May 2007, Like Someone Took Them Away

[ellectrical]

There were certain geographic areas around the world that held unusually high concentrations of the kind of people the Company sought out – those with special abilities, and those with flexible morals. They were rural and urban, ranging from central Alaska and Jakarta, Indonesia; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and the Tarapacá region of Chile.

The southern coast of Italy, and New York, New York.

The Company shrinks theorized a common element that drew the disaffected. That somehow, they could sense their disconnect with others, with the rest of the world, even without knowing what they really were. But Elle wouldn't know – she can't really remember a time when she wasn't recognized for both qualities.

Her first night, Elle flattens the New York City metro map across the navy carpet floor of her motel room, takes out a black marker, and marks them down. Charles Deveaux's midtown penthouse. Isaac Mendez's studio in TriBeCa. The Petrelli house. Suresh's apartment in Brooklyn. Gabriel Gray's watch shop is eight blocks north and four east of where she's staying in Queens.

It goes on for a while, until the map is freckled with dots, and ends with a line drawn over the bright orange route of the F train, for the ten-year-old mind reader.

But she's only come for one of them. Elle draws a small, deformed circle around a relatively large space of a nearby neighborhood, then reaches for the city map she took from the Bar, and lays it over the first until she can see the matching metro routes. The circle is traced through it, and Elle leans in, tapping a few of the buildings within. Unlike the others, these aren't meant to tell her where to look – the Company had never pinned this man down too exactly, the way they had so many others. With him, she can only mark her vantage points.

The first attempt is from a chain coffee shop. She takes a seat by one of the large windows that face out into the street, and pulls out a pen, small notebook, and paperback of Emily Dickinson poetry, all of which she'd bought at a bookstore on her way there. The book is similar to the collection of Dickinson poems her father had kept on one of the shelves in his office. Most of it hadn't stuck in Elle's mind, but on the other hand, the words seemed a lot less like a code she just wasn't meant to understand. It's a cover, in any case; settled at her table, Elle can easily pass as a student, studying for hours if that's what's needed.

It is on that day. What she's watching for never occurs beyond the window.

Her luck is the same the next day.

But on the third, as she's having lunch, sitting in the window of a Pakistani restaurant, Elle glances up from tearing naan into pieces, and sees him. He steps down the stoop of a building across the street, onto the sidewalk, and walks right past the window. Elle can follow him until he's turned a corner and disappeared behind the sign of a record store. She leaves the money for the meal on the table, and leaves the restaurant immediately.

The building is discreet – redbrick, maybe ten stories high, old steel fire escapes affixed at the alley. There's no guard at the door, she can tell that immediately. The apartment numbers are listed with a set of buzzers along each number and name. It's easy enough for Elle to slip up the stoop, and lean in the doorway, sticking her hands in her jeans like she's waiting for someone rather than reading the names off the buzzer list. Two are marked as empty, but she knows he wouldn't do something that would so easily draw attention. She reads it over twice – no name stands out to her.

"Are you looking for something?"

Her movement isn't sharp. Elle looks to the man – dark hair and dark eyes, he's about a foot taller than her, though as he's standing on the first step of the stoop, this isn't obvious. Still, even though she's meant to look sharper than she did as she was traveling to New York (now, she's in a blue blouse and jeans, with a black leather jacket that conceals her gun, and heeled boots, her blonde hair down and her bangs brushed carefully over her forehead), it doesn't take much for her to shrink back against the wall, and look to the apartment listing with apparent uncertainty.

"My boyfriend lives here – he's waiting for me to buzz him, but –"

She reaches across to the listings, choosing one of the buttons with only a male name listed. In the instant her finger brushes the button, a thin but high-voltage thread of electricity passes through her hand into the buzzer's circuit board. She presses the button, and nothing happens.

"It's not working. I was running late anyway and forgot my phone."

Elle tilts her closed purse in the man's direction, as though he could see there was no phone inside. It's the truth, but the man doesn't give her more than another cursory glance before stepping up past her, to the door, and taking out his own key.

"I'll tell the super it's broken," he mutters. From his tone, it doesn't sound like it's the first time. Elle mumbles a thank you as she steps into the building behind him, and the man is soon distracted by the mailboxes that line the right side of the entrance hall, and doesn't look to her again as she dashes for the stairs.

Of course, being in the building doesn't exactly give her what she needs, which Elle realizes as she reaches the third floor. The halls are simple brick, and the doors have no decoration – only the occasionally glowing button and apartment listing to the right of the doors. They all have numbers painted in white near the top of the door, however, Elle's deciding that she'll get a good look around before heading back that she stops.

3B4.

It's at the end of the hall, near a window that looks out into the street. Elle is also certain it wasn't listed at the entrance.

With one glance around the empty hall, and a moment to listen for any footsteps in the other apartments, Elle steps to the last door, and opens her purse. It's very full, the items inside jumbled, but she finds what she's looking for when grasping near the bottom – a small hairpin. Spending time with thieves can have its benefits; Elle leans into the door, and slips the pin into the keyhole. It takes about a minute, but something in the door clicks, and she twists the knob, pushing the door open.

It's a spare apartment – no decorations, only a few pieces of furniture spread around a single room. Elle shuts the door behind herself and turns the lock once more. The walls are bare, with a couple windows lining the right side of the room that look down onto the street. A single bed with white sheets in the far corner, a small kitchen with a short refrigerator across from it, with a couple cupboards and sink, and a table with one chair. To the left of her, there's a bookcase that touches the ceiling nearly brimming with stained and tattered covers, a tall steel lamp, and a patched armchair of blue felt.

She has nothing to do but wait. Elle steps to the right, toward the first window. A small table sits beneath it; she stops at it, her hand reaching out to touch a water stain on the wood.

A moment later, she sees something that's been left on it. Long, thin slices of dark, polished wood strung together with what looks like fishing wire – she finds a knot, and lifts, only then realizing what the object is.

A wind chime.

She doesn't shake the chime or flick at the pieces of wood to see what sort of sound it makes. There's a nail hammered into the top of the window frame, and though Elle has to stand on her toes to reach it, she holds it up, and loops the wire over the nail. The chime is still against the window, and Elle turns away, heading for the kitchen table.