Long Term Care, Sunnydale Hospital Coma Wing

Nurse Matty had been looking after her for almost a year, while making her reports to the English group that was paying for everything. No one had come to see the young woman in about a year.

There had been a few kids in the first few months, the young man more than the others; he had said he had a connection with her. And then he just disappeared, too.

Now, no one came to see her.

It was sad, but from what she had heard about the girl, it was not unexpected.

Well it's time for her sponge bath, Matty thought, gathering up the bathing supplies as she moved toward the woman's room.

As she walked down to her patient's room, she thought back and realized that no one had really told her what to call her.

Pushing in the door as she entered, backwards, she said, "Ok time for your bath, sweetie."

Turning around, she came to a complete stop.

She was gone.

O god, what happened? she thought, noticing that the monitoring equipment was broken and scattered around the room.

Matty rushed to a phone and dialed the contact number she had been given.

When someone picked up on the other side, she told the unknown voice, "She's gone. I don't know what happened. When I came to bath her like I do each night, she was gone."

"Thank you. We'll handle it from here," was the reply she received. Then the voice was gone.

Same time
The Initiative's labs

Max knew Xander was in the room with her but still, she jumped when he appeared in her line of sight.

He was covered in blood, and small trails of it ran out of his mouth.

As he leaned over her to free her, some of it dropped on her body, like warm rain.
Trying not to think about what it was, she started giving orders.

" Xander, get me out of this."

Xander looked down at her, leaning forward to take a deep sniff.

" Mate."

His voice was deeper than before.

O shit, it's the Hyena in charge.

She remembered what Xander had shown her from the Dream plane about the Primal Spirit, and relaxed the slightest bit as she realized that she and the baby were in no danger from her.

"Xander, HELP ME!" she called urgently, hoping she could get though to him.

Xander's eyes flashed green for a moment, and then his entire body stance changed.

"Here, Max. Let's get out of here." Looking up at the Camera in the corner of the room, he said, " We don't have a lot of time."

Just as he finished speaking, three guards ran into the room and the tall brunet was on the move before they were completely into the room.

He grabbed the first one's stun gun, but because they were so close, he was unable to aim it at the next one in, so he just slammed it into the guard's face, sending him to ground.

He then quickly turned the weapon around with a jerk and pointed into the face of the final one. Hitting the firing stud, he sent 20,000 volts of electricity into the guard's chest while he smashed the knife edge of his hand into the throat of the first one to enter.

As he watched the second guard drop to the floor unconscious, he turned back to the first one and kicked him in the side of the head, knocking him out cold.

After checking to make sure that they were all still breathing, he ran back to Max and finished untying her from the hospital bed.

"Grab weapons and then we move out."

"What about clothes?"

"No time. We get away, then we get clothes."
"Ok. But just remember, this was your idea. I don't show the goods just to anyone."

Giles' apartment

Giles was just going into a speech about the effects of the possessions that they would have to deal with, if Xander was, indeed, possessed again, when the phone rang.

"Roddy? It's been a long time."

"–"

"Good Lord. She has? Do you know where she is?"

"–"

"Yes, yes, we'll keep a look out for her."

"What's happened?" Buffy asked, after Giles hung up the phone.

"Faith. It seems that she has awakened."

"Oh God! Is she coming here?" Willow asked, looking around at shadows like Faith would be sitting there.

"No, the Council doesn't think so. She is missing, though, so they wanted to let us know, so we could keep and eye out for her, just in case."

"Who's Faith?" Riley asked.

"A complete psycho," Willow said emphatically.

First, Xander. Now, some girl called Faith. Riley wasn't sure, but too much was happening too fast to sound like a coincidence. Something was going on.

Just then Riley and Buffy's beepers went off.

"It's a 911 Recall," Riley said. "Something big has to be happening at the Base. We've got to go."

And with that, both of them were out the door.

Deep in the Initiative
Max and Xander were just finishing up with another patrol that they had come across.

