Endgame - ...And All That Could Have Been

Participants:

abby_icon.gif anne_icon.gif brian_icon.gif eileen_icon.gif eve_icon.gif gillian_icon.gif helena_icon.gif kazimir3_icon.gif lucrezia_icon.gif rafe_icon.gif sylar_icon.gif trask_icon.gif

Also Featuring:

carmichael_icon.gif elvis_icon.gif

Scene Title Endgame - …And All That Could Have Been
Synopsis Ragnarok
Date January 28, 2009

The sound of groaning steel and cracking stone rises up from the bridge like the horrible roar of some unimaginable monster. A whistling and whipping sound of the suspension cables snapping one by one cracks along with the yawning creak of strained metal and crumbling concrete. Amidst the billowing plumes of smoke rising up from the chasm in the middle of the bridge, screams fill the air.

As the dust cloud begins to settle, the bridge shudders and tilts, pitching towards the north and sending the tractor-trailer's burning remains sliding across concrete until it smashes into the guard rail and flips over the edge of the bridge. The vehicle crashes between the strained suspension cables, swings around like a jacknife and hangs by the front cab. The axels scream with the strain of metal, followed by the rythmic popping of linkages and cabling.

"Help! Help!" Panicked screaming, coming from under the truck, muffled and terrified. Not far from where Sylar was thrown from the blast, the shrill voice of a young girl cries out from between the truck and the railing. At first unseen, but soon visible as a slender and bloodied form, dangling from the burnt and twisted remains of the railing, "Oh god help! Help!" Her legs swing back and forth, kicking wildly forsomething to grab on to, only causing the bent limb of metal she grips to flex and bend further.

A shriek escapes from the young woman, barely audible over the collapsing of the bridge as an entire span of the middle finally breaks apart under the pressure, stone splitting and dropping down into the river as metal cracks and cables break free, lashing up into the air as their tension is released.

Her grip slips, and Eileen falls, striking the side of the truck on her way down, landing on the crooked top of the dangling trailer, sliding down the slick metal as her hands helplessly try to grasp for purchase that isn't found, "Sylar! Sylar— Help! Please! Help!" She calls out for someone who isn't there, she calls out for her guardian angel to swoop in and rescue her.

The bridge shivers and the support columns beneath the Brooklyn side of the bridge crumble from the strain of the weight, and the upper deck of the bridge begins a slow collapse down on top of the lower deck, entire sections of the bridge pancacking the lower floor, which in turn causes the lower deck to strain from the weight, breaking apart and casting itself out into the frozen riverbed.

"Sylar! Sylar!" Gripping by bloodied fingers, Eileen spins wildly in the air from the bumpter of the trailer, her eyes wide with panic, heart racing in her chest. Her hands shake and tremble, legs kicking wildly as blood flows down from a gash n her forehead. As she feels her fingers slipping, blood lubricating her grip, as if her entire body were fighting her own survival, she whimpers out that name, "Sylar…"

It all happens so fast.

She loses her grip.


Twenty Minutes Earlier, in Brooklyn…


The second major blizzard to hammer New York this winter couldn't have come at a worse time, a haze of snow and ice that blankets the streets and blinds vision. The end of the world, heralded by the cold and numbing chill of Mother Nature's wintry caress, paling the world under a white death shroud. Queens, despite all this, looks like a picture out of a snow-globe, an untouched and pristine field of white covering broken concrete and rusting metal. Rows of cars, trapped in deadlocked traffic by the falling snow idly amidst rows of other cars, red tail-lights extending out down a main artery traversing Queens and headed towards the Triborough Bridge bridge, into Manhattan.

Up ahead, a pair of cars lie sideways in the middle of the road, scattered amidst the upturned snow around their tires, are the broken fragments of glass and torn pieces of automobile, a winter accident serving to further back up the already congested roads. Three NYPD officers, dressed in yellow and orange vests, work to direct traffic around the accident amidst the chill of the falling snow, waving cars around while one officer blocks traffic from coming from the opposite direction.

No one knows the world is coming to an end.

