Nightmare on Durham-Street

A huge and violently loud crash rang out, as if the ceiling of the whole production hall had just come down. Shawn, Juliet and everybody else who was with them behind their bench, flinched at this terrible impact. Even Claire seemed to have woken up now and two big eyes stared out of her father´s arm. Nothing of Roth´s created dream could have survived this scare she´d gotten just now. There was no other way for her but to be back to the real world. If this crash meant something bad, it had at least caused one good thing.

"What just happened?" Bennet whispered into the following silence.

After the echo of the crash had ebbed away, everything was quiet. The shooting, that had filled the air so far, had stopped.

Shawn and Juliet exchanged a worried glance. Slowly they turned around and rose up, to peek over the edge of the bench. They expected almost everything, from an explosion to a half gone hall. But what they really saw, was completely unexpected. What the hell …?

Where the door had been there was now a working bench, lying on its side like the tossed away toy building block of a child. The cloud of dust it had caused, was still settling. All around it there lay people, unconscious or dead after the shooting that had lasted until the bench had ended it. It was the bench that had served Lassiter and Gus as cover earlier. Now the two of them were standing there, along with Peter and Mohinder, obviously in no need for cover any longer. The way things looked, they´d found a better usage for it.

Lassiter nodded, an approving smirk on his lips and looked at the two Specials.

"Not bad." he said.

Gus who´d just come around after the shock as it seemed, cheered in victory.

"Peter." Sylar cried and rushed over to the younger man, hugging him in an almost brotherly way. "Good to see you´re back from the dead." he chuckled.

The reaction on Peter´s side was a little more hesitant though. He looked at Sylar very uncertain, as if he tried to decide if he should greet him as heartily as Sylar´d greeted him, or if he´d rather accuse him of something. Probably of how many people he´d killed.

When Sylar realized this, his smile faded. He opened his mouth, to say something, but Peter stopped him.

"We talk about everything else later." he said with the most serious face Shawn had ever seen, except maybe for Lassie. "For now we have to finish something." Peter stated.

Sylar nodded, in hesitant agreement. Then his eyes fell on Mohinder and his bloody shoulder. "Mohinder, you´re hit." he reached out for the scientist but Suresh skipped back, avoiding the touch.

"I´m fine." he assured him with a tiny smile that was as uncertain as Peter´s gaze had been before. His hand lay protectively on his hurt shoulder. The message was clear enough. There simply was no time for more treatment of wounds right now. They´d brought Peter back around but that was all the loss of time they could afford.

Lassiter´s eyes fell on one of the guards he´d shot earlier in the battle. A woman. But her face was halfway covered with hair, hanging loose, dirty with dust. Lassiter knew it was probably senseless, but he couldn´t help. He needed to know. So he walked over to her and went to his knees to brush the hair away.

"What is it, Carlton?" Juliet asked, frowning curiously.

He looked up at her, one brow arched, almost amused. "Maria Takolov." he said, pointing at the dead woman before him. Her hands were still clinging to her MP.

Juliet looked at the face of their earlier suspect, from a case that seemed to be a lifetime ago, and just couldn´t believe it.

"Guess you were right about her after all." she finally managed.

"We need to move on." Bennet spoke, to get all of their attentions back. He and Claire stood in their midst, as if to gather the team at last, for the final battle.

"Roth is still in the building and still aware of what we´re doing." the man with the glasses told them and looking at his daughter he added: "He has Lauren and Gretchen. And he will send more men for us."

"Actually, no, he won´t." a new voice echoed through the hall, making them all swirl around.

And there he was. Standing in the hall amongst his dead and wounded men as if they were just some thrown away junk. "There is no sense in sending more men after you." Roth told them. "The old saying seems to be true after all. If you want something to be done right, you´ve got to do it yourself."

Lassiter immediately aimed his gun at him. "Frederic Roth." he shouted. "You are under arrest for so many crimes that I don´t even want to get started on them."

"You can´t arrest him." Bennet cried desperately. "Shoot, before he can use his power on us."

Lassiter hesitated one more second, the cop in him that was used to only shoot if there was immediate threat demanding that he reconsidered this idea. But the things he´d seen over the last hour, reminded him of the fact that there was indeed an immediate threat existent here.

So he pulled the trigger.

Only that no bullet came out of his gun. Only an empty click. And another. And another. He was sure the gun was loaded. He´d reloaded it just before Suresh and Petrelli had ended the shooting so elegantly. He tried again but still nothing happened.

