Sylar wanted to burst through the door so desperately. He had been out in the hall waiting for Peter, Molly and Mohinder to give them some information. It had been an hour and not a peep. Claire and Noah sat together on a bench, while Sylar sat slumped against the door. He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to get angry. He just focused on his black pants, examining the stitch work. He made his way down his leg to his boots. Black, like his pants. Laces tied tight and once around his ankles. Jenny always laughed at how he did that. She joked that his shoes were trying to get away from his smelly feet. Then she'd make a sad little face and apologize. He wanted so bad to be touching that face right now. If Sylar wasn't going to get news about Hiro, he at least wanted to know if Jenny was still alive. This feeling in his stomach was almost unbearable! He didn't know which was worse: being without Jenny for this long or being around all these people. People he could never understand; who could never understand him. As the tension boiled inside him, his hearing caught the sound of the elevator moving.
"Some one's coming" his words snapped through the silence. A snap that made Claire jump in her seat. Sylar just smiled. "Still the bad guy" Claire opened her mouth to reply; to say something polite. Sylar put his hand up. "No, you don't have to apologize. I'm just...on edge. Bottling up a lot of aggression. I see no point in winning this fight in a lab. Generations of men have hunted down enemies without the help of little girls with special powers. Why can't Peter and I just take this fight to the streets?" As he asked this, the phantom-elevator operator turned the corner of the hall loudly in her heels. Angela Petrelli stopped when she saw the three slouched in the hallway there. "What's this? Why are you still her Mr. Gray?"
Sylar's eyes grew wide. "Thank you! That's what I said" Noah stood and went over to Mrs. Petrelli, extending his hand. "Good seeing you again Mrs. Petrelli." She, however, did not return the greeting to him, and moved past him to her biological granddaughter. "Claire, honey, shouldn't you be studying, or out with a boy or doing something a girl your age would do? This building is a cold, sterile representation of ...oppressive times. I can't believe..."
Looking at Noah, her pause was pregnant with years of judgment,
"...your father would just ignore your needs..." Claire clashed her sharp tongue against the quick steel of her grandmother. "It's summer vacation. I don't have class, or know any boys in New York. I am part of this building because I want to help. That decision is in my my hands and he knows that. Actually, my father knows more about my needs than anyone on this planet. There isn't a better father alive..." When those words hit Angela, they hit hard. Claire sensed it, and immediately realized her mistake. She was sometimes too brash with her quick wit. She never meant to attack so deep. "I'm...so...sorry"
"It's fine." Angela said, chillingly. "I'm an old broad with tough skin. I know you meant no harm with your words. I'll chalk up your insensitivity to the ignorance of your youth."
Noah, to break the tension of this awkward moment, spoke in the silence. "Dr. Suresh has a theory about your son, Peter. He's trying to use his Empathy as a sort of add-on to other powers. At least, that's how I think it was explained." Mother Petrelli was not pleased. She heaved a sigh and made her way for the door to the lab. Claire and Noah tried to stop her, but no one has ever really been able to stand in her way. She threw the door open, startling Molly, Mohinder, and Peter. Though Peter didn't seem too surprised. The three of them were sitting Indian style on the floor in a triangular formation.
Peter stood up, stretching his very tired legs. As Peter kicked blood back into his legs, he turned to face his mother. "Hi Ma." He read her face clear as day and nodded to confirm her thoughts. "It isn't working. We can't find Hiro. And we can't find Jenny cause neither of us know her." He looked down to Molly, still on the ground. "I'm sorry. I don't think it's your fault. I just can't see how we can look into the past or future to find someone from our present." At the sound of this, Sylar almost jumped out of his skin.
"Has anyone taken into consideration that both Peter AND I can see the future!?" Despite the excitement in his voice, the rest of the room was hesitant to react joyously. Could that really work? Noah stepped forward. "Sylar, that shouldn't be the way we go about this. Looking into the future can be...misleading. It takes all the decision out of it. Instead of fighting for or against something, you just walk the part set for you. It doesn't always work that way. Precognition is, I'm sorry to say, a last resort."
"But if we both take turns viewing the outcome, we both can't be wrong. It would be... the way.. it HAD TO BE." Sylar insisted. "Why don't we do that power boost thingy and get a super-vision?" Now Mohinder was seeing the fault in this plan. He quickly interrupted. "That wouldn't work. It would be like running the same program on two separate CPU's. Their similarities wouldn't affect their respective performances. Actually, in this allegory, if you linked the CPU's they would work in divergence with each other."
His analogy had lost the crowd. He sighed softly and sat down offering layman's term. "The two would butt heads, perhaps causing irreparable damage."
Sylar collected his emotions. Then, with common sense in his tone, "Don't you think we would learn a lot more than we have in the past hour?" No one spoke to it. He had a point. Peter spoke up. "I trust it could teach us a few small things. Not necessarily the big, complete situation. Isaac's paintings saved New York; and Claire." Noah raised his eyebrows. Slowly nodding his head and taping his finger, thoughtfully Noah said. "Painting is another story all together. Professor Suresh had his experimentation time. It's my turn." Noah turned to Claire.
