AN: Hope you guys enjoy this chapter. It was a long time in the making. And thanks to everyone who has encouraged me to keep writing.

Thanks for reading!

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Chapter 9

"Elle, would you please stop fighting me!" Adam yelled in anger, chasing Elle as she ran through the dining room on her way to the back door and dodging the bolts of electricity she was throwing behind her to slow him down. "I am doing this for your own good, you stupid, ungrateful girl!" At this, Elle turned, deftly flipping a dining chair into Adam's path and followed up with a high voltage blast to his face as he was busy blocking the chair with his arm. She grinned in satisfaction as his face and hair blackened and he choked on a scream. Taking quick advantage of his momentary lapse, she dashed through the kitchen and then out the back door as he sagged in agony against the table and then slid to the floor, clutching his rapidly healing face.

Adam groaned as tears leaked out of his eyes involuntarily. The pain was worse than he remembered from the last time she had "accidentally" zapped him in the face five years ago after a particularly nasty fight between them. As he slowly brought himself back up, he almost decided to just let her go - almost - she could be more trouble than she was worth, after all. But then, he thought of the crazed look on Sylar's face when he had spoken so slyly about his wife and Adam's eyes narrowed viciously in grim determination. Even if he no longer wanted to kill her now that he knew who she really was, Elle was still the key to exacting his revenge on Sylar. And after he subdued her, he knew just what the best method would be to get what he wanted.

Now, he just had to make sure he could catch her before Sylar got there. And Sylar would be coming – there was no doubt about that. Adam would just have to make sure that when he did, it would be too late. With renewed determination, Adam hoisted himself up and through the door, using a projected version of his energy shield to knock it clean off its hinges.

Whether she liked it or not, Elle was coming with him.

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Slamming the kitchen back door closed and then welding the lock shut, Elle turned quickly and ran down the left side path that led from the garden in the back to the gate on the north side of their home, flying over the stone steps. A locked door wouldn't hold him for long. She deliberately set fire to the plants lining the path to slow Adam down and lead him into following the fire after her. Geez! Why was he showing up now of all times? No doubt, whatever it was, he was up to no good. Throwing Sylar's name out had probably been a ploy of his to garner her cooperation. And telling her that they needed to get to Primatech could have just as easily been a way to get her to come with him quietly. He was sneaky like that. But he had lied to her too many times in the past for him to be able to expect her to blindly listen to him now. The fact remained that he was no longer working for the company. He had been a free agent now for five years and that meant that he couldn't be trusted.

Halfway down the trail, she set fire to the trees on the path before her and then veered to the side, hoisting herself easily up over the fence that separated her home from the neighbor's backyard, even in a hip hugging skirt and heels. Immediately the sounds of Adam breaking through the backdoor came to her as she crouched low in a conveniently positioned clump of dense shrubs. A vicious smile lit her face. It had taken him a long time to recover from that face blast – he always had been a bit of a wuss when it came to pain.

Looking through the bushes and the fence to see if he was coming, Elle scanned her backyard and home. Oh God, their home! She could clearly see smoke rising from several broken windows. Dull, numbing pain crept into her heart. The house that Gabriel had bought her…the only place she had ever really been able to call home, destroyed. It wasn't fair.

Emotional pain was not something that Elle liked to dwell on however, during any occasion, and with Adam still on the loose, she absolutely needed to push it away. There would be time later to mourn the loss. Biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, she grimly reminded herself that she still had a deranged ex-boyfriend to deal with.

She hadn't seen Adam in close to five years. Their last fight had been disastrous and he had left soon after, severing all ties with the company and disappearing without a trace - or so her father had told her (she wouldn't be surprised if Bob had just been keeping all news of Adam under wraps). It was hard to even remember now what that fight had been about but it had seemed that their entire relationship was always one fight after another. They had dated back when she was still young and hot headed and enjoyed using her powers in harmful and sadistic ways. Admittedly, she probably had only been with him in the first place because he had been the only man who she could actually date without accidentally killing. It didn't hurt that he had let her indulge in zapping him on occasion - he had been a bit of a closet masochist back then. They had been quite the pair at the time.

