More Than Human Chapter 1: Prologue, a twilight fanfic

Title: More Than Human

Rating: M for graphic violence, for sexual situations, lemons, hot steamy angsty teenage lovin', underage drinking, smoking, drug use and overall bad behavior.

Premise: Bella is more than human. Renee makes the ultimate sacrifice to hide her with a father she never knew existed. Who can she trust when she finds more kids like her in Forks? Will they fight to help her or betray her to stay hidden? AU OOC ExB & JxB Lemons

Alternate Universe: Mostly all human. No vampires. Enhanced humans with powers and The Shop is hunting them. Pretty much OOC, ExB of course, but some JxB for a twist.

POV: The Prologue is from Charlie's POV. Otherwise, BPOV (Bella) for the most part. POV may shift depending on who is narrating the story in some chapters.

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Author Notes:

Please note that this story is rated M for a reason, if you'd prefer not to deal with mature themes, please do not read this story.

Mostly all human… at least there aren't any vampires in this story. Not an X-Men story, although there may be some comic book references. Enhanced humans and mutants exist with powers beyond the capabilities of normal people. Think Heroes, Stephen King's Firestarter Universe and the Movie world of Summit's Push movie.

There's no organized mutant underground, but individual groups of special people have banded together to try and live normal lives while government agents and Global Mega-corporations are hunting them to try and find out how they tick and how to turn them into living weapons.

Some of these groups are tired of running, and are starting to fight back.

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Chapter 1 Prologue

CPOV (Charlie)

Another boring day in the Forks police department on a Thursday afternoon, I suppose the holiday had something to do with it. I was working on Thanksgiving so the married guys could take the day off with their wives and kids. It was a year since Mary had passed, and I didn't feel like being with people today. We'd never had any kids, so I was alone again in a big empty house. Billy had invited me to La Push, but I'd said no. Being around happy families was still just too hard.

The weather hadn't turned too cold yet for November and I was contemplating if I'd be able to go fishing this Saturday. The weather stayed pretty much the same year round, dropping enough degrees in winter to be cold out. We might have two or three days with a dusting of snow that wouldn't stick and some black ice late at night and in the morning, but overcast and rain were the general order of the day pretty much year round. Besides, the cold never seemed to bother me anyways. I always seemed to manage to stay warm, regardless of the elements. Mary had always commented that my hands were always so hot…

The winter steelhead run should be starting soon as the wild fish returned from the ocean to swim up river to spawn. Some of those wild fish were huge and they put up an incredible fight. If nothing else, there were still plenty of hatchery steely's in the rivers, and they were big enough to make good eating. I'd call Billy later and see if he wanted to go fishing Saturday. We could Shanghai Harry and drag him out of the house before Sue got up. I'd pick up a couple of twelve packs of vitamin R, and we could make a day of it…

I was sitting going through the mail that had been delivered the previous day. Usually it was just bills and junk mail. Sometimes we got notices from the state or county, but nothing too pressing. I'd told the guys to leave it for me so I'd have something to do today. I noticed a FedEx overnight delivery envelope that had a bulge like there something inside. I wondered if one of the guys had ordered something and had it delivered here. I picked it up to look at it, but it was addressed to me.

I tore the package open, and there was a cell phone inside. The cheap disposable prepaid kind of phone you could buy in a truck stop gas station or a convenience store. My peaceful contemplation of a weekend fishing trip was shattered by the phone from the envelope suddenly ringing. I stared at it for a minute and then pressed the button on the handset to accept the call. The worst I had been expecting today was maybe a traffic call for a fender bender with all the people traveling to visit family, but this was like something from the twilight zone.

"Fork's Police Department, Chief Swan speaking," I said into the phone.

"Charlie? It's Renee… It's about time you opened the damn package. I was hoping to talk to you yesterday…" The woman sounded out of breath like she'd been running. She sounded like she knew me, but I wasn't familiar with any Renee.

"Is there an emergency, Ma'am? How can I help you?" I asked, but I felt weird talking into a cell phone I'd just been delivered in the mail.

"I guess you wouldn't remember me after all these years… You knew me as Renee Higginbotham. We dated in college at WSU?"

That Renee… Suddenly it all came back to me like yesterday.

