The ladder leading down into the underground room ended in a small alcove off to the side of a brightly lit hallway. Buffy silently stepped off the ladder into the alcove, turning quickly and glancing around to see if anyone was there to see her entrance. Spike was following quietly behind her, but she reached up a hand to grab his ankle and stop his progress, just before he would have stepped down low enough to be seen by anyone who might happen by.

He looked down at her questioningly as she released her grip on his ankle, holding up her hand in a silent gesture that clearly told him to wait. She wanted to be sure that it was reasonably safe before he came down the ladder to join her. He was impatient and did not want to wait – but he did.

Cautiously Buffy peered out around the corner, looking up and down the long, white hallway. There were several doors branching off of it on either side, all of which were closed – and no soldiers in sight. Without taking her eyes from their cautious sweep of the hallway, she beckoned with one hand behind her for Spike to come on down the ladder and join her.

As he moved to stand beside her, she unconsciously put her arm around his waist, still looking out into the hallway. “Can you smell her?” she asked in a soft whisper, barely audible to human ears – but clear to his hearing, she knew.

Spike stood there in silence for a moment, focusing, and she could feel the tension in his body under her arm, could feel the trembling that was the only indication of his fear. “This way,” he finally replied, nodding with his head toward the right as he slipped out of her arm around him and stepped out into the hallway.

Buffy immediately grabbed his arm and pulled him back, whispering sharply, “No!”

He looked at her, a question in his wide blue eyes. His expression was calm but very solemn, and she knew he was trying very hard to be brave.

“Me first,” she said firmly, moving past him to lead the way down the hallway in the direction he had indicated.

As they made their way slowly and cautiously down the silent hallway, stepping softly to avoid making a sound, Buffy began to wonder if they had made a huge mistake. No one was around that she could see, but she knew how quickly that could change. And here they were right out in the open, with no where to hide, the only escape route one that could be very easily cut off.

The situation was not a good one, she knew. But they really had not had any other option. Anya was down here somewhere. What would she tell Xander? *We found her, but we thought it was too dangerous, so we just came back home…*

Buffy knew in her heart that she could not bring herself to go back to the house at all unless Anya was with her when she did.

Suddenly, at the end of the hall and around the corner, the sound of voices could be heard, loud and careless, completely unaware of their as-yet unseen listeners. Forcing herself to stay calm, Buffy instinctively put out a protective arm in front of Spike as she took a step back to the nearest door, trying the handle quickly.

It was unlocked.

Silently she opened it, a quick glance inside revealing that it was pitch black – apparently empty. They had to hope for the best; it was not as if they had a lot of choices. Buffy and Spike slipped silently into the room, closing the door softly behind them – just as the voices rounded the corner into the hallway.

Buffy’s heart was pounding as she stood with her hand and her ear to the door, listening for any sign that their presence might have been detected. Her wide green eyes focused on Spike, who was facing her, also listening intently, breathing hard as he stared into her eyes. He did not need to breathe; it was a leftover instinct from his humanity that he seemed to fall back on in frightening situations such as this one.

Buffy was afraid that the soldiers might hear him.

She pressed a finger to her lips as she met his eyes, reaching out a steadying hand to his arm. His eyes widened when he realized what he was doing, and he nodded quickly, closing his eyes and lowering his head for a moment, his trembling hand rising to grip her arm as he concentrated on stopping the action that came so naturally to him.

After a moment the voices in the hall came near enough that Buffy could make out the actual words.

“…on his way down here right now. He wants to question her or something, I don’t know.”

“I heard she’s a demon. Is that true? She looks human enough…all her vitals checked out. What sort of demon do you think she is?”

“Personally, I don’t care,” the first voice replied in a leering tone. “Like you said…she looks human enough to me!”

Buffy felt her anger building at the suggestion she heard in the man’s voice, but forced herself not to react for the moment. They had to remain undetected long enough to get to Anya and get her to safety. Still, it was clear that the soldiers were discussing Anya, and it enraged her to hear them talking about her like nothing more than an object for them to do with as they pleased.

She was relieved when the second one said, “Finn gave strict orders not to touch her, man. Not yet. He said he’ll let us know what to do when he gets here.”

The two soldiers continued to talk as they made their way down the hallway, until their voices finally faded out, and Buffy could hear them no longer. She looked closely at Spike in concern, when she saw that his eyes were still closed, and he was absolutely still, not daring to breathe yet, his hand on her arm painfully tight and shaking violently.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Spike, it’s okay. They’re gone, and they didn’t find us.”

He nodded quickly, but did not look up or move at all.

She moved in closer to him, her hand moving from his shoulder to his face, drawing his eyes up to hers, wide and fighting back panic. “Hey,” she whispered gently, searching his eyes with concern. “It’s all right, Honey. You can breathe. Okay? It’s all right.”

He stared at her for a long moment, before letting out the breath he had been unnecessarily holding, lowering his head against her shoulder, gasping softly against her shirt to muffle the sound. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Buffy, I’m sorry!”

“Shhh,” she murmured, her hand moving to the back of his head to stroke slowly through his hair in a comforting motion. “It’s okay.”

He looked up at her, then lowered his eyes again in a look of shame as he whispered almost frantically, “I shouldn’t be here, Buffy. I shouldn’t have left. This is all my fault. If I can’t bloody take it, I shouldn’t be down here, I’m just making it more difficult for you…”

“No,” she insisted softly, trying to reassure him with the affection in her intent gaze. “No, it’s all right. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be able to find her down here. It’s okay, it’s only natural that you’d be a little freaked, Spike. I understand. It’s okay.”

