7

He knew Bob knew stuff other people didn’t, and had sources other people couldn’t, but it still struck Logan as showing off that he'd discovered the location of the secret Organization base in two phone calls. Bastard.

He told him he wanted to do the hit a bit differently, in that Bob would be him, and that he wouldn’t be visible to anyone. Logan tried to follow that logic, and wasn’t sure he had. “Say that again?” he asked.

Bob just stared at him, the faintest of smiles curving his lips. “I’m you. See?” And just like that, he was - Logan found himself staring at himself, right down to the appalling t-shirt and the day’s growth of beard. When he spoke, he sounded just like him too. “They’ll come after me like I’m you. But that ain’t gonna work, is it?”

“And I’m … invisible?”

He ducked his head to the side. “In a sense. You’ll always be there, but no one will be able to see you until I say they can.”

“Even if I punch someone?”

Now he grinned, and it was supremely unsettling to see a slick Bob grin on his own face. “Especially if you punch someone. They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Okay, this was a plan he could get behind. “So we’re gonna tear the place up?”

Bob’s look was measured and wary. “Well, I was thinking getting Giles and Doyle out would be the priority.”

“Fine. After that.”

“We really don’t need to. I can understand you wanting to blow off some steam, but -”

“What the hell do you mean we really don’t need to?”

“I’m gonna put an end to this. It’s gone on long enough, don’t you think?” Something in Bob’s tone stopped him from commenting further. Why? Was this a push? Probably, but there wasn’t anything he could really do about it; he didn’t even feel like doing anything about it.

He may have looked like him, but he certainly wasn’t. And that was pretty much the crux of Bob’s plan.

****

The force of the explosion sent the soldiers flying, and Doyle found himself shoved backwards as well, hitting the back wall so hard he felt his ribcage groan, electric shocks radiating outward and slithering down his nerves. He wasn’t sure if he’d broken anything or not, but he hoped not since it wasn’t his body to wreck.

He lost hold of the taser, but since the soldiers were all sprawled around, he could trade up to a gun. He was wondering if he should - did he even know where the triggers were on those damn things? - when he noticed someone standing in the fog of pulverized cinder blocks at the end of the hall, where there was a brand new hole in the wall big enough to drive a tank through. The person seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite believe it. “Giles?” he asked, pausing in his reach for a rifle.

Giles stepped forward and squinted through the fog at him. “Xander? I mean Doyle - what are you doing here?”

“Honestly? No fuckin’ clue. I just woke up here.”

“They kidnapped you too?” He scowled at the thought. “I wonder if anyone else is here. I suppose we should look.” He said something in Latin (or at least it sounded vaguely like Latin), and there was a loud, weird noise, all the locks on all the doors shattering at once, metal hitting concrete and bouncing across the floor.

Doyle sat back on his haunches, a bit surprised. Was that right? “What did you just do?”

“I’m getting out of here. Are you coming with me?” He didn’t wait for a response, he simply turned on his heel and started walking down the cross corridor. Doyle climbed up to his feet and followed, although there was something wrong with all of this. Since when was Giles the demolition expert? Since when did he throw around spells like hand grenades? Doyle didn’t know a single thing about this guy, but he got a sense - probably from Xander’s mind, even though he wasn’t sure how to access it - that this wasn’t exactly right.

Besides, his impression of a Watcher was that of a bookish aesthetic, a guy (or gal) who was essentially a walking library of demonic shit, not so much a hunter as back up for a Slayer. Oh sure, Watchers sometimes got proactive, mainly against vampires, ‘cause there just weren’t that many Slayers to go around, but this seemed rather extreme somehow.

But as he scrambled over unconscious soldiers, reaching down to snag a rifle, he got a sense from Xander that Giles had a rather dark streak; a kind of frightening dark streak. Not seen a lot, but when it came out, duck and cover. Xander seemed to know how to handle the rifle too, taking off the safety and hefting it upright, leaning the barrel against his shoulder, and Doyle wondered when a Sunnydale guy would join the military. You’d think just surviving to get out of town would be a job in itself.

