The city is burning/
The ocean is turning/
Our only chance is the lighthouse/

It was Ted Sprague. Ted Sprague was walking into the White House.

As soon as Peter could electrify his heart back to life, he had only one thought, flashing neon in his mind in fifty-foot letters: STOP TED SPRAGUE. He began struggling as he hadn't before, trying to pull away from the policemen, who immediately jumped back in guarded startlement as they remembered the footage they'd seen on the news. He could feel their guns on him, and the red flickering dots of sniper sights from a distance, and in hopelessness and desperation he even tried appealing to his brother.

"Nathan!" he yelled. "Nathan, let me go, you don't understand—"

"I understand as much as I want to, Pete," Nathan said coolly, arms crossed and blending perfectly with the backdrop of marble and history as if he were born for photo ops, pictures in textbooks and under headlines. Politician. Future President. I belong here. Vote Petrelli.

"No," Peter said furiously. "You don't—Ted Sprague, Nathan, he's—"

"I know, Peter," Nathan said sharply. "You think you have to save the world, I get it. Well, guess what—you don't. The sun's going to come up tomorrow without you carrying it, okay? Get over yourself."

Peter gave an angry half-snarl in response, too frantic to argue semantics with Nathan. He wanted to explode, to burst all to hell and go after Ted, but he kept remembering scenes in comic books when the hero did impressive things like that—even as a child, he'd wondered about the collateral damage, about whose car it was that the superhero had thrown, and who it had landed on. The people he loved were pinning him back from that kind of display, surrounding him like cardboard 'Innocent Bystander' cutouts at a shooting range.

He took a deep breath and tried precision. With a focused flick of his mind, he caught hold of what he wanted, pulling out a 'file card' and using it like a razor, melting away the links of his handcuffs. Then, before anyone could notice his new freedom, he gave a controlled shove out from himself, pushing the officers against their cars. He grabbed a gun from one of them and took one last glance back—trust-me looks for Katie and Claire, an angry look for Nathan—then sprinted for Ground Zero.

He didn't hear the yells behind him, concentrated down to destiny-driven autopilot as he skidded into the building. On some vague inspiration, he paused an instant to shift into the form of Nathan, perfect camouflage for this jungle of marble and white. People looked at him with startled alarm as he raced past them and through them, interrupted at their leisurely touring by an apparent madman with a gun. Peter barely registered them, shoved them out of the way without a thought in his drive to the center of the building.

He slid to a breathless stop at an intersection of hallways, swearing furiously under his breath, useless sixth-grade tour facts flashing through his brain. One hundred and thirty-two rooms, four hundred and twelve doors, eight staircases, three elevators. I am very lost. All he could remember was that the Oval Office was somewhere in the West Wing, but he didn't know where that was or even which was west, and every second that went past meant that things were happening that he was supposed to stop. He did a swift mental reorientation and took the left hallway, jumping over a series of velvet rope barriers (who did they think they were kidding with those things, anyway? If they wanted to keep people out they should have installed massive electrical force fields, not ropes that potential assassins could jump like subway turnstiles), trying to hone in on the most elusive of his abilities—mind-reading.

For once, he managed to grab hold of it, but it was instantly a liability as thoughts poured in like water from a broken dam, an overload of bland buzzing reflections and considerations beating through his head. He had to stop his headlong sprint under their attack, leaning against the wall for support until they subsided; as they all fell back to a manageable hush, one voice punched through the trivial tourist concerns, instantly recognizable in its brash unstable intensity. Five more steps, it said, come on, this is how you want to end it. Someone deserves to pay for this. Someone has to pay.

Peter broke back into a run, tracking the voice down the hall and into a side venue—and there it was, the scene from his dream, the soft taupe color of the walls and the fluorescent lights washing out the man walking toward the Oval Office.

Peter felt like he was walking through three feet of water, unfairly stuck in slow motion while the rest of the room was free to react. It played out exactly as he'd dreamed, the slowly growing furor, Ted grabbing onto the President in preparation for his spectacular kamikaze attack. Only one thing was different: Peter. He raised his hand coolly, suddenly leveled calm by necessity and obligation, and shot Ted Sprague, three clean shots that hit him in the back and dropped him to the carpet.

There was a split second of blank silence, of finality, and then the room exploded, Secret Service agents boiling around the President where he had fallen against his desk, arms livid with third-degree burns but alive, alive, and Peter faded back in relief. He saw his brother rushing belatedly into the room, and was suddenly struck by the problem of two Nathan Petrellis in the same room. He immediately turned himself invisible, grabbing Nathan's arm as he passed, all resentment and anger burned away by near death and near misses.

"Nathan, it's me," he whispered swiftly under his breath, hoping no one was paying attention to disembodied voices in the chaotic aftermath. "It's all right, I shot Sprague and he's not going to be blowing anything up, but I did it looking like you, I shapeshifted. You're the hero, Nathan."

"Peter—" Nathan protested, probably not out of any kind of selflessness, but Peter was wiling to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He thrust the gun into Nathan's hand and pushed him toward the door. "Go accept the medals or whatever, I don't care. I'll meet you back in New York."

As soon as Nathan moved forward, he was swallowed up by the growing crowd, Secret Service agents who wanted to get him to safety, hysterical aides who wanted to shake his hand and cry all over him. Through the uproar, Peter heard President Cordova's voice as Nathan fought to his side, saying "Nathan Petrelli! God, man, you've just saved my life—no, get off, I'm fine. Nathan, how did you ever—" He is so getting elected, Peter thought with dry amusement as he slid out the door.

It took him some time for him to locate Katie and Claire in the milling mass of people outside the White House, but only minutes to get them free from the understandably distracted cops. He melted through their cuffs with surgical precision and pulled them away from the commotion, ignoring their frantic questions until they'd gotten some way down the street.

"Peter, what happened?" Claire asked with force bordering on desperation.

He pulled her into a sudden, irrational hug, needing to touch someone and not sure how Katie would respond to an unexpected embrace. "Um," he said helplessly. "Wow, where do I even start?"

"Did we win?" Katie said with raised eyebrows, hating the oversimplification of the question but needing the core of the story as fast as possible.

Peter grinned at her phrasing, a huge communicative grin that told them the answer before he spoke. "Oh yeah," he said with satisfaction. "We won."