A/N: I apologize for the abysmally long time it took me to finish and post this chapter (just about 13 and a half months)
I know how awful it is to read a story you like and wait ages for an update and I'm really sorry. More in depth reasons can be read here
I also want to thank all those who read and reviewed this story so far and everyone who hasn't given up on me yet. It really means a lot to me and I deeply appreciate your support.

Many thanks and a big hug to my wonderful beta BloodyTearsOfLife who made sure I didn't make any totally embarrassing mistakes and that this chapter will be an enjoyable and smooth read. ♥

Disclaimer: The characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox studios. This story is not meant to infringe upon anyone's rights, only to entertain.





Chapter 3

~*~

Deep down below the premises of Sunnydale University, Dr. Maggie Walsh slowly walked in front of her slightly overstuffed but neatly organized desk, her eyes alert and trained on the opposite wall. The entire length of the wall was lined with monitors, each labelled with a number that belonged to a holding cell or a 'research lab' on the level down below the high security area of the Initiative facilities.

Some of the screens showed the various hostiles, agitatedly pacing their small cells, banging angrily against the electric field which prevented their escape, or cowering in a corner of their cell. Others showed the special research rooms, where her teams of scientists performed their tests.

She lingered for a moment and watched as a struggling sub terrestrial was restrained with a painful and most importantly paralyzing taser blast before the soldiers present hefted it on the metal table in the centre of the room. The scientists started applying the electrodes and other required medical devices for the scheduled neurological evaluation on the now unmoving body.

The last monitor in the row, marked with the digits 314, seemed to capture her attention more than the others as her gaze stayed for a good while on the figure on the examination table, her eyes roaming over the still form and something akin to an affectionate smile upon her lips.

On said table lay what once could have been a handsome young man, completely motionless. Now it bore more resemblance to a jigsaw puzzle made up of human, demon, and glinting metallic body parts, fused together by the best surgeons and computer experts the secret military program could obtain. It was obvious that there were still pieces missing, a gaping hole in the middle of its chest and one arm reached only just below the shoulder where a mass of tubes and wires protruded from the stump were evidence of that.

Her eyes swept again over the unmoving form, shining with parental pride and what would have appeared to others as a glint of insanity.

Dr. Walsh moved on and watched another screen when someone knocked on her office door. Several of the medical assistants and two armed soldiers were carefully approaching a young woman in another cell, but stopped some feet away from her. Their, for now useless, taser weapons carefully trained on the ground as they had learned a painful lesson a couple of days before when the current had rebounded from some kind of barrier and knocked the unfortunate soldiers out for a whole day.

She issued a curt "enter" without taking her eyes off the screen. The blonde woman cowered in the far corner of the cell, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in concentration. Her arms were protectively stretched out in front of her while her lips moved in a flurry of words that no one could quite make out.

A sturdy young man with newly cropped light brown hair, clad in dark green fatigues entered her office and stood at attention, silently waiting for her to acknowledge him.

They both looked at the small monitor where, unbeknownst to the young woman that was huddled in her corner, once the initiative personal had left the room, gas warbled slowly into the cell through the gaps in the air duct. She stared at the fog for a moment and her eyes widened in sudden comprehension and fear before she crumpled to the ground in an unconscious heap. The soldiers re-entered the room with gas masks, strapped her to a gurney, and wheeled her out of the cell into one of the many labs of the underground facilities to thoroughly investigate the origin of her strange abilities.

Dr. Walsh turned to the young soldier, her commanding officer of the Initiative's military forces, and with a short nod signalled him to stand at ease. She proceeded to walk behind her desk, sitting down and shuffling some of the daily reports on the progress of the medical research into a neat stack in one of the few free spaces.

"Commander Finn," she addressed him finally looking up. "Did you find our escapees?" she questioned in an impassive voice.

"Negative, ma'am." He tried not to grimace, knowing the news wouldn't go over well with his superior. "We were able to follow Project 13's trail to the area around sectors 25 through 27. There we lost it and had to retreat for a while as the Slayer was patrolling that area. There is still no sign of hostile 17. We were able to capture some of the other HSTs on your list though. My men are securing them in the holding area as we speak."

