DISCLAIMER: All characters presented in this story are the property of Joss Whedon, the WB, Mutant Enemy, et. al. The only part that's mine is the plot.
WARNING: This is a work in progress ... and probably will be for some time. Don't keep reading if you're looking for something finished.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.
Onward!!
* * * * *
PROLOGUE:
WHAT DARK FROM YONDER SHADOW BREAKS
It was well past the time when the last bars of Los Angeles were closing, and the last of the after-midnight revelers were fading from the streets. It was Saturday, so the city was going to bed several hours later than normal. That meant nothing to the quintet of figures gathered in the basement of the Pendulum Nightclub, however. There was always rest from pleasure. There was never rest from business, even when business was slow and their fellow creatures of the underworld had largely gone into hiding recently.
"It's just a quiet time, boss," Ctharl, a heavyset blue-scaled brute with heavy-lidded eyes, offered. "Ever since Sunnydale, all the action's takin' to other other parts of the country."
"Then something had better happen to shake things up a bit," the leader, a massive creature, although the most humanoid of the group, snarled in reponse.
There was an uneasy silence as the five all looked at one another. It was against the rules of their order to start turmoil simply for the sake of attracting business, though senior members had sometimes been able to stretch the rules somewhat.
The tension was broken abruptly, however, when Hascinth, a short, brown creature with long, razor-sharp claws at the end of each hand, suddenly perked up his head. The other members looked at him, startled. Hascinth generally said the least of any of them, but none of them ever mistook his silence for ignorance. Aside from the leader, he was the most deadly of the group, and his senses were attuned to things that no earthly predator could perceive.
"What ... is ... that?" he hissed slowly.
There was a tremendous crash on the basement door, hard enough that the floor seemed to shake, as well as the door. The mysterious figures all turned, a light of battle entering most of their eyes. Almost none of them had had a chance to kill of late, and that, more than anything else, was what they lived for.
"Who is it?" the leader called out, his tone completely at odds with the situation. He sounded like he was answering a polite knock, even though his double-edged claymore was already naked in his right hand.
The door could not handle the unannounced visitor's second knock; the second impact splintered it into pieces and left it lying on the floor in a semicircle around the now unbarred portal. The passage beyond was unlit, and a dark, man-sized silhouette was all that could be seen at first. Then the figure strode into the room, and the demons gasped in shock. It was not a man. It was a woman. Well, at least it looked like one. They all knew better, though.
"Well, well, well, here you all are!" Glory's ever-confident voice sang out. "You people are so hard to find. That's why I love you all so much!" Her gaze centered on the leader of the group. "Rhyzor, it's so good to see you again! It's been ... what ...?"
"Two hundred and eighty-seven years, if I haven't lost track," Rhyzor answered. "Didn't expect to see you down here, though."
"Well, I figured, if I can't have Hell, there's always Los Angeles," she quipped. Her smile was a little strained, though, which Rhyzor could would have sworn he had never seen during the brief year he had known her in the eighteenth century.
"I thought you were supposed to have left already ... I even heard that the portal opened up in Sunnydale. Then again, other people are telling me that you died. Looks like humans are as unreliable as ever."
"Actually, they got it just about right," Glory answered. "Except for the part about me dying of course. My other body got killed by some old British guy, or so I heard. This is just my new one. Gods just don't go down that easily."
"Well, new body or old body, we're honored by your presence."
"Well, of course you are!" Glory answered in her customary fashion. "You don't need to tell me that. What you do need to do is pay back an old favor, don't you? You remember what I mean, right?"
"The Order of Turaca never backs down on a debt," Rhyzor answered.
Glory smiled. "Especially not when your life depends on it."
"Naturally," Rhyzor answered with a carnivorous grin. "And believe it or not, you're actually here at a good time. The boys are kinda hungry at the moment. What're you after?"
"Oh, Rhyzie, I thought you'd never ask." Almost instantly, she was across the room and standing right next to the Turacan praetor. "You see," she continued, "this body just isn't really me. I mean it's me, it's just even worse than my last one. I mean like, if I wanted to kill every one of you in here, it would probably take me a minute or two now. I feel so helpless."
"You want another new body?" Ctharl broke the silence of the other members.
"Oh, no, this one's fine. It's got potential, I mean, it is ME after all. I just want to get back to the old me, that's all."
"I see," Rhyzor replied. "So what it it you want from us, then?"
"Well, you see, I have this ritual that will do exactly what I want, but I'm missing something I really need for it."
"And this is?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just the blood of a Slayer."
The Turacans cast furtive glances at one another. They remembered all too well what had happened the last time that they had fought the Slayer of Sunnydale. There had never been an occasion to seek revenge, though some of the Order had wanted to make a special mission out of it with no contract involved. That would have broken every code of the Order, of course, so it was shouted down, but the simple presence of such sentiments was almost unheard-of in the Order. Of course, some of the naysayers were probably motivated more by fear than by caution. Buffy Summers was supposed to be stronger than any Slayer in centuries, an exception to the historical waning of the Slayer's power since the days of the first Slayer. Furthermore, Rhyzor remembered that both Buffy and Glory both lived in Sunnydale. This didn't seem like any reason to call on the Order, whether they owed her a favor or not.
"Your Eminence, the Order will gladly attempt to repay our debt in this fashion, if you so desire, but the Slayer actually lives in Sunnydale as well. I'm sure you already knew that. Why come to us? You could just as easily get it yourself."
"Huh?" Glory replied. "Rhyzie, you're a little bit behind the times, you know? That Buffy girl, she's dead."
The members of the Order of Turaca came to their feet en masse. Words flew from every direction, in five different languages, until Glory shouted for silence.
"So I can't use Buffy's blood, because she already used it to stop me. The little bitch." The vengeful goddess was actually pouting.
"Stop ...?" Rhyzor began. If the Slayer had stopped the Beast, then she deserved her legend, even if it had cost her her life. He was still angry in the back of his mind that the Order's vaunted intelligence had somehow failed to discover the most significant event in supernatural circles in at least a century, especially one that had to have been fairly conspicuous even to a mortal observer.
"So anyway, now I've got a problem," Glory continued, ignoring the Turacan's question. "You see, one of my little peons told me that every time one of those little girls dies, they just go find someone else. But you see, they don't let poor little Glory in on this selection, so I'm just up the creek, see? I have no idea where this new little blood-filled Slayer is hiding on this forsaken-God-forsaken planet!" She smiled and put her arm on Rhyzor's arm. "But ..." she began sweetly.
"That's where we come in," Rhyzor finished. It would be a good idea to learn who and where the next Slayer would be, anyway. He was just about to accept when the ever-silent Hascinth spoke.
"Forget it," he stated flatly.
Rhyzor burst out "What?!" at the same time Glory turned to him and said, "Excuse me?"
"I thought all you wanted was the blood of a Slayer," the little brown demon replied to Glory.
"Yes, I thought that's what we were getting at here!" Glory answered impatiently.
"You know, the new Slayer could be called from anywhere on this entire planet. And we'll have to get inside the Council of Watchers before we can even find her location. Even for us, that will take a long time."
"Oh I think you owe me that," Glory answered.
"I know, but I thought you were in a hurry."
"I can wait an eternity, but not for you to get to the point. What the hell are you saying?"
Hascinth smiled wickedly. "If you want the blood of a Slayer, I know where to find one without going halfway around the world."
* * *
CHAPTER 1:
EXODUS
Faith fled through the darkness, though she had no idea what she was running from or where she was going. She just knew that whatever was behind her was terrible, and sought only to swallow her whole. She was screaming, but the darkness was a great velvet blanket, swallowing her screams so quickly that she could not even hear them herself. There were shapes in the darkness, some moving, some standing still, all ominous and threatening. She had no idea how she could tell they were there, since both they and the darkness around them were pitch black. Eventually, one reared up right in front of her, and she was running too fast to stop. She ran into it, and suddenly felt as though she had run into a solid shape of water, because she heard a splash and felt a wet, numbing chill spread across her skin. Then pain lanced through the numbness, and she looked down. The darkness had parted just enough to reveal a knife in her belly, the same that had sheathed itself there on her rooftop back in Sunnydale in what seemed like a distant past life. She felt herself falling again, but there was no truck to break her fall, and she just kept falling and twisting in the darkness. She could feel a rushing sound as though water was following her, almost as if she were being pursued by an angry waterfall. She tried to remove the dagger from her abdomen, but it was as though the knife were made of water as well; it kept slipping from her numb, stiffening fingers.
