the Final Cut

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of
Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part II

“The bad news,” Ethan said, peering at the sparkling disk suspended in the air in front of him, “is that it appears we were enveloped by a Deccam involution moments after we stepped into the factory.” He glanced back at them, his smile showing real pleasure. “The good news? Vampires find a Deccam to be thoroughly inhospitable, so we’ll not need to worry about them while we’re still inside. Not that there won’t be other things to watch for, of course.”

The walls around them were too even, too sharply delineated, the cracks repeating a bit too regularly, and the sunlight coming through the outer windows had a peculiar flatness. They had immediately felt the unreality of it all, and paused to assess their status. “Great,” Xander said tightly. “And you’re supposed to be our trap-whisperer? What we’ve got here is a pratfall in the first three steps.”

“Had you ever even heard of a Deccam involution before I named it?” Ethan asked Xander, still smiling. “I barely have, it’s a very obscure application of Iritulian energies. Count on it, you’d have done no better without me, and at least I have some idea what we’re dealing with.” He dismissed the hovering disk, which promptly faded away, and swiveled to face them. “To begin with, this isn’t so much a physical location as a projection of certain concepts. It’s a separate environment, simplified in some ways and purified in some. With me along, this is actually a better place for us to be.”

“Yeah,” Xander said, eyes ceaselessly sweeping their surroundings. “And why do I think I’m hearing the sound of a guy talking out of his ass?”

“He’s, he’s telling the truth, Xander.” Giles, too, was watching out for further surprises. “At least, he seems to be. I know quite a bit about involutions — though not the Deccam variant, I’m afraid — and it matches what he’s saying.” He let his gaze rest on Ethan for a half-second. “So far, at least. My primary concern …” He cleared his throat. “Manifesting a stable Deccam involution is a feat requiring some effort and sophistication. If this is merely the first of the obstacles we’re to overcome, we could be facing … severe difficulties.”

“You know, I don’t think so, Ripper.” Ethan’s drawl was of a type seemingly designed to annoy, but his eyes were bright with interest. “This is too big for something like that, really; or I suppose I should say, too expensive to fritter away as an opening diversion.” He grinned. “I don’t believe this is an obstacle, I think it’s the obstacle course itself.”

Giles felt his eyebrows rising. “That … does seem logical.”

“Guys?” Xander complained, hands white-knuckled on the haft of his weapon. “Explanation?”

“Er, yes, of course.” Giles cradled the crossbow he carried, impatient to proceed but grudgingly recognizing the value of basic operating knowledge. “As Ethan said, an involution is a separate, artificial environment; and the Deccam approach, as I understand it, superimposes that environment over the structure of the underlying reality.” He gestured at the walls around them. “This isn’t truly the factory, but a … pattern, that within the involution serves as a framework. There may be more rooms, additional wings, subterranean sections; various demons or supernatural beasts may have been sent in to await us, or the involution design may create its own perils —” He broke off, for Xander was staring at him, eyes wide and mouth falling open. “I’m sorry, I realize it’s a confusing concept to try and take in without warning —”

“Are you kidding me?” Xander interrupted. “Man, you’re describing DOOM!”

“I —” Giles stopped. “What?”

“It’s a game, a video game.” Xander’s mouth spread in a wide grin. “Few years after its release, the makers open-sourced it so people could create their own levels. I’ve heard of corporate types who used the specs of the building where they worked, so they could spend their lunch hours trashing the offices and blowing away their supervisors in virtual space.” He looked around happily. “So it’s like we’re inside a video game based on the factory. That makes perfect sense!”

Ethan laughed. “You can forget about extra lives or leveling up, but it’s a fair analogy otherwise. And, just as games follow certain conventions and coding styles, I believe the Deccamites had their favorite techniques and habits of approach that I should be able to suss out and exploit.” He tilted his head, considering. “Now that I think of it, calling up that sensing pane was almost effortless. Unexpected, that. I wonder …”

He held his hands out, palms upward, as if balancing something unseen, and frowning slightly in concentration. Ghostly green flames appeared about his palms, flaring and subsiding as he twirled and shaped them. “Yes!” he cried in triumph. “I knew it, magic is stronger here. There’s no telling how much I can do, this place is brilliant —!”

