Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy Season4 02

Christopher Golden

Prologue

Torn away.

Buffy hurtled forward, not propelled from behind but tugged, dragged, hauled painfully and
suddenly into a black and red abyss. It felt as though only her face had been torn away, pulled on
farther and farther into the chasm of infinite black before her, but the rest of her left behind, all
the weight that flesh and blood and bone added to the image she had of herself. What was she?

Mind and heart and soul. Face. Eyes and ears and mouth. Words.

Red whirlpools punctured the endless velvet shadow around her, flashing past as she was
dragged by. As if the universe itself were wounded and bleeding.
Vaguely, in the fog that seemed to comprise her mind, a dark certainty overwhelmed her.
This was not a vision. Somehow, her spirit had been torn from her body and was now on a
journey. Traveling. Hurtling out of control toward some unfathomable point in the distance.
Buffy felt her mind slipping away from her, felt herself shutting down as she was drawn
through the void… and drawn… and drawn. Lulled into a kind of hibernation, aware and yet
unresponsive to her surroundings.

Then, suddenly, some sense that the void was not endless, the abyss not infinite. Somewhere
ahead was a barrier, a wall, and she was hurtling toward it, bound for collision. She peered into
the darkness ahead but all had become black now, as though she were blind But blind or not, she
could feel it, sense its proximity as she was whipped along a course toward inevitable impact.
Collision.

Cold water splashed her face.

Shocked, Buffy stared at her fingers, splayed before her. At the grimy, cracked porcelain of the sink and the water running from the faucet. Instinctively she looked up for a mirror over the sink, but there wasn’t one.

Of course there isn’t one. They took it away the first day,
she thought. She flashed back to that time, five years before, when Clownface and Bulldog had thrown her, beaten, bloody and barely conscious, into this cell for the first time.
They didn’t want you to cut your wrists.
Buffy spun about like a cornered animal, and her eyes darted around the room. The cell. Bars on the two high windows barely allowed the tiniest bit of light from the outside. Ten-foot stone walls all around. A steel door with rivets driven through it and neither handle nor knob nor even keyhole on this side.
Built for me. This was built for me.

Her hands went to the sides of her head and she squeezed her eyes closed. Then she opened them wide and gazed around the room, hugging herself tight. Buffy knew things. She did not know how, but she
knew.

Impossible.

But inescapably true.

She had been here, in this cell, for a very long time. Reluctantly, afraid of what she would find, she looked at her hands again. Rough, hard hands, with lines that had never been there before. She stretched, felt her body,
looked
at herself.

No thinner than before. But harder. Tighter. Rippled with muscles she remembered seeing in magazines and on television whenever they showed women who were Olympians, whose very life was exercise, exertion, sport.

But there was nothing sporting about this.

Buffy’s body was taut and dangerous. She felt it, even in the way she moved. She felt like a weapon.
Gathering dust.

This cell. Endless days and nights alone, with only these four walls and the ruthless way she forged her body into this steel thing. Vampires with tattooed faces and orange flames in their eyes; they fed her, kept her alive, but nothing more. No talking, not even threats or taunts. Only the toning of her body kept her sane, that focus on the day she would escape.

And in time, even that focus blurred and there was only the routine of exercise. Hope dimmed.
These aren’t my memories. Can’t be my memories. I remember yesterday. They took Giles.
Camazotz is preying on Sunnydale. Lucy Hanover came in my dreams and Willow summoned her
and…

Buffy stared down at her hands again. And they
were
her hands. Just as the memories of this room— month after month becoming intimate with these four walls, eating the awful slop they fed her, and waiting for an opening—just as those recollections were hers.

Lines on her hands.

Five years since she had been put into this room.

“No,” she whispered.
It’s impossible.

“No!” she screamed.

With a roar of fury and hatred surging up from her chest, Buffy ran full tilt at the door. Though her body still felt foreign to her, she loved the way it moved. Fluid and powerful and deadly. She launched a drop kick at the steel door, slammed into it hard enough to rattle her jaw, then fell and banged her head hard on the stone floor. Adrenaline screamed in her, and she pushed the pain away. With a flip, she was up on her feet, and she kicked and punched at the door with only the echo of her own grunts in the room to accompany her.

Several minutes passed. She slowed, breathing heavily.

The adrenaline subsided. The ache in her skull and the pain in her bloody, ravaged knuckles was real. The skin on her fists was scraped raw. Buffy reached up to touch the back of her head, where she’d struck the floor, and her fingers came back streaked with blood.

She would heal quickly. After all, she was the Slayer. But the wounds were real. This was real. Even as her mind recoiled in horror at these thoughts, even as she examined her body and her surroundings, she felt her memory of the battle with Camazotz begin to dim. Desperate to save Giles, they had summoned Lucy Hanover. Lucy had called upon an entity known only as The Prophet, who promised Buffy a vision of the future, a vision that might help her prevent it and save Giles’s life. The Prophet had touched her.

But this was no vision.

Whatever The Prophet had done, somehow she was not nineteen anymore. Buffy Summers was twenty-four, at least. Maybe twenty-five. Somehow, the entity had torn her spirit from her body that day, years ago, and thrust it into the future, into this body.

Her memories of that day faded, now. Though she knew in her heart that in some way it had happened only moments before, she remembered it as though years had passed. But there was a blank spot there as well—a period of days she did not remember at all— the time during which she had been captured. A gap in her memory existed between The Prophet touching her and the day when Clownface and Bulldog threw her into her cell.

For more than five years, she had wondered what had happened in that dead space in her memory, that blackout.

