All rights belong to Stephanie Meyer.
Read and review please.
Hope you all enjoy.Chapter One
My favourite time of day. Sunset. The colours of the sky, the smell of the warm, evening air, the chorus of the birds and the insects...it was all so soothing. A natural symphony designed just for me. My perch was cool against my skin. The stone was smooth, weathered by centuries of harsh rain and howling winds. The moss had been worn away by my frequent visits to this place. I'd only been here a few weeks but already I had taken this unruly wilderness and made it my own. The clearing had morphed somehow to suit me. The only place that I had left my mark was on this rock, but I had been here so many times before that the forest, the animals, knew this was my area, they had become accustomed to my visits. There was this one small family of rabbits. I always brought some food for them, just left it at the edge of the clearing and then waited for them to come. I enjoyed watching them, marvelled in the simplicity of their existence. Did rabbits ever question the nature of their being? Did they ever search for their place in life? No, they just hopped about, evaded predators, found food and a warm place to sleep. Simple. I envied them...not the fur, or the hopping or the predators, just the simplicity.
My life was far from simple...in fact the simplest part of my life was the act of drawing breath. I had come to Forks to try and escape my past, to erase the demons that haunted me...but there was no such luck. No matter how far I ran they found me. Even when I wasn't physically reminded of my past the memories were still there. I was a slave to them. Nightmares invaded my sleep and terrifying visions plagued me during my waking hours. No matter how hard I tried to forget, the demons were always there, so there was nothing left to do but accept it and try and get on with my life. That's what I was doing in Forks, Washington, but nothing was ever easy.
I ran my stiff fingers through my hair, feeling the wavy brown strands slide between them. I glanced at my watch and realised I'd been out longer than I'd intended. I heaved a sigh and stared after the slight fog as it wafted away on the evening breeze. I stretched out my legs and slowly leapt off the rock, a few dried leaves and twigs crunched under my feet. I turned around and retraced the familiar path out of the forest. It was getting dark and the shadows were closing in on me but I had walked this path a thousand times before. I knew where every root snaked its way out of the soil, I knew ever path of nettles, every rock and every low-hanging branch. I could find my way home blindfolded.
After a couple of minutes the forest began to disappear. Fewer and fewer trees surrounded me and my house came into view. The white paint was starting to peel slightly, I'd have to remind Charlie about that. It wouldn't help the situation if the house started to rot from the outside-in. Ahh Charlie, to everyone else he was my Dad but to me, he was the man who helped me escape. He risked his life to give me my freedom and since that day we've looked out for each other. He taught me how to assimilate into society. I used my adorable puppy-dog eyes to get him dates. We were quite a team. Charlie gave me life and in return I give him my gratitude, protection, admiration, and yes love.
I walked up to the back and slowly wiped my feet on the mat before entering. The smell of chicken greeted me. Charlie was psychic when it came to food. He always knew what I was craving. I turned into the kitchen, following the aroma and saw the freshly roasted chicken on the counter. My mouth immediately filled with saliva and I began to pick at the skin. Steam escaped from the juicy meat and I slid the crunchy skin over my lips and into my mouth. I savoured the taste, my favourite in the world.
"What do you think you're doing?" Damn! Busted! I turned around slowly, a piece of skin still clutched between my teeth. I grinned sheepishly at Charlie as he stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his mouth set in a stern line but a glint of a smile shining in his eyes.
I gulped down the last of the chicken skin. "It smelled so good. It was a moment of weakness. My peers pressured me to do it. I was possessed and knew not what I did...take your pick!" His face cracked into a smile and he joined me at picking at the chicken skin. Twenty minutes later we were both sat at the kitchen table with plates heaped with roast chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots and gravy. I was a slave to food. We sat in a comfortable silence, just enjoying the meal that was in front of us. Charlie mopped the last of his gravy up with a slice of bread before folding his hands delicately under his chin and staring at me thoughtfully. I set my cutlery down on the plate and returned his gaze. Questions were coming, I could just feel it.
"Bella, have you thought about school?" Crap-sticks. I was hoping that would slip his mind. I was happy to hang-out at home. Playing Xbox, watching movies, doing house work. I was content with that life, at least it kept me out of trouble...but school? Other kids? People? Lessons? Homework? I'd been through some pretty scary situations in my life but the thought of school made my skin crawl. I gulped slightly, my gaze dropping to just below his chin.
"It never really crossed my mind. Can't I just stay here?" I began picking at the hairs on the back of my arms. It was a nervous habit that I couldn't remember picking up, it had been with me as long as I could remember.
"You know that's not an option Bella. I have a pretty high-profile job here, it would be strange if the town Sheriff neglected his only daughters education. The 'family death' story can't hold up much longer." I hated it when he was right. I especially hated it when he used the tone of voice that he was using now. That calm, sweet, fatherly tone. He knew it got to me because it was the first voice I remember hearing as a child. It was also the only kind voice I ever heard as a child. Such a master manipulator, it must have come from his military training.
