Waking Time

Shawn immediately started to struggle but Sylar´s grip on him was just too strong to get away. He tried to scream but it didn´t work. The killer over him just smiled at his fear and even started to shush him as if he were a kid, that was frightened of the monster in his closet.

"Ssshhhh, Shawn." he said in a gentle tone. "Don´t bother. It´s okay. Everything is all right. No one is gonna hurt you."

Shawn stared into these dark eyes, the eyes that had used to haunt him in his dreams and his heart was thudding behind his ribcage. Sylar´s smile grew a little wider.

"You don´t actually think that I just came here to take revenge, do you?" he asked and shook his head. "Honestly, Shawn. Sometimes I wonder what is going on in this head of yours."

He raised his hand and pointed at Shawn´s forehead. The fake psychic closed his eyes and waited for the pain but it never came. Instead a second voice spoke up.

"Stop that." the accented voice of Raj Singh´s cousin demanded and when Shawn opened his eyes, he saw the scientist holding Sylar´s wrist. "We´re not here to scare him."

"I know." Sylar replied sadly and looked down on Shawn again. "What a shame. You have no idea how much fun it can be to scare this guy."

He took his hand away and of course Shawn started to scream. Or at least he tried to. Sylar´s hand was covering his mouth again only a nanosecond after he´d released it. He leaned over him as if it needed more strength to keep Shawn quiet than before, groaning exasperated.

"Told you." he said in a chitchat tone, looking over his shoulder. Then he turned back to Shawn and started to talk to him again, his brows raised as if he really spoke to a stubborn child. "Listen. I´m not gonna hurt you." he said. "But you won´t make this better if you don´t listen to us."

Shawn stopped struggling and when Sylar released him this time, he didn´t scream. Instead he asked: "Is this a dream?"

Sylar chuckled. "Oh, no. This time it´s real. Believe me. It´s as weird for me as it is for you. You see, I had some weird dreams too lately."

"What are you talking about?" Mohinder asked confused. "We´re not here to talk about dreams."

"Oh, come on, Mohinder, we have the time." Sylar pouted, never looking away from Shawn. "It´s quite a coincidence, isn´t it? Maybe you can tell me about it … Psychic. What is all that supposed to mean?"

"I have no idea." Shawn cried. "I am no psychic. You said that yourself."

"Well, maybe I was wrong."

"No, you weren´t. You weren´t. You were absolutely right. I´m not a psychic. Not at all."

Sylar smiled. "How sweet." he said. "Look at this. He´s afraid that I´ll take his brain out if he would admit it."

"There is nothing to admit." Shawn assured him. "You´ve got to believe me."

"Cut the crap." Mohinder demanded, talking to Sylar not to Shawn. "We´re not here to play staredown. Shawn. I´m sorry that we invaded you like this. But we came here to ask for your help."

"I know." Shawn said. "You need to get in someplace."

"See?" Sylar cheered, hitting his knee. "I told you he´d know." For a moment he enjoyed Shawn´s fearful silence. But then he met Mohinder´s warning gaze and he contained his grin. "Sorry." he said with a bashful smirk that wasn´t sorry at all.

"Wait." Shawn panted. "So you mean all this is real? All that I dreamed about you guys … this really happened?" he stared at the killer before him. "What did you do to me, for gods sake?"

"I did nothing." Sylar stated, almost angry about this accusation.

"What are you talking about?" Mohinder demanded to know. "What dreams?"

"I saw it." Shawn told him. "The whole thing. You helped him escape from prison. Are you crazy? This guy´s a killer. He killed your cousin. And your dad, you told me that."

"I know." Mohinder said, an expression of shock on his face. After another moment he shook it off and asked: "How can you know all this? I thought you are no psychic."

Shawn could only shake his head. He was looking at Sylar who he still believed to be responsible for all this crazy stuff in his head. But Sylar only turned around to the scientist and gave a small shrug.

"I think there is a lot more going on here, than we understand, Mohinder." he said.

Shawn looked from one of them to the other and when he realized that the killer was momentarily distracted, he took his chance to bolt away from the couch. It actually worked. He escaped from Sylar´s reach and for a moment he truly believed that he could make it to the door. But when he ran past Raj´s cousin, the Indian scientist grabbed him and swirled him around until his back was pressed against the wall. Not even the surprised look in Mohinder´s own eyes (it probably had been an instinctive reaction) could change the shock Shawn felt over this.

