"Everything is Automatic" -- Flashpoint

[whenrabbitsattack]

Disclaimer: I own neither Flashpoint, nor the characters involved. They belong to Pink Sky and CTV television. I make no money from these works, they are for entertainment purposes only.
Title: " Everything is Automatic"
Fandom: Flashpoint
Character: Various.
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 14,266
Rating: PG (language)
Spoilers: 2.03 "Haunting The Barn" Minor (very) for 2.07 "Clean Hands" General character stuff, post 2.14 "One Wrong Move." Not much else I can think of. All episode notation derived from CTV.ca
Credits:.
Author's Notes: Written for spook_me

Please note that this has been posted prior to a beta, simply due to length and it being past deadline. This is NOT a state of affairs I am happy with, however it would be unfair and unrealistic to expect my betas to be able to complete their end in a reasonable amount of time, nor would it be fair to ask them to rush, simply because I was not able to finish before or even at the deadline.

Thus, the contents here are subject to change upon beta completion. Also, if you see any glaring errors, such as spelling mistakes or unfinished sentences, feel free to point them out.



Everything is Automatic


It was quiet. Too quiet, and if there was one thing a Strategic Response Unit sergeant knew, it was that there really was such a thing as too quiet. Especially when it came down to one Constable Scarlatti.

"What's wrong, boss?" Ed snuck up behind him, probably unintentionally. Most times the man rattled the floor like he was trying to outdo the entire equestrian unit on parade, but when things got quiet, he could outsneak anybody. It was instinct with the guy.

"What's the date today?" Greg listened hard. Nothing.

"It's… oh, shit." Another good thing about Ed. He was always quick on the uptake. Then again, they'd had a few years to get used to this.

"Yeah."

"It's what?" Leah must have been on Ed's heels walking in, and now was probably wondering why neither one of her commanding officers wanted to walk into their locker-room. "Halloween?"

"Hey… theirs might be safe." Ed nodded across the hall at the women's locker-room. For the past few years it had been Jules' alone. Her space. Now 'their' space.

"No way." Jules wasn't even all the way down the hall before she cut them off. "You are not taking over our locker-room, just because it's Halloween. Forget it."

"Come on, Jules." Ed gave her his best puppy-dog eyes. Greg endeavoured to do the same.

"Forget it. He's your problem, you deal with him." With that, Jules marched into the women's locker room.

"Who?" Leah looked nervous, but it was a rookie's nervous. It wasn't a nervous born of years of experience and highly honed reflexes combined with the knowledge that it was indeed Halloween, and somebody liked to think that tricks were a treat.

"Spike." Ed looked around both before and after answering, as though the mere invocation of the man's name would be enough to spring him from the ether, claiming innocence even as they died of shock. "Last year he did something to the plumbing. Put some kind of water-soluble red dye into the pipes, so when we turned on the showers…"

Leah winced. "But it washed off, right?"

"After it cleared out of the system, yeah." Greg shook his head, remembering. "Good thing, too, otherwise Ed would've killed him."

"Year before that it was maggots in the refrigerator. Fake ones, but still." Ed seemed to relish the memory, or maybe it was just being able to inflict it on the newbie.

"And let's not forget the… whatever it was he put in the coffee." Greg still didn't know. Still didn't want to know. It wasn't like anybody had been willing to drink it. "Why do you think he always brings his own Tims and never ever asks for something when somebody does a coffee-run, hmm? He's still afraid someone's going to get revenge."

"Don't forget the rats." Wordy might have shown up late to the conversation, but he too had enough experience to immediately guess the reason for the bottleneck in the hallway.

"Oh, God, the rats." Ed shuddered, a rare thing for the man afraid of very little. "You had to remind me about the rats, didn't you?"

"Rats?" Leah studied their faces, most likely looking for clues that this was another hazing thing. If only.

"The less said about the rats, the better." No, Ed had not dealt with the rats well at all. "So, please?"

"Uh-uh." Leah held up her hands, backing away. "I'm with Jules on this. He's your problem."

"Only if he targets the locker-room. Common areas, and he's yours as well." Greg tried another approach. Clearly the bystander effect in Leah combined with Jules' devotion to SEP principles was causing them both to forget the real danger.

"He better hope he doesn't." Leah backed away about two steps before turning to join her fellow traitor in the other room.

The remaining three looked at each other. Greg knew he could claim right of seniority. Besides, negotiators did not charge in. "Sam's not here, yet, is he?"

"I don't think so," Wordy said, cautiously.

"Okay," Greg decided, "Here's the plan. If he does get here in the next ten minutes, he goes in first."

"Agreed." Ed and Wordy both nodded their approval. After all, if somebody had to take one for the team, it might as well be somebody else, right?

---

"Hey," Jules looked over from her locker as Leah walked in. "They done scaring you?"

"More like scaring themselves." Leah started stowing her gear.

Jules turned back to hide her smile. Oh, people assumed there would be instant bonding between them – two women versus all those guys – but there were some times Jules found it hard not to laugh. Maybe it was the fire-department experience, but Leah just had to play tough. Or maybe she just was that way – gearing to be stronger, better, and faster than the boys – but around here a girl didn't need to be. Sure, there was a lot of sexism out there, especially in the high-adrenaline, testosterone-heavy world of Strategic Response, but not on this team. There was constant competition and the rookie-baiting was there, but every rookie got baited that way, boobs or not. "They're not making it up. It really isn't about you, this time."

"Okay, so tell me about the rats."

Jules' smile grew wider. "The rats? Oh, the rats was a classic. Most people would just use a run-of-the-mill, fake rubber model, right?"

"And stick it somewhere you wouldn't expect. Like your locker." From the sounds of things, Leah had a lot of experience with low-end pranks. She wasn't used to dealing with an artist like Spike.

"You're forgetting, though. Most people don't have advanced knowledge of robotics and robotics software. He built his. An entire clan that he then set loose to run through the building. Ed almost had a heart attack when one ran right across his shoe. He actually screamed. Then he grabbed a weight bar and went after it, he had it cornered when suddenly it looked right at him and said, 'Please don't hurt me, Officer Lane.' Spike had to run extra drills for the next three months." Jules fought down an attack of the giggles. "Ed threatened to tell Babycakes. Spike swore she sulked for an entire week."

"Babycakes is his bomb-robot, right?"

Like you could be in this unit for more than two days and not know about Babycakes. People mocked Spike's devotion to the machine, but they also understood it. When you needed something complicated to work right, first time, every time, you spent a lot of time taking care of it. If Jules spent less time with her rifle, it was only because the rifle had less moving parts. In that light, it was less creepy than some other guys' affection for their cars. At least Babycakes had the ability to save lives.

"You don't seem worried, though," Leah sounded a little suspicious about that. "According to Greg, you ought to be."

"Nah, we're safe." Jules pulled her T-shirt over her head.

"Because we're women." Leah's tone was only slightly less bitter than the infamous coffee had been.

"Because we cut a deal." Jules turned around, grinning before leaning up against the locker-bank to put on her boots. She could see the scepticism on Leah's face, the worries that the deal might be something she – Leah – couldn't live with. "We have something he wants."

"What's that?" No, Leah wasn't quite at the point of fitting in yet; she hadn't managed to classify Spike in his rightful spot as 'mostly harmless'. It had taken Jules a little time to figure it out, but not quite as long. It was probably a product of growing up small and smart in a tough neighbourhood with fairly well-defined gender roles. That was Jules' theory, at least. Then again, it might have had something to do with being the kind of guy who still lived in his parents' basement.

"Security and storage space." Jules opened one of the spare lockers to reveal box upon neatly stacked box of Halloween candy. It was a geek's dream filled with enough sugar, fat and other empty calories to power a small city for a year.

"That is a lot of candy."

"Oh, you haven't seen anything yet." Jules opened another locker to showcase the same. "Two years ago Ed and the Sarge threatened to revoke his Costco membership. When he started, he figured that since the space wasn't being used for anything else… the bonus is that the guys can't just wander in here without fair warning."

"Security," Leah echoed. "And for that…"

"We get immunity. Or at least, fair warning." That was why she hadn't been the one to open the refrigerator. Not to mention scoring naming rights two of the rats.

"Why doesn't he just take it home?"

Jules tried to remind herself that Leah was a rookie. Still, it was hard. "Because his mother has a tendency to throw it out on him. I told him he should get his own place, and the response was 'What? And give up free rent?'"

"Free…"

"Rent. In this city." Jules nodded. "Not such a bad deal, when you think about it. By the time he retires, he'll probably have enough money saved to buy the entire block."

"If he hasn't blown it all on candy." Leah closed her locker. "And he eats it all?"

