Chapter Two: Field Work

One more murder in this town,
Don't mean a thing, just lock your doors
And drive around.
One more murder in this town,
Don't worry, the rain will
Wash the chalk marks from the ground.

"One more murder," Better Than Ezra

Racine, Wisconsin. May, 2009

Noah Bennet had a lot of things to atone for in his life. A lot of things he had done wrong, even though he'd always thought they were for the greater good.

He had lied, stolen and cheated. He had killed and made innocents suffer. He had manipulated and betrayed those he loved and who loved him. All for the greater good. Always blindly believing that the ends justified the means; what was important was not the path you walked, but the destination you were trying to reach.

Amazing how it had taken a little girl to show him that it's the road taken that makes the destination worthwhile.

Amazing how hindsight is 20/20.

The road to redemption is long. It's hard. And it's uphill all the way. It's merciless too, and testing. It dares you to give up at every step, tempts you with the ease of just pulling over to the side of the curb and resting. Burdens you with the weight of your guilt and conscience. It screams at you, 'it's okay if you quit, at least you tried!'

But if life's a journey, it is the path you take that makes the journey worthwhile.

Bennet had learned that from his teenage daughter. That weakness and strength are not measured by how many times you trip and fall, but how many times you stand up and keep on walking.

And now he walked. Slowly sometimes, others running as fast as his legs would carry him. But he never dared to stop.

It was good that, at least, he didn't walk alone.

That morning, as he drove the rented sedan they had picked at the Chicago O'Hare airport terminal, Bennet considered his current companion in the long journey to inner peace and enlightenment.

Mohinder Suresh sat in the passenger's seat of the Nissan, busily going over his notes again as Bennet drove the car. The Indian professor hadn't physically changed much in the two-plus years he had known him. His life in the States and his current academic status hadn't done much to improve his taste in clothing either. Still the same perpetual five o'clock shadow and unruly jet-black hair. Still the same choice of floral shirts and faded jeans or chinos.

Bennet had tried to instill in him the reasoning that the people they met would take him more seriously if he dressed more like the Ph.D he was, instead of a New York cabbie.

The man from New Delhi usually just retorted that tweed itched.

On the other hand, when he looked into Mohinder's dark eyes, the former Primatech executive had no problems in seeing how much the professor had changed indeed.

There was still a weight on his shoulders, the one of a son trying to live up to the ideals of a father he had thought had failed, but it seemed lighter these days. Molly Walker could claim a lot of responsibility for that, but also the fight they were fighting every day.

A battle not fought with guns or bombs, but with science and microscopes. A fight not to overcome and conquer, but to understand and help. A fight for hope.

Mohinder was another man Bennet had used and abused like he was tool. Now he called him friend.

The shared road to Shangri-La had some strange turns indeed.

"Do you ever think about publishing your work?" Bennet asked, making small talk while they drove towards the suburban outskirts of Racine, 50 miles away from the Chicago international airport.

Mohinder gave him barely a glance before going back to his papers. It was always his work, as if he was the only one responsible for it and the man behind the horn-rimmed glasses was just an unimportant assistant. When the truth was that he wouldn't have advanced half as much as he had done during these last few years, if it hadn't been for his "unimportant assistant".

The Accelerated Evolution Project was officially an academic study that tried to trace a virtual roadmap of what human evolution might bring in the near future. The applications of said work – according to the official press reports – would help scientists in all fields of study to anticipate the twists and turns that extreme genetic variations might affect to humankind. The benefits in pharmacology and medicine advancement only would be endless and profitable.

Funded by Yamagoto Industries – a pet project of Kaito Nakamura himself - it was the consensus by those very few in the business circles that had even heard of the project, that it was little more than some theoretical nonsense that would amount to nothing more than some science fiction-y press release, and a possible tax write-off. The Wall Street Journal had published a rather poignant, yet small, article about how big companies would do better investing their money in more realistic investigation programs instead of wasting it in pointless pseudo-science that would go nowhere. Why try to figure out what might be a problem in the distant future when there were already so many diseases today which still had no cure?

They had no idea.

Mohinder and Bennet looked for special people all around the globe. Evolved humans whose names were produced by the constantly-running computer program created by the late Dr. Chandra Suresh. A coded program whose inner workings, by the way, they still hadn't been able to figure out.

"Look how much something like that helped my father," Mohinder finally said, not without a small dose of bitterness. "The day I want to be branded a fool that way, I'll simply dress up as a clown instead."

Bennet darted a look at his shirt. It was white with pink flowers today. "I'll pass on any commentary about that. But seriously, your father didn't have a tenth of all the data you've collected during the last two years. He wrote a book about theories, whereas you have facts."

"Facts? Oh yes, I can really see the editors of the academic journals agreeing with that description. Nobel Prize, here we come," Mohinder chuckled. "You know, for being a man so used to keeping secrets, you seem awfully interested in bringing everything into the public light nowadays."

The man with the horn-rimmed glasses shrugged. "It's going to become public knowledge, and sooner rather than later. Remember how it was at the beginning? We were lucky if the program added one name to the list every month. Now it's one every week. Sometimes two."

"Yes. It's definitely accelerating," the Indian professor conceded. "But there's still so much we don't know, Noah. This is a phenomenon of which we're only starting to glimpse the consequences. We don't know the reasons, we can't see any pattern. There's so much we don't know, it eclipses what we actually do know. And we don't know Joe."

"Jack," the other man corrected.

The genie was definitely out of the bottle now, Bennet could feel it. Mohinder would go into at least a fifteen-minute tirade about his investigations, but he didn't mind. Listening the professor's rambles beat the local radio stations any time of day.

Suresh didn't disappoint, either. His accented voice grew in intensity and passion about the subject. "For example, we know that the genes containing the DNA mutation that endow special powers are present at birth. You're either an evolved human or you're not, you don't become one. But if it's like that, what makes them go active? And why aren't they active right from the start? We've met people who manifested their condition during adulthood; like Matt Parkman, he didn't have a clue about his telepathy until he was well in his thirties. But others like Molly and Micah have been conscious of their abilities since early childhood. Now, Micah of course is second-generation, both his parents are evolved humans themselves, but Molly's biological parents were baseline-"

"Baseline?" Bennet arched his brow.