"What the hell are you doing?" he cried. "You´re really helping him? Why?"

"It´s not about him." Mohinder said. "It´s about much more people. Innocent people. I´m trying to stop a genocide."

"Shouldn´t you know about this, Shawn?" Sylar asked, coming up beside Suresh. "I mean you dreamed it, didn´t you?"

Shawn threw a dark glare at this killer. "Let´s say it was more like a slide show what I saw." he said at last. Sylar nodded understandingly.

"It was that way for me too." he said and when Shawn frowned, he added: "You are a lucky guy, Shawn. Living a life like this."

Mohinder released Shawn´s collar, looking bemused over his shoulder.

"Spare it." Shawn hissed at Sylar. "We´ve been there before."

"Indeed." Sylar agreed. "But I grew to realize something more through these dreams. That we both, you and I, are actually not that different." Shawn snorted but Sylar didn´t let that irritate him. "We both tried to be special because our parents wanted us to be." he started to talk. "Because they wanted us to be so much more than we could actually be."

I knew you could be so much more, Shawn heard his mother´s voice again like she´d spoken to him in his dreams.

"Your dad wanted you to follow in his footsteps." Sylar said. "My mom wanted me to be president." He chuckled and shook his head.

If you wanted, you could be president.

Shawn stared at the killer and just couldn´t believe it. "That was you." he understood in shock. "Those were your memories. I dreamed your memories."

"And I dreamed yours." Sylar nodded. "Sort of. It was a strange and … very disturbing mixture of both our memories, I guess. But whatever it was, it was enlightening. At least it was for me. You have no idea how good I understand you, Shawn. You tried to run away from your father but in the end you had no choice but to come back … and to fulfill what he´d wanted for you. It was never your choice to do this. It was always his. He made you that way. The way my parents made me this way. Created after their misguided image. Only you found a way to live with this curse your father put on you. Much better than I did. Now look at us. Two opposite sides of the same coin."

"No." Shawn shook his head. "I´m not like you."

"Exactly." Sylar agreed. "And that´s why I think you could be my savior."

"What? Okay, dude. You … need help."

"That´s what I´m talking about." Sylar said, staring at Shawn with glowing eyes, far too intimidating to be even remotely comfortable. Shawn was close to freak out.

"We are not here to find salvation for what you´ve done." Mohinder spoke up, to end this whole thing.

"Maybe we are, Mohinder." Sylar objected. "Don´t you see it? That´s why all this happened. Why we got connected." he looked at Shawn. "Because we are in some way connected. You must understand that, Mohinder. You were brought on this way by your father as well."

"All right, that´s enough." the geneticist demanded. "I didn´t come here to find salvation."

"But you could find it anyway." Sylar tried to convince him. "Maybe it was fate."

"I said, stop that."

Shawn stood there and listened to all of this and found it utterly disturbing that he actually knew what they were talking about.

"I came here to stop the Company from killing people." Mohinder stated.

"The Company?" Shawn repeated.

"The organization we escaped from." Mohinder explained. "They are locating people with abilities to hunt them down and kill them."

"People like Juliet." Sylar emphasized. "They don´t know about her yet but one day they will. And then they´ll come and kill her too."

Shawn swallowed. "They already came." he said and an expression of shock appeared on the killer´s face. "But she wasn´t hurt because they came for me." Shawn hurried to explain, wondering why he felt the need to put this man´s mind at rest. "That´s at least what Peter said."

"Peter?" Sylar asked with a frown.

"Peter Petrelli?" Mohinder specified.

"He was here." Shawn said, not surprised that they knew who he was talking about. "He saved my life after these guys with the black masks shot me. Brought me back from the dead, man."

Mohinder threw a bemused glance over his shoulder at Sylar. The killer just shrugged. "Seems I missed that episode." he commented. "But that definitely sounds like Peter. The only thing I don´t understand is, how he could know about this. What is he doing here?" he wondered out loud to himself before he addressed Shawn again. "You don´t happen to know that, Shawn, do you?" he asked him.

"Why should I tell you?" the fake psychic replied.

"Peter had to run when the Company came for him." Mohinder spoke up. "Just like Angela."

Sylar stared at him. "You knew that?" he asked in disbelieve. "Why didn´t you tell me?"

"We were not on this trip to exchange family stories." the geneticist said.

