Nathan recruits allies to help him round up the rest of the heroes while they try to build new lives for themselves and Sylar embarks on a voyage of self-discovery. Welcome to Heroes Volume 4: Fugitives!
Tracy receives a call from the governor (whom we haven't heard from since the first episode of the season, I believe) telling her to turn on the TV. Nathan’s on a Meet The Press – esque show talking about his position as Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Tracy tells the governor that she’s as surprised as he is since she hasn’t spoken to Nathan in months and hangs up.
Nathan drones on in the background about the need to protect America – though he’s not clear about whom he’s protecting America from – while Tracy putters around her apartment. Eventually Tracy notices that her window is open. Apparently she left it closed because she starts looking around all paranoid. Out of nowhere, she’s surrounded by military-types in black fatigues and bacalavas. She tries to freeze one of them, but the fatigues either have some kind of super-insulation or they’re able to counteract her powers some other way, because he just shrugs it off. Regardless, they obviously had some background knowledge on her and came prepared. Tracy screams at the military types until the leader shoots her with a huge tranquilizer dart. The leader takes off his bacalava and we see that this is the Hunter that all of the Heroes fansites have been talking about for months. He dials someone and tells them to let “Petrelli” know that they’ve got “the first one.”
Hiro has bought an abandoned fire station to serve as a “lair” for himself and Ando. He’s also set up all kinds of hero gear for Ando, including a spandex costume, GPS tracking, and an “Ando-cycle” with two-way communication so Hiro can coordinate from home-base. Ando’s not really interested in living out Hiro’s fantasies and, when Hiro injects Ando with a GPS implant similar to his own, takes off on the Ando-cycle to pick up chicks at the local strip club. Hiro tries to get him to come back by calling him on the bike’s two-way communicator, but Ando blows him off until he hears Hiro being abducted by the Hunter’s goons. By the time Ando gets back to the “lair,” everyone’s gone, but he’s able to use Hiro’s GPS implant to find out where he’s been taken. Ando rushes off to save Hiro, but we don’t see him again this episode.
Sylar has tracked his father down to a watch repair shop. His father initially assumes that Sylar has come to confront him about abandoning Sylar and his mother and is initially unapologetic, defending himself by talking about how crazy Sylar’s mother was. Sylar already knows how crazy she was, though, and is uninterested in excuses, saying that there’s no way that he’s the son of a watchmaker and a woman who collected snow globes, so who is he?
Sylar’s father then spins a tale of a man who had a child but needed money, Sylar’s mother’s desire for a baby, and his own desire to shut his wife up. The man was apparently his brother. He gives Sylar the brother’s address and asks him to leave. Sylar seems to consider killing his father, but then leaves.
The address is a taxidermist’s house. As Sylar explores, he finds a picture of himself as a little boy and a still smoldering cigarette. Just as Sylar puts the cigarette out, he’s attacked by the Hunter’s goons and shot full of tranquilizer darts. For a moment, it looks like Sylar’s going to go down, but he uses telekinesis to shoot the darts out of his body and then uses Elle’s electrical powers to fry the entire squad.
Claire’s staying with Angela, who has apparently been charged with keeping Claire out of trouble. She’s pressuring Claire to go to college, saying both of her fathers agree that it’s what would be best for her. Claire has no interest in school when Sylar’s still out there, though. Angela tries to tell Claire that Sylar’s dead, but Claire’s not buying it. She throws out a list of people with powers that have disappeared recently as evidence that Sylar is still out there. Finally, Claire declares that she’ll just find Sylar herself and storms out. As she’s leaving the house, though, she overhears Angela on the phone telling someone that Claire knows about the disappearances and is getting curious. Claire picks up the phone to hear Nathan telling his mother that he needs her to keep Claire out of the way while he rounds up Peter and Matt. Angela sees Claire listening in and Claire rushes out of the house.
