Rating: R
Pairings: Peter/Claire, Sylar/Claire, and maybe some Mylar hints for fun *wink*

Summary: [6 Years PostSeasonOne] After finding out that they're siblings, rogue Peter and amnesiac Sylar have worked together for three years to rescue their kind from mutant detainment laws. But when they cross paths with Claire again, the worst threat yet starts to rear it's ugly head.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

A/N Yeah, I know I said this story will be updated every Wendsday. And...I lied. I've decided to update every Tuesday and Friday for now on, since the story hit off so well and I've written quite a bit of it already. So there's your kicks, people =) 

Chapter Two

“Tower of Babylon”

By the time Peter opened his piercing eyes to find himself at home, the two people in his arms were both unconscious. Strictly speaking, Claire was stone-cold dead, but Hiro must have passed out from the pain of a bullet in his arm.

Remembering the firefight’s effects, Peter finally started to feel the agonizing sting of the own shots that hit their targets in his thigh, lower back, and shoulder. Groaning, he let Claire and Hiro slip ungracefully out of his grasp, and took off his coat.

“Sylar!” he called through gritted teeth. His brother was at his side in seconds, a kettle of hot water in hand. Before the others arrived, he’d been preparing to make some peppermint chai. Frowning at the two bodies and injured Peter, he set the pot down tentatively and scratched his head.

“Rough day?”

Peter glared. “You think? The bullet in my back’s crippled my legs. Grab the forceps and get it out first, will you?”

Sylar hastily rushed into another room and came back with a mad scientist’s version of tweezers. Peter stripped himself of his long sleeve shirt and already started working on the shoulder wound by the time Sylar kneeled behind him.

“Sit still,” he murmured, and dug the cold, metal tweezers into Peter’s back. Petrelli bit his crooked lower lip, trying not to scream as Sylar searched for the offending bullet.

The tweezers accidentally pinched a nerve in the process, and this time, Peter did let out an anguished shout at the sudden agony. Sylar muttered a useless apology before pushing the forceps back in and working even harder to find the projectile. After a few seconds, the tweezers’s tips bumped into something small, round, and metal. Sylar swiftly clamped onto it and pulled it out, giving Peter feeling back in his legs.

Unfortunately, now the wounded man could feel the injury on his upper leg in addition to his damaged arm. Peter dug his quivering fingers into his shoulder, and pulled out the warm bullet as fast as he could. As soon as the intrusion was removed, the tissue and skin knitted itself back together, perfectly smooth, as though nothing had ever happened.

Two down, one to go.

Lastly, Peter snatched the tweezers from his brother and practically stabbed himself in the thigh with them. Wet tears of pain began to cloud his vision as he desperatly tried to get that damn slug out. Though Peter had walked into his fair share of bullets, it still hurt like a mother every single time. 

Mohinder Suresh and Molly Walker entered the room, rather unfazed as Peter held up a shiny, bloody bullet and watched his thigh heal. They’d been the ones Sylar invited over for tea, and this wasn’t the first time a lunch date was interrupted by a banged up Peter and Co.

“Mohinder,” Peter gasped, bare chest heaving in relief as he rested back against the table leg. “Take Hiro to the den and fix him up. I think he got shot too.”

The Indian man asked no questions as he, with Sylar’s help, hoisted the Japanese man up. Suresh was the closest thing they had to a medic, and the den was transformed into his first aid cove. Molly, Mohinder’s self-appointed assistant, followed behind her adopted father and friend as they opened the basement door and headed downstairs.

Peter closed his eyes, still breathing heavily. In most cases, his healing covered pain as well. But when he was distracted and overwhelmed by it, he felt it just as bad as everyone else.

His left hand brushed against a soft mane of hair, and he opened his eyes. Claire lay sprawled across his lap, beautiful brown hair streaked with blood and grey matter. Without the gaping hole in the side of her head, she would have seemed almost serene.

Peter looked at her guiltily as he gently slid his arms under her kneels and shoulders. She was a light girl, but after the hell he’d just been through, she felt like a bag of bricks. Peter’s arms ached like they would fall off once he walked the ten feet to the cot by the window. It was more of a seat then a bed; just a firm pad to top off a half-wall, a three foot wide window sill with a mattress. Yet that was all Peter could make it to without collapsing, landing roughly on his knees as Claire dropped onto the cushion.