Then, suddenly, the evasive knife came free and sailed up into the darkness above Faith. Faith suddenly realized she was in the midst of dark stormclouds, and lightning arched and danced around her. Several bolts of it converged on the place where Faith had flung the knife, lighting up the darkness for a brief moment. The fugitive Slayer had a momentary glimpse of a woman's silhouette in the abyss above her, seemingly formed entirely of water or some other undulating liquid, with death in her eyes. Then the lightning struck it, and the woman shattered in a shower of drops and sparks. There was another blinding flash a moment later, accompanied at last by the roar of thunder than banished the silence.
She awoke with a start, her hair matted in front of and around her face. The last lightning and thunder of her dream blended with the flashing and booming of the storm outside her narrow, barred window.
The dreams were becoming more and more common, and had been almost from the end of her first month in prison. There had also been a noticeable spike in them since a volunteer from the local community college had introduced her to a form of kriya yoga, a pastime which she had enthusiastically adopted after a brief period of denying that she liked it and saying that it was hokey and all of that. This dream was different than the others she had experienced, however. It had a sense of personalness, of immediacy, that Faith could not put her finger on. It filled her with a sense of foreboding that lasted well into the morning, and there was nothing to distract her from it until her cell mate awoke.
"Rise and shine, Chica," she said fondly as she heard the slight Mexican girl stirring on the bunk beneath her. Juanita spat an obscenity back in her direction, and Faith's smile only broadened.
Juanita Garrido had been the complete opposite of the stereotypical inmate that she had always worried she was going to end up sharing a room with for a long time. She was even shorter than Faith herself was, and probably only ninety pounds. She didn't have much of a figure, but she was far from ugly, and still managed to have a kind of spark in her eyes after almost three years in prison, though she rarely smiled. Her English was surprisingly good, considering most of the Mexican offenders in the California Institution for Women could barely understand directions in English, much less speak it. Juanita at least had a reasonable grasp of it, especially the profanity. She had quickly grasped on to the concept that "fucking" was an appropriate adjective for just about any purpose, and that "as hell" was appropriate description for just about anything as well. She had ended up in prison more for falling in with the wrong crowd than for any true malice, getting picked up at a gang bust in L.A. three years previously, while engaged in some kind of vandalism; Faith had never been able to drag out of her roommate just exactly how serious that had been, and had taken the point and given it up after a couple of tries. Juanita had only been moved down to maximum security after attacking one of her guards in medium security; had it not been for that incident, the girl might have already been free again.
The official wake-up call came shortly, crackling over the aging P.A. system as the guards lined up to escort the inmates to breakfast. Faith leapt lightly down from her perch atop the bunk bed, narrowly missing Juanita's head as she crawled out from the bottom bunk. That drew a fresh round of obscenities, but they were half-hearted at best; there was really no room for Faith to have landed anywhere else, and they both knew that she could have jumped a lot farther than she had if it weren't for the simple fact that there was a concrete wall there. The cell had originally been meant to house a single person, but the prison was strained to nearly double its intended capacity, and living room was tight, to say the least; the cell hadn't been designed to give even one person much air to breathe.
The shuffling walk to the cafeteria for breakfast was so mindless and routine that Faith practically did it instinctively at this point, barely noticing the armed guards and security cameras. She did notice something different today, however. One of the guards assigned to her cell block was new, a rare event, and one which would probably end up being the subject of conversation at some point during breakfast. New guards were rare, and anything at all could become news in a place so monotonous and isolated from the outside world.
Breakfast was the standard fare of nondescript organic matter that would never be admitted even into a high school cafeteria. There was something that could have been soup; it was liquid, anyway, and it came in a styrofoam dish. There was some form of mystery meat; Faith did her best to avoid thinking about what kind of animal it came from. She piled the items onto her tray wordlessly and headed for an empty space at a nearby table.
Faith had never had a group of friends that she fell in with that she always sat near at meals. When she had first come here, some people had chosen to sit near her for a few days. Then there had been a period where no one wanted to sit next to her, then people would again, and now she was in a state once again when people were giving her a wide berth, and the seats next to her would only fill when all others were taken. Her rises and declines in companionship occurred because of all the strange events that surrounded her; her second wave of popularity had been shortly after she had sent one of the inmates that everyone else despised to the infirmary for the night, but that had been only temporary. The subsequent decline in her clique had no direct cause, just a strange feeling that many of the other prisoners got when they were near her. There was the sense that the guards were somehow treating her differently, watching her differently ... the world itself had an air of unpredictability around her, which made many of her fellow inmates uncomfortable. Faith herself had sensed it on occasion, but even she had never been able to puzzle out anything about it.
Today was no exception. That was one of the characteristics of prison. There were never any exceptions, to anything. Faith remembered watching the Shawshank Redemption years earlier, and how Morgan Freeman had talked about prison life being "routine, and then more routine." She had no idea how correct he was.
Eventually, however, the fact that there was never enough space at the tables to go around forced the stragglers into her area. They tried to take as little notice of her as possible; a scant few gave her a nod or a smile or a muttered "'sup" in greeting, but no more. She returned the greetings of those who offered them, but did not go out of her way to try to spark conversation. For one thing, conversation this morning didn't seem to be incredibly lacking. It was usually like this during storms and other inclement weather conditions; there were always a good number of inmates who felt the urge to talk more than usual to lift the mood. Faith had noticed that the stupidest stuff could become the topic of long conversations in such times; there was simply never much in prison to talk about, and most of the inmates didn't care one way or another about the outside world, so the possible topics of discussion were fairly limited.
"See the new chick?" a tall pimply redhead was asking to a friend as she sat down nearby.
"Hell yeah, bitch," came the affectionate reply her friend, a stocky black woman who somehow managed to keep her head shaved even in prison. "Man, she is fine ... but keep yo' hands t' yo'self, hear? Girl looks like she's mean with a stick, 'f you know what I'm talking 'bout."
The redhead smiled mischievously. "Good thing I don't have one, then," she smirked, and Faith grimaced in a moment of repulsed reflection. It was never the ones you expected. She couldn't help following the redhead's eyes to the newcomer among the guards. She had heard something from Dr. Bronson about there being one coming in, but had never paid much attention to it.
The new guard was definitely a piece of work, Faith admitted. She was tall, six feet if you included her shoes, and had solid definition that showed even beneath her uniform. Her hair was ash blond, but Faith couldn't see any more than that; the woman was on the far side of the room from Faith and was not paying her any attention. Nonetheless, Faith's eyes narrowed as she looked at the new arrival, though for the life of her, she could not discern the reason why.
She didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the newcomer, however, because remembering that Dr. Bronson had mentioned something about this also reminded her that she had a morning appointment with the good doctor today. She groaned. Out of all the things there were to hate about prison, that woman was the worst.
Dr. Bronson was the prison shrink. Not shrink, she reminded herself. Psychiatric social rehabilitation therapist, or some such nonsense. She had required appointments with Faith at least once a week, and had somehow taken a special interest in Faith and often requested to see her at least twice as often. Faith couldn't stand the woman. It wasn't that she was mean; quite the opposite. She was cloying, almost flattering, always emanating a kind of false friendship that was carefully crafted but which Faith saw through like an open window. Faith hated pretenders, and Dr. Bronson not only pretended to be someone she wasn't, she had made a career out of it.
Shortly after breakfast, she was escorted to the shrink's office by the usual trio of guards, just as she always had been whenever she had to be brought outside the thickest of the security web at the heart of the complex; the doctor's office was not at the edge of the compound, but it was just outside the maximum security sector that housed Faith and her fellow "extremely dangerous" inmates. The Three Stooges, she had affectionately nicknamed the trio, based on the fact that they had practically no facial expression at times, and when they did, it was generally to crack jokes that she didn't think were the least bit funny. It was all as routine as breathing.
When she entered the doctor's office, however, her eyes widened immediately. The doctor was not alone. The new guard from breakfast was there as well. Faith gazed at the newcomer quizzically until she realized that it was not polite to stare; then, since she had never been one for manners, she continued to gaze at her anyway. Breaks in routine at prison were rare, and never happened without a purpose of some kind.
Dr. Bronson, a short, plain woman with brown hair and thick, professorial glasses, was seated behind her desk. She was facing sideways as Faith walked in, looking out the window. That, at least, was fairly routine.
"Faith!" she exclaimed excitedly in her bubbling, ever-enthusiastic voice. "Good to see you again! Do come in."
Faith slowly shut the door behind her, leaving the Three Stooges out in the hall.
