Note: This fic is my way of saying thank you and happy birthday to my regular beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support... but I still got her to step in once the first draft was complete to beta it for me.

Over the course of the writing process, while t_geyer was taking a well-earned rest, alwaysjbj was a ready 'ear' on Yahoo and an extra pair of eyes when it came to spotting my mistakes.

Chapter 3

Spike ghosted his way along the hospital's top floor, checking each door as he went. Wes stayed about six feet behind him, and the vampire took care, even when he crossed to the same side of the corridor to check a door, that his fellow countryman had a clear line of fire for the pistol he carried. He had reached the ninth door, and the lift machinery had ground into action, before he found a room that was unoccupied and unlocked. He strode in and then held the door open for Wes, who backed into the room keeping his gun trained on the lift doors, until Spike closed the door with barely a click.

They pressed themselves against the wall to either side of the doorway, letting their eyes adjust to the darkened room after the brightly lit corridors.

The lift doors rumbled open, and weary steps trudged towards the staircase leading to the roof. There was a second of static, and then a Brooklyn accent announced that it was, "All quiet on the top floor." The fire door squeaked loudly, and the guard's footsteps receded into the night.

Wes was ridiculously aware of the rapid beating of his heart as they waited for the guard to return. He consciously slowed his breathing, counting out thirty breaths before he hissed to Spike. "What's taking him so long?"

For answer, Spike only tapped the pocket that housed his pack of Marlboro, and placed his finger to his lips.

Eventually, the guard returned. The lift doors opened, and the mechanism clattered back to life.

Wes had just pushed himself away from the wall when Spike's arm flattened him back into position. After a few seconds, he heard a metallic rattle followed by the squeak of soft-soled shoes on linoleum. The steps paused every few feet along the corridor, but kept on going past the room where Wes and the vampire were hiding. Eventually, they reached the far end of the corridor, where they doubled back, this time without any pauses. There was another rattle, and the footsteps sounded more muffled and quickly became too quiet for Wes to make out. This time, he stayed in position until Spike made the first move.

"Great," the vampire muttered as he stomped off in the direction of the lift.

"What's the problem?" Wes asked as quietly as he could.

Spike prodded the button to call the lift with rather more than the required vehemence. "They must keep the stairwell doors locked."

Wes gave a long-suffering sigh. "And it's going to be beyond your capabilities to pick the lock?" he enquired.

Spike gave an offended snort. "'Course not."

"Then stop pouting like a five-year-old and see to the lift," his companion instructed as the lift doors lumbered open.

Wes took position just inside the lift doorway, leaning against the door to stop it closing, pistol at the ready.

Spike faced off with the control panel and began a familiar routine of patting down all his pockets, only this time, instead of cigarettes and a lighter, he triumphantly produced a tiny tube. He unscrewed the cap and broke the seal. Holding the tube delicately in his left hand, he pressed the door open button with his right index finger, checking how far it could move up and down and left and right. He tilted the button as far downward as he could and then carefully inserted the tube's nozzle down the side of the button and very gently squeezed the base of the tube. Pulling the nozzle out, he broke off the thin clear string that joined the tube to the control panel. Then, he pushed the button as far up as he could, keeping it pressed in, and waited for a count of thirty before he let it go.

It stayed in place.

He put the cap back on the tube of superglue and returned it to his pocket. "Done."

Wes gave a little nod, and both men moved off in the direction of the main stairwell. "You're sure the area we're looking for will be below ground?" Wes asked as he waited for Spike to open the door. It wasn't as if he could be more impatient to reach his objective than his undead companion, but from here on out it was just a matter of time before someone realised there was a problem with the lift, and anything more than the most cursory investigation, especially if the smell of glue didn't dissipate before then, would make it plain that it was sabotage. There was no knowing what obstacles they might encounter if there were a full alert.

"Yeah," Spike answered. "Well, maybe ninety-five percent sure. They might dope them up to the eyeballs and keep them in plain sight, but I think they're too greedy for that. My bet, they're trying to work out how to use them, and, if they want to do that, they can't interfere too much with their magic. What's up here - that all just icin' on the cake. It might keep in a ground pounder that's seen one too many demons. It's not going to work with even a half-way decent mage. Now, shut up and let me work."

Eventually, the door gave with a final click, and the two men slipped through into the stairwell and pulled the door closed behind them as quickly as they could, hoping against hope that no one would be watching the right monitor at just the wrong time.

Wes looked down the centre of the stairwell, counting the floors in order to confirm their suspicions. If there were levels below ground, this was not the way to reach them. If Spike was right, there had to be another staircase somewhere, but it would have been built after the Initiative took over, and it would probably be heavily camouflaged. If it had been used regularly, there might have been a chance of Spike tracking it by scent, but most likely it was reserved for emergency use. That meant their best chance of getting in before an alarm was raised was to use the lift-shaft. They moved down one floor, and Wes stood guard while Spike picked the lock on the stairwell doors.

