RETURN to CHAOS

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

Louder this time, her name sounded almost musical, the syllables rising and falling in tone.

  A young woman stepped out from behind the bushes—a young woman dressed in flowing white. It was someone Cordelia hadn’t seen in quite some time.

  “Naomi!” she called. “We were just talking about you. You know, me and Amanda. She’s just down the street. I could call her back in a second.”

  But Amanda and the others were already out of sight. Where were those three dull guys when she needed them?

  “Sweet Cordelia,” Naomi said. She seemed to be able to talk without moving her lips.

  Something was definitely different about her. Maybe it was that new hair color Amanda had been talking about.

  She was coming closer. She was so light on her feet, she almost seemed to glide across the front lawn.

  “Gee, Naomi. You look awfully pale. Have you been getting enough sun?”

  Naomi smiled.

  Chapter 5

  HE WAS RUNNING FROM THE HELLMOUTH. BUT THE fissures grew ever larger around him, spitting great gouts of fire. He would fall into a crevice or be burned alive.

  “Where are you going, brother?”

  Before him, floating in the air above the flames, was his brother Stephen.

  “What do you hope to do?” Stephen continued.

  “I—have—to—get—away.” He was having trouble forming words.

  “There’s no way you can flee,” Stephen said gently. “The only way to escape is to confront the Hellmouth.”

  “Confront these things? I saw what happened.”

  “We were not ready before. We were led down false paths. You must find the truth.”

  “The truth?” he demanded. “What is the truth?”

  But his brother had let himself drift too close to the flames. Fire engulfed his form. He staggered back, waiting for the screams.

  But Stephen laughed instead—a hideous laughter that filled the air around him—a laughter that would consume him as surely as fire.

  “This program! Why can’t anything go easily around here?”

  Buffy heard Rupert Giles before she saw him. She pushed open the swinging doors that led into the Sunnydale High School library.

  To the rest of Sunnydale High, Giles was the school librarian. A tall, thin fellow with horn-rimmed glasses, Giles had a distinct British accent and was probably as old as Buffy’s mother. But he was also Buffy’s Watcher.

  What exactly did a Watcher do? Even now, Buffy wasn’t exactly sure. Giles wasn’t even her first Watcher. She’d had another fellow who helped her out, Merrick, over at her old high school, Hemery High in Los Angeles. That was, of course, before she burned it down and had to move to Sunnydale. Buffy had been able to defeat the vampires at her old school, but not before they’d killed her Watcher.

  Buffy was determined never to have anything like that happen again.

  And what exactly was a Watcher? Well, as far as she could figure out, Giles was part mentor, part trainer, and part walking encyclopedia of arcane knowledge and spooky stuff. Throughout history, there had always been Slayers—born into every generation—to push back the forces of evil. As far as Buffy knew, they had all been young women close to her age. And all those Slayers had always had Watchers to guide them on their way.

  Generally, they watched out for you. Buffy thought that having a Watcher was one of the nice things about being the Slayer. Giles had helped her a hundred times, and when she had enlisted some of the other kids at school to help, he had accepted her friends as well. Buffy thought he was sort of like a scout leader of the occult.

  Right now, though, this particular scout leader was not a particularly happy camper.

  “Hey!” Willow called. “At least it’s printing out complete sentences now. Too many complete sentences.” She glanced back at the monitor. “Way too many.”

  Giles paced back and forth behind the library table where Willow scowled at the computer. Buffy was the third person to enter the large, book-filled room. It was still pretty early in the morning, with maybe half an hour before classes, but the other students at Sunnydale High didn’t seem to have that much use for the library. Which was too bad, really. The high-ceilinged room was maybe half the size of the school auditorium, with long tables perfect for reading or studying. A few of the tables even had computers, just like the one Willow was using.

  Beyond Willow, steps led up to even more books—it was sort of a split-level library. It was up there, at the back of the room, that the more common books on the occult were kept. Thanks to Giles, the library had quite a few. He even had a small, locked cage behind the librarian’s desk where he kept the really rare, one-of-a-kind stuff.

  Buffy often wondered what the other students and teachers thought of Giles’s somewhat lopsided collection, not to mention the locked stacks. The one time she had mentioned the subject, Giles had sniffed rather self-importantly and said the administration here should feel privileged to be able to employ a librarian of his stature. That he should bring a few of his own research materials along went without saying.

  But if Giles was the scout master, then this room was also summer camp all year round for Buffy and her friends. Giles never minded any of them dropping by, even on those days when there wasn’t a crisis. This library really felt like Buffy’s home away from home.

  Of course, some days at home were better than others. Apparently, the librarian’s research wasn’t going all that well at the moment.

  “Is there any way we can fix this?” Giles moaned,

  Willow glanced up at Buffy and grinned. “Hey, with computers you can do just about anything.” Willow’s faith in computers was one of the constants of Sunnydale. “And here we have just about everything.”

  “Everything,” Giles added in his usual distracted manner, “and more than everything.” He waved at the stack of printouts piled next to the library’s laser printer. They were the size of two large phone books. “This is what’s going to happen to Sunnydale!”

