Wannabes - 2/3 (Heroes, Gen, 12930 words, 15+)
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]
ix. escher in the now
The only limits are physical, but that's more than enough. There's only so far you can bend things before they break. There's only so much data you can fit down a line, only so fast you can write files or read them. There's only so far you can go without power.
Breaking the encryption takes him longer than it should have and Micah finds himself missing Hana, not for the first time, nor the last. He pushes the thought away. There'll be time for that when he's done.
N.W.A. invective on the radio. Hip hop gone gangsta. Sylar likes the rhythm, the anger. Micah would have to listen to have an opinion, and he isn't. His hand is over the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the laptop screen, on the windows flickering open and closed. Most of them are blank.
"Let's just blow the doors off," Sylar says.
Micah shakes his head. "If we go in blind, they could just kill everyone."
This one, they've given thought to. Independent generators, electromagnetic shielding, each camera on a separate circuit with multiple overlaps to eliminate blind spots. Reinforced and plated walls. Minimal distortion, bullet-proof glass. Bladed, electrified fences, nested inside each other in wide spaces. There's some cover, of course, there has to be, to maintain the bland illusion of just another warehouse district, but not enough to be of any real use. You'd have to be impossibly smart, ridiculously lucky, or simply not care about being caught to get inside. And then what? Micah couldn't even tell if the place was actually inside the warehouse, or under it, or somewhere else completely, joined by secret tunnels.
It's like they took Level 5 and decided they weren't being horribly paranoid enough.
The building -- it's referred to, and then only obliquely, as 'A' -- connects to the outside world by laser burst. It's scheduled, limited, uninterruptable. He can't work out what error checking mechanism they're using, but a single doubled packet on his first try caused so many counter-attacks he had to take out AT&T for an hour in self-defense.
He's blind. He hates not knowing things.
A phone ringing distracts him and Micah searches his peripherals with a glance before realizing it's Taub's phone. He knows it's Danko, doesn't need to check the screen to confirm, and says so, dropping the phone on the desk.
Sylar picks it up, flips it open, watching the windows flicker on the laptop screen.
x. other people's problems
Taub saunters in to Building 26 like he owns the place. No one gives him a second thought. No reason they should. He sits at his desk and plays with the computer for a bit, deleting the spam that's managed to sneak in, chuckling over the new list of potential Sylar sightings in places he's never been, forwarding a few jokes and YouTube links on. Taub likes cheap laughs, cheap cigars, cheap women, a man or two, expensive guns and liquors. He sends his ex half his pay check every month on the strict condition that she never mentions their son.
The things you learn about a person when you go through all their stuff.
Danko sticks his head out of his office, says something to Jackie (spends all her free time volunteering in charity shelters for battered women) and Aaron (spends all his free time growing pot in a tent in his bathroom) and then nods at him. "Quick word?"
"Yes, boss," Taub says, pushing away from the desk. Chairs with wheels. Great idea. Stylish, ergonomic and useful. An admirable use of government money, Sylar thinks, letting Taub smirk as he lopes into Danko's office and throws himself down in a handy chair.
Danko is saying something innocuous as he closes the door and then the blinds, and Taub doesn't listen, plucking the paperweight off a pile of photos -- Hiro, Matt, Micah, Luke, others -- and tossing it idly from hand to hand. It makes no difference, really, since as soon as they're alone, Danko flips between casual and irate, snatches the paperweight away, and slams it down on the desk.
"Where were you?" he demands.
"I had things to take care of," Sylar says, leaning forward a little in his seat. Danko doesn't twitch at the change, but he leans back in his own chair, and that's gratifying enough.
He expects a lecture, but Danko just opens up his laptop, hits a few keys, and turns it round. The photo is a little pixelated (not too much, even crap phones come with 10 mega-pixel cameras these days), and a lot out of focus, but Sylar recognizes the corridor and can put two and two together.
"Things?" Danko asks.
"Things," Sylar agrees. "I'm looking at... A blur. You've taken a photograph of a blur. Congratulations."
"All the people with low level abilities that we got from Rebel's system," Danko says, "were found and released within hours of being picked up. While you were taking care of things."
Sylar shrugs. "You don't need me for that." He deliberately pauses, considering, says, "Well, if you can't keep them corralled, maybe you do; but I'm not interested."
Danko starts ranting about, what, Sylar doesn't really care. Rebel and loose ends and all that crap. Mostly he's watching the man's shaking hands, his too bright eyes, that unhealthy pallor. You're coming apart, Sylar thinks. Poor Mister Danko.
"--you running off the rails, I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't--"
"Rebel's not just one person," Sylar says. That gets Danko's attention. "It's a team."
"A team," Danko repeats with suspicion.
"Talking of loose ends," Sylar says, mildly.
"You know this for certain?" Danko asks, sinking back into his chair.
"What can I say? You raise a boy on comic-books, he gets some strange ideas. Saturday morning cartoon morality." Sylar smiles. "Four color fight scenes, neat resolutions and a catchy theme song. They get so uncomfortable with shades of grey."
Danko's mouth twitches up. It might be a smile.
"Do you have names?"
"A few." He can give them West, and Sparrow -- she was already on the plane, once; it's nothing new -- and he opens his mouth to say that Molly Walker is in India and hears himself say, instead, "Viva Libertad."
It means nothing to him, but it clearly does to Danko.
"Spanish," Sylar muses out loud. "Claire Bennet is in Mexico, isn't she?"
