This chapter is about a fortnight late and half the length that I had planned it to be. Life, unfortunately, has intervened, and in a week's time I will be a married man. Gosh. Luckily my best man is sensible and there is little chance of my waking up tied to a sheep on the outskirts of Riga on the day before the weddiing. Hopefully the next chapter will emerge... eventually, after the honeymoon.
Swords, Jack knew, were archaic weapons that were utterly useless in this day and age. Unfortunately that information was not very reassuring when the business end of a very sharp example of the sword masters art was being waved in front of you by a very pretty young woman who also looked disturbingly proficient in the use of the damn thing.
Buffy Summers was every inch the California valley girl. She was wearing a leather jacket, pants that didn't so much flatter as accentuate, boots that that were both practical and stylish and oh, yes, that damn sword.
"I'm still waiting…." She said in tones of sickly sweet reason that also displayed a fair amount of extreme anger hiding beneath it.
"He… got shot?" ventured Jack after a moment.
This was true but was hardly reassuring, because her eyebrows contracted and her eyes became, if such a thing was possible, even more like miniature chips of diamond that had been covered in ice. She looked at Finn quickly and then at this Oz guy, whoever or whatever the hell he was, and then dragged her gaze back to Jack. Said glance took a fraction of a second, which was impressive.
"Who shot him?" she ground out between slightly gritted teeth.
"A… vampire?" replied Jack with an internal groan from the part of his brain that still wanted to deny that this entire fubar situation was even happening.
"It's true Buffy," said Miller to one side. "Bunch of HSTs stumbled onto us on our patrol. We took them out but the last fang face pulled a gun on us. He didn't seem that threatening at the time and the gun didn't look too big, but he fired it just before he died and it hit Riley."
"You can put the sword down now please Buffy," chided the Giles guy with a small and rather smug smile. "I think that you've made your point, and Oz is treating Riley now."
Summers swept SG1, and Bra'tac and Maybourne, with those very hard eyes and then nodded slightly and returned the sword to a sheath that hung under her coat from what looked like a reinforced leather loop. Then she hurried over to the sofa and became a mass of raging female ministration.
Jack let out a breath that he hadn't really realised he'd been holding and then looked around as others did something similar. Except for Maybourne, who was staring at Summers with what looked very much like astonished bafflement.
"Will he be ok?" Summers demanded of the Giles guy, who nodded at Oz.
"He got shot," Oz replied laconically. "It's not too bad though. The bullet didn't do too much damage, partly because I think it was a bit old. No, what caused the collapse was this." And he held up the chip, which Summers stared at with a great deal of confusion.
"What's that?" She asked.
"A very good question," sighed Giles as he crossed his arms. "It was in his chest. According to Oz the bullet was touching it, and might well have damaged it somehow."
"Why would he have an electronic chip in his chest?" she asked slowly and then looked around at Gates and Miller, who both shook their heads grimly.
"You got me, Buffy," Miller replied. "We didn't know he had one and Oz confirmed that we don't have any ourselves."
She turned back to Oz again and then all of a sudden something happened to her eyes, because all of a sudden they were agate chips again. "Walsh," she hissed from between what sounded like clenched teeth.
"Good guess," said Harris from his new perch by the window. He was staring at the chip with his eyes half closed and a look of deep calculation. For a split second he looked just like Hammond. Only with more hair, obviously. And less weight. "I wonder why though. What did it do? Why place it in Riley? And why did it seem to have such a dramatic effect?"
"Can I see it, please?" asked Carter to one side and Oz handed it over to her whilst Jack was still busy wondering how to get control of this entire conversation back. So far he didn't have a clue.
His second in command examined it closely and then pulled out a small jeweller's eyeglass, which she screwed into one eye and then looked at it again in more detail. "There's a slight dent on the top," she pronounced after a moment. "The bullet must have damaged it." Then she pulled the glass from her eye and stared at it worriedly. "This is a very advanced piece of microcircuitry," she said in a voice that combined astonishment, wariness and a hint of jealousy. Then she caught the looks that the rest of SG1 were giving her. "What? Oh, the eyeglass. I use it to weld some circuit boards back at the… base where we're stationed."
Jack, who had been giving her a look that had been so pointed that it was almost needle-sharp, relaxed slightly. The last thing that they needed was for Carter to start blurting things out.
Harris was looking at the red-headed girl who had come in with Oz, and who was apparently bursting with some kind of news. She settled down after he looked at her in almost as pointed a way as Jack had looked at Carter, but he was willing to bet a lot of money that she would make a really rotten poker player. Unless it was all an act. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. He needed to get out of Maybourne's company. He was starting to think like him and frankly he didn't need the headache that was resulting.
Speaking of Maybourne it was at this moment that el Weasel chose to stir himself. "The Vampire Slayer is a HST myth," he scoffed quietly, "It's something that they tell to frighten themselves with!"
Jack could have told him instantly that the entire comment was one great big honking mistake. She may have been small, but there was a Summers-shaped blur and then all of a sudden Harry Maybourne found himself looking straight down the blade of a sword, the tip of which was just touching his nose. It looked like a well-made, quite tough and oh, pretty sharp, piece of metal and Summers was holding it at arms length without her arm even hinting at beginning to quiver. He was impressed. By the way that Teal'c and Bra'tac were blinking, even they were too.
"Would you care to rephrase that?" Summers ground out. "Or does my sword feel like a myth?"
"My mistake?" squeaked Maybourne and then he sighed as the sword was removed and returned to under her coat.
"Sir, the Vampire Slayer, as you can see, is a lot more than a myth," muttered Miller with a slight smile.
Maybourne looked deeply unconvinced, despite the fact that he was obviously trying not to show it. Summers looked at him with a hard and very flat look. "Ok, you want proof? Do you have that gun? The one you said the vampire shot Riley with?"
"I don't think we need it," Jack muttered as he pulled it out of his pocket. "Are you going to dodge a speeding bullet or something?" She waved an imperious hand at him and he checked the action, pulled the magazine out, double checked the breech and only then placed it doubtfully on her hand.
She looked at it and then pulled the barrel free from the stock with barely a grunt of exertion, before bending it into a rough semi-circle. Then she gave the pieces back to him.
