A/N: Hi all,

Okay, here's chapter two. A couple of things. Thank you to those who reviewed the previous chapter. I've been travelling on and off these past few weeks, so I haven't responded to some of the reviews. I'll try to do better in the future.

Also, I've no clue where this story's going. I figure I ought to let people know that before they come along for the ride.

Comments and suggestions are all welcome.

Chapter Two

Umbrella

It was the middle of summer, and Buffy, one of a great many slayers, was trying to figure out how it was that everything had gotten so fucked up. It seemed that annihilating an entire town hadn't exactly been the smartest move to make, even though it had seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, it meant that the Hellmouth would be sealed for a very long time, and that was great news given the First's propensity to try and crack it wide open. And now that there were in the realm of a bazillion slayers running around capable of fighting all the baddies out there, the burden she had shouldered for so long had been diffused greatly. In the span of a day, the tables had turned so that the forces of good were no longer the underdogs. They were the top dogs.

Wasn't that supposed to be a good thing?

Apparently not.

The destruction of Sunnydale had garnered a great deal of attention from neighbouring counties. There had even been a TV news crew all the way from L.A. running around taking pictures and asking questions, and while most ordinary citizens had been content to accept the explanation that a localized earthquake had smoothly and efficiently swallowed a town whole, there were others out there who were not quite so satisfied. Scientists had begun asking piercing questions about why it was that the results of the quake did not conform to any prescribed standards. Where were the cracks? The fissures? the post-quake seismic activity? Worse yet, many of the inhabitants had left in advance, and were now quoted as claiming that they all felt premonitions of demonic evil. How in God's name did they know that? At the time, Buffy had been mostly just relieved that the innocents were getting out of dodge, but now, their survival was raising uncomfortable questions.

It wasn't so much that she had to answer to anybody. Nobody even knew that she and her cohorts had survived and escaped on a bus bound for somewhere far away. At least, mostly nobody.

And there was the rub. There existed only one person outside the Scooby club who had any knowledge about slayers and Hellmouths and evil beings and about her. And he just so happened to be with the military. Riley.

The sun set on the Western horizon and cast Buffy in a golden glow. Absently, she scattered the ashes of the fire the few survivors had been using to cook their food that day. Dawn sidled up next to her as did Willow and Xander. They were the only ones left now after twenty-four long and brutal days being hunted by shadowy figures in the night. Of the thirty or so slayers that survived Sunnydale, two thirds had been sent to the UK and the continent, leaving nine plus herself to work on uprooting any remaining power bases in North America. Within a week, however, they had started being hunted, and not by anything as pedestrians as vampires or demons or even the First. Instead, they were being hunted by soldiers; soldiers with state-of-the-art military technology, long range weapons, sophisticated stealth technology and God only knew what else. More disturbing yet was the simple fact that they weren't being hunted for the purposes of extermination. Extermination was something Buffy could understand; it had always been the way of things. Ever since she had been blessed and cursed with this power, she had been targeted for eradication by all the dark forces that the underworld could throw at her. No, this was something else. They were trying to capture them, though for what purposes was anybody's guess. Secretly though, Buffy thought she had a pretty good idea why. It was the initiative all over again. They were going to experiment on her, test her, drug her, synthesize her, transform her into a mindless tool. Like Adam.

And so, on the cusp of victory against the First, in a time where she was supposed to be liberated from her ceaseless burden, she was made to stand against a new darkness. An evil unlike any other she had ever faced before. The darkness of Man.

So now what?" Dawn asked, curling up in a ragged little blanket and inching closer to the fire, desperate to keep warm amidst the unusually chilly night air.

Willow was busy weaving together a protective ward that would keep intruders out long enough to alert them, and Xander was checking and re-checking the firearms they had pilfered from dropped soldiers.

In truth, Buffy had little clue how to answer Dawn's question. Part of her wished that Dawn would not ask such questions, even though she knew they needed asking. Buffy's initial instinct was to supply false words of comfort, but, knowing how hollow they would sound after being so long on the run and having been picked off one person at a time, she instead opted for quietly saying, "I don't know, Dawn."

"There," Willow said, plopping down next to the sisters. "The protective shield is now fully operational, commander."

Xander too took a seat and reached over to grab a hot dog on a fork, which he promptly stuck in the way of the fire for some tasty roasting.

"Could almost pretend it's a camping trip," Willow said with loads of irritatingly false cheer.

"Mmph," Xander agreed, already stuffing the wiener in his mouth.

