Title: In the Face of Death
Characters: Sylar, Peter, with Maya and Adam in background. Near the end of season two.
Length: ~8700 words
Rating: NC-17
Genre: gothic horror (this is not slash.)
Summary: Peter devises a fitting punishment for Sylar at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Sylar spends a lot of time in the dark, alone and in pain, thinking about his life. Crossover with Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum".
Warnings: Dark Fic! Violence, gore, torture (physical and psychological), gross and disturbing imagery. There is no happy ending here people, but there is also no character death.
Disclaimer: I own neither Heroes, nor The Pit and the Pendulum.
Beta by means2Bhuman
Peter and Adam, Montreal, Canada
Peter shook his head in confusion as memories flooded his mind. Adam stood by silently, waiting for the assimilation to take place, confident in its outcome. Peter knew as soon as he had sorted through his memories exactly what he needed to do. And it wasn't helping Adam. He was paying attention to the immortal's thoughts for a change, and it was easy to tell that Adam was playing him for a fool. If he left, Adam would have no other recourse to follow. Peter could catch up with him later. Right now, he had something much more urgent to find out. He knew where Sylar should be according to the Primatech files he had looked through back in New York, but where was he now?
Sylar and Maya, Hershey, Pennsylvania
Sylar was getting so tired of this game with Maya. They were eating in a park in Pennsylvania Amish country. It was peaceful and beautiful and he wanted to scream. He was tempted to kill the woman sitting next to him now and just be done with it, or leave her stranded. Anything to get away from her. It wasn't just one thing irritating him, it was everything - her voice, her tears, her smiles, her kisses, her enormous breasts. Everything was just so loud and overstated. Maya didn't know the meaning of the word subtle or quiet. She wasn't very neat either. Plus, her constant talk of God and Mary and Jesus was genuinely grating on his nerves. It reminded Sylar too much of his mother and his childhood filled with over done sermons about sin and Hellfire. He didn't want to think about retribution and damnation. Sylar needed to believe that the atheists had it right, because the other was unthinkable to him now.
Sylar shivered in the bright afternoon sun, chilled at the thought that Hell might be real, and what it would mean for him and his soul, if it existed. That hidden closet from his apartment flashed in his mind - the confessions he had written in tall, overlapping layers of gut wrenching pain with bare hands soaked in earth- and blood-colored paint. Would God listen to his prayers if he turned away from his path now, or was it far too late to ever go back? Wouldn't it be better to simply make sure that he could never die and find out? Insanely, wasn't that the easier path?
Sylar took a sip of wine to steady himself and tried to ignore Maya's blabbering. God, how he hated her, but he needed a hostage. The only things keeping him going were the hope of getting his powers back and the certainty of seeing Mohinder again. Sylar checked in on Maya's conversation to see if he could continue ignoring it and get on to imagining the look on Mohinder's face when he showed up on his doorstep, when suddenly, Peter Petrelli appeared a few feet away behind her shoulder.
Sylar was startled to say the least, and for a moment his mind whirled in several directions. He took in Peter's appearance. He looked different, harder, but unsure and surprised. Peter couldn't know he didn't have his powers, and Maya was here. Sylar hoped that would stall him, and he stayed seated to further the illusion of being the powerful one in control.
The two men sized each other up as Peter walked forwards. Peter hadn't counted on a third party. He hadn't even known if this would work or if Sylar was still alive, and at first he was hesitant to act.
"Hello, Peter," Sylar said.
"Well, hey there, Sylar," Peter said in return with a small crooked smile.
"Oh, hello." Maya turned around in surprise to see the strange man. She hadn't noticed him teleport in and thought he had just arrived from the parking lot when she wasn't looking. "Who are you?" she then asked suspiciously.
"It's been a while. Please, sit down, join us," Sylar said, ignoring Maya and smiling broadly up at the other man. Thus began the strangest luncheon he had ever had.
Sylar and Peter pretended to be old friends for Maya's benefit. Peter sat and they continued eating and chatting for a while, until Peter was able to read enough of Sylar's mind to know that he was powerless and planning to resume his killing spree as soon as possible. Listening to the madman's thoughts had also given Peter a great idea and the beginnings of a plan.
"All right, I think that's enough," Peter interrupted Maya. He hit Sylar across his glass jaw, knocking him out. Then Peter reached over, laid his hand on Sylar's arm and teleported them out of there, while holding off a loudly protesting Maya with telekinesis.
