This chapter should have been finished a week ago. Unfortunately I've found that it's been the hardest one that I've had to write so far. Not sure why, but I had to get it right. Hopefully I have. Oh and people wanted to know what the Jedi and the Watcher were singing. Very simple - 'Mercy Street' by the great Peter Gabriel. One last thing - I don't own these characters.
He closed the door to the armoury with his best attempt at nonchalance and then looked around. He had the latest upgrade to the ESB-2 under his arm, as well as a few goodies here and there, like the automatic tucked into an ankle holster and a large knife at his side. It was a good thing that he was known for going on patrol heavily armed.
The fact that he had a Heckler & Koch submachine gun broken down into its component parts in his backpack, along with a lot of ammunition was neither here nor there. He certainly did his best to hide the weight, but then as he was known to be recovering from a leg wound, that added to his cover, or whatever the hell he was going to call it.
As he walked down the corridor he found himself remembering the sight of that damn eye. That… glowing green eye. In the face of his commanding officer. Oh, sure, it was possible that he might have been seeing things after helping to subdue an HST that had sent him and a few others flying. But the memory of that eye kept bringing him back to earth.
No, he had not imagined it. He had seen it. And it had taken every piece of strength in him not to react at the sight of it. To flinch or run or scream at the very sight of that terrible green orb.
But he was Forrest Gates, agent of the Initiative and he had schooled himself not to flinch in the face of anything. It hadn't been easy and he'd boggled a lot at things along the way, but he'd managed it. The constant parade of HSTs had made it easier here and there.
Heh. The rep was a good one. But he'd still come close to wetting himself and running. It had only been his instinctive self control that had stopped it. Plus the thought that if Finch knew that he had seen what he had seen… well, who knew what would happen?
Which was why he'd signed up for some early patrol time. Solo patrol time in the woods during the evening. Just to get his instincts back up and running, or so he'd told the operations team. Solo patrol on his own until he could meet Riley and Graham. The only two guys he trusted enough to tell what he had seen. Even if they had not bothered to tell him about the Slayers and the Jedi in town, although he grudgingly had to admit that they did have a point. If they had just told him, then he'd have called for a pair of straitjackets and then shrugged a great deal.
He felt the comforting weight of the gun on his shoulder, took a deep breath and then walked into the lift at the end of the corridor. He had a great deal of things to think through. And a lot to do.
Xander looked as if he was doing a lot of thinking, as they walked around the campus on the way back to the library. The way Faith saw it, that wasn't a good sign. At all. Normally the Jedi was the guy with a quiet words of wisdom and the lazy smile, with the odd quip thrown in. When he was thoughtful, that tended to mean that things were bubbling away in his head that… probably meant that something nasty was up ahead.
Faith could see it quiet clearly. She could also see that Buffy could see it too. Well, she had known him longer.
"Ok, Xander, spill. What's wrong?" the blonde Slayer asked as they were passing the geography department.
The Jedi blinked slightly and then looked at them. "Ah. I was just thinking about a few things. Running the events of the past month or two through my brain. I'm not that I really like the conclusion that I seem to be headed towards."
Faith waited for a few seconds and then rolled her eyes at Buffy in exasperation before looking at Xander, who seemed to be running on autopilot again. "And that conclusion is….?" she hinted.
"One that I need to refine. And then talk to you all about once I have a better idea about it. In the meantime all that I can say is that I think I know what Adam's plan might be. It's very familiar in a nasty and very familiar way. I hate it when bad guys think alike. On the one hand it makes them predictable, but as there are so many of them out there, it takes time to narrow down their Modus Operandi."
"Can you at least give us a better hint?" asked Buffy, obviously as exasperated as Faith felt.
"I think it involves the Initiative. And I need to have a look at the map of Adam sightings again. I have a theory, but it's just speculation right now." He took a deep breath. "Buffy, Faith, when I know I'll tell you both at once. Ok? Giles and the others too."
She looked him long and hard. And then she nodded. "Ok. But I'm going to be very upset with you if you don't."
Riley pushed a knife into his boot holster and then straightened up and shrugged hard to get everything settled. Something wasn't hanging right and he paused to get his belt adjusted properly where his sidearm had done something inventive to it. There were times when he was sure that equipment had a life of its own. Scary thought in this town.
When he had everything adjusted to his satisfaction he closed his locker and turned to Graham, who was in the middle of lacing up his boots. "Why is it you always do that last?" he asked, amused.
"Habit," replied Graham tersely. "Plus I have to concentrate to do it. I am a marine after all," he added with a straight face.
Riley grinned and then looked to one side to the other locker on the row. "I wonder where Forrest is?"
"Grant told me that he'd gone out early. Something about getting back in shape again, getting back in the swing of things, or some such shit," grunted Graham as he finished one boot and started on the other. "He's going to meet us at Patrol Point Alpha at the scheduled time."
Riley mulled this for a long moment and then nodded absently. "Sounds a bit unlike Forrest, but I understand why. I just hoped that…" he expelled a sigh and then ran a hand over his chin. "Well, I hoped that tonight would be like the old days. Us again. The old team."
"He's had a lot of things to work through," muttered Graham as he finished the other boot and then stood up and stamped twice with each foot to get everything settled. "Come on Riley, there's no way that he could have just breezed back in and acted as if nothing had happened, man!"
"I know," muttered Riley. Then he turned and walked out of the door, Graham a step behind him. Time to patrol.
"Harry, I thought that you said that this place was a death trap and that going around out there at night was a very bad idea?" Jack asked caustically.
Maybourne grimaced slightly and then held a hand up in a seesaw motion for a moment. "Yes and no Jack. Yes, it is a dangerous place. But no, we know what to look out for, plus we're looking for a human. Ok, probably a human in a patrol from the Initiative. Riley Finn is out tonight, and I need to talk to him."
"Ummm, you still haven't told us how exactly you know that he's patrolling tonight," pointed out Daniel with a great deal of shrewdness. Damn, the man was learning to take whatever Maybourne said, sift it until its teeth rattled and then pick through the winnowings. You never knew what you might find and sometimes you had to look for the gaps in what Maybourne told you, because more often than not, what he didn't tell you was far, far more important than what he did.
Not that Jack was feeling cynical or anything.
