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Universal Vampire by Mabel Marsters
 
Honey, I'm Home
 
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Thanks to Carol and dawnofme for their beta work :)


Chapter Eleven



Honey, I’m home!


By mid afternoon, Willow was ready for Spike. She put him to sleep with a spell, and then Giles and Xander laid him on his front on the sofa so that she could insert the probe. Dawn and Xander were banished to the kitchen.


“This feels wrong,” said Willow as she started to insert the probe down the shunt until it touched the chip. “It’s making me feel like I’m one of them.”


“It is wrong, Willow,” said Giles. “It’s a terrible thing to do to someone, but Spike was right. He has to go back the way he came out.”


“Doesn’t mean we have to like it,” added Buffy.


Willow pressed a few keys on the computer and used a little spell to help the probe deactivate his speech and his left arm. She reversed the sleeping spell, and once Spike woke up, they would know if it had been successful or not.


Spike and Willow had practised mind links during the morning until either could initiate contact with ease. Willow hoped she’d gotten the message to the chip correct and that Spike’s mind wouldn’t be controlled by it again.


Ten minutes later Spike woke up. They could see right away that this left arm was once more paralysed. They sat watching him; once fully alert, he sat up and looked down at his left arm with horror. A flicker of fear went through him; it was an awful feeling. He looked at the others.


“Well, that worked OK,” he tried to say but once more had no way of conveying his words to his lips - nothing happened. He looked at Willow.


“You did a good job.” He projected to her mind.


“Thanks, but I feel terrible for doing it,” she replied so only Spike could hear.


“It’s OK Red, it had to be done. Hopefully you’ll soon be putting it right again.” He winked at her, showing a bravado he didn’t really feel.


“It worked,” said Willow to the others. “He can’t speak; the arm well, that’s pretty obvious and the fact we can mind link means the chip’s not controlling him.”


“Number Seventeen,” ordered Giles. “Stand up.”


A blank look came over Spike’s face and he stood up.


“Oh, my God! The chip is working!” cried Buffy, “We can’t send him in.”


“No, it’s not, pet,” he said in Willow’s mind, sitting back down with a grin.


“He’s joking,” said Willow.


“Not funny!” yelled Buffy as she threw a cushion at him.


Ooooooo


Soon, it was dark and time for the final piece of work to be done on Spike. Buffy stood in front of him, tears in her eyes.


“I can’t do it. I just can’t,” she said looking into Spike’s eyes. He nodded at her, encouraging her.


“I’ll do it. I don’t mind,” said Xander.


Both Buffy and Spike turned to glare at him. Before Spike had the chance to look back at Buffy, she screwed up her courage and hit him hard on the side of his face. The blow took him off his feet and he landed with a thud on his back. She raced over to him and hit him again, this time splitting his lip. She then held out her hand to help him up.


“God, are you OK?” she asked.


There was a cut at the side of his left eye, already swelling up, in addition to the split lip. Spike touched his face and saw the blood on his fingers. He nodded, then kissed her, pulling her close with his right hand as she collapsed sobbing against him.


Spike had insisted that he had to look like he’d fought his way out to allay suspicion of how he came to turn up. He looked at Willow.


“Keep in touch, Red.”


“I will,” she replied.


He hugged Buffy even tighter, wiping her tears from her face with his hand before stepping outside of the door. He paused for a second on the step, fighting back tears of his own, then walked down the path and headed for The Initiative. As he passed a wall he punched it with his right hand, grazing the knuckles. Now it looked like he’d fought back.


He walked on, making sure he took the measured paces he had in The Initiative. It wasn’t difficult. He was petrified at the thought of going back in, but Adam had to be stopped and he had to protect Buffy.


As he’d predicted, he soon ran into a patrol; he’d had it instilled in him that if Initiative soldiers approached with weapons drawn he was to put his hands on his head and kneel down so they knew that he was no threat. This prevented them from using their tazers as they could damage the chip.


“Stop right there,” said one of the soldiers when he saw Spike.


“Vampire,” said the other reading his thermal imager.


Spike immediately dropped to his knees and lifted his right hand to his head, careful not to make eye contact.


“Your left hand too, pal,” said the first.


“Crap, trust me to run in to a jumpy bleeder.”


Spike very slowly brought his right hand down, clutched his left wrist and pulled his hand back up to his head.


“Hey!” said the second soldier. “It’s left arm doesn’t work. It’s one of ours, it’s Number Seventeen. Boy, is the Professor going to be pleased to see what we’ve found.” He radioed his report in.


“Number Seventeen,” he ordered. “Stand up.”


Spike stood up.


“OK, take your hands away from your head and put them behind your back.”


Spike obeyed but couldn’t quite reach his left arm with his right arm going behind his back. After struggling for a minute, he felt his right arm being roughly grabbed and the soldier then brought his left back and tied the two wrists together with a plastic tie. Spike could feel it cutting into the flesh of his right wrist.


“Number Seventeen, we’re walking back to the base. Stay at the side of Brian here; I’ll be right behind you so don’t try anything.” He gave Spike a poke in the back with his weapon to reiterate his threat.


