Chapter 1 -- Winding Around

Faith was dreaming.

She was ten years old again, attending a day camp that the local primary school put on each year for poor kids from the area. The budget was low, so there wasn't much in the way of sports equipment or materials for crafts, but it was a lot better than staying home with Mom.

One of the people who made camp OK was Joanna. Like the other counselors, she was a volunteer, a high schooler from the rich suburbs. She had long, straight, light-brown hair, and big glasses, and she played the guitar. Her singing was really nice.

That day, Faith and a dozen or so other children were sitting in a circle on the ground and singing along while Joanna played. The song was one of Faith's favorites, "I'm Being Swallowed by A Boa Constrictor". They had just finished "Oh, no, it's up to my toe" and were about to start on "Oh, gee, it's up to my knee" when a man's voice called, "Hello, kids!"

All the children stopped singing and turned their heads to see who had spoken. Then they shouted in unison, "Hi, Mister Wilkins!"

Richard Wilkins was walking up to the circle of kids in a plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy slacks. He carried in his arms a big, green, stainless- steel cooler. "Who wants ice cream?" he called gaily.

The children rushed towards him in a chorus of "I do! I do!" Wilkins set the cooler down and threw open the lid.

Faith lagged behind the other children as they dashed forward. She noticed that Mister Wilkins' cooler looked bigger now that it was on the ground.

"Right in here, kids!" the man said, pointing down into the open cooler. The children began to climb in to root around on the bottom for ice cream bars.

Faith had a funny feeling about the cooler. Something in her tummy told her it wasn't safe.

"Don't..." she squeaked, but she could barely talk. It was like there was a thick rubber band around her throat.

Mister Wilkins looked at her. "Come here, sweetheart," he said, his eyes twinkling. Faith's stomach felt achy when she looked at him, but she went to him anyway.

By now, all of the other children had climbed into the cooler and were on their hands and knees, searching for ice cream. Without even looking down, Mayor Wilkins casually closed the lid of the cooler, then took a seat on top of it.

Wilkins turned to the counselor, who was still sitting on the ground with her guitar. "Joanna, you're dismissed," the man said.

Joanna looked doubtful, but this was Mister Wilkins, after all; no one questioned him. Guitar in hand, Joanna walked away, not looking back.

Richard Wilkins turned to Faith and slapped his thighs. "Come sit with daddy," he said.

Faith dutifully climbed onto his lap. She knew it was supposed to be nice to be with her daddy (wasn't he?), but at the same time, the aching in her stomach only got worse.

"Having fun at camp, sweetheart?" Wilkins asked.

"Yes," she replied, eyes downcast.

The kids inside the cooler seemed to have noticed that something was wrong, because they were starting to beat against the lid and sides of the cooler with their little hands. Their feeble pounding could barely vibrate the heavy stainless steel.

"Daddy," Faith said, "shouldn't we let them out?" Her tummy hurt worse than ever.

"Now, Faith, we've talked about this," Wilkins said, turning serious. "Sometimes, to make things better, you have to make hard decisions. Sacrifices. Remember, up to four people can play Scrabble, but only one can win."

The pounding was getting louder now, from all sides of the cooler. Faith could also hear muffled screams.

"But they're little," Faith protested. "And some of them are my friends."

"No matter," Wilkins said sternly. "It has to be done. Now I'll hear no more about this, or no TV for you tonight."

Faith was afraid to make daddy angry. He was all smiles and cheesecake and mini-golf when she behaved, but when she upset him...

The screams and pounding were getting fainter as the air inside the cooler began to run out. Faith couldn't stand it. Her throat got even tighter, and a few tears leaked from her eyes.

"Please, daddy," she begged, "let them out."

"That is it, young lady!" Wilkins said angrily. "As soon as we're finished here, I am taking you right home. No more camp for you!"

Faith didn't care about the camp. "Please, please, let them out, let them out," she pleaded. She was crying hard, now. The sounds inside the cooler had faded to almost nothing.

"DON'T YOU DEFY ME!" Wilkins shouted. Faith screamed as the man's eyes turned blood red and tiny lines ripped like jagged lightning across his face, dividing it into scales that turned green before Faith's eyes. Faith tried to jump out of his lap, but she was surrounded by thick, writhing coils. They wrapped tight around her neck until her blood pounded in her head. Her lungs strained uselessly to pull air through her closed windpipe as the blood vessels in her eyes exploded and everything was red red red

Faith sat up suddenly in her cot, gasping.

Damn, she thought. I think I liked it better when I WASN'T dreaming.

She looked around, just to make sure that the nightmare was not a warning of any immediate danger. All was quiet in her cell. The powerful sodium lights that illuminated the prison yard shone up through the window, creating a squarish patch of light on the ceiling. She could see the outlines of the cells' furnishings -- a desk, some cubbyholes along the back wall for clothing and other belongings, the toilet and sink in the corner. Faith could hear the sink dripping. The soft snoring of her cellmate drifted up from the bunk below.

After more than three months in the supermaximum-security wing of the Fuller State Correctional Facility for Women, Faith had been released into General Population. It was partly Faith's good behavior that got her back into GP; it also helped that the gang girl who had gotten Faith thrown into supermax in the first place had been charged with perjury for lying at her appeal, where she had been represented pro bono by Wolfram & Hart. With the loss of what was left of their client's credibility, the law firm had unloaded the girl like a leaky barrel of nuclear waste.

Faith lay back down, satisfied that nothing lurked in the shadows of her cell. Her confrontation with guard-turned-vampire Jason LeBeck during her stay in supermax had made Faith realize that prison bars were no protection from supernatural horrors. She had been a lighter sleeper ever since.

It seemed like only a few minutes later when the 6am buzzer sounded. Faith got up, pulled on her prison uniform, and had just enough time to brush her teeth and hair before the second buzzer sounded. At that moment, the cells unlocked automatically to let the prisoners out for breakfast.

Faith walked out and looked down into the open space in the middle of the three tiers of cells. Through the wire mesh barrier that kept prisoners from throwing themselves or others over the side, Faith could see hundreds of blue-suited prisoners making their way towards the cafeteria. After that, they would head off to jobs, classes, and all manner of other activities. It struck Faith as funny that, even though she was in prison, it seemed like there was so much to do.

But, even though it was vastly better than supermax, GP was no picnic. There were plenty of fights. Faith had already had two girls pull knives on her -- the one who stabbed her from behind and got her sent to supermax, and then one who just wanted to enhance her rep by marking up a pretty white girl. Faith had taken the knife and broken the girl's wrist, but, as she later told Angel during one of his visits, the only consequence that time was a beating from the guards. Faith didn't mind those so much; physical pain she could deal with. But the feeling of being trapped, of not being able to open her eyes without seeing gray walls and blue uniforms, was not always as easy to handle.

Faith was shaken from her gloomy reverie by a commotion from the other side of her tier of cells. Ignoring the stairwell that would lead her down to the first floor and the cafeteria, Faith wound around the side of the tier to the site of the disturbance and pushed her way through the crowd to see what was going on.

Inside one of the cells, the bug-eyed corpse of a prisoner hung by its neck from the corner of a bunk bed. The body was clad in a white t-shirt and white cotton underwear; the prisoner had used her own pants to hang herself.
Faith had heard a lot of stories about hanging, and that you could die a slow, choking death if you didn't do it right. This prisoner obviously hadn't done it right -- her face and neck were covered with scratches from where she had tried to pull the fabric away from her neck as it asphyxiated her. Faith could barely imagine it; it must have felt like-

Like my dream, she thought.

Faith shook it off. Coincidence. People have dreams about being strangled all the time.

The guards arrived and began herding prisoners away from the scene, pushing them towards the stairs. Faith drifted along with the crowd, trying to shake off the feeling of dread that followed her from the hanged woman's door.

I don't think I'll ever try to kill myself again, Faith thought. But if I do, first I'm gonna read the manual.

Chapter 2 -- Observations

Faith looked around again as she and the other prisoners were herded downstairs to the cafeteria. The prison resembled a great concrete ant farm, filled with tiny blue ants that scurried across the tiers and down the many open stairwells in the pursuit of breakfast. Breakfast was Faith's favorite meal in prison, if only because, unlike lunch and dinner, it was usually possible to identify everything she was expected to eat. No mystery meat, no vegetables boiled beyond recognition. Prison oatmeal might have been gluey and flavorless, but at least you could tell it was oatmeal.

A line formed out the door of the cafeteria, a long, blue string of hungry, jostling, gossiping inmates. A few guards along the line, maintaining a semblance of order.

Someone shoved Faith roughly from behind. The heat of anger flared in her chest as Faith turned around to see a gang girl standing behind her, glaring at Faith with unflinching hostility as a gaggle of her comrades looked on.
Faith's mind flashed on the image of herself punching the woman hard in the gut, doubling her over, then pushing her down and kicking her in the head again and again until it split open like a rotten melon.

No, no, no, Faith thought, pushing her rage down. Not today. I can get through one day without fighting. One hour. One minute. The effort was like wresting an anaconda, but somehow, Faith kept her anger under control. She only glared back at the woman who had pushed her.

Somehow, the gang girl sensed how close she had come to unleashing something she couldn't handle. "Sorry," the girl said, taking one step back. One of her cohorts started to say something, but the others shut her up.

Word must have gotten around about the girl with the knife, Faith thought.
Whether she wanted it or not, it seemed, Faith had acquired a rep. She just hoped that a good angry stare was all she would need to maintain it.

Faith got her breakfast -- tasteless pancakes with non-maple syrup and a cup of orange something that might have been Tang -- and looked for a place to sit down. Such places weren't always easy to find. Well over half of the tables in the cafeteria were occupied by jailhouse chapters of L.A.'s many street gangs. The largest gangs had enough members in GP to fill a dozen tables. There were also gangs that were strictly in-house, formed for the purpose of mutual protection from the larger groups.

This rigid social structure was the source of Faith's dilemma. She was a loner by nature, but being alone in prison wasn't just dull -- it was dangerous. As her recent experiences had demonstrated, the gangs tended to pick on people who didn't have anyone to fight on their side. And while Faith knew she could take on a whole bunch of convicts by herself in a fair fight, convicts didn't tend to fight fair; she knew THAT from experience, too. Even if she managed to avoid getting stabbed in the back again, she didn't relish the thought of having to go all Jackie Chan on a bunch of attackers in the gym or the cafeteria, drawing plenty of attention to herself in the process.

An old, familiar voice laughed at her from inside. Here she was, worrying about how to get along and stay out of trouble, when she could easily rule this place. She could be the biggest prison gang leader ever, if she wanted to be.

But then there wouldn't be any point in being here in the first place, she thought. Anyway, it's no big. If I wanted to have my own empire, it would be in a place with a lot more guys. And real maple syrup. Maybe both at once.

Faith saw an open spot at one of the neutral tables, occupied by girls with no gang affiliations, or whose 'gangs' consisted of only three or four women. She sat down and ate, not speaking to anyone.

Suddenly, a commotion erupted at a table nearby. Faith turned her head to see that a prisoner had stood up and grabbed the woman next to her by the hair. Now she was screaming and bashing her victim's head into the table, again and again. The look on her face was one of pure fury.