"Reportedly," Danko agrees.
"And she was helping Doyle," Sylar says.
Danko is quiet for a moment. Sylar lets him think, retrieving the paperweight, turning it over in his hands. It's blocky, amorphous, a triumph of function over form, comfortably heavy. Two swift blows would take care of Danko for good, and then Sylar could just put on his face and go outside and... Do what?
He realizes Danko is talking, and forces himself to listen long enough to realize Danko is trying to send him to Mexico.
"Been there, done that, got the shirt," he says. Shirt. Virus. Whichever. "No, I'll be here. The 'more dangerous ones', like you said." He grins. "Maybe this time you'll actually get to keep them."
Danko smiles thinly.
xi. mirror mirror
"He's suspicious," Micah says.
He hasn't got any further since Sylar was out. Frustration drives his fingers harder against the keys. There's no rhythm to the sound and Sylar flicks the stereo volume up. Freddie Mercury sings. Dynamite with a laser beam, guaranteed to blow their minds. Sylar chuckles a little, throwing himself down on the couch.
"Of course he is. There's nothing more paranoid than little men of power. They get just far enough to see how precariously they are balanced, how truly expendable they are. And then," Sylar says, laying back, his head resting on his hands, "they start wondering just how much their ends can justify their means. They become partners with killers and they say it's necessity, that it's better than the alternatives."
"I'm nothing like Danko," Micah says sharply. "He wants you to be a killer, because that's all he understands. That's why he fears us; he knows he'd use his abilities for evil, so he expects everyone else too. We disgust him because he disgusts himself."
"Daytime television psychology," Sylar scoffs.
"We don't have to be anything they expect us to be," Micah says, ignoring this. "We're new."
"There's nothing new under the sun, kid," Sylar says. "Haven't you gotten inside yet?"
"Maybe if you didn't keep interrupting me," Micah says, just loud enough to be heard.
It's childish, and so is Sylar's smirk. The stereo announces they are princes of the universe. The laptop announces there's new mail.
It's for Taub.
xii. euphemistic
By rights, Sylar should have arrived on the scene first, bagged the catch and been on his way but, in an unprecedented case of being good at their jobs, Taub's team gets there first. He's forced to waste ten minutes while they get their asses kicked so he can slip away and do the thing properly.
This one's power is almost interesting: claps that blast outwards, a vortex of concussive force. It's ridiculously loud though -- and for once Sylar is thankful he no longer has the enhanced hearing -- and hardly exact. He can read rather inventive curses off the woman's lips when she accidentally strikes her own couch, tearing it into a whirlwind of fabric and wooden splinters. It's amusing enough to be distracting, something he's never admitting, and she actually clips him with the next shot. The Cheerleader takes care of his shoulder, though, and Jesse lets him give as well as he takes.
Taub stops to check if she's still breathing, just as the team regroup. They're down four, although they prove only critical, not dead. The same can't be said for the apartment or much of the building and, since they've already evacuated the other residences, Taub blows a gas-main to cover their tracks.
Those who can, take the van back, guns trained on the woman despite the drug pipe shoved up her nose.
"We're going to run out of beds at this rate," someone says.
(Sylar really should learn their names. Taub would know them.)
"Not if they keep breaking out as fast as we pick them," another says with disgust. He might be a Jones or maybe a Johnson. Something with a J.
"They won't," the third man -- Gordon? -- says. "Not for long, not if what I've been hearing is true." The others all look at him and he grins. "I know this girl -- Bonnie, works in the West Wing secretarial pool. She says Danko has been pushing for a meeting with the president to ask for a permanent solution."
"Permanent as in--" Jones-Johnson asks.
"One in the head, two in the chest," Gordon says.
"Damn," says the one who complained first and then, off their looks, "Hell, you know they're going to have us digging the damn graves, man. Shit."
There are laughs all around. Taub chuckles along. Sylar thinks about the flick of fingers, about throats unfurling like flowers, red as a rose's petals.
xiii. sound the light
Dialing faster makes no difference, of course it doesn't, but Micah's hand barely brushes the phone and it's already pumped all the numbers out. The exchange mumbles in complaint. He doesn't bother with Molly's own phone, just goes straight to the Suresh residence. He's on a street corner, listening to the cars slow down and speed up around him, to the ringing of the phone, to his too shallow, too fast breath, his too loud heart.
When Mrs Suresh answers the phone in Hindi, he has to swallow twice before he can force out a greeting, and then he has to correct himself for the time difference, so it's, "Good evening, Mrs Suresh. This is Micah Sanders? I don't know if you remember me."
"Of course, I do," she says, cheerfully enough. "Such a handsome lad."
"Uh. Thank you." Molly, Molly, go get Molly. "How are you?"
"And polite too! I am doing well, thank you," she says. "And yourself?"
For a second, he honestly doesn't know how to answer that question. He mumbles some sort of affirmative sounding thing and hopes it will suffice. "Is Molly there? I wanted to surprise her."
"She's just upstairs; I'll call her for you," Mrs Suresh says.
There's an amused undercurrent to her voice and he can hear Sylar saying 'your little girlfriend'. He manages a thank you over it. At a great distance, he can hear Mrs Suresh calling for Ujala. Light, he thinks. Brilliance.
"There's a call for you," Mrs Suresh says, and Micah hears Molly answer, "Who is it?" even as she's taking the phone. "Hello? Mohinder?"
