The first part of this chapter picks up right where the telepathic standoff between Matt, Edward, and Maury left off in the previous one, then jumps back to Peter in the second half; I hope the structure isn't too jarring, but it felt like the right way to write it.
Chapter 12: Powerless
At last, after a seemingly interminable descent, Edward found himself lying on a narrow bed in a room he'd never seen before, or at least he didn't think so - despite his perfect eyesight, his surroundings were oddly hazy. Even more alarming was the fact that, for the first time in all his many, many years as a vampire, he felt unwell. Every muscle ached, his head pounded, and he couldn't seem to get his breath, which somehow felt like it might actually be a problem...yet all these sensations were as dim as the scene around him, as if he was having some sort of out-of-body experience.
What has Maury done to me? Where am I? Forcing himself to focus through the weird fog that had enshrouded his mind, he realized that he was in a hospital, though not a modern one; the furnishings and medical equipment all clearly belonged to a bygone era. 1918, to be exact - the year I nearly died of the Spanish influenza. He took a deep, calming breath, doing his best to ignore the phantom pain in his chest. It's quite impressive that Maury managed to dredge up such an old, faded memory and make it feel so real, but that's all it is: a memory. I am not dying, and I need to break through Maury's hold on my mind so that I can reach Matt.
He poured every ounce of concentration he could muster into calling out to the other telepath, but there was no response. Then a new figure entered the scene his mind was still trapped in. His face stood out much clearer in Edward's memory since it was one he'd seen so often in the years that followed, though at the moment the sight of the man who would become his second father engendered only dread, because he remembered all too well what came next. As with all vampires, the agony of his sire's venom scorching through his veins was forever branded deep within his consciousness.
Edward reminded himself once more that this was only a memory, yet he was powerless to stop it from playing out just as it had that fateful night - first the pain of Carlisle's razor-sharp teeth tearing through his thin human skin, which soon paled in comparison to the awful burning that started in the wound and spread like wildfire, until it felt as if every fiber of his entire being was engulfed in flames...
Even though he still knew on some level that what he was feeling wasn't real, that he had already survived this and therefore was certainly not going to die from merely reliving it, he really wished he could.
###
As with Edward, Maury first announced his presence to his son by cutting him off from the sights and sounds of the world around him, though Matt experienced no sensation of falling. Instead, the lights seemed to come back on as suddenly as they went out, only for him to discover that he was now in a jail cell. He shouted for someone to let him out, but no guards came - only his ex-wife, who proceeded to berate him for abandoning her and 'their' baby, tormenting him with the possibility that the child had actually been his rather than her lover's, despite what she'd told him when he first learned of her affair.
To make matters worse, Molly appeared in a cell across from his, crying and pleading with him to save her, but of course she was out of his reach.
You can't help her, his father's voice taunted, echoing inside his head. You're mad at me for leaving you, but I had important work to do. You left your own kid just because you were pissed that your wife cheated on you, which wouldn't have happened if you'd paid more attention to her in the first place, and you'll leave Molly too. You're just like me...
"No! No, I'm nothing like you! Hang on, Molly - I'll get you out of here, I promise!"
"Don't leave me, Matt! I'm scared!"
Matt! Can you hear me?
"Edward?" Matt whirled around, but there was no sign of the other telepath anywhere. "Where are you?!" Gritting his teeth, he tried to block out his father's taunts, Janice's rant, the baby's wails, and Molly's crying - it helped to remind himself that they were only illusions, so he wasn't actually ignoring anyone in need of his help - and focus on Edward, who was really there and quite possibly in trouble.
As he homed in on his ally's mental voice, he saw flashes of things that baffled him - an old-timey hospital ward, a blond-haired man in equally outdated clothes who seemed to be a doctor, his face twisted in anguish - but he couldn't break through until the doctor, after what appeared to be a fierce internal debate, leaned in and bit Edward in multiple places. The searing pain resulting from those seemingly minor wounds was so intense that Matt felt it too, causing him to wrench himself out of whatever bizarre nightmare Maury had plunged Edward into...and somehow, Edward came with him, materializing in Matt's cell.
