Connor was walking along the L.A. streets with his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Tracy. They were holding hands and laughing and smiling. They were the perfect image of a teenage couple who looked like nothing in the world could go wrong. They were in love, or at least they thought they were, because every time they broke up (which had only been two times) they had gotten back together and momentarily realized they wanted to be together forever. Both of them were seniors in high school, and Connor was in the top tenth percentile. He was getting scholarships to colleges left and right.

Tracy, on the other hand, although not an idiot, was not as bright as Connor. She wasn't an idiot, by any means, but Connor was far brighter than she could ever hope to be. Actually, she was a bit jealous of Connor's brains. He was literally perfect—he had the good looks, brains, he was tall, and, honestly, what more could a girl hope for? Tracy was willing to do anything to make this relationship work out at this point.

With all his scholarships, Connor was still deciding what college he wanted to attend. He had a wide variety of choices, and he took his time in choosing. Wherever he would go, they had a deal that Tracy would also apply to that college, and if she wasn't accepted, she would go to a different college near wherever Connor went.

"I'm serious!" Tracy called, still recovering from her previous laughter. "Jeremy is dating Lisa."

"But…but why?" Connor exasperated.

Tracy giggled. "There are more important things than looks, Connor."

"Lucky for me, huh?"

"Oh, please," Tracy quipped. "You know you're gorgeous." She ran her hand through his light brown hair and they shared a brief yet passionate kiss.

Connor wanted to be with her all the time. All the time. Tracy was very beautiful—a blond with long, lustrous hair. She had a slim figure and she was a little shorter than Connor. She had huge green eyes that seemed to glow in the moonlight. He could stare in those eyes forever and ever.

When they pulled apart from their kiss, Connor saw something, a light out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look and saw what looked like a flying ball of ice-blue electricity was falling rapidly their way. It was coming so fast that Connor had no time to react.

Tracy didn't notice Connor's worried glances, and the light went into her body and she felt extremely, extremely cold, like ice had started building inside her chest. That same "ice" seemed to go through her heart, and as it stopped beating her eyes rolled backwards in her head and she fell backwards on the ground.

"Tracy!" Connor yelled, afraid.

Quickly, quicker than the normal human eye could see (although Connor still didn't know he wasn't normal), the light flew out of Tracy's body and entered Connor's, seemingly falling right through his skin like it was nothing but tissue paper.

Illyria did not comprehend. She did not comprehend, and it was making her angry! What was happening to her, what was causing this force to pull her into another nice, warm, perfectly usable human body and then rip her away so violently?

She jumped in the woman's body and knew, instantly, that the woman would die. And she did die. Illyria was correct. Illyria was always correct, even in this pitiful, hopeless form of nothingness. She could still think, though, still see somehow, despite the form she was in. It was unnatural, incorrect. Illyria did not like it, and Illyria was not something anybody wanted to make angry.

As soon as she arrived in the woman's body, it was as if she was already jumping out of it and into another body.

Illyria had killed before. She'd killed thousands, millions, and she had yet to encounter anything she could not defeat.

But she'd never been in contact with a creature such as this, an impossible creature born from two vampires, one with a soul.

Inside Connor's body, Illyria felt a pain, a stinging that she could not explain. She had never felt pain before, and she almost did not recognize the feeling. If she had had a beating heart, she was sure it would've stopped beating. It was unbearable, whatever this was she was going through. It hurt her, and she just wanted it to stop, to stop, to stop!

Connor was also feeling a sharp pain in his chest. He was distracted, somehow, because as the pain arrived, something else did, also. Flashes of images, pictures, running across his mind. Words and names he had never heard before or never took seriously before came rushing at him: Quor'toth, vampires, demons, dimensions, Hyperion, Holtz, Angel, Darla, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, Fred, Lorne, Jasmine. Along with each name a picture of that person seemed to flash into his head, along with many memories such as the stories he had heard about Wesley kidnapping him as a baby, Gunn and Fred who'd looked after him one summer while Angel, his true father, was missing, Lorne the Pylean with green skin and red horns and who could read your destiny if you were to sing for him, and Cordelia, Cordy, whom he'd gotten pregnant and she gave birth to Jasmine.

