8

Absolution

Emma was sitting in a taxi bound for Brooklyn when she received a text message from her mother, saying Peter's condition had deteriorated after he had suffered hypovolaemic shock during surgery.

The cab was going excruciatingly slowly. She'd left immediately after work, and since an overwhelming percentage of New Yorkers had similar office hours, the entire city seemed to be on the streets. From seeing his face the rearview mirror, and from the way his jaw was moving, Emma knew that the cabbie hadn't stopped talking for even half a minute since she had entered his taxi. As her headphones apparently didn't deter him, Emma had decided not to tell him that she was deaf. He didn't seem to mind whether she was listening or not.

And anyway, from her experience, a lot of taxi drivers didn't believe you if you told them you were deaf, thinking you just took the easy way of a conversation.

She sat staring out of the window into the rain-grey street, clogged up with traffic, wishing there was any way she could get to this Gabriel Gray faster, fearing that by the time she got there, his shop would have closed and he would be gone. It was ironic, she thought, that she could at least have tried to "call" him using her ability even though she didn't know what he looked like – if only Peter hadn't destroyed her cello.

When they were about ten blocks out, Emma paid the driver, stepped out into the rain, and walked the rest of the way on foot. She was soaking wet by the time she arrived at the address Angela had given her, but hardly felt it.

The quarter looked run-down, as did the little shop in the middle of the street, with an aged-looking sign saying "Gray and Sons" over the entrance. For a second, Emma thought she was indeed too late, because everything looked dark inside. Then she saw that, while it was dim, there was still light in the shop.

A wild rain of colour erupted over her head as she entered the shop, and she looked up in bewilderment until she realised it was a chime she had set off. The room she had entered was full of watches and clocks of every shape and size, as well as antique furniture, bookshelves and decorative quartz crystals.

There was nobody in the shopfront, but she saw another light in a back room.

"Hello? Mr Gray?" she called, just as someone appeared in the doorway.

Without really thinking about it, Emma had expected a small, stooped, mousy, middle-aged or elderly man, not the tall young man that now entered the room – much less the man she had met less than a week before, who had saved her from being manipulated by Eric Doyle.

"You?" she said, stunned.

He gave her a wide smile as he took off a pair of glasses with multiple magnifying lenses. "Emma," he said. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"So that's about it," Claire was saying. She and Zach had sat down opposite each other on the two beds in the motel room. "I exposed my abilities to the world and now I'm hiding from the consequences."

Zach frowned. "That doesn't really sound like you. Hiding from consequences or running from anyone."

She gave a bitter laugh. "I guess I don't really know what's me anymore."

"So what are you gonna do?"

Claire thought about this.

"I want to go back," she finally said. "My dad… he's been trying to protect me. Even you got your share of that a while back. But you're right. Hiding and running isn't my thing. I don't know what my thing is. But I won't find out if I just keep running away."

"Need anyone to create a diversion for your dad?" Zach asked with a sardonic grin.

Claire laughed. "Actually, this time, I'd prefer not to run." Her stomach growled, and she remembered that she hadn't eaten much since the dismal tortellini outside Dallas. "But before that, I want to know if Enzo's still has those fantastic Quattro Formaggi. Can I borrow your phone?"

He cocked his head. "What's wrong with yours?"

Claire didn't quite know what he was trying to say. "I can't find it, that's what."

Zach leant to the side and looked past her at Noah's bed. "And what's that? You're not telling me your father has a pink cell phone, right?"

Claire followed his glance, and looked behind her, where the contents of her father's case were still strewn across the bedspread after she had dropped it.

There, sure enough, lay her phone. She had just shoved everything back against the wall a few minutes ago without really looking at all the things that had fallen out of the bag, and had completely missed her phone lying there innocuously, waiting to be found.

With a puzzled expression, she took it, and was surprised to see it was switched off. She was sure he hadn't done anything of the sort.

"What?" Zach asked.

"My dad. He took away my phone." Claire stared at the display telling her she had fifteen missed calls. Most of them were from college friends including Gretchen, several more from her mother and Lyle, two were from her grandmother.

"I don't believe this," Claire said, shaking her head. "He told me he saw it in Brooklyn. He was hiding it, and lying to me about it."

