“Let’s go kick some Initiative ass!”
Riley watched the pair exit the stairwell door then switched to another camera angle that picked them up after they entered the compound. He followed them on the closed circuit monitor, watching as they entered the containment area and split up, the male going down one row of cells, the female doing the same on the opposite side.
Wait a minute… female? Their operation had very few females. Time to check it out.
He turned briefly to the computer and started typing codes that eventually brought up a list of female recruits in service to the Initiative, their name, position, and vital statistics listed in the database.
Chin, Margaret - stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico - classified.
“No, not her,” he muttered, moving on to the next name and picture as the first image looked nothing like the intruder.
Othello, Diana - stationed in Nova Scotia, Canada - priority clearance, science division.
He glanced over his shoulder at the camera once more, trying to zoom in on the woman’s face, but could only make out a slight frame and dark hair, her cap covering most of her facial features. “Not her either.”
The last recruit was displayed on the screen and she was located on the other side of the world at the moment, working on thermonuclear physics and only on a consultant basis with the Initiative. That left the possibility of an intruder… but one that had access? It didn’t make sense.
Watching the monitor more closely, he noticed the pair seemed to be looking for something… or someone within the cells, stopping to peer into each one, obviously not locating what they were hoping to find. The male turned to the female once to converse, but then continued on his path towards the end of the hall. The idea of reporting the ‘visitors’ to Walsh flitted through his mind, but he’d grown apprehensive of her and her orders in the past few weeks, the absence of his black eye still niggling at the back of his mind. He’d seen what they’d done to the demons and whatnot they’d captured, who knew what they were doing to the soldiers in their employ.
Instead, he disabled the alarm system and security recording mechanism, allowing him to deal with the guests himself without fear of interruption. The compound was practically empty at this time of night, only a few scientists and guards on duty, the rest fast asleep in their barracks. He could dispatch the pair without much notice.
Just before he left though, the scene on the monitor changed as the female jerked away from one of the cells, a hand over her mouth and pointing towards the glass barrier, the male grasping her by the shoulders and shaking his head. Oh yeah, these two were behaving like ‘civvies’ now and that meant containment was necessary. He spared one glance to the camera focused on Walsh and Hostile Seventeen then left the room.
~*~
“Well, that was easier than I expected,” Buffy murmured as they slinked their way in the shadows to the containment area.
“Don’t say that! That’s like asking for trouble!” Xander whispered harshly. He took note of the scant crew, his uneasiness growing the closer they got to the jail cells. “You know, they always say something like that in the movies… right before the ten-foot tall monster steps out and squishes them flat with its pinky.”
“Okay, I take it back.” She rolled her eyes before glancing up at the ceiling, silently praying the Fates would be kind but knowing her luck, they were just playing with her.
“Nope, no take backs. Once you said it, it’s a done deal,” he groused lightly as they rounded a sharp corner then stopped before entering the brightly lit area to study all the cells. “You take the left side, I’ll take the right. Hopefully he’s in one of these things.”
She slipped around him and carefully tiptoed her way down the row; searching and quickly moving on to the next when she didn’t find who she was looking for, Xander doing the same on his side. There were so many cells, and she wondered what on earth the Initiative was doing with all these creatures, becoming aware of the frightened looks on most of their faces. A few were too gaunt or wasted to do more than glance at her then turn away, despair etched in their gazes.
“This isn’t right,” she murmured, her eyes tearing up. “They’re being treated worse than animals.”
The ASPCA would’ve had a field day if this organization were actually keeping animals, the lawsuits never-ending from all the abuse and neglect she was witnessing. But that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? Were these creatures even below animals in their right to be protected? Spike had once told her that vamps were sentient beings and hinted that they might even have a soul; regardless of the tales and myths she’d been told. And now, staring into the cages, she could see what he’d been trying to tell her.
Each one was different, just as different as humans were and couldn’t understand what they’d done to deserve this… except exist. She drew similarities to the Jewish Holocaust and the situation she was being forced to acknowledge in these cells, the last occupant in her row making it painfully clear that he preferred death over the existence he was being forced to live.
Approaching the glass, she watched, at what she assumed was the last of The Gentlemen, slice his finger open with a small piece of sharp metal… only to have the wound quickly heal itself. He slowly raised his eyes to her and sluggishly moved to the barrier. He began cutting again, smearing the fluid on the glass before the incision healed and writing letters with each cut.
Kill me.
She covered her mouth in horror and nearly retched, backing away until she grabbed Xander and pushed him the direction of the ghoul’s cell.
“My God! I thought they were all dead,” he said in shock, stopping a foot away from the barrier separating them. He observed the being blink its eyes slowly, sliding down the concrete wall to sit with its head against the clear cell door.
Buffy’s muffled cries brought him back to his senses, backing away to hold his friend while she dealt with the horrors of human nature. Once she settled a little, he gave her a slight pat and sighed.
“He’s not in any of these cages, Buffy. I don’t have schematics of this place, so they could be holding him just about anywhere. Being a lab rat suddenly has new meaning in this maze.”
“She is the grass that I lay my head upon…”
Buffy went rigid with the nearness of Spike’s voice, turning her head to peer down a long and narrow, dimly lit corridor off to the right.
“Spike?” she whispered aloud, listening intently for his answer.
