I am Doctor Mohinder Suresh and I am currently driving a dented, rented automobile to a grimy hotel in order to spend a sleepless night pouring over my deceased father`s complicated research. In the morning I will be forced to wake up early to a cold windy day and depart to an equally disgusting car repair shop and ask a thousand complicated questions to a woman named Dale Smithers who has an extremely sensitive range of hearing, but I suspect is illiterate and won`t know what the 'big words' in my questions will be.
I wasn`t complaining in the slightest. Far from it, I was elated. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was with someone that actually shared a goal with me by my side. I had been alone in my search for truth so long; I had forgotten what it meant to have someone to tell me I was doing a good job. Goodness knows my father never did that for me.
Zane Taylor. He was one of the people I have met with special abilities. Melting objects with only his mind. I must admit, it was a great rush to see. But now I couldn`t think about how Zane had destroyed several of his own home appliances and a monkey wrench from the repair shop. I was trying not to steal too many glances of his face whilst driving. He wore a dark coat and curled up on himself for warmth in the passenger seat. The concentrating face he was pulling in order not the noticeably shiver too much nearly made me laugh. Zane was not only a remarkable human being, but had infinite compassion and insight of the world. He especially had compassion for me. I was thankful for my dark Indian skin, because every small act of kindness on Zane`s part made me blush. Offering to buy food and coffee on our trip, warning me when there was a patch of ice I could slip on, and the like. It didn`t help when he caught me staring several times on our trip, or that our hands bumped accidentally when we both reached for the salt at the local diner. He had a slightly pointed face and spiked brown hair. The wide-eyed expression of awe he sported when I babbled on about genetics was far too adorable to be legal. He hung on my every word. I could not seem to find flaw in this man. True, he had bushy caterpillar eyebrows, but it fit his face so well, I could not stand to see him pluck them.
When we got to the hotel, I handed him his key card. For a moment I wished I hadn`t. I wished I could have lied and said they only had one room available for the two of us to share. I wished for those thin lips to be swollen and bruised from harsh kisses. I wished for that hair, messy as it was, to be tangled in my fingers. I shrugged the wish away, knowing it was far too late to suggest such a thing, and what was I doing thinking it in the first place? Zane was a very nice and beautiful man, but that`s where the problem was. He was a MAN. And that was where I was going to end this argument with myself. End of story, Mohinder. Don`t give it a second thought.
… That is until Zane started talking. He asked me something about what we would find on our quest. I rambled on about how we could find those with special powers, like Zane, and tell them about what they were. Eliminate their powers if need be.
"Eliminate? You make it sound like it`s some sort of disease. A plague." Zane said almost accusingly. It hurt me just to hear that tone.
"No! No, it`s just… Sometimes, in cases like this… the powers could be potentially dangerous. For them and those around them. And in the wrong hands, it would never bode well."
"What do you mean?" Zane`s innocence nearly made me stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from saying something ridiculous.
"My… my father was killed by… a sick man named Sylar." I confessed.
"Oh, I'm so sorry Mohinder" Zane truly looked it as he grasped my shoulder. His hand might have very well melted through my coat from the warmth I felt. I almost checked to see if he really had before I collected myself.
Right before we ventured to our regrettably separate rooms, he asked "Mohinder… It's not wrong… having these powers, is it?"
"No. Of course not." I assured him with a smile. "It would be like denying you had brown eyes."
Zane gave a wide grin of relief that made his entire person seem to glow. I was so happy to be within a single step of my room, because I never heard my heart pound in such a way before. I was never happier to have cold water in a shower before in my life. You can imagine the predicament I would have with myself if I were to… release to the thought of my colleague.
After my frigid shower, I set my laptop down to get some good old-fashioned work done. Genetics and solid fact. That`s where I belonged. Not in a confused cloud of mixed feelings for a man I had only known for a few days. Less than! For about a half hour, I had completely forgotten who Zane Taylor was. Absorbed in the code my father cracked and a stranger to the rest of the world.
…Again, until Zane started talking. This time the words were to himself and heard by my ears through the thin hotel walls.
"Better get some sleep, Zane. We have lots of work to do tomorrow..."
