The Last Two Men [3/11] - Heroes - Mohinder/Sylar
Title: The Last Two Men [3/11]
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Word Count: 2658
Rating: R
Warnings: end-of-the-world, character deaths, zombie-vampires.
A/N: Inspired heavily by 'I Am Legend'. Thank you to Babylon_pride for betaing.
Previous parts: One :: Two
Summary: On the 13th of November 2010, the dead began to remain undead. Two years later, the last men on Earth struggle to survive.
23rd of May, 2012
Sunlight drips into the room through a crack in the thick curtains, spilling directly onto Mohinder's face to gently pull him from sleep. His hand rests next to a gun on the mattress: black and reliable, the sight of it is the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. He rolls onto his back to stare at the old, off-white ceiling instead. Another day has dawned and they're still alive. That alone is a triumph.
His hand bats to the side and encounters Sylar's shoulder, rudely awakening him. He's never been a fan of sharing a room, let alone a bed, but it's safer - and as long as Sylar keeps to his side then Mohinder can put up with it. The years have dampened his defences. "Wake up," he urges as Sylar rolls over and groans.
Fully dressed already, he steps from the bed - shoes on, regardless of how much he hates the uncivilised idea of wearing them as he sleeps - and picks up the gun. It's heavy in his hand, by now such a familiar weight. Complaining, Sylar pulls himself up as well. His dark hair is a scattered mess and there are red lines on the side of his face where he's been sleeping against the creased pillowcase. Mohinder tries not to smile.
"Upstairs or downstairs?" he asks, though he knows which Sylar will choose - downstairs. He thinks it's more dangerous. Once the choice is made, Mohinder nods. "I'll see you in the kitchen. Ten minutes."
They part at the stairway: by now this feels routine. Mohinder's feet follow well-worn routes around the house, checking their defences. The windows are still boarded, enough to keep this place perpetually gloomy but constantly safe. There are mirrors placed in every corner, angled so that they're able to see further ahead. No hiding spots.
The house is undamaged as Mohinder makes his sweep. Dust lingers in the air and only slivers of sunlight are able to worm their way through the wooden planks that board up the windows to protect their hiding spot. The creatures haven't found them yet - as long as he and Sylar can keep their whereabouts secret, Mohinder thinks they'll be able to survive for a long while yet, certainly long enough for him to work out a cure, a way to reverse what was done.
The stairs creak as he moves slowly down them ten minutes later, his gun still gripped tightly in his hands. The metal feels sticky against his sweat-lined palms; all this time has passed, but he still feels awkward when he holds a weapon. He wants to save lives, not take them - but what choice is there left to him?
Sylar's sitting at the kitchen table already when he walks in. "Took your time," he snorts.
"We don't all have the benefits of your powers, Sylar," Mohinder points out - he isn't sure why he cares. It isn't a race and in this case there's no reward for speed.
Sylar smirks and rolls his eyes as he eats the drivel made from powdered eggs: breakfast, apparently. "'We'?" he says, spoon inches from his mouth. "It's just you and I."
"I know that," Mohinder murmurs. He doesn't meet Sylar's eyes.
Breakfast is an unusually quiet affair: most mornings they managed to make some replica of small talk. It would be stilted and painful, but better than the silence that currently buzzes in Mohinder's ear. The scrape of Sylar's fork over the bottom of his plate seems far too loud. Mohinder looks around their kitchen, small and efficient as it is, and feels the marks of a cage. They're penned in and confined, the entire world turned into a macabre zoo.
They stack the dishes by the sink, to be cleaned when the pile of plates grows too high, before Sylar glances at him and asks, "So what's the plan for today?" He's trying to sound friendly. It almost works.
"Same as always, I suppose," Mohinder muses. "Check for survivors, look-"
"There aren't any survivors," Sylar interrupts. The tension in his voice crackles through every word. "There are never any survivors - why can't you accept that?"
Mohinder won't look at him: he doesn't expect Sylar to be able to understand. "I won't give up," he says. "I won't lose hope."
Sylar rolls his eyes, derision clear, and begins to move away from Mohinder out of the kitchen and back towards the stairway. "We'll leave in ten minutes," he states. Even if he thinks Mohinder's searching is in vain and is ridiculous, he still seems willing to accompany him for it. Mohinder knows he should be thankful. He pushes away the ungrateful voice in his mind that wishes that Sylar would leave him alone.
