S03E05 - Crashing Cars
In the cold open we see a funeral in the fall. A priest is giving last rites to a casket, speaking of the deceased as a loving father. Peter Petrelli is among the mourners. He walks over to the casket and throws a handful of dirt atop it, then hastily walks away from the remainder of his family. Peter spots Sylar waiting for him away from the funeral. Sylar asks Peter how he's doing and Peter says he's "been better." Sylar says he knows how complicated their relationship was, but at least Peter now has closure.
Peter puts an arm around Sylar's shoulders and starts to walk with him. Sylar says Peter's seemed troubled and notices he hasn't been sleeping well. Peter says that he's been having bad dreams, but he hopes with the funeral done they'll end soon. Sylar asks him what the dreams were and Peter says that they weren't good, but dodges the question. Sylar, hoping to put Peter in better spirits, suggests they go somewhere upstate for the weekend. Peter says he can't, that "something has come up." Sylar looks suspicious.
After the Series 3 intro we are shown an aerial view of New York City.
Three Years Later.
Late Winter, 2009.
We see Peter Petrelli emerge from an alley, it is the same night as last episode. He cuts through a quiet neighborhood, following parallel to a slowly moving white van, but staying out of its sights. Peter heads to a fire escape and slides an assault rifle out from under his coat and slings it over his shoulders. He climbs the fire escape and gets to the roof. We reveal that Peter is on the coast of Brooklyn with Manhattan right across the river. He quickly moves across the rooftops and when the van looks like it's out of sight, Peter teleports to a nearby roof.
When the van finally stops outside of another homeless village under an overpass, Peter sets up on the edge of the roof with his assault rifle, training his sights on the back of the van's doors. But the sounds of screeching tires suddenly distracts Peter. He watches as a pickup truck boxes in the van from the front and a woman on a motorcycle closes in from behind. Helena and Lynette emerge from the truck and Lynette turns into a bolt of lightning and zaps through the windshield of the van, reappearing inside the front seat where she electrocutes the driver. From a distance, Peter watches the Ferrymen through the scope of his rifle.
Lynette continues to fight through the van, moving into the back where she wrestles with a man in a biohazard suit. The pair tumble out of the back door and Lynette is struck in the face by the butt of his rifle. As he gets up Wireless grabs him from behind and slams him repeatedly against the door of the van until he collapses. Helena looks around and keeps an eye out and Peter follows her through the scope of his rifle. Wireless grabs one of the men and Helena grabs the other and hauls them into the bed of the pickup truck. Lynette jumps back into the driver's seat and Wireless gets back on her motorcycle and speeds off. Peter teleports down into the bed of the truck as it starts to move and lays down, staying hidden among the pair of unconscious men as it pulls away.
At an abandoned warehouse, Helena and Lynette pull in with their truck and Peter teleports out of the truck bed and behind a half-stripped car on cinder blocks. Wireless pulls up on her motorcycle and closes the garage doors. Helena and Lynette haul the captive men out of the truck and zip-tie their hands and bring them over to lifts used to hoist engine blocks out of cars. They hook their tied wrists in the lift and raise them both up so they're standing and restrained. Norman Benner comes out of a back office, loading a handgun.
Norman asks Wireless if she noticed she was followed. Wireless takes off her helmet and looks confused and Norman shouts, "you can come out. Or I'll have our friends here flush you out." Helena and Lynette look startled as Peter slowly walks out from behind the car with his assault rifle. Norman trains his gun on him and Wireless draws one as well. Before Norman can even say "Put the gun down" Peter has teleported across the room and back and taken both Wireless and Norman's guns. He drops them on the floor along with his rifle and says. "Maybe we can talk?"
Meanwhile, on Manhattan, Malcolm Parkins is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call. We only hear one end of the conversation, but Parkins is concerned and deferential to the person on the other end of the line. When he gets off the phone, we see Delilah Quinn in his bed. She asks Parkins what's wrong, and he says it's work and that he has to go in. Delilah checks the clock and sees that it's two in the morning and presses the matter. Parkins snaps at her and tells her to mind her own business, then regrets his choice and apologizes to her. Delilah looks hurt and tells him to leave.
In the warehouse, Peter Petrelli tells Norman and the others he's a friend. Norman asks what his "credentials" are, sarcastically, and Peter says he worked with Cameron and Eve for a time back when PARIAH first started. Wireless says Eve never mentioned him, and Peter asks Wireless if that surprises her. Peter says he's been staying off the radar because of personal reasons, but when he heard about the abductions on the news he felt he had to do something. Wireless asks if "doing something" meant shooting up a van full of these men. Peter says they shot first and seems proud of it.
One of the men they captured begins to wake up and Norman says this "reunion" will have to wait. He approaches the men and waits until they are both awake and asks if they can hear him. The captives are confrontational and refuse to speak English. Norman says something in Armenian and both men look surprised. Noah then shoots one of them in the head. Helena, Lynette, and Peter look shocked, Wireless does not. Norman then points his gun at the other captive and asks if he'd be willing to answer some questions.
