A/N: Ok…I know that Sylar lost the thermonuclear power he got from Ted Sprague when he contracted the Shanti virus, but I can give as well as I can take away. So Poof! He has it again. Shazam!

Chapter 9- Nothing Special

Peter wiped away the sweat that dripped into his eyes for the hundredth time, but he kept his pace- feet pounding steadily on the treadmill, breathing in and out in a controlled manner while Dr. McCoy stood at his side with an electronic clipboard and made notes. It had been a long morning of tests for Peter. He had a complete physical including blood work and urine samples, every part of him was measured, he was hooked up to electrodes to measure electrical currents that flowed through his nervous system, he was scanned from head to toe with some kind of laser although he didn't ask what it was for, and his reaction times were observed. And through it all he was forbidden to use any of his powers because they wanted as close to a natural baseline as possible. All that was left was a physical endurance test and he kept his mind off the task by thinking about what fun Mohinder must have been having at Sylar's expense. Awake or not, there was no way in hell they would get him on a treadmill, so they gathered as much data as they could from the comatose man and counted on Peter for the rest.

"How goes it?" Jim asked entering the room and taking his place next to McCoy to peek at his clipboard.

McCoy shook his head and frowned. "Everything looks normal, but he has been going at it now for over an hour. According to the readings everything is as expected- his pulse ox is fully saturated and efficient, he is cooling at a normal rate, his cardiopulmonary systems aren't showing any more strain than usual, but he isn't building up any lactic acid in his muscles to make him feel fatigued. It is like he is recovering even as he is running."

"Probably the healing ability." Peter panted. "I have no control over that one."

Jim smiled as he watched Peter run. He had to admit he was a little jealous of his stamina. Oh the things he could do with that…"So you are telling me he could do this all day?"

"Probably." McCoy grunted pushing a button on the control panel for cool down mode. "But I would guess this healing thing has limitations. He would drop dead of dehydration eventually." If the readouts were correct, he was almost there. "Does your healing thing compensate for that?"

"Dunno." Peter shrugged as he walked at a brisk pace. "I never really tried it. I don't run much."

"Why is that?" Jim asked handing him a towel.

Peter nodded in gratitude and replied with a smile, "Why run when you can fly?"

"Good point." Jim conceded. "So what do you have so far?" he asked Bones.

"Finish cooling down and make sure you drink plenty of water." McCoy instructed. "And get something to eat. You burned damn near 1,000 calories." He turned to Jim and motioned for him to follow. "I have to pick up the lab results, but I am guessing there won't be anything remarkable based on what I just saw."

"What about the other one- Sylar?" He snickered and asked, "What kind of a name is Sylar anyway? Did his parents hate him or something?"

"What the hell kind of name is Leonard? He didn't have any more control over what his name is than I did." McCoy grumbled as he rounded the corner to the sickbay. "But you would think something had to be going on there for him to be as messed up as Noah says he is. No one is just born a killer- they are usually made."

A nurse stopped him to give him the lab results as well as the chart for Hiro. "I need your signature to discharge him, Sir." She said in an uptight professional manner.

He scanned the chart and made his way to the biobed where his patient was surrounded by Noah, Mohinder, and Ando. "What the hell is this, a convention?" He growled. He took one look at Hiro's ridiculous smile and added, "Go on, get out of here." A man who looked that happy couldn't be sick unless he was just loopy from the pain meds.

"I can take you to your room," Ando offered, "it is next to mine. The door opens on its own, just like in comic books!"

"When you get him settled, can you join Matt and help him with the search?" Noah inquired. As was usual for him, it wasn't really so much a question as a statement.

"I want to also." Hiro stated with determination as he hopped off the bed. "I am better now and I want to do my part to help."

"You did help, Hiro." Mohinder said gently. "You got us all here safely and that was a huge undertaking." He glanced at McCoy and added, "I do not want to conflict with Dr. McCoy's decision, but I think it might be best if you rested awhile longer. We can always let you know if more help is needed."

