Edward.

It had been two weeks since I first saw the dreams of the frail girl trapped in the metal box, and it was all I could think about now whether I was in class, or at the music shop, absently correcting my students on their piano technique. I was barely surviving each day with my three cups of caffeine, and unlike my previous schedule which moved like clockwork, I was dragging my feet sluggishly from one place to the next; avoiding sleep for as long as I could put it off.

A feeling of both dread and intrigue flooded my being each night I began dozing off against my will. I was always so eager to see her. Yet, I was anxious to sink down the sea of deep red, and to drown in blood over and over to see her.

The dream began to take a few different variations over the weeks. The girl seemed to be in different conditions each time; sometimes she looked as if she'd been beaten with significant bruising over her face and wrists, other times she looked more lovely, despite the blood drying against her lips.

Today she was crumpled in a ball on the floor, holding herself in a tight fetal position, unconscious against the concrete floor. Her hair looked an oily black under the green tinged florescent lighting--it covered her face like a curtain, effectively shading it from view.

"No," I felt myself whisper.

Please, please be okay.

I ran to her from the door I always appeared by and knelt down to pull her into my arms. Her head rolled limply against my chest and her long hair parted to give me a clear view of her face. There was no blood on her shift, and it gave me a false sense of hope that I might not drown this time. Nonetheless, a bruise was beginning to stain her pallid skin violet over her left eye. I let my fingers trace the injury ever so softly.

What happened to you?

My eyes noticed something shining in the flickering light, and I noticed the metal cuff around her wrist. How Had I not seen this before? I picked up her limp hand as gently as I could. I noted how graceful her slender fingers were and was nearly entranced by the beauty of them alone. I forced my eyes to focus on the device on her wrist. It looked like half of a handcuff, a thick chunk of metal with a small plaque screwed on it that read a small scrawl of numbers, I think four digits, with two words. Why were these words blurred out to me?

It was as if even the dream was my own opposing force, and didn't want me to know who she was. Her eyes opened, and they were blood red, with a depth that was a cross between human and animalistic. So inhuman yet so undeniably beautiful.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was not accusatory; she sounded afraid, and not for her self.

"I need to get you out of here." I told her urgently, trying to split open the cuff around her wrist.

"You're not supposed to be here," she whispered. "And now it's too late." I blinked in confusion, and when my eyelids opened, blood had already filled the room, neck high, and she was covered in the blood, as if she'd bathed in it.

"Not again," I choked against the hot liquid as I pushed through it to stay afloat. The metallic smell was killing me.

"You should've never came." She whispered with a hint of sadistic glee, and pushed me down by my chest with one hand. Even her single handle alone had shot me through the viscosity of the blood and I hit the concrete floor with rebounding force. I had blood in my mouth, nose and throat, and when my head hot the concrete, it knocked me out.

That I was when I woke, gasping as I usually did at 3 in the morning, heart pounding. I shouldn't have kept thinking about it after, but it left my heart pounding, instead. Who was this girl. Why did she keep appearing to me, like this?

"Edwaaaard." A long drawl caught my attention and I blinked. Both Emmett and Jasper stared at me in the music shop we worked at as if I'd come from another planet. Emmett was sitting at his drum kit, with both sticks still as stone in his large hands and Jasper's hand was frozen over his tuning pick. It was as if time itself had stopped.

"What?" I mumbled. God damn, I'm tired.

"Dude. You've been out of it all day, and you haven't said anything." Jasper said. I shrugged carelessly, but also didn't bother to offer him an explanation. I turned my attention back to my piano, playing a riff that was a little too fast for comfort with my right hand as my eyes searched over my baby grand, hoping for my one o'clock client to magically show 15 minutes early to save me from my best friends' well-intended harassment. Where was my next lesson when I needed it, dammit. The sleep deprivation was really getting to my mood.

"The peace and quiet is a nice change from your usual optimism, don't get me wrong. But it's also creepy as shit to see you floating around like a ghost." Emmett joked. I waved them both off.

"Fuck off dude," I mumbled, standing up from the piano bench and pushing past their astounded faces, frozen in shock of hearing me curse at work, likely. They stole a look towards our manager, though we all knew he wouldn't have looked up from his newspaper even if the world was ending.

"Wait." Jasper set his acoustic guitar down and caught my shoulder before I could leave. He softened his tone, always being the most empathic, most sensitive of all of us. It's no wonder the music he writes is so heart-wrenching. "Somethings been up with you. What is it?"

"It's nothing." I said as casually as I could, with the same shrug I'd given my family members for weeks now. Neither of my friends bought it. Emmett caught my other shoulder in his large hand, staring at me dead in the eye.

"Edward. Come on. We've known you forever, since you were crying and snotting all over the place trying to beat up our teacher. We're brothers." I couldn't help but scoff a dry chuckle. He wasn't wrong about that. Emmett and Jasper had found me as I was closing my fists ready to jump the teacher that I thought saw eyeing me out threateningly on my first day of school. They had come over, and despite not knowing them, when I saw Jasper shake his head vigorously behind the teacher and Emmett sliding a finger against his throat at me in the international sign of "goner" I knew I needed to believe them. trust them. Befriend them. The bond we felt was formed nearly instantaneously. None of us had known why. Nonetheless, we've been inseparable since.

