Chapter Eight
Characters: Adam, Angela, Arthur, Linderman, Charles, Victoria, Kaito & The 12
Notes: Please feedback. I thank you.
October 1977
1977 was a troubled year in New York City. The black out, the looting that followed, the crime – Son of Sam was roaming the streets. There were rumblings and fear among the group that he was special like them; they were glad they were wrong. The country wasn't doing so well itself. On the other coast the Zodiac killer was making the rounds in California. There was a flood in Pennsylvania and a dam burst in Georgia. The world wasn't in the best shape as well. The Massacre of Atocha during the Spanish transition to democracy, earthquakes in Bucharest, coups, wars, bombings, terrible storms in Greece, assassinations, terrorism, hijacking. Angela's generation had lived through so much already. They saw two Kennedys and Martin Luther King shot dead, Vietnam, Nixon, Kent State, Charles Manson, the list was endless. And for them it had only been about thirty odd years of living and less than that of living with their powers, of being in this "war" as they called it. A blip in the screen compared to what Adam had seen.
The Garden of Eden was slowly turning into the River Styx, as Angela's friends could stop none of these events from happening – 1977 was a dark time for sure. Angela was only thirty one years old.
What Angela remembers most was the rain. It was a year of unheard of weather, and not just the weather that Angela and her friends had helped create. Angela only wished she had been warned about the flood in Pennsylvania like she had been warned about the tsunami hitting the east coast. She still didn't understand the rhythm or the reason behind what she saw and what she didn't see. Perhaps it was the number of dead. Perhaps it was the level of devastation. Millions over just a few dozen.
It rained and snowed like cats and dogs and this October day wasn't any different. Angela had spent the day finding a costume for Nathan for Halloween and being sure to be home with him before it got dark.. It was late, but Angela was avoiding sleep like usual. She sat in her living room with a lone light on, reading a book and trying to avoid the news. It was a new book by Betty Freidan, on her work with the women's movement of the 1960s. Angela had been late to reading Freidan's previous book Feminine Mystique." and therefore the women's movement, but with the little sleep she got Angela had caught up on a lot of reading.
Nathan and Arthur were asleep upstairs.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door so loud it scared her half to death; Angela jumped.
"Arthur!" she heard Adam's voice. "Angela!" Adam opened the mail slot in the door and yelled in. "Angela!"
"Adam?" Angela put down her book and walked to the door. "Nathan's sleeping, keep your voice down." She flipped the dead bolt on the door. "What are you doing?!" She opened the door and the sound of the rain was overwhelming. She was bombarded by a wet Adam as he barged into her home. "You're soaked to the bone." She closed the door behind him.
Adam put his wet hands on her arms, leaving water hand-prints on Angela's forearms. "Where is he, where's Arthur?" He let go of her and looked around as he walked the foyer. "Arthur!!" he yelled toward the stairs. "This concerns you too, Angela." He directed it to her, but turned back to the steps. "Arthur!"
"He's sleeping, as is our son. It's two a. m., Adam, for god's sake, what is going on?"
Arthur appeared at the top of the stairs in his robe and pajamas. "Adam? What the hell is going on here?"
Angela didn't know what to make of Adam's behavior. "He's ranting and raving – I can't get him to stop."
Arthur made his way down the stairs, trying to talk in a whisper, which came out as a raspy yell.
"I have a son, sleeping only feet away from this. Not in my house, Adam."
"I had to come talk to you, I knew you would understand. Not, the lot of them." Adam walked into the living room and poured himself a drink. He was dripping everywhere.
There was a knock at the door. Angela and Arthur looked toward the door.
"That'll be Daniel. Let him in, Arthur." Adam bit in his lower lip.
Arthur obeyed and opened the door for Linderman. Angela looked at Adam with deep concern.
Daniel came into the living room shaking the rain from his coat. "I came as soon as you called, what is so urgent... at this hour." He looked at Adam and then at Angela and Arthur.
Adam addressed his followers. "The time has come, my friends." He told them, as Angela, Daniel and Arthur stood in the doorway of the Petrelli living room, perplexed and confused. "Look outside. It's as black as pitch and I don't mean the lack of daylight." He circled the room. "Murder, hate, war, famine, destroying the earth for our own pleasure. The time of gluttony has overcome the world. It all just keeps happening again and again. I've seen it all, all so many times. The world doesn't change, people don't change."
"We can't give up hope, Adam." Angela stepped forward.
"Really...?" Adam walked up to Angela and took her by the arm forcefully.
He was scaring Arthur. "Stop it! Adam!"
