Lost Soldiers, Dark Deals, Lawful Justice Denied

by Shadow Master

(BtVS/Crysis/Ghost in the Shell:tSAC/Halo/Metal Gear/Terminator:tSCC/Stargate SG-1) There is a practice amongst most professions dealing in death that you don't assume anything's dead until you confirm it for certain. Sound advice for the SGC

2. The Bloody Darkness Creeps

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their creators and associated companies. I make no profit off of this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my work.

Note: Sorry for the long wait. Real Life and more specifically me new job were demanding quite a bit of attention and the place gets pretty busy around the holidays. Not exactly conducive to imaginative writing or at least not in my case.

A Few Hours Later, Rupert Giles' POV

Ethan, if I ever see you again, I'll shove a Needler so far up your ass they'll need to clean you off the walls with a sponge! he thought as he regained consciousness.

Of course once his mind cleared enough for him to realize that he'd used a term that he was fairly sure he'd known nothing about prior to this debacle, but now knew extensively what its capabilities were both from a user and a target's point of view. The more he tried to find out where this anomalous information came from, the more anomalies he came across, ranging from how to pilot a Banshee to the recommended method of taking down a pair of Hunters. The information was almost overwhelming but, with techniques learned in order to fend off telepathic intruders, he set it aside and partitioned that part of his mind. Instead he brought up what he knew about the current situation and how best to deal with the situation.

He knew that his old 'friend' was working for an employer who wanted to use the chaos spell cast in Sunnydale all those years ago, presumably to gain access to fictional technology and biology. This employer was apparently willing to party with a sizeable sum of money in return for this service but, considering how much an enterprising individual could gain from the venture, it was pocket change by comparison. Of course that assumed that monetary gain was the employer's objective but he knew that, even with just the knowledge, technology and enhancements he now possessed, conquering a sizeable country was not out of the question. Assuming the technology and the augmentation procedure could be successfully replicated using what could be found within him, both literally and figuratively, the mastermind could create an army of SPARTAN-IIs. Considering the exploits from the memories of the Master Chief, memories that were almost as real feeling as his own, it was unlikely that any military on the planet would be able to defeat then without resorting to extreme as well as possibly nuclear measures.

He'd rather the world not be turned into a radioactive wasteland.

Turning his focus inward, he could already tell that his body had undergone significant changes as his bones felt… firmer, and while he'd have to consult a mirror, he'd wager his muscle mass had increased substantially. In truth, he felt better than he had in ages with none of usual discomfort or maladies that commonly accompanied old age, thus making him reluctantly grateful to his 'old friend'. His greatly improved eyesight also let him know that the HUD on his visor worked and, while it was far from comprehensive, it was a strong indicator that the armor he wore was also fully functional as well as just like the foreign memories told him it was like.

While this information did reassure him somewhat since it meant he had more options than simply the skills of a Watcher at his disposal, he still did not appreciate it being done against his will. He had little doubt that, when his young friends were feeling better, they'd likely poke fun at the fact that he was now a cyborg and knew more about weapons technology than anyone on the planet. He'd told them repeatedly that it wasn't that he HATED technology but that he preferred that knowledge have a more tangible feel to it. Digital knowledge and technology… it just felt so ethereal to him! At least with books, scrolls and the like he could verify its authenticity with his own two hands using the skills he possessed and could trust the knowledge gained from people who'd made the discovery in the first place.

Well, no sense dwelling on something you cannot at present change, he thought as he noticed the others beginning to stir. Better to use that energy to help the others cope with their new circumstances. I will likely have my own 'freak out' moment later, once the ramifications have time to catch up with me.

"Uhhhh… .what a nightmare," Buffy said with a slightly scratchy voice. "I thought for a second I'd… wha-what's wrong with my… WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO ME!?"

"Buffy, I know that this is a lot to ask but please try to stay calm." he said with his voice somewhat deeper. "If we are to stand any chance of making it through this, we must keep our heads."

"Keep our HEADS!?" Buffy asked, with signs of a 'freak out' appearing. "IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE SOME KIND OF JOKE!? I'm a FUCKING machine! Nothing… nothing FEELS right!"

Well, that pretty much confirms that whatever the abilities of her cybernetic body, they do not include a perfect sense of touch, he thought, closing his eyes in sympathy. It's likely along the lines of how one feels under localized anesthetic: a numbness where only the minimal sense of touch is perceivable. You can tell you're hand is touching something solid but there's no texture to it. You can't tell if it feels smooth, rough, wet or dry. In a way it's worse than if she'd had her sense of touch removed entirely because at least then there wouldn't be that proverbial carrot dangling just out of reach.

"I know. I have the memories of thousands, tens of thousands, of deaths in my mind," he said, trying to let her know she wasn't alone. "Some were allies, more were enemies and some were just civilians I, I mean John One One Seven couldn't save for one reason or another. I thought I'd seen everything being a Watcher and then running the New Council… what the Master Chief has seen and endured makes me feel like a right pansy. Nevertheless, what I said was true: if we're to have any hope of making it through this, we have to stay calm and think things through. This is not the time to go as nutters as Drusilla."

"R-right… right! So, I'm guessing you haven't figured out anything new since you got back in the driver's seat?" she asked, sounding increasingly calmer.

"Alas, no. Until the restraints are removed we are effectively trapped." He remembered the conversation that had gone on while John was in control and frowned. "Our best chance will likely be when they attempt to discern how our new bodies work and try to replicate them. While they will likely attempt to sedate us in some manner, there is a chance they'll make a mistake with the dosage or the means given that they'll be unfamiliar with our enhancements."

"Then we'll break free and start kicking some ass!" she said, sounding very much like she'd only be satisfied when every last person in the complex was unconscious on the ground.

"No. Our priority will be escape," he said, firmly opposed to unnecessary fighting. "We will dispatch only the minimum needed in order to assure our escape from this hellish place. We have too little information on Ethan's employer to make an accurate assessment of their resources or influence. Better to get to a secure Council facility and plan our retribution there."

"Alright. Just don't make me wait too long," she said, sounding like only the promise of eventual revenge was keeping her from going for immediate revenge.

"Never fear. I'm eager for my own pound of flesh as well but I plan to make sure it all goes off without a hitch. That means planning. LOTS of planning." A feral grin was hidden by his helmet. "So when the buggers try to escape, they'll have no place to hide."

"Just remember to leave some for me," came Xander's voice from within the black and white suit of armor. "You're not the only ones with a new set of mental luggage."

"Death, loss or unbelievable suffering?" Buffy asked sardonically with a crooked grin on her face.

"All of the above. I don't think you can be a soldier and not experience all three at some point," Xander replied, turning his head to look at her. "We've been through a lot fighting the good fight but what I can remember of Prophet's life now. It's enough to make me believe we're still newbies."

"Prophet?" he asked curious about the rather ominous name or title.

"Major Laurence Barnes, leader of Raptor Team, a specialist in recon, covert and support missions in the American military. His call sign was Prophet," Xander explained, sounding like parts of his new memories were fuzzy. "I can't remember perfectly but I think he got the name because he had a habit of preparing for worst case scenarios on missions and his predictions had a bad habit of coming true."

Yes, I imagine that would be cause enough to earn that moniker, he thought, thinking on the sense of humor of the person behind the decision.

"Sounds like someone with his own kind of Harris luck," Buffy said with a bit of humor in her voice. "Except he had the sense to plan ahead."

"Ha-ha-ha-ha," Xander deadpanned at first. "…Yeah it does, doesn't it?" Xander asked rhetorically, sounding like he found the comment at least a little funny.

"You guys do realize that this entire room is probably bugged, right?" came Willow's voice from the high tech gurney she was restrained on. "From where I'm laying I see two cameras and at least one microphone. I'm thinking if we're gonna be planning our escape, it'd be a little smarter to do it where they can't eavesdrop."

Already he could hear Chief Petty Officer Mendez giving him a verbal beat down for overlooking such an obvious variable in the current situation. It was only logical that prisoners be kept under some kind of surveillance even from within their prison cell. Bloody rank amateur!

"Point made," he said, sounding appropriately chastised. "Then perhaps we should summarize our captures and the circumstances surrounding them. Perhaps we can gain a better understanding of what we're dealing with that way."

He knew it was most likely pointless. From what he'd seen during his encounter the men were most likely mercenaries rather than the personal operatives of their captor. Once they escaped they might be able to locate the group and search through their bank records for their employer but not now. All he could say for certain was that they were likely expensive given the weapons and equipment they wielded. Each mercenary likely had possessed a small fortune in equipment on his body and you don't possess things like that unless you had plenty of currency to spend.

Combined with Ethan's paycheck, the culprit or culprits were likely either government or corporate in nature. Neither would be easy foes to gain retribution from and, even if they succeeded, there would be consequences that could well have them leaving behind the Council in order to ensure its survival. Consequences often meant revenge, retribution and debts by the boatload. If the Council was to be free of such complications, it had to be kept at a distance once the five of them went on the warpath.

We've done a good job making the foundation, he thought as he listened to Xander summarize how he was captured. Robin and the others can take it from here.

