Author's Note: Arlene is an RP character of mine at a Heroes site. 3 Hopefully you like her. She resides in Ontario, Canada, just so you know. However, she will meet up with somebody we know from the show, so don't think this is an entirely OC fic... 'cause it's not.

Disclaimer: I'm going to lie and say I own Heroes. See, not that hard. gets shot by rabid fans ... or not.

Arlene closed her thick, maroon binder and let out a sigh. She had just finished grading a test, something she didn't necessarily like doing. In front of her were her students, each one working on an assignment she had given them. Those who were finished had fortunately started something else. She didn't like telling people what to do; it showed their lack of initiative.

She panned around the room, looking at each one individually, trying to catch a sense of what they were thinking. 'Arlene, don't… you're going crazy,' she thought to herself, and then thought of Brian. She slowly dropped her head and looked at the mess in front of her desk. The corner was the only unsullied place there, there sat a mint-condition copy of the book "Advancing Evolution" by Chandra Suresh. That book had become like a part of her, she would keep it with her all the time and didn't let anything touch it.

With a faint smile and a heave, she stretched out her arm and picked it up. The class was working, what harm would it do? The subject matter of the novel was truly intriguing to her, the thought of people with these types of abilities, while hard to believe, she found herself believing it as she progressed through it (it was now her third time reading it through, but she still caught on to something each time she hadn't before).

She had barely read a page before finding herself engulfed in the writings (which surprised her, considering it was a factual book, but Chandra's finding were unbelievable), she didn't even hear the knock at her classroom door, it had to be answered by one of the students, and Arlene only noticed when her first name was called from the doorway. Closing the book over her index finger to mark her page she looked over. The principal of the school was there, as were two other faculty members (secretaries? She wasn't quite sure), none of them looked rather happy. She motioned for Arlene to come over. A hesitant nod and the replacing of her bookmark into the information-lined pages occurred before she managed to stand up and make her way to the door.

"Anything wrong, Cheryl?" she addressed the principal of the school in the most calm voice possible. She tried not to focus her attention on the two people—two people she had never seen before—listening to their conversation. Who were they?

"Yes," she replied, glancing coldly at Arlene, "something is definitely wrong…" Her voice trailed off as she finished the sentence. Her eyes flicked to the two strangers—two women, one older, one younger—they looked very much upset.

"What is it?" Arlene asked, shifting her focus between the three people.

"You remember Brian Wilcox?" Arlene only nodded in response. "Of course you do. You were his favourite teacher." She stopped talking and frowned before clearing her throat. "They found him."

"Hey, Mrs. Wood," Brian said with a smile. The bell just rang; fourth period, as well as school, was finished for the day and the children could go and get on with their regular lives. It was always a good thing for the teachers, who despite loving their job, also loved when their job was done for the day. But not Arlene, she lived for when school was in session. But she also enjoyed the occasional after-school talk with some of her students.

"Hello there, Brian," she responded and smiled back. Brian was one of the students. For the quiet kid in the class, he sure spoke a lot with her. Maybe he was just shy. "How are ya?"

"I'm fine," he answered and shifted himself around in the chair. "Yourself?"

She smiled again and answered. "Great, thanks." She looked into his eyes and noticed her looked uncomfortable, like he was holding something back.

No words were shared between the two for a matter of minutes. Brian uncomfortably looked towards the clock, Arlene tried to resist telling him she had to go. The silence was broken abruptly when Brian pushed his chair back, scraping it against the floor. "Mrs. Wood? I have something to ask you."

Arlene lowly arched an eyebrow and also pushed her chair out slightly and leaned back in it (thankfully it was an office chair, with wheels). "Shoot," she told him and became fully attentive.

He looked out at the ground and then back up to Arlene. He had an odd look of his face. He was bracing himself for something. "Have you ever thought… thought that you could hear people's thoughts?"

She didn't quite understand. She pulled her chair forward and stared at him. "What do you mean? Like, your own…?"