Next to him, Sylar obviously didn´t want to wait for him to figure out the loss of his bullets and reached out his hand, to take care of Roth himself. The effect was the same like with Lassiter´s gun. Nothing happened. The murderer stared at his open hand, flabbergasted.

Peter scowled at Roth and bolted for him, to attack him personally. But halfway to him he ran into something. As if there was a wall, or a forcefield, or something similar, that kept him from going further. It was as if Roth had said, you may go that far but no further.

Sylar joined Peter but he had no chance against this invisible border either. The rules of physics seemed to have changed.

"I tried to be fair with you." Roth said, looking at Bennet as if they were the only two people in the hall. "But obviously you don´t appreciate our agreement. Now my patience is gone."

As if to underline his statement the ground beneath their feet started to shake.

"What´s happening now?" Peter cried, trying to keep his feet connected with the ground, just like everybody else.

"He´s doing it again." Shawn cried, desperately trying to be heard over the roaring of the shaking ground. "That´s not really happening."

But in that moment, the shaking showed effect, on the structure of the building and a huge crack ran over the ground, the walls, the ceiling. The tearing sound, when the concrete cracked was so loud that they all had to cover their ears, to not to become deaf. The crack tore open, wider and wider, steel, stones and dust flying around like avalanches, until practically the whole building seemed to be split in half. Peter and Sylar who stood closest to the edge swayed, struggling to not to fall.

"You think that isn´t real?" Roth shouted over to them, laughing.

Over them, in the ceiling, cables snapped when the exertion became too much. The lights that had illuminated the hall so far went out, all at once. Sparks flew out of the cables and a minute later, a whole curtain of big loose cables was hanging down, all of them sizzling under the still high voltage, frequently spitting sparks into the now dark hall. When one of them seemed to jump forward like a snapping snake, Gus and Shawn skipped back, screaming high and loud. They bumped into Lassiter and Juliet and shoved them backwards along with them.

A few feet away, Bennet had grabbed his daughter and dragged her out of the reach of those cables as well.

After the shaking of the ground had stopped, Peter fixed his eyes on Roth. The pit between them was over ten feet but that didn´t seem to lower the young man´s determination. Trusting the powers he´d gotten from Suresh, he jumped, ready to grab Roth as soon as he was on the other side. Only that he never reached the other side. The invisible wall was still there. Only this time, Peter had no floor to hit after the impact threw him down. He bounced off the forcefield and fell down, into the pit.

"Peter!" Sylar cried.

He and Suresh hurried to the edge of the pit. They spotted Peter, hanging on a piece of iron that stuck out of the torn open floor, one story beneath them. He was in the process of climbing back up when some cables came shooting up at him and wined themselves around his waist. Peter groaned, startled, and clung to the bar, to not to get dragged down.

Sylar forced his eyes away from this sight, to glare at Roth.

"Want to join him?" Roth asked and only a second later, more cables came out of the pit, this time grabbing Sylar to drag him down.

It all happened so fast that the usually multigifted murderer had no chance to react, let alone resist. The possessed cables wound themselves around his legs and then he was thrown to the ground and pulled over the edge. He tried to grab something, to hold onto it, but it all slipped through his fingers, completely useless. Then he lost contact to the edge and just fell … until his fall was stopped, by a hand grabbing his wrist.

The cables kept pulling on his legs, the force of it stretching him painfully. But the hand that held him was strong and when he looked up, he looked into Mohinder´s face. For a moment, he almost couldn´t believe it. There he was, the man that had wanted to kill him, that had hated him like no one else. And now he was lying on the edge of that pit, clinging to his hand, trying to save him. Beneath him the cables pulled harder and Sylar felt his fingers slip out of Mohinder´s hand.

Behind Mohinder, still trapped behind the hanging cables, Shawn had given up on the screaming and instead tried to open up his mind. This was exactly like that other stuff, Roth had done before. Well, maybe not exactly like before, but the idea was the same. Making them see something that wasn´t real, to keep them in place. Since Shawn didn´t believe this guy Roth could also make the earth shake and other things come to life, the odds were pretty good that this was another one of his dreams.

Of course it was. That´s what Marilyn had warned him about. But damn, it was convincing. More than that, it was freaking scary. But he had to try. So he left Gus and the others behind and dared to approach the cables. If he just believed it, he would be able to cross them without getting fried.

"Shawn!" Juliet screamed after him, in terror and he stopped, dead in his tracks.

"Are you out of your damn mind, Shawn?" Gus cried. "Come back here."

"It´s just a dream, don´t you see?" he tried to tell them and simultaneously convince himself.

"No, I don´t see." Gus cried back. "All I see is that there are thousands of volts running through those cables. So now come back here."

