Ring of Fire (26/30)
Title: Ring of Fire (26/30)
Author: lit_chick08 aka Meg
Characters: Paire with Peter/Simone, DL/Niki, Nathan/Niki, hints of Isaac/Claire, ensemble
Rating: PG-13 for allusions to sex, language, and violence
Word Count: 5001
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Spoilers: everything; goes AU after 1x11 “Fallout”
Summary: The heroes gather in New York to stop the exploding man, but saving the world is the least of their problems.
A/N: I'm using Bennet's canon name from now on; thanks to everyone for the feedback!
Previous Parts are HERE
”He’s going to start suspecting something if you keep acting like this.”
Meredith Gray, now Mrs. Heidi Petrelli, turned to glare scathingly at her new father-in-law. She despised these Sunday dinners at the Petrelli brownstone, had hated them from the moment she had started to date Nathan three years ago. It always resulted in Angela frostily sniping at her husband, Anthony berating Nathan, Nathan getting angry, and Peter staring helplessly by, confused by the anger and tension that simmered between all of his family members. Whenever she was sitting there, picking at whatever traditional Italian dish that Angela had ordered the cook to make, avoiding raising Angela and Anthony’s ire and staring at the brothers who were forced to deal with them forever, she wished for the old, tense dinners at her father’s apartment.
Now, as she hid in the den while Nathan and Angela had it out over something, she wanted to tear out Anthony Petrelli’s eyes, make him pay for the destruction he leveled at everyone who touched his life. He was a monster and it was no wonder he had fallen in with Linderman.
“Yes, I’m sure that if Nathan thinks I’m behaving strangely, his first instinct will be that I’m a shapeshifter impersonating a dead woman because I’m on the run from the organization that hired me to bed and procreate with a man.”
“Do you think this is a game?” he hissed.
“If it is, I want a redo.”
“A redo? Do you know how lucky you are, you little bitch? If it wasn’t for me, you’d be strapped to a goddamn lab table as Bennet’s pincushion. I saved your life!”
“No, you stole what little life I had left! You erased me! I don’t even exist anymore! I’m a ghost! You took everything-“
“You sold everything, sweetheart,” he corrected, his words dripping with bile. “You sold your identity for half of a million dollars to take care of that little brother of yours. If you want to start hating someone, take a good, long look in the mirror. That is, if you remember what you looked like.”
Anthony turned to leave when Meredith whispered, “I’ll tell him.”
He froze. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll tell Nathan everything. I’ll tell him about me, about Linderman and Primatech, about Joshua, Lizzie, you. I’ll pull every fucking skeleton out of the closet-“
She hadn’t realized she had been hit until she tasted the copper on her tongue and realized that the side of her face stung. Twisting her head back, she saw the naked fury on Anthony’s face, saw the way that his fists were still clenching, and Meredith wondered if she was going to be hit again.
“If you ever breathe a single syllable to my son, I will kill you. But first, I’ll kill that precious little brother of yours. What’s his name, Gabriel? Then I’ll tell Linderman exactly where you are and I will watch as he shows you what he does to people who betray him.” Grabbing hold of her ponytail and jerking it brutally back, he breathed into her face, “You do not want to go to war with me, Merry.”
She fell to the ground when Anthony pushed her away and she curled in on herself, bringing her knees up to her chest the way she had when she was little and things became too much for her. In the other room, she could hear Nathan and Angela’s voices rising, and she knew that she had, at least, twenty minutes to right herself, to mask the redness of her cheek and the small split on her bottom lip. However, before she could get to her feet, the door opened once again and there was Peter.
He had turned thirteen before the wedding three months ago, and he had hit his awkward stage hard. His limbs were too long for his body, which was painfully thin, and he had gotten braces only two weeks ago, so his speech was slightly slurred when he spoke. Unlike Nathan, who radiated self-assurance and confidence, Peter projected the image of a wounded puppy and Meredith loved him with a fierceness that she was practically maternal.
“What happened?” he exclaimed, rushing over to her, getting down on the floor beside her despite the fact that he was wrinkling his freshly pressed pants.
“Nothing. I slipped,” she badly lied, waving her hand as if to show how silly it was.
“No, you didn’t. Did Dad hurt you?”
Meredith had always loved the way that Peter could see through lies before, but right now, she despised it. “Peter, please-“
“I’m gonna get Nathan.”
“No!” Catching his wrist, holding him fast, she pleaded, “Please, Peter, I swear, everything’s fine. Don’t get Nathan. It’ll just upset him, and you don’t want to do that, do you?”
It was a low blow to go after Peter’s loyalty to Nathan, but Meredith was desperate. Of all of the sins she had committed, it was the smallest.
Peter sagged in defeat before reaching over to the Kleenex box and lightly pressing the tissue to her mouth, wiping up the blood. As he carefully tended to her swollen lip, he sighed, “This is wrong.”
“Things aren’t always about right or wrong, Peter. There’s a thousand shades of gray.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’ll keep this a secret, won’t you?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, his long hair falling into his eyes. Tenderly, Meredith pushed it back and pressed a kiss to his forehead despite the small throb of pain it caused her mouth. “You’re the best brother a girl could have, Peter Petrelli.”
Peter awoke with a jerk, his memory/dream startling him out of the exhausted slumber he had fallen into. As he moved, Claire, still asleep, adjusted to follow his body, molding to fit him. Despite the distress of his memory, Peter couldn’t help but admire her in the soft, early morning light.
He had been slightly terrified at the idea of making love to her. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to, because, in all honesty, it had pretty much been the only thing he could think about ever since that first night in Odessa. He could claim what he wanted, swear up and down about his nobility when it came to her, but at the end of the day, he was still a man.
But, at the same time, when it had come down to it, he had felt like he was eighteen again, back in Susie DeMarco’s dorm room at NYU with Bon Jovi playing on the stereo, about to lose his virginity with no idea where to put his hands.