"Ew, you hardly cooked that," Dawn said, scowling at Xander's consumption of the processed meat.

"I like it rare," he managed to say between mouthfuls.

"That is so gross."

Xander shook his head emphatically. "No, it's not. Let me tell you what gross is, kid. Gross is not having taken a shower for four days. Gross is the fact that we're communing with insects in our sleep. This-" he lifted the fork with the half eaten wiener, "is just about the least gross thing about all four of us."

"Point taken," Dawn said, sighing. "So, what the hell are we going to do?"

"Keep running?" Willow offered. "And pray to all the Gods and Goddesses that somebody nice finds us?"

"Argh!" Dawn wailed, pulling at her hair in an act of histrionic frustration. "I can't take this anymore!"

At Dawn's proclamation, everyone fell silent, the only sound remaining the continual crackling of the fire.

"They're all going to get us, aren't they," Dawn said in a defeated tone, her words echoing all their sentiments. "It's only a matter of time. And then they're going to do all kinds of evil things with us."

"No," Xander said firmly. "That's not what's going to happen. We called Giles. He knows what's going on out here. He won't let them get us. Why, slayers and other kickass Watcher Council types are probably on their way as we speak. We just need to hold out for another couple of days. You know, make it to a city give them a ring on the old mobile. They'll collect us in no time, and then we can let ourselves be whisked away to some secret, underground safehouse where big brother can't get us."

"Yeah," Willow agreed tentatively. "You'll see, Dawn. They won't get us."

Dawn, however, did not respond. Instead, she merely nodded and turned her gaze to the darkness beyond the firelight, all the while wondering, watching, waiting to see whether unknown figures would approach.

Dawn awoke to the crisp morning sunshine of yet another day of hiding amidst the rocky outcroppings that marked the mountainous landscape they were now in. Buffy had decided that their best bet for survival was to hole up in the mountains for several days and hopefully lose their pursuers. Between Willow's magic and Buffy's superior strength and agility, they would easily be able to hide and outrun any soldiers that were after them. At least, they would be in a better position to spy on the predators without being seen, and, hopefully, present a return attack.

It appeared, however, that Buffy's assessment had proven somewhat incorrect.

"Buffy?" Dawn called quietly in the eerie silence. "Willow?" Dawn got to her feet and took a moment to wander about their small campsite. Willow's things appeared to be all present, as did Buffy's, and, while Xander was contentedly snoring away in his makeshift sleeping bag, Buffy and Willow were nowhere to be seen. After several minutes of lurking about in the cold blue morning air, and calling out their names, a chill began seeping up through her spine. They were taken, she realized. Somehow, in the middle of the night, they were taken, and neither Xander nor I knew about it. We hadn't heard a single thing. Quickly, Dawn knelt by Xander's side and began poking and prodding him. He'll know what to do, she thought desperately, panic replacing her otherwise exuberant self. "Xander! Wake up!" Dawn poked him hard and with frantic urgency in his kidney area.

"Mmm, no more kruellers, thanks," he muttered and rolled over to avoid Dawn's prods.

"Xander, you damnable clod! Get your tight little ass out of that blanket right this instant!" she shouted, her voice carrying through the mountain range and returning as an echo.

"Wha-?" he said, bolting upright and looking wildly from side to side.

"Xander, they're gone," Dawn said, the tears once again creeping to the forefront.

"Gone?" he repeated, blinking owlishly. "Who's gone?"

"Buffy and Willow! They've been taken!"

After a moment of processing, Dawn's words seemed to take effect, for Xander turned his gaze to the empty beds of Willow and Buffy and stared long and hard at them. "Gone," he repeated. "You sure?"

'Dawn simply nodded, unable to speak.

Xander went to their beds and checked them closely. Everything seemed to be in order. So much so that their blankets appeared to have been stripped off with gentle care. And, more disturbing still, none of their belongings had been moved an inch from the night before, or at least, to Xander's best recollection, nothing appeared to have been shifted. "They were taken in their sleep," Xander muttered to himself, mentally reconstructing the previous night's events. "They must have been drugged or-" he glanced around and, after a moment of searching in the early morning light, his gaze came to rest on an unfamiliar canister. Collecting it from where it sat near the extinguished fire, he sniffed its contents and examined it carefully. "Sleeping gas," he concluded. "Somehow, they got it past Willow's shield. We never had a chance."

