AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to everyone for bearing with my sucker-punch of a cliffhanger. Sorry about that—I swear your questions will be answered within the first two sentences of this chapter…don't kill me :)

---

When Jessica came into the cell, she saw Bennet bending over their captive, just pulling a syringe out of his arm. "You didn't," she said, flatly horrified.

"Of course I didn't," was Mr. Bennet's calm response. "That's a tranquilizer. He's much too interesting to neutralize yet—I've never seen a DNA sequence like this in my life—but there's no harm in making him think we have cured him. Keeps him from trying anything."

"Right," Jessica smirked. "Don't want another Meredith Gordon incident on our hands."

"Do me a favor," Bennet said, throwing the empty syringe into a trash can. "Look up 'empath', would you? See if anyone knows what it means."

"What am I, your intern? Do it yourself." She walked over to the bed, knowing it irritated him for her to be around the other Specials, hoping she could get him to explode. "So do we know who our mystery man is yet?"

"He had no ID on him, nothing," Bennet mused, thinking out loud, hardly aware of her. "He says his name is Peter Petrelli, but I'm not sure I believe him. He's been feeding me quite a line."

Jessica recoiled at the name, hard enough for whiplash, looking back at the man with a whole new perspective. Petrelli? You're kidding. Now that she took a good look at him, though, she could see the resemblance, and she sincerely wished she couldn't. "He's not lying," Niki said.

Mr. Bennet stopped what he was doing, turned around and actually looked at her for the first time. "Really," he said skeptically. "And how do you know that?"

She gave him a sidelong glance, not willing to meet his infamous flat stare. "Used to date his brother." She reached out and touched a light finger to Peter's face, slid it down the side of his cheek, almost affectionate. "Look at that jawline—he's a Petrelli, all right."

"Well, you're remarkably useful today," Bennet said with mild, pleased surprise. "Where's Niki?"

A frosty silence. "I am Niki."

Bennet paused—smiled. "Awkward," he said, and turned back to the monitors.

---

Mr. Bennet stood outside the office door for a long time, trying to force himself to knock. He didn't get along with very many people at The Company; that was to say, he got along with exactly who he felt he needed to get along with and openly despised the rest. They knew he hated them and they thought him a snob—they felt intimidated by him, and he thought them useless. Noah Bennet and The Company had the comfortable relationship of an old married couple: occasional bickering, but mostly just silence, two people sitting side-by-side on a couch with nothing to say. He didn't go looking for trouble, but he wouldn't get out of the way if it came at him. Most people avoided him, because they saw the look in his eye and the way he walked and knew he wouldn't stop, would run them straight over and not look back, never lose a moment's sleep.

However, he still had his pride, and it made him reluctant to ask anyone for help—the illusion around here was that he knew everything, and he didn't mind the impression. He didn't much like admitting that he needed help. But Bennet was nothing if not practical, and pride was something he could deal with; he knocked on the door.

"Come in," came a voice from inside the office, and he opened the door on Mohinder Suresh.

Mohinder wasn't alone, and his guest made Bennet sigh quietly to himself. It was bad enough to have to come to Suresh, their resident self-righteous prodigy, with his lookdowns and his naiveté, but there in his office was Claude Rains. The man's permanent smirk curled wider at the sight of Bennet and his clenched teeth, reminding him forcefully why he couldn't stand his former partner.

"Well. Noah Bennet," Mohinder said smarmily. "Do you, ah—need something?"

"Yes," Bennet said with a voice like frostbite, hoping his eyes were communicating his homicidal thoughts. "I need your help." He threw a pointed glance at Claude.

"Oh, don't mind me," Claude said blithely. "I might be able to help you, Bennet. Field experience and all that," he said, and his expression said remember when we were partners. Remember when you were green and I was wise and I knew everything.

"I doubt it," Bennet replied, turning back to Suresh. "We have a new Special in custody, and his DNA sequence is giving us some trouble—we can't seem to identify his abilities. He happened to mention the word 'empath' this morning, and I wondered if you'd ever heard it."

Mohinder's face went pretty-boy vacant, switching from sharp scientist to blank dead weight as he sometimes did. God, I miss this kid's father, he thought, feeling a headache coming on. Well, it's clear I wasted a trip. Before Mohinder had a chance to be unhelpful, though, Claude jumped in. "An empath?" he said interestedly. "Been awhile since I've seen one of those. Where'd you get him, Bennet?"

"You've heard of them?"

"I want to see him," Claude said, as matter-of-factly as a child would ask to go to the zoo. Just a bug under the glass—not a person.

