Glossolalia, better known as “speaking in tongues,” is the phenomenon where the religiously fervent, so filled with ecstasy, began to speak nonsensically. It is theorized that the zealous are speaking some sort of celestial language. In the Bible, followers of Jesus Christ, overcome with the Holy Spirit, began speaking in tongues, and found themselves able to understand one another. Human are hardly unique in the ability to make vocal sounds. True we have one of the most complex speech organ systems. But it is our brains that make us truly unique. Not only have we developed thousands of languages and hundreds of thousands of dialects, which constantly evolve, but our words have more potential than we give them credit for. Our words exchange information, recount stories both true and fictional, and even elicit emotion. But perhaps most intriguing is our ability of deception. Nothing binds truth to our words but our own moral compass. What else give us so much power?
: : :
Claire and Arthur
Pinehearst Company
Fort Lee, New Jersey
2011
“Give Mr. Parkman my apologies,” Arthur said, “I do not know what happened to his wife or daughter. But we still need to know where Peter is.”
Claire apathetically noted, “He only required that I ask you if you’d done anything with Daphne and the baby. I’ll see if he keeps up his end of the deal.”
“If not, I have his father’s ability. Sedate him and bring him to me if he’s uncooperative. If Miss Zimmerman had any leads on Peter’s whereabouts she would have checked in. At least she should have.”
“Arthur,” Claire asked, “if no one at Pinehearst did anything with Daphne, why would Matt risk his life coming back here if he really had her? Do you suppose it’s some sort of ruse?”
“Matt is clever, but he doesn’t strike me as that shrewd.”
The Haitian burst into the room and ran straight to the computer on Arthur’s desk. Knowing that verbal questions would be in vain, Claire and Arthur followed him to the desk. On screen, a surveillance video showed Matt throwing a chair through the window and leaping out behind it, the timestamp noting that the event occurred only a few minutes earlier.
Claire was dumbfounded. “Is he crazy? That’s a fifth story window!”
The Haitian rewound and showed the scene again. Matt grabbed the sack of blood from the IV stand before leaping out.
Claire sighed. “Slippery little telepaths. Did you ever have this problem, Arthur?”
“Yes,” Arthur replied honestly.
The Haitian looked to Claire, who nodded. “Arthur, we’re quickly losing our hold on this situation. Matt may have teamed up with Angela. Or he could be—”
Arthur cut his granddaughter off, “I gave orders to a medical team to move Daphne and her daughter to a secure facility if Matt was spotted returning to the building. I was supposed to have been informed.” He surveyed Claire. “Can you handle this?”
“Don’t I always?”
“I don’t want another Costa Verde.”
Claire didn’t respond. She walked out the door with the Haitian. The normally tacit man looked around and spoke, “He’s lying.”
“I know. If they moved Daphne, they would have taken her medical equipment and certainly the blood.”
“If you know he’s so corrupt, why do you continue to work for him?”
“What about you? You swore that you were loyal until death to Angela and now you’re working with us?”
The Haitian remained characteristically silent.
Claire added, “Look, if working for the Devil is going to save the world, I’ll do it. I save lives. If I go to Hell for it, I’m not worried about pain. In fact, I’d welcome it.”
The Haitian studied the small woman and pondered her revealing words.
: : :
Micah Sanders
Suresh’s Lab
Lower Manhattan, New York
Micah walked into the dirty lab and immediately grabbed onto the railing as disorienting nausea overtook him. He looked forward and saw a familiar woman. “Aunt Tracy?”
Barbara’s face turned to panic. “Micah! Sweetie, how are you?”
Across the room, Peter Petrelli suddenly appeared into sight with a look of concentration on his face. Barbara tried to stare him down, but found her power useless. Behind her, a scarred Mohinder fell from the wall. Micah’s eyes widened at the professor’s appearance.
“Sorry about that,” Peter noted to Mohinder. He approached Barbara. “Did I ever tell you about the time I got in a scuffle with the Haitian and knocked him out briefly? For once, he wasn’t suppressing my ability to absorb his. In fact, I can even turn it off.”
Peter was instantaneously in front of her, shoving her into the cement wall with superhuman strength. She fell to the ground, unconscious.
The teenage boy at the top of the stairs screamed angrily at Peter, kicking him through the railing. Peter held him still with telekinesis. Micah retaliated by causing the light fixture above Peter to burst, allowing him to escape into the next room.
