Chapter Nine

Harry knelt down before his latest victim. She couldn't have been more than twelve years old; her eyes were wet with tears, her lips curled into a grimace. She looked up at him soulfully, as though begging him not to go any further. Harry did not respond to her silent entreaties. He laid one hand down across her hair stroking it, petting her as one might do to a dog.

"There, there," he murmured ever so softly. "Everything will be all right. Soon, you will be in heaven, with your kin."

Harry wrapped his hand around her small throat, just above where the bullet had entered her body, severing the neural pathways connecting her brain to her spinal cord, paralyzing her from the neck down. He licked his lips in anticipation. He knew he could do this. Concentrating, he focused on that familiar feeling, on the itch that writhed in the back of his mind, that same burning sensation he got whenever Faith was around. That thing that he had only ever been told was magic. He understood better now.

There was no way to describe using magic. The best you could ever get was generalities. But that didn't change the fact that it was always there, always waiting to be used, if one just knew how to use it. He knew it wouldn't be easy. All his attempts previously had met with relative failure. However, this time, Harry had a different goal. He didn't want to create giant explosions, or to cast complex spells. No, he just wanted to do the basics, feel it out, learn his own limits. He wanted control.

Harry was finally starting to get an inkling of what Kingsley Shacklebolt had met at the end of his training regime. Sure, Harry could cast spells, make portkeys, even do a bit of legilimancy and occlumancy. He could even utilize his animagus form. But he still lacked the superlative finesse, that ability to go from zero to sixty in under three seconds. He knew now that turning into an animal was only the beginning of the animagus transformation. There was a kind of blending to be had, a bleeding of forms, of animal and human together. It was the lack of that control that was the reason he couldn't retract his wings. But he was working on that too.

In time, if he survived.

He and Jill had picked their way through the sewers, Jill using a machete to clear away some of the denizens. It hadn't been pretty, and they had run across their fair share of critters, but anything was better than Nemesis. Eventually, they had negotiated their way to Umbrella, where they had gone topside just long enough to get into the building. Supposedly there was a chopper that was going to get them out of there, and they had endeavoured to head directly for it.

Harry purposely left this particular zombie alive. Jill was off investigating one of the facility's power plants, searching for the controls to the locks. Some of them had been smashed, but others were still intact, and they were wasting precious ammunition punching through some of the sturdier ones. Harry had elected to stand guard, in case anything came after them. At least, that was the cover story.

Mostly he just wanted to get out from under Jill's scrutinizing gaze, so that he could practice a bit of magic. Her moment of euphoria at having survived a crisis atop the cathedral had been short-lived, and she had returned to studying Harry like he were a new form of microbe. She hadn't asked him a single question about their miraculous descent, which, after some thought, he decided was a bad thing. It appeared that she had settled upon conclusions of her own, and Harry had no idea what they could possibly be. Nor did he want to ask. It was probably better to keep some of his secrets under wrap, and he didn't want to be backed into a corner where he felt obliged to inform her of his status as a citizen of the wizarding world.

It took four seconds for Harry to bring his magical energy to bear, to consciously fill himself with that suffusion of warmth. With gentle care, he coaxed it through his body, that same warmth pooling in his chest now being redirected to his hand. The tips of his fingers tingled, and when he squeezed hard enough to touch his index finger and his thumb together, they formed a small blue spark that singed the girl's grey skin. Harry squeezed harder, the soft, pliable flesh of her throat easily giving way, like that of a sponge. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and drool dribbled out the corner of her mouth. Her head flopped back and forth, her blood-soaked hair painted across her forehead, dark strands falling into her eyes. She gurgled as Harry applied pressure in excess of anything an ordinary human could manage. Translucent blue energy, the colour of a simple magical shield pulsed around his hand, the magic coming to life, bending under Harry's will. The bone snapped with a jolt, and the girl's head lolled in an awkward direction, the last remnants of her life abolished.

He sat there for a moment longer, leaning back on his haunches and surveying his handiwork. There was so much more to study, to test, to understand. He wished he had time to figure things out, but he knew he didn't. It wasn't just that he heard Jill's footsteps echoing on the steel grates down a neighbouring hallway. Big things were happening. He felt it in the air. His unicorn sense was thrumming with a vibe that it shouldn't have been thrumming with. The oily taint was everywhere now. Players were moving pieces across the board, knights dying, kings shifting restlessly with anticipation as their pawns coaxed their way toward inevitable victory. The Raccoon City conflict was a mere prelude to the bigger war, and Harry could only barely grasp who a few of the players were. Voldemort. Umbrella. Dumbledore. The Ministry. But there were others too, he could sense them, even if he didn't have a name with which to identify them. Slayers, maybe? No, he didn't think so. Slayers were just pieces, like knights and bishops and rooks. So was he, for that matter.

"Hey," Jill said, coming up next to him and eyeing the corpse of the zombieling. "Been busy, I see."

"Would you rather I let her wander down in your direction?" he responded.

Jill held up a keycard, and two boxes of shotgun shells. "Absolutely."

Harry grinned. "Good. Let's get out of here."

-Scene Break-

Jill and Harry had penetrated the deepest recesses of the Umbrella labs, Jill in search of incriminating evidence, and Harry in search of the lost slayers. Neither found what they were looking for.

Now they were en route to the chopper. Jill couldn't help but experience a feeling of unease. Traversing the labs was proving to be unnaturally easy, and it put her on edge. Her escape from the zombie mansion and underground laboratories had taught her one thing. Dealing with Umbrella was never easy.

Part of her edginess came from Harry. He was an enigma, and Jill didn't like enigmas. There were too many oddities about him. So many that she hardly knew where to begin counting. The first thing, she supposed, was his attitude. He seemed calm; relaxed, even. And that made no sense. Most people she'd met who were stuck in a zombie-infested town had gone crazy. Zombies were too much to comprehend for the ordinary soul. Even Jill had had her breaking point in the depths of the mansion. And Barry too, she remembered. Yet Harry seemed perfectly at ease to go toe to toe with zombies. Unarmed. That was the really baffling part. He was prepared to walk out of the safe room, after having barely survived - no, check that - miraculously survived the explosion of the train wreck, even though he was unarmed, and he wasn't even interested in escaping. He was going to go out into the dark in search of his friend, without even considering the fact that he was defenseless against zombies.

Unless, of course, he wasn't defenseless. Ever since the "incident" at the cathedral, Jill had had to let Harry take care of killing the zombies. Her professional calm had been rattled, and she found it difficult to put aside her questions and her discontent. She wanted to ask him what the hell he had done to her; how the hell they had gotten off the rooftop, but she was certain she wouldn't like the answer.

Jill was crap at physics, but even she knew that no pair of wings was going to give them the kind of controlled descent she experienced. By all rights, they should have plummeted to their deaths. Possibly, she could have passed it off as some freak occurrence, involving altitudes, air densities - hell, she would have believed in flubber if he had tried selling it to her, if it were not for the fact that she had felt something. Something deep and visceral, like a charge going through her, violating her, permeating the fabric of her being.

It was more than just wings and air densities and exotic sciences like flubber. It was something else, and she didn't understand it. And that left her with the question, what the hell was Harry? And, more importantly, what else could he do that she wasn't aware of?

Jill was, for the most part, prepared to believe that Harry's intentions were benign, if it weren't for a couple of peculiarities. Jill had spent several years working hard to enjoy the level of marksmanship that she enjoyed. Hell, all her teammates worked hard. They went through a sophisticated, rigorous training regime that put them in the top percentile of their class. More than one STARS member went on to compete in Olympic sharpshooting. Harry could match any of them, bullet for bullet. His aim was uncanny, his control unparalleled, and Jill knew that you just did not get that good without some serious training. And training like that meant financing. And financing meant Umbrella.

When Jill had lugged his bruised and battered body out of the wreckage, she had assumed he was some sort of stowaway. An innocent kid who managed to survive and hitch a ride on the train. But now, looking back, she was starting to revise her perception of those events. Maybe he hadn't been a stowaway. Maybe he had been riding the train on the rooftop. Maybe he was sent to observe her, or Nemesis, or something else altogether. Maybe it was his job to take her out if Nemesis failed.

She had seen too much shit in her life to take anything for granted, to close off any possibilities. She didn't know what Harry was, and she didn't know who he worked for, but it didn't matter. She wasn't going to turn her back on him. Not for a second. Because turning your back on someone - anybody - even a person who saved your life, was a reckless thing to do when it came to dealing with Umbrella.

Jill and Harry found themselves standing in a large room, easily bigger than any other room in the facility. Both of them could just make out the blades of a chopper through the slitted windows of two large, steel-reinforced bay doors at the far end.

"We need to get those doors working," Jill said, glancing about. The warehouse-sized room, with its twenty-foot high ceilings, was littered with electronic equipment of all kinds. A bureau of tools jutted out into the center of the room from the left wall, obscuring what looked like a small mainframe computer. Harry walked over to it and tapped on some of the keys. nothing happened, though that wasn't saying much. He had little experience with computer equipment, since electronics didn't work at Hogwarts, and since his family never let him near Dudley's computer. Jill flicked the power switch, and the machine whirred to life briefly, the monitor flickering before the power died down. "Nothing here works," she said, her gaze drifting longingly to the bay doors. "Christ, we're just metres from freedom."

"Can we power this contraption up?" Harry asked, peering about the area. His gaze fell on the remains of a Nemesis-like monstrosity splattered across the far wall, a gouge torn out of its abdomen, its sightless eyes gazing in his direction. Something that Harry had first thought of as a futuristic satellite dish stood, its one end pointed at the decaying remains of the creature, taking up nearly half the warehouse space. It was twelve metres long and four metres high, with a series of concentric rings tapering to a point with some sort of rail nestled inside. Jill had turned her attention to rifling through the lockers, the desk papers and various other knickknacks in search of any useful information. Eventually, she stumbled upon what were large power cells. "Hey," she called from somewhere near the giant ray gun. "Give me a hand with this."

Harry came over and helped her lift the power cell into place, carefully slotting it and attaching the wires so that it was properly connected. LEDs around the warehouse came to life, and Jill motioned for Harry to follow so they could insert other power cells, hopefully engaging the electronic door opener to raise the bay doors.

Before they could reach the second power cell, however, Nemesis appeared in the entryway. Both Jill and Harry froze, their muscles tensing automatically.

Staring at Nemesis' ravaged face, his wounded torso, his three remaining barbed tentacles, Jill knew with certainty that she was going to die. The three stood silently, motionless, for a brief moment, eyeing each other warily, relishing on some unconscious level the impossibility of escape. There was nowhere left to move, no way out. Jill was not prepared to chance opening the bay doors, even if she could, when Nemesis was hot on their heels, and everything they had done so far, every attempt at running him down had met with utter failure. Since the cathedral, they had encountered Nemesis three more times, each time fleeing at the sight of him, firing multiple rounds, ranging from shotgun blasts to grenades. Nemesis had taken the brunt of the abuse, but he had not faltered, no matter that shrapnel was sticking out of his synthetic skin in multiple places, singe marks streaked across his arms. They had nothing left to hit him with. They had just been running on false hope.

In that brief moment, as Jill's nerves, frayed to the breaking point, her muscles tightening, her glance shifting about in search of weapons and defenses, her training kicking in regardless of the dismal odds, Harry took a step forward. Jill did not know what he was thinking, but she recognized the hard determination in his stance. he put himself neatly between Jill and Nemesis, and said in a quiet, steady voice, "Jill, go finish the power cells."

"But-"

"I'll deal with this," he said, cutting her off with his words.

Jill could not fathom what Harry was thinking. As far as she could tell, he was going to get pulverized in all of three seconds, after which it would be her turn. Nemesis took a tentative step forward. And she still had no intention of opening the bay doors so long as Nemesis was still able to throw punches. It would not be fair to Carlos or to anyone else who needed that chopper.

"Harry, I can't let you-"

"Do you trust me?" he asked, not taking his eyes off Nemesis.

Jill hesitated.

Harry went on, "I can't promise I'm going to be able to survive this, or that I can stop him. Hell, I might not be able to even slow him down. Maybe if I had a day or two, some time, God, even an hour, but..." He trailed off, and Jill saw his shoulders tighten as he relived some memory from another time and place. "Just go," he said finally.

"All right. Do what you can."

Jill turned and bolted in the direction of the next power cell. As if breaking whatever spell held them, Jill's motion triggered Nemesis into action. he roared and charged forward, intending to barrel through Harry in pursuit of her. Thinking that maybe Harry would be able to slow down Nemesis for only a moment, Jill swerved to one side and leapt onto a table, pirouetting and unslinging her grenade launcher. The sight that greeted her was not what she had expected. Nemesis had crashed into a large table of electronic junk, his head smacking against the corner of the wood, with Harry standing to one side, his gaze still fixed on Nemesis. Jill blinked. Was that a blue glow surrounding him? As if sensing her gaze, Harry spared her a glance and a tight nod, silently communicating the phrase, Get moving.

Jill shook herself and jumped off the table, focusing on getting the power cells into place and working the computer system. She would just have to trust that Harry could handle Nemesis.

-Scene Break-

Harry vacillated between terror and resolve. Nemesis weighed over a thousand pounds, and could crush bricks in its bare hands. Its skin was made of a synthetic fibre capable of withstanding multiple direct hits from a grenade launcher, including over fifty shotgun rounds, ten magnum rounds and countless shots from the .38. It had enhanced regenerative capabilities, courtesy of its viral symbiote.

Harry whirled out of the way of the oncoming juggernaut, and delivered a magically enhanced shove to the creatures side, driving it off its feet, and sending it crashing into a table. Score one for Potter, he thought grimly. He sensed Jill gazing at him and spared her a glance, nodding in her direction in order to let her know that he was still alive.

Nemesis got to its feet and issued a rumble as it appraised Harry for the first time. In the background, he could hear Jill slotting in the second power cell and bringing to life the enormous rail cannon that stood behind him.

Nemesis seemed to have learned something, since it did not charge again. Instead, it stalked toward Harry menacingly, its one hand balled into a fist and its three tentacles coiled in the air. It rumbled once more. "Yeah, that's right motherfucker. Bring it on."

Each tentacle was approximately ten feet in length and was as thick as a human leg. It had segmented rings that flexed and contracted, thus able to wrap around a human torso and break ribs, as well as lift an adult male into the air. One tentacle lashed out, trying to smack Harry down, but he dodged halfway, while bringing his wing up to deflect the brunt of the force. Nemesis grunted and Harry took a step back.

Nemesis closed the cap between them with two quick strides, intending to hammer punch Harry on the head. However, Harry apparated four feet to a spot just behind Nemesis, executing a mid-apparation turn around so that he reappeared facing Nemesis' back. He raised his pistol and pressed it to the base of the monster's throat, firing without hesitation. He had seen how ineffective strikes against Nemesis' head and torso had been. Faith's sword strike had barely scratched his skin. Harry hoped, logically so, that its neck would be more fragile. It was a reasonable assumption, because human necks were pretty fragile relatively speaking, and Nemesis was fundamentally humanoid. However, the scientists at Umbrella had contemplated this potential deficiency and had taken steps to correct it. The bullet ricocheted off Kevlar-reinforced neck bone, bouncing back into the barrel of the gun and causing it to explode, jackknifing to one side and sending Harry crashing onto his butt. Nemesis whirled around, one tentacle lashing out at Harry, who tried to roll out of the way. The first one failed, but another one managed to pick him up, wrapping him in its iron grip and squeezing.

Harry shut his eyes from the pain, willing his magic to permeate the fabric of his body, to strengthen him enough to withstand the assault. Nemesis, frustrated by Harry's resistance, slammed Harry head first down against the steel floor.

"God fuck," he wheezed, apparating out of the way and staggering backward against the computer terminal to catch his breath. Nemesis was once again stalking toward him, its eyes glittering with unrestrained malice. Harry took a deep breath and leapt fifteen feet into the air, timing it so that he came crashing down on Nemesis' shoulders, bending his knees to slide into a crouch and, employing all his strength, delivering a vicious punch to the back of Nemesis' head before leaping off, a tentacle trailing after him even as Nemesis' head was snapped downward from the blow. The force of Harry's punch could have cracked a human skull wide open and was enough to cause Nemesis to stagger forward.