"Don't hang up," Micah says.
There's a pause, but no cut-off. He makes himself breathe properly. Meditation is good for the soul.
Molly says, "That was a cheap trick."
"I know."
Mrs Suresh says something inquisitive in the background. Molly says, "It's okay, Grandma," and the sound around her changes. She's moved rooms, closed a door, maybe. They're alone.
"You can't do this," Molly says.
"I know," Micah repeats, "but it's gotten worse--"
"Of course it has!" Molly snaps. "What did you think would happen? I told you that you couldn't trust him!"
"Not him! He helped save people," Micah insists. "We got them out because of him."
Molly snorts. "So he lets one go now and again. Big deal."
"That's not-- That's not why I'm calling. Danko's trying to-- They're not going to keep us anymore. They're going to kill." She doesn't respond. Micah tries again. "He's trying to make it so he can kill everyone with abilities."
"Is--" Molly hesitates, pushes on. "Is it because you've been breaking people out? Is it because of what you're doing?"
"No!" says Micah, all instant outrage, except it feels like a lie. He's seen Batman. Escalation happens. "It just makes rescuing them even more important. Look, that's-- There's this building, highest security. I can't get in."
"Highest security," Molly repeats.
"They're holding people," Micah insists. "People like us."
"Which us?" Molly asks. "People like West, like Sparrow or Abigail? Or people like Maury, or Linderman, or Doyle? People like Sylar?"
"Molly--"
"No! Do you think you can just cajole these people into being nice?" Molly demands. "That if you just let them run off alone into the streets, everything will be fine? You're just one kid!"
"I can help them," Micah says, wanting to mean it. "I have to."
"Like this?"
"Yes," he insists. "I'll keep them right, train them-- I don't-- Please, Molly. I can't get anyone else killed. I just can't."
"Oh, Micah."
"I can't do this without you," he says, begs.
"Then don't do it," Molly says tightly. "Just. Leave him. Call Sparrow. Call West. Come to Chennai. Grandma will let you stay. You can stay. We'll work everything out, together, I promise. Please, Micah."
And he wants to, he wants to so much, but, "I can't, Molly. You don't understand. I can't."
"Explain it to me, then. You're supposed to be so smart. Explain it to me."
He thinks she might be crying. He really hopes she isn't. He just says "I can't" again.
There's a long quiet and the Molly says, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry, Micah. Don't call me again."
"Wait," he says, but he's already talking to an empty carrier signal, "Wait, please, wait."
There's no-one. No-one at all. So that's it, then. Game over. You lost. He hangs the phone up. Nothing doing. He stares at the numbers and the letters and his distorted reflection in the curving metal, turned tall and thin. That's it. That's--
"No," he says, barely recognizing the voice in his ears. "Not quite."
xiv. what it takes
His head is buzzing and it takes him three tries to get the door to Taub's apartment open, but that's okay. He has an idea. He's read so many files, Primatech and Pinehurst and the Sureshs' and Building 26, and there are patterns to abilities, broad spectrum bands into which they fall. Similar powers turn up all over the place, matches like Adam Monroe and Claire Bennet, West and Nathan, close like Arthur and Peter Petrelli and Sylar. Somewhere in there, there's someone close enough to Molly for grunt work.
Micah drops the gear from Radio Shack on the floor with his laptop. On the coffee table, he places the cheap tat ornament he ended up buying from street vendor to break his notes so he had exact fare for the buses. Exact fare is good. It makes you invisible. He starts stripping wires, plugging things in, connecting laptop to phone, phone to transceiver, transceiver to the box attached to the traffic camera down the street. Ten thousand eyes. A hundred thousand. He knows what to look for.
"I have a plan," he says.
Road after road flicks across the laptop screen, car after car, license plate after license plate.
Sylar picks the ornament up, holds it up to the light. It's plastic, an almost filled bubble. When he shakes it, glitter snow tumbles across a rainbow-ringed map of Oregon.
Virginia claps and laughs. The laptop bleeps a hit.
xv. be seeing you
In other circumstances, Micah would have stopped to admire the set-up. The sixteen wheeler rig had been done out, mobile-home style, half curtained off for haulage, half filled with bed and books, TV, games consoles, DVDs. The cartoon characters on the bedspread/throw rug were a little childish, and Micah would personally have left out all the mirrors, but still. A mobile arcade you can sleep and eat in? Pretty cool. In other circumstances.
"Mister White?" he asks the man inside, the tall, well built man in the blue jeans and vest top, black wings tattoo peeking out across his shoulders, the man who has had his back to Micah the whole way across the noisy parking lot and isn't even slightly startled. "Robert White?"
There's a hefty Santa chuckle. White says, "Call me Bobby, man."
Micah's all set to run his spiel, and then White throws him by shoving a huge hand out at him. It dwarfs Micah's own, and White holds the shake just slightly too long. Micah's mind goes to all sorts of bad places, and suddenly he's sure this is a really bad idea, but it's the only idea he has. People are going to die without this, lots of who didn't do anything more criminal than get born special.
"What can I do you for?" White asks. "Come up back." There's nothing else for it, so he does. The hand to help him up is only polite. "You got a name, soldier?"
For a moment, his mind is a complete blank. He looks around, like maybe for inspiration. There's a camera watching him and he turns it off automatically. While he's distracted, White casually palms a button set high enough up that Micah would need a step and a jump to reach it. The doors close automatically behind them.
