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AN: To confirm, when Mohinder meets with 'Zane Taylor' as this chapter begins, he's still talking with Sylar as he did in canon; he just doesn't know it at first, so is obviously thinking of Sylar as 'Zane'.

The Not-So-Average Girl

Walking up to Zane Taylor's apartment, Mohinder wondered if he'd made the right choice to do this on his own. His argument had made sense when he'd presented it to Officer Parkman and Agent Hanson, as he didn't want to make the man uncomfortable by showing up at his door with strangers when Zane Taylor was apparently already disturbed by his ability, but the closer he came to the door the more he wondered if it was just because he wanted to feel like he was doing something.

He appreciated their faith in his theories, but the fact remained that since he'd met his two new colleagues Mohinder felt that they had been the ones contributing to his understanding of Sylar's motives and planning their next agenda. Making contact with someone else with abilities may not be something he was completely qualified for, but he was the person best qualified to at least offer some kind of answers to whatever questions this man might ask about how he had such abilities in the first place.

He wasn't entirely sure if he agreed with their insistence not to mention his colleagues to the man he was about to meet at first, but with a serial killer already known to be active, he supposed taking a few extra precautions was reasonable…

Pushing his doubts aside, Mohinder finally reached the door and knocked. He waited for a moment before the door opened, revealing a tall man with dark hair and five o'clock shadow, wearing a dark T-shirt with a logo on it for 'Ramones', along with pale Chinos.

"Zane Taylor?" Mohinder said.

"Yes," the man said. "You must be Doctor Suresh. Come on in."

As he walked into the apartment, Mohinder noted the large splotches on the plastic-covered floor, as well as a lack of furniture that would be unusual even in the poorest districts back in India; he would have attributed the current state to some kind of decorating project if it wasn't for the lack of painting equipment.

"Can I get you some tea?" the man said, heading into what Mohinder assumed was the kitchen.

"Sorry it took me so long to get here," Mohinder said.

"No, it's no problem," Zane said, before leaning out of the kitchen. "Is Earl Grey OK?"

"Yes, that'll be fine," Mohinder said, walking over to the leather chair that was one of the few things in the room. "You, um ... sounded rather alarmed on the phone. You seemed to have calmed down some."

"I had a kind of epiphany about it this morning," Zane explained as he walked out of the kitchen, a slightly shell-shocked expression on his face. "Are you familiar with Abraham Maslow, the peak experience?"

"I'm afraid not," Mohinder replied.

"It's, um… a single moment that takes you out of yourself. Makes you feel very tiny or very large. To some extent, one with life or nature or God."

"I see…" Mohinder said, already struck by the anomalies; Zane Taylor definitely hadn't sounded this in control when he initially called…

"Like seeing all the pieces of a puzzle fit together," Zane continued. "All this time, I was trying to fight it. Deny it. But there is no shame in having this ability, is there?"

"None whatsoever," Mohinder smiled; the apparent personality shift was suspicious, but he had a chance to make a positive first impression. "It would be like denying you have brown eyes."

"Right," Zane said, sounding more uncertain once again. "So, um ... I guess that you… You want to see my ability."

"Yes!" Mohinder confirmed. "I mean, I'm quite anxious to document it."

"You might want to step back," Zane said, as he placed a sheet of plastic on the table and put a toaster on the sheet. "That looks like a nice jacket."

As Mohinder watched, Zane held his hand over the toaster, and then the structure wavered and rippled as though it was plastic melting in the sun. Mohinder was about to ask what was happening when the metal toaster collapsed into a puddle on the table right in front of him.

"My God…" Mohinder whispered; Matt's telepathy and Peter's apparent mimicry were more obviously impressive, but the idea that a man could change the state of matter just by willing it…

"You want to see it again?" Zane asked, prompting a chuckle from Mohinder.

Regardless of the reason for Zane's change of personality, the doctor was cautiously optimistic about this meeting; maybe Matt and Audrey's concerns had been for nothing…

"You're kidding me, right?" Sheila looked incredulously at Bennett, the two sitting in one of the man's more private offices for a briefing while her brothers were off for another one of their training sessions. "The heads of this company had a psycho powerhouse like Sylar on lockdown after he's killed God knows how many people, and they didn't kill him immediately?"