"Leah, we're talking about a guy, in his thirties, who is still living in his parents' basement and plays with giant robots. What do you think?" Jules shook her head and headed towards the door. Does he eat it all. Had to be one of the most ridiculous questions of all time. Where else did she think the overgrown eight-year-old got all that energy?

---

"Ya think he's playing us?" Ed checked his chair carefully before sitting down. They'd gone three hours, so far, and nothing had happened. Wordy was on a food run – nobody was going near that refrigerator today, and the women seemed quite unconcerned about impending danger. Thus, it had been decided that they could take the risks of wandering freely around the building and the guys would be smart and hole up in the briefing room. They'd closed the shutters for both privacy and safety.

"Do you really think he thinks we'd fall for that?" Greg decided to not even take the risk of sitting. Spike had gotten in extra early, after all. There was no telling what he'd had time to set in place.

"Why don't you just make up a rule? No more practical jokes?" Sam, too, chose to remain standing. He'd been the first one to turn on the showers the last year, and the last one to forgive.

Ed unscrewed the top from a thermos of coffee that hadn't left his side. So far Spike had never repeated himself, but it didn't pay to get lax.

"We did. His second month in, remember? After he was still getting even with us for his hazing?" Greg directed the last part to Ed. "No more practical jokes, no more goofing around. The guy was miserable. He settled down, he focused…"

"And he wasn't Spike." Ed focused his attention on Sam. "He settled down, he focused, he got nervous and he started screwing up. He tried to be perfect, the guy he thought we wanted him to be, but he's way too smart for that."

"We almost lost him," Greg sobered, thinking about it. "He was right on the edge of quitting, and there aren't a lot of guys out there who can do what he does. We'd need three people to replace him and that library he carries around in his head."

"Spike? Quit?" Sam's tone said he didn't believe it, that he thought this was just another prank, courtesy of the boss. "This is his dream job."

"His and a lot of peoples'," Ed agreed. "Fortunately, if you want to know how Spike's doing, you can just look at his face."

"Yeah, and unlike some people," Greg directed a semi-glare at Ed who ignored it completely, "he's not afraid to talk. 'Course he was afraid of Danny at the time, so he came to me. Told me he that he didn't want to leave, but thought that he ought to, that he was upsetting the 'team dynamic', and on into terminology I didn't even understand. He quoted studies. Told me the evidence was overwhelming. If he'd put it in a letter, I might have even been convinced."

"One of your best talkdowns," Ed agreed. "Like I said, you just need to look at his face."

Greg nodded. "I don't think I've ever seen anybody who wanted this job more than Spike, and that includes Jules." He paused. "Do you know why so many gifted kids end up as underachieving adults?"

Sam shook his head. "I didn't know they did."

"They do. And it's because they are gifted. The achievements society says are important come easy. Failure is not an option only because they'd have to work at it, and they're smart enough to take the easy route. But why work for an 'A' if you can coast to a 'B', right? And when they do fail, it's easy for them to convince themselves that it's just not something they have an aptitude for, and they're wasting their time."

"But you're saying Spike worked."

"Worked his ass off," Ed confirmed. "Every drill we threw at him he worked twice as hard as anyone else. It was as though he was determined to leave absolutely no question in our minds who was the best. And as Sarge says, that is not normal. He wanted this bad."

"But he was going to walk away, because you wouldn't let him pull a few pranks." Sam still didn't sound like he bought any of it.

"No, because nobody can function if they spend every moment of the day consciously checking and censoring themselves." Greg frowned. "A million guys. I could walk out this door and get you a million who could do what Spike does physically. But to combine that with the kind of brain he's got?" None of the team were idiots. Spike, though… Spike was one in ten million.

"You want to know why he's not one of us? Why nine times out of ten he's on his ass in the van?" Ed sipped his coffee almost ostentatiously, clearly savouring his forethought and attention to detail.

"Because he's a geek and knows all that gear better than us?" Sam looked startled as the door rolled up and Spike poked his head through.

"What're you guys doing all hanging out in here? C'mon, we've got snacks."

"Thanks," Ed raised his coffee cup. "I'm good."

"You sure?" Spike looked a little disappointed. Normally it might be a sign that somebody had stepped on his feelings. This was no normal day, however. "Okay, then it's more for me and the girls."

"I think I want to be there sometime when you call them 'girls'," Sam said.

"Ah," Spike didn't seem concerned at all. "Jules doesn't mind." That was probably solid knowledge. Jules knew now that if Spike intended offense, he wasn't subtle about it. She also knew not to be subtle right back.

"And Leah?" Ed asked. Greg was glad he didn't, but wanted to know the answer, regardless. Part of the current team dynamic included Spike, and anyone who couldn't put up with him didn't belong here. For one thing, if they were going to get sensitive about what Spike had to say, there was no way they had the calm to deal with a high-strung, strung-out subject on the edge of breakdown.

"I don't know. She hasn't said anything." Now Spike looked almost worried. "Do you think that…"

"It's okay. It's okay. Ed's just giving you a hard time." Greg shot his friend a hard look. "He's just worried because you haven't booby-trapped his locker, yet."

"Well, there is a solution to that." Instantly worry found itself replaced by Spike's default mischievousness.

"Don't you dare." Ed shook his finger warningly. "You touch anything on my locker and you're not only going to be running extra drills, you're going to wash my car, paint my house and fix my computer."

"Fix your own damn computer, Ed. Or better yet, learn how to use it, first. I'm sure your kid could show you how." With surprising speed Spike ducked out of the room and behind the safety of the shutters, before the threat of a thrown coffee cup could become real.

"Smartass." Ed settled back down in his chair. "So, you want to know why we put up with this."

"Yes." Sam crossed his arms over his chest, more than a tad defensively. "'Cause if I told you that, I'd be washing the truck until every inch gleamed, including the lug nuts. What's he got on you guys?"

"Probably more than we want to think about." Wordy stepped through the doors bearing a double-handful of take-out bags and a relieved look to find the room the way he'd left it. He set the bags on the table and stood back to avoid the mad rush. "Do you really think if he can get into a database, he hasn't?"

"Probably not," Sam admitted, digging through the offerings and pulling out a salad. At Ed's raised eyebrows, he paused. "What?"

Ed looked at the salad and back at Sam. "Nothing." He grabbed a burger. "Absolutely nothing at all."

"You ever notice we're never dragging him across the floor?" Wordy shot back. "It wouldn't kill you once in your life."

"What? Shelley tell you that?" Ed retreated to the corner with his chair and his burger. He took a large, almost theatrical bite and froze. He spit the mouthful out into the wrapper and glared at Wordy.

"Oh, is that the extra-spicy?" Wordy asked innocently.

Ed stood up and stalked towards his friend. Fortunately for Wordy, Spike picked that moment to reappear. The look on his face was polar opposite to what it had been moments earlier.

"Who's that stupid? Which one of you guys messed with her, because I swear..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Greg raised his hands. "Slow down. Back up, and start from the beginning. What happened?"

"Babycakes." That explained the rage. "Someone's been messing..."

"Hold it." Greg spoke softly but firmly. "Before we break our necks jumping to conclusions, what exactly is the problem?"

"I left her in the workroom, plugged in so that new battery can charge. I go back in, and she's on the other side of the room, unplugged and facing in the opposite direction." Spike's hands shook with rage-born adrenaline. "How many times do I have to tell you guys? She's a delicate piece of equipment..."

"Whoa, whoa." Ed stepped forward in his own accustomed role in the 'soothe Spike' drill. "We all know that. Nobody's going to mess with her just to get at you. Nobody here is that irresponsible."

"Well, somebody did, and it's not funny. Or are you suggesting that she did it to herself?"

"Well, that would be an explanation," Sam murmured.

"Ha." Spike's flat delivery made it clear he was not amused.

"I'm just saying. SkyNet isn't going to appear out of nowhere."

"Such a comedian." Spike muttered. He stalked out, vowing to track down the guilty party and explain to them in precise detail why you didn't cross somebody named Scarlatti.

Greg waited until Spike was well out of earshot before turning to Sam. "You didn't, did you?"

"No. Despite what you guys might think sometimes, I'm not that stupid." Sam's face was unreadable. He followed Spike out before Greg could even reply.

"Nice negotiating, boss," Ed cracked. "Now there's two of them."

Greg resisted the urge to say something someone was going to regret. He had a feeling the man was right, but in a way Ed would never believe. For about a second, he regretted ever having quit drinking. He consoled himself with the fact that he now had a sober man's reflexes. He had a feeling he was going to need them.