"Don't need everyone walking past to get in our business, right?" White asks. He licks his lips.
Nerves, Micah thinks. "I know your secret," he blurts, which is probably the worst thing ever. "I-- I mean, I know, you're special."
"Special," says White. It's Tracy all over again.
"I'm special too," Micah says. He stares at the TV until it comes on bright, static hissing.
"Cool beans," White says, dropping onto the bed-couch-thing.
"I need your," Micah says, and blinks stupidly because White is somehow holding a gun on him. "Help."
"Where's your friend?"
"It's just me," Micah says. White waggles the gun. "I mean, he's staying back."
White's eyes bulge a little, return to normal. He seems satisfied. "So, what is this? Blackmail?" He drags his gaze up and down Micah. "Bribery?"
"You can see things," Micah says, "not just looking, but everything, right? Inside and outside. They call it clairvoyance."
"I know what they call it," White says. "Never been one for fruity names, myself. I call it seeing. Comes in right handy."
Micah knows this. White prefers cash, but there are ways and means and Micah knows he wins games and races much more than he should do. Aladdin's singing in his head, one jump ahead of the slowpokes, one skip ahead of his doom. There are Disney DVDs on the shelves, a cartoon parrot sticker on the X-Box.
"There's a building," Micah says. "A prison, where they put people like us. The government, they're looking for us--"
"Petrelli's goons," White nods. "Like to knock people out."
"You know? Right, you know. They're not going to do that, soon. They're just going to shoot us. They're going to kill everyone they already have. We have to stop them."
White laughs his Santa laugh again. It's an oddly hollow sound. It echoes strangely in the enclosed space. "Is that what 'we' have to do? Don't move your hands," he snaps before Micah even thinks about it. "I like you right there. Fact, you should give me a turn."
Micah blinks at him. "Turn?"
"Slow," White agrees. "Once right around. Show me you're not carrying weapons." He gestures with his own gun, like he thinks Micah might have forgotten it's there.
"I'm not armed," Micah says, lifting his hands and turning -- "Slower!" White orders -- around. "I'm not trying to blackmail you, or get you in trouble with the police. I'm just-- You can use your powers for good. You can save people. They're going to die without you. You can make a difference."
White hasn't listened to a word. He's licking his lips again. Micah's stomach twists. "Yeah," White says. "That's the stuff."
"You can save people," Micah repeats desperately. "You know about Petrelli -- about Danko. You--"
"Yeah, I know," White says. "I throw them a bone now and again, tell them where they can find one of you lot. I travel around, see, and the freaks, well, they glow right pretty. It keeps them off my back. They know they can't sneak up on me, not now I know to look out for the black guy. He your dad or something? Don't reckon you're old enough for teenage rebellion. That's okay, though. I like them..."
He trails off, thoughtful.
"Oh," White breathes. "You're him, aren't you. You're Rebel. Ohh, man. You have, you have no idea how perfect this is."
Micah can hear Sylar whispering in his ear. Sound projection, Micah thinks, Jesse's ability; Sylar always finds new and interesting ways to use things. He can't concentrate enough to make out the words. A flicked look starts the doors opening and gets a bullet so close his hair singes. No one comes running. Micah doubts anyone outside is close enough to hear.
"You're my golden ticket, boy," White says. "You're my fortune and my freedom. Gonna have us a bit of fun first, though. Don't look so worried. You'll like it in the end. They all do."
Sylar is whispering in his ear. Telling him things, obscene, terrible things. Things that White has done. Things that White wants to do.
"You don't have to do this," Micah says. "You don't have to be like this. You can be a hero."
White guffaws. "Son, the only real hero is a dead one. The living are all shits. They deserve everything they get. Hell, some day, some lucky punk is gonna catch me napping, blow my brains out, I reckon. We're all mortal. You've got to get in quick, enjoy it while it's ripe."
Micah wants to throw up. He wants to cry. His feet want to move, but there's another shot, to the other side this time. The doors are open. They could be a billion miles away.
"Reckon your friends abandoned you," White says. "Seriously, son. Didn't your parents ever teach you 'Stranger, Danger'?"
Something flares up inside him, a hot white core, like punching Damon, but stronger, harder. Sylar's saying, he's a killer, a pervert. Sylar's saying, no remorse, no compassion. Sylar's saying, people are going to die, and, we need his power, and, parents should protect their children, shouldn't they?
There's a photo on the wall, White with a thick arm slung around the shoulders of a thin boy with a face like his, a weak smile and dark circled eyes.
The doors are open. White's looking at him in confusion, eyes bulging a little. His mouth is moving, but Micah can't hear him. Sylar is too loud. Sylar is saying, he's going to hurt you and kill you, and then he's going to do it again to others, and Danko is going to kill everybody. West and Sparrow and Abigail. Molly. Sylar is saying, just say the word. Be the hero.
Micah closes his eyes. "Do it."
The doors are wide open. White makes a startled squeak of a noise.
Sylar grins and lifts a hand.
xvi. the kid grows
He vomits color all over the white porcelain.
There are spots on Micah's T-shirt. He thinks they should still be wet, but they've dried in, gone rust brown. They could be anything. Sauce from some too enthusiastic, too sloppy dinner. He turns the faucets on full, cupping his hands in the spray and throwing it in his face, scrubbing at himself. It hurts to breathe. His throat burns. He splashes himself again, scrubs harder.
When Micah looks up, he can see Sylar's eyes in the mirror, blank and pitiless as the sun.