"Well, it would have been nice to tell me anyway." the killer replied. "What the hell happened?"

"So now you care for other people all the sudden?"

"Yes. Mohinder. I do. So would you please tell me or do I have to beg for information?"

The scientist was uncertain for a moment but then he just summarized. "After Angela Petrelli knew that the Company had started to change its politics, she was replaced as its head. She could run before they came for her. She warned her son that they would come for him too and he left New York. Where he went and what happened after that, I don´t know."

"I think, I do." Shawn took over. "He seems to be with a group of people that are … how do you call it? Special?"

"A group?"

"The Rebels." Mohinder spoke it out before Shawn had a chance to.

"What? What is that supposed to mean?" Sylar wanted to know.

"What do you know about them, Shawn?" Mohinder asked ignoring Sylar. "The Company didn´t find them, did they?"

"No. But this guy with the glasses was worried that they could."

"Glasses?" Sylar repeated.

"Noah?" Mohinder asked. "Was his name Noah Bennet? Where is he? Is he in town?"

"Okay, dude." Shawn raised both hands. "This is getting way over my head now. Slow down."

"We already agreed that Noah can´t help us here." Sylar told Mohinder.

"He was the one who brought me into this." Mohinder replied. "It was his plan to bring the Company down from the inside. If he can´t help us, then no one can."

"That´s not true." Sylar argued and pointed at Shawn. "He can."

"Me?" Shawn shrieked. "Okay, time out. Seriously. I … I don´t even know what you guys are talking about."

"We´re talking about murder, Shawn." Sylar said. "Organized killings. Innocent people are killed just because they are different. If we can get access to only one computer, we could stop all this."

"How?"

"I have a virus." Suresh explained. "A computer virus. Here on this disc. I need to plant it into the Company´s system and they will not be able to find those people anymore. And that´s only the first step. With their system down, it will be a lot easier to destroy the whole Company. If we succeed we could stop all of this."

"But we need to get into this building." Sylar finished the explanation.

"What building?"

"It´s a technology producer." Suresh answered. "Electricon."

"I know that." Shawn realized. "That´s on Gus´ route. Er … ehm … in Durham-Street, I believe."

"The concern is just a cover. It´s one of the Company´s facilities. The computer we need access to is in one of their offices. But it is highly secured and if we come only near that building, they will immediately arrest us. Or worse."

Shawn hesitated. He tried to come to a decision to either listen and actually consider this idea or to just dismiss it and try another escape attempt. At the end his eyes came to rest on Sylar again.

"Why are you doing this?" he wanted to know. "Why do you care what happens to those people?"

"I know you only see me as a killer." Sylar said. "A monster." He looked at Mohinder briefly. "Most people do." He turned to Shawn again. "But Mohinder´s right. This is not about me. These people are innocent and what the Company tries to do is much worse than everything that I could have done. You don´t need to do it for me, Shawn. Do it for Juliet. One day they´ll find out about her. It is just a matter of time."

"All we need to do is getting this disc into the computer." Mohinder repeated. "Whoever goes in there … will practically safe half of the world."

"What do you say, Shawn?" Sylar asked with a smile. "You wanna be a hero?"

Shawn just made a face but he was already busy thinking this whole thing through. "Not me." he said at last. "Unfortunately I´m not qualified for this. Fortunately … I work with people who are."

...

Lassiter flashed his badge at the woman behind the counter. He was regarded with big uncertain eyes and he couldn´t help but wondered if the person before him knew what the people she worked for really did in this place. When Spencer had told him last night, he had barely believed it himself. He almost had denied him to come over to explain it to him. But then he´d mentioned that Juliet´s life might depend on it and Lassiter had allowed himself to consider the crazy things the fake psychic might come up with.

And then the shock when he´d opened the door. The man Shawn had brought along and that he had forgotten to mention. Lassiter had thought he was seeing a ghost. This man was supposed to be dead. He´d seen him as a dead body at the pier. Killed by that crazy killer Sylar. But then he remembered that Shawn had told them about Raj´s cousin and that the man looked almost like the man´s twin brother. Back then Lassiter had believed the fake psychic was only exaggerating. But the similarity was indeed amazing.

