Wannabes - 1/3 (Heroes, Gen, 12930 words, 15+)
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]
"You do not choose your destiny. It chooses you. And
those who knew you before fate took you by the hand
can not understand the depth of the changes inside."
Wannabes
fade in:
i. diverge among the dead men
"He's just a kid."
The hesitant flash of a laser sight, radio squawking, all, "I said take him down, now," and Micah watches Micah's lip curl up. It's the wrong face for that expression.
Danko yells, "Take him down!"
The shot turns Micah -- Sylar -- the shot turns Sylar. He twists as he falls, pained grunts at the impact with the edge of the pier. High, a child's sound. Then the sharp, cold splash.
So, Micah thinks, feeling oddly detached from this, like he's watching a movie -- though he can smell the cordite in the air, oil, sweat that he hopes isn't himself -- this is what it's like to watch yourself die.
There's a plan, he's supposed to be in the car, but instead he presses close to the icy, slick metal and watches the soldiers scour the black water. In his head, he counts, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three. How long can he -- can you -- can I hold our breath for?
Danko's pissed. He covers it, but Micah's been watching. Rebel's been watching. All those cameras, known and unknown. He's Argus now, ten thousand eyes. Death has made him mythological. (He's always been too precocious for his own good, is the problem. Part of the problem.) Danko's pissed and he's suddenly looking right this way, like he knows.
The metal is cold and wet and something oily trickles down his neck when he presses against it and he thinks, I've never been as alone as I am right now.
And he has to keep going because he's pulled off the Hail Mary but the ball's still in play and if he stops, if he's not fast enough and smart enough and sure enough, the Bogeyman comes out and all bets are off.
Molly is going to--
There's a gap, and he runs, from thought and soldiers both.
ii. softly, softly, catchee monkey
"This was very unlike you," Danko says. He's still looking at the water. Won't look at Sylar. Disgust, perhaps. Disappointment? Who really cares?
"Dead is dead," Sylar tells him. He's trying not to laugh. There's a certain childish glee to this whole thing, and never mind that Danko's right, that this isn't him. He is Sylar, he knows. The hunter, not the prey.
The system has been compromised. Steps will have to be taken.
"You can start tonight," Danko says. "Just as soon as you change your face."
Danko stalks away. It's all very dramatic. Sylar can't help smirking. This is a much better face for it. He follows at a much more sedate pace, at a slow, easy lope. Wolves take care of the weak. It makes the herd stronger. His father was wrong about that, too.
The car is waiting for him. Taub drives it past another of those nameless soldiers, lets them glance across the empty seats and see nothing. He takes the back roads. It's night and they're empty and the street lamps stroke him, one by one by one. The radio comes on. Roy Orbison is cry-i-i-i-ing over you. Classic.
Sylar adjusts the mirror until he can see Micah in it, and he's only slightly smirking, only faintly mocking, when he asks, "Now what, hero?"
iii. union station blue
The world is full of machines. In a car in the Nevada desert, miles from anywhere, Micah could hear Vegas in his sleep, singing him lullabies. In D.C. it's orchestras, Philharmonic gone digital, cyber-reverb, techno overdub; 3G phones sing out in joyful chorus over the bass clicks of the switching stations, the iron hum of the trains, the clattering chatter of the departure boards, the tourist laptop drums and watch-tick snares. It's too loud in his head, thrumming in him, but Micah doesn't care. It's glorious. How could anyone think this would be overkill?
He finds the most crowded rack of phones and picks one in the middle, resting with his back to the security camera. It winks at him. The phone clicks a demand for money in his ear. He caresses its silver body until it purrs. Jungle sounds, now, squawking phones, roaring engines, wires rustling like vines. His is the India of Mowgli and Kim, of Kaa and the Bander-log, of Shere Khan burning brightly in the dark. He hides in the noise and lets his fingers dial for him. Country code, exchange, area, 926-6223.
It's like being made of water, just flowing along. It's like being made of spirit. Ghost in the machine.
There's a connection. A click. No one speaks, but he can hear held breath. Good girl, he thinks, and says, "Molly. It's me. The line's clean."
"Micah?" she asks, half hesitant, half-hopeful.
It rushes through him, makes him feel real again, and he's grinning like a loon when he repeats, "It's me."
"I thought you were dead," she says, sounding pissed at him now, and it just makes him laugh. "It's not funny!"
"No. I know." He's still chuckling though. "It's just-- It's good to hear you."
