When Buffy opened the door to the main area, it was a scene from hell. Gunfire, explosions, blinking security lights, alarms, fire, blood, carnage.
Death.
"Well, Buffy, shall we clear a path for us?" Rowan commented idly from beside her as if the sight wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Well, knowing his background and the events surrounding the Sealing, it probably wasn't.
"No choice," she nodded grimly. "Xander, follow us with Willow. Giles, the rear with Tara. Got it? Let's go."
Even though their surroundings were something straight out of a nightmare, Xander couldn't but watch in awe as Buffy and Rowan, almost without slowing their pace, cleared the panicking soldiers and frenzied dark creatures out of their way with swift and precise attacks. He kept himself hunched over Willow, shielding her body with his as much as possible. Throwing a quick look behind him, he was relieved to see Giles doing the same with Tara.
Miraculously unharmed they rushed through the open door leading to the super-secret section of the Initiative. A rotating red emergency light next to the door helpfully indicated that the area had been compromised.
The corridor beyond the door was totally empty, and they were able to locate Room 314 without further encounters. Once inside the surprisingly small room for its notoriety, Buffy and Willow made a beeline for the farthest corner from the door where the schematics Willow had analysed earlier indicated as the most likely location for a hidden entrance to the secret lab. Behind them, Xander and Rowan upended the two operating tables and used them to barricade the door to the corridor.
Probing the large, square wall tiles behind a wheeled cabinet for storing canisters yielded immediate results. A corner of one of the tiles tilted inside with an audible click causing the corner sections of the wall to fold aside on silent rails.
"Alright," Buffy nodded in satisfaction. "Once I'm inside, barricade the door behind me as well. Giles, Tara? This place ok to be Magic Central?"
"It should do," Giles answered after having quickly measured the available floor space and receiving a firm nod from Tara.
"How long until the ritual kicks in?" Buffy asked for final confirmation.
"Five to six minutes," Tara answered confidently as Giles started carefully pouring their precious mixture on the floor in the required shape of a six-pointed star inside a circle – The Seal of Solomon – with the accompanying incantation.
"I'll be fast, then," Buffy smiled at the blonde Witch. She was truly impressed by how the newest addition to their team had handled the situation so far. Now, her real challenge would start.
"I hate the idea of you going in alone," Xander admitted quietly as he came to stand beside Willow to see Buffy through the secret entrance.
Behind them, Giles, Rowan and Tara were watching the scene intently. Buffy flashed them all a loving smile. "I won't be."
The short passageway led Buffy to an incredible, tube-like gallery, perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty in diameter. The exit was a circular opening mid-way up the wall with metal ladders for accessing the main floor. Almost directly below her stood a large, metal chair with someone sitting motionlessly in it.
"Riley!" she cried out in shock at seeing the disappeared soldier and quickly climbed down the ladders. "Are you hurt?" she asked anxiously as she reached his side. A cold hand gripped her heart when he just stared back at her mutedly. "Say something!" she demanded, close to panicking.
Then, noticing the brief flicking of Riley's eyes over her shoulder to something behind her, she whipped her head around. Maybe ten feet behind her stood a silent Dr Walsh and Dr Angleman with zombie-like faces and tubes sticking out from various sections of their body.
"What's this?" she gasped in alarm. Even though she had known about the plan for a hybrid army, the gruesome reality she was now facing was just too much. She turned back to Riley. "Why won't you say anything?" she asked in a shaky voice.
"He can't," the deep voice of Adam answered her from the other side of the vast area. "He's not programmed to. He's part of the final phase now, as you were supposed to be."
"Final phase," Buffy spat out, disbelief giving way to anger at hearing the hateful voice. "Final, as in me putting an end to you and this whole fucking place."
"Oh," Adam replied flatly. "Kill her," he commanded simply and – apparently losing all further interest in her – turned away and stepped through a circular opening in the far wall.
Before Buffy could react further, someone with a decidedly non-human arm had her in a tight stranglehold from behind.
"Thought he'd never ask," the simultaneously familiar and totally alien voice of Forrest startled her into brief immobility.
It was the high-pitched whining sound of a bone saw held by Dr Walsh that shook her back to her senses. She pushed forcefully back with her powerful legs, throwing herself and Forrest back-first against the wall next to Riley's chair. A glass beaker fell from a nearby shelf and crashed on the table for medical instruments standing next to the chair.