Harry watched and waited as Nemesis gathered himself to chase after him once more. Nemesis issued another rumble and gazed at Harry, studying him, trying to understand what he was. Harry pursed his lips. He had put a lot of hope into his ability to damage Nemesis a little. He was confident he could trade blows with Nemesis for at least an hour, but he began to fear that it would not be enough. Whatever magical abilities he had managed to cobble together were not sufficient for the purposes of arresting Nemesis completely.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could make out Jill struggling with the third power cell. Nemesis seemed to have caught sight of her too, because he reoriented his position to intercept her. Oh no you don't, Harry thought, apparating behind Nemesis, intent on delivering a punch to his lower back.

Nemesis wasn't exactly the sharpest tack on the wall. It wasn't built to do things like calculate friction coefficients or compound interest. It could never get a job as an accountant, because it lacked the ability to remember concepts or to reason out abstractions. It could not build a program to ascertain questions like, "Why is Harry able to disappear and reappear at will?" However, what it did have was the ability to understand causality.

Hearing the distinct pop of an apparation, and remembering that Harry had reappeared behind Nemesis the last time, it lashed out with a tentacle within a half-second reaction time, so that Harry was still in mid-punch when the tentacle slammed into his face, lifting him off his feet and sending him smashing into a wall three metres away. By the time Harry managed to see through the fog of pain and dizziness, Nemesis was already bringing his fist down on top of Harry's head., catching him off guard and flattening him against the ground.

Harry's jaw slammed into the ground, the sound of teeth breaking and his jaw bone cracking reverberating through his skull. An ordinary person would have passed out from the pain, but Harry's magic was flaring to life, desperate to keep him alive. Through watery eyes, he could make out a giant foot coming toward him at high speed. No, Harry thought distantly, apparating on instinct so that Nemesis' foot only ended up kicking midair. Harry reappeared in a heap twelve feet away. He tried to pick himself up, his entire body trembling from the two direct hits he had just taken. Touching the back of his head, he could feel his hand grow slick with blood. He got to his feet and promptly collapsed down onto one knee. Goddamn, he thought, gritting his teeth and rising again. Nemesis picked Harry up by his throat and lifted him into the air, struggling to crush his windpipe as his magic flared around him, searing through Nemesis' skin, hands, sinew and bone.

"Grrr," Nemesis rumbled, unwilling to let go despite the ferocity of Harry's magical attack. Having played with his magic enough to get a feel for it, Harry was able to partially direct his magic on a conscious level, magnifying its output to something far higher than mere accidental magic could generate. At first, Harry's magic simply began to burn Nemesis' skin away at temperatures in excess of one thousand degrees Kelvin, but then, at some point, it simply began shredding the molecular bonds that held Nemesis together, working its way through each layer of skin and bone and fluid. Nemesis squeezed harder, but he understood that Harry was killing him faster than he was killing Harry. Showing something akin to disgust for the first time, Nemesis threw Harry to one side, sending him landing on the floor and rolling to a stop eight feet away.

Harry spat out a combination of blood and tooth chips as he tried to flex his fingers. He knew he was done for. The best he could hope for was to simply apparate back and forth, continuously dodging Nemesis in the hope that Jill would find a way to rescue him. And, if push came to shove, he would have to simply abandon her and find a hole to crawl in to lick his wounds. He had done all he could. He was barely fit to stand, and it would do him no good to waste time even trying. He could sense Nemesis approaching, resolved to take whatever abuse was necessary to stamp Harry out of existence.

His vision still blurred by tears and pain, Harry could only barely make out the bright flash of fire, which swallowed Nemesis whole and knocked him clean off his feet. From beyond the image of fiery carnage, Harry could make out two figures, bathed in the halo of orange firelight.

-Scene Break-

Xander and Dawn had followed the sound of fighting. For a moment, they just stared, transfixed by the events unfolding. Harry was being lifted into the air by a giant tentacle stretching out from what looked like a Frankenstein's monster cracked out on steroids.

"You reckon we ought to lend a hand?" Dawn asked uncertainly, glancing behind her to make sure nothing else was about.

Xander unslung his rocket launcher and pointed it in Nemesis' general direction. "We can't hit that thing without hitting his hostage."

Nemesis slammed Harry's body down against the ground.

"Ouch! That's gotta hurt," Dawn commented.

"Yeah, we might just have to risk it."

But then, in a blink of an eye, Harry disappeared, reappearing some distance away and collapsing against a computer terminal for support. Xander aimed the rocket launcher, but before he could pull the trigger, Nemesis had already stalked toward Harry, closing a sufficient amount of distance such that Harry would have been caught in the backwash of the fiery explosion.

"Dammit," Xander muttered, lowering the rocket launcher slightly.

Harry proceeded to leap into the air with enough speed that Xander thought he had teleported again. It wasn't until he saw Harry land on the hulk's shoulders that he realized Harry had jumped. What struck Xander and Dawn as the most peculiar, even above and beyond the ability to teleport, was the fact that Harry seemed to land on Nemesis' shoulders as though he weighed no more than a mere leaf. And then, simultaneously, he delivered a forward, jabbing punch with the base of his palm that had enough force to drive Nemesis to his knees, while, an instant later, leaping off Nemesis' shoulders fast and hard enough to avoid a vicious swipe of a tentacle.

"Nice," Dawn remarked. "Maybe he doesn't need our help after all."

"Yeah," Xander said, keeping his one eye fixed on Nemesis, not prepared to let his guard down for an instant.

They then watched as Harry used his teleportation trick again, only to get caught by a backhand swipe of a tentacle, sending him crashing into a nearby wall. Nemesis swiftly closed the distance between them, not prepared to give Harry an inch. He delivered a hammer punch that fractured Harry's jaw.

"Jesus," Dawn said, wincing at the sight of Harry's body collapsing against the ground.

Harry teleported once more, but Dawn and Xander could now see that it was taking its toll. And Nemesis was committed to taking Harry down. He ran up to the boy wizard and lifted him into the air. Xander and Dawn watched, fascinated as a bluish glow surrounded Nemesis' fist, disintegrating the skin wherever it touched, slowly exposing the dark, obsidian bone underneath, and the black ichor that kept it alive. Nemesis threw Harry once more, sending him sprawling across the ground.

Again, Nemesis was closing the distance between himself and Harry. Only this time, his back was to Xander, who decided that he wasn't going to get a better shot than this. Hopefully, Nemesis' body would act as a barrier to the explosion, protecting Harry from the worst of the blast.

For a moment, as he pulled the trigger, Xander revelled in the feeling of power that coursed through him. It was a feeling of power he was unaccustomed to as the Scooby sidekick to the slayer, but one which he had felt keenly once before. Once when, coincidentally, he had been holding a rocket launcher, and when he had used it to blow apart another hulking brute of a creature. But that was a long time ago.

Nemesis was swept up in a torrent of fire, pitching him to one side with the force of the blast. Dawn gave Jill a salute as she stopped to gaze at the flaming inferno that Nemesis had become. Seeing that Jill was having difficulty with installing the third power cell, Dawn jogged over to her. "Need a hand?" Dawn asked.

"Yeah, thanks," Jill said, and they got to work.

To Xander's amazement, Nemesis was getting to his feet and turning around to stare at Xander. Nemesis growled once more, his dark eyes framed by the fires still licking at his shoulders. Xander fired another shot, this time impacting Nemesis in the chest. Again, Nemesis was knocked off his feet in a column of flames, this time smoke rising up from his burning body. Xander waited a moment, the rocket launcher still poised, two rockets remaining.

Nemesis did not rise.

Glancing over at Dawn and Jill to make sure they were not in any danger, Xander jogged over to Harry, careful to avoid Nemesis' corpse. "Hey, you okay?"

Harry craned his neck to stare up at his saviour, the skin on his face cracked in several places, blood dribbling out of his mouth and dripping down the back of his head, and soaking his hair. I feel like dog meat."

"It could be worse," Xander replied. "You could have been possessed by a hyena."

Harry blinked, perplexed by the comment, but still having enough faculties to take Xander's now outstretched hand. He stumbled once, then twice, before regaining enough of his composure to stand. He was still wobbly, and, Xander recognizing that Harry was halfway to shock, slipped his arm underneath Harry's shoulder to provide some support. Harry almost immediately collapsed into Xander's half embrace.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, gripping a tuft of Xander's shirt as they stumbled toward Jill and Dawn.

"Didn't you know? I'm the one-eyed man."

"Er,"

Xander waved his words away. "Let's do introductions when everyone's present, yeah?"

"Yeah, sure." Harry used his free hand to wipe drying blood from his face and to begin tentatively touching his jaw. "I got really fucked up, didn't I?"

"Not your best moment, friend."

Jill and Dawn were connecting the last of the wires to the power cell.

"Got it," Jill said, intertwining the last pair of wires. The thing came on-line with a high-pitched buzzing sound. "We've got power," Jill sighed, relieved, glancing at Nemesis' flaming corpse.

"So where's the garage opener?" Harry asked.

"Jesus, Harry," Jill cried out, her eyes widening in an expression of horror. She came up to him and began fussing with his face, gently wiping a bit of drool from his lip and tracing the swelling on his jaw.

"S'okay," he muttered, embarrassed at her ministrations. "I've got a good insurance plan." He pulled back and detached himself from Xander, instead choosing to lean back against a filing cabinet. He felt some of his strength returning to him, though he had no illusions about his injuries. He had a broken jaw and a fractured skull, at the very least. He should have passed out from concussion, and only the gravity of the situation had kept him conscious. Don't think about that now, he admonished. You're not out of the woods yet. You need to get that door open, and deal with whatever the hell's on the other side.

Harry glanced around and saw that Xander was not alone. A brunette, relatively tall and lean was pushing buttons at the computer terminal. She was chatting with Xander, and pointing to something on the screen. Harry noticed Xander's expression turn grim.

Jill meanwhile, was pretty much doing what she always did. She was checking her ammunition, playing with her guns, counting her bullets, fiddling with the straps and holsters in order to improve her draw. They had come out of their battle with Nemesis relatively unscathed, which, Harry had to admit, was a hell of a lot better than they should have. Xander's timing couldn't have been better, and while that was cause for a bit of suspicion, the guy had basically saved Jill's life, and probably Harry's as well. Despite that, however, Harry felt a pang of disappointment. He had gone toe-to-toe with Nemesis and had failed. Sure, he lasted longer than he had any right to, given that he was basically unarmed. His nascent control over his magic made him deadly to any ordinary muggle, which was something he could not have claimed five hours ago. Still, it wasn't enough. He had wanted to taste victory. Too often, he had been pushed around, oppressed, driven by forces he could not control. He felt he was running out of time. He knew he didn't have decades to learn magic, to learn about himself. He probably didn't even have years. His life could be counted in days and weeks and months, and, for his time in Raccoon City, he was counting in hours. Sure, he had made progress, but given the obstacles he faced, his progress wasn't fast enough.

Harry sighed. Well, now's as good a time as any to practice a healing charm, he thought. Taking several deep breaths, he mentally counted down from ten, losing himself in a familiar trance, waiting for his magic to materialize in the low thrum that he was steadily acclimatizing to. Shifting it about with his brain, using metaphysical muscles he had never quite realized existed, he pooled his dormant energies around him, bathing him in that glow that reminded him he was a special, unique little butterfly. He felt his pain ebb away, his magic soothing his nerves. Using magic like this was fundamentally different from wand magic. The kind of molding that took place, the mental power necessary to forge magic into a spell didn't exist. Instead, there was a kind of coaxing that one had to do, a gentle massaging of the magic into the right form. It was the difference between that of blacksmiths and sculptors.

Harry was jolted out of his meditation by the sound of Jill's screams.

-Scene Break-

As far as Jill could tell, the whole world had gone bonkers.

Harry couldn't have been more than eighteen years old. Hell, he looked more like he was fifteen, though she had to admit that looks could be deceiving when you had a pair of giant wings sticking out your back. God only knew what Umbrella had been doing to him. Still, she had seen him fight again and again, and there was no reason to think that he could have stood up to Nemesis for more than a mere second. And yet he was still alive.

Though not because he had some sort of unknown, supernatural power at his disposal. No, it was likely the case that he was just fast. Whatever doubts she had harbored about his motives had lessened somewhat since his entirely too reckless stance against Nemesis, in which he suffered some pretty severe injuries. He had been inches from death. Though she had paid little to what he had been doing, instead desperately trying to connect the power packs to their respective generators, she had managed to catch sight of Nemesis backhanding him with one tentacle with enough force to splatter him across the far wall. It was a miracle he had survive that.

She had to give the kid credit. He had the brashness of youth.

And, just as she had been coming to accept that Harry Potter, with all his oddities, existed, quite conveniently, in the midst of a desperate battle to survive a zombie horde, she had to run, also quite conveniently, into a pair of really strange kids. One of them clearly still in her teens, and the other, some one-eyed Californian with a frigging rocket launcher. And the girl, Dawn, had a peculiarly sophisticated knowledge of computers. Enough to crack a pass code on an Umbrella computer, which, as far as Jill could tell, was theoretically impossible.

It had not been lost on Jill that Harry hadn't understood what the giant ring structure was that occupied a good portion of the warehouse. That had given her some comfort. If he didn't know what a rail cannon looked like, then maybe there was still hope for him yet. Maybe he wasn't an Umbrella goon after all.

But Xander knew. Jill could see it in the expression of surprise that crossed his features for a brief moment, before he schooled his face into an expression of neutrality. And Xander knowing what a giant, experimental rail cannon looked like at first glance did not comfort her. Who were these people?

All these puzzles were starting to give her a headache.

Dawn had pretty much usurped control of the computer terminal, which Jill was more than hesitant about, but, since she herself could not have gotten past the login screen, she had to concede that Dawn deserved first crack at rifling through its contents. And then Dawn had made that flippant, almost dismissive comment about how she could see on the radar the trajectory of the missile, which was apparently scheduled to eradicate Raccoon City in thirty-five minutes. Jill had to pause and stare out the bay doors to reassure herself that the helicopter was still there.

Glancing over at Harry, she noted that he had slipped into some sort of meditative trance. It was something she had noticed him doing intermittently during their time together. She hadn't understood at first what he had been doing, thinking that maybe he was narcoleptic or something, but he had always maintained a sufficient level of awareness, leading her to conclude that it was probably something more akin to Zen-Buddhism. She had heard that Muslims were crazy about praying, and maybe this was sort of similar. The way some people were really crazy about coffee breaks. Brad had been like that. he had stuck to the rules no matter what, like a mantra, he would chant STARS protocol in his sleep, as though it would give him some kind of inner strength.

Everyone had their own Gods, she supposed.

That was why, even after she had checked and re-checked her weapons, she found herself hanging awkwardly next to Xander, who was just leaning back against the computer console and staring off into space with his one good eye, while she checked the action on her shotgun. Marshall's was an old make and he had made a couple of upgrades that made it notorious for firing. He had apparently wanted to ramp up his firing ratio, though for what purpose, Jill could not fathom. All she knew was that it made the weapon devastating in its effectiveness, though, at the same time, it was pretty high maintenance.

"It looks like pretty much everything here has been rerouted through this terminal. The entire warehouse is designed to be independent of the overall facility," Dawn said, typing and clicking furiously. "And this terminal is the nerve center. We can control the lights, the doors, all the electrical outlets, pretty much anything you can think of."

Jill had briefly entertained the idea of arming the rail cannon and using it to help Harry, if he survived long enough. However, she hadn't been able to find the arming mechanism, and so she had abandoned the idea. It was thus truly fortuitous that Xander had arrived with superior firepower.

"Does it control the rail cannon?" Xander asked idly, glancing in Dawn's direction.

"Er, yeah, I think so. Let me just look into it." Dawn scrolled through all the power output devices and eliminated all the ones she recognized. Amongst the unknowns, she quickly scanned through and found the rail cannon. "FYI, the model number's RX-85. Sound familiar?" Dawn glanced up to both Xander and Jill.

Xander just shook his head while Jill said, "No, it doesn't."

Dawn shrugged. "Well, it doesn't really matter. It's still going to take five minutes to figure out which output belongs to the doors, and then to figure out how to control them."

