This chapter will parallel Stephenie Meyer's conclusion of Twilight in some ways. I'm sure most of you have noticed the similarities in the actual Twilight compared to my story – yes, I did intend for it to be that way. Once again, I say this:

I don't own the Twilight Saga, and I did not create these characters. This is Stephenie Meyer's story, and she has all of the rights. I just created a different view on her own tale.

Chapter Twenty-Eight of Twenty-Nine

Bella's Point of View

"Bella?" The high-pitched, frantic female voice came from somewhere above me. "Bella! Oh, God, Bella . . . Can you hear me? Oh, God . . ." I willed my eyes to open, but instead they squeezed shut. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I felt paralyzed – my arms were vibrating as if they'd fallen asleep, and my toes had a similar feeling.

"Alice!" a deeper voice yelled from farther away, maybe a forty feet distance. It almost didn't sound human. "What do you see?"

Alice? Alice was here? Since when? "I see Bella in pain, that's what I see!" she screamed. "Where's Carlisle? She's losing so . . ." She choked off, hesitating. "So much . . . blood . . ."

"Alice!" The angry man sounded like Jasper, but I couldn't be sure. It could have been Emmett, but it definitely wasn't Edward. So where was he? Had he come for me, like Aro had wanted him to? Had he seen Aro's plan to coax him out into the sun in time to avoid the death sentence? Did he even make it to me, or did Felix end him before he arrived? Was he still alive? "Alice," maybe-Jasper called, "what do you see? Where did they go?"

"I-I can't see anything!" Alice yelled through her tearless sobs.

"Yes, you can!" He was right above me now, probably standing over Alice as she leaned over me. "Try, Alice! For two seconds! Give us a direction to go in! Which way did they go?"

"I don't know!" Alice's voice sounded jerky, weak, as if Jasper or whoever was shaking her by the shoulders. "I-I can't focus, Jasper! Stop it! I can't focus on anything! When I look into the future, all I see is Bella dying! I can't get past it! Don't touch me!"

"Fine," he said softly, somewhat calmer now. He sounded as if he were a few steps away now. "Emmett!" He sounded like Jasper now, not the angry, feral vampire he'd been a moment ago. "Em, we're leaving! Go that way! To the left! You're other left, you moron!" An exasperated sigh, and then he snarled. "Fine, then! I'll go left, you go right! Find them!"

"Alice!" It was a female voice, but it had a wind-chime affect after her word ended. It had to be Rosalie. I heard the swift, echoing sound of her high heels as she traveled closer. Just how big was the room I was in?

I tried again to open my eyes, and this time I succeeded. I stared up at the ceiling above me, and my confusion worsened. It was not the ceiling of the Phoenix Interrogative Center. There were twisted pipes and gigantic lights that weren't on. In fact, it was so dark in the room I could barely make anything out. All I could see were the silver snarls of the pipes, the general shape of the lights, and the small squares that I assumed were windows at the very top of the wall, just below the ceiling, which was a good fifty feet above us. How had I gotten to this place? What was it?

"Did they bite her?" Rosalie demanded. A flash of her blonde hair whipped me in the face as she skittered to a stop and plopped down onto her knees at my side. "Because if they did –"

"They didn't," Alice interrupted. Her voice was somewhat more controlled, but she wasn't any less frantic. "I checked. But she's bleeding . . . how are you so . . . in control . . . right now?"

Rosalie snorted. "It helps that I've never tasted human blood before." A cold hand rested on my forehead for a second, and then it was gone. "Carlisle sent me. He and Esme are finishing up with Edward now."

"Edward," I whispered, feeling my eyes widen. "Edward." Still, I stared blankly at the space above me. If I moved my head to the left, I would see Alice's pale, frightened face. If I looked to the right, who knew what expression I would see on Rosalie's. But right then, I couldn't move at all – I was paralyzed.

