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Tactical advantage

Summary:

Category: Fourth season Buffy/First season Angel crossover,
Buffy/Riley, Cordelia/Doyle, Xander/Anya (with Xander/Cordelia and possible Xander/Willow overtones.
Rating: PG
Summary: Spike and a new crew pit Buffy and Walsh against each other, leaving Riley torn between. The Angel crew head over to Sunnydale, and a warlock mercenary hired to kill Doyle follows them.
Disclaimer: All characters from 'Buffy' and 'Angel' do not belong to me. Doctor Damian D'Morte and Morgan Kayleigh Finn are my own creations.
Distribution: Distribute anywhere you can! (Do tell me about it, though.)
Feedback: Yes! Yes!! Feedback, any feedback!! Please? ;-)
Spoiler: "The Initiative" and "The bachelor party"
Disclaimer: All characters from 'Buffy' and 'Angel' do not belong to me. Doctor Damian D'Morte, Morgan Kayleigh Finn, and Stone are my own creations. The song "My father's eyes" is sung by Eric Clapton - I don't know at the moment who wrote it, but I sure didn't.
Submitted through the 'YG deleted' All-About-Cordy mailing list. Please join us at AllAboutCordy

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Tactical advantage

by Chris Kenworthy



Prologue

SPIKE:
I took a long time heading back to the Lair that night - wanted to make sure that nobody was following me, either the guys in the olive green suits or the Slayer. Seems that they weren't working together after all, considering that they had spent more time fighting each other than me, which was probably the only reason I got out of Stevenson Hall alive... and free, more or less.

Anyways, I covered a lot of ground once I got off campus, stole a car to break my trail, looped back on my own path and faded back into a hiding spot, just to be sure that no-one was tracking me. Which they weren't. Good enough.

I was so happy about that that I grabbed the next young lady I saw and went right for her throat. And there it was again - that mind-splitting pain in my head. I knew by now that it wasn't anything to do with Willow, or some coincidence - I'd felt the same kind of pain whenever I hit one of the boys in green. Snarling in frustration, I pushed the cutie away, feeling another little twinge of discomfort as I did so.

Over the rest of the way back to the lair I did a little bit of experimenting. I could pound away on stone, wood, the ground, whatever, as much as I liked, without any reaction. But to damage a tree, a rabbit, anything alive... and there was the feedback.

"Feedback. The fuck," I muttered, realization finally dawning. "I've been V-chipped. Those slimy scientists, they took their chance to cut me up before I even realized where I was. Put something in my head, they did." Paused for further reflection. "Or maybe it's a curse or someting."

I didn't say or even think much on my way back to the Lair. Harmony was there when I got there. God, but she was pretty. Drives me crazy, but Harmony is definitely a cutey. What was more, chances were that I'd be needing her help, so I figured I'd start right off with the apologies. "I'm sorry, my beautiful cantata," I said, before she'd even really realized that I was there. "You were right - I can't take the Slayer down by myself. In fact, I've, em, I've got a little problem, Harmony, and I need your help."

The words were magic. "Oh, blondie bear," she said, turning around, not even seeming to remember that she was furious at me the last time we were near each other. "What's wrong??"

"I think I've been pacified," I muttered. "There were these doctors and army guys..."

"Pacified?" Harmony said, a confused look on her face. "Like a rubber thing to suck on got stuck in your mouth??"

"No," I snapped, shaking my head. "Like a metal chip got stuck in my brain, turning me into a pacifist - a vampire who can't fight or suck blood from living creatures."

"Oh, no!" Harmony exclaimed. "What... what can I do?"

"Well, since I'm starving to death, I'd appreciate it if you could bleed someone for me," I muttered. "I'll help you catch a person, you can feed a little, then drain the rest of the blood into some kind of a cup for me to drink. After that, I want to go see the Doctor."

"What doctor??"

* * * *

DOYLE:
"You'll get through this, Doyle," Cordelia said, sitting down next to me with a sympathetic smile. "Nice guys don't always finish last."

I considered that for a moment, then decided it was too good to let go. "You think I'm a nice guy?"

Cordy smiled, in that ultra-sweet, warm and friendly way she almost never did. "I think it, I say it. That's my way."

Yeah, it definitely was. "Thanks," I muttered.

"Feeling better?"

I checked myself a moment, just to make sure, then voiced a "yeah." Sounds of agreement and relief were heard from both Cordelia and Angel, who was standing awkwardly near the doorway.

And that was the moment it hit me. Cordelia skittered back, frightened, as I grabbed my head in pain. "Not my fault," I could faintly hear Cordy disclaim while some part of my brain was still connected to the usual senses. And then, it was all blotted out in something else.

A park, or some open place with trees about, at night. A fight - a guy, no, two guys in what looked like university Letterman's jackets, attacking a girl. Not just any girl. A girl fighting back, and I recognized her face from that picture of Angel's. My vampire friend's great lost love. The Slayer - Buffy.

Slowly, the real world came back to me, in between the wracking pain. "What?" Angel breathed at me. He wanted to know what the vision was about, of course. "What d'you see?"

How could I tell them? What words were there? I knew that Angel was still hung up on Buffy to the point where it hurt to hear her name, and there seemed to be bad blood between Buffy and Cordelia...

"What do you see?" Cordelia pressed, and I knew I had to say something.

"We... we got trouble," I muttered. "I don't even really understand it, but... I think I saw Buffy."

"BUFFY!?" The word was repeated with utter surprise by both Angel and Cordelia, as I had expected. "Buffy?!" Cordelia repeated, bewildered. "What... what was happening to her?"

"I dunno - she was in some kind of a fight," I muttered. "Two guys, in school jackets or something. I didn't get a good look at their faces - not even sure if they're vampires, or what."

"So, she was in a fight," Angel said. "Not too unusual, for Buffy. Did it look like she was losing?"

"Not too obviously," I told him. "She got at least one good kick in."

"So, what's the trouble?" Cordelia asked me. "It doesn't sound like a problem to me. Can't we, like, ignore this one vision??"

"No," Angel told her automatically. "I... I mean, Doyle's visions aren't just random things. They're warnings, messages - about situations we need to help with, remember."

"So, Buffy needs your help?" Cordy said, sighing with annoyance. "Yeah. Can we say wishful thinking? You're just grabbing onto the flimsiest possible excuse to see her again."

"No," I broke in. "Angel's right. These visions are messages - messages to me and Angel, at least. You don't have to come, Cordy, but we two should be making plans for a trip to Sunnydale." Kinda weird how I talk about the town like I've actually been there, isn't it. Then again, I feel like I've been there, from hearing Angel talk about it. "Umm... how quickly can we leave, Angel?"

"Uhh..." Angel looked over at the clock. "It's... you know, it's getting awfully late, Doyle. By the time we'd be set and up the road to Sunnydale, the sun will be rising."

"Yeah!" Cordelia chimed in immediately. "We can't go to Sunnydale! Angel'd burst into flames!!"

"Well, maybe not that," Angel qualified. "But it would complicate everything, having to find a sunlight-proof autmobile, arranging things - let's face it. There's just not much I can really do during the daytime."

I suppressed a long and drawn-out sigh. It was pretty clear that Cordelia didn't want us going back to her old stomping grounds, with or without her, but Angel did have a point. "Okay, okay," I allowed, shaking my head. "I won't say that I couldn't do with some R and R before charging off to the bad old Hellmouth. But you guys gotta promise me - as soon as the evening twilight fades, we are hitting the road. That means you'll have to help me plan the trip, Cordy, okay?"

Cordelia jumped a bit. Oops - I had kinda asked her to help out, with this trip she didn't approve of, hadn't I? Then again, Cordy didn't seem upset, just surprised, maybe even a little contented. "Well, okay. But first, I get some sleep. Goodnight, Angel." Cordelia waved a hand, kinda toward the front door of Angel Investigations, and without even realizing it I got up and walked into the lobby with her. Not that there was any reason why I shouldn't have - I wanted to head back to my own place and go to bed, just like Cordelia did. I'm just mentioning that I don't remember thinking 'Okay, it's time to get up and go home.' Cordelia got up and gestured, and I came too.

"You know," Cordelia said, coming to a stop once we were in the center of the lobby, "last time the two of us were standing here, your wife walked through the door. We were kinda in the middle of a conversation, you know, that never did finish."

I scanned back in my memories. "Uh, yeah, I guess so. What were we talking about, though?"

"Doyle!!" She punched me lightheartedly on the arm. "Well, if you really can't remember, I was thanking you for saving my life." Ooh, this was starting to sound good. "And I had been just about to offer to buy you a moccachino - you know, as a way of showing my thanks to you in a more personal way."

I couldn't keep myself from smiling. "Really?"

Cordelia, on the other hand, was not smiling. "I was going to do all that. Talking with Harry, though, I've changed my mind."

Oh, no. "You have?" I'm sorry to say it, but there was definitely a whining tone to my voice as I said those two words. Sad but true.

"Definitely. No moccachinos - absolutely impossible." And that was when Cordelia Chase exploded into giggles. "It's gonna have to be dinner, 'Allen!'"

I laughed out loud in sheer relief. Cordy had really gotten me going that time. "Dinner it is," I said, nailing it down. "Oh, and... Allen?"

"Well, why not?" Cordelia replied with a mischievous smile. "I can't go around calling you 'Doyle' all the time, and I've kinda figured out that you don't like Francis any more, so... Allen?"

"We'll talk about it at dinner," I told her with a smile. "How about..."

"Morton's, over on Western street," Cordelia told me. "Quarter to five, after we pack for the trip to Sunnydale. Oh, and I'm afraid we're gonna have to go dutch."

"Now, wait a second." This was looking suspicious. "You're taking me out to dinner, but I'm gonna have to pay half, even when you'll probably order the more expensive meal. Where's the prize for me?" I had an idea, but I wanted to make Cordelia say it.

"You get the pleasure of my company. Isn't that worth risking your life for?"

"Actually, you're such a monster magnet that the pleasure of your company is risky in and of itself," I quipped. "But I'll be there. Right now, I gotta head home or I'll collapse from sheer exhaustion on the street. G'night, Cordelia."

"Sweet dreams, Allen Doyle," Cordy called out behind me.

* * * *

D'MORTE:
"Who is it?" I called out through the front door. After all, in these troubled times, you can't be too careful about your personal safety - even if you are a demon.

Oh, my apologies. I should introduce myself to you, since, unlike some of the other contributors to this chronicle, I'm not likely to be known to you. Well, let's see. My name is Damian D'Morte, and I'm a practising physician for vampires, various demons, and other quote unquote 'monsters.' It's an unusual specialty, I grant you, since most of these beings have natural healing talents far beyond the human norm. In a town like Sunnydale, though, there's three or four cases a week requiring my talents, even so. I supplement my income by working to procure for the same kinds of peoples highly valued merchandise - sophisticated weaponry, drugs and chemicals, electronic equipment, the occasional magical 'artefacte.'

I am indeed a demon - a Thysian, which will probably not mean anything to you. In my natural form, I have green skin with obvious spikes protruding from it, but with effort, I can assume a human appearance.

"It's Spike!" a voice called out from the other side of my door. Ah. I opened the door at once, letting William the Bloody and a pretty, young, blonde, and slightly surly teenage vampire in. I've known Spike for two years now - he came to pay me a visit soon after he moved into town (most of the more discerning vampires to arrive at the Hellmouth do,) but we really got to know each other once that pipe organ fell on him. I was in charge of his treatment and rehabilitation. You didn't know that, did you? Do you remember his surprising recovery, when he regained his full mobility and strength unnoticed by Drusilla and Angelus, just in time to team up with Buffy the vampire slayer, attack Angelus in the middle of the final ritual to awaken Acathla, and steal Drusilla off to Brazil? Well, I don't like to blow my own horn, but if it wasn't for me, all of that would never have happened. Surprising, wouldn't you say?

"So, William, what's the occasion," I ask. "Finally scraped up the cash to buy that ninety millimeter rifle you've been eyeing ever since you saw it? How's Drusilla doing, by the way? And who's this young lady?"

It was the wrong question to ask - I knew that as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Neither Spike nor the blonde was at all happy to hear Drusilla's name. "Uh, no go on the howitzer, Doctor. I've got a medical complaint again, well, it's kinda medical. Got a v-chip or something in my brain - can't feed or hit."

I couldn't help but smile. This sounded like it could be an interesting problem - and perhaps fun. "Could you show me? Hit... um, I didn't catch your name, my dear."

"Harmony," the blonde said. "And I don't want him to hit me!"

"Well, it won't hurt you," I said, shrugging. "Come on, Spike. Give her a roundhouse in the face."

WHAM!!! As Harmony picked herself unsteadily up off the floor, I gave Spike a stern glare. He was looking a little embarassed, but otherwise okay. "Well?" I asked.

"It didn't work with her, Doc," Spike muttered under his breath. "I think it has to be a living creature."

"Maybe he should hit you, Doctor," Harmony said. "You're not an undead, you're a vampire, right?" She smiled cruelly at me, as if just hoping that the chip, or whatever, wouldn't work on me either.

"I'd rather not count on that," I told her. "I've got some animals in the back that we could experiment on. Sorry about the misunderstanding, by the way, my dear," I told Harmony sympathetically.

I drew and fastened all the shades in the building before I fetched the lab rats and monkeys. Once Spike was done demonstrating the principle, I wanted to have a look at whatever was in his head. It could take quite a while, and the morning twilight was almost here.

* * * *

KAPLAN:
"Okay, you've seen the man we're interested in," I told the divinator. "What can you tell us about him?"

"Well," she said, shuffling her big crazy-painted fortune-telling cards. "This person, this Angel, he is a King of Wands - strong, swift, man of action, yes? Fiery, proud, impetuous, and active, yet generous, honest, and conscientious?"

"Uh, sounds about right," I told her.

She laid the King of wands out on the table. "Very well, let us see what the cards have to tell us about the King of wands," she said, dealing another card across the first, side to side. "Opposing him are those who restrict, confuse, and make their enemies powerless."

"That's us," I told her. "Wolfram and Hart. Go on."

She dealt another series of cards, in a complicated pattern. "Don't bother explaining every card to me," I told her, holding up a forestalling hand. "Just... is there anything that seems to indicate a vulnerability?"

"You are a very impatient man," she scolded me. "Very well, here. In the past, the Knight of cups. A youth of feeling, charged with the elemental power of Water." She dealt another card on top of that one. "Yes, this card represents the dark-haired demon halfbreed who was with Angel. He guides the King of Wands' quest for redemption - he sees that which is unseen. Eliminate him, and the Angel may trouble your affairs no longer."

"Good," I said, smiling. "Thank you for your help, Madame Avara." I handed over a check, fresh from the finance department. Now, how do you go about killing a demon halfbreed?

* * * *

RILEY:
"Hey, chief," Graham said, dropping down into a padded armchair. "What's all that? More papers to be graded?"

"No," I muttered, and looked around before I continued. Graham and I were practically the only people in the Lowell house lounge, and the other guys who were around were a far ways away from where we sitting, in on the Initiative, and smart enough to realize that we were being discreet even if they should overhear something, and not go running to Walsh about 'loose talk.' "Special research," I told Graham quietly. "About 'Hostile seventeen.'"

"Oh, yeah," Graham muttered, also taking pains to be quiet, I noticed. "Anything of any relevance?"

"Not sure yet," I admitted. "Went over the bag and tag report first - nothing there. They caught him here on campus - on top of Abbott's hill. Went over the incident report from the doctor he played possum on, to break out. Then I started reading the computer transcription of the audio monitor near his cell."

"Really?" Graham muttered. "I didn't know that any of that existed."

"I'm not sure if anyone remembers them," I said. "It's pretty certain that nobody's ever gone over this stuff. Hostile seventeen and his neighbor, number four, who seventeen sprung during his own jailbreak, but got recaptured, by the way... anyways, they had quite the little conversation when seventeen woke up, just before he pulled the breakout. Four warned seventeen about the drugged blood, which is how seventeen broke out, I think. Drained the blood package somehow, made it look as if he had drunk it, and pretended to be drugged. Until the right moment came to make his move."

"Cunning little bugger," Graham muttered.

"Yeah. They had some weird speculations on our motives, too - even if the perfume company reference is a joke. The weirdest thing is, they think some 'Slayer' herded them into our traps."

"A Slayer?? Hmm... well, maybe we should have someone called a Slayer, but we don't." Graham sighed. "Is there anything here that will help us actually track seventeen down?"

"Nope," I admitted, shaking my head. "I was hoping that he'd say something about where his hideout was, but no joy. Wish Walsh had thought to put a radio transponder into that implant of hers."

"Finn!" Forrest called from the hallway. "You got a call, Riley."

"Uh, yeah, I'll take it in my room," I said, crossing over, getting myself sat up on my bed before picking up the phone. "Hello, Riley Finn."

"Hi there, little brother!" The voice was that of my sister, Morgan Kayleigh Finn. "Hear that you finally got some interesting action down there."

"I guess you could say that." Morgan was one of the first people in the Project, when it was first formed in our home town, Denton, Massachussets. She was the reason I was recruited into the Project when I graduated high school.

"I do indeed say that," Morgan told me teasingly. "Well, I'll be there in Sunnydale in two hours. I'm calling from the jet."



Part 1

HARMONY:
I wandered around this doctor's house with idle curiosity. Pretty weird place - big weapons hanging on the wall, bottles of stuff laying out on counters. Then again, really weird doctor, so that kinda made sense.

Even though the heavy drapes over the windows were drawn and pinned in place so that they couldn't easily be pulled aside, traces of sunlight were getting in around the edges. I didn't get too close, of course. I'm not, like, stupid, and I know what sunlight will do to me now that I'm a vampire.

Sometimes I think about how different my life is from before the change. Sure, I can't tan any more or go out into the sunlight, but I don't have to go to school either. I've got a cute boyfriend, even if Spike's difficult and cranky sometimes, and it's fun watching him beat people up. (Boy, I hope this doctor can help get the chip out of his brain, or I won't get to see that any more.) And feeding on people is quite a high - I'm not the strongest or fastest vampire in town, but I can sure take down an unsuspecting teenaged guy. Except for Xander Harris, I guess. Oh well.

Completely bored now with the house, I wander over to where Doctor Damian is still examining my Blondie Bear.

"You should have seen the look on that scientist's face when I opened my eyes," Spike was saying. "He was so scared I'm surprised that he didn't piss his pants!"

"Okay," Doctor D'Morte started. "Two scientists are in the field following the tracks of a radio-collared grizzly bear..."

"No!" Spike shouted out, interrupting the demon doctor. "No jokes. I'm sorry, Damian, you're the best doctor I've ever had, but your jokes stink to high Hell, and I'm not in the mood to sit through one of them."

"Okay," D'Morte said, somewhat put out. "Well, this Army stuff does explain a lot, you know. There's been a lot of vampires and a few other demons disappearing mysteriously lately. You know Sunday? She had a setup on the University campus for more than sixteen years. Ran the runaway gambit every September?"

"Oh, yeah, her," Spike agreed with a wide grin. "We went to her Thanksgiving party back in ninety-seven."

"Well, every single one of Demon Sunday's gang disappeared without a trace," D'Morte informed Spike with a gossipy smile, which looked really weird on his prickly green face.

"I think that was mostly the Slayer's doing," Spike replied. "The girl tried to pull the runaway prank on Buffy Summers herself - before she was sure that the Slayer was dead. Not a great idea, I'd say. The Slayer staked every one of them, except for one henchman, who ended up running away, right into the tasers of these soldiers. He was my cellmate in the lab - tried to tell me that he was in charge of the vampire gang, but I knew better than to believe that."

"Well, Spike," the doctor said, and suddenly he was a doctor instead of a gossip partner, "You do indeed have something metal implanted within your skull. There's not much more I can do besides open you up, have a look inside."

"Duh! What do you think I came to you for?" Spike said. "Take the damn thing out!"

"Uh, well - we'll see," the demon replied. "I've never really done brain surgery before, but I know how it's done. Could you assist me here, Miss Harmony??"

I jumped. "I... Huh? I don't know..."

"It's simple," D'Morte told me, shaking his head. "Just scrub up, and hand me something if I ask for it."

The operation was so yucky. After giving him an anaesthetic drink, the doctor shaved a patch of Spike's hair completely off, (not that it was very much hair to shave off,) cut into him, and lifted a patch of the skin on his head completely off!

"Well, I didn't think I'd be the first person in here, considering," D'Morte muttered. "Your skull hasn't healed yet from the operation to implant the chip, Spike - there's a rectangular patch of bone just sitting here." He lifted the bone up and sat it aside. "And hello, v-chip."

"Can you take it out?" Spike asked. "Hello, Doctor??"

"Well, I will if you want me to," D'Morte said, sounding very reluctant. "I have to say, though, that without knowing more about this little bauble, if I take it out, there's two chances in three that I'll lobotomize you."

"Don't take it out, then!" Spike replied quickly.

"On the other hand..." The doctor considered a moment, poking inside the hole in Spike's head. "No volume dial or anything on this gadget - worse luck. I don't know what there is that I can safely do to help you at this point." He started to close up, thinking out loud. "You know, Spike, getting the notes of whoever built this little gizmo might do us a whole lot more good than just disconnecting one implant from your brain, Spike?"

"How do you figure?" Spike groaned.

"Well, developing this kind of device would require learning an awful lot about vampire neurology and electro-neural biology - a field that I don't think anyone else has ever explored. But think of the potential. From what I've heard, one of the biggest problems in all your schemes was that you couldn't count on your henchmen, Spike."

"Yeah," Spike muttered, "but what does that have to do... Oh-ho, I get it! Come up with a variation on this implant, and you could have an army of vampires working with perfect discipline, following orders precisely!"

"Think of the possibilities," D'Morte whispered.

* * * *

STONE:
"Okay, there he is," Kaplan said, wrenching his eyes away long enough to point down at the target. "The short shrimp."

"I see him," I answer the lawyer.

"So, can you do it?" he asks, focusing on me again. "You can eliminate him?"

"Of course I can," I mutter, shaking my head and shooting a nasty glare over at the spindly wimp.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to doubt your prowess, but, well, it's just a little hard to believe that a girl like you is an accomplished mercenary, bounty hunter, and, um, hit woman."

"Assasin," I correct him. "'Hit woman' is patronizing. And I'm not really a woman, or a girl."

"Oh, right," the slimy jerk says, stroking his hands together. "Demon??"

"No," I reply, more than a little acidly. "I am a Warlock."

"Shouldn't that be witch??"

"NO," I tell him forcefully. "Warlocks kill witches - thought I've never been one to limit myself that way. And come to think of it, this shrimp may have some witchly heritage that he doesn't know about. You say he gets visions?"

"That's what we think," Kaplan agrees.

"Hmm... well, I'll try stealing power when I kill him. I'm gonna need some other form of payment, though."

"Of course, um..." Kaplan coughs. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, Miss..."

"Miss nothing," I bite off. "They just call me Stone."

"Stone?? Uh, okay, Stone. Here you go." He holds out a hand, with four little bags in it. "One in advance, another two upon completion. Make your selection."

I take a moment to think about that, then shrug and pick one of the bags. When I open it, there are three metallic disks in it - coins. Pure platinum. "Good enough," I tell Kaplan. "I take my time on assignment, but your shrimp will be dead soon enough."

"Don't take too long," Kaplan advised me. "You have one week." And with that, he strode off to the roof access door, into the building, and vanished.

"Good enough," I mutter to myself. I take one more look at the target - he seemed to be loading a van with luggage, along with a frail and pretty dark-haired girl - then check my line and swing back over the edge of the building. While letting myself down the rope, I take a moment to reflect on my human facade, in the shine of the windowed surfaces. Long curly golden hair flowing past my shoulders, a shapely and curvaceous figure, and a charming, elegant face. Suddenly, on impulse, I 'locked' out, reverting to my natural warlock appearance, my body becoming leaner and more muscular, my face predatory and horrifying.

That was better.

* * * *

XANDER:
"By the time I got there, clouds of white soot were billowing everywhere," Buffy said, brushing a lock of golden hair away from her beautiful face and fidgeting awkwardly with the knee-length hem of her flowered skirt. "Not real soot - that stuff from the fire extinguisher. Out of the corner of my eye, through the clouds, I could see someone grab ahold of Willow and say she was 'contained.' I was so mad I wasn't even thinking - I just called out 'contain this' and I shot the flare down the hall."

"The flare gun I gave you?" I asked, somewhat surprised. "Not recommended in the manual, Buff. It must have been quite impressive though."

"Yeah, I guess," Buffy replied. "The glare was pretty bright and it bounced off the walls a few times. I kicked the guy who had grabbed Willow, twice, and made sure Will got out of the way, closed the door to be sure she was safe. Someone else grabbed me and threw me into a wall, not hard. He tried to kick and punch me, but I dodged and counterattacked.

"I was whaling on someone pretty good, not even sure if it was the same guy, when all of a sudden something got into my eye and the tables turned. That was when someone went straight through the window - I heard the glass shatter. I got spun around, but my vision was clearing now, and I whipped the bastard with a chair and started to fight back. Used a judo throw to flip him onto his back and got into my best fighting posture while he was getting up.

"But he had had enough. He yelled something out, abort, and the guys in uniform all took off. Right then, the lights came back on, and I went over to check and see that Willow was okay. She was. End of fight."

"Uh, okay, thanks Buffy," Giles said, who had been listening carefully to everything that Buffy told us. "Willow, is there anything else that you can add? About either the mysterious uniformed men, or Spike's role in all of this??"

"Well, I was lying on my bed when it all started," Willow said somewhat listlessly. Well, at least she was looking better than she had been the day before yesterday. "Working up a pretty good mope. The door knocked, I thought it was probably Buffy home from the party, so I said 'come in.' But it wasn't Buffy, it was Spike. I tried to run for the door, but he threw me back. He said something about choosing whether I wanted to just die or become... become a vampire."

"What did you say?" I asked, morbidly intrigued.

"Uh, nothing about that," Willow said, blushing. "I threatened to scream, he just said 'bonus' and turned the stereo on. He attacked me, grabbing me, trying to bite, but he couldn't seem to. It was like he'd get hit with a migraine headache every time he tried - pain so strong he couldn't make his jaw work right."

"Wow," Buffy muttered, surprised. "What happened next?"

"Um, uh, well..." Willow stammered, blushing. "I, uh, well, while he was complaining about the pain, I grabbed the lamp, bashed it into his head, and ran for the door. Spike had locked the door and broken off the lock handle, though. I tried to bash into it, but it's a really solid door. Spike was getting up and charging towards me, so I backed up to take a running leap at the door. That's when it burst open from the other side."

"And soldiers on the other side?" Giles prompted.

