Written by: Xandra & Ryan
Book One could be found here: , or on my site.
Chapter One: When the Dust Settles
Missing. That's all they could think about. Slayers were missing. Fiona was running around the dinning hall with a clipboard taking down the names of the students being brought in by Faith and Clem. They were finding and bringing everyone to the dinning hall. At least the girls were waking up. Fiona glanced over at the remaining sleepers. Evan and Matt had started to get up earlier but she made them rest some more. Xander got up but found he could go no farther then his chair. Willow did a little better, she was convinced she could help search but only made it to the door. Pike just decided to lay there. He fell back asleep at the table. They were lined up on the floor; the tables had been pushed out of the way. At least they were all right; only Curtis had been really injured. He was being taken care of but they were thinking of taking him to the hospital. When Ona saw Giles began to stir, she went to him. Robin began to wake as well so Faith went to him. So was Addison.
"Hey there." Fiona said kneeling down putting her hand gently on his chest.
"What happened? What time is it?" Giles asked as he coughed. He tried to sit up but needed her help.
"It's almost noon. Someone attacked the school; it's was around 3:30 I think. They knocked us out with some gas, still not sure what. They cleaned the air so after we were knocked out we were able to breathe again. Clem was the first to wake up. Then us, the slayers. Then my kids and Andrew. They've fallen back to sleep." She paused, she was shaking a little, but she took a deep breath and continued, "Sophie is missing, as is at least 15 of our students. Bridget too." She held back not wanting to say the last part, "Also- Buffy can't seem to find Dawn either."
"Oh god." He said and she moved a chair so he could lean back on it. He was still very groggy.
"She could still be here. I thought they took Evan earlier but we found her in one of the classrooms." Giles nodded and looked around. The slayers were sitting at the tables; they were scared, he didn't blame them one bit. Faith helped Robin over to a chair and went back out to look for students.
It wasn't too much later Buffy stormed back in. "I can't find her!" She said practically in tears. She went to Giles, who was now able to stand. "I don't even know where she was during the attack. Did you see her?"
"She was with us," Matt said sitting up. "We went down the other way, behind the classrooms, to lock the school down."
"Bridget and Dawn were with us." Evan continued. She and Matt were leaning on each other for support. "I had a vision, in my sleep. So I got them up first, Matt fell asleep on our couch. We ran into Bridget on our way to lock down the school but they were already in. I was only able to hit the alarm."
"Evan ran ahead, but they were behind us. The soldiers. Dawn, Bridget and me were knocked out." He shook his head, trying to remember. "Evan had ran too far ahead, I don't think they noticed her." Matt and Evan looked as if they were about to cry.
Fiona went to her children and hugged them tightly. "It'll be okay." She told them.
"Everyone in the house is here. They took her!" she pleaded to Giles. She looked like she was about to go into shock, again.
"Calm down, Buffy, relax." Willow said stumbling over. "We'll find her. We have to find all of them. They were obviously after Slayers. We can find them."
"Why would they take her? She's not a Slayer."
"Things didn't go according to plan," Xander spoke up. "They looked like military, they planned to gas us all in our sleep, take some of the girls. They would all be in bed; they could find the ones they wanted. Look around barely any girls over 15 taken. But the alarm was hit; they had to move fast and everyone fighting. They took who they saw."
"I agree." Pike said from his place on the floor. "They weren't expecting us to wake up."
"Do we know who 'they' are?" Vi asked from her place with the Slayers. "I mean I thought no one could know about this place. How could they find us?" No one answered her and the room remained silent.
"Hey Guys!" Faith called, reentering the Hall. "Look what I found!" She was holding a weapon in her hands, smirking. Faith went to Buffy to give her a closer look. Buffy took it. It was an Initiative weapon. The tazer gun that Professor Walsh had had backfire to try to get her killed.
"That's…" Xander could talk he just got up and grabbed it, "Riley?"
"Oh, dear lord." Giles sighed.
"The Initiative!" Willow gasped. "I better check the computer."
"Damn it!" Buffy yelled and walked away from the group. "That bastard!" She yelled again. She shut her eyes, hold back her tears. "How could I have trusted him?" She said to herself.
"What the Initiative?" Pike and Fiona asked.
***************
When Sophia Karameros began to wake, she was caught in the stage where she was awake but not conscious of the where she was and what she was doing there. And she most certainly didn't know she was locked in a cell eighteen floors below the surface in a Military base in the mountains. She opened her eyes. The room was cold, white and sterile. There was a bright light that made her eyes hurt; in fact she hurt all over. Like she had the flu.
She sat up and looked around her. She was on a hard cot made of plastic and bolted into the wall. Besides the bed there was only a toilet and a shelf in the small cell. On the shelf was a pair of white scrubs. She got up and went to the glass wall, which was the door to her prison. She could see more cells around her.
She saw Dawn lying on the bed in the cell across from her. Sophie looked to right, five more on that side of the hall and the same on her own side. Of the girls she saw she was the only one awake. She looked at the walls between the cell doors; each cell was given a number label and seemed to be showing the vital signs of each the occupants. To the left were more glass doors, leading into a security office. There were four visible guards, in military uniforms. She didn't know which branch. She kept looking and saw another door labeled: LAB #4. Wherever they were they were in trouble.
"Help!" she heard someone say a few cells down. Then there was pounding on the glass.
"Hey, this is Sophie, can anybody hear me?" She called.
