We went in/
We climbed up and looked out/
The door locked from the outside/
Three ghosts in the lighthouse/

Mr. Bennet approached the door warily with his gun held stiff-armed out in front of him, eying the knob with dislike. He didn't want to open the door on a potential threat, but he couldn't just walk away from a potential threat, either—it was an infuriating contradiction, and it would probably get him killed someday. He wished he could take the time to find his power-dampening and tranquilizing guns, he wasn't sure where they'd ended up in the scuffle—Jonathan had been considerably more trouble than he'd anticipated. Of course there was no time to look for them, never any time; there was no choice but to go one hundred percent fatal, but he couldn't honestly say he was feeling bad about that.

He took swift appraisal of the flimsy hotel door and then kicked it open, smashing straight through the knob with sledgehammer precision. As it swung brokenly ajar, he searched the room for occupants, feeling that nothing would surprise him at this point short of a pair of trapeze artists swinging from the ceiling fan. There was only one person that he could see, sitting up against the bed with a familiar tense posture, straight-backed and slightly leaning forward with avaricious life-lust.

"Bennet," he said in that voice that still made Mr. Bennet cringe somewhere inside, fortunately deep enough that it didn't show. "I thought I heard senseless violence being committed."

Mr. Bennet instinctively checked Sylar's neck, and was relieved to see the silver line of an inhibitor collar running around his throat. It would be that much easier to kill him with the collar on (there was no question of his conscience trying to talk him out of this one, not even Claire would object to the death of the infamous Sylar). Sylar watched him take aim with teeth bared, reminiscent of a cornered animal but veryhuman in the survival instinct in his eyes, the gutsy will to live. Between one breath and the next, the breath when Mr. Bennet was to pull the trigger, Sylar suddenly exploded into motion, passionately unwilling to die. He hit Mr. Bennet low with all his focused forceful energy, linebacker-tackling him to the ground, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand.

Knocked out of the upper hand by the surprise attack, Mr. Bennet felt the situation rapidly turn to a fight for his life as Sylar determinedly pinned him down, prying his fingers away from the handle of the handgun. He got a hand out from under Sylar's knees and thrust it determinedly into a pressure point on the side of his neck, making the man flinch away with a pained growl and loosen his hold on the gun. Mr. Bennet wrenched his hand out of Sylar's grasp with a final teeth-gritted effort, but Sylar managed to pin his wrist against the carpet as Mr. Bennet tried to get the gun up and around enough to blow his enemy's head to vindictive pieces.

Sylar scrabbled fruitlessly to get the gun back, then went for Mr. Bennet's throat with trademark fanatic predictability. Still unable to free his other hand, Mr. Bennet faced a swift, urgent decision—release the gun and be defenseless, or let himself be choked to death? It took him a few seconds longer than it should have to make the choice, with two such equally unattractive options, but finally he forced himself to drop the gun and try to get Sylar's hands away from his neck.

It soon became apparent that he might as well have hung onto the gun, after all—there was very little chance that he would be able to pry Sylar's hands away, locked in attack mode like iron around his throat. Great, his brain was saying with detached lucidity. After all these years, this is a pretty embarrassing way to die—not even the excuse of special abilities to justify my mistakes.

Just when his vision was starting to go hazily gray around the edges, he suddenly saw Sylar jerk as if from an impact, his eyes glazing to eerie unfocus. The hands went loose on his neck and he was able to push them away easily, shoving Sylar off him to reveal an unexpected sight: Jonathan, sitting propped up against the wall with Mr. Bennet's tranquilizer gun slipping from his hands. Mr. Bennet stared disbelievingly at the dart sticking out of Sylar's back, mind repeating a blazing WHY? as if on a circuit loop.

"Don't look at me like that," Jonathan said, with surprising ferocity for someone who looked like they'd lost a fight with a food processor. "What, do you want to be dead?"

"No," Mr. Bennet said as he stood up, habitual suspicion fighting with sincere confusion. "No, I appreciate your help, your timing was impeccable. May I ask…why?"

"No," Jonathan said vehemently, tossing the gun aside with a murderous glower. "No, you may not. I don't want to hear it."

Mr. Bennet shrugged, frankly unconcerned with adolescent mysteries, and picked his gun up to carry out his original intent. As he turned to Sylar, though, he was again surprised to hear Jonathan's voice, sudden and sharp: "Hey! Wait a second, don't do that!"

"I'm not sure what's sparked this newfound goodwill," Mr. Bennet said with exasperation, "but this is an extremely dangerous killer, and I am very cheerfully going to shoot him in the head now. If you don't like blood, I suggest you look away."

Jonathan looked as if he wanted to throw himself in front of the gun, but was hindered slightly by the fact that his knee had several foreign objects imbedded in it. "No," he said, "you don't get it. He is an extremely dangerous serial killer, but only sometimes, now."

Mr. Bennet stared blankly at him, patience disappearing at an alarming rate. "You've got fifteen seconds to explain what you're talking about, and then I'm blowing his head off," he said tersely.

"See, he's—"

"Thirteen seconds," Mr. Bennet interrupted, holding his watch up to eye-level.

"Back in Las Vegas, when—"

"Ten seconds."

"Would you stop that?" Jonathan yelled. "Listen to me! When he killed Niki Sanders, he took her abilities, including the weird freak-show schizophrenia thing. He's got this—other side now, Gabriel Gray, and he pops up all the time. I just don't think you should shoot him before we know what's going on with all this."

Mr. Bennet eyed Sylar skeptically. "A dual personality, huh?" Despite himself, he was interested; the part of him that the Company had capitalized on, the latent geek intellectual, wanted to know more.

"Yeah," Jonathan said helpfully. "It's really creepy."

Mr. Bennet sliced him a sharp glare, vividly remembering why he'd disliked this kid in the first place. "Why don't you keep your mouth shut until I decide whether or not I want to kill you, huh, champ?"

"I just saved your life," Jonathan reminded with an obnoxious grin. "If you killed me, I think the Gratitude Fairy would be obligated to come down and smash your head in with her sparkly wand."

"Shut up," Mr. Bennet said as pleasantly as he could manage, turning his back to Jonathan as he flipped his cell phone open. "It's rude to prattle brainlessly through someone else's phone calls. Hi," he said as the phone at the Petrelli house was picked up. "Who is this?" A raised eyebrow, a double-take. "Peter? What are you doing back? Saved the world already, have you? Really. Well, I would love to watch the news, but I've got some problems I need to deal with first, two of them. Could you send someone over with a car, and could you make it fast?"

"Oh, you shouldn't have," Jonathan deadpanned. "I'm only bleeding copiously, there's no rush. Or is it that you want to clear out before someone realizes we're not just watching Lethal Weapon with the TV turned up too loud?"

"Make it fast," Mr. Bennet repeated grimly. "Or there will be bloodshed."