The vampire relished the surge of strength flowing through him as he pummeled the object before him mercilessly, releasing a rain of vicious blows upon it. True, it was only a vinyl punching bag, and not the particular soldier’s face that he imagined it to be, but he was still allowed to dream, wasn’t he? He kept pounding until he felt strong enough to tear down the walls of the prison that held him and finally break free.

Too bad the prison was in his head. Literally.

The brick walls that surrounded him were nothing but a show, really. The lock on the outside of the door, a mere insult, a mockery of his powerlessness. He knew, they all knew, that he could break it in an instant if he wanted to. The real prison that held him here was the tiny piece of metal in his head.

Because he also knew that, should he choose to smash the door open and make a break for it, the tracking sensors in the chip would immediately notify his captors of what he had done, and the agony would drop him in his tracks. He would be helpless, too incapacitated by the pain to do anything but wait for them to find him and lock him up again – and certainly not without severe punishment for the attempt.

Only when he felt exhausted to the point of collapse did he finally abandon the punching bag and sink down onto the soft leather of the sofa. The spacious suite that was his living quarters – his cell – was comfortably furnished, ,cleaned for him regularly, and always stocked with a ready supply of blood. But he knew that it was all an illusion, designed to disguise the fact that he was a prisoner here – to make him feel somehow indebted to them, as if he had chosen this. It was an elaborate mind game, really, and he knew it.

Still, he thought, there were less pleasant illusions and much more vicious mind games he could have been subjected to.

He thought back to the first day, the day the illusion had begun to slip into place. Two burly soldier types had come to his crypt. He had made a brief attempt to fight them off that ended in the double punishment of his chip going off, followed by the fists of the soldiers. He had been bound and blindfolded and brought to this underground place, where he had spent hours – days possibly – locked in a small, dark cell, alone, hungry, and increasingly afraid.

As a master vampire, he had had much experience in conquering his fears. But there’s nothing like silent, dark loneliness to revive it. He had plenty of time with nothing to do but think about how helpless he was, and wonder what plans his captors had for him.

So by the time the general had arrived, he had been near enough to terrified to listen to her explanation without interruption. Or rather, he would have been, if he had been someone who was physically capable of listening to someone’s diabolical ranting without interrupting.

She had come to him in the cell, swaggering in with all the arrogant confidence of one so young, thrust suddenly into a position of great power. She had flipped a switch outside the cell before entering, and the dark room had been suddenly flooded with light, making him feel exposed and vulnerable in the sudden brightness.

The first thing he had noticed when his eyes had adjusted to the light was the strikingly beautiful woman who was looking him over appraisingly. She was obviously of Hispanic descent, with long, silky almost-black hair and chocolate-brown eyes. She was only a few inches shorter than he was, with a figure that could not be concealed by the sharp edges of her military uniform.

An arrogant smirk that she could have learned from him on her lips, she had turned to the soldiers flanking her and sneered, “*This* is Hostile 17? The only HST ever to thwart our security systems?” Looking back at him with what could only be described as a leer, she added, “Doesn’t look like much.”

Irritated by her derision, he had put as much menace as possible into his voice as he advanced on her, saying in a slightly suggestive tone, “Looks can be deceiving, love.”

Her smile had widened just slightly in an unsettling way, as she had replied softly, “Can they.” Then without warning she had backhanded him savagely. Her strength was astonishing for a girl her size; that combined with his weakness from not having fed for days, sent him staggering backward, struggling to keep his balance.

After giving him a few moments to recover, to be sure that he could actually hear her, she had continued in that softly authoritative voice, “I am General Serena Cordova, and you will address me as General or Ma’am. And you will speak only when spoken to, Hostile. Is that clear?”

His pride had risen up at that, every part of him loathe to submit. But one look in her eyes told him that he had seriously underestimated the danger in crossing this woman, and submission would probably be wise at this point. Spike had never been one to confuse courage with stupidity, or cowardice with sheer wisdom. He would wait for a better time, a time when he was not chipped, half-starved and surrounded by armed soldiers.

“Yes, *General*,” he had drawled, putting as much derision into the term as possible, as he wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He had had years of experience with Angelus at being respectful in his words and insolent in every other part of his being. The mockery in his voice had been so obvious that he had almost expected her to strike him again. Angelus would have.

But she had just smiled coolly. “I’ll come straight to the point, Hostile 17. Your reputation precedes you, and you have proven your skill and intelligence when it comes to battle, espionage, that sort of thing. It is for that reason only that I am giving you a choice to make.”

That was the first step of the illusion: choice. They both knew he had none.

“Your skills could be very useful for a certain project of mine,” she had continued, her voice calm and level. “I’ve long thought that your kind has tremendous resources to offer us, which are currently being wasted. You have incredible strength, healing restorative powers, not to mention the fact that you are nearly unkillable. I’ve long thought, if such power could be contained – controlled – it could be used for so much good! Imagine – an *army* of vampires – they’d be unstoppable.”

