"Bloody hell!" he cursed as he sped towards the Magic Box. Braking to a halt and leaving two unsightly skid marks outside the building, he got out, slammed the door, and pounded on the entrance.
"Giles, damn it, let me in!"
The door flew open and Giles, in his robe and fuzzy slippers, blinked through his glasses. "Yes? Spike, you're back! Where's the girl?"
"She was stolen in the girl's loo at Sunnydale International. I looked everywhere for the buggers, but they're gone."
Giles shook his head. "Yes, I told you to be careful for them. I knew they'd be tailing you. Well, come in. Everyone's here, but no one's awake."
Spike and Giles woke the Scoobies and were greeted by groans and yawns and one death threat from a certain ex-demon. The group propped themselves up and Giles began the questioning.
"So what happened, exactly?"
Spike told him as much as he knew. He had picked her up off the highway and while they were on the plane the following party slipped her a note and she assumed it came from the authorities.
"So they have her?" Giles asked for clarification.
"If they don't, then she pulled a mighty fine Houdini. But I checked the whole area, and her scent stopped where a toilet began."
"I see. Well, we have to find her. If they invoke the rites, if could mean a nasty bit of business."
"Another Armageddon?" Buffy sighed.
"Oh no, nothing like that. I mean a simple Reckoning. A Rapture."
"What do you mean?" Willow asked.
Giles began to clean his glasses. "The Society intercepted a message sent from a group called the Ascenders to the Vatican that they were searching for something called the 'angelus defluo'. I did some private research, and what they meant was a certain mythological being believed to be a…an…"
"An angel," Tara finished.
"I suppose so."
"An angel?" Xander interrupted. "How'd you swing that?"
"'Angelus defluo' translates from Latin to 'lost angel'. You see, Gabriel is an archangel in the Bible. He eventually assists in the actual Armageddon; you know, the one with the Four Horsemen and all that.
"Well, it's believed in some branches of the faith that Gabriel came to earth and fell into sin, being cursed to remain in the flesh until God was ready for the Second Coming of Jesus. Then God would release Gabriel, who would regain his six wings, plus another one to represent his reuniting with the Lord."
"A seven-winged angel. That's great and all, but how does it affect this girl?" Xander demanded.
"That's the thing. Every few years or so, she is reassigned as a foster child to a new family. Her memory is erased and replaced with another that coincides to today's time. She had an operation that would knock her out should she get too excited."
"So you're saying…"
"Right. This girl is the Lost Gabriel."
"So she's an angel? And the operation…"
"Is to prevent her from ever accidentally beginning the Rapture. Exactly." Giles replaced his glasses on his nose and sighed.
"So what would this group want from her? She's harmless with that chip in her head, like some other people we know," Xander mentioned, looking in Spike's direction. The vampire sneered and looked back to Giles, who treated the little banter like a father would regard two sons. He simply continued.
"Yes, she is harmless…with that chip in her head. I suppose they plan to take it out of her somehow. The Ascenders are a rogue occult group. They worship the Second Coming, hence their names. It's no surprise they'd want it as soon as possible. I just took it upon myself to keep them from it until we could hand her over to the Society for safekeeping.
"Which is why I sent Spike. I knew he could fight off those worshipers without asking questions that were not meant to be answered. No offense, Buffy, but I couldn't let you ask things that have been covered up for too long. You might have been abducted yourself by our agents for knowing too much."
"So instead of sending me, a perfectly good fighter who wouldn't rip the head off something in my way without first asking if it was necessary…?" Buffy demanded.
Giles shrugged. "You needed to study for your classes."
Buffy sighed. "So where do we find the Ascenders?"
The librarian coughed. "Well…we don't know."
"Well, where would they get that thing out of her head? Maybe we can, you know, head them off at the pass," Xander suggested.
"Not a bad suggestion. Sunnydale ER?"
"I don't think they'd do it somewhere too obvious. I think it's time for the Scoobies to spread out and search for clues," Buffy stated.