"You're right Charlie. I'm just nervous I guess." He reached over and placed a protective hand on top of mine. He smiled sweetly, his thumb rubbing across my skin comfortingly.
"I know Bells, but remember, you're faster, stronger, smarter and prettier than they are. If they try to hurt you, you hurt them first." His smile was infectious and my face cracked into a goofy grin. He was right. I could take whatever anybody had to throw at me. Nothing could ever be worse than being there again.
That night I couldn't sleep. Charlie had rung the principle at his home, it was all arranged. Sheriffs get special privileges it seems. I just had to show up, sign a couple of forms and start classes tomorrow morning. I had my secret-shoe box open on my bed, the contents spread across the bed spread in a mess. There were photo's, and ID tag, sheets of paper with numbers, graphs, strange medical and mathematical symbols on them. It was my past. I had no family, just this shoe box and Charlie. I was grown, in a lab. From what Charlie says it had been happening for years. Rather than making soldiers better, governments had begun making better soldiers...children. Harvested from the DNA of the best, brightest and bravest. According to my file I had six 'parents' if you wanted to call them that. A US Army Ranger who single-handedly took out a terrorist strong-hold in Afghanistan. A female British scientist who has one of the highest IQ's ever recorded. An Olympic swimmer. A world famous gymnast. An extremely famous survival expert and adventurer. And a member of the British special forces. All of those samples of DNA had been chopped and changed. The best parts from each person had been genetically altered, amplified and combined to create me. I was a freak. A weapon. A child soldier built for the sole purpose of furthering the governments political and military aims overseas. I could walk at 3 months. I could talk at 8 months. I could speak 4 languages by 18 months. I could run a mile in under two minutes by the time I was 4 and when I was 6 I completed my first marathon...on a treadmill of course. I was fed well, taught well and monitored 24/7. Everything was white, I remember that. The walls, the doors, the floors, the chairs and tables. White. Not varying shades of white, the same blinding white of the Arctic. I lived my life in a sterile environment.
Charlie had been assigned to watch over me. There were nine of us at the Facility. I was the only girl. For some reason they'd been convinced that the male-form would produce the best soldiers. I can understand the logic. Men are stronger and faster than woman. And yet I was their most prodigious subject. I was the strongest. The fastest. The smartest. I had no fear in combat. I could survive in the woods for over two weeks without food or water and without being captured. I was the only subject who never broke under interrogation and I never flinched when I pulled the trigger. I was their star pupil. Nobody had names there. We were all numbers. One to nine. I was B.E.L.A number six. Bio-Engineered Legion Asset. The US Government wanted a legion of us. They started with nine and now, as far as I know, they're down to eight. My spine still bore the needle marks from the innumerable performance enhancers they pumped us full of. Fifteen years in a laboratory-prison. Charlie got me out. Charlie saved me. He couldn't bear the thought of me becoming a killer, a weapon, expendable. Shortly after we escaped, he'd stumbled back into the crappy motel we were hiding in one night. He'd been drinking. The previous day he'd had to kill two men he used to work with who had been tracking us. I put him to bed, pulled his boots off, placed a glass of water on his bedside table and the waste bin by his bed. He kept trying to sit up and I kept pushing him down gently. Then he just grabbed my hand and kissed it softly.
"You were such a beautiful baby you know. Such a good kid. They told us...told us not to care, not to get attached. You were targets. But you weren't. You were a child. Such a sweet, beautiful child. I couldn't ask for a better daughter." That was it. Fatherhood overrode Charlie's sense of duty. I would never be able to repay him.
We'd been on the run for almost eighteen months now. Charlie had gotten us new Id's. We'd both had our fingerprints removed and he'd found a job as a Sheriff at Forks a little under a month ago. Some elaborate story telling on his resume had helped land him the job and my little talent for accents had come in handy with his references. I actually think he loved his job, his new life. His face was losing some of the worry it had borne for so long. His eyes were getting their warmth back. He'd even taken to growing a moustache. He said he'd always wanted one but with his position in the military it was against regulations. It was good to see him getting back to human again. I'd worried about him for so long. We could never let our guard completely down but at least now we weren't sleeping in different towns every night and constantly looking over our shoulders in fear. Here we could almost be people.
I reached across my bed, taking hold of Charlie's old ID tag. It was a simple black rectangle. A thumb print in silver on one side and Charlie's name, rank and service number on the other side. I wrapped my fingers around the cold black metal and walked over to my desk. I hunted around in the top drawer until I found a spare chain. I slipped the tag onto the chain and slid it over my head. It rested comfortably just above my breast-bone. The metal was cool against my skin but then again, most things were. My regular body temperature was 102 degrees and my heart rate ran at a healthy 165 beats per minute. I was special indeed.
