First new Dark Days update of 2022! I hope all of you are doing well in the new year so far.

Warning: this chapter is where the story's main crisis really starts to escalate, so it's not very happy-making. I'm sorry my first update of the year couldn't be more upbeat.

Chapter 18: Going Viral

Everyone froze, staring in horror at the tainted bite mark - everyone except Eleazar, that is, because of course she had already shown it to him. He strode over to where Carlisle stood and gripped his arm, jarring the doctor out of his stunned torpor. "My friend," he said urgently, "we need to learn everything we can about this...poison that sickened and killed our visitor, and to determine whether Carmen is likely to suffer similar effects."

"Yes, of course," Carlisle agreed, giving himself a shake as he set aside his confusion, disbelief, and worry over what this unprecedented event could mean for his closest friends in order to look at the problem through the lens of medicine and science. "I'll need to return home at once, where I have access to the proper equipment to run tests on our unfortunate visitor's brain," he said in a more businesslike tone. "In the meantime, I think it would be wise to assume the worst and remove Carmen's arm as a precautionary measure, to prevent the taint from spreading further."

Everyone winced - it was very uncomfortable for a vampire to be separated from their limbs, after all - but Carmen and Eleazar both agreed that it was better to be safe than sorry. She even offered to let Carlisle study the severed part of her forearm in order to gain a better understanding of how the tainted venom affected vampiric cells.

"That will be very helpful, thank you," he said gratefully. "I promise I will do everything in my power to find a way of removing this corruption so that your arm can be safely reattached."

"I hope you can, but there's more at stake here than me losing an arm," she replied grimly. "I wasn't the only one who was bitten."

Carlisle's eyes widened in alarm. "Oh dear. How many-?"

"At least three, maybe four or five."

"Where are they now?" Esme asked worriedly.

"Gone - everyone left after that man showed up and ruined the party," Irina told her, her brow furrowing in an anxious frown.

"Carmen wasn't showing any ill effects from his bite yet, so we didn't think about trying to stop them," Kate added with an apologetic little shrug.

"Of course not," Carlisle said in a tone that was clearly meant to be calm and reassuring; he actually pulled it off quite well under the circumstances, though a hint of dismay bled through despite his best efforts. "However, knowing what we know now, I believe it would be prudent to track down everyone who was exposed. Who are they?"

Carmen listed the three she was positive had been bitten, then a couple more she thought might have been. Carlisle winced at hearing the names of two friends, but it was the last one that really caught his attention.

"Isn't he...?" He let the question trail off as he looked inquisitively at Eleazar.

"An old friend from my days among the Volturi," the other man confirmed with a nod. "I was surprised that he was able to get permission to leave the city..."

As they continued talking, Peter leaned closer to Bella and whispered, "Who or what are the Volturi?"

"I don't know much about them," she whispered back, "but according to Elle they're basically vampire secret police."

Unsure whether it was impressive or frightening that the vampires had their own secret police force, Peter tuned back into Carlisle's conversation with Eleazar just as the doctor said, "...Alert Aro and his brothers to the situation, as well as the possibility that one of their own may have been compromised."

"If you wish," Eleazar replied, "though I doubt the brothers will give much credence to tales of a disease or poison that affects us. They've lived a very long time, after all, seen many plagues ravage humanity, but always, we have been left untouched."

Carlisle frowned, realizing the other man was probably right in thinking they would react with their typical arrogance and complacency; then Esme turned toward him and laid a hand on his arm. "You should still warn them," she said quietly. "If they choose not to listen, at least you can say you tried."

"You're right, of course. I'll give Aro a call, then I really must get to work figuring out exactly what we're dealing with."

"I'll take you home," Peter offered. "You said you have your own lab equipment, right? Then I can track those people down and bring them to you for an exam. Where do they live?"

"Well, now, that's a problem..."

"Most of our kind don't trouble themselves with things like houses," Edward explained. "The majority of vampires are nomads, wandering whenever and wherever they please. It's easy to do when you don't require shelter and have no ties to your community holding you down."

