ACT FOUR

            "Faith!"  Robert ran through the door to the classroom and saw the Slayer lying in the floor.  He bent down, picking her up in his arms and checking for a pulse and breathing, both of which he instantly noticed meaning she had just been knocked unconscious.  "Faith, wake up," he gently tapped her face with an open hand, trying to get to her.  Examining her arms, he noticed three tiny darts stuck near her veins, now believing there had to be some kind of fowl play involved in this.  When it was obvious his attempts to wake her were not working, he went with the only option he saw available and keyed his radio lapel microphone.  "1144 – Dispatch."

            "1144," the response from the police department came quickly.

            "Need E.M.S. to the high school, I have an unconscious female, possible drug or poison related."  He continued trying to wake Faith to no avail as he waited for the response from dispatch.

            "10 – 4, 1144, will dispatch E.M.S."  As soon as dispatch responded to him, he heard a series of loud tones going out on the radio, alerting emergency medical services to go in service, a radio transmission advising them what the assignment was.  This was quickly followed by the responding units acknowledging, the sounds of their sirens in the background as the drivers spoke on the radios.

            "Faith come on," Robert was more intense this time, still gently tapping her face and shaking her, hoping to avoid a big hassle with paramedics, ambulances and hospitals.

            "Dawn!"  Was the first word out of her mouth when her eyes opened.  Faith quickly sat up, out of Robert's arms and looked around the room at the piles of broken robots but did not see what she was looking for.  She looked back at Robert.  "Where's Dawn?"

            "She wasn't here when I got here.  I didn't see her in the halls either.  Maybe she took off," Robert proposed the best possible explanation for why the young woman wouldn't be there, knowing it was by far not the most likely one.

            "No," Faith quickly discounted that as an option.  "No, we were surrounded, she couldn't have."  Faith stood up, Robert immediately following her as she brushed loose robot parts off of her body.  "We've got to find her."

            "We've got to take care of you first," Robert didn't know what it was that was used to knock Faith out and he didn't want to take any chanced on it.  "I've got E.M.S. on the way to check you out."

            "Don't make a big old show for me Robert."  Though still somewhat dazed, Faith felt fine.  "I'm five by five, besides, don't forget about the superpowers, accelerated healing comes with the whole Slayer package."

            "I still think it would be a good idea."

            "I think we need to find Dawn and the longer we wait to start looking, the hard it's going to be, so call 'em off and let's get to work."  Robert conceded he was not going to win the debate with Faith, keyed his microphone and told the ambulance they could stand down, that the person had just fallen but was fine and their services were not needed.  He then advised the police department dispatch that he would be out at the high school for a while longer.

            "Let's fine Kennedy and Andrew, get them to help.  I couldn't have been out for more than a couple minutes so there's a pretty good chance she's still at the school somewhere."

            "Andrew might have a lead on who's responsible."

            "We have to find Dawn first," Faith was determined.  She had promised to keep Dawn safe and was scolding herself for being so easily taken down by the robots when she was trying to protect her.  "Then we track down whoever is behind this."  Faith surveyed the classroom a final time, making sure she hadn't missed any crucial detail in it.  "You think there's a chance those things killed her?"

            "No," the image of Sarah's dead body was still fresh in his mind.  "No, I've seen how these things kill, it's not this tidy.  She's got to be alive somewhere."

            Faith was relieved as she imagined trying to explain that one to Buffy whenever she wanted to know how Dawn was doing.  The Slayer didn't say anything else as she stormed out of the classroom and into the hallway with Robert following.  "Dawn!"  Faith yelled at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing throughout the long empty high school hallways.  "Dawn!"  She yelled again after receiving no response.

            "You get Kennedy and Andrew," Robert took charge of the situation.  "Check the classroom, offices.  I'll check the parking lot, football field, all the rest of it."  He pulled a piece of scrap paper from his front shirt pocket and wrote a number down.  "Page me if you find anything."

***

            It was dark and cold, wherever she was that was Dawn's first impression when she woke up.  She couldn't see anything in the blackness beyond the chair she was tied down to.  All she could hear was the faint sound of water dripping nearby from what she surmised was an overhead pipe.  In her memory, she tried to run through the last thing she remembered.  Watching Faith try to fight off the spider robots and then collapsing.  Her last memory was of something poking her in the arm right before she herself passed out.

            Then she woke up here, wherever here was.  She tried to remember what Buffy and Faith had taught her about what to do in these situations.  The bonds on her arms and legs were too tight to make escape a viable option and the room too dark for her to try figuring out where she was.  She looked down at her feet, seeing then the only clue to her predicament.  She gasped as she saw the groups of spider robots that had formed a circle around the chair she was seated in.

