Quinto Formaggi
Written by Anakin McFly
Sasan finished his Microsoft Paint masterpiece and digitally signed his name with what attempted to be a flourish but never quite got there. He took the flash drive out from his pocket and saved the file onto it: fignewtons.png.
"Does it mean anything?" asked Smudge, who had been watching the artistic process in rapt admiration.
"No, it's just a box of fig newtons," Sasan said. "Of course, I could always pretend that it's a visual commentary on the commodification of food products and sell it to an art museum."
Adam wished they would shut up because he was trying to watch TV. He threw an annoyed look their way. "Don't close anything on there," he added in reference to the several open windows and tabs on the laptop, shoved unceremoniously to the background by the colourful digital painting.
Sasan pulled out the flash drive and put it back into his pocket. "I might go out and add on to them," he said, unplugging the laptop from where it had been charging. "There's nothing much going on here."
He paused, considering the risks of venturing out far enough for Internet access.
"I thought you were the one who said it's still too dangerous," Adam said.
Sasan shrugged. He looked at Smudge.
"I'll go if you go," Smudge said. "It'll be like our first day again before they got here."
"That's the day I got hit with a spanner," Sasan recalled.
Adam wished they would take it outside because he was trying to hear what Mohinder Suresh was saying.
"If anyone tries that again I'll hit them back," Smudge declared. He grabbed the remote control off the couch. "With this."
"Give that back," Adam said, eyes still glued on the television.
"You can't begrudge us our one weapon," Sasan countered.
Smudge pressed the Lens Flare button. Lens flare flared across the screen.
"Please don't do that again," Adam said.
Spock felt homesick.
Smudge grabbed Sasan's sleeve and tugged him towards the door, remote control in his other hand. "Come on, Sas, let's go."
Sasan picked up the laptop and agreed to be pulled out the door.
It closed as they left. Adam temporarily looked away from the television. "Did they take the remote?"
"I believe they did," Spock replied.
#
Smudge released his grip on Sasan when they were out in the corridor. "We could go back to that place with the electronic elep-"
The door opened. They stopped short before it. Noah Bennet looked sinisterly at them through his horn-rimmed glasses.
"Where are you going?" he asked. He smiled.
"What are you doing here?" Sasan asked warily.
"My friend Peter had some interesting news," Noah said. "Apparently Sylar is dead. Or is he?"
Smudge clenched his fingers tighter around the remote control.
"He's in that room," Sasan said quickly, pointing. "Peter killed him, you can look-"
Noah's expression didn't change. "But how would I know it's really him? And where are you two off to in such a hurry? To kill more people?"
"We were just planning on some research-"
"What research?" Noah asked, gazing serenely at Sasan, malice lurking behind his eyes.
Sasan swallowed, cowed by the accusing look. "On... on this place... how to get out..."
"Really."
"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Smudge yelled, raising the remote control. "I have a remote control AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!"
"A remote control," Noah repeated. "I'm scared." He grinned.
Smudge glared at him.
"This all seems very suspicious to me," Noah continued. "How would you lot succeed so quickly in killing someone whom others have spent months trying to take down?"
"We got lucky?" Sasan ventured timidly.
"Why are you here?" Spock asked from behind them, drawn out of the room by the noise.
They turned.
"..." said Noah, staring at the ears.
Smudge made use of the distraction and yanked Sasan by the hand past Noah and out the door-
"-Hey!"
-and into the thankfully waiting lift, where he slammed the button for the fifth floor and watched in satisfaction as the doors shut before Noah could stick his hand in.
"That was close," Sasan said.
"Yeah," Smudge agreed. "Let them deal with him."
They wandered aimlessly around the central block for a while; remembered their previous encounter with Wolverine and steered clear of him; spent several moments outside the hospital watching the injured people brought in – some with missing body parts, others covered in blood, some teenager with a newly broken nose – and ran off when a paramedic yelled, "Hey, aren't you-"
On an empty bench outside the games arcade, Sasan sat down with the laptop to check for an Internet connection. There was one. Smudge sat down next to him.
"Here we go," Sasan said, opening up Google and doing a search for 'kenselton hotel'.
He opened up one of the tabs, scanned through, and read:
"The Kenselton Project has as its goal the provision of beings not native to this universe, specifically those of a fictional nature. Touted as the next big step in entertainment, the project will allow members of the paying public to interact with these characters in any manner they choose, including but not limited to murder. The project is expected to go live some time later this month. The public is assured that all these characters retain the fictional nature of their origins and that they should feel no more guilt over their deaths and/or exploitation as they would that in a book or movie. They did not exist in incarnated form prior to their creation during the course of the project."
Sasan stopped reading. He looked at Smudge. Smudge looked at him.
"...While the location of the project facility remains unknown, rumours have leaked of a self-contained residential complex dubbed Kenselton Hotel located in a mini-universe of its own."
"So we can't just break out and run?" Smudge asked.
"It looks like normal escape methods won't work," Sasan said. "But we knew that already."
"We'll learn how to teleport," Smudge said decisively.
"How?"
"I don't know, but we'll learn!"
Sasan looked back at the screen. "I don't like how they're suggesting we had no lives before this. I guess that might be true for Adam, but I don't think I imagined the last few decades."
Sasan shut the laptop in a huff and got up. "I'm going to speak to the receptionist."
#
"What do you expect us to do?" Adam asked, glaring at Noah. Spock and Leo stood by his side. "Kill ourselves?"
"If you're willing to do so, I'd be extremely grateful," Noah agreed.
"I don't see what's the problem here," Leo said. "Sylar's in that room. If you don't believe that's him you could pull out the knife and see for yourself."
"I'm not that stupid," Noah said with a patronising smile. "If that's Sylar, I pull out the knife and I'm dead. But even if that's him, lying there, it doesn't mean the rest of you are innocent either. How do I know you're all not just like him?"
"How do you know everyone else isn't?" Adam asked, mad that he was missing bits of Heroes because he didn't have the remote control to pause it.
"If you're going to suspect all of us of being serial killers you might as well do the same for everyone else in this place," Leo said.
"His logic is sound," Spock agreed. "We are inherently no different from the rest of the people in this building. Sylar's individual failings say nothing about our own."
"Well, you see," said Noah, taking off his horn-rimmed glasses and polishing them, "back when Sylar was here, you were just as insistent on your innocence." He put his glasses back on and smiled. "Look what happened there."
"We made a mistake," Adam said. "It happens."
Noah shrugged.
"If you truly thought we were dangerous, you wouldn't have come alone," Spock said.
"Yeah," Leo agreed.
"What did you plan to do?" Adam asked. "Take out your gun and shoot us all?"
"May I?"
"I believe that was a rhetorical question," Spock said.
"My only concern is for the safety of everyone in this place," Noah said.
"Except for us," Adam added on his behalf.
"Sacrifices must be made," Noah said.
"HE TRIED TO KILL ME!" Leo shouted, losing it. "I saw him standing over the dead bodies. He came for me and slammed me against the wall and I would be dead by now if Spock hadn't come..."
"You just want an excuse to kill us, don't you?" Adam asked Noah. "Because that's what it's all about. You want us dead, even though we've never done anything to you."
"I cannot rest until I know with complete certainty that Sylar can no longer harm anyone," Noah said evenly.
"Yet you did not shoot us on sight," Spock pointed out. "That would seem to indicate that you do still harbour some doubt as to our guilt."
