Chapter 26: Owed Time
With nothing better to do after Danko left, Claire crouched in the chair and watched the hands on her watch move. Fifty-two minutes passed before she heard an odd thump come from the hallway outside her door, as if something had struck the wall. She rose to her feet to investigate before the cell door opened, and a dark silhouette was framed in the doorway. Claire blinked in the sudden flash of light, which cut off abruptly as the figure slammed the door behind him. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that it was Graham.
"What do you want?" Claire drew herself up, her eyes snapping fire.
Graham's face tightened and without a word he strode towards her. A yelp escaped her despite herself as he pulled her to the corner of the room, out of sight of the window on the cell door. He leaned on the two walls, closing her between the corner and his arms. Graham's face and form rippled, and a moment later Sylar loomed over her.
"Sylar!" The surge of relief that swept over Claire was so intense that her knees buckled, and she grabbed his shoulders for support. "Danko said he killed you!"
For a moment Sylar's eyes closed, as he was stricken once again by the sense of freefall he felt whenever Claire was near. He forced it aside viciously and swept her hands from his shoulders, then grasped her wrists, his eyes narrowing to slits. There was a fierce intensity in his eyes she recognized all too well, the same as those mad eyes under the black baseball cap as he chased her through her high school.
"As if he could." Sylar's voice was cold and disdainful, as if the question was an insult to him.
He released her and spun away to prowl around the cell. Claire looked down at her wrists and watched the bruises he'd left on her with his tight grip fade. She kept her eyes on Sylar, trying to work out which face of Gabriel Gray she was dealing with. That look in his eyes when dropped Graham's facade had been a bizarre kaleidoscope of relief and resentment, and the air around him vibrated with menace.
"What's happened?"
Sylar squatted on his haunches to touch the shackles lying beside the chair, soaking in the pure fury Tracy Strauss had felt as she was bound before the cruel radiance of the heaters. Strauss had wanted nothing more than to break free and destroy every living thing in Building 26. Sylar could relate. But unlike her, he would not fail.
"Sylar, snap out of it! What's going on?"
Sylar looked up at her and cocked his eyebrow before rising to his full height. He stepped backwards into the shadows of the cell and they swallowed him. A horrible shiver ran down Claire's spine and she crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Everything he had said and done since he burst into her cell had reminded her of the day he'd stolen her power.
"Danko laid a trap for me and a pretty good one, I must admit. He shot me up with a tranquilizer before shoving a spike into the back of my head." Sylar was a dim figure moving restlessly around the perimeters of the room, as far away from her as he could get.
"So how are you alive?"
Sylar stepped into the light and smiled broadly. "I moved it."
"You what?"
"I moved the off switch – a nice side benefit of being able to scramble your DNA at will."
She was tempted to ask where, but she didn't think he would answer, and it wasn't important right now. He had barely looked at her this whole time, only that one intense gaze when he'd had her pressed into the corner, and her relief at seeing Sylar alive began to be overwhelmed by anger. First he showed up at her bedroom window in the middle of the night begging for help, then he chased her out of his apartment when she tried to help, and now he was reverting to his old psychotic self.
"You know, Angela was right about you," she said, her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed.
He finally met her eyes, a frown furrowing his brow. "What do you mean?"
"You're like a child, you throw a tantrum when you don't get your way."
Sylar felt his temper rise and walked towards her, invading her space to glare down into her eyes. She didn't back off, instead she rose her chin and glared at him.
"I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it. Why would I have a tantrum?"
"You tell me. You've been pissed off ever since I told you that you're not really Sylar but Gab-"
"Don't call me that! Gabriel Gray is dead, he died the night he killed his mother, and he is never coming back!" They were nose to nose, their eyes drawing daggers.
Claire opened her mouth to retort before she recalled where they were. "Look, we don't have time for this, Danko is coming back any minute. What's your plan?" But you better believe this isn't over, buddy, she continued to herself.
"I'm going to blow a hole through the wall and kill anyone who tries to stop me." The one and only reason he hadn't directly attacked Danko and Building 26 in the first place was to eliminate Danko's opportunity to regain his hostage.
"That's your plan?" Claire exclaimed incredulously, to which he nodded assuredly. "You can't! Apart from the fact that it's insane, Danko said that a woman from DHS will be here soon, probably any minute now. If you start blowing down walls and killing people we'll never be able to keep our secret, and you'll give Danko exactly what he wants."
"I'm done with that. Danko dies today," Sylar smirked as he twisted Danko's words.
