So, You're Here to Save the World

Written by Anakin McFly

1. there is some fiction in your truth
2. free your mind
3. and some truth in your fiction
4. the only place we have left
5. anomaly
6. the quintessential human delusion
7. down the rabbit hole
8. the sound of inevitability
9. it ends tonight
10. anything is possible

I. there is some fiction in your truth

Sometimes in dreams, he thinks he feels reality.

It is not a comforting reality, and they are not comforting dreams. Not the exhilarating rush of the unknown rising to meet him as he launches himself off a roof on a wing and a prayer; not the terrifying flashes of a future apocalypse he is powerless to prevent; not the claustrophobic loneliness locked away behind a wall in the mind of a killer, immersed in a world governed by the steady ticking of innumerable watches that try and fail to eke out a rhythm in the midst of time-warped delusion.

These dreams cut deep.

The sensation of drowning. Gagging on something extended down his throat, opening panicked eyes to pink wetness and struggling with limbs too weak to struggle as they hit solid barriers on all sides; seeing ungainly black tubes emerging from all over his body and feeling them where they have snuck their way under his skin; hearing grim rumbles of thunder from a distant, foreign sky, and making out--just barely--the forms of strange, twisted inhuman beings with bulbous red eyes and grasping tentacles passing through this alien world.

Peter Petrelli has had worse nightmares. But nightmares distort themselves and bend to illogic. These feel real. Realer than other dreams, realer than the years he spent in the dreamscape with Sylar, realer even than his life as he wakes up each morning into the brave new world of his existence.

He feels the wet against his suddenly-hairless skin with shivering clarity every time. His thoughts are sharp, stung awake by the cold and the damp, and his eyes--though they hurt--move wild and free. He tastes the helplessness and fear and panic like piercing jabs into his mind. It is enough to wake him from any dream. But he never wakes, and, as always, the reason why persists in the nagging conviction that he is already awake; and the only way out is to fall asleep again.

So he does. He emerges onto his bed in his room in his apartment in his world, his senses dulled, his thoughts hazily blunted, and sits up to inspect his hands as though he might see something that would prove none of this is real.

The detail is exquisite. He sees the tiny capillaries running through each crook of his finger beneath the semi-translucent skin, and the complex lines that cross his palm and deepen as he closes his hands. He clenches them fully into fists and feels the strength that had escaped him in what he has come to privately call the Pod.

He closes his eyes. He could move the earth if he wanted to. He remembers power, and special abilities that challenge the boundaries of science. But in these moments just after waking (falling asleep?) they seem natural. For, in dreams, everyone can fly.

He wishes he has someone to talk about it with, but the very idea he would like to discuss sounds ludicrous to his own ears. Sometimes I think none of this is real. Sometimes real life feels like a shadow of a dream. What if I wake and can't fall asleep again?

The thought terrifies him. To live forever in the Pod, near-immobile and vulnerable to the preying red eyes of mechanical creatures, trapped in a world only large enough to encompass his body...

Peter kicks the wall. Pain shoots up his leg. He embraces it; he needs it in order to feel awake. But even this pain smacks dull, and tempts him to force it further; to hammer himself against the wall until this reality shatters beneath the weight to reveal whatever lies beyond.

The Pod. The Pod is what lies beyond, he knows.

Peter buries the thought. It's still early. He pulls clothes over his T-shirt. He needs to get out, and walk, and feel the brisk air and not dwell in the dark constructions of his fears.

He wishes Nathan were still around. He thinks he would have understood.

#

Leaves flutter and fly free in the breeze. Peter watches them go as he makes his way down the streets, crunching fallen leaves and gravel beneath his shoes.

"You're one of them, aren't you?"

Peter turns. A homeless guy on a bench stares at him in fearful hostility, a half-eaten sandwich clutched in his hand.

Peter tries to smile. "I... I don't know what you're talking about," he murmurs, and walks off quickly. He feels the man's eyes still on him. Go back to your sandwich, Peter thinks.

Sometimes he prefers the old days before Claire's broadcast announcement; back when everyone could at least pretend at times that the world was normal and that humans were all human and not capable of the things depicted only in fantasy.

Fantasy. Dreams. It is harder to accept reality when it doesn't seem real.

In dreams, everyone can fly... But they can't, can they? Peter thinks. The average person has no powers. He himself can no longer fly, bound to the ground until another time.

Peter half-heartedly kicks an empty can on the road. It rolls over and for a moment seems to float in the air... then it drops, clattering hollowly on the pavement.

He stares.

Peter walks up to it and kicks it again, but this time it falls normally. He gives a small laugh and pushes his fingers through his hair. He's starting to see things. That can't be good.

He walks on.

After a while, he returns to his apartment to get ready for work.

II. free your mind

Peter falls awake.

His eyes fly open, pulse racing. He still feels the impact of the drop against his back; feels the mattress below him flattening out from where his body hit it from a distance.

But he can't fly. Not anymore. He'd lost that ability several cycles ago from when he'd first obtained it from Nathan...

Nathan. The loss still hurts.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. He tries to block out the pain. And he tries, cautiously, to float off the bed.

Nothing happens. He lets out a breath and sits up. He runs a hand across his eyes; yawns; pushes his hair off his face.

The grey light of early morning fills his room. Peter gazes around it, but gets no answers. He bows his head in thought.

I was floating, he remembers, and then again, with a sudden firm clarity: I was. I know I was.

The conviction floods his mind with his power. Peter raises his head, his eyes burning with determination and belief, his body trembling where he sits.

He stands up, and steps into the air.

And he stays there.

Peter's mouth falls open in a silent whoa. He looks down at the floor below him, his feet hovering a distance away... and he laughs: a wild, joyous, confused, relieved laughter as he swoops up to the ceiling and smacks it in a high-five.

"I can fly," he exhales, the words tumbling out of his mouth in restrained excitement. For some reason he feels like crying. "I can fly..."

He kicks off from the ceiling and grabs a bookshelf on his way down. Childish giggles burst out of him. He has it back. Perhaps all of it. All his powers...

He needs to tell someone. Anyone. Any-

There's a watch on his bookshelf. Peter blinks at it through his mirth, then in a sudden decision picks it up, smashes it against the ceiling, and grins at its stopped hands.

He throws on a jacket and stumbles out the door. He takes a breath. I can fly, he thinks again. And I am fast. Very, very, fast...

