Defintion of Human
Round 1, Part 4
Chad

A chill breeze drifted through the trees surrounding UC Sunnydale as Buffy, Spike, Mulder and Scully made their way across the college campus. Buffy shivered, just a little. She had a feeling it had more to do with the Fibbie company than the nocturnal weather. Still reeling from the fact that Xander had gone off without her knowledge, it took every ounce of Buffy's Slayer will-power not to march right over to the Magic Box and demand an explanation from Giles.

She appreciated that he'd been trying to protect her and Willow, but Buffy hated being kept in the dark worse than she hated her Slayer duties breaking into her social life. And what was up with Spike knowing about it and not saying a word? Buffy shook her head as if to clear it. She glanced at the suits, Mulder and Scully, not entirely sure she should or could trust them.

She had an odd feeling, right between her shoulder blades, about working with the FBI. It was the same creepy wiggins she got every time she had to deal with the Initiative.

What she needed now were action, adrenaline, and a nice, ugly baddie or two. See Buffy. See monster. See Buffy kick monster's ass. It was what she needed to keep her focus.

Buffy moved through the trees toward the clearing of where Spike had once been found. "Here it is," she said, indicating with a nod of her blonde head to turf. "According to Spike, this is where he became slug man and crawled out of his cell."

"Easy, love," Spike said, sounding slightly offended.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Spike - not," Buffy said bitingly. "Don't think you're getting off the hook that easy."

"For what? Oh, I see. The Watcher decides to keep your Nancy-boy's duty call all secret and Spike's the fall guy..."

"Can we save the sarcasm for later?" Mulder broke in, stepping over to the side of the fraternity building. He brushed aside tree limbs concealing an imposing pair of slate gray doors. The entrance reminded Mulder of an old bomb shelter and it wouldn't have surprise him one bit if this was government owned property.

"What's down there?" Scully asked, arching a skeptical brow.

Buffy shrugged. "Don't know, never been down there."

"Well, hopefully we can find something about your friend," Mulder said, heaving open one of the heavy doors. "If the government hasn't destroyed all the evidence," he added grimly.

"Has anyone ever told you you're a bit paranoid, mate?" Spike commented.

"It has been mentioned." Mulder cast a glance over his shoulder at Scully.

"Once or twice," she put in.

Producing a high beam flashlight seemingly from out of thin air, Mulder switched it on and moved forward into the darkness.

*****

In a corner of the dark room, Xander shifted his weight against the featureless door as the man he'd found clung tightly to his body. As his eyes slowly became accustomed to the weird after-image sight he seemed to have inherited, Xander took a good look at the man in his arms, patting him calmly on the shoulder. Though older, the dark-haired man's handsome... 'Handsome?' ...face was streaked with grime from his neck to the tip of his elfin ears. He seemed to be dressed in some light, starched material gown that Xander had been thrust into at some point, though he couldn't remember when...

The stranger's sobs knifed through the darkness.

Xander realized that his simple reassurance of "I'm not going anywhere," had triggered something majority bad in this guy. He was in so much emotional pain that his words didn't make sense; he kept talking about greasy aliens, hazel eyes and red hair, smoking men and back rooms.

Xander had enough good sense left in him to be somewhat embarrassed. "Um, mister? That was sarcasm. Hard to tell with me, I know." Xander offered a brief smile, though he was sure the other man couldn't see it. "Are you all right?"

Wary, maybe even a little afraid, the man pulled back and gave Xander a cautious look. "Have you been here all this time? All along?"

"No. I just got here... I think... I'm just not sure where 'here' is." Xander closed his eyes. Shook his head to clear his mind. He felt more than a little unsteady. So many questions. "Who are you?" he asked.

The after image thing changed then, making the man seem kind of bluish instead of the orange outline thing. Xander could tell the stranger blink, sense his mouth open and close for a second like a fish out of water. "Krycek," he managed to say as if the word was somehow foreign to him.

'At least we're getting somewhere.' Xander nodded. "Krycek," he repeated, feeling a little bit better now that he knew his cellmate's name. "Do you know where we are? Is this some kind of a hospital? Can't be, huh? Because I'm not really getting a hospital vibe here."

The man shifted away, stood up slowly, painfully, and stared at him in the gloom.

"I don't know," Krycek said, his voice a low rasp. "I don't remember anything from before ... before...."

Even as he said it, Xander wondered just how long this poor guy had been kidnapped and kept locked up in this hell hole. Would they both be left to rot here for the rest of their lives? Xander shivered, there in this place, with this man whom he barely knew. Somehow he felt his fear even more keenly than before, and a terrible dread was born within him.

"So there's no way out of here?" Xander asked, his voice taking on a kind of quiet desperation, as if he had surrendered a part of himself. "Do the people..." he started, then paused, wondering if it was really flesh-and-blood humans they were dealing with and not little green men who'd whisked him away to cut him open and do experiments on. "The ones who put us here," he went on. "Do they come in here?"

Krycek grunted and threw his head something in the darkness. Xander could feel it, whatever it was, looming in the middle. It felt like evil, like the hellmouth did whenever someone was doing something to it. The thing in the middle was definitely evil. .

Krycek's green eyes filled with fresh tears and he wiped at them bitterly. Then he took a breath and steadied himself, a grim expression on his face. "Until they get careless, and let their guard down if they come back, there's nothing we can do," he said softly.

"There's something we can do," Xander told him.

One eyebrow raised, Krycek studied him. "What's that? What can we do?"

"Not give up."

**********