TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR: MENTIONS OF PAST ABUSE, PTSD EPISODE, PANIC ATTACK

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I'D FOUND ALEC IN HIS ROOM AFTER THE ALARM STARTED BLARING, DAZED AND CONFUSED AS TO WHY HE WAS THERE.

Never before in my life had I heard an alarm like this. Even AMBER Alerts didn't terrify me like this one. It was my first order of business to find Jane and Alec, though, as they were still kids and needed some protection despite their guard status.

He was on his bed, Alec. There was a little part of me that knew what had been done, but I just didn't want to believe it and shoved the feeling down.

"Alec, where is your sister?" I asked him, hoping that he would have some idea as to where Jane was. "You have to tell me where she is so we know that she's safe, okay?"

His eyes were dead, so blank and off. Every theory on uncanny valley could be applied to humans and near-human things, but I felt it. This is what uncanny valley felt like in a vampire, seeing one of your own not right. It was him, of course, but his eyes, his facial expressions, they didn't match up with the shy boy I'd played Air Hockey and Wii with in the Rec Room.

"What's going on?" He asked as if suddenly snapping out of his trancelike state. "Why is the alarm going off? What happened?"

I didn't know, but we were in on the lower floors, the closest to the entrance. It would be stupid for us to go out and figure out what had happened. Nobody had sent a message saying what exactly made a member trigger the alarm.

"Alec. do they ever trigger the alarm by accident?" I asked, hoping desperately that the answer would be yes and just like my time in school, someone was pulling a prank. They'd be accosted for it, but it would be better then the alternative of being in real, tangible danger.

To my dismay Alec shook his head. "Never."

God, that meant we were stuck in his room, not knowing where people were. I listened in to the outside, hearing plenty of vampires shuffling around and screaming at one another. Seasoned Guards, ones I knew were older than the country I wash born in, sprinted around inside, checking for whatever had caused the alarm.

It was Renata who opened up the door and slammed it behind her, beginning to move Alec's dresser in front of the entrance.

"Alec, good, you're in here. Your sister is upstairs." Renata lifted the dresser as if it were a feather before her eyes turned to me. "I'm expected to guard you from now on, River, someone has compromised the castle."

"The whole castle?" Alec asked in disbelief. "Who could get inside?"

"We don't know who or what or when or where exactly." Renata picked up more things to place in front of the door. There were thankfully no windows in this room, but if the wall was taken down, it lead straight into the street. "It's daylight, we can't get out."

"Why the hell not!" I'd never heard this little boy swear. "She can't fight! She doesn't know how to yet!"

There was no way that I'd be able to, Alec was right. I had strength, I had agility, but I sure as hell did not have any fighting bone in my body. I'd never even had a fight with someone in middle or high school. Everything I had was faulty knowledge from movies and television shows.

Whoever was disturbing the peace in the castle clearly got in, was able to be a bitch and cause ruckus, and who knew if they were out already with whatever they wanted.

Renata took out her phone and seethed, "Chrissy is compromised, whenever was watching her unfortunately didn't see her slip out."

"There's no way a human would be able to get out of that room," Alec denied as he looked at the dresser that blocked them inside. "Not without help..."

That was why the alarm was sent out.

A vampire.

Oh fuck. Oh holy fuck, I thought as I grabbed things around to also do my best to guard the door. There was only one person who would snatch Chrissy Destarri from inside of these castles walls. Someone who I swore I would never see again. Carlisle promised he would make sure.

Carlisle wasn't here to protect me now, but Renata and Alec were. Two people that despite their appearances had helped take down plenty of fully packed vampire Covens that caused disturbances. If his head wasn't torn off, little Alec would have kept me human.

"Who the hell even knows about that girl anyways?" Renata complained as she still stared at her phone screen. "What kind of bitch wants a fucking human so bad that they'd sent off the Volturi's Castle alarm? She cannot be that goddamn important of a person to someone. Please Gods tell me that she isn't some government spy or something?"

"We'd know if it were a human," Alec whispered. "I'm missing something."

Renata sighed, her anger clearly visible on her face. "Alright," the woman began to explain, "Luna says she sounded the alarm. She left for twenty minutes to find the person who was going to be on the same shift as her. Who the fuck misses that kind of shift? You're guarding the prisoner for fucks sake!"

People make mistakes, I knew that all too well. Those mistakes have consequences like these.

"There has to be another reason, nobody is fessing up the to schedule," Renata said, scrolling past what I assumed to be responses to Luna's message. "Fuck... the schedules have been taken down because it's the end of the week. It's Sunday, schedules get posted at midnight on Monday and would have been taken down an hour ago."

"They know the schedule," Alec said.

"Yeah, yeah," Renata replied as she began to pace, her phone in her hands. "This is so fucking messed up. Oh, shit, fuck. Luna why the fuck can't you just say who the hell you were on shift with! It doesn't fucking matter whose in trouble, girl! We're all in fucking trouble we may as well know if your shift partner is missing!"