He takes a breath and a running start, and super-speed kicks in.

#

Sylar looks sceptically at the watch that Peter hands to him.

"It, uh, kind of stopped working," Peter says. "Maybe it's the battery or... well. I thought you could fix it."

Sylar raises his head and raises an eyebrow. "It looks smashed," he says.

Peter shrugs.

"The glass is cracked," Sylar points out.

"I might have dropped it," Peter says lamely.

"Was that before or after the battery ran down?"

Awkward silence.

"Okay," Sylar says anyway, and sits down to work on it.

For a moment, Peter watches him. He killed Nathan. But at one point, he was Nathan, and the closest he has to his brother...

Peter swallows. He still can't get over the violation he feels over that, knowing that Sylar has experienced Nathan's most intimate memories, things that he himself never even knew. Sylar knows Nathan better than Peter does. That's wrong, Peter thinks. It's just wrong-

Sylar lifts up the watch and interrupts his thoughts. It's ticking again.

"...Thanks," Peter says. He takes it, trying not to look into the other's eyes. He straps the watch back on and gazes at it for a disproportionate amount of time.

"Anything else?" Sylar asks, sounding almost amused.

Peter brushes his hair out of his eyes. "Uh..."

"I should charge you for that watch."

"I can fly," Peter says.

Sylar blinks. "I thought you lost that-"

Peter defiantly rises into the air.

"...Fascinating," Sylar says.

"I don't know how," Peter says, getting back onto the ground. "And it's not just that, but everything else. All the powers I had, and some I didn't even know I had..."

Peter raises a hand and telekinetically grabs a spoon from the counter.

Sylar follows its path with his eyes.

"What else can you do?" he asks quietly.

"I don't know," Peter says. "Everything. Everything I try. I just... I have to be in this state where I believe that I can do it, and then I can."

"You have to free your mind," Sylar translates.

Peter nods. "Yeah. Yeah. But maybe it's not really happening. Do you ever get the feeling that you're still dreaming? And... and maybe I don't have all these powers, I just think I do. Maybe this is just some huge, consensual dream. Maybe there is no spoon, and no... no watch, and we're all just... dreaming..."

They look at the spoon.

"There is no spoon," Sylar repeats.

"I don't know what's happening," Peter says, and he no longer cares who he's talking to. "Nothing makes sense anymore. I get... these dreams that feel real. Realer than this, than... than here."

"What dreams?" Sylar asks.

Peter hesitates. His eyes take on a distant look. "There's this... container," he says slowly. "I call it the Pod. I'm lying in it, and it's filled with some sort of liquid, and there are... these..." – he gestures wildly – "these tubes... going into me, all over. And it's hard to move, or breathe, and there are these, like, robot creatures moving around outside, but it's all blurry because I think there's something covering the... the Pod... like a membrane or..."

Peter takes a breath. "And when I wake up, it's like I just fell asleep. Like that... the Pod... that's the real world, and this is the dream."

Silence. In the stillness, Peter remembers who he's talking to. Nathan's not here. Not anymore. He'll never be here again.

"I know it's crazy," Peter mutters. He turns to go. "Sorry."

Sylar watches him walk out the door. He almost wants to stop him, but he can't find the words.

#

There is pleasure in the simple, joyous freedom of being who you were meant to be.

Hiro Nakamura zips through space and time. Five minutes, ten seconds, a year, a decade; to and fro for just the fun of it, for the ability to do so without the pain that used to characterise every jump.

He feels himself again. Powerful. A hero. Ready to save the world.

Hiro teleports onto the top of a mountain in some bygone century and inhales the sharp, crisp air.

He beams in triumph, raises his arms, and shouts to a world too far below to hear. "Yatta!"

He can go anywhere. Anywhen. The space-time continuum lies open to him. His playground.

He wants to know its limits. Test the boundaries. See dinosaurs. See the formation of the Earth, although he should probably bring an oxygen tank along for that. Or rush ahead to the future and see where humankind ends up. Mingle briefly in the society of the future. Perhaps it may not be a good one. Perhaps there might be an apocalypse that wipes everything out. One of the usual ones, maybe. He could avert it. He could fix it. He could save the world again.

Up here on the mountain, he feels capable of anything.

A thousand years into the future, perhaps, for starters. He's never gone that far yet. Hiro smiles in anticipation. He squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating...

Green code slams his senses.

Hiro's mind reels in shock. The mountain is gone. His body is gone. There is nothing but a cruel rush of green characters that he tries and fails to read as it throws his consciousness through a whirlpool of data-

Leave, he thinks desperately to himself. Go back!

But he doesn't know how to time travel when his mind is bombarded with code that occasionally seems to translate into meaning: input boundaries exceed set parameters. return: null.

And then it stops... and Hiro's consciousness bursts out into a vat of pink goo, choking on a tube slid down his throat.

In the panic he shuts his eyes and tries to go back.

But nothing happens.

III. and some truth in your fiction

"...only days since the shocking announcement from college freshman Claire Bennet..."

Peter glances up at the television set at the mention of his niece's name. Some newscaster in a studio reading from a script. Calm, professional, as though she weren't talking about superheroes with special powers.

Peter returns to the notebook in his hand and the rough sketch he's trying to draw. A stick figure in a container of squiggly liquid. Thick curved lines poking into it, which only vaguely approximated the 3D reality. Maybe if he gets his dreams down on paper they might make more sense.

Peter reaches his free hand into the bowl of popcorn and sticks one into his mouth. He chews thoughtfully, gazing at the drawing, sifting through his night-time memories, and trying to let the saltiness of the popcorn numb the fear that threatens to rise every time he thinks back on that other, clearer, reality.

I was in the Pod. What was outside?

The area was vast. He remembers the sounds of thunder, and a crispness to the air whenever his flailing hands break the surface of the liquid, bursting through one of the holes in the membrane he tore in previous efforts. Outside. And the alien, robot creatures, moving from his Pod to...

...to other Pods, Peter realises.

His hand pauses in the space between mouth and popcorn bowl as the sliver of horrified excitement runs down his spine.

Other Pods. Other people. Fields of people, stuck in Pods.

If it was all truly real, surely he can't have been the only one to break free.

Peter looks back up at the television. The scene has changed; some reporter is live at a scene surrounded by jostling crowds, interviewing some excited person or other who claims to have special powers. There have been a lot of those of late. Some are genuine, some are faking it for the attention, others are desperate teenagers lost in delusions of being special ("I called heads and flipped a coin, and it was heads! I think I may be psychic, and my friend Matt thinks so too! It only works about half the time, though.")

