Broken Connections, Chapter Three: Broken World
Peter finished dressing. In the course of fishing his phone out from where the fighting had knocked it under the bed, he remembered someone had called earlier. Sylar had been about three bold strokes into him when the phone had begun to buzz and vibrate madly, like someone out there was psychic about their timing. Sylar had growled, "I had better be the most important person in your life at the moment, Peter," and kept pumping into him. Peter had been face down, ass-up, with Sylar crouched behind him and really starting to pound. Answering the phone had not been a serious consideration, not even for a heartbeat. He'd thought something that was inarticulate even for a thought about answering machines and otherwise went back to enjoying the moment and the honesty of Sylar's raw desire for him (or at least his body), promptly forgetting the interruption until now.
So who'd called? Oh yes. It was a psychic: his mother. He hesitated on the option of calling her back. What if she dreamed what I was doing? Or who, I guess. Um … Fuck. How would he ever look her in the face again? He hit the button anyway. Her voice was normal enough upon answering, "Hello?" That gave him hope.
"Hi. Um, Mom?"
Then her voice was no longer normal at all as she realized who had called. "Peter." It was one word, but it conveyed everything. She knew.
He cleared his throat. He felt an inch tall, utterly worthless, like he'd soiled himself in some intentional and irreparable way. And what could he say, anyway? 'Yeah, Ma, I spent the night being repeatedly fucked by Nathan's murderer because I'm too damaged anymore to do the right thing.' Whatever that 'right thing' was in this situation. He felt defective. He'd disappointed her, and he was the only son she had left. He cleared his throat again, fighting against the sudden tightness in it. "You … called?"
"And I left a message," she said so sharply you could cut a falling sheet of paper with her words. "You should listen to it." She hung up.
He shuddered and clicked the phone off. It wasn't my idea! None of it was! I didn't know this would happen! It was the story of his life. And now, he didn't even have Sylar, or know where he was, although 'having' Sylar was a dubious reward by itself. He had enjoyed Sylar having him, though. Having someone want him so viscerally, in such a complicated yet uncomplicated fashion, was everything Peter wanted. There was no way he could say no to that, just like there was no possible way to explain that to his mother - or to anyone, really. Alone, he sank down on the bed, pressing the slick, black plastic of the phone against his forehead until he couldn't continue to delay listening. He dialed his voicemail.
It was a simple message, less cryptic than his mother's messages often were: "Sylar will ruin everything our family has ever worked for. You must stop him." He listened to it twice more, writing it down on a slip of paper and staring at it, the fingers of his left hand curled against his lip, elbow propped on his knee as he sat on the edge of his bed.'Everything our family has ever worked for' - like blood money, persecution, underhanded bullshit? 'You must stop him' - really? What happens if I don't? Doesn't sound like he's going to ruin anything I care about. Or is she saying he's going to ruin everything and then I'm supposed to stop him?
His phone buzzed again. With narrowed eyes, he checked who was calling, but then sighed. His mother's premonitions were often world-changing in nature, but his work was calling him in for an extra shift anyway. What was more important: saving the world, or covering for someone who was out sick? The difference was comical, but he answered the phone. These were people who actually needed him.
A half hour later, he was walking into work, very glad he'd taken the call. There had been some kind of disaster overnight that he'd managed to sleep through. He wanted the details, but his supervisor hadn't given him any over the phone. Peter thought it unlikely anyone else would know about the carnival unless they understood specials, which was why his first stop was by Emma's desk. She was there, looking tired and wrung out, bandages on her fingers.
"Emma? What are you doing here?" he asked. Even though he'd come looking for her, he hadn't expected to find her. "Your fingers?"
"I can still work," she said stubbornly, watching his face with a frown of concentration. He could hear her thoughts behind the words: I couldn't sleep anyway after all of that.
Peter slipped around her desk and offered a wordless hug. She stood and returned it. The events of the night played through her mind and as he'd gathered, they didn't stop when she'd gotten in the taxi and left. She'd been woken by police a little after 3 am, and brought in for a questioning session that had frightened her as much as what Samuel and Doyle had done to her. Gripped by fear, she'd returned home to comb through the non-existent news reports and finally came here to work, where she'd learned there had been a riot at the carnival site after she'd left, and a confrontation between carnies and police that had cascaded into cop cars and buildings set aflame. Peter's mouth opened slightly in horror at what she was thinking. All of this had happened while he was at his apartment? He knew it wasn't his fault, but what if he'd stayed? Could he have stopped it? Could he and Sylar, together, have stopped it?
