West Wing, South Hall 2-B

[mustbethesuit]

[From here.]It might be quicker to check the stuff at the end of the hall first and work his way back. That way he wouldn't have to back track in order to get into the main hall. Yeah. Yeah - the morgue was marked on his map, but there were a few rooms around it that weren't labeled at all. Morbid as the thought was, it would be practical to keep

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[human_sponge]

[From here.]And so they were almost there. Peter wondered if they were the first group that was going to make it into the hallway, but he knew that it wasn't a contest. All it changed was whether or not they were going to have to break open another door. They'd been doing a lot of that tonight, it seemed

[autophoenix]

In the most rational part of her mind, she acknowledged that Peter had a point. No good could come of testing her ability here when there was no telling what Landel had done to it in order to best screw them all over. But, her own mortality was a scary thing to face when she's gotten used to the reckless idea of never being able to die, and it was easier to just argue with Peter on it and keep doing what she'd always done. At least that way she could say it was because of her uncle that she wasn't doing it and not out of her own fear

[product_of_fear]

How did the saying go? No rest for the wicked? Not that the Scarecrow believed that description really, truly applied to him - despite years of tender care at the hands of his grandmother, hard lessons learned, fear, control, knowledge, power - he simply taught others what he himself already knew. Fear was everything, it motivated everything, and Scarecrow was the master of that fear and, ergo, master of those it controlled

[human_sponge]

When the bat was extended toward him, Peter thought for a moment that Claire wanted him to take a few swings at the door, just like he'd done downstairs. But he could tell from the girl's posture that she was very much intending to get the door open herself, and he frowned just at the sight of her. Maybe she'd built up some muscle as a cheerleader, but most grown men couldn't break down doors with just their hands and feet, let alone a teenage girl

[autophoenix]

Once he took the bat from her, she set herself up to try and pick the best approach for the door. She could go running at it -- maybe that would help her build up the momentum necessary to bust it open. She'd seen it in procedural cop shows before, the whole busting in the door with your shoulder thing, and was pretty sure that as long as she wasn't too concerned about whether or not her shoulder dislocated in the process, she could pull it off. While she was assessing the door, though, she got lost in thought, only to be jerked out by Peter's words. She looked up, vaguely surprised

[product_of_fear]

The flashlight snapped off with a decidedly final click that seemed much louder than it really had any right to be. But it wasn't only the abandoned flashlight that Claire was holding that shut off with the click of a button, but their own lights as well, plunging the two of them into a suffocatingly thick darkness that almost felt alive.

Fortunately (if such a word could ever really be applied in a place like this, a situation like this one) it slowly became clear that there was something of a light with them. It was ever so faint at first, the soft glowing of a firefly perhaps, but growing slowly stronger.

And as it grew stronger, its origin became apparent. It was coming from Peter, or more specifically, his hands. They were glowing as if lit within by burning, churning energy... that was spreading and building fast.

[human_sponge]

Peter hadn't really meant to distract Claire from what she was doing, but it was good to know that it wasn't just him that was feeling something off. Or maybe it was bad to know that, since it meant that it wasn't just in his head. Something was after them, or watching them, and he couldn't even see any signs of it through the darkness of the hallway. Why did something have to catch up with them right now, right when they were about to reach their destination? But maybe that was the whole point.

"Wait--" He tried to call after Claire when she decided to just wander off and grab the flashlight, not thinking that it was worth the risk just to return it to whoever had dropped it there. Didn't the flashlights get magically replaced, anyway? But his niece wasn't always the best listener, and so she wandered off anyway. Peter's heart rate slowly escalated as the girl got further and further away from him.

And then she turned it off, but somehow that made everything turn off, even the flashlight he was currently holding. He stared down at

[autophoenix]

Okay. Both flashlights going off at once? Totally not where she was going with that plan. Claire felt her heart leap out of her chest as she fumbled for her own flashlight, trying to click it back on and finding that it refused to turn back on at all. And yet, somehow, there was a dim light. Claire, get over here. Peter sounded more distant than she'd realized and she, with a scowl at the broken flashlights, began to head over

[product_of_fear]

Whether Peter's abilities should have been working here or not didn't seem to matter. The energy was building and building fast, spreading from his hands up through his body, making his skin glow bright and hot under his clothing.

It was beginning to look like Claire would be lucky to get herself away from Peter before he lost what precious little control he had.

[human_sponge]

Why was Claire coming closer? Dammit, he'd told her to run!

But he felt her hands on his shoulders as she tried to calm him down, and yet none of her words were getting through to him. He heard them and was even able to grasp the meaning behind them in spite of the state that he was in, but they had no effect. He was terrified, plain and simple. If he blew up, then it would take out the entire institute and probably all of Doyleton along with it. All the people he'd befriended here, not to mention the countless others who he'd yet to meet, would die -- and it would be all his fault

[autophoenix]

The force of the radiation was starting to really wear at Claire. Her flesh itself began to decay first in her arms and hands, then creeping down toward the rest of her body, taking portions of the uniform shirt with her, the smiley face in the center of her chest remaining untouched in a way that was just a little too convenient and eerie. At the burst of energy, she actually flinched back, jerking her hands away and noticing one thing above all else.

It hurt.No matter how messed up it was and no matter how badly she might want to go warn the other people, she was officially not budging. There was something really weird about this -- all of it. Something unnatural, as if that didn't describe their entire lives since the first day they'd met. Slowly, she turned her hands over so her palms were facing up and stared down at them, bewildered as the flesh ripped away and tried to replace itself over and over again. It burned. Not just in an itchy burning kind of way, or the discomfort she was used to, it legitimately burned

[human_sponge]

All Peter could do was stand there and watch as Claire was broken apart by the radiation, by him and his inability to control the power that he'd been given. It was too much. Claude had said maximum potential, but this was far beyond what any human could handle. Yet despite that, he couldn't help thinking back on his training and knowing that he could have somehow tried harder and gotten better at this. He could have done something, but he hadn't and now his worst fear was going to overtake him and everyone was going to die.

Everyone except for maybe Claire, but it was clear that her power wasn't strong enough to help her completely, not now. It was a terrible kind of ironic, that they'd just been talking about her limits only to be faced with them now, in the worst possible way. He watched as her body desperately tried to rebuild itself over and over and over, but it just couldn't keep up with the destructive energy that his body was producing.

When he blew up (and it was a when, not an if, now), she might not be able to take it

[autophoenix]

The brighter he got, the stronger the force of the billowing energy, the worse the pain became. It wasn't long before she couldn't see him at all anymore beyond the light -- maybe her eyes had burned out, though. It wouldn't be all that surprising, and it would explain why it was all black instead of white

[product_of_fear]

The blast had devastated the area, transforming the night into a bleak, desolate place, utterly silent other than the noise made by Claire herself. After a while, soft, grey ash started to drift down from the sky like snow that crumbled into dark smudges on Claire's skin

[human_sponge]

This wasn't like the last time. The fact that he'd exploded twice was ludicrous, but Peter remembered the feeling of the wind whipping around his body as he'd fell, and how he'd eventually recovered to collect Nathan. He remembered the relief that had flooded through him when he'd realized that New York was intact, but also his distress over the blow his brother had taken for his sake

[autophoenix]

Claire stared helplessly, pathetically, at the sky as the desolated remains of the building continued to crumble through the air around her. The ash felt warm still on her cheeks, the only reminder that her uncle had ever been. She didn't flinch away from them, even as they burned into her face and made her choke and cry -- worse than before. The thought alone that this was where it all ended, that this was all that remained of him, of her hero, made her nothing more than a useless wreck