Chapter One – Flee Response
She wasn’t sure how it happened but the lights suddenly shut off.
Buffy had been in her cell for three weeks and in those three weeks the lights had never shut off this completely. She could no longer hear the low hum of machinery that had been her only company for days. She swung herself of the bed, the only furnishing in the stark box of a cell and took the five steps to the door. It was exactly five steps. She counted it every day. She gently put her pal on the door. It swung open with barely any pressure from her. She stared at it for a long moment and entertained the idea that she may be dreaming, but seconds later her survival instincts picked up and she stopped questioning. She hurried out of her cell. She found herself in a corridor painted that specific shade of green indigenous to hospitals. Usually that connection would have given her pause but at the moment instinct-Buffy had kicked in and nothing else really registered.
Working on slayer sense and animal intuition she begin to run. Logical thought should have told her she had no idea where she was going but she kept at it. She ran blindly through the halls before finally crashing into something. It was a figure, a man it seemed, with unruly brown hair muttering to himself. Buffy paused for less than a second, to asses whether he was a threat or not. He was skinny--too skinny to be healthy. He looked hollow almost. IN her state she didn't stop to think what she might look like to him. All that registered was the same sense of animal desperation that was driving her. He wasn’t an enemy, he was a victim, and spooked as she was she was still the slayer. So she grabbed him and tugged him after her.
She was relieved when he managed to keep pace with her until she reached a dead end. The hall T’d off in two separate directions. She was about to go left when the man frantically tugged her the other way.
“This way.” He said. He seemed so sure of himself that she followed.
And then without a word they were running again. They were half way down when the light suddenly came on along with blaring alarms and flashing red lights. Buffy and her companion were blinded for all of a second, but they kept running. So frantically that they hit a wall before they regained their bearings.
“A door!” Buffy exclaimed elatedly. She immediately pulled down on the handle and nearly cried when it didn’t budge.
Locked.
Of course it was locked. This was a secret inhumane facility. It had to be locked. For the first time since the lights went off, the adrenaline failed her. She began to realize the futility of an escape. Her stupid stunt would only get her punished. She couldn’t even think of anything worse than what she had already suffered, but it had to be worse somehow. Maybe they would take her bed. It had been a long time since she was acutely aware of her face, but it was drenched with her tears. She pulled at the door again nearly sobbing with the futility of it.
Her companion on the other hand didn’t have her qualms, he shoved her aside, grabbed the knob and with a savage grunt twisted it off leaving a hole where it had been he then he punched through the weak point, adrenalin giving him enough strength to bend the steel. In mere moments that felt like and eternity and a half, the door was twisted mass of metal. He grabbed a weeping Buffy by the hand and dragged her out into the darkness.
Soon they were making a mad dash through something. It was too dark to see and they were too forgone to care.
Neither noticed the minor stings and snags of trees snapping into their faces or pulled at their clothes. Neither felt their flimsy, cloth shoes give way nor the burs and leaves that got caught in their hair. They just kept running until the sirens and the noises faded into the background and they could no longer see even hints of the lights made by the facility.
They kept running, tripping on rocks and roots but they always managed to pull each other up and keep on going. They even splashed through streams and only just missed falling into a ravine.
It seemed like eternity had passed when both of them by some unspoken mutual agreement slowed to a stop. The only sound around them was the mingled sounds of their heavy breathing. After a few moments, the man grabbed Buffy’s hand and dragged her off into a darker pocket, she realized after that he had found a cave.
There was a tiny snick and a small flame illuminated the shallow space. Not much bigger than a public restroom but at this point both of its occupants were too exhausted to care they simply collapsed onto the floor and out in mere moments both had passed out.
*****
Buffy was dreaming.
She was in the gray room again. Usually in science fiction movies exam rooms of mad scientist lairs were pure white, this one was gray, raw cement and exposed piping. No frills to make this room look nice, only necessities. after all, the people who entered this room had other things to worry about.
Buffy was tied spread eagle on an uncomfortable gurney.
She could hear people above her bed talking about her. About the things they had to do with her. She felt like her blood was curdling in her veins. She knew what was going to happen next. Next came the poking and the prodding or the electro therapy or the water sessions.
They always spoke first, the torture would come after.
But Buffy barely felt it. She was gone. Already residing inside herself and clutching her last thread of sanity for dear life. There was a voice playing in her head. Low and soothing and rumbly. She had no idea what it said but it calmed her down. It spoke of softness and warmth and light. And she missed those things.
The voice came and went interwoven with her sessions and she looked forward to it each time
And then she could understand them, she heard the torturers ‘s plan. She began struggling anew at her bonds but extremely strong hands held her down. The other propped her legs up on stirrups the last thing she saw was the last torturer snap a pair of latex gloves on and then the all-consuming, violating cold.
