Author's note: Ok, I feel so bad about not updating that to prove I am serious about finishing this story here is a preview of chapter nine which should be up in full by the end of the week. This is in no way the whole chapter but I hope it tides you over until Friday.

Trinity

Preview of Chapter Nine

When Claire was nine years old a new family moved into their neighborhood, the Dales. They had a daughter Claire's age, who Claire tried to befriend. But the girl was, to put it plainly, a bully. One day she took Claire's favorite teddy bear. Back then Claire had cried to her daddy and gotten him to ask the girls parents for the bear back.

But the last year had changed her. She didn't do things that way anymore.

For about a minute she crouched with Peter on the floor, screaming her head off mentally and shaking. Then she got it together.

"Ok." She stood up, still shaking, but she did stand up. "What do we do?"

"We find her." Peter's voice sounded totally unfamiliar-stern and scary. She didn't care.

"Where you around Molly enough to be able to use her power?" Claire changed clothes as she asked. A small part of her brain marveled at the fact that she now looked-except for her hair-exactly as she had eight months ago. Another part grieved that she had no tangible connection to Hally now-no one would recognize her as a new mother. For some reason this made her self conscious and she hid behind the closet door as she changed.

"No." Peter's voice was sure. "We'll have to go find Molly first, get her to find Hally-we don't have time to mess around with me experimenting with something new."

Claire came out from behind the door and went into the bathroom. Pulling up her hair she started scrubbing the blood from her neck. Peter came up behind her.

"What's that?" he said, peering at her neck.

Claire's fingers went to her neck and she found a bump the size of a large pill. She grabbed Peter's razor and before he could saying anything sliced open her neck and pulled it out.

She peered at the object .It looked like a metal Tylenol-clear and oblong with little circuits inside of it. She handed it to Peter.

"What is this?" she was demanding, uncompromising. They didn't have time to be nice or lovey-dovey right now. "Is this how they found us? How they knew when she was born? Has this been there the whole time?"

Peter closed his eyes, tapping into Micha Sander's power. She felt like screaming.

Why is this so slow?!

Peter opened one eye, looked at her. "It's a lot harder if you're talking while I'm trying to communicate with it."

"Then stop listening to me!" Claire snapped.

"Hey." Peter put down the metal pill and she had to force herself not to scream. He grabbed her shoulders, gently, his voice changing back to the Peter she knew. "We're never going to get through this if we start fighting. That's what they want. We can find her; we just have to work together."

Claire took a deep breath, trying to force herself to relax. "Ok." She picked up the pill again, handed it to Peter. "What is this?"

………

Peter closed his eyes and dived into the tiny metal object. He ducked between it's circuits, weaving in and out of all of the tiny clumps of metal and wire.

Talk to me. Tell me what you are.

It came back, a jumble of electronic information, encoded and hidden. He frowned, clenching his eyelids, trying to dig deeper. Dates came back-dates he remembered. The day they were taken and Hally was conceived-September fifth. The day they first had sex-December 27th. The day they moved-December 29th. Today-the day she was born. Other dates where there to, dates that he didn't recognize as important but this little machine did. Hormone changes, mood shifts, anything that could be chemically measured was registered. Minuet changes in air quality and particles that reveled their location.

His hands started to shake. He put the pill down carefully, ignoring Claire's requests for information. Grabbing the razor she had used to cut it out of her neck he reached behind himself, set it to his neck and cut deep. It took some digging to find the machine in his head-the spike to Claire's brain had brought the one in her brain stem to the surface. But it was there. He dropped it to the counter with an expression of disgust.

"Shit!" He kicked the wastebasket, knocking it over. He wanted to smash things, break things. It had been there the whole time, every single minute he had thought he was doing everything to keep them safe. Peter could stop time, bend light, do any number of things some that he wasn't even aware of, but he hadn't been able to keep his family safe.

"What is it?" Claire was pale and looked shaky but resolved and looking at her he had to remind himself that even though she looked just like she had eight or nine months ago, she had just given birth, with all of the hormone fluctuations that go with it.

He took a deep breathe, letting the fury go out of him. "It's a tracking device" he said, picking the pill back up and letting a little electricity fry its insides to dust. "It's been recording everything we do, everywhere we went. And they've been here the whole time."

Watching her, something inside of Claire seemed to collapse and she staggered and Peter barely managed to catch her before she fell. She clutched at his shoulders, not noticing the blood on his skin. "Then we never had a chance" she whispered and Peter could tell he was the only thing keeping her off the floor. "We never could have kept her safe."

"No." Peter hauled Claire to her feet, an arm on each shoulder to keep her steady. "We're going to get her back and then no one will ever take her from us." He tried to inject as much optimism as he could into his voice-hell, if he had the persuasive ability he'd seen on Mohinder's list once he would've used it now. Maybe he did have it a little bit or maybe she just trusted him that much because Claire squared her shoulders and stood solidly on her own.

Peter smiled at her as much he could and wrapped his arms around her.

"Let's go find Molly."

And then they were gone.