"Shh, Bella," Alice hummed, and the relief in her voice was clear. "He's coming, okay? He's on his way, and then Carlisle is going t-to – uh . . ." Her swallow was audible, even to my weak, human ears. "Rose, I can't do this. I can . . . I feel my control slipping, and I . . ."

"It's okay, Alice," Rose responded steadily. There wasn't a hint of struggle in her voice. "You haven't been challenged like this in a long time. It's different for me – you know exactly what it would feel like to . . . well, you know. I've never tasted human blood, so I don't know what I'm missing. It's okay – hey, don't be ashamed."

"I want to kill my sister," Alice cried.

"Go!" Rosalie yelled. "I've got this, Alice. Just go. Find Jasper – help track down those –"

"Bella," Alice breathed by my ear. "I'm so sorry, I can't, Bella, I can't!" And then the coolness of her cheek next to mine was gone.

"Alice," I mumbled, but I doubted anyone would be able to understand me.

"She had to go, Bella," Rose told me gently. Her hand swept over my forehead again. "Don't worry – Edward's coming. He's on his way."

"Wha' 'app'n'd?" I murmured. I was seriously sleepy now, my mouth moving like mush. Waves of tranquility were lapping over my entire body, making my eyes slip closed again.

"It's okay, Bella," she responded. "There's no venom in your system. They were just –" She broke off, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded as if she'd turned her head away from me. "Do you remember anything, Bella? Anything at all?"

I tried to shake my head, but my neck was frozen. "N-no," I barely forced out. "J . . . us . . A-Alice."

"Just Alice," Rosalie whispered, more to herself than me. When I peeked my eyes open, I saw her shaking her head in disgust.

A door slammed open, and if I could move, I would have jumped. "What's happening?" Carlisle's voice yelled. My eyes closed again. "What did they do?"

"Is she changing?" It was his voice – the voice I'd wanted to hear for hours, maybe even days. I hadn't seen him since he'd fetched my dinner some time ago.

My eyes flew open. "Edward!" I screamed.

"Bella," he whispered, right beside my ear now. I felt his hands on me, one on my stomach and one gripping my hand opposite the one Rose had grabbed a hold of. "Bella, sweetheart. You're going to be fine." His lips pressed against my temple.

"What happened?" Carlisle repeated.

"I don't know," Rose breathed. "Alice found her. Jasper and Emmett took off on their trial, but they didn't know which way to go, so they split up. Alice couldn't see anything past Bella dying."

Edward whimpered next to me, a sound I'd never heard him make before. "Carlisle," he moaned. I tried to turn my head to see his perfect face, but I failed.

"She found her strapped to a chair," Rosalie continued. "There's no venom in her system – I don't smell any, and she's trying to sleep, so she can't be burning inside. There's blood on that machine over there – the oversized screwdriver, you know? And there was a saw sitting on the ground next to it. I think they were going to . . . cut off her body parts."

Edward's enraged roar filled the room which must be absolutely huge because of the intensity of its echo. "So that's why they brought her to a factory," he moaned. "To torture her. It was bad enough they took her to that . . . questioning place. She probably had a panic attack." He paused, gasping in pain. "I bet Caius laughed."

"We have to stop this bleeding," Carlisle insisted, talking over his son. "Wrap this around her hand, Rose." Moments later, I felt a bandage wrap around my palm. Was I bleeding? I couldn't feel anything, not even my head. The only things I could move were my eyes, and they only opened and closed and barely glanced side to side. "How long ago did you inject the morphine?"

"What?" Rosalie asked. "What morphine?"

"I gave Alice morphine to give her," he said, sounding confused. I felt his hand on my shoulder, possibly looking for a microscopic hole of a needle. "It's in her system. Don't you smell it?"

Rose was silent for a moment. "Alice didn't inject anything into her," she finally whispered. "She didn't mention it."

"Perhaps," Edward croaked next to me, "she did it before you arrived."