  This was all going too fast for Buffy. “Wait a moment! This is the big computer project you started last week, right? The one that was going to make our lives so simple?”

  Giles peered at her over his glasses. “Well, it did appear it would be simple at the time. The—what did Willow call it?”

  “The ‘Let’s Give Buffy a Break’ program,” Willow added helpfully.

  “Yes, it was supposed to make life easier—sort of an early-warning system for potential disaster areas.” He shook his head. “I was quite exact in what I had Willow load into the program. All the experiences you’ve had since you’ve come to Sunnydale—”

  “All my experiences?” Buffy demanded.

  “Only those that have to do with you being a Slayer,” Willow reassured her. “I’ve been keeping a file.”

  “And we also compiled files on the history of Sunnydale and its surroundings,” Giles continued, “concentrating on unexplained occurrences in the past.”

  Buffy could see what they were getting at. “You mean sort of a life story of the Hellmouth.”

  Giles paused, the slightest look of surprise on his face. “Well put. Then, not knowing what else would be pertinent, we also added all the research we’ve done on earlier events, whether or not that research was useful at the time. And, after that, Willow and I added whatever pet projects we’d been researching—you know, about the occult, the supernatural, special phenomena, the ‘funky’ as you call it.”

  “Wow,” Buffy replied. “Did you also throw in the kitchen sink?”

  “I wish we had. That, at least, we’d know how to turn off.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is, this whole big project hasn’t worked.”

  “No, not at all. The problem is that it worked too well.” He patted the very large stack of printouts. “This was supposed to be an early-warning system for you, so we could nip some of these dangers in the bud, so to speak, and not have a new crisis every week. Alas, this program has revealed the true, overwhel
ming nature of our task.”

  Willow looked up from her work at the computer. “Like Giles said, the problem here is that it’s all too easy. Since Sunnydale is located right over the Hellmouth, everything is likely to happen.”

  “Everything?” Buffy was beginning to see what had Giles so flustered. This was beginning to upset her, too.

  “Well, not everything.” Willow hit a few buttons on her keyboard. New text filled the screen. “It’s unlikely we’ll have an earthquake in the next couple months.” She paused then added, “Rainfall looks a little down for the season. And—um—we’re not due for a plague of locusts until at least July.” She looked up at Buffy with that what-ya-gonna-do look of hers. “But beyond that, we’re up for grabs.”

  But Buffy refused to accept defeat—probably something to do with being the Slayer. Maybe both Willow and Giles were too close to the problem. “Look guys. How big can this be?”

  Giles shook his head. “Maybe we can show you the true nature of our problem. Willow, why don’t you choose one of the smaller subcategories of danger that our program generated. Something, say, with less than twenty items?”

  “Less than twenty?” The tone of Willow’s voice said that was going to be tough. She once again scrolled through the text on her screen. “Well—maybe ‘Monsters from the Sea.’ ”

  “Monsters from the sea?” Buffy replied.

  “Hey, Sunnydale has a beach, doesn’t it? Some pretty cool scenarios here.” Willow frowned at the screen. “Here’s one where we’re overrun by sentient seaweed. Oh, and killer clams.” She grinned. “I particularly like the one with the mutant whale with feet.”

  “Feet?” was Buffy’s only response.

  This time, Giles’s sigh seemed to go on forever. “You can see the sort of thing we’re up against.

  Buffy was afraid she did. “Instead of limiting the possibilities—”

  “The computer program seems to go to great lengths to make up new ones,” Giles continued. “Now, some of these possibilities sound pretty unlikely—”

  “Around Sunnydale?” It was Buffy’s turn to shake her head. “Anything is possible.”

  Giles waved at the stack of paper behind him. “I didn’t say these were in any way inaccurate. However, we weren’t simply looking for the possible. We were looking for the probable. That was the original purpose of the program, to predict what we needed to prepare for. We needed to know what was likely to happen next week. Unfortunately, that word—likely—seems to have been left out of the final mix.”

  “So we don’t have to prepare for mutant whales with feet?” Buffy asked.

  “Heavens. I hope not.”

  Well, Buffy thought, that was good news at least. Maybe there was a way out of this mess. “Is there some way to rescue all this? How many possibilities are we talking about?”

  Giles paused for a long moment before he answered. “That’s very difficult to say. That category of dangers that we just read—”

  “ ‘Monsters from the Sea,’ ” Willow added helpfully. “And we only read a little bit of it. I didn’t even get to the vampire sharks—”

  “Yes, ‘Monsters from the Sea’,” Giles quickly interrupted, “is only one of many.”

  “How many?” Buffy asked.

  Giles grimaced. “Seventy-three.”

  Wow, Buffy thought. “Only seventy-three?”

  Giles’s grimace didn’t go away. “So far. When we saw what was happening, we stopped the program.”

  Willow nodded solemnly. “I think it could have generated dangerous scenarios . . . forever.”

  “No doubt we’ve learned something from all of this.” Giles smiled weakly. “There might be very valuable information in here—somewhere.”

  Buffy pointed to the printouts. “So, could we deal with the stuff we have so far?”

