Chapter Seventeen
Buffy came to first. Pushing the airbag out of the way and wincing at the numerous pains it provoked. She turned to look at Craig and called his name. When he didn’t respond she came close to panicking, but took a deep breath and reached out to touch the blood slowly tracking down his face.
“Craig, honey,” she said softly, smiling with relief when his eyes flickered open.
“Mom?”
A low whump of a noise caught Buffy’s attention and this time panic wouldn’t be denied as a plume of smoke billowed out from the car’s crumpled hood.
“Craig! We’ve got to get out of here! Now!”
She wrenched her door open and ran around the rear of the car to get to Craig’s side. He looked at her vaguely as she yanked the door open.
“Unbuckle your seatbelt,” said Buffy urgently.
He was still dazed and his hands moved too slowly, so Buffy leaned over his lap to release the catch. Putting her hands beneath his armpits, she dragged him free of the wreckage. When they were only ten feet away the car burst into flames. The explosion caused Buffy to stumble and the pair fell heavily to the leafy ground.
Seconds before the car exploded a second black Range Rover drew up on the road above. The passenger reported the fire to control and stated that they would take a closer look just in case the targets had got out.
The Range Rover’s doors slamming shut after the Initiative’s men got out alerted Buffy to their presence and with her heart pounding against her chest, she moved further back into the cover of the trees.
“Craig! Wake up. You’ve got to help me!” She lightly tapped his cheek.
He opened his eyes and gazed at the burning car. “Wow. Car’s on fire.”
Oh shit! He’s got a concussion! “I need you to walk with me. If I drag you, we’re going to leave a trail. People are coming,” she hissed in his ear. “On your feet!”
“Feet…yeah…’kay.”
Craig staggered to his feet and would have fallen but for his mother wrapping her arm around his waist and supporting him. She began to lead them further into the trees, ears straining for any noise that might indicate the men had discovered them.
After an hour, she began to relax. Surely if they had been spotted they would have known by now. Even with Slayer strength, Buffy was tiring and she eased Craig down so that his back was leaning against the broad trunk of a mature oak tree.
She pushed his hair away from the cut and sighed with relief when she found it to be little more than a graze. A tender lump was forming where his head must have struck the side window.
“Ow!” Craig pushed her hand away. “Hurts.”
“How many fingers can you see?”
Craig blinked a couple of times, and then focussed on her hand. “Um…I can see two hands but I think only six fingers.”
“Oh, God. You need to get to a hospital.”
“Hey, Mom. I’m sorry, okay? Just joking. I know there was only three.” Craig smiled weakly at her.
“That is so not funny!” said Buffy, but her face broke out in a broad smile and they hugged each other.
“So what do we do now?” asked Craig, as they parted. “We have no car. Shit, I hope you paid the damage waiver.”
“I did, but I still don’t think they’re going to be that impressed. We need to get back to Windayle.”
“They could be watching it.”
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take. Our passports and money are there. With a bit of luck, they’ll think we’re dead. The only problem is I have no idea which way to go,” said Buffy
Craig shifted his position and dug a hand in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Always be prepared,” he said with a grin, and handed her a small tin box. “Remember when Spike got me this before I went to camp?”
Buffy rolled the tin over in her hands. “Yeah.”
She smiled at the memory of Spike finding it on the Internet and ordering it. Using her fingernails, she prised off the lid and looked inside. The tin contained a small compass, a multi-tool Swiss Army knife and a small pouch made of a piece of muslin tied with a gold ribbon. Buffy raised an eyebrow and poked at the pouch.
“What’s this?” she asked. “I don’t remember that coming with it.”
“The ingredients for a locator spell. Aunt Willow gave it to me – she said it would keep for a long time as all the ingredients are dried.”
“And there was me thinking I managed to give my sons a normal childhood,” said Buffy, shaking her head.
“Um…your best friend was a witch and then you brought a vampire home to be our nanny,” said Craig. “So I’m thinking normal’s maybe not the right word.”
Buffy frowned, “Locator spell? Why didn’t you say – we could have used it to find Cam.”
“I was only a kid when she gave me the spell. It’ll only find something of mine. You know like keys – stuff like that.”
“So how is a compass going to help us to get back to Windayle, if we don’t know where we are to start with?”
Craig took the tin out of her hands and said, “You really aren’t great with the magics are you?”
“Hey!”
