Chapter 21: Altered States

Bright lights flooded his half open vision and Sylar hissed, trying to back away, only to find he couldn't move, he flinched hearing metal clink, he was strapped upright to a metal surface, confined. He opened his eyes just in time to see the bucket of ice cold water tossed his way, he choked back the mouthful of water and tried not to think about how god damn cold it was as it seemed to burn his skin. Focusing his eyes and lifting his head he was able to focus on the Haitian as he carefully lowered the bucket and stared passively back at him.

"Fuck that was cold!" Sylar bit off, having nothing else to say, as he scanned his surroundings... a cell, looked very similar to the ones he'd been held in before, although he was certain he could smell the traces of fresh paint. Which probably meant this was one of the 'new' company holding facilities. He snorted and dropped his head, not sure why he found the situation suddenly amusing, but he couldn't help it, after all he'd been through and survived, the idea of a little cell and a few chemicals were hardly the nightmare they once were. Nor was the paper salesmen who held the keys.

Cocking his head he watched as Noah Bennett idled into the room, that smug grin on his face... he'd always just assumed Claire had inherited hers, but now he was inclined to believe it had been a taught trait.

"Sylar, so good of you to join us." Bennett grinned coming to stand inches from him, unconcerned.

"Why, did you miss me?" he quipped, perking his ears as he tried to dredge up some semblance of his abilities through the haze of chemicals.

"Looking for something?" Bennett asked quietly, raising an eyebrow. For an instant Sylar considered blurting out Claire's name, but something told him that wouldn't go down too well. But he had to know, he had woken alone, he remembered that much, remembered the feel of her fingers slipping through his seconds before the impact and the blackness. Had they found her? Dear god was she even alive? Squeezing his eyes shut he tried to focus.

"He's worried about Claire."

Sylar's eyes snapped open just in time to see Parkman idle into the room, looking uncomfortable as Angela slid in beside him. If he still had his abilities it would have been like Christmas... only he didn't.

"What's this got to do with Claire?" Bennett snarled, before shooting a sharp look his way that made his balls want to crawl back up inside his body.

"She was with him." Parkman continued, his head inclined and expression contorted as he struggled for stolen information inside his brain. Powerless he might be, but Sylar had a will of iron, he slammed the shutters of his mind down and reinforced them with concrete, sending the former policeman to his knees with the sudden shock of it, his nose bleeding.

"Damn it... I can't, he's blocking me." Parkman cursed, wiping at his bloodied nose with the back of his hand.

"How is that possible?" Angela snapped, looking nervous as she indicated the Haitian to move closer, and check the drug that was pumping into him via drip.

"How did I get here?" Sylar decided to ask a few questions of his own.

"You crashed." Angela replied succinctly. "The Airforce blew up the ship you were in and you landed a few miles away from the site where most of the debris landed."

"So why am I here and not in some government run facility, being prodded for being E.T?"

Angela smiled that kitten eating grin at him, "We got to you first. I had a dream."

"Bit sketchy on the details of it though I assume?" Sylar prodded unable to help himself.

"What about Claire?" Bennett snapped, he always did have a one tracked mind; he drew up to Parkman grabbing the other man forcefully by the arm and getting right up in his personal space. "You said she was with him!"

"I don't know." Parkman muttered, rubbing his no doubt throbbing head. "It was the overwhelming thought in his mind right before he shut me out. He was worried about her, wanted to know if she was alive, where she was, if we had her."

Bennett frowned and turned back to stare at him, warily he reached into his pocket and extracted a cell phone.

"Noah, you know she won't answer your calls." Angela chided him lightly.

"She won't recognise the number, I need to know she's safe Angela." Bennett snapped, looking determined as he punched in numbers on the keypad and pressed the phone against his ear.

"Claire." He breathed a sigh of relief into the handset no doubt as she picked up. "Wait don't hang up!" he snapped hurriedly. "It's about Sylar!" Bennett froze, his hand tightening around the handset until his knuckles were almost white. "It's not important how I got this number Claire. Please, there's something important I need you to see." He implored her as Sylar watched on, fascinated, he knew she and Noah had fallen out sometime before he'd realised the truth about his nature as Nathan; that at least gave him a time point of about 10years to work with.

"Claire please, this isn't a lie... Sylar is here, now." There was a pause he could practically see the man holding his breath as he waited for her answer. "I swear to you Claire. He's contained, he's not going anywhere." He let out an exasperated sigh. "Claire it's not safe... I won't have this argument I..." she clearly cut him off and his head dropped in defeat, Sylar smirked, Claire always did know how to get her own way. "They'll be a ticket waiting for you at the airport. I don't have to tell you how dangerous this is Claire." Sylar snorted, she was in about as much danger from him, as he was of suddenly taking Bennett's hand and declaring them best friends.

