08:04, FRIDAY AUGUST 27, LIMA (16:04/27-08-99 ZULU)
SUNNYDALE ARMS APARTMENT COMPLEX
Little Bob leaned back in the seat of his car, sorting through what he'd seen inside. Strictly speaking, this wasn't his case, but his partner was involved, and that made it his business, assignment be damned. Nuñez had told the press the usual fairy tales - in this case, 'probable gas explosion' - but Patterson had seen inside that apartment, the pattern of damage and its origin, so he knew that 'fairy tale' was all it was.
Especially when the records show the gas to that apartment being shut off five days ago! he added humourlessly. A Forensics type rapped on his window; winding it down, he cocked an eyebrow. "What'cha got?"
Why on Earth the S.P.D. Forensics Division had hired Sara Sidle during the Wilkins Era was anybody's guess. She might have been cute, with her wavy brunette locks and her pointed chin and her flashing eyes, but she was three other things that should have absolutely precluded her from being hired: aggressively competent, stubbornly honest - and nobody's fool. "We just got the chemical-residue results back from the lab. The explosive agent? Everybody's favourite way of cancelling Czechs."
Little Bob whistled. "Semtex? Nice."
"There's more. We got a DNA match off the vic to an Interpol file. Ilya Vassilievich Borodulin, KGB Second Chief Directorate, dropped out of sight about five years ago. So, what the hell is a Russian spy-chaser doing getting blown up in Southern California?"
"I don't know, but it looks like he spread himself pretty thin doing it," Little Bob essayed. Both chuckled at the gallows humour.
"Nice, Bob, real nice," LaFollet inserted, dropping into the car's passenger seat.
Bob tipped his head to Sidle; she took the hint and went back to work. "Jan, you look like hammered dogshit. Have you slept?"
"After what I saw last night? You gotta be kiddin'," she snorted, draining her umpteenth cup of coffee. She'd changed into slacks and a T-shirt, and (following a stern talking-to from the EMTs last night) put her left arm back into its sling.
When LaFollet's syntax starts to deteriorate, you know she's pretty out of it. "Maybe you should try, y'know? You've got two weeks off with pay, partner; make the most of 'em."
"Somebody just blew up my apartment building, Bob, and no pun intended, but that's kinda close to home." The end of her sentence was muffled by a jaw-cracking yawn. "What the hell happened, anyway?"
"Judging by the pattern and the extent of the damage, it looks like a booby-trap in the nightstand in the master bedroom. 'Bout a quarter-kilo of plastic explosive, probably on a trip-wire, just waiting for the first poor schmuck to open it."
"You sure?"
"I spent fifteen years handling C-4 and planting booby-traps, Jan; I know from explosives."
"But why? I knew the two kids who lived there: they were flakes, but I can't see why anybody'd want to kill 'em. And that kind of expertise costs money, right?"
"When I have some answers, you'll be the first to know, okay? But after you've rested."
"You're too ugly to be my mother, Bob."
"Jan -!"
"I'm going, I'm going," she said in a long-suffering tone, climbing out of the car again. Between the bad arm and her fatigue-born lack of coordination, it took her a couple of tries. "Talk to you later."
As LaFollet slowly and carefully made her way back up inside the building, Stein and Nuñez appeared at the entry-way again. She couldn't completely contain a gleeful smirk at seeing Stein's face, what with the tape on his broken nose and both of his eyes blackened.
"Hey, LaFollet. Kill anybody today?" he asked archly.
If she'd been tracking even a little better, that would have been a knife in the heart. As it was, it just pissed her off. She hooked her thumb through her belt just forward of her holstered USP, looking him over. "The day's young, Frank," she said significantly.
Nuñez carefully didn't laugh.
Stein faltered, then shifted tacks a little. "They called us off the scene of the fourth Cult Murder to look at this. Y'know, the case we might be making some headway on if you hadn't killed our only leads?"
"What was I supposed to do - pose for 'em?" she snarled back. "And you weren't exactly busting down Umbra's door to talk to those guys ahead of me!"
"What did you think you were doing, anyway? Who do you think you are, trying to solve my cases for me?"
"Somebody who actually can solve cases," she snorted, heading inside. "Got a suspect in Allan Finch's death yet, Frank? Oh, wait, it's too soon for that: after all, it's only been, what, five months?"
"You -!" Stein seized her by her arm and whipped her around. Unfortunately for him, he grabbed her wounded arm, and none too gently.
His grasp sent a wave of agony through her body. LaFollet yelped; pain blanked her conscious intellect, and primitive reflex took over. She lashed out as she turned, her fist catching Stein right in the bridge of his broken nose.
