Fic: In the Forests of the Night - Chapter Five
Title: In the Forests of the Night - Chapter Five (of Ten)
Author name: brighteyed_jill
Characters: Ensemble, Peter/Nathan. Other slashiness if you squint.
Rating: PG-13 this chapter
Word Count: 5,800
Warnings: Violence, angst, adult situations, slash.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 1. Not Season 2 compliant.
Summary: Mohinder deals with a captive Sylar, the Petrellis attend a funeral, and Hiro’s team receives an unexpected visitor.
Author’s note: As always redandglenda is my beta extraordinaire. And jaune_chat helped! Remaining mistakes are mine.
Mohinder’s lab in the Homeland Security building looked almost exactly like the one Thompson had given him to work with Molly Walker. He wondered if people like Thompson and Nathan and Secretary Madden had a tab in their address book for contractors who specialized in building secret genetics labs.
They’d put Sylar in a room attached to the lab, a Plexiglas cell with a locked door. Sylar had been on his bunk when Mohinder arrived, curled up on his side facing the wall. He didn’t move when a white-jacketed lab assistant escorted Mohinder in, showed him the security code to get into Sylar’s cell, gave him a Homeland Security ID badge.
Mohinder took stock of the office after the lab assistant left. Tools, equipment, chemicals, noting the function of each item. His eyes kept straying back to the cell where Sylar lay unmoving. He went to the laptop on one of the lab tables. There on the hard drive were archives of his research, charts and records, as if he’d only left the Department yesterday.
Sylar still wasn’t moving. Mohinder was fairly sure the man was breathing, but he needed to be awake if Mohinder was going to find out what exactly he’d told Secretary Madden. There was no way to know if they were watching, somehow, or listening. Mohinder imagined there had to be security monitors, but if there were, he hadn’t found them.
He hated the idea of going into Sylar’s cell, but if he wanted to reduce his chances of being overheard, he couldn’t very well yell through the Plexiglas. He pressed in the code to unlock the door, and went in.
“Sylar,” he called from the doorway. Then, louder, “Sylar!” No response. Reluctantly, Mohinder took a few steps closer, gingerly reached out a hand and shook the prone man. At last, Sylar stirred, squinting up at Mohinder in apparent confusion. “Wake up,” Mohinder said impatiently. Now that he was sure Sylar wasn’t going to try to attack him, he felt silly for being afraid. “I need to know what you told them.”
“Nothing,” Sylar said. His voice sounded hoarse. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Surely you told them something. What did you say?” Mohinder demanded.
Sylar seemed startled at his vehemence. Then a look of recognition dawned on his face and his eyes darted momentarily to the ceiling. “I told them the truth,” he said. His voice was a little stronger. “That I was the ring leader. That it was my plan, and that I recruited some lackeys to distract the guards while I got what I came for.”
“There’s no need to-.” Mohinder waved a hand in irritation. “They’re not listening. Tell me what they know.” Suddenly, Sylar pressed a hand to his head, wincing. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” Sylar said, rubbing his forehead. “I feel terrible. My head hurts.”
“I’m not here to make you comfortable,” Mohinder said. He didn’t really think Sylar had forgotten that, but it did make him feel a little better to say it. “I’m here to learn what I can from your DNA and apply it to a worthy cause, and if I have to hurt you to do that, Sylar, then I’m prepared to do so.”
“I wish you’d call me Gabriel,” Sylar said softly.
Mohinder stared at him for a moment, shocked at the man’s audacity-he acted as if they were friends. Mohinder drew himself up and spoke a little louder for the benefit of anyone listening in. “I’m going to draw some spinal fluid,” Mohinder said. “Sit up.”
Sylar dragged himself upright, wincing again as he did so, while Mohinder uncased the needle. Sylar offered no resistance, but Mohinder approached him warily, ready to call for help at the first sign of trouble. Sylar did nothing, so Mohinder pushed his head forward and readied the needle at the top of his spine.
“Haven’t we already done this?’ Sylar muttered.
“Shut up,” said Mohinder, and stuck in the needle. Sylar didn’t scream this time. Instead, he stifled a whimper. It sounded as if he were trying to be brave. For some reason, Mohinder found that intensely irritating. He all but slammed the cell door behind him as he took his sample out into the lab, and when he returned to work, he felt unaccountably grumpy.
Mohinder was vaguely aware of Sylar watching him from the Plexiglas cage, but he didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that it bothered him. He tried to ignore the scrutiny as he separated the spinal fluid sample into different containers. By the time he had the first sample under the microscope, he’d almost forgotten he had an audience.
“Mohinder!” A shout through the Plexiglas broke his concentration.
He turned and glared at Sylar before answering. “What?”
“Do you have an aspirin or something in that fancy lab?” Sylar asked.
Mohinder glared at him. “Leave me alone,” he growled.
Sylar sat down on his bunk. “Nothing?” he asked again. He sounded almost apologetic. It was infuriating.
“I am trying to work,” Mohinder snapped. He turned back to his microscope, fully prepared to ignore any further outbursts, but Sylar said nothing more.
As the day stretched on, Mohinder began to find the silence unsettling. Sylar watched him through the Plexiglas whenever he was awake. He seemed to sleep a lot. Sometimes, when Mohinder snuck a look, he was holding his head in his hands, as if he was still in pain.
He looked so miserable that Mohinder thought of offering him a shot of pain-killer, or at least a pill. He squelched that thought, however, with a quick reminder that he was probably still being watched and recorded and besides, Sylar was his enemy.
In any case, he soon had no attention to spare for Sylar. What he was finding in the spinal fluid was much more interesting. At first, it was just interesting. Then the findings started to become alarming. Mohinder had seen test samples from Cure patients before, of course. The tests had never, never looked quite like this. Why did things always have to be so complicated with Sylar?
********
Nathan watched Heidi adjust her hat in the mirror. “I feel like Jackie Kennedy,” she grumbled.
“You look great, Heidi.” He pressed quick kiss to her lips before returning to tying his tie. “Besides, it’s a state funeral, not a fashion show.”
“At least that made color choice easy,” Heidi muttered. She smoothed out the front of her dress, gave one last look at the mirror, and then left the mirror to Nathan while she gathered her handbag. “Is this a crying event? Or are we being stoic?”
“Stoic,” Nathan said firmly. After hearing “be strong for America” from every one of his advisors, he could at least rest easy that his lack of empathy wouldn’t be a political weakness this time. Still, the First Lady had a bit more leeway when it came to showing emotion. “But remember to hug the widows,” he added. “Or you can do kisses.”
“The social secretary said kisses on the cheek didn’t poll well. It’s too Italian,” Heidi said primly. “People get the idea we’re into organized crime.”
Nathan smiled. He should have realized Heidi would have done some research of her own. She’d mastered the tone-probably borrowed from Angela Petrelli-that was a gentle warning not to treat her like she was helpless. “Of course,” he said. “No kisses, then.”
They lapsed into silence for the walk down to the limousine. The joint funeral of the former President and Vice President had been planned to the last detail, and for once Nathan just had to show up and look pretty. He wasn’t expected to speak, so the drive to Arlington was blessedly calm: he and Heidi had the limo to themselves, not counting the Secret Service agent who sat up front.
It had been weeks since Nathan had spent any time with Heidi, but the past few days had been especially strained. Nathan had been handling a national crisis, and he had no idea what had been happening with his wife. The simple truth was that she didn’t require his attention; she was part of Nathan’s life that ran flawlessly, always appearing when he needed her, always fulfilling the role of politician’s wife and loving mother. The boys, too, were her domain far more than Nathan’s.
