ACT THREE

INT. ANGEL'S OFFICE

Angel, Connor and Alexa are standing about, Alexa looking nervous and the other two looking shocked.

ANGEL
(to Connor)
Did you kidnap Melody?

CONNOR
No! God no. She actually came down to my hospital room and played cribbage with me, every day. If I was going to kidnap someone, it wouldn't be Melody.
(a beat)
Also I don't kidnap people. Anymore.

ALEXA
Well, the cameras tell a different story.

CONNOR
They're wrong. I left my room and came straight up here.

ALEXA
When?

Connor stares into space for a moment and makes small motions with his hands. Angel smiles as he realizes Connor's reenacting the situation to remember the moment he looked at the clock.

CONNOR
One twenty-seven.

ALEXA
Wow, that's precise.

CONNOR
(shrugging)
Photographic memory.

Angel's smile widens.

ALEXA
I didn't actually look at the time stamp on the recording, but I will. Right now. So, um… don't go anywhere.

CONNOR
I'm coming with you.

ALEXA
No! What did I just say?

CONNOR
Listen, I didn't do this. And I want to see whatever it is that's wearing my face so I can beat it up.

ALEXA
Your… neck is broken.

CONNOR
It's almost healed up, actually.

ALEXA
You're still hardly a fighter!

CONNOR
You're afraid to be alone in a room with me, aren't you?

ALEXA
…No…
(off Connor's look)
A little. But only because I saw the tape.

ANGEL
I'll come.

ALEXA
(relieved)
Really? Okay great. Let's go.

Cut to:

INT. SURVEILLANCE ROOM

ALEXA
Hey Rob, can you bring up that footage again?

ROB
Anything for you, Alexa.

ALEXA
Aw, thanks. You're a doll.

Rob, the five-handed demon, fiddles around with something and promptly the footage of Melody yelling at Angel comes up on one of the screens. She stands huffing for a moment before pressing the elevator door button. Connor comes from around the corner and starts making small talk.

ANGEL
Time code's off.

ALEXA
(skeptically)
True.

ANGEL
You're not convinced.

CONNOR
Wait, shh.

Connor on the screen smiles good-naturedly and then sneaks behind Melody, cutting her off mid-sentence and dragging her off around a corner. Connor in the surveillance room frowns.

CONNOR (cont'd)
Can you, like, rewind or something?

ROB
Sure thing.

Connor watches himself turn the corner again and shakes his head.

CONNOR
I come around the wrong corner. My room is in the other direction. I should have come from the left wing, not the right.

ALEXA
Maybe, but you could have walked through the rest of the hospital and come in the other direction intentionally to throw everyone off.

ANGEL
And the time deficiency? Different clothes?

ALEXA
He could have taken Melody wherever, tied her to a chair and then double backed to his room to change and come from the right direction.

ANGEL
What do you mean, wherever? We have every inch of this entire building under surveillance, except where I disconnected it.

ROB
Yeah, I noticed that. I can't fix it, either. How did you even notice the cameras?

ANGEL
The buzz is really annoying when I'm trying to sleep.

ALEXA
Where Connor—

CONNOR
I didn't do anything.

ALEXA
Fine, where whoever it is that looks like Connor took Melody… there's a wall right there. It's like there's a chamber or something that not even the blueprints document.

ROB
That's not possible. I know this entire establishment like the back of each of my five hands. There's no secret chamber there or anywhere else.

ANGEL
Okay, so what are our options?

ALEXA
(turning to Connor)
Why don't you ask the culprit?

CONNOR
I didn't do anything! I would never do anything like this!

ALEXA
That's not what Melody's mind suggests.

ANGEL
Are you reading her?

ALEXA
Her panic is so strong. I can sense it, but I can't pinpoint the location.

ANGEL
Is that how you knew she was kidnapped in the first place?

ALEXA
Yep.

CONNOR
Hey, can we focus, please? Melody saw me on the Inter-dimensional back in the day. Things have changed. I didn't do this.

ANGEL
I know.

ALEXA
I'm still not convinced, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this isn't y—Angel, we still have a case! I totally forgot.

ANGEL
I know. I thought that you and Wesley could deal with the case while me and Gunn looked for Melody.

ALEXA
(grinning)
Okay. Good plan. I like this plan.

CONNOR
(to Angel)
I'll come with you.

ANGEL
No, you won't.

CONNOR
Didn't we just have a discussion about how overblown your instinct to protect me is?

ANGEL
I'm serious, Connor. I don't want you in any danger until you're, at the very least, out of the neck brace.

CONNOR
And I don't want you to keep telling me what to do, but one of us is going to be disappointed here and to be frank I'm tired of being disappointed with you.

Angel and Connor stare each other in the eye, both with identical set expressions and crossed arms. Finally Angel breaks into a wide grin.