Hiro looked deeply disappointed and it moved Dr. McCoy to say, "Let the kid help if he wants to. All he will be doing is reading and running queries on a computer." Hiro immediately perked up and bowed deeply to him which McCoy wasn't sure how to react to. He decided on a firm scowl and a stern warning. "But I am telling you kid, if you feel any pain in your head or your nose starts bleeding again I want you to come back here immediately." He turned to Ando and pointed at him. "I am holding you personally responsible for him."

Ando jumped slightly because the doctor scared him more than just a little and he was certain he meant what he said. He vowed to keep a close eye on his friend because if he didn't he could end up like Sylar and he didn't want that.

Satisfied that he would have 100% compliance with his orders, he turned to Mohinder and asked, "How are you coming with your research?"

Mohinder sighed and admitted, "It is rather slow going picking through each chromosome one band at a time, but ultimately I believe that is where we will find the answer. There has to be mutations within the genetic code that makes them different from us." He rubbed his face in exhaustion. "I just have to find them."

"Well, I'll take your word for it." McCoy smirked, "I'm a surgeon, not a geneticist." Mohinder returned to the small lab that was prepared for him and once again studied the karyotype films of Sylar's DNA that lined the backlit walls. "Good to have you on board, Dr. Suresh." McCoy added. Mohinder gave a small nod and a smile. It was nice to feel needed.

Noah and Jim followed McCoy to his office where he looked over the lab results. After a few tense moments he sighed and tossed the PADD on his desk and shook his head. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing that is out of the ordinary. According to the results, Peter and Sylar are two perfectly healthy, normal human males."

"But you said in the rec room that Peter's body was reacting as it should, just at a faster rate. Isn't that something?" Jim asked hopefully.

"I don't know." McCoy sighed. "That could be explained by some metabolic anomaly. Both of them have normal CBC counts and healthy immune responses with a full compliment of antibodies to most of the common communicable diseases. If there was some metabolic reason for this advanced healing thing, that is where you would find it. I would expect to see elevated T-cells or an influx of white blood cells, but their blood is no different from ours. In fact, the only thing remotely unusual about either of them was I found a faint 3 inch scar front and back on Sylar's lower chest region."

"Yeah," Noah said adjusting his glasses, "that was from being run through with Hiro's katana. Sylar didn't have Claire's ability then, so he had to heal on his own."

"He shouldn't have survived a wound like that." McCoy said emphatically. "It would have severed his descending aorta or at least caused serious damage to his lungs and diaphragm. He would have suffocated from lack of oxygen as his lungs filled with blood."

Noah shrugged casually. "Believe me, we were just as surprised as you. I was there when it happened and shortly after he was stabbed, he disappeared down a sewer. Either he drug himself or an unknown person helped him, but no one saw anything because we were…a little distracted."

"By what?" Jim asked fascinated.

Noah took a deep breath as he searched for the right words to say. "Well, we all thought that Sylar was the one who was going to destroy New York City. He had stolen the ability to summon up thermonuclear power from another person…"

"By killing them?" McCoy asked dryly as he imagined him somehow cutting the person's head off.

"Of course," Noah nodded, "and with this power he had the potential to take out the entire city."

"Why would someone do something like that?" Jim asked horrified. "I mean, I get it that he has a chip on his shoulder, but how pissed off do you have to be to take out an entire city of innocent people?"

"How pissed off do you have to be to take out an entire planet?" McCoy asked grimly. "Spock should have asked Nero before he went all kamikaze on his ass with the Jellyfish."

Noah had no idea what any of that meant, but he went on. "As it turned out, Peter was the real danger. As I told you, he didn't have much control in the early days and Sylar capitalized on this. He pushed Peter until he lost control and became nuclear himself. He couldn't stop the reaction, so Nathan flew him up into the atmosphere to detonate safely away from the city."

