Mohinder Suresh arrived at his makeshift laboratory at 9:15 in the morning, a little later than usual; Molly had started having dreams about Sylar again, and they'd been keeping the whole… "family," for lack of a better word… awake. He was so hurried that he almost didn't notice Elle Bishop sitting cross-legged on the floor, a piece of paper clutched in her left hand, staring at the painting underneath her forlornly. Mohinder approached her cautiously.
"Elle?"
She didn't acknowledge him, but she reached out with her right hand and started to trace the lines of the mushroom cloud. He tried again.
"Elle, is everything alright?"
She smiled a little…
Sylar took his third bite of ice cream and leaned easily against the brick wall, smiling as he found the situation somehow familiar. His sensitive hearing was intently focused on the converted studio three blocks away. He'd wanted to stay closer to keep an eye on Elle, but the security around the lab had been upgraded since his little… visit. He didn't need "Primatech" knowing he was still in the city.
He was scooping up bite number four when he heard the door of the lab open. Sylar glanced at his impeccably repaired watch; Elle had been in there so long, he'd almost forgotten that Suresh was going to show up. Spoon frozen in midair, he strained to hear the proceedings.
"Elle? Elle, is everything alright?"
Sylar would have killed for the ability to see what was happening. (Then again, he would kill for a lot less than that.) Elle was supposed to be looking through Suresh's files, and her facial expressions trying to explain herself had to be absolutely delicious.
"I think I'm in trouble, Mohinder."
Sylar had pushed himself off of the wall before her sentence was finished. He dropped his unfinished ice cream in a nearby trash can and headed in the direction of the loft. Abruptly, an evil smile spread across his face. He'd almost hoped it would turn out this way.
Mohinder's eyes raked over the list, wide as dinner plates.
"Dear God, he remembered all of these names?"
"Instant retention, remember?"
Mohinder said nothing. He couldn't take his eyes off of the list, and Elle's girlish handwriting spelling out the locations of all the people there.
"If you'd have given this to him…"
"I couldn't do it. I mean, Peter's name is on there… Molly's…" she trailed off in horror of what she almost did. "There has to be some other way."
"I'm going to call Peter, he'll take you somewhere safe while we figure this out." He felt in his pocket for his phone, but it wasn't there. "Oh, damn it. I left my phone at the apartment. Stay here, I'll be back in ten minutes."
Elle stood to protest as Mohinder opened the door, but didn't have a chance to speak before an unseen force threw him sideways against the far left wall of the loft. Her blood turned to ice in her veins as Sylar caught the door before it closed and stepped inside. He was smiling in a way that almost guaranteed pain would be involved.
"You're in trouble now," he said, the terrifying distortion in his voice present. Elle couldn't move as he started forward, but a gunshot suddenly rang out and Sylar crumpled to the floor. She looked around to see Mohinder, still on the ground, but holding a smoking gun that he must have been carrying on his person. She started to run towards him, but Sylar was on his feet again, clutching his left arm, glaring lividly at Mohinder. He nodded infinitesimally at a rack of test tubes, which immediately flew and cracked over Mohinder's head, knocking him unconscious.
"NO!" screamed Elle, staring desperately at her fallen champion, but she couldn't react anymore than that before something solid collided with the side of her head and everything went black.