I hope all my American readers had a great Thanksgiving, and Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to everyone.

Chapter 4: Forget Me Not

Primatech facility, Hartsdale, NY - the night of the explosion

Upon arriving at the Company's main headquarters, Peter was taken to a small room empty of all but the most basic necessities. Under different circumstances, he might have questioned why his accommodations looked so much like a prison cell, but in his current frame of mind he couldn't have cared less. He simply took the pills Linderman gave him and flopped down on the hard, narrow bed, not even noticing when Linderman locked him in.

The next day, his host took him to the lab to test the drug's effects. "Just try moving this pen across the table, please."

Peter stared at the pen, concentrated every fiber of his being on moving it...and nothing happened. "Great, your cure works. Can you get to work on Bella now?"

"Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, Peter," Linderman said condescendingly while the scientist conducting the tests scribbled on her clipboard. "Our current formula only lasts as long as our subjects take the pills regularly; we'll need to create something permanent before we can call this project a success and move on to other pursuits. Now, if you don't mind, we still have a few more tests to do..."

These tests involved taking several blood samples - the pinprick wounds left by the needle didn't automatically heal, proving that the abilities not under his conscious control were suppressed as well - after which Linderman took Peter back to his cell, then returned to his office to find a worried-looking shapeshifter waiting for him. "Candice? I thought I told you to stay at the hospital and keep an eye on our friend, Miss Swan."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Linderman - I was doing what you asked, but then Elle and her boyfriend showed up with the head of their coven, the doctor. Between the three of them, they never left her alone-"

"That doesn't explain why you decided to abandon your assignment," Linderman interrupted, giving her a disapproving frown.

"I was afraid the telepath would figure out it was me if I hung around too long, and I was scared, okay? The last time I ran into Elle, the crazy bitch almost put my eyes out!"

"That would have been most unfortunate, but not irreparable."

This statement was met with an incredulous look from his most devoted employee. As brilliant as Candice thought Linderman was, in this instance she felt that he was missing the point - even if she could be healed later, that didn't mean she wanted her eyeballs gouged or burned out in the first place.

"The Cullens' presence complicates things," Linderman continued, "but it's not a significant setback. Peter's being perfectly cooperative; if that changes, I'm sure we can find a way of getting to her."

"In the hospital, sure. What if they take her somewhere else?"

"She's getting the very best care right where she is," Linderman replied impatiently. "There's no reason to move her. Besides, Peter has no way of knowing if they do, so threatening her should remain an effective means of controlling him as long as he doesn't require proof that we really do have access to the girl." He didn't think that was very likely; based on what Angela had told him about her younger son, Peter didn't seem that sharp.

###

Peter, meanwhile, was sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the opposite wall, when a seemingly disembodied voice spoke to him. "Hello?"

"Who said that?"

"Me." This time he was able to determine that the voice was coming from an air vent. "Your next door neighbor. I'm glad they finally put someone on the other side of my wall; you don't know how long it's been since I've had another human being to talk to."

"Sorry, I'm not feeling very chatty right now."

He refused to say anything more, and his neighbor soon gave up trying to engage him in conversation, at least temporarily. He tried again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Sometimes Peter gave short responses, sometimes he asked for peace and quiet, mostly he said nothing at all, but it didn't matter. Nothing deterred the chatterbox in the next cell for long.

"You know," he said one day, "it's been a month, and you still haven't told me your name."

"Please, I just want to be left alone." Peter was in no mood to indulge him today; he knew exactly how long it had been, and Linderman still hadn't found a way to help Bella. Now he was starting to worry about what kind of shape she would be in if she ever did wake up. When, he corrected himself. When she wakes up, not if.

"Well, you've come to the right place. I have to warn you, though, it does get a bit old, even for someone as depressed as you."

"What makes you think I'm depressed?" Peter demanded. He was, of course, but the man's presumption was still annoying. "You don't know anything about me."

"I might know more than you think. Let me guess, you were living a perfectly ordinary life, until one day you discovered you could do something incredible. I bet it was wonderful at first; you thought you must've been given this gift for a reason, that you were destined for greatness - perhaps you even thought you could save the world. Then, tragically, you realized you were dangerous."

Peter lifted his head and frowned at the wall separating him from the other man, whose deductions had hit much too close to home. How could he know all that? Unless maybe it happened to him too...