Zach was watching her intently. "So what are you going to do?"

She grimaced. "First, I'm not going to buy him a Quattro Formaggi from Enzo's."

"I'd never have expected you to… repair watches," Emma said, looking around the shop bemusedly.

Sylar looked at her in a way that she wondered whether she had said something wrong, but then he just replied, "It helps me clear my mind when I have something to think about." He took in her sodden clothes and hair. "But you must be freezing. Let me—"

She shook her head, as there were much more important matters right now. "I'm here because of Peter."

"Peter?" he asked. She found she had difficulty reading his expression, if not his lips; he was similar to Angela in terms of what might be on in his mind. If that was possible, Emma found him even harder to figure out than Peter's mother.

"He asked me to find you. He needs your help. He was shot during a call on Monday morning. He's at Mercy Heights Hospital at the moment."

Sylar stared into space for a moment, and didn't look at her when he said, as if to himself, "Funny that he asks me for help." Emma was fairly sure she knew what he meant this time, and decided mentioning that Claire was not available would have been a bad idea.

"His mother told me you could heal." She hesitated, realising that there was something odd here – she knew that Sylar had used an ability to save her from Doyle, which had looked like being able to move objects with the power of his mind, something that probably wouldn't help Peter a lot right now. But what she had seen him use was definitely not healing. So either he had more than one ability, or he could switch his, like Peter.

"Angela told you where to find me?" he asked.

"Yes." She had been able to gather, from Angela's expression, that there was something between her and Sylar, something serious. She wondered whether Sylar would refuse to help. "You can heal? You could give Peter that ability, too?"

He seemed to shake off something, and nodded, looking truly concerned for the first time now. "Yes. How serious is he?"

"Very serious," she replied, with a slight lisp before she remembered again to watch her enunciation. She couldn't remember when she had last had to talk so much, and to so many different people, at least not since breaking off her residency.

"Then we'd better leave at once."

"Thank you…" She hesitated. "What should I call you?"

He gave her a strange look with a smile that could have been sardonic, or sad, she couldn't quite decide. "Sylar… or Gabriel. Whichever works for you."

On the way, they didn't talk much. There were so many things Emma didn't understand and would have liked to ask, but she felt that she had no business to pry.

It was already past 7 PM when Emma and Sylar arrived at Mercy Heights Hospital. Emma led the way up to the Intensive Care Unit on the second floor where Peter lay.

"Intensive Care?" Sylar asked, looking troubled. She was surprised that he seemed to know his way around here so well.

As they walked along the corridor, Emma wondered for the first time what was about to happen. After seeing Peter so badly hurt for two days, it was hard to imagine him just healing and walking off. And there, she realised, also for the first time, lay the next problem. Half the hospital knew about Peter. If he just jumped up from his bed now, he would have a lot of things to explain.

She became aware that Sylar slowed his steps as they approached the right room, and saw that Angela was still there with Peter. He looked even paler than he had that morning, obviously deeply unconscious.

Emma was walking behind Sylar as they entered, so she couldn't see his face, only saw his jaw move as he said something short. Angela seemed to look slightly past him, not gracing whatever he had said with an answer. There was an expression of carefully veiled disgust on her face as Sylar sat down at the left side of Peter's bed, opposite Angela. Emma chose to stand close to the wall near the foot end of the bed, which allowed her to be unobtrusive, as well as enabling her to see both Sylar's and Angela's faces, if at an angle.

Sylar now turned his attention from Angela to Peter, taking his limp hand.

Emma watched.

She wasn't sure what she had expected, but whatever it was, it should have been more dramatic, because nothing at all happened.

She watched the monitor for any sign of improvement, watched Peter's face, expecting his colour to recover, his respiratory rate to pick up, anything at all, but he just lay there as he had before.

"Why's it not working?" she asked, quietly, but both Angela and Sylar started, as if they had already forgotten about her being there.

"Because Peter has to take an ability consciously." Angela continued to look at nothing in particular. "And right now, he can't."

Sylar's expression told Emma that he had expected the outcome, although he had probably hoped for a different one.

"He didn't take mine consciously," she threw in. "When he did, he hadn't expected it to happen."

