The war room - it was right down the hall.

Saddiq actually didn’t like his chances, but he didn’t see that he had much choice in the matter. He shoved himself backwards, his lungs aching for a good breath of air, and scrambled towards the room at the end of the corridor, feeling the vibrations of his attacker thrumming through the floor. He just about reached the doorway when something hit him in the back, propelling him into the room and straight into the old oak table in the center of the room, which exploded around him like so much breakaway furniture.

He had a sense of movement behind him, and he turned as he fell, which may have saved him at least temporarily, as the thing was on him before his back hit the floor. He felt a pressure on his chest and a sudden, terrible wave of cold that seemed horrible and monstrous, as if a vein had been opened and all his blood was draining away at a rate that was supersonic. With the cold came a weakness that was even more frightening.

He still couldn’t see the damn thing, just a hint of a distortion in the air, but he knew from its weight that it was a huge and inhuman. A demon? That might make the most sense.

He punched it, punched where some of it must have been, and did so repeatedly, with what strength he had left. It felt like he was punching an armadillo with scales made of granite, and he rammed his knee into what was presumably its underbelly, but felt like it was made of titanium. No matter how much it hurt, he kept pounding away, even as it felt like he was using his last energy in this fruitless task.

Finally he hit something it didn’t like. It grunted, a breath as cold as winter and as sour as fear sweat, and Saddiq managed to get his leg up and kick it off him, its bulk slamming into the doorframe and taking a piece of it with it.

A minor victory, and he couldn’t enjoy it. He felt so weak he wasn’t sure he could move. He just wanted to sleep; to close his eyes and drift off with the endless cold. But he wouldn’t let himself do that. To give in without a fight was not only dishonorable but cowardly, and he was not a coward. He was Saddiq; he was a guard of the royal court and an X-Man, and he wouldn’t die without fighting it every step of the way.

He couldn’t risk turning his back on the thing, so he shoved himself backwards until he was within reach of the nearest weapons cabinet, just as the air shifted and blurred. He blindly grabbed whatever was closest on his right and just managed to raise it in his hands and pull the trigger as he felt the weight of the demon crush his legs. He’d grabbed some kind of bolt thrower, a rather medieval looking weapon that could have been the rocket launcher version of a crossbow, and as he fired it pneumatically flung a small projectile about the size and thickness of a shotgun shell into the thing.

There was a noise like a cracking shell, and something liquid splattered from a nowhere point in the air, a slightly pearlescent fluid like semen, but it had the meaty smell of blood. The demon made a noise like an aggrieved yowl, and with blood now streaming down its … chest (he decided to mentally call it a chest; he had no idea what it actually was), he had something to focus on. He ratcheted back the firing mechanism and shot another bolt at it; he continued to do this as rapidly as possible, until he was out of bolts, and then he used it as a bludgeon, smashing it into the open wounds with all the strength he had left.

The thing was roaring now, screaming, a slightly sub-sonic noise he could feel vibrating in his gut, and the thing turned and galloped out of the room, out of the office; he heard the front door slap open or maybe it slapped closed - it was incredibly hard to tell.

He sagged back and the bolt thrower fell out of his hands, and he knew he should grab it back up in case it returned, but his fingers were numb, and his world was narrowing to a single point of light in a growing circle of darkness. The cold and weakness was just overwhelming; he felt like he was slowly submerging in icy water, sinking so slow it was almost sensual, comforting in an odd way. Perhaps if he hadn’t expended all his remaining energy trying to hurt it, he would have been able to stay conscious.

But Saddiq couldn’t accept that his choice was bad. He hurt the thing - his enemy was marked, and would always remember him, would always remember that he wasn’t an easy kill. That felt like exactly what he was made to do.

If genetics were destiny, at least he’d fulfilled his.

*****

It took them so long to respond that Doyle wondered if he actually was being watched, and he almost gave up. But finally he heard footsteps outside his door, and remained where he was, laying splayed on the cold, hard floor, pretending to be dead.

