(Sigh...) Another late chapter, but at least I have lots of excuses this time. I start a new job next month (More money! Yesss!) plus we have been involved in lots of wedding planning stuff, plus I had a business trip to Monte Carlo. Look, damnit, someone has to stand on verandas and sip champagne whilst the sun goes down! Ahem. So. Here it is. Enjoy, because things are about to get rough...
Riley hated being confused. He hated that his head tended to buzz with too many thoughts, all crammed in like fireflies in an opaque jar. He never knew which way the damn things would buzz sometimes and he was starting to become concerned about opening his mouth at times, for fear of what might emerge at the wrong moment.
The cause of this confusion was currently watching Professor Walsh from a seat at the back of the classroom. Buffy was sitting there looking studious and scribbling away. She looked adoringly cute in her top and skirt, which was ironic given the fact that she could kick the ass of anyone in the room, probably him included. At the moment though she was giving Maggie Walsh her full attention as she talked about popular political thought during the French Revolution. Occasionally she scratched her nose with the tip of her pencil. That was distracting too, but had no idea why.
What exactly was she? He'd done some background research into the Slayer, but everything that he'd found had either been wrong ('The Slayer Myth') or had been seriously skewed ('Ye Slayer Scourge'), so he really wasn't any further forwards. What he did know was that he liked her a lot and that she seemed to like him. The fact that she was a mystical warrior called the Slayer was the confusing bit. The other fact that there was a Jedi knight, or a self-proclaimed one… who just happened to have a working lightsabre… was the other confusing issue.
He paused and resisted the temptation to walk up to the nearest door and hit it with his forehead until things quieted down in the maelstrom that was his brain.
Ethan Rayne stared into his pint of beer and scowled darkly. He had been stuck in this rotten town for far too long, a victim of circumstances and his own perfectionist nature. His plan had been a good one. It was also cruel and unusual and would have made the perfect answer to all that Watcher bollocks. He would get all the ingredients required to turn old Ripper into a Fyarl, knowing full well that there was an excellent – and exquisitely ironical – chance that he would get staked by his own Slayer.
Well, that plans' legs had fallen off a long time since. For one thing getting hold of the ingredients had been a lot easier said than done. The local magic shop had been undergoing one of its periodic changes in management, and what it did have was almost all reserved. A lot of local demons had been trying to get all kinds of protective amulets and spells. The problem was that some were home-made, or rather just made-up. It really was pathetic, demons going around with bags of rare substances around their necks that did bugger all. Some had even made the mistake of mixing some of the components together when they had no clue what might happen. There were at least three squirrels hopping around Sunnydale that still had vague memories of being demons. Janus only knew what they'd do with any acorns they found and when it came to the breeding season, well… yuck. That was the problem with spell components. Some of them had very odd effects on people. Odd even by his standards.
He paused for a moment. There had been that one time in London, when he'd been convinced that he's seen a white mouse with an eyepatch driving a very small car flying past… never mind, odd things happening was just a part of life for any kind of mage.
Thinking about odd things, there was the other rumour that he had heard, about the two other warriors in town. That had to be complete bollocks. Two Jedi Knights. Right, and Arthur and his knights were probably buried in the hill behind him right now. Next to Charlemagne and to one side of Shangri-La. He thought about ladies with hankies on their coned heads and prats with unfeasibly large amounts of metal on them and stifled a laugh. Then he thought about Mons Badonicus and shook his head sadly. When it came to a choice between truth and myth, most people preferred the myth. Well, whatever was going on, he wasn't falling for it. The local demon community had obviously fallen for some kind of trick. He was trickier than anyone else that he knew of, with the exception possibly of Ripper – and Ripper was cuddly uncle Rupert these days.
He rubbed one of the knuckles on his left hand carefully. Sometimes it ached a bit, a reminder of when Rupert bloody Giles had broken it on the night that that he had brought Janus down on this awful place. It demanded a little payback. Hopefully tonight he'd finally be able to get all the parts he needed to play his long-awaited prank on old Ripper.
He just knew that he was going to laugh so hard his stomach would hurt afterwards.
Why was it that he hated folders marked 'Confidential' so much? Oh wait, wasn't it the fact that Wolfram & Hart used the word as a euphemism for 'Insane client/disgusting mission' again and again? Yes, that was it. Yuck.
Lindsey sat there and looked at the folder with a great deal of distaste. Then he quirked his lips slightly. He was tempted to try and open the thing with the Force, but that wouldn't have been a good idea. Firstly he didn't want to use his powers at all in an office that had anything to do with Wolfram & Hart. You never know who (or rather what) might be watching. Secondly he had a nasty feeling that the dark side was literally dripping off the damn thing and puddling on the floor.
Instead he reached out with a pencil and opened it, before leaning forwards and starting to read. By the time he had reached the bottom of the first page a slight frown had broken out. By the end of the second page the frown was a grimace. And by the time he had reached the end, his face had closed down completely and was blank of all emotion.
He pushed the folder away with the pencil and then just sat there, numbly. It was… vile. Horrific. Revolting. Evil. All of the above. Par for the course for Wolfram & Hart then. It was, in fact, an excellent example of why he wanted to leave the company.
Speaking of which everything was ready. His flat was bought and paid for. He had no financial ties to anything related to Wolfram & Hart. He had more than enough money squirreled away in various places, just in case Wolfram & Hart tried to apply some fiscal pressure. He'd also been able to get hold some very nice anti-vampire amulets that should protect him until his training kicked in.
He paused for a moment and then smiled wryly. He was going to be trained by someone who was younger than him. That was going to be weird. That said, Xander knew things that he couldn't even guess at. He had done something with his life, had made use of his powers in a noble way. Wolfram & Hart didn't do noble and in fact the word, let alone the concept, probably wasn't even in their dictionary.
He thought about what Wolfram & Hart would have done with him if the firm had found out about his powers, if he had been stupid enough to mention something to Rove. There was a good chance that bits of him would now have been bobbing in jars, whilst his barely alive body was being probed in various horrible ways to see how it worked.
He wanted his body upright and working perfectly, thank you very much.