"Why don't you talk to me after a decade?" his neighbor went on. "Actually, talk to me after three."

"If they want to leave me in here forever, that's fine by me." It wasn't like he didn't deserve it, and even if Bella was healed, he doubted she would ever want to see him again.

"You've been through something awful, haven't you? I'm sorry."

He sounded sincere, and at long last, Peter relented. "I'm Peter."

"Hello, Peter, nice to meet you. I'm Adam."

###

Peter and Adam struck up a sort of friendship over the next three months, at least as much as was possible for two people who never saw each other face to face, and Adam soon began dropping hints that Linderman, and the Company in general, weren't trustworthy. By that point, Peter was starting to lose patience with his captors anyway, and when Adam revealed that Primatech had been days away from perfecting their cure since his arrival thirty years ago, Peter decided it was time to confront Linderman.

"How much are you really working on this cure?" he demanded during their next meeting. "I thought you were trying to come up with something permanent, but in all the time I've been here you've just had me taking the same old pills."

"Scientific progress doesn't happen overnight, you know that."

"What I know is that I agreed to let you test your cure on me in exchange for you finding a way to fix Bella's brain damage, and so far I haven't seen you following through on your end of the deal."

Linderman's expression hardened, his tone shifting from placatory to threatening. "Careful, Peter. I'll admit healing your little friend isn't my highest priority - the girl was quite a thorn in my side, after all - but I haven't harmed her either. However, if you're going to start being difficult...well, it would be a shame if her life support were to malfunction, wouldn't it?"

"You can't-"

"I assure you I can." This was a lie, since the Cullens had spirited Bella out of the hospital almost a month ago, placing her well beyond his reach, but thanks to his frequent dealings with the criminal underbelly of Las Vegas - a distasteful enterprise, to be sure, but such a convenient way of amassing the monetary resources he needed to aid the greater good - he was an expert in the art of bluffing. "Do you remember the woman you met on Kirby Plaza, Niki? Her son has the ability to control technology, and his father can walk through walls; the family is rather deeply indebted to me, and they would have no trouble at all in getting to Miss Swan and tampering with the machines that are keeping her alive. In the unlikely event that they were caught, our Haitian friend could easily take care of any witnesses. Of course, I take no pleasure in the murder of a defenseless girl - I won't touch her unless you force my hand. You don't want to be responsible for any further harm coming to her, do you?"

Peter stared at him, wondering why he had ever believed the man had good intentions - hadn't Nathan told him often enough what a crook Linderman was? Obviously he had let his desperation to undo the harm he had caused cloud his judgment, and had ended up in an even bigger mess; he was no closer to reviving Bella, and now he couldn't even be there to protect her from Linderman's assassins. He'd failed her again.

Meanwhile, Linderman was still watching him, gauging the effect of his threat as he waited for an answer. "Do you, Peter?"

"No, of course not. I won't give you any more trouble, just leave her alone."

"Gladly. You see how much easier things are when we all behave reasonably? Now, I have other matters to attend to, so Candice will show you back to your room."

Peter would have rolled his eyes at Linderman's insistence on maintaining his veneer of civility by calling it a room instead of a cell - Adam was right, this place really was a prison, and the fact that he wasn't allowed to go anywhere unsupervised only served to emphasize that - but the name Linderman had just mentioned sent a surge of anger through him that overshadowed all other annoyances. "Candice?!" He whirled around, and sure enough, there stood the illusionist who had taken on Bella's form in an attempt to make it look like she had deserted him, wearing a smug grin.

"Hiya, Pete."

He brushed past her without responding, suddenly eager to escape back into the solitude of his cell. Unfortunately, she effortlessly kept pace with him. "Not thrilled to see me, huh? Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I was just doing my job."

"And you sure enjoyed it. You get a kick out of messing with people's heads, don't you?" Peter snapped. "You weren't very convincing, though."

"Okay, so I got her shoes wrong, big deal. It wouldn't have mattered if Elle wasn't so damn nitpicky, but I can do better. Just watch." Before he could explain that it was her behavior that had given her away rather than her footwear, she closed her eyes in concentration and transformed herself into Bella's double. Her disguise was flawless this time, right down to the worn-out sneakers, but Peter wasn't impressed.

"Change back," he ordered in a low, warning tone, "now."

