Fic: The Chronicle of Perdition
CHAPTER SEVEN: Darkness (Part Three)
Characters: Sylar/Claire
Summary: “What, you afraid I’m gonna die? Leave you all alone to wander eternity all by your pitiful little self?”
Rating: PG13 in this chapter for a little language and some violence
Spoilers: Season 4 stuff.
A/N: Whew this chapter is late!!! Sorry folks! Had some nice family time, though, did a little traveling, and am currently getting over a nasty cold so to say I've been busy is a tad of an understatement, but I would NEVER give up this story =D It must go on! The most important reason for the delay, however, is the amount of research I had to put into it: restaurants in the Atlanta airport, menus for that restaurant, caves in Texas, corresponding coordinates even, the surrounding terrain at said coordinates (even though my grandma and my mom grew up in parts of Texas), what domestic oil marketing companies were like (they have nice websites btw, very tasteful), symptoms of rattlesnake bites, etc. Tons of stuff. I'm also gonna forewarn - I've made a very bold move and I'm fleshing out Sylar's character quite a bit more than what the show allowed. I mean, let's face it: we don't really know much about the guy other than he's got an ability, he's got mommy issues, and he kills people. Claire we've got figured out pretty well, but there's a lot of Sylar that's still a mystery. I'm filling in some of the gaps. If you see ANY toes I've oafishly stepped on (because some research didn't turn up much in the way of results), please let me know so I can groan in my retardedness. And, lastly - Kaas, there's an article of clothing in here just for you =D
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me.
Read Chapter Six | Read Chapter Eight
Mohinder set his phone on the table before stomaching another sip of watery tea, disdainfully picking over the menu while waiting to be joined by Noah Bennet and his partner. He culturally had a difficult time grasping this country’s obsession with red meat, wrinkling his nose at the garish pictures of the stuff splashed largely across the oversized pages portraying the collection of their selectable fares in arrangements that were laughably designed to stimulate the appetite. He thought maybe he just wanted a salad… or perhaps the French onion soup. Molly, on the other hand, happy to be back on her native soil, was very satisfied with the prospect of ordering an eight ounce filet. Medium rare. Now he knew why she was so insistent on coming… Forty minutes later he watched Noah tuck into his own top sirloin while his English partner sampled the salmon, and Molly, having chickened out and settled for the more kid-friendly pasta alfredo, nimbly missed the drinking glasses as she slapped her map down in the middle of the table.
“Anxious to get rid of us, huh?” Noah chuckled to the girl in a way that wasn’t quite genuine. Molly only showed him a creamy white smile that oozed with acerbic teenage sarcasm. She picked up her butter knife and performed her magic, spearing the creased sheet of paper with the tip on an area smack dab in the middle of the state of Texas.
“She’s just southeast of thirty-one north, one-oh-one west.”
“That’s Edwards Plateau country, few hours from Midland… pretty scrubby, not many places to hide,” he didn’t do much to disguise the shiver of fear that crawled down his spine. “Outside of the cities, not many people to hear anything besides a few ranchers… it’s awfully remote.”
Perceptive to his partner’s mood swing, Edgar signaled the waiter for their check. “If we’re lucky though, mate, maybe that’ll make ‘er easier to spot…”
“I cannot thank you enough,” Noah imparted as they made their hasty exit after signing the credit card receipt, leaving Mohinder behind to marvel over their speedy departure, spoon still hovering over his steaming bowl stringing a trail of molten provolone, mouth-breathing to avoid allowing the stench of Noah’s wastefully half-eaten shank of bloody flesh to pervade his nostrils.
“That was… far less complicated than I thought it would be,” he muttered once the men had left.
“You wish… that was only half of it.” Molly lifted her utensil a second time, letting the weight of its blunt end fall a second time to a position just north of Houston. “Earlier, I think Janice was on a plane. This is where she is now.”
“Looks like they aren’t the only ones headed to Texas…”
Mohinder signaled as wildly as his mild-mannered self could muster, vivaciously eager to pay his tab and catch up to Noah Bennet. He wasn’t a devout man, but he knew better than to ignore an omen - they were meant to work together.
~*~*~
“I dunno, Neil, this little guy seems a bit too fair to be a Mexican or even a Cuban,” Sally proclaimed, suspending the little boy in the air while she wiggled her thumbs into his belly, tickling away the disoriented insecurity that came with having been separated from his mother. “But who else would just leave him in our garden if not for some unfortunate, underprivileged soul… we should really call the State …”
“Prob’ly should,” Neil Culbertson mumbled, rustling the newspaper sweeping across his lap as he reclined in his sitting chair, reading glasses glittering on the tip of his stubby nose in the expensive lead crystal lamplight. Managing a half-assed attempt at folding the periodical into a vaguely rectangular shape that made absolutely no sense, he stuffed it into the sweet-smelling cedar magazine rack that dressed up the little area of the study. After some effort he eventually levered himself out of the chair and into his boots and was on his way to the front door when the phone rang. Any hope that Sally’s hands were too full to answer it was dashed.