"Is something ... wrong, doctor?" she asked hesitantly, without moving away from the door.
"What? No, why should there be? Please, have a seat."
The hair on the back of Faith's neck raised at that, though she couldn't put her finger on the exact reason yet. For some reason, however, that inner voice that had kept her alive as an abandoned Slayer was telling her that the woman was lying, or at least, not telling the whole truth. She noticed that Dr. Bronson had not even bothered to introduce the new arrival, despite the fact that it should have been obvious to the doctor that there could be no other reason for Faith to believe anything was out of the ordinary.
"Are we going to have company today?" Faith asked, still not moving toward the chair in front of Dr. Bronson's desk.
"Eh? Oh, yes, how foolish of me. Faith, meet Officer White," Dr. Bronson said, rising to her feet for the moment. "She has ... uh ... experience in dealing with cases similar to yours, so I thought it would be appropriate to include her."
"Please, just call me Crystal," the new guard said, though she did not extend her hand or make any other kind of friendly overture.
Nevertheless, the hair on the back of Faith's neck raised another inch at this latest exchange. Something was out of place. There was something seriously wrong this; guards were practically never on a first name basis with the inmates, especially not in any kind of friendly manner, and never unless both the guard and the inmate in question had been here for years. She focused her gaze temporarily on the new guard, but they were unreadable, though Faith thought she caught a flash of something there for a brief instant. Then it passed. She turned her gaze back to lock the good doctor's, and they were focused and level. For some reason, however, the doctor did not seem as calm as her eyes argued; then, suddenly, Faith put her finger on it, and had to control herself from starting and startling the other two. The temperature in the room was deliberately kept cool, but there were clearly beads of perspiration standing out on Dr. Bronson's forehead.
"Are you going to sit down, or are you just going to stand there all morning?" Officer White asked. Once again, her voice was far too friendly for Faith's comfort.
"Well ..." Faith murmured as she approached the chair before the desk.
"Oh, come on, Faith, sit down, I can't wait all day," Dr. Bronson said. That was another break from routine; Dr. Bronson almost never sounded cross, even when she was. The beads of sweat on her forehead were even larger now than they had been when Faith first noticed them. Something was clearly fraying the good doctor's composure.
"Doctor, what's wrong?" Faith asked, trying to sound as genuinely concerned as possible. She half hoped it was laryngitis.
"Eh? Oh, nothing, my nerves ... oh, it's nothing, just have a seat."
Faith's eyes narrowed. They were awfully insistent on getting her to sit down. Instinctively, she glanced at the seat of the chair, as though it could provide her with any answers. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary to see, but then she noticed something small and shiny lying on the chair, a tiny metallic speck. She tried to brush it away, and it didn't move. Her eyes widened; both Dr. Bronson and Officer White tensed simultaneously, and Faith felt rather than saw Officer White's hand drift closer to the holster at her right hip.
Convulsively, Faith tore the cushion free of the seat, and gasped, even though she had suspected she might see more than what would normally find under a chair cushion. Wedged into the base of the chair was a syringe, with a dose of some kind of green liquid in it with which Faith would have injected herself had she actually sat down. She had no idea what it was, but she doubted it was a flu shot.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, alarmed, but she did not expect an answer and was only doing to conceal that she was preparing to fight.
Dr. Bronson's hand instantly lunged for the alarm button beneath her desk, while Officer White's hand darted for the holster at her hip.
The good doctor's hand never reached the button, as Faith, moving as quickly as she ever had, grabbed and hurled the syringe like a dart, embedding the entirety of the needle in the woman's hand. The woman sprang back with a cry, clutching her hand to her breast, though her movement was slower and stiffer than any normal pain reflex, and her eyes were already beginning to take on a distant, glazed look.
Faith was not paying her any attention anymore, however, because as soon as she had let fly the syringe, she had pounced at Officer White in a deperate lunge to keep the woman from bringing her Remington into play. She was half successful. The woman was fast, and strong, and had already gotten the revolver free, but Faith was there in time to slide to the inside of Officer White's body and lock a hand around her wrist, sending the officer's shot flying up and knocking out the hanging overhead lamp. A shower of glass fragments and sparks rained down on them, and surprisingly, Officer White jumped back as if seriously pained.
Faith jumped back as well, but not from the sparks or the glass; she had shrugged off much worse in her day. Officer White's gun had come loose from the impact of the brief struggle ... and had come loose straight through her fingers. The feel of Officer White's flesh, if flesh it could be called, might have been enough in and of itself to have caused Faith's reaction. It had had far too much give, and was far too cold, to be normal human flesh. It had felt like liquid contained by only the thinnest of membranes. And the way she had recoiled from the glass and sparks ...
"What the hell are you?" she asked, inching towards the gun on the floor.
The taller woman did not answer, and realized immediately where Faith was heading, and she dove for the gun. Faith dove at the same instant, but not at the gun. Realizing that Officer White's path to the gun would take her straight under the blown lamp, Faith dove straight at the woman, bracing herself for the cold feel of the woman's skin, wrapping her arms around the woman's waist, and lifting her into the air towards the frayed ends of the wires hanging from the ceiling to where the lamp had been seconds earlier. There were still sparks dancing at the exposed ends.
"No!" the officer shrieked, and Faith's last doubts about the woman's humanity were annulled. The woman twisted, and her flesh blurred and became a liquid metallic silver, flowing downward around Faith's arms; Faith suddenly found that she was trying to hoist a pool of water into the air, though there was something solid within it that brushed against the sleeve of her prison jumpsuit as it rolled down around her, but it felt thin and frail like a wire frame. She jumped back, unwanted visions of "Terminator 2" coming into her mind and fearful that the woman might suddenly re-materialize right around Faith with knives for hands, but that didn't happen, and Faith managed to free herself from the descending blob. It reached the floor, and there it actually did begin to materialize, but Faith was already moving.
As soon as she got her balance set under her again, she sprang onto the doctor's desk, and from there into the air, grabbing the wire dangling from the ceiling several feet above its end. The wire was held to the ceiling only by a few metallic clips, which came free with Faith's weight on them. Faith, the wire held out in front of her, plunged down into the reforming ooze.
There was a loud crackle and a series of popping sounds, and a high-pitched wail echoed from the blob, which had begun to have a recognizable human shape again. However, not only had Faith brought the live wire down with her, but she had also brought all her weight down straight on the frail inner skeleton of whatever kind of creature Officer White was, apparently before it could reform its fluid defenses around itself. There was a loud snap that was distinct from any of the popping sounds caused by the live wire. Faith hurled herself away quickly, as a burning sensation began in her flesh where her exposed hand had touched the skeleton, but she was already reasonably confident that she had struck a fatal blow.
She wheeled around as soon as she thought she had put a yard or two between herself and the creature, however, and froze. She had been right about striking a fatal blow, though the current was not exceptionally powerful and she wished she had something like a high-voltage line at her disposal. What caught her eye, however, were the Three Stooges, standing at the doorway of the doctor's office, having heard the gunshot and the screaming. Their eyes were wide with terror, and Faith felt an irrational pang of sympathy for them. They had probably been watching most of the battle, and now they were watching, transfixed by horror, as a creature that none of them would have believed existed burbled its last ... well, burbles, Faith thought with a start. She had no idea if that thing breathed or not.
Faith's mind raced to think of anything she could say that might stop them from either gunning her down on the spot or sounding the alarm, but a moment later, she settled on saying the first thing that came to her mind. "Run," she said, and then louder, "Run!"
Under normal circumstances, it would have seemed odd for a group of guards to be taking orders from a convict, but after what they had just seen, apparently these were no longer normal circumstances. Two of the officers immediately bolted in fright. The last, an older woman of just over Faith's height, remained frozen in place. Cautiously, Faith inched towards her, waving her hands and trying to get her attention, but was three-quarters of the way to the woman before she got any reaction. The officer suddenly jumped and made a panicked move towards her holster, but Faith was there first, and the woman was shaking so badly that she actually missed her holster altogether, so Faith barely even exerted herself.
"Now look," Faith said, taking the clip out of the gun and tossing it at the woman's feet. "I'm not going to hurt you, but I really need to get out of here."
"You ... not ... need ..."
"Yes, and a few other words in between."
Apparently Faith was not the most qualified of shock therapists, because the woman fainted on the spot. There was a brief moment of truly unnerving silence, as the creature's burbles were getting faint, Dr. Bronson was by now completely unconscious, and there were no sounds of alarms being raised, despite the fact that the other guards had been gone for nearly a minute. Faith harbored no illusions that that would last long, however.