Dawn came up next to him and stared at the canister as though it held the secret to Buffy and Willow's location. "It can't be," Dawn said, her mind not quite able to believe that her big sister. The infamous slayer, the protector of all the innocents, the one who had been there for her thick and thin over the course of her short but very strange life. "How?" she asked, though to no one in particular. In truth, there was no answer to that question. It wasn't so much about finding out how it was that Buffy had been taken. No, the answer to that lay in Xander's hand. It was more about how it had all come to this. How was it that the world's saviour, a girl who had given so much, had been treated like this, forced to flee and watch her friends picked off one by one, only to be taken herself. "Why didn't they take us?" Dawn asked.

Xander sighed. "Because, Dawn, we're nothing special. No magical powers. No Chosen One status. We're just plain old ordinary humans."

Dawn snorted. "As if we haven't been through our fair share of crap in this world."

"Yeah, well, apparently that's not good enough to join the elite. Of course you knew that though."

"Yeah, we've always known that, haven't we?"

Xander nodded. "Yeah, we have."

Dawn knelt down and began packing up her things. "Come on, we've got work to do."

"Work?" Xander asked, tossing the canister aside and pillaging Willow's and Buffy's things for anything useful they could take with them.

"Yeah, work. We're getting our family back. Those motherfuckers are going to rue the day they ever crossed Xander Harris and Dawn Summers." Having collected her belongings, Dawn stood and shouldered her pack, a determined expression on her face as she looked up into Xander's eyes.

"They stared at each other for a long time, Dawn's resolve turning infectious as the sun ascended the clear blue Nevada sky. After a time, Xander nodded. "Yeah, let's do it then."

Nicolai Ivanovna did not have a wife, nor did he have kids. Unlike his American counterpart, Brett Hayes, he was a complete bastard and lived for only one thing. Hunting. That was perhaps why the industrial megagiant Umbrella appealed to him. For the last fifteen years, they had given him exactly what he wanted. Having the depraved indifference of a psychopath to the lives he took, Nicolai found himself moving up quickly through Umbrella's military arm with each passing mission. When it came to espionage and torture, Nicolai excelled.

Nicolai was currently transmitting a short report of his platoon's progress through the dark fields outside Birmingham. His GPS tracker informed him that they were steadily approaching the edge of the memory field that insulated the wizards from prying muggle eyes. Nicolai had seen and done enough in his life that, the news of the existence of wizards hadn't fazed him terribly. He took it in stride, much like his cadre of soldiers, who he had handpicked for this particular mission. The only thing that had surprised him so far was the fact that Umbrella had not discovered the magical world's existence earlier. He was certain that bureaucratic heads were going to roll somewhere for the fuck up. Nobody kept crucial information like this out of the hands of Umbrella. He secretly hoped that he would be assigned to that mission. Assassinating high profile targets was particularly appealing to him. Especially if he got the chance to rape proper ladies. The wives of senators were like a fine wine. Their indignation was intoxicating.

Nicolai flashed an electromagnetic sensor that alerted his soldiers to stop. They had found the field. Of all the tricks and trades of wizards, the anti-muggle repulsion ward was undoubtedly the most ubiquitous primary defense. Nicolai had read no less than four separate military dossiers on the magical world, including one dedicated exclusively to this so-called Lord Voldemort. A part of him was impressed that such beings existed, and a part of him was disappointed. At the end of the day, they were soft bags of flesh, like everybody else. The trick to defeating them was simply catching them off guard. From what he understood, they were at a major tactical disadvantage, having no knowledge of the sophistication of muggle technology. That meant that his team would have one chance to strike a lethal blow against them. He was certain that, if Lord Voldemort were permitted to execute a counterstrike, none of them would be left alive. They had the power to disappear and reappear at will, and they had the power to control people's minds. Nicolai unconsciously found himself salivating at the prospect. If he had such power... Nicolai had once taken to reading in-depth reports on all the failed mind control experiments conducted during the sixties and seventies. He had been enchanted by the prospect of programming lackies to do his bidding. However, he had never been able to find a thread, an unexplored avenue that might take him somewhere in the experimentation that his predecessors had overlooked. It was simply not meant to be. Until now. If he could harness the power of magic - it was times like this he was truly thankful for being a twisted fuck.

In the dead silence of the pre-dawn hours, in the middle of the British countryside, three paratroopers landed silently inside the wards of the Bones ancestral home. Nicolai could only faintly make out the sounds of their movements as they rummaged about and set up their tools.