"Bella." Carlisle's bangs fell into his face as he leaned over me again, but he didn't brush them away. "Did Alice –"

"No," I gasped. My hand, which was pinned to the floor by something granite – undoubtedly Edward's or Rose's hand – was starting to lose its tingling sensation. A light throbbing was beginning, but if what Carlisle had said was true, if I did have a hole drilled in my palm, then that was just the start of some intense pain that would come.

"Are you sure, Bella?" he pressed, his doctor-tone slightly less prominent. He was talking to me like I was a six-year-old who'd fallen off a swing at the park, like he was asking me if I'd hit my head off of the grass and dirt.

"She's delusional," Rosalie said softly. "She's out of it, and she's lost too much blood. She can't think straight." Her necklace accidentally smacked my cheek as she switched positions on the floor, leaning forward to release her legs from underneath her. "I'm sorry, Bella," she apologized. I wanted to accept it, but my mouth was missing.

Carlisle nodded. "Okay."

"Where are they?" Edward demanded suddenly. I didn't have a clue who he was talking about – his own brothers, or the brothers . . . from Italy?

"We'll find that out later, Edward," Carlisle said. He was so calm it actually worked some tranquility into me. Or maybe I was just exhausted and confused. "We must move her. This isn't a sanitary place, and I can't deal with this head wound here. She's losing blood quickly, but I can't make it stop while she's lying like this. Are you okay to carry her, Edward?"

"You've already reattached my arms, Carlisle," Edward snapped as his arms slid under my body. I felt my head rest against his stone chest as he cradled me against his cool body. "Shh, Bella," he whispered to me when I made a whine in the back of my throat. "I've got you now. You don't have to worry anymore, love. I'm here. You're going to be just fine." I squeezed my eyes shut tight and willed myself to sleep. It didn't work until I was lulled by a smooth motion of a car.

I woke in a soft hospital bed, hearing soft conversations. My eyes opened to see soft, baby blue colored walls surrounding me. I listened to the beeping of medical equipment and tried to figure out where I was. Glancing out the window, I noticed the rain, and the conclusion was instant. I was back in Forks.

"I believe you were right about the screwdriver machine," Carlisle said softly to Rosalie, who was leaning against a light brown countertop to my left. He leaned over so his face was within my line of sight. His wide yet controlled eyes met my bewildered gaze. "Oh," he breathed. "Bella, honey. You're awake. What do you remember?"

I frowned, trying to conjure up the words I was thinking. I was more distracted by the thought that Rosalie was still with me, still caring about my health. "Alice," I finally mouthed. It felt like my throat was swollen closed, but I was breathing just fine.

He watched me for a moment, and then turned to Rose for an explanation. "She only remembers Alice coming and unstrapping her from the chair, I think. She told me so in the factory."

I saw him nod. "Edward," I whispered, looking as far to the side as I could but I still couldn't see him. "Edward." Maybe if I just kept saying his name, he would get the picture and show up where I could see him. I hadn't laid eyes on him at all in the . . . factory, if that's where I'd been.

"Son," Carlisle said, turning to look towards the door. So Edward wasn't in the room with me. "She needs you. She needs your attention. She's frightened. You must gather yourself – get yourself in control."

"It's not her blood I'm longing for, Carlisle!" His loud scream came from downstairs, but he didn't stay there for long. Two seconds later, he was standing in the doorway of Carlisle's study – my makeshift-hospital room – growling evilly at the family members who had been keeping me company. "It's their death that I want most of all." His blazing eyes shifted to me and all anger disappeared. The grimace fell from his face as he flashed over to my side, kneeling down beside my bed, keeping our eyes locked together. His face hadn't changed a bit – he was still beautiful.

"Speaking of . . . the Volturi," Carlisle murmured. "I have a theory about . . . the morphine we found in her system."

"What are you thinking?" Rose asked.