*
The morning sunlight feels weak against his face, but it's bright enough to make him feel alive again. By his side, Sylar is a dark shadow devoid of hope - but he's used to the man's gloomy presence by now. It won't dampen his spirit. It won't kill his hope. Their footsteps are the only sounds in the empty street, though Mohinder strains to hear anything further. Just in case.
Doesn't hurt to be on guard.
They find bodies of the creatures more often than not: brutalised, bitten, clawed, destroyed by their own kind. There's no loyalty between the dead. As he and Sylar turn the corner onto a new street, it's the smell that hits him that allows Mohinder to know what's waiting for them up ahead. Rancid and rotting, the scent of decay invades the air.
He steps forward, raising the shotgun he carries, but Sylar's hand clamps down on his shoulder and stops him from going further. 'I go first' Sylar mouths, his eyes darkened. There's no arguing with that expression, so Mohinder has no choice but to allow it and wave a hand ahead to invite Sylar to do whatever he wants.
Sylar's shoulders are tense as he takes the lead, with his hands open by his side - ready to call upon any power he needs to. The stench is invasive as they begin to make their way forward: Mohinder doesn't imagine that he will ever be able to get used to the stomach-churning smell of these creatures when they're dead.
In the middle of the road, surrounded by a bed of wild foliage and forgotten cars, the dead and broken body looks so human. She was human, Mohinder reminds himself, Once. The sunlight has burnt her pale skin to a deep red, like a holiday-maker fallen asleep on the beach. Her eyes are closed, but the hints of black around them confirm that she was one of Them.
"Is it dead?" Sylar asks as they creep closer.
Mohinder's gun is aimed securely at her head, even as he nods in confirmation. "The sun's up," he points out. There's no way one of them could have survived that, even with the sun's light weak in the early morning. "And there's blood." It pools beneath her head on the road, slow and sluggish in its movement. Her own kind got to her before they did - sometimes Mohinder thinks that if he and Sylar just stayed hidden, the creatures would destroy themselves with no additional input, in time.
And then what? he asks himself - because, no, the answer to this has to be in curing the condition, not waiting for the ill to die out. It's just another illness. It's just a disease waiting for a cure.
Sylar huffs beside him: "One down," he muses aloud. "Suppose that's something." Not much at all - there are thousands out there, more than Mohinder can manage to comprehend. "We'll have to come back and burn the body. What street're we on?"
They check and make a mental note to come back before nightfall. Mohinder doesn't think that she'll be able to rise again, but you never know and it never hurts to make sure. It's through being paranoid and over-cautious that he and Sylar have managed to survive this long. He's not ready to jeopardise that - not yet.
*
It was midday before they'd finished ensuring their area was clear, criss-crossing through the streets in a familiar pattern. They dispose of any bodies left on the streets near them - too close for Mohinder's comfort. He doesn't think that the creatures have detected where he and Sylar hide at night, not yet, but the bodies in the morning seem to be gradually turning up closer and closer to home.
Home.
He nearly laughs at that idea as he takes his radio set out into the overgrown garden, into the sunlight. He could do this just as well indoors, and it would probably conserve the batteries, but he needs the sunlight. He craves it, because he's learnt of the blind terror that darkness can bring. With its securely boarded windows and bolt-locked doors, the house he lives in is depressingly gloomy even in the afternoon, with only a few strands of light managing to find their way in.
In the garden, even infested with weeds, it's almost relaxing. He sits on the small stone wall that surrounds the building with the radio on his lap as he begins to flick through the channels. Static buzzes and fizzes over the airwaves to greet him, but nothing more than that. He thinks that he'd give anything to hear another human voice again. Sylar's still sets him on edge and listening to the thousands of recordings and movies just isn't the same.
One voice, one plea for help, one ray of light. That's all he wants.
Today isn't the day for him to get that, he realises as the silence over takes him. On the last station he hears his own voice - the message recorded such a long time ago to be played over the airwaves - before he turns the knob at the side to turn the machine off. The static fades reluctantly.
"Nothing today?" Sylar asks from the doorway.
Mohinder spins quickly, having never heard his approach. "Don't creep up on me," he complains.
