Quinto Formaggi

Written by Anakin McFly

(If you prefer to read from a saved copy, you can download the PDF file (1.20 MB) instead.)

Prologue: Day 3

The eleventh dimension. The final frontier.

Kenselton Hotel floats in an isolated bubble of hyperspace, hanging from nothing, supported by nothing, surrounded by an all-encompassing vacuum. Ten blocks at its inception, an additional central block, and more in the process of construction.

There are no windows anywhere. No entrances, no exits, its interior an unbroken shell of concrete.

Inside, the internal time hits 0730 hours and the transworld teleportation machines hum automatically back to life.

Kenselton Hotel needs to be populated.

It is Day 3 of its operation.

Quinto Formaggi

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
—Prospero, "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare

The shawls of coloured light rose and faded in the air, revealing the figure on the ground as their bright, chiming notes gave way to faint music from unseen speakers.

Adam Kaufman opened his eyes.

Soft light infused his field of vision in a steady glow of warmth. He blinked, still half in the dream he'd woken from, his mind struggling to place where he was.

The first thing he saw was his arm before him, resting against a polished wood floor, and that seemed strange to his half-asleep mind convinced that he had previously fallen asleep in bed and should not, now, be lying on a floor.

There was a plastic tag around his wrist. Adam gazed sleepily at it, trying to figure out what it was doing there. He rolled over and tugged at it with his other hand, turning it around in examination. It had a barcode, said 704270/003/KAU, was made of seamless plastic, and refused to come off.

...He was not in his home and he had been tagged. Suddenly more awake, Adam scrambled to his feet.

He was in a tiny room, just long enough to lie in, high enough to stand in, the walls smooth and cool to the touch. And there was a door with a note on it.

BLK-J/ENG/2

Welcome to Block J of Kenselton Hotel. We are pleased to inform you that you are part of an epic experiment involving the transportation of fictional characters like you into our world, henceforward known as the real world. In time, your services may be solicited by members of our paying public to indulge their whim of choice, which may include but not be limited to murder, sex, housekeeping and cannibalism.
There is no possibility of escape, but for your entertainment we have provided several red herrings that might make it seem otherwise. These are mainly to confuse and discourage you in the unlikely event that we have overlooked a genuine means of getting out of here.
The populating period will be a week or less, depending on when you came to join us. In this time and for some time after, your residence will be here in Block J, on the floor that our receptionist will allocate you based on your unique identification number. Have a pleasant stay.
P.S. Please do not tear this message off the door and throw it at our receptionist. >:(. We have had to replace it twice, and our receptionist knows kung fu.

Adam rubbed a hand across his eyes and blinked. Nothing changed.

He looked at his wrist tag. He looked at the door. He looked at his wrist tag. He pushed the door open, and it slid aside from under his palm.

Beyond lay a small lobby. In the lobby was a desk counter, and behind the counter sat the receptionist who knew kung fu.

Not looking up, she pushed a sheet of paper out between the counter and the unbreakable glass that separated her from everyone else. "This is a map," she said. "Mealtimes are stated here. You will be staying on the seventeenth floor."

Adam stared. There was something off about her movement and speech. "Are you a robot?" he asked.

She looked up. "Seventeenth floor," she replied with a stern look.

"Okay. What's going on here? Seriously?"

"Seventeenth floor."

Adam looked back at the cubicle from which he'd emerged, one of three in the room. He pointed at it. "How did I get there?"

"Seventeenth floor, or I'll call the guards."

"You can't just kidnap me from bed and-"

The receptionist hit a red button. "Code 1," she said into a small microphone. "704270 on J-64. Please assist. Set phasers to stun-"

Adam backed off, palms raised in surrender. "Seventeenth floor. Got it."

The receptionist hit the cancellation button. She tapped on the counter where the paper was. Adam picked it up and looked at it. It was a map. Mealtimes were stated there. The map had vague place descriptions, like 'bar'.

"You can read it on the seventeenth floor," the receptionist said smoothly.

Adam looked up. "There's something wrong with you, you know that?" he asked.

The receptionist gazed coolly at him.

The lift arrived on the seventeenth floor. Adam went through the stairwell and through a door into the hallway. There were rows of doors to his left and right, most closed, several slightly ajar and opening into darkness. Adam paused at one of the doors and pushed it open.

Light from the corridor cast his silhouette in the doorway as he stood gazing into the darkness of the deserted room. Two bunk beds on one wall, a desk and chair adjacent to them, all of it waiting in the silence for some future occupant. Adam had the sudden fear of having to live here, forever, sucked into its grey waiting depths to be lost in the shadows of template furniture.

This room, the one after... he had the feeling they were identical. This was a hotel of sorts, after all. Identical rooms; it was a pity there were no identical people to fill them in some mechanised fantasy of perfect order. Everything neat, running to function, minds acting as one-

Adam closed the door and turned his gaze ahead. The doorway to the end room stood ajar.

More significantly, its light was on, but in the absence of any sounds of life he did not know if it meant people. Someone, anyone, to help him explain away this mess, to tell him what was going on and why he was here and how it had all been some mistake and he could go home right now back to his bed and his home, ready to leave for yet another day of work at the Counter Terrorist Unit.

He paused before the door and listened; and while he thought he heard nothing at first, he soon became aware of the sound of steady breathing. Slow, as in sleep, barely discernible if not for the silence of the hallway.

Adam nudged the door further open and slipped in, closing it softly behind him.

This room was much larger than the others. There were no beds, no desk nor chair, but a kitchenette to his left and shelves of books and stuff to his right. Before him, facing the television set, was the back of a couch with legs hanging off one end.

