It was starting to rain a little, but Claire barely noticed. She was more occupied by everything that was going on around her.

"Don't they have anything better to do?"

Claire grimaced and tiptoed to look over the crowd. There were about fifty people who had come to take a look at the potential drama that went on inside that building. Most of them had gathered behind a line of yellow tape which the police had put there to stop them from coming too close. Other people merely glanced at it as they walked by. "I don't think anyone has seen us yet." She spoke with little volume, but still loud enough for Edgar to hear her.

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

Claire shook her head. "Not now. Later. After I've found out what's going on in there." She didn't want anyone to recognize her. Not yet. What if they decided that she was more important than whatever was going inside that building? What if they wouldn't leave her alone? It was going to be one hell of a task to get inside once they found out who she was. "I'll talk to the press when I come back." Hopefully with some good news for once.

"I'll be here," Edgar said just when his phone started to ring, "...give you a quick escape, should you need it." He took the phone out of his pocket and cleared his throat. "Yeah. ... We just got here. ... Uh, let's see. Most of the surrounding area has been cleared. No one's allowed anywhere near that place. Cops everywhere... Yeah, she's right here. Hang on." He then gave his phone to Claire.

"Hey," Claire said.

"Hey," Micah replied. His voice was hoarse again. "How are you feeling?"

"Not bad. You?"

"Same. Have you decided how you're gonna get in?"

Claire exchanged a quick look with Edgar. They didn't even have a plan. There wasn't enough time for one. "I'm gonna try the main door on the ground floor first, but if it that one is locked I can always try one of the other exits or the fire escape. It's right across the street so I'll have to do it in a bit of a run in case anyone comes after me. They probably won't, but you never know."

"You need to do whatever you think is best."

"I'm gonna need your help though. I don't know what's going on in there. It could be anything." Claire didn't like to admit it, but she was nervous. Was it a stupid decision to go into that building unprepared? What if that woman's ability was powerful enough to kill her? It was a possibility, one she had not considered as much as she probably should have.

"I'm right here. Dr. Suresh is listening too in case you need his help. Wait, I'll put you on speaker."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm gonna need all the help I can get once I'm in." Claire waited a moment and then added, "Wish me luck."

"Good luck."

She didn't end the call, but slid the phone into the pocket of her coat instead. "See you in a bit," she told Edgar and gave him a smile that did not conceal her nervousness at all.

He also wished her good luck, gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder and returned her smile with a wide grin. She then started making her way through the crowd, pushing people gently aside until she reached the front row. The building in question was all the way on the other side of the street, behind a parking lot.

It looked pretty normal.

Claire didn't know what to make of it. She was standing there with everyone else and they were all looking at... nothing much really. It was just an ordinary apartment building. It certainly didn't look like anything strange was going on. That was probably why so many people had come to watch, Claire realized. It didn't seem like anything weird was going on and yet, no one was allowed to go near it.

A police officer saw Claire and told her to back off. "How many times do I have to tell you?" he said to other people as well. "Stay back. It's for your own safety."

"Why won't you tell us what's going on?" a man standing behind Claire asked.

"My husband is in there," a woman to her right said. "Please, I need to know if he's okay."

"We're doing everything we can..."

Every second counts. Claire knew she had to make a move on, so she crouched down, sneaked her way under the tape and ran. She didn't really think about what she was doing, she just ran to the other side of the road, across the parking lot and toward the front of the building as fast as she could. She didn't know what was going on behind her. She couldn't hear anything. Any sound, anything at all that came from behind was drowned out by the sound of her own heart, pounding in her chest and ears like the beat of a drum. It was both exciting and nerve-wrecking at the same time.

She did not look back, not once. She was a little surprised when she found the door standing ajar, but went inside anyway, not really knowing what to do or what to expect. What was the plan? Ring doorbells and knock on doors until someone answered? Go straight to Maya's apartment? What if people were taken hostage? How the hell was she going to deal with that?

She only had two weapons. Her dad's gun, (which was kind of useless since she had not practised with it once), and she had her immortality, which wasn't exactly one of the most intimidating weapons, but still a very useful one in certain situations. Jumping out of a window had proven more than once to be an ideal way to get herself out of a tricky situation. She could use her own body as a shield to protect others from harm and if anyone got hurt she only had to inject them with her own blood to heal them.

It was so easy to forget how useful Spontaneous Tissue Regeneration could be sometimes. Claire knew she had to remind herself of this more often, but she couldn't just simply overlook the negative side of her ability either. The part which made it impossible for her to have a normal life.

But at that moment there were more important things to think about than the pros and cons of being immortal. So Claire shook her head, emptied her thoughts and focused. She gave the hallway a quick look around and then made her way to the staircase. It was pointless to search the whole building when she knew the source of everything was coming from the fourth floor (assuming that Maya's ability was the cause of everything).

She just hoped she wasn't too late.

It was pretty dark inside, despite of it being almost mid-day. The windows looked like they hadn't been cleaned in a while and in the air hung an unfamiliar, almost nauseating smell. The eerie silence wasn't making things any better either. Altogether, it gave the whole place an ominous kind of vibe.