And then she was screaming
*****
Buffy snapped awake expecting to see the walls of her cell instead she was surrounded by the walls of a cave, it was shallow, deep enough to let a little but not much light in. Her mouth felt a little furry and she could feel her tummy grumble. Rationally she knew that she had brought no food with her, but that didn’t stop her from looking around anyway. Her eyes fell onto a supine form a few meters away and belatedly Buffy recalled she had not been alone on her flight from the facility.
Slowly, she approached him. Yesterday had been a blur of adrenaline. Buffy remembered almost nothing of what happened. She knew only that her companion had all but saved her. She had no idea who he was, nothing. None of that had mattered last night. Last night nothing had really mattered except getting away. A quick glance outside informed her that she was in the middle of a forest of some sort and the sun had just been sucked behind foliage. It didn’t really surprise her that she had slept so long, last night she was sure she would sleep for a week.
There was a faint rustling noise as her companion began to wake up. The figure jerked suddenly and he was in a sitting position looking around frantically.
“What?” he exclaimed. “Where am I?”
Buffy frowned thoughtfully she hadn’t noticed his British accent before.
“It’s okay.” She said, surprised her voice sounded so level after such a long time without using it. “You aren’t there. You’re out of there. We got out last night. It’s okay.”
He was shaking his head and babbling incoherently Buffy had to squat down to his level.
“You don’t remember?” she urged. “The lights went off and then we were running and then we broke out? Don’t loose it now! We need to keep it together if we want to survive. WE need to get further away from there.”
His eyes snapped to her as soon as she started speaking, laser bright and eerily familiar. The only person who ever looked at her like that had been-
“Spike?”
He wasn’t lucid she realized and it was no surprise she didn’t recognize him. He didn’t look like the bleached blond vampire she had known for the last three years. His hair was a mop of golden brown, and his face didn’t have the same arrogant sneer she had thought was ingrained in his features. And yet he was unmistakably the slippery menace that could Houdini his way out of almost anything. Of course it was he who had got her out last night.
He was even wearing his duster.
“Spike!” He said with not a little bit of amusement. “Spike, that’s what I told them to call me. Rather Machiavellian isn’t it?”
"Spike, snap out of it.” she demanded. Her tummy was outright demanding nourishment.
“I don’t know who you are good madam but I would appreciate you-” He broke off and peered at her. “Lord George Byron.” He said then looked away.
Buffy stared at him. Who the hell was he talking about?
“No Spike,” She insisted. “William the bloody!”
But Spike was on about something else. “--She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and in her eyes-”
“You have got to be kidding me, Spike.” She interrupted. It didn’t really register what he was saying. “Buffy? Summers? Goldilocks? Slayer? All of the above? Snap out of it! This is not the time to be making jokes!”
Spike cocked his head to one side and studied her intently with his penetrating eyes. He looked so much like his usual self that Buffy nearly breathed a sigh of relief then he opened his mouth and it was painfully clear she was not dealing with her Spike.
Abruptly Spike’s face tightened and his eyes narrowed.
“You’re not real.” He said. “They’ve ruined you. Just like they’ve ruined everything else. They’re testing me is all. Always taunting and teasing. Always testing me. M’ not the lamb anymore, M’ the tiger.”
“The tiger?”
Spike’s eyes snapped to her.
“Yes, Blake said it first but Henley said it better.” He looked away again spurting out rhyming verses of what Buffy only had to assume was poetry. This was getting incredibly frustrating.
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” Spike finished.
Buffy glared at him and finally when she was at a complete and utter loss at what to do, she punched him in the nose.
“Argh! Bloody hell!!”
Buffy grinned triumphantly. Now that sounded a lot more like the Spike she knew.
“Spike?” she tried again.
This time, when the blue eyes met hers they were more lucid.
“Buffy?”
The use of her first name unsettled her, but Buffy nodded.
“Is that you Spike? sane Spike? Less rhymy Spike?”
The vampire nodded slowly, then a moment later as if waking from a dream, he jumped to his feet.
“The facility-they’ve got you too-fuck. We have to get out of here, slayer, we have to-”
Buffy took a step back and held her hands out.
“Easy there, captain peroxide, we’re out.” She said. “but not safe. Too close to nurse Ratched’s happy house of screaming. We have to keep going.”
Spike nodded.
“Then what the bloody hell are we waiting for?”
Buffy glared at him.
“You.” She muttered as she took off after him.
Quickly, they negotiated their way out of the cave into the forest, Buffy pointed the way and they took off, not really sure of what they were running from but too afraid of getting caught to really stop. Pretty soon forest gave way to a field, one that had been tended to sometimein the past. THere was a structure at the fa end of it. Buffy wasn’t sure if she was relieved or terrified to see other human’s again.
“We have to stop.” Spike informed her.
She glanced back, stricken, her instinct was screaming at her not to stop at any cost. She violently shook her head.
Spike shrugged.
“Well, then, I have to stop.”
Again Buffy shook her head violently.
“Sunrise, Slayer.”
