QUANTUM EEEP!
Part II
The day passed with agonizing slowness. After managing to find a manhole shrouded in shadows from a nearby building, Sam had crawled down into the sewers, hiding himself in an old pipe away from the main line. A number of things Sam couldn't believe existed ambled past the physicist throughout the day and each time he saw one, he pulled himself as far back into the pipe he could. Remarkable healing abilities aside, getting attacked still wasn't any fun and he had no desire for a repeat of the thrashing he took when he first leaped into Spike.
Finally, after a short eternity, Sam sensed that the sun had finally set. How he sensed this, he wasn't sure. Actually, there were a lot of things he wasn't sure about. He hoped Al would be back soon so he could ask him some questions. With luck, Ziggy would have come up with something better than "Go to LA" by now.
So, moonlight on his back, Sam was now walking very quickly down a busy street, looking over his shoulders at every opportunity for things that went bump in the night, trying to decide what to do with himself. An examination of the vampire's clothing found very few things in his possession - a crumpled pack of cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, a metal flask of something that smelled like whiskey, yet had a disturbing red-tint to it, and a crushed biscuit of Weetabix. Nothing that could help him get to Los Angelus, as far as he could tell. Scratching his head, he paused in front of a closed electronics store, looking in at the glass, squinting at the television that was on in the back, noticing the reflection of people walking around behind him.
Sam blinked and put his hands on the glass.
"No reflection," he muttered, feeling slightly hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat. "No reflection at all..."
"Well, if it isn't the defanged wonder," came a loud voice from his right, startling Sam so badly he almost jumped around, looking to see who had spoken. A young man wearing a very loud Hawaiian shirt and long khaki shorts was walking very purposely up to him, a girl with red hair wearing a nice shirt and long skirt by his side.
"Hey, you can put the 'scary-face' away, bleach-boy," said the kid, making little finger quotations around his head at the supposed insult. "Really, not terrifying anymore." Sam reached up and felt his face, shocked at the ridges he felt there. Running his tongue along his teeth, he cut it on the fangs, which Sam knew for a fact had not been there earlier. He tasted blood. Closing his eyes, he felt his facial features smooth themselves out once again, then opened them to look at the two kids again.
"Uhm..." he began intelligently, not really certain of what to say. These kids seemed to know him, but the boy, at least, didn't seem to like him. Of course, they weren't attacking him, either, which was a good thing.
"Xander, don't be mean," the girl said, hitting the boy lightly on the arm. "You shouldn't hurt his feelings." She turned to Sam, giving him a small smile. "He didn't mean anything by it."
"Yes, I did, actually," Xander said, putting his hands on his hips. The girl sighed.
"So, Spike, what brings you to this part of town?" she asked pleasantly.
"Seems like a nice place?" he offered lamely, feeling dumber by the second.
"At least, until you got here," Xander said, smirking. He turned to his friend. "Can we leave now, Willow?"
"Willow!" Sam said excitedly, pointing at the girl, remembering the name "You're Willow!"
"Yes," Willow said slowly, looking a little worried, Xander also giving him a peculiar look. "I'm Willow."
"She certainly is," came a voice behind Sam.
"Al!" Sam cried, turning around to look at his friend, who was giving Willow an appraising look.
"Okay, chip-kid, how much of your brain did they take out when they put the hardware in there?" Xander asked with a raised eyebrow as Sam turned back to them.
"Uhm, well..." Sam began, again, not sure what to say.
"If only those percentages were a bit higher..." Al murmured, moving through a light pole to stand next to Sam. The physicist shot a quick glare at his friend, which basically read, Not helping, Al.
"Right, um," Sam continued, thinking quickly. "Look, I need to get to LA"
"Oh, good. You're leaving us," Xander said with a true smile.
"Why?" asked Willow, furrowing her brow.
"It's complicated," Sam said, rubbing the back of his head. "What I really need to ask is, can I borrow some money for a bus ticket?"
"I don't think that's gonna work, Sam," Al said with a shake of his head, still looking at Willow.
A series of expressions crossed Xander's face for a few moments, until he finally picked one and started laughing, nearly doubling over.
"Whooh, good joke, oh-impotent-one," Xander squeaked out when he finally managed to pull himself together. "Us giving you money! I love it!" Sam frowned.
"Are you going to be bothering Angel?" Willow asked, still looking concerned. "I hear he hasn't been in the best of moods lately."
"Not that we actually care about dead-boy's feelings or anything," Xander reminded her. Sam started at Xander's slandering of Angel and an idea leaped into his head.
"Tell you what," he said, taking a step toward Xander. "You give me the money... mate, and not only will I be out of your hair, but I'll be ticking off Angelus at the same time."
Xander paused in his low chuckling, then tilted his head to the side, considering. "You know, I think that's a win-win situation for me."
"Ooh... that's good, Sam," Al said, cheerfully, smacking his hand-held computer against his hand with a flourish.
As Xander started digging around in his pockets, Willow stepped forward, obviously unhappy. "Spike," she began, "you shouldn't start trouble with Angel."
"I'm not going to start trouble," Sam promised her, hoping it was true. "I just need to talk to him."
"Here," Xander said, shoving a wad of bills at Sam. "Enough for a one-way trip to LA"
"Thanks," Sam replied with a dry smile, pocketing the bills. "I'll be going, then." He turned and started walking towards what he hoped was the bus station, Al following close on his heels.
