A/N: Yes I'm aware that someone else already tried doing the "alternate volume three storyline" as a fanfic, but please do read on. The very least you'll get is perfect spelling and punctuation in this fanfic and who knows maybe even some intriguing twists on the canon.
Prologue: "Powerless"
Adam Monroe
PrimaTech Vault, Odessa, Texas
"Kensei!" Adam Monroe turned around at the mention of his old alias just as he grabbed the vial.
"You were a friend to me once" Hiro Nakamura said in Japanese, as he glared at Adam with an expression that was a mix of disappointment and anger.
"You were more than a friend to me Hiro, you were and inspiration," Adam responded in English as he moved closer to his new enemy, "I was a rudderless drunk and you taught me how to be a hero."
"Only to have you become a villain," Hiro retorted.
Adam face twisted in anger as he drew his sword.
"I learned that from you," He stated coldly as he positioned the blade inches from Hiro's neck, "and when this virus is released, those that are left will be granted a second chance..."
He moved closer to Hiro.
"...and I'll be their hero." He whispered but before he could strike, Hiro grabbed Adam's shoulder.
Checkmate, Adam thought as he dropped the vial, just milliseconds before Hiro teleported both of them away, which in turn proceeded to shatter on the vault floor.
"Don't you see, you're on the wrong side." Peter Petrelli yelled as he telekinetically pushed Matt Parkman back along the vault corridor.
"What about me Pete?" Nathan Petrelli's words froze Peter in place as the elder brother emerged from the corner of the corridor.
"Am I on the wrong side too?" Nathan grimly asked his brother in their first face-to-face meeting ever since Peter saw Adam save Nathan from a slow, painful death with his blood.
"Nathan?" Peter's mouth was wide open at the sight of his brother.
"We have to stop Adam," Nathan pleaded.
"We have to? Nathan he saved your life!" Peter retorted, "you wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for him!"
"He 'used' me to get to you," Nathan clarified, "and now he used you to get to this place, ask yourself could he manage that without your help?"
The question pierced Peter like a dagger, Adam didn't want to destroy the virus, he wanted to release it and Peter made it happen.
Peter made a dash for the vault followed by Nathan and a barely-on-his-feet Parkman. The first thing he saw when he entered were the shattered remains of the vial. The virus, that in a little over a year would kill 93% of mankind, was released.
Caitlin, I'm so sorry. Peter fell to his knees, defeated.
"Is that it?" Nathan asked, "is that the virus?"
"Yeah," Peter grimly confirmed, "and now it's out because of me."
"Sylar!" Elle Bishop's hand electrified as she had the serial killer in sight, who in turn grabbed the vial case and made a dash for the fire escape just as she began shooting bolts of blue lightning from her hand but none of them hit their intended target. She then ran after him to the fire escape but by the time she reached it Sylar was nowhere in sight.
"Sylar's gone," Elle said dejectedly as she punched a nearby door frame with her one unbroken hand, "my dad's gonna kill me."
"I very much doubt that," Dr Mohinder Suresh retorted, "if it wasn't for you Sylar would've slaughtered us all."
Elle's spirits perked up at the realization of this small victory. They had Sylar on the run, with or without his powers they would catch him eventually.
"Cool." Elle smiled awkwardly.
"Oh no," Mohinder exclaimed as he realized that Sylar had made off with the vials of Claire's blood and his antibodies, "Nikki!"
Sylar wouldn't be powerless for much longer, and even if he accidentally killed himself with a wrong dose of each, this was the last of Claire's blood which meant that Nikki's chances decreased considerably unless they could obtain more.
Peter, Nathan and Matt, made their way back to the ground floor just in time to see a person falling to the ground.
"No!" Peter yelled as he rushed to the man.
"Stay with me, man!" Peter pleaded with the dying man as he checked his pulse and temperature to find them weakening and feverish respectively. His medical training allowed him to make several educated guesses about the virus, it was airborne, which means that we're already exposed to it, highly contagious, which means it's spreading fast, and had an inconsistent incubation period which meant that they could start showing symptoms in a time frame ranging from any second to any day now. The perfect combination of factors for a pandemic of biblical proportions assuming they had failed to contain it. The man's eyes closed and he breathed his last.
"This is all my fault," Peter said in desperation, "he died from the virus."
"Don't say that Pete," Nathan implored his little brother, "we can stop this."
"How can we stop it, it's in the air?!" Matt asked incredulously.
"Quarantine," Nathan responded, "we shut down the building."
Peter unfortunately knew that it was already too late for that.
"No, we close off the whole town." Peter said with renewed determination. Adam hadn't won yet, not while they had anything to say about it. "Let's go save the world."
Nikki Sanders and Monika Dawson collectively struggled to lift the beam that was keeping the door shut as the flames close in around them. The beam finally lifted high enough for the door to open. They braced the beam on the wall next to the door as Monika opened it just wide enough for her to slip through it and into safety.
Before Nikki could follow, the beam shifted and pinned the door shut again.
