Starring: David Boreanaz as Angel, James Marsters as Spike, J. August Richards as Gunn, Amy Acker as Fred, Andy Hallet as Lorne, Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndham-Pryce

Guest starring: Tom Lenk as Andrew Wells, Mercedes McNab as Harmony, Navi Rawat as Dana

Original air date: January 28, 2004

Written by: Stephen S. DeKnight and Drew Goddard
Directed by: Jefferson Kibbee

In a psychiatric hospital a nurse rushes to the nurses’ station looking for a doctor. The doctor and nurse hurry down the hall to find one of the patients lying on the floor unconscious. The patient apparently collapsed after taking a sedative. The doctor quickly realizes that the patient was given the wrong medication and wants to know which patient didn’t get their sedative. Just then the doctor hears loud banging down the hall. The doctor and an orderly walk toward the banging noise when BLAM! the door comes flying out off its hinges. A young woman, Dana, starts walking toward the doctor and orderly and they back up, slowly, to a cyclone-fence style security door. They close and lock the door shutting Dana on the other side. Dana sees a syringe in the doctor’s hand and reaches over and rips the door off its hinges, casually throwing it down the hallway. Dana rushes the men, and fights with them, knocking the orderly unconscious. Dana grabs a bone saw and slices open a second orderly’s neck, dips her fingers in his blood, and draws his blood on her face.

At Wolfram & Hart Gunn and Fred are talking about how half of the cases at Wolfram & Hart are settled: on the golf course. Fred’s not sure that’s what the founding fathers have in mind. Gunn thinks they made the right choice moving to Wolfram & Hart - they’ve averted disasters and saved lives, even if they are playing by a completely different set of rules.

Meanwhile Angel’s in his office with Lorne and Wes and Angel’s not sure they *did* make the right move. When Fred and Gunn come in Lorne explains that they are trying to figure out what to do about Eve. Angel is convinced that Eve was responsible for the sulventh parasite that nearly put Angel in a permanent hallucinogenic coma [see AtS 5.10]. Wes thinks that firing Eve would be light punishment in light of what she did. Gunn, though, thinks they need a lot more evidence before they can even think about firing Eve. After all, Eve didn’t get to be the liaison with the senior partners without having some serious clout. Gunn thinks that any move against Eve without some very solid evidence would be very dangers. Angel reluctantly agrees and Gunn suggests that they restrict Eve’s access within the firm.

Just then Harmony comes in and tells everyone that a mental patient has beaten up a couple of the orderlies and run away. Angel and Wes both think it’s a case for the police, not Wolfram & Hart, that is until Harmony tells them that the young woman is probably possessed. Wes wants to assemble a team to track the woman down but Angel points out that demon possessions can be very tricky and the situation has to be handled with finesse, so Angel goes to the hospital alone. At the hospital Angel and Spike come out of different elevators at the same time. Spike wants to find the woman, too, but Angel tells him to get lost. Spike ain’t budging. Both Angel and Spike interview the doctor in Dana’s room where the walls are covered with crayon drawings of monsters attacking people. Angel and Spike find out that Dana had been abducted after her family was murdered. The murderer tortured Dana for months and she had been virtually catatonic since then. Several months ago Dana started to show extreme agitation and inhuman strength. Spike leaves to find Dana, but Angel stays behind and figure out what the doctor isn’t telling him. A woman from the nurses’ desk tells Angel that the doctor videoed all of his sessions with Dana.

Meanwhile, Dana is in a store helping herself to a light snack in the aisles. When a clerk tries to convince Dana to pay for the food she breaks his arm, grabs the bone saw (from the hospital) and walks off. She finds the clothing aisle and puts on some clothes. As Dana grabs a dark colored t-shirt she has a flashback - she remembers a man in a similar colored shirt, some tools covered in blood, and her younger self chained to some pipes. A security guard finds Dana and points a gun at her. She looks at him, then we see her walking out of the store in her new clothes. She’s still carrying her bone saw and it’s dripping with fresh blood.

