Chapter Four
The last star had faded and the sun's golden rays reached all corners of the sky; it was morning. Marisa knew she was going to have to sleep during daylight hours but her body's clock was working against being nocturnal. She sat up in her sleeping bag and called her spy cam Iggy over. Marisa had sent it to follow her and Edward because she always liked to record her tricks. Doing so might seem dangerous but Marisa had given Iggy Artificial Intelligence far beyond the legal limit. It would only respond to her no matter how much it had been tampered with. Being the top computer engineer student and a trickster certainly had it's advantages. But for the time being there was no upgrade that would allow Iggy to fly as fast as Edward so it missed most of the journey. Iggy was able to find its way to Marisa though about an hour after she stopped.
Marisa downloaded the footage Iggy caught on its journey and figured out how far she had travelled. The map of the world appeared on her eye screen, with her current position and city marked. The distance Edward ran in such a short amount of time was incredible. Marisa was right, he was no ordinary Pretty. She opened a window to the interweb in her eye screen and uploaded a search engine. Marisa thought of all the unusual traits Edward possessed and entered them into a news search. Only two feeds appeared, one kicked a few days ago about scientists beginning to experiment with iris colour and emotions, the other kicked a month ago showing debates between cities who hoped to reinstate the Olympics. Nothing about the cold skin or inhuman speed. No clique, operation or research were publicly producing these traits. Maybe Edward was a city's secret, maybe he was part of a special police? Marisa had learnt about Specials in her history class after the mind-rain had revealed them but those Specials tried to contain the world not free people from it.
Thinking back to that class made Marisa remember some cultural oddities of the Rusties. In order to explain what they didn't know, teach a lesson or for entertainment, Rusties would invent legends. While ancient history class never discussed these stories in depth, the teacher did mention that many myths contained various creatures with superhuman abilities. Feeling a bit silly, but realizing she had nothing to lose, Marisa thought of the same characteristics she had before but under folklore.
Vampires appeared at the top of Marisa's eye screen and she opened the feed. Violent movie clips and gruesome images blurred through her vision. A piece of text from a fairytale flicked by next and Marisa read it like a checklist: Pale, check; cold skin, check; inhuman strength, check; fear of sunlight, maybe; thirst for human blood, not check? Marisa felt the colour from her face drain as she read the last point. Was Edward a dangerous monster? She continued to look through the images and found a range of portrayals, there were suave cloaked figures juxtaposed with decaying zombie-like creatures. Marisa felt a sense of paranoia rise through her. She looked to her hoverboard and then to the river. She could run away but she had no where to go, there was no way she could head back to her city on foot. Marisa took a deep breath and organized her thoughts logically. Vampires were a Rusty fantasy, and if Edward wanted to drink her blood he wouldn't have taken her to the middle of nowhere and leave her, he would have bitten her the second they were out of sight of the city. And he said she needed his help, though Marisa still didn't know what that meant. Edward must be some city's invention, Marisa reasoned, but something in her mind knew that wasn't true. Desperately trying to ignore that voice, Marisa fell into an uneasy sleep.
Thanks for the reviews everyone. And Non-Canon pairings? I'm writing the story one chapter at a time so I can't make any promises but the focus of this story definately is not romance... So I'm going to say probably not.