The Next Day, The Director's Office, Rocky Mountain R&D Facility, Athena's POV

Time to see how my investment has turned out, she thought as she activated the vid-com system built into the wall in front of her. Drago should've had enough time to do a basic scan on each of them by now.

It only took a couple of seconds for the link to be established but, once it did, the music of screams and suffering filling the air even as the image of a particularly busy Doctor Drago moving about the lab like a hyperactive puppy appeared before her eyes. He seemed quite excited and that led her to believe that he was getting quite a bit of useful information from the test subjects pleasing her greatly. Nevertheless, when she called for a status update, she demanded that her underling present himself promptly before her regardless of how productive he was being.

"DOCTOR DRAGO!" she said loudly enough to get the weak willed man's attention. "I trust you have good news for me?"

The man instantly abandoned his activities, knelt before the camera in proper subservience and kept his eyes on the floor.

Better.

"Yes, mistress. While we have only just finished a cursory scan of each subject the information, we have gained is… well, astonishing would be the best word to describe it," Drago said, barely maintaining a professional demeanor. "The technological advancements across EVERY field of science… they're incalculable!"

"Then perhaps you could give me a summary of what you've learned so far and put the rest in your official report?" she asked in a sharp but polite tone of voice.

"Um… yes. Certainly," Clark said as he brought a clipboard of notes up to read. "Subject One, codenamed 'Prophet', is clad in a suit comprised of a Coltan-Titanium exoskeleton, with various points carboplatinum-reinforced. However the material that makes up the bulk of the suit is nano-fiber and, from what we've been able to determine thus far, is the source of the suit's amazing enhancement properties. There are also signs that it possesses significant energy absorbing capabilities which I suspect explains why it doesn't possess a visible power generation or battery unit. Quite impressive and it's given me new ideas for overcoming my own project difficulties.

"Subject Two, codenamed 'The Chief', is proving to be both a boon and a source of difficulty. Basic scanning was completed but some of the properties of the armor have resulted in certain areas being distorted." Drago did not sound too concerned. "Nevertheless, we've learned quite a bit. First is that, as suggested in the fictional material, the suit when in use is fully pressurized, allowing the wearer to continue functioning in a vacuum. The armor is comprised of several parts, starting with its titanium outer shell, rendering it quite immune to small arms fire and I suspect it even possesses resistance to energy weapons if my theory about the cause of the distortions is correct."

"That is quite good, Doctor Drago. Many of the enemies my forces will be fighting will wield such weaponry," she said, already picturing Jaffa and SG team alike firing uselessly at the Spartan. "What of the man inside?"

"We have gained a greater understanding of the enhancements to 'The Chief' as well," Clark replied, flipping a page over the top of the clipboard. "We immediately picked up on the fact that a carbide ceramic was grafted onto skeletal structures throughout his body but not exceeding three percent of his total bone mass. Doctor Henson suspects this is so there would be no interference in the body's natural production of white blood cells. We are also seeing signs of extensive biological tampering, resulting in such things as increased growth of skeletal and muscle tissues, as well as changes to the nervous system. Henson strongly recommends a thorough understanding of these enhancements and how they were carried out before we try it on a baseline subject."

"So noted," she said, willing to give her scientists some say in their work so long as they never forgot who ruled over them all.

"Subject Three, codenamed Miss Lightning Bolt, is, as we suspected, completely cybernetic from the upper jaw downwards. Aside from the upper half of the skull and part of the spinal column, everything else is completely artificial. The design of the exoskeleton bears some resemblance to Prophet's in its resemblance to human musculature but that is all," Drago explained, moving onto the next 'volunteer'. "It apparently runs on artificial white blood and, according to a preliminary analysis, increases the amount of oxygen Miss Lightning Bolt can absorb, resulting in a great deal more energy. Logical, especially when taking into account that the musculature would require a great deal of that energy to give the subject increased speed, strength and agility. The only drawback being that the subject would require the blood to be externally dialyzed after prolonged activity in order to prevent autotoxemia in the subject. I've asked our med-tech division to begin construction on the necessary equipment using the basic scans immediately."

She nodded once to show that she approved of his decision to give an order to the med-tech division without consulting her.

"Subject Four, codenamed 'Cameron', has shown a distinct lack of reaction to the basic scan when compared to the other subjects. Whether this is simply because like her fictional counterpart she does not feel pain or she has a higher pain threshold than the others is unknown. As described in the fictional material she is comprised of a humanoid endoskeleton possessing design differences from the T-800 model. One of the most surprising would be thigh blades that apparently can pop out on command, allowing for an unexpected attack to a target," Clark said, moving onto the second last subject. "Composed of a Coltan hyperalloy, it possesses significant resistance to heat and a resistance to small arms fire. Doctor Emerson speculates that it would likely take a depleted uranium bullet or a high explosive-incendiary round in order to do any damage to it. There are also several as yet unidentifiable components, though it has been theorized that one might be intended to distribute nutrients gained from food in order to maintain its synthetic skin.

"Subject Five, codenamed 'The Major', is comprised of a human brain with extensive replacement of large parts of the cortex with nanotechnology. We've been able to confirm the existence of 'ports' on the back of her neck, indicating the ability to directly interface with computers and operate them with thought alone. Quite an advantage if she were to attempt to hack into or out of a system. Much like the other subjects with organic components, she will likely need to absorb the nutrients in some manner in order to stay alive." Drago flipped another piece of paper over the top of the clipboard. "We've also discovered elements in the composition of both her synthetic skin and her clothing that imply an advanced active camouflage system that is consistent with the fictional counterpart's ability to render the user invisible. In depth analysis of both will likely be required before we could replicate it for use by your agents, mistress."

She couldn't help the broad smile that crossed her face as the summary of the findings concluded and she found she didn't particularly care if Drago saw it.

She'd been concerned that the technology might be too advanced for her scientists to reverse engineer but, assuming Doctor Drago wasn't exaggerating the team's understanding of the scans, she was wrong. Her mind boggled with the possibilities of what she could accomplish once a complete analysis was made of the technology present in each subject. She still had no intention of letting the five subjects die if it could be prevented but she would be sure to impress the need to dig as deeply as they safely could upon the scientists involved in the project.

After all, their findings would be the foundation upon which she would bring about the returned dominance of the Goa'uld System Lords, with her taking the position once held by Ra before his humiliating death at the hands of the Tauri.

"Proceed with your examinations, Doctor Drago. I want to learn as much about this new treasure trove of information and technology as possible. However both you and your colleagues are to keep this in mind at ALL TIMES: every precaution possible is to be taken to ensure that no permanent or fatal damage is done to any of the subjects." She put strength and edge into her words and the man took note. "After all, once the first soldiers of my new army have received their 'upgrades' they will need instructors to show them how best to make use of their enhancements. I cannot think of better teachers, can you?"

"No, mistress. I will notify them of your commandments at once," Drago replied with just enough fear in his voice to convince her he'd give the message all due weight.

"Very well then. Contact me if there are any significant developments but otherwise I will leave day to day affairs in the hands of the facility director," she said before severing the vid-com connection.

Things were going to be very busy for all concerned in the next little while.

While Drago and his associates handled the scientific side of things, she would work to begin constructing a series of plans that would best make use of what was discovered. Fools like Ba'al and Apophis would no doubt rush things in order to first conquer Earth before turning their ambition to the stars themselves. She would play things differently, though. She would plant the seeds of her victory well before she revealed herself to the world and, when they tried to retaliate, they would find their systems co-opted and their weapons useless. Through the various companies and businesses she controlled, through fools or blackmail, she would slowly disseminate technological developments into the places of power. Once there they would facilitate the actions of her agents, allowing them to do as they wished as though the fools who thought themselves powerful were already her servants.

Yes. My rise shall be like unto a storm; moving, gathering, changing and then before anyone can do more than flee I shall strike. Her excitement caused her eyes to flash with light for a moment. All shall come to worship me or die at the hands of my technological warriors!

With that thought she succumbed to the urge to laugh at the prosperity she would soon enjoy and so the sound would echo through the air for all to hear.

Twelve Hours Later, Holding Room, Willow's POV

Pain.

It was something that some people said was a strong indicator that you were alive, no matter what injuries you'd received because the dead felt no pain. It was something that the majority avoided, whether it was physical or emotional pain because the sensation was unpleasant.

Buffy, Xander and Giles had been put through a great deal of pain up until two hours ago when they'd all been wheeled back into the room they'd undergone their changes in. The scanning device that they'd used on all of them had not been a gently working tool and it'd only gotten worse the deeper the scans went. The basic scans were enough to send her friends and mentor into literal screaming fits that wouldn't end until either they went hoarse or the scan finally came to an end. It'd been bad, she'd heard every second of it, but they'd still been conscious enough to voice death promises to every scientist in the lab. Some of them had been quite impressive, causing more than one lab jockey to go pale for a moment before finding someplace else to be.

It didn't last though.

A few minutes after the basic scans had been completed the man with the name Drago on his lab coat had ordered level one scans to be initiated.