Sylar's smirk indicates that he isn't taking that warning to heart. He steps forward, closing the door to their house firmly behind him just in case, and walks to sit beside Mohinder on the wall. His eyes settle on the radio and for that Mohinder's glad - the ache in his chest from the unwilling knowledge that he truly is alone in the world with this man feels like too much for him to be able to handle. What did Sylar do to deserve survival? Why him?
Why either of them? Mohinder knows that his own crimes must surely by now outweigh Sylar's. The deaths unknowingly caused, the spread of disease, all from one simple mistake. If there is an afterlife, if Hell exists, Mohinder imagines that he will be burning alongside Sylar for centuries to come.
"I should get going," he sighs, looking along the street so that he doesn't have to look to Sylar. He can feel the man's presence by his side, warm and strong and so disconcerting - like a wild cat tamed temporarily.
"I'm coming with you," Sylar states.
And though Mohinder knows that he'll only sit there and complain, and try to talk him out of it, and tell him he's wasting his time, he remembers the stomach-clenching fear of the night spent alone in his laboratory as he hid beneath his desk. Some company would be a rare treat in that all but empty place, he reminded himself as he nodded gratefully. "Just this once, I'll allow it."
Sylar quirks an eyebrow at him, taking the radio from his hands to take it back indoors to its resting place. The sun is still high in the sky and Mohinder's watch tells him that they still have nearly five hours until they need to be safely locked up in their hiding spot.
*
His key jangles in the lock as he allows them into the laboratory. He no longer feels a chill run down his spine when he walks over the mural on the ground; New York's explosion is no longer something that terrifies him. There are days, dark days, where he longs for it to happen - where he longs for this entire world to disappear in a loud bang, taking them right back to the start. Those thoughts are fleeting; he's too busy with the process of staying alive to sit around and brood on how he wishes they were all dead.
"This place gives me the creeps," Sylar says as he closes the door behind him. His eyes linger on the door to what was once the bathroom of Isaac's apartment but has now taken on a whole new purpose: it is their prison, their cell, their cage. Mohinder avoids looking at it, his gaze searching anywhere but there. It's daylight, he reminds himself. The creature inside the cell is asleep now - or something like that. 'Sleep' seems like an overenthusiastic word. She will be resting, with her eyes closed and her head bowed, but she will still be standing. Mohinder has no doubts that anyone foolish enough to step inside that cage during the day would not be protected by that illusion of slumber.
"Then don't come here," Mohinder suggests. "Stay at home."
"And leave you to get trapped here again?" Sylar says. "I thought you were supposed to be the smart one."
"I'm not 'supposed' to be anything at all," Mohinder sighs wearily. He wishes, more than ever, that he wasn't involved with this, that he wasn't a scientist, that he'd died along with the rest of the world's population - because searching in vain for a way to undo his mistakes is eroding away his sense of self, piece by piece. He hardly remembers what life was like before the outbreak. "Just sit there," he says, waving at one of the chairs, "And try not to break anything."
Sylar rolls his eyes and he smiles in a way that seems almost warm as he does as he's told. "I'm not a toddler," he complains, but it seems more light-hearted than Mohinder's heard him being in such a long time.
"You could easily have fooled me," he says, just to hear Sylar snort air through his nose in disbelief. It's a nice sound, warm and human. Real. Alive. Mohinder looks away from him to take in his notes and wild theories from the following day, holding back a smile when-
A loud slam sounds from the cell in the back of the laboratory, the sound of angry fists against an enforced door.
He freezes, every muscle tensing up in an uneasy mix of horror and confusion. "Is that…" he says, but the sound rockets through the room again to cause his words to die as they leave his month. "How is this possible?"
The sun is so high and so hot today; she should be practically dead to the world, not slamming on the door as if she's trying to knock it down. As Mohinder gets to his feet and reaches for his gun from where he'd rested it on the tabletop, Sylar moves closer to the doorway.
The banging doesn't stop - Mohinder thinks that he can hear wet snarls from the other side of the door, but he hopes that that's just his scared imagination torturing him. He swallows hard and steps forward, his hand reaching shakily towards the cord of the blind that covers the tiny window through the door. He doesn't want to look, he doesn't want to see, he doesn't want to acknowledge that this is getting worse - that the creatures are evolving - but…
There's no choice.
Running, hiding and denial are no longer options.
He breathes deeply and hears Sylar hurrying him, then his hand grips the cord hard and pulls - ready to stare into the eyes of the monster of his making.