“Neil!”
“I’m on my way out to the shed, Ma - just have ‘em call back tomorrow.”
“But it’s Brother Jacob! Says he needs to talk to you!” The baby was fussing again - Sally was about to lose her patience with her husband.
“I’ll take it in the shed - tell ‘im to hold on a second.”
“You should really hire someone to work on that old tractor, Neil - you’re gonna hurt yourself. Those things are dangerous…”
He suspected the only reason why Sally wasn’t calling the nanny was because the phone line was otherwise occupied, regardless of the fact it was a tad late in the evening. He allowed the manservant to open the door, admitting him access to the opulent palisade that constituted the front porch - towering with rusty-pinkish sandstone columns casting twilit moon-shadows over the bubbling fountain, sluicing cheerful rivulets of water over smoothly tumbled stones in the center of the circle drive. He waved the employee off as he marched away on foot - it was past time he head home. Kicking at the soaked grass clippings stowing away on the toes of his boots for the duration of his trek down the hill and across the estate, he ensured he was in fact alone and slipped unseen into a large and remote utility shed erected at the distant edge of the sprawling expanse of lawn. He picked up the phone next to the densely populated tool bench and waited until he heard the click, telling him Sally had set down the receiver in exchange for her endeavor to mother the wayward infant.
“Brother Jacob.”
“Good evenin’. Am I to understand your new… guests are finding their accommodations to be comfortable?”
Neil thought of the smile that briefly flashed across the baby’s face when Sally took advantage of the soft spots universal to all children his age.
“We’re taking good care of them, yes. They’re very happy. What can I do for you?”
“Jim called me. I suppose he thinks it’s more seemly for you to receive your information from a man of faith?”
“He’s always been a suspicious character.”
“I guess so. Anyhow, he caught up with the tail at the Atlanta airport. The guy met an Indian there - not the American kind - with a girl who is American. He wasn’t sure how much he knew, but he’s hot on our trail - headed straight for Midland. It’s not a far jump to the Plateau where the cave is located.”
“It might be worthwhile to send some folks out there to keep an eye on things. I’m a bit… tied up here - would you mind giving him a call?”
“Certainly, no problem.”
As he replaced the phone to its cradle he reminded himself he didn’t have much to worry about - he still possessed all of the cards. One little nosy man in horn-rimmed glasses was never going to present much of a challenge, no matter how many sidekicks he was able to recruit. He settled his formidable bulk between the tall, wide rear wheels of the tractor and dropped his feet into the mechanic’s pit underneath. Once inside, he touched a button on a panel that revealed a doorway to a secret room. Inside, he beheld his other powerful bargaining chip - a dark-haired and sweetly pretty Janice - strapped to a hospital bed and kept under heavy a fog of sedatives for the duration of her captivity. Next to her, on a low aluminum table, rested a vial filled with the chemical he’d need to drip into her IV should things go wrong…
The chemical he’d need to claim her life should Matt Parkman disobey.
~*~*~
Noah had just placed his carry-on bag in the overhead compartment when his phone rang. In spite of knowing that their totalitarian flight attendant would remind him to soon power down the device or suffer the consequences, he answered the jingling tone in the hopes that the voice on the other end would tell him something worthwhile. It was Virgil - a colleague of his and Lauren’s from days long gone by - the same man who had done them a rather sizeable favor a few months back by absconding with a particularly troublesome individual from Central Park in a pair of heavily armored Suburbans.
“Virgil, hey buddy - how’s your tenant?”
“Sullen and quiet, as usual. An interesting study subject. Got a lot more polite when Rob brought him a Guinness though.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get too trusting.” He settled down next to the window and glanced at Edgar, his arms elbow-deep in the cubby space, before he discreetly added, “Samuel didn’t get where he was without a certain level of charisma - I promise he’s only biding his time.”
“Well, he can bide away, it won’t change nothing for ‘im. Got some info on the license plate you wanted me to run, though.”
“Yeah? Got a hit?”
“Not so much, but better than nothing. The van’s got a clean record, but it’s registered as a fleet vehicle for a marketing company in Houston - Bartlett & Wells. They work pretty extensively with domestic producers of petroleum products, tending to specialize in promoting the sale of American oil.”
“So… damn. All that tells me is that Sylar stole a van from some marketing reps on their way to a conference…” With his computer pressed against his belly Edgar took his seat, but kept his shoulders angled toward his partner, paying close attention.
“Nope - we thought about that one already, started doing some digging. If we could confirm that the company was missing one or two employees, I could get their names and a coroner’s report - thought that maybe if a body had been found we’d have a location that would at least give us some clue to his movement.”
