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 5:00 A.M. AND 6:00 A.M.

5:00:00 A.M. PST

Xander was trying his best to stay calm inside of the control room. He grabbed an old, wireless headset covered in dust off of the darkened computer desk and blew off the dust. Placing the headphones on his head, he lowered the microphone in front of his face. "Okay…" he breathed nervously into the microphone piece. "Can you hear me now?"

Chloe, on the other end, sitting at her laptop in the Almeida kitchen, rolled her eyes with a scoff. "If I say yes, will you say 'good?'" she asked. "Because if you do, I'm hanging up."

"I'm definitely not in any position to be saying 'good,'" he declared.

Chloe shook her head in bafflement. "How did you get this number anyway?"

"It might be because my best friend's a hacker," Xander shrugged. "It might be because of my one-night stand of military training. Or hell, maybe I'm lucky that your standard government agency keeps their contact list as easy to read as a phonebook. Homeland security, my ass."

"Okay, what do you need, Xander?" Chloe sighed.

"I'm trapped in a control room inside the Initiative," he replied. "And there's some giant nasty slobbering all over the door outside. I'd go out there myself and… show him a thing or two about messing with a Sunnydale man… but… I, uh… pulled a muscle last week playing… um, croquet…"

"Save it," Chloe cut him off. "What do you want from me? I can't go down there and help you."

"Look, I heard Jack talking to you, all right," Xander pleaded. "You've got to have something on a computer that can get me out of here… or at least to a weapon. Maps, satellite imagery—"

"Satellite imagery won't work if you're underground," she declared as she rolled her eyes, shooting him down.

"Schematics!" Xander continued. "I don't even know what those are, but I'm sure you've got 'em, and I need help!"

"All right!" Chloe snapped. "Just keep your pants on! I can't work with people shouting at me!" At this point in the argument, Michelle walked into the kitchen with a curious expression planted on her face. She stared at Chloe with the cell phone on her shoulder and her hands sliding across the keyboard suspiciously.

Xander raised his voice, "I'm not shouting at you!"

"Yes, you are!" she complained. "You're exclaiming!"

"Then help me without an exclamation point!"

"Fine!" she barked. "Can you at least tell me something useful, like… where you are for example? It's not like you have a tracking device on you."

"If I knew where I was," Xander replied with frustration, "why would I be calling you?"

"If you don't need my help, I'm going to hang up."

"No, no, no!" he pleaded. "Look, look, just hold up…" Xander's eyes darted around the dark room until they found a dirt-and-cobweb-covered sign posted on the wall. "Okay, okay, there's a sign that says Control Room N-19."

"The 'N' stands for 'north,'" Chloe explained as she gazed at a black-and-green blueprint of the base. "You're in the north wing right next to the medical unit." She stared closely at the screen and studied the lines of the drawing. "You should see a ventilation shaft overhead, climb into it and go left for about fifty meters. Check in when you come to an intersection."

Chloe put the phone on speakerphone, then on mute, and typed in the commands to access the rest of the ventilation tunnels of the entire base. "Who's that?" Michelle asked.

Chloe looked up at her with a shrug. "Just some idiot who got stuck in a control room with a demon blocking the exit."

Michelle stared at her incredulously. "Oh." Several moments passed by as she studied the frown-faced young blonde. "So… what do you think?"

The computer analyst stared at the screen, raising her eyebrows slightly as she shrugged her shoulders again. "Kinda cute."

5:07:58 A.M. PST

Buffy and Anya slowly jogged down the sidewalk of downtown Sunnydale just yards away from the sanctuary of the Magic Box. Buffy slowed a bit more as she stared at the broken windows with suspicion. "What the…?"

They looked back to see a silver Chrysler pull up to the curb in front of them and slow to a stop. Willow hopped out of the driver's seat as Tara crawled out of the passenger's side with stunned expressions.

"Buffy!" Willow exclaimed. "Anya! What happened!"

Buffy still had her eyes on the damaged front of the shop. "Was that there before?" she asked, her mind fixated on the broken windows.

Willow and Tara looked back at the shattered glass with confusion. "No…" Tara answered, shaking her head slowly.

Buffy rushed past her and burst through the open front door of the Magic Box to find it in a worse shape than it had been before. "Jack?" Buffy called out. "Dawn!" She ran to the center of the store, her eyes looking around as her heart beat nearly out of her chest. "Daw—"

Her eyes froze in horror as she saw her little sister lying on the ground covered in blood. "Dawn!" she shrieked. Anya, Willow and Tara rushed in to see Buffy race towards the teenager and drop to her knees in fright. "Dawn, Dawn… wake up…" She grabbed her sister's body and cradled it in her arms, hot tears forming in her eyes.

