Sorry for the long wait on the update. I've had some issues with writer's block on this one that I had to work my way through. Thanks again for all the great reviews! 17 for the last chapter so yet another new record! There have been a few questions that came up which I really can't answer without giving away some major plot points, but I had already promised an Elle appearance before for someone that will be coming up in the future. And yes, the rabbit hole is deep for almost all characters involved. There was definitely a reason why the song "Cry Little Sister" inspired this fic. Without further ado, here's chapter 20. Hope you enjoy!

March 25, 2006

'My work with the human genome project has uncovered the fact that tiny variations in our species' genetic code are taking place at an increasingly rapid rate. This should come as no surprise. So-called evolution is just that - evolving. It is an ongoing process with no beginning and no end. As the world around us changes due to technology, shifts in environmental patterns, overcrowded living conditions, war, disease, and hundreds of other seen and unseen factors, mankind reacts, mankind changes.

'We evolve.

'Currently, mankind uses less than a tenth of his brain power; there are even those that believe we use much less than that. And though the human brain is the most remarkable mechanism we know of on earth, it is still highly inefficient and can only interpret the most obvious and base of senses: sight, smell, sound, passion, fear. But add a mere additional two neural pathways and the brain could interpret wavelengths at a frequency a thousand times greater than our current capacity, giving us the ability to hear each other's thoughts.

'What else could the human brain and body achieve with the subtlest changes in biochemistry? Teleportation, levitation, instantaneous tissue regeneration, precognition, telekinesis, and even invisibility are well within the realm of possibility. Could it even be happening already?

'I believe that it is.'

"You have no idea just how right you are, Dr. Suresh," Gabriel spoke to himself in the quiet of his shop. He still couldn't shake the image of Claire's healing ability from his mind. Even though he hadn't really wanted to cut into her hand, watching her body sew itself back together flawlessly was undoubtedly the most beautiful thing that he could have ever imagined. She could never be hurt. Never grow sick or old. Never die. She couldn't even feel pain, but pleasure on the other hand… A devious smirk curled in the corner of his mouth.

She was perfect in every sense of the word.

"Gabriel? What are you up to back here?" And there she was, leaning against the doorframe to his work room appearing every bit of the golden haired angel that he saw her as.

"Uh," he looked down at the book in his hands and firmly closed it. "Just working on a surprise." Gabriel covertly slid his copy of Activating Evolution into a desk drawer before spinning his chair around to face her.

"A surprise?" she smiled seductively, walking over to him. "What kind of surprise?"

"The kind that wouldn't be very surprising if I told you about it," he responded with a mischievous eye roll.

"I see," she laughed, leaning to give him a peck. "Well, I was going to be nice and bring you lunch, but if you're just going to be keeping secrets from me…" Claire started to turn to walk away. She didn't even get to take a full step before Gabriel's arms shot out to seize her by the waist and pulled her down into his lap.

"Why, how very kind of you, Ms. Bennet." He pulled the brown paper sack out of her hand and dropped it off on his desk top with a wicked grin. "I'll be sure to devour every," kiss, "delicious," kiss, "bite right away!"

"Ah! Gabriel!" she squealed, helplessly kicking her feet into the air when he made a prompt attempt to consume her neck. "I am not on the menu!"

"I disagree." Gabriel picked her up effortlessly and sat her down on the end of the desk, bending over her until she was practically laying down on the polished surface. "You're quite edible," he added with a devilish wagging of his eyebrows.

"What's gotten into you?" she asked with a shy smile of suppressed delight.

"You." He grabbed her by the hips and gave her body a sharp tug so that her bottom balanced precariously on the edge of the desk and her legs could wrap around him, bringing their bodies into a dangerous sense of proximity. Goosebumps excitedly prickled over her skin when his mouth enthusiastically attacked all of the points that he knew would drive her into a hormonally charged frenzy.

"If I knew that," she gasped, drawing a hiss of air through her teeth, "telling you I was a freak would make it like this…" Claire grasped the back of his neck to draw him even closer with a shiver. "I would have done it so much sooner."

Gabriel stopped short in his manipulations and captured her jaw to bring her attention back to him. "You are not a freak," he enunciated clearly, holding back on the harsh tone that wanted to leak into his voice. "You're… perfect." He released her face to continue his progress down her neck, failing to notice that her intentions had faded from lust to worried contemplation. "You're beautiful," he murmured into her skin as a calloused hand slipped over her stomach. "And strong… Not like the others." He rolled against her suggestively before taking a leg and bracing it on his chest. "Special," he added, giving her sharp nip on the inside of her thigh. "And… really too short for this." They both examined the awkward position that he had worked them into with a burst of laughter, biological logistics clearly putting a few restrictions on their love life.

"Probably for the best," Claire giggled, pulling her legs down from him to sit up. "Somebody could walk in and see us." Or we could be caught on camera…

The way he quirked a brow at her made her internally question whether Gabriel would have had a problem with that scenario. "I could close. It is my lunch break after all."

"Gabriel, have you been looking at dirty magazines again?"