“Has Monty ever…” he began, but stopped himself. He was sure Heidi had such a small problem as nightmares under control, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Simon’s warning.
“Has he what, Nathan?” Heidi asked.
“Told you about his nightmares?”
Heidi raised her eyebrows in interest. “How do you know about those?”
“Simon told me. The other night after you were in bed.”
“Hm.” Heidi sat back on the seat and turned her attention to the window, where the Potomac slid lazily by.
“Hm what?” Nathan prompted her.
“Nathan, your son is scared to death of losing you,” Heidi said finally. “It’s been going on for months, but it’s gotten worse since the assassination.”
Nathan was almost afraid to ask. “What do you mean worse?”
Heidi narrowed her eyes, and Nathan could tell she was deciding how much to tell him. “It’s an obsession with him,” she began. “Monty comes up with these detailed scenarios of what’s going to happen to you, or to me, or to him and Simon. It’s just paranoia, Nathan. You can understand why he’d be afraid of something happening to his family, after all that’s happened.”
“Of course.” So that’s all it was. Just simple nightmares that the boy would grow out of. “You think we need to get him a counselor or something?”
“No,” Heidi said. “I just think he needs to know his father isn’t going anywhere.”
“Of course I’m not,” Nathan snapped. He knew she hadn’t meant it as a jab at his absentee-ism, but it still landed right in the seat of his guilt about shirking his family duties. “How am I supposed to prove that?”
“You can’t prove it, Nathan, but you can try to understand how your son feels,” Heidi said. Her voice was level and matter-of-fact, another Angela Petrelli trick to diffuse arguments. “First his Grandpa, then his Uncle Peter, then his Grandma. What Petrelli is left aside from you, Nathan?”
Nathan shrugged heavily. He knew how much it hurt him to have lost most of his family in the past few years. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered how it would affect his boys, it was just… It wasn’t his problem.
“And if President Devlin can be killed,” Heidi continued. “Then so can you. So you can see why Monty’s scared.”
“I don’t have time to deal with this now, Heidi,” Nathan said. He knew it was a cowardly way to end this conversation, but he wasn’t prepared to do anything else right now.
“All right,” Heidi said, still calm: not backing down, just acknowledging Nathan’s decision. “I’ll be the dutiful wife, Nathan. I can be that woman.” She slipped a gloved hand around the crook of his arm. “But if you want your sons to be healthy, you’d better find time to convince them you’re not going anywhere.”
It pained Nathan to let her have the last word, but he didn’t reply. He let the silence lapse until they were both sure the conversation was over. “Did you handle flowers?” he asked.
“Yes. I signed them from President Petrelli and family.”
“Good.” A few more seconds of silence. “Remember to make the sign of the cross. We’re supposed to be practicing Catholics.”
“I won’t forget, Nathan,” Heidi said. Now there was a smile in her voice. “Remember, I’ve been the President’s wife as long as you’ve been President. I know what I’m doing.”
**********
They had provided Mohinder with an apartment in the Homeland Security compound. He wondered what would have happened if he’d asked to stay in a hotel instead, but decided he would rather not find out. The night hadn’t been particularly restful; he’d been plagued of images of Sylar alone in his cell, in pain, with theories of why Cure was causing such unpleasant side-effects with him, with ideas of how he could fix the man. Mohinder got out of bed as soon as it was light, less reluctant to get back to his lab than to be alone with his own thoughts any longer.
At his lab, Mohinder was greeted by a rumpled-looking lab assistant, and the sight of Sylar passed out on the floor of his cell. “He was sick all night,” the lab assistant explained. “Don’t know what’s wrong with him. You want me to sedate him so he won’t disturb you?”
That idea was tempting, but Sylar, face down and unmoving, looked pretty quiet for the time being. “No, I might have to talk to him,” Mohinder sighed.
The lab assistant shrugged in an it’s-your-funeral kind of way, and left Mohinder alone.
Less than an hour later, Sylar was up and kneeling by the toilet in his cell, dry-heaving violently.
Mohinder was comparing gene sequencing from Sylar’s DNA sample to other samples in the database. Each sound from Sylar’s cell dragged Mohinder’s attention back from the theoretical, and Mohinder was definitely regretting having turned down the lab assistant’s offer. At last, he whirled around to face the cell and shouted, “I can’t concentrate with all that retching! Would you just shut up?”
Jerking his head up from where it was resting on the edge of the toilet, Sylar regarded him with wide eyes, his face drawn and entirely bloodless, pale as Mohinder had ever seen him. “Sorry,” he croaked. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and dragged himself back to his bunk, where he curled up and lay still.
Mohinder turned back to his data, surprised to feel the beginnings of guilt gnawing at his stomach. He had no reason to feel guilty. He refused to pity Sylar. And even if he would-even if he should-he had no time for it. He’d promised Madden an antidote to Cure, and there was only so much he could do to avoid finding an answer he already knew how to find. In the meantime, he could find out what was wrong with Sylar in case sometime in the future, theoretically, the same thing happened to someone worth saving.
With fresh eyes, the genetic sequences Mohinder had been pondering last night suddenly seemed much clearer, and much more grim besides. A few hours of methodically comparing Sylar’s DNA to other Cure patients had shown Mohinder the problem. Sylar’s adaptability, which had made his DNA versatile enough for Mohinder to base an algorithm on it, was now killing him.
“You look pretty down, Mohinder,” Sylar called from his cell. “Is my DNA not as helpful as you’d hoped?” When Mohinder didn’t respond, Sylar dragged himself upright, leaning against the wall of his cell. “What’s happening?”
“I’m working,” Mohinder snapped. He circled another spot on the print-out of Sylar’s DNA sequence.
“You’re never too busy to monologue about your discoveries, are you?” Sylar quipped.
Mohinder turned around in his chair to glare. Sylar was smiling a weak, watered-down smile, and it made Mohinder want to punch him. Or at least give him another spinal tap. He grabbed his clipboard from the table, the one with the chart that showed Sylar’s cellular deterioration, marched over to Sylar’s cell, stabbed in the security code, wrenched the door open, and shook the chart in Sylar’s face. “This is what I’ve discovered, Sylar. You’re going to die.”
Sylar looked past the clipboard at Mohinder and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Cure works by blocking your body’s ability to read genetic code that differs from the norm. For most mutations, this doesn’t interfere with the regular functioning of the organism. But you…” The word was almost a snarl, and Mohinder checked himself from sliding further from scientific detachment into the guilty pleasure of revenge. “With each person you murdered, you altered your genetic code anew. So clever, seeing how things worked.”
“But it’s just one ability,” Sylar said in a small voice. “Like Petrelli.”
“No, you’re quite different from Peter. Look.” He showed Sylar the DNA sequence print-out. “I’ve seen Peter’s DNA. Peter borrows. You steal, Sylar. You alter yourself permanently. Now each one of those changes is hurting you. There’s hardly any unaltered genetic code left for your body to read.”
Sylar swallowed hard. “Is that why I’m-?”
“Sick, yes. As the Cure continues to work, I imagine you’ll start to lose more basic body functions. You’ve made too many changes that can’t be undone. You’re going to die.” Mohinder expected to feel pleasure saying those words, but instead he felt nothing. Sylar looked at him uncomprehendingly, and Mohinder again felt the stirrings of guilt.
“Can you help me?” Sylar asked.
“Only if I gave you the Cure antidote.” The words came out of Mohinder’s mouth before he could stop them. That wasn’t an option. As far as anyone in this building was concerned, there was no Cure antidote.