"Oh, my god," Willow breathed in horror. Tara and Anya stopped in their tracks and stared with awe and horror.

Buffy gazed down with wide eyes at the blood stain covering Dawn's left shoulder and then stared at her tear-soaked face. "Dawn, please," Buffy called out, her voice cracking with the weight of her sorrow and fear. "Please—" Instantaneously, Dawn gasped for air and let out a hard cough as she stirred. "Oh, god," Buffy breathed with joyous relief as she held her sister in her arms. She glanced up to see Tara standing over her, staring at Dawn's injuries.

"Dawn?" Buffy breathed. "Speak to me, please…"

The young girl continued to heave. "It… it hurts," she cried, tears welling up in her eyes again as Buffy held her shoulder-wound.

"I know," she tearfully answered. "I know, Dawnie, just… just be strong…"

"Jack," Dawn whispered. "They… they took Jack away…"

"Who?" Willow asked. "Who did this…?"

"Vampires," Dawn cringed as she tried to shift herself and sit up.

Buffy's hand smoothed her cheek. "No, no, slowly," she said. Fear gripped her words and clouded her mind – fear which was slowly turning into rage. "Just… just stay… stay still."

"It looks like they just hit the shoulder," Tara declared. "I can take her to the hospital. It'll be faster than an ambulance."

"I'm going with you," Buffy declared.

"Buffy," Dawn shook her head with alarm. "You can't… you've… They took Jack… He tried to save me. Something's… something's wrong with him—"

"Let's go now," Tara said as she reached down and helped Buffy stand Dawn up. The young teenager grimaced with pain as her burning shoulder throbbed and bled with fury.

Through gritted teeth, she continued her plea, "Buffy… please…" Dawn took a deep breath, "Please, listen to me. You have to find Jack. They-they took him…"

"All I care about is you," Buffy declared, shaking her head.

Dawn squeezed her eyes shut and continued, "I'll… I-I'll be fine. Really… you…"

Buffy sternly disagreed, "Dawn, no."

"Please," she answered with resolve, free of self-concern and fear. "You have to save him." Buffy stared down into her sister's eyes and saw more of a woman staring back at her than anyone she'd ever met.

"Dawn," her sister shook her head apologetically. "You're all I have—"

"You're all he has," Dawn explained with a shaky, yet steady breath. "You have to let me go alone." Buffy stared at her silently for several long seconds. Her eyes shifted over to Tara who stood near Dawn for support in case she were to topple over, yet let her stand on her own because she was capable of doing so.

Buffy turned back to Dawn. "Go," she said. "Hurry." Willow handed Tara the keys to her car and joined Buffy at her side. With Tara's close guidance, Dawn turned away and the two of them walked out of the Magic Box towards the car out front.

They were in stunned silence as the three remaining women watched them go. "I-I don't understand," Anya dizzily began. "Dawn… She was here alone?"

"No," Willow turned to Buffy apologetically. "She was here with Jack, Xander and Spike. Jack sent us back to the house to find stuff on the Initiative. We… we wouldn't have left if we'd thought she was in any danger, I swear—"

"I know," Buffy replied. Suddenly, she froze as a horrifying thought came into her mind. "Xander," she repeated. "Xander was here?"

"Well," Willow shrugged, "yeah—"

"No, he wasn't," Buffy exclaimed with panic. "Oh, god, he followed me to the Initiative. They took him away right before they knocked me out."

"What?" Anya exclaimed with horror and disgust.

Willow shook her head. "No, that's not right. Xander said that he was going to check on Spike—" As soon as she said it, both Buffy and Anya looked over at her incredulously. Willow suddenly realized the error in her thinking. "Oh…" she realized, her eyes wide. "Dammit!"

"You left Xander?" Anya exclaimed. "He could be dead! For all we know that gas gotten to him!"

"Maybe not," Buffy sternly replied.

Anya shook her head angrily, "But you don't know—"

"Here's what I do know!" Buffy spun around and barked at her. "These animals came in and shot my sister! A teenage girl! I'm not playing anymore games." Buffy marched over to the weapons cabinet and opened it up revealing an arsenal of axes and swords. "I'm going back to the Initiative to find Xander," she decreed with resolve. "And to save Jack." She picked up a battle axe and glared down at it. "And then I'm gonna kill them all."