Slipping herself free from Forrest's slackened grasp, she instinctively struck the approaching Dr Walsh with a spin kick to the head which sent her sprawling to the floor. The tool in her hand went quiet and slipped under an operating table. With an inhuman growl and hardly shaken at all Forrest launched himself back at her, the apparent toughness and speed of his new body coming as an unpleasant surprise to Buffy.
Riley was forced to watch in impotent fury as his former brother in arms commenced a frenzied attack on his girlf... Buffy. Then, noticing the large shards of broken glass only ten inches away from his right hand, he took a deep breath and concentrated all his will on making his arm move.
He was able to choke out a strangled "Buffy!" as Forrest managed to land an especially brutal blow in her stomach, doubling her over.
"Shut up," Forrest growled at him, eyes blazing. "Watch me kill your girlfriend, Rye. That's an order."
The fight flowed back and forth in front of his almost immobile body. Sweat drenched his t-shirt as he forced his hand to crawl towards the broken beaker inch by an agonising inch. After what felt like hours, his fingers touched cool glass and closed around a dagger-like shard. With an inaudible scream of defiance, he wrenched his arm free of the partial paralysis and stabbed himself in the chest, just below the left shoulder.
In Room 314 five solemn figures were sitting cross-legged inside the triangles formed by the six-pointed star Giles had carefully drawn on the floor using the mystical mixture in their magic gourd. Inside the sixth triangle the gourd sat in Buffy's vacant place. Six candles were lit along the encirclement between the points where the star touched the circle.
Drawing a deep breath to centre herself, Tara began the ritual.
"The power of the Slayer and all who wield it.
Last to ancient first, we invoke thee.
Grant us thy domain and primal strength.
Accept us and the power we possess.
Make us mind and heart and spirit enjoined.
Let the hand encompass us. Do thy will.
By the generous will of the Ancients,
The almighty power of the Divine Spirits…
Your supplicants humbly beseech thee to behold us
And that which we possess…
The moieties of the One, the Avatar…"
With a deep breath she turned over the first tarot card.
"Empress: Femininity, beauty, nature, nurturing, abundance," she spoke quietly and laid the card down in front of her knees. "May all people be happy."
She handed the deck to Willow who was the next one to her left.
"High Priestess," Tara announced as her girlfriend turned the next card. "Intuition, sacred knowledge, divine feminine, the subconscious mind."
"Go the way of wisdom," Willow murmured as was required for her part of the ritual as she laid the card on the floor.
The deck was next passed to Giles.
"Hierophant: Spiritual wisdom, conformity, tradition, institutions," Tara intoned.
"You will win on your spiritual path," Giles completed his part.
Rowan was next.
"Hermit: Soul-searching, introspection, being alone, inner guidance."
"Guide the Unknowing," Rowan responded.
The final one in the circle was Xander.
"Hanged man: Pause, surrender, letting go, new perspectives."
"Sacrifice your ego and take things as they are," Xander spoke quietly, laying down his card.
Now fully immersed into the ritual past the point of no return, Tara took back the offered deck and turned the next card.
"Strength: Strength, courage, persuasion, influence, compassion."
"Forward with self-discipline and fortitude," all five spoke in synch as Tara planted the card in front of the gourd.
As they finalised the last incantation, a warm wind – like that of a dry desert – blew over them flaming the candles to a furious blaze. Tara found herself unable to stop the flow of words out of her mouth.
"We are enjoined that we may give ourselves to the chosen vessel, the hand wielding the Strength, daughter of Sineya, first of the Ones."
The warm wind coalesced into a small whirlwind rising from middle of the star, and each of them felt like something was inexorably pulled out of their being into the tornado. The top of the funnel kept reaching higher and higher until it passed the ceiling as if it wasn't there.
"Something is wrong," Tara cried out in dismay. They had performed the ritual flawlessly but now it was as if the force was looking around, sniffing for the intended receptable, unable to locate it.
"Faith!" Rowan exclaimed in sudden understanding as the meaning of Tara's last words became clear. He quickly drew the next card from the deck with Air.
"Lovers," Tara gasped. "Love, harmony, relationships, values alignment, choices."
"Follow your inner voice of truth and love," she and Rowan spoke together.
