Let the tide swallow me whole/
Like morning light through windows/
Let that dark water take me home/

As a general rule, Linderman didn't take phone calls while he was in his gallery—walking the halls lined with paintings was like literally stepping forward to the future, and he preferred to preserve the sensation while he was planning. So, when his bodyguard popped his head around the divider, phone in one hand and apologetic expression on her face, Linderman knew it must be important.

"Sorry, sir," the woman said deferentially. "It's Nathan Petrelli. You said you wanted to be informed—"

"Yes, yes," Linderman said, striding forward to take the phone. "You did the right thing, Coblentz, thank you." He waited for the woman to fade back into discreet watchfulness, and then held the receiver up to his ear, wondering what it was that his future President wanted. "Nathan?"

The man's clean, metallic tenor came across the line at once, sounding even more sharply biting than usual. "Mr. Linderman, how are you?" It was a perfunctory question, more of a reflex than a sentence, and Linderman swiftly reread it for its real meaning: I'm angry. I'm on edge. I know you have Peter.

"I'm fine, Nathan. Things are going well. How about you?" Linderman played along at surface level, carefully angling to bring Nathan out.

"Not so well, I have to admit," Nathan said, readying to breach the reality of his call. "I seem to have misplaced a brother. I don't suppose you've seen him?"

"Your brother is fine, Nathan," Linderman said with near-perfect honesty.

"I think he'd feel a lot better if he was on a plane to New York with me."

"Very possibly," Linderman agreed. "But then, life isn't about doing what makes you feel best, you should know that. A successful life means taking the second option, compromising, learning to live with things that you can't change and getting so good at lying to yourself that you think you're happy."

There was silence on the other end. It wasn't that Nathan didn't understand—Nathan was one of the few he could trust to get the meaning out of his dense sophistries—it was that he understood perfectly, with the crystal clarity of a like mind. He understood, and was trying to decide what to do with the understanding. "I just want my brother back," he said finally.

Linderman sighed, gazing at a Mendez painting he'd grown fond of—Nathan, in the Oval Office, looking unhappy and incredibly strong. "Don't you think this is for the best, Nathan?"

"Not for Peter."

""I'm sorry," Linderman said, in the tone of one who has to break bad news, "but you can't have him. We need him too much, he's the key to this whole thing. He's going to have to stay with us."

There was a very long pause and an odd wooden sound that he thought sounded like Nathan kicking furniture. "Can I see him, then?" Nathan asked.

"Yes," Linderman allowed against his better judgment, figuring Nathan needed a concession. "I'll set you up an appointment."

"Fine," the word had trace venom in it, too deferential to be deadly. "Goodbye, Mr. Linderman."

"Goodbye, Nathan."

---

Peter hadn't realized how big his cell was. Of course, it was no Ritz hotel, but really, it wasn't any smaller than his college dorm room, and a lot cleaner. Now that Sylar had been moved to another cell, he felt free to walk around, and now that they had unchained his wrist, he actually could. He could count the steps across the room (fifteen and a half), or inspect the spot where Sylar had pulled his bolt out of the wall (they had concluded that somehow he'd pried it out using his plastic fork—Peter found that kind of sheer fanatic willpower frankly terrifying). He could lay flat on the floor and try to figure out what the odds were that anyone would try to save him. He didn't get very far with this—he'd never been very good at math, and the whole idea made him feel like the walls were closing in on him, haunted-house style.

In a weird way, he hoped that they wouldn't try. This place was like a military bomb silo for security, and he thought he might go crazy if anyone got hurt trying to free him. They would do better to run and keep running, getting as far away as they could and leaving him. Claire would be all right—Hana would take care of her, and as far as Peter had seen, nothing short of a full-scale army would get past that woman. Nathan—well, maybe Nathan would be better off without him.

He was sitting on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest, thinking about things he didn't want to think about, when the door opened. A dark-haired man with a sharp, thrusting face (Peter guessed that maybe he had Native American blood—that would explain the strong bones) came into his cell, pulling a cart adorned with bright, glittering instruments like Christmas ornaments. Peter felt himself go very cold.

"Hello, Peter," the man said casually, folding surfaces and compartments out of his cart. "My name is Dr. Sorensen, and I'm going to need to perform a few tests on you this morning. I hope we can cooperate with each other to make this as painless as possible."