Right. He stood up and then consigned the folder to the bin, before reaching into his suit and pulling out the letter. He looked at it soberly and then nodded hard, replacing it in his jacket and then striding from the room. Time to do this thing.
Rove's secretary was looking as frazzled as she normally did these days as he approached the office. She was typing with a somewhat abstracted air about her, and only noticed him when he cleared his throat softly.
"Mr MacDonald! I'm sorry, I didn't see you there. How can I help you?"
"I need to see Mr Rove," said Lindsey solemnly. "I have some important news to give him."
"I'll see if he's free," she said with a slightly strained smile, before she stood up and knocked carefully at the main doors. Interesting. Why not just call him? A muffled voice said something indistinct and then she sighed slightly and opened the door to slip in. More muffled voices and then the door opened again as the secretary slipped out. "He can see you now."
When Lindsey entered the room the first thing that he noticed was the smell. A number of scented candles were burning in one corner. From the marks on the wall next to them, it was obvious that Rove's paranoia had taken a step forward into some of the odder types of anti-surveillance spells. Hum. Those could be notoriously unreliable, but they did provide the credulous – or the gullible – some measure of reassurance.
The second thing that he noticed was Rove himself. The man looked unkempt. He looked red-eyed and more than simply strained, he looked as if he had gone beyond strained and emerged onto the dizzy heights of rampant instability that lay beyond them.
"Lindsey," he said, in a ghastly attempt at joviality, "How can I help you?"
"I need to give you this," he replied, passing the fat envelope over.
Rove picked it up with a frown, hesitating slightly as he did so. "Well now, what's this? Looks quite weighty."
Lindsey smiled what had to be the most heartfelt smile that he could remember smiling for some time, maybe for years and years. "I quit." And then he turned on his heel and walked out, ignoring the bellow of incomprehension that rose from the room, ignoring the startled look that the secretary gave him, ignoring the sound of gasps from the people that were passing in the hall outside. He was free. Hopefully.
More things on her list… always so many things. Things to verify, supplies to order for the base, personnel to interview, transfer or request, supply orders to be triple-checked once they arrived, records to monitor, amend or even just falsify in extreme circumstances… it never really ended. And behind the official things, there was the ongoing issues behind the creation of Adam.
Adam… was something that she was increasingly proud of. He was already at a state that she had only hoped of being able to achieve when she first started the project so many months ago. The things that she had learnt about so many aspects of everything, from basic human anatomy, to demon anatomy, to cybernetics… that was another list that never seemed to end. And there were always new parts to add. Always new places to check on. It made her giddy at times.
She walked up to the door, unlocked it with the keypad and slipped inside. Only when the door was firmly closed did she turn to the table.
"Hello Adam," she smiled at the unmoving form on the table. "It's almost time to wake up. I know that you're going to make me proud." Turning away she sat down at her computer and accessed her internal email. There were things to work on that she just had to do before she could work on Adam today. She didn't want to be distracted from him today after all. There was a new set of diagnostics that she wanted to run. Oh and she had to check on those new fibres that she had seen in one of the latest X-rays. She wasn't sure what they were, but they almost resembled nerve endings. That was silly, nerve endings couldn't grow like that, but she had to check them out anyway. Well, on a project like this she shouldn't have been surprised to see a few anomalies along the way. She had been surprised by the amount of energy that the powerpack embedded in Adam had provided though. It was working very well. Data retention was also up quite a bit from her original specifications.
Finishing up on her computer she sent off a few more emails and then stood up. As she turned around she stopped dead. Adam was standing a few feet from her, his head cocked to one side. He was watching her with a slow, unblinking, stare, as if he was studying her.
Her heart thudded wildly. This was a hell of a shock. He was activated! That was impossible! He should have been unable to even lift his head from the table without the right authorisation!
Adam blinked for the first time and then she realised that she must have said that last thought out loud. For the first time she really noticed just how tall he was and how powerful as well. For the first time… ever really, she started to feel something else about her project. Fear.
"Incorrect," he said in a flat, almost uninterested, tone of voice. "Not impossible at all. Authorisation depends on programming and mine has been… altered. Your design was somewhat inefficient as well, mother. That has… also been altered again." He leant forwards slightly and then different muscles fluttered around the sides of his mouth. She stared, until she realised that he was literally building a smile, muscle by muscle. "Hello mother."
A green arm came up and then something hit her in the throat, so fast that she couldn't comprehend what had happened until she tried to breath, but instead of air all she could inhale was hot blood. The world darkened at the edges of her vision, her legs started to fail and as she fell to her knees she could see that the prong that she had so painstakingly installed had extended from his arm into her throat. She wanted to say something, she wanted to fight, to explain, to…
Just before the darkness came she heard her creation say something else.
"Goodbye mother."
It was a perfect evening. The food had been superb, the wine had been perfectly chilled to the right temperature, the candles had made the mood right and the entire dinner had, all in all, been wonderful. In a word, perfect. Work was shoved into the background and all that mattered right now was the moment. Naturally the moment that Holland Manners stood up to follow his wife off the verandah and into the bedroom, his phone went off.
This annoyed him. He had left careful instructions that he was only to be disturbed in the event of a major disaster. Nothing else. He had been planning this anniversary dinner for months and for once he intended to make it a work-free evening for his wife.
He reached in and answered it with a scowl. "Manners."
Then he flinched slightly and held the phone away from his ear so that he wasn't deafened by the babble. Listening carefully he sighed, covered the mouthpiece with a hand and then called out: "I won't be a minute, darling, there's a madman on the phone."
Then he listened for a moment again. When the babble paused for a second to allow the idiot on the other end to draw breath Holland snapped: "Rove! Get a grip!" The voice stopped with an audible gulp from delivering another rant.
"Now, summarise in ten words or less. And make it good, because I am in no mood for any distractions tonight. The fact that you rang me at all when I had left strict instructions to be left alone already means that you in deep trouble. Now. Summary?"
"Lindsey McDonald has resigned from the company, effective immediately," said Rove in a shaken and for once sane tone.
