A Note From Lara: Okay, this is it people! This is the eclipse chapter! Or at least, the first part of the pilot episode, anyway. Finally, after ten chapters of setup, we're here! (But remember, it is AU, although with all the universe-jumping in this series, I hesitate to call it that.)
And on that subject, I have one small note to make. I will be covering the other heroes' storylines, even when they're not directly interacting with Dianne. I know that most of you don't need that to remind you what happened, but believe it or not, I have one or two amazingly devoted readers who have never even watched Heroes at all! They read Smallville According to Dianne and apparently loved it enough that they wanted to read the sequel even though it's in a fandom they know nothing about. I am completely amazed by their friendship and their commitment to this series, so I will be giving at least little exerpts to explain what the hell's going on for their sake.
The first two sections of this chapter are set two days before the eclipse, the rest of them are on the day of it.
--
"Look, driving a cab is a very dangerous business," Nirand insisted. "The wrong fare, the wrong time... we may never know what happened."
"No!" Mohinder said stubbornly, sloshing through the rain-filled streets of Madras. "A few days ago, my father called me, insisting that someone was following him, trying to steal his research. I dismissed it as paranoia, but now that something really has happened..."
Mohinder ran up the steps to his father's abandoned apartment. "Nirand, I have to do this. I have to finish what he started. According to him, he was this close to finding the first of them... his "Patient Zero". He tracked him as far as Queens, New York."
"Your father lost touch with reality, Mohinder. Let go of this... this fool's quest of his," Nirand said angrily.
Pausing on the stairs, Mohinder turned back to look down at his friend. "I can't do that. I have to know that he didn't die in vain." Leaving Nirand standing on the steps, Mohinder continued up the flight and entered his father's long-abandoned apartment.
Almost everything was exactly as Chandra Suresh had left it. The scattering of books and papers all across the room, the huge map on the wall. The map was covered with interconnected lines of string, linking cities and countries, spanning the whole globe. Newspaper articles and photographs were tacked alongside some of the pushpins that had been inserted with great precision into the board.
Mohinder glanced around the room, looking for anything out of place. One thing immediately caught his attention. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay on top of a stack of books. His father had not worn glasses, and none of their relatives did either. These had not been here the day after Chandra left.
Suddenly, a voice echoed from the other side of the wall covered by the map. "Yeah, I'm at his apartment right now. No, he left everything here but his computer." Mohinder froze in his tracks. Someone was in the apartment with him. Hurriedly, and as silently as he could, he gathered together as many of his father's things as he could. "Yeah, get a team down here to bag and tag everything," the man across the wall said. Mohinder pulled out his digital camera and took a quick snapshot of the map, then pulled a pin out of the dot marking New York.
"I've got to call you back," said the voice. Mohinder swore under his breath. The man must have caught sight of the camera flash. He rushed out of the apartment, carrying an armload of files.
By the time the other man emerged from behind the wall, Mohinder was long gone. The man glanced around, observing calmly that some of the files that had previously been there were gone. Perhaps some burglar... Ah well, this was one the Company he worked for didn't need to know about. He picked up the horn-rimmed glasses and placed them over his eyes.
Horn-Rimmed Glasses surveyed the room with satisfaction. Another job well-done, he could go home to his family now.
--
Claire Bennet was supposed to have been home an hour ago. She ran through the dark streets of Odessa, Texas, breathing hard as her legs pumped beneath her. She just knew that her mom would give her hell if she didn't get home soon. The skirt of her red and gold cheerleading uniform danced around her thighs, and she tried to come up with a decent alibi to explain her lateness.
The truth was that cheerleading practice had been canceled and she had gone to a party at the house of the head cheerleader, Jacky, who also happened to be her best friend. She had had just a bit too much to drink, and lost track of time. But she needed a better explanation than that. Her long blonde hair streamed out behind her as she streaked through the streets.
Perhaps she could just say that cheerleading practice ran late. That was plausible, and the other girls would back her up. The sixteen-year-old smiled briefly to herself. The lie made sense, and it was one she could tell with a straight face.
Suddenly, her foot was snared by a deep crack in the pavement, and she fell hard. "Ow!" she hissed through gritted teeth. Her beautiful green eyes welled up with unexpected tears at the pain in her knee. She rolled over onto her back and sat up, surveying the damage. As she saw the bloody cuts that covered her skin, she swore under her breath. Her entire knee had been completely ripped apart by the rought cement.
