Peter never would have guessed that The Loft would feel so much like home—when they stumbled back into it from impossible elsewhere, he felt a surge of relief that stunned him, hadn't realized that he'd become so attached to the SoHo artist hideout. It was four walls and a roof, a place to hide—simple. So he felt relief at first, safety—which quickly changed to annoyance as he saw Audrey come stalking towards them.
"Where have you been?" she asked Hiro coldly as he appeared next to Peter, her arms crossed, defensive-angry.
"We were mapping, Audrey, you know that," he explained, walking over to take her hand, but she pulled away, unappeased.
"For ten hours?" she demanded. "I know you can come back right to the minute you left, Hiro, that doesn't make any sense."
"Sorry, he was probably a little off because he just nearly died," Peter snapped at her. "Give the guy a break, he's had a hard day."
"What does he mean you nearly died?" Audrey asked Hiro, and Peter took the opportunity to escape into the kitchen. Girlfriend-boyfriend spats weren't really his thing—Audrey wasn't really his thing, she was Hiro's, and it was Hiro's job to calm her down. He, on the other hand, was single and hungry and tired, and he was going to solve at least one of those problems right now.
---
"Okay," Hiro said briskly. "Let's go."
Peter looked up at him from his bowl of Ramen, nonplussed. "Go where?"
Hiro rolled his eyes. "To Disneyland, Peter. Where do you think? We've got twenty-one universes left, we've got to get moving!"
"Mmm, I disagree," said Peter through a mouthful of noodles. "You're not going anywhere for awhile, and that's an order."
Hiro blinked at him. "You want to repeat that?"
"You just almost died, tough guy," Peter explained, pushing the bowl away from him. "As far as I'm concerned, you're on bed rest until further notice."
"Sorry, maybe I missed the part where you became my mother," Hiro said, annoyed. "You may have noticed that you can't tell me what to do."
"Right, saving the world by passing out from exhaustion, there's a good strategy," Peter said sarcastically. "Seriously, Hiro, you look like you're going to collapse any second."
Hiro gave himself a hard look in the mirrored surface of the refrigerator, taking in the circles under his eyes and the shoulders bent by a too-swift recovery. Peter was right, his body wasn't ready for another trip—but of course, he would never admit that. "That's ridiculous," he said stubbornly.
"Actually, it's not," Audrey said, breezing in from the main room. "He's right, Hiro—you're getting some rest, if I have to knock you out myself."
"She'll do it, too," Peter warned solemnly. "Look, Hiro, I skipped out on a universe, it's your turn, okay? Why don't you just sit this one out—you can map Epsilon and Zeta, and I'll take Eta by myself. No big deal."
Hiro studied Audrey wordlessly. "You will actually knock me out, won't you?"
"Absolutely," she said sweetly.
He sighed, bowing to the inevitable. "Fine. Go. Just try not to get yourself killed, because I won't be there to save you," he said sardonically.
Peter stood up from the stool, gave him a mock salute, and closed his eyes.
---
Peter saw the strobe lights through his eyelids even before he opened his eyes—pulsing like a heartbeat, decadent epileptic. When he finally opened them he started to feel dizzy; he was in some kind of dark room, lit only with neon and strobe, filled with people too close to each other. At first he thought it was a nightclub—then he saw the poles, stabbing into the ceiling every hundred feet or so, and he knew it wasn't, or at least not just a nightclub. He could see the silhouettes twisting themselves around the poles, lithe and female, and it took an extra measure of self-control for him to keep his attention on the job. He was a guy, after all—but he wasn't stupid.
He maneuvered his way through the crowd and found a seat at a low, black table, trying to get a feel for this universe that so far, consisted only of a strip club. He studied the people around him, but there was nothing shockingly standout about them, nothing more than usually wrong about an audience like this. It would be harder to dig under the surface of something that seemed so similar to his own reality—with no specific oddities to pounce on, he wasn't quite sure where to look. He snagged a glass of amber liquid from a passing waitress and settled in to wait.
There was a click of stiletto heels on the stage in front of him, feet walking straight past his face. Without thinking, he ran a glance up the legs of the girl onstage, followed the lines of her body all the way up to her face—and nearly had a heart attack. "God!" he yelled, knocking his chair over backwards, knocking his drink across the sleek black tabletop, scrambling to get away from the fact that this girl had blond hair and blue eyes and the face of Claire Bennet. Claire Bennet in a strip club—working in a strip club. The only reaction he could manage was complete, utter panic.
He shoved his way back through the crowd, knocking people indiscriminately from his path, desperate only to get out of this club and get this new, disturbing image of his niece out of his head. He burst from the building like a cork popping free, breathing much harder than necessary for a quick walk, hands on the sides of his head as if he could crush the picture straight from his brain. This was not okay. This was not an okay universe.