Yes, we had dated in college. It was my sophomore year and we'd gone out together for eight or nine months. I'd thought we'd shared something special back then. I'd told her I loved her and I thought we'd end up getting married if we stayed together through school.

We were living together that summer, sharing an apartment off campus, and then she up and left. No explanation, no goodbyes. One day everything was fine, and we were in love. The next day she was gone with a hastily written note left on the kitchen counter as the only explanation. All her stuff was gone and I had no idea what I'd done wrong.

I searched for her for weeks, but nobody had the first clue where she'd disappeared to. I had to assume she'd left the state. I remembered she said she had family in California, but I had no way to contact them. After months of dead ends and fruitless searching I'd given up and went on with my life. I hadn't heard word one from her in seventeen years, and now she was calling me out of the blue. She was still taking steps so she couldn't be traced.

"Hello, Renee. I remember… It's good to hear from you. Happy Thanksgiving…"

"I'm sorry I can't go into all the details, but I didn't just walk out on you all those years ago, Charlie…"

"It seemed like it to me. You went to an awful lot of trouble not to be found. It was like you dropped off the face of the earth, Renee. You could have just told me to leave you alone and I would have understood…"

"I didn't walk out on you! I was kidnapped! I loved you! I wouldn't just leave you!"

"What?! What do you mean kidnapped? By who? How did you get away? Why didn't you call me before now? It's been seventeen years, Renee."

"Do you remember that drug test we signed up for? That study that those doctors were doing to test some new performance enhancing drug?"

"Sure… That's where we met. I thought it was easy money and there were even odds I'd get nothing but distilled water. I was hoping it worked so it would make it easier to study or something. I guess I got water. Nothing ever happened to me. What has that got to do with you getting kidnapped?"

"It wasn't water, Charlie. About two thirds of the kids they gave it to showed no noticeable effect. Most of the other third they tested it on died, but they hushed it up. It worked on the rest of us. Some of us could do things after they gave us the drug. Weird shit like read minds or move objects…"

"Ok, but why did they kidnap you? I don't understand…"

"I was pregnant, Charlie. I went to the clinic on campus to get tested and the result came back positive. There were men in black suits waiting for me when I got back to the apartment. They shoved me in a car and took me away. I guess they made it look like I walked out on you…"

"Oh my god! What about the baby?"

"We have a daughter, Charlie. They took me away to study me. They wanted the baby to study her...to see what she could do. They kept us in some secret research lab for two years…"

"I have a daughter? What's her name? Why didn't you call me before if they let you go?"

"They didn't let me go! I escaped, and took Isabel with me…"

"Isabel? You named her after my mom, Isabella?"

"Yes, both our moms, Isabella Marie. Look, Charlie, I don't have much time…"

I could hear running in the background, and then it sounded like Renee was running again too.

She was out of breath when she spoke again. "We've been hiding from them for the last fifteen years. I was on the run for the first couple of years, but I gave them the slip and we lived a normal life for a long time. By the time I was free to look for you, you were married, so I didn't drag you into it."

"I'm sorry, Renee… I would have helped you. Are you alright? Where are you now? What can I do to help?"

"You can't help me anymore. They found us, and now they're just tying up loose ends. I put Isabel on a bus and got them to chase me. I led them away to keep our daughter safe. If everything went according to plan, she'll be at the Greyhound station in Port Angeles tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. I put everything I know about them in that envelope. Keep her safe, Charlie. You're all she's got now. I always loved you…"

There was a muted clatter like she'd dropped the phone and it had hit the ground.

"Renee! Renee! What's going on! Where are you?!"

The sound of gunfire filled the speaker in the handset. It was close by the phone, and I had to assume it was Renée shooting. More muted shots rang out, and then a woman screamed. There was a thud like a body hitting the ground.

"Renee! Renee! Are you alright?!"

It was silent for several minutes, and then I heard another woman speak in the background. "Goddamn It, James! I told you they wanted her alive! Now how are we going to find the girl?!"