"Yeah. I ran right into them. One of them pointed a gun at me, but another said 'hold your fire.' That's when Spike got out of the room. He went to bite one of the soldier guys, but screamed in pain again. They grabbed Spike, put a bag over his head, restrained his arms. Maybe tied his wrists or something, I couldn't tell. I was just staying out of the way, kinda not able to deal with the whole thing, when one of them noticed me again.

"He..." Willow paused, shaking her head. "He said that I might have been turned, that I was under 'quarantine.' One of the others said to leave me. That was when Spike broke out and started fighting again. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and one of the soldiers shot it. That's about when Buffy arrived. I can't add anything more to what she's already told you."

"Well," Giles said, sitting back in his chair. "This is, um, disturbing, to say the least. I think that it's now more obviously important than ever that you find out what these soldiers are up to. Capturing vampires..."

"What about Spike?" Buffy asked.

"If what Willow has said is true, he's less of a threat than usual," Giles decided. "The soldiers are our priority."

"I might be able to help track Spike down," I heard myself saying. "He's still with Harmony, or he was. After finding out that he's not at a hundred percent, he'd probably go back to her. I remember where I found Harmony in the woods, and you guys know where the vault was, where she and Spike found the Gem of Amtrak. If we go into the tunnel below the vault, and follow it in the direction of the wooded grove, I'll bet you that Harmony and Spike's lair is somewhere in the catacombs there."

Buffy, Willow, and Giles were all staring at me. "It's... that's a good plan," Giles stuttered. "Although the name of the gem was 'Amara.' Why don't, em, you and Willow work on that? Buffy and I will attempt to find some more promising line of investigation on the masked soldiers. Good enough?"

"Sure," Willow said, with a smile. "If we can just grab a little self-defense gear from your weapons collection, Giles, we'll be off, and I'll show Xander to the Amara Vault."

"Don't engage," Buffy warned us. "If vampires attack you, just get out of there, let me know. I'll take care of it."

"I know," Willow told her, nodding, as she handed me a cross, a stake, and a little bottle of holy water. "This stuff is just in case we get trapped in a dead-end or something, or grappled down."

"What if it's just Harmony?" I asked. "I fought her to a standstill, Buffy - the two of us could definitely take her. We might be able to catch her, get something out of her about where Spike is, while she'd just scram if we took off and you'd never be able to find her again."

Buffy sighed. "Okay, maybe if it's just Harmony."

We said our goodbyes, and Willow led me off to the tunnel entrance near the Vault. "So," she said conversationally. "Um, how are things going with you and Anya these days, Xander? I haven't heard much about her lately."

"Uh, to tell you the truth, neither have I," I complained. "There was Halloween night, and, um, we met for lunch a few days after. Since then, I haven't seen her. I guess she's taken off again, or something. She's not the most stable girl on Earth, you know."

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," Willow said sympathetically.

"So," I said after a few seconds, deciding to change the subject. "What didn't you tell us about Spike??"

Willow jumped about a foot in the air, at that. "What about him??"

I chuckled softly, shaking my head as Willow led me down into a tunnel access. "I've known you too long to fall for that innocent act, Willow Rosenberg. I know when you're not telling me everything. Something happened, between you and Spike, while he was in the residence room. After he first attacked you, and before you hit him on the head. Am I ringing any bell here?" I smiled teasingly over at Will.

"Uh... oh, okay," she grumped. "We talked, some. He was, you know, kinda grumpy after he tried to bite me the first two or three times, but he wasn't off his guard yet. So, well, we kinda joked around a bit. At least, it was joking for me."

This was starting to sound weird. "Joking?? About what?"

"About the fact that he couldn't, you know, bite me. Kill me. It... it became this weird double meaning thing. We were saying the cliches, you know." Willow was blushing a fiery red by now. "Like, well, you know. If it was a guy, and a girl, in the bedroom, and - um, the guy couldn't perform."

"Willow!!" I said, shocked, and a little titillated. "You - were you flirting with him? You were - you were flirting with Spike! With William the Bloody!"

"I wasn't," Willow said. "Well, maybe it might have sounded like I was. I was kidding around, trying to get him off of his guard."

"What kinds of things did you say?" I asked, intrigued.

"Oh, you know. 'Maybe you're trying too hard,' 'doesn't this happen to every vampire?' 'this doesn't make you any less terrifying,' 'it's me, isn't it...'" She shook her head. "I kinda get the feeling that it was more than joking on Spike's side, you know? Like he has a sorta repressed crush on me - and maybe Buffy, too."

"You're pulling my leg," I said, shaking my head again. "Did he say anything?"

"Well," Willow said, considering. "While I was in the 'it's me' riff, I was kinda rambling on about how I was more a best friend/sister type than the kind of girl every vampire would want to bite into, if you know what I mean? Kinda channeling my frustration about the whole Oz thing into it, you know, because he was the first guy to see me as more than the best friend, as beautiful and, um, desirable."

"Oh," I muttered, feeling bad about those old days, when Willow had a big crush on me and I had an even bigger blind spot for how attractive a young woman she was becoming. "Sorry, Will. I wish it could have been me. So, uh, what did Spike say about that?"

"He said that he'd fantasized about sucking my blood, ever since he kidnapped us last year. He even remembered exactly what I was wearing that day. It was really sweet."

"Sweet?" I repeated, disbelieving. "He said that he's been thinking of killing you for a year, and you think that that's sweet?"

"It's not like that," she told me. "Feeding is a very psycho-sexual thing with vampires..."

* * * *

CORDELIA:
"Okay," Doyle said, smiling that slightly goofy smile at me. "Looks to me like we're ready to leave as soon as the twilight fades away." He checked his watch happily. "And it's only four thirty! Mortons, here we come!!"

"Just gimme ten," I tell Doyle with my best teasing smile, heading back into the building. "I've gotta get ready."

"Oh, you look smashing right now," he told me, which was a pleasant surprise. All I was wearing was pretty much jeans and a sweater, after all.

"I'll be back here in ten," I told him, picking up my bag as I passed through the lobby and locking myself into the bathroom. I don't own as many clothes now as I used to in the good ol' days, but I still pride myself on the flexibility of my wardrobe. The ensemble for my dinner date with Doyle had been carefully chosen for effect. I reflected on the image I was trying to project as I stripped off my dingy 'work clothes.'

Doyle... interested me, in a way that I'd never really experienced before, even with Xander Harris, though that came close. He was kinda sweet, and cute in a leprechaun-ish way, and obviously madly in love with me. He'd saved my life from that biker vampire, and that counted well in his favor. But, on the other hand, I didn't want to commit myself to anything, to encourage him too much, or make myself look more interested than I was. Doyle had his moments of being a complete and total jerk, and he was so not the kind of man I saw as my first ex-husband.

So, the desired look was two-sided. Beautiful and desirable, yet none too available and somewhat untouchable. So, I put on a black push-up Wonderbra, a strappy dark brown leather bustier-style top, a pair of leggings made out of thin, stretchy, black lycra, and a purple linen tunic on top, covering everything from its low scoop neckline to its mid-thigh length hem. Black leather platform heels, a silk belt-style sash, golden star pendant necklace, amethyst ring, and dangle chain earrings accesorized the outfit well, and I carefully pinned up my hair on both sides so that it fell in a lustrous dark river straight down the middle of my back.

I took one more look at myself in the mirror before going out to show Doyle. Perfect Ice Princess. Flawless.

"Whoa," Doyle muttered when I stepped out of the bathroom. I hadn't expected him to be right there, but I basked in the attention happily enough and twirled around to show him the grandeur that is Cordelia Chase from every side.

"So, you ready to go?" I asked. With some degree of surprise, I noticed that Doyle had changed clothes too, or at least added some - a dark blue jacket and necktie. Together with the white button-down shirt and dark slacks he had been wearing today, it made a decently presentable outfit, which was good, because Morton's was a nice enough place to have a dress code. Or, at least, the maitre d' would look daggers at anyone who was dressed too casually while seating them, I would think.

"Right this way," Doyle said, gesturing grandly to the way out of the building. On the short walk to the restaurant, Doyle chatted idly with me, even managing to draw me out enough to talk about Sunnydale and Buffy's friends, probably because of this 'trip to the Hellmouth' he was insisting on taking. So I told him a little about Buffy, Willow, Oz, and Xander, including how I had ended up dating a nerd who was completely hung up on two girls that weren't me. I didn't go into the story of how my 'relationship' with Xander ended yet, however. I somehow think Doyle already got the details out of Angel.

The Maitre d' at Mortons showed us to a cozy booth for two, nestled against the wall, and a waiter was by quite quickly to take our orders, (Doyle had a ginger ale, roast lamb, mashed potatoes, and mixed vegetables. Myself, I ordered a bottled water, fusili marinara and a garden salad.) When the waiter left, I figured that if I didn't want the conversation to drift back to Sunnydale, I'd better take charge.

"So, Doyle, what were you doing between Harry and Angel? I mean, I've kinda got a picture of what you were like before and during your experience with marriage - the concerned youth for America thing, food bank volunteer, third-grade teacher, general take-charge guy. But then... well, as I make it, there's kinda a blank between then and when you suddenly wake up with visions, telling you to track down Angel and join his little crusade to help the hopeless. So, what were you up to then?"

Doyle just stared at me for a few moments, then looked down at the table and shook his head. "Boy, Cordelia, you don't shy away from the hard questions."

"What?" I muttered. "How was I to know that... oh, well, yeah, I guess you've kinda let it slip that you've done some things you're not too proud of. But you've been grilling me about my high school years and you know that they were very tragic for me! I don't see that it's any different!!"

Doyle was staring into my eyes again by that time, seeming to be evaluating something. "Okay, well, let me give it to you in the broad brush-strokes, okay? When Harry left me, I took it hard. Looked for comfort in a whiskey bottle, and normally found trouble. I got in a bad temper when I drink, and there were more than a few fights. I missed enough mornings and days at the school that they let me go. That was why I started working for, um, more unsavory elements, purveying items that were desired and serving as a conduit of information.

"Then, one night, a fight went way too far. I hit a guy hard, much too hard, and I could tell by the way he went down that he wasn't ever getting up again. I ran, I hid for several days, and then the guilt caught up with me. I went to the police and turned myself in for murder." Doyle sighed and shook his head. "A few days later, they let me go. Said that they couldn't find any other evidence that the crime had taken place. 'You dreamed it, sonny,' the sergeant told me. 'Just go home and forget the whole thing.'"

"Wait," I said, shaking my head. "Did you dream it? 'Cause if not, why couldn't they find..."

"Well, it's like this," Doyle said, a little embarassed. "The guy I killed, well, he had his own reasons to keep his existence from ever coming to the attention of the law. His business partners saw no reason why that should have to change with his death. They covered his life and death up, well enough that the police didn't want to bother with even a confessed murder. Laying the groundwork would have been too much of a pain in the butt." He sighed.

"The business partners, they knew that it hadn't been intentional murder, so they didn't come down too hard on me. Warned me, in their own inimitable way, that it wasn't to happen again to anyone in their outfit and let me go. So, well, from then on I was lost in a cycle of guilt, booze, and low self-esteem. Until the first vision came."

I just sat there, kinda stunned at how much Doyle had just revealed to me. Before I had collected my thoughts, the food came.



Part 2


BUFFY:
"Well, this has certainly been a productive way to spend the afternoon," I grumped at Giles, stretching as I sat on his couch. We had been brainstorming for hours about how to find out more about the mysterious masked soldiers, but no really impressive plans had been formed. I would continue to keep watch on patrol, maybe following vampires from a distance to see if our millitary friends would come along and capture them.

Also, since the scant evidence we had about the soldiers seemed to center around the UCS campus, Giles and I would start poking around the buildings tomorrow, trying to see if we could find some complex or building that we wouldn't be allowed into. And when Willow got back, one of us would suggest that she try to work her hacker magic on the university computer system, see if there was some top-secret server that these soldiers might be using.

"Is there anything else you can think of?" I asked, getting up. "I'm sorry, I just can't sit around here much longer, thinking about how little we can really do to find these guys if they don't want to be found."

"No, I think we're done for now," Giles told me with a sympathetic smile. "Do you have any idea where you'll be going?"

"Back to campus, I guess," I told him with a shrug. "I was thinking I might drop by Lowell house - see if Riley's there." With that, I waved goodbye to my ex-watcher, left the condo, and practically jogged all the way back to campus. After stopping in quickly at Stevenson Hall to freshen up and change (since Riley had already seen this tank top and the flowered skirt,) I was on my way to see a guy.

What was it that I felt drawn to in Riley?? I couldn't put my finger on it. It had been months since I first met him, that first day in the bookstore, and for most of that time there had not even been the slightest trace of interest. He was just - Riley, the teaching assistant. Even that time I bumped into him in the pub, (literally,) he seemed, um, more than a little dull.

Somehow, though, something had changed. Either during the party, or when he came over to talk to me this morning. Sure, Riley was a little bit blah, but he was sweet, (in what I hoped was a more sincere way than Parker Abrams blechh,) and very human, and he had that endearing shy modesty thing going for him.

Also, he was pretty handsome I guess, but the university seems to have a good quota of attractive guys, most of whom I wouldn't let within ten feet. And I wouldn't be going to see Riley now if I didn't see something deeper than that - somehow, very deep inside, I felt like he was a kindred spirit. Which is kind of hard to believe on the face of it, since he's the mild-mannered psychology teaching assistant and I'm, you know, vampire slayer, the chosen one with whom the destiny of the Earth lies.

"Buffyana!" a frat guy called out as I poked my way into Lowell house. I turned to see who was yelling at me, and groaned inside. It was Forrest, one of Riley's friends, but loudmouthed, overconfident, and an obvious skirt-chaser. "Oh supremely Buff one," he quipped, crossing over to the foyer where I stood, "To what do we owe the pleasure of your magnificence??"

"Um..." I muttered, caught off guard. "I... was wondering, uh, if Riley was here?" Behold the utter supremacy in conversational lameness that is me, I know, I know.

"Uh, I think he's upstairs," another guy said. "You want me to go get him for you??"

"No, that's fine, I'll just..." I started, but he beat me to the staircase. I climbed up anyways, figuring that we'd meet in the middle somewhere.

"So, you come calling for Riley, dressed in that number?" Forrest said, keeping pace with me. "Lucky guy!"

"What... what about my 'number?'" I asked, looking down at my clothes. My nice blue jeans and a light green spandex shirt, nothing special. I'd tied my hair up in a cute ponytail, and was looking very all-american, if I do say so myself.

"Nothing," Forrest said, smiling. "But it does show off your chassis very nicely, if you know what I mean." He gave me a leering wink. Oops - well, yeah, I guess these clothes were a little tight. But what the hell - at least it's appreciated!

"Forrest, shut up," Riley said - he was just getting to the second-floor landing from the hallway at the same time as Forrest and I had reached it from the stairs. "You're giving all of us guys a bad name. Nice to see you, Buffy." He smiled a modest and sincere smile in my direction. "Was there any particular reason you came by?"

"Uh, well, I'm not meaning to ask you about the reading, Mister Finn, if that's what you were meaning," I joked, smiling back at him. "I guess I was just wondering if you wanted to do something - get a little something to eat, or just talk a little while..." I faded out somewhat uncomfortably. "Hang out in the game room. Whatever."

But Riley smiled at me and chuckled softly. "Grabbing a bite sounds great."

"Okay..." I said, feeling relieved that something was actually going well. "Okay, we'll hit the cafeteria dining room..." But Riley was shaking his head. "You don't eat at the dining room? I've seen you there!"

"Yeah, you've seen me there," Riley said, "when I need some place to get a little work done between lectures. I wouldn't reccomend that anyone actually eat the food there."

Oh. Whoops. "Uh... well, then where? There's Luigi's, but it can get a little pricey, and I don't have much cash on me..."

"Then why don't I save us both the money," Riley said, reaching out to briefly touch my forearm, "and whip you up some vermicelli and cacciatori sauce right here?" He pointed down the hall. "Down worry, the kitchen 'slash' dinner nook is a fully public place. There won't be any funny business."

"I wasn't even thinking of it," I said, shaking my head. "You cook?"

"What, isn't a guy allowed to cook??" Riley shook his head at that.

"To be honest with you," I admitted, "I don't think I know anyone who cooks except my mother. Including myself, and my girl friends." I shook my head. "No cooking know-how whatsoever."

"Oh!" Riley scoffed softly. "I'm sorry, but that is just such a damn shame. Every university student, hell, anybody who's reached our age, should be able to cook for themselves. It's the best, cheapest, AND healthiest way to eat..."

* * * *

DOYLE:
"So," I muttered, trying to break the uncomfortable silence after I'd had a first bite of roast lamb and mashed potatoes, and washed it down with ginger ale. "How did things end up with that young chap in Sunnydale - Xander?"

"Come on," the ever-lovely Cordelia Chase told me, keeping her breathtaking hazel eyes locked on me as she shook her head. "You already know all this - you pumped Angel for the details."

"Well, I asked him a few questions," I confessed. "But our vampire friend is far from the talkative sort, as I'm sure you know."

"So, how much have you heard, then?" she asked me softly.

"That there was a bit of an indiscretion with the best friend - the Willow girl. Secret kisses, stolen moments, that kind of thing. They got caught at it, and you never forgave him."

"About the 'it,'" she told me, shaking her head. "I was furious with Xander when I found out, and who could blame me? Oz ended up taking Willow back - they're living happily ever after for all I know, but I wasn't going to give Xander a second chance. I couldn't seem to stop getting dragged into their scary adventures, and I guess you could say Xander and I are kind of friends now, but certainly no more." She looked over at me, fastening that haunting stare on me again. "What do you think about what happened, Doyle??"

Oooh - difficult question. On one level, I certainly sympathized with the Xander kid, having had a childhood friend who I suddenly realized I was attracted to, and having at one time juggled two girls without either of them knowing about the other. That was the sort of thing kids do in high-school, you choose partners, and you change partners, and you learn the rules of love as you go. You get your heart broken a few times and maybe even break a heart or two yourself. It's a part of growing up, I think.

On the other hand, I didn't want to defend Xander to Cordelia, and not just because I had the hots for her and, to whatever extent this date was going well, I didn't want to mess things up. I had the feeling that nobody had ever really acknowledged Cordelia's pain, how much she had been hurt and felt betrayed by Xander's cheating, (however understandable it might have been,) and that because of this she didn't have any closure on the matter and was defensive about it.

Soon after the 'factory incident' brought Willow and Xander's stolen kisses to light, after all, Xander and Willow had circled wagons with Buffy, looking out for each other and supporting each other. Given what I knew of human nature, it was quite unlikely that they could also give Cordelia the validation she needed about her all-too-real pain and loss.

And Cordelia's more 'popular' friends, Angel tells me, basically mocked her over the whole incident. Xander hadn't been in Cordy's social class, and when he cheated on Cordelia with someone just as uncool as he was, it was construed as an open affront to Cordelia's image, which the wannabes took immediate advantage of, using it as a lever to attack Cordelia and depose her place.

Well, if no-one else would take Cordelia's side on this, I would. "It sounds horrible," I told her. "This Xander made a big mistake, not making holding on to you his first priority. I bet it hurt you a great deal, to discover what he had been doing."

Oops. Looking at Cordelia's face, I could tell that I had kinda overdone it on the sympathy, as she shifted back into tough cookie mode. "Well, a little," she said, brushing it off. "I should have seen it coming. Let's, um, let's change the subject - get into something a little less emotionally wrenching, huh? What kind of music do you like?"

We chatted about bands and movies through the rest of dinner, foregoing dessert when Cordelia pointed out that the darkness was gathering. As we walked back to Angel's building, Cordelia stopped me momentarily by stopping dead ahead of me, turning around to look me in the face.

"This was sweet, Doyle," she whispered, kissing me on the cheek and then, ever so softly, on the lips. "I had a really nice time."

* * * *

WILLOW:
"Hey, what about this place?" I asked, following a cave tunnel into a good-sized chamber.

"Hmm," Xander replied, ducking his head under the low clearance as he followed me. "We have weapons," he picked up a butterfly knife and tapped it against a battle axe. "Radios and electronics, an awful, awful lot of clothes, and, well, looky here." He came to a stop right in front of a pretty watercolor unicorn poster. "What d'you think, Willow? Does this look like it could be Spike and Harmony's lair?"

"Nobody else's," I agreed with a smile. "But, well, they don't seem to be here right now." I picked idly at a pile of clothing, coming up with a lacy negligee. Ooh. I tossed it back, embarrassed.

"Yeah," Xander muttered. "Boy, Spike's really fallen on some hard times, hasn't he? I mean, in the old days, he'd have people standing guard at the factory all the day and night, regardless of whether he was there or not. Now, it's just... nobody left."

"Uh, yeah," I agreed. "Spike's lost a lot. Drusilla, his respect for Angelus, his reputation as a leader. And all because he tried to take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"Hmm," Xander said, and there was an awkward silence for a moment. "Well, I don't see that there's much to do here right now," Xander muttered quietly. "Now that we know where Spike and Harmony's lair is, Buffy might be able to surprise them here another time, if she need to. But for now..."

"We'd better get going - back to Giles' to report!" I finished for him. "It's, hmm, probably almost five thirty by now..."

"You're kidding me!" Xander burst out. "Oh, man, I can't believe I forgot..."

"Forgot what?" I asked him, curiously.

"Got a prior engagement - of the odd jobs variety," Xander explained uncomfortably. "Helping old man Wodgely clean out his attic. And I'm supposed to be there by now." He rushed out of the lair. "You wouldn't happen to know what the nearest exit from these catacombs would be? I don't really have time to trace the path back the way we came, then chase across town."

With a little trial and error, Xander and I found a quick route to the surface, and he dashed off on his way to old Mister Wodgely's house. Myself, I wandered back to Giles' house, keeping a grip on the stake in my pocket as the darkness began to gather. "Hi, Buffy! Hi, Giles," I called out as I walked through the front door to Giles' condo.

"Buffy isn't here," Giles told me. "I think she got a touch of the cabin fever - went back to campus. Said she might pay Riley Finn a brief visit. But she asked me to suggest something to you." I smiled and waved briefly at Giles, pulling up a seat to listen to what he had to say. "Given that the soldier sightings have all been on or close to the UCS campus, it seems a possibility that they are in some way based at the university. If that is so, their computer systems might..."

"Might use the UCS intranet system, in which case I should be able to find them and hack into them!" I finished, grinning widely. "I'll give it a try. It's been a while since I've given my network skills a good workout." And doing just about anything to keep my mind off of Oz sounds like a good idea. "Xander and I found a cave that looks like it might be Harmony and Spike's lair - neither of them were there though. I'll draw a map so Buffy can find her way there quickly if she wants to check it out." In fact, I was already drawing it, having picked up a pad of sketch paper and a uni-ball pen, clearly marking the tunnel entrances and every landmark I could think of inside the catacombs.

"Once I finish this, I'll need to head back to the campus myself," I said to Giles, thinking out loud. "My computer's not here, and anyways, my chances are better if I'm doing the tap from an actual university line. Trying the indirect connection would just complicate everything."

"Okay," Giles muttered. "So, you'll be in the residence room?"

"Hmm..." I considered that. "No, probably not. I'll use the computer lab in the Queenston building - there'll be hardly anyone there on a Saturday evening, and I can use one of the superspeed Pentium Pros. That'll help." I smiled at Giles, doing a made-up secret gesture as I passed him on the way back out of the condo. "Slayerettes forever. Wish me luck, Giles."

* * * *

ANGEL:
I stepped out of the basement bathroom, freshly showered, hair moussed and carefully dressed. Was I going to all of this trouble just because we were going to Sunnydale to see Buffy? No, I always take take about the same amount of time making sure that I look good. I'm not quite sure why - I wouldn't call myself vain. My mother used to lecture me that 'dressing appropriately is a way of respecting the body that God gifted you with,' when I'd sneak back into the house looking like the slovenly wretch I was, after a night of drinking and wenching. Then again, she'd beat my older brother for 'the sin of pride in appearance,' when he got dressed up too fancily. It just goes to show you that piousness condemns all extremes except its own.

God, I miss them all - my family, my friends from the days when I was truly alive. To a one, I slaughtered them, or the monster inside me did. Angelus. For a hundred years, I believed that there wasn't any difference. Buffy was the first one to tell me otherwise - to absolve me from the crimes of my alter-ego, even thogh she was the one that Angelus tormented most, when he got free again.

I can still hear Buffy's voice on that lonely hilltop. "I know everything that you did, because you did it to me." And despite all that, Buffy loved me, loved me enough to stick by me through the worst of times.

She loved me enough that I had to leave her.

Okay, that was definitely enough moping for now. I waited as the elevator made its slow way to street level, my thoughts returning again to the whole looking good thing. Cordelia was starting to bug me later about the whole handsome thing, with lines like 'have you seen how clothes hang on him?' But hey, really, what did I have to be so self-conscious about? So I was born attractive. The point was not to abuse it, and maybe even use it to help, if there came a circumstance in which I really could.

When I got up into the office, Cordelia and Doyle were milling around waiting for me. "Okay, you're here, Angel," Cordy said when she caught sight of me. "Is it dark enough outside? Can we leave already??"

Huh? "Am I missing something, Cordelia?" I asked, walking over the window to check the light level. Looked low enough. "I thought that you weren't coming with us."

"I never said that," Cordy said, crossing over to Doyle and discretely taking his hand in her own. "I'm along for the ride. God knows you guys could probably use a native guide to town - one who's seen more than the sewers, that is."

As we walked out to the van, I noticed that when Cordelia took her hand away from Doyle's, she squeezed him affectionately on the shoulder. Well, what do you know? It looked like Doyle's date with Cordelia went pretty well. Well, good for him - great for both of them, actually.

"By the way, any idea what we're going to do when we get to Sunnydale?" Doyle asked as I got onto the freeway. "How we find your Buffy girl, for instance?"

"Um... she'll be living on the university campus, I think," I muttered.

"Along with several hundred other students," Cordelia pointed out. "And the university authorities will probably take a dim view of strange men wanting to know where a freshman girl lives."

Hmm... there was that. "Did Oz mention anything when he was down here in L.A.? Which residence building they were in or something?"

"Not to me," Cordelia said pointedly. "Gee - I guess someone should have called Buffy, or her mom, or Giles or someone."

"Well, those are places we can start anyway," I mentioned. "Joyce will still be living at the same place, and probably Giles. They'll be able to tell us where to go next."

"Yeah, but how much will they want to tell you?" Cordelia quipped.

* * * *

ANYA:
I groaned when I woke up. My arms and legs were restrained again - they had me on the damn table again.