I gave in to the inevitable. I cleared my bed and slipped under the covers. I turned my lamp off and reluctantly closed my eyes. Sleep came about forty-five minutes later. It was a strange night. There were no dreams, just blackness and a sense of uneasy anticipation as if something was about to happen but I couldn't for the life of me think what that might be.
The next morning I pushed my alarm clock off the bedside table a little too forcefully. It crashed into my bedroom door with bits of it scattering across my floor. A small downside of being a government experiment was I always had to be extra careful. I couldn't run too fast or push too hard in case I drew attention. I'd have to remember that in school. I quickly showered and dragged a pile of clothes out of my wardrobe. I chewed my lip nervously. Did I want to dress how I normally did, ripped jeans and baggy t-shirts or did I want to blend in with the rest of them? Comfortable or fashionable? I decided to mix and match. I chose my ripped jeans and, a pair of black converse and plain, white fitted v-neck t-shirt with a black v-neck tank-top to go over it. I looked understatedly presentable. I grabbed a brush and pulled it through my hair, letting it fall over my shoulders. I wrapped a hair band around my wrist just in case I needed it later. Pulling my backpack out from under my bed I filled it with notepads and pens and grabbed my purse and threw that in there too. All packed and ready for my first day at school.
Charlie n was waiting for me downstairs. He threw me a worried grin and poured me a cup of coffee I grabbed the warm mug and dropped a couple of spoons of sugar into the dark liquid. I decided against breakfast, I was too nervous to think about food and just sipped my coffee. Thirty minutes later and Charlie was pulling up in the school car park just outside of a sign that read "School Office".
"This is it, you ready Bella?" Charlie still had a worried look on his face.
"Well it's now or never. I've faced worse." I grinned sheepishly and pulled by bag up from between my legs.
"I'll be back to pick you up when school's out, OK?" I reached over and squeezed his hand as it gripped the steering wheel. I nodded my understanding and opened the door, quickly jumping out of the police cruiser that I noticed was starting to attract stares from the quickly growing crowd in the car park.
"Good luck kid." Charlie waved to me lazily before turning the cruiser round and driving out of the school.
Good luck...I was going to need it.
My first three classes went by in a haze. After I registered at the office and collected my schedule and a crudely drawn map of the school, I stumbled through the crowds and entered my first class. English. I'd introduced myself to the teacher, Mr Murdock, I collected the reading list, introduced myself to the class and taken my seat next one of the windows and a shy-looking girl with razor-straight black hair. She introduced herself as Angela and offered to show me around. We compared schedules and luckily the only class I didn't have with Angela today was last period, PE.
I liked Angela immediately. She didn't ask me the usual questions...where are you from? What brings you here? How do you like the weather? Instead she asked me if I'd read the reading list before, she said she was sorry to hear about my mother before explaining that Forks was a small town and everybody had heard the story. (My cover story was that my mother, and Charlies wife had died in a house fire a couple of months ago and I'd stayed off school to deal with it. Which was why we moved here...a fresh start, in a nutshell.) She asked about my old school in Oregon, part of the cover, and asked what I was into. We shared much the same taste in music and films. I was still new to music and movies. Those sort of things weren't permitted at the institute. Instead there were military strategy movies, documentary's and movie dossiers on important political and military figures across the globe. Since gaining my freedom Charlie had been more than happy to help me catch up on what I'd been missing. To his dismay though, I'd fallen in love with musicals and old black and white movies. The kind of films that actually told a story and didn't rely on shock value or nudity.
English flew by, as did Chemistry and then Spanish. I was now waiting in line for lunch. I was famished, I was regretting my decision earlier that morning not to have breakfast. I heaped a hot dog onto my plate, cheesy fries, a bowl of coleslaw, a brownie and portion of salad before grabbing an energy drink and following Angela to her table which was already crowded. One other girl and two guys were already sat there, talking animatedly amongst themselves. I recognised the girl as Jessica from my history class and one of the guys, Mike I think his name was, was from my Spanish class too. Forks must be tiny!
"Hey guys, I'd like you all the meet Bella." I nodded at them and tried to plaster the most genuine smile I could muster onto my face. They all beamed at me and Mike pulled one of the chairs out for me to sit on.
"Bella, nice to meet you!" Mike greeted me and the rest of them added their own sentiments to the mix. The other guy, Ben, I noticed had his arm placed protectively around the back of Angela's chair. Mike and Jessica weren't as tactful as Angela and began bombarding me with questions about myself. I answered them as awkwardly as I could for a few minutes before I felt a small gust of wind against the small of my back. I turned to find its source and that's when I saw her, the embodiment of beauty.