Another prisoner, maybe one of the victim's friends, got up and tried to grab the attacker from behind; the enraged woman spun around and punched the other girl hard in the face. The woman staggered back, her nose gushing dark blood.

It took Faith half a second to gauge the situation. The guards were all at the edges of the room and were only just starting to notice what was happening. Meanwhile, the violent prisoner had put her initial victim in a headlock and was starting to twist. The woman's neck would be broken within seconds.

Faith was on her feet and halfway there when another prisoner, a tall black woman with close-cropped hair, approached the enraged convict from behind and struck the back of her neck with a knife-hand strike. The violent woman let go of her victim's head and turned, dazed but still full of rage. The tall woman punched twice, jabbing to the face and then closing for a powerful hook down into the crazed prisoner's ribs. The woman staggered back, the wind knocked out of her. She collapsed.

Then the guards were all over everyone. Three guards pulled their nightsticks and warned everyone nearby to sit down or else; two others dragged the tall woman backwards, away from the prisoner she had just KOd. Faith was afraid for a moment that the guards would beat her -- their knee-jerk reaction was always to resolve violence with more violence, and never mind who was at fault -- but they only cuffed the tall woman and dragged her away. She did not resist.

Faith walked back to her table, trying to act casual despite the fact that she had just seen two amazing things. First was the prisoner who had gone berserk for no apparent reason, attacking whoever was closest by with immense strength and viciousness. Faith understood the emotion of rage better than most people, but she could not understand why anyone would suddenly snap like that and just start whaling away on anyone nearby.

The second amazing part of the incident was the tall woman. She was a great fighter. What was more, she had been genuinely heroic; no one would have looked askance if she had stood back and let the guards handle the crazy woman, even if it meant letting the victim die.

The buzzer sounded, and prisoners began to move in great clumps out of the dining hall to their jobs or other activities. Faith headed towards the prison laundry, where she operated the steam press. She liked the job; working the big machine was easy for her, and she found something almost meditative in pressing one garment after another. Plus it paid thirty cents an hour, allowing Faith to save up for a couple of posters, chocolate bars, and other niceties which had been forbidden in supermax.

But all morning, Faith's mind was occupied with the thought of the tall woman's display of skill and courage. Faith hadn't seen anything like that since- well, since Buffy.

That's who I need to get with, Faith thought. That's who I need watching my back. I've gotta meet her.

----

"She's the one," Andrew Teague, warden of the Fuller State Correctional Facility for Women, declared. He and several other members of the prison staff were watching a videotape of the incident in the cafeteria, recorded by one of the many surveillance cameras in that area.

The warden pushed the REWIND button on his remote, then played the scene again in slow motion. "Look," he said. "She's not even at the same table. She has no reason to get involved at all, but she does anyway. And look at that hook punch -- lands right where it will be most effective. She's had some serious training. We've got to have her."

Teague stopped the tape on a frame in which the tall woman's number was clearly visible on her uniform: 7583.

Sarah Reynolds, the prison psychologist, punched in the number on laptop computer that lay open in front of her. "The prisoner is Sonya Medford, age twenty-two, home address in south-central Los Angeles. Interesting; despite her fighting skills, her records show no violent behaviour prior to this incident."

"She's only been in for three weeks," Julian Barnes, the assistant warden, said, leaning over next to Reynolds to look at the computer screen. "Maybe she just hasn't had a reason to rough anyone up yet."

"There are no violent offenses in her criminal records, either," Reynolds replied. "Everything is drug-related, either possession or sale."

Teague frowned at that. "She still using?"

"Here?" The question came from Anita Morales, the nurse practitioner who had just taken over running the prison infirmary.

Barnes turned to her. "It's not hard to get drugs in prison," he said. "We try to keep 'em out, but some always get through, no matter how many random cell inspections and body searches we do."

"I don't know whether or not she is still taking drugs," Reynolds said, "but she is participating actively in our in-house recovery program, so I would tend to doubt it. I believe I should interview her."

"Do it," Teague said. "Today, if possible. And what about 7302?"

"She's on my schedule for Wednesday afternoon," Reynolds replied as she quickly called up her list of appointments on her laptop. "I believe I can fit Sonya Medford in immediately afterwards."

"Good," Teague said. "I'm looking forward to your evaluation."

The buzzer sounded, indicating a shift change for the prisoners and an end to the morning meeting for the staff.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Morales said as everyone rose to their feet. She approached Teague hurriedly. "Why are you interested in these two women?"

"I'll fill you in later," Teague said as he headed out the door of the conference room. "Right now, I have to go find out why that prisoner tried to beat everyone in her general vicinity to death."

Barnes, who was just ahead of Teague as the staff streamed out the door, murmured, "Maybe she just hates it when other women wear the same outfit as her."

In the hallway, once the others had dispersed to their places of work, Andrew Teague and Julian Barnes walked down the corridor towards the central guard station. Both were big men; Teague was tall and bald, having lost most of his red hair and shaved off the rest, and Barnes was a thick-set black man with large, plastic-rimmed glasses. Together, they looked as much like a pair of football coaches as a warden and assistant warden in a women's prison.

"Andrew," Barnes said, once he was sure that there were no others around to hear. "I just want to make absolutely sure; you really think this plan of yours has a good chance of working?"

"If those two girls are what I think they are, yes," Teague responded.

"But what if it backfires?" Barnes asked. "What if we just end up making things worse?"

"How much worse can it get, Julian?" Teague replied. "The other night, one of my wife's friends asked me what it's like to run a prison. You know what I told her? That I didn't really know, because I have to share the job with the gang leaders and the drug dealers. That can't go on, Julian. When we talk about rehabilitating prisoners, who are we bullshitting? We can't rehabilitate anybody under these conditions. How can we stop the gangs when the girls need to join gangs for protection? How can we help the drug addicts when they're sharing cells with dealers? We need to change the system, Julian. Otherwise, our work is just a waste of time."

"When you put it like that," Barnes said, "I can't help but agree with you." He really couldn't; Teague's passion about his work was impressive.

"I truly believe we can fix this place, Julian," Teague said, "and those two prisoners are just the tools we need. You'll see."

I hope so, Barnes thought to himself. Because if they aren't, we are going to end up nailing ourselves right to the wall.

Chapter 3 -- Proposal

Oh, great, Faith thought. Just freaking great.

Two days had passed since the incident in the cafeteria, and Faith had had no luck catching up to the woman who had stopped the berserk prisoner. It was hard to find people in the enormous crowd in the cafeteria, and the woman obviously didn't have the same work schedule as Faith. Faith knew she would catch up with the tall, tough girl eventually, but she hated waiting.

Worse, Faith had just been informed that the prison psychologist wanted to see her. No reason was given. Did they think Faith was somehow involved in the fight? Or with the suicide victim who was found that same morning? Maybe this was just some kind of spot check to make sure that no other prisoners were going to snap in similar ways.

Though Faith had never actually met a psychologist, she imagined they were a lot like the social workers Faith had encountered in her childhood. Their main job was to ask a lot of personal questions, take kids away from their parents, and generally make things worse than they already were. The few who acted like they cared never stuck around long.

But Faith knew something now that she didn't know back then: that there were people in the world who really DID want to help, and they didn't always screw things up. So it was with a less-than-completely-closed mind that Faith first sat down across a small plastic table from Fuller State's resident shrink.

"Hello, Faith," the woman said. "I'm Sarah Reynolds. I'm the clinical psychologist here at Fuller."

"Hey," Faith said as she sized the woman up. Reynolds was a reasonably slim white woman in her early 40's; her medium-length brown hair had a few strands of gray. She wore small, round glasses over her brown eyes that made her look slightly owlish.

"I understand that you spent three months in supermax," Reynolds said, "over an incident in the lunch line."

"Yeah. I wanted peach Jell-O, and they only had lime."

Reynolds cracked a small smile, which Faith took as a good sign. It was nice to meet an authority figure who could laugh without being jabbed in the colon with the broom up her ass.

"The prisoner behind you stabbed you in the back," Reynolds continued, "and you responded by nearly breaking her neck. Is that accurate?"

"Pretty much," Faith said flatly.

"Was it self-defense?"

"Pretty much," Faith repeated.

"And the second incident -- another knife-wielding prisoner, in the exercise yard. You didn't injure her as severely as the first."

"I saw her coming. The other time, it was just reflex."

"It seems you possess substantial fighting skills."

"I'm from the Combat Zone. In Boston. It's a bad neighborhood."

"I understand." The woman smiled slightly. "Do you still practice?"

"Sometimes."

"Good. I'm told that martial disciplines can help control one's temper. Has that been a problem for you in the past?"

"You read my record, right?" Faith said with some irritation. "I'm not here for shoplifting."

"I know what you were sentenced for, Faith," Reynolds said, leaning forward over the table. "That's not the same as knowing what really happened, or why."

Faith looked at the floor. Three months in near-solitary confinement had given her time to think about her past and even figure some of it out, but she wasn't sure she was ready to share yet.

After a few moments of silence, Reynolds said, "Faith, I can't force you to be here." She paused. "Actually, that's not accurate; I CAN force you to be here. But that would be pointless. I would like to help you to improve your self-control, to become the sort of person who belongs in the world and not in prison. But I can only help; I can't do it for you, and I can't make you do it."

Faith looked up into Dr. Reynolds' face. There was geniune kindness there. Even more importantly, there was confidence. This woman really believed she could help Faith to change. And if she believed it, Faith decided, then maybe it was true. Even if it wasn't, at least it would make for one more hour of conversation each week and one less hour of staring at the walls.

"Fine," Faith said.

"Good," Reynolds responded. "Why don't we start with what happened in Los Angeles?"

Faith sighed. Telling this story to a stranger was going to require some heavy editing, but, somewhere deep down, Faith needed to tell it to someone. Someone who wasn't there when it happened, who could see it from a neutral point of view. Someone who could tell help her understand why she tried to make Angel kill her, instead of just throwing herself off a bridge or something.

"I don't know why I went to L.A., exactly," she started. "But there's this guy I know there, a real tough guy, and some people wanted him dead..."

"So what do you think, doctor?" the warden asked Sarah Reynolds later that day when he called her to his office. "Is she able?"

"This girl has been through a lot," Reynolds answered. "It's as if she's awakened from a long nightmare about being chased by a monster, only to discover that she IS the monster. She's been dealing with that realization for three months, in almost complete isolation. I can't imagine how she coped with it."

"Hmm." Teague looked at Reynolds, waiting for more.

"This is a critical time for her," Reynolds continued. "Being alone for so long was difficult, but it gave her time to process all the experiences that led up to her imprisonment. Most importantly, being in supermax freed her from temptation; there were few people there on whom she could vent her violent impulses. Now she has been thrust into an environment crowded with the most belligerent, impulsive, manipulative members of society. It must be a great strain to maintain her control."

"But can she handle it?" Teague asked.

"I believe she can. Her will is strong; she can do what she sets her mind to, and she has set her mind to becoming a better person."

"Fine. I'm bringing her in. We need her. Now, what about Sonya Medford?"

