At long last, here's the chapter where we finally see Arthur and Danko again! Show of hands, how many of you thought I'd forgotten all about them and there would never be a resolution to their part of the story?
Chapter 21: Keep Your Enemies Close
Sylar - New York City
The bar where Sylar found his latest victim was packed and noisy, but he tuned it all out - the blaring music, the raucous cheers from a cluster of middle-aged men with their eyes glued to the football game on the flat-screen TV in the corner, the chatter, everything. He was back in his element, about to acquire a new ability, and nothing else mattered. The kitchen where he killed James Martin was small and messy, even before Sylar painted the floor with the shapeshifter's blood.
Dissecting the brain and replicating the ability was a familiar routine that he slipped into easily, but something was wrong; the acquisition of new power didn't bring the rush he remembered. He had just added a new ability to his arsenal and he was one step closer to being the most special person in the world, but now he was alone with only a corpse for company. He had been alone since leaving New Hampshire, just like he'd been alone for most of his life, both as Gabriel Gray and as Sylar. Edward Cullen was the only friend he'd had in a very long time, but he hadn't seen hide nor hair of the telepathic vampire since his fateful run-in with Bella Swan, which wouldn't have bothered him except that the girl's words had stuck in his mind.
What good were all his powers with no one to be impressed by them? If nobody realized how special he was, was his life as Sylar really that much of a step up from working on clocks in his obscure little shop in Queens? He still didn't matter to anyone - except maybe his enemies, but they probably never thought about him unless he was trying to kill them - and wasn't the whole point of his ability-gathering to be important?
Looking up, he caught his reflection in a full-length free-standing mirror placed improbably - or perhaps not, considering whose house this was - in the center of the living room and saw that he had subconsciously used his new shapeshifting ability for the first time, turning himself into a perfect replica of…Bella Swan? Bella Swan, who had caused him to question his lonely, murderous existence. He was content before she opened her big mouth, or if he wasn't he'd never noticed it. "Damn you!" he snarled and slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering her face into a hundred tiny, fragmented pieces.
In the ringing silence following the crash of breaking glass, as he concentrated on reassuming his own form, his hypersensitive ears picked up the sounds of a large vehicle stopping outside James Martin's house and a dozen men wearing heavy boots disembarking. What the…? They - whoever they were - converged quietly (to a normal person's ears at least) on the house, cutting off every possible exit.
Realizing that his chances of getting out unnoticed were almost nonexistent, Sylar slipped into his victim's bedroom. He would stay out of sight there until he knew what these mysterious intruders wanted, then attack if he deemed it necessary, or if they attacked him first.
They didn't; after finding Martin's body they didn't bother to search the rest of the house, so they remained unaware of his presence and he was able to listen in on them. They knew Martin was a shapeshifter - in fact they had come to his house to capture him so that his ability could be studied. At least, they assumed that was what the 'government white-coats' wanted with 'freaks like him'. It was something their leader said, though, that interested Sylar the most. Before giving the order to ship out, he muttered to himself, "Petrelli won't be happy about this."
So the government was hunting down posthumans, and a Petrelli was behind it. That almost certainly meant they weren't being taken for experimentation - if that were the objective, Primatech had facilities specifically designed for those kinds of experiments, and the Petrelli family had strong ties to the Company. What would any of them need the government for, then? This might be worth looking into.
Arthur Petrelli & Emile Danko - Building 26
"Explain to me why you failed to retrieve James Martin, Mr. Danko. While you're at it, you can also tell me why we've still seen no sign of Claire Bennet and that Swan girl even though you've supposedly been making every effort to find them for months now!"
Danko ground his teeth - he knew that would come up. Being unable to track down two teenage girls was frustrating and embarrassing, and now it looked like his boss was running out of patience. "We found Martin at his house, sir, but he was dead. The top of his head had been cut off, and someone had removed his brain and torn it apart."
"Was the killer still there?"
"The body wasn't even cold yet, so he or she couldn't have gone far, but we didn't see anyone suspicious. We weren't looking, though - our mission was to capture Martin."
A look of displeasure slid briefly across Arthur's face; Danko saw it, and his natural wariness increased slightly. He had done a little homework on Arthur Petrelli and discovered that the last few people who'd worked closely with him had ended up dead. If not for the fact that someone needed to get these dangerous freaks off the streets and in cages where they belonged, Danko might be rethinking his current job. There were other, safer places to work…
At last Arthur sighed and said, "All right. I'm giving you a new top-priority assignment. I want you to read every file I have on a man named-"
The door to Arthur's office was thrown open and one of Danko's soldiers strode in without knocking or requesting permission to enter. "What in the hell do you think you're doing, Corporal?" Danko demanded.
