Chapter 11- Near Death Experience

Sylar threw the woman into the nearest wall and held her suspended about a foot from the floor. He had to concentrate more than usual to avoid destroying her completely with the force and pressure of his telekinesis. He was going to kill her to be sure, but he wanted her to suffer first. Had she not activated the alarm he may have allowed her to live but she had interfered with his plans and that angered him greatly.

A man in a blue shirt raced around the corner and came to an abrupt stop when he saw the woman hovering on the wall. He slowly turned to Sylar and said, "Put her down, son. You don't have to hurt her." Something in Sylar cringed at being called 'son.' It was patronizing and whoever the man was, he was working with the woman who was holding him captive and as far as he was concerned, that made him an accomplice in his book. With a small flick of his wrist, the man joined the woman in suspension. The look of complete shock on his face was priceless and it almost made Sylar laugh.

"Sylar!" Came a familiar voice.

Bennet. The rage returned and burned hot in the pit of his stomach at the sound of his voice. He narrowed his eyes and clenched his teeth at the sight of the man who had trapped him…again. The one time he had given Bennet the benefit of the doubt when it appeared that he was trying to help, he turned on him. Sylar was just as angry at himself for falling for it as he was at Bennet for doing who knows what to him. The memories of the tests that Bennet damn near killed him with bled in his mind. The suffering he endured left raw scars that he still felt and the pain nearly blinded him as he violently threw him against the wall with the others.

Something stirred in his peripheral vision and he reflexively turned his head to see Mohinder's stunned expression. "Oh my God." Mohinder sighed staring wide eyed at Sylar and his row of would be victims. "Wait, you…" was all he was able to say before he too was held captive.

Sylar didn't care why Mohinder was there, but no doubt he had a hand in whatever was going on at the facility. If he hated Bennet, words couldn't express his distaste for the geneticist. Even if he had nothing to do with any of it, he deserved to die for his past transgressions. How could he forget the time he was given spiked tea in a pseudo act of friendship only to be drugged and shot at? Again it was his intellect that saved him and he was able to stop the flow of drugs and play charades long enough to regain his ability to stop the bullet inches before it entered his forehead. Were it not for his quick thinking, Mohinder may have been successful in his attempted murder.

He slowly raised his right hand and pointed at the throat of the woman. He was through with all of them, no more games- just swift and certain death. One quick slice across the throat and he could be on his way…. The sound of footsteps pounding on the floor moving in his direction gave him pause.

"Sylar! Stop!" Peter called excitedly. Sylar was growing tired of people shouting his name and even more weary with each new batch of arrivals and his agitation was starting to show. This time two more colored shirts came with him and he was momentarily caught off guard when he realized that one of the men had pointed ears and a green tint to his skin.

The man in a gold shirt next to Peter took one look at the man in blue and drew a gun from his belt. Sylar smirked at the man's actions because he had seen this show many times before, so he stretched out his hand in anticipation to stop the flying projectiles in midair. He was in the middle of considering whether or not he would fling them back when Peter shouted 'no' but it was too late; the man pulled the trigger.

Sylar's mind was incredibly fast, but even he had just enough time to realize that what was being shot at him was not metal fragments, but a stream of light. He knew that light consisted of photons and photons did not have mass. Without adequate mass, he wouldn't be able to stop it. When his mind had completed this calculation, he had just enough time to squeeze his eyes shut tight and wait for the pain. Sure enough, the intense burning sensation lit up every nerve in his body and he stumbled backwards a step or two before it subsided and the scorch mark in his side healed. Behind him, the people on the wall slipped a bit.

Jim almost couldn't believe his eyes. 'Almost' because after he had time to think about it, he had watched the man survive a knife in the back of the head and yet there he was. He was used to operating in the usual world where phasers set on kill actually did as advertised, yet as was his luck, he had accidentally stumbled upon Sylar's Achilles heel: his powers didn't work for phasers. Jim didn't have time to gloat to Spock since he had actually figured it out before his logical science officer because Sylar blasted him with a stream of blue energy that emanated from his hand. The force was sufficient to throw him backwards and leave him paralyzed staring at the ceiling. Jim should have been disturbed by this, but all his stunned brain could focus on was how cool it was to have a more powerful phaser than his gun shoot from his hand.

While Spock checked on Jim, more colored shirts arrived from the bridge but stood down on the green man's orders. Peter raised his hands in mock surrender and slowly approached the enraged man. "Sylar, this isn't what you think." He said quietly and calmly.

"Is that right, Petrelli?" Sylar sneered. "Tell me, did Nathan recruit you too?"