She turned around and faced Willow and Anya. "They took Jack for a reason," she declared. "He's got more to do with this than any of us. Find out why."

5:15:29 A.M. PST

Xander crawled through the cramped, tight corridor of the ventilation shafts above the Initiative grounds. "I think this is a bad time to mention I'm kind of claustrophobic," Xander said to Chloe, who was on the other end of his wireless headset still.

"Shut up before somebody hears you," Chloe ordered.

Xander continued to crawl agitatedly as he whispered back, "I'll try to detect a slight sense of concern in that."

"Just keep moving," she sighed, unimpressed. "Turn right at the end of the shaft."

Xander came to the end of his tunnel and rounded a corner to turn left. His head rammed into a hard, metal plate. "Ow!" he hissed as he reached up and held his forehead.

"Shh!" Chloe declared. "Geez, they can hear you in San Diego!"

"I just hit my head!" Xander grumbled. "I think you got me lost in your computer world maze."

"What?" she said with confusion, staring at her blueprints.

"There's a metal plate blocking the left tunnel," Xander said with frustration. "Now what, Clu?"

Chloe thought to herself for a few moments, and then an idea popped into her head. "Did you hear any alarms or sirens go off while you were in there?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"It must be an air-seal," Chloe declared. "The east wing is closed off. There's probably poisonous gas on the other side of that metal plate."

"What?" Xander exclaimed, lifted up and banging his head on the top of the vent shaft. "Ooh!"

"God," Chloe rolled her eyes. "Are you always this slow? Turn around. You'll have to go back the other way."

"Don't really think I'll be doing any turning," he complained, then slowly began to back-crawl through the path that he came. After almost a minute of backwards-crawling, he stopped, staring through a vent cover into a laboratory-type room. "Chloe, did you say I was in the medical unit? I think I see a chemical lab or something."

"So?"

Xander glanced down and stared through the thick shadows at his own hands as he refereed a wrestling match in his head. With a long sigh, he asked, "Can you tell me if there's an antidote of a virus named X-815?" He shook his head in disbelief of himself. "It's a pretty important thing – there's gotta be something about it in front of you."

Chloe was already at work scanning through files. "Yeah, the computer says it's in there, but we can only assume that it's still there."

Xander rolled his eyes, still shaking his head. "All right. I'm going in."

"What?" Chloe exclaimed. "Is the idea of stealth completely lost on you?"

"If the virus is in there, the antivirus might be in there."

"What gives you that idea?"

"Resident Evil," Xander snapped. "Now give me a break. I'm goin' down."

5:19:48 A.M. PST

Jack slowly opened his eyes and stared up at a rush of bright, white lights zipping by. He felt the rattling of the stretcher he was lying on, the wheels of which were speeding across the concrete floors of a hallway. With an oxygen mask blocking some of his view, his eyes rolled from side-to-side groggily as he tried to decipher his surroundings.

Immediately, the pain of his aching muscles began to come back to him. He felt his arms tremble and his stomach churn. Sweat continued to drip from his face and he struggled to catch his breath as the stretcher he laid back on flew down the hallway.

Jack's multicolored eyes glanced over at one of the faces of the four people shoving his stretcher. The twisted face of the vampire glanced down at him only momentarily, the yellow eyes of the male vampire having little concern for Jack. He glanced around at all of the blurry faces of the "doctors" around him and found that they were all vampires.

In a panic, Jack began to struggle but was met with much adversity. The vampires looked down at him as they continued down the hallway, but didn't have to move to restrain him. He was strapped down to the stretcher with what might as well have been concrete. He grunted and called out with livid fury, but his voice was muffled by the plastic oxygen mask. Agent Bauer was as helpless as a kitten.

Jack heard two doors depressurize and slide open as the stretcher came to a slow stop. He looked around and found himself in some sort of operating room, which only furthered his fear. Haplessly attempting to fight his kidnappers, he was lifted by the vampires off of the stretcher and placed on a steel operating table with steel bars that locked around the patient and held him steady. With the push of a button, Jack was trapped in the steel arms of the table as he shouted and spat at the demon doctors.

He noticed that his kidnappers were now paying him no attention as someone new entered the room. One of the female vampires reached over and removed Jack's oxygen mask and then retreated without delay. In fact, all of them stepped away and abandoned the scene immediately. Jack turned to the right and gazed motionlessly at the male figure standing against the wall.
His face, his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth, even the way he casually, yet proudly stood – all strikingly familiar.