"No!" he instantly denied with a bright cherry blush creeping into his cheeks. He dove back into her neck to take a deep pull of her scent. "Why would I need something like that when I have the real thing waiting for me at home?"

"Uh huh. Nice try."

He groaned in defeat while still being concealed in her hair. "In my defense they can be quite creative. I thought that maybe we could borrow a few ideas…" A pair of lost puppy brown eyes rolled up to look at her. "I want to keep you happy."

"You want to keep me happy?" Claire laced her fingers through his hair. "Be yourself. Just be Gabriel." He nodded despondently and she lifted his chin to press their lips together, heightening his spirits again. "So, exactly how much thought did you put into that little plan?"

"Apparently not enough," he noted with closely drawn brows after catching on to her insinuation. "I guess I'll have to start packing some provisions in my wallet like all the other boys."

"Or you could, you know, actually close up and come home at a descent hour," she suggested with a playful peck for the end of his nose. Gabriel hadn't been returning to the apartment that they shared before midnight for the entire week since the revelation of her ability. Claire couldn't deny that she was worried by the growing distance between them with the increasing amount of time spent apart. However, it was given a sharp contrast by the way he would incessantly cling to her when they were together. He always had to be touching her, holding her hand, kissing her, telling her how wonderful she was. Not that those things in any way really bothered her, but there was something in the level of adoration that he showered her with that was different somehow from what it had been before. Something about him had changed, was still in the process of changing. She could sense it in the air about him, feel it in his presence. See it in his eyes when he looked at her.

And yet, there didn't seem to be any way to tell what it was that Gabriel was up to. Claire and the Haitian had spent hours every evening watching his movements over the shop's video feed. He would work through his usual routine of tinkering and cleaning, but more and more he would just sit in his work room out of sight of the camera reading, or remain in a statuesque position of quiet thought. All harmless enough activities since he never left the store, but it was the way he behaved when he did come home that she found the most unsettling.

Claire would typically depart the Haitian's side for home around nine when the day's fatigue would catch up with her and she felt that she could barely keep her bleary eyes open. In the wee hours of the morning she would wake to find Gabriel, having silently entered, undressed, and crawled into bed with her, watching her sleep while his fingers drew paths over her exposed skin. His dark eyes seemed to take in every inch of her form at once, piercing through her to study the metaphysical beyond. It was even more unnerving when he wasn't simply watching her.

On a few nights she had woke to the feel of his lips on hers, his hands roaming to explore her body. Upon noticing her abrupt alertness he would roll over her and press her down into the mattress so that she was firmly pinned beneath his weight before hoisting her legs to wrap around him. He had barely hesitated to enter her, vigorously making love to her with some fresh source of passion. Claire still felt confident that had she wholeheartedly resisted in any way that Gabriel would have immediately stopped what he was doing, but his increasing aggression was far from going unnoticed.

Her stomach growled and he chuckled quietly, withdrawing from her to pick up the brown paper sack holding their lunch. Gabriel made a strange face when he pulled out a package of coconut snowballs. "Oh, those are for me," Claire explained, snatching the processed snack food from his grasp along with a bag of cheese puffs and chicken strips. "The sandwich is for you."

He pulled another face watching her rip open the wrapping of the coconut snowballs and take a healthy bite. "You hate coconut," he blurted out. "Anything coconut…"

"I know," she grumbled with her mouth full. "I don't know why they sounded so good today, but I just had to have one."

Gabriel shook his head at her, muttering something along the lines of I don't get it. "I don't suppose it would do any good to lecture you about the junk that you're putting in your body right now," he chided her after a few minutes of eating in silence, taking careful note of how she had reserved the junk food for herself while packing more sensible foods for him.

"Nope," she replied flippantly, smirking a touch as she took another bite of the fried chicken.

"Of course, I don't suppose it matters for you does it? Not like you'll ever have to worry about cholesterol or heart disease." But I do and she knows it. Claire happily continued to pack her mouth with obscene amounts of food while he looked on past his own lunch. Gabriel was darkly staring at her again the way he did in the night. In the ticks and tocks of the watch shop she could almost feel the wheels turning behind his eyes with mechanical ideas as his gaze settled on her midsection, an eyebrow slowly ascending after a moment's study. "You can gain weight though."

Claire spluttered her soda ready to protest his observation when he was suddenly right in front of her again holding a finger to her mouth for quiet. "Your waistline has increased by 6.36 centimeters in diameter." She nipped at his finger grouchily so he allowed the palm of his hand to slide over her belly. Leaning in to whisper in her ear with a lowered voice he added, "I kind of like it." A shiver rippled through her body as he continued to caress the skin on her stomach. "Your skin is so sensitive."

"Gabriel," she gasped his name when he reattached his mouth to her neck. The moment was wrong. Everything about it felt forced rather natural as though it wasn't her sweet Gabriel pulling the strings. She tensed up under him, pressing her palms against his chest in an unspoken signal to stop what he was doing. He pulled away far enough to turn the full force of his puppy brown eyes on her in an expression of hurt, shooting her with an inexplicable pang of guilt.