"I have to try!" Shawn insisted but in this moment one of the cables jerked again and when it came at him, he heard Jules and Gus and Lassiter, all of them cry out for him. Then the cable struck him and at least ten thousand volts of electricity ran through his body.

Every muscle in his body tensed and he was shaken violently. It felt like an eternity in which he didn´t feel anything but the pain that filled his entire body and mind, and couldn´t hear anything but the horrified screams of his friends, who had to watch him writhe completely helpless. As helplessly as he was. His mind knew very well that it would be better to jump aside and away from that aggressive cable, but somehow his body just couldn´t comply, no matter how much he wanted it.

At last the cable jerked again, releasing him. But with the electricity everything else went away as well, as if this had been the last string that had attached him to this life. His muscles relaxed and his mind stopped working. A moment later, he just broke down, to the ground, limp, not moving anymore.

Gus fell down to his knees, quickly crawling over to Shawn. He grabbed his collar and pulled him back with him as fast as he could, before another cable could jump at him.

"Is he all right?" Juliet cried, her breath high and much too fast. "Please tell me he is all right!"

"Shawn." Gus called his friend but Shawn lay limp in his arms, not reacting to anything.

"Did that feel real enough for you?" Roth´s voice called over to them.

Noah and Claire who´d watched the whole thing from their own corner, looked over at Roth in shock. Claire wanted to bolt through the cables, trusting her healing abilities, but Noah held her back.

"He disabled Sylar´s powers, he could have disabled yours too." he cried.

Down in the pit, Sylar had turned his head a little at Roth´s shouting too, but a moment later he had to focus on his own situation again. His fingers were slipping more and more out of Mohinder´s hand and soon he would lose it for good. He took all the strength he´d left and reached up, with his second arm, to grab Mohinder´s wrist. He had to struggle to get his hand high enough. The cables were still pulling him down.

Mohinder lay at the edge and had no idea what else to do. Peter was hanging far too deep down for him to reach him and Sylar was slipping away. The others behind him were trapped and just now one of them had payed the prize for underestimating Roth. If he´d believed to be in a nightmare earlier, he now had to learn that there was always room for aggravation.

He closed his eyes when the pain shot through his wounded shoulder, on which he was lying. When he opened them again and looked down, his heart skipped a beat. There were scales growing on the back of his hand again. And not just there. His sleeve had slipped up and he could see that the scales ran along his whole arm. Sylar´s hand stopped, an inch before this scaled wrist. Of course he was reluctant to touch those.

While Mohinder looked at his own skin he could see them grow. Too fast. Too much. It happened again. And then Sylar´d overcome his initial shock and his hand grabbed Mohinder´s wrist. Not hesitantly like someone who was afraid, but tight and fearless.

"It´s not real, Mohinder." he pressed the words out, while trying to not to be torn in half. "Don´t believe it. That´s what he wants."

Again the cables pulled at him and again he lost some of his grip on the scientist´s hand. Mohinder reached down his second arm, to make up for it. It didn´t help much, and the pain in his shoulder was agonizing.

"Nothing of this is real." Sylar croaked. His eyes darted down to Peter for a moment, to make sure he´d heard him as well. But Peter was struggling and he had no one to support him.

"Hang on, Gabriel." a female voice told him all the sudden. "You can make it."

Sylar blinked and tried to look around, but he couldn´t see anyone. This voice. She´d almost sounded like his mother.

"Shawn!" Marilyn called now. "Shawn, you must wake up. Wake up, Shawn. They need you. Come on. Remember what I told you. You can do it. Shawn!"

Shawn opened his eyes and for a moment he thought he had flashes before his eyes. But then he realized that what he saw were no effects of his eyes, but real flying sparks. No, not real sparks. Nothing of this was real. It was an illusion created by Roth. But one thing was real. The tears he felt dropping down on his face. He looked up and when Jules saw him awake, her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide. She tried to say something but there were only sobs coming out of her throat.

"I know." he said and gave her a comforting hug. "I know, you thought I was dead."

He looked at Gus and Lassie who stared at him as well. Gus´ face was wet. Lassie´s was pale.

"I told you it´s not real." he said, releasing Juliet and his own voice wasn´t so steady either. "You believe me now?"

Instead of waiting for an answer he stood up and approached the cables one more time. Juliet grabbed his arm, to drag him back, but he resisted.

"It´s a dream, Jules." he told her, facing all three of them. After that his gaze searched Bennet and Claire and found them. They looked over at them, confusion on their faces.

"I´m all right!" he assured them. "It´s a dr..."

