A Note From Lara: I hate Texas, you know that? I really, really hate Texas. I've driven across it way too many times. It is flat. It is boring. There are way too many cattle. There are way too few people, especially in the Panhandle. And where it is not flat/boring/cattle-ridden, it is near the Gulf of Mexico and it is humid and unpleasant and smells like oil. I prefer Arizona. Arizona is pretty.

--

I sprinted the thirty blocks to the highway, and by the time I arrived I was gasping and out of breath. My lungs burned and there was nothing I wanted more than to throw myself down on what passed for grass in this godforsaken place and catch my breath. "No time to be weak," I hissed, putting a hand to the stitch in my side. They'd have realized by now that I'd found my way out of Primatech and more than likely they'd be sending people to find me. I set off at a quick jog down the highway, heading for the place where I'd hidden my duffel bag in the bushes before going to see Claire.

Once I reached it, I slowed my pace but I was still prepared to dive for cover in the mesquite along the road at any sign of pursuit. The hot Texas sun beat down on me and I wondered for perhaps the millionth time that day why anyone in their right mind would live here. I loved the glowing red deserts of Nex Mexico, but this flat, colorless land was nothing like that at all.

After having gone a few miles, I decided I was reasonably safe for the time being. I sat down on the embankment at the side of the road and took stock of my situation. I was thousands of miles from home, and planning on going further on a half-conscious mumble and a hunch. I had a mysterious and extremely powerful organization hunting me. How did I get into these situations?

On the other hand, I did have the majority of my gear with me. That had to count for something. Although at this point, I'd rather have had the Bat-cycle. I pulled my wallet out from the side pocket of the bag and flipped through it. I had just shy of a hundred dollars in there, for which I was infinitely thankful. Sure it wasn't much, but I could get to Vegas on that, provided I ate cheap. Looked like plenty of McDonalds for me in the immediate future.

I tucked the short stack of files I had nicked into the bag and zipped it up again. I stood up, intending to start walking again.

The low hum of tires on pavement reached my ears. I turned around and peered through the glare from the windshield to get a good look at the driver of the moving van that was approaching. He was a red-faced middle aged man and looked fairly trustworthy. I stuck out my thumb.

He pulled over. "Where you headed, Miss?" he asked.

I smiled. "Las Vegas."

"I'm headed that way. I can take you at least part way," he said, returning my smile with one of his own. I climbed into the cab of the van. "Name's Bill Matherty," he said, sticking out a pudgy hand.

I shook it. "Dianne," I replied, deciding to give only my first name. He pulled away from the ditch and headed away, not seeming inclined to speak any more.

--

It was getting dark when he stopped at a small motel just off the highway. We'd crossed most of Texas, and I assumed we were somewhere in the Panhandle. Bill glanced at me. "You gonna stick around tonight or keep movin'?" he asked.

With a shrug, I said, "I have to keep going. What I'm doing... it's important." I used a few quarters to buy a pair of water bottles from the vending machine outside the motel office and shouldered my bag. And I turned and walked away from the motel, out into the desert.

Most of the heat of the day had faded away, though a steady warmth still rose up from the golden sand beneath my feet. The narrow strip of blacktop that comprised the highway nearly baked the air in comparison, however, and I stuck with walking through the rougher ground to one side for the time being.

I watched the last vestiges of crimson light gleaming off the steep sides of the mesas that lined the horizon, keeping my eyes glued on the tiniest sliver of the sun's disk that still showed. Maybe if I just kept walking, I could go fast enough to race the sun, catch up to it as it tried to drop past the horizon out of view.

One by one the stars came out, and the sky faded from violet to darkest blue to a deep, velvet navy. Not truly black, though. The moon would rise to continue its chase of the sun soon enough, and enough of its light preceded it to keep the sky just a shade above pitch.

As the heat leeched out of the land, the moon finally began to show itself. I glanced back at it, marvelling at how big it was. It had been months since I'd really looked at the sky. In New York, light pollution drowned out the stars and the moon was robbed of its shimmer and made sallow from the smog. But here, in the cooling desert, it shimmered and gleamed like a new quarter.

I checked my watch. It was past midnight. I was tired physically, but I'd been tired before. My common sense told me that I needed to rest tonight if I was going to keep walking tomorrow, but I've always been very good at ignoring common sense. Peter needed me to do this. I didn't know why, but I owed it to him to do this. Pulling the strap of my bag more firmly over my shoulder, I downed a single mouthful of water from one of the bottles and set off resolutely, determined to walk until my feet fell off, if necessary.