But the signs are upon them.

A car in the line of gridlocked vehicles lifts up off of the street, rising into the air like a toy thrown in a tantrum by an over-acting child. The vehicle spins end over end, cartwheeling through the air over the heads of the police officers before it crashes down on its roof, followed by another car flipping up and twirling through the air, crashing down atop another vehicle with an explosion of glass and the wrenching sound of twisting metal. Panic sets in, people fleeing from their cars as another vehicle just rises into the air like it was kicked by an unseen foot, flipping wildly before it smashes thorugh the glass windows of a storefront. The NYPD officers scramble, feet sliding in the snow as they rush for their squad cars.

"Holy shit! Get on the horn, call someone, jesus christ!" The roar of a horn blares out across the road, and one of the officers looks up from his walkie, eyes growing wide as he watches a white semi-truck barreling down the road at full speed across the slick snow, a speeding motorcycle following quickly behind. The white truck blows through the space in the traffic that was blocking its way, where cars had gone flying previously, roaring through the intersection. Behind the wheel, hunched against the steering wheel in Sylar's body, Kazimir Volken prepares his one, last-ditch attempt to secure his victory against the world.

The motorcycle following the truck zips through the intersection, weaving around police officers as Elvis Shepherd roars across frozen streets, rear tire skidding back and forth as she fishtails her motorcycle past fleeing pedestrians. In the truck, Kazimir's dark eyes flick to his side-view mirror, spotting the motorcycle with a downturn of his lips, "Persistant." He spits out, lips downturning into a frown as he reaches out the window, using the mirror as a guide, and flicks two fingers, causing a car door to open in the oncoming traffic.

Adrenaline pulsing through her veins, Elvis skids to the side around the door, leaning into the turn, knee skidding over snow and ice as her motorcycle nearly drops fully sideways. Her foot kicks out, pushing the young woman back up as she snakes between a pair of oncoming cars, their horns blaring. "Persistant and lucky." Kazimir looks to one of the oncoming cars, motioning with one hand over the steering wheel, sending a sudden impact of telekinetic force into the hood of the car, crushing it down and causing the vehicle to bounce across the roar, upending and soaring through the snowy sky.

Eyes wide, Elvis breathes out a deep breath and revs her engine forward, rising up to stand on the pegs of her bike as she jumps up and bounces down on the shocks, causing the lightweight motorcycle to rise up in the air, slamming the wheels into the hood of an oncoming car, windshield shattering as she rides up over the hood, and then jumps the bike off of the back of the sedan, soaring the vehicle through the air and over the crashing car thrown by Kazimir, skidding to a stop in the middle of the roar, giving the engine a good hard rev as she thinks things through.

Elvis lifts her front break, and then its on. The RC explodes foreward in a white cloud, working less like a motorcycle and more like a snowmobile as it dogwalks left and right in the snow. Your not supposed to ride motorcycles in the snow god damnit, right! "Fuck" is all she cares to say, reaching back to produce backup. A mac-10, loaded for bear she is right? With it held firmly in her left hand, she taps the bike up another gear without the use of a clutch. In snow like this, its easy to do things the hard way(by matching engine rpm to gear output speed) by feel. "Hey jackass!" She swings left as the RC begins pulling, careful to stay just behind that trailer's rear bumper for a moment. She lifts the Mac and then, she lets loose. Thirty rounds of .45acp full metal jacket blow into the back of the cab, on the passenger side. Blowing apart glass and seats alike!

Eyes on the road, Kazimir makes a sharp left turn, causing the truck's trailer to jackknife and the entire vehicle to fishtail as the windows explode out. The trailer slams into the side of three parked cars, and the wheels spin, spewing snow out from behind the rig before it gets moving again, heading southwest on the highway. "Motherfucker!" Elvis hisses out, foot slamming down into the ice as she whips her motorcycle around, revving the engine again before peeling out in the semi's tracks to follow it, one hand moving up to her headset, "Helena!" Her voice crackles over the intercom, "I've spotted Sylar — Kazimir — who //fucking-ever. He's in a big-rig, headed — " She halts, looking up and past the semi as it smashes into the front of a car in an intersection, spinning the little sedan around to flip up and over onto the sidewalk. Damaged, the big-rig keeps rolling onwards. Her eyes scan up past the truck, towards the enormous bridge looming on the horizon, "He's headed to the Verrazana-Narrows! Repeat — He's headed to the fucking narrows, going towards Staten Island! Cut him off!"

