LEGAL A/N: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all characters belong to Joss Whedon, 20TH Century Fox Television, UPN, The WB and CW. 24 and all characters belong to Robert Cochran, Joel Surnow, 20TH Century Fox Television, Imagine Television, Real Time Productions and Fox Network. No profit is being made off of this and no copyright infringement is intended.
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN 10:00 P.M. AND 11:00 P.M.
10:00:00 P.M. PST
James stood up from the ground and emerged from the kitchen as Buffy, Willow and Xander stood with each other in the front. "Oh, my god," Willow began with heavy breaths as she ran over and threw her arms around Buffy. "Are you okay, Buffy?"
"I'm fine," she answered, as her heart rate slowed down to a normal pace. "Are you guys okay?"
"We're good," Willow nodded.
Xander walked over and hugged her as well. "Thank god you're safe. We don't know what we would've done if something had happened—"
"It's over," Buffy answered quickly as she pulled away. Xander and Willow felt a tinge of guilt again as they stood quietly in the restaurant, staring at each other. Buffy turned to the back and rushed around the counter, "James! Are you all right?"
James walked over with the machine gun hanging down in one hand and his other hand over his left bicep as blood trickled down his arm. "I'm fine," he nodded.
"Fine?" Buffy exclaimed. "You've been shot."
"It's just a nick," he shook his head, with a gracious smile. "I'll be okay." Buffy pulled off his hand and viewed the cut.
"It'll need stitches," she said.
"We should get that cleaned," Willow declared. "Let's take him to the Magic Box and get it sewed up." She looked up at James with a smile, and then waived her hand. "And hi – I'm Willow."
"James, Willow and Xander," Buffy introduced. "Willow and Xander, James Dawson."
"Welcome to hell," Xander greeted with a grin. They all quieted themselves as the sounds of sirens cut through their conversation. "We're about to get some company."
Buffy sighed, "I do not want to explain this."
"My car, now," Xander declared. James held his wound and the gun as he followed Buffy, Willow and Xander out of the restaurant and into Xander's car parked outside. They jumped inside and sped off towards the Magic Box just before the police could arrive at the destroyed fast food restaurant.
10:06:22 P.M. PST
Spike sat quietly in the back of the huge van, staring at a handful of the other vampires, including Elijah. The leader sat in silence, burning his eyes into Spike, chilling him to the bone. Spike glanced down at Anya, who remained tied and gagged on the floor of the van, wide-eyed and tearfully terrified as they drove through the night.
"So what's the plan?" Spike asked.
Elijah's glassed over eyes fixated on Spike's face. "What do you mean?"
"Why do we have the girl?" Spike replied. "I mean, is she part of the plan… or just a late night snack?" Elijah cracked a small smile as he looked away from Spike towards the back of the driver's head without saying a word. "Is she the collateral you were talking about? What is the Slayer gonna do?"
"Why do you keep asking so many questions?" Elijah calmly stated, his eyes flicking back to Spike. "You should have more faith, Willy." Spike's face fell flat as his expression melted into a glare.
His eyes spotted one of the vamps retrieving a syringe from a black duffle bag. The vampire came to a shaky stand as he grabbed one of Anya's arms. She grunted and let out a muffled scream as the vamp found a vein in her arm and jabbed the needle into it. Spike focused carefully on the needle as the vamp drew Anya's blood carefully, aiming for a specific amount. When he was done, he yanked the needle out with malice and a wicked smile.
"She's not the collateral," Elijah explained. Spike looked over at him as soon as the vampire left Anya alone and retook his seat, carefully injecting the contents of the needle into a vial. "But she's part of the job." He continued to stare at the vamp as he cautiously placed the vial into a padded metal canister and tucked it safely away in the duffle bag.
"Who's the collateral, then?" Spike asked, still staring at the vamp in the corner of the van. After several moments without an answer, Spike turned his attention back to Elijah to see him sitting with his arms crossed and a haunting smirk on his face as he continued to stare at Spike.
Elijah whispered, "The Slayer's sister."
10:13:02 P.M. PST
Buffy walked into the Magic Box with James, Willow and Xander closely behind her. They entered the store to see the bookshelves and tables overturned, every bit of glass from the antique artifacts to the counter display smashed, and paper thrown everywhere. It appeared as if a tornado had ripped through the store and spat it out in shambles.
"Oh, no…" Willow breathed as she and the other two Scoobies gazed around the store in awe. "What happened here?"
