"I'm hungry," a less angry Spike than before said. "I haven't had blood all bloody day, and now I'm hungry. You didn't bring any with you did you?" Angel shook his head. "Then come on, mate, you gotta be as starving as I am."

"Spike, be quiet."

"Now why do you have to have such a pissy attitude all the time?" Spike questioned, turning towards Angel. "Like it's against the law to be hungry around here."

"There's nothing to eat around here anyway," Angel rolled his eyes. They were a bit away from Drogyn and the pilot of the plane, so neither of them was hearing the conversation between Spike and Angel. They didn't see Spike as he eyed both of them with a hunger in his eyes that had to be fed. "No!" Angel said defensively. "You are not going to eat Drogyn!"

"Okay," Spike shrugged. "Wouldn't want him anyway."

"The pilot? Seriously, Spike? We do need to get home, you know, once a chunk of the world has been destroyed."

"Relax, Angel-cakes, I wouldn't kill him, just feed from him."

"Angel-cakes?" Angel frowned deeply, concerned with the reason why Spike was calling him what Lorne often called him.

"It bugs you when the Pylean does it, so I figure anything I can do to further your bothering is a win for me."

"Seriously, why are you so annoying?"

"Seriously, why do you use so much hair gel?"

"Ugh! I don't know how anybody can even spend time around you."

"I'm actually quite a delight to be around."

"Spike, please, I'm begging you. Be quiet."

Spike was quiet, but only for a minute. Then he spoke again. "I'm still hungry," he groaned.

"Fine!" Angel gave in. "Feed off the pilot if you must. But I'm warning you, Spike, do not kill him. We need him to get us back to L.A. And please, be a decent vampire for once in your life and ask him if it's okay if you feed off of him, don't be a savage animal and attack him like there's no tomorrow."

"Aren't you coming?" Spike asked as he took a few steps away from Angel.

He shook his head. "I don't feed off of humans. You know that."

"So you'd rather starve then satisfy your needs?" Spike stood there, appearing in deep thought for a moment. "You tell me how that works out for you."

With that, he walked away towards the pilot of the plane, leather coat flapping behind him.

Half of California was gone, at this point. Illyria had then gone upwards from California, wiping out all of Oregon and then most of Washington, leaving no survivors. She was on a rampage, killing humans, demons, and any other thing that stood in her way. She was now making her way up through an area of Canada, and on her way back down she'd go through Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and so on and so forth. She would work her way up and down through the United States and through Canada, and even through Mexico and South America. She'd be able to work halfway through Africa and as she was going upwards she'd go up through Spain and France, and then she'd run into England; Cotswolds, England, where the Deeper Well was and where she would be trapped. Illyria did not know what the schedule was and where she would be going. She just knew she was traveling quickly, killing hundreds of people. It didn't take that long for her to truly figure out what was happening. There was a spell she had heard of so long ago, a spell that would bring her through everyone between her and the Deeper Well and kill everyone in her path. That had to be what was happening. Well, she wasn't going to fight the death of thousands, millions maybe, so Illyria stopped fighting and just let herself jump in and out of people, murdering them within seconds, because that was everyone in the world, in any country between that useless shell called Fred and the entrance to the Deeper Well where she was being drawn to.

Gunn walked past a lab table, grabbing a single, sharp knife that happened to be lying there. It was a relatively small knife, but it seemed sharp, and that would have to do. For now.

Knox was finally awake. His eyes opened slowly and he looked at Gunn. He put on a casual smirk. "Ah, so you've tied me down? You really think that's going to help anything? It's only a matter of time, Gunn. Illyria will take over Fred, if she hasn't already."

Gunn chuckled. "You were knocked out, I guess you missed it. Fred's okay, Knox. Angel found a way to save her."

He kept the smug smirk on his face. "Mhm. You know, for some reason, I'm not buying it. And even if it is true, that changes nothing, really. Your friends will still hate you. Imagine how they'll look at you when they realize you were the one who brought the sarcophagus here, to Wolfram & Hart. They'll hate you. They'll be disgusted with you, if they aren't already."