"What the hell was that?!" Matt gasped out, still reeling from the secondhand torture he'd just experienced. When Edward didn't answer, Matt shook his head. "If that's what your nightmares are like, you've got one hell of a twisted mind."
That got a response in the form of a crooked smile, albeit a rather shaky one. "You have no idea." Looking around, he asked, "But where are we now? Is this your nightmare? And if so, how did I get here?"
"I don't know!" Now that he was no longer distracted by his search for Edward, the cacophony was back in full force, and it was starting to get to him. "I heard you calling me and tried to zero in on your thoughts; that's when I saw...whatever the hell I saw, but then I felt- It was like that blond guy had shot you full of acid and all I could think was that I had to get out of there, but I guess some part of me still knew I had to get you out too...and here you are."
"So you summoned me into your own mindscape through sheer force of will? Most impressive..." Edward mused, before his expression became more calculating. "I wonder if the two of us working in concert might be able to do the same to your father."
"I don't know," Matt said again, this time with more uncertainty than exasperation. "I pulled you in by tapping into your mind, but I don't hear him anymore. He's probably bailed out again; that's what he's good at."
"No, he hasn't; he's still here, enjoying having us trapped in his illusory prison like rats in a maze. Can't you feel him?"
Once again accessing Edward's more refined senses, Matt found that he could indeed feel an insidious presence lurking in the deepest recesses of their shared consciousness, practically oozing malicious amusement at their predicament. "Yeah, he's there all right," he muttered, locking onto that presence just as he'd done with Edward's telepathic probes a moment ago. "Why don't you quit hiding and face me like a man for once, Dad?"
He followed up those words with another almighty mental tug, and Maury appeared, looking flabbergasted. The bars enclosing Matt's cell vanished in the same instant, along with Janice and her baby; only Molly remained, but she was quiet now, cowering against the far wall as she stared at Maury in abject terror. Maury, however, ignored her in favor of sputtering at Matt. "What-? How-?"
"Elle Bishop told me everything you can do and how these powers are hereditary, so I've been practicing...and unlike you, I'm not alone. You're not in control anymore." Turning his back on his father, Matt walked over to the cell holding the only person who hadn't disappeared when he took over the dream world they were in. "Molly? Is it really you?"
"It's me," she said in a small voice, still darting frightened glances at Maury. "I tried to find him like you asked, but he caught me and put me here."
"Don't worry, I'm gonna get you out." As he spoke, the steel bars trapping her vanished as well, and she ran to him, threw her arms around him and sobbed into his shirt while he stroked her hair. "You don't have to be scared of him anymore."
He picked her up, then turned to face Maury, who still seemed stunned at having the tables turned on him, though now he was clearly getting angry as well, not to mention desperate as his attempts to reassert control failed. "So you think you can beat me by working with him-" He glared at Edward "-but you can't trust him. He's not what you think - he's a vampire!"
Matt's eyebrows shot up. "Vampire, huh?" He looked from his father, who appeared to be completely serious, to Edward, who appeared stricken by the accusation but made no effort to deny it. In fact, the look in those weird golden eyes of his was that of someone who'd just had a shameful secret exposed - dismayed yet resigned, as if he knew it had to happen sooner or later. Then Matt shrugged. "That actually explains a lot." He turned back to Edward, who was now staring at him in utter disbelief. "Let's get out of here."
"Wait." Shaking off his astonishment, Edward gestured at the man who had brought them into this illusory world in the first place. "What about him?"
Matt glanced at Maury, who seemed just as stunned by his easy acceptance of his ally's true nature as Edward himself, and a grim smile spread slowly across his face. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
An identical grin formed on Edward's lips as he read Matt's thoughts. "Yes, I believe so."
Together, the two telepaths altered the scene once more, turning it into a solitary confinement cell with impenetrable steel walls.