Still, with all those people getting to be on television, perhaps he might stand a chance. Especially being related to Claire and all. "Do any of you have dreams where you're stuck in a vat of liquid with things stuck into you?”

Crazier things have been said on TV this past week. He would blend right in.

#

The bombardment of code lessens up and leaves behind the last impression of a message of system failure. Something in Hiro's subconscious knows what to do.

Don't panic. This isn't real. It's just a dream. Or a future. A bad future.

He relaxes and sinks back down into the Pod.

And he falls asleep, and emerges back on the mountainside.

A snatch of green code translates itself through his mind. Previous space-time parameters: restored.

Hiro squeezes his eyes shut and goes home.

#

He knows how things work. The inner mechanisms of everything fascinate him. Objects, people, and the world.

The first two make sense. They are hives of complexity; but perfectly aligned and logical. Everything can be figured out. Everything has something that makes it tick.

The world is the problem. Delve too deeply in, and it seems to take on the appearance of green code.

Sylar hadn't thought it important. He'd decided that was just the way the world was, because deciding otherwise brings unfortunate implications. Such as why some parts of the world seem to have corrupted code, and in those areas his powers seemed temporarily accentuated. Loosened. Unrestricted. As though he could do anything, even things not within his collection of abilities. And why, at other times, he sometimes sensed what he could swear were programming error messages enmeshed in the fabric of reality.

What if that isn't reality, he wonders.

What if there really is no spoon?

Sylar reaches out and tries to take reality apart with his mind. Learn how it works; go in all the way, right to the level of the green code and see what lies beyond... but there is nothing beyond. He senses cold programming code. And then a void.

It disturbs him, and so he pulls back.

#

Peter sits idly on his bed and moves things around with his mind. He misses the lost pleasure, and the convenience, and the nostalgia involved in having regained one of his first obtained abilities. But he doesn't know where some of his other powers came from... or if they even come from anyone.

Peter concentrates on the sheet of scrap paper levitating in the air. He crumples it up into a ball, and then extinguishes it in a burst of flame. Ash floats down towards the floor. Peter points at each piece, and it vanishes into nothing.

I can do anything.

He holds back the rush of exhilaration that threatens to overwhelm him.

Anything. But how? Why?

Maybe Arthur hadn't stolen his ability, but simply repressed it. Perhaps it's now bouncing back with all the other powers he might have unknowingly obtained along the way.

Or maybe-

Or maybe this is all a dream, Peter thought, materialising droplets of water in the air and freezing them as they appeared. And, in dreams, anything is possible.

IV. the only place we have left

On the hovercraft Euthyphro, the lights flicker on to mark the day.

In her cabin, Caitlin opens her eyes. Another day. It's hard to tell in this place, where hours run upon each other and merge into stretches of grime and metal, crew clad in ragged but sturdy pieces of cloth as they go about their duties.

She has been to the cockpit before, and looked out. The sewers are always the same: dark, dank, the walls glowing in the eerie blue light from the ship. She makes out ancient pipes and tunnels too small for them to traverse; gathered pools of stagnant liquid, soiled concrete home to unknown life.

She could have stayed at Zion, but something in her made her want to move. A restlessness borne from being so far from home. Misplaced in time, misplaced in space. A part of her still longs for Ireland. A part of her cannot settle in this reality.

Staying in Zion would have been too final a statement. It would have been giving in to this new life: growing mushrooms in pots for food, living in a hole, and waiting, every day, under the fear of a possible attack from the machines. Unlikely, at the moment, but things could change.

Like the future. The future changed.

Caitlin remembers queues of desperate people behind fences. New York, 2008, in the aftermath of an apocalypse, trying to grab for Peter as they are pulled apart. Being told that she would be deported to Ireland. Seeing Peter again, later, only to have him vanish before her eyes and send panic piercing through her heart as she searched the unfamiliar crowds. But she never saw Peter amongst the throes of future folk. He never came back. Sometimes in dreams--real dreams--she still sees his confused smile. Peter. He left her. He forgot her.

She barely remembers the rest; the events lie confused in a blur of trauma. What she does remember is the future world around her flickering and growing insubstantial, and bursting through a veil of dream into choking wetness; being flushed through pipes and falling, dazed, into a large body of water; being terrified with wonder at the strange new world as she shivered and splashed in the water with no clothes or hair to cover her and no reachable land in sight. Convinced that it was all over.

And then she had blacked out, and awoken on the floor of the Euthyphro.

"Welcome to the real world," they had said.

Now she gets up from her bed and opens the cabin door to join the straggling trails of people towards the mess hall for breakfast.

The goopy nutrient mix that passes for food glops into her bowl. Caitlin carries it to her seat and eats with a real spoon.

"A lot of minds freed last week," says OC, their operator. She waves her spoon in the air for emphasis. "Other ships picked 'em up."

"It's because of that announcement that Claire made," the young teenager Rebel comments. "Now everyone's convinced that they're special and have powers too, and then they end up bending the laws of the Matrix without even knowing they're doing it."

"It's just going to lead to disaster," Ujala adds. "If too many of them realise the truth there'll be panic and chaos. There aren't enough resources at Zion to deal with that."

"They might just choose to stay in the Matrix," Caitlin suggests, her Irish lilt interrupting the series of American accents. She has yet to come up with a cool alias. Several months on, no one really cares, and they just call her Caitlin. "Inside they can be special. Out here they're just human."

"Yeah, but they're also lying in pods of goo," OC points out. "It's not a pleasant thought."

"Most of them don't even know they're lying in pods," says Theanu, their captain, who due to being their captain is the only one allowed to touch the tiny stash of real sandwiches on the ship. Wheat is a luxury; especially since the machines discovered and destroyed one of Zion's few secret wheat fields. He takes another bite from his sandwich. "They may get a sense that things aren't quite right or not completely real, but realising that they're lying in pods... that rarely happens."

"Why would they think things aren't real?" Ujala asks. "If so many people have special powers and everyone's saying that it's normal, it's not going to make them wonder if their world is real."

"Molly's right," Rebel says.

"Don't call me that," Ujala says.

"Even fantasy worlds have their limits," OC says. "They have their own rules. Whereas the Matrix... the Matrix has almost no rules."

They eat.