It was at that point that Jill felt it.

something visceral was in the air; it was the stench of sweat, and internal bodily juices. Her nerves still frayed and her body still queued for a fight, she glanced around, her gaze resting on Nemesis' corpse.

Jill blinked.

Some sort of fluid was leaking out of its wounded abdomen. A fluid, she was certain, that hadn't been leaking before. Hesitating, too many memories of being hunted stealing her courage, Jill paused to take a deep breath and regain her composure. She then proceeded to head towards the creature, taking care to keep a good distance and to track it with her gaze.

The multiple grenade rounds and the two rockets had turned its resilient skin into a burnt, flaking exterior. It reminded her of the skin on Swiss Chalet chicken, all crispy and brown. Now that burnt exterior was fissuring, cracks spreading across its surface like a flaking pie crust, translucent juices dribbling out, and, out of that cesspit of necrotic, viral tissue rose something more terrible than anything she could have ever imagined.

Jill had survived a surprising amount of zombies during her career as a STARS member. She had been, quite understandably, inured to them. When she first killed a zombie, she had mourned for them, their lives, their memories, their hopes and dreams, which would never be realized. She had fixated on the blood leaking out of their wounds, the grey tinge to their skin, their hands still curled into claw like compositions, rigidifying as rigor mortis set in. Once she had to lead Bravo team into a hostage situation that was very quickly turning to dogs hit. She had killed the lunatic's accomplice, who had been a bit too trigger happy and who did not exercise enough caution. The bullet had collapsed his thorax cavity, depressurizing his chest so that his lungs caved in. He suffocated and bled to death at the same time, his eyes wide, his face contorted as he lived the last ten minutes of his life in agony.

She had not mourned that man. He had made his choice, regardless of what circumstances might have had a hand in guiding him to that point. Others were all too happy to shift the focus to childhood's and schoolteachers and parents, and maybe they were right to do so. But none of that was her problem. She was just a tool like everyone else. Killing that man made the world function.

Zombies were something else altogether. She couldn't rouse that natural apathy that allowed her to subdue humans with quiet efficiency. Her apathy for zombie killing was born out of inculcated repetition. At the end of the day, it came down to her and them, and she was not prepared to go gently into that good night. So she killed them, and she got used to it. However, it seemed that there was a price to pay for all the death and carnage; the sorrow and the pity that was systematically broken down and reassembled into her hatred. Having gone without food or rest for twenty-four hours, coupled with the heavy stressors and her chronic worry about Umbrella backstabbers, Jill's body was shutting down right when she needed it the most. She was going into shock.

The creature, whatever it was, that erupted out of Nemesis, its rippling, stone-coloured skin peeling away like an expired mold, reared up. It had a tubular body with short but stout feet, and it sported a great big, black cyclopean eye that bled black ichor. And, of course, it had a gaping maw filled with terrible fangs.

Jill just stared, wide-eyed at the creature, unable to move, unable to lift her gun, or throw herself to one side. Instead, she just screamed as it fixed its eye on her.

The advance of the monstrosity was halted in a burst of fire. The heat wave buffeted Jill so that she staggered backward and fell down, her body twisting to absorb the fall as her soldier instincts kicked in. She glanced back, her eyes still unfocused, only partly taking in the sight of Xander lowering his rocket launcher and staring in consternation at the behemoth. Jill didn't need to turn back to know that the rocket, this time, had only a nominal effect. Xander leaned over and spoke urgently to Dawn, while gesticulating decisively at the rail cannon.

You need to get up, Jill told herself, but her body didn't seem to want to cooperate. She was tired of running. Who were they kidding? They weren't going to survive. They were thirty minutes from total annihilation and they had a rampaging and seemingly invulnerable science experiment out for their blood.

Glancing over to one side, she saw Harry staring wide-eyed at Nemesis' new look. As if sensing his gaze, Nemesis turned its one eye to Harry. Seeming to recognize him from its previous incarnation, it oriented itself and lunged with raptor-like speed and precision, crossing the five metres between them in under one second. No ordinary human could have dodged such an assault.

But Harry was no ordinary human.

Jill blinked as she continued to stare at the spot where Harry had been occupying an instant before the creature smashed into the floor and the filing cabinet Harry had been leaning against. The cabinet, which was not designed to withstand the thousands of foot pounds of force that had just assaulted it, cracked clean through the middle, metal grinding on metal as the momentum of the creature carried it forward several feet.

It roared, but Jill was not paying attention. Somebody was trying to bodily lift her up. For a moment, she felt that strange tingling sensation that she had felt when Harry had hurled them off the cathedral rooftop. She looked up, and, sure enough, there was Harry lifting her into his arms, even though she probably weighed more than he did, given that he was bone thin and two inches shorter than her.

"You disappeared," she blurted out, the odd statement breaking her from her moment of shock.

"Er, yeah," he mumbled. "Surprise?"

"Get over to the thing!" Xander called, waving and pointing in their general direction.

"Huh?" Harry asked.

"Go to the monster!" Xander tried again, still pointing emphatically.

Jill gazed up at Harry's baffled expression. "Go to the monster?" Harry asked incredulously, staring at the giant quadruped that was turning itself around and aiming for another attack. "Are you fucking out of your mind?"

"Not that monster!"

Just then, a voice boomed over the intercom system.

"CANNON ARMED. COUNTDOWN WILL NOW COMMENCE. FIVE."

Jill struggled to free one of her arms so that she could raise it and catch Harry's attention.

"Huh?" he asked again, casting about in search of the new voice, though Jill could tell that most of his attention was focused on Nemesis. Idly, Jill noticed that the swelling around his jaw had mostly dissipated, as though he had been applying an icepack to it for the last five minutes. She resolved to put that oddity, like all the others that surrounded Harry out of her mind for the moment.

"He's referring to that monster," Jill explained, pointing to the carcass of a creature long since having been fossilized.

"FOUR."

But Harry did not have time to pay attention. Nemesis launched itself again, this time leaping to the spot right in front of Harry and swiping at him with its head. Moving faster than he had any right to, Harry managed to evade the swipe of its head and its jaws, coming out of the assault with nothing more than a few drops of saliva that had been expelled from its mouth and which splashed across Harry's neck and back.

"THREE."

"Go," Jill said, pointing to the carcass, knowing that she didn't have much time to explain to Harry, but knowing that she needed to do so at some point in the next three seconds.

Reacting without instinct, he leapt, narrowly evading another swipe and landing dead center in front of the cannon. For the first time, he seemed to realize that the giant telescope thing wasn't really a telescope at all.

"TWO."

"Er, is that thing powering up??" Harry asked.

The electromagnetic fields from the induction coils were making Jill's hair curl with static. Preferring to die on her feet, she pulled herself out of Harry's deceptively strong grip and set her feet on the floor, ignoring the jarring feeling of activating her muscles to carry her own weight. She wasn't quite able to manage carrying herself under her own power, so she half-fell into Harry's arms, grunting.

"ONE."

Harry seemed to have realized what was going on as Nemesis loomed menacingly over them, taking care to cut off all avenues of escape with its enormous body. "We're going to die," Harry noted.

"Unless you disappear," Jill added uncertainly. "You can disappear, can't you?"

"I won't be doing that," he replied. "Either we get out together, or we don't get out at all."

Whatever doubt Jill may have still been harboring about Harry's sincerity evaporated at that moment. You just couldn't distrust somebody who was prepared to die needlessly in your arms.

"ZERO."

The last thing Jill saw before the giant creature occluded the rail cannon from view was the flash of the induction coils glowing a blinding white from the tremendous electrical current that was piped through them.

-Scene Break-

Even before its metamorphosis, Nemesis had been bullet proof. Anything short of a chain gun would have simply been a minor irritation. Harry had noted that its skin was leathery or perhaps like that of a reptile. While it was a reasonable assumption, it was incorrect. The truth was, not even the scientists that created Nemesis knew exactly what it was. They had been playing with viruses, pushing their experiments into dangerous territories where not even they knew what would result. That was what Umbrella demanded of them every day of every year of every decade for the last two hundred years. For the most part, scientists had been stumbling around in the dark, which meant that ninety-nine percent of their work led to dead ends. Nemesis was the result of that other one percent.

The T-virus, which had been the original template for Nemesis, had had its DNA recombinated so that it began producing a quasi-synthetic compound that was flexible, porous and very strong. The scientists were still trying to understand what the material was, and how they could replicate it safely and cheaply.

However, after its metamorphosis, thanks to a selectively advantageous mutation generated out of the crucible of multiple rocket blasts, the virus had begun production of a new compound, this one not so flexible but which was harder than diamonds, and which had begun working its way through the respiratory system, reinforcing wounded areas, giving body and depth to the viruses that were hard at work feeding off Nemesis' corpse for the reconstruction of a new host system. With a replication rate that would make the most malignant cancer envious, the viruses swiftly and efficiently generated a host that embodied the most basic instinct of life: the need to survive.

And survival meant food.

The creature's skin was impervious to bullets. It was highly resistant to heat, metal shrapnel, and other sharp instruments. Even if one managed to cut through its epidermis, the creature's most sensitive internal workings, its central neural net, was coated in the new advanced crystalline substance, which functioned like a protective bone around the otherwise sensitive nerve fibres. Not even continuous fire of eighty millimeter rounds from a Soviet CCVL tank could damage those nerves.

Fortunately, the rail cannon was an order of magnitude above any of that. The rails were four metres long, and made of magnetized soft iron. There was a sophisticated cartridge system that loaded the two hundred gram, Kevlar-tipped, armour piercing bullet, equivalent to a one hundred twenty millimeter anti-aircraft round into the rail chamber. From there, the bullet was kept from being propelled forward by a Kevlar coated shutter. Because the energy field necessary to generate a supersonic bullet often had the unfortunate effect of melting the induction coils, the shutter had to be dropped precisely when the magnetic field reached its peak, so that the current could be cut as quickly as possible.

The bullet spent exactly one two hundredth of a second travelling through the cannon from the point the shutter went down. At the point of post-ejection, the bullet was travelling at approximately six times the speed of sound, which was about two thousand metres per second. Having enough energy to carve through six feet of solid oak and still puncture a human chest bone. the two hundred gram bullet, carrying a kinetic energy of four hundred thousand joules, tore through the skin of the monster as though it were made of paper. However, that is not to say that the bullet entered the creature with any measure of surgical precision. The momentum that bled from the bullet into the surrounding tissue was so high that the bullet exploded the surrounding flesh and juices in all directions, causing gore to splatter across the floor as the bullet continued its orgy of destruction inside the creature's body.

As big as Nemesis was, a bullet travelling at supersonic speeds only required a miniscule fraction of a second to traverse its entire length. In this case, however, the bullet never exited out the other side. Fortunately for all parties involved, all except Nemesis, the first bullet impacted Nemesis's central nerve system. The bullet collided squarely against the protective bone in what was a near-perfect elastic transfer of momentum. The shock of having hundreds of thousands of joules of energy transferred to it in the blink of an eye overwhelmed the molecular bonds holding the crystalline compound together. the bone cracked like an egg, with deep fissures running up and down its length and spreading over its surface for thirty-six inches. The bullet did not survive so well. The opposing action, Newton's second law, caused the pointed ball of iron to shatter into a thousand pieces, each no bigger than an iron filing, and each still having enough momentum to surge like shrapnel to all sides, lacerating all the auxiliary organs that kept Nemesis functioning optimally.

Nemesis emitted a piercing shriek as it thrashed about on the spot.

"It looks like it's trying to hump itself," Dawn commented idly. She let her hand slide down and tap the enter key on the keyboard. A little light on the screen blinked, and a note at the bottom indicated that the cannon was charged and ready to go. Dawn clicked on the automate option: bypass security protocols. Dawn couldn't help but smile.

Within another two seconds, the rail cannon discharged another round. And, for each second after that, for the next five seconds, the cannon issued a steady stream of three rounds per second, each one gouging a new hole in the creature's body. The eighth round managed to impact the nerve center, this time, completely shattering the bone and severing what passed for the creature's spinal cord. It went taut for a brief second before going limp. The cannon continued to discharge round after round until the heat from the electrical current melted the rings, causing them to ooze into molten puddles of slag at the base of the cannon.

Nemesis was certainly dead. Mostly.

"Do you reckon we should check to see what's left of our allies?" Dawn asked.

"Seems only courteous," Xander replied, pushing himself off the computer and walking over to Nemesis' corpse, careful not to step into puddles of the creature's innards. Dawn was just a step behind.

"Hey, er," Xander called out, not sure what to really say. "Are there any humans in there?"

"Harry? Jill?"

In response, there was a muffled moan buried deep within the mass of oozing flesh.

Xander and Dawn picked their way through the muck and uncovered Harry and Jill, Harry's wings wrapped protectively around them, cocooning them from the worst of the goo. They looked relatively unharmed, save for a shard of synthetic bone that had somehow managed to impale Harry's left wing.

"Oh God, somebody kill me," Harry muttered, blearily opening his eyes and gazing about his surroundings, taking in the carnage, the destroyed rail cannon, the remains of Nemesis' body. "Dead?" he asked, his gaze remaining on the mutilated corpse.

"Looks like it," Xander replied, toeing a bit of sludge out of the way to help clear Harry's path. "Whether it'll stay that way is another question."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, inching his way to a sitting position, mindful of his damaged wing and some bruising on his right leg. "Christ, what I would do for an aspirin right about now." He massaged his leg with both his hands in order to try and get some feeling back into them. He didn't fancy trying to get to his feet until he was certain that he wouldn't just stumble and collapse.

"Er, your wing," Dawn said, gazing at the puncture wound where the stick of bone was still embedded.

Harry glanced at it and blinked. "So that's where all the pain is radiating from," he muttered. Carefully inspecting it, he added with a sigh of relief. "It only pierced cartilage." From the underside, the skin and muscles and tendons were much more visible, including the veins that pumped blood through the wing. There was a moderate spattering of blood from the wound, but, all in all, not enough to be a cause for concern. Harry touched the bone with one hand. It was still warm from having been rooted inside the monster. It was smooth to the touch, like porcelain. "Huh," he said, pondering the strange protrusion. "I don't particularly fancy yanking this thing out," he said.

Jill took that moment to groan. "What hit me?" she said, clutching her head and dragging herself to her knees.

Dawn knelt beside Jill and gave her a quick inspection. "You all right?"

"Yeah, I think so," she replied, taking Dawn's shoulder for support.

"You need to get that out," Xander said, kneeling next to Harry to inspect the bone. "And there really isn't any good way to do it."

"So I figure," Harry said, looking up at Xander. He eyed him speculatively before saying, "You do it."

Recognizing the sense in Harry's comment, Xander nodded. "Yeah, nobody likes pulling off their own band-aids. You ready?"

Harry nodded, bracing himself for the pain. Xander gripped the bone in one hand and placed his other hand on Harry's wing to hold it in place. "On the count of three."

Jill was standing now, and she and Dawn just took a step back and watched as Xander and Harry readied themselves to pull the protrusion out.

"Two."

Harry tensed.

"One." Xander waited another half-second before gripping the bone more tightly and yanking with all his strength. The shard came out with an unpleasant sucking sound that ended in a small pop. Harry squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and his back arched as his nerves became a hotbed of activity.

Xander continued to hold Harry's wing down, while Harry just balled his fists and waited for the initial onslaught of pain to give way. Xander glanced up at Dawn and then motioned with the now freed shard to the computer terminal. Dawn seemed to understand, as she glanced over at the bay doors.

It was time for them to get the hell out of dodge.

After several seconds, Harry's breathing slowed and he managed to take a calm, deep breath.

"You okay?" Xander asked.

Harry nodded and opened his eyes. "Yeah, I'll survive."

"Good. You know it was a smart plan when even the bait survives."

Harry let out a bark of laughter, all the tension dissipating from him. They were free. After the last twenty-four hours of hell, thirty-six if he included his tiff with Faith on the mountain top, they'd finally made it to freedom. Nemesis was down for the count, and all they had to do was walk the ten metres or so to the helicopter, all their limbs intact.

That was when Jill's cry of, "WHAT THE FUCK?" broke Harry from his moment of manic euphoria. Both he and Xander snapped to attention, their gazes landing on Jill, who stood, riveted to one spot at the center of the warehouse, her gaze fixed on some point beyond the bay doors.