The way that Maybourne ran his hand over his beard spoke volumes, as did the way that he grimaced slightly. "Well, it's possible that the NID – and therefore the Initiative – weren't aware of some of the backdoors I programmed into their computers," he said with a distinct air of smugness.
Jack just looked at him. "Harry? Did you hack into the computers of the nice people who I've never met but who chase things with far too many teeth then I'm uncomfortable with even thinking about?"
"Yes, I did Jack," the former NID Colonel replied with a grin. "And I know where Finn is going to be patrolling tonight. So we can track him down and have a little talk."
"What about the other people in the patrol?" asked Carter with a frown.
"Not a problem," said Maybourne, "I recruited them too."
Jack sighed. "Ok. Let's have a word with Mr Finn about how he knew about plans that he shouldn't have known about."
It had been a very, very… awkward patrol so far. They had been approaching Patrol Point Alpha when Forrest had appeared from behind a tree and fallen in to one side of Riley. Without a damn word. Riley had looked at his friend and had opened his mouth to greet him… and had then caught the burning look in his eyes, the look that spoke volumes about confusion and bafflement and anger. It was like going back in time to the night when the Slayers and the Jedi had rescued them.
Riley had recoiled slightly and then shot a baffled look of his own at Graham, who was eyeing Forrest carefully before raising an eyebrow and then shaking his head slightly at Riley.
It was only once they had passed into Patrol Area Beta Two that Forrest had finally broken his silence, although before he did he pulled out his earpiece and then turned off his microphone. "Guys, we need to talk."
"You ok?" asked Riley as he and Graham disconnected themselves as well. "And this is very non-reg. You sure you're ok?"
Forrest emitted a cynical-sounding snort. "Ok… nope, I'm not ok. I'm not I'll ever be ok. Not after what I saw this afternoon that is." He looked to one side and then beckoned them over to one of the small mausoleums that dotted the cemetery that made up a large part of the patrol area.
"Ok," said Riley with a baffled sigh, "What did you see this afternoon?"
This brought out a long sigh from the other man as he leant against a small cherub and ran a tired hand over his face. Then: "How much do we know about Finch?"
"Finch?" asked Riley in the puzzled tones of someone who really doesn't want to get the men in white coats out to deal with a friend with wildly veering thoughts.
"Yes, Finch. Our commanding officer. How much do we know about him?"
"Not a lot," replied Graham. "Head cheese. Big honcho. Guy in charge. That's all we were told."
"Yeah, well, he's something else. Something more." Forrest dragged his eyes from his own boots to look at the two of them. "I was in one of the main corridors this afternoon, doing a little walking and talking and getting back into the groove after my convalescence, when I bumped into our C.O. He asked me how I was doing, and so on. At the same time some of our people were wheeling some weird new HST past on a gurney. Something big and hairy and strong. Hadn't been knocked out properly either – it got free, knocked a guard and a technician to one side and then whacked Finch against a wall. I hit it with a stun baton, but it just shrugged it off and then it went for me. I got my hands on the guards sidearm just before it lifted me off the ground, and I nailed that son of a bitch in the throat with a spread of three nine-mil, so he went down real hard."
He paused. "And then, Finch gets up from the floor, holding his head and looks around for something on the floor. Looked like a real strange blue contact lens."
Riley blinked. "I didn't know that he had contacts."
"Neither did I," said Forrest, looking straight at him, "But I'll tell you what he does have under that, and that's an eye that's green. Not green and Irish, but green and glowing like a god-damn low-voltage light."
There was a very long moment of horrible spine-crawling silence.
"I don't believe this," muttered Riley as he slumped against the side of the mausoleum. "I just don't. I mean, how bad can this thing possibly get? Are you sure about this?"
Forrest just looked at him for a long moment, and then Riley closed his eyes tiredly and ran a hand slowly over his face.
"So. What do we do about this? What can we do about this?" asked Graham thoughtfully.
It was a good question. Sadly it had only one possible answer. "Bupkiss," replied Forrest. "We don't know what he is. We don't know what he wants. We don't know who to trust in the Initiative. Barring each other, of course." He smiled grimly. "We need outside help."
The look that Riley and Graham shot each other was pregnant with meaning. In fact it could have delivered triplets.
"Let me guess – Graham, you've talked to these Jedi people. And the Slayers. You've torn up procedure and most of the regulations we were told we were bound by and you… did what I should have done. If I hadn't had my head rammed up my own ass to the point where I could have seen my own lower intestine…" He paused, coughed in an embarrassed manner for a second and then shook his head as if to clear it. "Well, never mind. I may be behind the curve a bit, but I did a lot of thinking when I was recuperating. Sorry I was so quiet on you guys."
"Not a problem, man," sighed Riley with what was obviously a great deal of relief. Then he stood up and adjusted his equipment back from where his slump had disarranged it. "So it's back to patrolling and asking quiet questions and then wondering what the hell is going on then," he said as he frowned slightly and then pushed his fingers under his flak jacket and scratched at his chest for a moment.
"And sharing information with those other assets we have now," muttered Forrest with a wry smile. "Hell, if I can get used to this, then anyone can. Besides, I rather feel like staying alive through all this and one day taking home a girl that my mother can perhaps like."
"What was wrong with the last one?" asked Riley with a wry chuckle.
"Too pushy."
"And the one before?"
"Too quiet."
Riley laughed quietly for a moment and then looked up at the stars for a moment. "Ok patrolling." They looked at each other, nodded almost simultaneously and then walked around the mausoleum and straight into the path of the collection of HSTs that were coming the other way.
Xander looked out of the windscreen of his car. Ten per cent of his brain was on the red light at the intersection and the other 90 per cent was busy wading through what he knew about Adam and what he thought the cyborg-demon thing was up to. What he did know was that he had a very nasty idea what Adam was aiming at, at least in the short term. And the possible parallels with Obi-Wan's memories were positively chilling.
Order 66. It was going to be Order 66 all over again, only this time with demons and vampires instead of clones.
What he didn't know was when this little plan of Adam's was going to be launched. Not to mention the little question of if his guess was right in the first place. But… he had a feeling about this one. The pieces to the puzzle fitted too well for him to discount them.