Sylar, Toledo, Spain, The Inquisition 1750
Sylar woke up to complete, unrelieved darkness. His first thoughts were confused and disjointed. Memories were out of sync, flashes of green grass and rolling hills then excruciating pain; dark walls moving and flowing as though in a breeze; a picnic with Maya and Peter Petrelli; vomiting; being chained up and whipped bloody; a row of judges in dark robes with droning voices like the hum of bees; screaming himself hoarse and shaking from exertion. And now, the feeling of having been unconscious and dreaming.
He was groggy, freezing cold, and nauseous with sour acid in his throat, and the disorientation was taking too long to fade for his liking. All these impressions went through Sylar's mind for what seemed like an eternity before he could make sense of them, put them in some kind of sequential order. Awareness of their implications came gradually and added another chill to his already cold frame. He opened his eyes again to nothingness, wiser and aware of his situation. But, instead of being a warm cloak of empowerment, as knowledge usually was, it left him feeling like an exposed wound, left to fester and rot alone.
Sylar was a prisoner. He had stood trial for of all ridiculous things witchcraft, thanks to Peter Petrelli. He had been found guilty and his preliminary punishment made Sylar all of a sudden wonder why his back didn't feel like it was on fire. The answer was easily discernible with a quick feel around, and just as easily, it was unthinkably disgusting. The floor Sylar lay upon seemed to be stone and covered in a cold and congealed, slimy coating. It was refrigerating his wounds and dulling their pain. He supposed he should feel grateful, but for some reason, couldn't muster it.
Experimentally, he tried rolling over and came off the floor with a sick squelching noise and a suctioning sensation against his bare skin. A full body shudder of distaste followed. That's when he thought to wonder at his attire. Another feel in the dark found simple drawstring pants of a coarse and flimsy material and nothing else.
He stayed on his side, too hopeless and overcome with revulsion at the surroundings to touch more of it than he had to for the moment. Instead, he thought over his preposterous circumstances: stuck back in the past in medieval Spain, tried for witchcraft, and doomed to die in a miserable cold, dank tomb. And hadn't he just been dreading Hell? The irony of being cursed by Spanish speaking Catholics was also not lost on him. If he never heard their language again, it would be too soon, and that must be where Peter had gotten this diabolical plan from.
Who would have thought Peter Petrelli could think his way out of a paper bag, let alone come up with something this glorious? Sylar thought to himself. But then, is it really that inventive for a Catholic? Wouldn't a prison in Tanzania be more creative? No, on second thought, this is almost expected. In fact, shouldn't there be thumb screws and an Iron Maiden at some point?
Sylar weakly laughed at his attempt at courage, and was briefly warmed by the old fire of scorn and rebellion. Really, it was like a bad joke. It was like the do-gooder had sent him to the corner to think about what he'd done. Which was so unfair. Peter was just as dangerous as he was. He was the one who almost blew up New York, after all. Sylar had gone there to stop him. When he thought about it, already spending a lot of time in prison paying for his crimes, and almost dying twice should have been enough. Really, it should be Peter laying here in the cold, pitch-black, slimy tomb.
Wait a minute, Sylar thought, blinking, I'm not really in a... He held his breath, frozen and deafened for a second, too paralyzed with growing dread to reach out and confirm for himself his sudden idea. And then sound and feeling returned and with it the thunder of his heart and a surge of strength and panic as he kicked out violently. He rolled to his knees and then staggered as quick as he could to a standing position, lifting his arms wide and taking a few steps.
"Aw, fuck!" He went back down just as quickly to put his hands on his knees as pain lanced through his back and sides. He could feel wounds tearing open and blood seeping down his back, tickling him. And there was the fire he had been looking for. But at least he had some answers - he was not in a tomb, and he had been whipped.
Sylar quickly discovered that he did not like sitting up in the dark. He felt exposed with nothing to lean back against, so despite the ick factor, he laid back down. He hoped the chilled, gooey mess on the floor would go back to having a numbing effect on his back so he purposely pressed down into the cool gelatin-like material.
Convinced that there wasn't going to be anything to see, Sylar strained his ears instead for any hint of sound. Oh, how he wished for Dale's power now. It was so still and silent in the...whatever he was in, that his mind could easily trick him into believing that he was the last man on Earth. Total absence of light was combined with such a total absence of sound, that he imagined this was what the sense depravation tanks he had read about were like. Only instead of salt filled water, his body was suspended in mucus-y slime.
On impulse, he pressed his right hand to his chest and there was something there, finally something else in the quiet, lonesome dark. A small but strong beat, like there was a tiny drum mallet pounding to break through his rib cage. He could hear it in his head now, too. A steady one-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. He pressed his left hand on top of his right and focused contentedly on the sensations. He wasn't alone anymore.
