Chapter Eight

"Enemies"

Their emotional confrontation had left them listless, tired and drained. Peter hated seeing Claire so deflated, but he had been glad of the silence in the cab on their way to Mohinder's apartment. It had given him time to think and much more importantly, to breathe.

What she had said to him that morning and making him lose control of his own emotions – had brought home a truth that Peter had realised for days but had refused to admit. They were too close. He had known this since she had surprised him on his doorstep, but had pushed it to the back of his mind because more pressing things that required his attention.

But now he could no longer deny it. For two people whose lives had barely crossed – who had known each for hardly more than a few days – they were too involved. Obsessively, tenderly, desperately involved. Peter wasn't sure about Claire, but for him, what began as a journey on an impersonal mission to save the cheerleader had quickly become personal. Instead of the cheerleader, she was now Claire.

Their friendship was probably more damaging to Claire, being the much younger half of the two. She was only 17 for god's sakes, barely old enough to drive a car and not legally able to take a swig of alcohol for another 4 years, but here she was, running for her life. She was depending on him for survival and protection and what had he delivered? Gut wrenching, heart yanking confusion to an already complex situation.

In their defence, they had met under highly dramatic circumstances. What could have been more dramatic than 'saving the world'? Their fates had collided with the concatenation of their destinies, and now they seemed to be irretrievably linked, forced to play out their parts in their big, cosmic journey.

Peter was beginning to feel increasingly bitter towards destiny. Ando's running joke was that he wished that destiny would lose their number and at this moment Peter could not have agreed with him more. He hated this. When he had discovered his abilities – both Nathan and his own he supposed – he had been elated, triumphant. He had fought against his father's wishes for so long it had felt liberating to know that he truly was unique and different. The discovery of his ability was like a vindication of the markedly different path he had consciously taken in his life.

He was finally going to be somebody. What had he said to Nathan just before he had jumped off the building on that fateful day? 'It's my turn to be somebody now, Nathan.' But little did he know then, that everything he had done, all the roads he had taken had all been leading him to this. Being the ultimate cause of destroying the city he had grown up in. Was this what he had wanted? To be the somebody that would ultimately be responsible for destroying the city and killing millions of people along with it?

Peter almost wished he had the power to turn back time – Hiro's ability – to go back and change the past. Just wipe out the innocence and naivety that had plagued him all his life. He should have been more like Nathan, more guarded in his acceptance of his new found abilities. He half-seriously wondered how long he would have to be around Hiro in order to pick up the other man's ability to bend time and space to do just that.

"Just here please." He motioned for the cab to let them out outside Mohinder's apartment building. They quickly proceeded up the stairs, Claire intent on avoiding Peter's searching eyes at all costs.

They were greeted at the door by Mohinder, looking even more sombre than usual, and two other men who looked terrifyingly familiar. One of them had horn rimmed glasses. Claire gaped, grabbing Peter's arm in panic. "Oh my god." Without thinking, without even pausing to look at Claire, they bolted as quickly from the apartment as humanly possible. Peter's sprint was hampered by a sudden, vivid stab of pain at the base of his skull, the headache that had subsided in Claire's presence returning in full force in an instant. Through his increasingly searing vision, he felt Claire's small hand in his own, tugging him as she raced ahead, intent on escaping the father that had lied to her all her life.

Footsteps raced after them. Peter knew with their non-existent head start, there was no way they would be able to outrun them.

It was the dark Haitian man that caught up to them first. He pulled Peter up as easily as he would have picked up a child, and Claire's father did the same with her. They struggled viciously against their attackers.

Mr Bennet – god, what was his actual name Peter wondered – released his daughter, holding up his hands in the universal sign of surrender. "Please Claire, I just want to talk." She whipped around, tearing Peter from the Haitian's grasp. Her father looked on imploringly. "I just want to talk, I swear."

Peter didn't have to turn around to imagine Claire's face at that moment. There was a long, charged pause before she stepped from behind Peter and looked her father square in the face. "You won't try to erase my memories?"

"I swear." Mr Bennet said solemnly.

"Swear on Grandma Bennet's life?" Claire asked, more forcefully.

"I swear on Grandma Bennet's life." Still eyeing her father suspiciously, she stepped into Mohinder's apartment, careful to keep her eyes on him the whole time. That was also the cue for Peter to follow behind her. One false move from either Claire's father or his associate and he would grab Claire and dive out the window. Not his preferred way of exiting a building generally, but he seemed to have had a quirky penchant for diving out of buildings lately.

Mohinder had been hanging back, careful to keep himself out of the scene. Seeing that a temporary truce had been concluded, he stepped out, warily eyeing the others.

