A/N: Thank you to the magnanimous Stephenie Meyer for allowing us to dip our feet in her pool. Thank you to my readers for reading, reviewing, and respecting my work. :)
Edward's POV
One last night with family and friends before Bella, Jasper and I began our mission, cutting off all ties and going directly into the lion's den. Adrian and Emmett insisted on seeing a concert, some rapper named Velvet, saying he was 'the shit' and just what we needed to get our minds off things. The girls complained the whole way there, until he got on stage and then suddenly they changed their tune, shouting and waving at him like a lovesick girl front row at an Elvis concert. I raised my eyebrow at Adrian, silently asking him 'what the hell?' but he just shrugged at me and laughed, lifting Alice up onto his shoulders so she could get a better look. I just prayed she didn't flash him, or worse, get caught sparkling in the spotlights.
The guys had managed to get us backstage passes, and of course all the girls wanted their picture taken with him. I just rolled my eyes and played along. Whatever makes them happy, I suppose, but I didn't see what the big deal was. The guy was polite enough, smiling and posing for several pictures, but I picked up from his wife's thoughts that she could tell there was something 'not quite right' about us, so I thanked them for their time and shuffled us out of there quickly.
"That guy was hot!" Gianna giggled conspiratorially, holding onto Bella's arm as they laughed the whole way out of the stadium.
"I know! He looked a lot like how I imagine Edward would look if he were still human," Bella whispered, knowing full well I could hear her.
"I am MUCH better looking than that guy!" I protested.
"Of course you are, dear," Bella patronized me.
At least she didn't enchant him, Jasper said in his thoughts, and I nodded my head in agreement. You'd think with all the money he makes, he could buy pants that fit properly.
"I don't know about the rapper, he was just alright, but his bodyguard...damn...he can frisk me anytime he wants," Rosalie piped in. Emmett pretended to be affronted and slapped her backside playfully. She just giggled and ran a few steps ahead of him to catch up with the rest of the girls.
The rest of the evening was peaceful. Everyone was doing a good job of not addressing the elephant in the room and just enjoying being together for the sake of it. At some point in the early hours of the morning, Jasper and Heidi disappeared together. Everyone's thoughts focused on it, but no one voiced them, knowing it was truly no one's business but theirs. Shortly before it was time to go, Jasper came back alone, his thoughts centered on the mission.
The next morning, the three of us hugged everyone one last time before heading out. Adrian was overtaken with emotion, hugging Bella for dear life. Finally Felix and Alice made him let go so we could get going. A few words of encouragement from Marcus and Carlisle and we left behind what had come to feel like a second home to us.
We took our time making the trek, changing vehicles a couple of times and then walking through several hundred miles of wilderness. The hardest part was changing our eye color to red. Carlisle, luckily, had the forethought to stockpile us bags of donated blood, which we forced ourselves to drink. It was difficult, but not for the reasons I'd anticipated. The blood, although human, was cold and stale. Nasty, Bella had called it, her ever-present nausea from her newborn days resurfacing, causing her to struggle to keep it down.
I was relieved that it did nothing to bring back the desire to hunt humans in Jasper or me, and Bella certainly wasn't going to develop a taste for it from drinking sterilized pints of type O. Still, it served the need. When we were about 50 miles away from the coordinates Francesco had given us, we dug a hole in the ground to bury the surplus bags and other essentials we didn't want the Romanians to know about.
Jasper took the opportunity to give us one last pep talk. "You ready, Bella? It's not too late, darlin'. We can still back out."
Bella shook her head. "No, I'm not ready. But we're doing it anyway," she said firmly.
Jasper sighed. "Alright. Then the only other thing I'm going to say is this. Once we're in there, we have to stay in character. No slip-ups. Edward, either you and I need to be with Bella at all times. I don't want her alone for a second, not even with Francesco. Trust no one but each other. From here on out, all we've got is each other. We need to stick together. It's the only way we have a chance of getting all of us out of here alive. And we are all getting out of here alive."
Bella gave Jasper a hug. "Thank you for being here with us, Jazz. For me. I couldn't do it without you."
Jasper smiled warmly at her. "You're welcome, Bella." I love you. Jasper looked at me apologetically and I just smiled at him, hoping it wasn't coming across as rueful. Bella released him and he walked away to give us a moment's privacy.
Bella quickly fell into my arms and held me so tight I thought I might crack. "I love you, Edward. No matter what happens in there, always remember how much I love you."