Helena goes to confront Norman but Wireless stops her. Norman asks who he works for and the man says he doesn't know, that he is paid in cash installments for every captive he can get off of a pre-determined list. He says the list is in his pocket, and Norman retrieves it and hands it back to Wireless. As the interrogation continues, the captive explains that they are given the van and their hardware at a dead-drop on the outskirts of Queens, the van is left in a parking lot. The job was offered through a chain of intermediaries. He doesn't know who it originates from. The captive also explains that any people they abduct are exchange at a rest stop west of New York in New Jersey and loaded into a tractor trailer truck. Norman asks for the location of that rest stop and he is provided with it.
As Norman is continuing the interrogation, Peter asks Wireless who she and Norman are because they don't seem like "people off the street." Wireless doesn't answer and tells Peter that he hasn't earned that answer yet. Helena then asks Peter if he's seen Eve, and Peter says he was going to ask Helena the same thing. He's worried she may have been abducted by these same people. There is another gunshot that immediately ends all conversation. Norman walks over and informs Wireless he has all the information he could get out of their prisoner.
Helena gets in Norman's face about executing people and Norman asks if Helena would prefer if they let him go. Helena says he should have been handed over to the police and Wireless asks, "after seeing all of us? After identifying our vehicles?" Helena doesn't have a good answer, but looks troubled by the violence. Lynette seems less bothered and sides with Norman and Wireless saying that this is "a war" and sometimes bad things happen in a war. Peter, too, sides with Lynette and asks if they might all be able to share information.
Norman agrees that he has some questions for Peter, but this doesn't concern him and he needs to stay out of it. Peter and Norman argue and Norman says trust doesn't come easily. Peter tells Norman he'll regret saying those words and vanishes.
The next day, in Manhattan, Teo meets up with Helena on the south side of Central Park. Teo looks tired but Helena tries to lift his spirits and delivers the news about the captives from the night before. Teo says he learned a little too and asked Richard's old business partner Kain if he'd heard anything and Teo got the name Pinehearst. Helena asks what that is and Teo isn't sure, then he jokes, "probably not an air-freshener." Teo can tell Helena is troubled by something and he asks her what's on her mind, she explains how Norman killed the two men last night and Teo is troubled by that. He reminds Helena that Norman and Wireless are "spooks" and see things differently.
Helena remembers to ask Teo if he ever heard of someone named Peter Petrelli back in his days with PARIAH. Teo says he doesn't remember anyone by that name, but when he came on board he knew Cameron already had a falling out with a few members who left. But that was "before his time." Helena says they ran into Peter last night and Norman drove him off. Teo says that's a shame, he would have liked to talk to Peter about Cameron.
Teo's phone starts to vibrate, but when he pulls it out of his pocket he accidentally drops the remainder of his cocaine he bought from Kain. Helena bends down to get it for him without realizing what it is. Teo looks distraught and says it "isn't what it looks like." Helena asks if he's been getting high all this time and Teo doesn't directly answer. Helena is getting increasingly upset and asks Teo if he was drugged out when Magnes went missing. He has a few false starts but finally says yes, and Helena punches him square in the mouth, knocking him onto his knees.
Helena shouts at Teo and calls him irresponsible and dangerous. She says he's the reason why Magnes got caught, because Teo wouldn't come back to help so Magnes felt he had to take care of him. Helena asks Teo if he even realizes how Magnes feels about him, and Teo looks confused. Helena, disgusted, storms off and tells Teo to "walk to the rest of the way to headquarters yourself."
On Staten Island, Sylar is leaving his abandoned tenement building, followed by a bird. When he leaves, we see Gillian emerge from hiding behind an abandoned car and hurries into the same tenement building. She starts snooping around, but is quickly confronted by Eileen. Gillian is shocked to see Eileen alive and shakily pulls a handgun out of her purse. Eileen does not look frightened by the presence of the gun, even as Gillian levers the hammer back.
Gillian demands to know what Eileen is doing here with Sylar. Eileen says she's trying to help him remember who he is and regain his abilities. Gillian starts crying and calls Eileen a murderer. EIleen says she hasn't killed anyone, and asks Gillian if she can say the same thing. Gillian is momentarily distracted and is blindsided by one of Eileen's birds. In the scuffle Gillian shoots and kills the bird and Eileen recoils as if she was shot as well. Eileen collapses onto the floor holding a seemingly uninjured shoulder.
Gillain points the gun back at Eileen and asks where Jenny is. Eileen suddenly looks afraid and says that Jenny is dead. Gillian screams and shoots the wall beside Eileen who flinches away in terror. Gillian screams at Eileen and asks where her sister was buried, and Eileen shakes her head and says "she wasn't." This makes Gillian break down sobbing, but before she can recover Gillian is bodily flung through the air and pinned to a wall by an unseen force.
Sylar comes back into the apartment and goes to Eileen's side, asking if she's okay. Eileen says she's fine, just stunned. Sylar turns to Gillian and looks at her with familiarity. A smile slowly creeps up on Sylar's face as he says, "I remember that face."
