“Good morning, Cameron,” said Maggie Walsh, stretching her pinched features into a smile. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m good thanks.” Cam wheeled his chair to the desk. “I’m just impatient to get to work. I can’t believe this accident made me miss so much time. You must be getting behind with the experiments.”
Maggie and Mark exchanged smug looks. Damn, those techs could mess with minds.
“You’ll be back to work today; if you’re sure you’re up to it?” Maggie replied.
“Yeah, can’t wait to get back. Might need the arm rests taken off the chair though, so I can get in close enough to reach over the table,” Cam said. “What’s scheduled for surgery today?”
“I just need you to look over some of the past projects and see if you have any suggestions.”
Cam grinned. “So what are we waiting for?”
“Mark, take Cam to the holding pens.”
“Sure thing, Professor.”
Mark put his hands on Cam’s chair.
“I can do it,” snapped the boy. He nodded at Maggie and wheeled himself out of the room, pausing only for Mark to open it for him.
“So what am I going to see first?” asked Cameron as they made their way to the pens.
“We need you to observe a vampire.”
“Cool,” said Cam, showing boyish enthusiasm. “I love messing with vamps.”
They’d removed his soul to get rid of his pesky conscience but the input of the surgical knowledge meant that they’d had to give him memories of past experiments. So it seemed to Cam that he’d performed them himself. It would be quite a test of the technician’s skill if he was happy to use Seventeen as a subject given his previous connection with the vampire.
“Then I think you’ll enjoy this one.” Mark grinned.
At the outside of Spike’s cell, the pair stopped and Cam spun his chair around to face it.
“So what’s the low down on this thing?” asked Cam, his face wrinkling with distaste at the sight before him. “Who’s the toy?”
“That’s Gibson. Well what’s left of him,” said Mark.
“The fucker who put me in the chair?”
“That’s right.” Mark’s satisfied smile at another lie successfully implanted was hidden from Cam as he stood slightly behind the chair.
“Good.”
“So the vampire was a tracker?” said Cam, regarding Spike with clinical detachment. “An early one, given that both eyes were taken.”
“Yes, that’s right. We’ve only given it the sight of one eye right now though.”
“So why is it here?”
“It rebelled and escaped. Should have been retired years ago, its knee was screwed, but it got re-trained.”
“I think it’s enjoying itself too much,” said Cam, as Spike bit into the weakly struggling man’s thigh, tapping the femoral artery.
“We’re re-honing its killing instincts. It has spent a long time with its aggression curbed. Now if it’s not inflicting pain – its head hurts.”
“Well, give it night vision only. The added pain from being in a bright environment will keep it aggressive. What are Maggie’s plans for it?” asked Cam, twisting so he could see Mark’s face. “I can’t remember anything about this one.”
“It came in while you were unconscious.”
“So what’s she need it like this for? It’ll be uncontrollable.”
Mark took a deep breath. He glanced at the camera up near the ceiling before answering him, knowing Maggie was watching and listening.
“We’re pretty sure the retired slayer is going to come here – the vampire is our weapon of choice.”
Frowning, Cam said, “My mother? She’s going to come here?”
“We think so. She wants to take you home.”
“This is my home. Where was she when I needed her after the accident? It was the professor who was there for me – not her. Half my childhood, she palmed me off on…” Hesitating, he stared at Spike, trying to remember something that was just out of reach.
“On what?” prompted Mark.
“On anyone she could have. No wonder Dad left us.”
Mark winked at the camera. The kid had passed. His memories of his mother were suitably warped. Maggie would be pleased that the money spent on embedding the surgical knowledge wouldn’t be wasted. Cameron was here for good.
“So what do you want to do with the vampire, Cam?”
“Like I said. Get rid of the normal vision. It can be accessed remotely, can’t it?” Mark nodded. “Oh, and make sure the techs paralyse the eyelids to keep them open.”
“Won’t that cause permanent damage to its ability to be able to see?”
