Chapter 7

---Kira---

It was dark down in the cells with only the dim blue light from the firefly moss illuminating the room. I had turned off the lanterns for the night; not that you would know it was night if you didn't have a clock. Without windows time became rather fluid inside of the complex.

I flipped on my laptop and checked the time; it was 2 am and I was covered in a cold sweat.

Another nightmare… it feels like I never get any sleep anymore.

I shouldn't even be sleeping. A week was already over and Sylar could be back any day now and I still haven't worked up a virus to take out the Enterprise.

It shouldn't take this long. I've done it before, but… I just keep putting it off.

Fragments of my nightmare drifted back to me in the silence.

I was standing alone on the bridge of the Enterprise; I don't know how I knew I was on the Enterprise since I had never been there, but I was certain that's where I was- it was burning!

The fire was consuming the ship as I watched it crash towards Terran on a giant view screen.

I ran!

I tripped over something large and bulky as I tried to escape. Suddenly I was surrounded by bodies scattered all about the floor everywhere I looked. They were faces I recognized- faces of people I had met. Faces of people I had watched Sylar kill.

And there, at my feet, I saw them: Jim, Bones and Scotty.

It was the site of their lifeless eyes that had jolted me awake. It was this dream that truly made me realize…

I don't want them to die.

My sight went a bit blurry as I blinked back some tears.

Don't cry! You promised yourself you wouldn't cry any more.

"Bad dream?" I heard a voice whisper from across the room- it was the doctor.

"It's nothing." I whispered back. Placing my hands on the keyboard I stared at the blank screen indecisively. "I should be working anyways."

"Ah. No rest for the weary, huh?"

I shrugged, "I get enough."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You can't lie to a doctor, darling. Enough to survive is hardly worth calling enough."

"I'm used to it."

"You shouldn't have to be."

I shrugged at him again, "That's a sweet sentiment, but I'm used to a lot of things that I shouldn't 'have to be', that hardly changes things. I hate to break it to you, but life isn't fair."

"You don't have to tell me. If life were fair I wouldn't be gallivanting off into space and courting death at every turn."

Propping my head on my hand, I leaned on the desk. "What could be so bad that you had no choice but to face the big bad terrors of space?"

"My ex-wife," he said wryly.

"Could one woman truly be as bad as you say?"

"You better believe it!" I couldn't help but laugh softly.

We spent the next couple of hours talking about everything and nothing at all. Well… he did most of the talking.

He told me stories about Georgia, mint juleps and peach cobbler. I laughed at his tales of his days spent in med school.

Later on he told me a bit of his separation, then divorce, and of his little girl Joanna.

"It's just hard to believe that someone I once trusted so much could just betray me like that, you know?"

I watched him silently for a moment. "I can't say that I do."

He looked back at me sadly. "If you were anyone else I would think that was a good thing."

"If I were anyone else, you'd probably be right."

He frowned deeply, "And now here I am, just as I predicted, in a cell probably harboring a million parasites, about to be tormented and probably killed. I should have just moved to Mars."

"I'm glad you didn't." It was selfish of me, but for some reason I couldn't help saying it.

He looked like he was about to say something, but the chime of my comm interrupted.

"Keys?"

I sighed, "What is it, Ubar?"

"We just received word from Sylar. He'll be in later today. Be ready."

I locked eyes with Bones, "Got it."

Silence permeated the room for a while after that, and I couldn't meet his eyes any more.

"You should get some sleep. I've got work to do."

He just nodded at me and rolled onto his side away from me.

There wasn't much time left; I knew what I had to do. I began typing faster than I had ever done in my life.

I have a plan!

This was a very hard chapter to write. There is just too much in between stuff to get from one point to another in my head easily. Here's to some action in the future!