All at once, the pain vanished, and before her disbelieving eyes, the blood disappeared back into the wound and the skin knitted itself back together. "Oh my god," she whispered, staring at the smooth, perfect skin. "What the...?" What had just happened? How had the cuts just... healed themselves?
Numbly, Claire rummaged around in her purse, and found the small multi-tool she usually carried with her. She flipped out the knife, and placed it against the skin of her thigh.
She rammed the blade deep into her flesh. Blood spurted out, covering her hands and the skirt of her cheerleading uniform. She wrenched the knife free, and within seconds, the skin was pulling itself together once more. Claire sat there on the sidewalk, staring at her bloody hands. How was this even possible?
--
Los Angeles
A beautiful blonde woman posed in her underwear before a webcam. She turned her back to the camera and unfastened her bra, glancing over her shoulder at the lens. She smiled seductively, before an egg timer dinged and the camera stopped recording. Quickly throwing on a robe over her lingerie, the stripper hurried across the garage to her laptop.
She sent an instant message to her client:
XXXNiki4u: Time's up.
Huggerz69: Little more. Please.
XXXNiki4u: It'll cost you another 39 bucks.
Huggerz69: BITCH!
"Pervert," Nicole "Niki" Sanders said aloud. She closed the connection to her website and hurried past all her paraphernalia for her 'job' towards the door to the garage. As she passed a large mirror, she paused. For just a moment, there were two Nikis in the mirror. She stared at her reflection, and the look in her blue-gray eyes was challenging. Exhaling sharply, she turned away from the mirror and entered the house.
"Micah?" she called to her son. "Time to get ready for school!" She stuck her head into his bedroom, only to discover that her eleven-year-old son was nowhere to be seen. "Micah?" she said, panic swelling in her chest. Oh god, she was late on her payments, what if Linderman had sent some thugs to kidnap her son...? Niki whirled out of the room, running down the hall.
She didn't see that her reflection in the mirror above his bureau turned out of the room after she did.
"Micah?!" Entering the living room, Niki found the boy sitting on the sofa, fixing his computer. "Oh my god, baby you scared me!" she said breathlessly. She tousled the boy's dark curly hair. "What are you doing?"
The dark-skinned boy glanced up at her. "Just working on my computer. The logic board was bad, so I built a new one." Niki laughed softly. "A new one. Did anybody ever tell you you're the smartest little man on the planet?"
"Yeah, you do. All the time," Micah said. Niki picked up a shoebox that was sitting on the table and looked at him questioningly. "It's a pinhole camera," he clarified. "For the eclipse? The moon's gonna cover up the sun today. We're supposed to watch it in school."
Niki nodded, handing the box back to him. "Speaking of which, you need to go get ready. You can't be late, not today."
"I'm already dressed and I packed my lunch," Micah countered. "That's what I've been doing this morning. What about you?" Niki sighed inwardly. She sometimes wondered if Micah knew exactly how she made their money. The boy was so much more perceptive than she ever gave him credit for.
Suddenly, a sharp knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. "Micah, go get your stuff and wait by the back door, okay?" she said, tension showing clearly in her voice. The boy left the room quickly as she peered through the curtains. On the front step, she saw two men standing impatiently before the door. Oh god, Linderman had sent debt collectors after all!
She hurried Micah out the back door to the car and threw it into reverse, skidding out of the driveway as quickly as she could drive.
--
Claire Bennet stood on top of the old mining derrick, peering through the bright Texas sunlight to the ground below. They were pretty far away from the town, no one would see her. Across the flat ground stood Zach, a former friend she hadn't spoken to since... god, she didn't know how long it had been since she'd talked to Zach. But she felt that she could trust him, and he had a camera...
"Camera ready?" she called. He gave her the thumbs up, and she climbed over the rail between her and an eighty-foot fall. Her palms sweated, and she felt a familiar thrill of adrenaline, despite the fact that she knew she would be fine. She clenched the bar behind her, then with a shriek she let go.
The next thing she was aware of was her spine snapping itself back in place. She stood up as the pain wracking her body quickly faded, and saw that Zach had run across to where she was getting to her feet. She looked straight into the camera and said, "This is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt number six." She felt the lacerations on her face healing, blood vanishing back into the cuts.
Zach turned off the camera. "Aside from the fact that that was so gross I almost fudged myself, this is about the coolest thing since television!" he exclaimed.
"Not if nobody finds out about it," she said sulkily.
