Chapter 7- Choices

Nathan Petrelli sighed as though he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders, and in a way he kind of did. It was 10:00am and his coffee was cold so he was left to face the pile of papers that he dreaded in less than good spirits. Not that he could ever face this daily horror with anything other than trepidation and loathing, but it was his job. Not one that he had ever asked for, mind you, but one that he had been more or less blackmailed into. Just another day as the junior Senator from New York.

He had no one to blame but himself, he thought as he reclined in his plush leather chair in his office. He looked over his Navy medals and pictures of him as a pilot that lined the walls. The young man that smiled back at him was so full of promise and hope. What had ever become of him? Somehow he had become twisted and molded by those who wanted a puppet in power to do their bidding and more and more it seemed they got what they wanted.

He never wanted it to be this way. He was no naïve rube, he grew up in a family that wielded power and called in favors at will so he knew how the game was played. He had no illusions when he ran for office that he would be untouchable, he knew how this town worked and how so much of politics was done by under the table deals, but this was something entirely different. He nervously shuffled the papers and put them back down on the desk. He just couldn't face them yet.

Although no one would ever believe him, he really did have good intentions at the start. He really did believe that if he could contain people with special abilities in a secret location he could ultimately save them. He knew it looked bad on the surface, and it appeared that he had sold them out so it was no surprise that they revolted. What did surprise him was that Bennet's involvement mucked things up even more rather than helping. To be fair, Nathan never did tell him the grand plan of political sleight of hand because rule #1 of the game was trust no one, but he would have thought that Noah would have picked up subtle hints like his repeated interventions when it came to Claire.

Claire. That was what this was all about. He looked at the papers again and noticed his heart beating a little faster. After the last house of cards collapsed, allies in the Senate and the Security Council on which he sat were looking for signs of loyalty. As far as he knew, Danko never got the chance to tell anyone what he knew- that he was one of them- so it was a little easier to operate under the radar and pull strings behind the scenes without the glare of a conflict of interest. He didn't know what really happened to Danko other than he just disappeared and frankly he didn't care. A small part of him actually hoped that Sylar had grown tired of him and turned on him as he invariably did when someone outlived their usefulness. If it wasn't for his predilection for murder, he would have made a great politician.

Because of his previous work, he was asked- check that- told he would take charge of a new initiative to wipe out those with abilities. This time, it would be a black-ops job with no accountability as to methods or budget. Nathan didn't ask too many questions because truly he didn't want to know the answers, but from what he could gather once the individual was caught, they were disposed of quickly. No scientific study, no trial, no hope of escape.

And that was why he came to hate 10:00am because everyday like clockwork a list of "Neutralized Threats" came across his desk. Everyday he had to force himself to look through the list of names of people that were alive at this time yesterday but were gone today. Everyday his hands shook as he read the names because he felt sick at being associated with wholesale murder. It reminded him of Nazi Germany exterminating Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Russians, political dissidents, and anyone else they found inferior or inconvenient. But mostly it was because he always wondered if today would be the day that he would read "Claire Bennet" or "Peter Petrelli".

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Peter stepped back from Hiro's bedside as soon as Ando arrived. He smiled faintly as he watched Ando speak to him in Japanese, likely he was too embarrassed to say what he wanted to in English but Peter knew that the important thing was that Hiro had a friend to help him through this. So much of one's recovery depended on the amount of support they had.

Peter had personally witnessed the role that willpower played in traumatic events. He had seen people who were so badly injured in a car accident that there was no way they could survive long enough to be declared DOA at the hospital, yet they did and walked out a week or two later. He had also seen people die from minor incidents like a broken arm when they just didn't want to live anymore. And of course his time as a hospice nurse taught him that death often came when the person was ready and accepted it. It was a strange thing to be sure, but he didn't have to worry about Hiro. He was very much alive and was not one to just lie down and die over something like this.