“Except that same van has been seen in places like Chicago and my daughter’s college campus, which suggests some pretty erratic and unpredictable movement.”
“Sure, that’s true… but here’s the interesting thing: it doesn’t matter. All employees were present and accounted for, and - this is the real kicker - their databases didn’t show any evidence of a stolen vehicle. Which can only mean someone there knows he has that van.”
Noah straightened. “He’s not working alone.”
“Exactly.”
“But… why a marketing company?” He felt childishly obtuse - even as the question left his mouth he knew the answer.
“Well, it’s one of two things. Either that firm is a front for an operation like the Company, and they’re ridding the world of the Para-Human Threat by working him to their advantage, or the mastermind behind this whole mess is someone who has a close relationship to the firm and also has the same agenda.”
Noah mentally catalogued images from the clippings still crushed against his laptop in the travel bag above his head.
“The Preservists… this reeks of them, they’ve gotta be involved somehow… Okay, with that in mind, I can try to understand why he’d kidnap Claire, but why Gretchen?”
“Ruling out a case of mistaken identity?”
“Oh no, there is absolutely no way -”
“Then I’d have to say the roommate was either the bait or a tool to get what he wanted.”
‘What Sylar wanted’ was promising to keep Noah from getting any much-needed sleep on the plane. In truth, it had been robbing him of much-needed sleep for quite some time… years, if all was told.
“I can look into Neil Culbertson,” Virgil continued, “the Preservists’ spokesman, start from the top of the food chain if you really think Sylar has a a mutual relationship with his group and this company… I can see if the man is in any way affiliated with Bartlett & Wells. Rattling their cages might save some lives, put the focus on us for a while.”
“That would be great, yeah, but be careful - a man like Culbertson has a lot of… influence.”
“So he’s evil, then? The usual dangerous variety?”
“Definitely evil, yes. A powerful string-puller - the only kind of man Sylar will tolerate enough to align himself with… although I don’t anticipate the deal will work out so well for Culbertson in the end. Partnerships with Sylar tend not to.”
“So I should move quickly.”
“If for no other reason than I wonder who else he’s killed or kidnapped. Lauren’s actively investigating some of the killings with her partner and I haven’t got any details yet other than the fact that it appears there are some heads that have been opened up in the, uh, typical fashion.” The flight attendant gave him a double-take while assisting another passenger with the overhead compartment. “Look, I have to jump off here - if you can’t get a hold of me, call Lauren - we’re working together on this with some other associates you can trust. If you play your cards right, you could get yourself into some paying work.”
“Working for who?”
Grateful for the information he’d received, he didn’t want to put a strain on their relationship.
“It’s probably better you don’t ask.”
“Right.”
He slid the phone shut, severing the connection, just before a trio of piping notes told him he’d received a text message from Lauren. Glancing at the display, he saw only four words: ‘Weird stuff - NO BODY.’ He squinted as the backlight from Edgar’s monitor flashed in the low darkness of the cabin, mystified over his girlfriend’s rather obvious loose end. Crossing his arms over his chest he lifted his face to the narrow portal separating them from first class where Mohinder and Molly were flying, having to make the superfluous upgrade in order to get a seat on the fully booked aircraft at the last minute. Lauren wasn’t the only person who was missing something here.
“Marketin’ company, eh?” Edgar broke in, starting up a browser, ready to begin a search. The man may have had a shady past (who, between the two of them, didn’t really?), but he came to the table with an admirable work ethic. “Sounds dodgy.”
“My friend, you are truly quick with everything,” Noah replied on autopilot. His mind was swirling with questions as he swept his unfocused gaze down the aisle. Mohinder was in the States at the behest of Matt Parkman, looking for Janice and the baby. But where was Parkman himself? And why did this seem so coincidental? Why did he have the sinking feeling Matt fit into the puzzle somewhere? And where? And how on earth could a witnessed killing turn up no body? Who would take off with something like that? And why? He’d stumbled upon something that had more than just embroiled his daughter and Sylar. He wondered what he’d find if he made a trip to Houston to investigate the premises of this dubious ‘marketing company’.
“Who’m I lookin’ up?” Edgar interrupted his train of thought with another question.
“Let’s start with Bartlett & Wells - I wanna see who they’re affiliated with, whose asses they kiss and who kisses theirs.”
“Sounds… delightful.”
~*~*~
The fact that she didn’t feel the pain meant absolutely nothing. Claire was still a human being who did what any human being would do if she had been carpeted with rapidly swelling snakebites by countless swarming rattlesnakes - she flailed and screamed in the instinctual sort of self-preserving panic that was honed by millions of years of evolution. Unable to escape, her mind was beginning to crumble under the suffocating weight of the horror - she was going to faint. And, as if to make matters inconceivably worse, a floating orb of light drifted down into the hole to actually illuminate the squirming nightmare she didn’t want to see.