They watched as Dawn sidled up beside her, dismay blossoming across her features.

Harry couldn't help but feel a growing pit of dread open up in his stomach.

Jill turned to their direction, her face ashen. "It's gone. The helicopter. They took off without us."

A pall settled over the quartet, and, for several moments, nobody spoke. Finally, Xander asked in a subdued voice, "How long?"

They all immediately understood the question, though Dawn was the one to speak. "Twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes until Raccoon City was wiped off the map, and they along with it.

Xander stood, the bloodied shard slipping from his grasp and rolling in Harry's direction. He went over to Dawn and hugged her. The only thing to break the oppressive silence was Dawn's burst of shuddering sobs. She buried her face in Xander's shoulder, and spoke, through her tears, "We failed them."

Xander said nothing, instead choosing to simply hold Dawn and stroke her hair in a wan attempt to comfort her. Jill just stared sullenly at the space where the helicopter had been not five minutes ago. Even now, she could see it shrinking in the distance.

Harry was the only one not driven to despair. Instead, his attention had been stolen by the shard of bone that lay at his feet. It was about twelve inches in length and it had a diameter of one inch. On one end, a single unicorn feather was impaled on its tip, much of it having been folded around and pasted to the shard by drying blood. He picked it up, studying it intently, rolling it between his fingers, twirling it, swishing it back and forth, and, finally, just holding it, contemplating it. Sparks hadn't flown out of its tip, nor had he felt the familiar rush of warmth that he normally associated with a wand. But these things didn't bother him.

For too long had he been a prisoner to his wand. For too long had he made his wand the center of his magic. His wand did not govern whether he could use magic or not. Magic belonged to him as a matter of right. It flowed through his veins, gave him long life, great strength, resilience muggles could only dream of. A wand was just a tool. A useful tool, to be sure, but a tool nevertheless.

When he first entered the magical world, he had been taken in by all its quirks, its oddities. It had amused and enchanted him, but none of it had compared to that moment when he had gotten his wand. It had been the first time he had been suffused with that warm feeling. That feeling that told him he was a wizard. And ever since, he had always been scared that, by losing his wand, he would somehow no longer be a wizard. Certainly, that was the impression Dumbledore and Fudge and the rest of the wizarding world had always presented him with. Hadn't that been the biggest threat they could muster against him back during his fifth year? the breaking of his wand? Harry marvelled at how such an insignificant piece of wood could command so much attention. The wand was the symbol of wizarding power. Elves were not allowed to use them, and neither were goblins. But the wand was a prison as well. Through it, witches and wizards had gained dominion over the magical world, but, paradoxically, they had also chained themselves to it. A wizard was nothing without his wand.

Harry was not going to let himself be drawn into that trap again. Sparks would not fly out of his wand just because he mindlessly waved it around. Magic would only flow when he willed it to flow. The idea that he could accidentally blow his own buttocks off by placing his wand in his back pocket seemed patently ridiculous to him now. That lack of control over his own magic was something he would never again tolerate.

Harry pointed the makeshift wand at the rail cannon and gave it an experimental flick. If it were his holly and phoenix feather wand, Harry would have expected that a few sparks would have flown out. The connection between his own magical core and the magical focus, brought together by the wood, would have automatically been forged, with next to no conscious thought. Even though nothing happened with the bone wand, Harry could feel the magical focus quiver as though responding to his attempt. Out of the corner of his eye, he absently noted that the other three had wandered off past the bay doors, probably to spend their last minutes searching the skies for the object that would claim their lives.

"Come on," he muttered. "There's got to be a way to do this."

Harry pushed his magic outward, attempting to be both gentle and firm. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally crack the bone. One of the things he had noted in the last five hours is that his magic tended to dissolve easily into the air, most likely, he surmised, because it was unfocused. The dissipation effect meant that it was very hard to summon enough energy to do anything significant. It meant that he was limited to casting wandless spells on himself. However, he had also noticed that he had some success casting spells on objects that he was in physical contact with. Harry pressed his magic forward, running his fingers along the smooth surface of the bone, trying to coax his magic through it, to build that connection through the wand handle into the magical focus.

It was a long and tedious affair and it was causing blisters to form on Harry's palms, but he did not care. He felt something working, something giving way. The obsidian sheen of the bone was degrading to a matte finish, which in turn was turning to a mottled charcoal colour. Simultaneously, he felt his magic oozing through the handle, the way a stubbornly viscous milkshake would ooze up through a straw. And when his magic finally penetrated all the way up the handle, devouring the last of the bone's luster, the tip exploded in a burst of blazing sparks, ranging through all the colours of the rainbow.

Harry grinned. He could feel it now. The connection, like his old wand but different. He casually pointed it to the far wall and fired off a stunner, the red light splashing against the concrete surface and thinning into oblivion.

Harry stood, following the others into the courtyard, content in the knowledge that their freedom was assured.

-Scene Break-

"Do you hear that?" Nicolai asked in a soft, sinister voice.

there was another rumble and another roar that emanated from inside the warehouse.

"That is the sound of your friends dying."

"Go fuck yourself," Faith wheezed through gritted teeth. she was fighting it as hard as she could, but the pain was overwhelming, forcing tears to slip through her eyes and down her cheeks. She couldn't believe this was happening. Her entire body was trembling from pain and exhaustion and humiliation. She had never known rage like this before; the kind of rage that was born out of absolute impotence.

Nicolai hadn't given her even a second to dispatch Carlos. He had duly recognized her as the far bigger threat and had swiftly fired a bullet into her right kneecap while her attention was diverted. He had then discharged a pair of bullets into Carlos' brain, destroying whatever was left of his neural function and sending him sprawling to one side with a well-placed kick to Carlos' hip, as though Carlos were just a piece of clutter that needed to be knocked aside.

Even in her pain-induced stupor, Faith knew she needed to get Carlos' gun, but it was no use. Nicolai had already zeroed in on it and neutralized it with another round of his magnum.

Now he was hovering over her, relishing his victory, raking over her body with his hungry eyes.

"You're a special one," he murmured. "Faith Lehane, the second slayer. Sidekick, wannabe, the second fiddle. Poor little Faith, full of all that self-loathing, all that desperate want. That unbridled need to be loved, accepted for your mind and your heart. Did it feel good, going to prison, Faith? Did you feel like it was worth it? Your freedom for a vampire's respect? I bet it did. So much so that you broke out of prison to save him. It was very touching to read that part."

"How?" Faith asked, despite herself. she knew he was baiting her, taunting her, but she couldn't help but give into it. She was sick and tired and hungry and injured and weak, and worst of all, she was alone. And this creep, with his pedophile leer was messing around with her mind, toying with her, and she needed answers. "How do you know all this?"

Nicolai smiled that sinister smile, and Faith knew that she wasn't going to like the answer. Not one bit.

Nicolai knelt down and stroked her hair. "Don't you wonder where your powers have gone? Can you not see the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle? Can you not put it together?"

Faith reached over, acutely aware of her sluggishness. She hoped she still had enough strength to take him by surprise. She grabbed Nicolai's wrist with surprising speed, but it was not enough. Nicolai brought his other hand down, clobbering Faith on her own wrist, forcing her to relinquish hold of his gun hand. "Now, now, that is no way to treat your superiors," he admonished, waving a finger in her face.

Faith did not respond, instead just focusing her gaze on his. "There is no missile, is there?" she finally said. "That was just a ruse."

Nicolai scowled and glanced back at Carlos' corpse. "I didn't want to kill him. He was a good soldier."

Faith reached her hand over again, pushing it as fast as she could, grabbing onto Nicolai's arm once more. instead of trying to use brute strength, however, she instead dug her thumbnail into the soft flesh of his wrist, causing him to curse.

Come on, Faith thought, just a little more.

But before she could wedge her thumb into his vein, Nicolai leaned forward, crushing his knee into her face, grinding her nose and breaking it. The pain was intense. She could feel cartilage giving way and heat blossoming in its wake. Faith cried out and snapped her hand back, in an attempt to push his knee away, but Nicolai just pressed harder, the hard bulge of his kneecap moving downward and putting mind-numbing pressure on her teeth. Faith thought she was going to black out from all the pain, but Nicolai released the pressure and pulled his leg back completely.

"bitch," he said, standing and nursing his cut wrist. "Obviously you don't want to play. We'll just get a move on, then."

Faith touched her face tentatively to see what damage he had inflicted. Sure enough, her nose was broken and bruised, but her teeth, thankfully, were still in place. She knew her slayer healing would fix her up as good as new, assuming that it hadn't been suppressed.

Suppressed.

faith blinked. Was it possible? Was that what had been done to her?

But how could it? She had never experienced it before, but Buffy had. In fact, Buffy would have been the only slayer to that was still alive. It was an arcane, obscure and totally pointless ritual that was a relic of the old council.

The cruciamentum.

Buffy had only ever mentioned it in passing, and she had had nothing good to say about it. Usually, she only brought it up to highlight just how clueless and misguided the Watchers' Council had been.

But how the hell would these clowns know about something like that?

The possibility of the cruciamentum was the only explanation she could think of, but it was too farfetched to believe. Even if they had discovered the suppression drug, they hadn't had an opportunity to administer it.

Unless it came part and parcel with her belongings. Unless it left England with her.

Faith felt a cold chill creep down her back as the distinct possibility that she had been set up worked its way through her brain.

There were still far too many questions that needed answering. Faith tried to recall everything Buffy had ever said about the ritual, which, in actuality, was very little. The drug was mostly contemporaneous with her loss of powers. She had been on the drug for a day or two before it started to take effect. That made sense, Faith thought. She hadn't drank from her water bottle until they were on the plane, and even then, she had only drank in small doses, choosing to save it for use in emergencies. Her last sip had been nearly twenty-four hours ago.

"So you went to all this work to capture me?" Faith asked. "That's rather flattering. How did you know I would be here?"

"So the second slayer seems to have come to some conclusions, has she?" Nicolai sneered, absently pawing at his wounded wrist.

"Yeah, well-" Before Faith could deliver a witty retort, Nicolai's boot connected with her head, cutting her off in mid-sentence and making her see black spots. By the time her head cleared, she found that her hands had been shackled behind her back.

"You were never supposed to make it to Raccoon City," Nicolai said, attaching a rope to the cuffs and dragging Faith across the cement, completely apathetic to the skin that was being grated off her arms and back. Faith could barely make out Nicolai's words, but she knew she had to in order to get some information. Pain she could handle. Information was what she needed.

"The cruciamentum was supposed to have taken effect by the time you reached the base of the mountain. You were supposed to have collapsed from exhaustion by the time you reached the top and you were supposed to be picked up then. You were two days ahead of schedule. I thought it was fitting that you should be caught at the same place where the first slayer, the true slayer, had been caught."

Faith took in that tidbit with a thoughtful frown that was mostly obscured by her wince of pain. Two days ahead of schedule... she thought. Cruciamentum, the mountain top. It sounded like Giles had been the one to rat them out, but it didn't make sense. Leaving aside the fact that Giles was one of the do-gooders, he had discussed Faith's change of plans. With the introduction of Harry's magic, they had been able to expedite her itinerary.

Okay, she thought, maybe it was some sort of underling. A grunt that had access to some information, but didn't know what it all meant. Maybe someone just copied all the files from the head office and the Umbrella goons picked and chose what they liked.

But somebody had to get the potion into her water bottle.

Faith was thrown unceremoniously into the backseat of the helicopter with Nicolai getting in the front. There had been a lull in the sounds of carnage coming from the warehouse, but now they had picked up again. Whoever's in there is putting up one hell of a fight, Faith thought absently as she watched the ground fold in on itself, shrinking as the buildings of Raccoon City's downtown came into view.

"So what then, it was just luck that I ran into you in raccoon city?" Faith asked.

"Precisely."

"that's not a very diabolical plan. No offense."

"None taken, Faith," Nicolai said, pushing the helicopter forward as fast as it would go. "We assumed you would either be killed by a zombie wandering around in raccoon City, or you would be annihilated by the tactical strike. If, somehow, you managed to escape, well, we had all the exits and entrances into the city being watched for escaping zombies, so we would have simply picked you up as well."

So there really is a tactical strike, Faith mused, feeling an uncharacteristic stab of pity for the people down below. They had been putting up a real fight against the monsters, from what she could tell from the sounds, and here they were going to get themselves wiped out by a giant missile. Not that she was in a position to do too much pitying. She was broken and abused and was being carted off to become a lab rat for some seriously twisted fucks.

"So why are you doing all this?" Faith asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. In all her years, she had pretty much come to the realization that there were two reasons why people did evil things. either they were just plain evil, or they were misguided. Faith was pretty sure Nicolai was in the former category, but she wanted confirmation.

However, Nicolai didn't respond.

"So I assume you're conducting tests on us, then?" Faith said, trying a different tact.

Nicolai nodded.

"You want to figure out our secrets?" Faith prodded, searching for some more information. "You know, reproduce us, make cures for third world countries and all that stuff?"

"Consider it your civic duty."

"I'm an escaped felon. I don't really have a civic duty. I can't even vote."

"True, true," Nicolai replied. "As you have no doubt been briefed, ten slayers were apprehended between here, San Francisco and Sunnydale. One of those was the first slayer. Incidentally, were you aware that Ms. Summers has significantly higher performance specifications than her counterparts? She can lift twenty-three hundred pounds over her head. The others can barely do half that. I am curious to find out whether it is a function of her life experience or a function of the young witch's activation spell. Testing you will help answer those questions."

"Joy," Faith muttered, tentatively testing to see if any of her strength were returning. The cruciamentum had to wear off sometime, and Nicolai obviously didn't know how much or when she had consumed the drug. That meant she still had a chance.

"Ms. Summers can endure far more from our testing procedures than can the other slayers. That makes her invaluable. Five of our slayers failed to survive Umbrella's tender mercies. It is a pity." Nicolai turned around, his one hand still gripping his pistol. He gazed intently into Faith's eyes. "Do you see what a prize you are, Faith? We can learn so much more from the true slayers than we can from the false ones." For a moment, Faith saw a glint of something alien in his eyes, something devoid of humankind, something intelligent and demonic, and the worst part was that she suspected, however paradoxical, that it was not really a demon at all. Nicolai was a true psychopath. He was just born wrong and it made him different from other humans. It gave him the ability to do things that others could not bring themselves to do. "As useful as it is to study Ms. Summer's we need a comparator. One who was made like her, from the same original magic. We need it to control for the magical variance. We need to know why Ms. Summers is different from the others, and we need to explore that difference. Figuring out where you stand in the kaleidoscope of slayer powers is essential. You are the key to answering that question. Did you not bother to question even once why Mr. Giles would send you to the United States where you were a wanted felon? Would it not have made sense to send someone else. Possibly someone older, who would not have become a target? Someone like your ex-lover, Robin?"

"You can't convince me that Giles betrayed Buffy. Maybe he'd sell me out. There's no love lost between us, but he wouldn't do that to Buffy."

Nicolai shook his head, and returned to staring out the window. "I thought you would understand. Everyone breaks. Words like betrayal are just fictions placed onto the truth of human nature. There can be no betrayal, because there can be no trust. Rupert Giles has new allies now. He may not have chosen us, but it is the case nevertheless."

"What did you do to him?" Faith asked.

Faith caught sight of Nicolai's grin in the reflection on the side window. The glass was specifically constructed to avoid reflection, but the angle of the rising sun was just right that it managed to catch Nicolai's visage. "What is the first rule of every slayer, Faith?"

"Don't die," she responded without thinking. She could never remember where she'd first heard that. Possibly it was Buffy, but Faith wondered if maybe it was built into the slayer package. Some sort of primordial survival instinct that transcended time and place.

Nicolai said no more, instead choosing to focus on his flying. After a minute, he picked up the radio and dialed out.

"Control," he said, "This is Colonel Nicolai reporting. The package has been received. Respond."

Nicolai let go of the talk button and waited for the crackle of static to fade. To his dismay, it did not.

He repeated his words into the mouthpiece, but it again had no effect. "I do not understand," he muttered, checking the wires and fiddling with some of the knobs to see if everything was in order.