At the hospital Angel is reviewing the tapes of Dana and talking with the nurse. Angel figures out that the nurse called Wolfram & Hart and gave them the heads up. As Angel watches the tapes he realizes that Dana isn’t speaking gibberish on the tape, she’s speaking Rumanian.

At the store Dana was in emergency personnel are taking some victims to the hospital and police are cordoning off the area. Spike arrives and sees blood on the ground. Spike apparently uses the smell of the blood to track Dana. In the meantime Angel is talking to Wes while he drives. Angel asks Wes to assemble a tactical team and find out Dana’s last location. Angel tells Wes that Dana was speaking Rumanian and yelling about being “chosen.” Angel realizes that Dana’s not possessed, she’s a vampire slayer. Spike has caught up with Dana in a warehouse and he tells her that it’s time for them to have a ‘nice quiet chat’ demon to demon. Spike vamps up for his fight and Dana looks at Spike the same way she looked at the security guard. Uh-oh. During their fight Spike knocks the bone saw out of Dana’s hand so she grabs a piece of wood. Dana eventually gets Spike up against a wall where she tries to stake him, yelling in Chinese. Spike knocks the stake out of her hand and Dana throws Spike out of a window. Spike lands on the pavement about 5 floors down a few seconds before Angel drives up. Angel tells Spike to stay out of it but Spike tries to convince Angel that Dana is possessed by a Chinese water demon or “one of those elemental thingys.” Angel walks off disgusted.

Angel and Spike walk off the elevator at Wolfram & Hart and Spike is still trying to digest the fact that Dana is a completely psychotic vampire slayer. Spike wants to go back out and find Dana but Angel wants to leave it to the professionals. Wes called Rupert Giles who sent his ‘top guy’ to retrieve Dana. Angel and Spike walk into Angel’s conference room to find the ‘top guy’ - Andrew Wells [see also BtVS Seasons 6 and 7]. Andrew is, um, very enthusiastic about seeing Spike again. He hugs Spike for quite awhile until Angel suggests they saunter down memory lane *after* they find and contain the psycho slayer. Andrew fills in Lorne, Gunn, and Fred on vamPYRE slayer mythology and Buffy’s change to the slayer line: she had Willow conjure up some magic to transform potentials into a slayer army [see BtVS 7.22]. Andrew tells everyone that Giles and the other Sunnydale alums have been rounding up the newly made slayers and training them. Wes figures out that in Dana’s tortured mind, her dreams of past slayers and demons may seem more real than just dreams. Spike figures out that Dana yelled at him in Chinese because she thought she was the slayer that Spike killed in the Boxer Rebellion [see BtVS 5.7]. Spike leaves, disgusted with the “corporate” approach. Angel tries to convince Spike that the last people who should be trying to contain Dana are two vampires, with or without souls.

Meanwhile Dana is walking down by the docks having flashbacks about her torture. A man approaches Dana wanting to help her.

Angel is beginning to wonder if Spike didn’t have the right idea after all - maybe they should just track Dana down. The tactical team is currently sweeping the general area where Dana fought with Spike but the search is too slow. Lorne suggests that they ‘read’ Dana’s house to get clues to where Dana might be. Angel wants Andrew to help, but Andrew is down on the docks following Spike. Spike finds Andrew and tells him to go back to Wolfram & Hart. Unfortunately Andrew trips of the dead body of the man that tried to help Dana.

In the meantime Angel, Lorne, and Vernon the psychic are at Dana’s former home. According to Vern the walls of the house are screaming. Vernon ‘sees’ the murder of Dana’s family and Dana’s abduction. According to Vernon the man took Dana to a basement that had air that smelled like molasses.

Across town Dana arrives at the basement where she was tortured. Dana takes off the grate of a vent and finds some of the tools that were used to torture her as well as a small metal box filled with glass syringes and vials of liquid. Dana has a flashback: She’s chained to the pipes and her abductor tells her they’re going to ‘try the blue one this time.’ The abductor crouches down to inject Dana and. . . she sees Spike.