“Do you hear-”
“Shhh!” she cut Xander off. Hearing nothing, she prodded his mind again. “Spike? I’m coming, hang in there!”
“She is the rain that quenches my undying thirst…”
His words were slurred, even in his head, and she felt him slipping from his earthly prison.
“NO!” she screamed and bolted towards the corridor, only to run into a brick wall of flesh.
Riley picked her up by the scruff of the neck, keeping well away from her hands and feet. “Now, where do you’re think off to?”
“… and I love you as the flowers love the sunshine.”
Her eyes widened as she went lax in Riley’s grip, her lower lip trembling. “No… no,” she whimpered.
“Spike? Spike! Talk to me, godamnit!” she screamed uselessly at his mind. A daunting silence was her only answer.
“Do you need help here, sir?” a low voice interrupted.
Riley turned to see an agent nearby, gun at the ready. He probably heard her scream and came running. “No, I have everything in hand. You’re dismissed.”
The soldier narrowed his eyes at the tall Commando, but wisely nodded and left the trio.
“We definitely have everything in hand, don’t we…” He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Buffy.”
She stiffened for a moment, wondering if her glamour disappeared, but frowned when she felt no hair on the back of her neck.
“Oh, I know it’s you under all that - that… whatever it is. Who else would come looking for the amoral idiot of undead society?”
“Uh - oh,” was all Xander could mutter before he watched her clock Riley a good one.
Or, at least, he thought it was supposed to be a good one. Riley didn’t even flinch with the force of her blow, but he returned the power threefold as he backhanded her, sending her sliding along the floor to land at her friend’s feet. Xander didn’t think twice as he slung his rifle into position and took aim.
“You’re Swiss cheese history, man!” He opened fire on the imposing Commando, emptying most of his rounds into his chest area, a few on his arms and one grazing his cheek.
They all stared in shock at Riley, who stood there investigating his wounds with curiosity then pulled out one of the slugs to examine it.
“Jesus! It’s like he’s… he’s…”
“Indestructible,” Riley finished with a scowl.
“Sir! I heard the commotion and-”
“I said I’d handle this!” Riley roared as he turned and wrapped his hands around the guard’s throat, squeezing the life out of him.
Buffy scrambled to her feet, knowing that so far, Riley had only detained demons and vampires, never killing humans. If he murdered a human, there would be no way to save him and he’d have to answer to a higher, more human authority.
“You’re killing him!” she yelled, trying to pry his hands from the soldier’s neck.
He dropped the man, who’d passed out, and instead wrapped his meaty fingers around Buffy’s throat. Confusion warred in his features as he flexed his digits, cutting off her air supply and then allowing her to breathe. Xander made a move to intervene, but Buffy’s eyes caught his, shaking her head as much as she could in her current position.
She didn’t know or understand why she was trying to save what was left of Riley, but his permanent look of utter disbelief as he stared at his hands helped reassure her she was on the right track. “Riley?” she rasped.
His brow dipped low in a frown as his eyes darted from his fingers to her face. “I-I don’t know…”
Slowly and gently, so as not to agitate him further, Buffy reached up and touched his wrists, trying to withdraw the pressure from her trachea. He stood there in a daze as she looked at the injuries Xander’s gun had inflicted, noticing a silvery sheen under them. She tentatively prodded an open wound, expecting to find some sort of bone fragment, but only finding… metal.
“What are you?” she gasped, finally looking him in the eye.
He looked at the holes on his arms and grimaced in disgust, shaking his head. Reaching down, he pulled a wicked looking blade from his boot, watching as Buffy jumped back a few feet. His eyes steady on her, he stabbed the knife deeply into his forearm, feeling pain and seeing blood well to the surface, but it wasn’t a biting pain, more of an annoyance. And the blood was minimal, nothing like in… humans.
“What’s happening to me?” he whispered, looking as lost as he felt.
“Execute order thirty-seven!”
Riley’s body became rigid and beyond his control at the sound of Walsh’s voice. It was like he was watching a movie of himself as he approached Buffy and Xander in a menacing fashion. Whatever bullets were left in Xander’s clip, he knew would be emptied into him as they tried to keep him from advancing on them. What the hell was going on with him?
“Buffy, the gun’s jammed!” Xander yelled as he pulled her behind him and they backed away.
“Riley! You can’t do this! You’re sick, let someone help you!” she screamed at him.
“I-I don’t want to… to…”
Walsh emerged from the shadows, watching with great interest. “Do not deviate from the order.”
Trying to counteract the command, Riley’s body began shaking, as if going into seizures. His back arched violently and he fell to the floor, his head striking the pavement several times, hard enough to leave an indentation.
“The failsafe is working, I see,” Walsh said with a smirk as she walked around her agent’s twisting body. “Defy me further, and your body will go into shut down.”
“Defy this, you bitch!”
Buffy decked the hag and watched her sail across the compound to land unconscious after hitting a metal door. She rushed over to Riley to find him passed out, his face slathered in foamy drool.
“God, what did they do to him?”
“I’ll watch him, Buff… you go find Spike,” Xander said, toeing the inert man with his boot.
Without a word, she turned and ran in the direction she last heard something, screaming in her mind for Spike to answer. She cursed herself a fool ten times over for her delay in getting to him when she heard nothing but an empty echo.
