The hunger. It drives me. The review monster is never sated.
At the time that I wrote this chapter I had completely forgotten about Micah's stint as Rebel so please forgive the little brain glitch there.
Chapter Ten
Claire enjoyed the feeling of the cool breeze whipping through her hair as she clung to Sylar's back. They zipped between buildings and dipped and dodged through traffic and then he had pushed himself nearly into the mesosphere when she asked how high he could go. He was now keeping her arms securely fastened around his neck after an impish attempt to dive off purposefully.
She squealed with delight when he did a few barrel rolls for kicks.
"New Jersey?" she asked incredulously as he landed and dropped her to her feet. "Who are we looking for in New Jersey?"
"Samson," he said as he repressed a bubble of loathing. She continued to eye him quizzically.
"My father."
Claire wasn't entirely sure how to react to this news. Sylar paused a few feet ahead waiting for her with an extended hand. The only time he had ever mentioned anything about his father Claire had gotten the impression that the man had a great deal to do with Sylar's problems. She had imagined him as being incredibly violent, cold and evil. Judging by the look on her companion's face now, that was probably an accurate assumption.
She hesitated but decided that it would be necessary to move on. She took his hand and he wrapped his fingers through hers. His stance and manner suggested protection, but Claire could feel in his touch how much more he needed this contact than she did. She gave him a little squeeze for a signal that everything would be okay.
The house they approached was little more than a shack. A very gray shack at that. The siding was falling apart, the steps were cracked and at least one window was visibly broken. As they walked up to the door she could see that it was slightly ajar. It creaked when Sylar pushed it the rest of the way open and the sudden noise caused a flock of black birds to flutter out from the dead tree in the yard.
If Claire thought the outside of the home was gray, it was nothing compared to the inside. Everything seemed to be surrounded in a kind of smoky haze. Floor boards groaned under their weight in a way that made her imagine they could fall through any second. Dust was covering all available surfaces and cob webs haunted virtually every corner. Stacks of books and various trinkets and parts littered the place. The smell of death hung heavily in the musty air.
A string was hanging down from the ceiling fan in the front room with a note attached.
Father Gray lost his way, one to many butts he led from the tray. To bad he lost his temper, now he resides in the clothing hamper.
"That's not disturbing or anything," Claire whispered as she read the message.
Sylar broke the hold on her hand and marched off towards a side room. She almost had to jog to keep up with his long strides. He shoved a door open and the stench hit her like a brick wall. Flies buzzed angrily around the room and several species of scavenger bugs crowded around the base of ragged blue laundry basket. Some unidentifiable fluid stained the bottom of it and leaked out onto the floor.
He put his hand out to motion her to stay there and opened the lid of the basket. His arm immediately shot up to hook around his face. The crook of his elbow safe guarded his nose and probably helped to suppress a gag. He reached down into the hamper and retrieved a slim file.
They left the house as fast as the laws of physics would allow. Outside in the yard Sylar heaved a few times and coughed hard enough to cause more black birds to scatter into the wind. The look on his was pained. Not the kind of pain you would expect from the ailing effects of such a grotesque sight, but the kind of pain that comes from unexpected tragedy.
Claire automatically moved to his side. She couldn't remove the harshness from reality but she could do her best to soften the blow. For the second time that day the world was kept from crumbling apart by the strength of their embrace. She stroked her fingers through his hair as his low voice rumbled next to her neck.
"I imagined killing him so many times. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to die. But seeing it like that… They tore his body apart and left his head on top of the pile just waiting to look at me. And it was cut in half… Why did they want us to see that?"
There was no telling how long they stood there like that. When he finally let go of her, his face was a blank slate.
Claire looked inside the file he had fished out from the body. There was an address and a picture of a boy that seemed strangely familiar, like maybe she had seen him once before.
To seek the gods is divine, but for this mission you need an electronic mind.
Noah Bennett made his way down the narrow stairwell to the department's basement storage facility. He flipped a switch and florescent lights burst into life, illuminating the stacks of precognitive paintings that were kept on hand.
He was reflecting to himself on the strange behavior of his daughter this morning as he strolled down a row of shelving. Deep down he had known that there were still some unresolved trust issues between them. It had been like that for the last few years. Claire had never been able to completely rekindle her heroic views of him after all the revelations of his working life, but he had thought that since they were now working together to help the good specials and stop the bad that they were starting to make progress at bonding again.
Noah had at least thought that all the secrets were behind them. He had felt more than a little hurt when he realized that she had been hiding something from him.
Knowing that the Nathan Petrelli impersonator was still at large was bad enough. Finding out that he had been communicating in cryptic messages with his sweet Claire was just down right disturbing. What did the deranged mimic want with her?
He was still half wondering if maybe his suspicions about Sylar were correct. Who else would be able to take that form? Who else would be sick enough to do it if they could?