Angela didn't flinch - she had been taught well.
Adam leaned in and matched her face-to-face. "Do you really believe that, Angela? I hear you complain about the world the same way I have – is this the world you want to leave to Nathan? The world you want him to inhabit? This world that says it wants to be saved, but does nothing about it. We have all worked so hard, for so long and it only gets worse -- it only gets harder. No one wants to listen and they all just die, all of them – they go away anyway, nothing left to live for." He was rambling. " Do you really believe it anymore, Angela? Is there really hope inside of Pandora's box, that we can't seem to close?"
It hit a cord in her. "No, no. I don't believe it anymore," she cried. "I don't."
"Angela!" Arthur scolded her.
Adam looked at Arthur and Daniel and pointed at them like a preacher on Sunday morning. "And you. You both have seen the plague of war, do you see any progress, anything – does man really want to be saved? They don't. They say they do, but they don't take action! Not like we have. No action toward it. They need to be punished. They need to fear. They need to be destroyed and we will start over. A clean slate. A new utopia." His eyes glowed. " Maybe...maybe we shouldn't have stopped that tsunami, stopped that flood. Maybe it's some grand design we're playing with. We need something big, something to pull it all down." His voice rose and rose as he spoke. " I will save you all, I will save Nathan – with my blood, don't worry. I will heal you all and we can start this world over. Years and years. Millennium after millennium and nothing changes. Nothing. I've seen it. Time, and time again."
"Adam..." Daniel walked closer as if asking him to back off.
"What is he talking about?" Arthur questioned Daniel.
Daniel looked at Adam. "We didn't want to tell you, we thought it might scare everyone."
"What?" Angela stepped forward. One wondered if she knew or just suspected. She looked frightened, but curious.
Adam started to confess. "After my cells began to regenerate, after a certain point..." He took in a deep breath, the water from his wet hair dripping from his face. He looked quite mad. "I stopped aging. And I no longer just regenerated...I could never die. I just kept living."
"How long?" Arthur leaned his head forward with the question. He looked as if he was unsure if he really wanted the answer.
Adam took a breath and seethed with pain. "Almost four hundred years.."
Angela took her hand to her mouth. "Oh my god." She hadn't known and she was shocked. Mostly because Angela felt that if anyone would know what she feared, that humanity would never change, it would be this man. She now understood that look in his eyes. The one she had seen when they first met.
Adam started to pace. "Our families can repopulate this world and it will be good again. Together, we can do this – the hard choice for the greater good, for our children, for their children, for all the generations of this earth. You've said it yourself Arthur, a dozen times, the ends justify the means --I have a plan, once we set it in motion, it can save the world – I guarantee that." He stopped and looked at them. "Will you join me? Will you help me save the world?"
There was a large clap of thunder.
Angela & Arthur Petrellis
Manhattan
Three weeks later
November 2, 1977
"Oh god!" Angela woke up in a cold sweat."What have we done!? What have we done!?" She was finally seeing how wrong it all was. Her dreams were telling her and her gut was warning her, it all had to be stopped. Adam was wrong. She had followed him too blindly. She wanted it too badly. And now it was time to fix it. The cult of Adam would finally end. If it wasn't too late.
Angela woke Arthur and confessed her dream to him and although he agreed with her it was solely her choice to make the call. It was her change of heart that changed the course of history. Just like so many times in the future, it would be a Petrellis' change of heart that would save the world.
"Kaito," she told him breathlessly over the phone. "It's Adam. He's on his way to release the virus, you must stop him..."
Kaito called in the guards and the world was saved. Adam was found fighting with Victoria in her lab over a certain strain of the virus, the Shanti virus, the supposed cure. A strain of the virus that if Adam had not been stopped, would have killed them all.
The 12
Primatech Research
Hartsdale, NY
Kaito stood in the main office at Primatech Research, which would one day become Bob's office, but was now his. He looked out from his desk at his eleven cohorts; important decisions were at hand. Kaito slid a single paper to the front of his desk. "This paper makes Adam's incarceration official and binding. We all agree he is dangerous and should be locked away. I ask for a show for hands for a yay vote..."
Charles and Harry raised their hands first. Charles was right, inside Harry was a serious man. Arthur and Angela looked at each other and raised their hands together. Suzanne, raised her hand with a tear in her eye. Paula, Carlos and Bob were next, followed by Maury. The final hand was Daniels'. He knew he had to agree with the group, not to appear as a sympathizer, although Daniel now knew Adam had gone too far. Daniel slowly raised his hand, shamefully.
"Then it is agreed." Kaito stamped the letter and signed it.