Cordy. Connor was trying to kill her, and himself when Angel showed up. And that was it. The next thing he remembered was nothing, or at least nothing to do with that life full of demons and monsters.

That was his life. His life was not this, this lie. He was not in any tenth percentile; he'd never even been inside a school in his real life. Somehow, he just knew the memories that had just come back to him were real, and the ones he had with his other "family" were fake. Everything was a lie. A lie that he now knew the truth about, because Illyria entering his body had done something to him that was inexplicable.

How? How had he believed that the other memories, the fake memories, were real? He remembered so clearly playing with his little sister as a child and arguing with her. But it was not real. His father wasn't really his father, Angel was his father. Angel, the vampire with a soul. He'd been raised in a hell dimension by Holtz.

Illyria found herself soaring out of Connor's body and into another that was less than ten feet away. This person died in a mere second, and Illyria was then flying into someone else's body, and so on and so forth. Something wasn't quite right, though. She could feel it. A part of her…well, she was not whole any more. A part of her was missing. The pain she'd felt in Connor's body had an effect on her.

Back to where Connor was standing, he didn't know what to do. He saw the people rapidly dying, but he was not feeling too good. He felt sick and weary, and not just because of the assault of memories he had gotten so quickly. Something inside of him wasn't right. He knew he should be super powerful now, strong and fast, but in reality he felt weaker than he ever had before, even when he thought he was just a human.

He was not cold. He had not fallen ill, like Fred had. Instead, he was just different. And as he slowly started stumbling away, he had no idea that his eyes had drastically turned blue with no trace of brown left in them, while everything else on his body remained the same as it had been before.

The pilot of the plane came into the Deeper Well with Angel, Spike, and Drogyn and they moved Illyria's sarcophagus in front of them, so they wouldn't be in Illyria's way and face what would happen to them if they were. They brought the pilot in because they still needed a ride home after Illyria was back.

Spike was impatient, even though he knew he had no choice in waiting.

"Tell me again how long this will take," Spike demanded. "Must we really just sit here while she kills everybody?"

"Spike, calm down," Angel said.

"Hey, you don't tell me what to do!" he stabbed a finger at Angel.

"Wait," Drogyn interrupted their little argument and took a deep breath. His eyes opened wide. "It's started. She has begun."

"Oh, sod off," Spike grumbled. "You're tellin' us it's just started? Just now!"

"Yes," Drogyn answered. "And she will be here soon. She will begin to advance at rates so fast, in and out of bodies each second. She will be here within twenty-four hours, most likely."

Great, Angel thought to himself. Just a day. Just a day and most of the United States should be knocked out. What would happen then? How will I ever live with myself after this massacre?

No one held the answers to Angel's silent pleas. He would have to just wait and see what happened.

"Okay, I can't stand it anymore," Lorne stormed in the lab similar to how Harmony did just minutes earlier. "I gotta know what's going on, sweeties, before I lose my mind." He stopped when he saw Gunn standing with Harmony and Knox tied to a chair. "Umm, Gunn? Why's the scientist tied up to a chair?"

"He did it," Gunn stated angrily, "and I a'int lettin' him get away with it."

"Wait, back up. What did he do?"

"He brought the sarcophagus here to get the Old One to infest Fred!" Gunn yelled, leaving out the bit where he was the one to sign the papers to bring the sarcophagus here.

Lorne didn't know how to respond.

In the chair, Knox was finally starting to stir awake

"Now we're going to hurt him. You can help us!" Harmony cheered.

"Yeah, I don't think so, Harmonica," Lorne said, shocked over the news. "I think right now I need to sit down. And I think I need a sea breeze. Yeah, a sea breeze would be nice."

A loud ringing noise came from Gunn's pocket. He took out a phone, looked who was calling, and answered it.

"Wes? What's going on? Is she okay?"

