It was 7:55 when Buffy walked into General Cordova’s office. Encouraged by the success of her earlier act, and thus in a positive frame of mind, she was sure that she could easily convince them that she was genuinely trying to find Spike and Diana, while throwing off the real trail if they should happen to find it.

She took a deep breath, then entered the room with grim determination in her eyes.

“I see you’re ready, Ms. Summers,” the general smiled at her warmly, rising from her desk as she entered to walk around it and greet her.

Buffy thought that was a bit odd; the general had never bothered to come around the desk to talk to her; she had always just addressed her from behind it. “Where is…everyone?” Buffy wondered aloud, realizing that as of yet she and Cordova seemed to be the only ones there.

“A sudden emergency came up,” Cordova said coolly as she reached Buffy. “It’s just going to be you and me and a few others I just couldn’t spare.” Buffy was further unsettled when Cordova put an oddly motherly arm around her waist. “You see, my dear, there’s been a slight change in plans.”

Alarms were going off in Buffy’s head; something was seriously wrong with this picture. “What sort of change?” she asked warily, and just as she pulled away from the woman’s odd embrace, she felt a slight, quick little pain in her side. *Did she just pinch me?* she wondered dully, glancing down to see the hypodermic needle in the general’s hand.

She wasn’t even bothering to hide what she had done.

Buffy looked back up at the general with sudden comprehension as she realized she’d been trapped. But suddenly, she could hardly bring herself to care, as the powerful sedative she’d been injected with began to take effect as it made its way through her system.

“I’m sorry, Buffy,” Cordova said softly, as the girl sank to her knees, trying to maintain consciousness against the black wave that assailed her. “You had such a bright future.” Her tone was sympathetic, and she had a falsely sad smile on her face.

“I’m so sorry to see it fade away,” the general finished, her smile fading to a grim resolve. But Buffy couldn’t hear her above the roaring in her ears. And then she couldn’t see her, either, as everything went dark.


“Oh. My. God,” Willow’s voice was soft, hushed and almost awed as she stared at the screen of her laptop.

Spike got up from his seat at the table near hers to peer over her shoulder at the screen. “What’d you find, Red?” he asked her.

“Everything. I think,” she replied, her eyes lighting up with excitement as she looked at him. “I managed to crack Cordova’s password to get into her records…and what this looks like is…like her *personal* records…kind of like a log that she keeps herself. You know, the really *really* secret stuff!” Her voice was gleeful, like a child who had just gotten away with something really, really bad.

“I’m in awe of you, Red,” Spike said, shaking his head in amazement, genuine admiration in his eyes.

Xander and Anya were cuddling on the couch in the living room, but had overheard and appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Find something, Will?” Xander asked.

“Yeah,” Willow sounded distracted as she scrolled through the recent history. “This one’s from the other day when we got you and Diana out,” she said to Spike. “Not much here…she doesn’t have a clue…at least she didn’t when she wrote this.” She frowned and made a worried little hissing sound over her teeth, glancing at him as she said, “She sure was mad though.”

Willow scrolled on down to the next day’s record, reading it over quickly. Xander and Anya sat down at the table, waiting for her to tell them if she found anything interesting. Suddenly Spike’s eyes widened and his face turned even paler than usual…a moment before Willow’s face turned bright red and her mouth opened in a shocked little “o”.

“Oh, bollocks, I’m such a stupid git!” Spike exploded suddenly, turning his back on Willow and the laptop. “Why didn’t I even think of it? Of course she’d watch the tapes, the bloody sadistic bint! Bloody soddin’ *hell*!!” he berated himself, his voice rising on the last few words until he was shouting.

Willow was still staring at the screen, re-reading the general’s notes again and again.

“What is it?” Xander asked, interested now, getting up to go look.

Spike suddenly turned and leaned over Willow’s shoulder, slamming the laptop shut. “Nothing to see there…is there, Red?” he asked her pointedly, catching her eye with a look that was half-threatening, half-pleading.

“N-no…um…” Willow stammered. “It’s just…” Suddenly her eyes widened even more as a new realization struck her, much more troubling than the notes she had just read. “Oh my God! Buffy’s in trouble!”

“What?” Xander demanded to know. “What is going on here, Will?”

“Well, after we did the whole big escape thing, Cordova went back and reviewed the surveillance tapes from Spike’s room…which happened to be where Buffy and he would meet to…strategize,” Willow explained in a voice that was somehow too innocent. “She saw Spike giving it to Buffy…the laptop!” she suddenly burst out, her expression anguished at the near-slip that Xander and Anya still did not understand. “She saw him giving her the laptop! She knows that Buffy is against her. Let me see if it says what she’s planning to do about it.” She opened the laptop, carefully positioning it so that the screen pointed away from Xander.

“I don’t need to know anymore, Buffy’s in danger. Cordova will kill her,” Spike said, his voice low and dark. “We’ve got to get in there and get her out.”

“Oh, no,” Willow whispered suddenly, her eyes stricken with panic. “Oh, God!”

“What?” Spike demanded, leaning over her shoulder again.

“She’s not gonna kill her. Not *just* kill her. It’s worse than that,” she whispered, shaking her head slightly.

Spike took in a sharp breath beside her as he read what she had just seen. “Much worse,” he said grimly.

“What could be worse?” Xander asked, fear beginning to show in his brown eyes.

