(Untitled)

[nuclear_ted]

Who: Ted and Sylar. Later Ned.
Where: Sylar's Cabin. Level 5, Room 12.
What: Sylar needs/wants Ted's ability. Ted will let him take it.
When: An hour after this. Backdated to first flood day.
Warnings: Character Death. R to be safe.

Comments

[gray_atonement]

Sylar might have underplayed the death toll a little, but who could expect any less from the killer? He was talking someone into letting him kill them as he had done a few times before, letting him rip their heads open and get a look inside their minds-- metaphorically as much as literally. Ted may or may not forgive him, but the important thing was that he would have Ted's ability at that point regardless of how the other man felt about him. The inmate idly wondered who his old.. friend's warden was, not thinking that the man might be a warden himself. It really didn't matter.

Really, that people did agree to let him kill them only helped his ego. He was arrogant, feeling that he had outwitted them rather than that they were actually trying to help him.. or that, if they were trying to help him, it was because he had convinced them it was the right idea. Ted was the fifth or so willing victim; he had lost count of the total number.

Sylar moved quickly to his door, lifting a hand to open it without touching the handle. It was a subtle sign of his ability. Stepping aside, he made space for Ted to enter. "I wasn't sure you would actually show up."

[nuclear_ted]

Ted entered, hands in his pockets. He was most definitely nervous about the whole thing, and it showed. But he was here, a physical consent to what he'd already written to Sylar's warden.

"Yeah, well," he said and shrugged. It was a gesture that said no big deal. Even if the rest of him clearly contradicted that. "I'm here to help you. I feel like I should. For some reason." He didn't understand that himself. Not really. But sometimes you have to go with your instinct. And his instinct, influenced by the recent flood, told him that he and Sylar should be friends. They had a connection. Or several, actually.

[gray_atonement]

Sylar closed the door behind him and locked it, again with his ability rather than a hand. Then he sauntered forward into the main portion of his room near his bed, passing the paintings on his walls from when he had had his full abilities not long ago. Convenient timing, that Ted should appear just when he was craving to maintain that ability.

He gestured toward the bed, Tim's staff propped up near it. The killer grimaced slightly at the realization that he would have to carry the dead Ted to the infirmary for his warden to revive him if he wanted to avoid, only because he was lazy not afraid of the blood, the mess, or the reputation.

Something gave him pause, however, and he began to suspect there might be some semblance of odd behavior. Then he realized he didn't care and began continuing on with the process. "I thought you didn't like me.."

[nuclear_ted]

Only now did Ted notice Sylar's telekinesis. With that simple gesture, he felt suddenly as he had when the FBI van flipped over. Nauseous, locked and helpless. What he remembered of Sylar was at war with the flood's influence; the flood still won out. Any protest or bad memory his mind thought up, he right away reasoned away.

He gave Sylar a questioning glance after the killer indicated the bed, and staff. He couldn't remember any weapon the last time.

"I didn't really know you," Ted replied. "I hadn't heard of you at all until moments before you... killed..." His voice faded away as he was distracted by the paintings. In particular, the exploding man. He moved closer to it, studying it. "Is that... supposed to be me?" He asked, turning to look at Sylar.

[gray_atonement]

"Peter Petrelli," he replied without hesitation. Trying not to let impatience catch hold of him, despite how much he wanted this. That taste for blood on his hands hadn't waned so much as he had led Tim to believe and to be able to do it now, again, without getting punished for it? Well, it was too easy. Too perfect. Focus on someone else rather than their own history.

"It will be mostly painless." Sylar offered after a pause, casting a very short glance at Tim's staff. "Much better than if I did it normally."

The bed had been stripped of its blankets, a couple layers of sheets above the plastic to contain the inevitable blood. It was subtly apparent that Sylar had done this before, and would probably do it again.

Impatient killer Sy is strangely adorable.

[nuclear_ted]

Ted remembered Peter. The guy who 'absorbed' his ability, as Bennet called it. He wondered how Peter was like a sponge and Sylar was... well, like he was. Then again, maybe there wasn't an answer to that. Things just were.

