12

It's Coming…

December, 2012

Sylar pulled up short of the glass at the last possible second. Claire on the other hand didn't even bother trying to fight the force of momentum that carried her directly into the solid plates only to bounce off with an unhealthy ringing sensation in her bones from impact. She landed hard on her backside to which Sylar found immense amusement. He didn't quite point and laugh, but the expression on his face told her he was doing so on the inside.

"What did you think was going to happen, Claire?" He pawed at the chilled glass so that it made the most irritating of squeaking noises. "This glass is tempered to resist enhanced strength, fire, ice, and any other range of physical or elemental abilities. We're not going to break it any time soon." She flew a one-fingered salute in his direction and he only vibrated harder with barely contained laughter at the crude gesture. "Good to see you too, sweetheart."

"What are you doing here, Sylar?"

A wry smile lifted in the corner of his mouth as he continued to scratch at the glass. "I was bored."

"So you came up with a diabolical plot to annoy me to death?"

"Why do you think they gave you the comfortable side of the room? These cells were obviously rebuilt to be joined, but only your half is decorated." Claire's heart jumped in pace for a moment but she refused to be sidestepped so easily. "If I knew treason came with perks like this, I would have made more effort to mention it in my charges."

On queue, the door panel separating their cells slid open with a light hiss of colliding air fronts. Fog billowed out into Sylar's half of the room when the refrigerated air from hers clashed against the warmth on the other side. Claire crawled backwards in a pang of fear when she could no longer see where he had gone. Once the irrational fury of heightened hormones had subsided, reality set back into place. She was alone, mostly powerless, vulnerable in a cage, and the hunter had been allowed inside. Their little cat and mouse games didn't seem quite so amusing anymore.

"It's a little chilly in here." Claire jumped at the sound of his voice behind her. Rolling over, she found him reclined on her bed with his hands folded beneath his head, watching the puffs of steam from his breath evaporate in the air. "What do you say we turn the thermostat up a bit?" Sylar slid from the frosty sheets lazily with a vindictive smirk on his lips for her. Bright blue flames erupted from his palms to lick over flesh that could not be burned. He pressed his hands to the wall, enjoying the anxiety building within his cellmate at the sight of the ice melting away. Degree by precious degree the atmosphere helping to regulate her out of control body temperatures was heating up.

"Sylar." She couldn't be sure if her tone came across as more of the command she wanted it to be, or a frightened plea for mercy. "Please. Don't." Whatever it was that he heard cross her lips, it caught his undivided attention.

"Since when do you say please to me?"

He snapped the full force of all of his intuition towards her when his overly sensitive ears picked up on a weak fluttering sound. Where the cold had kept the source of the noise serene before, the sudden heat had disturbed it. Claire reflexively covered her stomach for protection when his eyes scanned over her form but she couldn't stop him from detecting the brilliant spirits of color that bloomed out from her where the sound originated. The fires died in his hands.

"Claire, is there something that you'd like to tell me?" Sylar swallowed the lump in his throat over the cotton dryness that had sapped all the moisture from his mouth. He moved to her side with a sloth of motion born partly from shock and the need to not startle her further. Fingertips ghosted over the range of bruises and cuts decorating her body, sprinkling dashes of frost in their wake. Her arms slipped from her sides as she turned her face away with glistening tears in her eyes so that he could lift her shirt to see for himself the secret that held potential to fire the first shot of the war.

Tendrils of ice crawled over the skin of his hand where flames had been before and they spiraled outward into twisted winter designs across her belly as he placed his palm over the bump that had just begun to show itself to the world. "Like the fact that you're pregnant."

A low whistle of a sigh escaped him into the thunder clouds of turbulent thought that gathered over his head. Theirs was not the kind of world to be bringing a child into. Not at that time. And certainly not in a prison cell. Sylar saw her shoulders tremble from the corner of his eye and turned a worried face to see her carefully maintained walls crumble downward in a fit of choked sobs. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't the end. He wanted to tell her that they would find a way to make it through as they always did. But the words failed him when she crawled into his side, twisting her fingers in his shirt and burying her face in his chest. So instead he let his forehead fall to rest on hers, wrapping his arms around her and holding her as he should have been all along.

There was one question though that he could not erase from the multitude of troubled thoughts plaguing him at that moment though. The detail in all of these events that threatened to bother him the most. "Claire, who's the father?"

New York, 2032

Sylar knelt down in reverence before the fallen general. Using two fingers to trail down the man's scarred and bloodied face, he drooped the half-open eyes to a peaceful close. He rooted around the neck of the armored chest plate to dig out a set of I.D. tags. The silver tags tinkled lightly as he lifted them free of the body and roamed his fingers over the name and serial number stamped on them.

"I just want this war to end," he had told him only hours before the tragic end. I just want this war to end. Twenty years of fighting had taken its toll on all of them. Twenty impossibly long years of chaos, blood, and loss. Double crossing and betrayal at every turn fueled by a hatred that had nothing to do with most of the players and never should have been allowed to exist in the first place. It was one thing for someone like Sylar to be ready for the end, but for a man that had spent more than half of his adult life on the battlefront dodging bullets and watching the bodies fall; even in death the exhaustion of it all was heavily imprinted on his features with every premature wrinkle, gray hair, and shadow in the hollows of his sleepless eyes.

In another time, another life, Sylar had wanted to kill the man he paid his respects to. He had craved the feel of his blood on his hands for stealing away what had never belonged to him. At the end though all he felt was regret that it had taken the passing of the eleventh hour to see what all the man had done for their cause. For him. Providing for his wife when Sylar hadn't been able to. Keeping a tight grip on Whitlocke's reigns when common sense should have told him to run for his own sake so that more lives had not been lost than already filled the unnecessary mass graves. Feeding their Rebel forces the information they needed to take down the cryo core and… save his daughter. Sylar owed him Miranda's life.

He held the dog tags tightly in his fist as Sylar rose to pry away the boards covering the window of the last Alliance stronghold - what remained of Kline Enterprises and the very room that Lucius himself had kept for an office. The Rebellion's conquering of the upper Manhattan base would complete the sacking of New York and mark the finality of the revolution. All remnants of the old Department were being erased as he watched. "Specials" everywhere would be free from the tyranny to live in peace, or at least what few of them had survived.