"Oh, my god," Xander breathed, his heart racing as he began to frantically shout. "Anya! Ahn!" He raced around the store, looking under every fallen bookshelf.
"Just calm down," Buffy ordered. "Everyone watch out. Whoever did this could still be here." She looked back at James who was searching around the store. "You stay here," she said as she rushed off to the back of the store. Willow ran down to the basement, rushing down the stairs and froze at the base as she gazed into the shadows.
She could see Tara's unconscious body draped in the darkness beneath the staircase. "Tara!" she shouted in horror. She rushed over to her as Buffy ran down the stairs a few seconds later.
"What happened?" Buffy asked.
"I found Tara," Willow nervously began as she dropped down to her knees beside Tara's body. "She's not moving… She's…" Buffy ran over to Tara and Willow and quickly placed her ear to her throat, then checked her pulse.
"She's alive, just unconscious," she declared as Willow sighed with relief. "We need to get her upstairs." Buffy took Tara's shoulders and Willow grabbed her legs as they lifted her off the ground and carried her up the dark, wooden stairs.
They entered the store as Xander walked up to them and saw who they were carrying. "Is she okay?" Xander asked.
"She's unconscious, but I think she's all right," Buffy replied.
"I-I can't find Anya anywhere," Xander declared, his voice shaking. "I… I don't know where she is… She-she should've been here."
James watched him nearly fall to pieces from the other side of the store as they placed Tara on the ground. He glanced behind the shattered glass to the cash register. Slowly he moved around behind it, placing the machine gun aside and opening the register to find it full of cash. He glanced to the right to see a door leading to the alley outside with the alarm system keypad flashing a frantic warning. The door was slightly cracked open.
"What… what's happened to her?" Xander stuttered with fear as Buffy struggled to get Tara taken care of while Willow and Xander fretted around her. "Who would want to hurt her?"
"She's smart," James declared. Xander, Buffy and Willow looked up at him as he stood behind the cash register staring at the door. "There's no sign of forced entry on this door, which means she heard the alarm and ran. There's a good chance she got away."
"From who?" Willow breathed with wide eyes.
"She was your friend?" James asked Buffy, receiving a nod. "Whoever it is was looking for something or someone in particular. They haven't stolen any money."
"I'm guessing the fact that this so happened to coincide with our chill-out period in the meat locker isn't so coincidental," Buffy frowned.
"Anya…" Xander shook his head. "I should've been here."
"She'll be okay," James assured. "We'll figure this out."
Buffy went over to a cabinet behind the counter and pulled out a first-aid kit. "James, we need to dress that wound," she said.
"I'll take care of it," he nodded. "You take care of your friend." James reached out and grabbed the first-aid kit, walking over to a flat place on an overturned bookshelf and sitting down. Buffy watching him curiously, but thankfully, as he took care of himself and she moved quickly to help Tara.
10:20:43 P.M. PST
Spike, Elijah and the army of vamps with Anya being dragged along arrived at an abandoned factory where at least two dozen more vampires were waiting for them. The vamps stopped whatever they were doing and stood at silent attention as Elijah entered the main facility.
"Nice digs," Spike declared as he strolled in. "Where did you get a place like this?" Elijah ignored him, marching over to a wooden crate, grabbing a crowbar off of a table and popping the lid. "I mean, really," Spike continued. "This is nice. Roomy. A bit too roomy, though. Why so big?"
Elijah ripped out a crossbow faster than Spike could blink and shot an arrow into his chest. Spike jolted from the shot, feeling it pierce his heart. He glanced down in horror at the end of the arrow, expecting it to be the last thing that he saw. He stared at it as he noted he was not exploding into dust. Metal, he realized.
"There're plenty more arrows," Elijah stated. "And trust me, they're not all made of metal." Spike glared up at him with fury as Elijah lowered the bow. "You keep annoying me with questions," he warned, "I'll introduce you to every single one before your dust hits the ground."
Elijah tossed the crossbow aside, shouting to his lackeys, "Put her in the other room!" He strode away into a back corridor and out of sight, leaving Spike behind. He glared at Elijah as he watched him go, then ripped the arrow out of his heart and bent the piece of steel between his fingers.
10:23:26 P.M. PST
James sat on the toppled-over bookcase holding up the short sleeve of his orange-and-white-striped uniform shirt with his chin. He carefully sewed the gash in his bicep with the surgical needle inside the kit. It was odd to have such a thing in an everyday first-aid kit, but by now he figured that first-aid was an everyday necessity for this group of people. As soon as he had finished the last stitch, his light was obstructed. He turned to see Buffy standing over him with her arms crossed and a firm expression on her face.