An hour or so later, I finally conceded defeat. I might be able to keep on like this at night for a few days, but I couldn't keep travelling during the days. It was October, which meant it would be cooler during the day than usual, but it would still get up into the eighties, with a bright sun more than likely. Much though I liked to think of myself as indestructible, I knew that nobody could keep up more than one day under conditions like that. I'd have to keep hitching rides, and I'd have to actually sleep.

With that decided, I moved off the road right then and there. Once I had found a suitable patch of sparse bushes, I curled up underneath it, not even bothering to take off my shoes. I pulled my jacket out of my bag and rolled it up for a pillow. Then I pulled out the tiny pocket flashlight I kept with me most of the time and pulled out the first of the files I had taken from Primatech. Peter's file.

--

It was nearly three a.m. when I finished going through all the print materials in Peter's file. There were a couple of discs inside as well, but until I could find a couple of gadgets of mine, stashed away in the bag, I wouldn't be able to look at those.

I clicked off the light and rolled over onto my back, my mind whirling. What I had read was... insane. There wasn't much in his file, not compared to the thickness of the other two, but what was there made me sick. Empathic mimicry was what they called his power, and apparently it wasn't common. Empaths like Peter did crop up occasionally, but not one of them was able to keep control of more than four or five powers at once. There had been experiments to try and increase this capacity in an empath they'd captured six years ago, but the crisp records stated that they "hadn't gone well." I interpreted this to mean that the poor guy had died.

But Peter... they had done blood tests on him as an infant (which confirmed my suspicions regarding the connection between the Petrellis and Daniel Linderman) which had determined that he was likely to become extremely powerful, even as empaths went. They couldn't find an upper limit to the number of powers he would be able to absorb. There was a memo from omeone named Thompson who had wanted to keep him at the Primatech facility until his abilities manifested. However, a reply at the bottom of the note insisted that "the boy" be left to develop on his own. The reply was signed C.D.

I had a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude for C.D. I didn't know who he was, though I made a mental note to find out, but he had done me a huge favor without even knowing it. A world with no Peter- or rather, a Peter completely different from the man I knew now- was hardly comprehensible.

Yet, his abilities weren't the extent of it. Someone had used the ability of various precogs to discover the New York explosion long before we ever heard of it, and although most of the details were omitted, I was able to glean that Peter was somehow at the heart of it all. How that was, I couldn't figure out from the bits and pieces in the file, but I knew that he was.

It gave me a lot to think about, and by the time my mind finally settled enough for me to drift into sleep, the sky was beginning to pale on the eastern horizon.

--

I woke up with sand in my mouth. Spitting disgustedly, I wiped at my lips with the back of my hand in an attempt to brush away the remaining grit. I blinked at the bright sun cutting down through the branches of the mesquite bushes. Taking a swig of water and determining that I was going to ignore the twinge of hunger in my stomach, I crawled out from under the bush and pulled myself to my feet.

The heat hit me in the face the moment I was out from under my spindly bit of shade. It probably wasn't as hot as it seemed, but I had gotten used to the cool temperatures in New York quickly.

I checked my watch. It was almost ten in the morning. I'd missed a lot of travel time. After another swallow from the water bottle, I hefted my bag and set off at a quick walk down the side of the road.

Several times cars passed me. I stuck my thumb out each time to no avail; no one seemed willing to stop for a dusty girl on the side of the road. The one time I didn't attempt to hitch a ride was when a police cruiser went by, but I might actually have had better luck if I had. As they went shooting by, I caught a glimpse of a face staring back at me. It was the face of the same officer I had seen outside Primatech yesterday, the one who Peter thought might be able to read minds. The brief flash I saw of him made me wonder what had happened to him in the hours since I had last spotted him. He looked as if his whole life had come crashing down around him.

But I couldn't dwell on it for long, and though the cruiser later passed me again, this time going the other way, I didn't care much. I did recognize the woman driving as the FBI agent who had been at Sam's murder scene. She must be investigating Sylar, I though. It was too much of a coincidence. I screamed the name in my head. If Parkman could read minds, that ought to bring them running. But nothing came of it, and I forgot the incident.

Around noon, a thought occurred to me. Pulling my phone out, I dialed a number I had programmed in just the day before. It rang twice before Ando answered. "Hello? Ando?" I asked hurriedly.

"Yes. Dianne?"