“Probably,” said Cam, with a smirk, “but we’ve got the other eye to play with. I want it fitted with the most up to date eye you have in the other socket.”
“Sure thing. Should I get the techs to switch the mode of vision when it’s on the table having the new eye fitted?” asked Mark.
Cam shook his head. “No. It’ll hurt like hell and I want to see it.”
“Oh, okay.”
Mark shook his head slightly at the change in the boy. He knew it had to be done, and he’d seen it done plenty of times before, but the contrast in this case was extreme. Using a radio, he passed Cam’s instructions on to the team of techs, and then stood back to watch the show.
*~*~*~*
Spike licked the wound to seal it and glanced up at the food hanging on the hook. It didn’t make much noise anymore, but its heart still beat, albeit erratically. He scored the thigh with one of his fangs, leaving a neat incised cut that slowly seeped blood. The food twitched, and he grinned. The pain was gone. The fury that had prompted him to bash against the walls was reduced to the extent that he was able to ignore it. Just biting or breaking one of the food’s limbs quelled it if the rage returned.
The light in his eye intensified, until it seared. Screaming, Spike tried to close his eyelids, panicking when he couldn’t. It took several seconds before his muddled brain could work out what to do. He dropped his head to the floor and curled up, wrapping his hands around his head to blot out the light.
Cam smiled. “I don’t think it liked that. Take its food away and leave it for two hours before letting the techs take it away.”
They watched as the suspended body of Gibson was hauled up through a hatch in the ceiling. The vampire, distressed by the pain from its eye, didn’t react until it was too late. With a roar, it leapt up and tried to grab the feet of its food but it missed. Howling with rage, Spike clawed at his temples, drawing blood on the skin already seared by the Holy Water. Then as quickly that he got up, he retreated to the corner with his arms covering his eyes.
“I want to be the one to work on it,” said Cam, once it became clear that the vampire wasn’t going to be moving anywhere for a time.
“No problem. Now, Maggie wants you to look over the others and let her know if you think further work needs to be done.”
“Cool!” For a moment, Cam looked like the teenager he was as he grinned up at Mark.
*~*~*~*
The first thing that Craig saw when he woke was his mother’s face peering anxiously at him.
“How are you feeling?”
Smiling, he sat up. “I haven’t been awake long enough to know yet.”
“Well, you look better than you did last night.” She took his hand and squeezed it.
“Thanks, Mom. I think I do feel better.” His fingers explored the lump on his forehead, and he winced. “That’s still sore though. Good job I’ve got a thick skull, huh?”
Placing a gentle kiss on his brow, Buffy laughed softly. “If you’re making jokes, you must be feeing okay.”
They stared at each other for a moment, before Craig broke eye contact and said quietly, “Do you think he’s still alive?”
“He has to be.”
A tap at the bedroom door interrupted them. “Buffy? Craig? Dora’s making some breakfast – it’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll be down. Thank you,” called Buffy.
“So it looks like they’re going to help us,” said Craig. “You said he found you in the house?” He raised an eyebrow. “Losing your touch, Mom?”
“I never heard him at all,” Buffy said ruefully. “But at least it got us a safe place to stay.”
“I don’t like it though. We’re best when it’s just us. How do we know we can trust them?”
“I hear what you’re saying, but I think this is too big for us to do alone.”
Craig got out of bed, pulling his jeans on over his boxer shorts as he said, “Don’t you think it’s all a bit of a coincidence? We just happened to stay at a guest house whose owner is anti-Initiative? What if they’re a part of it all?
“Craig, we’ll just take it step by step. We’ll tell them only what we have to. But I honestly feel that they’re genuine.” She handed her son his shirt. “Now, let’s go down and eat. We need to work out where we go from here, and Willow should be arriving in London soon.”
Nodding his agreement, Craig put the shirt on, and together they went downstairs.
The Carmichaels were in the kitchen, and Craig’s face lit up when he saw Dora taking bacon out of a frying pan.
