This chapter was hard to write, but here it is at last.

Chapter 22: Heroes and Villains, Pt. 1

Hartsdale, NY

"You sure this is the place?" Charlie asked with a dubious look at the rather nondescript gray building in front of them, surrounded by a simple chain link fence - no watchtowers, armed guards, or anything else that made it look like anything other than what the sign out front proclaimed it to be: the national headquarters of a paper company. "It doesn't look any different from any other office building."

"That's the point," Noah Bennet informed him. "They can't exactly publicize the fact that they're studying people with abilities that aren't supposed to exist outside of comics and movies, can they?"

"Guess not."

"She's here all right." Peter glanced sideways at Demetri. "It's just like you said, like there's this invisible thread tracing where she's been, leading me straight to her."

The tracker nodded; never having met Claire himself, he couldn't see the psychic trail she left behind when she entered the facility, but what Peter described sounded exactly like the connection he felt when he set his mind on a target. Of course, they didn't really need a tracker's skill to narrow down her location - with Primatech's Odessa facility still in disarray after Adam's break-in, Noah was certain they would have taken her here, to the only other Company holding that equaled it in size and capacity. They had bases all across America and in a few other countries as well, and Linderman sometimes used his own personal resources to conduct operations, but the former agent had a hunch that whatever they wanted Claire for was too important to be accomplished at any of those smaller outposts.

"So what are we waiting for?" Breaking away from the group, Emmett marched up to the fence and tore through the metal links like they were a daisy chain, ripping a steel pole right out of the concrete in the process. Casually stepping through the hole he'd made, he turned around to give the others an impatient look. "Are you coming or what?"

Noah and Peter were the first to step forward, with the rest of their team right behind them; besides the two of them, Charlie, Demetri, and Emmett, the rescue party consisted of Bella, Edward, Elle, Leah, and the twins, although everyone suspected they had only volunteered to join because Jane was hoping for an excuse to torture somebody and it seemed that where one went, the other followed.

"Be careful; there are a lot of dangerous people in there," Noah warned as they hurried across the paved area surrounding the building, "and they know we're coming." His eyes flicked upward to the security cameras that were following their every move.

"Good," Emmett said with a feral grin, his teeth glinting in the distant glare of the floodlights that illuminated the employees' parking lot off to one side. "Wouldn't want this to be too easy."

Coming to an emergency exit door in the otherwise solid wall, he yanked it off its hinges and carelessly tossed it aside, sending it sailing over his companions' heads. The facility was as nondescript on the inside as outside, all featureless cinderblock walls and harsh, stark white lighting. As they followed Peter in his pursuit of Claire's psychic trail, however, the look of the place changed from industrial to clinical, becoming almost like a hospital. Peter paid it no mind, all his attention focused on the sense of her presence that grew stronger with every step, until a sudden clamor of confusion broke out behind him, and he turned around to find that the others had stopped, their eyes darting around as if they had become disoriented.

Only Bella seemed unaffected, though she was gripping her father's arm as she tried to get his attention. "Dad? Charlie? What's wrong?"

"Bella? Where are you?!"

"I'm right here!"

"Everybody stay calm!" Noah ordered, his voice rising above the disconcerted babble. "This is just an illusion!"

"Candice," Elle growled, "or whatever she's calling herself now."

Peter scowled at the mention of her; he hadn't forgotten how the woman had taunted him during his captivity in this very facility by assuming Bella's form, which she had also done before the explosion in an attempt to drive a wedge between them. Luckily, with his powers intact and Bella by his side, this time his mind was shielded from her tricks, though he dropped his defenses just for a second, curious to see what everyone else was seeing. The hallway warped into the sort of distorted image one might see in a funhouse mirror, leaving him uncertain which parts of the kaleidoscopic picture, including the twisted and scattered glimpses of the people with him, were real.

Then the world abruptly righted itself as Bella shielded everyone from Candice's reality-warping assault and shot him a mildly reproachful look, silently scolding him for letting himself get distracted. "Careful," she murmured, her amber eyes anxiously scanning the hallway ahead. "I have a feeling that little party trick was just an opening shot to test our defenses."

She was proven right when, just beyond a bulletproof glass door which, lacking a keycard and authorization code, Emmett simply smashed his way through, a gout of blue flame came rushing at them from an intersecting hall, forcing the big vampire to jump back. When it dissipated, they saw a handful of people emerging from various corridors and rooms, positioning themselves to face off against them.

