Exodus Revoked

Chapter 7

Faith doesn't move towards the opening in the room even though both Willow and Xander start there way to it.

"Come on..."

She crosses her arms over her chest in a defensive posture to show that she's not going anywhere.

"Right, because trusting you is my automatic first reaction."

Willow turns to Faith a couple feet closer to the doorway.

"Not that I didn't think about this repeatedly on the way here, but if all we wanted was to have you brutally murdered so we could escape Sunnydale, I could've just left you on Kakistos' doorstep and waited. But look at you, you're alive and... well, not safe, but at least you're not dead."

Xander sorta smiles at Faith.

"Which is supposed to be a reassuring way of telling you that we're not leading you into an ambush..."

After a rather long silent moment between the three of them, Faith starts to follow them out of the white room into whatever's on the other side. They walk out into a massive concrete room with hallways on every side that seems to lead into a bunch of other areas. Faith slows down her pace, falling behind the other two so that she can take in the sheer size of it all. Everywhere there seem to be people doing something. There are people in military uniforms running around in groups involve in some kind of drill, while in other places there are groups of people in white coats standing around various areas studying things. Xander throws up his arms to show the size of the place.

"Welcome to Scooby Central... we've managed to upgrade a little since you last saw it."

Willow scoffs at Xander slightly.

"Xander, you know he hates it when you call it that."

"I'm fairly certain I asked him to stop too... repeatedly."

Both Xander and Willow suddenly turn respectfully to the new voice quickly coming up to them. A dirty blonde tall man in semi-formal military clothes stops in front of them.

"It's okay though, I can just have him thrown in the holding cells for a few hours until he learns his lesson."

Xander seems to take the threat in stride.

"Yeah, you could do that. But then you'd end up pissing off my girl here, and you wouldn't want that now would you?"

He sidles up to Willow and puts his arm around her waist, pulling her close. The military man seems to smile at the sight.

"No, of course not. Willow, I'm glad you're back."

Willow smiles somewhat half-heartedly.

"Thanks, I wish I could say the same."

"How is the outside world?"

She shrugs.

"Pretty much the way we left it."

"Well it's good to know that it hasn't ended without us."

Faith finally decides to join the conversation.

"Yeah, that's great... exactly how long until I can get back to it?"

The military man acknowledges Faith for the first time since he's joined them.

"You must be Faith..."

He holds out his hand for a handshake.

"My name is Riley Finn."

Faith doesn't even bother trying to return the favor. Eventually Riley withdraws the handshake and continues.

"I'm the commander of this base. Despite Xander's insistence, this is actually a military instillation formerly known as The Initiative."

Again Riley pauses for a response that never comes.

"If there's anything you need, feel free to come to me and I'll do what I can to provide it."

"How about an exit strategy?"

It takes Riley a second to respond before he smiles slightly.

"Well, we're hoping now that you're here that we actually have one."

Riley decides to size Faith up fairly quickly.

"So this is a slayer. From the various descriptions I've read and heard, I was expecting someone a little more menacing."

"Yeah well I'm sure you've been misinformed about a lot of things. Not the least of which is the fact that I'm a slayer. I'm not... not anymore."

That makes Riley seem a little surprised.

"I wasn't aware that was something you could lose."

"I'm sure you have a habit of expectations not being met. Got any ex-girlfriends in this place I could talk to? Maybe they could tell me exactly how badly you're going to screw up?"

There's a slight change in Riley's expression to something closer to uncomfortable at Faith's question. He turns to Willow.

"She's not a slayer anymore?"

Willow rolls her eyes with a bit of a sigh.

"Of course she's a slayer. You don't lose it. She's just whining because she says she hung up her stakes after skipping town."

Riley looks at Faith curiously.

"Really..."

Now it's Faith that rolls her eyes and lets out a frustrated breath.

"Yes, really..."

"Let's find out."

Without warning, Riley pulls back his fist and clocks Faith in the jaw as hard as he can. Faith's head snaps back with the fist but then quickly locks her eyes on Riley with a pissed off expression.

"You SON OF A..."

It isn't long before Faith's own fist comes right at Riley's face and takes him off his feet and onto the floor hard. Several soldiers suddenly notice the commotion going on in the direction of the commander and rush over for support. Riley quickly waves them off while feeling his jaw to make sure that it isn't broken.

"It's all right."

He looks up at Faith standing over him, apologetically.

"Sorry about that, had to find out if you actually lived up to all the hype these two have been giving me since they started using your name."

She readjusts her footing in front of him and starts closing the small gap between them.

"Yeah? How about a closer look?"

Faith leans down to him and pulls back her fist. Instantly, the other soldiers move to stop her but that's when Xander steps in again.