"Claire, get two notepads and pencils out of the reception desk at the end of the hall. Make sure there good-n-big. Peter sit over there. Sylar there." Bennett nodded to two sides of the lab table in front of him. The two men complied. Once Peter and Sylar had their tools, Noah slowly and calculatingly said. "At the end of all this, when you come back here: What do you see?"
The two sat for a moment. They mulled it over: here, but not; mission accomplished; returned home victorious. But did the future hold victory for them? The train of thought set the trance in motion. Both Peter and Sylar's heads floated up, lightly extending their neck. Their pale eyes gazed at the blank canvas, as they saw molding structures form in front of them. Peter's hand worked in quick juts up and down; right and left. Fast and calculated, his hand moved across the paper. Sylar's pencil danced from one side of the paper to the other. He seemed to be working the edges in, to a center focal point. The others waited in apprehension.
After about 5 minutes, impatience set in and it was Molly who first went to look. She stood behind Peter in his chair, and soon Claire followed. Then Mohinder and finally Noah. Angela just sat calmly in her place. This method of accomplishing a goal was ludicrous to her. Those paintings created by Isaac had always given her the creeps. It was Linderman who insisted that they use them as a road map to accomplishing what they thought had to be done. Now Linderman was dead and so was Nathan. She definitely wanted no part in this sketch-fest.
It was Peter who had finished first. He dropped his pencil in the moment of awakening. Slowly his eyes took focus on the pad in front of him. A landscape and an eclipse. The bright eclipse held great focus off in the horizon, to the right. The rest of the drawing was occupied with buildings. One marvel stood out amongst the rest. It had four small towers, tight to it's almost perfect square facade. Peter began to examine the scene. None of this was helpful. He began to get frustrated with everything, until he saw IT. A silhouette, two people. A man holding a woman. They are standing on the roof and...to Peter it looks like the man is doing all the standing. He is holding her, like a duffel bag under his arm. There was nothing romantic about it. In the trance, it seems that Peter went to the trouble of putting the girl's skirt pattern in; polka dots. He huffed in surprise. Maybe this was more of a clue than he thought.
The others began to crowd him a little as he examined the roofs. Hunched over him, Molly asked quizzically "What's it supposed to be? Is that an eclipse?" Claire and Noah were stumped. Mohinder spoke up. "That's the Charminar," referring to the magnificent structure with four towers. Everyone turned to him. "What?" he defended, "It's a monument in Hyderabad. It's just north of Chennai. I spent a semester there in my graduate studies. Anyone can recognize the Charminar. It was constructed in 1591 to commemorate the end of the plague in that region of India." he sighed. To them he sounded crazy, when these were all well-established facts. Mohinder added this moment to the long list of instances where he felt under appreciated.
Noah shook his head and turned to move back to his seat at the computer. "This seems too easy. Like it was just handed to us."
At this point, while everyone was deep in thought, Sylar let out a scream. It was of surprise, astonishment and disappointment fused in one. The group of people still huddled around Peter quickly moved over to the opposite side of the table. There, in his hand, Sylar held a portrait of himself; lifeless and with no emotion. They all had assumed that, like Isaac Mendez, Sylar had just drawn his death. But it gave no indication as to how or why. Claire saw something in the figure's hand. While the rest of him had no life whatsoever, his hand was clutching a piece of fabric very tightly.
"Look in the left hand."Claire said sternly, "Some torn piece of fabric. It's looks almost like the same pattern the girl in Peter's drawing is wearing. Could this be a clue about Jenny?" Sylar got up from his seat to get his own glance at Peter's drawing. Once he saw it, he shook his head."That can't be Jenny. She has long blond hair. Unless...the top of her head is gone..." Peter, shook his head. "That's not what I saw. I can't remember everything from the vision, but her head wasn't sliced off. She had short hair."
"Do you remember who the man holding her is?" Sylar asked. Peter thought. He shook his head. "No, I can't see him. It's like in a dream. You can't see the person's face, or it's different. You know who they are, they feel familiar but it's not them in front of you. This person holding the girl, he feels very familiar."
Mohinder, who had snuck over to a computer, asked for everyone's attention, "Listen to this: I did a search for 'Hyderabad' and 'solar eclipse'. While the first few results are about a partial solar eclipse set to happen later this year, there is one entry here that talks about a total solar eclipse that happened in February of 1980. Peter, your vision is set 29 years in the past."
Peter and Sylar's eyes widened. Sylar turned his head slowly from Mohinder to Peter. His eyebrows lifted as he slowly opened his mouth to speak. "Um, Peter...Can you do that? I mean, I know technically, yes, you have Hiro's power...but can you do that?" Peter sat for moment. Can I?, he thought.
"Well, I won't allow it." Noah firmly stated. "It's too great a chance that something could go wrong. Bending space is one thing, bending time is anoth..." Mohinder interrupted "Actually..." But Noah took it right back "IT's too risky! No matter the physics behind it, the timeline could be altered. For now, you boys get ready to go to Hyderabad. Present day Hyderabad. If Hiro really is keeping Jenny in 1980, then you wait in the present for him to bring the fight to you."