Dr. Walsh nodded sagely, but made a little displeased sound and muttered something inaudible under her breath.

"Agent Finn, I believe I don't need to remind you how important it is to get Project 13 back under our control, do I?" she regarded him with a stern glare. "We have been working toward this for the last four and a half years. Numerous teams of scientists and specialists worked 24/7 to get us to where we are now. Not to mention the millions of dollars that have been invested into this project. Only to have it escape when we were finally making a breakthrough."

"No, ma'am," the young man replied, clearly uncomfortable under the head scientist’s penetrating gaze.

"I want you to increase the numbers of teams and have them fine comb the entire town, if need be. I want it back. Dismissed."

"Yes ma'am!" He saluted and hurried out of the room to carry out her orders.

~*~*~*~

Spike was so startled by her sudden outburst and the confusion that raced through his body that he didn't even have time to put up any defence as Buffy shot off the sofa and punched him right on the nose. A searing pain registered in his brain when he finally caught up with what was happening and he brought his hands up to shield the injured organ, glad that it wasn't broken.

"Ow! What the bloody hell..." he started to growl but was cut off when the slayer hissed an angry "shhh!" at him and shooting a pointed look at the couch.

Rolling his eyes, Spike risked a glance over the back of the couch and was surprised to see that the tyke was still sleeping peacefully and, in fact, hadn't so much as twitched at all the noise and ruckus he and the obviously mad blonde Slayer were making.

Without so much as a warning or her usual snarky comments, the Slayer's fist flew towards the side of his face again. Luckily he had come out of his stupor and had been able to raise his arm to deflect part of the force behind her punch or she would have knocked him out cold; and later, he probably would have been floating into the night in a cloud of a million little dust particles not long after. If the fury burning in her darkened gaze was anything to go by, she thought he was involved in whatever had caused her to go off the deep end. He parried her kicks and punches as best as he could without setting off the blasted chip in his brain. What surprised him most though was not the anger that sparkled in her expressive hazel eyes, but the hint of hurt and betrayal that swam among the other emotions.

He paid for his moment of distraction as a high heeled boot caught him squarely in the chest and propelled him to the other side of the room. He slammed into one of the many bookshelves that lined the walls and slumped to the floor in a shower of broken wood and scattered books. He briefly winced in pain at the shards of the bookcase digging into his back and the sting of his ribs, hoping they were only bruised and not actually broken.

He was quickly brought back to the problem at hand by the blonde stalking towards him, her breath coming in short angry puffs and her eyes burning with anger, a vision of Athena incarnate. He flipped back to his feet and prepared himself for another attack. The weakened vamp was able to successfully block some of Buffy's powerful punches, but soon found himself back on the ground after one of her high kicks got past his defences and connected once again with the side of his head.

He tried to fend off the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him as he struggled to get up. He didn't have a chance to, however, as strong thighs trapped his hips in a vice like grip, pinning him to the ground. Startled blue eyes flew up only to be met with blazing hazel ones.

The Slayer didn't give him any chance to get his wits back. Straddling his prone form while he shook his head to get rid of the stars dancing before his eyes she continued to punch him.

"You... monster... how could you do that to him? He's just a little kid. I shouldn't have thought you were any better than any other disgusting blood sucker and staked your pathetic ass when I had the chance," she spat at him, though she wasn't yelling, as not to wake up the little boy who slept peacefully on the couch oblivious to the fight going on in the living room.

"Slayer! Buffy!" He tried to get her to stop her assault but she ignored his pleas. He grabbed her hands an held on, effectively stopping her attack. Spikes was glad when he realized that his chip wasn't sending near crippling waves of pain through his battered body as the enraged slayer increased her struggles against his tight grip.

"Would you just listen for a sodden moment you stupid twit!" he snarled at her, startling her out of the murderous fog that seemed to cloud her rational mind. "I don't know who turned the brat, but I sure as hell didn't. Besides, the kid's demon isn't any older than a couple of weeks, maybe a month. An' from what I've seen so far not very dominant either. An' if you recall, I was rather tied up for the last couple of weeks," he drawled sarcastically, referring to his time in the Initiative and later on in the watcher's bathtub. “So how in the bloody hell should I have done that, eh?" he tried to reason with her, hoping to get through to the rational part of her.