Several locked doors lined the hallway, each with large numbers stamped on the metal door. She took the first door, broke the lock and peered about the room. Polished steel cabinets filled the room, a steamy vapor rising from the bottom of each one. She mangled the handle on one and looked inside. Rows and rows of glass vials were nestled in deep freeze, all containing a liquid of some sort. Definitely not the room she wanted.
Moving on to the next, she poked her head inside, gasping as she took in the horror before her. Eight long cylinders lined the room, filled to the brim with clear liquid. Each tube held a form inside, in various stages of development, some grotesque in their twisted appearance. She quickly backed out of the room and fled to the next one.
The lock on the door to three-fourteen was harder to break, grunting as she pushed and pulled on the latch until it finally gave way. She shoved the door open, nearly slipping on the blood that pooled on the floor.
Spike’s blood!
Abject terror coursed through her body and soul at the sight she beheld on the table. Carefully stepping around the puddles of blood littering the floor, she made her way to the side of the metal slab, an empty tube brushing against her hip. She looked down at the offending item and followed it to its beginning in Spike’s vein. Gently withdrawing the needle it was attached to, she flung the hated torture device across the room, listening as it plopped uselessly in a puddle.
She braced herself and lifted her gaze, looking into his now lifeless eyes. His lids had closed halfway, as if he were sleepy… but they didn’t move, his beautiful blue eyes sunken in so far he looked like a skull. His skin was yellowed and paper-thin over protruding bones, his cheeks so hollow she could see the outline of his teeth beneath the muscle. His lips were cracked and dry, no moisture to be found except on the floor.
“Spike?” she sobbed in a quiet voice, reaching out to touch his shoulder. It was cold as ice.
That’s when she noticed the triangular piece of bone lying off to the side of his head. She moved to the top of the table and immediately turned to the side, vomiting in a nearby sink. Holding the back of her hand to her lips, she looked at Spike’s head.
The platinum bleach curls in the back were drenched in blood, apparently from where they sliced open his scalp. She glanced at the bone-saw, propped up on a side table, and then back to his skull. She prayed to God that he’d been out cold when they started cutting, but knowing them, he was probably wide-awake.
Making her way back to the table, she picked up a wire with a microchip attached to the end of it. This… this little piece of silicon and wires was what debilitated Spike so much that he sought refuge with her and the Scoobies. This was the hardware that caused all his stored up years of information to flow like a broken damn from his mouth. This was the piece of shit that stole his eyesight from him and caused him to question his sanity.
She never hated science more in her life.
She crushed the chip in her fist, cutting her palm in the process. Dropping the metal, she stared at the blood oozing from the cut and without thought, began rubbing the liquid over Spike’s dry, cracked lips. When the bleeding stopped, she waited, searching for any signs that he smelled the life-giving substance, wanting it bad enough to come around.
Nothing happened.
Biting her lip to keep from completely losing it, she dug around in her pocket for the Gem of Amara and slipped it on one of his thin, limp fingers. If anything could bring him back, it would be the ring. It was supposed to keep vamps impervious to harm, wasn’t it? She wondered how long it would take before the effects would be apparent.
Several moments went by, and still… nothing happened.
“Spike? C’mon, wake up!” she said a little hysterically, her eyes overflowing with tears.
No spark, no movement, not even a hint of unneeded breath stirred within him.
“No,” she whimpered, touching his cheek in a gentle caress.
Leaning down, she kissed him lightly on his parched lips, her tears covering his face. She then wiped the smudges from his jaw, trying in vain to make him look presentable as she ran her fingers through his soft curls. She knew she was quickly losing it, but didn’t care any longer if she actually did.
“You know, you still haven’t beaten me when we’ve fought,” she whispered to him, as if he could hear her. “I’d hate to think the Big Bad would let me down. You’re supposed to kill me, you know?” She stroked his collarbone lovingly, going lower to touch the place where his dead heart laid.
“It’s not supposed to happen this way, Spike,” she protested weakly, tears coursing down her cheeks to plop on his sunken chest. “We’re supposed to go out in a blaze of glory, you and me. Not with you as someone’s science experiment and not with me having to live without you.”
“Buffy?”
“You were right, Spike. You were always… annoyingly right… about everything,” she hiccupped, grief overwhelming her now. “But now,” she moaned, “you’re safe from all those horrible things they wanted to do to you.”
“Hey, Buffy?”
She laid her upper body against Spike’s and sobbed in earnest, clutching his shoulders. “I miss you… I want you back! I’m so sorry for all I did to you… for not letting you know that I cared… that you were everything that was exciting about life… that I loved you.”
Xander glanced at Spike’s unmoving face and body, pursing his lips as his best friend bared her soul on his still form. He grasped her arm to pull her off of the vampire, but she snarled and clasped his emaciated frame in a death grip.
“Don’t you touch him! Don’t you hurt him!”
Tears welled in Xander’s eyes. “Buffy… Spike’s gone.”
“No! There’s a body, which means he’s just asleep! If he were really dead, he’d be dust!”
“Buffy,” he pleaded gently, “- he’s not asleep. Spike’s really dead.”
She shook her head vehemently and growled every time Xander tried to get near her. “Okay, okay… Spike’s just, uh, sleeping,” he choked out the words for her benefit. “But we need to leave, our hour is almost up.”