"Well, that complicates things," Peter said dryly.

"It does, but it's not an insurmountable obstacle. Do you remember the girl our friend Matt was caring for?"

"Molly - he said she could find anyone, anywhere," Peter recalled. "I think I need to pay them a visit."

Manhattan, NY

Matt wasn't pleased to be awakened so early on his day off, and even less happy about having to drag Molly out of bed so she could show Peter how her ability worked, but he did it once Peter impressed on him just how serious the situation was by showing him memories of the infected vampire, his erratically aggressive behavior, and his decayed brain. When the tutorial was over and Molly had gone back to her room, Peter was ready to leave immediately, but Matt held him back.

"Wait a minute. What exactly is going on here? I mean-" He glanced at Molly's bedroom door, listening to see if she was still awake, then lowered his voice to ask, "Vampires aren't supposed to get sick, are they?"

"No, they're not. This guy's mind was pretty much gone, but I did manage to dig into his memories enough to see that someone did this to him. There were two people who had him in a lab, experimenting on him. Edward's dad's trying to figure out exactly what they did, but he's just a regular doctor; weird science isn't really his specialty. Hey, is Mohinder around? Weird science is his specialty, so maybe I should ask him to take a look at this."

"Good luck with that. He's been running around with Noah Bennet, going undercover to try and take down the Company."

Peter could feel the displeasure rolling off him, though he didn't need Jasper's ability to know Matt wasn't happy about the situation; his grimace made that clear enough. "Well, I hope he's being careful. Those people are dangerous."

"That's what I... Never mind. You watch your back too, and let me know if there's anything I can do. I mean, I've never tried to arrest a delirious vampire before, but..."

"Thanks. I wish I could say I won't bother you again, but I don't know... I have a bad feeling about this."

###

Bad feelings notwithstanding, the first couple of tracking missions went smoothly. Between Carmen's memories and the others' artistic skills (her own being somewhat diminished now that she only had one hand), they were able to create detailed images of everyone they needed to track down, allowing Peter to use the clairvoyance he'd acquired from Molly to locate them. Their first targets, an Irish vampire named Liam and a nomad named Mary, had only suffered bites to their extremities, so that once Peter and his companions convinced them that the black tendrils radiating outward from their wounds did in fact pose a serious threat to their health, removing the affected parts was easy.

When they got to the third name on their list, however, things took a turn for the worse. The woman in question, Makenna, had been bitten on the ear, much closer to her brain than any of the others' wounds. By the time they caught up with her and her mate - Charles, the man who had tried to use his talent for determining the veracity of a statement to aid in interrogating the stranger - she was already showing signs of the same violent delirium, and they had to fight to subdue her and take her back to Carlisle.

Naturally, Charles insisted on coming along and demanded to know what was happening to her, but there wasn't much the doctor could tell him.

"My family and I - those who haven't been busy tracking the infected - are working around the clock to learn everything we can from the samples we've taken, and we have determined that we're dealing with a virus...an incredibly potent one, to have achieved what no other pathogen in history has been able to do, penetrating and degrading vampiric cells. I've never seen anything like it."

"And the cure?" Charles asked anxiously. "There must be some way to stop it."

"I'm sure there is; every disease that has ever existed has eventually been remedied in some fashion. I'm afraid I haven't yet found the key to countering this one, though," Carlisle admitted, his shoulders slumping ever so slightly. "Of course I'll keep doing everything I can-"

"And if you don't find it soon...what happens to Makenna?"

"We still know very little about this virus," Esme broke in when her husband hesitated, obviously wishing to reassure him. "We've only seen a single case progress to its end stage-"

"Which ended in the stranger's death," Charles finished for her. "I appreciate your kindness, but the downside of my gift is that I can never settle for anything less than the whole truth."