Feeling much more hopeful, Sylar decided to explore his hard, icy home. He began crawling carefully on hands and knees. As he went, he became more convinced that the floor was made of stone. It was rough and smooth in places, and curved like limestone. He imagined it was a greyish color with strains of black and white. His fingers ran along grooves that could be the seams between bricks but it was hard to tell as the whole surface was uneven. Soon, he came to what he thought at first was a step.
He started to crawl down the presumed staircase, but lost his balance as his extended hand hit nothing but air and kept on going well past his elbow. He gripped the edge with his right hand as his left arm swung free for one terrifying second, until his hand hit a hard surface below and perpendicular to him. He let out a strangled sound of alarm as he slipped, scrambling back from the edge, and fell back on his hands. He moved his seated body this-way-and-that as he tried to relieve the pressure on his back, the near tumble having re-awakened his lacerations. His breath came in ragged gasps as his heart tried to pound out of his chest, his optimism of before having long fled.
Even so, he eventually calmed down and slowly, ever so slowly, approached the brink. He found it and making sure he was steady, reached his right hand over the side, touching the floor the whole way as it curved in one unbroken brick over the side and down. He felt down farther, came to a seam, and went on to the next brick. It felt like the same rough stone that made up the floor. So he was in a structure, something built, and not a cave. That was something. There was also a faint stench in the air near the edge. Something musty and slightly sweet. Taking care to not get any closer than necessary he crawled around the edge of the drop-off. He had been counting his steps from where he woke, and once he counted off as many around the edge and then twice more and then three times more, he stopped and sat a ways back from it.
Something was not right here, surely his cell wasn't so big? He had assumed he was in a cell, as he was a prisoner, but, perhaps he was in a basement or dungeon and not a cell at all? But then, what was with this long mysterious boundary of space that never ended? Where was the other side, the bottom, or top? And most unusual, he had the impression that it had been curving to the right, like he had needed to keep inching to the right as he went, but he wasn't sure that it wasn't just him leading to the left. But he had turned to the left when he started his journey... He shook his head. He just couldn't be sure. He couldn't think straight. He had never known such complete and confusing darkness, not even in Primatech's dungeon. There had always been some light source there, no matter how faint - a monitor, light from under the door to the stairs, something. But this total darkness was oppressive. It was almost like it was pressing against his eyeballs, acting as blindfold and not just the absence of light.
Nothing else existed except the beating in his chest, and he touched it again to be sure. It was still there, and he counted the beats for several breaths. With nothing else to do, he made sure he was several feet away from the brink and laid down to rest, using his hand to cushion his head from the unforgiving floor, and to keep his ear from being plugged with slime.
When he woke up his situation had not changed. All was still silent, cold, and empty night. His whole body ached, but especially his back. He assumed that the cuts were getting infected as the ones he could reach were hot, crusty, and itchy. He pictured his wounds as long pus-filled lines criss-crossing his back, teeming with bacteria from the filthy floor, and he was nauseated. His face was clammy with sweat and his mouth tasted disgusting. He felt for the beating drum and found it where he had left it in his chest, feeling it with the heel of his palm for many minutes, soothed by its presence enough to continue his explorations.
Cautiously, he crawled around until he came back to the drop-off. Determined to gain some more information, he worked loose some stones from the interior lip and listened attentively in the pitch black nothingness as they fell, only half aware of his counting. It took six seconds for the rocks to make another noise, landing in water and sending back some welcomed aural stimulation. Then another noise like stone and metal scrapping together sounded throughout the blackness and a flash of dim light briefly illuminated the chamber with pale yellow light. Sylar had time to look up, in the direction of the noise, just as an opening in the ceiling closed and the cell was thrown back into darkness.
Even so, Sylar felt something close to relief at proof that he had not been simply left to rot. Somewhere above him, maybe ten or fifteen feet up, was a ceiling with a window in it, and there were people on the other side of it. His breath quickened and the barest hint of a smile crossed his face. Someone was paying attention to him. Tracking his progress. Perhaps, it was possible that they merely wanted to watch his reactions to the torture. Perhaps he wasn't meant to die down there at all!
Filled with hope again, tired of kneeling by the mysterious edge of nothingness in the floor, and curious about the cell that he had gotten only the briefest glance of, including walls, Sylar started crawling in a straight line away from the edge. After twenty-five steps he came to the wall, turned to the left, and proceeded to crawl along its length. Not sure that there weren't any more drop-offs, he chose to remain on his hands and knees, even though it meant making his way through more sticky muck. He was used to the sensation now. As he circumnavigated the room, he had to keep correcting to the left, sometimes drastically, so he was pretty sure his cell was more or less square-shaped. The walls were so uneven that there might have been corners that he had taken for depressions in the stone, or maybe the walls were curved, he couldn't be sure. One thing definitely missing was a door.