It was a risky gambit, but the only one he could try right now, and besides, he knew from past experience he was very good at it. If these demons were at all concerned about their merchandise - a/k/a Humans - they would be worried if one seemed to suddenly be broken. So he complained loudly about his headache until he seemed to have a mild fit and apparently passed out. Doyle didn’t find it easy to keep track of time when playing limp and dead, but he figured he’d been “out” for at least six minutes, maybe even a bit more.

He was good at playing dead. He’d developed the fake “pass out” to get out of bar tabs and the occasional bet without having to devolve to fisticuffs which, to be perfectly honest, wasn’t always his strong suit. As a general rule, he avoided pain as often as possible. Which is why it was such a bitch that his head hit the floor so hard, but unavoidable in the name of realism. He also went for a limb twitch, but quickly stopped ‘cause there was such a thing as overkill.

From the sound of it, three different guys came in, about one more than he anticipated, but that was okay - he figured he could work with it as long as they weren’t spaced too funny. Two crouched down on either side of him, and he felt one feeling for a pulse on his neck as the other said, “What the fuck’s this about?”

“Did ya hit him in the head?”

“No!”

“Maybe he’s having a reaction to the tranq,” Guy number three said. From the sound of it, he was near the door.

“Is that possible?” Guy number one pried open his eyelid, but Doyle had made sure to have his eyes rolled up. It hurt after a short while, but again, realism.

“When chemicals are involved, almost anything’s possible. I’ll go see if a med bay’s clear.”

Med bay? Since when did demons have “med bays”? Maybe they were doing medical experiments or something - what a pleasant thought. But he heard the third guy walk off down the hall, and he was glad, as now he had a shot at getting these guys.

He let the guys bicker over what to do for a couple more seconds, then made his move.

He elbowed the one of his left hard in the gut, and before the one on the right could react, he grabbed that taser thing he had in a holster at his side, thumbed it on, and stabbed him in the arm with it as he tried to grab it back. He stiffened and fell backwards as Doyle turned the taser on the other guard, the thing snapping like a whip. Jesus, how much of a charge did these things carry? Were they legal? (Were they lethal?)

After stunning them both, he scrambled to his feet and rushed out the door, figuring an alarm would be going off any second, and he was surprised to find himself in what looked like an actual cellblock, a dark cinderblock hallway with steel doors on either side of the corridor. A quick glance at the locking mechanisms showed they were operated by some kind of key card system, so he couldn’t just throw open the doors and cause chaos like he’d been hoping to do. He considered going back and searching those guys for a key card, but then he heard the unmistakable sounds of boot soles slapping on cement, and he just ran for it.

The hallways were all low lit and maze like, similar in almost every detail and in their directional turns, enough so that he felt like he’d wandered into a space station movie set or West Hollywood sex dungeon by accident. Finally one turn ended in a dead end, the hallways ending abruptly in a metal wall that looked thicker than all the others and covered with a faint patina of rust, and he had nowhere left to go. He pressed himself flat against the side wall of the corner, and waited for his pursuers to come around. He’d give at least a couple of them a little “present”. An alarm must have sounded, but obviously it had been a silent one.

He saw the blur of movement, deep black against grey darkness, and he got one of the storm troopers with the taser, making him yelp in surprise before he went down. But others converged on Doyle, a pair of guys dressed in similar black uniforms (not the Scourge; far more military), and he kicked one in the balls before punching the other one across the face with the hand holding the taser. It went off, and he was pretty sure he shocked the guy in the face, which sounded unbelievably nasty.

There was a loud, echoing “click”, that of several guns being cocked, and he paused to see about ten guys aiming big ass military rifles at him. “That’s enough,” the guy who must have been the head storm trooper said. Doyle couldn’t single him out from the mass of guys with guns. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

He scoffed. “Really? So the whole attackin’ thing and aimin’ a shitload of guns in my face is your version of a group hug? I’d hate to see what you’d do if you fuckin’ hated my guts.”

All the storm troopers had flinty, dead eyes, even though most couldn’t have been over thirty. Definitely military, but shit, since when did the military kidnap people on American soil? (Did they think he might be a terrorist or something? IRA?) “We just need to hold you until Weapon X makes the exchange. Then we’ll let you go.”