Doctor Suresh had explained to him, that the employer of Lassiter´s murder victim Takolov was involved in some strange and seemingly random killings all over the country. He´d shown him evidence that proved his words. The explanation seemed fantastic but for some reason Lassiter had believed it. He´d seen the two men entering O´Hara´s place to kill Spencer the exact same way this doctor Suresh described as their modus operandi. They´d believed Shawn to be a real psychic and they´d indeed sent someone to kill him. They even had succeeded in killing him and if Lassiter hadn´t been there, they would have killed Juliet as well.

So no, Lassiter had absolutely no problem believing that these things, this strange Indian scientist was talking about, could truly exist. Even the part that was about superhuman abilities. He´d seen Sylar change into his partner for cry out loud. He´d seen Spencer dead and then alive again. He´d seen too many impossible things lately to doubt. And as it seemed, his theory about his victim´s death hadn´t been so far off after all. It had been a professional killing, all right. Only not done by the mafia. Instead it had been another criminal organization. An organization that hid right under their noses, with a big building here in Durham-Street, all in the open and for everyone to see. An organization that called itself The Company. How original.

Now the receptionist of this so called Company, officially known as Electricon, took her phone, to call her boss. To inform him about the two detectives that were here, asking questions about Mr. Takolov.

Lassiter exchanged a glance with O´Hara. Spencer had been against the idea to let her come along. But there was simply no other way. Lassiter had had to justify their visit here before the chief and it would have raised suspicions if he´d gone alone. Besides, the plan wouldn´t work with only one person and Spencer was not a good idea to let in here. These guys had already tried to kill him once. If he would show up at their doorstep now, every alarm in the building would go off. Silently of course but it would shatter all their plans to sneak in discretely, seeming harmless and unknowing. Just some local cops who had no idea what they were truly investigating.

The receptionist put the phone back into the cradle and told them Mr. Anderson would greet them in his office.

"Just take the elevator to the fifth floor and go to the end of the hallway." she explained the way. "You can´t miss it."

When they were in the elevator, he raised his hand, up to his ear.

"We´re on our way." he spoke silently into the microphone he´d hidden in his sleeve.

Man, that was so cool. He felt like an FBI agent, or like one of the Secret Service. God, he loved these undercover outfits they had at the station. They truly had too less opportunities to use it. But in this case it was just essential for the success of the plan.

"Understand." the accented voice of the scientist answered him. "We hear you loud and clear."

O´Hara raised her hand to her ear for a moment but dropped it quickly. She needed to remind herself to not let show that she was wearing this earwig. She threw Lassiter a glance and after a moment, he did the same. Regretfully. But she was right. They were not in here to play. They had a mission to fulfill.

The elevator stopped and they went out into the long hall. The hallway that led to the office where this famous and all controlling computer was supposed to be located.

All Suresh had known about it, was that it was hidden in the Company´s big boss office. It was connected with all kinds of systems worldwide. Homeland security, FBI, CIA, even similar organizations in foreign countries. Interpol for god´s sake. All of them unaware of this unasked visitor to their systems. And the Company was able to locate the people they wanted to kill and to erase all their tracks after the job was done.

Lassiter felt anger inside of his chest. Suresh was right. What those people did was cold blooded murder, organized and inhuman. He would do whatever it took to stop that and if he had to tear this building apart, stone by stone. But for now he had to act friendly.

When Anderson greeted them and shook their hands, assuring them that he´d do anything to help them solve this cruel and terrible crime that had cost one of his workers life, Lassiter thanked him. He started to ask the standard questions and Anderson answered them all, willingly and as it seemed honest enough. He barely sounded suspicious. What a good liar.

Lassiter had to restrain himself, from yelling into this guy´s face what he really thought of him and his organization.

He demanded to see the victim´s working place, insisting that Anderson should be the one to show him. He had questions to ask that only he could answer, he claimed. The slimy bastard hesitated very subtly, only for a second, before he agreed.

"Maybe my partner could have a look around in here, while we´re gone." Lassiter suggested before they left the office.

He took good care to say it in a nonchalant way, as if the idea had occurred to him just now. Again a short hesitation on Anderson´s side. But then he smiled.

"Of course." he said. "Make yourself at home, detective."

"Perfect." Lassiter commented and urged Anderson out of the door, before he could change his mind, throwing one last glance at his partner.

As soon as the door was closed Juliet began to inspect the big desk. "I´m alone in the office now." she spoke into her sleeve.