"Yes, Gunn, she's alive," Wes's voice said on the other end of the phone. "It was miraculous. But the precise details don't matter at the moment. She's alive, Gunn. Angel and Spike, they must've found a way to save her."

"Oh, thank God," Gunn gave a sigh of relief. If Fred had died…well, he'd be to blame, wouldn't he? It was his fault. And not only that, he'd be losing one of his closest friends.

"What's going on?" Lorne asked.

"Fred's okay."

The look on Gunn's face told Lorne that he was completely serious. Lorne yelped with joy and then ran up and hugged Gunn as hard as he could. Harmony, after a few seconds, joined in and they were in one happy group hug.

"Oh, I'm so happy!" Lorne squealed.

After several moments, the three pulled apart. Gunn tried to talk on the phone again, but Wes was gone, most likely spending this time with Fred. That was fine, then, he supposed.

"We should go celebrate," Lorne said. "Come on up, guys, I got some drinks up in my office."

Lorne, followed by Harmony and Gunn, started to walk away. Before they left the lab, though, Gunn turned back and looked at Knox. He was still waking up. He couldn't just leave Knox here.

"You know," he started, "someone should really watch him. You guys go, have fun. I'm gonna…I'm gonna stay here."

"Aw, are you sure?" Lorne cried.

"Yeah. Yeah, go have fun."

They left, leaving Gunn alone in the lab with Knox, who was just starting to reach full consciousness.

Fred, although perfectly okay, was not ready to get up and out of her apartment. She knew she and Wes should get back to Wolfram & Hart, but she just want ready. She wanted to stay here, for a little while longer, with Wes. Fred was the one who had told Wes to call Gunn and Lorne and tell them she was okay. She wanted to make sure no one else was worried about her, for the moment, at least.

Now that Fred was back, fully aware and everything, she was thinking over everything that had happened to her. Where the sarcophagus had come from was still a mystery to her and Wes. What Angel and Spike did to save her was still more or less a mystery.

What Wes had said to her; that was the only real thing she now understood. He loved her. He'd always loved her. Had she just been so blind not to see it?

"Ya know," Fred started, and then stopped and chuckled. "Ya know, I love you too. I'm sorry I couldn't say it before I was just…in shock, I guess. I've loved you for so long. I was just too big a goof to realize it. But…the moment I saw you, in Pylea. There was something about you. I can't really describe it, maybe because it's beyond words, or something, but I just…I love you. And I'm so glad I can be with you now."

Wes put his chin on Fred's head and let a single tear drop down his face. Fred also closed her eyes, and they laid there, holding each other in a tight embrace.

Connor was walking in the area Illyria had not hit, so there were still a few people walking the streets. He was tired, and he wasn't sure where he was going, and something was wrong. He needed to sit. Or he needed some medicine, or something.

He busted into a grocery store. A woman by the front door saw him, gasped, and walked away, obviously afraid. Connor was confused. Did he really look that bad?

Everyone he walked by gasped or looked at him very strangely. Something wasn't right. Something must be wrong. He needed a mirror.

He saw the sign for a bathroom, and he walked towards it and then entered. He walked straight to the mirror.

He saw it immediately. His eyes, they weren't brown anymore. They were blue. Ice-blue, unnaturally blue; this was why everyone was afraid. Nothing else was blue, just his eyes. He shut them, tightly, breathing heavily. He squeezed his eyes so tight it almost hurt.

And then he opened them.

The ice-blue was gone. His eyes were brown again, without a trace of blue and suddenly he felt normal again, strong again. Connor shook his head. What was going on here? Why was any of this happening? Connor stayed there, staring in the mirror, waiting.

Kill him, a sudden whisper exploded in his head, and he watched as his eyes seemed to flicker and turn right back to the ice-blue they were before. Connor punched the mirror in front of him and glass shattered everywhere. But suddenly, he didn't care. A grin crept its way on to Connor's face.

Kill him, the voice repeated. Connor knew exactly who the voice was talking about.

To be continued…