Disclaimer: SM owns what's hers, I own what's mine. Sorta. We can debate another time :-)


Chapter 2

EAM POV

"How long has he been out?"

Bella pulled her eyes away from Ed's pale face, pain and fear contorting her beautiful features as my compulsion to protect them both threatened to overwhelm my need for calm. I took a deep breath, trying to still my heart that insisted on pounding a staccato beat in sympathy with hers.

"I don't know," she whispered. "I shouted for him because I needed a hand with something on a top shelf. When he didn't answer, I came up here… and found him like this."

Pulse strong, skin cool and clammy – it was the strong pulse that ruled out shock. He appeared to have fainted, but… why?

I adjusted the blanket Bella had thrown over him - he was far too heavy for her to even consider moving from the hallway floor. She'd raised his feet and placed a small pillow under his head, and until I had more facts my years of medical training were worth shit as I watched my healthy son lay unconscious on the hardwood floor.

Her soft whimper drew me to her. Wrapping my arm around Bella's shoulders and pulling her close I breathed in deeply, desperate for her gentle scent to relax me as I tried to think of anything I could to ease our fears. Suddenly the dam broke as sobs shook her body, fingers grasping my shirt, clinging to the fabric as if it was the only thing that kept her from falling to the floor right next to our son. Holding her tightly, I whispered soothing and meaningless words, pushing back my own growing terror, the intuitive sense something about this felt familiar. I couldn't allow myself to lose it - right now my first priority was to be husband, father, and doctor.

"Shit."

We both jumped, Bella pulling out of my arms with a gasp as we both looked down. Ed lay there, eyes open and blinking against the bright light from the overhead bulb. I stood and lunged for the switch, quickly flipping it off and returning to his side.

"What happened?" Bella had his hand clasped tightly in her own, her fear replaced with concern. Over the years I'd gotten used to the bizarre fact she and I didn't appear to age, yet here we are with a full grown son. If he didn't look so much like her, you'd think she was his girlfriend instead of his mother… and I swallowed the sharp pang of jealously before it had a chance to take root. Our son was breathtakingly handsome, and it wasn't the first time I'd felt this irrational bite. If I had the guts to ever admit it to anyone, I'd find myself on a therapist's couch trying to explain why the father was afraid of an Oedipal complex when his wife was the epitome of devoted spouse. Course, sometimes I remembered the times I was jealous of a vampire writing in a book. I'd be the first to admit I wasn't the most rational guy around.

"I don't kn… Dad?" he focused his eyes on me, his voice a quiet rasp. "Dad, were you here earlier?"

What the fuck? No, no, no, this is not what I wanted to hear. My blood turned to ice because no, this wasn't going to fucking happen again. But the feeling, the knowing clawed inside me, tearing its way out to bring with it the full realization the nightmare was going to start again.

But right now, my job was to detach, and although this was my son I had to allow medical training to take over – remain objective, not panic, assess facts. I kept my face blank. Sort of.

"No, Ed, I just got home a few minutes ago." I gulped, hesitated, but knew I had to ask.

"Why?"

"He was here." Ed was calm, he was lucid, his pupils reacted normally, he wasn't hallucinating…

"Who?" Bella looked from Ed to me; her eyes growing wide as she quickly put the pieces together that had already fused in my own mind. "Where?"

Ed rolled to his side and sat up; his knees pulled up to his chin, and pointed down the hall. "There," he whispered, "You were, I mean he was there. He looked at me, and then turned." Taking a deep breath he wrapped his arms around his knees tighter, drawing them closer to his folded body. "He turned, and then walked through the wall."

Shooting to my feet I turned the switch back on, the hallway blazing in bright incandescent light. We all turned to look, and as one, our jaws dropped.

Inching my way slowly down the hall, each step as careful as if I might take one too many and fall off a cliff, I made my way bit by bit… and stopped – my hand running lightly over the wallpaper. It felt normal, familiar, the dry grass-colored texture rough under my palm as my hand slid along the wall and past the line where the wallpaper abruptly ended, continuing on to the satin feel of the royal blue latex paint.

Paint that now covered the walls in this end of the hall. Paint that hadn't been there when I'd left for the work that morning.

'********'

EAMC POV

Isabella stood next to me, her breathing labored and her amber eyes glowing in the hallway light. Both of us had our palms resting against the wall at the end of the hall, both of us feeling the minute bumps and machined patterns in the wallpaper that hadn't been there a few hours earlier.

"He was there, you know."

She looked at me sharply, the intelligence in her gold eyes fiercer than ever.

"The boy?"

"He's not a boy any longer," I chuckled. "He's a handsome young man, who looks astonishingly like you… well, like his mother." And then it occurred to me that perhaps…

"You're not sorry, I mean, you don't have any regrets that…"

"What are you… oh god no, sweetheart, none at all!" She reached up and smoothed her thumbs over my cheeks. "Don't cast me in with Rosalie. I'm fine without propagating myself, at least not in the conventional manner." She turned away with a sly grin.

