It was shockingly easy to ignore Edward's distress. The boy yelled for the better part of a minute, sobbing like he'd never heard a member of his coven cry before.

Edward's pain bounced off of Jasper in a way that he didn't know was possible; he felt entirely unaffected by it. As if he couldn't focus on Edward's misery when his thoughts were so caught up in what was happening around them.

So, James had grabbed Alice. He'd taken her, bolted, and left them confused enough to give Victoria ample time to snatch Bella, and leave them a note.

You lose.

Even now, Jasper's eyes raked over it. They hadn't lost though. Because if the game was truly over, Edward would instead be sobbing over Bella's corpse. And Alice would be...

"It's not over," he muttered quietly, his voice barely carrying over Edward's hysteria.

"What isn't?" Emmett asked, frowning up at Jasper from where he was halfway crouched beside Edward, looking helpless.

"The game. If it were over—if they'd won—someone would be dead."

Edward snarled at him, teeth bared as he turned his head toward him and glared. The emotions the boy was projecting were volatile.

It was nothing Jasper hadn't felt directed at him before.

"You know it," he wasn't phased by Edward's anger. He also knew that in his state, if push came to shove he could defeat him in a heartbeat. An amused, very quiet part of Jasper's subconscious wanted to let out a dark laugh. That was Edward's problem: all bark, no bite. "This is part of his game," he emphasized, meeting the younger vampire's deadly glare. "You said it yourself. This is his most exciting game ever. You saw it in his head."

"So, what is his goal?" Carlisle crossed his arms over his chest. Leave it to him to keep up the human charade at a time like this.

"I don't know. Kill Bella? Kill Alice?" the words tasted horrible in his mouth, but it was the truth. "Use them as bait to kill us? To wipe out our coven?"

"No one is going to harm our family," Carlise spoke sternly, his correction obvious to everyone in the room.

"Look around, Carlisle," Jasper was growing impatient, "he's already doing it." He gestured to the hysterical Edward, who was only now beginning to pick himself up off the ground. "I'm telling you this now, but if he harms a hair on Alice's head, mercy will be the last thing on my mind."

"I understand that," Carlisle assured, but Jasper knew he didn't. Jasper would tear this whole, lousy world apart to make sure that Alice stayed safe. That wasn't a feeling Carlisle—soft, gentle, compassionate Carlisle—could empathize with.

"I can," Edward finally spoke, righting himself fully. "If anything happens to Bella—"

"Don't you dare compare how you feel about that human to how I feel about Alice!" Jasper finally snapped, shouting. "You barely know this girl!" He felt Emmett take a step toward him, and disregarded him fully. "You've allowed your emotions to compromise everyone's safety, and now, because you've been so focused on this child, Alice—the person who has known you as her brother longer than the rest of your 'family' has been immortal, the person who has loved you for longer than you've known her—is in the hands of someone who may or may not know her. Someone who may or may not kill her."

He paused to pull back the emotion he knew he was expelling. He didn't need his own frustration to affect anyone else. He wanted them to react to his words genuinely. He wanted his words to hurt Edward.

"Did Alice recognize him?" Jasper asked, after a beat of silence. "In the field, did Alice recognize him?!"

"No," Edward's voice was low, angry. And the awful emotions that were radiating off of him almost made Jasper feel better. They didn't, but it was a small consolation. "As far as she was aware, she's never seen him before."

"So, for all we know, he could be her creator. Back to reclaim her." Even speaking the words made Jasper feel suddenly ill. "You saw how badly he wanted Bella because of your reaction. Imagine how badly he probably wanted Alice, recognizing her after all these years..."

Jasper didn't mention his one fear: that James could have been more than just Alice's potential creator. Alice had never remembered a thing prior to becoming immortal. There was a story behind her creation, and it was one that none of them had.

Knowing that James likely knew everything made his temper boil.

"We're wasting time." He spoke, turning toward Carlisle. "There's no point in Rose and Esme watching over the girl's father. If Victoria is down here that means she and James are likely going to rendezvous at some point."

"You're right." Carlisle ran a hand through his hair, his eyes still watching Edward apprehensively. Edward wasn't looking at anyone at this point; he simply stared at the wooden floors despondently, his guilt and fury at war inside of him.