This level of scanning apparently made the basic scans look like a light massage by comparison because, while her loved ones did scream just like before, this new set of exclamations were as different as diet Pepsi and normal Pepsi. The pitch was higher, the time before their voices gave out was shorter and, when they finally came to an end, all three of them looked lucky to still be conscious. No death promises were issued this time but this was more likely due to physical exhaustion than lack of desire given the hell they'd just been put through. The level one scans lasted a full two hours by her estimation due to the fact that the scanning beam crept up their bodies at a slow rate of speed. Obviously these monsters were going for more in depth scans of their bodies in order to figure out what they were made of or where every wire and part went.

They were very thorough going all the way up to level three scans before finally sending them back to their room two hours ago since at that point Buffy, Xander and Giles had apparently shown signs of reaching their physical limitations where pain was concerned. However while she could not be certain, she thought she'd heard the lead scientist say that they would conduct level four and five scans on completely different days in order to minimize risk of permanent damage. That these two new levels would be so painful that doing them both on the same day would risk permanent harm or death made her hate these people all the more. She wanted nothing more than to unleash her magic upon them all and curse them to relive the suffering they'd caused every time they fell asleep, not waking up until they'd felt IT ALL.

But she couldn't.

Not because there was some important reason why she had to wait or because there was some sort of containment spell around her.

It was because her magic was almost all gone.

The moment she'd woken up and been in control of her new body she'd known something was off but it hadn't been until after she and the others had finished talking that she'd learned the truth. She'd tried to use her magic to open up a communications connection with one of the other mages employed by the New Council of Watchers and had followed the steps just like she had hundreds of times before.

Nothing had happened.

The connection had risen up, up out of her body, but before it could even leave the room she'd felt it sputter out into nothingness. This had mystified her and at first she'd merely written it off as the lingering affects of the chaos magic and had tried again, albeit with a bit more effort than before. This had barely resulted in the connection getting more than an inch out of the room before it followed the fate of its predecessor. This had caused her to become quite worried and so she'd focused her mind inwards to see just how drastic the changes were to her magical core and how it interacted with her body.

What she'd discovered had been enough to shatter her tranquil calm entirely and had attracted the attention of the others. They'd asked her the usual questions like 'what is wrong' and 'are you alright' but she was only peripherally aware of this because what held her complete attention was one thing alone.

Her magical core, that had once burned with the brilliance of a newborn star, now barely qualified as a particularly bright flashlight.

Her mind had raced to determine the reason for this drastic alteration of who and what she was but, as the more comforting possibilities were eliminated one by one, there came to be only one scenario that fit all known parameters. When she'd first regained control of herself, she'd thought that she was more techno organic than an actual cyborg like the Major. All her studies of sorcery had told her that drastic transformations of any living thing into something drastically different required a large amount of power, a clear cut road map leading from one form to another for every part of the body and supreme focus. She'd conceded that with Janus' magic and Ethan's combined, they met that requirement and Giles' old friend might be able to manage the final condition but it was the middle one she'd considered unlikely. Everything she had ever heard or learned about Ethan Rayne indicated that the man's medical or technical knowledge was no better than your average civilian would possess. The changes that the man had caused on Halloween all those years ago had been temporary and in some cases only skin deep. She believed this was mostly due to Janus stepping in, taking care of things to the best of the Roman god's ability since Ethan couldn't fill in the blanks himself. She'd believed that something similar had happened in this case and that had made her believe that Janus had simply altered their biological bodies just enough to be passable imitations of the genuine articles. Thus she'd reasoned that she'd still be close enough to her human self for everything to be okay and therefore had no reason to think her communication spell would fail.

After the second failure she'd known better.

The total amount of biological matter she had left was now about the size of a clenched human fist, with all the rest being replaced with various types of micromachines, cybernetic implants and artificial components. While some people might think that a Wicca or wizard's power came from their soul, they'd be only half right because it was the combination of the flesh and the soul that made everything to work. It was like fire, if you wanted the very simple analogy. The size or intensity of a fire was entirely dependent on the amount of oxygen that was available to fuel it. No matter how much combustible material you fed to the flames, without an increase in oxygen it'd stay at the same level. When she'd been fully biological she'd had more than enough 'oxygen' to generate as much magic as she needed and certainly enough to contact the Council from anywhere on the planet. Thanks to Ethan's fucking spell, though, she'd be lucky to pull off basic parlor tricks and maybe a watered down version of her magical electronic hacking technique.

Being able to do magic had been full of ups and downs for her since she'd first started dabbling but she'd come to respect it and it'd helped her establish her place both in the Scooby gang and the New Watcher's Council later on. Now, though, it looked like she was back to being her pre-magic self: an academic genius with mad hacking skills. Indeed, things would likely be better than ever because, thanks to the spell, she now had the memories of a super-class-A hacker as well as a major in the Japanese military. While her fully prosthetic body wasn't anymore bullet proof than a normal human's, she believed she now had physical abilities comparable to a Slayer. However there was one other 'advantage' that she was beginning to think of as a form of mental torture all its own.

Because she'd been reduced to a brain with a few cyber parts added on, it was impossible for her to feel physical pain because there were no pain receptors in the brain.

That meant that while her arm could be ripped off or her body could be shot full of holes, she wouldn't feel a single thing and would still be able to act provided the desired part of her prosthetic body was still functional as well as connected to her brain case. Even if someone stuck needles into her brain she wouldn't feel a thing but it would impair her movement or shut down her senses depending on the placement of the needles. Just like that time when the Major was going to switch to a new prosthetic body after her current one had gotten its arm shot off by an ARM suit and one of the NARC squad members still at large tried to kill her. It pretty much meant that the only way to kill her for sure would be to blow her organic brain to pieces while denying her any means of transferring her mind to a new prosthetic body.

However it also meant that, while the scans had thrown her for a loop, it hadn't been any worse than her sitting in a chair then having someone spin it as fast as they possibly could. It was more disorienting than anything else but that meant that she couldn't share in the pain of the others and, without distraction, she was all too able to hear their screams. On and on they'd screamed as the unfamiliar scanning device panned over them leaving her a helpless listener to their suffering. It'd gotten so bad that she'd thought that she'd lose her mind if it went on for much longer but then it did end.

At least until they were ready to start the level four scans of their bodies.

Then the others would scream again, with it potentially being for the last time if the butchers got careless or didn't take the necessary precautions.

Left without the most expedient means of saving her friends or getting revenge for them all, she was left with only one choice: be patient.

Listen.

Watch.

LEARN.

Then, when the opportunity appeared, take ACTION.

She might not be able to pull off Darth Willow now but with a little work she could become something just as terrifying.

A ghost in the machine.

Doctor Clark Drago's Office, Two Days Later, Evening, Drago's POV

Was it really all worth it?

It was a question that he had yet to come up with a concrete answer to and that bothered him during the odd time when work didn't dominate his thoughts.

They had completed level five scans a few hours ago and now each department was going over the information relevant to their own specific expertise. To say that they had a small mountain of information to go over, even after it'd all been divided up, would be something of an understatement and he personally wouldn't likely finish his pile for at least another three days, assuming he slept on the couch in his office. The sophistication, the inspirational approach to each system and the way it all came together made him feel like he was just out of high school. He hadn't been lying when he'd told Athena that what the scans revealed could help him overcome the difficulties he was having with his own work. The knowledge gained from subjects Major, Miss Lightning Bolt and Cameron alone showed him how he could get the results his mistress demanded without rendering disguising the operative as a human impossible. His mind was already coming up with an idea for a new cybernetic limb design that he was sure would surpass all expectations.

First, however, he would need to finish analyzing the findings from the scans so that replicating the desired enhancements could be one hundred percent guaranteed.

He knew beyond a reasonable doubt that priority had to be given to this or else Mistress Athena would be quite cross with him. Perhaps even cross enough that he might need to surgically connect a cybernetic limb to his own body in order to continue to work.

Besides fear of reprisal, though, he couldn't help but believe that they were doing work that would change the world forever and usher in a new age of prosperity for humanity. Oh, he understood that his Mistress was solely interested in creating her own galaxy-wide empire with this newfound technology but that didn't mean that the ill, the handicapped and the unfortunate couldn't benefit. After all, if all the information he'd gained about how the Goa'uld ruled was accurate, basic citizens were allowed to go about their respective lives as though nothing had changed. True, they were called upon to serve their ruler and, if necessary, give up their lives, but that was not all that different from how most Earth governments operated. In a way serving a Goa'uld would be superior to following the orders of a normal human ruler because, where a president or prime minister might have a decade or two of experience administrating a nation, a Goa'uld had centuries of experience to their credit. Logic dictated that the person with the greater amount of experience and knowledge was the superior leader rather than a person with less than two decades to their name.

So as long as they obeyed then why wouldn't the people gain access to the medical and technological benefits of what they were learning from the subjects?

If the cost of eliminating some of humanity's biggest ills was serving a superior leader, then he considered it well worth paying.

