Chapter 3

When Willow's spirit returned to her body she was standing on a sidewalk lifting a man wearing green military garb a foot off the ground by his throat. Two squirming tendrils coming out of her right hand were half an inch from making contact with the man's neck. She let out a squeak and dropped him. He landed on his feet at first then crumpled to a crouch. He gasped for breath and looked up at Willow with eyes full of, not fear exactly, but he definitely looked like he expected Willow to attack him. When the man realized Willow wasn't going to go after him, he rose to his feet and ran away as fast as his wobbly legs would allow.

"Sorry!" Willow shouted at the man's retreating form.

After the man disappeared into the night, Willow rolled up her sleeves to examine her arms and hands. They felt strange. Heavier, but somehow lighter at the same time.

Approximately seventy percent of her left arm was covered in an exoskeleton that was fused to her skin. It looked like dark gray metal made up of tightly interwoven latices of wires, circuits and microchips melded together into a singular mass. The metal was malleable like silicone, allowing Willow to bend and rotate her arm normally. When she tapped at the material, however, it still felt solid enough to be a soft metallic substance like copper or tin. Or maybe some kind of poly-carbonate?

She didn't have fingertips anymore, they'd been replaced by the metal. The material was smooth and shaped like thimbles. They also transmitted tactile sensation. Willow remembered feeling the man's sweat, and the heat from his skin as she choked him.

Willow shook her head and tried not to think about the patterns of geometric shapes she understood, somehow, that floated in her field of vision and displayed the man's body temperature and heart-rate.

Willow's other arm made her wince when she saw patches of the Borg metal on the back of her hand, forearm, and her upper arm. They made it look like her skin had been torn off after skidding over pavement, and the abrasions were scabbed over by the Borg metal. Implants the size of silver dollars spotted her wrist and forearm, though several spanned the entire length of her biceps and triceps.

Her muscles felt stiff when she flexed them, yet still perfectly flexile. Willow quickly understood Borg implants had replaced most of the organic tissue in her right arm. What skin she had left on her arm was drained of all pigment.

"No," Willow whispered. "I'm—I can't be—!"

Willow froze.

The left side of her jaw felt constricted when she opened her mouth, like it was partially wired shut.

She traced her jawline with her right hand, because she didn't want to see what geometric symbols would show up on her HUD if she used her left. She felt a strip of the bumpy Borg metal an inch wide start on her chin and follow her jawline. It wound around to the helix of her ear where it then circled the back of her skull like a tiara and terminated behind her other ear.

Willow remembered if a Borg implant was on a person's head then it was connected to their brain.

She had an implant in her brain.

The thought of killer alien cyborg technology penetrating her skull and invading her brain should've made Willow shiver in disgust. Or had her curled up on the ground bawling her eyes out. Instead, she felt inexplicably calm. What emotions she did feel felt strange and incomprehensible to the cold, passionless awareness growing within her.

Oh, no...

Willow probed her rib cage and located two of her ribs that hadn't been replaced by Borg components. She made a fist and fractured one of them with a single blow. She clenched her teeth and only let out a long strangled moan as she clutched her side and dropped to her knees. She inhaled pain and let it blow away the stoic fog that had suppressed her feelings.

Her HUD alerted her to the injury and reported nanoprobes had begun the slow process of mending her rib, but not, she noticed, doing much to sooth her pain.

Borg register damage. Borg do not respond to pain. Sure do feel it though.

Willow smile bitterly. As long as she could still acknowledge her pain, she was more human than drone. She would break every non-Borg bone in her body if she had to to keep it that way.

Willow stood and relished the fantastic agony that followed.

It was time to stop wallowing and go find her friends. And Cordelia.

With a thought, Willow retracted her assimilation tubules then took in her immediate surroundings. She was on Main and Oak Park, three blocks from the house where her body collapsed and was likely assimilated. The early morning sky was still dark, yet to Willow it was bright as mid-day. Not only could she see in the dark, but the fidelity of her vision ranged into the telescopic if she concentrated. She could also hear the faintest whisper for a hundred meters in every direction.

Willow took a deep, pain-filled breath, released it, then closed her eyes. She located the subroutine that operated her sensory node then gave it the command to run an endless diagnostic on itself. She had no idea how she knew how to do it, or how she knew it would work, but she did. It was as easy as writing her name. After the node was disabled Willow felt like she'd put on glasses with lenses smeared with Vaseline, and stuffed her ears with cotton balls. Willow didn't mind—her freaky new super senses made her feel uneasy. Less human. She'd get by with her regular senses for the time being.

Willow headed for the school, where she hoped the others regrouped. Along the way she saw adults who looked lost, confused, or in shock as they made their way back to where they last remembered being. A number of them very loudly complained about not knowing where their cars were. None of them wore costumes, just regular clothes that were torn or shredded in places.

When Willow did come across people wearing a costume it was other kids. She didn't recognize most of them, but she did see a few who went to Sunnydale High. She even knew some of their names.

They lumbered around like zombies, or were sprawled on lawns and sidewalks. Staring quietly at nothing. One girl Willow came across sat on a curb with her knees tucked under her chin, and her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. The girl was sobbing so hard Willow was tempted to stop and help her.

As Willow came closer, she realized the weeping girl was Harmony.

There had been times when Willow wanted to knock Harmony Kendall on her butt, or at least make her cry once for all the times she picked on Willow and made her cry. But listening to Harmony's wretched sobs hurt worse than her broken rib.

Willow decided she wouldn't go near Harmony. She was a terrifying Borg-like reminder, and Harmony had clearly been through enough trauma. Instead, Willow let her hair down, obscured her implant, and tried to keep her distance from anyone else she crossed paths with.

When Willow reached Thousand Oaks Drive a couple approached her. She spotted tubules marks on their necks that on any other night she would've mistaken for vampire bites. If the woman recognized Willow's Borg implants she didn't let it show. The man flinched when he saw them, but he didn't freak out. Still, even without fancy Borg senses, Willow could tell she made him uneasy.

The woman, a woman Ms. Calender's age, held up a wallet-sized photo of a girl who looked about nine-years-old.

"Have you seen this girl? Her name is Sara Tyson," Mrs. Tyson asked with frantic hope in her eyes.

It was too dark to see the picture clearly, so for a few seconds Willow used her enhanced vision to make out the little girl's features.

"No, I haven't seen her," she lied.

Mrs. Tyson squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them there was no mistaking the boundless determination that burned in them. Mrs. Tyson thanked Willow for her time then Mr. Tyson, still watching Willow like she could strike at any moment, took his wife's hand and led her away to resume their search.

Willow watched them leave and wondered if it was her Borg-ness that made her deny seeing Sara. She had lied so easily and didn't feel guilty at all. Willow always felt guilty when she lied.

Was it cold logic that made Willow think it served no purpose to tell them the truth? Or was it because she didn't want to destroy their hope when she told them their daughter might never come home?

Willow touched the implant on her face and remembered that Ethan guy's words back at the costume shop about the spell being consumed and corrupted; twisted into something unexpected and dangerous… forever.

Sara was one of the eight kids Xander chaperoned that night. Willow remembered with crystal clarity the clown costume Sara wore was identical to the one child Michael Myers wore when he stabbed his sister to death. Willow recalled how brightly the little girl blushed when Xander called her a genius and praised her homage to a Halloween classic.

No, little Sara Tyson and none of the kids in Xander's group would be going home.

They'd been changed for too long.

Xander, after all, assimilated them first.