James began, "How's… uh…?"
"Tara?"
"Yeah."
"She's fine," Buffy replied. "How's your arm?"
"It'll be okay," James smiled a bit, then returned to his arm.
Buffy continued to stare at him. "Did they teach you how to sew wounds at your box company?"
James' hand froze momentarily as he looked away from both Buffy and the wound. "I was a boy scout," James answered.
"Since when does 'being prepared' mean learning how to operate a machine gun?" Buffy asked. Her eyes were firmly on the side of his face, burning themselves into him with suspicion.
"How hard could it be?" James responded with a shrug. "Point and pull the trigger. I mean… any idiot could work one—"
"Well, I'm not an idiot," Buffy simply and calmly answered, "and I've noticed more than one coincidence tonight. Like the fact that all of this is happening on your first night on the job."
James shook his head and declared with more strength, "Look, I've already told you—"
"I heard," she cut him off, speaking softly. "You're just Average Joe from Smallville, U.S.A. with no knowledge other than your boy scout training." He looked up at her to see her deadly serious, but beautiful green eyes glaring heat on him. "And even though I am zero-and-one tonight against Sophie, I usually know a liar when I see one. Especially when he can chunk a meat cleaver across an alley and hit a moving object in the back."
James stood up defensively, pushing his former persona as far away from him as he could. "I don't know what you want me to—"
He suddenly froze in his sentence, his head lightening like a balloon and his vision blurring. Buffy stared at him strangely as he swayed and struggled to regain his balance. Within seconds, he collapsed on the ground unconsciously.
10:31:53 P.M. PST
"Don't make me have to repeat this information again," Elijah firmly declared. His small army stood side-by-side and all around inside the main room of the factory as he strolled calmly through the rows of vampires with his hands behind his back. Spike stood to the side and out of sight as he listened carefully and cautiously to the leader.
"In a half hour, the third team will depart," Elijah announced. "You will come back with results that are favorable to me, or you won't come back at all." Elijah turned to a muscular, dark-skinned vampire that stood over six-and-a-half feet tall and was 250 pounds of demon and pure steel. Second-in-command to Elijah, he was addressed by his men as 'sir,' but Elijah had a different, more-fitting name for him.
"Goliath," he began to order, "assemble your men. They must be prepared before they leave."
"Consider it already done," Goliath rumbled with wild, dark, glassy eyes.
"Splendid," Elijah replied. He turned to Spike, who watching from the sidelines anxiously. "Willy," he called, but received no response. Spike continued to glare at him in silence until Elijah finally restated his address. "Spike," he ordered. "I have a job for you."
"Good," Spike replied. "I was wondering when this party was gonna start." Elijah pulled his knife out of its hilt and threw it across the room into a crate on the ground near Spike. As terrifying as it was, the gesture was mostly unthreatening, but extremely commanding.
"Take that to the ex-demon's room," Elijah explained. "Bleed her." Spike looked down from Elijah's fierce glower and stared down at the glittering blade dug into the wood of the crate.
10:35:19 P.M. PST
The phone hanging on the wall began to ring inside the Magic Box as Buffy walked from the front of the store to the back, answering it with a hint of agitation – so many things already happening. It had been over a half hour and they still had no sign of Anya anywhere. Her cell phone was turned off and she wasn't at Xander's house.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Buffy," a familiar male voice on the other end exclaimed. She recognized his distinguished British accent immediately.
"Giles?" she said with immediate surprise. It had been months since the two of them spoke to one another. He had abandoned – or left – her and moved to back to England. Since their bitter goodbye, they hadn't made contact.
"I've been trying to reach you for over an hour," Giles said with an uneasy sigh.
"I'm kind of in the middle of something," Buffy curtly replied. "Hellmouth, remember?"
"Yes, yes, I understand," Giles answered with a tinge of sensitivity in his voice. He expected that she would be this way. Why wouldn't she be? "I know what's been going on."
Buffy froze. "You do?" she responded in amazement. How? I don't even know what's going on, she thought to herself; although it was something she'd never admit to her former Watcher.
"I got a call late last night," Giles explained, "from the Watchers Council. Apparently, Quinton Travers has been detained and questioned for his involvement in a conspiracy."