They were five minutes from the Umbrella military complex, which was nestled in a secluded valley on the other side of the mountain range, about forty kilometres from the edge of Raccoon City. The complex was just visible in the morning light when, all of a sudden, it disappeared in a burst of flames.

-Scene Break-

"Where the fuck is the helicopter?" Jill shrieked, kicking Carlos' mangled gun to one side in a fit of despairing rage.

Xander and Dawn exchanged looks, while Harry stood in the middle of the courtyard, staring somberly down at a broken sword. He knelt, and picked up the hilt, his gaze fixed intently on it, his lips pursing in sober contemplation as he considered the ramifications of finding this particular sword.

This was the one he had made for Faith. He knew it from the look of it, the feel, the weight, the unnaturally sharp edge of the blade. Jill was currently inspecting Carlos' body. He imagined it couldn't be easy for her, seeing another comrade fallen, and, by the look of his skin, having been turned into a zombie beforehand. But at least, despite all that, Jill knew for certain his fate. Harry had no such assurance. Where was Faith?

Harry's first instinct was to assume that she had broken it fighting some particularly large and ferocious creature, like Nemesis. But if that were true, where was the large and ferocious creature now? Had it chased Faith into another room? Another building? That didn't make a lot of sense. Faith wouldn't just leave when there was a perfectly good helicopter waiting here. Harry too had seen the chopper blades. He knew it was sitting out here no less than ten minutes ago. Canvassing the skyline, they had even seen the departing vehicle, though it had been a mere speck in the distance.

Faith was super strong, and super fast and super durable. There was no reason why she would have to be forced to flee from the courtyard when the driver of the helicopter didn't have to. Unless she was doing it in some crazy act of self-sacrifice. Harry couldn't picture Faith being that noble. Besides, that hypothesis didn't include the smashed gun that Jill had ruthlessly kicked into a wall.

Harry went and examined it. The clip had popped out and bullets were scattered across the ground. A lead round had nestled itself in the cocking chamber, demolishing part of the hammer, the latch for the clip and the chamber itself. Why would a human destroy a gun?

To stop another human.

Harry pursed his lips again. "So much for trusting the mercs." Harry briefly wondered whose side Carlos had been on when the shit went down.

Harry was certain that Faith would not have run. What would the point have been? She was here, at the center of the fight, inches from freedom - she would have fought tooth and nail to get on that helicopter. It was likely that she had been shot at. The sword was probably wrecked in the firefight. Without there being any giant monster bodies decomposing, and assuming that such a monster wouldn't have fled until it smashed the helicopter, Harry was prepared to assume that there was no monster at all.

Could Faith have been kidnapped? That made even less sense, unless she had been gravely injured. Harry glanced around. There were blood spatters, but what made them and whose they were remained a mystery.

"Jill closed Carlos' eyes and stood. Harry caught her gaze with his own, and he felt the despair radiating off her in waves. It occurred to him then to wonder why Jill was so hard. Harry had had a tough life, and so had Faith, and they had both come out of it tougher. More importantly, they had both come out of it relatively unscathed. Sure, they had their fucked up moments, and they had violent mood swings, but they weren't like Jill. Jill seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was choking to death. She was as hard as any ordinary person could get, he supposed, but she didn't have the tolerance for this kind of emotional and physical abuse. Her entire world had been torn to shreds, and she was left alone, friendless, forced to stare into the face of a vast chasm each day, always being reminded of her own smallness. He supposed it must have been that quality to her life that made it so difficult to live. She was ordinary. She had no unique powers to speak of, no destiny, no Chosen One status. She couldn't take comfort in the knowledge that she was unique and that those qualities that defined her uniqueness also gave her purpose. She had no Voldemort against which to define herself. All she had was Umbrella, which was a faceless, formless entity made up of halls of mirrors, intersecting, stacked on top of one another, rife with betrayal and the weaknesses of human kind. Jill's despair was an existentialist one.

Harry gazed down at the broken gun. They had fifteen minutes before the entire place was destroyed. Harry wondered how they planned to wipe out an entire city. Were they going to systematically bomb each district? Or were they going to use a nuke and cordon off the entire valley?

Xander and Dawn were having some sort of debate in a corner, where Dawn was talking and Xander was shrugging. No one had any ideas.

Harry tentatively retrieved the stick of bone from the makeshift holster he had created with his belt loops. The realization that the chopper had taken off without them had driven the others into a stupor, which was quite understandable. There was nothing like one's own imminent death to incite a bit of self-reflection. Harry, of course, was not partaking in the catharsis, as he was confident that none of them were going to be left to die. All it would take was the creation of a single portkey. Harry's ruminations had taken him elsewhere.

Harry still hadn't gotten over the shock of possessing a wand. Over the last ten hours or so, he had grown accustomed to its absence, having been forced to contemplate the puzzles each scenario offered in new and exotic ways. His mind had given up relying on the belief that he could create portkeys, vanish objects, conjure, transfigure and heal at will. It had done so as a matter of survival, and it had been a brutal lesson to learn. But now his wand was back, and all those things that he had taken for granted and which had been denied him had, consequently, returned. It was a bit much to absorb.

Harry pretty much trusted Jill. She was a decent sort, even though he had had reservations about her in the beginning. He couldn't quite make the claim that he trusted either Xander or Dawn. Like Jill, he felt their timing was a bit too coincidental. Also, he had yet to see them throw themselves in harm's way on his behalf.

Harry blinked out of surprise, as he just realized that mortal self-sacrifice was a prerequisite to gaining his trust. He shook that concern from his mind, and accepted that, for a long time, it was the way things were going to have to be.

Some would have said that Harry enjoyed breaking rules. That he reveled in the attention, and while it may have been true in some exceptional circumstances, like under Umbridge's reign, generally speaking, Harry abhorred doing so. He only broke as few rules as necessary to get by, or, at least, rules that he thought served no useful purpose. Harry had yet to truly violate the International Statute of Secrecy, and there was a good reason for that. He actually believed in it. Going around doing magic in front of muggles brazenly and without attention to the consequences was a recipe for disaster. Even taking a benign view of what muggle-wizard relations would be like, Harry could see a lot of misconceptions and violence arising out of the friction between the two groups. Any dismantling of the Secrecy Act would require a very well-developed integration system, carefully thought out by a team of experts. And now, having seen the brutality of Umbrella, Harry suspected that secrecy was paramount to wizarding survival. Umbrella had wiped out more people in a day than Voldemort had killed during his entire reign of terror.

And there was the rub. He thought it was likely that Dawn and Xander had seen him perform magic. He was certain that Jill had. At the time, he thought it was justified, since he was in a life or death situation. He hadn't even expected that he would be able to do something about it, even if they had survived. He hadn't thought a wand would end up falling into his lap. But now it had, and Harry had to make a decision. Should he obliviate them?

He wasn't too concerned about Jill. Who would she tell? Who would believe her? But Dawn and Xander were another story. What if they were friends of Umbrella? Umbrella already knew about slayers. They would believe Dawn and Xander if they told a story about a winged kid that could disappear and reappear at will. Harry didn't want to bring that problem down on the wizarding world. Sure, it would probably take years for Umbrella to get anywhere, but then again, Umbrella did have years. It had decades and resources, and Harry didn't want to think about what it would mean for the wizarding world if Umbrella began trying to push its way into it. He didn't want Hogsmeade to be another Raccoon City, and he wasn't so arrogant as to assume that Umbrella couldn't do it simply because he himself couldn't conceive of a way how. Human ingenuity was a dangerous thing.

Harry went over to the broken sword and, with a quick repairing charm, he mended it. With another flick of his wand, he vanished the blood and grime off the sword and then turned it into a portkey before conjuring himself a simple scabbard, glued to his hip with a sticking charm. He picked up the sword by the handle and turned it over, admiring his handiwork. Sometimes, he still had trouble believing in magic. Harry didn't know the first thing about swords. He'd only ever seen one on black and white reruns of Douglas Fairbanks Zorro episodes and then once in the Chamber, where he had used Gryffindor's sword to kill the basilisk. The sword in his hand looked nothing like either of those. It was slender but deceptively strong. it was medium length, about three feet, lustrous and had a curved tip. The blade ran all the way through the hilt, which was encased in wood, with metal bands over top, which were in turn covered by a synthetic, rubber-like tissue, ergonomically designed to accommodate his fingers and his thumb.

"I guess this is good-bye, then," Jill said, coming up next to him and eyeing the sword. "Nice work, by the way."

"Hmm?" Harry asked, drawing his attention away from his creation and turning to gaze curiously at Jill.

"I assume you're taking off. You know, doing that disappearing thing," she replied, behaving with surprising nonchalance. "I just thought I would say good-bye."

"Er, yeah, the disappearing thing. It's called apparation."

Jill smiled. "Must be convenient."

"It is, as a matter of fact."

Jill nodded. "I know you'd take us if you could," she went on, locking eyes with Harry. "You risked your life back there for me." She gestured to the warehouse. "I'm thinking now that you could have taken off whenever you wanted."

"Jill-" Harry began, trying to cut her off.

"No, please, let me finish," she continued, a distinct note of vehemence in her voice. "I get that I don't really know you." She let out a short laugh, her gaze glancing off his wings before returning to face him keenly. "But I do know that you're a noble person. You've proven that, I think. So, I wanted to say thank you, and to let you know that it's okay. You need to go. The world needs you."

Harry sighed. This is what I get for leaving her to brood about her own mortality. Harry opened his mouth to respond and then promptly closed it. He had no idea what to say to that. Finally, he just said, "We're all getting out of here. Right now."

Jill remained motionless, as if not understanding his words. Harry sighed again and hollered to Xander and Dawn, "Oy, you two! Get over here!"

"What do you mean?" Jill asked.

Xander and Dawn approached.

Harry raised the sword so that it was in plain view to all four of them. Laying it flat between his two hands, he said, "this," he shook the sword to emphasize it, "is a sword that I have just enchanted - that's right, - enchanted, to transport us from this place at near instantaneous speed. Each of you put a finger on the blade."

Dawn and Xander exchanged a glance that Harry couldn't identify, while Jill raised an eyebrow questioningly, while complying to Harry's command. Dawn and Xander followed suit.

"Activate."

The quartet disappeared in a swirl of colour.

They reappeared atop Sulfur mountain, in the same spot where Buffy and Willow had been taken and where Faith and Harry had had their little tiff.

With his improved reflexes, Harry managed to not fall, while the others just looked a little queasy.

Now that they were out from under the mountain's shadow, the world looked significantly brighter, the sky a markedly cheerier blue the sun twinkling as though zombies were just the product of overzealous imaginations.

"Incarcerus," Harry said, simultaneously knocking Dawn and Xander off their feet and wrapping them in magically interlocking ropes.

"Wha-fuck?" Xander cried out. Dawn just issued a tiny shriek before they were both neatly settled on the ground. Jill, meanwhile, staggered back and regained her footing long enough to whip out her pistol, her eyes wide. She aimed it at Harry first, and then, uncertainly, aimed it at Dawn and Xander.

"Point that somewhere else!" Dawn cried.

"Harry?" Jill asked, glancing between the two prisoners and Harry.

Harry slid the sword into his makeshift scabbard and tapped it twice to disillusion it. I'm going to have to learn to do that one wandlessly, he thought.

"Yes, Jill?" he replied in his calmest, most soothing voice.

"What - what are you doing?"

"I'm tying up Dawn and Xander," he replied.

"But why?"

"Yeah, why," Xander echoed.

Deciding that it made far more sense talking to Jill, Harry turned to face her, only keeping enough attention on Xander and Dawn as was necessary to prevent them from doing something like escaping. It hardly mattered that he spoke to them anyway, since they were only going to be obliviated. "I don't trust them," Harry explained, deciding to skip the part about the wizarding world and the International Statute of Secrecy. "If you haven't noticed, I'm a winged magical being. I can teleport myself and others at will across great distances. They" he pointed a finger at them, "are liabilities. I hardly want my skills advertised to Umbrella so that I can be hunted ruthlessly. Surely you understand that, Jill?"

"Er, yeah, but what are you going to do to them? Harry, you can't kill them."

Harry stared into Jill's imploring face, realizing that the trust they had managed to forge with one another was not something she was prepared to let go of so easily. Part of him was tempted to simply ask, Why not? but the more rational part of him asserted itself. He replied, "Of course I wouldn't do that." He decided to tack on what he thought was a rather cheesy line, but which was a good way of asserting morals, "That would just mean that I'm stooping to Umbrella's level."

Jill visibly relaxed. She glanced at Xander and Dawn speculatively. "So what then?"

"Yeah, what are you going to do with us?" Dawn asked, a hint of hope in her voice.

"I'm going to modify their memories," Harry replied.

Xander and Dawn both bristled, while Jill just looked confused.

"You can do that?"

"You're so not modifying my memory, wizard boy," Xander said with uncharacteristic vehemence. "Been there, done that. Not a happy place."

"Yeah," Dawn agreed with equal intensity. "Playing with mind magic. Not cool. Not cool at all."

Harry paused to consider their words. They were implying that they had experience with mind magic. At first, Harry was inclined to dismiss it as posturing, but the fact that they described it as mind magic was startling. It would be unusual for people who knew nothing about magic to denote a particular spell by the class of spells. It was unlikely that someone would just spontaneously identify the nomenclature for magic.

"We don't really have time for this, Harry muttered, glancing about searching for the helicopter. Part of him had wanted to just run off and seek out the helicopter. He figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that Faith was on it, and that there was a chance, however small, that the helicopter would lead him to where the other slayers were being held. But he didn't want to leave them in the lurch, or tie them up and stun them while he went out and searched for Faith. He couldn't assume that he wouldn't be disarmed again or possibly injured, and anything could have happened to them while he was away. Besides, he had familiarized himself enough with her that the Point Me spell would suffice to track her down. Making a snap decision, Harry walked over to Xander, knelt down and pointed his wand. Legilimans.

Xander's mind, Harry was surprised to see, was unusually organized. Flipping through his memories, it quickly became clear that Xander was neither an inhabitant of Raccoon city, nor a wandering tourist, nor an Umbrella agent.

Harry broke the connection and just stared, stunned at Xander.

"What, what is it?" he asked. "What the hell did you do to me?"

Harry just sat there for a moment, taking it all in, before he focused his gaze on Xander and said, "You slept with Faith?"

Xander was clearly taken aback by the question, because he did not immediately respond. He didn't even manage to issue a witty retort.

Harry sighed and stood up, taking a step back and vanishing the ropes. "Man, and I thought my life was fucked up," Harry said. "Never been possessed by a hyena before."

"Hey!" Xander cried out, realizing that Harry had just rifled through his memories. "What the hell?"

Harry turned and walked to the edge of the cliff, gazing out at the vast sky, the valleys, the mesh of mountain peaks that rose up around them. Behind him, a trio of fast-moving jets flashed by, staying within their range for no more than a minute, each one discharging a pair of multiple, independently targeted missile clusters. The firepower, which was equal to nearly ten megatons of TNT, vapourized Raccoon City in a sea of flames. Harry wasn't paying attention to it, instead lost to his own thoughts. Regardless, he couldn't ignore the wave of heat that stole over him from the blast. It was truly impressive, given that they had elected to not use nuclear weapons.

Xander whistled. "That's some serious firepower."

"They seem to be concentrating on the outskirts of the city," Dawn commented.

"Yeah, it's so that they create a no man's land for the zombies to get out. Look." The jets passed over again, and this time, they released another volley of missiles, these ones dedicated towards flushing out the interior. By the time it was over, Raccoon City was a smoldering ruin of debris. Any zombies left functioning were either too maimed to move properly, or were damaged sufficiently that their bodies were no longer capable of carrying them outside the wasteland that the city had become. Even for an able-bodied adult it would have been grievously difficult to navigate the mess of torn cement and asphalt that the streets had become. A few of the more resilient creatures that lurked in the sewer system survived relatively unscathed, but they too would succumb in time. The site would be subject to a twenty-four hour guard dedicated to the certain eradication of all Umbrella's experiments. Eventually, Umbrella would begin reconstruction of the site, and, in ten years, it would be as good as new. As though the apocalypse that had hit in the summer of nineteen ninety-six had never happened.