Explosions continued to rock the crumbling architecture as Rebel forces traversed the minefields below. Their body armor obscured most identifying traits but by the trademark whirlwind of sands sweeping over the field he could recognize Sparrow Redhouse clearing a trail for her team, mercilessly sandblasting anything that dared to cross her path into oblivion. One of their own strayed from the trail and looked up into the window with silent shock as the explosive beneath his feet gave its beeping alarm that it had been triggered. In the next second the lone soldier was little more than a pink mist drifting in the breeze. Fire rained down around them from one of the towers that had yet to realize that they had been defeated, catching blistering skin that fell to the lifeless grounds as ash. Screams and gunfire echoed from beyond his view as an angry rumbling in the Earth's crust gave birth to gnawing gashes that swallowed anyone unable to outrun their reach. What a glorious battle it had been. But at what cost had the war really been won?

"Hey, check this out," Peter called. He had plucked a glass vial of Whitlocke's corrupted formula free from a fallen soldier and waved it about carelessly.

"Jesus," Sylar flinched at the sight as though his comrade were twirling around an active sample of nitroglycerine. "Be careful with that! Damn it."

"How did this not break?" he laughed, tossing the vial up into the air and catching it just to watch Sylar squirm. On one toss the glass container slipped through his fingers to surely shatter on the floor and release the toxic green fluid within. In a split second decision Sylar threw his hand out towards the vial, tearing open a swirling vortex that swallowed the weapon into oblivion. Withdrawing his hand closed the rift.

"Where did you get that little trick?" Peter half-asked, half-snarled. Sylar grimaced for the blunder when he saw the telltale darkening in the other man's eyes. The hunger had come to call. "How long have you been keeping that from me?"

That's not the only thing I've been keeping from you. Peter raised his hand to charge a pulse of energy which was easily deflected by a flick of Sylar's wrist to blast a searing hole in the wall. "Don't try me, Two-Face," he glared. "We're not as matched for abilities as you think we are." Sylar strung the jingling set of dog tags that he had taken from the fallen Alliance general around his neck and tucked them beneath his shirt with his own. Peter and the others would see the action as that of claiming a trophy of sorts, but in reality it was a final motion of respect that his tags not be taken by anyone who couldn't acknowledge the sacrifices that had been made. They would be returned to whom they rightfully belonged and laid to rest in peace.

"You're right," Peter grinned so that the scar neatly splitting his face in half crinkled around the eye that it ran through. "We're not." In a flash his body morphed into the form of a hulking grizzly bear with saliva coated incisors that gleamed in a roaring mouth.

Sylar didn't even waste a blink at the maneuver. It ceased to be impressive after the first dozen times or so that Luke had done it. He was mildly irritated with the swath of thick drool that had been flung onto his sleeve however, and he brushed it off while giving the growling Petrelli the best "go to hell" look he could muster. Peter charged at him in all of the feral glory that could be managed in such a tight space, snapping serrated lines of glistening teeth all the way. He waited until the last second to merely sidestep the advance and watched as the half-mad grizzly plowed through the weakened wall structure to plummet to the ground below. Two distinctive blasts of land mines echoed up the failing architecture, rippling out into the floorboards beneath his feet which began to buckle towards collapsing under the strain.

Peter teleported back into the room with a subtle pop to spit a hunk of bloodied shrapnel at his feet. "Dick move." Sylar was prepared to give a scathing retort about learning not to run into things headfirst when another space pop disrupted the Petrelli from prying metal slivers out of his arm. "Miranda?"

"I can't stop them all. Not in time. Not like this." He cringed for the wild determination in her eyes; the exact same look that Claire got when she was about to do something irrational that no one would be able to keep her from. Not for the first time he mentally questioned the combination of Gray and Petrelli DNA. The girl had gotten his tooth and nail stubborn attitude with the charge in headfirst mentality, and all on a hair-trigger temper. "I need more power."

Miranda motioned to lay a hand on him, but Sylar moved away from the contact. "No you don't."

She laughed at him callously, almost daring him to stop her. "I'm taking it. One way or another…"

"I'll give it to you," Peter grinned, extending his hand for the ability transference. Sylar swatted him away with a menacing glare.

Like the biblical challenge for superiority between father and son, Miranda reached out to bind her biological father in telekinetic restraints. With her crafted limitations however, the invasion only resulted in an obstinate staring match between them, each exerting their will for mental dominance until she was forced to pull back. A small trickle of light red blood leaked out from a nostril that was wiped away to smear across her cheek. Sylar took a steadying breath to remain strong in the face of the bewildered look she shot at him, appearing as if he had physically slapped her.

Peter leaned back against the window to watch the show unfolding like he wished he could pop a bowl of popcorn before the Superbowl. "He's thinking that you turned out to be a spoiled brat, you know," he chuckled darkly.

"We didn't give up everything to stop Lucius and the old Department so that you could throw it all away," Sylar fumed at the girl. "So that you could be used and manipulated like we were."

"I'm inclined to agree," Peter continued to muse to himself since the other two ignored his jibe.

"Tell me how that worked out for you." Miranda crossed her arms over her chest defiantly with a pointed look out the window to the world crumbling around them. Shrill shrieks of terror filtered out from the growling snare of shifting tectonics. Another rumbling shudder shook them all to the core; the steel skeleton of the building screeching an ungodly banshee's howl of twisting metal as it gave way.

Peter was quick to claw at a warping beam when the window collapsed behind him, leaving the Petrelli to dangle in the wind on the bent bar several stories above the shifting earth. Sylar grappled with what remained of the creaking floor, leveraging his weight with the leg that had been pinned by falling supports to focus on the grip he held on Miranda's hand to keep her from falling into the abyss of air she was hanging out in. A fall from that height would crush her body in a way that she could never survive. "Don't you dare let go," he growled at her when her fingers started to slip.