Claire ascended the stairs, taking two steps at the time. She hoped she hadn't wasted too much time slacking around, lost in her own thoughts. But on the other hand, there had been no contact with any of these people for several hours before she even heard about it from Micah. Rushing was definitely not going to make any difference. Nothing she did would, because she was probably already too late.

All she could do was try to minimize the damage and do everything she could to make sure that people like her, people with abilities, wouldn't get labeled as 'murderers' just because of one bad mistake. She could and would not let that happen.

Reaching the top of the second flight of stairs, Claire turned around to climb the third, when she suddenly saw someone and jumped. Whatever sound came out of her mouth was muffled by her own hand, which she had clasped over it in utter shock.

Those firemen she read about in that article, the ones who had been sent inside to look for a gas leak, they were there. Two of them. One body lay sprawled over the top of the stairs and the other one lay just around the corner with his limbs twisted in very strange angles. It looked like they passed out trying to get to the second floor, both of them still wearing gas masks.

"Oh, my God..." Claire was in a momentary state of shock, but then recovered quickly and climbed the remaining steps to check if the two of them were still alive. She took off the fireproof glove of the man closest to her and held his wrist between her thumb and index finger to check his pulse. She swallowed nervously. There was no heartbeat.

She went over the other man's side and checked his pulse as well.

No heartbeat.

"Claire?" she heard Micah say from a distance. "Claire, what's happening?"

Claire got her cellphone out of her pocket quickly and held it to her right ear. "I'm here."

"Are you okay?"

"I am, but..." Claire took a deep breath and got to her feet. "Those firemen... You know, the ones from the article you showed me, they're here. I found them on the stairs and I checked, but I can't feel a heartbeat. Micah... I think they're dead."

"You have to look into their eyes," Mohinder suddenly said.

"What?" Claire frowned. That wasn't even something she had considered doing, because why would she? What would looking at their eyes tell her that she didn't already know? There was no pulse. It was too late. "Why?"

"Just look at their eyes and tell me what you see."

"Okay..." Why am I doing this? Claire sighed, then quickly got down on one knee and placed her phone on the floor so she could use both hands to remove the gas mask which was strapped tightly to the man's head. It wasn't easy, but she managed to get it off eventually. She then turned the man's head so she could look at his eyes.

"What do you see?"

"I..." Claire couldn't find the words to explain what she was seeing. It was, by far, one of the most disturbing things she had ever seen in her life.

This man had no eyes. At least, that was what it looked like at first. His eyes were open, but the parts that should have been white were entirely black instead. His pupils were just gone. Or maybe they had turned black as well. She couldn't tell. His eye sockets seemed practically hollow in the dimly lit space she was in.

"Claire?"

"What's that? It's all... No, wait." Claire gasped. There was something coming out of the corner of his eye. What the hell? "There's something coming out of his eyes. Some kind of liquid." It looked like a tear, but the liquid was way too thick to be a tear. It looked more like... blood.

"It's poison. Maya's ability is causing it. You need to go to her. You need to go to her now. Calm her down. That's the only way to stop it."

Claire didn't hesitate, picked her phone up from the floor and hurried to the fourth floor. "Are they going to be okay?" she panted. All the while the image of those men kept flashing before her eyes. It was horrible.

"I can't say. It depends on how long they've been exposed to her ability."

"Okay." So there's a chance they're going to make it. Claire was starting to feel very anxious. She encountered another fireman on her way up and even someone who might have been one of the residents, both of them in the exact same state as the first two firemen she found. She didn't check if they were still alive, because Mohinder kept telling her to move on. There wasn't anything she could do for them, he told her. Not until she found Maya.

"What's the apartment number?" Claire asked as she reached the fourth floor.

"It's the first one you see when you reach the top of the stairs," Mohinder said.

Claire didn't waste any time and banged her fist on the door so hard she knew it would have left a good bruise if she hadn't been able to heal. And then she waited, but nobody answered. She knocked again and even started calling Maya's name, but to no avail.

Something was seriously wrong.

"She's not answering," Claire panicked as she held the phone to her ear again. "I'm gonna have to break in."

"How?" Micah asked.

"The old-fashioned way." Claire held the phone tight in her hand and took a couple of steps back. Her ability wasn't just about defence. Her mortality was also a weapon, and for a moment she was glad for not being able to feel any pain, because when she ran and hit that door with her shoulder, she could have sworn she heard something snap.

She kept throwing her body against the door with so much force, her shoulder actually dislocated a couple of times. Her sixth attempt was by far the most succesful one. The wood cracked, the lock broke and after hitting it one more time, Claire found herself facedown on the floor of Maya's apartment.

And then a baby started crying.

A baby... Claire got to her feet and followed the squeeking, screaming noises with a deep frown on her forehead. How the hell is that possible, she wondered. How was it possible for a baby to still be alive when everyone else, every single person in the building, young and old, just collapsed and passed out?