This did not seem like a place for answers, Adam thought as he slowly moved around the couch, or a place for locating whoever was responsible for him being here. Such people waited smugly in high-backed chairs behind their desks, decked out in rich clothing and condescending smiles to bestow on the lowly folk who dared speak to them-

Adam paused by the side of the couch, a chill running down his spine. There was something uneasily familiar about the two people asleep on it.

Two people, oblivious to his entrance, oblivious to his approach; oblivious as he bent lower on shaky knees to get a closer look at their faces and confirm, with a wild, sick feeling, that both of them looked almost exactly like him.

Identical rooms for identical people.

Adam sank down onto the carpet, his breath caught in his throat, unable to take his eyes off the imperfect doppelgangers.

They weren't him, that much he was fairly certain of; one was slightly older, the other younger, just a few years out of his teens, both of them clad in the kind of clothes he'd never be caught dead in. But otherwise...

Adam shut his eyes and took several deep breaths. He had to get out of here. He opened his eyes and stood up.

His gaze was drawn back to the two on the couch, sleeping peacefully in each other's company – perhaps a little too close, but his mind refused to go there – and he tried to push aside the sudden mysterious yearning to stay there, with them, and belong-

No, he told himself. Get out of here. Get out.

He backed off towards the door, gaze still locked on the couch, and that was when he tripped over the remote control and yelled as he hit the ground.

The younger of the two others jolted awake and sat up. He found the source of the disturbance, and looked quizzically at Adam.

"...Hi," he said, voice wary.

Adam threw the offending remote control aside and looked up; and a jolt of weird shot through his mind as their eyes met.

He opened his mouth to say something. Nothing came out. He closed his mouth and went on staring.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" the kid said, suddenly defensive. "IS IT BECAUSE I'M BISEXUAL?"

Adam blinked, tension broken. "What?"

The other turned to shake his companion awake. "SAS!"

"Ungh."

"SASAN!"

"what."

He hit him.

"Ow!" Sasan got up. "Don't-"

"There's a new guy here and he's staring at us."

Adam got to his feet and stepped back. "Forget I'm here," he said quickly. "I'm going to go, okay? Just-"

He forced himself to look away and head towards the door with slow, heavy steps, aware that the others' eyes were on him-

"Where are you going?" Sasan asked, and Adam recoiled at the sound of his voice, different and wrong when outside his own head, and he could not bring himself to speak a reply and contribute to a one-voiced conversation.

Sasan got off the couch and came up to him and Adam knew he was there but dared not look and then he was in front of him in curious concern and Adam just wanted to look away, look away, trying to suppress the panic rising in him-

"There's no way out," Sasan said. "Other people have been through the place; there have been escape parties, attempts to break out through the walls, and if any of it had succeeded we would have heard of it by n-"

"Stay away from me!" Adam said in a forceful burst, channelling fear into angry frustration because that he could deal with, that he could handle.

"Hey, I'm just trying to help. There's no use in running around out there looking for escape because there are thousands of people in this place and if none of them have gotten anywhere... Are you even listening?"

The shock of contact ran through him as Sasan placed his hand over Adam's on the doorknob and tried to push it off.

Adam snapped his hand back, raising his head to look at Sasan with a fear he tried and failed desperately to disguise; angry that he was scared, because there was no immediate danger at hand, angry that Sasan had dared to touch him, still reeling from the feel of his own fingers against his own, and he knew Sasan saw him flinch as he looked at him.

"I... know this is weird," Sasan said. "You'll get used to it eventually, but it might take a while. What's your name?"

"..."

"I'm Sasan. That's Smudge. He's bisexual."

"Yeah, and you're gay," Smudge retorted.

"Smudge!"

"You told him I'm bisexual."

Sasan sighed. "Smudge, you tell everyone you meet."

"...Oh. Yeah."

Sasan turned back at Adam, trying to look as though that exchange never happened, and wondered if it was just his imagination or if Adam had taken several steps back.

"So that's us," Sasan said. "What about you?"

Adam struggled again to meet Sasan's gaze, angrily forcing himself to do so because to give in to fear would be cowardice; struggled to make sense of the sight of his own eyes looking back at him, eyes the same and yet somehow different, controlled by a foreign mind. Sasan was a stranger he knew nothing about. Like Smudge, he moved differently, he talked differently, no more similar to him than any hypothetical person grabbed off the street, and this knowledge fought against the instinctual feeling of kinship that arose as Adam looked at them-

"Adam," he finally said.

"There can't be no way out," he added.

"I would tell you to go and see for yourself, but the escape parties tend to have a lot of people who don't seem completely human and can do really freaky things and for some reason a few of them keep trying to kill us."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"It helps if you say 'I'm not Sylar' and run," Smudge advised.

Sasan shrugged. "That helps, but I still got hit with a spanner."

"Who's Sylar?" Adam asked.

Sasan bent down to pick up the remote control and return it to the table. "I don't know," he said with a tight smile. "But I don't think we ever want to find out."

"Breakfast?" Sasan suggested. "I'm famished."

Adam looked at the clock. He dug the slip of paper out from his pocket and looked at that. "It says breakfast is at 8," he said. "It's only 7:45."

"I know that," Sasan said testily. "I also know that if you want to eat anything without getting repeatedly assaulted by angry superheroes, you've got to get there early. Clock's ticking, let's g-"

"Or you could just stay away from their table," Smudge said.

"It's a bunch of guys in tight spandex. What do you expect me to do?"

"Spanner," Smudge reminded him.

Sasan winced and touched the side of his head. "Touché."

Adam stalked out of the room. Smudge and Sasan watched him go.

"It looks like he changed his mind," Sasan said. "Come on."

They ran after Adam and made it into the lift just as the doors were closing.

The button for the 64^th floor was lit.