"I'm sorry," Carlisle said with heartfelt sympathy. "I promise you we won't give up...though in the meantime, you should probably spend as much time with her as you can. She'll need your support, however this turns out." As Charles walked away, he turned to Edward and silently added, Keep an eye on them, please. I'm sure I don't need to tell you to be discreet, but don't let her bite him.

Edward nodded and followed the other man into the room where Makenna had been sequestered, telling him that he needed to observe her for data-gathering purposes - which happened to be true - and Carlisle and Esme returned to the lab, where the team of amateur trackers were waiting. Peter had more or less become the leader by default, since they were relying on his clairvoyance to find the people they were looking for and his teleportation to reach them in time; he had taken Bella and Elle with him since their powers would come in handy in a fight (and had when Makenna became agitated), and Jasper because his gift, coupled with the fact that their targets already knew him, had helped avoid fighting when they caught up with Mary and the Irish coven.

Alice had wanted to go with Jasper, and Emmett had wanted to go because tracking the infected sounded a lot more exciting than helping Carlisle set up lab equipment, but they were forced to stay behind since their talents would have been of limited use; Peter's ability to pinpoint where someone was at any given moment meant that they didn't need to predict their targets' future movements, and while Emmett was a strong fighter, Peter could only teleport so many people at once. There was some grumbling about those decisions at the time, but now they were all talking without a hint of discord, catching each other up on what had occurred while they were apart.

"So now you've got all the ones Carmen was sure were bitten," Rosalie was saying. "That just leaves two who might have been."

"Did Carlisle get in touch with the Volturi?" Jasper asked.

"He did," Alice confirmed, "and Aro said their guy had just checked in and told them what happened at the wedding. They agreed that it was weird, but since the stranger - or Patient Zero, as Carlisle's calling him now - only acted out in front of other vampires and is dead now, they decided they don't need to take action."

"And when Carlisle told him their guy might be infected with a vampire-killing virus?" Elle pressed, eager to get to the most important part.

"Aro laughed his ass off," Emmett said flatly. "Just like Eleazar said, he didn't believe it's possible for one of us to get sick."

"Well, the Volturi guard is the most formidable force in the world," Jasper said with determined optimism. "If he is infected, they should be able to contain him. Meanwhile, we still have one more person to check on."

"Right..." Peter spread out the map once more with a slight sigh, but his weariness soon turned to concern when he saw their final target's current location. "Guys, look at this."

They all gathered around to see where the pin had landed, and their faces fell.

"Well," Emmett said with an air of someone desperately searching for a bright spot amid a towering mass of storm clouds, "at least he didn't go far. He's still in Alaska."

"But he's found his way to a town," Rosalie grimly pointed out. "This isn't good."

"A very small one," Alice offered. "There's hardly anything that far north except tiny fishing villages, so maybe he just stopped for a snack?"

"We need to get there," Peter said, pushing the map away and standing up. "Bella, Elle, Jasper, are you guys up for one more trip?"

###

The town was as tiny as Alice had said it would be, barely more than a collection of houses clustered around a handful of small stores - as Bella put it, it made Forks look like a thriving metropolis - which meant they didn't have to look far to find their man. He was lying in the middle of the only paved road, blackened veins clearly visible against his deathly white skin even in the fading glow of twilight, black eyes staring sightlessly up at the purple sky. Far more worrisome than his condition, however, was the fact that he was surrounded by a knot of curious people chattering in loud, agitated voices.

"Great," Elle grumbled. "What are we gonna do about them?"

"Human witnesses are a complication we've been lucky to have avoided until now, but I suppose we should have known it wouldn't last," Jasper sighed. "Elle, Bella, I need you to hang back for a minute. Peter, follow my lead."

He strode right into the middle of the small crowd, projecting an air of unquestionable authority, and calmly asked the nearest person what had happened. His inquiry was met with a wave of hysterical responses, everyone shouting over each other.

"I don't know - this guy came out of nowhere and started attacking people!"

"He must've been high."

"No, he's sick - look at his face! His eyes are black!"

"He grabbed one of my neighbors and bit them-"

"Then he just fell down right here in the street and started thrashing around, but now he's not moving at all; I think he's dead!"