Adam thought about just going back into the common room to continue watching TV. Then he remembered that he hadn't been able to pause the thing, and wouldn't be able to know what was going on.
Noah finally turned and started to walk away. "This isn't over," he said with a last sweeping glance at the three of them, and left.
#
"Hi," Sasan said to the receptionist at the arrival lobby of Block J with what he hoped was an innocent smile. "Is there any chance you could send us home?"
"No," said the receptionist curtly, being immune to innocent smiles of any degree. "Get back to your floor."
"Why not?" Smudge asked.
"It's a one-way trip. Get-"
"So they did lie!" Sasan said. "This place doesn't create us; it kidnaps us from our homes."
"I'm calling the guards if you don't-"
"Why are you lying to the public?" Sasan asked. "The press releases about this place say that we never existed prior to-"
"Where did you read that?"
"Online," Smudge said triumphantly.
"There's not supposed to be any Internet access in this place. Not for you. I'm calling the guards."
"Do people know what they're paying for?" Sasan demanded. "Or are they going to think that we're just soulless playthings created for their amusement?"
"Maybe you are," the receptionist said coolly. "Prove that you're real. Haha, you can't. Good luck with that." She pressed the red button and spoke into the microphone: "Code 2. 704270 times 2 on J-64, please assist, set phasers to stun."
"What if I hit you with this remote?" Smudge threatened.
The receptionist tapped the hardy transparent banner separating them. She smiled.
Smudge glared. He raised the remote in an attempt to bash it in when Sasan caught his arm. "Smudge, don't."
"Why?"
"Adam will kill you if you break that."
"Guards are coming," the receptionist said cheerfully.
"I hate you," Smudge said.
Sasan pulled him away, and they got out before the guards arrived.
#
Adam turned off the television manually, deciding to wait until Smudge got back with the remote control, which had better be still in working condition.
Leo had given up on his book (a collection of academic essays by renowned experts on the subject on how and why spinach would one day become sentient and take over the world) and was now engrossed in losing at chess to Spock.
Adam sat fitfully on the couch and gazed at the spot where the laptop had been. He hovered in that curious zone between abject boredom and the inability to get bored because there was a half-alien in the room playing chess. Adam watched Leo lose for a while, then got up and paced around.
He rearranged some of the stuff on the shelves to make them look neater.
He rearranged the books in alphabetical order by author, flipped through the philosophical text Understanding is Overrated, noted the mistakes in One Day I Will Understand Technology: Confessions of a Tech Noob, and yelled in pain when A Selection of Watercolors by Boca Raton Artists dropped on his foot.
He moped on the couch.
"Checkmate," said Spock.
Adam got off the couch. He went into the corridor and checked on the room with the dead people and the serial killer. He discovered that the wet rag was now just a rag, and went to the bathroom to make it wet again. He stuffed it back under the door.
He wondered if Sylar was really in there or if Noah's suspicions had been right. He opened the door to check. Sylar was there. Adam closed the door. That part of the seventeenth floor did not smell like roses.
He wanted to know just what was taking Smudge and Sasan so long, and what exactly they were up to anyway.
#
"I don't want to go back yet," Smudge had said, and so they returned to the fifth floor and hung around, and joined the small group of people who rushed past them.
"Someone blasted a hole in the wall," one explained after Sasan asked. "It's been there for a while but we just heard about it."
Back to the sprawling central block and away from its chaotic centre, up a side escalator sandwiched between walls of deep polished wood; and they rose on the moving steps basked in warm lamplights from above, and the lights faded away as they emerged at the top and got off.
The once-elegant glass doors that greeted them now lay torn from their hinges. They stepped through into the vast room with its floor of timber and midnight blue, the sweeping wooden bar curving away from them, rows of glasses and drinks still neat behind the counter. Two small robots hovered above the dance floor lost in their respective paths of sucking up tiny bits of debris, oblivious to the intruders; the possible-robot bartender greeted each person who went up to him and asked what they would like to drink.
But at the end of the room was a yawning hole gashed brutally in the wall, pitch black shining through the opening and seeping through its jagged edges. There were no stars to break its unearthly velvet; no recognisable object that Sasan could see when he stepped cautiously up to the edge and looked down.
"What's out there?" Smudge asked, uncharacteristically quietly, awed by the scene.
"I can't see anything," Sasan said. "Just darkness."
We're alone, Sasan thought. In a universe of our own. There's really nothing out there.
A sudden homesickness washed over him; desperation amidst the isolation that now challenged them. Sasan wondered which direction home was, and knew that it was futile. He could run forever and never get there. He let his mind be filled instead with memories of that other world now so far away, places and people and voices that might have been no more than products of his imagination...
Smudge slipped his hand into his. Sasan squeezed it.
And they stood on the edge of forever, and gazed out into the void.
"Hey, Adam – prove you're real," Sasan said when he and Smudge finally returned with the electronics they had up and left with.
"What?"
"Yeah, it's hard, isn't it?" Sasan put the laptop down on the coffee table and opened it.
"Give me back the remote."
"It's not yours," Smudge said.
"Smudge, just give it to him," Sasan said, so Smudge did.
"Checkmate," Spock said.
Sasan opened up some of the Internet windows he'd left there. "This is what we found out," he said. "There's nothing much that's new – we can't get out of here unless we learn how to teleport, and in the meantime the powers that be are letting people believe that we were created solely for their entertainment and didn't exist until then. I tried to lodge a complaint, but we got kicked out."
"How could we teleport?" Adam asked.
"Learn," Smudge explained, thinking that it was obvious.
"Yeah. How?"
"If there's going to be any interaction between us and the public, sooner or later we'll go to them or they'll come to us and then go back," Sasan said. "Presumably these are normal people we're talking about, so they'd have to use some form of technology that we might be able to hijack."
"Okay," Adam said.
"But that won't happen for a few days more. Until then we're stuck. There's the very real possibility that we might never see home again."
Adam was silent. Finally he got up, put the Heroes DVD back in, picked up the remote and continued from where he had left off. Smudge sat down to join him.
Sasan went to watch the chess game. He decided that Leo was terrible at it.
"That's not a good idea," he said as Leo's hand hovered over a bishop.
Spock raised an eyebrow at him.
Leo gave up. "Take over," He told Sasan, who gladly slid into his vacated seat to play and proceed to lose less spectacularly to Spock.
Leo joined Smudge and Adam in front of the TV.
The hours ticked by.
In the lull between episodes Adam found his mind wandering back to his fate, and to his home and the people he knew, and how he was stuck in a prison which he wasn't trying to get out of. And that drove him to start the next episode and escape back into that world; insofar as it could be an escape, with that mental jolt of fear shooting through him at every mention of Sylar's name, coupled sometimes with an anxious glance behind him half-thinking that he might see the killer standing right there; but these fears proved unfounded.
Adam skipped Seven Minutes to Midnight. He'd seen that. He fast-forwarded through most of Homecoming. He spent most of Six Months Before glaring at the television.
When the time came, they ventured out for dinner. Their increased numbers – five – might have helped contribute to the lack of any incident, with only a few unfriendly looks thrown their way by people they did not know.
They found a table snuggled against a pillar and sat down with their food. Adam opened the laptop again intending to find out more about the stuff Sasan had discovered. His mind was too hyped up on Heroes for him to pay any attention.