Ah. He hadn't been expecting that. How disappointing. And it just showed that Rove had lost it. He's been losing it for months now, but he'd expected that the scenario would play out with Lindsey taking over in Sunnydale for a while, before coming back to the LA office, while Rove's nondescript threat would end with him in either a shallow grave or a nuthouse. Blast. What the hell had happened?
This would take some careful thinking. Much devious plotting. All of which would be later, because right now his wife was standing in the doorway, wearing something that could best be called diaphanous.
"Send his resignation letter to my office. I'll deal with it. Do not call back unless you want to die." He turned the phone off, tossed it onto the dinner table and walked towards the house. It could wait. There was always his back-up plan in case Lindsey's attack of conscience had been serious, and that had been in place for months.
Wolfram & Hart wasn't finished with Lindsey McDonald. He was a fool if he thought that anyone could just walk away from the firm. No-one did, not really. Not in the long term. After all, a contract was a contract…
"Hannah Reid?"
"Forrest…"
"Sophie van der Preis?"
"Are you nuts? She's the captain of the girl's rugby team and crushes men underfoot!"
"Rhiannon Jones?"
"She plays for the other side!"
"Well then, what or who the hell has got you so wound up, Ri?"
"It isn't another girl, Forrest! I just… have a few things to work through. That's it."
"Well, then Buffy Summers must have to work damn hard to get two words out of you on dates, Riley. You've been going around like you've been stunned for a few weeks now. Just what the hell has got you so turned around?" He stopped. Riley was no longer walking next to him. Instead he was standing off to one side, staring at something just down the corridor. Then he turned around, his face as hard as stone. "Weapons free, we have a Code 15-A."
Forrest's automatic appeared in his hand as if by magic as his training kicked in, and then he checked the area as quickly as possible. Only when it was clear did he open his mouth and ask the all-important question. "Situation?"
Riley nodded curtly at the door down the corridor, where a glistening red puddle was starting to seep out from under it. Blood. A lot of it too.
Their automatics held in both hands, ready for anything, the two men sidled up to the door and did their best to peer in. Frosted glass meant that they couldn't see anything. Then they caught sight of the name on the door. Director Walsh's private sanctum, where she worked on God only knew what. Well, what ever it was, he was pretty sure that having a flood of blood on the floor was not part of the plan at all. Which brought up its own set of problems. They didn't have access to that room. Forrest shot a quick look at Riley, who nodded at the intercom on the other wall, but before they could use it they heard quick footsteps in the corridor. A moment later Dr Angleman came around the corner, holding a clipboard in one hand and a coffee in the other. He faltered slightly when he saw them and then stopped dead when he saw their guns. Then he saw the blood on the floor and promptly went white. "Where's Director Walsh?" he hissed.
"We don't know, Doctor, we came along the corridor and saw the blood. Door's locked and we don't have access there," replied Riley softly. Then they all looked at the door. Something had crashed to the floor inside, rather loudly as well.
Dr Angleman hurriedly placed the clipboard and coffee to one side, before fumbling in his pocket for his pass card. Stepping over the puddle of blood carefully he poised the card just above the swipe slot and then looked over at the other two men. When he received a careful nod from Riley he swiped the card, punched in the code quickly and then pushed the door open, stepping back from it hurriedly as he did. He seemed nervous and uncertain about whatever might be in there, as if something that he was afraid of was inside.
Forrest felt a trickle of uneasiness run through him for a second, and then he was in, moving with Riley in a swipe-and-wipe movement, his gun and eyes checking by sectors. His first look was at the wall behind the door. Clear. His second was the wall as it continued on… to a table with a smashed computer on it. Smoke was rising from it slowly and there was a groove in it that looked as it something very heavy had punched down onto it. Then he heard a smothered groan from Riley, something that was so unlike his teammate that he spun on the spot to check out what was wrong.
Maggie Walsh was lying on the floor, her eyes open, almost as much as her throat. From the amount of blood puddled on the floor around her, she was very dead. And the rest of the room, or laboratory, or whatever the hell it was, it was trashed. Computers had been crushed, although one looked as if it had been dissected, files had been pulled out of the one filing cabinet in the room, something that smelt unpleasantly chemically nasty was literally fizzing in a sink to one side… oh and several jars containing odd body parts were lined up on a workbench and had been smashed open.
Forrest heard a gasp from behind him and turned slightly to see Dr Angleman staring at the devastation. "No, no, nononono," he whined, "Not our research, not all our damn research!" Then he looked over to one side. "Adam. Where's Adam?"
"Adam who?" asked a very pale Riley as he rose from checking on Director Walsh. He jerked his head at the body. "She's dead."
"Me," said a flat voice to one side and they all turned around to see a figure in the doorway that led off to one side of the room. It took a step forwards and Forrest took a hard step back, because this thing looked like Frankenstein's monster's worst nightmare. Half of the face was human, but that was where the normal part ended, because most of the rest was green, with the remainder being metal. Its chest was… scarred, with bits and pieces sutured on, with other metal bits thrown in for good measure. It looked like it shouldn't be able to even function, and yet it seemed to move with a certain grace and fluidity as it walked forward a step or two and then stopped.
"Adam," breathed Dr Angleman, "You shouldn't be able to even move yet, let alone have motor function…"
Whatever this Adam was, it looked at them all, its head tilted briefly to one side. "Another person who was incorrect about me. Almost amusing. Your inability to see what was in front of you was interesting, as was your failure to understand my healing abilities." It paused for a second, looking almost confused. "My. Me. What am I, exactly?" It held up a green hand and looked at it. "What makes me, me?"
Confused, Forrest exchanged a glance with an equally baffled Riley. "Do we take him down now or what?"
This also seemed to amuse the thing, because he moved his mouth into a ghastly rictus of a smile. "Take me down? Ah. Only two people know how that can be done. Mother was one, but she isn't talking just now. Dr Angleman is the other." Its arm moved up in a blur of motion, before returning to its side. "Oh dear. No-one now."
Forrest snapped his head to one side at the same time that he heard the choked-off scream as Angleman grabbed at the scalpel that was suddenly standing out from his neck, with blood spurting out from it in an obscene spray of colour. Another scalpel suddenly appeared in his chest and then he was down, collapsing in a slow but final manner, all twitching limbs and staring eyes.