Part Four
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Word Count: 2658
Rating: R
Warnings: end-of-the-world, character deaths, zombie-vampires.
A/N: Inspired heavily by 'I Am Legend'. Thank you to Babylon_pride for betaing.
Previous parts: One :: Two
Summary: On the 13th of November 2010, the dead began to remain undead. Two years later, the last men on Earth struggle to survive.
23rd of May, 2012
Sunlight drips into the room through a crack in the thick curtains, spilling directly onto Mohinder's face to gently pull him from sleep. His hand rests next to a gun on the mattress: black and reliable, the sight of it is the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. He rolls onto his back to stare at the old, off-white ceiling instead. Another day has dawned and they're still alive. That alone is a triumph.
His hand bats to the side and encounters Sylar's shoulder, rudely awakening him. He's never been a fan of sharing a room, let alone a bed, but it's safer - and as long as Sylar keeps to his side then Mohinder can put up with it. The years have dampened his defences. "Wake up," he urges as Sylar rolls over and groans.
Fully dressed already, he steps from the bed - shoes on, regardless of how much he hates the uncivilised idea of wearing them as he sleeps - and picks up the gun. It's heavy in his hand, by now such a familiar weight. Complaining, Sylar pulls himself up as well. His dark hair is a scattered mess and there are red lines on the side of his face where he's been sleeping against the creased pillowcase. Mohinder tries not to smile.
"Upstairs or downstairs?" he asks, though he knows which Sylar will choose - downstairs. He thinks it's more dangerous. Once the choice is made, Mohinder nods. "I'll see you in the kitchen. Ten minutes."
They part at the stairway: by now this feels routine. Mohinder's feet follow well-worn routes around the house, checking their defences. The windows are still boarded, enough to keep this place perpetually gloomy but constantly safe. There are mirrors placed in every corner, angled so that they're able to see further ahead. No hiding spots.
The house is undamaged as Mohinder makes his sweep. Dust lingers in the air and only slivers of sunlight are able to worm their way through the wooden planks that board up the windows to protect their hiding spot. The creatures haven't found them yet - as long as he and Sylar can keep their whereabouts secret, Mohinder thinks they'll be able to survive for a long while yet, certainly long enough for him to work out a cure, a way to reverse what was done.
The stairs creak as he moves slowly down them ten minutes later, his gun still gripped tightly in his hands. The metal feels sticky against his sweat-lined palms; all this time has passed, but he still feels awkward when he holds a weapon. He wants to save lives, not take them - but what choice is there left to him?
Sylar's sitting at the kitchen table already when he walks in. "Took your time," he snorts.
"We don't all have the benefits of your powers, Sylar," Mohinder points out - he isn't sure why he cares. It isn't a race and in this case there's no reward for speed.
Sylar smirks and rolls his eyes as he eats the drivel made from powdered eggs: breakfast, apparently. "'We'?" he says, spoon inches from his mouth. "It's just you and I."
"I know that," Mohinder murmurs. He doesn't meet Sylar's eyes.
Breakfast is an unusually quiet affair: most mornings they managed to make some replica of small talk. It would be stilted and painful, but better than the silence that currently buzzes in Mohinder's ear. The scrape of Sylar's fork over the bottom of his plate seems far too loud. Mohinder looks around their kitchen, small and efficient as it is, and feels the marks of a cage. They're penned in and confined, the entire world turned into a macabre zoo.
They stack the dishes by the sink, to be cleaned when the pile of plates grows too high, before Sylar glances at him and asks, "So what's the plan for today?" He's trying to sound friendly. It almost works.
"Same as always, I suppose," Mohinder muses. "Check for survivors, look-"
"There aren't any survivors," Sylar interrupts. The tension in his voice crackles through every word. "There are never any survivors - why can't you accept that?"
Mohinder won't look at him: he doesn't expect Sylar to be able to understand. "I won't give up," he says. "I won't lose hope."
Sylar rolls his eyes, derision clear, and begins to move away from Mohinder out of the kitchen and back towards the stairway. "We'll leave in ten minutes," he states. Even if he thinks Mohinder's searching is in vain and is ridiculous, he still seems willing to accompany him for it. Mohinder knows he should be thankful. He pushes away the ungrateful voice in his mind that wishes that Sylar would leave him alone.
