Heroes Volume Four, Chapter Two: Trust & Blood

So the plane crashes, but we don’t get to see the part where all our heroes somehow manage to avoid being crushed or charred in the wreckage. Instead, we catch up to them with their madcap escape already in progress. Armed goons with search lights and helicopters pursue Hiro, Matt, and Mohinder. Matt develops the Isaac Mendez Milky-Eyes™ again, and a vision of Usutu guides him to a trailer, from which he steals art supplies. While Matt makes some prophetic sketches, Hiro and Mohinder swipe clothes from the clothesline and change out of their orange prison jumpsuits (Mohinder dons an awful black-and-red striped shirt, which, honestly, is no sillier than some of the stuff he wears voluntarily). Mohinder tries to convince Hiro to turn himself in, theorizing that the authorities will go easy on him once they discover he no longer has his powers, but Hiro isn’t falling for that crap. Matt sketches a bunch of random pictures, including one of Daphne getting shot.

Daphne finds Ando in Tokyo and tells him she’s worried because Matt didn’t come home last night. It’s not clear why Tokyo was tops on her list of places to look for him, but whatever. Ando fills her in on Hiro’s capture, mentioning he’s tracked him via GPS to Arkansas. Daphne and Ando zip off in search of Hiro and Matt.

At the crash site, Nathan argues with the scary balding guy (aka Danko, aka the Hunter) over the extreme and deadly tactics used to hunt the escaped prisoners (Danko is pro-, whilst Nathan is anti-). The plane wreckage is bombed to remove all traces of the crash; this seems a tad unnecessary, especially since much of the remainder of the episode takes place around the still-identifiable wreckage of the plane, but I’m sure Nathan’s goons know what they’re doing.

Bennet apprehends Peter and Claire, but has a pang of conscience and lets Peter escape. Bennet and Claire have one of those father-daughter squabbles I enjoy so much (“I don’t even know who you are anymore!” “I’m just trying to protect you, Claire-Bear!” Repeat ad nauseum). While Bennet and Nathan have a powwow about how Danko is totally nuts and super-violent, Daphne zips in and speeds off with Claire.

Matt, Mohinder, Ando, Daphne, Claire, and Hiro all congregate around the plane wreckage, heedless of the dozens of heavily-armed goons sweeping the immediate area for them. The goons attack and riddle Daphne and Claire with bullets. Chaos ensues; heroes scatter. Claire comes back to life and gets captured, but Daphne, apparently, is a goner. (Or not: there’s a framing device running throughout the episode featuring Nathan, forty-three hours after the crash, relating these events over the phone to someone who ultimately turns out to be Angela. So it’s fully possible Daphne is still alive and Nathan either is unaware of this or isn’t telling his mother the whole story.)

Danko takes Claire into custody and informs her that the plane crash was entirely her fault. Fair enough, though I’d go ahead and save a little of the blame for the kid who caused the big old hole in the side. Danko wants to shoot Claire in the head, but both Nathan and Bennet object. Strenuously. Bennet sends Claire back to Costa Verde.

In Newark, Mary Campbell and her no-good teenaged son Luke, who are neighbors to Sylar’s still-unseen taxidermist father, arrive home and find Sylar camped out in their living room, happily interrogating one of the agents who’d tried to capture him last episode. The agent hasn’t surrendered any information about Sylar’s father, so Sylar decides to torture the Campbells to get him to talk. As a bonus, Sylar throws in some free half-baked psychoanalysis of their family dynamic: Luke is a child of a single mom and an absent father, so Sylar, sensing a kindred spirit, concludes he’s a mom-loathing psychotic killer-in-training. The sad part is, he’s not far off. Luke reveals his own cool ability: heat rays!

This is relevant to Sylar’s interests.

When the tortured agent frees himself, Luke kills him to protect Sylar. Bad judgment call, kid. Really, really bad. Sylar takes off, but Luke decides he has a new best friend and tags along after him. Sylar thinks this is a crappy idea at first (as he tells the kid, “I let you live, which is kind of a big deal for me”), but relents when he finds Luke knows the current location of Sylar’s father. They steal Luke’s mother’s station wagon and hit the road. Is this plotline awesome or disturbing? Both? I can’t decide.

Peter teams up with fellow escapee Tracy, who is being sort of a wet dishrag, and tells her that, for plot simplification purposes, he can only hang onto a single ability at a time now. Tracy and Peter try to lure Nathan into an ambush: Tracy calls Nathan and offers to give him Peter in exchange for her freedom. When Nathan arrives, however, he successfully sweet-talks Tracy into betraying Peter. Peter ends up taking Nathan hostage; Bennet passes up a perfect opportunity to shoot Peter and instead lets Peter absorb Nathan’s power and fly away. Nathan takes Tracy into custody.

Matt, Mohinder, Hiro, Peter, and Ando meet up outside a church. Hey, it was really super-awesome of those masked goons to let everyone hang onto their cell phones after being arrested, because it’s made all these post-escape hookups go so much smoother. They look over Matt’s prophetic drawings. Hiro sees one of himself in New Delhi and concludes he’s supposed to find a sword and regain his powers. Sometimes Hiro’s leaps in logic are sorta hard to follow. Matt decides he wants to wreak terrible vengeance and retribution for Daphne’s death, while Mohinder, still strangely calm and reasonable, tries to steer him more in the user-friendly direction of “justice” instead. Peter yammers on about taking the fight to the enemy, and everyone starts to look noble and grimly determined. God help us all.

Claire returns to her home in Costa Verde, where a cheerily oblivious Sandra thinks she’s been off visiting colleges. Claire gets a text message from someone named “Rebel,” which reads, “There is still hope. You can fight back.”