And yet…

And yet the screams of three of the subjects as they were scanned kept encroaching upon his thoughts and, every once in a while, he had a nightmare with one of them glaring at him in accusation. In the waking world he was able to ignore the looks, words and minimal gestures they sent his way by reducing them to specimens in his mind. Specimens weren't people, they weren't sentient, they were merely a source from which great knowledge could be gleaned, along with advancements that would benefit all mankind. It wasn't like the scans were doing irreparable harm to their bodies after all. Mistress Athena had been quite clear that no permanent or fatal harm was to be done to the subjects and that all possible precautions were to be taken. It had been this order that had caused him to space out the last two scans and kept him from subjecting the specimens to the remaining five scan levels. All those that possessed pain receptors of some kind had shown clear signs of extreme duress that was beginning to affect their vital systems. Monitoring systems had strongly indicated that, if they'd gone further, there was a chance of causing cardiac arrest in some or chemical complications in the others. Therefore he'd put an end to the scanning and, once the director of the facility agreed with this decision, it'd been decided to focus on making sense of what they'd learned before going further.

Once they were done, though, it was likely that they'd proceed with the exploratory surgeries and bio-sample extraction on the relevant subjects.

Sure, the scanning equipment that Mistress Athena had provided them with had given them a detailed look at each specimen but there were just some things that could only be learned from the item itself. The scans they took would allow them to disarm any systems meant to deter or prevent such actions, as well as help them greatly in ensuring that they could put everything back the way it was supposed to be. He believed that the reason why Athena wanted the subjects to suffer no permanent or fatal injury was because she intended to send them on missions. Therefore all of them would be in a great deal of trouble if they failed to reassemble what they disassembled properly so that it functioned as intended. He would have to make sure that all of the people who'd be involved in the surgeries and sample extractions knew this beyond any reasonable doubt.

He would NOT be the one to take the fall if something went wrong!

A loud, insistent knocking at his door startled him slightly. "Come in!" he said, looking away from his computer screen and towards the office door.

"Doctor Drago! We've discovered something AMAZING!" said one of the assistants as she came in the door like time was of the essence.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to be more detailed than that, my dear," he said with an indulgent smile on his face. "As I'm sure you're aware, we've discovered quite a number of AMAZING things from the scans."

"That's just it, sir! It wasn't from the subjects!" the assistant said, excitement positively humming from her. "It was from one of their restraint gurneys!"

"WHAT?" he asked, not having expected this turn of events in the least.

"Me and Andy… I mean Assistant Mason, were checking each of their gurneys to make sure that they'd be ready for surgery and sample extraction," she replied, recalling the discovery. "As you know they're not normal and possess a system meant to monitor each subject's systems so we can be alerted if they're up to something. However when I was checking the monitoring system for Subject Chief's gurney I was shocked to find that its internal workings had been transformed into one massive data storage device!"

The news was almost too much for him to handle but, through a herculean effort, he managed to ask his next question. "Have you taken a look at what's on the storage device?"

"Only one file, sir, in order to properly determine the contents of the storage device. It appears to be schematics for Subject Chief's powered assault armor." she replied, finally remembering she was in the presence of someone in authority.

"Excellent! That will prove invaluable in disarming the armor's self-destruct mechanism." He recalled when the scan revealed anti-tampering system and remembered how much of an issue it would have caused. "I was a concerned we might have had a problem there, however with the schematics we should have little trouble. I assume preparations are underway to transfer the information from all the gurney's to our secure database in the vault?"

"Yes sir! I volunteered to inform you and the director while Assistant Mason would make sure the restraints would hold and get the necessary equipment for the data transfer." she replied promptly, never quite losing the sparkle of discovery in her eyes.

"Then I suggest you hurry along and inform the director," he said with a friendly smile. "You know how he hates to be kept waiting."

"Yes sir! Goodbye sir!" she said politely bowing a bit before dashing out of his office to inform the director.

Well, this is quite fortunate, he thought as he sat back in his chair and contemplated. If we're lucky the files will also contain enough information so that exploratory surgery and sample extraction won't be necessary. It'd be a real boon if we could dodge that particular bullet.

In the end this finally provided him with the answer to the question that'd been plaguing him.

It was all worth it.

With the files on those storage devices and what they'd managed to acquire from the scans, they would be able to begin constructing replicas of what the subjects possessed ahead of schedule. That would please Mistress Athena greatly and perhaps remove the option of painful punishment or exacting execution from her mind entirely where he was concerned.

Definitely worth it.

Three Weeks Later, Staff Briefing Room, Afternoon, Buffy's POV

That's it… keep digging your graves even deeper… then when I get out of these restraints… Raiden's gonna let'er RIP! she thought angrily as the bastards responsible for the entire mess wheeled her into what looked like a meeting room of some kind.

It'd been weeks since their last torture session with the weird scanning device but that hadn't meant that their torture had ended. No, it'd simply changed in nature. While stuck in their 'room' people in lab coats came in at least three times a day, with the first being to check their vitals, the second to experiment with a new version of crap they wanted to see if it'd work with those of them that needed their flesh kept alive and the last an interrogation session. The last bit was a series of questions aimed at finding out just how much they could recall of their costume's past and experiences both personal as well as professional. One lab jock had finally cracked under her badgering about a week back and told them that the purpose of the questions was to get an early indicator as to how well they'd be able to use what'd they had 'inherited'.

Naturally, since she hated every last person in the place with the exception of her fellow Scoobies, she'd chosen to tell them nothing but made up stuff while using what acting skills she possessed to make them think it was the truth.

That game didn't last long.

Apparently they'd somehow managed to get a hold of some very detailed information regarding the fake universe her costume had come from and knew when she was bullshitting them. At first they'd made veiled threats about what'd happen if she continued to be uncooperative. When that didn't work, they went with blunt threats with varying degrees of detail. They didn't realize that threats of personal pain wouldn't work on her anymore because, after the hell they'd put her through scanning her robot body, her pain threshold had skyrocketed. They'd have to be particularly inventive and inspired to do anything that'd do better than what they'd done and she wasn't optimistic about their chances. In the end they'd given up about a week ago trying to get anything out of any member of the Scooby gang verbally but that hadn't left them torment free.

At least she didn't think it did.

The day after they'd stopped interrogating they'd gassed the room AND sent some kind of heavy duty EMP through that knocked her out cold. She wasn't sure how much time had passed by but when she'd come to the bastards had been wheeling her back into the room implying that she'd been taken out of it at some point. When the others had come out of their slumber she'd asked them if they remembered anything but they'd been just as clueless as her.

As the last of the Scoobies entered the room and were left arrayed side by side in front of a large flat screen, she thought back to the OTHER reason was she was all kinds of pissed at the people holding the Scoobies captive.

They'd changed Dawn.

Into what she didn't know because, as far as external appearance, she looked the same as she always had, though with a bit more of a leather fetish than every before. As much as she'd hated to, she'd tried to use the Solid Eye things that were built into her new 'body' to find out more but the stupid things couldn't tell her anything other than the fact that her sister still had body heat. That wasn't all that helpful, though, since she knew what Willow had turned into and, while it had flesh, everything except the brain was synthetic. She'd tried talking to her sister but all she'd gotten was a momentary, cold, look that still sent chills down her spine just remembering it.

There'd been very little life in those eyes.

She knew that your average person wouldn't be able to tell that anything was wrong but, whether it was because she still had the Slayer in her or because whatever mental quirks she'd gotten from Raiden made her pay attention to detail, she could tell. When she'd told the others about what she'd noticed, Xander had clung to the idea that whoever she'd been turned into had simply been the supreme ice queen and that Dawn was just having trouble shaking it off.

She wasn't so sure.

So this was another thing she wanted to kill everyone in this place for: turning the normally smiling and full of life young woman into something that just looked like her sister.

When the flat screen turned on, she was shown the face of the one person she'd be particularly inventive with when it came to exacting her revenge.

"Well, this day has been a long time coming but I would have to say that it has been well worth the wait. Through you five I now have the knowledge necessary to turn my company into THE most powerful corporation on the planet," Charlotte Mayfield said from what looked to be a rather fancy office. "Already my business and other front companies have begun work on replicating everything from the weaponry your fictional selves employed to the very components that make up your bodies and BEYOND. I expect to be the richest person on the planet within three years."

"So glad our suffering is helping to line your pockets," Giles said with sharp, dry sarcasm.

"However in order for me to expand in the necessary directions, certain… variables… need to be put in their proper place and obstacles need to be removed. How fortunate that I have a strike team of five with the skills and memories of some of the most impressive soldiers ever to be born of the fictional world." Charlotte said, completely ignoring the elder Watcher's words.

"You put us through hell and you expect us to do your wet work for you?" Willow exclaimed angrily, voicing what all of them were feeling at the moment.

Well… almost all of them.

"Why, yes, I do. Hmmmmm… it seems Mister Harris did not inform you of our last conversation together. Very well, since I'm in such a good mood I'll tell all of you what I told him even though I despise having to repeat myself." Mayfield said, never losing her victorious smile. "You see, I did not choose your costumed identities by mere chance. I specifically chose them because each possesses an Achilles heel of sorts that will force your obedience with regards to my orders.

