Wednesday, January 28th, 2004

Lorne stood in the doorway of what had been the entertainment wing of Wolfram and Hart, red eyes shining with an almost maternal pride.

The small screening room was now lined with rows of chairs, mismatched true, but functional to the task and comfortable. In the adjoining conference room, a small bar was taking shape. Oh, it wasn't Caritas by any stretch of the imagination, but between his personal liquor cabinet and the various bottles and pieces of sound equipment he had scavenged from private offices around the building, it wouldn't be half bad.

It was funny. Lorne wasn't a fighter by any stretch of the imagination. Loathed violence, truth be told, but this? This was something he could do.

It didn't take an empathic demon to figure out that if the current crisis exploded in the way the mystics were predicting (a little late, if you asked him), then they were looking at a very long stay in the law firm. Without some kind of diversion, people were going to start going a little stir crazy, and considering the environment, that way lay broken heads, ice packs, and ill-conceived curses. The thought sent an exaggerated shiver up his spine.

"Oh, Anthony? Scootch those tables back a little bit." Lorne pointed with the hand not holding his sea breeze. "If those speakers are going to put out like I think they are, it'll be Excedrins all around if we sit people that close."

He felt like a conductor, wielding a baton of smooth, alcoholic sin, but under his practiced eye, and with the liberal application of creative lighting, his little fiefdom was starting to turn into something that he knew, knew, was going to make a big difference in the days to come. And okay, maybe they didn't actually have the licensure to show all of the movies he was starting to collect, but they weren't camped out in an insanely powerful, interdimensional law firm for nothing.

So maybe Lorne wasn't a good trooper, but he was a damned fine morale officer, if he did say so himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Sir, the werewolf and her family are being placed in one of the last guest suites,” Phillip said crisply, back stiff and feet shoulder width apart as he made his formal post-op report to the CEO of Wolfram and Hart. “We ran into minor resistance, but there were no casualties, civilian or otherwise.”

The look of faint relief behind his newest boss’ eyes was a welcome change in Phillip’s opinion. One didn’t become a member of Wolfram and Hart’s wet teams without a certain moral flexibility, but knowing that their new boss, vampire or not, seemed to give a damn about their well being was an extra layer of job security that he had never known before.

“What kind of resistance?” Angel asked, leaning heavily on the hardwood desk that dominated this corner of his office.

“No more than fifteen zombies,” Phillip replied easily, voice neutral despite the oddness of the statement. Then again, working on the front lines of the firm’s unending gambit for more power had made him restructure his definition of the word ‘odd’ over the years. “We were able to neutralize them with sniper fire from the helicopter before performing the extraction. The sound attracted others, but I arranged a perimeter guard around the house. They were easily dealt with. Also,” a vial containing an ear made its way from Phillip’s tactical harness and onto the vampire’s desk, “Here is the tissue sample Ms. Burkle requested.”

Angel gave it the briefest glance before punching a button on the phone at his elbow. “Harmony?”

“Yeah, bossy?” The blonde vampire’s voice chirped through the phone.

“Could you page Fred and ask her to come to my office?” Angel asked briskly.

“Sure thing!” With a quiet beep, the line was severed.

Angel looked back up at the commando. “Nice work Mr… ah…”

“Roberts, sir,” Phillip supplied without cracking a smile. Being unremarkable and unmemorable was actually a benefit in his line of work, and with the changes in administration, he could hardly be offended that his name, or at least the one he was currently using, had fallen between the cracks.

“Yes, Roberts. Tell your team they did an excellent job.” The formality sounded a little flat and strained on Angel’s lips.

Phillip figured that a fighter like the vampire wasn’t used to the niceties of his new job, and was instead wishing that he could have been the one to save the girl. That did bring the tiniest of smiles to the commando’s craggy face. “Will do, sir.” With that, Phillip stiffened to attention, some training just never seemed to die, and turned briskly on his heel when he received a nod of dismissal.

When the door closed behind him, Phillip walked quickly to where Anders was waiting for him. The leader of Alpha team, and at least nominally Phillip’s superior in the department’s hierarchy, stood and nodded to the leader of Beta team. “How did it go?” he asked.

The two might be departmental rivals, but they were also allies and, if someone in their line of work could truly claim such a thing, staunch friends. “Not bad, he seems pleased. In either case, he’s in a reasonable state of mind.”