In this moment, Bennet got shot from out of nowhere, by at least six bullets, that threw him to the ground. Claire cried out, kneeling down beside him. There was blood all over her father´s chest and when she attempted to touch him her hands began to shake in fear.

Shawn looked ahead, at Roth.

"It won´t work, Freddy!" he cried and then turned to his friends again, shouting as loud as he could, to make sure they´d all hear him, even the ones hanging in the pit. "We must not fall for this!" he yelled. "Nothing of this is real. Bennet, you´re not hit by anything. He´s a mind controller, not a telecommunist."

"Telecinetic, Shawn." Gus corrected automatically.

"Exactly!" Shawn cried. "This is all an illusion. He can´t harm us if we don´t let him. We … we need to concentrate. All together! You hear me? Concentrate! We need to wake up. Wake up from this nightmare! Come on! Wake up! Wake up!"

"Don´t bother." Roth cried. "You´ll only strain your simple mind."

"Don´t you worry about me!" Shawn shouted back at him. "Just get the hell out of my dreams. Come on, guys, don´t let me down! I can´t do this alone! Wake up! Wake up!"

"Wake up." Juliet joined him, hesitantly at first. But when Gus and Lassiter joined in, she lost the insecurity in her voice. Shawn felt a strange pride inside of him. He closed his eyes and set his mind to this one thought, they all had to combine.

Wake up.

Juliet´s hand found its way into his and then he could even hear her voice in his head. And following hers, also Gus´ and Lassie´s.

Wake up. Wake up.

Down in the pit, Sylar looked up at Mohinder, who was growing more and more pointy scales each second. On his hands and by now also in his face. Roth´s last try to shatter the scientist´s hope. Sylar looked in his now fully black eyes and nodded at him, reassuringly.

"It´s a dream, Mohinder." he said. "Come on. Wake up. Wake up."

The desperate look in the geneticist´s eyes became stronger again. When Sylar was sure that Suresh had understood, he threw a glance down, to Peter, and the young man gave him a nod. All together they closed their eyes and concentrated. Concentrated on the fact that nothing of this was real, on waking up from this nightmare.

Again the ground started to shake, but this time they didn´t react to it, just kept their eyes closed, only focusing on these two words they repeated in their minds over and over again.

Wake up. Wake up.

By now the voice of their own mind was accompanied by others too. By Shawn´s, Juliet´s, Claire´s, Bennet´s, until all of their voices were combined in each of their minds, drowning the sounds the building made while slowly breaking apart. And then all the sudden, it was silent around them. The lights were back on and when they opened their eyes, there was no pit anymore and no cables were hanging down from the ceiling. The walls were intact and everything else looked exactly like before.

Peter, Sylar and Mohinder were lying on the ground where the pit had been in the dream, the two later still joined at their hands. Now, when they found that everything had been set back to normal, they all looked around, astonished.

Mohinder immediately looked at his hands, touched his face, to find it normal again. No scales. Bennet touched his chest and found it unharmed too. No bullets.

They all sat up and looked over at Roth, who looked more than just a little disturbed by that development his plan had taken. It obviously had never happened before that someone escaped his nightmares. Now the great mind controller shook his head, in disbelieve, in denial. That was impossible. Things like that didn´t happen. Not to him.

"Face it, Freddy." Shawn cried. "The nightmare´s over."

"Who allowed you to call me that?" Roth shouted. "No one called me that since I was a kid. I´m not Freddy anymore. I´m Frederic Roth. The most powerful mind on this planet."

"Well, obviously not as powerful as you thought." Shawn replied and chuckled, demonstratively shaking his head. "We came out of your nightmares, two times already."

"Doesn´t matter." Roth said. "I´ll just put you back in another one. Separately this time. And this time you won´t even remember your name when I´m done with you."

He took one single step forward, ready to do what he just predicted, but in this moment his expression of rage changed, to confusion. He stopped, frowning, listening for something no one else could hear. His eyes switched back and forth for a moment. And then he stared up in the air, in pure shock. His eyes were big and round when his mouth dropped open, forming a silent O.

"Marilyn?" he asked, his voice thick from disbelieve and fear.

For another moment nothing else happened. Then he tensed all the sudden, as if something had just hit him. His should have been victims stood around him and watched how the tension slowly left his body, more and more, until his legs gave in and he just collapsed, down to the ground.

After that everything was just quiet. None of them dared to say a word, almost as if they were afraid to wake up Roth or the strange and unseen force that had just defeated him with only so much as a simple thought. The only sound around them was the steady ticking of the clock on the wall, that used to tell the workers when their shift was over for the day.