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Peter fell and squinted his eyes together, expecting the dull pain of concrete hitting his temple. He held his breath until he realized that he was already lying on the floor. Carefully Peter opened one of his eyes, shortly blinded by the bright daylight. Hadn’t it been night just a second ago?
Peter could feel concrete under his hands, but he wasn’t lying on the damp stone steps in front of Union Wells High School in Odessa. Slowly he turned his head around to examine his surroundings. Nathan was gone, but Peter knew exactly where he was, he knew the gray streets and buildings. Somehow he was back in New York, but not the New York where he had grown up and lived for 30 years. This city was lifeless.
Creased flyers flew through the air and were the only things in Peter’s line of sight that actually moved. Down the street stood hundreds of motionless black and yellow cars, carelessly parked and widely opened. Everybody must have left in a hurry. But why?
The nurse ambled towards the metal shells, glancing into a few of them to check if there were any other people in the ghost town apart from himself. There was an unintelligible voice crackling through the air, but Peter couldn’t make out what it said. It sounded like a police radio, but he couldn’t see any police cars or police officers, so where was the voice coming from? Peter knitted his brows. Was this even real?
He kept making his way through the cars, looking for something that was familiar, something that was alive. He saw Nathan. Not his brother, in flesh and blood, but a star graced banner with the letters 'vote Nathan Petrelli', framed by red, white and blue rosettes. Peter stared at the banner while he continued to walk, wondering who exactly was supposed to vote in this empty city.
A sudden noise that approached from his right made Peter flinch and stumble. As he looked around for the source of the noise he saw the first real face in this cursed place. It was Mohinder Suresh, the scientist he had searched for Isaac with. He was also the man who hadn’t believed in him. As the Indian rose out of the seat of his cab he wore a cheerful smile on his face, which faded as soon as he realized who was standing in front of him. Fear and panic became apparent on his face and before Peter could ask him what the matter was, the scientist turned around and ran away.
Peter opened his mouth the shout after him, but as he turned into the direction Suresh had run to he came up against a different familiar face. It was Matt Parkman, the man who had interrogated him just hours ago. He held up one hand towards Peter and tried to shield a family Peter didn’t know with his other.
“Stay back, Stay back!” He shouted and Peter didn’t know if the police officer was talking to him or the family behind him, which was running away from Peter as fast as they could. Parkman turned away from Peter and started running, too. Where were they going, what were they running from? Peter turned around, panic building inside his chest. What were they so afraid of?
His breath almost got stuck in his throat as he saw one particular face that was framed in golden locks that whipped up and down as Claire ran towards him. He wanted to tell her to run, to run away from the unknown danger everybody but him seemed to be seeing, but Claire just stared at him with a similar expression as Mohinder. Her fear mixed with guilt and with complete bewilderment. She shook her head, slowly turning away from Peter.
“I’m sorry.” was all she whispered as she turned her back on the nurse and disappeared behind the cars.
Peter’s heart was pounding so heavily that he could hear the blood rushing through his body. His whole body throbbed every time his heart beat. A terrifying suspicion blossomed inside his mind. What if everyone was running away from him? Why would they do something like that, Peter didn’t want to hurt anybody, he wanted to save them!
He turned his head once more to see Simone running towards him. Before Peter could take a step Isaac wrapped his arms around Simone and pulled her away from him. The woman didn’t fight him for long and decided to run away with the artist instead of staying with Peter.
Peter almost fell onto his knees as he stumbled towards the only person that was still here, the only person who wouldn’t leave him alone. He felt like all his energy was leaving him, but at the same time he felt more powerful than ever before. The air around him seemed to burn like fire as Nathan stopped in front of him and looked down onto Peter’s hands. The other brother did the same thing and gasped in horror. His hands were glowing. They were producing so much heat that Peter could feel it on his face, on every inch of his skin. The glowing traveled upwards, across his arms, his shoulders, down his torso and on to his face.
He looked up to his brother again, who was staring blankly at the scene in front of him. More and more heat coated the Petrellis and filled every fiber of Peter’s body. Until it was too much to take. With a pained scream he let all the power stream out of his body, knowing that he would shred his brother and everything around him into pieces. Knowing that he wasn’t the hero, but the villain.
