Disclaimer: I don't Heroes, and the fundamental concept of this story was inspired by rain and leaves' "Four Months Later" and is used with his permission
Feedback: I'd like it, trust me
A Leap to Safety
It was only when Claire opened her eyes and looked at her surroundings that she realised that things had changed around them. One moment they were standing in a deserted warehouse filled with all kinds of assorted junk that apparently had nothing in common with everything else in the room apart from the fact that it all seemed to be really old, and the next…
Claire might have never been there herself- when she'd last been to New York she'd been more concerned with tracking down Peter and then Ted, causing her to focus her time between either Kirby Plaza or the Petrelli's house-, but she didn't need to be a native New Yorker to recognise Times Square.
The only problem with this current sight was that it was a Times Square that was totally deserted, lacking any trace of the people who should have been in the square under normal circumstances. The usual advertising signs for various upcoming and currently-showing Broadway productions were visible on the various buildings around them, but most of the electronic signs that should have been advertising food, drinks, or upcoming TV shows where all turned off; even the traffic-lights immediately next to them weren't working. Continuing the impression of nobody being present here, the street corners were each filled with large piles of garbage bags, giving the impression that people had just thrown them away without anybody being present to pick them up afterwards, while various pieces of paper lay scattered around them as they stood on the pavement.
"Oh my God…" Claire said, staring in shock at their new location. "We're in New York…"
"What the… New York?" Peter repeated, looking over at Claire incredulously. "We in Montreal a few seconds ago; how did we get here?"
"Well… you already knew you could teleport; you must have… I don't know, subconsciously decided to try it out?" Claire suggested, shrugging her shoulders uncertainly. "I mean, you did say that you wanted to know where to go…"
"Hold on…" Peter said, turning around to crouch down and pick up one of the pieces of paper that Claire had noticed earlier, subsequently holding it out so that Claire could read what it said.
She didn't even need to read the smaller print at the bottom of the page; the large print at the top- beginning with thick white text in a red box and followed by similarly-sized black words underneath it- provided all the answers they needed.
EVACUATION NOTICE
JUNE 14th, 2008
MANDATED EVACUATION ORDER
June 14th, 2008, Claire repeated in her head, looking up at Peter as the implications of this latest discovery hit her (The 'Evacuation' thing was a point for concern, of course, but right now the date was the main issue they now had to deal with as far as she could see).
"Oh my God…" she whispered, half to Peter and half to herself. "We… we're in the future…"
"After something happened that made people evacuate the whole of New York…" Peter muttered, swallowing slightly as he looked grimly at the buildings around them. "We definitely have a problem…"
For a moment, the two of them simply stared silently around at the streets, trying to spot some sign of another human being in the area, before Peter sighed and turned to look at Claire.
"Well," he said, a slightly uncertain expression on his face, "guess… all we can do is look around."
"Yeah…" Claire said, nodding slightly in response, before the two began to walk down the nearest street.
"So," Claire said after a moment's pause, glancing over at Peter curiously, "sensing anything yet?"
"'Sensing'?" Peter repeated, looking uncertainly at her.
"Y'know," the former cheerleader said, shrugging uncertainly, "I just wondered if you'd… well, if you'd picked up anything with Officer Parkman's mind-reading or something like that…"
She knew that it was almost hypocritical of her, really- after spending so long worrying about Peter picking up something he shouldn't if he did access that power, here she was wondering if he could use it now-, but with the situation being what it was, Officer Parkman's telepathy was the only thing she could think of that they could use to find somebody else (There was the power of that Molly girl her father had told her about- she'd apparently been there during the Kirby Plaza incident; she was supposedly able to find anyone she wanted-, but she wasn't sure about asking Peter to access a power that, as far as she knew, he hadn't used already).
"Not yet," Peter said, shaking his head apologetically as he smiled slightly at her, cutting off Claire's train of thought as she turned back to look at him. "I gave it a shot, but… well, I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong or what, but I'm not getting anything."
"Nuts…" Claire muttered, shaking her head in frustration as she looked up at the nearest building, sighing slightly at the lack of activity around her. "God… what could have caused all this?"
"Yeah…" Peter said, looking grimly up at another building before he turned back to look at her. "Look, maybe I should just try and send us back; we're not-"
Before Peter could finish that sentence, an armoured car of some kind suddenly drove out of a nearby side-street, sirens blaring as it halted in front of them. Peter and Claire barely had time to register what had just taken place before four men dressed in what looked like haz-mat gear- yellow full-body suits that included a helmet with a large visor and left nothing uncovered- jumped out of the car's doors and ran towards them.
"Over there," one of the men said, grabbing Peter by the shoulders and dragging him off to one side, away from Claire, before Peter could even think about trying to use one of his abilities. "Get on the ground. Get on the ground now!"
As he lay on the ground, Peter vaguely registered the sound of what could only be Claire as she hit the ground with a slightly muffled thump; Peter was willing to guess that she'd hit the trash bags they'd seen earlier rather than hitting the ground itself, but right
"Do you have any symptoms?" Peter vaguely heard one man yell at Claire.
"Are you sick?" one of the men currently holding Peter down asked him.
"Sick?" Peter repeated, staring in confusion up at the man before him. "What the hell's going on?"
As a gas mask was forced onto Peter's face, he wondered if it would make any difference if he'd told them that they couldn't have any symptoms- with Claire's ability to heal from injuries, he somehow doubted that either of them would ever have to worry about illness again-, but then he found himself hauled roughly to his feet
"Take them to decontamination!" one of the men- Peter couldn't be sure who; everything was happening too quickly for him to identify who was saying what any more- yelled as the two of them were dragged away. "Now!"