Of course, just like his first foray into sex, he found his way quickly, learning details about Claire that no one else knew, a knowledge that was too intimate for even Isaac Mendez to know. For instance, Peter now knew that if you brushed a kiss against the soft skin of her stomach, Claire would giggle; he knew that she would bite her lip to stop from moaning because she felt too self-conscious until he’d whisper in her ear that it was okay to let go; he now knew that she babbled a little before she reached orgasm, that he had never felt anything as good as being inside of her, and that he was completely, unequivocally in love with her.
She seemed so tiny in the massive bed, her petite body almost lost amongst the down pillows and comforter. There was no sign of the unbreakable girl here in the early dawn light; no, here was only the young woman that had given herself so freely to him last night with no expectations or promises of forever, the woman that Peter was willing to kill or be killed for.
He carefully slid out of the bed, pressing a gentle kiss against her forehead, before locating his discarded clothing. He was almost out the door when he heard her ask, almost in a whisper, “Where are you going?”
She looked delicious, wrapped up in Nathan’s expensive white sheets as a contrast to her Texas tan, her hair tousled from sleep. Peter couldn’t help but start to smile until he saw that naked vulnerability in her bright eyes, a vulnerability that spoke of the fear she obviously felt at being rejected by him.
“I was just going to get some coffee before I checked in with Mohinder. It’s still early; go back to sleep.”
“I can get up,” she offered, starting to get out of bed before realizing that she was still naked and her self-consciousness kicked in.
“I’m not going anywhere. Sleep while you have the chance.”
The exhaustion in her body won out over her desire to go with him. With an easy nod, Claire burrowed down into the bedding, letting sleep take her once again. Peter spared her one last lingering glance before slipping out into the hallway.
In the early morning hours, there was no telltale laughs from his nephews or the blare of cartoons; Nathan wasn’t attached to his cell phone and the seemingly endless parade of domestic help was off. Peter knew that the only person who was ever up this early on a weekend was his sister-in-law, especially since the accident. His instinct was correct, as Heidi was in the living room, sipping a steaming cup of coffee and watching the six o’clock news.
“Good morning, Peter. Do you want some coffee? It’s not as good as Rosa’s but-“
“Were you having an affair with my father?”
Heidi froze, her jaw dropping in shocked disgust. After a moment to gain her composure, she emphatically stated, “I would never have had an affair with Anthony.”
“Then what was the fight about?”
“What fight?”
Jaw clenched in irritation, he snapped, “The one right after you and Nathan got married, the one where he hit you.”
She set her cup down carefully and Peter recognized the gesture as one that was his mother’s, a way of buying time. “I thought that you had forgotten all about that.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was nothing.”
“Heidi-“
“It was a stupid little disagreement.”
Crossing his arms across his chest, he stated, “Nathan and I have pissed him off a hell of a lot worse and never got hurt, so what got you that special honor?”
“Peter, leave it alone.”
“What the hell is going on, Heidi? You owe me-“
“I owe you nothing!” Fire burning in her eyes, a fire that tugged at Peter’s memory, she declared, “This isn’t a game! You can’t go around, reaching into everyone’s closets and pulling out skeletons! Some things just need to die, and that was one of them.”
“If you weren’t having an affair, then what was it?” Peter pressed, ignoring her words.
Beginning to wheel herself out of the room, she felt real, true anger towards her brother-in-law for the first time since meeting him. “I let you have your secrets, Peter, so let me have mine.”
Peter easily blocked her exit, grabbing hold of the wheels, effectively trapping her. He had never been an aggressive man, but he was in her face now, determined and frustrated with her sudden lack of cooperativeness. “Maybe secrets are the whole reason things go to hell in this family. Maybe you’re making it worse.”
Heidi couldn’t help the tears that stung her eyes. “You don’t know anything about secrets.” Breaking his hold on her chair, she pushed herself back, distancing herself. “You think because you’ve spent the last six months dealing with this that you know what’s going on, that you know best? You know nothing. You’ve stolen Primatech’s golden goose and you just spent the night bedding the adopted daughter of their best agent, and you’re wasting your time asking me about a fight I had with your father a decade ago?”
This time, it was Peter’s turn to be stunned. “How do you know all of that?”
She hadn’t used her power in years, but the ease with which she shifted her shape would not have shown that. No, as if she was simply tossing her hair over her shoulder, Heidi Petrelli became Merry Barnes and Peter Petrelli felt his stomach give a twist as if he was going to be sick.
“You’re her,” he choked out.
She shimmered again, this time becoming Meredith Gray, becoming the girl that she had killed so many years ago, the one that only a few people alive could even remember. Her hair was dark, like her brother’s, but her eyes were a brilliant blue; she was just as striking as Meredith as she was as Merry or even Heidi but she doubted that she would’ve recognized her true reflection in a mirror, it had been so long since she had seen it.
“I’m Meredith Gray,” she said in her true voice, which was huskier than Heidi’s sweet tone and lacked Merry’s deceptive turn of phrase. “And if you want to stay alive, you’d better listen up.”
* * *
Isaac was many things, but blind and stupid were not amongst them. When Claire didn’t come back to the loft, he had originally bought the explanation on the answering machine; when she had never called him again, he had thought that maybe the party had ended late; when it was nearly noon and he still hadn’t heard from his girlfriend, he had to face facts, and the facts were that Claire had spent the night with Peter and Isaac doubted that the empath’s strength was enough to stand up to that temptation.
He itched to shoot up, wanted the heroin more than he wanted oxygen, and he knew that he had to get out of his apartment before he ended up trying to score again. He knew that if he wanted to stay clean that he had to change his habits, and handling his problems with heroin wasn’t going to fix a damn thing.