Now, however, things were different - she was different. There was no way she was letting him waltz back into her life and destroy everything she had worked so hard to build. She was happy now. She had a life and a family that didn't include him. And if she needed to make him disappear again in order to make sure things stayed the way they were, then so be it. She wasn't sure how he had picked up new powers since the last time they met but new powers or not, he was going to get his skinny British ass beat if he tried anything with her. To hell with the old Company truce! Adam was going to pay dearly for wrecking her home but first, she needed more information before she could go blindly charging after him.

Reaching for her side clip and encountering nothing but air, she swore silently to herself – she had left her cell phone and car keys in the house. As she silently debated whether or not to break into her neighbor's home and call Primatech for backup or make a break for it, she heard the squealing of tires and a crash sound from the front of the house. What the hell, now!? Elle craned her neck but her view of the front of the house was limited due to the wooden fence. Had Adam brought backup? If so, they were being exceptionally noisy. It certainly wasn't the fire department - there were no sirens.

Turning her head back around, she saw a glimmer of Adam emerging from the back of the house. He looked...determined. His face and clothes were still smudged with black soot and it looked like some of his hair was still missing. From this angle, it looked a little like he was going bald. She smirked.

Before he could start down the path after her, something seemed to catch his attention and he cocked his head to the side as if listening. She couldn't get a clear look at his face anymore but she saw him head back inside.

Well, that was certainly interesting. She waited for a moment on aching knees to see if he would come back out but he didn't. Instead, Elle listened in blank astonishment as the sounds of muffled shouting and fighting broke out in the house.

Hell no am I sticking around to find out what that is all about. Adam was obviously occupied. It was time to leave.

Getting up and dusting herself off, Elle made a low dash to the front of the house. Screw the keys - she could always hotwire the car if she needed to. Going past the fence and through the neighbor's yard, she breathed in relief when no one attempted to stop her. Her relief ended as soon as she rounded the corner.

Gabriel's car was embedded in the garage. Elle stumbled to a stop. Gabriel's car was embedded in the garage...and Gabriel was not in it. A muffled concussion rent the air and the house and grounds shook. Elle stumbled before regaining her balance. Her pale face turned towards the house in sudden panic.

Taking off, Elle flat out ran across the driveway. Bursting through the broken door, she first noticed that the house was alternately covered in scorch marks and melting icicles. The stairs before her were collapsed and the library under it was torn down with books and glass strewn everywhere. She could see clear through to the dining room on her left but to her right, broken furniture was littered throughout the living room, making access to her office and the rooms beyond it difficult. Nothing in the house seemed like it had been left untouched and the house stank of burnt flesh and smoke and fresh blood. Dark red splatters adorned the walls, dotted amongst broken plaster and brick. Elle was not the type of girl who became queasy at the sight of blood but the thought that it could be Gabriel's was almost too much to bear. For a moment, she felt sick to her stomach.

Had Adam done all this? It didn't seem possible. Suddenly, it didn't matter anymore to Elle whether or not Adam found her.

"Gabriel!" she shouted, plunging into the wreckage of the living room, pushing past the couch and broken electronics. Her eyes swam with tears from the lingering smoke but she blinked them away rapidly.

"Gabriel!"

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Gabriel's hopes that Elle would not be at home were dashed as he ran past her neatly parked convertible on their long driveway. Before he even reached the front door, he knew something was terribly wrong. The large bay windows at the front of the house were shattered and there were copious amounts of black smoke pouring out. Bursting through the door, he was confronted with a wall of flames in the living room. The world slowed and white hot rage like he had never felt before poured through him, numbing his entire body and bringing his vision into sharp focus.

Adam was a dead man!

Breathing in sharply, Sylar exercised tight control over himself and pushed his rage down to a manageable level. He needed to focus.

He needed to find Elle as quickly as possible. He started by using his cryokinesis to snuff out the flames with a frigid blast of ice. At this point, keeping his powers a secret from her was second to saving her life. Propelling himself over the damaged furniture, he run through the library, quickly checking Elle's office on his way past to their game room and the secondary set of stairs at the back of the house. Making his way swiftly up, he carefully checked each room, his worry mounting with each empty chamber he passed.