He examined the parts that had once been a weapon and then looked up. "Show-off?" he ventured feebly and then handed them over to Maybourne and an incredulous Carter.
"Buffy, let's not make matters worse," the Giles guy sighed from where he was standing.
"No, Giles," she replied with a very grim smile. "Cards on the table. We need to hear why they're in Sunnydale. And why they've been following Xander around. And they have any other links to this place."
Jack blinked slightly. "Following is such an ugly word," he said carefully. "I'd prefer to call it specific reconnaissance. Mr Harris here did design a very advanced energy cell. We were just… checking up on him."
Harris just tilted his head and then smiled thinly at him, like a man who got a joke that only he could see. "You also just happened to be following me on the day that Wolfram & Hart got themselves blown sky-high. The buildings, at least."
"Yes…" admitted Jack slowly. They had never exactly figured out what the hell had been going on there. Inquiries into whoever or whatever Wolfram & Hart had been, apart from lawyers tied to some very dubious clients, had been slower then molasses coming out. "We never found out what happened there."
"We did," sighed Miller as he traded an unhappy glance with Gates. Then they both looked at Maybourne. "Sir, we're taking an awful lot on trust here and this might not be the best place to discuss this. Did Riley tell you about the project that Director Walsh was involved with?"
"If you mean Adam, then yes, he told me," replied Maybourne heavily. "I wish he hadn't, but he did. And before you ask, no I didn't give her permission for that project."
"Adam?" Carter asked incredulously, "This Walsh person gave a walking amalgamation of parts a name?"
Gates shrugged. "We didn't know about until it broke free, killed her and Dr Angleman and then left. After which things got a bit wiggy in town."
In 1991 Jack had once seen a B52 flown by a certifiable madman pull a turn that the book said was impossible to pull out of. Not without ploughing straight into the ground, anyway, but he'd made it. Right now he was having flashbacks to that moment, because the entire conversation was reminding him of that incredible instant of time. They were discussing a classified project in front of civilians. This was more than a no-no - it could get them all court-martialled.
As he opened his mouth to point this little fact out the conversation look another lurch from the strange towards the bizarre.
"Adam has indeed ridden roughshod over the area," said Giles quietly. "His actions in getting rid of Wolfram & Hart alone would classify him as being a very dangerous creature indeed. So, yes, Colonel O'Neill, we know all about Adam. I believe that Riley, Forrest and Graham were nearly killed by him – and owe their lives to young Oz here."
Speaking of whom, it was at this point that Oz looked up from where he was treating Riley. "Guys, I need a wound dressing, if you have one. And any kind of first aid kit. Do you have a battlefield dressing or something like that?"
This prompted a muffled curse from Gates as he pulled off his rucksack and fumbled in a pocket, before pulling out a small field medical pack. "Will this do?"
Oz took it and opened it, assessing the contents quickly. Jack watched with a certain degree of reluctant approval. The guy seemed to know his stuff. He pulled out the packet of antiseptic powder, dusted the wound lightly, threaded the needle quickly, pulled the wound closed with three or four stitches at a frightening speed, added more powder and then applied a field dressing carefully, before leaning back on his haunches and wiping off his hands absent-mindedly. "That'll do for the time being, and I've speeded up the healing process, but he really needs a hospital at some point. Blood loss is minimal and I was able to clean the wound thoroughly, but it might be better to be safe than sure on this."
Speeded the healing process? What the hell did that mean? Jack frowned and he could see Daniel and Carter doing the same thing.
But it was Maybourne of all people who opened his mouth next. "You knew about Adam? How?"
"He has – or rather had - a habit of killing things and then dissecting them," said Harris quietly. "Cats, dogs, raccoons, demons, humans, children – everything that crossed his path. We're not sure why exactly, but we think that he was learning about the way that things work. About life. And possibly non-life."
"Adam has his own agenda," Buffy Summers broke in with a glare for Maybourne. "We've been scraping up his debris for a while. That and trying to work out what he's up to. So that we can stop him. What are you going to do with him if you find him? If you survive the experience, that is."
Carter opened her mouth for a moment and then closed it again. "I was going to say take him into custody, but I'm not sure what that would mean in his case."
"He wouldn't come easy," Harris said quietly. "For one thing he now has a chain gun built into one arm. For another, well, he walked into a Wolfram & Hart building that possessed some pretty impressive security, without being detected and then killed everyone inside, before blowing the place sky-high. He has capabilities that you can't even comprehend."
"So, what's your plan?" asked a bemused Jack.
"Kill him," said Harris in a voice that almost sounded sad. "We have no choice here. We'll kill him and do our best to make sure that every part of him is destroyed. Because he's something that should never have been built. He's an aberration – a scab on the soul of the world." Then he looked at Maybourne almost absently. "And no, you can't have him for study. Maggie Walsh should never have even started to build him."
Maybourne looked back at him for a long moment, something working behind his eyes. "She didn't have permission to start building him," he muttered after a moment.
"You knew her, though," Harris said in a voice that sounded very sure.
"Yes," replied Maybourne.
"You said that she didn't have permission before. Would I be right in thinking that she didn't have permission from you?"
"I used to be her commanding officer," Maybourne confirmed reluctantly. "Perhaps I just didn't know how… set she was on her idea." He smiled sadly. "I recruited her. I also recruited most of the Initiative agents. Finn, Gates and Miller were all interviewed and appointed by me. It's my fault that they're here. My fault that Adam is loose. And I like to correct my mistakes."
Jack did his best not to raise an eyebrow at this, but the more he thought about the more that he was, albeit very, very reluctantly, forced to admit that for once Harry Maybourne sounded sincere about something. That had to be a major first.
He rubbed the side of his forehead with two fingers for a moment, whilst his mind shuffled through the options that they had in front of them for a moment and then came up with the equivalent of mental raspberry. The entire evening so far had been odd beyond words. In fact it had started out as simply odd, veered off into wacky and had now become loony tunes. Any second now one of them was going to pull their own head off and reveal themselves to be Daffy Duck.
Oh hell. Why did Teal'c have that look on his face all of a sudden?
The duck guy turned to one side at this point and looked in the general direction of the bathroom. As he did so, Xander suppressed an internal groan. He'd been hoping that Spike could have kept his head well down and that none of their unexpected guests had needed to use the toilet.
