Fic: Like a Hole In the Sky Part I
The last of the fires had stopped burning by the time Adam Monroe returned to Manhattan and the city itself was little more than a burnt out shell. The streets were gray with ash and steeped with filth; not even the rats would forage there anymore. The store fronts still retained some of their vivacious color, but most of the windows had been blown out and the stores that were on the outskirts of the blast radius had been completely looted. There were no people and hardly any animals. The plant life hadn't returned yet, but Adam knew that in the grasses and trees would return long before the people would. Such was the way of things. He had seen it happen before, many times.
The ground became blacker and the debris smaller the closer Adam got to what had become known as 'ground zero.' The ash was thicker here. Adam left footprints in the chalky stuff as he crossed from one side of the street to the other, and when he glanced back he mused that it looked as if a ghost was following him. Perhaps there was, in a city that was damned like this one.
The sun began to set behind the ruins and by the time he reached what had in another life been Times Square Adam began to wonder if he wasn't wasting his time. He had returned to the city in the hopes of recovering some of the more valuable items from the lower levels of the Kirby building. He'd left them behind months before when, half naked and stunned from surviving the initial explosion, he had escaped from his prison of thirty years and joined the frantic masses in evacuating the city. He had been under cover since then and his funding had shrunk to a measly sum; the objects he had left behind were worth enough that if he found them he'd be able to live off the profit for some time. The damage to this part of the city was worse than he remembered, however, and it would be even more difficult to search the rubble once night fell. As he mulled over the idea of quitting for the evening and finding a place to pass the dark hours, Adam made his way around the skeletal remains of a skyscraper...and froze.
Somebody was following him. Whoever it was, they were good at remaining undetected; Adam hadn’t noticed until he slowed his pace to go around the building and noticed an echo that wasn’t caused by his own feet. The footsteps stopped a split second after Adam did, and for an entire minute he listened and silently waited.
Nothing and, after another minute, nothing still. There was no noise save for the eerie creak of the crumbling buildings and the distant squawk of some of the more ambitious scavenger birds. Nevertheless, Adam was positive that he was no longer alone and that bothered him. With the amount of radiation that was in the air only someone who was suicidal or completely mad would dare come this close to the epicenter. Adam wasn’t worried about physical harm, but being attacked by a grief stricken lunatic was not something he particularly wanted to deal with at the moment.
Well, Adam decided, if the situation came up he would handle it. Now that he was aware of his pursuer he had the upper hand anyway. With a slight shrug of his shoulders he continued down the road. A bus was overturned at the intersection, lying in the shadows like some giant, silent sentinel. Adam skirted around it without a thought, taking care to avoid the safety glass that littered the pavement. As he reached the curb he heard an odd sound, like the whoosh of a stick cutting through the air, and an instant later the crunch of trodden on safety glass followed.
Adam’s carefully honed instincts kicked in at once, and even as he spun around he went for the handgun that was holstered beneath his jacket. Three hundred years of practice had given him a quick draw, but his stalker was somehow on him before his fingers even brushed the metal. His back slammed into a wall of debris and before he knew what was happening there was a blade at his throat and he was staring into the angry face of a man he did not know.
‘Who are you,’ the man asked, ‘and what are you doing here?’
Adam raised his hands slowly, palms turned outwards, and tried to school his features into something that looked harmless and appropriately frightened. He was certain he could get the sword away easily enough, but doing so without cutting himself in the process would be tricky. He had no desire to soil his dress shirt with blood, and anyway he preferred to err on the side of caution when it came to situations that could possibly end in his decapitation.
‘I didn’t think there was anybody else here,’ Adam said calmly. ‘I used to live in the city. I was just coming to reclaim some things I left behind.’
The other man shook his head slightly, dark eyes narrowing in suspicion. ‘Civilians don’t come here. They think there’s radiation.’
Adam raised an eyebrow. ‘Isn’t there?’
The other man frowned, as if the question confused him. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Now, who are you?’
Adam sighed inwardly. It was becoming abundantly clear that this man thought himself to be some sort of vigilante, though exactly what he thought he was defending was a mystery. Vigilante types were always a pain to deal with. This one seemed particularly stubborn.