"No." Peter answered sadly. "He was after me too, Sylar."

Sylar was bored with the scene and he was already working on a quick exit strategy because he didn't know how many more people would respond to the alarm. He again quickly raised his hand to complete his initial task, but this time started at the other end with Mohinder. He managed to make a small cut in his throat before he heard Peter yell "Wait!" over the scientist's pained screaming.

Peter's eyes were wide and filled with desperation in Sylar's estimation. Peter was a true believer, so if he was panicked he must have been convinced that something else aside from torture was going on at that place. He once more pleadingly stretched out his hands and breathed, "Just hear me out, Sylar. You have the ability to know when someone is lying. Just listen to me, let me explain."

Sylar waited, but he didn't feel the small tingling sensation at the base of his skull that alerted him to dishonesty. Not that he needed to use it with Peter- he was perhaps the worst liar he had ever met. Mother Theresa was probably better at it than he was. "Go on." He responded coolly.

Peter nodded in relief at having been granted a reprieve. "So Nathan was after us, right? Well, we aren't in that time right now. Hiro brought us to the future- a future where we aren't supposed to exist. Whatever Nathan was doing, he was doing it well because all indications are that he got us too."

The innuendo was not lost on Sylar. He, Peter and Claire were more or less immortal- apparently less because Peter hadn't lied so far and that disturbed him because he didn't particularly enjoy contemplating his own mortality.

"This isn't a place run by the Company. We aren't even on Earth. We are on a spaceship and that man," he pointed to Jim who was by this time sitting up on his own with a dazed look on his face, "is the Captain. He agreed to give us a safe place to stay until we can go back to stop Nathan."

Sylar glanced at the man in the gold shirt, but didn't feel any particular remorse. He had been shot at first so in his mind it was self defense. The green man at his side, however, unnerved him a bit. He was still completely confused by him mostly because of the calm way he held his stare. Most people flinched and looked away under his harsh glare, but this man passively engaged him with a steady will and he didn't know how to react to that. There was a keenness in his eyes that he recognized as an intelligence equal to his own and he was instantly intrigued.

Peter looked from Sylar to Spock and almost smiled because what he saw was pure Gabriel- distracted, curious, and definitely not a homicidal maniac that needed to be talked off a ledge. Suddenly he had lost interest in his prey and was taken with the green man for some odd reason. Peter got the sense that Spock was also highly intelligent, but he would have thought that Sylar would have seen him as a threat- not a potential playmate in the sandbox. After all, he was not exactly known for playing well with others. His relief was short lived, however, when like a rubber band Gabriel snapped back into Sylar and he turned to him and hissed, "Spaceship?"

"We should have shot you out an airlock." McCoy grumbled. He may have lost control of his volitional movement, but he never could keep his mouth shut to save his life- almost literally in this case.

Sylar glared at him for a moment and replied, "Idiot. That wouldn't kill me. I would keep regenerating until I got back on the ship, and believe me, I would one way or another just to kill you." McCoy was not a man that was easily rattled, but he believed every word he said.

"Sylar, they are all trying to help us, just put them down." Peter said softly.

"You didn't explain why I was being held while you were running around." Sylar said in a low voice as he glanced sideways at him. "Why did I have to be put in chemical restraints? What were they doing to me, Peter? And don't think about lying…I can tell, remember?"

Peter was really hoping he could just sidestep that particular freight train if he could just gloss over it, but he should have known that he would find the devil in the details. "We are here because we have to find a way to stop Nathan. Obviously he knows something we don't- he knows how to exploit some weakness in us that we all seem to have. We have to find that weakness too and the only way to do that is to study our powers with their advanced technology." Peter watched anxiously as Sylar set his jaw and began to grind his teeth as he squinted hard at him. "I had the same tests you did," he said soothingly, "and then some. They are good people, Sylar, they didn't do any mad scientist experiments on us." He paused for a moment and asked, "Am I lying?"

As an answer, Sylar let his hostages fall to the floor in a heap.

Up on the bridge Matt, Hiro, and Ando sat where they had been left when their partners ran off to respond to some kind of alarm, afraid to touch anything for fear of what it might do. The odd thing was, Peter went with them.

"Do you think it is some kind of fire drill or something?" Ando asked nervously.

"Where the hell are they going to go?" Matt laughed. "Are they going to go running out into space? Meet up on the nearest asteroid and do a head count?"

"Maybe it is drill." Hiro agreed. "You must always be ready for disaster."

"I just hope it isn't a disaster of the supervillain kind." Matt groused. "I'll bet they don't have plans for that one in their standard operating procedures."