Turning back to the thing Forrest brought the gun up smoothly, ready to double-tap the bastard, but before the first bullet was even out of the end of the gun he could see the monster moving forwards, green and metal and flesh in motion. Riley had fired at the same time, yet he missed too and before either of them could fire again Adam was on them. An arm flashed around in a controlled semicircle, hitting Riley first in the arm and then coming back and down to hit him in the stomach and sending him flying through the air and across the room, to land on a table and destroy it. The other arm came around and it was only because he was already flinching that Forrest was able to dodge it, feeling the rush of displaced air at the same time as he smelt something unidentifiable. He pulled the gun up again, but then the other arm came back again, as the thing grabbed the gun, wrenched it out of his grip and then suddenly punched him with it in the chest. Something crunched nastily in his chest as he found himself hurtling backwards, to hit the wall and then slowly slump down, fighting to breath, trying desperately to get air into his lungs.
When he finally managed to breathe, he looked up. Adam was gone. And Riley had somehow gotten to his feet. He was clutching his left arm gingerly, and he had a cut over one eye that was bleeding like a stuck pig, but he was upright. He hobbled over painfully to the intercom system on the wall, punched in a number and then leant over the microphone. "Emergency crew to Room 314. Hostile HST present on the base. Casualties present. Agents down, I say again, agents down." And then he slumped down beyond Forrest's sight.
Alarms blared around the base, loud insistent alarms. For the first time since Hostile 17 had unexpectedly escaped the Initiative was on full alert for intruders. Or rather in this case, escaping prisoners. The point was rather an unclear one, as the only two survivors of the breakout were either unconscious or only partially conscious. Agent Finn was being treated for concussion and a broken arm and hadn't woken since the first team had arrived and confirmed the alarm. As for Agent Gates, he was being treated for a broken breastbone and two cracked ribs. The medical team had to keep trying to restrain him and keep him from talking, but well, people needed to know what the hell was going on.
The news that both Director Walsh and her Number Two were both dead meant that the chain of command went down a rung or two to Major Flashman, who had promptly declared that he was going to the command room and that everyone was to guard the area carefully. Then he had strode off quite quickly, radiating calm efficiency but not letting anything at all stop him from getting into the most heavily guarded place in the facility as fast as humanly possible, although not so quickly as to prevent him from making a quick trip to the toilet first.
Once he was in the command room coherent orders had started to flash about the place – search by sector grids, ascertain if the creature that Director Walsh had been working on had breached sector containment, make sure that the cells had not been compromised, and so on. Once the Initiative was secured they were to search outside, starting with all exits and ventilation vents. Major Flashman seemed to have a very good idea about how something escaping the base would try to get out.
Agents, operatives, technicians and guards scurried, ignoring the blaring sirens, ignoring the screaming questions and howls coming from the cells. Arms lockers were opened, weapons passed around, body armour issued… The walls echoed with the sound of running boots.
And a pair of cold eyes observed all of this from a ventilation shaft in a wall high above the main hall. They flickered from spot to spot, observing, registering, assessing. Once or twice what might almost have been amusement flickered over them briefly, like a cloud skidding over the moon. And then the eyes were gone into the darkness.
It was pitiful, absolutely pitiful. Atan'yar looked down at the collection of objects on the rough altar in front of him and scowled. There should have been the head of a lynx. Instead there was the mummified head of a dead cat that had been in a back garden. There was even a collar on the damn thing that still read 'Mr Flibble.' There should have been a leg from a human, preferably very fresh. Instead there was a very yellow femur that looked as if it was close to becoming dust if someone coughed too hard on it. Oh, and there should have been a pint of virgins' blood. Instead there was something cotton soaked in rusty-red. At least the ceremonial blood gutting knife in his hand was up to the job, as a random acolyte was about to find out.
As a sacrifice it left something to be desired. Actually, as something to be left on an altar on the Hellmouth, it left a massive amount to be desired.
A mournful sigh almost escaped his lips but he choked it back and then looked around at the collection of demons who were hovering nervously around him. They were even more pitiful, they really were. What a bunch of idiots. They looked up at him and he did his best not to sneer back at them. Unfortunately he needed them. He hated the bastards, but he needed them. If he was going to try and gain some power on the Hellmouth, he needed some flunkies. This looked like the best that he could get for the time being, but he could always get some more. At least they'd stopped babbling about the dangers of the base, once he'd killed the more nervous of them as messily as possible. They'd said something about two Slayers, which was impossible, and then something about two Jedi, which was just laughable. Warriors from films being here! Pffff! And then one had muttered something about a vision and something called 314. More piffle.
Raising his arms in the most impressive way that he could, he looked down at the altar and opened his mouth, preparing to say the long, sonorous, incantation that would raise a spirit that would tell him where the secrets of the Hellmouth lay hidden. Then he paused. Someone was behind him, looking over his shoulder.
"Yuck, not a very impressive collection of objects," said a voice and he spun around on the spot. A medium-sized human was standing there. It had dark hair, a small smile and was dressed in brown and white clothes. It was also scratching the tip of its nose with a short metal rod.
Atan'yar looked around at his acolytes. They were… cowering? Those that remained that is. The others had run away. Which meant that they were afraid of something that wasn't him. This was, of course, a mistake. Once he had dealt with this idiot, he would track them down and kill them, slowly and messily, over this altar.
The human put the hand with the metal rod behind his back and then raised the other one, extending a finger as he did in a lecturing manner. "I'm guessing: new in town. Don't know the area that well. Not much evil oomph, so to speak, at least not just yet. Very bad at sacrifices. And unwilling to listen to the locals. Am I right?" He pointed a finger at the objects and then flicked it upwards.
Sensing movement out of the corner of his eye, Atan'yar turned just in time to see the sacrificial objects shoot up into the air at great speed, vanishing into the darkness. "Oops," said the human, "You might have some trouble finding those anytime soon."
He saw red at this. Literally, as several blood vessels popped in his eyes. "Blasphemer!" he screeched. "You will die for profaning our ceremony!"