---

Sometimes Sam wished they'd cut him some slack. The day he did anything to Babycakes was the day he let someone perform random adjustments on his rifle. On the other hand, by the rules of the man himself, personnel were fair game. Not only that, but Spike had never been through the crucible known as the modern military. Any possible permutation of any prank; Sam had seen them all. Thanks to his parentage, he'd been victim in more than a few. Last year he would have suspected the same kind of targeting, had the perpetrator not been Spike. Spike never made minor fools of his enemies, only his friends. Sam didn't want to know what might happen to someone who crossed the man. Knowing would probably lead to arrest and possibly indictable offense charges. After all, Spike was one of the few people to whom RPG could mean either role-playing game or rocket-powered grenade, and either one equally likely. I have a brain, and I'm not afraid to use it, he'd more than once threatened. Once you knew Spike, it was a damn good threat.

On the other hand, there was... well... this. The man could not accept that there could be a simple, rational explanation that he might not know. Far better – or at least easier – to believe that people were conspiring against him in some yet-to-be-explained conspiracy. Admittedly, he had a right to be paranoid, today of all days, but really? There could be over a hundred mundane reasons for what happened. At least fifty. But did he consider any of them? If the accusation in there was anything to go by, no. Once Spike's brain locked onto something, you'd need about a pound of C-4 to shake it loose. Even then, Sam reflected, he'd probably tell you you wired it up wrong.

Sam shook his head. He hadn't known what to make of the guy when he first got here. On the one hand, Spike had been the first to break through the barrier of suspicion between the team and an unexpected – probably unwanted – new arrival. At the same time, he'd almost seemed to be the team mascot, with special treatment for being an extra-special snowflake. The surest way to bring the wrath of the others – especially Jules – down on your head was to say anything negative about Spike.

And in a lot of ways, it was true. Half the time he couldn't even button his jacket up straight without help. As for his marksmanship, it was above par, generally, but for SRU it barely made the grade. In workouts, he was always the first to slack off, his attention captured by what Sam supposed were more interesting things like how to rewire the lights so they could flicker ominously on command, or what to do in the event of an alien/supernatural attack.

It was just... Boss was right and Sam knew it. Spike might need help getting dressed and keeping his bootlaces tied, but show him a bunch of bottles with seemingly random letters on the side or a bunch of wires and he could instantly list off all the ways those things could be used to kill you and only leave out the obvious ones of blunt-force trauma and strangulation. That, when it came down to it, was Spike's biggest problem. He was so busy looking at the whole wide world of options that he missed the obvious.

Some days, you just couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy.

---

"They were right here. Right here." Spike swore under his breath, a habit born more from survival than manners or even guilt. Last time he'd said anything like that out loud it garnered him a mouth full of soap, and no amount of pleading for mercy in the face of toxins could save him. He slapped the top shelf of his locker, as though his keys had somehow magically returned in the interim, or he'd missed them the first five times. "Right here."

"Well, maybe you put them down somewhere else and forgot," Wordy suggested. Wordy, always so reasonable, so calm, so... Dad-like. One of these days Spike wouldn't be surprised to hear something along the lines of did everybody remember to use the facilities before we left? Because this could be a long stand-off and there might not be time to have a break. Greg was the father-figure, sure (though, sometimes he reminded Spike more of his mother) but Wordy was one-hundred percent a 'dad'. "And does your mother know you use that sort of language?"

Spike glared at him and stalked towards the showers. He needed a shower, and he wanted a change of clothes. Robot rats and fake-blood showers were one thing, but wasting police time for a rotten-egg bomb was something else. And they'd made certain those eggs were good and rotten, too. It wasn't the prank thing that bothered him, it was the fact that they'd thought getting the police to run around in as near as SRU ever got to a panic was funny. And – just possibly – the fact that nobody had wanted to ride with him on the way back. Ed even suggested he should walk.

He turned on the water, cautiously. He didn't tend to repeat himself, but there was no telling who might have gotten ideas. The water ran clear, so he cranked it towards hot, praying that with enough soap he'd be able to get the worst of the stench off and down the drain.

Partway through, eyes closed against an onslaught of suds, everything changed. Almost uncomfortably hot became what seemed impossibly cold. He yelped and leapt backwards, waiting for but not hearing the sounds of uncontrollable laughter. What were they waiting for? It had to be a trick – the hot-water supply for a building this size was huge. He desperately splashed his face clean so he could at least see who might be watching. No one. Finally, Sam poked his head around, like he'd travelled all the way from the hall, or something.

"What happened?"

"There's no hot water, that's what happened!"

Sam leaned around and tested one of the nozzles closer to the door, holding his hand in the spray. "Huh. Something must have broke."

"Something? More than something, Sam. This is not your household water-supply where if you flush the toilet you cook your brother, okay? It takes more than something to take away our hot water."

"Not if the boiler is shut down," Sam told him, shutting off the shower. "It's a large supply, and designed for multiple users, but there's still just the one source. I checked."

"You checked." That, to Spike, sounded suspiciously close to a confession.

"Yes. After last year? When somebody spiked the system with dye? I wanted to see if I could avoid it, the next time." Sam shrugged. "Guess we'll have to call building maintenance?"

"But what about me?"

"I don't know? I guess you'll have to put up with cold." He held something up in his dry hand. "I was just coming to tell you I'd lend you some stuff, at least until you find your keys."

"Oh. Thanks." Spike deflated. Of course it wasn't Sam. Sam was one of those all-around generally nice guys. He'd literally give you the shirt off his back, if he thought you needed it.

"Oh, and, uh, Winnie suggested this." Sam picked something up from the floor and underhanded it towards Spike.

Spike stared for a moment at the bottle he barely caught. Luckily it was plastic, not glass. "Lemon juice?"

Sam shrugged. "It's worth a shot. Apparently it kills the smell, and you need all the help you can get."

Spike made a face. On that, Sam had not been helpful, refusing to let Spike drive the van or even get into it until the seats were protected by heavy-duty blue tarp. The rolling all the windows down part, Spike understood. Having to sit on plastic was just humiliating. "Actually, baking soda would probably be better." he grumbled. At least it would counteract the acid from the hydrogen sulphide, another reason he'd gone with the slightly alkaline option of soap. He gingerly tested the waters again. They were still cold. "If I catch pneumonia or hypothermia, someone's going to pay."

"I'd think you of all people would know pneumonia is a bacterial infection, completely unrelated to the temperature at which you shower."

Spike answered him with a phrase that would have had his mother reaching for the detergent. It just happened to coincide with a stray bit of suds and a drop of undissolved soap escaping from his hair to land in the corner of his mouth. He gagged and spat, then caught himself before he swore again. At the door, Sam doubled over with laughter.

"I'd say 'somebody ought to', but..." For some reason, Sam seemed to be relishing Spike's run of bad luck.

Spike did his best to ignore him, and the goosebumps from the coldness. It wasn't right. Chills on Halloween ought, he felt, to come from being spooked, not sluiced. And maybe Sam was right, maybe it was just random, but he couldn't shake the feeling he was in somebody's sights. On a team full of snipers, it didn't narrow things down, much. Maybe not Jules – they did, after all have an understanding. And Sam was willing to risk the ruin of his clothes if all this didn't come out. As for Ed, despite the man's claim of mechanical competence, Spike didn't quite know if he had it in him to pull something like this off. Which left him with... well, everybody. After all, the best way to get away with things was to be unsuspected.

He rinsed off as quickly as possible and grabbed a towel. Sam, thankfully, was about his size, so the clothes weren't too bad a fit. The only thing worse than having to borrow clothes in the first place was having to look like a kid in his brother's hand-me-downs at the same time. Or, for that matter, like a thirteen-year-old whose mother bought his clothes a month ago and hadn't been shopping since. These also had the bonus of being dry, warm, and clean. Sam wasn't like Ed, who would throw his work-out clothes in his locker and forget about them for six months. Sam had standards.

Spike sighed. Unfortunately, now that he had clean clothes he had a bigger mystery than missing keys that he needed to solve, namely why he'd gotten egg on his face to start with. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said that Babycakes was a delicate piece of equipment. She wouldn't boot up out there, no matter how he'd coaxed. If she had, he could have simply water-cannoned that thing into oblivion and wouldn't that have been a pleasant revenge? This is what we think of your pathetic attempt at humour, asshole.

He grabbed some diagnostic gear and headed for the truck. With any luck, it'd be a simple thing like a wire come loose that he just didn't see, given the pressure of the situation. Because if any day was liable to be bomb call after bomb call, this was the day. As much as it hurt to admit it, he'd gotten lucky out there. It could have been a lot worse than eggs.

He stepped into the back of the truck and froze. Babycakes was there – she hadn't moved this time – but it was what also was there that spooked him. Dangling from one of her grabber arms were his keys, as though she'd picked them up and just made her way back here with them. He knew they hadn't been there earlier. He was certain of it. He would have noticed.