"Has there been any more news about Peter?" Caitlin asks tentatively.

"The anomaly?" OC asks.

Caitlin nods.

"He seems to be becoming aware," OC says. "Freeing his mind. But we don't know how much he suspects yet."

"Is he the One?" Ujala asks.

"I think so," says Theanu, finishing his sandwich. "We'll be monitoring him."

"Yeah," Rebel says. "I'm on it."

#

"Hey, freak!"

Claire Bennet turns, just as the knife flies through the air and stabs her heart. She gasps; dropping her books, she yanks the knife out and looks around, glowering, for the attacker, but all she sees is a passing crowd of gaping, laughing students.

"Who threw this?" she demands, raising the knife, but the crowd merely disperses. The show is over.

Gretchen collects Claire's books from the floor and passes them back to her. "Let's just go," she says.

Claire winces. The wound has healed over, but the spurt of blood still stains her clothes. "Thanks," she mutters, dropping the knife and taking the books.

"They're just jealous," Gretchen says as they continue walking back to their dorm room. "They're not special like you."

"Yeah, I guess I asked for it," Claire says bitterly. "Jumping off Ferris wheels in front of a whole bunch of cameras doesn't really lead to a normal college life."

"It was the right thing to do," Gretchen assures her. "The world needed to know. You can't keep secrets forever."

Peter is waiting outside, looking kind of jittery.

"Peter-"

He notices them and goes forward, words coming out in a rush. "Claire, I need to talk to you. Do those media people still come after you asking questions or-"

"...What are you doing here?"

"I need to ask a favour; okay, see... I've been getting these... these dreams, and-" Peter hesitates, feeling suddenly foolish. "...and I was wondering if anyone else had them."

Gretchen raises an eyebrow. She goes into the room to dump her stuff.

"They're not regular dreams," Peter insists as Claire gives him an incredulous look. "They... they feel real, like more real than this world. And in them I'm in this pod thing with alien... creatures moving around. It's like this huge cocoon of liquid and there are tubes stuck into me all over."

"O...kay."

Peter pushes his hair off his face. "I'm serious. I think there's something going on here. I just got all my powers back-"

"You got your powers back?" Claire asks

"Yeah. Look-"

Peter floats off the ground.

"Cool," Gretchen comments from inside the room.

"And not just those, but also some I didn't even know I had, and it's like I can just imagine it and it happens, like... okay... that door-"

Peter points at the door to their room. It promptly changes colour to green, and then dissolves into a blob of goo and oozes past their feet making derp derp noises.

"Uh, Peter? That's... really impressive, but can we have our door back?" Claire asks.

"Sure," Peter says, but it takes a while before he fumblingly manages to telekinetically collect the goo ("derp derp") and form it back into a solid door.

"So," he says after, "can you? Just ask them. When they next talk to you. Tell them... ask them if anyone else has been having dreams about another... real place in this pod thing."

"I'll think about it," Claire says warily.

"Great. Thanks!" Peter gives her a huge smile, and bounces off.

Claire and Gretchen look at each other.

"Derp," says their door.

V. anomaly

"Ando!"

"Whaaat."

Hiro bounds excitedly into the office. "I entered another world!"

Ando makes some non-committal sound, engaged in a riveting game of Minesweeper. The smiley face dies. He swears.

Hiro is babbling on about breaking the space-time continuum or something else dangerous-sounding like that. Something about some computer program being behind reality and how he has solved the universe.

Some other day, Ando might have cared about Hiro's attempts at working out the mysteries of life, the universe and everything. Probably any other day. But he's still trying to get re-accustomed to the rhythm of working life in a world where people like him had just become known.

'People like him'. The term itself is troublesome, and Ando sometimes has problems figuring out just where he lies. He isn't like the special people who were born that way. And he isn't normal either, and will never be again.

"So what can you do?" people ask him in excitement. Their faces fall in disappointment when he demonstrates. Then they look scared when he blasts an impressive hole in the wall, and the maintenance guys now hold a grudge against him.

He still thinks The Crimson Arc is a cool name.

Sometimes he misses his humanity. Yet it is the thing that stands in the way of him being able to fully embrace his powers the way Hiro does. They don't feel a part of him; he is always aware of their synthetic origin.

Almost always. Hiro constantly reminds him (with great enthusiasm) of all the superheroes who weren't born with their powers, but got them only after being bitten by a spider or falling into a vat of toxic waste or something. They, too, were heroes in their own right, and some of the best. Batman didn't even have powers.

The knowledge is comforting, but in a world where genuine genetically evolved humans exist, he sometimes still feels like a fraud. Second-best, always; doomed to be the sidekick. He might as well do something that he knows he can do: sit in an office, and work. Or play Minesweeper; no difference. From a distance, it looks like work.

Hiro is saying something about pods and scary alien machines. Ando decides yet again that he has been watching too much TV.

#

Peter can see the music again.

His fingers join Emma's on the piano, caressing the black and white as they nurture coloured notes into the air to flow and dance around them in otherworldly strains.

She catches his gaze as Peter watches a flutter of turquoise shimmer and burst into a gentle purple that falls in vanishing droplets of crimson above the piano.

When the colours ebb away, the world is still again; but calmer, as though nourished by their song.

"You can see them again," she says.

Peter nods. "I got my powers back," he tells her as she intently watches his lips, deciphering the words that accompany every shape.

"How?" she asks.

"I don't know," he says. Peter raises his hand and telekinetically moves a file through the air. Emma gapes, her eyes following its progress to his hand. She looks from it to him.

"I think I had to free my mind," Peter says, and then the idea comes. "Close your eyes," he says. "Close your eyes and listen."

The obvious question forms but she does not speak it.

"Free your mind," Peter adds, with sudden earnestness. "Believe that you're not deaf, and you can hear everything I say without... without having to read it or guess or... Just believe it, and listen..."

A troubled look crosses her face, but Emma closes her eyes, and the world goes dark and silent.

Free your mind, she thinks.

Peter speaks, but she does not see and she does not hear.

Free your mind. A sudden, wild excitement grows in her. She tries to believe that she is not deaf, and that she can hear-

Muffled bubbling. Deep, hollow echoes as though underwater. A heartbeat – her own, growing clearer and louder in her mind-

She opens her eyes.

The sounds stop. Peter is looking intently at her. "Did you hear that?" he asks.

Emma doesn't know what he's referring to, but she heard something, so she nods.