He took a deep breath and stood back up, wincing, before examining Claire’s head wound. Hopefully, she could heal from this one, if his own experiences taught him anything…

But Peter didn’t revive her just yet. He took an opportunity to turn her face to his, run his finger down her lovely, tanned cheek. As a man she thought was her uncle, getting in this proximity would have been inappropriate, and Peter never was able to lean close enough to admire her beauty like this.

“You went to go rescue Hiro,” Peter heard Sylar say from behind him. “She got in the way, or was another prisoner?”

Peter didn’t take his eyes off of Claire. “A little bit of both.”

Sylar’s brow knitted at the uncharacteristic softness of his brother’s voice. “C’mon, she’s pretty but she’s still  dead. You’re not getting laid with this one.”

Peter whipped his head around and shot Sylar a dirty look. “She’s not dead. Do you know who this is?”

The younger man took a long, hard look at the dead girl on the sill and turned back to Peter. “No.”

“Claire,” Peter rasped, narrowing his eyes at Sylar. The amnesiac’s own eyes grew as wide as pancakes.

“This is actually her!” he exclaimed in wonderment, kneeling down and taking a closer view. For the past three years, Peter told Sylar all about his former niece as if the girl were a goddess. “But…you said she was blonde.”

“She was,” replied Peter, absently brushing his fingers along to tips of the girl’s hair. “And now she’s working for the FBI. Hell if I know why. Claire never liked attention or violence…”

“Aren’t you gonna wake her up?” Sylar asked after a moment of just plain staring at the young woman’s slender, pretty form.

Peter nodded, but first began unbuttoning Claire’s fitted dress shirt. “It had blood on it,” he explained offhandedly to his sibling. Sylar didn’t protest, even though he knew it was just an excuse to get the agent down to her black tank top.

Peter didn’t bother asking for any tools this time. The bullet was clearly visible, and all he had to do was dip his fingers into the unpleasantly spongy wound and pull it out.

“She should heal,” he remarked, more to reassure himself then to inform Sylar. “Same thing happened to me in San Diego, remember?”

Sylar did recall that incident, with a nasty lurch in his stomach. Eighteen months prior, on a mission to break out a large group of captured metahumans in California, Peter came back with a bullet the circumference of a dime lodged in the back of his head. They seriously thought he didn’t make it, but Sylar’s knowledge of the brain empowered their allies to at least get the shot out of Peter’s head. Alas, the young man came to again, and Sylar later illustrated that as long as the part of the brain that generated these abilities remained in tact, Peter could survive getting shot to the head. Pretty much the only way to blow apart said lobe would be to put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger, and Peter had no intention of doing that any time soon.

This time was no different. Peter and Sylar watched on in relief as Claire’s brain, skull, and scalp snapped back together with the wonder of spontaneous regeneration.

“She,uh…” Peter cleared his throat abruptly, looking sideways at Sylar. “She might not be too happy to see you. Just, as a warning…”

Before Sylar could press questions, Claire rose from the dead with a screeching gasp, her back arching off the bunk. It was actually the first time Peter ever witnessed a revival, always being on the revived side of the spectrum.

Racking coughs came next, shaking Claire’s body with their force, and Peter helped her sit upright. She wiped the blood off of her mouth with her bare wrist, frowning down at her torso. The dress shirt was gone; she was down to her spaghetti strapped undershirt.

“Hey,” Peter grinned, his hand still on her back. Claire caught sight of him and her eyes flitted back and forth, as if making sure she was really looking at Peter Petrelli. After all, gone were the boyishly long emo bangs she used to tease him about. His hair was down to a wild crew cut, a few hairs gelled to stick out over his brow.  But other then that, it was the same clean shaven face, round brown eyes, and vacant expression that she remembered.

That she remembered killing her, as well.

Even with his super reflexes (a power absorbed by some goody-goody Air Force chick they rescued, that later, Peter gladly took the virginity of), Peter never saw the heinous slap to his face coming. One moment, Claire sat blankly with her hands at her sides, and the next, her face was screwed up in anger and her palm flying at his face in breakneck speed.

Sylar nearly jumped a foot when it happened, and restrained snorts of laughter after. Had he not known that Claire and Peter thought themselves to be family, he would have assumed she was a scorned old flame.

Peter rubbed his crimson cheek, gaping at her. “What was that for?!”

“You shot me!” she yelled indignantly, going to slap him in the face again. Peter was quicker this time, catching her wrist in mid-arc.

“No, I just saved your pretty ass,” Peter corrected her irritably, still gingerly rubbing his cheek gingerly. Claire scoffed unkindly.

