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, who 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 34 – Rosalie asks a question

(Bella's POV)

A few days after the fight with Connie, I was still surprised that Rosalie had not only stood in front of me to protect me, but she had spoken to me afterwards. She hadn't spoken to me since I had arrived in Forks in July. Immediately after the fight with Connie, though, she had gone back to her reserved self, sitting across the room from me. But at least things weren't as tense as before.

She stunned me one morning by coming over quietly to sit in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

"What happened to your mother and the rest of your family in July, 2020?" she asked.

None of the Cullens had asked me so directly what had happened to my family. I think that since Jasper had been so intimately involved in the Gathering, they hadn't wanted to raise the possibility of one of Jasper's groups having had a hand in their capture and captivity.

"She didn't tell me much, but the other women there did tell me what they knew," I began. "They said that she had married shortly after she graduated in high school. Just before the Event, her husband had left for a business trip. She learned she was pregnant with their first child while he was gone.

She had wanted to tell him in person," I continued, "so she was waiting for him to come home on July 1st, 2020, when Aro came on the news and announced his new world order. Shortly afterwards, her husband's car pulled up to the house. She ran to the door to meet him. She was stunned to see he had red eyes, which meant he was no longer human, and he wasn't alone. He had another vampire with him.

Her husband refused to speak to her. When she told him about the baby, his only response was hold to out his hand to the other vampire. The second vampire handed him a piece of paper, written in a strange language. Her husband wrote something at the bottom, then turned his back and walked out. The second vampire reached out and put a collar and chain on her neck. She was shocked at her husband's behavior and his refusal to speak to her, but hoped that he had plans to come for her when things were safe. She followed the second vampire in silence when he tugged on the leash.

My mother was taken to a bus, where she waited with other women to be driven the new human containment facility outside of town. As they waited on the bus, they saw groups of people being taken to separate buses. They watched in horror as some people who were waiting in line to get onto a bus were killed. Some of these people had started to resist, and others had done nothing. In all cases, a vampire had walked up to someone waiting in line and pulled them out of the line. Some people been carried off screaming, others attacked and killed in front of the group. The women on the bus listened in terror to the sound of screaming and crying coming from all directions. They didn't know what would happen to them.

Once my mother's group arrived at the facility, they had their clothes and personal belongings taken away and were sent into showers. My mother used to say the showers reminded her of the old movies of prisons and the WWII death camps. When she came out of the shower, she was sent to a bunker-like room, where she would spend the rest of her life. She did not see sunlight or anything from the outside world until the day she and I escaped.

During the first few months, the constituency of her group changed constantly. Three walls of the bunker room were made of concrete blocks, and the fourth wall had bars. Vampires came to the barred side of the room and were able to point to individual women. The guards would make the women come to the bars. Sometimes the women were taken out, never to be seen again, and others would take their place. Sometimes the women were just allowed to return to the group without incident.

After a few months, there was no more news from the outside world. In the early months, women were still being brought in from more remote areas, and they told of the entire governing bodies being murdered by vampires. Some of these attacks were televised, and were broadcast over and over in the early months, my mother was told. The president and congress of both Germany and Serbia had been shown being attacked in chambers and killed in a bloody frenzy by a group of vampires.

After that, all humans were supposed to be in custody. There hadn't been much communication other than by television, as vampires could quickly track cell phone calls and would pick up anyone using a cell phone while trying to hide. After a year, any newcomers to the group were women or children who were being transferred between facilities. There were no more women being brought in from the outside world.

About a year after that, the only newcomers to the cell block were infants that were given to women to raise. Where these newborns came from, they never knew. If a woman was allowed to keep one baby from a pregnancy, the future children were usually taken from her, so the assumption had always been that these were some other incarcerated woman's children. No one was allowed to speak to the vampire guards or ask them questions. The guards never spoke in English; they gave all their orders in vampiri. They used their cattle prods to make their points, when they weren't being obeyed quickly enough.

I grew up in that dim room with her. Aside from eye and hair color, there weren't many other colors. The thin smocks they gave us to wear were undyed cotton. The guards' uniforms were always grey. The shoes that only the guards wore were a shiny black. I learned most of my colors from the bruises left on my arms or legs by the exsanguination machine.

The outside world was described to us in terms of the colors from bruises. My mother said the sky overhead could be any number of colors, from orange and red in the morning and evening, to blue during the day. There were trees and plants that had brown or green stems or trunks and green leaves or flowers. There were animals and birds with fur or feathers in many different colors. Some of these animals, they told me, had lived in houses with people, such as cats and dogs. Others had been wild animals, such as bears and panthers, and were only seen in zoos.