"Is there someone in your bathroom who wishes to remain hidden, Rupert Giles?" the guy rumbled, causing the others to turn and look. The comment was followed by the very audible noise of someone throwing all their weight against the door in an effort to wedge it shut.
"Who's in there?" asked Forrest, looking puzzled.
"Someone in my life who I wish was long gone and out of here," growled Giles, rubbing a hand over his face. "And someone who has no wish to meet any of you."
"Too bloody right!" shouted a muffled voice from the other side of the door. "They can all sod off!"
"Does that voice… sound familiar?" asked O'Neill in a puzzled tone as he looked at the other members of his team.
"It should, you trigger-happy yank bastard!" yelled Spike from the room. "Bugger off, or I'll… I'll chuck soap under your feet!"
"It sounds like that HST we picked up," frowned Carter as she looked at Giles and Xander with a frown.
"You've got a vampire in your home?" Forrest and O'Neill both half-yelled this at the same time, whilst various weapons came up and were half-waved at the doorway. Xander groaned internally and then looked over at Giles and Oz, both of whom were composed but tense. This had all the hallmarks of something that might get very nasty indeed.
"An effectively neutered vampire," grated Giles, as he drew himself up and glared at the newcomers, while ignoring the cry of 'Oi!' that came from the bathroom. "A vampire who, thanks to Maggie Walsh and her meddling in things that she didn't understand, cannot harm any human. Cannot bite any human. Has not, in fact hurt, bitten or laid a finger on any human since an electronic chip was placed in his skull by the Initiative for highly dubious ethical reasons. And a vampire who is under my protection at this time, under my authority as a member of the Watcher's Council! Authority that your State Department recognises as being inviolable and giving me the equivalent of diplomatic immunity! So if you don't like any of those facts, then you can take your sodding guns and shove them where the sun doesn't shine!"
Xander was impressed. The Watcher had expanded with a visible sense of authority and power with every word that he had spoken. Apart from the bit about shoving the weapons that is.
"Bloody hell," said the voice from the bathroom. "I think I just felt something like respect for a bloody Watcher."
"The Watcher's Council?" asked this Maybourne character with yet another frowning smirk of disbelief. "Didn't they disband after the Second World War, after they put their noses into US-UK military matters?"
Giles stepped forwards, his face courteous but, under that civilized façade, as cold as ice. "No," said, in a brutally curt voice. "They did not. By which I mean that they did not disband and that I hardly think that telling the US military that the demon world was not something that could be grafted onto anything human without something horrible happening, counts as meddling! I take it that you're referring to the termination of Operation Lazarus after the bombing of Peenemunde? My grandfather was on the Watcher's Council during that time, Mr… Maybourne, if I have your name right, and he was very clear that the entire project was a potential disaster waiting to happen." He tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes, allowing a hint of Ripper to shine out darkly. "As the current situation has made very clear in a thoroughly ghastly manner."
Maybourne stared back, his jaws working silently as he looked at Giles. Then he took a deep breath. "I hate to say it, but I can't really argue with that."
"Lovely, let's all have a hug," said a caustic voice from the bathroom. "But I'm still not coming out!"
"Spike, you've been given the protection of the Watcher's Council," Xander sighed wearily. "Doesn't that count for something?"
"I've never trusted sodding Jonathans!" Spike yelled.
There were a large number of confused frowns in the room. Then Giles cleared his throat. "He means Americans. It's an old term."
"Spike's an old vampire," chirped Willow with more than a hint of mischief.
"I heard that!" said the bathroom door.
"Fine," said Xander, "Spike, then I'll offer you my protection as well, how's that?"
There was a long moment of silence. "The protection of the you-now-what? That they don't now nothing about because they're a bunch of brainless yank pongoes?"
"I'm not sure what that last reference was about, but yes," replied Xander.
There was another long moment of silence and then the door opened a crack and a cautious eye peered out. Then Spike waved a hand through the opening. "Clear a way!"
Forrest lowered his gun with a glare at Giles and then stepped back. This allowed Spike just enough space to dart through the opening and throw himself over the table. Unfortunately his foot collided with a chair on the way and the next thing they all knew the vampire was a pile of heaped limbs lying against the far wall. "Ow," he said after a moment. Then he disentangled himself and shot upright, looking about with more than a hint of a cornered animal. "You can't lay a sodding finger on me, I'm under their protection," he growled, waving a finger in the general direction of Xander and Giles.
"I'm still wondering why," growled O'Neill, while the old guy with the beanie directed a glare at Spike that should have sent the vampire up in smoke.
"He's been… neutralised with the chip that Walsh placed in his brain," replied Xander carefully. "He can't hurt humans. He's not a threat."
"His kind are always a threat," growled the old guy. "They kill for pleasure. For sport. And simply because they can."
"Not any more," snarled Spike. "Not since they opened up my sodding skull and placed that chip in it!"
"Walsh did that to a sentient being?" Carter said in a sick voice. "That's monstrous." Then she shook her head slightly. "Of course you aren't really human, but even so…"
"Thanks for the qualifier," sneered Spike.
"The other reason we protect him, other than the fact that it's, oh, the right and ethical thing to do, is the fact that he can give us information about the underworld in Sunnydale," Xander broke in, trying to settle things down a bit. "And about Adam. And possibly his master plan."
"What he's worked out," mumbled Spike as he looked at the window and assessed the way that the catch worked.
"Excuse me?" asked O'Neill with a frown, just before Buffy crossed her arms and directed a frown of her own his way.
"So Faith was right, something was bugging you. When were you going to tell us?"
"Just as soon as I'd finished talking it out with Giles. Sorry Buffy, but the pieces only came together today. I had a lot of thinking to do."
"I'm sorry," O'Neill broke in, "But can we get skip the apologies and get back to talking about how a civilian with some kind of whacky magic powers has worked out the plans of some Frankenstein's Monster which was built by a whack job who should never have been allowed anywhere near a position of power?"
"Whacky magic powers?" snorted Buffy, looking around. Then she caught sight of Xander's face. "Oh. They don't know it all, do they?"
"Not really, and I'm still hoping that they don't ask the really tricky questions until later, Buffy," he replied wryly.
