HEROES: Villains
ch.5 - Monsters and Angels
Disclaimer: just playing with Tim Kring's toys. I own nothing.
A/N: many Heroes fans were bothered by the throwaway murder of Adam by Arthur. I got to thinking: what if Arthur's plan went awry and Adam, well, that would spoil this chapter and the rest to come! Canon up to 3.5, then AU starts taking over.
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Angela Petrelli hadn't realized she had dozed off. She found herself walking down the halls of PrimaTech, but she knew something wasn't right.
Then she heard the scream of a familiar voice.
She opened the doorway and found a massacre. Everyone she had loved and known lay strewn about, dead. She knew it had to be one of her dreams portending great danger to them all.
She walked down the hall, surveying the carnage until she heard her granddaughter struggling. She saw the man known as Knox holding the girl against the wall. Then he tore her head off as it was nothing.
A sound behind her made her turn. Adam Monroe stood there with Maury Parkman, smiling darkly. A blonde woman stood between them. It looked like the recently departed Niki Sanders, whom she knew Maury had manipulated into almost killing Bob Bishop before he had been stopped by his own son, Matt. She also knew this wasn't the woman Daniel Linderman had blackmailed into becoming a brief lover of her son, Nathan, but one of her sisters.
Knox joined the trio and she felt someone step up behind her. The serial killer known as Sylar grabbed her from behind, smiling.
She woke up, stifling a scream.
-
"How do you feel about recruiting?"
"Recruiting for what?" Daphne asked, nonplussed.
"An organization for a new world order," the man who called himself Daniel Linderman replied, motioning to a stack of files at his side.
-
"Someone is manipulating us, someone powerful," she informed the young son of her one time lover, Kaito. "And they must be stopped."
"I will find them and stop them," Hiro declared.
"Actually, you're the only one who can," she told him.
-
The duo had spent the last few hours digging up the grave, and now had reached the moment of truth. Hiro opened the casket and looked down at the body of the blond man he had left there. A man he had once idolized as Takezo Kensei, but who had turned on him and killed his father after 400 years of waiting for revenge.
Adam's hand suddenly shot out and grabbed Hiro by the neck.
"Hiro, you little--"
"I need your help!" he choked out.
SLAM!
"Formula?!" he laughed. "I knew that would come back to bite them in the ass some day." He considered what they said a moment. "Even I told them to destroy it," he lied.
"So you know who would steal it?" Ando asked.
"Maybe," he replied, regarding this unknown friend of Hiro. "If I tell you, what's in it for me?"
After a little debate and shaky promises (Adam had to laugh at his own 'Japanese Nazi" snipe), Adam Monroe had promised to help them find this missing Formula and the person who Adam surmised had haunted Angela's dreams, since it was she who had sent the pair after the immortal. She had been against injecting her firstborn, but not others. If she was sending these two to find the Formula, she didn't know who was after it, either. That left three people. One he had already killed.
Adam lead them to the Angry Skunk bar, where other Specials could be hired under the table, which Hiro immediately likened to the Cantina from Star Wars. The reference was pretty much lost on Adam, not having had the chance to see the movie before his incarceration, thirty years prior.
What the pair didn't realize was that Adam had been to the bar during his brief reprieve from his cell. In fact, he apparently had bedded the bartender, Milosh's wife, and the man held a grudge these last few weeks.
At least, that is what Hiro and Ando were lead to believe as the large man chased their blond associate out the back. In fact, Milosh was one of Adam's newer followers. The pair had actually worked out a brief code in case Adam needed a quick escape.
Adam hid in a dumpster in the back alley until he was sure the young duo had left. Unsanitary, but sufficient for the task at hand. Clothes could be replaced, he thought as he pulled himself out of his predicament only to face another one.
A black man suddenly stepped out from behind another dumpster. Before he could react, the man had knocked Adam cold and tossed him into his van. After calling his superior and inquiring of the other two men, Benjamin "Knox" Washington went on with his present duties. He hog-tied Adam, gagging him to make sure he stayed quiet while he waited for his partner to show up.
-
"You're just going to have to trust me, Nathan," Linderman enthused. "You must help her." Nathan knew there was something wrong about the man, but still did as he was told, saving Tracy Strauss from jumping into the Potomac, and then bedding her after she admitted what had happened to her of late.
A few hours later, Nathan woke up thirsty. He wasn't really surprised to see his visitor had returned and called him out on his ghostly status and demanding answers. Linderman suggested he was from a higher power, which Nathan doubted he was "a messenger from God."
