Heroes: Volume 5: Redemption: Chapter 4, Hysterical Blindness

Sylar:
After his strange transformation back to his old self, Sylar is now all confused and lost walking on the side of the road. A passing police car pulls over and takes him into the police station where they can question him or find out who he is. A doctor of psychology is called in to help get the mysterious man to talk. With a bit of trying Sylar begins to open up about his last memory: being shot then buried somewhere out in the woods. After he gets a shave and cleaned up, Sylar becomes relaxed and becomes more open to the physician. He reviles that everything he is currently experiencing is new to him; he is feeling as if he’s been “reborn”. The doctor takes this as a good sign feeling that it is his old self trying to break itself free to help determine who he is. Then she tells him to close his eyes and to tell her what is the first thing he sees. He tries but nothing is coming to mind; instead he gets thrown off be the constant ticking of both the clock in the interrogation room and the ticking of the psychologists watch. He reviles that the watch is actually running fast, but unsure on how he knows this. Just before they start to make another break through she gets called away and the arresting police officers takes her place. He confesses that they now know who he is and is currently under arrest for the murder of his mother. Of course he needs a confession first and prepares to man-handle Sylar until a confession is made. This doesn’t bode well with Sylar and just before the officer attacks him, Syalr sends him flying through the two-way mirror. Deciding this is now an ample time to get out of there, Sylar makes a break for it and confronts the doctor as she is about to leave. He feels bad but he takes her hostage so he may try to make a getaway. While on the loose they get to start talking again; she confesses that she knows he’s wanted for the death of his mother, but he doesn’t believe that and feels that she doesn’t believe that either. She convinces that Syalar should turn himself over to the police so that they can do a proper investigation. While putting his hands up for the officers, Sylar begins to emit some electricity around his fingers. Fearing for their lives, the officers fire, causing Sylar to tumble down the hill side road with the doctor. As soon as Sylar heals he gets himself back up and running again, where he runs up a hill only to come across a circus on the top, with no other than Samuel waiting for him at the entrance, welcoming him to his new home.

Claire:
After about a weeks or so in her new school and the death of her old roommate, Claire is feeling pretty good. She is happy to both be in school and have a new best friend, but her happiness doesn’t end there. While sitting and talking with Gretchen, a new girl she hasn’t met yet, comes up to her and asks if she was thinking about joining a sorority house. She says her name is Becky and had found that Claire is a descendant of one of sisters form the sorority house. Becky wonders if Claire would like to join, being that her mother had joined so many years ago. Gretchen becomes jealous of this invitation to come in for an open house and tries to persuade Becky that Claire doesn’t want to go. Claire, being the girl she is, accepts the offer to go in for the open house. She invites Gretchen along to make sure there’s nothing actually going on there and so the two girls show up. While at the house the girls are split up into two groups and they are sent on what they classify as “speed dating” where the pledges go around talking to the other members of the house to see who they are and what they are like. Claire starts to go around talking about her past with some of the sisters and soon starts to come across some of the members who had recently talked to Gretchen. This surprises Claire because they start to recite things from her past, that she didn’t know Grecthen knew. After the girls get back they spend a few hours back at the dorms before they get ready to go off to the sorority mixer. While Gretchen goes to the bathroom Claire looks around for something to wear. As she does this, a text book from her roommates book shelf falls down and she hears the computer turn on. Without wanting to leave the book on the floor Claire goes to pick it up and place it on Gretchen’s desk but upon inspection of her desk, Claire looks upon the screen of her laptop and see’s that Gretchen has been looking up all that she can about Claire on-line. When Gretchen comes back, she wonders if Claire is ready to go but being so bewildered, Claire tells Gretchen to go on her own and meet her there. After calming herself down and thinking about it for a while, Claire shows up at the mixer where she begins to look around for Gretchen. Becky shows up first and introduces Claire to another blond girl who was once a cheerleader as well named Claire. Both Claires get to talking and find out that they seem to share a similar experience being cheerleaders. For some odd reason, Claire (Bennet) looks up and sees a giant flag pole racing towards them. She pushes the other Claire out of the way as the flag pole slams itself into the ground. Claire looks back up only to see Gretchen looking down on her. Feeling angry and confused Claire storms out and goes back to the dorm room. There Gretchen shows up and tries to explain what had just happened. Claire doesn’t straight out say it,  but accuses Gretchen of trying to hurt her with the flag pole. Gretchen is confused and tries to reassure Claire that she didn’t do it. Claire is even goes to tell her about the images and the information she saw about herself on Gretchen’s computer. Gretchen freaks when she hears this blaming Claire of snooping and that she had no right to do that. Claire explains that she wasn’t snooping, that she only saw it because there was a text book that fell and when she picked it up, the computer turned itself on and the web pages were in plane view. This relaxes Gretchen a bit, and feels she must come clean. She tells Claire, that yes, maybe she was stalking her just a little bit, but it’s not what she thinks and with that Gretchen leans out and kisses Claire. Claire is completely caught off gaurd and Gretchen claimes she has a crush on her. Before they get a chance to talk more on the subject they get a knock and soon the sisters of the sorority house are standing in their dorm room announcing that they have been accepted as sisters of the house.