"Still not feeling well?" he asked, sweeping a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"I'm fine," she promised. "I'm just tired. I think I'll head home and take a nap."

"Alright." He gave her a sincere smile. When she started to leave he latched onto her wrist, spinning her back to him. Taking the back of her neck he insisted on gaining her eye contact. "You know I love you, right?"

"Of course I do."

"Good." His lips hovered over hers, gaining acceptance of the motion before bestowing a light kiss and releasing her to leave. "I'll be home early tonight. I promise."

She's leaving me. She doesn't even know it yet, but she's going to leave me. Claire hadn't left Gray and Sons for more than a minute, Gabriel watching her pass by the front window, before he picked up the phone and dialed the number that Dr. Suresh had left in his book.

"Hey," she called, opening the door of the Primatech van that waited down the block from the watch shop. The Haitian turned from the monitor that he had been watching. "Keep a careful eye on him tonight. I…" she faltered, trying to find a way to communicate the thoughts that reluctantly clung to the back of her mind. "There's something going on with him and I don't know what it is." René nodded in quiet agreement. Claire was about to slid the door shut again when she paused, looking back to her dark skinned partner. "Why do I always have the feeling that you know something I don't?" He simply gave her a look that had her shaking her head. "Right."

René turned back to his screen once the girl was gone, quirking a brow for the scene awaiting him. Gabriel was standing behind the counter staring intently at a watch he had placed on the glass surface. The man could have been in another one of his catatonic states of thought had he not shot forth an outstretched hand to beckon the object to him. His motion was fruitless, but none the less an indication of future prospects. "Because I do, Claire. Because I do."

"So, what? You're going to cut me open?" Gabriel asked in an attempt at humor upon sighting Chandra's open medical text.

"I'd like to run some tests," the scientist laughed, pouring himself a cup of tea. "EEG, EKG, nothing invasive. A friend at Columbia has access to an MRI." Chandra gestured for them to have a seat at his desk in front of a series of maps boasting colored strands of yarn connecting photos of other potentials.

"Mapping the brain?"

"Measuring alpha waves, resting rates, neuron clusters," he explained taking his seat. "The brain controls every human action. Voluntary or involuntary. Every breath, every heartbeat. Every emotion. If the soul exists, scientifically speaking, it exists in the brain." Gabriel listened intently to every word that the other man spoke, finding an irrefutable sense of logic in the theory.

He smiled, joining his counterpart. "When I was a kid I used to wish that some stranger would come and tell me that my family wasn't my family. They weren't bad people. They were just insignificant. And I wanted to be different. Special. I wanted to change. A new name. A new life. The watchmaker's son… became a watchmaker. It is so futile. And I wanted to be… important."

"You are important, Gabriel," Chandra declared excitedly.

"What do you think my abilities might be?"

"Well, it's quite difficult to say without some testing," the geneticist chuckled. "Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that has happened to you recently?" A few things actually… "Perhaps strange occurrences of objects moving without being touched, or maybe going without being noticed when faced with a particular person that you didn't want to see you?"

"No, I don't believe so. Nothing like that." Gabriel got up from his seat to wander over to Chandra's maps behind the desk, glancing over the web of strings and glossing over the photos until a specific one happened to grab his attention.

"Perhaps there is some talent that you may possess which others do not? Maybe something recently acquired? An increased sense of intuition, perception of the emotions or thoughts of those around you?"

"No, I don't think so." He reached forward to take the picture of a young girl from Texas with waves of curling blonde hair and a beaming smile into his fingers. Suresh stood to note what his subject had found so interesting, peering around Gabriel's shoulder to the image that he held.

"Ah, Miss Claire Bennet. Do you know her?"

He instantly dropped his grasp on the picture, snapping his attention back to the scientist at his side. "No, I'm afraid I don't. She's very beautiful."

Chandra gave him a brief look of reproach before shaking it off. "Yes, I'm sure she'll be a lovely young woman when she comes of age. She's barely fifteen at this time though." Gabriel didn't miss out on the subtle tone of disapproval in the doctor's voice.

Fifteen? His tongue felt like a wad of cotton shoved into the sudden dryness of his mouth. He clutched at his stomach for a moment, feeling the acid rise in the back of his throat as his gut turned over. But it was too late. He already loved her and regardless of her true age, which seemed quite arguable by that point in time, he couldn't just let her go. At least her father hasn't come back to kill me yet. I guess it's a good thing that I asked to meet him.

"If you don't mind I would like to take a blood sample for analysis this afternoon."

"That sounds like a fine idea," he agreed, the other man's voice bringing him out of his reverie again. "I think you'll find that I'm very eager to get started." Anything to discover whatever power I have. Anything to keep her. God, I really am going to hell. Pervert.

Chandra left the room to retrieve his kit for taking the blood sample allowing Gabriel enough time to pluck Claire's picture from the map and shove it into his back pocket. He felt that she had a valid reason for wanting to keep her ability a secret and he would do whatever was necessary to help her maintain that.

To be continued...