AUTHOR'S NOTE: I haven't a blessed clue what's going on with the site not letting you guys access my updates. If anyone knows why in the heck my chapters aren't showing up, please tell me! I need help! Thank you for your patience!

You perceive all of these things/
I'd never have known/
Love, will you turn off the lights?/
Cause we're already home/

"You're not seriously thinking about taking Peter to New York, are you?"

"You know what, I am," Nathan said, somewhat defiantly, bothered that he felt he had to defend himself to Mr. Bennet. "It's his home. Where else would you suggest?"

"How about someplace he's not going to explode? That would only seem sensible."

"Do you remember what happened last time we let him go off on his own?" Nathan said, not paying much attention to the electronic ticket-buying system he had on the phone. "Because I do. Despite the fact that the rest of you seem content to play Witness Protection forever, I actually have an election to win and a state to run. I need to be in New York yesterday, and if you think I'm letting Peter out of my sight, you're clearly crazier than even I suspected."

"I'm not the one playing chicken with an H-bomb," Mr. Bennet said coolly. "You simply cannot guarantee that he won't run into Ted, and my saying 'I told you so' isn't going to do us much good after the fact."

"So I'll keep him in the house," Nathan shrugged. "Lock him up, if I have to. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life dancing around this thing—obviously, it's time we do something about it, and Peter may be the only one who can."

"Fine," Mr. Bennet said, mashing the words through gritted teeth. "Get tickets for Claire and I." At Nathan's raised eyebrow, he turned away, walking through the disaster-area clutter of blood and furniture. "If you can't beat you I might as well join you. They can make a big communal grave for us all after you get us killed."

"What about you, Hana?" Nathan asked, punching numbers into his phone. "Want me to buy you a ticket?"

"No," Hana said in a clear, carrying tone, not looking up from cleaning her gun.

Nathan did a small double-take, dropping the phone and then catching it neatly with the other hand. "No?"

"My job is to take down Linderman," she informed them. "Linderman is in Las Vegas. I'm not leaving."

"Your apartment's kind of trashed," Nathan observed helpfully.

"I'll get another one."

"You'll be killed."

She cocked her gun loudly and stared up at him, cherrywood eyes glassy with patient danger. "No I won't."

---

Peter waited until Katie got up before he went to her, unsure what to say to a woman who was kneeling silently on the floor, looking like a too-pale carved statue of blank stillness. He watched her, making sure she didn't go into shock, or keel over dead like a terrified rabbit, but he didn't move toward her until she'd gotten to her feet, slightly unsteady, pupils dilated.

He came up slowly up behind her, nonthreatening, and handed her a glass of water (the cup was broken, jagged into glass teeth on one side, but he figured if she cut herself she would heal up anyway). She took it with an uneven smile, holding it in both small hands and drinking carefully out of the smooth side, steadily draining the cup until it was nearly empty.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, swishing the water around in the bottom of the glass with a slow, rhythmic turn of her hand.

"It's okay," he said, encompassing everything she could possibly be apologizing for in a blanket forgiveness, free with his amnesty.

"I should have told you before," she said. "Under pressure, I pretty much suck. It was bad enough before, and now after the whole Linderman thing…I don't know. You can't really count on me, not ever. I freeze up, or get hysterical…it gets ugly. "

"And I'm going to blow up New York City," Peter cut in. "So what? What does that have to do with anything? If you think you're getting out of this by saying you're useless, you're wrong, because we already know better."

She drained the last of the water and handed the cup back to him, looking around the rest of the room for a change of subject. "Where's Jonathan?" she asked.

"I think I saw him leave a minute ago—guess he wanted some air, after the whole near-death experience thing. I tell you, seventeen years old," he kicked a fallen lamp to the side, and it clinked sadly, hollow and broken, "he shouldn't have to deal with any of this."

"And we should?" she asked, half joking, half unfortunately serious.

"Good point," he said, catching her meaning on both levels. "Well, I'd better go find him, we'll be leaving soon."

He walked slowly down the stairs, feeling each step shudder under him, maliciously threatening to break, and found Jonathan ten feet away, snapping a cell phone shut as he approached.

"Hi," he said, coming to stand a respectful distance away from Jonathan—he wasn't sure how close he could get without the kid charging. He'd been a teenager, he knew about the madness and hormones and the sudden killing desire to be new and separate on your own two feet. He had a lot of patience for it all, given the hurricane violence of his own adolescent years. He knew that a vast majority of people came through it all right—he had, or very nearly. "Who are you calling?" he asked in the most neutral tone he had.