And so, Spike was taken back to The Initiative. He fought the urge to turn and run. He’d forgotten what the place smelled like; it reeked of fear, pain, and suffering. When they were controlling him it was blocked out, but now it felt like the first day he’d been captured.


He was led to a holding area where a chain was fastened around his neck. It was suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room and so he was kept in a standing position. He hadn’t been there for more than ten minutes when Maggie Walsh arrived, her assistant Michael following her.


“It is Number Seventeen,” she exclaimed in delight. “Well done, boys,” she said to the soldiers. “We’ll take it from here.”


She walked to Spike and held his chin so she could turn his head to examine his bruises. He kept his eyes averted.


“He took a good hit there,” she murmured.


She took a pair of strong scissors and cut the binding on his wrists, his left hand falling limply at his side.


“Get the chain off him and get him up to the operating rooms.”


Michael unlocked the collar from around his neck.


“Number Seventeen, go to the operation rooms,” ordered Maggie.


“OK, so much for hoping that I’d be put in a cell and left alone.”


Spike walked to the complex of rooms. He was ordered into a small room and told to strip. They just stood there and watched as he struggled with his t-shirt - he’d insisted on leaving his beloved duster at Buffy’s house, not wanting to risk losing it in here. When he was finally naked, Michael ran a scanner over his body to see if he’d had any devices implanted.


“It’s clean.”


“Good,” said Maggie.


“Where do you think it’s been?” asked Michael.


“I don’t know but it looks like our homing programming worked and it got out. Unfortunately, not without a fight. Look how its knuckles are bruised, too. Let’s see if we can get some answers and check out the chip. Number Seventeen, go to operation room one.”


Spike obediently walked to the room. He still knew the plans to the base in his head. As Spike had thought, Maggie was going to test him to make sure her work hadn’t been meddled with. He was ordered onto a table and was soon securely strapped down.


She picked up a scalpel and ran it down Spike’s left arm. He looked at it curiously but couldn’t feel a thing. Satisfied she closed the wound with sutures and looked Spike in the eye. He avoided the contact, looking away.


“Number Seventeen, look at me,” she ordered, and Spike did so. “Keep looking at me. This is going to hurt; if you want it to stop just tell me to. Do you understand?”


Spike nodded.


“Oh, hell!”


She took the scalpel blade and carved a small hole in his chest. Spike’s eyes never left her face, then, God, Spike wanted to scream. He tried to scream, he tried to tell her to stop. She was pouring holy water into the wound and the pain was excruciating.


“Number Seventeen, tell me to stop,” she insisted, pouring more onto him, his flesh sizzling as if being burnt by acid.


He couldn’t even begin to mouth the words. He hated this woman, she had to be stopped.


“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Number Seventeen. You know that you’re my son but we need to see what has been done to you, if anything.” She smiled a terrible smile.


She walked to his right and thrust a wooden cross in to his hand.


“Hold on to that, Number Seventeen.”


Spike held the cross, his skin started to smoke but his eyes never wavered from Maggie’s, his hatred of her giving him strength.


“Number Seventeen, drop it.”


He unclenched his fist and it fell with a clatter to the floor. That pain had been nothing compared to the pain in his chest.


“Right then, let’s have a look at your chip.” She walked away to get the instruments ready.


“Red, Red, can you hear me?” Spike let his words carry to find the mind link.


“Yes, Spike, I can. Are you OK?”


“Well, I’m in. She’s checking the chip in a soon. Give it thirty minutes and make contact again, all right?”


“Will do.”


Willow could sense his pain and fear.


“God, Spike, I hope we’ve done the right thing,” she whispered to herself as she severed the link.


Spike couldn’t stop himself from trembling as he heard the Professor approach him once more.


“Oh, Number Seventeen, you’ve never gotten used to this really, have you? After all this time you’d think that you would have. I just need to change a few things and make sure you haven’t been messed with. I’m afraid I won’t be anaesthetising you this time.


As she inserted the probe Spike bucked against his restraints - the pain was unbearable. He must have passed out as the next thing he knew Maggie was slapping his face to bring him around.


“Ah, you’re back with us. The chip has degenerated a little so I had to dig a little deeper to get what I wanted done.”


She unfastened the straps and told him to sit up. He did and a wave of nausea hit him as the pain in his head intensified. He bent double and vomited.


Maggie waited for it to pass then told him to stand up. He did and stood there swaying alarmingly. She told him to go in to a cell just around the corner and had to support him as he walked. She knew that she was lucky that he could walk at all after all the probing she’d done. She hadn’t wanted to call for assistants to help as she hadn’t wanted them to witness what she was doing with him. He just made it to the cell before collapsing to his knees.


“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said as she locked the cell door.


“Spike? Can you hear me?” Willow’s voice floated through his mind.


“Yeah, talk later, OK?”


The effort of replying was too much and he passed out.

Willow turned to the others. “I can still mind link but I think it’d have been better for him if I couldn’t”, said Willow, tears falling.


“Why, what do you mean?” asked Buffy, voice wavering.


“They’ve hurt him already, Buffy. Perhaps if he’d been under their control it might not have been so bad for him.”


“I’ll go in tomorrow and see what I can find out,” said Buffy.


None of them slept well that night.


To be continued…

 
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