The Calm Before by Mallinder

Summary: Oliver learns that Sylar isn't the only threat that he needs to be worrying about.

Rating: PG-13, course language

Disclaimer: Any characters you recognize from 'Heroes' are clearly from 'Heroes' and don't belong to me. Everything else is mine mine mine!

Notes: This chapter is kind of heavy in dialogue so watch out! Any comments or constructive criticism are encouraged and highly appreciated. Enjoy(I hope)!

P.S. I am looking for a partner in crime. Anybody who is interested in receiving an advanced copy of each chapter in order to check for plot holes, grammar etc. please contact me. As the writer, sometimes I forget that readers aren't privy to all the information that's floating around in my head, so it would be nice to have an outside opinion of the chapters before I publish them.

Chapter 5 - The Company

"Who's that?" The voice was soft, curious and sounded like it was a world away.

"He's a guest in our home. He's very tired, so we have to be quiet while he sleeps."

"Is he the one you had to go meet?"

"Yes, he is."

"Did the boogeyman try to hurt him?"

"Yes."

"Oh." There was a pause. "Where's Matt?"

"You know where he is."

"With the blonde girl again?"

"Yes."

"She's weird."

Silence took over then as blessed sleep resumed.

Matt Parkman, Helena, Montana.

Matt was always disturbed by her eyes. They were once beautiful, vibrant and full of life. Now they were dull and misguided, the soul that they once possessed had vanished. Every other part of her body hid the trauma she had been put through, but her eyes held the truth. Claire Bennet was gone, replaced by a catatonic copy of who she used to be. She wasn't alive anymore. Not really. She had grown unhealthily thin and her hair was beginning to grow back from its shaved state.

Delving into her mind was puzzling, disorientating and sometimes dangerous. She had bouts where she would lash back, threatening to pull him into her infinite confusion. She wasn't lashing back today, though. She was resisting. Every time he explored her mind she had to relive those terrible events. He hated putting her through it, but it was necessary.

Matt was forced to admit defeat. "I can't get anything. She's blocking me."

"Try harder."

"It won't work. She really doesn't want me in there today."

"It doesn't matter what she wants anymore. We need that information."

"I know, Nathan, but she won't give it up. Not today."

Nathan Petrelli had taken custody of Claire after her adoptive father had been murdered. Bennet was a riddle wrapped in an enigma to say the least, but his love for his adopted daughter was obvious. He had died doing the thing he did best; protecting her. It had taken some effort, but Matt had managed to convince her mother, Sandra, that Claire would be given the care and protection that she simply couldn't provide. The days that Sandra visited were the easiest for Matt to pull information from Claire. When she was near Claire seemed to relax and lower her defenses. But Sandra wasn't here today and Claire wasn't cooperating.

"We need that information, Matt," Nathan said, ever practical.

Matt shook his head. His power was far greater than any resistance Claire might put up, but he refused to push when she resisted this much. They needed the information but he didn't want to torture the poor girl in order to get it.

Nathan sighed and pursed his lips, displeased. "You're too soft, Parkman. When will you be back to try again?"

Matt shrugged. "I don't know. Another week, maybe two."

"Fine. But we need results, Matt. I know you don't like it, but if she keeps on resisting like this than you need to force your way in."

Oliver Gordon, Mohinder Suresh & Molly Walker, New York, New York.

Oliver cracked an eye open and shut it immediately. There was soft light streaming in behind the curtained windows, but to him it felt like somebody had shoved a flashlight in his face. How long had he been here? More importantly, where was here? Images of the past few days began creeping in hesitantly, as if too much at one time would overload his brain. Mohinder, Matt, Stanford, Sylar, the fog. They all came trickling back to him as he lay in bed. What happened after they had escaped Torrington was somewhat unclear. He could only remember patches. Matt and Mohinder had bickered a few times, mostly about him. When they had arrived in New York Matt had to leave so Mohinder had taken him to their apartment. After that he had slept.

Oliver sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He rubbed circles around his eyes with the base of his palms, trying to vanquish the remaining vestiges of sleep. When he opened his eyes he realized that he had gone through a wardrobe change. Pajamas, Matt's he assumed, since they were two sizes too big, and bare feet. He couldn't remember changing into them but that hardly mattered. He looked over at the clock. Four in the afternoon. He should probably let Mohinder know that he was awake. He padded over to the bedroom door and opened it rather tentatively. He barely knew these people and he had just spent a night in one of their beds, wearing their pajamas in their apartment. It was an awkward situation, to say the least.

Mohinder was sitting at a small kitchen table, peering into his laptop, a cup of steaming tea in his hand. Beside him, Matt had been replaced by a young girl who was looking down at a sheet of paper with frustration.

"Mohinder, what's smaller? A microgram or a nanogram?"