"I'm only going to ask one more time, Edward. No bullshit," Emmett continued, almost aggressively. Emmett would not backdown when he knew his friend's well-being was at question.

"What are you hiding?" I shifted my eyes, felt myself scuffing my shoes against the sound proof-carpeting a little before answering, reluctantly.

"Well... I've been seeing this girl in my dream."

There was a moment of dead silence as they stared at me. Expressionless.

To my surprise, a mere second later they burst out laughing, cackling loudly and holding their stomachs. "He's been seeing a giiiiirl," Emmett wheezed, even threw in a lewd jerking motion with his fist for emphasis which made them both laugh so hard they were rocking in silence from the laughter racking their bodies. Jasper was wiping away a tear.

"Dude. You only NOW had you first wet dream? Where were you through all of middle school and the first two and a half years of high school? Did you not see Mary Alice Brandon when she started growing tits?" He raised a brow.

"Yeah," Emmett boomed. "Man if you just started dating when me and Rose met, you'd have had plenty of wet dreams by now." He added a perverted slapping gesture to the thin air, adding a small "pow" with his lips. I shook my head, persistently, feeling the sleep deprivation shortening my willpower through their usual teasing antics about me never having had a relationship through high school.

"This isn't a wet dream." I tried to explain patiently, but over the laugher, the noise deemed it pointless. I sighed and rubbed the side of my pounding forehead as I pushed past them to make a bee line towards the front door. The bell jingled brightly as I pulled back the door. "I'm stepping out, getting coffee. The usual, Mac?" The reserved shop owner didn't even look up from his paper, simply nodded behind his glasses.

I stepped into the wet Seattle air, grateful for once that it was always too cold for my taste. I would need help staying awake. Especially to keep the girl in my mind at bay. "It's not a wet dream," I mumbled to myself, kicking a pebble in my way.

Or is it?

Bella

I regained consciousness as I usually did, blinking hard as I woke up with a cheek against the concrete. I sat up slowly, careful to feel for any serious injuries. When there were none, I pushed my hand against my jaw, and heard my neck crack a few times.

How long had I been out? Ow. Is that a black eye?

I barely remember the events that happened.

Aro came into my test lab. He pulled a stool in as he did, motioning for me to sit on the metal table. He set up his stool so we could face each other. Do not overthink anything he says.

He was the only one who knew when I was lying. They called him a human lie detector, claiming he was telepathic by touch, almost, he was so accurate.

"1906. It's been a moment. How are you faring?" He asked cordially, as if asking about my day when knowing full well I'd been beaten and sedated only hours ago.

"As well as you think." I snapped, through a split lip.

"The hostility! You always were a stubborn one," he said with an amicable chuckle. I glared at him. I wanted nothing more than to strangle him. "You are very lucky to be here, you know. If the outside world had found you, you'd be shunned." He stated at me, and released his hand from mine. "Ah, so the outside world is something you desire?"

"I need to know what's out there." I said between gritted teeth.

"You know full well we cannot do that. You will destroy anything you touch."

"How can you know that if I'm not given a fucking chance?" I spit out. Aro's lips twitched into a smile that didn't touch his eyes and motioned to the lab behind him with a finger. "I believe we're done here."

Alec came through the doors with a syringe ready in his hand. Jane must've been watching. He stabbed me with the syringe with more force than necessary into my thigh. After I felt the needle push into my skin, I felt a cold fluid being released into me as he depressed the plunger. I hissed under my breath but kept my eyes trained on Alec, without blinking. I would never give them the satisfaction of seeing my pain.

In fact, it only added gasoline to my already crackling fire. I would leave this place. They will never have the satisfaction of using me again.

Days passed, weeks passed as I plotted my escape.

They rarely let information of the others slip, but I'd understood well enough that many of them didn't make it. They had tried to escape but had been unsuccessful; they were thus labeled those who born and died as sacrifices to science, to "furthering the research" of our kind. Their bodies were to be cut open for "autopsy" purposes.

I knew it was horseshit that they disguised as something that sounded noble. I knew full well that they had tried with all they had to escape, but were literally torn apart for their courage, and then taken advantage of afterwards.

The ones that were slaughtered without an attempt of escape was because the team had found a single flaw in them that deemed them too imperfect for the standards that constantly seemed to raise higher and higher each year. We had to be physically strong enough to pass our strength and endurance tests. In control, enough to be coherent as a human would be when we weren't changed. Hearing radius a mile or more, precision sight more than that, and fighting ability had to be nearly perfect.

I knew I was preserved only for the strengths I had. This made it clear to me that if I were to escape, I was one of the stronger half breeds that stood a chance... I knew one thing was for certain, my biggest setback right now was that I was marked with the comment, "there is no regard for human life in 1906 while changed." This was true. I was a primal beast when I tap into the other side.

I would just have to play this supposed "weakness" to my advantage, then.