Okay, I'm a couple days late with this update – there's finally some fighting, though, so I feel fairly confident that you'll forgive me… or at least I feel optimistic! This chapter has the first preview scene, except I've changed the setting from outside a book store to outside a hotel; you'll see why if you just read for context.

Hart S. Topper is my OC, although his ability is somewhat inspired by Lily in Supernatural S2, and yes his name is a cheap play on words – feel free to laugh in private. The place he lives is inspired by the Heavenly Hotel (um, misnomer, anyone?) from the Sammy Keyes series.

Chapter 12: Be Still My Heart, Pt. 1

"I cannot believe I'm going along with this," I muttered. "You, Claire Bennet, are a horrible, horrible person."

Far from being insulted by this assessment of her character, she laughed. "No I'm not – lighten up. What are you, scared?"

"Yes! Of getting arrested, or expelled, or-"

"That's what you pick to worry about? Bella, no one gets expelled for ditching school one day, and the law only says you have to go till you're eighteen…so maybe I'll get arrested, but you won't."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that makes me feel a lot better! Even if we don't get caught ditching, this still seems like a very bad idea. If you find out there's a posthuman who can give someone a heart attack just by touching them in Seattle, most people would drive the other way!"

Claire sighed and patiently explained, "We aren't most people, Bella. This guy mugs people and uses his power to keep them from ID'ing him to the cops, and we can't sit around in school pretending it's not happening just because it doesn't affect us."

"I'm not saying we should, but couldn't we just, I don't know, tell your dad what's going on and let his company deal with it? Isn't taking people with dangerous abilities off the streets supposed to be their job, not ours?"

She snorted derisively. "Supposed to be, but that doesn't mean they're good at it. They already had this guy locked up, and then there was some kind of accident where all their most dangerous prisoners escaped! It was supposed to be their job to keep everyone safe from Sylar too, remember?" An edge crept into her voice; I knew then that losing her capacity to feel pain wasn't the only consequence of her fateful encounter with the killer – she'd also lost her faith in the organization that should have kept that from happening to her, and probably in her adoptive father by extension.

"You're right, sorry. I get it now." This was something she needed to do, and maybe I did too, because I understood as well as her how it felt to be at the mercy of someone so much more powerful than yourself that they could end your life whenever they felt like it while you were completely helpless to stop them. I'd been there myself with James and again with Sylar, although in that case I hadn't had as long for the terror and hopelessness to set in; it wasn't something I'd wish on my worst enemy.

I fell silent, waiting for Claire to say something else, but she was gone, her lips pressed into a tense line, eyes staring blankly at the road ahead; it didn't look like she'd resurface anytime soon. Sighing, I turned my body to the window – it was going to be a long ride.

However (possibly because I dreaded reaching our destination) time flew, and all too soon Claire was parking in front of a seedy-looking hotel. "Our guy lives here?" I asked incredulously. Ordinarily I would run to the other side of the street so as not to get too close to the front doors of a place like this, and now Claire expected me to go inside?

"Yep, this is his last known address." She cast a dubious look at the building; I drew some comfort from the fact that she was no more enthusiastic than I was about entering it.

"And, assuming he's actually in there, what exactly are we going to do – tie him up and toss him in the trunk?"

To my astonishment, Claire took this suggestion seriously. "Well, my plan was to call Dad to come get him-"

"And if your dad happens to not know he's here and be in another state or something?"

"Then I guess we'll have to put him in the trunk after all, or get Peter to teleport him to my dad."

"After which he'll teleport you into the nearest mental hospital," I pointed out. "Me too, for not stopping you. Hey, speaking of him, how were you able to find out about Topper without Peter catching on?" Given that we'd taken Claire's car on this trip – during which she'd squirmed guiltily when I mentioned him – I had an idea that he was in the dark about his niece's new extracurricular activity.

"From Dad's files on the Company's top-security prisoners – I brought copies with me when I moved to Forks just in case any of those people ever showed up in the neighborhood. And no, Dad doesn't know I have them. I looked up where Hart lived before Level Five, Primatech, and this is it."

"Are you sure he came back here? Seems to me like the place you got caught last time is the last place you'd go when you got out."

"Yeah, I don't see the logic there either but he's here, all right. People having heart attacks in the middle of the street for no apparent reason is the kind of thing that eventually makes the newspaper's B-section, so all I did was compare stories from last week with the ones on file that first led Primatech to Topper and put two and two together. Wasn't that hard, really."

Against my will, I was impressed – Claire's detective work and deductions weren't half bad. It was just the practical application that had me worried. Seeming to guess that I was having second thoughts, Claire linked her arm through mine and tugged me forward. "Come on, Bella, if you back out now you'll have blown off school for nothing. As long as you're acting like a delinquent, you might as well get your money's worth."

"You're conveniently omitting the fact that I wouldn't be a delinquent if not for your bad influence…"

"Does this mean you're chickening out?"

I groaned. "No, I already made up my mind to accompany you on your mission of temporary insanity – at least I hope it's temporary – and I always follow through on my decisions. Let's just get this over with."

Claire squeezed my arm and gave me her overly perky cheerleader grin. "That's the spirit!"

I quickened my pace, pulling her along. "Start cheering and you die."

Completely undaunted by that statement – her ability probably made death threats a lot less frightening – Claire kept up the bubbly act long enough to persuade the man at the front desk (inside a small, dimly lit lobby with grimy windows and a lingering stench of cigarette smoke) that Hart S. Topper was expecting us. The man looked us over in a way that made my skin crawl before waving us toward the staircase.