"You too. Are you--" She sounds confused, starts to say something that sounds like 'where' but can't be, because Molly always knows where everybody is. That's what she does. But she still sounds confused, and when she says, "You're at the train station?" it's more question than statement.
This body is, he wants to say, but my mind-- He doesn't know to describe it. It's like. Electricity. It's electricity.
Molly is saying, "West and Sparrow -- everyone was worried. I can call them. They can come and get you and--"
"No," Micah says, and louder when she keeps going, "Molly, no. They have to stay away. It's not safe."
"But they can help," she insists. "It's what we do, remember?"
"Not this time," he says and, over her protest, "No, listen. I got compromised. I wasn't fast enough, and Danko got into my systems. He has dozens of us, now."
Molly huffs. "That's why you need help, Micah."
"They can't. It's--" He can't explain Sylar. He can't. "Complicated. It's. Please, Molly."
The silence at the other end of the line is too deep, too long.
"Micah," she says, the accusation plain in her voice long before she asks. "What did you do?"
"People are going to get hurt," he tells her, talking too fast, "and we have to stop that; we have to, Molly. They're paying for our, for my mistakes. But I can fix this. I need you to help me fix this. It's, it's going to be okay, I promise, he's not--"
"He's not what?" Anger, fear, sharp in her tone.
"We can't just protect the good guys," Micah says. He's holding the phone so tight his hand hurts. "We have to save everybody. We have to try."
Molly practically spits. "He's a killer."
"I know--"
"No! You weren't there. He killed them, he killed--" But she can't get the words out.
"I killed my parents," Micah says. He doesn't mean to. It just slips out. His tongue is a traitor. He closes his eyes, rests his head on his arm on the phone.
Molly makes a noise, half sob, half bitter laugh. She sniffs, says, "Don't."
They're both quiet. He wants to tell her it's all going to be okay, but he knows how that sounds.
Her voice is so small when she says, "He's there, with you, isn't he? The Boogeyman."
"I can't do this without you." Micah knows Sylar was wrong. He's not alone. He's not. "Please. ...Molly?"
"If he-- Is he. Is he making you do this? You've gotta-- We can rescue you, I promise," she says desperately.
Micah shakes his head, realizes she can't see it, says, "It's not like that. The ability he has, he can make them stop. The Petrellis and the Dankos, Primatech and Pinehurst and everything. He can make them stop. I can make him."
He listens to Molly breathe. She's using the pink iPhone he got for her. It's full of media files, bright pop and Bollywood numbers and spiritual sounding things by Indian bands he doesn't know. There are photos, Matt, Mohinder, Mrs. Suresh, spires and temples and endless steps down to a sacred river. There are no photos of him, of course, or West, or Sparrow, or Abigail. There's an old picture, scanned in just off-vertical, of a laughing girl and her parents.
"Send me the photos," Molly says, sounding tired, resigned. "I'll do it. But I'm turning my phone off afterwards."
"Yeah," he says. He writes his memories of names and faces onto her SD-card, pushing them down the wire over the protests of the network, under the sudden complaints of those around him as their calls fade and crackle. "Thank you."
"I mean it, Micah. You can't-- He's not a stray," she insists. "You can't house-break him."
"It's just for now," Micah says, and it feels like a lie, and he's sure it sounds like one, because Molly hangs up on him. He says "Goodbye" to the empty line.
iv. travelling man
The sun's come up and it turns the windscreen opaque, but Micah can still feel Sylar watching him. He finds the door, lets himself in. The car pulls away. Morning traffic is beginning, but the roads are still mostly clear. They drive sedately.
"All sorted with your little girlfriend?" Sylar asks.
Micah doesn't rise to the bait. "She'll find them."
The radio comes on. Elvis singing for Del Shannon. Run, run, run, run, runaway.
Sylar chuckles, whistles along. It's a smooth ride. The car, some Nissan or other, practically drives itself. Maybe that's just Micah. They hit all the green lights and Sylar asks, "What makes you think I won't kill them all myself?"
"You're not that person."
"Hate to disappoint you, kid," Sylar drawls, "but I've been that person."
"I'm here," Micah points out, digging in his backpack. He's lost his jacket somewhere, but it's warm enough in the car, especially once he has his laptop out.
"Don't count on that lasting," Sylar says, watching the road, fingers tapping absent rhythms on the steering wheel as he takes the ramp.