And so Sylar crawled like a child until his hands were puckered from moisture and numb to the rough stone. He went through the dank slime and suffocating dark, slowly measuring out his cell, using pieces of cloth from his pants as markers, eventually getting a picture of its dimensions, including one enormous hole in the center. Time passed endlessly, broken only by periods of fitful rest. No one came to feed him and the window in the ceiling never opened again.
When he tired of measuring his new home, Sylar lay on his back and felt for the beating in his chest. When that wasn't enough, he began remembering books he had read and movies he had watched. He spent hours going over different plots, confusing ones together, trying to remember which scenes went where in the longer series. He went over Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, easily recalling every line and bit of action from his favorite tales, and he gladly shared them with the hammering in his chest, like two old friends at the movies together.
He tried not to let his imagination run wild when watching Empire Strikes Back. The temptation was there to imagine himself in the mouth of a great beast and he kept reminding himself that the floor was obviously hard stone and not a tongue, despite the presence of the cold wet slime that he assumed was some kind of algae or other organic residue. Then he wondered if it was algae, could he eat it, because he was getting very hungry. The hunger had crept upon him stealthily in the dark, in the dreams of popcorn and concession stands with every kind of candy. Still, no one came to feed him even the most moldy piece of bread, or bowl of gruel and cup of filthy water. He had no idea how much time had passed since Pennsylvania, hours, days. It felt like years. Not knowing was unnerving to him. Another ability whose absence was keenly felt.
He was well aware that he was slowly and surely starving and thirsting to death alone surrounded with nothing but dark and slime. His hope faded and unease was recalled to take its place. His stomach twisted constantly, but a kernel of spite remained. He refused to cry out for help or mercy like some pathetic fool, convinced that it would do no good; he would be humiliated, and it would probably accomplish nothing more than making him more parched. If they wanted him to die in here, there wasn't much he could do about it in his current, powerless condition. He was not going to give them the satisfaction of breaking him in the process. He knew his only logical way out of this was Peter, and that didn't even warrant thinking about. He refused to give himself false hope. He wouldn't want to be rescued by him anyway, he assured the drummer that lived in his chest.
He was laying on his back as usual, trying to keep busy with the movies, but it wasn't working to alleviate the dry gnawing in his throat and stomach. He pressed his hand harder against his chest, but the sound of his drummer didn't soothe him this time. In desperation he began roaming his body with both hands, eventually finding his neck with his left and another strong though small beat sounded. Gratefully, he pressed against the other side of his throat with his right, and found another, beating in unison. He breathed a sigh of relief. Now he had two companions.
Even though he had a good mental image of his cell now in his memory, he didn't try walking around. He was so weak that he dared not exert himself as he was always on the verge of passing out anyway. He knew he was sleeping a lot, but whether from exhaustion, shock, or hunger, he wasn't sure, and, blissfully, he could not remember his dreams. It was just as well, because his conscious mind was having no problem coming up with horrifying scenarios and nightmares for him to dwell upon and go crazy from.
He huddled against the wall laying with his back to it, trying to get what sensation he could as he thought and worried about his situation. All out of books and movies, he couldn't help letting his mind get the better of him and he was scaring himself silly imagining what death by dehydration would feel like in the end. Images of himself as an emaciated corpse loomed in glowing hallucinations before his eyes if he left them open open long enough. He could feel his sanity slipping away, could hear voices murmuring in the unseen corners, wondered again what the algae slime would taste like. He tried to focus on his cold rock bed and the pain in his back instead of the things that he knew couldn't be real or that he didn't want to be real. And then he argued about why it mattered at all, until he was shaking with fright and confusion, twisting his ears and fistfuls of hair and moaning from a pain that was in his head even more than in his body.
He imagined that the cell wasn't dark at all, that it was him, his eyes that were blinded. He was in the present in a regular metal and glass cage surrounded by windows of two-way glass, being watched and studied. Like an animal. He imagined Peter and Noah Bennet of the other side of that glass, watching him, waiting for him to go mad before finally dying, wasting away to nothing before their eyes. He found that he preferred the idea of being trapped in the past and a victim of The Inquisition to being tricked and crazy in a cage in the present. When he checked in with the beats, they agreed.
But the idea that he was going to die here, trapped in the past, where no one would know or care was the most horrifying aspect of this long, slow, exquisite torture. There was no one left back there in the present to care anyway. Except maybe the father who had walked out on him and his mother a lifetime ago. He could taste old bile in his throat and acid churned his stomach. It felt as though the darkness was seeping into his very soul like bitter puking in reverse. Sylar had never felt more alone or abandoned. It was like he was always destined to be here. Like this place and what he was becoming were physical representations of his own soul and the fulfillment of the cruelest, well-deserved destiny.