Even as he was dragged into the back of the car, Peter could only keep his eyes fixed on Claire as they were thrust into the back of the car, wishing and praying that he could gain enough control to figure out how to teleport them both back to the past before something even worse happened to them…
As he stared grimly at the building below him, his arms folded as he waited semi-patiently for Claire and the Old Guy- he didn't know the guy's name and he was at least a decade older than Claire; 'Old Guy' seemed like the best term for him right now- to find whatever they'd come here for and leave, West glanced impatiently at his watch once again.
He couldn't believe it; how could anybody spend this long looking around a bunch of boxes? He'd taken a brief peek inside the building once he'd seen where they were going- just a quick glance through the windows after they'd turned the lights on before he flew away once again; he hadn't wanted to give himself away too early, after all-, and all he'd seen inside the place was a bunch of old crap that looked like nobody had touched it for at least a couple of decades; what could be so fascinating about that?
After around twenty minutes had passed without any sign of activity at any of the doors- what kind of moron came to a place like this without a clear idea of what they were looking for; surely the Old Guy would have found what he'd been looking for here if he'd been after anything?-, West took a chance and, after a quick glance around to make sure nobody could see him, dived down to peek in at the window he'd used earlier…
Only to see nobody inside.
The warehouse wasn't that large- he could see everything inside the main storage area fairly easily from where he was currently looking at it-, and the way he was positioned he could easily see enough over the tops of the piles to see the Old Guy if he was standing up, but there wasn't any sign of him…
Hell, West couldn't even hear any sign of somebody being in the place (He freely acknowledged that his hearing wasn't exceptionally sharp or anything like that, but the glass he was looking through wasn't that thick); what was going on here?
After a couple more minutes of silent observation had revealed nothing, West made his decision; lowering himself to the ground in a nearby alley- he wasn't going to draw any more attention to himself than he had to-, and then walked over to the door, taking a last quick look at his surroundings before he opened the door and slipped inside the building, quickly raising himself a few inches off the ground to prevent his footsteps giving him away.
If he was just being paranoid, he'd prefer to give as few clues about his presence as possible; at least if he floated, he wouldn't make any sound as he walked or something like that…
In the end, however, it didn't take long for West to determine that his attempts at 'stealth' were pointless; he 'flew'- 'levitated' had always sounded kind of stupid to him- all the way up to the highest point in the warehouse to try and get a better look at the room he was currently in, but he still failed to see any sign of Claire or the Old Guy.
Hell, there weren't even any boxes large enough for them to be hiding in or giving any sign that they'd been opened recently enough for that to be an option; it was as though Claire and the Old Guy had stepped into this place and then…
Vanished.
"What the hell…?" West muttered to himself, lowering himself back down to the ground as he stared around at the multitude of boxes surrounding him in confusion. "What's going on here; where are they…?"
"More to the point," a voice with a slight accent said from behind West, accompanied by the faint sound of footsteps, "what the hell are you doing here?"
Spinning around in shock at the sound of the voice- he must have been concentrating so much on trying to see something that he'd missed hearing the door open when this guy entered-, West barely had time to register a tall man with short fair hair and blue eyes standing behind him before his vision was filled with a fist hurtling towards his face, accompanied by the gleam of something shining on the fingers…
Then he felt something strike him in the chest with an unpleasant cracking sound, sharp pain overwhelming his senses as he collapsed, and West knew that he suddenly had bigger things to worry about than Claire's weird disappearance.
"You see," the man said, West only just able to see the speaker as he squeezed his eyes half-shut against the pain that now dominated his senses, "I had to go to a lot of effort to get here, and I have just spent the last few days waiting around for Peter to show up, only to find when he does get here that he's vanished into thin air- possibly with Carp's power, which means I don't know when he'll be back-, leaving me with some kid who doesn't know his place."
"Hey…" West gasped, glaring weakly up at the man before him even as he gasped for air while trying to figure out what the guy was talking about (Was 'Peter' Old Guy's real name?). "I… fly… ass… hole…"
"Oh, shut up," the man said, following his statement up with another punch- what was this guy wearing on his hands; West was sure he felt something break with that last hit- that sent West to the ground once again, blood now pouring from his nose over his lips and his vision unfocused, to say nothing of his sense of smell having seemingly nearly vanished. "I've got bigger things to worry about than some kid who can hover around a bit; I have to find Peter…"
West couldn't believe it; not only did the Old Guy have Claire fawning all over him like some pathetic kid- how could she go for that weirdo over him; at least he was her age!-, but now this creep was saying that West wasn't worth his effort because he wanted the Old Guy?
Even as the part of his brain that wasn't blinded by pain noted that he was being ridiculous about this- how could he be complaining that he wasn't interesting enough for a guy who was beating the crap out of him?-, West, enraged at being ignored, forced himself off the ground and began to charge towards the creep who'd just attacked him…
Only for the man to whirl around, duck under his initial assault like it was nothing, and then follow it up with a quick punch to West's stomach even as he flew above the other guy. The force of the blow not only left West with a serious pain in his stomach- if that last hit hadn't cracked a rib or two he'd be really surprised-, but it forced him out of the air and into a nearby box, his body suddenly so stricken with pain that he couldn't concentrate enough to stay in the air. Pain flooding through his brain, West barely had time to register the strange man approaching him before a new round of pain tore through his body, causing some part of him to briefly conclude that now might not be the time to remain conscious before the rest of him caught on to that fact, blackness taking over West's brain as the new arrival launched another kick at him…