The man from New Delhi grinned sheepishly. "Well, I had to define regular non-empowered humans somehow, and felt that labeling us 'normal' would somehow brand them 'abnormal'. I refuse to give our daughters a label with such negative connotations."

"Anyway," Mohinder continued excitedly, "there has to be a factor that activates the powers, but what is it? It is biological, environmental, emotional...a combination of any of those? Something completely different? Ah, it's so frustrating! It's like we have only pieces of a giant puzzle, and we have no idea what kind of complete picture they form."

Bennet understood the other man's frustration with the subject. For as long as he had worked for Primatech – in a middle-management position, as Parkman had so accurately described it once – he had only been revealed glimpses of all that his bosses knew. He had always been briefed on a regular need-to-know basis. As Mohinder had said, he had only been shown small pieces of a much larger puzzle, too few and too far away from each other.

Like Kaito Nakamura himself. The man knew – KNEW with capital letters – more than he had ever let on. He had been one of heads of the Primatech Hydra at one point. Hell - he had been the man who, back in 1990, had put Claire into Noah's arms to raise her as his own child!

The reasons behind the Japanese mogul's actions were nothing but a mystery themselves. Had he simply left Claire in his care with the intention to retrieve her when she 'manifested', as the Japanese man had assured him would happen? Bennet couldn't help but to think – given all that had happened afterwards – that Nakamura-san had had ulterior motives. But what were they?

Then, if he really wanted Mohinder's research to succeed, why did Hiro's father refuse to meet them face to face and reveal all he knew about the phenomenon? Why did he keep his silence about Linderman, the Petrellis, Deveaux and himself?

Was Nakamura really furthering their research, or just keeping them in the dark?

All this unsettled the former man in black – well, he had never actually dressed in black – and did nothing to ease his mind and clear his conscience.

If it had been up to him, to be honest, Bennet would have been perfectly happy throwing everything aside and moving with his family to some remote and anonymous place where they could spend their lives in blissful ignorance after the night of the exploding man.

But he knew such an option simply was not possible. With Linderman, Thompson and Deveaux dead, Angela Petrelli vanished and Nakamura playing his own game – whatever it was – Primatech had fallen apart. By the time he had made it back to Odessa, the back rooms in the paper factory were all empty. The scientists and technicians gone. The security personnel vanished.

Bennet had phoned numbers, tried to get in contact with key figures. He only got disconnected lines and silence as answers.

The front business was still running, its façade setup so good that those employees actually believed themselves members of a successful but regular paper manufacturing business. They had even kept his position as sales director, if he'd wanted it.

But of course, as tempting at it had been to turn his fake persona into the real one, it was something Bennet couldn't allow to happen. That the people who'd worked for the Company weren't there any longer didn't mean they didn't exist anymore. They were still somewhere, possessing enough knowledge to make them dangerous and extremely valuable at the same time.

It was only a matter of time before somebody would pick up that knowledge and try to do something with it. And the end result would invariably be that innocent people would suffer because of it. People like Claire.

The only way to protect his daughter and many others like her was to beat them to it. To find answers where there were only questions. To be ready for when the time would come. Nakamura's offer to fund Mohinder's research had been godsend in that sense, and Bennet had decided to take the chance. Maybe he was once again allying himself with the Devil, but for Claire, her would gladly run that risk.

And, along the way and much to his own surprise, the man behind the horn-rimmed glasses had found he was not alone. And that, as much as for his daughter and family, he was doing this for himself.

For redemption.

"What do we know about this guy?" Bennet asked all of a sudden, realizing that the Indian professor had fallen into a sullen silence. This was not strange to him, either. Mohinder could become quite brooding when the frustration of the work came afloat, and, although he had memorized Robert O'Connor's file, he wanted to shake him out of it.

Mohinder went back to his notes and read over, "Robert Donovan O'Connor, 33 years old from Racine, Wisconsin. Married to Carol O'Connor, née Foster for the last five years. No children. Works as an accountant in a factory that produces home rubbish compactors."

Bennet nodded. "Fitting. Rubbish compactors were invented in Racine."

"Fascinating," the professor said, in a tone that clearly indicated he didn't think it was. "He seems to be your average Jack."

"Joe," the older man corrected him off-handedly. Mohinder's English still slipped here and there.

"Whatever. Any other interior knowledge you want to share at this point?"

"Well, Racine is also famous for being home to the largest settling of Danes in North America outside of Greenland. I think I'll get Sandra some Danish cookies when we finish." He frowned, considering something else. "I wonder if they'll sell Danish bears too. Is there such a thing as a Danish teddy bear?"

"I don't know. One with a blue dress, a white hat, wooden shoes and holding a tulip? Don't you think Claire is a bit too old for bears, anyway?"

At this, Bennet couldn't help but to chuckle. "It's a tradition. You should start one with Molly too, it would strengthen your relationship. Believe me, you need to cement it before the day comes."

Mohinder frowned, not understanding. "The day?"

"The day, Mohinder!" the older man laughed out loud. "Believe me, it'll come whether you want it to or not. She'll be going through puberty, hormones and rebellion raging inside her. She'll want to do something you consider inappropriate, like going to a party with boys you don't think she should hang around. It'll start off slow, but then build up into a full-fledged fight. She'll say, 'But why can't I go?'You'll say something like, 'Because I say so, and that's final!' And then she'll say, 'What do you care? You're not my real father!'"

Bennet smiled softly at the professor's horrified expression. "Don't worry; she won't mean it, but she'll say it anyway. And your heart will break, my friend. And that day, or a couple of days afterwards, you'll go back to your silly tradition, like bringing her a teddy bear from wherever you've gone to that week. And she'll smile at you, kiss your cheek and tell you what a great daddy you are and how much she loves you. And your heart will mend. Till the next time."

Mohinder contemplated this future. "Sounds terrible."

"No, it's called 'being a father'. Take advantage of my experience."

