It was like a tomb in the belly of the prison ship as it passed through inspection. The prisoners sat in their rows, silent, their heads bowed as if in prayer. Not a single breath could be heard in the forty five minutes it took for the ship and its contents to get approval from the Port of Florida.
Finally, one of the marshals came down with his men, guns drawn and ready to fire at the slightest movement. "All right, scum!" he bellowed at them. "Time to move out. You'll go through detox, then a full body scan, and get delivered to your assigned farm. I hope you're looking forward to your 12 hour work days."
The marshals had them stand and turn simultaneously, then march out row by row. Marina could feel the hot, rank breath of the man behind her on the back of her neck as they waited to exit. She squinted in disgust, trying to will herself to think of her escape instead. She knew that the prison ship was really the only way an expatriate like her was going to get back into the country, but she still hated it. Whatever Claire was up to, Marina could only hope it was worth the trouble she had put her through.
The row in front of Marina's was just filing out of the chamber when she caught a glimpse of one of the prisoners slipping something to the main flank guard. She saw the officer discretely nod to the other man as he passed by. Marina felt a cold tingle of fear run through her head at this exchange.
They were marching out of the chamber, row after row, side by side. Marina wasn't a short woman, but she was walled in by the bodies of the other prisoners at the front and sides so she couldn't see where they were going. She soon was aware, however, that the men marching around her had manipulated their movement, giving her little choice but to be pulled along with them.
The wall of prisoners around her had walked her to a dark corner of the port. Marina looked around frantically for the guards, but there were none to be found. They'd been paid off well.
The tall African who'd laughed when Marina had demeaned Armis stood in her way, his arms crossed, his face humorless. Three other men stood around her as well – two looked Greek, the other Irish.
Marina threw her shoulders back, trying not to show her fear. She knew she stood no chance against all four of them – not without a weapon. She could take on one of them in basic hand to hand probably, two maybe – but the powerful African, whose name was Akinola, tipped the balance in favor of her attackers.
"Here's the deal," Akinola told her. "You get on your knees, I fuck your face, and you'll walk out of here alive."
Marina smiled. "You saw what I did to Armis' finger. How can you be sure I won't do the same thing to your prick?"
Marina's answer came in the form of a sharp blow to the back of the head. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees as everything became blurry for a moment.
They were on her in an instant. They pushed her face first into the cold, dirty floor. Her teeth hit the concrete with a tiny clink.
She knew exactly where each of the eight hands was in relation to her body. Two hands held her knees in a vice-like grip. Two were on her shoulders. One had her ponytail gripped tight, pulling her head back while simultaneously smearing her face in the dust. The other two hands were working off her pants.
She could feel their breath on her skin, could feel their fingers pulling at her, pushing into her. She grunted at the assault, forcing herself not to grant them any more satisfaction by giving in to her body's urge to scream and sob.
Then, as if by a miracle, their weight was lifted from her and she could breathe again. She heard zaps of electricity, then cries of pain. She brought herself to a sitting position, realizing that one of the guards had shot her attackers with stunner darts and they were now lying on the ground, writhing in shock.
Sato was soon by her side. "Are you all right?" he whispered to her.
Marina, who was busy pulling her pants back to her waist, ignored his question. She hated him, even more than the men who had just attacked her. She hated him for having seen her that way. She kept her face down, not wanting to even look at him. She said nothing.
Sato stood up and confronted the guard, who now had the four disoriented prisoners chained together and escorted out of the room. "What the hell is this?" he demanded. "You promised me that no harm would come to my meat. Now I probably won't get half of what her lord promised me!"
"I didn't promise you shit," the guard snapped back. "You were too damn cheap to pay for a commercial carrier, so that's what you get. I'm not bending over backwards so you can make a buck off some trifling whore."
Sato barely managed to keep himself from breaking the man's face at these words. He knew he had to stay in character if they were going to escape. "Fine. How do I get out of here?"
"One of our farm runners will take you as far as Carolina. You'll need to check in with the state authority once you get there."
Sato nodded and turned to Marina, who had composed herself as best she could, in spite of her dirty face and torn clothes. His heart was heavy with pity, but he couldn't show it. "Come on," he told her, taking her arm. "You've caused me enough trouble. In front so I can keep an eye on you."
As they walked out of the room, the guard called out, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Sato looked at him in confusion. "What?"
"The cuffs. If the meat's so important to you, you've gotta keep it secure, right?"
Sato nodded, taking out the cuffs. He turned Marina around, encasing her wrists in the metal fixtures. Taking a quick glance over his shoulder at the guard, he pretended to input a locking sequence in the handcuffs' mainboard.
Thirty minutes later, Marina was in the back of a security runner, bundled in a cheap, scratchy, but clean snowsuit, her hands uncomfortably wedged behind her. She quietly began to work her wrists out of the cuffs, hoping that Sato was doing a decent job of distracting the guard.
