AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry. I thought my holiday break was going to be super-relaxing and filled with free time, but…it wasn't. To make a long story short, my best friend broke up with her longtime boyfriend in order to date his best friend, and said ex-boyfriend rebounded pretty hard and consequently spent a great deal of energy trying to hook up with me. It was a huge mess—I'm so glad I'm home. But hey, you don't want to hear my life story :). Let's move on to more interesting people: the fictional ones!
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Hiro and Peter slid out of their apartment like cat burglars escaping the scene of the crime, making a quick retreat before they could get roped into building a scale model of New York City out of Legos. Outside of the apartment, they didn't have much to worry about—they were in SoHo. Nobody lived in Soho anymore, not really. Only the people who had really good reasons to, like them—people who would put up with the three-walled buildings and the power shortages. There was no one out here to sneak from.
Once they got out on the street, it was a slightly different story. There were actual people out here, real, live people on the sidewalks and in the yards. There weren't many people, due to the disgusting sleet-snow sheeting from the sky—again, only who had to be. This close to Ground Zero, life was all about necessity, and sometimes necessity meant letting freezing rain get under your collar and slide down your neck. For Hiro and Peter, it was definitely necessity. Audrey was sometimes too much for them all on her own, and the unholy triumvirate of Audrey, Hana, and Sparrow was more than they could handle. It was a G.I. Jane sleepover of epic proportions; they would return when the estrogen levels had run down a little.
"Jeez," Peter said, sloshing through a curbside pile of sleet.
"Yeah," Hiro said, knowing exactly what was contained in his friend's single syllable. It was the secret language of boys talking about girls, and they both knew what was meant.
They walked; they passed the dying flower garden of Mrs. Gutierrez, and Mrs. Gutierrez herself, on her hands and knees trying to cover her petunias in time to save them from the viscous, slushy rain. She waved as they walked past; Hiro waved back but Peter didn't, his eyes on his shoes where the water was seeping in at the laces.
"Have you noticed that it's getting more dangerous?" he asked Hiro.
Hiro flipped his collar up against the diagonal drive of the sleet. "What—existing? We're wanted terrorists, Peter, we can only be so careful."
"No," Peter said, jumping over a puddle. "I mean, sure, we could get arrested or whatever, but I think we've seen that this is not the worst that's out there." He swept his hand out to encompass everything: the slush, the petunias, the asymmetrical New York skyline with whole chunks cut out and gray sky behind them.
"You mean the other universes."
"I mean the other universes," Peter confirmed. "They're getting super-dangerous all of the sudden, you know? It's like playing hide and seek on a minefield. I mean, we started out with what? Muffins and incest? Now, every dimension we go into, it seems like everyone wants us dead."
"Believe me, I know," Hiro said. "You're not the one who keeps getting shot."
"Oh, I get shot all the time," Peter said glibly. "Doesn't stick. What I'm saying is, we're gonna freaking die."
"Pessimist," Hiro said, and walked faster. He didn't want to hear about implications and complications—five universes and they were done. There was no room for roadblocks in his plans. "I mean, what are you saying? Are you saying we should just give up?"
Peter watched his shoes—watched carefully where he placed his feet, avoiding anything that looked gray or slushy. "Where are we going, anyway?" he asked mildly.
"Peter," Hiro said, suddenly concerned. "Is that what you're saying? You want to give up?"
"I mean, obviously we had to get out of that apartment," Peter continued, "but we're not really headed anywhere specific. Do we have a plan, or—"
"Peter," Hiro yelled, grabbing his friend's arm so that he stopped with a jerk, swung around to face him. "Answer the question!"
"No," Peter responded, eyes finally off the pavement. "No, I'm not saying we should give up. I just—have this newfound desire not to die."
Hiro let Peter's arm go and stepped away, considering. "Dying really wasn't ever in the plan. I'm pretty sure it still isn't."
"Well then, let's be smart about this," Peter said. "Let's think it through like we haven't bothered to this whole damn time. How can we make it so we don't get shot or sliced or kidnapped?"
"I was thinking awhile ago," Hiro mused, "mostly out of impatience, but I was thinking that we spend too long in each universe. I mean, remember in the beginning, how you were always chickening out and ditching universes?"
"I was not—" Peter started.
"I was thinking that might be a better idea," Hiro continued over the top of his protesting. "Just to stay in the universe for a little bit and not just randomly chat up all these potential psychos and killers. Find some way to figure it out quick and then get the hell out, you know?"
"In that Claire-as-a-stripper universe," Peter said, wincing at the memory, "I grabbed a newspaper and bailed, and that worked out fine. We got everything we needed from the paper."
"Okay, there we go," Hiro said. "New game plan. Get in, get a newspaper or something that'll let us know what's up, and get out. We can puzzle everything out in the—er, relative safety of our own universe."
"That's good," Peter said. "I bet we can do two, three universes at a time—we won't have to be coming back to stitch ourselves back together or anything. I bet I can do two dimensions in an hour, tops."
"If that's true," Hiro said, "we can have all of this over with in one, two days. We can be done with this whole thing." He said it with a tone of astonishment, as if he'd never really expected to see the finish line—as if he'd expected to just keep running until his lungs collapsed and his heart burst open, never getting any closer. That was the kind of unfairness he'd come to expect—success was a new one.
"Well, damn," Peter said, slapping Hiro on the shoulder. "What are we standing around here for? I'll race you, Hiro—two universes and meet me back at the Loft. Bet I beat you by half an hour."