Noah's eyes widened behind his horn-rimmed glasses as he recognized some of the newcomers. "Flint Gordon...Knox...Eric Doyle...Stephen Canfield... Has Linderman actually gone so far off the rails that he let you out?"

"Yeah, he said we could get 'paroled' if we helped take you and your crew down," Flint confirmed.

"Although to be honest, I would've done it just for the chance at a decent fight with her," Knox said with an evil glare at Elle, who sneered back at him.

"Screw you, Knox. I wasn't scared of you when you were caged up like the animal you are and I'm sure as hell not scared of you now."

"No, you're not afraid at all, are you?" He tilted his head as he scrutinized her, frowning at her complete lack of fear, but then his lips curled into a malicious grin. "But he is." He nodded at the other black man in the group, Stephen Canfield, who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. "So is she." He gestured to the Company's newest recruit, a girl with chin-length dishwater blonde hair who was hanging back behind the others, trying to keep out of sight.

"No wonder - she looks like she belongs in junior high," Leah scoffed.

"She has an acidic touch, though, so take care with her," Edward warned. "She ended up in Primatech's custody after severely burning her stepsister during an argument."

"You can have the shrimp," Emmett said dismissively, his eyes fixed on Knox. "I want that one."

Striding forward, he swung a fist at the fear-feeder, who caught it before it hit him and pushed it aside. Emmett looked surprised for a split second; then his face lit up with pleasure at having found a worthy opponent, and the fight began. Flint Gordon threw fireballs with such reckless abandon that he was almost as much of a danger to his own side as to their opposition, though there was no doubt that his pyrotechnic attacks played an important part in keeping the vampires on the defensive. The acidic girl did her part too, darting in wherever she saw an opening and throwing her targets off their game as they tried to avoid her touch, which allowed Knox to get in several hits.

Eric Doyle took advantage of a moment in which Bella and Peter were distracted - the former from nearly getting her arm singed while shielding Charlie and the latter by a punch in the ribs from Knox - to seize control of Elle's movements, turning the lightning bolt she was aiming at the back of Knox's head on Edward and Demetri instead. Luckily, she was able to thwart him by cutting off the electricity she generated, but Noah had no such recourse when Eric forced him to shoot at his companions. His bullets bounced harmlessly off the vampires' skin, but some found their marks, hitting Peter and Leah. They healed almost instantly, and Noah's gun was soon empty.

Realizing that the tide was turning against them, Flint paused his nearly indiscriminate flamethrower action long enough to grab Stephen Canfield by the front of his shirt and growl at him, "Time to get your ass in the game, Vortex Guy."

Stephen protested that he didn't want to hurt anyone, but when blue flame sprang to life in Flint's hand once more while the other pulled him in close enough that he could feel the searing heat on his skin, the resulting panic overrode his desperate efforts to restrain his power. A black void materialized behind them, and as Flint turned to look, Stephen managed to free himself from the other man's grip, then gave him a shove that sent him stumbling right into the hole Stephen had torn in the fabric of reality. There was a brief scream that was abruptly cut off as he was sucked in, and then Flint Gordon was gone without a trace.

The black hole remained, however, and grew, the air around it starting to swirl as it tried to draw the surrounding matter into itself, and it wasn't long before everyone felt its pull. Eric Doyle and the acidic girl fled, taking their apprehension at confronting a larger group whose powers outmatched theirs with them, which weakened Knox enough that Emmett and Demetri were able to subdue him. Before anyone could object, the tracker snapped his neck - not that anyone would have, since the rest of the group's attention was firmly riveted on the black hole in the middle of the hall.

Bella had put up a force field between it and them so they weren't in danger of getting sucked in, but of course they couldn't walk away and leave it there. It was Leah who voiced the obvious question: "What the hell are we supposed to do with this thing?"

"Kill Canfield and hope that gets rid of it," Elle suggested.

Noah didn't seem entirely opposed to this course of action, but he was the only one.

"We're not killing someone just because they have a dangerous ability," Peter said firmly. "If we decide that's okay we could probably justify killing almost anybody, including me."

"Fine," Elle huffed. Turning to the man who was eyeing his creation with a look of horrified despair, she said, "You made this thing - you fix it."