“Oh, blowing my brains out is saving me, now? I think I liked it better when ‘saving me’ was you jumping off buildings,” she mocked cruelly, wrenching her wrist out of his grasp and standing up from the cot.

“And my ‘pretty ass’ is none of your business either, uncle.” A slight flush spread across her cheeks, her words even more touchy with his toned, bare torso staring back at her.

Peter managed to smile, even against her fury. He was used to this, Claire the firecracker of a girl that didn’t put up with anyone’s bull. As quite a rule following man in his day, he’d ended up on the wrong side of her yells many a time.

Now, the wrath that he sensed was not just because he shot her. It was four years since they last saw each other, since he got up and ran for it without any notice. Not only was it heartbreaking to Claire, but also insulting. In the two years that they had to bond, Peter pretty much became her best friend in New York, her confidante. They told each other everything, but he neglected to mention any plans of running away, even to her. It was a grudge that Claire harbored in the back of her mind, until she started at the FBI, and…

“How d-,” she began rapidly, but Peter cut her off, still ranting about what she said prior.

“I didn’t know it was you, okay?” His arms were crossed, but one wrist was still extended and moving about as he talked. Claire recognized the mannerism and her heart clenched. “Plus, if I left you there, they would have thrown your body in a dumpster and forgotten about you, without even taking the bullet out. I saved you by bringing you here, a safe place away from all of that. And lastly, I can look at your ass all I want,-(and he emphasized as much by craning his head to look behind her. Claire grumpily turned and blocked his view)- because in case you haven’t heard, I’m not your uncle.”

Claire ongoing glare at him turned into reeling when his last tidbit hit her. “What do you mean you’re not my uncle?! You’re Nathan’s brother; I’m his daughter-,”

“I’m not Nathan’s brother,” he informed her bluntly. “After I left when Nate became president, Mohinder told me I’m not a Petrelli. He sent me to my real family.”

“Who?” asked Claire in a high pitched squeak.

“Him,” Peter pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Sylar, who up till now remained unnoticed.

Claire walked closer to the stranger, stepping into the light to get a good view of him. Now that she thought about it, Nathan looked nothing like Peter compared to this guy. Sylar had the same dark brown eyes, black crew cut (though his hair was browner in color than Peter’s), high forehead and long neck.

He was a good-looking man, even if his nose was a little flat and his brows rather thick. But Claire didn’t have time to admire the physical; she longed for answers now.

“I’m Claire,” she introduced herself quietly, extending a hand towards him. Sylar grasped it, smothering her petite hand with his large fingers, and looked up into her eyes. He felt a blush spreading across his cheeks at her beauty (Sylar, quite the contrary to his brother, was a hundred times more introverted and shy around women), but masked it with a confident smile.

“Hey; I’m Peter’s brother, Sylar.”

Claire snatched back her hand like she’d been burned, and ran back over to Peter.

“Tell me that’s not the same Sylar,” Claire hissed hysterically, going to clutch Peter’s lapels, but finding nothing but his shirtless chest.

“Yeah, me too,” Sylar groaned, but he already knew that this was what Peter warned him about.

“No, it’s our Sylar,” Peter admitted to Claire frankly. “But he’s not like how you knew him; he doesn’t remember any of that.”

Claire’s face shifted through different expressions before landing on confusion. “Remember it? He has amnesia?”

“Yeah, that’s what they usually call not remembering stuff,” Peter nodded enthusiastically, and Claire resisted the urge to smack his currently naked and sensitive upper body.

Claire looked back at Sylar, absorbing his features. She never knew what the man who killed Jackie, who tried to kill her on a few occasions, looked like. He always remained in a baseball cap and shadow, and Claire’s mind filled in the blanks. Whenever she pictured the killer, she imagined him as an old, disfigured pedophile or something. Not a young, God, so young, handsome man.

“I don’t want to know what I did,” Sylar told her, holding up a palm as a peace offering. “It’s in my past life now, and I don’t want any of those regrets invading this one.”

“You don’t want to remember Jackie Wilcox’s blood on your hands!” Claire seethed dangerously, and Peter gripped her biceps, afraid she was gonna leap forward and maul his brother.

“No, I don’t,” Sylar replied, uncharacteristically forceful and stern. “If you woke up one day and didn’t know who you even were, would you want to know all of the terrible things you’ve done?”