"Okay, all right, time to be referee me again."

Xander manages to lean forward enough to catch Faith's attention and she looks at him halfway to pounding on Riley. All of the soldiers also stop because Xander is standing in the way.

"There's going to be more than enough violence for everyone in the not too distant future. How about we put a hold on the good guy vs. good guy violence until then?"

There's a few moments where no one says anything and Faith seems to consider what Xander said. Eventually she straightens up her stance and steps back.

"Fine..."

She makes sure to catch the attention of both Willow and Xander before continuing.

"But you people ain't exactly making me wanna help you."

Xander waves off the other soldiers and helps Riley up.

"You're right, and some of us are actually kinda sorry about that."

He approaches Faith slowly with a slightly relaxed attitude.

"We get it, this sucks. And it's not exactly high on your list of things to do, but the past three years wasn't on ours either."

Faith shifts her weight back and forth uncomfortably for a moment while looking around at the different people in the immediate area.

"Violence is kind've our quick fix for every problem around here, but all of us would like it if we could let our guard down long enough for that to change. We'd really appreciate it if you'd help us with that."

She doesn't respond to what Xander says that time, keeping quiet as she looks around.

"We promise to try and cut back on the Faith-related violence if you do."

After a long few moments of silence between the four of them, Faith rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath.

"Fine..."

That makes Xander smile slightly. So does Riley, but Willow remains in the same mostly bad mood.

"Glad to have you on the team."

"Right..."

"Well, since you're going to be helping us out with this, it's probably a good idea for you to meet the rest of the team. No sense in going into battle unless you know what weapons you're packing, right Commander Finn?"

"Let me know if you need any help Harris."

"Will do..."

Riley starts walking away but keeps his eyes on Faith for a few moments before finally turning away and going back to whatever he was doing before she arrived.

"Let's go get ourselves set up, shall we ladies?"

Willow starts to follow Xander down a nearby hall, away from the main facility. Faith starts to feel slightly nauseous when she doesn't keep up and Willow looks back at her with a slightly annoyed expression. The nauseous feeling gets worse and then finally goes away when she starts catching up.


The hallway is long and dark, only minimal lighting through one of the most straight forward hallways ever seen. There are no winding turns or corners to turn down. It's just one extremely long hallway with cell after cell side by side, reinforced concrete keeping the occupants separated from each other. Faith quickly looks left and right as they pass each cell and the demon living inside reacts to the three humans in their presence. Willow and Xander don't even bother reacting to any of the strange looking creatures inside.

"What's with the kinky peep show? Military boy got a thing for less conventional relationships?"

Xander looks back at Faith for a second.

"This is what the Initiative does, or it used to anyway... sorta."

He motions to one of the cells, not looking inside as he does before focusing back on where they are going.

"Before things went to hell, this was a research facility for demons and other things in Sunnydale. But with everything going on up top, they had to repurpose a lot of their 'storage space' for other uses. We've got our own little area down this way for our plans and schemes we want to cook up. We mostly get left alone, but we get help from Riley and his troops when we need it. And we help them out where we can."

"So these things have just been sitting in their cages for three years?"

"Not really, no. Most of the research demons were killed off before we got here. These demons are here for different reasons. Some of them are here to keep the bigger demons they serve from starting demon wars, keeping their ranks low. Others are here to be pumped for information on various demon clans and their rivals coming into town. But all of them are here to be `slayed' after the lab coats get a look at them and study them as much as they can to make sure the military can fight them when they go topside."

"Topside?"

Again Xander looks at Faith for a second, something of a realization coming over him.

"Oh, right... the facility is underground. Built right under Sunnydale by the government to study the Hellmouth and everything that passes through it... or, well, gets trapped in it nowadays I guess."

An end to the hallway seems to come up on them about fifty feet away.

"Great, so I'm already more than six feet under."

Willow jumps into the conversation for a second.

"Doesn't mean you can't have farther to go..."

There's a bit of a nauseous feeling that goes through Faith suddenly but it quickly goes away. She decides to ignore it.

"So how'd you slayerettes get mixed up with the army? I don't remember her being much of an army brat."

Willow scoffs at Faith's question.

"I'm surprised you remember anything about her at all."

Xander decides not to make the situation worse by getting involved in the conversation.

"We didn't have much of a choice really. We'd held out as long as we could against the supernatural, keeping them away from the hellmouth for almost a year. But with the barriers up and the demon population going up by the day realizing the feeding frenzy that was Sunnydale, we all knew we couldn't last forever. After that, we bounced around mostly, living wherever we could fight off the demons best. We'd found a decent place called The Magic Box and had been living there for almost six months before Riley and his guys found us. They'd heard rumors of a group of humans fighting off the demons and came looking for new recruits."