Xander leaped at him with the battle axe raised overhead, and Ethan yelped and fell down as he tried to dodge from the boy’s path. The axe came down in a full-power two-handed swing, the blade landing with a deep, sickening chunk! in the muscled shoulder of the hairless, blue-skinned creature that had surged around the corner of the ‘factory’ wall on four clawed feet. Its shriek blotted out all other sound, and it tried to swipe at Xander with its good foreleg but missed, lurching offside, as the injured one gave way beneath it. Giles shouldered the crossbow and fired, quarrel all but disappearing into the creature’s chest, and Xander’s next swing split the misshapen skull in a spray of garish brains and shattered teeth.

Ethan had scrambled to his feet, and watched with a slightly stunned expression as Giles calmly reloaded the crossbow and Xander shook thick blood from the blades of the axe. “Nice little demo there, Gandalf,” Xander observed caustically, “but I’m thinking for most things, we’re better off sticking with Sir Hackalot.”

The blue creature was still twitching on the concrete floor, gape-toothed jaws stretching more than halfway around its face; it could, almost certainly, have severed a man’s leg at the thigh with one solid bite. “That was quick action, Xander,” Giles said, “and quite well done. I trust it didn’t touch you?”

“Not even close,” Xander reassured him. “I’m just glad it wasn’t a bunch of smaller ones, ’cause that coulda been nasty.”

“Indeed.” Giles glanced toward Ethan. “Are you ready to proceed? More to the point, can your ever-so-superior knowledge give us at least some warning before the next attack?”

Ethan recovered himself with a shake. “You deal with the uglies that pop up, and I’ll sniff out such spell snares and trapdoors as are built into the fabric here.” He shrugged, and that scoundrel’s smile returned. “After all, it’s my own skin I’m looking out for, too.”

“Yeah, well, try to stay more alert.” Xander’s voice was clipped, and he used one sleeve to blot sweat from his forehead. “I’ll fight whatever I have to, but I’m not crazy about jumping in to risk myself just because you can’t be bothered to look around every now and then.”

“I shall endeavor to be vigilant,” Ethan said with mock, pompous resolution. Then his eyes cut momentarily toward Giles, his smile broadened into something close to a leer, and he added, “But … do be careful with that axe, Eugene.”

Xander stopped with a What the hell? look on his face, Giles rolled his eyes, and Ethan cackled with glee.

*               *               *

Jenny’s expression was doubtful. “Was that … supposed to actually mean something?”

Giles sighed. “It’s the title of a Pink Floyd song,” he explained. “I chatted up one of their roadies once, checking possibilities, and then tried to tell the story when I’d had too much to drink. Ethan insisted ever after that I’d claimed to have toured with the band, and he’d work song titles into conversation just to twit me.” He shook his head. “I thought he’d given it up years ago for more sordid amusements, but perhaps he was feeling nostalgic.”

Jenny nodded slowly; her eyelids were drooping, but genuine rest still eluded her. “I didn’t even know he’d been there, or Xander either. I remember your voice — I think — but everything else was just … jangling and fuzz. I don’t know if I’ll ever get those memories back.” She reached for the second teacup with determined steadiness. “I don’t know if I want to.”

It was true, she’d been somewhere between comatose and delirious when they found the cell where she’d been chained, and she had dissolved into weeping when he spoke to her, clinging to him and burying her face in his shoulder like a frightened child. “Well, once we were out, I brought you here on my own. I had some sense already of what you would probably need, you see, and … er … was rather certain you wouldn’t want an audience.”

Meaning, for the hot bath he had used to restore her core temperature. He’d left her clothing for later laundering, unless she preferred that he simply drop the garments into the rubbish bin, or burn them outright. “You were dead-on there,” she agreed, and settled back in the armchair. “Xander would have been embarrassed even if he wasn’t in the room with us, and Rayne would have made a show of ogling me just for the pleasure of being offensive.” She took a sip from the cup, and another. “That’s if he’d been around, I mean. I don’t suppose there’s any chance he got killed during the big expedition?”