Helping herself to the gun and spare cartridge of her would-be assassin, as well as a ring that looked like it might be worth something that had remained behind as the creature disintegrated, she took off running for the nearest thing she could think of that might be an egress from the California Institution for Women: the sewer tunnels. There was a manhole not far from Dr. Bronson's office, she knew, and she couldn't think of anything else. There would be no Plan B.
The alarm went up before she had gotten fifty meters outside the doctor's office, but she managed to duck the notice of two patrols of guards, both of which seemed to be rather disorganized at the moment; the two guards that had run screaming had probably not been able to give very coherent accounts of what was happening. Faith reached the manhole moments later; it was sealed shut with four thick iron bolts that were kept underneath small locking hatches, but Faith wasn't going for the subtle approach. She had never felt this large an adrenaline rush since she and Buffy had faced Kokistos, and she was more sure of herself now. She locked her fingers into the small air holes, set her legs, and heaved upward with every muscle in her body.
With a scream of tearing metal, the manhole came loose; any guards in the area would have heard it, but Faith didn't care. She jumped down the shaft into the darkness and stench below.
Shouts began to echo down to her moments after she landed, indicating that someone was beginning to realize that there was a breakout in progress, but as soon as they spotted what remained of Officer White in the doctor's office, they'd have a lot more questions than her to worry about. Hopefully the sight of whatever kind of demon's corpse that was would send a few more guards into a panic, and the search for her wouldn't get organized until she was at least beyond the grounds.
The tunnel was pitch black, but Faith had always had extremely good senses of all kinds. She knew to within a few degrees which direction the exterior parking lot was, and she could feel extremely faint drafts, which indicated which passages went anywhere and which didn't. Steeling her nerves--and her nose--she plunged ahead into the tunnels. It took almost twenty minutes, but she eventually managed to slog her way to another manhole. Not knowing what to expect when she surfaced, but knowing that she didn't have the tools to be subtle and had no idea where any other exit from the sewers lay, she popped the manhole free as quietly as she could ... which still made a great deal of racket.
If she had expected a surprise, she got what she expected. The prison, the outer perimeter of which was a short distance behind her, appeared to be in total pandemonium. Whether there were more of the creatures inside, or the guards had simply all gone haywire after seeing what had happened, or perhaps one of the inmates had caught a glimpse of the creature and had started a panicked riot, Faith couldn't say, but it appeared that the search for her hadn't fanned out from the prison much at all. As Faith watched, two state trooper cars and one unmarked black sedan that looked decidedly federal careened down the highway toward the institution, passing out of sight to Faith's left toward the main gate in the perimeter. Reinforcements were going into the prison, not out. The parking lot in which she surfaced, used mainly by civilian personnel of the prison, was nearly deserted.
Without further hesitation, Faith bolted for the woods. There was a lake a short distance from the prison, and Faith wanted to wash the filth of the sewer off her as quickly as possible. In addition, the main part of the town of Corona was on the far side of the lake, and she would have to get there to have any chance of putting real distance between herself and this place. She had to maneuver through a lot of outlying buildings of the compound, but was surprised at how empty everything was. She was three-quarters of the way to the woods when she spotted a pair of helicopters coming in from the north, but she had expected to see that earlier. Then her eyes narrowed. Whatever the reason, the situation inside the walls had to be serious. Those were no ordinary police helicopters approaching. Those were Black Hawks.
She took cover until the choppers had passed over and settled down within the walls, and then made a break for the treeline, not caring if anyone spotted her with a telescope from the walls. She had made it nearly a mile into the woods before she stopped, listening for the sounds of pursuit. Another helicopter was approaching from the north, but to the east, in the direction of the prison, there was still silence.
"Well, you sure know how to stir up a hornet's nest," a woman's voice said from behind her.
Faith wheeled, the sidearm she had taken from Officer White springing into her hands. She relaxed a moment later, however, when she realized that she was not being attacked.
The woman to whom the voice belonged was alone, though she had come upon Faith so quietly that Faith wondered how many more of them might be in hiding. The woman looked human enough, but just enough different as to perk up Faith's senses--senses that had admittedly failed to detect the woman's approach. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, strong and athletic, with summery auburn hair and a general sense of vitality radiating from her skin. Her hair and her dress were both adorned with flowers, and even twigs and berries.
"Who are you?" Faith asked, not lowering her gun all the way.
"Call me Sycamore," the woman answered, "Or whatever you want, but listen to me. I'm here to help, but I'm only going to have time to explain this once. Believe however much or little of this that you want. Listening?"
"I'm listening."
"My sisters and I are foiling the pursuit that's on your trail, but we won't be able to keep them at bay forever. A friend of ours told us you might be needing our help. We have a few friends inside the prison, but we never thought you'd actually come to our woods. Now that you're here, you can get to the town and get away. You've been learning the arts of the Ley Lines in there, right?"
"What?"
"Yoga, you call it?"
"Oh ... yeah, a little," Faith responded uncertainly, suddenly wondering where all this was going and how the woman knew so much about her. A local community college student had taken on doing volunteer work teaching yoga to the prison inmates once a week; it had taken some wrangling, but eventually the warden had seen that it generally kept a lot of the girls quiet for two hours a week and could be used as an incentive for good behavior as the class became more popular.
The other woman nodded. "Juniper Kent, the girl that teaches it, is a friend of ours. She'll be waiting for you at the boathouse at the far side of the lake by the time you get there. One of my sisters is catching her up on what's happening." Faith wanted to ask how many sisters the woman had, and why no one was catching her up to speed on what was happening, but thought better of it. The woman continued, "you should be able to use her teachings now, however. I'm sure me talking so fast is not helping, but when I'm gone, clear your mind, and you may find that the woods have strength that they can lend you. You look like you might need it. Anyway, Juniper will be able to take you back to her home by Chino Hills Sports Park. It's right by route 71. You can get from there to wherever you need to go, once the heat dies down a little."
By this time, Faith was in the mood for questions. "Now wait a moment, who told you about all this? How do you know so much about me? And ... what are you?"
"I don't have time for that. Like I said, you can believe me or not, it's your choice. Slayers can make their own choices about who to trust. The search parties entered the woods about ten minutes ago. I'll stall them for as long as I can." With that, she flitted behind the tree she had been standing against, but did not come out the other side. Faith looked for her, but she was gone. She looked up in the tree, even climbed up a branch or two, but eventually resigned herself to the fact that the woman would not be coming back to answer more questions. Her eyes narrowed when she looked at the tree a second time, however, and she began to make some foggy conclusions in the back of her mind. She had never been much of a botany student, but that tree could very well have been a sycamore.
Eventually, she decided that she might as well do what the woman recommended, though the thought of doing yoga on bumpy, uneven ground while covered with sewer sludge and with hot pursuit not too long behind her was a little laughable, she didn't intend to rest long. Just enough to recover her breath.
Shortly after she began to run through some of the breathing and focusing exercises that Juniper had taught her over the last year or so, however, she began to sense that the woman, whoever and whatever she was, might have known what she was talking about after all. She felt as though each breath were indeed infusing her with more energy than any breaths she had taken in a long while. In addition, her senses, which had always been sharp, suddenly felt markedly more so. The forest seemed a bit noisier all of a sudden, though she realized that she was just hearing it more clearly. After a few moments, she almost thought she heard whispers in the wind blowing through the branches, and thought she caught the word "Slayer."
At that point, she figured she'd had enough. She had spent a good ten minutes already, which wasn't long for a yoga exercise but was definitely a long time when one was on the run. In addition, by this time, for whatever reason, there was life and energy singing in her blood, so much so that her breath was heaving just to contain it. When she did start moving again, she found herself running as fast as she had ever run before and not growing tired. It was almost, just as the woman had implied, as if the woods were lending her strength. Perhaps it was simply the combination of youth, desperation, and the renewed taste of freedom. Whatever the source, she was grateful for it. In a corner of her mind, she was still suspicious--or at least curious--about Sycamore and her motives, and who else had been keeping an eye on her during her time in prison, but she forced such concerns to the back of her mind for the moment. Getting away from the pursuit that was apparently gathering steam at last was her first priority, and if it turned out that Sycamore was not everything she seemed, she would deal with that when she had to. Leaves and flowers danced in her tailwind as she sped off through the woods.
* * * * *
COMING SOON: Faith returns to Los Angeles; Buffy returns to Earth.
