Back to the Future

The first thing Hiro saw when they appeared in the hallway before the honeymoon suite, was the camera under the ceiling, the lens pointed directly at them. The happy smile on his face, painted there by the excitement over their return, vanished at this sight. A live teleportation in front of a camera was never a good thing.

"Oh, boy." he exhaled, and his shoulders dropped.

It was nothing but a subtle gesture when Sylar raised his hand but Hiro could see Mohinder stir, preparing for whatever the killer might do. Shawn´s action was a little faster, but much less afraid. He simply lay a hand on Sylar´s arm to keep him from his action.

"No, don´t." he said, absolutely calm. "Bennet hotwired the system, remember? Means he´s the only one who can see us."

Mohinder huffed, quietly. "If he´s alive that is."

"Well." Shawn frowned, shrugging to signal indifference. "I remember that he is, so why shouldn´t he?"

Mohinder's eyes were dark when he answered. "Memories can be deceiving."

"Seriously?" Shawn cried, finally giving up his try to ignore the scientist´s stubbornness.

"Maybe we should just check if …" Hiro started but was ignored.

"Why do you always have to make everything so complicated?" Shawn demanded to know.

"I´m a scientist." Mohinder answered. "Being skeptical is a given." And with a side glance at Sylar he added: "At least it should be."

Sylar, standing between all this, didn´t give a response to this dare. It was obvious that everything he could say would only result in more heated discussions. The heavy silence that came with their staredown, was proof enough of this.

Hiro had never been someone to flee a confrontation – except with his sister – but here, he decided to bolt. When he was at the door to the honeymoon suite, the three contestants were still discussing. Hiro cleared his throat, his hand on the door.

"Does anyone want to join me?" he asked, and entered the suite before either of them had a chance to respond. He didn´t want to hear any more arguments from them.

He entered the suite carefully, knowing that a door that wasn´t locked could be dangerous for the one who stepped through it. But no one inside the suite tried to attack him, the intruder. They only turned around to him, startled. As if he´d interrupted something much more confusing than an unexpected visitor.

Hiro smiled, nodding at them politely, to apologize for his unasked entrance. He could see the two detectives, Lassiter and O´Hara, Shawn´s friend Gus and … Noah Bennet, who fixed him, highly irritated.

"Yataaa!" Hiro cried, throwing up his arms.

When Noah Bennet was alive, then Peter Petrelli and the Cheerleader had to be too. And that meant the timeline was fixed. They´d made it.

"Well, that sounds promising." he heard Shawn Spencer´s voice behind him.

"Shawn." Juliet O´Hara was in the process of darting over to him. Until she saw the dirt all over him, in his face, his ripped clothing. "Oh god, what happened to you?"

"Have you guys been digging in a coal mine?" Gus asked, eying the three of them warily, while Juliet´s hands carefully examined Shawn, for injuries.

When she touched his cheek, he flinched. Not much, just a little and almost unable to see at all. But for Hiro it stood out very clearly. And obviously it did so for Juliet O´Hara as well.

"Are you all right?" she asked, uncertain.

Shawn studied her face, as if he hadn´t seen her in years, only for a moment. His hand closed around hers.

"Sure." he said. "I´m fine."

"You sure?" she asked, frowning deeply.

"Yeah." he assured her, still studying her face. He chuckled. "That´s … weird."

There was something in Juliet O´Hara´s eyes, that made Hiro think, she knew what had happened to Shawn. Or at least guessed it. Guessed something. Something too strong to actually face it. Something that if you ever really knew the whole truth of it, would haunt you to the day you died. And so she didn´t ask. And maybe that was good.

"Shawn." his friend spoke up, ending that weird moment. "Where the hell have you been?"

Shawn looked at him, a hesitant smile gracing his lips.

"Dude." he chuckled again, shaking his head. "You wouldn´t believe me if I told you. I know people say that all the time but … dude, you wouldn´t believe me if I told you."

"Oh, I´d say I´m ready to believe quiet a lot today." Noah Bennet stepped forward. He threw a glance at Sylar and Mohinder before turning to Hiro, nodding at him briefly. "Hiro. I´m glad you´re alive. Would you mind telling me how this … is possible?" and with that he pointed behind himself, at a screen, standing on a table full of machines and computers.

Nathan Petrelli was on that screen, speaking into a microphone, as if he was holding a press conference. Hiro almost forgot how to breath.

"What is he doing?" Shawn Spencer cried, as baffled as Hiro.

"Telling the world about a conspiracy." Bennet told them, watching them closely. "A conspiracy that covered up his fake death, the way I understood it. But that can´t be, can it?" The Company man looked at their group with asking eyes. "Why do I have the feeling that you guys know more than we do? The fact that you don´t seem surprised that Nathan is alive, makes me feel very paranoid, Hiro."

