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Unliving Conditions	By : Brakers Category: -Buffy the Vampire Slayer > Het - Male/Female > Buffy/Spike(William) > Buffy/Spike(William) Views: 1132 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the Series or any of the characters therein and I gain no profit from writing these stories.

Chapter List
- 1-The Fledgling
- 2-The Outliers
- 1
- 2
***
Chapter 2 - The Outliers
“Bloody fucking hell,” Spike groaned, slowly opening his eyes and then slamming them shut again when he was accosted by the harsh stab of fluorescent lighting.
“Spike?”
Fuck. Harm was still here. Why hadn’t she fucked off when he’d told her to?
Where was here, anyway?
“Blondie bear?” came Harmony’s plaintive, frightened voice again.
A giggle from somewhere else, strangely familiar. Spike rolled onto his side, clutching his aching head. Christ, he felt weak.
“Spikey?” Harm asked again. Spike let out a growl in warning, praying she’d shut her gob and let him get his bearings. After a moment, “Spike, where are we? I’m scared.”
“Sod off,” he growled, hiding his face from the blinding light in the leather of his sleeves. He inhaled and a cacophony of unfamiliar, chemical scents overwhelmed him.
A huff. “God, you’re so mean! I thought you’d be happy once you got that stupid ring, but you’re still just a big jerk like always!” Harmony whined.
“I said, sod. Off!” he bit out. Reminded of the thing he’d spent all summer searching for- the thing that would be his salvation, allow him to fight the fucking Slayer in the sun, finally taste her blood, bring her head back to Dru and make everything alright- he dug a hand into the pocket of his duster and was relieved to feel the gem still tucked there.
“I’m so glad to see you haven’t lost any of your charm.” That voice!
“Slayer!” he growled, managing to sit up and look around him finally. Fuck, he was weak, but he had the Gem of Amara now. If this was his chance to take down Buffy fucking Summers, he needed to be ready.
“Although I’m kind of sad they didn’t bother to remove your vocal cords when they put you under the knife. That would have been a real improvement.”
He spotted her sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back turned to him, hunched over something in her lap. Paying no mind to the strange white space he found himself in, he launched himself at her before hitting a barrier and promptly finding himself twitching on the ground, electricity sizzling through his limbs. “Fuck!” he shouted
“Careful there, big guy. It’s electrified.” Did she always have to be so fucking smug?
“Hey! Don’t talk to my boyfriend like that! He’s totally going to kill you, you know. Now that he has the Ge-“
“Shut your bloody mouth, Harm, or I swear will rip your tongue out,” Spike said, glaring in the direction of her voice somewhere out of sight. “Where the fuck are we? What the fuck did you do to me, Slayer?”
She didn’t even bother to turn towards him, just waved a hand in his direction dismissively, which really pissed him off. “Some underground lab. Apparently, some mad scientists got bored with experimenting on rats and got military funding to try messing with demons instead.”
He gaped at her for a moment until her words caught up with his cooked brain cells. Then he laughed bitterly and turned to pace in his tiny white cell. “I knew it! I always knew you’d get government funding someday.”
“Right. I’m behind all this and that’s why I’m in a cell just like you,” Buffy replied, sarcasm dripping from her tone. “Moron,” she grumbled.
Spike blinked. “Hey! Why are you in here?” He approached the glass now, careful not to touch it, eyeing her back with fresh curiosity. For the first time, he noticed how tense her shoulders were, how dull her hair, how rumpled her clothes were. It seemed like she really was stuck in here like him. His natural instinct was to be suspicious, but he knew this particular Slayer too well for that. She wasn’t the type for elaborate tricks. When Buffy Summers came for you, it was with fists flying, hair streaming, and she looked you in the eye.
“Same reason you are, you bleached idiot. I got caught,” she said. She still seemed to be focused on whatever she held in her lap. Despite himself, Spike craned his neck to try to get a look at what it was.