Peter's head was still killing him and what was worse, the physical struggle against the Haitian had made his entire body break out in cold sweat. That was when he realised that there must have been some brutally concentrated power in that room. The pain racking his body made him just the wrong side of hostile. "What the hell are they doing here?" He asked Mohinder.

Mohinder quickly recounted his conversation with Mr Bennet and the Haitian, right up until Claire and Peter's interruption. Mohinder sighed, his weary frame leaning against the peeling walls. "He told me how Eden died. When I hadn't heard from her, I feared the worst. Now I know she was special, and I never saw it. Now it's too late."

"Whose Eden?" Claire asked blankly, clinging to Peter and keeping her distance from the others.

"She lived next door." Mohinder replied crisply. If Peter had not gotten to know him in the past few weeks, he would not have noticed the gleam of grief in the other man's eyes. "Next to my father. She was his only friend just before … just before he died. The last message she left me, when I came back to New York, she said she was going to avenge my father. Kill the man that killed him. Sylar. But I never heard from her again."

"Sylar wanted her power. But he never got it."

Claire asked quietly, careful to not look at her father. "Was she like us?"

"She had the power of persuasion. She could convince others to do her bidding. It would have made Sylar nearly invincible." Mr Bennet replied, just as quietly.

Peter was only half-listening through the haze of pain that was now assaulting him. He knew that it must have been either the Haitian man or Claire's father that had an ability of some sort – and a powerful one at that – to make him feel it this intensely, even with Claire in the room to heal him. The pain, like a thousand red hot pokers puncturing the base of his skull, nearly made him crumple to his knees and cry with a decidedly un-manly fervour.

The Haitian, who had been silent all during the discussion, suddenly looked piercingly at Peter. Then just as abruptly, his pain disappeared. Peter panted loudly, making the others turn. "What did you do to me?" Peter asked softly in the stifling silence.

Claire's father turned to face him curiously. "Mr Petrelli?" The way the older man said his name made Peter feel like a science experiment, something to be prodded and studied. Which he probably was to Claire's father. Peter's dislike for the man increased. "Are you feeling all right?"

Technically, he no longer had to lie. The Haitian man had done something to either switch off his powers – or block it, he didn't know which – that had been more effective than anything Peter had achieved with Claude. He wished he could have talked to the silent man away from Mr Bennet's prying ears. "I'm fine." Peter breathed, straightening his frame for emphasis.

Claire's father was still eyeing him suspiciously and it was Claire that finally drew his scrutiny away from Peter. "What are you doing here Daddy?" She asked pointedly, hostility still dripping like hot lava from her voice.

Sensing that his daughter was not in a conciliatory mood, Mr Bennet's tone reverted to being business-like. "Sylar escaped from our custody. The last read of him we got, we know he was heading for New York. For you."

Claire shivered visibly, involuntarily clutching her body as if for protection. She seemed particularly small at that moment. "Where is he?"

"We don't know." Mr Bennet took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes wearily. It was the first sign of stress that Peter had seen escape the older man. "That night we came to Mr Petrelli's apartment –", his gaze shifted to Peter, "he was there."

"How did you know he was going to be there?" Peter asked accusingly. The irony of having a conversation with the man that he and Claire had jumped off his building to get away from was not being lost on him.

"We didn't. We were staking out your apartment because I knew Claire was there." That particular disclosure made Peter suck his breath in. Those two days that Claire had stayed with him, and her father had been lurking outside the whole time? It was creepy in the extreme.

Mr Bennet replaced his glasses. "We erased his memories of Claire while he was in our custody. That slowed him down; but he must have kept records of people somewhere, it's the only way to explain how he knew about her. And you, Mr Petrelli." The skin on the back of Peter's neck crawled. He now fully understood the fear Claire must have felt on knowing that a psychotic murderer was after her. Or more accurately, after her brain.

"It's true. When I first came to New York, I found an address for Sylar in my father's notes. We – Eden and I – went there, it was full of notes about everyone, all the information he could find. Now I think it was all the information he was able to steal from my father." Mohinder confirmed. "He is a very dangerous man."

"Here's a question. How do you know he hasn't followed us here? You've led him straight to us."

"Rest assured Peter – can I call you Peter? We're going to take precautions." Claire's father answered a little brusquely. "There is no way I'm going to let that man hurt my little girl." Peter didn't trust Claire's father as far as he could throw him – which wouldn't be very far at all, judging from their respective builds – but Peter sensed that he had meant every word of that statement. It made Peter feel oddly better. Both of them had something in common now – protecting Claire at all costs.

"How do you plan on catching him?" Peter asked abruptly. He didn't like the idea of Sylar running around New York stalking them while Peter was trying to keep himself from blowing up. He didn't think he could handle one more crisis.