Either most of the other cells were empty, or the people had already scampered by the time they worked their way down the blocks, ‘cause the only people they encountered along the way were soldiers trying to stop them. Doyle thought he’d have to shoot them, but Giles inevitably threw a spell at them that took them down before they could even finish sighting down the barrel. Okay, yeah, Mr. Watcher was in full hard ass commando mode. He was glad he was on his side.

“So, uh, d’ya know who these guys are?” he wondered, scrambling to keep up with Giles.

“I believe they’re the Organization, an anti-mutant government group.”

“We’re not mutants.”

“No kidding. “

“D’ya know what Weapon X refers to? ‘Cause those guys back there said they were holdin’ me until the exchange with Weapon X, which makes no sense to me.”

Giles actually did pause, stopping for a moment to look back at him, his brow furrowing in thought. “I think that’s a nickname of some sort for Logan.”

“Really?” He considered that a moment. “Oh, I guess I can see that, he’s a weapon, got the X gene. Not very imaginative, is it?”

“No, but I’m sure most governments aren’t known for their imagination.”

“Fair point.”

They walked into a segment of the corridor that suddenly sealed around them, back and front, cutting them off. Doyle hefted the rifle and looked for something to shoot, as he heard the hiss of what must have been some kind of gas. But then Giles said something weird sounding - demon language? Latin just didn’t have those “grgh” sounding syllables; maybe it was Belial - and the newly minted steel wall in front of them exploded outward as if hit with an invisible battering ram. Giles then continued onward, and Doyle followed, wondering how much magic this guy could sling. Throwing around dark magic could get tricky, couldn’t it? It could do bad things to the practitioner, right?

“Let us out and I won’t bring this place down around your ears,” Giles sniped, to no one in particular. But they had to have been watching. “You can’t contain me; you can only annoy me further.”

“So that’s the big plan?” Doyle wondered, reasonably certain they could do better.

Giles turned to glare at him. “Do you have a better plan?”

What color was Giles’s eyes normally? Doyle couldn’t remember, and Xander’s memories weren’t helping him, but he was fairly certain they weren’t pitch black like they were now. He knew this was bad; no normal Human could have their eyes turn completely black unless some bad mojo got a hold of them, unless magic took them over. And not good magic either.

The hair on his arms was standing up, like the static electricity was unbearable, and he was aware his life might actually be on the line here. Sometimes the magic could carry you away, and you were unable to distinguish friend from foe. “Nope, not at all. Lead on.”

He stared at him for longer than he needed to, but finally he turned away and continued down the hall, and Doyle let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding until now.

Oh shit, what was he supposed to do about this?

*****

The base was called Point Pacific, and it was an abandoned military base - of course - in an area that looked barren and completely strip-mined. In other words, a happy, cheery place that instantly brought to mind torture and death. Bob had teleported them straight inside the perimeter gates, right in front of the main entrance, and even though he couldn’t be seen, Logan tensed and waited for an attack.

It was no real surprise that it didn’t come; no, the real surprise was that no one attacked Bob a/k/a him either.

There was an alarm screaming through the base, but it was at the very edge of Human hearing, so it was unlikely that anyone found it quite as annoying as he did. All barriers fell away before them as Bob led the way in, singing, “You’ll fall apart before all this is through, you’ll let the pressure get the best of you -”

“I don’t sing,” Logan reminded him.

“You do now,” Bob replied cheerfully.

He considered punching him for that when a soldier scrambled past, and did an almost comical dead stop upon catching Bob (him) in his peripheral vision. He pivoted, his rifle raised, and while Logan moved to grab him, Bob simply said, “Freeze. What’s going on, son?”

As if to emphasize how bugfuck things were, there was a loud “boom” that echoed through the base, a tremor that they could feel through the floor. Was someone else attacking the base? “A normal has manifested powers and is tearing the place down,” the soldier replied, perfectly paralyzed in a posture of defense.