Brian let out a sigh and shook his head. "No—no, I mean other people's."

"You'll have to explain, I don't quite understand."

"I… Today during class, I heard something. But it didn't sound like something anybody said, it was like a whisper."

Her eyebrow arched higher. Arlene still didn't quite understand. "Are you sure you weren't just eavesdrop--"

"I wasn't!" Brian shouted and pushed his chair back farther, before rising to his feet. "I thought you'd be the one I could talk to about this. You don't understand--"

"No, Brian, I don't," she said soothingly and took a breath. "But I want to. You have to tell me what you're talking about, because right now you're making no sense."

He let out another sigh and sat down on the chair with a thud. He tilted his head back and stared at the roof for something to say. When he finally looked back down his eyes looked watery. "I don't know how to explain it…" he told her, swallowing hard. "I was sitting in the room, doing my work... then I heard something. But it was like a whisper, like somebody was talking just to me--"

"Well, maybe they were," Arlene cut in.

"That's the thing… she wasn't. I know she wasn't. And if she was, she's a bigger idiot than I thought she was. She was saying how hot some guy—Mark something?—was. She was one of the girls near the front, never bothered learning her name, Kayla? Kylie?"

"Kayla."

"Right, whatever… but I could hear her. I know she didn't say it out loud, she was doing her work and so was everybody else. It's like a tapped into her thoughts."

Arlene still didn't get it, but she was intrigued. She stared at him, not saying a word until she could think of the right thing to say. Brian wasn't the type to tell a lie and why would Kayla tell him of all people she thought somebody was hot? Nobody talked to Brian, as much as she hated to admit it—she knew how school hierarchy works, and Brian was pretty far down on the food chain. "Brian…" she began and blinked a few times before continuing. "Tell me what I'm thinking."

It took him a moment of deep concentration before he answered. His eyes never left hers, when she moved them he'd move them with her. Arlene tried to focus on only thinking on thing until either he gave up or he answered her. "… You're thinking it's nearly four o'clock and that I'd better get going."

"Correct," she said in the most serious of tones she could muster. It was what she was thinking, but she was pretty sure that he would have guessed that anyway.

"You're also saying that I aced last week's math test. 97."

She didn't know what to reply to that, except, "I want to see you after school tomorrow."

"Don't be irrational, Arlene--"

"Oh, shut up!"

Arlene had been both distraught and irritable since the funeral. She hated funerals. Why would she want to listen to some man who had never met the poor person and spin lie after lie about them? Brian was quite the athlete, he said. Hah! One of the many things Brian confided to Arlene was that he'd rather die than take his gym credit. He got his wish, as gruesome as it was to think about it.

Then there was the matter of how he died. Murder. She'd come right out and say it; she knew he'd been murdered. But being found a month later was not your typical murder. His parents released statements that they never received a ransom. Arlene knew there was something more than meets the eye with the case, but she seemed to be the only one who believed it.

"Don't tell me to shut up!" laughed Mike, her husband. She was folded on her couch, nose in a book, while he watched television, another news story was up about the murder.

"I wasn't joking," she said, raising only her eyes from the book. "Why would somebody want to murder him?"

"Why would anybody want to do anything like that? It's disgusting."

She groaned at him. "I know, but… they have to have a motive, right?"

"Not if he… or she… is a serial killer."

"But have we heard about any other murders? No! Why the hell is this story getting so much publicity, then? Mike, you know there's something more to it than they're letting on… maybe how he died--"

"Gun shot."

"—did they show us any proof? No!"

"Bodies being buried tomorrow, hon. They've done the autopsy. I don't think they'd lie to us."

"Michael. There's something wrong with this case. Why won't anybody believe me?"

From the door came a startling voice, to both Arlene and Mike. Arlene snapped her book shot and turned her head over to the doorway. In the dim light being established by the sitting room she could make out the figure of a short person—a child. What they said both melted Arlene's heart and concerned her greatly. "I believe you, mum."