Everyone: I know it's been a while, but I've been very busy and haven't had much time or disposition to write fanfiction. I promise however that I will finish both this story and Teenage Wasteland in time.

Part 6

Monster

The Mundagoon Complex

Anne's military bunk

She was crying in a corner, hugging her body, when the massive metal door opened and a familiar figure appeared in the doorway.

"Spike?" she muttered when she saw the vampire entering her room. She ran straight into his arms letting all the frustration inside her flow out of her in a storm of tears that wetted the vampire's leather jacket.

"What have they done to you?" he asked saddened as he rocked her body in his arms like he would a little child's. He put aside the anger that was boiling inside him against the doctors, humanity's desperate need for a leader and Cincineel herself who had been the seed of this tormented creature's life – he knew full well it wouldn't help him with anything, only make the doctors remove him and refuse him any further contact with the clone.

"He wouldn't let me sleep!" she let out wiping her tears away with her sleeve.

"Shh, I know," he pulled her hand away and gently started wiping her tears away with his hands. "I've been watching you. From the top of the walls surrounding the training area."

"You were?" she seemed comforted by that thought somehow.

"Of course I was," he said with a weak smile. "I wanted to help you so badly. Beat the hell out of that bloody general they sent…"

"Why didn't you?" she asked confused.

"Way of the world, love," he said letting out an unnecessary sigh. Any little protest on his behalf would've been a good enough reason for the doctors to remove him from the experiment. So although it had torn him apart, he had been reduced to watching that horrifying general bully her – the shadow of the woman he had loved and that he still loved although she was long dead. Every moment he reminded himself that if he gave in to the anger, then his plan would never be fulfilled and Anne would never taste freedom. He had to endure it. For now.

"Tell me another story," she begged with tears in her eyes. "I want to hear another story."

East entrance of the Mundagoon Complex

The figure walked down the corridor, its steps echoing in the empty hallways. It was dark, it was late - too late for anyone to be wondering down those corridors. The cameras moved slowly from corner to corner as if they were tired as well and had suddenly grown lazy. The white coat reached down to his knees and he nervously arranged his glasses as he made his way towards the exit. Security had grown tighter since the incursion of Cincineel's assassin and he had to use his security clearance for each door he passed through. His palms were sweaty and he had the feeling that he was being watched by a thousand eyes. What he was doing was wrong. Or was it? What was he accomplishing again? He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Two more doors and he would be outside…He quickened his pace. The second door opened and then the last. He took in a deep breath of air and looked around the garden. It was a sort of relaxation area for doctors. Green was soothing, calming and sometimes that's what the doctors working within the complex needed. While ethics had stopped being an issue a long time ago in their profession, sometimes the enormity or monstrosity of what they were doing would become overwhelming. He supposed that was now such a time for him. Or maybe he was just weak, a little voice inside him thought.

As he scanned the area, he came across a figure hiding in the darkness and discreetly gestured for it to near him. Two knives suddenly flew in his direction and he flinched although the knives passed right by him and embedded themselves into two security cameras above him on the wall of the complex.

"Come on," he muttered as the figure finally dared to show itself. "We don't have much time. Anne is being kept in a military bunk attached to the west wall of the incubation area. The only way you can reach it is by going directly through the complex. I can get you inside, but I can't guarantee your safety or that I'll be able to help you if you're captured."

"Get me inside," she simply said.

"All right," he muttered after he held his breath for a moment. He turned on his heels and before opening the door he looked back at the woman and asked: "Why Erinya?"

"For obvious reasons," she said as she uncovered her face.

"My god," the doctor let out shocked while the woman quickly covered herself again.

"Door," she reminded the stunned man and the doctor, snapping out of his shock, quickly opened the door.

"You're on your own," he told her as she passed him by. She didn't say anything more, but disappeared down the hallway, in the darkness. When she was gone, he took out a transmitter. "Security? Something happened to the cameras on the East Wall. You should send someone to check them out."