Her soothing, comforting words had a calming effect on him, and after a few moments his breathing evened out again, and he looked up at her with a little grimace of embarrassment at his own behavior. “I – I’m sorry, Buffy,” he repeated, but he seemed calmer now, more in control. “I – I think I’m okay now. We – we should get going. Gotta find Anya.”

She smiled tenderly into his eyes, tracing down his cheek as she replied, “Let’s just take a second. Okay?” She wanted to be sure that he was really ready, not on the verge of another freak-out, before they stepped out that door to face the unknown.

He opened his mouth as if to object, not wanting her to feel that she had to make special allowances for his presence with her – but then stopped, nodding his reluctant acceptance. He was quite clearly not in enough control to make the decisions for them on this little mission, anyway.

If Buffy said they should wait – they would wait.

She drew back from him slightly, reaching into her pocket for a small flashlight she had tucked away there when she had left the house. She didn’t dare turn on the main light in the room, afraid it might give them away; but she was curious as to where exactly they had ended up.

In the dim glow from the small light, Buffy could make out that they were in what appeared to be a records room. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, and there was no other furniture of any kind in the room that she could see. One of the cabinets nearest to them was labeled, “Classified”.

Now wasn’t *that* interesting.

A slow smirk spread across her face as inspiration struck her. They had to find Anya and get her out of here – but she *did* think it was wise to give Spike a few minutes to calm down before they went on their way.

And it did not have to be time wasted.

“Well,” she whispered with a speculative smile at Spike. “Looks like we’ve stumbled onto Riley’s records. Just might be something interesting here to take back with us.”

A slow smile to match hers spread across the face of the vampire as he turned to take in the cabinets that surrounded them. “Could be,” he agreed softly. “But – Anya…?”

“We can take a few minutes,” Buffy assured him. “Those men just said Riley told them not to hurt her.”

As she spoke, she tried the drawer marked “Classified”. As she had expected, it was locked. She did not seem phased by it. With a quick burst of strength, she yanked the drawer open, springing the lock with no more sound than a soft little *ping* as the lock broke under the quiet force of her strength.

She shrugged carelessly as Spike walked over to the drawer to join her, his eyebrows raised over a little smirk.

“Security around here’s pathetic,” Buffy muttered with a little smirk of her own, as she handed the flashlight to Spike, who dutifully held it for her as she pulled out the first file and opened it, paging through the sheets inside.

The first few files were nothing of any great interest to her, financial information on Riley’s organization, official paperwork of the nature that people always kept around, but never actually used or even looked at.

But as she went further back in the file, she found a folder marked, “Project Sleeper”. Her eyes narrowed with interest as she opened it, but then widened in shock as its contents became clear to her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, staring at the shocking words before her.

“What? What is it?” Spike asked her urgently, unable to get close enough to read the words for himself in the dim lighting, his eyes focused instead on her face.

“Wow,” Buffy shook her head, not answering him directly just yet, still too shocked at what she had just read. “This is – this is awful.” Her eyes widened further as realization struck her and she corrected herself in an excited whisper, “No! This is *wonderful*! This is the evidence we need!”

“What? *What*?” he pressed her impatiently, unable to suppress a bit of irritation.

She looked up in surprise at his tone, before laughing nervously. “Sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just – this is a lot. Um…well, it looks like there’s a little more to Riley’s slave program than he’s letting on. The chips he’s been installing in these vampires – well…they’re equipped with a sort of – on-off switch.”

Spike’s eyes went wide then, and he blinked at her in surprise. “What?”

She nodded as she met his eyes. “He can turn them off and on as he chooses. They can all be controlled from a main switchboard that he has -- *here*,” she realized as she read further down the paper. “And some of them have manual controls too. Like – remote control.”

Spike frowned, confused. “Why would he need to turn the chips *off*? Can’t think of a single soddin’ situation where he’d *want* a vamp to be able to fight back – to be able to…” His voice trailed off as he suddenly reached the same realization that was already in her eyes.

“ ‘Project Sleeper’,” she read again from the folder, her voice soft and serious. “He’s made it so that the vamps *can* hurt people. If he wants them to.”

“Like the Watcher’s friend – the senator,” Spike realized with a slow, thoughtful nod.

Buffy nodded grimly in response. “That’s what I’m thinking,” she agreed, paging further through the folder. “Oh God,” she whispered, finding something else that caught her interest. “Look at this.” She held out a sheet of paper to him, an expectant look on her face as she watched his reaction.

It was a list of names. He frowned as he scanned down it, pausing when he reached the name of the senator that had just been killed. Before he could comment she reaffirmed what he had already figured out.

“Project Sleeper is Riley’s way of placing vampires that he’s already trained to kill their masters in the homes of people that he wants to eliminate, and then using the manual controls to get them to take those people out of the way. To kill them. This is a list of the people he’s already planted his own assassin vamps with.”

Spike continued scanning down the list as Buffy looked away, shaking her head in disgust. “I can’t believe that Riley would do this. I mean – I can – but all that time I was with him – I never would have thought…”

“Buffy.”

Something about his quiet, weighted tone stopped her, and Buffy looked to Spike with a question in her eyes. “What? What is it?”

Spike held the paper out to her, his finger marking a spot on the list. Something in his eyes, in combination with her own intuition, sent a chill of foreboding down her spine as she took the paper, focusing on the spot he pointed out to her. A part of her already knew what she would see before she read the name on the paper.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped, a sick feeling of fear coming over her at the confirmation of her thoughts; there in print before her eyes on the list of Riley’s intended victims, was the name of a man who meant more to her than almost anyone else in her life.

*Rupert Giles*.