“OH JESUS CHRIST!!!” he shrieked, and she was plunged back into blessed blackness punctuated by the hard smack of his body flung flat against the wall in paralyzing terror. “Oh my god…”
“Sylar,” she rasped through gritted teeth, “please do not choose now to become a big girl.”
“They don’t have rattlesnakes in New York, Claire.” She’d forgotten he was a soft-footed city boy. “Just lots of rats… and yeah, okay, fine, occasionally someone’s pet boa that got loose in the sewer -”
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!”
“ALRIGHT! Alright!”
He summoned another ball of light and hovered out across the writhing den of snapping, needle-fanged jaws. He jerked wildly with a gasping ‘holy shit’ as one struck a bit too close to the trailing toe of his right Chuck Taylor. He trembled in place for a moment, eyes squeezed shut as he tried to reign some sort of control over his increasingly frenzied state of phobia. She didn’t know what nauseated her more: the thought of the massive dose of oozing, snot-like venom sliding through her veins, or the sight of her father’s stolen ability being employed before her very eyes by the man who claimed his life. And then there was the fact that she needed him to use it…
And on top of that was the hilariously ridiculous notion that two completely invulnerable people could be so idiotically scared of a bunch of silly snakes.
Pulling himself together, he reached out a shaking, tentative arm…
“Take my hand -”
…an arm that was ripped away - “Holy hell!!!” - the second he saw a triangular, reptilian head slither from underneath the cuff of her jacket.
“We are so retarded…” she muttered under her breath as she watched him convulse with the heebie-jeebies.
“Fuck this, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” he stated plainly. For the first time ever, she nearly sighed with relief when she felt his invisible grip wrap its unseen cradle around her entire body, lifting her effortlessly from the depths of the abhorrent trap. Feeling sluggish from a million healing wounds, every heartbeat replacing the blood in her body with freely flowing poison, she put her life in Sylar’s hands and let her head loll forward, drowsily dropping her chin to her chest. When her feet touched something like solid ground again they wouldn’t support her weight - her knees buckled and she was allowed to slump tenderly to the muddy earthen floor. Her skin was as clammy and wet as the enveloping cave walls and she shook with feverish tremors as the foreign substance invading her fighting circulatory system ran its dreadful course. The nearly constant background dripping was occluded by the rush of her pulse and her racing breath pounding between her ears. She fought hysteria when her lungs began to fill, making her feel like she was sucking air through a straw. Hot, dry fingertips brushed across her swollen, discolored cheek to tuck into the neck space pinched between her shoulder and her ear.
“Claire, you’re like ice… this isn’t normal. What’s happening…?”
“What, you afraid I’m gonna die?” she spat, muscles seizing with what would’ve been wracking pains. “Leave you all alone to wander eternity all by your pitiful little self?” It was probably insensitive given he’d just rescued her, but she was too miserable to care. And he didn’t answer her, sinking into a wordless sort of wounded gloom - she’d either stabbed the truth or touched a nerve. Or both. She coughed up a wad of something gross growing in the back of her throat as she curled her aching middle into a tight ball. “Rattlesnake bites aren’t usually fatal, but I’ve got enough venom in me to kill a horse. So, this might take a little bit. But I’ll be alright.” She whined and twisted when she felt something wriggle under her shirt, but her state of exhaustion prevented her from taking any other action. She didn’t fight when she felt his hand dip beneath the collar, index finger tunneling unnervingly between the confluence of her breasts, as the last of her attackers was withdrawn from the confines of the constricting article of clothing.
“Fry you legless bastard!” his irritated hiss echoed bravely in their close quarters as he threw the creature away and blinded them both with electrifying radiance, tossing spinning shadows off of the surrounding irregular surfaces as he cooked the thing alive.
“It’s funny,” she wheezed, the last of her strength ebbing from her they way the tide drains from between each grain of sand, “I learned in my biology class that snakes actually do have legs… they’re just ves… vest… vesig…”
“Vestigial,” he supplied, his voice as silky and smooth as a creepy spider’s web, yet providing her a strong anchor to which she could desperately cling. She was going to be fine. She wasn’t going to die. No, she wasn’t.
“Yes, vestigial.” Her addled brain carefully processed the word. “The bones are fused… they never poke through the body…”
His response was to drape something warm and soft and somewhat heavy across her shoulders… probably his jacket, she realized. She weakly fumbled her arm around to push it away.
“I don’t need this, I don’t -”
“It’s cold in here, Claire.”
“Then you keep it - I don’t feel the cold.”
“Would you just stop it? I’m trying to help you, okay? Would you let me? Just keep it, and relax - fuck.”
She had hurt his feelings earlier, he was sore and touchy.
“Why?”
“Because, it’s first aid, stupid. I’m treating for shock.” He sighed in a defeat to which he hadn’t actually succumbed. “And if my mother were here, she’d smack me upside my head.”