Don't let him get to you, Gunn was thinking over and over.

"You can come with me, though," Knox offered. "Untie me and we can get out of here together. Come on, Gunn. You know you're no use to these people anyway. They don't appreciate anything you are. They just think you're the dumb muscle. Even with your brain boost they don't care about you. You're nothing to them."

Gunn's jaw tightened. "They're my friends."

"No, you think they're your friends. They're not."

"I love them. They love me."

Knox laughed. "Come on, who are you trying to kid?"

"What do you know? You're just a stupid, lonely, pathetic guy who worships a demon so much he planned to kill a defenseless, innocent woman to get what he wants."

Knox shook his head. Why was this guy so headstrong, so stupid? "So what are you going to do? Wait here for Angel to get back? What then?"

"No," Gunn spoke with strong force. "I'm not just gonna wait. I'm gonna hurt you, 'cause that's what you deserve."

"Excuse me?"

Gunn stepped forward with the knife and slowly ran it across Knox's arm, drawing some blood.

Knox was in pain. He kept a small smile on his face, but his eyes were screaming for help. He wouldn't give Gunn the satisfactory of making him think he was being hurt, though. No, Knox would keep a strong face.

As Gunn drew another line of blood, Knox laughed. "They'll still find out about what you did. This doesn't change anything. They'll hate you."

That might be so, Gunn thought, but that ain't gonna stop me from hurting you.

"Mmm, you know, for stuff I don't find enjoyment in anymore, this is pretty good," Harmony said, taking a sip out of her champagne glass.

"I don't know how you vampires live without this stuff," Lorne shook his head incredulously, taking his own sip. "But who cares. This is a celebration! Fred's alive, Harmonica! This is cause for a party."

Harmony looked around Lorne's empty office. "This doesn't seem like a party. Nobody's here. Duh. Do you know what a party is?"

"Yeah," Lorne mumbled. "Well, when Wes and Fred come back and Angel and Spike come back and we find out what to do with Knox so Gunn doesn't have to keep watch, then we'll have a true party. For now, it's just the two of us."

They clinked glasses together and took a drink.

Harmony sighed. "I really wouldn't have minded torturing that guy with Gunn." She looked off longingly into the distance.

"We're not really about torture here, Harm."

"Lorne, we work for Wolfram & Hart."

"I meant us. Angel, Gunn, Wes, Fred, and all the group of us. We don't torture much."

"Yeah, well, it was Gunn's idea."

Lorne frowned, but didn't think too much about what Harmony was saying. More than likely she was just saying that so she wouldn't look guilty of attempt-at-torture. Oh, well. That was Harmony, for you.

Connor walked down the street. His eyes were blue. He didn't know, not really, because he couldn't tell, but he just knew. When they were blue, something was different about him. He felt like when they were blue, he was being controlled, forced into something he didn't want to do. And when they were brown, he felt free to make his own choices. They hadn't been brown in a while.

It was night, and all the lights from buildings were shining down, showing the way down the road. The road was empty, surprisingly, and Connor felt an odd comfort in walking in the middle of it.

Kill him, the voice inside him whispered yet again, and he felt the powerful urge inside of him to listen to everything it said.

Deep down, deep inside his subconscious, Connor knew he was being controlled somehow, but he couldn't fight it. The force was too strong, drawing him to where the voice wanted him to go.

There it was. Like a skyscraper with billions of lights shining down so bright, like the starts in the dead of night.

He recognized the building. How could he not? Everyone in L.A., in California, knew about this building, the gigantic Wolfram & Hart offices. And somehow, Connor knew who worked there. His father, Angel. Who, by the way, was the one he was being told to kill.