Reynolds' forehead furrowed. "An equally complex case. I believe she, too, truly wishes to change. But I don't think she yet knows what she wants to change into."

"We can help her with that," Teague said. "As long as you think she's trustworthy."

"Yes."

"Then we're good to go. I'll meet with both of them tomorrow."

"You really think this will work?"

"I really do."

That evening, Faith was on her way back to her cell from the prison library, where she had been wrestling with the possibility of trying to get a Graduate Equivalency Degree. On the one hand, there was all the studying, something she never liked and was never very good at. On the other hand, how else was she going to spend her time? Playing poker for cigarrettes?

She reached the top of the spiral stairs that led up to the third tier of the housing unit and, along with hundred of other prisoners, moved down the long row of cells toward her own. Instead of thinning out, however, the crowd of blue-suited women was becoming thicker, slowing Faith down.

Suddenly, there was a crashing sound from somewhere up ahead, followed by barely-coherent screaming. Faith pressed forward, forcing her way through the crowd to see what was going on.

"Get the fuck away from me!" a woman was screeching. "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

Faith finally got close enough to the front of the crowd to see several inmates gathered, not too close, around the door to one of the cells. Inside the cell, Faith saw a single prisoner crouched behind a cot, which had been tipped onto its side to form a makeshift barrier.

"Sarina!" one of the inmates outside the door shouted. "What's wrong with you?"

"Lying BITCH!" the woman screamed. "Don't act like you don't know! You ratted on me to the guards, and now there's cameras in the lights and microphones in my shoes and roofies in my toothpaste! So DON'T YOU PRETEND!"
Sarina grabbed a bottle of shampoo out of the cubby behind her and hurled it at the woman who had called to her. The targeted prisoner ducked only just in time; the plastic bottle slapped noisily against the far wall.

Faith moved close enough to get a good look at the shrieking Sarina. The expression on the woman's face was unmistakeable; it was one of unreasoning, all-consuming terror. Her eyes darted from one onlooker's face to the next, as if she were expecting someone -- or everyone -- in the crowd to attack at any moment.

Faith's first impulse was to act, to rush Sarina and wrestle her down. But Faith had learned from experience that her first impulse wasn't always the right one. If she just ran in there, she could probably take the woman down, but maybe not without hurting her. The guards, on the other hand, could blind her from a safe distance with their pepper spray, then grab her arms and cuff her without causing any lasting injury.

"Everybody back off!" Faith shouted, waving her arms at the inmates crowded closest to the door of the frightened woman's cell. "Just give her some space!" The other prisoners paused for a second, then slowly backed away from the cell door.

"Sarina!" Faith shouted, standing just within the terrified inmate's view, "We're gonna leave you alone now! None of us are coming in, I promise!" It wasn't a lie; only the guards, who weren't here yet, would enter the cell.

Sarina screamed back, "You're lying! You all want to kill me!" But she made no move to attack.

Faith didn't say anything more. Several seconds later, two large guards in riot helmets and body armor pushed past her and ran into the cell.

In the two seconds it took the guards to enter the cell and take aim with their pepper spray, Sarina picked up her cot and threw it sideways at the guards with impossible force. The steel frame hit the first man in the chest and knocked him down; the corner caught the in his side and knocked him off-balance long enough for Sarina to rush him. She rammed shoulder-first into the center of the guard's kevlar vest; the man's helmeted head cracked into the back wall. Then Sarina reached under the guard's armored face mask and began choking him.

Faith couldn't stand by any longer. She had decided to let the guards handle this, and now their blood would be on her hands if they got killed.

She ran into the cell and grabbed Sarina's right arm. She wrenched the deranged woman's hand off the guard's throat, and pushed her elbow up and back, throwing the shrieking inmate down. Faith fell on her, seized her wrists and pinned her to the floor.

Sarina screamed high and loud, thrashing so hard that Faith's superhuman strength could barely hold the woman down. Faith had seen -- and caused -- a lot of fear in her time, but she had never seen terror like this.

Suddenly, Faith felt a nightstick hit her between her shoulder blades; the spot burned as if on fire. The toe of a black boot smashed into Faith's face, flipping her off of Sarina and onto her back. Faith's head was swimming, but she saw that the cell was now flooded with more black-armored guards, crowding around the struggling prisoners. Faith went limp, as she had learned to do when beaten by the guards, but Sarina howled and flailed as nightsticks thumped against her sides, arms, and legs. Now and then there was an audible crack as a bone fractured.

Finally, they hurt Sarina enough that she couldn't struggle any longer. She could only screech and whine like a wounded housecat as several guards picked her up and carried her out of the cell. Two others lifted Faith; she felt far away from her body when the faceless, armored figures carried it off to who knows where. Soon, her field of vision blackened, and she drifted away completely.

Faith woke up in a strange place. Bright lights blinded her to everything but the black silouette of a woman's head leaning over her.

Faith tried to lift her head to speak, but the effort was like moving a bag of concrete with her neck. Concrete that could feel pain.

"Uhhh," Faith groaned as she gently set her throbbing head back down. "My head hasn't hurt like this since the day after I learned about body shots." She smiled weakly. "You wouldn't believe how much tequila will fit in a guy's belly button."

"Lie still," the woman said, rubbing something on Faith's forehead. "You're lucky your skull isn't fractured."

"Where am I?"

"County General. The doctor just stitched up a nasty cut on your head; I'm cleaning you up."

Faith tried to raise her hand to her head, but only got her arm up a few inches before it stopped with a rattle of metal on metal. Both of her hands were cuffed to the gurney she lay on. Faith didn't protest, knowing that this was standard procedure.

Then memories of the fight started to trickle into Faith's brain. "Where's Sarina?" she asked.

"Is she a friend of yours?"

"No. Her cell is near mine. Is she gonna be OK?"

"We're not sure. The doctors are still with her. Now, if you can lie still for a few more seconds... There. You're all done. You should rest for a little while; I'll be back in later to check on you."

The nurse got up and went to the door. Faith suddenly felt a twinge of fear.

"Um-" Faith started.

The nurse stopped and turned. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?" There was genuine concern in the woman's dark eyes.

"I...woke up alone in a hospital once," Faith said. "It wasn't so great."

The nurse walked over to the bedside and pointed to the call button that hung just behind Faith's head. "This goes to the nurses' station. I'll be on duty for six more hours; if you wake up, just push, and I'll stop in."

Faith felt embarassed to act so needy. But the nurse somehow understood. Even though Faith now knew that such things were possible, they still amazed her.

And when Faith awoke hours later, she pushed the call button, and the nurse did indeed show up.

The next morning, when the hospital staff was satisfied that Faith did not have any sort of brain injury, they sent her back to Fuller. Faith had barely had time to change into a fresh uniform -- carefully avoiding pulling off the bandage on her forehead -- when a guard came to her cell.

"Warden wants to see you," the guard said.

"What for?" Faith asked.

"Didn't say," the guard replied. "Let's go."

Faith suddenly flashed on all the times in elementary school -- and junior high, and high school -- when she'd been called to the principal's office. She'd never worried then, and she wasn't worried about seeing the warden now. What's he going to do? she thought. Expel me?

When Faith arrived at Warden Teague's office, she was surprised to see Sonya Medford, the woman Faith had been trying to meet for two days, sitting in one of two cushioned metal chairs in front of the warden's desk. The guards who had escorted both prisoners into the office in waited outside the door.

The warden stood up and extended his hand. "Faith," the man said with a hearty smile, "I'm Andrew Teague, the warden. Have a seat."

Faith shook the man's hand and sat down next to Sonya. She hadn't expected such a warm welcome. Nor had she expected a prison warden to be so good-looking, at least for his age. Faith mentally slapped herself -- despite having spent three months largely isolated from the male half of the species, this was no time to get hormonal.

"Have you two met?" Teague asked.

Faith turned towards Sonya. "I'm Faith," she said.

"Sonya," the woman replied. "I heard about how you handled Sarina when she went bugshit yesterday. Nice."

"Same goes for you and Psycho Girl in the cafeteria," Faith said. "She would have killed somebody if you hadn't taken her down."

"Good," Teague said, causing both women to turn to look at him. "Then I don't have to waste time telling you why you're here. You're both tough, and you both stepped in to help people when you didn't have to. In my book, that means you might actually be fit to let out of here someday."

Now Teague had both womens' undivided attention.

"I wish I could say the same for most of your fellow prisoners. The problem is that most of the women in here can't fend for themselves the way you two can. They have to join gangs to avoid being victimized, and once they're in the gangs, they become more hard-core than when they arrived."

Both Faith and Sonya nodded in agreement. Even in the short time they had been in prison, both had seen new inmates with minor records sucked into the gangs and made to commit worse crimes in prison then they had on the outside. Gang leaders ruled with both carrot and stick, having access to drugs with which to reward the faithful and large groups of thugs who could punish the defiant. What did the prison system have that could compete against those kinds of incentives?

"So here's what I'd like," Teague continued. "You two have reps for being tough, and the skills to back them up. So I want you to start hanging out together. Being seen together. In the cafeteria, the gym, wherever. I can even change your work schedules to give you more time for that.

"Most important, I want you to keep an eye out for any new prisoner who you think might be even half-serious about getting her life together. Get her to hang out with you, too. And teach her how to survive in here without becoming somebody's bitch."

"Warden," Faith said, "not to get technical or anything, but are you telling us to start a gang?"

The warden smiled. "Faith, every prison environment is the product of two systems: the prison administration, and prison society. The state and I control the administration, but the gangs control the society. It's a long-standing, well-defined system that even the people who run the prisons can't upset. So instead of trying to change the system from the outside, I want to work within it.

"So yes, I am telling you to start a gang. An honest gang, where prisoners who don't want to make crime a permanent career can get protection from the real thugs."

He turned to Sonya. "Sonya, I understand you're in our recovery program."

"Twenty-two days clean and counting", Sonya said. "Whole reason I'm in here is drugs; I don't want any more to do with them when I get out."

"Good," Teague responded. "Part of your job will be to lend a hand to anybody who comes to you wanting to clean up. Let them know that there's somebody they can talk to, and a safe group of people to associate with, instead of junkies and dealers."

Faith saw Sonya nodding carefully. It was hard to ignore the sense in what the warden was saying.

"This all sounds great," Faith said, "but there's one problem. When we start this Girl Scout troop, the regular gang leaders aren't going to like it. Hell, they'd probably be willing to put their arguments aside just to squash us. How do we deal with all that?"

"Don't think I haven't given that a lot of thought," Teague replied. "The reason I'm making this proposal to the two of you right now is that some of the gangs are disorganized at the moment. Sarina was a leader in one of the biggest gangs, and Yolanda Perez, the woman who committed suicide, was a major drug runner and right-hand woman to one of the other gang leaders. That gives you the opportunity to put together a big group quickly, while the established gangs are dealing with their internal problems and aren't recruiting so hard."

"Lucky break," Faith muttered. She hadn't really meant to say it; it just slipped out. Fortunately, the warden seemed oblivious to the suspicion behind the remark.

"Maybe," he said. "But luck isn't enough; it's what you do with the opportunities it brings you that matters."

"Can we have some time to think this over?" Sonya asked.

