10:57, TUESDAY AUGUST 24, LIMA (18:57/24-08-99 ZULU)
SUNNYDALE HOSPITAL
Reflexes like chained lightning; the strength to bend a rifle-barrel into a hoop; hand-to-hand combat skills to shame most black belts; resilience sufficient to shrug off blows that would incapacitate a normal human; senses as sharp as those of any great cat. Such is the Slayer's power.
And every last dot of it completely useless right now, Buffy thought bitterly, looking down at trembling hands. I never thought I'd feel as horrible as I did during Cruciamentum: I'm so used to having these powers, to doing superhuman things, that losing my powers was terrifying. But this is worse: I still have my Slayer-ness... and right now I can't do a damn bit of good.
"Where's Will?" she asked, almost absently.
"Restroom. She wanted to wash the blood off," Xander shrugged. His attention was bent on the laptop he'd snatched up in their scramble to get out of Giles'. Or, rather, on the two jagged rents straight through the LCD.
Buffy lifted her head a little, glancing at what he was doing with curiosity, but little enthusiasm. "What're you doing?"
"Just checking this thing out. I'm curious," he murmured. "Somebody was editing the post-mortems on our four tangos from last night, and I'd like to know what they were taking out - plus we've still got that possible blood-magic case to check out. Will might've got what we need, but without a display, there's no way to tell yea or nay."
The Slayer blinked and cocked her head a little. God, he's even talking smarter! "Xander, where the heck did you go when you left here?"
He glanced at her sidelong and gave her a strange little smile. "You're not asking the right question, Buff. No, wait, I take that back: you're not asking all the right question."
God, and I thought Angel was annoying when he did this! "Xander, don't make me hit you."
He coughed once - or was it a muffled laugh? - and turned his attention back to the laptop.
Buffy let out a little scream and shot out of her seat to pace some more. She'd already left a race-track pattern in the linoleum, and now she was trying to make it a permanent fixture. "So?" she prompted, flicking her eyes at the laptop.
"The screen is, well, shot," he smiled, poking two fingers through one of the bulletholes and waggling them to illustrate, "beyond repair, but it looks like that's the sum total of the damage. CPU and motherboard, hard-drive, keyboard - all that's on this other half, and as far as I can see, that's untouched." He paused and cocked his head thoughtfully; after a moment, a mischievous smile crept across his face. "Y'mind holding on to this for a minute, Buff? I'm just gonna get something from the Suburban."
"What?"
Xander shot her a wink on his way out the door. "You'll see."
Buffy leaned back in her seat and looked down at her hands again, one corner of her mind marvelling at the change in Xander. When she'd gone to help Cerian, she'd thought she'd been leaving Giles in safe hands - meaning Willow's hands - and that she'd be better off doing something instead of hovering at the Wiccan's shoulder, being useless again. She'd been right on the second part, but the paramedics had made it diamond-clear that Xander's - Xander's - prompt action had almost certainly saved Giles' life.
And half an hour ago, I wouldn't have been happy betting money that Xander could spell 'prompt action', she mused, with a tiny sniff of almost-humour. God, in high school he ran late so often I wondered why he bothered wearing a watch in the first place. Now, he's Johnny-on-the-spot.
She looked up again as Willow came in. "This is so not the way I wanted to get back here."
"Seconded." The redhead's cuffs were still speckled with rust-red blotches, and she was just as down - and adrenaline-fatigued - as the Slayer was. "Where's Xander?"
"Getting something from the car. Something to fix The Wonderful Willow-Machine, I think."
"Oh. Wait, how? Xander can't fix computers and he doesn't have the things he'd need and it's all FUBAR-y anyway and -"
"'FUBAR'?" the Slayer interjected, arching her brows.
"Uh... Oz and I went to Saving Private Ryan the week before things got fluke-y."
"You don't see enough blood and guts around me?"
"Dad and some of his buddies saw it, and when he got home, the first thing he did was come into my room and tell me I should go. 'So I could see some real values in action,' he said. Since it was about the only thing he said to me all year...." Willow shrugged.