Nikki silently cursed whoever designed the building's doors so they didn't open outwards as she attempted to lift the beam on her own. Without her powers however, her efforts were tragically futile as the flame finally came into contact with a gas main and the resulting inferno consumed her whole, or at least that's the impression the rest of the world was left with.
"Why don't you listen!" Nathan's patience with the officer in front of him had flown out of a window five minutes ago.
"Because I have genuine health threats to deal with," Sheriff Bradford replied with a deadpan tone which served to infuriate Nathan even more, "case in point, a student at Union Wells High just passed out."
"Why, is he sick?" Peter asked in a 'you're staring at it' tone.
"I don't know," Bradford responded indifferently, "we're sending an ambulance to deal with it."
"We have another one boss at the library!" A nearby officer exclaimed as he was holding a phone up to his left shoulder.
"What the hell's going on out there?!" Bradford's exasperation was matching that of Nathan.
"We told you it's the virus." Peter said.
"So you're saying" Bradford left to make a few phone calls that hopefully would save the world as Nathan and Peter examined the police map of Odessa.
"Union Wells is here," Nathan pointed at one intersection, "the Library's here," he pointed at another further up north, and closer to the highways leading out of the town, "the virus is on the move but it hasn't made it to the highways yet so we still have time."
"I'm on it." Peter said as he realized exactly what Nathan meant, if Bradford wouldn't quarantine the town then it would fall to him to block any people from leaving it.
"I'll set up a press-conference, get the word out" Nathan responded.
As soon as Peter was out of the police station he flew north to try and salvage the situation and by the time Peter had arrived at least 500 cars had left the city since the virus got out, any number of which could've carried infected people. Peter had to make sure the number didn't get any higher before the authorities showed up. He landed in the middle of the road and right in front of a rocky trench the highway had cut straight through.
And I thought opening the vault was hard. Peter thought as he felt the crushing mental strain of telekinetically creating a rockslide, only slightly alleviated by the reassuring image of the road being blocked by an ever increasing pile of rocks dirt and even whole trees. Once he was positive that the barricade was high enough no one would dare climb it, much less attempt to drive over it he wiped off the blood that had escaped his body through his right nostril with his hand and flew back to Odessa.
By the time he was back, Nathan had done everything humanly possible to look presentable as the reporters, camera crews and journalists had been piling up thanks to Matt's telepathy.
"They're all set, I've made sure they'll listen to what you have to say." Matt said as Peter approached his brother.
"Peter," Nathan noticed Peter's discomfort, "this is not your fault."
"If I hadn't listened to Adam..."
"If only I hadn't listened to Linderman." Nathan's words cheered Peter up as the three moved to face the music.
Claire Bennet wasn't having the best of days, her dad was dead, her boyfriend had dumped her for admittedly well justified reasons and right now she wanted to lay in her bed, curse the stupid American drinking age being four years away for her, and hope that a magic fairy would give her a fake ID so she could drink the pain away without being blocked by a self-righteous bartender or shopkeeper.
"Claire, I'm going out!" Sandra Bennet shouted from downstairs.
"Okay mom!" Claire shouted back with all the mustered enthusiasm of a suicidally depressed toilet cleaner.
After what felt like a minute but was actually a couple of seconds, she reached for the remote and turned on her bedroom TV just in time to see Nathan in mid-sentence.
"...Odessa, Texas has been quarantined to prevent the release of an unknown, extremely contagious virus..." the rest of the sentence became a blur as Claire realized that the person standing right next to her biological father was the long-thought deceased Peter.
"My god! Peter you're alive!" Claire whispered at the screen in subdued shock.
I need to be there, she thought as she began packing for the trip to her childhood hometown.
The Powers that Be had decided that Nathan should be among the first to die from the Shanti virus, he knew that his incubation period was over, he could only imagine how sweaty he must have looked on camera but he couldn't afford to think about it, years as a DA and months as a Congressman candidate had trained him to deliver public speeches and statements with composure regardless of how much physical or emotional pain he was in at the moment.
"I, stand alongside the brave citizens of..." Nathan felt what he imagined a non-lethal gunshot to the head would feel like, "...Odessa..." he knew he didn't have long left, "...in these trying ti..." he felt what strength he had left leave him and he collapsed to the floor.
Peter leapt into action and caught his brother.
"Nathan?" Peter felt a familiar sensation as the same feeling that gnawed at his soul when Nathan told him their father had passed away was here now as the fate of his brother was literally in his hands. He checked Nathan's pulse and found it stable, but the alarming thing was that Nathan's skin felt like napalm to the touch. "My God, he's burning up!"
"Somebody get a doctor here now!" Matt shouted as hard as he could as the assembled camera crews and reporters scattered to the four winds out of sheer panic.
"Nathan please stay with me!" Peter's hope was now replaced with fear, "somebody please help!" He pleaded with the people around him to do something for he could do nothing but watch his brother die. For the first time in a long while, he truly felt powerless.
End of Volume Two
A/N: Interested? Well there's more coming soon so stay tuned, leave a comment and tell me if you liked it and if not tell me why you didn't like it. Chapter One: "Hope And Fear" of Volume Three: "Exodus" will be out ASAP.