There was also the question of how. Staring at the map for a long time, with its multi-coloured pins here and there, along with the small notes pinned to the side of the board had taken an hour or two, during which he'd barely noticed a visibly fascinated Wesley come and go, but after all that he had a sudden feeling that he knew where Adam was hiding. The only problem was that it made no sense at all. That was until he factored in the other bits and pieces.
Adam was possibly rather better informed than they had figured.
But not smarter than they were. Still, he possibly had what Giles would call a staggering amount of cheek.
The light turned green and he took his foot off the brake, put the car in gear and then drove off. He had a crypt to visit and the possessions of a very nervous vampire to pick up. Spike had insisted on that bit. The question was just one of finding out where the crypt was. "The one with the least crap urn on top, with a TV aerial nailed around its corner" did not come under his definition of helpful instructions.
Riley rolled to one side and then sent a stream of sizzling blue energy straight at the head of the very tall demon that was charging at him with a face like a pig. Whatever it was it seemed to react very badly, given the way that it collapsed bonelessly and then tried to scream through a fried mouth.
Thumbing the recharge switch frantically Riley leapt back and looked around. The damn thing needed four seconds to recharge and when it came to this sort of close-quarters fighting, four seconds could frequently stretch out like a lifetime. It was a good thing that he had moved when he did, because a vampire came sailing through the air right through the spot where he'd just been. It was beating at its flaming chest, accompanied with frenzied screams. Too late though – by the time it hit the ground it was just so much fiery dust particles.
Ok, two down, plus the three that they'd been able to take out right at the start. That just left the other eight or nine of the bastards.
Forrest swore to one side and Riley turned his head just in time to see the man drop his drained weapon and then pull out his hand weapon, which he then used to drill a nice, tight, three-bullet pattern into the forehead of the leading demon. Unfortunately although the damn thing's eyes glazed with the arrival of death, its impetus carried it straight on, collapsing as it did, right into Riley's shoulder. He had braced himself as much as he could in the half a second that he had warning for it, but it still twisted him around at least 45 degrees and knocked him off balance more than a bit.
Luckily Graham was in the process of leaping up to his feet, having changed magazines, because he could then shoot the next oncoming vampire in the face with tracer bullets. It didn't even have a chance to scream before it went down in flames.
As Riley came back around, balanced on his toes correctly again, his gun gave a quiet beep that meant that it had recharged itself properly, and he used the opportunity to assess the range of targets opposite them. The initial demon charge was petering out, with two slowing down and trying to work out what the hell was going on, whilst another was busy panting some way away as it tried to catch up to the fight. He could almost smell the brain cells burning as minds that were not used to fast thinking tried to go into overdrive. One vampire was still on the ground making horrible noises from where Riley's boot, acting purely by instinct, had lashed out and caught it in the nuts. Another was still trying to remove Forrest's knife from its leg without ruining its leather pants whilst turning the air blue around it, and a third was standing against a nearby crypt, looking as if it was about to wet itself with fear, and searching its coat desperately for something.
A fourth was busy lifting a sword that it had finally freed from the hand of the first, and now very dead, demon, and as it did Riley sent a burst of energy straight into its chest. It screamed with pain, and then fear and then finally just blew apart into yet more fiery particles.
Unfortunately that made four discharges in less than a minute and that meant that the damn thing would be useless for at least 30 seconds, so he hit the locking button and then dropped it. They were useful for jab and dab raids, but for these kinds of melees you needed something more reliable, so he pulled out his automatic with his left hand and then his bayonet with his right hand. Ok, so the long blade was archaic, but hell it made for a good weapon.
The vampire that would be singing soprano for a while wobbled to its feet and then looked up, its face a mask of pain and indescribable fury. It really should have either stayed down or crawled away, because Riley's instant response was to shoot it twice in the head. One round was an incendiary, and again a vampire died without even being able to scream.
"One o'clock is mine!" said Graham to one side and then sent another tight burst of bullets into the chest of the greener of the two demons, who had both just decided that attack was the best form of defence. It seemed to have some kind of carapace, but that wasn't much of a defence against a bunch of 9mm bullets, especially as one of those bullets seemed to bounce upwards off a tough bit of armour and then make a horrible mess of its throat.
That just left the less green demon, the two vampires and the oncoming thing. Forrest took care of the former, by sending a bullet straight through one eye and making a very revolting Rorschach pattern on the wall of the nearby crypt. The prone vampire had finally stopped swearing, had written his pants off as being ruined, and had removed Forrest's knife, obviously with the object of gutting them all with it. Unfortunately no-one had ever told him that it was not a very good idea to bring a knife to a gun fight, because Riley and Graham fired five rounds into it almost simultaneously, sending it up in flames in record time.
It was at this point that the world took a turn for the distinctly weird, because three things happened, almost all at the same time. The first was that the three Initiative agents all registered the sound of running feet, followed by the sound of a rapid halt and muttered swearwords. The second was that the final demon took that moment to make its appearance. It was somewhere around seven feet tall, had a lot of needle-sharp teeth, had biceps the size of Ohio, very impractical-looking horns, and was covered with what looked like very hard dark red skin. And the third thing was that the last of the vampires gave a moan of relief and then pulled out a small and rather rusty-looking handgun from an inside pocket, which he aimed shakily at first an inoffensive bush and than at Riley.
Crap, though Jack as the six ran through the entrance to the cemetery, this was a very bad idea. But the moment that they had heard the sound of fighting, and then the sound of gunshots and screaming, their choices had narrowed to two. One was to walk the other way. Yeah, right, as if that was a viable option. And the other was to find out what the hell was going on, when the chances were that they already knew. Some patrol from the Initiative had run into trouble, and that was enough to get him to run good and hard. Damn NID idiots, sticking their noses into… well, places that a few weeks ago he would have dismissed as the ravings of lunatics.
He could see movement up ahead, and he pulled out his automatic carefully, grabbing his right wrist with his left hand, to brace it. Running with a gun was amazingly stupid, a small and distant part of his brain screamed, but there were times when you just had to do it.
He freed his left hand briefly to gesture at Teal'c to go right with Bra'tac and then at Carter and Daniel to stay with him. Maybourne stayed with them, like the ingrowing toenail that he was.