“Your mother should smack you for a lot of things.” And then, with a mind clouded by weariness, her mouth worked faster than she could stop it. “Your real mother or your adopted mother?”
The silence that crept over the walls like the glistening sheen of calcium-rich water was as frigid and stale as the air that rattled in her throat. Suddenly uncomfortable, she peeked through the slits of her eyelids and winked against his retinal assault. He was kneeling before her still, and the contours of his face and shoulders were laid bare by the brilliance he cupped in the hands he rested in his lap. He was drawn tight as a bowstring and his jaw was furiously clenched. He’d become, himself, a monstrous man-shaped rattlesnake - disturbed and aggravated, taut and prepared to strike. She hated when he got unpredictable like this. Just when she thought he might electrocute her ungrateful ass, he finally spoke.
“I don’t remember my real mother. Well, except for…”
He blinked slowly and his mood deteriorated into something far more dismal, staring into nothingness as his well-shaped teeth chewed at the soft, fleshy divot of his upper lip. Without warning, as if attempting to hide from her scathing line of questioning, he extinguished his lamp. She didn’t press him for more information, and not just because she didn’t have the energy - she got the feeling he’d inadvertently admitted more to her than he’d likely ever done before to anyone else. In spite of her irritatingly irrepressible curiosity, she let the conversation dwindle.
After a few tensely quiet moments, she felt his fingers thread through the hair she’d mashed into the mud under the weight of her head, lifting it to slip a cottony, rolled bundle underneath. It smelled of detergent, deodorant, a tasteful hint of cologne, and something else decidedly male. This time she was too feeble to refuse him.
“You didn’t pee all over yourself, did you?”
“…uh, what?”
“When I fell? And I broke the circuit?”
“Oh. Right. No, I managed to control myself, thanks.”
“Good. Thank you for saving me… again,” she offered, to lift his bruised spirits and act as a pridefully unspoken apology. “I forgot to thank you the last time. At the college.”
“Don’t sweat it. I owe you.”
She was unable to formulate a reply as her consciousness was carried away instead on a wave of fitful sleep.
~*~*~
*** in Hell, maybe a dream… ***
The street was as barren as a desert, with tall, stick-like lampposts forming a giant fence restraining clawing, skeletal trees and looming, ghostly vacant towers. The sky was as grey as the asphalt, but Claire still felt like it was high noon in the Old West, crushed styrofoam cups and other wasted scraps of litter tumbling across the roadway like scrubby tumbleweeds. She was startled when something warm and soft circled her right ankle, and she looked down at the same time she heard the muted ‘meow’ to find a mostly white calico with an orange tail and a tortoiseshell splotch over both ears peering up at her with sharp green eyes.
“Hello, Headphones,” she whispered into the whistling wind. The cat chirped a peremptory call before moving quickly ahead down the block. At the crest of the horizon she stopped and crouched low, as if she were waiting for something. Claire placed one foot in front of the other which prompted the cat to move again - she was asking her to follow. Claire was happy to oblige.
She trotted after the little darting animal as best she could, winding through dark alleys, abandoned parking lots, over fences and under overpasses until she came upon a nondescript chain-link fence where her diminutive spirit guide stopped and sat, wrapping her oddly colored tail around her delicate forepaws before lifting one to wash her face. Claire twined her fingertips amongst the links as she pressed her chest against the cool lines of metal, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. The building inside was sober and austere, as featureless as the lawn that ringed it save for a few old, gnarled, and impressively trunked oak trees opening embracing limbs in a scholarly stance.
The place was a school.
Just as the realization hit her, a bell as shrill and fragile as a distant memory sounded and the front doors swung wide to admit a stream of unidentifiable shapes. They appeared as diaphanous tufts of flame, like the kind that adorn the tips of birthday cake candles, jubilantly flickering and dancing as they moved all over the lawn in pairs and groups, socializing like children.
And then he walked out.
Unlike the others, he was recognizably human - a young boy, probably twelve, close to thirteen. He was waifish and long, bearing the characteristics of someone who’d grow to become quite tall but probably from an embarrassingly late growth spurt, and his thick brow and dark eyes were obscured behind large glasses. His shoulders were hunched in a manner that screamed to anyone who’d survived their formative teenage years that he was begging to remain unnoticed as he descended to the last step and sat down, bodily tucked against a square cement column displaying a badly weathered statue of the school mascot. He removed a small, leather-bound journal from where it was clutched against his heart and placed it gingerly into his lap before he used one finger to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Producing a pen from a back pocket, he began to privately pour his soul onto the empty pages.
One of the milling flame bodies became aware of his presence. A spindly orange arm reached for a crumpled wad of paper and threw it at him, landing with a bounce in the middle of the book on the boy’s knees. He flicked the detritus harmlessly away, but Claire got the feeling she hadn’t seen the last of the treatment judging by the pink that flushed across his cheeks. He pulled his top lip into his mouth in preparation for the barrage he knew was to follow.