She'd been working on something for over a year now, consulting with Carlisle on occasion. For some reason she withheld information on it, insisting she wanted to surprise me and bring me in on it at precisely the right time. The only thing I knew for sure was, she wasn't getting pregnant. As unique as she might be, there were limits. Of course, I didn't delude myself. If anyone could find a way to get what she wanted, it was my wife. I cleared my throat, trying to keep my mind focused. Even after 15 years, just the thought of Isabella as my wife sent chills down my spine, and an excess flow of venom into my nether regions.

"Anyway," she continued, ignoring the way I shifted my legs as my trousers grew uncomfortable, "the real question is, how did this happen? The journal is long gone."

Her line of questioning was an excellent deflationary tactic, and I took the opportunity to focus. Unlike the times when we had the journal and I… slipped, I felt no side effects or physical distress – just some brief disorientation. This time it would appear the change was to our surroundings, not to me. And although that was a comfort, it also set off warning bells.

Something was very different, and looking at the wall, something was potentially very dangerous.

"What did you see when I…er… left?"

"You kinda winked out, and then you were here. I think if I'd been human, I might not have seen you leave at all."

"I was there longer than that, 47 seconds from my relative position." I brushed my hand along the wall again. "This is the wallpaper in their home; it was on the wall I pushed through."

Isabella once again ran her hand over the patch of wallpaper; her eyes with that familiar inward stare, the kind she always got when she was puzzling out a problem. She backed up, tapped her finger on her chin and started talking, as much to herself as to me.

"We have a few issues here. First, why now? After almost fifteen years, why are the universes connecting again? Second, why wasn't something like a journal necessary? And maybe most importantly, did sending that message in the accelerator directly result in this?"

Looking back on it, our actions seemed to make no sense. It was almost as if we were all caught up in some kind of bizarre game, all of us excited after hearing about Alice's vision of the boy. With no thought of consequences, we laughed and played at creating the intellectual puzzle that would be the code, crafted the tiny package to carry it, and immediately booked a flight for Switzerland, and CERN.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, was located near Geneva on the France/Swiss boarder. It was the home of the Large Hadron Collider – the most powerful accelerator ever built, spanning through underground tunnels below both countries.

For years, the entire family had been fascinated by developments in particle physics – this Hadron Collider in particular. We'd followed the design, the development, the construction, and the protests from groups fearing the worst of what might happen if humans successfully unlocked the secrets of the universe. But the point of our current endeavor was the game – nothing more. Few understood just how boring immortality could be, and when seemingly harmless fun presented itself, it was hard to resist turning a mind experiment into the real thing.

And so, we played – getting into the labs without detection, inserting the tiny block of lead foil into the accelerator… and then the rest of the time spent enjoying the Alps with Isabella. We were close, but not too close, to Italy. I felt confident we wouldn't be detected, and Alice gave no indication of problems.

"Did you know the Internet was created at CERN?" Isabella looked at me as if I had two heads, and to be honest, I had no idea where that thought came from. I stepped away, rubbing my face. My thoughts were normally far more ordered than that, and Isabella knew it. Blaming it on arousal didn't seem feasible.

I was about to come up with an excuse, something to explain that bizarre outburst of random information when my phone rang. Digging it out of my pocket, I saw it was Carlisle.

"Is there anything wrong?" It was rare for him to phone in the middle of the day, especially a day he was scheduled to be with patients.

"I just got a call from an old Italian friend. He's asking me what the hell we're up to – his words exactly."

"I don't understand, Carlisle."

"It appears there's something wrong in Volterra. He wouldn't explain any further, other than to say they're changing residences immediately. Edward, something is so wrong he fears for the safety of his wife, his friends… and Aro believes you had something to do with it."

"That's absurd, I mean…" I stared at the wall while I answered, the words drying up in my throat.


A/N Hi! Yes, I know, it took a while. But it's been snowing here. And icing. And I've been trapped in hotels near my office. And they make me work at work.

Unreasonable!

I hope you enjoy this, and I hope it won't take as long to get out the next. Questions, just ask! Review if you like, say hi if you like.

And it looks like Vampward is in trouble with the big boys. In honor of the recent Federal Mafia arrests, we need to give Aro a name like... Aro the Fish. Help me name him. The winner gets... uh... hmm. I have a bag of black dog fur, suitable for spinning into the finest wool...

At the very least, the winner will get their name into an A/N. Yeah I know. :-)

A wondrous thank you to Books for beta'ing, to Isa for pre-reading, and most of all to my dear friends who are now convinced I'm insane :-)

And once again, I have Douglas. He's being hand-fed grapes by scantily-clad chipmunks. I keep my squirrels happy.

Where did I put my meds...