Gray
Gray
After having her world destroyed by the Winchesters, Eve wanted to rebuild her family. She claimed a soul with his own dark power and his own moral gray. He would be her champion. Hopefully. Xander just wanted to go home, preferably before the hunters Sam and Dean Winchester caught up with him.
Chapter ONE :: Chapter TWO :: Chapter THREE :: Chapters 4+5 :: Chapter SIX :: Chapter SEVEN :: Chapter EIGHT :: Chapter NINE :: Chapter TEN :: Chapter ELEVEN : Chapter TWELVE :: Chapter THIRTEEN :: Chapter FOURTEEN :: Chapter FIFTEEN :: Chapter SIXTEEN :: Chapter Seventeen :: Chapter Eighteen :: Chapter Nineteen :: Chapter TWENTY :: Chapter TWENTY-ONE :: Chapter TWENTY-TWO : Chapter TWENTY-THREE :: Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
Does anyone think that Stargate Command is a safe place to hang out for long periods of time??
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You hungry?” Xander asked Spike.
“Could use a little snack,” Spike agreed. After almost three weeks, they’d reached a strange sort of routine. The guard outside the cell turned on the television. Someone brought Xander a huge tray of food. Xander ate everything, with Spike stealing some of the good bits. Then after a while, Spike would sit close, and Xander would tilt his head and let Spike feed.
Spike’s teeth had just slipped into him, and Xander was squirming with entirely inappropriate feelings of lust, when every alarm in the building seemed to go off at once.
“Bloody hell, give a bloke some warning,” Spike complained. The guard didn’t react. Xander had even mooned the guy at one point, but that just led to truly disturbing fantasies and Xander and Spike and some random soldier dude, and why did everyone in the universe assume that Xander would be the butt boy?
When the alarm kept going and going, Xander could feel the anxiety levels rise. Ghost thoughts of invasion and false gods and little gray guys on power trips all drifted through the room. Spike tightened an arm around Xander and whispered in his ear. “What’s got their panties in a twist?”
“Invasion,” Xander answered. He reached out for Dorsey, but a wall of emotion slapped him back. “Oh, this is not a drill,” Xander said as images of mechanical bug-like things filled his head. “Okay, this is worse than seeing your thoughts, Spike. Bugs. Metal bugs with long legs and some seriously weird weapons.”
The guard whirled around and gave Xander a very unhappy look, but then his radio came on, and an unfamiliar voice started ordering the military guys to hold certain areas. With an almost apologetic look, he answered his radio and then headed out the main door, locking it behind him. The lock gave a heavy thunk as it closed, not that it mattered because Spike and Xander were still behind bars.
Spike waited a half second before leaping to his feet and rubbing his hands gleefully. “About soddin’ time. These wankers are too fucking fond of their security. Right then, break the bars while they’re distracted.” Spike looked over at Xander as if he’d just said something perfectly reasonable-which he hadn’t.
“Break the… what? Spike, have you found a stash of the really good booze somewhere that you’re not sharing?”
“For the love of…” Spike pressed his lips together tightly for a second, and then took a deep breath. “Listen ya wanker,” he started, “you’re an alph, and that means power and a lot of it. I can taste it every time I feed. I’ve avoided taking too much of that power so that when we got a chance, you’d have the strength to open the soddin’ cell door.” Spike’s voice had started to rise, but now he stopped and made a really strange face, one that made Xander a little bit worried because it looked a lot like his ‘I’m about to kill someone’ face. “Either you get that cell door open or you’re going to be stuck in here with one seriously brassed off vampire,” Spike warned.
“Hey, I think I’m going to try the door,” Xander said weakly as he got up from the cot. Turning his back on Spike, he put his hands on the heavy bars and started pushing. Color him unsurprised that the metal didn’t so much as bend.
“Move,” Spike shouted, danger in his tone of voice as he shoved at Xander’s back, and Xander surged forward at the same time he tried to spin around to meet whatever danger made Spike use that tone of voice. Pushing and turning at the same time led to falling and Xander found himself on the floor, one ankle still caught in the mangled bars.
Spike looked down and gave a quick laugh. “You should see your face.”
Xander looked around at the torn metal hinges and the door hanging from the frame. “Okay, that’s a little freaky.”
“You’re an alph, a regular demonic ox. Now get over here and break this door.”
After pulling his book out of the wrecked cell door, Xander stood up and eyed the door. It didn’t look as strong as the cell door. He took a running start and put his shoulder into it. The door broke out of the frame and hit the far side of the hallway. Xander slid to the floor, and the door fell on him.
Spike came and lifted the door off as Xander crawled out from under it. “Ow,” he complained as Spike helped him up. “Is that solid steel?”
“Pretty close,” Spike agreed. That’s probably why the hinges gave instead of the door breaking. Now let’s find a way up and out,” Spike said, turning to look down each direction of hallway before picking one. Xander was almost sure that Spike was walking in random directions, but since he didn’t have any better suggestions, he followed. They ducked into a side hall when a number of soldiers rushed past, and Spike managed to find a door labeled “Stairs.”