Unsatisfied with being ignored, the flame body approached the dark boy and the breeze lifted to Claire’s listening ears a tiny, mournful skirl of a voice that chided with words she couldn’t understand… with an admonishing tone she did. It was picking on the boy, and it was drawing a crowd. One by one, the attacker was joined by others of its kind, and their combined chorus of voices became a howl that blew like a banshee through the creaking branches of the ancient, leafless trees. Words began to pop with recognition like fleeting, bursting bubbles, things like ‘weird’, ‘creepy’, ‘abnormal’, ‘psychotic’, ‘trash’, ‘scum’… she didn’t want to hear any more but they kept coming, mingled up in phrases of untranslated gibberish. The boy did his best to pretend he wasn’t listening, but was betrayed by the tears that had begun to trickle behind the angry reflections in the lenses of his glasses. Before long, however, he’d hit his breaking point - he slammed his journal shut and collapsed in on himself, dropping his forehead against the hard, brown cover and slinging his arms over the back of his head where grasping fingers tugged at his shirt near his shoulders. His hidden face audibly wept.
“But I told you - I can’t remember my real mother!” she heard him wail into the muffled space of his body between fits of wet sniffles.
“Yes you do.” Claire spun around, shifting her eyes back and forth across the sky, searching for the source of the disembodied murmur. “You remember one thing. What is it?”
“Leave me alone… I’m different now, I promise I’ll be good…”
She turned back to him in time to watch the original antagonist stretch out another lanky golden appendage to grasp a painful chunk of the boy’s hair, thrusting his puffy, streaked face out into the open, exposing and humiliating him. And as if that weren’t enough, that same fiery fist pulled back and hit the boy square in the nose, popping a crimson spray of blood through the air and knocking his glasses away, falling to the sidewalk where cracks like spiderwebs etched through the surface of the lenses.
And then the scene changed.
Tapping a well concealed reserve of inner strength, the boy sneered and stood, slowly and imperiously. He raised a threatening hand and for the first time Claire could truly see who he was as his features glazed over with a very familiar malignant gleam of murderous intent. With a flick of his wrist the nasty little flame body was lifted above the ground and its windy, singing cries reached a new pitch.
“Don’t, Gabriel. Don’t do it,” the faceless ventriloquist mirrored the thoughts inside her head, making her feel like a puppet in a twisted children’s after-school special. Before her eyes, all of the oscillating little candle people transformed into moaning, rotting zombies - their sightless eyes rolling, penetrating him with haunting accusation, their peeling skin as grey as everything else. Claire knew them though… knew their faces: she saw Meredith, Nathan, Jackie… Dr. Suresh… so many she knew, and others she didn’t. They mindlessly rushed him, leper hands tugging and tearing at him, forcing him to face his own sins. His demons. They surrounded him.
“I told you I’m different now,” he straightened his spine with courageous resignation, letting his arm return to his side. He didn’t make another sound as he allowed them to devour him.
“NO!” Claire was surprised to hear herself scream, flinging a useless hand toward him, too late as they took him to pieces and whittled him down to nothing. When he was gone, they all disappeared, swallowed by the ground, leaving behind a lonely object that beckoned to her from the hard corner of the step on which it sat. Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of white caught her attention - Headphones had gracefully leapt the fence and was crossing the yard. When she reached the leather tome, she poked inquisitively at it with tickling whiskers. Finding her feet to be feathery light, Claire easily hurled her body over the barrier and joined the cat, taking the book into her hands and laying it open, caressing the dry texture of the pages that held Gabriel’s secrets. In blue ink and unmistakable penmanship, she saw the same markings she’d seen on a blackboard not long ago during her waking life - a table headed with a capital ‘C’ and a capital ‘S’, detailing the similarities between the two warring individuals. The same original points had been made - both abandoned, both adopted, both immortal - but something new had been added.
‘Watched mom die.’
Shaken by this new revelation, she closed the cover and the grey world faded into darkness.
~*~*~
If she hadn’t been aware of the muscle movement she would’ve sworn she never really opened her eyes. She was immersed in dense, velvety black so substantial she could believe it was tangible. Her fingers searched for pockets, looking for the one that held her phone. She felt large ones with a heft that seemed alien to her, then she remembered the fabric that blanketed her wasn’t her own. Slipping underneath it she sifted through her own jacket, smiling when her fingertips curled around the device in question. She winced when she flipped it open, bathing the small, dank chamber in an abrupt dazzle of light. Across from her, miraculously, Sylar didn’t stir - the even rhythm of his soft inhale and the long, slow puff of his exhale, uninterrupted, told her he was still asleep.