"We use you as bait." Mr Bennet said simply, as if he was merely reciting the grocery list.

Claire's eyes widened while Peter exclaimed. "Um, no!"

"It's the only way." Off even Mohinder's slightly shocked look, he elaborated. "Look, I know what's going to happen in three days. There isn't time to try anything else. You'll need to concentrate your energies on trying to prevent your destruction. There's no time."

Peter was floored. "How do you ..."

"I know a lot more than you would give me credit for Peter." Claire's father smiled, but there was no warmth behind it. "I've been aware of several of the others for a while now. Isaac Mendez, your brother. You I wasn't aware of until you saved my Claire. But I must say, you have an extraordinary ability, it's more powerful than you realise. You'll develop it in time."

Peter frowned. He simply didn't trust the older man and by the way that Claire was still standing, with her arm's crossed over her chest, she seemed to feel the same way too. He had no idea why Claire's father was being so forthcoming with them. But at the same time, he knew that there was no way that Mr Bennet was telling them everything he knew.

His head ached with all the intricacies of the situation he had found himself in the middle in. Peter would have given anything to return to the simple life of the ostracised hospice nurse at the moment.

Claire's next question stunned Peter. It quite simply had not occurred to Peter to ask. "Can you help Peter? Can you stop him exploding?"

To his credit, Claire's father seemed to have seriously considered the question. "I don't know Claire-bear." He replied thoughtfully, not noticing Claire's flinching from the familiar name. "There's no way of knowing what exactly triggers it. With more time, we could perhaps study him, monitor his brain waves and fluctuations. But with so little time …"

"I don't believe you." She hissed, her anger making her fearlessly step towards her father. "You've been running around studying everyone with abilities. I don't believe you can't help him."

"You're wrong Claire." This time Mr Bennet's tone held more force, sounding like what Peter imagined him speaking to a subordinate. "Our work has been concentrated exclusively on bringing out those abilities, not reversing them. The only thing I can offer is that I think Mr Suresh's supposition may be accurate – over the last few weeks, Peter has absorbed too much power too quickly. It's degrading his body. The same thing's happening to Sylar, his entire physical and mental make up is breaking down as we speak."

"Peter's nothing like Sylar." Claire spat angrily.

"You're wrong." Mr Bennet replied darkly, suddenly appearing less fatherly. "Peter and Sylar are in many ways two sides of the same coin. They both have the ability to siphon powers and use them as their own. The only difference is that Peter does not have to physically ingest the ability the way Sylar does. That's all."

"Ingest?" Claire said sickly, realisation dawning on her face. "You mean, he eats …"

His victim's brains, Peter added with revulsion. Hearing his ability dissected and compared so clinically to a raging homicidal lunatic did not make his day any better.

"So what do you suggest we do?" Peter asked quietly.

"Go about your day as if we never had this conversation. We'll follow you closely. Sylar will strike soon, it's in his nature. He's too hungry for new powers."

The thought of him and Claire being bait for Sylar made Peter's stomach decidedly queasy. Not only did he have himself destroying New York to worry about, he also had to worry about being brain meat for a hungry, power crazed psycho. His day couldn't get any worse.

Nodding tersely, Claire's father and the Haitian left them to their devices. Mohinder looked at them apologetically. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to stumble in on that. They just approached me this morning."

Peter waved it off. Now wasn't really the time to sulk about nuances and betrayal. What he really needed to know was whether Mohinder had made any headway with the vaccine. "I have something for you." A surprisingly boyish grin appeared on Mohinder's normally serious face. "I think I have it." He declared triumphantly.

"You have it? It works?" Peter asked excitedly.

Mohinder whipped around, rummaging through the piles of documents and books scattered over his table. Finally, his eyes landed on a small wooden box, the contents of which he produced to Peter. "This is the vaccine." He carefully passed the syringe into Peter's shaking hands. "You have to try it first, to make sure it works. It should only last for 24 hours. It's not a cure, but it should prevent you from degenerating any further."

Peter stared at the vaccine mutely, almost reverently, in his hands. It was quite possibly what was going to make the difference between his life or death.

The intense revelations at Mohinder's apartment did nothing to alleviate the tension between Peter and Claire. Picking up some Chinese takeout in the late afternoon for dinner, they returned to Claude's apartment, at a loss what to do. With Sylar potentially lurking about, it was hard for Peter to concentrate on practicing the techniques that Claude had taught him. He felt like they were sitting ducks, just waiting on getting their brains cut open by a homicidal lunatic who could strike at any second.