Buffy nodded her understanding. Okay, now, let's keep this small-talk thing going, okay? Just to keep our minds off the uselessness. "Where are your folks, anyway? They weren't exactly ringing our phone off the hook looking for you this morning. They in Phoenix again?"
A shake of the head. "Baltimore. Dad's taking some vacation time from the DA's office to tag along while Mom does the speaking-circuit thing. Y'know, about that paper she helped write?"
"Oh yeah. She still in denial over the Wicca thing?"
"Are you kidding? She still thinks I'm going to Temple every single weekend, like reliable-dog-geyser-person," the redhead drawled.
Buffy thought better of asking her where she did go; she could make a pretty fair guess on her own, and the object here was to occupy, not to mortify. "You gonna shake her out of it?"
"What's the point? We'll be at college in two weeks anyway, and then it'll be a question from Mootville."
"Biggest town in Don't-Want-to-Know County," the Slayer half-smiled. "What's in the bag, anyway?"
Despite herself, Willow dropped a hand to the gym-bag. "Stuff for Oz, clothes, his college package -"
"He hasn't got it in yet? Ouch - penalty fees!"
"We had an Ascension to worry about, Buff. I think he wanted to wait until he actually knew he'd be going before he sent anything in - y'know, in case it became more moot-ness?"
The Slayer raised one eyebrow a little. Jeez, Will, rationalise much? she didn't say.
Xander reappeared through the doorway; he carried a brace of gift-wrapped boxes, about shoe-box size, under one arm. "It has returned," he intoned sonorously, his eyes dancing merrily.
"And it comes bearing gifts," Buffy chirped, cocking her head curiously. "What'cha get us, Xand-man? And how should we react?"
"Knowing him? Be afraid," Willow sniffed.
Xander generously ignored the commentary, setting one of the packages on the coffee-table next to Willow for a moment; the other he held in hand as he turned to Buffy. "Y'know, Buff, you're a hard person to buy for... but with time, and some advice, I finally found something."
Buffy accepted the offered package a little warily, not knowing what to make of all this. She tore through the green-and-blue wrapping paper, opened the lid, and found two smaller packets inside, a flat one about fourteen inches by five and the other a... a jewellery box? "Xander, if this is some sort of proposal gag -"
He gave her a steady look. "Open 'em and find out."
Inside the jewellery box was not a ring, but a ball-chain necklace bearing a stylised shield about an inch high, made of what looked like solid silver and set with a crucifix made of - Buffy blinked and gaped. Those can't be - "Are those rubies?"
"Nothin' but," he smiled gently. "That's the Cross of Saint George: patron saint of England... and of soldiers." He inclined his head at her.
That was good for a Buffy/Willow "Awwwwww" duet... but Buffy was a little confused, and a lot stunned. Where'd he get the money for something like this? This has to be custom work, and if it cost less than five grand, I'm Ivana Trump!
Tabling that issue for another time, Buffy opened the snap on the other box... and blinked again. "Knives?"
"The big one in the sheath is sold under the model-name OSS: it has an eight-and-a-quarter-inch blade with a clipped point and a textured non-slip rubber handle. The smaller one's called the Recon One; it's a tactical folding knife - basically a pocket-knife you can fight with - with a four-inch blade and a clipped point. I picked 'em up from a cutler's shop in Ventura that calls itself - get this - Cold Steel." Xander raised both eyebrows. "Kind'a says it all right there, huh?"
Buffy shivered at the idea. Try as she might, she couldn't forget that places like that, ignorant of the dangers in the dark, made implements that were used to kill other human beings. That's probably where Wilkins got Faith's knife, she guessed, incorrectly. "The pretty and the practical. Thanks, Xander."
"Well, you junked Faith's knife, and I don't think we want to repeat the Exact-O incident, do we?"
She snickered, fondly remembering that God-so-long-ago conversation they'd had in the sewers on her second day on the Hellmouth. But then, it beat hell out of the last conversation I had in a sewer, she remembered, her smile dying again at the spasm of pain in her chest.