And Sylar was afraid of it. For the first time in so long, he felt real fear. Cold, numbing terror, stealing through his limbs and sapping his strength, his will. Greater than even in the jungle of Mexico. Even there he had some hope. Here there was none. He was certain that he was going to die here. A horribly agonizing death.
The emotions running through him were familiar, like something was tickling his subconscious. Like a long lost family member - a cousin you had forgotten was a childhood playmate. There was something about being scared alone, hopeless, and fearful in the dark. But the memory was just out of reach. Nothing, but left over physical sensations of limbs trembling in shock, a stomach twisting painfully with nausea, and a head throbbing in blinding and deafening pain. He broke out in another freezing sweat, his surely infected wounds throbbing in time with his heart. Thoughts were murky and stunned with emotion.
Sylar knew the lost memory was something he didn't really want to remember. Something best left buried in the dark recesses of his mind. But he also had the impression that the ugly feelings were inspired by whatever happened in his past, and had something to do with his hunt, but again, he chose not to examine it. He hid from it instead, leaving it in its box. He enjoyed being on the prowl too much for self-examination. It was the first time he could remember feeling powerful and in control. He was not going to go back to his stupid, insignificant life. Death would be preferable. Even this cold, hungry, dark, one. The drum beats agreed with this, too.
Sylar supposed this punishment of Peter's was supposed to teach him how pointless it all was, his hunt. Despite his love for killing, this position did seem pretty stupid, he allowed. All that work and perfection for nothing. He had been stopped in his prime. There was so much more left for him to accomplish. Everything had been going so great until so many things went wrong, one after another - Texas, Peter, Mohinder, Primatech, that Japanese man. And to be captured not once, but twice? No, make that three times, because he could not imagine that Peter was in this by himself. That was a dog that had to be on a leash to be so well contained.
Sylar's mood darkened further as he thought about all that happened, how many times he had been bested. He bit his lip and hugged his arms tighter around his body. He wasn't sharing this pain with his companions. Pain and shame, that perhaps he wasn't as perfect as he had believed. Or that no matter how perfect he was, it wasn't enough. Would never be enough. No matter how much power he had, alone he was still no match for a group of heroes out to stop him. This was him, losing. He shivered, and held himself tighter, burying his face in his folded arms.
He had been a fool. He had wasted his gifts and reached above his means only to be smacked down to his lowest point like an insignificant fly. And here he lay at death's door, truly and terribly alone. He was literally rotting to death, surrounded by putrid slimy mucus like some kind of bottom feeder, but he was too weak to feel angry. Filled instead with despair, he cried himself to sleep.
The next time Sylar woke, he was startled to find his circumstances were greatly changed. He was tied down with thick, coarse rope to something wooden. Its surface was hard and rough beneath his torn back. He could tell that the burning, purulent cuts in his back had opened again, and could feel the blood pooling slowly underneath him. But more importantly, he could see the rope and his legs and the room that had been his home for days. He couldn't tell where the light was coming from and it was faint enough not to hurt his eyes, but just enough for him to see the walls of the square room, and the floor, and the drop-off in the middle, that was really a circular hole in the floor like he had surmised. Despite the circumstances, satisfaction stole through him at finally being able to see his cell. But best of all, like a miracle, there was a plate of meat beside him. Joy surged through him as he reached for it.
He quickly discovered that though his entire body was held securely to the table-like structure, his left arm was free from the elbow and he could both reach the pieces of meat and bring them to his lips. He ate in a frenzy at first, humming, groaning and licking his fingers in between bites, so happy that he was hard from it and he welcomed that, too. He undulated against the ropes in time to his chewing, overcome by so many physical sensations bombarding him after what seemed like a lifetime of neglect. The food tasted and smelled delicious, salty and peppered like game meat. He ate several bites before slowing down and going back to inspecting his cell while finishing the plate at his leisure. The idea that the meat might be poisoned crossed his mind, but he decided he had to take the risk. He was famished and didn't have the strength to stop gorging himself.
He had to wonder at his jailers. At their sanity. He had read about The Inquisition, but this was really over-the-top. Tying him down before feeding him was just the first unusual and slightly kinky thing. High up, the walls of the cell were littered with ghastly religious iconography; angry, seething ghouls and lurid pornographic crucifixes the likes of which he had never seen. Statues of gargoyles and demons stood on shelves attached to the surfaces in a horrifying ring of gothic artistry. All in all, it just gave him more reason to explore the joys of atheism he told himself resolutely, determining not to be frightened by the angry faces looking down at him accusatorially. He stared back at them defiantly, as he licked and sucked on the fingers of his left hand.