"For you, Miss Rosenberg, there's the fact that like all machines your body will experience wear and tear. Where do you plan on getting replacement parts?" she asked with smug confidence. "My companies will be the only ones that will make them and they won't be available for purchase by anyone for at least a decade or two. Therefore the only way to keep your body in good working order will be through me. Add to that the fact that your brain is going to need a specific cocktail of nutrients and amino acids in order to stay alive and I don't like your odds for survival outside of my employment.

"For Miss Summers, her cybernetic body is similar in that it'll need maintenance in order to remain functioning, as well as specialized food." She turned her head to the snow haired cyber-ninja. "She will also need to have her white blood externally dialyzed with special equipment following prolonged use in order to avoid autotoxemia. That, of course, isn't taking into account replacing the white blood should she be wounded in some manner. I don't believe you'll find tanks of white blood available at your local pharmacy or chemical supplier. You will, of course, have all the white blood you require as an 'employee' of mine.

"As for Mister Harris himself there's the fact that the nanosuit he's wearing is symbiotic in nature and, according to our scans, it's already begun to form a bond with him. Before long it's questionable as to whether or not he'll be able to take it off at all." She lost a BIT of her smugness. "Then, of course, there's his absolute loyalty to his friends. He'd never abandon the rest of you to save his own hide and he might well be the one who'll volunteer to take on the bloodier assignments just to keep the rest of you as clean as possible.

"As for Mister Giles, it was your old acquaintance Mister Rayne who suggested a means of keeping him in line. However, since surveillance and sensor scans indicate that she hasn't made her presence known, I guess I'll just have to provide some 'incentive'," she said before pressing a button obscured by a ledger on her desk.

"AAAAHHHHHH!" came woman's scream cutting through the air from the direction of Giles' helmet.

All of them reacted with shock when they heard the scream but the reason went far deeper than simply the loudness of it because though it had been years all of them recognized the voice.

"JENNY!" Giles exclaimed with a voice that was a mixture of shock and hope.

"Indeed, Mister Giles. Given the results and the quality of the leash, I consider it money well spent to drag her spirit after the afterlife so that she can take on the role of Cortana. Bear in mind that if I hold down the button on the A.I's incentive for longer than a minute and a half, she'll suffer irreparable damage and 'die'. From what we can tell, though, it looks like the descent from whatever afterlife she was in has caused her to withdraw in on herself but I'm sure that some 'motivation' will coax her into action once more," Mayfield said as she looked at Giles after releasing the pressure on the hidden button. "Whether it is you who convinces her to return to the outside world or me, it will happen. An entity with the abilities of Cortana is simply too precious to be allowed to cower inside her data crystal chip until she comes out on her own. I'll give you two months, Mister Giles. If she fails to regain some semblance of human level thought and activity, I will take matters into my own hands.

"Last but certainly not least is dear little Dawn Summers." She looked over at the expressionless face. "Tell me: have any of you ever watched the television series 'Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles'? It's relatively new and only started airing last January but already it's become quite popular. In fact I was such a fan that, when the mercenaries I'd hired came back one person heavy, I decided it would be nice to have a terminator of my very own."

"YOU BITCH! I'LL SKIN YOU ALIVE FOR THIS!" she roared in fury as it was revealed to her what her little sister had been turned into and why she was so emotionless.

"Now, Miss Summers, I simply can't abide my employees taking such a tone with me no matter how fond I might be of them," Mayfield said with a sharp, dead serious look on her face. "I imagine that you don't care if you get hurt or even if you die so long as you get what you want before you perish. However, I wonder if you would be so willing to defy me in light of… THIS!"

All at once Willow, Giles and Xander began screaming out in pain as though their blood had been replaced with the feeling.

"You may recall that after your final interrogation session, you were rendered unconscious for an undetermined period of time. Once my surgeons and scientists had familiarized themselves enough with both your technology and your biological components, I had them implant devices tied directly to your brain stems or, in Miss Rosenberg's case, her brain case," C.E.O Mayfield, said leaving no room for anyone to speak. "While it's true that her body doesn't possess pain receptors, we managed to find a way so that she feels the pain of Mister Giles and Mister Harris. So the question becomes Miss Summers: are you willing to subject your mentor and your friends to unbearable pain on the off chance that you can get close enough to me to kill me? There is, after all, only so much pain the mind and the body can take before they simply… break."

A second later it looked like whatever had been used to hurt her friends had been turned off. It pissed her off but she couldn't deny that the bitch had done her homework when it came to backing the Scoobies into a corner. Not only did she find a way to physically keep them under control but she also came up with an emotional leash to wrap around their necks. As much as she hated the woman, as much as she wanted to use every shocking method of inducing pain she could think of on the bitch, she wouldn't put her friends through hell just to get her way.

She was pinned and the whore on the flat screen knew it.

With the flick of a switch all of the restraints that had kept them immobilized for so long popped open, allowing them all what appeared to be freedom.

The truth though was that now the chains that held them were invisible to the naked eye.

The PTB had screwed them over again.

BASTARDS!

Colson Industries Corporate Headquarters, One Week Later,

Security Desk, Main Entrance, Security Guard James Matheson's POV

BOR-ING! he thought as he casually gazing from one monitor to the next. Still it's a job and in this economy that's more than most people can say.

It was hard to believe that four years ago the company nearly went under due to that mess in financial department of the company. He'd never trusted those idiots. Anyone that obsessed with numbers was bound to screw up sooner or later and that Volger guy was a clear cut example of that sort of person making the guy's suicide perfectly understandable. It was just a lucky thing that the government decided to ride in and save their butts with some financial aid or else the company would've gone under and he'd have been out of a job.

That was not something he could've handled.

He'd only gotten this job because a friend of his wife worked here and was able to pull some strings with the head of the personnel department. If he'd lost this job he'd be unemployed again and the job prospects weren't good for someone with just a high school diploma and some security guard training. No way was minimum wage at some fast food restaurant going to be enough to make a man's contribution to the bills at home or get REAL gifts on holidays or birthdays.

It was this thought that had him shake off his casualness and boredom so that he could take his job more seriously and scrutinize things more carefully. While nothing had happened in weeks that would require a security guard's intervention, that wasn't to say that there wouldn't be anything tonight. Colson Industries was still a very profitable business and had many contracts with the government, so whether it be thieves or terrorists, it was definitely a viable target. While he didn't like his odds with just a standard issue sidearm and only three other guys as back up, he knew it was part of his job description to be the building's first line of defense. It was their job to spot the trouble and, if they couldn't handle it, set off the alarms that'd have the police and maybe S.W.A.T team haul ass to the building. One of the others might screw up but he wouldn't.

Tap, tap, tap.

Looking up from the monitors at the sound, he looked towards the glass front doors of the building and saw a woman in her late twenties dressed in the uniform of the company in charge of installing the security cameras, motion sensors and the infrared trip wires. The first thing he thought was 'damn, she is HOT' and the second thing he thought was 'what is she doing here' but he only partially slapped himself for thinking such things in the wrong order of priority. Getting up from his chair, he made sure he had his keys, flashlight and ID scanner since he didn't want word to be passed around the security community that slackers worked here.

"Yes?" he asked after opening the front door enough for a conversation.

"Hi. Name's Lucy Lawson. I'm with Securtech Security Services," Lucy replied with a nice smile on her face. "Our systems at the local office showed that some of the infrared trip beams are going on the fritz. Nothing serious but they sent me up here to check them out and see what's causing the problem."

"I didn't see anything at my station," he said, trying to recall if he'd seen any flickering or anything.

"Your station's only set up to show something if one of the beams is completely tripped or fails entirely," Miss Lawson explained, never losing her 'I am just one of the gals' tone. "The monitoring system back at the local office is more comprehensive. After all, if one of those things goes down, do YOU know how to fix it?"

"No, I guess not," he replied, conceding that repairs were best left to the guys at the local office.

With that he opened the door and let her in, watching as she bent over slightly to pick up a rectangular metal box that kinda reminded him of a fisherman's tackle box.

Nice ass, he thought, admiring how her pants just clung to her butt for a few seconds.

CRASH

"Aw dammit!" she cursed as the handle on the box broke off, causing it to not only fall to the ground but cause its contents to fall out. "Cheap ass bastard! I told him we needed replacements."

Deciding to do the nice thing, he knelt down with her to help her put everything that'd spilled back into the box. Who knew… maybe after she was done he could ask her out on a date.

Huh? Pretty strong breeze tonight, he thought as a gust blew across his face.

It'd been pretty still when he'd gone outside for his smoke break two hours ago but then weather could change at the drop of a hat.

In the end he decided it wasn't all that important.

Willow's POV

Never thought I'd be wearing something like this, she thought as she crept to the air duct entrance that had been chosen as her primary means of getting to her target floor.

Clad in a light gray, skintight suit with an almost triangular piece of headgear of the same color, she'd recognized it instantly when it had been put before her as what Motoko used to disguise herself as a super thief to locate the funds of the deposed Secretary General of Japan. When added to her Thermo-Optical camouflage, she was confident that she'd have little trouble accomplishing her assigned task. She'd almost have preferred that the place was better protected but what could she expect when she had tech over two decades ahead of anything in the building.

