This has nothing to do with the story but please keep reading: I recently received a truly horrifying letter from PETA about cats and dogs - the same animals we keep as pets - being slaughtered to provide fur for clothing. And I'm not talking about humane killing either; they're subjected to torture that would turn the stomach of anyone who cares at all about other living beings, including skinning them alive, and they aren't all old animals that would soon die naturally anyway - this is happening to puppies and kittens. The fur harvested this way is then labeled as 'Asian jackal' or 'rabbit' so consumers are kept ignorant of what they're unwittingly participating in when they buy fur products. I know not everyone is able to contribute financially to organizations like PETA that fight this abominable cruelty so I'm not asking you to donate to them, but next time you're out shopping and you see something cute with fur on it, please think of the cat or dog that might have suffered and died horribly to make it and DON'T buy it. And if the store has a system for receiving customer complaints, please tell them you don't approve of them carrying such products. They will listen if they start losing business. This depraved practice has to be stopped, and the only way that's guaranteed to happen is if there's no longer a market for animal fur. Also, please spread the word to your friends and family - doing so might save a life.

Chapter 26: Perfidy

Elle was put back on active duty the very next day, her bosses having decided she didn't need any time to recover; she was perfectly healthy thanks to Linderman. More importantly, they wanted to keep her too busy to think about Edward. They didn't have a new assignment for her, so she was kept busy supervising the prisoners, and once she was sent out to assist with a bag and tag mission.

She thoroughly enjoyed it - there was nothing like a good fight that allowed her to give free rein to her powers. They had been repressed for far too long while she was trying to fit in with those insipidly normal people in Forks. She couldn't understand how the Cullens forced themselves to live like that. Not that she cared, of course. Just because the thought of her former boyfriend made her feel like zapping the nearest object, it didn't mean he was still important to her in any way. Because he isn't. Not at all.

Unfortunately the nearest object at the moment happened to be her pillow; if she incinerated it she would have nothing to sleep on, so she settled for punching it into a more comfortable shape before lying down.

A short time later she awoke to a distant racket; some idiot had attempted to enter a secure area of the facility without the proper clearance. Luckily dealing with this kind of disturbance at this hour wasn't her job. They better get that alarm shut off soon, Elle thought sleepily, or I'll have to find the guy in charge of night security and give him a piece of my mind. She was just about to drift off again when she heard her window opening.

She sat up, all thoughts of going back to sleep forgotten, and turned toward the window. There was no one there, but that did nothing to calm her racing heart. The window could not have come open on its own - it had been opened by someone who had no business in her room, someone who was inside with her at this very moment. She could feel the intruder's presence. "Come out, come out, whoever you are," she called, pushing back her covers in case she was about to need to jump off the bed. Getting tangled up so the intruder could subdue her more easily wouldn't do. Come here so I can show you you picked the wrong place to break into!

"I'm right here, Elle."

The voice came from directly behind her. She spun around while at the same time shifting from her bottom onto her knees and almost bumped noses with Edward Cullen. The vampire was there, in her room, standing by the side of her bed farthest from the window. I must be dreaming.

Though she couldn't know it, Edward was thinking the same thing. Since the day Carlisle told him about Elle's condition he had spent a lot of time during his search for her preparing himself for actually seeing her. He had expected her to be in bad shape, his brain constantly throwing out data about how long it took for physical deterioration to set in after a person lost the capacity for movement, the number and placement of the tubes required to feed and hydrate a quadriplegic, and take care of their other bodily functions. It had made him wish several times that he wasn't so well-versed in medicine, yet here she was, clearly not paralyzed and looking lovely as ever.

Then she tried to slap him, shattering the scene's dreamlike quality. She might appear ethereal with the moonlight turning her hair to pale gold and her gray eyes silver, but she was definitely the real Elle, not a figment of his imagination; he didn't believe himself capable of imagining anyone quite like her if he tried. He aborted her attempted slap by catching her wrist.

She jerked her arm back and hissed, "What the hell are you doing?"

"You aren't pleased to see me?"

"No!" she shouted. "You shouldn't be here!"

"This is exactly where I should be - it's where you are."

Elle sat back on her haunches, scowling. "If you wanted to be with me you're a little late."

"What are you talking about?"

She ignored his question. "How'd you even get here? I never told you where I live."

"I knew you lived in New York-"

"New York is a big state."

"-And I knew the name of your company. I looked up Primatech on the Internet; according to the website it's nothing more than a paper company - it would be very convincing if I didn't know better - but at least the list of their office locations is accurate. Also, your father is named as one of top executives in this office; I assumed you would be where he was."

"Haven't you heard that saying about what happens when you assume?" Elle asked, annoyed.

"That adage doesn't apply if your assumption is right," Edward countered smugly.

Elle sighed; she was tired, and not in the mood to argue with a vampire who was stubbornly, infernally convinced that he was always right. She put her head between her knees - she didn't think she could look at his too-perfect crooked smile for another minute without getting violent - pushed her fingers through her hair, and grumbled, "What do you want, Edward?"

"You, of course. I came to get you out of here, but we'd better get moving."

She lifted her head but made no move to stand up. Edward frowned; he was ready to carry her out, but after seeing that she wasn't paralyzed he'd thought he wouldn't have to. "You're crazy," she informed him. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Why not? Is there something stopping you from leaving?"

"Daddy would be mad if I did."