The next phase of his torture dawned on him gradually, barely noticeable at first, since it was a sensation that had been with him for so long now. But eventually, it became vividly apparent. The meat, the salty meat had made him unbearably thirsty. He looked around in vain and rising panic for a pitcher or cup but saw nothing that could help him. He cursed himself, his jailers, Peter, and everything else that had brought him to this place. How stupid he had been to not look for water first thing. But then his torturers had counted on that, on hunger overriding his logic.
He struggled to ignore his many physical discomforts by focusing on the ceiling above him and noticed for the first time that what he had originally taken for a painting was actually an enormous pendulum like from the world's biggest grandfather clock. And it was swinging back and forth in long sweeps directly over his chest. It had an almost menacing quality, as well as hypnotic, and for several long moments Sylar tracked its progress, gratefully losing awareness of everything else - his pain, his thirst, the rats that had showed up while he was eating and were even now sniffing around his vulnerable and bloody body. Back and forth, back and forth it went, calming and lulling him in time with its repetitive motion. Everything else fell away, and life was only the beautiful golden shining sun swinging high above him like the promise of peace and tranquility.
Then a rat bit his finger, breaking the spell and bringing Sylar back to his dismal surroundings. He swatted at the rats that had taken position around and near him on the platform. They looked like a ravenous army waiting to descend on him. As he stared them down, something entered his peripheral vision, and looking up all too late he saw the final trap. The pendulum had descended, and continued to do so, moving from side to side at a much more rapid pace than before. What he also had just noticed was how incredibly sharp looking the edge of the metal was. It wasn't a pendulum getting closer at all. It that was an enormous carving blade coming to slice him in two like a side of beef. He wasn't on a table; he was on a giant cutting board.
You have got to be kidding me.
He was supposed to lay there looking at the instrument of his death and wait for his fate? How melodramatic. He wondered if Peter was there watching. Hoping and waiting for his confession to being a murderer, to being afraid, or begging for Peter to save him. He assumed that Peter would want him to pray to him for forgiveness, and he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. He might die screaming, but it wouldn't be for Peter Petrelli to save him.
That's for damn sure.
Sylar watched as the pendulum swung closer and closer, his eyes following its movement faithfully, his bravery slipping with every stroke. Death seemed to be creeping in from all sides as the rats had overpowered him and were now licking and nibbling at his own flesh and where his blood was pooling on the table. Their tiny evil teeth and nails gnawing and clawing into him with pain, irritation, and the final insanity - a slight tickling sensation. He tried not to think about what was happening to him, for fear that his mind would completely shut down in shock, and he renewed his efforts to shoo them away.
If only they'd chew the ropes, he thought. That's when inspiration struck and it took him a while but he finally got enough of his own blood on the ropes that the rats, slowly and cautiously at first moving onto him; but, eventually, surging in a rush of swarming small furry bodies, scampering and fitfully licking and nibbling all over his exposed flesh in one giant mass of warmth and stink.
The pitter patter of little feet.
Teeny tiny sharp nails scrambling.
Teensy weensy tongues licking.
Tiny teeth chewing on him, eating him.
All he had to do was lay still and prevent insanity from overwhelming him. If he could just bear this new horror long enough, he would be freed, he promised himself while fighting the urge to scream and vomit. This really was just a whole new level of disgusting, so much so that he had to work to remain silent, biting at his chapped lips in frustration.
He looked up. The blade seemed to be descending quicker now. Its mirrored surface, level with his face. It swooshed past, scaring a few rats but none of the bloodthirsty rodents were within reach of the pendulum's path. For a moment, Sylar had the impression that there was a race going on between the blade and the rats; and his heart quickened pace with the golden, spherical knife, until it felt like it would burst out of his chest or fail completely. And then the unthinkable happened - the blade found its mark and cut him on its next pass. It was just a nick, but as it started to bleed, rats came and starting drinking directly from the new stinging cut. He couldn't prevent the whine of pain and revulsion that escaped him.
Now the desire to struggle was almost too much to bear, but he wasn't sure that he was free yet, couldn't tell how much the blade was descending with each pass. He tried to contain his panic, tried to think past the fog in his mind and the thunder of his heart and the squeal of the rats in his ears. What if they just dropped the pendulum with the next pass? What if he died two seconds from now? But he doubted that option, quite sure that they wanted this to be as slow and painful as possible, wanting to drag it out for their own sadistic pleasure.
He knew that because it's exactly what he would want to do.