I kissed her, then pulled her back in for another hug. "I love you, Bella. Please don't talk like that. Jasper's right, we're going to get through this together. We can do this. It's too important to fail. Just remember...you may be here to save the world, but Jasper and I...we're here to save you."
Bella nodded against my shoulder, and we stood that way a moment longer before I felt her body stiffen with resolve. It was time. We caught up with Jasper quickly. He was just standing there, and we weren't sure why until we got closer.
Here, in the middle of the Siberian wilds, we'd found what we were looking for. But it was not the single warehouse hooked up to a generator that we were expecting. No, this was a compound, practically a city, self-enclosed in a fence so high even a vampire couldn't jump it, and humming with an electrical charge that I had no doubt would hurt a hell of a lot worse than anything Jane ever did. There was one entrance, a gate with a vampire sentry to allow large trucks to come and go. We watched as one passed, and I could faintly pick up several heartbeats from inside the back of the truck. They were slow and sluggish, belonging to victims who had most likely been drugged. I shuddered at the thought, and Jasper chastised me.
"No, Edward. No fear. No sympathy. No mercy. You have to act like them, react like them. Bury every precious moral you have deep within you. You can't give them any reason to doubt us." He looked to Bella to make sure she understood that he meant it for her, too. She swallowed thickly but nodded her head.
After the truck disappeared down one the many streets inside the compound, a single flash of light clicked on, then off, from the gatehouse in our direction. "Come on, that's our cue."
The sentry, it turned out, was Francesco.
"Bella," he said breathily when we approached. He stepped out to meet us, immediately pulling her into an awkward hug, his hands making themselves a little too comfortable for my liking. Jasper and I both held back our reactions. It would do us no good to kill the double agent. At least, not until our mission was over. Afterwards, I might be willing to reconsider.
Bella, for her part, hugged him back politely and smiled at him. I'm sure she was glad to see him doing well and obviously not blaming her for his transformation. His eyes blazed red, and it startled her a little when she pulled away from his hug and really looked at him for the first time.
"I know, it's hard to get used to for me, too, and I definitely don't like seeing your eyes this color. I liked the topaz so much better," he reached out his index finger and traced her high cheekbone. Bella took a step back away from him, smiling to reassure him when he looked hurt by it. "Anyway, I don't like it, but Aro assured me that it was the best way to go, both to keep my newborn instincts in check and to blend in here. And it's not like I had never killed anyone before I became a vampire. It's just a lot easier to clean up now." Memories of 'hits' flashed through his mind. Francesco wasn't just any Italian university student. He was mafia. No wonder Carlisle thought he was perfect for this mission! Leave it to Bella to enchant a hitman from the Italian mob.
"I've got a room in one of the main dormitories. That's where all the low level people are, support and patrol personnel, mostly. The scientists and higher ups have apartments in one of the other buildings."
"How many vampires and humans are here, Francesco?" Jasper asked, his voice falsely light and casual.
"About three hundred vamps, and an additional hundred humans who are working here. That doesn't count the humans that get shipped in almost daily to be lab rats. That number changes daily, depending on how long they last before one of the experiments kills them."
It bothered me how little Francesco seemed to be affected by this whole thing. As if reading my mind, he narrowed his eyes just slightly. "When you've lived the life that I have, you learn how to hide your true feelings, disengage yourself from your surroundings. It's a valuable skill in here." The second warning on the same subject in the past ten minutes. I was beginning to think a higher power was trying to tell me something.
"Anyway, like I was saying, I'm in that first building on your right with most of the other grunts. I'm working as a researcher's assistant, plus we all have shifts guarding the gate and doing patrols. You guys can make yourselves at home there. As soon as someone comes to relieve me, I'll show you around and start introducing you to people. Anyone sees you and asks, you're here with me." He handed Bella a key and reluctantly turned away from us to go back inside the sentry house. We followed his scent through the building to the room he had been occupying. It was, indeed, locked, which we found a little funny under the circumstances. Luckily, although we'd passed several vampires along the way, no one stopped to question us, although it occurred to a few of them that we must be new, that they'd never seen us before. They all seemed to be confident enough in the security that they assumed there was no way we could have gotten in unless we were allowed to be there.