“You won’t get out the way you got in,” a weary Riley said from the doorway. “You’ll have to take the way Spike used to escape.”
Xander looked the agent over, noticing the blood dripping from his hands. “How do we know this isn’t some set-up?”
Perspiration covered every bit of bare flesh on Riley and he looked too ruddy in complexion. He held onto the door, his fingers digging deep groves in the metal as he tried to focus on what he was doing.
“You don’t.”
“So why should we trust you?”
“That’s your choice. You can either die here or you can leave and never come back.”
“Not much of choice, is it?”
“At least you have one.”
“How’d you come by that?” Xander asked the Commando, pointing to his bloody hand.
His lip curled. “Walsh. She woke up, trying to execute another order. I stopped her before she could.”
“Let me see.”
Riley led him out of the room, Buffy never noticing either man leave. He then pointed in the general vicinity of Professor Walsh’s body, not bothering to specifically state where, because it would have been too many places. Her body had been torn apart at the limbs, inhuman strength ripping the joints from their sockets. It was amazing that Xander never heard anything, no screams or moans… nothing. He supposed it was because he was so focused on Buffy and Spike that he tuned out everything else.
“You should leave,” Riley ground out harshly, scratching at his skin and nearly removing large sections of flesh on his arms.
Xander grew queasy watching him. “Man, what is wrong with you? What are you?”
“I don’t fucking know!” he roared, beginning to pace.
Knowing Buffy wouldn’t leave without Spike, Xander asked, “Do you know what they did to him?”
He stopped pacing and stared. “Your magic faded.”
The brunet shrugged. At least it lasted long enough to get their mission accomplished… sort of. “If you know, man, you really gotta tell me. Buffy won’t leave-”
“Reanimation.”
“Hate to break it to you, but Spike was already a walking corpse as it was. Why would you guys make him a zombie?”
Riley snorted. “You have a very limited imagination. Let me show you.”
Xander followed him towards one of the labs that Buffy had apparently broken into in a vain attempt to find Spike. It was cold in the room, the icy vapor leaking from the metal lockers nearly freezing everything. Becoming calmer, Riley punched in an access code on one of the cabinets and it popped open, revealing a screen and keyboard.
“The implant in Hostile Seventeen’s brain was malfunctioning. We hadn’t had enough time to test it thoroughly before he escaped, so it was a wonder it was still working at all,” he told him, keying codes in quickly until he came to a top-secret screen.
“Under normal conditions, the subject is to be controlled through electroshocks at just the right time to teach the Hostile to obey on command. But that control was the last phase of the experiment.”
Xander couldn’t image Spike under anyone’s control, let alone military goons. “What was the first phase?”
“Control of feeding habits. We wanted them to know we were their only source of food, and to do as we told them would be in their best interest.”
“So you never got beyond the first phase with Spike?”
“No, it takes a few months between phases. It’s probably why the microchip transmitter became displaced. The chip requires fine tuning with each phase.”
“What happens when you reach the final stage?”
Riley finished typing and turned the monitor towards Xander. He punched one last key and said, “This.”
Video footage sprung up on the screen and began playing. It was a night setting in what looked like a South American background, plants and forests all around with a stucco building in the forefront. He watched as several shadows crept across the terracotta roof and dropped silently on to a balcony.
“Once they’re in this position, we deactivate the mechanism, basically giving them free reign to wreak havoc with our chosen targets,” Riley pointed out.
Blood coated the curtains as the vampires destroyed whoever was inside. Once finished, the vamps trying to escape suddenly suffered a seizure and collapsed to the ground, incapacitated.
“We do that in case they try to run.”
“Who uses vamps like this? Isn’t it dangerous? I mean like Alien-movie kind of dangerous? What makes you think you can always control them?”
“Wasn’t my job to know,” Riley muttered, typing for the next file. “I just bagged and tagged them for the implants.”
“That’s like training dolphins to locate underwater mine fields, except Flipper doesn’t want to eat you!” Xander shook his hand paced away. “You can’t believe this is right!”
“Those vamps annihilated a Colombian drug cartel lord. Now… you tell me. Was it right to keep his drugs off the streets by eliminating him? I think so.”
This information sobered Xander’s anger. “Is that what they were planning to do to Spike?”
“Eventually, but they needed to start over with him. He would’ve probably been even more aggressive than the others once he’d been reanimated.”
“Why?”
“Draining a vamp of all their blood and then replacing it makes them even more feral than before. If he didn’t kill someone when he woke up, he would have been shipped to the Special Weapons division for implementation.”
“You mean Spike’s alive?” Xander’s brows rose to his hairline.
“No, he’s dead alright.”
“But you just said when he woke up-”
“After a very lengthy and painful reanimation process, Xander.”
Thoughts whirled in his mind, mainly on getting Spike back for Buffy. “But it can be done, right?”
Riley frowned hard at the younger man. “The process is recorded, but we’ve never been able to achieve a viable subject before. I can’t guarantee its success.”
“I’m not asking you to, but I think Buffy deserves the chance to find out if it works.”
“Fine. I’ll find the files and you do with them what you want.”
As Riley typed away, Xander wandered around the room, opening freezer doors and glancing inside. “What are all these vials?”
“Demon blood or genetic material,” he muttered, continuing to search for the information.
