-1This is the 1st part of the sequel to "Mutation." A lot of this is just recapping what happened in "Mutation" and is moving the story towards the new plot.

Thursday

Xander sat silently in the small padded room, his arms and legs tethered to the wall by leather straps and steel chains. The walls were so white that they seemed to glow despite the overhead light being filtered through a protective wire screen. He knew something was about to happen…

The thick metal door opened to a pitch black abyss. Not even the light above him allowed anything beyond the doorframe to be seen.

Xander watched as a dimly-lit, but obviously pale, girl materialized several paces outside the room.

She stood on the nonexistent floor for a moment before moving towards the room, practically floating. Finally, she took a step into the room, the light revealing both her identity and her plight: she was the girl Xander had killed in December and she looked very much like she had when she died. On the left side of her neck was the apparent cause; there was a bite-shaped, bloodless mark with slightly shredded edges and a purplish bruise.

Xander was scared, but he stood. "I-I'm sorry," he said honestly. "I didn't mean to do it."

The girl smiled but her gaze seemed to be drilling into him. "If you'd have just lasted another five minutes, I'd be graduating from high school next month," she spat back at him. "You deserve to die. A witch can't change the fact that you're a murdered; even becoming human again won't change that. If that spell is broken before you get a cure, you'll just kill more people the way you killed me…"

The girl stepped aside, and the hall outside brightened, revealing a new room.

Xander was looking into the living room at Giles' flat, just as it had been before Giles returned to England. Buffy, Willow, Dawn, Anya, Giles, and even Tara were all talking happily, but Xander couldn't hear the words, only what sounded like several different sets of drums all beating in the same rhythm but at different moments.

"One second without that magic and you'll tear them apart," the girl emphasized again, glaring at him.

Xander could feel the fangs in his mouth and the chains began to fade as his fingernails sharpened to claws. "No," he said quickly, looking at his hands. "The spell is still working; this can't be real," he continued, beginning to panic as he turned to the girl. He pressed his back against the wall, staring with reflective, golden eyes at his friends socializing in the next room. He felt compelled to run in there and attack them; he could practically smell their blood from where he stood…

"You know that a big part of you wanted to kill me, and you even enjoyed it," the girl continued to taunt. "The same part is even stronger now than it was when you killed me, and it will let you kill them all in the end," she added with a nod to the other room.

Xander couldn't hold back any more. He ran into the other room and roughly grabbed the closest of them from behind, sinking his teeth into their neck….

Xander woke suddenly in a cold sweat with his heart racing. He was in his own bedroom in his Sunnydale apartment, and his friends were safe. He sat up quickly and put his feet on the carpet, taking a few deep breaths to try to calm himself. It wasn't the first time he'd dreamed about the girl he'd killed, nor was it the first time he worried about hurting his friends. He'd even seen himself killing his friends more than once, but seldom in the last five months had those factors combined into one grand nightmare.

He looked over at the clock. It was only 1:48 pm but he felt rested, despite the dream waking him. He'd gotten in the habit of getting up around 4 pm but with the sun rising earlier he was getting to bed a little too early to excuse the schedule.

Still groggy but not willing to shut his eyes again, he began to think back to everything that happened in December… He'd been kidnapped by a group of vampire scientists who were trying to engineer the perfect vampire. They'd injected him with drugs, chemicals, and other things he knew little about. Eventually they'd successfully transformed his body into a hybrid of vampire, human, and various demons whose traits could be beneficial to their cause. When his friends found him, he was still human enough to control himself. After being re-captured the following evening, and disfigured even more, his mind was too mixed up to instinctively know the difference between right and wrong. He could, however, control the change in his appearance between his human and demon forms, hiding the gnarled claws and sharp teeth when he wished. Sunlight was also less of a problem than it had been before his second visit to the scientists. Unfortunately, he was about to find that his need and desire for blood had increased substantially.

The scientists had locked him in a padded room with the girl he'd just seen in his dream and were trying to see if he would kill her for her blood. That morning, at the very moment his friends were implementing their plan of rescue, Xander succumbed to his urges and grabbed onto the girl, draining the blood from her neck with his sharpened teeth.