He looked around. Nothing else seemed out of place. Sam's words from earlier came back to him. SkyNet isn't going to appear out of nowhere. Spike tried to tell himself it was insane. Someone was messing with him. Someone was... he reached out and touched Babycake's main motor housing. It was slightly warm, as though she'd just been out for a short trip. Like, say... no, that was impossible. He'd gone straight to the locker-room before his shower. The keys were gone before that. Besides, if he couldn't get her to boot up, how would anyone else?

Suddenly the van seemed a whole lot smaller. Common belief was wrong – he wasn't claustrophobic, not exactly – but he was beginning to feel like he could develop it.

He jumped, seeing a sudden flicker of light as the computer monitor flared to life. That wasn't supposed to happen, either. He'd turned it off. He was sure he had. It...

"Get hold of yourself." He knew he had an overactive imagination. The problem was it would never listen to reason, mainly because there were just too many times it had been right. Romans in the woods, for example. Everybody laughed at him, and then what happened? He got set on fire. "It's all fun and games until somebody gets Molotoved."

He glanced back over at Babycakes. It had to be the lighting, probably the unsteadiness of the glow from the computer monitor, but he could swear the keys were swinging ever so slightly. Like she was mocking him. Why would she do that? He'd given her no reason. She was an inanimate object, in fact, her level of inanimacy was the problem. She couldn't mock him. She didn't need a reason.

"Well, okay, I'm just going to check that battery, to start." He eased a little closer, setting his equipment case carefully down on the floor half-expecting her to swing violently towards him and take his head off. Nothing happened. That was good. He took out his current tester and hooked up the leads. Battery had power – not as much as he expected, but enough to at least run a boot-cycle. Okay, so it had to be something else. A loose connection, a short...

The van door opened suddenly and he jerked upwards, banging his head against one of her struts.

"Oooh. That... sorry." Sam really did look apologetic. "I just wanted to let you know that they did find the problem. Somehow the shut-off valve coming from the boiler got engaged – that's why you couldn't get any hot water."

"Thank you." Spike rubbed his head. It hurt.

Sam's expression evolved into one of surprise. "Hey. Your keys."

"Yeah." Spike didn't dare look at them. For all he knew she'd shifted her grip so she could stab him. "Amazing, that."

"You can get into your truck," Sam said, reasonably. "That's good, right? You know you can go home."

"Later," Spike clarified. Of all the days to have to pull a double-shift... yes, he understood why they needed extra bodies on the street, yes, he understood that it was Team One's turn, but he could have gone out, tonight. The window of legitimately being able to escort his nephew from house to haunted house was, after all, limited.

"But what I mean is you're not going to have to hitch-hike to Woodbridge. I wouldn't want to do it on a good night, let alone tonight."

Spike glared at him.

"Man, you are touchy. I'm sorry I said anything." Sam threw up his hands and backed away. "You just do your... thing." He gestured vaguely at the van.

"'Thing'," Spike muttered, turning back to his task. Highly technical diagnostic work, boiled down to 'thing'. Some people were just philistines.

"Believe it or not, I've never actually been to Southern Palestine." Only when Sam responded did Spike realise he'd spoken aloud. "I mean, I've lived practically anywhere else you can think of, but..."

"Isn't being annoyingly finicky with definitions my job?"

Sam shrugged. "I keep getting told we've all gotta be able to cover for everybody else, so..."

"Just remember who you call a geek," Spike said.

It was hard to define the look on Sam's face in response to that. Irritated, thoughtful, bemused, surprised... it was like they all wanted a chance to be number one.

Spike waved him off and went to get back to doing his 'thing'. It wasn't his job to solve other peoples' identity crises. He had enough problems of his own, like...

...Like where the hell was his current tester? It was in his hand when Sam opened the door. He looked at Babycakes. She wasn't holding it, just his keys. So where?

Had Sam been carrying anything when he left? The more Spike thought about it, the more he didn't think so. The man's hands had definitely been empty. So where the hell...

"This is not going to be my day." Sighing, he extricated his keys from Babycakes' grip and jumped down out of the van. He'd have to get his spare from his truck, which meant more time wasted. The only bright side, as Sam had pointed out, was that at least he now had his keys.

Except... Spike stared around the parking lot. It was starting to feel like déjà-vu. His truck, which should have been right over there, had somehow managed to transport itself three rows away. This was a dead giveaway. Someone was out to get him.

Grumbling, he pressed the unlock control on his remote. At least something was working, as he heard the reassuring chirp of the alarm deactivating. He wouldn't have put it past his mysterious adversary to pull the battery out of the remote.

As he reached his truck, he grabbed the door handle and yanked towards him, only to have it yank back as the door refused to budge. The alarm began to shriek, claiming that someone was clumsily attempting to break into and possibly abscond with someone else's property. He stared at the vehicle for a moment, then ducked around front to check the plates. It was his. So why?

He tried the lock button, just in case. The alarm still blared. An audience had begun to gather around the building doors, people wondering just who was stupid enough to try stealing a car from a police parking-lot. More than a few would be amused when they realised just who was having technical difficulties. He was not going to be able to live this down for a long, long time. Forget that none of them would actually know how to fix it, save possibly the ones who'd done time in Auto Theft; these were cops. Cop humour demanded he suffer endlessly for this.

Just as unexpectedly as it began, the noise ceased and the locks popped open. He made no move, at first, to open the door. Booby-traps were obviously the order of the day. Finally, duty triumphed over common sense and he gingerly tried again. The door opened slowly, as though moments ago there'd been no problem whatsoever.

"Riiight," he said. Taking no chances, he quickly retrieved what he needed – including his change of clothing – and manually locked the door before closing it behind him. The alarm could stay off. This was a PD lot, after all. And, as had just been proven, nobody really did anything about alarms, anyway. Except, perhaps, point and laugh.

He made eye-contact with no one as he made his way back into the building. He had a pretty good idea who was out to get him, now, and it constituted the entirety of modern technology. He felt like asking if he could trade in his firearm for a club. 'Luddite' was starting to sound like a reasonable point-of-view.

"This is just not your day, is it?"

Spike didn't need to look at Wordy to know the man was trying not to laugh. Still, this didn't quite seem his style. Wordy would have removed the battery. His pranks tended to be variations on a theme. Pepper-spray in one's vest was – after all – just another version of itching-powder in the jock. Besides, he was more a general handyman than tech. He might have been able to mess with the shower, but alarms were a little out of his league. And therein lay the problem: nobody on this team, save Spike himself, had the background to do this. Nobody else really had motive.

"Egg bombs, ice showers..."

Spike glowered at him.

"Hey, come on. It's a small building. We heard your girly-scream all the way into the briefing room. We thought that maybe you'd seen a spider or something, but Sam set us straight."

"Ha, ha. And it's not spiders, it's wasps. And you'd be afraid too, if you'd ever been swarmed." Then again, this was Wordy, so maybe not. After all, getting shot hadn't seemed to teach him to stay out of the path of bullets. People described getting stung as feeling like they'd been set on fire, but Spike had lived through both and he'd have to say he'd prefer the burns.

"Well, they do say they're attracted to the smell of rotting food." Wordy sniffed theatrically. "Are you sure you got that all out?"

Spike gritted his teeth and walked away. It wouldn't do him any good to kill the man; at this rate, he'd probably come back as a zombie. Or prove to be a cyborg, which would actually explain a lot of things about the man. Nobody was that well adjusted without relying on circuitry. He'd get his, though. This day wouldn't last forever, and when it didn't...

At the van, it took all of his effort not to explode. Sitting in plain view, right in front of Babycakes, was a stuffed toy of a rat that looked like it had been run over a few times, with treads. Not one of his rats, obviously, but the message was clear.

"We went over that," he told her. "It had nothing to do with you." Usually when he talked about her being touchy, it was a joke, but there were times...

"Okay..."

Spike winced, looking over at Leah's sceptical face. Of all the people to catch him talking to inanimate objects, it had to be her. Anyone else, and they'd just laugh. Her, though... he wasn't quite sure what to make of Leah. He didn't think she liked him. He wasn't sure quite why, and that worried him. "Nothing."

"Oh, I get it." The look on her face said she thought she got something. "I just came to get some gear out of the truck." She nodded over at one of the SUVs. "Don't let me interrupt you two."

Spike ground his teeth, ignoring decades of advice from his orthodontist. It was one thing when Ed gave him a bad time about it. That was Ed. Ed never really meant it. Leah, on the other hand – Spike was pretty sure she'd already decided he was just too weird and that it wasn't a joke.