*
The morning sunlight feels weak against his face, but it's bright enough to make him feel alive again. By his side, Sylar is a dark shadow devoid of hope - but he's used to the man's gloomy presence by now. It won't dampen his spirit. It won't kill his hope. Their footsteps are the only sounds in the empty street, though Mohinder strains to hear anything further. Just in case.
Doesn't hurt to be on guard.
They find bodies of the creatures more often than not: brutalised, bitten, clawed, destroyed by their own kind. There's no loyalty between the dead. As he and Sylar turn the corner onto a new street, it's the smell that hits him that allows Mohinder to know what's waiting for them up ahead. Rancid and rotting, the scent of decay invades the air.
He steps forward, raising the shotgun he carries, but Sylar's hand clamps down on his shoulder and stops him from going further. 'I go first' Sylar mouths, his eyes darkened. There's no arguing with that expression, so Mohinder has no choice but to allow it and wave a hand ahead to invite Sylar to do whatever he wants.
Sylar's shoulders are tense as he takes the lead, with his hands open by his side - ready to call upon any power he needs to. The stench is invasive as they begin to make their way forward: Mohinder doesn't imagine that he will ever be able to get used to the stomach-churning smell of these creatures when they're dead.
In the middle of the road, surrounded by a bed of wild foliage and forgotten cars, the dead and broken body looks so human. She was human, Mohinder reminds himself, Once. The sunlight has burnt her pale skin to a deep red, like a holiday-maker fallen asleep on the beach. Her eyes are closed, but the hints of black around them confirm that she was one of Them.
"Is it dead?" Sylar asks as they creep closer.
Mohinder's gun is aimed securely at her head, even as he nods in confirmation. "The sun's up," he points out. There's no way one of them could have survived that, even with the sun's light weak in the early morning. "And there's blood." It pools beneath her head on the road, slow and sluggish in its movement. Her own kind got to her before they did - sometimes Mohinder thinks that if he and Sylar just stayed hidden, the creatures would destroy themselves with no additional input, in time.
And then what? he asks himself - because, no, the answer to this has to be in curing the condition, not waiting for the ill to die out. It's just another illness. It's just a disease waiting for a cure.
Sylar huffs beside him: "One down," he muses aloud. "Suppose that's something." Not much at all - there are thousands out there, more than Mohinder can manage to comprehend. "We'll have to come back and burn the body. What street're we on?"
They check and make a mental note to come back before nightfall. Mohinder doesn't think that she'll be able to rise again, but you never know and it never hurts to make sure. It's through being paranoid and over-cautious that he and Sylar have managed to survive this long. He's not ready to jeopardise that - not yet.
*
It was midday before they'd finished ensuring their area was clear, criss-crossing through the streets in a familiar pattern. They dispose of any bodies left on the streets near them - too close for Mohinder's comfort. He doesn't think that the creatures have detected where he and Sylar hide at night, not yet, but the bodies in the morning seem to be gradually turning up closer and closer to home.
Home.
He nearly laughs at that idea as he takes his radio set out into the overgrown garden, into the sunlight. He could do this just as well indoors, and it would probably conserve the batteries, but he needs the sunlight. He craves it, because he's learnt of the blind terror that darkness can bring. With its securely boarded windows and bolt-locked doors, the house he lives in is depressingly gloomy even in the afternoon, with only a few strands of light managing to find their way in.
In the garden, even infested with weeds, it's almost relaxing. He sits on the small stone wall that surrounds the building with the radio on his lap as he begins to flick through the channels. Static buzzes and fizzes over the airwaves to greet him, but nothing more than that. He thinks that he'd give anything to hear another human voice again. Sylar's still sets him on edge and listening to the thousands of recordings and movies just isn't the same.
One voice, one plea for help, one ray of light. That's all he wants.
Today isn't the day for him to get that, he realises as the silence over takes him. On the last station he hears his own voice - the message recorded such a long time ago to be played over the airwaves - before he turns the knob at the side to turn the machine off. The static fades reluctantly.
"Nothing today?" Sylar asks from the doorway.
Mohinder spins quickly, having never heard his approach. "Don't creep up on me," he complains.