"Hello, son," Merrick smiled warmly. Jack gazed at his British-accented father with confusion and growing fear. He felt like a small child standing in the shadow of a monster. He stared at the face that he vaguely felt he could recognize, but saw a grim darkness and an appetite for destruction in his eyes where a man's soul should be.

Merrick shook his head as if he could read his thoughts. "You don't have to be afraid," he grinned. However, Jack for the first time in his life had every reason to be terrified. The two of them were silent in each other's presence for an eternity as Jack stared at the man he'd been wondering about all of his life.

After a while, Jack finally replied, "Merrick." Merrick gazed at him with a slight sense of puzzlement as he gently tilted his head to the side. Jack's gaze quickly transformed into a glare. "Are you him?"

"Your father?" Merrick clarified.

With the slightest of nods, his fear was melting into anger. "The man that abandoned me."

"Abandoned?" Merrick repeated, distraught. "Son, I was murdered. Murdered by that wretched girl whom you've grown so attached to in the past few hours." He stepped towards Jack with a caring tone and a loving face. "You've no idea how much I've wanted to—"

Jack shook his head. "You left me. You left me alone…"

"You blame me for things that you do not understand," Merrick explained. "The darkness that you think you feel in your heart? The rage? The brutality… Do you think I gave that to you?"

"I'm not like you."

"You have no idea what I am." Merrick gazed down at him with a growing smile as Jack looked away in distress. "Nor what you are," Merrick continued. "How can you walk amongst the men of this world and pretend you are one of them? You are not. You never were."

Jack breathed deeply, his heart pounding, "You don't know what you're talking about—"

"Have you ever wondered what makes you such a magnificent killer?" Merrick said bluntly as his son's heart skipped a beat. Jack gazed at him blankly, dumbfounded and disgusted. "It's because that is what you are destined to be," he explained. "Not to hide among ants but to live as a god over them, for you are superior."

He continued to shake his head in growing horror. "I'm not… a-a monster…"

Merrick gazed at him quietly as another smile formed on his face. "Do you know why I left you Macbeth?" Jack stared at him without an answer. "So that you would learn an important lesson in my absence," said Merrick. "A man can't change his fate. That is already decided by who we are, and we cannot change who we are."

A female vampire wearing a white lab coat walked into the operating room carrying a syringe filled with a compound containing Anya's blood. Jack stared at her with wide eyes as Merrick continued to explain, "The government that betrayed you also had a dream once… of creating the ultimate solider. Maggie Walsh's dream was to make that soldier from her own son."

The female vampire nurse walked over to Jack's extended arm as he tried to pull it away to no avail. The needle jabbed down into his artery as the vamp injected the chemical into his body.

"What she did not understand," Merrick declared with pride, "is that no matter how much power she gave to her son, he was destined to fail." He stared down at his son as Jack felt an immediate rush of fever come over him. "But this… This is your destiny." Jack struggled to keep his eyes open as a wave of energy escaped from him as his body began to rebuild itself and regenerate into something new. With wide eyes, he gazed up at his father's face. "Don't fight it," Merrick whispered, shaking his head with a contented smirk.

5:27:33 A.M. PST

"Xander, what's taking so long?" Tony asked. He stood next to Michelle in the kitchen of his home with Chloe's cell phone against his ear. Chloe herself sat at her laptop typing away with her mind wrapped around a difficult task. "Do you have the antivirus or not?"

"I'm looking," Xander sighed as he stepped past the shelves of different vials that mostly looked all the same, reading each label before he moved onto the next. "Wait a second," he declared, staring at one skinny glass vial with a gold coloring to the transparent liquid inside. "What's the name of it again?" he asked with uncertainty.

Tony gave a worried, frustrated look to his wife, then answered, "DI 9FFTR731. Listen Xander, if you waste any more time you won't be able to get out."

"I found it," Xander replied, taking the glass vial off of the shelf and holding it safely in his hand.

Michelle shook her head. "Well, that was nothing like a needle in a haystack."

"More like a needle in Texas," Tony sighed.

"I've got it!" Chloe announced. They turned to her as she explained, "I can triangulate his position in the Initiative tracking the frequency of the phone line. He's in the far east side of Chemical Lab 19." Tony put the phone on speakerphone again as Chloe ordered, "Xander, you need to exit the room through the door closest to you on your left to enter the hallway. Go north to the third door on the right and there should be a weapons cabinet in there."