When she looked up again, Xander was looking at her with concern in his eyes. She waved him off, tilting her head towards Willow. I'm fine. Go on, give Will her present(s).
He spared her another split-second of 'are you okay?' before finally obeying and turning to Willow. "Go ahead and open yours, Wills."
Like Buffy's, Willow's necklace was of the ball-chain variety, but its shield was set with six sapphires that described a five-pointed star, circled by a platinum inlay. Long moments passed in which Willow could do nothing but stare at the adornment in open-mouthed shock. "H... h... how much did you win in those poker games?" she finally managed, in a breathless, freaked-out squeak.
Xander plays poker? And wins? Since when? Buffy wondered.
He cocked his head and ran the math in his head(!). "All told... a little under ninety grand. I banked forty, splurged on goodies with the rest."
"So I see," Willow breathed. "I... I c-"
"You can, and you will," he said firmly. "Even if you never wear it. You... you guys mean everything to me; those pendants are just one way of showing it."
Still in shell-shock, Willow missed the way he'd corrected himself and dug into the other box, producing... "What the heck are these?"
'These' was a set of goggles, similar in style to those one-piece eye-shields skiers wore; the lens was made of a translucent, dark-blue material, and the arms and brow-piece were of very thick plastic. A curly-cord ending in a very rugged-looking plug dangled from just forward of the left hinge; an ear-piece/ lip-mike rig was swivel-mounted on the right.
"Those come from a Taiwanese outfit called HyperComm that just started product-testing 'em; they call 'em 'eye-phones'. Here." He took the laptop from Buffy and plugged the headset into the video-jack at the back, then carefully settled the screenless keyboard onto Willow's lap and the goggles onto her face. "Put the earpiece in, you'll need it for the new interface." He flipped a switch on the plug. "Watch out, it's gonna take 'em a moment to synch with your current hardware."
Before Willow's astounded eyes, the inside of the lens lit up with {OS LOADING - PLEASE WAIT}. "Wow! What is this?"
"It's a holographic display system, like they use in fighter jets; it projects your desktop from inside the brow-piece. There're sensors in there that track your eye-movements, too, and the interface software lets you give voice commands. Think of it as a computer screen you can wear like glasses and a mouse you can talk to."
A moment later, the 'wait' prompt was replaced - by her laptop's desktop interface! Her eyes tracked back and forth across the screen, and the cursor followed her gaze with millimetric precision. Willow let out a squeal of geeker joy - post-high-school dignity be damned. "This is SO COOL!" she chortled, setting both eyephones and laptop aside for a moment so she could stand up and hug him nearly in half. "Xander, these are, like, beyond the cutting-edge - how'd you get them?"
"One of HyperComm's sales-pukes sat in on the last game I played before I left. Everybody else quit, and he was desperate to call me, so he pitched those in. The pot was worth ninety-odd-thou, so I can't really blame him; I guess he thought an ace-high straight was unbeatable. It would've been, except I was holding nothing but hearts, queen-high. I told the guys I'd take those eyephones as my only prize, left my money in the pot, and went straight out the door to let 'em duke it out."
Both women stared at him. "You gave up ninety... thousand... dollars for these?" Willow repeated faintly. "For these for ME?"
"I can always win more money, Will. Ninety thousand dollars is worth ninety thousand dollars - but that look on your face is beyond price," he smiled.
The tiny part of Buffy's mind that wasn't swooning at that impossibly sweet gesture was glaring a hole in the side of Xander's head. Xander, you'd better not be doing what I think you are!
He coughed and pointed his chin at the laptop again. "Besides, I figured you'd want something you could use for college and Slayerette stuff. And as much as I don't want to break the mood before you two kiss me senseless for all these wonderful toys, we've still got four or five case-files to look at."
"What about Oz? Shouldn't we go visit him while we're here?" Buffy suggested, a little tartly.
"Oz?" Willow repeated - then it sank in. "Ohmigod, Oz! He must be -"
"Will." Xander laid a hand on her shoulder, shifting gears in nothing flat. "If they release him before we're finished, they'll tell him where we are. If they don't release him, he'll still be there when we're done... and considering that Giles has already been shot over what's in those guys' files, I'm kinda curious to see what they want to hide."