"I don't know what that is," Sasan agreed when Smudge held up the offending piece of food on his fork and loudly questioned its identity. "Just eat it."
"It's furry."
"Some people are into that," Sasan murmured.
Spock raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I don't think that's meant to be in there," Leo said, looking at the unidentified furry object.
Smudge dropped the UFO onto the table with a satisfied air and continued on with the recognisable food.
Adam looked up from the laptop to take another bite of food. He stared at the furry thing. "What's that?" he asked.
Spock was giving it a funny look. He'd just realised that it looked an awful lot like a baby tribble that someone had pierced through with a fork.
An unexpected sadness stirred in him.
Spock reached out a hand and picked it up. The tiny ball of fur quivered in his hand and made shaky purring noises.
"...it's a tribble," he said in wonder.
"What was it doing in my food?" Smudge asked.
The purring died away. The tribble went limp in Spock's hand.
"It's dead," he said.
Spock laid it to rest on the table. They went on eating, slightly more unsettled than before.
#
About an hour before midnight saw the arrival of a stunned-looking young man who was about to shut the door again when Leo got up from the couch and went to see to him.
Leo found him standing on the other side of the door, confused and scared, backing off as he approached.
"Hi," Leo said. "What's your name?"
The kid struggled to look him in the eye. "Mike."
"Do you want to come inside? We don't bite."
"...Who are you people?"
"Just people," Leo said patiently. "Normal people. I'm Leo."
"Why... why do you all look like-"
"Same actor," Leo said.
"...Wow."
Mike glanced back at the empty corridor.
"If you want to be by yourself for a while, it's all right," Leo said.
"No... I gotta get home, I can't-"
"There's no way out," Leo said. "I'm sorry."
"But..."
"Some people have been here for days. No one's managed to escape yet."
"I was just home, just five minutes ago."
"I'm sorry," Leo said quietly.
"So what... we're stuck here? Just like that?"
"Yeah." Head bowed, Leo turned to go back.
"What's going to happen to us?" Mike asked.
"I don't know. You can come in if you want to. It's not very safe out here."
Mike warily followed him in. The television was on and had since conquered all of Adam's attention again save for the small amount required to swat Smudge's hand aside whenever he felt that the scene needed more lens flare.
Sasan and Spock were busy with another chess game. Mike looked uncertainly at them, did a double take at the ears ("yeah, that's Spock," Leo said) and hung around feeling out of place as Leo rejoined the two on the couch.
Mike blinked and tried to take in everything; but his breath caught every time he looked at one of them and the disjoined recognition hit his brain; tried to make sense of the images and sound coming from the television; cautiously approached the chess game and watched Sasan progressively lose; finding it easier to get a grip on himself if he concentrated on the chess pieces alone...
"Get a chair if you want to watch," Sasan said, moving a knight.
"I..." Mike left.
A myriad questions swam in his head, but he could not put them into words. He opened his mouth to ask Leo something, then realised that he didn't know what to say and settled for gazing at the back of their heads as he tried to make some sense of everything.
Five minutes. Five minutes ago he was at home. In his room. He'd gotten up from his desk to get a file and found himself stepping into nothingness and then lying on a floor in a cubicle in another universe.
Leo turned to see what he was doing. Mike stood there looking pale.
"Are you okay?" Leo asked.
"I... I think I need some time alone," Mike said, moving back towards the door.
"Okay."
Mike left the common room for the blessed stillness of the corridor, and let out a breath as the door shut behind him.
He padded down the corridor, trying to forget the people in that room, gradually starting to feel like himself again; pushed open one of the doors and looked into the small room. He went in and let the door close.
Alone now.
He climbed up onto the upper bunk and buried his face in the pillow. Squeezed his eyes shut, wishing hard that he could wake up back home and have this just be a dream...
Mike opened his eyes. Nothing had changed. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, and lay there for a while.
#
Adam didn't want to go to bed. It felt too much like giving in, and it was barely midnight according to the clock. His eyes were tired after more than half a day in front of the television, and their situation had taken other tolls on his mind. But though he tried to fight it, when the latest episode ended, he found that he no longer had the will to continue.
He got off the couch without comment and went to take the DVD out and turn the television set off. Smudge had since fallen asleep on the couch.
"If this is a dream and we wake up tomorrow, we'd never know what happens next in the show," Leo said as Adam returned the DVD to the case.
"I still hope this is a dream," Adam muttered. He put the case down on the coffee table and left for one of the rooms.
The cool sheets were strangely inviting. Adam shut the door and turned off the light. He dropped onto the bottom bunk, clutched his pillow, and fell into a troubled sleep.
Mike turned his head to look when Leo opened the door to check on him.
There were no words that could be said. Leo quietly closed the door, and Mike went back to gazing at the ceiling.
Spock took another room.
The two of them alone now, Sasan gently shifted Smudge down to lie on the couch he had fallen asleep sitting on. Smudge stirred slightly to adjust to the new position, his eyes remaining closed.
"Sas?" he murmured.
"Yeah, it's me."
Reassured, Smudge fell still again.
Sasan opened the door to let some of the corridor light in, then flicked off the common room lights.
He lay down on the couch. Smudge snuggled up to him, a faint smile appearing on his dreaming face. Sasan held him close, and soon sank into sleep as well.
#
Restlessness shook Mike out of the bunk bed. He hopped off the last few rungs of the ladder and exited into the corridor. It was quiet. People were sleeping. He couldn't sleep. Not like that, not after just being kidnapped...
Back out in the corridor, he paused before one of the rooms. On its door was tacked a note. 'DO NOT OPEN. DEAD PEOPLE + SERIAL KILLER.'
Serial killer? Mike wondered. The room seemed quiet. He pressed his ear against the door. Silence.
Mike tentatively tried the doorknob. It turned easily beneath his palm.
It wasn't locked.
Mike pushed the door open.
He recoiled at the sight of the three dead bodies lying on the ground; stumbled back into the corridor, his pulse racing, and then morbid curiosity got the better of him and he inched forward into the room.
He saw no serial killer. Just the dead people, one of whom had a knife sticking nastily out of the back of his head.
Mike swallowed.
He didn't like seeing the knife there. It looked wrong, and painful, and he knew the guy was dead but it didn't stop the instinctive repulsion. Dead people should not have knives stuck into their heads. Especially when they looked more like him than he was comfortable with.
Mike slowly crouched down, his breaths coming fast, and reached out a shaky hand towards the knife. He grasped the hilt, and gingerly placed his other hand on the victim's head for leverage.
He closed his eyes and pulled the knife out.
Mike opened his eyes. He let the knife drop onto the floor and lifted his hand from the head. It looked better now. More natural. Mike stood up, backed out, and shut the door.
Rest in peace, he thought, and continued on towards the stairwell.
#
Sasan opened his eyes in the dimness and wondered what it was that had woken him. Some instinct told him not to move; and so he lay as still as he could, eyes and ears straining to make out anything unusual-
Footsteps. Getting louder in their approach, and then a shadow fell over him and Sasan's breath caught.
The footsteps stopped.
Sasan gingerly turned his head to look at Smudge, but he was fast asleep and oblivious.
Another single footstep.
There's nothing to be afraid of, Sasan tried to tell himself. Someone might be a sleepwalker. Or wanted water or the bathroom and can't find the light switch... just sit up and look. They're in the light, you're in the dark, they won't be able to see you...