“How the hell can a normal manifest powers?” Logan exclaimed. He’d have thought he was lying, except that in Bob’s grip, no one could lie.

“Answer him.”

“I don’t know,” the soldier replied. “Nobody knows. We don’t understand it.”

Bob cocked his head to the side as if listening to something in another room, and smirked. “It’s always the reserved ones, isn’t it? The reserved British guys are always the ones you gotta watch. When they snap, they do it up big.”

It took him a moment to get what he was saying, but he did. “It’s Giles?”

“You should feel the magic being slung around here; it’s like Wizardfest ‘97.”

He raised an eyebrow at him. “You just made that up, didn’t you?”

“You’ve never been to a Wizardfest? Bloody hell, I’ll have to take you to one some time. It’s really commercial now, but you can still wring some fun out of it.”

“You are so making this up.”

Bob turned one of his wide, smart ass grins on him, which looked really sinister on his face. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He turned his glance on the soldier, and said, “Take me to your leader.”

The soldier moved, walking back in the direction he had come from, and he and Bob followed him, while noise and chaos continued on the other end of the base. Bob was back singing again, and Logan considered pushing him, but what was the point? It wouldn’t stop him. “Sweet annihilation in your hands, your own personal Stalingrad -”

They were led to an adamantium reinforced room that normally wouldn’t have been easy to get into, but with Bob they just walked right in. It was a control room full of monitors, a bank of them filling the wall with flickering images of one similar corridor after another and destruction on an impressive scale. There were soldiers in the room, who all raised their rifles as one, but Bob said, “Why don’t you point them at everyone else? Don’t shoot, just threaten for a while. Pretend you’re in a Tarantino film.”

The soldiers did as he said, switching their aim from him to each other, and also aimed their weapons at the director, a slightly bloated white guy (they were all bloated white guys) in a khaki uniform with vague markings, his hair a premature mane of white. The soldiers were snarling insults at each other, reasonably creative curses that made for interesting background noise. “ What the hell are you people doing?” The director snapped, standing up from behind the main console. He turned his enraged look on his men, then glared at Bob. “And how the hell did you get in here?”

Bob held his hands out wide in a semi-shrug. “You wanted me here, Dave, remember? That was the kinda pathetic plan, wasn’t it? An exchange, me for them. Did you actually think that would work?”

The director - Dave - stared at him in disbelief. “How the hell do you know this?”

Logan had walked around the soldiers, amused at their empty threatening and posturing, and headed for the director. So that was the plan? That was pretty lame.

“I know you’re desperate,” Bob continued. “I know Cressy’s really kicking your ass in. But did you really think I was ever gonna help you get her? Did you really think you could blackmail or brainwash me enough?”

The director’s ghostly blue eyes narrowed, and after studying him for a moment, he snarled, “You’re not him, are you?”

“Let him see me,” Logan said.

Bob pointed at him. “There he is. Now guess who I am.”

The director did a slight double take, and Logan figured he must have just popped into existence, which would have been startling since that wasn’t in his power set. Logan gave him an evil smile that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for friendly, and the director sighed and sank back in his chair, defeated, as his eyes scudded back to Logan number two (Bob). “ You’re the reality warper, aren’t you?”

“Name’s Bob, actually, but call me whatever you want as long as it’s not lame ass motherfucker.” Bob’s eyes widened, and he barked a laugh. “My code name is Pretty Boy? Cool beans! I like that. I’ll get that on a t-shirt. I bet there’s a whole bunch of guys in West Hollywood that would agree with you too. I’m such a hit at gay nightclubs you can’t possibly imagine it.”

The director was staring at him with strangely hollow eyes. He’d already become resigned to his defeat; he wasn’t even going to try and fight, probably because he knew he couldn’t. That was rather pragmatic of him. “You’re responsible for the Human, aren’t you?”