Hiro raised both brows, feeling very awkward all the sudden. As if they´d been caught, doing something forbidden, like a bunch of bad kids. But wasn´t that exactly what had happened? They´d been playing around (not by choice but that was beside the point) and had screwed up history.

"It´s a long story." he told them at last.

"But it is one we have to tell later." Mohinder spoke up, stepping forward. "Right now we have a mission to finish. Janice Parkman is still waiting for us. We should go and get her, while they´re busy down there." He gestured for the screen, one hand already laying on Hiro´s shoulder.

"I´ll go with you." Sylar said, but Mohinder denied the offer with a hard gaze.

"No." he said, simple and plain. "Hiro and I will do that." And without even waiting for a response from Sylar, he turned back to Hiro. "Let´s go."

The time traveler threw a glance around, knowing exactly what had just happened. But in the end he obeyed. What choice did he have anyway? So he shut his eyes and focused, on getting himself and Mohinder down to the cellar of this building. They had two lives to save after all.

After the two of them had disappeared into thin air, Noah Bennet stepped forward, regarding the two men left behind, Sylar and Shawn.

"I can´t tell you how anxious I am to hear what happened."

...

When Janice Parkman heard the sounds outside her door, her mind was set. Every thought that spurted through her head was about one thing. Survival. Her son´s, not hers. Although he would need her to get out and away from here. But if this would mean that she had to carry him to a police station while dying from internal bleeding after the guards shot her, she would do it. It was the only thing she could do.

Another noise from outside. As if one of the guards had stumbled on the way to her cell. Thoughts of getting rescued were out of her system. She´d considered it at the beginning, hoped for it, dreamed about it, only to wake up in that tiny little room again, still incarcerated, still unable to protect Mattie from these men. Knowing that they would not let them go, no matter what Matt did out there on their demand.

She´d never really believed that these people would let them go, letting possible witnesses walk free to tell the police what they´d done, to identify them. Not after this woman had talked to her personally. The mastermind behind this insane plan, a plan she hadn´t told Janice, but Janice knew people like her. She´d worked with them and she knew to recognize insanity when she saw it.

Whatever this woman Shana wanted Matt to do, she would let neither of them go to tell the world.

That was the reason why she was standing behind the door now, one of the two trashy chairs in her hand, ready to use it against the guard. It was not important if he came to bring them their food or to shoot them. She would not wait to find out.

She threw a checking glance at the three year old behind her. Mattie looked up at her, his eyes asking, worried, understanding. They´d talked about this long enough and Janice trusted him to know what she expected from him.

"Always stay behind me." she´d told him. "When I run, you run. When I tell you to keep running, you keep running. Reach the elevator. Activate it. I know you can do it. And when it opens you get in. With or without me. It will bring you upstairs. If you get there without me, you keep running. Run out until you find a police officer. You know how they look. They look like Daddy on the old photos. Let no one else take you, you understand?"

And he´d nodded, a sad, heartbreaking look in his wet eyes. But he´d nodded. And he would follow her order, she knew it. He would get out. No matter how, he would get out. He would survive this. And knowing that was enough. Enough to make her fingers hold tightly around the chair in her hands, when the lock was turned and the door opened.

Janice didn´t wait for the man to finish his turn, to see her, to see it coming. She swung the chair and crashed it over his head. The man went down with a surprised grunt and Janice ran, over him and out of the door. The second guard was right outside. She collided with him, ripping him off his feet and they hit the ground together.

"Run, Mattie, RUN!" she shouted, struggling to get up, one hand reaching out for the man next to her. "To the elevator." she instructed her son.

She was at her knees now, ready to fight the guard and hold him off, long enough for Mattie to reach the elevator. But the guard didn´t attack her. Instead he held out both hands, as if to defend himself.

"No, no." an uncharacteristically high voice cried. "We´re here to save you."

Janice halted. Her mind was racing, her panting so loud in her head that it drowned out almost everything. What had he said? Save them? Her hands were standing in mid-air while her mind tried to compute with this unexpected change in the situation. She knew she´d seen this man before. Small, Japanese, friendly smile. But she just couldn´t place him. Just couldn´t make up her mind that someone like that could actually be here, right now.

"It´s all right." the man with the gentle smile told her in a thick Japanese accent. "You´re save now."

And suddenly she recognized him. From one moment to the other she knew that they were save. That this man had saved the life of her child once already and that he´d come to save it again. And in this moment, something inside of her just cracked and she flung herself at him, hugging him tightly, sobbing against his shoulder.

"Thank you. Oh, god, thank you. Thank you."