"Nanogram," he replied instantly. He lifted his head from his laptop to look at her sheet and spotted Oliver standing at the threshold of the bedroom. "You're awake."

"Seems that way."

The girl looked up from her paper and chirped "Good morning! Or afternoon, really."

Oliver forced a grin. He certainly wasn't in the mood for banter, but he didn't want to offend or upset the little girl. When she smiled back Oliver had flashback to one of his meetings with Mohinder and Matt. This was the same girl he saw in one of the pictures of Sylar's victims.

"How are you feeling?" Mohinder asked, sliding out of his seat and approaching Oliver.

Oliver shrugged. "Better. How long was I asleep for?"

"The better part of two days."

"Two days?"

Mohinder nodded. "Yes. You had an exhausting day. I expect that keeping up a constant fog and deactivating a threatening storm must have taken its toll as well."

"Excuse me!"

They both looked over to the table where the little girl was sitting. She stood up and gingerly made her way over to them.

"Aren't you going to introduce me?" she scolded, placing her hands on her hips in mock anger.

Mohinder smiled patiently. "Of course. You have my apologies."

Oliver crouched down to her level and offered her his hand, a mockery of the formal gesture. "I'm Oliver Gordon. Pleased to meet you."

Molly gripped his hand enthusiastically and gave it a few hard shakes. "I'm Molly. I don't know what my last name is anymore, but I'm pleased to meet you too!"

Oliver smiled, genuinely this time, and stood back up. "Where's Matt? I think I owe him his pajamas back."

"He's with the weird blonde girl," Molly said.

"Aren'tyou the weird blonde girl?" Oliver replied playfully.

Molly pulled a face. "I'm not weird! And I'm not blonde, either!"

"My mistake."

"Molly, why don't you go and finish your homework. I need to have a word with Oliver."

Molly briskly nodded and skipped back to her chair. Oliver envied her attitude. Sylar had murdered her parents and tried to kill her yet she still managed to remain perky and optimistic. He turned back to Mohinder.

"So, where's Matt? With some weird blonde chick?"

"Her name is Claire Bennet. She's not weird, she's catatonic." Mohinder paused. He needed to start from the beginning if Oliver was going to understand any of it. "Listen, there is a lot more to these powers that I haven't yet explained to you. There is a group of people out there, a company," Mohinder paused again, tilting his head slightly. He knew he must not be making much sense. Maybe a change in surroundings would help him sort his thoughts. He turned to Molly. "Molly, how would you like to go to the park?"

"What about my homework?"

"Forget about that for now. You can do it later."

"Cool!"

Mohinder turned back to Oliver. "Get dressed. I'll explain it all on the way."

"Explain what?"

"That Sylar isn't the only thing you need to be worrying about."

Nathan Petrelli & Claire Bennet, Helena, Montana.

Nathan leaned back against the wall and pursed his lips. Claire was lying on the bed in front of him, her eyes unseeing, her face expressionless. He didn't love her. Not like a father should, anyways. She was still a stranger to him. He had met her for the first time about five months ago and three of those months she had been gone, stolen by The Company. But now they were in Montana. They were safe, off The Company's radar, at least for now. The house that they were in acted as a headquarters of sorts for their resistance group. The Company had been nothing more than a vague threat in the past, but now the danger was imminent and very real. Poor Claire had been one of the first to fall victim.

Nathan stepped softly over to the bed and peered down at her with a mix of pity and disdain. He had never been particularly adept at the whole parenting thing. His boys were growing up to be fine young gentlemen, but that was mostly due to Heidi. He was always too caught up in his own world and aspirations to provide anything more than a pat on the back and a vacation or two. Now that he was alone with this comatose daughter he felt comfortable giving true fatherhood a shot. Nobody was around so nobody would see if he failed. He gently sat down on the bed. Claire turned to look at him, but he knew that it wasn't him she was seeing. She lived in her own private hell now. Reality had been brutally ripped away from her.

How would a good parent act in this situation? He didn't know. He never had any good examples himself. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder and stroked it with his thumb. This wasn't so bad. But it wasn't enough and he knew it. Pats on the shoulder did not make him a good father. Just then he noticed something about Claire, something different. Her eyes were focused and direct. Had she finally regained herself? As she stared at him, her face grew twisted with anger, fear and despair. Her brows furrowed and her lips began to quiver.

"Get away from me.." she whispered, gripping Nathan's wrist with her hand.

"Claire?"

"Get away..." Her hands began to shake and tears dripped from the corner of her eyes. Her grip tightened suddenly, her nails digging in to Nathan's skin. Her lips curled back from her teeth, as if she was snarling at him. "Get away! Get away! Get away!" she began screaming, banging her head against the pillow.

"Claire! Claire, calm down. You're safe here."

"Leave me alone! I don't want to go with you! Get away from me, please!" She was in hysterics, tears streaming down her face, her chest heaving.