"Why didn't you respond?"

"Did you... ask me something?"

"Yeah; I kept asking if you could hear me but you didn't say anything."

Emma hesitates. "I didn't hear you," she says. "I heard... something else."

Peter blinks. "What did you hear?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know."

"Did it sound like someone talking? Because I was talking..."

"No."

"Oh." Peter tries to look on the bright side. "But, hey, you heard something. You actually heard something... that's a good start, right?"

Emma is silent. She looks away from him.

Peter touches her shoulder. She turns back, and there is a spark of defiance in her eyes.

"Why is your way of hearing the right one?" she asks. "I have my own way of hearing too."

"Well, yeah, the colours are cool, but..."

"I am not broken," Emma says firmly. "Just different."

#

"So... are you going to do it?" Gretchen asks.

"Do what?"

"You know... what Peter said. Tell the whole world about the weird dreams he gets."

Claire flops down onto her bed. "Everybody treats me like the freak," she mutters. "The one you can throw a knife at because, hey, she can't get hurt! Or make strange requests just because he's my uncle and I can't just... chase him away. He's some of the only biological family I have left," she adds, more quietly. "Everyone else is either dead, or... dead. And I'm the one who can't die."

Claire punches her pillow and makes a frustrated noise. "Why can't I be normal?" she asks.

"Derrrrrrrrrp," replies their door with a satisfied air.

Gretchen sighs. "He really needs to fix that," she says.

"Derp?"

"Yeah," Gretchen says. "Stop talking." She throws a pillow at it.

"Derp," the door says, sounding sad.

"I guess I'll have to do it," Claire says. "Or else Peter will be all disappointed and ask me why I didn't make myself look like some fool going on about pods and aliens in front of the whole world. And he did get his powers back, so maybe there's really something going on and he's just terrible at explaining it. As usual."

"Pods and aliens," Gretchen repeats with a wistful air.

"Do you get dreams like that?"

"Nah," Gretchen says. "But I dreamed about a radioactive cactus last night. It's name was Spike, and it had funny hair."

Claire snorts.

"It lived on a spaceship."

"Well, at least it looks like you've got the alien part down."

"Derp," the door agrees.

VI. the quintessential human delusion

Peter sits at his desk before his computer, typing out a forum post.

Sometimes I get dreams that feel more real than when I'm awake. I'm lying in a pod filled with goo and there are tubes stuck all over me...

"So, what are you going to do?"

Peter jumps at the voice and jerks back in his chair. Sylar is standing behind him, a smirk on his face.

"How did you get in here?" Peter demands, angry at the shock.

"Teleportation," Sylar says casually, wandering over to the bulletin board on the wall and poking at the newspaper articles pinned on it.

A wild hope leaps in Peter's heart. "Since when did you-"

"Some kid teleported right into a brick wall. I... don't like wasted opportunities."

Walls. They know walls. Walls keep bringing them together, it seems.

"Why are you here?" Peter asks, trying and failing to continue looking angry, trying and failing to look away from the streaks of brownish red on Sylar's shirt which he realises now is probably blood.

Silence.

"...Have you ever tried to see beyond this world?" Sylar asks.

Peter gives a short laugh. "What, you wanna talk about the meaning of life?"

"It's code."

"What?"

"Green code," Sylar says. "That's what's running this whole system. That's what the world is made of."

Peter stares.

"I know how things work, Peter. Everything. The code... there are letters, numbers... strange characters I don't understand."

"What are you saying?"

Silence. Five years together in a dream is one thing; here, the old tensions are back. The hero and the villain.

"This world isn't natural," Sylar finally says. "It's a computer program."

Peter doesn't break the eye contact. "Then what's the real world?" he asks, but already he knows with a deep, gripping terror what the answer is.

Sylar raises an eyebrow. "I thought you were just telling me all about that."

"The Pod," Peter says quietly, turning away.

"Peter."

"What."

"I lied. There wasn't any kid in a brick wall. I just... hacked the program."

Silence. Turned away from the other, staring at his desk to clear his mind, Peter's pulse is racing.

Then the surface of his desk reforms itself to spell out letters before his eyes:

I can do anything now.

Slowly, Peter turns to look at Sylar. A small grin of pride is playing on his face. There is almost a hint of malice about it; a cruel rejoicing in the newly extended boundaries of his power, the knowledge that he had just discovered something special...

And somehow, imperceptibly, the old fear is back, and Peter wants him out of his apartment right now.

"What happens next?" Sylar asks, the half-whisper sending chills down Peter's spine.

Peter tries to shake it off with an unsteady smile that isn't completely convincing. "Why... Does anything have to happen?"

"We could rule the world, Peter. Destroy it... Or save it..."

"Save the world," Peter mutters to himself, the words evoking memories of another time, a more optimistic time, filled with hopes and dreams, heroic aspirations and delusions of grandeur, visions of destroying the enemy...

Something in him lashes out. "D'you know why we even had to save the world?" Peter asks between gritted teeth. "Because of you."

Sylar shrugs and takes the offered credit. "You're welcome."

"You... you kill people, you ruin everything, and then what--you think you can just ignore that now? D'you think all of us can ignore everything you've done just like... just like that?" Peter snaps his fingers and half-misses. The resulting snap is unsatisfactory, and it fuels his rage.

"You're scared of me, aren't you?" Sylar asks quietly, almost tauntingly.

Peter laughs at him. "I've got nothing to be afraid of," he says forcefully. "I can do everything, remember? Just like you."

Silence. Peter glowers.

A message alert sounds on his computer. Peter breaks the impromptu stare down and turns to the screen. A blank textbox has popped up:

There is some fiction in your truth and some truth in your fiction.

Peter blinks. He looks at the post he was typing; he hadn't posted it yet. "How did-"

New words appear.

Wake up, Peter. The Matrix has you.

Sylar moves to see what's going on. "What's that-"

Hi, Gabriel.

"Hey!" Sylar yells.

"They're watching us," Peter says, his gaze darting frantically around the room. "They can see us."

"My name is Sylar!" Sylar informs the computer screen with disproportionate fury.

"Who is this?" Peter asks it. "Who are you?"

Rebel.

"What do you want?" Peter asks.

To help you realize the truth.

"What truth?" Sylar asks.

There is no spoon.

Peter stares. "How did you know about-"

Ring ring, Peter.

"What do you mean-"

The doorbell rings and both of them jump.