As they drew closer he could see three figures up against maybe ten, and the trio were more than holding their own, as what had to be vampires faded into fiery outlines. But then there were the other things there… the shapes that weren't human, and Jack suddenly found himself swallowing hard, as his throat was very dry all of a sudden. Demons. Actual demons. It had been one thing to read about them in files, but to see them here… right in front of him… hell.
Then he snapped back and focussed. What the hell. An enemy was an enemy. He grasped his right wrist again as the four came to a halt and brought their weapons to bear on the tall thing that was walking up into the light. Whatever it was it was pissed, because it stamped on the path once, cracking the surface with ugly-looking stress lines and then threw its head back and screamed what sounded like a challenge into the night sky.
The three Initiative agents swung their own weapons around slightly as all this was happening, their eyes widening at the sight of the new people entering their own private war, but then Maybourne shouted: "Home team! Thunderclap one!" Whatever the hell that meant, Jack had no idea, but the trio all relaxed slightly and then brought their weapons to bear on the demon, which was glaring at them.
Behind it a vampire was pointing a wavering hand that contained a small gun at… hell it was Riley Finn!
"Gun!" shouted Jack and then fired a three-tap at the vampire's head. All three hit and the thing that had once been a man jerked wildly, as its fingers convulsed and the gun it was holding went off. A fraction of a second later Maybourne fired his own weapon, and three glowing rounds impacted the vampire's chest, before it caught fire and exploded.
All this seemed to infuriate the whatever-it-was demon, because it screamed with rage and then lunged at Gates, who fired straight at its chest. Unfortunately the only result was a dull whining noise as the bullet bounced off somewhere. The demon grunted at the impact and then swept a hand into the agent's side, sending him flying off to one side, where he landed with a hell of a noise.
"Shit!" growled Jack and fired himself, sending another three-group at its head. Then he did his best not to gape, because the demon's head stopped each slug in its tracks, like it had Kevlar for skin. It whipped its head around to glare at him and then turned itself to… and then Teal'c was standing there in front of it.
The creature let out another scream of challenge, or warning, or 'I've got big horns', or what ever it was, but the Jaffa just stood there and glared back at it. Then it unleashed another hand, this time straight at the chest of the former First Prime of Apothis. If it had hit it probably would have gone straight through him – but it didn't. At the proverbial last moment Teal'c grabbed the onrushing fist with his hand and slowed it to a standstill.
The demon blinked hard for a moment and then flexed various muscles in an attempt to overcome Teal'c's grip. It failed. After a moment of thought it then seemed to remember that it had another arm, because it then brought it around and tried to take the Jaffa's head off – only for Teal'c's other hand to flash out and bring that one to a halt as well.
There followed a few seconds of silence, as various horrible creaking noises spoke of tendons undergoing a massive amount of strain. Sweat stood out on Teal'c's face and blood vessels raised little pulsing freeways of relief on his arms.
The demon then looked down at each arm in bemusement and then made a fatal mistake. It opened its mouth and screamed some sort of challenge again into the Jaffa's face, possibly hoping to stun him with its terminal halitosis. Jack could smell the stink from where he was standing. Teal'c's response was original – he headbutted it from a standing start. As his head impacted the demon's face its jaws slammed together and various pointy teeth broke off it its mouth with an audible crunch.
As the demon reeled Teal'c took the lapse in its attention as an opportunity to twist its arms to one side and then wrench them inward with a complicated bit of wristwork. Something inside each armoured arm grated and snapped and then suddenly the demon screamed again, this time in agony. The Jaffa grunted with effort and then threw the thing back whilst releasing his grip, sending it reeling away with its arms held akimbo in pain and its mouth dribbling shards of teeth. Teal'c then picked up one of the fallen knives on the ground and threw it straight at the demon's head, where it almost vanished inside an eye socket. It was dead before it even started to topple over and hit the ground.
"An interesting challenge," panted Teal'c as he rubbed the red mark on his forehead gingerly.
"You seem to have learnt your lessons well," grinned Bra'tac, like the skinny old son of a bitch that he was. Then he sobered. "It looked like a formidable challenge."
"It was most strong," admitted Teal'c. "But it lacked skill."
"Sorry to interrupt, but who the hell are you?" broke in Gates as he limped over from where he'd been thrown to, in the process passing Finn, who was frowning and scratching at his shoulder. Then Gates caught sight of Maybourne and stiffened to attention, along with Miller. "Colonel Maybourne sir!"
"At ease gentlemen," soothed the little weasel quietly. "Especially as I'm not a colonel any more and I haven't been in charge of you for a while."
Gates's mouth dropped open for a moment, wandered around for an equally long moment and then he seemed to reacquire it again. "Sir, I thought you were in Leavenworth?"
"What can I say, Agent Gates… well, apart from 'the food was terrible.'" Then Maybourne sobered. "I… had a number of reasons for not wanting to stay in custody Gentlemen. I won't bore you with them, but there were a number of matters of national security."
Yeah, thought Jack bitterly any enemy of el dirtbag Kinsey is my friend. Well, ally. Ok, nodding acquaintance.
"Plus," said Maybourne grimly, "As the person who got the late and it seems very unlamented Director Maggie Walsh appointed to command the Initiative, I feel a certain amount of responsibility for the way that things have gone recently. I did not, for a start, give her permission to start on the project that you're hunting. I believe that you call it 'Adam' and I also believe that you have taken some savage losses from it recently, given the funerals that took place recently."
"You know about Adam, sir?" asked Miller with a certain degree of incredularity. Jack winced slightly. He was starting to suspect that they had no idea that Maybourne had more layers than an onion at times.
"Oh yes," sighed Maybourne. "I wish that I didn't, but I do. Ever since Agent Finn saw me at one of the funerals of your team mates and then ambushed me at the next funeral, I've been wondering why on earth I pushed for Walsh to be appointed. Oh and I told Finn not to tell you that he'd seen me."
Miller and Gates jerked their heads around at Finn, but he wasn't looking back at them. He was busy staring down at his chest and then pushing two fingers under the edge of his Kevlar jacket. And thanks to the light from the path lantern above, Jack could see that both fingers were covered in blood. "I wondered where that bullet went," said Finn in a wondering voice and then he went down like a puppet whose strings had been cut and everything went nuts.