"No!" Maury yelled, sweat breaking out on his face, his voice rising in panic. "You can't do this to me! Let me out!"
"You shouldn't have hurt Molly," Matt retorted coldly. "You know, for a long time I blamed myself for you leaving - I thought you would've stayed if I did better in school, if I was more popular...if I wasn't so fat...but now I see that you left because you're a selfish coward. You're great at scaring little girls, but you're not so tough when you're up against people who can fight you on your own turf."
"I never wanted to hurt the girl! I just couldn't let her - or you - get in the way of what I'm doing here-"
"Helping Adam wipe out humanity? Why, because you think you'll be more important when he remakes the world like he wants it - you'll be his right hand man, is that it? Maybe so...but you'd still be nothing more than a flunky latching on to someone else who has the vision you never had, and selling out the whole human race in the process. Now that I know what kind of man you really are, I guess I should thank you - because leaving was the best thing you could've done for me. Goodbye, Dad."
With that, he tightened his grip on Molly and walked out with Edward right on his heels. The heavy door slammed shut behind them, leaving Maury Parkman trapped inside his own mental prison - never to escape again.
###
Several floors down, in the real world, Peter was making his way down his chosen corridor when he sensed a sudden yet subtle shift in the atmosphere. The air became unnaturally still, the faint hum of the ventilation system ceased; even the mildly sterile smell of the recycled air pumped through the ducts vanished. An uneasy prickling sensation ran from the back of his neck down his spine, but he went on, bracing himself for whatever might be waiting for him, though he didn't get far before the oppressive silence was broken by what sounded like the clashing of swords punctuated with indistinct yelling.
He broke into a run, then slammed to a dead halt after rounding the next corner. Hiro Nakamura was in the hallway ahead, swinging his katana...and there, facing off against him, was Bella. Her back was turned toward Peter - all he could see was her thick curtain of hair rippling as she fended off Hiro's attempts to slash at her, but that was all he needed to recognize her. He wanted to call out to her, go to her, yet his body seemed strangely disconnected from his brain; he could only stand there, mesmerized by her graceful movements as she ducked and dodged Hiro's blade and leapt just out of his reach, almost like they were engaged in some deadly ballet...
For her part, Bella was simply exasperated. She was so close to her goal - so close to the release Adam had promised her - and then this buffoon literally appeared out of nowhere and attacked them with a sword, of all things, while yammering about his supposed history with Adam, which apparently involved a grave betrayal, though they seemed to disagree on exactly who had betrayed whom. It made no difference to her anyway, so she had used a force field to separate them and prevent Hiro from pursuing him as she sent Adam off to find whatever treasured possession he was so desperate to reclaim from the Company while she dealt with the interloper.
Dealing with Hiro, however, was proving to be problematic. His ability to stop time was no hindrance since it seemed that her immunity to mental powers now extended to physical ones as well, and his katana was no more threatening to her than a silk scarf, but his repeated attempts to strike her with it and insistence on teleporting in front of her whenever she tried to get around him were very annoying. Still, after what had happened when she tried to pull that security guard's gun out of his hand, she didn't dare to touch Hiro or his sword.
Finally fed up, she repurposed the force field stopping him from following Adam to push him violently to one side, slamming him against the wall - in this, at least, she knew her own strength better, and was able to moderate the force of her attack so that he was stunned by the impact but otherwise unharmed. She was about to walk past his crumpled form and catch up with Adam herself when she realized there was someone else in the hallway, edging up behind her. Time had restarted when Hiro was knocked out, so the air was moving again but blowing upwind of her, carrying the newcomer's scent away, yet she didn't need to smell the sweat that was undoubtedly beading on his skin to know he was nervous. She could sense it in his wary tread and the frantic thudding of his heart.
Maybe that means I can talk him out of trying to stop me. She dearly hoped so, because she didn't think she had another fight in her, didn't think she could bring herself to look into the frightened yet determined eyes of one more person she desperately wanted not to hurt while knowing she had no choice, because they were an obstacle in her path to escaping the bleak, meaningless existence she saw stretching out endlessly before her...
