Chapter 54

The turning earth was giving off a sweet organic smell. She hadn't ever thought, before a few years ago, that she would like such a scent. Now, she wished she could wake up to it every day. She had no idea what kind of money Angel was paying these people to work on the weekends, but she was glad they were. The school would never be done in time if the crews only worked five days a week. Some of them were even working Sundays, she had learned from the foreman.

Wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a yellow hard hat, Faith brushed her hair away from her eyes. A few of the guys had looked in her direction and one or two had gotten up the nerve to whistle. Before, she would have beaten them into ground meat. Now, she gave them a rude hand gesture and a sweet smile. They laughed, which was a much more rewarding reaction that screams of terror.

Walking throughout the site, she looked at the foundation walls, which were being built for the house style dormitories at the West side of the property. When the construction was done, there would be room for one-hundred and fourteen slayers. Eight houses that would house eight girls each were being built along the West fence, surrounded by woods behind them and the gymnasium in front of them.

Two dormitories were being built at the East end; they would house twenty-five slayers each. Faith had decided that more housing buildings holding a smaller number of girls would be better than forcing fifty or so to live together. She was trying to avoid fights before they even began. Having read up on all-girl schools, Faith knew the troubles she might have to face.

The old high school was being remodeled into something that would serve for classrooms and a few sparring rooms. Most of the sparring, though, would be conducted in the gym. Three different construction crews had been contracted to work on the project. One crew was working on the houses, another was remodeling the school and the third was finishing the structural supports for the gym and indoor pool area.

A landscaping firm had sent thirteen people to try and make the property look beautiful; they had tried explaining what kind of trees they were planting, but Faith had lost interest in the conversation almost immediately. She had remembered to write herself a note about hiring gardeners, though. A paving company was creating a gated entrance and parking lot for the administrators and professors and whatever students had vehicles. Once that was done, they would move on to the basketball and tennis courts and outdoor eating area.

The sketches Angel had sent her included every amenity he could think of. He wanted the academy to be almost self-sufficient. She was sure that when Angel finally negotiated the deal for more land from whoever owned the surrounding properties that he would want to place restaurants and a few clothing stores on the campus. He had mentioned something about creating a small town for the slayers. Faith thought the idea was phenomenal, but she was also slightly alarmed at the idea that the slayers would never leave their area and venture into the real world.

The school was designed almost like a college and boarding school hybrid. The girls would be allowed to leave the campus, with certain conditions. Classes were mandatory, as were training sessions. Privileges were to be earned at this school, Faith had decided. Fights, skipped classes or training sessions would mean a kind of house arrest. The campus, however, was going to offer enough for the girls to do that Faith doubted they would want to leave very often.

Basketball and tennis courts were on the north end. The dormitories would be very close to those courts. The school, outdoor eating area and cafeteria were clustered together, and separated from the gymnasium by soccer and softball fields. In addition to the fields, there were picnic areas, woods with hiking trails, and an outdoor obstacle field and running track.

Smiling to herself, she stood in front of the school, looking at the blueprints for the large piece of land. Angel had insisted the entire facility be fenced in. She understood his reasoning; he only wanted one attack point for an enemy to use if the slayer school became known about. She smiled at his paranoia, but agreed with it to a certain degree. The fence would be over twelve feet high, and was being built behind preexisting woods and forests. They were going to use nature to their advantage.

The site was a few hours from L.A., but the drive was pleasant. The area was quiet and Angel had found some old millionaire that had bought the school after the town around it disappeared. Faith thought that was odd, but there were other towns in California that had ended up as ghost towns. The original school had been built by a wealthy man as a sort of charter school for special needs children. The project had been finished, but hadn't gone according to plan. Faith hadn't heard the entire story; she was just glad Angel had found such a perfect location for the Academy.

Crossing her arms across her chest, she turned to see a Jeep driving along the make-shift roads the construction crews had created. Smiling, she simply raised her eyebrows and waited for the Jeep to park. A smiling Xander exited the vehicle and accepted the hard hart she offered him.

"I thought these things went out of style."

"I got yelled at for not wearing one."

His eyebrows raised in unabashed shock. "Is this person still alive? Someone yelled at you and you're still smiling?"

"I'm doing this whole self control thing. It's a new for me."

"Yeah." Following her to the wide bench with blueprints scattered on it, Xander carefully went through each one before speaking.

"Well, these are good. Really good. I would have moved the cafeteria about ten feet to the right, but what can you do? Anyway, why did you want me to come out here?"

Taking a deep breath, she started, "Well, I know about as much about construction as I know about knitting. I figured you, being mister carpenter person, could give this all a look over and tell me if everything's as smooth as I want it to be."

Nodding, he pulled a few blueprints towards him and traced lines with his fingers. "Everything looks good. A little ambitious, maybe."

"Yeah, blame Angel for that."