“So you can help,” Sylar said slowly.
“If I had an antidote, Sylar, you would be the last person on Earth I would give it to,” Mohinder said. Even as he said it, he regretted the necessity of this cruelty. Madden expected him to let Sylar die, he was sure of that, but this torture suddenly seemed to Mohinder excessively vindictive. “You don’t deserve to get your abilities back,” he finished.
“There’s nothing else you can do?” Sylar asked, staring at Mohinder as if he didn’t understand. Mohinder wasn’t fooled; Sylar was smart, surely smart enough to know what kind of a choice he was asking Mohinder to make. Under these circumstances, there was nothing Mohinder could do to save him, even if he’d had the will to do so.
“I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to lift a finger, and I can watch you die,” said Mohinder. His feeling of guilt began to grow as he saw Sylar recoil from those words.
“I don’t expect you to want to save me,” Sylar said. “But I do expect you not to stand by and do nothing.”
Mohinder’s sense of righteous indignation rallied again, pushing down the guilt. “I don’t owe you anything, Sylar.”
Sylar looked at him in silence for a long moment, then let out a harsh sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “You never met Isaac Mendez, did you?”
Mohinder narrowed his eyes at the sudden change in subject. “No. You murdered him before I had the chance.”
“Yes, well… Did you know he let me kill him?” Sylar asked. Mohinder shot him an angry glare, but Sylar was looking at the ground. “It was strange at the time; he wasn’t afraid at all. He’d been painting his death; he knew it was coming, and he just let me kill him.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Mohinder said, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.
“I’m only saying this to explain. Once I had his power, I understood why he would let himself be killed like that. To see something that scares you, something you know will happen…” He looked up at last, tentatively meeting Mohinder’s eyes as if he was afraid the scientist would turn away. “I saw something, Mohinder.”
The words were pulled from him almost against his will. “What did you see?”
“I saw something I didn’t want to be. I saw something that sent me running from who I had become.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I wanted to change, and I knew Hiro could help me.”
“What did you see?” Mohinder asked again. Despite himself, he moved a step closer, the better to hear.
“The same as it was for Isaac in his last days, I painted the same thing over and over, drew it on every page of half-a-dozen sketch books, saw it when I closed my eyes, as if it was burning itself into my future.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw you,” Sylar explained. “Look.” He took the clipboard out of Mohinder’s hand, flipped a page of it over to show the blank side, and began to sketch quickly with a pen. Mohinder watched in frozen silence until Sylar handed the finished drawing back to him. “Like that. Look.”
Mohinder looked at what Sylar had drawn. He saw himself laid out on the floor, eyes open and staring in death, his skull torn open, ringed with gore. Sylar sat beside him, contemplating his corpse thoughtfully, his expression almost tender.
“I didn’t want that. That’s insane,” said Sylar. “That’s one step beyond the line that can’t be crossed. Do you see? I couldn’t pretend it was an evolutionary imperative, pretend I deserved a power you weren’t using; it was just… killing.” Mohinder looked up from the drawing and met Sylar’s eyes, eyes that grabbed him and held him, begging him to understand. “Even before, when you were the enemy, I never hated you, I never wanted to kill you, not like that. Isaac’s ability showed me what I would do to make me realize what I would not do. Does that make sense?”
“No,” Mohinder whispered.
“It won’t happen, Mohinder.” Sylar reached out to place a hand over Mohinder’s where it lingered on the clipboard. “I’m a different man than the one whose future held that. I haven’t drawn such things in… in a long time.”
“You drew it now.”
Sylar shook his head. “That’s just a drawing. Not a prophecy. I wanted to show you.”
Mohinder brought himself back under control. “And now you have, Sylar.” He tore the page off the clipboard, crumpled it, and threw it on the ground.
“Mohinder!” Sylar protested. He lurched to his feet, but then clutched his head in pain. Mohinder took advantage of his distraction to retreat from the cell, slamming the door behind him.
“Mohinder!” Sylar called, pleading and demanding.
Mohinder didn’t look back.
********
Ando knocked on the door to the den for the tenth time. “I know you’re in there,” he called. There was no answer. Ando was starting to wonder if Hiro was broken. He hadn’t come out of the den all day, and drama was starting to reach a fever pitch in the apartment. Ando had finally told Alai to stop cleaning the guns and put them away because he was afraid there might be an “accident.”
Ando knocked again, and switched to Japanese. “Will you at least talk to me? The others are starting to get worried.”
“Go away,” Hiro called from the other side of the door. At least that meant he wasn’t dead.
As Ando raised his hand to knock again, Alai appeared at his side. “Someone just tripped one of Dean’s proximity alarms downstairs,” he said urgently.
“Hiro!” Ando called. “Did you hear that?” When there was no answer, Ando grumbled under his breath, “Fine, then.” He turned to Alai. “Let’s go,” he said.
Alai led him back into the main room of the studio where Dean and Micah were huddled in front of a laptop. The others had finally stopped bickering and were sitting in tense silence. “What happened?” Ando asked.
“We have some light sensors in the stairwell. The first one tripped about a minute ago, and whoever it is just passed the one on the fourth floor,” Dean reported.
“How many?” Ando asked.
“Should be just one. See?” Micah said, pointing to a read-out on the screen that was gibberish to Ando but apparently made perfect sense to him and Dean. “Light beam was only disrupted for three tenths of a second.”
“Might not be here for us,” Dean said. “Could be a vagrant, squatter, something.”
“Awful lot of locks on that stairwell door for a casual visitor,” Alai said grimly.
Ando tended to agree with Alai. Things hadn’t been going well for the group lately, and it was better to assume the worst. “Lara, Matt,” he said. “Take guns, get everyone in the back room. If you hear shooting, take the fire escape. Go.” Lara and Matt sprang into action, heading for the cabinet where Alai had stowed the guns. “Alai,” Ando said, lowering his voice. “You and I will take the door.”
“Hit the sixth floor now,” Dean called from the computer. Lara was starting to shoo everyone toward the back of the apartment, a shotgun balanced firmly on her hip.
Alai took a handgun for himself from the cabinet, and tossed another one to Ando. Then he threaded his way across the room to take Molly Walker by the shoulder. “Can’t you tell us who’s out there?” he asked.
“It doesn’t work that way. I have to know who I’m looking for,” Molly said, exasperated. She looked at Micah. “I wish I could,” she said apologetically.
“It’s okay,” said Ando. “Go on with Matt. You guys, too,” he said to Dean and Micah.
“The sensor at the end of the hall just tripped,” Micah said. “Be careful.” Then he and Dean followed Molly into the other room.
The apartment was dead silent, and Ando could now plainly hear the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside. Ando leveled his gun at the door, and Alai crept quietly over to the door and positioned himself behind it.
There came the jingle of a key ring, and to his surprise, Ando saw the lock turn and the deadbolt slide out. When the door opened, everything seemed to happen at once. Alai pulled the person through the entrance by his shirt, slamming the door closed, and proceeded to wrestle the intruder to the ground. Ando moved closer, trying to find an opening to take a shot if he had to. Then Alai gave a startled shout and jumped back; the stranger’s hands were glowing with fire. Fire?
The stranger scrambled to his feet, looking between Alai, who was more surprised than hurt, to Ando, who still held the gun pointed unwaveringly at him. “Ando?” he said finally.
Ando stared at the man in disbelief. “Peter Petrelli?”