The small hands of her son nudged at her own rocking shoulder and when she let go of this hero that had come to save them, she saw little Mattie again, his eyes wet and uncertain. He didn´t understand why his Mommy was crying.

Janice embraced him at once, holding him tightly, protectively, still not able to stop crying herself.

"Oh, no, don´t cry." she told her son, rubbing his back. "Don´t cry, Matti, it´s over. It´s over. It´s over."

...

Bennet threw a glance through the bedroom door, where Hiro and detective O´Hara comforted Janice Parkman, who was still recovering from the hysterics she´d had. He met Juliet´s eyes when the detective glanced up for a moment.

The way it looked, the poor woman was getting better, slowly, but she´d stopped clinging to her son as if he would fall apart as soon as she let go. Now Hiro was holding the kid, laughing at him, like they were old friends who hadn´t seen each other for years, while Juliet quietly spoke to the mother.

"I´m fine." Noah heard the harsh voice of Dr. Suresh behind him and turned back to the rest of their group, just in time to catch the cold glare the doctor shot the killer next to him.

The geneticist was holding an icepack to his head, where Janice Parkman had hit him with the chair, but other than that he seemed fine indeed. Better than Bennet could remember him in years.

It was a strange story Shawn and Sylar had told them so far, and even if it had been very rough in the details, Noah had a feeling that some more interesting changes had happened, than just a newly resurrected Nathan Petrelli. He couldn´t say he would regret it if Suresh´s opinion about a few things finally started to change into a more reasonable direction, especially when it concerned that killer.

"What are we doing now?" Guster wanted to know, getting straight to the point once again, just as Noah had learned to expect it from him.

"I´m going down." Mohinder decided at once. "Talking to Matt."

"No way, doctor." Bennet immediately denied, stepping forward to block his way.

"He needs to know that his family is save." the geneticist insisted.

"I agree." Noah nodded, throwing him off base with that. "Only it will be hard to get to him. They left. While you were down there, rescuing Janice. Right after Nathan finished his speech. Probably to avoid further questions from the reporters. And we have no idea where they went."

"Then …" Suresh looked around rather helpless. "What do we do now?"

Surprisingly it was Shawn Spencer, the overgrown kid, that stepped forward and spoke.

"First we have to take care of the hostages." he decided, his voice sounding serious for a change. "And we need to decamp before they figure out we´re still here."

When the young man noticed all the surprised eyes on him, he halted.

"What?" he cried. "If they come up here and we´re still here, it´ll get messy, wouldn´t it?"

Noah couldn´t help but smiled. Some interesting changes indeed, he thought to himself.

Carlton seemed to agree with him. He nodded at the fake psychic approvingly.

"He´s right." he said.

"We don´t know how many of the hotel staff is in on the whole kidnapping." Gus recalled. "How do we get the two of them past the lobby without getting seen?"

Noah glanced back over his shoulder into the bedroom. Janice Parkman had calmed down by now, quietly talking to Juliet. And in this moment Noah made a decision.

"We don´t." he answered Guster´s question. "I say we just walk out, with them in plain sight. Let them know we have them. They can´t do anything."

...

The hotel staff was indeed watching them, when they passed the lobby. Only it was hard to tell if it was because they really recognized Janice and her son as the hostages that were supposed to be in a locked room in the cellar. Or maybe just because they made a big camel lacking camel train, walking out in a closed formation like this.

All the way to the cars, parked right outside the front door, Janice Parkman was holding tightly to her son, her eyes darting around, to everybody who crossed their way or even followed them with their eyes. But no one, not even the hotel manager, made a move to stop them. Noah´d been right. Whatever had happened in this hotel, it was over. Miss Stockwell´s plan, whatever it was, had been moved away from it, along with Nathan Petrelli and Matt Parkman.

Juliet opened the door for Janice to get in the car but the mother hesitated for another moment, her eyes following Shawn and Gus, mostly Sylar.

"Please, Mrs. Parkman, get in." Juliet told her gently. "We need to leave."

"Where do we go?" Janice wanted to know, her eyes not looking away from Sylar.

"Some place save."

"Will he be there too?"

Juliet turned around, as if she didn´t know already who she was talking about. She sighed.

"Don´t worry." she said. "We´ll protect you from them. You´ll be save."

"You know this man´s a murderer?" Janice informed her, not really asking.

Juliet met Lassiter´s eyes, over the roof of the car, begging for his support.

"As my partner said." he spoke to Janice Parkman, his voice calm and reassuring. "You´ll be save."

...

The place was crowded. People were running around, carrying luggage, looking for the right gate or something else they were missing, bags and luggage, creating a big mess of faces and forms. Enough for them to blend in, even with all the men Shana had with her, to guard her precious trophy.