"Breakfast is on the second floor," Sasan said. "The blocks connect on the fifth-"

"I'm not going there," Adam said.

"But we are," Smudge pointed out. "Why, you don't want to eat with us? Because we're not straight?"

Adam ignored him and watched the floor numbers ascend.

"What do you plan to do up there?" Sasan asked.

Adam didn't reply.

They continued upwards in silence.

"...Adam?"

"Don't talk to me."

Silence.

The lift arrived and its doors opened. Adam got out.

The arrival lobby. The receptionist looked up and frowned. "Get back to your floor," she said.

"Seventeenth, yeah, I heard." Adam went over to the small arrival rooms; inspected their doorframes, entered, knocked on the walls, checked the floors, gazed at the ceiling...

"What do you think you're going to find?" Sasan asked.

"Way out."

"There's no way out."

"Seventeenth floor," said the receptionist.

Adam left the room and gave the lobby a quick survey. There was a door next to the receptionist's counter with a label that said 'Computer Room'. He headed straight for it.

"Please don't go there," the receptionist said sadly.

Adam tried the handle. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and went in.

The receptionist sighed mechanically and pressed the red button. "Code 12," she said into the microphone. "704270 times 3 on J-64, please assist, set phasers-"

"Hi," Sasan said brightly, with what he hoped was a charming and innocent smile.

"Yes?"

"Please excuse our friend over there. He's not very concerned about his continued survival, but we'll deal with him, and you needn't worry-"

"-to painful stun," the receptionist finished, and gave Sasan a pointed look that made him quite upset.

"Sas, let's go," Smudge said. "He can stay here if he wants to."

"We stick together-"

Light suddenly filled the room and dissipated as quickly as it had come. Coloured ripples washed up through the air and vanished over one of the arrival rooms.

Smudge went over and slid the door open.

A small lump of cheese lay on the floor. He picked it up. He sniffed it. Then he yelled and ducked as a burst of light sent another lump of cheese out of thin air and onto the floor.

"Smudge!"

Smudge stumbled out the cubicle. Sasan caught him. "What happened?"

Smudge held out the cheese in a dazed sort of way. "It was just lying on the floor."

The receptionist pressed the button again. "Addendum: Code 12c, subsection mozzarella and subsection triple-cream brie."

Sasan let go of Smudge and ran into the Computer Room.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

Adam looked up from the awesome computer he had discovered. "What?"

"Why is there cheese materialising outside?"

"I don't know. I just clicked on this 'Execute' button. It's some beta testing program... I thought I could run it and figure out how it worked and-"

Smudge came in munching on cheese. "Mozzarella," he said.

"Ew!" Sasan grabbed it from him. "This was on the floor!"

"So?"

Sasan looked at the cheese and decided that all arguments were henceforth invalid. He shrugged. "Five second rule," he decided, and took a bite.

"Okay, I found this," Adam said, as Smudge tried in vain to grab his cheese back. "It's a database; I think it has everyone in here... serial number, name, status-"

"Give the cheese back!"

"There's more outside."

"Yeah, but I got this one first!"

"That's only because you've got the disgusting habit of picking up food from the gr-"

Sasan realised that Adam was glaring at them and stopped.

Smudge took advantage of Sasan's temporary disorientation to grab the mozzarella back and stuff the little that was left into his mouth.

Adam turned back to the screen, shaking his head. He looked at his wrist tag, brought up the find function on the screen, and typed in his serial number.

The list jumped to its position.

704270/003/KAU | Kaufman, Adam | Arrived

The list continued on above and below the entry, Sasan and Smudge labelled as the only other 'Arrived' under the 704270 series; the others were all listed as 'Pending', except-

"Who's Gabriel Gray?" Sasan asked.

"Why is he banned?" Adam asked.

"Triple-cream brie," Smudge said, back from the lobby and munching on cheese.

Adam selected the entry 704270/006/GRA and clicked on the 'Change Status' button.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Sasan asked.

"If this place doesn't want him here, why should we make them happy?" Adam asked.

"This place also likes to feed us," Sasan said. "Why should we make them happy by eating?"

Adam selected the 'Pending' option and clicked 'Confirm'.

"Why don't you ban everyone and prevent more people from getting here in the first place?"

Adam realised that this was a good idea.

But then the guards arrived to pull them out, and they had their phasers set to painful stun.

Smudge grabbed for the computer mouse as Adam was hit and fell out of the chair. He found the beta testing program open in another window, and clicked 'Execute' as many times as he could manage. And then a phaser got him, and he blacked out.

The door slammed shut on the seventeenth floor. Adam and Sasan and Smudge lay in the hallway in varying degrees of pain and consciousness.

The door opened. The guards threw Smudge's cheese in.

Then the door slammed shut again.

Smudge got painfully off the floor. He picked up one of the lumps of cheese and regarded it. "We don't need to go for breakfast now," he stated to the others. "We have cheese."

Sasan considered this.

"We can't live off that," Adam said, sitting up.

Smudge glared at him for doubting his suggestion. "How would you know if you didn't TRY?" he demanded.

Adam gave up. "Okay, fine. Have cheese if you want. Since I can't get out of this place, I'm going to have proper food."

He stood up and headed out the door.

Smudge picked up a chunk of Gouda and munched on it.

"He's going to get himself killed," Sasan observed as the door swung shut behind Adam.

TEN MINUTES LATER

Adam gagged, trying to pry away the invisible grip on his throat, barely hearing the conversation:

"It's not him," the emo-looking guy Force-gripping him against the pillar said, not quite looking him in the face.

"Does it matter?" asked emoguy's compatriot, a man in horn-rimmed glasses gazing coolly at them. "Sacrifices have to be made, Peter. For the good of us all."