"It's me," I said. "How did your meeting with Isaac go?" He told me, explaining the paintings of Hiro with a sword, and, more troubling, about the exploding man.

That triggered something in me, though I had no idea what. "Exploding man?" I said. "We're trying to stop a bomb, and it turns out to be a person? And just when I thought I'd seen everything." Ando made a noncommital noise. "Listen," I said, "I needed to ask Hiro something. He said that he was in the future and saw New York explode. Does he know what day it happens? Just so we have a timetable for when this happens?"

There was a brief chatter of muffled Japanese on the other end of the line, and then Ando was back. "He says November 8."

November eighth. The day after the Congressional election. What kind of significance did that have? "Okay," I said. "I'm on my way to Las Vegas. I'm looking for somebody named Niki. Keep in touch, will you? Let us know how you're coming with... whatever you're doing. Somehow I think we're all in this together."

I was about to hang up when Ando burst out, "Niki? You are looking for Niki Sanders?"

"Yeah," I said slowly. If Ando knew this girl, I was going to have to take drastic measures. There was just too much not-a-coincidence in my life lately. "Do you know her?"

"She is a... stripper," he replied slowly. "She run a website. I visited her before we came to Texas."

Frantically, I said, "Ando, what's the address. Do you remember her address?"

He gave me the house number. "Thank you, Ando," I said. "You've just made my life significantly easier. I'll hopefully see you guys in New York, alright?"

We said goodbye and I hung up. This was too much. Everything was coming together. Claire, Peter, Isaac, Hiro and Ando, and now even the mysterious Niki had her own ties to our little group? Everyone had their place in the picture that was emerging right before my eyes.

Well, everyone but me. I was the tagalong best friend. That had been my role before, and it was one I could accept with reasonable grace, but just this once I wished I could be important. Barry Allen had told me, before he brought me back to this universe, that I was. He'd said that he had "a sense" before he took me away all those years ago, that I was special. That I would be needed, and that I needed the pain and miracles and revelation that other world would bring me to be the one needed. But he had been wrong. Peter was important. Hiro was important. Claire was absolutely freaking essential, if Hiro-from-the-future was right. Even the crazed serial killer I had confronted yesterday seemed to have a part to play, somehow. But not me.

I could live with that. I could be their cheerleader and watch and applaud as they saved the world, and help whenever I could. I could do my small part and be content with that. It had been a long time since the days when I dreamed of having fire and glory for myself. That was what I had learned in that otherworld- that fire and glory is bullshit. It's never as glamorous as it looked before I experienced it. I had chosen a mundane life (not that I was likely to get it). And it was this world I had chosen, two months ago, when I had decided to come home.

Or rather, what I hoped was home. I didn't really understand what home was. All I knew was that I had felt a call to come back here too powerful to ignore. And I had followed it. I was glad I had. It wasn't as mundane as I'd been expecting, but I'd found something better than I'd ever had back there. I had friends, real friends I'd made for myself, not ones who had simply fallen into my life because I happened to know Clark Kent. I had Peter.

My mind shied away from that thought. Thinking about him brought up in a rush the last time I had seen him, lying frighteningly still in the hospital. I didn't want to remember him that way. I was going to make better memories later, when he woke up.

A car came rushing down the highway, dragging me out of my morose speculation. Tiredly I stuck out my thumb and the car skidded to a halt. The woman in the front seat tossed her cigarette down on the road and said, "Well come on. Get in then." I did so. "Where ya headed?" she asked.

"Vegas."

She laughed. "Vegas, huh? Well, it's not really on my way, but I can get you as far as New Mexico."

I thanked her and turned to stare out the window, watching as the mesas on the horizon drew nearer and the desert floor turned from dusty yellow to oranges and gleaming reds. After several hours, we passed a sign saying "Welcome to New Mexico." She drove on for awhile longer before pulling up a ramp to an overpass. "This is as far as I can take you," she said. "It's this highway here I need to take, and you gotta stick with the one we just came off of, 'kay? You'll have to catch another ride from here."

I nodded and hopped out of the car. Once the door was closed behind me, she took off in a squeal of rubber. I watched her go, then returned to my road and continued walking on, hoping my water would last me until the next highway rest stop.

--

Another Note From Lara: And C.D. who was mentioned in Peter's file is, of course, Charles Deveaux. The only one of the Company founders who isn't COMPLETELY FCKED UP IN THE HEAD!!!!!!! *coughs* Erm... yeah. Any chance of reviews?