OK, folks, here it is. Chapter 3. Claire says goodbye to her old life, and plots the assault on Primatech. Some Clach. Please read & review.
Also, I should credit Couch Baron of for his recap of "How to Stop an Exploding Man?" which I used as a reference when writing Chapter 1.
Yes, I did take down this chapter and repost it. I found a serious typo, so I changed it.
February 14
I arrived at last. After nearly three months of walking and hitchhiking, I had come home to Odessa. So much had changed. Nearly everything that was familiar to me was gone, but Odessa held the last fragments of my old life. And if I had a home, it was here. I had been raised here. I had gone to school here. I had learned of my powers here. And I had died here, if only temporarily.
I stopped by my house. It had been repaired, and there was a "For Sale" sign up. Apparently, the bank had foreclosed on the house. I was saddened by the fact that my house was no longer my own, but I was hardly going to move back in.
The door was locked, but I remembered where we kept the emergency key in the backyard. I dug it out from behind the angel statue, and opened the back door. Yes, I was breaking and entering, but this was once my house.
The house layout had not been changed, but the furniture had been replaced. I slowly walked through the kitchen and living room, letting memories wash over me. I remembered sitting on the couch with my newborn brother when I was three. I remembered meeting my fake parents. I remembered finding my mother passed out in the kitchen. And I remembered tranquilizing Ted Sprague as he burned our house.
I went upstairs to my room. As seemed to be the pattern in the house, it was still a bedroom – but the furniture was different. I remembered Zach climbing through my window to 'rescue' me. I remembered sitting on my bed calling anyone in Kermit with the surname Gordon. I remembered waking up after being shot by Parkman, and spitting the bullet out.
I spent the night there. I had lived there for nearly all my life – it only made sense for me to say goodbye.
April 15
I went to the cemetery in the morning. As I expected, a funeral for my mother and brother had been held in my absence. Presumably, all their blood relatives had come instead. I brought a bouquet of flowers to place on their grave.
Near the end of the cemetery, there was a large granite tombstone. It was designed for two people, but there were three names:
SANDRA BENNET NOAH BENNET LYLE BENNET
LOVING WIFE & MOTHER DEVOTED HUSBAND & FATHER BELOVED SON
1969-2006 1966-2006 1995-2006
It made sense, after all. My father's body had been obliterated, so he could never be buried. But he would have wanted to be buried with his wife and son. So they had put his name on the tombstone as well.
I sat by my family's grave for several minutes. I thought about death. I had experienced death three times. The first time, Brody had accidentally impaled my skull on a branch. I had awoken on an autopsy table, and gotten quite a shock when I saw my chest cut open for autopsy. I had pulled my skin back together before stealing a lab coat and sneaking home.
The second time was when Matt Parkman and Ted Sprague burst into my house. Sprague had been holding a gun to Mom's head, and was about to kill her. I had mentally urged Parkman to shoot me instead, and he obliged. I had awoken on my bed a few minutes later.
The third time was when Peter exploded, and I was totally incinerated. I had awoken hours later in the water off of Brooklyn. After swimming to shore, I had stolen some clothes and supplies from a sporting goods store before walking to Staten Island.
I don't remember what it was like to be dead. The best description I can come up with is that it is like being knocked out. I don't recall seeing a light, or my life flashing before my eyes. Maybe because each death was only temporary. I would die again, in all likelihood. But permanent death would be an experience I would never share.
Before leaving the cemetery, I stopped by Jackie's grave. Jackie's family had a private plot, surrounded by a fence. Stepping past the graves of her family, I read the inscription on Jackie's tombstone:
JACQUELINE WILCOX
CHERISHED DAUGHTER
1992-2006
I looked at the other graves. They were all much older – Jackie's family had lived in Texas for generations. One grave bore a Confederate flag. I studied the dates, and a grim fact emerged. The last grave before Jackie's had been dug in 1990. None of the dates overlapped with her life. The first funeral the Wilcox family had held here since Jackie's birth had been Jackie's.
I left a single flower at Jackie's grave. I walked out of the cemetery, glad that I had been able to say goodbye to my family – and to Jackie.
Originally, I had planned to stop by Zach's place. He was pretty much the only friend I had left alive.
When I had discovered my abilities, Zach was the person I confided in. He had made the tapes for me. He helped me appreciate my powers, and he became my closest friend. Had Sylar not shown up at homecoming, he would have been my date.
Then the Haitian erased Zach's memories of me. But I got him back as a friend. He helped me find my biological mother. And with my family dead or disowned, he was all I had left.
I wanted to see him again so badly. But as I approached his house, I realized that I couldn't put him at risk. I was going to go after the Company, and I didn't want him to suffer the same fate as my family. Zach was the only person alive I could trust.