Isaac wasn’t sure why he had decided to go to Brooklyn to see Mohinder; he didn’t much care for the scientist and he also was uncomfortable with the idea of being poked and prodded, studied like he was an object and not a person. But he also knew that being around people would stop him from using, and, even if he didn’t like those people, they would still serve a purpose.
Mohinder was doing something with Hiro when Isaac entered the apartment, and, when he took a seat beside Ando, the usually quiet man held out his open bag of pretzels and asked, “Want to watch Baywatch?”
Isaac shrugged and nodded, temporarily content to watch Pamela Anderson rescue people with bad tans and unrealistic bodies, banishing Claire Bennet from his mind for as long as he could.
* * *
Joseph Linderman was a powerful man and, like all powerful men, he had little patience for ineptitude. Until the last few weeks, he had never had any reason to doubt the competence of Noah Bennet, but lately the man had done nothing but ruin twenty years of careful planning by letting emotion cloud his usually impeccable judgment. Joseph Linderman was a patient man, but his patience was a kindness to those who worked for him and that kindness was about to expire.
At age eleven, when Joseph had brought his sister Angela back from the dead after falling from a tree on their family’s property, he had known he was destined for great things. When Angela’s powers manifested three years later and she had been able to kill with a single touch, he knew that he would have to do whatever it took to not only keep them safe but to make sure that more people like them knew and appreciated their true value. He had known that both he and Angela would have to become powerful in the tradition sense in order to accomplish that, and so he had become the most important mob boss in all of the United States and he had made sure that Angela had “coincidentally” met Anthony Petrelli, his newest attorney in New York City and a man of little personal integrity.
Claude Rains had fallen into his lap. He had been searching for someone to help with his desire to start a laboratory studying the origins of their abilities and had contacted an old classmate who was teaching at Cambridge. The man that his friend had recommended hadn’t shown up and, on his way out, he had seen Claude having a rather explosive argument about being denied a promotion in his department. It had hardly been a question of whether or not to extend a position to Claude; it had only been a question of how long he would last before his ethics overpowered his curiosity.
Charles Deveaux had been a friend of Anthony’s, though they were the most mismatched a pair as Joseph had ever seen. He had a head for business that Joseph respected and his desperation to keep his son safe had struck a chord with Joseph, who was not without a heart. By using his medical businesses as a front, it had given them a sense of respectability in their fund raising measures so that his entire fortune was not consumed by Primatech.
While the rest had been somewhat coincidental, the appropriation of Noah Bennet had been both time consuming and premeditated. He had been a brilliant student, on the doctoral path when most his age were attending keg parties and trying to sleep with sorority girls. Like Joshua Barnes, another carefully cultivated protégé, he had no family and was desperate to prove himself and Joseph had offered him that. Bennet had not only managed to dissociate himself with the work that he had asked him to complete but had also managed to broaden their understanding of the mutations by light years. The only mistake that Bennet had made was one that Joseph was willing to take responsibility for.
Joseph Linderman believed that he was a good judge of people, and he had believed that Noah Bennet had no interest in fatherhood, that any statements he made about being a father were to pacify that simpleton wife of his, the one who was always simpering over her dog. It was for that reason that he had given little Elizabeth Barnes to him with the explicit instructions that he was to care for her until her powers had manifested to an appropriate level and then to give her back to Primatech for an assignment. At the time, Bennet had agreed easily since he had no attachment to the child. What Linderman hadn’t counted on was that Bennet would come to think of Claire as his own child, as a girl to protect not for her power but because he loved her; when he had first learned that Claire was manifesting so strongly, Bennet should have handed her over immediately for her assignment. That was the second fold of his mistake; by placing Bennet in charge of mutation investigation by any means necessary, he had assumed the same would be done to Claire, when that had never been her purpose whatsoever.
Meredith Gray had been an experiment. She wasn’t the most intelligent woman that Linderman had met during his search, but she was the one with the most intriguing power at the time as well as the highest reading for mutation in her blood. He had wanted to breed a higher level of mutation, and, when her high levels would be combined with Joshua, he knew that it would result in a child with a significant power. Spontaneous regeneration had been far more than he could have wished for, and it made the long-term investment that much greater.
Though both of his nephews had no idea that he was, in fact, their uncle and despised him greatly, Joseph Linderman cared greatly for his sister’s children. They weren’t just a continuation of the bloodline or anything as inane as that; they were the future. Anthony hadn’t been able to see the big picture; he had seen Nathan being born normal and Peter with the power as a mistake nature had made. He had argued that Nathan was more gifted, could accomplish so much more with a gift that Peter would undoubtedly squander as he did not have the wherewithal to truly do what would need to be done. It was the reason he had stolen that extra dose of the experimental serum to dose Nathan with; it was the reason that he had never invested anything in his younger son.
But Joseph had always seen the potential in Peter Petrelli, in the strength of his abilities and in the unfathomable amount of powers that he could take into himself. It was for that specific reason that Joseph Linderman had bred Elizabeth Barnes, now Claire Bennet, to be the lover for his nephew and to create a child that was even more powerful than the two of them.
When Angela had informed him of the instability that Peter was beginning to show, coupled with the vision that Charles had told him about, the vision of a decimated New York City with Peter as the catalyst, that Claire’s spontaneous regeneration needed to be absorbed by Peter in order for him to survive and for the city to remain standing. He had needed Peter and Claire to meet, needed them to set the chain of events in motion; it was why, after Chandra Suresh had been murdered by Gabriel Gray, Linderman had found the man who now called himself Sylar and had given him a list of the more expendable people with mutations. Nature would take its course with them anyway, and really, if the end result was a more powerful future, the means through which it was achieved could be a little unseemly.
If Linderman had no problem with things that were unseemly, Angela was positively unbothered and unrepentant with the things she had done. When she wanted to be, his sister was so cold and calculating that it didn’t surprise him in the least that her power was to take lives. She was the entire reason behind his visit to New York, and, as usual, she met him in Trinity Church.