"Copy," he answered. Chloe, Michelle and Tony watched the green dot on her computer screen which was Xander exit the lab and turn into the hallway.

Frustrated, Chloe snapped, "Your other north!"

"Sorry," he whispered, then rushed in the right direction.

"How are we coming on the other?" Michelle asked.

Chloe announced, "I'm sending the information to Willow Rosenberg's laptop right now." With a few more button commands, the file was already being sent through the Internet. They suddenly heard an inhuman bellow shriek from the speakerphone.

"Xander, what was that?" Michelle asked, alarmed.

They heard the sound of a doorslam followed by the panting of a terrified human. Xander breathed hard, his heart racing, "I'm pretty sure my friend Cujo just found me."

"What?" Tony responded, giving both Chloe and Michelle a confused expression. Chloe pulled up another window, accessing the security cameras inside the Initiative and found the camera facing the outside of the security room that Xander was in. Their eyes went wide as they saw the four-legged, part-dog-part-lizard demon that stalked the outside of the door fericiously banging on the only thing between Xander and a bloody death.

"Oh my god," Michelle gasped as she stared at the creature. A stunned Tony glanced over at his wife momentarily, then placed his eyes back on the screen. Chloe continued to stare motionlessly with her mouth slightly agape, her frown disappearing into a look of awe.

"They knew," she whispered in shock. "The government knew."

Tony took his eyes off the screen with much difficulty. "It's right outside," he told Xander. "Get back into the air vents."

"I can't," he answered. "They're too small in here." Xander turned around and jumped as he saw the door jolt towards him for a moment, being hit with a force so powerful it seemed that the door would explode off. He turned away from the door and looked over at the steel cabinet against the wall. "Anybody know how to pick a lock?" he asked, swallowing hard.

5:36:49 A.M. PST

Spike's eyes opened slowly as dim light poured into his sockets. After a few moments of trying to adjust his eyes, he gazed around the dark basement around him, his head throbbing and found a figure standing over him. Buffy stared down at him with her arms wrapped around her, eyes red and face bruised.

"I'm…" he whispered softly. "Buffy… I'm…" She kneeled down beside the cot, putting her face closer to his.

"What is it?" she asked kindly.

With barely enough strength in him to form the three words, he breathed, "I'm… so… s-sorry…"

Buffy gazed at him as she felt a stinging in her eyes. They blurred over as she watched his weakened and fragile state and felt sorry for him if nothing else. She came to a stand, her own heart aching with guilt and remorse. "Trust me," she said with a grim and dark tone. "There's plenty of blame to go around."

They stared at each other for several seconds of silence before Willow's voice cut through it. "Buffy! Come quick!"

5:39:13 A.M. PST

"What have you got?" Buffy asked as she marched into the front store. Willow and Anya were at the front counter staring at Willow's open PowerBook computer.

"We recieved some important information from Chloe O'Brian that she found in the government's documents about the Initiative," Willow explained.

Buffy walked up behind the counter and glanced over at the screen. "Such as?"

"Adam was a project that the government had been planning for years," Willow began.

"It wasn't just Maggie Walsh's idea," Anya added. "Somebody high up came up with the idea in the early 1990s. They were supposed to make a super-solider army but needed a successful prototype to command it."

"And in the mid-90s when Maggie Walsh took over the project," Willow continued, "she put her own son as the frontrunner to be the government's Manchurian Candidate-solider."

Buffy shook her head in confusion. "Right, but what does this have to do with what's happening now?"

"Maggie essentially took away the project from another group in the government who had their eyes on somebody of their own," Willow explained. "A man named Ryan Chappelle was the leader of the opposing group and one of the secret founders of the Initiative." Willow turned the computer around and revealed a picture of the balding, stern-looking caucasian man in an expensive suit with the words 'Regional Division Director of Los Angeles' Counter Terrorist Unit' next to the image. "He already had his eyes on a certain former Special OPS Marine."

"Jack," Buffy whispered in bewilderment.

"Chappelle gave Jack the job at CTU to monitor him and to see how easy he would be to brainwash and use," Willow continued. "And when Maggie stepped in Jack was put on hold, but not forever. The government always planned to use him even when the Initiative was out of commission, they just weren't sure when. But think about it – all the training he received, all the missions he was put on… He used to get away with a lot of stuff when he was at CTU. It's all because he was special. He was their perfect Terminator."

