Author's Note: Thanks as always to my beta AgoodWITCH and my WC girls for encouraging me! You guys are awesome!

Now in the way of other good news…some of you may have heard, but I won the Young Adult division of the TWCS Original Fiction Contest. What most of you do not know, however, is that I have been in the process of getting the manuscript done to begin my first round of editing in four weeks. If all goes according to plan, I will be an officially published author by early March! Thank you for your patience as I've worked to finish laying down my story, which I have decided now, will be a series. The first book will be Children of Creation: Convergence and I've already been approached about getting the sequel done by the end of next year. At any rate, this has been major things going on for me…awesome, but very stressful. Thanks for your patience while I was wrapping up CofC and I ask once more for patience as I begin to do some cleaning up in the next few weeks before going into hard editing mid November. I have a feeling my fanfics will be silent or close to it during that time. Until then, I'll do my best to update as frequently as I can. Thank you all so much for all of your support. You readers really do keep me coming back again and again! So thank you!

Chapter 4

"This makes absolutely no fucking sense!" Emmett stalked up slamming a file on my desk. I frowned up at him, as much in curiosity at what had him so upset.

"The tests were run on the infant's DNA and checked against CODIS, and he is a genetic match for Royce King, but there's no fucking way. King has been in solitary the majority of his stay in the pen since his conviction thirteen months ago. I double checked the prison visit records, and he has had no visitors, much less conjugal visits in order to impregnate this young girl within the last thirty to forty five weeks. It's in-fucking-possible, yet the DNA tests are conclusive. It came back as a 98.99% match for paternity. How the fuck?"

I rubbed my temples feeling the building weight of my frustrations. The evidence was incontrovertible. Royce King was responsible for the string of murders, which all connected back to our Rosalie, his first rape victim. We had an airtight case, mostly based on DNA evidence. If he chose to appeal now, the new evidence coming in, that seemed to suggest the impossible, would inspire his jackass group of high dollar lawyers to jump on it like a pack of rabid dogs on a fresh T-bone steak. The worst part is that it could potentially seed just enough reasonable doubt to get him off, which would be an absolute nightmare.

"All I can think is that possibly King donated his sperm. Check with area sperm banks. He most likely used an alias, so be sure to send photographs for them to look at."

Emmett nodded, looking frustrated and not entirely convinced. Honestly, neither was I. Even if she was some random female who happened to end up with the convicted criminal's sperm sample; that certainly didn't explain why she was kidnapped and killed. Not only that, sperm bank records are kept under lock and key, so how would a copycat know who she was and what she carried. It would help if we could get an ID on the female, but whoever dumped her body was smart as hell. Her fingerprints had been removed, her teeth had been pulled, and her face had been beaten enough times that her bones had healed at odd angles even making facial recognition software stumble. Our only hope was for us to find a top of the line facial reconstruction expert to help us fill in the gaps.

Normally, we would all look to the Smithsonian. Dr. Brennan and her team had helped us on countless occasions, but we had already tried there, and Brenan's entire team was currently dispersed across the globe, taking an extended hiatus, with the exception of Dr. Saroyan who was on a short vacation in California. Thus, we were forced to go with the second best, in which case we expected a two day wait for the team to arrive, then even more time for them to examine the remains, and reconstruct facial representation to help Identify the girl since her DNA did not bring up a match in CODIS. Until then, the poor girl would remain nameless.

Emmett was getting up to leave when a frantic looking Jasper and Alice came flying in, tossing more folders in my lap.

"This is impossible! No Way!"

I rolled my eyes. "Appears this is the day for impossibilities…what did you find?"

Alice was pacing like a madwoman as Jasper leaned on my desk. "The physical evidence…the hairs, the skin under the nails, the semen found on the victim, it ALL matches Royce King. Impossible, right? He's in solitary right now and has been for more than a month. It's not fucking possible!"

I blinked in shock as Emmett's face matched mine from where he sat on the couch. Carlisle and Edward also appeared equally as dumbfounded. It didn't make any sense at all. They were both right. It was impossible.

I shook my head, my mind running a million miles a minute. "Whitlock, double check the samples, also look for signs of degradation that might point to them being older samples that were planted by a copycat. Brandon, you double check Whitlock's findings, and while he's running the first batch, I want you on the fiber samples and trying to rush that ID. McCarty, I want you and Cullen to bring in all of the prison employees with any contact with King. I'm talking guards, maintenance, cooks, laundry workers, anybody that came within ten feet of anything to do with King needs to be interviewed. There's a possibility he has some sort of a smuggler, except in his case, the goods may be going out instead of coming in. Before you leave, place a second guard on Hale. King has always been obsessed with her, if he's pulling strings on the outside, then she might be a target. I want her under 24 hour guard with backup. Carlisle will stay here with me to keep an eye on Dr. Paynor's findings and make a few calls to his contacts in the King case. We need to brief them in case this thing hits the fan."