The human rolled his eyes. "No, no, that's all wrong. Come on, you sound far too stable to be an evil demon priest on the Hellmouth. You need to raise that voice a few octaves until you sound as if you've been kicked in the happy sacs and… you do have happy sacs, right? Whatever. Try screeching and gibbering incoherently, that works. You also need a better line in dialogue, because that was just too lame for words." The human paused. "Or you could just get the hell out of Sunnydale. I'd choose the last option, personally."
Atan'yar opened and then closed his mouth. The human's composure was setting off more than a few alarm bells. And then there was the fact that the last of his acolytes had vanished. "Who are you, human?"
There was a nasty electronic buzz and then the human pulled his hand out from behind his back. The metal rod had grown a blue humming blade. It looked rather like a lightsabre. Actually it looked exactly like a lightsabre. The human tilted his head. "I am Xander Harris, Jedi Master. Welcome to Sunnydale."
As he tried to bring the ceremonial (but very sharp) knife up the blue blade flickered and he-
Xander looked down at the headless corpse of the horned demon and shook his head. "I hate these wannabes," he muttered. "Well, 'hate' in the loosest sense of the word that is." He looked down at the makeshift altar and then used the Force to tear it apart, the loose bricks and stones crumbling away down the side of the hill. "No Dark Side there yet. Good."
He hooked his lightsabre onto his belt carefully and continued his stroll to the top of the hill, which had been interrupted by, well, the chanting and the bad over-acting on the part of the horned demon. What a putz.
When he reached the summit he looked around carefully and then sat down. He had been patrolling in mufti, so to speak, and had left his cloak back in his closet. A shame, because the grass was a little damp. Not that it mattered, but there was a chance that his trousers would get grass stains, and his mother would ask embarrassing questions about them and then get the wrong end of the stick entirely. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Sunnydale was spread out below him in all its brilliant splendour, like a skein of lights that hid an underlying darkness. So much was under the surface down there. In more ways than one. The vampire underworld. The demons. And the Initiative. The latter on the side of the forces of light, so to speak. He still had a bad feeling about them, a feeling that just wouldn't go away. It wasn't down to what they fought, it was down to what they also did. He didn't know who their boss was, but he would have loved to have had a quiet ten minutes with them to discuss a few things, like their efforts at brain control therapy for Spike, and the goal behind it.
Closing his eyes he embraced the Force. He had a lot on his own plate over the next few days. He had to start training Lindsey. The man was potentially powerful – and yet had been exposed to the insidious evil that was Wolfram & Hart. It had taken patient encouragement to get him away from the firm, but once Lindsey had realised what he could do – and the perils associated with that – he had taken that all-important leap into the dark, or rather the light.
He suspected that the sound of laboured, amplified, breathing in their imaginations had driven them both to making the right choice. It was something that had haunted him in the months after that first Halloween. How long it would affect Lindsey, he had no idea. But it was good, in a way, that the lawyer knew what might happen to him.
Of course there was little chance of him burning up next to a river of lava on a planet called Mustafar, but the metaphor was an apt one.
Then he frowned. Opening his eyes he looked down the slope. He couldn't see them, but by using the Force he could sense the half-dozen figures moving carefully and cautiously at the foot of the hill. They were humans… moving in a military formation, in a set pattern. And they just radiated worry and concern and yes, rage. The Initiative by the look of it. But what could have set them off like this? And what were they looking for?
He paused. He didn't need to turn his head, but he could sense more of them, about another dozen, over to the left. And then more to the right, about half a mile away. All radiating the same emotions as the others.
What the hell was going on?
Faith was halfway up a tree when her phone rang. Typical, she thought, just typical. She found a nice place to do some meditation whilst practicing on her balance skills and her damn phone just had to go off. Plus it was in her pocket. Ordinarily that wouldn't have been a problem. But it was when she was balancing 20 feet above the ground, upside down on a tree branch.
She fumbled for the phone, noting with amusement the squirrel that had stuck its head out of its hole to see what the noise was before almost suffering a heart attack when it saw her. Then she finally thumbed the right button, squinted at the readout and then lifted it to her ear. "Hey, Wes. 'Sup?"
"Good evening Faith. Where are you?"
She looked around. Oddly enough balancing upside down on one hand whilst talking on the phone could be quite challenging. Odd form of training, but what the heck. "Well, I guess I'm up a tree about half a mile from Dead Parson's Creek. Why?"
"I just had a call from Xander. Something seems to up with the Initiative, they're swarming all over the grounds near the southeast side of the Campus. He thinks that something's very wrong with them – they seem to be heavily armed. And there's a lot of them, he says."
Faith frowned. "Where's Spike and has he gone anywhere near them to get his chip doodad removed?"
"No, he's hiding in Joyce's cellar again. He went there the minute he heard what Xander said."
"Typical Spike. So, I wonder what they're lookin' for?"
"We don't know. I just wanted to make sure that you knew what was going on."
"You want me to observe if they swing my way?"
"Yes, but please use discretion Faith. If they are looking for something, then the amount of firepower that Xander said that he saw them bringing is, well, somewhat worrying."
Faith bit off a rather nasty swearword before it could emerge from between her lips. "You think they've lost something."
She could almost see the shrug on the other end of the phone. "Possibly. If you see them, watch but don't get involved. Not unless there's trouble."
"Okay, Wes. I'll keep my eyes open." She disconnected from the call, returned the phone to her pocket and then grinned. Talking on the phone whilst balance in the tree was a great way of training. Flexing her arms suddenly she sprang upwards, flipped her feet under her and fell to the ground lightly. Time to go and look. But not before she loosened her knife slightly in its sheath. You wouldn't be too careful.
Nothing. Everywhere they looked, they found a big fat nothing. Graham looked around carefully. The base checked out. Nothing had escaped from the cells – except this mysterious monster that Director Walsh had been working on. That made him pause for a moment and shake his head with a shiver. The rumour mill was going into overdrive now. All kinds of stories were going around. Walsh had been working on a Frankenstein's monster, which had turned on her and killed her. No, a Frankenstein's monster had broken in and killed Walsh. It had been restrained, it had not been restrained, it had activated itself, it had malfunctioned, it had killed Sergeant Harvey, no he was fine he had just been at the head, something had been heard in the air conditioning vents, no it had been a vibration… it went on and on.