"Infiltrating this operation, sir," the corporal replied with a smirk no soldier would ever wear while addressing their commanding officer. His features rippled, shifted, and suddenly they were looking at a totally different man.
"Well, it looks like you don't need to read up on Gabriel after all," Arthur remarked. "Gabriel - I wasn't expecting to see you here. I hadn't heard anything about you for so long, I thought Angela's attempt at reforming you must have taken."
"You mean her attempt to manipulate me," Sylar tersely corrected him. "But I found out the truth - I'm never going to be used again, not by her and not by you. And call me Sylar."
"Okay, Sylar it is," Arthur said amiably while Danko wondered what the heck was going on. "What brings you here?"
"Saw your men come for the shapeshifter tonight. I was curious. So you want Claire and Bella Swan? Why?"
Arthur raised his eyebrows. "Does it really matter to you?"
"I guess it doesn't. They're in Hanover, New Hampshire. So is Peter." He refrained from mentioning Elle; she might be captured or killed if she tried to protect Bella, as she almost certainly would, but he wasn't going to tell Danko anything about her. If she got hurt, it would be her own fault.
"This is the best news we've had in a while. Thank you, Gabriel. Mr. Danko, assemble your best strike team."
"Roger that. We'll leave for New Hampshire ASAP."
Next day - Hanover, NH
Upon arriving in Hanover, Danko did some recon and quickly decided that it would it be best to wait until his targets separated before making a move. His chance came shortly after lunch, when Swan left for the Dartmouth library. Petrelli went with her, leaving Bennet at home with an unknown female.
"All right men, we're splitting up. Half of you are gonna stay here and keep eyes on the Bennet girl; the rest of you are with me."
"Sir, should we grab Bennet now? She's the least dangerous one, right?"
"Negative. I want to move on all three at the same time." Danko didn't know how close they had to be to communicate telepathically, but he didn't want to risk one of them warning the others. "You just sit tight and keep your eyeballs glued on Bennet. Wait for the other girl to leave if possible; I don't want civilians involved in this if they don't have to be."
"Yes, sir."
###
The minutes Petrelli spent looking up the books Swan needed and fetching them for her seemed to drag on forever, until Danko wondered if he should just call in his men and try to take them both together, since it didn't look like they would be splitting up any time soon. Then he heard Swan say, "Thanks for your help, but you don't need to hang around if you don't want to. I have some reading to do - you know how absorbed I can get when I read. I won't be much company."
"I don't mind watching you work." He moved to stand behind her chair, his hands sliding over her shoulders.
Swan hunched forward, pulling out of his grasp. "I won't get any work done if you do that."
"You want me to leave?"
"No, but I think you should."
"See you in a couple hours then." He leaned in as if trying to read over her shoulder; she turned her head so that their lips met in a brief, intense, awkwardly-angled goodbye kiss. Then he straightened up and walked away, leaving her alone at last.
Danko put down the newspaper he'd been using as camouflage and followed at a discreet distance; unsure whether he was in Petrelli's telepathic range, he focused his thoughts on recalling all the Rolling Stones lyrics he'd ever heard. Once outside the library building, he radioed his men and told them to pick up the girls, reminding the unit he was sending after Swan to get the tranquilizer dart in her before she saw them - they wouldn't be able to touch her if she had time to project one of her force fields. He performed a cursory visual sweep of his surroundings, making sure there was no one close enough to interfere before pulling his own gun and firing.
###
Feeling a sharp sting on his neck, Peter automatically lifted a hand to swat at the source of the pain - which turned out to be some kind of dart rather than the insect he expected. "What the hell?"
"It's a hypodermic dart, used as a remote injector. They're usually for handling dangerous animals in zoos and wildlife preserves - sedating them for transport and veterinary examinations - but they work just as well on humans."
This explanation came from a man with pale gray eyes and thinning white hair who was rapidly closing the distance between himself and Peter…and casually pointing a gun at him. Peter didn't know what to make of this; his first thought was that Arthur must have finally found them and this guy must be the latest person he'd found to do his dirty work - who else would shoot him with a hypodermic dart? They weren't exactly common weapons - but if he worked for Arthur then he would know all about Peter's powers. So why was he approaching him so openly? The man had to be pretty confident in his own abilities, which meant he would be easy to take out…or that he was an extremely skilled fighter.