“Government types spot you showing off that Slayer strength and haul you in, is that it?” he asked.
She snorted and shook her head.
“Makes you wonder if they might be on to something, don’t it? Ever wonder where that strength comes from? The drive to hunt, the need for violence?” he wheedled. Spike knew how to wield every weapon he had, and if he couldn’t get his hands on the Slayer, he knew where to throw his words. Buffy Summers was the poster child for denial. Slayers were always self-righteous, high and mighty little things, looking down their noses at the demon prey they saw as vermin. This Slayer had always been particularly uptight in that area.
“As always, Spike, you are late to the party,” she said mysteriously.
The Slayer genuinely seemed unbothered by his attempt to psych her out. He frowned in consternation. “What have you got over there? And do we get any bloody sustenance in this place? I’m starving. There are rules about starving prisoners, you know.” This last bit he said loudly, looking up into a little black bubble on the ceiling he assumed was a camera.
“When they drop the blood, I wouldn’t drink it. It’s drugged,” said the Slayer.
“Fuck!” he swore. “Well, how are we going to get out of here, then? Shouldn’t the bloody Scooby brigade be swinging in to save their chosen one? Where’s the bloody cavalry?”
“And how are they supposed to know where I am? Do the words secret underground lab mean anything to you?” she shot back.
The fact that she still hadn’t looked at him was really starting to get to him. “What the hell is wrong with you, anyway? Look at me when you’re talking to me. Got a zit you’re trying to hide? Don’t worry, Slayer, it’s nothing compared to your nose.”
That got a rise out of her, finally. “And what’s wrong with my nose?” she asked, offended, and whipped around to glare at him… And she glared at him through demonic, yellow eyes.
Jesus H. Christ.
For a solid thirty seconds, Spike could do nothing but stare into those gold eyes. Idiotically, he found himself missing the fierce, burning green. And then anger swelled up in him. Someone had killed Buffy. Killed his slayer! Some manky fucking bloodsucker had put their fangs in his slayer!
“Who got you?” he growled. The anger simmered.
“What?” she asked, demonic brow crinkling in confusion.
“What wanker thought it was a good idea to turn a Slayer? Who’s your sire?” he tried again. Belatedly he realized his own demon had come to the forefront. His hands were shaking. Fuck! What was wrong with him?
“Oh.” The bitch rolled her eyes and seeing such a familiar expression on her face was comforting, soothing in some way. Spike didn’t want to think about that. “Some stringy-haired college dropout named Sunday.” Buffy turned to face him finally. He noted the object she’d been hunched over. It was a book, which she set aside.
“Huh,” was all he managed in return. His hands were still shaking.
“I mean, I guess being a vampire isn’t totally bad. I’m still myself… I think.” This last part she whispered as she laid a hand on her chest and gazed down at it for several long moments. Then she seemed to shake it off, straighten her shoulders and put on that unconcerned, confident air that she wore like armor. It was her armor. Spike had always recognized it on her; she wore it the same way he did. “What kind of name is ‘Sunday,’ anyway? And you should have seen her fashion, like she stole her wardrobe from Edward Scissorhands.”
Spike took a step forward, tilting his head as he studied her intently. “Where’s she now, pet? Why are you down here and she’s not?” Something twisted in his chest imagining a fledge, his slayer, alone and wondering what the hell was happening to her, filled with new instincts she couldn’t understand, captured by a bunch of sadistic army sods before she could even sus out how her whole world and her place in it had been turned upside down. It wasn’t right. Granted, it seemed to be the norm on the bloody hellmouth, but that didn’t make it right. Dru had been barmier than a magpie as a sire, but at least she’d always tried.
The Slayer grinned at him with a mouthful of fangs, which didn’t manage to ruin the effect. “It’d be kind of hard for her to be caught by mad scientists, being that she’s a big pile of dust now. Actually, if I’d known rotting in a government facility could have been her fate, I might not have staked her.” She seemed to consider this seriously. “No, never mind, I still would have done it. She was a bitch with a capital ‘B.’”