And then she smiled at him. A smile of wicked intentions that he could see spinning behind her vibrant blue eyes. One way or another indeed. Miranda released her hold on his hand and slipped from his grasp to spread her arms out for free fall. His breath caught in his throat for a moment at the sight of her hurdling towards the ground and certain death. With a calculated blink he teleported free from his position, grabbing on to her in mid-air. Peter felt a pang of mischievous intuition and grinned for the ingenuity of it all. Launching himself from his own impending disaster, he joined the tumbling family. Snatching a hold of Sylar's shirt in just the nick of time, they all disappeared from space and time with a little pop just as the debris they had carried with them shattered on impact with the earth.

September, 2012

Freedom Park as it had come to be known was much more like a large courtyard than an actual park. Situated between a humble cathedral and a rather unique hostel that catered to the influx of "specials", the area had been decorated by the local residents in celebration of finally finding a place they could call home. Lush green grass grew in unimpeded swaths with intermittent patches of fuzzy moss that gave the little hill a cozy checkerboard appearance. Around the edges of a hand-dug pond, bedazzling displays of floral brilliance illuminated the grounds with the most visually intoxicating range of colors imaginable. Stone benches aligned with the creation for visitors to rest on while enjoying the natural beauty, relaxing to the scent of jasmine in the breeze, or contemplating to the gentle splashing sounds of bright golden fish that occupied the waters beneath floating lily pads. The center of the space had been adorned with a fountain; the statue of which, being a somewhat androgynous person holding a floating orb that resembled the planet Earth, had become a memorial for all of those that had been persecuted in a world unprepared for coexistence with the evolved. Sylar had spent nearly an hour unabashedly staring at the statue the first time he had seen its wonder. Others seemed to find some form of hope or unity in the symbolism, but he just wanted to know how the damn thing worked. There hadn't been anyone around to control the floating sphere so there had been an amount of mystery in the strange device. In the end though he had figured out that the thing was made of some ingeniously crafted iron and enhanced magnets set to reverse polarities. Perhaps it wasn't as fascinating after that, but it remained aesthetically pleasing nonetheless.

He took care to shape shift into Claire's form a good time in advance before reaching the designating meeting area so that whomever would be watching for her arrival wouldn't immediately suspect the switch. Strolling down the moonlit paths at average speed for her considerably shorter stature became a frustration in itself when he had become used to traveling in an ability driven capacity, but since Claire wouldn't be using such tools it was a necessity. Sylar took a moment to enjoy the modifications that had been made to the Department issued body suits since his departure; mostly the lack of hindrance by groin chafing that was Mohinder's original design, but also the smoother texture improvements to the fabric that made it feel like a wonderfully snug velour blanket on the skin. They also seemed to be significantly lighter in weight, and the heels of the standard issue boots were reinforced with a blissfully cushioned padding so that they could walk for hours on end as if treading on clouds. But all of that appreciation was a focused attempt to ignore the torture devices known as the thong underwear and the underwire bra. Transforming into a female, nay, a female that couldn't feel pain, had its drawbacks. He just reminded himself with a grin on Claire's face that it wasn't actually a perverted act every time he ran his hands over the buttocks to readjust the foreign string running the crack of his ass. It was still his body after all. Not the real thing.

Sylar reached the park and approached the fountain, cautiously looking in all directions before tugging at the underwire and palming her form's breasts in a futile attempt to make the contraption more comfortable, and then sat down on the cool marble rim with a huff. No wonder she always had a look of annoyance on her face. He would certainly be making a platonic suggestion about the finer attributes of boxer briefs later.

His fingers trailed about in the cool murmuring waters as he looked over all of the names inscribed around the statue's base in a variety of languages, listening to the chirping nightlife and the buzzing of thousands of fireflies that lit the grounds with their twinkling. A few minutes passed in waiting and he glanced down at his wrist watch to see that there were only ten remaining until the cloaked figure had said that Zach would die. Sylar paused when a splash in the fountain's water reflected something shiny in the dim light. It wasn't unusual to find any number of international currencies there, but what he thought he saw wasn't a coin. Taking a risk, he allowed a hum of electricity to flow out of the fingers of one hand, illuminating the water so that the other could reach out to grasp the strange object. It was a copper coupling that he discovered, connecting a thin hose to the fountain's aerator.

Curiosity and the familiar sense of dread convinced him to follow the hose. Sylar traced the path of water around the base of the fountain and out a few meters to where it fed into a stump of plastic piping imbedded in the ground. "You've got to be shitting me," he cursed into the darkness, the words falling surprisingly easily from Claire's cherubic lips.

During the day the scene would have been much more pronounced to someone with his observational skills, but with only the light of the waning moon and flying insects to guide him, he feared that it might have taken too long. The grass around where the piping fed into the ground had been very carefully cut apart and rolled back to cover a particularly soft patch of soil. Since most of the earth was fairly fresh from the grounds' recent cultivation, once the piping had been pushed down and the hose removed, the casual passerby never would have noticed that the space had been disturbed. Or that something had been buried there.

Claire's dainty hands dug into the rich dirt with a masked amount of enhanced strength to help progress. Her nails were dirtied, chipped, and stripped away at the quick, growing back before blood could rise to the surface in the ferocity of the excavation. With only seconds to spare by his watch, Sylar hit something solid. Wiping away the loose soil that remained, he uncovered a Plexiglas box containing a squirming body that was fighting a rapidly rising water content.

He dropped his act enough to employ telekinesis, using the ability to help shift the mass of dirt that still encased the water casket. At the foot of the box the hose tapered into a drip set so that the fountain water had been allowed to enter at a steadily timed rate. Sylar jerked out the tubing and went to work with his telekinetic scalpel to carve out an opening for the boy to escape through. Freezing cold water splashed out of the box and soaked him through but at least the kid came rushing out with it, praising deities, his friend for finding him, and maybe the grass in between pathetic sputters for air.

Clapping echoed out to them from the shadows and Claire's body instinctually whirled around to meet the cause of the noise. Their mysterious cloaked figure approached as casually as an old friend with an air of amusement. "Well played," came the gravely voice. "You passed the test. That means your little friend can go along now." A pale white hand motioned for Zach to be on his way. He glanced at Claire and when she mouthed a "go" at him, he didn't need to be told again. He probably had the most sense out of any of the other D.S.R.E.C. idiots that Sylar had encountered. There wasn't any kind of narcissistic hero complex sitting around in that one. He just wanted to get the hell out of there and was perfectly alright with letting himself have that.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't your test to pass. I do believe that I asked for Claire Bennet quite clearly. And from what I could tell from her picture, she wasn't a six-foot tall man lax on shaving."