All this he thought in the space between seconds and then it was time for the pendulum to return. He braced himself, breathing out to make as small a target as possible and then it was slicing into him, scraping bone along its way, the sound grinding in his ears and the vibration tearing through him, jarring him from teeth to toes. Only then came the fiery strokes of pain tearing through him, not just in his chest but through his entire frame. He howled in the greatest agony he had ever felt, screaming with rusted vocal cords. He couldn't breathe and he willed himself to not pass out. But the pain was so great that he came off the table reflexively, and that's when he realized that he was finally, amazingly free!
He rolled off the table in a lurch, but only his upper body cooperated. He spun and found himself hanging over the edge with his right leg still trapped in the ropes, and both shoulders on the ground. Blood poured out of his chest, down his neck and onto his face. He tried to shield his eyes and free his foot at the same time, while fending off eager rats newly lathered by all the fresh food. He had become a feast for them, and they were now trying to devour him as he hung trapped against the wooden platform.
He was panicking in earnest now, yelling gibberish, hands waving madly to disperse the fiends, and feet kicking wildly until he was finally and completely free. Adrenaline gave him new strength and he surged to his feet, stumbling back from the path of the still swinging pendulum, and brushing hanging rats off his shoulders and pants, intense horror giving him new heart.
That's when Sylar realized that the cell was even lighter than before and that he could better make out the details of the ghoulish hangings on the walls. He went to the wall to try and find a door, but there was nothing to indicate an opening. What he did find worried him even more than not being able to escape. It seemed like that walls themselves were on fire. They were hot to the touch and the extra light source appeared to be flames that he could see in an opening along the floor. There was a twelve inch gap between the wall and the floor, and flickering orange light, and so much heat that he couldn't stand to stay beside it any longer.
He went then to the circular opening in the floor to see once and for all what it was. What he found made very little sense, except in the most gruesome way. It was the opening to a deep and incredibly vast pit. At least fifteen feet in diameter. He edged closer until he could see into it, but at first he couldn't understand what he was looking at. The drop seemed to be about ten or fifteen feet deep. The bottom looked like it was moving, churning, but he saw nothing but varying shades of black and grey. As the light grew in the chamber and more spilled into the pit, he could make out the water he had heard earlier, and at last realized that the movement he was seeing was caused by rats, hundreds of rats moving in what must be a shallow pool. Oh, but Sylar saw more than that and the knowledge made him scramble away in horror at the fact that he had slept soundly beside this great hole of hideously gross death that was little more than an enormous garbage dump.
He brushed his hands at his body in fearful reflex and kicked at the rats that had gathered around him. He screamed unconsciously, wildly, kicking blindly at the vermin, flinging their small bodies in all directions, but more still came to the call of fresh meat. The ones not afraid of the new heat in the cell and his flailing legs seemed content to drink the blood pooling on the floor around him. He contained a shudder of nausea at the sight and put his hands to the laceration in his chest. Working on instinct, he took off his pants and pressed the scratchy material to the cut to slow the bleeding. It burned as bad as the walls, and the whole room was burning. It felt like the fire was closing in on him, suffocating him, and he sought the cool air from the pit.
He didn't know which would be worse, dropping into that hole and hoping against hope that the fall killed him, or staying here to surely bleed to death while being eaten alive. Either way, the rats got him in the end. He suddenly wondered why he had been so eager to escape the pendulum. At least the death would have been quicker. He groaned as the pain in his chest got too bad to ignore. He could feel his adrenaline winding down and shock kicking in. He had chills despite the heat, and he was so weak, sleepy even. He knew he was dying, maybe not bleeding out, but certainly losing too much blood for his already sickened body, and awareness and resulting anxiety and trepidation were slowly and surely paralyzing him.
Sylar tried to reign in his reason and looked around for another means of escape, but that was when yet another hurdle in the house of horrors standing between him and life made itself known. He hadn't noticed the alteration at first, but he could hear the sounds of ancient machinery and had been subconsciously searching for their source. It only took a few moments of concentration to see the latest hellacious thing.
It would appear that it was the pit for him after all. The choice had been made for him. The walls of his prison were somehow, literally, closing in on him in heaving, lurching movements. His revulsion and horror at the pit dulled into a feeling of certain doom, and it would have been a comfort if he could only look forward to a quick death in the fall.
He stood motionless and stupefied as the walls of his prison closed in. All excitement had left, leaving behind only tired emptiness.
He watched the walls move.
One at a time.
Massive stone walls.
He couldn't imagine what kind of mechanism went into to being able to move so much weight. How many people must be turning wheels and wenches right at this moment to deliver him to his fate? The idea was incredible. Did they know? What was happening in this room? Did they know they were killing him? Was Peter watching this?
