{

I screamed as a huge monster barreled into where Bella was just standing. It was hunched over and ran on all fours, but the overly-developed muscles in its chest and front legs indicated it was more than capable of fighting on two legs. It screamed as it smashed into a derelict car, tossing it aside like it was made of tin foil and rushing back, slashing at my daughter.

My heart was racing and I was shaking as I hid behind a dumpster, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Bella – and I certainly couldn't run. Bullets whistled by, embedding into a nearby wall and making me duck out of instinct. I gripped the rusted edge of the dumpster as she sliced cleanly through the beast, blurring away from the gunmen who focused their fire on her now that she had killed the infected monster.

I heard footsteps running on the sidewalk and I put my back against the wall, hiding myself completely from view of the street. A radio crackled as the footsteps slowed, heading out into the street and away from my hiding spot.

"Anyone have eyes on Eve?"

"Negative; I think we lost her."

A hand clamped over my mouth and I jerked, stopping only as my eyes landed on the hooded face of Bella. She removed her hand and motioned for me to follow her out of the other end of the alley.

}

-Chapter 11: People Puddles-

"What about…this one?" Alice asked, pointing to a ridiculous dress in a magazine full of ridiculous dresses.

"How many more dresses are you going to have me model?" I asked as the skirt and blouse I was wearing shifted into the gown on the page Alice held up.

We had been up here for hours, and since neither one of us ever had to eat or use the restroom and never got tired, Alice had spent each and every second exploiting my shape shifting abilities for her own amusement. She had stacks of fashion magazines to choose from, and I often had to shift the colors of the false fabric I wore just to satisfy her.

The process was boring, and I originally thought she might have known this and was only doing it to annoy me. Only, she wasn't; she just had some sort of sick fetish for clothes shopping and found my abilities convenient. I honestly wasn't sure which scenario I was more comfortable with.

"Only a few more seasons," Alice promised, as if the thought of shifting into that many outfits would be comforting to me. "Winter, Spring, and Summer." I held up my hand, the dress I was wearing dissolving under the red-and-black cluster of tendrils and reforming into jeans and a black t-shirt.

"No; no more. I honestly think shopping with you would be more fun," I cringed at my own words, but they still rang true. "At least then I would get to move around and do stuff." Alice rolled her eyes and tossed the magazine she had been holding onto her couch.

"Well then what do you want to-" Alice's eyes glazed over, smothering her sentence as she went into a trance. I remembered her talking about her visions, and I had seen a few of them in action, but none that took more than a second or two to complete.

Confusion and fear swam in her freshly-golden eyes as they refocused on the present. Her body was frozen in place for only a moment before she flitted out of the room at vampire speed, her light footsteps peddling out of my hearing range as they ascended the stairs.

"Alice?" I asked in a raised voice, following her path out of her room and up to the third floor. Edward and Angela stepped out of the room I knew to be Edward's bedroom and gave me a questioning glance as they went down the hall and through the last door on the left. I followed them inside the room I had never been in and was immediately distracted by the absurdity of it.

If Carlisle's office was a mini-library, the room we entered would be a fully-fledged one. It was over twice the size of the vampire doctor's fortress of solitude, and had laptops and desktops lying about on the multiple hardwood tables in the center of the room. This room, I also noticed, was the only one without a wall made of glass. It had more conservative windows where the giant panes would have been, letting in dim streams of overcast light.

Alice stood behind one of the bookshelves, staring at a flat screen TV mounted on the wall with the remote frozen in her hand. The three of us swarmed around her and looked at the screen, wondering what could have given the tiny vampire such a shock.

The news channel was on, and my gut clenched at the words 'BREAKING NEWS' that accompanied the helicopter shot of a cityscape, shifting every few seconds to an on-the-ground camera angle of men in yellow containment suits as they taped off the area that was guarded by armed men in non-distinguished, full masked gear. The sight was completely familiar to me and to everyone else who had followed the nightmare that was the Phoenix attacks, only it wasn't Phoenix this time.

It was Tacoma.

"Not only is it a matter of distance, it's also one of improbability!" a gravely male voice said, clearly in the middle of a conversation with someone back in the newsroom. "We're talking about a single attack over a thousand miles away from Phoenix. There have been no other sightings or incidents between the two cities – all of it was contained in Arizona. It's preposterous to even begin to call it the same type of attack with such a lack of evidence – all that's going to accomplish is panic."