Stein howled and reeled backwards, falling on his ass right there on the steps, once again clutching his nose as blood ran through his fingers. "MUDDERFUGGER! GodDABBIT, dat's twice, you fugging bidch!"
LaFollet cradled her arm for a few moments, gritting her teeth against the flames shooting down to her fingertips and up her shoulder. "What goes around, comes around, Frank. Happy trails."
And as she passed Officer (Probationary) Rachel Greyfeather, who was standing guard just inside the front entrance, LaFollet was cheered to see the Comanche woman shoot her a not-so-subtle thumbs-up. As a patrol probie, she might might not have been square in Stein's sights... but that didn't necessarily mean she didn't want to see him taken down a peg or three.
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
Meanwhile, back in the car, Little Bob was smirking at Stein's misfortune when something hit him. He'd spent fifteen years handling explosives and setting booby-traps, all right; and one of the prime uses of booby-traps was to - To cover your escape! Plant a few charges on your escape-route, and when the bad-guys show up, pow! You kill one or two of 'em and sure as hell make the others a lot more cautious about trailing you.
Nah, can't be. That's military thinking, and there's no way this was a -
"Sergeant Bob Patterson?"
Little Bob looked up again. He didn't recognise the man standing at his window: about twenty years his senior, weather-worn, grey-haired... and despite his casual dress, his were the eyes of a soldier.
"Drew O'Ryan, Gunny. Can I 'ave a quick word?" the newcomer asked in a broad Cockney accent.
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
08:21, AUGUST 27, LIMA (16:21/27-08-99 ZULU)
SOMEWHERE IN SUNNYDALE
Owwwww....
Pain was the first thing to register on her mind. The residual ache from her bruised bust; the throbby pangs in her knuckles; the dull, clamp-like pressure of a phenobarb-hangover behind her temples.
Next came sound - at first muffled, as if heard through cotton-wool, but clearing with every painful pulse-beat. The quiet murmur of air conditioning and passing footsteps was overlaid by distant voices... and one closer to hand.
"- phone rings at oh-dark-early. I pick up, and guess who it is -"
Xander? He's doing his British-Guy thing again.... Willow thought muzzily, even as she realised... I'm lying on a bed, with a pillow and everything, and it almost feels like a hospital bed, and I'm still fully dressed and I'm not tied up at all - which makes me ask 'what the heck?' -
"- and, shock of all shocks, he's well-pickled. He and Jack and Sharky have mustered just enough surviving brain-cells between them to realise that they're in no fit state to drive, so he's called me so I can call him a taxi."
"Why didn't he simply call it himself?"
I know that voice, too....
"That's kind'a what I say," Xander replied. "He twigs, then yells 'just do it, would you?' and *blip* hangs up. About two seconds later, I call him back, and y'know what I ask?" (A snigger.) "'Where to, smart-arse?'"
A stifled laugh from the other man, which turned into a groan of pain. "Xander, please don't make me laugh when I'm in this state."
Wh - Giles?! The surprise of that made her crack her eyes open - an action she immediately regretted. The bright morning sunlight drove straight into her brain like lances of brightness, and she flung her good arm across her face with a near-soundless whimper.
The men's laughter broke off. Willow felt/heard someone approach, then a callused hand brushed at her hair. "How are you feeling, Will?" Xander asked, her voice ineffably gentle.
"Kind'a... all-over-ache-y," she said, her voice tiny.
"Can you sit up?"
"I guess, but there's this whole 'ow' factor involved...."
He chuckled softly, then slipped an arm under her shoulders to help her into a seated position. That done, he moved away for a moment; when he came back, Willow jumped a little as she felt him sliding a set of sunglasses onto her face. "That should help. I've got some Advil here."
Oh, God, what a beautiful thought! she sighed, cautiously opening her eyes. It took a moment or two for her eyes to see more than colourful blurs; resolving what stood in front of her into focus as a man-shape took a couple more seconds, and realising the details of exactly what it was took longer - but when it all sorted itself out, her jaw sagged open in astonishment. "???"
The man standing before her was not the regularly scheduled Xander Harris. That fact was made abundantly clear by the now-familiar midnight-blue battledress he wore - and by the dark green beret (adorned with a globe-and-foul-anchor) tucked under his left epaulette... and the parachute-qualification wings at his left shoulder-seam... and the way his short sleeves bared arms that were not bigger but a hell of a lot harder than they had been the last time she'd seen them.
Between the fog her mind was wrapped in, the aches, and the surprise, her mental editors really didn't have a prayer. "Do you look as good out of that uniform as you do in it?"