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]
ix. escher in the now
The only limits are physical, but that's more than enough. There's only so far you can bend things before they break. There's only so much data you can fit down a line, only so fast you can write files or read them. There's only so far you can go without power.
Breaking the encryption takes him longer than it should have and Micah finds himself missing Hana, not for the first time, nor the last. He pushes the thought away. There'll be time for that when he's done.
N.W.A. invective on the radio. Hip hop gone gangsta. Sylar likes the rhythm, the anger. Micah would have to listen to have an opinion, and he isn't. His hand is over the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the laptop screen, on the windows flickering open and closed. Most of them are blank.
"Let's just blow the doors off," Sylar says.
Micah shakes his head. "If we go in blind, they could just kill everyone."
This one, they've given thought to. Independent generators, electromagnetic shielding, each camera on a separate circuit with multiple overlaps to eliminate blind spots. Reinforced and plated walls. Minimal distortion, bullet-proof glass. Bladed, electrified fences, nested inside each other in wide spaces. There's some cover, of course, there has to be, to maintain the bland illusion of just another warehouse district, but not enough to be of any real use. You'd have to be impossibly smart, ridiculously lucky, or simply not care about being caught to get inside. And then what? Micah couldn't even tell if the place was actually inside the warehouse, or under it, or somewhere else completely, joined by secret tunnels.
It's like they took Level 5 and decided they weren't being horribly paranoid enough.
The building -- it's referred to, and then only obliquely, as 'A' -- connects to the outside world by laser burst. It's scheduled, limited, uninterruptable. He can't work out what error checking mechanism they're using, but a single doubled packet on his first try caused so many counter-attacks he had to take out AT&T for an hour in self-defense.
He's blind. He hates not knowing things.
A phone ringing distracts him and Micah searches his peripherals with a glance before realizing it's Taub's phone. He knows it's Danko, doesn't need to check the screen to confirm, and says so, dropping the phone on the desk.
Sylar picks it up, flips it open, watching the windows flicker on the laptop screen.
x. other people's problems
Taub saunters in to Building 26 like he owns the place. No one gives him a second thought. No reason they should. He sits at his desk and plays with the computer for a bit, deleting the spam that's managed to sneak in, chuckling over the new list of potential Sylar sightings in places he's never been, forwarding a few jokes and YouTube links on. Taub likes cheap laughs, cheap cigars, cheap women, a man or two, expensive guns and liquors. He sends his ex half his pay check every month on the strict condition that she never mentions their son.
The things you learn about a person when you go through all their stuff.
Danko sticks his head out of his office, says something to Jackie (spends all her free time volunteering in charity shelters for battered women) and Aaron (spends all his free time growing pot in a tent in his bathroom) and then nods at him. "Quick word?"
"Yes, boss," Taub says, pushing away from the desk. Chairs with wheels. Great idea. Stylish, ergonomic and useful. An admirable use of government money, Sylar thinks, letting Taub smirk as he lopes into Danko's office and throws himself down in a handy chair.
Danko is saying something innocuous as he closes the door and then the blinds, and Taub doesn't listen, plucking the paperweight off a pile of photos -- Hiro, Matt, Micah, Luke, others -- and tossing it idly from hand to hand. It makes no difference, really, since as soon as they're alone, Danko flips between casual and irate, snatches the paperweight away, and slams it down on the desk.
"Where were you?" he demands.
"I had things to take care of," Sylar says, leaning forward a little in his seat. Danko doesn't twitch at the change, but he leans back in his own chair, and that's gratifying enough.
He expects a lecture, but Danko just opens up his laptop, hits a few keys, and turns it round. The photo is a little pixelated (not too much, even crap phones come with 10 mega-pixel cameras these days), and a lot out of focus, but Sylar recognizes the corridor and can put two and two together.
"Things?" Danko asks.
"Things," Sylar agrees. "I'm looking at... A blur. You've taken a photograph of a blur. Congratulations."
"All the people with low level abilities that we got from Rebel's system," Danko says, "were found and released within hours of being picked up. While you were taking care of things."
Sylar shrugs. "You don't need me for that." He deliberately pauses, considering, says, "Well, if you can't keep them corralled, maybe you do; but I'm not interested."
Danko starts ranting about, what, Sylar doesn't really care. Rebel and loose ends and all that crap. Mostly he's watching the man's shaking hands, his too bright eyes, that unhealthy pallor. You're coming apart, Sylar thinks. Poor Mister Danko.
"--you running off the rails, I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't--"
"Rebel's not just one person," Sylar says. That gets Danko's attention. "It's a team."
"A team," Danko repeats with suspicion.
"Talking of loose ends," Sylar says, mildly.
"You know this for certain?" Danko asks, sinking back into his chair.
"What can I say? You raise a boy on comic-books, he gets some strange ideas. Saturday morning cartoon morality." Sylar smiles. "Four color fight scenes, neat resolutions and a catchy theme song. They get so uncomfortable with shades of grey."
Danko's mouth twitches up. It might be a smile.
"Do you have names?"
"A few." He can give them West, and Sparrow -- she was already on the plane, once; it's nothing new -- and he opens his mouth to say that Molly Walker is in India and hears himself say, instead, "Viva Libertad."
It means nothing to him, but it clearly does to Danko.
"Spanish," Sylar muses out loud. "Claire Bennet is in Mexico, isn't she?"
