Heroes, Volume Four, Chapter Three: Building 26

Sylar and Luke, who is reaching bold new levels of irksome, continue on their road trip to find Sylar’s dad. When the damn kid keeps lying about their destination, Sylar, who is all too clearly thinking about how this isn’t nearly as awesome as that time he drove cross-country with Mohinder, starts losing it a little and threatens to slice open Luke’s head. For the life of me, I can’t tell whether I’d support this. On the one hand, murdering a stupid teen is a horrendous thing to do, even by Sylar’s bottom-barrel standards of moral behavior. On the other hand, Luke is working my every last nerve.

Sylar and his little buddy stop at a diner. When Luke uses his heat wave powers for no good reason, Sylar informs him that part of being an effective super-villain is always knowing your motivation. Serial killers: they’re just like actors! Nathan’s goons, who have located Sylar using surveillance cameras and super-sophisticated face-recognition software, storm the diner. Luke creates a distraction to save his new best friend, and a huge shootout ensues. Sylar escapes in a barrage of gunfire, but Luke gets tasered by the goons. Sylar returns and massacres the goons to rescue his stupid protégé.

Hiro and Ando go to New Delhi and find the location depicted in Matt’s prophetic drawing, which turns out to be the site of a big wedding. Hiro decides he needs to stop the wedding and rescue the bride. Wow, Hiro gets so much more out of those drawings than I do. Before Hiro can intervene, Ando approaches the bride, Annapura, and demonstrates his ability for her. The bride interprets this as a heavenly sign to call off the wedding. Hiro gets bitchy and resentful toward Ando. His reasoning goes thusly: By depriving Hiro of his chance to stop the wedding and fulfill the prophetic sketch, Ando has ruined Hiro’s opportunity to get his powers back. He got all that out of Matt’s little sketch? Really? Is it me, or are Hiro’s leaps in logic sort of dizzying?

Annapura’s jilted fiancé kidnaps Ando to intimidate Annapura into going through with the wedding. Hiro stops the ceremony and punches out the groom, thus fulfilling the prophetic sketch. The groom releases Ando, who apologizes for infringing upon Hiro’s destiny. Hiro goes on his “I don’t need powers to be a hero” kick again and forgives Ando. They receive a fax from the mysterious Rebel, which reads, “Save Matt Parkman.”

Washington, DC: From his top-secret headquarters in the mysterious Building 26, Nathan fields a visit from Homeland Security agent Abby Collins, who is concerned about his request for additional funding for his “round up all super-powered people and imprison them indefinitely” scheme. Nathan tries to explain his plan, but Abby thinks he’s full of it. Fair enough. Upon learning that a super-powered individual is in custody in the building, Abby asks to see proof of the existence of special abilities.

The prisoner is Tracy, who’s being kept shackled to a chair and bombarded with heat waves. Wait, so Tracy’s the only prisoner Nathan and Danko managed to recapture after the plane crash? I mean, there were SWAT teams, and attack dogs, and helicopters, and flood lights… Granted, Nathan has been a teensy bit flaky and incompetent lately, but I’m starting to think Danko’s abilities as a super-elite hunter and tracker have been greatly exaggerated. Abby, who knows Tracy from her days as a lobbyist, is horrified and threatens to shut down the entire program.

Tracy, meanwhile, breaks her chains and escapes from her cell. When goons surround her, she takes some poor random guy hostage, then freezes him solid and shatters him into pieces. This does absolutely nothing to further her attempt to escape and, indeed, kind of helps along Nathan’s argument about people with special abilities being too dangerous to exist in polite society. So that went well. Tracy is taken back into custody, and a shocked Abby agrees to give Nathan all necessary funding. Later, Tracy tells Nathan her chains were already broken and her cell door was left unlocked. She accuses Nathan of orchestrating her escape attempt just to squeeze money out of Abby. Yes, Tracy, Nathan’s a scumbag. We all got that memo. Doesn’t mean you had to murder that random dude. For his part, Nathan realizes Danko was actually the one who released Tracy.

Costa Verde: Over breakfast, an oblivious Sandra Bennet grills Claire about her recent--and wholly made-up--East Coast college tour (Noah Bennet, perhaps realizing the Ivy League is pretty much a pipe dream for Claire, even with a truckload of Petrelli money at her back, takes the liberty of enrolling her in the local community college instead). Claire gets an urgent text message from Rebel asking her to warn someone named Alex of imminent danger.

Claire visits comic-geek Alex and delivers the message. It should be noted that Alex is sort of adorable and earnest, and doesn’t deserve to get bogged down in a plotline involving sullen, petulant Claire. When Bennet comes searching for Alex, Claire and Alex flee. Claire gives Alex the lowdown on Nathan’s goons and his plans to incarcerate all people with special abilities. In turn, Alex tells her he has the power to breathe underwater.

(At some point in all this, Bennet and Claire have a spat about all the lies and sneaking around, but I’m just too tired to mention it in detail. How’s this: from here on out, if Bennet and Claire don’t get into at least one tedious domestic squabble in the course of an episode, I’ll make a note of it. Otherwise, just assume at least one such argument takes place.)

Claire tells Sandra that Bennet is still up to his old tricks: once again, he’s working for shady organizations and abducting innocent people. Sandra gets seriously peeved at this and kicks him out of the house. Oh, hallelujah. It’s about fricking time. Sandra, I just wish you’d done that two seasons ago when you discovered your husband had given you brain damage rather than tell you the truth about his line of work. I’m downright fond of Bennet as a character, but he’s an appalling excuse for a husband. Claire, meanwhile, is keeping fugitive Alex hidden in her closet. Good for you, Claire. He’s cute.

A forlorn Bennet drinks and mopes in a hotel bar. His vision blurs, and he collapses to the floor. Matt, Mohinder and Peter pop up out of nowhere and drag him off.