"I can't! I've never been able to control it - the first time it happened, I was arguing with my neighbor over a lawnmower, and then this hole just opened up and swallowed him! Then these people showed up and locked me away with no trial, no lawyer; they said I was too dangerous to be out in the world, but they never did anything to help me!"

"Yeah, they're not big on helping," Peter agreed.

"Okay, let's work through this." Ignoring Bella's look of alarm, Charlie stepped out from behind her and approached Stephen with the same calm, professional manner he used when breaking up the bar fights that occasionally broke out in Forks' drinking establishments. "This...power of yours kicks in when you're feeling angry or threatened, right?" At Stephen's terse nod, he then asked the gifted members of his team if they'd had similar experiences with their own abilities.

"Yes," Bella answered at once, unsure where he was going with this but wanting to be helpful. "In the first few months after the active side of mine manifested, force fields kept popping up around me any time I got scared or even just startled, whenever I felt like I needed a protective barrier. Didn't you tell me once that it was the same for you, Elle?"

"Yeah, I've had some accidental sparkage when stuff startles me," the blonde admitted, somewhat reluctantly. "And I used to have trouble controlling my reaction to water, which made showering a real pain in the butt."

Edward and Demetri both denied experiencing such issues with their abilities, though Edward speculated that this was because their particular gifts had no obvious defensive or offensive applications. Peter also had a different answer, his power having been more likely to act up when he had just copied some volatile new ability or was overwhelmed by absorbing too much at once.

Charlie took in this information with an appreciative nod, then asked Bella and Elle how they reined in their potentially destructive power when they felt it slipping away from them. Although both girls found it somewhat difficult to describe their techniques, the gist of their answers was that it was easier to cut off the flow of whatever energy they used to create their shields and lightning once they'd calmed down.

"All right, Stephen, let's try that. Take some deep breaths, or whatever works for you. Nobody here wants to hurt you, okay? We just need to make sure you aren't going to hurt us or anyone else, but you don't want to do that, do you?"

Stephen replied emphatically that he did not and, after shooting one last suspicious look at Elle and Noah, both of whom he remembered seeing around the facility during his captivity, closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, then another. As he did so, the vortex he had created shrank, its pull weakening, then collapsed to a tiny pinprick of impenetrable darkness before vanishing completely.

"That was amazing, Dad!" Bella exclaimed amid everyone's sighs of relief, throwing her arms around Charlie.

"It's standard procedure for deescalating situations with an emotionally disturbed person," he muttered, though he looked rather pleased nonetheless.

"Standard or not, it was still impressive," Noah told him. "You would've made a good agent."

"I don't think so," Charlie retorted, his expression darkening. "The fieldwork I could handle, but violating suspects' rights to due process and kidnapping people's daughters is a deal-breaker." In addition to his feelings about the current situation with Claire, he wasn't happy to learn that, when Bella disappeared for a few days after her near-death experience in Port Angeles, she had not been in a hospital as he'd previously been led to believe but had instead been spirited away by the Company, which had only let her go because they deemed her nascent powers too unreliable to be of use to them.

Noah nodded understandingly; he may not have lost sleep over the rights of people he considered too dangerous for society to deal with, but the Company had crossed a line when they took Claire.

Meanwhile, the others had begun assessing the damage they had taken in the fight.

"Looks like Acid Girl got you," Elle told Emmett after noticing the holes burned through his sleeve, once she had finished apologizing to Edward for being forced to zap him and assuring herself that he was all right.

"Must've snuck up on me while I was fighting Knox; I thought I felt a sting somewhere in there." This didn't seem to bother him, at least not enough to dampen his enjoyment at having fought someone who'd actually presented a decent challenge. Even when he rolled up his sleeve to find that the girl had left her handprint on his skin in a strange waxy patch that resembled a partially melted candle, all he said was, "I can't wait to show Jasper - he thinks he's so badass with all those scars from the southern wars, but I think mine are cooler. You think Rose will agree?"

"I think Rose will be upset that you got hurt," Edward said dryly, rolling his eyes at his brother's macho antics. "She'll probably threaten to kick you out of your bedroom for a week." As Emmett's face fell, he added, "She won't be able to go through with it, though."