Noah had been very well aware of the killer's psychotic fascination with his daughter when he was still openly evil. Seeing it continue now as they were assigned to work together left a sour taste in his mouth that he couldn't shake.
He found the stack of paintings he was looking for and started pulling them, lining them up one by one against the shelving. It was a series of nine.
The first one depicted a faceless man standing over the body of an older man wearing an oxygen mask with balled up fists. The second showed Claire being stabbed in the neck with a syringe as she struggled against a hand holding her jaw. The third showed Peter laying in a bed with Claire holding his hand. In the fourth Sylar was standing over a dead bloody girl holding a vial of some kind. The fifth showed Claire and Sylar holding one another, kissing, with white and dark blue auras around them blending together making the symbol that meant 'God send' in Japanese. The sixth featured Claire with a pained look on her face as she held a gun in Noah's direction. The seventh showed Sylar kneeling over Claire with a long bloody gash across her forehead. In the eighth a shadowy Nathan Petrelli. And in the final painting a tall willowy girl with black hair and hauntingly blue eyes stood in a white dress, holding a blood caked katana looking off to the distance somewhere.
Bennett didn't even bother putting the upsetting art work away. He marched to his daughter's office and began ransacking through her things looking for any kind of evidence that would lend proof to what he had seen. A broken snow globe sat in her bottom desk drawer with a set of figurines next to it. The models depicted the same scene as the painting of her pointing a gun at him. He grabbed them and ran across the department campus to the main administrative office. If Claire told anyone about any of the things going on in her personal life, it would certainly be her dear uncle Peter.
Peter Petrelli nearly jumped out of his skin when Noah barged through his doors.
"I need to call you back," he said quickly hanging up the phone. "Noah," he nodded politely.
"Do you know anything about this?" he demanded, slamming the figures down on Petrelli's desk.
Peter leaned back in his chair with heavy sigh and ran his hands down his face in exasperation. "Yes," he answered. "Somebody's been running around leaving clues for us to follow. I thought the trail had run cold after the Shanti virus thing."
"What Shanti virus thing?" He could feel the rage growing exponentially inside of him.
Peter seemed only slightly surprised at how much had escaped Bennett's knowledge so he began to relay the entire story from start to finish.
"Did you know about the flowers this morning?"
"Flowers?" Peter asked in confusion.
"She got a vase of flowers this morning from your dearly departed brother. There was some kind of card that came with them. It said something about sin and her turn." Noah was gesturing wildly with his hands, conveying his frustrations.
Petrelli's eyes grew wide and he picked up his phone, dialing a number and hanging up after a few rings several times. "Yeah, I need a team to find Claire Bennett... Yes, it's an emergency... I don't care how strained for people you are, find her, now!" He violently hung up the phone, nearly knocking it from the edge of his crowded desk. "Both Claire and Sylar are missing. No one has seen Claire since this morning and Sylar was supposed to be in the lab first thing today. Suresh said he never showed."
Noah could feel his gut twisting with more than dread.
The flight to New Orleans had been significantly less fun. Sylar was lost to brooding thoughts and the waves of tension rolling off of him ate away at her stomach. Even though they had made excellent time Claire's fingers had severely cramped. By the time they landed it was a struggle to unclench them from her dark companion's neck.
A large mansion spilled out before them on a beautiful hilltop setting that overlooked the city proper. Statues of a tall, lithe and strong looking woman with long willowy hair greeted them as they approached the elaborate estate. An elderly woman answered the door.
"Hello ma'am. My name is Claire Bennett and I'm looking for Micah Sanders. Is he home?" The woman happily invited them inside and quickly shuffled off, calling for Micah.
Off in a side room an energetic younger female dressed in a black athletic suit was doing a steady progression of exercises ranging from throwing knives at a target to balancing on one hand over a thin wooden beam.
"A muscle mimic. I'd like to see how that works," Sylar remarked in a particularly dark flavor of wonder.
"Saint Joan," Claire mumbled with a smile remembering the old graphic novel cover. Sylar looked at her curiously.
"She was a character featured in the 9th Wonders comic." He gave her a slightly surprised if not impressed expression. "What? I worked in a comic book store for a while," she laughed.
"Illustrated by Isaac Mendez," he said darkly.
"Yeah, how did you know?" Sylar picked a spot on the floor as far away from her gaze as possible to stare at and jammed his hands in his pockets with a faint sigh.
"Oh," she muttered under her breath when she got the idea.
"I thought you were dead. What are you doing here?"
A young boy, barely out of school, Claire guessed, descended the stair case staring openly at Sylar. His face was filled with a mixture of confusion and apprehension.
"Do I know you?" Sylar asked cocking his head to the side a little as he read the boy.
"The last time I saw you, my mom was hitting you over the head with a parking meter in Kirby Square."
They finally made the connection as to why he looked so familiar. They hadn't actually met, but his family had been involved in the events of the near catastrophe when New York almost went nuclear. Claire and Sylar looked at one another with their own uneasiness.