The man from New Delhi hoped that didn't mean he would have to wipe his adopted daughter's memories every now and then. Although he conceded such an ability would be quite handy, in such fights were ever to take place. He didn't say anything, however.

Frowning, Mohinder suddenly asked, "Where do you find all that stupid trivia for wherever place we visit, anyway?"

"The Internet. Wikipedia," Bennet said, deadpan. "A truly wonderful tool."

Mohinder just rolled his eyes. He opened his mouth, but then quickly shut it again, realizing it wasn't a subject he wanted to pursue any longer.

The former Primatech man liked this kind of banter with the Indian professor. It reminded Bennet of his old partner Claude, and a time when he'd actually believed that what he was doing was something good and great. Before black and white became all too familiar shades of grey. And it was a refreshing change from the Haitian. The pseudo-mute man had been talented and a great asset, but to say he hadn't been a witty conversationalist would be like the greatest understatement ever.

Chatting amicably like that, they kept on driving with the help of the Nissan's GPS navigator until they arrived at the suburban neighbourhood where Robert and Carol O'Connor had their house. As soon as they arrived at the two-way, 20mph-only street, both felt deadly silent at once.

Police cruisers and ambulances were never a good sign, especially in such a peaceful residential neighbourhood as this one seemed to be. It even reminded Noah of the street where his old home in Odessa used to be. Before Ted Sprague had reduced it to radioactive ashes, of course.

Bennet parked the car by the curb. He heard Mohinder saying, as both of them stared intently at the cops and paramedics coming in and out of the house, "Please, tell me we got the wrong street. Tell me this is not Nolan Terrace."

The mind behind the horn-rimmed glasses had read the placard at the entrance of the street. "If I did, I'd lie."

"Tell me then that that's not number 36."

His spectacled eyes moved to look at the professor. "It is number 36."

Mohinder also looked away from the obvious crime scene. "Shit."

Shit, indeed.

Bennet killed the engine of the rented car and both men unbuckled their seat belts to step outside. Uniformed officers had surrounded the property with black and yellow tape and a couple of them stood guard to keep the rubberneckers from getting too close. The duo's small hope that the situation wasn't as serious as it looked like vanished completely, when they spotted the paramedics getting in their ambulance and drive it away empty, revealing the coroner's van.

"You think he lost control?" Mohinder asked in a whisper.

Sadly, it wouldn't be the first time that they had seen something like that happening. An evolved human with powers too strong or unstable to control, harming himself or others by accident or on purpose. It was exactly what drove them on this quest. To help or stop the Ted Sprague's of the world before it was too late.

"Maybe," Bennet nodded. "Then again, maybe not."

The former Company employee looked around until he spotted what he was looking for. The O'Connors' home was on one of the corners of the street, and right across the road there was a media van parked, the lettering on the side indicating it belonged to a local TV station. They had probably just finished taping a news segment, for the one-man crew was already collecting the utilities and storing them in the back. A woman in her early thirties, dressed in a tailored, not overly revealing outfit was leaned against the passenger's door, checking her make up on the rear view mirror.

"You take the reporter, I'll talk to the cameraman," Noah told the professor.

"Why?" Mohinder groaned. "American women scare me."

"American women like you. That's why." It had to be the accent.

They could have gone and asked the cops straightaway, but law enforcement tended to keep their lips shut at the beginning of a investigation. There was no bigger gossiper than a man with a badge and no one else loved more to appear on camera, but they were always terrified of saying something that made them look like fools. So they always gave non-committal answers and the straight official story. At least, until the rumors would spread and they could be quoted as an 'inside source'.

Bennet didn't believe Mohinder would have much of a chance of actually getting anything better from the news reporter – those types were always afraid of anybody else stealing a good story – but he betted the professor could distract her with his exotic looks long enough for him to extract some valuable information from the cameraman. Those people, yes, those people loved to talk.

"Hey, how's it going?" he greeted the man, carefully standing at the other side of the van so the view of him was blocked to the woman in front. The twenty-something guy – pierced ear, spiky hair, Grateful Dead T-shirt – frowned at him.

The former Primatech employee scanned him from head to toe with a single look, noticed the tiny rainbow bow pinned to his shirt's left breast and sneakily, with his hands on his pockets, let his wedding ring slide off his finger.

Bennet just put on his best salesman smile and motioned for the other man's camera equipment with his head as he crossed his arms over his chest, his thumb rubbing on space of his finger left empty by his wedding ring. "That a Nikon 5600?"

"5700, actually," the young man grinned proudly. "Best damn camera in the business. Can I help you with something, dude?"

"Oh, just wondering if you knew what was going on. Me and my partner just arrived, we're looking to buy a house in the neighbourhood, but we saw all this and thought we might be looking in the wrong place, you know?"

The cameraman leaned slightly to the side to have a look at Mohinder, who now was chatting with the woman. He smiled as he looked back at Bennet. "I see this isn't the only neighbourhood you're new around."

The older man drew a shy – if fake – smile. "Is it that obvious?"

The cameraman shrugged. "Your partner...well, you only need to see how uneasy he is acting around a sex predator like Sharon the Megabitch to know he bats for the other team. And no hetero would wear a shirt like that. But you? That suit, those glasses... dude, you're even missing your wedding band."

Bennet acted like he was surprised, like the rubbing motion of his thumb on his empty ring finger was not something he was doing on purpose to call for the younger man's attention. "You have good powers of observation, my friend."

Sylar might have known how people ticked, but Noah Bennet knew what made them tick. And how to manipulate them so they would tick in the way he wanted them to. That was his talent, and even if it wasn't a product of evolved genetics, it was just as useful nonetheless.

The young cameraman nodded in understanding. In just a few exchanged words, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses had made him think he was a kindred spirit. He said, "So, looking for your first place together?"

Bennet nodded sheepishly. "Yeah, I...er...I'm still a bit in between worlds, if you catch my drift. We want something that's ours, but no so different than what I had before." He waved his now ring-less hand as an explanation.

"Well, I'm sorry to squash your hopes then, dude, but you're looking in the wrong place here, at least right now. Most people living around here, they're salt of the earth types and all that. But the guy in that house – that one that the cops are getting out in a black bag right now – just blew his brains out. Did his missus first, too. Apparently, he was a closeted kiddy diddler or something."