“Well,” Giles said with calculated nonchalance, “now that you mention it —”

Jenny stared at him, owl-eyed, her mouth forming an ‘O’ of surprise. “Rupert … are you serious? You wouldn’t tease me about something like that, would you?”

Well: grudges, indeed. Jenny’s possession by Eyghon, while it had been caused by Ethan’s selfishness and disregard for others, had never been his actual intention, and after the demon’s expulsion, with Jenny safe again, Giles had simply added the incident to the catalogue of sins for which the man must someday answer. Clearly, the matter had been quite a bit more personal for his accidental victim. “I’m not simply teasing you,” he assured her. “He really … that is to say … and, yes, there was some satisfaction there … but then, my own feelings about it all were rather muddled and conflicting …” He ground to a halt, pulled himself together. “It’s difficult to sum up quickly, but the entire situation subsequently became rather convoluted, in ways we’d certainly never expected —”

*               *               *

Giles had been correct; there were additional areas in this ‘factory’, higher and lower levels that went beyond the original, warrens and labyrinths scattered with hostile spells and organisms. And Ethan had been proven right about his ability to anticipate and work through the spell-traps, while — unexpectedly — Xander’s video-game familiarity had him attuned to the most probable locations and timing for the appearance of living (or quasi-living) adversaries. More than that, Ethan’s dismissive crack about leveling up had been found to be not completely true: whenever he successfully disarmed or diverted one of the spell-traps, the result was an increase in the range and control of the mystical abilities he could manifest here; Xander, likewise, seemed to become quicker and more skilled each time he killed one of the several different types of creature that burst in sporadically to attack; and Giles himself, who alternated physical combat with thaumaturgical support for Ethan, found himself performing rather better than usual in both areas.

Ethan was working to unseal one of the doors just now, hovering in lotus position about five feet above the floor while he delicately manipulated the runes set into the upper corner of the frame. “You know,” he observed, “I’m beginning to get a sense of the mind behind this baroque little scenario. Tell me, Ripper, is there a fellow in this town who helps would-be wizards with their magic? building it up and feeding from it at the same time?” He nullified one set of runes, chuckled in satisfaction, and glide-floated to the next cluster. “Chap I’m thinking of favors a low profile, keeps the entrance to his little lair invisible and shifts it about now and then to discourage unwelcome company. Ringing any bells?”

“There have been rumors,” Giles replied, holding the crossbow at ready and watching one sector of the corridor while Xander kept an eye in the other direction. “What I heard sounded more than slightly unsavory, but not particularly threatening. Do you think this is his handiwork?”

“Maybe,” Ethan said, a softly glowing baseball-sized sphere providing illumination as he worked. “He plays around with the kind of little gimcracks I’ve been seeing here, sort of as a hobby, and he’ll sell them sometimes if the mood strikes him. Setting up a little pocket murderworld as a hamster-wheel for a Slayer, now, that’s a bit more ambitious than his usual, but the basic brush-strokes I’m seeing do remind me of him.”

“Very well,” Giles said. “If you’re correct about the author, is that to our advantage, or will there be cause for concern?”

“Actually, the more I see, the more promising it looks.” Ethan finished with the locking runes, unfolded his legs to put his feet back on the floor. “Even if he reproduced the overall Deccamite structure well enough, he didn’t put his best work into the trim.” He smiled. “Mind you, we may run across the stray Easter egg here and there as a whimsical surprise, but on the whole I’d say he phoned this one in.”

It was a flash of the Ethan that Giles had once known, the man who took genuine pleasure in working through an interesting problem. The moment of not-yet-formed camaraderie, or at least recognition, was burst as Xander called, “Is that door ready to open? ’cause a moment like that is when you have to watch for attack from behind you and ahead of you, and I want to make sure we’re ready.”