Spike felt the last of his anger leave him. The Slayer had gone against every fledgling vampire instinct she’d woken up with and staked her own sire. She hadn’t let the demon sway her, hadn’t let it keep her from doing her duty. And yea, generally speaking, that duty ran counter to everything Spike was, but he still respected the hell out of it.
The thing about vampires was, they were a mixed lot. Most of them had very little of their human personalities left upon rising. The demon was just too strong in most cases, or the human too weak to hold on to themselves. And if his mind tried to conjure one particular beloved face staring back at him with hate filled eyes, he shut it down with practiced ease.
That was most of the time. Sometimes, though, it was different. He’d seen only a handful of cases where the human personality remained dominant with the change, but he had seen it. Poor sods were usually picked off real quick, because that was just the way of the world. A weak demon just couldn’t cut it in this world for long. Survival of the fittest and all that.
He knew, although he’d never articulated it to anyone else (he’d learned very quickly that a weak demon would not survive in the Aurelian nest and Spike was nothing if not a survivor), that he was one of those rare vampires whose humanity had clung to the shell when the demon invaded. But Spike was also adaptable. He didn’t know if that was a trait from William or from the demon, but he had managed to blend his two halves more successfully than most. Take Angelus for instance. His human and demon parts were so diametrically opposed that when he’d gotten his poncy little soul back he’d managed to convince himself he was two different people. Fucking wanker was deluded and had deluded everyone around him into believing that myth, too. But any vampire with an ounce of self-awareness knew that wasn’t how it worked.
Most of the time Spike did a fair job of keeping the William half of him from bleeding through. But he knew the little ponce was still in there, pulling strings. It was why he loved the way he did. Why he still cleaved to the notion of beauty, of knowing something true. Why he had spent over a century loving one woman, changing himself for her, molding himself into whatever she needed, and why he still tried so hard to be what she needed. Why he would be what she needed again. That wasn’t something a demon was interested in. The demon was self-serving. William was love’s bitch, always had been. Hell, it was why he still toted around his favorite poets in the trunk of the DeSoto. It certainly wasn’t the demon that knew every word of Keats and Byron. Although, it was anyone’s guess which one of them liked the soaps.
“So I guess you’re not the Slayer anymore, huh?” came Harmony’s voice. Bloody hell, for a few blissful minutes he’d forgotten Harmony was here.
The Slayer turned her haughty gaze somewhere to his left where he assumed Harmony must be held in the adjoining cell. “Oh, I’m still the Slayer. Actually, I think I’m a little stronger now. I’m definitely faster,” she answered, all cheerful and perky. Another layer of her armor.
It made sense why she’d kept her back turned to him for so long. She was unsure of herself. Didn’t know yet how she fit in this new skin. Didn’t know herself anymore.
“Yea, right. Not stronger than Spike, anyway. He could still kick your ass.” A flustered pause. “And he’s totally gonna! As soon as we get out of here.”
At least she wasn’t spilling her guts about the bloody gem anymore. Dozy bint probably already forgot about it.
Buffy fluttered her lashes and gave Harmony a patronizing smile. Now that she wasn’t looking directly at him, Spike took the opportunity to study her demon’s face. She was pretty. Beautiful, actually. She’d always been. No harm in admitting that to himself. He was a bloke with eyes, for fuck’s sake. Have to be blind not to notice the Slayer was a knockout. “I’ve been kicking Spike’s ass all over this town for two years, Harmony. That’s not likely to change anytime soon.”
“Oi!” he protested.
“Oh, yeah? Well, some things are about to change around here. Big things!” Harmony boasted. Just when he thought he would have to shut her up again before she started talking, she threw him for a loop. “Actually,” she said thoughtfully. Spike hated that he could picture the look on her dimwitted face. “You could be one of our minions if you wanted. We lost a few when Spike lost his temper and ripped their heads off. You could be like, a guard or something. Or you could do my shopping for me. Only shoes, though. Your taste in clothes is a literal tragedy.”
