"Well, where is he? We have to help him!" I exclaimed.

"Bella, it's really dangerous," Alice warned.

"I don't care! We can't let her hurt him!"

"She's got a friend with her—someone I don't know—and this new girl is powerful. From what I can see, Edward is barely fighting back. He's… slowed down?" Alice paused to replay some of the scene in her mind, trying to pinpoint the power. "Victoria's tearing him to pieces, and he can't react quickly enough."

I growled at the image. "I'll kill her."

"Bella, if I'm right about this girl's gift, she could wrap us in it too. None of us would be fast enough to do anything. We'd just get ourselves killed."

I didn't care about living in a world where Edward was dead. But that wouldn't sway Alice, so I searched for a different argument.

"Well, maybe you're wrong. Maybe she can only slow one person at a time. Can you see it affecting me?" I asked. I was determined to go, so Alice would see me there.

Alice's eyes went blank again, checking. "No," she finally answered. "You're not slowed down. So if we both go…." She blinked, then refocused on a third vision with the two of us there. "That's strange. I'm affected, and so is Edward, but not you."

"So she's not limited to one at once," I frowned. "But why wouldn't she use her ability on me too?" I thought for a bit. "Maybe it's harder the more people she tries to cover, and they figure the two of them can take me easily—"

"Actually, just Victoria," Alice interjected, "The other girl seems to slow herself down too when she activates her power."

"Well, regardless. I don't have a special power like you two do, so I'm the least threatening."

"No, Bella," realization dawned on Alice's face, "Maybe you do have a power. Remember how Edward couldn't read your mind?"

I understood what she was suggesting immediately, but it didn't fit. "That's just Edward. Your gift works on me just fine," I objected. "So does Jasper's."

Alice was silent for a moment, watching the future for clues. "It looks like she's distorting the brain's perception of time, rather than changing how fast time itself moves for specific people. When Victoria hits Edward, he gets flung back at a normal speed. It must seem incredibly fast to him."

I growled again, impatient with the conversation. I had to get to Edward.

"So maybe it's your mind that's immune, and non-mental gifts still work normally on you," Alice concluded.

"Great. Let's go!"

"He's in Brazil. We'll never make it in time if we run. We'll have to buy plane tickets." Her eyes were wide.

An airport full of humans. Great. My throat burned at the thought of being cooped up with the scent of fresh blood for an entire plane trip. But I had to try, didn't I? Knowing that if I lost my self control and attacked a human, they'd shut down the flight, and I'd never make it in time… surely my love for Edward could outweigh my thirst for blood?

"Buy the tickets. I'll live."

She must have seen that I could do it, because she nodded and dialed the airline. Her acceptance gave me greater confidence in myself. A minute later—an agonizingly slow minute, in which Alice talked at human speed and I felt like maybe I was the one having my perception of time distorted—we had booked a plane for Rio de Janeiro.

"Our flight is five hours away," Alice grimaced. "We'll be cutting it very, very close. I see us reaching Edward just as Victoria does, if there are no slip-ups. But there isn't a sooner flight, and it'd be slower to run."

"Try other airlines? Other airports?" I suggested, desperate. We were an hour's run out from SeaTac, but we could probably make it to Portland in two hours if they had sooner flights. Even arriving a minute sooner could mean the difference between life and death.

"Already checked," Alice gave me a look, as if to say, Why would I call them when I could simply envision myself doing so?

I rolled my eyes back at her.

"Bella, we can make it in time," she reassured me. "And we won't be idle in the meantime."

"We won't?"

"No. It's time for you to learn how to fight."

My biggest advantage was my brute strength as a newborn. Alice's biggest advantage was that she could foresee anything I decided to do and counter it perfectly.

I was losing every time.

"Bella, you can't just go for the obvious attacks. Victoria will predict those and dodge," she chided me as I picked myself up yet again.

"You predict it whether it's obvious or not," I grumbled. "How am I supposed to tell what would work on her?"

"She must have fought plenty of vampires over the years. Whatever your instincts are telling you to do, it's probably too obvious."

So I tried to ignore my instincts and do random other things. Unfortunately, I had no idea what sorts of other things were good fighting moves. Without my gut as a guide, I was trying moves that left me completely unguarded against counterattacks, and lashing out at angles where I couldn't apply much force. After the eighth time Alice pinned me, I concluded that instincts were actually pretty helpful.

I sighed, still on the ground. "Do I have any hope at all, or will Victoria kill me in about two seconds?"

Alice looked ahead for a moment. "Um. Three point seven seconds. You charge toward her right side, she sidesteps, then she swipes a chunk out of that unprotected left side we've been talking about. It goes downhill from there."

My head whipped up. "What if I start by aiming for her head?" I decided to do so, hoping that would be enough to let Alice see the outcome.

Alice's eyes went blank again. "She dodges. You last four point six seconds instead. That's not going to work, Bella."

But I was only getting started. "Which direction does she dodge?" I demanded. "No, wait. Stand there, I'll punch toward your face, and you show me how she moves."

She obliged me. I committed the move to memory, and planned my followup strike accordingly. I was up to five point two seconds. We continued in this vein for two hours, memorizing increasingly long attack sequences where I would come out ahead, backtracking whenever my latest move proved to be a mistake. It was difficult work: I had to make up my mind to take an action, and then Alice had to watch for it, every time we wanted to check a possibility. Unsurprisingly, Alice was much better at suggesting promising potential moves than I was.

All of a sudden, there was a breakthrough. I'd been gradually chipping away at our predicted Victoria; Alice was pretending to fight without one of her arms. Now I found a sequence that would end in me tearing off her left foot. Alice mimicked her newly limited movements, and I kept attacking, waiting to see how she would turn the tides this time. But that moment never came; she was too handicapped, and just by following my instincts I was able to widen my advantage. Finally, I had her pinned, and was tearing her head from her shoulders. I opted not to act that part out on Alice.

She grinned up at me, and I grinned back, triumphant. What had previously looked like a hopelessly one-sided battle now had a clear path to victory. A human might have worried about remembering the whole sequence or being able to replicate it precisely, but I could rely on my perfect memory and physical control. I would not deviate in the slightest from our plan. And, without knowing what we had foreseen her doing, Victoria could not hope to deviate either–even if she became suspicious of my unreasonably good fighting, however she decided to respond to it would be the very thing Alice had predicted she would do.

I was giddy with success. I pulled Alice to her feet and hugged her, hard. "Ow, Bella," she laughed.

"Oops!" I'd forgotten that I could now hurt vampires just by hugging them. I danced around for a bit, then leapt twenty feet into the air just for the thrill of it, pumping my fist up victoriously. We could really do it!

It dawned on me that I might have solved Laurent's problem, too. At least, if he was willing to let Alice be involved enough to help him. It would be hard to prove that he was cheating when he just happened to be making moves that would result in a win. I knew he didn't want to risk the wrath of the Cullens for helping change me, but Alice had seemed excited about my new state, not upset. I supposed I would explain things to Laurent and let him decide.

Meanwhile, it was time for a whole new type of challenge: a crowded airport.

2024-09-14 A/N: Thank you for all the reviews! They're very motivating–I've now drafted through chapter 16.

What do you think: will their plan work? How will Edward react?