Largo
by leaffymomo
Note: "You're hiding one of them." Not just one, but two. The reason that Claude was removed from Primatech. How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? I don't own Heroes. Please, please read and use the lovely purple box below, even if you don't like it.
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Some say it's just a part of it,
We've got to fulfill the book.
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause they all I ever had...
-Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"
lar-go: (lär'gō) n. a musical composition or passage that is to be performed in a slow, dignified manner
Chapter One: Claude
Claude--just Claude--tips his head against the car window lazily, opening one eye to observe the cloudy world of the outside. They are somewhere in Maine---the sky was the bleak color of dull cigarette ashes, perfect for tufts of snow to come falling out of them. He wants a cigarette. God, he wants a cigarette. But Claude smokes a pipe, and only sometimes at that. The physician at Primatech has told him probably fifty times that he needs to stop, and since Claude--just Claude--would like to keep his job, he's gradually shifting from one stage to the next.
He's rather antsy. He fiddles his fingers, taps his foot. He flicks the knob that rolls down the window. He drums his nails on the armrest. Bennet, next to him, glances at him the way fathers sometimes glance at their children when they want them to stop being such an annoyance. Claude glances back and puts his hands in his lap. Bennet chuckles.
"Christ," he says, his eyes still on the road, "You're like a little kid, Claude."
Claude gives him an almost sulky look. "Where's the case profile?"
"In the back seat. Read it to me, wouldja?"
Claude unbuckles his seatbelt and twists around through the gap between the seats to pick up a thick manila folder. He resumes his spot in his seat, crossing one leg over the other and flipping open the file. His blue-gray eyes scan the page. Bennet clears his throat.
"Oh--sorry," the invisible man says in his light English accent, "First one is a man--Richard Ackerley, forty-five years old, a..." He furrows his brow at the page, "God, Breckster's got horrible handwriting, can't he use a bloody goddamn typewriter for Jesus' sake?"
Bennet raises an eyebrow. "You need a cigarette," he informs Claude, who snorts.
"Mimic. He's a mimic. He's been forging papers for illegal immigrants...sort of weird...on the Canadian border," remarks the Brit, clucking his tongue.
"What kind of immigrants, though?" asks Bennet and Claude nods in understanding.
"Yeah. Is it...?" The question is wordless, hanging open in the air. "No. Just arrest. Bring him in."
"There's two, though," reminds Bennet, and Claude flips to the next person. "Woman, looks like his wife. Forty-one years old, name's Lisabeth Jones Ackerley..." He trails off.
Bennet waits expectantly. He coughs again, to remind Claude that he's not the only one in the car who needs to know who they're supposed to be tracking. "She's a..." he says, gesturing, waiting for Claude to complete the statement.
"She's telekinetic."
"Shit," says Bennet, sighing and looking back out on the road. "You get her, then. If she goes beserk, the only thing that'll stop her is---"
"Something she can't see, I know," Claude cuts him off irritably. "I was there at training too. This is why I'm here." He slaps closed the folder, and then opens it again in a huff.
"Take the exit after this one," he says, "We've got to get to...1589 Prewett Street. It's in...Brussels?" He squints at the report. "Yeah. Brussels, Maine."
Richard and Lisabeth Ackerley live in a poorer part of Brussels, Maine, but it's not bad. A lower middle class suburb, not quite poverty, not quite comfort. Their house is the last on the end of a quiet, motionless lane called Prewett Street. It's the middle of the day--1:00, lunch breaks are over and the streets are devoid of life. Except they'll be there. They always are. Even though it's a Saturday, no children are out in the yards. It's too cold, deduced Claude. He doesn't find it too bad.
That's the description for this place: not too bad. You might as well take it, something better might not come along.
They pull up in the driveway. Bennet gets out, locks the car door and so does Claude. He doesn't go invisible yet; they've deduced over countless confrontations that the surprise of him being invisible is better. It creates panic, and sometimes they need that desperately.
Bennet rings the doorbell, Claude at his side. A middle aged woman answers---she's slightly heavy-set, but she has a sweet face and sweet eyes. A surge of guilt plunges through Claude but he stuffs it down expertly. He always feels a twinge or two...these are people like him, after all.
But it is eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. And Claude rather likes his head.
However, back to the issue at hand.
Telekinetics always seem to be a little psychic. "Richard," she calls over her shoulder, in a tone that Claude cannot identify, "It's for you." She quickly backs up, disappears up the stairs. A tall, gangly man appears, and Bennet and Claude shove their way inside the house, closing the door behind them.
"Mr. Ackerley," says Bennet professionally, pleasantly. "You are under arrest for using supernatural powers in ways that have been deemed illegal by the nation and our government. You will brought into custody, along with your wife."
Claude doesn't his take his eyes off the mimic. Richard glances back and forth, apprehension evident in his face. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says, and Claude could have mimed his response along with him, that's how typical it is.
Bennet does not waste time. He is a precariously efficient man, and one too many close calls with these sorts has left him with little, little patience. He draws his gun and points it...rather pointedly at Richard. "Do not make this more difficult for yourself, Mr. Ackerley," he says cleanly, "Put your hands up and let my partner cuff you, and then we'll get your wife."
"Richard? What---oh my God," the voice from the stares, panicked and feminine. "Don't...don't touch him!" And then suddenly Bennet is unable to move. His entire body is trembling. He cannot even turn his eyeballs to give Claude the warning glance, but Claude already knows.
"Let him go," warns Claude in his accented voice, so serious, that flighty quirkiness gone and all that is there is the cold mask of a businessman, "Let him go. That's your warning. Stop it, stop it now."
"No!" she yells, "You're not...we didn't do anything! We didn't do anything!"
And with that, Claude becomes invisible. She gasps, for a moment her guard is dropped and Bennet is released. He slams Mr. Ackerley across the face with his gun instinctively, and then there is the burn of psychic power all around him. Ackerley is still the ground. There is not even the slightest movement of his chest.
"I...told you...not to touch him..." Mrs. Ackerley is shaking, glowing, and Bennet is choking to death. Bennet's eyes roll back into his head. Claude sprints towards the woman without being seen. He is able to touch her---he pounds on her, pulls, screams, the woman is not to be deterred in her last throes of anger, of power.
Bennet lets out a strangled cry, his hands writhing. Claude doesn't think. His hand goes to his belt, he pulls on the cold metal there and then---
The gunshot.
Mrs. Ackerley falls to the floor. Bennet doubles over and breathes. Claude runs over to him. "You alright, friend?" he asks, helping him up. Bennet nods wordlessly. "You're covered in blood," Bennet tells Claude breathily. Claude nods.
"I'll go...upstairs. Wash it off. I'll see if I can find some papers. Go out in the car, okay? We're done here." Bennet limps out the front door.
Claude jogs up the stairs over the woman, heading into a small upstairs bathroom. The tile is plain, the counter is plain and the shower curtain is a dull mint shade with white polka dots. He shakes his head, leaning over the small white porcelain sink, trying to calm himself. He breathes, slowing the shaking of his heart.
A sound. Like a squeak, a pained squeak. Claude whirls around. The squeak comes again, and then a...a hushing noise. His eyes widen; without thinking he yanks back the light green shower curtain.
In the bathtub, huddled together, are the two people who were not in the file.