This was turning out to be harder than Edward had anticipated - while not expecting rescuing Elle from her company to be easy, he hadn't counted on resistance from her. But if these people were able to turn her into their spy, of course they'd need some hold on her. I should have thought of that. He quickly weighed his options and saw only two: he could try reasoning with Elle, or he could try to remove her against her will. Based on his knowledge of her powers and personality, the second option seemed unlikely to succeed. Reasoning with her it is. "Do you want to stay here?"

"What I want doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does. If you aren't happy here, you can leave-"

"And go where?" she interrupted. "I've lived here forever. This is my home."

Edward began to get fed up, more with himself than with her. He came to this place to repair the damage done to her because of him, not to get back together with her - so, now that he saw she was okay, why was he still there? Why couldn't he just walk away? "You know what? If you insist on being blindly loyal to a father who doesn't even care about you, that's fine with me. I don't know why I bothered tracking you down - you are so frustrating!"

"I don't know either if all you want is to insult me. You know, until you showed up I didn't realize how much I've enjoyed not having to put up with you every day!"

"Well you won't have to put up with me any longer," Edward snapped. "I'm going now. If you ever learn to think for yourself, you know where to find me. Goodbye, Elle."

"You're leaving?"

"I see no point in staying, so yes, I am."

She sat up a little straighter, a strange smile playing on her lips. "Too late."

"What-?"

Elle's bedroom door burst open, letting in half a dozen armed guards, Bob Bishop, Noah Bennet, and Eden McCain. Too late, Edward realized he should have paid more attention to the hurried footsteps he'd heard approaching, but he'd been too occupied with Elle. A deliberate distraction, or just an unlucky coincidence? He suspected it was the former, especially when her electricity hit him in the back. He'd felt her power before, but never this strongly; this was no accidental discharge or mild sting to show her irritation - it was a full-force attack. The pain would have rendered a human unconscious, but Edward didn't have the luxury of blacking out. He fell to the floor and stayed there until Eden ordered him to get up.

Once he was back on his feet he saw the security team uselessly pointing their guns at him, Bennet and Eden (who were unarmed) observing the scene, and Bob making a show of fussing over Elle - as if that made up for his usual negligence! Edward snarled angrily.

All eyes were instantly back on him. "Don't move," Eden ordered in her irresistibly compelling voice. Edward froze.

"Get that monster away from my daughter," Bob demanded. "I think he's put her through enough already."

Eden told Edward to walk with her, and he did, but before exiting the room he took one last look at Elle. Her eyes narrowed as she read the betrayal and hurt in his, like he didn't think he deserved this. Like he hadn't brought it on himself by abandoning her to a lifetime of staring at the ceiling of a room in the facility's medical treatment area, then being stupid enough to show his face around her again. "What're they gonna do with him?"

"He'll be our guest here for a while," Bob told her. "We don't know much about his kind beyond the fact of their existence, so we'll be studying him."

"The scientists won't need him twenty-four-seven though, will they Daddy? I can play with him, right?"

Bob sighed. "Vampires don't make good pets, Elle."

"I bet I can teach Edward to be one."

"You do realize that we don't want him damaged," Bennet put in.

"I won't damage him," Elle scoffed. The smile suddenly slid off her face, replaced by an almost feral look. "Much."

"We'll see." Bob patted her on the head. "Now, why don't you go back to bed? Come on, Noah, I think Elle's had enough excitement for one evening."

###

As soon as they were away from Elle Noah exploded, "What the hell were you thinking, Bishop? Using your daughter as vampire bait?"

"That was Arthur's idea, not mine. He and Angela were the ones who thought Cullen might try to contact her again. I didn't much like it, but I couldn't exactly argue with the Petrellis."

"He did more than try to contact her - he was in her room! And he was smart enough to set off an alarm somewhere else to cause a distraction before making his move. It took us longer than it should have to get to her; anything could have happened in that time."

"It didn't, though."

Noah still looked unhappy. "Are you sure about that? There's so much we don't understand about vampires - what if he infected her somehow? What will we do then?"

"My daughter is not going to become a vampire," Bob said sharply. That would be a disaster. The combination of her powers and mental instability already made Elle dangerous; add in the enhanced strength and speed and the predatory instincts of a vampire and she would be unmanageable. "Still…I'll have her examined tomorrow. Just to be safe." He stopped walking and hit the call button for an elevator. "Well, I'm getting out of here. Coming, Noah?"

"No, I still have work to finish here so I can get a flight home tomorrow." For just a moment after Bob left, Noah considered doubling back to Elle's room and warning her that she was under some suspicion because of her intimate relationship with Edward, but soon decided against it. He had always made a point of not interfering in Company business, not doing anything that could draw attention to him - and by extension, his family. He especially didn't want them noticing Claire.

Besides, he had never gone out of his way for Elle before, even when she was experimented on as a child…and with Thompson dead, no one except Elle herself knew the full details of her time with the Cullens. Noah wasn't even sure Thompson had known everything, since he had complained about Elle failing to report to him. Simple teenage rebellion…or did she have something to hide? Noah agreed wholeheartedly with Bob that Elle couldn't be allowed to turn; if she had been infected with vampirism, she would have to be put down.

Noah began walking faster toward his office. If the worst-case scenario regarding Elle was realized, he'd rather not stick around to watch.

Next chapter: Edward's trapped in the Company with an angry Elle. Let the games begin.