Who they were, or how it was that I had come to be staying with them, I wasn't quite clear on. The last thing from my 'normal' human life I remembered was going to the college campus to 'hang' with Xander and his friends at the pub. There was this lancing pain spreading from my shoulder to my back, and the next thing I knew I was here, with the white antiseptic walls and the mean people who didn't talk much.

"Hello there, Anya," a familiar voice said to me. "I've got a few more questions for you tonight, and another medical procedure - we're going to be trying to take a liver biopsy. I hope that that's okay with you, Anyanka."

A few orderlies rushed forward, strapping my hips, stomach, and shoulders firmly to the table. Boy, I wish that I had never told the weird doctor my name. My names, actually, both of them - Anya and Anyanka. "Okay, time for some questions," the doctor's light, but kinda steely voice rang out. "Where did you come from, Anyanka?"

"Burbank," I quipped.

"I somehow don't think so," the doctor said, and a painful electrical shock rippled into my body, starting from the, uh, the 'nipples?' (Terms for the various parts of my new human body still stump me occasionally.) There were some kind of electrodes there, I vaguely realized. They had done this to me before, vaguely shifting memories told me.

"You have a body temperature of only eighty-four degrees, Anya." The words washed through the room as the pain subsided. "Your blood cells are tube-shaped. Put simply, Anya, you're not human, so I really don't think you came from Burbank."

There was a pause as the doctor got up and started to maneuver a tubelike device into position to delve down into my body. "Where do you come from, Anya?" she asked again. I didn't answer, and the doctor pushed a button, starting the pain at the electrodes again. I couldn't help it - I screamed.

"Who... are you," I muttered when the agony subsided. "You know my name... I should know yours."

"Oh, fair enough," the doc said. "Call me Walsh - Colonel Maggie Walsh. You know, Anya, you're my favorite. We've got vampires here, a few unusual demons here, but you're the most intruiging of all. A demon, so cleverly altered that you could almost perfectly pass for a human girl."

"And while the last thing I want to do is to be forced to kill you," Walsh continued, aligning the biopsy tube and injecting my upper arm with a hypodermic needle, "if you don't start giving me some answers, I might be forced to. Where do you come from, Anyanka??"

A strange floating sensation suffused my mind. "The realm of Abyssia."

"How many others like you are in the realm of Abyssia, Anya? Can you explain to me where it is??"

"There are none others like me that I am aware of. I was the Wishmistress, the only one of my time. I might have been replaced by the Lower Beings by now - I'm not sure. There are about three hundred Lower Beings in Abyssia. It's a small, interdimensional realm that is beyond space as you mortals understand it."

"Why were you sent here, Anya? Are you the advance agent for a Lower Being invasion??"

"No. I was exiled here - stripped of my powers and reduced to mortality, because my wishstone was destroyed..."



Part 3

STONE:
I sighed to myself. The wind rushed past my face as I followed my target's van onto the Interstate north.

Damn it, why didn't Kaplan tell me that Doyle was going to be leaving town? Or did he know?? Maybe someone in that law firm had leaked information about my contract to Doyle, or the Angel. Were they skipping town to try to get away from me? Well, they had another think coming if they were. The way they were driving, my bike and I would be able to keep up as long as we had to.

On the other hand, I couldn't attack while my target was on the move. Far too risky. But they couldn't drive forever, When they stopped, especially if Doyle and Angel split up then, I'll be able to make my move.

As I gunned my motorcycle across a bridge, I took a moment to evaluate my armaments. Throwing knives, 'shuriken,' a Brigadier pistol, a short sword, and a half-dozen grenades. Plus, of course, the magical power I inherited from my lineage as a Warlock, and a few little magic tricks I've stolen from the witches I've managed to kill so far. I was ready for the fight - ready for anything and then some.

Curious, I pulled my bike up next to the target's van, wondering if I would provoke a reaction. There was nothing. Well, if they were running away from me, they certainly didn't seem to recognize me. Maybe they had left Los Angeles for some other reason. That would certainly make my job easier. I'd kill Doyle, see if I could steal his power, and then collect the rest of my pay from Wolfram and Hart.

Side by side, we sped on into the night.

* * * *

RILEY:
"I dunno," Buffy said with a shrug as she washed down a bit of my vermecelli cacciatori with some lemonade that I had found in the fridge. "Not much to tell here. I'm eighteen, a freshman, as you know already. Been living in Sunnydale for about two and a half years now, ever since my Mom and I moved here from L.A."

"Ah," I said, nodding. "Parents divorced?" Buffy nodded silently. "Why did your mom move here?"

"Uh," Buffy said, blushing and looking down at her food. "That would be because of me. I got expelled from Hemery High in Los Angeles - disciplinary record. Sunnydale was the nearest school district that would take me. Mom really wanted me to finish school, so she basically made a job for herself here - setting up an art gallery."

"Really?" I said, smiling. "Your mom's the one who got the gallery started? Cool. I gotta say, though, that I'm surprised - that Sunnydale would go out of its way to take a problem student. I'm not familiar with the school board, but Trollman Snyder - taking over some other district's problem kid sounds like the last thing that he'd ever do!"

Buffy laughed at that. "You know, you're right. But Snyder wasn't here yet when I first came to Sunnydale." I was a little surprised at that - I hadn't known that he was here for so short a time. I've heard plenty of Snyder stories from kids who came to UCS from Sunnydale High, and even met him once or twice, when business had taken me briefly to the high-school last year.

"It was Bob Flutie who was Principal when I came to Sunnydale High," Buffy said, somewhat reminiscently. "Very liberal, very politically correct. Then, he, uh, got killed, and they brought in Snyder to replace him. They're total opposites, aside from both having been jerks. I had my share of run-ins with Snyder, but he couldn't keep me out of school for long..."

"Uh, this is probably gonna sound morbid, but how did this Flutie die?" I asked.

"Um... he was attacked by wild dogs," Buffy said, making a face. Hmm... I wonder if those 'wild dogs' could have really been werewolves or some form of canine demon. We'll have to check into that. "You know, that's, um, that's really more than you need to know about me," Buffy said, obviously trying to change the subject. I didn't blame her. "What about you, Riley? Where are you from?"

"Um, a little town outside Boston, called Denton," I told her. "Transferred out to California, and Sunnydale, two years ago, in September of '97, after doing my freshman year at University of Massachussets, Boston. Got interested in psychology, and now I'm helping Ms. Walsh out as a teaching assistant while I finish up my psych degree."

"Ooo," Buffy said, frowning at the mention of Walsh's name. "I don't like Professor Walsh. Do you??"

"Umm... well, she's definitely a cranky person," I admitted.

"Bitch is the word, I'd say."

"Yeah, sometimes," I agreed. "She's brilliant when it comes to her field of study, but, well..." I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to say it. "She's gone through a lot of hard times, I think, and she's hardened herself as a way of dealing with her own pain. I guess it's blinded her to the suffering of others." I shook my head. "I'm sorry about what she said to Willow. Walsh deserved everything you said to her, and then some." I sighed. "But that doesn't change the fact that professionally, I respect the hell out of her."

"A professional has to be a person too, you know," Buffy told me.

"Hmm. You know, I guess I had never thought of it that way..." Suddenly a throat cleared at the doorway, and I looked up to see Graham standing there. "What is it?"

"It's a minute to six," Graham reminded me. "We're gonna be late to the, um, the brotherhood meeting, downstairs."

"Oh, my gosh, is it that late?" Buffy said, getting up and crossing to the window. "Is it dark out? I, uh, I have a thing to get to too, Riley." Verifying that it was, indeed, dark outside, Buffy turned back to me and flashed that brilliant, beautiful smile. "This was really nice, Riley. We should do it again - drop by sometime, okay?" She leaned up to kiss me briefly on the cheek, then dashed out of the room."

"Way to go, Riley!" Graham congratulated me as he led the way to the elevator shaft. "Looks like you're finally getting what you want out of the Buffster. Man, if I could only get a girl to kiss me on the cheek..."

"Yeah, yeah, very funny, laugh your heart away," I said, flashing Graham a grin as we stepped into the elevator. "Things are going a little slow with Buffy, okay, but that's fine by me. At least they're going. That's the important thing."

Graham smiled back at me in the midst of stripping off his school clothes, leaving just his fatigues underneath. Belatedly, I remembered to do the same. "Cool, Riley. I really am happy for you. If there's any girl on campus who's worth that much time, it's her." There was a pause before Graham continued. "She's so hot that..."

"Abort that," I laughed as the elevator doors opened at Complex level. "We've got to get moving, quick. Where's Walsh?" I called to Forrest as we walked out into the staging area.

"In the conference room," Forrest told me, pointing up a short metal stairway. "I don't think she wanted to be disturbed."

"We need to get moving ASAP," I reminded him, "and Walsh said she'd have some special instructions before we move out."

"Well, then you go talk to her," Forrest insisted. Shrugging, I climbed up the steps and knocked on the door.

"Come in!" I opened the door and saw Walsh chatting with my sister, Morgan, and holding up a hand in my direction to indicate an order of silence. "It was incredible, Doctor Finn. For the first time, we have confirmation of so much that I've been suspecting. That these demons, at least some of them, are able to cross planes of existence that our mortals minds cannot even yet contemplate, and they've been interfering in human civilizations unnoticed for thousands of years. This is just the kind of information we need to substantiate our project, if we're to get direct Senate appropriations and legal clearances that we need, to fight the demon menace." She sighed. "I'm just glad that these lower beings transformed the demon Anyanka into an Anya who was a little too human. She was subject to sodium pentathol - without that 'truth elixer' I probably wouldn't have been able to find any of this out. God knows, none of the vampires and demons we've got have given me any straight answers."

"It sounds incredible, Margaret," Morgan said with a smile. "I'm so glad I was able to come here. But we've got problems here, too, don't we? Hi, Riley, it's good to see you."

"Hi, Morgan," I said with a nod. "Colonel Walsh, you said you'd have some final orders for the troops."

"Oh, yes," Walsh said, rising to her feet. "By the way, Riley, after you get the search started, participate for thirty minutes, then come back here. I'll want you to brief Morgan on how things are looking from the field. Okay?"

"What? My men need me to be out there with them." Even though I'd appreciate a decent chance to catch up with Morgan, rather than an exhausted conversation after a night of frenzied searching.

"This is more important, Riley," Walsh said. "Let's go." And she led me out of the conference room.

* * * *

SPIKE:
"Okay, we're done here," I told D'Morte. "And the darkness is complete. I'd better be heading off."

"Okay," Harmony said, grabbing her coat - a cute red knee-length cashmere thing. "I'm with you."

"Oh, no," I said, giving my little blonde cutie a smooch and a smile. "You shouldn't risk yourself, darling. Stay here - the Doctor will keep you safe until I get back."

"Not a chance," Harm said, putting hands on hips in her 'proud princess' gesture. "You're still helpless - you can't defend yourself against any living thing..."

"We'll all go," D'Morte said, picking up a mace and a handy little revolver. "That's the safest and the fairest way. All for one and one for all."

"We're not the three bloody musketeers," I muttered, leading the way back out onto the street.

"Actually, you know, that's cool," Harmony decided. "The Three Bloody Musketeers. It makes a good name for us."

"Would you shut up about the Musketeers?"

We walked down the street for a minute in silence. "So, Spike," D'Morte said conversationally. "Any plans for what you'll do if we get this thing to work? If we get the info we need to take the implant out of your head and raise up an army of implanted vampire warriors?"

"Hmmm..." I thought about that a while, conscious of Harmony next to me and how I needed to make sure not to tick her off at me. "Not stick around here, that's for sure. Army of vampires notwithstanding, the Hellmouth is more trouble than it's worth for me. Slayers and soldiers and so forth. If we get our hands on the secret, the entire world is ours. We could set up anywhere we like."

"Even Paris?" Harmony chimed in, right on cue.

"Well, maybe someday," I hedged, smiling at her. "You know, it's not like we vampires can just hop on a jet plane."

"How about New York?" D'Morte suggested. "It's continental, we can drive there over a couple of nights, fashion headquarters of America, and millions of people, just asking to die. What d'you say?"

"Sounds like a bloody plan," I told him, smiling, and putting my arm around Harmony's shoulders.

"Of course, we've got another plan to carry through first," Harmony reminded me. "The one where we actually get the plans without being either Slayed or captured by soldiers. We're coming up on campus now, aren't we?"

"Oh, right," I agreed, nodding. "Careful now - we've gotta watch ourselves around here. Soldiers and Slayers and all that."

"I know that," Harmony told me witheringly.

But for all that, there wasn't anything that intercepted us on the way to Stevenson Hall. "Um, you two should probably stay here," I told them on the steps. "Harmony, you could go into the building, but you can't go into the room without an invite from Buffy or Willow. Besides, I'll attract less attention going in myself, and that's the best way."

Rather surprisingly, I didn't get any argument. "Good luck," Harmony said with a smile.

"If you're not back out in ten minutes, we'll come in after you," D'Morte told me with a pat on the back. Oh, well. I climbed up the rest of the steps and traced my way back to Buffy and Willow's room. Hopefully, they'd both be out doing something, although I could probably make the plan work if one of them was there. I'd just have to be ready to run very fast if Buffy was present.

There was the room. The door was locked, but Buffy's watcher isn't the only one who knows his way around locks. I left the map on Buffy's pillow, locked the door after myself, and headed back to the front doors.

My special gift to Buffy wasn't just a map. With Doctor D'Morte's help, we'd prepared a special surprise - a tiny broadcast eavesdropper inside the paper of the map itself. The receiving station could pick up sounds spoken within range of the paper, and track the direction that the signal was coming from.

"It's in the room," I told Harmony and the Doctor, who were standing next to the door and talking amongst themselves. "Let's get out of here."

* * * *

DOYLE:
I couldn't do it.

I knew that I wanted to, but I also knew that I didn't have the nerve to. Oh, come on, Allen Francis Doyle, just screw up your courage and do it.

Allen. That was what she had wanted to call me.

I turned over to Cordelia, who was looking out the window from her seat, and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. Her shoulder wasn't completely covered up, between the tunic and the straps of that leather top, and my fingers ended up touching her collarbone. Oh my god, she's got an amazing collarbone. How can someone possibly have an amazing collarbone??

"Uh, Cordelia?" I whisper softly.

She turned around to face me. "Yeah, Doyle??" I could only just make out her smile in the faint light of the Interstate.

"Um, well, C-Cordelia..." I stammered. "We, uh, we kinda had a first date earlier this evening, well, um, late this afternoon, actually, I guess. And, um..." From somewhere behind me, a light shined briefly into the car, bathing Cordy in a radiant glow. My breath caught. Powers that be, but she's gorgeous. Great legs, too.

"Well?" Cordy prompted me. Oh, yeah, I kinda did let my train of thought go off the tracks there, lost in contemplation of Cordelia's loveliness and her shapely figure.

"Oh, yeah, where was I?" I muttered. "We had a first date, and I think it worked out well. So, well, uh, I was wondering - would it be too early to ask you if we could have another date?"

"A little, yeah," Cordelia told me with a sad shake of her head. "Especially considering that we're charging into danger and have no idea at all what our schedules will be like over the next few days."

"Oh, yeah, that's a good point, Cordelia, that is. Whoops. Don't I feel like a perfect idiot?"

"Don't," Cordy whispered. "I... uh, well, I'm interested in that second date too, God help me. It... it just isn't the time to be making any formal plans."

"Does that mean we could take time out for some informal plans?" I whispered teasingly. "Just steal off together?"

"Well, you never know," Cordy teased back, winking at me. "Somehow I'm afraid we might have our hands too full to grab a coffee at the Bronze, though."

"Uh, what's..." I started, when the memory came back. The Bronze was a nightclub in the bad part of Sunnydale - a favorite with the high school crowd, also well liked by some of the college students. "What's the problem? I mean, there's trouble, we find it, Angel and Buffy kick its ass. He's the super fighting vampire, she's the Vampire Slayer - what could go wrong?"

"Buffy and Angel," Cordelia said cryptically. "Together again, after their whole big tortured goodbye. It's a dangerous prospect," she whispered to me, quietly enough that Angel probably couldn't hear her up in the front seat.

"Well, um," I muttered quietly back. "Do, um, do you think I should talk to him about it?"

Cordy shrugged, which brought me back to the passionate contemplations for a second. "If you think it's a good idea," she muttered noncommittally.

I thought about things for a few seconds, reached out to rub the top of Cordy's back for a second in what I hoped was an affectionate but non-threatening way, then got up and maneuvered my way into the front seat, sitting down next to Angel. "Hey, there man."

"Doyle," Angel said in a very matter-of-fact way, his eyes on the road. Well, it was definitely a good thing that his eyes were on the road, but, um, well...

"So, about this, um, Buffy," I said, trying to keep a casual tone in my voice. "Have you, em, thought about what you're going to do? About Buffy, when you get to Sunnydale? Considering that, well, you left her, said that you should never see each other again, broke her heart more than a little, and now here you are, um, coming back to town to help her?" I paused to think about that for a second. "Not to suggest that this isn't the only thing we could have done, Angel - somehow, Buffy needs our help. But... well, isn't it going to be awkward?"

"Well, yeah," Angel muttered. "I guess... I guess I'm just gonna avoid the subject of what Buffy and I used to be, as much as I can. Keep the whole thing about business, saving Buffy's life or whatever, not romance or nostalgia. Does that make sense?"

"Uh, yeah, actually, that sounds pretty good," I admitted. "Sounds like you've got everything under control."

"Hardly that," Angel told me, shaking his head. "When it comes to Buffy, I'm anything but under control, inside. But I'll deal as best I can." He took a look in the rearview mirror, and I turned around to look back myself. Cordelia was lying back in her chair, eyes closed, gorgeous in repose. "So, it looks like things are finally starting to happen for you with Cordelia, huh?" Angel smiled a half-smile.

"Well, yeah," I told him softly, smiling back. "Cordy's keeping me on my toes, but I think it's safe to say that the starter pistol has gone off."

"I don't think she'll ever let you off your toes," Angel said with a soft chuckle. "But you'll be good for each other."

"I'm glad you think so," I whispered, making sure I was speaking quietly enough that Cordy couldn't hear me even if she was awake and paying attention. "Now, I've only got one problem. How do I tell her about, well, um, you know. The legacy I got from my Da'."

All Angel could do was shake his head, without words.

* * * *

BUFFY:
I ran briskly out of Lowell house and over to Stevenson. It was past time to go out on patrol, looking for soldiers, but first I needed to grab a few weapons. I took the back door into my Residence Hall and was at the room in only a few moments.

I had grabbed my supplies (a stake just in case, pistol crossbow, and a short sword,) and was on my way back out of the room when I saw it. A folded piece of paper on my pillow. A message from Will, maybe?

It wasn't. There was a hand-drawn map of campus, with a tiny building at the edge of the track field, near the woods. The small square representing I-knew-not what was dwarfed by a huge X, and there were words marked on it. "You want to find the masked soldiers, Slayer? X marks the spot, Buffy my sweet. Your old pal, the Big Bad. William, 'the Bloody,' SPIKE."

"Oh!" I muttered to myself, beyond words. "He comes back here, into my room, with... wait a second. The masked soldiers??" The very ones I was looking for? Well, okay, at some point Giles would have do dig out the little black book and get Spike dis-invited from our room, but right now it seemed as if he had, for some reason, dropped an incredible lead in my lap. I didn't trust it, but it looked like I needed to check it out anyways.

The building indicated on the map looked like nothing but a tool shed from the outside, but the back of it was swallowed up in a seven-foot high rise of hillside. Now that I thought about it, it was easy to imagine such an innocuous building hiding an entry into a underground tunnel complex.

I poked around it for a few minutes, shaking the doors (locked firmly shut, I couldn't even budge them with the Slayer-strength,) investigating numerous cranies of the outside walls, and then I gave up. There was nothing else to do here, after all, and I was starting to worry that even if I could find the way in, I might be way unprepared for what I found inside. After all, even if I was used to skulking into vampire lairs, a millitary complex of some kind had to involve security several times as iron-clad, at least.

Feeling ill at ease, I high-tailed it back over to Giles' condo. "Okay, here's the sitch," I muttered, charging into the room.

"What is wrong with this picture?" Giles asked me from the sofa. "I mean, I don't object, much, to staying here and volunteering my house as a headquarters for the various missions that we're undertaking, so that everyone can stay current and know where they have to go in case of a problem? But would it be too much to expect greetings and salutations? Something along the lines of, 'Hi Giles, glad you're here,' would be nice."

"Sorry Giles," I muttered. "I'll try to be more polite in the future, but you know, when it's a hairy situation, sometimes the social niceties get left out. Anyways, Spike left something in my room. You'll need to fetch that book out - the little black one that, um, Jenny gave you, to, you know, disinvite a vampire, keep them out of anywhere. But what he left me, well, was this." I put the map down on Giles' coffee table.

"I checked the building marked on the map - it looks like a shed, but you never know. Could be an entrance do an underground headquarters. We'll have to figure out some way to get in..."



Part 4

D'MORTE:
As it happened, we didn't make it back off campus as easily as all that. We were on our way - around a few buildings and halfway to the main road out. Then, all of a sudden - "Hey! Half a mo'!"

That was Spike. He was looking in a wide bay window, at a room full of top of the line computers. The lab was practically empty - not surprising, given that it was a Saturday night. "The li'l cutie in the corner," Spike whispered as Harmony and I came up behind them, and he pointed to a girl with short red hair. "Willow Rosenberg, she is - the Slayer's best friend. Wonder what she's doing in the computer lab tonight."

"Who cares??" Harmony muttered.

"If she's breaking into Soldier Headquarters online, then I do!" Spike shot back.

"Well, why don't we take a little look-see," I suggested. "Quietly." And that was what we did. It took a little while, actually, to get into the building and find our way to the right computer lab. By that time, the room 'Willow' was in was completely empty, except for her. I parked Spike and Willow behind computers so that Willow wouldn't recognize them if she happened to take a look around, put my best human face on, and sat behind a computer terminal of my own.

Once I was well settled, I took a peek around the cathode ray tube and read Willow Rosenberg's screen display. (Having an inhumanly sharp vision can be handy sometimes.) She had a text-only UNIX window running some kinda complicated network bridging protocol program - rather hard to make out all of what was going on, but some words made a LOT of sense - secure subdomain, authorized access only, userid & password, authorization secured, association for united states security, project demon, sunnydale initiative.

"She's in," I whispered almost silently to Spike. "Just got authorized to access the server - I'm almost sure that it's the right system."

"Then it's time to make our move," Spike said, getting up and crossing over to Willow. "Hello again, lovely."

"Huh?" the college girl said, turning away in complete shock - she had been so intent on the bridging program the the initiative server that she hadn't even heard Spike walk over. "Ahh! Spike!! Wait a second..." her fear changed into a certain kind of uncertain confidence. "You can't hurt me any more, can you, Spike??"

"But I can!!" Harmony crowed, stepping up next to her sweetie and changing into her fiercest vampire face. I took the hint and walked over there myself.

"Kii-ya!" Willow shouted out, charging out of her chair towards Harmony, all sudden ferocity. But she was too late. I reached out and grabbed the pretty redhead by the neck, seperating her from Harmony.

As an added touch, as I swung the little human girl around to face me, I morphed into my own demon appearance. "Boo," I said, grinning nastily.

"Freica," Willow muttered, and I felt a sudden brief weakness. Wait a second - that was a word of power she just hit me with, I think! Was the little hussy a sorceress?? But by then, she was out of my grasp and running out the door to the lab. I tried to run after her, but my strength wasn't back yet, and I stumbled into the wall.

"Sorry," I muttered to Spike. "She used a..."

"Don't worry about her," Spike said airily. "Is the computer still connected? Can you get into the system??" He gestured at Willow's computer.

"Oh, right." I slid into position, and looked at the screen. Everything was still all go. "Yep, we're connected. Whatcha want me to do? See how much information I can grab on this Initiative??"

"Perhaps later," Spike said with a nod. "First of all, I'm more interested in dropping the other shoe - we've let the Slayer know about the soldiers - now we let the soldiers know about the Slayer! Can you send an anonymous message on this thing?"

* * * *

MORGAN:
I checked my watch, a little impatiently. I couldn't work any more - going over my own projects, looking over Maggie Walsh's new 'research...' I was too antsy. Riley was going to be back in just a few minutes. I couldn't wait to get a real chance to talk to him.

I wandered about the conference room, looking at my reflection in the shiny metal walls. I looked good enough - pretty tall, five-nine; rich long reddish-brown hair, decent figure. Too bad I hadn't had any time to for a social life or dating lately, what with all the time I'd been spending on special research for the project lately.

Sometimes I wonder about that, about how I got involved with this in the first place. I was a junior at Northeastern back then, when an urban studies project uncovered something weird. It looked like an indication that non-human creatures were responsible for a small but significant fraction of Boston inner-city deaths. I didn't hardly believe it at the time, but... well, there was a night of drinking at the pub with my girlfriends, a dare, and I turned the essay paper in with the monsters and all. I got a D- and a note of 'treat the assignment with more respect, Miss Finn.' For a month, it seemed like that was the end of that.

It was then that I was approached by people from the "Association for United States Security" and Project Demon. The Association is an organization of 'public-spirited citizens' who are in the know about international threats to world peace, hi-tech terrorists, inhuman monsters, and even some more unbelievable threats to the good old free world. I swear I've heard some of the Association bigwigs talk about aliens, though I'm not sure if they're joking or serious. The Association isn't officially a part of the government, although we get funding from government sources as well as other channels.

Anyways, project Demon is about the monsters. I've been working in research for four years now - going over old books, examining suspicious incidents around the world, trying to figure out exactly what's real and what's not. I brought Riley into the project - he and Maggie Walsh were the first two project agents dispatched here to Sunnydale. Now, there's a field initiative going on in Sunnydale, and Riley's the field commander. I couldn't be prouder of him.

"Morgan!!" Well, think of the devil. Guess who just walked into the conference room.

"Riley!" I called out, rushing over to my little bro and giving him a warm hug. "How've you been?? Missed you!"

"Can't complain about things here in sunny Cal," he told me with a smile.

"Oh, I bet," I said, sitting back down. "I vaguely recognize that smile, little brother... you've met a girl, haven't you?"

"I meet girls every day, Morgan," Riley reminded me, trying to draw me off of the subject. "Big university, teaching assistant for a big class, fraternity brother... any of this ringing a bell?"

"A special girl," I clarified. "Special enough that even the thought and indirect mention of her is making you blush." Well, there had only been the faintest touch of a flush on little bro's cheeks before, but now that I mentioned it the color was rising steadily. "So, come on, spill. Who is she??"

"We're not here to discuss my love life," Riley reminded me in one last desperate attempt to change the subject. "I'm supposed to be briefing you on Initiative operations in the field - especially the Hostile seventeen crisis, right?"