"What are you worried about? It's not like you won't still be popular," Zach pointed out. "Popular!?" Claire burst out. "Who said anything about popular? Homecoming is a less than two weeks away and I'm a freak show! I've busted, like, every bone in my body, stabbed myself in the chest, shoved a two-foot steel rod through my neck, and I don't have a mark on me!"
Looking slightly disgusted, Zach pointed shakily at her abdomen. "What do you call that sticking out, then?" Claire glanced down at her side to see three of her cracked ribs poking through her skin. "Oh great," she sighed, shoving them back in as the skin healed.
As they walked back into Odessa, flames rising high into the October sky caught her attention. Claire motioned Zach to follow her, and they watched from behind the police barricade as most of the town's firemen battled a huge blaze from a horrible train wreck. It seemed that fire billowed from every car scattered across the dusty ground. "How hot do you think it is in there?" Claire asked quietly. Zach glanced at her and turned the camera on.
Claire darted under the barricade and dashed into the nearest car. As she stood in the flames, feeling her skin burn as quickly as it healed, she felt a surge of awful joy. She could stand here, where no one else would ever live to tell about it. Granted, she would always be a freak, but it was almost worth it to feel the fire lick across her skin almost like a lover's caress...
A sound from the back of the car caught her attention, and as she turned, she saw a man trapped behind the flames. Running forward, she grabbed him by the arm, hauling him out of the burning car. She half-carried him into the open, supporting him until two firemen had hurried over to wear they were stumbling along. Once she was sure the man was in good care, she ran away from the scene, back to where Zach held the video camera, still trained on her.
--
I was sitting at my desk, just like normal, when Nathan Petrelli came up to me. "Ms. Morton, right?" he asked. I nodded. "Call me Dianne," I said. I might not particularly like the guy, but that was no reason to be rude. Ha, yeah right.
"Dianne. Mr. Sully tells me you were late to work the other day. Is that so?" I nodded. "I overslept," I said tersely by way of explanation.
Nathan frowned. "I have to tell you, if the situation were any different, I'd have to let you go. At this stage of the campaign, I can't afford any mistakes, even something little like my secretary being late to work. Absolutely nothing can go wrong. But since Mrs. Gordon is still on maternity leave, we'll keep you on, just until Prissy gets back. Do we understand each other?"
Hm. Nathan in person was... interesting. I mean, sure on TV he's all make-nice to everybody, a total kiss-up just to get votes, but face-to-face he seemed like kind of a straight talker. I could respect that. Even if it was two-faced. Hm, speaking of Two-Face, I wondered how Bruce was getting along... Keep your mind focused, Dianne! That's what comes of living half your life in another reality; your mind never seems to stay on task when you really need your wits about you.
"Yes, Mr. Petrelli. I understand perfectly," I replied.
"Call me Nathan," he said, smiling. I nodded, unsure what to say.
Then there was one of those awkward silence that makes you want to stand up and do something totally ridiculous just to break the tension. "Well then..." I said, completely unsure of what I was going to say. 'I have a lot of work to do,' just seems kind of obvious, you know? And saying 'I want to go back to playing Tetris,' isn't exactly the kind of thing you want to say to your boss when you just got done having a discussion about why he wants to fire you but can't just now.
Thankfully, I was rescued by the phone ringing. I picked up the receiver and listened to the voice on the other end of the line for a moment. "Yes, as a matter of fact he's right here. It's Mr. Linderman," I said, handing the receiver to Nathan. "And I think it must be something important, because this time everybody's favorite mob boss is actually calling in-person." Oh my god, did I actually just say that?
Nathan gave me a very strange look, but took the phone. "Yes, hello Mr. Linderman," he said, and began "mm-hm"-ing and "yes"-ing like crazy. But the whole time, he was giving me this "we'll-talk-about-this-later" look I hadn't seen from anybody since my last foster parent.
Suddenly, Peter burst in through the door. "Nathan, I gotta talk to you!" he said loudly.
--
Another Note From Lara: Here we go! Time for everybody's world to turn upside-down! Who here thinks that Dianne's going to be totally in her element?
On another note, I have a favor to ask of all of you. I'm having some difficulties deciding what pairings I'm going to start off in this fic, so give me some ideas. Bear in mind that although I have no objections to it, I don't write slash, and I'm already planning on setting Mohinder up with Tanya (although it may eventually end in disaster, who knows?) Anyway, please help me out, I'm struggling with this!