“Giles? Oh gods no. You just pissed off a spellcaster, mate; if you can’t deal with the supernatural, don’t play in the pool.” There was no transition at all - one second he looked like him, and the next second Bob looked like himself again, with his artfully messy blond-brown hair, nuclear cobalt eyes, black leather pants, and a green t-shirt reading - what else? - Pretty Boy. “Now, what are we gonna do with you, Dave?”

“I have some suggestions,” Logan interjected, glaring at the director. He seemed to shrink beneath his gaze, and Logan could smell his fear like a spill of fermented vinegar.

“I have a better one,” Bob replied casually. “Dave, go back to headquarters and do whatever you can to shut them down. Figure the best way to shut down the Organization, and do it. Think you can handle that?”

Something gleamed deep in the director’s eyes, and Bob’s push cemented in his mind. “I can.”

“Then go do it. Shut this base down, clear it out, and get to work. Go help Cressida.”

“And that’s it?” Logan asked querulously. “We let him get away with this shit?”

“We’re not letting him get away with anything. We’re using him as a tool to shut down the Org. A pretty good deal, don’t you think?” Although it sounded like he was asking a genuine question, Logan knew it was rhetorical; Bob had already decided on a course of action and didn’t want his opinion. “He’s a last minute replacement anyways; he’s just picking up someone else’s slack. Wolfram and Hart apparently killed the first director.” Another blast seemed to shake the entire building. “Come on, let’s go calm Giles’ down before he brings the roof down on our heads.”

Bob left the room, casually strolling out as if he wasn’t walking out into a war zone, and Logan followed, mainly because what he just said didn’t make total sense. “What? Wolfram and Hart killed the first director? Why?”

Bob shrugged as the alarm stopped sounding through the base, and a different one sounded, this one slightly less urgent but far more audible - the evacuation klaxon. Dave was indeed sounding the retreat. “I guess they decided that hitching their wagon to them was a zero sum game. There’s no honor amongst thieves or evil lawyers, you know. If you can’t help them in some way, you’re sucking in water at the bottom of the ocean before you realize you’ve been sized for cement shoes.”

It didn’t take them long to find Giles, who had an armed Doyle in tow. “Oh, hey guys,” Doyle said, as if they’d just run into each other in the supermarket. “Took you long enough to get here, eh?”

Giles’s eyes were completely black, something he’d seen happen to Mordred before, but for some reason it seemed much more sinister to see it in Giles, especially since his unseeing gaze landed on him first. Logan thought he could feel it slide along his skin like a razor blade. “This is your fault, isn’t it?” he said, in a voice that had just an edge of the inhuman about it.

“Uh -” Doyle said, almost as a warning, but clearly he didn’t know what to say or do. He wasn’t the only one.

“No powers,” Bob replied, waving a hand dismissively. “Come back to us, Rupert.”

Giles blinked rapidly and wavered on his feet as his eyes suddenly cleared of blackness, and he rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. “Oh dear. That went a bit farther than I expected.”

“Sounds like my third marriage,” Bob noted cheerfully, clapping his hands together. “Shall we go?”

It was Doyle’s turn to look surprised. “That’s it?”

Logan shrugged helplessly. He didn’t like it either.

“They’re closing up shop, mate. Seriously, we need to get outta here before someone hits the self-destruct.”

“We have a problem,” Giles said, looking at Bob straight on. If he was embarrassed - and Logan had some sense that he was - he was hiding it well. “When we did the soul transference spell, something got out with Doyle.”

Doyle shifted his rifle until the barrel was pointing down at the floor. The soldiers were paying them absolutely no attention now. “It did?”

Bob nodded. “I know. It’s a succubus. It’s already attacked Scott, Marcus, and Bren. It seems to be targeting us.”

Giles frowned in consternation. “How is that possible? They aren’t that smart.”

“Someone must have known what we were going to try, and were standing by to take advantage of it.”

“Who?”

“Well, we have what, a million enemies?” Logan carped. “Kinda hard to narrow it down.”