He made his way to the bed and sat down on the edge. In his lap he tapped his fingers together nervously. "Right, so...uh. What's the procedure?" Keep things simple, professional. That will help.

[gray_atonement]

"I recommend laying back and closing your eyes," he replied with a hint of humor, a smirk twisting his lips. No matter how well they might ever get along, no matter the arrangement, Sylar was still a killer at his core and he loved to see the blood run. He walked around to the side and grabbed the staff, the knife he was going to use to kill Ted still hidden within.

The closer they got, the longer it took, the more Sylar began to turn into the demon within him. The more he became every inch the terror that so many people knew him to be. The person Tim, Cissie, and Claire would not approve of.

[nuclear_ted]

Sylar's attempt at humor didn't help, and Ted couldn't think of anything to say. So he lie back, hands at his sides, and closed his eyes. He was thankful it was going to 'mostly painless', but he was more concerned with the death being too slow.

"Just try to be quick, okay?" He said, glancing up at Sylar. "The last time... I couldn't do anything. But this is different. A gunshot wound made me explode and--" He was rambling. What survival instinct was that, anyway? He paused, relaxed, and closed his eyes again. "I'm ready."

[gray_atonement]

Sylar rolled his eyes after Ted's were closed. His humor with the situation wasn't meant to be shared. Taking hold of Tim's staff, he twisted and clicked it as his warden had taught him such that the knife popped out at the end. The shine in his eyes as he leered down at Ted was one that nothing other than killing could create. He watched the man's tense muscles and slightly twitching eye for a moment before finally lifting the staff up. Swinging down quickly, the knife cut straight through Ted's neck, cutting through his trachea and both arteries. Blood began gushing out from the wound and the killer took comfort in the gasping breaths that accompanied it.

He lifted the staff to above Ted's heart, prepared to stab the man if it was essential but figured the combination of blood loss and suffocation should be able to kill a person in less than thirty seconds.. fast enough for Ted not to explode. With any sign of glowing, he would plunge the knife through the ribs and into the heart, then twist.

[nuclear_ted]

Ted expected the pain at his head, so the quick slash at his throat was surprising. He gripped the bed beneath him as he gasped for air like a fish. His hands glowed faintly and flickered but that was all. He was dead in less than a minute, and the glow faded away.

[gray_atonement]

Sylar dropped the staff beside him, leaning on the bed. There was nothing else that mattered-- nothing else but this. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples in his excitement, in his intensity. The killer reached forward to Ted's neck, finding a great, almost erotic sense of satisfaction as the blood slid beneath his fingers. His eyes drifted closed for a moment as he dropped his fingers into the puddle at the base of Ted's neck. The liquid was distinct from anything else. The smell taunted his nostrils and the thick liquid felt an extension of himself in some way.

Eyes snapping open again, he knew that he had a limited time if Ted's warden was going to find him. Or maybe he really was a warden, since it seemed strange never to mention his own. Regardless, the killer opted not to waste much more time. Grabbing hold of the staff again, in a combination of his ability and actual hands, he created an impressively straight line across Ted's forehead to peel the skin back, and then to remove the less-clean cut of skull, exposing the brain beneath.

Sylar laid the staff aside, idly amused that he would be returning it to Tim with blood on the handle, and set to work. His fingers danced nimbly over the lobes, occasionally pressing into the semi-gelatinous organ to feel around for what he was looking for. After a moment's searching, he found it. Deep within the hypothalamus, an area he had needed to claw out part of the brain to reach, was the answer to Ted's problem and Sylar's solution. Grazing over the small portion of the brain, he began to understand how it was that Sprague could control his temperature, his radiation. Then the inmate could do it too.

Withdrawing his fingers from Ted's head, he stared down at his red hands with a pleasure he hadn't known since.. well, since Claire Bennet, most likely. The killer reached his hands down to wipe the blood onto his sheets, wanting to get rid of the body and not have to deal with an unhappy Ted awakening in his bed. Rather than throw the body over his shoulder and have to carry the skull and bits of brain separately, he opted instead to wrap Ted up in his sheets, then throw the man over his shoulder.