It had taken nearly a week of covert surveillance coupled with a lot of theorizing and guesswork to get an idea about how the muggle repulsion ward operated. Their best theory was that it had roughly the shape of a fence, approximately ten feet high, and that it had a width of somewhere between one and three metres. From their calculations, the field did not need to cover anymore area, because one step would activate the field, which was foolproof against unsuspecting muggles. However, for those who knew of its existence, it was a surmountable obstacle, as Nicolai and his team were demonstrating.

The three paratroopers, having parachuted inside the ward boundaries, immediately began setting to work. One was employing a series of sensors, sound and UV and infrared, in order to begin gathering data on their surroundings. One moved ahead to scout the terrain. The third was uncoiling a long aluminum chain with a hook on one hand. This chain was the key instrument in overcoming the muggle repulsion ward. The soldier, Carter, tossed the end of the chain into the darkness in the direction of Nicolai and his eleven soldiers. He kept one gloved hand tightly gripping the chain and waited silently for Nicolai and his soldiers to locate the other end. On a mission this sensitive, nobody dared speak aloud, and nobody dared shine a light. The soldiers relied on sophisticated sonar tools, mental maps, trigonometry, and taps on the shoulder to interact with their environment. Currently, Nicolai would be using a simple magnet to ferret out the aluminum chain. From there he would work silently and in the dark attaching the chain to a large sled, which Carter could then pull across the repulsion ward. Nicolai would take eight soldiers along with him while three remained behind to keep watch and provide sniper cover should the dozen on the inside need it.

Nicolai and his eight soldiers all stuffed themselves onto the sled, and they each proceeded to inoculate themselves with a minor tranquilizer. This would prevent them from being able to jump off the sled once it came into contact with the ward. Soon, they were across and Carter was administering a stimulant to neutralize the tranquilizer. Within ten minutes, there were now twelve soldiers on the inside, and three on the out.

Nicolai double-checked that his radio transceiver was operational. Satisfied everything was in order, they proceeded forward, fanning out and forming two lines as they closed in on the Bones home, all the while, Nicolai was receiving communications from both the scout and from the snipers. Silently, they crept along, Nicolai aware acutely of the oppressive silence that filled the air. Somehow, the world was darker, more sinister, more quiet on this side of the fence. It made Nicolai heady with anticipation. Something about the taste of magic called to him. Like a kindred spirit.

Tacticians had pored over the copious volumes of video and sound recordings and the reports of the various scouts they had sent to feel out the area. This coupled, with some rudimentary knowledge of magic, gave them a pretty good idea of the manor's outer defenses. Wizards had been seen crossing the repulsion ward without any difficulties. This was not a surprise. The dossier had contained information that wizards could key wards to the presence of magic in the object. Tacticians had also noted that animals had difficulty moving between the repulsion ward. This was a very good thing for the muggle tacticians, because they did not, as of yet, have any technology that could let them observe magic directly. As such, they did not have a comprehensive understanding of what blockades were present beyond the muggle repulsion ward. A number of theories had been batted about. Possibly, the only wards beyond the repulsion ward were targeted specifically at magical folk, since there would be an expectation that muggles would not have been able to get that far. This made sense for the most part, but no one wanted to send soldiers blind into what could be a deathtrap. Someone else postulated that, because the repulsion ward had difficulty distinguishing between muggle humans and muggle animals, other wards on the premises would have the same difficulty. Therefore, the soldiers had with them a collection of trained puppies, each having been rendered mute and placed on a long collar with an EM transmitter around their necks. They could then be sent ahead, their distances measured and then followed. Not knowing whether height might play a factor, they all crouched down and crawled forward, wary of having their heads chopped off by some unknown ward.

It had taken Umbrella six whole days to accept that the Dark Lord's base of operations was too well fortified and that there were too many unknowns to orchestrate an assault. Umbrella decided then to move to plan B, which was to find a secondary magical site and target it for termination. After a lot of probing, much of it done by satellite, the executives at Umbrella's military subsidiary, Wartech Inc., happened upon a large home outside Birmingham that was not listed in the local land registry office. It was exactly the kind of thing that they had been looking for. It was a domestic wizarding home. After another five days of heavy surveillance, which involved assessing the number and nature of the residents, the level of traffic, etc. felt confident they were ready to prepare a team for infiltration. They knew, for example, that the power to teleport was non-operational inside the manor itself. Whatever field scrambled the teleportation power extended throughout the home and to about five metres beyond the front door. They also knew that the home was equipped with the chimney transport system, called floo, and that this would be the residents' primary means of escape. There were two targets in this particular raid. An older woman, named Amelia Bones and her niece, Susan. Their names were merely incidental and had only been secured when a listening device caught part of a conversation that had taken place on the front steps of their home. Nicolai would have preferred to think of his targets as real people. It gave him an extra little thrill, but he had let Umbrella condition him to thinking of them as nonentities, which was useful, as it lent the exercise a greater degree of clinical objectivity.