Mohinder ran in after him, his eyes turned upward, calling out to Molly. Micah followed the professor’s eyes and saw the encapsulated girl on the ceiling. He pulled the dragonfly robot out of his pocket and set it into motion; it first attacked Mohinder’s face and then flew to the ceiling, where the cocooned girl was bound. The dragonfly quickly tore through the webbing, fouling up its internal workings. Both Molly and the irreparable dragonfly fell to the ground, Micah breaking Molly’s fall. Thinking himself a hero, he was surprised when she slapped him and raced to the disfigured Mohinder.
The bloody gash on his face healed quickly.
Micah again found himself telekinetically grabbed. He was held against the wall.
“Micah?” Peter asked.
: : :
Noah Bennet and Victoria Pratt
Odessa, Texas
1996
Noah’s eyes swept the room one last time through the infrared goggles and turned to Victoria Pratt, who was standing nearby. “He’s not here,” he noted. “Now, what can I do for you, Miss Pratt?”
“How is Claire doing?”
Suspicious of the apparent small talk, Noah replied mechanically, “She started kindergarten this year. She likes spelling and coloring but hates math.”
“Excellent.”
“Excuse me for asking, ma’am, but why the sudden interest in my daughter?” His hands fisted tensely.
“Claire is very important. The daughter of a Special, you know.”
“A pryokinetic. I was there.”
“We left her with you for a reason.”
“And that is…?”
“Because you’re a Company man through and through. When we need something done, you’re the man for the job. And we need her protected.”
“I assure you Claire is very well protected. Sandra was desperate for a child. Nothing bad will happen to Claire.”
“Frankly, there are things that Sandra isn’t prepared for.”
“I thought that’s why I was for.”
“There’re things you’re not prepared for.”
“I will keep my daughter safe to the best of my ability. It’s my job.”
“‘Your daughter’” Victoria noted, using his words, “is destined for great things. I’m certain we chose the right man to take her there.”
“Speaking of jobs, how’d you get here?”
“Summa cum laude from Dartmouth. Ph.D. in microbiology.”
“You had a leg up, shall we say?”
“Which brought me here. A coincidental meeting with a certain Robert Bishop at a biomedical conference that wasn’t coincidental at all. They say one’s calling is where your greatest talent meets the world’s greatest need.”
“I believe it’s where your greatest desire meets the world’s greatest need. Your greatest desire was to be a microbiologist and founder of a covert organization?”
“Your greatest desire was to be a hired gun in a covert organization?” she challenged.
“What do you want me to say? A childhood of reading Ellery Queen and watching The Rockford Files led me to seek a career as the closest thing to a spy I could get?”
“If it’s true, yes. You know what I wanted to be?”
“Wonder Woman?”
“When I was eight, yeah. I wanted to be in TV. Morning news. The next Barbara Walters or Jane Pauley.”
“I would have watched.”
Victoria nodded to the compliment and headed toward the door, stopping to admire a fern sitting in a flower pot near the door. “Nice Pellaea ovata.”
“It was there when I got here.”
“You should take it home to your girls. It’s going to sprout the most beautiful multicolored flowers.”
Noah’s phone rang. He answered. “Sandra… oh, she does, does she? Well, then, put her on… Hi, Sweetie, how was school? Oh, he did? Uh-huh. That’s great.” He continued to listen to his little girl, opening a drawer. He pulled out a crayon drawing of three stick figures with yellow hair: a mommy, a daddy, and a little girl going to the “Baby Store.”
: : :
Nathan and Arthur Petrelli
Pinehearst Company
Fort Lee, New Jersey
2011
Arthur welcomed his eldest son into his office. “So, word on the street is that you met the Dream Team yesterday.”
“‘Word on the street’, Dad? That’s top secret information. How did you hear about that?”
“I have many talented people working for me. You hear things.”
“Fine, I met the first squadron of Special soldiers. All thanks to the Evolution shots provided by the Pinehearst Company. They’re getting expensive, by the way.”
“It’s supply and demand.” After a lengthy pause, Arthur admitted, “We lost the Formula.”
Surprised, Nathan asked, “How?”
“Nakamura.”
Nathan failed to look as angry as Arthur thought he ought to. “Dad, I’m worried about how easily those shots were getting out to the public. You claimed to have had the tightest security on them, but my intelligence agencies are telling me that there isn’t a corner of the Earth where Synthetics are popping up. Every dictator has an ability, making them all the more difficult to depose. All the crime syndicates seem to have Special assassins. Street gangs whose worst crimes were graffiti can now knock down buildings. I’m not going to tell you what I had to do to suppress an Israel-Pakistan ability-enhanced conflict last month. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted this stuff available.”