"He's not breathing!"

"His skin feels like ice!"

"All right, everyone calm down," Jasper ordered. Both empaths poured everything they had into tamping down the people's fear, and their yelling soon subsided into nervous mutters. "How long ago did this happen?"

After some more muttering, they agreed that the man must have appeared no more than twenty minutes ago, several of them commenting on how fast everything had happened.

"Thank you. Now, some of you mentioned him attacking people? Biting them?"

An older man stepped forward. "Two of my friends and I were down at the beach checking our crab traps, about to head in for the night, when he came staggering up the shoreline. We tried talking to him, but he never said anything...just came right up to us and sank his teeth into John's neck. Me and Gene tried to pull him off, and he hit Gene - caved in his ribs with one punch. Then he just ran off. Strange thing is, a few seconds later John started yelling that the bite was burning him and dove into the water to try and cool off, even though he knew there was a dangerous riptide farther out. Swept him away just like that."

He fell silent, a lost look on his face, and others spoke up with similar tales which painted a picture of a very disorganized assault, the vampire grabbing people at random but being easily distracted by friends and neighbors coming to his victims' aid and letting them go before finishing the job. It appeared that he had bitten at least three people, yet only drained one. Of course, his haphazard attacks created a new set of problems.

All those people he bit, Peter asked silently while pushing his thoughts into Jasper's mind, are they...changing?

Yes, Jasper thought back with a mental sigh, and probably infected as well. We'll send the girls to round them up...and maybe we'd better see if we can get a look at the body of the person he did kill too.

Speaking aloud again, he assured everyone that the situation was well in hand before throwing the dead vampire over his shoulder and quickly walking away. "Don't worry," he told Peter in an undertone as they headed up the street, "I've found that if you convince people you're in charge and tell them everything's under control, they won't question it too much. They'll come up with their own explanations, and then they'll do what humans usually do when faced with anything that doesn't fit into their comfort zone: forget about it."

They retreated into the shadows where Bella and Elle were waiting, and he handed the body off to Elle with instructions to take it outside the town and burn it. "Bella, you scour every inch of this town and the surrounding area for those other people he bit."

"And do what when I find them?"

Jasper didn't answer right away, so Peter spoke up. "Just get them away from everyone else for now; we can take them to Carlisle. Be careful."

"I'll be fine," she assured him, forcing a half-smile that she was only able to hold for a brief moment, "but what about the one who jumped into the ocean? Do you think he'll drown before he becomes a vampire?"

"We can hope," Elle replied, drawing a chastising look from Bella. "What? If he's infected, he's dead anyway."

"We don't know that," Bella protested. "Maybe we can still help them. If you find them before I do, promise you won't just kill them."

"Fine, I promise," the blonde said grudgingly. Even though it'd probably be better if they died. Otherwise, they'll just keep spreading this thing.

Bella didn't hear that part, of course, but Peter did, and though he didn't say anything, he gave her a long, troubled look. Feeling his eyes on her, Elle turned her head and stared appraisingly back at him. He was a good man - undoubtedly a better person than her - and she was glad Bella had him, especially since he had earned her respect with the way he handled Sylar that night on Kirby Plaza, but a brain-stealing serial killer was totally different from a bunch of innocent people who might need to be eliminated before they became a threat. She just hoped he would prove capable of handling this situation as well.

###

Peter and Jasper went to the home of the boy who had been killed, the attack having taken place right in front of his house, where they discovered that the family members who had carried the corpse inside were looking a little feverish.

"Could the virus really have jumped from vampires to humans already?" Jasper wondered in a whisper as they examined the body after Peter sent the family out of the room with a telepathic command.

"You get cross-species transmission with a lot of viruses," Peter replied, rubbing his forehead as he tried to recall everything he'd learned about how various pathogens travelled between hosts before going on to specialize in a field where infectious diseases weren't the main focus. "Though I guess if this kid was infected by the bite and died before he turned into a vampire, it didn't really jump across species...and it's possible for some viruses to remain active in a dead body long enough to infect other people, especially if they handle it without protective equipment, but for it to have taken hold in him when he was only exposed a minute or two before he died and the family already showing symptoms... I've never heard of anything moving that fast."