How he managed that, though, was beyond her. His body language, even at rest, spoke volumes of his discomfort. Seated upright, his arms were compressed against his chest by knees that were pulled up tight against them, and his face was buried between the bony joints for warmth. A restless shiver ran unbidden through the expanse of his lengthy frame - he was freezing cold, having gifted her two layers of his clothing leaving nothing but a simple white t-shirt to protect him from the humid chill of their underground environment.
Feeling better, but still a bit too weak to return to him his garments, she pushed herself to sit up Indian-style and was considering passing the time until he woke up playing Tetris when she heard some items in his pockets jingle in response to the motion. Insatiably intrigued, she withdrew the noisy objects to examine them more closely in the light.
His left pocket contained a very ordinary set of keys, bound on a chain with what was once a black eight ball, whose paint had all but chipped away over time. His right carried a wallet and a watch, which she was surprised he wasn’t wearing given his fabled fascination with them. She flipped open the leathery billfold, finding forty-three dollars inside with a small contingent of change, three worn receipts whose ink had been bleached away through friction, an old movie ticket stub, a punch card to his favorite sandwich shop, a modest cadre of credit cards, and the holy grail - his driver’s license. While she was fairly certain hers only displayed the middle initial, she found it very interesting he’d opted to print his full legal name on the stiffly laminated parcel of identification. ‘That’s something only a serial killer would do,’ she reasoned.
His middle name was Aaron. Which meant his initials spelled ‘GAG’. She clamped a hand over her mouth, unable to stifle the throaty giggle.
She held her breath when he suddenly snuffled, rubbing his face against the backs of his thighs before surrendering again to continued slumber. For a strange moment, he resembled the boy who’d just occupied the vivid dream from which she’d awoken. Once he was still, she lifted the watch into the phantom glow, turning away the glare to peer into its spartan face.
When she saw the name in stark white on contrasting black - the one that lashed at her with visions of torment and a ceaseless, merciless hunt - the priceless timepiece slid through her fingers and tumbled to clatter against the slimy stone. This successfully managed to rouse him.
She skittered around in the thin layer of mud for a split second until she thankfully retrieved the object, shoving it back into the pocket just before his sleepy, dark eyes rose to meet hers, instantly frowning at the renewed use of her cell phone as a torch.
“Please tell me the indestructible girl isn’t afraid of the dark…” he groaned as he stretched his kinked muscles.
“Please tell me the infamous Sylar isn’t afraid of snakes,” she retorted just as easily.
“Touché.” He rolled to his feet and produced a sparking blue lantern before moving away down the corridor.
“Where’re you going?”
“Thirsty.” His monosyllabic answers made it evident that his mood hadn’t improved. He was only gone a short time, but the sound of his padding footfalls never dissipated - he hadn’t gone far. He reappeared out of the darkness, having abandoned his electricity in favor of water since the two didn’t prefer to mix, with hands cupped steadily before him. Each step he took was like that of a tightrope walker. “Here,” he offered, holding a rippling little pool beneath her nose where it twinkled in the soft phosphorescence. It reeked of mud, lye, and sulphur. It was likely murky and teaming with amoebae or other microscopic organisms with fuzzy little flagella and… worms. Definitely long, squiggly, freakishly blind parasitic cave worms.
“Oh my god that’s disgusting…” No sooner had the words fallen from her lips than was she splashed in the face with his entire payload. He stalked away into the void, leaving her to drip and hack, sneezing the contaminated water out of her nostrils. “YOU ASS!!!”
“Here,” his voice ricocheted around them with a little more force than was necessary as he knelt before her again, initiating round two.
“You can’t make me -”
“You know I can. You’re in recovery and you need fluids.”
“But -”
“In the mouth or in the face.”
“You are such a shithead.” He sloshed a little when he made a sudden movement in response to her reticence, but she was quicker this time, clasping her fingers around his wrist and arresting him before he could douse her again. “Alright, alright!”
The water’s flavor bore no similarity to its pungent odor, tasting oddly pleasant and cool as it refreshed an esophagus she hadn’t realized had become so parched. Ducking his chin to the side in an unusually shy gesture, the yellowy dimness did nothing to mitigate the blush that sprang to the tips of his ears. Obviously, he hadn’t put much thought into whether or not she’d actually lay her lips against his fingertips… and he hadn’t been prepared. Feeling disconcertingly inappropriate, she pulled away. Anxious to shrug off the spike of juvenile awkwardness, she yanked his jacket from around her shoulders and lifted it up to him with his shirt.
“I don’t need these anymore… I warmed ‘em up for you.”
She climbed laboriously to her feet while he dressed and elicited an airy sound that meant he appreciated her lingering body heat after his wretchedly soggy nap. Wavering a little on her feet, she nearly tripped over the charbroiled coil of a slender body - the snake he’d barbecued earlier. The rumble in her belly protested against her good sense… but since she’d already drank the water, she didn’t see why not.