Adam kicked in the air, struggling. "You're crazy," he choked out.

Horn-Rimmed Glasses smiled coldly at him. "Kill him, Peter."

Some distance away, ineptly hiding behind another pillar, Sasan and Smudge looked on in horror.

"We should do something," Sasan said, rooted to the spot in fear borne out of a desire to continue living.

Peter suddenly released his telekinetic grip. Adam collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath.

"Peter?" HRG asked dangerously.

"I can't. It's not fair. He's unarmed."

"So were most of Sylar's victims."

"I'm not Sylar," Adam said weakly.

"Run!" Sasan whispered desperately from his vantage point. "Run, Adam, run!"

"We could just... mark him," Peter said.

"How?" HRG queried. "Shave off his eyebrows?"

Sasan and Smudge gaped in horror.

Adam clutched at a table leg for support and wondered if he dared get off the ground.

"We don't know how Sylar might use him," HRG said.

"What could he do?" Peter demanded. "Create an army? He'd probably just kill them-"

"Decoys, perhaps. We don't know what twisted ideas he might come up with."

Adam wiped blood from his mouth and decided that all he wanted right now was to be off at the office in front of his computer doing work for other people who did not sufficiently appreciate his efforts.

HRG went up to Adam and crouched down before him. He smiled sinisterly. "Hello," he said.

Adam stared. He started slowly propping himself up, hoping to eventually get back on his feet and run.

Then he screamed as HRG threw a punch at his head and grabbed him.

"Noah!" Peter shouted.

"Do you know how long I've wanted to bash that face in?" HRG said through gritted teeth.

Adam decided that he hated life.

"How different could you be from him?" HRG continued, his breath hot on Adam's face. "You share the same DNA-"

"YAAAAAGGHHH!"

HRG released his grip and fell over as Smudge jumped on him.

"What-"

Smudge yanked HRG's horn-rimmed glasses violently off his face. "LEAVE US ALONE!" he yelled, full of bisexual fury.

Sasan grabbed Adam's hand and pulled him off the ground.

"PETER!" HRG yelled, trying to get the bisexual guy off him.

Peter didn't do anything.

"Smudge!" Sasan shouted. "Let's go!"

Smudge regretfully let go of HRG and landed on the ground in a half-fall. He scrambled back to his feet. HRG lunged at him in a tackle, knocking Smudge over, but then a sudden crackle of blue lightning blast the older man off.

Smudge looked up in surprise.

"Go," Peter said tersely, withdrawing his hand. "GO!"

Smudge ran.

"Peter!" HRG said in incredulous anger. "I thought we were on the same side!"

"I was. Until you started going after innocent people."

"...Peter. I know you hate him as much as I do-"

"Yeah," Peter said. "Him. Sylar. And I want him dead more than anyone else, but they-" he pointed, "-are not him."

"..." said HRG.

Peter stalked off.

"Hey-" Sasan called out as he passed by.

Peter paused.

"Thanks," Sasan said.

Peter nodded.

Sasan held out his hand in offered handshake.

"...I'm sorry," Peter said, turning aside. "I... I can't look at you. I'm sorry."

And Sasan lowered his hand as Peter walked off, and the three of them got free sandwiches from the vending machine, and Smudge dragged Sasan away from the superheroes table and they returned in silence to the seventeenth floor of Block J to eat.

There was someone in the corridor. He turned as they entered, gave a start, and then settled into an analytical gaze.

"Is that food?" he asked.

"Yeah," Adam said. "Take some. Don't go back there."

"Where?"

"The cafeteria or anywhere that's not here," Sasan said. "Unless you want to get beaten up by people who think you're some guy named Sylar."

"...Sylar."

"He kills people," Smudge explained, dropping to sit down on the floor and tearing open the packaging on a sandwich.

Sasan gave the new guy a sandwich. "What's your name?" he asked.

New guy took the sandwich from him and turned it over in his hand. Feeling it, inspecting it...

"Gabriel," he said, looking up at them. He gave a small grin. "Gabriel Gray."

"You were banned," Adam said. "Do you know why?"

"What do you mean?"

"I found a computer upstairs. I changed your status. Someone didn't want you here."

Smudge picked up some cheese from the floor and added it to his sandwich. It was tasty.

"That's gross," Sasan said.

Smudge held out his sandwich to him. Sasan hesitated, then gave in and took a bite. It was tasty.

"So I'm only here because of you?" Gabriel asked.

"I thought you could get us out of here," Adam said. "Can you do anything? Like, special abilities, or-"

"I fix watches," Gabriel said, but there was a strange gleam in his eye that crept Adam out.

"Cool," said Smudge. He dug in his pocket with a free hand and pulled out two watches.

"..." went everyone.

"This one broke when it fell off my guinea pig," Smudge explained, holding it up. "And this one needs battery, but I can't get the back open."

"How long have you been carrying those around?" Sasan asked.

"I don't know. I just remembered they were there. I think that's why there's a soap bubble inside this one. It must've gone through the wash."

Adam noticed Gabriel staring at the watches and twitching slightly. It unnerved him in a way he couldn't quite define.

"Can you fix them?" Smudge asked.

Gabriel reached towards the watches, his gesture almost hungry; then, as with a great effort, he withdrew his hand. "I don't have my tools with me," he said.

"Oh." Smudge put the watches back and continued with his sandwich.

They lapsed into silence, sitting on the floor eating sandwiches in the corridor.

Adam tried to concentrate on his sandwich; to do otherwise made him feel decidedly awkward. Sasan and Smudge didn't seem awkward. They were practically cuddling. And there was still something off about Gabriel, but Adam didn't know what. So he ate his sandwich.