He broke the hug, holding her at arm's length so she could see his lips. "Emma, I-" He paused, interrupted by hearing Nurse Hammer loudly saying his name down the hall, confirming that yes, a Peter Petrelli did work here but she didn't know where he was. There was something about her tone that he registered as a warning. And besides, she knew exactly where he was, because he'd asked her if Emma was in today before walking down here. "Wait," he told Emma, letting her go and going to the corner of her work area, looking out. There were two beefy-looking police officers next to the squat form of Nurse Hammer. One of them glanced down the hall at him, expression sharpening in recognition. Shit. Despite the many possible inoffensive reasons police officers might have to be looking for him, the experience of being on the run from Homeland Security had left deep marks. He turned to Emma. "I have to go."
Peter wasted no time in running, using every twist and turn of the hospital layout to his advantage. He panted at the end of a long hallway, listening. He heard nothing out of place - no running footfalls, no shouts, no alarms, no coded announcements. It was so much 'business as usual' that he assumed they hadn't bothered to give chase. What if Emma ran interference for me and got in trouble? Worry creasing his brow, he circled back to check the most likely area where they'd parked. If it was just the two of them, then he could use the telepathy he'd taken from Sylar to make them let her go.
He saw the police car. It was just the one vehicle. A quick scan of the street showed no SWAT vans or other suspicious trucks lurking about. Ramming his hands into the pockets of his paramedic jacket against the cold, he walked down the sidewalk towards the car, feeling very exposed. He was almost to it when the two officers came out of the building nearby, talking to each other. Peter stopped, squaring off between them and their car, hands still in his pockets. They saw him as one and fell silent, but they didn't stop and they didn't have Emma with them. It was odd and not the arrest he'd been expecting. He tilted his head as they approached him, listening to their thoughts.
What's he got in his pockets? I don't like this.
Get in a fighting stance. Spaulding can go left. I'll take right. This might be bad. Maybe we should stop here. What if he's a firestarter like those others?
Peter pulled his hands out slowly, letting his empty palms show. "I didn't come here to fight."
Okay. Good. Great. "Are you Peter Petrelli?" Both cops stopped a little further away from him than conversational distance. They eyed him suspiciously, but neither was doing anything else. Peter noted there were no guns drawn, no calls for backup. Peter nodded in answer to the question. The one who had spoken, 'Spaulding', nodded in return and faked a friendly smile. "We're here to bring you in for questioning."
"Am I being detained?"
The two men looked at each other. One thought, 'Crap. He's going to lawyer up.' The other was more nonchalant, caring less whether they brought him in or not and more that he did what he'd been told to do, 'Hanson will be pissed, but she's the one who told us to handle him with kid gloves because he's on that special list of the president's.' They looked back at Peter. "We have some questions we need to ask you."
Peter noticed the lack of an affirmative answer, which translated to 'no, you're not being detained.' "Ask them."
"At the pre-" Well, not really at the precinct. He won't know, though. "At the precinct." The Special Investigations HQ.
Peter nodded slowly. "I'm not going." He turned and started to walk off, his mental attention still on them to see what would happen next. From their thoughts, he anticipated what did happen - nothing. They walked forward to their car and spoke quietly with one another, but the consensus was they were done here. Audrey Hanson had sent them to bring him in, but had very specifically stopped short of authorizing arrest or coercion. Plus, she'd warned them that he might have an ability and not to push him.
That was it - anticlimactic, but very informative for Peter. Audrey Hanson, he repeated to himself. Where do I know that name from? The memory surfaced slowly, with difficulty, of a hard-nosed, sharp-voiced woman sitting off to the side of a bare concrete interrogation room in Odessa, Texas; a cup of bitter, overcooked coffee in front of him; and the jarring mental dissonance of Matt Parkman trying to read his mind. He'd felt so sick from the ability absorption and was reeling from the experience of dying and coming back to life, but he still remembered her. A good memory for names and faces - Peter had that.
Recalling where he knew her from brought another name and face to mind. Once out of sight of the police, he pulled out his phone and dialed Claire. His concern turned to apprehension when she didn't answer. With a heavy lurch in his gut, he remembered his feeling from the night before that she'd need saving, and soon. He gritted his teeth in anger - at himself and at her. I knew. I knew it and I still walked away! Impotent rage passed through him and he wanted to punch something, but the brick wall at his back might distract him from his wrath via broken knuckles, but it wouldn't help. He kicked it instead. I am such an idiot!
This isn't helping. He stopped throwing a tantrum and scrolled through his contacts, dialing Noah next.
