Willow climbed in the side door of the van and helped Xander to gently lower Buffy onto the seat, where she lay with her head in her best friend’s lap as Xander rushed around to the driver’s seat and tore out of the parking lot, leaving the headlights off.

Buffy had slipped into unconsciousness at some point before Spike had reached her friends. Now, she was moaning softly, struggling to open her eyes against the wave of pain that assailed her upon waking.

“S-spike,” she whispered. “Wh-where…” Her voice trailed off.

Willow felt sick. She dreaded telling Buffy what Spike had done. She knew in her heart that if the van would not have been able to outrun Cordova and her men, there was no way that Spike could on foot. And that was not even considering if Cordova fired the chip – which she undoubtedly would. There was little doubt in Willow’s mind that Spike would be captured.

“It’s ok, Buffy. Don’t worry about anything. You’re safe now, just rest,” she said softly to her friend, stroking her blood-stained hair back, avoiding an actual answer to her unfinished question.

Buffy drifted back into unconsciousness, and Willow let her tears slide down her face at last.

From the front seat Xander spoke suddenly, quietly. “He knew.”

“What?” Willow asked, sniffling, wiping tears from her face as she turned to look at him.

“He knew about the tracking device all along. So he had to know that he couldn’t come with us back to the mansion. Before we ever left the mansion in the first place.” There was a sort of awe in Xander’s voice – and more than a little guilt.

Willow hadn’t thought of that; her eyes widened as she considered it. Spike was not stupid; he had known that he was going to have just enough time to get Buffy out and make a run for it before they would be found out and pursued. The thought of the tracking device in his chip could not have just occurred to him in the middle of the rescue. He had to have known all along that he was going to be risking his own freedom to gain Buffy’s.

Her tears flowed harder at the realization of the sacrifice he had made.

When they reached the mansion, they carefully took Buffy inside and laid her gently down on the bed. The pain of movement awakened her again. Her eyes opened wide and she gripped Willow’s arm weakly to whisper again, urgently, “Spike! Where’s Spike?”

Willow could barely bring herself to tell her the truth, and even then had to temper it with hope she knew to be unfounded. “He – he’ll be here soon, Buffy,” she whispered back. “He s-stayed behind to throw them off our trail…but he’s really smart and really fast, and he can take care of himself. He’ll be able to lose them and get back here okay.”

“No,” Buffy moaned softly, turning her head away. “She’s gonna catch him! She’ll kill him! She looked back at Willow with wild, panicked eyes, struggling to rise from the bed. “We have to help him! We have to…”

“You’re not going anywhere just yet,” Xander said firmly, pushing her back down with gentle hands. “We’ve got to get you taken care of. If he’s not back by then…we’ll figure out a way to help him.”

Willow was surprised that there was no protest, no insistence that she not risk herself for Spike again, from Xander. He had a somber, thoughtful expression in his eyes. Spike’s sacrifice for Buffy had obviously made quite an impression on him.

Buffy’s friends set about treating her various injuries the best they could with the bandages and other supplies they had thought to bring from her house. Due to the dangerous nature of Buffy’s calling, and the difficulty of explaining certain injuries to hospital staff, they had become quite good at dealing with injuries of a more serious nature than would typically be treated by first aid.

But this was like nothing they had ever seen before. Cordova had done an unbelievable amount of damage. Several deep incisions in her chest, stomach, and abdomen; a place on her hip where an actual piece of her flesh had been removed, into the muscle of her leg, no doubt a sample for Cordova’s scientists to “research”. Willow felt sick, and a cold, dark rage slowly began to consume her at the thought of what the woman had done to Buffy…and what she would do to Spike, if they didn’t get him out of there.

Because by this point a couple of hours had passed, and there was still no sign of him. By now all hope of his escape had fled Willow’s mind. She was certain that he had been captured. And she was equally certain that this time, there was no way that they could leave him there – not after what he had done for Buffy.

As they waited for Buffy’s accelerated Slayer-healing to kick in, Willow opened her laptop again and began to look further into the general’s database. She was going to find a way to save the one who had given himself up to save Buffy.


Pain. That was the first sensation that met him upon waking. His head ached with the remnants of the chip-induced migraine from earlier, and there was a strange tingling sensation coursing through his body – after-effects of the shock, he supposed. He tried to reach a hand to his aching head, and found that he couldn’t.

*Of course not,* he realized with an unwelcome sick feeling in his stomach, as he remembered. Cordova. She had caught him, she had fired the chip. He looked to the side and saw that his wrists were strapped tightly down by his sides, and another strap at his shoulders held him to the table. Attempting to move his legs revealed that they were restrained as well. It was no more than he had expected.

“Oh, good. You’re finally awake,” Cordova’s voice spoke suddenly in the stillness, startling him. He jumped, cursing himself silently for the show of weakness. Unfortunately, Cordova had not missed it, judging by the smirk on her face when it came into view. She stopped, standing just at the head of the table, just barely within his vision. “I’d been waiting to talk to you.” Her tone was almost pleasant, conversational.