After several excruciating minutes the lock capitulated, and Spike and Wes made their way back toward the lift shaft. When he got there, Spike reached out as if to force the doors open, but, before he could bring his strength to bear, Wes tapped him on the shoulder and held up a roughly T-shaped piece of metal. Inserting the vertical stroke of the T into a hole above the doors, he gave it a clockwise twist. The doors parted an inch at their centre and when Wes pushed them apart they slid open smoothly.

"Where d'you get your hands on that, Watcher?" Spike asked in obvious surprise.

"Last time the repairman came out to the lift in Lily and Clem's building, I talked him into leaving a spare in case anyone got stuck." Wes unslung the rope that he'd been carrying looped diagonally across his chest. After assessing the visible superstructure of the lift car on the floor above, he selected a karabiner from a pouch at his waist. "Of course, they're all a standard size so that the fire departments don't need to have dozens of different ones... I thought it might prove useful," he explained as he looped the midpoint of the rope, which he had marked earlier with some tape, through and over the top of the clip. Then, he held onto the door as he reached out and hooked the clip onto the car's framework as near to the centre as possible.

Spike kicked the coiled rope into the shaft and was rewarded by a distant splash. He took one of the ropes from the watcher and, not bothering with any other equipment, he wrapped his leg around it twice, checked his grip and stepped into the shaft.

Wes rolled his eyes, but refused to be intimidated into following the vampire's example. He'd had to do emergency rappelling once before, and given the choice it would really have to be an emergency before he did it again. He donned a harness as quickly as he could and clipped onto the second rope. Just before he dropped into the shaft he reached up and removed the key. As he rappelled downward, the doors above clanked closed, enclosing them in near-total darkness.

"Watch it!" a familiar voice whispered and Wes felt his legs pushed to one side. "Your great clod-hoppin' boots are about six inches from my head."

Wes carefully lowered himself the last five feet or so until he and Spike hung shoulder to shoulder and locked the rope in position. "Can you see where the key fits?" he asked. Thin ribbons of light shone through at the outer edges of the doors, but not enough for him to make out more than the barest outlines of anything in the gloom... other than the gleam of a pair of golden eyes moving up and down as Spike nodded.

"Guess the reception committee is up to you," the vampire conceded as he took the proffered tool and waited for Wes to steady himself and bring his pistol to bear. Spike held onto the ledge above the doors with one hand to steady himself and, although he didn't immediately free his leg from the rope, he balanced on tip-toe on the bottom edge of the doorway. He shuffled to the right and then reached up and out with his left hand to slide the key into place and give it a twist. As the doors shifted, he inserted the fingers of both hands into the gap and wrenched the door to the right.

The guard seated behind the reception desk had barely begun to get to his feet for a better view when Wes's first shot took him in the neck. The other guard had had his back to them, and as he spun around, coffee arced over the floor as the mug in his hand tilted precariously. The second shot took him high in the arm as he turned, and he staggered a couple of steps toward the counter.

His mind full of images of some sort of panic button, Spike threw himself over the nurses' station and tackled the guard to the ground. Bones crunched as Spike's shoulder drove the man into the floor. Spike rolled away from him, making a grimace of distaste as he found himself lying in a puddle of coffee.

The guard didn't move.

Wes swung forward and stepped into the corridor. To right and left, as far as he could see, the corridor stetched on and on, cell after glass-fronted cell. Instinctively, he raised his pistol to fire at the fatigue-clad figure far down the corridor, even though he knew the man was well outside his effective range. It was only when his reflection raised his gun, mirroring his every move, that Wes realised the truth and moved to help Spike rearrange the two men to look as normal as possible.

Spike had already pulled the dart from the second guard's arm and was lifting him into the spare chair.

The first guard had fallen back into his seat but it had glided backward and Wes wheeled him forward, somehow managing to prop his head up in his hands as though he was watching the monitors in front of him.

Spike didn't even try to mimic Wes's success. Instead, he picked up both his guard's legs and propped them on the counter, one crossed over the other at the ankle. The guard's head flopped back but was propped up slightly by the chair's back.

Wes picked up a clipboard that rested on the counter between the two guards and checked the heading on the front page. 'Subject list.' Eagerly, he flipped the page over, hoping to find the list of subjects would come with a list of cell allocations. It did... but where Wes had hoped he'd be able to look down the list until he found 'Rayne, Ethan,' there were no names, only 'Aberrant 47', 'Aberrant 83' and even 'Aberrant 259'.

"God in heaven," the watcher spat out as he dropped the board back where he had found it. "They don't even use names."

Spike shrugged. "They never did."

"But— I mean, with most demons it's not as if they could ask."

The vampire eyed the filing cabinets that lined the back wall. He doubted the guards would have access to the information inside them, so he didn't waste time checking them for keys, but he also doubted they would be alarmed. Even though he knew they were already on borrowed time, he waited for the camera to sweep to the other side of the room and then, with a whine of twisting metal, pulled open the top drawer of the rightmost cabinet.