"It just looks like a migraine that resulted in a nosebleed." McCoy shrugged as he spoke with Noah and Mohinder. "It does happen sometimes when the intracranial vascular pressure builds to the point that the much smaller capillaries that line the nose break. I gave him some pain medicine that should control the migraine, but I want to keep him here for observation."

"Of course." Mohinder agreed. "But perhaps there is something you should know. I have found that this is a common presentation when people with abilities push their limits when they use their power too much or attempt something that is too difficult."

"What do you mean?" McCoy asked with a squint.

"Well, take telekinesis for example. Peter has the ability to move objects from a distance, but his ability depends on the amount of control that he has. He may be able to lift a car, or perhaps even two if he concentrated hard enough, but eventually there will be too much mass to lift and he simply wouldn't have enough power to do it. Sylar can also lift things, but it seems that telekinesis is his primary power and one that he uses most of the time. As such, he has more control over it than Peter and can accomplish more with it. But even he would eventually reach a limit. I wouldn't think that he has enough power to say, alter the orbit of a planet."

"Jesus, I would hope not." McCoy mused.

"But to be clear, telekinesis is not his base power, it is just the one he most often uses." Noah stated. "His actual power- the original one he developed and the one that allows him to collect others- is intuitive aptitude. He can figure out complex systems very easily which is why he would be so dangerous around the workings of this ship. He could probably figure out how this whole ship runs in 20 minutes flat and that is information you do not want him to have."

"Scotty would love that." McCoy chuckled. "An engineer that could outdo him. So how exactly does he get powers by understanding how complex systems work?"

Mohinder and Noah exchanged uneasy glances. "He um…." Noah sighed scratching his head.

Mohinder smiled and in his smooth British accent began, "As you and I know, Dr. McCoy, the human brain is perhaps one of the most complex systems ever found in a natural environment. What Sylar does is make an incision by focusing his telekinetic power much like a gamma knife laterally across the forehead to remove the skull cap and expose the brain." He glanced nervously at Noah and continued. "To be completely honest we don't know what he does with the brain but he is somehow able to study how the power works and with this knowledge he replicates it."

Noah noted the disturbed look on McCoy's face. "Some of his early victims were missing the brain." He admitted with a shrug. "I don't know what he does with them. We initially thought that he was….well, eating them and that was how he was getting the powers, but most of his recent victims have been found with exposed but intact brain matter so he is doing it some other way."

McCoy walked up to the reinforced, thick Plexiglas wall that separated the isolation room from the rest of the unit and watched the mysterious man's chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm despite being out cold. He checked the lock just to be sure because he was starting to get the creeps.

"Peter also has the ability to collect powers, he just does it in a much more socially acceptable way." Noah said. "His base power is empathetic mimicry. All he has to do is touch the person with the power and then remember how he felt around them to use it."

McCoy's head was spinning but he was trying to keep up. "So theoretically, Peter could go in there and touch Sylar to get all of his abilities?"

"Yes, but I highly doubt he would want to." Mohinder smiled. "Peter is not driven by a hunger for power as Sylar is. He can control when and from whom he gathers abilities."

"But that has come with practice." Noah countered. "There was a time when he couldn't selectively choose. The very first power he got came from Nathan almost by accident and he damn near killed himself trying to fly because he didn't know how to control it. The second came from Sylar- telekinesis- when Peter tried to save my daughter from him and they went for a freefall over a 30 foot wall onto concrete. Sylar tried to slow his fall by using his power and Peter was hanging onto him. And the third came from Claire. She went back to him while he was laying there and dying on the pavement. She gave him the ability to heal." He smiled faintly both at Peter's courage to intervene even when he didn't think he had any powers and for Claire, who unknowingly saved her uncle.

"Save the cheerleader, save the world." Peter laughed as he approached the group. "That was a long time ago. Way back when I first met Hiro and Ando and none of us had a damn clue what we were doing." He looked back at the two men talking and smiled. "I still don't think we do."