I sighed, and then decided to let him off. He was right about the briefing thing, to start with. "Yeah, okay. I'll be expecting some serious details later though, okay? So, what's the scene?"

"Here's how it looks," Riley started. "Hostile seventeen's a bloodsucker - you know what I mean by that, right? They bagged and tagged him, and the Professor picked him as a test subject for one of her new gizmos - a brain implant that delivers an incapacitating power surge when he tries to hurt a living thing. I didn't think it would work - you'd hardly figure a vampire for having a working brain, after all. Just rotting gray matter up there... but it works. He..."

Suddenly the door to the conference room whooshed open, and Colonel Walsh was standing there. "Agent Finn, get your ass to Central, right the hell now!!"

Both Riley and I were astonished, but Riley obviously cued in that Walsh was talking to him (since I'm not an agent, I'm a special researcher,) and left the conference room heading for the section of the base known as 'central station' - the communications and command hub of the complex. "Agent Finn, you are well acquainted with a freshman by the name of Buffy Summers, aren't you?" Walsh barked out as soon as Riley was within the 'central' region. I followed, concerned about how this was going.

"Well, yeah, I'm friends, with Buffy," Riley said, in a much more casual tone of voice than Walsh was using. "You know that, Maggie..."

"Call me 'Colonel Walsh, sir' in this conversation please," Walsh told him crisply. A bunch of field agents were gathering to listen to this, and Walsh didn't seem upset by that prospect in the slightest. "In point of fact, you submitted a request to me, in my capacity as university professor, that you be excused from any teaching assistant duties with respect to Buffy Summers' presence in psych 1E6 because you were intending to pursue a romantic relationship with her."

"Yes, Colonel Walsh, sir, I did," Riley admitted.

"On the other hand, you did not make a request to have Miss Summers cleared in a security check, as all Initiative personnel are required to do for any and all individuals that they are dating?"

"Oh, man, I knew I forgot a form," Riley moaned. "But you would have been handling both of them anyways, Colonel Walsh, sir. You could have done the security clearance check yourself. Besides, we're not really dating yet."

"Oh, and what was that upstairs?" someone else called in. "Vermicelli and cacciatori sauce in the dinner nook, looked awfully 'dating' to me." Riley groaned - his own brothers were burying him now.

"As it happens, I did request that security check," Walsh continued. "Quite a record - expulsion from Hemery high school in Los Angeles for burning down a gymnasium, suspicion of murder, during which Summers ran from the law, a list of suspicious incidents and disciplinary problems a mile long..."

"Excuse me, Colonel," I said, stepping forward. "What is the purpose of this interrogation, exactly?"

"Fact-finding, Miss Finn," Walsh told me snidely. "You see, about a half-hour ago, an unauthorized individual approached the track field access to the Complex, and investigated it rather thoroughly." With a touch of a remote, a picture flashed up on one of the large monitors. A pretty blonde girl. "Buffy," Riley breathed.

"Wait a second," one of the other field agents called out. "I bumped into her, on patrol, um, a week and a half ago."

"Really?" Walsh said, turning to the man who had spoken. "Where were you??"

"Um..." The soldier racked his mind. "The orchard on the top of Abbot's Hill."

"Only a stone's throw away from where Hostile Seventeen was acquired," Walsh said. "Well, I think it's a strong possibility that we have here the mysterious 'accomplice.' Which begs a question, Agent Finn. Did you conceal Summers' identity in your report of the fight because you had romantic feelings for her, or because you're already in league with her and Hostile Seventeen??"

"For god's sake," another field agent protested. "You still have no proof that Riley recognized her in that fight, Colonel Walsh, sir!"

"Message just came in on the secure server, sir," a lieutenant called over to Walsh. "We couldn't trace the origin. You'd better look at it, though."

"What?" Walsh muttered, then went over to a computer console. "I think I have all the proof I need, now! 'Soldiers. The gal you're looking for is Buffy Summers. She helps the vampires. Monitor on 168.47 Megahertz and you'll find some very interesting things!'" Walsh looked up, smiling broadly. "Someone get me a radio reciever that can recieve this frequency. Agent Finn, can you give me one good reason I shouldn't throw you into Hostile Seventeen's cage right this moment??"

"Sir," I broke in. "Even if Riley may have acted against the Initiative, his long and decent service to the cause at least merit honorable confinement until his guilt is proven beyond doubt. In secure quarters, where he can have access to what he might need to prove his innocence - not rotting in a vampire's cell."

"Whatever," Walsh shrugged. "Two of you, secure Finn according to his sister's suggestion. The rest of you, move out! I want Summers in custody before the sunrise!!"

* * * *

CORDELIA:
I shook myself out of a bored half-doze as Angel drove us past the Sunnydale city limits. Well. Here I was. Back home again, to the town I swore I'd never come back to again. Well, maybe I never 'swore' that, but I sure as hell didn't expect to be back here so soon.

But what could I do? Angel and Doyle were so determined to come here, on their harebrained scheme to protect Buffy from whatever, and so the least I could do was come help out. For one thing, I didn't want to let Doyle out of my sight for so long when I hadn't finished figuring out what I felt for him.

Quite quickly, it seemed, we were in the middle of town, zooming past Rebello Drive towards Hamilton street. I'd forgotten just how small Sunnydale is, compared to Los Angeles. Suddenly I saw a familiar profile, standing out in brilliant relief against a porch light. "Oh, my god, it's him!" I called out.

"Who?" Angel said, startled - the van waved back and forth on the road for an instant.

"A demon? A monster??" Doyle yelped. I think I might have woken him out of a light doze.

"No," I told them contemptuously. "My ex-boyfriend. Xander!"

"Who would be one person who knows Buffy," Angel realized. "Where is he... oh, there." He pulled the van over to the sidewalk and jumped out. "Hi, Xander."

"Gah! Haah!!" Xander spluttered. "You... what are you doing here??"

"Buffy's in trouble..." Angel started, but Cordelia was distracted from the rest of what he said (if indeed there was any more,) by a closer voice. Doyle, sitting right next to her.

"Well, let's go," he said, opening the sliding door to the van and unbuckling himself. When he was standing on the asphalt of the street and I still hadn't unbuckled myself, he gestured me emphatically out. "Come on out - what are you waiting for, darlin'?"

Well, waiting 'til my ex wasn't in the vicinity - that had seemed like an idea. But Doyle was giving me the Irish eyes again, and... oh, hell. I climbed out of the van and walked around the front of it, impulsively catching Doyle's hand with my own.

"Um... she was at Giles' last I saw her," Xander was telling Angel. "But that was a few hours ago - she might have gone back home to campus or something... Hi, Cordelia! Who's the new guy?"

"This is Doyle," I told Xander snidely. "He's our partner." For some reason, I bent over and kissed Doyle feelingly on the cheek. I'm not sure why I did it. There's just something about being near Xander that seems to make me more affectionate towards other guys, these days. It was probably a contributing factor in the whole Wesley debacle.

"Uh, okay," Angel said, somewhat uncertainly. "Do you know where Buffy lives on campus, Xander? The residence room number, or whatever?"

"Uh, Stevenson Hall, 224. She's rooming with Willow, now," Xander said, somewhat reluctantly.

"Aha!!" a new voice called out, rolling across the street. Looking towards it, I could vaguely see a motorcycle pull up just beyond the van, from the direction in which we had come. Doyle and I were looking straight at it, since we had come around the front of the van. Angel and Xander were facing each other, across the street. "I've come for you. Prepare for your death, half-breed!!"

I'm not quite sure what happened next, exactly. Doyle dodged sideways in a reflex action of avoidance, trying to get behind the front of the van. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that we were still holding hands, and I stumbled over a bit before letting go, with, I guess, the net result that I was standing exactly where Doyle had been two seconds earlier.

And a knife came whizzing out of the darkness, plunging into the fleshy area just beneath my shoulder. Blood started to flow, and I almost fainted right there.

"That was meant for you," the attacker cried out, and I realized that her voice was high-pitched, like a woman's. Still sounded nasty, though.

"Doyle!" Angel snapped. "You're the one she's after. Take Cordelia and get out of here, now!! You too, Xander - you're not a part of this. I'll hold her off."

"Where do I go?" Doyle muttered, but he didn't sound uncertain or panicked. Just... making sure of his plan before he took action.

"I'll stay, and watch your back," Xander broke in. Oh, god, he's doing the I-can-be-brave-too, me-fight-me-fight thing. "Go to my place - it's just down the street, four-eighty-three." There was a jangle - probably Xander tossing Doyle a key ring. "Take the side door and go down into the basement - no reason my parents need to know any of this. I've got a first aid kit, on the shelf above the clothes dryer. Now GO!"

Doyle didn't need to be told twice. He tried to grab me and lift me up, but I shrugged him off, (and wished I hadn't as the knife complained at the shrugging motion.) "I can run for myself," I muttered. Doyle extended a helping arm around my waist, kept the other hand supportively at my wrist, and I didn't complain about any of that.

Soon enough, we were lurching down a driveway, through the side door to Xander's house, and hobbling down into the basement. I collapsed down onto Xander's bed, too weak to worry about the odd associations that brought up. It was a relief from having to stand up, and it was fairly comfortable, and that was all I cared about right now.

"Come on, Cordy," Doyle said after a moment, crawling half onto the bed to sit beside me. More odd feelings about that! "We're gonna have to get this knife out, and there's only one way to do that. It's going to hurt, but I'm gonna need you to be strong, Cordelia, and not writhe or cringe enough that you widen the wound. Okay??" I had my eyes closed, but I couldn't miss the concern and caring in his voice - mixed with just a tinge or fear.

"Hand..." I muttered. "Gimme your hand," I muttered, lifting up my right forearm. Doyle's hand found it, and I grabbed on for dear life.

The blade slipped out of my shoulder like it was on fire, but it felt better once it was out. I don't think I shuddered more than the teeniest bit, either. "Okay, now, Cordy," Doyle said again. "I'm gonna need to sew this up, and I'll need both hands for this. But you're gonna have to keep being strong, Cordelia... can you keep it up for me? Uh..." His hand left mine. "Talk to me. Talk to me, Cordelia."

"Do you... really know... how to... give people... stitches?" I managed to mutter.

"Oh, yeah," Doyle said with a laugh. "Third grade teacher, remember? Advanced first aid certification was part of the training. After all, when you're looking after twenty eight-year olds, you've gotta be ready for anything. Kids that age are always cutting themselves and what not." He sighed at me. "Come on, Cordy, stay with me. Say something else."

"I... I..." I groaned. "I can't think of anything to say. Sorry."

"That's good enough," Doyle said. "Okay, done here. Oh, wait," he forestalled, pushing me back down when I tried to stand up. "Should put a bandage on it too. And you need to rest..."

"I'm feeling better now, honest," I told him as he bandaged. "Why don't you come up with a topic, Doyle? Anything you want, the first thing that pops into your head."

"Why were you using me to make your ex jealous??" A pause followed that question. "Oh, man, I can't believe I just said that."

"No, no, it's okay," I assured him. "I said anything you wanted to ask. Well, I wasn't doing it on purpose, really. It's just... oooh, I don't know how to explain it. Ever since I broke up with Xander, there's just... I dunno, it's like I've got a compulsion to hit on other guys when he's around. Last year, there was this whole big thing with an older guy - the replacement watcher, Wesley." I sighed. "It doesn't mean that I don't like you, Doyle... just that... oh, I don't know." I breathed out a frustrated sigh.

"Oh, okay," Doyle murmured, and I could hear the disappointment in his voice. "Well, I'm done here." He smoothed out my bandage. "You feeling okay now?"

"Well, yeah, I think so," I told him, sitting up and looking myself over. "Oh, god - my dress is covered in blood now!" It was, too - icky and nasty and red spreading over and underneath the purple tunic. I stood up and pulled the tunic off. "Could you see if there's any club soda on that shelf?" I asked Doyle. "That's the only way that this will ever come anything close to clean."

But Doyle didn't move. He was staring at me as I stood in just my leather bustier and black leggings, in the middle of Xander's basement. Oops!

* * * *

GILES:
"Okay, let's get this straight," I said, looking closely at the map Buffy had presented me with - the one she said had been left in her room, with the note from Spike written on it. "You, uh, you followed these directions, that Spike left you, and found a locked and secured tool shed on the edge of the track field. You suspect that this an entry into the base of the masked soldiers, and you plan to go in? Alone??"

"I have to figure out what they're up to, Giles," Buffy told me. "I have to know why they're capturing vampires and what they're doing with them. Why else were we looking for the soldier's hideout, if not to investigate it in person??"

I sighed longsufferingly. "Well, at least see if we can monitor them for a time - try to develop a plan. For one thing, we might as well wait and see if Willow finds anything out about their organization using her computer search."

As if on cue, an insistent if quiet pounding rang out on my front door, and Willow Rosenberg's voice cried out. "Giles!! Let me in, please. Buffy? Giles?? Is anyone there!?"

I got up, leaving the map on the coffee table, rushed over to the door, which Buffy must have locked at some point, and let the frantic young witch in. "Spike!!" Willow burst out. "And Harmony, and a big demon with blue-green skin and spikes growing out of his face!!"

"What the..." Buffy said, upset, running into the foyer right behind me. "Where was this?? In the room again??"

"Nope," Willow said, shaking her head. "In the computer lab. I had just hacked into this top-secret database - Association for United states security, project demon, sunnydale initiative. I was sure that it was about the soliders, but all of a sudden, 'they' were there. Harmony was about to bite me, and the demon grabbed me. I had to use a 'stun' word to get away. I ran straight back here."

"Did they follow you?" Buffy asked, a suspicious look crossing her face.

"Uh..." Willow thought about that for a second. "No, I really didn't see them once I got out of the lab. Uh, why??"

"Then that means they could have..." I muttered.

"Did you leave the connection open when you ran away?" I asked. "Would Spike and the others have been able to get into this 'Initiative's systems??"

"Well, I guess maybe," Willow admitted. "If they know how to use a UNIX network bridging program..."

"Hmm. Sounds unlikely," Buffy decided. "But stranger things have happened. Okay now." She led Willow back into the living room. "Well, anyways. Spike left me a map in the room..."

"Who left it to you?" Willow asked. "Sorry - I didn't quite hear you."

"Spike??" Buffy repeated. "William the Bloody, the vampire who we've known for about two years now, on and off. Was in your residence room, the soldiers were about to drag him off when I happened on the scene." Her words were full of frustration, but the tone she said them in was calm and not without sympathy to Willow.

"You don't have to rhyme it all off for me, Buffy," Willow told her. "I remember who Spike is. I just hadn't heard you."

"Oh, okay, sorry," Buffy said more softly. "Anyways, the map said it pointed the way to the soldiers hideout, oh, here it is." She handed the map over to Willow. "I went over to look, and there was a little tool shed there that might lead into underground tunnels or something."

"Sigh. Why is everything underground around here?" Willow sighed.

"We need to get into the complex," Buffy continued. "Do you have anything that might be useful in getting past electronic locks and stuff like that?"

"Some, in my room," Willow decided. "Magnetic card reader analyzer and strip burner, signal tappers, that kinda thing. Usual tools of the trade for an electronics whiz..."

Just at that moment, an audible whizzz was heard, and then a crash as all three of my front windows broke. "Buffy Summers," a voice called out. "We know you're in there. Come out with your hands up or we will shoot our way in!!"


Part 5

XANDER:
Doyle helped Cordelia down the street, and I turned my attention to the scary figure that had just attacked her from out of the darkness. Man. Just how do I get myself into this kinda thing? I wanna be the hero and impress people, I guess. Angel reached into the van, pulled out a baseball bat, and tossed it to me. "Be careful," he whispered.

I took a cautious step towards the enemy, and suddenly she, (was it a she? It was starting to look like one, and the voice matched up,) whipped something up from her waist. Something gun-like. "Nothing will stand between me and my target," she called out, aiming it at me. I waited until she had me locked in, plus a half-second more, and dived aside onto the grass. There was a ringing shot, but no pain - hopefully the bullet had rocketed over me.

I picked myself up and looked to see what the scary chick was up to next. It looked like she had been distracted by trying to shoot me, and had ignored Angel for a split-second. Not too bright an idea. As I watched, Angel was in mid-air, leaping at her. But when he made contact, something seemed wrong - as her body fell backwards, it was completely stiff, motionless, like a stone statue; and Angel cried out in pain as he struck at her. Angel made a fist and got ready to pound on her jaw with the bottom of it, when all of a sudden she was moving again, grabbing his arms, pinning him, (I wouldn't have thought any girl but Buffy had strength to match Angel's, but she sure seemed to.) So quickly that Angel couldn't even seem to respond, she had grabbed a weapon from somewhere - a long, sharp knife, and was bringing it to Angel's neck.

I jumped up, screaming, and got my bat into a battle-ready position to swing right into this chick's head. I guess I was calling to much attention to myself, because she looked up at me, (wow! she was gorgeous - curly blonde hair, perfect face, the works...) blinked, and suddenly it was like I was running into a clap of thunder. The sound was so loud and painful that I fell down again.

But she had forgotten about Angel again. The vampire threw her off of him, (she must have gotten ten feet into the air,) stopped to help me up, and we ran for the van. He peeled off, making a U-turn and heading back up the street the way he had come. "Check in the rear-view mirror," he told me. "Is she following us?"

The beautiful and dangerous chick dashed back to her bike and went the other way down the street. "Nope. Wrong way."

"Damn," Angel swore. "She's tailing Doyle. We've got to try and stop her before she gets to your place." He swung around in another U-turn and gunned the motor. "She's a statue warlock - can turn her whole body into stone and back with a thought. She's virtually indesctructible that way."

"She's statuesque, all right," I quipped, which earned me a dirty look from Angel. "Any idea why she's going after your friend?"

"A few," Angel admitted. "There may be people who want him dead because of what he does for me. Hang on."

I looked up, and screamed. Angel was running the van straight into statue-girl's bike, which was slowing down in front of my house. There would be a collision, just about any second now...

* * * *

WILLOW:
"We gotta get out of here!" Buffy called out. "Back door, Giles?"

"Uhhh... yes, I suppose so," Giles muttered, clearly not pleased with the prospect of people, possibly soldiers, 'shooting their way' into his house, but willing to concede that there wasn't any good alternative. "This way." He led the both of us to a pantry corridor behind the living room that I don't think I'd ever noticed before. At the end of the corridor was a small doubly-locked portal, which Giles quickly opened and cautiously opened.

"No sign of soldiers," he reported back to Buffy, and we rushed out. I closed the door behind me - we couldn't spare the time to lock it, but it would be better if it wasn't wide open and calling attention to itself when the soldiers, (or, again, whoever else was about to 'shoot their way in,') searched the house.

As if on cue, gunshots rang out, and there was the sound of glass breaking. Giles and Buffy hurried me and each other along, and we ran across the field behind Giles' building and stopped to catch our breath in a nearby patch of woods.

"Um, okay, thoughts?" Buffy asked, once we were within the cover of the trees. "Soldier guys?"

"It would certainly appear so," Giles agreed. "One would wonder what they expected to find here and why, though."

"That map!" I exclaimed. "They've got transmitters now that can be disguised in a piece of paper. What if the map had a bug on it?"

"But Spike sent me the map, or so it said," Buffy muttered. "How could the soldiers have homed in on it..."

"Unless he's playing us against each other!" I said, and everything fell into place. "He gives you the map, telling you where to find the soldiers. He gives the soldiers the information about the bug - probably using the connection I made in the computer lab - to tell the soldiers where to find the bug - and where to find you!"

"Where is that map, anyway?" Buffy asked, suddenly concerned. "We left it at your place, didn't we, Giles?"

"Uh, yes," Giles agreed. "At least, it was sitting on the coffee table, and I didn't pick it up again. Did either of you?" We shook our heads.

"Okay," Buffy muttered. "We've got two problems. There's Spike, who I can deal with now, except that I can't find him. And then there are the soldiers, who we know where to find, but don't know what to to about them."

"Let's go by the lab, see if Spike and Harmony are still there by any chance," I suggested.

"Okay," Buffy agreed, nodding. "We can go by the residence room too - you can pick up that stuff that you said might get us into Soldier HQ. Then... we really need somewhere safe to plan, and I have no idea where that might be! If Spike's told the soldiers about me... where can we go that they wouldn't think to look for us?"

"The university library," I suggested. "We've never used it as a base camp before, but it should give us everything we need."

And that, is pretty much what we did. There was no trace of Spike or Harmony at the computer lab - my computer had been logged off, and I couldn't take the time to try and figure out what had been done on it once I ran away. Our residence room was unlocked, and Buffy was sure that she had locked it, so somebody had been looking for us there. Definitely not safe to linger any longer than we had to. We took off for the library, trying to figure out what the hell we could plan that would get us out of this.

* * * *

DOYLE:
I couldn't move.

I had to move, I mean, for god's sake; it's one of those things that's a social necessity. But somehow, with Cordelia Chase herself standing right in from of me, with only stretchy black tights covering her legs, thighs, and hips... her incredible breasts jacked up by a sexy leather bustier that showed off a deep stretch of cleavage... It was as if every nerve in my body was crowding into my optic canal to catch a glimpse of the wondrous sight before me. I wasn't moving a millimeter, I think for ten seconds there I wasn't even breathing.

Then, with an incredible effort, I grabbed back control of my body and mind. "Uh... uh, what was it you wanted, Cordy? Soda pop??"

Cordy giggled at that, which set her chest into motion and almost dumped me back into a mesmerized trance. "Oopsy! No, club soda - it's like water for pop - no flavor or sugar or anything."

I went over to the shelf and took a look at it. "Uh... tonic water?"

"Eww, no," Cordelia told me. "I don't want my dress to be smelling of lemon forever. Guess that figures - Xander's family keeping the tonic stocked." She chuckled at that, though I didn't see the joke.

"Soda water?" I tried again, vainly.

"That's the stuff!!" Cordelia smiled brilliantly, running some warm tap water into a plastic bucket and holding out a hand for the soda water. I handed it to her, watching as she dumped the dress down into the bucket and poured the contents of the bottle out onto it, watching as the fizz rose.

"Um, okay..." I said, starting to get a little restless, (and still having a little trouble with Cordy's dishabille.) "We probably should me making tracks again - whoever that is who showed up and attacked us, she might still be on the trail. Can we, um, break our tracks some? Get out of the house by a back door or something?"

"Even better!" Cordelia said, grinning. "Xander was rambling on to me about this house once. The whole block has an access tunnel underground - right in there, I think. We can go along it to the other end and come up through the service access!!"

"That would be perfect!" I enthused.

"Okay, I guess I'll have to leave the dress here," Cordelia said with a sigh. "Pick it up later, if nothing happens to it. Now, if I'm right, the tunnel access is..." She stepped across the basement floor and pushed open an old-looking, rusted metal door. "Right in here, yeah. Yeah, good."

I followed her in and took a look. A foreboding tunnel corridor stretched along, doors with large and old-looking keyholes spaced evenly along one wall. Cordelia drew the door closed and set off down the tunnel at a brisk pace. As nearly as I could figure, we were doubling back now in the direction from which we had approached the Harris house, which seemed as good as the alternative.

"So, I guess you spent a lot of time with Xander," I mentioned casually. "I mean, you were dating him for what, ten months? And hanging out with him, to a varying degree of friendship, for a long time before and after."

"Ten months??" Cordelia repeated back, in a surprised and offended voice. "It can't have been that long."

"Late January to early December, right?" I shot back. "Nine and a half months. With the 'secret smoochies' period stretching back a few months before that, right?"

Cordy stopped dead and turned to face me, which made me draw in a sudden breath as I was confronted by a great view of her chest again. "How is it you know so much about my relationship with Xander??"

"I grilled Angel," I told her, shrugging.

"Well, anyways, you can't count the summer," Cordy informed me, starting to walk again. "I was out of town on vacation with my parents - I didn't see Xander the whole time." All of a sudden, the tunnel passed through a low archway, with a tight and cramped staircase on the other side.

Cordy hesitated a second, shrugged, and headed up the stair. I was uncomfortably aware of the height advantage Cordelia Chase had on me, though it was a disadvantage in this case - she had to worry about bumping her head into the close ceiling, while I was short enough to avoid that particular hassle. Somehow I wasn't particularly happy about that. I was also aware of the view I was getting of Cordy's, um, tight end. Too bad there wasn't much light.

The staircase ended up in a very cramped rise, just big enough to let someone out. Cordelia pushed the door open, took a quick look around, and stepped out onto the street. I followed her, noticing that this door, also, had no knob on the outside, and a very obvious lock. There would be no getting back in this way, once we left.

Three steps out of the stairwell, just as I was about to turn to Cordelia and ask her where we should go next, (not meaning to be a wussy and let her make all the decisions, but this is her turf, you know...) I was interrupted just as I opened my mouth.

A loud, ringing crack of thunder echoed through the sky above us, followed within a few seconds by a soaking downpour of rain. Cordelia looked to the heavens, her skimpy clothes pretty much soaked through in seconds. "You gotta me kidding me! This top is leather!!" she complained.

"Uh," I spluttered, trying to talk without letting too much water run into my mouth. "Do you know anywhere..."

"Ummm, let's see," Cordy said, spinning around, trying to get her bearings. Once again I tried not to stare too hard at the showcase of her figure that that afforded me. Damn, but she looked good. "Oh, right, the bad part of town, of course. There's the Bronze - it's right down this way." She took my hand, (oh, the touch of her hand,) and led me down the crossing avenue. A rain-soaked block later, we approached a piquant nightclub with sultry music coming from inside. A few patrons hurried from their cars to the door as we approached, but we didn't have any hurry left.

"Hey," Cordy said as she pushed open the door.

"Two bucks cov-" a doorman started, breaking off as he saw Cordelia's skimpy clothing, absolutely plastered to her body after all the rain. "Two bucks cover," he said, more gruffly. "Each."

"Uh..." Cordy patted various parts of her outfit, but there were no pockets and definitely no wallets. "I'm a little short this time, Mike. Can you spot me some? You know I'm good for it."

"Who is that?" 'Mike' asked. "Oh, my god, Cordelia Chase? I thought you were in L.A., getting your star on the walk of fame!"

"I'm working on it," Cordy teased him back. "Just taking a break from shooting on my movie. So, how about it?"

"Hmm... loan money to the infamous Cordelia Chase?" Mike grinned and shook his head. "Nope. Not a chance."

I opened my mouth to say that I'd got a little money, but Cordy tapped me twice on the back of the arm, where Mike couldn't see. "Oh, come on." she cooed, "Just a few bucks. I'll pay you back."

"Oh, like the twenty I spotted you in '97?"

