The Fever, Part Six
Author: Elsa Frohman <elsa@frohman.net>
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through the end of BtVS and AtS S4.
Archive: http://www.the-sandlot.com/ and
http://www.spikedreams.com/
Summary: Spike is back and working for Wolfram & Hart as an outside
contractor. He's human, sort of. This is my AU S5 AtS.
Note: Thanks to my fabulous beta, JanK, who has kept this on track
and made some great suggestions.

After Knox had the duct tape sealing the new vampires' mouths
removed so he could take saliva samples, the howling started. The
four vampires decided that since they couldn't get loose and bite
their human captors, they would make them uncomfortable in the only
way left to them.

Gunn paced like a caged animal.

"Can't they shut them up?" he snapped, looking down at Spike, who
was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, strangely not
reacting at all to the ear-splitting din.

Spike looked up, and Gunn was struck by the emptiness in his eyes.
It was almost as if Spike wasn't there, just his body.

"If they're going to do that to them, don't you think they should
have to listen to it?" he said quietly.

Gunn stopped and stared back at the man on the floor.

"What are you talking about, man? Those aren't cute little bunny
rabbits out there. They're vampires. They're evil. They kill
people."

"Yeah, I know," Spike said listlessly.

"Man, I don't get you. You go out and kill vampires every night."

"Yeah, I know."

"It's not like you're on their side."

Spike just shrugged.

Gunn squatted down in front of Spike and looked directly into his
face. There was something wrong. He could feel it. Spike was
retreating.

"Talk to me, man," Gunn said. "Something's got you. What is it?"

Spike's mouth tightened. "You can see what's going on in the next
room and you don't know?"

"Hey, it ain't pretty. I know that. But we've got to beat this
thing."

"Why not just let it take its course?" Spike asked. "It'll wipe out
every vampire in LA. Our job will be that much easier."

"Yeah, but what about Angel? He can't stay locked in his office
forever."

"Angel. Bloody Angel," Spike said bitterly. "One vampire with a
soul; bugger everyone else. We've got to protect the bloody vampire
with a soul because he's the only one.

"And isn't it convenient that we can't reach Angel? This way he
doesn't have to acknowledge what's being done on his behalf. It
just happens, and he keeps his hands clean."

"I don't get you. Yesterday you were all: 'We've got to stop this
thing.' "

"Well, maybe you've got to be strapped to a table and have white-
coat loonies go all Dr. Mengele on you before you get it," Spike
snapped.

Spike stood up abruptly and stomped out of the room.

---------

In the main room, a team of technicians was struggling to put the
tape back across the mouth of one of the vampires. The vampire was
resisting to the best of his ability -- snapping at any hand that
got close enough to apply the tape, struggling and snarling as the
technicians tried to subdue him.

"Can't we sedate them?" one of the technicians asked.

"Knox won't have it," another shouted. "Says they've got to be drug-
free for the studies."

The din of shrieking vampires and struggling technicians was beyond
toleration. It was painful to Spike's hypersensitive ears. A wave
of nausea rose in his belly.

"Spike."

His name floated to him through the tsunami of noise. One of the
four vamps had stopped shrieking and was looking directly at him.

"You're a yellow-bellied, traitorous coward," the vampire said in a
low voice with a thick southern accent that Spike found uneasily
familiar.

Spike was certain that through all this noise, he was the only one
who could hear it. He turned to walk away. If he stood here any
longer, his head was going to explode.

"You used to be somebody. But you've turned into a spineless worm,"
the vampire continued. "You're worse than the rat eater."

Spike stopped and turned back to face the speaker. Looking across
the beds, he could see Ralph at Maria's side. He was holding a
pillow around her head to shield her ears.

"I used to admire you."

"Your mistake, mate," Spike replied.

"I used to work for you. I can't believe I ever called you boss.
You're pathetic," the vamp sneered.

Spike took a closer look.

"That you, Gator?" He recognized the vampire now. He'd been one of
the minions in Sunnydale. It seemed like a century ago, though it
had been barely five years.

"Yeah, it's me. But that ain't you."

Spike shrugged. "Times change, mate."

"You used to be a terror. But now you just lick the hands of your
human masters. You're an abomination."

"What do you want me to say? I'm not what I used to be. Got no
apology for you."

He turned and started to walk away again.

"Spike!"

"More insults, Gator? Because it doesn't matter what you say, I'm
still free and you're not."

"For the sake of Beelzebub, don't leave me here."

Spike turned to face Gator again.

"I'm begging you."