“My passport is at the guest house. So I do the spell, which turns the muslin that the ingredients are wrapped in, into a map. Then using the compass we follow the map and abracadabra, we get back to Windayle.”
“So what are we waiting for?” said Buffy. “We need to get our stuff and move somewhere else as soon as we can. God only knows what they’re doing to Cam.”
*~*~*~*
Cameron took his hands away from the keypad and laid them on the armrests of his wheelchair. He let his head loll to the side until it rested against one of the pads and closed his eyes.
“You okay?” asked Gunn.
“Not really,” said Cam. “I miss my family and … and I hate being like this.”
“We’re your family now! You don’t need anything else. You’re just down, ‘cause you’re tired. There’s just one more thing I need you to do and then I’ll get Mark down here to take you home.”
“It’s not my home! I don’t belong here!”
“Hey, calm down,” soothed Gunn, his ever present smile not fading a bit. “Once they get your meds stabilised you’ll feel a lot more positive.”
Cam stared at the IV line running into the vein at the back of his hand. “What sort of shit are they pumping me full of?”
Gunn grabbed his hand as Cameron went to rip the line out. “Easy now. Leave that be. They’ll only strap you down ‘til you’re more rational. Don’t want that do you?”
Surprised at how strong Gunn was, Cam shook his head.
“So are you ready to do that final task?”
“Yeah, okay. What is it?”
*~*~*~*
Pain ripped through Spike’s head. Then his world was flooded with light. He squeezed his eyes closed for a moment then opened them slowly. They’d given him back the sight in his left eye, but he had no idea whether this would be a good or bad thing.
*~*~*~*
“I just need you to activate the program you’ve been working on,” explained Gunn, with a smile.
What the fuck are they drugging him with to be this happy when from the waist down there’s nothing there? Will I be like that soon?
Gunn nudged Cam. “Hey, man, are you listening?”
“What? Yeah. Sorry.”
“So what did I just say?”
“Um…okay. Wasn’t listening.”
With an eye roll, Gunn ran through the procedure again and as the teenager ran his fingers over the keypad and methodically pressed the required sequence, he switched on a monitor to the right of Cameron.
“Done,” said Cam. “Now what?”
Gunn nodded his head towards the screen. Cam’s eyes widened and his exhaustion was forgotten when he saw Spike in the picture.
“Why am I looking at Spike?”
“You’ve just set the program in motion.”
Cam shook his head. “No. I haven’t done anything to him. You said that the program was for clearing corrupted data.”
“It is,” replied Gunn. “He hasn’t been behaving as he should so he has to be cleaned out.”
Cam punched Gunn, who just grinned and said, “You might want to work on that upper body strength a little.”
“You tricked me! Maggie promised he’d be okay as long as I did what she wanted.”
“Oh, he’ll be just fine,” Gunn said, staring at the screen which showed Spike thrashing wildly in the chair, mouth open, as he no doubt screamed at the top of his lungs. “In a while.”
Raging impotently at being fooled into activating whatever was happening to Spike, Cam couldn’t take his eyes from the screen. After ten interminably long minutes, Spike’s body went lax as he fell unconscious.
Cameron’s head lurched forwards as his chair was abruptly pulled back.
“Time for bed,” said Mark.
The boy let out a startled yelp.
“Sorry, didn’t hear me come in? You didn’t even have the volume up, did you?”
“I want to see him!”
“Sorry, Cameron, no can do. You get to see him once a day and you’ve already seen him today.”
“Please…I’ve got to—”
“You have to go to your quarters,” snapped Mark, spinning the wheelchair around. “Hey, Gunn, how you doing?”
“I’m good. Though I’d appreciate it if my new work mate would lighten up!”
They exchanged a high five as Mark wheeled Cam out of the room.
After going along in silence, Cameron asked, tentatively, “He wasn’t really attacked by a vampire was he?”
“No. He used to work for a law firm. Wolfram & Hart. When you join there you sell your soul to the company. Wolfram & Hart were in debt to us, after some work we did in the early days, so we took payment in souls rather than cash.” Mark chuckled wryly. “I’m not sure that the employees realised that their souls could be passed on with or without still being attached to the body. Maggie wanted the whole package and so we got Gunn and Lilah and a few others, including the CEO. Did you see that glass orb on top of the filing cabinet in her office?”
“Yeah,” said Cam, quietly.
“Well, that contains the soul of the CEO.”
“What happened to the body? Is it down in those rooms full of experiments somewhere?”