After sleeping for a while at the motel, he realized how much he was still being changed by the chemicals coursing through his system. Willow, his best friend, cast a spell meant to help humans overcome their addictions. As a happy side-effect, all Xander's demonic features and impulses were masked completely. As the spell worked into the afternoon, Xander continued to feel more and more human. The spell could be broken by only by himself, but if it was ever broken it could never be cast upon him again for the same addiction.

That night, hopeful that a true cure may exist for Xander's condition, they decided to attack the scientist's hideout, but ended up in a trap: the door locked behind them with four other test subjects still locked in their cells, and two vampire women left behind as an intended blood supplement for Xander. With the building rigged to disrupt magic, the spell Willow had placed on Xander was being blocked. An automated recording explained that there were only four doses of a cure that would return the five patients to their human form; it was known to work on the four creatures left behind but had not been tested on hybrids such as Xander. To make the potion, they had to collect the chemical ingredients from each of the remaining patient's rooms. At noon the following morning, the door would unlock and magic could again be used within the bulding.

Xander, almost stronger than Buffy, had volunteered to preoccupy the inhabitant of the cells as they gathered the boxes from each of the rooms. Three of the patients were feral but one still acted very human; her name was Tess, and after being let out of her cage she continued to assist her rescuers.

After gathering three of the four ingredients, they entered the last cell expecting things to go as smoothly as they had been. Lee, the occupant of the cell, had been given a wooden chair leg as a weapon and he gleefully took the chance to surprise the intruders; he ran the thick shaft through Xander's chest. Retreating without their ingredient, Xander's blood loss rendered him unconscious and allowed his instincts to briefly take full control. He'd nearly killed Buffy after he'd thrown Spike down a hall, and as he left the corridor he'd also come close to letting himself bite Willow before regaining his senses.

Still in need of blood, he realized his only option was to take the blood from the two vampire women the scientists had left behind. Locked in a room with them, he allowed his body and mind to hunt in the barbaric way it desired.

With renewed strength, and a growing guilt over how much he'd enjoyed killing the vampires, he and Buffy returned to the last room and successfully retrieved the final supplies.

Fearing that this combination may actually be poison, they decided to administer Tess's dose after the others had recovered. The combined chemicals effectively created a cure for the other patients, but delivering the required injection was proving more difficult. Lee was the first to get the cure, running out of the building in a daze as his body transformed back into its entirely human form. Stephen, the other male patient, struggled more than expected when he received the shot. He ended up stabbing Xander with the needle containing a small portion of the formula.

The effects on Xander could be interpreted as successful in that less of his system was being polluted with demonic DNA, but the actual results were less than desirable. Willow assessed the effects and found that Xander could no longer change his form to look human, and demonic personality traits that remained were amongst the most dangerous ones added to the Scientist's mixture of demons.

While Stephen, Olivia, and Tess were recovering from their part of the cure, Willow and the others orchestrated a plan to contact their police friend, Andy, while leaving the demonic information out of the kidnapping investigation. By the time the police, social-workers, and medics arrived, they had all agreed upon the same story.

When Xander woke up that night, his friends were arranging the trip back to Sunnydale. Seeking closure, and wanting to help the only one of the vampire's experiments who didn't to receive a cure, Tess was set to accompany them wherever they went until Xander had been turned back into a human.

Before finally leaving the hotel room, he made Willow promise never to lift the spell she'd cast on him. He never wanted to look or feel like a demon again, even if it meant he would die. On Christmas Eve, Willow reluctantly agreed that if anything happened to him, he "…won't be stuck as that monster."

Tess quietly knocked on the door. "Xander? I heard you yelling… Are you awake?"

"Yeah," he called. "I'm up."

She opened the door and stepped inside. She was still in her pajamas. When she realized she may be in Sunnydale for a while, she enrolled in a few afternoon classes at U.C. Sunnydale. Given the town's reputation, she was always sure to be somewhere safe before it got too dark. Today she didn't need to leave until 3:15 pm, and, even better, her second class had been canceled so she'd be home before 6 pm. She'd only been up about an hour. "Was it another nightmare?"

He nodded a little. He'd shared a few of his nightmares with her, usually only when she woke up after a particularly violent one of her own about the man she'd killed. When he woke up from one, he felt no desire to tell it to anyone about it for quite a while.

"Do you need to go back to sleep?"