"Peter blew up?" Jim asked confused. "Like….completely blew up?"

"You would have to ask him exactly what happened, but because of his healing ability he wasn't harmed by the radiation." Noah answered.

"The more important question is can he do it now?" McCoy asked warily. "Either of them?"

"Yes, they could." Noah admitted. "Both of them. But all indications are that neither has used that ability since then."

"Great." McCoy muttered. "This just keeps getting better and better. Well, since there is nothing special in the baseline data, we will probably start testing with abilities as soon as Peter has recovered. We will see if we can get anything unusual then."

"You won't have to wait long." Noah chuckled. "You have two of the most resilient lab rats ever. By the way, for the accuracy of your records Sylar's name is actually Gabriel Gray."

"I knew that couldn't be his real name!" Jim exclaimed with a smile. "No one in their right mind would name their kid that."

"I wouldn't say his parents were ever in their right minds." Noah said darkly. "At least what we know of them."

"Here we go…" McCoy muttered under his breath as he pulled up the mystery man's records to correct them. "I had to estimate his age with the help of an anthropologist. Judging by the complete closure of the growth plates of the long bones and the presence of wisdom teeth, he is over the age of 22. And by measuring the gap in the joint of his pelvis we put his age at somewhere between 28 and 34. But with this whole healing thing he could be 100 for all I know. It would stand to reason that any cellular damage that naturally occurs would be corrected immediately, slowing the aging process tremendously."

"That's pretty close." Noah commended. "Birth records were hard to locate for him because his family situation is…complicated, but we think he is around 32 or 33. We do know that he was born in Brooklyn, New York and lived with Martin and Virginia Gray as an only child."

"What's so complicated about that?" Jim wondered aloud. "It isn't that unusual for people to be only children in a family."

"No, what was unusual was that they were not his birth parents, rather his aunt and uncle. We know nothing about his biological mother other than at around the age of 5 he witnessed his father murder her. At about that time he was sold to Martin for cash, but he didn't find any of this out until recently."

"Jesus." McCoy sighed as he typed furiously. "No wonder he is messed up in the head. You watch your mother get killed and then you are sold like cattle at an auction."

"It gets better." Noah promised. "Martin left the family when he was about 8 and Virginia was very child like herself which forced Gabriel to grow up very quickly. He is very intelligent- some would say a genius- so he became a watchmaker just like Martin and supported himself by running the family shop with little formal training. When I first became aware of him he was nothing like he is now. He was very quiet, shy, and by all accounts a fine young man. But he was desperate and believed he deserved more from life. He wanted to be special in the worst way, he just wanted to matter. I don't know exactly when his power manifested, but he was aware that he was different by the time I was onto him."

"So ok…" Jim began trying to keep things straight in his head "his life sucked growing up, but he still turned out alright probably because he was so smart. So what the hell happened that he all of a sudden turned into a psycho killer?"

"Don't make that mistake." Noah warned with a smile. "To say he is psychotic overlooks that he does what he does with absolute intention and purpose. He doesn't half ass do anything- no action is executed without being completely thought out step by step and that is what makes him so dangerous. It isn't his powers, it is the way his intellect allows him to wield them with such precision that is the real threat."

"He sounds like Spock, only evil." McCoy mused. "Just what we need. As if having one around wasn't maddening enough."

The med tech that had been assigned to alpha shift looked up from her microscope and stretched. She had been busy all morning completing a huge pile of lab tests for Dr. McCoy and now she was working on a project for Dr. Suresh. She checked the machine that developed the agarose gel full of DNA markers. It still had 10 minutes to go and it had to be perfect or she would have to start the process all over again. She still had to check on the IV drip for the creepy guy in the isolation room, but he could wait awhile longer. At the dose he was being given, he would be out for weeks even without it.

Unbeknownst to her in the isolation room, Sylar's fingers began to twitch.