Nathan stood beside her, quietly, his head bowed down a little, under the brim of his hat, as if he truly had to make sure no one would recognize him. But that was exactly what he must believe, right? Matt had made sure of it.

Because being unsuspicious was crucial for the plan. Whatever the whole plan was. Shana sure as hell hadn´t told him. But Matt didn´t care about the plan. He cared about something else. Steeling himself for the inevitable confrontation, he approached Shana.

"I wanna talk to you." he demanded. "Alone."

Shana looked up from her purse, stopping to rummage for a moment. There was a silent surprise on her face but she followed him when he walked a few steps aside.

"I´m not coming with you." he told her as soon as they were out of ear shot from the others.

A tiny frown appeared on her forehead, as if he´d said something totally out of context.

"What are you talking about, of course you´re coming with us." she said and turned her attention back to her purse.

"No." he insisted. "I want my family. Now."

She looked up at him again, the ticket she´d been looking for in her hand. The glance she gave him was estimating, but not really considering. She obviously didn´t doubt the power she had over him, not for a single moment.

"I know you kept them at the hotel." he blurred, desperately wanting her to know she didn´t have half the control she thought she had. "In the cellar." he specified his knowledge. "So now we´ll be driving back there and you´ll …"

"How do you want to know where they are?" Shana interrupted him, irritatingly calm. "No one here knows that. Not even I."

Matt only shook his head. "Doesn´t matter. I know. And I want them back."

Again she looked at him with this estimating look of hers. Still far too confident for Matt´s taste.

"You have a nice imagination, Mr. Parkman." she found. "But if this is true and you really know their location, why did you leave with us? Why didn´t you stay to rescue them?"

Matt looked into those insane blue eyes, and gritted his teeth, knowing that he couldn´t say anything, not if he wanted to keep his dignity. To win that conversation was not an issue anymore as it seemed. And that after only a few minutes.

Shana smiled at him, victoriously. She nodded.

"Exactly." she said, as if he´d given her an answer. "For the same reason why you will get into that plane with us. Because you know exactly what happens if you should violate our agreement."

"I did what you asked me to." Matt burst out. "Now it´s your turn."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Parkman, your friend Hiro didn´t think it necessary to stay with us any longer." Shana idly closed the zipper of her purse. "So he didn´t quiet keep up his part of the bargain."

"Okay, maybe not." Matt found it harder and harder to stay in his place. "But I did. You owe me. At least stand to your words."

"Oh, I will." she assured him. "As soon as we´re done."

"We are done."

Instead of being intimidated by his intense glare, Shana merely smiled at him. Worse, she smiled at him like one would smile at a stubborn kid.

"You know better than that." she said and when she heard the frustration coming from deep within his throat, she lay an almost caring hand on his arm. "Don´t worry." she told him. "You´ll get your family back. As soon as our mission is accomplished."

Matt couldn´t help the humorless smirk that came over him.

"Maybe Hiro already freed them." he suggested a possibility. "Maybe you don´t have anything to make me stay any longer."

"In that case I would have gotten a call from my men by now." Shana replied unimpressed, her brows raised in total innocence. "Telling me what happened."

"Maybe they´re dead." Matt suggested but she merely smirked, amused about this idea.

"Your friend Hiro would kill my guards to free the hostages?" she asked mockingly. When he didn´t answer, she smiled again. "I didn´t think so."

She got her cell phone out of her purse, holding it up for him to see it.

"But maybe you want me to give them a call, just to make sure." she suggested as if this offer was generous and not a threat. Her false surprise about his reaction, almost drove him crazy.

"No?" she asked as if she didn´t know and then gasped. "Oh, right. I forgot. Every call from me or any of my men that contains any other message than to shoot the hostages … would end with them shooting the hostages." she summarized, as if she truly just remembered the threat she´d made, right from the start.

She made a snatching sound with her cheek, mocking annoyance. "Because they´d know we were forced to say something against our will." she finished the speech, and when she faced him this time, she didn´t pretend any longer. Instead she tilted her head, looking at him almost enigmatic.

"I´m disappointed in you, Parkman." she said. "You´ve been doing good so far. On your wife and on your son." She put the phone back into her purse, obviously guessing, and guessing right, that she´d won. "Don´t put all this at risk now." she advised him. "We´re almost at our target."

After she´d closed her purse again, her eyes could have been mistaken for being sympathetic.

"Don´t worry." she again lay a hand on his arm. "You´ll get your family back. After the mission is over."

The caring hand let go and padded him one last time.

"Now come on." she said with a smile. "The plane´s waiting."

Hey, people. You ever heard the saying, the applause (respectively the review) is bread for the artist? So don´t let me starve here, okay? Let me know if I´m doing good.