Nathan could hear footsteps racing up the stairs. The door flew open and Niki came racing over to the bed. Nathan wasn't sure how she did it, but Niki always found a way to calm Claire down when she was having an episode.

"Claire," she said firmly, but with a motherly tone. "Claire, sweetheart, you're okay. You're okay, nobody here is going to hurt you, you understand?" Niki stoked the side of Claire's face gently as she spoke. The effect was almost immediate. Claire turned away from Nathan and looked at Niki. She tilted her head slightly back and her eyes drifted out of focus. Her chest settled into a steady breathing and her grip on Nathan's wrist loosened. He slipped it from her hand and rubbed the spots where her nails had pierced the skin.

She was a stranger to him. An illegitimate child with a woman he no longer made contact with. But The Company had another thing coming if they thought he wouldn't make them pay for what they did to his daughter.

Oliver Gordon, Mohinder Suresh & Molly Walker, Central Park, New York

Oliver watched Molly as she quietly approached a squirrel, a peanut held out at arms length. What he wouldn't give to be ten years old again. He missed the ignorance and perpetual happiness of being young. But ignorance wouldn't serve him anymore. Ignorance would get him killed.

He and Mohinder had taken a seat on a bench just off the path. Mohinder insisted that they had to be relatively alone before they spoke of the matter at hand. Once their area of the park had cleared out, save for a few squirrels and ducks, Oliver turned to Mohinder.

"So, who else is trying to kill me that I don't know about?"

Mohinder looked back at Oliver with a certain distaste. "I know all of this information has come as a shock but that attitude isn't helping."

"You try losing your best friend to a brain stealing whacko and see how you feel," Oliver shot back.

"I lost my father to Sylar," Mohinder seethed.

Oliver looked away, suddenly ashamed. Of course he wasn't the only victim. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"That's right, you didn't know. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't make assumptions like that. Everybody I know who is involved in all this has lost somebody."

Oliver said nothing, giving a silent apology.

Mohinder sighed before continuing. "I would hate to lose another friend, so please pay attention."

Oliver nodded, a ghost of a smile on his lips. It was nice to know that somebody cared, even if he had only met that person twice.

Mohinder took a moment to gather his thoughts. "There is a group of people out there, we call them The Company, who are a danger to people like you. Actually, they are a danger to us all." He paused and pulled a face. He was being awfully vague. "Maybe I should start at the beginning. Many years ago a group of people who knew of individuals with special abilities formed. At first this group was fearful of people with powers. They wanted to eliminate them, destroy them so these people would not become a danger to society. However, they soon learned that these abilities are simply the next step in the evolution of the human race and couldn't be destroyed, lest they stop evolution itself. So they changed their tactics. Rather than finding and killing these people, The Company opted for a humane way of dealing with the problem. They found these evolved humans and tagged them for monitoring. They kept track of their powers and watched them develop."

"That doesn't sound too bad."

"It wasn't at first. They were simply ensuring that these people with abilities did not abuse them or use them for personal gain in illegal ways. If somebody was clairvoyant and only used the ability to find lost car keys The Company would leave them alone entirely. If, however, these powers posed a threat, The Company would step in. Like you, for example. If they knew about your ability five years ago they probably would have made contact with you. If it turned out somebody's power was completely uncontrollable and could harm or kill people, they would take steps to ensure that didn't happen."

"What kind of steps?"

"Usually isolation. They would send that person to a remote area. They would ensure that the person had the means to survive, but contact with other people would be limited. It was for the greater good, as they saw it."

"I still don't see the problem," Oliver admitted. "It sounds to me like they are doing the world some good. I mean, if it turns out I can make violent storms and not control them I wouldn't want to be around people, either."

Mohinder nodded briskly. "In the beginning they were noble. They truly wanted to help the natural evolution of humanity along with minimal risk to the general population. Things soon went awry, I'm afraid. As the first generation of The Company aged and retired, a new generation took charge. There were a few, subtle changes when this happened. Instead of approaching evolved individuals with the adequate information, they began abducting people against their will. They wouldn't hurt them in any way, but it was still unethical. Soon, instead of simply isolating dangerous individuals, they took more drastic measures."

"What do you mean?"

"They began eliminating people, murdering them 'for the greater good'. Someone like you might not have been given the chance to learn how to control your powers. You would have been considered too great a risk a keep alive."

"Are they still like this?"

"They are. They've also grown a lot more liberal in their definition of dangerous powers. More and more people with seemingly harmless abilities were being killed off by The Company. The clairvoyants, the telepaths, they would be relatively safe. Anything more threatening than that and The Company would step in. But that's still not the worst of it."

"What could possibly be worse than genocide?" Oliver asked, much too loudly.

