A/N: I don't own the Twilight characters, wish I did, but I just own a computer that can't run without power. I also have a huge obsession with this fiction, and it wouldn't leave my mind alone until it's written down somewhere. Might as well make you benefit from it...

Chapter 11

Rebooting the past

EPOV

The weekend had come and gone, and it was Monday morning, at last. I had been thinking of a justification to see Vickie ever since that talk with Alice on Friday night. But to be honest, there was not much left to say to our classmate, now that we knew what was wrong with her. We obviously needed to learn more about her disorder, which, according to Carlisle, was not even documented in the medical world. And I was also concerned because of Alice's visions about the Volturi. We didn't want to get involved with those opportunistic rulers ever again, so why would my whole family go to them in the future? Alice had warned me to do something about it, as if I was responsible for whatever would force us to seek advice from such unscrupulous creatures. Clearly, there was no way we would fly to Italy just to say hello to a bunch of vampires who were killing hundreds of tourists every year in order to survive, and who, after three thousand years, looked more like stone than like real people anyway. It would have to be a very serious matter that forced that course of action, and I just couldn't imagine one right now.

Today, my goal was to convince Vickie that we might be able to find a cure for her condition if she let us analyze her blood. It wasn't a lie, considering that the more tests performed on her, the more chances for Carlisle to actually find a remedy for the disease. Just thinking about Bella's reaction to curing Vickie made me smile all the way from our mansion to the campus. After our electricity and electromagnetism class, Bella agreed to study in the science library again, and her face lit up when I told her to wait for me in one of the secluded cubicles.

We didn't have linear algebra on our schedule, so only two options were left for me to find Vickie. 1) I could scan all the students' minds to see if someone had seen her, but that could take a while. Or, 2) I could simply go to Professor Letourneux and ask him if he knew of his wife's whereabouts. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of having a chat with the astrophysicist. I headed to his office, which was located in the same building we had just had our physics course. The astronomer's workplace was a lot smaller than Carlisle's, I realized very quickly, peeking in the door that was left ajar. I decided I would ask the teacher about his work for starters. I knocked at the door to make him aware of my presence, and entered the room.

"Edward! What a nice surprise to see you here," Professor Letourneux said with a genuine smile. Since Friday, he knew he couldn't play me.

"You're actually pleased to see me, Professor. Why is that?" I asked, curious.

His head was full of anxiety regarding his wife, so maybe he thought I could be helpful somehow.

"I don't get why you have to ask, Edward. You already know what I am thinking right now," the astronomer stated.

"Yes, but I don't want you to think of me as an intruder, Mr. Letourneux," I explained.

"All the same, you are aware of the fact that I am extremely concerned about Vickie."

"Do you want to talk about it, Professor?" I asked. "It must be hard to have to keep your true relationship with her a secret here."

"More than you can know, Edward," he answered flatly.

That, evidently, could not be farther from the truth, my life being entirely built on secrecy. But, of course, Alain Letourneux didn't know it.

"Well, Professor, my being a mind reader is not something that I tell to everyone I meet, so I can relate a little to your situation," I responded with a slight smile.

"Right you are, of course. And please, call me Alain," he whispered, before continuing louder. "So I was wondering, since Vickie talks to you, if you could try to convince her to be checked by a doctor…"

The implications of the space scientist's last sentence were numerous and disturbing. He had told us about Vickie's mysterious disease the other day, but now he was telling me that she hadn't gone to a doctor. He was also insinuating that Vickie didn't speak with him. Or, maybe, I was misinterpreting what he had just said.

"What do you mean, exactly, when you say that Vickie talks to me? Doesn't she talk to you as well?" I asked.

"Vickie doesn't want to have real conversations with me anymore, Edward. It all started when we discovered that there was something wrong with her, two years after we moved to New England," the astrophysicist answered. "She was supposed to be thirty-five at the time, but she definitely looked younger than that."

