Author's Note: If you haven't seen Torchwood's Children of Earth, I'm hoping you'll still be able to know what's going on. I think it's probably much more confusing if you haven't read the stories comprising this current Season of the Child of Balime.
Just in case you've forgotten what was going on before the Ten Seos...
Ever since The Making of Bilis Manger, Buffy has been sick with mysterious headaches that make her lose her train of thought and forget whatever she's doing. Martha's been looking into it, and has already announced that she believes the illness is something to do with Time, instead of something to do with aliens. When Seo took Buffy to a hospital on the planet Totania, which specialized in temporal illnesses, the doctors insisted that Buffy wasn't sick at all.
Now...
Time to find out what's really going on.
Enjoy!
Day 1.
At 8:40 am, Greenwich Mean Time, every single child in the world stopped.
At 8:39 am, Buffy Summers had another dizzy-spell.
Just like before. Except this time it was worse — so much worse! It began with a sudden, splitting headache, tearing across her mind, and then the world began to slide sideways, her vision blurring until she couldn't see what was what, like a thousand transparencies laid one on top of another. A ringing resounded in her ears, and she couldn't think, couldn't remember, couldn't even… stand…
Buffy reached out, grabbed at the railing to one of the houses, nearby. Trying desperately to stop herself from falling down. Except there wasn't a railing there, wasn't anything, and Buffy found herself on the sidewalk. Just hoping this would end. End. END!
The clock ticked to 8:40 am.
The world snapped back into focus.
And Buffy felt fine.
Completely fine. Got up from the sidewalk, seeing the faces of concerned civilians crowding around her — one of them on his phone, calling for an ambulance. Trying to dismiss the nice people who wanted to help and led her to a bench and offered her water. Trying to work out how she'd explain to the ambulance that she didn't need to go to the hospital, she was fine now, would be all the way until the next attack, and no medical equipment in the universe seemed to be able to tell what was wrong with her!
Then Buffy noticed the mother, in the middle of the street, trying desperately to get her child to move. The little girl, looked about 8, stood frozen, a blank expression on her face. Didn't seem to even notice her mom was there.
The ambulance sirens blazed, in the background. Began to approach.
Buffy bolted forwards, jumping off the bench and then launching herself into the air, doing a double-flip over the crowd of people that had surrounded her, then sprinted for the child, grabbing the girl up and shoving her mother away, just as the ambulance screeched on its breaks.
The child still didn't move.
Didn't seem to even register that anything had just happened.
The mom, now splayed out across the pavement, frantically jumped to her feet. Grabbing the girl from Buffy, alternately clutching her and scolding her, clearly terrified and half out of her wits.
The ambulance drivers raced out, too, half checking the girl over for any injuries, the others running to the crowd and asking to get through and reach the emergency patient.
The crowd was just staring at Buffy with their jaws hanging open.
"Is this a joke?" one of the medics who'd come from the crowd said, when approaching Buffy. "You… collapsed — couldn't even stand up — and you're now doing high-level acrobatics?!"
"Look, she's the one who needs an ambulance!" Buffy retorted, indicating the little girl. "Not me! It was just a dizzy spell. I'm…"
Buffy trailed off.
As she looked down the street, at the sidewalk about a block away. Where a mother was trying, desperately, to get a little boy to move.
"No obvious symptoms," said one of the medics examining the girl. "We'll take her in for some tests. Make sure…"
"No, wait!" said Buffy. She sprinted down the street, towards the nearest intersection. Looked both ways.
Four more kids.
All exactly the same.
"It's all of them!" Buffy called back. "All the kids! They've all frozen!"
But no sooner had she said it, then every single child, all at once, resumed. Sometimes in mid-conversation. Once again running and playing and laughing, talking and chatting and crossing the street.
The little girl who'd nearly been run over looked around herself. "What am I doing on the ground?"
Buffy took it in. As she walked back. For a whole minute, the kids had stopped. Hadn't noticed, hadn't realized it was happening. They just… stopped.