Then, with the missing incantation done, Rowan brought the final card briefly to his lips and then laid it down in the middle of the star, directly under the mystical vortex.
In the secret lab two identically brutal fights were in full swing. Adam had constructed Forrest with skill and thought, making him an incredibly strong fighter. An army of hybrid soldiers like him, Buffy thought as they exchanged a powerful blow after another, would be in all aspects unstoppable.
In his chair Riley was determinedly cutting into his own flesh in a diagonal angle over the spot where Adam had said the behavioural modifier chip was planted. Dropping the now bloody glass dagger he steeled his resolve and inserted his fingers into the deep wound he had just slashed open. The pain and revulsion were almost overwhelming, but he kept on digging around in the wet hole regardless. Every agonising nerve impulse screamed at him to withdraw his hand but then his fingertips touched something solid, metallic.
With a final burst of resolve he dove deeper into his chest and managed to get a firm grip of the device embedded into his nervous system. He wrenched his hand away almost vomiting at the feeling but then it was as if a cloud had been blown away from his mind. He could once again think clearly, his body responded to his will, and his will alone. With determination he dropped the gory piece of electronics to the floor, stood up and crushed it under the heel of his boot.
Using a slight opening in Buffy's defences Forrest had been able to pick her up and slam down on one of the operating tables. Simultaneously Dr Angleman had thrown himself bodily over her flailing legs and was now clumsily trying to use the leather restraints to fully tie her legs down.
"Is that it, Slayer? Is that all you got?" Forrest grinned like a beast as he had Buffy's upper body pinned against the metal surface with his arm pressing down on her throat.
Out of the corner of her eye Buffy saw Dr Walsh approaching her with a large syringe in her hand.
"No, she's got me," a determined voice announced from behind the white-clad zombies, and then they were pulled away from the table.
Slow as they were, they were unable to prevent Riley from grabbing their life-supporting tubes and yanking them mercilessly loose from their bodies. Gurgling and choking both former scientists fell to the floor in convulsions which soon ceased until they lay still in spreading pools of red liquid.
"Well, well, look who's come off the bench," Forrest almost purred in evil glee and forgot Buffy for a crucial moment.
Kicking Forrest in the face from her prone position, she used her motion to bring her back to her feet as the hybrid soldier was momentarily stunned.
"I need to get to Adam – now," Buffy urgently told the grim looking Riley who had a long, bleeding hole in his chest. "Are you able?"
"Go," Riley nodded determinedly and switched his attention to Forrest who had already recovered from Buffy's kick.
In Oruanui, New Zealand the bokken Faith had been practicing with in the front yard suddenly fell from her grip as a powerful, warm wave flashed through her. Her legs folded and she fell to the lawn with wide staring eyes.
"Faith!" Miyoko cried out in alarm and immediately wheeled her chair next to the fallen Slayer. She determinedly pushed herself off the chair and crawled the rest of the way to cradle Faith's head against her chest. Somewhere behind her she heard running steps and Patricia calling out her and Faith's name.
"Bright Eyes, B, Red..., they need me," Miyoko heard Faith whisper urgently as the Slayer grabbed her arms.
In the next second Patricia was on her knees next to them. "I thought I felt...," she panted. "This is... Faith! Try to relax, feel. This is not black magic; it feels like... like, love."
Opening herself and reaching inside Faith more felt than saw two scenes taking place below, above and all around her. They were separate but still irrevocably intertwined. In one Buffy was fighting something that looked like a modern-day Frankenstein's monster. In the other, her love, friends and a beautiful blonde girl were sitting inside a magic circle, joined together but somehow lacking the guiding spirit.
Acting purely by instinct she reached for those in the circle first, gathering the wildly pulsating energy around her, taming it, claiming it.
In Room 314 Tara watched in awe as the primaeval energy they had unleashed slowly came under control and coalesced into the ethereal shape of a stunningly beautiful young woman.
"Sunray," she heard Rowan whisper in a voice full of love. "It was always going to be you."
"Faith?" Willow, Xander and Giles gasped together as the apparition gave each of them a cocky grin.
"The Slayer," Tara addressed the woman in awe as their eyes met. "Your Sister needs you, all of you." She had no idea how she had known what to say.
Nodding in understanding the spirit floated out of the circle and through the wall which hid the doorway Buffy had used earlier. With her went the power those participating in the ritual had freely given her.