Haydn Cohegen's office

"This is intolerable," Haydn said as he looked down at the two cameras with knives still embedded in them that were displayed on his desk. "We have doubled our surveillance. Nothing gets in or out without top security clearance. How could this…have come to pass?"

"Maybe she didn't do it from within the complex," the security chief suggested. "If she has a good enough aim she could've done it while she was perched up on the wall somewhere."

"The wall that's supervised by 321 cameras you mean?" Haydn asked looking up at the man with a frown. "189 of which are mobile and turn 360 degrees every minute and are synchronized in such a way that not one inch isn't covered by them every second?" The security chief shifted his weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other. What did the doctor expect him to say?

"Someone let her in," the general spoke up as he looked out the windows of Haydn's office. "Whether you want to admit to it or not, doc, you got yourself a loyalty problem in this fine establishment."

"Don't you think I've realized that already?" Haydn asked sighing. "The problem is for this sort of breach someone with high security clearance would have to be involved and there are only a handful of people who have it. And each one of them is dedicated heart and soul to this project."

"What about the vampire?" the general asked looking back at the doctor. "He has, from what I've seen almost unlimited access through the complex and to the clone."

"It can't be him," Haydn shook his head. "He cares too much for her. Besides, he was the one who stopped the assassin last time."

"Plausible deniability," he suggested. "Maybe it was orchestrated to appear as if he was saving her so he couldn't be blamed of anything if something happened a second time around."

"That's highly improbable," Haydn shook his head. "You replaced the cameras, right?" he addressed the security chief.

"Yes and we added two more just to make sure this doesn't happen again," the man assured him.

"It might be too late for that," the doctor muttered. "You're excused," he gestured for the man to leave. The security chief sighed relieved and headed out. When they were alone, Haydn asked the general: "Anyone else you might consider suspicious?"

"I haven't met your entire staff, but I suggest you pull out all their files and have them carefully analyzed by your top psychologists and logistic machines. You might be surprised by the result," he told him before heading for the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me I have a trainee to get back to."

"General," doctor Cohegen stopped him for a moment. "Suppose the assassin managed to get inside somehow. What then?"

"I think it would be an ideal situation," the general admitted. "We'd finally get to see how your experiment, put in a real hazardous situation, would react. If she survived it would cost the assassin its life and prove you haven't been wasting your time and otherwise…well, you can always brainwash the assassin and maybe get a decent general for our troops out of it. Something trained by the enemy could prove useful after all."

"Are you suggesting I don't try and find this assassin?" Haydn asked rising his eyebrows.

"Precisely," the general nodded. "And even more, I'd go as far as suggesting you tell your security people to simply ignore her appearance on the screen if she makes the mistake of popping up on one."

Anne's training facility

She was doing better. Running wasn't so bad anymore. Her muscles didn't ache too much, her breathing was regular and the general, although observing her with a frown and a face of stone from the sideline, seemed pleased by her progress. Her head was still full of the wonderful new stories Spike had told her that morning. Of the singing demon that had made everyone dance and sing in Sunnydale and the time the slayer had been turned invisible by the deadly geek nemeses trio. She smiled as she remembered those stories and she quickened her pace.

"What are you grinning at, soldier? You're not good enough to be sneering just yet!" the general yelled after her as she passed him by. She forced herself to keep a straight face. Spike had also told her about the day she would see what was outside the walls of the complex. She wasn't even allowed in the garden anymore. Before, watched by an army of doctors, she had been allowed short visits to the relaxation area where she got to breathe fresh air and touch plants and the bark of trees and the soil beneath her shoes. It had been a strange feeling considering she had spent all of her life between the concrete walls of the Mundagoon Complex. The thought of being outside the complex – alone, without anyone watching her every move – made her nervous, but at the same time, the simple idea made her smile and become giddy. She imagined herself running across an endless landscape that in her mind looked exactly like a million gardens, like the one she knew, put head to head. That was the only way she could imagine it as she hadn't seen anything else belonging to the outside world. She didn't even know that beyond the walls of the complex there were no trees or grass, only wastelands over wastelands as Phenias was a secluded deserted planet that had been chosen as a home to the Mundagoon Complex precisely because of those attributes.

