Buffy started as Dawn shook her awake. Gathering their things, the two sisters made their way off the train, shivering slightly in the cool English air. Buffy’s expression remained tight, though relief raced through her when she saw their escort. She was eager to get to LA, to get to Spike, but she needed insurance first. If Angel had been keeping this from her for so long, she was definitely going into Wolfram & Hart fully prepared.

***

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” Fred asked, worrying her bottom lip. Spike rolled his eyes and bounced on the balls of his feet. Really, Fred’s concern was touching, but it had already delayed his potential recaporialization a full day while she’d ‘covered all variables and contingencies’ by running millions upon millions of tests and simulations on her Spike Solidifier. Well, 634 according to her, but it felt like millions.

“I would very much like to be solid,” Spike said in his primmest imitation of Wesley. Fred rolled her eyes and rechecked her calculations—again.

“Alright, I’m going to run—“

“NO!” Spike growled, his impatience finally getting the best of him. “No more tests. You’ve done them all. Twice. All that’s left is to do the damn thing.”

“But we only get one chance at this. The machine’s going to use up all of the ectoplasmic and super-atmospheric energy in the building for the next hundred years…you could be stuck here if I misplaced a decimal or forgot to carry the two!”

“Not inspiring a lot of confidence here, pet,” Spike sighed.

“Sorry, I just…”

“I know. But it’s all I’ve got.” Fred nodded her assent; really, Spike was right. There was nothing left to do but try this. They had one shot, and one shot only, and she had prepared as much as she possibly could. Twice.

“Alright. Into the circle, make sure you don’t get too near the edge of the ring. There’s going to be an unstable vortex whirling around you; I have no idea what will happen if you venture out, but I think it would be bad.” Spike snorted. With the amount of supernatural energy the soft-spoken scientist was harnessing to make him solid again, he was pretty sure BAD wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

Taking a deep breath, Spike stepped over the metal ring and took a deep breath. He focused on his family, Buffy’s green eyes glittering stubbornly, Anne’s delighted laugh, and the memory of his son’s birth. His son, whose name he didn’t even know. Determination gripped him, flooding him with a renewed resolve.

“Do it.” Holding her breath, Fred turned her machine on. Her eyes remained glued to Spike, looking so calm and collected, as the energy built. The crystals set into the machine began to glow, filling with charged energy particles waiting to be released. Fred could feel the power here, her hairs rising, her body reacting to the invisible pulsing. The machine began to whine, getting higher and higher. Fred’s heart was hammering as her computer screen registered full capacity, and the release countdown began. Three…two…one…

Spike screamed. Pain ripped through him, millions of volts flaying his body from the outside in. His senses deadened, everything going dark except for his nerve endings, which screamed at him that it hurt in every way imaginable.

Fred’s hands were flying over the controls; something was very, very wrong.
She tried to interrupt the power flow, but she couldn’t do it without blowing the entire block up. Her only option was to wait it out, and hope that Spike would survive.

***

Angle was in the middle of a conference call when the lights went out. He felt a slow smile stretch across his face as the reason struck hum. With any luck, Spike was now gone for good, but he’d settle for knowing that Fred would never be able to replicate these conditions and Spike would be stuck as a ghost for…as long as it took the Senior partner’s little ‘friend’ to overpower his wayward grandchilde. A sharp knocking at his door startled Angel out of his reverie. He quickly stowed the smooth crystal he’d been unconsciously fondling and took a deep breath. Lorne and Gunn; he needed a cover.

“I don’t care! I want the power back on now! Even if you have to attach a Conditavoxia Demon to the generator to do it!” He slammed the receiver down, turning his attention to the two questioning humans lurking in his doorway. “Boys downstairs don’t know what blew out the power. Anything you did?” Gunn shook his head in the negative, and Lorne began complaining about how much networking time he was loosing. Angel settled back into his chair, his mind wandering to all the possible outcomes of his subterfuge. He never noticed when he started humming, or when Lorne ground to a halt, staring at his friend in alarm.

***

Fred felt a sharp shock as she dashed through the diminished—but still potent—electromagnetic field that surrounded Spike. He was collapsed on the ground, completely still. Fred swore as her hand passed right through him. It hadn’t worked; this had all been for nothing.

“Spike!” she called frantically. He had to be OK. There was no way she’d messed up, miscalculated this badly. “Spike, please! Come on!”

“Bugger.” It was so faint, Fred was sure she’d imagined it.

“Spike?” she whispered, afraid to do anything that might convince him to not exist anymore, as if her breath could disperse the out of phase atoms holding him together. Nothing happened for several seconds, until a pained exhalation signaled Spike’s continued un-life.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” Spike tried to open his eyes, but changed his mind when the simple thought of attempting it felt like a spear through his brain. He tried to clear away the fuzz in his head by doing a mental check of his extremities; unfortunately, since everything hurt like hell, he couldn’t tell one part from another. His body was just a lump of ouch. He could vaguely hear Fred through the painful buzz, talking somewhere above him; he was pretty sure she was mumbling apologies, though she very well could have been spouting off quantum equations. Spike didn’t particularly care at the moment, and slipped into blessed darkness.

Fred had to assume by the random twitching of Spike’s muscles that he was with the living—or as much with the living as a ghost-like member of the undead could be. She just prayed that the mysterious grayness that had Spike so spooked wouldn’t come for him in this state. If it was really that powerful, he wouldn’t survive and she couldn’t protect him. If the power were on, she could test out the new ectosheilding platform she’d installed a few days ago to try and give Spike some sort of safe place. But the machine’s overload seemed to have knocked out all of the power. The only thing for Fred to do right now was to wait—wait for Spike to wake up, and wait for the power to come back on so she could figure out what had gone so terribly wrong.

Waiting only lasted as long as it took her overwhelming sense of guilt to force her restless hands to some task. So she started taking apart her creation piece by piece, checking each lead and connection. Many of them were fused together or badly charred, and most of the crystals reduced to fragments. She worked her way steadily around to the regulating crystals, freeing each one gingerly from its niche to be sent for analysis. Her hands worked methodically, her mind running through equations, scenarios, and simulations, trying to find out what went wrong, when her fingers slipped, her rhythm faltered.

She looked down with a frown. Her fingers had closed over air. One of the regulating crystals was missing. Probably shattered with the overload. Fred looked around for the remains, but didn’t find any. That wasn’t right. There was no evidence of a crystal ever having been in the little groove. Even with as much power flowing through the machine, it wouldn’t have completely vaporized the crystal. Fred felt panic flood her as she realized she must have forgotten it, left it out as she constructed the complex monstrosity. This was all her fault. What was she going to tell Spike?

Fred was staring at the missing part, trying to remember putting it together, forgetting that one crucial part that had cost Spike his chance at life. But for some reason, the only thing she could focus on was the night Angel had paid her an unexpected visit…and a cold feeling worked its way into her belly.