Chapter I: Collision
Mohinder rubbed his eyebrow absently with his right thumb as he turned the wheel. The car glided smoothly around the corner, and down the street two blocks from his apartment. He was almost home, it was nearly the weekend, and Matt had taken Molly on a three day vacation to the beach. He was about to get the house to himself, and the thought of curling up with a good book and resting was just enough to keep him going. A few drops of rain had begun to patter down onto the windshield, and he blinked back tears of sleepiness as he stifled a yawn after he pulled up to a red light. When he shook his head slightly to try and wake himself up, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye, and turned his attention to a man playing drums on the sidewalk for cash. His gaze slid indifferently over the various people going about their lives, until it came to a sudden jolting stop on a tall man in a long dark jacket.
Mohinder's breath caught in his throat as he made eye contact with Sylar. The killer was leaning back against the wall with one foot up, resting against the brick. He nodded slightly to Mohinder, and grinned. Mohinder saw Sylar's attention shift to the intersection of busy cars before him, and he turned to look too. As he did he felt an all too familiar invisible force push his body back into the driver's seat. Mohinder gasped as he attempted to grab the steering wheel, but his arms were pinned down ineffectually at his sides.
"No," he breathed, feeling his foot being pulled back from the brake. The force then slammed down on the gas pedal, and Mohinder's car lurched forward into traffic. The psychic hold on his body was released at the very moment the car collided on the driver's side with an old Buick, and its shocked driver. Mohinder's head cracked against the glass of the driver's side window, and darkness consumed him instantly.
XXXX
A train of garbled voices hummed just outside Mohinder's realm of understanding. At some point there were shouts, and beeping, and then everything had gone quiet. In the calm of night, the geneticist opened his eyes. For a moment his vision swam, and he closed his eyes quickly to keep the nausea at bay. Then with an effort he was finally able to look at his surroundings. He was in a single occupant hospital room with the curtain pulled around the left side of the bed. To his right there was a doorway. Mohinder assumed the bathroom was on the other side of the curtain. The room was fairly dark at the moment, with a single light coming from behind the bed somewhere. His left hand bumped the nurse call button/television remote, and he brushed his fingers lightly over it, resting on the buttons, but not pressing them.
He winced as pain arced through his skull, starting at the left temple, and traveling all the way to his jaw. Mohinder reached up instinctively, and felt the warm cloth of the bandage that was wrapped around his head. The motion felt strange, and he held his hand in front of his face and moved it slowly.
"Morphine."
Mohinder's attention immediately turned to the corner of the room where the voice had emanated from. He squinted into the darkness, barely able to make out the tall dark outline of a man.
"Sorry I had to resort to such a violent action, but it was important that we could have a nice face to face chat like this, without you trying to stab, drug, or shoot me every chance you got." As he spoke, Sylar stepped out of the darkness. He barely made a sound as he crossed the floor to stand next to the bed. Mohinder's heart monitor began to beep faster as he stared up at Sylar who, in the eerie single tiny light of the room, really did look like the boogeyman. Mohinder tried to press the nurse call button, but Sylar was fast, leaning over the doctor and gripping his wrist firmly to keep him from reaching it.
"I know you're drugged, but try to think clearly Mohinder. What do you suppose I'd have to do if you called someone in here for help?"
Mohinder swallowed, and relaxed his hand. Sylar lay Mohinder's arm down at his side, brushing softly against the doctor's stomach as he stood and moved around the bed to set the call button on a shelf just out of reach.
"There was an accident?" Mohinder asked.
"Yes."
"You took control of my car..."
"I did."
"And the...the other car...did they...?"
"She survived, don't worry."
Mohinder lifted his left hand to the wound again. Under the pretense of fighting off the pain in his skull, he glanced toward the door, gauging the distance. There was little chance of taking Sylar unaware, but if he could, and somehow managed to make it to the hall, he might be able to hide. Would Sylar kill someone in the time it took Mohinder to find a phone and call the company? Could they make it here before the killer ripped the building apart?
