The Science Lab

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, Midnight Sun or anything else in the series as I am not Stephenie Meyers.

AN: An alternate universe where Edward didn't resist temptation after Bella sat down at the desk next to him. For very obvious reasons this will only be a one-shot. The first portion is directly quoted from the partial draft of Midnight Sun and is in italics as such (I don't normally do that, but in this story, it just seemed to feel right). Fair warning, this tale is morbid.

In the classroom, I settled into my chair and let my books – props, again; they held nothing I didn't already know – spill across the table. I was the only student who had a table to himself. The humans weren't smart enough to know that they feared me, but their survival instincts were enough to keep them away.

The room slowly filled as they trickled in from lunch. I leaned back in my chair as I waited for the time to pass. Again, I wished I was able to sleep.

Because I'd been thinking about her, when Angela Weber escorted the new girl through the door, her name intruded on my attention

Bella seems just as shy as me. I'll bet today is really hard for her. I wish I could say something...but it would probably just sound stupid...

Yes! Mike Newton thought, turning in his seat to watch the girls enter.

Still, from the place where Bella Swan stood, nothing. The empty space where her thoughts should be irritated and unnerved me.

She came closer, walking down the aisle beside me to get to the teacher's desk. Poor girl; the seat next to me was the only one available. Automatically, I cleared what would be her side of the table, shoving my books into a pile. I doubted she would feel very comfortable there. She was in for a long semester – in this class, at least. Perhaps though, sitting beside her, I'd be able to flush out her secrets...not that I'd ever needed close proximity before...not that I would find anything worth listening to...

Bella Swan walked into the flow of the heated air that blew toward me from the vent.

Her scent hit me like a wrecking ball, like a battering ram. There was no image violent enough to encapsulate the force of what happened to me in that moment.

In that instant, I was nothing close to the human I'd once been; no shreds of the humanity I'd managed to cloak myself in remained.

I was a predator. She was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.

There was no room full of witnesses – they were already collateral damage in my head. The mystery of her thoughts was forgotten. Her thoughts meant nothing, for she would not go on thinking them much longer.

I was a vampire, and she was the sweetest blood I'd smelled in eighty years.

I hadn't imagined such a scent could exist. If I'd known it did, I would have gone searching for it long ago. I would have combed the planet for her. I could imagine the taste...

Thirst burned my throat like fire. My mouth was baked and desiccated. The fresh flow of venom did nothing to dispel that sensation. My stomach twisted with the hunger that was an echo of the thirst. My muscles coiled to spring.

Not a full second had passed. She was still taking the same step that had put her downwind of me.

As her foot touched the ground, her eyes slid toward me, a movement she clearly meant to be stealthy. Her glance met mine, and I saw myself reflected in the wide mirror of her eyes.

The shock of the face I saw there saved her life for a few thorny moments.

She didn't make it easier. When she processed the expression on my face, blood flooded her cheeks again, turning her skin the most delicious color I'd ever seen. I could barely think through it. My thoughts raged, resisting control, incoherent.

She walked more quickly now, as if she understood the need to escape. Her haste made her clumsy – she tripped and stumbled forward, almost falling into the girl seated in front of me. Vulnerable, weak. Even more than usual for a human.

I tried to focus on the face I'd seen in her eyes, a face I recognized with revulsion. The face of the monster in me – the face I'd beaten back with decades of effort and uncompromising discipline. How easily it sprang to the surface now!

The scent swirled around me again, scattering my thoughts and nearly propelling me out of my seat.

No.

My hand gripped under the edge of the table as I tried to hold myself in my chair. The wood was not up to the task. My hand crushed through the strut and came away with a palmful of splintered pulp, leaving the shape of my fingers carved into the remaining wood.

Destroy Evidence. That was a fundamental rule. I quickly pulverized the edges of the shape with my fingertips, leaving nothing but a ragged hole and a pile of shavings on the floor which I scattered with my foot.

Destroy evidence. Collateral damage...

I knew what had to happen now. The girl would have to come sit beside me, and I would have to kill her.

The innocent bystanders in this classroom, eighteen other children and one man, could not be allowed to leave this room, having seen what they would soon see.

I flinched at the thought of what I must do. Even at my very worst. I had never committed this kind of atrocity. I had never killed innocents, not in over eight decades. And now I planned to slaughter twenty of them at once.

The face of the monster in the mirror mocked me.

Even as part of me shuddered away from the monster, another part was planning it.

If I killed the girl first, I would have only fifteen or twenty seconds with her before the humans in the room would react. Maybe a little bit longer, if at first they did not realize what I was doing. She would not have time to scream or feel pain: I would not kill her cruelly. That much I could give this stranger with her horribly desirable blood.

But then I would have to stop them from escaping. I wouldn't have to worry about the windows, too high up and small to provide an escape for anyone. Just the door – block that and they were trapped.

It would be slower and more difficult, trying to take them all down when they were panicked and scrambling, moving in chaos. Not impossible, but there would be much more noise. Time for lots of screaming. Someone would hear... and I'd be forced to kill even more innocents in this black hour.

And her blood would cool, while I murdered the others.

The scent punished me, closing my throat with dry aching...

So the witnesses first then.

I mapped it out in my head.

My mind was made up. I watched as Bella slowly turned to come down the aisle and take her seat by my side.

I could feel the seconds tick by, as I watched her walk toward my desk, in the first second she'd made two steps, in the second, she made three more, and in the third she was sitting down in the chair beside me, her movements stiff and awkward – her instincts obviously recognized I was a legitimate threat, even if her mind wasn't comprehending it – and the scent of her blood bloomed in an inexorable cloud around me.