On the docks Andrew is filling Spike in on the Scoobies. Xander’s in Africa, Willow and Kennedy are in Brazil, and Buffy and Dawn are in Rome. Andrew suddenly realizes that Buffy doesn’t know that Spike is alive, um, un-dead. Andrew volunteers to tell her but Spike tells Andrew that he’ll take care of it. As Andrew and Spike continue to search the docks, Dana is on a rooftop watching them. At Wolfram & Hart Angel asks Gunn to track down the man who abducted Dana and asks Lorne to work with the psychics to get more about where Dana might be.

Spike is getting a stronger scent so he runs down towards a dead end and finds Dana’s blood on the wall. Dana drops down from nowhere and fights with Spike. Andrew tries to tranquilize her but misses. Dana knocks him unconscious. When Dana runs off Spike follows her down into the basement. She keeps talking incoherently, saying things like “heart and head. . . . stab the heart, cut off the head. . . . keep cutting until you see dust.” Cautiously Spike tries to explain her visions, but Dana’s remembering Nikki Wood, a slayer Spike killed [see BtVS 5.7]. Dana knocks Spike’s feet out from under him and injects something into Spike’s neck. Spike screams and manages to hit Dana a couple times before Dana knocks him down and he’s unable to move. Dana takes Spike’s coat off and drags him over to the pipes and chains him up. While she’s doing this she keeps having flashbacks of Spike chaining her to the pipes when she was a child. Dana fills another syringe and injects Spike again, causing him to pass out.

There’s a serious pow-wow at Wolfram & Hart. The crew is beginning to narrow down where Dana may be. Lorne hasn’t had any more success with the psychics. Wes almost suggests they look for a molasses factory when Fred has an epiphany: when whiskey is cooked it smells like molasses, so they start to look for distilleries. Suddenly Andrew arrives and tells everyone that Dana has Spike.

In the basement Spike wakes up and Dana’s still mumbling incoherently. She tells Spike he’s losing all his pieces and that he can’t touch her any more. Spike raises his arms to find that he doesn’t have any hands - Dana’s cut both of them off. Dana moves toward Spike still clutching the bone saw, still believing that Spike was the man who killed her family and tortured her. Spike tells her that Dana’s confused and Dana starts to have flashbacks, some with Spike some and with her actual abductor. Dana accuses Spike of killing two slayers and he admits to it, but tells Dana that he never tortured her. Dana starts hitting Spike and is ready to dust him when Angel grabs her arm and throws her across the room. Angel tells Dana that her abductor has been dead for five years. Dana is still incoherent so she attacks Angel. They fight until Angel manages to grab Dana from behind, yells “Now!” and Wes pumps three tranquilizer darts into Dana’s torso.

Angel calls for a medical team and the tactical guys move into high gear. Fred arrives and takes Spike back to Wolfram & Hart, with his hands, to reattach them with a shaman’s help. Angel and Wes are taking Dana back to Wolfram & Hart but Andrew intervenes. He tells Angel that because Dana is a slayer she is their (the Watcher Council’s) responsibility. Angel disagrees but reconsiders when a dozen or so slayers arrive out of the shadows. Andrew tells Angel that the Council doesn’t trust Angel anymore, and that Andrew’s orders came directly from Buffy. Since Angel joined up with Wolfram & Hart he’s no longer on their (the Council’s) side.

Later Spike is recovering from surgery, looking quite forlorn. Angel arrives and the two talk, quite civilly. Spike knows that Dana thought that he killed her family and that he doesn’t have the right to complain because her family wasn’t one of the families he destroyed as a vampire. As a demon, he didn’t think about what evil was. He was just interested in the rush from the kill and never thought about the victims. Angel tells Spike that he couldn’t take his eyes off the victims - the victims were his art. When Spike asks about Dana Angel tells him that Andrew took Dana with him. Spike’s a little surprised that Andrew managed the double cross. Spike tells Angel that, based on what Dana did to him, Dana’s become a monster, but Angel tells him that Dana’s an innocent victim. Spike reminds Angel that the two of them were innocent, too, once upon a time. And Angel agrees.

Summary by Kirsten.