In actuality, Sato had to provide very little of a distraction. The homely, balding agent seemed thrilled to have company along his usual lonely run to the Carolina briquette farms.
"Say goodbye to civilization, my friend," the agent, whose name was Noble, told Sato. "Florida's where it ends. Those briquette farms – ugh – all I can say is I'm glad I got the job I have. Doesn't matter who you are – they lump all the hardened criminals and the debtors and the foreigners in there together, working in 20 degree temps gathering and shredding hay and moving animal fat."
Noble took a quick glance at the holding area behind the cabin and said with a wry smile. "I'm guessing that one's not gonna end up making charcoal, is she? Looking like that, there's probably some Carolina politician that wants her, huh?"
Sato smiled uneasily. As much as he hated it, he had to admit that he'd rather think of Marina working hard labor on her feet than serving as some man's sex toy on her back. He knew his friend Silas, who had made the arrangements for them to get into the country, was right: Sato cared too much.
More than twenty four hours earlier, Sato and Marina were sitting in Silas' tent in Trinidad, trying not to gag from the smells of tanning chemicals and the thick stench of animal blood. Silas eyed Marina up and down. He was an old lech, but Sato knew he'd help them for the right price.
"Your truck," he told them. "Give me that, and I'll make the arrangements. You'll leave tonight. I have a friend who can get you on a Port of Florida H.A. ship."
"Wait, H.A.? You mean Human Acquisition? A prison ship?" Marina asked.
"That's right. I'll have one of my boys hack the PF mainframe and register you as parolee meat. Sato will be your handler."
Marina and Sato looked at each other in confusion. "Why does Marina need to pretend to be a convict?"
Silas laughed. "Because she's an expatriate, that's why. The U.S. hates those almost as much as real criminals. She's not getting into that place unless she's in chains."
Sato began to protest, but Marina held his arm and said, "All right, if that's the only way. I've had to do worse."
They spent that evening as Silas' guest. Their host encouraged them to eat hardy, especially Marina, since the conditions on the ship were going to be awful. Before they went to bed, Silas turned to Sato and said, "You should strike her."
Sato looked at him as if he had three heads. "What?"
"She looks too put together. You're supposed to be her handler. You need to show that she's your meat and you have the power. Otherwise, they're not going to believe it."
"He's right, Sato," Marina confirmed. "We can't have them being suspicious." She walked up to him, her face only barely visible in the waning light of the moon. She touched her cheek. "Hit me here."
Sato shook his head. "I can't."
"Just a slap. Just enough to leave a mark."
"No."
"Sato, please. I wouldn't let anyone else do this." Marina felt herself losing control, but she steadied herself. "Claire is going there, and she's all alone. I have to find her. If this helps me get to her in time…I need you to."
Sato sighed and shook his head. Marina closed her eyes in frustration.
Then, he brought his hand back and struck her, so hard that she fell to the sand.
Noble was still engaged in the one-sided conversation, blissfully unaware that Sato hadn't been listening.
Sato sat up straight and examined the runner's geo display. They were nearing the "black hole," a ten-mile stretch of the main highway from Florida to the north in which wireless communication and homing devices would be inoperable. Silas had warned that if they needed to lose anything or anyone, this was the place to do it.
"So I decided that working as a runner might be boring as shit, but the pay is excellent. You should see the house I have in Tampa!" Noble was saying.
Sato watched him closely, getting ready to press the button that would release the barriers between the cabin of the runner and the holding area. He hoped Marina had gotten herself out of the cuffs by now and had found the weapons reserve in the back.
A tiny beeping noise along with a flashing display indicated that they were at the black hole.
"Oh damn. I hate going through this. Always makes me feel so helpless," Noble complained.
With that, Sato smacked the release button and a second later, Noble felt the cold metal of a rifle against the back of his head.
"I guess this just isn't your day, is it?" Marina hissed in his ear.
Noble gasped and pulled his hands off the controls.
"Now, just calm down, Noble," Sato told him in a gentle voice. "You need to keep this runner under control. You're going to stop it right here on the road, okay?"
Noble looked at Sato in fear and disbelief, but he nodded and complied with his orders. After they'd stripped him of all of his communication devices, they had Noble climb out of the runner.
Sato threw him a bag with food and water. "I saw a call box about ten miles back that way," he told him. "You'll be able to make it before the sun sets." Without waiting for a response, Sato closed the hatch of the runner and they sped away.
They hadn't been on the road more than five minutes when it began to snow. Marina put on the wipers and crossed her arms around herself. Sato sat next to her and watched her stone face as they sped north toward where she hoped she'd find Claire.
"Are you all right?" Sato asked her again.
Marina ignored his question and said, "We could have used that food you gave that agent. You know he's just going to alert the government when he gets to the call box."
Sato shrugged. "Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll be grateful that we spared his life."
Marina scoffed. "That compassion of yours is dangerous. It's going to get us killed."
Sato looked away. "My compassion is what got you here now."