The big vampire perked up at that, then quickly moved on to the next thing on his mind. "Now, where'd the wonder twins get off to?"

###

Jane and Alec had taken off down another hall when the jets of flame started flying; given their history, they wanted no part of a fight where fire was being weaponized against them. They met a few security guards as they ventured deeper into the medical research wing, who invariably tried to stop them by yelling and brandishing those silly things humans called firearms even though they produced no actual fire, which meant they posed no threat. Needless to say, this did nothing to stop the twins from continuing their exploration, leaving a trail of screaming or unconscious guards huddled on the floor in their wake.

After choosing a couple of turns at random, they froze as a new scent reached their noses, one that stood out sharply amongst the faintly unpleasant sterile smells of the place: the scent of the girl they had come to retrieve, which they had learned to recognize from a jacket Noah had brought in case one of the would-be rescuers with a superior sense of smell had an opportunity to sniff her out. They looked at one another, agreeing on their course of action without saying a word out loud, then resumed walking with a renewed sense of purpose, following the trail.

Their noses led them to a locked door made of steel, but that was no obstacle to them; although they lacked Emmett's impressive musculature, they were as strong as any average vampire, which meant they were perfectly capable of tearing through the door, its thickness slowing them down only for a moment. The room beyond appeared to be some sort of lab or medical chamber, its walls lined with stainless steel shelves and cabinets. The only other accoutrement present was something resembling an operating table that stood in the middle of the room, with a girl who looked close to the twins' physical age strapped to its surface, her long blonde hair spread out around her.

Her head was turned toward the door, her attention undoubtedly captured by the screech of steel being ripped apart, and her green eyes widened as they approached.

"Who are you?" They didn't look like Primatech agents, and she wondered if they were responsible for the alarms that had been blaring for the last several minutes, making her wish her hands were free to cover her ears.

Ignoring her inquiry, the twins stopped on either side of the table and gazed down at her as if she was a mildly interesting specimen under a microscope.

"So this is Claire Bennet. Somehow, I thought she'd be younger," Jane remarked.

"It's a shame she's one of them. Her scent would be quite lovely if only she didn't smell so...inedible," Alec said regretfully.

"What the hell?" Claire said loudly as Jane nodded in agreement. "You want to eat me?!"

That finally got their attention, their usually well-guarded expressions betraying a hint of amusement. "Don't be ridiculous," Jane scoffed. "Your flesh is of no interest to us."

"Great. So if you're not going to eat me, would you mind getting me the hell out of here?"

The twins exchanged another look. When they volunteered to join the rescue party (as much out of curiosity about how the strange team would work together as Jane's desire to find acceptable targets for her power, despite what the others believed) they had never considered the possibility that they might be the ones to find the girl whose retrieval was the object of this little excursion. Now that they had, however, it seemed there was only one thing to do - since they couldn't make a meal of her, they might as well return her to her family, especially since failing to do so would probably anger Peter. While they couldn't exactly say they liked Peter, they had developed a grudging respect for him; aside from the fact that he had saved Jane from being infected back in the castle, the Volturi had fostered a culture among their guard where power was valued above all else, and Peter was the most powerful person they had ever met even though his unassuming personality baffled them, which was not a feeling they enjoyed.

"Of course, fair maiden," Alec said sardonically as they made short work of the straps holding her down.

Claire stared at him, too astonished to even notice when she was freed or to protest when he slid his arms under her back and knees and lifted her off the table. "Fair maiden?" she repeated incredulously. "What century are you from? And what's wrong with your eyes?"

"Nothing; I daresay my eyes are much sharper than yours. And my sister and I have been told we were born near the dawn of the ninth century, in the year 800."

"Huh?"

Her mysterious rescuers didn't seem inclined to say anything more, and Claire didn't have long to ponder the boy's absurd statements; they seemed to be moving very fast even though he and the girl he'd identified as his sister weren't running or even jogging, and before she knew it they had come within sight of a group of people that included her dad and Peter. She started squirming in her eagerness to get to them, and although he could easily have kept his hold on her, Alec quickly set her on her feet. Being in such close proximity to a human he wasn't about to bite felt strange.

"Dad! Peter!"

They hurried forward, conveniently moving closer together as they converged on her so that she could hug both of them at once.

