The thought forced a chuckle out of her, but it died quickly. It wasn't really funny, when she thought about it. And she thought about it quite a bit.

She was restless. That was the problem. She didn't want to be in prison anymore. Which sounded an awful lot like whining. She'd done the crime, after all, and she'd long since resolved to do the time. It had seemed the only way to get her head straight again, not to mention make up for the horrible things she'd done.

Lately, though, she'd been feeling like prison wasn't working for her anymore. She knew she would never truly feel like she'd atoned for her crimes, but thought she'd be better off outside, helping people, instead of rotting in her cell.

Well, rotting wasn't really the word. She'd managed to get her GED, with the help of the prison psychologist and lots of encouragement from Angel. That had felt good to do. It had made her feel human again. That's when she'd started thinking about leaving.

That's one thing you could say about prison - it gave you a lot of time to think. Too much time, maybe. Getting out was all Faith thought about these days, but she wasn't sure she could manage it. The guards seemed to have been tipped off from the start that she was a special case, and they kept a careful eye on her. She was followed by the eyes of the snipers whenever she was in the prison yard, and she was never allowed on work details that had any hope of seeing the outside world. She would have bet she could have gotten out somehow, but she almost certainly would have had to hurt a bunch of guards to do so, and she wasn't willing to do that. She was proud of that fact, but her continued imprisonment still frustrated her.

That was the reason she was in solitary now, actually. She'd gotten into a fight with the Latina gang. The entire gang. Their leader, Isabel, had insulted Faith at dinner, and one thing led to another, and before she knew it, Faith was the last one standing, surveying two dozen unconscious bodies on the floor and then looking up to see enough guns trained on her to start World War III. She knew a dumb move when she saw it, so she just raised her hands, smiled, and let them lead her off to solitary.

*Damn, I'll never get out now. No way will they cut me any slack after that.*

Disgusted with herself, Faith finally nodded off to sleep.

She awoke with a start. *Someone's in here with me!*

She jerked upright and put her back to the wall, frantically surveying the dark room. She couldn't see a thing, but a sense she'd long learned to trust made her focus her attention on the far corner.

"Good eye," a soft voice said from the corner.

"What are you doing here?" Faith demanded, listening closely in case he wasn't alone.

"Got a job offer for you," was the calm response.

Faith almost laughed at the absurdity of it, but controlled herself. "How the hell did you get in here?"

Her eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the darkness, but she still sensed more than saw the man's shrug. "They haven't built the prison I can't get into. Or out of, come to that."

Faith started to ask what he meant, but stopped herself. Instead, she said, "You said you're here to offer me a job. How do I know I can trust you?"

The man laughed, a harsh, cold sound. "You can't. And I can't trust you. But we need each other. You need me to get out of here."

"And why do you need me?"

Another shrug. "They tell me you're the one for the job."

"Who's 'they?'? Faith demanded.

"The people who sent me," the man answered with infuriating calm. "The people who are gonna send me home and fix it so you can stay out after we do this job."

"Send you home?" Faith was getting more bewildered by the second. "What do you mean?"

"Long story, and I don't understand any of it. They said it was a dimensional vortex. I have to take their word for it. And I also have to get you on board."

Faith had a thousand questions, but went with the one that seemed the most important. "What's the job?"

The man nodded in apparent approval. "We're going in after what they called a nest of demons, if you can believe that."

"You don't believe in demons?" Faith asked.

He snorted. "Hell, no. These things sound like some of the shit the Chinese threw against us in the War, though. Genetic engineering, the brass called it. Damned disturbing, we called it."

Faith ignored the new questions his words evoked. There would be time later. "So you're gonna bust me out and we're going to kill demons?" It sounded like just what she'd been hoping for. It sounded too good to be true.

"That's the plan, yeah," the man said.

Faith gave a mental shrug. *Why not?* "Okay, I'm in," she said. "But if we're working together, we need to know each other. My name's Faith. What's yours?"

The man's hands came up in front of him and Faith heard him strike a match. She blinked as the sudden light hit her eyes. Opening them a second later, she got her first clear look at him as he carefully lit a cigarette.

He was tall, thin and heavily muscled. He wore black combat boots and canvas pants with a camoflauge pattern. He had a holstered gun at each hip, and his belt held a number of other weapons, as well as other objects Faith couldn't identify. His t-shirt was black, as was the long leather coat he wore.

Looking at his face, Faith saw that he was probably in his mid-thirties. His hair was dark and shaggy, and his face was covered in stubble. His left eye was covered with a black leather patch, but his remaining eye glinted in amusement as he watched Faith study him. He offered her a thin smile as he shook out the match, then answered her question.

"Call me Snake," he whispered.