"You care about her?" Parkman snapped, looking somewhat sickened by the revelation. Sylar winced, sliding his mental defences back into place, he had been so engrossed in Bennett's attempts to reconnect with his daughter that he'd momentarily lost his concentration.

Bennett hung up and glanced between him and Parkman with growing distaste.

"You're Ethan." He snarled finally. Sylar opened his mouth to agree but Bennett cut him off. "Don't even try to deny it, we have it all on tape. Claire's seen it, she won't be fooled by your sick lies again!" Sylar didn't need the slam of Bennett's fist across his jawbone to pick up on the fact that the man was upset that he'd taken advantage of his Claire-bear that way.

"Not like she was fooled by yours lies for years." Sylar hissed back, spitting out blood; he hadn't been without his abilities in Centuries and he wasn't enjoying the experience one bit.

"You son of a bitch!" Bennett roared and raised his fist again, only to have Parkman catch it. "You won't touch her again!" he raged not relenting.

"Enough." Angela snapped. "We need answers, and we aren't going to get them that way." She slid around Bennett's towering form and came to stand directly in front of him. Something twisted in his gut, the lingering sense that this woman was his mother and he attempted to squash it... he hated that she had branded herself inside his mind like this. Twice!

"You're from the future, that much was apparent before we got you out of what was left of that outfit... the materials it was made of, apparently don't exist." Angela informed him, "Then there was the ship, also made of materials that apparently don't exist anywhere on Earth." She took a step closer and raised one of the weapons he or Claire must have dropped. "Then there's this." She waved it at him. Some form of recognition must have flickered across his face because her smile grew, carving the expression onto her face.

"But the biggest clue; the most important thing in this whole ugly mess, are the bodies lying in our morgue and in various Government facilities. Badly burnt and mangled from the other crash site, but intact enough for us to examine... imagine our surprise to find they weren't even remotely human."

Sylar tried to bite his tongue, now wasn't the time to run his mouth off.

"Cat got your tongue?" Angela prodded, that thin smile stretching her features into something faintly unpleasant as she loomed over him with the alien weapon hanging loosely between her thumb and forefinger. "Or let me guess, you're worried about the time-line."

Sylar couldn't help it, he snorted, dropping his head to chuckle to himself. "I'm quite sure the timeline can take care of itself." He wasn't particularly concerned about damaging the time-line and ceasing to exist or some nonsense like that, nor was he particularly optimistic of being able to affect it at all; he had tried before with little success.

No he knew, instinctively, just like he knew when and where he was when he had his ability working, that there was no way of him ceasing to exist because of something he might say or do here. He and Claire were outside of this timeline now, separate from it, disconnected, they had stepped out of it, which meant they could affect changes only because they knew what was coming, but it couldn't touch them. Handy really, further evidence of nature's neatness and its disdain for time-travel.

"It's good you have such a healthy respect for time Sylar, because you're going to lose a lot of it, trapped in here. Make yourself comfortable, and when you feel like sharing, we'll start this conversation again." Angela smirked, clearly enjoying it as she stalked from the room, Bennett was a little slower, he stopped sending him a hateful look that promised this wasn't over before he slammed the cell door shut, plunging him into darkness.

---*---

Claire crouched low, avoiding the security cameras; there was no telling how long she had, hijacking an Aiforce fighter jet had probably not been the most subtle approach, but she hadn't exactly had many options; unlike Sylar, she couldn't fly, or teleport. So when she'd managed to crawl out of the pit she'd landed in higher up the hillside and look down in time to see her father and the Haitian bundling Sylar's healed but unconscious form into a Company issue van, before speeding off with a hunk of spaceship to examine, she'd had to act quickly. The jet had come a little too close, hovering inches above the crash site, getting a good look, all she'd had to do was make a calculated leap. After that the only difficulty had been in trying to disable the tracking device, but then to her the technology was practically antiquated, she hadn't had to use much more than her knife and a few carefully rerouted circuits to convince them that the jet was happily returning to base. It had probably bought her a couple of hours, but not much more, fortunately flying low under the radar seemed to have done the trick, before she'd torn out the little black box and dumped it over a cornfield, then she'd managed to ditch the jet in a quiet lake not far from their new facility outside of Maine, New York.