A grim silence fell between them, though it lasted only a few seconds before Jasper spoke again. "We should take the body to Carlisle, and probably bring him here to examine the others."

With their combined talents, getting the family to agree was easy; the only hint of dissent came when they mentioned bringing Carlisle in to examine them in their home. "That's kind of you," the dead boy's father said, "but you don't have to go to all that trouble. If we start feeling worse, we can just go to the hospital like Sarah did."

"Sarah?" Peter repeated, his ears pricking up at the mention of a heretofore unknown person. "Who's Sarah?"

"Danny's little sister," the father explained. "They were playing outside together when that man you were after came and attacked her. Danny tried to fight him off, and that's when he grabbed him and..." He trailed off, his eyes misting over, and Peter started to offer his condolences yet again, but Jasper had no time for such niceties.

"Where is your daughter now?" he demanded, his voice filled with a new sense of urgency.

"After that bastard bit her, she had some kind of fit, started screaming that she was on fire, so my wife snatched her up and took off for the nearest hospital, a couple towns over. She'd have taken Danny too, but we could see it was too... That there was nothing..."

"How old is your daughter?" Jasper asked next, the barely contained panic in his voice intensifying.

"Four. Why-?"

"Thank you for your help," Jasper said hurriedly. "Our doctor will be in touch tomorrow. Until then, stay inside and avoid contact with anyone outside your household." Then he practically dragged Peter out of the house.

"What was all that about?" Peter demanded once they were safely out on the street and heading for the edge of town at a brisk clip. "I get why we couldn't leave that kid's body there, but you barely let them say goodbye-"

"There's no time for that," Jasper snapped. "Listen to me - hopefully Elle and Bella have rounded up all the surviving victims by now, so I need you to teleport them and the body to Carlisle, then go straight to the hospital where the girl was taken. Bring Emmett, we may need him this time. Bella, Elle, and I will leave at once and try to catch them on foot. It's imperative that we stop that girl from reaching the hospital, do you understand?"

"What's the rush? I know it'd be a disaster if she turned in the middle of a crowded hospital, but that takes three days, doesn't it?"

Jasper shook his head; he understood that Peter must be getting tired after running himself ragged all day, but they couldn't afford for his thinking to start getting fuzzy just yet. "That's the average amount of time it takes for the venom to spread through an adult human's body," he said slowly, his gaze locked on the other man's dark eyes as if to help him drive home the severity of the potential catastrophe they were facing. "For a four-year-old, it would happen much faster."

###

When Peter and Emmett appeared behind a clump of bushes near the emergency room's entrance, they were immediately hit with an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong - which probably had something to do with the truck that almost ran over them a second after they materialized, the driver flattening half the bushes as she peeled out of the parking lot like the legions of hell were chasing her.

"What the hell?!" Emmett exclaimed, staring after the careening vehicle from where he had instinctively placed himself between it and Peter. "It was like she didn't even see us!"

"Maybe she didn't," Peter said as he peered around the vampire's hulking frame. "Maybe she was more worried about what was behind her, and it looks like she wasn't the only one. Does this parking lot look oddly empty to you?"

Emmett's indignant expression gave way to one of uncharacteristic solemnity as he glanced around the deserted area. "I hope we're not too late."

When they entered the building, however, it immediately became apparent that they were. The emergency room was empty, but it was clear that something very bad had happened there; several gurneys had been overturned and flung around as if a hurricane had swept through the room, medical supplies were strewn everywhere, and the entire room was splashed liberally with blood. Worst of all, there was a white coat-clad body in the middle of the floor, his throat torn open so violently that only his spine and a small flap of skin still connected his head to his body.