"Um, well… Long story, short, he's reformed and working for the good guys now. And we need your help," Claire dug her department badge out of her back pocket and handed it to him. Micah took a long withering look at Sylar but nodded in acceptance.
"What do you guys need from me?"
"I think we need you to help us crack the encryption code on a computer file," Sylar said with understanding glinting in his eyes.
"How did you know that?"
"To seek the gods is divine, but for this you need an electronic mind. Remember what the Russian said and what Jones found? I've got a feeling that this kid is our electronic mind…"
"Um, the kid, is still here," Micah said pointing to himself, "I don't know anything about a Russian but I'm guessing that you're looking for Miranda if you came to see me."
Looks of anxious inquisition were exchanged between them all. Sanders led the duo up the stairs into a spacious office filled with computers. He sat down in the chair in front of an expensive looking laptop and placed a hand on the keyboard. Windows started popping up on the screen at an incredible pace. The boy mentally punched in a few numbers and the mysterious file that Agent Jones had claimed would take a super computer one hundred years to crack, was opened before them in less than a minute.
"Wow, you're really good," Claire beamed.
"I hope so. I'm the one the government hired to write the program." He smiled back.
Micah loaded the information they needed onto a flash drive and handed it to Claire.
"Do you know what's on here?" Sylar asked, telekinetically snatching it away from her to be examined.
"Nope. The D.S.R.E.C. were paying me a lot of money not to ask questions. I just wrote the code. Anything it was protecting was added after that."
"How much did they pay you?"
Micah just grinned from ear to ear and gestured with both arms for them to infer that it had been enough for everything they saw before them and probably more.
It was just after midnight when Sylar and Claire drifted over the landing pad of the department's facility. He landed gracefully and reluctantly helped Claire disentangle herself from him. Sylar smiled down on her as he tucked a rogue lock of hair behind her ear.
"So, I guess it's true what they say." The voiced startled them both. Chris stepped out from behind one of the helicopters. "You really do have a thing for the guys that can fly, don't you Claire?"
Sylar shifted aggressively and was about to open his mouth when she stopped him.
"I need to talk to him… Alone," she said low enough that only he could hear. Claire knew that Sylar wouldn't want to leave her side but she gave him her most imploring look. "I'll see you tomorrow." He glared at the other agent but nodded in acceptance and launched himself back into the sky.
"It's good to see that you're out so soon," she awkwardly started.
"Yeah, real great," he muttered, kicking at the asphalt. She wanted to say something that would explain the situation he had seen in a way that wouldn't hurt him anymore, but nothing was coming to mind.
"You know… I kinda knew that you were really thinking about him when you were kissing me. I didn't want to believe it though. I like you, Claire. A lot. And I thought that maybe someday…" The sadness in his voice and downtrodden look on his face made her feel like she had just kicked a puppy. An adorable, trustworthy, fun loving, brown eyed puppy.
"Chris…"
"No, it's okay, Claire," he waved her off and started to walk away. She was about to run after him when he stopped and turned. "It's okay because I can wait. Maybe someday it will be me that you think about. If that day comes, I'll still be here." He flickered his contagious grin at her and continued to depart.
Sylar had a little kick to his step as he strolled through his doorway. But it was all quickly ruined with a bad case of déjà vu. Someone pushed him up against the wall and heated lips found their way to his neck.
This time he pushed back. Charisma was standing there when he flipped on the light switch.
"What's wrong, baby? To tired tonight?" she asked as she stepped forward again and wrapped her arms around his neck. When she moved in for a kiss he blocked her by putting a hand over his mouth. He removed her hands from his personal space and pointed his thumb over his shoulder towards the door, telling her with the universal body language to get lost.
Jones was more than a little dismayed. They had spent nearly every night together since their first encounter.
"What is your problem?" she hissed at him. Sylar didn't think she had ever been rejected before and it was making her furious.
"Obviously, it's you right now. Vacate." When she put her hands on her hips and made that little huffing sound of hers, he rolled his eyes and started to walk away, leaving the door wide open for her.
"I see. You finally got a piece from that skank and now I'm not good enough. Is that it?" She spat each word at him with extreme toxicity. Her antagonistic turn only served to infuriate him. Sylar turned on his partner and mentally pushed her against the wall. He got directly in her face and stuck his finger in her chest for extra emphasis.
"I'm going to speak very slowly now so that you can understand. I do not want you. I never wanted you. I'm never going to want you. Ever. I don't even like you. Now get out and do not come back."
He let her down from the wall and gestured to the door again. "Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out," he called over his shoulder as he made his way to his bedroom.
Jones was outraged to the point of tears. She grabbed her jacket from the rickety table and dashed for the exit. At the last second she thought better and stopped, turning towards his retreating back.
She pulled a revolver from her jacket pocket and aimed at the back of his head.