"Why? Except for the clothes, it's really not so bad being her." She changed the jeans and t-shirt Bella favored into something more to her liking, stopping to admire her reflection in an empty cell's observation window. "Hmm, not bad. There might even be something here I can use if I ever feel like designing myself a new face."

Shaking his head in disgust, Peter wrenched open the door to his cell and hurried inside, but Candice followed, much to his dismay. "Why don't you just leave me alone? Don't you have something better to do?"

"Not really. Sylar was supposed to be my next assignment, but you and the electric bitch took him out, so I'm just hanging around here for now."

"Then go hang around somewhere else."

"What's your problem? Aren't you glad to see your precious Bella again?"

"You're not her."

"But I look like her, which is probably as close as you'll ever get to having her back."

"You don't get it, do you? You think I love Bella because of the way she looks? That doesn't matter to me-"

"It's all that matters," Candice interjected bitterly. "Guys like you never look twice at any girl who isn't rail-thin and gorgeous."

Remembering Elle's remarks about how Candice's usual appearance was just another illusion and her taunts about the shapeshifter's true form, Peter felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for the woman, though it was somewhat muted by the fact that she was still wearing Bella's face like a cheap Halloween mask. "Look, I'm sorry for whatever happened to you, but you don't know anything about me. Whatever you're trying to prove with this facade you've created for yourself, leave me out of it, and don't turn into Bella again. You may be able to copy her face, but you'll never be like her; she was willing to risk her life to save people she didn't even know, to save the world, and you can't fake that."

Candice changed back into her normal self, looking furious. "Whatever! You could've had way more fun with me than you ever did with her, but hey, it's your loss, pal." She stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

Adam piped up as soon as she was out of earshot. "You've been holding out on me, Peter - you never mentioned a girlfriend." When Peter didn't respond, Adam quickly began putting things together. "Oh, I see. She was in the wrong place when you found out about the downside to your abilities, wasn't she? Did you hurt her?"

"Yes." With that one little word, the whole story came pouring out. He'd thought talking about it would hurt, which was why he hadn't told Adam anything about Bella before, but Linderman and Candice had already done such a thorough job of rubbing salt in the wound that it hardly mattered now.

Adam listened sympathetically, then said, "Well, the good news is that you don't need Linderman. My blood has healing powers; just a few drops should have your girl up and about in no time. All you need to do is get me out of here."

Peter's initial reaction was skepticism - after all, recent events had shown him that if something sounded too good to be true, it probably was, and the odds that he'd just happened to stumble across someone who had exactly what he needed must be astronomical - but unlike Linderman, Adam was his friend. Surely he could trust him. Besides, he was planning on escaping anyway, and he saw no harm in taking Adam with him; even if it turned out the man was lying about his abilities, he didn't deserve to be left in this hellhole. "Okay, but first I need to get my powers back."

That turned out to be easy, since the Company workers who delivered his daily dose of pills never stuck around to make sure he took them, even after he confronted Linderman; apparently the old man believed his threats would be enough to keep Peter in line. His telepathy returned after two days without the pills, just a faint whisper in the back of his mind at first, but three days later it was back in full force, and he decided it was time to try accessing his more 'active' powers. Linderman usually checked up on him about once a week, so he didn't dare delay any longer.

He could have blasted the door to his cell off its hinges, but that would almost certainly set off some kind of alarm; luckily, he had picked up the ability to phase through solid objects during his brief encounter with Niki Sanders' husband on Kirby Plaza, though he hadn't realized it at the time. Silently thanking Linderman for carelessly giving away that information, he stepped through the wall into the adjacent cell where Adam was waiting for him.

"Hello, Peter. It's nice to finally meet you."

###

Peter made a quick stop at his apartment to collect his ATM and credit cards, figuring he would need the money if he and Bella had to go on the run - they could be traced, of course, but with the abilities he had at his disposal it would be easy to evade his pursuers, or even use the cards to lay a false trail - then teleported himself and Adam to the hospital where he'd left her, only to find her bed empty. "Looks like we're too late," Adam observed. "I'm sorry-"

"No! She has to be here somewhere; they just moved her, that's all."

"Why would they do that? I'm sorry, but you know as well as I that it's far more likely her parents pulled the plug on her, and we can't afford to waste time searching the whole hospital for someone who isn't here. The Company will know we've escaped by now, and this is the first place they'll look for you."