Tacticians had debated over whether to deploy a nerve toxin through the ventilation system before penetration, or whether to just barge inside and tranquilize them. Nerve toxins were estimated to yield a slightly higher probability of success, but it would also mean damaging the targets. In the end, Wartech executives were too antsy to get moving. They wanted fully functional subjects as quickly as possible, and so Nicolai was ordered to penetrate the interior of the home and extract the targets alive and intact. Having been alerted to the probability that simple tranquilizers may not be effective against magical folk, the lab techs fashioned a tranquilizer cocktail that featured a multitude of different tranquilizers and even an illegal painkiller called etorphine, a far more potent cousin to heroin and morphine.

The team located a number of effective stress points that they could take advantage of. In particular, the parlour, where the chimney transport system was located, had bay windows covering one entire wall. Using glass cutters, two soldiers cut open sniper holes targeting the fireplace. Four soldiers took up posts at key guard points to monitor the situation and provide live surveillance. Two soldiers took to penetrating the cellar and the remaining four, which included Nicolai, stormed the front door.

Once the others were in place, Nicolai began cutting apart the wood of the front door. They had already been made aware that wizards used magical locks, and so the only recourse they would have would be to cut the door apart. Within ten seconds, however, Nicolai received a radio transmission from guard number three, who indicated that lights had come on in the master bedroom. Nicolai swore silently and instructed the three soldiers with him to fall back to covered positions. He himself followed suit, but only after pressing a wad of c-4 into the splintered wood frame. He wasn't exactly sure what he was doing. They hadn't expected to run across a silent alarm system. All he knew for certain was that he needed to be able to blow apart the door at a moment's notice and make room for entry, in case his soldiers covering the fireplace failed to do their job. He secured the detonator and pulled back to a fair distance, while transmitting a simple message to his point guards. The message was simple: Lay the mines.

If the targets managed to send a message, they would have to wipe all traces of Umbrella's existence from the premises. And given that their enemies could transport themselves instantaneously, that meant vaporizing themselves in a major firestorm. Nicolai could safely say that he didn't want to die, but he was prepared to nevertheless. He wasn't even really sure why he was prepared to. He didn't really believe in things like patriotism; he loved nothing, not even himself. All that mattered to him was winning and if his own death was necessary for his side to win, then so be it.

Nicolai could make out pinpricks of light through the cracks in the door, and, from what he could tell, the home's occupants were approaching to investigate. That was a bad thing, since he needed to herd them toward the fireplace, where the snipers were waiting. If they had a chance to investigate the wood and the c-4, they might gather together clues about the nature of the intruders, and that would be a very bad thing. Nicolai dared not underestimate them. He detonated the c-4, which cleanly vaporized a chunk of the doorway, blowing wood shrapnel in all directions with a rumbling bang. Hopefully that would ignite their panic response and drive them to seek escape through their chimney system. Nicolai quickly received confirmation from one of his point guards that both targets had been sighted and hit in the parlour. Wasting no time, even as he was given a running commentary of their incapacitation, Nicolai moved into the house, the three soldiers with him fanning out to either side as they covered ground to the parlour.

"Targets down," Carter said.

However, before Nicolai's team infiltrated the designated assault point, there was an explosion of firelight and sound and twinkling glass shattering and spraying the two snipers that had caught Susan and Amelia. What the fuck? Nicolai thought, halting his approach and listening for the sound of intruders.

In the echoing silence, Nicolai heard the distinct sound of silenced gunfire, followed by two words coming in through his earpiece. "All clear," said Carter. "Snipers down."

Nicolai pushed forward into the parlour to find out what had gone wrong. Both the Bones women were lying unconscious. The elder one was still clutching her wand and appeared to have staggered away from the windows unsuccessfully. Nicolai noted she had two darts in her leg. Hopefully that doesn't kill her, he thought, before scanning the remains of the room. The bay windows had been shattered, and the curtains were lit ablaze. He could make out the still forms of his two snipers. They looked as though their bodies had been cut to ribbons. Carter climbed in, pale and trembling through the now broken windows. "Report," Nicolai commanded.