He tried to take Danko's gun from him, but nothing happened. His telekinesis wasn't working. That was when Peter began to suspect he was in deep trouble.
"Of course, I didn't inject you with a sedative - you metabolize toxins too fast for a tranquilizer to be effective. That dart contained a drug to dampen your powers. Now, I'm taking you to your father; whether you get there in one piece is up to you."
Even without his telepathy, Peter could read this man well enough to know he would shoot with the slightest provocation - he actually wanted to, and while Peter wasn't exactly afraid of getting shot, he knew that injuries would make getting out of this predicament a lot harder. "Okay. You got me."
"Walk." Danko indicated the direction with his gun and walked behind his prisoner, keeping the gun trained unwaveringly on the back of Peter's head, ready to put a bullet in his brain at the slightest sign of resistance and maintaining enough distance between them that Peter couldn't turn around and knock the weapon out of his hand. "Not such a hero after all, are you?"
"I'm not suicidal," Peter retorted. "Dying isn't my idea of fun."
"Freak."
Peter didn't bother answering. Danko took him to the van he and his men had left in the nearest parking area, where he finally sedated him. He intended to try to keep Petrelli and the two girls away from each other during transport, but in case that wasn't possible he didn't want to give them a chance to talk to each other and plan an escape.
Building 26
Peter woke up in a small, totally dark enclosed space. The drug Danko had given him was still in his system; most of his powers were still inaccessible to him. The only thing the drug didn't seem to have suppressed was his mental shield, but before he could figure out what use being able to shield his mind might be in his current situation, the room - at least, he assumed he was in a room - was suddenly illuminated in blinding white light.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was in a cell with bare metal walls, no windows, no door, and no furnishings of any kind. Also, Arthur was in there with him, though Peter was positive he'd been alone just a second ago. Either there was a door and it was very well-concealed, or his father had phased through the wall.
"Hello, Peter. Been a while." Peter glared up at him from where he sat on the floor but said nothing. "It's good to see you again."
"The feeling isn't mutual."
"That's no way to talk to your father."
"Cut the crap. You didn't come here just to annoy me. What do you want?"
"All right, if you want to get straight to the point…" Arthur took a step closer, hand outstretched.
Peter flinched back from his father's touch, but there was nowhere to go; he couldn't avoid him forever. Arthur's fingers wrapped around his throat, not strangling but merely providing the physical contact he needed to use his ability, and Peter mimicked what Bella had done in similar encounters with Arthur, channeling all his energy into shielding himself.
"What are you doing?" Arthur hissed. "You shouldn't be able to fight me! The drugs-" Frustrated, he reflexively tightened his grip, constricting Peter's windpipe.
Peter grabbed his wrist and ripped the older man's hand off him. "I can't use my abilities until the drugs wear off," he agreed, rubbing his sore throat, "but the shield I copied from Bella isn't something I use, exactly - it's just a part of me now. There's no way of turning it off. So now that you know you won't get what you want from me, will you leave me alone?"
Arthur ignored his request. "Ah yes, Miss Swan - so unfortunate what happened to her."
Peter's heart immediately started to beat faster. I shouldn't have gone with Danko without a fight; if Bella's been hurt… I should've tried to fight him, even if he would've shot me! "What about Bella? If you've done anything to her I swear I'll-" He was on his feet now and had actually taken a step in Arthur's direction, fists clenched.
Arthur sighed and telekinetically pushed Peter away, slamming him into the wall. "Calm down, son. I'm in no position to harm your girlfriend, because she never made it here. Sylar has her."
Seven hours earlier
Following their leader's instructions to the letter, Danko's soldiers had knocked Bella out and removed her from the library via the nearest fire escape door without anyone seeing them. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but before they could get her to the transport van something totally unexpected happened: mild-mannered Private Jenkins suddenly pulled out his weapon and gunned down the rest of the team.
The features of Private Jenkins distorted and warped away as Sylar reverted to his usual appearance before turning his attention to the unconscious girl. "So you don't think I matter to anyone, huh? Well, I'm going to fix that. Starting with you."
Well this seems like a nice place to leave things: Arthur has Peter, Sylar has Bella, and we have no idea what happened to Claire and Elle. Please don't kill me!