Spike choked on whatever he’d been about to say. “Harm!” he croaked. He couldn’t articulate why, but Buffy as a minion was just wrong. Besides the fact that it just wouldn’t work. Whatever Harmony thought, Buffy was still the Slayer. Her actions and manner of speech, her expressions and mannerisms, that was all Buffy. Buffy, who was inseparable from her identity as Slayer. The little tingle on the back of his neck that always screamed “Danger! Predator!” when she was near was still there. If anything, that tingle had intensified. Not for the first time, he wondered what the effects of a vamp demon inhabiting a slayer, who already had her own demon in residence, would be. He supposed he was going to get a front-row seat to that show.
Buffy laughed and the sound was so familiar, no maliciousness to it. She seemed genuinely amused. “Harmony, this is the longest interaction I’ve ever had with you and I already want to stab out my own eardrums. If I had to hear your voice all night I’d stake you.”
Harmony huffed and he could hear her stomping around her cell. “Whatever, Buffy! God, you’re just like you were in high school. This is why you never had any friends, you know!”
“Says the girl who spent four years as Cordelia’s personal gofer,” Buffy shot back.
“Better than spending four years as a fashion-challenged freak who could only make friends with the nerd squad!”
Spike ground his teeth in growing frustration. As much fun as it was to imagine a catfight between Buffy and Harmony, (and realistically it would be pretty one-sided and Harm would likely not leave with her head intact), the real thing was less sexy and more irritating. He latched onto something to distract Buffy with, since berating Harm was like cursing at a brick wall. “What’s that you’re reading there, Slayer?”
Buffy’s eyes snapped to his. “What’s what?”
He nearly rolled his eyes. He gestured to the forgotten book lying on the floor beside her. “The book. What is it?”
She eyed the book with disinterest. “What’s it to you?” she asked with a mulish curve of her lips.
Now he really did roll his eyes. Christ, the Slayer was stubborn. “We’re in the fucking demon dog pound waiting to be experimented on. Bloody hell, Slayer, would it kill you to be civil? Just curious.”
“Civil? To you? Yea, actually, that might just kill me,” Buffy snarked.
“Bloody-! Never mind. Just making fucking conversation, you infuriating chit,” Spike growled. He turned around and paced to the back of his cell, surveying the featureless walls.
The Slayer was quiet as Spike pointedly ignored her. Then she sighed. “It’s a stupid book called ‘Of Human Bondage.’”
He wrinkled his nose in disgust, huffed out an amused breath. “You into that miserable shite, Summers? Bloody hell, I knew you had dismal taste in men, but I didn’t know it extended to your reading selection, too.”
“Shut up, Spike,” she said automatically. Then, “And no, it sucks. It’s so depressing and whiney.”
His interest piqued. “Oh? Why you reading it, then?”
“I had it in my pocket when I got caught. And it’s just barely more entertaining than staring at the wall, so I’m reading it.”
Spike found his lips curling in an amused smile of their own accord as he watched her look at the book like a worm in her apple. “Maugham was a wretched sod. How’d you come by it?”
Buffy shrugged and put her head in her hands, looking bored. “Some guy I met on campus was going on and on about how it was his favorite book and he read it over and over again. I’ve been trying to read it for days. I’m starting to think he was just actually really pretentious.”
“Or dull as bloody ditchwater,” Spike added.
“Right?” she said.
“Spiiike.” Harmon’s whine broke whatever weird moment he and the Slayer were having, thank fuck. Also, why couldn’t she shut up for five bloody minutes?
“What?” he growled.
“This place sucks! And I’m hungry! How are we going to get out of here?” she complained.
“I’ve only been in here for five bloody minutes, Harm! I’ll tell you when I figure it out!”