"Sure," Teague answered, "but let me know by this time tomorrow. This is your chance to make a mark, ladies -- to change the system for the better. Think about it."

Teague got to his feet and went to the door to let the two women out. Just as his hand grasped the knob, he added, "And don't forget the very positive things I would say to the board when you both come up for parole."

With that, the doors opened, and the two guards escorted Faith and Sonya away.

Fortunately, before they were taken to their separate cells, Sonya and Faith agreed on a spot where they could meet and talk during dinner. Picking at her tray of steaming brown something with a side of steaming green something, Faith asked, "So where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"I was Orange County amateur kickboxing champ for two years. Even made it to the state finals once," Sonya replied.

"Wow. So...what happened?"

"Smashed up my knee in a car accident. I couldn't walk without crutches for six months. And I couldn't train. When I finally could start training again, I was in the worst shape of my life.

"I was so pissed off, losing so much time for no reason. I was angry all the time. So I started smoking a little weed to make it better, and the next thing I knew, I'd moved on to rock."

"Damn."

"Yeah. All the money I got from my accident settlement, I smoked up. Then I had to start dealing to pay for my own stuff. And now, here I am, just another guest at the Fuller Hotel.

"It took going to jail -- for a second time -- to make me realize how bad I'd screwed up. So now I'm trying to get clean, get out, and get my life working again. Now, how about your story?"

"How much time do you have?"

"It's like that, huh?" Sonya said, nodding. "You can catch me up on your personal soap opera later. Let's talk about the warden's idea."

"I gotta admit, I like it," Faith said.

"Why?"

"'Cause it could work. And because I'm tired of having to beat a girl down every other day just to stay alive."

"I'm with you on that," Sonya said. "But don't think we won't have to kick a whole lot of ass."

"I know," Faith replied. "But when you're kicking it for the right reason... There's nothing else in the world like that." Faith thought of the vampires she had fought in defense of a church full of people, and how she had felt then. She wanted to have that feeling again.

"Then let's do it," Sonya said, extending her hand.

Faith shook it.

Chapter 4 -- Getting Into It

Assistant Warden Julian Barnes was not having a good evening.

He had worked full-time and then some for the past several days, preparing for an upcoming state audit of the prison. What was more, Barnes had to stay at work especially late this particular night to meet with the family of Yolanda Perez, the prisoner who had committed suicide in her cell earlier that week. Then, two hours before the meeting, one of the maintenance staff burst into Barnes' office to inform him that the main water pipe in the basement had burst. There would be no water pressure anywhere in the building for several hours while the pipe was replaced. Barnes dropped everything to supervise the repairs himself, knowing that, while prisoners could go without a lot of things, nothing pissed them off like missing their already-infrequent showers. There was also the question of how the main cell block was going to smell in a few hours because the cell toilets couldn't be flushed.

With the problem under at least partial control, Barnes hurried to his meeting. Halfway to the visitors' lounge, it suddenly hit him that he had wanted to look at Perez's prison record again, just to refresh his memory about where she was from, how long she had been in prison, and other data that might be useful to him in his conversation with the deceased's parents and siblings.

Barnes didn't want to go back to his office; that would make him late to his meeting by several minutes, and he didn't want to keep a grieving family waiting. Fortunately, the main prison records were all stored under password protection on the Fuller server. Barnes could access them from any networked computer in the facility. And, luckily, Dr. Reynolds' office was just up the hall. Barnes didn't think she would mind.

He knocked quickly, on the off chance that the psychologist hadn't gone home yet. As he waited, he began to fish for his master key, but he heard movement inside the office.

Several seconds later, someone opened the door. It was not Dr. Reynolds.
Rather, it was a smallish woman in her 40s with short blonde hair and downcast hazel eyes. She wore the uniform of the cleaning staff.

"Sorry, sorry," the woman said in a small voice. Her thick accent sounded eastern European. "I did not mean to lock, it close behind me."

"It's all right," said Barnes. He looked at the woman's ID tag, which read "Laina Aronofsky".

Barnes normally made it his business to know, by sight if not by name, everyone who worked in the prison. It was partly a matter of security -- it was not unheard of for prisoners to escape disguised as staff -- and partly a matter of respect. Barnes' mother had worked as a cleaning woman in a highrise office building. When she retired after more than twenty years, half the executives whose offices she had cleaned every day didn't even know her name.

"How long have you been working here?" Barnes asked.

"Just two days," the woman answered, still looking towards the floor. "I am-" she searched for a word "-substitute. I work different places."

"Right," Barnes said. He looked at his watch; he needed to hurry up if he wanted to make his meeting.

"I just need to get on the computer for a minute," Barnes said, walking over to Dr. Reynolds' desk. Oddly, the doctor had left her computer on. Even stranger, Reynolds had left the local directory open, which contained a listing of all of her case files by prisoner ID number. One of the files was highlighted, and there was a text box open which read, "Enter password". Barnes was pleased that Reynolds was taking precautions to protect her confidential files, but thought it strange that she had left the computer on with the file list just sitting there on the screen.

Lacking Reynolds' personal password, Barnes couldn't open the file. He could see from the directory listing, however, that the file was unusual in two ways. First, Barnes recognized the file number -- 7302, Faith's number. Second, the listed file size was ten times that of most of the other files in the directory. Even 7583, Sonya's file, wasn't half as large.

Barnes checked his watch again. There was no time to dick around. He quickly opened Yolanda Perez's prison record and printed it out. He could read it on the way to the visitor's lounge.

"Nice to meet you," he said to the cleaning woman as he exited Reynolds' office. "Nice to meet you, also," she said clumsily. She grabbed Reynolds' wastebasket and emptied it into the large trash bag on her cleaning cart.

Barnes walked fast to his meeting and put the incident out of his mind.

The next morning, the day after their meeting with the warden, Faith and Sonya discussed how they would carry out the warden's plan of having them be seen together to attract members to their 'gang'. They decided to try hanging out at the gym. Both women enjoyed working out, and there were always lots of other prisoners there.

Faith was stretching while Sonya puffed away on the leg press machine. For a non-Slayer, she could lift a lot. Faith tended to avoid the weights herself, since she couldn't really use her full strength without looking like the circus strong woman, but she liked running on the treadmill and, of course, working out with the heavy punching bag.

As she pulled her arm behind her head in a shoulder stretch, Faith noticed a woman -- young, Hispanic, and obviously new to Fuller -- putting some weights on the bench press bar. Not too many, Faith noticed, probably because she didn't have anyone to spot her.

The woman lay down on the bench, not noticing that there were three other prisoners closing in around her. Faith recognized them as members of Fuller's resident white-trash gang. Poor, skanky, and badly tattooed, they were rumored to have ties to militia and white-supremacist groups on the outside.

One of the gang girls leaned over the bench at its top end, so that her hair, half bottle-blonde and half dark roots, hung in the prone inmate's face.
"Hey," she said. "This is our bench."

"I was here first," the woman on the bench responded, with an obvious effort to sound braver than she was.

The other two gang girls moved in on either side of their intended victim. Each grabbed her by one armpit and hoisted the woman roughly to her feet. The first woman punched her in the gut, making her exhale sharply. She would have doubled over were it not for the two inmates holding her arms.

The ex-blonde prisoner pulled back for another blow that would surely break the Latina's nose. Her intended victim squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation.

But the punch never landed. Instead, the woman opened her eyes to see her assailant on her knees. Faith was standing behind the gang girl, twisting the woman's arm behind her back with one hand and holding her by the hair with the other.

Sonya walked up to the other two gangbangers, who were still holding the new inmate by her upper arms.

"You want a workout?" Sonya said, raising her fists. "'Cause you'll get one if you don't let go of her right this damn minute. Whole lot of pain, not a lot of gain."

The two gang girls looked at each other, uncertain. On the one hand, it would be two against one. On the other, they knew who Sonya was; the story of her subdual of the crazed prisoner in the cafeteria had rapidly become local legend.

Their indecision was resolved by a painful grunt from their cohort, whose arm Faith had just given an extra twist. The two women let go of their captive and backed off. Once they were out of fighting range, Faith pulled their comrade to her feet and shoved her towards them.

"Now take off," Faith said, putting her hand on the victim's shoulder. "This gal's our new friend, and we don't want her taking any of your bad hair care advice."

The three women walked off.

"You OK?" Faith said to the new prisoner, who was still gasping a bit from the gut shot she'd taken.

"I think so," the woman breathed. "Thank you."

"No prob. I'm Faith, and this is Sonya."

"Gloria," the woman said.

"You wanna hang with us?" Sonya asked. "We can show you how to keep things like that from happening. Later, when you feel up to it, I mean."

"That'd be great," Gloria answered, sitting back down on the bench to get her breath.

Sonya moved closer to Faith and pointed across the room to where the three gang girls were standing, talking to a fourth member of their crew. "Those girls?" Sonya said. "They're gonna be back later. With friends, sisters, cousins, everybody."

"Those hicks? Their sisters ARE their cousins," Faith responded. "But yeah, we're gonna have to kick some ass. Until they stab me in the back, anyway."

"Can't happen," Sonya said. "'Cause that's where I'll be."

Faith smiled, just a little. Because it wouldn't be cool to start screaming or crying over having a best friend for the first time in her life.

The next morning, Faith had another appointment with Dr. Reynolds, who had told Faith that she wanted to see her twice a week. Faith couldn't believe that the psychologist, with a couple thousand prisoners to deal with, could afford to spend that much time with just one, but Faith wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Her first session with Reynolds had had its painful moments, but she had walked out feeling strangely liberated. Maybe sharing your problems with someone else wasn't always a bad idea.

"Faith," Dr. Reynolds said as Faith took a seat in Reynold's office. "How are you today?"

"Pretty good," Faith said. "Got started on the warden's project today. Me and Sonya got our first new recruit."

"How did you do it?" the doctor asked. Faith explained about the confrontation with the three gang girls.

"That must have been difficult for you," Reynolds said.

"What?"

"Holding back. Not beating the daylights out of her."

"It- It was, kind of. I mean, I'm grabbing her from behind, and my first instinct is to...choke her. Or beat her head against something. Just...just..." Faith paused. "Just make her go away."

"Go away?" the doctor asked.

"I mean, she's just going to do it again to somebody else, right? And if she's dead, she can't."

"You make it sound very simple."

Faith took a breath and exhaled it. "It was. 'Til I remembered that Angel could have made the same decision about me."

The doctor nodded.

"I mean, who'd blame him, right?" Faith went on. "After what I did to him and Wesley. Angel could have killed me; I would've let him. I was in total self-destruct mode.

"But he didn't. He...knew what it was like, I guess. To not be able to live with yourself."

Reynolds said, "It is a powerful comfort to feel that someone truly understands you."

"Yeah. It really was."

"Was that how it was with you and Richard Wilkins?"

Faith's chest tightened.

"What- what do you know about him?" Faith asked nervously.

"Just that he was Mayor of Sunnydale, and that you worked for him for a time. And that he was the mastermind of some sort of criminal conspiracy."

Faith looked away from the doctor's gaze. "I don't want to talk about him," she said.