********
Mohinder had never actually had to watch anyone die from the effects of his drug. He’d read reports about it, then spent months refusing to read reports about it, but he’d never witnessed first-hand one of his own murders. It shouldn’t matter that Sylar was in pain. Mohinder shouldn’t care. He hadn’t cared before. He didn’t owe Sylar anything. He would keep telling himself that, no matter what happened.
Sylar had been quiet most of the morning, for which Mohinder was distinctly thankful. He didn’t want to think about what Sylar had drawn, what that meant about his influence on Sylar, what that meant about how Sylar viewed him. To avoid those thoughts, Mohinder focused on the minute, the knowable. DNA was absolute, and understandable, and he’d spent the last four hours losing himself in the inner workings of Sylar’s genome. The more he studied Sylar’s gene sequence, the more he was convinced that the only way to stop the deterioration was to reverse the effects of the Cure. The only thing that might save Sylar was the one thing he wouldn’t do.
“Mohinder?” Sylar’s voice came through the Plexiglas, strangely flattened.
“What?” he called, not bothering to look up from his microscope.
“Mohinder?” Sylar called again.
“I’m right here,” Mohinder snapped without looking. “Stop it.”
“Mohinder!”
Mohinder stood up and whirled around to face Sylar. “I’m right-.”
Sylar was standing, face close to the glass, staring at Mohinder in horror. “I can’t hear you,” Sylar said, suddenly quiet. “I can’t hear you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sylar shook his head.
“You can’t hear me?” Mohinder asked.
“I can’t hear anything,” Sylar said.
Mohinder had been right. Cure was starting to impair the basic functions of Sylar’s body. “Dale,” Mohinder breathed. “You changed your DNA to match what Dale could do, and now you can’t revert to what you had.”
Sylar shook his head, not understanding. Mohinder turned away, and he heard an anguished cry from his patient. Mohinder ignored it
He looked again at the sample he’d taken earlier. The damage was accelerating. Sylar would continue to get worse, and faster, if Mohinder did nothing. Mohinder pushed the sample away-he didn’t owe it to Sylar to do anything, he told himself fiercely- and turned his attention to data from some older cases. Madden might start to get suspicious if he made no progress at all toward his supposed goal of a Cure antidote.
As if his thought had summoned her, Alicia Madden suddenly appeared in the doorway of his lab. “Knock knock,” she said pleasantly.
“Madam Secretary,” Mohinder said, and stood up. “Come in, please.”
“You can call me Alicia, Doctor,” Madden said. “How’s your patient?” She nodded toward the cell at the back of the lab.
“Not well, I’m afraid,” Mohinder told her. “Cure seems to have had an idiopathic effect on his DNA.”
“Hmm,” she said. She came to stand in front of the Plexiglas, cocking her head to the side in interest as if Sylar was an unusual specimen in a zoo.
“I’m afraid he’ll be dead soon,” Mohinder said. That, at least, was the truth.
Madden turned to scrutinize him. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” Mohinder said tightly. Except that it was. When he thought about just letting Sylar die, it suddenly seemed cowardly, even if it was for the good of humanity. If Mohinder could even truly say his choice was for the good of humanity, and not for revenge.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Doctor Suresh,” Madden said. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I know you understand the depth in tragedy of the crimes Sylar has committed.”
“Yes,” Mohinder said. He tried to bring to mind the faces of Sylar’s victims, but saw only the faces of those who’d died because of Cure.
“Your own father’s murderer...” She shook her head. “The man really is a monster.”
“Yes,” Mohinder said, but to hear her say so made him doubt it. How many had Sylar killed, in all? Dozens? A hundred? Mohinder’s drug had caused thousands of deaths. He was suddenly finding it difficult to judge Sylar’s crimes so harshly.
“I’m surprised you can maintain enough scientific integrity to use him as a test subject,” Madden said, strolling casually to a lab table and peering at the papers Mohinder had lined up.
“I’m not really testing him, Secretary Madden. I’m just observing his condition.”
“His condition,” Madden repeated. She turned back to look at Sylar, still curled in the fetal position on his bunk. Her smile was almost malicious. “Yes, it’s lucky for us that Cure is so successful at making people like Sylar safe to observe.”
“Yes.”
She turned to him, beaming. “You’re a real hero, Doctor Suresh,” she said.
Mohinder couldn’t hold on to his fake smile, so he was relieved that she looked back to the cell.
“Mister Sylar,” she called. There was, of course, no response, so she turned to Mohinder. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s lost his hearing,” Mohinder said blandly.
Madden laughed, a hearty chuckle that froze Mohinder’s blood. “Oh, that’s a charming side effect.”
“Yes,” was all Mohinder could bring himself to say. How dare she laugh at Sylar’s pain like that. Sylar may be a monster, but to take delight in his pain, the type of pain Mohinder’s Cure had caused for countless others in its time... It was sick. And you’ve never delighted in Sylar’s pain? a small voice whispered to him.
“You know,” she said, turning her back on Sylar to study Mohinder. “Some of my colleagues doubted you could handle this assignment, but I knew you had it in you to make the most of this opportunity.”
“Thank you, Madam Secretary.”
She kept up her smile as she strode to the door. Mohinder followed her. “Let me know if there’s anything you need, won’t you Doctor?”
“Thank you,” Mohinder said. Then she was gone.
Mohinder leaned against the door a moment and found that he was shaking. Fear, rage, he wasn’t sure. Something about her attitude had made him positively ill, and he was afraid it was because he recognized too much of his own feelings in her. When he had control of himself again, he turned back to the lab only to see Sylar sitting up on his bunk, staring at him. Or, more accurately, staring through him.
Mohinder noticed, when he moved forward, that Sylar’s eyes didn’t track him. “Mohinder?” Sylar’s voice sounded weak, almost frightened.
Mohinder punched in the code to unlock the cell door and went in.
“Mohinder.” Sylar reached out for his hand. Mohinder let him find it, let Sylar twine their fingers together. “I can’t see,” he whispered.
“I know,” said Mohinder, even though he knew Sylar couldn’t hear him. He squeezed Sylar’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Sylar said. Mohinder tried to let go, but Sylar held on, his grip barely strong enough to pull Mohinder back. “Mohinder, please.” Mohinder pulled away again, this time breaking his grip from Sylar’s, but he didn’t walk away. He couldn’t walk away.
It wasn’t quite pity that he felt. It wasn’t quite forgiveness, or mercy, even. Shame. That was it. Mohinder was ashamed that he could stand here, knowing that his drug had killed so many others, stand here with an opportunity to stop it, and not help. It was selfish. Sylar was begging for help. Begging.
Some hero. He’d prayed for a chance to undo his mistake. Just one chance to save someone, and now that chance was here for the taking. The gods must hate him. He didn’t deserve a test like this.
“Are you still there?” Sylar whispered. He reached out again, and this time Mohinder stepped away. Sylar’s hand searched feebly for a moment, then dropped. With a panicked little exhalation, Sylar curled onto his side, muttering to himself. Mohinder thought he caught a snatch of Bible verse. He remembered “father forgive me” scrawled in red on the walls of Sylar’s old apartment in New York back before he’d met the man. Father, forgive me indeed. Mohinder looked at Sylar, created by Chandra’s hubris, tortured by Mohinder’s failures. Forgive me indeed.
Previous Chapter
Next Chapter
Author’s Note: So, I know you may hate me for this, but it looks like there will be a week’s hiatus. We’re halfway through the story, and I need to take some time to work ahead if I’m going to have any hope of keeping up this weekly posting schedule for the second half. That means I’d be posting the next chapter on Friday, November 9th. In the meantime, I have a one-shot or two that might find their way onto LJ, so hopefully those will tide you over. Thanks all for your lovely comments thus far-they fuel the fire!
