Chapter 3

The Lost Ones

The Laws of Physics are such that when two objects seek to occupy the same space at the same time Bad Things happen. The standard response to such an interpenetration is for both objects to go acoherent. Violently. The Laws of Physics were just beginning an act that would have vaporized everything west of the Rockies when they received a command. It had been several thousand rotations ago that the last command had been given, but they knew the source. They would obey.

So instead of their standard reaction, the laws undertook a hereforto unknown series of low order probability reactions, fusing, multiplying, and separating in such a manner that, at the end, one equaled two.

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Fred was all alone.

It had been a long time since anything had happened here in her darkened universe. For such a long time she had hoped for rescue. But hope had faded as time passed. She sank into despair then.

They didn't care. They weren't coming for her after all.

But then He came, and the despair melted away. He was easy to talk to. She could tell Him everything. Her fears, her loves, her ambitions and desires.

He was a good listener. Most people would have interrupted her or grown bored, but He didn't.

She supposed that it was quite possible that she was mad.

But she didn't care. When He was around such things seemed unimportant. She asked questions and He answered them, but He never volunteered information.

Somehow it never occurred to her to ask who He was, or why He was here where none of her friends had found her.

She knew instinctively that He was her friend.

That was all that mattered to her.

But one- day? Year? How does time pass here anyway? –He breaks His usual pattern of behavior. As she stops for a breath she doesn't need, not here at least, He speaks.

"You must leave soon." He says to her in a quiet compassionate voice.

Her immediate reaction is denial, "No! I want to stay here with you!"

He smiles at her sadly. "It was not yet your time when your existence in the physical world ceased. Now it is time for you to return." Seeing her heartbreak He gently poses a question. "If your friends died because you were not there to help them how would you feel?"

Understanding comes quickly, "Wesley's in danger?"

He nodded, "All of those you care for are."

Sadness fills her. She must leave, but she doesn't want to! She wants to stay!

He seems to know what she searches for the words to say.

"You can come back here." He assures her, "though it will not be soon."

"I'll go," she replies in a small voice.

He smiles at her, and she feels comforted.

"Will I remember?" she asks Him.

"For a time you must forget." He says, then raises a hand and continues before she can shout the rejection on the tip of her tongue. "It is as it must be, but fear not. You will remember when it is needful that you do so. But now you must wake. The dawn comes and now the dream must be dispelled." He places his first two fingers on her forehead. "Goodbye for now young one."

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She awoke and was surrounded immediately by absolute terror.

Her own voice seemed to shout for her attention from thousands of directions at once. Reverberating back and forth within her own skull.

And her senses! She could smell everything within miles! But she could draw no information from it! The ground she sat on was agony to her sense of touch. Her neurons reported in such detail that it was actively painful to feel it. And her sight! She could have tracked individual bacteria in the air if she hadn't been too terrified to realize what she saw. She could hear the heartbeat of everyone in the city and the beat of every insect's wings.

But she had no control, she could not stop hearing, seeing, thinking, feeling, and smelling in this enhanced mode.

She was bare moments from insanity.

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Illyria recovered quickly from the shock of seeing a reflection of herself sitting less than five feet away.

She also realized what must be happening to the shel- Fred. For it was beyond doubt that she was no longer just Illyria's new body. Illyria herself hadn't gotten all of her abilities at the same time and at what was probably full power. The former God-king didn't question how she knew what was happening, but she could have described- in detail –everything that Fred was feeling.

And because of that, Illyria knew that Fred was bare moments away from losing control of her new powers and destroying everything in a five hundred mile radius.

Illyria did the only thing that she could. She mentally projected her consciousness into Fred's mind.

It took only a bare moment for Illyria to limit Fred's new abilities. She restricted her sight to only slightly better than a vampire's, and then she did the same with her hearing and touch. Her sense of smell she restricted to nearly that of a normal human. Then Illyria shut off all but fifteen of Fred's Mind-Threads and withdrew.

She just hoped that she hadn't broken Fred's mind in the doing.