"Oh, you didn't want the soccer field?" he joked, "Well, I mean, it's a lot. A lot to get done in the next couple months, especially. But I saw the name of three different companies as I pulled up here, so I guess it can get done. And they're working on Saturday."

"Angel's giving them double time to work weekends. And they go about sixteen hours a day."

"Wow. That's'…intense. Anyway, yeah, I guess it all looks good. If it can get done in time, I will be very impressed. I have no doubt, though, that these guys want to get paid. So I think they will work as hard as they can to get this done. And I wouldn't want to make you mad. That would be enough to make me get this done."

Smirking, she turned around and leaned against the work bench. "Is this going to work, Xan? Can this school really turn into what Willow and Angel want it to be? Willow emailed me this morning; she sent digital pictures of the insides of the classrooms and the administration building. She said an interior design firm used some computer program to create a blueprint of what the interiors will look like. It was pretty neat, but I don't know if we can get this done in time."

"Well, I think we have to. This is what, like, a billion dollar deal? They want this to work. And it has to, there are slayers trying to patrol with no training and no leadership. We know of two girls that have died this year because of lack of practice in the field. I'm amazed the number isn't higher. The thing is, though, we aren't sure if new girls will be activated since those two died. Are all of them, for this entire generation, activated or can there be more? We have to get them to safe places to train them and figure this stuff out."

"We have to track them down first. We have, what, five hundred now? That we know of? It isn't as if we can put adds in international papers asking all super-powered young women to call us."

"Well, we could do that, but we'd probably get some thirty-something year old woman using a towel as a cape telling us she's Wonder Woman incarnate. So I vote to not do that."

"I don't really have any good ideas for tracking these girls down. It can't be easy; keeping something like that a secret. I know I wouldn't tell anyone. Men in white coats would come to take you away."

Shrugging, he turned back to the blueprints. "It was tough for Buffy and she had friends that knew about it. Being all alone on that journey, that would be really hard." Pausing long enough to find the schematics he wanted, he turned to Faith with a curious glance. "Have you guys thought about protection?"

"Protection? What, you mean like guard towers with snipers on them?"

"No. I was thinking of something more along the lines of an escape route. If I were a demon, I wouldn't attack a place with sixty-three student slayers. And I definitely wouldn't attack when you were on campus. But you won't always be here and some of these girls have no training whatsoever. I would have some kind of underground system to get out. Or at least an escape route. I get what Angel wants, with the one entrance, but that also means you guys are trapped if that's blocked."

"I think he thought of that." Looking through the pile of papers, she found the one she had noticed earlier. "Look at this. I think this part," pointing to a tunnel on the blueprint, "is underground. Doesn't it look like it is?"

He stared for a few minutes. Whoever had designed the plans was using a code he had never seen. If he was reading the drawing right, there were underground tunnels throughout the system of buildings. However, he wasn't sure if they were sewer pipes, water pipes, or escape tunnels. The coding was something very unique to whoever had designed the project.

"They're underground alright. I just don't know what they are. Call Angel, he'll know what's going on, hell, he probably designed this code."

"He's kind of secretive about this stuff, isn't he?" If a voice could be dry, hers was. She sounded less than amused and slightly perturbed by her observation.

"He is. I think he lets us on to about ten percent of the actual plan. He does that with everybody though."

Shaking her head, she said, "I'll call him. Honestly, I never know what he's gonna say. He could come right out and say, 'yeah, I have an underground railway and a train waiting to take all of them away,' or he could say, 'I'll think about it,' and never bring it up again. I just never know."

"It worries me." Looking directly at Faith, he tried to gauge her response to his statement. She was more difficult to read than Angel, at times.

"I'm not worried. More frustrated. He compartmentalizes like no other. Anyway, it's hot, I'm hungry, and I want to get out of here. Want to go for a beer?"

Making no effort to hide his surprise, a slow smile crept to his lips as he spoke, "going for a beer with Faith. Never in my wildest dreams did I think of that. And I had some wild dreams about you."

"I bet you did, stud. Don't get any ideas; I think I found a man already."

"You work fast. You've been in California for like five minutes."

"Jealous?" Turning, she flipped the hard hat onto the table and headed for her car. Smiling over her shoulder at him, she laughed before getting behind the wheel. She had missed tormenting Xander.

Shaking his head, Xander started the Jeep and followed Faith away from the multiple work sites. Looking at his watch, he realized he had only about ten hours before he had to catch his flight to Chicago. He figured that was long enough to have a beer and some onion rings with Faith and still be able to grab his already packed bags.

Trying to keep up with the speed demon slayer, he smiled at how much she had changed. She was turning into a pretty neat woman, he mused. Ready to see another woman, he convinced himself that he wasn't nervous about his latest trip. This trip had nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart; it was personal. Pressing the accelerator so as not to loose the slayer he was following, he told himself he was ready for his impromptu vacation.