As she continued to run, she saw a figure perched up on the facility's wall and knew that was Spike. She smiled up at him, but didn't dare to wave as she wanted to. She knew that would enrage the general. Instead, she looked back at the running track, focused on it and continued to run. 10 laps. 11 laps. 12 laps. 13 laps…

Room 1134

"Well?" Dollorian asked the doctor as he started removing the wires attached to his body. The doctor had demanded that he come to his office every day for the next few weeks so he could follow his condition closely. The drug used to ensure his recovery was after all experimental.

"It looks…," the doctor observed the screens that showed his vital signs were chaotic, his pulse too low, his kidneys were failing and his right lung was beyond any kind of recovery. His heart was under an abnormal pressure and blood vessels in his brain were threatening to pop at any moment. "Fine. Brilliant. Your…uhm, liver's recovering well."

"I feel great. You have no idea what a weight you've lifted off my heart," Dollarian said grateful, letting out a sigh of relief. "It's so horrible when…when you know you'll never be healthy again. That there isn't a chance…not even a glimmer of hope…and then…," he chuckled. "Relief doesn't even cover what I feel right now."

"I'm happy for you," the doctor said, feeling knot in his stomach as he did. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Of course," Dollorian told him smiling and putting his shirt back on, he left the room. When he was gone, the doctor rubbed his face tiredly and saved Dollorian's results to a file on his computer. By following his condition he could at least tell when he would be close to dying. It was only a matter of time now. He had given him a thousand pills to take as a supplement for the injection that annulled all his pain and Dollorian took them all, but at this point, it was pretty hopeless. The doctor just needed to convince himself he was doing all he could for the poor slayer. He desperately needed that assurance, if not for Dollorian's sake then for that of his own conscience.

The corridor outside Room 1134

As the slayer passed him by, Spike suddenly stopped, hesitated, then turning towards him, yelled after him:

"Dollorian, right?" The slayer looked back at him curiously. He apparently wasn't aware who Spike was. He had of course heard of his presence there and knew all the legends concerning him, but his appearance didn't strike a nerve. He had seen old pictures of him, in the slayer history books, but now beneath the leather coat Spike had clothes belonging to the modern day and age and half his face was obscured by the tattoo he had received in the vampire concentration camp.

"Yes," Dollorian said after a moment of hesitation.

"You're a slayer," Spike said and he nodded. "I went to see Niya yesterday. She mentioned you," he paused for a moment before adding: "I'm Spike by the way."

"The Spike?" he asked with a mixture of awe and suspicion. He had seen a real vampire only once in his life, when he had been a child and his parents had taken him to a zoo on Andalla. He still remembered the show the vampires were forced to put on. To show their fangs, drink the blood of rats for the enjoyment of the public. They were underfed and dressed in filthy rags. He had pitied them then until he had read a book on the old days and then he had thought they had gotten what they had deserved.

"The one and only," Spike said with a smile. He thought the reactions slayers –male or female didn't matter anymore – had when they found out who and what he was were highly amusing. "The girl says the good doc's put it to his mind to convince you he can make you all better."

"He already has," Dollorian said annoyed. Niya had been wrong. The doctor, the charts – which he didn't know how to read – all said the same: he was getting better.

"Don't be stupid, mate," Spike urged him. "Everyone knows slayer conditioning fucks up your cells faster than any deadly disease known to man."

"Every disease has a cure. It's been proven countless times before. It was just time someone found a solution for the problems of slayer conditioning too. It's been a flawed process for over 3 centuries, it had to be perfected at one point," Dollorian reminded him. "If you don't believe me ask the doctor," he said and gestured towards room 1134 and then stormed off. Spike stared at the closed door. Just as he was about to go inside alarms went off all around the complex.

"Anne," he muttered and ran down the corridor.

