The Walker Tracking System, Part One
Eight-year-old girls are not supposed to hate people- not really. They aren’t supposed to want to kill them, they aren’t supposed to have not-quite-nightmares where they aim a gun at the bad guy’s head and pull the trigger and the result is an open skull with a missing brain and-
Well, it’s not like eight-year-old girls are supposed to watch their parents get murdered in front of them either. All things considered, I’m probably not completely hopeless.
I’m nearly eighteen now, anyway. Age eight is just when it started.
You see, I have a power. It’s not a very good power- I can’t really protect anyone with it, but still, I could do more than your normal eight-year-old girl. I should have done more- I could have done more. I might not be a cop like Dad, but at least I could be an alarm, and warn the good guys when the bad guys are coming.
This would be my train of thought right after we found out Sylar wasn’t dead after all- right after he got his powers back and began terrorizing the world again.
He’d almost killed Appa and me. He did kill Maya, but Appa bought her back. And he’d killed the babysitter too- I couldn’t see her, and I don‘t think we ever did find the body. It scared me how easily he’d been able to walk back into my happy little family, and how easily he’d be able to destroy it just like he did my last one.
I’d already lost one family. I was not going to lose another one.
So I started thinking about him. The Boogeyman. Sylar.
I was really scared at first, because he had powers, maybe like the Nightmare Man did, and on a list of things I never, ever wanted to do again, getting put into a telepathic coma is pretty high up there. But losing my family again had always been all the way at the top, so one night in motel number fifteen of what Dad was calling ’our long overdue family road trip’, but was actually a very frantic and not-too-thought-out flight from Sylar, I decided to do something about it. Dad and Appa were busy arguing over our next move, so when I announced that I was going to take a shower, they didn’t bother to notice that I had hidden my atlas behind my back. I went into the bathroom, and locked the door behind me and concentrated and-
-the sky was darker, darker than she’d ever seen before. Hot, moist wind swept through the evergreen trees as he walked towards the small, rundown house. The sound of frying meat was too heavy in her ears and the distant sound of a coyote howling was too loud to be distant, but she knew it was-
-found him. In Georgia.
Considering we were in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin at the time, I figured we were safe, breathed a sigh of relief, and started running the water in the tub.
It got easier after that. Eventually, I came to think about Sylar with the frequency I thought about Dad and Appa, if never with the same fond feelings. I tracked him into the Southwest, down into Mexico, then straight up through Middle America into Canada and over to Alaska. From there he caught a flight to Japan and wandered around the Tokyo area before taking a slow ship to San Francisco.
Where we had settled down.
It didn’t register at first. I still though of New York as home, and it almost didn’t cross my mind that for the first time in months Sylar would be within a few dozen miles of where my family was. Then I checked on Appa, and noticed that he was less than ten feet away from Sylar‘s position.
I might have screamed at that point. Okay, I did scream. Loudly and hysterically, because I thought my father was about to be murdered. Dad came running, thinking I was having another nightmare, and it took a long time- much too long a time- before I’d calmed down enough to explain to him what was happening coherently. By that time, Appa was already on his way home, with Sylar following at a discreet distance.
There was some scrambling and cursing and hurried packing and even more hurried explaining when Appa got home, oblivious to Sylar’s proximity, but we made a clean getaway and were headed to New Orleans before Sylar entered our apartment.
I left a note for him. A short, succinct Post-It on the back closet wall, where I knew he’d check for someone hiding, and my parents would never think to look.
I can see you, Mr. Sylar. Leave my family alone.
I think that might have been when I stopped being scared of Sylar. Well, I didn’t stop being scared of Sylar completely- because seriously, if you’re not afraid of a psychopath who killed your biological parents and was trying his best to finish of the second set and yourself as well, you are that psychopath- but I stopped being petrified by him. He stopped being the Boogeyman, a quasi-solid, invincible monster, and started being Lex Luthor, a smart, but ultimately fallible, defeatable supervillian.
I can do supervillian. I mean, okay, in the world of superheroes, I wasn’t even Robin, but I was one mean Bat Signal.
So yes, the Walker Tracking System came back online- well, as online as she could be with a grand total of three people to watch over and an inevitable conversation from the fathers about why, exactly, she was keeping tabs on Sylar, but still…
It was nice to feel like I could do something. And I never wanted that feeling to go away.
~*~
Link to the next part is here.