The sound turned out to be coming from the bedroom. Claire pushed the door open and looked down. There was a woman lying on the floor near the foot of the bed. The woman had long, dark, wavy hair and was still wearing her night robe. A couple of feet away from the woman Claire saw a baby, lying on the floor, on its back, kicking its legs and arms in the air and crying its lungs out.

Claire went to it immediately, picked it up from the floor, and tried her best to soothe it by holding it to her chest and rocking it back and forth repeatedly. At that point she didn't know what to think anymore. She could only guess that the woman on the floor was Maya Hernandes and that the baby was hers. It was also quite plain that Maya hadn't done anything wrong. Her eyes were the same as those of the firemen on the stairwell, but she was also unconscious. She had become a victim as well.

It was the baby. One look at its eyes told Claire all she needed to know. They were pitch black as well, but seeing as the baby was still alive and the rest of the people Claire encountered so far were not, she had to acknowledge that the baby was responsible for poisoning them.

Claire sighed and held the baby tight to her chest. "Shh, it's okay. Don't cry." She went back into the living room and started looking for her phone. It fell on the floor right after she broke down the door, but she had forgotten all about it as soon as she heard the baby cry.

Still holding the baby, Claire went back to the door and picked her phone up from the floor. It had disconnected. In fact, the whole thing had turned off completely and to make matters even worse, it appeared the damn thing wouldn't turn back on either. "Great..." she muttered sarcastically. It was just what she needed. Being trapped inside a building together with dozens of bodies, either unconscious or dead, and a baby that killed anyone who came too close.

She had no idea how to reach Micah without her phone. The only thing she could do was wait for him to contact her, maybe on Maya's phone. If Maya even had a phone.

Meanwhile the baby wouldn't stop crying for some reason, which was starting to get really annoying. Claire didn't know what it wanted, whether it was hungry, thirsty or just tired. But then she looked down and she noticed that the baby's eyes had gone back to normal. It didn't look like a scary demon anymore. It finally looked like a normal, human baby. And even though it was wearing a pink t-shirt, pink trousers and pink socks, Claire had to check just to be sure, that the baby was in fact, a girl.

She was actually quite adorable, apart from the demonic eyes, the deadly poison and the fact that she was constantly screaming bloody murder.

"Claire?"

Claire turned around in an instant and looked up. It was the Haitian. He was standing in the doorway, his face emotionless as always. "René..." She got to her feet slowly, making sure the baby's head was supported at all time and then looked at the Hatian with curiosity, confusion and even a little distrust. Micah didn't ask him to come, she knew that for a fact. He would have told her if he had. "What are you doing here?"

He looked down at the baby for a moment, then turned his eyes back on Claire. "I'm here to help."

René had always helped Claire in the past, even though he wasn't supposed to, which she was still very grateful for, but so much had happened since then and she had no idea which side he was on. She needed to know what his intentions were. "How did you know?"

"The news."

"Who sent you?"

"Nobody."

"Who sent you?" Claire repeated, raising her voice a little. This didn't make things better for the baby, if anything the girl started crying even louder. Claire felt herself becoming more agitated by the minute.

"Why is she crying?"

"I don't know. She's been like that since I got here."

"Where did you find her?"

"In the bedroom, on the floor. The mother is in there too, but she's unconsious like the rest of them."

René took a step closer and tried to examine the baby's head from where he was standing. Claire was obviously not going to let him touch her. For some reason she thought he was going to take her away. It wouldn't be the first time the company took away a baby with supernatural powers.

"Is she hurt?"

"I don't know."

"You need to take her to a hospital."

"How? She'll kill anyone she gets close to."

"Come with me."

That's when Claire realized that the girl's eyes had turned back to normal because the Hatian was there. He nullified her ability using his own powers. "Okay, but first I need to know what's going on and who you're working for."

The Hatian nodded his head and took a step back. "Then come with me. We can talk in the car."

"What about these people? The mother, those firemen, everyone in this building, what's going to happen to them?"

"They get help as soon as we leave."

"Okay..." Claire said as she looked around. "Okay, we'll take her to a hospital, but we're gonna need to bring some stuff. Clothes, diapers, maybe a toy..." Claire closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The continuous crying and screaming was making it hard for her to concentrate. "Um, what else do we need...? Oh, her birth certificate! We're gonna need that in case they start asking questions."

"Leave it to me." And so René started looking for the birth papers while Claire went back into the bedroom to gather up some clothes, a stuffed bunny, a pacifier and diapers, just in case. She tried hard not to look at the woman on the floor, but her eyes kept wondering in that direction anyway. It was so painful to think that that little girl was going to grow up without her mother. Because even if they were able to save Maya, she still wouldn't be able to come near her daughter. It was too dangerous.

"Did you find it?" Claire asked as she walked out of the bedroom, holding the baby in one arm and a bag filled with baby stuff under the other. She tried to smile as she gave René the bag, but she felt miserable on the inside. It was only then that she noticed the baby was no longer crying.

"Yes."

"Okay, let's go."

Next chapter: Not Done Yet