Peter and Emmett froze just as Jasper, Bella, and Elle burst in through another entrance. The three of them were likewise transfixed, but Jasper, who had seen much worse carnage in the Civil War, quickly snapped out of it and urged the others to do the same. "Come on, everyone. We still have to find the girl."

Shaking off their horror, the other three vampires joined him in scouring every exit leading out of the emergency room, and even with the overwhelming aroma of blood obscuring everything else, it wasn't long before Elle picked up the child's scent.

"Wouldn't you just know she'd have to tear through the rest of the hospital?" Emmett grumbled as they hurried down the corridor she had taken. "She couldn't have run outside?"

"Why would she," Elle countered, "when all the prey is right here?"

"Be glad she didn't," Jasper said grimly. "On a rainy night like this, we would've lost her trail before we made it out of the parking lot."

They found two more bodies in the hallways, one of which wasn't even drained of blood - like the man who bit her, it seemed the girl was so far gone in delirium that she had simply mauled someone and wandered off, forgetting to feed - before finally catching up with her in the part of the building that housed patients who needed to stay for a few days. She was standing outside the closed door of one such patient's room with her back to them, swaying almost drunkenly on her feet as she tried to figure out what to do next.

"Sarah!"

At the sound of her name, she whirled around, allowing them to see that her face and arms were laced with the black veins that seemed to be the hallmark of an infected vampire, her eyes two black pits devoid of all rationality or intelligence; then, with a furious hiss, she ripped the door out of its frame and hurled it at them.

Emmett caught it and deftly tossed it aside just as she launched herself at him, snarling and spitting...only to slam into an invisible wall. Scrambling to pick herself up, she lashed out at the next target to catch her attention - Bella, who had taken a step forward while projecting her shield in front of Emmett. She lunged, mouth opening wide as she prepared to sink her teeth into Bella's arm...

In that instant, every nightmare from the past week flashed through Peter's mind, a nightmare that was less than a heartbeat away from becoming reality...which would mean he would lose Bella again, and he couldn't let that happen. He unleashed a burst of telekinetic energy, and Sarah was sent crashing to the floor once again, but this time her head landed several feet away from the rest of her.

Jasper, Elle, and Emmett wasted no time in gathering up the girl's remains and the bodies of her victims; Peter thought he heard Jasper telling the others to take them all to the morgue and put them in the cremator, but their voices sounded faint and faraway. He was still staring at the spot on the floor where the girl's head had been, unable to tear his eyes away until Bella took hold of his arm and shook him, gently at first, then a little harder.

"Peter? Peter! Are you with me?"

With what seemed like a great effort, he finally turned his head toward her, though she wasn't sure if he was really seeing her or not. "I killed her," he said numbly. "She was just a little girl...and I killed her."

"She was in pain, and we couldn't help her. You did the kindest thing anyone could have done for her," Bella assured him, bringing her free hand up to caress his face.

He laid his own hand over hers, holding it there as his eyes focused on her. "I wasn't thinking about that," he admitted. "I saw her trying to bite you and my mind went blank, I just...reacted." His grip on her hand tightened. "I lost you once, Bella; I won't lose you again. I can't."

"You aren't going to lose me, Peter," she tried to reassure him, but it didn't seem to work; his pained expression never even wavered, nor did the almost unnervingly intense look in his eyes, which remained riveted on her face.

Bella hadn't felt cold since she was changed - even walking barefoot through snow and sleet hadn't bothered her - but as she met his anguished gaze, she felt something very close to a chill crawl up her spine. "What is it?" she whispered. "There's something you're not telling me. Does it have to do with your nightmares? Please, just talk to me."

He didn't want to, at least not about that, but now that parts of his visions seemed to be coming true, she had a right to know that she might be in danger. He still hoped that her recurring presence in his nightmares was just dream imagery, his brain inserting her into his visions because of her importance in his life, rather than a literal glimpse of future events, but just in case it wasn't...

Pulling her hand away from his face while continuing to hold it tightly, he started to speak, only to be cut off when Elle, Emmett, and Jasper came back.