The five people in the room who had helped Adam with his plan still said nothing - whether they still believed in Adam or not, they kept their secrets to themselves.
"I say blow his head off," came a voice from the doorway.
Everyone turned to see Victoria standing there. "I said...I say why don't we just blow his head off." Victoria had a bandage on her left cheek from where Adam had sliced her with one of her instruments, as she struggled to protect the virus from him – as she had struggled to save the world.
"That's inhuman!" Suzanne exclaimed.
"Who said Adam was human?" Victoria trilled.
"We don't even know if that would kill him?" Arthur chimed in.
"That's why we try." Victoria made her way into the center of the room. She was at her fiery best, a color rarely seen on her, but that would soon become commonplace with age.
"And who among us, could do that to a friend?" Daniel spoke up.
"I thought that's why we hired people." Victoria's voice seethed with bitterness beyond her years.
"We all agree that Adam has gone off the deep end." Charles chimed in. "But, I don't think any one of us could condone – could say he deserves to die for it."
"Then you're a fool, Charles." Victoria almost spit in his face. "You're all fools."
Victoria pulled a piece of paper from her fist. "This is my resignation. I'm officially gone.
She handed it to Kaito, who took it reluctantly. "Don't come after me, I just want to be left alone and you can all do whatever the hell you want to, I for sure can't stop you." Victoria walked toward the door to leave, but paused – they were all standing in her way. The group parted and let Victoria pass. She walked the gauntlet toward the door as they all looked at her silently.
"Victoria,' Charles called after her. "We all believed in Adam –" he looked around the room, "Maybe some more blindly than others, but what is most important now is that we are all on the right course. Don't leave us, Victoria. We can still make a difference."
Kaito called to her, "Victoria, please."
"Destroy the virus, " she said bitingly. It was her final test to the group.
Angela interjected quickly, "We destroy the virus and it's our last chance at finding a cure."
Victoria and Angela caught eyes in a deadly stare.
Linderman stepped forward. "Certain people with power need to be stopped."
Victoria looked him over. "Do they now?" she said sarcastically with a bitter tone in her voice. When she reached the doorway she turned.
"I am sorry it had to end like this." she half smiled. "Maybe in the future, we'll meet under better circumstances." She held back her tears. "I just can't be a part of this. Not anymore."
As Adam was officially put in the cell he would occupy for the next thirty years, no one was happy that night. The sadness was palpable.
Arthur and Angela held hands in their living room, saying nothing. Harry and Suzanne smoked a joint over at Charles' place, while he listened to Jazz and Paula sat at his feet drinking a glass of red wine, while across town Maury and Bob joined an all night poker game and drank the night away. That night Suzanne would let Harry make love to her, but never again. Carlos ordered another round at his local bar and bummed another cigarette off a man named Grey, who sat behind him. Carlos 'wife sat at home, newly pregnant, wondering where her husband was. Kaito told Adam's new bride that her husband was dead. And Daniel Linderman actually cried for the belief that he had betrayed his friend, his mentor, to save his own skin. Linderman promised himself he would make it up to him Adam one day; how he didn't know.
That night Angela feel asleep in Arthur's arms and they were closer than they had been for years, both physically and mentally. That night Angela dreamt that Nathan was the President of the United States. Was it a metaphor or the truth she wondered?
And Angela couldn't help but get the lyrics of an Elton John song out of her head. A song she had liked to listened to when it all started. A song she had listen to for merely the music, but now the lyrics were coming through, overshadowing the melody.
There's a joke and I know it very well
It's one of those that I told you long ago
Take my word I'm a madman don't you know
The ground's a long way down but I need more.
And she wondered if Adam had really been the madman or had she. The madness had taken hold of her and taken her over.
Once a fool had a good part in the play
If it's so would I still be here today
It's quite peculiar in a funny sort of way
They think it's very funny everything I say
Get a load of him, he's so insane
You better get your coat dear
It looks like rain
It was time to grow up, if she hadn't already -- it was just official now. "It was only fair," as Arthur had said. But, this had nothing to do with fairness. Nothing in life is fair.
And the war kept on raging and the work got harder and they all got older and Angela clung to the idea that Nathan might be the one to save them all. That perhaps her dream about Nathan was the way to keep him away from the front lines. She didn't know what it all meant yet, but she knew it was a start. Her only son would lead the world and perhaps do what his parents felt they were failing at, "Saving the world."
Is the nightmare black
or are the windows painted
Will they come again next week
Can my mind really take it?
–Elton John "Madman Across the Water" 1972
Next Chapter: Peter