“Wow, that smells good,” he said, sitting down at the table when she indicated he should with a wave of the spatula.
“How’s the head?” she asked, beginning to pile scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage onto plates.
“It’s fine, thanks. Sorry for all the hassle I caused,” he said, fiddling with the knife and fork on the table.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You had a bang on your head, a long hike and then an hour on the back of the quad! I’m surprised you lasted so long.”
“What would you like to drink?” asked Maurice. “Tea? Coffee?”
“I’ll have coffee, please,” said Buffy.
“Tea for me,” said Craig. “Spike got me to like it.”
“Spike being the vampire we talked about last night?” said Maurice.
Craig glanced at Buffy before answering. “Yeah. I don’t know what Mom told you about him, but he was a better man than my dad was. I know you probably won’t understand, but I loved him.”
Buffy’s eyes filled with tears as Craig spoke, recalling his harsh words from not so long ago when he’d said he wished Spike had never lived with them. She wanted to correct the tense from past to present, but she honestly couldn’t believe that they’d let Spike live after kidnapping Cameron. A shudder ran through her. Please let them have dusted him and not sent him to the retirement sheds.
“I do find it hard to understand,” said Maurice. “The adverts on the TV that have aired have shown vampires to be little more than trained animals – something akin to a dog. Yet he lived as family with you?”
The drinks made, he put a cup on the table in front of each person and sat when Dora passed out the plates. They were silent for a time as they began to eat.
“He was my lover,” said Buffy, causing the Carmichaels to choke in unison.
Craig laughed at their shocked faces, and Buffy thought sadly, how long it had been since she’d heard him do it.
“I’m sorry,” said Buffy, smiling. “But I thought it was better out in the open. Craig’s right. Spike was a better man than most. I intervened when his handler told me they were going to retire him – and trust me when I say that what happens to retired vamps isn’t conversation to have while eating – I should have done it years before.”
“Why?” asked Dora. “I’m not trying to be awkward – but why intervene with this particular one? Surely you encountered many vampires when you were an active slayer – both in and out of the Initiative.”
Nodding, Buffy said, “I did. But a long time ago, before the Initiative was formed, and when I was the sole slayer, he helped me save the world.”
Craig smiled as he saw the Carmichael’s digest that fact.
“Good God,” said Maurice, reminding Buffy of the late Rupert Giles. “Why on earth would a vampire help a slayer?”
“It’s a long story,” said Buffy, and as they ate, she told of Spike’s aid in defeating Angelus.
*~*~*~*
The pain was back.
Spike’s cries began as whimpers but as the pain increased his rage increased with it and soon, despite the pain in his eye, he started to attack the walls again. By the time the techs came to get him, he could barely stand.
A shock from the stun gun put Spike on the floor and he was rapidly taken to the lab for treatment. His head was fastened into a brace and on Cameron’s instructions, Spike was given no anaesthetic.
Mark watched in fascination as the teenager scrubbed up for the procedure. Normal surgical hygiene was observed so that no time was lost to infections that even in a vampire might result in several days out of action. After Cam had scrubbed up, he smiled as he touched the control joystick of the electric wheelchair that had been sterilised for him to use while operating. It was hard to take in that this would be the boy’s first operation. But to Cameron, it was as routine to him now as breathing was. His imported knowledge led him to believe he’d operated many times.
As Cameron approached, Spike growled, struggling against the restraints. The vampire’s panic and fury increased by the fact he was now blind, the vision in his left eye burnt away.
“Gag it,” ordered Cam.
He wheeled back a little to allow a couple of techs to ram a metal ball gag into Spike’s mouth. It was small enough to fit comfortably behind his fangs, but pulled back so tightly that it provoked the gag reflex, as it pressed on the back of his tongue.
Waiting for the vampire’s retching to settle, Cam studied it carefully. He reached out but didn’t touch a scar on the vampire’s chest. For a moment he thought he remembered something about such a scar, but then it was gone.