Which was why he didn't think any of this was her doing. Leah wouldn't waste her time on getting even with him – for one thing, she had nothing to get even for, and for another she seemed to take the route that it was easier to ignore him and not bother, than to try to relate. And he was okay with that, after all High School had taught him a lot, even if most of it was outside of class.

So, who? He looked back at the rat again, once again feeling that victim in the crosshairs feeling. Sam hadn't been here for the rats. It had been just slightly before his time. Jules? Jules liked the rats. Again, he couldn't imagine it being Ed, despite Ed being that year's candidate for best scream. Ed was better with threats than tricks. Who left, then? The boss? Spike shook his head. He couldn't imagine it. Greg didn't do things like this. Greg was the nice guy. Even if he was a sergeant. No, it really just did not fit. He lay down on his side to get a look at her undercarriage and make sure nothing was stuck in her tracks. He hated cleaning those out. No fur, fake or otherwise, but there was something else, lying just in the shadows where he could have sworn he looked three times, before. First his keys, and now this. He looked up at Babycake's innocent lack of motion and then back. Tucked neatly between her treads lay his current tester.

He could swear he heard her snickering.

---

This was going to be a long day. Greg glanced at the clock. Not even half over, and already he wanted to pack it in and find a nice dark hole to crawl into. Babycakes wouldn't stay broken forever, and once Spike was no longer preoccupied with her problems, he was undoubtedly going to turn his attention to the plot against him. 'Plot', for there seemed a definite plan, but he wasn't going to go so far as to call it a conspiracy. Conspiracies required multiple parties and if Greg was right about who was behind this, brain versus brain was the ultimate game here. That was why he hadn't shut it down, yet. He was too good a leader to stunt the kind of character development this meant.

In the long run, it would probably be a good thing, he tried to convince himself. It would be good for Spike, for sure. Everyone else would – eventually – recover.

"All I know is that it is driving him around the bend." Wordy's voice drifted in from the hallway. Greg had kicked them out of the briefing-room on the guise of getting paperwork done. As sergeant, he had to at least pretend to be professional. "You should have seen him out there in the parking lot. I wish I'd had a video camera."

"Keep that up, and he's going to think it's you," Ed warned.

"I'm just saying, turnabout is sweet." From the sounds of things, Wordy was enjoying his vantage point on the sidelines. And he was definitely a spectator. Like Spike, Wordy planned his pranks well in advance and was always nearby to see them sprung. Both also tended to play a short game – single shots that weren't part of an overarching scheme. It made it easier to claim credit.

He was half-surprised the others didn't know who it was, already. Good thing, he mused, that they were SRU and not detectives. The clues were right there if anyone was willing to take the time to listen. Or at the very least communicate and use a simple process of elimination. If it's not you, and it's not me, who does it leave? Someone smart, adaptable, able to take advantage of circumstance, and without a need for instant gratification. Someone with, if not hidden depths, then ones that didn't come out on daily display. After all, nobody could have planned for that egg-bomb going off in Spike's face, nor would they have for Babycake's breakdown. But both had been seamlessly woven into the overarching pattern.

Greg couldn't help but wonder, too, if Spike was the only intended victim, here. Was there a bigger reason no one else had been let in on it?

That was close to one of Ed's theories, that Spike never had been the intended victim and was only playing so to hide that his plans had backfired. Greg didn't believe that. Spike's biggest problem with failure wasn't that he couldn't admit it, but rather he was too hard on himself when he did. No, if Greg was right, then there were two games at play here. One was just for fun, but the other, Greg mused, was driven more out of revenge. Again, that was something he'd normally put a stop to, but he had a feeling it would be better for the team in the long run if he didn't. Frustrations left unreleased had a habit of turning into explosions, and Ed was right in that sometimes talking wasn't the solution. Sometimes object lessons worked best.

He hoped he knew what he was doing.

---

"It's not fair."

Sam stopped short as Jules nearly collided with him. Maybe he was getting better at reading people, but it didn't hurt that she tended to be rather transparent. Passive-aggressive wasn't her style at all. She wanted to confront you on something, she got right into your face, personal boundaries be damned. Sometimes she was even more of a drill-sergeant than Ed. "What's not fair?"

"Spike. You ought to at least stand up for him."

Sam threw up his hands, instinctively. I'm unarmed. Don't shoot. "I am. Whose clothes do you think he's wearing? And I noticed how you volunteered to drive him back." He knew what she meant, though. Some others from outside the team were beginning to think they could pick on the geek with impunity, forgetting that this wasn't high-school and that Spike's clique was no longer a bunch of skinny, acne-faced losers who fainted at the sight of a paper-cut. Sure, he's a geek and he's weird, the unwritten universal rules of teamdom read, but he's our freak. "And to be honest, I think he's taking this better than you are."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Sam sighed. Open mouth, insert foot. Oh, well, if he was going to be in trouble, he might as well really go for it. "Anybody says anything about Spike, and you're the first to get offended, even before he does. I'm just saying... you dish it out, you gotta take it."

"Oh, you're on their side, now?"

"Or maybe your apparent immunity is causing you to lose perspective." For someone who regularly served as the Sarge's second, sometimes she could be really, really dense when it came to people, almost as bad as him. "Spike has been having fun at the expense of the rest of us for a while, now. A little payback isn't going to kill him. He's tougher than you seem to think."

Why, oh, why, did he let himself say those things? Far from calming her down, it seemed to piss Jules off even further. "So, this is some macho-guy thing of suck it up, it's good for you?"

"Look, Jules, I know your brothers probably tried to look after you and all, but..." He tried to think of a way to say it. Jules might not have grown up a typical girl, but there were still some parts of institutionalised guy-dom that she just didn't get. Like the fact that every time she jumped in on Spike's behalf, she made it worse for both of them. Maybe she was right and it was wrong, but you weren't going to change it, at least not anytime soon. "It's not about you. And it's nothing he hasn't done to anyone else, which is what makes it fair game. Come on. If he'd ever done anything to you, you'd be hitting him right back, and you know it." He eased around her, not daring to turn his back, but wanting to get where he was going. "You know it."

"That's not fair, Sam. It's not the same."

"Isn't it? Are you sure?" Sam continued to back slowly away. "'Cause unless it's you, I wouldn't be so sure of the 'whys'. You're not the boss, yet." He wouldn't put anything, even mind-reading as beyond Greg Parker. Thankfully, he was a cop, because he would have made one hell of a con artist.

The look Jules gave him in return was enough. He fled as fast as he could while still holding to a slight thread of dignity. But really, what did make her think she knew what was going on? Nobody else around here did.

That was when he heard the scream. Not a quick yelp of startlement, but a long, loud cry of anguish. Jules was a second slower to react; he could hear her behind him as he sprinted towards the garage. Other people were less quick to move, perhaps wary of the boy who cried 'wolf'. Sam had heard a lot of painful screams in his life, however, and this sounded all too real.

Spike lay on the floor in the back of the van, his right hand looked like it was caught under one of Babycake's treads. His face was white; there was no way he was faking this. His other hand pushed futilely against her, trying to free himself.

Sam didn't even pause. He just charged to the back of the van and leaped up, grabbing the robot by its frame and pulling it up and backwards. He didn't care that she was delicate equipment – Spike was more delicate and harder to replace. Sam hadn't been arguing with the boss about that.

Spike pulled himself away, cradling his injured limb, reflexively. Sam let go and the van jostled as a couple hundred pounds of metal obeyed the laws of gravity. He crouched beside Spike for a closer look. It wasn't the entire hand, at least, just the two smallest fingers, but they looked bad enough. The tracks had cut into the flesh in multiple places, and the instinct to pull free had made it worse. The only reason there wasn't a lot of blood was that they'd already begun to swell. "We better get you to the hospital."

For a split second, it looked like Spike would protest, before he nodded.

"Spike?" Greg came up, looking sicker to his stomach than even Spike did. "What happened, buddy?"

"Nothing." Spike turned his body, the better to hide the damage. Whether it was not wanting to admit the hurt in front of the growing crowd, or not wanting the scare the sarge, it was hard to say.

Wordy reached overtop of someone's head, proffering an ice-pack. Sam took it and broke the capsules, kneading it until he could feel his fingers start to numb. He wrapped it carefully around Spike's hand, despite the fact that 'pain' was probably no longer the operative word. That would come back later as the swelling went down and circulation returned.

Greg took off his jacket and draped it around Spike's shoulders. Sam nodded, unconsciously. The hand needed ice but the rest of Spike's body needed to maintain warmth to ward off the shock. "I'll take him," Sam said, softly.

