Rose checked the room number once again, to be sure she had heard the guard at the security desk right. Dead ringer, room number 528. Oh look, isn't that cute, Rose thought, as she examined the almost illegible scrawl of the hand made sign, designating the room, the conference room. She took a deep breath, Please let me be right about this. She knocked twice on the door.
"Come in," she heard a male's voice call.
As quietly as possible, she turned the knob and opened the door wide, so she could stand in its frame. In the middle of the room, was a long conference table surrounded by expensive leather rolling chairs. Along one side of the long table sat four people. They were bunched together in the middle of the table's length. Rose smiled to herself; these people seemed almost fully invested in their own activities. From the inside of the group, Claire offered her a friendly smile. On Claire's left was Noah Bennett, obsessively scouring over his computer; hunting down possible identifications for her, no doubt. To Claire's right, sat Peter Petrelli, texting on his blackberry. Rose let her gaze linger on him for a moment feeling a tightness in her chest. The man sitting on Peter's right, by process of elimination, could only be Sylar. Rose examined him curiously, he seemed to be off in a different world with his eyes glazed over like that.
Nice try, Hotshot. Scanning for my abilities, too bad it's not working. Rose thought behind her polite stare. She almost broke out into a smile when she saw Peter turn to a bewildered Sylar, for his results.
"Please, Rose, have a seat," Claire welcomed. It was then that the men in the room finally acknowledged her.
Squinting slightly, Peter asked her," You look familiar. Have we met before?"
Rose forced a smile and answered, "No, I don't believe so." She received a curious look from the man called Sylar.
"Well," Claire began," let's start with the introductions. Rose, this is my adoptive father Noah Bennett, he helps head up the security here. Peter works as my main personal security and Sylar deals more with the background and scans of the area. They normally go out in public with me for meetings and other publicity opportunities and they usually hang around the building, when I'm here."
"Pleased to meet you all," Rose responded, taking a seat across the table from the group.
"Please forgive me for being rather abrupt here, Rose, but I'm afraid I have some suspicions as to why you're interested in a position here, with Claire and her campaign. It just seems strange that you would show up one day, undetected I might add, and offer to work here. Right now, we aren't exactly a popular group to apply with." Noah began, eyeing her up and down before glancing back at his computer, probably checking to see if she matched any of the profiles he had on his screen.
"No problem. I understand this must be unexpected, me showing up out of the blue. But I would love an opportunity to become a part of this movement. I feel I have much to offer, along with my skills at avoiding detection."
"I'm sure we're all excited to hear about your qualifications. Why don't we get started by getting a full name to work with?" Noah asked, preparing to enter them name as she said it into his database.
"Well," Rose began," my first name is obviously, Rose and my middle name is Allison."
She waited while Bennett entered the information into his computer then he glanced up at her asking, "And your last name?"
Rose blew out her breath, while the others watched her curiously. This probably won't be popular.
"Linderman", snipped a new voice from the hallway.
Rose didn't know whether or not she should be alarmed that, overtime, she had actually missed that voice and the woman it belonged to. Rose twisted her chair around to address the woman in the doorway. "Angela, what a surprise. Who would have thought that you would be here!"
Angela acknowledged the woman's sarcasm with a slight tightening of her lips. "I suppose the same thing could be said of you. Last I remember, you felt you were above efforts such as this."
"I'll be honest, my first reaction was to buy a one way ticket to lovely Canada, always painfully neutral there. Then, after realizing the cold would never sit well with me, I decided why not throw myself into this mess, wholeheartedly. It's only a matter of time before the yellow stars come out, you know."
Angela Petrelli turned to Bennett who was frantically typing on his computer. "Noah, you can stop searching for the girl, I'm quite positive you won't find anything on her."
"Why not?" Claire asked, sharing the same confused expression as the rest of the table.
"When I went missing, about ten years ago, my father destroyed any evidence that I existed; expressly for the purpose of keeping me out of the hands of organizations such as Primatech. I do believe that is what it was going by last."
"So you're father was protecting you from being discovered." Claire said, sending a glance over to the man who had basically done the same thing for her. Bennett, though, was gaping at Rose, astonished by her knowledge when he had no idea who she was.
"More like the other way around." Rose answered. "Father dearest, didn't want me vandalizing his precious schemes and investments."
"Your father loved you dearly. I should think the enormous inheritance left to you should provide some evidence of that." Angela snapped, eyeing the younger woman with disapproval.
"No doubt, my father loved me. Still, it's hard to remain supportive of anyone, no matter who they are; when their "work" places many people in danger, including yourself."
"Hold on a sec! What exactly are we talking about here?" Peter turned to his mother for answers. "You're saying that this is Daniel Linderman's daughter? With as much time as our family has spent with Linderman, don't you think I would have known something about her?"
"That certainly is a million dollar question." Rose joked receiving a withering glance from Angela.
"She said it herself Peter, she didn't see Daniel very often and you weren't exactly someone with whom he entrusted his secrets to." Angela supplied, coming further into the room and seating herself at the head of the table.
"She looks close to my age." Peter objected. "I would think that I would have known her, at some point, when we were kids."
"Yeah, we're in the same ballpark, about 18 months. Me being the oldest, of course."
"Peter," Angela reasoned, "you hardly knew Charles Deveaux's daughter before you began caring for him, in his last months."
"He wasn't around like Linderman." Peter argued. "I had no idea of Charles' involvement in your group, until after his death."
"Well, you can chalk that up to the luck that your ability didn't manifest at the age of six," Rose offered.
"What sort of ability?" This came from Sylar. It was the first time he had spoken during the meeting and his voice held a tremor of uncertainty in it.
Rose glanced over at Angela, as if to discern some sort of direction from the older woman.
"Don't look at me, dear. It was your choice to come here, after all."
Rose turned to the rest of the table with a sigh. It wasn't that she was burdened by her ability, but she knew that them finding out about it put her in a position she had worked hard to stay out of. This is how it should happen, Rose reminded herself. It was time to become apart of her generation and try to make sense of all this.
"It's a form of empathy" Rose began, "my mind acts as a receptor and storage device for abilities. If I'm even in the same room as another special, I can tap their power and file it away in my head for future use."
"How do you access others' abilities?" Sylar questioned intensely. The others shuffled uncomfortably in their chairs.
Rose met his gaze head on. "Think of everyone's brain as a computer. Computers can communicate with each other, as well as, share files. Basically, that's what I do, I access other people's ability files. Even when I'm not focusing on it my mind can subconsciously hone in on the mind of a special. Once I gain the ability, I can store it away and open it up whenever I want."
Peter regarded Rose curiously, "How can you handle that many abilities?"
"My brain compacts them down, like I said, into files. I can call them up."
"Do you know how many powers you have obtained?" Noah asked.
"It would be difficult to calculate. I would have to go through each power individually, and that could take a while. I can also remove the abilities if I find they don't work for me. "
Sylar was incredulous, "You throw away powers?"
"There are powers out there that even you wouldn't want." Rose explained.
"What was the first ability you gained?" Claire asked curiously.
"My father's, of course." Rose answered.
"Other than your father's?" Claire specified.
Rose smiled sadly as she answered. "The ability to generate electrical currents through my body."
She could feel everyone in the room freeze, but she didn't care about them, she was too busy staring down Sylar, as a blue ball of charged energy sat on top of her hand.