He was down to his undershirt now, the horrendous paisley monstrosity he had been wearing upon their arrival having been abandoned as too shredded for further utility; a single torn strip, worn as a headband, was the only remnant. Layered in grime and sweat, his arms and chest spackled with the blood (or closest analogue) of the creatures he had been fighting, he looked grim and determined and vaguely brassed-off and utterly alarming. In the parlance of his peers, the class clown had left the building.

“Oh, there’s an easy enough way to address that little issue,” Ethan said lightly. “How’s this: we pull open the door, and very quickly shove you in there ahead of us, and then stand back to see if anything jumps out and starts biting —?”

“Shut up, Ethan,” Giles said. “Yes, Xander, we’re prepared to proceed. Everyone ready? Very well, on three: one, two …”

His back to the corridor wall, Xander faced the door, axe poised, while Giles split his attention between the door and the corridor on his side; half-facing the other way, and with flames swirling from his upturned hands, Ethan shoved the door open with a quick kick, stepping back —

Nothing appeared from any direction. “Dark,” Xander commented, trying to peer through the doorway, muscles bunched to strike with the axe on an instant’s notice. “Dark is usually not a good thing.”

“Allow me.” Ethan let the mage-flame subside in his right hand, and used it to form one of the glowballs and send it drifting in through the doorway. It brightened as it floated in, and all three could see that the revealed room appeared to be empty, about forty feet by thirty, with a corresponding door on the far side.

“Traps?” Giles asked.

“Not picking up any,” Ethan replied. “Of course, we know that sometimes we have to get a lot closer to tell. We’ve done okay so far, though, and —”

“And,” Xander interjected, “I’m definitely hearing something from off thataway, so it’s probably not a great idea to stay hanging around out here.” He stepped forward, adding, “Don’t forget to look up. Sometimes they hide high.”

The three men filed inside, spreading out and surveying their surroundings; Giles closed the door behind them and, after a second or so of consideration, set the bolt, for he too could now hear whatever was making its way up the corridor. “Best not dawdle,” Ethan observed, stepping ahead briskly. It was unquestionably a risk, but so might be not moving quickly enough, and at bottom the goal was still to find Jenny, which they couldn’t delay too long …

“Wait,” Ethan said, holding up one hand just before they came to the center of the room. “There’s something —”

It was already too late, Giles and Xander had reached his side even as he began to voice the warning. Two or three steps ahead of them, something rose from the floor in the room’s center, ten feet wide and moving upward as smoothly and quietly as the power window on an automobile: a wall, no, a pane of glass, no, a mirror. It reached the ceiling and stopped, the men looking from their reflections to one another as they started to back away; then the surface of the mirror misted in a cobwebbing of tiny cracks, and the glass collapsed to the floor in a shower of fragments that melted into nothingness even as they landed —

The reflections remained, however, and Giles, Ethan, and Xander found themselves facing … Giles, Ethan, and Xander.

The tableau held for only a frozen instant that felt like much, much longer. Then the face of the Giles across from Giles twisted into an ugly mask of malice and he raised his crossbow, the other Xander began to draw back his axe while his visage fell into that same expression of virulent hatred … and the Xander to Giles’s far right leaped forward on a diagonal, ignoring his counterpart and passing in front of Ethan and Giles himself to slam into the other Giles in a driving tackle as he shouted, “Switch right! Switch right!”

There was no time to understand or even to think, and yet miraculously he and Ethan responded correctly as if by some pre-existing plan; Giles fired at the other Ethan with a reflexive snap-shot from the crossbow, then launched himself at the man in seamless follow-up as his chosen target threw up a hasty shield to deflect the shot; Ethan, meanwhile, blasted fire at the other Xander, who likewise had to jump out of the way. Then there was no time to track anyone else’s actions, Giles had his hands full with his own foe.