‘Do you regularly go around harassing people for no good reason?’ Adam asked. ‘Or am I a special case?’
It was dark enough that the other man’s scowl was hard to make out, but the way his body shifted against Adam’s suggested that he was getting restless. Adam mused to himself that the feeling was mutual.
‘I have good reason,’ the man began softly, then abruptly stopped and tilted his head slightly as if he was listening for something. Adam was certain it was a diversionary tactic, and a cheap one at that, but then he too heard the distant, rhythmic chuffing of what could only be a helicopter. It was coming closer quickly, and as the noise grew louder Adam’s assailant became agitated.
‘They’re early tonight,’ he muttered, eyes darting from Adam’s face to the section of the city the chopper was coming from.
Adam didn’t bother to look. ‘Friends of yours?’
The man shook his head, and then stepped back, releasing Adam from the wall. ‘I don’t know who you are, but if you’re not with them,’ he said with a gesture at pinpoint of light in the sky that was steadily drawing nearer, ‘you’d better get out of here.’
Adam glanced at the light as the man sheathed his sword. He wanted to ask who ‘they’ were, exactly, but then the man turned as if to go and Adam caught a glimpse of the silver emblem on the hilt of the sword. It was hard to make out at first, but as the light from the chopper chased away some of the shadows Adam could see it clearly.
It was the Godsend symbol. It was his symbol, his sword. He hadn’t seen it in years, had thought it lost ages ago to time and decay, but there it was. A flood of a thousand memories flashed suddenly before his eyes, memories of women, battle, and a hundred grateful villagers joyously chanting his name. His hand twitched as it recalled the way the sword had felt against his palm, like it was more than an extension of his arm and part of his very flesh and blood. There had been a time where that blade had been the embodiment of all he was. For another person to handle it so easily seemed almost sacrilegious.
Seething with possessive anger, Adam surged forward, tore his gun from its holster, and grabbed the other man by the wrist. The younger man didn’t cry out as Adam spun him around, but his eyes did widen slightly when Adam raised the gun and pointed it at his head.
‘Hang on now,’ Adam said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the din of the approaching helicopter. ‘You’ve got something that belongs to me.’
The other man looked at Adam as if he were insane, but before he could answer there was a loud clang and the intersection was flooded with light. Cursing, Adam looked up. The helicopter was hovering almost directly above them. Its giant propellers churned the air dangerously close to one of the taller structures, and all the ash and dust that was on the ground began to spin as if in a cyclone. Adam’s assailant swore loudly in what sounded like Japanese and then, all around them, the very air seemed to explode as a hailstorm of bullets rained down from above. Something hot and monstrous ripped through Adam’s hand, and all the feeling went out of the appendage in a burst of red. The weapon fell from his ruined hand and went tumbling towards the ground. Adam watched it fall, saw his own blood spatter on the pavement, and then all at once…it was gone.
Everything was gone, the gun, the helicopter, the city, everything except the man whose arm Adam held in a death grip. The blinding artificial glare of the search lights had been replaced with the brightness of the afternoon sun, and the blood from Adam’s virtually destroyed hand fell onto dry, dusty desert terrain rather than concrete. Startled, Adam stepped back quickly and let his eyes sweep over the new surroundings while his hand began to stitch itself back together. There were buildings in the distance, he noted, a small town or city that probably served as a hub for the nearby interstate. There was a distinctly southwestern flavor to the architecture; certainly, there was no place like it in New York. Adam had been transported to the other side of the country in an instant, and there was little doubt as to who had done it.
With his shadowed features and all black apparel, the teleporter had blended in easily amidst the cold colorless streets of Manhattan. Here against the sunny landscape, however, he looked terribly out of place, a stranger in a foreign land. He seemed completely unaware of this, and for several long moments simply stared at Adam as if Adam could not see him. His expression was as guarded as it had been back in the city, but his eyes…well, only fools let their thoughts show so plainly, fools and those who thought they had nothing left to lose.
‘You can heal,’ he said as if he were accusing Adam of some heinous crime. ‘How can you heal?’