The scientist seemed very affected by what he had just revealed to me. But it was pretty clear why Vickie would stop communicating with Alain after finding out she was dying. She wanted to put some distance between her and her husband because she knew the relationship she had with him would come to an end and she was trying to make things easier by shutting him off already.

"But you understand what she is trying to do, don't you, Alain?" I had to ask.

"She wants to put a wall between the two of us because she thinks that if there is nothing left of our former bond - well, not exactly nothing since we are still connecting in certain ways as you witnessed the other day - I won't feel as much sadness and pain when she is gone," he said blankly. "But the thing is," he added with some kind of resentment, "she's wrong. And we've lost four years of our life because of her silly behavior!"

"She succeeded in making you feel mad at her, that's for sure," I trailed off with a bit of sarcasm. But I regained a very serious and empathic expression in less than a second.

I wanted to feel indifferent to the astronomer's affliction, but it was too late for that. Bella's compassion had impacted me. Emmett had been right: I was completely losing my capacity to act like the monster I was supposed to be.

"Isn't it pathetic, Edward?" he said after a moment. "I mean, you come here to ask me something, and instead of listening to you, I am giving details on my private life, which surely you don't give a damn about."

"You want Vickie to be checked by a doctor, Alain," I interrupted him. "Is it because my uncle happens to be one, or is it just a coincidence? And why has she not been seen by a specialist when you realized she was sick?"

"My wife is very stubborn, and she simply doesn't want to be examined by a stranger," the professor explained with a hopeless expression.

"There's got to be a reason behind your wife's refusal, though," I went on.

"Oh, I am positive she is hiding something from me, if that's what you are implying, Edward," he replied sourly.

I had a pretty good idea of what she was hiding from her husband, but I couldn't tell him. He thought Vickie had a disease, but I had the feeling that her condition had rather been induced by the injection I had seen her receiving in one of her visions. But if the astrophysicist didn't know about that event, I couldn't bring it to his attention.

"So," Alain said after a while, "will you try to persuade my wife to go see your uncle?"

The man looked desperate, and I could see in his thoughts that he perceived me as some kind of angel crossing his path to save his wife's life.

"I can't promise you that Vickie will listen to me, Alain. I don't have that much influence over people, you know," I responded. "Besides, she is too insightful for her own good. Nobody can fool her."

"Regardless, won't you at least try?" the astronomer asked again.

The conversation had taken a very dramatic turn. I had to lighten it up a little.

"I have always been intrigued by the research astrophysicists do, Professor. I know that you, for instance, are working on an article you want to publish about highredshift quasars, but I have only a slight idea of what those are," I trailed off.

"You want me to give you a lecture about quasars?" Alain Letourneux questioned me.

I could see that he was still distracted, despite my attempt to get him out of his dark meditations. Obviously, now was not a good time to discuss about supermassive black holes with him.

"Not really. Not if you don't want to, or don't have time to," I replied with a sigh.

"Well, Edward, it's nice to know that you're not taking my astronomy class only to boost your average and that the subject is truly appealing to you. Come back another day with your friend, Isabella, and I will tell you more about my research, okay?"

I nodded, my hand already on the door handle. I had come to Professor Letourneux's office in the first place to ask him where to find Vickie, and finally I was leaving it with the promise that I would talk her into being checked by Carlisle. If that was not kismet, I wondered what was.

"Actually, the reason I came to your office was to ask you where I could find Vickie, since we don't have any class with her today."

"You wanted to discuss this with her, then? Even before I asked for that favor?" he asked, suddenly looking less distressed.

"Bella wants me and Carlisle to help Vickie," I admitted in a whisper. "So I would have done it anyway."

"Then you will find my wife in the cafeteria at this time of the day. She's very thin, as you may have noticed, but she eats all right. That, at least, has not changed."

The astronomer was right, and I found Vickie all by herself in a remote area of the cafeteria, eating a large slice of pizza. She didn't stop to greet me when I sat in front of her. And yet, she was aware I was watching her across the table, because she said, her eyes looking down deliberately to avoid disturbing me with her flashing visions, "My husband sent you to me, didn't he?"