"Don't. Don't even think about it." Sylar grabbed Mohinder's wrist, and pressed his arm back into the pillow behind him. Mohinder was forced to look into Sylar's eyes. His own eyes were wide, and Sylar didn't need the heart monitor to hear Mohinder's heart skip a beat at the sudden movement.
"I'm taking you with me because I need your help. You're going to come willingly, or you're going to get a lot of people hurt, do you understand?"
"Yes," Mohinder said.
"Good. Then I'll try to make this as painless as possible."
Sylar released Mohinder's left arm, and leaned toward the right one. He was in the process of pulling the IV out when he suddenly froze. Mohinder, who was holding his breath so he didn't touch the killer any more than he had to, felt a pang of fear at Sylar's abrupt pause.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Someone's coming. If you tell her I'm here, she dies. If you try to signal to her, she dies. Understand?"
Mohinder nodded as Sylar backed away, hiding behind the curtain as the door opened. Mohinder watched as a young nurse entered, her smile glowing with the brilliant light from the hall. He winced as she left the door slightly ajar.
"Hello doctor Suresh. How are you feeling?"
"Disoriented," Mohinder said with a mild smile.
"I can imagine. Your head and your left shoulder took a pretty good knock in that accident."
Mohinder moved his shoulder automatically. He hadn't even realized it had been hurt. The morphine was doing something right.
"You were lucky really. A lot of people don't survive a trip through a red light."
"It was an accident," Mohinder said, his stomach clenching at the realization that it would all come across as being his fault. He squirmed uncomfortably as he thought of Sylar on the other side of the curtain, waiting for him to slip up.
"Well, whatever happened, everyone survived. You have an angel looking out for you, if you don't mind me saying so."
The nurse walked very close to the curtain as she looked up to check the vitals on the heart monitor.
"Did the other driver come to this hospital?"
"She did, they released her awhile ago with a few scrapes and bruises."
Mohinder's smile grew with relief. He laid back and let his attention wander for a moment as a small wave of euphoria hit when another dose of morphine was pumped into his veins. The nurse finished writing on her clipboard, then turned to him.
"I'll be back in fifteen minutes to take your blood pressure, and I'll check your O2 stats then. Do you want anything before then? Water, or ice chips, or dinner?" Mohinder turned almost lazily to look at her.
"No thanks, I'm alright." She nodded, a small curious smile on her face as she looked at him.
"I'll see you soon then."
As the nurse left, Mohinder found himself drifting back to sleep. He jerked awake again as Sylar once more set to taking out the IV. He removed it carefully, and quickly, as he did with the EKG monitors on Mohinder's chest.
"Time to wake up now," Sylar said, deftly sliding an arm under Mohinder's back, and supporting the doctor's weight. Dropping the gate on the side of the bed, Sylar sat Mohinder up, then with a swift and uncomfortable motion, the doctor was standing. He remained that way for roughly a second before a wave of dizziness caused him to brown out, and he fell limply sideways, against the killer. Sylar supported him, using telekinesis when he thought Mohinder was going to fall. In a somewhat tender display, Sylar picked up the top blanket from the bed, and wrapped it around the doctor's shoulders.
"Can you walk?"
Mohinder finally managed to steady himself, uncomfortably aware of how much his weight was supported by Sylar.
"Yes."
Sylar looked down for a moment as though focusing on a speck of dirt on the ground. Mohinder almost browned out again as the world shifted before him. The ceiling grew further away as he lost a few inches of height. Sylar too became shorter, and now had the appearance of an older man, while Mohinder looked like a nurse who's had just a bit too much to drink.
"I have breasts," Mohinder stated with only mild surprise. The drugs in his system were making the adjustment much easier.