“Actually, you’ve been in here for like half a day. Well, minus however long they had you in surgery,” Buffy spoke up, looking bored again.
Spike narrowed his eyes at her. “What bloody surgery?”
“You have stitches in the back of your head?” Buffy gestured behind her with one hand.
With a feeling of dread, Spike lifted one hand to feel along the back of his skull and found a neat row of stitches in a patch of bare skin. “Bloody FUCK! What the fuck did they do to me!” He felt along the place with both hands now and whipped around to throw a fist into the wall behind him. The wall was left unsatisfyingly whole.
“Spike?” Came Harm’s frightened voice. He saw Buffy glance at her from her cell across from him with a brief expression of pity.
“I don’t know what they did. The head bitch comes to interview me once a day. She calls it a ‘behavior modification chip,’ but won’t give me any details.” The Slayer rolled her eyes and shifted to the back of her cell to prop herself against the wall and stretch out her legs. She crossed her arms over her chest and let her head fall back, closing her eyes. Her indifference pissed him off.
“What the bloody hell is she interviewing you for? Scientists are interviewing their bloody lab rats now, is it?” he grumbled, rubbing his split knuckles.
She shrugged one shoulder, eyes still closed. “When they find out the rats can talk, I guess. She seems particularly interested in me because she knew me when I was in her psych class.”
“She’s one of your professors?”
“Yea, but don’t expect any humanity out of her. I’ve been talking to her for days like a fucking person and she still calls me ‘it.’ And she never opens the glass. Sorry, Harmony, but you’re probably going to miss Sunny Boutique’s winter line release.”
“You can rot in here if you want, Slayer, but I’m getting the fuck out of here. I’ve escaped from worse sodding places than this,” Spike said, hoping he sounded surer than he felt.
“You tell me how that works out,” Buffy sighed.
“Have you ever seen ‘em let down the glass?”
This prompted the gaze of her slitted golden eyes in his direction. “Only when you drink the blood. Like I said, it’s drugged.”
As if on cue, a slot opened in the ceiling and Spike watched a bag of blood drop out and smack against the floor at his feet. An identical one landed in front of the Slayer and he watched her as she eyed it with a mix of painful longing and a determined frown. She split it open with her claws and let it run into the drain in the middle of the floor. Bloody hell. He’d never seen a fledge with even an ounce of her self-control and he couldn’t help being impressed all over again. Especially when he took notice of how pale and thin she was looking. How long had she been refusing meals? Had she had a single feed since she’d been turned?
Spike stared down at the red bag at his feet. His stomach cramped with hunger and his mouth watered.
“I’m so hungry!” Harmony complained. “Are you lying about the blood being drugged for some sneaky Slayer plot?” he heard her ask Buffy, who only rolled her eyes in answer and went back to resting against the wall.
Spike picked up the bag of blood and subtly turned his back to the camera over his shoulder. He stared at Buffy and bit into the bag.
She heard him slurp and her eyes shot open. “What the hell are you doing, you idiot? I just told you it’s drugged!” she shrieked.
Keeping eye contact, he crouched so that his mouth was right over the drain in the floor and soundlessly let the blood run out of his mouth and down the drain. He took another slurp and spit it out.
Buffy’s mouth fell open in shock and he watched her eyes dart to the camera over his shoulder. Immediately, she schooled her features into a scornful snarl. She overdid it a little in his opinion, but these wankers probably wouldn’t be able to tell. They were animals in their eyes. “Whatever, moron. It’s your funeral,” she said. But she didn’t close her eyes again, just leaned back and watched him with a hard frown.
Spike was getting out of here. And he was getting the Slayer out with him. And then he’d get his dance.
***
Buffy couldn’t believe it had worked. Shortly after Spike had pretended to drink his drugged meal, he’d stumbled back against the wall, eyes rolling, cursing the heavens like some stupid overacting Shakespeare guy. Seriously, she couldn’t believe it had worked. He’d really hammed it up. Buffy thought she’d blown his cover when Harmony, screaming for her “blondie bear” from the next cell over, gave herself a nasty shock on the glass and started rolling around on the floor melodramatically while Buffy slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.