“Whoa, bugs,” Xander warned, grabbing Spike’s hand before he could turn the knob.
“Cockroaches?”
“Techie versions of horror movie superbugs.”
Spike sighed. “Great. Well, if it’s bugs or living our lives in a cage, I know which one I’d prefer,” Spike said, and he reached for the knob again, but Xander caught his arm and held it as he slowed his breathing and reached out for Dorsey. He found the man firing a machine gun at one of the bugs. It was a scout bug. He looked over his shoulder to where Willow knelt next to an open panel where she worked on rewiring something he didn’t understand. “Rosie?” he asked.
“Working on it,” she said, her voice snippy, but then he didn’t have time to worry because more bugs came down the hall and he opened fire, targeting the center mass that floated between long, delicate looking legs that weren’t delicate as much as they were strong enough and sharp enough to plunge through a man’s guts.
“Destroy the control…” Xander held out his hands to show the shape of a small dodgeball like thing. “The control thingy in the center, and we have to go up three levels.”
“We’re going up more levels than that,” Spike said as he looked around. He eyed a pipe on the wall for a second before he reached over and ripped it off the wall, jerking at it to force the metal to break. The wires insides were pulled out, and a few sparks flew, but Spike ignored that, swinging his new weapon a few times before going back to the door.
“Willow and Dorsey-”
“Don’t care.”
“They’re cut off.”
“Bully for them,” Spike said as he pulled the door to the stairs open fast and fell back, his weapon up. Xander held his breath, but nothing was in the stairwell. Spike gave him a weary look and then headed up the stairs, leaving Xander to scramble after him.
“I only saw bugs in the stairwells, not this part of the stairwell. There are a lot of stairs around here,” Xander hissed. Spike kept going up and up, but Xander stopped at the door to level 13. Willow was here. Xander could tell. Well, actually he couldn’t tell about Willow as much as he could about Dorsey, but Willow was with Dorsey, so… Xander pushed the door open and stepped out.
Behind him, Spike cursed, but Xander was a little too busy taking care of a scary-ass bug. The round ball-like control floated in the middle of ten or twelve curved legs, each leg looking way too much like a blade for comfort. The creature, machine, cyborg thing came right at Xander. The legs rose from the control center up several feet and then curved down to the ground where they ended in sharp tips instead of feet. At the top where the leg bent, the whole thing was about five feet tall.
Xander took one look at it and froze. A leg came up, poised to strike, and Spike came through the door swinging just as Xander brought his hands up to defend himself. And using hands against giant alien blade legs was not his best plan. Spike’s first swing knocked two legs out from under the spider, but it simply leaned back on the other legs. The control center… that’s what had to get destroyed. Xander leaped up, determined to reach that center and rip it to shreds.
Unfortunately, he hit the ceiling and came crashing back down onto the floor.
“Oh for-” Spike swung at another leg.
“Sorry.” Xander got back up and then threw himself backwards to avoid a leg that was aimed right at his stomach. “Hey!” Xander grabbed the leg above the sharp foot and gave it his hardest pull. The whole thing started tilting toward him, and Xander’s eyes got big as the rest of the legs all started flying at him as the creature trying to catch itself.
Luckily, that left an opening, and Spike leaped in and brought the pipe down on the round center. All the legs seemed to slap inward, and Xander could see the bug trying to curl in on itself and protect the center. “Oh no you don’t.” Xander held the leg he already had in one hand and reached out to grab a second leg. Bracing himself he held the two legs, opening a hole in the creature’s defenses, which gave Spike the chance to beat it to death. And boy did Spike beat it. Gleefully. Brutally. And he kept beating it until every leg lay flat on the ground and little pieces of electronics and metal were scattered across the floor. Finally he brought the end of the pipe down on the cracked housing and used it like a pry bar to split the control center in half.
“Um, Spike?”
“Wot?” Spike snapped.
“You’re scaring me.”
“Not enough if you’re still bloody running off without permission,” Spike said, and Xander got pinned in that yellow eyed glare. “First, she’s not your bloody best friend. Your best friend is in another soddin’ universe. Second, how the bloody fuck do you know where she is?”
“Um…” Xander cleared his throat. “I…”
“Spit it out.” Spike ripped the pipe out of the ruins of the alien tech, and Xander knew Spike well enough to know that he was having fantasies about sticking it through Xander’s foot.
“I accidentally turned Dorsey. I think. Probably. I can tell where he is, and I can hear his thoughts and I’m pretty sure that while I can’t plant ideas in his head, I can push him to do something if he has even a little inkling of an idea on his own.”
Spike’s mouth just about fell open, and his vampire ridges vanished.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Xander defended himself. “I was draining him, and I didn’t mean to, and then I pushed my energy back into him because I felt his spark dying, and I’m not helping myself here, am I?” Xander asked.
“No.”
“Good to know.”
For long seconds, they stared at each other.
“Well? Where are they?” Spike demanded.
Xander looked in both directions before he pointed to one. “Um, that way.”
“Come on then,” Spike said as he headed that way. From the way he was swinging the pipe, Xander thought he probably wanted to run into more alien bugs. Yep, Spike was unhappy.