Hands only partially cleaned, sheets still soaked in blood--though thankfully not dripping, Sylar made his way out of his room toward the common room. Without hesitation, he flopped the bloody lump of sheet onto the floor of the room so that someone would eventually find him. Glancing up, he caught sight of another person coming down the stairs and rolled his eyes a little. His hands were still smeared with blood, shoulder and part of his chest and sleeve soaked with it, and there was still an arrogant smirk on his lips that he couldn't suppress in spite of everything.

"If you have a problem with it, talk to my warden. Tim." The remark was flippant and dismissive.

[easy_aspie]

Ned was moving down the stairs, minding his own business and heading towards the library when he caught a flash of red and the muffled thump of something heavy being dropped. He stopped abruptly at the foot of the stairs, staring at the bloodstained Sylar. "I - what? You've..."

His eyes were drawn downwards to the bloody mass, and his face hardened. He knew what was under that sheet. Ned was no stranger to corpses - he'd seen more than his fair share working with Emerson. But there was something distinctly different between seeing a body on a stainless-steel table in the morgue, covered with a snowy, sterile length of fabric, and this; this was violent, and raw, and abrupt. Ned moved quickly across the room and knelt beside the body. He placed the back of his wrist to his mouth, holding it there for a long moment and steeling himself. Then, with a hand that he could not keep from trembling slightly, Ned drew back the top corner of the soaked sheet.

He didn't recognize the man, and that was its own sort of relief. He didn't know if he could handle staring into the glassy eyes of another dead friend; Inara's still kept him up some nights. He might not have been a friend, whoever this man was, but he couldn't have deserved this.

Still on the floor beside the body, Ned's voice was quiet. "What have you done?"

[gray_atonement]

Sylar stifled the laugh that threatened to rise in his throat. Rolling his eyes upward as if to search for the proper words, he hesitated for a moment. Then dropped his head into a tilt in an attitude that suggested he didn't much care what the other man thought of him. "It was pre-approved. Warden supported murder, you could say. Voluntary."

Then the inmate turned around to begin heading back toward his room, looking forward to the shower to wash the blood from his body as much as he was to get the blood on his hands in the first place. It was comforting.

[easy_aspie]

Ned heard Sylar's excuse, but couldn't quite bring himself to understand it. Every inmate had his own path to redemption, yes, and those paths were varied, sometimes taken in roundabout ways, but he couldn't see how committing murder could possibly help an inmate towards the good. This just seemed... well, it had backslide written all over it.

"Yeah, well, he - he belongs in the infirmary, not just dumped here like y-your trash."

Ned drew the sheet back over Ted's face with an imperceptible breath of relief, careful not to touch the man - the last thing they needed in this situation was for Sylar's victim to sit up and start wondering how he could possibly be alive. Ned stood and turned to Sylar, only then realizing that he was leaving.

Ned sighed, looking down at Ted's body. "Sorry about this."

WORST TAG EVER.

[gray_atonement]

Sylar couldn't care less. With a hand over his shoulder to wave the guy away, the killer continued on toward disappearing into his room. He cast a short glance back toward the distraught man, speaking over his shoulder before disappearing into his doorway. "His warden will come find him."

NO WORRY BEEF CURRY.

[easy_aspie]

Ned watched Sylar go, his face hard. Kneeling down, he regarded Ted's body for a moment, then released a muttered curse that sounded suspiciously like 'fudgesicles'. From his pocket, Ned drew out a pair of leather gloves that he carried in case of emergencies such as these. Being careful not to come into contact with Ted's skin, Ned tucked the sheet closer around the body before lifting the man in his arms.

His voice, when he spoke, was a bit strained - Ned was a big guy, but carrying the full weight of a grown man was no easy task. "I've got you," he said, then, carrying the bloody parcel that was Ted, headed for the infirmary.