The screen flashed back to the newsroom, where the serious-looking male and female anchor team warned the audience that the next scenes would be graphic. None of us turned away, though; I wasn't convinced any of us could.

There was a lot of blood. It covered everything and was splattered nearly everywhere as the screenshots shifted to get a different view of the crime scene, which was cliché enough to be a dirty-looking alley. Chunks of meat were concentrated in several blood pools on the pavement, turning it a dark cherry color. Smaller bits of flesh were strewn about and plastered to the walls like a bomb went off.

There was no bomb, though, even though the dumpster was dented and the car that had partially obstructed the entryway to the alley was smashed and flipped upside down. It was so, so, familiar; like a piece of Phoenix had somehow switched with a part of Tacoma. And I knew, then, that the voice on the news was completely wrong. This was the same thing – somehow, the infection had reached Washington.

"Oh god," Angela breathed from behind me. I had nearly forgotten she and Edward were here with us. "Is that…is it the same thing as Phoenix?" Alice turned away from the screen and looked at me, frowning as she caught the grim look on my face. I turned around and nodded.

"I think so," I confirmed.

"But how?" Edward asked, pulling Angela closer to him. "They're right: it's completely impractical for the infection to have traveled so far without leaving a trail." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me, so I didn't try to argue with him.

His logic was sound, of course; it would have been a stretch to claim the virus had escaped from Phoenix and came here. The safeguards I dodged were there for a reason, after all, and it was one hell of a gauntlet for anything to make it out of Arizona, much less Phoenix.

But then again, I had made it out without anyone catching me. My teeth grinded as I pondered the possibility of one of those mutated creatures escaping, free to roam and infect the country.

"There's going to be another attack," Alice said, her eyes distant and clouded-over. "I can't see when or where," she growled and shook her head. "But there's going to be more news coverage like this – I can see us watching it."

"How do we even know it was something from Phoenix?" Angela asked, keeping her eyes on the screen. She broke eye contact with it and glanced at Edward. "Couldn't it have been a vampire or something?"

"There was too much blood," Edward sighed and shook his head. "There still might have been…pieces, but most of the blood would have been drained."

"It wasn't one of us," Alice shook her head and gave me an apologetic look. "But it did resemble the way you feed, Bella. I know it wasn't you but it was something like you." Edward hissed and my muscles bunched in response, though I managed to keep myself from falling into a defensive stance.

"Carlisle needs to hurry up with Bella's DNA analysis," Edward pinched the bridge of his nose. "If this thing keeps on killing like this, we need to know how to kill it – what its weaknesses are."

"Why?" I gave Edward a questioning look. "It's one attack so far, and not nearly as violent as Phoenix. It shouldn't be much work for the military to take out one of those monsters." Edward stepped away from Angela and pursed his lips as he paced in front of me.

"Because of all the places something like you could have gone," Edward spoke slowly, locking his golden eyes with my brown ones. "It came here, to Washington. That would be one hell of a coincidence, Bella." He gave a quick glance at his girlfriend. "And I've learned not to underestimate an opponent, so if there's anything you know that works against your kind, please tell us."

I stared at him for a moment, both angry at the insinuation that I was the same kind as those brutes that stalked Phoenix and worried that he might be right. It was quite the coincidence that something infected came to Washington shortly after I did – if it was, in fact, an infected beast. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of something following me, but it was what it was, and Edward was right. They did need to know how to fight an infected off.

"They are…strong," I started. "You already know that, of course. I don't think we're dealing with those mindless zombies they show on the news all the time. They're dangerous to humans in numbers, sure, but they're no more a threat to you as a human is.

"The other one – the hunters – they're like some kind of mutated bear on steroids." I paused, remembering the beasts as they attacked the tanks the soldiers brought in to clear out the more concentrated portions of the infection that had nested inside the city. "They're smarter and faster than the zombies, and they usually attack in groups of two or three. Your best bet is your speed, honestly; there's no way one of them could catch you."

"Shouldn't we wait for the others to come back to have this conversation?" Angela asked as Alice pulled out her phone and started typing into it.

"Rosalie and Emmett won't be back until tonight," Alice answered, pocketing the phone. "I left Carlisle a message, but he's in surgery and won't be back for over an hour. Esme will be here in a few minutes." Angela nodded.

