Part 4
The Shadow
Planet Phenias
The Mundagoon Complex
"Do I even have to point out the horrifying situation we find ourselves in?" doctor Domner asked leaning back in his chair uncomfortably.
Haydn Cohegen, who was presiding the emergency meeting that had been convoked after Anne's miserable failure at killing the demon, looked pensively at the doctors before saying:
"Maybe she is more flawed than we allowed ourselves to admit or we're simply going about this the wrong way. Offering her everything she needs. Giving her a choice. Perhaps that was wrong. If we want a leader we should create the conditions appropriate for breeding an elite militarist."
"I thought we wanted Buffy Summers," doctor Vecka pointed out.
"Buffy Summers is dead. What we have in there," Cohegen gestured towards the direction of Anne's room within the complex. "Is a bad copy with an extinguished flame. If we get the fire burning, then she might take one step closer to the greatness of the woman she was suppose to resemble."
"And if we can't force her to kill? To use her skills properly?" Vecka asked frowning.
"Then she will die trying," Domner interfered agreeing with Cohegen. "If she will not defend herself when her own life is at stake - in an uncontained scenario - then she is of no use to us."
"After all the trouble we've gone through to breed her?" Vecka protested. "Gentlemen, isn't all this too extreme?"
"But we do live in extreme times, doctor Vecka," Domner pointed out. "The slayer army is advancing. Soon, humanity will have to make its last great stand against it and we have no one worthy to lead our armies. Do you understand the gravity of this situation? We are nearing the brink of our extinction or do you doubt for a moment that they won't annihilate us to the last man, woman and child when they have reached dominion?"
Met with such a harsh reply, doctor Vecka remained silent.
"Do you all agree to my suggestion then?" Haydn spoke up. "That she be transferred in a more suitable area? The military bunks, for example, found a few miles from here would be a proper change."
"We'd have to reposition our surveillance equipment and move our entire headquarters there," Domner pointed out the inconvenience.
"Or we could reposition one of the military bunks," another doctor suggested. "Given the military's habit of building easily transportable and disassembling units, I don't think it would be a problem, whereas some of our equipment is very fragile and a proper movement would take days."
"Excellent point, doctor Mermer," Haydn nodded approvingly. "Then if you could..."
"I'll make the proper arrangements," he assured him.
"We'll also need an incentive," Domner pointed out. "Someone from the military. The harshest of the best we can find. Someone who'll push her hard."
"At least don't take away the vampire's visiting privileges," Vecka interfered. "They're vital to her mental well being."
"Spike will have his visits, don't worry, doctor," Haydn assured him. "As for a military officer to train her, I'll speak to the general this very after noon."
Anne's room
She was cowering in a corner when he entered her room after knocking politely on the torn out door. She was crying and it broke his heart to see her in that state. He crouched down next to her and put a gentle comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Hey," he whispered and she looked up at him with her big blue tear filled eyes. She stared at him for a moment before jumping in his arms, sobbing.
"Why did they do that?" she asked in between sobs.
"They just wanted to test your instincts, luv," Spike explained. "But it was too early. You still need time..."
"But I don't want to kill anything," she said pulling away.
"Now, now, none of that," the vampire told her wiping her tears away with his hand. "The doctor won't be pleased to hear that. And unfortunately for us, we have to care what the doctor thinks for now."
"Killing is wrong. No matter what you're killing," Anne protested.
"It's quite a different story when that 'no matter what' of yours starts killing everyone dear to you or innocent people," he said wisely.
"I don't want to know that kind of no matter what," she told him, her lower lip trembling.
"Shhh," he hugged her again, holding her in his arms as if she were nothing but a child. "Do you want to hear another story?" he suggested in order to calm her.
"Yes, please," a weak smile crossed her saddened face.
"All right then. No more tears," he pressed his lips to her forehead, holding her face in his hands. Anne's smile widened and as soon as he let go, she jumped in her bed, sitting down cross-legged on it waiting for Spike to start his story. The vampire headed over to the doorway he had come through and picking up the door, started attempting to put it back in its place.