Xander peered more closely at a larger vial. “Are you sure?”
Riley grit his teeth in frustration. “Look, do you want this formula or-” He turned to see Xander holding aloft a large glass tube.
“This has your name on it.”
~*~
Buffy never noticed the two men leave.
She withdrew from Spike’s body and pulled up a stool with wheels on the base, sitting next to the table where he lay, pulling his skeletal hand into her warm ones.
His palm had lost its fleshy appearance, his fingers like sticks as they curled into a cupped position of their own volition. Stretching out his hand, she tried to rub warmth into them by slowly massaging the remaining muscle mass, hoping to find enough blood left to give her hope.
She refused to believe he was completely gone, his body all the evidence she would need to argue her case. He had some fluid in his system, or else he’d be dust… but soon realized that might not be the case. The harder she stroked his skin, the smoother it felt… and the dustier her own fingers became. Frowning, she glanced down to see that her hands were covered in dust.
Spike’s dust.
Horrified, she quickly examined the hand she’d been holding, only to see parts of his fingers had been wiped away, down to the bone! She dropped his hand like it was on fire and stared at him, torn between wanting to hold him and petrified that she’d hold him too hard and, in essence, dust him via hug.
The laughing sob that burst from her mouth startled her as she backed away from the table, looking at everything but the hand that now dangled off the edge.
Get a grip, Buffy! You won’t do anybody any good if you don’t!
Blowing out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding, she tentatively began to remove the remaining needles and tubes from his slack body, avoiding the wasted blood on the floor. That’s when she noticed his beloved duster in the corner, rumpled into a ball, forgotten.
She picked it up and shook it out, but was afraid to lay it across his nude form in case it would wear away more of his skin. Instead, she folded it and placed it on a counter near the door, ready to take with her when they left.
Because Spike would definitely be coming with them, regardless if he was…
No, she wouldn’t say that life-shattering word, the one where there was no return for those that spoke it. No, that never applied to Spike, even as a vampire.
Needing to patch him up before they left, she returned to the top of the slab, closing her eyes as she picked up the triangular piece of skull bone. She then scanned the countertops and wondered how the scientists were going to reattach the fragment when she spied a tube of Crazy Glue. Seeing nothing else available, she grabbed the bottle and squeezed some on the edges before replacing it where it’d been taken from. Trying not to hurl, she laid the flap of skin over the wound to see if any of the flesh had been cut away in the process. Seeing no other lacerations, she began searching for a needle and some thread.
She pulled out each drawer in the room, finding gauze, bandages, alcohol prep pads, assorted antibiotic ointment packets, and then finally several different types of sutures. Choosing a strand that looked sturdy enough, she threaded a rather lethal looking needle and grabbed a squeeze bottle of alcohol.
“I don’t know if it needs to be sterile, but I’m not taking any chances,” she muttered under her breath while cleansing the area before beginning, forgetting that she’d just used Crazy Glue to patch his skull.
She’d received basic first aid training from Giles throughout the years to include stitching up wounds that were just too deep simply to use butterfly tape. And while she’d done this to herself many a time after a particularly nasty monster inflicted injury, it was the first time she’d sutured someone else up… and her nerves were shot.
Pressing the edges of the laceration together, she slowly inserted the needle into his scalp to draw the skin together, praying with each short breath that Spike was truly just asleep, like she’d demanded earlier. Truthfully, she didn’t know what kind of state he was in. He looked dead, but he wasn’t completely dust, so nothing made sense to her really.
At times, the stitch wouldn’t hold because his skin was too thin and papery, so she adjusted the space in between each one until she was finished, tying the end off and cutting the remainder. She studied her handiwork with a grimace, hoping that if… no, when he woke up, no one would mention that his hair stuck straight up towards the back. Knowing him, he’d constantly pat his head in a vain attempt to keep his curls flattened, as the stitching looked haphazard at best and a little worse than his scarred eyebrow.
That done, she gently lifted his head off the prop on which it rested, throwing the bracket across the room and laying his head down on the cold metal. She ran her fingers lovingly over his brow and noticed that it wasn’t as dusty as his fingers were. Good.
“We’ll get you out of here, Spike. Then Giles will fix you up,” she murmured softly to him, tracing his eyebrows.
She refused to believe anything else.
~*~
“That’s not possible. This lab is for demon genetics and blood, not human. You must be mistaken,” Riley corrected Xander, turning back to his search.
“Look, I may be pretty thick sometimes, but I do know how to read,” Xander insisted. “Finn, Riley A. Subject three-twelve. Reference number nine.”
“Three-twelve? Let me see that vial.”
Xander handed him the glass tube, watching as several emotions crossed his face, the most prevalent being disbelief. “Do you know what those numbers mean?”
He gripped the vial tightly. “I have an idea, but I need find out for certain.”
Riley left the computer station and walked out the door, Xander trying to catch up behind him. They left the corridor and turned to the right and then left, returning to the area they’d left Buffy in. Stopping at the lab door before reaching her, Riley entered the room, the numbers three-twelve marked on the panel.
“Each secret lab has an even number - the higher the number, the more secret the experiments performed in them. Three-sixteen was the highest, but I rarely observed anyone going in there. I was often in three-fourteen, but I could never remember getting back to my barracks afterwards.”