I didn't know the answer to that, but I knew who would have taken my former best friend. There was only one person in this world that would have wanted her back in their arms, back down in that terrible place where we didn't know if things were real or fake. The cold, the wind that hit against the glass, the bits of meat we'd nearly choke on because he didn't let us chew when we were misbehaving....

My mind pictured a deer that he once brought in the house. The cold, dead deer that he'd smuggled in and placed in our room in the dead of winter.

I hated seeing it there.

I couldn't escape that deer.

It was everywhere, in the pictures on the wall and in my head. In the brown rug that reminded me of the fur, the look in Alec's terrified eyes.

My lungs didn't work, not that I needed them to, but that was the issue, wasn't it? My lungs didn't work. His didn't work either, as I'd come to realize. His were cold and dead, nearly rotten like that deer. He'd been a monster, able to hunt and kill a deer, a beautiful deer like it had been nothing.

I could smell it in the room, that decay. He'd left it in there for a week, only taking it out once the smell became too much for him.

I'm always in that room, I never escaped that room.

Chrissy was back in the room.

"River?" I barely heard Renata's softening voice as I doubled over on the floor. "River, sweetie, I promise I'll keep you safe. Alec and I are here to guard you, okay?"

Nobody could stop him, as he reminded me so often. I wish I couldn't remember. He promised me he'd remove anything bad from my head once I gave him what he wanted. He'd never do that for me now, the one good thing that he promised me over and over and over-

"What are you talking about, River?" Renata asked, wrapping a sheet over me, presumably to comfort me. "Who promised you?"

"The only thing he ever removed was his name. He told me so many times but that's all he gave me," I mumbled as my knees stung from the pressure of my body on the many things I'd put on the floor. "I had to give him- I had to give it to him-"

I never wanted children with him. He was a disturbing, cruel man that hurt me more than anyone ever could. He knew things inside of my mind, he took my feelings when he stole my memories. Half the time I couldn't remember how to feel, what feeling was. He taught me again.

He taught me how to hate, then he punished me for what he gave me.

He didn't have to give me anything, it was me who had to give him a-

"River, please, who are you talking about?" Renata's disembodied voice came from above me. I could only just hear her, I didn't want to hear anything. Reminders of the pounding snow and pouring water over the ground filled my brain.

"She's having an episode, leave her be," Alec snapped from I think it was my right. I didn't know anymore. "Don't push her for information right now."

The smell of it burned. The smell of burning wood and coal and the coughing that came along with it. The bed, the soaked bed. He poured water on it because he hated us. He had to hate me. He said he loved me but he hated me. I fucking hated him too. I hated everything about him.

I hadn't remembered his mouth whispering up against my ears in months. Words that were in English, some in other languages. He played television in other languages so we couldn't understand, made jokes so we didn't understand.

"I can't get away from him," I cried into one of the blankets in front of me. "He's always there."

That's why he came to take her, because he knew I would care. My heart would shatter the minute I knew he was near me, he would destroy me that way if he couldn't get his hands on me.

He had to die. Someone had to kill him. I couldn't do it myself, I didn't want to. Someone else had to find him, find the screams that he played to terrify us, and kill him so he would never get his hands on me again.

My immortal body felt so weak remembering everything that he said to me. The scrambled reminders that I didn't know his name, how that sadness hit whenever I woke up. Or, whenever he let me sleep. I could never sleep again, he didn't have that against me.

I was mumbling incoherently into the blankets everything that I wanted him to know he didn't have.

But he had her back, he had everything except for the one thing he needed Chrissy for. He never got that from her, never would. Carlisle made sure of it when he took me in. He gave us that freedom of never worrying over it. He couldn't use us for his delusions.

"HOW COULD YOU NOT REMEMBER BEING ON GUARD DUTY?" Renata screamed at Alec from the side, snapping me out of my episode. "SHE WAS A PRISONER!"

I DON'T REMEMBER BEING ON THAT STUPID SHEET! I NEVER MISS MY DUTY!" Alec screamed right back at her. "I WAS LOOKING FOR MY GAMEBOY, THAT WAS WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO! AFTON TOOK IT!"

Renata glared at Alec and sternly questioned him, "Who told you that you were supposed to look for it? Alec, Jane put it on your desk, she told you that before the shift change. Felix had found it between the couches very quickly after you asked him to do it."

"WELL THAT CLEARLY DIDN'T HAPPEN BECAUSE I DON'T REMEMBER!" Alec screamed and looked at the desk, which clearly had his Gameboy on it.

Renata pointed to the device that Alec was staring at. "It's right there. Alec, it's right fucking there. Where Jane said she placed it down, where it's supposed to be."

It had all been orchestrated, and who knew who else had been tampered with.

"I don't remember."