The flesh of Adam’s rebuilt hand closed with a wet squelching noise. The sleeve of his jacket was soaked with blood; Adam didn’t think there was any way he’d be able to salvage it. Grimacing slightly, he flexed his fingers and waited for the feeling to come back to his arm. ‘The same way you brought us here,’ he said with a nod at the distant town. ‘Gift, talent, genetic abnormality. I don’t know what they’re calling it these days. Probably something ridiculous and overwrought.’
The teleporter rocked restlessly from one foot to the other, like he was just barely managing to keep from pacing like a caged animal. ‘The man who destroyed New York could heal,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to figure out how. I wonder…there must have been…’
The stranger was progressively becoming more interesting with every minute that passed. Adam watched him curiously, marveling at the flurry of thoughts that raced over the man’s face in a matter of moments. The sword that Adam had been so proud to wield gleamed in the bright sunlight but for the time being Adam no longer felt a possessive need to immediately regain it. He was suddenly more interested in the man who now held it. For the first time in his long life Adam found himself wondering about another person’s history.
‘I don’t suppose you plan on explaining how you know all this,’ Adam said conversationally. ‘Or where you’ve taken me, for that matter.’
The man glanced at Adam and once again did that little frown of confusion. ‘I was there,’ he said. ‘The day the bomb went off, I was there. I know what happened.’ His face clouded suddenly. ‘If I can manage it, I’m going to make sure it never happens. I won’t let anyone stop me,’ he added with a pointed look at Adam.
Not just a teleporter, then, but a time traveler as well. More and more interesting. ‘You’ll get no interference from me,’ Adam said truthfully. In his opinion, blowing up cities was a showy and ultimately ineffectual way of getting things done. He preferred more subtle methods of destruction.
‘Good,’ the other man said curtly, then paused. ‘I was violent earlier. I’m sorry for that, but you can’t go back to the city. I’ve brought you to Nevada; the laws aren’t so strict here.’
‘Nevada,’ Adam repeated with a frown. ‘That’s a little bit of overkill, don’t you think? You couldn’t have brought me to New Jersey or Maine?’
The man smiled slightly. ‘You can never be too careful,’ he said and then with the quiet whoosh of displaced air he was gone.
Ando
I may have made a breakthrough today. I met a man who can heal just like Sylar did. I think Sylar must have stolen the power from another person. If I can find out who and make sure they live I can go back in time and stop Sylar before he explodes. It will take some time. I will have to start at the end and work my way backwards. Have faith in me.
I won't let you die again.
The ground became blacker and the debris smaller the closer Adam got to what had become known as 'ground zero.' The ash was thicker here. Adam left footprints in the chalky stuff as he crossed from one side of the street to the other, and when he glanced back he mused that it looked as if a ghost was following him. Perhaps there was, in a city that was damned like this one.
The sun began to set behind the ruins and by the time he reached what had in another life been Times Square Adam began to wonder if he wasn't wasting his time. He had returned to the city in the hopes of recovering some of the more valuable items from the lower levels of the Kirby building. He'd left them behind months before when, half naked and stunned from surviving the initial explosion, he had escaped from his prison of thirty years and joined the frantic masses in evacuating the city. He had been under cover since then and his funding had shrunk to a measly sum; the objects he had left behind were worth enough that if he found them he'd be able to live off the profit for some time. The damage to this part of the city was worse than he remembered, however, and it would be even more difficult to search the rubble once night fell. As he mulled over the idea of quitting for the evening and finding a place to pass the dark hours, Adam made his way around the skeletal remains of a skyscraper...and froze.
Somebody was following him. Whoever it was, they were good at remaining undetected; Adam hadn’t noticed until he slowed his pace to go around the building and noticed an echo that wasn’t caused by his own feet. The footsteps stopped a split second after Adam did, and for an entire minute he listened and silently waited.
Nothing and, after another minute, nothing still. There was no noise save for the eerie creak of the crumbling buildings and the distant squawk of some of the more ambitious scavenger birds. Nevertheless, Adam was positive that he was no longer alone and that bothered him. With the amount of radiation that was in the air only someone who was suicidal or completely mad would dare come this close to the epicenter. Adam wasn’t worried about physical harm, but being attacked by a grief stricken lunatic was not something he particularly wanted to deal with at the moment.