"I'm going to tell you a ghost story," he said frowning when the door would just not sit in its place. "You're not too scared to hear a ghost story, are you?" he looked back at her and smiled when he saw Anne, holding a cover over her head shaking her head. Finally managing to make the door sit up somehow, he turned off the lights. It was night outside, so the room was dark. "Good, because it's a particularly eerie tale," he said nearing the bed. He turned on a small lamp that illuminated his face only partially, giving the impression of candlelight. He sat down in a chair next to the bed and smiled when he saw the slayer looking at him with wide eyes. "A long long time ago, when humans still lived on Earth, there was a town called Sunnydale and a great - bigger-than-life - battle took place there and I was chosen to be the hero of this tale. I thought I had died, but instead, months later, I found myself haunting the building of the most annoying of creatures..." he began his story, his eyes never leaving Anne's for maximum effect and his mind wondering down corridors he hadn't walked down in ages. 'Seems right this way', he thought to himself. 'I never did have a chance to tell her this story.'
Distracted as they both were, one lost in the past, the other in the fantasy world she could only imagine, not see, they didn't notice a third person watching them through the room's window, from outside. The woman seemed mesmerized by them, her eyes, of an unrecognizable color, stared at Anne in particular with a sort of sick jealousy she couldn't hold back. Her body was wrapped in a black cloak, her face was covered by fabric and as she watched them she felt the urge to cover her face even more. She touched the glass and a bitter sadness filled her every thought.
"Spike," she whispered, barely audible. Tears formed in her eyes. She pulled away from the window and leaned on the wall right next to it, brutally wiping away her tears, leaving bloody gashes under her eyes with her nails. She clutched her fists until it hurt and turned back towards the window with a much more determined attitude.
Surveillance room
One of the guards looked bored from screen to screen, hoping to catch something interesting on the many monitors that showed various chambers throughout the Mundagoon Complex. His partner had plugged in a set of headphones and had turned up the volume on camera 623 that showed Anne's room, to hear Spike's story too. The other guard shook his head and rolled his eyes. But on closer inspection of the screen his companion was watching, he noticed something strange. He put a hand on the other guard's shoulder and the man startled. He pulled down his headphones and looked questioningly at his partner.
"What is it?"
"What's that?" the second guard pointed towards a shadowed figure that he spotted by the window.
"Looks like a person," he only noticed the presence now.
"An intruder," the other guard corrected him.
"Should we sound the alarm?" he asked his hand ready to press the general alarm button.
"We'll lose him this way. If he got this far without being detected, then he's going to disappear at the first sign of commotion," he pointed out.
"What then?" he looked back at the screen with a frown.
"I have an idea," the other guard said with a smile.
Anne's Room
"I realized I could write on the glass. So concentrating real hard, I managed to...," Spike was interrupted by a ringing sound coming from within the room. He looked around confused and eventually, using his sense of hearing, he managed to locate the place the sound was coming from. He found an old fashioned telephone and smiled. They probably believed that 21th century memorabilia would somehow make Anne feel more at home. He picked up the phone.
"Yes?"
"This is security, there's an intruder outside your window," the guard told him. "Could you catch him?"
"Of course," Spike said with a smile, nothing in his appearance betraying what he had just found out. He hung up and returned to Anne's side.
"What's wrong?" Anne asked gesturing towards the phone.
"Nothing, they just...uhm, doctor Cohegen wants to talk to me," he lied and stole an almost unnoticeable glance at the window, immediately spotting the shadow of the figure that had retreated next to the window when he had stood up from his chair. But even this gesture was noticed by the intruder and it was an immediate sign of danger. Both her and Spike's reactions seemed to be synchronized. Just as she fled from the building, he jumped out into the night, breaking the window in the process.
He chased her to the gates of the complex, she was very light on her feet and used to the strain, so it was pretty hard for him, with his entire vampire strength, to catch up with her. He managed to reach her just as she started climbing up the gates in an attempt to escape. He grabbed her cloak and pulled her down before she had a chance to reach the top. The figure stumbled to the ground, but regained her balance very fast, taking a defensive fighting stance before the vampire.
"Who are you?" Spike asked her before she charged him. Her moves were somewhat predictable and the vampire easily dodged most of them, counterattacking others, but the strength and stamina with which she hit were not lost on him. Only slayers had that natural strength and capability to aim at a vampire's weak points. She managed to throw him off his feet and hit him in the stomach twice before he grabbed her leg and threw her away from him, giving himself enough time to stand up. Just as he searched for her fallen form around him, in the dark, she hit him from behind, imbedding a wooden stake through his back, but luckily for him, in the right side, not the left. He collapsed to the ground wincing in pain as the mystery woman made a hasty retreat over the complex's gates.