Gates and Miller leapt for their fallen team member like salmon going up a waterfall, no hesitation at all. Carter and Daniel went with them, and they all almost banged heads together over the recumbent figure. Jack himself darted to one side and looked around, before ordering Teal'c to help him guard the area. The last thing they wanted now was to get ambushed again by whatever the hell went bump in the night in the area. Bra'tac watched, quirked an eyebrow in approval and then joined them, whilst Maybourne flapped his mouth for a moment and then hurried over to join the throng.
By now Gates and Miller had been able to get Finn's jacket at least loosened and lifted away from the wound enough for Carter to shine a flashlight on it and examine it intently. Then she looked up, looking confused. "Sir, it's a small entrance wound. Can you find the weapon?"
Jack huffed for a moment as he looked around and then jogged quickly over to where the vampire of a thousand terrors had been standing. It had to be about… there. He squatted down on his haunches and parted some grass stems. "Looks like a .22," he grumbled. Then he picked the weapon up with a finger and a thumb. "A very rusty .22 – I'm amazed the damn thing didn't blow up when he fired it."
This brought a confused look from Carter. "I don't understand. There's no way that a bullet that small could have caused this kind of reaction in him. His pulse is thready and erratic and the amount of blood is relatively small and-"
Whatever she had been about to add would remain unsaid for the time being, because Finn suddenly opened his eyes for a moment and then the man convulsed as if someone had just stuck a power cable onto his spine and then plugged the cable into a nuclear power station, because his limbs thrashed and his spine arched. And then he started to scream, an ugly choking, choppy sound that raised the hackles on the back of Jack's neck. After a moment he relaxed slightly, but that was only for a second or two, because then his body twisted into a new and equally horrible shape as another scream, this one louder than the first ripped out of him.
"Carter?" shouted Jack in alarm and she shot a tight, white-faced look of bafflement at him.
"I don't know what's causing this!" she said desperately as she fumbled to get a field dressing onto the wound. "It doesn't make any sense!"
Another scream tore into the air and then one of Finn's flailing hands made contact with Miller's throat – and then squeezed. The NID agent gave out a choking sound and then turned red as he scrabbled at Finn's fingers, but neither he nor Daniel seemed to be able to get that grip loose. Maybourne was hovering over Finn's elbow, clutching his gun by the barrel and about to strike, when all of a sudden Finn relaxed with a sigh. Jack stared at him, a horrible certainty rising inside him – and then Carter straightened up, with a syringe in her hand.
"I gave him something to put him under," she said, relaxing slightly as Miller fell onto his side and then took a great whooping breath of air into his lungs. "Sir, I don't know what's wrong with him, but we need to get him to a doctor as quickly as possible." She looked around. "Does the Initiative have an infirmary?"
"Yes," said Gates slowly as he looked at Finn with concern. "But we don't know how much we can trust our own people right now. Or at least our commanding officer. We think that he might have been compromised."
"Or rather," rasped Miller as he rubbed his throat, "We don't… know what he… is."
"What?" asked Jack and Maybourne at the same moment, before he turned to glare at the rogue NID Colonel. "Stop that."
"You started it."
"Well stop it anyway." He turned back to Gates. "What exactly do you mean 'compromised'?"
"I-" Gates started and then stopped, before looking at Maybourne. "Sir, who are these people anyway?"
"They're with the Air Force," sighed Harry Maybourne. "They're part of a unit that is even more classified than the Initiative and much as I hate to say it they can be trusted. They found out about the Initiative as a part of an investigation they were running here in Sunnydale into Major Wilkins."
Amongst other things, thought Jack, things that we still haven't been able to work out, like a certain Alexander Harris.
Gates looked like a very suspicious kind of guy, which was probably a good thing generally, but a bad thing right here and right now, as he looked at them all with narrowed eyes. Then he looked down at his fallen and bleeding friend and relaxed just a hair. "Ok, sir. Brigadier-General Finch has a green eye. I don't mean green as in a green cornea, but green as in entire eye, plus it glows, and as I can't explain that normally, I have to think that it suggests that he's not exactly on the level."
They all stared at him for a moment. "A… green eye?" Maybourne muttered quietly. "Yes… I can imagine that that might give you reason to doubt him." Then he shook himself visibly out of his shock. "Ok, then if not the Initiative then where?"
Miller stood up slowly and then looked at Gates for a moment. Whatever passed between them had to be pretty major, because all of a sudden Gates blew up. "Graham you can't be serious! Are you nuts? What makes you think that they can even help in the first place?"
"They have access to things that we can't understand, Forrest," Miller rasped back savagely. "Or have you forgotten what they did to help us?"
Gates opened his mouth… and then closed it again with an audible snap, before looking at Maybourne and the others with a slightly wild eye. "And them?"
Miller looked around and then allowed a very small and wintry smile to play about the lower part of his mouth for a moment. "We'll see." Then he looked down at Finn. "Ok, we have a place where we can take him for help. It's a bit… unorthodox… but it should at least he able to help him. We have some alternative contacts here in Sunnydale, ones who know about HSTs and vampires and everything."
"Alternative? In what way?" Maybourne asked with a frown
Gates and Miller just looked at each other again and then Miller chuckled slightly with a certain amount of bewilderment of his own. "Sir, you have no idea what they can do, but when Adam and his things ambushed us they pulled us out of it before we joined the list of the dead. We can trust them. Riley trusts them."
Maybourne looked at Jack and then shrugged slightly, before looking back at them. It was at that point that Finn chose to stir slightly and issue a faint groan, causing Carter to dart back down to his side and peer at the wound again. "Sir, wherever we go, we need to go now."
Jack nodded sharply and then holstered his sidearm. "Teal'c, help me to carry Finn. Gates, Miller, you know where to go, so guide us. Everybody else keep your eyes open and your weapons free – I do not want to run into any nasty surprises whilst I'm carrying this guy. Go!"
"Where's my lucky knuckle bone?" asked Spike as he peered into the box. "And did you grab my favourite pair of leather trousers?"
Directing a very level stare at the vampire, Xander put the box down. "Lucky knuckle bone?"
"Yeah, I got it off a girl who was looking for the seamier side of life in Paris in the 1930's and… I… don't think you want to hear that story, do you?"
"Nope," said Xander dryly, "I certainly don't." Then he paused. "Lucky leather trousers? I thought that they were all the same?"
