Disclaimer: Twilight and its sequels and characters are the property of Stephenie Meyer.

-Chapter 1: Waterworld-

You know that moment where something stops being novel and slips into the 'highly annoying and repetitive' column? I think that moment slipped by me a few days ago. I let the curtains of the cheap hotel room I'm staying in drop back into place and walk back over to the small table where my laptop is currently charging. Sighing, I step back until I feel the back of my legs touch the bed and plop down on it. What a week. And not in a good way. The pounding of the rain outside echoes throughout the room and I find myself wondering how on earth Seattle isn't completely submerged in water.

I reach into the front pocket of my pants and pull out my iPhone. No new voicemails, emails, texts, or missed calls. Not that I would have missed the phone vibrating in my pocket if I were to receive one, but it's been five days since my brother went missing and I'm extremely worried. Ryan's no pushover – and shit, he's probably one of the most dangerous people you'd ever meet – so being incommunicado this long in a city this fucked is no good at all.

The thought of Seattle brings me back to the reason we're even here. You see, people like my brother and I don't have a home or a job and have no real connections outside of each other. We really can't, being who we are. What we are. I pushed myself off the bed and walked into the very small bathroom. Ryan's phone was in pieces on the toilet lid airing out. I'd found it in an ally the morning after he failed to come back to the hotel room or call me. The rain had all but ruined the phone, but I was still able to track down the last place it was on and working on my computer.

I replay the last message on my phone I received from Ryan. We had split up to cover more ground that night.

"Hey Emily, still nothing. I'm gonna' head back to the room pretty soon. It's pretty late and I'm getting tired. See you when you get back."

And that was the last time I heard my brother's voice. He never came back to the hotel room and never called.

Turning to the side I glanced at myself in the mirror above the sink. I was wearing a black Aperture Science t-shirt with tan cargo pants. Poking out from my right hip was the handle of my knife – which I never went anywhere without. Physically, I was average looking; I looked about nineteen but was actually older and stood at a respectable five-foot-nine. My brown hair was currently in its semi-curly state, clinging to my back since I'd been outside recently and hadn't cared to dry it. My eyes were a very off color of brown. Not the deep, warm kind; the flat, I'm-not-quite-sure-if-your-eyes-are-hazel-or-brown kind. They were my mother's eyes – my brother's eyes. Below them were shallow dark circles that I've had for as long as I can remember; they contrasted with my pale skin. Simply put, I was not exactly a picture of excellent health.

Ryan looked a little like me. Enough to tell we were siblings. Beside the eyes we both had dark hair, only his was almost black and straight compared to my brown and curly. He wasn't quite as pale as me, and he had a large shoulder span. At first glance he looks like the football player type. Not super buff, per say, but definitely not as scrawny as I was. We both had a sarcastic sense of humor, but his personality wasn't quite as sadistic as mine was. He had one hell of a temper, though. And when he got mad he typically expressed himself through violence. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Violence was a part of our lives.

Shrugging, I grabbed the pieces of Ryan's phone – ruined for sure, I knew now – turned off the light in the bathroom and walked back to my laptop, setting the phone scraps on the table. I flipped open the lid and started browsing through the local news feeds. "Oh, wow," I said, reading over the latest deaths. Apparently there was a huge traffic accident late last night. Five people dead. Another article detailed the disappearing of another teenager – a boy of 16 named Cory. Apparently the car accident wasn't linked to the ridiculously huge killing spree going on in the city, or no one wanted to make the connection. It probably was though – I'd bet money on it. Anyone who can get the drop on my brother – or even a professional boxer, as was the case with another victim – could have the strength to stage a car accident.

If I was going to catch this person – or people, you never know – and figure out what happened to Ryan, I needed to put myself into the scenarios the previous victims were in. "So far all I know is that they are strong, cover their tracks well, and kill at night." It's nearly 11:30 by my computer's clock, so the night part is well and done, now all I need to do is find a place to plant myself. I opened up a new tab on my browser and checked a map of Seattle. The places the bodies were found – as well as the recent car 'accident,' for that matter – were all in relatively dead zones. Places with poor lighting, warehouses, riverfronts – places without witnesses late at night.

The spread was also interesting. A few nights, several of the deaths took place to the west and spread out toward the center; another few nights after that the same spread occurred on the north side. The next few cycles were from the south-east; and so on and so forth. They were moving around, and they probably resided outside of Seattle somewhere. A quick search of homes and apartments surrounding the city revealed another piece of the puzzle. Four house fires; buildings burned to the ground. All empty of their residents, but no deaths, so the police most probably didn't link these to the rampage going on in Seattle. Well, they got one thing right. Gang activity for sure. All the houses were large in size and had basements, perfect for housing a group of murderers.

I closed my laptop and went to the window. The parking lot lights were on, illuminating the light drizzle falling from the sky. Well, it's better than the torrent it was a few hours ago I guess. I grabbed my wallet – making sure the card-key was inside – and put it in the left side pocket of my pants and pulled on my jacket. Before I left I made sure I had everything. "Wallet, phone, knife," I muttered to myself, adjusting my jacket and zipping it up, "good." I opened the door of the hotel room and stepped into the damp darkness that is Seattle. I walked past the soda machine and into the side ally where no lights were pointing. I looked around a few times to make sure the coast was clear, yanked up my hood, and leaped up into the cold air high above the hotel rooftop before flying off to the north side of the city.