"His first trick was in splitting us up," Jasper hated to admit it, but it was true. "We're stronger when we're together. There's power in our numbers and he knows that so he had to split us up anyway possible. We need them down here, now."

He could feel Emmett's apprehension even as he pulled his own phone out and quickly dialed Rosalie's number. Jasper was sure that he was nervous about getting his own wife involved with the stakes this high. But these were good people. Loyal people. They had gone this far for a human they barely knew. Of course they'd do anything to help him get Alice back.

"They'll be expecting us to go directly after them. So time is of the essence."

"If they think we're gaining on them at any point there's no telling what they'll do." Edward spoke up, his voice forlorn. "They could kill them."

In true Emmett fashion, he snorted in reply to that. "I think you're underestimating Alice."

"There's no way," Jasper shook his head at Edward. "It wouldn't make any sense for him to go through all this trouble just to kill them in the desert and be done with it." He felt detached from his words as he spoke, as if they weren't calmly discussing Alice's potential death. "There is no show to be had in us discovering her remains in the middle of nowhere."

"He's working toward something," Carlisle nodded, agreeing with Jasper's train of thought. "What satisfaction will he get out of harming either of them if we aren't there to be aware of their loss?"

"What's this supposed to be then?" Emmett gestured toward the paper. The cursive glaring back at all of them. "A way to throw us off the trail?"

"To get us to second-guess their approach. Again," Jasper looked pointedly at the men. "We don't have time to waste. We have to get on this, now. Before they think they've gotten away. If we let them retreat and regroup and if we give them time to do it, we have lost."

"Not on my watch," Edward was the first to start walking, "which scent do we follow first?" And when he turned toward Jasper, waiting for some further guidance, Jasper swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded toward the closet.

"The one that's freshest."

"You lost them BOTH?!"

As if on cue, all four men in the room flinched habitually at the sound of Rosalie's fury.

Emmett stood off to the side, one finger in his ear as he held the phone away from his head with his other hand. He shot the rest of the men a guilty expression before mouthing an "I'm sorry."

"How the HELL do you lose a human girl and your SISTER?!"

Jasper sighed as Edward groaned. Thankfully, Carlisle beckoned Emmett forward as they all began to move out of the room.

They would have to be filled in on the way.


When the sun began to set, Alice was thankful. Even far away from populated areas, Alice had never felt fully comfortable being exposed in the sunlight. Sure, the way her skin glittered had been a novelty to her at first, keeping her entertained early in her life when there was little to do but everything to look forward to.

When you spent the first few decades of your life simply waiting, your entire life on hold, you had to find something to keep yourself from going crazy.

She felt much like that now. Like she was going to physically crawl out of her skin at any moment because she didn't know how much longer she could wait.

But she could wait. She knew that. Not only was it well within her ability but she had become so good at waiting that she even resisted finding Jasper early all those years ago.

Of course, that was a necessary thing. She hadn't wanted him to rip her head from her shoulders. And for most of the 1930s, that had been what awaited her if she sought him out.

James flexed his tricep against her throat, and Alice hated how she still hadn't been able to sneak a breath. He slowed down about an hour ago, his pace no longer full-speed. It was as if he could sense that no one was on their trail.

And with a quick glance toward her husband's future, she saw with acute disappointment that they weren't.

In fact, they weren't heading in her direction at all. It seemed they were following an entirely different trail. It didn't take Alice long to see that Victoria lay at the other end of that chase. But what Alice did see nearly made her cry out.

A wordless 'no' fell from her mouth the moment Bella's future entwined itself with Victoria's.

Victoria had Bella.

Victoria had Bella.

How had this happened? She was supposed to be safe with Jasper.

Not for the first time, Alice found herself frustrated with her own gift. If only it could work retroactively, Alice could go back and see what she'd missed.

Instead there was a huge gap in her visions of Bella. One moment, she'd been off with Jasper, but then James had thrown a wrench in their day and now they were heading deeper and deeper East, into the desert.

James made an amused noise, "What was that?" And as he slowed his pace, Alice knew she might have a shot now.

He released her torso first, moving his arm to grab one of her own. Quickly, Alice ducked her chin down as hard as she could, wedging it under his arm just barely, but enough that plucking her head from her shoulders wouldn't be that easy.