The older man put on a horrified face – not faked, actually, as he had no reason to believe what the cameraman was saying was nothing but the truth. "Oh, that's horrible."

"Tell me about it. I used to date one of the guys in blue over there, he told me the inside crap on the cops just discovered. People around here aren't evil, like I said, but right now they're going to look at anyone out of the ordinary as if we were all child-molesting monsters."

Bennet was sympathetic to the man's underlying bitterness. Sexual orientation, race, religion or having a genetic profile that gave you superpowers, what did it really matter? Humans were gregarious mammals, and anything that stuck out of the ordinary was always frowned upon. Sometimes persecuted. Sometimes hunted down.

He sometimes felt that for a long part of his life he had been wearing an invisible white robe with a pointed hat. He only hoped to have left the burning cross well behind him.

Mohinder came closer, a bewildered expression in his dark eyes and a little business card in his hand. "That woman just gave me her card and asked me to call her sometime. Why would she do that?"

The good professor really needed to stop spending so much time behind a microscope and start going out more, in Noah's opinion. Bennet smiled at him and wrapped an arm around his waist. Mohinder looked at him as if he had grown a tentacle on his forehead.

"You're so deliciously naïve, my dear." Before the man from New Delhi could say anything and ruin the charade, he offered his other hand for the young cameraman to shake it. "It's been a pleasure, thank you so very much for your help."

"The pleasure was mine," the other man grinned back. He gave Mohinder a look over. "Darn, it's just like they say: the good ones are all already taken or heteros."

With a wave of his hand, the cameraman walked past and into the van, driving away a few seconds later. Perplexed, Mohinder looked at his so-called assistant. "Now I have two questions. A, do I really want to know what that was all about? And B, why is your arm still around my waist?"

Sighing, Bennet released him and quickly retrieved his wedding ring from his pocket. He lost no time in placing back where it belonged, and felt somehow comforted by the sensation of the metal band against his skin. "Seems that our good friend Bob O'Connor took his own life after killing his loving wife. Apparently, he was a pedophile ashamed of his condition."

"As he should be," the Indian professor snorted, amazed that Bennet was so deep in thought. He was sorry about the woman, but he couldn't bring himself to feel any sympathy for a child molester. He was also disappointed to lose a subject of study, but he had long ago accepted that Mother Nature was a capricious and blind goddess. She gave her gifts without considering who might get them, or how they would use them.

If it was otherwise, Sylar would have always remained Gabriel Gray, son of a watchmaker.

But Mohinder had also come to respect Bennet's insight and instinct over the years, so it was without a double intention that he asked, "What do you want to do now?"

The former Primatech man was biting the interior of his cheek as he pondered their possibilities. After a few seconds, he said. "Let's talk to the cops."

He started walking forward with firm decisiveness, not waiting for the professor to answer, and Mohinder had to trot for a little while to catch up with him. "What do you want me to do?"

"Stay behind me. Don't say a word. If you have to, speak in Punjabi."

The Indian frowned. "But you don't speak Punjabi, do you?"

"That's not the point." They arrived at the limit around the O'Connors' property set by the police tape and Bennet simply lifted it up, his whole body adopting the demeanour of somebody used to giving orders and expecting them to be obeyed.

A uniformed patrolman quickly walked up to them, lifting a hand in an unmistakable stopping gesture. "I'm sorry, sir, but this is a crime scene. You're not allowed to be here-"

As if by magic, Bennet produced a business card from the interior of his jacket and offered it to the policeman. "Homeland Security, officer. Who's in charge here?"

"Uh, Detective Robinson, sir," the cop was shocked at the older man's claim, but was well trained. "Do you have some kind of photo ID?"

Bennet politely smiled at him, but didn't even bother to answer to his request. "Please tell Detective Robinson that we'd like to speak with him for a moment."

"But-"

"Now."

There was nothing in that word that wasn't an order, and the policeman stared at the business card for a second, then at the man with the horn-rimmed glasses and then at the business card again. Finally, he nodded, "Wait here, please."

When the young police officer quickly trotted away, Mohinder leaned closer to his friend and whispered, "You know that impersonating a Federal agent is a criminal offense, right?"

"So is trespassing past one of those," Noah said, pointing over his shoulder at the police tape. "And I don't see you standing on the other side."

Any retort that might have come from the professor was silenced when the patrolman returned, tagging along a plainclothes detective in his fifties and who wore a pissed-off expression on his face. He carried Bennet's business card in his hand, and was crumpling it between his fingers.

"What kind of stupid joke is this?" he barked angrily at them. "Who the hell are you people? And don't give me any of this 'Homeland Security' crap unless you show me some kind of badge right now!"

"I'm not carrying a badge because I'm not a field agent," Bennet explained calmly. Offering his hand to the detective, he introduced himself. "Detective Robinson, I presume. I'm Erik Lensherr, and I work for the personnel office at the Homeland Security - Washington department. This is Amahl Farouk, he's a civilian observer from the newly elected Iraqi government. He works for their Ministry of Finance."

Robinson, the patrolman – and Mohinder himself too – looked at the spectacled man with slack-jawed expressions. Luckily, the Indian was quick enough to recover before the cops noticed his own shock. He said something quickly in his native tongue to both men – 'good morning' to the detective and 'I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in jail' to the uniformed officer – and shook their hands.

"What the he- uh, I mean, what can I do for you, Mr. er... Lensherr?" the detective was nothing sort of bewildered at having two people like this show up at his crime scene.

"Detective Robinson, we've received information that Mr. Robert O'Connor has committed suicide here in his own home after murdering his wife, and that allegedly he is guilty of some... let's say, illegal and highly reprehensible behaviour. Is this correct?" Bennet spoke in a calm but rapid-fire voice, doing his best to keep the policemen out of the control of the situation.

"Well, yeah, but...hey, how did you know that? The department hasn't made any official statement yet-" Robinson demanded.