He glanced at the clock again: 1:53 PM. He'd successfully organized a night shift at the construction site, and he didn't need to be there until around 7 pm tonight. "I don't think I could get back to sleep if I wanted," he admitted, not wanting to risk another nightmare.

"Well, if you're interested, I made some coffee and there's still some eggs in the pan," she added, closing the door.

Xander sighed. Balford demons were incapable of staying awake during the day. That breed had been one of several demons his DNA had been mixed with, and that trait had been making it difficult for him to stay awake between sunrise and sunset. The magic Willow had used so many months ago seemed to be working better than ever: it was masking the harmless traits as well as it was masking the deadly ones.

Xander stood, ready to get dressed and prepare for the evening, but quickly felt lightheaded and was forced to sit again.

The few times he'd gotten up before sunset he'd been struck with the same sensation. He'd mentioned this to Willow and they realized that if he tries to stay awake during the day, he has more hunger symptoms despite the spell. She explained that, "Trying to keep his body functioning when its processes were slowed down for rest will mean that you need more nutrients to stimulate your system." This meant, simply, that if he wanted to do something other than sleep during the day, he'd need to drink more blood.

This dizziness discouraged him a little. The spell seemed to be helping him stay awake more comfortably, but it hadn't completely wiped out his need for blood. Even when he woke up at sunset, he still needed to start the evening with a package of blood, but after the single package he could eat and drink normally until the next evening's infusion.

The spell had, however, effectively brought him closer to being human in several other ways. Sunlight wasn't as painful as it had been at first. If he covered most of his skin and protected the rest with sunscreen, he found he could go outside during the day for quite a while before feeling too warm. Even with bare skin he could tolerate direct light for several minutes at a time. Also, but possibly for the worst, his ability to heal quickly had been almost completely masked by the magic. A few weeks earlier he'd gotten a cut on his arm from some metal at his construction site and it was at least five days before the mark had completely disappeared.

He tried to stand again, this time very slowly, and was easily able to find his balance. Walking slowly to the closet, he found his robe, slid it on, and went into the other room. He didn't want to risk any sort of fainting spell in the next few minutes so he figured getting his dose of nutrients out of the way would be for the best.

Tess was on the couch with her back to the partly un-covered window. She held her cup of coffee, but the empty breakfast plate on the table in front of her. She was flipping through the channels with the remote. "There's never anything on at this time of the day," she complained, turning to him with a smile.

Xander went into the kitchen, grabbed a large, green plastic cup from the cupboard, and took a bag of blood from the refrigerator. Aside from the time of the evening when he preparing that drink, he was in good cheer. At times he'd actually managed to forget his unusual situation, and feel completely like the person he'd always been. He glanced at her with a small smile, and then continued with his task. Grabbing his usual pair of scissors, he snipped the edge and poured the bag into the cup.

"There's always 'Passions' in a few minutes, but with all the real magic in this town the stories on that show seem a little out there," she continued more seriously, still watching him. Since he usually didn't wake up until after she'd left for school, it had been a while since they'd had an afternoon in the same room together.

Xander threw the empty bag in the trash and picked up the cup, drinking quite a bit of it in his first swig. The texture put him off, but there was absolutely no taste or smell to what was inside the cup. He felt better right away, but couldn't help thinking about the nightmare.

The phone started to ring.

Xander left his cup on the counter and answered it. "Hello?"

"Harris? It's Dan and I'm down at the site," the man explained.

"Everything ok?" he asked quickly.

Dan sighed. "I have an emergency at home and wanted to see if you could cover for me."

Xander thought a moment. It was the first time he'd been up this early, so he wasn't sure exactly how he'd be feeling in the six hours leading to sunset. On the other hand, Dan was his boss and the pay for a half a day at a higher position would make doing this more than worth his while.

"I know you work tonight, but your paycheck will reflect it. Besides, the job's mostly gonna be sitting in my office to take calls. There's only a few things left for me to do on the site, but that won't be until the end of the shift."

"Sure," Xander said finally. "But I really just got out of bed so it'll be about an hour before I get there."

"That'll be fine," Dan said quickly with obvious relief in his voice. "I'll make a little list of what really needs to get done, but they'll be ok here for a while. Thank you."

"I hope everything's alright with your family. And thank you for the opportunity."