Sylar tilted his head to the side, reaching out with Parkman's telepathy to try and read how his disguise had been seen through so easily. The irritating buzzing sensation returned with the vengeance of a thousand pissed off hornets trapped in his skull. No matter how hard he tried to push beyond the numbing barrier there was not a single trace of thought to be gleaned from the man.

"You'll find that your abilities do not work on me," he gloated from under the cover of his hood. Sylar gave him a sideways smirk in preparation to challenge that theory. He lifted a lethal finger and commenced to slicing… a portion of the cloak and what looked like a black shirt beneath it. He tried again with a little more force, and got the same results. A fully charged lightning bolt, fireball, shattering, sound blast, and seismic shock later yielded little improvement. He couldn't dampen the use of abilities like the Haitian, but continuously attacking him with them earned nothing but the smell of burnt cotton and a bored sigh.

Claire's body walked right up to the stranger without so much as a flinch of reaction. He reached out to touch the figure just to make sure that there wasn't some sort of force field at work and found no resistance. Yet where there should have been screaming and gore, there wasn't a single drop of blood. Not even a paper cut. Even regens bled. Even those with impenetrable skin could have their minds and emotions and memories read.

"Interesting." A long forgotten memory of Parkman's that had been absorbed during their less than involuntary sharing of a mind prompted an epiphany. Matt had once attempted to use his ability against the Haitian and suffered similar results to what Sylar had felt during his invasion of the cloaked person. And during their prior encounter when he had experienced the full bodily numbing effects, he had been reaching outward with multiple mental abilities at once as had become habit over the years. Which seemed to further explain why the rest of the agents had not been affected at all. So long as their abilities couldn't be used against him, or at least were not employed during contact, the foe was unable to harm them back. "A reverse Haitian," Sylar chuckled to himself with little humor.

"Xander Graves." He introduced himself dryly without extending his hand for greeting.

"That's quite an ability. I'd like to see how that works." Maybe he couldn't use any powers against the man, but his then starving hunger coiled to strike with the idea that he didn't really need to. His hand flashed out to grasp Graves by the neck, the other summoning a broken stone from the fountain. Xander was quick to defend himself though and the two men found themselves at a bit of an impasse when nearly equally matched in strength over control of the chuck of marble.

"My fight isn't with you," Xander grunted.

"That's funny. You probably should have thought about that before trying to take Claire." Graves jerked on the arm holding the stone and brought his forehead forward on a collision course with Sylar's nose. They broke apart as he scrunched up the broken portion of his face, sniffing to clear his sinuses with a hiss for the sting. Xander curiously watched the onset of swelling dissolve along with what should have been dark bruising as the split in the skin over the bridge of Sylar's nose sealed to a close.

"You defend a woman that has dedicated her life to chasing you - to arresting you…" Xander pulled his hood back to expose his face in the moonlight while he mused over the possible implications of such actions. His pale white skin was almost translucent with a myriad of blue veins networking beneath the surface giving his already gaunt appearance a deathlike quality. Dark circles haunted the shade of his eyes further accentuating the hard, angular features that could be seen around the overgrown mop of untidy black hair that fell in his face. He was young. Sylar guessed him to be barely out of his teen years but was hard-pressed to say for sure by the sharp wit lurking in the black depths of his eyes and the hardy musculature of his shoulders.

"Has the Boogeyman developed affections for his huntress?" A low rumble of a laugh for the absurdity of it all escaped him, rolling his eyes over the stars above, and exposing a set of monstrously sharpened canines.

"Don't over-analyze it." Sylar's grip on the jagged piece of marble tightened so that it cut into the flesh of his palm. Keeping a perfectly placid air about himself he continued to dissuade the assumption. "I just want the pleasure of ripping her apart to myself."

Graves laughed again, not truly believing the claim, and pulled his hood back over his head to hide his face. "I imagine we'll be seeing each other again, Sylar. Very soon." He walked away without turning his back on his enemy and disappeared into the night.

Sylar let the rock fall wondering what he had really gotten himself into. That had been the second person that day to have come to a conclusion about his relationship with Claire after running to the rescue. Not exactly his idea of convenience in a life that he had opted to live on the wrong side of the line. He should have known better. Should have realized that all she would bring to his life was chaos from the first night that he had met her and been thrown off of a damn roof for it. Cursing himself for his weaknesses, he retreated back to where the girl in question was still waiting because while he had fought to let her go, she wasn't willing to reciprocate.

"I spy with my little eye something… green."

"Grass."

"This game sucks."

"Yeah it does." West picked at the pebbles stuck in the bottom of his shoe being absolutely bored out of his skull.

"Do you think she's ever going to shut up?"

"Nope." Alex rolled over where he was reclining in the grass to see the helicopter steadily rocking back and forth. Claire continued to incessantly hurl herself at the door, spewing obscenities without a moment of rest since she had been locked in. "Kind of feel sorry for Mel though. I think she got stuck in there with her."

Alex chuckled in response. "Yup." His stomach growled and he groaned for the absence of the meatloaf that he had signed on for. "Where the hell did Kyle go?"

"Don't know. Don't really care," West sighed.

"Dude." Alex perked up to stare off into the darkened distance. "Did you hear that?" They both climbed to their feet in anxious anticipation of someone approaching. The raucous snapping of twigs under foot and clumsy steps announced that the visitor was neither Sylar nor their previous attacker, but after the circumstances that they endured for the day, they were wary of being caught off-guard again. A shadow lurched out from the tree line in their direction, gaining speed as it closed the distance.

"Zach?" West met the shuffling figure with welcome relief. Taking in his excessively damp clothing that clung to his blue-tinted skin in the chilled night air he pulled off his top layer of armor to drape the protective fabric around Zach's shivering shoulders and arms that could not be removed from where they clenched at his sides for warmth. "Holy…" An angrily swollen patch of red lacerations presented themselves on the side of his neck in a semicircular pattern. "Did that thing bite you?"