Sunrise. Buffy had forgotten. She didn’t waste words with a curse; instead they approached the house at the far end of the field. It was a farm house and there was a barn, which was mercifully unlocked. Neither of the two questioned the providence. They entered and climbed up the hayloft to hide in the furthest reaches burrowing into the hay to keep warm. They were asleep before they had time to register how tired they were.
*****
Her sub-conscious had decided it hated her and wanted to mess her up in any way possible. Despite having nightmares every night, Buffy still hadn’t gotten used to jolting awake. Coming to awareness still being tired but completely unable to go back to sleep. Not that after her nightmares she really wanted to, nightmares she could barely remember besides the gut numbing terror.
Buffy shot up taking in her surroundings instantly. She was surrounded by hay, it was dark out again and Spike was nowhere in sight.
“Spike?”
He was a little ways away. Downstairs out of the hayloft peeking out of the door.
“Spike?”
He looked up her way. His face was grim.
“The farm’s abandoned, slayer.” He said. It was a fact everything around them boasted signs of neglect., the hinges on the door were rusty, the wood had rotted, and there were ever a few cans of beer crumpled up and forgotten on the ground. The place smelled abandoned even to Buffy’s less acute senses. “--And I heard a noise.”
Buffy felt her insides twist. She realized her stomach was somewhere in the vicinity of her feet, which were bare. Funny, she hadn’t noticed that before.
“You heard-”
Spike held up a hand, and then pressed his index finger to his lips in the universal sign for ‘keep the hell quiet’. And then he was up the ladder and through the hay.
“We need to get out of here.” He said. “I can hear heartbeats.”
Buffy’s eyes widened and they searched frantically for a window, they found one and all but dived through it, never mind that they were on the second floor. Buffy barely even realized how she got down and they were out of the fields running and into a dark forest for the second time in as many days.
They ran through the night, Spike ran ahead leading Buffy. There was no time to cater to her pride, Spike had better night vision and they had to play on their strengths. Both of them could hear their pursuers crashing through the forest behind them. He pulled them into a cave a little ways away frantically going deeper and deeper. Still they could hear the people following them.
“Spike-”
“Find a place to hide, slayer.”
“Sure let me just strap on my night vision goggles.”
Spike let go of her sarcasm and scanned the area. There was a sudden clink of metal and both of them froze. Acting on pure instinct Both of them ran deeper into the cave, unable to really see what she was doing, Buffy ran straight off an overhang and feel about six feet to the ground.
“Spike!”
She whispered frantically, Spike, was already several yards away but he whirled around when she saw where she was and what she was sitting in front of, the overhang created a rabbit hole. Whoever was following was close, Spike pushed her against the wall and covered her body with his, pressing her flush against the wall. He pulled his duster off of her and used it to cover both of them . He prayed to whoever would listen that the dark and the cold would hide them from any sensors.
Spike could hear the chink chink of boots overhead and he felt Buffy freeze.
“They’re not ‘ere!” he heard a gruff voice say.
“Come off it, Roddy, I saw ‘em come in ‘ere!”
Spike could hear roughly five of them walking around. Speaking to each other like they were hunting particularly deaf rabbits they couldn’t be from the Initiative. A human may not hear it but a vampire could, clear as day. Hired soldiers, no doubt without any understanding of the supernatural creatures they were hunting.
“If we’ve lost them, ‘Orace, the boss will be furious.”
“She’ll ‘ave our ‘ead for this.” A new voice said.
“Oi, all of you shut your traps and search the cavern! A girl and a bloke, grab ‘em and taser ‘em and we’ll bring ‘em back to ‘er.”
There was a pause and then they started walking around.
They had no idea what they were up against.
Buffy was trying to get his attention. Spike looked passed her and saw her frantically gesture behind her. There was a tiny fissure in the wall. Spike leaned over Buffy’s shoulder and peered through the little crack. He could only catch a couple of pairs of boots and the beams of flash lights.
She frantically tried to catch his attention again and looked at him questioningly. She looked like she was about to chance a whisper but at that moment Spike heard footsteps get closer and closer to the overhang. He pressed a finger to his lips and crouched lower against the wall and under his duster.
“There’s an over ‘ang ‘ere, Roddy” someone said.
“Look into it.”
Buffy swore her heart stopped. She held on to Spike as hard as she could and closed her eyes trying, wishing with every single molecule of her body that she and Spike could become invisible for just the one moment that beam of a flash light wouldn’t catch them. Whoever was it was he jumped down and this time even Buffy heard the impact of boots on the cave floor.
“I don’t see anything,”
Buffy stopped breathing. The boot sounds rounded up and the gradually died down. The relief washed over them like a tidal wave. It was amazing and intoxicating and all too quickly Buffy and Spike realized they were pressed closely together.
Spike tore himself away from her before he even realized what he was thinking. The boot steps seemed to echo in his head again although he couldn’t hear their heartbeats.
“We have to go”
squawks
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!