Author name: brighteyed_jill
Characters: Ensemble, Peter/Nathan. Other slashiness if you squint.
Rating: PG-13 this chapter
Word Count: 5,800
Warnings: Violence, angst, adult situations, slash.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 1. Not Season 2 compliant.
Summary: Mohinder deals with a captive Sylar, the Petrellis attend a funeral, and Hiro’s team receives an unexpected visitor.
Author’s note: As always redandglenda is my beta extraordinaire. And jaune_chat helped! Remaining mistakes are mine.
Mohinder’s lab in the Homeland Security building looked almost exactly like the one Thompson had given him to work with Molly Walker. He wondered if people like Thompson and Nathan and Secretary Madden had a tab in their address book for contractors who specialized in building secret genetics labs.
They’d put Sylar in a room attached to the lab, a Plexiglas cell with a locked door. Sylar had been on his bunk when Mohinder arrived, curled up on his side facing the wall. He didn’t move when a white-jacketed lab assistant escorted Mohinder in, showed him the security code to get into Sylar’s cell, gave him a Homeland Security ID badge.
Mohinder took stock of the office after the lab assistant left. Tools, equipment, chemicals, noting the function of each item. His eyes kept straying back to the cell where Sylar lay unmoving. He went to the laptop on one of the lab tables. There on the hard drive were archives of his research, charts and records, as if he’d only left the Department yesterday.
Sylar still wasn’t moving. Mohinder was fairly sure the man was breathing, but he needed to be awake if Mohinder was going to find out what exactly he’d told Secretary Madden. There was no way to know if they were watching, somehow, or listening. Mohinder imagined there had to be security monitors, but if there were, he hadn’t found them.
He hated the idea of going into Sylar’s cell, but if he wanted to reduce his chances of being overheard, he couldn’t very well yell through the Plexiglas. He pressed in the code to unlock the door, and went in.
“Sylar,” he called from the doorway. Then, louder, “Sylar!” No response. Reluctantly, Mohinder took a few steps closer, gingerly reached out a hand and shook the prone man. At last, Sylar stirred, squinting up at Mohinder in apparent confusion. “Wake up,” Mohinder said impatiently. Now that he was sure Sylar wasn’t going to try to attack him, he felt silly for being afraid. “I need to know what you told them.”
“Nothing,” Sylar said. His voice sounded hoarse. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Surely you told them something. What did you say?” Mohinder demanded.
Sylar seemed startled at his vehemence. Then a look of recognition dawned on his face and his eyes darted momentarily to the ceiling. “I told them the truth,” he said. His voice was a little stronger. “That I was the ring leader. That it was my plan, and that I recruited some lackeys to distract the guards while I got what I came for.”
“There’s no need to-.” Mohinder waved a hand in irritation. “They’re not listening. Tell me what they know.” Suddenly, Sylar pressed a hand to his head, wincing. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” Sylar said, rubbing his forehead. “I feel terrible. My head hurts.”
“I’m not here to make you comfortable,” Mohinder said. He didn’t really think Sylar had forgotten that, but it did make him feel a little better to say it. “I’m here to learn what I can from your DNA and apply it to a worthy cause, and if I have to hurt you to do that, Sylar, then I’m prepared to do so.”
“I wish you’d call me Gabriel,” Sylar said softly.
Mohinder stared at him for a moment, shocked at the man’s audacity-he acted as if they were friends. Mohinder drew himself up and spoke a little louder for the benefit of anyone listening in. “I’m going to draw some spinal fluid,” Mohinder said. “Sit up.”
Sylar dragged himself upright, wincing again as he did so, while Mohinder uncased the needle. Sylar offered no resistance, but Mohinder approached him warily, ready to call for help at the first sign of trouble. Sylar did nothing, so Mohinder pushed his head forward and readied the needle at the top of his spine.
“Haven’t we already done this?’ Sylar muttered.
“Shut up,” said Mohinder, and stuck in the needle. Sylar didn’t scream this time. Instead, he stifled a whimper. It sounded as if he were trying to be brave. For some reason, Mohinder found that intensely irritating. He all but slammed the cell door behind him as he took his sample out into the lab, and when he returned to work, he felt unaccountably grumpy.
Mohinder was vaguely aware of Sylar watching him from the Plexiglas cage, but he didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that it bothered him. He tried to ignore the scrutiny as he separated the spinal fluid sample into different containers. By the time he had the first sample under the microscope, he’d almost forgotten he had an audience.
“Mohinder!” A shout through the Plexiglas broke his concentration.
He turned and glared at Sylar before answering. “What?”
“Do you have an aspirin or something in that fancy lab?” Sylar asked.
Mohinder glared at him. “Leave me alone,” he growled.
Sylar sat down on his bunk. “Nothing?” he asked again. He sounded almost apologetic. It was infuriating.
“I am trying to work,” Mohinder snapped. He turned back to his microscope, fully prepared to ignore any further outbursts, but Sylar said nothing more.
As the day stretched on, Mohinder began to find the silence unsettling. Sylar watched him through the Plexiglas whenever he was awake. He seemed to sleep a lot. Sometimes, when Mohinder snuck a look, he was holding his head in his hands, as if he was still in pain.
He looked so miserable that Mohinder thought of offering him a shot of pain-killer, or at least a pill. He squelched that thought, however, with a quick reminder that he was probably still being watched and recorded and besides, Sylar was his enemy.
In any case, he soon had no attention to spare for Sylar. What he was finding in the spinal fluid was much more interesting. At first, it was just interesting. Then the findings started to become alarming. Mohinder had seen test samples from Cure patients before, of course. The tests had never, never looked quite like this. Why did things always have to be so complicated with Sylar?
********
Nathan watched Heidi adjust her hat in the mirror. “I feel like Jackie Kennedy,” she grumbled.
“You look great, Heidi.” He pressed quick kiss to her lips before returning to tying his tie. “Besides, it’s a state funeral, not a fashion show.”
“At least that made color choice easy,” Heidi muttered. She smoothed out the front of her dress, gave one last look at the mirror, and then left the mirror to Nathan while she gathered her handbag. “Is this a crying event? Or are we being stoic?”
“Stoic,” Nathan said firmly. After hearing “be strong for America” from every one of his advisors, he could at least rest easy that his lack of empathy wouldn’t be a political weakness this time. Still, the First Lady had a bit more leeway when it came to showing emotion. “But remember to hug the widows,” he added. “Or you can do kisses.”
“The social secretary said kisses on the cheek didn’t poll well. It’s too Italian,” Heidi said primly. “People get the idea we’re into organized crime.”
Nathan smiled. He should have realized Heidi would have done some research of her own. She’d mastered the tone-probably borrowed from Angela Petrelli-that was a gentle warning not to treat her like she was helpless. “Of course,” he said. “No kisses, then.”
They lapsed into silence for the walk down to the limousine. The joint funeral of the former President and Vice President had been planned to the last detail, and for once Nathan just had to show up and look pretty. He wasn’t expected to speak, so the drive to Arlington was blessedly calm: he and Heidi had the limo to themselves, not counting the Secret Service agent who sat up front.
It had been weeks since Nathan had spent any time with Heidi, but the past few days had been especially strained. Nathan had been handling a national crisis, and he had no idea what had been happening with his wife. The simple truth was that she didn’t require his attention; she was part of Nathan’s life that ran flawlessly, always appearing when he needed her, always fulfilling the role of politician’s wife and loving mother. The boys, too, were her domain far more than Nathan’s.