He looked at Gabriel. Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Adam went back to his sandwich.

Smudge finished and chucked the wrapper aside. He slid against the wall to lean on Sasan's shoulder. "(:," he vibed.

"...." said Adam and Gabriel.

Sasan looked at Smudge and went on eating.

Adam got off the floor. He picked up Smudge's discarded sandwich wrapper to join his own and headed off to the common room. He threw the trash into the bin, washed his hands at the sink, washed off the remaining blood from his face, turned off the tap, turned around, and jumped as he saw Gabriel standing there.

He was staring at him.

That analytical look was back; Adam could almost see the metaphorical cogs turning in his brain, studying him, somehow taking apart and carefully examining every facet of his self, and through all that a barely-hidden hunger to know-

Feeling suddenly exposed, Adam tried to edge away.

"I want to look at you," Gabriel said. It was almost a command, tempered with a casual arrogance and touch of malice that sent chills down Adam's back.

"I don't think so," he said, tensely, and walked away from the sink.

There was a laptop computer in the common room, hidden away by the shelves. He had missed it the first time. Adam went over, sat down, and turned it on.

He felt Gabriel's searching eyes on him. He wished he would go away.

He didn't.

Adam spun round in the chair. "Are you just going to stand there?" he asked.

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"Yes."

Gabriel grinned.

Adam tried to meet his gaze and stare him down, but it made his head spin. He got off the chair and took firm steps towards the door.

Through it, he saw that Smudge's head had since descended onto Sasan's lap. Sasan was gently stroking his hair. Murmurs of quiet conversation floated by. He heard a giggle.

Adam thought of closing the door, but that would mean being alone with the creepy guy.

He went back to the computer, annoyed. His weirdness quota for the day had surpassed its limit and it was only after breakfast. It made him feel sick. It helped to just decide that everyone sucked and he was the only sane person around, because that looked better than curling up somewhere to cry.

Gabriel was still staring at him, a smirk playing on his face.

Adam subconsciously clenched a fist.

The computer booted up: Windows Vista. It was unfamiliar to him. Adam checked the date on the bottom of the screen. The year was 2009. The future.

Adam was hit by a belated bout of homesickness.

He opened up Internet Explorer, but there was no connection. He clicked around the control panel, feeling lost, but discovered a thing that said 'Connect to a network' and clicked on that. There was a sole entry on the next screen; someone had wireless Internet access on the fourth floor of Block F. He tried to tap in, but the signal was too weak.

He had to get nearer.

Adam shut the laptop and carried it up, then remembered the dangers of the outside. He hesitated, put the laptop back down, and looked around at the shelves. They had boxes of random things. Adam rummaged in them.

"Looking for something?" Gabriel asked.

Adam glared at him, then continued. He found a small pad of paper, a pen, and a roll of tape.

"I AM NOT SYLER," he wrote, then tore off the top sheet and taped it onto the front of his shirt.

"Convincing," Gabriel commented.

Adam grabbed the laptop and headed out the door.

"Get a room," he muttered at Sasan and Smudge.

Gabriel watched him go.

Wait, he told himself. Lay low. Wait. The time will come. He could sense others in the building. Specials. Their powers danced tantalisingly just out of reach. There were so many of them. But not here, not on this floor.

Adam, Sasan, Smudge: they were only human. Weak, pathetic, common people, and it disgusted him to be associated with them. He wanted them to know that. He wanted them to bend beneath his will. To scream, to struggle, and know where they stood in relation to him. To know that, no matter what it looked like, he was not one of them, and never would be.

Because he was special.

Gabriel lightly levitated the remote control off the table and revelled at the power within him.

"I am Sylar," he whispered to the empty room.

Lest he forget. Lest anyone ever forget.

But for now... he would wait.

The time would come.

It is hard to feel imprisoned in a playground.

In a cell, it is easier. Four walls around a tiny space, a slit in the door to let in light, a crude bed and a cruder toilet and rough floor caked with dirt. Streaks on the ceiling, scratches on the walls; sitting and waiting in grey eternities for the next meal to arrive.

Then it is easy to try and escape: to kick at the walls till it hurt to continue, to pound on the door and scream for freedom. And then to give up and sink down onto the bed, back into that stagnant unchanging world of hopelessness and despair.

In a cell, it was easy.

Clutching the laptop by his side, Adam entered the central block and paused to watch the streams of people going by.

Ten residential blocks of over sixty storeys each. A central block for food and recreation, stocked with stuff of a myriad consumerist dreams. Game arcades, bars, cinemas, bookstores, gyms, clothing outlets, sports halls, gourmet food at the gigantic cafeteria... and all of it absolutely free.

The walls were many, the doors were none. No responsibilities, no work, no strings attached. Not enough people were trying to escape.

People...

They mingled in groups both heterogeneous and homogeneous: people finding known friends, or new friendships forged between floormates, though the latter groups were smaller and kept mostly to themselves. There was a self-consciousness involved in hanging out together. Others were individuals, wandering on their own, lost in the tempting fantasy of this brave new world.

Adam could almost imagine this to be a regular shopping mall. A parody of normal society, trapped in this milieu of artificial consumerism. Escalators carried people up and down from floors. Robotic staff manned the stores, cleaned the toilets, mopped the floors, and smiled – when it was appropriate to do so – in automated appropriations of friendliness.

The only doors at the far ends of the central block led back to the residential blocks. There was no outside.

Adam gazed at the ceiling. It ran in unbroken concrete from wall to wall. How do we get out? He wondered. Where do we start? Barging into the leftmost bookstore and hacking at the walls? Or mechanically riding round in never-ending cycles on the escalators, hoping that they would end somewhere; or taking the lifts and pressing a button and wishing that when the doors next opened there would be a glimpse of larger doors headed with an 'Exit' sign, or automated sliding glass through which were cars and roads and buildings and pedestrians; although, if that happened, there would be no knowing if all that, too, were part of the prison.

