Buffy and Xander's plans to infiltrate the Initiative were waylaid by the alarms still sounding and the complete lockdown of the facility.

"Looks like you'll be playing soldier until we can get her back." Buffy sighed and leaned on a tree. "Please tell me you can fool them for a while longer."

"Yeah." He didn't really believe that. "I want to get Oz out of there before they chop off his other hand."

"What about Willow?" Buffy asked her brow furrowed.

"I don't know if she's still really Willow. You didn't see her, Buffy. Her whole body was scarred, and she had fangs. They turned her into a monster."

"They turned her?"

"No, but they spliced DNA from a vampire into hers. She was feral and fangy."

"So tell us, Wills, what's the big project they had you working on?" Faith asked while she plucked Spike's cigarette out of his fingers and took a drag.

Willow sat cross-legged on the floor and looked up at them with an innocent love to teach. "They're trying to combine human, demon, and mechanical parts to make some kind of super soldier. But their plans are flawed, they want something obedient, but instead of using something like a Fyarl, they used a demon called Titan. He's one of a kind and they didn't do their due diligence when they captured him and instead relied on tests that he manipulated. Titan's a dawn of time kind of demon and he doesn't play well with others. He hates demons and humans alike."

"What will this human/demon/cyborg..." Spike started.

"They're calling him Adam."

"What will Adam's capabilities be?" he asked taking his cigarette back.

"Extensive and unfortunately if they look close at the last book they give me, Adam should be operational in less than a week. The good news is that I know Adam's one and only weakness."

Faith and Spike listened to Willow as she laid out a plan. "Hey, blondie, see, I knew this girl would be, what's the word?"

"Pivotal?" Willow supplied.

"Yeah, pivotal. We should be one of those triumvirates." Faith grinned. "An unstoppable three headed monster."

"That's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, love."

"It's a big kitchen." She teased his lips with hers. "We want the world don't we?"

"I didn't know Red here was after world domination. And I don't remember telling you that was my goal."

"It was obvious." She kissed his neck, "Take down the government behind a veil of secrecy," nipped at his ear, "and put the right puppets into play with you pulling the strings." Her hand pushed down on his groin. "But it should be the three of us pulling the strings, we can control more puppets that way, right lover?"

"I'm not saying yes because of the sex," he muttered before he kissed her with lots of tongue.

Faith pulled back for air. "Of course not." She turned to Willow and panted out the words: "Wanna join the party?" as Spike bit her neck with blunt teeth.

"You think I'm going to leave the world to you two by yourselves? Unh-uh. Count me in." Willow watched them fuck each other on the desk with a detached interest.

"How's the pain?" Giles asked sitting in the folding chair outside Riley's cage. "Judging by the amount of sweat, I'd say it's excruciating. An infection has set in hasn't it?"

Riley looked away.

"So the answer is yes." With a Ripperesque smile, Giles pulled a bottle of pills out of one coat pocket and a bottle of water from the other. "I have a full treatment of antibiotics with me, but if you want them, you need to start talking."

Eyes rimmed dark pink and bloodshot, shaking from internal chills, Riley stared Giles down. "Fuck off."

From a leather case at his feet, Giles pulled out a bone saw. "Then I have no other choice than to cut off your leg. What a shame to lose the entire limb because of a simple break."

The shakes turned into tremors of fear as Giles approached the cage with the saw.

"Without someone to hold you down, this will be particularly painful." Giles got a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket once he was inside the cage. "But it would kill you if I didn't restrain you somehow. And you're useless dead."

The struggle to get Riley's hands cuffed around the one bar displaced the leg splint, and Riley screamed as his leg turned ninety degrees mid-shin.

Riley's pant leg had been torn off, so Giles applied a tourniquet mid thigh, and set the saw teeth just above the knee. "Let me explain something before we begin. Once I start, there will be no stopping me. Your last chance to tell me what I want to know ends in five, four, three, two, one." Giles pressed the saw down enough to just break the skin.

"Stop! I'll tell you anything you want to know." Riley's breath came fast and hard in his panic.

"Superb. We'll start by you telling me about the government agency for which you work. And we'll be finished when you have nothing else to tell me." Giles looked down at Riley's leg. "Shall I reset your leg first?"

"Please."

Giles put a piece of leather in Riley's mouth. "Since you asked nicely."

"Please," the first witch to fail in regenerating Adam's flesh pleaded. "I'm sorry. I can try again."

"Shut up or I'll shoot you now." Maggie nodded to the second witch when the first witch stopped talking.

The trembling second witch stuttered out the spell, lighting candles, and sprinkling herbs. Nothing happened.

Professor Walsh grit her teeth. She shot the first witch in the head. "Bring in the next one. No one sleeps until this is finished."

The soldiers hurried to follow orders as the captive shrieked in horror. "NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!"