“What? Who the fuck is Weapon X? And who the bloody fucking hell are you guys anyways?” He glared at them, still not dropping the taser, even though that would have been the smart thing to do: guns trumped tasers much like a lead pipe trumped fists, and could he risk getting this body damaged when it was just a loaner? But this was eighty thousand shades of wrong, and he wanted some answers, damn it, whether he was going to get any or not.

Some of the storm troopers exchanged wary glances, as if not sure if they should tell him the truth, and if so, who did it, when there was a very loud explosion, and suddenly no one cared anymore.

****

After getting Scott to the hospital, they paid a visit to Marc’s hotel room, and found him in much the same position, sprawled on his bed, completely insensate to the world. But there was something interesting here: namely there was a gun dangling from Marc’s hand, the one Logan recognized as the one he usually stashed under his pillow in case of violent wake up calls. It wasn’t fired - he didn’t smell cordite - but the fact that he had it out meant something. “He knew he was under attack,” Logan said, trying hard not to pace or kick a hole in the wall. Leave it to Marc to fight while he wasn’t even awake. There was a reason why he liked the guy, and that was it.

Bob held his face in his hands, and asked, “Marc, can you hear me?”

Much to Logan’s great relief, he muttered something. It was probably “Yeah”, but the syllables were too mushy to say for certain.

“Didn’t drain him as much as Scott,” Bob reported, even though Logan had figured that out for himself. “Scott was probably the first hit, or close to the first hit. Marc must have known something was wrong from the get go and tried to fight it, as futile as that was, but the succubus must have thought it wasn’t worth the bother. It took what it needed and moved on.”

“To Bren.”

Bob glanced up at him and nodded. “That would be my guess. Unless there’s another victim we don’t know about yet.”

They stared at each other a moment, and then seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same time. “Giles.”

Logan was a little tired of jaunting around and wanted to hunt this fucking thing down, but at the moment they were limited. Bob couldn’t track it down from a distance, and neither could he. He kept picking up a faint, otherworldly scent, much like he picked up on Kier, but it was maddeningly anemic, and it disappeared as soon as he stepped out of the room, even though it couldn’t teleport and must have run through here. So it had learned to cloak its scent? Well, why not? Demons had sharp senses of smell - if it was trying to hide from them, it would have to conceal its scent.

But could the Organization be connected to this? They really didn’t deal with demons all that much - beyond that DNA mixing thing - and he couldn’t see them taking the quantum leap to major league demon summoning and controlling. They used resources they found like any good scavenger, but they hadn’t yet acknowledged the existence of the arcane and occult arts, and probably never would. So this left any of the half million demonic enemies they had as the source of the succubus attack, and how would they narrow that list down? The Organization deciding to be jackasses was just coincidental, another case of the Douglas Adams maxim that nothing was ever so bad that it couldn’t get worse.

They got Marc to the hospital and then went over to Giles’, but it turned out his place was as deserted as Xander’s apartment. It was kind of creepy and deeply wrong, but that aside, Logan found himself admiring Giles’s library. It wasn’t just its own room, but spread out into the hall and living room, bookcases and shelves filling almost all available wall space. Apparently you could take the man out of the library, but not the library out of the man. Most of the books fit his previous Watcher job, spell books and demon dictionaries in about two dozen different languages, a couple of which Logan didn’t recognize and assumed were demon dialects of some kind. He didn’t smell the succubus’s faint trace either, only tea and the musty smell of slowly decomposing books.

As fascinated as he was by his book collection, he turned away, frowning at Bob, who also flipping through a leather bound book. “This isn’t right, is it? Both Doyle and Giles gone?”

“Maybe Giles took him out for a drink,” he suggested, flashing him a brief smart ass grin. “Okay, yeah, not likely. But I’m not sure what it means.”

“Neither am I. Could the people behind the succubus have taken them?”

Bob walked off into Giles’s neat kitchen and Logan followed, mainly to make sure he wasn’t up to something. Although he hated to traffic in stereotypes, for a straight guy, Giles kept an amazingly neat house. “I don’t see why. The succubus could attack them and leave them as temporarily out of play as Scott, Bren, and Marc. Why take them specially? Doesn’t make sense.”