The laptop goes sliding, but Micah catches it, plugs peripherals in with deft precision. The car weaves across the lanes, doing a steady three miles over the limit, not too slow, not too fast. Chameleonic. Micah flips a toggle, pushes his way in through the back-doors of the cell phone networks.
"It's called onion routing," he says, though Sylar doesn't ask. "I use multiple levels of encryption and mix cascades to hide where my connection is coming from and going to. As long as we don't stay still for too long, they can't trace my routing back to me. That's where I went wrong before, I think."
"Clever," Sylar says. It sounds more bored than sarcastic. He drives, heading vaguely west for no particular reason. The laptop bleeps softly, names and faces flickering across the display. A boy with impenetrable skin. A woman who can confuse memories. A girl with a healing touch. A man with resistance to poison. Nothing that he can't mimic in his own way already.
All the leaves are brown, the radio tells him, and the sky is grey.
"You can save them all," Micah says. Sylar chuckles, looks away. "You've done it before. You saved Rachel St. John, and you didn't kill Michael Fitzgerald or Tina Ramierez. You didn't kill Luke Campbell, or the Agents they sent after you. You should have lost your telekinesis to the Shanti virus, but you kept it because you felt empathy for Brian Davis. When you were with Arthur Petrelli, you copied Elle's ability--"
"I killed her in the end," Sylar says.
"She wouldn't let you be what you could be."
"A hero?" Sylar scoffs.
"Somebody important. Somebody who makes a difference."
v. building
Molly comes through.
It's not Building 26, but it might as well be. The list, the smallest abilities, the easiest captures -- Danko's team went through it fast. There are others out there. The harder ones. The ones Danko would send Sylar after, if they could pull this off. If they could keep the secret.
Danko's people have gotten smarter. Not a lot, but enough to keep a separate network, cut off from the outside. Still, everyone has phones, nice, new, modern cell phones with their built in Bluetooth and 3G capabilities. One indiscreet use of iTunes gets Micah a finger hold. After that, it's easy. All the firewalls and SPF record checking in the world can't spot a fake when it's coming from the same machine it's being read on. Formal notification: minor staff visit, operations issue, standard escort.
You wouldn't think Luke had boiled Simmons alive to watch the man drive confidently up to the gate, right on the dot. Military precision. It's trained in timekeeping; ingrained; in the blood. They let him through with only a cursory inspection. The parking lot is underground. A few vans, no people, a minimum of cameras. Electronic locks. They've hardly thought this through.
Once you're inside, you're in control.
vi. cooler
"What's the score?" Simmons, Sylar asks, leaning on the cubicle wall. Micah's out of sight. Computer whisperer, cajoling alarms here, herding data there. Simmons smiles at the girl in the cubicle, a bottle brunette, mousey turned multi-toned auburn. "We get the full dozen?"
"A baker's round," the woman says, lifting a hand to brush her hair back behind one ear, smiling at him, a little casual, a little flirty. "And not one hit on ours."
Sylar lets his smile go wider, lets her think she caused it. "All sleepin' soundly as a baby."
"Or sounder," she agrees. There must be something in his eyes, because her smile turns darker. "You didn't hear?" She leans towards him, conspiratorially. "They brought a bag in."
There's a discordant beep from the computer.
"Hell," Sylar chuckles, "maybe they're the lucky ones. Would you want to sleep the rest of your life away?"
"Maybe if I had company," she says, and they both smile.
"I have to do some inspecting," Sylar says, with just enough reluctance in his voice. "Maybe I'll see you on the way out."
"Maybe you will," she says, favoring him with a promising look.
"Don't work too hard, now."
"I work as hard as the government does," she says, and they share a laugh, nodding their au revoirs. The cameras snap off, one by one. The elevator indicator says going up on the outside, but down on the inside. Sylar arches an eyebrow but lets the doors close.
vii. down among the dead
Morgues shouldn't smell like hospitals, Micah thinks. All antiseptic and sick. It does though, this too bright room, all brushed metal and unfiltered fluorescence. His mother was in a room like this, once. His father. The computer labels the drawers by case number. It's a sequential field, automatic, already far too high. One of these numbers is Daphne. One is Tracy Strauss. One might be Daniel Hawkins. What's one more conspiracy?
One is fresh from the field. Micah palms the lock open, but it's Sylar who opens the door, who pulls the tray out.
Micah refuses to be sick. He refuses.
The worst part isn't the damage. It's the way there's enough left of this cut, crushed thing, that they can still make out the vestiges of a face, the last few strains of identity. Strands of hair cling to a concave skull.