"Faith," the doctor said carefully, "if he did something to you that you don't want to discuss-"

"No! He never did anything to me! He was-" She stopped. "I'm just...not ready yet."

The doctor seemed to realize that she wasn't going to get any further with Faith on that subject. They spent the rest of the session discussing Faith's new friendship with Sonya.

But, for the rest of the day, Faith couldn't help thinking about the Mayor. How much he cared about her. And how much he frightened her.

The next morning, the three gang girls brought four of their friends to confront Faith and Sonya when both women were working at their jobs in the prison laundry. They brought makeshift weapons -- shank knives, part of a mop handle, half a brick in a pillowcase. They chased off the other prisoners working the laundry, leaving Faith and Sonya to face them alone.

The fight lasted thirty seconds. At the end, both Faith and Sonya had a few bruises, and Sonya had cut her forearm a little taking a shank out of an attacker's hand. The seven gang girls, on the other hand, were unconscious. Those who weren't knocked out pretended they were, knowing that to do otherwise would be useless.

Warden Andrew Teague met with Faith and Sonya that afternoon. Their meetings always took place in secret now; Faith and Sonya were to tell anyone who asked that they had been doing extra duty shifts cleaning the furnace room. If other prisoners knew that Faith and Sonya were backed by the administration, it would only bring the gangs down harder on the two women.

Teague was very pleased, both with Faith and Sonya's defeat of the seven gang girls and with the fact that they had recruited two new members to their own gang afterwards. Furthermore, the story was spreading through the prison like wildfire, which would only attract more prisoners to Faith and Sonya's sides.

"Now," the warden warned, "it starts to get dangerous."

"Oh, it STARTS to get dangerous now?" Sonya said with a touch of sarcasm. "Great, 'cause seven-on-two when they've got weapons and we don't was just like the 'It's A Small World' ride at Disneyland."

The warden ignored Sonya's comment. "You need to get some more members quickly, because the major gang leaders are going to start feeling threatened by you, and they're going to want to stamp you out before you get too big for them to control."

"OK," Faith said, "we'll crank up the recruitment. Too bad we can't give out free t-shirts with every new membership."

"Remember," Teague said, "you're selling safety -- a chance to go straight without being hassled. More than that, though, you're selling community. The women in here will feel better about themselves if they think they're a part of something bigger."

The warden looked at his watch. "Well, I see it's nearly dinnertime. How about you two have dinner with me and Mr. Barnes? I believe the staff cafeteria is having pepperoni pizza tonight, which I think might be better than the stew -- or what the state is calling stew these days -- in GP."

They didn't need to be asked twice.

A week passed. Faith and Sonya recruited several more members into their group, and the gangs seemed to be leaving them alone for the moment. Sonya and Faith knew it wouldn't last, but they were happy to have a break from brawling.

There was one dark bit of news: Sarina Thompson, the terrified woman whom Faith had stopped from killing a prison guard, had died in the hospital. Rumor had it that her liver had failed, though her drug tests came back negative.

That Friday evening, Julian Barnes was knocking off for the day, finally having finished all of his preparations for the upcoming audit. He was looking forward to a nice dinner with his wife, after which they would probably have some cold beers and just relax in front of the tube. He vaguely remembered that there would be a Lakers' game on.

Barnes locked his office door, then started down the hall to sign out at the main guard station. He stopped when he heard noise behind him.

It was the short, blonde cleaning woman, pushing her cart down the hall. Barnes hadn't run into her since the first time they'd met, and he turned around to say hello, but she had already hurried out of sight.

Barnes' many years in the field of corrections had given him a good sense of what suspicious behavior looked like. There was something about the cleaning woman's seeming avoidance of him that bothered him. He turned and went back town the hall towards where he had just seen her. She was gone, but her cleaning cart was at the end of the hall, near the door to the stairwell to the basement. The door had locked automatically behind the woman. Barnes opened it with his master key and proceeded cautiously down the stairs.

The main corridor in the basement was gray and quiet, lit weakly by florescent lights. Barnes saw the doors to the furnace and boiler rooms and the storage areas, but one door in particular caught his eye -- the door to the old solitary confinement unit. The new unit was above-ground; there were plans to make the old one into a gym for the staff. Julian thought that was kind of fitting, exchanging one form of torture for another.

The reason this particular door had caught Barnes' attention, however, was that it appeared to have a brand-new lock on it. Julian tried his master key; it wouldn't even go into the lock, let alone turn. Which meant that the lock wasn't prison-issue.

Julian turned around to go back upstairs. He thought about getting security to come down and break the door open, but thought better of it; if he waited until the morning, he could get the prison locksmith to come down and open it. Or at least explain why he had put it there.

Barnes opened the door to the stairwell, then was stopped by a stinging sensation in his back. He turned around to see what had happened; he saw the figure of a large man down the hall, but Barnes' vision was too blurred to see who it was. Every muscle in Barnes' body weakened; he sank to the floor, trying to call for help, but unable to produce more than a squeak.

The last thing he felt were big hands under his arms, dragging him away.

Chapter 5 -- The Basement

Sarah Reynolds was in bed watching LAW & ORDER when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, very faintly: "Help me."

Sarah tried to place the voice. "Julian?" she said.

"Yeah," he whispered.

"Where are you?"

"My office." His voice cracked when he said it. Was he crying?

"What is it?" she asked.

"I...I can't...." Barnes squeaked. He seemed barely able to speak.

Sarah didn't press further. "Julian, don't do anything, just stay where you are. I'll be right there."

She quickly got out of her nightgown and pulled on some sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a jacket. Then she snatched her keys off the front hall table, walked quickly to her car, and drove towards Fuller somewhat faster than the law allowed.

It was after lights out, and Faith was just beginning to drift off to sleep when there came a whisper from below.

"Rochelle is gonna kill you."

The speaker was Faith's cellmate, Kim, who normally never spoke to Faith unless absolutely necessary. Kim was a member of one of the biggest gang factions in Fuller -- a contingent from the Crips. Rochelle was their local leader.

"You mean for real, or, like, metaphorically?" Faith asked.

"I mean she and maybe fifty girls are gonna beat you and Sonya to death," Kim replied flatly.

"Oh." Faith paused for a few seconds, then asked, "You know where or when?"

"Soon. Don't know where."

Oh, good, Faith thought, 'cause I was afraid you were going to be vague.

"Why are you telling me this?" Faith asked.

"I never liked Rochelle. If you get her first, Shawanda will move up, and I'll be next in line after her."

Faith blinked. Damn, she thought, I hope me and Sonya inspire more loyalty from our gang than that.

"Thanks," Faith said.

"Don't thank me yet. 'Cause one day I might have to kill your ass."

"OK, then," Faith said with false cheer. "Nighty-night."

Sarah Reynolds pulled her second-hand Volvo into the Fuller's staff parking lot, then got out and ran to the main entrance. She was glad she had worn sneakers.

She signed in and passed through the metal detector, then fairly dashed to the main guard station. She didn't know what was going on with Julian, but on the off-chance that there was any physical danger, she wanted to be prepared. She ordered a burly-looking guard to go with her to Barnes' office.

Sarah knocked rapidly on Barnes' door, then threw it open. Barnes was seated at his desk. He stared straight ahead, even though his eyes were red and the shiny tracks of tears marked his cheeks.

"Sarah..." he said. His voice was high and shaky.

"Julian, what is it?" Sarah said, stepping in front of the guard who had come with her.

That was when she noticed the forty-five-caliber pistol on Barnes' desk.

"I...I can't..." Julian said. He seemed barely able to speak. "I can't keep going like this. I can't do this job. I can't handle it. I act like I know what I'm doing, but I don't know anything. I..."

Sarah heard the guard behind her drawing his own gun, and Sarah raised her hand in a halting gesture. Wisely, the guard kept the gun out but held it by his side, unobtrusive.

"Go on," Sarah said softly to Barnes, never taking her eyes off him.

"I look at the future...and it's always going to be like this...just, just pain. I don't want it." He began to lift the gun from the desk.

But before Julian could put the gun to his head, Sarah took three quick steps forward and put her hand over his. She knew he wouldn't resist; he was almost too drained to lift the gun by himself, let alone fight Sarah for it.
Sarah had only been at Fuller for a few months, but she had gotten to know Barnes reasonably well, and he had always struck her as very stable. His coping mechanisms were strong: an optimistic attitude, a good sense of humor, and a strong marital relationship. Why was he now having what appeared to be a major depressive episode?

"Julian," she said, "I know we've only been working together a few months, but I think I know you well enough to say that you're not a quitter. You're strong, and you're capable; you've just been drawn into a dark place. So dark that you can't see a way out."

She swallowed to clear a lump of fear from her throat. "But there is a way out," she went on, "and this isn't it." She indicated the gun. "Can you trust me about that? Can you believe me when I tell you that you won't always feel this way?"

Squeezing his eyes shut, Julian nodded.

"All right," Sarah said. Gently, she took the gun out of Julian's hand and handed it to the guard behind her. "Let's get you some help."

Sarah put an arm around Julian's shoulders and helped him stand, then guided him out to her car and drove him to the emergency room.

Nearly a week later, Sonya Medford had just arrived at her cell for nighttime lockdown. Her cellmate, Maria, was already there, sitting on her cot and taking off her prison-issue sneakers. Maria was a new entrant to the prison; she was also a recovering addict and a member of Faith and Sonya's gang. Warden Teague had transferred Sonya's old cellmate and replaced her with Maria so that Sonya could help her with her recovery, and so that each of them could watch the other's back. The warden was still waiting for an excuse to move Faith's cellmate and move another new recruit in with Faith, but the opportunity hadn't come up yet. Sonya liked that about Teague; he made it obvious that he cared about Sonya, Faith, and their new followers, but he never jeopardized their efforts or their safety by doing anything to suggest a connection between the gang and the prison administration.

Prisoners flooded past Sonya on their way back to their own cells, clogging the hallway like a sclerotic artery. Sonya had almost reached the door to her cell when the prisoners in front of her suddenly stopped walking and turned.

They were all Crips. And when Sonya looked behind her, there was Rochelle and ten more of her homegirls. By the time Maria saw what was going on and stood up, a trio of Crips got there first and blocked the way.

Sonya knew she was in big trouble. This wasn't a fight she could win, maybe even if Faith were there to help. But Sonay also knew that, if she gave in now and begged for mercy, everything she and Faith had done so far, and everything they could do in the future, would go right down the toilet.

Sonya turned and looked Rochelle right in the eye. "I hope you want some of this, Rochelle," Sonya shouted, raising her fists. "'Cause your girls might beat me down, but I promise, I will get a piece of you before they do. So come on!"

Rochelle's eyes widened. Much to Sonya's surprise, she looked genuinely frightened.

"I-" Rochelle started. She looked to either side of her; all of her followers were watching her now.

"F-forget it," Rochelle stammered. She turned around and walked quickly away. The other Crips looked at each other with shock.

Sonya took advantage of their moment of confusion. She darted towards her cell door, shoved a Crip out of the way, and ran inside to stand next to Maria. Now Sonya and Maria had a tactical advantage; there might be thirty Crips in the corridor, but only a few at a time could get through the door and attack.