She wasn't there. Had she managed to escape Adam? He refused to even think that Adam had already been there...with Elle...and left. Leaving the last room on the floor, he turned back to the empty hallway to go down the main stairs that led to the front of the house.

But the hallway was empty no more.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite mass murderer," Adam smiled at him from the end of the landing. He was leaning against the railing that ran parallel to the top of the stairs, blocking them from view. He was casually flipping through a photo album he had picked up somewhere in the house. Sylar recognized it as the one Elle left under the coffee table, the one that had pictures of the vacation they had taken last December. Pushing down his immediate urge to gut Adam like the pig he was, Syler told himself he needed Adam alive to tell him where Elle was first. That was the only thing that mattered.

"Well look at this...is this you?" Adam asked in amusement, his eyes on the album. "All trussed up and playing house like your friendly neighborhood bloke? Oh, that's jolly good! Who would have thought that Sylar, world famous killer, would ever lose his head over a girl. But I must say," he mussed thoughtfully, "she really is one attractive female...or was, in any case." Adam drew his eyes up to look at Sylar with a vicious smile on his face.

Sylar saw red.

Faster than he could blink, Sylar had Adam in a death grip. Boasting his speed with his telekinesis, he launched himself down the hall at Adam as a vicious snarl erupting from his bared teeth, wrapping his hands around Adam's throat with enough force and momentum to kill a normal person. They smashed into the side table and mirror at the other end of the hall and both went down in a heap of broken wood, glass and plaster. At the moment of impact, Adam's throat caved with a meaty snap and a gush of blood poured forth in a frothy spurt from his mouth. Before he could even heal, Sylar drew his fists back and punched him repeatedly in face, his hands glowing with radiation and melting off the parts of Adam's skin it came into contact with. Underneath the blood and torn flesh, Sylar could see Adam healing almost as quickly as he was dying. He picked him up by his collar and threw him up against the wall, encasing his body from the neck down with a thick layer of ice, his hands still wrapped so tightly around his neck that all the veins on Adam's face and neck stood out. The reckless laugh that still managed to ring out of Adam's throat only served to fuel his anger.

"Oh, come on then, Gabriel. Is that all you've got?"

"Where is she?" With increasing force, Sylar used his weight and own blunt strength to slowly break the bones in Adam's face, knowing that even with his healing abilities, the capacity to feel pain still remained. Somehow, Adam still managed to smile grotesquely through his broken and bleeding face.

"Why do you even care?" he managed to ask. "Do you actually think you're in love with her? Do you think that someone like you could ever really know what real love is? Look at yourself – you're an animal!"

"You have no idea what I am. Now tell me where she is or I will break every bone in your body," Sylar seethed, using his telekinesis to ruthlessly punctuate every word with the shattering of one of Adam's bones encased in the ice. Adam's words had hit their mark, bringing into focus the one fear Gabriel had been haunted by ever since he had first clapped eyes on Elle Knight.

"What's the matter, Gabriel? Did I hit a nerve?" Adam snarled in hatred, pale and shaking with pain and suppressed fury.

And then the ice broke, erupting outward from him forcefully, sending Sylar across the hall and through the solid wooden door of the guest bedroom.

Adam went to stand in the doorway, looking shredded and half frozen but invigorated. He stared down with contempt at Sylar's groggy, wood embedded form. "You're disgusting! If she knew what you really are, she'd turn sick at the sight of you." As Sylar painfully reached to dislodge the largest spike embedded deep in his back, Adam rotated his neck to loosen his muscles and pushed his shoulders back, an ice cold expression on his face. His eyes glowed with deep seated hatred.

"My turn."