However that was also an obstacle since both her full prosthetic body and the tech would have compatibility issues with tech that her costume self considered antiquated. The Queen Bitch, though, had given her some go between tech that would take care of those problems like adapters for slots and sockets that didn't exist yet. It hadn't been voiced but she was pretty sure that Miss QB planned on fixing that by letting the little bits of her stolen technological treasures filter out to the general public; nothing that would give the human race an edge over the C.E.O or threaten whatever goals she might have but enough to perhaps facilitate global domination.

It was a given that the technologies that each fictional character took for granted didn't exist in reality. There was no advanced global network of computers crisscrossing the globe, nanotechnology was too crude to produce a nanosuit like Xander's suit, powered armor like what Giles had was currently impossible due to energy generation issues, cybernetics as well as high frequency blades faced similar difficulties as well as problems in miniaturization of certain parts and artificial intelligences like those found in terminators or in the form of Cortana did not exist. With this being the case, they'd be hampered on their 'missions' until tech caught up enough to make a difference.

Personally I hope that someone catches on sooner rather than later, she thought as she found the vent cover and worked quickly to circumvent the contact components that'd alert security if it was removed. Not much I can do other than hope.

Utilizing a focused laser cutting tool, she separated the parts of the cover that the contacts were attached to from the cover itself, allowing her to remove it without tripping the alarm. Entering it feet first, she carefully put the vent back into place before removing a vial from a hidden pocket in her outfit and tapping a bit of what to the ignorant observer would consider dust close to each cut in the cover. It was in fact microscopic nanites, tech gleaned from an unknown source though she believed it came from something in the tech gurneys they had been secured to up until a week ago. She thought that because she could recall a steady stream of lab coats coming into the room with what looked to be external hard drives of various sizes and models. At any rate, the nanite dust she was sprinkling was programmed to do one thing: repair any damage to metal in the area around their point of dispersal. The little machines would eliminate the cuts she'd made in under an hour, leaving no trace that anything suspicious had occurred.

Putting the vial back into the hidden pocket, she slowly began to inch her way deeper into the vent network while a map of that network appeared before her eyes. She knew that there weren't actual interfaces floating out in the open for all to see but rather that her eyes had a H.U.D like system set up. Following the map, she soon came to an intersection that she could use to properly reorient herself so she could see where she was crawling. Once that was done, she began to navigate to the nearest vertical shaft before beginning her ascent using a combination of EM boots and the strength of her prosthetic body to facilitate her trip up.

Well this is certainly putting that old 'Mythbusters' episode to shame.

Indeed she was having little trouble ascending without making a noticeable sound and any marks she left behind wouldn't be seen unless the company sent someone into the vents to check every square foot of it. She still didn't have one hundred percent mastery over her body, even with the memories of the Major helping her out, but the Queen Bitch wasn't willing to hold off on the mission any longer. What made it worse was that the C.E.O made it clear what the penalty would be for being detected even if the overall objective was achieved.

Once she reached the top floor she held herself just below the entryway into that level's vent network since the next move would have to be completed by Lucy Lawson, aka Dawn Summers in disguise. The security on this floor was unlike the ones below it because the owner of Colson Industries had his office there. That meant motion sensors and heat sensors in the vents, hallways and rooms with more contact sensors than anywhere else in the building. Turning up her auditory organs, she heard Dawn and the security guard that'd been checking her out exiting the elevator.

As the files on the security firm and the company confirmed, it as SOP for at least one security guard to accompany unexpected visitors to sensitive areas.

"So what do you think the problem is?" the security guard asked amidst the sound of footsteps.

"Best guess? The sheer number of heat and motion sensors along with infrared trip beams is probably causing a very slight feedback event in the wiring," Dawn said, playing her role perfectly. "No one would pick it up right away after installation but over time it tends to cause problems like this."

"Then why do they go with this set up in the first place?" asked the security guard, sounding like he was trying to figure it out.

"Because if they go with the safer configuration where feedback events don't happen, there'll be gaps that an intruder could sneak through if they were good enough." Dawn replied as they got closer. "Considering how powerful and wealthy Colson Industries is, it's a safe bet that someone would be willing to pay a skilled thief to grab something from this place, especially this floor. So it's basically a choice between the odd maintenance trip like mine and letting someone make off with all your secrets. A no brainer, really."

A no brainer is exactly what this security guard is if he's believing this line of bullshit, she thought from her place in the vent as she waited for her partner in crime to do her part. Goddess but they hire them dumb in the security business!

It was a sad thing that a lot of companies were relying on electronic security rather than quality security guards. It was because of that fact that they'd have such an easy time of this mission.

Though the fact that Dawn's fake uniform had specifically tailored to flatter her figure and draw the attention of males to specific areas probably contributed to how things had gone so far too.

It took about fifteen minutes of 'checking for the source of the problem' before the younger Summers girl reached the room where all the security sensors for the floor came together before descending to the main security switchboard. Two minutes later she received Dawn's signal and, when she peeked her head up to look into the entrance to the vent network, she confirmed that everything within sight had been disabled.

"There. We might have to do something a little more long term in a few weeks but for now this'll fix the problem," Dawn said with sounds of tools going back into the box filling the air occasionally.

"Glad to hear it. Think they'll tap you for the job?" the security guard asked with a bit of hope.

"Maybe. Depends if I'm free at the time and not on another job," Dawn replied with what was almost certainly a stunning smile on her face.

"Then I'll wait here hopefully," the security guard said with what was probably a charming smile.

The guy has no idea it's all an act, she thought with a bit of sadness. Dawn hasn't shown any real emotion since the spell.

All during their waking hours of captivity and since their release from restraints, the four members of the Scooby gang had done their best to try to get through to the real Dawn. They'd tried words, most kind but a few hurtful, and once they'd gained freedom of movement they'd tried action but nothing worked. Up until they'd been freed from the gurneys they hadn't been able to get a single word or emotion out of Dawn and afterwards it was like the young woman really was a heartless machine. Buffy's sister spoke and answered their questions but it was completely cold in nature and reminded her of the program on her computer that could take what she'd written in a report and read it back to her out loud.

That'd just made it all the creepier when Mayfield had asked Dawn to demonstrate her ability to take on the personae of 'Lucy Lawson' because, like a switch had been thrown, the young woman proceeded to act like a normal human being, like she was auditioning for a part in a movie. Then, just as quickly as it'd begun, the emotion and liveliness vanished when Mayfield gave the command to end the demonstration.

All of them had tried numerous times to get some spark of emotion from her but nothing worked.

That was why it was so creepy to hear the acting routine knowing it was only skin deep.

Keep your mind on the job, she thought as she crawled into the top floor vent system and began to make her way to Alec Colson's office.

While all of the sensors might have been disabled by Dawn, the security cameras were very much operational since it'd have been too suspicious to disable them as well. It was only luck that the vent cover in Colson's office wasn't the in the direct line of sight for the camera in that room. The camera was just a little off to the side and panned right to left, so the idea was to wait until it was looking away and unscrew the cover while holding it in place, and then she'd slip out into the room and put the grating back into place before anyone watching the video feed could see anything.

It'd be a bit tricky but it could be done.

Five minutes later she was in position and, thanks to the features her head gear possessed, she was able to clearly see everything in the room and the field of vision for the security camera like its lens was a flashlight. Once she'd gotten a feel for the speed of its movement and how far away it'd look before panning back in her direction she put the plan into motion. First the screws holding the cover to the wall were removed one by one, allowing the little bits of metal to drop to the ground harmlessly. She waited until it panned away for the second time before slipping out into the room and covering up the vent with the grate holding it in place with her own hands. Thanks to the fact that she was invisible to the naked eye and thermal imaging no one looking at the camera feed would notice anything out of the ordinary. It was when the camera panned away again that she picked up the screws from the floor and pushed them back into place. Literally she pushed them because it'd take too much time to screw them in properly and all they needed to do was hold the grating up so no need to be neat about it.

Once the cover was back in place she moved over to the camera and, once she was directly under it, she took out a square metal box from a pocket on her hip. It had ports specifically crafted for her so all she'd have to do would be to reach for the ports built into the back of her neck, pull the wire out and then plug into the box. The Queen Bitch had told her it'd been constructed using information gained about Motoko Kusanagi's world so there'd be little trouble using it to deal with the security camera. Carefully attaching the box to the wall just below the security camera, she first connected it to the camera before she attached herself to the box.

As soon as the connection was established, a familiar circular window popped up in front of her eyes and at its center was a rectangular window showing her the security camera's field of vision. With a thought she began to record five full minutes of 'everything is normal' before uploading the file into the box. Once there she programmed the file to play in a loop for the next hour straight before initiating the box's self destruct feature that'd reduce it to so much crumbly scrap and dust.

One hour would be more than enough time for her to complete her mission.