"You think the people who shot at us were buddies with the guys from last night? Why?" Buffy frowned.
"You know anybody else running around Sunnydale with assault rifles shooting at civilians?" he countered easily. "Somebody was trying to sanitise their autopsy reports, so we know they've got friends out there. Maybe they wanted payback for last night."
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
11:24, AUGUST 24, LIMA (19:24/24-08-99, ZULU)
SHRIKE-TEAM CENTRAL SAFEHOUSE, OUTSIDE SUNNYDALE
Ruby and Amethyst couldn't help but notice the looks their fellow operatives gave the sniper-duo as they walked through the mansion's games room-cum-command post. Looks of covert sympathy. They know what's happened... and they know we're in for it. The Afrikaaner swallowed at the thought.
Onyx was standing behind Topaz's chair, watching as the cracker finished sanitising the autopsy records on the downed members of SHRIKE-3. Behind him, Emerald was sitting at the scanning equipment, her bobbed auburn hair stuffed up under a Vancouver Canucks cap to accomodate her headphones, which were currently hanging about her neck. Even from where they stood, the duo could hear the faint chatter of the S.P.D. working the Carver Complex scene.
Onyx doffed his glasses and polished them, his movements very precise. "Doing a little hunting, Ruby?" he asked crisply.
"I saw an opportunity to finish the job in one go, and I took it," the ex-Ranger declared.
Onyx's calm was disturbed not a whit by the insolence. "You know the Judas Protocols as well as anyone here, Ruby. As a team leader, you could hardly be ignorant of them! 'All sanctions must appear to be -'"
"'- Accidents or incidents naturally occurring in the target area', I know," the American repeated over-patiently. "This is Southern California, Onyx. People get machine-gunned here every day."
"In inner-city barrios and ghettos, not in nice, quiet, middle-class Caucasian suburbs like Sunnydale," SHRIKE-1-Deputy returned, still unperturbed. "In drive-by shootings, not in such a clear-cut stalk. And especially not with people like Cerian McKellar in the room."
"What?" Ruby blinked, doing a perfect imitation of blank surprise. A little too perfect.
Amethyst kept her face blank, masking the sudden redoubling of her dread. Her team-commander had played that wrong: he should have been appalled, not surprised.
"You had a clean chance at all of this 'Scooby Gang', and who did you get? You killed two housewives and a four-year-old and wounded - wounded - Rupert Giles and Cerian McKellar."
He put his glasses back on. Every operative in the room had been waiting for that signal, and there was a sudden, multi-faceted rasp of metal against ballistic nylon. Everyone barring Onyx himself had drawn their sidearm and levelled it on the two miscreants before they could think of reaching for their own.
The new Walther P99 .40SW was standard-issue for SHRIKE operators, but that wasn't set in stone. Circumstances often required different weapons, and the best operatives were usually allowed a certain leeway. Onyx, for his part, carried a Delta Elite 10mm. He left that weapon holstered and took a spare weapon, a suppressed .22 HK4, from the desk next to Topaz's elbow, resting it against his thigh as he faced the duo again. That it was the very same pistol Opal had used in Napier did not escape anyone's notice. "You wounded someone who has been an asset to this organisation for thirty years, and you missed your primary targets completely. Putting Giles in hospital may prove useful, but the fact remains that you violated protocols, disobeyed Opal's specific orders, revealed our presence, put the subjects on their guard, and generally - what's that American phrase? - 'fucked the dog'." He released the Heckler and Koch's safety and earred back the hammer. "I had thought last night was sufficient warning about the consequences of ill-considered and intemperate action. I don't enjoy being mistaken. The question is, what do we do about it? And which of you should be punished?"
His gaze fell on Amethyst first. "There's no point asking who did the shooting, since you'll simply blame each other and we'll get nowhere. Besides, you were both there, so you're both responsible. Amethyst is of limited value to the organisation. Her linguistic gifts are useful but not unique, as are her medical skills. She's only an average shot, and possesses limited tactical abilities. In fact, she is eminently replaceable."