"Ok," said O'Neill as he raised his voice again, "What's going on? I'm sure I asked that before, because I'm not that old yet and I hate repeating myself, but can we have a few answers here?"
Turning his head Xander looked at Giles, who was still looming in the middle of the room and raised an eyebrow. Receiving a flicker of the eyes back he then looked at Buffy, who nodded slightly before grinning. "I want to know what Adam's up to myself."
Xander next looked at Oz, who was now standing next to Willow with one arm around her. "Whacky magic powers, eh?" the Jedi Knight smiled at his old master, while Willow looked chirpy.
"Buffy's right, I'd like to know how the Adam story ends," the witch said with a smile.
"Ok," said Xander as he looked back at the other people in the room.
"Aren't you going to ask me as well?" muttered a sardonic voice to one side. Spike then caught Buffy's glare and pretended to intently examine a possible stain on his jeans.
"Ok, Colonel O'Neill. I'll tell you what I know. I'm going to start off by not telling you anything about my 'whacky powers', as life's too short for your disbelief, so all I'll say is that I have access to certain… resources in life. One of which is the ability to look at certain situations, military or otherwise, and put the pieces together. And I think I know what Adam is up to. Interested in hearing my theory?"
"By all means," O'Neill replied with a hint and a half of snark.
"Last month three of the best teams the Initiative has were ambushed on a mission, when they thought that they found the location where Adam was hiding out. It turned out to be a trap – he was there, but so were a small horde of demons and vampires in his employ. We couldn't work out why Adam had done that though. Why set such a trap? Then we realised that we were missing the point and that the reason for the trap was to deprive the Initiative of its best and brightest operatives. The experienced ones, the guys who get a bad feeling about something just before the proverbial hits the fan. To weaken the Initiative in other words. Graham, Forrest, what are the replacements like so far?"
The two men looked at each other, mulling things over and then Forrest turned back to Xander. "Learning fast but still greener than grass."
"And over the past few weeks HSTS have been filling up your cells pretty fast, right?"
"Packed to bursting, almost," Graham admitted.
"How are the doors to those cells controlled?"
"Swipe cards, electronic keys-"
"I mean what controls the door controls?"
"We do it via the computer system."
"And what," Xander said softly, trying to minimise the weight of the hammer that he was about to drop on them slightly, "Does Adam have wired into his central nervous system?"
The two Initiative agents went absolutely still in a moment of horrified realisation. "A central processing unit – a computer," Graham half-whispered, his eyes very big and wide.
"Wait a second," objected Forrest, "After Director Walsh died we changed all the codes. Every one of them!"
"You don't think that Adam has the processing power to break into the system and figure out the new ones?" Xander asked.
Forrest opened his mouth to reply and then closed it again as a stunned expression stole over his face. "Jesus Christ," he muttered after a moment. "We're playing with a loaded deck and we didn't even see him do it. No, we've loaded a gun and then given it to him. And we didn't see it coming at all!"
"You couldn't have known," snapped Xander, trying to get as much sympathy into his voice as he could.
"No but we could have guessed!" replied Forrest, as he slumped into a chair to one side, like a puppet whose string had just been cut. Like a puppet… why did that ring a distant bell in Xander's brain?
And then it hit him. Reaching out a hand he used the Force to send the chip hurtling across the room towards him, where he grabbed it in midair and then glared at it. Forrest and Graham didn't see it happen, but the others did, whilst O'Neill's people blinked a great deal at the sight.
"Damn," said Xander after a long moment. "I should have guessed. Forrest, Riley told us that Adam smashed all of Walsh's computers when he escaped, right?"
The agent nodded.
"But there's no reason not to think that he didn't take a good old trawl through them before he destroyed them. He could have accessed anything, right? Including Walsh's medical files on what she'd done to Riley. Including the details about this chip. Everything about it, in fact… especially the fact that it was tied in to Riley's central nervous system. And what it could do."
The moment when everyone's eyeballs all swivelled onto the chip was very nearly an audible one, albeit one tinged with more than a bit of horror.
"Adam could have controlled Riley with that thing?" squeaked Buffy in horror.
"On some level, yes. But not any more," said Xander levelly as he studied it. There was a certain amount of power emanating from it and as he concentrated then he could feel something else… some kind of activity inside it. Something was stirring within it, something had been activated and was trying to… Xander tilted his head to one side and used the Force to crush it into its constituent parts.
Carter made a horrified noise. "What did you do?"
He paused to brush the parts off into a handy waste bin before answering. "Taking care of a potential problem. Something – or rather someone – was trying to activate it. I'll give you three guesses who."
"Adam," said three or four people at the same time.
"Yup," replied Xander with a cold smile. "We have less time than we thought. Adam's moving soon, if not now. We need to make some calls in, Giles. We need to plan." He turned to one side. "Does that answer some at least of your questions, Colonel O'Neill?"
O'Neill blinked hard for a moment or two. Then he scratched his chin in a meditative manner. "Can I get back to you on that one, just until my brain starts working again? I have a headache right now."
SG-1 stood in the small kitchen and mulled. Or rather, Carter was busy eyeing the bottle of Romanian plum brandy in a longing kind of way, Daniel looked as if his brain was working so hard that smoke was about to pour out of his ears and Teal'c had a frown on his face. As for Bra'tac he was chewing absent-mindedly on his thumbnail, something that he did every now and then when he was thinking hard. As for Jack, he was mulling whilst trying not to think about the headache that the entire evening had given him.
"Ok," he said after a long moment of silence. "What do we know here?"
"That… we've stumbled onto a group of people who all about vampires, who use some kind of powers to fight them, who are very well versed in the best way to wield things like swords, who protect neutered vampires because they're helpless, who know rather too much about the NID's illegal little project for our liking and who have also deduced the plans of that project?" replied Daniel, apparently all in one breath. "Does that cover it?"
"Yes, thank you Daniel for your little summary. That does indeed cover it. The question is, before we all get too carried away on this wave of teenage excitement that seems to be sweeping over the room we just left, do we in fact know what's going on?"
There was another pause. "According to them the situation is clear, O'Neill," rumbled Teal'c. "They regard this Adam as a threat, they believe that the Initiative base in vulnerable and they wish to summon allies and plan a counter-attack."