"Detective, please," Bennet smiled with the same expression a patient teacher would have for an especially slow pupil. "We're the Federal government, we have our sources. Anyway, the situation is this. I understand that Mr. O'Connor was an accountant for a local factory specialized in waste processing devices, is that right?"

"Yes, but-"

"You see, this company is about to get a very important contract with the Department of Defense, to provide the U.S. Army with portable waste processors for their operations in the Middle East. All the personnel in the factory have had to go through a security check out in order for them to be even considered for the job. We are deeply disturbed that somebody with such an unappealing background as Mr. O'Connor might have slipped though our screening process."

"Well, yeah, I can see that, but still-"

Bennet continued bombarding the detective with his machine-gun speech, not giving him time to process the information and realize what a huge lot of crap he was being fed. "This is potentially a source of deep embarrassment for us, Detective. That's why Homeland Security has sent me, and not the Army. We need to be as discreet as possible about this, if you understand my meaning. I know everyone in Washington would be deeply grateful for your cooperation in such a delicate matter as this one."

Robinson blinked, overloaded. "Well, of course. Anything for our boys over there..."

"What's he doing here, then?" the patrolman suddenly asked, pointing at Mohinder.

"Don't be stupid, Harris," the detective frowned before Bennet could offer another implausible yet convincing answer. "The man's an observer from a foreign government, he's...observing. Why don't you go to do something useful, like direct traffic or something?"

"Can we have access to the crime scene?" Bennet requested politely, as the uniform went away shaking his head. "I promise we won't get in your way. Really, I just want to fill out a couple of forms and then file the report on this disgraceful incident."

The detective nodded and he led them into the two-story house. As they walked, Mohinder whispered in Punjabi, "'I just aged ten years in one second.'"

He was unaware if Bennet actually understood him, as the man with horn-rimmed glasses just smiled enigmatically back at him.

A few minutes later, Mohinder was sure that if he looked up the definition of 'dichotomy' in a dictionary, he would find a picture of the O'Connors' house. It was as if somebody had gotten the best and the worst things in the world and slapped them together into a gruesome collage.

Cops and forensic experts roamed the tiny house, compiling evidence and taking pictures with blinding flashes. Fibres, traces and DNA, dusting for fingerprints and turning every cushion, opening every drawer and every locker.

"Here is where we found his body," Robinson said, taking them into Bob O'Connor's tiny office.

The chair were he had been sitting when the .38 bullet ended his life was empty, spinning slowly as if moved by an invisible force. A technician was dismantling the computer and bagging it so it could be taken to the police lab. Bob's blood and brains still splattered the wall and a collection of family pictures he had on his desk.

Mohinder took a second to examine them, while Bennet apparently only gave them a passing glance. Their wedding picture, Carol's white dress now sprinkled in crimson red. A picnic. An anniversary dinner. Holidays on the beach...

There were at least ten and, in most of them – save the wedding one and the one in the dinner – the couple was in the company of a dog. A large Saint Bernard. There was even a picture of the dog on his own, and the professor noticed a nametag around its thick hairy neck. It said 'Timmy'.

Raising his eyes to the window behind the desk, Mohinder saw the O'Connors' backyard. There was Timmy's doghouse, prim and well built. Empty. He wondered what would become now of the animal.

The drawers in the desk were open. Most of them were full of the usual stationery, but in one of the lower ones, the professor noticed several decks of cards. All opened. All of different brands. He remembered having seen the upturned cards on the living room's coffee table on his way in and frowned.

On the desk, O'Connor's suicide note waited for somebody to put it in an evidence bag. Mohinder quickly read it over. He quickly wished he hadn't

Robinson toured them around the house, chatting as aimlessly as he seemed to be walking. In general the police detective just used the time to complain about the world today and how modern technology in general and the Internet in particular was the source of all evil. Mohinder said nothing, and Bennet seemed to be only answering in automatic mode, generally agreeing with the cop but without really saying anything at all.

In the kitchen, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses halted for a moment, to look at the fridge's door for a second before resuming his tour behind Robinson. Mohinder imitated him, curious about what could have called his attention. The only thing he saw was a calendar, stuck to the door with a magnet. Tomorrow's date was circled in red, and somebody had written a little note. 'Pick Timmy up from vet'. There was a smiley face drawn next to it.

Back to the living room, they arrived in time to witness a couple of coroners carrying a black body bag in a litter from the upstairs level. They stood aside as they passed by, and Robinson commented with little sympathy, "The wife. She should have known what was going on with the husband, if you ask me. I can't do a damn thing without mine knowing it even before I do, it's like she can read my mind or something. This one probably just chose to ignore it."

'She got what she deserved,' the meaning wasn't lost on Mohinder. He felt bile rising to his mouth.

They went upstairs next. The bedroom, Carol's blood on the wall and more bile stinging Mohinder's throat. Main bathroom, of no consequence. A second room, with no furniture but with a lot of rubber toys scattered on the floor, a sleeping litter and food and water bowls.

"How long had the O'Connors been living here?" Bennet asked all of a sudden, looking inside the room as if it held the secret of life, the universe and beyond.

"Five years," the detective answered with a frown. "Ever since they got married."

The spectacled man nodded and released a 'hmmm' under his breath, but didn't add anything more until he finally said. "I think that'll be all, Detective Robinson. On behalf of Homeland Security and the Federal government I want to thank you for your help. I'll be sure to mention it in my report."

"Always a pleasure to collaborate with you guys," the detective accepted the offered hand.

"Please, don't let us keep you any longer. We know the way out," Bennet smiled, losing no time in turning around and making for the closest exit, with Mohinder tagging along.

It wasn't until they were out of the house and well on their way back to the rented car that the professor dared to speak. "Next time you decide to pull something like that, tell me beforehand and I'll wait in the car."

Bennet only grinned.

Inside the Nissan, seat belts on and engine running, Mohinder added, "I think he was a precognitive."

"Because of the cards?" Not that the man with the glasses disagreed, but he felt like playing Devil's advocate. "He might just have liked playing solitaire."

"But he had a lot of decks in one drawer. All opened, but barely used. I think he was using them to test his abilities, he wanted to be sure that whatever was happening was in him and not in the cards. That it wasn't coincidence or sheer luck or something."

