~*The introduction of...dun dun dun....the bad guy. Here it is folks, the long delayed Chapter Eight.*~

Fred. That was his brother's name. He didn't like being Fred, even for a seven and a half minute interview. After the camera had cut, he walked by the reporter's outstretched hand, neglecting to shake it. He collected a copy of the survailance tape that had been saved for him and started on his long journey home. The summer atmosphere sickened him. Hot and muggy city streets always meant bad things for him. He was a child of the winter, when the air was the same as his body temperature, of his heart. His brown coat was opened and sloppily hung on his shoulders. And to his breast, he clutched a disk, that he predicted he would be playing all night.

He did. He scoffed; in seven years that mother fucker couldn't get a new hair cut? He fondly remembered when had a mass of that ugly, brown hair in his hand, bashing the head it grew from into the concrete. He could clearly see the red fluid that gushed from his once handsome face spreading across a hopscotch game that had been abandoned that afternoon. He felt himself dropping his head, and walking away, leaving a seemingly lifeless heap of flesh to rot.

He started the movie over from the beginning again, and decided to zoom in on the figure that broke away from the group and killed the ones he came with. For the most part, all he could see was the black overcoat; he had taken notice of where the camera was. But for a split second, he got a profile on his mixed Asian-Caucasion face. He dropped the control and the small plastic broke. He choked on his own saliva and coughed at what saw. There he was, the patsy who ruined his life, his syndacate days. He had beaten him down with his bare hands, ripped away fiber by fiber the glorious cloak of power and status he wore. That man had sent him to the hospital, to jail after that. He had been the captan of the entire Mars territory. Now, he was simply George Mitchell, a guy on a small moon of Mars who worked in an office building. An office building, he thought to himself. He had gone a long ways downwards since his fun, free days. Now, he had taxes and bills and a job, and he hated it all. The normallity. He was leading a normal, boring life, like everyone else. He had to do something drastic, and soon, in order to fix that. He shut off his screen and decided to sleep on it.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Miss Valentine! What a pleasant surprise! Have a seat, won't you?"
Faye refused to smile back at the man who dared call himself a professional. She sat and continued glaring.
"What can I do for you?"
She sat back, carefully choosing her words. She spat out the ones she came up with. "I want all my fucking tapes in my room tommorow."
The doctor stared, confused.
"I don't know what your secret little perversion is or whatever, but I want all the betas back. Do you understand me?"
Dumbfounded silence. He recovered from this initial shock of accusation and was back to his annoying, stupid self. "Whatever are you talking about?"
"Why did you send me the time capsule? How did you track me down? Who the hell are you, anyway?"
Dr. Baquis removed his glasses. "I am Dr. Baquis, I am a well respected man of medicine, and I have no idea what you want me to do."
Faye lost whatever composture she had and sprung across the desk, easily capturing him in a firm headlock. "Where the fuck are my tapes, asshole?"
Struggling to breath, he pulled open a desk drawer full of early twenty first century betas. Faye stared wide eyed at them and turned her gaze back on the sputtering being beneath her. "You keep them in your office? What the hell!"
"This is it, I swear. There are no more! They were destroyed!"
Satisfied for the time being, she let go and left him gasping in sweet oxygen on the floor. She spent about ten minutes trying to figure out a way to get them all down stairs, and once she had piled them all up, she took her crutches and left for the elevator.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Spike strained every part of being into his ears so he could hear what was going on in the room next to him. Someone was having a fight, quite obviously. All he could make out were the words 'incompetent,' and 'unproffesional,' and 'should be fired.' It sounded like some middle aged lady wih a hysterectemy who likes to hear herself talk. Losing all interest whatsoever, Spike sat back and stared at the dots in the cieling again, awaiting his "in between" snack that Kimari now graciously snuck in for him.

He pondered Edward's earlier visit. So Faye was in the hospital. On his floor, aparently. That explained the yelling, now that he thought about it. He had been too wrapped up in his pain earlier to do much thinking, but now that his nurse was ignoring all orders from above, he thought more. A smile formed on his lips. Julia was humming to him, from heaven. Still that sweet, simple song that immobilized him. Had it been sung by anyone else, it would have no effect whatsoever, but Julia could send his mind to faraway places. And he went, but always took her with him. A private world, with the just the two of them. No doubt, someone was bound to feel slightly exlcuded when those two were together, with distant, loving looks in their eyes...

She strolled into his room, pushing a metal cart, like it had always been that way. She smiled down at him and wrapped a nylon strap around his upper arm. He reached up and touched her face, and got in return the queerest look. She didn't love him.

"You've been slipping the morphine back in, haven't you? I don't need it anymore, Kimari."
"With all that fuss you made, now you're saying...all right. Dr. Baquis wants me to anyway. He saw me taking it from the store room. So starting tomorrow, we'll bring down your dosage-"
"No. I don't want that bringing down shit. Just stop giving it to me."
The look turned even more estranged. "I know it's best for you, but, why, all of a sudden?"
The pump lay curled in her fingers, long, fake, red nails not squeezing. Spike assumed she had finished her work and peeled the velcro away from him. "Because you're not Julia."
Kimari brushed his babbling away as temporary insanity. She quickly jotted down some marks, put her hair back up with her pen, and dropped off a juice box and a bag of pretzles. To her concerned surprise, Spike didn't leap upon them like a ravonous lion. Hoping he would feel better once they got rid of the morphine, she pushed her cart out to attend the maternity ward.

Styrophoam hospital cieling boards faded into the plaster of their apartment. He had a toothache from where his face had been bashed. But his pain suddenly became nonexcistant, lifted by the voice of his siren, the beautiful singing nymph, Julia. She hummed nonchantly to herself, feining interest in the newspaper, reading about politicians that had no purpose at all in her life. A sigh emitted from the man to her right and the paper was dropped to the floor. She peered cautiously over him.

"Jules."
She smiled, restraining the single tear that threatened to make it's long journey down her beautiful face. She took a seat on the side of the bed and grabbed hold of his hand.
"That song, I like it."
She lost the battle of the tear duct, and leaned forward. She planted a magical kiss on his forhead, it seemed to him. "I'm so glad you're gonna be okay."
He pulled her hand towards him, indifferent to the sharp pain that seared through him, and kissed her fingertips. She never painted her nails, but always took great care of them. They were beautiful. She was beautiful. Spike found that he was obsessed with her beauty, her every beautiful feature, all the beautiful golden hairs of her head, her soft cheeks, her clear, spotless fingernails. And suddenly, he couldn't imagine life without her.
"Vicious was glad to see you yesterday."
Still holding her hand, he let his own rest on his chest. "Sing for me again."
She softly kissed him on the lips and hummed again. Spike fell back into his sleep.

He woke up, looking at a metal room with a fragment of a turing fan. Jules was humming by the table again. He turned his head to look at her and she smiled greatfully at him.
"You've finally woken up. You've been asleep three days."
How annoying. Seeing that little husy take Julia's place simply annoyed him. She reminded him where he was, were she was, where Vicious was. He was with her, while Spike was with a short, blacked haired, brazen woman who sang the song incorrectly. How it all seemed incredibly annoying.
"You sing off key."

"I guess that was pretty uncalled for," he said to himself. "But no one is Julia."
He thought about their visit, and Faye's dramatic exit. What was that about? Excactly, what was her problem, going all crazy like that? She had changed since he first met her. He would almost admit that he had a little soft spot for her. He wasn't as dependent and attached and obsessed with her as with Julia, but he didn't want her dissapear either. He felt he could manage without her, though. A frightened cry suddenly made him think otherwise for a split second.