"Yeah," the same voice replied right away. She knew the voice, it was Lee. She was fourteen, from Vermont and the youngest of four with her older sisters being identical triplets. She looked just like her sisters too. The same long curly hair and face, like they were almost like another part of the set. They were close they visited the school often. She was very good at sensing Vampires but was not as good a fighter. She looked around she could see her. "Where are we?"
"I don't know, Lee. Are you alright where are you?"
"I think I'm okay, kind feel sick." There was a pause, "I'm in a cell, where do you think I am?"
"I meant in the room. I'm by the entrance. Who are you across from?" Lee replied.
"Penny." Sophia looked around. Penny was on the other wall, all the way at the other end.
"It will be okay," she said to calm her. "Who else is here?"
"Not sure. I can only see Dawn, Enid, Shannon, Lizzy T. and Penny, but not who's next to us." Sophie turn back to her cell looking for something she could use to break down the door.
"Cory, Sara and Tess." a new voice answered. It was Shannon; she was two cells down from Dawn. "What the hell happened?" Shannon sounded scared, like she did when she talked to Sophie about her run in with Caleb from last year.
Sophie didn't answer she started pounding on the glass with her fists, trying to break it. It barely vibrated when she hit it and she could tell it had to be at least 2 inches thick. Also only after a little bit of pounding her hand ached, she stopped and made a fist. Muscle relaxants. She brought her hand to her neck, she could still feel the pressure form where they injected her with it. She began to pound on the cell door again, this time because she was trying to get the guards attention. She was not going anywhere not until the drug wore off.
After a few minutes it looked like it worked. Two of the guards escorted in two officers. Sophie wished she had paid more attention to Xander when he talked about the Army movies. The two Officers came to her cell, she stopped her racket.
"Please keep it down." Said the taller one with the "gold bird" on his uniform.
"Let me out of here!" She screamed.
"I'm sorry, Miss Karameros, we cannot do that." Said the shorter one with the gold maple on his uniform with a caduceus next to it. He was a doctor. He was short, in his forties and had a graying hair.
"I think you can." Sophia threaten, trying to rattle them.
"I think what Dr. Moseily meant was were not going to do that." Said the taller man, she read his name tag "Cl. Johanson" (NO IDEA)
"Why did you take us?" She asked, she tried moved herself into a threatening-like position leaning her arms against the glass glaring down at them. She was in luck, they were much shorter than her.
"Because you're Slayers." Was all he said, and he turned away.
They started to go to Shannon's cell but Sophie called out to them again. "Get us out of here!" Her captors just ignored her and they had the guards open Shannon's cell door. They held her back and injected something into her neck, they started to take her out of the room even with all the girls yelling. All the girls except Dawn, was awake now.l
"Where are you taking her?" Sophie yelled. The guards left with Dr. Moseily, Johanson stopped to talk to her.
"Don't worry about that." Then in a condescending tone he adds. "Please, keep it down and stop pounding on the glass. If you don't," he pointed to the wrist band on her arm and then to the dark line about an inch thick that ran around from the ceiling to the floor and back up again, "we'll turn that on. It will send a shock to you every time you try to cross that line. That goes to your girls too, we can always make anything much more worse for them."
She didn't care and pounded again. "Afisemas Na Pame!" She screamed at him in her native Greek, as he began to leave again.
"Oh also, don't think the relaxant is gonna wear off anytime soon. We barrowed the formula from an old friend of yours."
"Aregames!" She yelled at him again as he left.
************
Back at the school, the girls were allowed to go back to their rooms. Twenty people were taken including Dawn, Bridget and Sophia. Fiona had read the list. Cory, Enid, Penny, Lee, Sara, Elizabeth T., Carrie, Quinn, Shannon, Deborah, Sidney, Jean, Tess, Christia, Adena, Miranda, Shavonne,--what were they going to tell parents. Most of them were fifteen and under.
Giles declared a CSW meeting and they moved into the library to talk. The only student allowed where Matt and Evan. The topic was the Initiative. Buffy, Willow, Xander , Giles they each took turns telling the story. Riley, Spike, Adam, Oz, the list went on.
"You've got to be kidding me." Fiona said. "How could they be so arrogant!" She was outraged.
"I can." Pike said, "I worked with those asses for years, sounds like a stupid thing they would do." Addison just kept quiet, she felt very out of her element. All this time she had been worried about the girls education, she never thought something like this could happen. She was playing the self-blame game too.
"And they took our girls?" Fiona still not believing this, began to pass around the room, she stood and turned around to look at Giles, "You knew someone was on to this place, that why you started getting strict with the girls."
"I was approached, when I was in town, he was asking me too many questions. About what school was like, the staff, the students. He just seem to know too much." He sighed. "That's why I went off the handle when the girls were noticed." He explained.
"It's my fault." Buffy said taking her seat. "I saw Riley in Cleveland. When I first got there. I trusted him, told him everything." She was disgusted with herself.
"It's not your fault." Giles tried to calm her.
"It's entirely my fault!" She shouted, "I told him everything!" Pike went to her and put his arms around her. She couldn't hold back her fear for Dawn's safety, as well as the other girls.
"Were going to find them." Pike said and they all agreed, they were all tired and worried. They needed to rest but they knew that would not come easy. They sat there in silence for a long moment more, it was ended abruptly when Hortenzia ran into the room.
"Hey you guys, we've been picking up calls from the field," She said almost out of breath, "you better come quick. Other Slayers are going missing too."
End chapter one.