He glared at her, contempt in his eyes before he looked away without responding. Ignoring her.

Suddenly a blinding, white-hot pain shot through his head again, and his body convulsed against the restraints. He managed to bite back his scream of agony; he was determined not to give her the satisfaction. She released the button after only a few seconds, as she did not want him completely incapacitated just yet, and reached with one hand to turn his head to face her.

She was smiling cruelly. “That wasn’t very polite,” she said in a chillingly soft voice, shaking her head a little in reproof. “Let’s try to keep this civil, shall we?”

He did not respond. But he did not turn away again, either. He met her eyes with fierce hatred in his own.

“Let’s establish some ground rules, Hostile,” she said quietly, her eyes becoming hard at his continued defiance. “Since you seem to have forgotten the way things work around here. You do not speak unless spoken to…but when I speak to you, you *will* respond. Do you understand?”

Spike hesitated, loathe to submit to her. But he couldn’t see how refusing such a simple command would be of any benefit to him. It would gain him no ground, and only bring about intense pain. “Yes,” he whispered, looking away from her.

She smiled. “Good. Now we can get started.” She paused, walking a little further into the room, turning her back to him at a small table beside the bed which he had not noticed before. He heard a metallic sound as she did something with the objects on the table, still outside his range of vision, as she continued in a soft, even voice, “I’m very impressed, Hostile. You managed to break into the locked facility, and somehow get the Slayer out, despite all our security measures.” She turned to face him with a smirk. “I’m very, very interested in how.”

He felt a cold, sinking feeling as he realized what this was really about, what it was that she wanted. She was expecting to get information from him.

Information that he would die before he would give her.

“You obviously didn’t do it alone. The girl couldn’t even walk, let alone make it out the doors alone. And yet she is gone. And here you are.” The falsely pleasant tone vanished as she asked coldly, all business now, “Who helped you?”

Deliberately, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the inevitable pain, he turned his face away again.

“Not very smart, hostile,” she said in a quietly warning tone. “I’ll give you that one time. Once more, and I’ll start to get upset. Who helped you?”

“You might as well dust me now,” he muttered through gritted teeth, his eyes closed in preparation for what he knew her response would be. “Because I’m not telling you anything.”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say.” Though he couldn’t see her, he could hear the smile in her voice, an instant before the chip fired again.

He gasped in shock at the absolute agony of it. This was every bit as bad as that time in the van, when they had escaped. Intense, searing pain that seemed to consume every part of him, ripping through every inch of his body with brutal force. After a full minute, she released the button, leaning in close to his trembling form.

“On a scale of one to ten, Hostile, how high would you say that shock rated?” she asked with clinical interest, although he was still utterly incapable of answering.

She went on, her voice hardening, “As far as the range of how far the chip will actually go…that was about a three.” She leaned in closer, her voice quiet and deadly as she went on, “I’ll ask you again…and next time the chip fires it will be double the power of this time. Do you understand?”

He could not completely hide his fear, his façade ragged and battered through the pain still coursing through his body. He nodded shakily.

She smiled, pleased – and oddly disappointed. It had taken less to break Hostile 17 than she had expected.

“Who helped you?” she asked again.

He drew a deep, ragged breath in preparation to speak, and then whispered his response.

“Go to hell.”

Cold fury filled her eyes, and a vindictive smirk crossed her lips as she turned the dial up on the controller and pressed the button, holding it down for what felt like an eternity to her pain-ravaged captive. He had thought that the pain could not possibly get any worse than the last time.

He had been wrong.

It felt like being burned alive, a fierce heat flowing through him, consuming him until all their was, was pain. He could not hold back a cry of agony as he pulled reflexively against his bonds, desperate to somehow make it stop.

Finally, after an interminably long time, which in reality was only a minute, she released the button. She waited patiently for the pain to subside enough for him to be able to hear her. She reached a hand to casually touch his arm, and though his bonds prevented him from actually pulling away from her, he jerked in pain. Every nerve ending in his body was on fire, and even the slightest touch was agony at that moment.

She smiled, tightening her hold as she leaned in to whisper mockingly, close to his ear. “Not sure I want to ‘go to hell’, Hostile. Tell me…what’s it like?”

He gasped for breath, struggling to speak for a moment. She waited, a patronizingly patient smile on her face, until he was finally able. She leaned close to make out his words, barely a whisper in the otherwise silent room.

“Someday I’ll show you…bitch.”

Her eyes flashed with flames of rage, and she fired the chip again. But it was simply too much for his body to take, so soon after the last savage torture, and in a matter of seconds he was unconscious again.

“Damn,” she muttered, irritated that her interrogation would have to wait. “Sleep well, Hostile,” she sneered. “You’re gonna need it. We’re not through talking yet. Not by a long shot!”