"Moses saw a burning bush. Mary heard the angels," he mused. "God came to Samuel in his dreams."
"And I've got a dead mobster telling me he's the voice of God," Nathan retorted.
"You think the answers are outside of you, Nathan, but God resides within," he advised. "The answers will come."
Before Nathan could reply, Tracy entered the room. Linderman had once more vanished, so he fumbled a lame excuse to her. She didn't buy it.
Later that morning, they argued about their next step. She wanted to turn herself in for murder, even if she had to publicly expose her powers to do it. He countered with his fatal press conference, telling her that their abilities were a gift from God. She told him he was wrong, that they came "from a doctor in Reseda." He had no idea what to say to that.
-
Meanwhile, Angela had nearly been killed by her youngest returned from a future with Sylar's Hunger growing inside of him, only to be saved by Sylar, whom she had convinced was her middle child, before he had been sent away. She then let him accompany Noah Bennet to reacquire one of the men he had freed from Level 5, earlier.
When her eldest came to her looking for answers, she was momentarily taken aback by his companion, the blonde woman from her dream. When Nathan informed her of Tracy's identity, she had been glad she had read up on the Triplets that Dr. Zimmerman had injected, especially after the good doctor had called, informing them that Ms. Strauss had just paid him a visit.
When threatened with exposure by Tracy, neither were amused to hear "Zimmerman was instrumental in the Company's development of synthetic abilities." Angela admitted what had happened to the Triplets...and Nathan.
"We were trying to be better than God," Angela explained as she showed them the paperwork proving what had happened. He protested. "Your father was disappointed that you weren't born with the genetic code, but we thought, because of your lineage, your system could handle it," she continued. "And obviously we were right."
"Then what about me?" Tracy accused. "My parents were dead. I had no one to protect me."
Angela debated telling her the real truth, but instead opted on something the woman could more easily accept. "Tracy, what the Company did to you in the name of science was wrong. We know that now," she apologized. "And that is why we divided the Formula and hid it, so this would never happen again," she explained, rising from her seat.
"An innocent man is dead because of what you did to me."
"Then help me," she implored. "Because someone has stolen the Formula. They want to restart this project. They want to create a world filled with dangerous people. Deadly, out of control. They will destroy everything." She stood in front of Nathan as Tracy walked away. "Please help me stop them."
"Go to hell," her son told her and turned away.
"Nathan, it's why Peter took Sylar's ability. It's why he sacrificed himself," she begged, following him across the room. "He knows what's going to happen to this world. You do not understand." She knew she was losing him.
Nathan threw her words back at her, accusing, "You did experiments on me and God knows who else. Peter? Claire? Who else did you use as your own personal guinea pig?" He turned and left the room.
Angela called after him. "Nathan, listen to me. Nathan."
The door slammed in answer.
She knew what would happen, now. It was all a matter of time. They were headed to Mohinder Suresh for help. Suresh, however, had been found out by his new lover, Maya Herrera, and trapped her in cocoon as he did his abusive neighbor for experimentation.
-
Noah Bennet tried to force his quarry, Stephen Canfield into eliminating Sylar within one of his vortexes. Canfield refused, exclaiming, "I won't be a monster!" before jumping into a vortex over Claire Bennet's protests. Sylar would later point out that Noah had used them all that day, making him the real monster. Claire couldn't argue his logic, lying to her father she understood what he did.
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Knox kept a low profile as the two men returned to the bar while he waited for that fine looking petite speedster, Millbrook, to show up with their instructions. Nakamura claimed they were 'bad asses', now, and wanted to join their gang. Daphne informed him he had to prove himself worthy. Knox knew better and ordered him to kill his powerless friend to prove himself for his initiation. After surprised outbursts and an apparent moment's hesitation from Nakamura and Millbrook, the bespectacled man apologized to his friend and did as he was told, stabbing him with a cavalry sword Knox had pulled from the bar wall. Satisfied, Knox decided to return to headquarters with his primary quarry, Adam Monroe.
-
Claire's birth mother, Meredith Gordon, having gone after escapee Eric Doyle, now found herself under his sway, forced into dining with him and even kissing him against her will.
-
Angela had nodded off again at her desk. A woman's scream woke her. She found herself opening that same hall door again, but the hall remained lit, unlike the previous massacre dream. She saw the Strauss woman lying dead, throat slit. Near her, Nathan sat slumped against the wall, head sliced. Peter stood nearby, hands bloody, before dropping to the floor, a pipe lodged in the back of his skull.