"A perfect killer," Buffy declared, staring at the screen where pictures of Jack Bauer sharing a happy moment appeared. He was with a thin, middle-aged woman with short brown curls and a teenage blonde girl inside of a living room of his Los Angeles home. The pictures were from far away, taken through a window, and it was obvious that the Bauers didn't know they were being watched.

"That's what this is now?" Buffy asked, clarifying. "Chappelle has Jack at the Initiative to make him into another Adam?"

"Chappelle's dead," Anya explained. "Apparently Jack killed him to keep his cover in the middle of a mission about two years ago."

Buffy stared down at the screen picture of Chappelle as a slight hint of relief came over her. "Not so unpoetic in terms of justice," she coldly responded. She was able to easily sympathize with having her life invaded and being used by a powerful organization for their own bidding.

"Unfortunately," Willow sighed, "if Chappelle's not behind this, we don't know who is."

"Doesn't really matter anymore," Buffy declared sternly. "Whoever's in there is going to die. They can't complete their mission without Jack. We stop them before the surgery, we win – they lose."

"It's not as simple as that," Anya responded. "Trust me, I'm just as eager as the next girl for you to demolish the people responsible for kidnapping me, but they're going to be well-guarded."

"I can get through them," Buffy answered.

Willow frowned, shaking her head. "You might not be able to get through Jack."

Buffy turned to her with confusion. "Come again?"

Anya and Willow glanced at each other with worried looks and Willow turned back to Buffy with a nervous expression. "Probably the first thing that they did to Jack once they got him to the Initiative is inject them with a compound – a preformance enhancer – made from the diluted blood of several demons and amped-up portions of Seratonin, Adrenaline and Noradrenaline."

"In other words," Anya explained, "they gave him a Rage Cocktail that'll increase his strength and endurance while making him into an unstoppable, psychopathic killing machine." She shrugged with a grim tone, "And who knew that an ex-Vengeance demon still has the perfect amount of demon blood left in her to complete their Red Bull on steroids?"

"How fast does the chemical go into effect?" Buffy asked, her eyes wide with worry.

"It's a drawn-out process," Willow answered. "We're thinking they somehow already gave him part of it earlier and injected the rest when he got to the base."

Anya added as she glanced at her watch, "That'll give you… a little more than an hour before Captain America goes American Psycho."

"Buffy," Willow breathed with concern, "Jack seems like a guy with a lot of will power, but… but if he goes… over the edge, we can't be sure he'll come back."

Buffy stared at her in silence, then glanced back down at Jack's picture on the screen. Holding his daughter in his arms and his wife by his side, he appeared to be more of a human being than most of the human monsters she had met in her life. He may very well be a monster now in this instant, but he was a man once – a man worth saving.

"If he's still in there, that's a decision he'll make on his own," Buffy said, looking back up at Willow. "But he deserves the chance." She glanced over at Anya, then back to her red-haired best friend. "We're almost out of time. I've got to leave now."

"I'm going with you," Willow declared. Before Buffy could protest she grabbed her laptop, "I found the lockdown codes from the discs we had back when we were trying to figure out what was in Room 314. While you're trying to find Jack and Xander, I can connect to the main computer system and seal the Initiative permanently. We'll just have to skedaddle before it seals us in too."

"Trust me," Buffy sighed as she mused over the daunting task ahead of her, "I'll be doing my share of skedaddling." She turned to Anya, "Stay here with Spike and wait for Tara's call. We'll be back."

"Done," Anya nodded nervously.

5:46:29 A.M. PST

The door leading to the security office jolted once more, the hinges nearly bursting under the pressure coming from outside. The beast slammed against the door again, this time breaking the top hinge. The canine-like monster stepped back, then rammed its horn-covered cranium into the metal door, ripping the other hinges and door handle like paper. The steel door creaked and fell flat to the ground.

Panting fericiously, the scaly beast stepped over the door into the room, grunting as every massive paw – each the size of a soccer ball – crushed the withered steel beneath them. Slime dripped from the jagged jaws of the beast as the yellow eyes moved from side-to-side, a great white scanning through the darkness for its prey.

