Airdate: October 22, 2003

Guest Starring: Sarah Thompson
Simon Templeman
Dorie Barton

Written & Directed By: Steven S. DeKnight


Teaser

In Fred’s lab, Spike, still noncorporeal, is despondent. She scans him with a fancy scanner and tells him his heat signature has dropped another .02 degrees. He’s still feeling the tug of eternal damnation; maybe using all his willpower just to keep from slipping is why he can’t touch anything. She won’t let that happen: she’s been working on a theory and thinks she’ll be able to make him a vampire with a soul again. Just not like Angel and the prophecies. This gets Spike’s attention, prophecies? She tells him the abridged version of Shanshu: if Angel saves enough people he becomes human again. Spike is resentful of this, and Fred suddenly has a breakthrough on how to anchor Spike to this reality and make him corporeal. Spike’s pleased and goes to lean on a table and passes though it, and the floor, landing in the building’s basement. He hears a sound and heads for it. A man is sitting at a table, a bare bulb lighting the room. Spike asks him for directions when he sees the man is cutting his own fingers with a sharp knife. He turns around and shows multiple cuts on his face before vanishing, leaving spike alone.

ACT I

Fred comes in Wes’s office with a list of supplies she needs: the Magdalene Gremoire, Necronomicon des Mortes, Fractal Geometry in 12 Dimensional Spaces, and so on. Half of what she asks are antiquities of the rarest order, all of which he can get to her in twenty minutes using all his sources. One condition he asks for is that she gets a real dinner. When was the last time she had more than day-old takeout? Or more than a nap in her office? She assures him she’s okay, before turning and screaming at Eve’s sudden appearance. She needs Fred for a minute.

At Angel’s office, Angel’s concerned about how much the Practical Science Department is spending. Eve tells her that she’s gone $800,000 over the quarterly budget, and the quarter isn’t over. Fred realizes it’s a lot of money, but no one’s ever attempted to re-corporealize a soul before. That surprises Angel, all h e wanted was to get Spike free of Wolfram & Hart. Fred argues that their mission is to do some good with the W&H resources, and Spike did save the world, the good of humanity; he has a soul, he’s a champion, like Angel. And he’d be a tremendous asset to their side. Angel says he won’t be, he knows Spike and he only cares about himself. Fred points out that he also cares about Buffy, which picks Eve’s interest. Angel concedes that that’s true, so where is he going to go with his new solid body? Angel doesn’t want her to get disappointed; Spike can be charming when he wants to. But Fred’s no love-struck high school girl, she knows Spike’s been playing her, but she’s helping him because it’s the right thing to do. He says it’s her department, her call; but she shouldn’t get her hopes up, some people can’t be saved.

Spike arrives in Fred’s empty lab, hoping she’ll hurry back. Lights start flickering, and shadows move. Spike, out loud, says that it’s back for more chuckles. More lights flicker and fail. He knows the drill and heads for the light but stops at an intersecting corridor. He’s not playing “follow the blinking light.” All the lights turn off and he hears some crying in the distance. He finally heads for it, annoyed. He finds a woman dressed in colonial clothing, standing up with small stumps where her arms once were. She asks him to hold her, Spike’s clearly surprised and she moves to him and glides through. “It’s coming” she says, and vanishes.

Later, at the end of the workday, Spike’s waiting for Angel in his apartment, who’s once again annoyed at his presence there. At Spike’s uneasiness, Angel surmises that Spike’s feeling hell’s tug. Spike says it’s not a big deal; besides, Angel broke out of there. Angel says he didn’t escape, he got a reprieve, and he’s not quite sure how he accomplished that. Spike doesn’t care for Angel’s martyr attitude, he knows all about the Shanshu prophecy. It’s all bull to Angel: nothing’s set in stone. They saved the world and now he runs an evil law firm, and Spike’s a ghost. Angel says the only thing that counts are the lives they destroyed, they’re both going to hell. Spike asks him “why bother then?” Angel asks him back what else are they going to do? After talking about what they hate about each other, Spike sees a body hanging from a rope. Angel doesn’t see it. Some time later, Angel’s brought in Fred and Wes, and none of them can see the ghost. Spike sees Gunn and Eve come in: Spectral Security detects no other ghosts than Spike in the building. The armless woman tells Spike it’s coming for him. Spike tells everyone to check again. Another ghost says it’s here, and Spike disappears from view. But he’s still right there; he just can’t be seen or heard. As Team Angel spreads out to search the building for him, a deep English voice calls to him, telling him they can’t help him now, no one can.