  “Hmm.” Giles stuck his tongue in his cheek as he considered the possibilities. “Based on our response time in the past? I’d say, with the advanced technology at our disposal, and all of us—we three, along with Xander, Cordelia, and Oz—all working together, in all our free time, we could sort through it all in—maybe three years.”

  “Three years?”

  Giles smiled. “Rest assured, Buffy. None of us want to spend another three years in this particular high school.”

  Buffy was beginning to see the true depth of their problem. “By college, I was hoping to have some better things to do. I was hoping Slaying might lead to a career.”

  “Well, this is not really worth thinking about. All the current program can do is upset us. It all seems overwhelming.”

  But Willow was wearing her bravest smile. “We’ll find a way to get this darned program to work.” She looked down to the computer in front of her. “Well, I’ll find a way.”

  Giles nodded. “We’ve beaten every challenge that has been put before us.” He began to pace again behind the table. “There’s no reason not to believe that with a little luck and preparation we might be able to defeat whatever else we encounter. Even a computer program.”

  Willow frowned down at her monitor. “It seemed to make so much sense when we began.” She started to type.

  This is where I came in, Buffy thought.

  “There’s got to be some way we can limit our parameters,” Giles muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “These results are less than useless. . . .”

  “Gotta go!” Buffy called. She was sure she had a couple other things she had to do before classes started.

  Still, she had rarely seen the pair looking so glum. There had to be something upbeat Buffy could say.

  “Hey,” she called over her shoulder as she pushed open the library door, “when you’re prepared for a mutant whale with feet, you’re prepared for anything.”

  They didn’t even bother looking up at her as she left the library.

  Chapter 6

  WHY COULDN’T CORDELIA REMEMBER?

  She had been standing at her front door, searching for her keys. Absolutely nothing strange in that. Then someone had—what? She had almost more felt than heard somebody call her name.

  It had to be Amanda or her cousins, right? Why did this make her so upset? She couldn’t think of anyone less spooky than Amanda. Well, there was that time Amanda had gone through a phase and dyed her hair that weird shade of red, but that was more mind-blowing than spooky.

  All morning, from the moment she’d gotten out of bed all the way through climbing the steps to the high school, she’d had the feeling that something was—missing. She wasn’t even sure if that was the right word.

  It was more like something was—wrong. Something she had to make right again. But how could she make something right if she couldn’t even remember what it was?

  She had maybe five minutes before homeroom. She stared into her locker, as if the answer might be hidden somewhere between her chemistry text and her lunch.

  She got a glimpse of herself in that small mirror she had hung on the back of the locker door. There were circles under her eyes so large that even her concealer couldn’t hide them. She looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all.

  Cordelia blinked. It wasn’t her face looking back in the mirror. The face was very pale, as if the person almost wasn’t there. She had seen that face—it seemed like only moments ago. A pale girl—she knew her, didn’t she? Cordelia couldn’t look away. The eyes drew her deeper and deeper. She heard someone call her name, but it was not really a sound. It was more like a breeze, crawling up her spine—

  “Cordelia?”

  She jumped about a foot when the hand touched her shoulder. She spun around in a second, ready to fight or run.

  It was Xander.

  She half-wanted to hug him, half-wanted to bop him for sneaking up on her that way.

  She decided she’d yell at him instead. “Don’t scare me like that!”

  Xander took a step away, like scaring her was the last thing on his mind. “Sorry. I thought maybe we could take a minute to talk about—uh
—last night.”

  “Last night,” she repeated. What really had happened last night? She and Xander had fought about some silly thing or other. It didn’t seem at all important now. Then she had talked with Amanda forever. They had walked home together. And there had been Amanda’s dreary, but cute, cousins.

  Why can’t I remember what happened next?

  “Look,” Xander persisted, “about last night . . .”

  As upset as Cordelia was, she realized she wanted to patch things up with Xander. The two of them could get so intense around each other, for good or bad. Sometimes Cordelia thought that intensity was the only thing holding them together.

  “Do you mean at the Bronze?” she asked innocently.

  Xander shrugged. “Well, you know, sometimes I get—”

  She wasn’t going to let him take all the blame. She wanted this relationship to work.

  “Look,” she interrupted, “that’s nothing compared to the way I—”

  Xander interrupted her right back. “Well, look, when I said—”

  “Xander,” she interrupted all over again. “I never really gave you a chance to—”

  There was the bell. What bad timing!

  Xander smiled at her and squeezed her shoulder. “Well, I’m glad we at least had a chance to talk.”

  She waved to him as he turned to go. “Later?”

  “Later!” He gave her a glimpse of his incredibly cute grin.

  Why was his touch so electric? And why did they have to go through an entire day of high school before they could—well, actually Cordelia had all sorts of creative ideas involving the janitor’s closet. Creative ideas that had nothing to do with the Spring Formal. Not that Xander wouldn’t look very nice in a tux. For all of the little problems the two of them had, it was awfully nice to have a steady boyfriend around for the important events.

  Why was she so worried? Xander and she had just made up. She was on the committee controlling the big dance. She had even gotten an A on her chemistry midterm.

  Cordelia frowned. Well, that was all well and good, but there was one other thing she couldn’t forget: