The Way Forward, Part II

Participants:

ando_icon.gif young_hiro_icon.gif hiro_icon.gif matt_icon.gif mohinder_icon.gif nathan_icon.gif peter_icon.gif

Scene Title The Way Forward, Part II
Synopsis Peter, Hiro, and Ando attempt to change the future…
Date November 8, 2011

DHS Facility

Holding Area


Less than an hour ago they moved Hiro from the interrogation room to a 33rd floor holding cell. It looks like it was a storage room of some kind, shelving hadn't even been moved out yet. He's left to sit at a folding table, still handcuffed, but with Mohinder's copy of 9th Wonders still sitting in front of him. There's a stillness in Hiro, a disbelief that this is how it all ends for him. His shoulders are tense, heart beating hard, fingertips feel numb from the anxiety. He's so scared that he's paralyzed.

Under the fluorescent lights, Doctor Mohinder Suresh looks practically ghoulish. His features are sunken, eyes ringed with dark circles, sweat collecting on his brow. Everything in his subconscious tells him that what he's doing here is wrong, but an underlying whisper like a snake is urging him on. It is a berating voice that takes hold of his subconscious, strangles it to death, and then pushes the doctor forward. He can't put his finger on it, can't realize when the seditious intrusive thoughts began. As he opens a reinforced case holding several syringes, Mohinder's hands begin to shake. The door to the holding cell opens as Matt Parkman steps in, trying to hide how panicked he looks. A quick flick of a stare is fired over to the Haitian, then as he spots the syringes, to Mohinder.

Mohinder. Matt's voice rings in the doctor's head. Don't react, just listen to me. You can't go through with this. The President isn't who he says he is, we have to act calm. Whatever he's asked you to do here, it's a lie. Mohinder briefly looks to Matt, a dribbling bead of sweat trickling down the side of his face. Mohinder's eyes meet Matt's, and it's in that exact moment that Parkman realizes something is dreadfully wrong with his friend. He can see the dread in Mohinder's eyes, feel the emotional pang of fear deep within his subconscious.

Matt realizes just how wrong he's been about so much.


DHS Facility

Lobby


Seated at the reception desk, a security guard for the Department of Homeland Security holding facility leans forward with a creak of his chair and turns up the volume on the television. On the screen, Nathan Petrelli stands sharp in a dark suit and red tie, looking perfectly mournful and respectful as he stands before a broken concrete wall draped with an American flag. He leans back in his chair, looking at the chyron at the bottom of the screen that reads A NATION REMEMBERS. He looks across the wide-open lobby, up to the second floor balcony wrapping around it, then back to the screen as the President continues his speech.

We've all mourned. And we've all had to become soldiers…

In a rush of displaced air Hiro, Peter, and Ando appear in front of the security desk. Hiro looks around at the handful of DHS personnel in the lobby, then offers a look over his shoulder to Peter. Ando takes one step back, bumping into the desk, and the security guard watching the television looks up and then jolts out of his chair. Peter takes a step forward, long jacket swishing at his legs. The guard's voice hitches in the back of his throat, wide-eyed stare focused on the sword on Hiro's back.

…heroes.

Three security guards in the lobby spot the newly arrived trio and back away as they draw their sidearms. One of them rushes to an alarm on the far wall and pulls it down. It is silent, triggering elsewhere in the building but not ringing in the spacious lobby. The guards train their weapons on Hiro, Peter, and Ando and steady themselves.

Protecting one another


DHS Facility

Holding Area


…from the gravest of dangers.

An alarm sounds, blaring klaxon, ringing out through the open space of the holding area. Parkman looks up at the alarm, then down to Rene who steps behind Hiro and rests his hands on his shoulders. Mohinder stops mid-stride and looks over to Parkman, who steps away and scrubs a hand over his brow. Mohinder. Please. Talk to me, this is insane. Then, remembering Rupert Carmichael, remembering the threads that went nowhere in the investigation on him, remembering the possibilities that he'd considered and ignored because it seemed all too impossible, Parkman furrows his brows and pushes an intrusive thought deep into Mohinder's mind.

This is a battle that none of us wanted.

Hiro looks up at he two, then down to the dark hands on his shoulders. His brows knit together in an expression of worry that is so unlike the concentration and effort expressed by Parkman. He inhales, a shuddering and timid breath. He doesn't want to die here. Matt finishes staring at Mohinder, then fires a look to Hiro, then hastily moves to the door. He can feel his phone vibrating in his pocket as he moves. With a swift motion, he pulls it out and sees the front screen:

1 Missed Call
Molly

Matt tucks the phone back in his jacket. He can call her back when this is over.


DHS Facility

Lobby


In response to the alarm, two columns of black-clad and armored SWAT officers begin descending the stairs from the second floor balcony to the lobby.

One that we entered with a heavy heart.

More armed SWAT appear over the second floor balcony, their guns aimed at the three men standing back-to-back down below. Hiro looks aside at Peter, one brow raised. "Should we freeze time?" Peter glances back at Ando, considers the situation, and then looks back to the approaching phalanx of security forces.

"No," Peter indicates with some assurance, knowing that Niki and the others are right behind them. "I haven't had a good fight in years." Even as he says that, more tactical response team members begin flooding out of doors in the ground floor and circle behind the security desk. Peter looks at Ando, clenches his fists, and steadies himself.

Knowing that the enemy was ourselves.

Both Hiro and Peter disappear in a guttering rush simultaneously, flickering over to the closest security officers. Hiro draws his sword out and moves in a fluid arc, cutting up through the officer's chest and sending him sprawling to the floor with a scream. Gunfire begins to pop as Peter appears behind one officer, releasing a controlled burst of radioactive heat at his back that blisters flesh off and cooks him from the inside out. His clothing catches fire briefly, smoke issues from his tactical vest, and before the other officer can return fire, Hiro appears at his side and runs the Kensei sword under his armpit and out the front of his chest, then with a twist of leverage separates his rib down to his hip and swings the blade out in a clean line that leaves a red crescent on the white floor.

We've won battles…

Hiro flickers from officer to officer, sword flicking out in a glimmer of razor-sharp steel as he cleaves through armor designed to stop impacts, not shearing forces. Panicked shouts and screams erupt from the balcony as Hiro flicker-slashes his way through the security team, briefly stepping across the Department of Homeland Security seal on the floor as he advances on three more security officers taking aim at him. A few feet away, Peter projects a blast of radioactive fire out at four clustered security officers, setting them ablaze and peeling skin from meat from bone.

…the world over. Not only against those that would do us harm…

Hiro swings his sword down, cutting through another security guard and sending him toppling to the side into a rapidly forming pool of blood. Peter appears behind another officer, stripping him of his gun and punching him in the throat, sending him spinning end over end to collide with the floor in a sickening crunch just feet away from Ando. Ando, who is witness to all this inhumanity as the President's voice echoes from the television screen behind him. His jaw is unsteady, hands trembling, watching his best friend he has known nearly his entire life murdering law-enforcement officers without a second thought or remorse. Peter had called it a good fight and all Ando sees is a massacre of people who likely have families. He can't understand what he's seeing. Can't understand the horror, and what would drive good people to become like this.

…but against poverty, reclaiming the environment…

An elevator opens on the ground floor, doors opening, and the security officer inside is yanked off of his feet by an invisible force and thrown through the air like a ragdoll before colliding with one of the tall windows facing the street. The glass cracks and blood blossoms in the fissures. The guard falls to the ground, lifeless and broken. Peter steps into the elevator, looking back over his shoulder as Hiro follows. Ando, hesitantly, moves in to the elevator behind the pair, then looks back to the death and devastation left behind them.

"Upstairs our powers will be blocked by the Haitian," Hiro offers as he wipes his sword clean of blood with his sleeve.

"We need to take him out so the other Hiro can teleport out of here." Peter affirms, looking over to Ando.

"But— " Ando's back tenses, hands clench. "There are guards up there. Won't they be waiting for us? With guns?" He'd seen horrific things today, but he knows that both Hiro and Peter are reliant on their abilities to do much of what they have. Without that, they're not all that different from Ando in a lot of ways.

But we do not forget the price that we've had to pay.

Hiro offers Ando a look, then nods and presses the button for the detention-level floor with the handle of his sword. He stands in the center of the elevator, sword pointed downward with both hands as the elevator doors close.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


With a row of tactical response officers kneeling in front of him, Matt stands with his back to the door containing Hiro Nakamura. His breathing is hastened, heavy, and his sidearm trained on the door with the others. He has no way to know what's coming through that door, only that a security breach is in effect. Communication is spotty, multiple targets, screams, nothing concrete. For all he knows it's Sylar, and he's coming for the one thing he could use to destroy everything. Matt sweats, nervously. He'd put everything he could on Mohinder in that room, and all he can do now is hold out hope that his friend doesn't do something unthinkable. In the silence, Matt wonders about what Hiro can truly do. If he can change the future and undo all of these choices, undo what's happened to he and Janice, what's happened to his relationship with his son.

The laws that we've had to pass to keep our citizens safe.

"Put 'em all down," Matt explains to the guards. It doesn't matter who comes through those doors. If there's even a chance that this could all be undone, if the waking nightmare he's found himself in could end then it's worth it. Worth betraying his country, worth putting his life on the line, worth a lifetime of bad choices. "No warning." The phone in his pocket vibrates again.

To preserve our way of life.


DHS Facility

Elevator


In the elevator, Peter reaches up to his earpiece. He squints, getting static. "They're jamming radio signals, the diversion team's on their own." Brown eyes search Hiro's expression, watching at his friend anticipates the act moment he will need to act. Peter looks over to Ando, expression troubled. "Stay behind us, ok?"

Our hope has always been that a great peace was on the horizon,

Ando nods, though it's under duress. He looks at Peter as though he is a stranger, the same way he regards Hiro now. This is a world of death — his, and others — and the death of the people he loved in ways not physical. A spiritual death that has turned them into killers, because this is a world for killers. As Ando acquiesces to Peter's request and moves to the back of the elevator, he feels shame and guilt. The former, because he's going along with this to save his friend and party to the loss of so many lives. The latter, because he wasn't around to keep Hiro from walking down that dark path.

"that one day wounds would be healed and salvation would be found."


DHS Facility

Holding Area


I'm here to tell you that that day is today. I'm proud to announce that we have developed a treatment, a method to reverse the genetic code.

Stepping to Hiro's side, Rene keeps one hand on the time-traveler's shoulder and focuses his attention out to the hallway beyond. He can feel Parkman's ability, Hiro's ability, can feel the threads of others in his vicinity but not quote at the edge of where he can snuff them out. His eyes turn over to Mohinder, and watches as the doctor fills his syringe with an innocuous, clear fluid. Rene looks back to the door, steadies himself. Angela had told him he needed to be here today, needed to be beside Nakamura, needed to fulfill his role in the shape of things to come.

The first clinics will open next month across the world, and soon… we can begin lifting restrictions.

Hiro looks over to Mohinder as he flicks the last of the air-bubbles out of the syringe. He can see something is wrong with the doctor, the way he's trembling and sweating in the same manner Hiro realizes he is. They're both afraid. The only person in the room who isn't, is the Haitian.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


Cities and families can be reunited, and we can finally live without fear.

The numbers on the elevator leading up to this hallway are counting up. Matt keeps his gun raised, trained on the door. Then, the nagging worry at the back of his mind has him reaching down with one hand to pull his phone out and flip it open. He presses a button without looking and brings it up to his ear. He's tense, flicking a look back over his shoulder at the door to where Hiro is being held, then back to the elevator as it climbs in steady ascent. «Hiiii! You've reached Molly's Phone! If you're Daddy Matt or Daddy Momo leave a message!» Matt exhales a sigh through his nose and slaps the phone shut and tucks it back into his pocket. The fact that she isn't answering twists his stomach into knots.

We've been vigilant. We have been uncompromising.


DHS Facility

Holding Area


Mohinder walks into the caged enclosure Hiro is restrained in, syringe in hand and expression heavy. Hiro, trembling with fear, looks up at Mohinder with both hopelessness and weariness. He hasn't seen the death that Ando has, but he's seen the future take good people and strip them of their humanity.

and our efforts have paid off.

Hiro can feel the Haitian clamp down on his shoulder as Mohinder approaches, solemnly, with the syringe in hand.

The nightmare is over.

Mohinder stops beside Hiro, and Hiro looks up at the syringe.

The world is saved.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


"Why are we waiting, sir?" One of the tactical response members calls back to Parkman. "Why can't we just bring the fight to them?" It earns a withering stare that the officer can't see from his angle, and Matt's patience is wearing thin.

"Because we'd lose." And because Parkman isn't sure whether the President will be the one The Haitian's up here, so up here, they're powerless. When the elevator reaches their floor and a chime resounds through the hall, Matt's heart leaps into his throat. "Weapons free. Shoot on sight." The tactical response team steadies their firearms, but when the doors open there is only an empty elevator car beyond. Matt waits for a moment, extends his thoughts outward to see if its some sort of invisibility trick. Then, with a frustrated huff of breath he hurries over to the elevator and walks inside, looking around. Reflexively, he slams a hand into the wall, then turns around to look at the rest of the security team.

Whoever it is, they're toying with him.


DHS Facility

Holding Area


As Mohinder approaches with the syringe, Hiro feels the finality of what is happening. He has no idea what's in that needle, but it's certainly not the way home. "I must go back to stop explosion. You know I'm telling truth." He pleads with Mohinder, and somewhere deep down inside the doctor does know Hiro is telling the truth, but there's a pit in the back of his consciousness whispering lies into his ear.

"Hold him down," Mohinder orders, and in response Rene forcibly pushes Hiro forward and slumps him down onto the table, one large hand pressed at the back of his head.

"Please don't do this!" Hiro cries, his heart racing, eyes fixed on the syringe. He doesn't want to die here. Hiro whimpers, shaking with fright. It's enough to give Mohinder pause, and he looks down at the syringe in his hand, and then over to Rene.

"I'm sorry," Mohinder's hand is shaking, as Parkman's directive and the serpent in his mind battle for supremacy. Hiro clenches his eyes closed, waiting for the final sting. Rene feels it instead, as Mohinder slams the syringe into the side of his neck and depresses the plunger. Rene lets out a sharp exhalation of breath, looking over to Mohinder even as one of his eyes goes bloodshot and veins bulge at the side of his head. He lets out a gurgling noise and slumps over onto his side, hitting his head against the table before crumpling to the floor. In a sudden burst of movement, Mohinder drops the syringe and rushes behind Hiro, quickly unfastening his bonds.

"Come on. Come on, come on!" Mohinder shakily exhales the words as if repeating them will make this plan less suicidal and stop his stomach from twisting into knots. Mohinder uncuffs Hiro and helps him up to his feet and rushes out of the caged enclosure with him, sweeping up the 9th Wonders comic as he does.

"You're letting me go." Hiro blurts out exasperatedly. "Why?"

"I think I'm supposed to," Mohinder admits in a somewhat conspiratorial tone with wild eyes that any other person might see as deranged. He hands over the unfinished 9th Wonders comic, letting Hiro fold back to the marked page. There he finds a panel with a character that is clearly Mohinder with the syringe and the Haitian holding Hiro. In the following panel, the syringe is plunged into someone’s neck. The third panel shows it’s the Haitian.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


Distant gunfire echoes from floors below. In the stairwell below Parkman's position, Peter crouches in wait, looking back at Hiro and Ando. "Hiro," Peter's eyes flick to his sword-wielding friend. "Did— you feel that?" They'd been creeping up floor by floor, trying to circle around and figure out where the Hiro they're here to rescue might be. But now, both of them feel an absence of a static at the back of their mind. Both Hiro and Peter cracks a smile, and each slaps a hand on Ando's shoulder and disappear in a rush of displaced air—

— reappearing behind Parkman's defensive formation. Hiro freezes time, halting everything for them. Peter looks over at Matt, raises a hand and it ripples with radioactive heat. "Peter," Ando urges. "We… don't have time for that." It's not what Ando wanted to say, but he'd seen enough killing for one day. Seen enough killing for a lifetime. Peter hesitates, scowls, and lowers his hand.

"Hiro, go— " Peter considers his words carefully. "Find yourself. I'll make sure everything stays fine out here." He's worried about Niki, worried that the radios are still being jammed. Hiro turns to head for the door with Andowaiting by Peter. But Peter turns his attention to Parkman, that frown steadily returning. Then, a beat later. "Fuck it," and he unfreezes time and sucker punches Parkman in the jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor before he even knows who hit him. The security team turns around, and Peter wades into them, disarming them and smashing them against the wall until they crumple. Hiro looks back over his shoulder, just once, then continues for the door with a disgusted Ando hot on his heels.


DHS Facility

Holding Area


"I'll take you where it's safe," Mohinder explains, moving toward the door, knowing full well that Matt is behind this plan now. Kill the Haitian, he'd driven into Mohinder's skull. It took a while, but he'd gotten there. "Somewhere safe, so you can change all this." Mohinder opens the door, only to find a sword thrust through the gap and toward his chest. He lunges backward, eyes fixed down at the tip of the blade as this timeline's Hiro Nakamura moves in. He pushes Mohinder back up against the wall, then angles the blade up to Mohinder's neck.

"No, future me!" The younger Hiro calls out, "He's good guy!" Hiro's darker self cracks a confident smile, then catches sight of the Haitian dead on the floor by the table. There's a scream from the hallway and a security team member comes flying in through the open door and slides across the floor. Peter steps in a moment later, looking down at the unconscious guard, then up to—

"Mohinder," Peter narrows his eyes.

"Peter?" Mohinder hasn't seen Peter Petrelli face-to-face in years, and in this moment it isn't who he was expecting. Ando comes in behind Peter, stepping over the unconscious security officer. Then, as he looks up and sees—

"Hiro!" Ando rushes toward his friend, and his Hiro in turn does the same.

"Ando-kun!" The pair embrace, and the relief on Ando's face is so very palpable. "«It's so good to see you!»" He says, slipping back into Japanese.

This timeline's Hiro turns to look at his younger self, "You need to go back now." There's a desperation in his tone, and his younger self seems unconvinced. He disentangles his arms from around Ando and turns to face his older, darker mirror, pushing up his glasses with one finger.

"But," he briefly looks away, then back to his doppelganger. "How do I return to the right moment? I don't know how to do that." The older Hiro smiles, stepping forward to rest a hand on his younger counterpart's shoulder.

"I'll take y— " A gunshot rings out, reverberating through the walls, and the elder Nakamura crumples to his knees and then drops to his side on the floor. Hiro's younger self lets out a horrified scream, and all eyes turn to find Matt Parkman standing in the doorway with his gun out. Matt may never, could never know the gravity of the mistake in judgment he'd just made. He didn't know who it was he shot until he sees the sword on his back, until he sees Peter Petrelli standing in the room beside Mohinder. Matt's eyes widen, he had no way to know. And the sudden realization of what he'd caused delays him too long. Before he can try and explain himself Peter howls in anger and throws his hand forward, telekinetically launching Parkman off of his feet and out of the room, sending the door slamming shut.

Ando looks at Peter, and Peter turns a furious look at Ando. "You don't understand! Do you!?" Peter reaches up and grabs Ando by the throat, lifting him off of his feet. "This," he points down at Hiro's body on the floor with blood pooling out from beneath him, Mohinder kneeling at his side to check his condition. "This is our world! You can't reason with it, you can't escape it, you can just endure it!" Peter drops Ando, who collapses down onto the floor, coughing. "Niki and the others are out there, right now, fighting to be a distraction so you— " Peter points at Hiro accusingly, "can end this!"

Hiro tenses and backs away a step, looking down at his double's corpse. Ando pulls himself to his feet, staring at Peter with a challenge in his eyes. But he lacks the words, lacks any rebuttal. Ando had seen how horrible this world was, and now he's watched it take the life of someone he loves. His tired eyes alight to Hiro, and desperation replaces happiness. "We have to get home, Hiro." There's shouting outside, footsteps and voices. That door won't keep Matt and his team out.

"Can you take me?" Hiro asks Peter, pleadingly. There's a brief look of horror on Peter's face and he shakes his head.

"I— I can't. I'm not good with your ability like that. I'd— I'd just make things worse." The last time he'd tried, he sent someone to fucking Antarctica and spun into motion an unthinkable series of events that — even now — he is unaware of his full involvement in.

It's up to Hiro now.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


Out in the hall, Matt paces around with his phone, "Come on, come on…" A pair of officers with a battering ram move forward toward the door, while others with rifles stand at the ready. Whoever is on the other line picks up, and Matt calls out in exasperation. He has to think fast on his feet, has to try and figure out another way, a better way. What he's planning here is a huge gambit. His mind races, debating the values of letting Peter leave with Nakamura, letting things just fall as they might. But then, if that doesn't work, the greatest nightmare the world has ever known is in the most powerful office in the nation. No one will be able to stop him.