Xander ran right into the Riley’s back just as he flipped the lights on. “You’re more solid than a mountain,” he muttered rubbing his nose.
“I think you’re about to find out why,” Riley whispered as he stared at the large cylinders lining the room.
“What do you…” Xander started then lost his voice. “This is… way beyond science fiction. This isn’t real… is it?”
Riley paid no attention to him as he picked up the spiral notebook in front of the tank labeled ‘one’. He heard the boy talking in the background, but his focus was on the words he was reading, hoping they would deny what he was beginning to suspect.
Subject: Male embryo, viable to twelve months gestation then self-aborted due to Iffray genetic material introduction. Ocular maturation accelerated.
He glanced up at the twelve-month-old ‘thing’ floating in the fluid before him. Iffray demons had super acute eyesight and it seemed they were trying to splice human genes with Iffray genes to achieve… what? Apparently, nature didn’t want the hellspawn to even draw breath, cutting its life short before it could do so. He moved on to the second tank.
Subject: Male, equivalent three years old. Introduction of Tibberri gene sequencing code to prolong life – allowed for accelerated gestation time and aging, but abruptly terminated due to advanced aging.
Besides being unstable and quite possibly lethal to humans, Tibberri blood allowed the demon to grow quickly from infant to young adult, only to be frozen in full adult mode for thousands of years. No wonder the experiment only made it to three years… any more and it would have withered away.
He studied the remaining tanks and came to the conclusion that the Initiative had been, in effect, playing God with demon and human genes. Not bothering with the rest, he approached the last cylinder, numbered eight and read the notebook.
Subject: Male, twenty-five. Longest viable construct with Bist bone structure successfully grafted to human skeleton. Progress is beyond normal limits as bone graft overtakes human marrow, replacing it with carbon steel in small quantities similar to iron. With higher levels of carbon, the strength increases in skeletal frame but rigidity is apparent. Next subject will be last in series.
Riley glanced around for the ninth tank and realized there was none. He then searched for any notebook that might be associated with it, again finding none. Practically tearing apart the lab in search of any material in regards to subject nine, he suddenly came to a stop in front of Xander, finally realizing something.
Subject: Riley A. Finn. Three-twelve. Reference number nine.
“No,” he breathed, staring at his hands.
“What?” Xander watched as the soldier’s eyes darted around wildly, beginning to feel really creeped out. “What happened?”
“I-I’m not… real,” he whispered in horror. “I’m manufactured.”
Xander started backing away from him slowly. “Well, I’m a real boy, Geppetto… and I want to remain breathing.”
Riley never registered Xander’s words before he fled the room. He continued to stare at his hands, turning them over and over. Shining metal caught his eye when he looked at his forearm, musing to himself that it seemed as if they solved the problem of that carbon steel skeleton before they allowed him to be… alive.
“I’m not real,” he muttered to himself again.
Everything he’d ever believed in, everything he’d been brought up to protect and cherish was a lie. Were his memories a fabrication as well? Was everyone in the Initiative a homegrown, demon-spliced person, too? Remembering his access to high security files, he retraced his path back to the first lab they were in, determined to find out.
Even if it was the last thing he’d ever do.
~*~
Xander found Buffy tenderly stroking Spike’s head and whispering to him. Oh God, not Buffy, too! Am I the only sane one around here?
“Buffy, we gotta go now! Riley is about to-”
“Shh, he’s sleeping,” she reprimanded in a low tone.
Oh boy. “Buffy, hun? You in there?” He came to stand next to her, touching her shoulder.
“He’ll be majorly pissed-off when he wakes up if you don’t keep it down,” she said harshly, shrugging off his touch and moving away, but never removing her hands from Spike’s body.
Xander wiped his face in frustration. How do you get an insane Slayer and a dead vamp out of a military compound without attracting the attention of the Bladerunner wannabe? “Sometimes I hate my life,” he grumbled.
“Don’t hate life, Xander… embrace it, live it… love it,” she pleaded with a vacant gaze.
“Okay, Tony Robbins, I’ll try and do that. Meanwhile, we really gotta leave. As. In. NOW!”
“I can’t go yet, I have to wait for Spike to wake up,” she protested, digging in her heels.
God, if you’re listening… please, PLEASE forgive me for what I’m about to do. Oh, and don’t let her squish me too much either!
“Buffy! You need to snap out of it!” And before she could open her mouth to refute anything, he slapped Buffy across the cheek.
Her eyes widened in shock before her lower lip began to tremble. “You hit me!”
“I had to! We need to leave now or Giles will call the cops, and trust me, you don’t want them finding this place.”
Tears began spilling over her lashes though she tried desperately to keep from sobbing. “I can’t leave him, Xander.”
Running his fingers through his hair, he glimpsed Spike’s duster on the counter and grabbed it. “Here, wrap this around his body and I’ll carry him.”
She complied as if on autopilot, careful not to jostle him more than necessary to keep his dust shedding to a minimum. Once she had him sufficiently bundled, she nodded to Xander, grabbing his hand before he slipped it underneath Spike’s head.
“Please,” she begged, hiccupping from the crying. “Don’t hurt him.”
He squeezed her hand. “I promise I’ll be as careful as I am about mentioning rabbits around Anya… which never happens, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank me later when you have to sterilize the ball gag currently in Angel’s mouth.”