"...Are you going to get that?" Sylar asks.

Peter shoots him a glare and stalks off. He throws the door open-

"..." he says.

Clad in shiny black leather, Caitlin smiles coolly at Peter from behind a pair of shades. "Miss me?"

Peter's mouth falls open.

He's never been so confused.

And that's saying a lot.

VII. down the rabbit hole

Hiro can't stop thinking about that other place he ended up in. The green code--why was there green code?--as he flailed bodiless in what looked like a decidedly artificial environment, and the cold rush of waking up in that pod...

He remembers the fear, and the panic, but in retrospect it does not seem so bad, and he finds it hard to stem the growing excitement that rises in him every time he thinks about it. There was a mystery there that needed to be solved. If it was indeed a bad future, then he had to stop it, and find ways to stop it, and in order to do that he would have to know just what he was up against.

I can come back, he reassures himself. He managed to come back that other time, and he doesn't recall it having been too hard. Fear was no reason to stay safe in his time and place. A true hero did not let things like that stop him.

One thousand years into the past, Hiro decides. He's tried the future and seen what happened; perhaps straining the bounds of the other extreme might give a different result.

Hiro nods decisively to reassure himself, then squeezes his eyes shut, and-

The sensation of being flung into darkness and against a force field. The green code again, inserting itself painfully, randomly, into his mind at dizzying speeds as once again he loses all sensation of physical existence; error messages forming themselves in parts of his brain he cannot pin down:

input boundaries exceed set parameters. return: null.

His consciousness reels in the space of non-space.

It will be over, soon, he tells himself, and holds on-

Break. Soft, wet, pink light rushes in to overwhelm the green. Hiro gags, and struggles in thick liquid, but this time he is prepared, and alertness spikes his mind to full consciousness.

Clarity. Clearer than he has ever thought, or felt, even though his ears feel drowned in liquid and his eyes smart and blur in pain and his unclothed limbs are bogged down with an extreme weakness and he can't breathe... can't...

In his struggles, Hiro shoots out an arm. It stretches against membrane; the thick, disturbingly organic material that's all over above him, covering the pod and-

He tears it open and struggles up to sit and pulls the tube out from his throat, gasping the cold air in great gulps; and Hiro blinks in the brave new world (and he can see, his eyes hurt like anything but he can see perfectly without his glasses) and looks on in stupefied horror at the rows and rows of identical pods that stretch before him as far as he can see...

Hiro faints.

But the mechanical beings have been alerted to his awakening. One approaches with businesslike curiosity and lifts the unconscious Hiro up with its innumerable limbs, his head clamped firmly between metallic pincers. It investigates him; then yanks the long tube out from the back of his head and releases Hiro back into the pod. It flies away.

The tubes pop themselves out of the sockets on his body. The pain shakes Hiro back into consciousness just as a plug is pulled; and he tries to scream as the liquid rushes sharply down, dragging him relentlessly through the bottom of the pod.

The merciless current flushes him down a pipe. Dark, cold, wet, and fast, way too fast; trying and failing to gain traction on the sides as his hands and feet brush and slip off the slimy metal and do nothing to slow his descent; lightheaded and dizzy and water splashing everywhere getting into his mouth and nose and making him choke and wishing that it would stop-

He cries out. The sound reverberates through the pipe and vanishes upwards as he falls. Nobody hears. There is nobody around to hear.

Desperately, Hiro squeezes his eyes shut and tries simultaneously to teleport or to fall asleep again.

But this time, he can't.

#

"Caitlin?" Peter asks, confused. "I thought... you... how..."

"Have you ever had a dream, Peter, that you were so sure was real?" she asks him instead.

His blood runs cold. Nervous laugh. "You... you know about that?"

She smiles slightly. "We know a lot. We've been monitoring you."

"'We'? he asks. "Who's 'we'? ...How did you get back from the future? I thought I left you there-"

"You did," Caitlin says. "You forgot me."

"I... I'm sorry, I tried to bring you with me but-"

Sylar comes up behind Peter. "Who are you?" he asks.

"A freed mind," Caitlin says. "I'm not here for you. Just Peter. We have to go."

"Why?" Peter asks. "Where? What do you want with me-"

"We think you're The One they speak of in the prophecy." Caitlin says. "We need you to save the world and enlighten people on the truth."

"Me?" Peter asked, looking confused and as far from enlightened as it is possible for a human being to be. His hair falls into his eyes. He pushes it off. It falls in again.

"You're kidding, right?" Sylar asks Caitlin.

Peter looks back at Sylar, slightly miffed at having his Oneness doubted by a third party. Sylar shrugs and leaves, making his way past Caitlin, before remembering that he can teleport and duly vanishing into thin air.

"We have to hurry," Caitlin says. "People may be coming after you."

"People... what people?" Peter asks as he telekinetically grabs the keys to lock up.

"They call themselves the Company. They... track Specials, but it's just a cover."

"I thought the paper company was the cover."

"They have another," Caitlin says as they start walking. "People with special abilities are the ones who have realised the truth about the nature of this world. The Company doesn't want them to know too much. That's why they keep tabs on everyone. Most of its lower employees don't even know what their real mission is."

There's a motorcycle parked outside Peter's apartment building. Caitlin heads for it and climbs on. "Get on," she tells Peter.

"I can fly us, I don't need-"

"I didn't learn how to ride a motorcycle for nothing," she interrupts. "Get on."

Peter complies and climbs on. "I guess this looks cooler, huh?" he says with a sad attempt at a grin. "Like your whole black leather and sunglasses getup... can you even see with th- AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

And Peter's mouth continues to hang open in a scream for the rest of the too-fast ride.

#

Hiro falls from a height and lands with a splash in a body of water. It's dark, and cold, and the impact of the fall sinks him under while he struggles and finally manages to break the surface. His limbs feel unnaturally tired and foreign; as though they had never been used--really used--before.

He chokes and spits out water (is it water? he cannot tell) and blinks the wetness from his hurting eyes. He knows with a deadening conviction that it is futile before he even tries to teleport away, and when he opens his eyes again to the same scene the fear finally strikes deep.

No, he thinks. I'm not going to die.

He's exhausted from treading water, and with relief spots what looks like a piece of pipe floating not too far away. He struggles towards it and grabs on. The pipe sinks slightly beneath his weight, but it's better than nothing.

The surface... he has to get to a surface, to land, to...

