A/N: Seventeen chapters, and the plot is still pathetic. Gargh.

If I wrote more on this chapter, I'd have to cut off at a wierd moment, so sorry for the length.

Also, no time.

Chapter 18: Warping

I could almost have forgotten what happened moments before. We were walking along the deserted road just like two friends on a dare. We only exchanged a few words, as the situation still seemed unreal. It felt like I had to make sure this wasn't just what it felt like - a nightmare. I'd been shot in the chest twice, and I didn't even feel the pain anymore. "Wait. I have to check up."

Jenna, her whole body shaking with excitement, managed to stand still, observing me with a distance that was almost too personal. I pulled up my jacket and T-shirt and looked around for what I'd expected of a gunshot wound. I only found two holes, almost cartoonish in their linearity, without a trace of blood. So I'd only bled before because I'd wanted to?

Aro might not have had as much control over this as he'd wanted to.

I was interrupted by Jenna's shouting and her footsteps as she ran down the road in a way that still seemed half human. "Hey! No need to get emotional. We were goin', right?"

Emotional, huh? I hadn't thought of it as anything but observation, but it certainly had the potential to become philosophical. Still, there was no point in staying like this forever. I'd tried so many times, but I couldn't seem to let go of the humanity I had left. This was no time for regrets, though. I just had to let loose, cut off all conscious thought except instincts. The animal side of me welled up in a burst that seemed all too sudden. I had to act on it now, or else I'd never get anywhere. Just give up the needless self-pity. "Hey, wanna see if ya can race me?" The excitement in my voice seemed foreign to me, but I was in no position to consider anything.

"Sure! I need to burn off some of this." Her bright eyes had a glint in them that seemed out-of-place, but -

All conscious thought was cut off as I let my instincts off my mental chains. I could feel how my body began moving without even the twitch of a muscle, how everything vanished in the concrete gray blur of the buildings beside me. The only thing that seemed even remotely clear was Jenna, now not a friend, but a rival. At first, I thought she was going to fall behind, but as she let the beast in her take the reins, the only thing I saw before she was at my side was her feral smile. All sense of time vanished in this featureless red blur of raw, addicting power, until something inside me seemed to run out, and the acid burn in my throat started to sting faintly again.

I was staring into a withered patch of flowers, just beside a wooden shack that Jenna was leaning against, an unsettling blaze in her eyes, which revealed a shade of crimson. Had she already burnt off the blood so quickly? And more importantly, how much of the precious blood in my system had I wasted to fuel this vulgar show of superiority?

"You... won. But I was... almost as good." Jenna's already familiar, energetic voice was hollow and drained, as if the race had drained her willpower in addition to her blood. "Let me see... that was fifteen seconds! Y'know, this was a goddamn mile we took in fifteen seconds. This is awesome!"

At least she'd be happier with it than I'd ever be. "Oh, by the way, we're here. Creepy, eh?" The building about thirty feet from us was a huge, hulking, gunmetal-gray structure stretching towards the sky in a way that seemed faintly blasphemous, as if this half-darkened behemoth could ever reach Heaven in any way. It didn't seem likely that it would hurt anyone, though, as it was impossible to imagine a God in the featureless, pitch-black sky.

We were standing at an old storage shack on the far right side of the withered courtyard, but no lights were to be seen in the nearby windows. Only the left side, across an ocean of dessicated flowers, showed any signs of life. The ground floor and basement windows shone in the dark like beacons, and a fainter, more reddish light was coming from some of the third and fourth floor windows. The rest of the windows afforded a subtly disturbing view of white flowers and half-opened, sterile white curtains in every room in the seemingly endless row of empty, staring windows on the front facade. The whole building seemed devoid of any spirit, just a subconsciously chilling concrete husk.

"Oh, fuck yes. This is awesome." Jenna's voice, though rasping and hollow, accurately conveyed the excitement she was feeling. "Lemme tell ya a bit about this place. Ya see, there haven't been any inmates here for ages, but it's still there 'cuz they've got offices down there, in the basement." Her smile was shivering with excitement, but stable, as she kept on talking like a childhood dream had just come true. "So there shouldn't be lights on anywhere but there. But look up there, with the red lights. This is just perfect."

I wasn't prepared for this situation at all, and to my surprise, it felt fantastic.