For a moment it seemed as though the boss would protest. He took it as his role to watch over and care for the wounded and scared. "Okay," he said, finally.

Sam hopped down out of the back of the van and helped Spike slide out and onto his feet. The crowd parted to let them through, Ed even moving on ahead to open the SUV door. "Seriously, Spike," Ed asked, "What the hell happened?"

"Nothing." Spike gave the word a little too much emphasis. You didn't need to be the boss to know that translated into 'something, and I don't wanna talk about it.'

Thankfully, Ed didn't push. Of all the people Spike wouldn't want to lose face in front of, it would be a toss-up between Ed and Greg. You didn't need to be a mind reader to know that, either.

Sam drove carefully, knowing that time was less important than comfort. Even so, he could hear Spike wincing with each jostle and bounce.

At the ER, the nurse took one look and told them to sit down and wait. The uniforms didn't impress her – the fact that Spike was conscious and not immediately dying meant he could take his spot in line. A runny-nosed toddler watched them intently while his older brother sat carefully and still, arm resting on his lap. Over in the corner, a twenty-something-year-old lolled with his foot up on a chair dragged into the middle of the aisle, the cast on it and the bandages on his hand testifying to this being a return visit. He looked stoned, though whether from appropriately prescribed medication or something else, Sam couldn't tell. An older couple sat a few chairs away from him, the man attached to portable oxygen, while the woman searched for something in her purse, setting a pack of cigarettes and a lighter down in the empty space beside her as she did.

The kids' mother got up to go talk to the nurse, probably to ask how much longer it was going to be. The older one looked at Spike, somewhat dazedly.

Spike lifted his hand, ice-pack and all. "Robot."

The kid's face scrunched up, like he didn't quite believe it. "Skateboard."

Spike nodded. "Cool."

The mother came back and sat down, glaring at the strange man who'd tried to draw her hurt child into conversation. The uniforms didn't seem to do much for her, either.

Sam tried not to be bored. He wasn't a mother who could fuss over her offspring, nor did he have pain to keep his mind from being too active. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait and worry. At least Spike had some idea how bad it might be; all Sam had to go by was the quick look he'd gotten back at the van. He hadn't been exaggerating when he'd told Jules that Spike was tougher than she thought. Sam had heard him over the radio, when the Strachan kid firebombed him. Most guys would have just screamed. Some would have even panicked. Even afterwards he'd been more insulted than anything, his pride hurt more than his skin.

Someone came and collected the mother and kids, leaving only the old couple and the stoner, both too far away and too preoccupied to overhear a conversation. "I don't know what happened," Spike said, suddenly. "She just lurched forward, like boom."

Sam didn't know what to say. He had questions but was suddenly afraid to ask them.

"I mean, I probably shouldn't have had my hand there, but I was just trying to get at a connection and..."

He didn't hear the next couple of words, partly because his heart started beating again.

"Wordy's right." Spike sounded like he was trying not to cry. "It's not my day. I mean, I thought somebody was out to get me, but now... I'm not sure I'm not going crazy."

"You're not crazy, Spike. Trust me on that."

"How do you know, Sam, how do you..." Spike's hysteria stopped along with his sentence, morphing into suspicion. "Sam... is there something you should be telling me?"

"Umm..." Sam glanced around the waiting room. Surely an injured cop had to be fairly high priority. He coughed.

"You! I knew it was you! You... How?" Fluency in at least one of Spike's known languages deserted him.

"Not the eggs," Sam admitted. "And not Babycakes not working, or running you over. Really not that."

"But the water, the rat... my keys." Spike frowned. "How? What'd you do to my alarm?"

"Nothing." That was the absolute truth. "Your remote, on the other hand..."

Spike suddenly stood up and used his good hand to awkwardly fish his keys out of his pocket. Sam reached out to steady the ice-pack before it tumbled to the floor. Spike examined the remote closely and then looked back at Sam, his expression puzzled.

Sam waited until Spike sat back down and had hold of the ice-pack again before reaching into his own pocket. He brought out a keychain almost identical to the one Spike had just studied. "Would you believe that Sergeant Cray has an identical system to yours?"

"Rollie? Yeah, I told him what to get." Spike's eyes widened as he worked it out. "You're kidding me. You just swapped..."

Sam nodded. "That's why I had to move your truck. I had to get it close enough to his, so you couldn't tell the difference."

There was a moment of silence, then Spike burst out laughing. "I spent all that time, thinking it couldn't be done, and all you did..."

Sam shrugged.

"Why? And how come Babycake's motor-housing..."

"Heat-pack," Sam said, simply. "I knew it'd be one of the first things you'd check, so..." He shrugged again. "As for why... it took me two days to get that colour out from under my fingernails." It wasn't the only reason, but it would do as an excuse.

Spike shook his head slowly, grin widening as he did. "You realise, this means war."

"I was hoping for a truce," Sam admitted.

"Truce? Are you kidding me? All this and you want a truce? Oh, no. I'm not giving you a truce."

Sam endeavoured to look disappointed. The truth was, he could go either way. He'd been having fun with this. Now that he knew Spike's injury wasn't his fault, well, if Spike wanted a war with a soldier, he could have one.

"Mr. Scarlatti?"

Spike stood up as a nurse interrupted them. "War," he repeated.

Sam pretended to be casual as he picked up an ancient Reader's Digest. He said nothing. They'd see.

---

Spike still couldn't quite believe it, even as he sat on the ER bed, waiting for the doctor to arrive and look at his hand. Sam. Mr. Nice-guy, goody-two-shoes, Sam. At least he had the comfort of knowing he wasn't crazy, and that it wasn't personal. Or, rather, that it was, but it wasn't malicious.

He snuck a peek at his fingers. Gross. He was glad it was Sam and not the boss who'd gotten there, first. Better Sam than Jules, too. Sometimes Jules worried about him, too much, and the boss, too. Sam had a better sense for catastrophe.

After all, it wasn't the first time he'd been mangled. You couldn't do his job without bashing, smashing or burning something. He had more shirts and pants full of acid and burn holes than Wordy did damaged vests. He just wished he knew what had happened. One second Babycakes had been dead, and the next... bang, out for blood. Sam didn't do that, of that Spike was certain. He shivered. No, Sam's only confessions were to the water, rat and alarm. Not the computer, not her...

"Officer Scarlatti? Let's just see your hand, for a moment."

Normally, Spike would have corrected the doctor, telling him it was Constable, not officer, but he'd been too preoccupied even to hear the man approach. He ignored the perfunctory murmuring over the damage, too. No, it looked bad, yes, it was going to hurt, yes, it probably could have been avoided if he'd been super-careful and followed every safety rule to the letter. None of that mattered. What was important was figuring out why and how an inert piece of metal suddenly developed a life.

He hissed, suddenly, as the doctor probed at the fingers, the numbing powers of ice no longer there. He became aware of every laceration and there seemed to be more of them than there was finger. The way it all just seemed to move probably wasn't very good, either.

"How did this happen?"

"Unexpected engagement with a continuous track vehicle." Spike couldn't help himself. Doctors all too often had a bad habit of talking in technical terms. Every time he had to explain what happened to him, he returned the favour.

The doc looked at him oddly, but said nothing more. Instead he waved over a nurse, and then the doc wandered away to look at someone else while the other two went to work cleaning Spike's fingers. Across the way, he could see the skateboard kid. Spike smiled wanly. No sense scaring a ten-year-old by freaking out. Especially since the kid probably had a broken arm, and was handling it calmly enough. Still, the solution hurt like hell as they washed his hand, the slight pressure afforded by a squirt-bottle more than he could have possibly imagined. "Did I mention I lost?" he said, just loud enough to be heard over the aisle.

The boy shook his head. His mother was nowhere to be seen – down the hall taking her other son to the bathroom, Spike guessed, now that the older one was safely guarded by medical staff. "Does it hurt?"

The nurse took that moment to focus on a particularly tender injury. Spike inhaled sharply. "Yeah," he admitted.

The kid nodded and turned his attention back to his arm.

"Thank you," the nurse said, quietly.

"For what?" Spike was puzzled. He didn't do anything, did he? He wasn't sure. He'd been distracted.

"For not lying to him." She straightened up from her work. His fingers looked slightly better now, though still not quite like fingers. She lifted his hand from the rim of the stainless steel bowl and put it down on a sterile cloth, a better backdrop for the doctor's examination. "You tell kids it doesn't hurt and they either know you're lying, or they feel bad because theirs does." Spike nodded. He understood that one.

"I'll get the doctor back to have a look at that, and put in some sutures. Then you'll probably have to go in for X-ray. Do you have someone who can drive you home?"