"They're lovely," Sylar laughed, before he concentrated on something Mohinder couldn't see. After a moment, the killer determined it was safe to move, and he walked Mohinder right out of the room, down the hall, and onto the elevator. Mohinder leaned against the wall as the elevator descended, his eyes closed, his thoughts becoming more and more random. When they reached the ground level, Sylar moved still faster, urging the doctor along. Then they were free of the hospital, vanishing into the night, nothing more than two shadows in the darkness.
XXXX
Mohinder accepted the cold rag and used it to dab at his warm face. Now that the morphine was wearing off, he was beginning to feel the full effect of his impact with the car door. His left shoulder throbbed, and he winced every time he moved that arm. Pain lanced through his skull at regular intervals, and he had a hard time keeping his composure. He'd already thrown up twice. Sylar didn't seem particularly worried about this as he moved around the abandoned hide-out, indifferent. Somehow the killer had managed to help Mohinder change into gray sweats and a long-sleeved white shirt over which he also wore a light-brown jacket. Mohinder currently rested against a dirty wall, his dark curls and the bandage occasionally catching on bits of stucco. He concentrated all his effort on watching his own chest rise and fall.
"Any better?" Sylar asked after a few minutes.
"A bit," Mohinder croaked, swallowing back a bitter taste as he continued to look down.
"In a little while I'll go get you some more painkillers, if you're good. Until then I need you to listen."
"Mm," Mohinder answered..
"I've discovered a new power. It's sort of unstable. Maybe unstable isn't the word for it. Let's just say it is really hard to get to this power, but it's one I would love to collect. With me so far?" Mohinder nodded very slightly, his gaze now on his knees.
"If I had this power, I think I could increase my other powers exponentially. I would be unstoppable. And the best part is, I doubt even that empath could affect me."
"I never heard of this power," Mohinder mumbled. He chanced a look at Sylar, and was relieved to find he wasn't too nauseous to do so.
"This person doesn't go around sharing their gift with the world," Sylar said, "I sort of stumbled on him by accident when doing a little research at the library. He can control snow, and he's been alive for a very long time."
Sylar walked into the other room for a moment, at which time Mohinder made an effort of taking in his whereabouts and finding the exits, including the front door which was visible in the other room where the killer had gone. When Sylar came back in, Mohinder immediately returned his attention to his captor. Sylar was looking down at some copied papers in his hand.
"I was trying to figure out if anyone else studied special people, the kind of research you and your father have done, and I found some interesting paranormal stories. But this one stuck out to me."
Sylar handed Mohinder the stack of papers.
"I don't care about the active power, I can already make snow. From what I've gathered though, this man has been around for over 200 years, and his power seems to grow once a year. In that time of year an area of about a hundred square miles will be completely blanketed in snow for about six months. And if you look at the dates there," Sylar flipped through the pages in Mohinder's hand, and placed one of them on top of the pile, "the snow cover always corresponds with a death in the local area. The one year where there is no death listed in the past two centuries, is a year where there was an extreme decline in snowfall. There's a poem written about him. People call him the Snowman."
Mohinder's hands shook slightly as he rustled through the papers, but his attention as a scientist had been piqued, despite the pain currently emanating through his body.
"That's quite a conclusion," he said finally, looking up at Sylar, "how do you know it isn't all just coincidence?"
"I don't, but if I'm right, I could take this ability, and make it work so much better. My powers would only grow. I could move whole continents with my mind." Mohinder's head swam as he looked at Sylar, less from the pain, and more from fear of what the man could become capable of.
"And why would I help you," Mohinder asked, "especially if the entire human species is at stake?"
"Because I would be willing to strike a bargain in return," Sylar said. Mohinder frowned, and instantly regretting doing so as his head buzzed dangerously.
"What sort of bargain?"
"I would let you, your family, your friends, and within reason, anyone else you chose, live."
"I am not going to do this so that you can be a god on Earth," Mohinder said forcefully.