Peter:
Peter invites both Nathan and his mother Angela over to his apartment, but in the end only his mother shows up. But while Peter is talking on how much he wants to become closer to the family he can’t help but notice that his mother is currently distracted by something else; that something is his brother Nathan. Peter can’t help feel that his brother is currently more important that he is right now and can’t get anywhere with his mother. Fortunately he has to head off to work, but his mother decides to stay behind to wait until Nathan shows up. While on his patrol Peter comes across a woman in need, who looks like she is about to be hit by a bus. With this he runs at blazing speed and moves her out of the way. The woman is Emma, who was taken back by some colors she saw again. Peter tries to talk with her but she tries to shrug him off. Feeling rejected, Peter decides to go his own route and decides to go on his attempt to save everyone he can. He turns down a back ally way to make sure no one sees him speed off, but as he tries to run he realizes that he can’t, well not at super sonic speeds. He tries again and again until he gives up; in doing so he kicks over a garbage can and in the process begins to see magical lights coming from it. He heads off back to the hospital to visit Emma to discuss her ability but she isn’t at the filing station. He wonders through the hospital until he comes across a choir of children singing to someone else playing the piano. This stops Peter dead in his tracks while he witnesses the wonderful and captivating colors that start coming from the piano. But he is not alone, across the room Emma is doing the same thing. He begins to watch her and in turn she watches him. She asks him the best way she can giving signals if he can see the colors too, and he replies yes. After the music is done they get together and Peter tries to talk to her the best way he can to explain that she is not the only one, there are others out there that can do different things, such as fly, teleport, turn to water, etc. They find an empty piano in the hospital and being to play, both of them now are captivated by the magical lights emanating from the piano. After they are done Peter asks her if she would mind going out for lunch and to talk about the new found power. Peter tries to comfort her by saying that going out would take her away from filing, but in turn only makes things worse and feeling insulted Emma walks away. Peter, feeling even worse now goes home to his apartment where out of the blue Hiro shows up and collapses in his living room.

Emma:
While working to file the papers as she has done so many times before, she gets visited by the doctor who first diagnosed her. The doctor is her mother, who has also came across another explanation about her being able to see sounds, called “Hysterical Blindness”. Emma shrugs it off thinking that it would mean she was going insane. He mother soon switches topics and sujects to her that she should go back and try to become a doctor saying it would get her out of the filing station. Emma takes this as an insult saying that if it wasn’t for her; the files doctors and nurses needed so bad wouldn’t be filed properly and be all over the place. Being still upset, Emma goes for a walk but can’t concentrate because of all the sounds she is starting to see. She stops suddenly at the sight of construction workers jacking up the street. Being one of the loudest things she’s come across she watching in wonder at the lights. There seems to be something distracting about them, but for some odd reason she begins to back up onto the street where a bus is about to collide with the young woman. Luckily Peter was in the area and quickly rescues her. Peter tries to talk to her, to make sure she is alright, but Emma wants nothing to do with him. She would rather think that she was ignoring him because she doesn’t care rather that him finding out that she is deaf. With that she walks away quickly, but still can’t escape Peter who is still trying to talk to her. Luck would have it that Peter gives up and Emma finds her way back to the hospital. While there she catches a show put on by a choir of children, this distracts her because she again really starts to see the music coming out of the piano that is also used. That where she sees Peter, watching the colors swim by. After the show they get together and Peter tries to explain to her that she isn’t alone that there are other people out there are well, but they have different abilities.They find an empty piano in the hospital and being to play, both of them now are captivated by the magical lights emanating from the piano. After they are done After they are done Peter asks her if she would mind going out for lunch and to talk about the new found power. Peter tries to comfort her by saying that going out would take her away from filing, but in turn only makes things worse and feeling insulted Emma walks away. After work Emma goes back to her apartment where there seems to be a cello waiting for her. Wanting to relive the experience from the park, Emma begins to play, and play she does. She becomes enthralled in the sensation of watching such beautiful colors. She plays harder and harder trying to make the colors more and more vibrant, the colors seem to dance on the walls of her living room, but before she knows it the intensity of the colors actually cause the walls to crack and split open.

Samuel:
After several attempts at  trying to recruit someone into the family, Samuel hasn’t find any body worth joining. The rest of the family members are getting restless to have Samuel’s fallen brother replaced. During a large breakfast gathering, Samuel makes a promise that he would make the family “whole” again.  Lydia is unsure if Samuel can actually deliver and after breakfast talks to him in private to see who is the new recruit. Samuel does not answer, and tells her that even he doesn’t know. She is worried that he might not find anyone at all and it is very risky to play such a dangerous game. Samuel lets her know that he is willing to risk everything to see the family flourish. As time ticks on, Samuel later approaches Lydia to see if she can help show him who the next member will be, but when he tries to apply ink on her back nothing appears. Frustrated Samuel throws a towel but instead of falling to the ground it gets tangled up into something that doesn’t seem to be there. Out steps his niece, Becky, who is letting her uncle know the progress she is making with Claire. Becky tells him that she is working quite hard on trying to isolate and separate anyone who seems close to Claire, even staging accidents such as pushing her roommate out the window, dropping a book to force her to look at Gretchen’s computer, even dropping a flag, almost injuring her and forcing Claire to believe it was Gretchen all this time. Samuel is pleased to hear about her work and urges her to continue. Lydia soon springs that she now knows who will fill in the place left vacant by the death of Samuel’s brother. Samuel rushes over and applies the special ink onto her back and an image is formed, that of Sylar.