A man's voice spoke next. "They wouldn't have sent me if they wanted her alive, Vic. I wasn't going to take a chance on the bitch getting into my head again. Don't worry, I'll find the girl, and then she'll get what mom got. Course maybe we can have a little fun first…"

"You're a sick pervert, James. Laurent would have blocked her ability, and then we could have questioned her…"

"I don't need to question her... Looky here…" There was a scrabbling sound like he'd bent over to pick up the phone. His voice was louder. "She was making a call. It's still connected. They're probably still listening to us right now."

"Can you track it?"

"Give me a second… West coast… Pacific Northwest…"

I hit the end button to kill the connection before he told her the name of the town. Hopefully he didn't figure that much out before I ended the call.

My god! I had a daughter… And she was in danger! I believed Renee. I couldn't imagine her lying about something like this.

I picked up the FedEx envelope. It was mailed from somewhere in Texas… Renee had said she'd put everything she knew about them into the envelope…

There was a folded manila envelope inside, but it didn't look like there was anything else was in it. I took out the manila envelope, and then spread the bigger cardboard FedEx envelope open and turned it upside down… Something small and silver dropped out of the envelope and landed on my desk. It was a flash drive memory stick for a computer with a post it note stuck to the side.

The note said, 'Do not plug this into a computer connected to the internet'.

I stuck the flash drive in my pocket, and then opened the manila envelope. There was an official looking notarized document inside. I took it out. It was a birth certificate for Isabella Marie Swan, born September 13, 1989. It listed me as her father, and Renee Higginbotham as her mother, but it said she was born in Phoenix, Arizona.

I double checked the manila envelope and found a photograph inside. It was dated march 2004. I recognized Renee in the photograph. She'd matured and had cut her hair, but she still looked like the girl I remembered from college. She was standing in front of a small house with a brown lawn and cactus growing in the garden. She had her arm around a teenage girl that had to be our daughter from the resemblance. She was a couple of inches shorter than her mother, but had the long hair I remembered from Renee's college years. I could see myself in her features and she had my brown hair, although it was straight like her mother's instead of curly like mine. Her eyes looked odd, but I couldn't pick out what it was from the photo. She was about fifteen in the picture if this was a couple of years old.

I got up to close up the station and head home. I didn't even really need to be here today. The police emergency number had call forwarding, and it would ring at home or to my cell phone depending on where I told the system to direct the calls. I packed up the papers and went home to look at the data on the flash drive.

~*`MTH`*~

The computer acted funny when I plugged in the memory stick. I was pretty sure it ran a security check, and then installed some kind of firewall security program before I could access the data on the flash drive. There was a lot of data. Tons of PDF's, official looking government records, operations reports, field agent reports, wiretap data, sealed congressional sub-committee briefs, I was sure a lot of this was probably classified data. I could probably go to jail or disappear just for knowing half of this even existed.

Apparently Renee and her friends had been able to play hell with The Shop's computer records and servers when they escaped. The account of what had happened made it sound more like a war zone than a simple escape attempt. The entire facility had burned to the ground, and all of their physical records had been destroyed. Dozens of 'research subjects' had fled into the night. Less than half were ever accounted for.

Renee was fairly certain that The Shop thought I was dead. Besides, they had another name in their records for Isabel's father. The name Charlie Swan didn't appear in their records anymore, so there was no reason to associate me with Renee's daughter. Renee was never my wife and Isabel had been using a different last name for years now. She didn't even know I was really her father. She had grown up thinking Renee's husband was her real dad.

Renee had married Phil Dwyer, but he was dead now. They'd killed him when they came for Renee, but she'd escaped with Isabel again. The official report of the incident was strange… It was like most of the agents had shot each other instead of trying to capture Renee. The rest… It was like they were literally torn apart… like they had exploded from the inside out...

This organization, The Shop, was a shady operation, to put it mildly. It operated on the fringes of the government and wasn't officially sanctioned, although it had apparently started as a CIA black operations project back in the fifties or sixties. They had begun with practical experiments based on data liberated from the Nazi's at the end of World War II. Hitler's scientists had been trying to create a genetically enhanced super soldier and had stumbled onto crude methods of triggering genetic mutation with startling effects. Of course the Nazi's had no qualms about performing tests on human subjects or dissecting them as part of the experiment to determine exactly what had happened. Apparently neither did The Shop.