Wait, a voice, a different voice, said inside Connor's head. He knew the voice. It was his own voice, and it was telling him to stop. He couldn't go in there. He wasn't going to kill his father. Why would he ever kill his father? Well, okay, he'd tried before, but things were different now. He didn't have any desire to murder Angel.

He is not there, the voice screamed in his head so loud that Connor instinctively covered his ears. We will wait.

Connor willed his own body to run into an alley. There, he sat against the wall, closed his eyes, brought his knees up to his chest, and started rocking back and forth. He was willing himself to do what he had done in the bathroom, when his eyes turned back to brown.

What are you doing? No, no, no, stop, Connor, you must-

Gone. Connor opened his eyes. He could feel the difference inside himself. His eyes had to be brown again. He was himself again.

He needed to get out of there. He couldn't stay here any longer. He had to get as far away from Wolfram & Hart as possible.

Connor wasn't ready to go back to the way he was before: angry, miserable, depressed, wanting to murder Angel. He'd learned a lot through his fake memories of his old family. He'd realized how happy he'd been, and how happy he wanted to be. He regretted everything he'd done to Angel. Nothing could change that, though.

Connor examined his fist. It was covered in blood and a few broken pieces of glass from the mirror. He needed to get some bandages.

HOW DARE YOU? The voice boomed once again, and Connor was once again different, his eyes blue.

"I apologize," he whispered nearly unwillingly, being forced to act this way somehow. "I follow you."

We will kill him.

"Yes," Connor said louder, more confident. "We will kill Angel."

The pilot agreed to let Spike drink from him. If it was just his choice alone, he would of ran away screaming "Hell no!" But it wasn't his choice, not really. He worked for Wolfram & Hart, and it was his instruction to give the two souled vampire champions anything they needed. And, well, one of them needed blood, so he would give the blond-haired vampire his blood.

"I'll try to make this painless," Spike said, almost as a joke. Spike and the pilot were farther inside the Deeper Well, while Angel and Drogyn were a ways away so they wouldn't have to witness what Spike was about to do.

The pilot watched as Spike's vampire face appeared and the fangs came out of his mouth. Spike grinned, stepped towards the pilot, reached down, and bit into his neck and let the warm flow of blood wash into his mouth.

After a few seconds, he pulled away, blood covering his mouth. "Tasty," he almost joked, then reached down for more.

The blood really did taste delicious, and Spike was finding it hard to stop.

Luckily, Angel decided to come check on them, to check on Spike. He saw that Spike was drinking the pilot dry.

"Spike!" he yelled, and Spike lifted his face away from the pilot's neck and allowed his real face to come back. The pilot fell to the ground and placed his hands on his bloodied, torn up neck.

"You're crazy!" the pilot yelled.

"Spike, I warned you about this!"

"Relax," Spike waved a hand in dismissal. "He'll be fine. In a few minutes he'll be able to walk again and when the time comes he can fly us home."

Angel rolled his eyes. "Still. I didn't want this kind of thing to happen."

"Why do you care so much? He works for Wolfram & Hart, he's probably evil anyway."

"No, Spike. What you did right now? That was evil." Angel turned and walked away, feeling like a parent scolding a child. In the back of his mind, he kind of liked scolding Spike, though. It gave him something to do, to think about other than the world.

Angel helped the pilot up and they walked away together, leaving Spike standing there, alone, wiping the remaining blood off of his face with his hands and licking it to receive all the blood he could get.

Wes had fallen asleep. Fred couldn't blame him much; it had certainly been a stressful day for both of them, for everyone. Fred wasn't sleepy, though, for some reason. In fact, she felt wide awake.

She unwound herself from Wes's arms and snuck into her living room. A part of her really wanted to call Gunn, Lorne, Spike, and Angel, all of them individually. She wanted to talk to them desperately. She wanted to know what Angel and Spike did.

Calling them now wasn't a good idea. Gunn and Lorne were probably heading to their homes, and Angel and Spike were probably heading back here. She really shouldn't bother them. She'd see them tomorrow at work, surely.