"Still, he wasn't unconscious at the time, was he?" Angela answered snappishly, still not looking directly at Emma, and the younger woman didn't even have to hear her voice to be able to tell she was cross. Emma made no reply.

Sylar remained sitting for a few moments before he got up. Emma saw him give Angela a look that seemed almost pained. "I'm sorry," she saw him say.

Angela finally looked up at the tall man, her face as fixed as it had been, as if he had just wandered into her field of vision without anyone's doing.

"You may find absolution from every person on this planet, but you never will from me." She turned away from him and towards her son again, before finishing, "I don't blame you for failing to help Peter."

Sylar stood there for a few heartbeats, then he turned and left. Emma was reluctant to go, unhappy with her failure to do anything to help Peter, and unwilling to just leave now.

Angela, however, seemed to have completely forgotten that she was there, so she slowly turned as well after a while, leaving Peter there with his mother, both equally motionless.

Sylar was still in the corridor some twenty yards away when Emma emerged from the room, leaning against a wall with a brooding expression on his face. He turned to look at her as she walked towards him.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "When I realised he might not be conscious, I should have told you I suspected that it wasn't going to work."

"You tried," she said.

He nodded.

"I can send you a message when he comes to."

He gave a humourless laugh. "I'm not sure Angela could bear it if I saved Peter."

Emma frowned. "Why does she treat you that way?"

Sylar looked past her, his expression wistful. "We have what you might call a… complicated history." He held out his hand. "If anything happens, let me know, OK?"

Emma took his hand, and nodded.

Hesam entered the EMT room after his shift with his shoulders hunched, wishing nothing more than to become invisible. Everybody seemed to know that Peter's surgery had gone badly, and everybody seemed to have the profound wish to tell him how sorry they were, pretty much every time they saw him. Hesam just wanted to hand in the keys and radios and be gone. What would have helped was being able to go up and see Peter, but with his mother there, there was no way Hesam was going to intrude.

When he entered, the room was almost empty. His initial feeling of relief faded fast when he saw who the only person in the room was. Simon Blumenthal was just taking a fresh shirt from his locker, and seemed to freeze when he saw Hesam.

For a split second, Hesam wanted to just stick his head in the sand and flee, pretending he hadn't seen Simon, but then he realised that if he did that, the other man probably would never talk to him again, and rightly so.

At least with Simon, he was in little danger of being patted on the shoulder, which was definitely worth something these days.

"Hey man," he said heavily.

"Hey," Simon replied. It was the most guarded "hey" Hesam had ever heard in his life.

"Look, I…" Hesam took a deep breath. "Simon, I'm sorry."

Simon pretended to be very busy with the buttons of his shirt, the sidelong glance he threw Hesam saying, just keep it coming.

"I just snapped, OK?" Hesam went on. "I really thought you'd been there well over five minutes and had gotten so little done. It felt like ages to me. I didn't realise how you'd been working until I got our run times from dispatch. You did everything right. Peter'd probably be dead without you. I was being a complete asshole. OK?"

Simon finally jerked up his head, exhaling explosively. "Yeah, you were."

"I'm sorry."

Simon hesitated for another few seconds, until he finally made a small step towards Hesam, clapping him on the shoulder. "It's OK, man. Thanks."

He nodded at him once again, tucked in his shirt, and left.

Well, Hesam reflected, that hadn't gone too badly. He'd had to admit to being an asshole, plus he had got a pat on the shoulder he totally hadn't anticipated, but all in all, the day hadn't been a complete waste.

He went through to the supervisor's office, handed in the radios and ambulance keys, and was just about to head home when a phone rang in his pocket.

He started, since he rarely took his own phone to work, until he remembered that it was Peter's.

By reflex, he took it out and took a look at it. The name on the display read, Claire.

Claire.

Under normal circumstances, Hesam would never have answered a call that wasn't intended for him, but the circumstances were hardly normal.

He pressed the "call" button. "Hello?"

There was a pause at the other end, then a very young-sounding, female voice asked, "Who's that?"

"Hesam. I'm a friend of Peter's."

"Hesam? You're his co-worker, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Why isn't he answering?"

"Because," Hesam said very slowly, "he really, desperately needs your help, Claire."