However getting to the facility had been just one hurdle, she knew where Sylar was, but getting in to him was causing more of an issue. She still had her weapon, which was a small mercy, but she stood out like a saw thumb in her skin tight suit... well sort of, it was New York after all. She was just about to consider going in all guns blazing when an opportunity quite literally landed on her doorstep. Claire blinked watching as an all too familiar head of hair stepped out of a car she'd once owned and started making her determined way out of the parking lot and towards the front of the unassuming building. Not a paper company this time... laundry instead, but still, something inoffensive, inconspicuous and utterly boring.

The knife flew out of her hand with silent precision, she darted forwards, timing her run as the cameras conveniently gave her a blind spot. She had mere seconds as she caught the fallen body of her younger self, the blade buried in the back of her skull, dragging her down behind the shelter of her own car, concealing them from view. Taking in an adrenalin fuelled breath she stole a look at her young face, smoothing her hands over unchanged features, yet somehow she still seemed softer, younger, innocent. It couldn't be helped. Had she had her choice she wouldn't have visited this time-period again... ever. But it hadn't been her choice and something had gone wrong, they were here now, and her only way out was Sylar... just like old times she mused.

She dragged her younger self back into the vehicle, keeping ducked down, thankfully the SUV provided plenty of space for her to strip the 20th Century clothes off and switch them with her own. Sliding into the jeans she grimaced at the texture of the material, she'd almost forgotten how uncomfortable clothing had been, how constricting, but it couldn't be helped, she needed to get inside. Glancing one last time at the prone form of the girl she'd been, she sighed, and slammed the door closed, she had nothing to conceal her with anyway, so why try, it wasn't like the knife was going to fall out of her skull without help any time soon and she didn't plan on being inside long enough for the body to be discovered.

Trying to remember the state her younger self would have been in, she attempted to walk like a determined young woman about to confront her monster, and the family she had cut herself off from. She stalked past the security desk, they waved her by, clearly expecting her, her heeled boots clicked on the surface, entirely too loud and too ineffectual for anything she might have planned.

Large heavy footsteps alerted her to his presence before he actually appeared around the corner, he stepped out bodily in front of her, she stopped only because that was what the young Claire would have done. Hands on hips she lifted her chin to stare up at the man that had raised her, loved her, protected her and ultimately lied to her one time too many. But even though her memory was as clear as day, and every lie was seared into it, she couldn't summon the same anger that was supposed to be fuelling her. After all she'd been through all she'd seen and done, the lies she'd told, his lies seemed practically microscopic in comparison, particularly because as a parent herself, even as briefly as it had been, she understood why he'd done it... given the same choice, to protect Adam, she'd have lied her ass off too.

But that wasn't her role, so she raised her chin, gave him a disdainful look and sidestepped around him with a sneer.

"Claire, honey, please." Her father sighed and followed quickly behind her, it took more than she imagined to simply ignore him, until he grabbed at her arm and attempted to whirl her around. She should have expected it really, her stance switched, her automatic reaction to snap the wrist almost asserting itself, instead she managed to turn the movement into something slightly less aggressive, swiping his hand off instead and spinning to face him, the natural stance she fell into was unavoidable. Of course he picked up on it, he gave her a once over, his eyes narrowing, but she was an excellent study of human expression, and she'd spent years analysing his, he was... proud.

"So you decided to take up self defence." He nodded, standing up to his full height and using it to loom over her, ever the father figure.

Claire cricked her neck and sent him a cold look before, spinning away and making her way down to the corridor. Again she had to catch herself when she got into the lift; she knew exactly where they'd be keeping him, having been here more than once, but her younger self wouldn't, not yet. So stepping into the elevator she waited, arms crossed as her father stepped in alongside her and pressed the appropriate button.

"Has he said anything?" she asked keeping her tone neutral, she needed to know what they knew.

"Not much. Parkman managed to glean some interesting information out of his head before he got cut off." Claire frowned and glanced at her father, noting the sudden tension in his voice. She couldn't help it she let out an amused breath

"About me I assume." She shook her head, stupid bastard always did have a one tracked mind. "So that's why I'm here." The question was as much for her as him and he nodded stiffly.

"Claire, please I need you to rethink this." Claire suppressed her eye roll at his clearly uncomfortable tone. "Confronting Sylar may not be the best thing to help you get over what he did to you." He continued, his hand almost hovering over the elevators stop button, in an attempt no doubt to keep her in the same room as him. Subtly she moved to stand in front of the buttons, arms crossed and stared evenly at him, she'd honestly never realised just how desperate he'd been to contact her, to talk to her.

She remembered of course, the last time she'd seen him, he'd been dying, the gunshot had bounced off his skull leaving him alive, but with enough damage that he'd slipped into a coma. Her mother had been sat beside him, his cold limp hands enveloped in hers, but Sandra hadn't been crying... that had always surprised her. It had taken her years and several partners to understand, that grief could be so complete that even tears wouldn't come.