ACT II

More shadows move around in Angel’s darkened pad. Spike shifts to an elevator, and goes in.

In another office, Wes tells Fred and Gunn that Angel has a point: Spike’s been vanishing more and more frequently. Fred says it’s different; he was agitated, hallucinating perhaps. Wes says in such a unique case, dementia’s possible, Fred won’t accept that. She tells them that Spike goes to hell when he disappears, they’d pretty much figured that out though.

Spike’s back in the W&H basement and hears that cutting sound again. He’s already played this game, but heads for the table anyway. There, the knife and some fingers remain, but no man. One twitches, and a woman with a long piece of glass in her head sings, “He’s going to get you.” It, turns out would be the Reaper. Though he’s been dead and easy to find for months now. The woman pulls out the shard from her eye, tells him she hasn’t forgotten him, and slashes his face. When he looks again, she’s gone, but the cut is still there.

Spike finds Fred in her lab, oblivious to him. He thinks that those spirits he’s seen are the welcoming party: hell got tired of waiting. He thanks her for what she did, it means a lot to him. She almost has a breakthrough, but it’s a dud and turns in for the night. Spike tries to grab her and feels an electric jolt. She’s startled, and calls out to him. The lights turn off and Angel shows up behind her. They had another sweep with the mystics and they found nothing. But she knows what she felt, they have to find a way to reach him

Eve brings in a specialist to a conference room: a cute communicator for the other side. She does a few common words about the dead and its keeper. She brings forth Spike, but only she can feel him. She feels the Dark Soul, it’s coming and she’s about to say what it is when she’s choked by some unseen force. Angel assumes it’s Spike. The grip on her releases and she stares before throwing a big blood loogie on Fred. The specialist’s dead.

In a closed-door session, Wes and Gunn talk about what’s happened and surmise that the “Dark Soul” wasn’t Spike, but something else at W&H, something worse.

Fred’s taking a shower in her lab. She feels something, but see nothing. Spike’s there, and confused about why the Reaper killed the specialist. It takes souls, it doesn’t make them. He thinks it was trying to hide something, something it didn’t want them to know. He touches the glass, and doesn’t go through, he tries again and it doesn’t work. He concentrates and writes on the steamy glass. Fred sees it once she’s done showering: REAPER. The glass shatter and Spike is thrown clean into another office. Someone’s coming to him, a disfigured lawyer, calling his name. The other two women from earlier are also there but he’s tired of talking to flunkies. It dawns on him that he’s not talking to the Reaper, just some third rate spirit. Then he collapses in agony, and the English voice comes back, attached to an ancient pale, and scary looking Englishman. He tells Spike that he’s going to suffer eternally for his sins, but first he gets to play, and displays a big disturbing smile.

ACT III

Gunn finds more than three thousand references about the “Dark Soul,” four of them about Angel. Fred, clothed but damp, tells them to cross-reference that with the word Reaper. It’s Dark Soul # 182: Mathias Pavane, an aristocrat in the 18th Century. A doctor, nicknamed “The Reaper” for performing unnecessary surgery on his patients. And he has a file in W&H’s classified histories. Word spread of his practices, so he fled to Spanish California, which coincided with a rash of ritualistic murders, placed in a manner suggesting an intimate knowledge of the Dark Arts. The slaughter went on for twenty years until W&H took him out; the Senior Partners were looking to build an office in what would become Los Angeles, but a Spanish Mission rested on the site their seers recommended. They needed Pavane’s blood to deconsecrate the grounds. And if he knew enough of the Dark Arts, he might have had enough to escape hell’s grasp and keep himself hidden. And given the high-risk employment nature of W&H, this pace should be full of ghosts, so where are they? But whatever the reasons, they need to get Spike, before he’s next.