Growing terror paralysed him.
Do it, Sasan thought frantically. A single look, it'll be nothing, you'll laugh about it after, just do it, do it...
Slowly, he managed to force himself up enough to peek over the back of the couch-
There was a figure standing in the doorway. Shadowed against the brightness, but the relative light was still enough for him to tell...
Sasan's mouth went dry. He had never thought his own face could look that evil.
He's dead, he thought. He's dead, Smudge stabbed him, Peter killed him-
Sylar smiled.
...He sees me.
Fear rose in his throat and yearned to be expressed in a scream.
Get back down. He might not have seen you. He might not-
Suddenly weak with fear, Sasan dropped back down out of sight and grabbed the sleeping Smudge in a desperate hug; trembling, trying not to cry, not daring to close his eyes out of fear of what he might see when he next opened them, and in his mind played the repeated mantra directed at the unwelcome intruder, silently mouthing the words: Go away. Please go away, please go away, please-
"Sas?"
Sasan clapped a hand over Smudge's mouth, a pleading desperation in his eyes that led Smudge not to question further even before Sasan lifted a shaky finger to his lips.
More footsteps. Closer. The shadow shifted as its owner entered the darkness of the room.
Sasan gave in and shut his eyes tight, his heart pounding in his chest, hoping, praying, clutching on to Smudge...
The footsteps made a slow, taunting journey around the room. Deliberate. Then the sound got closer, and stopped, and Sasan knew without looking that he was standing right in front of them.
He heard what might have almost been a low laugh.
Malicious, more so in its mocking familiarity; and too close. Too close.
And then... miraculously... Sylar left.
The footsteps receded back into the corridor. The shadow passed across them once more and slipped away, and the stillness of the room returned.
Somewhere in Sasan's mind registered the amazing fact that he was still alive. But he still dared not open his eyes, and did not see Smudge glaring at the diminishing form down the corridor; did not see but felt and heard Smudge get up to shut the door and turn on the small light at the end of the room to chase away the darkness; heard him drag three chairs forcefully against the door before returning to his side; heard Smudge whisper, "it's okay, Sas, he's gone now"; and then sleep finally took them once more.
#
In a place where every hour was work-free and sleep was the main escape from dealing with reality, there was no nightlife.
Most of the lights in the central block had been turned off. Those in some stores stayed on, beacons of life in the darkness; although how much they could be considered life was debatable, with the sole occupants of the stores the same semi-robotic figures who smiled plastically at Mike as he passed them. It freaked him out, but they never moved from behind their counters.
Mike stuck his hands into his pockets and continued on. He didn't know where he was going; he just needed to walk, to be alone for awhile, away from the others on his floor, to feel like an individual again...
His feet slowed to a stop. The girl manning the drinks stall to his left was decidedly human and staring at him with a mix of recognition, curiosity and fear.
"Hey," he said.
She gave a quick nod. "Hi. I'm sorry. You look like someone I know."
"Oh. Yeah, there... there are a few of those."
Awkward silence.
"You're not a robot," Mike said. "Why are you here?"
She shrugged. "I guess I just needed something to do. That's Jenny over there," she said, pointing to where one of the standard-issue store attendants lay on the ground, smiling cheerfully and dead-eyed up at the ceiling. "I short-circuited her and took over."
"Wow. I guess being in this place can get boring, huh?"
"Yeah."
Silence.
"...I'm Elle."
He gave a small smile. "I'm Mike."
"Mike. You wouldn't... happen to know anyone named Sylar, would you?"
Mike shook his head. "No. I just got here a few minutes ago."
Elle nodded, but there was a wariness in her eyes when she looked at him that suggested there was more to it.
"Who is he?" Mike asked.
"A serial killer. He... kills people," she added redundantly.
"Is he here? In this building?"
"Yeah."
Mike glanced uneasily behind him.
"-hey, you want a drink?" Elle asked with sudden perkiness, changing the subject.
Mike turned back around. "Sure. What do you have?"
"Anything you want. You can come round the back here and have whatever you like. It's all free."
"Cool." Mike went into the store and joined Elle behind the counter.
The wall was lined with drink dispensing machines for a whole range of non-alcoholic beverages.
"The alcoholic stuff is in the bar," Elle explained. "But the ones here are pretty good."
Mike got himself a cup and filled it with cranberry juice. "Where do the drinks come from?"
"Yeah, that's the weird thing," Elle said. "Look at this."
She hefted one of the dispensers away from the wall. "No tubes or anything, see? But it never runs dry."
Mike drank a gulp of juice. "Are you sure?"
"I've been here for two days," Elle said, shifting the dispenser back. "A lot of thirsty people drop by all the time, but those things are still full."
"Weird," Mike agreed.
"This whole place is weird," Elle muttered. She got herself a drink as well.
"So do you just... stay here?" Mike asked.
"Yeah. It makes me feel less like somebody's experiment than being up there."
Silence.
Mike finished his drink. He looked at the cup, then found the bin and threw it in.
"...I guess I'll be going now," he said, looking reluctantly back out at the darkness with its robots and occasional stranger.
"Sure," Elle said softly.
He left the store; turned right back towards Block J, and started walking-
"Mike!"
He stopped and turned. Elle stood there in the lighted storefront, slightly ashen. He jogged back. "Yeah?"
"Okay, I... I don't really know how to tell you this, but..." She took a breath. "There are people after you. People who want to kill you or-"
"Wait, wait... why? What did I do?"
"Not you," Elle said. "Sylar."
"The serial killer?"
"That one. He looks like you. Older and more evil, but... There's this man, his name is Noah Bennet, and he says that the only way to make sure that Sylar is dead is to kill all of you-"
"But that's ridiculous-"
"Not if you know Bennet. He's just waiting for an excuse, Mike. And when he does it's going to be the end of it for you."
"That's not f-"
"You don't know what Sylar is like!" Elle said. "He slices people's heads open and takes their brains."
Mike's mouth fell open.
"Look... I'm sorry, but it's better if you know. I don't think it's safe back there with... with your friends. He's probably with them. They might all be in on it-"
"They didn't look like serial killers to me," Mike said.
"Yeah, well, appearances are deceiving."
"They were watching TV and playing che-"
Mike broke off. He remembered the room of dead people.
"What is it?" Elle asked.
"There... there was a room on that floor. With three dead bodies in it."
Elle looked vaguely horrified.
"But they were us," Mike said. "I mean... other people from the same floor... why would they kill... them..."
"Maybe they didn't want to go along with the killings," Elle suggested quietly. "They had to be silenced."
Mike looked at her. "Do you think they'd kill me too?"
"I don't know."
Silence.
"Stay here," Elle said.
"All right," Mike said, a bit too quickly.
"If Bennet drops by I'll vouch for you that you're not some kind of psychopath like the others. He probably won't believe me but it's worth a shot."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
#
He ruled the shadows, lurking unseen in the dark.
He'd gotten new clothes from a store and thrown the torn and bloodied ones away. He had standards, and did not appreciate looking like a victim. "Why does it look like you were repeatedly stabbed by an angry bisexual?" were not the last words he preferred to hear from someone he was about to kill. If it had been Smudge who had stabbed him, that is. He didn't think any of the others would have been that violent, but still you never knew. He'd have to check.
