For Sylar

[downsidedarling]

Diana's been having a bad day.

"Oh look," she grumbles. "Another man. I bet he's a rapist. The last ten men I checked out of this shithole were fucking rapists."

She places a hand on the oval window and closes her eyes.

Comments

[the_brain_man]

The first time, the very first time, he killed with his hands. If he’d expected anything, it would have been for murder to be difficult - but Brian Davis just stopped, a watch with the coil ripped out, a defunct piece to be scavenged for salvageable parts

[the_brain_man]

“Five,” says Sylar.

He watches Victoria leave without blinking, then stoops and picks up the fallen business card, turning it over in his fingers.

Now, at least, he has a destination.

[downsidedarling]

The contractors' building is ancient-looking and made of stone. Above the iron-bound wooden doors is a black crescent, points facing down, "FOR YOU" inscribed between them.

Inside, the receptionist looks bored but friendly. She's doodling, and without looking up holds out a hand. "Papers?"

[the_brain_man]

‘For you’. Sylar gives the sign a very flat look; he’s questioning the mental soundness of anyone who’d submit to torture just because someone else might not deserve it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s not going to take full advantage of them.

“Sylar,” he tells the receptionist. “Nine eight nine two five four three seven one caret one.”

Somehow, he doesn’t think that handing over papers recording his murders will help him feign innocence.

[downsidedarling]

The receptionist chuckles, though she doesn't explain why. The code is tapped out sharply into a computer; she blinks at the screen.

"Any requests? We've got at least four contractors on shift at the moment, and more hanging around."

At levels not audible to the receptionist, the second door on the right down the hall is playing music.

(The sirens are screaming and the fires are howling
Way down in the valley tonight)

[the_brain_man]

He lifts his chin slightly, unsmiling; she’s the second person to laugh at him here, and this time it isn’t so convenient to demonstrate why she shouldn’t.

(His eyes tick briefly to the source of the sound, and then back again, irritated: he’s never liked that kind of music.)

“Eight-hour Chainsaw.”

‘The only one likely to touch twelve hours of Jasmine with a ten-foot pole’. If that’s true, then Sylar would rather not be on the receiving end of whatever’s been prepared for him.

[downsidedarling]

(There's a man in the shadows with a gun in his eye
And a blade shining oh so bright)

The receptionist nods, and points with her pen at the door to the very hall from which the music issues.

(There's evil in the air and thunder in the sky
And a killer's on the bloodshot streets)

"Good choice. Second on the right."

(And down in the tunnel where the deadly are rising
Oh I swear I saw a young boy
Down in the gutter
He was starting to foam in the heat)

"And good luck."

[the_brain_man]

But of course it would be that door, wouldn’t it?

No point in hesitation. Sylar moves towards it, the “Thanks” he throws over his shoulder perfunctory at best, and steps through, twisting his head away briefly as the music increases in volume.

He only pauses when he reaches the contractor’s door.

Then he opens it without knocking.

[downsidedarling]

It was ajar; one gets the sense that Eights doesn't mind visitors.

Of course, it is at this point that she begins to sing.

"Oh baby you're the only thing in this whole world that's pure and good and right
And wherever you are and wherever you go
There's always gonna be some light
But I gotta get out, I gotta break it out now
Before the final crack of dawn
So we gotta make the most of our one night together
When it's over you know we'll both be so alone..."

Eights croons out the last word as though it carries with it her entire heart, eyes closed. Then she opens them to look at Sylar, a grin breaking over her face like midsummer's dawn.

"Hiya, newbie. I'm in a good mood. Papers or res code?"

Behind her on the wall is dart-board with a picture pinned to it - a woman wearing a hood, her face replaced by an anatomical diagram of female genitalia. The hood-woman has a dart stuck directly through her clitoris. A slightly gruesome spectacle, to be sure.

[the_brain_man]

Sylar’s grimacing at the sheer volume of the singing. He half-closes his eyes and ducks his head away again, flaring his fingers; the stereo shifts backwards a few centimetres and cuts out abruptly.

Then, moving out of the doorway, he cants his head and looks at Eight-Hour Chainsaw with obvious interest. So this is a contractor, and the best of them? She doesn’t sound different, her gears and cogs ticking away with far more preciseness than is right in the dead.

“Nine eight nine two five four three seven one caret one,” he quotes. “My name’s Sylar - and you’re Eight-Hour Chainsaw?”

[downsidedarling]

"Fucking right I am." Again, a computer receives the code; she's absently humming the next part of the song. Doesn't appear to have noticed Sylar's intervention with the stereo. It looks to be quite the piece of junk; intermittent failures are probably the norm.

"Huh. Diana. Should've guessed that fucking cunt - twelve hours with fucking Jasmine? Is she insane?" Eights frowns. "Huh, let's see what you're in for--"

Click. A single tap of the mouse has never sounded so ominous.

[the_brain_man]

Ominous indeed. Because while she might help an innocent man, he can’t imagine that she’d react well to one who’d killed about a half-dozen times.

(His eyes tick to the stereo. She hadn’t seemed to notice. Perhaps power failures are common in the afterlife.)

Quickly, his hand down at his side, he presses his thumb and forefinger together, drawing the one across the other like a scalpel on skin; inside the desk on which the computer sits, wires fray and the bottom length of the power cable drops away from the top with a patter.

[downsidedarling]

"Well, fuck," says Eight-Hour irritably. It would seem Sylar has guessed correctly. "My Meat Loaf and my fucking sentence checker in the same day. They seriously need to rewire this fuckin' place. Gimme a sec, I'm gonna go check with reception. I wanna know what in the name of fuck was going through that bitch's head."

Eights stands up, picks a stray dart up from beside her keyboard, and tosses it over her shoulder at the dartboard. It misses and clatters off the wall. She gives Sylar an expectant smile - in the crowded office, she can't exit the room without his moving to one side to let her pass.

[the_brain_man]

Sylar, who's arranged his face into something vaguely sympathetic, listens to Eights’ reaction with growing irritation. No matter what he does she seems hell-bent on finding out what he's done.

(The size of the room is interesting, and he wonders what she did to be unmourned. Perhaps, if he’s lucky, something to make her lenient about his own deeds?)

But he backs out of the room amicably enough, keeping that same expression in place, though it’s slightly flat. “Go ahead.”

He’s wondering whether to follow her back to the reception, or wait here for the explosion.

[downsidedarling]

It's a moot point.

"Yo, girl! Can you gimme the numbers on my latest?" calls Eights down the hall, leaning out the door.

A pause, then the receptionist reads out a string of digits, which Eights copies down blankly onto a notepad she grabs off her desk. She straightens, absent-mindedly closing the door and hopping back over her desk to sit in her swivel chair and read the numbers on the pad.

"Murder, murder, scarin' the shit out of people, murder..." Seems that, so far at least, she's not seeing anything she considers novel or interesting. "Huh. You really got around, babe. More murder... hey, that res code looks familiar--"

A pause, accompanied by a faint, distant frown, which suddenly solidifies into a glare of intense hatred.

"Speaker. You fucking killed Speaker? Get the fuck out of my office, you son of a whore."

[the_brain_man]

Sylar listens in silence, expression guarded, body tensed - her reaction is impossible to predict, and he might have to defend himself. After the guide, he’s only half surprised by Eights’ underwhelmed reaction, until-

“Who’s Speaker?” he demands, his face creasing into a frown but otherwise unmoving. Of all the things to call him on-

(There’s no direct link to memory, but there is a possibility, an image washed out by white walls and harsh floodlighting, a slightly-built and unsmiling girl who spoke to him-)