The tone in witch he said that last sentence sent shivers down my spine. I had never heard such malice in Zane`s voice before. In fact, Zane had never said anything cruel before, even by accident or when he thought I was wrong.
Something was amiss.
I was never paranoid about anything, but with the fact that things beyond my control were happening, and that Sylar was out there looking for my father`s research, I had to be cautious. I moved aside my research and pulled up something I detested using for even the smallest things. It made me feel like a homemaker looking for a recipe on peach cobbler.
Google. The enemy of intellects everywhere. But it was the most reliable search engine on the web, so I had to. I typed in 'Zane Taylor' and browsed through the items found. One of them managed to catch my eye. I opened it and stared in disbelief at the screen.
"Young Musician Found Slain" I whispered aloud. It was impossible. But there it was, clear as day. How many other men in the world had the name Zane Taylor and lived at the exact address I had visited what seemed like years ago? The top of the man`s head was sliced clean off and his clothes stripped. No evidence of thievery, sexual assault, or even a motive. In my mind, there was no doubt about it. This was Sylar`s doing. And Sylar was sleeping right next door to me.
At first, I entertained the idea of a panic-stricken attack. But if Sylar was as powerful as I imagined him to be, that would never work. He would kill me before I got a punch in edgewise. I tested different ideas in my head, imagined what would happen if this were to happen, and mentally prepared myself for the worst as soon as possible.
But wait. If Sylar really wanted me dead, he would have done it already. What was the point of wasting time by acting as Zane if he was just going to kill me? He needed me. He needed my research. That was why he killed my father. For his research. Sylar needed that list of people he wanted to kill for his personal gain. Hell if I was going to give him what he wanted.
The next morning, Sylar and I drove to the woman with special hearing`s auto shop. I really didn`t see the point in me calling him Zane in my head anymore. The man sitting next to me was Sylar. A cold-blooded killer. A very beautiful, sensual-looking cold-blooded killer, but a killer nonetheless! I had to keep reminding myself of these things or else I was going to succumb to my perverse feelings for him.
I told myself I had to keep an eye on Sylar`s every movement in case he were to lose it and attack anyway, but I knew that was a lie. I just wanted to burn his beauty into my mind before I had to hurt him. I know he must have gotten to the woman at the auto shop by now. Though I didn`t see him leave his room, I could hear him showering at four in the morning. The question was, how did he manage to get her powers?
"Excuse me! Ms. Smithers?" I yelled loudly as I got out of the car, searching for the woman I was almost sure to be dead. "HELLO?!" I saw Sylar cringe inside the car out of the corner of my eye. "What`s wrong, Zane?" I asked, feigning concern.
"Nothing. Just a headache." Sylar replied. Contrary to my belief that causing him pain would be my pleasure, it only caused me grief. I turned back to the task at hand and gagged.
The woman we came to see… she was stuffed under one of the cars she was working on with the top half of her head sliced off. All her brains scraped out and gone. Blood was still leaking everywhere.
My knees went weak and I could feel heat rising in my throat. Turning around and holding myself steady by the car, I vomited onto the snow. Sylar came out and helped me stand up straight before another wave of sick passed over me.
When nothing more would come up, I got out my cell phone. Sylar went into the shop to see the gruesome sight. 'You`re the one who did that to her, you sick bastard…' I thought, punching in the number I knew would help me.
"What are you doing?!" Sylar shouted, seeing my phone and rushing over. He really was a good actor. Had the same sickened face as any other person who could have seen that body.
"Calling the police." I replied. Sylar grabbed the phone to stop me. His expression was pained from listening to the metallic beeps the phone made.
"What are you going to tell them? What reason do we have for being out here in the middle of nowhere? Can we explain all this without sounding completely insane?"
As much as I hated to admit it, Sylar was right. There was no way of explaining this to the cops. No possible way of telling them Zane was Sylar without Sylar hearing him with his newfound abilities and tearing the place apart.
With a new plan formulating in my brain and a weighty soul, I ran back into the car. Sylar took the liberty of driving, probably afraid I would take him somewhere he didn`t want to go.
But the worst part of the past twelve hours… not the dead woman in her garage and the fact that Sylar was more dangerous than ever…was that I still had feelings for the handsome serial killer driving us to the bus station.