Chapter Nine

Dr Cullen

This was it, the culmination of all my years of research, it had been a giant leap of faith going from laboratory animals to the real thing but at last I was close, so close to my goal of understanding the vampire make up, both physical and mental. I had often wondered if I would have the courage to take that final step and if I did how would I find my subject? It had to be a good specimen and I needed a way of capturing my new breed of Lab Rat for that's all it was, just a larger more powerful laboratory specimen. I had thought long and hard about how I would contain my subject, feed it sufficiently without danger to myself and what exactly I would do with my findings. The Volturi would be most interested and I didn't think they would question my methods too closely, Aro especially didn't care about the way you got results, just that you did.

The final experiment, the one I'd kept to myself was the most exciting and the most dangerous. I had what I needed and my target. She had fallen into my lap as her Doctor inquired about the drug trial for patients with severe depression. I had smiled when I saw the name of one of his patients, Isabella Swan, poetic justice I thought, God had sent her my way. She was ideal, unstable, depressed, suicidal at one time and most importantly of all available. It took a little juggling but I managed to put her on the trial, the only of my subjects to be getting the full treatment. I had to have a few successes but that was fairly simple, human minds weren't that complex and treating their depression was interesting as a side line to my main research. Once on the drug regime it was simple to visit her without her ever knowing.

These things took time and I wanted her as relaxed as possible. The fight she had with her Father resulting in her leaving home made it even easier, no chance of being discovered or my time cut short. When she stopped taking the first drug I admit I was concerned but it was quite easy to replace her pain medication with a substitute and she never even noticed the slight difference. Once my task was fulfilled I would leave her long enough for the depression to overcome her again and she would disappear, such a tragedy, a young life wasted. All they would find were her clothes beside the river and a note, already written by her bedside, "Goodbye cruel world" or similar, I barely remembered what I had written but it flowed nicely.

After all my hard work and planning something had gone awry, Bella wasn't there when I went to collect her, the last blood confirmed what I was hoping, she was pregnant and now she and the baby would be mine, but she wasn't there. There was no sign of where she'd gone but the majority of her clothes and the few scraps of Jasper's life she'd salvaged from the house without knowing why were gone, along with her truck. She wouldn't get far without her medication, she'd soon start feeling sick and dizzy, I made sure that would happen if she stopped taking her pills although she'd suffered grimly in silence until I changed her pain relief to my drug. She really thought she'd got over the withdrawal symptoms and I knew that was because she had become awake enough to track the drug to Dr Cullen.

It was unfortunate but not disastrous to my plans. All I had to do was trace the truck and I'd find her so I went back to my car and booted up the laptop checking on the tracker I'd put under her truck a long time ago for just such an eventuality. I was amazed to see how far she'd got and she was still headed South. Why South? She had no one there except her Mother and she was headed in the wrong direction for that. I checked Charlies phone records and there was a short call from her to her Father in the early hours of the morning. Something had spooked her in the middle of the night and I needed to find out what. Had someone found out what I was doing? I didn't think so because Alice, the only one who could have, had already told us all that she couldn't see Bella or Jasper's futures once the family left Forks. It had been a good result for me, in fact it gave me the green light to further my research.

The fact that I had encouraged her disappointment and anger at Jasper after the incident at the party seemed to have been overlooked when she finally lost it and trashed all his things. The whole family were very supportive of her but we all thought it best that she shouldn't try to see him again, it would be too painful. Then he vanished, although no one else in the family knew that, they just thought he had disappeared from our lives not from the outside world entirely.

When this was all finished and my Research written up Esme, in fact all of us, would be overjoyed to have our very own child to rear and I could always come up with an excuse for having the poor little mite. A girl raped by one of our kind and found by me, I'd be seen as a philanthropist for my kindness in helping her by taking the child into the family's care. How many vampire traits it would have was anyone's guess but I would be in the ideal position to observe it growing up and so continue my work on into its adult hood if it lived that long. I had a day before I would be missed so I headed south to find my little Lab Rat before she did anything to ruin my hard work. I kept the Laptop on so I could see what she was doing and twice she stopped, hopefully beginning to feel the effects of the pregnancy although she wouldn't realize that's what it was yet. The second time she started off she seemed to have a purpose, turning off the Interstate and heading into rural Oregon. Interesting, had I missed a family member living out there? Was she on he way to a friend perhaps? I'd soon find out.