Chapter Six
While the other agents were unable to look at the corpse without dry heaving or grimacing in pure disgust Noah reflected to himself about how jaded he had become to it all. He had seen so many grisly crime scenes, so many maimed and broken bodies. A distinctly large portion of them had looked exactly like this.
An older woman hung from the wall of her, what would have been, cozy apartment. Countless pictures of her grandchildren stared at her with wide smiling faces. She had basically been nailed there with all manner of random objects forced through her body. Blood stained the wall behind her and pooled on the floor beneath. Her head slumped forward exposing the empty skull, the top of which lay a few feet away.
She may have been a pre-cog, but she never stood a chance.
Sylar ignored the conspicuous stares of the office aids. Of course they all had known who he was. Some of them had probably even gotten into this line of work on the credits of detailed essays about him. Seeing the legendary Boogie Man in the flesh though, that was a vibrant experience all its own, sparking fear and curiosity.
The secretary busily typing in front of Peter's office looked up as he passed by, the same glint of recognition in her eyes. She started in her chair like she meant to protest him showing up without an appointment but quickly turned away and pretended to return to her work. Sylar mentally pushed both doors open and slammed them behind himself with a dramatic flair.
Peter looked up from his paperwork in surprise as he stormed up to the desk and slammed the thick manila folder down in front of him.
"Sylar, what the hell-"
"Did you know about this?" he demanded, pointing furiously at the collection of documents. Peter flipped through the folder, his eyes growing wider with each turn of a page.
"Where did you get this?" he asked quietly.
"Remember the post cards we got with the snow globe keys? I followed my clue and it lead me straight to this."
Sylar could feel the waves of tension and hostility rolling off of himself. He took several deep breaths and forced himself to calm down. The rational side of his brain had put it together that Peter probably knew less than he did about the situation.
Peter drummed his fingers over a picture of a brain scan with his niece's name attached to it.
"That explains a lot," he mumbled to himself. "Looks like I need to call my mother. If there's a buried secret to be found, she's usually got the shovel near by."
"What's going on?"
Both men looked towards the door. Neither of them had heard Claire enter the room. Concern painted her face.
Sylar slammed the folder shut and whisked it away from Peter with a meaningful glance. The Petrelli grabbed his arm and transferred the power of telepathy to himself.
I take it she doesn't know and I'm not supposed to tell.
Some of the stuff that's in here… I'm not so sure it would do her any good to learn.
Claire crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "Hello?" she called to them in agitation over their silent communications.
Right, well I'm going to talk to Angela. You should probably take Claire and run distraction.
"You and I are going to see Mohinder," he said, clearly not giving the girl a choice in the matter. She glared at the back of his head indignantly as he grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the office.
"I'm not sure I understand what this is all about, Sylar." Suresh glanced nervously from Claire to him and back again, sensing the obvious tension between them.
"I just need to see something for myself. That's all," he tried to sound reassuring but he could already imagine the way the scientist's graphs would ripple when he said it. There was a mysterious hole in the pit of his stomach that refused to close.
Claire hadn't said anything since he had brought her here to be hooked up to a series of sensory cables with him. She couldn't possibly have known what he was up to but he recognized the look of turning wheels behind her eyes.
"How did you get your power, Claire?," he started calmly.
"Does it matter?" she cocked her head at him and took a step to the side.
"You always answer that question with another question. Why?" He too took a step to the side.
"Maybe because you keep asking me when you know I'm not going to answer you."
Mohinder glanced up from the dancing colors of activity on his computer. A glimmer of understanding came over him as he watched the two moving around one another in the observation chamber.
"Or maybe, because you're afraid to admit how you got it." The words stung a little more than he had intended them to, but now was not the time to hold back if he wanted answers.
"I didn't have to kill anyone for it if that's what you want to know."
Sylar winced at her harsh tone.
"If you didn't do anything wrong then why are you hiding?"
"Who says I'm hiding anything?"
"Nobody has to say anything, Claire. We can see it. I can see it." They had started circling one another without noticing. Their stances shifted aggressively.
"If it bothers you so much maybe you should stop looking." She shoved his shoulder.
"Face it, Claire Bear, you like it when I look don't you," Sylar smirked as he shoved her back.
"Don't ever call me Claire Bear." The venom was really spilling over now.
"Oh, touched a nerve there, didn't I. Is that a privilege you reserve for Mr. McKinley?"
Claire's shield started glowing around her. "Leave Chris out of this."
"Do you even remember how you got it?"
"Of course I do!" she screamed at him, realizing her mistake to late.
Uh, oh.
That was the ammunition he was looking for.
"Tell me what you know," his voice was climbing in volume.
"If you want to know so bad why don't you just take it like you take everything else!" Claire threw her shield at him, slamming him into the wall. The fight was on.
"Because I want to hear you admit it! I want to hear you say out loud how you helped them manipulate me!" He used his telekinesis to knock her feet out from under her.
"What? I didn't help anyone manipulate you!"