Anders smiled bitterly at that. “Suppose I should thank you for that. Over beer… Afterwards…” At Phillip’s wry smile, the leader of Alpha team schooled his features to neutrality and walked to Harmony’s desk to ask her to inform the CEO of his arrival.

Phillips took the seat the other man had vacated just moments before to wait. He had softened up the unpredictable vampire with his successful report. Now, it was Anders’ turn to drop the other shoe. Alpha team had been tasked with finding and retrieving a family, the Reillys, and especially their son, Connor. It had been made plain that this mission was of the utmost importance to the CEO, so when Alpha team had found the targets’ house empty and obvious signs of a struggle present, well, the potential repercussions hadn’t been pleasant.

So Phillip had given his positive report first, in order to soften up their boss and gage his mood. Now, it was up to Anders to slip in while Angel wasn’t in one of his notorious rages and report the mission’s failure.

Hell, before this current crisis went down, the vampire had been regularly decapitating employees for what had previously been minor infractions, even encouraged vices, under the old administration. Until they figured their new leader out, now was not a time for position jockeying among the wet teams. Now was a time to close ranks and look out for their own. And so Phillips watched, and waited, and hoped for the best.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Survivors Welcome
Southeast Entrance =>
Food, Protection, Shelter Within
Researching Cure”

One of Wolfram & Hart’s sanctuary offer banners. Currently on display in the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harmony viciously attacked the rough patch of fingernail with the pink emery board, smoothing and sculpting it to perfection. She was humming a little tune to herself, whatever that bitch Marcy had been playing on her CD player in the break room earlier. Real radio was getting spotty, and those stations that remained tended to be all news, all the time. ‘Boring.’

It had been a few minutes since the second commando had abruptly left Angel’s office. Spying over her too-tall desk and into the rest of the lobby was difficult without looking like a prairie dog, but she still managed to keep tabs on the comings and goings in her little corner of the firm. Super-keen senses of smell and hearing had their uses. Therefore, when Fred walked across the lobby and into Angel’s office, Harmony knew without having to actually see.

The door had barely closed behind the scientist when Harmony’s phone buzzed again. The vampiress put down her emery board and punched the button next to the blinking light on her phone with her newly rounded fingernail. Before she could chirp a cheerful greeting, a garbled shout, filtering in tandem through the wall to her right, crackled through the phone line.

Harmony was torn. On one hand, bursting in to help with an obvious boss-in-distress moment might score her some serious brownie points. On the other, nail breakage was the least of her worries if something serious was going on behind those closed doors.

On the other hand, wait, how many hands was that? Whatever, the point was that Angel was the only reason why she was sitting at her classy new desk and pulling down a larger paycheck instead of languishing in a dead end job in the cubicle next to the late, unlamented Tamika.

And even though she sucked at being evil, Harmony was a very skilled sycophant, and she was pretty certain that there couldn’t be anything too dire in her boss’ office.

And if there was, she could just run back out again.

She hit the door at a full run, which was pretty impressive in three inch spiked heels. “Boss!” she cried in a voice that she hoped sounded suitably worried. Angel was backed in a corner, arm thrown across his face and a dark scowl wreathing the part of his face that was exposed.

Fred was just standing there, face quizzical and an open vial of some kind in her right hand.

They were both looking at her, but when Harmony sucked in a breath through her nose in order to ask her own questions, a scent so nasty that it sent her reeling backwards hit her sensitive nose. “Oh my gawd,” she cried, hand covering her face in an ineffective attempt to block out the hellacious odor. “That’s just, just… ugh!”

Fred just looked back and forth between the two vampires. “Am I missing something here?” she asked, swinging back towards Angel. The motion sent another wave of noxious scent into the room, letting Harmony know beyond a shadow of a doubt where the odor’s source was.

Harmony’s eyes were starting to water, which was sure to make her makeup run. That was almost as upsetting as the smell, so she found herself blurting, “Get that away from me!”

In the back of her mind, Harmony noted with some alarm that she had shifted into game face, but thankfully, Angel didn’t seem to notice. Maybe it was his own yellow eyes and ridged brows that let her know that she hadn’t just committed the biggest faux pas ever.

And that smell really was terrible.

“Fred, cork.” Angel’s voice was muffled through the shield of his arm, but the pleading there was plain.

Realization dawned on the scientist’s face and she quickly shoved a rubber stopper into the container in her hand.

‘And ew, is that an ear?’