The Shop received almost as much funding and mission directives from the research divisions of half a dozen global multi-national mega-corporations as it did from the government. It was still considered a division of the CIA, but it was so far out on the fringe that it was practically a private black ops group that received little or no official notice despite being funded, supported and sanctioned by the government. It had almost no official government oversight or reporting responsibility, but had the full backing of the CIA, the NSA and the DoD. It was so far out on the fringe, half of Washington and most of the current administration probably didn't even know they existed, but it could wield the full power of the government bureaucracy in the name of defending National Security.

Nothing it did was a matter of public record but it could call on support from government agencies like the FBI all the way up to the military and expect to get it. Hell, if these jokers had walked into the station in Forks and flashed a fancy badge at me, I probably would have accepted their lies and helped them before I'd read all of this. I'm sure I would have been skeptical if they told me it was a matter of national security, but I wouldn't have refused to help.

There were more enhanced humans than the clandestine study programs The Shop had run in the seventies and eighties could account for. They had always known there were naturally occurring mutants out there. They formed the basis of the original research, but nobody had guessed how many there really were until the Divisions started looking for them to catalog and classify them. A lot of otherwise innocent Americans had been detained against their wills for study and containment by paranoid government agencies that feared their power.

The Shop practically had carte blanche to deal with the perceived enhanced humans, mutants and individuals identified with paranormal powers threat, but they had done a lot to generate that threat in the first place. The way they treated these people forced them to do most of the things they claimed were a threat to national security. It was like there was a secret war going on that most people never heard about. Anything that might hit the media was covered up and there was an active campaign of disinformation to discount, hide and discredit anything that made it onto the internet. They were burying the truth along with the innocent casualties and collateral damage.

This organization, The Shop, made it their business to discover how these powers worked, but it had gone beyond that in recent years. The study I had been a part of was one of dozens where they'd tried to cause people to develop these special abilities. They had planned to bring in any of the test subjects that exhibited powers to study them, like how they'd taken Renee. Some of the subjects had proven too powerful for them to contain, and now they were trying to hunt down these people with the apparent intention of studying them like lab rats. Some of them they just wanted to eliminate before the secret got out about what they'd done.

As if this wasn't bad enough, other world powers had similar Divisions that tracked, hunted, and studied these people. It was like the cold war all over again, but instead of nuclear weapons the new weapons of choice were the powers that these groups of special individuals exhibited.

I studied the information and documents, and then made plans and phone calls. It was a holiday weekend, but I had a lot of friends and I called in a lot of favors. I might be a small town cop, but I'd been a small town cop for a long time and I knew a lot of people. I would keep my Isabel safe.

~*`MTH`*~

It was an hour and a half drive up to Port Angeles, but I left early. I didn't want Isabel to think she was on her own and just wander off because nobody showed up to meet her. The bus still got there early. I had the website for arrivals and departures up on the laptop screen in the squad car and I saw the status change as I pulled off the highway into Port Angeles.

I hadn't been to the Greyhound station before, but I had the address programmed into the navigation system in the cruiser and it told me how to get there. At least it wasn't raining, although there was a light drizzle and the temperature was definitely falling as we moved closer to December. I could feel winter in the air.

The bus had arrived about twenty minutes ago when I pulled into the parking lot. I saw the girl standing on the sidewalk in front of the station under the overhang of the roof. She looked older than seventeen. I had a sudden sense of déjà vu as I looked at her. It was like looking at Renee standing there waiting for me to pick her up, not her daughter.

She looked just like her mother, standing there with her long brown hair loose and blowing in the light breeze, but there were subtle differences. Renee's hair had been a lighter golden brown…

She was smoking a cigarette, holding it between her fingertips the same way Renee used to, standing beside a large black canvas duffel bag that lay on the ground. She looked up as I pulled up to the curb and parked. Her eyes flicked to the marking on the door of the car, registering the City of Forks Police badge and legend.

I got out of the police cruiser and walked up to her, looking her over with a practiced eye, noting the details I'd need to make an accurate description.

She was very fair-skinned, almost too pale white, which seemed odd for somebody that had lived in the valley of the sun in Arizona for so long. Her heart shaped face with her wide-spaced eyes and narrow jaw with a pointed chin reminded me so much of her mother. She had prominent cheekbones, a thin straight nose and full lips. Perhaps the lips were a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line. Her eyebrows were darker than her hair and more straight than they were arched.