Without turning around, she said softly, "You don't have to do this. I didn't come here looking for a fight... You can just walk away, and I swear I won't hurt you. Don't try to be a hero."
Peter's heart somehow beat even faster at the sound of her voice - clearer than it used to be, perhaps, with a certain bell-like quality that hadn't been there before, yet still undeniably hers. It was also undeniable proof that, regardless of her alarming behavior at the Cullens' house, her mental faculties were fully intact, though he wasn't sure whether that made her recent actions more or less worrisome.
Swallowing his competing feelings of elation and trepidation, he managed to keep his own voice remarkably steady as he answered her. "Sorry, but you know me - I can't help it."
Bella froze, every muscle in her body seizing up as if she'd just received a physical shock. No, it can't be... I've gone crazy, that's all. Insanity is the usual explanation for hearing a dead person speak to you. Still, she couldn't help wondering why, after months of depression, her mind had waited until now to snap...and she knew for a fact that there really was someone behind her, even though it couldn't possibly be the person her traitorous brain was trying to convince her it was. I'm going to turn around, and it won't be him, just another security guard. Do it now...rip the Band-Aid off...
She whirled around...and the ground seemed to fall out from under her feet, because somehow, against all reason, it was him; the countless hours she'd devoted to shoring up her memories of him left her with no doubt on that score, even as she found that, compared to seeing him with her new eyes, those old memories might as well have been a bunch of grainy black and white photographs. Part of her still balked at accepting it, though, because if Peter was alive, if he had been alive all along, he wouldn't have let everyone think he was dead and grieve over his supposed demise for so long. The Peter Petrelli she knew would never be that cruel, so this couldn't be him...could it?
Meanwhile, Peter was studying her just as intently. He'd been warned that vampirism caused some changes in a person's appearance, which he now saw firsthand - Bella's face was thinner and a bit more angular than he remembered, her bone-white complexion forming a sharp contrast with the deep purple shadows under her eyes...which, as advertised, were bright red, though he tried not to dwell on that too much. When he looked past the unsettling color, there was no doubt that the intelligence behind those scarlet irises was still hers. "Bella..."
Hearing his voice again jolted her out of the spiral of bewilderment her mind had fallen into, prompting her to ask, "Peter...is it really you?"
"It's me."
Then, moving so fast she became a blur, she ran to him, but if he was hoping for a joyful reunion he was sorely mistaken; when she screeched to a halt mere inches away, he saw that her eyes were blazing with fury. She didn't lay a finger on him - incensed as she was, she didn't want to risk hurting him, not even to make him feel a tiny fraction of the pain she'd suffered - but she wasn't so gentle with his shirt, seizing it with both hands and balling up the fabric in her fists as she shouted at him. "Where the hell have you been?! Nobody's heard from you for months - we all thought you were dead-"
"I'm sorry-"
"Sorry? You're sorry?! You'd better have a damn good explanation for this!"
Seeing that she wasn't going to let go of him until he provided one - and deciding, based on Alice's admonition against antagonizing her, that trying to free himself might not be the best idea - Peter rushed through the story as fast as his tongue could move. "When I healed from exploding and found you unconscious, I took you to a hospital; then Linderman showed up and offered to heal you if I let him take away my powers. I know it was stupid to trust him, but I was desperate, so I went with him and let him lock me up in another Company facility. I stayed there for a couple months, until I realized he wasn't curing either of us - he never did anything for you, and the drugs he gave me were only temporary. When I confronted him, he threatened to sabotage your life support, so I stopped taking the pills and escaped once my powers came back...but then some Haitian guy chased me down, erased my memory, and shipped me off to Ireland."