Harmony took another step back, ridges across her forehead wrinkling further into a wincing scowl, even though the smell was quickly dissipating. She was so distracted with her own disgust that she missed the first part of Fred’s babbling apology. However, she did not miss Angel’s accusatory growl. “Harmony, what are you doing in here?”

The vampiress quickly shifted into human guise and cover-your-ass mode, eyes scanning the room and mind stretching for the right thing to say. However, her mouth started long before her brain could catch up, and she found herself babbling worse than Fred had been just moments before.

“You called me, but there were just funny sounds and growls and stuff. And I really hated stenography, even though I was pretty good at it. And why does that ear stink so much anyway? And-“

“Harmony!” Angel’s booming voice, which had been repeating her name at a lesser volume during her ramble, cut through the vampiress’ stream of consciousness whine. He just looked tired, and there were red rims and dark circles around his now human eyes. With him, the miserable undertone was a given, even if it seemed a little thicker than usual.

“Yeah, boss?” she asked meekly.

He just sighed, and replaced the phone on the desk, which sure enough, had been thrown aside and was dangling brokenly. The tiny dial tone was finally silenced when he put the receiver back in the cradle. The rest of the desk held other clues that he had abruptly and violently thrown himself away from Fred and her reeking vial. Papers were scattered about and there were various pens and pencils were strewn across the floor. No wonder Angel was looking so chagrinned. Perversely, that made Harmony feel infinitely better about the flush that would have been staining her cheeks if she had still been human.

“Never mind, just… leave.”

That stung, but she was slowly starting to get used to Angel treating her like last year’s chunky mules. ‘Crap.’ A tiny sniffle escaped her as she turned for the door.

“Wait a sec,” Fred’s voice was quiet, but when Harmony turned around, there was understanding, but also a glint of excitement on the woman’s sweet face. “I think we might have just solved our problem.”

Angel was glaring silently, so Harmony spoke for both of them. “Huh?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“This is just so… wrong,” Harmony whined to no one in particular. The armed and armored men surrounding her in the screening center certainly didn’t seem to be listening. She pouted a little, and took another sip from her blood-drizzled latte.

The screening area had been a cargo bay before the security teams had converted it into an airtight staging ground for checking out the firm’s newest tenants. Someone had finally hung some huge signs on the outside of the Wolfram and Hart building. Harmony didn’t have the first clue what they said, but partnered with the firm’s commando teams’ aggressive defense of the building’s perimeter, the message seemed to be getting through. A few refugees were starting to trickle into the screening center.

“She’s clean,” she said to the dour-faced guard at her side. At his dubious glance, she tossed her hair and gave him her most scathing glare. “Get a move on, I have stuff to do! Good meat! Next!” The young woman, wearing a blood spattered Radioshack uniform and a hungry, haunted expression on her face, was shuffled away and the next person was paraded past Harmony’s uncomfortable folding chair.

“Good meat, next!”

“Good meat, next!”

“Whoa! Bad meat!” The smell wasn’t as bad as it had been with the ear upstairs, but it was still pretty distinct. Rotten meat, the bitter scent she knew meant illness, and a touch of that nasty funk that grew under the bathroom sinks in her high school gym. Bleh.

Harmony watched them escort the older man in a business suit away from the others and into a holding area. The fact that he was going to be spirited off and put on ice, literally, until they figured out how to stop whatever was causing the zombieism didn’t faze her in the least. What did bother her was the lingering stench. She reached under her chair and pulled out the one thing she had demanded before agreeing to this ridiculous new assignment: a bottle of Febreeze. She sprayed it around her and inhaled deeply through her nose in relief.

“I said next!” she said imperiously, really getting into the swing of her temporary position of power. “And someone get me another low fat latte with mink!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

To: Winifred Burkle
From: Amber Weatherby
Subject: Initial Lab Work on Ear

Hey Fred,

Initial lab results are in. The vector seems to be viral in origin, but there is a mystical element, bound on a molecular level with the raw genetic material. The pieces of genome we have decoded do not resemble anything available on GenBank or the firm’s own files, so further sequencing is needed. Wesley’s lab is working on the vector’s magical aspect.

The good news is that while the zombies seem to seek out and attack any living things, only humans and a few isolated demon species seem to be able to contract the disease, if we can call it that, which makes its victims rise from the dead.

Sorry I can’t tell you more. Knox is running new gels right now. We should have our sensors tuned to recognize infected individuals within a few days.

Amber

TBC...