“Hungry?” she asked, proudly presenting her spoils.
Slack-jawed, he gaped at her in utter amazement that she could be this serious about something so clearly insane.
“You can’t be…”
“Of course I am! We’re in Texas - these things grow like weeds, people eat ‘em all the time. I’ve had it before, it’s not really that bad - not fishy like alligator or frog legs.”
“You’re gonna make me sick…”
“Seriously? You’ve seen the inside of a human brain! What could be grosser than that?!?”
“Gross?!? The human br - are you crazy? Claire -”
“I can’t believe we’re having a gross-out contest right now -”
“ - the human brain is one of the most complex and ornate tools this planet has ever seen! It’s the temple of the soul, Claire! There’s nothing else like it! Even super-computers with multi-threaded, over-clocked, water-cooled processors can’t do what it can do - not even with self-teaching A.I. chips, with all of their probabilities and logic - none of them can replicate - none of them can compute,” he made a flurry of flicks with his fingertips, “the concept of ‘arbitrary’! They can learn language but they can’t truly acquire its meaning! They can be taught to paint and compose music, but they have no appreciation for it!
“And do you have any idea how much power it would take for a system to even come close to operating like a human brain???” She could only stare at him, wide-eyed and stunned by his tirade. “You would need at least ten megawatts - do you even know how much that is???”
“…no…”
“It’s the same amount of energy produced by an entire hydroelectric plant! And it’s all up here,” he tapped the side of his forehead, “all of those mysteries, confined by the porous, wafer-like barrier of a flimsy bone skull. Completely organic, mystifying in that its success is measured by how it operates in complete chaos, as opposed to the artificial, mechanical precision that’s invented by the very same brain. And what else on earth could interpret something as intricate as genetic code - so exquisite, it allows for mutation, creating people like you and me… It might be messy, Claire, but it could never be described as ‘gross’.”
“Unless it’s open and bleeding, and splattered all over the coffee table in the middle of your living room…”
Her indifferent and factual reply punched the air right out of him. He deflated like she’d stuck a pin in his balloon. But she was right and she wasn’t going to say she was sorry.
“You missed your calling,” she said instead, “you should’ve been an engineer… instead of a deranged nutjob.”
He bent lithely at the middle to pick up her cell phone, snapping it shut when he twirled another orb into existence and sending it to her outstretched hand on a telekinetic zip line. Stuffing his free hand deep into a pocket, he leaned against the sweating limestone and crossed his ankles out in front of him.
“I graduated from MIT.” She barely heard his hushed admission. “Was asked to apply for a prestigious assistantship with a fat stipend to pursue graduate work at Stanford.”
“Oh my god, and you gave that up to work on watches?!?”
“Timepieces -”
“Whatever. Seriously? Why would you do that???”
He started to say something, then pursed his lips, thinking better of it. He tapped one heel lightly, pock-marking the mushy earth, while he arranged his thoughts.
“I’ve never been… competitive. I prefer a sure bet. And it’s no secret, Claire, that I have some… behavioral issues…”
She saw what he left unsaid as clear as the light in the palm of his hand - he had been terrified of rejection. Paired with some of the passages she’d read in his journal, hidden covetously in the pocket at her side, she supposed it could’ve been a side effect of having been abandoned.
“Heh,” he barked a cruel chuckle, “I wish I had a nickel for every time my mother asked me the same thing.” The corners of his mouth fell, lining his face with a somber frown. It was true, Virginia had been hard on him. “Dr. Suresh had changed everything, but then he…”
And just like that, the conversation was over. His nostrils flared and he shoved himself off the wall, moving toward the yawning drop into the Shadowy Pit of Rattling Reptilian Death. Cautiously, he lowered himself to one knee, not willing to tempt fate a second time just to have another look. She would’ve been lying if she said the thought of pushing him over the edge didn’t cross her mind… she sidled up next to him instead as he extended a hand to stroke the open air above the den.
“Do you feel a draft?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised - those snakes had to come from somewhere… why didn’t I think of that while I was down there???”
“Well, to be fair, they’re snakes… so they probably snuck in through holes about this big around,” he held up a hand to form an “O” shape about two inches in diameter, “and you were trying to be positive weren’t you…”
“Yeah, kinda…” she replied, massaging her eyebrows. “You wouldn’t happen to have some kind of weird snake-charming power, would you?”
“No, but I could disintegrate them if you weren’t so much of an animal lover...”
She paused in consideration.
“… I did say they grew like weeds…”
“Shit. Are you kidding?”
“What?”
“I just… I just didn’t expect that to work. Fuck.”
“…what???”
His melodramatic sigh was thoroughly morose.
“You’re gonna make me go back down there, aren’t you.”
Claire couldn’t wipe the wicked devil smirk from her face.
“Well… you do owe me, right? I mean, those were your words…?”
“I hate you.”