"Wait." McCoy shook his head pointing at Sylar. "That man tried to kill your daughter? And you still want to save him?!"

Peter and Noah looked at Sylar's comatose body and shrugged. "He has tried to kill me too, but that was a long time ago. I think he is a lot smarter about how he picks and chooses his victims." Peter suggested.

"He almost killed me as well and did murder my father." Mohinder added with some hint of sadness. There were so many things he wished he had said to him. "But as Peter said, that was when everyone was just figuring out who they were and what it all meant. I hate him for what he did, but I also recognize that he as well as Peter may well be the next step in the evolutionary process. I have to believe that he will suffer for the things he has done, but it cannot be on my hands. The best way in which to honor my father's memory is to continue his work in figuring out how these powers work."

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Matt almost jumped back when the door slid open all on its own and Chekov smiled. "The sensor is right there." He said pointing to a small pinhole in the doorframe. "And if you approach another door like mine, a chime vill let me know that you are outside."

"Creepy." Matt commented eyeing the sensor suspiciously.

"So this vill be your room as long as you stay." Chekov said with a sweeping gesture around the room. "The vashroom is beyond the vall over there." Matt took note of the partition that partially obscured a sink. "And the replicator is there." He pointed at a machine that looked a lot like a tube in the Jetsons. "Vhen you go out the door, the first room you vill come to vill be my friend Sulu. Mine is the one after that if you need any further assistance."

Matt was still staring at the replicator as he nodded absentmindedly. He hadn't the first clue what a replicator was or how to use one. Although the room was nice and the people there were hospitable, Matt wished he could be roomed near the others, people he was familiar with.

Almost as though he could read Matt's mind, Chekov went to the replicator and made a PADD. "You can read or play games vith this." He stated attempting to hand it to Matt while he backed away as though he were holding a live snake.

Matt had just watched the thing appear out of thin air and that more than spooked him a little. He didn't know what kind of voodoo the kid was using, but he didn't want any part of it. "Do you have some kind of power too?" He asked half laughing.

"No." Chekov answered innocently. "It is a replicator. It's what replicators do- they make things." He showed Matt how to turn it on and scroll through files.

Matt watched, but he had no intention of using the thing. Not because he was a technophobe or anything, although he had to admit he was a bit slow in jumping on the cell phone wagon…and the HDTV thing…and perhaps he was a bit skeptical of compact fluorescent bulbs as well, but he politely indulged the kid and quickly thanked him. The truth was, reading was the last thing he wanted to do. Dyslexia was not an easy thing to live with and it pretty much made the term leisure reading an oxymoron, but he wasn't going to tell the kid that. That was something that he had only plucked up the courage to tell his wife Janice and then only because he had failed the LAPD detective exam three times. He hated it because it made him feel stupid when he knew he wasn't.

After the kid left, he sat on the bed and tossed the PADD aside. He tried to gather his thoughts because he had felt absolutely numb ever since Bennet showed up at his door and more or less told him to leave or die. What kind of a choice was that?!

He didn't ask for this stupid ability. He just wanted to be a cop, that was all. He just wanted to do an honest day's work and maybe, just maybe help someone in the process. But here he was sometime in the far future sitting on a spaceship with absolutely no clue of where to go from there. A spaceship? Really? Would he ever see Janice again? The two had decided to separate, but he would probably never stop caring about her. What he wanted in the worst way was to just have a beer and watch a football game to get his mind off things, but it seemed unlikely.

He jumped slightly when a beeping sound echoed through the room. "H..hello?" he called. He felt stupid, but he remembered the kid saying the door would let him know when someone was outside. He got up and went to the door when it beeped again and it opened for him. The Chekov kid was with another man in a yellow shirt.

"It is time for dinner." Chekov smiled. "If you are hungry, Sulu and I vould like for you to join us." Matt nodded in acceptance. If he was going to stay on the ship for awhile, he might as well make some friends in the process.