Buffy connects this song with the song Spike was talking about in the cellar. Xander concludes that the song is Spike's "trigger." He explains to the gang the role of a "trigger" in making "sleeper agents." Willow asks if this bit of lore is just something left from Xander's oh-so-convenient Magical Military Memory, but he corrects her: "No, it's left over from every army movie I've ever seen." Heh. Xander realizes that, since they've all been haunted lately, perhaps Spike is being haunted as well. Furthermore, "What if Spike's ghosts have figured out a way…to control him?" Buffy wants to know how they can override his trigger. Xander blithely mentions that usually sleeper agents complete their tasks and then blow their own heads off or steal a submarine. I could live with either of those. I'm almost over my death wish for Spike. Don't get me wrong -- I'd rather see him dead than see him at all, but all I really care about is that he just goes and leaves me in peace. Buffy decides that she's heard enough; it's time now to parcel out the real work to everyone else. She dispatches Willow and Dawn to do research while she leans back and has a margarita or something.

Sunnydale High. Principal Wood leaves his office late in the evening as The Ominous Violin Of Ambiguous Characterization plays. He walks through the halls, then stops at the basement door, which is, once again, left unlocked. Can someone in Sunnydale please cut a key for the Big Bad Beneath? Then they might not need that silly little "No Student Access" sign. Cut to the basement. Wood strides purposefully along, giving the impression that he knows exactly where he's going. He enters the room with the Seal of Danzig and sees Jonathan's body still splayed across it. He is, in a word, nonplussed. You couldn't plus this guy with this scene even if you had a whole plethora of plus-y things. Sometimes making words up is easier than really writing.

Cut to somewhere dank and dark where Spike is chained up. Finally. As long as he stays there, I don't need to see him chained up somewhere in direct sunlight. He's still unconscious and has a bloody lip. Buffy tromps down the basement stairs with a bowl of water. She takes a cloth and dabs at the dried blood on Spike's lip. He starts to come to, and his first words are, "Did I hurt anybody?" Well. I know Ace and I are awful tired of seeing you. So much so that having to sit through scenes in which you appear is actually a bit painful, but…oh. He was asking about people in the Sunnydale universe. Buffy fills him in on Andrew. Spike is confused as to Andrew's identity, but for some reason completely accepts Buffy explanation of "Tucker's brother." As if Spike went to school with the gang as some Sunnydale High exchange student from a hell dimension. Spike is all, "Boo hoo hoo, I don't know why I'm hurting people again when I went and got a shiny, happy soul just to prevent this." Buffy explains that he's being controlled by some sort of mystical force, and they're working on researching it. Spike: "Kill me." Buffy: "No." Sep: "If anyone is going to get the sweet release of death here, I'm first in line." Spike is all, "Do you know what I'm capable of?" And then proceeds to spell out exactly what he used to do to girls Dawn's age, implying that he used drain them very slowly so that they'd still be able to cry when he raped them. Spike still wants Buffy to kill him. And on my "which episode are they ripping off this time" scorecard, I heartily check off "Amends." As usual, Buffy is anti-death-penalty for vampires that she's slept with.