Author's Note: Well, I guess the question whether or not you lot still remember this story was answered. 13 reviews within a day. I'm not sure whether that's a personal best for me, but it's gotta be in the top five at least. So, to reward you for your dedicated reviewing, here is another chapter. First, though, a few remarks to the reviewers:

Rosie W: Was Lydecker's wife killed? It's been a while since I watched "Jesus Brought a Casserole", but I don't think it was said one way or the other, just that Max reminded him of her. Oh well, seeing as I've broken Dark Angel continuity quite a few times already, just imagine that she left him during his depressed phase.

Tap Dancing Widow: You'll get your Angel vs. Lydecker in this very chapter. As for Angel meeting Logan, not sure whether I'll include that. If I do, it will be somewhere around the end, as Logan will not be as involved in the attack on Manticore in my story as he was in the TV series. More of a command & control role here.

Ellie: I don't have any pairing plans for this story (I don't really write shipper-fic), but I did include something you might like in this chapter featuring Zack and one of the other Slayers. Will more come from it? Possibly. This is the kind of stuff I might tack on to the end of this story as well.

Again, thanks for all your reviews. Keep it up! And now, on with the show!

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Part 13: A Colonel and a Vampire Sat in a Hotel Room ...

#

When Colonel Donald Lydecker regained consciousness he made two quick observations. One, he was tied to a chair. Quite expertly so, in fact. He had been taught by the best, but escape from these bonds seemed rather impossible. And second, he wasn't alone. There was one other person in the room he found himself in and it was the 'uncle' from earlier.

The man was sitting in a chair right in front of him, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees as he studied Lydecker with the air of a psychiatrist measuring his newest patient. The silence was deafening. Turning his head as far as the bonds allowed Lydecker took in the room. Size and layout spoke of a hotel room. Faded wallpapers and shoddy carpet, no furniture but the two chairs and a table. On the table he saw ... tools. Quite a few of them in fact.

"Are you going to torture me now?" he asked.

"Eventually," the other man said calmly. He might as well have been talking about the weather. "I am sure that you have already grasped your situation and are aware that we want information from you."

"And you think any information you might get from me won't be trustworthy unless I have been given some added incentive first?"

"Something along that line, yes."

He made no move to begin, though, falling back into silence. Lydecker wasn't surprised. You want to torture someone? Tell him you're going to and then let him wait for it, stew in his own sweat. Basic technique.

"You've done this before then?"

"Quite a few times, yes."

Silence again. Lydecker studied the man now, remembering the disturbing detail that he had walked out of a gas-filled building without a gas mask. Looking at him now, he searched in vain for any signs of breathing. And that wasn't the only weird thing he picked up about his opposite.

The man looked young, but his eyes looked very old. He didn't blink. At least five minutes passed and he didn't blink. He sat still, incredibly still. If he didn't know better Lydecker might have mistaken him for a wax doll or statue. His skin was pale, as if he hadn't seen the sun in years.

"Torture me all you like," he said, his voice sounding remarkably calm to his own ears. "I've been trained by the best. You won't get anything out of me."

"Are you sure about that?" There! A slight movement of his chest just before he spoke. As if he needed air only in order to speak, but not at other times.

"I'm su..."

"No one can resist torture indefinitely," the man quoted the familiar words. "The mind is infinitely pliable. You will reveal what you know." He gave a brief smile. "Those are your words, aren't they, Donald? May I call you Donald? Max told me a lot about you. About the training you gave them. There was a time they all looked up to you, you know that? That was before they realized what you were doing to them, of course."

"I assume you know what Max and her friends are," he said, hoping to get the other man onto a different train of thoughts.

"I know."

"You are not exactly normal yourself, either, are you?"

"We could spend a lot of time talking about me, Donald. That is not why we are here, though, so I hope you'll forgive me if we skip my life's story for today."

"Do you have a name, son?"

A slight chuckle escaped the man. "Sorry, just the notion of you calling me 'son', well, just believe me that it is rather amusing for reasons you are not privy to. You should know, though, that the last person who called me son was my father and we never got along. I ended up killing him."

His complete matter-of-fact tone robbed Lydecker of any hope that he was joking about that last part.

"You can call me Angel, by the way."