She didn't weigh much, but the momentum from her swinging legs, that were now able to sway her torso fully around his body, helped to free her. He had to release her head so that he'd be able to grab at her with his left hand, too. His right still held her forearm in his grip.

This was her chance, she only had to wriggle free and then—

The grinding sound of her arm being yanked from her body registered with her senses before the pain did.

She stumbled back on her legs, shocked to still be on her feet as she turned her head to stare at the gaping hole in her shoulder.

Alice had taken part in a handful of fights before—nowhere near as many as Jasper, but enough that she'd had a close call here and there—but never before had she lost a limb. Never before had she been injured, really.

And god, it hurt.

She barely even registered the fact that she'd fallen to her knees and was gasping, just staring in shock at the jagged, silver wound in her arm. The worst part was the fact that she could still feel her detached arm, and it felt like it was on fire.

Eyes shooting toward James she was confused, yet relieved when she saw him turning her arm over in his hands. He grinned down at it with a childlike expression, like it was some kind of prize he'd won.

Sick, Alice found herself thinking as she watched him touch each of her fingers, his study of her limb slow and thorough. Pressing her palm to his nose and inhaling, Alice couldn't stop the fearful shiver that ran through her.

"Do they know we're acquainted, Mary Alice?"

Alice blinked once, then twice. "What?"

It wasn't the brightest response to give, but he caught her so off guard that she couldn't quite form thoughts properly. And still, her arm was burning.

James made a noise implying offense. "What? Do you not remember me?" Alice didn't reply, and he frowned. "Not even what Kumboh told you of me?"

Lie, an instinct within her immediately popped up, you have to lie.

It only took her two seconds to flicker through her best course of action and her most neutral pieces of dialogue.

"It's… fuzzy…" She narrowed her eyes up at him, acting as if she were recognizing something about him. "I remember…" she flashed through a few possibilities, and when one line of dialogue stuck out to her, she picked it, "a fight?"

James made a satisfied hum before smiling, his eyes flickering back to her limp arm in his grip. They'd been the right words to say, apparently.

"I'd switch up the name, too," he said, as if they were suddenly going to have a friendly conversation. "With everything they put you through in that asylum, it's a wonder you even remember it."

"It's fuzzy," she repeated, trying to force down the panic she felt as he prattled off information. Surely, he couldn't really be talking about her. Her name wasn't Mary Alice, it was Alice. He had to be delusional. "I really don't remember too much."

"Let me fill in the blanks for you."

As he approached, Alice couldn't help but flinch back from him, sinking further into the ground as he reached forward. She knew what he was about to do, and she knew that it was going to hurt.

As he held her arm up to her shoulder, he forcefully jammed the frozen flesh back together. Alice couldn't help but cry out when he released her arm and she grabbed it, wishing she could push down the pain as the limb slowly, achingly, began the process of attaching itself.

"Stings, huh?" He grinned widely, lowering himself further until she was forced backwards, onto her backside in the dirt. "I only ever rip, I never repair. So consider yourself lucky."

Grabbing her up by her throat, he resumed the same hold on her as before.

"I might not be as giving next time."

Turning once more, James took off into the night. Alice only closed her eyes, and tried to think about anything besides the searing pain in her arm. In her mind, the possibilities ahead of her ran wild.


A/N:

two chapters in one day bc I've done so much writing today it would be a crime if I DIDNT share another.

Review Replies:

deltagirl74: literally when I heard this idea I was like... fuck... sorry CotN sequel... this shits gonna get priority for a bit. it's just too good of a scenario to not write. like, could you IMAGINE if we'd gotten something like this in canon? god it would be a dream. need me that GOOD angst smeyer... none of this love triangle bullshit!

Meagan: oh man... u have NO idea... :~)

ZileRacer: hope this chapter answered your first question. and yeah, I doubt james has much of an outside social circle. couldn't even hold on to laurent that long. and yup! victoria was being chased by esme and rosalie first! but when she escaped their chase, they returned to forks to keep an eye on Charlie. with her ability to pretty much avoid and hide from people, I imagine it wasn't too difficult for her to set some false trails and book it after James.