Chapter 10: Original Sins

"What?! Bella...here? Are you sure?"

Edward nodded. "The scent's faded a little, but there's no doubt that it's her."

"You can smell her?" Nathan blurted out. "Even after three days?"

Every eye in the room turned toward him, and he belatedly realized that Edward hadn't specified exactly how long ago Bella had been in the apartment.

"You knew?" Peter demanded, his voice rising as he advanced on his brother. "Why didn't you tell me?!"

"Between you showing up and our mother getting attacked, it must've slipped my mind," Nathan answered honestly.

His reply cooled Peter's outrage to some degree, but his voice was still sharper than usual as he fired off his next question. "Where is she now?"

"How should I know? Listen, Pete..." Nathan hesitated, knowing his brother wouldn't like what he had to say, before forging ahead, feeling that it needed to be said regardless. "When I saw her...she wasn't herself. She wouldn't explain how she recovered from whatever landed her in the hospital, and she was...aggressive, almost like some feral animal-"

Peter shot a worried glance at Alice and Edward, but neither of them seemed the slightest bit perturbed by Nathan's account; at least aggression was an improvement over huddling in a corner, and was more in line with what they expected from such a young vampire. In fact, considering her age, they were quite impressed that she had managed to let Nathan go with all his limbs still attached.

Reassured by their blasé reactions, he turned his attention back to his brother. "So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that wherever she's disappeared to...maybe it's best if she stays there. I'm saying I don't think you should go looking for her."

"What, just give up on her?" Peter was already shaking his head before he finished speaking; merely voicing the idea felt like a betrayal. "I can't do that. You want to know how she ended up on life support, Nathan? It's because I wasn't strong enough to stop myself from going nuclear; I exploded, and she used her shield to contain the blast. If it wasn't for her, this city wouldn't even be here anymore...and I'd have all those people's blood on my hands. But she never gave up on me, so I won't abandon her now. I'll find her, no matter how long it takes." Ignoring Nathan's look of dismay, he then addressed the two vampires. "Is there any way you can tell where she went after leaving here?"

Alice shook her head. "Too many other people live in this building - all of them coming and going will have diluted her scent too much for us to follow outside this apartment, especially since the trail isn't fresh."

"At least we know she didn't leave alone," Elle announced as she reappeared after giving the entire apartment a thorough sniffing. "Someone else was here after Nathan. Their scent's fainter, so I don't think they stayed very long, but from what I did pick up, I'd say they were here at the same time Bella left. She seems to have spent most of her time in the bedroom, and the other person never made it in there, but then she came out and their trails overlap...right...here." She retraced Bella's steps to the exact spot where she had made herself known to Adam. "Then they left at the same time, so wherever they went after that, I'm guessing they stayed together."

"You can get all that just from leftover smells?"

Peter was impressed, but Elle's expression as she nodded was less than pleased. "I can tell where Bella's been, and I can make a pretty good guess at when she left by how long it takes a person's scent trail to dissipate, but I have no freaking clue where she is now, or why she decided to go off with some random stranger!" A single spark leapt off her finger as her frustration mounted and fell to the floor, though she quickly stamped it out before it caught anything on fire.

"I'm not so sure it was a random stranger." After Elle pointed out the unknown interloper's scent, Edward had sniffed the few items the person had handled, and was surprised to find that it struck a chord in his memory. "I think I may have encountered this person before."

"You did? Where?"

"When I was your 'guest' in Primatech's Hartsdale facility, I caught an occasional whiff of the other inmates through the ventilation shafts. I think our trespasser might have been among them; their scent is vaguely familiar, though it's hard to be sure. Level Five's air supply had a certain stale, sterile quality that made it difficult to smell anything."

"Really? I never noticed the air smelling funky."

"Your nose wasn't as sharp then."

"At least that's a possible lead," Peter cut in, in an effort to get them back on track. "Who else was in Level Five at the same time as Edward?"

Elle's brow furrowed as she tried to remember. "I don't think there were that many..."

"I counted six, not including myself," Edward reminded her.