Xander had thought it hilarious to see the soldiers' faces when Max stepped out around the corner to face them. Everyone but Xander had stood there with their mouths open, making the fight short and very brutal.

He grabbed up a pistol to replace the one he had been using; it had jammed on him and he didn't want to chance happing again. Max, meanwhile, was pulling the shirt off one of the men they had just pounded into the ground.

"I am not fighting anyone else with MY TITS HANGING OUT!" she declared in a very annoyed voice while looking at Xander.

"Why? I think they're very lovely," Xander said with a grin.

Max bent over, to pull off one of the soldier's pants, then glanced up fast and saw where Xander was looking.

"Keep your eyes on the halls, dog-boy. Later, you might get more than a look, but now is definitely not the time to get distracted."

"Ok, will do," Xander said, getting back to the business at hand.

Max had just finished getting dressed when they heard people coming down the hall. Xander still hadn't gotten a chance to get dressed and was holding pieces of the torn uniforms in his hands as they noticed the sound of footsteps.

Max and Xander looked at each other, then up above them. The corridor overhead was merely bare pipes and conduits.

Smiling at each other, they jumped up into the twisted pipes. It was a tight fit for both of them to fit over the main air conduit, but they made it, sliding into hiding in the shadows there.

If not for the small groan from the conduit they rested on, it would have seemed as if they had just disappeared. And once they had sidled further back into place, even the groan was gone.

They watched from their vantage point as the squad of soldiers moved under them.

"Four dead, Sergeant," one of the uniformed men said looking down at the bodies.

"What Kinda of HST are we dealing with?" another asked.

"A male and a Female, both look Human. Both are dangerous. So shoot to kill."
As she lay there, spooned to Xander chest, Max felt something move on the back of the thigh. She rolled her eyes, and with a shake of her head, she looked back over her shoulder at Xander.

"That had better not be what I think it is," she whispered to him.

"Hey, beautiful woman…danger…some things, guys just can't stop," he whispered back to her.

I hope she doesn't do anything drastic, Xander thought.

I hope he doesn't get like this all the time, Max thought.

The soldiers left one man to stand guard over the bodies while the others continued the search for the escapees. The other soldiers, the ones who were only hurt, were sent back to the command area. From there, they would send someone to come get the bodies.

The soldier was getting jumpy. The dark spots in the hallway seemed to grow. And he really didn't want to be here.

I'm was supposed to go on leave tonight, but NOOOO, some HSTs break out and I end sitting here, guarding the bodies of two guys that were unlucky enough to find what I am looking for.

"Looks about my size, don't you think?" Xander whispered to Max.

Before she could say anything, Xander had moved, dropping soundlessly behind the private.

The private felt something behind him and began turning just as Xander struck at him a vicious blow across the side of his head, following it up with another that sent him to the ground.

Once she was certain the soldier was out of it, Max jumped down.

"Not bad. I'd give you a seven for that," Max said.

"Seven? That was a ten," Xander argued.

"Six for talking back to the Judge," she quipped back to him.

"Ok, Ok. Let me get dressed, and then we are out of here."

"Why? I think it's lovely hanging out like that…" max told him , with a grin going ear to ear.

"Stop stealing my lines."

Same time Prof. Walsh's lab.

Walsh was looking over the computer read-out from Adam. She had not looked up from it since she had sat down, so she had not seen the alarms or heard anything from outside the lab. She was so busy she didn't notice when Adam came online behind her and moved off the table.

The movement on one of the screens caught his attention and he paused to watch as Xander and Max took apart a small squad of soldiers. He looked to the side and saw Walsh working on a Computer on the other side of the room.

Her back was to him so she couldn't see that he was up and moving. The mismatched monster felt something for the woman he had seen on the monitor; some part of him was drawn to her. A name popped into his head.

She was important to him.

That he knew but why he didn't know. He saw that the automatic defenses were about to come online and decided to help her, so he just turned them off.