"Nobody hurt me," she revealed in response to their anxious queries. "Some scientist took a lot of blood samples-" More than could have been safely extracted if she hadn't been able to instantly regenerate the lost blood, she thought "-and then he and Linderman left me strapped to a table while they went off to run tests or whatever. It felt like I was there for hours before those two found me." She nodded at Jane and Alec where they stood off to the side, then lowered her voice to ask, "Has anyone else noticed they have red eyes? And the guy said they were born, like, two thousand years ago... Are they...you know...?"

"They're not crazy," Peter assured her, reading in her thoughts the word she was reluctant to say out loud. "They're vampires."

Claire's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She looked at Noah, who had always seemed like a pillar of no-nonsense rationality even after she learned that he wasn't a boring old paper salesman, as if hoping he would contradict this outlandish claim, but he just nodded.

"It's true," he said grimly. "People like you aren't the only unusual things in the world, Claire."

"We're not that bad, though," another voice chimed in, drawing her attention to a tall, burly man among the group that was hanging back behind Peter and Noah. "Not all of us anyway."

"Us?" As she took in the other people with him, she recognized Edward and Elle - who had somehow seemed to be more than just a couple of ordinary people with extraordinary abilities, who walked right into highly secure places they had no business being in like it was nothing, who moved with an inhuman grace and speed that she suddenly realized was eerily similar to the twins' movements, whose cold skin and strange eye color she had wondered about before... "You're all vampires?"

Then she did a double take as she realized she knew another of the pale, gold-or-red-eyed figures, though this one had looked very different the last time Claire saw her. "Even you, Bella? Is everybody a vampire now?" she wondered almost despairingly. "Did the whole world go full-on Daybreakers while I was locked up? I didn't think I was here that long..."

"Not everyone is a vampire," Bella reassured her in a soothingly melodious voice. "My dad isn't." She gestured at the man beside her, and Claire was relieved to see that he wasn't deathly pale, his eyes a normal shade of brown.

"Neither am I." This time it was the other girl in their group, whose features indicated Native American heritage, who spoke, her dark eyes flashing indignantly as if being mistaken for a vampire was a grave insult.

"Yeah, she's some kind of werewolf knockoff," the big guy joked.

"I'm wolf enough to kick your butt, meathead," Leah retorted, though not quite as heatedly as she would have prior to fighting side by side with him.

"Save that debate for later," Charlie advised before Emmett could respond. "Let's get out of here."

Everyone agreed that was a good idea, but they hadn't gone far before they met Daniel Linderman and Mohinder Suresh heading in the opposite direction, toward the lab from which Claire had recently been liberated.

"That's him!" she exclaimed, pointing at Mohinder. "That's the guy that took all those samples from me!"

"You son of a bitch!" Shouldering his way past Emmett and Demetri - neither of whom were inclined to stop him - Noah punched Mohinder in the face, blood flying from his nose to stain his white lab coat. "You betrayed me, you took my daughter - for him?!"

"Dr. Suresh came to understand that there are more important matters afoot than your petty vendetta against our organization," Linderman said in his customarily haughty manner, straightening the lapels of his expensive suit jacket after having hastily stepped aside to avoid the spray of blood. "You used to understand that yourself before you let personal feelings get in the way, and if you weren't so blinded by your affection for the girl, you would see that she has a vital role to play in-"

His condescending speech was abruptly cut off as his knees buckled and he fell to the floor, screaming. Everyone turned to look at Jane, who met their accusing stares with a nonchalant shrug. "He talks too much."

"He does love the sound of his own voice," Elle agreed, "but I think we've heard enough from him." Striding over to where the head of the Company was struggling to pick himself up as tremors coursed through him from the aftereffects of even a brief exposure to Jane's power, she came to a halt right in front of him and waited until he looked up at her before saying grimly, "Remember the last time we saw each other, when you thought New York was about to get wiped off the map and you were trying to save yourself? I told you not to make me regret letting you go, and guess what? You made me regret it."

As Linderman rose to his knees, his mouth already opening for one last argument about how a few million lives or Claire's freedom should be considered acceptable sacrifices to make in the name of whatever 'greater good' he was working toward, she pressed her palm to his chest, directly over his heart, and unleashed a massive electrical charge. His body jerked backward, going rigid as the jolt coursed through his muscles and caused them to seize up, though this only lasted for a single instant; Elle's attack had also disrupted the electrical impulses that regulated his heartbeat, sending it spiraling wildly out of rhythm. The strain quickly became too great for the older man's heart, and he crumpled like a puppet with severed strings, his bloodshot eyes set in a lifeless stare.