FAIR WARNING: This is a work-in-progress fic and I'm busy with my junior year of college. It could be a while between updates.
WARNING: This is a work in progress ... and probably will be for some time. Don't keep reading if you're looking for something finished.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.
Onward!!
* * * * *
PROLOGUE:
WHAT DARK FROM YONDER SHADOW BREAKS
It was well past the time when the last bars of Los Angeles were closing, and the last of the after-midnight revelers were fading from the streets. It was Saturday, so the city was going to bed several hours later than normal. That meant nothing to the quintet of figures gathered in the basement of the Pendulum Nightclub, however. There was always rest from pleasure. There was never rest from business, even when business was slow and their fellow creatures of the underworld had largely gone into hiding recently.
"It's just a quiet time, boss," Ctharl, a heavyset blue-scaled brute with heavy-lidded eyes, offered. "Ever since Sunnydale, all the action's takin' to other other parts of the country."
"Then something had better happen to shake things up a bit," the leader, a massive creature, although the most humanoid of the group, snarled in reponse.
There was an uneasy silence as the five all looked at one another. It was against the rules of their order to start turmoil simply for the sake of attracting business, though senior members had sometimes been able to stretch the rules somewhat.
The tension was broken abruptly, however, when Hascinth, a short, brown creature with long, razor-sharp claws at the end of each hand, suddenly perked up his head. The other members looked at him, startled. Hascinth generally said the least of any of them, but none of them ever mistook his silence for ignorance. Aside from the leader, he was the most deadly of the group, and his senses were attuned to things that no earthly predator could perceive.
"What ... is ... that?" he hissed slowly.
There was a tremendous crash on the basement door, hard enough that the floor seemed to shake, as well as the door. The mysterious figures all turned, a light of battle entering most of their eyes. Almost none of them had had a chance to kill of late, and that, more than anything else, was what they lived for.
"Who is it?" the leader called out, his tone completely at odds with the situation. He sounded like he was answering a polite knock, even though his double-edged claymore was already naked in his right hand.
The door could not handle the unannounced visitor's second knock; the second impact splintered it into pieces and left it lying on the floor in a semicircle around the now unbarred portal. The passage beyond was unlit, and a dark, man-sized silhouette was all that could be seen at first. Then the figure strode into the room, and the demons gasped in shock. It was not a man. It was a woman. Well, at least it looked like one. They all knew better, though.
"Well, well, well, here you all are!" Glory's ever-confident voice sang out. "You people are so hard to find. That's why I love you all so much!" Her gaze centered on the leader of the group. "Rhyzor, it's so good to see you again! It's been ... what ...?"
"Two hundred and eighty-seven years, if I haven't lost track," Rhyzor answered. "Didn't expect to see you down here, though."
"Well, I figured, if I can't have Hell, there's always Los Angeles," she quipped. Her smile was a little strained, though, which Rhyzor could would have sworn he had never seen during the brief year he had known her in the eighteenth century.
"I thought you were supposed to have left already ... I even heard that the portal opened up in Sunnydale. Then again, other people are telling me that you died. Looks like humans are as unreliable as ever."
"Actually, they got it just about right," Glory answered. "Except for the part about me dying of course. My other body got killed by some old British guy, or so I heard. This is just my new one. Gods just don't go down that easily."
"Well, new body or old body, we're honored by your presence."
"Well, of course you are!" Glory answered in her customary fashion. "You don't need to tell me that. What you do need to do is pay back an old favor, don't you? You remember what I mean, right?"
"The Order of Turaca never backs down on a debt," Rhyzor answered.
Glory smiled. "Especially not when your life depends on it."
"Naturally," Rhyzor answered with a carnivorous grin. "And believe it or not, you're actually here at a good time. The boys are kinda hungry at the moment. What're you after?"
"Oh, Rhyzie, I thought you'd never ask." Almost instantly, she was across the room and standing right next to the Turacan praetor. "You see," she continued, "this body just isn't really me. I mean it's me, it's just even worse than my last one. I mean like, if I wanted to kill every one of you in here, it would probably take me a minute or two now. I feel so helpless."
"You want another new body?" Ctharl broke the silence of the other members.
"Oh, no, this one's fine. It's got potential, I mean, it is ME after all. I just want to get back to the old me, that's all."
"I see," Rhyzor replied. "So what it it you want from us, then?"
"Well, you see, I have this ritual that will do exactly what I want, but I'm missing something I really need for it."
"And this is?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just the blood of a Slayer."
The Turacans cast furtive glances at one another. They remembered all too well what had happened the last time that they had fought the Slayer of Sunnydale. There had never been an occasion to seek revenge, though some of the Order had wanted to make a special mission out of it with no contract involved. That would have broken every code of the Order, of course, so it was shouted down, but the simple presence of such sentiments was almost unheard-of in the Order. Of course, some of the naysayers were probably motivated more by fear than by caution. Buffy Summers was supposed to be stronger than any Slayer in centuries, an exception to the historical waning of the Slayer's power since the days of the first Slayer. Furthermore, Rhyzor remembered that both Buffy and Glory both lived in Sunnydale. This didn't seem like any reason to call on the Order, whether they owed her a favor or not.
"Your Eminence, the Order will gladly attempt to repay our debt in this fashion, if you so desire, but the Slayer actually lives in Sunnydale as well. I'm sure you already knew that. Why come to us? You could just as easily get it yourself."
"Huh?" Glory replied. "Rhyzie, you're a little bit behind the times, you know? That Buffy girl, she's dead."
The members of the Order of Turaca came to their feet en masse. Words flew from every direction, in five different languages, until Glory shouted for silence.
"So I can't use Buffy's blood, because she already used it to stop me. The little bitch." The vengeful goddess was actually pouting.
"Stop ...?" Rhyzor began. If the Slayer had stopped the Beast, then she deserved her legend, even if it had cost her her life. He was still angry in the back of his mind that the Order's vaunted intelligence had somehow failed to discover the most significant event in supernatural circles in at least a century, especially one that had to have been fairly conspicuous even to a mortal observer.
"So anyway, now I've got a problem," Glory continued, ignoring the Turacan's question. "You see, one of my little peons told me that every time one of those little girls dies, they just go find someone else. But you see, they don't let poor little Glory in on this selection, so I'm just up the creek, see? I have no idea where this new little blood-filled Slayer is hiding on this forsaken-God-forsaken planet!" She smiled and put her arm on Rhyzor's arm. "But ..." she began sweetly.
"That's where we come in," Rhyzor finished. It would be a good idea to learn who and where the next Slayer would be, anyway. He was just about to accept when the ever-silent Hascinth spoke.
"Forget it," he stated flatly.
Rhyzor burst out "What?!" at the same time Glory turned to him and said, "Excuse me?"
"I thought all you wanted was the blood of a Slayer," the little brown demon replied to Glory.
"Yes, I thought that's what we were getting at here!" Glory answered impatiently.
"You know, the new Slayer could be called from anywhere on this entire planet. And we'll have to get inside the Council of Watchers before we can even find her location. Even for us, that will take a long time."
"Oh I think you owe me that," Glory answered.
"I know, but I thought you were in a hurry."
"I can wait an eternity, but not for you to get to the point. What the hell are you saying?"
Hascinth smiled wickedly. "If you want the blood of a Slayer, I know where to find one without going halfway around the world."
* * *
CHAPTER 1:
EXODUS
Faith fled through the darkness, though she had no idea what she was running from or where she was going. She just knew that whatever was behind her was terrible, and sought only to swallow her whole. She was screaming, but the darkness was a great velvet blanket, swallowing her screams so quickly that she could not even hear them herself. There were shapes in the darkness, some moving, some standing still, all ominous and threatening. She had no idea how she could tell they were there, since both they and the darkness around them were pitch black. Eventually, one reared up right in front of her, and she was running too fast to stop. She ran into it, and suddenly felt as though she had run into a solid shape of water, because she heard a splash and felt a wet, numbing chill spread across her skin. Then pain lanced through the numbness, and she looked down. The darkness had parted just enough to reveal a knife in her belly, the same that had sheathed itself there on her rooftop back in Sunnydale in what seemed like a distant past life. She felt herself falling again, but there was no truck to break her fall, and she just kept falling and twisting in the darkness. She could feel a rushing sound as though water was following her, almost as if she were being pursued by an angry waterfall. She tried to remove the dagger from her abdomen, but it was as though the knife were made of water as well; it kept slipping from her numb, stiffening fingers.
