'The stars fade, the earth shakes,
The poison's on your tongue.
The lost plans, the last dance,
oh God, what have you done?'

"Stone Walls" ~ We the Kings

The bright fire is gone, no spark or flaming hutzpah or any kind of fight left in those chocolate eyes.

Six hours ago, Saul threw him in a tiny, three by three storage cabin and locked the door. It's muted. There's only one window here, from which to watch clouds go by, the landscape changing to open ocean as far as the eye can squint.

Night falls outside the window but they're chasing the sun. Heading east.

Spike doesn't care much about any of this. Absent of any furniture, Spike sits on the floor, in the corner where the window meets the wall, and his dead eyes peer over the lip of his knees at nothing. They're drawn tightly to his chest, close as he can press them.

Getting re-snatched wasn't in his plans, not that he had one to begin with.

This spot, however, isn't chosen at random. It's illogical, but Spike imagines he can feel Ed's breath at his back, where the head of his stretcher is on the other side of the wall. If it wasn't there, Spike would be able to tip his head back and have it touch Ed's gurney.

True to form in this series of tragic attempts—Spike's momentary pride at having grabbed Saul's ancient cellphone out of his pocket, during the scuffle, turned out to be wasted.

The cellphone isn't getting any reception this far out. The only thing it's good for is marking the passing of time.

Spike isn't trying to dial Greg's number anymore even if he could send a message. There's nothing to tell, no markers to indicate where they are. They could be near the Bay of Fundy or heading to the Gulf by now.

His body wants fervently to shiver but Spike doesn't, much. He's ceased caring. Beyond concern for what happens to himself.

His stitches have reopened, though they clotted hours ago. Little puddle stains of blood ring his feet on the carpet and scarlet tints his chin from a new cut inside his mouth.

Spike does the math in his head, realizing he's overdue for another round of antibiotics and dose of pure oxygen to help the still-healing lungs. He probably won't survive the poison without them.

I want to go home. I want…I want…

Spike lifts his hand. Hesitates, feeling weirdly timid and embarrassed.

Working up his nerve, he knocks on the wall in Morse Code. Ed's name.

There's a toxic pause, one that has Spike's teeth smarting from how clenched they are. Then—

Thump.

Ed can't use his hands, so Spike guesses this sound is his head replying to the tacit message.

I'm alive, it says. You're not alone.

Ed is still alive and even though Spike knows he'll probably never see the man again, it's enough for now. He didn't leave Ed behind after all or abandon him. Not this time, not ever again. If nothing else came of this awful development, he made things right—he didn't let Ed go it alone.

Spike closes his eyes.

Everything in him fights it, steels himself against such a banal action, disgusted with the very notion of doing it—

But after only ten minutes or so, Spike drifts off to the buzzing lull of the engines.

He hasn't truly slept, not counting anesthetic for surgery or the cat nap after their solarium visit, since huddling up with Ed on the forest floor.

Spike sleeps long and deeply, his abused body fighting remnants of the anthrax. He doesn't dream, not at first, lost in the dead sleep of the beleaguered. Towards the end, feverish images plague his mind in twitches and faint moans. Visions of Ed getting shot or suffocating under all the leaves, gurgling for air.

Sleep holds him so securely under, in fact, that Spike doesn't even wake when night changes to day, nor when they hit the tarmac.

Then a familiar voice starts yelling. There are a lot of profanities thrown in but the tone isn't just angry; it's urgent.

Spike jerks awake.

So far he hasn't been able to hear a peep from the other side of the door, the main cabin, because of the engines and how sound proof it is. So the fact that he can is his first tip off.

That voice isn't coming from the cabin.

Spike swivels on his numb seat bones to peer out the window. He's groggy and dizzy with sleep, breathing more laboured than before. His mouth tastes funny and he can tell, even before he glances at the cellphone, that he slept for a substantial stretch, certainly more than eight hours.

Still, it doesn't compute when he sees the inside of a private hangar. This isn't exactly alarming, of course. Planes have to land somewhere.

But…but all the signs on the wall and the TV screens in a back business room are in…they're…

French.

Spike blinks. Wonders if he's still dreaming. He checks again, for French in itself is not a strange thing in his life, having grown up in Canada with its bilingual signs and cereal boxes.

But this isn't Acadian or Montreal French. And the TV is playing a news station he doesn't recognize.

Spike processes all of this in a blink, attention quickly diverted to a tiff happening on the hangar floor. Three men wrestle with a shiny, bald headed figure in thick restraints and ankle cuffs.