Harry's thoughts were elsewhere. There was something building in the air. An energy unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was as though a cruciatus curse was being cast, only it was being diffused over a vast space, so that, instead of causing a single person excruciating pain, it was causing a great many people a mild discomfort. So faint was it, that Harry doubted he would have noticed if it were not for his increased attunement to his own magic. Caught between this curious dark magic and the titanic destruction of a cozy little resort town, Harry couldn't help but be struck by that same feeling of smallness that he attributed to Jill. He was a small fish in a very big pond.

Jill came up next to him and asked, "What do we do now?"

But Harry didn't answer. That tingle of energy, the resonance of something fundamental, like some sort of metaspell, or transmagic, was building, the way a brushfire catches in a dead forest. Soon, it was alive in the air, streaming out, darkening the light of the sun like a thousand dementors. It became so strong for a brief instant that Harry felt as though his soul were going to be drawn clean out of his body, and then, in a flash, like a balloon deflating, it ebbed away, pulling back, retreating into obscurity, squirreling itself away under its own protective wards.

Jill shivered but she did not understand what had happened. Only Harry did. Somehow, the game had changed. A new power had revealed itself. Something distinct. Something that wasn't slayers, or Dark Lords, or evil corporations.

"I have to go look into something," Harry replied distractedly, still trying to get a fix on whatever that thing was. "I'm not sure how dangerous it's going to be or how long it will take."

"Something magical?" Jill inquired.

Harry nodded. "Yeah."

Jill remained quiet after that, and Harry saw for a brief moment, the vision of a scared little girl, pulling the blanket around her shoulders to insulate herself from the creeping shadows. But then it was gone, and in its place stood Jill, hard, defiant, solitary. "Go on then," she said. "I can make my way down the mountain." She glanced over at Xander and Dawn. "The three of us will go together."

"I can give you another portkey," Harry offered, but somehow, he knew she would refuse.

"I've been up and down this mountain a hundred times. It won't take more than an hour to scale. Thanks anyway, though."

"You gonna head to Denver?" Harry asked. He conjured a bottle of water and half a dozen peanut butter and jam sandwiches, neatly tucked away in a conjured rucksack. "Here," he said. "That should do you for awhile."

Jill took it graciously and quirked an eyebrow at the display of magic, before saying, "Yeah, I guess so." Then, as an afterthought, she added, "I'm not going to ask why we didn't get this treatment before."

"Magic is a fickle friend," he said simply.

Jill went to go talk to Dawn and Xander, and soon, they were saying good-byes and heading down the slope of the mountain. Harry remained to gaze out at the horizon for awhile longer, his mind flush with uncertainty, with paths never before crossed. He was in the garden of forking paths.

THE END

Epilogue

Whatever Happened to that Buffy Girl?

Station x-09 was a dark, ugly place. Its walls were made of bare concrete, and there were very few windows, save for those located in the second floor offices. Most of the building was underground, and that's where the slayers were housed. Each slayer had her own cell. When the slayers had first been brought to the building, they had made many escape attempts. Most of them had been very successful, at least in so far as the slayers had been able to escape their restraints and their cells, and, more often than not, to make it to the perimeter, which was marked by a fifteen foot high electrified fence. None of the slayers except for Buffy had managed to scale it. They were too young, too inexperienced to force themselves to grip the chains, despite the thousands of volts that were trying to lock their muscles and burn their flesh. Buffy had been the only one to make it over the top. Unfortunately, the scarring on her hands, the sheer exhaustion, the toll the electricity had taken on her body had worn her down too much. She had been struck by five tranquilizer darts ten feet from the fence.

when she had awoken, she had found herself locked in her cell once more.

The Umbrella scientists had assumed that steel bars would have kept them in their cages. They were wrong.

They thought the cement walls were impenetrable. They were wrong on that count as well.

The slayers had made fourteen escape attempts, each one craftier the previous. The latter nine were led by Buffy personally, after she had been caught. By then, some of the slayers weren't even interested in escaping. They were merely seeking revenge against their torturers. The price they exacted was very, very high. Twelve guards, three scientists and sixteen support staff were killed. Another forty-five people were grievously injured, many permanently, and some so severely that Umbrella quietly knocked them off so as to avoid the hike in insurance premiums that would have surely followed.

It was a testament to Umbrella's dangerousness that the company did not lose a single slayer in any of the escape attempts. Even Buffy came to appreciate the irony of the situation when it finally struck her. All their escape attempts, all their struggles, their resistance, it did more for Umbrella than any amount of scientific poking and prodding could have accomplished, and it did it in half the time. Pound for pound, they had probably saved Umbrella money.

Every escape attempt had been recorded. Every show of strength. Every preternatural ability that a slayer had was laid bare in those fourteen attempts. Their keen senses, stretched to the breaking point, their superhuman strength, their animal ferocity, their ability to withstand punishment, their stress levels - it was all observed by strategically placed cameras. Each piece of information was catalogued and analyzed.

By the end of the entire exercise, Umbrella had refitted its entire facility so that it became completely slayer proof. The handcuffs were augmented, the steel bars were replaced by solid steel walls. The concrete had been overlaid with a synthetic resin that was just flexible enough to diffuse a pummel from an enraged slayer. Of course, these enhancements alone would not be enough to render a slayer impotent. Humans were still needed to come into close contact with each and every one of them, which meant that there would always be a substantial amount of risk. Various suggestions had been thrown about in the executive offices. Someone suggested that the slayers be starved into submission, kept on the brink of extinction so that they simply did not have the physical energy levels to function properly. However, that suggestion, like all the others, was quickly vetoed. Slayers needed to be in good form for testing purposes. Deprivation strategies would ruin the results.

Eventually, they touched on the cruciamentum, and that's when everything changed. The cruciamentum added a whole new dimension to the study of slayers. Imagine, a drug that was capable of modulating the abilities of a slayer. It was exactly the kind of key that the scientists needed in order to understand the symbiosis that underscored slayer powers. A symbiosis that Umbrella was committed to replicating. Best of all, it ensured the security of the staff.

The slayers were no longer a threat, because all the powers they could have brought to bear had been accounted for and neutralized.

That is, all except one.

At five minutes after four o'clock in the morning, on August 10, 1996, while Faith was having her kneecap demolished by a bullet, Buffy Summers was having a vision. Fifteen minutes later, at precisely twenty-five past four, Buffy was standing over Jorge's body, his throat having been torn out by Buffy's bare hands. She then limped over to a desk chair and collapsed in a heap, quietly sobbing into her blood-laden palms.

After several minutes in which Buffy gathered her wits about her, slowly rebuilt her composure and tried futilely to wipe the drying blood from her hands, she leaned back and closed her eyes in quiet contemplation of her situation. The vision that had gotten her this far had scarcely little more information to go on. She was certain the guard rotation came by Jorge's office at exactly half past and on the hour, which meant that she only had to wait another minute or two to let them pass before slipping out the office door. She was still under the effects of the cruciamentum, which meant that she had no special powers to speak of. All she had was a prolonged bout of nausea that she was fiercely suppressing in order to get the job done. The PTB had sent her a vision, a slayer dream, which meant that this time, unlike all the others, there was a way out of this mess. She just had to figure out what that way was.

She understood Faith better now. Buffy glanced over to Jorge's corpse and found herself reaching over to the office waste basket to silently hurl her previous night's dinner. It wasn't the sight of the dead body that repulsed her so much as it was the fact that she had been the one to cause that mess.

Okay, maybe she couldn't really understand Faith at all. Buffy was appalled by her own actions, her own failing fortitude in the face of her imprisonment. Jorge had caught her rooting around in his office, and, between her fear of getting caught, the close taste of freedom, the memory of having her uterus removed just last week, she went feral. Her blue eyes had darkened considerably. She had thrown herself at him, tossing them both clumsily over a chair and sending them crashing against the ground. That one brief moment of surprise had given Buffy the advantage she needed to drive her fingers deep into his jugular, crushing it in a matter of seconds, and parting the flesh in a burst of red liquid. Even without her slayer powers, Buffy could be a formidable killing machine. Seven years of front-line battle experience taught her how to win and how to put aside her sense of compassion, love and tenderness, the things that she thought made her human, in order to do what was necessary to succeed.

Now it was all hitting her. These cretins, these scientists had destroyed her. They had taken her apart and put her back together again. Only, she wasn't whole anymore. They had always been careful not to inflict physiologically debilitating surgeries on her. Those kinds of tests were reserved for the other slayers. Buffy knew this. Sometimes, she caught sight of dismembered limbs, and she had shuddered. What did they need to dismember them for? Fortunately, that kind of testing was among the rarest. Mostly, they were simply tortured, their endurances measured. Other tests were more innocuous, involving the taking of samples. they took every kind of sample imaginable, ranging from blood, to urine, to spinal fluid. Buffy suspected that they were putting lesions on some of the girl's brains in order to understand the interface between the mystical link and their neurology. Buffy had no idea whether they found anything. She didn't really care about that. All she cared about was the fact that her girls, the ones she had trained personally, had fought with and against, had suffered with - they were being mutilated, and maimed one by one, violation compounding with violation. It was no wonder that Buffy had to cry at least a little bit. She was the hardest, toughest, bitchiest slayer on Earth, but she loved deeply. It's what gave her her strength.

After collecting herself, she picked up Jorge's key ring and slipped out of his office, careful to gently close the door behind her. She knew from some of the comments of her interrogators that every square inch of the facility was covered by surveillance cameras. She had to assume that they weren't manned around the clock. There was simply no way for her to execute a successful escape attempt unless she was able to move undetected for quite some time. Most of her plan relied on the brute strength of other slayers. She had to hope that they weren't all under the cruciamentum. As useful as her slayer dream had been, and as useful as it was to be free in the pre-dawn hours, they needed serious muscle to escape this mess.

Ironically, the cruciamentum actually increased the success rate of an escape attempt. Umbrella had relaxed their guard presence at the facility, content to assume that the automated security measures were sufficient to contain the slayers. That too, proved to be exceptionally helpful. Instead of having to unlock each and every cell manually, Buffy was able to control them at the main security console. She opened every single one though it was hardly necessary to do so. Half the cells were empty, courtesy of Umbrella's science goons. Half of them were dead or too gravely mutilated to deal with.

However, opening the electromagnetically sealed cell doors was not the primary objective of the mission. No, the PTB had given her something else, and, when she spotted the computer terminal nestled to one side of the main computer system, Buffy understood that it was time to fulfill her mission parameters. It was currently twenty-minutes to five.

She had seen this computer terminal in her dreams. It was more or less nondescript, save for a purple teletubby that was glued to the top of the monitor. In her dream, she had seen a particular screen display. It had been black and white, utilizing the old school command prompt system characteristic of DOS and UNIX. On it, a single command had been typed out. It was a long and complicated twenty-three character alphanumeric pass code. Only three executives knew of its existence, and only one of them actually had the code.

Buffy hit the enter key, and briefly closed her eyes.

Five seconds later, klaxons began sounding throughout the building. The lights were cut, plunging everything into darkness for another five seconds, until the red emergency lights kicked in.

"DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVATED. COUNTDOWN BEGINS IN FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE. FIFTEEN MINUTES REMAINING."

At precisely five o'clock, as Raccoon city was consumed by flames, a series of underground, strategically placed mines would be detonated, designed to vapourized the key executive rooms of the building, destroying all relevant evidence, as well as shattering all the foundational keystones that kept the building together. By five after five, the entire building would be a smoldering tomb.

The activation of the self-destruct sequence was the slayers' best shot at survival. Even with their slayer powers intact, Buffy doubted that they would have been in a position to escape, if, for no other reason, than the simple fact that the others would have been too broken to function. But now, with their imminent death made crystal clear to them, with the alarms breaking them out of the stupor, communicating to them the simple knowledge that the rules of the game had changed, they had a chance. Hope had returned to them.

It didn't hurt that the scientists and the guards would all be running for their lives.

Buffy limped out of the security room, only to run across two guards that were rushing in her direction. "Oh, Christ," she muttered, before blinking in astonishment as they ran straight past her.

Self-preservation was a powerful motivator.

The facility was based on a simple utilitarian design, which made committing its layout to memory easy. Buffy quickly navigated the halls until she reached the cell block. One of the doors had already been knocked open, and Victoria, one of the younger slayers, was peeking around.

The sight of Buffy, robed in a bloodied hospital gown and limping toward her, her face bathed in the red incandescent emergency lights visibly startled her. She shrank back as if in fear. Buffy however, did not waste time trying to puzzle out the psychology of tortured prison victims, or even to exchange a simple pleasantry. In thirteen and a half minutes, the entire place was going to come down.

Buffy yanked on the first door, intent on throwing it wide open, and only managing to budge it a little. "Argh," she grunted, reclaiming the handle and using all her strength to drag it open. The door hinges were actually based on a hydraulic press system that were controlled by the main security office. Doing it by hand required far more strength than a power-suppressed Buffy could manage. Suddenly, the pressure disappeared, and the door finished opening the rest of the way. Next to her, stood Victoria, who just gave her a smile and shrugged.

"Thanks," Buffy said, peering in and seeing only an empty room. Despite having her powers suppressed her years of combat experience allowed her to catch sight of a fast-moving leg in the periphery of her vision and to respond quickly enough that she didn't have her skull cracked in half. She grunted and cried out stop, even as she hit the ground as she overbalanced to avoid the strike.

"Buffy?" came a feminine voice that Buffy immediately recognized as belonging to Courtney.

"Yeah, who else? Jeez, watch where you put that leg next time." Buffy got to her feet and turned around and marched out of Courtney's cell. Victoria had already roused the other two slayers, who were standing idly about, some with scars peeking out from under their clothes. Buffy wondered what horrors had been inflicted upon them, but quashed the thought immediately. There was no time for that. They had all their limbs in working order, and she could tell from their stances that they were all turbo charged.

Eleven minutes left. Even with enhanced reflexes it would be a tight squeeze making it out of the building before its destruction. The irony was not lost on Buffy that, even though the slayer dream had come to her, she herself was not fit to escape their prison.

"This all of you?" Buffy asked, looking them each in the eye.

They all glanced nervously at the fifth door.

Buffy followed their gaze and, not wanting to waste any more time, she just asked, "Who is it?"

"Sylvia," one of them muttered.

"Go on then," Buffy said. "Get out of here. The building's about to blow, courtesy of the PTB."

At the mention of the ancient and mysterious beings, hope blossomed fully on their faces for the first time. "You're not coming?" Victoria asked, furrowing her brow in confusion.

"I...," Buffy began, but she found that she could not bring herself to articulate her present disability. Even if it weren't her fault, she felt a distinct sense of shame, as though she were no longer worthy. No longer special.

Realization dawned on their faces. They had all been subjected to the cruciamentum at one point or the other during the last two weeks of their incarceration. It just happened to be a stroke of bad luck that Buffy had been the one on the drug at the time of the vision. They seemed to make the same calculation as she had, having all participated in the numerous escape attempts and understanding what was demanded of an escapee. They were underground, and in order to escape, they would have to perform superior acrobatics to rise up through the levels in order to make the deadline.

"I'll be right behind you," Buffy said, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her lack of conviction.

"We can't-" Victoria started.

"You have to," Buffy insisted, her eyes shining with tears that would not flow. She was past crying. She did not want to die. Not like this, and, though she had moped about after her resurrection, longing for the warmth of that heavenly embrace in the afterlife, she found now that she wanted to remain in the here and now. "You need each other. And you need to warn the others. Think of how guilty you would feel if you failed to spread the word. If other girls suffered at the hands of these creeps."

They exchanged glances. Finally, Courtney gave Buffy a long hug before stepping back, her own eyes wet with tears. Victoria and the other two followed suit before turning and fleeing down the hallway.

Ten minutes left.

Buffy composed herself and considered her options. She could try and escape, she supposed. It would be utterly pointless with her injured leg, but it would at least allow her to embrace her fighting spirit in her moments of death. Only, there was something about it that seemed undignified. At least it was better than standing uselessly in the hallway just waiting to die.

Like Sylvia.

thinking of the last remaining slayer alive in the complex, Buffy decided on an impulse to go see her. If she were going to die, at least she would not die alone. Of all the fears she had had surrounding possible death scenarios, Buffy had always thought that to die a failure would be the worst way. To die alone, she had always felt would be the second worst.