"Quinton, eh?" Buffy repeated with a sigh. "And when he tries to kill me on my eighteenth birthday, what do they do? Squat."
"Six years ago Travers disappeared for a while without anyone knowing his true whereabouts," Giles stated. "He claimed he was on a trans-dimensional retreat of some sort, but was grossly ambiguous about any details."
"'Ambiguous' as in he was actually living a life as a cross-dresser?" Buffy asked.
"As strange as it sounds," Giles answered, "how I wish it were that simple. It seems he was in the United States with a separate identity. He lived as Robert Stanton, the head of the National Security Agency of United States."
"Whoa," Buffy declared with surprise. "He sure took that 'double-identity day job' thing way too seriously." She added with a frown, "Now please tell me that was the only conspiring done in this conspiracy."
"Unfortunately, it's not," he sighed. She could practically hear him remove his glasses. "Do you remember the nuclear bomb that went off five years ago in the desert?"
"Yeah," Buffy replied, nodding her head grimly. "That was the summer I was visiting Dad in L.A. I also happen to remember riots, chaos and a whole lot of running around."
He continued, "The Council was able to hack into confidential government files to learn that as Robert Stanton, Travers was personally involved in the conspiracy."
"Wait," she interrupted, baffled as she tried to remember her current events with much difficulty. "I thought President Palmer said that everybody who was involved in that was taken care of."
"Due to some technicality Robert Stanton agreed to resign from his position and return to England," Giles stated. "But we believe his part in the conspiracy was simply a façade to mask what he was truly doing."
"A cover up of a cover up?" she replied in confusion.
"Precisely," he explained. "Now obviously, there's no file or record that we could find on his activities in the U.S. before being discovered, but we have reason to believe that he was extremely interested in the business of your first Watcher, Merrick Jamison-Smyth."
Buffy's jaw went agape as she heard the name. It had been over six years since he had been mentioned. It only brought back bitter memories of her slaying in Los Angeles before she moved to Sunnydale, and how he sacrificed himself in a fight with a vampire.
"What does he have to do with this?" she breathed.
He replied at a loss, "I'm not sure, Buffy. But we're finding out things about both of them that we had never known before." Buffy held the phone tightly in her hand as she stared into the blank space in front of her, memories filling her mind. "We'll get to the bottom of this," Giles added. "I promise."
She was quiet as she gazed into space motionlessly. She finally replied, "Let me know when you get anything."
10:44:09 P.M. PST
Audrey Raines, the daughter of Secretary of State James Heller and the new widow of Agent Paul Raines, paced back and forth with her cell phone to her ear tiredly. It was the tragic end to a very long day inside Los Angeles' Counter Terrorism Unit. She had seen a side of the man she thought she loved, a side she was oblivious to until now. A side that was almost inhuman to her. A side that terrified her.
She froze in her steps as she heard the door open behind her. Jack Bauer walked in and gazed at her almost timidly. The voice of the woman rattling on to her on her cell phone melted into obscurity for a few moments before she was able to concentrate on the difficult conversation at hand.
"No," she answered as she turned away from Jack. "Commercial flights are still grounded. I'm… I'm trying to get Paul back on a military transport."
Jack flinched at the sound of his name. A dark guilt washed over him again as it had earlier in the day. He regretted terribly having to let him die. But he regretted breaking his girlfriend's heart more.
"Yeah," she continued her conversation on the phone. Her back was firmly turned towards him. "I haven't taken care of his funeral arrangements yet. I still need to call his mother. Listen, I'm gonna… I'm gonna have to get back to you. There's something that I need to deal with."
Audrey hung up the phone as he stepped up to her meekly. He remembered the times when he used to march like a lion.
Jack stared at her blankly as she turned her tired face towards him. There were so many things to say – so many things to put into grand words.
"Hey," he said. It was the only thing he had enough courage to finish.
"Hey," she replied, to the relief of his racing heart.
Jack briefly looked away, and then turned back to her, "Your father said you were going back to Washington tomorrow."
"Yeah," Audrey answered. "I have to take care of Paul's funeral."
"Yeah," he nodded with understanding. He didn't want to say it, but he had to ask. "And after that?" He glanced up at her again to see her look away with difficultly. "I'm sorry," he immediately added. "I know this isn't the right time to be talking about everything." The rate of his words increased as he felt he was trying to save a sinking ship with them. "Maybe tomorrow before you catch your flight… we could… We could get together…"
"Jack, I don't think that's a good idea," Audrey responded, cutting him off. He looked at her blankly. Truthfully, he was terrified, but being Jack Bauer required that he could not show it. To anyone. Ever.