"I'll pay it all back," Cordy promised him, with a little half-pout. "Come on." Mike sighed and pulled out a few bills to drop into his own money organizer. "A little more? Enough for a few hot ciders? We're soaked and cold, you know..." Mike was shaking his head at both of us now, but he handed her a ten-dollar bill.

"Boy, I'd forgotten how much fun that is!" Cordelia chirped as she led me to a private booth. "God, Doyle, you look like that rain hit you bad."

I wasn't actually feeling too bad, though the sour look on my face did have something to do with the rain. I'd been surpressing a sneeze ever since we came into the building, and right then, as I slid into the booth, that sneeze burst out of my mouth.

Just like I'd dreaded, my face exploded back into its demon configuration. I could feel the spikes sprouting out of my cheeks and forehead. I shook it back as quickly as I could, but the damage was done.

Cordelia was staring at me. I wasn't sure if she was going to scream or run away or what. And then, she crumpled to the Bronze's floor in a faint.

* * * *

RILEY:
Morgan led the two guards to the number three conference room, and the guards dragged me along between them. Unlocking the door with a punched-in code, my big sister turned to the guards, (so recently, they were part of my platoon.) "You can go. I'll be in here with Riley for a little while."

They didn't buy it at all. "You're dismissed," Morgan repeated. "That's an order. Walsh put me in charge here."

"With the stipulation that Riley was secure," one of they guys told her. "We can't leave that up to you."

"Fine," Morgan snapped. "Stand out here and guard the door if you like. I'm going inside to talk to my brother." With a sidelong glance and a shrug, the boys let go of my arms, and I followed Morgan through the door. She closed it firmly behind us, then turned to me.

"Okay, spill it. Who's this Buffy? This is the blush girl, am I right?"

I took a second to place the reference - Morgan had known that there was a girl in my life now, and that she was making me blush by talking about it. "Yeah. That's Buffy."

"What do you know about her?"

"Not much, I guess," I admitted. "She's a freshman in the psych class, as you already know. Um... bit of a party girl, skating fan. She's peculiar. You'd love her."

Morgan shook that information off. "Where does she come from? What do you know about her past, besides what Walsh just mentioned??"

"Um..." I stalled. "She's been here in Sunnydale for a few years, took most of high school here. Originally from L.A."

"Okay," Morgan said, nodding grimly. "Now, you may not want to hear this, Riley, but you need to. Your ass is on the line here, and one way or another it all comes down to this Buffy girl. If she is consorting with vampires, the only way to get you off the hook is for you to help take her down. And if she isn't, clearing her name is the only way to clear yours."

"But..." I stammered. "How are you gonna figure that out?"

"I'm gonna do what I do best," Morgan told me with a smile. "In-depth research."

* * * *

ANGEL:
Xander screamed, as if I was actually about to run into the motorcycle. Yeah, right. I turned aside at just the right moment to rush right past the assasin, (or whatever 'she' was,) with the side of the van passing just a finger's width from her right leg and right handlebar. Sure enough, she rose to the bait, gunning after us, but I floored the pedal and the van, (which had no slouch of an engine,) finally lost her as we spun around Weatherly park.

"What... are you just letting her go?" Xander muttered. "She's just gonna go back and find Cordelia and that friend of yours... at my house..."

"Which she never got a good look at," I told Xander, "and probably she can't even remember which one it is, now. Doyle and Cordelia will have moved on by now, anyways. I hope." A few raindrops started to fall on the windshield, then increased into a steady rain. "We can't run interference forever. The best thing for me to do now is try to find Buffy - to help with the original danger that Doyle foresaw. Then we can worry about the new problem. Maybe Giles can help research a way to defeat a statue warlock."

"Hmm..." Xander considered that, then shrugged. "I'm not really sure where Buffy would be by now. She was at Giles' the last I knew, but she could be just about anywhere."

"Well, we'll try Giles' first, then go on into campus," I decided. "Does that sound cool??" Xander just shrugged.

I started off for Giles' condominium, which was most of the way across town, and thought to myself. What was I going to say, when I actually did run into Buffy? It was awkward enough with Xander... well, it was always awkward with Xander, considering that he pretty much hated me. But it would be worse with Buffy - it would have to be. What would I say?

It would be easiest, I suppose, if nothing needed to be said at first. If I showed up in the middle of some fight or something, where I could just start in, getting the job done, and let the fighting break the ice. Would I be that lucky?

"Hey," Xander said as we got near to the complex. A shadowed individual, in a strange-looking mask and carrying a rifle, was walking from the courtyard to a large brown sedan!



Part 6

CORDELIA:
"Hey." The word penetrated my unconscious fog, but I was too out of it to pay very much attention to it. "Hey, Cordelia. Here, have a bit of this." I could feel a warm, smooth surface pressing against my bottom lip, and then a trickle of even warmer liquid spilled into my mouth. In fact, it was hot, and fruity, and spicy. It tasted good, and I swallowed.

Boy, that felt good. My level of energy started to rise, and with it I regained some sense of awareness. Where was I? From the sense of touch I could tell that I was sitting, or actually, I was propped up on some kind of bench seat and lying half against a wall.

Okay, next step. Visual information? Would it be okay if I opened my eyes? No way to know but trying it. I cracked my eyelids open. Okay, this isn't too bad. No bright lights wherever I was. Slowly, focus came to the images I saw. One image in particular. Doyle.

With that, a rush of memories came back to me. Coming back to Sunnydale, being attacked by something and hiding out in Xander's basement together, moving on to the Bronze... and Doyle's face going demonic for a split-second as he sneezed. Could that last memory be right? Or was it just the wanderings of a freely associating subconscious mind?

Then again, if Doyle wasn't a demon, why the heck was I regaining consciousness in the Bronze??

"Ah, good, you're awake again," Doyle was saying with a concerned smile. "Why don't you take this?" He put the glass he had been holding to my lips down onto the table, and I noticed that there was another glass on the other side of the table, in front of Doyle himself. "I remembered that you had been wanting the hot ciders, so I got one for each of us."

Oh, right, I had mentioned that while I was doing my flirty coquette routine on the doorman. And the ten-spot I had charmed out of Mikey was still tucked into my tights, so Doyle had stumped for the ciders himself. Not a bad sign.

"Uh..." I said, "what happened? Why did I?"

"I dunno," Doyle said. "I guess the cold and rain outside took a little bit too much out of you. You just passed out as we were about to sit down. Maybe you needed that hot cider a little bit sooner, huh?"

Yeah, right. That was a non-explanation if I'd ever heard one, which meant that there was no good reason for why I had fainted. Which meant, in turn, that what I had seen was real - Doyle was a demon of some kind. The question is, what do I do about it?

I took a sip of the cider as I thought, and then a more substantial swig. You know, come to think about it, this explains a lot. Angel has, from time to time, treated Doyle like he was a 'fellow creature of the night,' or something like that. Or hinted that I was the only real human in the office. And then there's the visions thing - that kinda smacks of non-human powers. So there's a good chance that Angel knows about all this, which means, in turn, that Doyle's not really an evil demon assasin sent here to kill us, or spy on us, or anything. He's a good demon, then, and his reasons for working with Angel are pretty much what he said that they were.

The big question, then, is how knowing what Doyle might be changes how I feel for him personally. I don't know about that one. I didn't even know for sure how I felt about him personally fifteen minutes ago, for that matter. I helped myself to another draught of the hot cider, and smiled over at Doyle, trying not to let my nervousness show. "So, what's the plan now? We've covered our tracks pretty well from whoever or whatever was chasing you, Doyle," I whispered. "Do we stay lost? I mean, that'll keep you as safe as possible, but it also means that we can't help out with whatever Angel's doing. And if someone's chasing Angel while he tries to save Buffy, well, he could be in a lot of trouble." I sighed at the thought.

"We stay lost for a little while longer, say, half an hour, or a little bit more," Doyle suggested. "Then we try to find some other way to get in touch with Buffy direct, not having any more to do with the channels Angel would be taking than we can help. Cool?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a good plan, actually," I said, smiling at Doyle, and drinking another mouthful of the cider. The glass was more than half empty now.

"So, uh, Xander said that he expected Buffy to be at this Mister Giles, right?" Doyle waited for me to nod before he continued. "So we won't go to Giles' - we'll try the campus first. 224 Stevenson Hall, right? That's the room number he said, I think."

"I think so," I agreed. "You're being very take charge, you know. You're take-charge-Doyle again. Harry said you used to be take-charge and I couldn't believe that, but you're getting a little take-charge again."

"Oh-kay," Doyle muttered, somewhat bemused and amused.

"But you know, I'm pretty take-charge myself - I was the one who asked you out first, and..."

Doyle broke in, cutting me off. "You know, Cor, I think you might be psyching yourself a little bit here. Just for the record, there's no booze in these ciders, so you can stop acting like you're getting sloshed."

"I knew that," I told Doyle with my best offended voice. Actually, I hadn't, not for sure, since I knew that Doyle had gotten the drinks and I knew that he did drink alcoholic things. I think, actually, on a certain level, I had been wondering if it might be 'hard' cider, and maybe I'd gotten into the spirit a little. Who says that I'm not a good actress?? "I just happen to be a little talkative tonight, that happens with me sometimes. So there."

"So, okay," Doyle said with a wide smile, taking a swig from his own drink.

"So..." I repeated, deep in thought. How do I bring it up? How do I tell him that I know what he is, or at least that I know he's not human. I think he knows that I saw, but he's hoping that I forgot when I fainted or something. How do you broach that kind of topic in conversation?

I couldn't think of anything right away, and our dialog slipped down to the 'ocasional small talk' level. And then, just as we were each finishing off our drinks, a slow song started to play, with a provocative, familiar, guitar line. Oh, right, 'My father's eyes.' And yes, I know that Eric Clapton is no longer the rocker he was years ago, but I can't help it - I'm wild about that tune. "I love this song," I said to Doyle, smiling suggestively. "Would you like to dance?"

"God, yes," Doyle shot back at once, so I got up and walked to the edge of the dance floor, waiting for Doyle to join me. He stepped up and took one of my hands in his own, putting the other around my waist and on the small of my back. Quite gentlemanly. I started to sway to the music as the saxophone, or whatever it was, joined in.


"Sailin' down, behind the sun,
Waiting for my - prince to come.
Praying for, the healing rain -
To restore... my soul again.
Just a toe-rag - on the run.
How did I get here? What have I done??
When will all my... hopes arise?
And how will I know him,
When I look in my father's eyes??"

"I know. Doyle," I whispered softly into his ear. "I know that you're a... well, I'm not quite sure what, but you're not human."

"Oh, no." Doyle tried to pull away, his face hanging down in shame. but I kept a grip on his hand with my own and kept my other hand firm at the back of his neck.

"No... don't run away from me," I whispered to him. "Stay, please."


"Then the light begins to shine,
And I hear those ancient lullabies.
And as I watch this seedling grow,
Feel my heart start to... overflow.
Where do I find... the words to say?
How do I teach him? What do we play??
Bit by bit - I realize...
That's when I need them. That's when I need my father's eyes."

"You're my friend, Doyle," I continued once the chorus has started again. "Whatever you are, that's not going to change."

Doyle looked up at me, and I realized that there was a trace of tears in his eyes. "How can you know that, Cordelia? Everything changes."

"Well, I know this. Right this moment, you're my friend, and I'm yours."

Doyle smiled, and I could see the glad relief written all over his face. "I'm half demon, Cordelia - my mother was human, but my father was a Thysian demon. He could take human form, and so can I, but sometimes when I lose concentration - when I sneeze, or I'm in pain, or something like that, I look like a Thysian."

"And they... you know, got married?" I said. "Weird."


"When the jagged edge appears,
Through the distant - clouds of tears.
An' I'm like a bridge that was washed away.
My foundations were made of clay.
As my soul... slides down to die:
'How could I lose him? What did I try??'
Bit by bit, I realize,
That he was here with me -
I'd looked into my father's eyes!"

"You've actually seen me in demon form before, Cordelia," Doyle continued. "At that bachelor party, you saw a demon crawling out from behind a chair, and clobbered him with a silver serving platter. That was me. Rick and his Ani-Movic demon kin had..."

"Oh, my god," I breathed, interrupting him. "I'm sorry, Doyle, I'm really sorry. They'd pounded on you bad enough that you couldn't keep your human form, and then I clobbered you more."

"Well, actually, I lost human form because I was mad, not because I was hurt, that time," Doyle quickly corrected me. "At first. But yeah, I took a few lumps during that fight."

He was staring into my eyes, bringing his face closer to mine, and I jumped. I couldn't help it, I just flashed to that ucky monster face for an instant. "Okay, I guess that answers the question I couldn't figure out how to ask," Doyle said, backing away a little bit himself. I opened my mouth, about to tell him that it wasn't like that, not really, but Doyle talked over me. "You know, wouldja look at the time. We'd better be heading off for the university campus now, hadn't we?"

I sighed. The song was dying away. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." I caught Doyle's hand as we left the Bronze. The rain had stopped.

* * * *

FORREST:
"Damn," I muttered to myself as I got into the unmarked car. I activated the scrambled radio. "Gates here," I muttered softly into the microphone. "Looks like they got out of the condo unit somehow. There's a back way out of the building. We found the transmitter - it was included on a map - marking the location of the track field aperture, and a message from a 'big bad bloody spike,' or something, saying that the map points the location to 'the masked soldiers.'

"That clinches it - they've got our number," Walsh said over the radio. "No mercy, no measures are to be spared in dealing with these people. They're out to destroy everything we've worked for."

"Copy that," I said. "The boys will be out soon - where should we head?"

"Drive up to campus, keep the line open," Walsh suggested. Sure enough, my guys came out to the car in a minute and a half, and I started to drive over to campus. We had been a while searching the condo - too long, maybe - I should have reported in sooner. But I didn't want to leave while there was any possible hiding spot. Who knew where they could be by now?"

"I've got a target sighting," a new voice said over the radio. "Summers, Rosenberg, and the old librarian. They're just leaving Stevenson Hall now."

"Got it," Graham answered. "I'm just around the corner - should we intercept?"

"Do that," Walsh said. "But no uniforms on the first approach - remember that she's looking for us. Wearing the masks will just alert her that we are her target. Send the leading men in wearing civilian clothes. They'll distract while sharpshooters further distant can try to tag them using the shock rifles."

"Copy that," Graham said. "It'll take me a minute to arrange all that and close for an ambush."

"We can be there by then," I promised, pushing the gas pedal to the floor.

I didn't notice, at the time, that a van was following my car.

* * * *

STONE:
Snarling, I set out in a wide circle around the edge of town. My prey may have escaped me for now, but I'd catch the scent again soon enough. I wasn't the best for nothing.

As my bike zoomed down the street, I noticed something unusual. Three people were walking into town from someplace a little further out. However, they weren't people in the human sense. Two were vampires, and one was a demon. Well, who knows. A few fellow creatures of the night might have some useful information for me, though I hardly know what questions I might ask them.

"Hello!" I called, braking to a stop in front of them. "You wouldn't happen to have seen a short little half-demon around here, would you have? Dark hair, leprechaun face, has visions?"

"What, Doyle?" the tall man-vampire said, with an expression of confused recognition on his face. "Not around here, no. He's in L.A. with that putz Angel."

"Not any more," I shot back. "If it's the same guy we're talking about, and it sounds like. He and his friends drove up here tonight."

"Well, don't that just beat it all," the vampire said. He was speaking with a lower-class British accent, and he was ogling me. The pretty little girl-vampire beside him was noticing it too, because she nudged him in the side. I chuckled under my breath at that.

"I'm Stone," I announced, stretching out a hand to greet the guy. "Bounty hunter on contract to kill this 'Doyle.' And you are?"

"Spike," the vampire said. "These two with me are Harmony," here he gestured to the girl, "and Doctor D'Morte." That was the older demon/man. Spike was pretty handsome, and I could see why Harmony was so protective of him. He seemed to like my looks too, which was a plus. "We're... well, we're scheming to set the Slayer and local demon-hunters at each other's throats instead of at ours."

"Sounds like a good thing," I told him with a smile. "Well, if you can't help me, I had better be of- oh, damn! There he goes!" A bus was zooming down the cross-street, and in the window I could see that short little twerp. "I must away!" I called, backing the bike up to drive off.

"We'll catch up with you!" Spike called.

"What did you say that for?" Harmony complained as I drove off. "You just wanna do her, don't you??"

"Now, perhaps a return to the campus might be appropriate," D'Morte suggested. "Events may be moving quickly without us..."

* * * *

BUFFY:
We were getting close to the Library when I heard the voice. "Buffy! Willow!! Wait up!" I didn't really feeling like talking to anybody but Willow and Giles, so I tried to pretend I hadn't heard whoever it was. But I guess he ran to catch up with us. In fact, a pack of four guys in frat jackets came jogging up and around to intercept the three of us.

"Uh, yeah?" I asked. "What is it??"

"Yeah, um, I'm not sure if you remember me," the lead frat guy said. "My name is Dan, I met you at the Lowell house party last night, and there was something I was wanting to say to you."

Oh, god, what was it now? "Go on," I sighed, gesturing impatiently.

Instead of speaking, though, the frat-boy sucker-punched me in the face, knocking me to the ground. "Stay out of our business!" the frat boy yelled. I was back up in a second, but all the frat guys were rushing at us. Oh, god. Frat-boy vampires? Or were they soliders out of uniform? Strange demons, cultists? It was hard, to say, just that they wanted a fight. Well, I was just the Slayer to give them one.

I wound up to give the leader my meanest right hook, and accidentally bashed my elbow into Willow's eye. "Oww!" my redheaded best friend exclaimed in pain and surprise.

"Sorry!" I said, mortified. "Spread out, spread out. Room to fight, I need room to fight." Willow and Giles backed away, and I started to get into serious ass-kicking mode. And I did. There was nothing that these guys could do that could match my moves. They were pretty good at self-defense - I had to keep on my toes to keep the upper hand over them, but they weren't hardly doing anything to counterattack.

They weren't vampires, I could tell that much. Which meant that I couldn't stake them, and wasn't exactly sure what to do with them once I beat them up. Oh, well, time enough for that later. For now, I let loose with a dizzying series of punches and kicks. trying to do as much damage, (non-fatal damage, hopefully,) as I could as quickly as I could.

"Buffy!" a new voice called. "Look out! This... this is it! This is when it's happening."

"When what's happening?" I asked. But I recognized that voice. I looked over, and there was Angel, standing maybe a hundred feet away. I also saw that there were a few masked soldiers. "What are you doing here?"

"Buffy..." Angel called out. "Turn around. Willow and Giles..." I spun in place, roundhousing one of the jacket-boys as I went. Willow and Giles were lying prone on the ground, and as I watched, soldiers in masks hurried up to them and started to carry them away. I tried to save them, but a few of the jacket-boys got in the way, and once I had cleared them out, another soldier took aim at me. Only by ducking and tumbling out of the way could I avoid the first bolt of blueish energy. Another lanced into my foot, and it went partway numb - I had difficulty getting back to my feet. By that time Willow and Giles were being dragged away.

"Xander!" Angel called out. Xander? I turned around to where Angel had been, and saw that Xander was also being dragged away. Had Xander and Angel arrived on the scene together? Why was Angel here, anyway? And why were the soldiers kidnapping my friends? A new series of energy bolts came rocketing towards me. I wanted to go, to save my friends, but I knew that the only way I could avoid being captured or worse myself was to fall back and take evasive action.

"Um... some help over here?" I called to Angel, rolling back down to a crouch and craning my head around to see which soldiers were where.

"On my way," Angel yelled back.

* * * *

MORGAN:
"Yeah, that was the name they said," the voice on the other end of the line said. "Buffy Summers, class protector. That was the girl who I had seen earlier killing this huge, horrendous, animal-thing outside the cloak room."

"Okay, thanks," I told the guy. "Is there anything else you can tell me about Miss Summers?"

"Naw, I never really met her except that one time. I didn't go to Sunnydale High - I went to Fonderin High. I was just at the prom because I was dating Janey Manton last may, and she went to Sunnydale. So I went to Janey's prom, and she went to mine. But Janey said that something really went down at graduation, and that that Buffy chick was right in the middle of it..."

"I've heard about the graduation incident," I told him. "Thank you very much for all your help." I hung up the phone and considered what I'd learned so far. Buffy Summers had been involved in a lot of strange incidents, true, but in all the cases that I could probe into in-depth, she seemd to have been responsible for killing inhuman creatures and saving human lives. She wasn't a collaborator with vampires - she was a vampire-killing heroine.

And more than that - not only did she behave with courage and dispatch, but a lot of her strange behavior seemed to be trying to uncover these monstrous creatures. She was seeking them out to destroy them. And she, or someone working with her, knew their beasties - probably better than I or anyone in the Project did.

Besides all this, there was only one strange thing in all the material I'd been able to find out about Buffy Summers. A word that popped up a few times, in different forms. Slay. Slaying. Wait a second. Slayer... the slayer... that rang a bell. Yes, of course! "Legends of the champions" mentioned a vampire slayer. I reached into my duffel bag and rooted out the heavy tome. (And I thought I had been foolish to bring this many reference books with me from Massachusetts.) Let's see - the knights of the true order of silver... the warrior women of Artemis... the golden drake... countless dozens of others... ah, here it was at last.

"The slayer of vampires: In each generation, there was born one girl who would become the Vampire Slayer... she alone in all the world posessed the strength to fight the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness... when one Slayer died, the next was called..." I looked over the rest of the entry. It didn't seem to imply that there were Slayers even at the time the book was written, which was sometime in the 1500's, but it didn't say outright that there weren't. And if a new Slayer is called whenever one dies, the series would have to continue indefinitely... wouldn't it?

I had enough evidence now. It all hung together. I called Walsh up on the intercom. "Corporal Walsh, it's Morgan Finn here," I opened up. "I think you're making a big mistake on Buffy Summers. I've done my own investigtion on her and I think she's not what you think she is. She's on the side of humanity, just like we are."

"Impossible," Walsh snapped. "She's consorted with vampires."

"So have we," I snapped, "especially in the eyes of one who doesn't fully understand what we're doing here. If you pursue Summers, they you are the one who's putting this operation in danger, not mine. Call off the field troops immediately."

"I will do no such thing," Walsh told me. "Go back to Boston, Researcher Finn. Immediately. That is a direct order from a superior officer. To refuse will be considered treason to the cause - do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," I muttered, and broke the connection. "You are emotionally unfit to command this Initiative, Walsh - that is what I see most clearly. And I will do whatever I need to do to see you relieved of that command. And to clear Riley's name. And to save Buffy's life." I paused for a second. "Oh, god, now I'm talking to myself. Help."


Part 7

DOYLE:
"Uh, where the heck are we?" I asked, looking out the window of the bus. "There's no lights out there, except for the streetlamps. Are you sure we're headed for the University?"

"Umm... I think so," Cordelia told me, a cutely uncertain look on her face. With that, she scampered across the aisle of the bus, sat down beside me, and took a searching look out of my window. "Oh, yeah," she decided finally, a bright smile crossing her gorgeous face. "The university is past the city limits, and there's a stretch of undeveloped land in between - farm, field, pasture... I'm not sure what exactly. We should be getting there soon." Sure enough, lights and buildings were starting to appear ahead.

"Hey, driver, driver!" Cordy called up ahead to the front of the bus. "Could you drop us off at the stop for Stevenson Hall?"

The bus braked to a sudden stop. "This is it, lady," the driver called back.

"Here?" I asked. There were no buildings around yet.

"It's just up ahead," the driver told us, "but this is my closest stop. Your other choice is in riding as far as the student union and trudging back. This is less of a walk."

"You couldn't make a little unscheduled stop, just for us?" Cordy asked, walking up to the driver and inhaling so as to make the most dramatic impression possible on any male. The outfit helped a lot - I would have done whatever she asked.

Unfortunately, the driver didn't. "Sorry, toots," he told Cordelia, shaking his head. "Transit regulations. You getting off?"

Cordelia sighed loudly, letting out the breath she had been holding. "I guess. C'mon, Doyle." She flashed a striking 'now why did you have to do that' scowl at the driver as I headed up to the door, and we walked out. The bus doors closed and it pulled away.

As I stood there, getting accustomed to the lower level of light out here, I saw something very unusual. A bunch of masked guys were carrying, leading or dragging three people away. A fraternity prank of some kind? "Hey, look," I said, nudging Cordelia on the arm to draw her attention to the unusual sight.

Cordelia looked, and her eyes went round. "Xander??" she breathed, amazed. "Xander, is that you?"

One of the people being led away turned his head up and around instinctively. "Cordy?" he called out disbelievingly. It was her ex-boyfriend, Xander!

"Giles? Willow??" Cordy asked, evidently recognizing the others too.

"Oh, shit," one of the other guys said, taking out a threatening-looking thing, midway between a metal pole, a rifle, and a tv antenna. "We'll have to take them too. Brandon?" One of the other guys was taking out some kind of weapon too.

"Cordy, get outta here!" Xander called out as bolts of energy or electricity came out of the weapons. Cordelia dived out of the way and tumbled in a somersault along the ground, getting away from the soldiers. I wasn't so lucky.

I had done my best to take evasive action too, but the shock ray caught me in the legs, and all of a sudden they had gone dead. I sprawled out on the ground, turned up, and found Cordelia, who had gotten to her feet again. "Get outta here, Princess!" I roared as loudly as I could. It was the only think I could think to do to keep her safe.

Cordy turned, shot me one last look, and ran away. One of the weapon-boys took aim at her, but Xander plowed into him, knocking him off balance, and the shock ray went wide. And then she was gone, a tiny figure disappearing behind one of the buildings. God, but she could run!

Next thing I knew, the soliders were grabbing me and roughly dumping me alongside Xander. "That wasn't smart," our captor informed the both of us. "You'll see why not soon. Now, we're going back to the base now. Any more trouble is going to mean we blast you unconscious and carry you in. Is that understood?"

I stared defiantly back up for a few seconds, then nodded slightly. "Understood," Xander whispered.

* * * *

ANGEL:
I stared vaguely for a second to the direction in which Xander had been dragged off. That was my fault - Xander had been my responsibility. Then another cry came out from over the hill: "Angel!" and I shook myself out of it. There were other things to do now, and another person to help.

I moved cautiously towards Buffy, keeping myself aware for any more threatening moves by the human beings that surrounded me. A soldier yelled out loud in a gutteral vowel and shot his energy weapon at me, but I was ready for that. I dived at him, the blueish bolt passing over me, and yanked his feet out from under him.

Quickly, the poor sap was out cold from having the back of his head knocked firmly into the ground, and his gun was in my hand. I spun around, firing at any more enemy figures I could see, and several of them were hit and collapsed. I ran the rest of the way over to Buffy, who had also gotten the bright idea of using the soldier's weapons against them.