No one wasted their breath pretending to feel bad about his demise; most of them hadn't even known the man, and those who did understood that he was too dangerous to be allowed to continue his schemes. Their attention then turned to Mohinder, who shuffled his feet nervously but didn't try to run.

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you," he said with an earnest, almost pleading look at Claire.

"Then why'd you kidnap me? What did he-" She glanced at Linderman's body, then quickly looked away from the smoking hole in his chest "-mean about needing me for something important?"

"It would be better if I showed you."

Noah wasn't interested in seeing or listening to anything the scientist had to show or tell them, but Peter, remembering how Mohinder had once helped him, said they should hear him out. Bella and Charlie sided with him, but only when Claire decided she wanted to know the reason behind her ordeal did Noah give in.

As they followed Mohinder through the medical research wing, they encountered a redhead dressed as a lab technician, though her scent revealed her to be the latest incarnation of the shape-shifter sometimes known as Candice Wilmer. After a brief debate over what to do with her, they let her go, deciding she wasn't much of a threat without Linderman to give her orders and that her devastation over his death was punishment enough for her involvement in his plots.

"And quit pretending to be me!" Bella called after her as she hurried away, eager to comply with Peter's and Elle's demands that she never let them see her - in any form - again. Though she'd never witnessed it herself, she hadn't been pleased to hear that the other woman had borrowed her identity twice, especially since her goal in both instances had been to mess with Peter's head.

"If it's any consolation, she wasn't very convincing," he reassured her, reaching out to take her hand as they resumed walking. "She may have copied your face, but what really makes you special, the things I love about you... She didn't get that at all."

His words brought a smile to her lips, but it soon vanished when Mohinder led them into a hospital room, its bed occupied by a woman who was obviously very sick. She was either asleep or unconscious, yet even in that state her face was set in what looked like a pained grimace, her eyes roving feverishly behind their closed lids.

"Hey, I know her," Elle said with a hint of surprise, stepping forward to get a better view. At Edward's inquisitive look, she elaborated, "She was in Linderman's headquarters on Kirby Plaza when we went there to get Bella back; she and her husband said he'd taken their son too, and we fought after I let him go. She threw me out a window."

"Well, it doesn't look as if she'll be doing that again," Edward observed, though he was relieved to note that Elle didn't seem to be holding a grudge over the defenestration incident. Killing Linderman was one thing, but he hoped he wouldn't have to dissuade or prevent her from attacking a woman who had only opposed her because Elle was obstructing her efforts to rescue her son, and who was currently defenseless as well.

"Yeah, I remember you two literally crashing into my fight with Sylar. You almost landed on top of us," Peter recalled, "and then I got this burst of strength that let me get the upper hand, which I guess came from her." He looked back at the woman in the bed with a worried frown. "What happened to her?"

"Niki came to the Company for help," Mohinder explained. "The psychological stress associated with the manifestation of her ability had caused her to develop Dissociative Identity Disorder, more commonly known as a split personality-"

"Truly?" The interruption came from an unexpected source: Demetri. "I once read that most cases in which a person claimed to have multiple personalities were more likely malingering."

"You have an interest in psychology?" Edward asked, unable to hide his surprise.

Luckily, Demetri wasn't offended. "I've read a great deal on many diverse topics - we all did, during those times when there was no reason to leave the castle - but I did wonder, since my gift works by allowing me to track a person's mind, if one suffering from that particular disorder would be able to evade me if a different personality took control. I was almost disappointed to learn that I would probably never get a chance to find out."

"Well, in Niki's case the other personalities were very real," Mohinder interjected. "I witnessed one of her psychotic breaks myself, shortly after her arrival. She became violent and...we were forced to subdue her." An image flashed through his mind of a lab technician stabbing her in the back with a needle as she tried to choke him, to the dismay of the two telepaths who saw it.

"Why do I get the feeling it wasn't just a sedative in that syringe?" Peter asked dryly.

"Because it wasn't. We were studying a new strain of a rare virus that robs people like yourself and Niki of their abilities-"

"The Shanti virus? What were you doing with something that dangerous?"