Just as a shark finds its single drop of blood in the ocean, the human scent of the helpless man was instantly found by the ferocious beast. Like a lightning bolt, the monster dashed off, trotting like a racehorse, across the rows of lockers and weapons cages to the back corner of the room. The beast opened its jaws wide, wide enough to consume a large dog with one bite and snapped down on Xander's dark green overshirt. In moments, it was ripped to shreds, but the animal was confused as to why there was no blood or flesh involved. It was just a shirt.

Xander, squatting on top of one of the lockers with his head near the ceiling, had the monster in his eyesight. He aimed the M16 assualt rifle at the beast, nervous sweat pouring off of him. In a flash, the beast was turned around and glaring at him angrily. It was so fast, it startled Xander as the rifle slipped from his sweaty grip and fell to the floor below him.

He gazed down at the gun, wide-eyed, then back up at the hungry beast. "Dammit!" he grunted in a state of panic. He then jumped off of the lockers. As he was falling through the air he could hear the instantaneus sound of the monster rushing towards him. He hit the ground, rolled, scooped the rifle in his arms, sat upright and unleashed a blaze of bullets from the assault rifle. It took nearly the whole magazine cartridge before hearing a final yelp from the monster which toppled over on its side, mortally injured.

"Xander!" he heard Chloe's concerned shout from the earpiece. "Xander, what happened? Are you there?"

Xander came to a stand, staring down in disbelief at his ability to slay the beast, "I-I'm here." After several more moments of awe, a smile formed on his face, "Nighthawk has defeated the demon, over." He relished in his victory shortly before Chloe's confused tone snapped him out of it.

"What?" she declared in incredulousness.

"I mean, er," Xander stuttered, "it's dead."

"Somebody's got to have heard that, man," Tony warned. "It's best that you get out of there right now. They'll be coming."

"Believe me," Xander said as he turned, carrying his weapon and rushed out of the door of the security room and back into the hallway. "I'm already gone!"

5:52:11 A.M. PST

Tara Maclay sat in the ICU waiting room of Sunnydale Memorial Hospital with her face resting in her hands and her nerves racing. She looked at the analog clock on the badly-wallpapered wall with dismay… it was taking way too long. She glanced over to see a doctor enter the room with a grim expression.

He looked over in Tara's direction. "Are you with Ms. Dawn Summers?"

Tara stood up quickly with a wide-eyed face. "Y-yes, that's… that's me."

"Are you her mother?"

"No, I'm… I'm a family friend," Tara answered in a nervous stutter. "What's… what's going on? I-Is she gonna be okay?"

5:56:34 A.M. PST

Spike began another airless heave as Anya stood by his cot, watching in horror. He went into a violet convulsion before her eyes, thrashing and trembling beneath the covers. Anya covered her mouth in horror, not knowing at all what to do or how to help.

Her eyes shot around the room until she found a stake lying on the desk next to the cot. For several moments, she gazed at it in deep thought, weighing the options. Her eyes found Spike again as bloody foam began to drain from his mouth as he clentched his jaw together. Anya turned away from the sickening sight and grabbed the stake immediately.

She stared back down at the vampire with worry, then shoved the stake between his jaws so he would have something to bite down on during the seizure. Stepping away, Anya glanced down at her wristwatch. There wasn't much time left for him.

5:59:32 A.M. PST

Kim Bauer stood in the faint blue light shining through the glass wall of the Los Angeles CTU headquarters. Her long blonde locks framed her tear-stained face as she wrapped her arms around herself tightly, being the only one left alive to comfort her. She turned around and stared at her father in disbelief, betrayed horribly and heartbroken.

"How could you lie like this?" she cried with a soft whimper. "How could you do this to me?"

5:59:43 A.M PST

Jack's eyes opened wide as he stared up at the bright overhead lights of the operating room. His daughter's image flashed through his mind one last time and he was overcome with the worst guilt he had ever had. Hot tears formed in the eyes of his fevered face. He was strapped down to the metal table and awaiting the worst torture he had ever be subjected to.

No, he thought to himself. Not the worst of my life.

They were going to change him and he wasn't sure that he would even be Jack Bauer in the next hour. In a way, he had got what he wished for. Maybe with luck, it would kill him for real and all of the pain would be over. But tonight he'd seen the undead walk the earth. They had the power. They would never let him go. Never let him rest.

The tears fell from his eyes and his vision of the world cleared. He saw a figure out of the corner of his eye. Jack glanced over and froze in awe and fear.

The worst torture of my life.

With a kind gentle smile upon her thin, rosy face, Teri Bauer gazed down at her husband.


5:59:58…

5:59:59…

6:00:00