Sylar's smirk indicates that he isn't taking that warning to heart. He steps forward, closing the door to their house firmly behind him just in case, and walks to sit beside Mohinder on the wall. His eyes settle on the radio and for that Mohinder's glad - the ache in his chest from the unwilling knowledge that he truly is alone in the world with this man feels like too much for him to be able to handle. What did Sylar do to deserve survival? Why him?
Why either of them? Mohinder knows that his own crimes must surely by now outweigh Sylar's. The deaths unknowingly caused, the spread of disease, all from one simple mistake. If there is an afterlife, if Hell exists, Mohinder imagines that he will be burning alongside Sylar for centuries to come.
"I should get going," he sighs, looking along the street so that he doesn't have to look to Sylar. He can feel the man's presence by his side, warm and strong and so disconcerting - like a wild cat tamed temporarily.
"I'm coming with you," Sylar states.
And though Mohinder knows that he'll only sit there and complain, and try to talk him out of it, and tell him he's wasting his time, he remembers the stomach-clenching fear of the night spent alone in his laboratory as he hid beneath his desk. Some company would be a rare treat in that all but empty place, he reminded himself as he nodded gratefully. "Just this once, I'll allow it."
Sylar quirks an eyebrow at him, taking the radio from his hands to take it back indoors to its resting place. The sun is still high in the sky and Mohinder's watch tells him that they still have nearly five hours until they need to be safely locked up in their hiding spot.
*
His key jangles in the lock as he allows them into the laboratory. He no longer feels a chill run down his spine when he walks over the mural on the ground; New York's explosion is no longer something that terrifies him. There are days, dark days, where he longs for it to happen - where he longs for this entire world to disappear in a loud bang, taking them right back to the start. Those thoughts are fleeting; he's too busy with the process of staying alive to sit around and brood on how he wishes they were all dead.
"This place gives me the creeps," Sylar says as he closes the door behind him. His eyes linger on the door to what was once the bathroom of Isaac's apartment but has now taken on a whole new purpose: it is their prison, their cell, their cage. Mohinder avoids looking at it, his gaze searching anywhere but there. It's daylight, he reminds himself. The creature inside the cell is asleep now - or something like that. 'Sleep' seems like an overenthusiastic word. She will be resting, with her eyes closed and her head bowed, but she will still be standing. Mohinder has no doubts that anyone foolish enough to step inside that cage during the day would not be protected by that illusion of slumber.
"Then don't come here," Mohinder suggests. "Stay at home."
"And leave you to get trapped here again?" Sylar says. "I thought you were supposed to be the smart one."
"I'm not 'supposed' to be anything at all," Mohinder sighs wearily. He wishes, more than ever, that he wasn't involved with this, that he wasn't a scientist, that he'd died along with the rest of the world's population - because searching in vain for a way to undo his mistakes is eroding away his sense of self, piece by piece. He hardly remembers what life was like before the outbreak. "Just sit there," he says, waving at one of the chairs, "And try not to break anything."
Sylar rolls his eyes and he smiles in a way that seems almost warm as he does as he's told. "I'm not a toddler," he complains, but it seems more light-hearted than Mohinder's heard him being in such a long time.
"You could easily have fooled me," he says, just to hear Sylar snort air through his nose in disbelief. It's a nice sound, warm and human. Real. Alive. Mohinder looks away from him to take in his notes and wild theories from the following day, holding back a smile when-
A loud slam sounds from the cell in the back of the laboratory, the sound of angry fists against an enforced door.
He freezes, every muscle tensing up in an uneasy mix of horror and confusion. "Is that…" he says, but the sound rockets through the room again to cause his words to die as they leave his month. "How is this possible?"
The sun is so high and so hot today; she should be practically dead to the world, not slamming on the door as if she's trying to knock it down. As Mohinder gets to his feet and reaches for his gun from where he'd rested it on the tabletop, Sylar moves closer to the doorway.
The banging doesn't stop - Mohinder thinks that he can hear wet snarls from the other side of the door, but he hopes that that's just his scared imagination torturing him. He swallows hard and steps forward, his hand reaching shakily towards the cord of the blind that covers the tiny window through the door. He doesn't want to look, he doesn't want to see, he doesn't want to acknowledge that this is getting worse - that the creatures are evolving - but…
There's no choice.
Running, hiding and denial are no longer options.
He breathes deeply and hears Sylar hurrying him, then his hand grips the cord hard and pulls - ready to stare into the eyes of the monster of his making.
Part Four