She sat in the front pew, her head demurely bent, not in respect for what the Church represented but because she was reviewing her events calendar on her Blackberry. When he slid in beside her, she didn’t stop what she was doing the way that others would; only when she was ready did she tuck the electronic device safely into her purse and turn to face him.
“Are things on track?”
“They spent the night together,” she reported, not mincing words, “and, from what I gathered from surveillance tapes, they now know each other in a much more Biblical sense.”
“So it’s done then. We can step in and take care of Sylar.”
“It’s not that simple, Joseph. The regenerative power he’s borrowing from her is not enough to keep his system stable.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he had time to control his powers, it wouldn’t be an issue; we could teach him easily enough. The issue is that the explosion is set to occur in a two days and Claire’s power is now not regenerating the mutations to his tissue at a quick enough rate to keep his system stabilized. We need an alternate plan.”
“It would appear that we do. What do you suggest?”
“We need to eliminate Ted Sprague and Gabriel Gray. Mr. Sprague poses the most immediate risk, as his power is even more unpredictable than Peter’s, and Gabriel is now becoming cause for concern.”
“I’m inclined to agree, but at this point, how are we going to accomplish that?”
Her irritated sigh was one that had been heard many a time by Nathan and Peter Petrelli, and Joseph couldn’t help but smirk at the fact that, younger sister or not, she still felt it was appropriate to lord it over him.
“For starters, you’re going to contact Noah Bennet and tell him and Michel that they need to neutralize Ted Sprague; keeping him locked up is pointless when he will always be a threat to those around him. Sentimentality for human life is not what we need right now. Then, you’re going to give the kill order for young Mr. Gray.”
“Assuming we can get to him. He’s absorbed some fairly important powers.”
Her smile was enough to send chills down Joseph’s spine. “Not more than my Peter has.”
* * *
How do you stop an exploding man?
It was the question that haunted Claire Bennet even in her sleep. The man that she loved, the man that she had spent the night making love with, was going to explode in forty-eight hours unless they could find a way to stop it. It was more painful to think about than the torture that Sylar wanted to inflict upon her; it was more upsetting than her origins or the pain that Isaac would feel when he found out the truth. The only thing that was on Claire’s mind was Peter, and she needed to keep him safe, to be his hero.
When she had gotten dressed and came downstairs, the scene she found was not the one she had been expecting. In some Dawson’s Creek fantasy she had, she expected Peter to make her breakfast followed by a somewhat uncomfortable but ultimately assuring morning after conversation. Instead, she got an awkward conversation with Heidi that was overpowered by Simon and Monty followed by Peter declaring that he had to go somewhere, but that he would see her later at Niki’s apartment. He had given her explicit instructions to go to Niki and stay with her until he came for her. That was followed by a brief kiss to her forehead and then he was gone and she was confused.
Heidi had called a Town Car to take her to the apartment building in Brooklyn, and the entire time she had fretted and worried. When she reached the right floor, she could hear Matt’s booming laugh through Mohinder’s door followed by Ando joining in and finally she heard the distinctive sound of Isaac cracking another joke. Her stomach twisted and lurched, and she knew immediately that she couldn’t go there right now.
Niki’s door was unlocked, and Micah was sitting on the couch with his laptop in front of him. There was the muffled sound of arguing from the bedroom and her face must have shown her concern because Micah dismissively said, “They’re fighting over whether to run or stay and fight.”
“What’s the vote?”
“Dad says run, Mom says stay, Jessica says stay.”
“Two against one?”
He smiled. “Something like that.”
Taking a seat next to him, she asked, “How goes it?”
“Claude gave me a lot of interesting variables to the research at Primatech, even if it is fifteen years old. You know, they really could be a great organization if it wasn’t for the evil genius running it.”
“Evil genius?”
“Joseph Linderman. Claude says that he has a power, but he won’t share it with anyone. He’s a mob boss; my mom borrowed money from him since he’s based out of Vegas. He’s got his hands in all kinds of pots.”
“Niki borrowed money from him?”
“She thinks I don’t know, but, like with most things, I do. She wanted me to go to this ritzy private school, but I got kicked out and she lost the money. Anyway, Joshua had some interesting insight as well. I think that with a little more time, I could formulate an entire working model of the Primatech organization.”
“You’re a little scary sometimes.”
He grinned, suddenly eleven again. “I know.”
“Micah…how would you stop an exploding man?”
“Easy: I’d get the cure for the mutation.”
Claire froze. “There’s a cure?”
“Claude said that it was in the experimental stages when he left Primatech, but he said that your dad, Bennet, was the one in charge of the project. There was a cure in the test phases when Claude left.”
“So, in theory, there’s a cure in a Primatech lab that could stop Peter from exploding?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know which lab or if it works, so we can’t exactly steal it. We’re just going to have to stop the explosion by defeating Sylar. That’s Plan A.”
“And Plan B is?”
“We don’t really have time to make a Plan B.”
* * *
Peter couldn’t gather his thoughts, couldn’t make sense of his world. Hearing Heidi-Meredith-tell him the truth about everything had just sent his world spinning so fast and far off of its axis that he could barely hold himself together. He needed to find Claude; he needed to make sense of this.
He was taking the steps to his apartment two at a time, cursing the broken elevator, and he was surprised to see what appeared to be a homeless man sitting against his door.
“Can I help you?”
The man with the Cro-Magnon features and severe beard said, “Peter Petrelli?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m Ted Sprague. I was told to find you.”
Peter couldn’t utter a word before his hands started to glow with radiation.
* * *
Claire trusted Micah and trusted his logic. If there was any man on this planet that Claire truly believed she could place absolute trust in, it was Micah Sanders. That was why she was doing this. That was why she was taking this step.
“Hello?”
“Dad? It’s Claire. I need your help.”
She was barely two sentences into her ramble when Claire knew that, once again, Noah Bennet was about to play God with her life.