"Then why do you remember when no one else does!"
"I don't know!" He hit her with a bolt of lightning. She bounced his head off the wall with a well placed punch.
"What do you know?"
"Apparently not as much as you think you do."
"I found the file, Claire. I know all about Miller and the things he did to us."
A file… How could there be a file? No one knows anything about it.
"They know. It was Angela and your own father that set it all up. The whole thing was some kind of twisted experiment to see what we would do."
She stopped for a moment, lost in thought.
My dad would never do something like that…
"That's where you're wrong, Claire. It's all in the file. You can see for yourself."
If he knows about everything that happened then how can he think I helped them?
Sylar narrowed his eyes at the girl. She had been thinking freely for a moment only to stop and throw up a mental block, shutting him out.
"You're still hiding something from me, Claire. What is it? What are you keeping from me?" He roared at her as they bull rushed one another in the tiny room. "Tell me why you've worked so hard to keep me out!"
He pinned her down on the floor, holding her hands above her head so that they were face to face.
Her expression was unreadable for a second and then she began to crumble.
"You said you loved me!"
The flood gates were opened with that one little confession.
Images of him teaching her how to use her new power flashed through her mind and twisted into memories of how they had slowly grown closer together during their fight for survival. How she had tried to save his life. The tingles of static over her skin as she kissed him. The look in his eyes as he told her that he needed her.
He felt the convoluted succession of emotions that had flooded through her when he told her that she had to kill him to stop their enemy. He saw himself through her eyes as he told her he loved her just before the death blow was delivered.
He saw how life had started over for them after it all. How she had reconnected with him in her own way just to find out that neither he or Peter had remembered a single thing. He felt how hard it had been to keep everything to herself when they saw each other every day. He saw himself with Charisma…
Tears were spilling from Claire's eyes when he refocused. Sylar rolled off of her in a daze.
That was her big secret. She hadn't kept anything from him about the ordeal out of malicious intent. What she had held so dearly was just a precious memory about the one single moment in her life that she might have been able to love him back.
And then it was all gone. Obliterated.
Sylar watched as she jumped to her feet, ripped off the cables they were tangled in and ran out of the lab. He waited a while before following suit.
Mohinder sat in the observation booth, long forgotten by his subjects. He felt like he would have to physically return his jaw to a closed position as he looked over the data the couple had just unwittingly given him.
Angela Petrelli already knew that her son would be coming and what questions he intended to ask. She didn't take long to mull over her options. She could lie and cover up what they had done. She could do that very well. She was an excellent liar.
But her son would know. As gullible as Peter could be at times, telepaths were much harder to fool. She would have to tell him the truth.
It had been more than one person's dream to see a weapon as powerful as Sylar molded into a force of good. Their own brand of good. The opportunity to test how far his streak of redemption could go would have been blasphemous to waste. And to see something like her granddaughter's growth of power blossom out of that had been a very pleasant surprise.
Power. It was always about the power.
Noah Bennett had argued and fought until he was nearly blue in the face, but in the end even he had agreed that a simple test was warranted. After all, if the department was to come to fruition Sylar would be used to further its goals. They had to know that he could be trusted under unfathomable circumstances. They had to know that he would not cave in to his own desires when push came to shove. In these ends, he had performed quite admirably.
"Hello, Mr. Kline," she answered her phone before it even rang. "Yes, I am very well aware of the situation. I can assure you that it will be handled appropriately."
With a click of her phone she went to answer the door.
Peter sat in the deep chair, hands supporting his face, a brooding mood spoiling his boyish good looks. He had listened carefully to everything his mother had told him about why they had concocted their alternate reality scheme. He had understood. He had not really been surprised by her actions or her reasoning. And yet, it all left a sour taste in his mouth.
There were still puzzle pieces missing from the big picture. But he knew that those bits would not come from Angela. Peter finally rose from his stupor and headed for the door without saying a word.
His mother followed him and placed a hand on his shoulder just as he was opening the door.
"Peter, tell Sylar to kill the girl."
"What?" he whirled around on her with a shocked expression.
Trust me, son. Let Sylar kill the girl. It will all turn out as it is meant to.
In the way that only a woman of her stature could manage, Angela scooted her son out the door and closed it quickly behind him. He could hear a series of locks being turned from the other side.
"Let Sylar kill someone? I can't do that," he muttered to himself as he headed for the street corner to hail a cab.
The worry had not yet faded from him when he reached the intersection. He threw up his arm to catch one of the passing cars but was knocked from his feet by an unseen force. A blur caught the corner of his eye.
Images of himself as a bloody heap on the ground spilled over from another consciousness.
Peter felt the pressure first, like something raking over his body multiple times. And then the pain. He pressed a hand to his stomach and watched as dark red blood warmed his skin. Nathan's voice was at his ear as he fell to his knees.
"Hello, brother. Give Claire my best, will you?"
His vision was clouded white with acute agony as he fell forward. Sirens were screaming from somewhere in the distance.