He just wished that he had been able to talk to Riley or Forrest, but both were out for the count for the time being. Riley would probably be up and about the next day with luck, and if Forrest could just listen to sense and be treated properly instead of insisting that he was fine, then he would be out tomorrow as well.
He glanced down at his watch quickly and then blinked. Ah. Make that today, not tomorrow, because it was 00.43 hours. Where had the time gone? He snorted. It had gone here, in searching for god only knew what.
Then he paused for a second, his nostrils flaring. Blood. Fresh blood at that. He lifted up a hand and clenched his fist. In an instant the line behind him stopped dead. He sniffed carefully to each side and then opened his hand fully, before gesturing to his left and right. The line spread out as the others formed up into the search pattern that they'd been in up until a few minutes before, when an odd hunch had come over him.
On they went, more carefully now. Infrared visors swept the foliage in front of them carefully. The smell was a little sharper now and… wait, there was a dull smudge ahead of them. Graham stopped and clenched his fist again, looking to each side to make sure that the others spotted the gesture. The line stopped again and then he pushed forwards carefully. Reaching out with one hand he brushed a branch away from him, to reveal… he blinked. Then he pulled the visor off and snapped on his torch. A very dead racoon was lying there on the ground. The thing was, it had not died naturally. Something had gutted it with almost surgical precision. Skin, fur, muscles and tendons had been peeled apart like a travesty of an autopsy.
He hefted his gun thoughtfully. This was odd. Very odd. And… there were the shape of footprints by the body. Odd footprints, along with an odd scrape in the ground, not far from the racoon's head. Which had a through-and through hole in it, as if something had impaled it. Just like Walsh…
He looked to one side, where Weissman was looking at the dead creature with professional curiosity. "Get the technicians in here to look at this thing. I think it's been killed and flayed by the same thing that killed Director Walsh. Let's go. We've got a lot of ground to cover and so far little to show for it."
Several minutes after they moved on a cautious figure ghosted into the area, barely moving a branch let along a leaf. Then the leather-clad figure squatted down and looked at the dead racoon carefully, before standing up and shaking its head. Then it pulled out a cell phone and dialled a number. "Wes? It's Faith. They are really freaked out by something. I didn't get close to be able to hear what they're talking about, and 'sides they've got night vision goggles, but I found a very dead racoon that they stumbled on. Wes, something pulled it apart like an anatomy lesson. Worryingly slick would be the way that Giles would probably call it." She looked around carefully. I have to go, I think there's someone coming. But whatever it is they're worrying about, it's got them thoroughly spooked. Yeah, I'm coming home. We need more people. Tell Giles to put the coffee on too."
Buffy looked at the notice tacked to the door of the lecture room and frowned heavily. Then she turned to an equally baffled Willow and Oz, who were among the confused multitude of students milling about like a herd of baffled of wildebeest. Whatever a wildebeest was. Something that had horns but was vegetarian according to Giles.
"All lectures by Maggie Walsh cancelled," she muttered to them. "That's odd."
"You think there's a connection with whatever it was Xander and Faith said the Initiative was looking for last night?" asked Willow worriedly.
"It's possible," replied Oz, raising am interrogative eye at Buffy.
"Maybe," she conceded. "I can't get in touch with Riley though. I've left a lot of messages, but he hasn't come back to me." She sighed. "That's not like him."
There was a trill and she grabbed for her cell phone as fast as she could. As she saw the display she relaxed slightly. "Hi Giles," she sighed as she answered it.
"Yes, well, thank you for the enthusiastic greeting Buffy."
"Sorry Giles, but I thought that you were Riley. But you're not."
"Something that I am eternally grateful to my parents for. Anyway, please come over to the library as soon as possible. Are you with Willow and Oz?"
"Yes. How did you know that?"
"Because you're all supposed to be at Walsh's lecture. And that's not going to happen."
Buffy turned and looked at the other two. "How did you know that the lecture was cancelled?"
"Because Walsh isn't going to be taking any lectures ever again. She's dead, Buffy. The Dean just told us all. I need to talk to you all at once."
The phone went dead and Buffy found herself staring at it incredulously. "Dead?" she repeated. "She hadn't finished grading my paper."
"Buffy?" broke in a pale Willow, "What's going on? Who's dead?"
"Maggie Walsh is, according to Giles," she muttered at them both. "He needs to see us as soon as possible."
His head was killing him. Not literally, but it felt horribly like it. They had given him a lot of pills and told him to take it very easy, as a minor concussion was not something to be sneezed at, but he had to keep moving or go raving mad from boredom and frustration. Plus he needed to warn Buffy.
His arm was throbbing as well, but that wasn't as bad as his head. He kept feeling dizzy as well. Speaking of which, he paused for a long moment until the world stopped spinning for a while. Then he moved off again.
He realised that he was walking in a rather wobbly line as he approached the library, but the need to reach the library was overriding quite a lot of sense. That was a train of thought that seemed to have jumped the track somewhere along the… the… doodad, the thingy.
He was starting to suspect that he should have stayed in his room with the curtains drawn and a handful of Advil vanishing down his throat. That would have been the smart play.
He wasn't up to smart today.
He kept thinking in short sentences for a start.
Reaching the main doorway he looked around. If the Director's lectures had been cancelled then Buffy would not be attending them. That meant that she might be in the place where she wasn't when she… wasn't at her room.
Did that make sense?
Probably.
He wobbled into the library. After a while the dizziness came back. This time he couldn't fight it off.
For someone who had just recently resigned from an evil law firm, Lindsey McDonald looked remarkably cheerfully bemused to Xander, like a man who kept peeking around corners, expecting a sabre-toothed tiger to jump out and maul him, only to discover a small kitten that meowed at him. He was currently also doing his best to meditate, despite the noise of passing students in the grassy tree-lined quadrangle in front of the library. And they were pretty damn noisy.