"Reportedly," Danko agrees.
"And she was helping Doyle," Sylar says.
Danko is quiet for a moment. Sylar lets him think, retrieving the paperweight, turning it over in his hands. It's blocky, amorphous, a triumph of function over form, comfortably heavy. Two swift blows would take care of Danko for good, and then Sylar could just put on his face and go outside and... Do what?
He realizes Danko is talking, and forces himself to listen long enough to realize Danko is trying to send him to Mexico.
"Been there, done that, got the shirt," he says. Shirt. Virus. Whichever. "No, I'll be here. The 'more dangerous ones', like you said." He grins. "Maybe this time you'll actually get to keep them."
Danko smiles thinly.
xi. mirror mirror
"He's suspicious," Micah says.
He hasn't got any further since Sylar was out. Frustration drives his fingers harder against the keys. There's no rhythm to the sound and Sylar flicks the stereo volume up. Freddie Mercury sings. Dynamite with a laser beam, guaranteed to blow their minds. Sylar chuckles a little, throwing himself down on the couch.
"Of course he is. There's nothing more paranoid than little men of power. They get just far enough to see how precariously they are balanced, how truly expendable they are. And then," Sylar says, laying back, his head resting on his hands, "they start wondering just how much their ends can justify their means. They become partners with killers and they say it's necessity, that it's better than the alternatives."
"I'm nothing like Danko," Micah says sharply. "He wants you to be a killer, because that's all he understands. That's why he fears us; he knows he'd use his abilities for evil, so he expects everyone else too. We disgust him because he disgusts himself."
"Daytime television psychology," Sylar scoffs.
"We don't have to be anything they expect us to be," Micah says, ignoring this. "We're new."
"There's nothing new under the sun, kid," Sylar says. "Haven't you gotten inside yet?"
"Maybe if you didn't keep interrupting me," Micah says, just loud enough to be heard.
It's childish, and so is Sylar's smirk. The stereo announces they are princes of the universe. The laptop announces there's new mail.
It's for Taub.
xii. euphemistic
By rights, Sylar should have arrived on the scene first, bagged the catch and been on his way but, in an unprecedented case of being good at their jobs, Taub's team gets there first. He's forced to waste ten minutes while they get their asses kicked so he can slip away and do the thing properly.
This one's power is almost interesting: claps that blast outwards, a vortex of concussive force. It's ridiculously loud though -- and for once Sylar is thankful he no longer has the enhanced hearing -- and hardly exact. He can read rather inventive curses off the woman's lips when she accidentally strikes her own couch, tearing it into a whirlwind of fabric and wooden splinters. It's amusing enough to be distracting, something he's never admitting, and she actually clips him with the next shot. The Cheerleader takes care of his shoulder, though, and Jesse lets him give as well as he takes.
Taub stops to check if she's still breathing, just as the team regroup. They're down four, although they prove only critical, not dead. The same can't be said for the apartment or much of the building and, since they've already evacuated the other residences, Taub blows a gas-main to cover their tracks.
Those who can, take the van back, guns trained on the woman despite the drug pipe shoved up her nose.
"We're going to run out of beds at this rate," someone says.
(Sylar really should learn their names. Taub would know them.)
"Not if they keep breaking out as fast as we pick them," another says with disgust. He might be a Jones or maybe a Johnson. Something with a J.
"They won't," the third man -- Gordon? -- says. "Not for long, not if what I've been hearing is true." The others all look at him and he grins. "I know this girl -- Bonnie, works in the West Wing secretarial pool. She says Danko has been pushing for a meeting with the president to ask for a permanent solution."
"Permanent as in--" Jones-Johnson asks.
"One in the head, two in the chest," Gordon says.
"Damn," says the one who complained first and then, off their looks, "Hell, you know they're going to have us digging the damn graves, man. Shit."
There are laughs all around. Taub chuckles along. Sylar thinks about the flick of fingers, about throats unfurling like flowers, red as a rose's petals.
xiii. sound the light
Dialing faster makes no difference, of course it doesn't, but Micah's hand barely brushes the phone and it's already pumped all the numbers out. The exchange mumbles in complaint. He doesn't bother with Molly's own phone, just goes straight to the Suresh residence. He's on a street corner, listening to the cars slow down and speed up around him, to the ringing of the phone, to his too shallow, too fast breath, his too loud heart.
When Mrs Suresh answers the phone in Hindi, he has to swallow twice before he can force out a greeting, and then he has to correct himself for the time difference, so it's, "Good evening, Mrs Suresh. This is Micah Sanders? I don't know if you remember me."
"Of course, I do," she says, cheerfully enough. "Such a handsome lad."
"Uh. Thank you." Molly, Molly, go get Molly. "How are you?"
"And polite too! I am doing well, thank you," she says. "And yourself?"
For a second, he honestly doesn't know how to answer that question. He mumbles some sort of affirmative sounding thing and hopes it will suffice. "Is Molly there? I wanted to surprise her."
"She's just upstairs; I'll call her for you," Mrs Suresh says.
There's an amused undercurrent to her voice and he can hear Sylar saying 'your little girlfriend'. He manages a thank you over it. At a great distance, he can hear Mrs Suresh calling for Ujala. Light, he thinks. Brilliance.
"There's a call for you," Mrs Suresh says, and Micah hears Molly answer, "Who is it?" even as she's taking the phone. "Hello? Mohinder?"
"Don't hang up," Micah says.