"Are you alright, sir?" a guard asked as he neared the fallen Spike as two other men tried to stop the fleeing woman with laser guns. But it was too late, she was already too high up on the gates to be reached by their feeble attempts.
"Oh, yeah, bloody peachy," Spike said as he struggled to stand up.
"Just stay down, I'll call the medical unit," the guard told him.
"Medical unit," the vampire chuckled. "Boy, I've lived for over a millenium and I never needed a damn medical unit to survive a little scratch like this."
"But sir...she skewered you," the young guard pointed out.
"Skewered, nearly killed. What's the difference?" he asked as he looked down at the piece of wood sticking out of his chest. "1, 2...," he pulled the stake out with both of his hands. He grunted when the pain sent shockwaves through his entire body. "3."
"Did you have a chance to see her face?" he asked looking at the gates as if desperately needing to look at something else except Spike's wound.
"Nope, her face was covered, but her eyes seemed oddly familiar," the vampire said thinking back to his fight with her. "One thing I can tell you though, she was a slayer."
"Figures," the guard shrugged. "Who else would be interested in finding out what's going on here except them. We'll have to double security."
"You do that," Spike said absently, staring at the gates in front of him. "I'm getting too old for this," he murmured to himself.
The Planet Corrian
Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army
Cincineel's chambers
"She's getting distracted," Cincineel said pacing in front of the half naked Thomas, lost in thoughts. "I should've never allowed it. She should have seen her only once. When she killed her."
"Relax," Thomas suggested, leaning his head on the pillows. "This can only feed her hatred."
"Are you sure?" Cincineel eyed him with a penetrating gaze. "What's stopping her from simply siding with her? Seeing how good and lovely she can be and what a monster she 't she suddenly decide that killing her would be a crime?"
"Are you listening to yourself?" Thomas chuckled. "You're getting way too paranoid and you know that's not a good quality in a leader. No human being, faced with a similar situation as Erinya, would ever side with the clone. This is instinctual hatred. Primal, it doesn't have a logic. It's absolutely irrational which is the reason why this plan is so brilliant to begin with."
"This whole situation is wearing me out," Cincineel confessed stopping her nervous pacing to stare absently at the floor. "Everything is hanging by a thread."
"The human armies don't stand a chance against us, with or without the reincarnation of Buffy Summers," Thomas assured her. "She is more legend than reality, Cincineel. You're afraid of a myth. Think of this logically, how could one person make a difference? How could this flawed copy of a hero stand against the might of your armies?"
"Too many leaders have failed by underestimating one single person," she pointed out. "I want her dead."
"And you will have your wish," Thomas told her. "Erinya will not fail you."
Planet Phenias
The Mundagoon Complex
Room 1134
Dollorian blinked several times until his vision cleared. His head was hurting and he felt like he was suffocating. He stood up in his bed far too quickly and felt like his world had started spinning around him.
"Stay down," the doctor told him.
"Doctor?" he asked weakly as he let his head fall back down on the pillows.
"You had an attack," he told him calmly.
"It was twice as worse as my last one," Dollorian muttered.
"Your condition has worsened," the doctor nodded. "But...," he hesitated looking at the vials that held the drug Haydn had ordered him to lie to Dollorian about. "I've been working on an antidote."
"Really?" his face light up with hope.
"Yes," the doctor looked away. "It'll be ready in a few days."
"Doctor, you've just become my hero," Dollorian said relieved.
The Conference room
"How the hell did this happen?" Haydn asked looking at the vague imagine of the intruder the guards had provided him with.
"The guards didn't see anything. The tapes are clean. I looked at them personally," Domner told him. "I'm afraid this can mean only one thing."
"Treason," Haydn agreed sighing. "Any leads on who the mystery woman is?"
"None whatsoever," Vecka interfered. "She was cloaked. Spike said she was a slayer."
"Figures," Haydn shook his head. "An assassin sent by the Slayer Liberation Army. How's the military bunk transportation going?"
"It'll be finished by morning," doctor Mermer assured him.
"Good. I don't want the vampire to know until Anne will be transferred," doctor Cohegen told them. "He'll just stir up trouble. Oppose us. Until then...," he looked down at the picture again. "We have a mole to find."
End Part 4