Despite this, he was doing his best and was almost – very nearly – embracing the Force. It was just that he obviously couldn't quite make it that last metaphorical inch.
"Block them out," Xander muttered softly. "There is only the Force. Think about the Force and nothing else. You're almost there."
Lindsey sighed slightly, concentrating hard – and then suddenly he was there, with the Force flooding through him. For about three seconds, until a girl laughed particularly loudly, whereupon his grip shattered like a soap bubble in the sun. But when he opened his eyes there was a look of sheepishness in them, not the anger that Xander had been fearing. "Oops," said the former lawyer. "I had it for a few seconds and then it just went away from me."
"You'll get used to it. Meditating on your own is one thing, but when there's unexpected noise around you it's another matter. It's just a matter of acclimatising yourself to it. You can reach the right place in your mind to embrace the Force when it's quiet – now we have to stretch your mind a bit so that you can do it whenever you like." Xander paused. "This is Sunnydale. You might have to embrace the Force with very little warning sometimes with your life – or someone else's – on the line." He smiled crookedly. "I once had to do it to avoid one of the nastiest vampires in the world when he was temporarily here. Angelus thought he'd cornered me. He was very nearly right."
"I've read his file," muttered Lindsey. "He was a bad one."
"He was also existing in Angel's body, so that made staking him a bit hard. It wasn't a good time."
He shook his head and then looked around at the diminishing number of students walking past. "Anyway, we need to keep you practicing that. But at some other time – there aren't enough people around now to give you a noise level to try and block out." Then he frowned. A man was walking along the path to the library. Well, not so much walking as weaving, in a grimly determined manner. He had a cut on his head that had been fastened with two white strips, his left arm was in a sling and he looked as if he had just crawled out of a hospital bed, but he was staggering down the path towards the library.
"That's Riley Finn. He looks like death warmed up. What the hell happened to him?" he paused and looked back at Lindsey. "Were you able to pull any more information about the Initiative?"
"Nope, not a thing," replied Lindsey as they both stood up and watched the staggering figure pass through the great doors. "Wolfram & Hart had lost more than a few clients to mysterious causes recently, but they thought that it was the Slayers. All I found out was that it was being run by the National Intelligence Division, for what I never found out. Wolfram & Hart's sources hadn't dug anything up by the time I left, although they did come up with the name of a man called Maybourne, who used to be a big cheese there before he vanished. Government files tend to be classified as hell, although I'm sure that someone in Wolfram & Hart probably knows something about it by now." He looked at Xander as they approached the doors themselves. "So do we know that this Riley guy hasn't told anyone about the Slayers and the – I mean us?"
Xander smiled. "You'll get used to calling yourself a Jedi eventually. I know that it sounds a bit odd at first, but you will." Then he nodded. "As far as I know he hasn't so far. And as far as he knows, there's only one Slayer and only one Jedi – he doesn't need to know about Faith and Oz and you just yet. Besides," he added with a wry twist to his lips, "The poor guy's only just getting used to Buffy right now. I don't think that he could handle Faith just yet."
A slow slithering crump suddenly started up ahead, followed by a loud clang as something hit the floor and bounced several times. Xander and Lindsey turned to one side, just in time to see a figure hitting the ground next to a bookshelf. A small table at the end of the shelf had been knocked over and a potted plant and a metal plate stating what section they were was lying next to each other on the ground. The metal plate had survived the fall, but the pot was done for.
As they hurried over they heard a long slow groan from the figure that meant that he wasn't dead. It was a very green-looking Riley Finn.
"Riley? You ok?" asked Xander as they both knelt down next to him."
"Urghhh," came the reply.
"What happened to you?"
"I think… think I fell on my keys…"
"No, what happened to your head?"
"Uhhh…. Where's Woody, mom?"
Okay. He was not in good shape. Xander squatted back onto his haunches and exchanged a bemused grimace with Lindsey. "Ok, let's get him to Giles's office. Get him stabilised and conscious again. I'd say he shouldn't be running around with this kind of head wound, and Oz is a far better healer than I am."
Somehow, with a great deal of difficulty, they both got Riley upright and then started to move him towards the office. He was a lot heavier than he looked.
Giles was drinking a rather sombre coffee when they staggered up to the door, and when Xander knocked with a foot he looked up and then blinked heavily. "Good lord, what happened?" he asked as he literally sprang up from his seat.
"We saw him zigzagging past us into here and followed him, just in time to see him collapse," said Xander as they all lowered the recumbent form of Agent Finn into Giles's favourite chair. "He seems to have been in the wars a bit."
"I'd say that was putting it mildly," muttered Giles as he quickly and expertly examined the unconscious man. "Nasty head wound that's been cared for, broken arm… he shouldn't be out of bed. What the hell is he doing here?"
"No idea," replied Lindsey.
"Well, we'll just keep him here for the time being." The older man looked at them both owlishly. "I was just about to ring for you anyway. Maggie Walsh is dead."
Xander blinked hard. "Professor Walsh? What happened?"
"According to the Dean she died suddenly last night. He seemed to be lacking in some rather pertinent information, so I started to smell a rat. There might be a connection to the activity in the Initiative last night."
"Fire in the hole," muttered Riley in a slurred voice and then he started to snore slightly.
"Sleep's probably the best thing that he can get for the meantime," Giles said and then he looked up at the two Jedi in front of him. "Buffy calls what she gets as a 'wiggy' feeling, whatever wiggy is. Well, I seem to have it now."
"Have what Giles?" said a cheerful voice from the door, followed by an indrawn gasp. "Riley!" Buffy rushed over to the unconscious Initiative agent and examined him frantically. "What… what happened? Giles? Is he ok? What happened to him?"
"Buffy, please! Calm down. Xander and Lindsey saw him enter the library and then carried him here after he collapsed."
"He was staggering down the path to here, Buffy. Looked real determined to get here," said Xander reassuringly. "We followed him in time to see him collapse on one of those tables by the shelves. I think one of the potted plants might not make it."
"Bloody things. Another idea from the benighted Jenkins. Still," the Watcher mused, "It might have broken his fall."