“Now, why would I want that? Can you imagine a world where everyone has abilities? Politicians, police, gangsters, the poor, the rich, every race, every creed?”
“Is that supposed to terrify me or inspire me?”
“Evolution. It’s a biological imperative.”
“You sound like Sylar.”
“He goes by Gabriel.”
“I know what my brother prefers to be called. And I wasn’t taking about him as he is now.”
“Now, he’s a puppet of his mother.”
Nathan began to taunt his father. “You must be so jealous. You can’t have him. You can’t have Peter. And, well, I’m just not as easy to control as you thought.”
“I thought you were with me.”
“I am. I believe that there are people in this world that deserve abilities. Medicine had made colossal leaps now with regenerator blood. Technology is limited only by the imagination of our byte-talkers. We’re regrowing forests and cutting down on pollution.”
“We’ve got nigh-invincible warriors,” Arthur added.
“Is that what this is about? World domination?”
“Nathan, you are the President of the most powerful country in the world.”
“Because you couldn’t be. This Legion that I created, I didn’t create for your purposes to amass so much power that you wouldn’t even need to use it. I am doing exactly for the very reasons I told the American public.” Standing tall, he added, “I’m going to save this country and this world, either with you… or from you.”
“You always did have a Messiah Complex.”
“No, Dad, I didn’t. I learned it from Peter. He may have been disillusioned but at least he was fighting for a noble purpose.”
“Son…”
“Don’t even…”
“Son, we are the next step in evolution…”
“Dad, don’t. It’s obvious you don’t even understand evolution. Evolution is not about reaching the next ‘stage’ or being ‘the pinnacle.’ Evolution is about adapting to the environment one lives in. Once upon a time, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was king. It was strong and it ate whatever it wanted. And when the world turned cold, T. Rex slumped over and died, and it was the rodents who would survive. Dad, a day will come when the world turns cold and it doesn’t matter how many abilities you’ve stolen, you will fall and cockroaches will trample your body.”
: : :
Port Reyes Correctional Facility
San Diego, California
2011
“Oh, dear Lord,” Audrey prayed as they neared the prison. “How many Specials are we talking about?”
Meredith Gordon replied, “Doctor Desmond stole fifty-three shots. Subtract those who’ve already escaped.” Audrey stared out the window at the orange blurs streaking across the sky. “We know at least one was killed before a guard. And no doubt a few have killed each other.”
“We’re still outnumbered. And outgunned.”
Meredith just grinned. “I’ve spent my fair share of time with convicts. They’re a notoriously unorganized group. Plus, these guys will not be practiced with their powers.”
Audrey looked in the rear view mirror. “I’m ex-FBI; I’m not used to playing fair. We’ve got two cars behind us.”
“That would be Bess and Elle, then Gabriel and Ryan. And Angela will send more. I hope.”
Port Reyes was small, holding perhaps a hundred convicts, made up of thieves, arsonists, assaulters, and a few second-degree murderers. In the late afternoon, the smoke coming from inside the prison yard was visible against the sky. One outside wall began to crack and finally a sliver crumbled, allowing a handful of speedsters to escape. Inside, the superpowered criminals brawled with their newly-discovered abilities.
: : :
Director's Commentary: It was fun adding Micah to the mix. Also, this marks the first time I've had to work with Jack Coleman, who on an account of being dead during this series, I haven't the chance to work with. Which is no excuse. I'll try to find other places to put him, though.
Written and Directed by Christopher VanDrey
Milo Ventimiglia ... Peter Petrelli
Greg Grunberg ... Matt Parkman
Adrian Pasdar ... Nathan Petrelli
Adair Tishler ... Molly Walker
Robert Forster ... Arthur Petrelli
Sendhil Ramamurthy ... Mohinder Suresh
Ali Larter ... Barbara Zimmerman
Jimmy Jean-Louis ... The Haitian
Noah Gray-Cabey ... Micah Sanders
Jessalyn Gilsig ... Meredith Gordon
Jack Coleman ... Noah Bennet
Clea Duvall ... Audrey Hanson
Thomas Robinson ... Noah Gray
Joanna Cassidy ... Victoria Pratt