The door took some effort to open. The first thing that struck her was the stench of urine. The other slayers had lived relatively clean lives in their respective prisons, so the rank putrefaction that permeated Sylvia's cell surprised her, casting into sharp relief her hatred for Umbrella. The bed sheets were stained with blood, that gleamed under the sinister incandescent lights burning overhead. "Sylvia?" Buffy asked quietly in the dead air.

Sylvia was lying on her back on the small cot, her eyes staring up toward the ceiling, glassy and unfocused. It took Buffy a moment to register what she was seeing.

Sylvia's left arm had been torn out of its socket, the wound cauterized to reduce blood loss. Buffy could tell that it had not been sawed off by the neatness of it. Somebody had ripped the joint clean out of the socket. It was also in sharp contrast to Sylvia's legs, both of which had been sawed off at the knees. The only undamaged limb was her right arm, which was missing two fingers.

Above and beyond that, Sylvia was completely naked, her emaciated torso unblemished. A pool of urine stained the bed sheets around where her crotch was located. Buffy was pretty sure there was some sort of infection, not withstanding slayer tolerances for disease.

Her brown hair was splashed around her pillow, unwashed, shiny with grease from days of neglect.

Even if Sylvia were not in a state of pain and hunger induced shock, she would not have been able to speak, because her tongue had been cut out of her head. It was in a jar in a lab somewhere.

Buffy swallowed the bile that threatened to rise up in her throat, but she refused to speak. She could not voice the horror of what she was seeing. She could not understand what purpose drove the scientists to do this. What human could think that this was sensible? That this had value? Not that she could see any value, even from a scientific perspective. What use was it to dismember somebody?

"In the nineteenth century, scientists took prostitutes and performed vivisections on them. The women were tied to tables, lights illuminating their naked bodies, while men used knives to cut open their torsos, carve open their breasts, and gaze at the internal workings of their body."

Buffy whirled around and stared at... herself?

"Who-?" Buffy began before it clicked. "The First," she said with no small amount of contempt.

"Hello, Buffy," the First said soberly, ignoring Buffy's condemning glare and instead walking up next to her to stare impassively at Sylvia's form.

Eight minutes left.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "Have you come to gloat?"

"No, though I can understand how you would think that."

"Then what?" Buffy challenged.

The First took a moment to choose its words before speaking. Eventually, it said, again with that impassive voice, "I have failed completely and utterly."

Buffy snorted. "Gee, you think?"

The First ignored the sarcasm. "It never ceases to surprise me that you have no respect for me whatsoever," the First said. "When I initially met you, I thought your sarcasm was a means for you to deal with your fear. But now I know better. It is indicia of your unrelenting disdain for all things evil. I am more than millennia old. I am more than millions of years. I existed since the dawn of this universe's creation. that amounts to billions of years. Tens of billions, in fact. I watched the beings that you call the Powers That Be rise up through infancy. I watched them mature until they became so powerful, they shed themselves of their corporeal bodies, and became, in some respects, like me. I do not say this simply to puff myself up with importance. It is simply that, as I watched life, I saw many constants. One of those was that age was cherished as a gift. Elders were always treated with reverence. I came, eventually, to believe that I, as the oldest of beings, deserved the greatest reverence. That is why I adopted the moniker, The First. It was meant to signal my age superiority. To let others know that I deserve not just respect, but the greatest respect."

"I'm going to die in seven minutes," Buffy said impatiently. "Please tell me you're not going to waste the last few moments I have on this Earth with your moans of self-pity."

The First shot Buffy an annoyed look before snapping her fingers. Suddenly, time ceased to have meaning, and Buffy was torn from Sylvia's rank cell to a white, featureless mindscape. "There," said the First. "Now I can bore you for hours with my moans of self-pity, and you will have nothing to complain about."

"Where the hell am I?" Buffy asked, glancing around and noting the muted quality of her voice. It was like talking through a wall of cotton.

"This is a mindscape I have created so that we may talk for longer. It is a trick used among telepaths to increase communication speed. Because our minds are now linked, we can communicate with one another so quickly that seconds will turn into minutes, and minutes into hours."

"Whoa, hold on a second. Are you telling me you plugged some sort of a metaphysical USB wire into my head?" Buffy asked. "And did I just use a computer analogy?" Buffy had a sudden vision of transforming into a female version of Andrew, whereupon she shuddered uncontrollably.

"I am not altogether familiar with computers, though I do have a sophisticated knowledge of some sciences. I am particularly adept at theoretical mathematics and astrophysics."

"Er, why?" Buffy asked.

"I have sought to understand our universe. While I have an intuitive grasp of some of its more elemental features, some of which you can barely conceive of, I do not have the technical knowledge, nor the means by which to go about gathering such knowledge. It is a relatively recent pastime of mine."

"Okay, so you're a nerd," Buffy said. "That's... unexpected."

"It's unbelievable," the First exclaimed, losing her composure and throwing her hands into the air. "You're impossible, Buffy Summers." The first put her hands on her hip and sauntered right up to Buffy so that their noses were just inches apart. "I have powers so immense, I could crush Hell Gods. I could cut through the fabric of reality with my bare hands. I can delve into the deepest parts of your psyche and pick your thoughts apart with impunity, and I can do it from a thousand light years away. No other being in the universe can claim to do such a thing. Not even the much vaunted Powers that Be. I can command legions of soulless beings should I choose to do so, and I can manipulate the weak-minded and the power hungry with relative ease."

"And it really burns that I kicked your ass," Buffy responded softly, her eyes intense and glittering with the internal fires of her spirit.

"Yes," the First admitted, looking away, disgusted with herself. "Yes, you defeated me. You closed a bloody Hellmouth. That has never been done before. You and your witch-friend and all the potentials."

"They're not potentials anymore," Buffy said.

"No, but they're not you, either."

"What does that mean?" Buffy asked, curious despite herself.

"You're special," the first said. "Not just because you are a slayer, but because you survive. You survive unlike any other slayer who has come before you. You survive when you are not supposed to."

"I've died twice, you know."

"So why is it then that you are still here?" the First challenged. "Have you thought about that?"

"Because of my friends," Buffy returned. "It has nothing to do with me."

"Spare me your self-pity," the first said, fixing Buffy with a penetrating gaze, as though by the force of her will she could make Buffy understand a simple truth. "Why do you have friends that are prepared to go to such lengths for you? They are nothing special. There is no reason to expect them to fight supernatural beings."

"Willow's special."

"Yes, and have you ever wondered why? Do you think she would have become a witch if it hadn't been for you? It was you and your war that spurred her to develop her powers beyond any normal limit. Did you know that your watcher is the only watcher to ever leave the Council in defense of his charge? Let us not forget Alexander Harris."

"You do not need to speak of Xander to me. I am well aware of the sacrifices he has made."

"Do you think that you are the only slayer to have friends in the fight against darkness?" the First pressed, coming closer once more, her own intensity mirroring that of Buffy's. "Some slayers had even gone to such lengths as to recruit soldiers to assist her in her war. They all failed her. Not Giles, nor Willow, nor Xander, nor any of the potentials understood just what a feat it was to bring them all together. To train them. You commanded them to walk into the mouth of Hell, and they went."

"I'm just a slayer," Buffy said helplessly. "I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"Slayers are pathetic, insignificant beings. They have short, brutal lives marked by pain and suffering. They come to long for death far before their time. You have felt this, just like all your predecessors. Their powers are bestowed upon them for the purposes of destroying half-demons, like vampires, and even then, a particularly smart and experienced half-demon can defeat a slayer. Spike has proven that he is quite capable in the field. Against beings like Wilkins, Glory, and Caleb, you should not have stood a chance. Certainly not against me."

"What are you trying to say?" Buffy repeated. "Again, not with the understanding here."

The First sighed, as in so far as an ageless, incorporeal being could do such a thing, before continuing. "The war you have been charged to fight is just one war amongst many wars, each one varying in scope. For example, on your very planet, there is currently a war taking place over the future of the planet. It is a magical war between wizards. Thousands of them are about to descend into an anarchical struggle that will determine the fate of non-magical beings. You have no place in that war. A slayer has no place. Your place is fighting the vampire and guarding the Hellmouth."

Buffy nodded. "Yeah, got the memo.'

The First just went on, "The beings you call the Powers That Be are engaged in their own personal war. They too are desperately fighting an intruding enemy. However, their war is occurring on a scale you could not conceive of. To you, it would not even look like a war. It would probably look as though they were meditating. But I assure you, if they are not careful, they could wipe this solar system from existence with their minds. They are power beyond reckoning."

"Where do you fit in all of this?" Buffy asked.

The First smiled a humourless smile. "You are finally asking an intelligent question. I am a free agent. As I said, I am not a product of growth. I am unique in that way. I gained sentience at the start of the universe. It is the reason I have no physical being. My essence pervades the fabric of space-time. It is the reason I can move instantaneously across vast distances."

Buffy remained silent. Only after several moments did she speak. "You did this to us. You told Umbrella about us. I thought it must have been Riley, but it was you. That's the only way they could have had so much information on us."

The First nodded. "I did. I even told them about your watcher. They were not interested until I mentioned the cruciamentum. I knew how to push their buttons."

"Manipulating the power hungry is easy," Buffy echoed. "That's what you said."

"Yes, and it is," replied the First.

"I hate you."

"I know."

"I'd like to go now," Buffy said. "My time here has come to an end. I don't think there's really anything left to say to one another."

""There is just one more," said the First. She looked directly into Buffy's eyes, and her gaze noticeably softened. It was the only time Buffy had ever seen the First show a sincere emotion. "I am sorry. It was never anything personal with you. You defeated me, and while the defeat stung, I only ever respected you."

"Then why?" Buffy asked, surprised that she believed the First, and surprised that her mind was not clouded by her emotions. "Are you planning to open another Hellmouth? Destroy the world?"

"It was never my intention to destroy the world. It was only my intention to find a hero."

Buffy snorted. "Yeah, right, and I'm the queen of tea and crumpets."

"It is true. Caleb was to be my right hand in the coming battle for the defense of Earth."

"Well, you're not exactly looking for our best and brightest," Buffy said. "what in the world would make you think that the preacher freak would be a good leader?"

"He was docile, and his needs were easily met. It was easy to command him. That was all. You would be surprised at how difficult it is to find somebody like that. They always develop delusions of grandeur, or, even worse, their sense of morality reasserts itself at the most inopportune time. I needed a true psychopath."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "that's your criterion for a hero? He has to be a psycho? No wonder you keep losing."

The First smiled wanly. "I suppose it would be rather silly of me to argue with the victor."

"What exactly do you need a hero for anyway? What are you defending Earth from? these invaders?"

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" the First responded. "Don't you ever get tired of sacrificing yourself time and again?"

"It's better than sacrificing others," Buffy replied. "I cannot abide that. To me, that is just murder."

"That is what distinguishes you from me. I have no compunction about sacrificing others to succeed."

"Perhaps that is why evil people always lose. You're not prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice."

The First blinked, as if surprised. "I have never considered that."

"Well, perhaps you should. You'll never win if you demand complete obedience. It's stifling. Your soldiers will never truly respect you. Not if they've got two brain cells to rub together. You've got to begin by sacrificing your control. Your leaders need to be free to chart their own paths in a war. Good people are held together by things other than fear. They fight because they recognize the higher purpose behind it. I trust Xander and Willow and Giles, because I know that they believe in the same things that I do. They've proven that. I don't need to have any of them on a leash."

"And yet Willow tried to kill you all."

"That's the danger, isn't it? You give up your control, and your servants become your allies. Their interests can change. They can turn on you. Independent thought is a double-edged blade. The true leader knows this and learns to work with it, not against it."

"There is no one I can trust with that kind of power."

"Then your plans are doomed to fail."

"That is not an option. The fate of all sentient beings in this galaxy depends on me."

"Why?' Buffy countered, taking a step toward the First. "Why not the PTB? You said they're powerful. They can handle these invaders. Why do you need to do anything?"

The First shook her head. "The Powers are a race of beings. they have flaws just like humans, despite their advancements. They are all too happy playing the shepherd when they're the biggest kids on the block. But with the invaders, the game has changed. The Powers will concede the whole galaxy if it means protecting their own. They will not die for you. They will not die for any of us. They would sooner flee, and because they are not rooted to this place, they can do exactly that."

"Who are these invaders?"

The First tilted her head, looking off into the distance, her eyes clouding over as though she were recalling an old memory. She seemed to relive some moment in the past, because the timbre of her voice softened. "They are ascended beings from far away. Like the PTB, they have achieved what some call instrumentality. They can manipulate the ambient energy of the universe directly, and they can do so through many layers of reality at once. They were mortal once, but no more. Some believe they have advanced to the point where there is simply nothing left to learn. They have accumulated the sum total of all knowledge. They call themselves the Ori. Mortal beings cannot stand against a direct attack from them anymore than they can withstand an attack from the Powers That Be. Only the Powers, or other such ascended beings have the power to stop them."

"And you?" Buffy pressed, disturbed to hear of this cosmic war.

"I cannot," the First said, her voice growing more distant, her eyes seeming to turn inward. The First hesitated, and then said, "I do not have the strength to stop them. I can stop one, or two maybe. But I am just one being. And I am linked to the fabric of space-time that permeates this region of space. they can come and go as they please. I am immortal. I am timeless, but I fear they will know how to neutralize me. They will destroy me as they have destroyed all else who stand in their way. I will succumb, and my existence will be over."

"You fear death," Buffy whispered, seeing the First as she truly was. "That is why you are getting involved. You don't want to die just like the rest of us. That is why you're going to such lengths to stomp all over everyone and anyone who gets in your way. You're trying to do something to stop these Ori."

The First returned to herself and gazed at Buffy intently. "Of course. Everything I have done has been for the single purpose of insulating myself, and, by extension, this galaxy from an invasion by the Ori. You cannot fight these beings with axes and arrows. They do not have bodies. They can wipe this solar system from neighbouring star systems. You need to ascend. You need to become like the Powers if you expect to fight the Ori and defend your home. Umbrella could have done that. Umbrella is the synthesis of human ambition. After failing to install my own minions on Earth to direct them personally, I tried steering Umbrella to do what I could not. to learn the secrets of magic, of energy, of time and space. To drag themselves towards a place where they could fight the Ori."

"But?"

"But they do not listen to me. They are going to start a war with the magical world, and I fear that it will destroy them all. Not even I can forecast what will come of that battle, but it does not look good. You have all wasted too much precious time already. There is very little hope for you now."

"You could have said all this in the beginning," Buffy countered. "why did you not try speaking of it? We would have listened."

The First gave another humourless smile. "Do you really believe that? You are a pawn of the Powers. The Powers loathe me. I am a constant irritant to them. I harm their precious humans. I do not play by their rules. I look down upon them with contempt. Why should I expect their pawn to be any different? The powers at your disposal, however meager they may be, are given to you by those very beings that despise me. Besides, what could you do? To fight the Ori, you will need to do precisely what you have always been counseled against doing. You will need to gather power. You will need to become a force as powerful as the very beings that hold your strings. The PTb would not permit it."

"The PTB don't own me," Buffy said harshly.

The First laughed. "Don't they? Don't you long for what they can give you? Don't you long for the warmth of their embrace? That perpetual joy you experienced after Glory's death? Are you not now seeking to return there?" The first leaned in close, a smirk twisting her features. "Tell me, do you really believe you're going to go back to that place? That the Powers will send you there?"

Buffy shivered for the First time. In truth, she had always expected that, when she died again, she would simply return to the warm place that Willow had torn her from. It had only made sense. In fact, that knowledge had given her the peace of mind to continue living her life, content with the knowledge that she had already paid her dues, that her spot in heaven was reserved.

The First pressed onward, "Willow could not have torn your soul from their grip without their permission, Buffy."

Buffy felt as though she had been punched in the gut. "That's not true," she said.

"Why do you think I was allowed to run rampant?" the First said, almost sneering now. "Did you not think about it at all? The Powers broke the covenant. They let you return. They violated the rules by doing that. Do you think that the wiles of a mere witch, no matter how powerful, could alter the balance to permit me to move freely amongst you?" the First shook her head. "No, it was the Powers. It was their act, their complicity in the affair that permitted me to be here. They know they are losing grip on their holdings. They know the Ori are coming. They have been in contact with another ascended race, known as the Ancients. They have been given advance warning. And do you know what? They have done nothing."

