In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, which began to plan the Insurgence.

I am, of course, indebted to Stephenie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, Manners Training, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.

Chapter 13 –Some of the Rules, and Crazy Chick Nomad

(Bella's POV)

Jasper and Emmett were outside putting up a fence around the back of the house. A six-foot high, black metal fence with decorative spears on the top, with bars spaced 4 inches apart. Honestly, Carlisle couldn't think that would keep me in, after all the chasing around steam tunnels we did in Chicago. But the Rules say that houses with humans have to have a fence if the human is to be allowed outside. At least Carlisle has the sense to not try to make me wear a collar, which is another one of the Rules, because I will be gone the day that happens. And humans are supposed to wear collars 24/7. I guess I shouldn't complain about that one external nod to the rules which he made by putting up the fence.

Carlisle has ignored the more critical Rules that impact daily life. After all, he has always spoken to me in a human language, which is forbidden Rules. The cops modified the Rules to add a little gem about humans not being allowed to sit on furniture as vampires; people have to sit in kind of modified doggy bed style pieces if they are to sit in the same room as vampires. Carlisle always gestures for me to sit with him, and the other vampires always rise when I enter the room, just as they do with Esme.

So they fenced a large area of the back yard in accordance with the Rules, but with this style fence, you can still see the view off the back porch that lines the back of the house. But I want to go out further. I can see trees, and they tell me there is a spectacular view of the river valley from behind the house.

I got Emmett and Jasper to take me outside with them daily, and I ride on their backs while they climb trees. When I was in the wilderness vampires were always up in trees, and I wanted to know what that was like. I could climb around in the lower branches on my own but could never go really high. Emmett was the first to take me up a tree, and when Carlisle realized how much I liked it, he started to climb the high trees with me on his back.

The trees and forest reminded me of the early days of my freedom, after I first got out, before I found my first colony.

-FLASHBACK-

I escaped the Human Containment Facility because a mind reading guard felt he wasn't paid enough. He heard a plan by one of the human men to lead an escape in an effort to keep some of the teenaged girls who were approaching forced breeding age from being made to bear and raise children as vampire food.

So the guard set up a phony escape by playing with a door in front of the man, acting as though the door wasn't shutting without extra effort, laughing to himself as the man pretended not to watch. On the night of the escape, the guard arranged doors so that there was a way to get from the men's cells to the women's via the common washing facilities. Once inside the wash facilities, he left a service entrance door from the shower room to the outside. He then waited outside in the woods for whoever made it that far.

I was nearly asleep when I heard a whisper to "Come now". My mother and I got up with the other two girls who slept close to us. We followed this man in the semi dark to the back of the bathroom to an area we had never entered. There, a door gave way, and we were outside.

The light was blinding outside, it instantly burned my eyes. I had to them and could only look down at my feet. The air was terribly cold, colder even than the water that came out of the showers before it warmed up. Even the ground was cold on my bare feet, but I ran when Mother gave my hand a tug. As I started to run, I heard a door close behind me, followed by the sound of another door opening, so we knew we had been spotted. Our leader, whose name I did not know, gestured for my mother and me to head for some trees, while he slid down a hill with the other two girls. I had never seen the sky, trees, or grass, or anything outside of my cell block. But all of that now was secondary to running.

Initially I didn't recognize the objects she had signed to me as trees. I had heard trees had green leaves on them, but these were just brown and scraggly. When we made it to the trees, we saw the guard. We assumed we had been caught, so we stopped running but took a step towards him in despair. He grabbed both of us and latched on to my mother's throat, biting her then sucking. I held her hand, eventually feeling her pulse as it faded to nothing. The last words formed on her lips, which couldn't be spoken, were my name. We both thought I was next.

When she was dead, the vampire tossed her body on the ground like the clothing we shed once a week in the wash room. I grabbed her body and was trying to hold on to her, when I felt something under her body, a long rock, so I pulled it close to me. The guard grabbed me roughly, picking me up and running at what felt like lightning speed.

My senses remained aware, but I felt myself slide away from my body. It was as if I was viewing it everything from above. The vampire entered a structure and eventually a small room, similar to the washing facilities in the Human Containment Facility. He put me in some kind of a cold stone container, which he filled with water. Two other vampires came into the room, and they all looked and poked at me. I could feel the water and their hard fingers, but it was as if it was happening to someone else.

"Is this all you got?" asked one.

"Yeah, the night guards caught the other two girls," said the guard.

"Well, you're not going to get much from the brothel for this one, look how bony she is."