"Our illustrious supervisors decided that it would be better to work out how he was copying all those abilities in the first place rather than just eliminate him," Bennet said. His tone was relatively controlled, but Sheila had to appreciate the grim edge to his manner; the man might tow the company line, but he had enough of his own initiative to recognise when some things were just a bad idea.

"Pricks," Sheila muttered. "And that's how he killed Eden?"

"He didn't kill Eden himself, but he did… well, she was in a position where it was kill herself or risk Sylar taking her ability," Bennett said, nodding at her in solemn understanding. "They stepped up precautions after that and prevented any of your department getting close to him, but… well, Eden's sacrifice guaranteed he didn't get anything useful."

"Got to admire Eden for the effort, anyway," Sheila said, feeling the inadequacy of those words even as she hoped Bennet understood the sentiment behind them. She had always felt slightly uncomfortable around Eden, considering how the woman could have easily made Sheila do basically anything if she just said the right words, but she'd appreciated that the woman's heart had always been in the right place despite her rough upbringing. She'd never seriously thought that the woman would 'rape' her mind or anything like that, but… well, the idea was enough to make her worried.

"Seriously, though," she continued, getting the conversation back on the most relevant detail, "they kept that brain-slicing guy in Level Five and he's the only one who managed to get out?"

"The psyche team speculate that his ego probably helped us there," Bennett mused with a grim smile. "All other doors on that level were locked when Sylar got out, nobody else in there has seen any news of his activities so didn't grasp the significance even if they knew he was there, and most of the other patients were asleep when he actually left his cell. Either Sylar didn't see the other prisoners, or his ego led to him assuming that they were just standard prisoners or empowered prisoners who couldn't have anything worth taking if they were still here."

"Makes sense," Sheila nodded, even as she privately hoped that she'd never have the chance to see Sylar in action. The idea that anyone could take powers from others was disturbing on its own, but the way this Sylar guy killed them in the process was really sick; at least empaths like the guy from the club could choose whether or not to tap the power and left the other guy alone. "So what happened then?"

"I managed to track him to my house-"

"Your house?" Sheila's incredulity shifted to shock. "Why would- how would he-?"

"He stole my wallet and went after Claire while I was stuck in the cell," Bennett explained, before he looked at Sheila with a more pointed expression. "And on that topic, where is she?"

"Hey, don't complain about us doing a second-rate job on second-rate intel, pal," Sheila countered, falling back on her usual defensive stance. "We followed a possible lead and then had to take a detour on a more official job; is it our fault that you wanted this little search kept away from the higher-ups?"

"I need to find my daughter-"

"And speaking as the woman who was once the bratty teen herself, when a kid runs out on you and doesn't come back after a few days, she's got a freaking plan and she's not going to just come back when things get rough before she's ready to show up," Sheila countered. "We got a call on another rogue that we had to check out, and we captured a shapeshifter who was impersonating celebrities who could have been a problem. If you've got a problem with the way I'm doing things, make the case official so that we can find your kid ourselves, but otherwise just get out of the way and let us do our jobs at our own pace."

"…Fair enough," Bennett conceded, before he looked more thoughtfully at her. "You think Claire left with a plan?"

"Y'know, I get that Henry doesn't give the greatest impression of our family's ability to do more than hit stuff in interesting ways, but I do read the files," Sheila smiled at him. "Your daughter doesn't strike me as the type to just bail out because she's protesting against something, which means she bailed for a reason."

"Well… I suppose that's something," Bennett nodded in understanding. "You say you saw an empath in the club?"

"Looked like it, anyway; his body seemed to be ready to turn on itself before that girl stepped in," Sheila explained. "No idea how many powers he'd have had to take in before then for me, Mike, the Weegs and Camille to push him that far that fast, but give him credit, he seemed to get himself focused pretty quickly."

"Which at least gives you a legitimate reason to focus on New York."

"You really think she's there?"

"I have… a source… who's given me reason to focus on that area," Bennett said, with that edge to his tone that always made Sheila wonder if the guy had some really subtle power that even the Company's brains hadn't dared try to crack yet. "Shall I let you know if any further leads turn up on Sylar?"

"Let's see, do I want to have advance warning if I'm about to risk running into a guy who'd happily crack open my skull to find out what makes me tick?"

"Point," Bennett observed. "I'll do what I can at this end."