Peter ignored him, storming out of the deserted room and grabbing the first hospital worker he came across. "The girl who was in that room – Bella Swan – where is she?!"

The orderly blinked at him, befuddled. "The brain dead girl? Honey, she was transferred out of here weeks ago."

"Transferred? But she was still alive?"

"If you can call it living. Didn't look like she would last much longer, poor thing."

Peter released the woman and ran off down the hall with a frustrated Adam trailing after him. "Now where are you going?"

"To find a computer!"

Using Micah's power, he hacked into the hospital's records and discovered she'd been taken to a private facility, but before he could read all the details, Adam tugged on his sleeve and pointed to a security monitor feed. "They're here."

"I just need one more minute-"

But Adam seized his arm and forcefully turned him away from the screen. "We don't have another minute! If they catch us, we'll be right back in our cells and you'll have no chance of helping her then!"

Reluctantly conceding the point, Peter tried to teleport out, but it didn't work.

"Damn, they must've brought the Haitian." Thinking fast, Adam suggested they split up, ostensibly to confuse their pursuers, though his true motives were more self-serving – the Haitian would naturally go after Peter, whose powers were much more formidable, and he was the only one Adam was really worried about since his presence would allow Adam to be knocked out or otherwise incapacitated. With his centuries of experience, he was confident he could handle anyone else they sent after him. It was a shame he had to sacrifice such a potentially useful ally as Peter, but avoiding capture was the most important thing right now; he could always find someone else to aid in his plans for revenge later.

###

The Haitian chased Peter down several blocks before finally cornering him in a shipping yard. Once he realized he had nowhere left to run, Peter turned around and braced himself for a fight. "If you take me back, I'll just keep escaping," he warned as the Haitian approached. "I'll never let Linderman get his hands on Bella again!"

The other man responded with a sad shake of his head; it had never occurred to Linderman to wonder why the Cullens had stolen Bella from her parents, but the Haitian had no doubt in his mind that they intended to turn her into another undead abomination like themselves, as they had done to poor Elle. He could only hope she was too far gone for the evil spirits that gave the vampires their unholy semblance of life to take hold in her.

"I'm afraid Bella Swan is lost to you," he said gently, trying to soften the blow as much as he could. "You must forget her and start a new life."

"Forget her?" Peter repeated incredulously. "I could never do that even if I wanted to."

"Then it seems I must help you." Lunging forward, he clamped a hand over Peter's forehead.

The empath cried out in shock and pain as he felt his mind being invaded and struggled to break through the Haitian's psychic lead blanket so he could access Bella's shield, but it felt like his skull was being hollowed out…then, to his horror, his memories began disappearing, the white-hot fire burning through every synapse of his brain consuming everything in its path. Suddenly he couldn't recall Nathan's face…but who was Nathan? Peter tried to remind himself that Nathan was his brother, then in the next second forgot he had a brother. One by one, everyone he'd ever known was erased – his mother, father, nephews, Claire, all the people he knew from his former job…Bella.

No! I can't forget her – I have to save her! I have to get back to her. I have to remember… I have to… As his memories of her started to slip away like water through his fingers, he made one last desperate effort to fight the Haitian's power, to hold on to something, anything, that would help him find his way back to her…

Cork, Ireland – 1 week later

"You have to remember something, anything. A name, a face…"

Peter frowned at the curly-haired brunette who was washing blood off his face, feeling exasperated – in the past hour, he'd awakened to find himself handcuffed inside a cargo container, got beaten up by a group of Irish gangsters who'd expected to find a shipment of iPods in said container and weren't pleased to discover him instead, then was hauled off to some pub and tied to a chair. Throughout the entire ordeal, he'd insisted repeatedly that he didn't know how he came to be there - in fact, he had no memory at all of his life prior to that point. Why wouldn't they believe him? Did they think he'd wanted to be locked in a big metal box where he could easily have starved or suffocated?

Still, he racked his brain one more time, hoping against hope that he might be able to come up with something now that he wasn't being punched, kicked, or hit with a bat…and, to his astonishment, a single scrap of information floated up out of the void. "Hey, wait - I do remember a name!" he said excitedly. Then his face fell. "I'm pretty sure it's not mine, though. I don't look like a Bella, do I?"