"Right. What I'm still having trouble with is, how did they know that there's an NID base in town?"
"They know Riley Finn," replied Teal'c in a tone of voice that said that he was stating the very, very obvious.
"True," put in Daniel, as he crossed his arms and looked down for a moment in concentration, "But from what they said about Walsh they knew her, and more to the point, distrusted her before Adam escaped. Obviously, because he killed her then. And from what Riley's friends said, they trust Rupert Giles and Xander, as I suppose we have to call him, Harris."
"I still don't understand how he can do that. He and this Oz guy," muttered Carter quietly. "I mean, telekinesis has never been proven but…"
"They can juggle better than any circus?" Jack ran a hand over his forehead for a moment and then sighed. "We know now that the world is a weirder place than we knew before," he said, gritting his teeth slightly. "We know that vampires exist, and demons, and little blue-green things that live in boxes and keep people's schedules in their heads, and a whole load of things that a few months ago I'd have had myself locked up in a padded room for even thinking about!" He closed his eyes for a second and held up a forefinger. "However, nuts as it all sounds, it seems to be worse than we thought when we came here. Which brings up the question of, again, what do we know and what should we do?"
There was a short pause before Teal'c bestirred himself. "Surely we should help them, O'Neill. They are preparing to fight a host of Mar'tyuns and other creatures of darkness, to help defeat the creature that the NID created and to save the lives of the members of the Initiative. I would say that under such circumstances we have to help them."
"That's the thing," objected Jack. "They're making plans, but they're just kids. Teenagers. Well, apart from the old guy and the blond vampire version of Billy Idol, who still confuses me, but they. Are. Still. Kids!"
"They may be veritable children, but that have a far better idea as to the evils that exist in this place than you did before, O'Neill," muttered Bra'tac. "This 'Buffy' is also a skilled warrior, based on the way that she moves and handles a weapon. Besides… she is a 'Slayer' as they called her. The title seems significant." He fell silent again, but with a significant frown on his face.
"What's wrong Bra'tac?" Daniel asked after exchanging worried glances with the others.
A sigh emerged from the old Jaffa, as he rubbed his beard with a hand. "Although I am unfamiliar with the word 'Slayer', the way that she moves and acts reminds me of a very old legend, one so old that I doubt that you have ever heard of it, Teal'c. It was said that…" he turned around to look at the doorway and then leant forward conspiratorially, "More than fifteen hundred years ago there was a young girl among the Jaffa who fought the Mar'tyuns with great strength and power and speed. Her name was Ka'tleen. It is also said that there had been others like her, long, long ago. As the years went by though, the number of Mar'tyun grew ever fewer, and the appearance of these girls became rarer and rarer, until they ceased entirely. The last Mar'tyun was killed not long after Ka'tleen had been killed herself. No more like her ever emerged."
Jack had a brief burst of the creeping horrors along his back. Girls fighting vampires? "Did the snakes ever find out about these girls?" he hissed quietly.
"Apparently they knew but attempts to find them often failed, as people knew that they were fighting the Mar'tyuns. In addition, those who fought the Mar'tyuns… often did not survive for very long."
Jack pulled a face for a moment. "You think that Summers might be like her then?"
"It is a possibility. It would explain much… but that is about all that I know. Ka'tleen's abilities had faded almost into legend by the time that I heard of the story."
The sound of footsteps caused Jack to pause and look at the doorway, where Maybourne appeared after a moment. He looked… well, like a man who had no idea, at all, what to do. "Harry," he said in greeting. "Come to add to the madness of the night?"
"I have no idea, Jack," the former NID colonel said wearily. "Just as I have no idea what the hell the right thing to do should be." He paused and then eyed the plum brandy, before dragging his eyes from it with a shudder. "Quoth the raven," he muttered. Then he looked up. "Forrest and Gates are mapping out access points to the Initiative, as well as the layout of the place. Part of me wants to scream at them for divulging classified information. Part of me also wants to join them. And part of me wants to run around like a headless chicken with its tail feathers on fire."
"They're planning to get into the Initiative with Summers and the others?" Carter asked incredulously.
"They think that Harris's theory about Adam is a viable one and that they need to get onto the premises as soon as possible in case some kind of HST prisoner insurrection starts. Given the evidence so far, I have to say that it's a… plausible theory." Maybourne scratched under his nose for a moment and then shook himself. "Ah, screw it, I'm not on duty any more." He straightened up, looked around, pulled a shot glass that had some kind of coat of arms off a shelf and then grabbed the bottle of plum brandy. "Vlad," he read off the label. Then he turned it around. "Brewed in Cluj, Romania, wherever the hell that is."
"It's on the border of, ah, Transylvania," Daniel said with a wince.
Maybourne digested this. "Figures," he said after a moment and then poured a slug out, which he then threw down his throat. After a moment he stiffened. "Interesting," he said hoarsely. "Reminds me of the moonshine my great uncle used to brew."
"As fascinating at that all is, can we get back to the point here, Harry?" urged Jack after resisting the temptation to roll his eyes. "We need to work out some options here and try and take back control of this train wreck of a situation."
"Why?" asked Maybourne as he placed the shot glass carefully into the sink.
"What part of 'classified information' and 'court martial offence' do you fail to understand, Harry?" Jack snapped.
"I'm not a member of the armed forces anymore, Jack, so I can't be court martialled. Besides, I happen to think that they're right. Adam's plan, the more I think about it, makes sense. As you'd say, it's very NID."
There was pause whilst Jack felt faintly sheepish. "I was not going to say that. I hadn't even thought about it. Much."
"Jack, everything that's happened with Adam over the past few months has obviously been building to something. It doesn't take much to work that out. What that something is… well, I can think of a few things, but Harris's theory is the best one so far. It makes sense. Adam has a plan. So should we. They have a plan, out there, in that living room. We should either add to it or get the hell out of the way. Or," he took a deep breath, "You should get out of the way, because I'm with them."
"You're with them?" Jack repeated slowly. "Harry, the moment that anyone from the NID lays an eye on you they're going to be screaming for you to be arrested, just so that they can't be tarnished by your deeply unpopular presence."
"So I go back to prison for a while. I got out the first time, remember?"