"Right - there was a sound wave guy, a creepy guy with a weird puppet fetish, and one who supposedly was able to create mini black holes; I always steered clear of them. Then there were Knox and Flint; I used to have fun riling Knox up with how I wasn't scared of him, but Flint was a little too grabby for my taste... Oh, and Adam."

The familiar name immediately caught Peter's attention. "Adam? Adam Monroe?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"He was in the cell next to mine, and we escaped together after he convinced me Linderman was lying about getting rid of my abilities and helping Bella."

"You let him out?" Elle demanded, her golden eyes widening. "Are you crazy?"

"That's debatable," Nathan muttered, but everyone ignored him.

"Not that I know of," Peter retorted. "He's just a guy like me who got locked up because he was in the way of Primatech's plans, whatever those are. What's the big deal?"

"I don't know," Elle replied, "but Daddy always told me Adam was the most dangerous person in those cells - even more than the black hole guy."

That, Peter had to admit, was rather disquieting. "And he never told you why?"

"Are you kidding?" she scoffed. "He never told me anything."

"Angela would know," Alice piped up. "We should ask her."

"If she hasn't been dragged back to jail or murdered in her hospital bed," Nathan said testily. "We're supposed to be looking for that symbol to clear her name and find out who tried to kill her, in case you've forgotten."

Peter's face fell as Nathan's words pricked at his conscience, but before Nathan could try to press him into choosing between searching for Bella or helping their mother, Edward stepped in with a solution. "Why don't you and I stay here and keep looking for the book Peter mentioned, while he takes Alice and Elle back to the hospital to speak with Mrs. Petrelli?"

Nathan didn't look particularly pleased with this suggestion, but couldn't seem to raise any better objection than, "If she'll talk to you. She was awfully tight-lipped when Peter and I tried asking her about the murder."

"Don't worry." Alice gave him her best disarming smile, which instantly quelled his protests. "Between the three of us, I'm sure we can find a way of loosening her tongue."

###

Angela was gazing pensively out the window when they arrived, and didn't seem the least bit surprised by three people appearing out of thin air at her bedside. "I see you're improving," she remarked dryly to Peter. "You've come a long way from the time you could barely stay airborne without Nathan there holding your hand."

Her admission that she had known exactly what was happening to him when his powers first manifested but had chosen to say nothing, instead letting him flounder on his own while Nathan insisted he was losing his mind, sent a stab of annoyance through him, but he had more important things to deal with at the moment. "What can you tell us about Adam Monroe?"

For a split second, Angela was visibly taken aback, and something that looked disturbingly close to fear flickered across her face before she schooled it back into a neutral expression. "How do you know that name?"

She fixed Elle with an accusing stare, which the blonde answered with a look of indignation. "Don't look at me - I haven't been telling him stories about my days as a Company girl, and I didn't take him there either. You can thank your buddy Linderman for that."

"I beg your pardon?" Despite her efforts to hide it, Angela was clearly startled.

"That's why I disappeared after election night," Peter explained, rushing through the words in his impatience at having to repeat the story yet again. "He locked me up in one of Primatech's facilities, and Adam was in the cell next to mine. He started talking to me through the air vent-"

"My God," Angela breathed, "what on earth was Daniel thinking, putting you anywhere near him?" She shook her head in disbelief at her old friend's foolishness, then gazed imploringly up at Peter. "Tell me you had nothing to do with his escape."

"Yeah, I took him with me when I got out." He crossed his arms somewhat defensively over his chest. "And I don't see what's so bad about that."

Angela just shook her head again, closed her eyes, and leaned back against her pillows with a look that fell somewhere between resignation and despair. Then Alice perched on the edge of her bed and took her hand, and her eyes flew open again at her sister's cold touch.

"Angie, talk to us. Who is this man?"

She hesitated a moment longer, but Alice had always had a way of convincing her to do things she knew she shouldn't just by turning those eyes, which were usually sparkling with mischief and the promise of some exciting new adventure, on her; even though her eyes were now golden instead of the rich, deep brown Angela remembered and the days when she had followed her older sister around like a puppy, eager to please her in any way she could, should have been long past, it seemed Alice's powers of persuasion were as strong as ever. Drawing in a deep, slightly shaky breath, she began to speak.