            Unlike in the classroom however, they were not attacking, not even moving, if not for tiny movements in their legs, she would have thought their batteries had died or they had been switched off.  As it was, it was like they were all watching her.  She considered that they weren't there to attack, rather to guard her, prevent her from trying to escape, as if she could.

            "Beautiful aren't they?"  Dawn heard an all too familiar voice come from the darkness above her.  A light came on.  She quickly looked around, confirming her initial suspicion that she was being held in a basement.  It wasn't just a basement though.  Electronic equipment of all types covered long wooden tables.  In the corner farthest from the one she was being held in, something large was covered by white tarps.

            "The pinnacle of technological achievement," Tyler continued.  Dawn looked up and saw him walking down a long wooden staircase, slamming a door behind him as he entered the basement.  "Don't you agree?"  He finished descending the staircase and stood just behind the rows of spiders in front of Dawn with a menacing grin about his face.

            "What do you want?"  Dawn spoke with nothing but disgust as she locked eyes with her captor.  She thought there might be some small chance of talking him out of whatever he was planning or at least buy herself some time for Faith to find her.  If Faith even knew where to start looking.  Despite what Faith had told her about Sarah's mother saying he had taken their breakup hard, she never considered Tyler to be a suspect, until now at least.

            "What do I want?"  He mocked the question.  "What do I want?"  He paced frantically in a short line in front of her for a moment, thinking, before finally giving his answer.  "I want to be treated like a human and not like some insect by people like you and Amber and Brooke and Alyssa and Sarah.  I want people to like me for who I am and not just because I can help them with their homework.  I want to walk through the hallways at school without being laughed at, tripped, pushed or having 'Kick Me' signs taped to my back."

            He began walking away, taking several steps, picking up a laptop computer off one of the tables before turning around, walking back towards her and continuing his rant.  "I want friends.  I don't want to be called a nerd just because I don't play football.  I want to do well in school and not be ridiculed for it.  I want people to think of me as being a normal guy.  But mostly Dawn, you know what I really want?"

            "A healthy dose of sanity," Dawn replied, the hate in her voice not diminishing.

            He charged towards Dawn, slapping her in the face with his hand not holding the computer.  "Respect!"  He calmed down instantly, taking several deep breaths and three steps backwards from Dawn, not losing eye contact with her.  "I want people to respect me.  No one respects me.  Not you, not Sarah, nobody," his voice became sullen as he slipped into his true motivations.  "But you will.  Soon, everyone will."

            "You're going to make people respect you by having robotic spiders eat them all?"  Dawn recognized a normal variation of villain logic emanating from Tyler.  "Did it ever occur to you that people can't really respect you after they've been eaten?"

            Of course it had.  "They'll see," Tyler quickly countered.  "They'll see the penalties for not giving me the respect I deserve, the respect I've earned and they'll fall into line.  Speaking of which Dawn," Tyler tapped a key on his computer, causing all of the robots around her to tap their front two legs once against the concrete floor.  "Would you care to beg for your life?"

            "You're insane."

            "Hmm … not quite the amount of begins I was hoping for really."  He pressed three more keys that sent the robots scattering across the floor, hiding in shadows, under tables and near the walls.  "But I like you too much just to kill you, that's why I have something special planned for you."  With his computer resting in the palm of his hand, Tyler slowly began walking towards the tarp covered object.  "You see, the main problem with my little friends here is that they take me a longtime to build and your friends have destroyed almost my entire first batch."

            "Gee," Dawn's voice shifted from dripping with hatred to dripping with sarcasm.  "That's a shame."

            "Oh don't worry," Tyler reached the corner, placing his hand on top of one of the tarp.  "Because I've designed a system that can produce one of them in seconds, converting raw materials into parts and at the same time, act as a central processing network for a hive mind, directing actions of thousands of individual units and even participating when a greater show of force is required."

            Tyler yanked the cover off revealing a hideously larger version of the robot spider, standing at least three feet taller than its creator.  "Wonderful isn't it?"  Tyler ran his hand down one of the beast's polished metal legs.  Dawn did not reply.  "The only problem is power."  Dawn felt a long and drawn out explanation coming.  "The queen requires more power than I can easily generate with any sort of battery source.  Except for you of course."  Dawn couldn't believe what she was hearing.  "Your body generates enough heat to power the queen.  I'm going to turn you into a living energizer."

            "Tyler," Dawn tried to remain as calm as possible, hoping she still had a chance to talk him out of this plan.  "No offense, but I think you've seen The Matrix a few too many times."