"Ed!" Spike pounds on the window. They're taking him away! "Ed! I'm here—Ed!"

Not again. Please not again!

Spike siphons artificial tasting air into his inflamed lungs, fist hammering over and over again. Ed doesn't hear him and Spike turns steadily crimson.

"Ed, please…" Spike coughs. Now the shakes come. "I can't lose you. Please turn around. Please see me."

But he doesn't.

Spike fumbles for the phone hidden under his shirt. There are only two bars of reception but Saul, distracted with Ed, thankfully hasn't noticed its absence yet.

Spike's digits are cold from the suddenly reduced cabin pressure and long flight. He types the number wrong twice before it finally works. The call goes through.

He stares at the screen to be sure—the call is going through!

"The number you have dialed," says an automated, female voice, "is a long distance call. Additional charges may be added. Do you accept these charges?"

Spike nearly laughs. "Yes...yes!"

"One moment, please."

"Ah," says a new voice. "I see you survived the trip. We didn't expect that."

Spike whirls around and tucks the phone under his thigh in one go. The man who stands at the door of his 'cell' is not the human trafficker Spike expects. No guns or leather or ugly gang tattoos. In fact, he looks more like your stylish, Muslim grandfather than an international criminal.

The man, late fifties, is dressed in a long white garment and a black and white keffiyeh. This isn't a novel sight, having grown up in urban Toronto with its many cultures and clothes, but the pure gold band around it is, along with an engraved symbol at its crown.

Status, the head piece broadcasts. Power.

He's polished, clean, nails more manicured than Jules' ever are. A dazzle of rings sits across the stage of his fingers. He smiles calmly at his hostage on the floor, eyes a glittering, light brown and beard neatly trimmed.

Spike still shies away from the man, pressing himself into the corner.

The man doesn't seem to mind, still with that serene expression. "When I heard how much a feisty Canadian gave my men trouble, well, I had to see for myself. You even shot Saul, for which I am highly impressed."

An accent is faint but present, like he was educated somewhere else.

"Where…" Spike swallows dried blood. "Where are you taking my friend?"

The man tilts his head in thought. "To a secret medical facility, for now. He needs to be recovered from that concussion before we can sell him or wipe him. We already have buyers lining up."

A shiver again assaults Spike when he hears the nonchalant word. Wiped. Erased.

He considers rushing at the man, jumping to his feet and knocking him out with a quick blow…but he recognizes the futility of it, if he could even get to his feet in the first place without buckling. The entire hangar is surrounded by guns, people who work for this man. He wouldn't make it three feet out the door.

"You should know my government doesn't negotiate with terrorists," says Spike, even though he knows that this man probably isn't one.

Sure enough, the man's smile grows, genuinely delighted to hear Spike's words. His folded hands part so he can gesture to himself.

"Do I look like a terrorist, my good man?"

That question certainly feels like a trap so Spike doesn't answer.

"Officer," says the sheikh, "I'm not even a practicing Muslim. But do you know what altar I do bow to?"

This man's speech and manners are much more demure than Saul's or Rook's from before. He's refined. Elegant.

Looking him in his cold eyes, Spike is still more afraid in this moment than he has been in days. There's something viperous in the air, a razor cloud of brutality and greed. It makes hairs on Spike's arms stand straight up.

"Little Roman," says the man, and Spike's stomach bottoms out. "I am not doing this for religion or ideology—I am doing this for profit, plain and simple. Exorbitant profits, at that. Of course, sometimes we sell to terrorists. But that's none of my concern."

"It's not possible," Spike insists, deciding to ignore for now the fact that this man knows and taunts his ethnicity, the possibility of how much information he might have. "You can't just brainwash someone like in the movies."

This time when the man smiles, it has no humour or warmth at all.

His voice is dulcet, sweet and soft. "Have you ever heard of a desensitization chamber?"

Spike pales. His milky skin is almost translucent with fear, and he feels suddenly very small.

"I'll take that as a yes." The man crowds closer, bending so he blocks the overhead light. "You see, they all come in just like you, with the same fire—fighting, outraged. Intelligent men with training for scenarios like this. And they always lose it, little by little, just like you will too. Soon you will not even remember your own name."

Spike glances out the window. He can't hear a thing from the phone under his leg and for now that's a blessing. Even if the call dropped, which is very likely at this great distance, Spike isn't sure he'd mind. He doesn't want to be heard this exposed, at someone's mercy.