He turned his eyes on Ruby. "Ruby, on the other hand, is a SHRIKE team commander. He's a trained sniper, with fieldcraft and tactical skills many of you can never hope to match. He's seen more combat than the rest of you combined, and, in fact, is one of the finest assets we have." He cocked his head as if to say 'don't you agree?' to the American, turned his eyes to Amethyst, swung the .22 up waist-high -
- and put three hollowpoints through Ruby's liver.
The ex-Ranger went down shrieking, clutching a bloody and mortal wound. Amethyst blinked and stared down at the fallen man in shock, not daring to move. Onyx crossed to stand over the larger man, then shot him again, this time putting two rounds into his crotch. Ruby howled and thrashed on the floor, blood rapidly pooling on the floor beneath him, much of it streaked with yellow bile.
Onyx handed the HK4 off to Garnet. "You and Jade strip him of his valuables, lock him in the boot of a car, park it in a rest area off the highway, then burn it with him inside; make sure you leave some of his blood on the driver's seat. The police should take it for the work of garden-variety criminals. Leave his gun in the car so they can match it to the victims at the house."
"Should we kill him before we torch him?" Garnet asked.
"Why?" Onyx asked blankly.
Garnet winced, then moved to obey, taking the wounded man by the shoulders while Jade got his feet. They left a long, almost uninterrupted line of blood spatters on their way out the door.
"I don't envy the individual that has to get that out of the carpet," Onyx observed, almost whimsically, then turned and went back to where Amethyst stood, still frozen to the spot. "You've been party to a mistake, Margaret; everyone is, sooner or later. Because it was more Ruby's mistake than yours, you're going to get a chance at redemption," he said... then smiled, in a way, and added, "of a sort."
He crossed to where Topaz and Emerald sat and sat on the edge of the desk. "Now, for reasons both various and obvious, neither Opal nor I can participate in the action on Thursday night. With that in mind, Amethyst, you'll be in command of SHRIKE-1 during the operation; Turquoise, you'll be her second."
Neither operative knew how to take that.
Onyx ignored their stunned looks and went on, addressing Amethyst. "The plan's as ready as it can be without details we won't have for a few more hours, so until we get those details, you'd do well to study the basic concept and the locations involved. Turquoise has more experience at the command side, so don't be afraid to ask for his opinion or listen to what he has to say. The mark of a good leader is the ability to accept advice. Remember: quick, quiet, and with a minimum of bother. Rosenberg must be alive and more or less unharmed if we're to exert effective leverage on Summers. Taking any more 'Scoobies' alive would be useful... but ultimately they're expendable."
Chapter End Notes:
If you want to see pictures of the knives Xander gives to Buffy (and, indeed, carries himself), visit www(dot)coldsteel(dot).com. They're certainly not anything I'd want to mess with.
Eyephones are a concept I borrowed from the supposedly cyberpunk movie 'Johnny Mnemonic', which is owned by a lot of people who aren't me. Even a movie that was 98% shite had to have something useful to it.
- The Walther P99, most famous as James Bond's new sidearm of choice, is available in two calibres: 9x19mm Parabellum (with 10- or 16-round magazines) or .40SW (10- or 12-round sticks). Technically speaking, neither calibre is really at its best when silenced.
- The 10mm Delta Élite bears a close resemblance to its ancestor, the M1911; in fact, apart from its calibre it is virtually identical. The 10mm Auto cartridge has enough energy to fall into the Magnum power spectrum; Onyx likes to be sure that what he shoots stays shot.
- The HK4 (made by Heckler and Koch) can be easily modified by a user to chamber .380 Auto, .32 Auto, .25ACP or .22LR ammunition, all of which are small calibres that can easily be silenced, but are not especially lethal unless well-aimed.
For those 'tropers' among you: did Onyx just subvert 'the Blofeld Ploy', invert it, tweak it, or just plain play it straight? :D