"Gabrielle," Micah says. "Her name was Gabrielle."
Gabrielle was a vet. She made a living making animals better. Adults liked her, kids and pets loved her. She had a magical touch. Light hands. She made lives better, and now there's nothing left of her but a torn bag of skin, a cache of broken bones. There's no point to this. No point at all.
It hasn't been long enough for formal reports to be in the system. Micah's relying on this, on the confusion, but he can't help wondering. What will Gabrielle's say? Was she 'resisting arrest'? Micah knows what that means. It means you stand there and let them hit you, or they hit you for resisting. It means you don't get out of the place they put you in. You don't be smarter, or faster, or stronger, or anything. You don't be special.
Bullies. It's all just bullies.
("You get in a fight at school today?" D.L. asks.
He's holding out a sandwich, and Micah takes it, saying, "It was nothing. Just some jerks, that's all."
This is where Niki would lecture, but D.L says, "Just want to know if you won, that's all."
"Yeah," Micah says. "I won.")
He reaches out to touch her, but he can't make himself.
"Gabrielle Marcus," Micah says. "She was one of us." He corrects himself. "She is one of us."
They can't take the body with them, but Sylar can press his fingers together, building the shakes until, when he clicks his fingers, there's a crack like thunder and then only dust, pink and grey, whispering down in dainty rivulets from the slab.
"This is why they have to be stopped," Micah says. "It's wrong. It's just plain wrong."
He's not crying. He's not. He's too angry for that.
viii. seven thunders
It's so easy, it's almost criminal.
Micah's talent more than outmatches the internal systems; it subsumes them, making the building an extension of self. They walk past closed circuit cameras, invisible to the electronic eye. Sylar takes care of the lone guard, knocking him out with a flick of his fingers. Micah waves the door open, moving swiftly from bed to bed, killing the anesthetic. People wake up slow, groggy and dry-mouthed. Micah gives orders with an authority that belies his age, ordering them to follow Sylar, and herding them towards the door when they just blink at him stupidly.
The fire suppression systems love him. They start crying with joy all over the building. Alarms scream in triumph.
Sylar thinks Elle would have appreciated this and sends sparks into the rain. Not enough to kill. Enough to stun, though. Enough to hurt. They fall like dominoes. Seems cubicle girl won't see them on the way out after all. Sylar finds himself wondering what her name was, and then wondering why he's even interested. He keeps the people moving.
Micah finds one in particular, pulls her aside. "Abigail," he says. "We need you. They can't know we were here."
"I can't." She shakes her head rapidly, shakes her whole body. The sprinklers have woken them up, but soaked them through. "I've never -- I just can't."
"You can," Micah says, taking her hands in his. "It's okay. They're all asleep. Sylar did that. He made it safe for us. You won't hurt them. You'll just confuse them a little bit. It's okay."
And it is. He breathes, and she breathes, and something ripples through the building around them. It's done.
Then they're moving again, Sylar in front, tossing the last few straggling guards into the nearest walls, and forcing the escapees into the vans. Sylar takes his car; sure, it's stolen, and he's going to have to dump it anyway, but it's his, now, and better by himself anyway. That confusion thing was starting to seem a little tempting, even if it was mostly pointless. Micah doesn't say anything. When Sylar drives, the vans fall in behind him like ducklings.
The traffic cameras' gazes slide off them like water off a cygnet's back.
He's thinking about swans and old fairy tales and if they call them that when there's no fairies in them, just talking animals (and does even that count if they only talk to other animals?), and half-wondering if somehow the confusion thing can't work on awake people too, and it takes him a moment to realize he's brought them all to the park. There are clothes here, and a little bit of money each courtesy of Micah and ATMs. Some morality is clearly more flexible than others.
They're all looking at him for answers, eyes bright and needy. Sylar waits for Micah to speak, but the boy doesn't, has gotten himself lost in the background, so Sylar simply says, "You're free."
They're all free.
There's a yell from the crowd, his name, not Gabriel with Maya's accent, but Sylar, with her tone, the way she said it before she knew the other part of him. The way she said it after she knew he'd killed, before it became personal. Hope. Worship. Sylar. Someone takes up the call and then they're chanting, all of them, "Sylar! Sylar! Sylar!"
It rises around him, and he starts laughing, lifting his arms, and they're laughing too, laughing and crying and cheering around him, and, when he catches a glimpse of Micah, transformed by a huge smile, he can't help grinning back.