He'd slipped away quietly, never once regaining consciousness and she hadn't offered her blood.

For years the decision had haunted her. He had been her father, and he'd loved her... too much, of that she'd been certain. But even at that early point in her life, she'd begun to understand that this was the normal way of things, that people died, family, parents, lovers, friends. She could save them, all of them, for years maybe, days, minutes, seconds; but eventually even her blood wouldn't be enough, old age and chance would take them from her. Prolonging their deaths was the real agony, grieving year after year for a death she knew would come... that had almost been worse.

She had never admitted to anyone, nor would she, that with Lyle's death, standing over her younger brothers grave long after the other mourners and the members of her extended family had left, she'd felt the strangest sensation of relief. Relief that this would be the last person she'd allow to touch her this deeply, the last member of her family she had to loose, the last grave she had to stand beside and feel the all consuming grief and guilt of the survivor.

How wrong she'd been. The tiny headstone beneath an orange sky flashed into her memory and she pushed it away, there was a reason she'd grown cold... it was the only way to survive.

Lifting her head she felt the crystal blue of her father's eyes pierce her, the pain she had suppressed for so long must have been carved across her ancient unchanging face because he sucked in a breath and made as if to envelope her in his strong arms. She let him. The scent of his aftershave stung her nose and brought back the flood of sensations and memories she associated with it... this was home, this was happiness and safety, this was what they'd been searching for through the stars.

"Claire-bear, I'm so sorry." He breathed, pressing a kiss to her hair. "I promise you, I won't let him hurt you again... never." Claire closed her eyes, it was only natural he would assume her pain was because of Sylar and him. "And for what it's worth, I swear I will never, ever, lie to you again. Even if the truth is terrible." Claire went still, simply feeling his heart beating beneath his shirt as he hugged her tightly. The girl she had been would have thrown the apology back in his face, would have rejected it. But she wasn't that girl.

She hugged him tighter. "I know daddy." She allowed herself a moment, just a moment to be the girl again, to be the innocent that loved her father, the cheerleader from Odessa Texas, who wanted nothing more than the praise and affection of the man who was holding her like she was the answer to everything.

The elevator reached the basement and the doors slid open, ending the moment.

Claire slipped out of his arms and stalked away, blinking back the tears, as she made her way down the corridor, the cells all blessedly empty apart from the one that Angela, Matt and Peter were crowded around, waiting for her.

Coming up to stand beside them, she attempted to keep her mind blank, without actively blocking, letting only memories of what Sylar had done, the anger she'd associated with him at this time surface. Matt winced and she suppressed the smirk as he looked away, clearly deciding not to invade her privacy at this time, instead he focused intently on Sylar.

"Claire." Peter sighed in relief at seeing her, his arms enveloped her, almost as though he were attempting to shield her from the monster that lurked in the cell. Peter would always be a painful memory, she'd lost him far too soon, but it hadn't been a surprise, she'd always known from the moment he leapt off a building to save her, that he'd die a hero. "You don't have to be here, you don't have to do this, we can deal with Sylar." He insisted breaking her reverie and releasing her from his crushing hug as she came up to look inside the cell.

They had Sylar trussed upright, restrained, pumped full of drugs; the sight was oddly horrific to her now, she'd seen him worse, done far worse to him, and yet the sight of him powerless, at the mercy of her family overrode all of that. This was the man fate had chosen for her, the man she honestly believed was destined to be by her side for an eternity, a man wholly unacceptable for the girl she had been.

"That isn't Sylar." She told them quietly, staring at him fixedly until his head raised, through the haze of drugs she saw the moment recognition blazed in his dark eyes and felt something warm in the pit of her stomach, as she acknowledged that even now, she was his salvation. "This is his future." She whispered, pressing her hand against the glass, bringing them fractionally closer.

Parkman took in a sharp breath and she reacted instinctively, her hand went out slamming into his chest and pushing him back into the wall with enough force to wind him and prevent him from giving away her secret for a few precious seconds. Crouching down and whirling she whipped the alien weapon out from beneath her pant leg where she'd tucked it into her inappropriate boots, and brought her arm with inhuman speed to knock away the gun that her father had aimed half heartedly in her direction. She grabbed it as it fell, turning it on Peter, holding them both in her sights. The alien weapon hissed cycling through settings, their eyes widened in surprise as she levelled her stony gaze on them, as slowly, surprise turned into equal parts confusion and anger.

Her words were cold and clinical, when she spoke; the girl forgotten for now, as she used the voice time had given her, the voice of a Commander. "Release him."