"Hello. Peter?" Noah's voice was clipped.
"Hey. Do you know where Claire is?"
"The government's taken her. Where are you?"
"I'm at work. A pair of policemen just tried to bring me in. I told them no and they actually took that for an answer."
There was a moment of silence. "That's … interesting. The earthquake set off more than just seismic shockwaves, Peter. There are a lot of government people who were mobilized last night. I gather they think someone tried to bring down New York City, which isn't too far off target. I've been trying to get time with some of them to find out where Claire is, who's in charge, and what their agenda is. Do you have any leads?"
"Just one: Audrey Hanson." He waited a beat, but Noah didn't speak, so Peter explained, "She's the one who interviewed me in Odessa, after the stadium, after Sylar showed up."
"I remember," Noah said.
"Why do I have the feeling you're not telling me everything you remember?"
Peter could hear Noah's wry smile. "If I told you everything, it would take too long. But the short version is she tried to investigate the Company back then. It didn't go anywhere. I heard about her when I was working with Danko, but she was still with the FBI - not part of Homeland Security. I don't know why, but it wasn't part of her career path. Of course, investigating specials has never been good for anyone's career, until now."
"If I have to find her to find Claire, then that's what I'm going to do."
"Okay, Peter. I'll call you if I find anything."
"Sure." He hung up. Peter stared at his phone for a moment, thinking about what he should do next. The cops had mentioned, or at least thought about, a headquarters, but he had received only the fuzziest impression from them of where it was. He knew where the carnival had been the night before, though, so he ducked inside to tell his supervisor he was taking the day off (and after his vociferous objections, got it approved with the convenient whammy of pushing a thought), then grabbed a taxi and headed to Central Park. The cabbie dropped him off on the edge of the park. He could see police lines blocking off the section where the carnival equipment, tents, and trailers had been the night before. Now there were only a few trailers. As he walked closer, he could see tow trucks and flatbeds setting up to take away the last of the structures.
He stopped next to the police line and spoke to the officer who had walked over at his approach. "Where are they taking all those trailers?"
"Impound."
"Why? Where are the owners?"
"No permit."
"What?" Peter asked.
"You can't just set up a carnival in the middle of New York without a permit."
Peter frowned. "Where are the owners?"
"You mean the owners of the carnival?"
"Yes."
The cop shrugged. "I dunno." She was being truthful, Peter could tell, and more helpful than was strictly required. Which probably had a lot to do with the paramedic uniform Peter was wearing. "Were you here last night?"
"No, no. One of my friends was, though. She told me about it. Did people get hurt?"
The cop nodded. "It was pretty bad."
Peter's eyes widened as the woman's thoughts informed him there had been multiple deaths among the police and several severe injuries. "How many died?"
She shook her head. "It was really bad." Six or seven? ran through her mind, but she didn't know specifics. Everyone who had been on the night shift had been rotated off, many with injuries ranging from severe burns and smoke inhalation to bruises and sprains. Besides, more government agents and officers from the precincts within driving distance had been pouring in all morning. She suspected they had more people than they knew what to do with, but the mobile HQ kept gathering people up and sending them out in teams with the mission of bringing back the scattered carnies - teams that she hadn't been part of, much to her irritation.
"I need to report in to HQ," Peter told her. "Where is that?"
She looked him up and down for a moment, dubious because she hadn't seen any other EMTs called in. But she supposed it made sense. He was a first responder, and she could tell from his insignia that he was local. She hooked her head at what looked like a collection of cargo containers that had been dumped off on the street on the other side of the park. "Over there. The blue one is where you check in."
"Got it," he said, stepping over the yellow tape, being careful not to catch his toe on it and either rip the tape or take a dive, either of which would be embarrassing.
There was a small mob of people on the other side of the collection of cargo containers. The blue one had signs taped to the outside of it identifying it as the coordination center. Peter waited a moment, watching the ebb and flow of the crowd, scanning people's thoughts to find out who they were and what they were doing there. The group included truck drivers, police officers, a representative from the mayor's office, several firefighters, a bunch of building inspectors in normal street clothes, and a bunch of government agents in business casual. He noticed there were no guards and no one in SWAT gear. This was an administrative center. He wasn't going to find Claire or any other special here. He didn't think that was quite where he wanted to be.
He followed the woman from the mayor's office as she went to a less trafficked green container. The sign on it simply said, 'Central'. She didn't pay him any mind as he went in, nor to the tall police woman who came in behind him. The mayor's rep tied up the receptionist with questions about scheduling for a report by the local news stations. Peter went towards the opposite end of the container, leaving the police woman waiting for her turn as additional distraction for the beleaguered receptionist.