"You were a first, you know."

The word catches Spike's attention. "First what?"

"We made a mistake," the Arab explains. "Not only were you the first Canadians, you were also the first SWAT, non federal agents, that we grabbed."

A flicker of something defiant appears, just for a breath, in Spike's eyes. "Should I feel honoured?"

"We did it because of upped demand for close combat skills, which you have," the man speaks over him. "But none of that was the big failure on our part. We'll know better next time."

Spike opens his mouth to ask what this man is droning on about when he kneels. It's a slow action, meant to force his knees close into Spike's space. Spike shrinks to the side, to get away.

And suddenly, the latent ire in the man's face, Saul's brutal manhandling of him, it all makes sense.

Wonderment washes over Spike like christening day. "We were the first set of partners you ever took. And it cost you, because it didn't cow us."

The man's face is still mild, but there's the beginning of a wrinkle there—displeasure.

"We're close to each other." Spike knows the truth of it like he knows gravity. "Every other agent caved, didn't put up such a fuss, because they were alone. But then you abducted us, not only colleagues but friends. We had someone to fight for."

Something dangerous swells inside the dark eyes fixed on Spike. "A mistake we shall not repeat."

"It won't work," declares Spike, less sure of this one. He fidgets under the intense gaze. "No amount of torture will make us fight for your buyers."

The smile is back but Spike hates it afresh. "I don't have to lay a finger on you, thrall. In fact, with that poison in your system, I'd prefer not to."

Spike spits at his sandaled feet.

The man laughs. He stands in a graceful rise. "You have a passion inside you, so unlike the other men whimpering for their families."

A pressure builds in Spike's chest. Not the promised ache of tears, but the start of a snarl with enough menace that it would make Ed proud.

The sheikh just laughs again at his vicious glower. "Come. We are changing planes so as not to be followed. If you live and the poison doesn't kill you first, I might just get a nice bonus off of you."

Rolling that little tidbit around, Spike stands too, shaky, phone hidden up his sleeve. "What about this plane?"

"It will be taking your friend to his new owner."

Another, more hot headed, officer might have lunged at the man then. At such a cavalier word used in the same sentence as such a treasured friend. Spike, however, feels a bolt of inspiration shoot through him.

The man pulls out a gun from his robe and nudges it at Spike. It's sleek, a newer, unfamiliar model Spike doesn't know. Probably a recreation of an old pistol, longer and thicker than his usual Glock.

"Alright," says Spike, stepping through the door. "But can I please use the washroom first?"

The sheikh, behind him, is quiet. "I'll be right outside the door and my men are on the ground. There is nowhere to run."

Spike twists his head and looks the man right in the eye. "I won't. I'm in no condition to be moving much at all."

The evidence of this is the new spots of blood that trail after his footsteps and the way he has to hold the wall for support.

Once the tiny airplane bathroom door is shut and Spike is alone, he whips out the cellphone.

The call has dropped, of course. He has no idea how long it even stayed on the line.

He really does use the toilet and then, running the faucet to wash his hands and create noise, he dials Greg's number again.

A fist pounds on the door. "Time to move!"

"I'm coming!" Spike listens frantically to the three tone beeping, the call trying to connect once he accepts the charges. "Just feeling light headed."

That's not totally a lie. Spike's stomach is in knots again and he can tell his lungs are working too hard for what little oxygen they're getting. It's still worlds better than before.

"I'm coming in!"

Just as a key twists in the lock, Spike hides the phone in the cupboard below the sink. He closes the door, resigning himself to leaving it behind—

"Spike? Is…you…talk?"

The voice is crackling with the distance and archaic phone design. It still makes Spike freeze.

"Hurry up." Saul wrestles the door open, one handed. His neck tattoo strains with anger. "Or don't. I'd love nothing more than an excuse to put a payback bullet in you. Don't think you're not expendable here."

"How can I forget?" Spike fires back.

Rough fingers clamp around Spike's arm and jerk him out of the bathroom. The sheikh, with his escort of six heavily armed men and assault rifles, wait for him on the hangar floor. Saul shoves him at every step. Spike doesn't feel any of it.

A blizzard of numb leeches across his body, starting at his extremities and suctioning inwards until there's nothing left inside Spike but a frail hope, one that's not even for himself.

Walking away from the phone—and Greg's voice—is one of the hardest things he's ever done.


AN: I just had to bring the archaic cellphone back! I love the idea of poor technology making the situation even more dire.