Bella seemed to deflate after hearing that, her grip on his shirt loosening as the angry tension seeped out of her. "Oh... I guess that is a good reason." She released him, took a step back and ran a hand through her matted hair, suddenly very conscious of the fact that she had completely neglected personal grooming during her trek to New York, which had taken her through rain, sleet, snow, and a great deal of mud. Her only saving grace was that he couldn't see her ragged dress; Adam had pointed out that it was almost too tattered to qualify as clothing anymore and instructed her to find something to cover herself with, so she'd borrowed one of Peter's jackets, though she had to roll up the sleeves in order to free her hands.
"So," she asked in an effort to distract him from her unkempt appearance, "what are you doing here?"
"Looking for you, obviously - what else do you think I've been doing since I got my memory back?"
"How-?"
"Your friends tracked me down in Ireland and helped me fix what the Haitian did to me. They also explained how they healed you...by making you a vampire."
She started at the word, raised a hand toward her face as if only just remembering her red eyes, then turned her head to the side in a belated attempt to hide them. "They shouldn't have done that."
"Why not? Sure, it was a shock, but I'm just glad you're okay. I wanted to see you, but they told me you'd run off, and now you're here with Adam? Where is he?"
"He went off that way." Bella gestured vaguely at the corridor behind her. "But never mind him; when he comes back, I'll tell him I won't be needing what we came for after all."
"You won't be needing it?" Peter echoed, now more confused - and concerned - than ever. According to Angela, Adam had been plotting to weaponize the Shanti virus since long before Bella was born, so how could she be involved in his schemes - much less the mastermind, as her words implied? "Are you saying breaking in here was your idea?"
She frowned at him, not liking the hint of accusation in his tone. "No, it was Adam's idea. He said the Company had stolen something important from him and asked me to help him get it back in exchange for-" Realizing she was about to say too much, she snapped her mouth shut.
"In exchange for what?" She didn't answer, but the panicked look that had flashed across her face returned. Peter took a step closer, doing his best to stare her down. "Tell me!"
She squirmed a little, then quickly wilted under his penetrating gaze. "Poison," she whispered, avoiding eye contact by looking straight ahead at his collarbone rather than up at his face.
"And you needed to break into Primatech for that? There are plenty of poisonous substances that are easier to get."
"It was a specific kind of poison that Adam said Primatech had made," she elaborated while shrinking into her pilfered jacket and wrapping her arms around herself, making herself as small as possible in a futile effort to escape his scrutiny. "One that could kill vampires."
Peter didn't know what to make of this; while he was relieved to hear that she knew nothing about the virus or Adam's plans for it, it was still worrying that she'd been seeking the means to kill her own kind. She was clearly unhappy with her new condition, which had obviously been imposed on her without her consent since she was unconscious at the time, but surely she wasn't that mad at her friends for saving her life the only way they could. "What did you want it for?" he asked quietly. "Which vampires were you planning to kill?"
"I wasn't planning to kill any vampires, plural," she replied even more quietly, before lowering her head so that her hair fell over her face and adding in such a tiny whisper that he had to strain his ears to hear it, "Just one."
He didn't understand what she meant at first; then he did, and almost wished she'd been plotting to massacre the entire Cullen clan instead. "You wanted to... We're gonna have a long talk about this later, but right now I need you to listen to me, okay? Adam is a liar and a murderer, and he was never going to help you. He's really after a virus that'll wipe out almost everyone on the planet, and he's using you to get it. Now, where did he go?"
Bella's eyes widened when he called Adam a murderer, then narrowed angrily at the revelation of how the immortal had tricked her. When Peter finished speaking, she sprang into action with no hesitation whatsoever. "This way."
By that time the gas had dissipated enough that she was able to pick up Adam's trail and lead Peter even deeper into the bowels of Primatech's stronghold, to a hallway that dead-ended at the heavy door of the most secure vault...which was slightly ajar. Realizing that Adam must already be inside, they sprinted down the hall; easily outpacing her companion, Bella reached the door first and flung it wide open.
Adam was busy rifling through the racks of vials containing various chemical and biological specimens, but he spun around when the hinges shrieked in protest, then winced at the thundering boom as two feet of reinforced steel bounced off the wall. "Ah, Bella, there you are. I know you're eager to conclude our business here, but is it really necessary to make such a racket?"