The door to the office that took up the left end of the cargo container was open. Inside, he could see a blonde woman frowning at her computer screen and occasionally hammering at the keys. He recognized Ms. Hanson and slipped inside, pushing the door shut behind him. That got her attention, but for a second, she looked at him without recognition.
Audrey straightened, then modified her startled stiffness by continuing the movement to lean back in her chair, arms flopping down on the arm rests. "Peter Petrelli." Her eyes went past him to the door. "Where are the officers who were supposed to pick you up?"
He shrugged. "Probably stuck in traffic somewhere." She raised her brows inquiringly. "I didn't do anything to them," he said defensively.
"I heard you told them to get lost," she said in accusation, like he really had done something wrong.
Peter stared at her for a second before getting enough of her thoughts to laugh. She was making a joke. Under the layers of genuine concern and fear and bluff, she was making a joke. He wasn't sure he saw the humor, but she thought it was funny that of all the things an unpredictable, loose cannon special like himself could have done to her men, he'd told them to screw off and then he'd shown up here anyway. She hoped he wasn't here to kill her - she had memos she wasn't done with and she didn't want to die with a headache.
To allay her fears and get to the heart of the matter, he said, "I'm here to find Claire Bennet. Are you holding her?"
Audrey lifted her hands and made a wordless show of how empty they were.
Peter pursed his lips and cocked his head. "Answer my questions," he said, pushing the thought. "I don't have time to play games."
"You won't find Claire Bennet here." Audrey's expression hardened as she recognized and struggled with the compulsion to say more.
"Where is she?"
"In ..." Audrey stopped leaning, sitting up. She was thinking about the gun she wore. She was thinking about yelling for help. She was thinking she needed to have a panic button installed in her office, which wasn't a place where she'd ever expected to be confronted like this. "Washington … DC." She panted from the strain of trying to resist and glared at him angrily.
"What is she doing there?"
Nothing. Hanging out. Site-seeing. Flippant responses passed through Audrey's mind, but she was too by the book to acknowledge them as legitimate answers to Peter's question. "She's being held for further interrogation."
"Where?"
"Building 26."
Peter grimaced. But of course the place hadn't gone away just because he wanted it to. The government still owned it, still operated it, and still had a vested interest in figuring out specials. "How many other specials have been taken there?"
"I-" She grunted. With great difficulty, her head throbbing in worse pain than it had been before he'd come in, she ground out, "You know, asshole, there is the possibility of having a decent conversation here, but you're blowing it!"
Peter exhaled softly and stopped concentrating on forcing her cooperation.
Audrey groaned and put her head in her hands, elbows on knees. Peter glanced behind him. The voices through the thin door had faded to quiet, but at least no one had tried to bother him. Yet. He turned back to her. "I don't have much time."
"What are you trying to accomplish? Are you just going to jail-break her?"
Peter frowned. "You can't hold her forever."
"We haven't even held her twenty-four hours! Maybe not even twelve. Legally, we can hold her a little longer, Mr. Rescue Ranger. She's not in danger."
"What are you going to do her?"
Audrey sat up, brows rising. "Ask her questions. Maybe she can explain all of this." She waved her hand in a way that indicated her computer, office, the cargo container, or maybe all of New York. She meant the entire situation.
"So what if she can? It's not your business."
"The hell it's not!" Audrey said hotly. "A bunch of yahoos almost shook New York City to its foundations! That's not my business? Not the government's business? Are we supposed to sit around and hope you people," she waved at Peter, her thoughts indicating specials as a whole, "can work it out on your own, when you can't even handle a few shoplifters without inciting a riot?"
"Okay … that ..." He wasn't sure what to say. It was painfully true and apparent to him that specials, especially the carnival, didn't have a good track record of self-governance, or of sensitively handling the power differential between specials and non-specials. A good illustration of which was his own behavior of just a few minutes earlier, when he'd been using Matt's power to coerce answers from her. So it wasn't just the carnies, he thought guiltily.
"And burning people to death!" Audrey added, in unintentional reinforcement of what he'd been thinking. "And not even the shoplifters, but the police, who were trying to calm things down." Audrey stood up. "Peter, I think you're trying to be one of the good guys." Her voice returned to normal, trying to be persuasive and call on years of training in manipulating people on the other side of the table from her. "I know you have a regular job, you pay taxes, you live somewhere stable, you have a life. I have some questions I want to ask about what you were doing here last night, and-"
"I was here to stop Samuel Sullivan from killing thousands, maybe more, with that … earthquake stunt he tried to pull."