ANGEL
Chip off the old block.
(nodding at the door)
Let's go. But don't blame me if you get hurt.

CONNOR
(happily)
Okay.

Everyone except poor old Rob files out of the room. Cut to:

INT. MEDICAL FLOOR – HALLWAY

Connor, Angel and Gunn are all standing in the middle of the hallway, staring at a central point on the wall. Angel leans forward and pokes the wall. His finger does not go through. It's a solid wall. He stands back and stares again for another few moments.

ANGEL
We're missing something.

GUNN
Apparently I'm missing a whole mess of things. How does a vampire have a son?

ANGEL
According to Wolfram and Hart, when I went through the trials to save Darla, they gave her another life even if it wasn't given directly to her. How do two people disappear through a solid wall when they're both corporeal?

GUNN
Whoa, whoa. Darla's the mom? I thought she was dead. And a vampire before that. And maybe they're not corporeal.

ANGEL
What do you mean by "maybe they're not corporeal"?

GUNN
If whoever did this isn't Colin—

CONNOR
It's Connor.

GUNN
—then maybe they have some kind of special power to make themselves non-corporeal. Okay, how do two vampires have a son, and how does he age nineteen years in the space of two?

ANGEL
I'll have someone remove the block on your memory later. Right now we have to focus. Even if whoever it was wasn't corporeal, Melody still would be.

GUNN
Well, maybe who or whatever it was could make her incorporeal, too.

ANGEL
Do we know of any demons that do that?

GUNN
I'm just the lawyer. I don't do demons.

ANGEL
I know we're in another dimension and everything, but I've never heard of anything that can make something else incorporeal just by touching it, and I've been around a while.

CONNOR
Wait. I… I'm remembering something.

ANGEL
What is it?

CONNOR
I was… nine or ten, I guess, maybe younger, and Holtz was teaching me about what a menace you were. Suddenly the air shook and something came across the plain. I tried to fight it but it wasn't really there. It grabbed a nearby talumpha and when I tried to kill it out of mercy my sword went through it, as well.

GUNN
What's a talumpha?

CONNOR
A small harmless demon that healed me once. One of the few things on Quor'toth that wasn't evil. But entirely solid. Both the incorporeal thing and the talumpha disappeared into a tree and didn't come out on the other side.

ANGEL
Did Holtz have any answers?

CONNOR
He just said it wasn't from this plane and I guess I forgot about it.

GUNN
So that's it?

CONNOR
Yep.

ANGEL
It's something. Whatever took Melody isn't from this plane. Which makes our jobs a lot harder, but at least we're getting somewhere.

GUNN
So what's next?

ANGEL
We look into other dimensions.

GUNN
You're joking, right?

ANGEL
Nope. It's time to break out the Inter-dimensional.

GUNN
(crankily walking toward the elevator)
So much for going home. Ever again.

Cut to:

INT. WESLEY'S OFFICE

Alexa and Wesley are sitting, each with a massive book on sightings of the dead, but neither of them seems to be focusing all that well. Alexa slowly raises her eyes and looks at Wesley before dropping them back down to her book, and a moment later Wesley does the exact same thing. Alexa notices and smiles.

ALEXA
So… find anything?

WESLEY
God no.

ALEXA
No, me neither. I'm having a hard time concentrating. It doesn't help that I can't get this song out of my head, especially since it seems to be in Japanese and I don't think I've ever heard it before.

WESLEY
You're sure you don't know of any spell that could do this?

ALEXA
I focus on other dimensions, not this one. I've only been in it for a few months.

WESLEY
Where were you before?

ALEXA
Nowhere. I was just… one day created.

WESLEY
(frowning)
When?

ALEXA
March sometime. Why?

WESLEY
(suspiciously)
No reason. Perhaps we should go down and see if we can find out any more. We're getting quite impressively nowhere with the knowledge we have.

ALEXA
And say what, "did you happen to notice anyone casting a spell on you to make you see certain people from the Valley of the Souls?" I don't think that would go over very well.

WESLEY
Wait. You said earlier that she was only seeing select individuals because they likely all shared a certain trait. What led you to that conclusion?

ALEXA
Well, otherwise she'd be seeing everyone. But a part of the reason as to why she's only seeing some has to be attributed to something. It would have to be specified as to what it is these people possess to make them visible to her.

WESLEY
So all we have to do is ask her what these souls have in common and maybe we can track down the source, or at least a reason for which she's seeing them.

ALEXA
(smiling)
Let's go.

They get up and start to leave the office. Cut to:

INT. ANGEL'S OFFICE

Angel, Gunn and Connor are all crowded around the tiny, tattered scroll that lies on Angel's desk. The image fades from it and Gunn rubs his eyes.

GUNN
Okay, so that's seventy dimensions down, only an infinite number to go.
(sighing)
We have to narrow this down somehow. We're just going through the dimensions in numerical order looking for a shape-shifter, but we still don't know that's what we're looking for. Plus there are bounds to be all kinds of shape-shifters in dimensions we haven't gotten to yet.