Marina cleared her throat. She knew he was right. But she didn't want to admit that she couldn't have gotten this far without his help. She didn't want to acknowledge how relieved she was to see him after being attacked by those raping bastards. She didn't want to need him, period.
In spite of those feelings, she knew that it was only fair to concede that he had been useful. So after several minutes she quietly said, "Thank you."
For some, this would be a poor display of gratitude to someone who'd given up so much and risked so much for a total stranger. But Sato knew how much Marina was really admitting in those two words, and he knew how hard it must have been for her to say them.
He knew some levity was needed. "Thank me for not reading your little epic novel." He reached into the inner pocket of his snowsuit and pulled out Marina's Enlighten. "I haven't looked at it, I promise." He put it in her open palm, shyly looking away from her grateful face. "Keep reading. I'll watch the controls."
Marina smiled genuinely. "Just keep heading north. Hopefully this will tell me where we need to go before we've gone too far."
For the first time since the two women parted company, Claire was in a more precarious situation than Marina. She was lying on her back, crushed under the weight of the runner she had been hiding in. The crash had killed the two agents who hadn't been paying attention to the road, and had damaged most of the runner's systems. Predictably, the snow had begun to fall in Virginia, and had reached nearly six inches when Claire had regained consciousness for the fourth time since the crash.
She would become lucid and aware of her surroundings for a few minutes, then the pain, cold, and blood loss would become too much for her body and she would die. Then her brain would regenerate her body, and the horrible process would begin again.
She could barely see with the snow in her eyes, so she took sharp, deep breaths to try to blow it from her face. One of her arms was free, so she tried to get it to move up to her head to brush the snow off. She couldn't feel the fingers touching her nose and eyes.
She brought her arm down and hit the ground with her fist, crying out in frustration. "I'm sick and tired of the goddamn snow!" Her heart was slowing down, she felt it. She was going to die again.
She had to do something. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to keep her mind working, but it was hard to keep a machine working that was broken.
"Remember…just remember…" she told herself. "Please remember."
She took a breath in, and smelled perfume. What was it? It was spicy, and slightly earthy? Shalimar? Cinnabar?
It was Chanel. Her grandmother always wore it.
Claire opened her eyes and she could see an elegantly decorated room. The walls were a rich burgundy. The curtains were lace. Angela sat facing away from her, looking at herself in her ivory-colored vanity mirror. She was wearing a crisp grey suit, much like the suit she wore the day Claire left her. Claire squinted, and noticed that Angela had a very large brooch pinned to her chest – a red rose.
Angela delicately applied face power to her cheeks and nose, and took one last liberal spray with her atomizer, allowing the fragrance to engulf her.
She finally acknowledged Claire by directing her gaze in the mirror. "You've found yourself in quite a predicament, my dear," Angela observed.
Claire nodded from beneath the snowy wreckage. "How do I get out?"
Angela chuckled lightly. "You have to figure out what you want first. That's the only way to be free."
Claire moaned. "I want to get out of here. I want to keep moving! I want Marina to understand!"
"But what is she supposed to understand? Where are you going?"
"Oh God. I don't know! I just know I have to get there." Claire could feel the tears in her eyes, stinging them as they grew ice cold on her face. "I don't want to be like…this. I want to be the person I used to be."
Angela slowly turned around in her vanity's seat to look at her granddaughter, and it was now that Claire realized that the red rose shape wasn't a brooch. It was the bloodstain that formed when Angela had been shot through the heart.
"You can't go back to that, just like I can't come back. Or Peter. Or Sylar," Angela said sadly. "We exist only in you, Claire. You carry all of us inside you – the best and the worst of us. You are the final girl, the survivor, the one-woman show."
"But how do I - " before Claire could finish her sentence, Angela turned out the pearl-like light bulbs adorning her vanity and that corner of Claire's mind was once again left in darkness.
The rage began to build in her. She was so sick of her grandmother's riddles! How could she just sit there doing her stupid makeup while her granddaughter was suffering?
Claire looked up at the twisted metal hanging above her head and growled. "I – want – this – to – go!" Her energy focused completely upon it, the runner disengaged from the ground and flew swiftly up in the air, then was thrown several hundred feet away, coming to rest in a huge snow bank.
Claire laughed and cried as she felt her body beginning to heal itself. Legs re-grew themselves. Bones reset. Lacerations stopped bleeding and skin began to close cleanly over muscle. She sat up now, turning her head and waist back and forth to set the discs in her back into place.
The snow had melted away from her. She stood up, feeling the frigid air blow mercilessly upon her body. She didn't care. She was alive, and she had to keep moving. She turned and started walking north.
As Claire walked away, a man with red hair, who was once known as Bruno by his family, walked up to the runner wreckage that now sat sticking straight up in the air like some grotesque modern sculpture. He looked at it briefly, then turned his attention to the figure retreating ahead of him.
"She's beginning to remember," he shouted to the wind, with a smile.