Hanging around Francesco's room was a bit disconcerting, especially considering he knew we were coming. There was a pile of clothes on the floor in one corner, almost all of which were covered in blood. There was what Jasper considered an impressive weapon collection, ranging from guns to daggers and an ivory handled switchblade, along with rags and cleaning solutions for them. But what bothered me most were the sketches of Bella. Everywhere. Considering the fact that he was human when he last saw Bella, his sketches of her face were disturbingly accurate. There was also large nude of her tacked to the wall, and his imagination was close enough to the real thing to make me shake with rage. In the sketch, she was sprawled out over the same sofa it was displayed above, and looking at the viewer with a come hither look. Jasper was mentally cataloging all the different ways to kill him, giving priority to the ones which included prolonged torture first, when Bella took the picture off the wall and shredded it.
"Jesus. How many people do you think saw that drawing?" Bella asked. That thought hadn't even occurred to me. "So much for no one here knowing me. How are we going to explain that?!"
"Easy," Francesco replied as he walked into the room, his cockiness and arrogance just adding fuel to the fire, but it was only there a second before it was gone. His smile was only for Bella, and his voice dropped down to a whisper, cautious of the vicinity of others within hearing range, but also suddenly nervous about presenting Bella with his explanation and plan. "Only a few people have seen it, but I simply told them it was a drawing of my girlfriend. Why tell them any different?" He looked so hopeful and sincere that I almost felt sorry for him.
"No. Absolutely not," Bella replied. "There are so many things wrong with that idea that I can't even begin listing them off."
"I can," Jasper replied. I looked to Bella, who was intently staring at Francesco, her eyes slightly narrowed and her jaw tight. Jasper didn't notice, though, as he was too busy laying into our new friend. "First of all, you're not her boyfriend. Never were. Never will be. I know that sucks for you, and I'm sorry about that, but that's the way it is. Get used to it. Second, you're a fucking newborn. You can't protect her half as well as Edward and I can, and if you love her as much as you seem to, you'll want to see her protected. Third, and possibly the most important, because you come within 10 feet of her with even the slightest hint of lust, and I will kill you. Permanently, this time." If it weren't for the fact I was listening to his mental responses to Jasper's speech, I would have assumed he didn't even hear him. He was staring back at Bella quizzically.
Bella suddenly growled, throwing her hands in the air and turning her back to Jasper and Francesco.
"Bella?" I called to her, and when she turned to look at me, her features were so distorted with frustration that I ran to her, concerned. "What's wrong, love?"
"Marcus was right. I can turn it up, but I can't seem to turn it down or change it." I couldn't hide the joy I felt that Bella would try and do that, even if it didn't work. I kissed her forehead and mouthed a thank you against her ear. I turned back to Jasper and Francesco. Jasper was smirking at Francesco, who looked absolutely heartbroken.
"You would do that, Bella? You would take back the gift you've given me? Steal my love for you away from me that way? Why?"
"Because it will bring you nothing but heartache, and I don't want that for you." Bella stole a quick glance at Jasper before turning back to Francesco. "And because it has the potential to make the next weeks, or maybe even months, unnecessarily complicated."
Francesco shook his head vehemently. "No, Bella. Please don't. I love you, and to be honest with you, this is the first time I've ever put someone above myself. It's the first time I've wanted to make myself a better man for someone else. I'm not a man who has known love in his life, before you came into my world. My human life left no room for anything beyond one-night love affairs. But you, you make me see the world in a different light. My love for you makes me feel as though I can move mountains. It's given me the opportunity to be part of something important, and feel I can really contribute to something that is good and right. Please don't take that away from me."
Bella looked truly torn, but finally caved. "It didn't work, anyway, but as long as you promise to try and keep it in check, I won't try again."
Francesco smiled and reached out to hug her, but she shook her head at him. His arms dropped to his side, crestfallen but still more positive than he was a moment ago.
"Not right now, Francesco. Those pictures have me a little freaked out. What are we going to do about the people who've seen them, anyway?"
"Ex-boyfriend, maybe. Or we could always say he's in love with you, but it is unrequited," Jasper suggested, shrugging his shoulders. That was clearly his preference, both from a statistical and emotional standpoint.
"Ex-boyfriend, if you please. It affords me more dignity," Francesco said, adding a mental footnote. And leaves me the opportunity to show her a bit of affection without raising suspicion. Something in his emotions must have tipped Jasper off, because he picked up his list of ways to torture a vampire where he'd left off. We could break his fingers off one by one and burn them with a match flame, nice and slow...
A/N: Felix, mindful of my reviewers with allergies and wanting to pay homage to his homeland, has offered himself up...covered in fruit flavored gelatos for your reviewing pleasure.