            "It actually a very sound scientific principle," Tyler set his computer on one of the tables and grabbed a welder, having a little work left to do on the queen before he was ready to plug Dawn into it.  "Plus," he added from behind the welder's mask.  "I think it'll give us a good chance to spend some time together, do stuff together, you know the sort of thing you would never have thought of before now."

            "Tyler, please listen to me," Dawn pleaded, thinking she saw an opening for her negotiations to get through.  "You don't understand.  What happened, I didn't mean to hurt you.  I like you; I've liked you for a long time.  You don't have to do this."

            "Yeah," Tyler scoffed.  "You like me just like everyone else likes me, when you need something.  You say I don't have to do this Dawn but I don't see any other way than to do this."  He returned to his welding, leaving Dawn to watch.  "Just a few hours of work left to go, we should be ready to rock and roll by dark."

            Dawn waited, hoping Faith wouldn't let her down.

***

            Faith, Robert and Kennedy sat in the living room of the Slayer's house, waiting.  After their search of the high school had turned up nothing, they had resorted to using the one solid piece of evidence they had to try and locate who or whatever was behind the spiders, hoping in turn it would lead them to Dawn.  Andrew had collected one of the more intact damaged robots, removed the computer chip from inside and was now attempting to access its programming, hoping it would give them some sort of useful information.

            With the exception of Andrew, who was fully engrossed in trying to bypass the computer encoding, the rest of the gang was growing tired of waiting.  Faith and Kennedy worked on sharpening bladed weapons while Robert, whose shift had ended a few hours before, was cleaning one of his sidearms.

            "Yes!"  Andrew proudly proclaimed, slamming his fist down on the table near the computer, signaling to the others a definite success of some sort.

            "Address?"  Faith raised her eyebrows, asking the only question she cared about.

            "No uh," Andrew hesitated as the Slayer glared at him.  "I, uh, won an autographed picture of Captain Picard off Ebay."  All three of the others glared at him before Kennedy shot out of her seat.

            "Can I hurt him?"  The fiery potential asked with eyes cast towards Faith.

            "No," Faith continued glaring at him.  "But I might if he doesn't hurry up and get me where I need to be."  Nothing frustrated her more than having to wait because of something that was completely out of her control.  Robert always used to tell her that he was surprised she lasted in prison because of it.

            "I'm working as fast as I can," Andrew went back to feverishly working the keyboard.  "But breaking through custom encoding on a type of system I've never even seen before isn't exactly my forte you know."  After several more key clicks, he again pounded his fist on the desk, proclaiming victory.

            "Obi-Wan lunchbox?"  Robert asked sarcastically.

            "No, I broke through the code," Andrew thought about it for a moment before returning to his work.  "Though I do have two of them, maybe I should try to sell one."

            "Address!"  Faith cut that train of thought and rambling off before it continued for too long.

            With Andrew working the keyboard, Robert holstered his pistol and stood over his shoulder, reading date as it appeared on the screen.  "819 Brookstone," Andrew reported.  "They're programmed to return there in the event of any sort of catastrophic system failure."

            "Tyler Jacobson's house," Robert said grimly with eyes cast towards Faith.

            "How do you know?"  Faith of course realized it was his job as a police officer to know some things about the neighborhoods he patrolled but doubted he had been able to learn so much so quickly.

            Robert flipped his keys into his hand as Faith and Kennedy collected their weapons and joined him on the way out the door.  "Let's just say vanity got the best of him, his name is listed in the robots code as 'The Creator'."

            "You drive," Faith volunteered Robert as she headed out the door, Robert following behind her and Kennedy in the rear who squeezed in the last comment.

            "I knew that guy was trouble."

***

            After a bit of searching, Spike had actually managed to find a bar in Sunnydale he hadn't been tossed out of with orders not to come back during the past six months.  Given his recent encounter, he had the feeling that one of the local demon haunts wouldn't be too friendly.  Therefore, he settled on drowning his problems in alcohol for the evening and trying not to think about or concern himself with what Faith and the others might be up to.

            Stepping into the establishment, it struck Spike as being simply an average bar.  Dim, dirty lighting accenting the smoke filled air that smelled of day old beer.  The wooden floor was cracked and stained, the tables, bar stools and pool tables also in various degrees of disrepair.  Spike's kind of place. 