Anne's training facility

She was alone. The general and the soldiers guarding her had rushed inside the complex to see what all the commotion was about. They didn't worry about Anne. She was constantly being watched by cameras. The general, before leaving, had ordered her to do another few laps, but as soon as he was gone Anne had stopped running, even if she knew the general would find out she hadn't been doing as she had been told after viewing the video footage of the facility's security cameras.

She sat down on the floor cross-legged and breathed deeply. She looked up at the walls, hoping to spot Spike watching her from up above, but found they were empty. He had probably been drawn inside by the alarms going off as well.

"I hoped you'd be alone this time," a voice startled Anne and she turned around to see a figure dressed completely in black and with her face covered looking down at her. In one hand, she held a sword. Anne had a deep knowledge of swords implanted in her mind.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Anne asked confused. "I know I'm suppose to know a lot of people, but I don't always remember everybody. Are you from Sunnydale?"

"You could say I am," the woman said as she reached out to remove the dark garment covering her face. "I am who you are. Only worse. Only better," she said and piercing green eyes stared into Anne's blue ones. Her face was, like Anne's, a copy of someone else's, except hers was horribly disfigured and only certain traits – the chin, the way her hair fell over her scarred face, the lips – vaguely reminded one of who she had been made to resemble, namely the greatest slayer of all times, Buffy Summers. "You see, we are both flawed in our way. I was too disfigured physically, you're too emotionally mutilated. They wanted to kill me when I was just a fetus because no one would follow a monster into battle; they bred you to be their great general. But to your great misfortune, I was saved." Anne said nothing. She continued to stare at those eyes. Green like the girl's in Spike's drawings. Green like hers would never be. Green like Haydn had wanted them. "And raised by the true heirs of Buffy Summers, Cincineel and the Slayer Liberation Army."

"Are you Buffy?" Anne managed to ask.

"You don't have a clue, do you?" she smirked and told her: "No, I'm Erinya. Do you know what an Erinya is?" Anne shook her head. "It's an ancient Greek mythological term. The Erinyes were the punishers of mortals. Those that inflicted divine judgment onto human beings. I thought it appropriate given the circumstances," she said rising her sword.

Anne held up her hand and asked innocently:

"What is divine?"

"Something you'll never be," Erinya muttered and prepared to strike her down.

"Anne, get out of her way!" Spike yelled as she entered the training area in a rush and jumped directly at Erinya. Taken by surprise, Erinya didn't have time to move and the vampire knocked her off her feet and the sword flew out of her hands. Applying a few kicks to Spike's stomach, Erinya managed to free herself and tried to reach out for her sword, but the vampire threw her out of its way. They went back and forth for a while until Spike managed to get the upper hand and grabbing her neck in an iron hold, chocked her to death. When he let go of her, her body fell limp to the floor. Anne stared at it wide eyed. "It's okay now, luv," he told her gathering himself. "She won't hurt you anymore." Anne neared the body hesitantly and kneeled down next to it. She touched the knife hidden inside Erinya's belt – she hadn't had a chance to take it out – and, after looking intently for a few moments at the lifeless green eyes staring up at the ceiling, Anne grabbed the knife and plunged it inside Erinya's eyes furiously, with tears in her own blue eyes. "Anne…," Spike muttered, but didn't dare to try and stop her. He couldn't know what sort of mixed up feelings Erinya had awakened inside her.

The Planet Corrian

Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army

Cincineel's chambers

Kenya rushed inside the room without even knocking. Cincineel looked up from the bed annoyed and pushed Thomas off of her.

"You better have a good reason to…," Cincineel started saying, but Kenya cut her off:

"Erinya failed. She's dead. The vampire killed her," Kenya told her in one breath.

"Damn it!" she let out furious and hit the bed with her fist.

"There were other news from the Mundagoon Complex as well," Kenya added and Cincineel looked at her expectantly: "The vampire is planning to escape Phenias. With the clone."

"Now that is good news," Cincineel said with a smile.

End Part 6