"What about the wolves?" Angela spoke up again. "We should warn them about this." Edward and Alice hissed under their breath, and I mentally agreed with their response.

"No doubt those mutts have already heard about the attack," Edward muttered through his teeth.

"It's a legitimate concern, actually," I made a face as I argued in favor of warning the Quileute tribe. "While I don't think vampires have to worry about getting infected, anyone with a pulse does have to. A single scrape is enough to do it, and it kills more often than it turns people into zombies."

"They don't ever get sick though," Angela frowned. "And didn't you say you fought some of the wolves when they confronted you?" My eyes widened as the memory of my blade slicing into the chest of the brown wolf flitted through my mind.

"Is he…" I trailed off and Angela shook her head.

"No," Angela assured me. "I was at Emily's house on Wednesday and the whole pack was there. They didn't particularly like you," Edward snorted, obviously finding something in Angela's memory humorous. "but you didn't infect any of them, as far as I know."

"Well that's something, at least," I sighed.

"It feels warm," Angela said to herself as she rubbed the fabric of my bio-hoodie I had shifted into for the trip to Port Angeles. "Kind of like when clothes come out of the dryer." She blushed and released her hold on my sleeve as she caught my amused expression.

"Relax," I rolled my eyes as I leaned back in my seat. "You're nowhere near as bad as Alice, and I mean that in more ways than one." Angela smiled and popped another few fries into her mouth.

Alice had dragged the three of us to the mall to go shopping. I had begun to argue my case against such an act, but Angela told her she wouldn't mind going, deflating any case I could make against going. It was actually not so bad with Edward's girlfriend here. It was a welcome distraction from the subtle panic the news had given everyone.

Before, Alice would go full tilt as she bounded from section to section since neither of us really got tired and could potentially shop for days if we felt the need to. Angela required bathroom, food, and rest breaks every hour or so, which broke up the shopping frenzy into manageable sections. Normally, Alice would sit out with us for a few minutes while Angela composed herself, but this time the pixie-vampire decided to finish up the last few stores on this side of the food court while we took our break.

Sitting here and watching the crowds of people passing by was actually kind of soothing. It was dark outside and the mall would be closing in an hour, but there were still swarms of people out and about. Christmas was in less than two weeks, and the festive decorations were sprinkled around the mall walkway, giving it a sort of half-assed attempt at holiday cheer.

"If you don't like shopping, why did you come with us?" Angela asked, drawing my attention away from a group of women who were struggling to juggle the heavy bags full of their purchases as they walked in the direction of the exit. I shrugged.

"To torture myself, mostly," I joked, earning a small snort from Angela as she balled up her trash and tossed it in the trash can that was right next to our table. "I like hanging out with Alice, and I also wanted to see Edward's reaction when I volunteered to go with you guys." Angela giggled and shook her head.

"I thought he was actually going to come with us after you said you were going," she said as she pushed her glasses back up on her face. "He's still a bit overprotective."

"A bit?" I cocked an eyebrow.

"I can see where he's coming from, even though most of the time he overreacts," Angela frowned, her eyes unfocused as she remembered some memory.

"So why doesn't he just turn you into a vampire, then?" I asked, though I had already heard most of the story from Alice. "He wouldn't have to worry if you were indestructible." Angela's eyes bugged and she gave a quick glance around the mostly-deserted food court as if someone had overheard me say the v-word.

"I want to be one; I asked him to change me," Angela ran her hands through her hair like she was embarrassed. "But he's very…determined to keep me human." She made a face, clearly unhappy with Edward's decision.

"Angela said you two were mates?" I asked; Angela nodded. "So what's going to happen when you die?" Angela blanched, and I instantly knew the answer to my question.

"He said he wouldn't live without me," she cringed down at the table top.

"How…morbid," I said awkwardly. "Why don't you just ask Carlisle to bite you, then?"

"He said it was between Edward and me," Angela rolled her eyes and I snorted at how crazy that sounded.

"What is Edward, your keeper?" I snarked. "I bet I could find a vampire and hold him down so he could take a bite out of you." Angela laughed, but I could still see how excited my offer made her.

"He would be pissed!" Angela said with a grin.

"Yeah, but what could he do about it?" I shrugged, imagining an enraged Edward trying to kill me as a vampire Angela looked on. "It's your life, Angela." The sound of Angela's phone chiming brought an end to the talk of vampire transformations, and she stood up as she read the message.