Moving for the first time, he got up and picked up a tool from the nearby table. It was a knife, an ordinary kitchen knife. Just from the way he handled it Lydecker could tell that he knew very well how to use it and not just for peeling apples.

"You are the commanding officer of Manticore," Angel said, walking towards him with the knife in hand. "Your command is located in a secure facility near Gillette, Wyoming. Apart from a rather extensive security system and many armed guards you also have a large number of genetically engineered super soldiers stationed there to protect it."

He squatted down in front of Lydecker, still playing with the knife.

"By the time we are done here you will have told me how to get in without being noticed, how to turn off the security system in a way that won't notify the guards, and how to take down the X-5 soldiers with minimum fuss, a safety measure I'm sure you have installed somewhere."

Lydecker was about to say something, but whatever words he had thought up slipped from his mind before he could utter them when he saw the man's face begin to change. This was impossible! What kind of genetic enhancement could ... long fangs? Bumpy forehead? Amber eyes? What was going on here?

"How long it takes," the man turned monster went on calmly, "is, of course, entirely up to you."

#

Faith's sensitive hearing had little trouble picking up the first scream even through several thick walls. She closed her eyes, trying to block it out. The last thing she needed right now was a flashback to her own darker days. All these years and she still didn't know how Angel did it. How he lived with all he had done, all the blood-soaked memories he carried around. Her own load, as heavy as it was, was less than a hundredth of his.

"He took his time," Zack said from where he sat beside her.

"Angel's got nothing if not patience," Faith told him. "Comes with being as old as dirt, I guess."

"Does he know our time is limited? When Lydecker doesn't call in soon they'll assume he has been captured and change all the security codes, revoke his access privileges, everything."

"He knows, Zack! Let him do his thing, okay? He's the best there is at what he does."

The young man got up with a huff, not caring how many people knew that he didn't like their current situation one bit.

Most of the other X-5 were in the training area at the moment, sparring with the Slayers to get back into combat shape. Though genetically enhanced, most of them hadn't exactly kept up their training regimes these past few years. Wesley and Robin were observing, hoping to assess the mental readiness of the kids. They were a bit worried about the one called Ben, who seemed mentally unstable at best.

Max was off somewhere chatting with 'Eyes Only', whom Faith secretly suspected was that guy Logan she had been referring to several times now, her almost-boyfriend. She'd have to meet the boy one of these days, put the fear of God in him and everything.

Apart from Faith the only other Slayer present was Alison, taking a break from putting the X-5 through the wringer. The youngest Slayer alive, she had been a mere fourteen years old when Willow's spell activated all the potentials. Despite being thirty now she was still regarded as the baby among their tightly-knit group. So when Faith saw her checking out the pacing Zack's ass she couldn't quite resist a little tease.

"Thinking of shopping in the junior section, baby girl?"

Alison gave her a mock-glare and stuck out her tongue. "Afraid I'll corrupt your son, grandma? Stop him from becoming a perfect Angel-copy?"

Faith barely managed to keep in her laughter, even though she still had trouble thinking of the grim young man as her son. Zack, his own enhanced hearing easily picking up the low-spoken words, just glared at both of them.

"Maybe you should check whether anyone's given him the talk yet, Faith," Alison teased. "You know, the one with the flowers and the bees."

"Maybe I should," Faith went along. "Zack? Come here, son! I want to explain something to you."

She hadn't thought it possible, but his face actually grew grimmer still as he turned around and left the lobby, slamming the doors shut behind him. Alison and Faith no longer managed to restrain themselves and burst out laughing.

"God, Faith," Alison managed between fits. "I don't remember the last time I laughed like this. This place really needed some youth injected into it."

"It sure did," Faith agreed, though she quickly found herself sobering up again. There were quite a few things she had managed not to spend too much time thinking about yet. Like, would the kids stay once their siblings were freed? Could they recruit some of them to help the Slayer cause? Should they? What were her duties as mother to all these children? How much of an influence could she be on them, seeing as they were all grown-up already. How much of an influence should she be?

"You okay?" Alison asked, picking up on Faith's darker mood.

"Yeah. Just thinking."

"Stop that! We always end up in trouble when you try that!"

That managed to bring a smile to Faith's lips, but only for an instant. Then her hearing picked up another scream from the improvised torture chamber two floors above.


TO BE CONTINUED