But for now, there was the careless young mutant smugly causing cleaning robots to break down from a distance. Revelling in his power, thinking he was alone.
Sylar watched another unfortunate cleaning robot squeak in horror and roll to a sad halt.
"Who's going to clean up all this mess?" he asked.
The teen turned at his voice. "Stand back," he commanded, excitement creeping into his confidence. "Come any closer and I'll kill you."
Sylar grinned. "In that case, I'll just stand here," he said, and raised a finger.
#
Sitting together on the floor at the back of the drinks store, Mike and Elle fell asleep.
#
Hands banged on the door. "Hey! Open up!"
Smudge blinked. He sat up, stared at the door and the chairs shoved against it, and quickly stumbled over to pull them away.
"Okay, okay..."
He pushed the last chair over and opened the door, flicking on the lights.
"Ngggh," said Sasan, and rolled over to bury his face in the couch.
"Why did you barricade the door shut?" Adam asked, looking at the chairs.
"Sylar was here," Smudge said. He rubbed a hand over his eyes to get the sleep out.
"What?" Leo asked.
"Sylar is dead," Spock said.
"He was here," Smudge insisted, then decided it was too early to argue and trudged back to the couch. He liked the couch. It had a Sasan on it.
"...how could he have been here when he's dead in that room?" Adam asked.
Smudge shrugged and nestled up to Sasan.
"Perhaps he's not in that room," Spock said.
"Where's Mike?" Leo asked.
"Who?" Adam asked.
"That kid who arrived last night..." Leo made his way back down the corridor, throwing doors open and looking in. "He was in that room," he said.
Adam hesitated, then rushed to the room with the sign on it and pushed the door open.
Two bodies.
A distant fear rose in him.
Adam closed the door. He took a breath and walked back to the others. "Sylar's gone," he announced. "You saw him and you didn't do anything?" he demanded of Smudge and Sasan. "What if he tried to kill the rest of us?"
"They couldn't really have done anything," Leo conceded.
"Right," Adam muttered. "There's a serial killer on the loose, and they just go back to sleep." He glared pointedly at Smudge and Sasan, who were doing just that.
"It's six in the morning," Sasan mumbled, deciding that should cover everything.
"Yeah," Smudge agreed.
"HEY!" Adam yelled.
Sasan muttered something into the couch and finally sat up to meet Adam. "Look, it was late and we were just glad to be alive," he said. "We weren't going to run after him to see what else he got up to, especially since he was supposed to be dead and it might not even have been Sylar but some other freaky guy who likes walking around in the dark. If he didn't kill us, there was no reason to expect him to kill you. All right?"
Sasan lay back down and buried his face back in the couch, having completely exhausted his 6am communicative capabilities.
"You're not going back to sleep," Adam said.
Sasan looked up from where he lay. "I went to bed at midnight and it's just past six. I need more than six hours of sleep to function, thank you very much."
He buried his face back in the couch, having completely exhausted his 6:05am communicative capabilities.
Adam looked at the two of them on the couch and decided that they were hopeless.
"How could Sylar have escaped?" he asked instead, generically pissed off at life and not helped by the fact that he'd had only six hours of sleep rather than the recommended seven or eight hours for healthy adults.
"Leo said that Mike was missing," Spock pointed out. "He might have been responsible for resurrecting Sylar-"
"Why would he do that?" Leo interrupted. "He was new. I don't even think he had heard of Sylar."
"Precisely," Spock said. "He might have been unaware of what he was doing. It could have been an accident."
"Or else the guy in the horn-rimmed glasses was right and we're all potential psychopaths," Adam said. He ran his fingers through his hair and tried to sit down on the couch, then realised that it was occupied and he couldn't.
"I don't think it's safe to stay here," Leo said. "Sylar might be back." He gave another worried glance at the empty room where Mike had been.
"Yeah, try and get them to move," Adam said, prodding the couch with his shoe.
Sasan and Smudge didn't budge. Sasan had fallen asleep again. Smudge was just pretending to be asleep, because he didn't feel like going anywhere either.
"We should look for Mike," Leo said. "It's still early; I don't think many people would be up and it might be easier now than later."
"If he's still alive," Adam said. "And on our side. Why would anyone open a door labelled 'dead people and serial killer'?"
Leo shrugged.
"The strange old man is still unaccounted for," Spock said. "Some of this might have been his doing."
"Yeah," Leo said. "He said he likes playing with us. He might be watching right now."
"...All right," Adam agreed. "We're leaving this place."
"What if newcomers arrive?" Spock asked.
"They'll just have to fend for themselves. Smudge, I know you're awake!"
Smudge attempted a terrible attempt at a snore that immediately dispelled any illusion of sleep.
"You're not fooling anyone," Adam said. "Get up."
Smudge grudgingly did so.
"And wake him. We're leaving. Too many people know where to find us."
Adam went over to the laptop. He picked up its charger and coiled its wire around it.
"Where are we going?" Smudge asked.
"I don't know. Away."
"Wha' time 'sit?" Sasan mumbled when Smudge nudged him awake.
Smudge glanced at the clock. "It's almost 6:10."
Sasan groaned.
Smudge glanced sadly around the room. He'd grown strangely attached to the place in the short time he'd been there.
Leo brushed by Sasan's shoes sticking off the end of the couch and took the Heroes DVD from the coffee table. He wandered over to the shelves and grabbed a random book: I Can Dig It, and Other Philosophical Musings of Jach Juan.
"If you two stay here and get killed, that's your own problem," Adam said to Sasan and Smudge, the former of whom still had yet to budge. He tucked the laptop under his arm.
"Why can't we just stay here and lock the door?" Smudge asked. He liked this room. It was cosy and had Sasan in it.
"A locked door will not stop Sylar," Spock said. "Or anyone else who is determined to enter."
"If he didn't kill us last night, why would he do so now?"
"He appears to like a challenge. Killing people who are asleep is not much of a challenge and would not have fulfilled his egotistical need to feel superior. Alternatively, he had some other reason for his behaviour that I am not aware of. Either way, he has sufficiently shown that he is fully capable of murdering us when he wants to, and as long as he is aware of our location we cannot be assured of safety."
Spock's brief speech had succeeded in making Sasan fall asleep again.
#
Eventually the sorry party emerged from the common room, Leo flicking the lights off for what would probably be the last time. Smudge kept casting longing looks back at it; feet dragging slightly, wanting to stay in the place that had for the past few days been home. Several steps on, he finally resigned himself to the fact that they were really leaving. He nipped into one of the rooms and came out hugging two pillows.
He passed a pillow to Sasan. In his half-asleep state, Sasan thought about how idiotic he would look going around hugging a pillow. Then he realised that self-consciousness was basically moot when hanging around present company at six in the morning, and gave in to the temptations of the pillow. The pillow made him think of sleep. He wanted to go back to the couch.
They left the seventeenth floor and the door swung shut. Echoes reverberated down the empty corridor, and all was still once more.
#
"He's one of them," Noah said. "You can't trust them."
"Maybe not, but I can trust him," Elle said. "You don't even know anything about him. How could you just... decide that he's got to be some crazy psychopath? Does he look like a crazy psychopath?"
Noah looked at Mike. Mike stood there feeling awkward.
Noah shrugged. "Yes."
"He's safe," Elle insisted. "If he wasn't safe I'd be dead by now. Do I look dead?"