"After you were taken, I was...lost, for a long time; I became obsessed with finding the monster I believed had killed you and learning how to destroy him, but when my dreams wouldn't show me anything helpful, I began to think of our gifts as useless, or worse, a curse...until Adam found me. He brought a group of us together - including your father," she added with a glance at Peter, "and convinced us that we were given our abilities for a reason, that together we could change the world. As I'm sure you've surmised, that's how the Company came to be-"

"Hang on a minute," Peter interrupted. "You're saying Adam Monroe introduced you to Dad? How is that possible when he looks like he's around Nathan's age?"

"Appearances can be deceiving," Angela replied with a slight grimace. "Adam told us his only power was healing, which he could share with others via blood transfusions; what we didn't know at the time is that Adam's cells don't merely repair themselves quickly when he's injured. The rate of regeneration is constant."

"Constant cellular regeneration," Peter murmured, his eyes widening as he realized the implications of what he was saying. "And aging happens because of wear and tear on cells...but if they're constantly regenerating..."

"Bravo, Peter; I always knew you could be quite clever when you wanted to be. Yes, after several years with Adam, we noticed that he never seemed to get any older. He initially tried to dismiss our suspicions, but eventually he confessed that he was born sometime in the middle of the seventeenth century."

"That would put him close to Carlisle's age," Alice mused, "but why does it matter? Being immortal doesn't make someone dangerous."

"Not unless the fact that you've lived longer than everyone you know causes you to start seeing yourself as a god. Adam's heart seemed to be in the right place at first, and we did a great deal of good under his leadership; then he started talking about how humanity didn't deserve to be saved, how the entire world was so corrupt that it needed to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch, but not everyone was worthy of the new world he intended to create. That's when we realized that the man we had looked up to for so long, the one who had given us a purpose, was in fact a madman. We locked him up, and he's been in that cell ever since-"

"Until I let him out," Peter finished grimly. The blood had drained from his face as Angela's story came to an end, his initial look of shock quickly giving way to a more downcast attitude. "I was so stupid-"

He expected her to agree, but when she spoke again, her tone was softer than usual, reassuring rather than biting. "You mustn't blame yourself. Adam is quite skilled at convincing others of his beneficence and telling them whatever they want or need to hear in order to win their allegiance; you're hardly the first person to be taken in by his false promises."

"You're making him sound like some kind of cult leader," Elle broke in before Peter could respond, though he forgave her when he heard the barely concealed note of worry in her voice, "but what would a guy like that want with Bella?"

"Bella?" Angela's voice regained its customary sharpness as her gaze darted between her three visitors. "Your friend, Isabella Swan? I had heard she passed away recently."

"Not quite. We faked her death so we could change her, but then she ran away from us," Alice admitted. "We picked up her scent in Peter's apartment, along with Adam's, and all the signs seem to suggest that she left with him."

"Well, that is worrisome." Angela appeared to be more than worried, though; the look in her eyes was closer to outright fear.

"Why?" Elle demanded, her patience obviously exhausted. "What does he want with her?"

Angela swallowed hard before speaking again. "Remember how I told you that Adam believed the world needed to be purged of those he deemed unworthy? He had a plan to accomplish it; there's a rare virus that primarily affects people like us-"

"I think Matt might've mentioned something about that," Peter blurted out, too surprised at the revelation to keep his mouth shut until she finished. "He said he was taking care of a little girl who'd had a virus that took away her abilities."

Angela pursed her lips at the interruption. "Yes, that is the first symptom of the Shanti virus, followed by fever, delirium, accelerating neurological deterioration, and eventually death."

"But Matt said the little girl was cured."

"That's wonderful, but at the time when Adam first showed his true colors, there was no cure. We had been studying the virus, trying to create a non-lethal strain that could be used to neutralize particularly dangerous individuals - until we learned that Adam was conducting his own experiments in secret, producing an even deadlier form of the virus, one that could spread far more easily among the general population. Once we'd apprehended him and had a chance to examine his work, we realized that the ease with which it mutated made the virus far too dangerous to trifle with, so we destroyed every sample in our labs...most of them, at least. A few of us thought it would be wise to preserve a vial of each strain. They said it was for further study in case the virus ever resurfaced, but now..."

