Coming Back

A/N: Thanks for Reviews

anubiset: Thanks, glad you like it. And yep i love cliffhangers, sorry for being mean.

After Riley had finished spilling his guts and his blood about what the Initiative were up to, Willow had run to be sick at least once and Giles had polished his glasses so much that the cloth he used should be sporting holes all the over it. Buffy had silent tears running down her face over the way her boyfriend had betrayed her. And not to mention that she felt sick over the fact they were going to kill her friends and experiment on her.

Both Spike and Xander stood in a similar position, arms crossed in front them as they surveyed the room, noting everyone’s look, but liking mostly the look of pain etched on Riley’s face as he tried to stop himself from passing out again.

‘Ok, so we know now that the Initiative have kidnapped Dru and Oz and right now, they’re locked up in a cell waiting to be tortured by being tested on.’ Threatening growls from Spike and Xander and nods all round as Giles spoke. There was even a rather vigorous nod from Riley, as he tried to convey that he had been honest with his information. ‘And also that they planned to control the slayer and make her into their own personal soldier, with the aid of a behaviour modification chip, but not before they spliced her with some demon parts they had collected.’ Another vigorous nod from Riley and he seemed to relax as all the information he had told was relayed back, but then he stiffened again at Buffy’s words.

‘You are a bastard, Riley.’ she spoke eerily calm. ‘I trusted you and you betrayed me *and* my friends. You make me sick.’ she walked closer to his body, past Spike and Xander. The hate was clear in her eyes and the threat showing through in her words, as she leaned closer to his face. ‘You and your Initiative buddies are going to see how the Slayer really works.’

Giles cut her off before she could continue, so she pulled back from Riley. She walked as far away as she could so as not to attack him. ‘Buffy, please, we don’t even have a . .a plan of attack. We need to calmly rationalise the situation and then go from there.’ he paused ‘So, what do we know . .?’

BEEP, BEEP. Everyone turned to where they assumed the noise was coming from and their gazes fell upon Riley, who still looked slightly out of it from the pain, but was coherent enough to know that he was going to be in even more trouble.

Spike and Xander were the first to get to him, looking him over and grabbing the pager from it’s place in his pocket. They looked over the pager, but they couldn’t read it, all that appeared were numbers.

‘What’s this mean?’ Spike said shoving the pager into Riley’s face, numbers first.

Riley knew already that trying to lie didn’t work, keeping quiet didn’t work, so all he had left was telling them the truth. ‘It means they want me back at the base for a debriefing.’

‘What’s the debriefing about?’ Xander piped in.

‘About the new hostiles we’ve taken and the take down of the slayer.’ he then added quickly, ‘It should be tomorrow.’ he wanted to be as helpful as possible right now, they were all a little unstable to him.

Spike and Xander growled low in their throats at the mention of Dru and Oz as just hostiles. They were may not have been human, but they weren’t as evil and depraved as the fuckers that had them.

‘Well what do we do now? They want to talk to him.’ Willow paused realising something. ‘They’ll want to see him and he looks pretty bad, with his face like that and his fingers are, um . . .kind of, not working.’

‘Good point luv.’ Spike said. ‘It seems we got to keep him here.’

‘What!?!’ Buffy exclaimed. ‘Didn’t you hear what Riley said, they’ll be waiting for him.’

‘Yep I heard. And when they come for him,’ Spike said gesturing towards Riley. ‘We’ll be waitin’ for them.’

Giles shook his head at Spike’s rashness, he was thinking like a vampire, about the fight, but not about what was best. ‘We can’t hope to build up a big enough fighting force to take on the Initiative. They have weapons that could take us down in an instant.’ he sat heavily into an available chair, sighing heavily like a man defeated.

Spike saw Giles’ defeatist attitude and wanted to punch him, talk about giving up too easily. ‘That they could mate, but unlike me and Xan did, we can take proper precautions.’

‘Oh really. How?’ Giles said sceptically asked.

‘Magic to stop their weapons. Leaving us all able to take them down, once they make an attack.’ Spike held up his hand, forestalling any remarks from Buffy. ‘Cause they will go for an attack. We have one of their men. *And* they can take all of you out at once.’

‘Well what do we do now then?’ Buffy asked.

‘We plan.’ Xander concluded and walked back over to Riley to get some more information, this time about the Initiatives weapons, training and the most important fact, their weaknesses.