"There you are," the electric blonde huffed. "We've been all over this place - which, okay, isn't that big, but still - and you're still right where we left you?"

"I'm sorry you had to kill the child, Peter," Jasper said quietly, correctly deducing at least part of the reason why his fellow empath hadn't been able to help with the cleanup. "I know how hard it was for you to do that."

"Don't worry about me; I'll be okay," Peter replied, hoping that saying the words might make them feel true. "I just hope there weren't too many people hurt."

"We didn't find any more bodies," Emmett reported, though he didn't sound as happy about that as one might expect. "Problem is, we didn't find anybody alive either, except the patients who weren't able to leave their beds. Looks like everyone who was able to move skedaddled when the girl turned."

"Now they're probably out there telling their little horror story to everyone who'll listen," Elle said grimly.

"We'll be lucky if that's the worst of it," Jasper countered in an even graver tone. "We've cleaned up all the physical evidence, so their accounts might be written off as mass hysteria caused by witnessing some sort of traumatic, though not supernatural, accident. If anyone who escaped was bitten, though..."

"But that couldn't have happened, could it?" Bella asked anxiously. "I don't remember what it was like when Elle bit me, but I've heard the venom is supposed to hurt so much that you're basically paralyzed."

"Supposed to, yes. However, it's not unheard of for an exceptionally resilient or determined person to hide themselves away until the transformation is complete. Carlisle did."

"That's right - he knew his dad's fanatical witch hunting buddies would kill him if they found out he'd been 'tainted by a demon', so he managed to crawl into a potato cellar," Emmett recalled.

"The place wasn't super crowded, but there were enough people here that some of them could've helped anyone who couldn't move on their own get out too," Elle pointed out. "Then they probably either ran off into the storm or drove away like bats out of hell, which means we have no way of tracking them. Hell, we don't even know who they are or how many new infected vampires we're looking at."

As he listened to their summation of what had happened and what they might be facing next, Peter's mind flashed back to his nightmarish visions again - not the part about Bella this time, but the innumerable bodies that had formed the backdrop of each one, lined up in plastic-shrouded rows as far as the eye could see. Suddenly all the stress and exertion of the past twenty-four hours, which he had held at bay by simply refusing to acknowledge it until the crisis was dealt with, seemed to crash down on him at once, leaving him drained and mentally exhausted - a feeling that was only exacerbated when he thought of what lay ahead. He didn't know how bad it would get, if things really would reach the level of devastation he'd foreseen or if his dreams were merely warnings of what might come to pass if he didn't stop it somehow, but one thing seemed certain.

"We're not going to be able to keep a lid on this, are we?"

Well, I hope that wasn't too depressing. I was trying to come up with a fairly realistic (within the worlds of Twilight and Heroes) chain of events that would lead to this outbreak developing into a credible threat without reaching apocalyptic levels overnight...and here it is.

Last time a reviewer mentioned the possibility that Peter could simply go back in time and kill the infected vampire who crashed the wedding before he had a chance to bite anyone, so I wanted to acknowledge that it's a good suggestion, though not the route I'll be taking here. I have in-story reasons which will be revealed in later chapters, which would make detailing them here redundant, but what I will say now is that I personally feel using time travel to stop bad things from happening rather than making the characters actually work to resolve the problem is a rather unsatisfying way to handle a plot-driving conflict - sure, I could do it, but then the next chapter would be the last. It also puts a serious dent in my ability to relate to the characters' struggles, because I'm sure we all have things we wish we could go back and undo, but we can't no matter how much we want to.

Also, in a lot of storylines where someone goes back in time to erase a bad future, they frequently end up causing new problems even as they solve old ones, which makes me feel that such an approach should be saved for a last resort, when nothing short of the entire planet exploding could possibly be worse. For instance, if things get as bad as that possible future Peter visited in season 2 where the Shanti virus had killed most of the world's population and caused the complete collapse of society, then it would make sense for him to try changing the past, but they're nowhere near that point yet.