Behind Xander, Giles gurgled and shifted in his bed, trying to simultaneously choke back a laugh and pretend he'd never heard that. Xander himself kept his expression neutral only by conscious effort. "Well, nobody's said anything, Will - but if you ever want to judge for yourself, let me know."
Willow cringed, her face virtually flaming as she heard her own words. Oh God - where's the Hellmouth to swallow you all up when you need it?
"Saying the first thing that comes to mind - you've been hanging around with Taz too long," he added dryly, offering her those pain-pills he'd mentioned and a glass of water.
Willow accepted them, frowning at him even as her blush faded. "Who?"
"'Shooter'."
"Oh. Taz is her real name?"
"More or less."
"Okay. I guess." She knocked back her painkillers, drained the glass completely to get the weird taste out of her mouth, then glanced about, taking in her surroundings even as she tried to sort the zillion-and-one questions in her head into some sort of coherent order. "Hospital?"
"Fort Quick infirmary," Xander nodded. "One of our Special Guest Bad-Guys-of-the-Week came gunning for Faith and Giles at Memorial last night, so we figured it'd be safer for everybody here."
"'We'? And who's 'everybody'?" the Wiccan puzzled.
Xander tipped his chin to the bed behind her. She followed his gaze - and went cold as she saw its occupant.
Faith. Still unconscious; hooked up to IVs and monitors and stuff; but Faith, nonetheless.
Well, at least she's still comatose. Hooray for the good guys! she thought uncharitably. "And the 'we'?"
"Big surprise: that's a long story," he said wryly, taking a seat between the two bed-bays.
"Start at the beginning," Giles suggested, with a hint of strained patience.
"Which 'beginning', Giles?" Xander countered earnestly. "From whose perspective? Mine? My colleagues'? The bad-guys'? This caper has more layers than a frickin' matryoshka doll."
Willow sighed and massaged one aching temple. I can't wait for that Advil to kick in.... "Maybe you can start with who we're dealing with. Bad-guy-wise, I mean."
"Go ahead and show her, Snoopy."
The Wiccan turned to look at the speaker - and immediately regretted it. Again with the dizziness... and who the heck is that -? "Nemo?"
"Not... exactly," the foreigner smiled blandly from the doorway, shooting her a wink with his left eye - the one that there was never anything wrong with. His hair was different, too: not the ash-white she'd become accustomed to, but a gingery shade of blond that somehow suited his freckled face better. He wore short-sleeved midnight-blue battledress virtually identical to Xander's, but the beret under his shoulder-board was sandy-beige and adorned with a wingéd dagger; the entire upper side of his right arm was a sheet of plastic-y burn scars from wrist to just above his elbow.
Owwch! she winced to herself. Jeez, how'd he get that?
Giles' eyes locked onto the youth's scarred face. "I know you!" he breathed. "The people from SO13 showed me your picture when all the shooting was over."
"SO13, Mister Giles?" the young man sniffed. "They were no more Metro-Cops than I am Mahatma Gandhi. That notwithstanding, it's good to finally meet you. The last time I tried, there were... complications."
"'Complications'? A running gunfight in the middle of my museum that caused more than half a million pounds' worth of damage is a little more than a bloody 'complication', my lad!"
"Testy when he gets shot, i'n't he?" 'Nemo' observed to Xander, tongue firmly in cheek.
"He doesn't have your practice with it," Xander shrugged.
And there was a distinct click behind Willow's eyes as it all fell into place.
- A twenty-year-old Russian woman who brawled with Recon Marines - and apparently won a lot.
- A twenty-year-old man with lots of scars and a casual facility for languages. Such a useful gift... especially if one were to be raised as a Watcher.
- Nemo's natural accent having a faint lilt - like Cerian's. A Welsh lilt.
- Their out-of-character coolness towards Buffy.
- Their almost blithe efficiency in hand-to-hand combat, manifestly the product of gruelling training and broad experience.
- And now Xander's joke about getting shot.
The conclusion all that led her to should have beggared belief... but instead, there was a peace to it, an almost gentle humour; she'd solved a riddle she'd barely realised she was struggling with. Willow smiled at her foreign friend, wondering how in the blue heck she hadn't seen it sooner. "Hello, Peter," she said, strangely calm.
The banter between the two young men died, and 'Nemo' cocked an eyebrow at her, letting out a soft, impressed whistle. "As smart as advertised! Well done, Willow - though I haven't used that name for a looong time."
Giles was looking back and forth between them, frowning deeply. "Do you know him, Willow?"
"Sorta. If I'd had anything like a normal life, I'd say this was impossible."