Logan’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and while Bob stuck his head in Giles’s fridge to search for … well, he had no fucking idea, he pulled it out and answered it with some reluctance. “Yeah?”

“So you’re still alive?” Gold replied with sarcastic surprise. “Good thing you’re nearly indestructible. That could raise your percentage of the back end if we market you right.”

“Can the bullshit. Did you find out something?”

Bob found a can of ice tea, which he sipped as he turned to look out Giles’s kitchen window, which was quaintly framed with lace curtains that must have been leftovers from the previous tenant. He was singing softly, “It’s my party but I’m waiting for someone to start it, my party there’s blood on the ceiling the carpet, gotta get my mojo runnin’-”

Gold sighed extravagantly, stretching it out until it was almost a comment in itself. “Well, I found out who hired the Vrenicks, but it doesn’t really make sense. Some organization, but I wasn’t able to find out specifically who. I doubt it was CAA or the Teamsters, but god knows in this town -”

It felt like he’d just been shot in the spine; an electric shock ran through him as brutal as anything he’d ever experience. “The Organization? They were hired by the Organization?” Bob turned to face him, no longer singing his creepy song.

“An organization, yeah, but no one seems to be able to tell me which one -”

“You just did. Thanks.” He hung up before Gold continued to talk about getting him a studio contract, and just as the thought popped into Logan’s head, Bob nodded and agreed with him aloud.

“Now we know where they are.”

*****

The mystery man turned out a slender, nebbish-y looking man in a white lab coat, probably in his early thirties, although his straw blond hair was thinning so drastically he looked ten years older.

A very military looking man in a black outfit and carrying a military rifle stood back and off to the side as the nebbish-y man released Giles from his restraints and took the jaw restraint off. “I’m really sorry about this,” he said blandly, sounding about as sincere as a boss who praised you before he fired you. “But we had to make sure.”

Giles glared at him, sitting on the edge of the gurney, astounded by his urge to simply hit this man. He wanted to beat some kind of genuine Human expression into his face, and he was quietly appalled by his own brutality. He’d been in America too long, perhaps. “If you had simply asked me, I could have told you I wasn’t a mutant.”

The “doctor” smirked in a very smug way. “Well, you know, trust but verify.”

“Of course. But here’s something I’d be surprised if you could verify. I’m not a mutant, I have no special physical or mental abilities, but I am a spellcaster. Vis vires.”

At those words, both the “doctor” and his soldier companion went flying into the back wall with bone shattering force, unconscious before their bodies thudded to the floor. Perhaps that was too powerful a spell for his purposes, but frankly he was really bloody angry. He was tired of always being the one to get knocked out, to get kidnapped, to be held hostage. He wasn’t weak; he wasn’t without resources.

It may have made him a hypocrite, though. He always taught Willow not to use magic for such a negative purpose as violence, such a thing could not only corrupt you but come back hard in a karmic sense, but to be totally honest: screw it. He already knew he was beholden to a demon or two, that his soul was already bound to be held hostage by characters both unsavory and suspect, so he didn’t see that he had much to lose at the moment.

Besides, right now, he just wanted to vent some rage.

He walked out of the austere, high tech Frankenstein’s lab and into a wide cinderblock corridor, where more soldiers in black body armor appeared, aiming rifles at him and barking, “Stand down! We will not hurt you if you capitulate!”

Americans. They’d already hurt him - all they were doing is promising not to hurt him further. He felt the energy gathering in his chest, a ball of flame welling deep inside his sternum, and he almost felt sorry for these tossers. Almost. “Extorqueo,” he snapped, and the group of soldiers was flung aside as bonelessly as toy soldiers, thrown into the walls and ceiling and each other at near hurricane force. None of the guns went off, for which he was glad, as he couldn’t create such a precision bullet avoidance spell without some special herbs and artifacts, although he was pretty sure he could create a broad spectrum kind of force spell that would repel them from his vicinity.

He continued walking down the hallway, hearing the sounds of more soldiers approaching, and he couldn’t help but smile grimly to himself. Did they still think that guns were going to work?

Well then - time for a little lesson.