Heroes fic: Out of Their Hands (pg)
Title: Out of Their Hands
Author: sabaceanbabe
Rating: PG, just to be safe
Word count: 570
Summary: What is wrong? What is right? How can anyone know?
Characters: lots, but it's from Angela Petrelli's POV
Spoilers: through Truth and Consequences
Author's note: Thank you, jebbypal, for the beta. This was written for challenge #2 at heroes_contest: right and wrong. Oh, yeah! And I placed 3rd in challenge #1. :D
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Angela shivered. She pulled her sweater closer around her, chilled by more than the temperature in the room. Unable to remain silent, she interrupted Kaito. "This is wrong. We all know it's wrong. We cannot lock him up and throw away the key."
Kaito skewered her with a look. "And is it somehow less wrong to let him remain free? Knowing that he is unstable? That he wants to release the virus?"
"Is he unstable?" she countered.
Victoria stood up, leaned on the conference table. "How can you even say that? He wants us to destroy the world!"
Angela leaned back in her chair. Absently, she drew a streak in the perfect shine of the table's surface and then smoothed it away with the palm of her hand. She felt their eyes on her. She looked up, first at Kaito, then Maury, then Victoria, and finally her gaze rested on her husband. "Is it any less wrong to kill hundreds of thousands rather than billions?" she whispered. The question had bothered her since Adam had first proposed it several weeks before, in this very conference room. Louder she said, "In his eyes, he's trying to save it."
She wished Charles were here. Calm, unflappable Charles Deveaux. He would know what to say to defuse the situation, to make them think rather than simply react. Adam had called this meeting of the company's founders, wanting to discuss, yet again, the merits of his plan versus Linderman's. On the surface, Adam's plan was sheer madness, releasing the virus with its potential for destruction. But was Linderman's plan any more sane?
Charles had dreamed something that had shown him what might be in some possible future. A future within their lifetimes. And Linderman had seized upon it, doing everything in his considerable power to bring that possible future closer to reality. It was still by no means a certain thing, but it seemed that it was at odds with Adam's version of the future. One would prevent the other. Or so Charles suspected.
All Angela knew for certain was that they were, in one form or another, playing God. And she was uncomfortable with that, although she could find no escape from it. There was an inevitability about the whole thing. No matter what they did or didn't do, people would die.
Linderman was a fanatic. Adam was... Angela closed her eyes against the room and its occupants. Adam was just as much a fanatic, if a somewhat more palatable one. At least she had the sense from him that he truly cared about what happened to the world. It was just that he had lived so long, seen so much. It couldn't help but color his thinking.
Their choices were few, although she hoped that in the intervening years more would present themselves. Either allow a nuclear bomb to explode in the middle of a crowded city or allow a mutant strain of a virus to be released on the entire world, destroying nearly everyone.
An alarm klaxon jarred her from her thoughts. Its sound sent a chill down her spine. Victoria ran from the room, the tails of her white lab coat flying. Kaito jumped for a telephone as an announcement threaded beneath the raucous noise.
"Containment breach in bioresearch. Evacuation protocol in full effect."
"Oh, Adam, what have you done?" she asked, even as she followed Dallas from the conference room.
Author: sabaceanbabe
Rating: PG, just to be safe
Word count: 570
Summary: What is wrong? What is right? How can anyone know?
Characters: lots, but it's from Angela Petrelli's POV
Spoilers: through Truth and Consequences
Author's note: Thank you, jebbypal, for the beta. This was written for challenge #2 at heroes_contest: right and wrong. Oh, yeah! And I placed 3rd in challenge #1. :D
------------------------
Angela shivered. She pulled her sweater closer around her, chilled by more than the temperature in the room. Unable to remain silent, she interrupted Kaito. "This is wrong. We all know it's wrong. We cannot lock him up and throw away the key."
Kaito skewered her with a look. "And is it somehow less wrong to let him remain free? Knowing that he is unstable? That he wants to release the virus?"
"Is he unstable?" she countered.
Victoria stood up, leaned on the conference table. "How can you even say that? He wants us to destroy the world!"
Angela leaned back in her chair. Absently, she drew a streak in the perfect shine of the table's surface and then smoothed it away with the palm of her hand. She felt their eyes on her. She looked up, first at Kaito, then Maury, then Victoria, and finally her gaze rested on her husband. "Is it any less wrong to kill hundreds of thousands rather than billions?" she whispered. The question had bothered her since Adam had first proposed it several weeks before, in this very conference room. Louder she said, "In his eyes, he's trying to save it."
She wished Charles were here. Calm, unflappable Charles Deveaux. He would know what to say to defuse the situation, to make them think rather than simply react. Adam had called this meeting of the company's founders, wanting to discuss, yet again, the merits of his plan versus Linderman's. On the surface, Adam's plan was sheer madness, releasing the virus with its potential for destruction. But was Linderman's plan any more sane?
Charles had dreamed something that had shown him what might be in some possible future. A future within their lifetimes. And Linderman had seized upon it, doing everything in his considerable power to bring that possible future closer to reality. It was still by no means a certain thing, but it seemed that it was at odds with Adam's version of the future. One would prevent the other. Or so Charles suspected.
All Angela knew for certain was that they were, in one form or another, playing God. And she was uncomfortable with that, although she could find no escape from it. There was an inevitability about the whole thing. No matter what they did or didn't do, people would die.
Linderman was a fanatic. Adam was... Angela closed her eyes against the room and its occupants. Adam was just as much a fanatic, if a somewhat more palatable one. At least she had the sense from him that he truly cared about what happened to the world. It was just that he had lived so long, seen so much. It couldn't help but color his thinking.
Their choices were few, although she hoped that in the intervening years more would present themselves. Either allow a nuclear bomb to explode in the middle of a crowded city or allow a mutant strain of a virus to be released on the entire world, destroying nearly everyone.
An alarm klaxon jarred her from her thoughts. Its sound sent a chill down her spine. Victoria ran from the room, the tails of her white lab coat flying. Kaito jumped for a telephone as an announcement threaded beneath the raucous noise.
"Containment breach in bioresearch. Evacuation protocol in full effect."
"Oh, Adam, what have you done?" she asked, even as she followed Dallas from the conference room.