"What makes you think that, Vickie?"

"Because ever since he learned that your uncle is working on the campus, he's been pushing me to get tested by him, and I feel like a damn lab rat!" she snapped.

Jeez, if she was already aggravated, what could I say to smooth things over?

"Actually, Bella wants you to be checked. But it's also true that your husband asked me to make you reconsider your decision. Honestly, I just can't fathom why you are not agreeing to his request."

"Are you sure about that?" she cut me off.

Was she asking me that in order to verify what, in fact, I knew? Okay, then, I wasn't going to lie to her. It was impossible, anyway.

"Vickie, what difference does it make whether you have a disease or you have been poisoned?" I questioned, beginning to lose my patience because of her attitude.

"Do I really have to explain that to you, Edward? My husband thinks I have a disease, but the truth is that I was injected with some lethal drug. I have been victim of a criminal act, for God's sake!" she stated, furious.

I couldn't understand her reaction. Didn't she want her husband to know that someone was responsible for her condition?

"I am at a loss, here, Vickie," I replied, barely opening my mouth. "Why would you hide from your husband that you have been poisoned by a man inside a car?"

"Because it would be too much for him to take, on top of everything else."

Without warning, Vickie touched one of my hands that I had distractedly left on the table. I had let my guard down without even being conscious of it, and now it was too late to make a retrieving move. Vickie would be offended if I pulled my hand back. Why the heck did I care? But the strangest thing happened when her fingers made contact with my bare skin. Unexpectedly, the cafeteria background disappeared of my sight, and I was in the back of a car, facing a man that was clearly up to no good. I understood right away that I was now reliving Vickie's ordeal through her thoughts.

The man was interrogating her about a murder contract she was supposed to have received, but apparently she had not, and he was angry at her. Vickie was upset because the guy in the limousine with her had wasted her evening, and now she wanted to get back at him, not terrified at all by the gun he was pointing towards her. She basically told him to go to hell, and then the man shot her in the knee.

The next second, I was back in the cafeteria, quickly withdrawing my hands from Vickie's reach.

"What was that?" I asked, trying to look at a spot behind the human girl while regaining my composure.

She just kept staring at the place where my hands had been, and I realized that I had removed them way too fast.

"What?" She said almost at the same time. And then she continued "I'm sorry, Edward, I wasn't listening to you anymore. I was remembering the encounter with that evil man while my husband was in Hawaii."

"Vickie," I answered, "you touched me and suddenly I was in your mind, reliving the whole thing with you. You got shot in the leg!"

"You mean you were in my head just a few seconds ago?" she asked.

She looked very confused. She hadn't noticed when I had retrieved my hands from the table.

"Yes," I responded, "I think that if you touch me again, I will be able to access more of your memories."

That was a reckless comment to make. But was it possible that Vickie's disorder kept her from recognizing our markers?

"Why would you want to do that? Didn't you feel the pain I felt from my wound?"

"No. It's more like I was watching a movie," I explained.

"I prefer not, nevertheless. Those are painful memories. At the time, I thought I was going to die and never see my children again," she tried to justify herself.

I couldn't push my classmate further. Besides, maybe I had just been lucky so far. It could be if she touched me again, she would be more observant and remark that I was stone hard and ice cold.

"Okay, Vickie, I get your point," I replied gently. "But can you at least tell me what happened after you got shot? And how did you justify your wounded leg to your husband?"

"When he came back from his trip, I told him that I had been hiking and that my injury was the result of a bad fall. It wasn't as severe as it looked anyway. And as for what I recall from that fateful evening, I had been kidnapped because Bruno Dupuis, the man who shot me, thought I was a hit woman. He wanted me to kill someone. When I refused, he told me I wouldn't live long enough to alert the police. That's when he injected me with some kind of poison. I was supposed to die within a couple of hours, but I got rescued by a friend who gave me an antidote. Well, I don't know about that. I didn't die right then and there, like I was told I would, but I am dying nonetheless."