Noah didn't bother checking, too busy staring Mike down with a creepy smile that made Mike wish he would go away.
"What's your name?" Noah asked.
"Mike," he said. "Sir," he added.
"How long have you been here?"
"Since last night."
"Do you know who Sylar is?"
"Not until Elle told me about him. I'm not a serial killer, I swear-"
"Well," Noah said, "somebody is. This morning, several people were found brutally murdered all over this place. All of them had the top of their heads sliced open and their brains gone. Just the way Sylar does it. The thing is, your friends upstairs claim that he's dead. So who could it have been?"
"Why would he know?" Elle asked.
"I'm not speaking to you, Elle. Well, Mike?"
"I don't know. It wasn't me; I was here with her the whole time-"
"It could have been anyone," Elle said. "How hard is it to imitate Sylar's style?"
"These were powerful victims, Elle. Special people. They were not easy to kill."
Mike wished that Noah would stop looking at him like that.
"Do you want to look at the bodies, Mike?"
"...No."
Noah smiled. "Why not. So you can see what we're dealing with."
#
The bloodied corpse lay on the floor with the top of its skull gaping emptily open.
Mike threw up violently on the carpet.
Noah smiled.
#
"We could go to that place," Sasan suggested when it had finally sunk in that he was probably not going back to his couch any time soon. "The one where they blew a hole through the wall. There were rooms there."
"Where's that?" Adam asked, so Sasan took the lead and tried to be more awake.
The place in question was empty, now, save for the cleaning robots and bartender, who appeared to be permanent fixtures of the place. The bartender smiled perfunctorily at them as they entered and asked what they would like to drink.
"It's six in the morning," Leo said in reply.
Spock had been distracted by the hole in the wall. He stood before it, hands clasped neatly behind his back, gazing out into the darkness of the void. It looked like space. Like standing on the bridge of a certain ship that was now worlds away. Only here, there were no stars. Just darkness. A never-ending blackness, with no signs of life out there as far as the eye could see...
To boldly go, he thought, and that made him feel a little better.
There were doors along one side of the room, adjacent to the bar; opening them led into a series of small, cosily-lighted function rooms with a long central table and several chairs around it.
"I guess this will do," Adam said, after they piled into one and he shut the door and the silence enveloped them.
They pushed the table against one wall to give them more space and moved the chairs to the side. Sasan adjourned to a corner, where he spent several moments worrying about the cleanliness of the carpet before finally giving in, plonking his pillow down on it, getting down, and letting his sleepiness override any hygienic concerns.
Smudge shortly dropped his own pillow next to Sasan's and curled up to him. He shut his eyes. Sparse voices travelled from the other side of the room; Adam or someone. The door was closed. No one knew where they were. They were safe. For now, at least.
This, too, could be home.
#
"Why," Mike gasped out, still shaking. "Why-"
"I know it's hard, Mike," Noah said calmly, looking strangely as though he was deeply enjoying himself.
"I'd never do anything like that," Mike said. "Never, never, never..."
Noah nodded slowly in understanding. "I tell you what," he said. "I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. That is, if I can trust you. Can I trust you, Mike?"
Mike nodded desperately.
"Good. A few colleagues and I are going to pay a little call on your friends. We are going to get the truth out about these murders, and when we do, things may get nasty. Would you like to come along?"
Mike hesitated. "Yeah."
"If a fight breaks out, will you be able to stand your ground and not run away or defect to the other side?"
Mike swallowed. "Yeah," he said quietly.
"Remember what these people can do, Mike. Remember the bodies you saw. Either they are harbouring Sylar or it turns out that they share his abilities and homicidal urgings. You're not like them, are you, Mike?"
Mike shook his head, face pale.
Noah smiled. "Good boy. Here's a gun. Don't forget whose side you're on."
I Can Dig It, and Other Philosophical Musings of Jach Juan.
Chapter One: PROMISES PROMISES SON!
"..." thought Leo. He flipped to the next page. And the next, randomly opening pages and scanning through their contents before realising that he should have probably picked a different book off the shelf, because this one looked to be the opposite of enlightening.
Leo shut the book and put it down on the table.
Adam stood up from where he had been plugging the laptop charger into the wall socket, and sat down on the chair as the laptop booted up.
"This place has Internet," Adam said to no one in particular. A sudden thrill shot through him. If they were staying here for good, he could be online as long as he needed. He could try and hack into the system; find out how it worked, how to control it, perhaps bring the whole thing down or send them home or both...
His fingers eagerly attacked the keyboard.
"Where'd the Shift keys go?" Leo asked from where he had been pondering the keyboard.
"I don't know; they were missing when I first found it," Adam murmured absently, then fell silent in activity, engrossed with the task at hand.
Leo watched him for a while before losing interest. He sat back on the swivel chair and gazed idly around the room. Smudge and Sasan were still fast asleep. Spock had wandered back out to the main area to stare out the hole again. He seemed to like that place.
Leo glanced at the clock in the room. 6:25. He looked back at the two asleep in the corner and felt a twinge of envy. They looked so peaceful together, lost in dreams away from the cares of waking life. Sleep beckoned to him. It wasn't as though there was anything else to do. But the carpet was uninviting and he doubted that his intrusion would be welcome if he tried to join Smudge and Sasan.
He found himself thinking of the bed he had left mere minutes before, soft and warm in the cool darkness of the room until Adam had yanked his door open and said to wake up because the common room door appeared to be locked or stuck.
He had felt safe there; almost, with the door blocking off the rest of the world and imagination free to take him wherever he wished. Threats had seemed meaningless then. Time had seemed to stand still. But now that was gone, and they were fugitives sent running to a different part of their prison out of fears they had not deserved.
He wanted to go back. Return to his bed and shut the door and pretend that no one could find him; for all appearances they had left the floor, and he doubted that Sylar would bother going into every room to check. The Mysterious Old Man probably knew where they all were anyway, because he seemed to always know things like that.
He could go back. Catch another couple hours sleep, then rejoin the others... take a few more things from the floor, like pillows and blankets and a better book... he would be quick. Safe.
Leo considered the option. Alone, sleeping, in the dark. He liked it-
No, he told himself. We left for a reason. It's too dangerous to stay there.
But if he just nipped by and got the things...
"I'm going back to get some stuff," he told Adam.
"Don't get killed," Adam said distantly, lost in his hacking.
Leo left the room. Spock was sitting by the hole in the wall, looking almost sad by half-Vulcan standards.
On his way down the escalator, Leo realised that he could probably get all he needed free from the various stores. Sleeping bags, food, perhaps a TV and things to watch on it...
Leo pushed the thoughts aside. He wanted to go back to the seventeenth floor. It felt like a right that Sylar had taken away from them. If they had to be imprisoned in this building, he'd rather they be in the place that had been specifically prepared for them. Even if it were just for a few more minutes.
#
"Why is he here?" someone asked, eyeing Mike warily the same way everyone else in the party had.
"He wants to prove that he's on our side," Noah said.
Mike attempted a friendly smile, but the hostile, fearful glances did not stop. He dropped his head and fiddled with the gun instead, feeling deeply out of place.
"Just ignore them," Elle said by his side as they walked towards the seventeenth floor.
Mike nodded, suddenly wishing that he had never volunteered. He found his mind going back to the scene from the previous night: the others sitting around the common room, harmlessly watching television and playing chess, Leo inviting him to join them, the unspoken sense of family that hung in the air...