Mohinder was taken aback at learning that Peter already knew of the virus in question, but rallied quickly. "As I said, this strain was a very recent discovery, but we had hoped it wouldn't present as great a danger as its parent strain once did. You obviously know something about this virus, but do you know how it got its name? Shanti was my sister...and one of the earliest recorded victims, perhaps even the very first. When she got sick, my parents decided to have a second child in hopes that I would possess the antibodies she lacked. Sadly, I was born too late to save my sister, but my blood did cure Molly Walker. This new strain, however, is more resilient than anything I've ever seen; my antibodies were useless against it. Linderman's healing touch seemed to help at first, but it kept coming back. That's when he thought of one last avenue to pursue - a regenerative power that works at a deeper cellular level than his, from the inside out-"

"Mine," Claire finished for him. "That's why you took me." She tilted her head thoughtfully, regarding the doctor through narrowed eyes. "Do you think it'll work?"

Mohinder swallowed hard, his eyes darting between her and Noah, whose glare he could practically feel singeing him through his lab coat, before giving her the best answer he could. "I only have preliminary test results...but those results did indicate that your blood was effective in combating the virus."

"Then take some more. Give it to her right now."

"Claire," Noah objected. "You don't have to do this."

"She'll die if I don't - right, doctor?"

"Yes," Mohinder reluctantly confirmed.

"Then I do have to. I can't just let someone die when I could save them, Dad. Besides, it's not like losing a little more blood will hurt me."

Moving quickly, before she could change her mind, Mohinder retrieved a fresh syringe from a cabinet in Niki's room, drew Claire's blood, and injected it into Niki's IV. Her fever dropped almost instantly, her vital signs improved, and within minutes she was awake, alert, and said she felt completely well. Mohinder cautioned her that he needed to test her for the virus again before he could pronounce her cured, but luckily he had developed a fairly rapid test. When the results came back negative fifteen minutes later, he happily cleared her to go home to her son.

Peter, meanwhile, had used the time while they were waiting for Niki's results to call Angela and inform her that Linderman was dead, and that she would need to move fast to take control of Primatech before someone equally unscrupulous stepped in or the whole organization descended into chaos. She had assured him that she had no intention of allowing either of those things to happen, so he and the others prepared to leave, though there was some disagreement on where some of them were going.

When Peter told Mohinder about their own viral problem, the geneticist had agreed to lend them his expertise; although he was understandably apprehensive about working on - and with - vampires, he was also intrigued at the prospect of tackling such a unique challenge. The sticking point came when Claire offered to accompany them in case her blood proved helpful in curing this virus as well.

"Absolutely not," Noah said firmly. "You're coming home with me."

"To do what - go back to cheerleading? This could be my chance to do something important-"

"You're not supposed to do important things yet. You're still in high school."

"I don't think that'll matter if the world ends in some kind of vampire apocalypse before I get a chance to graduate," Claire countered, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "Look, Dad, I know you want to protect me, but if I can use this ability to help people, I have to try. Besides, I'll be perfectly safe; Peter and Bella will be there. They saved me before."

"And will again if we have to," Peter assured Noah. "I don't think we will, though. Carlisle isn't like the Company's doctors."

"He's probably the kindest person you'll ever meet," Edward added, which seemed to alleviate the flicker of anxiety the former cheerleader had been trying to hide. "I promise you won't be compelled or coerced to do anything against your will."

Seeing that Noah still didn't look happy, Charlie said, "Believe me, I know how you feel - all you want is to protect your daughter, and it's like a punch in the gut when you realize there are things you can't protect her from. What's really hard, though, is when you turn around one day and she's not your little girl anymore, and what she really needs is for you to step back and let her do her own thing. But if you can do that," he added with a sideways glance at Bella, "you might be amazed at what she's capable of."

Seeing that Noah was wavering, Claire moved closer and hugged him. "I'll be fine, Dad. Go back to Mom and tell her I'm okay, and I'll come home as soon as I can."

Peter started to offer to take Noah home immediately, saving him the hassle and expense of booking a flight, but his phone rang before he could say a word. Seeing that it was Nathan calling, he excused himself to answer. "Nathan, hey-"

"Where are you?" his brother demanded, but didn't wait for a reply. "Never mind - how fast can you get to Washington? I need to see you."