"Talk about a Sunnydale moment," Buffy said. Then reached into her pocket to take out her phone. Call up Jack and the others, or maybe Giles, see what she could get on this.
But her phone, when she pulled it out, had already begun to ring.
"Did you see?" came Alison's voice. "All across London! The children just stopped!"
Giles, naturally, had an enormous pile of books open on his desk, even as Buffy arrived. Alison was right beside him, making exaggeratedly disgusted facial expressions at some of the things written inside of them.
"And back with the magic books," said Buffy, shutting the door behind her. "Just add a few vampire slayings, and it'd be high school all over again." She sat down on the arm of a chair, by a very large stack of books about magical jinxes that can happen to large numbers of children. "Why aren't you at work? I thought the Ministry would be all with the kid-freezing."
"Ministry of Magic, maybe," Alison muttered. "Giles thinks it's supernatural." She made a gagging expression, and thrust her book away. "Do all these evil-magic-type things end with the kids being brutally massacred?!"
Giles looked up at Buffy. Peering through his glasses. "This particular incident has been assigned elsewhere," he explained. "Mr. Frobisher did not wish for my assistance when I offered it. I thought perhaps it would be better to approach him, again… when we had more information."
"Or maybe not at all," said Buffy, "if this is magical and not all outer-spacey."
"Hope it's not!" said Alison, slamming down the latest book. "If this is what magic does, I think the kids'll have more luck with the aliens." She got up, headed over to the computer. "This Frobisher bloke. Any chance you have his lot's pass codes on your computer? Something I could hack? We could check up. See what info he's got."
"No such luck," Giles admitted. "But I doubt Home Office will know much more than we do, at this point."
"Yeah, Torchwood doesn't know anything, either," said Buffy, picking up a book and flipping through it. "They're all with the freak-out. Jack told me this stuff's happening across the world. Even in totally random places, like Belgium." She stopped, her eyes skimming the page. Then make a disgusted face and shoved the book away. "Ugh! Alison's right. Let's hope it's not magic."
Alison looked up from the computer. "Torchwood's onto this?"
"So Jack says," replied Buffy.
Alison jumped to her feet. "Then why are we wasting time with this rubbish?" she said, toppling a stack of books to the ground. "Let's go to Cardiff and solve this using high-tech alien gadgets!"
Giles looked like Alison had just slapped him.
"Sorry," Alison said, with a cringe. "But… it's probably not really magic, anyways, is it? Not if it's world-wide." She gestured around herself. "And I'm pretty sure Torchwood has most of these books in ebook format."
Buffy wondered just how many demons Torchwood had introduced into their internet, doing that.
Giles turned back to his books. Sullenly. "Yes. Well. It's just not the same, is it?" Opened another, thumbing through the pages, but clearly not really reading them. "Without the physical book."
Alison looked hopefully at Buffy, as she headed towards the door.
But Buffy wasn't about to trust herself on the road, right now. Didn't know if she'd be able to make it to Cardiff even as a passenger, to be honest.
"I'll… help Giles with his books," Buffy said, sitting down in the chair properly.
Alison paused in her walk. Scrutinizing Buffy, carefully. All mirth falling away from her in an instant.
"And… hey, I mean, if you guys need someone to… snoop around government places or something," Buffy offered, "it'll be good for me to stick around here."
"It happened again, didn't it?" Alison said. "You had another… episode. A bad one."
Buffy tried to paint a picture of total happiness and unconcern on her face. "Of course not," she dismissed. "I'm fine! I just… like Giles' books. That's all."
Alison glanced between Buffy and Giles. Uneasily.
Then took out her car keys. "Anything happens," Alison told the two of them, "you ring me. Got that?"
And left.
For a few moments, neither Giles nor Buffy said anything. The only sound that of the clock, ticking on the wall.
"Was it very much worse, this time?" Giles asked, quietly.
Buffy didn't want to answer that.