She turned and saw a face she thought she would never see again. "Hello, Angela," Arthur greeted her. "You can see the future. I can't have that, it's too dangerous," he informed her, stepping closer.
"No, you won't succeed," she defied her supposedly late husband. "I'll stop you."
"Don't be ridiculous," he replied, reaching for her shoulder with a bloody hand. "You won't even be able to move." She felt her body grow stiff and glared at him. Just before she woke, she saw two familiar figures behind him. She couldn't believe her eyes as she saw them approach Arthur from behind, menace in their eyes.
Her eyes snapped open. She heard his words echo again as she found herself unable to move, slumped on her desk over the folder of her late husband in front of her that she had been reading. She was unsure if it really was him in the dream or a trick by another associate.
-
Daphne Millbrook returned to Pinehearst for her next assignment ahead of her partner, stopping outside the building.
"You're late. Have you completed your task?" her boss asked her, passing by on the darkened sidewalk.
"They're on board. Even the Japanese guy," she informed him as he crossed to the benches by the building. She knew she had to say something. "I'm not happy about what happened. That's not what I signed up for. I'm not a killer," she protested, following him.
"Well, it's all part of making the world a better place, Daphne," he admonished her, sitting down. "No pain, no gain."
He considered his next words carefully, not wanting to bring him up. "There's another one you're going to have to recruit," he informed her. "I'm afraid he's going to be the most difficult," he warned her with just a hint of sadness.
She frowned and picked up the folder, opening it to see a uniformed policeman staring back at her. Kinda cute, she thought. I hope he's not one of those sleazoids on the take like other creeps I'm being sent after.
The man smirked.
"Matt Parkman? What's his thing?" she asked.
"He has the ability to alter your mind," he explained. "Put thoughts into your head. Make you see things that aren't there." He glanced to the spritely girl.
"Speaking of which," she countered, "I finally figured out what's been bugging me about you."
He gave her a knowing, impressed smirk as she stood. About time, he mused.
"I'm fast. Real fast. I can sneak up on everybody," she told him. "But I can't sneak up on you."
He smiled. Stood, and waited for her next move. She took a wide arc with the folder in her hand, slashing through his body.
It passed through and she gasped.
"I knew it," he exclaimed. "You're not really there."
He smirked again. "It's not really your concern, Daphne," he admonished her. "Just bring me Parkman," he said solemnly.
She got the hint he wasn't happy about this new situation as she shoved the file into her bag. "I guess I really don't have a choice, do I?"
He frowned as she walked away. She stopped and looked back only to see he was no longer there. Had he even been there to begin with? she wondered as she ran off.
Maury Parkman stepped out as she disappeared in a blur. He hoped this turn of events didn't ruin the plan. He proceeded inside to update his boss. Time to get your game face on, he told himself, steeling his mind as he entered his boss' room. Dr. Livitz was bustling about, as always.
"The team is coming together nicely," he boasted.
Everything is proceeding as planned? What of my son?
"Everything went fine, perfect with Nathan," he explained nervously. "I messed with his head, gave him visions of Linderman, just like you asked. Now he thinks he's doing God's work."
Good. And he believes you? He believes Linderman is real?
"Yes. Very real."
And the other part of the plan?
"Daphne is spreading the word. We're building an army, just like you...."
What about Adam? Where is he? Do we have him yet?
"Sorry. Knox called just a few minutes ago. He'll have Adam Monroe here by tomorrow."
Excellent. I can't wait to proceed.
"Right. Absolutely. Whatever you say goes, Mr. Petrelli," he agreed before nodding and stepping back out, still careful to keep his mental walls up. Then the plan will truly begin, he thought.
-
Matt Parkman's mind was on his recent experience as he pushed the trolley with his new spirit guide through the terminal. He hadn't liked to use his powers to get back home, but speed was of the essence now, he thought ironically as he glanced down to his new companion.
-
When Knox returned to Pinehearst with Adam, the older Englishman who had recruited him with a shiny new car and beautiful girls in a stretch Humvee limo met him in the lobby.
"Well, someone took their fine time," he quipped.
"We had things to take care of, old man," Knox shot back.
"My, such an attitude," Daniel Linderman replied caustically. "Manners have all but died out, haven't they? And after all I did for you?" he asked.
"Weren't none of them bitches really interested in this," Knox said with disgust at how easily he had fallen into the man's employ.
"If you say so," he replied with a chuckle, looking at his former leader, Adam. "And how are you, this evening, Adam?"
