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A/N Many thanks to Carol and Dawnofme for their beta work :)





Chapter Nine


Memories


Spike had slept for hours, not hearing Buffy when she came to check on him. He’d woken up in the early hours of the morning, and now could hear them all in the kitchen.


He was still trying to psyche himself up to go up the stairs without being told to when Giles called down to him.


“Spike! Are you awake? Are you going to join us for breakfast?”


“Yeah, thanks,” answered Spike in relief. “God, that was well timed.”


Trying to go against what had been ingrained for over a year was tough.


He went in to the kitchen and sat in the only empty chair, which happened to be next to Buffy. As soon as he sat down, Dawn put a plate of pancakes in front of him.


“Um, thanks Dawn, but where’s my blood?”


He was starving as he’d missed his evening meal the night before, having fallen asleep. He had a moment’s panic that they were going to starve him of blood like at The Initiative, then, he looked at their faces and remembered these were good people. Other memories had surfaced of them whilst he slept; more feelings than images, and he knew he loved Buffy and that she did him. He felt protective towards Dawn and Willow. The two men were harder to figure out, but he did feel safe.


“Oh? Is that all you want?” said Dawn. “You used to love pancakes.”


“I did?” said Spike. “It’s just I can’t remember having anything else.”


“Yeah, well blood keeps you going, but you’ve always liked other things too,” replied Dawn.


He tried a mouthful of pancake dripping in maple syrup.


“Mm, you’re not wrong, these are great.”


Ooooooooo


Once breakfast was over and the table cleared away, Willow went to work on hacking into The Initiative’s computer system, to find out as much as she could about security and what the place’s goals were. Maggie Walsh had quite openly shown them that they’d trained Spike as a weapon, so what were they up to that they hadn’t shared yet? There must be something.


“Spike.” said Giles, handing him a notepad and pen. “Can you write down all that you can recall of your time in there? Not so much what methods they used on you, more the layout of the place or whether you can remember anything you may have overheard them talking about - other projects and so on.”


“Ok,” said Spike. He sat and thought for a while, brought pen to paper, then stopped.


“Um, seems I’ve got a bit of a problem.” said Spike quietly.


“What’s the matter? Can’t you remember? Willow deactivated the chip so that shouldn’t be stopping you anymore,” said Buffy.


“No, I can remember stuff. It’s just…er….thing is….I don’t seem to be able to write,” said Spike, putting the pen down in frustration and looking up at the others, his expression anguished.


“Is it your hand? Is it not working properly still?” asked Xander, knowing that Spike was left handed.


“No,” snapped Spike, raising his voice for the first time. “I just don’t know how to sodding write.” He cringed, waiting for the chip to punish him for his anger but it didn’t kick in.


Giles picked up a newspaper and pushed it along the table to Spike.


“Can you read the headline?” he asked.


Spike looked at it, frowning as he concentrated, then shook his head.


“No, haven’t a bloody clue as to what it says. It’s like with the talking. When the chip was stopping me, I knew what I wanted to say but it was like I’d never known how to transfer that into words. This is the same. I just can’t remember reading anything even though I must have done so, right?”


“You certainly did,” said Giles, “This must be due to the chip being degraded like Willow said.”


“Is it fixable?” asked Buffy.

Beside her, Spike tensed and slid back in his chair a bit when Buffy spoke. She looked at him realising that ‘fixing’ was an Initiative term.


“Sorry, Spike. I mean, can we put it right?”


Spike relaxed again, looking embarrassed.


“It’s ok, just my head’s still pretty messed up. Some things just make me react without knowing.”


“Don’t worry, Spike,” said Giles. “It’ll take time for it all to settle down. As to whether we can sort it out, I’m not sure, but we can work on it.”


“Great,” said Spike. “They’ve even managed to turn me into a bleeding retard.”


“Well, you were never exactly Einstein in the first place,” said Xander.


Spike glared at him, grateful that the anger sensor was no longer active.


“Not helping,” snapped Buffy.


“Look, stop it,” said Giles sharply. “We’ve got more to worry about than sniping at each other. Buffy, you’re going to see Maggie today, aren’t you? See if you can catch a glimpse of anything in the area where Spike was being held. Spike, you can recount it to me and I’ll take notes. Xander, go and get more blood, but make sure no one sees you.”


“I’ll come with,” said Dawn.


Ooooooo


Buffy headed out to The Initiative. It was the first time since Spike’s escape that she’d been asked to go in, and she was a little nervous about exactly what Maggie Walsh wanted from her. She was so sure that the woman had a hidden agenda, even more so since she showed her Spike, but still had no real idea of what it was.


She was taken to Maggie as soon as she entered. The professor was in the area where she’d discovered Spike. So far so good - she still wanted to show her ‘best’ subjects to her.


“Buffy, thank you for coming,” said Maggie.


“Yeah, you know me, anything to help,” said Buffy in reply, suppressing the urge to tear the woman’s face off for what she’d done to Spike.


“We still have no news of Number Seventeen. It’s most frustrating. No doubt, whoever stole it will use it at some point or demand a ransom, and we’ll be able to take it back. But enough of that, I have others that I want you to see.”


She led Buffy away to a viewing gallery attached to one of the operating theatre rooms. Maggie proudly talked Buffy through what the surgeons were doing. Buffy tried to remain impassive, but she felt sick to her stomach. They were transplanting arms from one demon to another, basically swapping them over. Both demons had defensive systems in their arms, one, a Polgara demon, could draw out a skewer of bone that was like a spear, and the other, a Werdna, had retractable venomous claws. Maggie’s voice was still droning on.