"Out of the question."

"I want to see him or you're getting nothing from me," Claude said, leaning back in his chair.

"Not going to happen," Bennet maintained, leveling an ironclad look at Claude—nobody pushed him around, not a former partner, nobody.

"I forgot what a stubborn bastard you are," Claude said inscrutably, matching him look for look. "All right, then—I'll tell you what you need to know, and you can take the hell that you're walking into."

"That bad?" Bennet said, amused.

Claude grinned with an edge, as if he was already seeing him fail. "You have no idea."

---

When Peter woke up, he didn't feel any different. I thought I would feel it, he thought, staring at the grained grey ceiling. I thought I would feel it right down to my bones. I felt it the instant I had it, I should feel it when it's gone. He felt like a widow, a lover standing alone in the house where two people used to live. I can't feel it. I can't feel anything.

"How are you feeling?" came Mr. Bennet's voice from behind him, eerily echoing his thoughts.

He twisted around to try to get a look at Bennet, but the restraints wouldn't let him get a look at his captor, not positioned as he was, directly behind the bed. "Freaking fantastic," he spat. "What did you do to me?"

"I made you safe," Mr. Bennet said. "I made you normal. You should be thanking me."

"Thanking you? You son of a bitch, I'm going to kill you!" Peter said, pulling involuntarily against his restraints, body straining to get at Bennet.

"Don't tell me you've never wished it," Mr. Bennet's voice came calm and measured to his ears like a conscience, a catalogue of his worst thoughts. "Don't tell me you've never wanted to be normal."

"I got over that a long time ago," Peter snapped.

Mr. Bennet finally walked around the front of the bed, but as soon as Peter could see him he realized he didn't want to—didn't want to look him in the face, didn't want to see him so calm after everything he'd done in his life, blank smooth surface holding his caustic, radioactive insides in. He turned his face away and stared fixedly at the ceiling, which was just as cold without the excuse of being human.

"So you're an empath," Bennet said, then paused. "Or at least, you were. A copycat. A sponge."

Peter didn't answer; it was really starting to hit him now—it was all gone. Everything that had ever made him anything was just gone, sucking his self-purpose down with them. These abilities had been his whole identity, and he didn't know who he was without them. Some lost kid in the back of a taxi—do you ever the feeling that you're…meant for something more?—a second-tier undefined younger brother—you'renot a fighter, Peter, but that's okay, the world needs nurses too—a fixer who could never quite fix things good enough—here lies Peter Petrelli, he's tryingA million threads that added up to nobody.

Mr. Bennet was still talking, but he wasn't listening. All he could think was, Why is it always my job to save the world when I'm so clearly terrible at it? Why is it always me? Why can't I just have somebody save me for once, God knows I need saving. Why is it always my job to fix everything—and how the hell am I going to fix it now? He'd never missed Nathan more in his life.

"…Well?" Peter heard Bennet say as he focused his mind back in, trying to cut off the self-pity before it shut him down. "What do you think, Mr. Petrelli?"

"You don't know what you've done."

"Sorry?" Bennet said, raising his eyebrows.

"You don't know what you've done," Peter repeated flatly, still looking at the ceiling. "I wasn't just trying to save my own world, you moron, I was trying to save everybody. I was trying to save us all and you've just screwed me over. You might as well just shoot yourself in the foot, while you're at it."

Mr. Bennet rubbed his temple with two fingers, a look on his face that Peter was familiar with—it was the tired-parent look, usually applied to Claire when she'd done something stupid. "Mr. Petrelli, you should know that I'm starting to think you've lost your mind," he said.

"I wish."

"No you don't," Bennet said.

"Yes I do," Peter said, and meant it.

"Well," said Bennet with a sardonic smile. "Maybe we can help you with that."

---

Peter was so drugged, so borderline-depressive drained, that he thought he might never wake up again. He was wrong. His body jerked awake on pure reflex in the middle of the night, so instinctive that it took his a few confused seconds to figure out what was wrong. There was a hand gripping his arm, and another over his mouth, someone leaning over him with their hair brushing his neck. He started struggling, another instinct that did him little good, restraints cutting into his wrists, unsuccessfully trying to get his attacker off.

"Stop that," a woman's voice snapped close to his ear. "I'm trying to help you, damn it! Stay still, I'm going to get you out of here."

He froze instantly, more out of shock than trust, but her hands were at his wrist, pulling the restraint open, moving to the other arm, and he wasn't sure he believed she was here to help but at least he was getting free, and that was a start. This is fine, this is good, I'll just get the IV out of my arm and wait for the drugs to drain out, then I can teleport—oh wait, no. Son of a bitch! He could barely keep himself still as she undid the rest of the restraints, muscle-memory telling him to escape, to turn invisible, to set things on fire, to do all the things that he couldn't do anymore and didn't know how to survive without.