He dropped the papers suddenly and gasped when a new pain shot through his head. His ears began to ring so loudly that Mohinder squeezed his eyes shut, and pressed his hands over the sides of his head as if that could keep the sound out. The pressure built until he felt he was about to burst apart. Then all at once it stopped, and Mohinder sat in a miserable heap, his breathing ragged, and his heartbeat frantic. Tears fell from his eyes in response to the strain on his body. He turned sideways and retched again.
"You don't really have a choice," Sylar said, "unless you would rather die here on this floor. Just think of it as the next chapter in your book, the evolution of a god."
Mohinder wiped his mouth with the back of his trembling hand, and looked up at Sylar. He couldn't speak, and he didn't dare try. If he lost any more fluid he knew he would be in real trouble. Something seemed to shift in Sylar as he looked down at the doctor. His face went from looking angry, to confused, to concerned. He jumped up and hurried into the other room. Mohinder heard the sound of a faucet running, and then Sylar returned with another rag, and a slightly dirty glass of water.
"Drink," he said, tipping the water to Mohinder's lips. The doctor sputtered, but was forced to swallow. His throat burned as he took in the water. Sylar finally set the glass down and used the rag to clean Mohinder's face.
"I'm sorry about that," Sylar said absently, "you should get some rest."
Sylar once again helped Mohinder stand, and walked him over to the room's single, surprisingly clean mattress. The doctor lay down on his right side, and as Sylar stood watching him, Mohinder's eyes fluttered closed. He was unconscious within moments.
XXXX
Mohinder woke. His gaze trailed around the room where dust was floating lazily in the new morning light. The doctor's head and arm were still throbbing, but the pain had dulled, and when he sat up he felt the mild euphoria of narcotics. Sometime in the night, Sylar had drugged him. Looking around Mohinder saw that the floor had been cleaned where he'd last thrown up, for which he was grateful. The stack of papers from library research was lying on a rickety table beside his bed, next to a glass of water, and a bottle of pills. Picking up the bottle, Mohinder read the label. The pills had definitely been the source of his relief. He didn't even remember Sylar having him take them.
Mohinder stood carefully, and when he was sure he wasn't going to pass out, he began to explore the apartment.
"Sylar?" he called out uncertainly.
The apartment felt somehow empty, and Mohinder was beginning to eye the front door. When there was no response, he checked the remaining rooms. Sylar was gone. Mohinder hurried to the front door and attempted to turn the knob. He wasn't surprised when it didn't give at all. On closer inspection he found that Sylar hadn't locked it, but had somehow jammed the door closed when he left. Mohinder pounded on the wood with the side of his right hand as hard as he could.
"Hello?! Is anyone out there? Please, I need help!"
He stopped pounding for a second in order to press his ear to the door and listen. There was no sound from the other side, no one had heard him. He pounded again, but once more there was no response. Sighing, Mohinder turned and leaned his back against the door, weighing his options.
He was feeling light-headed. With some effort he went to the sink and cupped his hands under the running water, drinking as fast as he could, as much as he dared. He hadn't realized how incredibly thirsty he was. When it was apparent he could not take in too much more and safely keep it down, he turned off the faucet and wiped his mouth.
Mohinder squinted as he was blinded by a ray of morning light, and he put a hand up to shield his eyes before walking to the window. It was locked, but it was still made of glass, and glass was breakable. The window looked out to a poorly tended back yard with a broken fence. Mohinder searched around for something to break it with, and spotted the best weapon for the job when he happened to glance up and see the unused curtain rod that hung loosely above the window. Tugging it down with both arms, and wincing as his left shoulder flared in protest, Mohinder wielded the rod like a bat, and smashed the window. It took two blows to shatter the glass. The third blow opened a large hole in the window, and by the fifth strike Mohinder had a hole big enough to fit through. He ran the rod along the bottom of the window pane to knock away any excess glass, then he slowly maneuvered his way through the hole, inhaling sharply whenever he accidentally cut himself.