"'Impossible', Willow? The impossible is what we do best," a familiar Slavic accent interjected. 'Shooter' was just coming to a stop in the doorway, half a step behind her husband's shoulder and smiling crookedly as usual. At least, it looked mostly like Shooter: she wore the same uniform and beret as her husband; without her formerly-ubiquitous shooting glasses, her eyes were a puckishly sparkling grey-green, and the hair that had tumbled past her shoulders like an ebony river was now bound back into a tight French braid a shade of auburn as dark as henna.
Even as Giles' eyes went to 'Shooter', something about their lack of insignia tickled at Willow's memory.... That's it: they must be Special Forces of some sort or other, she realised, half-remembered conversations with Jesse and Little Bob flitting across her mind. Only two types of soldier went around in unmarked uniforms: those too lowly to merit identification, and those too good to need it.
"They are the best-kept secret in the world," Xander drawled in his best Tommy Lee Jones. "Their mission is to monitor and police all extra-dimensional activity on Earth. They are your best, last, and only line of defence. They work in secret. They exist in shadow. And they dress in -"
"Blue, actually, but why quibble over details?" 'Nemo' murmured blandly. Ignoring Xander's Death Glare for ruining the joke, he gave the assembled crew a flourishing, semi-mocking bow. "Misha Bleddyn, at your service."
"Trooper Michael Bleddyn, of the New Zealand Paranatural Defence Service," Xander supplied.
"New Zea-" Giles' eyes bugged out of his head like an out-take from 'Tom and Jerry'. "Peter McKellar!?"
"That took him long enough," the scarred foreigner observed blandly. "Medication must be slowing him down."
Again with the Xander-Glare. "You'd know, Mister 'three weeks in a narcotic coma'! And, of course, ladies and gentleman, we have Misha's wife: Buffy's predecessor, and perhaps the only woman in the history of the Slayer lineage to permanently lose her title and powers and survive the experience... NZPDS Lance-Corporal Tatyana Alekseyevna Zyrianova."
"Please: Taz," the Russian smiled genially.
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
Willow was the first to find her voice again, and she didn't know what she was going to say until her lips started moving. "Don't tell me: reports of your deaths were greatly exaggerated."
Misha laughed, softly and gently. "Actually, they were downright falsified," he corrected wryly.
"But -!" Giles began, still staring at 'Taz' in bewilderment.
"Mister Giles, death is not necessarily a career-ending injury in our line of work; you're Watcher to living proof of that!" the amber-eyed youth smiled blandly. "But we have more pressing issues to deal with. Snoopy?"
Xander nodded at that cue, producing a thin white folder from an attaché case set atop Willow's bedside table; opening the folder, he took out two copies of the frontmost page and handed them to her and Giles.
Giles had only to see the watermark at the top of the page to go chalky-white and sag back against his pillows. "Oh my God...."
"You don't seem completely surprised, Giles," Xander said, with only the faintest of harsh edges.
The ex-Watcher couldn't quite meet his eyes. "I had... suspicions. I thought bureaucratic inertia would buy us some time -"
"They were signing the order before the last pieces of Sunnydale High hit the ground, Giles. They don't waste time when it comes to ensuring their grasp on power."
Willow's pains had short-circuited her temper, and being talked past like this -! "Heeeyy! Wanna explain something to the outsider here?" she growled, waving the document vigourously. She'd recognised the symbol in the letterhead: the triangle-and-three-rays from their assailants' tattoos. "What the heck is this? And who wrote it? And why?"
"It's the Scooby Gang's death-warrant, Wills," Xander told her, his tone almost sadly gentle. "And the seal at the top of the page? Well, that's the mark of our old friends -"
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
17:28, AUGUST 27, LIMA (16:28/27-08-99 ZULU)
GREYMOOR MANOR
OUTSIDE OXFORD, UNITED KINGDOM
Thomas C. Winston was reviewing the files of the Potentials.
He sat at the magnificent mahogany desk that went with the post of Sub-Coordinator (Security/Operations), as had his seven predecessors in the last twenty years - wearing a hand-tailored Italian suit of finest silk, with a belly full of rich English food, a comfortable bed waiting for him upstairs, armed guards seeing to his absolute personal safety, a full private hospital wing tending to his every paper-cut, and properly servile peons to see to his every whim - debating with himself over which of these poor fifteen-year-old girls would be condemned to a life of privation, sacrifice, misery, and a mean life-span once Chosen of 16.7 months (with a standard deviation of 2.3 months).