"I think he thought we were hookers or something!" Claire said in an undertone once we were past the first landing and out of the manager's earshot. I shuddered, not only because the idea was repulsive but also because it wasn't an unreasonable explanation for what girls like us would be doing in a place like this. "Well, that's a mistake Topper won't make; if he does, this'll straighten him up fast." She reached into her purse and pulled out a taser.

My eyes widened. "D'you actually know how to use that thing?" At her nod I murmured, "I fear you…like, a lot."

"Me? I'm just an indestructible immortal cheerleader with lethal weapons – I'm harmless."

I let her take the lead since she was the one with the weapon; after a climb that didn't last nearly long enough for my liking we stopped outside room 211, my fearless leader knocking on the door while I hung back, hoping fervently that Hart wasn't at home.

Today wasn't my day, though. The door's peeling paint swung back to reveal an even more unpleasant sight: a scruffy man in his late twenties or early thirties, wearing a pair of jeans that looked on the verge of falling down, a stained undershirt, and a leer.

Left to my own devices I would have fled then and there, but of course it took more than this to faze Claire. "Hart Topper?" she asked coolly.

"Yeah, that's me. What can I do you for?"

"You can let me do this the easy way for once," Claire retorted, whipping the taser out from behind her back.

She fired, Topper grabbed her wrist and twisted it so that the taser was no longer pointing at him, and right on cue I located the hot spot in his adrenal cortex and activated my shield, ensuring that his touch wouldn't have any harmful effects…unless it counted if he succeeded in breaking her wrist. Still not as bad as a heart attack; she can take it.

"What the hell?" I had guessed right – Topper had tried to use his ability on Claire, and discovered that he couldn't. His eyes wheeled frantically, finally settling on me. "You!" Wresting Claire's taser from her grip, he pressed it to her forehead, discharging its full voltage directly to her brain; I couldn't tell if she felt it, but her face went blank as she lost consciousness.

Topper dropped her and the taser and lunged through the open door to grab my shoulders. "If your partner happens to wake up, you tell her no way in hell am I going back to that hole of a cell, you hear me?" He shoved me into his room; my breath was knocked from my lungs as I landed hard, the worn carpet hardly cushioning my fall.

I lay stunned until I was flipped onto my back and shaken. "Bella? Bella, wake up!"

"Uhh… Stop shaking me… Claire, get off!" I sat up, bringing myself nearly nose-to-nose with the blonde just in time to see the burn on her forehead heal. "Where's Hart?"

"Gone." She slammed a fist on the floor in frustration. "And catching him'll be harder now that he's made us!"

"Does this mean we're still going after him?" Please say no, please say no…

"Yes, we're still going after him! Can you move?"

"Um, I think so?"

"Good." Claire tried to haul me off the ground just as she had after Sylar left me on the Newtons' parking lot, succeeding this time because I was able to cooperate. It might have been smarter to go limp and refuse to let her drag me to my feet, but that course of action, while it might get me out of this mission, also seemed likely to leave me with a dislocated shoulder. "Here, you take this." Claire shoved her purse into my arms and dashed down the stairs.

I followed as fast as I was able, tripping more than once on the twisting staircase and all but falling down the last three stairs into the lobby – where I barely avoided crashing into Claire, who was staring in apparent horror at the front desk and a nearby cluster of chairs. Glancing in that direction, I saw that the manager was slumped over his desk, another man was lying on the floor in front of it, and a man and woman were sprawled in the chairs – all dead, all with the same thunderstruck look on their faces. I quickly looked away.

Claire shook herself and swallowed hard. "We can't let him go, Bella – come on!" Then we were running again.

I was panting after ten steps; running was never easy for a klutz like me, and being thrown off balance by her heavy bag was not helping. Why had I let Claire talk me into this? Apparently being indestructible doesn't protect her from going crazy!

Craziness must have been the order of the day – Claire and I had barely cleared the doors of the hotel and hadn't even begun searching the sidewalk for our quarry when everything – pedestrians, cars, even a bird flying over the street – froze around us. "Holy crow!" My voice sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.

Panicked – had I missed something on the news about the End of Days? – I cried, "Claire, what the hell's- Claire!"

My friend was frozen too, still and lifeless as a photograph. I extended my shield to wrap around her as well and she jerked back into animation mid-stride, stumbling as I pulled her to a halt and clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened as she took in our motionless surroundings. "What's happening?" she whispered.

"No idea," I whispered back. "Obviously someone like us is doing it, but I don't know who it could be. Let's get out of here, and keep quiet!" Claire nodded; I let go and we set off up the street at a jog, with her automatically taking the lead. The instant we rounded the corner a man jumped out at us, swinging what looked like some sort of ninja sword in an arc – an arc perfectly aimed to chop off Claire's head!

You all know who freezes time and carries what Bella would describe as a 'ninja sword'; I changed this bit to include Hiro thanks to popular request for him to put in an appearance, hope it doesn't come out too awkward. I do have something like a reason for him being in Seattle, and if I'm lucky it won't sound unforgivably stupid. If it does, go ahead and ridicule me – translation: review! Pretty please?

My high school graduation is tonight, and we have relatives in town; don't know what effect that'll have on my writing time, but I promise not to dawdle unnecessarily on Pt. 2, so please, no death threats or throwing fruit, anvils, or Edward's piano at me!