"You're on," Hiro grinned, and they closed their eyes at the same time, throwing themselves outward—
When Peter opened his eyes again, he almost thought he hadn't moved at all. At first glance it looked the same—the echo-empty streetline, the hollow stale silhouette of a city. But the familiarity was only superficial, and on a closer look, things began to seem very different. There were very few people where he'd been—there was nobody here, literally nobody for miles on either side of the level, stretching line of the road. It was definitely New York, but there was the oddest feeling about it—like an invalid. Sick and dying but not dead. The emptiness was painful like an unhealed wound, like it was recent and not at all right. There was a slight wind blowing trash and paper down the sidewalks, and Peter felt one piece of paper suddenly pushed up against his foot, trapped by the wind.
He picked it up, and read: EVACUATION NOTICE, JUNE 14 2008, MANDATED EVACUATION ORDER, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING EVACUATION ROUTES TO LEAVE THE CITY IMMEDIATELY. Capital screaming words about emergency and out-of-nowhere devastation, and below the caps-locked headlines there was smaller print, something about a virus and a lot of numbers, casualties, quarantines.
"Well," Peter said to nobody, to the lack of people anywhere around. "That works."
He folded the paper and put it in his pocket, very ready to close the door on this horror-future. As he prepared to jump, though, there was movement down the street, a sudden silhouette where there had been no one. He turned to see who it was—and it was him. Another Peter Petrelli standing a few hundred feet away, abruptly appeared from nowhere and looking just as confused as he'd been himself. But he wasn't alone—there was someone standing next to him, sheltering behind him, and it took him a second but he recognized her. It was Caitlin.
"Aw, no, come on!" he said loudly, and the other Peter turned quickly to him, startled, possibly too confused and too far away to recognize his double. "Really? You're with her?"
"Hey!" the other Peter said. "Who are you? What is this place, how did we—"
"Sorry, got to go," Peter said, backing away before he could rift the space-time continuum somehow. "But think about it, man—you can do better."
He closed his eyes and teleported away, careful to concentrate on going to a new universe instead of back home. It was surprisingly easy—home wasn't a terribly compelling thought at the moment, what with it's nasty sleetstorms and female invasions. Instead of returning back to the boxy, cement-blocked Loft, he seemed to be in a boxy, cinderblocked new room so white it hurt his eyes. There was very little in the room—no windows and a single heavy door, almost cell-like in its sparseness. The only person in the room was him and—another him.
"Hey there," he said to Phi-Peter, who was plastered back against the wall, staring at him like he wasn't sure whether or not to scream. "Hi. Don't freak out."
"No," Phi-Peter was saying, low and fast, almost inaudible. "No no no no no. I'm hallucinating."
"No, you're not, actually," Peter explained patiently, a veteran at this by now. "I'm real, I'm here, I'm just from—"
Phi-Peter wasn't listening. "They said this would happen, they said I might still hallucinate, but they said I was getting better, I'm taking the medicine, I'm getting better."
"Ahhh," Peter said, lightbulb over his head. "This is a mental hospital." A double take. "Why the hell are you in a mental hospital?"
Phi-Peter gave him a patronizing look, as if he were a particularly slow child. "Because that's where people go when they're out-of-their-head crazy. You should know that, you're me."
Peter glanced around at the locked room, keeping the twitchy and obviously unstable Phi-Peter in the corner of his eye. The newspaper idea wasn't going to work as well here—he'd just have to go the old-fashioned route and get out as soon as possible. "Calm down," he said with a careful smile. "I'm just a hallucination, right? I can't hurt you. Just tell me why you're in here, okay?"
Phi-Peter glared at him again. "Are you just the manifestation of the really stupid part of me, or what? I'm in here because I freakin' think I can fly."
"Oh," Peter said, frowning. "Oh." He remembered that part of his life—he didn't particularly like to remember it, because Nathan had been a real jerk just then, and he didn't like to remember the parts where Nathan had been a jerk. His brother had several times threatened to put him in a mental institution, and he could easily imagine a universe where Nathan had followed through on the threat. The fact that he didn't even know he could fly, didn't know he could do any of it—that was a little more surprising, but again, believable.
"Nathan put you in here, right?" he asked, just to make sure.
"Yeah," Phi-Peter said, flicking his gaze up so that Peter could see his eyes—a little glazed, pupils dilated.
"They must have you on so many damn drugs," Peter said, mostly to himself. That would explain the lack of abilities. Guy can't even think straight.
"Stops me from trying to fly out a window," Phi-Peter snorted, unbothered by the pity in Peter's voice. "Makes things easier."
"Yeah, I'm sure it does," Peter said, sick of this universe already. It was leaving a bad taste in his mouth, making him pull back from touching it. At least no one trying to kill me, he thought optimistically, then, …yet.
That was it—he was out of here. "Well, nice to meet you," he said briskly to Phi-Peter.
"Yeah, you too," Phi-Peter said warily. He wasn't surprised when the other Peter disappeared into thin air—he'd had some experience with hallucinations, and they tended to do things like that. He just turned around and put his forehead on the wall, trying not to think, to do anything.
He heard the sound of the door opening behind him, but he didn't turn. There was only ever one person it could be.
"Hello, Peter," came the warm, overly helpful voice. "How are we doing today?"
"Not so good, Doc," he said, words going into the wall in front of him. "We're hallucinating again."