Emotional control. That was what he was going to struggle with the most. All his life, Peter had been an emotional person. It was what had made him the black sheep of the Petrelli family and it was what had made him gravitate towards nursing. He remembered a particularly angry conversation with his father just before he had signed up for nursing school, trying to justify his decision to the man that had never been satisfied with his younger son's lack of ambition. Peter had felt no inclination to be a doctor even if his marks had allowed him the choice, which it hadn't.

"Are you going to use the vaccine?" Claire's quiet voice brought Peter out of his gloomy thoughts. While her tone was sedate, there was a ghost of a grin on her face.

"Yeah, I'll try it now." Smiling what he hoped was a mollifying smile, he pushed his sleeves up and extended his arm out for the injection. Claire silently opened the box and handed him the syringe containing the clear fluid.

Although Mohinder, a geneticist, had developed the drug specifically for him, Peter still felt trepidation at injecting it. It was untested and untried – on anything. There was good reason why pharmaceutical companies tested newly developed drugs on animals and conducted human trials, because results from the use of a new drug could have wholly unexpected results. But Peter didn't have the luxury of time. Taking a deep breath, he injected himself with the vaccine.

Claire looked on, holding her breath in anticipation. Her expression made Peter laugh, and the tension between them suddenly dissipated like morning mist in the sun. "Relax Claire, you can take a breath."

She ignored his jibe. "Can you feel it working?"

Peter stood, shaking his shoulders and chest. He didn't feel any different. "Not yet. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel." Almost as soon as he said that, he wished he hadn't. The headache that had racked him so viciously just before Claire appeared back into his life began to throb back to life. "I think it's working."

"How do you know?"

"My head feels like it's going to split open." He answered slightly tersely. "It was like that before you got here. The vaccine must be blocking my ability to heal, even with you around." Claire's apprehension mirrored his own. It was something he hadn't actually taken into account. Her healing ability had been the only thing that had made him feel almost fine, and now, through the waves of pain reasserting itself onto his fatigued body, he questioned the wisdom of that decision.

He swore, putting his hands to throbbing temples. Through the pain, he heard Claire shifting and standing up. She placed a cool hand into one of his. "Peter, take my hand." She said gently. Peter, his eyes now squeezed shut in an effort to lock out the pain, almost crushed her hand as she guided him out of the room. "Easy." She breathed.

She was softly steering him towards the bedroom where hopefully he could lie down. Peter only vaguely remembered the layout of the apartment but he knew that the same thought would be running through her mind. It was funny how now, with one decisive action, their roles had been reversed. She was the guide and protector, he her dependent charge.

Peter muttered inaudibly. He began hearing voices, which was an entirely new phenomenon for him. They were faint and incoherent, swimming around on the inside of his brain, whirling and spinning his head around until it made him dizzy and sick with nausea. He wanted to scratch them out by any means possible, even if that involved getting a can opener and popping his entire brain out to do it. But that would be doing Sylar's work for him.

He screamed then, an unbearable scream of pain. He felt it racking his body, twisting and contorting it like red hot pokers piercing through his eyes. Dimly, he realised they must have reached the bed just in time, because he had collapsed and was now lying down on something soft, something that was absorbing the sweat that now coated his body.

He heard shushing noises and somewhere at the back of the part of his mind that was still functioning, he knew Claire was sitting beside him. She was the source of the comfort, and young or not, Peter found himself clinging to her for dear life. If he could anchor that part of himself that was still conscious, perhaps he could hold on. Get past this, if there was a way past it.

"Claire …" Peter rasped heavily, feeling his consciousness slipping mercifully away from him. "Thank you …"

Shouts rang in his ears, jerking Peter awake. It took Peter a few long moments – and a sore, parched throat – to realise that he was actually the source of it. Invisible hands clung to him, holding him against the bed, only to morph into Claire's familiar frame. "Shhh, hey Peter, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay …" She was repeating it steadily like a mantra, but he could tell even in his dimmed state that panic edged her voice. Suddenly it faltered. "Please wake up Peter, please wake up. I'm scared, I'm really scared."

Peter opened his eyes, blinking hard in the darkness. Thankfully, the excruciating pain had disappeared, leaving only lethargy in its wake. He was even able to reach up and take one of her golden curls in his fingers, curls that cascaded like a torrent of golden rain down the side of her face. He twirled it as her crystal blue eyes looked down at him wondrously. "Hey."

She had been crying. Tears still freely streamed like rivers down her face but at least she was smiling as well. "I'm glad you're back." Her fear – not for herself but for him – prompted a surprisingly boyish grin from him.

For a moment he forgot about the dream that so roughly jerked him awake, but then it came back crashing down on him, screaming for attention. Peter gulped furiously for air, only one thought from his dream ringing in his mind.

Sylar was not going after Claire or Peter. He was going after Nathan.