“So, we will be able to discover whether the creatures use the different weapons they now have; whether it’s a purely physical thing, whether it’s something they have to learn to use, or whether they’re unable to because they weren’t born with it.”


“God this is like Frankenstein’s Monster in here.”


“Have you done this before? Have you had any success?” She managed to force her voice to sound calm.


“We’ve done it very successfully where the limbs didn’t contain weapons, but were just ordinary arms. The transplants took, and the creatures soon regained full use. Come, I’ll show you.”


Maggie led Buffy down a corridor accessed only by opening the door with a security code. Here there were other cells similar to the ones that had held Spike, and inside was every shape, size and colour of demon you could imagine. All had had limbs transplanted from another species; some limbs were obviously very similar to their own, but further down the row, the sights were more horrendous. Some demons had limbs attached that were the wrong size. Buffy saw arms so long they literally touched the ground and so short that they could barely reach the poor creature’s mouth. It wasn’t just arms, but legs too, again starting with ones in proportion and getting worse until some clearly couldn’t take the weight of the demon they’d been transplanted on.


“Oh my God!” exclaimed Buffy, unable to stop herself when she saw one demon.


“Ah, yes,” said Maggie in that flat dispassionate voice. “We wondered what would happen with this one, but animals cope with whatever you do to them, as you’ll see.”


She pressed a button and a lump of meat was dropped in with the demon. It picked it up and started to eat it, pulling chunks off with its teeth as it held it in its hands.


“It was feeding itself normally after only a few days,” continued Maggie.

“But its arms,” said Buffy, trying and failing, to disguise the disgust she felt. “They’re on backwards.”


She could scarcely watch as the demon was coping with elbows that bent the wrong way.


“Yes, they’re its own limbs but we wanted to see if it could fend for itself and also fight. It’s been amazingly successful. It’s one of my favourites.


“Why?” said Buffy, feeling distinctly green.


“I’m sorry?”


“What purpose can this possibly serve?” said Buffy.


“It’s very important research for our other projects,” said Maggie. She glanced at a door near them as she spoke.


Buffy turned to look at it. It was solid steel, with no window, so it gave no indication of what was behind it. Written in bold letters to the left of it were the numbers 314. Buffy was going to ask Maggie about it, but when she’d turned around, Maggie had walked away. Shortly afterwards, her tour complete, Buffy hurried home.


She found Spike and Giles still going through the things Spike knew. Spike looked a bit ragged, the memories it evoked were not of the good.


“Hi guys,” she said, walking in and flopping on the sofa next to Spike. “You will not believe what I’ve just seen.”


Buffy recounted her visit to Spike and Giles, the others drifting in to the room to listen, too.


“Oh, yes, then she glanced over at this door as she spoke. I’m not sure she even knew she had. I didn’t get a chance to ask her about it, but I’m sure that the answers we want will be behind that door marked 314. Whatever is going on in that place, that’s the key to it.”


“My brother,” said Spike in an odd sounding voice.


“What?” they chorused as one.


“Three fourteen. That’s where my brother is.” His voice was strangely monotone, eyes distant. “She says she’s my mother since I was born there, but he’s the one she loves best because she created him. I’m to help him when he’s ready to come into this world. I must defend him. That’s my only true purpose, when I’m with Adam, I must protect him.” He stood up and walked a few steps, before stopping and looking around in confusion.


“Huh? Why are you all staring at me?” he sat back down.


“You don’t remember what you just said?” asked Giles.


“Um,” said Spike, rubbing his hands over his face as he concentrated hard. “Yeah, yeah I do, but it was like I was listening to it. I kinda wasn’t in control when I said it; it was weird.”


“It’s part of the conditioning that you were subjected to. They obviously wanted to instil loyalty to this Adam. You never mentioned him in all we’ve been through today; it must have been hidden in your subconscious,” said Giles.


“God, Spike, you’re shaking like a leaf,” said Buffy, taking one of Spike’s hands in hers. “Are you OK?”


“I reckon so. I mean I’m here on the sofa with you guys, but I feel…scared, but excited too; it’s hard to explain.”


“Can you tell us anything else about this Adam?” asked Giles.


“No, just that,” replied Spike shaking his head.


“Now I’ve a reference, I’ll go see what I can find in their files on 314 and Adam,” said Willow.


Oooooo


Later as they were going to bed, Buffy walked down with Spike and they kissed and held each other for a time. The sights she’d witnessed that day stopped her libido cold, and as she went to leave Spike to go to her room, he asked her to chain him up before she did so.


“There’s no need, Spike, I’m not chaining you up. Why would you want to be? You could come up to my room with me.”


“Look, upstairs I said stuff I didn’t really know I was saying. I got up and started to walk away. Buffy, I’m a vampire. What if something else sets me off? I’m not risking it so fasten this lock.”


“OK,” agreed Buffy, as he did have a point.


Spike’s sleep was riddled with memory-filled dreams, mostly relating to 314 and Adam, who struck fear in his non -beating heart. He’d seen demons go in there and bodies come out missing limbs. He’d seen the professor and her assistant going in there and heard whispered conversations about Adam’s aims and functions. He woke with a start. He knew what had to be done. He knew what he had to do. He got up.


“No time to waste, got to get the others up to tell them.”


He’d also gotten more parts of his pre-Initiative memories back. He remembered more of the people upstairs, remembered more of Buffy and it made him even more certain of what he had to do.


He took a stride away from the bed and was stopped by the chain on his right wrist.


“Bollocks.”


He sat back down and waited impatiently for morning.


To be continued…