Emmett nodded, looking grateful for my protection detail assignment for Rose. Not only would I function better knowing she was protected, but that would go double for Emmett. The room quickly emptied of bodies, save for Carlisle who stared at the files on my desk in bewilderment.

"How is this even possible, Bella? I mean…" He shook his head, the strain of everything written in every line of his face. Carlisle always looked so young for his age, but in that moment, he looked every bit of his sixty-one years.

I sighed, yanking the folders off the end of my desk and stacking them in front of me to review once more. "I know, Carlisle, I know. Let's just do our best to figure this out. There has to be a rational explanation."

Carlisle nodded, picking up his file to flip through it once more before excusing himself to go check on Jane and get an update.

Once the room was clear and I was alone, the full weight of this case hit me like a ton of bricks. I had long ago gotten over the need to cry over my job, built the necessary tough outter skin, and had refused to let the cases that I've dealt with affect me so profoundly, but this…this was just too much.

I leaned my elbow on the desk, gripping the bridge of my nose and squeezed, getting angry that my vision kept growing more and more blurry as I looked over the reports, one after another, after another. In the right set of hands, these few sheets of paper would end up spelling an almost certain appeal, with a high likelihood of repealing his life sentence. The thought alone, knowing all I knew about what he had personally done to Rosalie, not to mention the other girls that we were so certain he had abused and murdered, brought a sob bubbling up in my chest. The burden lay on my shoulders to find the answers. In the end, the team supported me, but I was where the buck stopped. If he went free, it would be my failure and my failure alone. I couldn't let my failings allow that man to wander the streets once more and destroy more innocent girls. The pressure was nearly unbearable.

After a good cry followed by an ice cold soda from the fridge under my desk, I dried my eyes, picked up the folders, and moved across the room to climb the step ladder in front of the specimen result board and began jotting down the results and DNA match ups from the investigation. Already the pieces were starting to come together in a troubling manner.

Once I was done with the information, I stood staring at the notes, my brain working overtime, searching for a possible explanation and finding none. There had to be a reasonable explanation, but whatever it was, it was not readily apparent.

Over the next few hours, bits of information began to trickle in. Carlisle came back in to update me on Jane's results. More or less, she had only confirmed that the girl had given birth to the infant via a crude cesarean section. In addition the girl's body had been completely drained of blood, thus complicating her ability to pinpoint a time of death since the lack of blood caused the liver to grow cold much more quickly than in a typical corpse. Jane had commented that the girl showed signs of malnutrition, and had contusions and lesions on her body that seemed to indicate she had been tied somewhere and forced to spend long, long periods of time in a sitting or lying position.

Due to the malnutrition of the mother, it was difficult to tell the gestational age of the equally emaciated baby, but Jane suspected he was not full term, his lungs showing signs of immaturity that could be a result of lack of nutrition, but more likely due to prematurity. Considering the physical state of the mother, Jane suggested that the mother's body would have been incapable of reaching full term and most likely went into early labor, although there was no physical proof of her theory.

Jasper and Alice were still slowly repeating their tests to confirm and were only half way through the samples, but thus far, their results had been consistent in reaffirming their first round of testing. In addition, Jasper had found no signs of degradation of the samples. They appeared to be recent.

My chest ached as I began making more notes on the white board, word after word linking these two deaths even more closely to the impossible suspect, Royce King. I wanted so badly to wake up, for this to be a twisted dream worked up by my overworked psyche, but it was real and there was no waking up from this nightmare.

Dawn rose, flooding my office with light as calls began coming in again. Rose called to see what was happening, knowing full well I could not reveal any facts in the case to her, but insisting on trying to coerce them out of me anyway. The director called twice, demanding answers that I still did not have.

Emmett and Edward called to inform me that they had the list of interviewees in hand and were making arrangements to have them scheduled to come to the floor below the lab where the two way mirrors and stark interview rooms waited for the endless procession of suspected conspirators. I would be spending the rest of this new day observing interviews between phone calls, and in some cases questioning some of the workers myself.

Monotony lay ahead for all of us, but it was just one more part of the job, and with any luck we would find some answers somewhere in the stack of faceless employees and hopefully a link that would shed some light on how in the hell this was even remotely possible.