"Drop the act," she snapped. "I know what you're really after."
A look of dismay flickered across Adam's face, but he was quick to smooth it over. "So now I suppose you've come to stop me...but have you really thought this through?"
"What is there to think through? You're talking about humankind's extinction!"
"Don't pretend you care about them," Adam scoffed. "You were desperate for a way out of this sorry world! Well, that's exactly what I'm offering - maybe not in the way I said, but viruses mutate as they spread, you know. Who knows, the Shanti virus may eventually turn into something that can kill even your kind. You might get your wish after all."
"And how many would have to die before that happened?" Bella asked, shaking her head in disbelief at the amount of death and destruction he described so casually. "I'd never let that happen, no matter how miserable I was."
"Oh, spare me," Adam muttered, unable to bear any more of her platitudes. "I never thought someone with nothing but venom in their veins could be such a bleeding heart."
"That's because you don't know anything about her," Peter retorted as he stepped into the vault, having lingered outside just long enough to listen to the end of their conversation.
Adam was so surprised to see him that he stumbled back a step - which just happened to bring him within reach of the shelf where he'd spotted his prize right before Bella came in. "Peter! How nice to see you again-"
"You knew?" Bella demanded, her voice rising to a shout as the truth sank in. "You knew he was alive this whole time?!"
"He knew, all right," Peter replied before Adam could try to weasel out of it. "Linderman put me in the cell next to his. He fed me a story about being locked up to stop him from using his abilities for good and got me to take him with me when I escaped, then ditched me when they came after us."
"I'm sorry about that. I thought if we split up, it increased the chances that at least one of us might make it out-"
"That you'd make it out, you mean. You had to know they'd send the Haitian after me - your power might make you hard to take down, but it's not exactly dangerous in itself, not like mine. You sacrificed me to buy yourself time to get away...or maybe you wanted me out of the way so you wouldn't have to guard your thoughts all the time, because you knew if I realized what you were up to, there's no way I'd stand by and let you murder millions of innocent people."
"Innocent? Come now, Peter, even you can't be naive enough to truly believe that. Greedy, shortsighted fools, the lot of them, polluting and destroying the planet all for the sake of a bit more money or the latest modern convenience...but we can change all that, don't you see? Not everyone has to die, and we can build a better world with those who are left-"
"With you as their messiah, right? This world isn't perfect, but that doesn't give us the right to play God trying to fix it!"
Adam shook his head sorrowfully. "You disappoint me, both of you; with the power you have between you, you could do anything! But neither of you have the vision, the ambition...which is why the world needs people like me."
With a sudden sweeping motion of his hand, he sent a rack full of vials - at least one of which held the deadliest strain the Shanti virus had ever produced - flying off its shelf, hermetically sealed glass tubes arcing through the air like tiny glittering missiles. Luckily, Bella's reflexes were faster than gravity, enabling her to spread her shield over the floor like a ground mist before any of them hit the concrete. Adam let out a yell of frustration and tried to snatch the vials out of the air, intent on breaking them with his bare hands if he had to, but Peter telekinetically summoned them into his own hands first, then placed them on a shelf safely out of the other man's reach.
"It's over, Adam," he said with grim finality as Bella compressed and reshaped her force field, carefully wrapping it around the blond's torso like a straitjacket. "The only question is what to do with you now..."
"Let's discuss it outside," Bella suggested, casting an uneasy look at the shelves surrounding them, filled with things Primatech's scientists had deemed dangerous enough to lock away underground, behind two feet of steel. "This place gives me the creeps."
They marched Adam out of the vault, which they carefully locked up again, but that was all they had time to do before Hiro came charging down the hallway, brandishing his katana. He swung it at Bella, who happened to be the closest target, but Peter stepped in front of her and wrenched the blade out of Hiro's grip with a twitch of his fingers.