“Oh, no. The soul is all that remains. The CEO was a vampire.”
“A vampire with a soul? There’s no such thi…” Cam clenched his fists. Angel! He’s talking about Angel! His mom had know the vampire. An ensouled vamp. The only ensouled vamp. “This place is evil! What you’re doing is wrong!” Cam tried to twist his head around to look at Mark, but couldn’t manage it.
“Gunn’s happy enough, and Lilah enjoys playing with her parts! You don’t hear them complaining.”
“They’re drugged!”
“Gunn is. But none of the ones in the cells are. No need to with them safely locked away.”
“Why has Gunn been left like that? Why not just give him his lower half back?”
“No need to,” explained Mark. “We needed his brain. As long as he takes his meds, he stays a happy bunny and works hard. Plus, it means if he ever tried to get out of the facility – he’d fail. There are steps out of all exits!” Mark laughed and leaned down to slap Cameron’s unfeeling thigh. “So now you know why I activated the spinal clamp.”
Cam tried to push the man’s hand from his leg but groaned in frustration as his arms just weren’t strong enough to achieve it.
“Please let me go home,” said Cam, futilely.
“Your wish is my command,” Mark said as he pushed the button to Cam’s spartan quarters. “Better get used to it, kid. The nurses will be in soon to put you to bed.”
Cam started as the door slammed closed behind him. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was Gunn. How had the man even survived with so much of him missing? He thought back to what Maggie had said. Vampire blood. That must be the answer.
*~*~*~*
Spike screamed and writhed. The pain in his head worse than he’d ever endured. But then darkness came and he welcomed it. He was no longer in the chair when he came around. Not that he remembered he’d been in the chair at all. The room he was in appeared large and Spike decided that he should explore it. Trying to stand, his head swam and he collapsed back to the floor, so he crawled along the side of one of the walls.
His head bumped something solid and he looked up, but scowled as he saw only a white wall some ten feet way. Cautiously, he reached out with his right hand and hissed when it touched something cool. Further exploration revealed that this invisible barrier existed across the whole width of the room. Deciding that it couldn’t be good, Spike scooted backwards until he was huddled in a corner.
It was an hour later when his messed up mind figured out that the wall was showing a reflection, that the room was really only half as large as it appeared. But for the life of him he didn’t know why he wasn’t able to see himself. He laid on his side, curled up into as small a ball as he could manage and waited.
*~*~*~*
The nurses came in to find blood flowing freely from where Cameron had ripped out the line in the back of his hand. His face bloody, where he’d used his teeth to tear it free when his feeble fingers couldn’t tug hard enough.
Wordlessly they began to clean him up. The blonde wiped his face, all the time avoiding his eyes and the brunette put an adhesive bandage on his hand.
“Why don’t you talk to me?” asked Cam in a small voice.
Exchanging glances, the blonde spoke up, “Orders.”
“Why? I’m here. I can’t go anywhere.”
She just shrugged and left the room. When she returned, she wiped his neck. The tang of alcohol reached his nose and Cameron jerked his head away.
“What are you doing?”
The brunette placed her hands on his, pressing them to the armrests of his chair. Cam struggled to no avail. His head was pushed to the side and there was a sharp sting as a needle was pushed into the vein in his neck.
“Please don’t,” he begged, but he may as well not have spoken at all for all the notice they took of him.
The line was reconnected to the shunt in his vein and then a broad collar was firmly fastened around his neck. Smiling coldly, the brunette released his arms and watched him expectantly. Without thinking, Cam reached up to touch the collar. A bolt of pain shot through his neck and his questing fingers. With a yell, he let his hand fall back down to his lap.
“You won’t be pulling that line out in a hurry, will you?” The brunette sneered at him.
She wheeled the chair around and pushed it to the front wall of the cell so that Cameron’s feet were almost touching it. When they had left the room the whole front wall became one huge mirror, and Cam baulked at the first sight of himself since his arrival.
His face was vampire pale with large dark shadows around his soft brown eyes and he’d visibly lost weight. But what his attention really focussed on was the chair. The straps holding his useless body upright. The narrow tube running from a bag suspended at the back of his chair, to where it disappeared beneath the collar, feeding him drugs that would do God knows what to him.
Another glance at his face made him see what he really was. The corpse for all intents and purposes of the person he’d been before. He wished that he’d never cared enough for Spike to go looking for him.
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