Well, Adam decided, if the situation came up he would handle it. Now that he was aware of his pursuer he had the upper hand anyway. With a slight shrug of his shoulders he continued down the road. A bus was overturned at the intersection, lying in the shadows like some giant, silent sentinel. Adam skirted around it without a thought, taking care to avoid the safety glass that littered the pavement. As he reached the curb he heard an odd sound, like the whoosh of a stick cutting through the air, and an instant later the crunch of trodden on safety glass followed.
Adam’s carefully honed instincts kicked in at once, and even as he spun around he went for the handgun that was holstered beneath his jacket. Three hundred years of practice had given him a quick draw, but his stalker was somehow on him before his fingers even brushed the metal. His back slammed into a wall of debris and before he knew what was happening there was a blade at his throat and he was staring into the angry face of a man he did not know.
‘Who are you,’ the man asked, ‘and what are you doing here?’
Adam raised his hands slowly, palms turned outwards, and tried to school his features into something that looked harmless and appropriately frightened. He was certain he could get the sword away easily enough, but doing so without cutting himself in the process would be tricky. He had no desire to soil his dress shirt with blood, and anyway he preferred to err on the side of caution when it came to situations that could possibly end in his decapitation.
‘I didn’t think there was anybody else here,’ Adam said calmly. ‘I used to live in the city. I was just coming to reclaim some things I left behind.’
The other man shook his head slightly, dark eyes narrowing in suspicion. ‘Civilians don’t come here. They think there’s radiation.’
Adam raised an eyebrow. ‘Isn’t there?’
The other man frowned, as if the question confused him. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Now, who are you?’
Adam sighed inwardly. It was becoming abundantly clear that this man thought himself to be some sort of vigilante, though exactly what he thought he was defending was a mystery. Vigilante types were always a pain to deal with. This one seemed particularly stubborn.
‘Do you regularly go around harassing people for no good reason?’ Adam asked. ‘Or am I a special case?’
It was dark enough that the other man’s scowl was hard to make out, but the way his body shifted against Adam’s suggested that he was getting restless. Adam mused to himself that the feeling was mutual.
‘I have good reason,’ the man began softly, then abruptly stopped and tilted his head slightly as if he was listening for something. Adam was certain it was a diversionary tactic, and a cheap one at that, but then he too heard the distant, rhythmic chuffing of what could only be a helicopter. It was coming closer quickly, and as the noise grew louder Adam’s assailant became agitated.
‘They’re early tonight,’ he muttered, eyes darting from Adam’s face to the section of the city the chopper was coming from.
Adam didn’t bother to look. ‘Friends of yours?’
The man shook his head, and then stepped back, releasing Adam from the wall. ‘I don’t know who you are, but if you’re not with them,’ he said with a gesture at pinpoint of light in the sky that was steadily drawing nearer, ‘you’d better get out of here.’
Adam glanced at the light as the man sheathed his sword. He wanted to ask who ‘they’ were, exactly, but then the man turned as if to go and Adam caught a glimpse of the silver emblem on the hilt of the sword. It was hard to make out at first, but as the light from the chopper chased away some of the shadows Adam could see it clearly.
It was the Godsend symbol. It was his symbol, his sword. He hadn’t seen it in years, had thought it lost ages ago to time and decay, but there it was. A flood of a thousand memories flashed suddenly before his eyes, memories of women, battle, and a hundred grateful villagers joyously chanting his name. His hand twitched as it recalled the way the sword had felt against his palm, like it was more than an extension of his arm and part of his very flesh and blood. There had been a time where that blade had been the embodiment of all he was. For another person to handle it so easily seemed almost sacrilegious.
Seething with possessive anger, Adam surged forward, tore his gun from its holster, and grabbed the other man by the wrist. The younger man didn’t cry out as Adam spun him around, but his eyes did widen slightly when Adam raised the gun and pointed it at his head.
‘Hang on now,’ Adam said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the din of the approaching helicopter. ‘You’ve got something that belongs to me.’