Now I finally noticed what was so odd about her eyes as I stood in front of her. One was deep brown like mine, but her left eye was pale hazel green like her mother's. It looked like she was wearing colored contacts but had forgotten to put one in.

She was petite and delicate, but not tiny, standing about five foot four inches tall. She was delicately slender on a fine boned frame. She looked like she'd weigh about 105 pounds dripping wet but she had mature feminine curves in all the right places. She did not appear at all muscular, even though I could tell from the way she held herself that the reports I'd read in Renee's files were likely true. The strong smooth muscles that moved under her skin were deceptively more powerful than any ordinary human.

She was wearing several thin silver bangle bracelets on her wrists, a collection of rings, large hoop earrings and a medium sized silver cross on a leather thong around her neck for jewelry, but she only wore very light makeup. Nothing gaudy or over the top, but I could see some lip gloss to accentuate her lips with a bit of shine instead of lipstick and some eyeliner and color. I was sure there was more I wasn't seeing, but she didn't look like she spent a lot of time primping and preening, although she didn't ignore makeup and let it go altogether.

I knew she didn't have any tattoos or piercings besides her ears anywhere on her body if the files were still accurate.

She wore a three quarter length black leather coat that hung to her hips and was belted around the waist. She had a large purse slung over her shoulder on a strap. If the reports were accurate, she'd have a concealed weapon in the purse, and she knew how to use it.

My policeman's training noted the pertinent characteristics of her figure as I cataloged the information. Details were necessary to give an accurate description and I needed to know they matched Renee's records. She wasn't flat chested… I estimated a thirty-two or so, although the cup size wasn't apparent under her coat. Her stomach appeared to be completely flat with what at my best guess was about a twenty-two inch waist. Her legs were perfectly proportioned for the rest of her body, flaring to what I was guessing at thirty-one inches at her hips.

She was wearing jeans that had seen better days but they hugged her body like a second skin. There were large holes exposing both knees and they were frayed around the cuffs at the bottoms of the legs. They were patched and mended, but I didn't think she wore them as a fashion statement. Her sneakers looked worn out. The soles were practically worn through and looked oddly half melted where the wear wasn't obviously apparent. The laces were knotted in more than one place where they'd broken, and had been tied back together rather than replacing them.

My general impression of her attire and condition was somebody on the run and down on their luck, almost destitute as they made do with what they had. But she had spirit. She wasn't beaten down by her circumstances and appeared independent and doing whatever she had to do until things got better.

Things would be better for her now. I'd have to take her shopping and buy her some clothes. People would talk if she was seen around town dressed like a waif or homeless person. I had seventeen years of fatherhood to catch up on. I hope she wouldn't mind being spoiled for a while.

"Hi, Isabel…" I said to her. "You look like your mother…"

She nodded. "I hear that a lot… You're Charlie? I don't want to be rude, but do you have some ID?"

She seemed a little leery as I reached into my jacket and took out my badge and showed her my official ID. She looked it over carefully and studied my face as she compared it to the photograph on the ID.

She nodded and took a deep breath, and then held out her hand. "So you're Charlie Swan… Renee told me the truth last week when she came up with this plan. I hope you don't mind me staying with you for a while until I can meet up with her…"

"No… I don't mind. You know, those things will kill you." I said, indicating her cigarette.

She dropped the butt on the sidewalk and stubbed it out with her toe. "I have bigger concerns. I'll probably die from acute lead poisoning before these kill me. Besides, I heal fast. I doubt they affect me like normal people."

I nodded I wasn't going to make it an issue. She was old enough to know better, and I wasn't going to let something like smoking drive a wedge between us when I just finally got to meet her. Besides, she was right… She had a better chance of a bullet taking her out of the game than lung cancer.

"Ok… Isabel… Let's get out of here. There are some things you need to know…"

"Ok," she said, as I opened the trunk for her and she put her duffel inside. We walked to the passenger door and I held it while she got in. I went to the driver door, got into the cruiser and pulled away from the curb so we could talk as I drove.