"Yes," growled Jack, glaring at him, "I remember."
"Maybe I should have phrased that better," Maybourne conceded, "But the point remains that I agree with them. And they need help."
"I concur," rumbled Teal'c.
"Ok!" replied Jack, waving a hand explosively and cursing internally, "I get that!" He paused for a moment. "I don't normally ask this, because we don't normally do this by vote, but does anyone else have an opinion on this?"
"I don't see that we have any choice but to help out, sir," Carter said with a sigh. "If Adam – god what a name! – is planning to stage an uprising at the Initiative, then we have to help them defeat it."
"Daniel?"
It took a moment for the archaeologist to respond, but then he looked up and let out a sigh of his own. "Sorry, I was just reflecting on the various stories that I've heard about the so-called myth of the 'Vampire Slayer', which appear in a number of sources that I've been reading over the past few weeks. I guess that I might have to reclassify them.
"Okay… why are you arguing about this, Jack? We need to help these people. If Harris is right then the Initiative is about to face a mass breakout by a group of… demons. Vampires. Things that go bump, at the very least, in the night. We need to help them."
"I'm just… very stubborn sometimes," Jack growled, as he pulled out his cap and settled it on his head, making sure that it was centred. "Ok, as it turns out I happen to agree. I'm just very, very unhappy about it." Turning around to face the doorway he set his shoulders and then smiled thinly. "Ok. Let's talk to the nice people who know far too much about what should be secret and, judging by the fact that I just heard the front door open and close, have just been reinforced. Let's hope that the new people don't shave with a face cloth or something, or I'm going to get… fractious."
When Forrest finished speaking there was an interesting reaction from the group of people who were now standing by the window. Xander just stood there, thinking things over hard. Ok, he thought, the head of the Initiative is some kind of demon, or certainly something not human. Damn, we don't need anything else complicating things more than they already are, do we?
Buffy took the news with a short and savage nod, one fist clenching an imaginary axe, as if she was already thinking about the best place to decapitate Finch. Willow had looked perplexed and Oz had nodded slowly.
Spike just sat in the corner and nursed that bottle of whiskey.
Giles on the other hand had reacted differently. He had stiffened and then just stood there, his eyes flickering as he obviously thought very hard and very fast. Then he tilted his head slightly. "Forrest, what shade of green was his eye again?"
"Um," temporised the Initiative agent, "Kind of a deep meadow green. Not light, not dark."
"Ah," said the Watcher thoughtfully. "Interesting." He crossed his arms and then tapped end of his nose with a finger lightly several times. "Can you describe this Finch please?"
"Um – dark hair. Dark brown I mean. Caucasian, or at least looks it. We thought that he had blue eyes. Tall – about six foot. Roman nose. Scar about his left eyebrow, no idea what from."
"Right," said Giles after a moment of silence, at the start of which his eyes had gone very wide. "Yes, he's not human. But given what I suspect, if he is who I think he might be – not is, but might be - he might not be a threat. It depends."
It was at this point that Xander looked up and then walked towards the door. Faith was approaching and he could feel her tension and her anticipation as if she was already in the room. When he opened the door – a second before the dark Slayer's hand had a chance to rap on it – he blinked slightly. Wesley was standing behind Faith, which was to be expected, and behind him were Jonathan and Anya, again to be expected, with the former demon looking as if a frown had been etched onto her face. But behind them stood Amy and her girlfriend Tara. The dark blonde girl looked deeply shy and had trouble meeting his gaze, but from the way that she was standing so close to Amy, wild horses couldn't drag her away.
It was rather sweet, really.
Faith looked through the door and tensed slightly. "So they're really here," she muttered to Xander. "You trust 'em?"
"Let's just say that I don't distrust them," replied Xander after a moment. "Oh and Spike's been chased by the new guys, who have only just realised that he has a chip in his head. Plus we found a chip in Riley."
There was a pause as the others blinked. Then: "You found a what in him?" emerged with a splutter from Wesley.
"A chip. Small electronic doohickey. We were a bit surprised. Only found it 'cause he got shot."
"Yes, Mr Giles did mention that small fact. Shall we go in?" asked Wesley in a low voice as he looked through the door.
"Of, course," replied Xander with a slight, and very automatic, bow. As he straightened up the others passed him – all but Faith, who was watching him with a lazy smile that didn't fool him for a moment.
"You know, you do that when you're in full 'you-know-who' mode, Xander. That ain't a good sign." She tilted her head and then shrugged. "But then when you're in that mode it also means that we got a chance at least." She smiled and walked in.
The moment that the dark-haired girl walked into the room Jack could tell that hackles of the two Jaffa went up instantly. He could see why – she moved like Buffy Summers, only with a dash more wiggle in the hips. From the way that her eyes flickered over them he could tell that everyone from the Initiative and SG-1 had just been assessed in terms of threat, numbered and then filed. Freaky wasn't the word. As for the others… well the young Brit who was standing next to Rupert Giles seemed to be a younger clone of the Watcher, which was freaky. The young dork with a hint of backbone wasn't much, but his girlfriend – who appeared to be hovering around him protectively – was, well, just odd. Her eyes… looked old somehow. He paused. He had no idea where that last thought had come from.
As for the two girls they looked fairly normal, but from the way that they were talking to the Willow girl, he had a feeling that they weren't. Normal, that is.
Which just left the dark-haired girl, who walked right past him, turned a smouldering gaze onto Daniel, smirked briefly in a way that made the archaeologist blink and then blush, and then went over to peer over the sofa at Finn, who seemed to be sleeping. "He gonna be ok?" she asked Summers in what seemed to be Bostonian tones.
"Oz says so, and his colour's a lot better," she replied softly.
Jack looked over the newcomers and then shook his head slightly, before looking over at Giles. "Okay, so are these your new… auxiliaries?"
"Friends and allies would be a better expression," Giles replied with a wintry smile. "May I present my fellow Watcher Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Faith the Vampire Slayer, Jonathan and Anya, and of course Amy and I believe Tara?"
The blonde girl coloured slightly and nodded in response to his welcoming tones.
"All of them know about the Initiative, about Adam and of course, about the denizens of the Hellmouth."
"The Hellmouth?" asked Jack.