"Nice to see you again," I muttered, nodding as I stepped up to Buffy. "Any clue who these guys are?"

"What the hell are you doing here, Angel?" Buffy asked, staring up at me with disbelief. "Uh, they're army vampire hunters, we think. They caught Spike, but he busted out. Seem to think I'm playing for the away team."

"And me, too, probably," I said, suddenly realizing the implications. An armed forces special division that knew about vampires. "No way they'd stop shooting long enough to listen that I'm a good vampire." I shook my head. In a way, it was surprising how easy it was to just slide back into the partners thing with Buffy. A good thing, at this point. Bad if it led to the resurfacing of other habits... "Well, they got Giles, Willow, and Xander. Any idea where they might be based?"

"Uh... yeah," Buffy told me, an earnest memory showing in her eyes. "There's a shack outside of the track field that we think leads into an underground complex. But it's protected by all kinds of electronic locks and things. Willow was going to try to override them..." She walked over to the place where Willow and Giles had been taken, picking something up from the ground. It was a loose cloth bag, and when Buffy handed it to me, I could see that it was filled with electronic devices, for security countermeasures.

"I know a little about these kinds of things," I admitted. "But to use them well enough to break into a well-defended millitary installation..." I shook my head, aware of the odds against me, and I could see the panic starting to creep into Buffy's face.

"Don't worry," I said, reflexively putting a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. "We'll find them and we'll get them back. There's nothing to worry about..." I trailed off, suddenly very aware of the smoothness of Buffy's shoulder under the tight, stretchy top she was wearing. My god, that was a tight shirt. Sexy, too. Was... was she wearing this for someone else? Was Buffy dating again??

I shook my head a little and tried to put my thoughts in order. Buffy should be dating again. I had let her go so that she could get a more normal life for herself, and a new boyfriend would be a pleasant part of that. I was the one who had dumped her, so I couldn't complain about her dating other people.

So why did the thought of it hurt me so much?

Buffy was looking as if she was also very aware of the physical contact, and after a few seconds, she reached up, took my hand off of her shoulder, and let it fall back to my side. Point made.

All of a sudden, there were footsteps running up to us. Both Buffy and I turned, guns trained on the source of the noice. "Freeze!" we yelled out, as if with just one big ol' scary voice.

"Aahhh!" Cordelia exclaimed, stopping in place and windmilling her arms to avoid falling down. She was wearing considerably less than when I had last seen her - just a halter top and stretch pants, and despite the mildness of the night she had to be getting kinda cold. Probably she had just lost her dress, (yeah, it had gotten blood on it, hadn't it?) and this was what she had had on beneath it. "Are you guys trying to kill me now? My god, my life just flashed beyond my eyes."

"Cordelia," Buffy said disbelievingly. "What are you doing, are you here with Angel..." A jealous look crossed her face, as if contemplating the idea of Cordelia and me being with each other in a romantic sense.

But what Cordelia said next succeded in distracting Buffy completely. "Angel! Somebody's got Doyle! They zapped him and carried him off. They had Xander and Giles and Willow too."

"Doyle?" Buffy asked. "Who's Doyle?"

"He's a new friend of ours," I told her coldly, indicating that 'we' meant Cordelia and me, while a cold wash of anger rolled over me. "Where's the track field?" I asked simply, heading off in the direction the soldiers had gone with our friends. "If I can't get the electronics to work, I'll just break the door down."

"Wait, stop," Buffy said, grabbing my arm and holding me back. "Those guys... not the ones in full mask and uniform, but the guys who were in regular clothes, who distracted me at the beginning."

"Yeah?" I asked, remembering them. That was the scene Doyle had foreseen, Buffy fighting the guys in school clothes. If Doyle was hurt, there'd be hell to pay.

"They were wearing Lowell house fraternity jackets," Buffy said, as if I should know what that meant.

"Huh? Uh, so what??" Really expressive, I know, but I was surprised and more than a little bit frustrated and annoyed by this point.

"All of them," Buffy said with conviction. "Which begs the question of there's a connection between the soldiers and Lowell house... oh, my god. Riley!"

I started to ask who Riley was, but thought better of it. "So, you think we can get in from this frat house?" There was no response, and I had an impulse that I just couldn't resist. "You know, you don't have the best luck with frat houses, Buffy."

"Ha-ha," Buffy laughed dryly, leading the way off to one of the buildings in the university. "Cordelia and I got out of Zappa Kappa Delta that night, didn't we? I slayed Machida. Where's the bad??"

"Oh, my god," Cordelia moaned, following along behind me and Buffy. "Are we going to the lair of another reptile boy again?"

* * * *

XANDER:
The soldier-boys led us to a small hut on the edge of a sports field or something. Along the way, I turned to the most recent captive and whispered to him, "Hi, I'm Xander. You're Cordelia's friend, right?"

"Yeah," he answered in a distinct Irish accent. Great. Another Irish guy. "So nice to really make your acquaintance, man. I only wish it was under better circumstances."

"Don't worry," I told him, trying to be convincing. "Buffy and Angel are still out there - they'll find u--" When I broke off, it was because the barrel of one of those weird guns had cracked into my jaw. "OWW!" I finised off painfully.

"No talking," the soldier told us calmly. Leaving the rest of his friends to guard us, he walked up to the door, passed an I.D. card through a nearly invisible crack in the wood of the shack, and spoke to an obviously very particular spot above it, (though quite invisible.) "Success in Sunnydale."

"Voice clearance accepted," a synthesizer whispered, and the doors swung open. The soldiers urged us in, and I soon saw that within was a staircase leading downwards as opposed to a flat floor. The four of us were herded inside in moments, and the big wooden doors closed again. After thirty feet or so, the stairway ended in a corridor, all gleaming silvery metal, trimmed with polished white ceramic, and lit by intensely white overhead flourescents. We were led along several corridors, opening every so often on glassed-in cells. Some were empty, some had vampires in them. Others had more unusual creatures - a few demons, both recognizable and un, a giant grasshopper, (which gave me the willies remembering Natalie French the she-mantis, though this didn't seem to be quite the same variety of bug,) a hellhound... the list went on and on.

Then, in one cell, was a girl. Human girl, normal variety, at least in appearance. Quite attractive... oh, my god! It was Anya!!

"Anya!!" I rushed over to her cell, heedless of the grasping arms and forbidding voices of my captors. She heard, (this isn't soundproof glass, obviously,) and turned and dashed over to the window.

"Xander!!"

"How did you get here?" I asked. Well, this answered the question of where Anya had disappeared to after Halloween. Or did it? Well, I don't know. At least I had found her.

"Stupid move, maggot," came a voice from behind me. Oh, no. A rocketing pulse of pain slammed into the small of my back, shocking my heart, and numbing my legs. I collapsed in a pile of agonized limbs, barely conscious. As I'm sure the little jackass had wanted me. If I could get free... well, when Buffy could save us, more likely... there would be payback.

Soon, I was dragged off again, and dumped in a mostly sitting position in a large, partly open space. Words washed over me: "You stupid incompetents... I send you out after Summers, and you bring me a bunch of random passersby??"

"With respect, colonel sir, not random," one of the soldier-boys asserted. "Two of them were with Summers. Another was with a hostile who was coming to assist Summers, once we began the acquisition maneuver. The last one was part of a group of witnesses who recognized the other captives..."

"Incompetence," the first voice repeated. It was vaguely female, quite authoritarian and not at all pretty. "You can't bring in Summers. You can't bring me this hostile you mention. You apparently can't even capture all of a group of witnesses!! Can you give me one good reason..."

Another female voice interrupted her. "Ms. Walsh??" It was Willow, and she was oviously just astounded. I struggled back up to take a look at the scene.

Up on a slightly raised metal stage was a woman in a millitary green uniform, presumably the one who had been chewing the soldiers out. She looked mid-forties, attractive enough in a severe way, with short auburn hair. With a sudden gasp, she reached out, grabbed a gun, and very deliberately shot Willow in the chest. She gave one strangled cry and collapsed.

Quickly, with little formality, Walsh jogged down off of the platform, walking over to Willow, (as the guards quickly pulled the rest of us away from her, and getting quite a struggle out of Giles. I would have liked to struggle too, but I was still recovering from the jolt I took at Anya's cage.) The corporal, (that was what one of the soldiers had called her, right?) lifted Willow's unconscious face up to take a good look at it. "Rosenberg. Shit!!"

"What is it, sir?" one of the soldiers asked innocently.

"She's one of my students," the Colonel growled. Soldier-boy looked blank. "Psychology, 1E6, remember?? Now she's recognized me, and my cover is blown. Who's in command of this squad?"

"Umm... I am, sir," one of the soldiers. "Sergeant Forrest Gates, sir."

The colonel whirled on him. "Gates, it was your responsibility to clear the captives before letting them anywhere fucking near Central! Given the consequences, not having done so is the most egregious negligence, and I'll have you..."

"With respect, Walsh, sir," another soldier called out. "What does it matter if she knows who you are? We've got them already!"

"Well, yes," Walsh snarled. "But since she's seen through my cover, what do we do with them? We're not authorized to hold civillian humans - if they haven't broken laws or colluded with Hostiles." The loose-mouthed soldier started to speak again, but Walsh beat him to it. "Throw them in the tanks. That's an order. Dismissed!!" She turned and stalked off.

We were hurried off again and tossed into one of the glass-walled cages. "Walsh," I said to Giles once the others had gone away. "I think that scary lady was Professor Walsh - Buffy and Willow's psychology teacher."

"If you hadn't told me," Giles said with heaping sarcasm, "I would never have guessed it. Should we really be talking openly? God only knows what kind of spying equipment 'they' have trained on us in here."

"They're not paying any attention if they do," Doyle spoke up. "We were dumped in here so we they could worry about more pressing problems. And look at all the captives they've got." Doyle gestured to the fairly full 'tank' of confinement cells. "They wouldn't have tossed us in here just so that they can catch us trying to break out again. And except for that, there's no reason that they'd be paying particular attention to us at all."

"That sounds quite reasonable," Giles said. "Um... excuse me... but who are you, anyways, young man?"

"Allen Doyle," he said, holding out a hand. "I'm a friend of Angel's, and Cordelia's."

Giles breathed a sigh of surprised relief. "So is Angel in Sunnydale too? That seems good news under the circumstances."

"He is," I told Giles, since I had been the last one to actually see him. "Dead boy was heading over to team up with Buffy last I saw. Which I'd hate the thought of, except that they're probably the only team that could break into this soldier complex and get us out."

"Well, if they do get into the complex," Willow pointed out as she struggled to her feet, "they'll have their hands full with soldiers. So maybe we should see about breaking out of this cell ourselves."

* * * *

RILEY:
I paced the conference room, slowly going stir-crazy. I had no idea of what was going on outside, and no way to know. Morgan had left, telling me that she'd help, but I hadn't heard from her in close to two hours. The guards outside wouldn't even acknowledge me on the intercom. Damn!

Suddenly, I could hear something happen outside. Footsteps ringing on the metal floor, muffled conversation. I turned to face the door, assuming a roughly attentive standing posture, and it was a good thing that I did. When the doors slid open, Corporal Maggie Walsh was confronting me from outside them.

"Sir, corporal, sir," I said quickly, jumping to stiffly full attention.

"Agent Finn," she acknowledged me curtly. "Buffy Summers has again attempted to compromise this installation, in the company of a particularly strong hostile sub-t. There is little doubt that she is a collaborator. Were you aware of this??"

"Uh, no," I blurted out, then felt I had to qualify it. "I had a vague impression of similarity between Summers and the mysterious assailant that interrupted our retrieval of seventeen. But I wasn't sure, and given your strong injunctions about using guesswork instead of reliable evidence..."

"Very well," Walsh said, cutting me off. "Buffy and her accomplice have been spotted heading for Lowell house. I imagine that they know about the access there, and intend to enter the facility that way. We are going to help them do that."

I stared. "What??"

Walsh smiled a cruel smile. "Because once they have entered our demesnes, we will be able to capture them." She shook her head at me. "I am still far from convinced about you, Finn. But I will give you a chance to redeem yourself. If you wish, you may lead the attack party jointly with Graham MacInnis. If not... I'll ship you back to Project headquarters to face an Association courtmartial. What is your decision??"

Precious little choice. Given the paranoia of the Association, I would have no chance of proving my innocence to them if Walsh denounced me strongly enough. But, even without that threat, I really did want to prove myself. And if Buffy... if she worked with the kind of scum we put away, if all of her friendship with me, the seemingly inadvertent way she had captivated my attention, had been a ploy... it repelled me. "I'll do it."

"Very good," Walsh said, smiling thinly. "MacInnis!!" Graham came into the conference room at the sound of her voice. "Riley will be joining your team as co-commander, subject to the qualifications we discussed earlier." What qualifications?? Probably Graham would be watching tme, ready to shoot me himself or order any man in the team to do so if I made the slightest attempt to help or warn Buffy. What had I gotten myself into?? "Please escort him back to the staging area."

I let Graham lead me off, numbed by the magnitude of this development.

* * * *

HARMONY:
I followed helplessly along as D'Morte trailed along after Spike, who was following that gorgeous 'bounty-hunter' Stone a lot too eagerly. I'd like to give her a bounty!! I don't know what that means, but it sounds violent. Or extremely fattening, which would work too.

Stone drew up to a stop at a bus-stop, looking around like she was the Sentinel or something. (Really dumb show, but Davey Robinson loved it, so I suffered through a few episodes during the five months we dated.) That gave the rest of us a chance to catch up. I may not have to puff and pant when I run now that I'm a vampire, but it still hurts when I try to go too fast.

"They got off the bus here," Stone declared, "and were immediately set upon by a group of bandits, coming from over yonder, already laden down with prisoners." She pointed ahead and slightly off to the right.

"Um... we don't have bandits any more, really," Spikey-poo pointed out wittily, but Stone didn't pay him any attention.

"The bandits attacked my target," she commented, "somehow immobilizing him completely without spilling blood, and he fell down here," Stone tapped a spot on the grass, "helpless to resist or flee. The girl companion did flee, in the direction from which the brigands had come. The bandits added Doyle to their group of captives and continued on," (she pointed back the other way,) "in the direction which they had been travelling before."

"Say," D'Morte whispered closely to Spike and me. "These 'bandits' she's talking about sound like they might be our soldiers."

"Right," Spike agreed quietly. Aloud to Stone he said, "So, now we double-back and chase the bandits down, right?"

Stone sighed at him. "*I'll* chase them down. You may go where you wish, as long as you don't interfere with my mission." And with that, she stalked off.

The trail of the bandits, or soldiers, or whatever, led to a little wooden shack at the corner of a well-maintained grass field, probably used for sports or something. The field was used for sports, that is. The shack was evidently being used by the soldiers.

"Electronic security," Stone muttered as she surveyed the shack, a disgusted tone in her voice. Suddenly she pulled out a pistol and shot into the wood of the shack.

"What was that for?!" Spike exploded as the ringing retort died out. "Did you think you could just shoot the circuits into letting us in??"

"No," Stone admitted evenly. "But the hidden camera that might otherwise tend to announce our arrival to those on the inside has been taken out of comission. Now I bypass the door circuits." She bent over, (giving my Spikey-bear an entirely too good view of her butt,) and took the keypad near the door, and the metal plate it was mounted on, off in one ripping motion. For several seconds, she occupied herself with the wires and whatever else was inside, occasionally taking small tools out of her outfit to assist in the task.

"May I assist?" D'Morte asked, walking over to her. Stone looked up from her labors just long enough to give the demon doctor a black stare.

"I don't need anybody's help," Stone said, focusing her attention on the door lock again. She was at it for a few minutes before... "Damn!!" Stone pulled away from the lock electronics, patting at various parts of her outfit idly, (and once again drawing Spike's attention to her figure.) "I left the signal reverifyer in Los Angeles. Guess there's nothing for it but to trigger the emergency wire."

"Wait a second..." Spike said, stepping up to her. "That turns on all kinds of alarms on the inside, right?"

"Yeah, but it gets us inside," Stone replied.

"So does this," D'Morte interjected, showing both of them a tiny little bundle of electronic chips, wires, and diodes. "That's my reverifyer for you, Miz 'I don't need anybody's help.'"

Stone looked at it dubiously. "What's the catch??"

"No catch," D'Morte assured her. "We need to get inside as much as you do. Call it a good faith gesture." As Stone looked at him, stunned, D'Morte went over and put his gizmo into the door lock, connecting it up with some other wires. He pushed a green button and the door slipped open.

"Ladies first," he said, and Stone and I walked into the Complex.


Part 8

BUFFY:
It was quite obvious that something was up as the three of us entered Lowell house. The place was deserted. Literally. No-one was around.

"I don't like the looks of this," Cordelia complained out loud.

"I was thinking that it was a good sign," Angel shot back. "If the place is empty, that just means that it really is Soldier central - everybody on the project is needed. To try and track us down, among other things."

"Still, it seems more than a little careless for them not to have left somebody behind," I put in. "Guards. A few frat-boys to make the place look normal, if still a little on the empty side."

"Well, this way we can look around without anyone asking what we're doing," Cordelia said, flip-flopping in her usual fashion. "I'm all for it."

And look around we did, though I couldn't keep that uneasy feeling entirely away from the pit of my stomach. At first everything seemed completely normal, if rather tame for a fraternity house. And then...

"Hello, uniforms!" Angel called out from a few rooms away. I hurried towards the sound of his voice, and saw that his head was poked into a large closet. Cordelia appeared from the other direction.

"Like what?" I asked, pushing halfway into the closet myself. Besides racks upon racks of mostly casual clothes in all sizes, there were a number of sets of fatigues, (with a box of masks up on the high shelf,) and gleaming white lab coats.

"Good find," I decided. "We should wear some... may not fool anyone into thinking that we belong there, but it's better than nothing." Suiting action to word, I pulled a grey sweater on over my spandex top, and then reached for a lab coat. "Cordy, you and I should go in the lab coats, with nothing too outrageous underneath. I don't know if there are any girl soldiers, but we should be able to pass as scientists."

"The soldiers have scientists?" Cordelia asked bemusedly, taking a slightly longer lab coat off of the hanger."

"I figure so. Spike's had something done to him so that he can't bite - that could mean science," I told her. "Or magic, I suppose, but these lab coats kind of speak for themselves, don't they? Angel can go as a fatigue-boy."

"Good, then he can add another color to his repertoire - green instead of black," Cordelia quipped. Boy, it was weird to see the two of them joking around like that... or Cordy joking at least. Angel wasn't really the jolly type.

By this point, I had put the lab coat on and considered the effect in the full-length mirror on the closet door. My calves were drawing attention, light blue in my designer jeans, and it detracted from the scientist look. I sighed, grabbed a pair of dark navy slacks from the closet, scrunched my arms up the sleeves, and exchanged pants under the lab coat.

"You'll need to add some casuals too, Cor," I pointed out, waving at her outragous bustier and stretch pants ensemble. She looked good - quite good, but it would definitely never do for sneaking anywhere. "Luckily, you should just be able to pull them on over those." Cordy was already doing just that, putting on a long skirt over her tights and a fuzzy cardigan on top of her halter.

Meanwile, Angel was covering up his usual black sneak-clothes with green sneak-fatigues. Cordelia pulled on her coat and started searching through her purse. Finally she produced a bunch of hairpins, and handed half to me. "I think 'hair up' is called for."

Surprised, I agreed, and pinned my hair up in what I hoped was a business-like, scientist-y way, as Cordelia did the same. Soon the 'look' was complete, except for one last detail I doubted we'd be able to provide. "We need glasses," Cordelia remarked out loud, surely the first time she had ever said those words in her fashionable life.

Suddenly a hand was thrust about a foot before our faces, carrying two pairs of feminine, stylish eyeglasses, in different designs. I snatched up the ones with the gold trim and looked through them. No distortion - they were costume glasses, although they looked quite real. "Where did these come from?" I asked the mysterious provider, who was of course Angel.

"You probably don't want to know," the vampire said simply as Cordy took the other pair. Angel was in his fatigues now, still carrying one of the weapons we had taken from the other commandos, and was looking very soldierly.

With disguises done, it was time to return to our search. "The access has got to be very near here," I announced with my best attempt at logic. "Why would you put the commando wardrobe anywhere else but right next to the secret entrance?"

"Hmm..." Angel said. "Well, I don't think it's here in this room."

"Okay," Cordelia said, stepping out of the room into a hallway. "Hmm... 'In case of emergency, please use the stairs.' Riighht. Like I'm gonna walk down stairs." Her footsteps continued on.

I started to follow her, then did a double-take. "Stairs? Cordelia, where did you see that notice about the stairs?"

"Uhh... back there," Cordy said, pointing to a little notice on the wall near a decorated alcove. The arrow on the sign pointed back the other way down the hall.

"Come on," I told the others, and headed off looking for the stairs. Sure enough, about twenty feet down the hall was a door through whose circular window could be seen stairs heading DOWN. The door said 'Authorized Personnel only' and had one of those little magnetic card locks on it.

Angel and Cordelia were catching up to me now, and Cordy had a puzzled look on her face. "I think that's the way to the complex," I explained. "Or at least the emergency route."

"Or maybe just to the basement," Cordelia pointed out.

"With a sophisticated electronic lock on it?" I shot back. "Plus, I had just found stairs down to the basement when Angel found the wardrobe. Why would there be stairs and emergency stairs? This has to be the way to soldier central - there's a secret elevator or something, so well hidden that we can't find it, but they need another way in in case the elevator power mucks up."

I turned to Angel now. "You said you could work those ECS thingumajigs of Willow's. Can you get us past this lock??"

"I can damn well try," Angel said, pulling out the electronic devices and working on the lock. Still no-one else was in sight, or in hearing, besides the three of us, in all the time we had been in Lowell house. It was damn well creepy!

In just a few minutes, Angel got the door to open up, and we crept nervously through. The stairway went only down - down and down and down. I'd guess we were at least forty feet below ground level by the end - maybe fifty. It was five times around the square stairwell, that much I know.

The door at the very bottom of the stairs was quite old-fashioned, what looked like carved solid oak, with a simple doorknob and no keyholes or locks of any kind that I could identify. I shared an uncertain look with Angel and Cordelia, then tested the knob. It seemed to be unlocked.

"Well, here goes nothing." The room beyond was white and featureless, except for a few sliding-panel doors. As Cordelia stepped through the door we had entered using, it swung shut and there was a very audible click. Angel rushed to try the doorknob on this side, but it very obviously would not turn.

Then three of the sliding doors opened and soldiers, wearing fatigues but unmasked, poured into the room, levelling stun-guns at us. "Buffy Summers, you are hereby accused by the Sunnydale Initiative of consorting with hostile sub-terrestrials against the human race. You will be taken into custody and brought before the Association for United States Security to face charges of treachery for mankind."

As soon as soldier-boy finished that mouthful, they all looked at me as if waiting for a response. "Give me a break," I grumbled aloud. Me, the Slayer, having saved the world on several occasions, and they thought I was a traitor to mankind? Good grief.

At that point, uncomfortable recognition set in about the soldier's spokesman. It was Graham MacInnis - one of Riley's friends from Lowell house. I looked around, and there was Riley himself, at the head of another pack of soldiers.

Riley didn't say a word, but his lips were moving - he was mouthing something at me. What was it? It looked like "I'm sorry..."

Uh-oh.

I dived to the side, and Angel did too, just in time. Cordelia wasn't so lucky. As the soldiers opened fire, at least two of the energy bolts rocketed into her, and she screamed.

* * * *

WILLOW:
"We have to get out of here," I repeated again, more firmly, as if saying it could make it happen.

"Nice thought, Will, but I don't think it's about to happen," Xander complained. "This setup is jailbreak proof. Unless you happen to have something capable of exerting twenty tons of pressure on the door, you can't break out from inside. And we're inside."

"Hush," I told him, and then started thinking out loud. "When they were opening the door to put us in, the guard tapped a four-digit code out on the keypad and swiped a magnetic card through the lock."

"Which card the soldier took with him when he left, yes?" Giles said, slipping coolly into the role of Devil's advocate.

"No he didn't," Doyle mentioned. "He put it down, right there." He pointed at a small ledge of white wall, rigt beside the door, almost out of our sight, but I could catch a glimpse of something there that was vaguely card-like. "He musta forgotten to pick it up again."

"It's still out there, while we're in here," Xander pointed out irritably. "And we don't have the code either, or at least I don't. Soldier-boy made sure to cover up the keypad while he was punching it in. Did any of you see it?" Doyle and Giles shook their heads, and I had to admit I didn't know the code either.

But first things first. I turned to my oldest friend in all the world. "Okay, Xander, listen up. *I* am trying my best to escape, so that we can maybe help Buffy against these soldier guys, or at least not need to wait here for her to rescue us. We might have a chance of actually doing this. We might not -- I don't know. But I'd appreciate your not breaking in with cranky 'we have no hope' talk every twenty seconds. If you wanna help, fine. If not, shut up!"

I turned away from him, realizing that Giles and Doyle were looking at me with very impressed expressions. I spoke to Doyle next. "Now... if you're the guy I think you are, then Oz tells me you see visions, right?"

Doyle started a little bit. "Right. How is O-" He must have seen a look developing on my face, because he choked the question off. "Yeah."

"Can you do it on cue? Like, if we needed you to 'see' someone punching the correct code into that keypad?"

Doyle shook his head sadly. "It doesn't work that way, little one. I don't choose the visions - the Powers that Be send them."

"Have you ever tried to ask for one?" I pressed. "I'm sure the Powers would have no objections to us getting out of this cell - they could give you the info we need."

"I..." Doyle broke off, hesitating.

I knew I had to get to the source of that hesitation. "What is it, Doyle? Why don't you want to do this??"

His face suddenly turned sheepish. "Well... I don't like seeing the visions. They hurt... I mean, really hurt. To try for one... well, I'll say it straight out. I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to do that."

"You have to be, Doyle," I implored him. "For Angel's sake - and Cordelia. They mean a lot to you, don't they?" I was guessing, but the look on Doyle's face told me I had guessed right. "Well, they need us too. Do it for them, Doyle."

Doyle still looked doubtful, but concentrated, and suddenly reeled, losing his balance and half collapsing before Xander caught him and steadied him upright. "Six - four - nine... two," he gasped out.

"Thank you," I whispered, and quickly concentrated. Xander should have known better than to quibble about the card being outside and we being inside - however impenetrable the glass wall might be to us, it means nothing to witchcraft. With a practiced flex of my emotions, I scooped the card up into the air. This next part would be tricky, I suddenly realized. "How was the number keybad laid out?" I asked aloud, looking at the back of it speculatively."