Author: lit_chick08 aka Meg
Characters: Paire with Peter/Simone, DL/Niki, Nathan/Niki, hints of Isaac/Claire, ensemble
Rating: PG-13 for allusions to sex, language, and violence
Word Count: 5001
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Spoilers: everything; goes AU after 1x11 “Fallout”
Summary: The heroes gather in New York to stop the exploding man, but saving the world is the least of their problems.
A/N: I'm using Bennet's canon name from now on; thanks to everyone for the feedback!
Previous Parts are HERE
”He’s going to start suspecting something if you keep acting like this.”
Meredith Gray, now Mrs. Heidi Petrelli, turned to glare scathingly at her new father-in-law. She despised these Sunday dinners at the Petrelli brownstone, had hated them from the moment she had started to date Nathan three years ago. It always resulted in Angela frostily sniping at her husband, Anthony berating Nathan, Nathan getting angry, and Peter staring helplessly by, confused by the anger and tension that simmered between all of his family members. Whenever she was sitting there, picking at whatever traditional Italian dish that Angela had ordered the cook to make, avoiding raising Angela and Anthony’s ire and staring at the brothers who were forced to deal with them forever, she wished for the old, tense dinners at her father’s apartment.
Now, as she hid in the den while Nathan and Angela had it out over something, she wanted to tear out Anthony Petrelli’s eyes, make him pay for the destruction he leveled at everyone who touched his life. He was a monster and it was no wonder he had fallen in with Linderman.
“Yes, I’m sure that if Nathan thinks I’m behaving strangely, his first instinct will be that I’m a shapeshifter impersonating a dead woman because I’m on the run from the organization that hired me to bed and procreate with a man.”
“Do you think this is a game?” he hissed.
“If it is, I want a redo.”
“A redo? Do you know how lucky you are, you little bitch? If it wasn’t for me, you’d be strapped to a goddamn lab table as Bennet’s pincushion. I saved your life!”
“No, you stole what little life I had left! You erased me! I don’t even exist anymore! I’m a ghost! You took everything-“
“You sold everything, sweetheart,” he corrected, his words dripping with bile. “You sold your identity for half of a million dollars to take care of that little brother of yours. If you want to start hating someone, take a good, long look in the mirror. That is, if you remember what you looked like.”
Anthony turned to leave when Meredith whispered, “I’ll tell him.”
He froze. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll tell Nathan everything. I’ll tell him about me, about Linderman and Primatech, about Joshua, Lizzie, you. I’ll pull every fucking skeleton out of the closet-“
She hadn’t realized she had been hit until she tasted the copper on her tongue and realized that the side of her face stung. Twisting her head back, she saw the naked fury on Anthony’s face, saw the way that his fists were still clenching, and Meredith wondered if she was going to be hit again.
“If you ever breathe a single syllable to my son, I will kill you. But first, I’ll kill that precious little brother of yours. What’s his name, Gabriel? Then I’ll tell Linderman exactly where you are and I will watch as he shows you what he does to people who betray him.” Grabbing hold of her ponytail and jerking it brutally back, he breathed into her face, “You do not want to go to war with me, Merry.”
She fell to the ground when Anthony pushed her away and she curled in on herself, bringing her knees up to her chest the way she had when she was little and things became too much for her. In the other room, she could hear Nathan and Angela’s voices rising, and she knew that she had, at least, twenty minutes to right herself, to mask the redness of her cheek and the small split on her bottom lip. However, before she could get to her feet, the door opened once again and there was Peter.
He had turned thirteen before the wedding three months ago, and he had hit his awkward stage hard. His limbs were too long for his body, which was painfully thin, and he had gotten braces only two weeks ago, so his speech was slightly slurred when he spoke. Unlike Nathan, who radiated self-assurance and confidence, Peter projected the image of a wounded puppy and Meredith loved him with a fierceness that she was practically maternal.
“What happened?” he exclaimed, rushing over to her, getting down on the floor beside her despite the fact that he was wrinkling his freshly pressed pants.
“Nothing. I slipped,” she badly lied, waving her hand as if to show how silly it was.
“No, you didn’t. Did Dad hurt you?”
Meredith had always loved the way that Peter could see through lies before, but right now, she despised it. “Peter, please-“
“I’m gonna get Nathan.”
“No!” Catching his wrist, holding him fast, she pleaded, “Please, Peter, I swear, everything’s fine. Don’t get Nathan. It’ll just upset him, and you don’t want to do that, do you?”
It was a low blow to go after Peter’s loyalty to Nathan, but Meredith was desperate. Of all of the sins she had committed, it was the smallest.
Peter sagged in defeat before reaching over to the Kleenex box and lightly pressing the tissue to her mouth, wiping up the blood. As he carefully tended to her swollen lip, he sighed, “This is wrong.”
“Things aren’t always about right or wrong, Peter. There’s a thousand shades of gray.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’ll keep this a secret, won’t you?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, his long hair falling into his eyes. Tenderly, Meredith pushed it back and pressed a kiss to his forehead despite the small throb of pain it caused her mouth. “You’re the best brother a girl could have, Peter Petrelli.”
Peter awoke with a jerk, his memory/dream startling him out of the exhausted slumber he had fallen into. As he moved, Claire, still asleep, adjusted to follow his body, molding to fit him. Despite the distress of his memory, Peter couldn’t help but admire her in the soft, early morning light.
He had been slightly terrified at the idea of making love to her. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to, because, in all honesty, it had pretty much been the only thing he could think about ever since that first night in Odessa. He could claim what he wanted, swear up and down about his nobility when it came to her, but at the end of the day, he was still a man.
But, at the same time, when it had come down to it, he had felt like he was eighteen again, back in Susie DeMarco’s dorm room at NYU with Bon Jovi playing on the stereo, about to lose his virginity with no idea where to put his hands.