"Someone had to have given it to her," Carlisle said. "I think it was them. I mean, she has a hole driven in her hand! They would have had to inject a serious amount of drugs into her system for her to have been acting the way she was acting! She was trying to sleep after a hole had been driven into her hand by a machine!" My eyes shot down to my hand, which was wrapped with a lot of gauze, but I didn't say anything. They weren't listening to me, paying me attention.

"You think that . . . Aro . . . didn't want to hurt her," Rosalie mused.

"Maybe they . . . do you think they gave her morphine . . . before they drilled her?" Rose asked. "Do you think they let it spread, drilled her arm, and then gave her more after?"

"Why would they want her to not feel any pain?" Edward whispered, dropping his face into the crook of my neck. "And even if they gave her morphine, Bella would have still felt it. Morphine isn't that strong."

"Maybe Aro didn't want Bella herself to suffer," Carlisle suggested, ignoring Edward's negativity. "Maybe he knew that you, Edward, would suffer if you thought she had, and that's what he wanted. They obviously planned to kill her, but maybe Aro didn't want her to feel the pain of the torture Caius would insist upon."

"Ah, Caius," Rosalie murmured, shaking her head slowly. "He's such a fun person." Her sarcasm dripped from her tone. "What else do you think they had planned for her?"

"Well, there was the saw," Carlisle reminded us.

"Caius had more planned than a hole in her hand and a chopped off leg," Edward growled. "They wanted her body to be completely beaten to the point of being unrecognizable when I found her. It was just unfortunate that their decision was made too soon and Alice had time to have that vision." His face changed suddenly, and I knew because I had been watching him closely, unable to look away from his perfection. His lips pulled up in a scowl as he met Carlisle's gaze on the other side of my bed. "Speaking of that vision. Would you mind explaining to me why she didn't call me when she saw that they were coming for her?"

Rose's head snapped up. "Wait, Alice didn't call?"

"No!" Edward yelled. "She didn't! I was getting Bella dinner! I wasn't in the hotel room! They arrived . . . minutes after I left. If I'd just stayed for five minutes, I would have –"

"They would have killed you." Alice was there suddenly, standing at the foot of my hospital bed, hands angrily on her hips. "Don't you get it? It wasn't a coincidence that Felix was there when you got back to the hotel room, Edward! It wasn't a coincidence that he was prepared to rip you apart! They wanted to kill you, Edward. They didn't care about the rules. They didn't care about Bella, or you, or Aro's 'friendship' with Carlisle."

"Wait," I piped up, finally feeling the lump in my throat subside. All eyes snapped to me instantly. "What am I missing? I don't – I-I don't remember anything past . . . them talking to me . . . in our hotel room in Phoenix. I-I saw . . ."

Carlisle bent so that his face was even with mine. "Go on, Bella. Tell us what you remember."

And I did. I told them all about the hallucination of the burning building and seeing my mother's singed body, seeing her die again before my eyes. Carlisle labeled it as if obviously was – another panic attack. I wasn't ready to go back to Phoenix, not like we had a choice. That was the one place the Volturi wouldn't go.

That sure was wrong, but it had made sense on the drive there, I had to admit.

I told them about the conversation in the hotel room that I 'slept' through. I also mentioned that Aro knew about my leukemia, which really seemed like the least of my problems now, though I did feel weaker from the chemo that Carlisle must have given me during my time back in Forks. I probably missed a few doses during my captivity with the Volturi – I didn't know how long I'd been with them.

I informed them of the fact that no, I did not remember Alice pulling me from the chair. I only remembered her frantic voice in my ear as she argued with Jasper, before he left in search of the Volturi brothers, who must have took off after the Cullen family members arrived.

And that was all I knew of, besides the facts that I'd sort of pieced together. But I wanted to know why Carlisle had had to reattach Edward's arms.

"What happened with Felix?" I demanded, looking up at him expectantly. "I remember Aro sending him away . . . when we were at the P-Phoenix Interrogative Center. Did he . . . hurt you?"