Bennet nodded. "Your point being?"

A shrug. "Maybe he saw something in his future, something he didn't like. Something he didn't want to do and he...flipped out."

Another nod from the former Company man. It sounded logical. Seeing the future was something harder to go through than one would normally believe. Seeing things that were going to happen and finding oneself unable to stop them from happening. It could drive a man crazy.

Isaac Mendez came to his mind. It twisted his insides.

Mohinder insisted, "If Robert O'Connor was an Internet pedophile and felt ashamed about his compulsion, maybe he saw himself going further, doing something to a child he didn't want to do, but knew he could not stop himself from doing. Maybe he just wanted to do the right thing for once and put an end to it all before that actually happened."

"Nice theory," Bennet agreed. "Shame it's all a load of bullshit."

The professor frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, he didn't kill himself or his wife. And I doubt he was ever a pedophile either. It's all a set-up." There was so much certainty in the older man's voice that the professor didn't dare to argue. He just let his friend elaborate. "They didn't pick up on the dog."

"The dog? Timmy?"

"People who kill their loved ones before committing suicide don't do it in the heat of the moment, unless they commit suicide because they killed their families. If Bob O'Connor had accidentally murdered his wife or done it as a crime of passion, and then taken his life out of regret, I could buy the scenario. But the suicide note belies that possibility. It was very precise: he regretted his compulsion, he killed himself to stop it, killed his wife for her not to go through the shame."

"I'm not sure I'm following you here…"

Bennet sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He felt really tired, all of a sudden. "Those who do what O'Connor's supposedly done, they take their time to plan it. They...indulge...in the planning, because it offers them comfort, makes them think they're actually doing something to change what makes them feel so...ill. And yet, Bob O'Connor didn't make any plans regarding his dog. They were supposed to pick him up from the vet tomorrow, and yet he killed himself and his wife only hours before doing so. He didn't even mention him in his note. Nothing to his parents saying 'take care of the dog' or anything like that."

Now it was time for Mohinder to look for holes in the other man's theory. It was a verbal game-play they were used to, and it worked smoothly. Much to his surprise, they made a damn good team. "Maybe he didn't like the dog?"

"You saw the pictures, you saw the room. They'd been living for five years in a small house and they kept a whole room empty for him to play in. They called him 'Timmy', not 'Fido' or 'Samson'. Timmy is a kid's name, Mohinder. That dog was the substitute for the child they couldn't afford to have. They cared about him. Trust me, if Bob O'Connor had decided to kill himself and his wife, he would have first collected the animal from the vet clinic and then killed him too."

The professor considered carefully the other man's apparently off-handed petition.

Trust me.

For anybody else, those two words would have gotten lost in the conversation. For them two, they held a special significance. Because there had been a time, not so long ago, when Mohinder Suresh would have done anything but trust the man who sat at his side in the rented car.

Mohinder could still remember clearly those first weeks after the night of the exploding man. He had been lost, not really knowing to do with his life. With his father avenged, returning to India seemed the logical course of action. He had a life there, maybe even a future in private pharmacology with his ex-fiancée, and nothing to keep him in the States.

Nothing but Molly Walker, that is.

But there was no way Social Services would let him take care of the little girl. He was a foreigner, a single man without a stable job. And after he had dragged his feet about the departure for weeks, the day of going back home – if there was somewhere he could call that – finally arrived. Molly had been back to full health by then, the treatment distilled out of the antibodies in his own blood having beaten her exotic disease. There were no more excuses to hold him back, nothing that could save him but a last minute miracle.

But much to his own surprise, a miracle arrived in the form of Ando Masahashi.

There had been a knock on the door of his tiny apartment and he had been about to open it, thinking it would be Social Services coming to get Molly. His heart had been broken as the little girl yanked at his clothes, weeping as she tried to stop him from doing so, begging for him to let her stay with him.

He had been telling himself he was doing the right thing – and not believing a word of it – when he opened the door. And found Ando at the other side. With a sealed letter in his hands.

Mohinder would never forget the young Japanese office worker's words as he bowed formally and offered him the letter. "Mohinder-san, I bring you the words of Nakamura Kaito-sensei. Please, accept them with an open mind."

And indeed he had needed an open mind to read that letter, handwritten in English by the industrialist himself. A letter in which he detailed his plans to generously fund a research project that would look into the new species of humankind that was so secretly sprouting here and there around the globe. A letter that gave him a new future. For once, his future.

Suresh had read the five pages of the letter, each one of them cramped with the mogul's neat and careful scripture, on the very lintel of his apartment's door. Without even realizing he hadn't invited Ando to come in, holding the paper with one hand as he stilled a trembling Molly against him.

Mohinder had finished reading the last page when the woman from the Social Services appeared and asked for the little girl. The man from New Delhi had looked at her without really seeing her. He could never remember her face because his eyes had been full with joyous tears at the time. He had just let Ando come in and told the woman, "Molly's not going anywhere," before closing the door in her face.

One week later, the ultra-expensive attorneys working for Yamagoto Industries had sorted out all the paperwork. He had full resident rights for the United States and Molly's adoption was official.

One month after reading the letter, he was settling down in his new office at the NYU campus.

One month and a minute later, Noah Bennet was knocking on his door.

Why in God's name he hadn't also slammed the door in his spectacled face was something Mohinder knew he might never understand. This was the man who had threatened him, manipulated him, who was to a certain degree responsible for Eden's death, and who had once put a gun to his adopted daughter's head with the intention to kill her.

Why?

Maybe because he was tired of fighting the ghosts of the past and just wanted to look forward. Maybe because Bennet's offer of his experience and services actually was a good idea. Maybe because he saw something in his eyes, a sadness he had never seen before in the man.

Maybe because he wanted to give him the chance he had never given to his own father.

Maybe it had been all of the above. Maybe nothing like that.

He had given Bennet a job, but had told the man unequivocally, "Don't expect me to trust you. That'll never happen."