"I-I-I-I-d-d-do-don't re-re-mem-b-b-ber," he stammered between chatterings of his teeth.

"At least it's not bleeding anymore," Alex mumbled as he probed the affected flesh lightly before having his hand smacked away with a hiss for the wound's tenderness. "Where's Sylar?"

"Sylar?"

"You know. Tall guy. Rescued you. Acts like he has a stick up his ass."

Zach exchanged a thoroughly confused glance with both of his companions. "I just saw Claire." Another loud bang of body meeting metal vibrated the inside of the helicopter accompanied by muffled screams. They all turned to see the blonde pounding her fists against the window with all of her might. West turned back to add to the conversation only to run into another body that hadn't been there before. A perfect replica of the pint-sized fury stared up at him with defiantly crossed arms and a steely gaze from under heavily drawn browns.

"You forgot to mention the part about being a serial killer."

West scratched at the back of his neck nervously for an answer while Zach and Alex traded glances between the two Claires. "This is way too weird."

Sylar's flesh rippled and morphed back into that which belonged to him. In time with the shift, Kyle leapt out from the tree that he had lodged himself into in wait for the killer's return. The wave of a hand without so much as the courtesy of a head turned to look at the falling agent paused him in mid-air with his combat knife drawn to strike. A muffled grunt escaped him when he was unexpectedly dropped to the ground with what may have a little more force than necessary.

"Your Hong Kong E.T.A. is now over by one minute and thirty seconds," Sylar announced. Another wave of his hand from his side ceased a secondary attempt by the agent in his restraints. Curling his fingers into a claw-like position he gained control over O'Keefe's body. "If you would like to skip over the detention center, then I suggest that we work together to clean this mess up," he added with a rather pointed look for the windshield splattered with the pilot's blood.

Focusing with his other hand he ripped the door of the helicopter free from the welds that had sealed it shut allowing Claire to fall out of the opening and land face first in the dirt. He seized control of her body as well, effectively clamping her hateful mouth shut before she could utter any of the acidic words she mentally assaulted him with. "You," he pointed at West, "file the report for lost weaponry. All of your guns and ammunition were lost during the confrontation over Ivy Connors - where all four of you were together. The failure to capture the girl was a result of following protocols to spare the loss of human life. The other two never left the states."

West nodded in timid agreement and did as instructed with a spared look for Claire's well-being. "You," he next pointed to Alex. "Pick up the mess. That chopper had better be in regulation condition within the next five minutes."

"Uh… Okay."

"You." Zach's eyes widened a bit when a deadly finger indicated his turn. "Come here." He took a few ginger steps toward the most wanted villain on the planet unsure of what to expect. Claire was yanked into his side with little finesse. The palm of her hand was slit with as little care, and then pressed to Zach's neck wound before it completely healed over. Her regenerative blood smeared over the skin that slowly swelled with new pink tissue of healing before knitting back together as though it had never been damaged in the first place. "Locate all of your gear and anything that belongs to him. Since neither of you exist here," he heavily implied, "it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have your things here. Or even the two of you for that matter. You'll be hiding under the back row of seats when the Chinese arrive."

"And you." Sylar turned to his living puppets. "You can clean up the blood."

Once they had all been motivated to work as a unit in order to clear the wreckage for their impending inspection, at least one forced into cooperation by the Boogeyman's mental will, the job fortunately went quickly. West occasionally glanced up over the edge of his lap top at the others milling around him while he typed furiously. Zach and Alex kept giving Sylar furtive looks as they shoveled miscellaneous awry items back into the appropriate containers and spaces, making cautiously sure that they were moving at a speed that was to his liking lest they discover the consequences as Kyle had. O'Keefe, obstinate to the very end, had struggled his way into semi-permanent control. Eventually he had become resigned to the fact that Sylar wasn't going to afford him an opportunity to stab him in the back as he always seemed to be looking everywhere all the time, but that hadn't dissuaded him from muttering belligerently under his breath as he was manipulated to move the pilot's dead body into the very back seat where he was covered with a cargo tarp for transport back to the states. Claire, whose argumentative mouth had been clamped shut by a disembodied hand, glared venomously all the while she scrubbed away the blood from the windshield and cockpit controls. Not a moment too soon everything was carefully prepared as the Hong Kong branch of the Department touched down a few dozen yards away.

Sylar shifted into the form of the dead pilot prompting an unsavory hiss from Claire just as the other group of agents ducked out of their matching helicopter to back up their foreign comrades. The team leader, a slight man with a stature possibly more than a foot shorter than Sylar's approached the team in an air of silent confidence that demanded rapt attention. No one knew what his ability may have been, but as he took off his regulation helmet and eyed them all with a sharpness that could wither the bravest of men, they didn't feel up to the task of questioning him. He spoke quickly in his native tongue, directing his speech towards Claire as she was the designated leader of the group, and causing her to reach for some sort of explanation as she had no idea what he was saying and didn't feel as though he had the patience for them to terry. The visage of her deceased pilot locked onto her confusion for a split second before stepping forward as an interpreter. Having the ability to understand virtually any language thanks to Ms. Kane from his time spent working for the D.S.R.E.C. certainly had its advantages.

They spoke quite animatedly for over half an hour, the leader of the Chinese team inspecting everything to regulation detail. At one point the team nervously looked on as the two men appeared to be having a serious dispute but breathed a sigh of relief when they both slowly broke into an easy bout of laughter as though a joke had been shared between them. In the end, they had all saluted one another, and watched the Hong Kong team depart amicably.