There's a pause, but no cut-off. He makes himself breathe properly. Meditation is good for the soul.
Molly says, "That was a cheap trick."
"I know."
Mrs Suresh says something inquisitive in the background. Molly says, "It's okay, Grandma," and the sound around her changes. She's moved rooms, closed a door, maybe. They're alone.
"You can't do this," Molly says.
"I know," Micah repeats, "but it's gotten worse--"
"Of course it has!" Molly snaps. "What did you think would happen? I told you that you couldn't trust him!"
"Not him! He helped save people," Micah insists. "We got them out because of him."
Molly snorts. "So he lets one go now and again. Big deal."
"That's not-- That's not why I'm calling. Danko's trying to-- They're not going to keep us anymore. They're going to kill." She doesn't respond. Micah tries again. "He's trying to make it so he can kill everyone with abilities."
"Is--" Molly hesitates, pushes on. "Is it because you've been breaking people out? Is it because of what you're doing?"
"No!" says Micah, all instant outrage, except it feels like a lie. He's seen Batman. Escalation happens. "It just makes rescuing them even more important. Look, that's-- There's this building, highest security. I can't get in."
"Highest security," Molly repeats.
"They're holding people," Micah insists. "People like us."
"Which us?" Molly asks. "People like West, like Sparrow or Abigail? Or people like Maury, or Linderman, or Doyle? People like Sylar?"
"Molly--"
"No! Do you think you can just cajole these people into being nice?" Molly demands. "That if you just let them run off alone into the streets, everything will be fine? You're just one kid!"
"I can help them," Micah says, wanting to mean it. "I have to."
"Like this?"
"Yes," he insists. "I'll keep them right, train them-- I don't-- Please, Molly. I can't get anyone else killed. I just can't."
"Oh, Micah."
"I can't do this without you," he says, begs.
"Then don't do it," Molly says tightly. "Just. Leave him. Call Sparrow. Call West. Come to Chennai. Grandma will let you stay. You can stay. We'll work everything out, together, I promise. Please, Micah."
And he wants to, he wants to so much, but, "I can't, Molly. You don't understand. I can't."
"Explain it to me, then. You're supposed to be so smart. Explain it to me."
He thinks she might be crying. He really hopes she isn't. He just says "I can't" again.
There's a long quiet and the Molly says, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry, Micah. Don't call me again."
"Wait," he says, but he's already talking to an empty carrier signal, "Wait, please, wait."
There's no-one. No-one at all. So that's it, then. Game over. You lost. He hangs the phone up. Nothing doing. He stares at the numbers and the letters and his distorted reflection in the curving metal, turned tall and thin. That's it. That's--
"No," he says, barely recognizing the voice in his ears. "Not quite."
xiv. what it takes
His head is buzzing and it takes him three tries to get the door to Taub's apartment open, but that's okay. He has an idea. He's read so many files, Primatech and Pinehurst and the Sureshs' and Building 26, and there are patterns to abilities, broad spectrum bands into which they fall. Similar powers turn up all over the place, matches like Adam Monroe and Claire Bennet, West and Nathan, close like Arthur and Peter Petrelli and Sylar. Somewhere in there, there's someone close enough to Molly for grunt work.
Micah drops the gear from Radio Shack on the floor with his laptop. On the coffee table, he places the cheap tat ornament he ended up buying from street vendor to break his notes so he had exact fare for the buses. Exact fare is good. It makes you invisible. He starts stripping wires, plugging things in, connecting laptop to phone, phone to transceiver, transceiver to the box attached to the traffic camera down the street. Ten thousand eyes. A hundred thousand. He knows what to look for.
"I have a plan," he says.
Road after road flicks across the laptop screen, car after car, license plate after license plate.
Sylar picks the ornament up, holds it up to the light. It's plastic, an almost filled bubble. When he shakes it, glitter snow tumbles across a rainbow-ringed map of Oregon.
Virginia claps and laughs. The laptop bleeps a hit.
xv. be seeing you
In other circumstances, Micah would have stopped to admire the set-up. The sixteen wheeler rig had been done out, mobile-home style, half curtained off for haulage, half filled with bed and books, TV, games consoles, DVDs. The cartoon characters on the bedspread/throw rug were a little childish, and Micah would personally have left out all the mirrors, but still. A mobile arcade you can sleep and eat in? Pretty cool. In other circumstances.
"Mister White?" he asks the man inside, the tall, well built man in the blue jeans and vest top, black wings tattoo peeking out across his shoulders, the man who has had his back to Micah the whole way across the noisy parking lot and isn't even slightly startled. "Robert White?"
There's a hefty Santa chuckle. White says, "Call me Bobby, man."
Micah's all set to run his spiel, and then White throws him by shoving a huge hand out at him. It dwarfs Micah's own, and White holds the shake just slightly too long. Micah's mind goes to all sorts of bad places, and suddenly he's sure this is a really bad idea, but it's the only idea he has. People are going to die without this, lots of who didn't do anything more criminal than get born special.
"What can I do you for?" White asks. "Come up back." There's nothing else for it, so he does. The hand to help him up is only polite. "You got a name, soldier?"
For a moment, his mind is a complete blank. He looks around, like maybe for inspiration. There's a camera watching him and he turns it off automatically. While he's distracted, White casually palms a button set high enough up that Micah would need a step and a jump to reach it. The doors close automatically behind them.
"Don't need everyone walking past to get in our business, right?" White asks. He licks his lips.