Spike thought about it for a second. "Yeah." Either Sam could take him back to the station and he could wait out the rest of the shift, or someone else could give him a lift. He wasn't going to call his parents. They'd only panic. Better to spring the news on them when he arrived home in one piece, so they could skip that step and just get mad.

"Good," she said. "I'll have the doctor order something for the pain." She smiled. "I hope it was at least epic."

Spike blinked, confused.

"Tangle with a robot, it ought to be epic. At least that's what my kid says." She turned toward the door to the waiting room. "I'll tell your friend you'll be a while."

"Thanks." He was kind of glad he wasn't Sam. Bad enough to be on this side of things, but to be stuck out there, not even able to play with his cell-phone? Talk about a horror story.

---

By the time Spike wandered woozily back through the doors, Sam had consumed two cups of vending machine coffee, had run out of magazines he was even tempted to read and found himself fighting off the urge to pace or do push-ups. He couldn't help but wonder what was going on, back there. Was there a problem doing the X-rays? Did they decide, for some reason, to do a CAT-scan and discover that the man had no brain? Was he going to need surgery? Had he decided to take apart one of the machines and get electrocuted? Anything was possible with Spike, especially the impossible.

The man himself wasn't very helpful. "Let's go," was all he said, his eyes closing as he made his way towards the exit with a loose-limbed, almost zombie like trudge. Whatever they'd given him was strong.

Nor did he say much on the drive back, nodding off a couple of times, only to jerk back awake and stare around confusedly. His hand, swathed in bandages lay on his lap, holding down a handful of literature on wound care and medicine facts.

"Do you want to go home?" Sam asked.

"Station first," Spike mumbled. "Stuff."

"Okay." The boss would probably want to know that everything was okay, anyway. He'd want to fuss, almost as much as Spike's mother was liable to. Sam did not look forward to that conversation. Maybe someone else would volunteer to take Spike home, and they could have it.

A party of worried faces greeted the SUV as it pulled in. Everybody vied to be the one to help Spike out of the vehicle and ask if he was okay. As expected, Greg muscled his way in, clucking at the bandages and demanding details. "What did the doctor say? Are they broken? Do you want us to call your parents?"

Before Spike could answer, the sirens blared. "Hot call," Winnie told them. "Team One, you're up."

Everybody looked at everybody else. They obviously couldn't take Spike with them, but they couldn't hang around here, either. Nor could they afford to be down two bodies, with somebody driving Spike home.

"Go," Spike waved them off. "I'll stay here. Won't go anywhere."

"Hey." Greg flagged down a passerby and asked that Spike be escorted to the break-room. There were couches enough there for the man to pass out on. He was probably safer here, than at home. There were plenty of people who could check on him, as opposed to him hiding away in the basement suite where even his mother feared to tread. "We'll be back soon, okay?"

Spike nodded and pointed at Sam, bandages making the gesture all the more obvious. "War. 's war."

Sam shook his head and started back to the truck.

"What does he mean, war?" Ed didn't like being left out of things, and his tone said he definitely was behind on this one. "What's he talking about?"

"If you two are having a war," Greg warned, "you're not doing it in my building, do you understand? You fight it out, it's on your own time." He took Spike's place in the passenger seat.

"You mean it was Sam?" Light slowly dawned on Ed as he swung behind the wheel of his own vehicle. "Sam did all that?"

Sam closed his door and looked over at Greg, who shook his head.

"I'm not just a pretty face," Sam ignored the boss' advice, answering over the com.

"Well, that's good," Ed shot back, "because I wouldn’t say you're that pretty."

"Let's focus, please." Greg brought out words he usually reserved for Spike. "Let's try and act like the professionals they pay us to be?"

As Sam pulled away, he thought he saw something in one of the shadows in the corner of the garage. He told himself it was just the stress of the day. It was nothing.

---

He woke. He hurt and it was dark. It shouldn't have been dark. Spike stared at the shadows, willing them to make sense. Dark wasn't the right word, dim was better. The emergency lights were just that, so that you didn't kill yourself in an emergency. But emergency lights were only supposed to come on with no power. This was a police station, so why was there no power?

He made himself get up. He had to pee, which trumped the nauseous, vertigo feeling. After he got to the bathroom, he could throw-up. It was quiet, too. Everybody had gone out, it seemed; it probably had something to do with the power. Lights go out, and so do the people. He'd never heard it this quiet around here. Even graveyards had more of a buzz to them. He shivered, slightly. Graveyards at Halloween, he ought to be building them, not working them.

It was so quiet, he could hear things. The hum of the lights, as they vampirishly sucked their batteries dry. Footsteps, somewhere, but it was hard to tell with the echo. Normally, he liked the place, even in its quiet times, but right now, something was wrong. It felt empty. Dead. Like the world had ended and everyone got away, but him.

The bathroom was worse than the hall, all full of shadows and sharp edges. Fortunately, the worst of the nausea had passed, so he only had one problem to solve. Problem, he realised suddenly, was the operative word. Zippers worked best with two functional hands. He had to figure it out, however. There was no way, at any time, he was asking anybody for help. It was bad enough that his mother did his laundry.

Nor was washing his hands the simple matter it had been a couple of hours, before. He faced some nasty scars as it was, but the doc had made it clear that risk of infection was high with an injury like his and if he wanted to heal, he had to keep it clean and dry, period.

He escaped to the relative safety of the hallway as soon as he could. Somebody had to show up soon. They were probably just in another part of the building. The sooner he had someone to talk to, the better he'd feel. Someone human. Alive.

Something brushed past him, with a sound of dry leaves. He tried to scream, but sound wouldn't come. What the hell had that been? And why was it in here? If this was somebody's idea of a joke...

That didn't make sense, either. Jokes needed an audience, even Sam's kind. There was nobody here to laugh. He needed to get out of here. He needed to find somewhere that had people, and...

He stopped, suddenly. The workroom door sat ajar and he could see something inside. In the flickering light, she seemed to be moving, tracking him as he tried to sidle past. No, she couldn't be there. She was in the van, so how could she have gotten here?

He listened, hard. He could still hear the lights, but little else. This was ridiculous. What he needed to do was just stop being so hysterical, march in there and prove once and for all that she was just gears, metal and wire, and nothing. It was just the flicker of light and shadow playing tricks on him.

He stepped closer. Nothing happened. This was good. He forced himself nearer...

She moved, suddenly. It was no trick of the light, it was too fast and too much.

He scrambled backwards, into the hall. He could feel his heart pounding, every pulse ripping through his fingers, reminding him he was helpless. His only hope was to run. He couldn't hide. She had X-ray vision and infrared.

He retched, suddenly, feeling a cold sweat break out. He didn't want to die. He really didn't want to die like this.

---

Greg worried. He hadn't wanted to leave Spike, but there was no way he could justify having a drugged up officer on a call. Even if he could type faster than Ed, zoned out and missing two fingers. Something had just seemed off. He couldn't say what. He just couldn't quiet the nagging sense that things were not well. Sam acting spooked wasn't helping, either.

"I don't know, boss. It was just eerie, like something was moving." Sam negotiated a lane-change, far more smoothly than Ed had done in the vehicle ahead of them. It was ironic how Ed drove a large vehicle as though he were in the middle of nowhere and there was nothing around him, while Sam probably would shoulder-check on a deserted salt-flat. Greg actually preferred to ride beside Sam. Jules too, though she could also get reckless as her adrenaline levels rose.

It was more than that, today, however. Sam knew the most about Spike's condition. He was probably a better source for that information than even Spike himself, and it wasn't just the influence of the medications. For a man so expressive in emotional matters, Spike was the least likely of the team to admit to a physical hurt. To Spike, the injury would be 'nothing' and the doctor's response simply an overreaction. Like with Wordy, he'd been hurt so much that the novelty had worn off. It didn't make the wounds less traumatic, just their reaction to them.

But now Sam seemed to be succumbing to the same mind-games he'd inflicted on Spike. He, too, was jumping at shadows, or what he thought he'd seen in them. The fine line between genius and madness might have been a myth, but was it really coincidence that the two brightest members of his team were also the most hyperactively imaginative and impressionable? Greg didn't think so. Small wonder, either, that the two of them were starting to bond. On the one hand, it was good, but on the other... Lew had kept Spike grounded. Things seemed to be going in the opposite direction, here.

"Are you sure you didn't accidentally swallow one of these?" Greg held up a small bubble-pack of prescription-strength medication that had fallen to the floor of the SUV. It, too, testified to the level of damage. If it had been as slight as Spike had wanted him to believe, the advice would simply have been Advil.

"Only some really, really bad coffee." Sam pulled into the garage. "I'm just sayin'..."