Carter stood to attention and listed off the events as swiftly as he could. "Targets went down. After that, it's hard to tell exactly what happened. We didn't see the little creature that popped up." Carter pointed to a ugly little gremlin with big bat ears. "Some sort of magical guard dog, we expect. It shattered the windows in a fireball. Whatever it did, the glass - it was like it was alive, sir. The glass shards kept slashing at Luke and Genevieve, even after they were dead. It only stopped once I killed it." Carter's shot had put three bullets into the house elf's head, causing its skull to rupture and goo to dribble out of its forehead.

Just then, Nicolai received a short but fierce message from Jackson, one of the other point guards. "Fire in the hull."

A heavy explosion rocked the foundations of the house, easily vaporizing the entire front half and sending deep cracks and fissures through the rest of the structure.

"Jesus fuck," muttered Carter as he regained his balance.

"We've got company," Nicolai said, thinking that the guards must have been caught while in the midst of laying the mines. The situation was growing steadily worse. Luke and Genevieve were confirmed dead, and the five not with Nicolai were all unknowns. They could now here the intermittent burst of automatic fire. Another round of mines were activated, raising a crimson halo of fire in the darkness. All five soldiers could see a body being blown apart, its limbs ablaze.

"Jackson, Ivaylo," Nicolai commanded. "Collect the targets. And move out. Exit through the window and head to the rendezvous point. Keep quiet, but move quickly. The targets somehow contacted reinforcements. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. Stealth and speed are your friends now. Go."

Jackson and Ivaylo wordlessly followed their instructions, Jackson taking Amelia's limp form and Ivaylo taking Susan's. They both took a running leap out the window and disappeared into the envelope of darkness beyond. "All right," Nicolai said, turning to the others. "You're going to trail them at a good distance. Make sure they're not being crept up on. Kill silently if you can. Do not underestimate these people, whatever you do. Now go."

They nodded and headed out, leaving Nicolai standing alone in the ruin of the Bones parlour. He contemplated a number of different options at this point. He somehow doubted that they would survive without a major firefight. Even one wizard could dispatch them all if given half a chance. Their ability to retrieve reinforcements within seconds made them only that much more dangerous. Nicolai opened up a transmission to the getaway chopper.

"This is A unit commander reporting, requesting pickup."

"Understood commander. ETA?"

"Five minutes."

"Status?"

"Heavy fire. Come armed. Maximum seven passengers. Seven down."

"Copy, commander. Coming armed. Be there in five."

Nicolai clicked the transmitter, ending communication and jumping out the window to follow the rest of his soldiers. He was dismayed to see the light of battle up ahead. All their weapons were equipped with both sound and visual silencers, so he was particularly disturbed by the number of flashes that were appearing. Magic had particularly odious Technicolor properties, which Nicolai would never abide as an officer. He saw by the light of spellfire a wizard go down in a blaze of bullets, while a pair of others vanished with that eerie popping sound. Nicolai crept forward as quietly as he could, keeping his senses alert for where they would end up. One appeared less than five feet in front of him, and, taking a chance, he rushed the wizard and swiftly and surely plunged a six inch blade right into a fluid sac in the base of his victim's spine. Nicolai followed up by dragging the blade sideways so that it cut the spinal cord, paralyzing the wizard instantly, and sending him collapsing silently to the ground. Nicolai collapsed with him in order to shrink his profile, as he studied the landscape in search of another target. He saw one of his soldiers go down in a blaze of red light.

The repulsion ward was a mere ten metres from the edge of the home, and, normally, it would have been an unassuming distance. But here, in the darkness, with friends and enemies littering the battlefield, it was nothing short of an odyssey. Nicolai managed to creep across as wandlight scoured the area. He was certain now that his quarry was invisible, and that the wandlight was just a feint to draw him out. The tang of magic and blood was in the air.

Nicolai ignored the scream of one of his soldiers, and had to smile. Carter was going down for the cause. Two wizards immediately swarmed down on him and then suddenly disappeared in a column of bleu firelight. The distraction was enough for Nicolai to dash the remaining three metres to the muggle repulsion ward. Even as he took a running leap across the perimeter, the overwhelming vertigo assaulting him in mid-flight as his body careened through the repulsion ward, he felt the sting of a spell graze his shoulder. He collapsed in a heap for a few momentary seconds, fighting down the nausea and dragging himself into a crouch. Somehow, he had missed the discharge of a pair of rockets, that reduced the grounds to smoking craters. The escape chopper had arrived.