The blonde slayer seemed to come out of it as the struggles subsided and she stared down on him. He was confused at the look of horror that washed over her face.

~*~*~*~

Buffy processed what he had said and realized that he was right. Her shoulder sagged as her instinct to protect and revenge left her in a rush.

As she came back to herself, she couldn't believe what she done and had been about to do. The moment she had heard the word sire out of the little boy's mouth she had been overcome with the urge to protect him and to mete out painful retribution to whoever had hurt him. And that had appeared to be Spike at that moment. She had been totally consumed by her rage and righteous anger and all rational thought had been pushed aside.

She was frightened that she had reacted in such a primal manner to a possible threat towards something the Slayer considered hers to protect. Her slayer side had never been so dominate before and taken control over her almost completely. It wasn't so much the thought that she had beat up Spike, she had done so many times in the past and knew he could take it - probably even enjoyed it, the pervert - but she was horrified that she had attacked and taken out her anger on someone who couldn't fight back. Someone who, at the moment, was utterly helpless. It didn't matter that he was an evil and absolutely annoying bloodsucker who had tried to kill her and her friends several times, but because of that chip in his head he was at their mercy.

Sure she enjoyed the hunt in the dark of the night, when she patrolled Sunnydale's numerous cemeteries and revelled the rush of the fight, but those demons were just as strong as her, if not stronger and far from helpless. She was the Slayer and not some schoolyard bully who beat up people for the fun of it, otherwise she wouldn't be better than those commandos.

~*~*~*~

Buffy looked down into the piercing blue eyes of the vamp beneath her and was mesmerized by their intensity before she averted her gaze and mumbled an apology.

Spike was stunned speechless for a moment, maybe he had bumped his head one too many times, because he could have sworn the Slayer was actually apologizing to him.

"What was that, slayer?" he asked somewhat jokingly. Partially to get her out of whatever funk she had gotten in since she stopped beating the stuffing out of him and partially because he didn't think he heard her right.

She levelled him with a nasty glare but repeated her apology anyway.

"I said," she told him primly, "I am sorry. I shouldn't have beaten you up like that, when you are practically helpless, no matter how angry I was or how evil you think you are."

"Oy! I'm evil! The Big Bad. William the Bloody. One quarter of the Scourge of Europe. I'm the evilest thing there is, and don't you forget it missy!" He predictably bristled at that and she couldn't help the small grin that escaped her at his righteous indignation.

Buffy looked down and noticed that she still sat on top of the platinum blonde vampire and that her hands were still in his. She struggled a bit to get up only to freeze at the groan that tumbled from his lips.

At first she thought she had further aggravated his injuries but immediately quashed that thought as she felt something hard poke into her. 'Oh my god!'

"What now you stupid bint?" Spike asked clearly exasperated when he felt her go still above him and saw the panicked look in her wide eyes.

He watched her cheeks flush that lovely shade of red again, only this time not in anger rather because she realized the effect their scuffle had had on him and that she had in fact his whole attention. It brought back deliberately repressed memories, at least on her part, from a few weeks prior when they had been in similar positions, albeit under the influence of a certain spell.

The petite slayer struggled some more in a vain attempt to free herself from his grip but stopped all movement, when another groan came from the blonde beneath her.

"Let me go!" she hissed furiously at him, tying to hide her discomfort behind a mask of anger. "God, what's wrong with you? Did all that bleach fry your brain or do you seriously get a kick out of getting your ass royally thrashed?"

"What? It’snot as if I could help it. The demon's got a thing for violence. An' with you being all warm and wrigglin' your pert little bum above me, slayer." Spike leered up at her and emphasized his point with a little bucking of his narrow hips, smirking as she flushed a deeper shade of crimson.

"Cut it out, perv," Buffy ground out with a significant glance at the couch.

"Vampire," was his only retort. At the quelling glare she sent him he let go of her hands with an exaggerated sigh. Playtime was over.


____________
TBC...