He pulled out the front file for 'Aberrant 1' and skimmed through it. He'd hoped for some sort of photograph, but those there were only showed copies of x-rays, so he ran his finger down the summary page until he found the admission date. 09/07/80. He pushed the folder back in and pulled out the one at the back of the drawer. 'Aberrant 30' - 12/20/83. Their guy hadn't been picked up until January 2000. Spike took a couple of steps to his right and pulled out another drawer. 'Aberrant 241' - 12/20/02. The vampire backtracked a little and chose one of the middle drawers. Without even taking them out of the drawer he quickly checked the admission dates on the first few. Then he pulled all the others out and passed half to Wes.

"All these were admitted after Giles' little playmate got carted off. If we're lucky they sent him here sooner rather than later. Let me know if you find anything that looks like it might be him."

Spike started to go through his bundle of files, tossing aside any that were obviously too young, too old, too female... and it seemed that nearly three quarters of the people being held there were women. As he worked, his subconscious pricked at him, telling him that something wasn't right. There were no thumps of discarded files coming from the other side of the station. He looked over at Wes. His compatriot was still on the top file.

"Don't tell me you got him first time?" Spike asked.

Wes turned another page and then looked up. "What? Did you say something?"

"We're looking for one guy, Watcher, not collating evidence for Nuremburg. If that's not him—" The vampire froze and ducked down under the counter, freeing his pistol from its holster as he did so.

Footsteps clacked authoritatively along what had been an empty corridor and Wes joined Spike in ducking out of sight until they drew nearer.

"Sergeant Kowalski!" The woman's voice was harsh. "Sergeant, why isn't the eleva— What—"

Spike turned, rose and aimed all in a single seamless motion, the first dart catching the white-coated woman in the chest and the second in the forehead. Spike vaulted the counter and dragged her around behind it almost before Wes was upright. As soon as her body was out of general view, Spike began ransacking her unconscious form.

"What on earth are you doing?" Wes asked.

"What does it look like?" Spike demanded. "Going through her pockets looking for loose change."

Wes's mouth opened as if he would argue, but he returned to his bundle of folders instead. As if the woman's appearance had reminded him of how little time they had, he began to flick through them more rapidly, dropping the discards on the floor. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Pause. Spike looked up, hopefully.

"I think we've got him. One nine seven."

Spike picked up the patient list and skimmed down it. "Room twenty-three." He nodded to the right of station. "First one that way says thirty-one."

Wes looked to the left. "Twenty-nine."

They both broke into a run. Wes reached the cell first. Like all the others it was bare except for a mattress set on a low shelf and a bucket. Wes began to hammer on the glass, but the cell's inmate did not stir, though Wes fancied that he saw his back stiffen under the hospital gown that he wore. He kept his back turned to the world, maintaining what little privacy he had in the only way he could. Even as the watcher looked around in frustration for a way to open the cell, Spike gave a smug grin and from his pocket he produced a plastic card with a magnetic strip, swiping it through the slot to the right of the glass.

The glass slid aside, and the two Englishmen moved as one to retrieve the cell's occupant.

Spike grabbed an arm and used it to roll the man over and then haul him into a sitting position. He peered at the gaunt, lined face. "Right bloke?" he asked Wes.

"Right... person," Wes confirmed. He fumbled in his trouser pocket for a second before he drew out the last of the amulets he had made earlier that day and slipped it over Rayne's head.

"Ready?" Wes asked, grabbing hold of the man's other arm and putting it around his shoulders.

The figure between them finally showed signs of interest. He looked from Spike to Wes as they began to drag him out of his cell. "You're English?"

"As good old Queen Victoria," Spike replied.

"And this?" He lifted the amulet as if it were made of lead.

"Stops you showing up on the cameras."

"Don't you want to know who we are and where we're taking you?" Wes asked.

The skeletal face twisted into what might once have been a wry grin if the man hadn't forgotten how to smile. "It's hardly going to be anywhere worse."

They stepped out into the corridor, and Wes looked at Spike. "We need to find the stairs. There's no way he'll be able to—"

Anything else Wes was about to say was drowned out by the sound of klaxons. Solid steel plates slammed up from the floor so rapidly that the men were left in no doubt that, had they been crossing the line where they were set into the floor when the alarm went off, they would have been missing important portions of their anatomy.

"Bloody hell!" Spike shouted. "Guess they learned some lessons."

"I guess they did," Wes yelled back. He nodded to the man they held, who was writhing in their grip, clutching at his head with both hands, his mouth wide in a drowned-out scream, an anguished cry that had a muffled echo behind every security screen. Spike used his free hand to tilt Ethan's head to the side and down. The scar had faded to white, but it wasn't hard to see under the crew cut.

"He's chipped. They chipped them all."