“Has Monty ever…” he began, but stopped himself. He was sure Heidi had such a small problem as nightmares under control, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Simon’s warning.
“Has he what, Nathan?” Heidi asked.
“Told you about his nightmares?”
Heidi raised her eyebrows in interest. “How do you know about those?”
“Simon told me. The other night after you were in bed.”
“Hm.” Heidi sat back on the seat and turned her attention to the window, where the Potomac slid lazily by.
“Hm what?” Nathan prompted her.
“Nathan, your son is scared to death of losing you,” Heidi said finally. “It’s been going on for months, but it’s gotten worse since the assassination.”
Nathan was almost afraid to ask. “What do you mean worse?”
Heidi narrowed her eyes, and Nathan could tell she was deciding how much to tell him. “It’s an obsession with him,” she began. “Monty comes up with these detailed scenarios of what’s going to happen to you, or to me, or to him and Simon. It’s just paranoia, Nathan. You can understand why he’d be afraid of something happening to his family, after all that’s happened.”
“Of course.” So that’s all it was. Just simple nightmares that the boy would grow out of. “You think we need to get him a counselor or something?”
“No,” Heidi said. “I just think he needs to know his father isn’t going anywhere.”
“Of course I’m not,” Nathan snapped. He knew she hadn’t meant it as a jab at his absentee-ism, but it still landed right in the seat of his guilt about shirking his family duties. “How am I supposed to prove that?”
“You can’t prove it, Nathan, but you can try to understand how your son feels,” Heidi said. Her voice was level and matter-of-fact, another Angela Petrelli trick to diffuse arguments. “First his Grandpa, then his Uncle Peter, then his Grandma. What Petrelli is left aside from you, Nathan?”
Nathan shrugged heavily. He knew how much it hurt him to have lost most of his family in the past few years. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered how it would affect his boys, it was just… It wasn’t his problem.
“And if President Devlin can be killed,” Heidi continued. “Then so can you. So you can see why Monty’s scared.”
“I don’t have time to deal with this now, Heidi,” Nathan said. He knew it was a cowardly way to end this conversation, but he wasn’t prepared to do anything else right now.
“All right,” Heidi said, still calm: not backing down, just acknowledging Nathan’s decision. “I’ll be the dutiful wife, Nathan. I can be that woman.” She slipped a gloved hand around the crook of his arm. “But if you want your sons to be healthy, you’d better find time to convince them you’re not going anywhere.”
It pained Nathan to let her have the last word, but he didn’t reply. He let the silence lapse until they were both sure the conversation was over. “Did you handle flowers?” he asked.
“Yes. I signed them from President Petrelli and family.”
“Good.” A few more seconds of silence. “Remember to make the sign of the cross. We’re supposed to be practicing Catholics.”
“I won’t forget, Nathan,” Heidi said. Now there was a smile in her voice. “Remember, I’ve been the President’s wife as long as you’ve been President. I know what I’m doing.”
**********
They had provided Mohinder with an apartment in the Homeland Security compound. He wondered what would have happened if he’d asked to stay in a hotel instead, but decided he would rather not find out. The night hadn’t been particularly restful; he’d been plagued of images of Sylar alone in his cell, in pain, with theories of why Cure was causing such unpleasant side-effects with him, with ideas of how he could fix the man. Mohinder got out of bed as soon as it was light, less reluctant to get back to his lab than to be alone with his own thoughts any longer.
At his lab, Mohinder was greeted by a rumpled-looking lab assistant, and the sight of Sylar passed out on the floor of his cell. “He was sick all night,” the lab assistant explained. “Don’t know what’s wrong with him. You want me to sedate him so he won’t disturb you?”
That idea was tempting, but Sylar, face down and unmoving, looked pretty quiet for the time being. “No, I might have to talk to him,” Mohinder sighed.
The lab assistant shrugged in an it’s-your-funeral kind of way, and left Mohinder alone.
Less than an hour later, Sylar was up and kneeling by the toilet in his cell, dry-heaving violently.
Mohinder was comparing gene sequencing from Sylar’s DNA sample to other samples in the database. Each sound from Sylar’s cell dragged Mohinder’s attention back from the theoretical, and Mohinder was definitely regretting having turned down the lab assistant’s offer. At last, he whirled around to face the cell and shouted, “I can’t concentrate with all that retching! Would you just shut up?”
Jerking his head up from where it was resting on the edge of the toilet, Sylar regarded him with wide eyes, his face drawn and entirely bloodless, pale as Mohinder had ever seen him. “Sorry,” he croaked. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and dragged himself back to his bunk, where he curled up and lay still.
Mohinder turned back to his data, surprised to feel the beginnings of guilt gnawing at his stomach. He had no reason to feel guilty. He refused to pity Sylar. And even if he would-even if he should-he had no time for it. He’d promised Madden an antidote to Cure, and there was only so much he could do to avoid finding an answer he already knew how to find. In the meantime, he could find out what was wrong with Sylar in case sometime in the future, theoretically, the same thing happened to someone worth saving.
With fresh eyes, the genetic sequences Mohinder had been pondering last night suddenly seemed much clearer, and much more grim besides. A few hours of methodically comparing Sylar’s DNA to other Cure patients had shown Mohinder the problem. Sylar’s adaptability, which had made his DNA versatile enough for Mohinder to base an algorithm on it, was now killing him.
“You look pretty down, Mohinder,” Sylar called from his cell. “Is my DNA not as helpful as you’d hoped?” When Mohinder didn’t respond, Sylar dragged himself upright, leaning against the wall of his cell. “What’s happening?”
“I’m working,” Mohinder snapped. He circled another spot on the print-out of Sylar’s DNA sequence.
“You’re never too busy to monologue about your discoveries, are you?” Sylar quipped.
Mohinder turned around in his chair to glare. Sylar was smiling a weak, watered-down smile, and it made Mohinder want to punch him. Or at least give him another spinal tap. He grabbed his clipboard from the table, the one with the chart that showed Sylar’s cellular deterioration, marched over to Sylar’s cell, stabbed in the security code, wrenched the door open, and shook the chart in Sylar’s face. “This is what I’ve discovered, Sylar. You’re going to die.”
Sylar looked past the clipboard at Mohinder and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Cure works by blocking your body’s ability to read genetic code that differs from the norm. For most mutations, this doesn’t interfere with the regular functioning of the organism. But you…” The word was almost a snarl, and Mohinder checked himself from sliding further from scientific detachment into the guilty pleasure of revenge. “With each person you murdered, you altered your genetic code anew. So clever, seeing how things worked.”
“But it’s just one ability,” Sylar said in a small voice. “Like Petrelli.”
“No, you’re quite different from Peter. Look.” He showed Sylar the DNA sequence print-out. “I’ve seen Peter’s DNA. Peter borrows. You steal, Sylar. You alter yourself permanently. Now each one of those changes is hurting you. There’s hardly any unaltered genetic code left for your body to read.”
Sylar swallowed hard. “Is that why I’m-?”
“Sick, yes. As the Cure continues to work, I imagine you’ll start to lose more basic body functions. You’ve made too many changes that can’t be undone. You’re going to die.” Mohinder expected to feel pleasure saying those words, but instead he felt nothing. Sylar looked at him uncomprehendingly, and Mohinder again felt the stirrings of guilt.
“Can you help me?” Sylar asked.
“Only if I gave you the Cure antidote.” The words came out of Mohinder’s mouth before he could stop them. That wasn’t an option. As far as anyone in this building was concerned, there was no Cure antidote.
“So you can help,” Sylar said slowly.