One of the two remaining Crips in the doorway stepped forward; the ball of Sonya's foot hit her in the stomach and stopped her cold. Maria, who was still holding the sneaker she had just removed, threw it at the other Crip's face. The distraction enabled Sonya to fire a side kick into the woman's ribs. Sonya gave both of her disabled opponents a hard shove into the doorway, blocking anyone else from entering. Maria moved up next to Sonya as the two women waited for their attackers' next move.

The buzzer sounded.

"Shit!" one of the Crips yelled. The gang girls dispersed and ran in all directions. There were penalties for not being in one's cell at lockdown.

Seconds later, the cell doors closed. Sonya could hear guards yelling at the prisoners who hadn't gotten into their cells in time.

"Jesus," Maria said. "I've heard of being saved by the bell, but...I guess God is watching us, eh?"

"Somebody sure is," Sonya said.

Three days later, Rochelle was dead.

The news came as a shock to no one. Rochelle had shown that she couldn't handle leadership of a gang, or even membership in one. So she had been summarily jumped out with the traditional severe beating.

What was shocking, however, was that it was not the beating that killed her. Instead, the story went, Rochelle had awakened that morning in the infirmary, walked into the bathroom, and started screaming because the whites of her eyes were completely yellow. The jaundice signaled total liver failure; she died within hours.

Faith had an appointment with Dr. Reynolds that afternoon. When Faith walked into Reynolds' office, she was surprised to see the woman standing up in front of her desk instead of sitting behind it as usual.

"Faith," the doctor said, "I need to discuss something important with you that has nothing to do with your therapy."

"OK," Faith responded, raising a dark eyebrow.

"As you've no doubt noticed, several odd incidents have occurred here at Fuller in the past few weeks," Reynolds began.

"Yeah, I've noticed," Faith said.

The truth was, Faith hadn't just noticed; she was starting to freak. Sonya had told her about the fight, and Faith heard about Rochelle's death that morning. Sarina Thompson, the woman who went berserk with fear and nearly murdered a guard, had also died not long afterwards.

"At first," Reynolds went on, "I thought the incidents were unrelated. A prison is a stressful environment, after all. But I now believe it is more than that."

Reynolds paused for a moment, then went on. "You know that Mr. Barnes has been absent for over a week now."

"Yeah," Faith said. "I heard he went on vacation or something."

"That's what everyone was told. The truth is that he is currently on medical leave due to a suicide attempt."

"What?" Faith replied, stunned. "I guess you know better than me, doc, but Barnes didn't seem like the type to kill himself."

"There isn't a type, per se, but you're quite right. The hospital attributes his suicide attempt to drug abuse; apparently, their tests found substantial amounts of midazolam in his system."

"Midazzle-what?"

"Midazolam. Also called Valium."

"Barnes was doing downers? That REALLY doesn't seem like his style."

"They found half a bottle of them in his desk."

"Wow. Just when I was starting to think I knew the guy."

"You may, indeed, know him. I believe someone else gave Mr. Barnes the midazolam against his will."

"What makes you say that?"

"He had a needle puncture on his left shoulder."

"I don't know," Faith said. "If he's popping pills, maybe he's shooting smack or something, too."

"There were no other drugs in his system besides the midazolam, which Mr. Barnes denies ever having taken. Additionally, the puncture mark was on the BACK of his shoulder -- not the easiest place to inject oneself."

"Junkies are pretty creative. I've known a few. Besides, if somebody else shot him with the stuff, wouldn't he have told somebody?"

"He may not remember the moment of injection. In addition to its sedative properties, midazolam is known to induce short-term amnesia."

"Hm. Still not a lot of proof."

Sarah sighed. "Perhaps you're right. But look at all of the other odd things that have happened in Fuller lately. To paraphrase Ian Fleming, one peculiar occurrence may be chance, and two may be coincidence, but three means something is going on. And we've had more than three."

"OK. So what are you telling ME all this for? I don't see how I can help."

"I've been checking in with Mr. Barnes every few days, and yesterday he told me that the last thing he remembered before he found himself in his office with a gun was that he had gone down to the basement for some reason. I would like to go down there and have a look around, and I want you to come with me."

"Why?"

"Frankly, because I'm afraid. I don't know what's down there, and I'd rather have someone go with me."

"Why not just take one of the guards?"

"Faith, if there is some sort of plot being carried out here, at this incredibly secure facility, what are the odds that it is not an inside job?"

"Good point. OK, I'll be your bodyguard. When do you want to go?"

"Now would be fine."

Faith and Sarah Reynolds walked casually down the basement stairs, trying to act as though they were doing something completely legitimate. When they opened the door at the bottom of the stairwell and stepped into the basement corridor, Faith said, "OK, now what?"

"This way," Sarah whispered. She led Faith down the hall to a steel door. The door would not open; Sarah bent down and inspected the lock.

"It's just as I suspected," she said. "This is the door to the old solitary confinement unit. It's supposed to have been unused for the past year, but there is no rust on the inside of the lock, despite the dampness of the basement. Someone's been using it."

Faith put her ear to the door. "And they're still in there," she whispered. "I can just barely hear them moving around." After a few seconds, Faith hissed, "Shit!"

Whoever was inside was approaching the door. Faith jumped back and tried to drag Sarah around the nearest corner, but it was too late; the door opened and a heavyset man emerged. He spotted Faith and Sarah immediately and raised some kind of pistol. Faith shoved Sarah aside, trying to push her out of the line of fire and dodge in the other direction at the same time.

Faith felt a stinging sensation in her left hip. She looked down and saw the fuzzy red tail of a tranquilizer dart against the dark blue of her prison jeans. Faith yanked the dart out as the man reloaded.

"You drug me AND ruin my pants?" Faith shouted, moving towards the large man. "That's just more than a girl can...stand..." Sleepiness began to overcome her; her advance towards her enemy slowed to a halt. Faith fell to her knees.

Suddenly, Dr. Reynolds dashed into view from around the corner where Faith had pushed her. Faith had expected the doctor to run away, but instead she charged the big man and grabbed his wrist just as his finished reloading the tranq pistol. She clamped her other hand around the bottom of the man's large fist and twisted, forcing him to drop the gun.

Sarah started trying to push the man to the floor by his trapped arm, but he backhanded her with his free hand. She was stunned and released his wrist. Faith tried to get up to help, but she could barely even keep her eyes open, let alone move. Before Sarah could recover from the blow, the big man bent down, wrapped one arm around her waist, and picked her up on his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Sarah thrashed and beat at his back with her fists, but she was in no position to hurt him seriously.

The man carried Sarah through the steel door. A few seconds later, he came back and did the same with Faith.

Faith was growing sleepier by the moment, but she remembered what Sarah had told her -- that the tranquilizer also caused amnesia. With what was left of her mental energy, Faith went over and over the events of the last few minutes in her mind, determined not to forget them.

The man carried Faith into a hallway with a row of three steel doors on each side -- the solitary confinement cells, she guessed. The first door on each side was open. Faith caught a glimpse of some glassware and other laboratory equipment inside one cell, and heard the staccato screeches of several small animals of some sort from the other doorway.

The big man stopped and opened the middle door on the left. While the other doors were steel gray, this one was green and had a handle on it, like the ones Faith had seen on meat lockers.

A big, green cooler, she thought as the world began to go dark. This is SO not good.

And then she was out.

"Faith!"

A voice shouted at her from somewhere far away. It was really annoying; she was trying to sleep, after all.

"Faith! Wake up!"

Faith rolled over and found herself very uncomfortable. Awakened somewhat by the shouting and the aching in her arms, she realized that her hands were cuffed behind her back, and that she was lying on top of them. Faith rolled back over and opened her eyes.

She was on a thinly-carpeted floor in a small room whose walls and ceiling were covered in what looked like black foam rubber. Dr. Reynolds was standing against the back wall, her arms and legs bound to it with thick steel bands.

"What is this place?" Faith asked.

"It's a sound-attenuating chamber," Reynolds replied. "Normally, they are used in psychological experiments to prevent subjects from being distracted by extraneous noise. In this case, however, I believe the chamber's purpose is to keep anyone from hearing us if we shout for help."

Faith made a feeble attempt to get up, but found that she couldn't even move her feet apart. A thick chain had been wound several times around her ankles and secured with a padlock.

"How long have we been in here?" Faith asked.

"About an hour. I believe our captors are trying to decide what to do with us."

"Something tells me they're not gonna take us to Disneyland."

"Then we can rule out one form of torture," Reynolds replied dryly. "But yes, we must get out of here, sooner rather than later. Can you break out of those handcuffs?"

"I'm still feeling pretty weak, but-" Faith paused, narrowing her eyes. "Hold up. What makes you think I can break out of handcuffs?"

"Faith," Reynolds said slowly, "I'm very sorry. I was under strict instructions not to discuss my purpose here with you. However, under the circumstances, I can see no reasonable alternative."

"What purpose? What are you talking about?"

"I..."

Reynolds swallowed once, then tried again.

"I'm your Watcher."

Chapter 6 -- The Good Fight

Faith was silent, searching for words. After several seconds, she found one.
"WHAT?" she screamed.

"Faith, I'm so sorry," Sarah said.

"Why the HELL is there a Watcher working at Fuller?" Faith demanded. "You people tried to kill me!"

"The Council thought you were a threat to humanity. However, when you turned yourself in to the authorities, the leaders of the Council reconsidered their decision. They sent me to evaluate you, to see if you could be rehabilitated."

"Then I hope they're ready to be disappointed," Faith said coldly, "because the second I get out of these handcuffs, I'm gonna to kill you."

"How is that going, by the way?" Sarah asked with perfect calm.

"What?"

"Getting out of the handcuffs."

Faith gritted her teeth and tried to pull her wrists apart, but they wouldn't budge; instead, the edges of the steel cuffs bit painfully into her skin. She struggled, flipping over on her back, on her side, into all manner of positions, thrashing like a newly-caught swordfish on the deck of a boat.

Finally, Faith slumped back to the floor, exhausted. "Fuck," she breathed. "I'm still weak from the damn tranquilizer."

The chamber door opened, and the large man who had carried Sarah and Faith into the room picked Faith up and carried her out again. As he turned to take Faith back down the hall, Faith saw that the door to the cell across from the sound-attenuating chamber was open. There were two figures in the small cell. One was a short, blonde woman in blue surgical scrubs who was fitting a hypodermic needle onto a syringe. The other figure stood against the back wall, clamped to it by its arms and legs, much as Dr. Reynolds was. But there the resemblance to Sarah, or any other human being, ended. This creature was less than five feet tall but had a broad, ape-like build -- sloping back, barrel chest, and long, bent legs. The fingers of the beast's overlong arms were tipped with roughly triangular, two-inch claws.

The large man took Faith into the laboratory room and dropped her butt-first onto a chair.

"What the hell are you people doing down here?" Faith demanded.

"I can answer that," a man's voice said from the doorway. Faith turned her head and saw the tall, broad-shouldered form of Andrew Teague.

"Faith," he continued, "I'm sorry. I had planned to introduce all of this to you gradually. Unfortunately, Dr. Reynolds dragged you down here and forced me to rush things."