Then, suddenly, the evasive knife came free and sailed up into the darkness above Faith. Faith suddenly realized she was in the midst of dark stormclouds, and lightning arched and danced around her. Several bolts of it converged on the place where Faith had flung the knife, lighting up the darkness for a brief moment. The fugitive Slayer had a momentary glimpse of a woman's silhouette in the abyss above her, seemingly formed entirely of water or some other undulating liquid, with death in her eyes. Then the lightning struck it, and the woman shattered in a shower of drops and sparks. There was another blinding flash a moment later, accompanied at last by the roar of thunder than banished the silence.
She awoke with a start, her hair matted in front of and around her face. The last lightning and thunder of her dream blended with the flashing and booming of the storm outside her narrow, barred window.
The dreams were becoming more and more common, and had been almost from the end of her first month in prison. There had also been a noticeable spike in them since a volunteer from the local community college had introduced her to a form of kriya yoga, a pastime which she had enthusiastically adopted after a brief period of denying that she liked it and saying that it was hokey and all of that. This dream was different than the others she had experienced, however. It had a sense of personalness, of immediacy, that Faith could not put her finger on. It filled her with a sense of foreboding that lasted well into the morning, and there was nothing to distract her from it until her cell mate awoke.
"Rise and shine, Chica," she said fondly as she heard the slight Mexican girl stirring on the bunk beneath her. Juanita spat an obscenity back in her direction, and Faith's smile only broadened.
Juanita Garrido had been the complete opposite of the stereotypical inmate that she had always worried she was going to end up sharing a room with for a long time. She was even shorter than Faith herself was, and probably only ninety pounds. She didn't have much of a figure, but she was far from ugly, and still managed to have a kind of spark in her eyes after almost three years in prison, though she rarely smiled. Her English was surprisingly good, considering most of the Mexican offenders in the California Institution for Women could barely understand directions in English, much less speak it. Juanita at least had a reasonable grasp of it, especially the profanity. She had quickly grasped on to the concept that "fucking" was an appropriate adjective for just about any purpose, and that "as hell" was appropriate description for just about anything as well. She had ended up in prison more for falling in with the wrong crowd than for any true malice, getting picked up at a gang bust in L.A. three years previously, while engaged in some kind of vandalism; Faith had never been able to drag out of her roommate just exactly how serious that had been, and had taken the point and given it up after a couple of tries. Juanita had only been moved down to maximum security after attacking one of her guards in medium security; had it not been for that incident, the girl might have already been free again.
The official wake-up call came shortly, crackling over the aging P.A. system as the guards lined up to escort the inmates to breakfast. Faith leapt lightly down from her perch atop the bunk bed, narrowly missing Juanita's head as she crawled out from the bottom bunk. That drew a fresh round of obscenities, but they were half-hearted at best; there was really no room for Faith to have landed anywhere else, and they both knew that she could have jumped a lot farther than she had if it weren't for the simple fact that there was a concrete wall there. The cell had originally been meant to house a single person, but the prison was strained to nearly double its intended capacity, and living room was tight, to say the least; the cell hadn't been designed to give even one person much air to breathe.
The shuffling walk to the cafeteria for breakfast was so mindless and routine that Faith practically did it instinctively at this point, barely noticing the armed guards and security cameras. She did notice something different today, however. One of the guards assigned to her cell block was new, a rare event, and one which would probably end up being the subject of conversation at some point during breakfast. New guards were rare, and anything at all could become news in a place so monotonous and isolated from the outside world.
Breakfast was the standard fare of nondescript organic matter that would never be admitted even into a high school cafeteria. There was something that could have been soup; it was liquid, anyway, and it came in a styrofoam dish. There was some form of mystery meat; Faith did her best to avoid thinking about what kind of animal it came from. She piled the items onto her tray wordlessly and headed for an empty space at a nearby table.
Faith had never had a group of friends that she fell in with that she always sat near at meals. When she had first come here, some people had chosen to sit near her for a few days. Then there had been a period where no one wanted to sit next to her, then people would again, and now she was in a state once again when people were giving her a wide berth, and the seats next to her would only fill when all others were taken. Her rises and declines in companionship occurred because of all the strange events that surrounded her; her second wave of popularity had been shortly after she had sent one of the inmates that everyone else despised to the infirmary for the night, but that had been only temporary. The subsequent decline in her clique had no direct cause, just a strange feeling that many of the other prisoners got when they were near her. There was the sense that the guards were somehow treating her differently, watching her differently ... the world itself had an air of unpredictability around her, which made many of her fellow inmates uncomfortable. Faith herself had sensed it on occasion, but even she had never been able to puzzle out anything about it.
Today was no exception. That was one of the characteristics of prison. There were never any exceptions, to anything. Faith remembered watching the Shawshank Redemption years earlier, and how Morgan Freeman had talked about prison life being "routine, and then more routine." She had no idea how correct he was.
Eventually, however, the fact that there was never enough space at the tables to go around forced the stragglers into her area. They tried to take as little notice of her as possible; a scant few gave her a nod or a smile or a muttered "'sup" in greeting, but no more. She returned the greetings of those who offered them, but did not go out of her way to try to spark conversation. For one thing, conversation this morning didn't seem to be incredibly lacking. It was usually like this during storms and other inclement weather conditions; there were always a good number of inmates who felt the urge to talk more than usual to lift the mood. Faith had noticed that the stupidest stuff could become the topic of long conversations in such times; there was simply never much in prison to talk about, and most of the inmates didn't care one way or another about the outside world, so the possible topics of discussion were fairly limited.
"See the new chick?" a tall pimply redhead was asking to a friend as she sat down nearby.
"Hell yeah, bitch," came the affectionate reply her friend, a stocky black woman who somehow managed to keep her head shaved even in prison. "Man, she is fine ... but keep yo' hands t' yo'self, hear? Girl looks like she's mean with a stick, 'f you know what I'm talking 'bout."
The redhead smiled mischievously. "Good thing I don't have one, then," she smirked, and Faith grimaced in a moment of repulsed reflection. It was never the ones you expected. She couldn't help following the redhead's eyes to the newcomer among the guards. She had heard something from Dr. Bronson about there being one coming in, but had never paid much attention to it.
The new guard was definitely a piece of work, Faith admitted. She was tall, six feet if you included her shoes, and had solid definition that showed even beneath her uniform. Her hair was ash blond, but Faith couldn't see any more than that; the woman was on the far side of the room from Faith and was not paying her any attention. Nonetheless, Faith's eyes narrowed as she looked at the new arrival, though for the life of her, she could not discern the reason why.
She didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the newcomer, however, because remembering that Dr. Bronson had mentioned something about this also reminded her that she had a morning appointment with the good doctor today. She groaned. Out of all the things there were to hate about prison, that woman was the worst.
Dr. Bronson was the prison shrink. Not shrink, she reminded herself. Psychiatric social rehabilitation therapist, or some such nonsense. She had required appointments with Faith at least once a week, and had somehow taken a special interest in Faith and often requested to see her at least twice as often. Faith couldn't stand the woman. It wasn't that she was mean; quite the opposite. She was cloying, almost flattering, always emanating a kind of false friendship that was carefully crafted but which Faith saw through like an open window. Faith hated pretenders, and Dr. Bronson not only pretended to be someone she wasn't, she had made a career out of it.
Shortly after breakfast, she was escorted to the shrink's office by the usual trio of guards, just as she always had been whenever she had to be brought outside the thickest of the security web at the heart of the complex; the doctor's office was not at the edge of the compound, but it was just outside the maximum security sector that housed Faith and her fellow "extremely dangerous" inmates. The Three Stooges, she had affectionately nicknamed the trio, based on the fact that they had practically no facial expression at times, and when they did, it was generally to crack jokes that she didn't think were the least bit funny. It was all as routine as breathing.
When she entered the doctor's office, however, her eyes widened immediately. The doctor was not alone. The new guard from breakfast was there as well. Faith gazed at the newcomer quizzically until she realized that it was not polite to stare; then, since she had never been one for manners, she continued to gaze at her anyway. Breaks in routine at prison were rare, and never happened without a purpose of some kind.
Dr. Bronson, a short, plain woman with brown hair and thick, professorial glasses, was seated behind her desk. She was facing sideways as Faith walked in, looking out the window. That, at least, was fairly routine.
"Faith!" she exclaimed excitedly in her bubbling, ever-enthusiastic voice. "Good to see you again! Do come in."
Faith slowly shut the door behind her, leaving the Three Stooges out in the hall.
"Is something ... wrong, doctor?" she asked hesitantly, without moving away from the door.