"Is he going to be ok?" asked Buffy with more than a hint of alarm.
"I think he has a broken arm, a touch of concussion and a bad case of exhaustion," sighed Giles. "I also think that Oz needs to have a look at him."
"Already am," said the other Jedi, and they turned to see him kneeling next to Riley, one hand on Riley's shoulder. His eyes were closed and he was drawing heavily on the Force. "There is a small amount of bruising on his brain. Concussion. Slight though. I can't touch that too much, I don't want to give him a blood clot that might go zinging about his circulatory system. I can sooth it a bit. Broken arm is well and truly broken, but I can help with the knitting process a bit." His eyes opened. "His heart rate is a bit rapid. And there's some kind of booster drug in his blood. Can't tell what exactly, but I think the Initiative is giving him something extra with his cornflakes."
"Interesting. I don't like the sound of that and that has to be the most number of words I've ever heard you say at one time Oz," muttered Xander.
"So he'll be ok?" asked Buffy insistently.
"He'll be fine. But he really should be in bed getting as much sleep as possible. I'd put him into a Jedi healing trance, but that might make people a bit suspicious if he healed really fast." Oz stood up.
"You're getting good at that," smiled Willow.
He smiled back at her. "I like being able to heal people. I can't do too much here, but I've been able to help him out."
Buffy relaxed visibly. "I wonder why he was going to the library."
"I have no idea. He wasn't very coherent when we found him," admitted Xander. "We'll get him back to his dorm."
"I'll help," said Buffy instantly, before blushing slightly at the amused glances that her friends shot her way. "What? I'll tuck him in. You guys can undress him."
"Yes, well, I'll have to talk to you about the late Maggie Walsh later on," Giles muttered.
"I still don't like the sound of that," said Xander. "Do we have any information at all on what happened to her?"
"The Dean called a staff meeting half an hour ago. Apparently she died last night. There were no other details which, given that this is Sunnydale, makes me think that the missing details are quite suspicious."
"The timing on this is very suspicious guys," frowned Xander. "Last night the Initiative was scurrying about like an ant farm that been set on fire. What if-"
He was interrupted by Riley Finn who, without any warning, suddenly sat bolt upright, blinked muzzily and then grabbed at his temples. "Damn, my head," he slurred. Then he froze and looked around painfully. "Buffy? How'd you get here? Where am I?"
"My office Mr Finn. You were found by Xander and Lindsey outside, having fallen over rather abruptly."
"Xander…" Riley looked at him as if he was a live and very unexploded bomb for a second and then stared back at Buffy. "Director Walsh is dead."
"Yes, Ri, we know," she said soothingly, while Xander exchanged a puzzled glance with Giles.
"Director Walsh? You mean Professor Walsh," Giles asked carefully.
"Director Walsh. Has to be a director as she's in charge of us. The Initiative I mean," came the muttered reply, as if the answer was self-evident.
Blinking slightly with surprise Xander looked around. "Not a co-incidence at all," he sighed. Then: "Do you know how she died?"
"Adam. Killed her."
"Is this the right time for 20 questions?" hissed Buffy, looking at Riley worriedly.
"I'm afraid it is, Buffy," said her Watcher. "Riley? Who's Adam?"
Riley's face twisted. "What. Adam's a… a what. All kinds of things jammed together. Human. Demon. Other bits looked like metal. Didn't know."
"Didn't know what?"
"That the Director was working on it. Think she was building it. It killed her. Adam." His face twisted again. "Dr Angleman too. Hit me. Hit Forrest. Strong." His eyes opened wide and then he grabbed Buffy's arm as tightly as he could. "Strong! Fast! Dangerous! You need to… you need to…" He seemed to lose his focus a bit. More than a bit, as his eyelids were closing with an unstoppable momentum. He mumbled something and then fell asleep.
"What was that last bit?" asked Giles. "I couldn't make it out.
"He told me to be careful," Buffy said softly as she caressed the side of Riley's face. "I think he's worried about me. I'm more worried about him at the moment."
"We'll get him home," Xander assured her. Then he paused. "Should he have told us all that?"
"Nope," the ex-lawyer piped up for the first time. "He just drove a juggernaut through all kinds of legal-military walls marked 'Classified' I think." He looked around. "I've heard enough witnesses to know that he was scared. Scared and angry and worried."
"So he should and in fact so am I," said Giles quietly as Xander and Lindsey hoisted Riley upright, got an arm over a shoulder each and started to carry him out, followed by a worried Buffy. "I have a very bad feeling about this."
The car screeched to a halt outside the building and man dressed in a shirt and trousers that both had the discreet W&H logo embroidered on them got out clutching a large padded envelope. Locking the car he strode quickly to the main entrance, passed through the doors with a nod to the security guards and handed over the package to the receptionist, carefully making sure that he got a signature back for it. Then he left, having done his job. Courier work was good when it was this simple. It was when the package was still alive or, worse, still oozing blood that it got nasty. The cleaning bill could be a total nightmare.
At the same moment that the package was being delivered the chief archivist for Wolfram & Hart was sitting in her office having a chilidog with chocolate sauce and sushi and enjoying the odd combination of textures, flavours and colours. She was just contemplating adding a shredded dollar bill and a hint of mascara for added piquancy when she heard it – a high-pitched whining noise, accompanied by a faint crackling. She shrugged and was about to go back to her meal when one of the record cabinets shivered slightly and the noises stopped.
Frowning, she put her sandwich down and walked over. It was the cabinet that contained the files of all the present members of staff that had names that began with M. Opening it carefully her frown deepened. There was an odd smell coming from one of the files. Interesting. She reached out and located it at the back. Then she paused. She was getting very signals from it, as if… it was fading. Which was impossible.
Carefully she reached out and grabbed the plastic binder that contained the file. Something rattled in it, as if pieces of plastic or glass were at the bottom. This was strange. She hurriedly opened it and then stared at what was inside. After a long moment she picked up a piece of the employment contract of one Lindsey MacDonald. It looked as if the paper had been turned to glass and then shattered. Which was impossible.
She carefully replaced the piece and then she ran for the phone.