The motorcycle catches up, snow spraying out from behind the spinning tires as she pulls alongside the vehicle, reaching inside of her jacket to withdraw a pistol. Elvis roars up alongside of the cab, spraying bullets into the truck from the Mac-11, "Motherfucker!" The foul-mouthed anarchist cries, bullet-holes peppering the cab. In that instant, the door explodes open, blasting out like a frisbee towards Elvis' motorcycle. The woman skids to one side, dodging the crashing door with heightened-reflexes, her heart pounding against her chest from the continued amplification of her adrenaline.

When her eyes snap back up, there's Kazimir, leaning out of the truck with one hand raised, "I said, go away." His voice rumbles, a low and growling tone as his fingers twist and contort, puppetry taking control of Elvis' motor functions as she grabs the handles of her bike, and proceeds to navigate it towards a chain-link fence separating the road from the Hudson. Eyes going wide, Elvis lets out a scream as the motorcycle smashes through the fence, sending both her and the bike airborne, flying end over end before sailing off of the overpass and down towards the icy water below.

"Kids…" Kazimir snorts out with Sylar's crooked smile, leaning back into the vehicle as the cild wind blows past the open cab. Up ahead, the arching span of the Verrzana-Narrows comes into view. Licking his lips, Kazimir tilts his head to the side, blowing through an orange and white painted wooden roadblock that reads Upper Deck Closed To Vehicle Traffic. The semi keeps rolling on, no longer constrained by the slow flow of traffic, approaching concrete barricades designed to prevent vehicles from moving on the upper pass. Kazimir's hand raises, fingers curling closed into a fist, then open swiftly, wrenching the concrete blocks up from where they are bolted, sending them flying to opposite sides of the bridge, clearing the way for his truck.

"Nothing good on." Comes the deep gravelly voice, as two fingers go to flick off the radio. A little sigh comes out of the man, raising his fingers back up to his lips. The cigarette is replaced into his mouth before tapped outside the window. Casual as a sunday drive. Except for this is not actually a sunday dirve, nor remarkably casual.

The sleek black vehicle presses its limits as it is expertly maneuvered past the wreckage that Kazimir has wrought. A prolonged gaze is delivered at the would be motorcycle heroine. His lips curl back a little bit as if in a smirk. "Do you mind if I put down the sunroof?"

The vehicle gains ground on Kazimir's truck, the man in the green trenchcoat, reaching into the back simultaneously. The backseat is full of weaponry, high end weaponry. And one automatic weapon is retrieved in one hand.

Rafe glances over at Eileen. "Buckle up."

Rafe doesn't have to tell Eileen twice. Expertly, she maneuvers the seatbelt across her chest and fastens it with an audible click, gray-green eyes fixed on the road as it unfolds ahead of them. No comment about the sunroof — instead, she wrinkles her nose at the man in the driver's seat, an expression of disgust settling over her gaunt features. "I wish you wouldn't smoke in the car," she says, reaching forward to press the appropriate button on the dashboard, "it isn't even ours. Zarek's going to want it back in one piece."

A moment later, the sunroof begins to peel back, spilling wind into the front of the vehicle with such force that the sound roars in its occupants' ears and sends Eileen's long black hair flying wildly about her head. "Do you want me to take the wheel?"

"So you see, Sylar…" Kazimir's lips draw back into a smile, speaking to himself in the cabin of the truck, even as his eyes divert to a figment of his imagination seated in the passenger seat, a bookish looking man in glasses with swept back hair and a button down shirt. "Even if they think they can win, succeed, survive, it is all a part of the illusion of hope." Headed straight for Staten Island, Kazimir's white semi-truck rumbles along the bridge, tires occasionally slipping on the icy and untended upper deck, the jagged skyline of Manhattan visible off of the northern side, along with a slowly rising plume of smoke and an orange glow from the direction of Queens.

