As the two maintenance workers finished painting the over the glass of the cell on Level 5, Noah Bennet and Sylar took off sunglasses, both blinking.
“So, Noah,” Sylar quipped, “you have yet to congratulate me on not taking his brain.”
Behind them, bright slivers of light escape from the cracks in the paint.
Noah shot back, “You think this is funny? You think that just because you’ve stopped killing people for a couple of months, it makes up for the way you violated my daughter?”
Sylar didn’t get a chance to defend himself, as a female intruded in on the conversation, “Oh, Mr. Bennet, at least your little Claire’s still alive.” Elle strolled in, adding, “That’s more than I can say for my dad.” Large streams of electricity shot from her hands toward the pair.
Sylar swiftly placed himself in front of Noah, shoving his partner back and taking the full brunt of Elle’s attack. “Get outta here, Noah!”
Bennet stubbornly pulled out his gun and aimed, only to have Elle charge it with her power.
Sylar repeated, “Get out! I can handle her!” A blast from Elle put him on the ground. Only partway healed, he leapt up and held her against a wall telekinetically.
Inside his head, the ticking began. There was a tingling in an uncharted part of his brain. It ached like an atrophied muscle. It knew of the electricity coursing through its neurons; it knew how to take that energy and amplify it and expel it out from the body.
But her groans drowned out the ticking. Up on the wall, Elle struggled ferociously against his telekinesis, her teeth clenched and her hair in disarray. She screeched and howled and shocked the unforgiving cement behind her with futile arcs of lightning.
“Shh, Firefly, my little lightning bug, it’ll all be over soon.”
The rage in her eyes turned to fear.
He raised two fingers. A small cut appeared on Elle’s forehead and a small droplet of blood rolled down her cheek and began to fall to the ground. Sylar watched that droplet, able to sense every molecule. Liquids were fascinating to him: just enough electromagnetic charge between particles for them to adhere together without dispersing into the air, but not quite enough to allow them to hold a rigid form. He knew how the surface of the droplet would ripple as it came into contact with the air. He could predict the exact pattern it would create when it splattered against the cement. He knew how all the components of that blood would cause it to be more viscous than pure water. He could also feel all the cells in the blood breaking down as they were exposed to the unfamiliar environment outside her veins and arteries. Her blood was so much less resilient than Claire’s.
Claire.
He paused for a moment, thinking of the cheerleader. It was Claire who survived the procedure. Claire, who talked to him throughout it. Claire, who cursed him while her body blessed his with this immortality. She let him borrow her power. She… shared it with him.
And, once again, he had a young, petite, blonde woman before him, offering him an arousing new ability. Only she would die giving him. Because her blood is weak.
And she would not be sharing her power. He would be stealing it.
Startled, Sylar took a step back, dropping his hand, dropping Elle. The cut on her forehead was deep, but only a half an inch long, and barely scraping the skull. A fighter till the end, she sent a painful shock, which struck his thigh. It hurt like hell, but he healed within seconds.
After studying her for a moment, he began to taunt her, with intentional venom, “Is that all you got, Firefly? I killed your father. For fun. To steal from him.”
He stood up straight, only to be thrown backwards into the far wall by the next blast. He pulled himself up again, and floated himself toward her. Gripping her arms too tightly, pressing his body against her too closely, he whispered in her ear, “Is that all you got? I’m beginning to think you didn’t even like the man.”
He was rewarded with a shock powerful enough to light a city block for a week, but he maintained his grip on Elle, wrapping his arms tighter around her shoulders.
It was a religious experience. Sylar could feel his body waging war against the attack. The lightning seared his skin, but he could feel his flesh regenerating again and again. His hair was burning, but his scalp was unrelentless in producing more. Overheated organ tissue was repaired in heartbeats. His blood boiled, but his heart kept pumping, pushing oxygen into his veins, providing him with antibodies to fight the bacteria in the air. It pumped dutifully, resisting the conflicting electricity coursing through his body. His brain faced the same challenge, but knowing its need for survival, activated stem cells to replace the neurons that sacrificed themselves to channel the energy. Never had Sylar been so aware of his body or his body so aware of itself, able to efficiently replicate its pre-damaged state.
Sylar didn’t know if it was five seconds or five hours before Elle finally collapsed from exhaustion and grief. His body welcomed the victory, flooding his blood with endorphins, as it completed its final repair job. He lost count of how many hundreds of times his body has just replaced itself, but he fought the nausea that resulted from the nutrient depletion that resulted from his body’s superhuman effort to survive.
He knelt down and again wrapped his arms around Elle, only this time in a comforting hug. He whispered in her ear, “Whenever you need to get your anger out, you know where to find me. I can take it.”
Rising up to check on Bennet, he turned around one last time to add, “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
From the floor, Elle groaned with anger, but found herself too weak to lift her arm and give him another deserved shock.
Angela stopped him at the door. “Well, Gabriel, look what you caught.” She peered down as the broken Elle, who was only able to roll enough to look up at the matronly woman through unfocused eyes. “Miss Bishop, I’ve had a change of heart. It seems that you’re quite capable of holding your own. Perhaps we do have a place for you here.” She strode over to the blonde woman and extended her hand, though not lowering herself. Elle swung her hand to catch Angela’s and pulled herself up with some effort.
Angela briskly continued, “Well, young lady, we’ll better get you cleaned up.” Examining the bleeding cut on her forehead, “That’ll need a stitch or two, but I think you’ll be fine.” Dazed, Elle leaned on Angela for support, who scarcely acknowledged her. “You did well, Gabriel, resisting your primal urges.”
“I’ve already taken enough from her,” he replied distantly.
Upbeat, she commented, “Well, that’s good. I have a feeling…” She says the word with intentional weight, “…that Miss Bishop here is going to be much more important to us than I previously believed.”
Gabriel didn’t appear to be listening. He was studying Elle with intense scrutiny. Emotions ranging from guilt to admiration flashed across his face. He seemed preoccupied with everything about her: her blonde hair, her pixie-ish face, her lean and seemingly fragile body. His eyes followed the curves of her hips and bust, her arms and her shoulders. After watching her struggle to walk with the unforgiving Angela, he picked her up and carried her without a word, and received no word in comment from his mother. Finally able to relax, Elle passed out, her head drooping over his arm. He scooped up her hanging head and gently laid it against his shoulder. Pushing her frazzled hair out of her face, he stole one last peek at her still face before stoically following his mother out of the room.
“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.” –Orson Scott Card
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