Instead picked up another one of Giles' books. Thumbing through the index, trying to find planet-wide spells that caused children to act weird. "Oh, look at that!" She squinted at the name, trying to sound it out. "A demon called… Eg…so…hopskippy…"
Giles put his hand on hers.
Buffy couldn't meet his eyes.
"Did Martha find anything, yet?" Giles asked.
"She's… looking," Buffy admitted. Sighed, folding her hands over the book. "She's pretty sure it's something temporal. And that it's either specific to Earth, or that I'm too Line Hopper-y and confusing for the magic-space-people on that Toto world to figure me out."
Giles frowned.
"She doesn't think it's a tumor," Buffy put in. "She says… it's probably something Bilis Manger set off in my head, or… temporal debris from that Zen-12 bomb thingy, back in Sunnydale. She's… tracking down a time-sensitive in Mongolia. He's known to deal with this kind of thing."
Giles nodded.
"And then Seo and Dawn are off somewhere else in time and space," said Buffy, "tracking down whatever lead they have for a cure. And Martha's sent that Ricky guy of hers off to Madagascar, for some maybe-cure thing I can't pronounce. And Felix and my other UNIT buddies are all in the Amazon, trying to find something they think could help. And…" She grimaced, reflecting on this. "You know, my illness might have taken all the best planet-savers out of commission."
"Your health is important," Giles said. "We're all worried."
"Yeah, but if this kid-freezing-thing turns into something big," Buffy pointed out, "I think I've single-handedly doomed the world."
Giles shot her a pointed stare.
And Buffy sunk her head even further into her book. Didn't want to talk about this, anymore.
"You're frightened," said Giles. "I understand. But we care about you. The world… recognizes how important you are. That's why so many people are trying to help."
Buffy looked up at him. "Weird thing is… I'm not nearly as freaked as everyone else," she admitted. "I mean, I get that I should be scared, I get that I could die from this, but… part of me… can't process that it's real."
Giles nodded.
Buffy slammed down her book. "Just… you know!" she said, popping to her feet. Pacing around the front of Giles' house. "I spent so long being terrified of monsters and vampires and aliens, and the end of the world or the end of the universe, or my daughter blowing us all sky high, or… whatever." She turned on Giles. "I always figured… that was it! I'm the Slayer. I'm gonna die fighting."
Giles took off his glasses. Eyes never leaving her.
"And then something like this happens," Buffy said, "and… and it's just… I can't…"
"It's not a monster in front of you," Giles understood. "And so your mind can't process it as a real threat."
Trust Giles to get it completely.
Buffy threaded her hands through her hair. "And I'm doing that thing, again. You know? Where I keep finding evil alien plots and stuff, and thinking, 'Hey! This must be why I'm sick! It's all part of some massive alien-magic-demon conspiracy thing! Like the kind I'm good at fighting.'" She sucked in a sharp breath. "But I did that with Mom. And it wasn't magic. It was just… what happened."
"Martha will find the answer," Giles promised her. "I'm certain."
Buffy nodded. But didn't say anything, as they remained in silence a few seconds longer. Waiting as the world worried for its children.
"It's not connected to this kid-thing, right?" Buffy double-checked. "I mean, just because I collapsed right before the kids…"
She caught the look on Giles' face.
And grimaced. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. None of the other weird alien things that happened around me were connected, so there's no chance that this one is. It was just bad timing."
"I'm sorry," said Giles. "Really. I am."
Buffy nodded. Then stopped. Eyes fixed on the computer Alison had left sitting on the table. Her brow furrowing.
"That… government place," Buffy said, walking towards the computer. "The one that's handling this kid-thing. What kind of encryption key are they using to protect their data?"
Giles blinked. Stared. "I'm sorry?"
"I just… well, you know," said Buffy, faltering a little. "If they do know something. They're not just gonna leave it lying out for us to find, or…" She noticed the astonished look on Giles' face, and took a step back. "Yeah, okay, I get it. Buffy-no-go-near-computer."
Giles still just stared.
"Yeah, I think… I'll get back to the books," Buffy said, sliding down into a nearby chair. "Definitely. Books."
