I received your words from hospitals/
Where you felt alone/
Your words like smoke, they made me sick/
But they kept me warm/
The room that Mr. Bennet woke up in was so horribly familiar that he almost felt like laughing when he realized where he was. It was the large holding cell in Primatech, the one that had recently housed Sylar—he wasn't used to looking at it from the inside, but he was familiar enough with its bright lights and blank walls to recognize it.
Once his eyes adjusted enough to allow him to see—not well, because they'd taken his glasses, but well enough—he recognized the blurry figure of Thompson on the other side of the glass. He stood, walking slowly over until only the glass separated them.
"Why didn't you kill me?" he asked steadily. "Isn't that how we deal with leaks here?"
Thompson smiled that patronizing, edged smile that Mr. Bennet had always desperately wanted to punch. He wished he'd done it, now, before they'd caught him. "If it had been up to me, I would have," he said. "You owe your life to people far higher up, but don't think that means you're safe." He picked up a grey file and began flipping purposefully through it. "Why don't you tell me about Peter Petrelli?"
"I don't understand why you expect me to tell you anything," Mr. Bennet said reasonably.
Thompson put his file carefully down and planted his hands on the frame of the pane, leaning in with practiced menace. "Listen to me very closely," he said, his words slow, heavy with meaning. "I'm going to explain to you how this is going to work. Somehow, you've managed to get your daughter away from us—that's fine, we'll catch her sooner or later. However, there are still two members of your family around, just a few miles from this factory, as it happens. At this moment, they are safe—we haven't touched them. That could change very easily."
Mr. Bennet struggled not to let himself react, fingernails digging half-crescents into his palms. That was the trouble with working with someone for sixteen years: Thompson knew his weak points to perfection, knew exactly which buttons to push. "What do you want to know?" he asked flatly.
"Basically," Thompson said, picking the file back up, "I want to know why you seem to have botched the situation so badly. Were you trying to sabotage us, or are you simply incompetent?" Mr. Bennet didn't respond, knowing that Thompson didn't really want an answer. "Let me see if I have this straight: you were informed about a possible special, Peter Petrelli, by our agent Sarah Ellis—you did nothing. Later, an acquired special, Isaac Mendez, confirmed that he did indeed have abilities, and described occurrences matching the profile of a powerful empath—still, you did nothing. You came face to face with him after the incident at your daughter's school, and observed him acting oddly, appearing to be ill. Not only did you fail to bring him in at this time, you ignored the situation altogether for several days.
Finally, informed by Mendez that Mr. Petrelli was overloading with abilities and seemed likely to cause an apocalyptic explosion, you made a cursory attempt to take him. You failed, and he escaped, but instead of pursuing him, you left New York immediately and went home to deal with a personal issue."
"My wife was in the hospital, if you'll recall," Mr. Bennet said testily.
"As, I said, a personal issue," Thompson continued smoothly. "And since the single bungled attempt at capture, you have not so much as looked for Mr. Petrelli, despite the fact that he could, at any moment, blow up New York City." He threw the file down and crossed his arms. "Do you have any explanation for this, Bennet? Any at all?"
"I said I'd give you information," Mr. Bennet replied. "I didn't say I'd explain myself."
"Fair enough," Thompson said, and walked over to the door, opening it to admit a bored-looking Candice Wilmer. "We don't need you to—we have agents here who are capable of doing their jobs properly." He swung back around to face Mr. Bennet. "That's another thing, actually—what is it with you and Petrellis, Bennet? In my examination of your files, I found that you'd previously allowed the escape of Nathan Petrelli, which you have also failed to follow up on. Do you owe them money, or what?"
"I'm a busy man," Mr. Bennet affirmed. "I seem to remember asking you several times for more resources."
"You didn't need more resources," Thompson said impatiently, "you needed the spine to properly use the resources you had. Now, is there anything else we should know about the Petrelli family? Anything else you'd like to tell Candice before she goes to do the job that should have been done weeks ago? Remember, your family's life may depend on it."
Mr. Bennet shook his head. "There's nothing," he said, sitting down on his bed. "I've written everything down. Fairly normal people, strong family ties—the only thing you need to watch is their slight tendency to do the unexpected."
Candice raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Really?" The amount of sarcasm she managed to pack into the single word was astounding to Mr. Bennet. One of the only good side effects of his capture was that he no longer required to work with this snarky, scornful woman. He'd only done a handful of missions with her, but he'd found her adolescent and annoying.
"Really," he replied emotionlessly. She shot him a world-class smirk and walked towards the door, followed by Thompson.
"I'll be back," he shot at Mr. Bennet as he left, and Candace added, "Why don't you just sit in the corner and think about what you've done? Take all the time you need."
The door snapped shut behind them, and Mr. Bennet rested his head back against the wall, feeling powerless, and hating the feeling. He wished he knew if Claire was okay. He wished he could see his family. He wished they would give him his glasses, for God's sake.
He closed his eyes, collected himself, and thought.
Matt, he thought. If you can hear me, this is Mr. Bennet. You're trapped in a very bad situation and so am I—we need to help each other. I used to be in charge of this station, I know everything there is to know about it. Here's what I need you to do…