Of course, just like his first foray into sex, he found his way quickly, learning details about Claire that no one else knew, a knowledge that was too intimate for even Isaac Mendez to know. For instance, Peter now knew that if you brushed a kiss against the soft skin of her stomach, Claire would giggle; he knew that she would bite her lip to stop from moaning because she felt too self-conscious until he’d whisper in her ear that it was okay to let go; he now knew that she babbled a little before she reached orgasm, that he had never felt anything as good as being inside of her, and that he was completely, unequivocally in love with her.
She seemed so tiny in the massive bed, her petite body almost lost amongst the down pillows and comforter. There was no sign of the unbreakable girl here in the early dawn light; no, here was only the young woman that had given herself so freely to him last night with no expectations or promises of forever, the woman that Peter was willing to kill or be killed for.
He carefully slid out of the bed, pressing a gentle kiss against her forehead, before locating his discarded clothing. He was almost out the door when he heard her ask, almost in a whisper, “Where are you going?”
She looked delicious, wrapped up in Nathan’s expensive white sheets as a contrast to her Texas tan, her hair tousled from sleep. Peter couldn’t help but start to smile until he saw that naked vulnerability in her bright eyes, a vulnerability that spoke of the fear she obviously felt at being rejected by him.
“I was just going to get some coffee before I checked in with Mohinder. It’s still early; go back to sleep.”
“I can get up,” she offered, starting to get out of bed before realizing that she was still naked and her self-consciousness kicked in.
“I’m not going anywhere. Sleep while you have the chance.”
The exhaustion in her body won out over her desire to go with him. With an easy nod, Claire burrowed down into the bedding, letting sleep take her once again. Peter spared her one last lingering glance before slipping out into the hallway.
In the early morning hours, there was no telltale laughs from his nephews or the blare of cartoons; Nathan wasn’t attached to his cell phone and the seemingly endless parade of domestic help was off. Peter knew that the only person who was ever up this early on a weekend was his sister-in-law, especially since the accident. His instinct was correct, as Heidi was in the living room, sipping a steaming cup of coffee and watching the six o’clock news.
“Good morning, Peter. Do you want some coffee? It’s not as good as Rosa’s but-“
“Were you having an affair with my father?”
Heidi froze, her jaw dropping in shocked disgust. After a moment to gain her composure, she emphatically stated, “I would never have had an affair with Anthony.”
“Then what was the fight about?”
“What fight?”
Jaw clenched in irritation, he snapped, “The one right after you and Nathan got married, the one where he hit you.”
She set her cup down carefully and Peter recognized the gesture as one that was his mother’s, a way of buying time. “I thought that you had forgotten all about that.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was nothing.”
“Heidi-“
“It was a stupid little disagreement.”
Crossing his arms across his chest, he stated, “Nathan and I have pissed him off a hell of a lot worse and never got hurt, so what got you that special honor?”
“Peter, leave it alone.”
“What the hell is going on, Heidi? You owe me-“
“I owe you nothing!” Fire burning in her eyes, a fire that tugged at Peter’s memory, she declared, “This isn’t a game! You can’t go around, reaching into everyone’s closets and pulling out skeletons! Some things just need to die, and that was one of them.”
“If you weren’t having an affair, then what was it?” Peter pressed, ignoring her words.
Beginning to wheel herself out of the room, she felt real, true anger towards her brother-in-law for the first time since meeting him. “I let you have your secrets, Peter, so let me have mine.”
Peter easily blocked her exit, grabbing hold of the wheels, effectively trapping her. He had never been an aggressive man, but he was in her face now, determined and frustrated with her sudden lack of cooperativeness. “Maybe secrets are the whole reason things go to hell in this family. Maybe you’re making it worse.”
Heidi couldn’t help the tears that stung her eyes. “You don’t know anything about secrets.” Breaking his hold on her chair, she pushed herself back, distancing herself. “You think because you’ve spent the last six months dealing with this that you know what’s going on, that you know best? You know nothing. You’ve stolen Primatech’s golden goose and you just spent the night bedding the adopted daughter of their best agent, and you’re wasting your time asking me about a fight I had with your father a decade ago?”
This time, it was Peter’s turn to be stunned. “How do you know all of that?”
She hadn’t used her power in years, but the ease with which she shifted her shape would not have shown that. No, as if she was simply tossing her hair over her shoulder, Heidi Petrelli became Merry Barnes and Peter Petrelli felt his stomach give a twist as if he was going to be sick.
“You’re her,” he choked out.
She shimmered again, this time becoming Meredith Gray, becoming the girl that she had killed so many years ago, the one that only a few people alive could even remember. Her hair was dark, like her brother’s, but her eyes were a brilliant blue; she was just as striking as Meredith as she was as Merry or even Heidi but she doubted that she would’ve recognized her true reflection in a mirror, it had been so long since she had seen it.
“I’m Meredith Gray,” she said in her true voice, which was huskier than Heidi’s sweet tone and lacked Merry’s deceptive turn of phrase. “And if you want to stay alive, you’d better listen up.”
* * *
Isaac was many things, but blind and stupid were not amongst them. When Claire didn’t come back to the loft, he had originally bought the explanation on the answering machine; when she had never called him again, he had thought that maybe the party had ended late; when it was nearly noon and he still hadn’t heard from his girlfriend, he had to face facts, and the facts were that Claire had spent the night with Peter and Isaac doubted that the empath’s strength was enough to stand up to that temptation.
He itched to shoot up, wanted the heroin more than he wanted oxygen, and he knew that he had to get out of his apartment before he ended up trying to score again. He knew that if he wanted to stay clean that he had to change his habits, and handling his problems with heroin wasn’t going to fix a damn thing.
Isaac wasn’t sure why he had decided to go to Brooklyn to see Mohinder; he didn’t much care for the scientist and he also was uncomfortable with the idea of being poked and prodded, studied like he was an object and not a person. But he also knew that being around people would stop him from using, and, even if he didn’t like those people, they would still serve a purpose.