Nerves, Micah thinks. "I know your secret," he blurts, which is probably the worst thing ever. "I-- I mean, I know, you're special."
"Special," says White. It's Tracy all over again.
"I'm special too," Micah says. He stares at the TV until it comes on bright, static hissing.
"Cool beans," White says, dropping onto the bed-couch-thing.
"I need your," Micah says, and blinks stupidly because White is somehow holding a gun on him. "Help."
"Where's your friend?"
"It's just me," Micah says. White waggles the gun. "I mean, he's staying back."
White's eyes bulge a little, return to normal. He seems satisfied. "So, what is this? Blackmail?" He drags his gaze up and down Micah. "Bribery?"
"You can see things," Micah says, "not just looking, but everything, right? Inside and outside. They call it clairvoyance."
"I know what they call it," White says. "Never been one for fruity names, myself. I call it seeing. Comes in right handy."
Micah knows this. White prefers cash, but there are ways and means and Micah knows he wins games and races much more than he should do. Aladdin's singing in his head, one jump ahead of the slowpokes, one skip ahead of his doom. There are Disney DVDs on the shelves, a cartoon parrot sticker on the X-Box.
"There's a building," Micah says. "A prison, where they put people like us. The government, they're looking for us--"
"Petrelli's goons," White nods. "Like to knock people out."
"You know? Right, you know. They're not going to do that, soon. They're just going to shoot us. They're going to kill everyone they already have. We have to stop them."
White laughs his Santa laugh again. It's an oddly hollow sound. It echoes strangely in the enclosed space. "Is that what 'we' have to do? Don't move your hands," he snaps before Micah even thinks about it. "I like you right there. Fact, you should give me a turn."
Micah blinks at him. "Turn?"
"Slow," White agrees. "Once right around. Show me you're not carrying weapons." He gestures with his own gun, like he thinks Micah might have forgotten it's there.
"I'm not armed," Micah says, lifting his hands and turning -- "Slower!" White orders -- around. "I'm not trying to blackmail you, or get you in trouble with the police. I'm just-- You can use your powers for good. You can save people. They're going to die without you. You can make a difference."
White hasn't listened to a word. He's licking his lips again. Micah's stomach twists. "Yeah," White says. "That's the stuff."
"You can save people," Micah repeats desperately. "You know about Petrelli -- about Danko. You--"
"Yeah, I know," White says. "I throw them a bone now and again, tell them where they can find one of you lot. I travel around, see, and the freaks, well, they glow right pretty. It keeps them off my back. They know they can't sneak up on me, not now I know to look out for the black guy. He your dad or something? Don't reckon you're old enough for teenage rebellion. That's okay, though. I like them..."
He trails off, thoughtful.
"Oh," White breathes. "You're him, aren't you. You're Rebel. Ohh, man. You have, you have no idea how perfect this is."
Micah can hear Sylar whispering in his ear. Sound projection, Micah thinks, Jesse's ability; Sylar always finds new and interesting ways to use things. He can't concentrate enough to make out the words. A flicked look starts the doors opening and gets a bullet so close his hair singes. No one comes running. Micah doubts anyone outside is close enough to hear.
"You're my golden ticket, boy," White says. "You're my fortune and my freedom. Gonna have us a bit of fun first, though. Don't look so worried. You'll like it in the end. They all do."
Sylar is whispering in his ear. Telling him things, obscene, terrible things. Things that White has done. Things that White wants to do.
"You don't have to do this," Micah says. "You don't have to be like this. You can be a hero."
White guffaws. "Son, the only real hero is a dead one. The living are all shits. They deserve everything they get. Hell, some day, some lucky punk is gonna catch me napping, blow my brains out, I reckon. We're all mortal. You've got to get in quick, enjoy it while it's ripe."
Micah wants to throw up. He wants to cry. His feet want to move, but there's another shot, to the other side this time. The doors are open. They could be a billion miles away.
"Reckon your friends abandoned you," White says. "Seriously, son. Didn't your parents ever teach you 'Stranger, Danger'?"
Something flares up inside him, a hot white core, like punching Damon, but stronger, harder. Sylar's saying, he's a killer, a pervert. Sylar's saying, no remorse, no compassion. Sylar's saying, people are going to die, and, we need his power, and, parents should protect their children, shouldn't they?
There's a photo on the wall, White with a thick arm slung around the shoulders of a thin boy with a face like his, a weak smile and dark circled eyes.
The doors are open. White's looking at him in confusion, eyes bulging a little. His mouth is moving, but Micah can't hear him. Sylar is too loud. Sylar is saying, he's going to hurt you and kill you, and then he's going to do it again to others, and Danko is going to kill everybody. West and Sparrow and Abigail. Molly. Sylar is saying, just say the word. Be the hero.
Micah closes his eyes. "Do it."
The doors are wide open. White makes a startled squeak of a noise.
Sylar grins and lifts a hand.
xvi. the kid grows
He vomits color all over the white porcelain.
There are spots on Micah's T-shirt. He thinks they should still be wet, but they've dried in, gone rust brown. They could be anything. Sauce from some too enthusiastic, too sloppy dinner. He turns the faucets on full, cupping his hands in the spray and throwing it in his face, scrubbing at himself. It hurts to breathe. His throat burns. He splashes himself again, scrubs harder.
When Micah looks up, he can see Sylar's eyes in the mirror, blank and pitiless as the sun.
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]