He forced himself to think back to the bodies that he had seen. The three on the floor in that room and the latest ones with their heads sliced open. Those people had something to do with it, somehow. And if that's the case, then they aren't your friends, he told himself. They were just trying to lure you in to be a part of it.
But he still couldn't shake the desperate loneliness.
#
The opening of the corridor link to Block J was unusually crowded. Leo thought about continuing on anyway when he recognised Peter in the group and pulled back on reflex, just as he made out Noah amongst them.
They had to be going to the seventeenth floor, Leo thought as he hung out of sight to watch them pass by. But why-
And then he saw Mike amongst the small group, looking scared but determined, and bit back the urge to call out to him, half-hoping that Mike would look his way and half-hoping that he would not.
He didn't like how he had a gun in his hand. Leo didn't want to consider the implications.
They had gone down the hallway. Leo moved uncertainly after them, curiosity driving him now. They entered the lift and headed up. Leo watched the numbers ascend and stop on 17.
They're looking for us, he thought. All of us. And they brought weapons.
He shouldn't be here. But Mike was-
Forget him. He's safe. They let him live. They might not be as kind to you. Run.
The lift had started to descend. 16. 15. 14.
Leo left.
#
They were gone, Mike thought, and in that instant all doubts seemed to vanish. Why else but out of guilt and not wanting to be held accountable for their crimes would they have left the floor so suddenly?
"All right," Noah said, as they walked back to the lifts, "we now know that they're all guilty. Shoot them on sight. No questions asked. These people are dangerous."
A few more wary looks flew Mike's way. He huddled in the corner of the lift and tried to pretend that he wasn't there.
The lift doors opened. They walked out.
Mike jumped as the small electric spark hit him from behind. He whipped his head around.
Elle grinned. "Hey. Cheer up."
"What did you do that for?"
"Got your attention, didn't it?" She fell into step with him, trailing a little way behind the rest of the others.
"...Everyone hates me," Mike said.
Elle shrugged. "You can't blame them. You do look a lot like their worst enemy."
"It's not my fault. What do they expect me to do? Plastic surgery? Kill myself?"
"I'm sure at least some of them would like that."
Mike fell silent.
#
"I found Mike," Leo said, bursting into the room. "He's with them."
"Who?" Spock asked, looking up from where he had spent an agonising few minutes trying to make sense of Jach Juan.
"Peter, Noah... the others. They went to our floor, and they had weapons-"
Smudge rolled over and rubbed his eyes. He blinked.
"They wanted to kill us," Spock inferred.
"Good thing we got out," Adam said, eyes still glued to the laptop.
Leo shut the door tight. "But why would Mike be with them? He's one of us-"
"An arbitrary categorisation," Spock pointed out. "Technically, Sylar is one of us too."
"That's different-"
"To what difference do you refer?"
Leo gave up and sank into a chair.
"...All right," Adam said with a hint of triumph. "I broke into their surveillance system. Check this out."
A series of camera feeds popped up on the screen. Adam cycled through a few.
"They've been watching us," Leo said.
"Yeah. This whole place is rigged. All the common rooms on every floor of every block... most of the central block-"
"What about here?" Smudge asked, having wandered over to look.
"I'm looking for that..." Adam managed to call up a larger plan of the building. He found their location and called up the camera feeds-
They saw themselves on one of the open windows.
They looked up at the camera.
Smudge gave a slow wave and watched the action repeated on the screen.
"Can they hear us?" Leo asked.
"I don't know," Adam said.
"Should we destroy the camera?" Leo asked.
"That would only draw attention to ourselves," Spock said.
"But then they can see us and know we're here," Smudge said.
"We don't know if the feeds are being monitored," Adam said. "There are a lot of them."
"They have a lot of staff," Spock countered.
Smudge waved at the camera again, which caused Adam to scowl at the screen and cycle to another feed.
"Don't do that," he said. "We don't want them to know we know we're being watched."
"But who are these people, anyway?" Leo asked. "If these are the people running the place then they should be content knowing that we're still in here; I don't think they're trying to find us. That's a whole other group of people who think we should die because we happen to look like a serial killer."
In the corner of the room, Sasan opened his eyes and realised that Smudge was gone. He closed his eyes again and tried to ignore all the talking.
"The video recordings could work in our benefit," Spock said. "They prove our innocence."
"I don't know how to access the recordings," Adam said. "These are just the live feeds."
Sasan gave up and got up to join the others, marginally more awake than before. He peeked over Adam's shoulder at the screen.
"They've been watching us," Smudge informed him. He pointed at the camera.
Sasan looked at the camera. He waved at it.
"Adam doesn't like it when you do that," Smudge said.
"Do what?" Adam asked.
"Nothing," Smudge said.
"Can you find Sylar?" Sasan asked.
"There are hundreds of cameras," Adam said incredulously. "It'll take forever to go through each one and hope that he's in front of whichever one I happen to be looking at."
"What about the areas leading to this place?" Sasan asked. "We could keep a watch on those just so we don't get caught unawares."
"Okay." Adam went back to the floor plan and found the place. A single camera hung above the base of the escalator, showing its last few steps and the glow of warm lights on the timber walls and floor. Cosy, yet with a subtle claustrophobic menace.
"Coast is clear," Leo observed.
"We should go and get food before it's too late," Sasan said.
"What if they find us?" Leo asked.
"They might not think of searching the cafeteria this early in the morning," Spock said.
"They'll know we need food," Adam said. "They might start watching the cafeteria to catch us when we go in-"
"Which makes it imperative that we hurry," Spock said. "Hopefully we can get in and leave before they arrive."
#
Mike decided he needed to be alone for a while. He sat by himself against a wall in one of the empty stores that Noah and the others had fashioned as temporary headquarters, and tried to convince himself that he'd made the right choice. He thought he had. They just needed to see that he was really on their side, and not-
"Hey!"
Mike turned towards the voice, and a shoe crashed into his face.
Knocked over onto the ground, gagging in pain as he tried to look up and see his attacker, his hands rising reflexively to protect his head before another kick slammed into his stomach and rough hands were hauling him up by his shirt-
"You gave us away, didn't you?" a voice hollered as Mike blinked through redness to make out a trio of angry faces, all strangers, and tried to scream but couldn't as a fist smashed against his face and the hands dropped him back onto the floor, head ringing with pain, trying to protest-
"I didn't... I was with you the whole-"
"Then how the hell did they escape?" another voice demanded, or perhaps it was the first, for he couldn't tell; couldn't make sense of the sudden attack, felt thick wetness on his face and tasted blood on his lips.
"I don't know..."
"Really?" Another kick. Mike curled up in pain, tears stinging his eyes.
One of them bent down. Grabbed Mike by the collar of his T-shirt, pulled his face close, hot breath against his cheek.
"Why did you join us? Mighty suspicious, isn't it? Are you a spy? Have you been telling your friends all about us? Playing innocent, thinking no one will ever suspect-"
"No!" Mike cried.
The man shoved him against the ground. His head cracked against the concrete and sent a thrum of pain resonating out throughout his skull.
"No," he said again, rambling through tears of pain. "I swear, I didn't do anyth-"
He screamed as one of them grabbed his ear and yanked his bloodied face up to meet the hostile glares.