She took one quick peak at me, and her face once again flushed with the blood that was screaming at me, promising an end to the pain in my throat in a way no other blood ever had. She shook her hair out, obviously trying to hide herself from me, but all it did was taunt me. I made my move.

I gently smacked the girl's head into the table, not to kill her, but to knock her unconscious so she couldn't scream while I took care of the witnesses. Then I jumped up from my desk and spun around, reaching forward and grabbing Ashley Dowling's head and snapping her neck before doing the same to Lee Stephens, their bodies slumped and fell off their chairs in the same instant. I didn't give myself time to think on that, be it to admire the symbiosis or to be horrified by my own blatant slaughter of life.

I dashed across the aisle to two in the row on the right, parallel to the two that I had just killed. I reached out and snapped the neck of both Kirk Randal and J.D. Smith in succinct tandem. It was impossible for me not to think of their names as I did it. I'd known these human children for over two years now. In fact the only one here I didn't know was her, and all of them had to die because of this stranger.

I spun, snapping June Richardson and Conner Peterson's necks. Six were already dead, and a mere second had passed. So far the noises of the breaking bones and the falling bodies hadn't penetrated through the rest of the students' mind, but it would soon.

I flipped over the desk as well as the one in front of it, and broke Angela Webber and Whitney Fuller's necks as I passed above them, before I landed in front of their desk. I turned and snapped Jeff Franklin and Theodore Brice's necks.

I jumped again, landing in front of the front desk. I spun and snapped Mike Newton's neck, a small voice in my head told me that I shouldn't have made his death quite that fast – his mental voice being one that was particularly annoying. I snapped Jennifer Ford's neck as well, the girl sitting beside him.

Second number two ticked by.

I spun to face Mr. Banner who was starting to realize something was really wrong, his eyes widening. I knew that while he could see the bodies falling, could see I was no longer in my seat, he wouldn't be able to actually see me doing all this, moving too fast for the human eyes to properly perceive what was happening.

I stepped up, reached forward and snapped his neck.

Then I turned to the final six witnesses and moved to the closest two. Reaching out, I felt the snap of both Robert Sawyer and Katie Marshall's necks without even fully realizing I'd broken them. But I was in a hurry now. I couldn't risk any of the remaining students raising an alarm. I didn't want to kill any more than what was in this class.

Rushing forward, I snapped the necks of Janet Loveland and Gage Jackson, before finally stopping in front of the last desk of witnesses, their heads were both turned to look behind them, realizing the danger that they were fully in. I could sense their panic rising, but they wouldn't get a chance to scream. I reached forward and snapped the neck of Bridget Longfellow and then Mercy Rolands.

The third second ticked by.

If it weren't for the horror of what I'd just done, I'd almost be impressed by my speed. I knew that, even though I'd done away with the witnesses, I was running out of time. It wouldn't be all that much longer before one of my siblings would realize what I'd done. In fact, I was surprised that Alice hadn't seen this. She must be focused so hard on Jasper that she wasn't letting anything else through.

I stepped over to the girl. It had been my initial intention to break her neck first, so she wouldn't suffer any unnecessary pain from what I was about to do. But I'd already committed nineteen atrocities in a matter of a couple of seconds. I saw no point in wasting the effort that would prevent myself from committing a few more.

She was still unconscious anyways, and she'd be drained of blood in a minute or two at the most. I knew that by the time she'd wake up from me biting her, she'd already be to the point of delirium from the blood loss. She'd never feel the pain.

I picked her up from where she was slumped at the desk and brought her throat to my mouth, biting down with my razor sharp teeth. The first taste of her blood was pure nectarine and I knew I would never be able to feed off animals again. Instead, I would search the ends of the earth for others like her.

I kept swallowing, feeling the cool relief that her blood gave me. Part of me wished there was a way to slow the ebb of her blood so I could savor the measly five liters – three and half left – in her body even more. I knew it was impossible though.

My eyes closed, unable to believe how blissfully cool her blood made my throat feel. In all my life, even when I had hunted humans regularly, nothing gave me the kind of relief that this one human's did.

I could sense as she started to come to, but by then more than half of her blood was gone, and she was too weak to struggle. I could already hear her heart struggling, trying to keep up with the massive blood loss, but I knew it would soon stop completely.

I could feel her throat move under my mouth move, probably trying to form a word, but there was no way for her to really do that with where my mouth was at. I continued to drink.

As I swallowed more of the sweetest relief I'd ever tasted, I heard her heart falter a final time before it stopped completely. I finished the last of her blood then dropped her drained body to the ground.

I looked around and then quickly turned on several of Brunson Burner gas jets, before stealing a lighter out of Newton's pocket. I headed to the door, dropping the lighter behind me after flicking it on, and then left the classroom behind, running toward the forest.

A few seconds later, a boom shook the ground. I refused to look back and kept running. I wasn't going to stay and look my family in the eyes.

Besides, I now had a new mission.

AN: As I already stated, this is a clear one-shot, but because I can never end something like this without imagining what would happen next, here's a brief summation. Edward left his family behind and traveled the countryside looking for others with sweet blood. He found several, though none as good as Bella. Eventually his escapades garnered the attention of the Volturi guard who were scent to take him out. As Aro was not with guard's entourage, they never found out his his ability. He was tortured by Jane for his creator's name, but he refused to tell and was eventually killed.

For the record, while I have seen many stories that started with him killing the students in the lab and stealing Bella or even changing Bella after starting to kill her. I have never read a story we actually finished the deed. Which is precisely why I did it.