Author's Chapter Notes:
This is based at the end of season six but the following things are different--------------
The story starts a year on from Spike's disappearance.-------------------
The Initiative is atill active. Adam never happened nor did Maggie Walsh make an attempt on Buffy's life---------------------

Riley and Buffy have split following a mutual descision when he got reassigned elsewhere--------------------------
Spike and Buffy had the season six destructive relationship but it was after the Riley break-up. Spike never attempted to rape Buffy----------------------

Giles didn't go back to England after Buffy was resurrected but stayed in Sunnydale--------------------
Chapter One

A Typical Day

The lights came on as they did every morning at six A.M., flooding the place with bright florescent light, taking over from the dim lighting of the night. The place was never in total darkness.

Those with hearts capable of beating started beating faster, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before the days ‘patients’ were selected for their examinations and procedures. The place was eerily quiet.

Two men walked down in front of a row of glass fronted cells pushing a metal gurney. It was like a hospital trolley, but unlike a hospital trolley, it was completely bare of mattress and blankets, its shining metal surface held only several strong straps.

They stopped outside of one of the cells about a third of the way down the row. A pair of yellow eyes looked up as they approached. The men pushed a button on the console outside the cell’s door. Immediately the cell began to fill with gas, billowing in rapidly through vents in the floor, walls and ceiling. The creature in the cell looked round furtively, trying to find a way to escape the gas. It was impossible; the cloud soon enveloped its naked body. Merely seconds afterwards, it convulsed violently then lay still. Pressing another button vented the cell and made it safe for the men to enter. They lifted the unconscious body onto the gurney, using thick latex gloves in case any residue of gas remained on the creature’s skin. It worked on skin contact, not by being breathed in. It had been developed because too many of the subjects it was needed for didn’t actually have a physiological need for air and so couldn’t absorb it via the respiratory system.

The men closed the cell door and pushed the gurney to the operating room.

“Wonder what she’s got in mind for her old favourite today?” said a rather short, stocky man with flattish facial features, giving him the look of a boxer.

“Not sure. Something unpleasant, no doubt,” said the other, a taller slimmer man, with a grin. “Is there anything left that she hasn’t tried on it before?”

“It’s been here a year more or less so there must be something special about it. Never known one of its kind to last so long,” replied the first man.

They reached the operating room. That was a misnomer really, it was more like operating rooms as it was made up of several different sealed areas - some just like the cells the creatures were held in, some were like traditional operating rooms, yet more were filled with such strange apparatus that if you didn’t know what it was for, you were inclined not to ask as some things are better not known.

They wheeled the gurney into one of the operating theatre cubicles. Professor Maggie Walsh was waiting for them.

“Ah, gentlemen, put it on the table, please, and strap it down well.”

They lifted the limp body of the creature from the gurney and onto the operating table. It didn’t take much effort. The creature was about five feet ten inches tall but its slightly built frame was almost skeletal - it was so thin. Some of these creatures didn’t seem to thrive in captivity and the various tests and experiments it had endured had left their mark.

It was strapped down on the table at the ankles, knees, waist, wrist and shoulders. Its head was held securely in a brace to ensure no movement was possible once the creature woke up.

Maggie looked down at her specimen. She had learnt so much from the study of this one. It was so much more resilient than the others of its kind had been. It looked for all intents and purposes like a man but for the demonic features of its face - eyes yellow, brow and nose ridged, teeth sharp and pointed.

“Yes,” thought Maggie. “It is easy to see why vampires are such successful demon -, inhabiting a human body, only triggering the change to vampiric features when feeding or in a stressful situation like a fight.”

This one had had the feeling of stress and fear triggered by a chip implanted in its brain. For the past month, the creature had had the permanent feeling of imminent danger and paranoia coursing through its mind from the chip. The result of this was for the past month the creature hadn’t deviated from its demonic visage and its body had been subject to the changes this caused, an increase in the need for blood to eat being one of them. However, the paranoia they also introduced meant that it wouldn’t touch any of the blood offered in the first week so for the next three none was offered. Nor had it slept for more than a few minutes at a time. The ravages this had done to its body were plain to see in the acute weight loss.