The four of them explained everything to me then.

Alice had a vision of Aro coming for me, but she couldn't call and alert Edward. They already had the plan to kill him later, after they were finished with me, but she saw that if she informed him of their plan, they would have killed him right then and turned him into ash. Then, they would have killed me, because Edward would be dead, so he wouldn't need to see me suffer for extra pain. Alice's not telling us of their arrival saved both of our lives, though it didn't spare us pain. But we would both live to love each other for a long time in the future, so it had been worth it to me.

While I'd been in the PIC, Felix had gone back to our hotel. Edward was quicker than Aro thought at catching my scent and therefore our trail, and so Felix was forced to attack. Edward hadn't hunted in a while, and so the fight was uneven. Felix ripped his arms and one foot from his body and left him in the woods somewhere before leaving to come to the factory, where Aro, Caius, and Jane were torturing me so that eventually, when Edward found my body, he would know that I suffered. They wanted Edward to feel pain.

"I believe they would have killed Edward after a few days," Carlisle supposed. "They would want him to suffer first, and they would watch his pain from the shadows before ending his life."

Once they arrived in Phoenix, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie came to find me while Esme and Carlisle stayed back to put Edward back together. When they arrived at the factory, the Volturi were forced to flee. They didn't have their guard to protect them, and so they were outnumbered – not in numbers, but in the ability to fight. Aro and Caius had little to no skills in battle, and Jane's unusual power that inflicted severe pain into the body only worked on one person at a time.

"I wonder why they didn't bring their little slaves," Rosalie mused. "I mean, they never leave Italy without their entire guard."

"They didn't expect trouble, Rose," Edward said emotionlessly. "They expected two deaths and a trip back home within a day. They didn't expect a little scavenger hunt which was a lot easier than we intended it to be for them, and they definitely didn't expect the rest of our coven to show up and fight."

And Carlisle continued to say that Jasper and Emmett had gone in search of them, and Alice and Rose stayed behind to care for me. After being unable to contain her bloodlust, Alice had left to help Jasper. Esme had gone to help Emmett after Carlisle and Edward got to the factory. They patched me up the best way they could and rented a private plane for the trip back to Forks. They'd hooked me up to my many IVs and wires, and then a day later there we were, having that discussion.

My father was still frantic, but his searches had expanded to Seattle now. He didn't know I was home in town yet. Carlisle wanted me to heal before I made my grand reentrance into the pale population of Forks.

"Now, it's very important that Bella get lots of rest," Carlisle said a little while later, after Edward had finally calmed himself down. He looked down at me. "I know your wounds are very small, but you did lose a lot of blood back in Phoenix. How are you feeling, in general?"

I hesitated, mentally doing a full-body checkup. My hand, stiff from my inability to move it due to the mountain of gauze that someone had wrapped around it, was throbbing. My head was also hurting in a splitting headache. My neck needed cracked badly – it was tense and knotted up. And to top it all off, the room felt like a sauna and the needle that was my IV was uncomfortable.

"Perhaps more pain medication is in order," Carlisle suggested as he turned the knob of the thermostat to adjust the room temperature. In a flash, he was standing at the bag that should have been full of liquid, injecting a small tube of a clear, jelly-like substance. "This will make you feel better, Bella. Just relax and let the medication help with the pain."

I thought back to Phoenix, to my hallucination of my mother begging for me to save her. My heart was still beating, but how many times could it be stabbed and ripped apart before it just didn't work anymore? The medication wouldn't take away that pain.

Edward pulled a chair up next to me so he wasn't kneeling anymore. He sat down, keeping his eyes trained on mine. One of his hands rested in my lap, both of my own grasping it tightly. I swallowed as a flow of calmness and sleepiness suddenly took over my entire body. My eyes fluttered closed and Edward kissed both of my eyelids. "I'm right here, Bella," he assured me. "You heal. I'll stay right here with you."