Claire’s body relaxed and she looked down. He had a point. Perhaps this was a good opportunity for Sylar to start anew, go back to his old self. After all, he couldn’t have been a killer all his life.

Sylar, meanwhile, was letting her words sink into him. Jackie Wilcox. Another victim he just became aware of in the ever growing, seemingly never ending list. He closed his eyes and tried to remember a Jackie, remember her personality, her looks. A girl, or woman, that had a family, friends, people that loved her. Each murder was a terrible act, but the victim was never the only one hurt. At least another thirty people went into despair at Sylar’s hand. When he mentally calculated it all up, he figured there were hundreds of people whom he’d upset with his wrongdoings. Even though he couldn’t remember any of it, Sylar’s heart still thumped with regret and remorse in his rib cage.

“You didn’t even say goodbye, you know,” Claire lowered her voice, turning to Peter tiredly. The mood shifted drastically, from one of tumult, to a quiet lament.

“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “But you still knew I’d come back some time.”

“No,” she shook her head, sitting back down on the bunk. “A year after Nathan became president, when the laws started, he signed me up for the FBI to protect me from being branded. Angela and he tried so hard to erase me from the world that they sent the Haitian to everyone who knew me and wiped away all knowledge of me from their memories.”

Peter’s frown softened into a sympathetic gaze. She often used to mention Zach to him, her best friend whose memories had also been erased.

“’Everyone’ included you,” Claire continued miserably. “But Angela told me later there was one person they couldn’t mind wipe. I always assumed it was Sylar.” She glanced briefly in the amnesiac’s direction and he looked away sheepishly. “But I guess it was you, Peter. You remember me.”

He racked his brain. “I don’t remember the Haitian ever coming here, but it would make sense for him not to be able to take my memory. I’d just deflect his power.”

“Even if you did shoot me and abandon me, and even if you never came back ‘some time’ like you said,” Claire added wryly, before a small, tender smile appeared on her lips, “I’m still glad you’re the one that didn’t forget.”

They gazed at each other for a few seconds before Sylar awkwardly cleared his throat.

“Um…Claire? They all think you’re dead at the FBI. Shouldn’t we go tell someone you’re okay before Peter gets charged with murder?”

“Oh, please,” Peter blew Sylar’s concern off. “I’ve killed lots of people, and they haven’t gone after me yet. Besides, no one knows where this place is.”

Claire felt bile burn her throat. So Peter was a murderer now, too? She stood up and trotted across the room grimly. Clearly, Sylar had a very bad influence on him.

“I need to go,” she announced tersely. “They need to know I’m alive.”

Peter held her in place using telekinesis, and spun her around to face him. Claire’s briefly docile tones turned back into annoyance and anger.

Claire wiggled in the invisible bindings. “Let go of me,” she warned. Peter ignored her.

“They don’t care if you’re alive, Claire,” he said dryly.

“What are you talking about?” Claire shot back. “Turn on a TV. I’m sure it’s all over the news!”

Reluctantly, Peter let her go and flipped on an old, grimy set in the corner. He reached a hand towards the remote, and it flew towards him gracefully. Claire noticed several PEZ dispensers and wrappers of the same name scattered across the table where the remote rested.

Peter flipped the channel to CNN, and it showed a little bit of both sides. A break-in at the FBI was reported, but the result was a downright lie.

“We’ve just recently got news of a break-in at the FBI, but representatives have announced it as a green level situation. The criminal who ‘broke in’ was a mere tourist lost in his way. The FBI reports the whole thing to a false alarm, and though a couple personnel were mildly injured, everyone made it out alive. After the break: are gas prices getting too high? Stay tuned to CNN after-”

Click. Peter pressed the off button on the remote and tossed the controller aside. Claire’s lips were slightly parted in shock, and she didn’t notice Peter in front of her until she was face to face with view full of skin.

“I told you,” Peter said. “They don’t care. If Nathan really erased you like you said he did, then they can’t report the death of someone who doesn’t exist, can they?”

“They don’t know I’m dead,” Claire stammered, taking a few steps backward and shaking her head in denial. “T-They know I’m indestructible, so they just assume I’ll heal and get back to them. They can’t report me dead if they don’t find a body.”

“Claire,” Peter groaned, grasping her shoulders to still her. “Open your eyes. They. Don’t. Care. We’re mutants, we’re disposable to them.”