Maggie reached for the clippers hung at the side of the table and carefully shaved the creature’s hair from its head, the last month’s growth of sandy brown hair falling to the floor. She swabbed the area at the back of the head that marked the site of the chip. She reached for the probe attached to the computer and placed it against the vampires scalp. As she did so, she noticed that its hands were moving, fists clenching and unclenching.

“Oh dear, as usual you’ve fought off the drugs too quickly,” she said, knowing the creature could hear her. “That’s a shame, as I’m afraid this will hurt quite a bit, Number Seventeen.”

The yellow eyes opened but couldn’t see Maggie as she was standing behind its head. She slowly inserted the probe through a small opening left by the removal of a dime- sized piece of skull and into the chip embedded in the brain. Seventeen thrashed wildly in its restraints as the pain in its head exploded. Its head was kept perfectly still by the brace.

“Just a couple of minutes more,” said Maggie, the words spoken to herself - not as a reassurance to the vampire.

“That’s it.” She slowly withdrew the probe. “Any second now I should see…there, yes, that’s worked beautifully.”

As she looked at the vampire its face began to change. The features smoothed out, teeth receded, and eyes changed from yellow to blue. Now the vampire looked wholly human again. Its cheekbones jutted out above painfully hollow cheeks but she could see that it had once been a handsome man. Not feeding for a month had caused a deterioration in its appearance with the eyes sunken and dull.

She walked round to the front of the table so the vampire could see her. Its blue eyes followed her as she came into view. Its mouth moved but no sound was emitted. One of the first things they do at the Initiative on capture is render the creatures they capture mute, making for a much more peaceful workplace.

The chips embedded in the brains of their ‘patients’ were the fourth generation of the old type of implant they used in the early days. Those just triggered pain if the creature went to attack a human. These allowed you to do pretty well anything to them that you wanted to do. The development of the probe’s ability to reprogram the chip for new tests had been a major breakthrough.

She pressed a button on the wall indicating that Seventeen be transported to one of the testing chambers. The two men who’d brought it down appeared in the doorway.

“I’ll just knock it out for you,” said Maggie. She reinserted the probe and with a push of a button on what looked remarkably like a TV remote control Seventeen went limp.

The men strapped it onto the gurney, still fastening the straps even though it was only a short distance, learning from experience to expect the unexpected. They took it to one of the bare cell-like rooms in that section. They took it off the gurney and laid it on the floor. Maggie Walsh followed them and watched as a few moments later the vampire woke up.

Seventeen looked around, eyes lighting on Professor Walsh. He fixed her with a baleful stare and stood up. Any discomfort at being naked in front of her was long gone, as he hadn’t been allowed clothes since his capture.

Maggie had been amused that it had been embarrassed by its nakedness at the start, just as a human would have been.

“Time to see how you cope without being able to draw on your demonic features or enhanced abilities,” she said as the program she’d devised began.

A slot opened in the ceiling of the cell and a bag of blood fell through it, landing at Seventeen’s feet. He stepped back a couple of paces and looked at it suspiciously. His stomach growled with hunger. It was the first food he had been offered in three weeks, but he still didn’t go to get it, knowing from past experience that rushing in usually ended badly. He glanced at Maggie who was still watching. He could read nothing in her expression. Finally, hunger won and he snatched the bag from the floor, bringing it to his lips. He hesitated as he felt no change to his features. He bit into the corner of the bag but without his razor sharp vampire teeth, he struggled to make a hole in it. When he finally did, the bag ripped open spilling more than half its contents over him and the floor. As he desperately tried to drink the remainder before it too was lost, he caught sight of Professor Walsh, who was smiling at his efforts. Anger burned through him for a second before the chip activated and he fell to the floor holding his head, the pain almost unbearable.

“Now, now, Number Seventeen, no thoughts like that allowed,” said Professor Walsh, delighted that the chip was now so sensitive it activated on a thought of anger or violence.

The pain subsided and Seventeen once more became aware of his surroundings. The precious blood of which he’d barely managed to take a mouthful was all over the floor and himself. He started to lick it off his hands and pathetically try to scoop a little more up from the floor, when suddenly water poured into the cell via a sprinkler system. It was such a strong flow that before he could react, the blood he craved had been washed down the central drain. Rage once more came to the fore but again the chip sent pain searing through his head. He fell to the floor and curled up in a ball, head in his hands.

To be continued…….





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