Ordinarily, Peter might have been annoyed at the way Nathan expected him to drop everything and come running when he was summoned, as if he couldn't possibly have anything better to do than be at his more successful brother's beck and call, but there was a note of urgency in the older man's voice that made him think there was more going on than just Nathan being Nathan, and it was this suspicion that made him say, "Give me an address and I'll be there in a few minutes."

Washington, DC

Nathan was watching the door of the apartment he stayed in while Congress was in session, waiting for Peter to knock, so he jumped when his brother simply appeared behind him instead. "Geez! You should be careful doing that; we have security here, you know."

"I bet. Nice home away from home you've got here," Peter observed after taking a look around.

"It's okay," Nathan replied with a noncommittal shrug. "Might have to look for something bigger if I can ever convince Heidi to move the boys out here... But that's not why I asked you to come."

"Right. Well, you don't need to worry - we got Claire back and she's fine-"

"Wait just a minute. Got her back? Back from where?"

"From the Company," Peter said slowly, frowning in confusion. "Isn't that why you called me, to see if we'd found out where they took her?"

"No - I didn't even know she was missing," Nathan huffed. "My daughter was kidnapped and nobody bothered to tell me?!"

"Sorry," Peter said awkwardly. "I guess I just assumed Mom would have..." He let his voice trail off there, not quite knowing how to say that after years of Nathan being the most important person in his life, somehow things had changed to the point where he didn't even think of calling him when something momentous happened. After Nathan's dismissive reaction when their powers first emerged, followed by months of facing various crises with Bella by his side, he had come to rely more on her, and now the Cullens as well, but he hadn't fully realized until this moment exactly how great the distance between him and his brother had grown as they both followed their different paths.

Judging by the uncomfortable look on his face, Nathan must have been having similar thoughts, though Peter studiously avoided eavesdropping on them. "Anyway, I'm sorry," he repeated softly. "So why did you call me, if it wasn't about Claire?"

If he had hoped the change of subject would defuse the tension in the air between them, he was badly mistaken, as Nathan's mood became even edgier than before. "You really don't know? Haven't you turned on a TV at all the last couple of days? It's been all over the news..."

"I've been busy."

"Yeah, I guess you have. Take a look at this."

Taking his phone out of his pocket, Nathan pulled up a video which appeared to be security camera footage. A closer inspection revealed the setting to be an emergency room, but the realization of what he was watching didn't hit until Peter saw a woman rush in with a young girl in her arms, struggling to hold on to the child as she writhed in pain... Then the girl was taken from her mother and laid out on a bed, allowing him to get a look at her face.

"Oh no..."

Even though he had a pretty good idea what he was about to see now that he'd recognized her, that didn't make it any easier to watch as the child suddenly launched herself at the doctor, bowling him over, and sank her teeth into his neck.

He looked away as the ensuing carnage and destruction unfolded, until Nathan said, "This is why I called you."

Then he reluctantly returned his gaze to the screen, which was now showing footage from a different camera that had captured his and his friends' confrontation with the crazed vampire child. Fortunately, the lens was angled so that none of their faces could be seen clearly, yet it was all too apparent what was happening when Peter made a slashing motion through the air with his finger, severing the girl's head without touching her. He swallowed hard, then looked up to find Nathan watching him closely, a strange look in his eyes.

"You can't really see much except the back of your head there, but I knew it was you," he said quietly. "Peter...what the hell is this?"

"It's a long story." Shaking his head to clear it of the dizzying turmoil that was making it difficult to form a coherent thought, he forced himself to focus on the most immediate issue. "Where'd you get this?" With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he asked, "Did you say something about it being on TV?"

"Yeah, it's been all over the news since it was recovered from a backup server," Nathan told him, still giving him that same strange look - which at least explained how the footage had survived when Peter was fairly certain that the ER cameras, at least, had been smashed during the girl's rampage.

"Except for you, I'm pretty sure the whole country's seen it by now."

Well, this could be a problem. Shame Micah wasn't there to erase that recording for them.

I may have alluded to it before, but just to clarify, other characters' storylines - Mohinder and Noah trying to take down the Company, Niki going there for treatment, etc. - have happened pretty much as they did in canon, apart from some minor tweaks I've made to make them fit into this story better.