But Bob stared at a nowhere point slightly west of the far wall, and suddenly frowned, his eyes narrowing as if he was staring into the sun. “Maybe not as hard as we think.”

Giles glanced over his shoulder, in case Bob was actually staring at something physical, and then looked back at him in curiosity. “Do you know who it is?”

“No, I’m just thinking aloud,” Bob said, but Logan knew he was lying. Why? What had he figured out?

But Bob teleported them out of there, leaving Logan to wonder why Bob wasn’t sharing the name of their new enemy.

****

Angel had to explain what a succubus was to Naomi, who only knew of them from what she described as “really bad soft core horror movies”. Angel almost wanted to ask what those movies could possibly be named, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it without sounding like a pervert. When told of its cloaking abilities, she commented, “Like Predator? Oh shit, can you sense it without seeing it?” Since Kier had he assumed he could too, but there was yet another movie he had never bothered to watch. If they were going to have so much impact on his life, he supposed he should just go to Blockbuster one slow night and catch up on all the references so he felt less like an old, stupid ass.

Kier was nervous, which made Angel a bit suspicious. Why was he nervous? What was he hiding? He claimed he wasn’t nervous, just “edgy” because Bob had implied that the succubus would be returning and he was hoping that Bob would come back before it happened, but Angel was sure he was hedging. Besides, what was the likelihood that a succubus would actually attack a crowded demon hospital? Succubus generally preferred to take on their victims one at a time; crowds was not their forte.

Angel felt weird about leaving Kier alone in Bren’s room, but Kier was not inclined to leave. He supposed he had to trust him for now, he had protected Bren before, but there was no way in hell a single act would make him trust Kier completely. He was a soulless vampire, and simply wanting to be notorious was no grounds for trust. If he liked Bren, fine, good, but he still didn’t trust that either.

All of them - Bren, Marcus, Scott - were in adjacent rooms, as this was clearly the ward where the victim of succubi and other psychic demons were treated, and since they didn’t know how to split the difference, he and Naomi sat in plastic chairs in the hallway, waiting for Bob and Logan to return. He’d tried calling Doyle - Xander - and Giles, but there was no answer in either case. He didn’t know if he should be concerned or not. (Doyle could be out drinking, making up for lost time; he supposed if he were him, he’d be doing the same thing.)

“Do you think electricity would work on a succubus?” Naomi asked. She hadn’t put on any make up, so dark circles were quite visible under her eyes. None of them had gotten much in the way of rest lately.

That was such a good question he didn’t know how to answer it. “I don’t know. But I think you should stay out of any fight with it. They hardly need to make physical contact to feed off your life force. You should leave it to us dead guys.”

She fixed him with a scathing look. “Do you think Logan or Bob are going to stay out of the fight?”

Damn it; women were always nailing him with the sharp observations. “No, but Bob’s a god, and to take his life force down to a truly dangerous level, it’d have to drink him for years. And Logan’s … Logan. You can tell him it could kill him, and all he’ll do is shrug.”

“Do you think his healing factor covers life force?”

That was a puzzler. “I’m going to say no, but honestly I have no idea.” He did have a sinking feeling they were going to find out before all of this was over, though.

Angel shifted in the uncomfortable chair, wondering how a vampire with no blood circulation could actually get a numb butt, when he heard a loud noise near the front of the hospital, followed almost immediately by screams. Both he and Naomi jumped to their feet, suddenly awake, and he could feel a repetitive thudding through the floor.

Kier stuck his head out of Bren’s room to look, and almost instantly morphed into vampire face. “Holy shit, it’s here.”

“The succubus?” Angel asked, even as he said it aware it was a stupid question. What else would it be? “Get behind me,” he told Naomi, morphing into game face and pulling out the sword he’d brought with him, just in case. He hadn’t actually expected to use it, but he never went anywhere without expecting a fight.

A good thing too. He’d never fought a succubus before, but even as old as he was, there was a first time for everything.