CONNOR
Did you enter a keyword?

GUNN
What keyword?

CONNOR
During one of our conversations, Melody was talking about the Inter-dimensional and said we could just say a keyword and it would list the dimensions that apply.

GUNN
And you couldn't have said that seventy dimensions ago?

ANGEL
We still don't know what we're looking for. We can't list a keyword if we don't know what we're looking for.

CONNOR
(quietly)
I don't think it would be a shape-shifter.

ANGEL
Why do you say that?

CONNOR
I don't think a shape-shifter would go through all the trouble of making itself look like me just to take Melody back to its home dimension.

ANGEL
But you might be the target.

CONNOR
I'm not so sure. The me on the tape didn't say anything indicating that he knows who Melody is. Melody fed him information and he took it. I'm just saying… I recognized the glint in his eye. It used to be in mine. I don't think I was the target… I think you are.

ANGEL
You think that some form of you from another dimension found a way here and saw me and Melody arguing…

CONNOR
He probably took that as an indication that you knew each other pretty well and took her just to lure you to him.

ANGEL
It's working.

CONNOR
Should you be—

ANGEL
I'm staying on the case.

CONNOR
Okay. Just thought I'd ask.

ANGEL
So we start looking for versions of you who never had their memory erased.

CONNOR
Or are still in a version of Quor'toth.
(a beat)
Do you have like a snack machine or something?

GUNN
(raising an eyebrow)
I don't know, but we should have put one in the lobby a loooong time ago.

ANGEL
(rubbing his eyes)
Maybe we should all take a break for a few minutes.

GUNN
I like this plan. Chinese cool with you?

CONNOR
(grinning)
Yeah. Sounds great.

Gunn nods and leaves the room. Connor wanders over to one of the armchairs in front of Angel's desk and collapses into it. Angel watches him watch the floor for a minute.

ANGEL
You've been awfully quiet.

CONNOR
Yeah. Just thinking, I guess.

ANGEL
(after a beat)
Do you remember a lot of Quor'toth?

CONNOR
(sighing, as though he'd expected the question)
Everything. When my memory was restored, I remembered everything. Some of it's buried, but I can remember everything in my first life. Including before Quor'toth.

ANGEL
You're kidding.

CONNOR
I don't remember being born, or Darla at all, really, but my earliest memory is in the hotel. It's pretty distorted… I guess babies don't really understand much, but I remember Fred and Lorne and you and everyone. It took me a long time to remember their names, but… I remember.

ANGEL
When Wesley took you?

CONNOR
Yep. Definitely remember that. I even remember the epic shootout between you and Holtz and those men with guns and Sahjahn. I never really remember what was said… probably because I couldn't understand any of the words… but I remember what I saw.

ANGEL
Do you… miss Holtz?

CONNOR
(nodding slowly)
Yeah. But I miss a lot of other things and people more. Cordelia, Lorne, Fred… something about all my memories of Holtz are kinda bitter, like he only loved me because I represented revenge on you. I remember you and everyone else as loving me because I was me. And even if I wasn't really around you for long, it's what sunk in.
(a beat)
But I don't like to think about that version of my life because I ended up so screwed up. I like the new version, where I didn't try to blow people up or kill my father on numerous occasions. I also like where the new version of me ended up. I want to fight evil by your side because I know it's what I was truly born for. It's just that…
(sighing)
Every time I reference my memories in Quor'toth, I feel that part of me that wants to be primal and kill everything just because I can. And that's not who I want to be. So I keep them hidden until something reminds me of them. Like today. And I just don't want to go there. That's why I clammed up, I guess.

A weighted silence falls as Angel takes everything in. They're both roused from their thoughts by a shrill scream apparently coming from the lobby. They jump to their feet simultaneously and run out of the office.

INT. WOLFRAM AND HART LOBBY

Wesley and Alexa are hesitantly approaching Lily, who's standing in the middle of the lobby with a hospital gown on. She appears to be the one who screamed. She's now looking around the lobby, sobbing and whispering incoherently.

ANGEL
What happened? Why is she here?

WESLEY
We're just as clueless as you are. We were going to go down to speak with her about what the souls have in common with each other and she simply walked out of the elevator we'd called.

CONNOR
They're whispering the same things.

ANGEL
What?

CONNOR
The girl and Alexa. They're muttering the same thing at the same time.

Angel and Wesley both move their attention to Alexa and note that Connor is right. Suddenly they both throw their heads back and scream simultaneously. Momentarily it sounds as though only one person is screaming rather than two, and they both fall unconscious. Wesley catches Alexa and Angel bolts forward to catch Lily. Angel and Wesley exchange glances, and this is how we reach the

END OF ACT THREE