"Ooohhh boy," muttered Faith with a sideways smirk at Summers. "You don't know about the Hellmouth?"
"Um, I thought that the Hellmouth was just a version of the Spanish translation of the name for the area," Daniel put in with a frown.
"And why," sighed Giles, as he took off his glasses and cleaned them, "Did they call it that in the first place?"
"Because… it was hot?" said Daniel with what was obviously a guess.
The two Watchers exchanged glances that said a great deal. It seemed to combine exasperation with amusement, bemusement and something like recognition.
"Wait a minute," broke in Maybourne, whose frown had deepened a lot. "I thought that there could only ever be one Slayer? That's what the HST legend said – 'One girl in all the world to stand against the forces of night', or something like that. How come there are two of you?"
"She came first," said Faith, the smile sliding from her face. "I was called when she died."
A number of horrified eyes fell on Summers. "You… died?" choked out Carter after a moment.
The blonde girl shrugged. "Just for a bit. CPR is a wonderful thing. Xander remembered the lesson in it."
The eyes moved to Harris, who looked up from his inspection of a map on the table. "I don't like my friends dying," he said shortly. "It used to irritate me."
"And now?" asked Jack.
"Now I do my best to make sure that they don't die. Ever. Period." He looked back down at the map again. "What I want to know right now though is why we never caught sight of Adam being anywhere near this area."
Frowning, Miller leant over and looked down. "Xander, that's the same area as the Initiative. He'd be spotted."
"I know about that area," stressed Harris as he pointed at one section of the map, "But why was he never seen here?" He jabbed a finger at an adjacent sector and then looked up. "How far does the Initiative extend underground?"
"Not that far," frowned Gates, with Miller nodding his head in agreement.
"You're both wrong," said a voice that was more a groan than anything else. "There's the secret part of the place that was built earlier."
"Riley!" cried Summers as she turned back to the sofa, where a very bleary Riley Finn was blinking from his recumbent position, and then threw her arms around him to hug him.
"Buffy…." He wheezed after a second or two, "Can't… breathe… and hurts…"
"Sorry!" she apologised and then carefully let go of him.
He leant back again, smiled at her tenderly and then looked down at the dressing on his shoulder. "Whoa," he muttered. "What the hell happened?"
"You were shot," said Oz laconically.
"Oh. Yeah. By that vampire, right? What happened then though?"
"The bullet was touching this," answered Harris as he held the waste basket out. "You might have to look rather hard, I crushed it heavily."
Finn peered into the container and then leant back again, blinking puzzledly. "What the hell was that?"
"A chip," replied Summers, sounding like she wanted to pound the thing into dust.
"It was touching your central nervous system," added Oz. "The bullet might have damaged it in some way. It set something off, and you collapsed."
"That was in me? What was that doing in…" Finn stopped in mid-sentence and then went white with fury, the muscles in his jaw working. "Walsh." The word emerged from between his lips like a swearword.
"Probably a very accurate guess," answered Harris with a sigh. "Riley had your shoulder been bothering you recently? Past day or so? Had any odd urges or desires to be somewhere else?"
The Initiative operative looked up at him and frowned slightly. "Um… not really. Had a funny itch in my shoulder earlier this evening, like I had pins and needles or something, but nothing else. Why?"
Summers looked at Harris for a moment, seemed to receive a flicker of an eyebrow in response and then looked back at the prone man. "Xander thinks that if Walsh put that thing in you, then there's a good chance that Adam might have found out about it. He might have tried to control you with it."
It should have been impossible for Finn to go any whiter than he already was, but he made a valiant effort anyway. His mouth opened and closed once or twice and then he finally said: "Oh crap."
"Yes, young man," quipped Jack, "Nicely put, oh NID operative."
"Not now, Jack," muttered Maybourne.
"Ok, then how about: can you tell us more about the secret part of the Initiative that you mentioned and which might be massively important to us?"
Finn looked over at Maybourne, who looked back at him quizzically. "I don't recall that part being on the plans, Agent Finn."
"Major Tanaka told me about it when the Initiative was being built sir. Apparently there was an old command and control bunker built in Sunnydale in the 1960's for the Governor of California. The old Mayor Wilkins, the father of the one who died in the school gas explosion signed off on it. It was never used though. When the Initiative was being built it was supposed to be on that site – but it was too small, so Major decided to site the main part of the Initiative next to it and use the old facility as an emergency subunit. A mothballed hospital or something. Strictly emergency use only. When Director Walsh was appointed she had it sealed up as being surplus to requirements. I don't think that she thought that much about it."
"Sod," said Giles to one side as once again the glasses came off his face for a polish. "Riley, I wish that you'd told us about that earlier."
"Why?" he asked, looking confused. "It's just a mothballed facility."
"If Walsh knew," sighed Maybourne, "Then there's a good chance that Adam now knows."
"And that's where he's been hiding then," Faith said, explosively. "Man! But now that we know where he is, why not just go in and kick his ass?"
"Because he can just press a button and loose his army anyway," said Harris, closing his eyes as something pained flickered over his face. "We need to get him and warn the Initiative that something is happening, at the same time. If he's as plugged in to the Initiative computers as we think he is, then the moment that we turn up and warn them, he's going to push the button."
Jack thought this through for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. It made sense. He really wished that it didn't, but sadly it did. Then he looked up as the doorbell sounded yet again. The blonde girl called Amy darted to open the door, allowing a dark-haired man with cautious eyes to enter. As he walked in he looked hard at Teal'c and Bra'tac, before looking at Harris, who nodded slightly.
"Thanks for coming Lindsey," Harris said with a small smile. "A lot happening."
"I'm getting used to that," the new arrival replied with a quirk of his lips and a shrug, before walking over to Harris, where the two whispered quietly to each other.
"So who are you?" asked Jack when the whispering stopped the new guy looked around curiously at them again. "The Easter Bunny?"
This made the man blink a few times, while a smile stole over his face slowly. "No. Just a former lawyer for a law firm that represented the wrong kind of people."
Jack thought that over for a moment. "Well the 'former' part of that sentence gets you a grudging welcome from me at least."
Lindsey turned back to Xander and raised an eyebrow. "Interesting company," he said, leaning over and muttering as O'Neill walked over to his people and started to talk quietly to them.