"The only one who's been dragging me is your bondage-loving assistant," Faith said, indicating her handcuffs and the chain around her ankles.

"Again, I'm sorry. Mr. Santiago is our pharmacist. Not long ago, he was convicted of mishandling some controlled substances and was sent to one of the state's men's facilities. I managed to get him sent here to work off his sentence."

"Why do you need a pharmacist?" Faith said, looking more confused by the second.

The warden sighed. "Faith," he said, "our plan, having you and Sonya run your own gang, is a good one. It's starting to work -- the gangs and the dealers are losing their grip on the prison community. But I knew we couldn't get this project off the ground without some kind of an edge; otherwise, the other gangs would have crushed the two of you before you could even begin. Fortunately, I had some connections who told me about Dr. Pugacheva."

"Who?" Faith said.

"I'll introduce you," Teague replied. "Doctor, you want to come in here for a minute?" In a few moments, the short blonde woman entered.

"Faith, this is Dr. Elena Pugacheva. She used to be one of the Soviet Union's best molecular biologists. Until her country fell apart, that is, and left the good doctor unemployed."

Faith turned to Pugacheva. "Hey," Faith said. "Interesting setup you got here. Though I'm kinda wondering what you were doing with that demon."

The blonde woman raised an eyebrow. Faith guessed she was surprised that Faith knew about demons. Then Pugacheva turned to the warden, who gave her a 'go ahead' nod.

"I was part of a special projects group dedicated to the study of... unrecognized life forms," Pugacheva said.

"Wicked," Faith said. "A demon doc."

"I'm sure your own government has similar programs," the doctor went on. "In any case, my particular task was to examine the neurochemistry of these life forms to find substances which could be used for our benefit. I focused on emotional regulatory systems; my superiors wanted chemicals that could, for example, cause a foreign leader to become enraged during a speech, or to panic in the midst of a military conflict.

"I found that some demons' emotions are regulated through hormones secreted into the bloodstream. But just as I was beginning to have some success in isolating some of these hormones, the project was shut down for budgetary reasons. After 1990, there were no more funds available for 'long-term initiatives,'" Pugacheva said bitterly. "So I came to the United States to seek support for my work."

Faith didn't quite get all of that, but she nodded anyway.

"Luckily," Teague broke in, "the doctor and I found each other and realized that we could solve each other's problems. I gave her space to work in and some money from the prison budget, and she came up with ways to control our more difficult prisoners."

The doctor spoke up again. "I found two types of demons that produced hormones capable of eliciting emotional responses from humans. Vorpic demon blood, for example, contains chemicals which I have labeled Vorpic-11 and Vorpic-24, by the order in which they elude from a filtering gel. In humans, Vorpic-11 produces deep depression; Vorpic-24 causes overwhelming fear. Unfortunately, Vorpic-24 has proven to be severely hepatotoxic in human subjects."

"Huh?" Faith said.

"It ruins your liver," Teague translated.

"Ulyaro-6, extracted from the Ulyaro demon," Pugacheva continued, "causes uncontrollable rage."

"Like the woman in the cafeteria," Faith said. "It made her super-strong, too."

"Yes. However, each compound works best on persons already prone to the emotional state in question. We had to access Dr. Reynolds' files to find the best match between subject and drug."

Teague added, "With the help of Mr. Santiago, we were able to disguise the hormones as medications that the various target prisoners were already taking -- everything from allergy pills to AZT -- or to hide it in toothpaste. As a result, we got some of the gang leaders and drug dealers out of the picture, and Dr. Pugacheva got to test her new drugs on human subjects. And, since they haven't been chemically identified, the hormones don't show up on standard drug tests."

"Cool," Faith said. "Can you catch a buzz from any of this stuff?" Teague looked at her disapprovingly. "Kidding," Faith said.

"Faith," Teague said, "there are a lot of prisoners here who could become decent, productive members of society if they get the chance. But there are also some who are never going to be rehabilitated -- the hardcore criminals, the ones who end up leading the gangs and bringing in the drugs. We can't reach them; the best we can do is take away their power or remove them from Fuller completely."

"Pull the weeds, let the flowers grow," Faith said.

"Exactly," Teague responded. "You know how it is. Sometimes, to make things better, you have to make hard decisions."

A feeling of horrible recogntion came over Faith.

"Sacrifices," she added dully.

"Yes," Teague said. "I knew you would understand."

Faith paused for a moment.

"Here's what I understand," she said. "I understand that, for the second time in my life, I've found a leader, a real strong guy who respects me and treats me decent."

Teague smiled.

"And I understand that that's not enough."

The smile faded.

"I might not be the sharpest pencil in the box," Faith said, "but I've figured this much out: Being good to one person doesn't make you good. You can't just pick your chosen few and say to hell with everybody else, whether you're the warden, or the mayor, or me."

The warden began to look upset. "Now look-"

"Oh," Faith interrupted, "and the other thing I understand?"

"Yes?" the warden said.

"If you sit around and yak long enough, midazolam wears off."

With a loud shout, Faith pulled as hard as she could at the cuffs behind her back. The links between them broke, and Faith's hands swung around in front of her just as she threw herself forward on her bound legs. Both of her fists caught Teague in the sides of his head, knocking him out.

Pugacheva tried to run past Faith, but Faith grabbed the scientist's ankle just as she reached the door. Faith dragged the woman back and grabbed her arm in a painfully tight grip.

"Now," Faith said, breathing hard, "unlock my legs."

With her free hand, Dr. Pugacheva took a key from the shirt pocket of her surgical scrubs and unlocked the chains around Faith's ankles. Faith stood up, dragging the scientist with her.

"OK, now you're gonna unlock Dr. Reynolds," Faith ordered.

"I...I must do that from here," Pugacheva said. "The restraints in all the subject rooms are operated from the console." Pugacheva indicated a desk with a built-in keyboard and four small monitors, each of which showed the interior of a different room. The three solitary confinement cells each contained a demon -- two of the short, apelike type Faith had seen earlier, and another one, taller, with chitinous body armor like an insect's. The fourth screen showed Dr. Reynolds inside the sound-attenuating chamber.

"Do it," Faith said. "Oh, and if you hit a button other than those four marked 'release', I'll knock eighty IQ points out of your head."

"All right," Pugacheva responded.

With the heel of her hand, she slapped all four buttons at once.

Faith shouted some obscenity at Pugacheva, but it was drowned out by the snarls and roars of the three suddenly-liberated demons. The video monitors on the console showed the monsters fleeing their cells; the 'release' buttons had unlocked the doors as well as the restraints.

For a moment, Faith hesitated. It was a moment too long. Hearing movement behind her, she turned to see the tall, armor-skinned demon swinging a hard-knuckled fist at her head. Faith caught the blow on her jaw.

Only the skills trained into her by long practice saved her. She rolled with the punch and used the momentum to spin her body around and snap a reverse crescent kick to the demon's head. Faith winced a bit as the edge of her foot struck the creature's armored cranium. Nonetheless, she followed up by placing the ball of her other foot against the monster's midsection and shoving hard. The demon flew back through the doorway; the left half of its body hit the frame of the door opposite that of the control room.

Faith was about to run out and attack the creature again when something slammed against the length of her back, knocking her to her knees. She turned her head and saw Dr. Pugacheva standing over her, holding a chair. Faith spun on the floor and whipped her legs out, sweeping the blonde scientist off her feet. Before the woman could even begin to get up, Faith grabbed her by the hair and thumped her head against the thinly-carpeted floor. Pugacheva was out.

Faith sprung back to her feet and turned towards the dorway. The tall, armored demon was gone. Its friends had departed, too. The main door at the end of the hallway stood open. At the opposite end of the hallway, Santiago's body lay on the floor, a pool of blood expanding around it. Judging by the two sets of inhuman, bloody footprints leading away from the corpse, Faith figured the two Ulyaro demons had gotten him.

Sarah Reynolds stepped out of the sound-attenuating chamber, looking wild-eyed. "Where did they go?" she shouted. Then she looked at her watch. "Good Lord," she said, "it's dinner time. All of the prisoners will be in the cafeteria. If the demons get past the guard stations upstairs, they could kill hundreds."

Faith turned and ran for the door.

"Wait!" Reynolds cried. "You won't be able to-"

But Faith was already gone.

George Taylor, the guard on duty at Station 2 at the entrance to Fuller's main block, was wondering if there might be any chance of his not dying of boredom before the end of his shift. He hated working the entry station; he'd rather be walking around among the inmates, instead of doing nothing but buzzing people in and out all the blessed day.

His radio squawed for a moment. "All stations, we-" And that was it.

Taylor had just enough time to pick up his radio and say, "Say again?" before a dark, inhuman-looking figure appeared at the Plexiglas window of the guard station door. Impossibly, a fist smashed through the bulletproof glass and opened the door from the inside.

On every radio in the prison, the last words heard from Station 2 were, "Holy shi-!"

The Vorpic demon flicked its multi-faceted eyes this way and that over the guard station controls. It could smell the sweat, heat and pheromones from many bodies beyond the doors -- a feast waiting to be torn apart and gobbled down in big, bloody chunks by the Vorpic and its Ulyaro allies, who even now scratched and banged at the door like starving wolves. All that was needed was to open the way.

The Vorpic was not, perhaps, the most intelligent breed of demon. But it knew a big, black button must be important for something. It's armored fingers force the button down.

The doors swung open, and the two Ulyaro demons ran through. The Vorpic followed, excited and hungry.

Faith followed the bloody footprints that led down the basement corridor to the stairs. By the time she reached the ground floor, the footprints had faded to nothing, but the demons had begun leaving another sort of trail -- one of dead bodies. Three guards and an unlucky visitor were dead at the central guard station, and Faith could hear screams from somewhere up ahead. That meant the demons had entered the central prison block and had an unobstructed path to the cafeteria.

Faith blew past Guard Station Two at a speed that an Olympic sprinter would consider impressive. Rounding the corner into the wide corridor that connected the main cell block to the cafeteria, Faith saw the three demons ahead of her. The tall Vorpic demon was passing the two Ulyaros, which loped along on four limbs like the gorillas they resembled.

With a yell, Faith threw herself at the hindmost Ulyaro demon and tackled it by its crooked legs. The beast turned over just in time for Faith to punch it in the face. The demon was completely unfazed and slashed at Faith with its triangular claws; Faith hurled herself backwards just in time to avoid having her face ripped off.

Now on her feet, Faith slammed a side kick into the Ulyaro's chest. It felt like kicking a hundred-pound blob of hard rubber. The monster flew back into the corridor wall, but the impact didn't seem to hurt it.

Faith ran up and leaped into a flying kick. The monster ducked and raked her jumping leg, shredding her pants and leaving deep scratches in her calf. Faith landed awkwardly, but managed to backfist the Ulyaro when it came at her. The creature's head snapped to the side. Nonetheless, the beast immediately countered by grabbing Faith's arm and flinging her into the wall. Faith took the impact on her back, protecting her head.

It's like a big superball with arms, Faith thought. Hitting it doesn't do any good; it just bounces back.