Parkman's brows furrow, he can hear the gunfire coming from the elevator shaft. There's a fight in the lobby. When the phone call on the other line is finally handed off to its intended recipient, Parkman plays both sides against the middle of a better tomorrow. "The Haitian's down!" He shouts with a sudden rush of feigned panic. "The Haitian is down!" Then, with a pause he allows the person on the other line to talk. He knows what he has to do. He has to kill two birds with one stone. "We can't get to him, sir. Your brother is holding us off. If I don't get reinforcements now, it's all over, sir. Nakamura will escape. Mr. President? Mr. Pres— "

The line is dead. Matt closes his phone, breathes in deeply.


DHS Facility

Holding Area


The battering ram continues to slam against the door, and Peter with hand outstretched keep a steady telekinetic force holding the door intact. There's too much happening right now, he isn't sure if freezing time would be of help, he can barely concentrate enough to keep the door held fast. Patience and concentration uses Hiro's power, anger and frustration fuels Jesse Alexander Knight's telekinesis. It's easier, it's better than the horror that is Amid Halebi's induced radioactivity. It gives him something constructive to focus on.

Nearby, Ando and the younger Hiro kneel by Peter's Hiro. Reaching into his jacket, the older Hiro hands over the bloodied 9th Wonders comic to Hiro, jaw trembling, and then his hand drops limp. Hiro claps a hand over his mouth as he watches himself die, then looks up to Ando with a horrified expression. Ando is in shock, listening to the slam of the door outside. "«I'm dead»," Hiro whispers into his hand.

"«We need to get out of here.»" Ando directs to Hiro, trying to get him to concentrate, but Hiro can't take his eyes off of his dead future self.

I'm dead»", Hiro whispers again, tears welled up in his eyes.

Hiro!»" Ando grabs his friend by the shoulder and tries to shake him out of it.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


A door in the hallway opens, and as security team members turn toward it, they see the sleek silhouette of the President stepping into the hallway. His levels his eyes at the first soldier to open his mouth, and then tilts his head to the side and the soldier grows eerily silent and steps away from him. Nathan power walks down the corridor, brows furrowed and determined. "Get out of my way," he calls to the guards trying to bash down the door, and it isn't a request, it's a directive. The guards drop the battering ram, moving to the side and behind parting around the approaching President.

Matt moves to intercept, trying to play it cool, trying to make certain his involvement in what happened at the Petrelli Manor isn't plastered across his face. "Sir, how did you get here so fast?" He has to play the part. "I'm not sure it's safe for — "

"Out of my way, Parkman." Nathan's intrusive suggestion presses hard into Matt's mind, knots in a different part of the subconscious than his telepathy, needles through his psychic defenses and seems so reasonable. He steps aside, allowing Nathan to stride to the door, even as horror is swimming in the back of his mind. His will is stronger than Mohinder's, but a part of him wants it to play out this way. It's not about a battle of wills if there isn't a battle to be had.


DHS Facility

Holding Area


Holding on to the door and reinforcing it with a telekinetic shove, Peter notices the battering ram stopped. The voice on the other side feels familiar, but reason dictates the first to come to his mind can't possibly be —

An arm comes through the door as if it were made of water. A hand grabs around Peter's wrist, and he's pulled through the door's surface as though it weren't there. With a superhuman's strong motion, Nathan yanks Peter out from the door and throws him across the hall. Peter slides on the floor as he’s flung out and away from the room, coming to a stop a few feet away with a bewildered look in his eyes as he stares up at a man who looks identical to his brother, but can't be.

"Get in there Parkman. End this." Nathan's directive to Matt sends a chill down his spine, and he feels as though the course of action is reasonable. Get into the room, rescue Mohinder, end it feels— vague, slippery. He can work with it, his mind is already creating rationalizations by the time he's giving a monosyllabic response.

"Sir." As Parkman gives that response and heads to the door, Nathan turns around and looks at Peter with furrowed brows. Peter can see Matt taking his gun out as he moves to stand, but his attention is on the man wearing his brother like a tailored suit.