He fell to the ground outside, silently thankful for the fact that there was soft earth to cushion his fall. Taking just a moment to catch his breath, he rolled over and forced himself to stand. He'd cut his feet on the many shards that had fallen to the ground, and soon he felt dirt and blood mixing to form an earthy bandage over his fresh wounds. Mohinder limped quickly to the broken fence, crouching to squeeze through one of the large gaps in the wood, and pushing through to the other side where he spotted a street. Uncomfortably aware of every wound on his body, Mohinder began to feel sluggish. But he pressed on, leaving bloody footprints as he stepped onto the road, desperately wishing someone would drive by. The place appeared deserted, tucked away in the back of an alley. It was perfect for hiding, he realized grimly.
Mohinder limped through the alley. He had spotted the main road, and to his relief, he even saw some cars. He sped up, wincing with every other step, but only concentrating on reaching the road, getting help, getting as far away from there as he could. A chill ran down his spine and clenched his stomach when he saw the familiar dark figure come around the corner of the alley ahead, standing in between Mohinder and the street full of cars. He froze.
"I was getting breakfast. I figured you must be pretty hungry by now," Sylar said as he lifted a grocery bag to indicate his shopping trip. Sylar took a step forward, and Mohinder fell back a pace in response.
"I can see the apartment wasn't as secure as I'd hoped. I'm guessing I should have boarded up the window."
"Yes," Mohinder said, looking from Sylar to the road behind him, acutely aware of how far away the cars all seemed in that moment.
"Why don't you come back inside with me, where it's safe, and we'll have something to eat. It's not a good idea to be outdoors without shoes you know."
"I'd rather stay out here if it's all the same," Mohinder said, taking another step back as Sylar moved toward him again.
"You look a little accident prone doctor, I really think it's best if you remain indoors."
Sylar grinned as he continued to close the distance between Mohinder and himself. Mohinder steeled himself to run the other way, try desperately to find another exit, but his actions were preceded by gunshots. Sylar dropped the bag as he spun, a hand held up defensively, halting the bullets in mid-air. Mohinder jerked in surprise, then smiled in momentary relief as he spotted Matt over Sylar's shoulder. A second later there was a loud snap like a fire-cracker, and Sylar went flying into the far wall, a victim of Elle's expert targeting. The bullets fell to the ground at the same time as the killer.
"Hit him again," Matt said.
Elle complied, zapping Sylar with another volt of electricity, causing him to shudder violently, then collapse against the wall, hissing in pain. She raised her hand to strike him another electric blow, but Mohinder called out.
"Stop! Don't kill him!"
Mohinder was as surprised as Matt and Elle at his own response. He couldn't take his eyes from Sylar. The killer was slumped at an angle against the wall, blood trailing in a pool from his mouth. He looked up at Mohinder, his eyes unfocused.
"Don't kill him," Mohinder repeated, "just knock him out. Take him to the company. He could be of use to us." Matt complied happily, walking toward the killer, crouching down, then dealing out a blow with his fist that rendered Sylar unconscious instantly.
"You look like hell Doctor Suresh," Elle pointed out, looking Mohinder up and down.
"I'm starting to feel worse than that," Mohinder said. He leaned against the nearest wall for support as he looked gratefully at Matt and Elle.
"How did you know?" he asked.
"Molly wanted to check up on you. She found out you were with him," Matt indicated Sylar, "and we decided to cut our vacation short."
"I'm glad you did," Mohinder smiled.
"Let's get you to the company. They'll make you good as new," Elle insisted.
She hurried over to support Mohinder's weight and help him limp to their waiting car, as Matt dragged Sylar behind them. When Mohinder was securely in the back seat, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window, and relaxed, watching the cars go by. In his haze of thoughts the image of the papers on the table kept cropping up. One word played through Mohinder's mind over and over: Snowman.