"One two three across the top, from left to right," Giles supplied helpfully. "So on down to nine. Red zero and green on the last row."

"Thanks," I whispered, and set the corner of the card to pressing buttons as Doyle had specified them. Six - that's second row down, at the left as I see it. Four is two spaces over on the right. Nine is one move down. And two is in the middle of the top.

Then I swiped the card across the magnetic reader strip - or tried to. I missed the first time, but managed to get it into the groove on the second try. "There!" I squeaked in delight as the glass door slid up into the ceiling. "Which way now?" I asked as I left our prison.

"Um... up that way," Xander said. At his direction, we hurried up a white corridor.

"Stop! Freeze where you are!" a voice called out as we passed by an intersection. I looked - soldiers were pointing rifles at us. I acted on instinct alone - jumping down a corridor and running as fast as I had ever run before. In about a minute, it was clear that the soldiers weren't giving chase successfully.

However, it was also very apparent that I had lost the others. Giles, Doyle, and Xander were nowhere to be seen. Belatedly I realized that we had probably all run off in different directions.

Now what??

* * * *

WALSH:
I groaned as I headed back out to Central. A few things seemed to be set in order, but I still had problems up my ass. Rosenberg had identified me, broken my cover, and I still had no good idea what to do about that. And, even though I had a plan to finally get Summers into custody, I couldn't shake the feeling that my Buffy in the bush was not nearly worth one in the hand.

That was when that hussy Morgan stormed up to me, all righteous indignation. Riley's like a son to me, but I can't stand his sister. "What happened to Riley? Corporal, you agreed to hold him for fair trial. If you've had him thrown in the tank after all, I'll..."

"Oh, shut up," I snapped. Miss Finn has delusions of grandeur, but she doesn't understand half of what we're doing here. She's a bookworm and a good one, so the big boys at Project Demon tell her what she wants to hear to keep her happy. But she's a dupe, just like the little boys we recruit to be 'soldiers.' "Riley's accepted a mission for me, to prove his innocence. That is all you need to know, Miss Finn."

"What kind of mis..." Morgan broke off, staring at me with grim comprehension in her eyes. "You sent him off after Buffy, didn't you?" There was a pause, in which I didn't confirm or deny. Apparently that was confirmation enough for the bitch. "Colonel Walsh, you cannot continue to take action against Buffy Summers," she hissed at me, her voice soft but deadly. "She is the vampire Slayer, a guardian of the right and the representative of a tradition as old as history - and stronger than we are. If you earn the enmity of a Slayer to this endeavour, it shall never succeed. Even if you kill Buffy, another Slayer will be sent to finish her mission."

I looked over at Morgan, evaluating what she said. Some of it was probably true - it would explain a lot about Summers. Not a collaborator, but a vampire hunter, who occasionally profited from the natural treachery of demons, who would turn against their own mother at the slightest incentive.

Some of what Finn was spouting was obviously blown-up threats, however. And, all the more if Summers was a part of some mystic tradition, I couldn't afford to let her run loose, with the information she already had about the operation. What we were doing here went deeper than good and evil. It had to do with politics, and war. "Lies," I denounced Morgan's truths. "You make up fairy tales, to try to save your brother. He is not the one who needs protection now, Miss Finn."

Morgan looked into my eyes, and I could tell that she could read the determination in my mind. "Very well," she said, nodding her head down. "I will be going back to Boston now."

"Not so fast," I muttered, grabbing Morgan Finn's wrist. "I have some questions to ask you too."

"No!" Morgan shouted, attracting the attention of a few soldiers and scientists in the area. "I'm following your orders, Colonel Walsh, and returning to my post. But *I* don't have to stand here and listen to your accusations like Riley did. I'm not a part of your command - my loyalty is the business of my commanding officer, not you." And she turned and stormed away. She was right... I really couldn't do anything to her. Damn.

Then Doctor Hailey called me over. "Word from MacInnis' team," he reported. "They've engaged. And... Cauley's spotted the captives. They've escaped."

"What captives?" I asked uncertainly. Then it hit me. "Rosenberg and the others? How??"

"I... I don't know," Hailey told me fearfully.

* * * *

SPIKE:
The first thing I noticed as we crept into Soldiers Incorporated was the color scheme. They were using white, for one thing. White on white. White on white with white trim, to put it at its baldest.

I vaguely remembered that from my previous visit, but I was *not* impressed.

The gorgeous specimen of... what had she said she was... Warlock?? Anyways, Stone took a few deep breaths once she had gotten well and truly inside, her shapely chest swaying with the motion, and nodded enthusiastically. "He's been in here," she announced. "I'm close." And she headed off, going straight through the first intersection we came to.

I tried to follow her, but a hand on my arm restrained me. It was a delicate hand, so I knew who I'd be looking at when I traced the arm's hand to the face of the owner. "Harm??"

"Where are you going, Spikey?" she said with deceptive mildness and perkiness. There was a strong undercurrent of displeasure in her eyes.

"Following..." I started. "Going off looking for the big cahuna's office and the notes we need about the implant."

Harmony didn't swallow that one bit. "And you think those notes will be wherever Spike's going? With whoever-it-is she's trying to kill, that Doyle??"

"I was just going straight ahead," I said, trying to mollify her. "All roads lead straight to the center, so I figured if we needed the boss' office, we should go straight."

Harmony just shook her head. "Well, we're trying the right path first."

We headed off, and I contented myself to letting Harmony and D'Morte make the navigation choices from there on. Out of the blue D'Morte whispers to me, "Are you happy with your liason with Harmony, Spike?"

I blinked in surprise. Harmony's been handy in a 'nice-girl-to-have-around' way, but no, I'm not especially pleased with having her as my consort. Still, it wouldn't do to admit that until I knew what Damien was getting at. "Why do you ask?" I growled back.

"You don't seem to be," Damien replied. "To judge from your reactions, you would prefer to be free to form new associations, such as this 'Stone,' for example. If that is the case," he continued, going up from a real whisper to a 'stage whisper' that I'm sure Harmony could hear, "then I would be quite willing to take your place with Harmony, should she of course be willing."

"What?" Harmony said, looking up, surprise and a trace of pleased calculation on her face. I stopped short and really thought about it. I really wouldn't mind... no shame or downside in being swinging single even if the Stone thing doesn't work out. It wouldn't be like I 'lost' Harmony, since it would be understood that I was one of the prime movers in the arrangement. I would breaking things off with Harmony, sending her off to be with another man. She'd still be able to help out with this and that, as long as she was with D'Morte and D'Morte and I were allies. And if I was reading the expression on Harmony's face right, she was quite favorably intrigued with the whole notion.

"Okay, Doc, we'll do it," I muttered in my best gruff manly voice. "She is yours, a token with which to cement our alliance. Her life in death is your responsibility now." D'Morte made a fist, and I punched it with one of my own to seal the pact.

"What??" Harmony screeched, somewhat outraged. "What am I, a piece of cattle??"

"Yes!!" Damien replied immediately, Then he bent closer to Harmony, winking at her and whispering something that sounded like "No, you're not really, but don't let Spike know that!!"

Harmony promptly burst out laughing. I breathed a small sigh of relief. It was clear that the two of them would continue to hit it off famously.

"Okay," Damien said, draping an arm affectionately around Harmony and smiling as he addressed me. "Now that that's finished, we've got secret research to steal!! Come on!!!"

In a few minutes, we were peering into a large open space, possibly the operational center of the complex. "I think the office we want would be down there," I decided, pointing to an important-looking passageway, about two feet up from the general floor level, with gleaming metal steps leading up to it. It wasn't too far away from an obvious command location, with all kinds of monitors and other equipment.

"Agreed. But I don't think we can risk passing through there," D'Morte decided. "There'll be alternate routes. I think I should be able to lead the way from here."

* * * *

RILEY:
I gasped in surprise as Buffy and that other guy, (was he a sub-T? I couldn't be sure at the moment,) jumped clear at the last second. Even considering that I had probably given Buffy warning that we were about to fire through some unspoken cue I couldn't control... I didn't know that anyone could move that fast from a standing start!!

It kinda hurt me that the third one, the lovely dark-haired girl I had never seen, got hit so hard. From long experience with these shock-ray guns, I'd say that it would be at least three hours before she came around, and then about fifteen hours of incredible pain. Poor little thing - even if she was messing around with something she didn't understand - no-one deserves that.

Occupied as I was with these thoughts, I didn't realize that the guy had a shock-ray gun of his own, and he was bringing it to bear. With a lightning retort of electrical discharges, most of my team was down for the count. I couldn't tell why I had been left, whether it was the accident of aiming or purposeful. Hell, for all I knew, it could well be that he was shooting down my squad in order of combat-readiness, and I was dead last.

Rectifying the situation, I dove down, lying prone so that the body of another soldier blocked most of myself from our attacker. He didn't seem to notice, moving on to squad three until someone fired back with what might have been a glancing hit of some kind, (what kind I couldn't tell, not having a good view of him anymore. Nor can I tell you of my own knowledge what happened to him next.)

What I could see was Buffy. She cartwheeled up to Graham, kicking him in the face as she regained her feet. She's got some kind of martial-arts moves or something, I could tell that much. Then she kneed Graham right in the crotch and he went down faster than a sack of potatoes. Ouch.

Before any of us had recovered from the surprise of that, Buffy had Graham's gun and proceeded to calmly take out the rest of his team. That was when I realized what I had to do. "Freeze!" I shouted, pointing my own gun straight at Buffy. It was a perfect situation - I had the drop on her, one hundred percent. She couldn't turn to aim at me without giving me plenty of warning to make my own shot.

She noticed me, though, out of the corner of her eye. "What are you going to do, Riley?" she asked me calmly. "Are you going to shoot me, like you did Cordelia? Fry my spinal cord out for a while, toss me in some cage while your lab boys figure out what to do with me? I'm not your target, Riley. I hunt these demons, the same as you do. Along with a few very special and good people, my friends. Angel's one of them, and he is a very good person, even though he IS a vampire."

"You can't listen to her, Riley," one of the boys called out. I looked around for him as best I could without losing my shot on Buffy, and then realized that he had ducked down one of the corridors.

"Report, soldier!" I called out, as a way of stalling for time while I decided what to do about Buffy.

"Kingman reporting, sir! Myself and Vonder are at 90%, have taken cover. Reccomend we re-emerge and assist you in nullifying the target?"

"Negative," I reported. "You'd be throwing the show away." And that was true... the entrance to that corridor lay right athwart my line of sight to Buffy. If my boys moved into that space, Buffy would have a split second to move - to aim and fire at all of us. I had no doubt that she'd be able to do it.

"Reccommend speed and caution, then, sir," Kingman called out. "Target's hostile sub-t accomplice's status is uncertain. He may recover, acquire the jump on you, sir."

"Understood," I repeated, but somehow I just couldn't shoot Buffy yet. Not as she was, staying there, not making a threatening move.

"Angel's not getting up for a minute, Riley," Buffy told me. "You don't have to do this!!" There was a hint of pleading in her voice, but no more.

"Yes I do," I managed to reply between gritted teeth. tensing my trigger finger, about to...

"I beg to differ," another voice said, and I almost dropped my gun. It was Morgan!!

"Damn it, Morg, get outta here!" I all but screamed. There were way too many guns in the area for me to be comfortable with my sister being here.

"I can't do that, Riley," Morgan said, stepping calmly in between us. "Stand down, brother. We've got too much to do. Buffy Summers, I presume?" she said just as calmly, stepping up to the girl. "So pleased to make your acquaintance."

"What the hell?" Private Vonder snarled, charging into the room. Morgan just faced him down, with no weapon but the expression of authority on her face.

"This attack was a mistake," she asserted boldly. "It has been cancelled. Return to your barracks, men." They shared a bemused look, then took off.

"Um... I don't mean to sound ungrateful," Buffy said, stepping up to Morgan, "but who the hell are you? And what are you doing, and why?"

"Special researcher Morgan Kayleigh Finn," Morgan told her quickly. "I know that you're the Slayer, Miss Summers."

"The what??" I burst out, but Morgan wasn't paying any attention to me.

"Colonel Walsh ordered you taken captive as a collaborator with vampires, but I realized that she was wrong. I'm going to take you to her, and we can show her that. Sound good?"

Buffy seemed very uncertain, and then she looked up at me. She looked very different than I had ever seen her, in glasses and a lab coat with her hair pinned up. But when she looked at me, I couldn't help but smile. That seemed to decide her.

"I'm with you. Angel, you can stay here with Cordelia?" Her dark and broody friend, (in our fatigues,) nodded and headed over to the dark-haired girl.

"This way," Morgan said, leading myself and Buffy down a corridor.



<b>Part 9

GILES:
Frustrated and worried, I forced myself to a stop. Dashing madcap through the Initiative complex was not going to do any of us any good. What would do good was finding the others.

Well, then, should I go back, towards the intersections where we had all gone in different directions? No, that would not be advisable - the soldiers were still back there. What, then?

Somewhat uncertainly, I proceeded off again, with the outline in mind of a plan that would hopefully bring me to a rendezvous with Willow. Despite the fact that she was probably moving more quickly than I was, I forced myself to walk slowly and not hurry. More than walking, my attention was devoted to listening down this echoey passageways. If someone passed nearby, be they friends, soldiers, or... something else... I wanted to know about it.

And there something was - hurrying footsteps. I considered quickly. They had to be coming from a parallel passage, probably accessible through that door hatch overe there. The choice was all mine - to rendezvous or to avoid.

I had to rendezvous - it could be one of my friends, or two of them or whatever. I went over to the door hatch, pressed the green button for luck, and it slid open. I poked an eye through.

"Freeze where you are," a soldier ordered me. I sighed. "Come through and then stand motionless, with your hands where we can see them. I did as ordered, verifying that my captors were two soldiers, with ray guns. Most elucidating, (yeah, right. Good job, Sherlock Holmes.)

"Mister Giles?" the other soldier said in what sounded like disbelief.

I looked closely at him, without much to report in the way of reciprocal recognition. "Um, have we met?" I asked politely, as if I had just bumped into this young man on the street, instead of being accosted deep within a paramillitary installation. With high hopes I guessed, "Were you a student at Sunnydale High?"

"Yes, sir," he said with one tenth of a smile. "Class of '98. Brian Thompson. What are you doing in here?"

Hmm... how far could I risk playing this? "Umm... to be quite frank, I'm not at all sure where 'here' is," I said in my best flummoxed tone, (which didn't take much Thespianism.) Now, should I give him a story of having blundered into the complex by accident? No - too unbelievable. It would have to be part of the truth. "I was just walking across the University grounds to visit a friend of mine, and suddenly I'm being led around by masked figures with guns. I'm terribly sorry to impose, but would you be able to help me sort this all out?"

Brian considered. "Yeah, sure, Mister Giles. I'll just take you to the Colonel, and I'm sure she'll have you on your way within the hour." Right. Having met the charming Colonel Walsh earlier, I was far from convinced. Still, at least Brian was well disposed towards me, and hopefully not expecting any break to escape again that I might make.

We made our way through corridors for a while until Brian's friend turned to him and said "Hey, man - do you hear that?"

We all stopped, and I heard what the sound that he had been referring to. So did Brian, apparently - soft, but noticeable footfalls from a crossing corridor. It seemed unlikely to be a soldier, since their boots made more noise.

Indicating with a gesture that I should stay back, (it seemed that I had definitely won Brian's confidence, even though he wasn't about to break the rulebook for me,) the two commandos snuck along the corridor in an attempt to surprise the intruder. And I snuck along behind them, hoping to determine if the intruder was one of my friends before it was too late, and to take action to free the both of us if it was.

As I peered unobtrusively around the corner, it became clear that I had guessed right - there was Willow, a worried look on her face as she smoothed down her blue jeans. Without warning, I barelled into the two soldiers, knocking all three of us over. "Willow! Get, oof, one of the, ugh, guns!!" I called out amidst impacts.

Unfortunately, I had underestimated the reaction speed of Brian's friend. "No part of this, huh?" he snarled, his hand on his gun. The other was halfway between Brian and Willow - unreachable to either. "You've come here to destroy the Initiative, haven't you?"

And all of a sudden, Brian's rifle was moving - along the floor, towards Willow. Oh, of course. Willow was using her wiccan psychokinetic abilities on the weapon. (Her talents have developed nicely, haven't they?) Soon the energy gun was in her hands, trained directly upon Brian's friend. "Drop your weapon," she suggested, "or I'll shoot you."

"How do I know you won't tag me anyways?" he asked out loud.

Suddenly there was a blast, and I felt a tingle over my skin wherever the other man's body was near me. He collapsed into a stunned heap. "You're right," Willow announced to the unconscious soldier. "I probably would have."

I got somewhat unsteadily to my feet. "My word... Willow..."

"I'm in a bad mood, Giles, okay?" she said somewhat plaintively. "I've been kidnapped and my best friends have been put in danger. So I'm cranky. Can we leave it at that??"

I blinked in surprise. "Of course." I picked out a direction randomly and headed down it, and ran into another party - Spike, a young blonde girl with vampire-face, (probably Harmony - I never really met her during my tour as Sunnydale High librarian,) and a ferocious demon!

Without saying a word Willow and I backed off and went another way, and Spike's party shared a glance, shrugged in unison, and continued on their way.

* * * *

XANDER:
As soon as I realized that I'd lost the others, I slowed to a stop and took stock of my situation. Although I was getting a good idea of the layout of this place, (my soldierly memory was filling in details very helpfully,) I still had no way how to find the others. And I wasn't sure where to go, since I didn't want to go back to the cell, or Central command where Ms Walsh would be, or even the entrance...

Oh, my god. Anya!! I had to save Anya!! She may have been a demon, even still be a demon to some biological extent, I don't know. But she was a person now, and I couldn't leave her in the hands of people like these soldiers.

The fact that Anya's human persona was gorgeous and I had a mad crush on it didn't need to be a factor in the decision... did it??

I knew that I could find my way fairly easily to Anya's cell... but should I? I'd need to be prepared beforehand, especially considering that soldiers or scientists could be in the area, and that Anya would probably start screaming and yelling again as soon as she saw me, now wouldn't she?

Well, what would I need before I could get Anya out? One of those keycards and a blaster would be nice. Actually, come to think of it, I had snagged that card after Willow got us out of our own cell, hadn't I? I checked my own pocket, yeah, there it was. And... hadn't I just passed a door that said 'Armory?'

The armory was unlocked, (Very sloppy, guys. Were all soldiers criminally careless, or just the ones in Sunnydale?) and I quickly appropriated a small blaster gun. Then it was over to Anya's cell.

A white-coated scientist was hurrying by, and I shot him, to the muted cheers of the monsters nearby, and made my way to the cell of the lovliest demon-girl in all the land. "Come quietly," I whispered as I started to open the cell door.

"WHAT?" she shouted.

"No noise," I said, more loudly, and she shut up. Soon the door was up, and a very hyperactive bundle of teenaged girl hurled herself into my arms, which was quite a surprise. A pleasant surprise, I can't deny, but definitely a surprise.

"C'mon," I whispered, reluctantly disengaging and trying to decide on my next move. Deciding on whether the sky was blue was rather impossible while looking at Anya, so I turned away.

Somewhere in the middle distance, a blast gun went off. Oh, no. Who was shooting, and who was on the wrong end of the shot, I wondered?

"Hurry," I said, grabbing Anya's soft ladylike hand and urging her along with me on a roundabout route to the area that the shot had come from. Soon I saw two figures hurrying down a cross passage away from us - and one was wearing blue jeans and had short red hair. Only need one guess as to who that is.

"Willow!" I hissed over to them. Sure enough, the two people turn around to look at us, and it's Willow and Giles. Anya and I hurried over to meet them.

"I see you set one of the inmates loose," Willow muttered to me.

"Yeah, I let Anya go, Will," I said with a burr in my throat. "If anyone belongs in here, it's not her. So, what do we do next? Where's Doyle??"

"I'm afraid I don't know," Giles sighed, "the answer to either of those questions."

* * * *

BUFFY:
I followed Riley and the 'Morgan' girl, (had I heard right back there? Was her name Finn too, just like Riley's? A cousin? A sister??) led me through a bunch of white-lined tunnels.

Just as we were getting to what looked like a much larger, open space, Morgan peeked around the corner. "I don't think Walsh is at Central, which is good," she reported back. "There's way too many people around there for me to be comfortable bringing you around there, though, knowing that Walsh has ordered your capture, or death."

"I'm not that comfy with it either," I drawled back. Inside, my mind was whirling - things had been moving much too quickly for me, what with finding out that Riley was one of the mysterious soldiers, that this 'Morgan' girl knew I was the soldier, and that 'Colonel Walsh' in charge of the soldiers, (oh, my god, could that be Professor Maggie Walsh from Psych class?) was trying to imprison or kill me.

Morgan was already in action. "You'd better stay out of sight while I go up to Central and ask where Walsh is, okay Buffy??" She typed a number in a lock next to a metal door, and swiped her passcard. The door opened. "You too, little brother - people will know that you're supposed to be in battle. I don't imagine you'll mind staying here with Buffy, will you?" Riley shook his head with a smile. Well, that kinda answered the question of whether Morgan and Riley were related, though it kinda seems weird for her to call him 'little' when he's got at least four inches on her now. Ah, well. I guess she's a few years older than he is, and that means he'll always be the 'little brother,' no matter how tall he gets.

Not having any brothers or sisters myself, I kinda don't know these things.

Oh, right. I walked through the doorway into the dark room beyond, fumbling for a light switch. Riley followed me in, and pressed a button on the wall, shedding light on an empty office.

"Okay, wait right here until I get back," Morgan chirped, and the door closed on us. Riley smiled nervously at me, and sat down in one of the chairs in front of the office desk.

I considered a while, weighing the idea of taking the big, important-looking chair behind the desk, but I decided that that wouldn't be good. So far, we were equals. So I took the other chair in front of the desk and turned it around to face Rileys, and he quickly turned to face me. So far so good.

Except that neither of us were saying anything.

"So..." I started, mentally hitting my mind repeatedly against a solid object to try and jar loose a thought for my mouth. "You're a soldier, huh?"

"Um, not really..." Riley said with a shake of his head. "Technically, I'm the senior field agent of the Initiative. I only started weapons training a few months ago, actually. So that I could lead the commando teams, knowing the territory and the targets and everything."

"Ah." I tried to digest that, though most of it wasn't very edible just now. "And before a few months ago, what were you doing?"

"Learning psychology," Riley said. "Helping Miz Walsh in her assignment to categorize hostile creatures, and attempting to understand why they're drawn to this area. Making contact with locals that we could trust enough to recruit, when the second stage started." I shook my head doubtfully, and Riley turned the tables around. "Well, what about you? Morg said that you're a Slayer. What the hell is a Slayer?"

I paused a second, not wanting to lie to Riley but also wanting to give him the truth in a way that he could understand it. "These... these 'hostiles' that you capture, the bloodsuckers, the monsters. What do you believe that they are?"

Riley thought about that for a second. "I don't know. As I see it, that's what the Initiative is trying to figure out. Forrest says that they're just animals, ferocious creatures that were driven nearly extinct, never discovered by science until just now. That they might be responsible for the legends of monsters and demons, but that they're natural beings who evolved in just the same way as dogs and cats..."

I cut him off. "What do you think, Riley?"

"For some of the hostiles, maybe. But the bloodsuckers... they look just like humans, they have NO body heat, and they suck the blood of the living. They... somehow they can either take the shape of their victims, or the victims become more bloodsuckers. The resemblance to the vampire legends is too close to be an accident, but... undead? People rising back to walk around after they've died??"

That sounded like my cue. "Actually, a demon takes over the body of the victim and uses it after the victim has died. A Slayer is someone whose responsibility it is to kill demons - an unpleasant destiny that has existed longer than human history."

Riley blinked. "Demons? Magical beings from some mystical abyss??"

I shook my head. "Not really. As far as I know, the demons were here first. Evolved here, maybe. They mastered magic - built their world with it the way we use science. And then they couldn't live here anymore, so they left the world to us, except for a few cousins they left behind. Like the vampires."

Riley was just staring at me like he couldn't figure out how seriously to take me. That's too bad. Maybe I should have laid it on a little thinner at first. Luckily, that's when Morgan opened the door again. "I know where to find her," she said. "Come on."

Riley and I got up, started following Morgan through the catacombs of this 'Initiative' again. "So," Morgan asked me, in a conversational tone with a hint of deadly steel underneath it. "How long have you been the Slayer, Buffy?"

Ah - she was testing me. Rather belatedly, making sure she was right in her guess that I was the Slayer, before telling that to her boss. "About three and a half years now. Merrick called me in May of 1996."

Morgan frowned at that. "You weren't trained from birth? I thought the Slayers were."

"Not always. Finding us ahead of time, especially in this modern, complicated, overcrowded world, is getting more and more difficult. I slipped through the cracks completely, until I was THE Slayer." In some corner of my mind, I wondered whether I should really be telling Morgan Finn all this, but since she seemed to be the only person trusting me, I didn't exactly have a choice. I needed to keep her believing in me, didn't I?

"I see. Any idea how much you've Slayed over that time??"

"Hmm..." I thought, a smile crossing my face. "Say, eight hundred vamps or so, a hundred and fifty demons maybe, including an internet corruptor robot demon, a Mayor-nosaur, and... oh, but we can get into my Slayage taled another time. What's behind there?" I pointed to a door whose security lock seemed somehow more imposing than those of the others. The electric shock field around the door and the reinforced titanium sheeting may have had something to do with it.

"Um... I'm not sure, actually," Morgan admitted.

"That's suite 310," Riley offered. "Research laboratories 310 through 319. Ultra top secret - I don't even have clearance to go in there. Just Walsh and a handful of the scientists."

"Hmm..." Morgan and I said in unison.

"Well, come on, this way," Morgan said, leading us on. It was a much quieter trip this time, and soon we were at the doorway to an open laboratory. Walsh was riggin up some sort of singularly gruesome equipment.

"Colonel Walsh!" Morgan announced ringingly. "I have brought Buffy Summers to you, in the hopes of convincing you that she truly is an ally in the battle against the monsters and not an enemy."

Walsh looked up. "Well, Summers. This really does seem to be 'get to know your professor day,' doesn't it?"

I stepped forward, somewhat awkwardly. "Yes, thank you, Miss Walsh. As the vampire Slayer, I'd very much appreciate a chance to discuss your own little program of demon destruction with you..."