The more time Sheila spent on this extra assignment from Bennett, the more certain she was that there was a reason he was looking for his kid this way beyond simple fatherly concern, but at the same time…

She prided herself on being more rational and less 'in-your-face' than her brothers- sometimes she kept expecting Henry to start sprouting some of those heroic clichés that should have stopped being a serious thing back in the sixties- but something in Bennett's manner made her sure that he wasn't showing all this interest because he had some creepy ulterior agenda.

The man might be a bit of a creep, but he wasn't a pervert; until she had reason to believe otherwise, Sheila was going to trust Bennett that he was just a concerned parent looking for a daughter dealing with some unknown issue.

Kim liked to think that she was a good person, but she hadn't given much thought to the idea of trying to help people beyond 'be nice to everyone' before she pulled that branch out of Claire's head. Now that she was in a position where she was one of a few people who seemed to be prepared to stop the destruction of New York, looking back on the days when she and Ron had played 'superhero' when they were little, she had never realised just how hard it could be at times. Comics might feature the heroes making an effort to maintain their civilian lives on top of trying to fight their latest villains, but it wasn't until you had to face that kind of situation yourself that you realised how hard it was just to find something to do in the first place. She and Claire couldn't exactly go hunting for supervillains when they didn't really have any 'offensive' powers themselves, and they didn't even had any idea where to look for whatever was going to blow up the city in a few weeks.

All this advance notice of possibly the most devastating terrorist attack in years, and we don't know where to look for anything useful…

"Do you think we should… talk to his family?"

"His family?" Kim repeated as she looked at Claire, the two sitting uncertainly in the still-empty loft. "Whose family?"

"Peter's," Claire clarified, looking awkwardly at her. "I get that he's been basically on the run from them since this all happened, but they're still… I mean, if his father died just last year, then they've probably got a lot to deal with on top of his brother's election; maybe they'd feel better knowing he's safe-"

"Good intentions, but speaking as the girl who met his brother, I wouldn't recommend it," Kim shook her head. "That guy wanted to 'cure' Peter like his ability's something to be ashamed of, and from what I've heard the older brother was their mother's favourite, so it's probably safe to assume she'd be on his side with this kind of crap."

"So not worth it?"

"I get the sentiment, but if we try to talk to them I'm immediately foreseeing us getting sent away as 'meddlesome kids' who won't let his family 'help' Peter, and screw the idea that we might actually know what he wants to do with himself better than they do."

"Right…" Claire sighed as she looked up at the ceiling. "Damnit; what the Hell are we doing here?"

"Keeping away from Sylar and working out who's going to destroy New York-"

"But are we getting anywhere? Keeping away from Sylar's easy enough, but we don't even know what's going to cause the explosion, Peter's the only one of us who can actually do anything if we get in trouble, and the only time we went out of this loft we had to rely on Peter to save us from some quartet of superhumans we still don't know anything about-"

"We're still learning here, OK?" Kim cut Claire off. "You can't just dive in there and expect everything to fall into place; you can't be hurt, but that doesn't mean you can't be captured or anything like that."

"…OK, point," Claire sighed as she leant back against the wall. "I just… I thought when we met Peter we were finally part of something rather than just being a bunch of freaks and loners- no offence-"

"None taken," Kim nodded.

"Thanks… anyway, now it's like everyone new we've met has something interesting they can do and Peter's actually getting some training and I don't even feel like-"

The sudden ringing of a phone cut Claire off mid-sentence, the two girls exchanging confused looks before they hurried for the phone in question. For a moment their hands hovered over the receiver, each unsure what to do next, before Claire took it off and held it just between her and Kim's ears.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hola, Claire," Ron Sinclair's familiar voice said. "Is KP there?"

"Ron!" Kim smiled in relief before she looked at the phone in confusion. "How did you get this number? Actually, how did you even know there was a number?"

"I asked Simone about it while she was helping Hiro and Ando sort out a new car," Ron replied. "I thought it couldn't hurt to know who to talk to if we needed to keep you guys up-to-date."

"So it's all going OK?" Claire asked.

"Had a bit of a close call when some woman tried to talk Ando into helping her get out of a casino with stolen chips, but Hiro and I blew her cover before she could get Ando to do anything too stupid," Ron replied, sounding very satisfied at the story.