There's no real need to rush this decision, 'Keystone' smiled thinly, laying his hand-rolled Havana in an ash-tray as he turned a page. Opal and the Teams won't be certain of the matter for a few days yet. But still, it's best that I be fully acquainted with each of these girls before I make my decision. Poor Elliot Merrick wasn't half so thorough, and look what happened to him: personally saddled with that arrogant, self-absorbed, mutinous slut Summers. We can't afford that sort of disaster again; the next Slayer we call must be more... tractable, or our grasp on our control of our front-line brethren will slip even further.
Turning aside from his reading of the Potentials' life-histories for a moment, he looked at the PC next to his blotter - the sole anachronistic element in a room that hadn't substantially changed in almost a century - remembering the document he'd drawn up and presented to the Quorum less than five minutes after speaking to Wesley Wyndam-Pryce after that... fiasco at the Sunnydale High School Graduation. We can't have two Slayers walking the streets without any sort of leash, now can we? Much less all those insurrectionist friends of theirs....
{ OFFICIAL FINDING OF THE DISCIPLINARY TRIBUNAL
{ It has been made clear to the members of this Tribunal that the Slayer, 'Faith', is guilty of crimes including, but not limited to, the attempted murder of a human being, two instances of the murder of a human being, and mutiny against the authority of the Watcher Council. Given that under Council law these are all capital crimes, and given the unique nature of the Slayer, it is the finding of this Tribunal that she be put to death forthwith so as to allow the Calling of a Slayer who may discharge her responsibilities with more regard for the authority of the Council and for human life.
{ It has further been made clear to the members of this Tribunal that the Slayer, Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers, is guilty of crimes including, but not limited to, the attempted murder of a human being, mutiny against the authority of the Watcher Council, and the rejuvenation of a vampire. Given that under Council law these are all capital crimes, and given the unique nature of the Slayer, it is the finding of this Tribunal that she be put to death forthwith so as to allow the Calling of a Slayer who may discharge her responsibilities with more regard for the authority of the Council and for human life.
{ Moreover, it is the finding of this Tribunal that the assistants of the Slayer Elizabeth Anne Summers - being her former Watcher Rupert Keith Giles, Alexander Lavelle 'Xander' Harris, Willow Eileen Rosenberg, Daniel James 'Oz' Osbourne, and Cordelia Evelyn Chase - are guilty of complicity in her crimes, and are thus to be put to death forthwith so as to prevent any spread of their seditious sentiment.
{ Finally, this Tribunal sentences to immediate destruction the vampire Liam Padraig 'Angel' O'Donoghue, also known as Angelus. It is, after all, a vampire.
{ All sentences were passed without dissent.
{ TRIBUNAL MEMBERS:
{ Coordinator (Security) Francesca Mainprize
{ Sub-Coordinator (Security/Operations) Thomas C. Winston
{ Sub-Coordinator (Security/Intelligence) Pertile diCastra
{ DATE: July 05, 1999
{ The enaction of these sentences has been approved in the interest of the public good and safety.
{ Quorum Chairman Selwyn Wellesley, 5 July 1999 }
Selwyn's signature had been nothing more than legal formality; the poor man was almost eighty and three-quarters senile. (Which was just the way Winston and his Branch liked it; after all, a strong or dynamic Chairman might get some sort of daft notion about restricting operations.) Nonetheless, they'd needed his signature for this to at least appear legal, and that had required a confirming vote by the Central Quorum... but only Amelia Barton-Davies, Sub-Coordinator (Archives/Research), had held out against the 'manifest will'.
And God, is it past time for me to give that bitch what she has coming! Winston added, with a tiny little private grimace.
Buffy Summers, perhaps the longest-lived Slayer in history (if not the most notorious), doom of countless legions of demons and vampires, thrice a foiler of a full-scale Apocalypse, had been sentenced to death by the very people who'd Chosen her. As had all her friends... merely for knowing her and holding true to her friendship.
And not one of the people who had passed that death sentence had ever even seen a vampire with their own eyes.
Chapter End Notes:
CSI Sara Sidle is, of course, the intellectual and legal property of CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Alliance Atlantis (the lucky sods!) and is used (for all of three seconds!) without licence or intent to profit.
For those who might want to nit-pick, this is set before CSI ever started its run, when Sara was still based in California; remember, Grissom called her in from there as a pinch-hitter when Holly Gribbs was killed on her first shift.
Semtex is a plastic explosive, similar to C-4, manufactured primarily in the Czech Republic (hence the bad pun).
Matryoshka doll - a traditional Russian toy, consisting of a series of hollow dolls nesting inside one another in ever-decreasing size.
At the time of this fic, SO13 was the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the London Metropolitan Police. (In 2005, it and the London Special Branch were merged into a new Counter-Terrorism Command known as SO15.)