"Great." Suresh answered, from his position in the police van, hidden in a side allay a few hundred feet from the building in Durham-Street. Behind him Shawn and Gus cheered in silence.

"That´s my cue then." Sylar said and went out before any of them could even consider to say something.

Juliet and Lassiter had no idea about the presence of the killer. To explain that would have been way too difficult, Shawn had figured. But for his part of the plan, they didn´t need to be informed. Sylar would get spotted by the Company´s surveillance cameras, to draw their attention. Simple. And Lassie and Jules would be off their radar.

Gus threw Shawn a glance after the door was closed behind the killer. It spoke loud and clear what he thought of this sort of cooperation and Shawn couldn´t blame him. Sylar´d tried to kill him after all. He´d tried to kill them all. Only Shawn´s assurance that he felt the same way about this killer as Gus, had convinced his friend to put a good face on the matter. Or at least a neutral one, until this whole thing was over.

"Do you see the computer?" Suresh asked Juliet now.

"Yes, I see a computer." she informed him. "But … I´m not sure if it is the right one. It looks totally normal. Like the kind you find in every common household. Maybe there is another one in here. A hidden one maybe."

Suresh hesitated. "I can´t tell you what you should look for." he admitted. "If you´re not sure then have a look around. But hurry."

"I will." she promised.

Shawn and Gus exchanged a glance. They listened intensely at every sound they could hear over the channel that connected them with Juliet. And then there was a sound, one that wasn´t from Juliet´s attempt to search the office. It was a little farther away from her. Nothing loud. Maybe a door that got opened?

And then, all the sudden, there was only static in the line.

"Wow, what just happened?" Shawn asked, nervous. "Why can´t we hear anything? What´s the matter?"

"I don´t know." Suresh said, trying to get the signal back. Nothing happened. "I can´t reach detective Lassiter either." he said.

"Why that?" Shawn cried. "What´s going on?"

"Signal interferences?" Gus suggested. "There are computers and electronics everywhere. Maybe …"

"Yeah, and maybe they got caught." Shawn interrupted, impatiently, already on his way to the door.

Suresh jumped up, blocking his way.

"We don´t know that for sure." he tried to reason with him. "Maybe your friend´s right. Maybe we´ll get the signal back in a few minutes. It … It could be because they raised an alarm because of Sylar. We don´t know that. But if you run in there now, you´ll blow the whole thing. Please. We need to give them a chance."

Shawn tried to calm down. He really did. The scientist´s arguments were reasonable. But damn, something just told him he was wrong. Something had gone terribly wrong in there. A lost signal? Not good. Not at all.

But Suresh was right. If he was just over the top nervous and ran out there on a hunch, he´d blow their cover. So he settled down, and tried to wait. Wait for the signal to come back.

Only that the signal didn´t come back. They waited five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Nothing. Eventually Shawn jumped out of his seat again and when Suresh tried to hold him back this time, he didn´t listen anymore.

"If Jules had only lost the signal of her earwig, she would have found another way to contact us." he told him. "So you could give her your instructions to enter the virus." he cried. "She would have called me on my cell phone. But she didn´t. Something went wrong."

"If you go in there now, they´ll catch you as well." Suresh said.

"I sent her in there." Shawn cried. "If they do anything to her …"

"They won´t." Suresh assured him. "They have no reason to. For them she´s just a cop that became too curious. They will find a way to discredit them without harming them. That´s how they do it. They are not in any immediate danger."

"What about Sylar?" Gus threw in the question.

Suresh turned around to him, surprised. "If they caught him too … they´ll most probably kill him." he said.

"Forget about Sylar." Shawn cried. "What about Jules? And Lassie? We can´t just leave them there."

"We won´t." Suresh assured him, a gaze full of guilt. He hadn´t wanted this either. "We´ll get them out." he promised. "But not now. They´ll wait for us now. I´m sorry."

"Then what?" Shawn demanded to know. "I won´t leave her. Maybe you don´t care about them but …"

"I´m as responsible for their fate as you are." Mohinder interrupted him, grabbing Shawn´s collar to keep him from jumping out of the van. "If you want to help them, you have to wait. We´ll come back tonight. To finish the mission and save your friends."

Eventually he released Shawn´s collar, when he was sure he´d gotten through to the man. "We will save them." he repeated. "But we can´t do it alone. You said you know where Noah Bennet is hiding. Bring me there. He´ll know what to do."