After a while, some of us growing up in those rooms had begun to wonder if any of what the older women said was true.

But, really," I said to Rosalie, "Edward works in a living death camp; you can ask him what life there is like. As for what human life is generally like outside the camps, well, you have two humans at your house, and Jasper has one at his. What do they say about their lives and families?"

Rosalie looked at me, and said "I never asked them, it's against the Rules."

I decided to push this new openness with a coven member, so I asked her, "Is there anything in the Rules about forcing blood slaves to live hungry? Why don't you give them enough to eat?"

She looked at me and started to withdraw back into her usual haughty persona. Esme asked, "Why do you ask that, dear? Of course Rosalie feeds her human companions well. Why wouldn't Rosalie give the humans who live with her plenty of food? She certainly has enough money."

Rosalie didn't answer. We heard the sound of a bicycle coming up the driveway, and Esme went to the door.

I could hear her talking to Emily as she helped her up the front steps. "Emily, dear, how nice to see you! You should call us when you are thinking of coming. I would have come to pick you up."

As they walked in the front door, Emily laughed and replied, "I wanted to ride the bike. It's my only exercise." She came into view, wearing a bright pieced patterned sleeveless top held up by spaghetti straps, and maternity jeans that hung very low on her hips. She had matching necklace in pastel clear beads. She looked radiant. She also looked like she was about to burst. She handed Esme a basket of eggs, which Esme took into the kitchen.

Emily more waddled then walked over towards me. I jumped up and gave her a hug.

"Is little Sue going to make her first appearance in this living room?" I asked.

"I don't think so. No activity down there yet," she said, patting her stomach, "at least not anything about anyone getting ready to come out. I'm already two weeks overdue, and I'm beginning to think she's planning to stay right where she is. I keep having the same dream almost every night: I can see us now, at what should be her second birthday. I'll be pushing my stomach in a wheelbarrow, trying to bribe her to come out by telling her she won't get to open her birthday presents until she shows herself!"

Jasper helped her sit down on the couch. "Thank you," she told him. "If I didn't have immortal men helping me in and out of chairs, I would probably need a lift. I don't think a mortal man could get me up," she laughed.

Jasper replied, "You're hardly heavy, little lady."

"Nobody's calling me little these days," she answered with a laugh. "But keep it up, I love hearing the flattery! So, I hear Leah dropped in from the blue. Literally. The whole pack is going on about how she flew that Cessna. And she had never landed or taken off before. Now that girl has her nerve."

"I don't think a plane crash would affect her like it would affect us," I countered. "She could probably just get up and walk away."

Esme came back in, after putting away the eggs, with a bouquet made from her roses. "Will you have some brunch?" she asked Emily. "I was just about to make 99 something to eat."

I smiled at hearing Esme call me 99. She only called me that when there was a visitor. She called me 'dear' the rest of the time.

"I've never said 'no' to food, even before I had this excuse to eat," laughed Emily, patting her stomach.

My thoughts moved to Ardella, Jasper's blood slave. I could no longer stand her situation at Jasper's house. Every time he or Alice walked in, my gift kept picking up the same picture from them. Ardella just sat in her room on her bed, in the dark. She never left her room unless she was ordered to go to the exsanguination machine. She had stopped leaving her room of her own volition three days after Jasper and Alice took her newborn away from her. And, Ardella was always hungry. Alice fed her measured amounts from the bags of food she bought, feeding her precisely the amount shown in the directions for her weight and age. Never a pellet more or less. And it was never enough.

The cousins and I had devised a plan to improve Ardella's life. We had managed to get a mental connection to her, and we had started to talk to her using this connection. She hadn't heard human language since Clyde's visit to her, when she was impregnated. So even though we were disembodied voices in her head, she was so starved for contact that she was listening to us. And we thought we had a way for her to get her baby back.

I had heard that Alice couldn't remember anything from her human past. Well, because of my gift, Alice's past was clear enough to me from the memories that rolled off of her whenever she was around. Maybe, just maybe, we could give Ardella enough information about Alice's human life that Ardella could negotiate the return of her daughter Amy.

PLEASE READ AND REVIEW. I WILL SEND AN EXCERPT FROM THE NEXT CHAPTER TO ALL REVIEWERS.

Next chapter will be in Jasper's POV.