"Nianzu, apologized for being late. Apparently the team had a problem getting clearance to enter the country since they had no jurisdiction here." Sylar's face and body bled back into that of his own while he stared Claire down until she averted her eyes. Having gotten his hint of guilt across, he continued in his explanation of the conversational events. "I think they were genuinely sorry for missing out on the action but that won't be enough to keep him from filing the paperwork for an official investigation into your conduct. Politicians on all sides of this are frothing at the mouth to skin you alive over this. This is a neutral zone and you violated a hell of a lot more than one peace accord by coming here." She found herself wondering why exactly it was that she along with the rest of her team, except for Kyle naturally, stood at rigid attention as though they were being berated by a senior officer. His nostrils flared slightly as he paced up and down the line with his hands drawn behind his back, half-forgetting that he no longer wore the uniform himself while thinking of the young squad members as childish cadets worthy of nothing less than his practiced reprimand. "It'll all get swept under the rug of course," Sylar muttered disdainfully, coming to a stop once again in front of Claire. "Under the veil of black ops I imagine."

Claire cleared her throat uncomfortably and gestured towards her left eye. He ceased bearing down on her to peer into the reflective glass of the chopper's side door. Between becoming her in order to face Xander and then the dead pilot, one of his eyes had gotten stuck blue. Shape shifting, while having its perks, also erred on the side of dangerous when used for too long. He grunted and rubbed at the offending iris until it again flooded the appropriate shade of brown. "Get in the helicopter." Lickety-split they all followed the grumbled command and strapped themselves in.

No one else seemed to question his capability as he slid into the pilot's station but the ever precocious blonde leaned forward into the cockpit after glancing about at the others. During the commotion the ponderings over who the hell was going to fly them all home had been forgotten. West could have eventually gotten the job done one at a time, but that was just a bit unpractical. "Do you know how to fly this thing?"

Sylar fiddled with the controls, pressing a red-hued button and flipping overhead switches as he toggled a joystick, examining it all with surreal familiarity. "No. But Nathan did." She instantly frowned at him though she remained silent, settling back into her position. It was with a morose sense that he continued to call upon the memories of the fallen Petrelli that didn't rightfully belong to him, and steered them all back towards the motherland.

Once they had crossed the boundary lines of neutrality back into the Department territory, made the layover in Nanning to Shanghai, and then traded in for an oceanic transport back to the Los Angeles base without detection of the dead body they carried in tow; a minor miracle that Claire presumed to be the product of one of Sylar's telepathic skills, they dumped Kyle off under threat of death if he talked to anyone about the criminal element's involvement over the course of the mission. Zach and Alex also chose to quietly depart in favor of hot showers and crashing face first into standard issue cots at the California D.S.R.E.C. facility which would take care of their redirection back to New York the next day. Much to everyone's surprise, Sylar offered a gentlemen's hand to assist agent Waters to her quarters under the guise of another agent, but they hadn't been able to hear her silent plea that they speak privately. There was a matter of great importance that she needed to warn him about.

She seemed to be pleasantly amused at the bravado with which he stalked the halls at her side. She felt the subtle air currents of an exaggerated swagger drift over her skin and internally smiled for the imaginings it conjured. At the door to her room for the evening, Melanie purposefully lingered in his presence when he wished to disembark. Sylar watched her blind eyes roll behind the adorned cover, almost pensively waiting the hunger's call for her ability, when she motioned for him to come closer than the respectful distance he had kept between them. Somewhat hesitantly he followed the demands of her wagging finger until she could whisper into his ear that she had something he needed to see. "I told her she would save the wrong one."

Before he thought to avoid the motion, the all-seeing agent grabbed his arm. Flashes of faces and places in times that had yet to pass raced through his mind in fractured sequences, rippling and being overwritten as quickly as they came. There wasn't any sense of cohesive order to the jumble of images or sense of time frame to be felt. Decisions were still being made. The complete future was still being written as he saw it. But what little was decidedly sure, was more than a little disturbing.

He recognized the world falling in to place around him as New York City, but the once mesmerizing metropolis had become a battleground of apocalyptic proportion. Low flying military jets zoomed overheard where towering skyscrapers had once stood in all of their shining glory, swooping in until nothing but the deafening roar of their engines filled the air. Machine guns fired heavy caliber bullets in dense spray patterns at fleeing targets whose bodies joined the street carnage riddled of steel and stone. Gas canisters were deployed, detonating on impact to catch any survivors that couldn't escape the lethal green fog.

One of the few stragglers equipped with gas masks darted out from the cover of a collapsed tower to toss an I.E.D. into the tracks of a patrolling battle tank. The explosion violently ripped the lengths of ribbed steel from the combat vehicle which managed to launch an artillery shell directly into the half-crumbled building behind Sylar before rolling on its side with the force of the blast. Debris was showered over the area as commandos exited the hatch of the tank with their guns blazing, successfully falling the original attacker and his accomplices.

Tripwires were strung about passages too narrow for armored vehicles, connecting a sea of land mines that few dared to traverse. One unlucky soul had daftly gotten himself tangled in the last strands before freedom. He gave a heart's beat pause to look directly at Sylar with knowing in his eyes before a series of blast waves sent shrapnel and pink mist spiraling in all directions, nails, glass shards, and other improvised items of deadly nature imbedding themselves in any surface that stood to stop the trajectory.

A platoon of soldiers marched down a side street towards the last remaining fortress in the distance with precisely synchronized steps designed to disguise their numbers. Members of the opposing faction that impeded their progress were swiftly cut down in a hail of abilities. Flames erupted from inside one of the dilapidated structures they passed by and a force field burst into life to protect the unit from more projectile damage. Another troop came to join their ranks, swatting enemies away with controlled doses of seismic activity.

All motion seemed to slow and come to a perfect stillness though when an angry rumbling in the earth growled beneath their feet. Manhole coverings flipped into the air from intense pressure changes. Screams could be heard in the distance as a tidal wave of water came crashing into view to swallow everything in its path. One of the passing jets did an awkward barrel roll in the sky from dysfunctional instruments before plummeting into a nosedive that ended in an explosion that rattled his rib cage. Instinct demanded that he run, but fear born of helplessness absolute held his feet firmly locked in place. Concrete rose and split to release surges of boiling hot steam into the atmosphere. Beyond that he could see an enraged rip opening the ground, tearing a voracious scar across the flesh of the world that widened with an ungodly screech. In the distance the fortress that he had seen looming over the horizon quaked and crumbled to be engulfed in the ever expanding gorge.