"Naah," grinned the vampire as he took another slurp of pigs blood from the mug he was holding in his hand, "Can't you tell the difference at all?"
"I don't want to know, it was bad enough grabbing your things from your crypt," Xander groaned. "Well, that's the last of it."
"Yes," muttered Giles as he walked out of the kitchen clutching a very empty box of wheatabix. "And I for one will be very glad once I can pass all of this rubbish on to your next crypt. Can I ask if you've been looking to see what the vampire housing market has on its books recently?"
"Oi, don't bite my head off just because your bird's out of town right now," the blond vampire grumbled as he peered into his mug. "And it's not my fault that the wheatabix adds texture, is it?"
"Death, where is thy sting," the Watcher muttered as he grabbed the box that Xander had just set down and moved it roughly to a corner of the room. As Spike opened his mouth to protest, he seemed to notice the death glare that Giles was emitting, as he closed his mouth quickly and then smiled faintly.
Xander smiled himself and then turned to Giles. "I think I need to tell you something," he said quietly. "It only hit me today and I've been mulling it over for more than a few hours… but I have a very nasty feeling that I know what Adam's up to, at least in the short to medium term." He closed his eyes as he said the last few words, his mind drifting into unpleasant memories.
There was a short silence, before Giles finally coughed slightly. "And… would you care to enlighten us about this feeling?"
"And is there enough information to let me get a head start out of this bloody place as fast as I can?" Spike broke in. "'Cos believe me I want to!"
Xander started slightly, dragging his mind away from the horribly clear remembrance of the slaughtered younglings at the Jedi Temple. "What? Oh, sorry." He cleared his throat slightly, giving himself enough time to clear his mind at the same time.
"I think Adam's doing an Order 66." He caught their blank expressions and then smiled slightly. "You don't know what that is. Ok. The Clone Wars were essentially started by the Sith as a means of creating chaos in the Republic and allowing its President to amass totally unheard-of powers. What the Jedi didn't know was that the President of the Republic, Palpatine, was also a Sith Lord.
"His plan was to start the war off, with the Republic battling the Separatists. The Separatists used droids in their armies. The Republic used human clones who had been conditioned with varying degrees of skill and ability, and who were commanded by Jedi.
"The plan did two things. It scattered Jedi throughout the Galaxy, with their clones behind them, in the process taking steady losses. And when Palpatine felt that the time was right, he activated a secret part of the conditioning that each clone had received. It was called Order 66. It told the clones to kill the Jedi commanding them." Xander grimaced. "Hundreds of Jedi were wiped out in a matter of minutes. Killed by the people they thought they could trust."
"That sounds quite terrible," muttered Giles. "However, I fail to see the connection to our present situation."
"It fits, Giles. Adam wants to take over the Initiative, right, or at least neutralise it. First he weakens it. That was the reason behind that ambush that Riley and the others barely escaped from. How many of the Initiative's best people died in that? And how experienced are their replacements?
"Then I think he's going to take it out. We haven't seen a big upswing in vampire and demon activity recently, but the Initiative has. Why?"
Giles opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and then closed it again. Instead it was Spike who answered the question. "Oh my god… he's getting his own blokes into the Initiative. He's packing the cells with his own army." He grinned. "Not a bad plan at all!" Then he caught the looks that he was getting. "For an evil mechanical-human-demon creature of darkness that is! Tut tut!"
"Yes, thank you for the massive insincerity, Spike," muttered Giles. Then he turned back to Xander. "But that still means that they're imprisoned in cells within the Initiative. How can Adam start his little war by freeing them?"
"Good question. I don't know exactly, but I can guess. Spike, you said that the Initiative cell you were in was quite high-tech, right?"
"More bloody bells and electronic whistles than you can shake a stick at," the vampire admitted. "It was like being on the set of that Woody Allen movie. You know, the one with the Orgasmatron."
"Thank you Spike," groaned Giles with a pained expression. "That's one film I'll never be able to watch with quite the same amount of enjoyment ever again."
"If I could just refocus us all a bit. It probably relies on computers a lot. What does Adam have hardwired into himself?"
There was a nasty silence. "Oh bugger," said Giles and Spike at the same time and in eerily similar tones of voice.
"Before you say anything else, it's just a theory. But I think it's one that stands up in the face of the evidence. And while I have no idea of the timing involved, I think that it's going to be triggered soon, given the way that Riley and others said that the cells were filling up. I think we need to get everyone in tomorrow and talk this thing through."
"Make sure you do that," said Spike in tones of immense false sincerity. "In the mean time I'll be making my own arrangements tomorrow to get the hell out of here." He drained his mug, wiped his mouth and then looked around. "Where'd I leave that bottle of whiskey again? I feel the need to get very drunk."
"You left it by the bath, for reasons that I have yet to understand," said Giles absently, his mind obviously on other things.
"Oh good. So, am I kipping there tonight or on the sofa?"
"The sofa, as long as you don't get whiskey on it again," Giles muttered.
"Right," replied Spike as he wandered into the bathroom. "Thanks. Whiskey."
Giles watched him go with a slight frown and then turned back to Xander. "I think we should get in Buffy and Faith as soon as possible tomorrow morning, to at least-" He stopped in surprise as someone banged insistently on the front door. "Who on earth could that be?"
As he stood up and walked over to the spy hole Xander frowned himself. He was picking up some very odd signals in the Force from whoever was on the other side of the door. He could feel anger and fear, bafflement and... pain. Pain and desperate worry.
Giles looked through the hole in the door and then gasped. "Good god!" he exclaimed and then opened it hurriedly. "What on earth happened?" he asked as Graham Miller strode quickly in, dressed in body armour and holding a machine gun in a very competent manner. Right on his footsteps came Forrest Gates, similarly equipped and looking as uncomfortable as hell.
And then Riley came in… unconscious, with blood on him… and being carried by Colonel Jack O'Neill and the African-American-looking guy who gave off such an odd feeling in the Force.
"I'm sorry to bother you Mr Giles," said Graham shortly, "But Riley's been injured."
"I can see that," Giles replied carefully, as he looked at the men who were carrying the injured agent, and narrowing his eyes slightly at the sight of Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter, as well as the two other man, neither of whom Xander recognised.
