"Scott!"

The first thing he heard was white noise. The next was the transition of soft whispers calling, to slight concern, to a voice screaming. He felt he would recognise the voice, or even what it was calling, but he couldn't quite grasp those memories. He couldn't grasp anything beyond numbness.

That numbness became discomfort.

Suddenly, he let out a wail before he could send the signal to his mouth to wail, and then came the pain that told his voice what to do before the rest of his body. Every part of him was on fire, but his body was wooden. He couldn't move, nor could he hear anything. His screaming, he soon came to realise, was in his own mind, sinking in to the background like water down the drain, once having substance. But now it had drowned in the pain, so intense that screaming did it an injustice.

Still, he heard that word, and a few others, as panicked as the last.

"Scott! Wake up! Please, come on!"

He had no clue who it was, or what it wanted from him. He had no time for them anyway, he could only wait and hurt and reel until his mind's ears were deaf.

…

"Alenia, Alenia please, Alenia!"

Her eyes coaxed open to the mother's figure rushing into her room and back again, then back in. "Alenia!"

The light burst through her eyes with invasive arrogance and then found Carla, who had her hands braces towards her. Relief swelled in her expression, but the tears kept streaming.

"What is it?" She asked, and cleared her throat. She could barely remember even getting to her room.

Carla rushed out, grabbing Alenia's arm on the way. "It's your brother, he's not waking up."

They found Michael sat on the edge of the bed, calmly shaking Scott's chest with one hand. "Son, come on. Stop messing."

Scott lay still, peacefully sleeping in his shirt and black jeans from the previous night, apparently unchanged. Alenia had noticed how pale he was becoming, and no changes processed now. He was just sleeping.

"Check his pulse."

Her father looked back at her with tired eyes, rationality battling with dread. He turned back, and traced Scott's neck. It found the spot, and then after a few seconds traced another. "Nothing."

A thud echoed through Alenia's feet, and she sunk to put her arms around Carla's slumped body. "Call the ambulance," her muffled voice wept into her own lap. She looked tiny.

"Mom, you know we can't do that. Look, Jasper explained, Scott and I are going to change, this might just be part of it."

Alenia met Michael's eyes for support, but they looked sunken. He stood robotically, and patted her head. "What did he say?"

Her voice rushed out breathlessly, sometimes stumbling over words. "He said that the vampire part has just been trying to gain the upper hand, and as the change happens, we'll become more like them. Eventually, we stop changing and we're the same thing. Breathing, eating, heart beats, all that goes.

"What Jasper didn't tell you is that sometimes the change is too much, and the body will reject it," he retorted coldly. "Not every human survives the transition."

"But what happens when the change starts taking place? Bella told me! The body paralyses itself and it's like dying, but you wake up as one of them. She remembers it, and so do the others. It's the same as what's happening now, he's just changing-"

"Changing into what, Ali?!" He mother erupted. Her face contorted into one of immense panic. "What on earth will we have living under our roof? What will he do for food? How the hell can we keep him here if that happens?"

"Car-"

"NO! I know I'm not one of you in that sense, and that terrifies me around them. Esme's told me things too, you know. Newborns, she called them, they all come out of it with one thing on their mind; food. What will I do against him?"

Alenia's mind swam and her voice was drowning. "Are you saying you want him not to live through this?"

Her father crouched down. "Alenia, Carla, lets just get to bed and reassess ourselves. What youre saying, sweetheart, makes sense, and we'll just wait and see. That's not what your mother is saying."

Carla slumped beneath Alenia's limp arm, and she stood. Trancelike, she made her way to the room, leaving her parents to discuss whatever the hell Carla implied.

…

The next morning was painful to endure, and school felt like a welcome haven. The dining room table was met with one empty seat, and the absence of Scott's sarcasm was felt, with only the person left upstairs. Alenia thought that, when it happened to her, he would liken the situation to Gremlins, and she would be the questionable creature in the pod. The thought was absent and met with no humour, but it was real. His body was the pod, and whatever was inside him was changing. She felt sick, and guilty. Had the Cullen's activated something, or was it a change just waiting to happen, an object in constant motion no matter what the hell crossed its path?

The only person she could ask about the situation was just Bella, because her memories were fresh. She would use her gift, but it felt invasive. From what she had gathered, age had changed each of them; mentally, Carlisle was ancient, and Jasper not much younger. He was quite different from the naïve green eyed boy on horseback.

The car of the man in question sounded itself outside, followed by quiet footsteps, her hearing ever impressing her. He didn't have to knock anymore; she greeted him in a flash.

"What's wrong?" were the first words. Of course, he could sense it.

She shook the question away and pulled the door to a close, towing her bag over her shoulder. "Tell you on the way."

In the car, silence fell, and his concern intensified. "Well?"

Her eyes fell on her hands. How would she explain? She couldn't say he was dead, but she didn't know.

"How do you explain the period of change that takes place while you're changing?"

She looked up, and he frowned at her. "I call it simulated death, I guess, why?"

"Ok. Scott…he may be in…" her faltered around the words. Her breath shook its way from her lips. "Scott's erm…" A tear tickled her cheek. "He's not waking up."

All Jasper answered with was a short exhalation of breath, so cold she caught the mist in her peripheral vision. His hand laid itself delicately onto her shaking one. "It would be best he is taken to our house, for safety."

"What will he turn into? Will he be the same, you know, as you?"

She was looking at his lips sharply, monitoring every uncertain move they made, before they stopped and changed what they were going to say. "I'm not certain. He may be like every newborn, the phase may last a shorter period of time. On the other hand he may be unchanged personality wise, just without an appetite for whatever he litters the house with," he explained offhandedly, sending a teasing look her way. Alenia just felt exhausted all of a sudden. She adjusted so her body rested into the seat, and stared out the window.

"Id rather that than blood everywhere."

Jasper left her to her thoughts for the last few moments of the journey to school, and she wondered herself in circles.

Jasper was a newborn once, and she'd witnessed how that went for him. She felt his torture in her dreams as he killed, created, and killed the created. Some of them were for sport, some were for Maria, some were on her orders and some were mercy killings.

But Jasper was Jasper now, a man kinder than his human self with better morality than anyone. She was going to spend the rest of her life with a man who considered himself a monster; would her brother be the same?

Or would he turn out just like Rowan? Sneaking into rooms in the dead of night, teasing and killing and all for the sake of a woman; Alice. That scenario matched suspiciously well to that of Jasper's.

Then the loop started again.

"Jasper, can you calm me down please?"

At once a wave of calm washed over her, and they arrived in the parking lot.