"But why didn't you tell your husband about that kidnapping, Vickie?" I asked. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Because, as I said before, I didn't want to upset him more than he already was," she sighed deeply.

It was apparent that she was thinking about something very unsettling at that moment. Then again, what could be more disturbing than her being victim of a kidnapping, gunshot and poisoned, I definitely couldn't envision.

"Are you insinuating that there was more to your ordeal?" I kept asking, even if what she had in mind had probably nothing to do with her condition.

She resumed looking down to avoid my stare, and explained without showing any emotion "I am a hacker, Edward. I mean, not anymore, but I used to be one. So, late during that spring of 2003, I helped an acquaintance crack the code to enter in a federal building. I didn't know at the time, but the guy wanted access to set a bomb inside the place. Needless to say that we had to leave the country after the man got arrested. Many people were killed in the explosion of that building…" She began sobbing and hid her face from me.

I was not exactly shocked by her confession, but I was not as comfortable as I had been five minutes ago. The girl was a total mess, and I didn't know what to tell to make her stop crying. But then, I remembered I was here in part because her husband was having a very hard time himself, and he had made me promise I would try to be helpful.

"Vickie, you are bearing too much on your shoulders and you're overwhelmed. But at least, if you agree to be tested by Carlisle, he may find a cure to your illness," I told her after a few minutes of watching her lose her composure, something that I had thought impossible for her. She had appeared so self confident and carefree over the past days.

"Why do you want to help me?" she asked while wiping her tears with her napkin. "I just confessed to you that I was a criminal."

But she hadn't killed those people intentionally. And, moreover, she hadn't killed hundreds of bastards like I had. I wished I could confess my sins to her too, so she would feel less guilty for what she had done. But instead, I just replied: "Your husband is not ready to see you leave the earth, Vickie. And he told me that you are not making it easy for him, quite the opposite, acting as if you were already gone, somehow."

"Alain, and Ian and Joel, for that matter, still have plenty of time to enjoy my company, Edward. Ten years, if I need to remind you," she interrupted me with all the arrogance she was capable of at the moment.

"Don't pretend you don't know what I mean, Miss Villeneuve. You won't be able to remain a wife and a mother for very long. It will be over in less than two years if you do nothing about it. So you're better to hold on to your relationship with Professor Letourneux while you still can, instead of treating him like a stranger," I almost growled at her.

"Yah, you've got that right! I was obviously treating him like a stranger in the arboretum the other day," Vickie spat at me sarcastically, before continuing "All I have been doing for the past four years is to smooth things out for my family, Edward. And I can become even less lovable than I am now. This way, they won't regret me a tiny bit when I am gone."

"Who are you trying to delude this time, Vickie?" I asked harshly. "Your husband and kids will never stop loving you, and that is why you need to think about them. Unless, of course, you don't love your husband anymore."

"You may think it's not possible, Edward, after all, you are too young to know what true love means, but I do love Alain more today than I did twenty years ago. But it will be easier for him to accept my death if he's not attached to me anymore, don't you get it?"

"Well, the way I see it, your husband may die before you after all. He is so sad, right now, he may die from depression. But if you don't grasp that he needs you, you are the one who will end up with regrets. That being said, let's make a deal, shall we? If Carlisle can't find a cure, I won't interfere in your life anymore, and I will let you ruin it as you see fit. But if there is the slightest hope that he can help you, I don't want to hear ever again that you are distancing yourself from your family, am I making myself clear?"

I had spoken so fast that I wasn't sure she got everything I said.

"Jeez, Edward, you sound like my dad when I was a teenager. Are you sure you're only a freshman here?"

I couldn't help but smile. The observant Vickie Villeneuve was back on track.

"Finish up your pizza, Vickie. You're coming with me."

"Where are we going, if I may ask?" She looked hesitant.

"To Carlisle's office," I answered, flipping open my cell phone and putting it to my ear. I heard Bella's voice almost instantly. "Change of plans, love. Meet me in front of Carlisle's lab as soon as possible."

I stood up and made my way out of the cafeteria, Vickie following me a few steps behind.