Ethan had never been much of a direct fighter, but this one wasn’t even trying to fight, he dodged and twisted and scampered in every direction, meanwhile protesting, “Hold on, Ripper, wait up, wait just a bloody minute —!” Giles wasn’t having any of it, he knew Ethan needed a few seconds to call up the magefire and he wasn’t about to let this one have the time, he struck with the stock of the crossbow and other-Ethan dodged again with a yelp. “Just hold still, you bastard,” Giles panted; he had to finish quick here, kill this thing and go help Xander —

The Ethan he was chasing slipped to one side and stuck out a foot to trip him — seriously? — and Giles went staggering as helplessly as any schoolboy on the playground. His foe raised his hands, the pale green fire surging up again … and ducked out of the way as Giles hurled the spent crossbow at him, and the flame streaked past Giles — not even close, clearly not even trying, what was the man about —?

A scream from behind him jerked Giles’s gaze around; there, the other Giles, the wrong one, was beating at his blazing clothes as they burned around him. Behind the man, Xander stepped around to get a better angle, and the shrieks cut off as the axe fell with a butcher-block sound. Xander looked around and saw Giles, looked at the other pair still struggling. Then he bent to pick up the still-primed crossbow of the dead Giles, took careful aim, and sent a quarrel directly into the heart of the Xander who was energetically trying to strangle the original Ethan.

“Christ!” Ethan said, jumping back as his adversary collapsed, lifeless. He looked from the dead Xander to the living one, several times, for once at a loss for words. “I heard that bloody thing swip right past me,” he said at last. “You could have killed me!”

“Hey,” Xander said with a shrug, “I see that one as a win either way.”

He and Giles looked together at the second Ethan, and the first one seemed to recover himself as his eyes took in his doppelgänger. “Well, then, no harm done,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll just finish off this last one and then move along —”

“Is that necessary?” the other Ethan asked mildly, ignoring the original to speak directly to Giles and Xander. “I’m not your enemy. I helped you.” He slanted an eyebrow and a half-grin at Giles. “At considerable difficulty, I might point out.”

“I … that …” Giles stopped, momentarily at a loss.

“That part did mix me up,” Xander admitted. He stepped over to Giles and the second Ethan, handed Giles the duplicate crossbow, and held the axe in a way that was casual but still ready. “I was fighting the not-Giles, so I knew this had to be the real Giles. I knew that guy was the not-me, ’cause I’m the me-me. So if real-Giles was faced off against this Ethan, he’d pretty much have to be the not-Ethan, but then this Ethan turns away from real-Giles to burn not-Giles …” He shook his head, and asked Giles himself, “Are you sure you didn’t mix up your Ethans?”

“I’m certain,” Giles answered firmly. “This is assuredly the duplicate; I went for him the moment you made your move, never took my eyes off him.”

“He didn’t,” the second Ethan agreed cheerfully. “And wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him I was on your side.”

The first Ethan stepped up to join them. “Is anybody seriously listening to this bollocks?” he demanded. “Of course I’m the real one, of all the cheek —!”

“Well, now,” the second Ethan said, eyeing his counterpart with a smile. “Aren’t you a handsome bugger?” To Giles he said, “I’m the doppelgänger, all right, won’t try to claim otherwise. But I’m not like those other two there. They wanted to kill you, were compelled to. I’m not.” He favored them with all the amused charm that an Ethan Rayne could bring to bear. “In fact, I’d like to help you on your little rescue safari.”

“You know that look,” the first Ethan said to Giles. “I make sure to be wearing that look when I’m about to set up a new mark for plucking. He’s trying to run a con, surely you can see as much.”

“Yeah, I’m kinda gonna have to go with our Original Asshole on that.” Xander was facing the second Ethan, his grip on the axe now perhaps a bit less relaxed. “The real Ethan Rayne is bad enough, there’s no way I’ll ever trust his evil twin.”

“Really, now? Are you positive you’ve thought this all the way through?” The duplicate Ethan smirked at them, either genuinely enjoying the situation or playing the role perfectly. “Consider the source material, and ask yourselves: between the real Ethan Rayne, and a twisted-mirror double … what makes you so sure I’m the evil one?”
 

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