The other man looked at Adam as if he were insane, but before he could answer there was a loud clang and the intersection was flooded with light. Cursing, Adam looked up. The helicopter was hovering almost directly above them. Its giant propellers churned the air dangerously close to one of the taller structures, and all the ash and dust that was on the ground began to spin as if in a cyclone. Adam’s assailant swore loudly in what sounded like Japanese and then, all around them, the very air seemed to explode as a hailstorm of bullets rained down from above. Something hot and monstrous ripped through Adam’s hand, and all the feeling went out of the appendage in a burst of red. The weapon fell from his ruined hand and went tumbling towards the ground. Adam watched it fall, saw his own blood spatter on the pavement, and then all at once…it was gone.
Everything was gone, the gun, the helicopter, the city, everything except the man whose arm Adam held in a death grip. The blinding artificial glare of the search lights had been replaced with the brightness of the afternoon sun, and the blood from Adam’s virtually destroyed hand fell onto dry, dusty desert terrain rather than concrete. Startled, Adam stepped back quickly and let his eyes sweep over the new surroundings while his hand began to stitch itself back together. There were buildings in the distance, he noted, a small town or city that probably served as a hub for the nearby interstate. There was a distinctly southwestern flavor to the architecture; certainly, there was no place like it in New York. Adam had been transported to the other side of the country in an instant, and there was little doubt as to who had done it.
With his shadowed features and all black apparel, the teleporter had blended in easily amidst the cold colorless streets of Manhattan. Here against the sunny landscape, however, he looked terribly out of place, a stranger in a foreign land. He seemed completely unaware of this, and for several long moments simply stared at Adam as if Adam could not see him. His expression was as guarded as it had been back in the city, but his eyes…well, only fools let their thoughts show so plainly, fools and those who thought they had nothing left to lose.
‘You can heal,’ he said as if he were accusing Adam of some heinous crime. ‘How can you heal?’
The flesh of Adam’s rebuilt hand closed with a wet squelching noise. The sleeve of his jacket was soaked with blood; Adam didn’t think there was any way he’d be able to salvage it. Grimacing slightly, he flexed his fingers and waited for the feeling to come back to his arm. ‘The same way you brought us here,’ he said with a nod at the distant town. ‘Gift, talent, genetic abnormality. I don’t know what they’re calling it these days. Probably something ridiculous and overwrought.’
The teleporter rocked restlessly from one foot to the other, like he was just barely managing to keep from pacing like a caged animal. ‘The man who destroyed New York could heal,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to figure out how. I wonder…there must have been…’
The stranger was progressively becoming more interesting with every minute that passed. Adam watched him curiously, marveling at the flurry of thoughts that raced over the man’s face in a matter of moments. The sword that Adam had been so proud to wield gleamed in the bright sunlight but for the time being Adam no longer felt a possessive need to immediately regain it. He was suddenly more interested in the man who now held it. For the first time in his long life Adam found himself wondering about another person’s history.
‘I don’t suppose you plan on explaining how you know all this,’ Adam said conversationally. ‘Or where you’ve taken me, for that matter.’
The man glanced at Adam and once again did that little frown of confusion. ‘I was there,’ he said. ‘The day the bomb went off, I was there. I know what happened.’ His face clouded suddenly. ‘If I can manage it, I’m going to make sure it never happens. I won’t let anyone stop me,’ he added with a pointed look at Adam.
Not just a teleporter, then, but a time traveler as well. More and more interesting. ‘You’ll get no interference from me,’ Adam said truthfully. In his opinion, blowing up cities was a showy and ultimately ineffectual way of getting things done. He preferred more subtle methods of destruction.
‘Good,’ the other man said curtly, then paused. ‘I was violent earlier. I’m sorry for that, but you can’t go back to the city. I’ve brought you to Nevada; the laws aren’t so strict here.’
‘Nevada,’ Adam repeated with a frown. ‘That’s a little bit of overkill, don’t you think? You couldn’t have brought me to New Jersey or Maine?’
The man smiled slightly. ‘You can never be too careful,’ he said and then with the quiet whoosh of displaced air he was gone.
Ando
I may have made a breakthrough today. I met a man who can heal just like Sylar did. I think Sylar must have stolen the power from another person. If I can find out who and make sure they live I can go back in time and stop Sylar before he explodes. It will take some time. I will have to start at the end and work my way backwards. Have faith in me.
I won't let you die again.