With his ears still ringing and his heart surely in danger of arrest, Sylar dropped to his knees. He coughed and choked in the fresh air that somehow still tasted acidic in his mind. "It's coming," Melanie whispered to him at her feet before turning in to her quarters without another eerie word.

Sylar all but ran from there. He had seen futures heavily featuring annihilation before. A few had even been by his own hand. But the level of destruction that the pre-cog had forced into his mind's eye could not have been his fault alone. There was a feel of venomous brutality within the hateful landscape that he had never known; not from the Company, the Shanti virus, Arthur Petrelli, Samuel Sullivan, Brandon Miller, Lucius Kline, or the Department that sought to destroy him… None were comparable in sheer ruthless quality. It was much bigger and grander in scope than anything they had faced before. A new beast that sowed the seeds of war amongst their own until the very Earth beneath their feet surrendered its support.

He stopped at the open bay doors of the barracks to collapse against the framework. He wiped the sheen of sweat free from his brow as he looked out on the sprawling city lights that blanketed the land. Millions toiled their lives away on the asphalt arteries that interconnected the city; commuting to their cubicles under the rising sun, children padding out of their rooms to be ushered to school by hassled parents, dreams being born, and senseless violence shooting others down. A chaotic, teetering balance that few understood and less were aware of. In that singular moment that like the Farnese Atlas, the entirety of the world had been thrust upon his shoulders, Sylar knew that he couldn't save it alone. A few old friends were in order.

"Hey." West had wandered right up behind him while his mind had been so dreadfully distracted and the boy's voice disturbed his reverie. "We're, uh, we're heading out now," he said with an over the shoulder gesture to indicate Claire as his travel companion. "I just wanted to say thank you." Sylar briefly narrowed his eyes at him. Part of him was irritated by the audacity to thank him given their particular relationship in regards to the petulant blonde that tapped her foot impatiently. The other half was slightly surprised because he couldn't remember the last time that he had been confronted with such genuine gratitude for something that he had done. "You really saved our asses out there. You didn't have to, but you did, and I really do appreciate that." He gave the kid a mild nod of acceptance and watched him walk out the bay doors into the fresh morning air blissfully unaware of the bloody fate that awaited them all.

"This doesn't change anything between us." Sylar rolled his eyes. Every warm and fuzzy fiber that had been conjured by West's thankfulness was set on fire and marshmallow roasted by Claire's turn to pick at him.

"I do believe we've already had this conversation," he grumbled, not even bothering to turn around and face the little ball of infuriating spite.

"I just wanted to make sure that was clear." Claire bounced on the balls of her feet uncomfortably in the silence. "What are we going to do with the body?" she humbly asked in reference to their pilot. Since he had cleaned up all the rest of their mess it wasn't much of a shocker that she would expect disposal as well.

"I imagine he'll be having a tragic motor vehicle accident on the way home today." She would never tell him thank you as her partner had. Claire wouldn't allow herself to be in his debt. But however much she reminded him of her equally annoying father as she walked away, the thoughtful she gaze she tossed over her shoulder at him communicated all that needed to be known.

"Parkman! Damn it, Parkman, open up!" Sylar used the full potential of all of his drunken talent to take an extended pull from his rapidly draining whiskey bottle at the same time that he mercilessly banged on his newly Canadian friend's front door. "Parkman, you lazy son-of-a…"

Matt flipped on his porch light causing Sylar to flinch a little under its unexpected brightness before he whipped the door open. He rubbed his sleepy eyes as he stood in his undershirt and boxers for all the world to see. "Sylar, it's three in the morning. What the fuck do you want?"

"Right now?" he laughed in succession with a hiccup. "To come inside. I'm freezing my ass off out here."

The former police officer turned super hero, turned federal agent, turned wanted fugitive and expatriate, flopped down on his sofa with a sigh. His pink-tinged eyes watched the once reformed lunatic that dared to shadow his doorstep at such an unreasonable hour furiously as he wandered about the living room area examining all of the cheerfully framed family portraits. "I need a place to stay tonight."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Why?"

Parkman chuckled incredulously. "Maybe because you woke me up in the middle of the night? Maybe because I'm on the damn FBI's most wanted list because of you?" Sylar dropped into the chair across from him with a depressed sigh. "But mostly, because my wife hates you and she'll kill me if she finds you on the couch again. What's wrong with your place?"

"Department trashed it."

Matt rubbed his face to become fully alert to the situation. "Can't you stay at Edgar's?"

"Meh," he whined. "Tracy is always there, and they're always in the pool, and she hates me too…"

"Pool? What about the -" Matt cut himself off in mid-sentence with a disgusted facial expression. "Never mind. I don't want to know. My kids swim in that pool."

"I know." Sylar snorted with barely restrained laughter. "At least he's polite enough to bleach it and change the water when he knows you're coming." Parkman groaned into the decorative pillow that he pressed to his face in vain hopes of warding away mental images.

"I guess you and Peter are still on the outs?"

"Oh yeah."

"Are either of you ever going to tell us what happened?"

"Nope."

Matt was temporarily tempted to drag the information out of his mind. In his drunken stupor, he may have even had a real chance at trumping the ex-super villain, but something about the desperation lurking in the haunted depths of his eyes tugged at his more empathetic side. He didn't really need the place to stay when he could go anywhere and afford any place he wanted. For whatever reason, Sylar just didn't want to be alone. "I brought our best friends," he wheedled, pulling out a selection of rather large bottles that peeked out from his coat pockets. "Jim, Jack, and Jose…" He waved one of the bottles in a manner that was meant to be enticing before taking another drink. "Come on, Parkman. Don't make me threaten your family."

"Whatever," Matt snorted derisively. "Pass me the Jack, you lush."

"Pushover."

"Lightweight."

They clinked bottle necks in a reluctant toast, Matt savoring the warm flavor of his chosen whiskey, and Sylar contentedly sinking towards oblivion where he could hide from all of his problems if just for a little while. And there, in giddy delirium, he answered all of his unlikely buddy's questions. "I saw Claire again today."

"Oh boy, here we go again."

