Paul Heart was born in 1975, in upstate Massachusetts to Mandy and Vincent Heart. The Heart family were fine upstanding members of the upper crust who could trace their heritage back to Plymouth rock itself. Paul and his younger sister Sierra grew up with everything handed to them. Their lives were planned from conception to the grave. He was enrolled in a private secondary school before he spoke his first words. Paul worked hard, and if he ever fell short in grades, or friends, he just had his father buy his way out of trouble. That is how things worked in his world. Paul went to Harvard in 1993 and by 1999 he had passed the bar.
Paul was a man who early on learned that money in and of itself was nothing. It was the power that money gave you that was important. Power was the end all and be all of everything. Whether it was the power of taking the life of an animal on a hunting trip to Vermont, or the power of forcing a person out of the home they had lived in for the last 20 years and onto the streets. The feeling of controlling others, of having that kind of power was all that was important.
When Paul was in college he began to notice that when he gave speeches, debated, even presented in front of the class, he could do things to make his words more effective. At first he didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t even notice it. He had subtle unconscious control over the lighting to make himself look more friendly, or more intimidating. As time went on, this power became more and more effective, he would use it in court rooms to give his natural oration ability more strength, but never suspected it was anything supernatural.
Then one day, in 2003, he was working for a big New York City law firm. While traveling home from a late night of case work he was accosted by three men with knives. It was the first time in his life he felt truly out of control. The weakness made him helpless, and ashamed. Fear poured through his body and was released from his skin in the form of a blinding light that temporarily stunned the three men. Paul was so over come by his feelings that he took that moment to step forward and attack his erstwhile assailants, putting two in the hospital and one in the morgue.
Over the next few years Paul kept his ability hidden, practicing it in secret he discovered he could increase and decrease the lighting in an area at will. Reviewing tapes of some of his trials he even found he had been doing so for some time. This amazed and confused him and he began researching such phenomenon. He came across the writing of Chandra Suresh and came to believe he might be one of the people described in his book. He also realized that since these people were supposedly the next step in evolution, that made them better then everyone else. That made him better then everyone else. Something he had already known.
November 8th, 2006: New York City was rocked by an explosion. Paul was less then a mile from the epicenter. He was in a parking garage elevator when the shock wave collapsed the building he was under on top of them and sealed them in. With no power, no way out, and no knowledge of what was going on people paniced. Paul moved in with the practiced hand of a natural leader and began organizing those who were trapped with him to prepare for rescue. Twenty seven people survived the initial explosion. The wounded were treated as well as possible, and food and beverages were scavenged from vending machines once they escaped the elevator itself. The fact that they were underground, and in a form of concrete bunker protected them from radiation. Few questioned the apparent quirk of fate that left them without power on communications but with light.
November 23rd, 2006: New York City rescue teams, on one of their last flights looking for signs of survivors notice lights from one of the rubble piles in the middle of the night. Since the area has been without power for over two weeks, they move to investigate. They recover 11 malnourished and dehydrated survivors from the wreckage. They are rushed to medical treatment and miraculously have escaped the radiation itself. Once they have recovered the survivors credit their survival to the leadership of one man. The source of the mysterious light is never discovered.
In the following few months Heart is hailed as a Hero of the disaster. When Nathan Petrelli reveals the shocking truth behind the events on November 8th, Heart is one of the first people to come forward and register. Paul is smart enough to hide the true extent of his power, showing only the ability to make and decrease light, without revealing the ability to actually blind someone. He is classified in the Tier 0 category and makes no secret of his ability. He begins taking cases defending evolved rights, and working to set up special protections and equal right for the evolved under the constitution. His ultimate goal is to place the Evolved as the uber-man masters of the human race, and himself as King of Kings.