“Not me!” Claire cried, pushing him away. “They’ve got to be going crazy! I’m like…stolen technology or something! If anything got taken by the FBI, they’d be hell bent on-,”

“No, Claire, Claire, listen, to me, okay?” Peter insisted more firmly, pulling her towards him again and lightly shaking her. “They have a database of all of us. Names, ages, abilities, everything. They’ve probably already found another indestructible agent out in Kansas somewhere by now. Think about it. It’s not like they can pay respects to you, so why bother even mourning you?”

Claire heard his words of sense as if she was listening on the other side of a tunnel. She knew he was right, but that didn’t mean she wanted to accept it so easily. Claire realized when walking into the job that she was a prototype, a novelty act. Human Barrier Version 1.0. And three years later, there was bound to be a better model. The FBI would just search for someone better, stronger, more capable to replace her.

The young woman, feeling very much like a little girl again, shivered with her wrists held painfully in Peter’s fists. He noticed and let her forearms slip out of his fingers, then turned and placed a hand on the small in the middle of her back.

“Come on,” he sighed, leading her up the stairs. “We should be able to find you some clothes that aren’t bloody…”

Claire let him guide her around the upstairs mutely, noticing even more crushed PEZ and dispensers with Bert and Ernie, and Harry Potter scattered across the floor. The whole place was quite messy for a…whatever it was.

“Er…what did this used to be?” she inquired, looking over the railing to see a small chandeliers hanging from the main room. It was a dark, musky sort of place, and as they reached the second story, she noticed names on all of the doors. Dolly. Kitty. Tiffany. Deelish.

“Whorehouse,” Peter replied, leading her into a room with the name Krystal on the door. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Claire caught sight of the leopard printed carpet stained with God only knows what. “Now that you mention it…” She crept over to the window, pushing back tattered curtains. “Where are we?”

Peter followed her gaze. “Outskirts of Boston. This building is from the late 1800s, I think. So, it’s a lot more Moulin Rouge then-,”

“Emerald City,” Claire smiled, and Peter grinned back at their inside joke. For Claire’s eighteenth birthday, he offered to take her out to dinner, as fancy or Taco Bellish as she pleased. They saw a place named Emerald City while cruising downtown, made nothing of the Over 18 Only ID check, since they assumed it was just a restaurant with a bar, and were quick to find that the place offered dinner…and a ‘show.’

Peter gestured to the bed. “Sorry about the nasty sheets and everything, but we haven’t been able to buy new ones. Just got the place kind of recently and all…”

Claire frowned. “What about it? You don’t expect me to walk around wearing sheets do you? I might be just a name, but I’m not a ghost.”

Now Peter looked bewildered. “Well, I’m not gonna make you sleep on the floor.”

Claire caught his drift and rounded on him. “Okay, no. I’m not staying here. I’m going home!”

“You’re hundreds of miles away; how are you gonna get there?”

“Last time I checked, you can teleport AND fly, Peter,” Claire reminded him, arms crossed over her chest.

“I’m not taking you! You have to stay here; the first thing that comes out of your mouth about this place, and we’re finished. You’ve seen too much to leave.”

Claire’s jaw dropped crossly. “What, you think I’ll have a parade telling everyone your deepest darkest secrets? I just need to get back to Nathan, who is my father and all-,”

“No!” yelled Peter, with anger he hadn’t displayed yet that made Claire jump. “I am NOT taking you to that bastard! After all he’s done, I want nothing to do with him!”

“And I don’t want anything to do with Sylar!” Claire screamed back. “He’s a killer, and he’s turned you into one too!”

“He was a killer, and at least he’s loyal,” Peter shook his head. “You and Nathan have betrayed all of us, by joining those hacks in Washington!”

Claire walked towards him menacingly, forcing him to back up until he was standing in the doorway to Krystal’s bedroom.

“Whatever,” she snarled. “I’m not taking morality lessons from a murdering criminal!”

With that, she slammed his own door in his face, barely missing his nose.

“DON’T SLAM THE DOORS!!!” came the angry call of Sylar from downstairs, an outburst that Peter was used to hearing. Sylar was extremely OCD about doors being slammed, especially in this place that was about to fall apart.

Peter wanted to push that stupid, decaying door back open and teach the fiery minx a lesson, but held himself back. They’d gotten into plenty of fights before, and it always resolved itself in the end. Besides, he had to cut her slack for ignorance. Peter remembered what it was like to meet Sylar again after three years of thinking him a brain-eating psycho. The feeling was an unpleasant one that took a while to get over. Plus, she mentioned that Nathan signed her up for the FBI, so it wasn’t really Claire’s choice to join or anything.