"I'm sorry if I seem a little apprehensive… It seems odd to be voluntarily getting into a police car. Usually we avoid them. The cops are usually chasing us…"

"They were lied to, and didn't know any better. Renee sent me some records and files. I know you aren't a criminal. You've done what you had to do to defend yourself…"

"Oh… You're better informed than I expected… I didn't think Renee would have told you that much. I'll try not to cause any trouble before I leave…"

"Isabel… You know about me and your mother, right?"

"She told me. You're my real father… My biological father, but you have to know I still consider Phil to be my dad… I'm sorry, Charlie, but I grew up thinking of him as dad…"

"I understand… I didn't know you even existed until yesterday…"

"Thanks for letting me stay, Charlie. I promise, I won't be any trouble until Renee calls and I leave to meet her…"

"Isabel… There's something I need to tell you… Your mother… She called me yesterday… Renee isn't going to call, Isabel. You aren't going to leave to meet up with her..."

"What! But she said..."

"I think the agents from The Shop caught up with her yesterday. I overheard the firefight on the phone while we were talking. I'm pretty sure she's dead… I'm sorry, Isabel..."

"Oh…" She didn't get hysterical or break down in tears, but I could tell the news hit her pretty hard.

"You'll be staying with me from now on. I'll take care of you for as long as you want to stay. I have papers for you… I called in some favors from some old friends."

"Ok… What's my story? Who am I now…?"

"You're my daughter. You're, Bella Swan now. It fits with the birth certificate Renee provided for you. You've lived with your mom in Phoenix since you were a baby, but now you've coming to live with me. I'll let you fill in the details for why."

"Ok…"

"Renee led them away so you could escape, Bella. As far as I can tell, the trail is cold. You can live a normal life again, like you did before they caught up to you guys two years ago… I've got you enrolled in high school, you can handle that right? We had to fabricate a transcript for you…"

"Yeah, I can do high school… Genius level intellect is part of the package…"

"Huh, maybe those performance enhancers did work after all, only not for my generation. I'm glad somebody got some benefit out of it."

"Charlie… They're going to come for us… We can pretend to be normal for a while, but they won't let me go… I'm too dangerous for them not to do something…"

"I know… We'll deal with it when the time comes…"

Bella nodded. "Ok… I don't want to have to kill anyone else… I hate that I can… I don't want any more blood on my hands… But I won't go down without a fight."

The ride was quiet after that. I glanced over to look at her to see how she was holding up. She sat stoically staring straight ahead, but I could see the tracks of her tears as they silently ran down her cheeks.

Author's note:

I remember reading an article or interview with Stephanie Meyer, once where she said she thought of the characters in the Twilight Universe as superheros, each with their own kind of unique superpowers.

That's kind of what I'm trying to explore in this story. Only this isn't a comic book and powerful abilities have real world affects and consequences.

There aren't any vampires in this story, and the major players are essentially human, but they may still have unique abilities and powers that make them more than human. Many characters may have powers similar to what they could do in canon Twilight. Some characters will have different or expanded abilities than characters of the same name in canon Twilight.

Please don't assume that just because a character in this story has the same name as a canon character that they're going to be able to do the same things as that character or have the same limitations.

Some of the characters in this story may appear to act in ways that seem to be OOC (Out Of Character), and I take full responsibility for that, but considering the different life experience some of the characters have had as a result to the change in the basic premise of the story and some of the changes to powers and abilities, I've had to explore how I believe the character would react, given the circumstances of this story. Some of the characters may do things that you think are wildly OOC. That's my take on their reaction to the circumstances. All I can say is I look forward to reading your story if you think they would have done it differently.

I know you're probably thinking, why are you starting another story? It just kind of worked that way. Actually, I think I started writing this last thanksgiving, and I've spent many months off and on working on this when I probably should have been working on other stories. I wanted to post something, and I've sort of had major writers block on the next chapter of 'The Darkest Part of the Night', so I decided to start putting this up.

If you have an opinion about which story you think I should be spending time on, I have a poll in my profile. I think it's gotten like 6 votes in the last two months, and it was an even split on whether or not I should post the new material or not.

Have a happy thanksgiving, if you celebrate the holiday.