"It's been an odd evening so far," replied Xander with a grimace. "Riley getting shot kinda put the cherry on the cake. Me working out Adam's plan is nasty though. We're trying to work to someone else's timetable. I hate it when that happens, you never know if you're ahead of events or behind them. I think that it's happening tonight – or at least very soon. I can feel a disturbance in the Force. Something is moving out there."
This earned him a slow and rather worried stare from his Padawan. "It that what it feels like when you have a feeling of cloudiness and unease, but you can't your finger on where it is and what the hell is going on? Via the Force?"
"Yes," Xander nodded with a smile. "That's it exactly. Congratulations, Lindsey. It can be hard to isolate that feeling sometimes when you're starting out on the road that you're on, but you've got it. Hold on to it, try and see where it takes your senses. It's very important."
"I will," Lindsey replied, before looking around as Giles and Forrest both helped Riley to stand, despite the Iowan's protestations that he was fine really.
"You need to take it easy," said Oz quietly. "You lost a bit of blood. Nothing that your body can't make up again in a few hours, but you might get light-headed if you try and push yourself too soon."
"I know," sighed Riley as he ran a hand over the side of his chest where the bandage was now hidden by his ripped uniform, "But I need to map out where the unused part of the Initiative is, along with at least one escape tunnel out of the place that isn't marked on the maps. I never thought that I'd ever have to use it to get in to the place, but there you go. Life bops you one on the nose every once in a while." Then he looked down at his chest again. "You know people might start to worry if they see me in torn and bloodstained BDU's," he muttered thoughtfully.
"I've got one of your shirts back at the office in the library," said Buffy. "You left it there one day and it got tangled in amongst my laundry. My mom washed it the other day and then sent it back today, but I left it at the library as I wasn't sure if you were coming over tonight."
"Why weren't you sure?" asked Riley, looking puzzled.
"You mentioned that you had early patrolling, which meant that going by earlier examples, you'd be tired and sleepy," replied Buffy, before turning slightly pink.
"The office is a bit out of our way to get to the entrance of the tunnel," Riley sighed. "Oh well."
"Don't worry about it, I'll get it for you," interjected Xander. "If we're going to warn the Initiative or defend the place, the last thing we want is someone asking awkward questions about where the blood on your shirt came from." He smiled reassuringly. "I'll see you… where's the entrance?"
"You know that piece of scrubland by Gronow Avenue? There's a power substation there, with a door around the back that doesn't actually lead into the place."
"I take it that the door's locked?"
"Electronic combination on the door. 267894."
"I'll see you all there." Xander turned to his friends and nodded with a smile. And then he strode to the door and left, breaking into a run as quickly as he could. He had a feeling that it was going to be a very long night.
Jack watched Harris go, narrowing his eyes slightly as he saw the turn of speed the guy had. He was fast. And there was something about the young man's stance and style, something that was bugging him.
"I do not know what this Harris, but he has the authority of a leader of warriors," muttered Bra'tac to one side.
"He does indeed," rumbled Teal'c thoughtfully.
"He's just a kid," replied Jack absently.
"In age, maybe. In experience… I would say not," Bra'tac shot back.
"He's certainly used to giving orders," added Carter quietly.
Jeez, were they ganging up on him? "Ok, ok," protested Jack, "We add one more thing to the long, long list of strange things in this town. Are we all happy now?" He caught their looks and then sighed. "I'm starting to really dislike this place," he admitted. Then he looked around. "What do we have in the way of weapons?"
"Standard side-arms and not so standard ammunition," said Carter, straightening up almost to attention. "Plus… the reserve weapons in the van that General Hammond said could only be used in the event of an emergency."
"I'm still amazed that he let us take those off the base," Jack said with the ghost of a chuckle in his voice. "Weeeell, what with this possible attack and the nature of the attackers, and the fact that this Frankenstein's Monster of a thing is leading them, plus the fact that I'm feeling really, really, cranky right now, all constitutes an emergency in my book. Carter?"
She hesitated for a second and then nodded. "I'd say so sir."
"Daniel? Any thoughts?"
"How about – I want to live to see the dawn and drink coffee, so whatever works is good with me."
Jack nodded approvingly. "Not exactly the Gettysburg Address, but that works for me. Teal'c?"
"There is much honour to be won this night, fighting foes of such evil," the tall Jaffa said with a slight bow.
Jack turned to Bra'tac, whose eyes were shining. "Bra'tac. I hope that you will do us the honour of fighting with us?" asked Jack, with a serious tone to his voice.
"You do me much honour," the old Jaffa replied with a bow of his own.
"Hey! Secret soldiers guys!" They all turned to one side to see Faith whatsername walking towards them. "You ready? Time to go."
"We need to get some weapons of our own," replied Jack, with a look at Carter. "But, yeah. We're ready."
The library was quiet and still as he opened the side door and slipped in. He liked it at night. There was something about the smell of the older books and the way that the place looked at night, especially when the moon was shining though the windows.
Xander took a deep breath and then started to job quietly down the main hell, before taking the stairs two at a time. By the time that he got to the door of the office he was breathing slightly hard after his run, but not too much. His training was holding up very well indeed.
He had to squint slightly to see the lock, but the key went and as it turned something chimed slightly at the back of his head, because the lock felt ever so slightly stiff. It wasn't much but a tiny tendril of alarm went off in his mind. Something was wrong somewhere.
He still walked through into the office, flicking the switch for the lights with one finger as he passed, instead of using the Force as he did when he was in a rush. He wasn't sure why he used his finger, but that tendril was thickening slightly.
Riley's BDU's were on a chair off to one, along with a small note from Buffy to Giles asking him to pass them on to her boyfriend if he popped by. Xander leant down to pick them up and when he straightened up he knew that he was not alone in the office. Turning around as naturally as he could he stopped. A girl aged about 18 or maybe 19 was standing there in the doorway. She dressed in black trousers, a grey T-shirt and a very dark green jacket, and had her black hair tied severely back into a ponytail. She had the deadest eyes that Xander had ever seen in someone still living and a small pistol crossbow in one hand.
"Congratulations," she said in a bored voice that sounded very rusty from apparent under-use, "The Order of Teraka wants you dead."