"No one," Jonathan lied unconcernedly—as long as Peter knew it was a lie and he knew that Peter knew it was, they could pretend that it was nothing.

"Where'd you get the phone?"

"I stole it." This had a bit of challenge in it, an underscored what are you going to do about it?

"Huh," Peter said noncommittally, deliberately foiling his confrontation. "Well, we're leaving in a few minutes, so you should probably come in."

Jonathan didn't answer, only flipped the phone deftly over his hand, showing off for Peter and the brick walls. Peter had seen better tricks, and didn't want to overstay his welcome, so he turned to go.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" Jonathan's words bounced off his back, and he turned around again, pleased that Jonathan had actually initiated conversation instead of batting his questions back at him like it was a game of badminton.

"Shoot," he said, keeping his voice low-key and his hands where Jonathan could see them.

"Why'd you save me?"

"Because you're the most angry, deliberately obnoxious person I've ever met and there's got to be a reason for it," he said, wondering belatedly if he should have lied a little, but too far in to pull back without hurting someone anyway. "I'm curious about you, and I don't think the autopsy table is going to tell me what I want to know. Why? Do you think I shouldn't have?"

"You could have died."

Peter shrugged, shoulders moving under his thin cotton shirt, apathy in action. "Something's got to kill you, right? There are lamer ways to die."

Jonathan chose to implement another one of his rebellious silences, his eyes guttering with fought traces of light. "Come inside," Peter said, tired of being sounding board and camp counselor for every person who wandered across his life. "We're about to leave."

"Any chance you'll tell me where we're going?" Jonathan asked.

"New York City," Peter told him. "Don't worry, you'll fit right in."

---

"Is it in this room?"

Peter shifted on his feet, grinning and carefully not looking at his chosen object. "Yes it is."

"Is it on someone?" Claire looked down the line stretching between her and the security checkpoint, studying the annoyed, impatient people as they put backpacks through scanners and walked through metal detectors.

Peter chewed on his lip, deciding. "I guess you could say that."

"Is it blue?"

"Definitely not."

"Is it orange?"

"Why, yes. Yes it is."

"Is it that lady's hair?" Claire asked triumphantly, loud enough that the woman in question turned around, glaring at them from her formidable, chicken-skeleton height.

"Shh!" Peter said, putting his hand over Claire's mouth and dragging her behind Nathan. "Yes, it is, but not so loud. You win."

She appreciated Peter distracting her—she had been able to tell instantly what he was doing, but that didn't stop it working wonders for her nerves. Everyone in their group was various levels of twitchy, with the raw overdeveloped reflexes of people who are often attacked—Vietnam veterans and Presidents and victims of domestic abuse—only she had the benefit of Peter to get her mind off it all. Televisions glowed insistently in the background, playing news that none of them were interested in, and only made them twitchier with their noise. Somewhere along the line, they'd all become prey, hunters turned to hunted as the list of their predators grew too long to cope with. How, she wondered, were they supposed to go about saving a world that so clearly wanted them dead? Had this world no sense of self-preservation at all?

Her dad slipped into line beside her and took her hand in his. She looked up at him, his profile cutting against the wash-out lights from the ceiling, and she felt immediately better. Here was the one hunter that would never sheathe his claws, never drop his gun. When she'd first learned of the other side of her dad, the ugly ruthlessness he'd hidden from her, she'd been frightened and horrified, entitled suburban sensibilities shocked. Now that she'd seen more of life and small minds, she found that side of him reassuring. Her father would do what was necessary, always and without hesitation. How many daughters could say that?

A gray-clad airport security man tapped Peter on the shoulder, eyes shaded to invisibility beneath his unflattering cap. "Sir, could you step this way, please?"

Peter shot a troubled look at Nathan, complying with too-obvious reluctance. "Um, sure," he said uneasily, following the guard out of line.

"This doesn't look good," Nathan said tensely, drumming his fingers against the side of his leg. He glanced back at everyone else, and found Claire standing stunned, looking as if something very heavy had just fallen on her head, staring at the television set that was blinking and talking and breaking new, terrible news. The anchor made overdone surprised faces and flirted with her co-anchor while the words crawled across their chests in yellow letters: SUPERPOWERED FUGITIVES AT LARGE IN LAS VEGAS.

"Hey guys," Claire said, sounding dazed enough to fall or faint. "We're on TV."