She sat on the corner of her desk. "But there was an earthquake."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but it didn't open up the ground like one of his sinkholes and swallow all of Central Park like I think he was planning to do."
She blinked and pulled her head back. "Why would he do that?"
Peter shrugged. "I don't know. From what I saw on the news, he did for an entire town somewhere out west. And I know he pulled down a big house near here." He didn't mention the courthouse where Jeremy had been, because having heard what had happened to Jeremy, Peter couldn't find it in his heart to blame Samuel for that one.
"But what does he accomplish with it? That's what I don't get."
This really wasn't the conversation he'd expected to have here, but if it led to more information about Claire, then he didn't mind selling out Samuel. "I think he thought he could scare people into taking him seriously."
"Oh," Audrey smiled and turned her head, "We're taking him seriously, all right."
Peter nodded. "Let's talk about Claire. She wasn't hurting anyone. I've explained what happened. You can let her go now."
"I have a lot more questions than this, Peter. And if you know anything about investigations, we have to interview everyone separately, then we compare notes. That's how it works."
"You don't need her," he said, knowing she wouldn't listen.
"Once we get done with our questions, if she hasn't done anything wrong, then she's free to go."
"What do you even suspect her of?" he said, exasperated. He could hear the suspicion in her thoughts, but it wasn't coming to the surface.
"Now that you mention it, what were you doing last night with Sylar?"
Peter choked. Does everyone know? His own guilt, embarrassment, and shame made him color profusely and temporarily blinded him to the fact that Audrey was asking about events at the carnival, not in his bedroom. But now that he'd had such a strong reaction, Audrey's brows had climbed her forehead to hide under her short bangs, a soft, "Oh," passed her lips, and she was suspecting exactly what Peter didn't want her to know. He got out, with difficulty, "Sylar … saved … he saved Emma. He helped. He didn't do anything, um, wrong, last night."
"If you say so," Audrey said. "I suppose you'd know better than I would." She eyed him, and his continuing involuntary blush and tense irritation confirmed her opinion that she'd stumbled onto a previously unknown personal relationship. "Maybe you can confirm a theory for me, Mr. Petrelli. Back a few months ago, when we had a little scare that Sylar was going to assassinate the president and take his place, you, your brother, your mother, Claire, Claire's dad, Sylar, Matt Parkman, and a few others all went to the same place, with the same story - 'the big bad Sylar is going to get the president.'" She watched Peter for a moment, untrusting. "You know, I'm normally not a conspiracy nut, but you'd have to be an idiot not to know what the result would be if a group of specials banded together to appear to save the president's life - he'd be grateful. He'd think he owed his life to you. And that's why you're on the kid-glove list now, presidential pardon and all that. It was a good way to get Homeland Security taken off the case of specials as a whole and changed the entire philosophy for dealing with you people. Now what I want to know is, was that whole thing just a setup, from start to finish? Was there ever any real assassination attempt?"
He huffed. "That's what you want to know from Claire, isn't it? And you thought a nineteen year old girl would be easier to twist into saying what you want her to say, so you can go back to persecuting specials just like Danko was doing."
"I'm nothing like Danko," she said, rising from the corner of the desk, lip curling. "Whatever's going on, Peter, it's not healthy for your people. You know that as much as anyone. Your brother's funeral?" She tilted her head, and he could see she had a lot of questions about that, too. No one who knew Nathan could fly would buy the idea that he'd died in an accidental plane crash. "I hear just yesterday Matt Parkman was found dead, murdered, by someone claiming to be Sylar."
Peter's lips pressed together. He supposed Sylar must have idiotically announced himself to the family before killing Matt. But then again, he reminded himself, Sylar hadn't gone there to kill anyone. There might have been a lengthy and frustrating interaction before things spiraled out of control.
Audrey shrugged, pushing out her bottom lip and raising her brows as she shook her head. "And here you are, telling me Sylar spent last night saving people, before going home with you for the night."
"I didn't-" say he went home with me … Crap!
"I have witnesses," she said drily, trying to imply she knew more than she did.
"So, what? Are you going to put me on trial for who I sleep with, is that it?" he blurted out.
"When they're serial killers suspected of more than twenty murders and trying to kill the president? I think you have a lot to answer for in your choice of lovers, Peter." She was trying to goad him into confirming or denying and he knew that, but he felt a strange resistance to denying it even though he knew that was what he should be done.
Instead, he replied, "Well, I'm not answering to you." He turned and stomped out in an angry huff.