***Author's Note***

Sorry for the delay guys. Finals and Graduation from college have taken precedence over fanfiction, but are now happily in the past. Here's an extra long chapter as penence (:

I'm going to break a rule of mine and say definitively that Feeder17 is NOT Faith. Many have speculated, and I wanted to put curiosity to rest. I didn't consider Faith when I layed out my character description, but this chapter will hopefully give you a better idea of who Feeder17 really is (a totally awesome OC of my own design!).

I'd also like to thank all of you who've alerted, favorited, and reviewed, with a special shout-out to ginar369! I love reviews, whether they come with love or critique.

Of course, all publicly recognized characters, quotes, and plot lines belong to the genious that is Joss Whedon. Everything else is mine.


Spike's vigil at the door of the cell paid off. If he twisted his neck just right, he could see his three-doors-down neighbor, a panicked female vampire darting back and forth across the front of her cell in a frenzy, a rabid rat in a too-small cage. The soldiers and the white-coats had thrown a scrawny young man in with her, just the way they had with his girl, and he could only assume that a Feeder had just been introduced to his Hostile.

He watched with interest as the play unfolded, entirely different from the one he himself was living. The vampire was so frightened and shaken that she ignored the human sharing her quarters, staying as far from him as possible. Spike had felt a twinge of something like pity for her; she was clearly very young, almost incapable of acting without her sire's guidance. It really was too bad. Eventually she seemed to come to her senses a bit, grabbing the man by the throat and throwing him hard against the wall when he approached her, wrists out in supplication. An interrogation followed, the man's lips moving rapidly as he gasped out what Spike assumed was a similar explanation to that given him by his own Feeder.

Grimacing, he had shaken himself in an attempt to throw such thoughts away. She wasn't his Feeder, wasn't his anything. Just some girl who'd gotten the short end. He had his fingers crossed hard that she was wrong about the drugs, that they hadn't taken yet, and had locked his growing doubts tightly away in the back of his brain.

The science-bitch seemed to have learned from her mistakes this time, because after only eight hours of stillness from the cell down the way, a tray had been delivered and the young man's blood 'accidentally' spilled. The vampire's control snapped and she attacked, messily and with much waste.

Youth. Spike shook his head, watching blood spatter across the barrier. What a mess. She was hardly half as starved as he had been, but she fed with untidy abandon until the drugs latched hold of her and she passed out on top of her victim, her face still buried in the crook of his neck. Only moments later, the white-coats and the soldiers were back, only two of each, and Spike had to actively force himself to remain still, his expression schooled into a carefully neutral expression. The activity had peaked his interest, perked up his figurative ears, and now he watched the goings on with an intensity that could have melted ice.

There was quite a bit of movement down the hallway, but all stilted in a manner that suggested choreography, suggested the following of protocol and procedure. And that was good. Meant they were following a script, doing things the way they would be done from now on. Sure that first time had been muddled, the product of being unprepared, but the first rule of an experiment was uniformity. Spike could count on that.

The soldiers waited patiently at the door of the cell as the white-coats wheeled both gurneys inside, lifting first the vampire, then the man, strapping them each down in turn. They were then wheeled out, the soldiers closing the cell door with the swipe of a card and following the cots up the hallway. As they got closer, Spike looked away, feigning disinterest and hiding a smirk. The straps that held the vampire and the human down were thin; cotton at best, at worst only leather, easily broken through by even a weak vampire given that they were conscious. It would seem that the scientists and the soldier-boys were overly dependent on their little Molotov of drugs; there were only two straps to a gurney, one over the chest and upper arms, and one just above the knees. Not only that, but they were all unforgivably at ease, strolling nonchalantly down the hall.

As they disappeared off to his right, Spike smiled. Oh yes. This would do just fine. He could work with this.


After he deemed sufficient time passed, he shifted to his feet, testing himself as he did so. 'Steady enough for now,' he supposed. Enough strength, enough control over the pain and the quivering weakness of body and mind that lived deep deep down. His demon grumbled in the back of his head, inconsolably irritable over the fix they were in. Unconscionable, that's what it was! He was Spike, William the Bloody; He should damn well be able to walk out that door whenever he damn well pleased and leave a trail of bodies to mark his way behind!

Spike shook his head. He was doing it again. Focus, ya berk! Right. Plenty of time for that later. Crossing the cell, he eased himself down next to the girl, who'd been unnaturally still and silent, for a human anyway, ever since their little spat about names and change and deciding who you were. He trembled at their closeness, at the scent of her, the heat that bled through his coat sleeve where his forearm pressed against hers. It took him a moment to collect himself, to feel confident that when he opened his mouth, real words would come out of it, not just drool and half-starved whimpers.

She beat him to the punch.

"Shadoe."

Slightly alarmed, he looked about the cell, but there was a distinct absence of shadow there, only bright white and glaring fluorescence that filled every corner and leached the life from any complexion.

"Say again pet?"

"You're Spike," she murmured said softly, looking up at him, looking through him. "I'll be Shadoe."

Spike narrowed his eyes, brows drawing down to meet in the middle in a look that didn't quite read.

"He doesn't like it," she muttered, hurt lancing through the words as she dropped her gaze again, pulling away. "Told you he wouldn't like it…"

Reaching across his own body, Spike caught her arm and pulled her firmly back down beside him.

"Doesn't matter what I like," he said, trying to catch her stare. She seemed scattered, drawing into herself, talking to people who weren't there. "Only matters what you like."