"Try to have a good night." Dan hung up the phone, and then Xander did the same.

"Who was that?" Tess asked from the couch.

Xander went back to the cup and began drinking it again. "My boss needs me to take over for him until the end of this shift."

Tess was a little nervous. "Are you sure you can stay outside so long?"

Xander shrugged. "He said I'll be in his trailer most of the time." He finished the contents of the cup.

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3:15 PM -- Construction Site

Xander parked his car and began to walk onto the construction site. He had on a long-sleeved flannel shirt buttoned to his chin, work gloves, a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a layer of sunscreen on his face.

"Hey, Xander," Mark greeted from the shade as he sipped on a can of cola. "It's been a while since I've seen you on the day shift."

Xander nodded a little.

"But you're the one covering for Dan today?" Justin, another worker, asked.

"Yes. If you have any problems, just take them to me," he offered cheerfully.

"Then it's good you're here," Justin continued. "We're having some problems with the crane."

Xander took off his cap and put on the hardhat, ready to work.

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5:20 PM -- Xander's Apartment

The phone began to ring.

Tess was walking down the hall towards the front door as she heard the sound. She put her key in the door, and quickly rushed inside, dropping her bag as she picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Tess?" Willow asked. "Aren't you usually in class?"

Tess smiled a little. "One was canceled and the other cut short."

"Well, is Xander up yet? We have a really good lead in Chicago," Willow said excitedly. "Three John Does in the last three nights. The last one was found just twenty minutes ago, and all in the vicinity of one hospital."

"He's at the construction site already," Tess explained, closing the door and moving her backpack onto the couch. She continued to relay what had happened before she'd left for school.

"In that case, you can start packing your suitcase while we track down Xander. We're aiming for the 1 am flight, so we have a few hours to cancel or reschedule whatever we have planned tomorrow," Willow explained. "See ya later."

"See ya," Tess said cheerfully, hanging up the phone.

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5:40 PM -- Xander's Apartment

The phone began to ring again.

Tess came out of her room and answered it. "Hello?"

"There was some kind of accident," Willow said quickly, her voice very urgent. "The paramedics are just on their way now, and we're almost to your apartment to pick you up and go over there."

"Oh my God," Tess said. "Is he ok?"

"We don't know. They didn't tell us anything, just that there was an accident and that Xander was involved… We're pulling into your parking lot now; hurry outside and we'll go to the site together."

Tess dropped the phone back to the charger, grabbed her keys, and ran out the door for the car.

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5:55 PM -- Construction site

There were three ambulances and two fire trucks. Speeding all the way, they slammed on the breaks as they pulled in beside one of the ambulances. Everyone poured out of the vehicle and ran towards the small crowd. They were shocked by the extent of the damage.

The three story office building they'd been building was halfway fallen in upon itself. The crane rested in the middle of the building, obviously the thing that had caused the collapse. Two people were being strapped to backboards, and the firemen were still combing through the debris

"What happened?" Buffy demanded to the crowd as they took in the gnarled scene. "And is anyone still in there? Is Xander Harris still in there?"

Mark recognized Buffy as one of Xander's friends and approached the newcomers quickly. He had an icepack held against his shoulder. "Xander was inside, pointing out the next step on the blueprints, the way Dan was gonna do. He must have seen the crane coming. The thing wasn't working right a few hours ago. It was supposed to be moving things from over there to over there…" He pointed using his ice pack towards the two places at the far side of the crane. "It shouldn't have been anywhere near the building, especially not with the full load."

"B-But Xander…?" Tess asked fearfully.

"He spotted it, then yelled and pushed everyone out. I was near the exit, but with Phil in the building Xander went deeper in after him." He pointed to where the top of the crane rested. "It hit a support and the whole thing came down… Xander saved at least six of us from getting more than bumps and the two going to the hospital just have a few broken bones. Xander and Phil are still missing."

Buffy rushed into the scene and began pulling large pieces of metal out of the way.

"Excuse me, Miss, but you should just wait back there," one of the firemen said nervously. She was doing an extraordinary job of clearing the metal away, better than several fellow rescuers. "The building may not be secure."

She ignored him, looking back to Mark. "How far in was Xander when it caved in?"