Single efforts could do little good, and organisation on any large scale was close to impossible with most of the prisoners busy being traumatised by their lodging arrangements.

Block F, Adam reminded himself. He scanned the labelled far-off doorways and found the one that led to F, like the others an ominous rectangle of black cut into the concrete wall, a blip of gloom in the cheery atmosphere of the central block. Stay here, it suggested. Why go back to your weird floormates and be depressed again? Stay here, have fun, have some free stuff, play some games, be distracted, don't try to escape. You don't want to escape. You are not real, you don't exist, you are but fantasies: live as such.

Adam gazed back at the corridor that led to Block J.

He suddenly felt lonely.

The mass of people continued passing him by in meaningless chatter and sad, resigned laughter, forced jauntiness in their steps.

There was no place here for him to sit down and try to access the Internet. The dark doorway to Block F did not look any more appealing, and it was with some hesitation that he took the stairs down to the enclosed cafeteria on the second floor. Breakfast was almost over. He hoped it would be safe. Besides, he had his not-nametag. Adam checked to see if it was still there. It was. It probably made him look like an idiot, but if it meant not getting beaten up, he could deal with that.

The cafeteria of Kenselton Hotel existed in its own bubble of hyperspace. It technically did not exist within the hotel, for it was far too big for that, but it was accessible through doorways on its second floor, and for most people that was all they needed to know. Some did occasionally wonder at how the cafeteria appeared far wider, longer and higher than the second floor would allow; but usually by then they would have started eating and ceased to wonder about such trivial matters.

But space worked funny in the cafeteria. Things always seemed closer than they should be, perhaps a result of the building's actual dimensions trying to assert themselves. It made finding tables easier, and going to get food; an amazing number of people discovered friends and family while there, and the superheroes table was always near whenever Sasan and Smudge deigned to enter the place.

Adam chose an empty table and sat down. He opened the laptop, shook it out of sleep mode, noted the slightly stronger wireless signal here and tried once again to connect-

"Hi! Is anyone else sitting here?" asked a perky voice.

Adam glanced up. Some teenage girl.

"No," he said, returning his gaze to the screen. "But I'd like some privacy."

She didn't move, and Adam had the feeling that she was staring at him. He wondered what was up with everyone today, and why the connection couldn't hurry up and get him the Internet, and he was about to tell the girl to go, when:

"It's an 'A', not 'E'," she said.

Adam looked up. "What?"

"Your nametag," she said. "Sylar. It's spelled with an 'A'."

Adam stared at her.

She smiled. "But it's probably more convincing this way. I mean, Sylar would probably spell it right."

Adam slowly closed the laptop.

"I'm Claire," the girl said. "What about you?"

"...Adam."

"Adam." She nodded, and smiled again. "Watch out for Sylar. He's dangerous."

"Yeah, I got that much from all the people trying to kill me."

"What people?" Claire asked.

"Just some guys. I think one of them was called Peter."

"Peter Petrelli?"

"I don't know. Do you know him?"

"He's my uncle."

"Oh. I think the other one was called Noah or something. I couldn't really catch it because he was trying to kill me, but-"

"What did he look like?" Claire asked.

Adam tried to remember. "Horn-rimmed glasses, trying to kill me-"

"Great!" Claire rolled her eyes. "My dad's here."

"He's your dad?"

"Yeeeah. I'm going to find him and let him know he can't go around trying to kill people. D'you want to come with me?"

"No thanks."

"All right. Just be careful." Claire got up and left.

Adam opened up the laptop again. The Internet connection was working. He got online onto Google, and hesitated.

He glanced at his wrist tag. It couldn’t hurt to try…

704270 "adam kaufman"

He typed it in and hit Enter. There were only two results, and neither looked to be in English.

"…Sylar," he read.

Adam went back to the search bar and typed in "zachary quinto".

Results scrolled down the page, headed with photograph thumbnails from Google Images.

Jolts of recognition shot through his brain.

Jackpot.

"I don't want to die," Smudge said.

"Well, it's an inevitable part of life."

"But not here." Smudge sat back up and looked pleadingly at Sasan. "Not now!"

"We can't do anything about it."

"So you're going to give in just like that?"

"I don't know," Sasan said.

Smudge dropped his head back against the wall.

"Look, we don't know what might happen," Sasan said. "We might get out of this alive and go home and forget that it ever happened-"

"There are so many people here," Smudge said softly. "They're not going to send us home. Not after bringing us here. I don't think they care."

Sasan shrugged. "There's no harm in hoping."

"I want to go home," Smudge said, his voice choking up.

Sasan put an arm around him and pulled him close.

"Smudge… we're going to live as long as we can, okay? You read the notice. We've got a few days until this place goes live, and maybe then we can find a way out."

Smudge buried his face in Sasan's shirt.

"And if it weren't for this we'd never have met each other. That's a good thing, right?"

Smudge sniffed.

"Come on; we'd better go and check if Adam's still alive. He wandered off just now-"

The door opened. Sasan looked up. Some new guy was standing there and gazing at them in hesitant confusion.

"Hi," Sasan volunteered. "And you are?"

"…Leo."

"Hi. Smudge and I were talking about life and death, Gabriel's in that room, and Adam's probably getting himself killed."

Leo nodded slowly, not completely sure what was going on.

Sasan turned his attention back to Smudge and gently pulled him off. "You're getting snot on my shirt," he said.

"What is this place?" Leo asked.

"Exactly what it said it was."

"Is that cheese on the floor?"