"And what, have the government out to find everyone of us? It'll be Coyote Sands all over again. Sooner or later people like us will stop hiding and start fighting back. It'll be war, and who knows how many innocent people will die!"
"Have you ever considered the idea that we are already at war? Admit it, Claire. They're afraid of us, and they are right to be." To emphasize his point Sylar gestured at the chair and it flew into the air, smashing to pieces as it struck the heaters. "They're afraid because they know we'll win."
"Not all of us can fight like you can! Micah can control machines but what will he do when a bunch of guys in assault gear burst through the door?"
"I could protect him!"
It was debatable whether Claire or Sylar was more surprised by his outburst. The incongruous image of Sylar in a Superman costume came to her, and despite everything she couldn't help but laugh. The sound echoed in the cell and once again brought her to the problem at hand. Her eyes widened when the solution to their problem suddenly came to her, proving once again that though she might not share Noah Bennet's DNA, she'd certainly inherited his ability to think on his feet.
"I know what to do."
"So do I, and I already know I like my plan more."
"Shut up. You still owe me, and I'm calling it in. Danko wants to shoot me in front of everybody in Building 26, to prove I'll heal and that we exist. We're going to let him do it."
"What are you talking about, Claire? You're not going to be able to play dead for long enough to convince anybody. When you sit up spitting out bullets its going to make it pretty obvious that people with abilities exist!"
"That's where you come in. You can shapeshift into one of Danko's guys and use your ability to shove something into my brain stem – something small, a pen maybe - when Danko shoots me. No matter how hard they look, I'll be dead, and Danko will be responsible for murdering me."
"I won't do it." Sylar's jaw was set.
"You know I'll come back to life when it comes out! Besides, I killed you once, consider it payback." She tried a smile, but his forbidding expression did not soften.
"I can shapeshift to look like you and do it myself then. I can't die either, in case you forgot."
"How will I get a spike into your head without everybody seeing it happen? You are the only one who can do it."
"I won't kill you, Claire!" He almost shouted it into her face, then took a deep shuddering breath. "There has to be another way."
"You know there isn't."
She was right, this was the best way. He'd said it himself, long ago in Costa Verde: you can never die. He himself had survived a killswitch attack followed by the inferno that took Primatech and survived, she could take that and more and still regenerate. All these were facts, lined up behind his eyelids like watch gears, and yet the thought of actually doing what she wanted was repugnant to him.
All his fantasies of bloody revenge, so satisfying on the way to Claire's cell, were being defused by her arguments. The adrenaline rush he'd felt during and after the battle in the warehouse was fading, and the remembrance of the broken bodies on the floor did not leave him flush with power as killing always had. It just made him feel tired, far too tired to argue the conviction in Claire's eyes.
Sylar looked at her, this girl he loved. She was small and barefoot, with dirty toes peeking out the bottom of her yoga pants. She had no makeup on, and her hair was mussed and stood in all directions. Despite this, her eyes were fierce and her back was straight. She was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Perhaps killing her was appropriate, as he'd killed every other beautiful thing in his life.
"I'll do it," he mumbled hoarsely.
"Good," she said in what she hoped was a firm voice, then cleared away the knot in her throat. "I'm counting on you."
Sylar had too much to say, so he just swallowed and nodded. Claire lifted up on her toes and kissed him, a soft brush of lips against his, then gone. She didn't know that she was going to do it until it was done. Sylar gasped and reared his head back as if he had been burned, and his eyes looked black in the dim light. Claire's hand flew to her lips and her cheeks burned with a blush. She had absolutely no idea why she'd kissed him, she had just felt an overwhelming need to call him out of whatever dark place he had gone.
Before he had time to react, Claire started pushing him towards the door. "Quick! You have to go before Danko comes back!"
Sylar shook his shock and her off and walked into the hallway. A moment later Agent Graham was telekinetically thrown into the cell. Claire gasped and covered her mouth with her hands when she saw that his neck had been broken like a twig and lolled on his shoulder. Sylar stepped into the doorframe, the light behind him shadowing his features. He pulled the air with his hand and the face of the heater panels ripped away from the wall. Graham's body levitated inside the cavity they left, and then Sylar forced the panels back into place with a sick crunch. Claire could not see his eyes, but she knew that they were focused on her during the entire act.
"You killed him," she moaned, and the shadowed head of his silhouette nodded.
"He's not the only person I've killed today," he said in his dark husky voice. Then the door between them slammed shut and once again, Claire was left to wait. Only this time she was left with the body of a murdered man. Left with the knowledge that her future, and the futures of every person with abilities, depended on the murderer. She buried her head in her knees and trembled like a leaf in an autumn storm.