He softly replied, "I thought we agreed that we… wouldn't make those kinds of decisions today."
"I know," she said, shaking her head, "it's just—"
"Audrey," Jack declared, fear gripping his heart as he pleaded with her. "I love you. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you. That's all I want."
"We both know that you belong here, Jack," she replied apologetically. "At CTU, doing what you do best. And thank God there are people like you who can deal with that world." She looked up at him with eyes full of pity. "But I can't."
He could hear his heart break inside his chest. He was losing the one thing that brought him the most joy since he held Teri's bloody, lifeless body in arms in that very building, sobbing with guilt.
"Please don't say that," he breathed, shaking his head.
"Oh, Jack…" she said, grasping him tightly. "Oh, Jack. I love you… but after today… it's just… It won't work." He felt stinging in his eyes as she caressed his face. He was dangling in her wake. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry." She moved in to kiss him goodbye, but he did not permit her. Instead, he pulled her hands away from him and stepped back, staring blankly into the space between them.
"Jack?" she said to him. She had never seen that look in his eyes before. Not even in the midst of the darkness of the past day.
He felt his hand suddenly move without his consent. Zombie-like, he quickly gripped the cold gunmetal of the weapon in its holster. Jack ripped the pistol out and emptied it into her chest in a fury which he had never known before, reuniting her with her deceased husband.
10:55:27 P.M. PST
James' eyes opened with a start as he shot up from the table in the Magic Box which he was laying on. His heart was racing a thousand miles a minute as he reviewed Jack Bauer's memories. That never happened, he told himself as he breathed deeply with wide eyes of fear. That's not how it happened… I-I didn't… I couldn't have… It wasn't…
It wasn't him.
He had to remind himself of this fact as he suddenly realized that he wasn't alone. James turned to see Buffy leaning against a wall with her arms crossed, staring at him intently.
"You snore when you sleep," she stated simply, unaffected by his nightmare. James gazed at her blankly, for a few seconds praying that she didn't see what he saw. That would be impossible, though. The burden of that gruesome image he would carry alone.
"Who's Audrey?" Buffy asked point-blank. He stared at her motionlessly, feeling his skin crawl and his hair stand up on end. He wasn't dreaming of himself. He wasn't even dreaming of Jack Bauer. He was dreaming of a monster. A monster that had nothing to do with who ever he was. Or so he hoped.
James stared at her in silence. There was no way he could answer, and no way could he respond. "I know you're lying to me," Buffy coldly said as she glared at him. "You're not going to leave this building until you start telling the truth." Her anger spent, she pushed herself off of the wall and walked away, checking on her friends.
James watched her go as his heart sank once more. There he was, sitting motionlessly as another woman that brought him happiness walked away from him. He pulled his gaze away from her suddenly. Did he just compare Buffy to the other women of his life?
10:57:49 P.M. PST
"Sir," Goliath declared as he marched into the main factory where Elijah was being briefed by a portion of his vampires that were preparing for Phase Three. Usually, no one dared to interrupt Elijah in anything. Goliath had exception.
"We cannot find Spike," he announced. Elijah immediately froze and turned to Goliath with burning eyes. In a flash, he bolted across the main room and into a corridor. He stopped at the last door and burst into the room to see nothing but dust and a lonely wooden stake on the ground.
Elijah stood still, glaring as he fumed in disgust. Goliath appeared behind him a few moments later with a gang of curious vampires. "What shall we do, sir?" Goliath asked. Elijah stared angrily and he stood solid as a statue.
10:59:47 P.M. PST
Anya ran as fast as her tiny feet could take her down the dark alley away from the factory. Sweat beaded down her forehead as she pounded her feet across the concrete. Everything inside of her wanted to scream as she fled from her captors, but she knew that the noise of her call for help would only make things worse.
She didn't need to be alive for over a millennium to understand that the vampires would hear her screaming. She hoped that they wouldn't hear her running. One vampire, however, did hear her desperate run for help.
Spike watched as she bolted down the alleyway. He had released her and told her that it was her only opportunity to survive. She was on her own. Spike turned away and quickly rushed off into the darkness. Elijah would go ahead with his plans to kidnap Dawn. Spike would be there and waiting.
10:59:58…
10:59:59…
11:00:00