Well that's odd, Fred thought to herself, befuddled at the fact that she was actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow. She just wanted to see everybody again.

For now, she wasn't too sleepy, so she decided to turn on the TV and hopefully fall asleep at some point in the night. She mainly wanted it on so she wouldn't be in complete silence. She hated complete silence. It reminded her too much of Pylea, in that cave all alone all by herself.

Flinging herself on the couch, she turned on the TV. It was on a news channel.

"…and mass amounts people have fallen dead, although the number of people and the reason why is still unknown. We are trying to get into contact with other news stations to know what's going on. For more on this breaking news, here's Kathy," said a pretty woman with short brown hair.

People were dying rapidly, inexplicably? That sounded like something Angel Investigations could handle, if they were still "Angel Investigations" and not "Wolfram &Hart." Fred would have to remember what she heard on the news to tell Angel tomorrow; because suddenly she was feeling very, very tired and her eyes were drooping shut.

Connor was running. He didn't know where, he didn't know how, but he was running. He was normal again because the voice was gone and he was deciding his own actions. This time he hadn't tried to fight it, the voice just went away for a little while. He wanted to get as far away from his father's work place as possible. He knew Angel wasn't there, he was gone, but Connor was still afraid what he might do if he stayed there.

Don't worry, we'll go back when he's home, the voice said and Connor was forced into a stop.

I don't want to do anything, Connor thought to himself. He wasn't choosing what he did and did not want to do.

Illyria was killing mass amounts of people at alarming rates. All of the United States of America, with the exception of part of California, was gone. Canada was also gone, completely. Now, she was working her way through the continent South America.

Knox had blood running down both his arms and down his face caused from many deliberately-caused lacerations. When Gunn was done with that, he tore off Knox's shirt and made a slow cut across his chest.

Still, Knox laughed. "You've never tortured before, have you?"

Gunn shook his head, but not at what Knox was saying. He shouldn't be doing this. This wasn't…right. This wasn't his job to do, or his choice. Knox was bad, evil, really, but this wasn't his decision.

He dropped the bloodied knife.

"Are you done?" Knox asked.

Gunn had no answer.

Willow and Kennedy were in South America, inside the Watcher's Council headquarters that was there. They were watching things, making sure all the Slayers were training and being taken care of. They more or less ran the place, although some Watchers were helpful in helping with a lot of work Willow and Kennedy didn't do themselves.

Right now, Willow was going through some paper work. It wasn't the most fun work ever, but Willow was enjoying it, actually. It kind of reminded her of school and education and doing work and—oh, the memoires when life was so simple and she wasn't an extremely powerful witch half-running a building full of Slayers.

She was on the top floor with a bunch of Watchers, also doing some type of work.

"Willow!" a shout came when suddenly Kennedy arrived on the top floor from an elevator building, running in with some Watchers behind her.

Willow immediately jumped up and a few Watchers followed behind her. "Baby, what's wrong?" Willow asked her girlfriend.

"There's something-"

Kennedy was interrupted by a scream from a Watcher behind her. Then, he fell to the ground, dead, and then so did the Watcher next to him, and the Watcher next to him.

On instinct, Willow raised her arms, shouted a few Latin words, and a protective shield that would protect them from anything (or almost anything that Willow had ever heard of) came over Willow, Kennedy, and about three Watchers behind them.

Something hit the shield too fast for them to see and bounced off, then quickly went to the other Watchers in the room until they were all gone.

After a few minutes, when Willow thought it was safe, she put the shield down. They were safe. For now.

Willow looked around the room. Was everyone in the entire building dead?

"The Slayers…?" Willow asked slowly, not able to get the words out.

"Gone," Kennedy stated simply. "It took longer for them to die—maybe almost a minute each. That's what gave us the time to run up here to you."

Willow didn't know what to say. Something was going on here. They needed help.

"I-I'll call Buffy," the red-head stuttered nervously, and rushed off to the phone.

To be continued…