“Okay, show me the selection of eyes,” he said.
A tech came forward with an array of eye shaped cameras, all sterile and ready to use. After a pause, Cameron selected a vivid blue one. The lens of the camera so tiny that the eye looked normal. It amused Cam to put such a human looking eye into a demonic visage.
“We’ll put it in the right eye socket. The left is ruined. The pathway to the brain is gone. Just find a matching eye without any of the tech stuff in it,” said Cameron, carefully dissecting away the camera in Spike’s left eye.
He could have just left the socket empty but he liked things to look neat and tidy.
“The only blank eye we have is two shades lighter than the camera eye – will that be alright, sir?” asked a tech timidly, she knew whose memories had been used and old Knapton had been a perfectionist. “They won’t have a match for two days.”
With a sigh, Cam stared at the still struggling vampire. Would it really matter what colour its eyes were when it was unleashed against the slayer? He refused to think of that uncaring bitch as his mother.
“It’ll be fine. We’ll be picking them out of a pile of dust soon enough.”
The latest models could survive the vampire dusting, unlike the early ones.
Spike passed out as the camera eye was fitted. For the first time the techs had come up with an eye that could be attached so that it could be moved from side to side almost like a real eye. The left would remain immobile – no reason to go to the trouble of attaching it when there was no vision in it.
When the surgery was complete, Cameron leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out.
“Boy, that’s made me ache,” he said. “Glad to be back on the job though.” Glancing at Mark, he added, “I want to do something else – it’ll make it even more lethal.”
“You don’t need my permission,” said Mark. “What do you want to do?”
“I think I know how we can improve the fangs – elongate them a little.”
“Really? How’d you know that?” blurted Mark, not thinking it through.
Scowling, Cam shook his head. “Not sure. But I want to try it. It won’t take long.”
He manoeuvred the chair to a refrigerator on the far wall and took out a small vial. “Gemma, change the gag for a bit gag – one coated with rubber.”
Nodding, the tech did as bidden. Then Cameron approached the vampire once more. Drawing up a millilitre or so, with a fine gauge needle, he injected the gum just above the top left fang. Even unconscious as it was, the vampire’s body shuddered.
“Jeez,” muttered Mark, stepping back a pace as the fang almost doubled in length, and inclined forwards slightly.
Cam laughed. “I knew it would work!”
Within minutes, all four fangs were longer than they should be. The gag was taken out and Cameron eased the vampire’s jaw shut. The fangs now protruded from the lips when the mouth was closed, but didn’t interfere with the way the other teeth meshed.
“That’ll make its bite deeper and even more lethal.” Cam replaced the bit gag and looked up at Mark. “Best keep it restrained until you need it – unless it gets fed. Don’t want it thrashing about and damaging the hardware.”
“Sure thing.”
“I’m going to write up my notes and then go have a nap. My arms and back are aching. I don’t want to set my recovery back. But any problems with it and I want to be told immediately.”
*~*~*~*
Spike came to with a start. He hissed and bared his teeth as his fangs nicked his lips. The pain was there in his head. But other pain too. In his eyes. His mouth. Trying to rub them, he growled and snarled as he discovered he was firmly shackled, with the chains on his arms taut enough to prevent him from being able to touch his face. His legs stretched out on the floor in front of him. A collar around his neck fixed him so securely to the wall that he was unable to even bang his head against it with any force.
As his hunger increased, so did his desire to rip and tear and feed. Eventually, the food was lowered back into his cell. Gibson was more dead than alive and large swathes of skin had been stripped from his body, causing blood to drip sluggishly to the floor.
He was close enough for his blood to coat the vampire’s feet, but not close enough for him to eat. After thirty minutes, Spike was almost demented by being unable to feed or vent his rage. After an hour – he was completely demented – any small shred of humanity that may have survived had been purged.
Maggie watched the monitor and smiled.
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