“A lot of things, which unfortunately I’ll never have the joy of watching you experience,” Spike snapped. “And Cordova is very very good at most of them. Willow,” he said, startling her to attention with the use of her actual name. “We need to figure out a way to get this soddin’ chip down. I have to get in there and get her out, and I don’t stand a chance with this bloody thing in my head.” His eyes met hers intensely, desperately, willing her to see that his motives were sincere.

“Oh, no,” Xander said, shaking his head. “We are *so* not doing that!”

“We may not have a choice, Xander,” Willow said quietly. “We don’t know the Initiative like Spike does, and if we did we can’t fight armed soldiers. Spike might be Buffy’s only chance.” Before he could protest she turned to him and said, “Give me a few minutes. I need to see what I can find on the controls for the chips. They changed the codes for them yesterday, because of the escape. But now that I’m in to her personal stuff, it shouldn’t take me long to find them.”

“Good, cause from the looks of this Buffy might not have long,” Spike said softly. There was silence for a few moments before he said quietly, as a thought dawned on him. “*We* might not have long.” His voice was quiet and intense. He turned back to Willow, his ally in this mess. “Red…if General Bitch knows Buffy helped us escape…”

Her eyes widened as they met his again. “…they could be headed right here,” she finished in a whisper. She jumped up from the table, snapping the laptop shut. “We need to get out of here, now!” she said, uncharacteristically taking charge of the situation.

“The containment spell,” Spike frowned, giving her a questioning look.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Willow shrugged. “Works just like an invite, only backwards. All I’ve gotta do is tell you guys to come outside,” she said, her voice light and unconcerned.

Spike was stunned that it was that simple. “All right then,” he said after a moment. “I’ll go down and get Diana and Darian.”

“Good,” Willow said, still in take-charge mode. “I’ll start the van. We have to get away from here like now!”


Buffy’s head felt like it was about to explode. A blinding, white-hot pain tore through it, ripping her from the fog of unconsciousness back to awareness. She tried to raise a hand to her head. Couldn’t. She tried to remember where she was, why she couldn’t move her hands…

She struggled to open her eyes against the pain in her head, but found that no matter how hard she tried, all she saw was black. A distant memory played at the edges of her mind…what was it Cordova had said? *Sensory deprivation.* She moved the back of her head against whatever surface she was lying on and felt the fabric over her eyes move. So she was blindfolded, then.

She tried again to move her wrists, to no avail. The restraints felt like leather against her skin, and she remembered the bonds that had held Spike in the solitary confinement cell. She pulled against them, but she was still weak from whatever drug Cordova had shot into her system, and her bonds held firm.

Ok. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t move. She fought off the rising panic in her at this utter helplessness. Though she knew anyone who heard her in this wretched place would be more likely to hurt her than to help her, she tried to scream and could only get out a weak strangled gasping sound. She tried to pull against whatever it was that was constricting her throat, not allowing the sound to come out, and realized that another tight bond, like the ones at her wrists, was around her neck, slack enough to allow her to breathe, but tight enough to prevent her from making much of a sound at all.

And she was cold. Freezing in fact. *Oh, God!* she realized with a strangled sob that sounded only in her mind. Her clothes were gone. She was lying somewhere in the Initiative no doubt, bound, blindfolded, gagged and *naked*! She had never felt so utterly helpless before – so terrified. Desperately she strained against the bonds that held her, but they did not give at all. Cordova had been prepared for her, she realized.

She could feel her heart pounding against her ribcage as she finally gave up the struggles for the moment, trying to just calm down and *think*. There had to be a way out of this…right? There was *always* a way out!

Suddenly, the sound of a door slowly opening made her freeze in fear, every nerve, every muscle in her body alert and aware. She could not tell who had entered the room, but a mind-numbing, almost physically painful terror seized her at the realization that she was utterly, completely at their mercy. Unbidden, thoughts of Diana came to her mind. Was this what it had been like for her? When Riley had come to her? Perhaps not physically bound as she was now, but nevertheless knowing that she was absolutely powerless to defend herself in any way? That whatever he wanted to do to her was exactly what would happen, and there was nothing in the world she could do about it?

Just like Buffy felt now?

A familiar voice suddenly broke through her terrified reverie.

“So we’re awake now, are we?” Cordova’s voice, calm, smugly triumphant. “Good. I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”

Buffy tried again to speak, to demand her release, to ask what was going to be done to her, but the strap around her throat prevented it.

“You shouldn’t have tried to outsmart me, Ms. Summers,” Cordova reprimanded her in an almost gentle voice. “No one ever has. No one ever will.” She paused, as if sensing what Buffy must be thinking. “Oh I know…your little hostile friends you ‘rescued.’ They should be along shortly. They’re the ‘emergency’ that kept most of my men detained tonight,” she laughed cruelly. Her voice suddenly harder, she added, “And when I’m through with them they’ll curse your name for *rescuing* them!”

Buffy heard a faint metallic scraping sound that set her straining, tense nerves even further on edge and sent another wave of sick terror through her body. “And as for you, Ms. Summers,” the general continued. “I had hoped that you would rise in the ranks of this project, do very well for yourself and for me…too bad your priorities were so mixed up. But it’s not so bad, I suppose,” she mused. “I’d wondered ever since Lieutenant Finn told me about you…what makes this girl different? How can this seemingly ordinary girl have the incredible power and stamina that you do? It’s a scientific mystery to me.” Her voice was casual, almost friendly, as if she was confiding in Buffy. When she spoke again, her voice was soft, and so near to Buffy’s ear that she jumped, pulling against her bonds without even meaning to.

“Let’s solve the mystery, shall we?”