He gently slid his right hand under Spike’s head and the left under his knees, lifting and bracing himself for the weight. But the former bleached menace weighed practically nothing, so he was able to shift him closer, his battered head resting on his shoulder.
“Let’s make like a tree and get the hell out of here!”
She snickered and led the way back down the corridor they had originally come, noticing that room three-twelve was now demolished. “What happened in there?”
“It’s one of the reasons we need to avoid Riley. Apparently, he’s a pod-person and he had this gleam in his eye, like he wanted me to join the vegetable patch. I’m sorry, I’m just not as adorable if I’m a Cabbage Patch doll.”
“You mean aliens kidnapped him and performed unspeakable acts on his-”
“No! I’m telling you that he’s-”
“Not real,” Riley interrupted, suddenly standing before them.
“Run, Buffy!” Xander yelled, but she halted at his words.
“If you run, he’ll never wake up.”
She slowly turned around to look at him with deadly intent. “Why? What do you know?”
He held out his hand, a spiral notebook clutched in his fingers. He looked over at Xander as he handed the documents to Buffy. “That procedure you wanted.”
“Really? Are you sure? How do I know that you-”
“You don’t, remember? Like I said… no guarantees.”
“If you know how to cure Spike,” Buffy grated out, “- then you’d better guarantee something!”
“Buffy, trust me, this is as good as we’re gonna get,” Xander warned her. “They’ve tried it on other vamps without success. Maybe Spike will change those odds.”
“You’d better go now,” Riley reminded them with an odd light in his eyes.
She shook her head. “Even with everything you’ve given me, we can’t let these experiments continue.”
“Oh, they won’t… trust me,” the soldier said indicating that they were to follow him to a rarely used escape route.
“I can’t trust-”
“You’d better, because if you don’t leave now, you’ll all be dead in ten minutes.”
“WHAT?” Xander and Buffy shouted in unison.
“Follow that stairwell up and to the left. Then take the elevator to the second floor. The emergency exit is just beyond that,” Riley instructed without answering their question.
“What have you done?” she asked, dread welling up inside her.
He checked his wristwatch, tilting his head in much the same manner as Spike, looking at her. “In nine minutes and twenty seconds, this place will cease to exist. The labs, the experiments, the scientific material… everything erased from the earth.”
“Oh, God,” Xander said in panic as he started racing towards the stairway.
“How are you going to-”
“Buffy! Haul ass! The place is gonna blow!”
She stared at Riley, shaking her head. “No… no! You can’t stay here!”
“Buffy, I’m not real,” he said plainly, as if that explained everything.
“Of course you’re real! Look at you! You’ve got human flesh, you’ve got a mind, and you’ve got-”
“Lies, all of it. They constructed my memories like they constructed me. And if the government found out I was on the loose, I’d be captured and tortured… just like Spike.”
“But I can’t just let you… let you die, Riley! You helped us! Please, come with us!”
He smiled sadly at her, cupping her cheek. “If you remember me fondly, it’ll be enough.” He then leaned down and kissed her softly. “Leave now, Buffy… go and live your life. Tell Spike… I’m sorry.”
He grabbed hold of her upper arm and shoved her in the doorway, slamming it shut and barring it to keep them from attempting to return. He heard her screams and pounding on the other side, but did nothing about it. He hoped she’d listen to reason and flee with Xander as he had other issues to deal with.
~*~
“Xander, we can’t just leave him down there!” she argued, trying to barge through the door.
“He’s made his choice, Buffy… I think you should respect that,” he huffed as he carried Spike up the stairs.
“It’s a stupid choice!”
Xander stopped at the top of the steps. “Buffy, you know,” he wheezed, “- other than I’m really outta shape… is that you’re starting to sound like Angel, trying to control everyone’s choices.”
“I-”
“Don’t deny it. Now, come on and let’s get moving.”
She sprinted up to his position and offered to take Spike the rest of the way, which he was grateful for. He transferred his burden into her loving arms; Spike’s head nestled against her neck. They made the left turn and ran inside the elevator, pressing ‘two’ as the doors closed. When the metal doors slid open, they noticed an exit at the end of the hallway with a red bar across the middle of it that read, ‘In case of emergency, push’.
The pair looked at each other and walked quickly, pushing the bar and exiting out onto the USC Sunnydale campus. They stopped to gather their bearings, searching for something familiar until Buffy noticed Stevenson Hall off in the distance. “There,” she said as they started walking towards the building.
~*~
Riley sat on the metal slab where Spike had lain, his emptied blood covering the floor. In his hand was a remote control with five flip switches. In reality, he only needed to press three of the five, knowing the resulting explosions would trigger the other two.
He’d found what he was looking for in the encrypted sections of the system, guessing that the professor’s name, Walsh, was the needed key to break the code. Everything, from his first memory as a child in Iowa to his first time having sex had been implanted in his mind. That’s what all those trips to room three-fourteen had been, memory adjustments. They were to also ensure that his system maintenance was in top condition with no major malfunctions. It explained why his black eye refused to fade away and why, after one visit with Walsh, it disappeared.
The extreme hatred of demons and vampires alike was implanted as well, and for that little bit of knowledge, he was grateful. He knew, given the choice, he probably would’ve never had the prejudice that his current incarnation had relished with a malicious glee. He hoped that the purple demon forgave him for her murder. Not likely, but he was okay with that as he felt he deserved no mercy for that destructive act.