"So they just took you in?"

"Well, not exactly. Most of Riley's superiors were convinced that they could solve this with a military solution. Just keep killing demons until they took back the town. We weren't much for that plan, and they weren't too happy with us for our ideas. Riley was the only one who was really willing to listen to us at first."

"And when he ended up in control of the place..."

"People stopped dying. Took almost half the Initiative's staff, but eventually they learned and started listening."

Willow glances at Faith slightly.

"Almost 500 people died from this place, not counting everyone up above... all because of those barriers."

Faith avoids Willow's statement.

"Never thought much of the military anyway..."

"This isn't your typical military group Faith."

"Potayto, potahto..."

They make it to the opening of the hallway and walk into a smaller room with sections closed off by makeshift walls created by drapes and other large dividers.

"All right, so, here's the ACTUAL Scooby Central. I trust no one is going to object to me saying that?"

"Speak for yourself Harris."

A small, slightly older looking dirty blonde woman calls out from nearby. She stops what she's doing and comes over.

"I don't know why you insist on naming every place you live 'Scooby Central'."

"It's a reference to..."

"Yes, I've been explained the reference, and I still don't get it. This is about as far from a group of stoners with a talking dog as we can get, unless you've finally brought one home."

She looks at Faith with curious disdain.

"Who is this?"

Xander gestures towards Faith.

"This is Faith. She's the slayer I've been talking about."

There's a silent moment where the woman just looks in Faith's eyes with the same disdainful look.

"So you actually DID bring home a talking dog. Great..."

The woman turns around to go back to what she was doing before Faith came in. Faith tries to dismiss the blunt woman.

"Who's the mouth?"

Xander smiles.

"That's Anya. She's sort've our resident expert on all things supernatural... for the most part."

Faith takes a second look at the rather short girl she just met.

"Her?"

Xander shrugs slightly.

"She may not look it, but the girl knows her stuff."

Willow interjects.

"She should, she lived with them for 1000 years."

A slightly confused look is sent in the direction of both Willow and Xander.

"What?"

"Anya's an ex-demon. It's mostly my fault really. After the barriers went up I spent as much downtime as I could, searching for a way to change things. To put them all back to the way they used to be."

"I'm guessing it didn't really work out."

Willow glances at Faith with a bit of a glare to her look.

"No... I'd heard about vengeance demons, so I called one, hoping I could get her to grant me a wish."

"A vengeance wish? On who?"

Again Willow glares in the direction of Faith, this time long enough for Faith to realize what Willow is trying to say.

"But when I summoned her, she told me that the barriers that were keeping us in, also kept her from granting vengeance against people that were beyond the barrier, which is how I figured out where you were."

Faith brings her attention back to Anya.

"So she's a demon? Shouldn't she be locked up in one of the 5 by 10 cells the military boys have?"

Xander answers the questions.

"Not anymore. She's an ex-demon now."

"How's that?"

Willow takes a deep breath.

"When I found out I couldn't get my vengeance and fix things, I got a little pissed at her. So I smashed her power center. She lost all her powers and became a regular human like the rest of us."

"Except with 1000 years worth of knowledge and experience with demons..."

Faith grins a little as she watches Anya for a while.

"She must put the watcher boy to shame."

Willow turns to Faith with an angry expression.

"What?"

Xander gets slightly nervous.

"Uh, Faith..."

"The watcher... what was his name, Guiles?"

The air in the room shifts slightly.

"Giles..."

"Right... Rufus Giles..."

Willow lunges at Faith and if there'd been a table or something in the room then Faith probably would've been thrown up against it. But instead they land on the floor a few feet away from a medical drape nearby, Willow on top of Faith looking like she wants to tear the girl apart.

"HIS NAME IS RUPERT... RUPERT GILES!"

Xander starts making his way over to the drape.

"All right, all right... geez... what's the big deal?"

He pulls back the drape to show Faith what's behind it. The young slayer can see a hospital patient bed and for the first time since coming into the room, she can hear the beeping of a heart rate monitor.

"This is the big deal Faith."

Willow takes her weight off of Faith but pulls the brunette with her as she gets up, making her face the person in the bed. Rupert Giles is lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to a respirator, keeping him alive.

End of Chapter 7

Author's Note: So, I have an idea of where this story is going but this is the last chapter that I've written. I'm currently focusing a lot on 'Sins of the Past' and 'The F in Pike'. Once I get through that and get into their possible sequels, I'll start working on this or other stories. If you want me to focus on this one, let me know in a review or something.