"they're doing what they can," Buffy said, though her voice was more hesitant now.

"Are they?" the First mocked. "You're only here because they sent you a vision. Did you not think to ask why they have chosen to send you a vision now, of all times? Now, when you have no chance of escape? they have consigned you to death. You are expendable. They're getting rid of you. They intend to put their stock in Faith to continue the fighting. She has made contact with a wizard. They have high hopes for that relationship. they think that, maybe, if the slayers unite with wizards, some sort of magical catharsis will occur. They needed this facility destroyed so that Faith is diverted. They don't care about you. I can hear the wizard's thoughts even now. He is turning his eye in this direction. The boy wizard, Harry Potter, he will come shortly. He will find the slayers. Not I nor the PTB can predict what will happen when two potent magical cultures collide. It is their last gamble for this planet. Otherwise, they will leave you to the fate of the Ori. They care greatly about this planet. They love watching your kind grow and flourish." The First seemed to barely whisper the next words. "But they don't care about you, Buffy. They don't care about you. Did it ever occur to you that they don't even like you?"

"I don't - I can't...," Buffy started, her gaze shifting away from the First's. Finally, she said, "How can I believe anything you're saying? What does it even matter? I'll be dead in mere minutes now."

"It matters," said the First loftily. "It matters, because you could choose to join me."

"Join you?" Buffy asked wryly. "Gee, I didn't know you had any particular uses for demolished corpses."

The First frowned. "Again with the sarcasm. It's quite unattractive."

Buffy just put her hands on her hips and waited expectantly.

The First relented, not having expected an apology anyway. "You could reject your current demonic symbiote and merge with me."

Buffy paused, as if expecting the First to say something more, before responding. "that's a joke, right? You're joking."

"No, Buffy, I'm not."

"Joining you would be the antithesis of everything I stand for."

"Why?"

Buffy didn't have an answer to that. Finally, she settled on, "You're evil.'

"But you're not. I wouldn't be controlling your body like some sort of parasite."

"What then? What do you get out of this?"

"Consider me an advisor. I'll provide you some helpful comments."

Buffy narrowed her eyes. "That's it? What's stopping me from telling you to take a hike?"

The First looked shiftily about, before tucking nervously on her shirt collar. "Nothing?"

Buffy just continued to glare and wait for a response.

The First let out a long, suffering sigh. "Fine, you win. You'll have to merge with me regularly in order to maintain your powers."

"Oh, no," Buffy replied instantly. "No way. There's absolutely no way, shape or form I'm signing up to be your bitch. I saw how well that worked out for Caleb. That guy had issues."

"You'll still retain your mind."

"I want a little more reassurance than that." Buffy shook her head. "You have to go in all the way. You're going to have to give up some of that control you've grown so used to. If you're on the level with me, and these Ori folks are really the big bad, then I'll take them out. I'll do what you want, but it won't be because you tell me to. It'll be because I've determined that they're evil incarnate. That's the deal."

"I can't trust you to not be stupid about this. There are things you're going to have to do if you expect to survive a confrontation with the Ori unscathed.."

"You're just going to have to convince me," Buffy replied, folding her arms across her chest.

"You're going to need far more power than what I can bestow upon you through our symbiotic link. And you will need legions. You must gather together beings of such great power, beings who have achieved immortality, who draw on wellsprings of energy so powerful their very names invoke fear in lesser beings."

"Willow's really powerful," Buffy said. "We need to find her."

The First shook her head. "No, she is not powerful. She draws energy from the world and manipulates it. She is very good at what she does, but the power does not flow through her. That is the nature of the ascended. That is what you must gather to fight it."

"So what then?"

"There are few beings here that possess such power. The most notable is Lord Voldemort."

Buffy raised an eyebrow at the name.

The First continued, "But he will not be easily subjugated to your will. He will resist you, and his will is formidable. Unchecked, he would drag humanity to unknown places."

"Why didn't you approach him?" Buffy asked skeptically.

Now it was the First's turn to raise an eyebrow. "What makes you think I didn't?" The First shook her head. "It does not matter. Lord Voldemort would not listen to me. He would only seek to use me. I could not work with him. Moreover, he has made powerful enemies. He faces an uphill battle to achieve the ascendancy he so dearly craves, and they will work tirelessly against him. Among these is the boy wizard Harry Potter, of whom I spoke earlier. The Powers have their eye on Potter. No doubt they will back him if it strikes their fancy."

"Okay, that makes sense. But what makes you think he'll work with me? Will my power be so great?"

"Even combined with my formidable strengths, it may not be so. I should clarify that Lord Voldemort has achieved a form of immortality. One which is flawed, but which will function nevertheless. However, this immortality he has achieved is not the same as ascendancy. It might be best described as descendancy, if there were such a thing. Instead of purifying his soul and raising it above and beyond corporeal matter, he has instead divided his soul and tied it to several matter-based anchors. It is almost the inverse of what he in fact needs to do in order to achieve an ascended state."

"Still not helping with the plan here. How do I get this guy to work with me?"

"You will need power even greater than anything I could supply," the First said, again staring off into the distance. "But alas, we are exhausting the energies of this universe. You will have to go further afield."

"Further afield? Why don't I like the sound of that," Buffy muttered.

"You will have to cross the reality barrier."

"The reality barrier?" Buffy repeated doubtfully.

"All universes are governed by a series of rules. These rules are what we call the transreality matrix. There, you will find tools of great and terrible power. There is one item in particular that you will want. It is the physical nexus of the deep magic that permeates the fabric of that world. It was created by a dark lord to subjugate all sentient beings to its will." The First leaned forward, shifting her focus once more to Buffy. "It is a single object, small, innocuous and capable of giving you untold power. Power equal to that of my own. With it, you would have access to powers so great, no single being in existence could ever oppose you. It is the one ring. They call it the one ring of power, and it is loved and reviled by all who gaze upon it."

"You want me to get a piece of jewellery?" Buffy asked.

The first's eyes gleamed with fervor. "You do not understand. This is no ordinary ring. The ring has a mind of its own. It has joined with the Dark Lord Sauron. To retrieve it, you will not only have to possess the ring, but you will have to sunder it from the Dark Lord's psychic grip. You will have to prove to the ring your worthy. Do not mistake it for a piece of mere gold. It is forged with the lifeblood of the deep magic of that world. It is akin to what you know as the key. It is the embodiment of a great power that has been given a very specific form. If the monks had rendered the key of Daigon into a form that we could have used, then I would have told you to secure it instead. But they didn't, and they knew that it would be near impossible to use the key in its current form."

"And what exactly does this ring do for me?"

"The strength of the ring lies in its ability to magnify your psychic powers to a degree barely conceivable. To those who are the Dark Lord's enemies, the ring is a parasite, eating their minds away, rotting their brains until they are mere shells of what they once were. But to the Dark Lord Sauron, it gives itself over fully and freely for use. With it, you will control the Witch king, and the Nazgul, immortal beings that strike fear into the hearts of all who gaze upon them. With the ring, you will have the psychic strength to break Lord Voldemort to your will. And not just Lord Voldemort, but all the great powers that can assist you. Old ones. Illyria. the wolf, the Ram and the Hart. Hell Gods. They will feel your power. They will seek you out to be their shepherd. And under the banner of your will, you will marshall them for the defense of the world. You will have clout on the magnitude of the PTB, and with it, you will strike terror into the hearts of your enemies." She fell silent and gazed expectantly at Buffy. "Well?"

Buffy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Ask me for anything but time, says Napoleon," she muttered, casting her gaze about for something to settle it on. Truthfully, Buffy didn't know what to think. She had imminent death on the one hand, and, if she were being honest, there was a certain appeal to letting herself slip gently into that good night. But on the other hand, she thought of her world, her sister and her friends. If the First were telling the truth about these Ori, then they were all in trouble. Maybe not tomorrow or in ten years, but in twenty or fifty, who knew. She found it difficult to walk away from a battle. Maybe that was her slayer half talking, she didn't know. But it was true nevertheless, and this was going to be a battle to end all battles. Buffy had thought that shutting down the Hellmouth was the be all and end all of her career, and, now, just as it was so often the case, she was coming to see that it was a mere prelude to the bigger conflict.

"If I do this," Buffy said, "I can back out at any time. We can sever the symbiosis, and I'll go my way, you go yours."

the First nodded.

"And there's not going to be any of this namby pamby me having to come to you to recharge. I'm not a frigging Duracell battery."

"Agreed," said the First, "but at the same time, you will swear to me that you will fight the Ori. You will bring together the forces necessary to defeat them and to protect me."

"Only if I find that these Ori are the evil threat that you make them out to be. if I find out you've been lying-"

"I understand. All bets are off."

"Exactly. And as for this protecting you business. Yes, I will do my best, but only to the point where it is not inconsistent with the protection of Earth, and of my sister and friends."

The First considered this. "I know I cannot change your mind in this matter. I will concede the point."

"All right," Buffy said. "One final thing. What's going to happen to you after this merger?'

"If I give myself to the merger completely and utterly, and if I do so permanently, then I will no longer have form, the way you see me now. I will lie dormant in my natural state."

"Which is?" Buffy prompted.

"I will dissolve into the fabric of the universe, only passively aware of my surroundings. The only real data I will perceive will be your thoughts, actions, emotions, which will bleed into my subconscious. It will operate precisely the way the slayer symbiosis operates."

"All right then. Let's do it."

The First extended her hand, and Buffy reached out to grip it. To her surprise, the form was solid. Reading her expression, the First said, "We are in a mindscape. Perception is altered here."

"Oh, right," Buffy said.

Then, before she could add anything else, she began to feel a tingling sensation steal over her, spreading from her hand through to the rest of her body. It was unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was a study of contrasts. Hot and cold. Push and pull. Tingling and numbness. It swept over her, slow at first and then gaining momentum, as the slayer symbiote was purged from her body and the new symbiote took its place. Buffy was jolted out of her mindscape and sent reeling backwards, away from Sylvia, the living corpse. Buffy stumbled and fell onto her butt, staring unseeingly at the far wall as her mind processed the new details. The shock of going from the sensory blankness of the mindscape to her new awareness was startling.

It was a whole new world. "Whoa," she said, unable to articulate the new sensations she was experiencing. Her slayer powers put her head and shoulders beyond the abilities of mere humans. With slayer powers, all her senses had been finely tuned, capable of absorbing the most minute details, cataloguing, filing, conceptualizing, strategizing. Slayer powers also gave their hosts a sixth sense. They could maneuver in pitch darkness, sense vampires, and see through false constructs.

Now, all of those ancillary abilities, as well as the main ones, like strength, speed and endurance, were magnified a thousand fold. Buffy could bench press three thousand metric tons. She could close her eyes and conceptualize the entire layout of the room, from any angle. she could sense light sources, heat emissions, sound vibrations that no technology in Earth's hands could detect. The most incredible thing of all was the fact that her awareness had expanded. She could sense her sister, standing on top of a mountain, the same one on which she had been abducted. She could sense how Dawn was different from Xander, by the feel of them. She also sensed the wizard, Harry Potter, and though she wasn't able to articulate precisely what made him magical, she knew that he was different from both Xander and Dawn and the fourth person - a female. Buffy's psychic awareness was so acute that she could tell Harry was gazing intently in her direction, and she surmised that he had felt the formation of the symbiotic bond between herself and the First.

In those cold, isolated moments in the Umbrella underground facility, Buffy came to understand the magnitude of a being like the First. Buffy could identify anyone, anywhere, pierce all manner of magical veils and concealments, no matter where a person was hidden on Earth. All of Umbrella's plans unfolded before her eyes. She saw the inevitable conclusion of the war games that were being played out, the possibilities, each one spilling into one another, some waxing, some waning, as time passed, as decisions were made.

Buffy picked herself off the floor and glanced curiously at her surroundings. There was only a minute left before the facility was destroyed. Reaching out in search of her slayers, she discovered that they had, in fact, escaped the confines of their prison. That was good, she decided. She felt Harry disappear from the mountain top. At first, she was startled, in part because his sudden disappearance had physically drawn her attention, the way a sharp flash of light to one sight might do so.

Buffy groped around with her mind's eye and, after a bit of fumbling and searching, she located Harry, who was now much closer. Close enough to bear witness to the destruction of the compound.

Hmm, she thought. I wonder if I can do that teleporting thing.

At that moment the countdown completed its sequence. The electronic detonators clicked, causing sparks to ignite the eight hundred pounds of c4 laced dynamite spread across the facility. Concrete walls shattered, aluminum struts burned, steel beams melted as heat waves in the order of six thousand degrees reduced them to molten slag. Much of the structure was left intact. However, without the keystones supporting the weight, the several floors came crashing down, one level on top of the other, concrete and steel bending, cracking, breaking apart into jagged chunks that twisted and crashed downward as gravity continued its merciless assault. Buffy Summers was buried under thousands of tons of debris.

If she had been a slayer, she would have been killed instantly, regardless of her powers. But, as a superslayer, she was only mildly annoyed. A four hundred ton chunk of cement crashed down directly on her head. While it gave her a bit of a bruise, it was nothing to concern herself with. Upon impact, the reactionary force drove a crack through the concrete slab, causing its balance to shift so that it tumbled to one side. Buffy could, if she wanted to, smash her way out of the debris field. It would probably take her several minutes to do so, and she would probably be bruised and battered. The thing was, Buffy didn't need to smash her way out. Among the myriad of powers that she now had access to, one of them was the ability to hop dimensions. She could just as easily shift dimensions as she could grind a vampire's skull to pulp.

But Buffy wasn't going to hop dimensions either. Briefly, she considered staying in her own world, her own reality, and fighting the good fight. It would take little effort to save Willow, to reunite with her friends, continue leading the slayers and have a very serious chat with her former Watcher. However, the truth of the situation was slowly sinking in. She wasn't part of their world anymore. She was operating on a whole different playing field, one with different rules and different players. Every minute she wasted trying to put out the little fires was a minute in which she was letting the bigger fire get that much more out of hand. For the first time, Buffy was beginning to glimpse the vast responsibility that the Powers had taken on. They would have driven themselves mad if they had tried to save every kitten caught up every tree. the world wasn't meant to be peachy. From her new vantage point, it became painfully clear that human suffering, supernatural injustices, moral wrongs - the task of ridding them from the world was a fruitless one.

Still, Buffy decided that she would spare at least a moment, once in a while, to mourn the lost souls. She glanced over at what remained of Sylvia's form. Only a single bloodied stump was visible. The rest of her had been completely buried, her torso and head crushed into tiny pieces. Continuing to gaze down at the nominal remains of a sister slayer, Buffy let the rich energies of the First consume her body in a torrent, slowly but inexorably re-writing her quantum signature in order to situate her in the lands of middle earth.

A/N: OK, so we've come to the end of this story.

I hope everyone's enjoyed it. I received a number of thoughtful reviews. In particular, if I understand correctly, the general view is that the first few chapters had some issues with character portrayals and tone. As of chapter 6, I made a conscious effort to take care with how I went about phrasing Harry's (and others') reactions. Hopefully that came through.

Some people also expressed concerns regarding the use of weak plot devices. I'll try to curb those for the future, but if it helps me to paper over a writer's block, then I think it would be better to just get through a scene or a chapter and move on.

Like so many other fanfic writers, I've worked hard to have the Raccoon City story arc completed prior to the release of DH. There's a very good reason for this. I'm not sure how I'm going to respond to the final HP instalment. It may very well sap my will to write any more HP fanfictions.

I take pride in the fact that I've completed the fanfics that I've started, and that I've done so in reasonably good time. There's a lot of unfinished work out there, and I know from my own experience that it's really disappointing to see a story peter out.

I suppose my drive to continue writing will depend on whether you all wish to read on. Just as my inclination to write fanfiction may fade, so too might your inclination to read it. Please let me know whether you're interested in seeing a sequel. Also, as you've no doubt realized, this novel features a number of story arcs, each of which is in an inchoate stage. Please also let me know which arcs interest you the most. That will help in guiding me toward a particular direction. Any other comments, criticisms, words of praise, etc. are welcome.

I guess that about covers it.

Cheers,

EB