“If I had an antidote, Sylar, you would be the last person on Earth I would give it to,” Mohinder said. Even as he said it, he regretted the necessity of this cruelty. Madden expected him to let Sylar die, he was sure of that, but this torture suddenly seemed to Mohinder excessively vindictive. “You don’t deserve to get your abilities back,” he finished.
“There’s nothing else you can do?” Sylar asked, staring at Mohinder as if he didn’t understand. Mohinder wasn’t fooled; Sylar was smart, surely smart enough to know what kind of a choice he was asking Mohinder to make. Under these circumstances, there was nothing Mohinder could do to save him, even if he’d had the will to do so.
“I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to lift a finger, and I can watch you die,” said Mohinder. His feeling of guilt began to grow as he saw Sylar recoil from those words.
“I don’t expect you to want to save me,” Sylar said. “But I do expect you not to stand by and do nothing.”
Mohinder’s sense of righteous indignation rallied again, pushing down the guilt. “I don’t owe you anything, Sylar.”
Sylar looked at him in silence for a long moment, then let out a harsh sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “You never met Isaac Mendez, did you?”
Mohinder narrowed his eyes at the sudden change in subject. “No. You murdered him before I had the chance.”
“Yes, well… Did you know he let me kill him?” Sylar asked. Mohinder shot him an angry glare, but Sylar was looking at the ground. “It was strange at the time; he wasn’t afraid at all. He’d been painting his death; he knew it was coming, and he just let me kill him.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Mohinder said, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.
“I’m only saying this to explain. Once I had his power, I understood why he would let himself be killed like that. To see something that scares you, something you know will happen…” He looked up at last, tentatively meeting Mohinder’s eyes as if he was afraid the scientist would turn away. “I saw something, Mohinder.”
The words were pulled from him almost against his will. “What did you see?”
“I saw something I didn’t want to be. I saw something that sent me running from who I had become.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I wanted to change, and I knew Hiro could help me.”
“What did you see?” Mohinder asked again. Despite himself, he moved a step closer, the better to hear.
“The same as it was for Isaac in his last days, I painted the same thing over and over, drew it on every page of half-a-dozen sketch books, saw it when I closed my eyes, as if it was burning itself into my future.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw you,” Sylar explained. “Look.” He took the clipboard out of Mohinder’s hand, flipped a page of it over to show the blank side, and began to sketch quickly with a pen. Mohinder watched in frozen silence until Sylar handed the finished drawing back to him. “Like that. Look.”
Mohinder looked at what Sylar had drawn. He saw himself laid out on the floor, eyes open and staring in death, his skull torn open, ringed with gore. Sylar sat beside him, contemplating his corpse thoughtfully, his expression almost tender.
“I didn’t want that. That’s insane,” said Sylar. “That’s one step beyond the line that can’t be crossed. Do you see? I couldn’t pretend it was an evolutionary imperative, pretend I deserved a power you weren’t using; it was just… killing.” Mohinder looked up from the drawing and met Sylar’s eyes, eyes that grabbed him and held him, begging him to understand. “Even before, when you were the enemy, I never hated you, I never wanted to kill you, not like that. Isaac’s ability showed me what I would do to make me realize what I would not do. Does that make sense?”
“No,” Mohinder whispered.
“It won’t happen, Mohinder.” Sylar reached out to place a hand over Mohinder’s where it lingered on the clipboard. “I’m a different man than the one whose future held that. I haven’t drawn such things in… in a long time.”
“You drew it now.”
Sylar shook his head. “That’s just a drawing. Not a prophecy. I wanted to show you.”
Mohinder brought himself back under control. “And now you have, Sylar.” He tore the page off the clipboard, crumpled it, and threw it on the ground.
“Mohinder!” Sylar protested. He lurched to his feet, but then clutched his head in pain. Mohinder took advantage of his distraction to retreat from the cell, slamming the door behind him.
“Mohinder!” Sylar called, pleading and demanding.
Mohinder didn’t look back.
********
Ando knocked on the door to the den for the tenth time. “I know you’re in there,” he called. There was no answer. Ando was starting to wonder if Hiro was broken. He hadn’t come out of the den all day, and drama was starting to reach a fever pitch in the apartment. Ando had finally told Alai to stop cleaning the guns and put them away because he was afraid there might be an “accident.”
Ando knocked again, and switched to Japanese. “Will you at least talk to me? The others are starting to get worried.”
“Go away,” Hiro called from the other side of the door. At least that meant he wasn’t dead.
As Ando raised his hand to knock again, Alai appeared at his side. “Someone just tripped one of Dean’s proximity alarms downstairs,” he said urgently.
“Hiro!” Ando called. “Did you hear that?” When there was no answer, Ando grumbled under his breath, “Fine, then.” He turned to Alai. “Let’s go,” he said.
Alai led him back into the main room of the studio where Dean and Micah were huddled in front of a laptop. The others had finally stopped bickering and were sitting in tense silence. “What happened?” Ando asked.
“We have some light sensors in the stairwell. The first one tripped about a minute ago, and whoever it is just passed the one on the fourth floor,” Dean reported.
“How many?” Ando asked.
“Should be just one. See?” Micah said, pointing to a read-out on the screen that was gibberish to Ando but apparently made perfect sense to him and Dean. “Light beam was only disrupted for three tenths of a second.”
“Might not be here for us,” Dean said. “Could be a vagrant, squatter, something.”
“Awful lot of locks on that stairwell door for a casual visitor,” Alai said grimly.
Ando tended to agree with Alai. Things hadn’t been going well for the group lately, and it was better to assume the worst. “Lara, Matt,” he said. “Take guns, get everyone in the back room. If you hear shooting, take the fire escape. Go.” Lara and Matt sprang into action, heading for the cabinet where Alai had stowed the guns. “Alai,” Ando said, lowering his voice. “You and I will take the door.”
“Hit the sixth floor now,” Dean called from the computer. Lara was starting to shoo everyone toward the back of the apartment, a shotgun balanced firmly on her hip.
Alai took a handgun for himself from the cabinet, and tossed another one to Ando. Then he threaded his way across the room to take Molly Walker by the shoulder. “Can’t you tell us who’s out there?” he asked.
“It doesn’t work that way. I have to know who I’m looking for,” Molly said, exasperated. She looked at Micah. “I wish I could,” she said apologetically.
“It’s okay,” said Ando. “Go on with Matt. You guys, too,” he said to Dean and Micah.
“The sensor at the end of the hall just tripped,” Micah said. “Be careful.” Then he and Dean followed Molly into the other room.
The apartment was dead silent, and Ando could now plainly hear the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside. Ando leveled his gun at the door, and Alai crept quietly over to the door and positioned himself behind it.
There came the jingle of a key ring, and to his surprise, Ando saw the lock turn and the deadbolt slide out. When the door opened, everything seemed to happen at once. Alai pulled the person through the entrance by his shirt, slamming the door closed, and proceeded to wrestle the intruder to the ground. Ando moved closer, trying to find an opening to take a shot if he had to. Then Alai gave a startled shout and jumped back; the stranger’s hands were glowing with fire. Fire?
The stranger scrambled to his feet, looking between Alai, who was more surprised than hurt, to Ando, who still held the gun pointed unwaveringly at him. “Ando?” he said finally.
Ando stared at the man in disbelief. “Peter Petrelli?”
********
Mohinder had never actually had to watch anyone die from the effects of his drug. He’d read reports about it, then spent months refusing to read reports about it, but he’d never witnessed first-hand one of his own murders. It shouldn’t matter that Sylar was in pain. Mohinder shouldn’t care. He hadn’t cared before. He didn’t owe Sylar anything. He would keep telling himself that, no matter what happened.