Spike has now many lashes over his face and hands. Pavane finds his ghostly companion more fun than the previous ones. Fred comes in the lab they’re in, determined to get Spike. Pavane hopes that one day he’ll get to taste her; Spike scrambles up and tries to punch him, hitting nothing. Pavane tells him that the rules are his here: reality bends to his desire. Spike’s back in the basement, Spike understands that his fading away was Pavane’s doing. Pavane’s disembodied voice tells him that they’re parlour tricks, like his blood. Suddenly Spike’s cuts are gone, as are his clothes, and he’s next to the table. Pavane is unimpressed at his reputation of scourge and destroyer, peel away the surface, and he’s a little Nancy boy, crying for his mother. He knows all about Spike, that he thinks he’s special, that he matters, but, truth is, he knows he deserves it. the four ghosts at Pavane’s service come in, he explain that they died in service of W&H. Spike thought he’d more than given them a push to hell by now, Pavane says they are there, the apparitions are more parlour tricks. To prove that they’re still real enough to hurt, one of them stabs him. It’s feeding time.

Fred’s got a working theory, but it’s going to require a massive surge of dark energy to catalyze the process, the equivalent of nuclear evil. Gunn knows a place, and takes Angel to the White Room. He wants a part of the conduit. Angel doesn’t like this, considering the last conduit took the form of a creepy little girl, he doesn’t even want to know what the new one looks like. They hear the black panther snarl. Gunn talks to it, he wouldn’t as this if it wasn’t serious, but he needs this personal favour. The conduit finally appears to them.

Pavane, hovering near the huddled Spike, is disappointed. He expected more from the soul of a vampire, maybe he has too much of a conscience. A giant maw opens in the air: hell knows he’s ready. The soul that blesses him, damns him to suffer forever.

ACT IV

Pavane tells Spike he’s getting what he deserves and Spike agrees, but it just won’t happen today and elbows Pavane’s face, sending him flying. Spike gets up, the maw closes and he gets it: reality bends to desire, that’s why he could touch Fred and warn her. His clothes reappear on him, Pavane’s eyes go wide and Spike hits him again. They fight viciously, Spike with the upper hand, until he asks how fun it is when they hit back. Pavane hit him back, and says it’s starting to be fun.

Fred and Wesley finish calibrating the machinery when Angel and Gunn come in with the dark essence, of which the conduit told Gunn that they aren’t getting any more of. She inserts the dark matter, anything spectral is about to feel it coming.

Spike’s on the ground, beaten. Pavane admires that he’s learned some of his tricks, but it means nothing. He kicks Spike some more and tells him that he’s eluded hell for hundreds of years, fed it other dirty little souls, it let get stronger. Now he’s god of the realm and Spike’s wood for the fire. Then a sort of energy washes over them. Spike hits it and runs. This displeases Pavane.

In the lab, a sensor tells her of a spectral presence and screams over the machinery to Spike that he has to step into the circle, it’s his only chance. But it’s actually Pavane and he starts choking Fred. He knocks the others aside. Spike comes in and has to choose between Fred or his own real flesh. Spike attacks Pavane and pushes him in the circle. He becomes corporeal and most of the machinery sparks, burns, and crashes. Pavane screams at them for defiling him, Angel knocks him down. Spike appears, warning them not to kill Pavane, if they do they’ll never be able to stop him. Angel agrees and sticks to bruising.

Wes, Fred and Gunn are cleaning up the lab. The boys offer to finish up without her and she goes to her office; Spike comes to her. The experiment was a one-of-a-kind deal and she’s sorry, Spike tells her not to be. He made his choice and wouldn’t change it for the world. Fred says there are other options but they’re riskier. He tells her no, that he won’t end up like Pavane, cheating hell no matter who gets hurt. To her it proves that he is worth saving. He says it’s not so bad: he has lots of space, good company, and even picked up a few new tricks. With some effort, he picks up a cup to demonstrate. There are worst things than being a ghost.

Pavane has been placed in Permanent Storage, strapped in an upright coffin-sized cell. He’s perfectly still, like a mannequin. Eve tells Angel that W&H excels at keeping their unmentionables unmentioned. Angel gives Pavane some congratulations: he gets to live forever, unable to touch, move or feel, unable to affect the world around him. And Angel’s given him a window view. Angel shuts the steel door and through the eye hatch, welcomes Pavane to hell.


Summary by Dannyboy.