Speaking of recognising it was at this point that O'Neill caught sight of Xander himself and slowed slightly. This was a bad idea as it forced the duck egg guy, Tealc or whatever it was, to swing around slightly to cope, and the resulting snafu very nearly had them waltzing around in a tight circle or two. Fortunately they recovered in time to put Riley down on the sofa.
"Colonel O'Neill," drawled Xander lightly. "You seem to be very well armed for a visitor to our interesting little town."
"You know this guy?" Graham broke in with a frown.
"We've met," replied Xander. "We had a little chat about something I patented once and which the Air Force wants to get their hands on."
"Can we please hold off on the introductions until someone explains why Mr Finn is bleeding on my sofa?" asked Giles with an understandable amount of caustic sarcasm in his voice. He walked over and knelt down next to Riley, tilting his head to peer at what looked like a bloody field dressing.
Graham winced. "Sorry, Mr Giles. We got jumped by a group of HSTs – vampires and demons – in that cemetery off our main patrol area. We took them down, but the smallest and weakest of the vampires had a gun, which went off. I didn't think that it had hit anyone at first – and then Riley went down. Thing is, then he convulsed. Whatever that bullet is, it's not normal."
"I see," said Giles as he looked at the dressing. "Xander can you take a look at this? I think that your… skills… are better suited than mine. And can I ask you why you didn't simply take him back to the Initiative?"
"We aren't sure that our commanding officer is human," replied Graham as Xander walked over to the recumbent form of Riley and stretched out his senses with the Force.
Xander stood there for a moment, his eyes narrowed and his hand poised in the air as he probed with the Force. Interesting. Yes, there was a bullet there… but what was the other thing?
"Do you have the gun?" Xander asked. "Because there's something very odd going on here. I don't know what, but there's more than a bullet in there."
"How can you tell?" O'Neill asked. The guy had been glaring around at both him and Giles for some time and had then expanded his gaze to include Graham. "Miller, why the hell are we here and why are you telling him classified information?"
"Like I said, Colonel, we can trust them. More than I trust you right now I might add. Colonel Maybourne there might vouch for you, but I don't know you, whilst I do know Xander. And they knew about the Initiative before we knew about them."
Xander stared down the wound whilst the bickering rose in the background. Then he grabbed his cell phone and hit speed dial. It rang three times and was then answered. "Oz? Hi, it's Xander. I need to see you ASAP over at Giles's place. Right now, Oz, Riley's been injured and there's something in the wound that I can't identify. Oh. Great, so we'll see you in a few minutes. And Oz, we have guests here, so stoic face on please." He turned the phone off and then looked at Giles. "He was on his way over anyway with Willow. They had some news for us."
"Are these more people who know about the Initiative?" drawled O'Neill. "And can I ask how the hell you found out it about it? And how you were able to just look at a wound and then figure out that there was something wrong with it when…" He ground to a halt. "Oh crap. Are you some kind of magic demon thing?"
"Demon, no. My ability to look at the wound…" he smiled. "You can call it a kind of magic if you like, Colonel. If you know about vampires and demons, then you must know about magic by now."
O'Neill took a deep breath and then opened his mouth for a moment, before then closing it again. "That's not much of an answer."
"I don't think that you'd believe the truth."
"Try me anyway," he shot back with a small, dry, smile.
"Not until I think that you'd believe me. And I think that you're the kind of person who'd need a lot of proof. Besides, this is one secret that my friends know about. I'm not really ready to class you as a friend any time soon."
Whatever O'Neill was about to say next was stopped in its tracks by the sound of the door knocker. Giles strode over to the door, pausing only to raise an eyebrow at the old guy with a beanie to match ol' Duck Egg, who was standing by the door and looking as if he was about to either chuckle or kick the door down. Possibly both. He caught Giles's eye and then moved to one side with a graceful bow of his head. The Watcher looked out of the spy hole grunted with relief and then opened the door to admit Oz and Willow.
The Jedi Knight came in first, with Willow following him. He raised an eyebrow at the old guy, swept the others with a level gaze and then raised both eyebrows at Riley. Then he removed Willow's hand from his arm, possibly to remove what appeared to be a death grip on several important veins.
"Interesting company," drawled Oz as the two walked over to the sofa. Then he looked down at the wound. Xander could feel the pulse in the Force as Oz embraced it. And then the other Jedi frowned slightly. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a guy who's been shot in the upper chest," drawled O'Neill, not that Oz seemed to hear him.
Instead Oz knelt down next to Riley and peered hard at his chest, before looking up. "Help me get this chest armour off him. I need to be able to get to the wound."
Graham and Forrest stepped forwards and carefully started to ease the Kevlar protection off their friend, loosening buckles as much as they could. After a moment they paused. "We need to get him upright to pull this thing over his head," muttered Forrest. Then he paused as he looked at Oz. "Hi again. I never did thank you properly for saving our asses from Adam."
"Not a problem," replied Oz. "Just trying to help out. Xander, can you help me get him upright?" Both Jedi used their hands – and slight touches of the Force – to get the unconscious Riley as upright as they could whilst as gently as they could. "Ok, guys, on three. One – two- three!"
The armour came off and then Oz was busy inspecting the bloodied uniform. "Knife please. Something sharp." Forrest pulled a knife out of an ankle holster and placed it in his waiting hand. Oz nodded once and then used it to cut open Riley's shirt and then peel off the field dressing to expose the wound, which was crusted with blood. "Giles I need some warm water in a bowl and a cloth. Oh and I need a small, sharp knife. Sterilised as well as possible. Either boil it in some water or use some alcohol."
The Watcher nodded and then looked at Samantha Carter. "Major, the kitchen is there. If you and Dr Jackson can get the water please? You'll find some cloths under the sink and a bowl in the cupboard to the right. I think I know just the knife, which I will get now. Plus there's some Romanian plum brandy that a cousin of mine sent me last Christmas. Dreadful stuff, but if it'll peel the varnish off a table, then it'll also sterilise a knife."
He walked over to a chest by one wall, opened it and started to sort through the contents, some of which seemed to intrigue Duck Egg. "An impressive array of weapons," rumbled the guy.