Please God, don't let her be going nuts on me. Gotta get her outta here before she goes totally off her bird. Can't do it, not another one. Not like Dru all over again.

Reaching out, he took her chin roughly in his hand and forced her to look at him. "Seems to me it suits you just fine luv," he said. "You're dark enough. Get the feeling you'll be stickin' to me like a shadow once we're outta here too."

Not to mention you're nothin' more than a walkin' talkin' shadow as it is. A slip of yourself, a reflection of something darker… of me.

Unnerved by his thoughts, he dropped his hand, and was relieved when the girl seemed to calm, settling back in at his side and letting her body relax, her legs stretching out in front of her instead of being crushed tight to her chest. He watched silently for a minute as she pointed her bare, delicate toes in a stretch. He tried to bite his tongue, but his curiosity, and quite possibly his fear, got the better of him.

"Who you been talkin' to luv?" he asked quietly, not brave enough to look at her, instead staring blankly at the wall. "Got somebody in there with you?"

"Voice," she muttered, apparently unconcerned.

"Know who it is?"

She shook her head.

And that was a good sign right? It wasn't the stars, it wasn't some creepy Victorian doll with dead eyes.

"It tell you things?"

"Sometimes."

"It tell you the future? Stuff that hasn't happened yet?"

"No," she said, her tone suddenly derisive. Accompanying the denial was a look that suggested to Spike that perhaps he was the crazy one. "Doesn't show me anything. Just… says things I already know."

"Things you already know?" Spike whispered to himself, thoroughly confused. "You and this voice, you ever fight?"

"No. Sometimes. Sometimes it changes its mind. But we're the same in the end."

On this vaguely ominous note, it appeared that she was done talking, slouching down the wall and snuggling into his side, the hollow of her cheek finding his shoulder as her eyes fluttered shut.

Spike sat back, immensely uncomfortable with their position, but unwilling to wake her if she would sleep. He doubted that she would be any kind of help with an escape, but hoped that at the very least she could manage to keep herself out of any shackles in the process, and she would need all the strength she could hold onto for that. Turning over all the things she'd said in his mind, Spike tried to puzzle out just what he was dealing with.

He felt immense relief come with the idea that she wasn't completely out of her mind like his Sire was. She hadn't named the entity inside of her, couldn't identify it as something or someone other than a voice, and this suggested to him that it was not a splitting of her sanity, nor was it, for the same reasons, a demon or other nasty that had taken up residence inside her head. Could be that it was just her way of dealing with the Slayerness; she was new to it, and Buffy had been a prime example of how the Chosen One often sought to separate herself from her work to such an extreme extent that she could insist, even to herself, that she was two different people. But somehow that didn't seem to fit either. She'd said that they always agreed; hem-hawed a bit but that the voice only told her things she already knew, and that in the end they always agreed.

Spike felt a flash of something, some emotion that might have been pity if he were a man and not a monster. Poor kid had been down here God knows how long, suffered greatly at the hands of these wannabe Pavlovs. No memory, didn't know who she was, what she was called, couldn't recognize herself at all…

And just like that, it all clicked.

A wry laugh rumbled up through Spike's chest, his shaking shoulder's dislodging the sleeping girl. She blinked several times, looking up at him with confused, dark eyes.

"No more worries darlin'," he smiled softly. "Got you all figured out. There's nobody in that pretty little head of yours but you." Her sleepy confusion was almost endearing, and in a sudden fit of mercy, he explained. "That voice you hear, the one that always agrees with you? Sounds an awful lot like your voice doesn't it?" She thought a moment, then nodded, but he could tell that she still didn't understand. "It's just you luv. You been down here too long, don't know yourself anymore. That voice rattling round in your attic is yours. Your thoughts. Been you all the time. You just didn't know it."

He smiled with self-satisfaction, having puzzled it out, but she frowned.

"What if you're wrong?" she asked quietly, her voice breaking. "What if I'm just…?"

"Crazy?" She flinched, but Spike had always been of the school of thought that said ripping out a stake in one nice hard go hurt a lot less than trying to wriggle it out slow. Of course, some good old post-injury pain killers, preferably in the form of whiskey, never hurt anyone.

"Listen," he continued, "I've spent a lot of years with crazy. I've known it, intimately, for decades. Over a century. All those voices that whisper things in the dark, things that hurt…" Spike's voice almost cracked with the pain of remembering, remembering all the times that the stars or Miss Edith had driven Dru from his arms. "Anyway," he said brusquely, sniffing back tears, "It's not you. It's not you Shadoe. "

A small smile lit on her lips when he used her chosen name. What he didn't tell her was that it could be her, could easily be her. Dru had been made mad by the treatment of Angelus, and while the Initiative had yet to resort to his levels of depravity, there was no doubt in Spike's mind that, given enough time, they would get there. Just one more reason to get the hell out of Dodge City while they still had the functioning capacity.

"You pay attention now yeah?" Leaning in as close as was reasonable, he dropped his voice and slurred his words to keep his lips from moving, doing all he could to keep that cameras and microphones from picking up on their conversation. "It's just about time to get out of here. We're only gonna have one shot at this, and I need you ready to go."

Pride flashed through Spike at the flame his words lit in her eyes. Just a mention of a chance was apparently enough for this girl. Her hands balled into tight fists at her sides, which she was trying valiantly to hide from the cameras.

"Ready," she breathed, so softly that only a vampire wound hear . "Do anything. Whatever you want. Just get us out of here."