It was easy; there was so much he could do now, with the abilities Dr. Walsh had given him. He also knew what he had no reason, no meaning of life.

Just then Walsh finished the final modifications to her program and uploaded it into Adam's CPU.

And what was left of Zac, Mac's brother and fellow escapee was gone. In place of him now was nothing more than a program.

Walsh's program ran and processes were started, and the twisted thoughts of Maggie Walsh started to run deeper into Adam. 'Anomalies were to be removed' was his first directive.

Accordingly, he walked over to a small table on which sat a small assortment of tools and a behavioral chip. Picking up the chip, he inserted it into an injector, then walked over to Walsh.

She was preoccupied watching the program stream across her screen.

What are you doing Adam? she wondered to herself. He is taking a lot of time to process this.

She saw movement of the screen of her computer, and as she turned around, Adam drove the injector deep into her skull, knocking her to the floor.

"Time to start, Mother." Adam said. "Soon we will remove all the anomalies from the world."

Initiative Base
Main floor

Buffy and Riley walked into a hornet's nest as they enter the main area. There were body bags piled in a corner and wounded were gathered in another, where doctors were going over them.

Riley looked around, and when he saw Forrest, he demanded, "What the hell happed here?"

"Two HSTs escaped into the compound. They're still at large inside the base,
too," Forrest reported.

"Where is Prof. Walsh?"

"Don't know. We found some blood in her lab, but she is gone."

"What happen to the automatic defenses?"

"Someone turned them off. The command came from Walsh's lab."

"Oh shit."

Above their heads, in a dark airshaft, Max and Xander were watching as the various patrols came and went into the Base.

"So how are we getting out?" Max asked, looking at Xander.

"Well, I came in through that elevator, so I know that's one way out. But we would have to clear a lot of open space to get to it."

"Yeah, but how?"

"Pick up a gun and kill anyone that gets in our way?" Xander suggested, looking at Max with a small frown.

"I've got a better idea. We've got the uniforms now, so why don't we just walk out?"

"Don't have a better idea. Let's go."

Buffy and Riley were still talking with Graham when she noticed two soldiers walking toward the main elevator. She thought she knew one from his walk, but she couldn't quite place him from the back.

Riley noticed her staring at them.

"Soldiers, no one is to leave the base," Riley called to them, but they didn't stop.

One hit the elevator's call button and the doors opened. The elevator was still down from Buffy and Riley's ride down.

"Stop!" Riley called again.

When they still didn't stop, he signaled two more soldiers to stop them, who got to the elevator as the doors started closing.

As they closed, one of the occupants looked up straight at Buffy. It was Xander.

But before Buffy could react, the doors closed and the lift headed up.

Inside the Elevator.

"So far, so good." Max said.

"Yeah, but this is not going to be easy," Xander replied.

Just as Xander had finished they heard a hissing noise, and a yellow gas started to enter from a small vent at the bottom of the Elevator.

"Nope. It's never easy." Xander said, looking around.

Outside The elevator

"Bring it back down." Riley commanded.

"On the way back now. The Countermeasures in it have kicked in. They should both be out," Graham told him.

Buffy just stood there.

Xander. It was Xander who got on the elevator. Who was that with him?
Short, dark haired, female. Faith?

No, she would not be here. The last time Xander and Faith were in the same room, she had tried to kill him. Should she tell Riley? The elevator was almost back, now.

No, she couldn't say anything. Xander was family, and you watched out for family.

They had held it between the floors, to let the gas to work on them. The camera in the elevator car was no good right now; the only thing that could be seen was a wall of yellow.

Riley had told Buffy that the camera in there was just a normal one, not a thermal, so until the doors opened, no one would know what was going on in the car.

Riley nodded his head and the elevator doors open with a ding. Buffy's eyes stung as the gas pored out of the car.

But no one was in it.

"Sir, someone just opened the elevator doors in the frat house."

"What? Is someone coming down?"

"No, Sir. They were opened from the inside."