Mohinder was doing something with Hiro when Isaac entered the apartment, and, when he took a seat beside Ando, the usually quiet man held out his open bag of pretzels and asked, “Want to watch Baywatch?”
Isaac shrugged and nodded, temporarily content to watch Pamela Anderson rescue people with bad tans and unrealistic bodies, banishing Claire Bennet from his mind for as long as he could.
* * *
Joseph Linderman was a powerful man and, like all powerful men, he had little patience for ineptitude. Until the last few weeks, he had never had any reason to doubt the competence of Noah Bennet, but lately the man had done nothing but ruin twenty years of careful planning by letting emotion cloud his usually impeccable judgment. Joseph Linderman was a patient man, but his patience was a kindness to those who worked for him and that kindness was about to expire.
At age eleven, when Joseph had brought his sister Angela back from the dead after falling from a tree on their family’s property, he had known he was destined for great things. When Angela’s powers manifested three years later and she had been able to kill with a single touch, he knew that he would have to do whatever it took to not only keep them safe but to make sure that more people like them knew and appreciated their true value. He had known that both he and Angela would have to become powerful in the tradition sense in order to accomplish that, and so he had become the most important mob boss in all of the United States and he had made sure that Angela had “coincidentally” met Anthony Petrelli, his newest attorney in New York City and a man of little personal integrity.
Claude Rains had fallen into his lap. He had been searching for someone to help with his desire to start a laboratory studying the origins of their abilities and had contacted an old classmate who was teaching at Cambridge. The man that his friend had recommended hadn’t shown up and, on his way out, he had seen Claude having a rather explosive argument about being denied a promotion in his department. It had hardly been a question of whether or not to extend a position to Claude; it had only been a question of how long he would last before his ethics overpowered his curiosity.
Charles Deveaux had been a friend of Anthony’s, though they were the most mismatched a pair as Joseph had ever seen. He had a head for business that Joseph respected and his desperation to keep his son safe had struck a chord with Joseph, who was not without a heart. By using his medical businesses as a front, it had given them a sense of respectability in their fund raising measures so that his entire fortune was not consumed by Primatech.
While the rest had been somewhat coincidental, the appropriation of Noah Bennet had been both time consuming and premeditated. He had been a brilliant student, on the doctoral path when most his age were attending keg parties and trying to sleep with sorority girls. Like Joshua Barnes, another carefully cultivated protégé, he had no family and was desperate to prove himself and Joseph had offered him that. Bennet had not only managed to dissociate himself with the work that he had asked him to complete but had also managed to broaden their understanding of the mutations by light years. The only mistake that Bennet had made was one that Joseph was willing to take responsibility for.
Joseph Linderman believed that he was a good judge of people, and he had believed that Noah Bennet had no interest in fatherhood, that any statements he made about being a father were to pacify that simpleton wife of his, the one who was always simpering over her dog. It was for that reason that he had given little Elizabeth Barnes to him with the explicit instructions that he was to care for her until her powers had manifested to an appropriate level and then to give her back to Primatech for an assignment. At the time, Bennet had agreed easily since he had no attachment to the child. What Linderman hadn’t counted on was that Bennet would come to think of Claire as his own child, as a girl to protect not for her power but because he loved her; when he had first learned that Claire was manifesting so strongly, Bennet should have handed her over immediately for her assignment. That was the second fold of his mistake; by placing Bennet in charge of mutation investigation by any means necessary, he had assumed the same would be done to Claire, when that had never been her purpose whatsoever.
Meredith Gray had been an experiment. She wasn’t the most intelligent woman that Linderman had met during his search, but she was the one with the most intriguing power at the time as well as the highest reading for mutation in her blood. He had wanted to breed a higher level of mutation, and, when her high levels would be combined with Joshua, he knew that it would result in a child with a significant power. Spontaneous regeneration had been far more than he could have wished for, and it made the long-term investment that much greater.
Though both of his nephews had no idea that he was, in fact, their uncle and despised him greatly, Joseph Linderman cared greatly for his sister’s children. They weren’t just a continuation of the bloodline or anything as inane as that; they were the future. Anthony hadn’t been able to see the big picture; he had seen Nathan being born normal and Peter with the power as a mistake nature had made. He had argued that Nathan was more gifted, could accomplish so much more with a gift that Peter would undoubtedly squander as he did not have the wherewithal to truly do what would need to be done. It was the reason he had stolen that extra dose of the experimental serum to dose Nathan with; it was the reason that he had never invested anything in his younger son.
But Joseph had always seen the potential in Peter Petrelli, in the strength of his abilities and in the unfathomable amount of powers that he could take into himself. It was for that specific reason that Joseph Linderman had bred Elizabeth Barnes, now Claire Bennet, to be the lover for his nephew and to create a child that was even more powerful than the two of them.
When Angela had informed him of the instability that Peter was beginning to show, coupled with the vision that Charles had told him about, the vision of a decimated New York City with Peter as the catalyst, that Claire’s spontaneous regeneration needed to be absorbed by Peter in order for him to survive and for the city to remain standing. He had needed Peter and Claire to meet, needed them to set the chain of events in motion; it was why, after Chandra Suresh had been murdered by Gabriel Gray, Linderman had found the man who now called himself Sylar and had given him a list of the more expendable people with mutations. Nature would take its course with them anyway, and really, if the end result was a more powerful future, the means through which it was achieved could be a little unseemly.
If Linderman had no problem with things that were unseemly, Angela was positively unbothered and unrepentant with the things she had done. When she wanted to be, his sister was so cold and calculating that it didn’t surprise him in the least that her power was to take lives. She was the entire reason behind his visit to New York, and, as usual, she met him in Trinity Church.