Spike had often imagined just that, though “good” had never had anything to do with his ideas, and in truth he doubted it had much to do with hers, either.

“What I would like you to do for us, Hostile 17,” she went on in that same even, polite tone, “is to assist us in training the vampires we currently have here, and any others we acquire. Training them for battle.” She paused, then continued in a more intimately conversational tone, as if she were talking to a colleague, “The vampires don’t trust us.”

Despite the alarms going off in his mind, warning him of how terribly dangerous this woman really was, he could not suppress his sneer at the sheer obviousness of her statement. But the cruel gleam that came into her eye quickly wiped it from his face as she went on, “You would be able to get through to them better than we can.” She had paused, as if waiting for his answer.

“Please!” he countered, shaking his head in disbelief. “They’ll see me as a bloody traitor is all! They’ll despise me worse than they despise these wankers!” He indicated the soldiers accompanying her with a wave of his hand…before her fist shot out and sent him stumbling back again.

“Bloody hell!” he snarled in rage and pain. “You’ve *been* speaking to me for a soddin’ hour!” He did not understand why she had hit him again.

The general responded calmly, “You will address my men with respect.”

“Bloody hell,” he muttered again, reaching up to gingerly feel his nose. The girl hit like a Slayer.

Going on as if nothing had happened, the general said, “Regardless of how they *feel* about you, you’ll know how to reach them. They’ll all answer to you first. You’ll be their commanding officer. Under all of my…human…officers, of course.”

The anger building in him at the blows he had taken for next to nothing, the way she was just *telling* him what he was “going” to do, until it threatened to overcome his good judgment. “Of course,” he repeated with sarcastic venom in his voice.

The general frowned, her eyes narrowing, glittering with anger. “Of course, if you don’t *want* to help us,” she said in a softly warning tone. “we can’t force you to.”

“No, you’ll just use me for some soddin’ experiment, or simply dust me, or some worse fate you’ll come up with just for me, right?” he spat out.

The general did not deny it; rather smiled in acknowledgement. Now, *that* was just bloody scary!

As the perilous situation he was in finally hit him full force, he tried to keep his voice calm and steady as he replied, “Well…if I *do* decide to help you…what exactly is involved in this job?”

And with those words he outwardly accepted the illusion. But he never would allow himself to actually be deceived by it.

Once he accepted the “offer”, things began to move very quickly. The very next day his chip was reprogrammed to the specifications ordered by General Cordova. It was no longer set to fire only when he tried to hurt a human. Oh, it still did that. But it also fired any time he left his quarters without permission, any time he went into game face, any time General Cordova decided that she *wanted* it to go off! It now was equipped with a manual trigger device which was constantly in her possession.

He quickly learned to do whatever it took not to displease her.

The training part of his job description was the only sometimes enjoyable part. Against his expectations, the “recruits” for the vampire army did not despise him. Torn from familiar surroundings and placed here, he seemed to them someone familiar, a possible ally among enemies. They looked to him for guidance, a fact which did not escape the notice of the former vampire master, whose ultimate goal was still escape – escape followed by vengeance.

Then, a few weeks into his captivity, a soldier showed up at his door with a young man in chains. Shoving him into his suite, he had ordered, “Turn him.”

Shocked and disbelieving, he had called the general first to be sure she had ok’ed it. Upon finding out that the order had indeed come from her, he had enthusiastically carried it out.

The young man had been the first of about a dozen that were brought to him over the course of the next year. He soon discovered the reason for his good fortune. General Cordova needed officers for her vampire army – officers that would not inevitably be killed before all their troops, leaving them leaderless. In other words, non-human officers.

The problem was not a shortage of vampires, but rather a shortage of them with that much potential, intelligence. Most of Sunnydale’s vamps were merely minion material, no more. Somehow the general had found out about his own distinguished Aurelian heritage, and derived, accurately, that vamps sired by him would have more intelligence and potential than most.

At first he enjoyed this particular responsibility. But the longer he was there, the more abuses of power he was witness to, *subjected* to, at the hands of the general and her soldiers, the more it bothered him to do it. It was not so much the turning that bothered him as the fate he was condemning them to by doing it here.

Of course, the vamps he had sired received special treatment. Private quarters, like his, only much smaller of course, education in skills besides simple warfare. He was pleased that he was allowed to have a significant hand in their training and vampire upbringing. The other vamps viewed these few as elite.

But to the humans, they were nothing more than cattle.

He had once viewed humans that way. A lot of things had changed.

Although he was generally better-treated than most of the vamps, lately he had come under suspicion by some of the soldiers, led by General Cordova’s second-in-command, a man he had known before he had come here, and hated the entire time. One of his children had escaped. No one knew how. But they all knew who was the only one to have pulled it off before.

Personally, though he had had nothing to do with it, he was pleased and proud of his childe for his successful escape.

*Just hope he doesn’t run into the Slayer out there,* he thought with a shudder – and an odd fondness. “That bloodthirsty bint will kick his ass!”