"Daniel?" Adam said in apprehension. "I was to understand you had died?"
Daniel Linderman smiled. "As they say, rumors of my death have been reported in error."
Adam looked at his former follower for a moment, eyes narrowing. "Mazel Tov, then."
"Hm," Linderman grunted in response. He motioned to the elevators. "This way, gentlemen. Go on up, I'll be along in a moment," he smiled.
Adam and Daniel eyed each other as the immortal passed. Knox escorted him to their destination. He wasn't much for talking, so Adam took the initiative.
"You've heard of me, right? Adam Monroe?" he inquired. "I'm guessing you have some sort of special ability. What is it?"
"I get strong off other people's fear," he replied.
"Ah," he mused. "I'm not afraid."
A few minutes later, they arrived at their destination. Knox threw Adam to the floor, nearly missing Dr. Livitz.
"Seriously, you're wasting your time!" Adam protested.
Knox nodded at someone behind Adam. He slowly looked up to see an ornate bed occupied by a familiar face. One he hadn't seen in years, despite the fact there was a variety of tubes and wires strewn around the man. His right hand rested on a pillow, his signet ring still proudly on display, as usual.
Adam was slightly impressed. And curious. "Arthur? I heard you were dead." A familiar tickling in his head.
Long time no see, Adam. Now that you're here, you have something I need, he said, ominously.
"Wait. No. No!" Adam protested as Knox flexed in the doorway, feeding off his growing fear of what it was Arthur wanted from him. He tried to make a break for it, but Knox easily grabbed him and brought him back to the bedside.
"You scared now?" he mocked.
"Please let me go," the immortal begged. "Arthur, no, please! I can be of use to you!"
Knox forced his hand down on the bed and placed Arthur's on top of it.
"NO!" he screamed.
Arthur Petrelli watched as his former mentor grew old and turned to dust before his eyes. He felt the strength return to his hands and flexed them before reaching for the breathing tube, removing it from his throat with a grunt.
"It feels good to breathe again," he said.
Then he realized he hadn't actually said anything. His throat was still dry and sore from disuse.
He looked to Dr. Livitz. What's going on? What went wrong? he demanded of the man. Livitz was standing at his monitor, staring into space. He looked to the doorway. Two men stood there, grinning broadly.
"Nice try, Arthur, but some people are still loyal to me," Adam said, nodding to Maury Parkman at his side.
What? What happened? I took your healing factor!
"Oh, you took an ability alright, just not the one you expected," Maury replied.
Arthur glanced to the bedside. The black strongman stood there, a look of shock and pain frozen on his face.
"Neither one of us is afraid of you," Adam informed him. "Not that you would have the strength to do anything about it in your condition, anyway."
You can't do this to me! I'm Arthur Petrelli! I'm--
Adam and Maury started to leave. Adam glanced back. "Yes. Yes, you were Arthur. Now, you're just a helpless man locked inside a prison of his own making," he replied. "Goodbye, Arthur."
Maury gave him a curt nod and turned to follow the blond man down the corridor.
"Erase the doctor's mind, put the nigger back where he came from," Adam ordered as he walked away.
Maury flinched at the order, but nodded his assent. "I've got to make sure the new speedster recruits her latest assignment. He should be arriving any time, now."
Adam tossed a casual hand over his shoulder in acknowledgement.
Maury glared at him for a moment, then turned to the doctor, giving him his instructions before turning to Knox. "Get your ass out of here, and don't ever come back," he pushed into the man's mind, adding a possible address he could get his bearings at if he had to. Both men left, still in a mental daze.
Finally, he turned to Arthur.
"Sorry it had to be this way," he said as he started switching off the machines. "It was fun while it lasted."
He turned and started to leave the room, reaching for the light switch. "I guess you should have been nicer to the rest of us, huh? You've pissed off the last of the Company Founders, made everyone else think you were dead, and trapped Angela in her own mind. You've got no one to turn to. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see my son," he said as he left.
Arthur began to panic, as he could feel the respirator die down. It became hard to breathe. He concentrated. Use the fear, he thought. Make it work for you. Adam had said they weren't afraid of him, mentioned strength. Was that the black man's power, fear into strength? The Company had come across weirder abilities over the years. He embraced his panic, building his own strength as he did. He hoped this would work. He never found telekinesis useful, not when he could do things with his own two hands.
He heard a barely audible click. The respirator clicked back on.
I can work with this, he thought with a hint of triumph.
TBC_________