But the closest Hiro sees is the sheer wall out of which runs the tube he fell through, and there's nothing there to hold on to; no sign of exit.

The water has to go somewhere, he realises. There has to be a way out...

Hiro cries out for help: in Japanese, in English, in the universal sound of anguish; but his voice dies down in the darkness and the still, echoed faintly around the walls, and he's left alone with nothing but the sound of his weak splashing. There's no one around. Nobody knows he's there.

He looks towards the distance where the water ripples off into pitch blackness, and he shivers with cold and the increasing horror of his situation.

He lapses sorrowfully back to thoughts of home; of his office, of Ando playing that game with the smiley faces, of other people and sunshine and life...

He cries out again, uselessly.

There's no way out but into the darkness. Tired, cold, terrified, and with the chill of grimy water against his exposed skin, Hiro braces himself and starts moving in that direction.

#

They stop outside a dingy looking apartment building, Peter doubling over as he alights and looking about to puke.

"It's not that bad," Caitlin says, turning off the motorcycle engine. "It's all in your mind, you know."

Peter thinks that it isn't in his mind, it's trying to come out of his stomach, but he forces himself to keep it down and tries to regain his composure. "This... where is this place?"

"Nowhere important," Caitlin says. "But it will do for now." She opens the door, and they go in.

The room has been set up with bits of computer equipment that Peter cannot identify; but he can identify some of the people sitting by the wire-strewn desks...

"Micah?" he asks.

Rebel turns to him and gives a small smile. "Hi, Peter," he says, and then, to Caitlin: "We're online."

"Sit down, Peter," Caitlin says, giving him a chair. He sits down, still confused.

A girl he recognises as Molly Walker comes up to him with a glass of water and something in her hand. "Take this," she says, opening her palm to reveal a single red pill.

"What's that?" Peter asks, confused.

"It's a tracking device," Ujala says. "It'll wake you up and let us find you."

"Find me where?" Peter asks, confused.

"In your dreams," Rebel says, not looking away from the computer. "The ones that feel real. Remember those?"

"Normally we would give you a speech and a choice," Ujala says, as Peter takes the glass and the red pill and stares at them. "But almost everyone says yes anyway."

"Says yes to what?" Peter asks, confused.

"Do we have time for the speech?" Caitlin asks.

"Theanu promised to let us into his sandwich stash if we get back early," Ujala reminds them.

"Who's Theanu?" Peter asks, even more confused.

"Our captain," Rebel says. "Tall guy, scruffy beard, has a thing for sandwiches. Take the red pill, Peter. Sandwiches are waiting."

"You were on my computer," Peter says. "You said the Matrix has me... what is the Matrix?"

"Take the red pill," Caitlin tells him. "You'll find out soon enough."

I guess there's nothing to lose, Peter thinks doubtfully, and so he pops the red pill into his mouth and washes it down.

He waits.

"All right," Rebel says. "Here we go."

Everyone goes active around the computer terminals as Peter sits there looking confused. "What happens now?" he asks.

"Free your mind, Peter," Caitlin says.

Things are fl-

Peter blinks.

Things are floating in the room, taking off lightly from the ground. His half-empty glass of water waltzes slowly past his eyes, the water in it billowing out into gentle streamers in the air.

He hadn't done anything. "I didn't-" he starts to say, but no one is paying attention to him, conversing actively amongst themselves in jargon he can't quite comprehend. Data and charts flash across the screens.

Then his chair lifts off the ground with him in it. Peter clutches to its sides, trying not to slip off, and makes an unsuccessful attempt to lower it back down; but all around him the world is already warping, voices taking on strange pitches and losing meaning in distortion, walls and floor merging into one amorphous whole...

"What's happening?" Peter asks, but the voice that comes from his mouth sounds strangely electronic, and he becomes suddenly aware of a seeping, cold wetness all around him.

"Caitlin?" he asks, his eyes wide with panic behind his hair; and then the chair tips him over, screaming into the void-

-and Peter wakes up in the Pod, breathless, panicked and confused, and knows with chilling certainty that this time it is definitely not a dream.

VIII. the sound of inevitability

The darkness is complete now. Before him, to his sides, and behind him, Hiro can see nothing. He feels only the water against his skin and the pathetic piece of pipe that he clings on to, currently aiding him but possibly prolonging his death.

"Hello?" he calls out, and hears a distant half-echo that seems to indicate that he's in a large place. He doesn't know where – an ocean, perhaps? But he cannot see the sky, and there is a staleness and stillness to the water around him.

He splashes, just to make some noise. But the water soon settles again, the blackness not dispersed, and he's alone once more.

And then the sweeping light appears from above.

#

He makes it storm.

Grey clouds swoop in with unnatural speed from across the heavens, shadowing the city below and sending bolts of lightning down from the sky. A gale whips up. Trees bend beneath its force, leaves and branches snapping free.

The rain falls in loud patters to the ground.

In the eye of the tempest, Sylar stands with hands outstretched, revelling in the power of the fury he has created.

He raises his face upwards to catch the fall.

He smiles.

#

Emma looks out her window at the angry colours swirling from the sky.

#

"...and my uncle... said to ask if anyone else has been getting strange dreams about some pod of goo or something," Claire says, and laughs.

"A pod of goo?" the newscaster asks.

"Yeah. He says he gets these dreams where he's lying in some kind of pod with tubes and wires sticking out from him," Claire says, making appropriate gestures to go with it. "Oh, and aliens. For some reason he thinks other people might be getting the same dream. So I just thought I'd... put it out there."

"All right," the newscaster says, drawing out the 'right' and giving the camera an amused look. "Well, that's certainly interesting. Is your uncle a precog or something? Are these dreams of the future, perhaps?"

Claire shrugs. "I don't know. Uncle Peter, he... he can do a lot of things," she says.

"Multiple powers? Isn't that rare?"

"Yeah," Claire says. "I guess... he's just special."

#

Peter is dumped, spluttering, wet, and naked, on the floor of the Euthyphro. He raises painful eyes to meet the faces gazing down on him, and thinks he sees someone familiar--Hiro?--lying on something that looks like an operating table a short distance away.

"...where... where am I?" he asks.

Rebel grins. "Welcome to the real world."

Peter blinks confusion out of his eyes. He realises with a vague sadness that his hair is gone, and then he passes out on the floor.

IX. it ends tonight

He wonders how long he can make it rain.