"Brother versus brother," Nathan admits with a crooked smile. "It's almost biblical."

"My brother can't walk through walls." Peter widens his stance, relaxes his shoulders, stares the man wearing his brother's face down with pointed intent. "Who are you?" The answer to the question sinks a stone to the bottom of Peter's stomach. As Nathan's body ripples like the surface of water, his features become more predatory. Brow and nose more prominent, eyes darker, colder.

sylar_icon.gif

"An old friend," Sylar says with an all-too-pleased smile. He was proud of that line. Peter stares in wide-eyed shock, Gabriel wouldn't do this, wouldn't be involved like this. As far as he was concerned, after how Operation Apollo went down, Gabriel was reformed. Not forgiven, but at least trying to be a better person. Peter could empathize with that. With all of it.

"The guy they blame for blowing up New York," Sylar admits with his smile fading. "But, you and I know the real story, don't we, Pete?"


DHS Facility

Holding Area


Dark hands wrap around the hilt of the Kensei sword, as Mohinder picks it up from beside the older Hiro's fallen body. He slides it into its scabbard, then holds it out to the younger Hiro. "You must leave. Now!" Mohinder doesn't know what lies on the other side of that door, but he knows that whatever it is it means the end has come. Hiro, holding the sword, flips through the 9th Wonders comic that his future self had given him. There, he sees the final panel. The skyline of New York City, and the rooftop of the Deveaux Building.

Hiro's eyes narrow. He understands.


DHS Facility

Detention Level


"You're gonna pay for what you did to Nathan. What you did in his name!" Peter's hands begin glowing with a crackling orange energy, sparks of blue-white light flaring off the edge. Amid Halebi's power might as well be Theodore Spragues, this might as well be Kirby Plaza. History might as well be a fucking wheel. Hiro is forgotten, the future is forgotten, Niki is forgotten. Peter's rage, the single raw nerve of an emotion that made up this half of himself is all-consuming.

"What I did?" Sylar feigns indignation, opening his closed hands as waves of cold spill down from his palms and ice frosts over his fingers. "When I killed Nathan, he had already turned against his own kind."

"Liar." Peter wants nothing more than to believe his brother wasn't the monster he'd become. Wants to believe this was all some sort of sick, confusing game. It doesn't matter, though. None of this matters to Peter. It was always going to come down to he and Sylar, killing each other. What was it that Edward Ray had said to him once, before the raid on Pinehearst? History has inertia. You can either go with the flow, or get out of its way. Peter's lips twist into a scowl.

This is how it should have ended in Kirby Plaza, in the Bronx.

Just the two of them.


DHS Facility

Holding Area


Parkman and the security team have nearly battered down the door. Mohinder stands with his shoulder braced against it, struggling to keep them from breaking in. "Matt!" Mohinder shouts, "Matt stop! This isn't you! You need to listen to me!"

Ando urgently grabs Hiro by the shoulder, trying to get him to focus. "«We must teleport back to our own time!»" Hiro, still staring down at his future-self's body is listless and cdistant.

"«I can’t.»" Hiro's voice is small, broken.

"Hiro!" Ando shakes him by the shoulders, squaring himself to be between Hiro's line of sight and the corpse. "«I believe in you… I’ve seen the man that you become.»" There's a tension in his voice when he admits that. But it changes from anxiety to resolution at the end. "«You can do this.»" The hits against the door become harder and stronger. Mohinder has difficulty keeping the door shut, and through the cracks there are flashes of light and the sound of screams emitting from beyond. Mohinder puts all his strength to keeping that door shut long, looking back to Hiro in terror.

Hiro holds up the Kensei sword, looking to Ando with a worried expression. In that same moment, the door is blown off of its hinges and Mohinder is thrown across the room, colliding with the chain-link mesh of the cage Hiro had been trapped in. Parkman is likewise thrown into the room, but without the door to block the blast he lands in a broken heap, clothing charred and skin red from the heat of radioactive fire. Hiro closes his eyes, as tightly as he can.

I can do this.

Hiro clutches the Kensei sword firmly.

I can

Mohinder watches as Hiro disappears from sight. His mouth hangs open slightly, jaw unsteadies, and…

He hears the chaos in the hall, sees the lights flickering.

…and…

Tears begin to well up in Mohinder's eyes.

They're still here.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License