"For your sake, you'd better not," one said. "Or the next time, we won't be this easy on y-"
Footsteps. "Let go of him!" Gruff voice, unfamiliar.
His ear was released, his head falling back onto the floor; shielding his face with his arms, knees drawn up as he lay there; heard brief chastisements and angry exchange, and then footsteps left, and one pair stayed behind and with gentle firmness pulled his hands away from his face.
"You all right?" the stranger asked. "You're all right," he concluded, as Mike blinked at him and confirmed he was still alive. "...God, you look exactly like him."
A shake of the head, and then the stranger left too; and Mike was left alone, looking weakly forward to the cool darkness of unconsciousness. He curled up tighter, hugging himself, shaking, crying, wanting his mom...
"Mike?"
Elle's voice.
"Mike!"
And he heard her rush over and fall to his side, taking in the injuries, letting loose expletives.
"What did they do to you?"
"It's okay..."
"It's not okay! Mike! Who were they? I'll go after them; they're going to pay for this-"
Elle wiped the blood off his face with her hands, casting furious glances backwards as though she might catch a glimpse of those responsible-
"I don't... I don't know who they were... it's not their fault, I don't know how the... the other people escaped..."
"Look here. You've been nothing but nice the whole time. You're not a horrible person, and you don't deserve this." Elle swore again.
"I can fix this," Mike said.
"What?"
"I can fix this," he repeated, some strength returning to his voice. "I just... I need to show them I'm for real, that I'm on your side, and then they won't hate me..."
He fumbled for the gun in his pocket and wondered if he should have used it earlier; but no, that would only have confirmed their suspicions...
Mike tried to stand up, his head swimming. Elle grabbed him to stop him from falling.
"Mike, you're not going anywhere like this, okay? You need medical attention or something-"
"I'm okay," he insisted, trying to convince himself. "It'll be okay, I just need... I'll find them, and I'll... I'll kill one of them, and then they'd know for sure and then they'll trust me..."
Elle regarded him uncertainly.
"I just gotta prove... It'll be okay, I promise, I can do this. I'll be back, okay? I'll be back..."
And Elle watched him in despair as Mike wiped more blood off his face with his sleeve and limped out of the store, one hand on the gun, face set in earnest determination to prove that he was one of the good guys.
#
"You're up early," said one of the standardised chefs as they found a table near the food counters and got breakfast. "Most people sleep in. No work, no school; just more of the same monotony."
They were the only ones in the cafeteria apart from a smattering of individuals here and there.
"So what's the plan?" Sasan asked as they sat down to eat. "We hide until... what?"
"Until they open the place to the public," Adam said. "Then we try to get out."
"We'll need supplies," Leo said. "It can't be safe to keep going in and out of that room. People might notice-"
"Yeah," Adam agreed. "What do we need? Food? Water..."
"Where can we get food?" Sasan asked.
"They might have packed meals. I'll check." Adam put his spoon down and went back to the counter.
"Do you provide packed meals?" he asked.
"Why would you need them?" the chef asked.
"Does it matter?"
"No," the chef admitted. "But no, we don't. We pride ourselves on the freshness of our food."
"Do you know anywhere we can get packed food?"
"You could get sandwiches from the vending machine. The supermarket sells some. Or you could kill someone and eat-"
"Okay," Adam said hurriedly, and returned to the table.
"...Where's my spoon?" he asked.
Nobody appeared to know, so he got another one.
#
"Hello, Gabriel."
Sylar gave a start, looking up from beneath the brim of the free baseball cap he'd taken from a store.
Dem smiled. "Waiting for someone?"
"How did you find me?"
Dem shrugged. "The same way I find anyone else. Who is it now... that little girl over there? Picking on kids now?"
"She's special."
"What are you going to do – go up to her and slice her head open in front of everyone? A bit obvious, don't you think?" Dem picked a bar of chocolate off the shelf and peeled off its wrapping. "Or are you just compiling your To Do list for tonight?"
"Why are you here?"
"Why not?" Dem asked through a mouthful of chocolate. "This is good chocolate," he added parenthetically. "Want some?"
"...Leave me alone."
"I'm impressed that you're alive, actually. I had thought I might need to intervene there."
Sylar contemplated the old man and the chocolate bar before him. "Do you know who killed me?" he asked.
"Out for revenge?" Dem asked.
"Perhaps."
"If you must know, it was a collaborative effort between the Vulcan, the bisexual guy and your good friend Peter Petrelli."
Sylar twitched. "Peter," he said.
Dem took another bite of chocolate. "Leave the poor guy alone. He's emo enough as it is. Just look at his hair."
"What about the others? Where are they?"
"In hiding. You scared them off the seventeenth floor. Congratulations."
"Where?"
Dem smiled aggravatingly. "Are you just going to barge in and kill them all? Not really your style, is it?"
"Tell me where they are. I'll know what to do."
Dem popped the rest of the chocolate into his mouth and swallowed. "Somewhere on the west side of the central block. That's all I'll tell you."
"Where's west in this place?"
"Find a compass and figure it out."
#
"That's a lot of sandwiches," Sasan commented as Adam and Spock lugged over the loot from the vending machine and dumped it onto the table. "It's not a very balanced diet."
"There's bread and meat and vegetables," Adam stated. "It's balanced."
"The supermarket's on the third floor," Sasan said. "There's a wider variety of food there."
"Fine; go see what you can get from it."
"What about water?" Smudge asked.
"There should be some there too," Sasan said.
"All right, you two get the water and whatever else you want," Adam said. "We'll take the sandwiches up, Leo can finish eating, and everyone meets back at the room when they're done. Be quick."
#
"Hi, Mike," Dem said cheerfully. "Looking for someone?"
#
"All supermarkets should have free stuff like this one," Smudge commented, pocketing pieces of chocolate and cheese off the shelves as he and Sasan made their way through the mostly-empty place.
"It'd destroy the economy," Sasan said. He scanned through the rows of products. "All right, uncooked food is out because there's no stove."
"Where's the water?" Smudge asked.
"It's probably under 'Drinks'," Sasan said, pointing at the sign.
They located and picked up a heavy water tank, carrying it together to balance out the weight. Sasan grabbed a column of disposable cups off a shelf.
"Let's just take this first and come back for the food," he decided, and so they left the supermarket.
"What're we going to do up there?" Smudge asked as they headed past stores on the way back, lugging the water tank between them. Standardised attendants smiled blankly out at them from behind the counters.
"We'll figure something out," Sasan said. "This is a prison. It's not meant to be entertaining."
"But there's all the fun stuff out here," Smudge said.
Sasan shrugged. "It'll only be a few days at most," he said. "We could spend that time revelling in the beauty of human fellowship and watching the hours go by. Plus, we have a bar, and an android bartender to talk to. We'll manage."
"Yeah," Smudge said, sounding unconvinced.
"Things could be worse," Sasan said. "We could be starving to death somewhere or out on the streets or stuck in some dead-end job typing numbers into a computer."
"Yeah," Smudge said, feeling slightly better.
"Just a few days, and then we'll figure a way out, somehow."
They walked on in silence.
"Sas?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think we'll ever get home?"
"I hope so. Don't stop believing, all right?"
"All right."
They turned the corner towards the escalator that would lead them back to the room, and stopped short.
Mike shakily pointed the gun at them. "Don't move," he said.
Chapter 14 »
#