"You think that's what Adam's after," Alice surmised.

"Then what are we waiting for? We have to stop him." Peter took a step closer to Angela's hospital bed and leaned in so their faces were only a foot apart, as if physical proximity would help him wring from her the information he was sure she would be extremely reluctant to provide. "Where are those samples stored?"

Much to his surprise, she didn't try to prevaricate or talk him out of pursuing Adam, but simply told him that the vials were in the most secure vaults Primatech's facility in Odessa, Texas had to offer, leaving him rather disconcerted at getting a straight answer out of her so easily. As he straightened up and started to move away, however, she said, "Aren't you forgetting something? If Miss Swan has allied herself with Adam, stopping him might mean fighting her. Are you prepared for that?"

Once again, Elle piped up before he could get a word in. "We're not going to fight with Bella; we'll just tell her what a jerk Adam is, and she'll ditch him like the bad habit he is."

"If you say so."

"Yeah, I do," the blonde snapped, glaring defiantly at her former boss. "And since she's my best friend, I think I know her better than you do. Come on, guys, let's get out of here."

She whirled around and started to march out, but Alice grabbed her arm. "Hold on - there's still an officer stationed outside, and we're not supposed to be in here."

"So I'll make him take a nap."

"That won't be necessary; he's going to sneak off to the vending machine in three, two, one...now."

Elle wasted no time in leaving, and Alice followed her after saying a quick goodbye to her sister. Peter was right behind them, but before he made it through the door, Angela called out to him telepathically. Peter, wait.

Frowning, he turned around and walked back toward the bed. "What is it?"

She cast a furtive glance at the door, making sure the girls really were gone, before saying in a low, urgent voice, "Listen to me, Peter - Adam is perhaps the most masterful manipulator I've ever met. The devotion he can inspire in people, you have no idea... Despite Miss Bishop's optimism, I'm afraid breaking whatever hold he has on your friend may not be as easy as she thinks."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that if you can't get through to her, you'll have to kill her."

Peter recoiled as if he'd been slapped, and any warm feelings that had been generated by her earlier attempt to ease his guilt over falling for Adam's deception evaporated instantly. "I can't do that, Mom. I love her."

"Do you?" Angela's eyebrows arched skeptically. "Still?"

"What, you think I should feel differently about her just because she's not human anymore? Like you did with Alice?"

"Yes, well, she is my sister, whereas you've only known this Swan girl for a few months. Does she love you?"

He didn't answer right away - he would have given almost anything to be able to say yes, but it would be a lie; Bella had never shown the slightest hint that she was even capable of feeling that way about him, and that was before he hurt her so badly that she could only survive by becoming a vampire, a state of being that, according to the Cullens, didn't exactly thrill her - but his silence seemed to tell Angela everything she needed to know. Before she could say anything to twist the knife deeper, however, he said, "It doesn't matter if she does or not; I know her, and she won't help Adam once I tell her what he's really like. She'll listen to me."

Angela frowned at him, clearly unconvinced. "You were always too sentimental, Peter, and I've always worried that it would get you into trouble some day. If you let your feelings cloud your judgment now, though, it won't just be you who pays the price, it'll be all of us."

"My judgment isn't clouded," he replied heatedly. "You just don't know her like I do. As hard as it is for you, you'll just have to trust me on this." Then, deciding he had heard more than enough from her, he turned away and quickly left the room.

Sorry this chapter was relatively short and more of an info-dump than anything else; the next one should have more action as we finally head to Odessa for the confrontation with Adam, Maury, and Bella, though it might take a couple of chapters to really do it justice. My plans for the actual chapter-by-chapter breakdown of future events in this story are still sketchy - I sometimes don't know where I'm going to cut chapters off until I'm halfway through writing them - but I hope you'll like what I have in store.