But she still had to stay, and that was the end of it. And though Peter regained some sense of decency and sympathy towards the young woman as he bore holes into Krystals’s tilted nameplate, he still didn’t open the door and apologize. Six years ago, yes, but Peter was a changed man. Allies only got one “I’m sorry” and he’d already used that up on Claire.

Sylar sat downstairs, still thinking about Claire and fuming about the door being slammed shut. He heard the yells of his brother and the woman crystal clear, using super hearing, and had to agree a little bit with both of them. Claire couldn’t stay with them forever, and her father deserved to know if his daughter was alright. But on the other hand, she had seen too much, and even if they swore her to secrecy, something could slip out.

And he’d have to buy Peter some more PEZ later for sticking up for him. The lemon kind. That was Peter’s favorite flavor and helped fight off his addiction the best.

Though Sylar knew he should have felt anger at Claire for her obvious resentment towards him, he could not. She was afraid of his past even more then he was, for she saw it in the making with her own eyes. The stirring in his gut, he felt when she shook his head only made it easier to accept the girl.

Oh, no, he shook his head. Not her. Not like that.

But she didn’t seem too happy with Peter…

…aaaand she still thought Sylar was a murdering lunatic.

The young man rested his chin in his palm thoughtfully and watched Peter muttering indignantly as he trooped down the stairs. Mohinder appeared next, coming up from the basement, looking brimming to his ebony curls with something to say.

“Hiro’s been taken care of,” the Indian man announced. “He’s still asleep, and recovering from the TRS, but he’ll have his powers back within the next twenty-four hours.”

“Good,” Peter replied half-heartedly, slumping in his favorite, moth eaten recliner and grabbing a packet of PEZ from the coffee table. “Just a day to wait and he'll be able to teleport Claire to the freaking moon for us.”

“Peter,” Sylar rolled his eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

Peter munched on the candies, hesitated and sighed. “You’re right. I meant to say the sun.”

xxx

In the White House, things weren’t nearly as nonchalant as Peter suspected. Though he was correct on placing Claire as replaceable in the FBI, Nathan was having a mental meltdown.

Elisa Thayer, the ill-tempered, red-headed, and wickedly beautiful co-chair of the Investigation and Criminal Defense wing, took matters into her own hands. The moment she got an eyeful of the security tapes, she turned on her stiletto heel and immediately blew through ten layers of security to get to the Oval Office.

“Nathan,” she quipped, clip-clopping through the door. “I need to speak with you in private.”

He asked no questions, and neither did his secret service men. Mrs.Thayer had a way of controlling him unlike anyone else.

Once they were alone, she leaned forward on his desk and lowered her voice. “A source informs me that there was a casualty in today’s breach. Claire was killed, shot in the head by the invader, who teleported away with her body.”

“Hiro Naka-,”

“No,” Elisa interrupted the president. “We’ve reviewed the tapes and Nakamura was unconscious at the time. It was the rescuer himself. Dark hair, trenchcoat, about five foot nine. Know anyone who can teleport that looks like that?” Her tone, expression, and cocked eyebrow told him that she already knew. And so did he.

“Peter,” Nathan whispered. “Why would he kill Claire, and how could he-,”

Elisa interrupted him again. “Bullet wound to the head, Nathan. But seeing as her body was taken by Peter, we don’t know if she recovered or not.”

Nathan shot out of his chair, and slowly rounded the side of his desk until he was eye-to-eye with the woman. “I guess that means you need to find him, doesn’t it?” he suggested coldly, as though talking to a five year old. It was Nathan’s way of controlling his emotions: making others feel inferior.

Elisa Thayer was not a woman you just talk down to, though. “I’m the only one who even knows about your daughter,” she boiled. “Do you want me to get on my intercom and tell everyone that Mary Whetsill, the indestructible super weapon, is First Daughter Claire Bennet? I could have it done in just a few short minutes.”

Nathan gritted his teeth. That threat worked every time to shut him right up.

“Get a team of secret service to go on a confidential mission,” President Petrelli ordered. “I don’t want more then ten people to know about this, Thayer. Find Peter Petrelli, incarcerate him, get my daughter back, and don’t let a soul know. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” she replied smugly, tearing herself away from their proximity and walking back to the ivory double doors. Nathan had to be her least favorite person in the world, but a deal was a deal. Elisa would not let everything she’d worked on for six years go down the toilet because a little girl wanted to roll over and play dead.

xxx