"Not above begging a yellow-bellied, spineless worm, are you?"

"You don't know what this is like. I'm tied down. I can't move.
They're doing things to me. You can't imagine what this is like."

Spike backed away a step, then another. Finally, something in him
snapped, and he turned and all but ran from the main room, through
the former kitchen and out into the night.

He didn't stop until he reached the driveway. Gunn's truck was
still parked there. The night was hot and humid; it wasn't like it
was any easier to breathe out here. He put his hands on the cool
metal of the hood to steady himself. His stomach was twisting in
knots, and he felt weaker than he'd felt in more than a century. He
was shaking.

His stomach heaved, and he bent over double to vomit. The bile
flooded his mouth, bitter and acrid. It burned in his throat. He
heaved again and again. Everything he'd eaten in the past few hours
was gone, but still the spasms didn't stop. He felt like his guts
were rising up to strangle him.

He felt a hand on his back.

"You OK, man?"

Spike stood up and half fell back against the hood of Gunn's truck.
His legs would only barely support him. Ralph was looking at him
with confused concern.

Spike closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He wiped the back of
his hand across his mouth.

"Yeah. I'll be OK."

"You don't look too good. Maybe I should go get one of the medics."

Spike opened his eyes. "No. Don't. Nothing they can do for what's
wrong with me."

"Whatever you say. You always been good to me. I just want to
help."

Spike laughed bitterly. "Always good to you? I stood by while
Drusilla murdered you. I tore up your comic books, because I could
see they were the most important thing in the world to you. I
burned down your house. Yeah, Ralph, I've been real good to you."

"No, after all that. When Drusilla started getting tired of me.
When she started thinking up ways to scare me worse and worse. You
wouldn't let her keep on. You told her to lay off. And you wouldn't
let any of the others pick on me, either."

Spike sighed. "Never was much for torture."

"You always stood up for me."

Spike just shrugged.

It was a clear, moonless night; the sort of night that left humans
blind because of the near total darkness. The windows of the house
were boarded up, so no light was coming from there. Only the pale
stars and a faint glow from a streetlight half a block away
illuminated the yard. But Spike's eyes still had a vampire's
sensitivity, and Ralph was a clear, but pale, figure standing
before him. The young vamp was wraithlike with the star-shine
glimmering faintly off his ragged blond hair.

"And I don't hold the burning down the house thing against you,"
Ralph added. "I mean, you were right. As long as it was there, I
was never going to go out. I'd just have stayed there and hid --
forever."

"So, you find other places to hide now," Spike said with a sigh.

The slight vampire looked at the ground and scrubbed the gravel of
the driveway with his foot.

"At least it's a change of scenery.

"I guess I turned out a big disappointment. I mean, you really did
try to teach me to be a vampire. And I turned out to be the most
pathetic blood-sucker in all of history."

Spike laughed, not bitterly this time. It came from somewhere deep
in him. "Ralph... believe me, the way things have turned out, you
are anything but a disappointment. A puzzle... A mystery... A
miracle... but never a disappointment."

"You're upset because of what they're doing to the vamps in there,"
Ralph said quietly.

"Yeah."

"Scares me, too. But then, everything does. But if they can come up
with a way to cure Maria, I guess I can be scared for a while. I
mean, I'm scared all the time anyway..."

Spike felt a new wave of nausea rising. How could he tell Ralph the
truth? As pitiful as he was, the younger vampire had something to
live for now. How could he tell him that if Knox and his techs
found a cure, they would probably ship it right off to Angel and
let the vampires here die? Even if Maria hung on long enough to be
the one they tested their cure on, they'd never let her leave
alive. What else could they do? If they cured Maria or any of the
other four, they would go back to killing before the night was out.
Even poor, harmless Ralph was most likely doomed, because nobody
would believe he wasn't a danger.

"It's not fear," Spike said quietly. "I'm just feeling... helpless.
I want to stop what they're doing, but I can't..."

Ralph winced. "Yeah. That's the worst," he said in a voice so low
it was almost a whisper.

The skinny vampire backed away from Spike, his face full of pain.
Spike watched him go, puzzled. Something he'd said had struck
Ralph's heart.

"Look, if there's anything I can do..." Ralph said. But he was
already halfway to the back door.

-----------

Fred, Wesley and Lorne met at the Starbucks three blocks from
Wolfram & Hart headquarters.

"Are you sure this place isn't monitored?" Fred asked nervously.
"It's awfully close to the office."