Pulling Sylar up by his head, Adam tossed him up like a rag doll and then grabbed his legs while he was still in mid-air, pulling down with all of his considerable new strength and slamming Sylar forcefully down onto the floor, breaking the floorboards and driving pieces of broken wood even deeper into his body. He did this over and over again amidst Sylar's screams of pain until finally the floor boards gave way and they both crashed through to the library underneath, grappling with each other where they landed. Sylar forced Adam's form up away from him into one of the bookcases and then formed sharp icicles as thick as his arm and sent them flying with deadly speed at him. Adam blocked all of them with his force field and then used it to push Sylar through the wall into the kitchen, the force of his projection rippling away from him in a circular wave of energy and setting the house to shuddering with it's strength. Books flew away from their shelves and from the other rooms, he could hear the echo of tumbling furniture and the moan of shuddering foundations.

Stepping over the pile of ruined books, Adam emerged from the break in the library wall to see that the kitchen was empty but quickly filling with smoke and fire. He stepped outside cautiously to track Sylar when he heard her.

"Gabriel!" Elle's agonized voice sounded from the other side of the house.

Adam sworn violently under his breath. He turned to slink as quickly and quietly through the dining room as he could, following the sounds of Elle's increasingly frantic calls.

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Gabriel paused in his path around the right side of house to circumvent Adam when he heard Elle's calls. Without thinking, he doubled back quickly, bursting though the French doors in her office to see her struggling past their broken living room. At the first sight of her, whole and unharmed, something inside him broke. He felt weak with relief.

Adam was a lying bastard. Figures.

"Elle!"

Her head snapped up and her clear blue eyes met his before her eyes drew down his body. Her face crumbled and a choked whimper escaped her and he realized too late that he was covered in blood and gore and looked like he had been through a wood chipper. Before she could speak, he held up his hands and headed her off.

"Elle, it's not mine. I'm fine but we need to leave here, now." He saw a myriad of emotions pass through her face at his words. She launched herself at him and he caught her deftly while her hands frantically ran over his face and body, checking for injury.

"Gabriel, you're – you're alright -"

He couldn't help but smile at her adorably confused face when she found none. He cupped her face in his hands and drew her gaze up to him, allowing himself one hard, long kiss as she clung to him tightly before pulling away.

"We need to leave," they both said as they broke apart. They looked at each other in surprise for a moment and then together spoke again.

"Right! Stay behind me." "Stay close behind me, Elle."

She rolled her eyes at him.

"This isn't the time to get all Rambo on me, Gabe!"

"Don't argue with me, Elle!"

"Well, if it isn't the happy couple." Adam's cheerful voice floated to them from where he stood past the stairwell. His hands were jauntily placed on his hips and although his hair and clothing were mangled, he looked completely refreshed and relaxed. He wore a smug smile on his face that Elle knew well. It was a smile that spelled trouble.

She tried to step in front of Gabriel at the same time that he pushed her decisively behind him. Trying to move around him proved impossible. He was like a rock all of a sudden!

"Gabriel, no! You don't understand – you need to leave right now. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"Elle, listen to me," he said to her quietly. "This man is dangerous. You need to get out. Now." He needed to make sure she was gone before he took care of things with Adam.

Adam chuckled. "Oh, now this is funny. You," he pointed at Elle, "are trying to protect him. And he obviously doesn't know anything about you, at all. Does he, love?"

Elle gave him the glare of death and mouthed 'you're dead' as Gabriel discreetly glanced at her in bewildered agitation. "Do you know this person?"

"...unfortunately, yes. We have some unfinished business."

"What business?"

"Oh now don't get mad at her, Gabriel. After all, you don't want to get too angry. You might be liable to...explode. And I don't think our lovely girl here would enjoy that much. Would you darling?" Adam ribbed.

"Don't talk to her," Gabriel growled.

"I'll talk to her anytime I please. After all," Adam gave him a nasty smile before he dropped his bomb. "She was in love with me long before she ever knew you were a smear on the planet."

"You lying sack of shit! I was never in love with you!" Elle screamed at the same time Gabriel yelled, "I will end your life old man!"

"Aww laddie," Adam cocked his head to the side, "not if I end you first." And at that, Adam raised his hands. They were glowing with an eerie blue haze.

And then all hell broke loose.

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AN: Covers face. Eep! Hope you guys liked it.