I was about to leave, when Zach opened the front door.
"Claire?"
"Zach!"
All my worries collapsed when I saw Zach. I ran up to Zach and hugged him. I hadn't seen a friendly face since Peter exploded. When you go that long without friendship, you get lonely.
"Where have you been?" he asked.
How could I answer that? How could I explain everything that had happened over the past four months?
"Well, you'd better come in." He guided me inside, and I sat down on his couch.
I started talking. I told Zach everything that had happened since I had last seen him, starting with the day Ted Sprague and Matt Parkman burst into our home. I told him about my trip to New York, meeting my biological family, the explosion, the aftermath, and my three-month hike from Massachusetts to Texas. When I was done, he stared at me. Then he hugged me.
"You've been through so much," he whispered. "Where are you going to go next?"
"First, I want to visit the school once more. Then I'm going to attack Primatech, and get answers however I can."
Zach seemed to ponder this for a moment. Before he could respond, I cut him off.
"No, you are NOT coming with me!"
"You need help. How are you going to get to Primatech – walk?"
"Possibly. I know for certain that I'm not taking your car." I took a breath. "I am not putting you at risk!"
"Then let me help you think this whole thing through? How are you going to get answers? Do you even know what your questions are?"
"I want to know who carried out the hit on my parents – and who gave the order."
Zach grabbed his laptop, which I noticed was already on – he must have been working on it when he saw me. He opened up Word, and typed:
- Who carried out hit on parents
- Who gave order
-
He looked at me.
"Is that all you want to know?"
I thought for a moment. "I want to know who runs the organization."
He wrote that down, then looked at me again.
"I want to know how big the organization is. I know that they had another facility in New York. I doubt that their one other location apart from New York would be Odessa."
"OK, so you know what you want. Now, how are you going to carry out this plan of yours?"
We spent the next several hours plotting my assault on Primatech. First, we needed the layout. Zach pulled the complete blueprints to the factory off the city planning website. The designs included at least three subterranean levels, labeled either 'storage', 'administrative offices', or 'tornado shelter'. Nothing suspicious, until I noticed that many of the 'storage' rooms on the lower two levels had doors too small for big luggage carts, there were 'administrative offices' on all three levels as well as the ground floor (where Dad's office was), and the 'tornado shelter' could hold twice as many people as actually worked at Primatech.
"So what I want is underground," I mused, munching a piece of pizza. Zach's parents were out that night, so he had ordered Dominos.
"Yeah, but in what form?" Zach asked. When I looked at him, he clarified, "I mean, are they going to have some kind of computer database?"
"You don't think so?"
He thought for a moment. "Well, actually, it would make sense. I mean, they're going to need this information in an easy-to-access format. If the CIA has a giant database, why not these guys?"
"It's probably got tons of protection."
"I doubt they're planning on anyone getting down to those levels. They won't need anything more than a password or two – and I can get through that."
"You're not coming."
He slumped.
"But," I added, "the people there know the passwords."
"And you think they'll tell you?"
I gave him an iron glare, and raised a flaming hand. He gulped, and I quenched the flames.
"Well, you could also try and steal a hard drive or two. Then you could bring it back to me and I could hack it for you."
I laughed.
By the time we were done, it was very late. Zach asked me where I was planning to sleep.
"Do you have a guest room?"
Zach shook his head. "We don't have many house guests. And my parents will freak out if they see you on the couch."
"Yeah, that wouldn't be good."
"Say, you have a sleeping bag with you, right?"
"Yeah."
"How about my room? You can sleep on the floor."
"And what happens when your parents come in and find me?"
"My parents haven't come into my room for a long time. They try to give me my privacy."
I envied Zach. Yes, my dad had been trying to protect me when he kept tabs the way he did, stealing tapes and all, but it would have been nice to have some privacy.
"OK."
As had been my habit for the past several months, I slept in my clothes. But I was still sleeping in the same room as a boy whom I had asked to be my date a few months ago. There was the tense feeling of wanting to be close but not too close to him. He was, after all, the only person in the world who could be called my boyfriend.
I fell asleep thinking about Zach. Was he a connection to my old life? On the one hand, I had known him for years. On the other hand, I had only become friends with him after discovering my powers. And now he was helping me in my new life. We had just spent eight hours plotting a terrorist attack. He hadn't tried to stop me – I had to stop him from coming with me.
I loved Zach. Not necessarily in the romantic fashion, but as a friend. Out of all the people in the world, I could depend on him.
Well, that had a lot more Zach than I originally planned. This is also the longest chapter yet by a few hundred words. If you're wondering what will happen in the future:
Zach and Claire falling in love? Quite possibly.
Zach providing Claire with hacker skills? Definitely.
Large body counts and burning paper factories? Coming in Chapter 4.