But it had worked. The bleached idiot had really done it. And now they stood in the hallway, alarms and flashing red lights sending the other demons in the long rows of cells into fits of howling and throwing themselves against the electrified glass.
“C’mon, Slayer, if we’re not fast my brilliant performance will have been for nothing!”
Buffy didn’t have time to wonder why he’d let her out, why in fact that had seemed to be his first priority after he’d incapacitated the two lab coats who’d tried to roll him away on a gurney. She was in survival mode now, and there was no time to ponder the sordid workings of Spike’s brain.
She looked around at the sterile white cells, the demons trapped like insects under glass. They were meant to live and die on the battlefield, like her. They didn’t deserve to be experimented on and dismembered anymore than animals did. They weren’t animals. And not even animals deserved this. She remembered the stitches on the back of her head, the way Walsh referred to her as an ‘it.’ She remembered the personal, probing questions she asked with such detached interest, the notes she took on her clipboard, the cold disregard for Buffy’s feelings, for her rights as a person. She was a vampire now, sure, but she knew in her heart she was still Buffy. She was still the student who’d sat in Walsh’s class. But the scientists didn’t see it that way.
And just like that, Buffy switched from survival to slayer mode. This place could not be allowed to continue. Not on her hellmouth. Demons would meet her in a fair fight. That’s the way it was supposed to be, what they were made for. It was the difference between hunting and shooting a bird with clipped wings in one of those little fenced preserves rich people went to in order to feel like they were hunting. And Buffy might be a vampire, but she still knew right from wrong. And this place was very wrong.
Thinking fast, she grabbed the key card from the second human’s pocket and started opening cells as fast as she could. “Spike, help me set everyone free!” she yelled over her shoulder.
“Are you off your trolley? We need to move, now!” he sputtered at her.
She didn’t stop moving down the line, ignoring the roaring demons who rushed past her to freedom as she opened their cells, grateful they seemed to be smart enough in this instance at least not to attack the Slayer turned vampire saving their asses. “Listen, Spike, we don’t have time for this. I’m the Slayer, and it’s my responsibility to protect the hellmouth from evil. And this place? Super with the evil. So we’re getting out of here and we’re taking it down on the way out.”
He still hesitated and Buffy huffed in irritation. “It’ll be a lot easier for us to escape if we’re not the only targets when the army goons start rolling in, right?”
That got him moving, and he started carding the locks on the other side of the hall. Harmony spilled out of her cell in a panicking, crying mess which Spike seemed to be doing his best to ignore, even as she beat on his back and yelled at him for even thinking of leaving her behind. Buffy also ignored her.
Within two minutes every demon in the cells was milling around the hall, roaring and smashing into the walls, beginning to fight one another. It was chaos, and just in time to cover their escape as the soldiers filed in from the other end of the hall. They ran.
The next several minutes were a blur. They dodged soldiers around every corner. They got lost and separated from Harmony at some point, which was just as well. They defended themselves against lab coats when they came upon them, only to find that they suffered head-splitting pain when they tried to hit the humans and had to bluster their way past them and start dodging them entirely, too.
Spike cursed a lot, blamed her for whatever was going on in their heads, and was generally a pain in her ass. He did, however, really seem to be enjoying the utter chaos they’d created as dozens of hulking, irate demons with probably weeks of pent-up rage took it out on any government employee they came across. When they got to an area that seemed to be a surgery arena, the place was like a kicked anthill.
They’d managed to snag the lab coats off the first two scientists they’d left unconscious; Buffy’s idea. It had let them pass by unnoticed a few times so far, despite their conspicuous appearance. Well, Buffy was feeling pretty conspicuous; her bumpies were still on. She’d rarely been able to push them back in the week since she’d been turned. Spike had slipped back into his pretty human face without any trouble, the jerk. They needed to get out of the fighting and keep moving, keep looking for a way out.