Sylar roused himself to find that there were only a couple of feet left on either side of him to the fiery hot walls and the edge of the pit. This was it then. He found himself unexpectedly and thankfully calm. He knew what he had to do.
He walked to the edge of the pit, and took one last look around at the hideous masks and statues on the walls of the small, hot, bright room. He looked at the largest crucifix and its lurid, naked, wounded man, so close to him he could reach out and touch it if he wanted. He threw his bloody garment aside, standing as naked, wounded, and bloodied as the man hanging on the cross in front of him, and he stuck up both middle fingers to the decoration.
Sylar raised his face to the ceiling and yelled defiantly as loud as he could, "Fuck you, Peter Petrelli!" and then he dove head first over the brink.
Sylar woke up with a sudden jerk like he had fallen out of bed. He was on the ground outside at night with Peter standing nearby. Immediately his hands went to his chest, but there was no wound, and he was dressed like he was before...before. It looked like they were back in the park in Pennsylvania, but no one else was around.
The prison came rushing back to him as deja vu, reminding him of the first time he had woken up in the cold, damp cell, having to slowly piece together how he had gotten there. But this time he was quicker, easily recalling the fiery walls closing in on him. Diving over the edge of the pit. Exhilaration at soaring through the air. For one brief moment he had been free.
And ever closer to the promise of more pain and anguish as a long, fresh meal for a teaming mound of rats. Lying in a shallow, fetid pool of cold, stinking water filled with moldy corpses and waste from a hundred sources. But the worst part was the fear that one of those bodies was actually still alive. But surely that had only been the rats, making it move.
He shuddered and gripped himself by the arms, so glad to be out of that place. Hope surged within him. It was so nice and warm here and the grass smelled sweet. To be here without a scratch on him, clean even, and under a bright full moon. He could hear crickets and there were lightning bugs all around. It was beautiful.
Wait, this was wrong. A slow creeping dread seeped into his bones again. What if he had fallen and was now laying in the bottom of that pit, hallucinating, dreaming that Peter had saved him?
"This isn't a dream. We're back in Pennsylvania, the night we left," Peter answered his unspoken query.
"What the hell happened? Did I... What...?" Sylar sat up and glared at the other man who just looked back at him with a closed expression. "What the fuck is going on Petrelli?"
Sylar made to get up, but something held him back - Peter using his own telekinesis against him. He seethed on the inside at the unfairness, boiling over with envy and hatred.
"I know you don't have your powers, Sylar," Peter said quietly. "And in case you're wondering, I have learned how to control all of mine. Including telepathy."
"You mean...that wasn't real? It was a hallucination? I knew it! I fucking knew it! You were watching me the whole time! Did you enjoy it, huh, you little freak? Did you get off on watching me suffer?"
"Don't you get off on it?"
Sylar reared back as though he had been slapped.
"And no, I didn't enjoy it," Peter went on solemnly, standing still and relaxed. He met Sylar's angry gaze squarely. "I feel sorry for you. You've had a pretty messed up life, and all I did was add to that. I'm sorry."
"What the... Shut the fuck up! What do you know?" Sylar yelled, offended and outraged that Peter had the nerve to apologize and look like he meant it. "You don't know anything! Let me go or I swear I'll bash your fucking skull in you dammm..." Peter closed his mouth with TK.
"I know a lot more than you would feel comfortable with, Gabriel Gray."
Sylar's nostrils flared at the sound of his old name. Peter walked closer and knelt down within reach, if only he could move.
"I've taken Maya to Mohinder, and warned him that you're on the loose," Peter continued. "You won't find them," he promised, and Sylar's stomach dropped. "And you won't get your powers back. You have been infected with a virus. It's killing you, maybe." Peter cocked his head to the side, thoughtfully, sympathetically. "They're not sure about that part, only that it's taken away your powers, permanently. I am sorry, Sylar," he finished, shaking his head and searching the other man's face.
Sylar felt like he had received a blow to the chest, and he sat motionless as a statue, even after Peter teleported away. His mind was loud whirling chaos and blank silence at the same time. Sylar stayed like that for a long while, empty and without awareness, before laying back on the welcoming grass and finally giving in to his inconsolable tears.
Gradually he reached up and found the drummers in his neck and was comforted. They hadn't abandoned him. He wasn't alone. He laid on the grass in the dark and listened to them communicate their staccato words to one another and to him and then he slept.
That was where the park rangers found him the next day, lying still with his hands pressed to his throat, seemingly catatonic. In the hospital he was restless and miserable with the lights on so they left them off. And he laid there in the soft, clean, sterile cell listening to his companions in the comforting dark, dreaming of an edge from which he could dive off into the breezy blackness of night and be no more.