"Based on its appearance, taste and general consistency I would have to say yes."

"Why is there cheese on the floor?"

Sasan smiled brightly. "Why not?"

Gabriel emerged from the common room, having had his fill of levitating stuff around for the lulz and fixing the clock because it was running five seconds slow.

Leo backed off instinctively. There was something off about Gabriel.

Gabriel smiled creepily at them as he headed out into the stairwell.

"So that's Adam and Gabriel getting themselves killed," Sasan said.

"Why, what's out there?"

"People who SUCK!" Smudge said in a sudden outburst, glaring at the floor.

There was cheese on that spot: a nice camembert, and it didn't know why Smudge was glaring at it. Is it because I'm asexual? the camembert wondered, and was depressed.

Leo wondered why they were sitting on the floor, and if that was normal behaviour in Kenselton Hotel. He sat down anyway.

Smudge decided that he'd liked it better when it was just him and Sasan alone.

"Claire, where are we g-"

Adam looked up as Claire dragged Noah up before his table, her hand refusing to let him go. Noah saw him, and went silent. The hate reappeared in his eyes.

"Say you're sorry," Claire demanded at her father.

Adam glanced at her. "Look, it's okay-"

"No," she said. "He can't try to kill you and get away with it." Claire glared at Noah.

"Stay out of this, Claire," he said. "You don't understand what you're dealing with."

"What is there to understand?" Claire shouted. "You're attacking anyone who looks like Sylar, even if they're perfectly nice people who just want to be left alone. That seems pretty simple to me!"

Adam wished they would go. "It's all right, okay? Just drop it."

"Not until he apologises and promises to stop this ridiculous behaviour."

"Claire!"

"Say sorry, Dad."

Adam felt the chill of his eyes as Noah looked back at him, the hate and loathing simmering just beneath the surface of his gaze.

Adam's hands tensed on the keyboard.

"What would you do if you were in my place?" Noah asked.

"..."

"You don't know the things Sylar has done," Noah continued. "You don't know what else he's capable of. I would do anything to stop him. Anything."

Adam didn't like being looked at as though he were the scum of the scum of the earth.

"He might not even be here yet," he said.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"I know the others," Adam said defensively. "None of them are serial killers. They're a bit odd, but they're harmless. They don't deserve this."

"And what if you're wrong?" Noah asked.

Adam tried to glare back. "I'm not," he said, with more conviction than he felt.

"What if?" Noah said. "What if one of your odd but harmless friends up there turns out to be Sylar? Whose side will you be on, then?"

"It's not going to happen."

Noah gestured at Adam's nametag. "That's an 'A', not an 'E'-"

Adam tore the thing off his shirt and threw it onto the table. He stood up, grabbed the laptop, and stalked off.

Noah watched him go.

"What is wrong with you?" Claire demanded.

"I don't want you talking to him," Noah said.

"Dad-"

"Any of them. You hear m- Claire!"

She had run off, oblivious to his shouts.

"Adam!"

He didn't break his pace or look at her. "You heard your dad. Stay away from me. I'm dangerous and might kill you."

Claire shook her head. "I don't believe that."

"It's none of your business, okay?"

Adam found another empty table, sat down, opened the laptop and proceeded to ignore her until she finally went away.

The feeling got stronger the closer he got to the central block, until at last Sylar stood amidst the crowd and reached out with his senses to touch the whispered streams of power emanating from people all over the place. And the hunger stirred in him once again. There were so many of them. It would be a feast.

A surge drew his attention; he joined the moving crowd in search of its source, and saw him as he got off an escalator and headed towards the doorway to Block G. Peter.

Peter hadn't seen him. He went on into Block G.

Sylar followed quietly after.

"Excuse me."

Adam jumped slightly in his seat and looked up to see his table surrounded by a group of people.

"I'm not Sy-"

"Could we have our table back, please?" the speaker continued in a British accent.

"...I'm sitting here," Adam stated.

"Yes, we can see that. But it's one of ours. We sit here all the time. See that tea stain over there?"

Adam saw the tea stain over there.

"Please get up."

"Who are you people?"

"We're the British Holdout Group," spoke another member. "Just a bunch of poor sods who discovered that the fellows who played us weren't British after all. Imagine that!"

The rest of the BHG nodded sagely in agreement.

Adam thought he should probably go before things got stranger. "All right," he said, shutting the laptop and carrying it up. He supposed there was little point in further research. It wasn't as though it could help them or anything.

Smudge and Sasan and some guy who said his name was Leo were sitting on the floor. Adam sidestepped the cheese.

"Why are you all on the floor?" he asked.

"I don't know," Leo said. "I came in and they were sitting on the floor, so-"

"I like the floor," Smudge said with determination.

Adam decided it couldn't hurt to join them. He sat down and opened up the laptop. The Internet connection had died, but he still had several windows open.

"Okay," he said. "I found out some things. This is the guy responsible for us."

He turned the laptop screen towards them.

Sasan paled and looked deeply shaken. "What is he wearing?" he cried.

The kid said his name was Jess, in a stammering, panicked voice as he looked down from the stairwell wall onto the last face he would ever see.

"What... what are you doing?" he asked. "Who are you?"

"My name is Sylar," he replied, and sliced Jess' neck wide open.

He looked so much like Peter, Sylar thought, as he observed the teen gagging and clutching at his neck, his hands then falling limply to his side in the stillness of death. Perhaps this would be what it would be like, killing Peter. It was oddly unsatisfactory. He hoped the actual thing would be better. More of a challenge. More of a triumph.

He let Jess' body fall onto the ground. He slit open an arm and watched the blood flow, then dipped his hand into the blood and smeared it on the wall above the teen's dead body.

'I AM SYLAR,' he wrote.