"Six stories, in the dark? Who are these people?" Graham asked.

What has Xander got himself into? Buffy thought. Who was that with him? Dark hair, small? Definitely not Faith. She had tried to kill him. And how did he climb like that? He's the normal on in the group.

"Riley, I just remembered something," Buffy started to semi-babble. "I need to go back to Giles."

"Buffy, I really need your help here. I have two HSTs that just took apart this base. I need someone like you to give us the edge with them."

"I really, really need to get to Giles," she tried again. "Anyway, I will be back as soon as I can. Just round them up and I'll be there."

"Ok," he replied doubtfully. "But keep in contact."

Watching Buffy leave, he thought, She knows something.

Needs someone LIKE me? What the hell did that mean? Buffy thought as she walked away.

"Forrest, follow her. "
"Ok, Buddy. But you know I should be here, to help with the HSTs."

"Yes, but she knows something." Turning to a Computer tech near him, he instructed him, "Pull up any pictures or Video that we have, and send a copy to the brass."

Giles Apartment.

"Xander is in trouble," Buffy said as she burst through the door.

"I thought we had already said that?" Giles said.

"We did, but this is a whole new kind of trouble. He was at the Initiative tonight. He was part of an attack on it. There were people killed."

"Good lord, Did he kill anyone?"

"I don't know. I only saw him as he was leaving. He was with a girl. From behind, she looked a little like Faith."

Outside Giles' apartment

Forrest was sitting in his car. He would have used one of the base's Hummers but that would have stuck out in this neighborhood.

They're all in there now. The two witches had just shown up. And the blonde guy. Man, he looked like a vamp. But no way would a Vampire Slayer have one of those around...would she? he wondered.

He turned to his radio.

The Initiative

Riley was sitting with a tech going through all the footage they had for the night.

"Stop it." On the screen was a close up picture of Xander.

That's him, that Xander guy. What is going on? Buffy would not have an HST around her... Wait, Willow had said something about Angel. He was a Vampire. And she said Anya was an ex-demon. I really need to know what is going on.

Same time
Seattle

Aims White was looking at footage from the lab were Dr. Anderson had been killed.

He watched, fascinated, as Xander broke his conditioning.

Something which was supposed to be impossible.

But what really bothered him was that Xander's eyes were glowing green.

That, and the way he took the Doctor apart. He shouldn't have been able to do that.

All of Manticore's mental conditioning should not allow them to attack anyone who was Manticore.

He hit the intercom.

"Get me a plane to Sunnydale."

"Yes, Sir."

Same time
Sunnydale

Xander and Max were creeping down the back alleys in town, trying to get back to Max's bike. Once they picked up a few things from Xander's apartment, they were gone.

Then they saw a young woman sitting in a doorway. She was wearing mismatched clothing and looking at some kinda jewelry in her hand.

As they got closer to her, Xander could not help but feel like he knew her.

Just as they were passing the woman, she looked up.

Faith? He thought as they looked at one another.

"X-man, you won't be telling anyone about me," Faith said, then moved to attack.
She punched at Xander and he caught her hand, the one with the jewelry on it.

There was a sudden flash, that knocked them both backward, and then, before Max could do anything, Xander got up and ran away.

Max looked down at the girl.

She kind of remembered her from Xander's memories. She was about to chase after Xander and beat his ass for running off and leaving her, when the young woman awoke.

"What the hell hit me, Max?"

"How did you know my name?"

"Come off it, Max, I ha... WHAT THE HELL? I'VE GOT TITS?"

"Yes. All girls do."

Faith rolled her eyes.

"I am not a girl, Max. It's me - Xander!"

"Say what?"

Same time
England.

"Mr. Travers, the team is almost to Sunnydale. Any other instructions?"

"No. Just make sure the Slayer is dead before they leave."

"Just Faith, right, sir?"

"Yes, of course. But if Miss Summers gets in the way... Well I won't lose any sleep over it."