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]
"You do not choose your destiny. It chooses you. And
those who knew you before fate took you by the hand
can not understand the depth of the changes inside."
Wannabes
fade in:
i. diverge among the dead men
"He's just a kid."
The hesitant flash of a laser sight, radio squawking, all, "I said take him down, now," and Micah watches Micah's lip curl up. It's the wrong face for that expression.
Danko yells, "Take him down!"
The shot turns Micah -- Sylar -- the shot turns Sylar. He twists as he falls, pained grunts at the impact with the edge of the pier. High, a child's sound. Then the sharp, cold splash.
So, Micah thinks, feeling oddly detached from this, like he's watching a movie -- though he can smell the cordite in the air, oil, sweat that he hopes isn't himself -- this is what it's like to watch yourself die.
There's a plan, he's supposed to be in the car, but instead he presses close to the icy, slick metal and watches the soldiers scour the black water. In his head, he counts, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three. How long can he -- can you -- can I hold our breath for?
Danko's pissed. He covers it, but Micah's been watching. Rebel's been watching. All those cameras, known and unknown. He's Argus now, ten thousand eyes. Death has made him mythological. (He's always been too precocious for his own good, is the problem. Part of the problem.) Danko's pissed and he's suddenly looking right this way, like he knows.
The metal is cold and wet and something oily trickles down his neck when he presses against it and he thinks, I've never been as alone as I am right now.
And he has to keep going because he's pulled off the Hail Mary but the ball's still in play and if he stops, if he's not fast enough and smart enough and sure enough, the Bogeyman comes out and all bets are off.
Molly is going to--
There's a gap, and he runs, from thought and soldiers both.
ii. softly, softly, catchee monkey
"This was very unlike you," Danko says. He's still looking at the water. Won't look at Sylar. Disgust, perhaps. Disappointment? Who really cares?
"Dead is dead," Sylar tells him. He's trying not to laugh. There's a certain childish glee to this whole thing, and never mind that Danko's right, that this isn't him. He is Sylar, he knows. The hunter, not the prey.
The system has been compromised. Steps will have to be taken.
"You can start tonight," Danko says. "Just as soon as you change your face."
Danko stalks away. It's all very dramatic. Sylar can't help smirking. This is a much better face for it. He follows at a much more sedate pace, at a slow, easy lope. Wolves take care of the weak. It makes the herd stronger. His father was wrong about that, too.
The car is waiting for him. Taub drives it past another of those nameless soldiers, lets them glance across the empty seats and see nothing. He takes the back roads. It's night and they're empty and the street lamps stroke him, one by one by one. The radio comes on. Roy Orbison is cry-i-i-i-ing over you. Classic.
Sylar adjusts the mirror until he can see Micah in it, and he's only slightly smirking, only faintly mocking, when he asks, "Now what, hero?"
iii. union station blue
The world is full of machines. In a car in the Nevada desert, miles from anywhere, Micah could hear Vegas in his sleep, singing him lullabies. In D.C. it's orchestras, Philharmonic gone digital, cyber-reverb, techno overdub; 3G phones sing out in joyful chorus over the bass clicks of the switching stations, the iron hum of the trains, the clattering chatter of the departure boards, the tourist laptop drums and watch-tick snares. It's too loud in his head, thrumming in him, but Micah doesn't care. It's glorious. How could anyone think this would be overkill?
He finds the most crowded rack of phones and picks one in the middle, resting with his back to the security camera. It winks at him. The phone clicks a demand for money in his ear. He caresses its silver body until it purrs. Jungle sounds, now, squawking phones, roaring engines, wires rustling like vines. His is the India of Mowgli and Kim, of Kaa and the Bander-log, of Shere Khan burning brightly in the dark. He hides in the noise and lets his fingers dial for him. Country code, exchange, area, 926-6223.
It's like being made of water, just flowing along. It's like being made of spirit. Ghost in the machine.
There's a connection. A click. No one speaks, but he can hear held breath. Good girl, he thinks, and says, "Molly. It's me. The line's clean."
"Micah?" she asks, half hesitant, half-hopeful.
It rushes through him, makes him feel real again, and he's grinning like a loon when he repeats, "It's me."
"I thought you were dead," she says, sounding pissed at him now, and it just makes him laugh. "It's not funny!"
"No. I know." He's still chuckling though. "It's just-- It's good to hear you."