"We can't be absolutely sure," Wesley replied. "But Lilah once
mentioned a coffee shop nearby that senior associates used for
planning coups. She said it had been deliberately taken off the
surveillance grid. However, that was before the rebuilding, and
it's anybody's guess as to whether it's still blacked out."

"This Carmel Macchiato is fabulous!" Lorne said. "I can't believe
I've lived my entire life so far without it!"

"So, what do we know for certain?" Wesley asked, assuming
chairmanship.

"Well, not a great deal," Fred said uneasily. "I know I'm not
getting full field reports. Knox always has a reasonable
explanation for why I didn't get this or that report. But there's a
pattern; namely, I get vague summaries, and the details never quite
come through."

Wesley nodded. "I'm being similarly marginalized. In the first
hour, I found a number of references to Vampire Blood Fever in
various texts, but as soon as my staff got their bearings, any text
I felt I needed seemed to have gone missing. We're clearly being
kept out of the loop."

"Sorry, guys, but I don't have anything to report. Was never in the
loop, as far as I can tell. And that's the way I like it," Lorne
said cheerfully, taking a long swig of his drink with a satisfied
smile.

"They did take a blood sample from you," Fred said. "That was in
one of my summaries. They said you're immune."

"One more advantage to being me, muffin. Came for a sample of sweet
Lorne juice, then about an hour later they were there again and
gave me that injection, then, finally another blood sample an hour
later; and far as I can tell, that's my whole involvement."

"Injection?" Fred asked with a frown.

"Didn't they give you two an injection?" Lorne asked. "Can't say I
enjoyed that part. Look, I've got this ugly, pink bruise." Lorne
pushed up his sleeve and showed the mark on his forearm.

Wesley shook his head. "Just a blood sample. Fred and I are
classified 'unexposed,' and they said they didn't need any more
samples from us unless we have reason to believe our status has
changed.

"Are you sure it was an injection, and not another sample?"

"Don't try to tell Lorne he can't tell the difference between the
shaft going in, and the spunk coming out," the green demon said
with a frown. "Nope, for me it was 'out-in-out.' Can't say I like
having people stick things in me without even dinner and a movie
first."

Wesley and Fred exchanged a look.

"I guess we need to look into what's different about Lorne," Fred
said.

"You want the short list, honey bun? Or the whole dissertation?"

Wesley nodded. "That's up to you, Fred. Have you found a way into
the reports your division hasn't been giving you?"

Fred smiled. "Took about 15 minutes to find Knox's password. He had
it written on a piece of tape inside his desk drawer. It's
'derfiniw' -- my name spelled backward. I think that's sort of
cute, but I'm going to have to talk with him about making passwords
harder to find."

"Perhaps he meant you to find it," Wesley said thoughtfully. "We'll
have to be careful of the information you get that way. Have you
found anything useful, yet?"

Fred shook her head. "There's a ton of data. I'm just starting to
dig into it. I'm going to need a couple of hours."

"Very well, we'd best get to work," Wesley said. "For my part, I'm
going to work on the Angel problem. There has to be a way to get a
message to him."

"The phones on his floor are completely cut off. And when I asked
building maintenance to fix them, I just got a run-around. They
claim that the problem is in the quarantine area, so they can't get
to it to fix it," Fred said with a frown.

"How convenient," Wesley said gravely. "I have to think that
Wolfram & Hart is now in default of our agreements. They're
stonewalling, but the fact is, they've got an agenda here, and it
isn't ours."

"Actually, they're not," Lorne said, setting his Carmel Macchiato
down for the first time.

"Not ignoring our orders? How can you say..."

Lorne cut Wesley off.

"Not violating the agreement, crumpet. I can see you two didn't
read all the fine print."

"And you did, I suppose?"

"You bet your sweet patootie I did. I'm in show business,
buttercup. You don't read the fine print, you end up like Willy
Nelson."

"But the agreement was we were in charge!" Fred protested. "That
was very clearly spelled out."

Lorne shook his head. "Everything goes through Angel. You have
authority over your department, as long as Angel approves
everything you do. If Angel is incommunicado, all bets are off."

 Wesley frowned. "Then if Angel issued an order for our departments
to give us all the information we're asking for, they would..."

"But he can't because he can't communicate with us, and he doesn't
know what's going on out here anyway," Lorne said. "And they didn't
break any agreements by isolating him -- he let it happen because
of the threat of contagion."

"And they've shut him in with nobody who would be able to fix the
phones if he ordered them to," Fred added.

"Clearly, we have to place a high priority on finding a way to
communicate with Angel," Wesley said firmly.

Elsa Frohman
http://www.frohman.net/