The Sum of the Parts

Chapter Eight

Thump… Thump, thump… Thump, thump…

Sylar gasped and cold air burned his lungs. He opened his eyes and Peter was there, screaming in his face but he couldn't hear a sound. Every microscopic particle of his being seared with pain. He held a hand to his face and watched as new tissue, agonizingly slow, sewed itself together over exposed bone. After what felt like hours the softer bones of his inner ear had reformed and he could hear what Peter was going on about.

"Sylar? Sylar, where's Claire? Is she alright? What happened?"

He couldn't speak yet so he pointed a shaky hand in the general direction he thought he had come from. Peter ran through the hole in the wall and next, and hesitated, almost admiring the next. The room in question was still smoldering, the air super heated.

The walls had all bowed outward at a freakish thirty degree angle and both the floor and the ceiling had been cracked clear through to the floors above and below. Scorch marks covered every surface. Blood had boiled away below the black stains, caramelizing into a picture of how the blast had been emitted.

Claire lay sleeping in the middle of it all. Peter rushed to her side and made sure that she was still breathing. Her vitals were strong. Aside from being pretty filthy looking she was fine. He took her in his arms and delicately traced his back to a mostly recuperated Sylar.

"What happened?" she asked groggily, rubbing her eyes.

Sylar took a strand of her hair, holding against a beam of sunlight that shone through the damaged roof. She was no longer just blonde. It had been turned a pure shock white, something that made Sylar chuckle quietly to himself.

"Dude, what happened to your shirt?" Peter asked quizzically handing him his jacket.


"So, what's behind door number three? Fantastic prizes or more psychotic dementia," Sylar muttered, hesitant to even touch the handle.

Peter pushed past him and opened the door. It was a perfectly ordinary and peaceful hospital room. The setting sun shone through the window and glinted off the frame of a particularly generic print and a vase of flowers sat on the small table cart next to the bed where a young man slept.

Although the electric power had failed everywhere else somehow the machines connected to this patient were still functioning normally. One screen bleeped regularly showing a digital read out of all the vitals. Another connected to a small handful of the white suction cup sensors around his head, a thin wire arm scribbling brain wave activity across an endless sheet of paper. A sturdy plastic tube cupped around the patient's mouth and lead to a larger machine immediately beside the bed, heaving air in and out of his lungs. Even the small television hanging from the wall was still displaying a news channel on low volume.

"Are you here to help us?"

They all jumped at the sound of the scratchy voice. There was a woman, hunched over in the corner behind the door. Bony hands concealed her face but they all noticed the dried blood around her ears. Peter slowly tugged Claire behind him, shifting to a defense stance.

"Yes, we're here to help," Sylar said taking a small step forward.

"The doctor said he wanted to help too… They all wanted to help…"

"Do you know this boy?" Peter asked warily.

"He's my son. Or at least he used to be, before that eclipse."

Claire and Sylar exchanged meaningful looks.

"One day, all of the nurses taking care of him started behaving… strange. Like they weren't themselves anymore. Everybody started having nightmares, even when they were awake. It felt like reality was being torn apart. And then the first doctor he had killed himself, right over there." A long bony finger pointed towards the window.

"They all thought I was a bad mother when I said that I wanted to pull the plug," a dry cracked sob came from underneath the woman's greasy strung out hair. "But I know my boy… I know my son and that's not him in there anymore. It's something evil…

And then that new doctor came along. He looked at some papers and told me that my son was still in there. He showed me some drawing that was supposed to mean his brain was still alive. He thought it would change my mind… He told me that he couldn't end it when there was still a chance that my son would come back to me…" A troubled, choked sort of wail came from the mother.

"You're here now and there's nothing to stop you. Why didn't you just do it yourself?"

"He might be a monster, but he's still my baby."

Sylar pulled Peter aside and requested that he take the mother out of there. She didn't need to see what was going to happen next.

After they had left Claire started to move over to the machines but Sylar held a hand out to keep her back. He started shutting all of the monitors down and then he kicked at the plug powering the breathing apparatus.

"That was easy," he mumbled scratching his head and listening to the air flow stop.

They quietly watched as the veins in the boy's arms and face ran black, writhing with a will to survive, and then dissipated again as his heart finally came to a halt for good. Claire turned to open the door and Sylar's hand slammed it shut again from behind her.

"To easy," he said, his eyes turning dead.

Sylar slammed the other hand against the door trapping Claire and diving in for a sloppy kiss. She tried to scream but his mouth smothered the sound. When he pulled back she saw his skin healing around his mouth where a dark patch of necrosis had started.

"What's wrong cheerleader? Not into bad boys anymore?" He howled with crazed laughter. She could smell a faint scent of burning skin as he started stroking her hair.

"Tell me, do you still have some daddy issues we could play with?" Sylar's face shape shifted into Noah Bennett's form.

She thrust her knee where it counted and made a run for it out the door when he dropped. Claire ran down the hall as fast as her legs could carry her and headed for the stairwell to get outside. A jolt of electricity hit her in the back and she tripped, slamming her face into the railway, tumbling the rest of the way down the first flight.


"Claire…" Sylar's voice called out to her, taunting, laughing.

She jumped to her feet, checking door after locked door until one opened. She slid inside and hid under a heavy wooden desk.

"Oh, Claire… Come out, come out wherever you are…"

She could hear the sound of grinding metal as doors down the hall were being pulled off of their hinges, one by one.

"You and me, Claire. You know it's meant to be. Doesn't it all just seem so…" The door to the room she was hiding in flew open. "Inevitable?"

She saw his boots walk up to the desk she was using for shelter and stop. She held her breath trying to stay quiet. The boots turned away and headed for the door. Suddenly Claire was being showered with splinters as the desk flew up and smashed into the ceiling.

"You were never very good at hide and seek."

Sylar levitated over to her, blue lightning crackling around him. He floated her over to him and wrapped her in his arms. They floated together, spinning slowly as he ran his tongue up the side of her face. She struggled against him, smacking at his face and clawing at his neck. He ran his hand up the remnants of her shredded shirt and gave her a nice jolt to the stomach.

"We're going to watch this world burn together, you and I." A wicked smile spread across his face as he looked down at her, fighting against him.

"Thanks for the jump start, baby."

Claire's shield flashed in front of her, a shimmering window now separating her from this twisted visage. He screeched in pain, the high frequency blowing out all the remaining windows simultaneously.

She landed on her feet a short step away from where he seized on the floor. She bent over him, grabbing his face and watching how her touch physically burned him. Pure light started to glow from her finger tips.

She drew concentrated white energy into her shield and pushed it at him. Sylar writhed and retched under the attack, smoke trailing from blackening skin wherever she touched him until he finally lay still.

Sylar's eyes now looked back at her. He took her hand, their contact no longer hurting him.

"Neat trick, cheerleader," he chuckled for a moment before doubling over and squirming in pain again. "You have to kill me," he moaned.

"What? No!"

"Claire, listen to me. He jumps from body to body," another painful grimace. "He can't touch you anymore but we can't let him get out. You have to kill me."

"I can't," she started to cry. The tears started to make an audible hiss as they landed on his hand.

"Claire, I can't hold it back anymore."

Her fingers trembled as she picked up one of the larger splinters from the broken desk.

"I'm sorry, Gabrielle," she whispered as tears streamed down her face.

"I love you."

Claire plunged the wood deep into the tattoo of her face on Sylar's arm. His eyes flickered for a second and went blank.