Ugh! All the horrible things that woman & her "soldiers"
 do! But, being left-handed myself, I feel even more hatred for her now, because that is a cruelty I can relate to (as a victim) more than some of the others.
     Poor Spike! How deep is his love that it can find a small place to live even in the depths of hell.

At last!  A crumb of recognition. Some semblance of Spike is still there.

Well done 

Oh, Mabel, how sad, how horrific...one of the scariest things possible, to be trapped, with no place to go but in your mind or to just 'check' out.  Of course, I saw the original Universal Soldier, and it's subsequent followups; but,  the Initiative, with all the horrors it brought to mind and the heebie-jeebies it triggered on the edges of my limbic system, is indeed representative of the horrors that we fear just might occur now or in near future---many countries, some so-called 3d world, have long had a tradition of people being pulled from their homes with no further traces of them to be found or even a whisper of a whereabout...here in the US "Homeland Security" essentially has carte blanche to stomp all over rights as they see fit in the name of, well the name supposedly says it all...and therefore, the Initiative of the Buffyverse, the other bugaboos of sci-fi, re-programming and re-animating stir our deepest fears.  Here, we see Spike who we all obviously love, lowered to the 9th level of a hell he cannot seemingly escape from, and certainly not intact.  And now Buffy has the opportunity to realize not only guilt for the actions leading up to his capture, and for imagined and known horrors, but also survivor's guilt.  What she may do for him now very well may be too little, and too late, and wll there only be one humane thing to do in this instance?  I hopped over here to see what was new, and not having heard of this one from you, looked at it, but with the undoubtedly angst-ridden theme, was unsure I wanted to stay and read awhile... but, it was like a train wreck...it drew me in and though I wanted to turn away, I couldn't. I had to stay til the very last word and now await more...and can't help it.
~~K.~~
~~fyreburned~~

I can't decide if I like this or  not...so horrible what is going on with Spike.  I guess I'll have to keep reading till I figure it out!  :)