Once she was satisfied that the camera was taken care of, she moved over to Alec Colson's desk and sat down in front of his computer. After she turned it on she took a couple of the specialized adapters she'd been given and, once the right one was attached to the end of her wire interface, she plugged it into the computer. It took less than thirty seconds for the boot up procedure to finish and once it had she went to work inserting the specially prepared files that she'd been given.

Just keep thinking: it's for the others. It's all to keep them from dying or getting hurt, she thought as she began altering the records in the computer to perfectly match the events in the files.

Sadly, in order to make sure everything matched perfectly, she had to actually WATCH all of them and what she saw sickened her greatly.

There were ten files in all.

Five of them were audio files where Colson was speaking to a girl who if anyone did a voiceprint match would find out it was the daughter of a prominent United States senator. In one case the girl on the other end clearly stated who her father was and how much 'fun' it had been getting together right under daddy's nose. 'Colson', of course, agreed and made references to the kind of fun they had all of which were considered freakish by even the most open minded of bedroom play enthusiasts. Of course all the calls made at least two references to things the C.E.O had actually done and, according to Mayfield, if anyone checked the local phone records everything would check out there as well. The references would focus on places Colson had actually been and during times when the daughter was confirmed as being in the same city or when no one could account for her whereabouts. The only thing she'd had to do on her end was to make sure all the records on this side of things also matched with those at the local phone company as well as the details of Colson and the daughter's activities during the time in question. A few times she'd been forced to alter the files and impersonate his voice but with the tech she had that wasn't a problem. By the time she was done the information stored on the computer would fit perfectly with the scenario Mayfield had constructed with agents of the bitch making sure damning evidence was planted at other locations to further solidify the lie.

The next three files were video recordings showing Alex Colson at various locations that had at least one object to connect the video to a property or vehicle connected to the man. Each of them had dates and time stamps that matched places the man been and according to Mayfield had been confirmed to be by himself for at least a few hours. Each video was either a little over or a little under an hour long, containing sexual acts as well as drug use that, if it ever got out to the public, would cause serious problems for the C.E.O.

Finally, as if the previous fabricated scandals weren't bad enough, she inserted a series of emails detailing an exchange between 'Colson' and a person who at first glance wouldn't seem important. However with the previous two scandals piquing the interest of law enforcement the cops would of course investigate the matter further running a search on the name of the person 'Colson' had been talking to. It wouldn't take them long after that to connect the person to a black market arms dealer with ties to every major organized crime organization on the planet. There would be mention of 'deals' and 'modified' products not to mention rather large sums of money being sent to 'Colson' that were hidden away in Swiss bank accounts. There were also several disparaging remarks about specific members of the American military and how these people were completely in the dark.

Any one of these scandals would be enough to do serious harm to the owner of Colson Industries as well as the company itself. All three hitting at once would destroy both of them while landing the former in jail for a VERY long time.

She hadn't been told what the overall purpose of this smear campaign was supposed to be but she imagined that it was probably to either to blackmail Colson into either doing whatever the bitch wanted or to use the scandal to buy up controlling interest in the company. Either way, Mayfield would own Colson Industries and be able to use it as she saw fit.

She HATED the fact that they were ruining the life of someone who was both innocent and making great strides towards helping people worldwide but defiance was not a choice at the moment.

The Scoobies would wait and be patient. Well, most of them, anyways.

When Mayfield got sloppy or an opportunity to free themselves appeared only then would they act.

Then it'd be payback time for that BITCH.

The Home of C.E.O Carrie Marchant, Owner of Zeditron Industries, A Few Days Later

Carrie's POV

She better not call today or my day is going to be completely ruined, she thought as she prepared for another busy day at the office.

For the last month straight she had received no less than five calls from fellow C.E.O Charlotte Mayfield concerning a proposal for a ten year co-venture in the field of cybernetics and robotics. At first she'd been interested since such fields did have great potential but her position changed when the copyright and profit division details came up. They almost completely slanted in the direction of Farrow-Marshall Aeronatics to the point where no rational business person would agree to such an unfair agreement. Despite the fact that she'd made it clear at the end of the first call that she and her company had absolutely no interest in the proposal, Mayfield had continued to call offering only minor adjustments to the original proposal. In the last call she'd almost completely lost her cool and told the bitch where she could stick her proposal but had kept her cool just long enough to say goodbye and hang up.

She didn't expect the woman to give up anytime soon but fortunately all it'd take would be two more calls of this nature and, according to her lawyer, she'd have grounds to file harassment charges. Once that was in place she felt confident that Mayfield would give up since there were already rumors abound of the woman's company walking a fine legal line with the government at the moment. She wasn't privy to the details but apparently the previous company C.E.O had been involved with some sort of global crime and had been arrested. That meant that Mayfield and her company were likely still under harsh scrutiny by the government and, if a harassment charge came to light, it'd only make things harder for Farrow-Marshall Aeronautics.

If Mayfield had any business sense she'd give up and focus on cleaning up her business reputation before trying anything ill advised.

Then again, maybe it'd be nice to have her do something foolish, she thought as she picked up her briefcase and nodded to her bodyguard. If Farrow-Marshall starts having problems, I might be able to seize control of it and completely humiliate the bitch.

As she exited her home and got into the limo for the trip to work, though, her cell phone began to ring and, while she did consider just letting it ring, she eventually chose to answer it. There was always the possibility that it was work related and, if it was, then it could be important.

"Marchant," she said a bit brusquely as her driver began to steer the vehicle towards the front gate.

"Carrie, DARLING, I'm so glad I was able to reach you before you got to work," Mayfield's voice said through the cell phone. "I was a bit concerned that your busy day would mean I'd have to put off talking with you until tomorrow."

Oh yeah! Definitely gonna shut this bitch down. "One of the many burdens of a SUCCESSFUL C.E.O., Charlotte dear. Now to what do I owe this early morning call?"

"Well, I just thought I'd give you one final chance to sign on to the venture I spoke to you about before putting an end to the idea." Mayfield replied, sounding as smug as usual. "I really don't see why you're so opposed to the latest version of the deal. Granted, my company stands to benefit a bit more than yours but that's only right considering we'll be volunteering the bulk of the new designs and advancements."

As the limo pulled out onto the street and began to make its way into the city to the Zeditron building, she could only dream of Mayfield being within choking distance.

"The reason I'm opposed, Charlotte dear, is because as C.E.O of Zeditron Industries it would simply be bad for business if I agreed to your proposal. The investors alone would be calling for blood if they caught wind of me agreeing to such a one-sided arrangement and the board of directors wouldn't react much better," she explained as though speaking to an amateur fresh from business school. "After all, it's the duty of a C.E.O to run the company in such a way so as to maximize profits, minimize costs and ensure that the company has a future. Given the layout of your proposal and how it obviously favors your company to an extreme level, I would have to be rather foolish to agree to it."

"That's odd because I recently spoke to several members of the board and some of your investors and they sounded quite willing to follow the terms I laid down." Mayfield said, sounding puzzled. "In fact one said he'd try to speak with you to change your mind."

"Nice try, Mayfield, but I've established very good relations with all the important members of the Zeditron family. They trust me to lead them in the right direction," she said, not falling for the mind game. "Now unless you're willing to alter your deal to something much closer to fifty-fifty, we have nothing further to talk about."

"Indeed, I doubt we'll ever talk about ANYTHING again," Mayfield said, her tone shifting to something predatory. "Goodbye, Carrie. Give my regards to Adrian, won't you?"

With that the call was ended from the other side, leaving her to wonder about the final words of her despised C.E.O colleague and an unsettling feeling to manifest in her stomach. Surely Mayfield wasn't considering having her killed! That was certainly the most obvious way the comment about Adrian Conrad could be interpreted but, then again, it could simply be another mind game. Something to get her to jump at shadows or increase security precautions giving people the wrong idea about her as well as implying weakness.

Before she could decide on a course of action though she noticed the limo coming to a stop where it never had on her previous trips to the office.

"What's going on?" she asked the driver as she tried to look out the front windshield to see for herself.

"Looks like someone is having car trouble Miss Merchant," the driver replied promptly. "It's blocking the road so we'll either have to go another way or push it off to the side."

"You and Bernard go see if you can convince the driver to let you push it off to the side of the road," she ordered with annoyance. "I have a meeting with the board in an hour and I cannot afford to be late."

With a nod both her driver and Bernard exited the limo and walked towards the short woman who was bent over the front of the car, working on the engine with the hood being held up by a single rod. She could hear her bodyguard speaking but couldn't quite make out what he was saying due to the distance and the fact that the limo doors were closed. She guessed that her bodyguard was voicing an offer to help as well as a request to move the broken down car off to the side so the limo could get through. Strangely enough the young woman didn't seem to hear them at all and simply continued to work on her vehicle, implying that she was either deaf or was ignoring Bernard.

She watched as Bernard reached out with his right arm to try and grab the young woman's shoulder but then something happened that should not have.

In the blink of an eye her bodyguard's head and arms were separated from his body, dropping to the ground like pieces of wood, followed soon after by the rest of the body. With blood coming from the stumps of a man who'd been a valuable employee for five years her shock almost caused her to fail to register that the young woman they'd tried to help now had some kind of sword in her right hand. That, sadly, was all she was able to comprehend before the woman moved with speed that shouldn't have been possible to do to her driver what had been done to her bodyguard.