"Peter Petrelli?!" The Japanese man blinked in astonishment and pushed his glasses up on his nose as if to check that his vision was clear. "Why you protect her? She is working with Adam - very bad man! He-"
"That was before I told her the truth about him," Peter interrupted. "She helped me stop him from releasing the virus."
Peering around him, Bella added, "And I'm sorry for the whole force-field-wall-slamming thing."
Hiro looked from her and Peter to Adam, who was struggling fruitlessly against his invisible bonds, and his uncertain expression transformed into a wide grin. "No problem; my head very hard," he said proudly before gesturing at Adam. "What you do with him?"
"We're still working on that," Peter admitted, while Bella indicated her concurrence by spreading her hands helplessly. "We could take him back to the facility in New York, but he's already escaped once..."
Hiro thought it over for a moment; then his grin returned, this time tinged with the tiniest hint of malice. "I have better idea."
###
"So what do you think Hiro did with him?" Bella wondered aloud as she and Peter walked away from the vault. Once Hiro had teleported away with his prisoner, leaving them alone together, she had noticed Peter looking at her in a way that made her suspect he had a bone to pick with her - most likely regarding her suicidal behavior, but that was the last thing she wanted to talk about at the moment (or ever, really), so she hoped the question would distract him.
Fortunately for her, it seemed to work. "Well, he said Adam killed his father, so whatever he has in mind I doubt it'll be pleasant."
Bella shot him a surprised look, her eyebrows furrowing slightly; for someone who was usually so compassionate, Peter's voice had turned very cold just then. "I'm sorry," she ventured, faltering under his rather forbidding expression. "It's horrible the way he tricked you into setting him free-"
"That's not what I'm mad about." Taking note of the apprehensive way she was watching him, he reined in his anger and tried to soften his tone. "You said he got you here by promising-"
Her evasion this time was much less subtle. "Hey, you have Hiro's power, don't you? Why not teleport out of here before everyone who was gassed starts waking up and we have to answer a bunch of awkward questions?"
Peter frowned at her blatant refusal to discuss what was in his opinion a very pressing issue, but answered her anyway. "We have to find the others first."
"Others? Who else is here?"
"Alice, Edward, Elle, and Matt Parkman."
Bella abruptly stopped walking. "Alice, Edward, and Elle are here? Oh crap. Crap, crap, crap."
Puzzled by her reaction, Peter turned around so he could see her face directly. "Shouldn't you be happy to see them? They're your friends, aren't they?"
"I hope so... Let's just say I haven't exactly been a great friend lately, so even if I'm happy to see them, the feeling may not be mutual. Maybe I should've let Adam usher in the apocalypse after all," she muttered, only half-jokingly. "At least that would've given them something to think about besides being mad at me."
"Or you could just apologize. Friends fight all the time, but they get over it."
"Vampires are very good at holding grudges," Bella said darkly, "and Alice will definitely start an eternal blood feud when she sees what's happened to the dress she gave me."
Far from imparting the sense of doom she evidently felt, her dire prediction made Peter smile, though he managed to refrain from actual laughter. "Don't worry, I'll protect you."
Even though he said it humorously, there was an undercurrent of sincerity in the words that caused an odd clenching sensation in her chest, almost as if her heart had tried to beat one more time, and despite her misgivings about what lay ahead, she found herself smiling back.
After rereading this chapter (as I always do before posting) I hope it wasn't too anticlimactic, what with half of it taking place inside the characters' minds and the other just not featuring much in the way of action. In my defense, Adam's ability doesn't really allow for much of a fight between him, Peter, and Bella; they could easily beat him up, he'd heal instantly, and that's about it. Besides, I've always thought words and ideas are more effective weapons than superpowers/magic/face punches/whatever - those things might physically stop a person from carrying out their villainous scheme, but only words can unravel or undermine someone's motivation.
In any event, the rest of the story will include some fights that will be much more action-oriented. Obviously we've now reached the end of season 2's plotline, so from here on out we'll be venturing into uncharted AU territory.