Peter has been working as an EMT and is still having trouble dealing with his relative loss of power. We find him as he’s refusing to accept that he couldn’t save a car crash fatality, insisting to his partner that he should have been faster, stronger, or just smarter. As he’s arguing with his partner, he gets a call from Claire to tell him about Nathan’s plot. Peter decides to go talk to his mother while Claire goes to warn Matt.
When Peter catches a cab to his mother’s house, he’s surprised to find that the driver is Suresh. They banter philosophically about whether it’s acceptable to take away the liberty of those with powers in order to defend the public from the possibility of someone losing control of their powers. Suresh says yes, Peter says no.
Suresh’s position proves ironic since he’s the next person to be captured. After Peter exits the cab, the Hunter gets in, points a gun at Suresh, and tells him to drive. They end up on the top level of a parking garage, where the Hunter’s team is waiting. Suresh uses the super strength that he’s apparently retained to rip the door off of the cab, hit the Hunter, and use the door as a shield long enough to get away from the goons. As Suresh is running, HRG pops up and seems to be helping Suresh escape while questioning him. Once HRG has his questions answered, though, he pulls up in front of the Hunter and his crew, and shocks Suresh into submission.
At La Casa Petrelli, Angela’s not home, but Nathan is. He and Peter argue over recent developments and Nathan tries to make peace, but Peter has nothing to say to Nathan other than to tell him to kiss his ass. Nathan finally gets Peter to agree to talk over dinner and tells him that he’ll text the address to Peter later.
Nathan’s impatient, though, and is waiting in Peter’s apartment when he gets home. Nathan makes one last effort to get Peter to join him, but Peter tells him that if Nathan’s up to what Peter thinks, he’ll fight him every step of the way. Nathan seems to accept this and asks Peter for a hug. Peter, who apparently hasn’t learned that nothing good comes from hugging a Petrelli, hugs Nathan and is jabbed with a shocker thingy from behind by HRG.
Matt misses the normalcy he had before the first eclipse and is trying to live a life without powers, but Daphne’s not interested. They argue about the benefits of powers and the lack thereof until Matt sees Usutsu in the other room. For once, Usutsu actually talks to Matt and tells him that he now has the Usutsu/Isaac power of painting the future. Matt doesn’t believe him and sits down with a marker to prove it when he goes into that white-eyed trance and starts drawing.
When he’s pulled out of the trance by knocking at his door, he looks down to see a picture of himself and Claire looking at something. When he answers the door, Claire instantly begins trying to warn him, but he doesn’t seem to be listening and insists that he hasn’t even been using his powers, other than the drawings. When he shows Claire the picture he was just finishing, we see that the picture is of them looking at the picture. He flips to the next picture of them standing in front of a broken window and something sticking out of his neck just before a dart is shot through the window into his neck. The Hunter crew busts in and captures both of them.
In an airplane hanger, Nathan is watching the other Heroes – in shackles, hoods, and machines feeding them drugs to keep them sedated – being loaded into a C130. The Hunter pulls up and tells Nathan that Sylar escaped and they have one other problem. He pulls the hood off of a new prisoner and reveals that it’s Claire. Nathan revives her, tells her to forget everything she saw, and loads her into a limo to get her out of there. Claire, however, recovers enough to attack the driver, escape the limo, and sneak onto the plane before it takes off.
Onboard, Claire finds Peter and revives him. He’s too weak to break the shackles, but reveals that his new power is taking on others’ powers by touching them. Suresh is conveniently next to him so he’s able to use Suresh’s super strength to break the shackles and begin freeing the other heroes to fight the guards. In the melee, Peter tells Claire to get to the cockpit to make the pilot turn around. When she gets there, she finds that the copilot is her dad, HRG.
They don’t really have time to say anything, though, as Peter is knocked into Tracy (thus picking up her freezing powers) and then into the fuselage of the C-130. He’s disoriented enough to accidentally freeze the fuselage, which weakens it enough to break.
The episode ends as the loss of pressure causes the plane to crash.