"You too. Are you--" She sounds confused, starts to say something that sounds like 'where' but can't be, because Molly always knows where everybody is. That's what she does. But she still sounds confused, and when she says, "You're at the train station?" it's more question than statement.
This body is, he wants to say, but my mind-- He doesn't know to describe it. It's like. Electricity. It's electricity.
Molly is saying, "West and Sparrow -- everyone was worried. I can call them. They can come and get you and--"
"No," Micah says, and louder when she keeps going, "Molly, no. They have to stay away. It's not safe."
"But they can help," she insists. "It's what we do, remember?"
"Not this time," he says and, over her protest, "No, listen. I got compromised. I wasn't fast enough, and Danko got into my systems. He has dozens of us, now."
Molly huffs. "That's why you need help, Micah."
"They can't. It's--" He can't explain Sylar. He can't. "Complicated. It's. Please, Molly."
The silence at the other end of the line is too deep, too long.
"Micah," she says, the accusation plain in her voice long before she asks. "What did you do?"
"People are going to get hurt," he tells her, talking too fast, "and we have to stop that; we have to, Molly. They're paying for our, for my mistakes. But I can fix this. I need you to help me fix this. It's, it's going to be okay, I promise, he's not--"
"He's not what?" Anger, fear, sharp in her tone.
"We can't just protect the good guys," Micah says. He's holding the phone so tight his hand hurts. "We have to save everybody. We have to try."
Molly practically spits. "He's a killer."
"I know--"
"No! You weren't there. He killed them, he killed--" But she can't get the words out.
"I killed my parents," Micah says. He doesn't mean to. It just slips out. His tongue is a traitor. He closes his eyes, rests his head on his arm on the phone.
Molly makes a noise, half sob, half bitter laugh. She sniffs, says, "Don't."
They're both quiet. He wants to tell her it's all going to be okay, but he knows how that sounds.
Her voice is so small when she says, "He's there, with you, isn't he? The Boogeyman."
"I can't do this without you." Micah knows Sylar was wrong. He's not alone. He's not. "Please. ...Molly?"
"If he-- Is he. Is he making you do this? You've gotta-- We can rescue you, I promise," she says desperately.
Micah shakes his head, realizes she can't see it, says, "It's not like that. The ability he has, he can make them stop. The Petrellis and the Dankos, Primatech and Pinehurst and everything. He can make them stop. I can make him."
He listens to Molly breathe. She's using the pink iPhone he got for her. It's full of media files, bright pop and Bollywood numbers and spiritual sounding things by Indian bands he doesn't know. There are photos, Matt, Mohinder, Mrs. Suresh, spires and temples and endless steps down to a sacred river. There are no photos of him, of course, or West, or Sparrow, or Abigail. There's an old picture, scanned in just off-vertical, of a laughing girl and her parents.
"Send me the photos," Molly says, sounding tired, resigned. "I'll do it. But I'm turning my phone off afterwards."
"Yeah," he says. He writes his memories of names and faces onto her SD-card, pushing them down the wire over the protests of the network, under the sudden complaints of those around him as their calls fade and crackle. "Thank you."
"I mean it, Micah. You can't-- He's not a stray," she insists. "You can't house-break him."
"It's just for now," Micah says, and it feels like a lie, and he's sure it sounds like one, because Molly hangs up on him. He says "Goodbye" to the empty line.
iv. travelling man
The sun's come up and it turns the windscreen opaque, but Micah can still feel Sylar watching him. He finds the door, lets himself in. The car pulls away. Morning traffic is beginning, but the roads are still mostly clear. They drive sedately.
"All sorted with your little girlfriend?" Sylar asks.
Micah doesn't rise to the bait. "She'll find them."
The radio comes on. Elvis singing for Del Shannon. Run, run, run, run, runaway.
Sylar chuckles, whistles along. It's a smooth ride. The car, some Nissan or other, practically drives itself. Maybe that's just Micah. They hit all the green lights and Sylar asks, "What makes you think I won't kill them all myself?"
"You're not that person."
"Hate to disappoint you, kid," Sylar drawls, "but I've been that person."
"I'm here," Micah points out, digging in his backpack. He's lost his jacket somewhere, but it's warm enough in the car, especially once he has his laptop out.
"Don't count on that lasting," Sylar says, watching the road, fingers tapping absent rhythms on the steering wheel as he takes the ramp.