And yet...and yet, in the following two years they had gone though hell and back together. Had seen miracles and wonders. Had cried and laughed. Had saved some lives and lost others. Had risked their own. Had shared meals, cramped planes, uncountable rented cars and seedy motel rooms. Had seen the highest and lowest, the best and the worst of each other and come out of it all relatively sound and safe. Maybe with a little less sanity, but that was not entirely a bad thing in this confusing world they lived in.

How was he not going to end up trusting this man? How was he not going to call Noah Bennet 'friend'?

Back to the present. To the bodies of Bob and Carol O'Connor lying in impersonal black bags and their names being dragged through the mud. To the notion that they had been murdered by a third party who had covered it up with a blanket of lies.

Questions popped up inside Mohinder's head like mushrooms after the rain. Were the murders related to the fact that O'Connor had been a precog, or were they just a coincidence? Who was behind them? Why?

"What do we do? Do we tell the police?" the professor asked.

"Tell them what? We have no evidence, it's only a theory."

"So is the shooter behind the grassy knoll," Mohinder arched his brow. "Doesn't make it any less true."

Bennet shook his head in denial, his eyes intent on the road. "Whoever did this, they were professionals. The child abuse angle was a masterstroke, the cops won't even bother looking beyond that. Because they won't want to."

"And the real killers go unpunished?"

The other man darted a look at his friend from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. "I didn't say that."

"So, I repeat: what do we do?"

"Now?" Bennet sighed. "Now I look for some Danish pastries for my wife, and maybe a bear for my daughter. I'm sure Lyle would like something too, but I still need to figure out what to get for him. And you...you should start thinking about what kind of present Molly would like."

It was a full minute of silence before Mohinder spoke again. "And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow...tomorrow, we start asking questions."

---O---

They sit in silence for a long while, but for the first time, Peter doesn't feel comfortable.

He doesn't like this sensation. He'd rather go walk in the desert for a little more, maybe just some eons.

He doesn't want the questions that start forming into his head. Doesn't want to feel the curiosity. Knows he won't like the answers. He is afraid of them. And of what they will bring.

And yet, he is the one that speaks first. He asks, "Are you real then?"

"I though we had already settled that," Charles frowns, adjusting the fishing cane more to do something with his hands than for any other reason.

"No, I mean..." It's difficult to explain. He feels he doesn't have the vocabulary. "I mean, what are you? Are you the real Charles Deveaux, or just a product of my imagination?"

Because this world is of his creation, it's silly to deny it any longer. It's a product of his wounded, tired mind and soul.

"Why not a little bit of both?" the black man wonders. "Is it impossible for you to believe there's a part of me that was left behind in you? We were together for quite a while after your power was...activated, let us say. Some scientists believe in genetic memory, in basic impulses and traits passed from one generation to the next via a few coded genes in the DNA. You have this power, Peter, where your DNA constantly reconfigures into somebody else's in order to duplicate their powers. Haven't you ever wondered if that's the only thing of them that remain in you?"

"Then you're not really you, but my memory of you." Peter is a bit disappointed, although he can't understand exactly why.

Charles sighs and shakes his head. "You're looking for simple answers to very complicated questions, Peter. What is the soul? What is the meaning of life? I can't give those to you."

"I'm sorry," the younger man says abruptly, "about Simone."

The black man considers the boy in white for a few seconds, his dark eyes slits as Peter averts his stare. "No, you're not. You still don't remember the meaning of those words."

"But this is not about my daughter," Charles continues with another sigh. "This is about you, and understanding what you're doing here. And what it'll take to get you out."

"But I don't want to," Peter is adamant. "I can't. I...I shouldn't."

At this, Charles can't help but to arch his brow under his straw hat. "Why do you think that?"

"Because..." His insides twist, his heads starts pounding with a dull pain and for the first time he is conscious of the beating of his heart. It's speeding up, becoming a staccato. "Because..." He doesn't want to remember. He doesn't want to remember. He doesn't want to...

But Peter Petrelli can't help it.

"Because everyone I love dies because of me."

And then, finally, the memories rush into his brain like a tidal wave.

A tsunami of emotion that shatters him, drives a knife made of ice through his heart and brings bitter tears to his eyes. His breath comes in gasps, his stomach heaves and, as he tries to stand up, his knees fail and he falls down to the wet sand.

Images rush in front of his eyes, too fast to grasp them. His father's coffin descending into the ground. Simone, standing in Isaac's loft with an expression of incredulity in her beautiful eyes as a crimson flower of blood grows on her chest. And Nathan...

Nathan flying up into the sky. Nathan giving his life for him, for them all. Nathan vanishing in a ring of fire over Manhattan.

He has killed them all. With his foolishness. With his blindness. With his weakness.

Peter Petrelli weeps, his body rocked by waves of sorrow. The landscape around him changes with his emotions. A harsh wind rises, whipping him with pin-like grains of sand. The ocean becomes furious, crashing on the shore with angry explosions of white surf. Dark clouds appear in the spotless blue sky, and the boy in white raises his tearful eyes to the sun.

The sun keeps on shining. Even through the storm clouds. It gives light. It gives hope.

The goldenness of it.

Somebody golden.

All through his ordeal, Charles Deveaux doesn't move from his reclining chair. Doesn't try to comfort him. Peter needs this. Needs this pain in order to become human again.

Finally, the black man also looks up, at the dark clouds that dim the daylight. "There's a mighty big storm coming, Peter. It will be long, and powerful. Not everybody will make it though it. By the time it calms down, the world will be either destroyed by the fury of its wind and lightning, or washed clean by its rain."

Now he stands up and leans one hand on Peter's shoulder, who is still on his knees. "Peter, I love you like a son, you know that. I don't want you to be hurt or in pain, but the world needs you. It's time to stop running away from fate."

"What FATE!?" Peter yells, suddenly angry. "You told me it was my fate to save the world, and look what happened! Sylar beat me to a pulp and my brother had to give his life to save us all! And now you start all over again with the same bullshit!! Who will have to die next time when I fail? Who?"

Charles' eyes are hard as they look down at the younger man. He is not impressed by his burst of anger, nor softened by his tears. "I know you've lived all your life with the notion that you were the weakest link, but that excuse won't work anymore. Peter, you remember now what you can do. You know where your dreams can take you. And yes, it's a scary place, there's pain in there, and fear too. But there's also hope, and love and people who care about you. And if you don't overcome your grief, then those people are going to suffer, more than you can possibly imagine."