She sat in the front pew, her head demurely bent, not in respect for what the Church represented but because she was reviewing her events calendar on her Blackberry. When he slid in beside her, she didn’t stop what she was doing the way that others would; only when she was ready did she tuck the electronic device safely into her purse and turn to face him.
“Are things on track?”
“They spent the night together,” she reported, not mincing words, “and, from what I gathered from surveillance tapes, they now know each other in a much more Biblical sense.”
“So it’s done then. We can step in and take care of Sylar.”
“It’s not that simple, Joseph. The regenerative power he’s borrowing from her is not enough to keep his system stable.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he had time to control his powers, it wouldn’t be an issue; we could teach him easily enough. The issue is that the explosion is set to occur in a two days and Claire’s power is now not regenerating the mutations to his tissue at a quick enough rate to keep his system stabilized. We need an alternate plan.”
“It would appear that we do. What do you suggest?”
“We need to eliminate Ted Sprague and Gabriel Gray. Mr. Sprague poses the most immediate risk, as his power is even more unpredictable than Peter’s, and Gabriel is now becoming cause for concern.”
“I’m inclined to agree, but at this point, how are we going to accomplish that?”
Her irritated sigh was one that had been heard many a time by Nathan and Peter Petrelli, and Joseph couldn’t help but smirk at the fact that, younger sister or not, she still felt it was appropriate to lord it over him.
“For starters, you’re going to contact Noah Bennet and tell him and Michel that they need to neutralize Ted Sprague; keeping him locked up is pointless when he will always be a threat to those around him. Sentimentality for human life is not what we need right now. Then, you’re going to give the kill order for young Mr. Gray.”
“Assuming we can get to him. He’s absorbed some fairly important powers.”
Her smile was enough to send chills down Joseph’s spine. “Not more than my Peter has.”
* * *
How do you stop an exploding man?
It was the question that haunted Claire Bennet even in her sleep. The man that she loved, the man that she had spent the night making love with, was going to explode in forty-eight hours unless they could find a way to stop it. It was more painful to think about than the torture that Sylar wanted to inflict upon her; it was more upsetting than her origins or the pain that Isaac would feel when he found out the truth. The only thing that was on Claire’s mind was Peter, and she needed to keep him safe, to be his hero.
When she had gotten dressed and came downstairs, the scene she found was not the one she had been expecting. In some Dawson’s Creek fantasy she had, she expected Peter to make her breakfast followed by a somewhat uncomfortable but ultimately assuring morning after conversation. Instead, she got an awkward conversation with Heidi that was overpowered by Simon and Monty followed by Peter declaring that he had to go somewhere, but that he would see her later at Niki’s apartment. He had given her explicit instructions to go to Niki and stay with her until he came for her. That was followed by a brief kiss to her forehead and then he was gone and she was confused.
Heidi had called a Town Car to take her to the apartment building in Brooklyn, and the entire time she had fretted and worried. When she reached the right floor, she could hear Matt’s booming laugh through Mohinder’s door followed by Ando joining in and finally she heard the distinctive sound of Isaac cracking another joke. Her stomach twisted and lurched, and she knew immediately that she couldn’t go there right now.
Niki’s door was unlocked, and Micah was sitting on the couch with his laptop in front of him. There was the muffled sound of arguing from the bedroom and her face must have shown her concern because Micah dismissively said, “They’re fighting over whether to run or stay and fight.”
“What’s the vote?”
“Dad says run, Mom says stay, Jessica says stay.”
“Two against one?”
He smiled. “Something like that.”
Taking a seat next to him, she asked, “How goes it?”
“Claude gave me a lot of interesting variables to the research at Primatech, even if it is fifteen years old. You know, they really could be a great organization if it wasn’t for the evil genius running it.”
“Evil genius?”
“Joseph Linderman. Claude says that he has a power, but he won’t share it with anyone. He’s a mob boss; my mom borrowed money from him since he’s based out of Vegas. He’s got his hands in all kinds of pots.”
“Niki borrowed money from him?”
“She thinks I don’t know, but, like with most things, I do. She wanted me to go to this ritzy private school, but I got kicked out and she lost the money. Anyway, Joshua had some interesting insight as well. I think that with a little more time, I could formulate an entire working model of the Primatech organization.”
“You’re a little scary sometimes.”
He grinned, suddenly eleven again. “I know.”
“Micah…how would you stop an exploding man?”
“Easy: I’d get the cure for the mutation.”
Claire froze. “There’s a cure?”
“Claude said that it was in the experimental stages when he left Primatech, but he said that your dad, Bennet, was the one in charge of the project. There was a cure in the test phases when Claude left.”
“So, in theory, there’s a cure in a Primatech lab that could stop Peter from exploding?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know which lab or if it works, so we can’t exactly steal it. We’re just going to have to stop the explosion by defeating Sylar. That’s Plan A.”
“And Plan B is?”
“We don’t really have time to make a Plan B.”
* * *
Peter couldn’t gather his thoughts, couldn’t make sense of his world. Hearing Heidi-Meredith-tell him the truth about everything had just sent his world spinning so fast and far off of its axis that he could barely hold himself together. He needed to find Claude; he needed to make sense of this.
He was taking the steps to his apartment two at a time, cursing the broken elevator, and he was surprised to see what appeared to be a homeless man sitting against his door.
“Can I help you?”
The man with the Cro-Magnon features and severe beard said, “Peter Petrelli?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m Ted Sprague. I was told to find you.”
Peter couldn’t utter a word before his hands started to glow with radiation.
* * *
Claire trusted Micah and trusted his logic. If there was any man on this planet that Claire truly believed she could place absolute trust in, it was Micah Sanders. That was why she was doing this. That was why she was taking this step.
“Hello?”
“Dad? It’s Claire. I need your help.”
She was barely two sentences into her ramble when Claire knew that, once again, Noah Bennet was about to play God with her life.