Walsh cut me off with a wave of her hand. "Morgan Finn, you have broken my direct orders in bringing a wanted fugitive into this complex. Consider yourself officially reprimanded." She turned to Riley. "Agent Finn, I have heard the evidence of your sister and of Buffy Summers, and it is my considered decision as the commanding officer of the Initiative that the Slayer is a deadly threat to us." She fixed him with a steely glare. "This is not a matter that you are qualified to judge, Riley. As my senior Field Agent, it is your responsibility to take any actions that I decide are necessary to the security of this endeavour, and I'm choosing to exercise that authority right now. Draw your weapon and shoot Buffy Summers with a medium stun charge."

I wanted to turn away, to look at Riley, but something in Walsh's face held me. A glint of cold cruelty... somehow it seemed to me that she didn't really care which way this fell out. If Riley shot me, she would be savoring the expression of betrayal on my face. And if he didn't she would find some way to make Riley pay for betraying her... "And failure to comply will be seen as an act of gross insubordination, Mister Finn," Walsh informed him.

By the time I had turned to Riley, he had already drawn his weapon. And then, very deliberately, he dropped it on the ground.

"No!" I shouted out loud, all of a sudden. "Shoot Walsh!!" But it was too late for that, and as I looked into Riley's eyes, I could see that he wouldn't have done that either. He wouldn't shoot me on Maggie's behalf, but he couldn't shoot Maggie for my sake either.

A click drew me back to Maggie, who was holding an automatic pistol, and training it on me. I tried to move out of the line of fire, but she held it aimed at me unerringly. I tried to move forward, but something in Colonel Walsh's eyes told me that she would be able to shoot me before I ever got to her.

Just great. All of this training, destiny, and super-strength, and I was still helpless in the face of a crazy lady with a gun. Something needs to get written into the list of Slayer powers about invulnerability or force fields.

"So, you're all against me, aren't you?" Walsh hissed, advancing. By reflex, Morgan, Riley, and I backed away, but Walsh kept up the pace. "Too bad, but it seems that that's the way it always ends up in the end. I, alone. It was I, alone who presented the full details of the Sunnydale Initiative to the Association for United States Security. Nobody else on Project Demon would support me. But I won out."

Morgan seemed to be trying very hard to form words, and Walsh sneered at her. "B-but Miz Walsh!" Walsh called out in a pretty good mockery of Morgan Finn's voice. "The Slayer... a fellow crudader against the monsters... you can't..." Colonel Maggie scoffed, and went back to her own hard-edged bitch-monster voice. Still she advanced - still the three of us had to retreat. "Grow up, special researcher Morgan Finn. We aren't fighting hostile sub-terrestrials here! My vision is so much broader than that - the ability to recruit and control these beasts, for the sake of my country..."

"My god!!" I breathed, too struck by surprise to keep quiet, as I probably should have. "You're... you're planning to use demons as U.S. shock troops in the event of a war, aren't you? If they tear enemy soldiers limb from limb and devour them whole, so much the better, huh? You're crazy!!"

"Oh, no, Miss Summers, I'm quite sane," Walsh whispered earnestly. "And if a monster tears a Russian limb from limb, by the way, he can't possibly then devour him whole. Contradiction in terms." She chuckled cruelly as she backed the three of us through an intersection. "And the only thing standing in the way of my plan is a snotty, nosy little Slayer who thinks she can dictate right and wrong to the whole world, and two slimy traitors that she's gotten to." She aimed the pistol squarely at my forehead and chuckled. "First things first."

I froze, panicked. If Walsh shot, I could try to dodge, but I was facing an uphill battle. If Walsh's reflexes were one tenth as good as mine were, she'd be able to correct and kill me. And Slayer endurance might help keep me alive after a bullet anywhere else, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't help me much against gunshot wound to the head or the heart. Especially not in the depths of the initiative, where no-one would give me medical help against Walsh's say-so...

Maggie Walsh grinned, made sure that her aim was good, and stepped forward one more time, ready for the killing blow...

* * * *

DOYLE:
I must have run around that complex like the dogs of Hell themselves were after me for ten minutes. When I ran out of breath to run with, I wandered helplessly about the tunnels for even longer. No-one found me, friend or enemy. I was starting to wonder if it was possible for me to be alone down there forever.

And that, of course, was when she showed up.

I didn't recognize her at first - blonde curly hair, tight clothes. Mostly she looked like quite a babe, even after she pulled the gun.

"You have led me quite a chase, little demon," she announced. "But here I end it!" And she aimed the gun at me. Now I remembered - the assasin who had attacked me near Xander's house. Evidently she had found her way in here, somehow.

"Why are you going to all this trouble for me?" I wondered.

The assasin chuckled. "I have been paid well. Wolfram and Hart - you and your friends have caused them trouble for the last time. Without you they will be directionless, easy to lead astray."

I shook my head. "Angel will do what is right regardless of what happens to me, and if that means standing against Wolfram and Hart or their slimy clients, so much the better. The same goes for Cordy, as far as that goes." Or so I would hope.

The killer babe shrugged. "Well, be that as it may, it won't affect my pay in the slightest, I'm sure. In fact, I expect to negotiate some bonus pay for having had to chase you this far."

My hand came against something lying on the wall ledge. It felt... it felt like a smaller version of one of those blaster guns! I whipped it up and fired it at the murderess.

Shocked, she kind of went gray an instant before the energy bolt struck home. I looked closer. It was like she was a statue or something. I tried the gun another time, but nothing came out, so I turned and ran away.

Past an intersection, I didn't realize it was there until I was straight through. And then... something was wrapping around my legs, and I was tripping over it. I turned over to see what it was. Some kind of weighted line, or bola, and I was hopelessly tangled up in it. And Stone was back to moving flesh again, advancing on me again. A crowd of figures passed through the side passage and were gone. One of them looked familiar, though...

And just as Stone was bringing up her gun for the shot, another person, a red-haired woman in her elder thirties, stepped right into the line of sight. It had to be a million to one kind of coincidence.

A very unlucky one for her.

The bullet streaked into the redheaded woman's side, and she collapsed as a gout of blood spurted out of the hole. One of the other people dashed forward to inspect the body - to grab the gun that Red had been holding in her hands. It was the girl I had recognized - Buffy. She turned to aim it at the assasin, who panicked and ran off the other way.

"My god," I muttered, finally getting my legs free of the bola and going forward to see the woman who had been hit. There was blood all over, and she was obviously either dead or quite quickly dying. "Who was it?"

"Maggie Walsh, the commander of this Installation," Buffy said hollowly. "Does that mean that you're in charge, Riley?"

Riley considered, then shrugged. "I'd be willing to assume command jointly with Morgan. I'm sure that my troops wouldn't have any objection to that."

Buffy turned to look at me. "Are you Angel's friend? Doyle??"

"Yes, I agreed. "Has he warned you about the vision of danger I saw about you?"

The slayer looked blank for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, quite a few dangers ago, actually. Cordelia has been hit with these energy bolts, near the emergency stairs to the complex. Angel is with her. Riley, can you give Doyle simple directions to them??"

"Umm..." The guy, Riley I guess, seemed to be thinking, and then told me "head down this way, okay? Then take your second right an follow it all the way around, if you can tell that the hallway is curving then you know you're going the right way, okay? It'll lead you straight into the anteroom."

"When you find Angel, have him take Cordelia," Buffy told me, "and all three of you get up to the Frat house, leave it, and get the heck back to L.A. as quickly as you can. Understand??"

"Uh, yes," I muttered, "except... Angel's not going to want to leave without knowing that you're alright."

"I'm gonna be fine," Buffy assured me. "Go!"

"You can't know that for sure," he pressed. "I can bring him to you, or have him wait where he is, but..."

"O-kay!" Buffy groaned. "If he wants to rendezvous before you guys leave town, then..." She paused for a few moments, evidently having trouble thinking of a suitable meeting place. "1630 Rebello," she finally said, tossing me a key ring. "Don't make too much noice once you get into the house."

"Got it," I agreed. "Oh, some of your friends got captured with me, Buffy. We all jailbreaked together, but we got seperated amongst these corridors, what with all the soldiers. I suggest you find them!"

Surprise flooded the Slayer's face, followed by determination. "I will." With that, I took off down the corridors in the way that the guy had told me.

Down a long, narrow passageway, I caught sight of a fistfight in progress, and watched to see if it was anyone I should be worried about... It didn't seem to be - two blonds, a guy and a girl, seemed to be vampires, against unarmed soldiers...

And a Thysian demon. I'd never seen one before, but it was pretty easy to tell that his face looked like mine when I went demon. I'd never found another of my father's kind before, never really looked, but the sight of this demon hit me on a deep level.

I thought about going down the passageway, rendezvousing with them, but what would that lead to? And I didn't have the time - I hurried back on following the instructions I had been given. Good thing too - only belatedly I realized that if I'd left the path, I might have gotten myself completely lost again - unable to find Angel, or Cordelia.

I didn't run into anyone else, and soon enough I emerged, as promised, into a small entry hall. A brawny figure in green fatigues was kneeling beside the body of another person, who happened to be wearing a white coat. Was this the wrong place after all?

No, the soldier looked up at me, and it was Angel! I rushed over, and realized that the prone figure was Cordelia, dressed up to pass of as a scientist, with her dark hair pinned all the way up and wearing glasses, even.

She looks so lovely, even like this.

"Word from Buffy," I told Angel, somewhat breathlessly. (I guess I'd been running harder than I thought on the way over here.) "We take Cordelia out of here, rendezvous with her later at an address on Rebello. She thinks she's got things under control in here."

A brief wave of pain crossed Angel's face at my mention of the street name - why was it so significant? I suddenly realized that I was the only person insisting on the rendezvous so far. "Or we could just head on back to the office... if you'd rather, boss," I mentioned.

Angel shook his head. "Meeting up one more time to make sure that everything's all right makes sense. Let's go, Doyle."

I went to Cordelia's body and hefted her up somewhat strainedly. I knew that Angel could have done it much more easily, but... I wanted to be the one to look after Cordelia, to take care of her. So I carried her myself.

* * * *

HARMONY:
Once we'd scared little Willow and that stuffy librarian off, (which was a ton of fun!) it wasn't too long before Damien said we were getting into the right area.

I'm not sure yet what I think about that little 'switcheroo' that Spikey and Damien just pulled. The doctor's nice and all... kinda cute in his human face, sophisticated and well-to-do... the kind of guy I'd have thought of as a potential husband, before I got changed, actually. (Without the demon part.)

But he's not my blondie-bear.

On the other hand, Spike wouldn't have done this is he really wanted to be my guy anymore, and Damien, just as obviously, does. This routine is definitely easier to take than your typical breakup, especially because you get a new boyfriend out of it. And if I raise a fuss, I just might end up with no-one. So, yeah, I'll stick with it, at least 'til I've found out if D'Morte is as good as he seems.

"Well, which door, then?" Spike muttered, gesturing to all the many locked portals around this section of corridor. Damien looked around, then settled on one near the middle.

"We can start here," he said. pulling out his electronic door-opening gizmos again. (Hey, there's two ways you can read that, and they're both right. They're electronic gizmos that open doors, and also gizmos that open electronic doors!!) "So, Harmony my dear," he murmured to me as he worked, "are you still in favor of making our way to New York City once we are done on the Hellmouth?"

"Hmm..." I thought about that. It did seem like a good idea. "Sure, yeah. You mean, once you've got the implant plans or whatever it is that will let us brainwash other vampires, right?"

"Well..." Damien's face crossed. "Somehow I suspect that if we do not reach that goal tonight, within the hour in point of fact, we would be best off to quit Sunnydale regardless. This Initiative is more dangerous than I had realized, to both vampires AND demons. Trying again could be extremely hazardous to our health."

"Oh," I muttered, disappointed, though of course it was quite possible that Damien would find the plans in five minutes.

"I suspect that Spike's plan of setting the Slayer against the Initiative has succeeded, and fortunately so, or we would have encountered deadly resistance long before now," Damien commented. Sure enough, now that I listened, I could hear the commotion of a diversion or two going on elsewhere in the complex. One of them might be because of Stone, too.

"I'm in," Damien muttered, and sure enough, the door slid open.

"Soldiers coming!!" Spike called from a lookout position I hadn't seen him take up, halfway down the hall. "A lot of them. Get out of here!!"

"Now?" I complained. "We're so close, Spikey!!"

"We're close to being dead, or tossed into one of those containment cells, girl," Spike snarled at me. "Let's go!!"

I sighed and ran, doing my best to keep up with Spike and Damien. Once Demmy, (hey, that's a good nickname for him,) realized that I was having trouble keeping up, he slowed himself and Spike down just enough.

As he passed an intersection, Spike ran straight into Stone! Each of them stumbled but managed to keep their balance, and Demmy and I jogged around to meet back up with them.

"Uh, so, any luck hunting that little pipsqueak?" Spike was asking, like they were at a coffeeshop exchanging small talk instead of in deadly danger in a demon-hunter hideout. Demmy waved Spike along, and Stone jogged with us.

"No, I, whoo, I almost had him, but an officer got in the way of the bullet," Stone said. "And then a Slayer showed up. Who knew that this little backwater town had a Slayer?"

Spike laughed hollowly at that. "Two of them, at times. It's not a pretty scene."

"Well," Stone continued, "I didn't sign up for going head to head against a Slayer. I'm giving up on that damn contract."

Spike grinned. "Would you care to join up with us? We're going to New York City."

"And building an army of mind-controlled vampires," Damien put in. I stopped dead and turned to him, except that Demmy, of course, hadn't stopped dead, so I had to turn to face him and he was twenty feet away by that time, so I had to run back over to him. It was never so hard to create a dramatic moment, sigh.

"Demmy! You got the plans after all??"

"Yes I did," Damien said with a very pleased smile. "It only took a second to find them once I had gotten the office door open - about the time you and Spike took to argue about whether we should stay around to look for the plans!"

"Come on," I said, putting my arm around Demmy. "Let's go become all-powerful!"



EPILOG

RILEY:
We watched Doyle go, professor Walsh's body still lying on the floor between us. "Uh... so, what now?" Buffy asked, a somewhat lost look creeping across her face.

"Ummm..." I bent over Maggie and picked up a small cordless intercom that she had been carrying in her pocket at the time of the... incident. "Hello," I said into the thing after activating it. "This is Riley Finn. We have a terminal casualty here - it's Colonel Walsh. Gunshot wound from a hostile sub-t infiltrating the complex - five foot nine, female human-like appearance, curly blonde hair. No chance of resuscitation. We're taking the body to the morgue."

I put the intercom into my own pocket, bent down to grasp Maggie's body under her arms, and gestured that Buffy and morgan should each take a leg. With a heft, we had her in the air, and started moving towards the morgue, blood still dripping from her side.

As I had expected, people were already gathering in the morgue when we got there - most of my boys, some of the scientists. As the medicals took Maggie away, Forrest and Graham turned to me. "So, who's in charge now, Rile?" Forrest asked me. "You??"

"I think so," I said cautiously. "I'm not expert on the scholarly side of the Initiative, but Morgan has agreed to fill in as co-captain."

"We've got a situation on our hands," Graham muttered. "Escaped prisoners running around, sub-t's infiltrating the compound..." He shook his head. "Any change in our orders?"

I shook off the surprise. "Prisoners?"

"Let them go," Buffy whispered quietly. "Get them well out of here and set them free. They'll go willingly."

Graham looked to me, and I nodded slightly. "The hostiles?"

"The vampire who was with me when we fought should still be right there, or else have left," Buffy commented, really getting into this. "Anyone else you catch, throw 'em in the tank for now."

I sighed a big sigh. "Agreed. And send some people up into the house, Graham - we don't want anyone else noticing suspicious things." Graham nodded and walked away.

"I think we're done here," Forrest commented. "You'd probably better get to central, take command of the rest of the company."

I nodded tiredly and set off, Forrest, Morgan, and Buffy all following me. Even more of the soldiers were gathered at Central. "Colonel Maggie Walsh is dead," I told them starkly, just in case they hadn't already heard. "As field commander, I'm assuming control of the initiative, along with Morgan Finn, who will be taking Maggie's place in all matters of research and scientific work." Exclamations of disappointment and sadness were mixed with muted cheers amongst the crowd.

"I beg to differ," a new speaker announced. A tall man in a white lab coat, arriving from the direction of Suite 310. Doctor Bill Hailey, Maggie's biggest 'crony.' "According to the standing orders of the Initiative," he announced, "if Maggie Walsh were to meet misadventure, I was to assume command, rather than the field officers who don't even have full security clearance to the top-level projects of the Initiative." He stepped up, right beside me, one pace to the side and one pace further forward. "Any questions?"

None were announced out loud. But the boys were still looking towards me for their cue - they didn't like any of the top scientists, especially Hailey. Maggie had been at least partly in our world, but this jerk wasn't.

As for myself, I had no suggestions for how to handle the situation at the moment.

* * * *

ANYA:
We walked down a corridor, and then another, and suddenly there were soldiers all around, carrying those guns of theirs. Xander seemed poised to fight for a second, then realized that there wasn't much point.

"Oh, well. Freedom was fun while it lasted," I sighed.

"Not at all," one of the soldiers grunted. "Our orders are to escort you safely out of Initiative headquarters and the Lowell house fraternity. Once on the university grounds, you will be quite free, except for not being allowed to return."

"What?" That was 'Mister Giles,' seeming just dumfounded by this idea. "But... how could..."

"Let's not complain, Giles," Willow hissed, trying to whisper, though her excitement resulted in considerably more volume than might have been wise. "Ms. Walsh had a change of heart. Let's just leave it at that."

"Actually," soldier-boy commented absently. "Colonel Walsh is no longer in charge of this company. Nor is she among the living, for that matter. I am following the orders of the field commander."

"She's dead?" Xander and Willow exclaimed in quiet astonishment. The soldier shrugged, led us through the big open area, and to an elevator, all without a word.

Once the elevator doors closed... "I hope that you will not be, um..." Soldier-guy seemed to take quite a while thinking of the right word, which didn't surprise me much. "...Ungracious enough to speak freely about the operation to those who might cause us trouble. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Giles shared a look with the rest of us. "Um, yes, sir, I think that we are taking your meaning, and that we agree. We not be indiscrete."

"Good." The doors opened again, onto a well-decorated hallway, and as we stepped out, I noticed that from this side the doors were disguised as a mirror, meeting seemlessly as they closed. Laughing college guys were here and there as we moved through what I assumed was 'Lowell house,' drinking and watching tv. Our guard herded us toward the main doors and waved us out.

"Um, so..." Xander said, looking around the parts of the university that could be seen from where we were. "What do we do now??"

"Buffy!" Willow exclaimed. "What happened to Buffy? Did she go down into the initiative too? And Doyle!!"

"Buffy and Angel were meeting up last I saw," Xander said with only a slight exclamation of disgust. "They wouldn't have just stood by while we were held prisoner. Should we..."

"I suspect that there's not much more we can do for them now," Giles said, shaking his head nervously. "Besides go home and hope. If we were let go, it stands to reason that they shan't fare much the worse."

Willow's face crinkled up. "You sure Giles?" There was a pause, during which Giles presumably nodded - I wasn't looking at him, so I don't know. "Okay, I guess I'll go back to the rez room and wait for her... oh, wait! Giles... we need to do that disinvitation spell on the room, just in case."

"Oh, right," Giles agreed with a smile. "Though I doubt Spike will be paying any surprise visits again soon..."

"Buffy wanted it done," Willow reminded him with a resolve face.

"Okay." Giles sighed. "Come along then, I still have the book of incantations, and a few spare crosses."

As they walked off, I turned to Xander. "So... your place?"

He did his cute little 'scared of a girl' face. "Uhh... for what?"

I had to laugh. "Well, nothing that you're not ready for, silly." Followed that line up with a good-natured light swap to his shoulder. "But, well... I've been through a lot the past few weeks... so I'm in the market for some kisses... and some cuddling, and if you're really feeling helpful you could volunteer to check over my body and make sure that those scientists didn't do anything horrible to it."

Xander's jaw dropped. "Uh... okay." I giggled as I followed him.

* * * *

ANGEL:
The drive to Buffy's old house on Rebello drive was a quiet one, and not just because Cordelia was still asleep in the back seat. Doyle was seeming strangely introspective, whether it was because of what had happened with this assasin who had made another attempt to kill him inside the complex, and gotten someone else, (he had told me that on the way to the van,) or for some other reason I couldn't tell.

And, of course, I was being haunted by memories of Buffy. This town, this house, alll brought back too much of her to be ignored. We had been chased down Rebello drive by 'The Three,' the night before she learned that I was a vampire. I had gone up her driveway, as Angelus, to torment her by talking to her mother and letting slip the fact that we had made love.

I couldn't shake the notion that Buffy wasn't as badly haunted by me as I was by her. When she had seen me, tonight, she had been surprised, but she had dealt. She had worked with me to get into the Initiative and when the time came, she left me without difficulty.

Left with that guy 'Riley.' Nothing that had been said between them gave away that they were dating, or had flirted, or anything like that. But I could tell anyways. Something in their faces as they looked at each other. It might not be a done deal yet, but in spirit, this was Buffy's new man. The guy she went to after I left her.

I still can't blame her for it. I was the one to leave, and all of the reasons still stand. But I don't have to like the guy.

I almost passed the house, but Doyle jogged me out of my own thoughts, and I parked the car. There weren't any lights on - it was after one in the morning. Joyce was undoubtedly asleep.

"You comin' in?" I asked Doyle, cracking the door beside my seat wide open. He paused to consider that for a few seconds.

"Nope. 'Ll stay here," Doyle said, his attention never leaving our little sleeping beauty. "Make sure that I'm here if she wakes up."

"Uh, okay," I said with a smile, getting out of the van. The front door key that Buffy had given me via Doyle worked fine, and so did stepping across the threshold. "Invitation still good," I muttered to myself silently. When had this one been from again? Oh, right - the time Spike kidnapped Xander and Willow. 'Angel, why don't you come on in?' she had asked, her hand wrapped Spike's throat, pushing him back onto the kitchen table.

God, but Buffy was sexy when she was mad...

I shook myself out of that thought, and walked into the kitchen to wait for Buffy. It seemed appropriate. I left one light on to clue her in that I had arrived, and where I was, when she showed up - a little bulb over the stove.

How weird was this? I mean, I'd left, I'd told Buffy that we couldn't see each other anymore, and now here I was, waiting for her in my kitchen. And yet... at each step of the way, I don't see what I could have done except what I did. Maybe it was just fated...

"Hi," Buffy said. I looked up with a start - I hadn't heard her come to the kitchen door, or open it. She looked so beautiful... no, no, can't dwell on that.

"So, how did everything sort out?" I asked.

"Hmm..." Buffy thought about that one for a second. "Not sure. The danger is passed, I'd say, and no casualties. Kinda inherited a bit of a sticky situation in the aftermath, but we'll work that one out another day. You know what I mean?"

I thought about Stone and what she had said to Doyle about having been hired to stop him from helping me. "Yeah, actually I think I do. It looks like I've got a mess back in L.A. that I have to clean up."

"Mmm..." Buffy muttered noncommitally. Then she looked straight into my eyes. "Thank you for coming to help, Angel. I know it must have hurt you to come back, after the way we left things, but I would have been in a lot of trouble if you hadn't been around here tonight."

"Hey, don't thank me," I said, wondering if vampires could blush. "I was just doing my new job - Doyle gets a vision, and I snap to."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "You were doing a lot more than just a job."

I didn't try to demur twice. "Well, thank you as well," I finally got out. "For... for not making things difficult.

"I could never do that," Buffy told me with a gentle smile... not exactly an accurate sentiment in my opinion, considering some of the difficult things she's put me through, but sweet nevertheless.

"Uh, so... is there anything else?" I asked pretty much rhetorically, as I headed for the door myself.

"Yes. I love you, Angel."

I turned to look at her just once before I stepped across the threshold again. "I'll always love you, Buffy."

* * * *

D'MORTE:
We only stopped long enough at Spike and Harmony's old lair and at my shop long enough to pack up the essentials. (Which included all of my merchandise that was valuable, so that did take a little while.) Then it was into my station wagon, (far from stylish, I know, but it's a practical car and some of the time practical considerations take precedence,) and out of the Hellmouth. Perhaps forever.

"I figure we head as far as the Nevada border," Spike suggested from the backseat, "and then hole up for the day. I know this little town just across the state line where we can shelter from the sun." He shot a sidelong glance over at Stone. "And maybe get to know each other a little better." Stone grinned right back.

"Sounds good to me," I decided, taking the main route east as we left town, and shooting a suggestive look of my own over to Harmony.

"So," Stone broke in. "What's the deal with these 'plans' you stole from the soldiers? What good are they?"

"The soldiers have been doing experiments in vampire mind control," I told Stone. "They captured Spike and..." Uh-oh. I had been about to mention that Spike couldn't hurt anyone, which could definitely have painted him in a bad light with a hard-core gal like Stone, couldn't it? Um...

"...And, I found out about the experiments then, killer," Spike filled in for me. "We've just stolen the technology and are going to try using it ourselves - building up a group of vampires who we can actually rely on to carry out a simple plan - because they have to."

"If we can," I added regretfully. "I didn't want to say it back there, but I only got one report. It might be difficult, putting everything together. But I'm up to the challenge."

"If anybody can do it, you can, Demmy baby," Harmony said, reaching out and stroking my thigh.

Hmm... I'm not sure if I'm wild about that nickname...

* * * *

CORDELIA:
Ow. Ow! "OW!!"

"She's waking up," another voice said. "On a scale from one to ten, how bad is it, Princess?" Doyle's voice was full of concern and sympathetic suffering.

"Twelve. No, fifteen," I groaned. "Twenty."

"Ohh..." Doyle moaned back in response. "Well, the buggers that shot you said that there wasn't much that could be done for taser hangover, but in a few hours you're gonna be fine, baby. Focus on that."

"If someone could just make the world stop bouncing," I muttered, "that'd be a big help."

There was a pause. "Well, that's not exactly the world," Angel's voice came. "Just the van. I guess the shock absorbers aren't all that they could be."

I opened my eyes. Sure enough, we were in the van, myself sprawled out on the bench seat in the back. Going down the freeway, it looked like. "Where do we have to go while I'm feeling like this? Back to L.A??"

"Uh, yeah," Angel muttered. "That was the plan. Why?"

"If the van's making everything worse on her, man," Doyle suggested, "why don't you drop us off, man? Find us an inexpensive motel, get yourself back home before the sunrise, and we'll make our own way once Cordelia's feeling better."

Angel and I considered that. "A sleazy motel?" I muttered.

"Don't worry," Doyle quickly assured me. "No funny business - unless you get a laugh at the thought of me waiting on you hand and foot."

Aw. Doyle really was a sweetie, deep down. "You'd be surprised," I managed to mutter out. "Who knows - I may even have to find a way to thank you for the service!"

"Angel, turn off. Now," Doyle instructed him...



END