Greg had the door open before the truck had even come to a complete stop. He barely heard Sam's murmured complaint about not being listened to, as his feet hit the ground. He'd feel better once he'd checked on Spike and knew everything was okay.

At the break-room, he knew it was not okay. Spike wasn't there. Where would he go? Bathroom, maybe.

Spike wasn't there, either. Greg frowned.

"Hey."

Greg followed the sound of Ed's disturbed voice to where the man stood in front of a locked-down briefing room.

"I thought we left those up." Ed nodded at the tightly closed shutters.

"We did." Greg reached down and tried to lift one of the doors. Locked. They were designed to do that only from the inside. Fortresses were to keep people out, even if they did all too often just trap them in. He knocked on the metal. "Spike? Buddy... are you in there?" He had flashbacks to Danny, holding himself as his own hostage. "Spike?"

Both he and Ed listened hard.

"Spike," Ed tried. Even when Spike would listen to no one else, he'd listen to Ed. "Hey, it's us. Open up."

"No." The voice was muffled, but definitely Spike's. "It could be a trick."

"It better not be, or my boot and your ass are going to be making very close acquaintance." Only Ed could call threats a negotiating tactic. Only with Spike were they liable to work.

Deafening silence followed. Greg wished he could at least see what was happening in there. Why had they left Spike alone? They should have at least taken him home where someone could have watched over him.

Finally they heard the click of a deadbolt sliding back, as Spike began unlocking the door. It opened slowly, barely enough to allow a person entry, if he turned himself sideways. "Hurry," Spike hissed. "Get the others. If there's enough of us, we might be safe."

"Safe from what?" Greg eased into the room. Even in the poor lighting, Spike did not look good. "You okay?"

He shook his head, starting to cry. "No. I saw her. Sam was right... I saw..."

Greg looked a little closer. Spike's shirt was soaked with sweat, but he shook as though he were freezing. The man was terrified. Not to mention out of his mind. Greg had no doubt he did see something. Whether real or imagined was another question. This was Greg's version of a horror story. What had caused this, Greg couldn't be sure. But he had his suspicions.

So did Ed, who'd already begun calling for an ambulance. Wordlessly, Greg passed him the sample-pack. He didn't want to say anything that might spook Spike further. "It's okay, buddy. We're here. Nobody's going to get you, okay? Ed will stop anybody who tries."

Ed nodded, seriously. His expression said he was already planning to hurt somebody. You did not do damage to one of his people, even inadvertently, while he was still alive to find out about it.

Spike tilted his head, clearly calculating the odds of his mystery attacker getting past the unstoppable force known as Ed Lane in a bad mood. Sometimes Greg had to wonder if Spike was simply Ed's co-worker, or Clark's older brother, in disguise. He tried not to wonder if Ed would take the loss of team worse than family. It wasn't as though he could do anything about it; some lessons had to be learned the hard way, or they wouldn't need to be learned at all.

Spike reached a decision. "No. I'm not crazy. I saw..."

"I know you did, buddy. I don't think you're crazy." Delusional, maybe, but hopefully nothing permanent.

They were drawing a crowd, Greg realised. Wordy and Jules hovered just out of Spike's line of sight, wearing twin looks of concern. No Sam, though. Greg tried not to speculate what that could mean. He knew it wasn't because the man didn't care, but like their current subject, he sometimes thought on angles. Part of Sam's problem reading people came from his non-shared perspective. All the usual advice at putting oneself in the subject's shoes had no effect – even if Sam could imagine the situation, his reactions would have been markedly different. Small wonder, then, that he and Spike were connecting, despite the differences on the surface.

"I didn't imagine it." Spike was not taking confirmation well. "It was..."

"I saw it, too." Sam appeared, with Leah on his heels. She held a small box, cautiously, making sure it stayed closed.

Greg raised his eyebrows. Sam nodded, deliberately. His message was clear. Spike had seen something, even if it wasn't what he thought. Sam's ghost from the shadows? It seemed like a fairly safe bet. Greg tried not to let his disappointment with himself show. He should have known better than to doubt Sam's judgement. If he said something was there, it was there.

"You did?" Spike crept out from his hiding place, the better to see Sam.

"Uh-huh. And we took care of it, too. It's all safe." Sam stepped forward, carefully. Out of the corner of his eye, Greg could see a paramedic approaching. Sam's move directly blocked Spike's ability to see the same. Greg approved. If Spike was paranoid and thinking they thought he was crazy, he might not take well to the sudden appearance of medical personnel. The fact that it was Steve didn't help the tension levels. Greg was not so much of a fool to believe that Sam harboured no negative feelings towards the man. He hoped the hostility wouldn't be passed to Spike. He also hoped Steve wouldn't try to take this as an opportunity to try to gain their approval. Here and now, the smartest thing for him to do would be remain a stranger.

Steve got too close. Spike saw him. "I'm not..."

"You might have got banged up again," Sam reasoned. He was, Greg realised, getting better at this. He made no hint of drugs or anything being wrong with Spike's head. He stayed strictly honest. Spike's hand was still a concern. Hopefully, Steve would catch the drift.

"But..." Spike glanced around the small circle of faces, his eyes darting from Greg to Sam, to Ed, and back again.

"I'll go with you this time." Ed's words probably could have been better chosen. Sam was far from the worst of the team at keeping his emotions cloaked, but it wasn't hard to see he took the statement as a comment on his tenure as Spike's guardian.

Spike nodded, sticking close to Ed as they exited the briefing room. Greg waited until they and Steve had gone, before raising his eyebrows at Sam.

"We really did see something." Sam nodded over at Leah and her box. "Believe it or not, we've got bats."

"You're kidding me," Wordy said.

Jules looked curiously at the box. "Really?"

Leah nodded. "It must have gotten in through the garage doors and then got lost trying to get out. I guess Spike startled it, and it got spooked."

"That," Wordy gestured with his chin towards the briefing room, "was because of a bat?"

"You ever stumble across one of those things in the dark?" Sam took on a defensive tone. "Those suckers can move. It would've scared me, too, and I'm not even on drugs."

"It can be an unnerving experience," Leah agreed.

Greg found himself unnerved. Sam standing up for Spike was one thing, but Leah's role was usually that of team skeptic. She'd defend Spike from external attacks, but internally, he was on his own. That, too, was great and amazing progress. This was one Halloween living up to its promise of a day for shocks and surprises.

"You think that's it?" Jules asked. "What did they give him?"

"I don't know," Sam still sounded defensive. No doubt, Greg reasoned, because he was worried and couldn't do a thing about it. "But whatever it is, he had a bad reaction to it. When I took him in there, he was hurt, but he was okay."

"And he will be." Greg spoke with a certainty he didn't feel. He knew, realistically, that it wasn't even the doctor's fault. Spike's reaction might well be a rare, or as of yet unreported side-effect. They just didn't know.

They took him at his word, however, everyone nodding before heading off to prepare for the rest of the shift.

Greg sighed wearily as he started back to the garage to retrieve a couple of things he left in the SUV. His path took him past the workroom and he paused, looking in the door. Babycakes sat there, innocently, as much as metal and plastic could possess or be free from guilt. That's all she – it – was, just a tool. Part of the work kit. That was all.

He got about five steps down the hall before he returned, to close the door tight and be sure it was locked. They could deal with things tomorrow, in daylight. Better, tonight, to play it safe.

Comments

[lark_ascends]

. Ed almost had a heart attack when one ran right across his shoe. He actually screamed. Then he grabbed a weight bar and went after it, he had it cornered when suddenly it looked right at him and said, 'Please don't hurt me, Officer Lane.' Spike had to run extra drills for the next three months.

ROTFLMAO.

This was brilliant. Brilllliant. Hysterical and freaky.

[whenrabbitsattack]

*grins*

Catching up on everything, I see.

I'm glad you liked this.

[mermaid]

I'm late to the party, but I just found this fic as I was hopping between Yuletide letters. This is wonderfully well-written, and quite creepy (you totally had me believing that Babycakes had come alive or was possessed or something). A really fascinating look at the team dynamics, too - great work :)

[whenrabbitsattack]

Thank you. Sorry I didn't reply earlier, but between Yuletide panic and general Christmas craziness, I didn't get a break until now.

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it. And are you sure she's not? As Sam said, SkyNet isn't going to come out of nowhere....

[tristen84]

I just stumbled upon this fic and I just had to let you know how much I loved it :o) It's really well-written, spooky, and a lot of fun. You have a wonderful sense of humour!

Also, I really enjoyed the Spike-Sam bonding. There just isn't enough Spike & Sam friendship fic out there and I'm really happy to have found this gem. LOVED that it even had some Spike h/c in it!

Great job! Thanks so much for sharing this with us! :o)