"What? No, why should there be? Please, have a seat."
The hair on the back of Faith's neck raised at that, though she couldn't put her finger on the exact reason yet. For some reason, however, that inner voice that had kept her alive as an abandoned Slayer was telling her that the woman was lying, or at least, not telling the whole truth. She noticed that Dr. Bronson had not even bothered to introduce the new arrival, despite the fact that it should have been obvious to the doctor that there could be no other reason for Faith to believe anything was out of the ordinary.
"Are we going to have company today?" Faith asked, still not moving toward the chair in front of Dr. Bronson's desk.
"Eh? Oh, yes, how foolish of me. Faith, meet Officer White," Dr. Bronson said, rising to her feet for the moment. "She has ... uh ... experience in dealing with cases similar to yours, so I thought it would be appropriate to include her."
"Please, just call me Crystal," the new guard said, though she did not extend her hand or make any other kind of friendly overture.
Nevertheless, the hair on the back of Faith's neck raised another inch at this latest exchange. Something was out of place. There was something seriously wrong this; guards were practically never on a first name basis with the inmates, especially not in any kind of friendly manner, and never unless both the guard and the inmate in question had been here for years. She focused her gaze temporarily on the new guard, but they were unreadable, though Faith thought she caught a flash of something there for a brief instant. Then it passed. She turned her gaze back to lock the good doctor's, and they were focused and level. For some reason, however, the doctor did not seem as calm as her eyes argued; then, suddenly, Faith put her finger on it, and had to control herself from starting and startling the other two. The temperature in the room was deliberately kept cool, but there were clearly beads of perspiration standing out on Dr. Bronson's forehead.
"Are you going to sit down, or are you just going to stand there all morning?" Officer White asked. Once again, her voice was far too friendly for Faith's comfort.
"Well ..." Faith murmured as she approached the chair before the desk.
"Oh, come on, Faith, sit down, I can't wait all day," Dr. Bronson said. That was another break from routine; Dr. Bronson almost never sounded cross, even when she was. The beads of sweat on her forehead were even larger now than they had been when Faith first noticed them. Something was clearly fraying the good doctor's composure.
"Doctor, what's wrong?" Faith asked, trying to sound as genuinely concerned as possible. She half hoped it was laryngitis.
"Eh? Oh, nothing, my nerves ... oh, it's nothing, just have a seat."
Faith's eyes narrowed. They were awfully insistent on getting her to sit down. Instinctively, she glanced at the seat of the chair, as though it could provide her with any answers. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary to see, but then she noticed something small and shiny lying on the chair, a tiny metallic speck. She tried to brush it away, and it didn't move. Her eyes widened; both Dr. Bronson and Officer White tensed simultaneously, and Faith felt rather than saw Officer White's hand drift closer to the holster at her right hip.
Convulsively, Faith tore the cushion free of the seat, and gasped, even though she had suspected she might see more than what would normally find under a chair cushion. Wedged into the base of the chair was a syringe, with a dose of some kind of green liquid in it with which Faith would have injected herself had she actually sat down. She had no idea what it was, but she doubted it was a flu shot.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, alarmed, but she did not expect an answer and was only doing to conceal that she was preparing to fight.
Dr. Bronson's hand instantly lunged for the alarm button beneath her desk, while Officer White's hand darted for the holster at her hip.
The good doctor's hand never reached the button, as Faith, moving as quickly as she ever had, grabbed and hurled the syringe like a dart, embedding the entirety of the needle in the woman's hand. The woman sprang back with a cry, clutching her hand to her breast, though her movement was slower and stiffer than any normal pain reflex, and her eyes were already beginning to take on a distant, glazed look.
Faith was not paying her any attention anymore, however, because as soon as she had let fly the syringe, she had pounced at Officer White in a deperate lunge to keep the woman from bringing her Remington into play. She was half successful. The woman was fast, and strong, and had already gotten the revolver free, but Faith was there in time to slide to the inside of Officer White's body and lock a hand around her wrist, sending the officer's shot flying up and knocking out the hanging overhead lamp. A shower of glass fragments and sparks rained down on them, and surprisingly, Officer White jumped back as if seriously pained.
Faith jumped back as well, but not from the sparks or the glass; she had shrugged off much worse in her day. Officer White's gun had come loose from the impact of the brief struggle ... and had come loose straight through her fingers. The feel of Officer White's flesh, if flesh it could be called, might have been enough in and of itself to have caused Faith's reaction. It had had far too much give, and was far too cold, to be normal human flesh. It had felt like liquid contained by only the thinnest of membranes. And the way she had recoiled from the glass and sparks ...
"What the hell are you?" she asked, inching towards the gun on the floor.
The taller woman did not answer, and realized immediately where Faith was heading, and she dove for the gun. Faith dove at the same instant, but not at the gun. Realizing that Officer White's path to the gun would take her straight under the blown lamp, Faith dove straight at the woman, bracing herself for the cold feel of the woman's skin, wrapping her arms around the woman's waist, and lifting her into the air towards the frayed ends of the wires hanging from the ceiling to where the lamp had been seconds earlier. There were still sparks dancing at the exposed ends.
"No!" the officer shrieked, and Faith's last doubts about the woman's humanity were annulled. The woman twisted, and her flesh blurred and became a liquid metallic silver, flowing downward around Faith's arms; Faith suddenly found that she was trying to hoist a pool of water into the air, though there was something solid within it that brushed against the sleeve of her prison jumpsuit as it rolled down around her, but it felt thin and frail like a wire frame. She jumped back, unwanted visions of "Terminator 2" coming into her mind and fearful that the woman might suddenly re-materialize right around Faith with knives for hands, but that didn't happen, and Faith managed to free herself from the descending blob. It reached the floor, and there it actually did begin to materialize, but Faith was already moving.
As soon as she got her balance set under her again, she sprang onto the doctor's desk, and from there into the air, grabbing the wire dangling from the ceiling several feet above its end. The wire was held to the ceiling only by a few metallic clips, which came free with Faith's weight on them. Faith, the wire held out in front of her, plunged down into the reforming ooze.
There was a loud crackle and a series of popping sounds, and a high-pitched wail echoed from the blob, which had begun to have a recognizable human shape again. However, not only had Faith brought the live wire down with her, but she had also brought all her weight down straight on the frail inner skeleton of whatever kind of creature Officer White was, apparently before it could reform its fluid defenses around itself. There was a loud snap that was distinct from any of the popping sounds caused by the live wire. Faith hurled herself away quickly, as a burning sensation began in her flesh where her exposed hand had touched the skeleton, but she was already reasonably confident that she had struck a fatal blow.
She wheeled around as soon as she thought she had put a yard or two between herself and the creature, however, and froze. She had been right about striking a fatal blow, though the current was not exceptionally powerful and she wished she had something like a high-voltage line at her disposal. What caught her eye, however, were the Three Stooges, standing at the doorway of the doctor's office, having heard the gunshot and the screaming. Their eyes were wide with terror, and Faith felt an irrational pang of sympathy for them. They had probably been watching most of the battle, and now they were watching, transfixed by horror, as a creature that none of them would have believed existed burbled its last ... well, burbles, Faith thought with a start. She had no idea if that thing breathed or not.
Faith's mind raced to think of anything she could say that might stop them from either gunning her down on the spot or sounding the alarm, but a moment later, she settled on saying the first thing that came to her mind. "Run," she said, and then louder, "Run!"
Under normal circumstances, it would have seemed odd for a group of guards to be taking orders from a convict, but after what they had just seen, apparently these were no longer normal circumstances. Two of the officers immediately bolted in fright. The last, an older woman of just over Faith's height, remained frozen in place. Cautiously, Faith inched towards her, waving her hands and trying to get her attention, but was three-quarters of the way to the woman before she got any reaction. The officer suddenly jumped and made a panicked move towards her holster, but Faith was there first, and the woman was shaking so badly that she actually missed her holster altogether, so Faith barely even exerted herself.
"Now look," Faith said, taking the clip out of the gun and tossing it at the woman's feet. "I'm not going to hurt you, but I really need to get out of here."
"You ... not ... need ..."
"Yes, and a few other words in between."
Apparently Faith was not the most qualified of shock therapists, because the woman fainted on the spot. There was a brief moment of truly unnerving silence, as the creature's burbles were getting faint, Dr. Bronson was by now completely unconscious, and there were no sounds of alarms being raised, despite the fact that the other guards had been gone for nearly a minute. Faith harbored no illusions that that would last long, however.