At last, the African-American leans down, to whisper in his ear. His tone is secretive, conspiratorial, "What's it going to be, Peter? Thunder and lightning, or rain?"

Peter Petrelli looks up. To the sun. It doesn't blind him, it never does.

It fights the clouds with its light. Brings him hope and warmth. A sense of destination. A reason to be.

The goldenness of it.

Somebody golden.

He whispers, "Claire…"

And the entire world shatters around him.

---O---

Somewhere near Boulder, Colorado. The same time

There were so many tubes coming in and out of the little boy that he didn't seem human any longer, but a fantastic creature out of the mind of a science-fiction novelist. A cyborg like only HR Giger or the Watchowski brothers could have conjured up.

And he was now more machine than human, to be honest. A machine breathed for him, another recycled his blood while another one fed him and yet another took care of his waste. He was connected to so many monitors and screens that there was not a single parameter of his so-called life that was not controlled, examined, gauged and immediately corrected if need was so.

The only thing that remained entire was his mind. And the doctors kept it constantly sedated to spare him the horror and the pain of his dying body.

But to Foster Caine, the boy with all the tubes was just his ten-year-old only son.

A kid that loved frogs and baseball, that rarely cried or threw tantrums, that always ran to hug him when he came home from work. The only thing that he could positively say he had done right in his life.

Benjamin Patrick Caine, who had been born so perfect and beautiful. Who had been a miracle. Who had less than six months left to live.

Caine senior had been 52 years old when his third wife, nearly twenty years his junior, had told him she was pregnant. He'd accused her of being unfaithful, as for years he had been told that because of his work the chances of him fathering a child were damned near impossible. But she hadn't relented. How could she have been unfaithful when his bodyguards constantly surrounded her? How could she have cheated on him when she almost couldn't have a single minute on her own?

He had insisted on blood tests, though, and they had – for once – proven his suspicions wrong. A miracle, certainly.

Yet a flawed one.

Benjamin's blood disease had been first diagnosed when he was seven. Extremely rare, only one case in several million. Genetically transmitted, it was inherited from the maternal side, although it only affected males. No cure known, the children suffering it rarely lived past their eighth birthday. And they died in terrible pain.

No matter how much money of his vast fortune he had invested in medical research, no matter how many of Caine's resources he had applied to the search of alternative remedies, Benjamin had grown weaker and weaker with each passing month. All he had managed to achieve was to gain more time.

More time, for what?

His wife was gone now, although – unlike the previous two ones – she hadn't settled for a discreet divorce and a really generous alimony payment. She had taken her own life, unable to cope with the pain of a dying son and the increasing distance and blaming stare of her husband. Foster Caine had found the body still holding the empty flask of pills. He hadn't attended her funeral.

Benjamin was dying. The only person he had ever really loved all his life was living on borrowed time, and the only chance he had now left to save him implied maybe destroying all that he had ever accomplished in his life.

It was a price well worth paying, he thought.

Caine felt a presence at his side, as he looked through the window into the isolated hospital room in which his dying son slowly faded away. He didn't need to turn his head to know who it was.

Towering over him, six feet four over his average five-six, the man with the pristine white hair and the equally immaculate lab coat stood at his side without uttering a word.

Stronghein was almost ninety years old, though his mannerisms and energy were the ones of a much younger man. His ice-cold blue eyes were piercing and emotionless, with no need for reading glasses, and his body was still taut and lean, barely showing the decay of such an advanced age. He always managed to make Caine's blood run cold even with his mere presence, which was an amazing achievement considering the kind of person he was.

"Talk to me, doctor," Caine said, rubbing his neatly-trimmed, gray-peppered beard.

There was a slight trace of Germanic accent in the older man when he spoke, barely noticeable. "Have you really thought this through?"

"Haven't done anything else for the past two weeks, ever since your proposal. I don't see any other solution."

"You could just let him go. God knows he has suffered more than enough."

Caine had to make a superhuman effort not to smirk at that. If there was one man who didn't believe in a supreme being and who knew neither compassion nor mercy, his name had to be Heinrich Stronghein.

The bearded man darted a sideways look at him. "That's not an option."

The doctor nodded. "It could bring everything crashing down around us, you know. This will surely set eyes on us. Eyes we don't want to be looking at what we do. At what we intend to achieve."

"I'm willing to take the risk."

"But maybe others won't," Stronghein's voice was as cold as his eyes. It wasn't like he really cared one way or another, Caine knew. Whatever the outcome, it was the process that drove him. The endless, fanatical search for knowledge.

For him, Benjamin was another interesting piece of study, like uncountable others. Just another stepping stone on the road to help him reach a little further.

There was an edge in the bearded trillionaire's voice when he spoke, "I run this show."

"So used to say Linderman," the doctor observed analytically. "Have you gotten any news from him lately? Oh, excuse me, I forgot how hard it is to talk with such a big hole in your head."

"Do you have the file?" Caine cut the conversation off. There was nothing more he wanted to discuss about the subject now other than how to pull it off.

Indeed, the doctor was holding a manila folder and he handed it to the younger man. The trillionaire opened it and examined its contents.

There were several reports, tracking files, medical analyses going years back in time. And pictures, most of them taken with a long-distance objective lens. All of them of the same person.

Caine stopped at one that seemed to be a high-school yearbook picture. The blonde girl who was protagonist of the file was smiling at him it, beautiful in her young innocence.

Claire Bennet. Union Wells HS cheerleading squad co-captain. Class of 2006 – said the legend under the photo -. Motto: 'Live life to the fullest, you could die tomorrow!'

The bearded man's eyes looked back through the window. His son was still dying on the other side. He took a cell phone out of his pocket and dialled a number programmed into the memory.

After a single ring, a male voice picked up at the other end of the line. "Ditko."

"Bring her in." There was no emotion in Caine's voice now, only a numb calm. "Kill anyone who gets in your way."

---O---

To be continued...