Being early in the evening, the crowd was fairly light, a handful of people sitting at tables, two playing pool at one of the poorly lit tables and three at the bar.  As he took several slow and long steps inside, a person at the bar caught his eye and Spike grinned.  Though he had initially wanted to spend the night ignoring Faith and all of Buffy's other little friends, he did find this particular situation

Sitting at the bar, a half empty mug of beer in his hand was none other than Xander.  Wearing a large grin on his face, Xander being the last person he would have expected to run into, Spike slowly walked towards him and took the seat at the bar next to him without saying a word.  Xander glanced in his direction, barely regarding the vampire, turning back to his drink.  As it clicked in exactly who was sitting next to him however, Xander turned back to him, glaring at the vampire.

"Oh please, no."  Xander's slurred speech betrayed that he had already had too much to drink on this night.  Spike was the last person Xander had wanted or expected to see.

"What?"  Spike shrugged.  He knew Xander didn't want to see him and also knew they had likely come here for the same reasons but decided to play the innocent game for a little while.  He was curious to see exactly how annoyed he could make Xander while expending the least amount of energy in doing so.

"Don't play innocent vampire with me," Xander slurred, pointing an accusing finger at Spike.  "The last thing I want is the biggest pain in the neck sitting beside the biggest pain in my head."

            "Well sorry," Spike fought to keep from laughing at Xander's drunken state.  He waived to the bartender and pointed to Xander's drink, a signal that he wanted the same.  "But it is a free country you know so I think I'll sit where I want.  Suppose you could tell the pain in your head to leave."  The vampire grinned as he took a healthy gulp of his drink.

            "Like my life isn't pathetic enough," Xander polished off another drink that was almost immediately refilled by bartender.  "Without having to put up with you."

            "Your life isn't pathetic," Spike didn't really care about making him feel better, he simply thought pretending to do so might agitate him further.  "That's just the alcohol talking."

            "No, that's my two best friends taking off on a globe hopping journey without me talking.  That's being stuck in Sunnydale working construction and living with a nerd talking."  He glared at Spike, hating him even more as the vampire nonchalantly sipped his beer.  "But most of all, that's sitting here talking to you talking."

            "Give it a rest," Spike was now tired of listening to him.  "Besides, it isn't like you have demon after demon trying to kill you."  Spike thought about that for a moment.  "Okay, I'll admit you've had a few demons try to kill you."

            "Over two hundred!"  Xander had kept count throughout the years.

            "All right," Spike admitted.  "So a lot of demons, still doesn't mean your life is all that bad."

            "No friends," Xander set his mug down and began to count his points on his fingers.  "Dead end job.  Sunnydale."  He again glared at Spike.  "And you."

            "Hey," a loud and also drunken voice came from behind Xander.  He and Spike turned to see three large men approaching, pool cues in hand.  "We've had about enough of you two, you're talking too loud, interrupting our game."

            Spike felt a way to relieve some tension coming on.  "And what are you going to do about it?"  He flew off the bar stool, standing up to the three thugs, issuing a challenge."

            "Yeah!"  Xander stumbled up beside him.  The three men smiled, holes and yellow stains on their teeth showing when they did so.  In a split second, one cracked a pool cue against Xander's head, sending him toppling to the ground.  Spike sprang into action, punching two and knocking them down before the third one landed a blow against him.

            Xander was quickly back on his feet as were the other thugs.  Throughout the bar, people grabbed pool cues, chairs, bottles, glasses and anything else they could get their hands on as the establishment erupted into a full out brawl.

***

            Dawn was stuck, literally.  She had spent the last several quiet hours as Tyler tinkered with is creation trying to figure out a way to escape but the binds on her arms and legs were too tight and she knew she wouldn't get far with the remainder of Tyler's robots working nearby.  She only hoped Faith would get to her in time and that prospect did not instill her with a great deal of confidence.

            Tyler closed an access panel near the belly of 'the queen' and approached Dawn.  "Well, it's time," he bent down and spoke close to her face.  "You have any last words you might want to share before you spend the rest of your natural life as a human battery."

            "You're not going to live through this."

            Tyler was taken aback, expecting something a little more desperate and pleading.  "You know, it's too bad there's not going to be a tombstone to put that on so all the word can bask in the wisdom of your last insightful moments."  Tyler reached over to a nearby table where he retrieved a syringe loaded with a light brown liquid.  "Just a little something to make you calm."  He showed remarkable care when he stuck the needle into her arm, barely causing any pain.

            As the sedative took effect, Dawn's eyes grew blurry and her muscles weak.  Tyler untied the ropes around her arms, legs and chest, all but carrying her towards the queen.  He used his body to support her as he keyed in an access code on the belly of his machine.  He was prepared to lift her inside when a voice from the stairway interrupted him.