The laptop goes sliding, but Micah catches it, plugs peripherals in with deft precision. The car weaves across the lanes, doing a steady three miles over the limit, not too slow, not too fast. Chameleonic. Micah flips a toggle, pushes his way in through the back-doors of the cell phone networks.
"It's called onion routing," he says, though Sylar doesn't ask. "I use multiple levels of encryption and mix cascades to hide where my connection is coming from and going to. As long as we don't stay still for too long, they can't trace my routing back to me. That's where I went wrong before, I think."
"Clever," Sylar says. It sounds more bored than sarcastic. He drives, heading vaguely west for no particular reason. The laptop bleeps softly, names and faces flickering across the display. A boy with impenetrable skin. A woman who can confuse memories. A girl with a healing touch. A man with resistance to poison. Nothing that he can't mimic in his own way already.
All the leaves are brown, the radio tells him, and the sky is grey.
"You can save them all," Micah says. Sylar chuckles, looks away. "You've done it before. You saved Rachel St. John, and you didn't kill Michael Fitzgerald or Tina Ramierez. You didn't kill Luke Campbell, or the Agents they sent after you. You should have lost your telekinesis to the Shanti virus, but you kept it because you felt empathy for Brian Davis. When you were with Arthur Petrelli, you copied Elle's ability--"
"I killed her in the end," Sylar says.
"She wouldn't let you be what you could be."
"A hero?" Sylar scoffs.
"Somebody important. Somebody who makes a difference."
v. building
Molly comes through.
It's not Building 26, but it might as well be. The list, the smallest abilities, the easiest captures -- Danko's team went through it fast. There are others out there. The harder ones. The ones Danko would send Sylar after, if they could pull this off. If they could keep the secret.
Danko's people have gotten smarter. Not a lot, but enough to keep a separate network, cut off from the outside. Still, everyone has phones, nice, new, modern cell phones with their built in Bluetooth and 3G capabilities. One indiscreet use of iTunes gets Micah a finger hold. After that, it's easy. All the firewalls and SPF record checking in the world can't spot a fake when it's coming from the same machine it's being read on. Formal notification: minor staff visit, operations issue, standard escort.
You wouldn't think Luke had boiled Simmons alive to watch the man drive confidently up to the gate, right on the dot. Military precision. It's trained in timekeeping; ingrained; in the blood. They let him through with only a cursory inspection. The parking lot is underground. A few vans, no people, a minimum of cameras. Electronic locks. They've hardly thought this through.
Once you're inside, you're in control.
vi. cooler
"What's the score?" Simmons, Sylar asks, leaning on the cubicle wall. Micah's out of sight. Computer whisperer, cajoling alarms here, herding data there. Simmons smiles at the girl in the cubicle, a bottle brunette, mousey turned multi-toned auburn. "We get the full dozen?"
"A baker's round," the woman says, lifting a hand to brush her hair back behind one ear, smiling at him, a little casual, a little flirty. "And not one hit on ours."
Sylar lets his smile go wider, lets her think she caused it. "All sleepin' soundly as a baby."
"Or sounder," she agrees. There must be something in his eyes, because her smile turns darker. "You didn't hear?" She leans towards him, conspiratorially. "They brought a bag in."
There's a discordant beep from the computer.
"Hell," Sylar chuckles, "maybe they're the lucky ones. Would you want to sleep the rest of your life away?"
"Maybe if I had company," she says, and they both smile.
"I have to do some inspecting," Sylar says, with just enough reluctance in his voice. "Maybe I'll see you on the way out."
"Maybe you will," she says, favoring him with a promising look.
"Don't work too hard, now."
"I work as hard as the government does," she says, and they share a laugh, nodding their au revoirs. The cameras snap off, one by one. The elevator indicator says going up on the outside, but down on the inside. Sylar arches an eyebrow but lets the doors close.
vii. down among the dead
Morgues shouldn't smell like hospitals, Micah thinks. All antiseptic and sick. It does though, this too bright room, all brushed metal and unfiltered fluorescence. His mother was in a room like this, once. His father. The computer labels the drawers by case number. It's a sequential field, automatic, already far too high. One of these numbers is Daphne. One is Tracy Strauss. One might be Daniel Hawkins. What's one more conspiracy?
One is fresh from the field. Micah palms the lock open, but it's Sylar who opens the door, who pulls the tray out.
Micah refuses to be sick. He refuses.
The worst part isn't the damage. It's the way there's enough left of this cut, crushed thing, that they can still make out the vestiges of a face, the last few strains of identity. Strands of hair cling to a concave skull.