Peter watched dully as the man set up and rearranged sparkling steel tools, not bothering to answer. When he had been ten years old, he'd broken his leg badly playing soccer, and had needed surgery. He remembered watching the doctor bring out his scalpels and knives, how afraid he'd been, how much he'd wished the anesthesia would kick in, already, and put him in a place where it wouldn't matter. His father hadn't been there (of course) but Nathan had stayed by his side the whole time, reassuring him, holding his hand.

Nathan wasn't here to hold his hand this time.

---

"So he said no?" Mr. Bennet asked as soon as Nathan walked back into the room, instantly able to read the result of the conversation on his face.

"He said no," Nathan confirmed, putting his phone back in the pocket, coming to sit back down in the circle of bleak, determined plotters.

"Well, all right then," Hana said briskly. "We expected that. On to Plan B, yes?"

"Indeed," said Mr. Bennet, squeezing Claire's hand reassuringly. He had hardly let go of her since he and Nathan had arrived that morning, relieved to be reunited once again and worried that she looked so unhealthily ashen, stressing herself to nothing over Peter. If it had been up to him, Mr. Bennet would frankly have left Peter to Linderman—he liked the man well enough, but not enough to merit a full-scale rescue mission. He knew, however, that to say this out loud would be paramount to suicide, between Nathan and Claire and even Hana, who seemed to have developed some sort of mild affection for Peter. It was far better to go with general sentiment, keep Claire happy, and hope he could do some damage to The Company along the way. "As I told you, Mr. Petrelli and myself formulated a rough plan on the plane ride here, and we'd welcome your input, Hana."

He was treading particularly carefully around Hana—she didn't forgive as easily as Claire, and he knew what she could do, had seen her do most of it, and knew better than to get her angry. Hana, in turn, had been coolly polite to him, as if he were a neighbor who had insulted her garden instead of a former colleague who had betrayed her and left her for dead. "Linderman, being the experienced mobster and sneak he is, will certainly expect a rescue attempt of some sort. We agreed that the most likely point to stage such an attempt would be when Nathan goes in to see Peter. Therefore, we can assume that he will see it coming a mile away and take precautions to prevent it."

"That doesn't mean, though, that I won't be making the attempt," Nathan told them. "Since he expects it anyway, I'll be giving it to him, making it far less likely that he'll be looking for an attack anywhere else. Who knows," he said with a grin, "I might even succeed."

"In any case, there will be a second prong of the attack going on simultaneously," Mr. Bennet continued. "I'll be in the lobby with about ten guns, shooting security guards and making a huge, obvious mess and being as loud as I possibly can."

"With tranquilizers," Claire said suddenly.

"What?" Mr. Bennet asked, confused.

"You'll be shooting them with tranquilizers, right?" she repeated, blue eyes reproving.

"I suppose," he agreed reluctantly. "Anyway, you'll be with me, sweetheart. We'll be pretty safe, hiding behind slot machines and such."

"As we said, Linderman is going to expect an attack—he might even be able to anticipate two," Nathan said. "What we're banking on, though, is that while he's paying attention to these two, he won't be watching for a third."

"That's where you come in, Hana," Mr. Bennet told her, watching her straighten and shift into precise attention. "Casino security is notoriously impossible to crack, and the only way we've been able to think to compromise it is directly from the inside. We're going to need you to locate the feed from the Monticello security office, break into the office itself, and figure out how to open the cell doors in the vaults, all while we're distracting Linderman. Nathan will be right at Peter's cell, and should be able to get him out if you can unlock it. Do you think you can do that?"

"I can do it," she told him, calmly confident. "Just one thing: since I am the one who is going to be heading the actual attempt, may I have Claire?"

Mr. Bennet blinked behind his glasses, nonplussed. "Why?" he asked bluntly.

Hana smiled with an emotion he couldn't quite place, glancing across the couch at a very surprised Claire. "Well, I'm going to have to deal with a whole lot of security personnel, and as flattered as I am that you think I can take them all, I'd rather have a little help. Turns out your Claire is a bit of a natural."

Feeling as if he'd somewhat lost touch with the world, Mr. Bennet turned to his daughter. "What do you think, Claire?"

"I want to go with her," Claire said, her voice small but steady.

"Then I guess that's that," Mr. Bennet said helplessly. "When do we want to plan this for?"

"Tomorrow," Claire proposed immediately.

"Tomorrow?" Mr. Bennet asked, thrown.

"She might have a point," Nathan said. "Every day we wait makes it less likely that Peter will be alive to rescue at all."

"Right," Mr. Bennet said, bending to the two pairs of eyes that told him they were literally going out of their minds with worry. "Tomorrow."