            "You know," Dawn looked in the direction of the familiar voice to see Faith casually walking down the stairs, swinging her arms, a sword in her hand.  "This just doesn't strike me as the typical super villain hangout.  A little too, high school nerd needs a life for my tastes."

            Tyler laid Dawn down on the floor, believing the queen could wait for a moment.  Without saying a word, he picked up his laptop and keyed in the command controls for his remaining robots.  "I'll show you what being too much of a high school nerd lets a guy do."  All of the remaining robots emerged from the shadows, scurrying up the support beams of the staircase.

            Faith flipped over the railing on the staircase, pulling a small crossbow she had concealed in her jacket and firing a single bolt as she landed.  The bolt struck the bottom of the computer near Tyler's hand.  Sparks flew from the machine, Tyler instinctively dropping it as they burnt his hands.  When the computer shattered into pieces, the small robots stopped.

            He now saw that he had only one option left.  He started to bolt for Dawn, hoping to plug her into the queen but Faith pointed her sword at him, causing an abrupt halt.  "I wouldn't think about trying to take another step if I were you," she took several deliberate steps closer to him.  "You'd be dead before you got close to her."

            "So what are you going to do?"  Tyler backed up from Faith, putting his hands over his head to fake a surrender, already having a backup plan in mind.  "Kill me?  I don't think so," he smirked as he shook his head.  "Then you'd be no better than me."  He banked on a mind game giving him the time he needed.

            "You sure I'm not?"  Faith raised her eyebrow and pointed the sword towards his neck.

            "How about we put you in jail?"  Robert and Kennedy both emerged at the top of the stairs, Robert trained his pistol on Tyler as they walked down.  He stood at Faith's side while Kennedy went to take care of Dawn.  Robert flashed his badge around his neck.  "Sunnydale Police, you're under arrest."

            "Well then," Tyler continued slowly backing up until he was side by side with a rolling chair.  "I guess you better take me in," he pushed the chair into Faith and Robert, throwing them off balance, giving him the time he needed to run to another computer behind the queen as they regained their balance and pursued.

            "You don't think I would build this most perfect creation without a backup power supply?"  Tyler worked the keyboard with almost a blinding speed.  Before Faith and Robert could stop him, the robotic legs of the queen creaked to life and its giant eyes lit up red.  Kennedy pulled Dawn out of its path as it advanced on Faith and Robert both of whom assumed a defensive stance.

            Balancing on its back six legs, the queen swung the pointed metal ends of its front two legs at Faith and Robert, both leaping out of the way.  As they recovered, the queen attacked again in the same fashion.  Robert rolled to the side.  Faith ducked and swung her sword at leg which attacked her.  Sparks flew as the metal of her sword met the metal leg.  Jumping over another low attack, Faith stabbed at the belly of the robot, piercing the hard metal skin but seemingly causing no damage.

            "You can't destroy it!"  Tyler shouted, still working the keyboard, obviously controlling the queen's movements.  "It is perfection!"  With the queen now more engaged with Faith, Robert took his opening.  He pulled one of his short swords from his trench coat and tossed it into the spider's eye closest to him, blinding it and too a degree Tyler to his movements.  He rolled out of the way to where he had a clear line of sight on the young man, aimed his pistol carefully and fired two shots.  Tyler ducked, the bullets impacting against the concrete wall.

            Though the bullets narrowly missed his head, him being away from the keyboard and not controlling the queen for a brief moment gave Faith that opportunity she needed.  With the machine distracted, she leapt on top of its giant head.  When she had steadied her footing, Faith flipped her sword around and drove it deep into the metallic skull of the creature.  The red from its eyes faded and its body collapsed onto the floor.

            "No!"  Tyler pounded on the keyboard, attempting to bring his creation back to life after Faith scored a critical blow to its central computer system.  "No!"  Tyler attempted to run but Robert and Faith had already caught him, throwing him against the wall face first.  Robert pulled his arms behind his back, placing a pair of handcuffs on him.

            Faith and Kennedy helped Dawn out as Robert led Tyler to the car.  As Dawn looked at him for a final time, she knew it was over for now but a dark voice echoed in her memory.  She looked around the neighborhood block, nothing abnormal about it but she could not shake the feeling they were being watched.

            "Thanks for your help," Faith stood behind Robert as he finished loading Tyler into the car.  "Couldn't have done it without you."

            Robert wasn't sure how true that was.  Faith was, after all, the Slayer.  "Anytime you need help, don't hesitate to ask."  Just then, Faith's pager went off with Xander's cellular phone number.