Claire Bennet

’   sorry.   i   don’t   really   keep   my   phone   on   me.   ’   it   wasn’t   a   complete   lie.   it   was   either   in   his   locker,   or   dead.   he   was   really   always   too   busy   to   keep   the   damn   thing   charged   in   the   first   place.   doesn’t   mean   he   didn’t   see   the   several   missed   calls   from   claire,   and   then   the   several   more   from   his   mother.   ’   i   meant   to   get   back   to   you   i   just   -   ’   it   was   work,   and   then   come   home   and   sleep,   and   get   up   early   to   do   it   all   again.   he   had   to   keep   busy,   or   else   he’d   be   stuck   with   the   mess   of   his   own   mind   that   he   kept   avoiding.   a   smile   it   given   towards   her   though.   ’   what’ve   you   been   up   to   though   ?   besides   being   pestered   by   my   mother   ?   ‘   

Claire sighed, thinking things through for several seconds.  “Honestly? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  And I don’t like it, but I’m gonna need your help to disappear for awhile.  Molly’s already said that she’ll lie about her powers if I need her to, but your help would require a lot more than claiming you don’t know where I am.”  She wondered if he had inside people in Renautus, too, if he know something was coming... and that she had officially been listed in their targets to grab. 

“Look... I’m not sure how much you’re paying attention to current affairs, but... Renautus isn’t the good guys they’ve been pretending to be.  They’re kidnapping people with powers, experimenting on them, and nobody ever sees them again after that.  I put in a couple spies as soon as I heard whispers about it.  They’re planning something for the Expo, no one’s able to tell me what, but it’s going to be the biggest congregation of powered people since the public was made aware of them.  Your mother claims that Renautus’ sudden interest in collecting me has more to do with the twins.”  She had managed to keep it out of the public eye that she was pregnant, largely to keep the father out of the picture.  That had been a mistake in a half.  

    peter’s   tired.   he’s   done   so   much   trying   to   clean   up  his   own   messes,  his  parents   messes,   all   he   wants   to   do   is   save   people,   and   doing   that   in   his   job,   is   enough   for   him.   he   was   thankful   for   the   rest,   of   not   having   to   save   the   world,   or   hold   it   up   on   his   shoulders.  however,   claire   looks   nervous,   and   peter   always   knew   when   to   take   a   feeling   seriously.   if   claire   thought   something   was   going   to   happen,   that   was   a   good   enough   reason   to   look   into   it.   ’   probably  could   have   been   avoided   if   you   hadn’t  outed   everyone   -   ’   words   are   slightly  annoyed,   as   peter   moves   to   shove   his   hands   into   his   pockets.   ’   but   if   you   want,   i   could   dig   around  in   my   spare   time.   ’  

Nate continued glaring at the TV, as the silver haired man at the podium who sounded like Tom Hanks concluded his short speech. “You’d think they’d have learned from Nixon’s antics” he growled unhappily. “But no, instead these people make Linderman look like Honest Abe. Or they would, if they didn’t fuck everything up so badly”. 

After President Worf’s second term came to an end and the election of President Barker as a seeming backlash by conservatives, the world was more polarised than ever. And Evos of course got caught in the middle - vilified by one side and a cause celebre for the other, his own actions certainly hadn’t helped. For every Evo that appeared on a reality TV show or made the news as a feel-good community story, there was yet another preacher spewing hate insisting that they were “demons in human clothing” and “abominations before the eyes of God” or yet another moron blaming vaccines for causing their kids to start fires in their crib. 

The regulations on Evos had tightened - no longer allowed to serve in the military, with new regulations put in place restricting work and medical assistance, and even talk of them being rounded up as a “danger to humanity” as the new President ranted and raved, those once considered the next leap in human history were once again hiding. Watching the neighbourhoods and each other’s doors became second nature.

Of course, that was for the majority - the “green-tagged” people with harmless or useless powers, who were still allowed to walk around freely as long as they knew their place. For red-tags, flagged in the system as possessing dangerous powers or as involved with the Petrelli movement, it was worse - living in hiding in the abandoned places for some, and the houses owned by so many offshore shell corporations finding the actual owner was a needle in a planet of needles for others. 

The movement did their best to help out, with people like Rebel and Kane regularly getting into the computer systems and wreaking havoc with every database they could find - but in this they were hindered by Quislings, powered individuals who preferred to suck up to power and turn against their own kind. Every time the resistance gained ground they had it pulled out from under them.

And people had died - a counterprotestor at a hate rally who was mowed down, a group of right-wing rioters killed when the masked vigilante the Internet had dubbed Warhammer dropped a truck on them from a barricade. The President screamed and railed about “criminals that would be dealt with in the STRONGEST MANNER!” while all around both sides tried to put out the fires. Thankfully, nobody with nucleokinetic powers like Ted had decided to get involved in either side - the thought of a human nuke popping up in this mess made Nate shudder and unconsciously rub his face.

Among all this, Russia had decided to get in on the action - using cyberpropaganda to fan the flames on all sides to the extent there was a report made on whether Barker had actually conspired with them. Arrests had been made, people had been imprisoned, and everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for the next news bomb. A brave new world indeed, he mused as the talking heads on TV started to babble away.

Claire sighed as she heard Nathan speak.  “You’re forgetting, most voters now are too young to remember Nixon.  And most people have no idea what it’s like as an Evo.”  God, she hated that term.  But there was no better term out there.  Yeah, they were ‘the evolved people’, but did they really have to make it sound so impersonal?  They were still people, after all?

Claire was lucky.  Although she wasn’t considered a green tag because of all the implications that rapid cellular regeneration brought, she wasn’t considered a red tag because of her very public non-violent protests.  People knew she wasn’t out there to hurt anyone.  She had made it a point to speak about how most people with abilities wanted  to just be normal people, wanted to do normal things.  And, lucky for her, most people seemed to believe her... at least about herself.  The government still kept a rather keen eye.  She would always see a half-dozen suits at her rallies, but what could you do about that?  Stopping them would only make people think that she was scared.  And the government didn’t scare her.  No, it was the general public, the ones that made it their business to wipe the Evos off the map that scared her.  She doubted they’d actually manage to do anything to her, but what about Nathan?  What about Micah?  Or Molly?  Mohinder?  And what about their loved ones, the ones without powers?

Claire was well aware that her very, very public stance on peaceful protest was the only reason people were not demanding her be locked up.  After all, super healing could be the cause for any number of other things.  Training without needing to rest the muscles would give her essentially super strength or enhanced speed.  She already didn’t feel physical pain.  People were worried about whether or not she would eventually stop her nonviolent stance, what could mere mortals do against an assailant that couldn’t be killed, after all.