"Nice," Kim nodded in approval, noting Claire's frustrated expression at this further news that other people were making more of a difference right now. "It's… kind of quiet here right now; Peter's found a guy who's helping him get a better grip of what he can do, but it's still taking time for him to master everything."

"Hey, he's the only human I've ever heard of who's packing more powers than Superman; if anyone needs help keeping track of everything, it's him," Kim's old friend replied with a smile. "Chillax, KP, the guy's a full-on hero who's already fought off a supervillain; he can handle a crash course at Xavier's."

"Yeah," Kim agreed, sharing a smile with Kim and pretending not to notice the wistful edge to Claire's own expression. "We'll… let him know it's going well at your end when we see him again, OK?"

"Cool," Ron replied. "Gotta go; lot of ground to cover yet."

"And there's someone else making an impact-" Claire sighed as Ron ended the call.

"Which he and Ando are doing without abilities," Kim grinned encouragingly at Claire. "C'mon, just because you can't do anything offensive with your ability doesn't mean you have to just sit around and mope."

"Hey!" Claire glared at Kim, even if the slight smile on her face made it clear she wasn't that offended.

"I call it as I see it," Kim retorted teasingly, before she stood up and flexed her shoulders. "So… shall we practice?"

"Practice?" Claire repeated.

"Well, my powers aren't immediately offensive, but I do have the advantage of having spent time learning around sixteen different styles of kung-fu over the last few years," Kim explained with a thoughtful smile. "I'm not saying that it's going to be easy for me to pass that experience on, but if you're interested… shall I show you a few tricks?"

"Seriously?" Claire grinned, her initial dejection forgotten.

"We've got a big space and nothing else to keep ourselves occupied; let's get to work on teaching you how to kick ass."

"I'm very interested in how you control this… ability," Mohinder observed as he looked at the different coloured spots on the floor around the room. Zane's ability was one of the odder ones he'd seen- telepathy had its obvious evolutionary advantages, but what benefit was there in converting solids to liquids?- but he wasn't going to question it when he was still so early in his work.

"Well, it's, like…" Zane shook his head, as though trying to find the right analogy, "riding a bike for the first time; it's a little wobbly, and then I discovered something. A kind of peace. A sense of purpose that can only be described as destiny."

"I'd like to take a DNA sample," Mohinder said.

"From me?" Zane asked. "OK. Um, sure."

"Just swab it on the inside of your mouth," Mohinder said, handing the man a DNA swab before the kettle in the kitchen started to whistle.

"The tea," Zane said. "If you'll excuse me for a second."

"Of course," Mohinder said as Zane walked off, even as he found himself wondering about that; had the kettle been left on for that long…?

"I just swab it on the inside of my cheek?" Zane called back.

"Yes, that's right," Mohinder said. He briefly wondered if Zane had some objection to the idea of giving those kind of samples, but reminded himself that the man's DNA had been on record with the Human Genome Project in the first place; it was possible that he was just uncertain how to talk about something this strange.

"There you go," the man said, walking out of the kitchen to hand him the now-sealed swab. "DNA sample."

"Thank you," Mohinder said, taking the swab and putting it in a plastic bag. "You know… you should be careful who you talk to about this ability, Zane. There's some people who might not understand… who might want to hurt you."

"Why would anybody want to hurt me?" Zane asked.

"I don't know yet," Mohinder said; there was no way he was going to tell a stranger about Sylar this early in their association. "But I do know this; there are others out there like you."

"Really?" Zane asked with eager interest. "How many others?"

"Dozens, and those are just the ones I know about," Mohinder said. "With more time and research, I could find hundreds, thousands!"

He exaggerated his feelings on that topic to better sell it to this man, but he was being honest about just how many he believed he could find if he had the resources necessary to carry out a search like that.

"But," he added, exaggerating his uncertainty, "you're the first one who's returned my phone calls. But I am going to find them. All of them."

"I could go with you," Zane stood up. "I could help you. Think about it. These people could need convincing. Who better to do that?"

As Zane looked at the partially-melted phone on the table (how did Zane control when to stop something melting?), Mohinder had to concede that Zane had a point. Matt might be willing to serve as the team's current 'token superhuman', but with his relatively passive ability, it could be useful to have someone with a power that he could demonstrate to others that couldn't be easily dismissed as Matt doing advance research and a bit of 'cold reading'…