“Over here!” Buffy hissed to Spike, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him toward a door marked ‘314.’ Surely there had to be some ductwork in one of these labs. Labs needed ventilation, right? With the exits being shut down and guarded, it was looking like crawling out through the ventilation while the demons and soldiers fought below them might be their best bet.
Buffy tried her key card in the slot, but it didn’t work.
“What’s taking you, Slayer? We don’t have time for you to do your bloody nails!” Spike snarked behind her. He’d actually been doing a pretty decent job of watching her back as she led them through the maze of the Initiative.
“My key’s not working!” she growled back and pulled her fist back in preparation to just smash the damn thing.
Spike caught her attention before she could, though, and pointed to a woman with a hunted expression inching along the wall on the outskirts of the battle. “Incoming,” he rumbled, just beside her ear.
“That’s Professor Walsh!” she said, shocked to see her. Shouldn’t she be in some safe room somewhere, watching monitors and taking notes on the animals rioting in her lab?
“The bird in charge?” he asked.
“That’s her,” she said. Buffy watched her closely and pulled Spike with her to duck behind some equipment along the wall.
They watched Walsh dodge a hulking green demon with slimy pockmarked skin and a red wattle hanging under its throat as it rushed past her. The thing’s glowing red throat swelled out to twice the size of its head before it projectile vomited luminescent slime at a small group of soldiers who’d gathered in front of the main computers towards the center of the room. The humans managed to barely jump out of the way of the slime, but the stationary computers weren’t so lucky. The metal began to sizzle and spark as the slime, apparently some really powerful acid, melted through it.
“Huh. So that’s what that dangly thing on its neck is for,” Buffy said, watching as the beast stomped away to find a new target for its vomtastic attack.
“Slayer, look,” Spike said, bringing her attention back to the door. Walsh swiped her card, keyed in a code, and slipped through the door. Buffy darted forward to catch it before it closed and they slipped in behind her.
Inside, they found the professor frantically checking some medical equipment hooked into some big ugly Frankenstein-looking thing laid out on a gurney.
“Bloody hell,” Spike muttered, staring at the demonic amalgamation on the table. Buffy looked closer and realized that it looked only half-done. It was missing an arm and its chest was laid open, half mechanical and half visceral innards on display. “The government know you’re recreating Shelley’s monster down here, luv?” Spike said.
Walsh whipped around to face them, looking frightened for only a moment before her features smoothed into the calm, cold scrutiny Buffy had become accustomed to during her stay here. The professor’s eyes moved over Spike with disinterest, then settled on her former student. “Ah. I shouldn’t be surprised you’re behind this commotion.”
Buffy crossed her arms and squared her shoulders. “And yet here you are, all surprise lady.”
Walsh’s lips thinned. She inched closer to the monster laid out between them, and Buffy caught her eyes dart to the leads coming out of its chest. A revelation struck Buffy like lightning, suffusing her body with the hot rush of adrenalin. She’d felt it before, too many times to count, and it always meant she was going to win. Buffy took a casual step towards the Frankenstein and felt a rush of triumph when Walsh’s whole body stiffened.
“You won’t escape this place, you know,” Walsh said, perhaps trying to draw Buffy’s attention away from the gurney.
Buffy grinned and took another step forward. “Oh, actually, I think I will. And I think you’ll show us the way out.”
“You can’t hurt me. The behavior modification chip in your head won’t let you hurt any human ever again,” Walsh said confidently.
Spike, who had moved off behind her to inspect the perimeter of the room, swore loudly. Buffy ignored him. “I’ve never hurt any human in the first place,” Buffy shot back, hands curling into fists so that her claws stabbed into her palms. She was so sick of this woman treating her like a mindless, violent beast.