"Maybe ten feet in front of you," Mark shouted back. "But the other guy's right; with one of the main supports gone the rest might fall in if you keep digging that aggressively."

Buffy looked at the fireman very seriously. "I've done search and rescue before and I can move just about anything that's on top of my friend. If we're going to find him alive, we need to find him fast. What can anyone do to make it safer for me to keep going?"

Mark quickly crossed the safety line, ready to advise. "Think of it like a puzzle: look at everything the metal is touching before you move it even a little." He looked back to the crowd of workers. "Everyone who's willing should grab a hardhat and give these people a hand."

The firefighter looked concerned. "I can't allow everyone in here. This place is just too unstable"

Mark amended his announcement. "There is a risk, but two men may still be alive in there."

About seven men came out of the group with their hardhats on, ready to do what they had to so they could uncover their two coworkers.

"We built it, and we move this stuff around for a living," one of the workers explained to reassure the fireman.

The fireman finally nodded. "The rest of us will be around the back of the building. We're not exactly sure how far inside Philip Watkins was, but he was putting on some paneling near the rear."

Willow sat down on the ground, doing what she could to calm herself. She posed in a meditative position, her back straight.

"What are you doing?" Tess asked quickly.

Willow sighed. "If I can focus, I might be able to sense where both of them have been buried." She took a deep breath again and let it out slowly.

Dawn rushed over to where there were extra hardhats and pulled two small ones off the hooks. She put one on and hurried to Buffy, giving her a hat for protection.

Everyone began sifting through the rubble, creating a human chain to clear everything out of the way safely.

Willow opened her eyes suddenly, her eyes clouded white. She looked into the rubble as though looking through twilight. There were two human-shaped, golden lights, like beacons in the dim, marking the locations of the two men who were still alive. Willow jumped to her feet and ran into the scene, rushing past the other people and stopping just a foot in front of Buffy to dig in the same area Buffy had been.

Tess followed quickly.

"Here!" Willow announced, squatting as she pulled a few more things out of the way. As she looked into the shallow pile, she could see the Xander's outline, face down, buried about a foot under the mess.

Buffy began to dig a little more quickly where Willow suggested.

Willow hurried outside again, circling around to the back of the building. She could see the other light, but it was fading a little. Joining the firefighters, she continued past them and to the left. "He's over here," Willow announced to them. "About two feet under, but he's still alive."

"How do you…?" another fireman began to ask, but when he saw her eyes, he stopped, joining Willow and beginning to dig in the spot.

"We need a paramedic!" Buffy shouted out of the building.

Willow blinked a few times, allowing the trance to fade as she rushed back to Xander's position.

He'd been completely uncovered, but obviously injured badly. There were a few shafts of metal sticking out of his body: one thick bar wan through the right side of his back, another smaller one through his left arm, and another in his right lower back. It was hard to tell exactly where the blood was coming from because his shirt was soaked with it in several places. His hat had been knocked from his head and his scalp was bloody from at least one good whack.

"Xander!" Willow cried, going to his side.

All the construction workers moved out of the building to allow the medics more room.

Two medics began assessing the injuries and preparing him for transport.

"He's lost a lot of blood," the female medic commented.

"And he's sort of anemic," Willow added. "He really needs a transfusion." She realized that with the sun being up, he might have had even less blood being circulated than what was healthy, but a transfusion may also help him speed the healing. Even with her spell on him, she hoped his healing ability would be sped by more blood.

"We realize that, Miss," the male medic said, digging in his bad. He pulled out a neck brace and carefully stabilized his neck.

A third medic, a tall man, arrived with a back-brace.

"Xander?" Willow called softly, touching his hand.

He didn't stir at all.

The men carefully slid him onto the stable surface as the woman prepared a package of O-Negative blood. She cut Xander's sleeve and pulled off the glove so she could hit the vein. They couldn't pull out the shrapnel until they were in the emergency room, so they began to carry him out of the building and to the rig.

The men began to secure him in the rig as the woman quickly explained to Buffy's group what was going on.

"His pulse is good; better now than he was before the transfusion started. He'll be in the ER, but you can follow us in your car." Before the group could pose other questions, the medic joined the others in the back of the ambulance and shut the door.

Buffy's friends took off the hard hats, leaving them in a pile as they rushed into the car and followed their friend.

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