"Gabrielle," Micah says. "Her name was Gabrielle."
Gabrielle was a vet. She made a living making animals better. Adults liked her, kids and pets loved her. She had a magical touch. Light hands. She made lives better, and now there's nothing left of her but a torn bag of skin, a cache of broken bones. There's no point to this. No point at all.
It hasn't been long enough for formal reports to be in the system. Micah's relying on this, on the confusion, but he can't help wondering. What will Gabrielle's say? Was she 'resisting arrest'? Micah knows what that means. It means you stand there and let them hit you, or they hit you for resisting. It means you don't get out of the place they put you in. You don't be smarter, or faster, or stronger, or anything. You don't be special.
Bullies. It's all just bullies.
("You get in a fight at school today?" D.L. asks.
He's holding out a sandwich, and Micah takes it, saying, "It was nothing. Just some jerks, that's all."
This is where Niki would lecture, but D.L says, "Just want to know if you won, that's all."
"Yeah," Micah says. "I won.")
He reaches out to touch her, but he can't make himself.
"Gabrielle Marcus," Micah says. "She was one of us." He corrects himself. "She is one of us."
They can't take the body with them, but Sylar can press his fingers together, building the shakes until, when he clicks his fingers, there's a crack like thunder and then only dust, pink and grey, whispering down in dainty rivulets from the slab.
"This is why they have to be stopped," Micah says. "It's wrong. It's just plain wrong."
He's not crying. He's not. He's too angry for that.
viii. seven thunders
It's so easy, it's almost criminal.
Micah's talent more than outmatches the internal systems; it subsumes them, making the building an extension of self. They walk past closed circuit cameras, invisible to the electronic eye. Sylar takes care of the lone guard, knocking him out with a flick of his fingers. Micah waves the door open, moving swiftly from bed to bed, killing the anesthetic. People wake up slow, groggy and dry-mouthed. Micah gives orders with an authority that belies his age, ordering them to follow Sylar, and herding them towards the door when they just blink at him stupidly.
The fire suppression systems love him. They start crying with joy all over the building. Alarms scream in triumph.
Sylar thinks Elle would have appreciated this and sends sparks into the rain. Not enough to kill. Enough to stun, though. Enough to hurt. They fall like dominoes. Seems cubicle girl won't see them on the way out after all. Sylar finds himself wondering what her name was, and then wondering why he's even interested. He keeps the people moving.
Micah finds one in particular, pulls her aside. "Abigail," he says. "We need you. They can't know we were here."
"I can't." She shakes her head rapidly, shakes her whole body. The sprinklers have woken them up, but soaked them through. "I've never -- I just can't."
"You can," Micah says, taking her hands in his. "It's okay. They're all asleep. Sylar did that. He made it safe for us. You won't hurt them. You'll just confuse them a little bit. It's okay."
And it is. He breathes, and she breathes, and something ripples through the building around them. It's done.
Then they're moving again, Sylar in front, tossing the last few straggling guards into the nearest walls, and forcing the escapees into the vans. Sylar takes his car; sure, it's stolen, and he's going to have to dump it anyway, but it's his, now, and better by himself anyway. That confusion thing was starting to seem a little tempting, even if it was mostly pointless. Micah doesn't say anything. When Sylar drives, the vans fall in behind him like ducklings.
The traffic cameras' gazes slide off them like water off a cygnet's back.
He's thinking about swans and old fairy tales and if they call them that when there's no fairies in them, just talking animals (and does even that count if they only talk to other animals?), and half-wondering if somehow the confusion thing can't work on awake people too, and it takes him a moment to realize he's brought them all to the park. There are clothes here, and a little bit of money each courtesy of Micah and ATMs. Some morality is clearly more flexible than others.
They're all looking at him for answers, eyes bright and needy. Sylar waits for Micah to speak, but the boy doesn't, has gotten himself lost in the background, so Sylar simply says, "You're free."
They're all free.
There's a yell from the crowd, his name, not Gabriel with Maya's accent, but Sylar, with her tone, the way she said it before she knew the other part of him. The way she said it after she knew he'd killed, before it became personal. Hope. Worship. Sylar. Someone takes up the call and then they're chanting, all of them, "Sylar! Sylar! Sylar!"
It rises around him, and he starts laughing, lifting his arms, and they're laughing too, laughing and crying and cheering around him, and, when he catches a glimpse of Micah, transformed by a huge smile, he can't help grinning back.
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