"Get down," Terry ordered through his receiver. Nicolai flattened himself to the ground and dragged himself as close to the chopper as he could. He knew what was coming next and almost felt a twinge of pity for anyone caught in the crossfire.

Most people thought that the use of radiation technologies were downright abhorrent in battle, but nothing was too low for Umbrella. On the chopper was mounted what looked like a rail cannon. Except that, instead of discharging high velocity projectiles through induction coils, it discharged high velocity plutonium particulates that aerosolized ten metres from the discharge point. The high concentration of super-heated plutonium rapidly expanded at a rate of ten cubic feet per second, and emitted over a billion becquerels, instantly flash-frying anyone in the vicinity. Nicolai was amazed that Umbrella was prepared to use such a weapon in a public place. The plutonium residue would make the land inhabitable for years, and would carry radiation up to ten miles in any direction, depending on the wind. At least, for the next thirty minutes or so. After that, it would settle into the ground and poison the earth. Some of that could be expected to seep into the water supply and drain out into surrounding areas. Cancer would peak in the area, though it occurred to Nicolai that, if the repulsion ward remained intact, most of the damage would be insulated from muggles. He found that thought somewhat amusing.

After the initial discharge of the rad cannon, a pall settled over the area. Nicolai took care to make sure he was completely covered before standing and exposing himself to the radiation winds. Even with his insulations, he was not assured safety in the highly toxic environment. As such, he raced toward the chopper and hopped on. The others had mostly made it on, including the two targets, Amelia and Susan. The girl had suffered some of the backlash of the radiation and would most likely die assuming her internal magic didn't save her. Nicolai just hoped that the scientists would be able to glean enough information so that they wouldn't suffer the same debacle next time.

No, Nicolai thought firmly, staring at the three remaining soldiers in his company. Next time, we're not going to do this poorly. We'll get what we need from these two and then we'll be prepared. Down below, he could see the light of spellfire and wandlight shining up at them. He desperately wanted to instruct the pilot to fly in and hit them with another pulse from the rad cannon, but he knew they wouldn't comply. They didn't understand what was going on. They probably hadn't even been told that magic was involved. In a perfect world, Nicolai would have gone in and gotten out without a single trace of their presence. The magical authorities would have assumed that wizards and witches had been the culprit, and Umbrella could have enjoyed studying their specimens secure in the knowledge that the night's activities could not have been traced back to them. But now, things were different. The witches new, and with that knowledge would come retribution. Nicolai could see it as clear as day. They had started a war. One which would be fought in secret. One which would be long and brutal and which would test both sides to their utmost limits. And if the muggles were going to win this war, then they were going to have to fold in on themselves. Disappear. And when they returned, they were going to have to be armed with the knowledge of magic and how to counter it.

Voldemort sat in a stiff, high-backed dragonhide chair reading a book. It was dusk outside and the smell of rain permeated the air. There was a fire crackling soberly in the hearth, keeping his private study warm and wet with red light. Contrary to popular belief, Voldemort had undergone relatively few rituals in his lifetime. This is not because he couldn't have, or because he didn't know how to do some of the more obscure or dangerous or beneficial ones. It was simply that he didn't really have need of them. Voldemort was brilliant and powerful as a matter of nature. His mind and body had been forged through adversity. Day after day, year after year, ever since his birth, he learned to grow strong from the ill fortunes that befell him. Currently, he was reading the sixth year DADA curriculum material, though it could be said that only half his attention was devoted to the subject. Why he was reading it at all was a mystery to Pettigrew, the servant that had secured for him the material. So many of his underlings, as Slytherin as they were, did not understand that, no matter how powerful one was, no matter how mean a killing curse or how good a legilimans you were, it meant nothing if you were an ignorant twit. Voldemort was never going to make that mistake again. News of Potter's defense club had reached his ears, and Voldemort was curious. While he didn't honestly believe that Potter could defeat him in a duel, he knew there was more to winning than simply beating your opponents into submission. Dumbledore was forging the next line of soldiers at that school of his, and Potter was undoubtedly throwing his weight around shoring up support. And that meant that, in five or ten years, a whole new wave of adult witches and wizards would be on their way to opposing him. Even if by some miracle, he managed to kill his old transfiguration teacher by the end of the school year, the witches and wizards that he had graduated over the last ten and the next five years worth at least would be in his thrall. Killing the old man would only make him a martyr.

Voldemort turned a page.