No. It isn’t me. I haven’t been here. It never happened,
she reminded herself. And yet there was no longer any doubt that this was real. She could feel every muscle, every scratch, every sensation. This was her own body, her own life, and yet somehow her nineteen-year-old mind had been fast-forwarded into an older body, a dark, horrible future.

And all she could do was pace the cell. Work her body. Train for the day the vampires let their guard down.

Days passed. She trained and slept and washed and trained. They brought food before dawn and after dusk, always armed, always in groups of three or more. Made her stand in the far corner, afraid to have her come too close, as though she were a wild animal.

It made her smile.

Perhaps two weeks later, they brought the girl.

It was dark when they threw her into the cell, bruised and bloody but conscious. Alive. The girl was a brunette, dark and exotic.
Italian, maybe,
Buffy thought. Tall, but young. Even through the blood, when she looked up with her defiant, crazy eyes, Buffy could see that she was just a kid. Not more than sixteen, maybe younger.

For a moment, Buffy only stood there staring at her, five years without human contact having built up a callus on her heart and soul. She was two people in one, two Buffys at one time, the hardened prisoner and the young warrior. Then suddenly it was as though the part of her mind that was still nineteen simply woke up. It was as though she had been frozen in this body from the moment she had realized what had happened to her.

Now she thawed.

Ice melted away from her true self.

Buffy went to the girl, reached down for her. “Are you all right?” The girl’s eyes changed then. She blinked and her mouth opened with an expression of absolute astonishment.

“Oh my God,” the girl whispered, voice cracking. “You’re … you’re her, aren’t you?”

“I’m not tracking.”

The girl backed away, stood up slowly, painfully, and stared at her. “You’re Buffy Summers. I’ve seen pictures.”

“Yeah? How do I look?”

Beaten, bleeding, the girl actually laughed. A discordant sound, but a welcome one just the same.

“Like hell,” she said. “You look like hell.”

“Who are you?” Buffy asked.

But she thought she already knew the answer.

“I’m August.”

Buffy frowned. “You’re a month?”

“It’s my name,” the girl said, annoyed. She wiped blood from under her nose but it was still bleeding.

“I’m the Slayer now.”

Buffy closed her eyes. Shook her head to clear her mind. She felt a little unsteady on her feet. So many questions. But if this girl was a Slayer, what did that mean for—

“Faith?”

August nodded. “Six months ago. They tried for years to catch her, the way they … the way they did you. If it weren’t for her they’d have the whole West Coast by now, maybe more. At least that’s what my Watcher says. They caught her outside of L.A., I heard.”

Wary, maybe even a little afraid, the girl gave Buffy a cautious look. “Have you been here all along?

All this time?”

No. I just got here. A couple of weeks ago. I’m not supposed to be here.
Those were the first thoughts in her head, but even as they flickered through her mind she knew they weren’t really true.

“All this time,” Buffy told her. She turned her back on the girl and began to pace the room. “And now I’ve got company.”

“But haven’t you tried to—”

Buffy spun to face her, nearly growling. “Every day. What the hell do you think I am? I’m the Slayer.”

“You’re
a
Slayer,” August corrected. “Not even the main one anymore. Not for a long time. The Council, they just call you the Lost Slayer now. Not even your name.” Buffy took that in. In her mind she reached back to the moment she knew was truly hers, where her mind belonged. Her soul… where her soul had been pushed away, into the here and now, and her body left behind. Hijacked.

What had happened between then and now? Where were they all? What had happened to Giles?

“How much territory do they control? Camazotz and the vampires?” she asked. August seemed deeply troubled. She stared at the steel door, then turned back to look at Buffy, sizing her up.

“Well?” Buffy prodded.

“Sunnydale. A few other towns. Maybe a thirty mile radius around.”

“And nobody knows?”

“Nobody believes,” August told her. “Nobody wants to believe. That’s how they win. Spin control. Marketing the illusion that everything’s normal. Plenty of humans willing to help for a piece of the power.”

“God,” Buffy rasped.

“So there’s no way out of here?” August asked, her voice taking on a kind of quiet desperation, as if she had surrendered a part of herself. “You’ve tried everything?”

“Five years is a long time,” Buffy told her. “Maybe with two of us now it’ll be different, but I figure they’ll just send more guards now to bring the meals.”

“Then I guess we don’t have any choice,” August said softly. Her eyes filled with moisture and she wiped at them bitterly. Then she took a breath and steadied herself, a grim expression on her face.

“Again, not tracking,” Buffy told her.

August stared at her as though she were stupid. “They captured you because they finally got smart. If you don’t kill the Slayer, there won’t be another one. Keep you in here…” she whirled around, threw her arms up in near hysteria. “Keep us in here, and there’ll never be another Slayer.” Buffy stared at her. “You have a gift for stating the obvious.”

“You’re just going to let them? There’s nothing to stop them from spreading even further now.” August bit her lip, shook her head and hugged herself as though attempting to deny the thoughts that were filling her head.

“It sucks. It truly does,” Buffy said, hearing the pain in her own voice. The despair. “But until they get careless, and let down their guard, there’s nothing we can do.” August pushed a lock of her dark hair behind her ears. She would not turn her iron-gray eyes up to look at Buffy.

“There’s something I can do,” she said softy.

One eyebrow raised, Buffy studied her. “What’s that? What can you do?” Finally, August met her gaze. Her soft eyes had hardened again. Crazy, defiant eyes. Eyes cold and decisive.

“I can kill you.”

I can kill you.

The stone walls of the cell echoed back the words, and then silence descended. No noise came from the corridor beyond the steel door. The only thing Buffy Summers could hear was her own gentle breathing, and that of the sixteen-year-old girl standing across from her. The one who had spoken those impossible words.