"I know. I was planning to grab three girls, which would have helped towards the down payment on that new car I want," replied the guard.

"Tell you what," said the third vampire. "I'll give you $50 for this one."

The guard answered "No, the brothels will still give me something, she's virgin".

"Ok, I'll give you $100"…

This exchange continued over the evening, with the vampire raising his offer by $50 increments until the he reached $350.

"You don't have $350" snapped the guard to the third vampire.

"I'll pay you back next pay day, I promise. Just give her to me, I'll get rid of the body as well," the third vampire countered.

"Be sure to do that," said the second vampire, "with looks like that, you don't want her getting turned by mistake."

They left the room. The water was getting cold, and I started to slide down. As I slid down, the water soon covered my head, entering my mouth and my lungs. I didn't care; it was easier not to breathe. But the guard came back in and dragged me back up into a sitting position where I was leaning forward.

"What's wrong with her?" the two vampires asked.

"She's scared of me" replied the guard.

Oh no I'm not, I thought, but it was too much trouble to care. Not breathing was so much get easier, and pictures were starting to fill my mind, blocking out this reality.

The second vampire said "I think she's in shock. You may need to call the doctor."

"I can't do that. He works at the Facility, he'll recognize her and know she isn't mine" snapped the guard.

"Well, there is this crazy chick nomad in town right now, she's a bit wild but was supposed to have been an EMT for an ambulance company when she was human. She may be cheaper than a doctor anyway, so why don't you call her?" suggested the third vampire.

By now I wasn't seeing anything around me. I was floating somewhere else. There were strange pictures, in brilliant colors I had never seen before, running through my head. Images of swords, fires, men and vampires in strange clothes, and some of the clothes appeared to be made of metal. There were large four-legged creatures that the men rode, and huge buildings in shapes unlike anything I had heard of from my mother and her friends. There was a lot of fighting, between men and men, and men and vampires, where the men were armed with various long metal objects. Nothing really made sense, I just watched the pictures.

After a while, I noticed the same man, or boy, appeared in many of these fights. He had black hair and used a long slender weapon, unlike the swords that Mother used to trace images of on my leg when she told me stories. He appeared to be fighting vampires, and after a while, my body began to feel as if was moving with his. The image of his fights kept appearing, over and over, including one fight that he lost.

My dreams were interrupted as I began to hear some kind of yelling beside me, then a voice next to me. Go away, I thought. Someone was patting me, touching me, pinching me. Now that must be a human, as no vampire had ever pinched me. A vampire's touch brought only pain. Maybe I needed to wake up, maybe this had been a dream, and my mother would be next to me.

So I opened my eyes, only to see bright red ones in front of me.

"Hello, beautiful you", a voice cooed.

It had been a vampire trick, there was no human out there. So I started to slip back out, hearing, "No, don't leave me, come back", accompanied by little slaps and pinches. Finally she was so annoying I opened my eyes in order to glare at whoever this annoying vampire was. I saw that she had shoulder length blonde hair and a concerned look on her face. She was about my size, making her much smaller that the vampire guards I had seen all my life.

"Stay with me, I'm going to show you something that will make it worth your while," she whispered.

She called out in Vampiri, and the guard came to stand over me. I quickly shrank back, I knew this had been a vampire trick, designed to get me to come out of my dream state.

"Look at her chin, do you see that spot? If you don't get that treated, the brothels won't take her, it's a symptom of a contagious skin disease," said the strange vampress to the guard.

The guard mumbled something in Vampiri but leaned over me.

In a flash, she had climbed his back and wrapped her legs around his waist. She grasped his head in both hands, then twisted it off.

Wow, this was worth staying awake for, I thought, just as she had promised. She pulled off his arms, one at a time, and threw them in something at the end of the bed, which turned out to be a fire in a fireplace.

Then she turned to me. "Hello, beautiful you. My name is Wenda. We're getting out of here."

"Are you the one they were calling Crazy Chick Nomad?" I asked.

"Guess so, and you know I like the sound of that. So call me Crazy. And I have someplace I want to show you". After saying that, she picked me up, jumped out the window, and drove us to what became our favorite place.

END FLASHBACK

But now, back to the present and to that fence. A fence with bars spaced four inches apart is easy to scale. You can hook your foot inside the bars and shimmy your way up, without a rope. When I was in training in the Resistance, we practiced climbing walls carrying another person on our shoulder, in case we ever needed to carry someone over a wall during a liberation mission. Kind of insulting, this fence. But that's ok – I can get over it if I ever need to.

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