"Alice needs our help carrying bags out to the car," Angela told me, wrinkling her nose. I was sure my face looked much the same.

"What did she do, buy the whole store?" I joked as I stood up as well, following Angela as she headed in the direction Alice had gone when she left us.

"Don't even joke that way," Angela shook her head as I easily caught up with her.

As it turned out, Alice did not buy the whole store. She did put a pretty significant dent in their inventory, though, if the fifteen bags were anything to go by. I grabbed up seven of the heavier bags and Alice snagged five, leaving the lightest ones for Angela to lug back to the car. Even with the extra help carrying Alice's spoils, we got a few looks as we headed out of the mall and into the parking lot.

After we put the majority of the bags in the trunk of Alice's Porsche – the rest going into the backseat with Angela – we climbed in and Alice took off. About five miles into the drive, Alice tossed me a small cardboard box. I looked down at it, noticing the silver apple logo embossed on the sleek black cover, and gaped at the vampire.

She couldn't be serious.

"You got me a phone?" I asked, my voice wavering between disbelief and accusation. Alice only grinned and nodded.

"You're welcome!" she chirped. Angela snickered under her breath and I shot her a glare as I put the box in the cupholder between Alice and me.

"I'm not taking this," I told her directly.

"Why not?" she asked. "Do you already have a cell phone?" Alice asked like she already knew the answer, which she most probably did.

"No…" I trailed off.

"Well, now you do," Alice rolled her eyes at me as I prepared to go on the defensive. "Just take the damn phone, Bella. It's important that you're always able to contact one of us while this Tacoma business is going on, not to mention Victoria. All our numbers are programmed in already and it's on the family's plan; all you have to do is keep it on you."

"But I can't keep it on me," I countered. "I can't even wear a watch, since it would snap off as soon as I shifted. How do you expect me to keep from breaking it?"

"Put it in your backpack or keep it in your truck," Alice huffed and shook her head. "I swear it's like pulling teeth trying to give you a gift."

"Fine," I admitted defeat, opening up the box and taking the iPhone out of the casing. It was actually a very nice looking cell phone, and I found myself smiling to myself as I powered it on and began to set it up.

"Baby steps," Alice nodded to herself. I cast her a questioning look as I finished the setup and began to install some worthwhile apps. "We'll work our way up to a new car." I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to decide if the wide smile on her face was a good thing or bad thing and if she was joking or not.

The car started to drift into the other lane and I snapped my hand out to grab the wheel, turning it back and correcting our path. Alice's eyes were glazed over as I continued to steer for her and Angela shifted forward in the back seat, giving the vampire a panicked look.

"Alice?" I asked. Her eyes re-focused and she shook her head, taking back the wheel and giving me a thankful look. I nodded to her and sat back in my seat. "What did you see?"

"Absolutely nothing," she growled. "Which means those damn mutts are involved, somehow." A vibrating buzz came from the back seat, followed by the harsh illumination of a cell phone screen lighting up.

"Edward said the wolves want us to meet at the treaty line," Angela read out loud. "Do you think it's about the Tacoma attack?" I looked at Alice, but she only shrugged. She was completely blind when it came to the wolves, especially with me involved.

"I guess we'll find out," Alice answered, switching off the headlights and pressing her foot down on the gas pedal, speeding back to the Cullen mansion.

End notes: A little late on the update, but I had stuff to do. I know you understand.

It's not exactly pertinent to the story, but we'll say Bella's infected with Blacklight, for those of you who are crazy about Prototype. And yes, she does have a considerable mass (though it, of course, tends to fluctuate depending on how long it's been since she fed).

Renee's POV at the beginning of each chapter was intentional, and I am glad you liked it.

As for how strong Bella's senses are, I made a neat little percentage chart before I started writing, so I could stay consistent (percentages are compared to vampires).

Speed: 80%, acceleration: 25%, strength: 175%, durability: 25%, regeneration: 250%, hearing: 50%, smell: 25%, sight: 150%, endurance: 100% (practically infinite).

Bella can also see more of the electromagnetic spectrum than vampires can (ultraviolet and infrared). Since so many of her memories were trashed, she can't reliably compare her sight now to her sight then, but she's able to see heat signatures as well, which is what gives her sight stats such a boost over vampires.