Helping herself to the gun and spare cartridge of her would-be assassin, as well as a ring that looked like it might be worth something that had remained behind as the creature disintegrated, she took off running for the nearest thing she could think of that might be an egress from the California Institution for Women: the sewer tunnels. There was a manhole not far from Dr. Bronson's office, she knew, and she couldn't think of anything else. There would be no Plan B.
The alarm went up before she had gotten fifty meters outside the doctor's office, but she managed to duck the notice of two patrols of guards, both of which seemed to be rather disorganized at the moment; the two guards that had run screaming had probably not been able to give very coherent accounts of what was happening. Faith reached the manhole moments later; it was sealed shut with four thick iron bolts that were kept underneath small locking hatches, but Faith wasn't going for the subtle approach. She had never felt this large an adrenaline rush since she and Buffy had faced Kokistos, and she was more sure of herself now. She locked her fingers into the small air holes, set her legs, and heaved upward with every muscle in her body.
With a scream of tearing metal, the manhole came loose; any guards in the area would have heard it, but Faith didn't care. She jumped down the shaft into the darkness and stench below.
Shouts began to echo down to her moments after she landed, indicating that someone was beginning to realize that there was a breakout in progress, but as soon as they spotted what remained of Officer White in the doctor's office, they'd have a lot more questions than her to worry about. Hopefully the sight of whatever kind of demon's corpse that was would send a few more guards into a panic, and the search for her wouldn't get organized until she was at least beyond the grounds.
The tunnel was pitch black, but Faith had always had extremely good senses of all kinds. She knew to within a few degrees which direction the exterior parking lot was, and she could feel extremely faint drafts, which indicated which passages went anywhere and which didn't. Steeling her nerves--and her nose--she plunged ahead into the tunnels. It took almost twenty minutes, but she eventually managed to slog her way to another manhole. Not knowing what to expect when she surfaced, but knowing that she didn't have the tools to be subtle and had no idea where any other exit from the sewers lay, she popped the manhole free as quietly as she could ... which still made a great deal of racket.
If she had expected a surprise, she got what she expected. The prison, the outer perimeter of which was a short distance behind her, appeared to be in total pandemonium. Whether there were more of the creatures inside, or the guards had simply all gone haywire after seeing what had happened, or perhaps one of the inmates had caught a glimpse of the creature and had started a panicked riot, Faith couldn't say, but it appeared that the search for her hadn't fanned out from the prison much at all. As Faith watched, two state trooper cars and one unmarked black sedan that looked decidedly federal careened down the highway toward the institution, passing out of sight to Faith's left toward the main gate in the perimeter. Reinforcements were going into the prison, not out. The parking lot in which she surfaced, used mainly by civilian personnel of the prison, was nearly deserted.
Without further hesitation, Faith bolted for the woods. There was a lake a short distance from the prison, and Faith wanted to wash the filth of the sewer off her as quickly as possible. In addition, the main part of the town of Corona was on the far side of the lake, and she would have to get there to have any chance of putting real distance between herself and this place. She had to maneuver through a lot of outlying buildings of the compound, but was surprised at how empty everything was. She was three-quarters of the way to the woods when she spotted a pair of helicopters coming in from the north, but she had expected to see that earlier. Then her eyes narrowed. Whatever the reason, the situation inside the walls had to be serious. Those were no ordinary police helicopters approaching. Those were Black Hawks.
She took cover until the choppers had passed over and settled down within the walls, and then made a break for the treeline, not caring if anyone spotted her with a telescope from the walls. She had made it nearly a mile into the woods before she stopped, listening for the sounds of pursuit. Another helicopter was approaching from the north, but to the east, in the direction of the prison, there was still silence.
"Well, you sure know how to stir up a hornet's nest," a woman's voice said from behind her.
Faith wheeled, the sidearm she had taken from Officer White springing into her hands. She relaxed a moment later, however, when she realized that she was not being attacked.
The woman to whom the voice belonged was alone, though she had come upon Faith so quietly that Faith wondered how many more of them might be in hiding. The woman looked human enough, but just enough different as to perk up Faith's senses--senses that had admittedly failed to detect the woman's approach. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, strong and athletic, with summery auburn hair and a general sense of vitality radiating from her skin. Her hair and her dress were both adorned with flowers, and even twigs and berries.
"Who are you?" Faith asked, not lowering her gun all the way.
"Call me Sycamore," the woman answered, "Or whatever you want, but listen to me. I'm here to help, but I'm only going to have time to explain this once. Believe however much or little of this that you want. Listening?"
"I'm listening."
"My sisters and I are foiling the pursuit that's on your trail, but we won't be able to keep them at bay forever. A friend of ours told us you might be needing our help. We have a few friends inside the prison, but we never thought you'd actually come to our woods. Now that you're here, you can get to the town and get away. You've been learning the arts of the Ley Lines in there, right?"
"What?"
"Yoga, you call it?"
"Oh ... yeah, a little," Faith responded uncertainly, suddenly wondering where all this was going and how the woman knew so much about her. A local community college student had taken on doing volunteer work teaching yoga to the prison inmates once a week; it had taken some wrangling, but eventually the warden had seen that it generally kept a lot of the girls quiet for two hours a week and could be used as an incentive for good behavior as the class became more popular.
The other woman nodded. "Juniper Kent, the girl that teaches it, is a friend of ours. She'll be waiting for you at the boathouse at the far side of the lake by the time you get there. One of my sisters is catching her up on what's happening." Faith wanted to ask how many sisters the woman had, and why no one was catching her up to speed on what was happening, but thought better of it. The woman continued, "you should be able to use her teachings now, however. I'm sure me talking so fast is not helping, but when I'm gone, clear your mind, and you may find that the woods have strength that they can lend you. You look like you might need it. Anyway, Juniper will be able to take you back to her home by Chino Hills Sports Park. It's right by route 71. You can get from there to wherever you need to go, once the heat dies down a little."
By this time, Faith was in the mood for questions. "Now wait a moment, who told you about all this? How do you know so much about me? And ... what are you?"
"I don't have time for that. Like I said, you can believe me or not, it's your choice. Slayers can make their own choices about who to trust. The search parties entered the woods about ten minutes ago. I'll stall them for as long as I can." With that, she flitted behind the tree she had been standing against, but did not come out the other side. Faith looked for her, but she was gone. She looked up in the tree, even climbed up a branch or two, but eventually resigned herself to the fact that the woman would not be coming back to answer more questions. Her eyes narrowed when she looked at the tree a second time, however, and she began to make some foggy conclusions in the back of her mind. She had never been much of a botany student, but that tree could very well have been a sycamore.
Eventually, she decided that she might as well do what the woman recommended, though the thought of doing yoga on bumpy, uneven ground while covered with sewer sludge and with hot pursuit not too long behind her was a little laughable, she didn't intend to rest long. Just enough to recover her breath.
Shortly after she began to run through some of the breathing and focusing exercises that Juniper had taught her over the last year or so, however, she began to sense that the woman, whoever and whatever she was, might have known what she was talking about after all. She felt as though each breath were indeed infusing her with more energy than any breaths she had taken in a long while. In addition, her senses, which had always been sharp, suddenly felt markedly more so. The forest seemed a bit noisier all of a sudden, though she realized that she was just hearing it more clearly. After a few moments, she almost thought she heard whispers in the wind blowing through the branches, and thought she caught the word "Slayer."
At that point, she figured she'd had enough. She had spent a good ten minutes already, which wasn't long for a yoga exercise but was definitely a long time when one was on the run. In addition, by this time, for whatever reason, there was life and energy singing in her blood, so much so that her breath was heaving just to contain it. When she did start moving again, she found herself running as fast as she had ever run before and not growing tired. It was almost, just as the woman had implied, as if the woods were lending her strength. Perhaps it was simply the combination of youth, desperation, and the renewed taste of freedom. Whatever the source, she was grateful for it. In a corner of her mind, she was still suspicious--or at least curious--about Sycamore and her motives, and who else had been keeping an eye on her during her time in prison, but she forced such concerns to the back of her mind for the moment. Getting away from the pursuit that was apparently gathering steam at last was her first priority, and if it turned out that Sycamore was not everything she seemed, she would deal with that when she had to. Leaves and flowers danced in her tailwind as she sped off through the woods.
* * * * *
COMING SOON: Faith returns to Los Angeles; Buffy returns to Earth.
FAIR WARNING: This is a work-in-progress fic and I'm busy with my junior year of college. It could be a while between updates.