Water cascades in great sheets down from the sky onto roofs and streets and people; the sky perpetually overcast, daytimes grey and nighttimes lit with streaking streetlights searching through the rain. Water flows through drains and disappears. It's been days, and yet, impossibly, it doesn't flood.

Sylar wonders if he can break the system. Or figure out why the waters never rise; where they go once down the drains; and it reinforces his conviction that none of this is real.

He creates a space of dryness around him and looks up into the sky. The dark clouds seem to have a greenish hue; and for a moment he thinks he sees the same green code that faces him whenever he digs too deep.

He wants to know where Peter has gone. His apartment has been empty since that day he left with Caitlin. Sylar visits it sometimes, going through every empty room, opening drawers and rifling through their contents, getting that thrill of unencumbered invasion on Peter's privacy.

Peter's disappearance oddly disturbs him. He almost feels... incomplete. They were opposites. Hero and villain, no matter how often he thought they switched sides. Two parts of a whole. Two halves of the same equation-

"Hi."

Sylar turns, and in surprise drops the shield blocking the rain off him.

The other has changed. There's a new, albeit awkward, confidence in his eyes when he takes off his shades. A black trenchcoat sweeps the wet road. The emo hair has been slicked back, holding fast even in the rain.

"Peter," he says.

Peter gives a curt nod as he tucks his shades into a trenchcoat pocket. "Gabriel."

Sylar clenches a fist. "My name is Sylar," he says, glaring. A thunderclap breaks above them.

Peter shrugs. He gestures at the sky, the buildings looming around them, people rushing to take shelter.

"You did all this?" he asks.

Sylar grins. "Like it?"

Peter gives a short laugh, sarcastic.

"Where have you been?" Sylar asks.

"It's over," Peter says. "All of it."

"That's not an answer."

"The world isn't real," Peter says. "I've been out. I've seen reality. This is just a program." He pushes the clouds aside to let the sun shine through.

Sylar slams the clouds back. "I like the rain," he says. "Who are you, Peter? What happened? Shades? Trenchcoat? Who do you think you are? You look like an idiot-"

"I'm the One," Peter states with a glare. "From the prophecy."

Sylar raises an eyebrow.

"And I'm going to free all these people here," Peter continues. "Tell them the truth."

"So you're here to save the world," Sylar says. "Again. You never quite make it, do you? What do you need this time? The cheerleader is safe and babbling on TV about you and your dreams-"

"They're not dreams," Peter says, forcefully, stepping towards him; and beneath the heroic facade and getup it's just Peter, emo nurse Peter, with his delusions of grandeur and stubborn determination playing at saving the world. "They're real," Peter says. "I've seen it. I've been there. This is the dream. Like you told me, remember? It's all a program? And I'm going to let everyone know that and free them from the prison they don't even know they're in."

Sylar smirks. "Always the hero."

Peter doesn't break eye contact. "I thought you said you were one too."

"I am. I can rule this world, Peter. You could too, if you wanted. We could do anything. Hurt people, then help them. They'll worship us."

"It's not real," Peter says.

"It's real enough for me. Those five years... a dream within a dream, but they meant something." His eyes flash. "Didn't they?"

"An illusion of power," Peter says. "Is that what you want?"

"It's not an illusion. These people are real."

"They're going to know the truth. They're going to wake up-"

"To what, your pods?" Sylar asks. "Do you really think they want that? When they can do anything they want in this world? Free your mind, Peter."

"It's already free."

"I don't think so. So some people told you you were special. You're just going to play along with it?"

"It's not a game," Peter says.

"Why are you here, Peter?" Sylar asks. "What are you trying to do, kill me?"

"I should. You killed my brother."

"I am your brother-"

"NO!"

Peter flings a bolt of lightning through the air. Sylar dodges, staggers, then takes off into the sky and launches a fireball down in Peter's direction-

Peter blasts it aside and kicks off from the ground. He grabs hold of Sylar as they tumble above the rooftops, wind and rain whipping at their faces in the eerie green--definitely green, now--light coming from the heavens, crackling sparks of power shooting sporadically from one to the other.

Peter slams him through an office window, thirty stories in the sky. They fall through in a rain of shattered glass as white collar workers look on in shock.

"You're not my brother," Peter says, slipping off Sylar and standing up. "You never were."

Sylar winces on the ground, the cuts from the glass already healing. He sees Peter stand and hop onto a desk, and he doesn't feel like fighting any more. It's a pointless battle.

"Listen!" Peter announces to the confused office workers around them staring up at this strange figure in black that just crashed through the window. "None of this is real. You're all trapped in this... computer program called the Matrix-"

"Isn't that Petrelli's brother?" someone asks.

"I had a dream," Peter continues. "Only it was real. And I'm here to tell you things that you might not be ready to hear."

The office workers wished he would shut up because they had work to do, and someone was going to have to answer for that window.

"I know that you're afraid," Peter kept on. "You're afraid of us. Because we have these abilities, and we're... different, and the world isn't the same any more since my niece Claire made that announcement. Things changed, and... and it's now a world where people can fly, or stop bullets... a world where anything is possible."

"What are you doing, Peter?" Sylar asks.

"Freeing their minds," Peter says, looking at him. "Like you told me to. We're not that different after all. Both of us: we sensed the truth. And you..." He looked to the others. "...you could all be special too. You could get out. Break free. But it's a choice that you'll have to make."

#

"What is he doing?" Caitlin asks, peering over OC's shoulder.

"Telling everyone," OC says. "Zion won't be able to take them all."

"Not everyone might choose to leave," Ujala says.

"Why take the risk?" Rebel asks. "If the machines lose all their crops, there's bound to be retaliation-"

"Then we'll fight them," Caitlin says, eyes blazing with determination. "We can take back our planet." A pause. "...We'll take back our home."

X. anything is possible

The rainfall breaks and the sun comes out again.

Lying on her bed, eyes closed, Emma once again hears her heartbeat in the Pod. The news on the television plays on, her ears deaf to it and her eyes closed to the images; and on its screen a figure in black looks determinedly at the camera.

"My name is Peter Petrelli," he announces. "I'm here to save the world."

#

Hiro taps him on the shoulder, and Ando jumps in his seat. He swears.

"Hiro-"

His friend just smiles at him.

"Ando," he says. "I have another reality to show you."

And as Ando looks on in wary confusion, Hiro holds out his hand, and he opens his palm to reveal the red pill.

#