Terrified, she ducked out of view and immediately tried to use her cell phone to dial 911 so the police could come to rescue her. However, when she didn't hear the sound of the call being made, she looked at the display on her phone and found that she had no bars at all. That shouldn't have been possible given how close she was to the city and her phone was the latest frickin' model as well, with the company that made it saying it could get a signal from anywhere.

Bullshit!

Scrambling for the door that was furthest away from the bloody swordswoman she threw it open and fell to the ground. Determined to get away she spotted an alley not far away and once she got her feet under her she ran for it with all the speed she could manage. As she got eight feet into the alleyway she thought that maybe she had a chance.

Maybe she'd managed to get away.

"I'm sorry," a male voice said from above and behind her.

Before the thought to look at it could even form in her mind, it was over.

Xander's POV

Dropping from the fire escape on the second floor of the building, he landed with barely a sound and his nanosuit's HUD barely registers a decrease in energy or integrity. No surprise there considering it was designed to keep the wearer alive if dropped from heights two or three times higher up. If he'd gotten this suit years ago when Rayne first pulled this stunt, he'd probably have been overjoyed since it would've been a big help fighting vamps and demons. The ability to go invisible, to be able to lift and throw over seven hundred pounds as well as take hits from high caliber firearms without getting seriously hurt? Way cool!

Now, though… he thought as he looked at the lifeless body of one Carrie Merchant.

The woman he'd just killed with a single shot of his Hammer high caliber pistol.

He didn't know a whole lot about the woman other than she was the C.E.O of a company that Athena wanted to take control of and was willing to kill to get what she wanted. They'd been given basic plan and the desired conclusion but the whore had left it up to them to figure out how to make it all happen. Of course they'd been reminded of what'd happen if they didn't succeed, if they didn't do their very best, and as much as they wanted to vent their fury at the people responsible for their current existences, they knew that the time was not right. Until they found a way to independently maintain their new bodies, find a way to reverse the spell so they could get back to normal or eliminate the little surprises the bitch had surgically implanted in them, they were screwed.

Shaking off the sight before him, he opened up a comm channel to Buffy to see what sort of state she was in. "Status, Buff'?" he asked, turning away from the rapidly cooling corpse.

He didn't get a reply.

He wanted to go out there and see for himself but Athena had been adamant that nothing unusual could be connected to the deaths. The story that the local cops were supposed to buy was that the C.E.O and everyone with her had been attacked by members of the Yakuza in response to a past insult the woman had dealt one of their mid-level members during an overseas business trip. That was why Buffy had used her high frequency sword at its lowest setting and why he'd sniped Miss Merchant from where he had. It was all SOP for Yakuza retaliation but, to stack the deck even further in their favor, bits and pieces usually associated with members of that organized crime group would be left scattered about the crime scene. Not too much, though, since stacking things too much in the Yakuza direction would only make the detectives suspicious that they were being tricked for some reason.

"Buffy?" he said again, trying to get some sort of confirmation through the comm. link.

"I'M HERE!" she snapped like she wanted to introduce him to her blade. "I-I'm here Xan. God do I wish I could be anywhere else but here!"

"You and me both," he said, not liking his environment either even as he walked to a bag concealed behind a dumpster. "Still, we gotta finish the mission and get out of here before police arrive. Start scattering the 'evidence' then head for the extraction point."

"Don't you even care that we've just killed three people!?" Buffy snapped, clearly messed up enough emotionally that lashing out was a solid venting method.

"I care but I also know that now is not the time to be losing our heads. You know the situation as well as I do. At the moment there's nothing we can do. All we can do is keep ourselves alive until lady luck finally decides to send some of the good stuff out way. The thing is we're not going to be able to spot it if we're so pissed off we can't think straight. Now plant the evidence and then head to the extraction point as planned."

"…acknowledged. Over and out." Buffy said before terminating the link.

He couldn't blame Buffy because, much like her, he'd been the sort to let emotions dictate actions and, while they might've matured a bit since the good old days in Sunnydale, some parts of them hadn't changed. Right at that moment it was the soldiers in them, Prophet and Raiden, that allowed their emotions to be tempered somewhat and let them focus on the mission. There was one question that, with his inherited memories, he felt exemplified the leader of Raptor Team: what are you prepared to sacrifice? In that man's war he was prepared to sacrifice his life and his humanity to get the job done and honestly he couldn't see himself following any other route than that. It'd been his creed for as long as he could remember, to do whatever it took to keep his chosen family both happy as well as healthy, and this situation just meant he'd have to get his hands dirtier than he'd like.

He had no doubt that Mayfield would send the Scoobies on more missions in the future, ranging from corporate espionage to assassination to ruining the reputations of any who'd get in the way of her big plans. What were those plans? Probably global domination and then into space to conquer whatever was out there. Unlike who he was before the spell that had dropped a sizeable inheritance from Prophet, he was no longer disbelieving about the possibility of alien life. To him alien life wasn't just a theoretical possibility but an inevitable fact waiting to drop down on them all.

In fact, based on some of the tech he'd seen in Charlotte's possession, there was a strong possibility it already had.

Best time to try and pull off a rebellion is whenever she plans on making her first big push, he thought as he finished laying out the 'evidence'. That's when she'll be most distracted with a million things going on at once.

The only question was how to get the rebellion kicked off and running but fortunately the memories he'd inherited from the previous wearer of his suit provided him with a possibility. It was far from a guarantee but it was the best idea he had so he was going to run with it, hoping the Harris luck didn't pay him a visit somewhere along the way.

He was pretty sure that the others were doing the same thing as him, working on ways to regain their freedom and exact their revenge, and as far as he was concerned the more plans the better the odds of one of them succeeding. Unfortunately in order to keep their captor in the dark they couldn't voice their plans out loud and with the security cameras he had no way to write it out on paper or use any other non-verbal method. There was a good chance that they'd trip over each other's efforts and maybe ruin everything but they had no choice until a reliable and undetectable means of communication could be acquired.

Time to scram. Still, wish I'd been given a cleaner escape route, though.

Removing the sewer cover, he dropped into the sewers just as the cloaking function of the nanosuit ran out of power, causing him to fade back into visibility. He knew it'd recharge soon enough but imagined that this was why the sewer route was given to him. As handy as cloaking was for him, his suit couldn't sustain it indefinitely and movement only made it run out of juice even quicker. There would not be enough cover between his present position and the extraction point aboveground so he was left taking the route where there wasn't likely to be any people or cameras to catch a glimpse of him. Fortunately S.E.C.O.N.D. had a copy of the sewer system map so he'd have an easy time navigating through it to the extraction point. The only thing that could possibly complicate things would be if there were some changes made that hadn't made it into the official maps or if he bumped into some city maintenance workers.

Cloaking will help me get around the maintenance workers but let's hope that the map is one hundred percent accurate.

Definitely not the grand adventure he'd momentarily dreamed up once he'd first realized that his inheritance had become permanent.

For the next six weeks missions like these continued as the Goa'uld Athena used her newly acquired pawns to help expand her corporate powerbase. Enemies would either be eliminated or converted into unwilling allies and all the while more resources would be acquired in order to feed the production lines of technology from five separate realities. Throughout these operations, though, standing orders would be followed to the letter: no abnormal evidence is to be left at the scene of the crimes and any unanticipated witnesses were to be promptly eliminated. It didn't matter what the age, gender or ethnicity they were as far as Athena was concerned. ALL WITNESSES MUST DIE.

And so blood flowed.

Flowed from the wounds of their victims.

Flowed onto their hands, their arms, their face, THEIR ENTIRE BODIES!

Needless to say sleep didn't come easily to them and when it did it only lasted a few hours at best before they woke up with rapid heartbeats and frantic gazes. Thanks to their enhancements they didn't need as much sleep as they used to so even if they only got four hours of sleep, it was still enough to keep them alert for their next mission. Given the line of work they'd been in, fighting demons and vampires and ghosts and witches, they were no strangers to nightmares but at least then the things that haunted them were enemies or victims they'd been too late to save.

Those dreams never included accusing stares from their human victims.

Those dreams never had their friends and loved ones trying to kill them like they were some kind of monster.

Those dreams never had them helplessly acting like monsters killing those they cared for with cold, precise, efficiency.

All they could do was cling to the military training of their costume's personae in order to keep functioning and take comfort in the times when they could talk amongst themselves reassuring each other that they're still who they were before the nightmare started. The one who had it the roughest though was Giles because the clock was ticking on the deadline Athena had given him for coaxing the spirit of their deceased friend Jenny Calendar, cast in the form of Cortana, out of her hiding place. Fortunately the senior Watcher had all the time he needed since he hadn't been sent on many missions and therefore could devote the majority of his time speaking to her.

Nevertheless, in the entire six weeks since Rupert Giles had started trying to reach the soul of Jenny Calendar, the man hadn't gotten so much as a single word out of the woman.

Time was running out.