She pulled the last restraint away and he jumped out of the bed—too quickly, the tranquilizers making him stumble, knees buckling. She caught his arm as he fell, and he turned to look at her—it was Niki, blond hair blue eyes Niki, he'd thought he recognized that voice. "Why are you doing this?" he asked, fully aware of how inappropriate the question was in the middle of an escape attempt but unable to help it.

She shot him a look that he could tell was annoyance even in the semi-dark, pulling him up. "Look, Peter, I understand where you're coming from, but can we not? I'm trying to spring you from a high-security cell, and you're too drugged up to access any abilities, so I'm on my own here."

"Sorry to disappoint," he told her as she led him through the cell door, "but I'm the guy next door now—I've got nothing. Bennet gave me that cure thing, remember?"

She let out a short burst of laughter that made him flinch and check the hallway for guards. "This is probably not the best way for you to hear this," she said, "but you got conned. How are they supposed to study your abilities if you don't have them? Believe me, sugar, you're the most interesting thing to come across our tables in a long time, they're not about to just erase that and lose it forever."

He stopped dead in his tracks, but she pulled him on again the next instant, strong enough to drag him through his astonishment. "What—?" he spluttered. "But the needle—I saw him." She didn't respond except to shake her head, and a small fireworks-burst of hope lit up behind his eyes. She pushed him into the next room and he stopped beyond the doorway, focusing for a moment on his hand, willing it to burst out into flame like a gas stove lighting, to do the impossible that he'd thought was gone. Nothing. She saw him standing there, staring fixedly at his hand, and made a noise of exasperation, grabbing his arm to pull him forward. He swatted her hand away, swinging around to face her full-on. "You lied," he accused. "It's not working, none of it's working!"

"You want to keep it down?" she snapped. "Of course it's not working, you've got God knows how much drugs pumped into you! What, you thought they were just going to tell you that you were helpless and expect you not to try something? Your abilities will come back in ten minutes or so, as soon as it all starts working out of your system."

She grabbed him again, and this time he didn't protest, let her drag him toward another hall. He wasn't sure if she was telling the truth, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do either way. It was one of those rock-and-a-hard-place situations, and since he couldn't think of a good reason for her to lie, he was going to have to go with his churning, drugged-up gut. "Okay, fine," he said guardedly, "but I still don't trust you. Tell me why you're doing this."

She stuck her head around a doorway, checking for security, then turned back to flash him a hard half-second smile. "I couldn't save him," she said vaguely, "might as well make myself feel better with you."

He made a face, knowing she probably couldn't see it in the half-darkness. This was what he really hated about these alternate worlds—being out of the loop. Being expected to know what people were talking about when they said things that made no sense. Not ever knowing what the hell was going on. "What are you talking about?"

"Your brother," she said brusquely as they moved down the concrete-industrial back hall. "You know, your brother Nathan? I killed him." He stopped again—he couldn't help it. "Come on!" she hissed.

"Oh, I'm so freaking sorry!" he spat back as quietly as he could manage. "If you keep making these statements that blow my mind, you're going to have to get used to it! What do you mean, you killed him?" It's not the real Nathan, he reminded himself furiously, trying to squash the desire to strangle her, she's not talking about the real Nathan, she didn't kill your brother.

She kept moving and he had to follow, staying close enough to hear her reply. "I killed him, I got him killed," she repeated. "Look, do you really want to hear this story?" She turned abruptly, nearly colliding with him. "Or do you want to get the hell out of here?" Without breaking eye contact, she reached out to the door on her left, turned the knob, and pushed it open. The halfway-open door gave him a clear view of outside, a triangular slice of the stars and barely-dewing grass.

"Of course I want to hear the story," he said edgily, eyeing the exit."But you're off the hook, because I want that more." He shoved past her and got through the door, running as soon as he hit the grass, his legs already steadier under him. That was a good sign—if she'd been telling the truth, that meant his abilities would be back in under five minutes, and he could finally—finally—get the hell out of this universe. Until then, either way, he was getting as far away from Primatech Paper as possible.

Niki watched his silhouette blur into the shadows of the parking lot, disappearing behind awkward sightlines and then suddenly gone. She felt Jessica resurface slightly, a decidedly un-sweet-Niki smirk coming to her lips. "You're welcome," she said sardonically, and shut the door.