He had enough presence of mind to snatch a newspaper from a nearby dispenser, and then his presence of mind was all used up and the panic had full control. He closed his eyes and disappeared.
---
Claire felt fairly disgusting when she finally made it backstage again—for a number of different reasons, but primarily because she was covered in sweat, slick from it so she shined like lacquer. She immediately grabbed a towel and began drying herself off, making a face at the sweat soaking up into the fabric. She saw it when Niki came up behind her, caught her image in the mirror as the woman approached her.
"Hey, honey," Niki said, sitting down on the counter across from her. "You survived your first routine! How do you feel?"
Claire managed a smile, scrubbing the sweat from her shoulders. "It really is harder than it looks, isn't it?"
Niki grinned sympathetically. "A lot harder. Stripping is definitely not for wimps."
"Weird question," Claire said pensively. "It was really dark in there, and it was only for a second, but—I could have sworn I saw Peter sitting at one of the tables."
Niki's grin froze in place, becoming a strange, unnatural grimace. "Claire, Peter's dead. He died seven years ago in the bomb, you know that."
"I know," Claire muttered. "I know he's dead. I wasn't saying it was him, I'm not crazy. I just meant I saw someone who sort of looked like him. It threw me for a minute, seeing his face—I mean, I'm sure he wouldn't approve of all this."
Niki tossed her hair, adolescent-defensive. "Well, that's why he's dead and you're alive, Claire. You do what you have to do to survive."
"I'm just lucky you decided to let me hang around," Claire said with a calming smile, "teach me how to survive outside of Suburbia USA. With my dad gone, I didn't know what to do with myself, I was just…useless."
"You would have made it," Niki assured her. "You're stronger than you think. But I'm glad I met you, too, Claire; after Micah…" she faltered, then instantly tried to pretend she hadn't, shoving her sentence forward, "after Micah died, I think I needed someone to take care of."
"What a great symbiotic relationship we've got going," Claire grinned. "I'm the tapeworm, you're the intestines."
Niki stuck her tongue out. "What an adorable analogy. All right, babe, you ready for the next set?"
Claire rolled her eyes and stood up, fluffing her hair with her hands. "Middle-aged perverts, here I come."
Niki gave her an affectionate half-hug as they walked out the door. "It's a living."
---
"She was what?"
"I said," Peter said evenly, pausing to toss back a shot, "she was a stripper."
"That's…really disturbing," Audrey commented lightly. "How old is she?"
Peter put his palm on the newspaper he'd taken and slid it across the counter, skimming it quickly for a date. "July 2014. That means…" He tried some quick math in his head, but he was swiftly becoming too drunk for rational thought, and the numbers refused to add.
"Seven years since she was sixteen," Hiro told him helpfully. "That means she's twenty-three."
"Well," Peter said miserably. "At least she's legal."
"So much for 'go-lay-down-I've-got-this-one'," Hiro said wryly. "Let's see, that's two universes you've bailed on now, Peter."
"Still never gotten shot," Peter said with a half-conscious crooked smile. "And I did get you the newspaper. We can construct a line from there."
Hiro plucked the newspaper from the tabletop and studied it, frown going deeper and deeper as he read the headlines. "Wow," he said finally. "This universe is no fun."
---
Claude sipped his drink slowly, feeling the alcohol rush up to his head like hot ash through his veins, watching the women onstage, smiles on their faces and desperation in their eyes. The smoke hung heavy here like big-city pollution, making it harder to breathe but giving you that buzz for free, secondhand addiction. He liked places like this—it was almost as good as being invisible, slinking about here in the dark, nobody meeting anyone's eyes.
He knew she was here.
He'd been chasing her for months, and he was already planning his celebratory vacation ("Good job, you've finally caught that damn cheerleader!"). Admittedly, he wouldn't have expected to find her at a strip club, but this was where she was, and this was where he would find her. He checked his gun once more, quickly glancing at it in its shoulder holster under his jacket—it was a good gun, a nice one, the government finally giving them the resources they needed. The President understood now how important The Company was to America—after all that had happened, he finally understood.
There was a sudden burst of cheering, and his eyes snapped back up to the main stage. There she was—this was it. He pulled his gun out, stood up, and went after Claire Bennet.
---
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, I'm having a blast making up these universes, but yesterday I counted them and realized I've only written six universes so far. Six out of twenty-six—this is going to be a long story :). Anyway, I assume I'm going to eventually run out of ideas (I have this big character map on my wall and I just draw lines between them randomly, it's fun), so if you guys have any suggestions, anything crazy you'd like to see, please—send them my way. I'd love to hear them.