"There are things worse than death, Oliver. It happened to a friend of mine. Claire, the girl I mentioned before. She would be better off dead, but unfortunately she can't die." Mohinder could see the next question forming on Oliver's lips so he quickly continued. "The Company isn't in the business of protecting the general population anymore. They are in the business of evolving it. At some point in time they thought it would be wise to speed evolution along, to give everybody these powers. They have failed to realize that evolution simply cannot be accelerated. There are reasons why evolution is an excruciatingly long process. It takes millions and millions of years for mother nature to sort through all the genetic anomalies that occur in a species and decide which ones are fit to keep and which ones should be eliminated. If we rush evolution than we risk holding onto certain aspects that could be potentially deadly to the entire human race!"

"But how are they doing that? How can they possibly speed evolution along? More importantly, why would they want to do that?"

Mohinder shrugged. "I don't know. Jealousy perhaps. Maybe they truly believe they are doing the right thing. In any case, they haven't figured out a way to duplicate and pass along the special traits that people have. But that certainly isn't for lack of trying."

"Is that what happened to Claire?"

Mohinder nodded. "Yes. Claire's father worked for The Company and tried to keep her a secret. But they found out about her. They killed her father and took her into custody. What they did to her is just horrific."

"What did they do to her?"

"Claire can regenerate," Mohinder replied, giving the following information some context. "If she cuts herself it will heal in a moment or two. She could break her leg and be walking again in a few minutes. They knew this, so they wanted to test her limits. They started small. A papercut here, a small burn there. But then they began to get violent. Her files show that the began to shoot her. In the leg, in the arm, in the chest. Over and over again, every day. She kept healing, so they kept testing her. The poured pots of boiling water over her body and examined how long it would take for the burns to heal. They tested to see if corrosive materials could cause lasting damage. They threw her down flights of stairs, crushed her limbs and hit her with cars. They injected her with enough cyanide to kill twenty grown men, they stabbed her with swords and they set her on fire. Then it got really bad."

Oliver worked diligently to repress whatever anger that was brewing inside of him. It was terrible, but he couldn't afford to take any chances with his emotions. Still, he was curious. "What to you mean 'then it got really bad'. I can't think of anything worse."

"Amputation," Mohinder said simply. "They began to remove entire limbs from her body and see how long it would take for them to grow back. Her files show that she has gone through four left arms and three right. Her feet have been removed several times. But those are just external. They started to go inside, too–"

Oliver held up his hand and shook his head. "Okay, that's enough. I get the picture."

Mohinder looked sadly over at Molly who was still playing with the squirrels. "Her body healed every time. Her body could take it. Her mind couldn't. Every time they shot her, or threw her down the stairs, she felt it. She isn't immune to pain, you know. I imagine the feeling of being burned alive would leave a mental scar that nobody could undo."

They both fell silent at that point, losing themselves in their own thoughts. Mohinder watched as Molly chased a squirrel around the base of a tree, nostalgic for the time when he was nothing more than a simple professor. His world had been flipped upside down and although he loved Molly and had made some loyal friends, he sometimes wished that he could take it all away and live in ignorance.

"How did she get out?" Oliver asked, disrupting Mohinder's thoughts.

"What?"

"Claire. You said earlier that Matt was with her. I'm assuming he didn't barge in to The Company headquarters to have a pow-wow with her. So how did she escape?"

Mohinder considered before responding. Oliver was still a relative stranger so he didn't know if he could trust him or not. But he seemed like a good kid. Maybe in time he would even join their resistance force. "There is a resistance group," Mohinder started tentatively. "There are very few people outside of The Company who actually know what they are doing. Most of these people have abilities or have a loved one who has abilities. We formed a group to try and take The Company down, for obvious reasons. When we found out that Claire had been captured and what kind of tests they were administering to her, we took action and we broke her out. It was extremely dangerous and a somewhat foolish thing to do. Before Claire's escape I was confident that The Company wasn't aware of our group. But we exposed ourselves and now they must know we exist."

Oliver mulled over what he had just been told. A company that finds and kills most people with dangerous abilities, and tortures and tests the ones who aren't. A resistance group dedicated to bringing The Company down, destroying it and letting evolution take its natural course. Christ. Jackass professors and late essays seemed like a blessing now. But Jackass professors and late essays weren't his reality anymore. Brain stealing maniacs and people killing companies were. Oliver considered the obvious choice that lay before him. Would he join this resistance force and assist them in taking down The Company, or would he try and regain a sense of normalcy and pretend this past week never happened. He had never considered himself to be particularly brave, nor did he believe that he was put on this planet to do something great. But just because he didn't believe it didn't make it true. Maybe he was meant for something more. Maybe he was meant to join these people, to become a hero of sorts. He was certain that it would be dangerous, and he wasn't entirely sure he was ready for such a responsibility, but he decided to take the plunge anyways.

"So, how do I join?"