The monster slashed at Faith again. This time, Faith grabbed its wrist and twisted. Nothing broke; it was as if the creature's arm, though solid, had no bones at all. Faith tried to pull the Ulyaro in front of her to put a choke hold on it, but it kicked wildly at her knee, ruining her balance and her grip. Faith let go and backed away quickly.

Slayer and demon circled each other in the corridor. Faith couldn't help but wonder what the other two demons were doing.

Sonya sat at dinner, feeling both proud and worried -- proud because her and Faith's gang now had enough members to fill two tables in the cafeteria, and worried because Faith was supposed to be there with them. She had not come back from her appointment with Dr. Reynolds. What was up with that? Reynolds was a busy lady, not the type to go overtime with anybody.

Sonya's musings were disrupted by a commotion near the main cafeteria doors. There was yelling and movement, as if a fight had broken out. But something was wrong; prisoners were running AWAY from the fight, which wasn't normal. They usually either jumped in or, at least, gathered around to watch. And the yelling sounded less like shouts than like screams.

Then, as prisoners ran for dear life from the doorway, Sonya caught sight of two figures, one tall and slender, the other short and squat. They scarcely looked like people at all.

And then there was no more time to think about that, because one of the fleeing prisoners began to run in Sonya's direction with the shorter creature in pursuit. The woman passed Sonya, shrieking; Sonya instinctively let go with a roundhouse kick to the monster's head as it tried to follow. The creature fell on its back and slid several feet along the floor before springing back to a standing position and turning on Sonya. It leaped and slashed with its long claws; Sonya reflexively held up her arm to block. The long nails cut deeply into Sonya's forearm.

The demon threw itself on Sonya and knocked her down, then drew back its absurdly long arm, preparing to rip out her throat. Sonya weakly held up her good arm in defense and squeezed her eyes shut.

There was a sound like a baseball bat hitting a sack full of sand. Sonya opened her eyes to see that one of the guards in the cafeteria had whacked the monster in the back of the head with a nightstick. The demon immediately recovered and attacked with inhuman speed; its claws ripped open the guard's chest and stomach. The guard was still screaming when the beast began to gorge on the viscera within.

That was enough for Sonya. She passed out.

Faith wiped her brow with her sleeve. It came away bloody; her demon opponent had scratched her forehead, and she was bleeding into her eyes.

She was also beginning to believe that she couldn't stop this thing. She could knock it down, knock it away, twist it like a pretzel, but it just kept coming. She'd managed to jab it in the eye once, which seemed to hurt it a bit, but that only seemed to make it more furious.

The beast leaped at her again; Faith stopped it in the air with a front kick and sent it tumbling back. She was thinking of making a run for it, trying to lure it back to the solitary confinement wing. Maybe she could trap it there. Maybe not.

"Faith!"

Faith turned to see Sarah Reynolds throw two hatchet-like axes at her. Not end-over-end, however; the two weapons stood straight up, pirouetting gently like twin ballet dancers. Faith caught them easily.

The Ulyaro demon was on its feet and rushed her again. Faith didn't hesitate; she swung one axe and then the other down in wide diagonal cuts. The first cut took the demon's hand off at the wrist; the second sliced open its neck. Purplish blood flooded over the floor as the demon fell over and rapidly bled to death.

Reynolds had obviously been running hard. She barely had enough strength to wave Faith towards the cafeteria. Clutching her weapons, Faith took off.

Kelly Palastri, a member of Faith and Sonya's gang, had been a nursing student before an ugly incident with an ex-boyfriend and a baseball bat earned her a stay at Fuller. So she knew what to do when she saw Sonya on the cafeteria floor, bleeding profusely from her radial artery. Kelly grabbed a pile of paper napkins off her table and applied pressure to the wound while shouting for someone to help her. Gloria was at her side within seconds; Kelly instructed her to take off her shirt and tie the sleeve firmly around Sonya's upper arm to restrict the flow of blood.

She only hoped that the monster, which had chased some prisoners into the kitchen, wouldn't come back to finish the job.

Faith burst into the cafeteria and saw the devastation. There were dead, wounded, and terrified inmates and guards everywhere. Faith looked towards the two tables which her gang had claimed and saw Sonya on the floor, with Kelly and Gloria kneeling over her. Faith ran to them.

"Where-?" she started.

Kelly and Gloria looked up at their axe-wielding leader with surprise. "That way!" Gloria shouted, pointing to the kitchen doors.

Faith looked down at Sonya, then up at Kelly. "You got her?" she asked.

"I got her," Kelly responded rapidly. "Go!"

Faith went.

The second Ulyaro was a lot easier to kill than the first. It had cornered several inmates in the kitchen, and seemed to be trying to decide which one to eat first. Faith made the decision moot by throwing one of her axes sidearm, neatly cutting the demon's spinal cord at its midpoint. The demon fell over, helpless; Faith finished it with a stroke to the neck from her second axe.

Faith looked at the prisoners she had just rescued. "Where's the Vorpic?" she said. "The tall one?"

The prisoners only stared, wide-eyed. Then one of them screamed.

A long, hard body fell on Faith from above. The creature had been hanging from the pipes, awaiting the right moment for an ambush.

The Vorpic was light, but strong. Though Faith tried to throw it off, it clung to her, trying to crush her in a bear hug around her arms and ribs. Faith snapped her head back to butt the monster, but even its face was armored; all Faith gained was a headache. And she was starting to run low on air. Her remaining axe hung uselessly from her hand, which was pinned to her side.

With all her remaining strength, Faith leaped up in the air and rotated backwards, so that she landed on the Vorpic like a professional wrestler. The monster's hold loosened; Faith tore herself from its grasp and flipped onto her feet, raising her axe. The Vorpic scuttled backwards along the floor, but not fast enough to prevent Faith from driving the head of her axe into the gap in the armor around its knee.

The monster let loose with a metallic-sounding squeal and kicked Faith in the head with its good leg. Faith fell back into the body of the dead Ulyaro and pulled her other axe from its spine. As the Vorpic got to its feet, Faith ran at the demon, feinted to the right with the axe, then swept the demon's bad leg with her left foot. The Vorpic fell onto its stomach and never saw the final axe blow that separated its head from its body.

Faith took several seconds to get her breath, then began to shuffle back towards the cafeteria.

Several doors burst open at once. Guards with shotguns and riot gear shouted for everyone to get on the floor, then realized that most of the prisoners were already sitting or lying down. The guards had expected a prison riot; instead, they found a bunch of frightened, bloodied inmates who were all too willing to go quietly to their cells.

Faith casually tossed her axes behind one of the big kitchen ovens. Some of her girls worked the breakfast shift; she could ask one of them to retrieve the axes later.

Epilogue

The next day was an extremely busy one for Sarah Reynolds. There was a lot of trauma and confusion to deal with among the inmates.

Stories about what had happened were myriad. Most of the prisoners who didn't actually see the demons believed that the incident was simply a prison riot that had been exaggerated in the retelling. Others, those who had caught at least a glimpse of the creatures that savaged the cafeteria, were convinced that someone had put hallucinogenic drugs in the chili. Others opined that the monsters were escaped lab animals, products of some secret government experiment. Reynolds did nothing either to encourage or to dispel any of these rumors, knowing that they would create a convenient fog around the truth.

Despite her packed schedule that day, Sarah still managed to make some time to see Faith. She walked into Sarah's office with a casualness that was obviously too practiced to be genuine.

"So," Faith said as she sat down, "what's up with the warden and Doctor Derange-O?"

"Dr. Pugacheva was taken into custody by the FBI. Apparently, she has committed a great many offenses since she entered this country illegally ten years ago. Though I rather wonder whether they plan to punish her or give her a job.

"Andrew Teague has been arrested for manslaughter and misappropriation of prison funds. I imagine he will soon gain a rather new perspective on the corrections system."

"God," Faith said. "I really thought he was a good guy. But he was just Mayor Wilkins all over again."

"I don't believe so," Reynolds responded. "I think he convinced himself he was doing the right thing. As you no doubt learned in Sunnydale, human beings are capable of almost limitless rationalization. In any case, I'm certain that his successor will be far better; Mr. Barnes has accepted a promotion to the position."

Faith smiled.

"Now," Sarah continued, "on another topic, are you still planning to kill me?"

"I think I'm all killed out," Faith said. "Those demons were some of the toughest I've ever seen."

"The Ulyaro is vicious, and its body is mostly cartilage -- nearly impossible to kill without a sharp weapon. Though you might have been able to deal with the Vorpic unarmed. The articulations in the exoskeleton around its neck make it relatively easy to break."

"You Watchers know your demons," Faith said. "But how come you talk like an American? I thought you were all Brits."

"As am I. I earned my undergraduate degree at Stanford, and learned the American accent while I was at it."

"Huh."

"Well, in any case," Reynolds said, "my report to the Council will be favorable. They will send your new Watcher within the month."

Faith's brow furrowed. "Wait a minute. I thought you were my Watcher," she said.

"I'm merely a specialist. Now that I have finished my evaluation, I will return to England, and a properly-trained Watcher will be permanently assigned to you."

Faith looked at the floor for a moment, then raised her eyes to meet Sarah's.

"No deal," Faith said.

"Excuse me?"

"No new Watcher. You."

"Faith, as I said, I am not properly trained to-"

"You know lots about demons," Faith cut in, "you've got a brain like Miss Marple, and you're some kind of jujitsu expert. How much more training do you need?"

"Aikido."

"What?"

"Aikido, not jujitsu. And I know far less about demons than a conventionally-trained Watcher."

"So buy the Time-Life series," Faith said. "I hear it's good. My point is, it's you or nobody. I know you, and, Jesus help me, I trust you. So either you be my Watcher, or you can send the Three Stooges to take another shot at me. 'Cause assassination attempts are pretty much part of my lifestyle these days."

Sarah said nothing for several moments. Then she looked up with what Faith thought might have been a tiny smile.

"It will take some convincing of the Board of Directors," Sarah said, "but I believe I can arrange it. If that's what you really want."

"Yeah," Faith said, leaning back in her chair.

"Then sit up straight," Sarah ordered.

Faith did so, more out of surprise than obedience.

"Now," Sarah said, "you've done well in your psychotherapy, so I believe we can begin to use some of our session time for your training. Your handling of the Frankish hand axe involved far too much unnecessary movement for my liking; we'll begin with that. Then we will try to shape up your kicking combinations and add to your far-too-small repertoire of grappling techniques."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Faith said.

"Immensely," Sara replied, deadpan. "Now, since it appears that the old solitary unit will be unoccupied for some time yet, we will use it as our training facility, starting tomorrow. I am too busy to work with you today, so I want you to spend some time at the gymnasium. Warm up with one hundred each of front and roundhouse kicks -- one hundred per leg, mind you -- then two-, three-, and four-kick combinations, after which you should practice your boxing techniques..."

Great, Faith thought. Here I am in prison, and I just ordered up an extra helping of punishment. I should have asked for the Stooges.

And yet, despite all the surprises and disappointments of the past few days, Faith had the odd sense that things were starting to come together. She had a best friend, who was still alive thanks to Kelly and Gloria, she had her gang, and now she had a Watcher. It all made her future at Fuller seem a little less like a life sentence.

And more like a life.