“You’re an animal, Hostile 17. You operate on instinct. You follow your hunger and take life indiscriminately to appease it.”
“That may be what you think. And hell, it might be close to the truth for most vampires. But that’s not me. I’m the Slayer. I’ve been protecting people since I was fifteen, risking my life every night to keep them safe and oblivious to the kinds of monsters you’ve been locking up in cages and experimenting on. You’re messing around with stuff you can’t understand. And after being one of your lab rats? I think you’re just a big kid pulling the wings off flies,” Buffy said. She stood over the thing laid out on the table and suddenly realized she could hear the other woman’s heartbeat. She could hear it clear as a bell and it was racing. She was terrified. But not for herself. She was afraid of what Buffy could do to her little project.
“Slayer, there’s another door over here. My key don’t work in it, but I bet I know who’s will,” Spike growled. Buffy felt him prowl closer to stand at her back.
Someone or something started beating against the door they had come through. Voices shouted at them, or perhaps for their missing scientist, through the thick metal. Walsh never took her eyes off Buffy, and Buffy stared right back.
“I won’t let you out. And you can’t harm me. And in a moment my men are going to have that door down and you’ll be put back into a cage where you belong. You and Hostile 19.” Walsh said.
Buffy wordlessly reached forward and grabbed a handful of the leads spilling from the chest of the monster.
“Don’t!” Walsh snapped, feinting a step forward before she stopped herself, her hands hovering anxiously near Buffy’s.
“Don’t what?” Buffy asked innocently, tugging lightly on the wires. A monitor behind Walsh started beeping insistently.
“Here,” the professor said, reaching into her lab coat and pulling out her key card. She held it forward.
Buffy eyed her proffered hand like a venomous snake. “Drop it on the ground. Over there,” Buffy said, jerking her head to indicate a space a few feet away. Walsh tossed the card to the ground. “Spike, get the card,” she said.
“I’m not your bloody retriever, Summers,” he growled, but stooped down to pick it up anyway. He went and swiped it in the lock at the door at the back of the room. “It wants a code,” he said over his shoulder.
“What’s the code, Professor?” Buffy asked.
Walsh glared back at her defiantly. “If you go out there, you’ll starve. You won’t be able to feed. Your only hope of survival now is to stay in this lab where you’ll continue to receive regular meals.”
Buffy just jerked on the wires again. “The code?” she said, smiling sweetly around her fangs.
Walsh swallowed and, still glaring, recited the code. Buffy heard Spike tap it in and the door’s seal break with a soft hiss of air. “’S a long hallway, stairs at the end. Looks like it’ll take us out,” Spike told her. Buffy let go of the wires and backed away towards the open door. Walsh darted forward and began fussing with the leads she’d just dropped.
“Wait a minute, Slayer! I’m not leaving til this bitch takes this bloody abomination out of my head!” Spike said, blocking Buffy’s exit with crossed arms and glaring blue eyes.
“Do you hear the dozen soldiers on the other side of that door, or have the decades of peroxide treatments damaged your ears? We don’t have time for that, you idiot. We’re lucky to have made it this far,” she argued with him.
His eyes darted around the lab, to the shuddering door and to Walsh standing over her creation. “Fuck!” he swore, then turned to leave.
Buffy turned back to Walsh. “You treating me like an animal doesn’t make me one. I have a name. I have friends and a mom and a Watcher who love me. I’m the Slayer.” She grinned ferally and felt a wild, savage pride suffuse her. “And like every other Big Bad that’s ever tried to squat on my hellmouth, you just found out exactly what that means.”
Spike poked his head back through the door. “And actually, I’m the bloke what caused the commotion,” he said and gleefully offered her the two-fingered salute before turning in a swirl of leather and thumping down the long hallway. Buffy rolled her eyes and followed him without a second glance back at her former professor cum jailor. The hallway did lead up and out, and Buffy had never been so relieved to smell fresh, forest air.
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Unliving Conditions