Somewhere in Central Park, in the heart of New York City, two shadows appeared from thin air with a slight pop of space and time to indignantly smack into the ground at the velocity they had continued to fall. Sylar rolled onto his side with a pained groan as he heaved for breath, Peter pushing himself up enough to spit out the clod of grass and dirt that his face had been shoved into on impact - or at least the versions of themselves from twenty years in the future as it were.

"Get off of me, Two-Face." Sylar shoved his Rebel cohort off the top of him as rudely as possible and clambered to his feet.

"Thanks for breaking my fall," Peter muttered sarcastically. He turned his attention away from brushing himself off when his accomplice failed to make the typical scathing retort. When Sylar didn't acknowledge the push that he sent his direction, merely stumbling a pace or two and continuing to stare off into the distance, Peter too came to study what the other man saw and instantly became just as enthralled. Over the tree line city lights winked at them like welcoming arms of sweet life, bustling noises of a thriving community reaching their ears from the direction of towering skyscrapers that neither had seen standing at attention in years. Straight from the frying pan of a war ravaged future, they had jumped into the fire of the past with Miranda nowhere in sight.

"I almost forgot what it used to be like," Sylar mumbled awe, the first to come around as Peter remained dumbfounded. "We should track down Whitlocke. This could be our chance to -"

"I'm going to find Emma."

"Hang on." Sylar sprinted to catch up with the scarred Petrelli as he power walked away with only one goal on his mind. "Damn it, Two-Face," he griped, catching Peter by the shoulder and spinning him around. "We have a priority objective to meet here."

"You just said it, Sylar. This is our chance to stop the future from happening. I can save her, Sylar. I can keep Emma from dying this time." He spoke with such desperately hopeful conviction that it was reminiscent of the old Peter. Somewhere, deep, deep down beneath the muck and grime of corruption that bright young hero twinkled in his eyes again and it nearly tore Sylar apart to have to say no.

"You know I loved Emma, Peter. It killed me too when she was -"

Out of nowhere a fist collided with his jaw to send him sprawling on his backside in the grass. "You don't get to talk about her!" Peter screeched at the top of his lungs in a blind fury. "I could have saved her, Sylar! I could have saved her! It's all your fault that she's gone!" The jagged line of scar tissue splitting his face neatly in half rippled with the revolving emotions that fluctuated across his features. "You never loved her like I did."

"I know…" Sylar wiped the trail of blood from the healing split in his bottom lip.

"You're going after Claire," Peter sneered, relentless in his assault even as Sylar flinched at the sound of her name from where he remained on the ground.

"Peter…"

"No! You're going after Claire, but I don't get to save Emma? What? She doesn't matter enough? Huh?" Peter gave him a sharp kick in the ribs as he grew more angry by the second thinking about it. "Is she not important enough? Fuck you, Sylar. Fuck you, and fuck Claire too."

He could have stopped him. Hell, he could have opened up a black hole and swallowed the broken bastard into nothingness. But as Sylar rolled back to his feet, watching his oldest friend march away into the darkness, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Beyond all the backstabbings and betrayal, the pain they felt aching in their rib cages where their poor excuses for black hearts continued to beat was all too mutual.

He pulled off his tattered Rebel coat to shake off in the beautifully refreshing night breeze. After years of breathing toxic pollution and acrid, burnt air filled with ash, the smells of home had never been so good. While patting away the dust and charred bits of his pants, Sylar looked up to notice a homeless man that had watched everything in complete disbelief. He traded confused looks from his bottle of swill to the time displaced soldier and back again; taking the last drink before tossing the glass away with a loud clattering clink.

"What are you looking at?"

Desert sands picked up in intensity as the false winds gained force. Peter threw up his arm to protect his face from the blasting power of the coarse grains; the soft flesh of his arm being continuously ground away as it regenerated. Blue lightning illuminated the hazy atmosphere around him in brilliant displays that marked where to go next. Barely above the howling in his ears he could hear savage screaming, almost inhuman in nature. He had no idea where he was actually going, but there was an irresistible compulsion to follow the unearthly signs as his feet sank deeper into the building obstruction of dirt with every step. There was something that needed to be seen.

Claire. If he squinted tightly against the gale and focused through the tears that shielded his eyes he could distinguish her figure in the storm. Her long black tresses whipped and whirled about her face as she stared past him without seeing. On the other side was a stalking shadow that he couldn't possibly mistake for anyone but Sylar.

Seemingly unprovoked, his niece broke away from their holding pattern, lunging her way through the grinding storm to attack him with a fierce shriek. Peter didn't understand what he was seeing exactly. It was Claire. There was no doubt about that. But, there was also something very wrong with her. Something… evil.

They disappeared so that he couldn't follow the pair anymore. Just as suddenly as he found himself lost though, the sands died down and dissipated into a clear view of an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. It was a bit of a ramshackle establishment. Any paint that had been present had been stripped away. Wooden planks from the siding fell off at awkward angles around the shattered window panes. Still, before its untimely demise the place must have been as spartanly plain as was possible for habitation.

A gentle glow began to filter out from the dilapidated structure. Peter took a few cautious steps towards it until he found himself halted by a hand at his shoulder. He turned to see who it was at his side only to be confronted with none other than himself. A rather warped and twisted version of himself as it were, with darkened malice in his eyes and a deforming scar stretching the length of his face, but Peter Petrelli nonetheless. Together they watched the glow from the house increase so that it became blinding. He felt the white-hot heat sear through his being, tearing away at him as the sands had so that his flesh fell away as ashes under the red-tinted sun; and when he opened his eyes again, he stood in the middle of a sea of destruction. The desert floor smoldered, cracking and crunching outward from under foot as a spider web of molten glass.

His doppelganger leaned in to whisper in his ear. "It's coming."

All over the world precognitive dreamers and those tied to them sat bolt upright in their beds slick with sweat from their nightmares. Sylar rolled over on Parkman's couch, pulling a pillow over his head to make it all go away. Claire tossed and turned fitfully, crying out in the night. Peter sat on the edge of the bed to flip on the lamp, careful to answer the phone on the nightstand before it actually rang though he knew the noise wouldn't disturb his wife's sleep.

"Yeah, Mom, I saw it too. It's coming."

To be continued...