And then he stole away from Block G to wait for Peter to find his note.

He found a bathroom in the common block and washed the blood off his hands. He smiled at the shocked guy staring at him by the sinks.

"It's blood," he explained patiently. "I just killed someone."

The other guy nodded slowly, and waited for a punchline that never came.

Sylar left. He stopped by the bar. It was a fun place, but he could not afford to stay.

"...Sas? Are you okay?"

"I'm actually in the midst of a fashion identity crisis. Please don't speak to me."

Leo decided to give this dream another five minutes to end before he started suspecting that maybe it was really happening after all.

Adam emerged from the common room where he'd gone to return the laptop, carrying a box that he'd found and emptied. He picked pieces of cheese off the floor and threw them into the box.

"What are you doing?" Smudge asked.

"We can't have all this cheese just lying around."

"Why not?" Smudge challenged.

Adam ignored him and continued. Leo reached out for a chunk of Emmental and held it out for Adam to take.

"Thanks," Adam said and chucked it in with the rest. "Watch it," he said to Gabriel as he came back in, bending down to snatch a cheddar out of his path.

Gabriel started to say something, then stopped, and got down to help with clearing the cheese. "Here," he said with an unexpectedly friendly smile as he put one of the triple cream bries into the box.

"They've got a bar in the central block," he continued. "Nice place. You get free drinks. I just spent the whole morning watching people get drunk and throwing chairs at each other." He dug into his pocket and pulled out a coupon. "Buy 2 Get 2 Free," he pointed out.

Adam glanced at it.

"What's up with him?" Gabriel asked, motioning to where Sasan sat against the wall looking distraught and broken inside.

"He's having a fashion identity crisis," Smudge explained.

And then the door flew open and Peter Petrelli stood there, anger blazing in his eyes beneath his emo hair.

"WHERE IS HE?" he demanded.

Adam slowly straightened up from where he'd been picking up another cheddar.

"I told you never to come here," Smudge said, suddenly on his feet.

"I know he's here," Peter said through gritted teeth, his eyes darting between each one of them in frustrated attempts at recognition. "He's one of you."

"Then you're mistaken," Adam said.

"What are you talking about?" Leo asked Peter.

Peter strode up to him and grabbed the front of his shirt.

"Hey-"

"I," said Peter, "am talking about the guy who just killed someone and wrote 'I Am Sylar' on the wall IN HIS BLOOD!"

"What makes you think it has to be one of us?" Leo asked, not liking being shouted at and wishing Peter would let go of his shirt.

"Yeah," Smudge said. "Maybe you're just looking for an excuse to kill us!"

Peter let go of Leo's shirt and looked at Smudge. "If I'd wanted to kill you, I would have done so long ag-"

"Maybe it was your friend," Adam said. "Noah. Ever thought about that? I just met him. Maybe he's trying to frame us. It seems like something he would-"

"SYLAR KILLED SOMEONE!" Peter yelled.

Adam took a step back.

Sasan wished that Peter would stop shouting because it was interfering with his angst.

"It's him," Peter said. "I know it's him, all right? I know. And if I have to kill the lot of you to make sure that he's dead-"

"What happened to us being innocent people?" Sasan asked, deciding that this warranted more attention than contemplating the horrors of silver belts and fughats.

"Even if he's here, he might not be on this floor," Gabriel said. "He could have just gone straight on to kill and tell."

Peter's eyes swivelled towards him. Gabriel calmly met his gaze. Peter blinked. Sylar, something told him, with some deep, dreaded conviction, but he couldn't know. Not for sure. He couldn't tell...

He looked at the others. He swallowed. Then he thought about Jess' dead body, the casual message in blood almost mocking him from the wall, meant for him to see and understand and fear, and the anger rose up in him again.

"No," Peter said, raising clenched fists glowing white hot with power. "Sacrifices. Have to be made."

Peter opened his palm and thrust it out.

The blast hit Gabriel and sent him flying against the wall, screaming in pain as he hit and fell-

"GET OUT!" Adam yelled, lunging at Peter, Leo barely dodging an arc of blue lightning.

"I'm sorry," Peter gasped and tried to push Adam away, his concentration broken for the moment. Then Smudge jumped on him, hitting at him and shouting incoherently-

"We didn't do anything!" Adam shouted, as the off-balance Peter crashed against the wall. "We didn't kill-"

Peter telekinetically wrenched Smudge off his back and threw him down. He raised his arm at him, wanting to attack and yet not, the indecision ravaging his mind-

"What makes you any better than him if he killed one innocent and you kill four or five?" Sasan asked Peter, glancing desperately at Smudge. "Please! Just let us be-"

"If you kill me, I'll die," Smudge stated with impeccable logic tinged with fear. "And then I'll be dead."

"Get off our floor," Adam said, glaring at Peter.

Peter slowly withdrew his hand, still shaking with angry frustration.

"I'm sorry about the murder," Leo said. "But I don't think any of us did it."

"You don't... know."

Leo shrugged. "Neither do you."

Peter gave them a final look, then turned and left the floor. The door swung shut.

Gabriel got off the floor and winced. "That hurt," he said.

"This isn't a dream, is it?" Leo asked.

"No," Adam said.

There were scorch marks on the wall where Peter's lightning had struck.

"If any of you are Sylar, this would be a good time to own up," Sasan suggested.

Adam sat down against a wall and buried his face in his hands.

The door opened again.

"Please don't be Peter," Adam muttered. He looked up, wearily, and then he stared.

The newcomer gazed curiously at them.

"Fascinating," he said.

sideways from eternity

Quinto Formaggi

Written by Anakin McFly

Prologue: Day 3

Quinto Formaggi

Chapter 6 »