It was one of the many reasons he sat with his finger on the first switch. The other reasons were too numerous to count; torture, creating more beings like him, continuous experiments among them… Sliding lower on the table, he lay down, saying a prayer he supposedly learned as a small boy on his parents’ farm.
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
He flipped the first button and an explosion rocked the compound.
“I pray the Lord, my soul to keep.”
Another explosion made the area shake, this time a little closer.
“If I should die before I wake…”
The third switch triggered the bombs closest to his position.
“… I pray the Lord, my soul to take.”
Riley then closed his eyes and, along with the Initiative, was no more.
~*~
The first explosion made Buffy feel as if she was experiencing an earthquake of low magnitude – like the world was a little off kilter and wobbly on her feet. “We gotta stop, Xander… I’ll drop him if we don’t.”
“Here, let me take him. You go look for the van.”
She gently laid Spike in Xander’s arms and ran to the side street in search of Anya, who was driving a rented van, since Giles’ old Citroen was too small. She waited, feeling another tremor beneath her, praying to God for a free pass for Riley’s sake. They would’ve never escaped with Spike without his help.
By the time the van came into view, the fourth explosion sent a minor shockwave throughout the area, causing Anya to lurch to the right to avoid a driver who apparently had never driven during an earthquake before.
“Lousy vehicular operator! You’d never have survived the Quarlek uprising of twenty-eight!” she yelled out the window, shaking her fist at the retreating man.
“There’s Buffy!” Willow shouted, pointing to a lone girl standing near the sidewalk.
“About time. Giles can only be stalled for so long.”
Willow’s brow creased in a frown. “Where’s Xander? And… oh – no!”
“Oh no, what?” Anya squinted through the darkness. “She’d better not have damaged Xander! There’s no amount of money that could make up for that!”
“There they are!” Tara squealed.
Xander joined Buffy as they waited on the van to roll to a stop. All three girls poured out of the vehicle and helped Xander load Spike in the back, Buffy firmly entrenched beside him, holding onto the sleeve of his duster.
Willow and Tara joined her while Xander sat up front with Anya as they headed back to Giles’ apartment. “He looks pretty bad, Buffy.”
She caressed the black leather as if she were touching his skin. “He’s still in there, I know it. He’s not dust, so… he’s still here… somewhere.”
“God, what happened to his head?” Willow gasped as she glimpsed his scalp in the passing streetlights.
Buffy fingered a few of his curls in front. “They took the chip out.”
The redhead’s eyes grew big. “Th-that’s good, right?” she hoped!
“Yes. It’s very good. It’s good to the infinite degree.”
Tara hefted up the notebook that Riley had given them into her lap. “What’s this?”
“Hopefully the way to bring Spike back, but we don’t know for sure,” Buffy said with a little sigh. “It didn’t work on other vamps. Xander seems to think it might work on Spike, though.”
“This process calls for vampire blood… and lots of it!” she exclaimed after reading the requirements. “A-and human blood, too.”
“He can have a pint of mine,” Anya offered.
“I’m sure I can spare a pint or two,” Willow said with a wink.
Anya elbowed Xander in the ribs. “Ow, woman! I risk my life to get Dead Boy Junior here out of the psych ward and you… ugh, fine… I know I can donate a pint.”
Tara looked shyly at Buffy. “If you want more, you can have some of mine.”
Buffy couldn’t hold back her sobs anymore. “I love you guys! Thank you so much, all of you, for all of your help.”
“But where will we get vamp blood, Buffy?” Willow asked as she read over the instructions with Tara.
The Slayer’s eyebrow rose as her lips tugged wider in an evil grin.
“Oh, I think I know just the vampire.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
And see folks? I didn’t leave ya hanging for TOO long! * giggles *
Thanks ever so much to Dusty273 and Im_Bloody_English for making this so much better than it was – you gals seriously rock!
This chapter is for my son, Brandon, who wanted a certain soldier to have a chance at redemption. Here ya go, boog – you da man!
Like I’ve said, this story is very much in the finish line – only 2 or 3 more chapters to go and it’s caput… finito… done and buried… eh, you get the idea. I’ll probably cry once I’m finished, ‘cause hey, it’s been my baby for over a year now (god, really that long? I’m so sorry for dragging it out!) and I’m sure I’ll go back and rework some parts of it at some point.
Thank you everyone, for all the reviews that you’ve left – you are all kinds of awesome!
Thanks ever so much to Dusty273 and Im_Bloody_English for making this so much better than it was – you gals seriously rock!
This chapter is for my son, Brandon, who wanted a certain soldier to have a chance at redemption. Here ya go, boog – you da man!
Like I’ve said, this story is very much in the finish line – only 2 or 3 more chapters to go and it’s caput… finito… done and buried… eh, you get the idea. I’ll probably cry once I’m finished, ‘cause hey, it’s been my baby for over a year now (god, really that long? I’m so sorry for dragging it out!) and I’m sure I’ll go back and rework some parts of it at some point.
Thank you everyone, for all the reviews that you’ve left – you are all kinds of awesome!
Chapter End Notes:
So what do you think the odds are that Spike can be reanimated? Next update soon!