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Fred had actually been calmed by the controlling power which had just left. She expected the terror to come back, but her senses were her own again. Well almost. Her eyesight, hearing, everything was enhanced. She suddenly realized that her mind was functioning . . . strangely.

"They're Mind-Threads," a voice spoke from just to the right of her. She turned towards the speaker, overbalanced, and almost fell, but a hand caught her before she hit the ground. "Your reflexes and speed are equal to mine, I see." The voice spoke again, and this time she was able to see the speaker's face. It was her face, albeit with blue eyes and blue highlights in her hair, which looked back at her.

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That went better than expected. Illyria thought as Fred literally jumped three feet into the air and her armor shifted from a leather catsuit to plate mail to a sundress and back to the catsuit before she landed.

The next question was anticipated. "Who are you?"

"I am Illyria," the Old One replied.

A sudden light came on behind Fred's eyes. She seemed to struggle with what to say, perhaps even what she should say. Finally she settled for, "Why did you help me?"

This time it was Illyria who stopped in surprise. She had not even considered the question, and she said so, then added, "I do not see any advantage for me in it, I just felt that I should." She shrugged.

Fred looked away from Illyria and for the second time in five minutes jumped back startled. Illyria could understand. The area around them looked like ground zero of a kiloton range nuclear weapon.

"What happened?" Fred asked, dismayed.

"I am uncertain," Illyria replies as she views the devastation. "Though I think it was excess energy released when your new body was constructed."

"Constructed . . ." Fred's voice trails off as she looks down at herself, and appears to see for the first time the leather armor, identical to Illyria's, that she wears.

A thought seems to strike her suddenly, "Oh God! Wes? Where is he? Is-" she breaks off suddenly as she sees Illyria's stricken look. "God no! Angel? Spike? Gunn?"

"Lorne may live, but none of the others do" Illyria answers so softly that even with her enhanced hearing Fred can barely understand her words.

"No." Fred says quietly, as though her words can change what was. Then. "NO!" she yells at the top of her lungs. "This shouldn't be!" and it is Illyria's turn to feel surprise. Her inner sense of time has stopped and begun reversing.

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Time flowed backwards for almost a full twenty-four hours before the power Fred unknowingly called spent itself. It occurred so quickly Fred wasn't sure what was happening, though a part of her, One of the new Illyria-parts? insisted that something serious was going on.

After the gut tearing surge of temporal displacement passed Fred looked about her and saw only the alley near the Hyperion bathed in predawn light, and Illyria, looking at her, absolutely stunned.

"What happened" Fred asked in a weak, shaky voice.

"You-" Illyria stopped and swallowed. "You just reversed time by almost a full day" she said, wonder apparent in her voice. "At the height of my power I could have managed half of that."

Fred's eyes shot open wide. Her few functioning Mind-Threads had already reached the obvious conclusion. "Then we have a chance to save them?" she asked. But Illyria was already shaking her head.

"I must return with all speed to the domain of the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart. If I do anything differently, the future could change for the worse more than we could correct it and make it better. Perhaps the Senior Partners will not notice you if I am easily found, but if the cannot find me they will surely search and in the process find both of us. No, only you have any freedom of movement. Otherwise we lose the element of surprise."

Fred felt suddenly terrified. She wasn't a fighter! She was a scientist who happened to occasionally fire a crossbow!

But Illyria had already guessed the direction in which Fred's new Mind-Threads were moving. "You have but to look within yourself. If I have your memories then surely you have mine! Your manipulation of time confirms that you have my powers. You can do this, and if you wish Wesley to survive, you must."

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Fred was frightened. She didn't know what to do. After a few moments, she forced her new Mind-Threads to do her will.

They took approximately 32.56 seconds to compile a list of persons capable of rendering assistance. Regretably, it was not a long list.

Well, Fred thought, Waiting isn't gonna make it any easier. First, Faith.

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So wadda ya think? Surprised? Sorry it took so long, but the characters weren't speaking to me and I've had school and work. And that's it. I'm goin back to bed. As always, review! Please?