The other half of Voldemort's attention was directed at a Daily Prophet clipping from the day before. The headline read: HEAD OF MLE ATTACKED.

The Ministry detailed the kidnapping of Amelia Bones and her niece, Susan. Huffelpuffs, Voldemort remembered. The woman was a rather gifted witch.

What was more interesting was the fact that he was attributed as having led the assault personally, and that he was holding her prisoner. The Prophet was really laying it on thick. YOU-KNOW-WHO TORTURING CHILDREN.

Voldemort snorted. He would have found the article naively amusing, if it weren't for the fact that he had nothing to do with the attack on the Bones residence. Furthermore, from the details reported in the Prophet, he had a pretty good idea that the Ministry also knew that he wasn't behind the attacks. Which meant that they were covering up for somebody. Surely not themselves, Voldemort mused. Who among them would dare attack the head of the MLE? It made no sense.

No, he had decided, the culprits are elsewhere.

It had taken a few hours of pondering before Voldemort finally settled on the only ones who could have possibly done it. At first, he thought the idea preposterous, but, the more he ruminated, the more likely it seemed. Unlike his pureblooded servants, Voldemort did not share the same kind of contempt for muggles. That is to say, he had contempt for them, but it was a different kind of contempt. He hated them because he was jealous. All around him, the magical world was rife with buffoons. He could count the number of intelligent witches and wizards in Britain on one hand. If he had the talent that muggles had at their disposal, trained soldiers, strategicians, you name it, he would probably leave the poor muggle sods alone. But no, that wasn't the case. They were the ones dominating the planet, and they were the ones who lived in an ever-changing, ever-growing society. All the while, the retarded chickens that passed for witches and wizards around him were content to stagnate in their own ignorance. Yes, he wanted to make the wizarding world strong. He envisioned a world where magic pushed harder, went further. Where great things were achieved year after year. Where society today could not even comprehend what society a hundred years from now would look like. And he would do it by strengthening his grip on every aspect of magical Britain and crushing the weak from it, excising the filth and purifying the nimrods from every nook and cranny of the island. Out of the ashes, only those who survived would remain, their minds and bodies and magic forged through hatred and strife. From there, they would learn. They would grow. In a hundred years, under his eternal gaze, they would come to dominate everything in their path. There would be no task they could not do. No creature, no country, no obstacle would stop them.

And now, all that he feared was coming to pass. His worst nightmares were being realized, however obliquely. He expected that, at that very moment, the newly elected acting Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour, was raving like a madman at the muggle Prime Minister. And he also knew that it would do no good. Whoever did this, whatever muggle organization had decided to act against wizardkind, it would not be some obtuse government branch. It would be something private. Something sleek and dangerous and well-resourced. It would be something like him. The magical world wasn't capable of taking on the muggle one. They wouldn't even know how to go about it. If the boys over at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office were any indication, it would take years before they properly understood the full implications of muggle technology. And the muggleborns were a whole other story. Voldemort was willing to bet that if war broke out, at least half of them would return to the muggle side, and they would become a potent ally for the muggles. And that was more of a concern than anything. No, they were too much of a liability and they had to be eradicated before wizards and witches could fully develop themselves. It would be inevitable that, if the wizarding world sought to expand, it would magnify friction between the two worlds. The Magical Reversal Squad could only do so much.

Voldemort was willing to bet that old Amelia and her niece were already being experimented on, tested, probed, prodded and poked. The muggles were already trying to figure out magic, develop anti-magic technologies. And Voldemort had no idea how successful they would be. Could they create a magical plague? He knew magic disrupted electrical equipment. Could muggles turn the tables? Could they disrupt magic? If so, no ward in the world would save them. And without magic, wizards and witches would be sitting ducks. Worse, he had no idea what would happen with the interaction between his soul energy and some bizarre, muggle technology. The entire war would be fought in laboratories, with constant experimentation and innovation. And if left long enough, the muggles would eventually find a way.

Voldemort closed his copy of Dealing with the Dark: An Advanced Guide to Evil, and stared out his window, the firelight making his red eyes shine. "Nagini," he hissed, still staring out the window.

"Yes, my lord," she responded.

"I have a task for you."

"Anything, my lord."

"Go to the Bones residence. Investigate. Find out anything you can about the ones who attacked the Bones."

"As you command." Nagini waited a second to see if her master would say anything more before turning away and slithering out the door.

Soon, Voldemort thought. Soon, we shall test the might of magic against the might of muggles.