Sylar had been quiet most of the morning, for which Mohinder was distinctly thankful. He didn’t want to think about what Sylar had drawn, what that meant about his influence on Sylar, what that meant about how Sylar viewed him. To avoid those thoughts, Mohinder focused on the minute, the knowable. DNA was absolute, and understandable, and he’d spent the last four hours losing himself in the inner workings of Sylar’s genome. The more he studied Sylar’s gene sequence, the more he was convinced that the only way to stop the deterioration was to reverse the effects of the Cure. The only thing that might save Sylar was the one thing he wouldn’t do.
“Mohinder?” Sylar’s voice came through the Plexiglas, strangely flattened.
“What?” he called, not bothering to look up from his microscope.
“Mohinder?” Sylar called again.
“I’m right here,” Mohinder snapped without looking. “Stop it.”
“Mohinder!”
Mohinder stood up and whirled around to face Sylar. “I’m right-.”
Sylar was standing, face close to the glass, staring at Mohinder in horror. “I can’t hear you,” Sylar said, suddenly quiet. “I can’t hear you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sylar shook his head.
“You can’t hear me?” Mohinder asked.
“I can’t hear anything,” Sylar said.
Mohinder had been right. Cure was starting to impair the basic functions of Sylar’s body. “Dale,” Mohinder breathed. “You changed your DNA to match what Dale could do, and now you can’t revert to what you had.”
Sylar shook his head, not understanding. Mohinder turned away, and he heard an anguished cry from his patient. Mohinder ignored it
He looked again at the sample he’d taken earlier. The damage was accelerating. Sylar would continue to get worse, and faster, if Mohinder did nothing. Mohinder pushed the sample away-he didn’t owe it to Sylar to do anything, he told himself fiercely- and turned his attention to data from some older cases. Madden might start to get suspicious if he made no progress at all toward his supposed goal of a Cure antidote.
As if his thought had summoned her, Alicia Madden suddenly appeared in the doorway of his lab. “Knock knock,” she said pleasantly.
“Madam Secretary,” Mohinder said, and stood up. “Come in, please.”
“You can call me Alicia, Doctor,” Madden said. “How’s your patient?” She nodded toward the cell at the back of the lab.
“Not well, I’m afraid,” Mohinder told her. “Cure seems to have had an idiopathic effect on his DNA.”
“Hmm,” she said. She came to stand in front of the Plexiglas, cocking her head to the side in interest as if Sylar was an unusual specimen in a zoo.
“I’m afraid he’ll be dead soon,” Mohinder said. That, at least, was the truth.
Madden turned to scrutinize him. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” Mohinder said tightly. Except that it was. When he thought about just letting Sylar die, it suddenly seemed cowardly, even if it was for the good of humanity. If Mohinder could even truly say his choice was for the good of humanity, and not for revenge.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Doctor Suresh,” Madden said. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I know you understand the depth in tragedy of the crimes Sylar has committed.”
“Yes,” Mohinder said. He tried to bring to mind the faces of Sylar’s victims, but saw only the faces of those who’d died because of Cure.
“Your own father’s murderer...” She shook her head. “The man really is a monster.”
“Yes,” Mohinder said, but to hear her say so made him doubt it. How many had Sylar killed, in all? Dozens? A hundred? Mohinder’s drug had caused thousands of deaths. He was suddenly finding it difficult to judge Sylar’s crimes so harshly.
“I’m surprised you can maintain enough scientific integrity to use him as a test subject,” Madden said, strolling casually to a lab table and peering at the papers Mohinder had lined up.
“I’m not really testing him, Secretary Madden. I’m just observing his condition.”
“His condition,” Madden repeated. She turned back to look at Sylar, still curled in the fetal position on his bunk. Her smile was almost malicious. “Yes, it’s lucky for us that Cure is so successful at making people like Sylar safe to observe.”
“Yes.”
She turned to him, beaming. “You’re a real hero, Doctor Suresh,” she said.
Mohinder couldn’t hold on to his fake smile, so he was relieved that she looked back to the cell.
“Mister Sylar,” she called. There was, of course, no response, so she turned to Mohinder. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s lost his hearing,” Mohinder said blandly.
Madden laughed, a hearty chuckle that froze Mohinder’s blood. “Oh, that’s a charming side effect.”
“Yes,” was all Mohinder could bring himself to say. How dare she laugh at Sylar’s pain like that. Sylar may be a monster, but to take delight in his pain, the type of pain Mohinder’s Cure had caused for countless others in its time... It was sick. And you’ve never delighted in Sylar’s pain? a small voice whispered to him.
“You know,” she said, turning her back on Sylar to study Mohinder. “Some of my colleagues doubted you could handle this assignment, but I knew you had it in you to make the most of this opportunity.”
“Thank you, Madam Secretary.”
She kept up her smile as she strode to the door. Mohinder followed her. “Let me know if there’s anything you need, won’t you Doctor?”
“Thank you,” Mohinder said. Then she was gone.
Mohinder leaned against the door a moment and found that he was shaking. Fear, rage, he wasn’t sure. Something about her attitude had made him positively ill, and he was afraid it was because he recognized too much of his own feelings in her. When he had control of himself again, he turned back to the lab only to see Sylar sitting up on his bunk, staring at him. Or, more accurately, staring through him.
Mohinder noticed, when he moved forward, that Sylar’s eyes didn’t track him. “Mohinder?” Sylar’s voice sounded weak, almost frightened.
Mohinder punched in the code to unlock the cell door and went in.
“Mohinder.” Sylar reached out for his hand. Mohinder let him find it, let Sylar twine their fingers together. “I can’t see,” he whispered.
“I know,” said Mohinder, even though he knew Sylar couldn’t hear him. He squeezed Sylar’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Sylar said. Mohinder tried to let go, but Sylar held on, his grip barely strong enough to pull Mohinder back. “Mohinder, please.” Mohinder pulled away again, this time breaking his grip from Sylar’s, but he didn’t walk away. He couldn’t walk away.
It wasn’t quite pity that he felt. It wasn’t quite forgiveness, or mercy, even. Shame. That was it. Mohinder was ashamed that he could stand here, knowing that his drug had killed so many others, stand here with an opportunity to stop it, and not help. It was selfish. Sylar was begging for help. Begging.
Some hero. He’d prayed for a chance to undo his mistake. Just one chance to save someone, and now that chance was here for the taking. The gods must hate him. He didn’t deserve a test like this.
“Are you still there?” Sylar whispered. He reached out again, and this time Mohinder stepped away. Sylar’s hand searched feebly for a moment, then dropped. With a panicked little exhalation, Sylar curled onto his side, muttering to himself. Mohinder thought he caught a snatch of Bible verse. He remembered “father forgive me” scrawled in red on the walls of Sylar’s old apartment in New York back before he’d met the man. Father, forgive me indeed. Mohinder looked at Sylar, created by Chandra’s hubris, tortured by Mohinder’s failures. Forgive me indeed.
Previous Chapter
Next Chapter
Author’s Note: So, I know you may hate me for this, but it looks like there will be a week’s hiatus. We’re halfway through the story, and I need to take some time to work ahead if I’m going to have any hope of keeping up this weekly posting schedule for the second half. That means I’d be posting the next chapter on Friday, November 9th. In the meantime, I have a one-shot or two that might find their way onto LJ, so hopefully those will tide you over. Thanks all for your lovely comments thus far-they fuel the fire!