Giles looked up and directed a wintry smile at him. "Sadly necessary in this town. Ah!" He straightened up holding a small but lethal-looking throwing knife in a sheath. Pulling it partially out he tested the edge carefully with one finger. "Excellent." Then he looked up to see Daniel Jackson walking towards the sofa carrying a bowl of hot water. Major Carter was behind him with a cloth in one hand and a frown on her face.
"How did you know my rank?" she shot sharply at Giles as she handed the cloth over to Oz.
"I know a great many things about this town, Major Carter," he replied evenly as he walked over to the drinks cabinet and then rummaged about in the very back. "I also know Xander, who told me about your first trip. And your second, when I met Dr Jackson here. Plus there have been times when you've all been about as stealthy as an elephant with a trumpet tied to its trunk." He grabbed a square bottle with a picture of a man with a moustache on the front and then walked past them all into the kitchen. When he re-emerged a moment later his eyes were watering slightly and he had the knife dunked into a small bowl, which he handed to Oz, who recoiled slightly from the smell of the clear liquid inside it.
"Holy Hannah," muttered the Jedi Knight with a grimace.
"I told you it was strong," said Giles with a quirk of his mouth. Then he looked up to see Carter, Jackson, O'Neill and Duck Egg all staring at him. "What? Oh. Well, you have been wandering around a lot and asking questions."
"Let's stick to the matter at hand, shall we?" smiled Xander as he looked over Oz's shoulder to where his friend was carefully sponging down the wound on Riley's chest. "What the hell is in there?"
"I don't know," said Oz grimly, "But the more I look at it the more weird it looks. Something's in there and interfering with his nervous system, and it's not the bullet." He looked around. "Someone hold him down – I need to sterilise the wound area."
Forrest and Graham moved over to grab Riley's shoulders between them, whist Duck Egg grabbed his legs. Oz nodded and the pulled the knife from the small bowl and then splashed some of the alcohol on the wound. Riley moaned deeply and tensed, but with three men hanging onto him he wasn't able to thrash around. Even as he relaxed Oz moved with lightning speed to cut into the wound, widening it slightly with two deep incisions. Riley tensed again and then relaxed as Oz placed a hand over the wound and closed his eyes. "I had… to open the wound to get a better idea of what was… in there. Bullet's small... Damn, there are rust flakes in the wound. I can get those… and the bullet is moving up…" he removed his hand, his eyes still closed and waited. After a long moment a small copper-coloured cylindrical shape streaked with blood emerged from the wound and rose in the air to hover over a few inches over the unconscious form of Riley Finn.
"That's impossible," gasped Carter after a long moment.
"Not really," replied Oz as he plucked the bullet out of the air and peered at it. "Not badly deformed at all – it kept its copper casing. Must have been a very badly maintained gun, with all that rust. Plus ammunition. There you go." He dropped the bullet into the trembling hand of Forrest Gates and then looked back at the wound. "There is something in there still. And it's too big for the bullet to have taken into it. Too complex too. I'm picking up… electronics?" He looked up at Xander, Willow and Oz sharply. "It's a chip. I don't know if it's like Spike's but it's a chip and it's pressing against a nerve cluster. Maybe the bullet damaged it, or pushed it against the nerves too hard."
"Oh crap," groaned Xander as he ran a hand over his chin. He had a nasty feeling that they should have called in Buffy, but things were fragile and dangerous enough with the people from the SGC here, seeing things that they had no clue about. But once an egg is cracked you can't put it back in the shell, as Dex used to say. He did some very hard and quick thinking. "How complex is it? And is it as inoperable as Spike's?"
Oz paused and closed his eyes for a moment. "Very complex. But not inoperable. I can take this one out, with some care. It isn't attached to as many interesting nerve endings." He opened his eyes again and grimaced. "But I don't know what's going to happen when I disconnect it. You guys had better hold him down again, just to be on the safe side."
The same three men grabbed Riley and then looked at him. Oz nodded, more to himself than anyone else and then stared down at the wound, with the most intent expression that Xander had ever seen on his face. After a long moment he sighed slightly. "It's free," he muttered and at that same moment Riley tensed, his muscles standing out like cordwood as he flailed for a moment against the three straining figures who struggled to hold him down. And then he went limper than a than a tired noodle, slumping down bonelessly onto the sofa.
Oz took a deep breath and then concentrated again. There was another long moment and then the tip of something broke free of the wound. It slowly pushed out like an obscene technological version of a birth, to reveal a chip about the size of Xander's thumbnail. It didn't look that threatening, but Xander stared at it as if it was steeped in the Dark Side. Oz was obviously taking no chances with it, because he stared at it long and hard before plucking it out of the air with a careful hand and a slight shudder of disquiet.
"I don't know what the hell it is," he said quietly, "But I can guess who put it in him. Although I have no idea why I didn't sense it in him before. Maybe it wasn't active."
"Walsh," said Xander a millisecond before Willow and Giles did. He shook his head. "Her work lives on. Only met her a few times, but I failed to enjoy each meeting."
"How long has that been in him?" asked Forrest in a tone that combined fascination with deep loathing.
Oz shrugged. "Hard to say. There was no surface scarring that I could see. Months at the very least."
"Jesus!" exploded Forrest, who then shot a startled glance at Graham. Then they both stared at him. "Do we have any of those things in us?"
Xander raised both eyebrows. "Good question. Oz?"
His fellow Jedi stared at the pair of them for a long moment, his eyes glassy. Then he shook his head. "Now that I know what to look for, I can't sense them in you. Riley here must have been a test subject."
"Do you know what it does?" asked a quiet voice from across the room, and Xander looked up to see the bearded guy, Maybourne, peering over at Riley and looking worried.
The Jedi looked at each other and then Xander turned and shrugged. "No idea. But if it was anything to do with Walsh, then it has to be potentially very bad indeed, as I wouldn't have trusted her as far as I could throw her." He thought the metaphor over. "OK, as far as Giles could throw her." Then he blinked slightly as the front door opened and closed silently.
"I wouldn't have thrown her," muttered Giles, "I'd have kicked her."
"Right!" exploded O'Neill, who had obviously been on a very short fuse for some time now, "Who the hell or rather what the hell are you people???"
"Hi," said a voice from the doorway. "I'm Buffy. The Vampire Slayer. This is Birdy the sword. And you have exactly ten seconds to explain why my boyfriend is lying on the sofa covered in blood."