"Be careful," Willow called to him.
"Or not!" Xander added earnestly. "And don't come back!"
* * * * * *
The two-hour bus ride to LA seemed to take more like six. Crammed between two oddly smelling large men in the back seat, with Al having gone back to confer some more with Ziggy, Sam was deciding very quickly that he hated this leap. With a passion. The bus bounced and shook, the engine making alarming noises the whole way. To top it off, Sam was getting hungry, and he didn't want to think about what that meant. When the bus finally pulled into the LA station, Sam breathed a deep sigh of relief and pushed his way out of the confining vehicle, taking in a deep draught of city-smelling air.
"You probably don't need to breathe that much."
Sam turned and looked at Al, nodding unhappily. He walked swiftly towards a nearby alleyway, out of the way of people who might listen in and think he was crazy.
"Al," Sam began, once they were out of earshot, "what am I supposed to do here?"
"Well," Al said, hitting the hand-held device in his hand, "I told you already. You need to meet up with this Angelus guy and bury the hatchet between him and Spike."
"And he's not going to bury a hatchet in my back?"
Al shrugged. "Probably not."
"'Probably not?'" Sam repeated, walking in a quick circle and rolling his eyes. "I'm under the impression that they're not on very good terms."
"Well, they're not," Al told him, lighting up another cigar. "The last time Spike saw this guy, he had him tortured by a professional - suspended from the ceiling by his wrists, hot pokers in his chest - that sort of thing."
Sam let out a sound like a wounded animal, burying his head in his hands. He hated this leap. Something suddenly occurred to him. "How are you getting all this information about this leap, anyway?"
"Now that's kind of a funny story," the hologram told him, grinning a little. "You see, Ziggy has always had a closet fascination with these sort of things. Turns out he hacked into a couple of super classified databases once that was just full of stuff about demons, vampires, and the occult."
"What databases were these?" Sam asked, disbelieving.
"Well," Al said, looking down at his computer, punching some buttons and hitting it a few times, listening as it squeaked angrily back at him, "one of them was from this government instillation called the Initiative---"
"That group that put the chip in Spike's head?" Sam interrupted, pointing to his skull.
"Uh huh," Al said with a nod, then continued squinting at his computer. "And the other one was this law firm called Wolfram and Hart that is... heh, get this Sam, located in Los Angeles. That's where Ziggy got all the information about Spike and Angel."
"A law firm?"
"Yeah," Al confirmed, slipping the computer into the pocket of his very loud coat. "They have a lot of clients who are demonic in origin."
"Of course," Sam said, rubbing his temple, trying to ward off a headache he knew was coming. "So, if Ziggy knows so much about all of this, why isn't he giving me more specific instructions about how I leap out of here?"
"It seems as though most of the historical information Ziggy has is accurate, but he can't seem to come up with good probabilities," Al explained, scratching his head. "It has something to do with interference from other, more random forces, which are causing the prediction algorithms to go all... wonky."
"'Wonky?'" Sam asked, not impressed with the jargon. A noise in front of him drew Sam's attention to the end of the alleyway. He glared fiercely at a strange man who poked his head into his line of sight, feeling his face change and his fangs lengthen in response. The man let out a high-pitched sound of surprise and rushed away.
"Don't do that, Sam," Al said, backing away. "It's weird."
"Sorry," Sam replied, shaking his head a few times to get his features back to normal. "I think I'm hungry."
"Don't tell me that," the hologram warned looking positively sick. "And yes, I said 'wonky,'" Al continued, obviously wanting to get back on track. "It's really bothering Ziggy. He's getting depressed. I'm just hoping he doesn't get all snippy on us and refuse to do his job."
Sam sighed again. "Whose brilliant idea was it to give that computer a personality?"
"Yours, Sam," Al reminded him.
"Oh, right," the physicist said with a frown, trying to pull his memories from his swiss-cheesed brain. "Well, did you ask Spike in the waiting room?" Al suddenly looked very uncomfortable.
"Uh... no," the hologram said, taking a long puff of his cigar. "We kinda had to... sedate him."
"Why?" Sam asked, surprised and confused.
"He freaked out, Sam," Al told him shaking his head. "He started ripping your body apart. He thought he was back in the Initiative. Total mental breakdown. Gooshie and the psychiatrist decided it would be a good idea just to keep him sleeping until this leap was over. He's not going to be any help."
Sam nodded. "Okay. So I guess my only option is to go see this Angelus guy and try to figure it out from there."
"I guess so," Al said with a frown. "I hate sending you in there blind."
"I've done it before," Sam reminded him, trying to reassure his friend.
Al made a sound of consent then straightened his shoulders, looking Sam straight in the eye. "Okay. I'm going to go back and work with Ziggy. Maybe he can hack into some more of these... occult databases and figure something out. In the meantime, you make nice with Angelus."
"Where's this detective agency at?" Sam asked him.
Al rattled off an address that Sam easily stored away in his mind, then, after withdrawing his computer, opened the holochamber doors. "Now, remember Sam," the hologram told him, the lights of the doors shining behind him, "You need to be careful. Because of that chip, you can't attack humans in any way."
"I'll be careful, Al," Sam said. Al nodded and disappeared into the doors. Taking a deep breath, Sam turned and walked out of the alleyway, on his way to Angel Investigations.
To be continued...