"Everyone who has attempted to oppose me, given their faint glimmer of hope, to allow them the comfort of complacency." His composure has cracked, and while he resides behind the calm facade of Sylar's features, the sheer fact that the former serial-killer trapped in his mind has been afforded a measure of freedom this prescient is a sign of Kazimir's control slipping, despite his proclimations to the contrary. "Once I deliver these incubated test subjects to Staten Island, the plague will spread like a wildfire, and this world will be consumed in the overwhelming tide of the great flood." A ghost of a smile, eyes focused on the road up ahead, "This world — my world — will be reborn anew, and I — " Something in his rear view mirror catches Kazimir's eyes, and he turns to confirm it in the other mirror.

"Persistant."

The vehicle tears down the Narrows, and Sylar— Gabriel— whatever, this figment of Kazimir's imagination, seems to grip onto the interior as they go in the oh-so human way people do when a car might just be out of control. As if would help them should it topple over. His hand presses against the glass, mouth drawn into a line as Kazimir, as ever, taunts him.

It's flawed, this time, though. A seam of disruption like a crack in the glass. Sylar can sense it. He turns his head to peer at Kazimir through his glasses, eyes narrowing. "This is going to sound interesting coming from me," Sylar says, voice smoother than the rasper tone of Kazimir's, "but you're insane."

At the word 'persistent', he glances into the rearview mirror as Kazimir does, seeing only what he sees, and his mouth curls in a half-smile, if an uncertain one. "Hope isn't an illusion."

"It's about that point in the car chase scene." The man rattles in response to her.

Setting the car in cruise control, the man rises out of his seat to stand out of the sun roof. Black hair flapping back in the icy wind, his weapon is trained on the drivers window in the oncoming truck. The trigger is pressed down on, as the rather homeless looking man lets out a long flurry of gunfire. In between bursts the man shouts down. "Get us in front then jack it 'round!"

Whilst Eileen leans over to pilot the vehicle, Rafe continues in his rage of bullet firing. A pistol is drawn to accompany the automatic weapon, and gunfire is unloaded on the vehicle as they pass. At the moment the sleek black vehicle is parallel with the truck. The man gives a little smile in greeting, then continues the gunfire.

The vehicle soon overtakes the truck and surpasses it, speeding ahead of the big rig. But it continues on, as if it was racing the vehicle rather than chasing it down. Once it has a substantial lead on it's opponent, the tires start to squeal, as the vehicle is quite literally jacked around to face the truck.

"Hand it to me." The man clips, and as he says so, he starts to ubutton the green trench coat. Eileen hands him the tool which he requested, and Rafe takes it happily. Stepping up out of the sunroof to the top of the now parked vehicle, the man walks down the windshield to the hood of the vehicle. Tossing his trenchcoat aside reveals two things:

One, the man is wearing a very nice, very black suit. Contrasted only by a gray tie, and a pistol sticking out of his pants. On the gun a wolf's head is engraved. The second thing is the thing Rafe holds in his arm. An RPG.

Going to one knee on the hood of the car, Rafe pulls the trigger on the now, very close, oncoming truck.

"I'm back, 'Master'."

The rocket-propelled grenade launches out from where Rafe kneels, corkscrewing through the air like a smoke-trailing snake. In the cab of the semi-truck, Kazimir watches as the rocket streaks towards the front cab, mouth going slack as he raises a hand to try and divert the course of the projectile from the windshield, using a burst of telekinetic force to drive it away, anywhere.

It goes down.

The rocket strikes the ground beneath the truck, exploding in a fireball of concussive force and flames that lifts the front end of the vehicle into the air, propelled forward by its tremendous forward momentum and the velocity of the blast. A tire flies from the front cab of the truck, along with shards of metal and shattering glass. There is a yawning creak of broken steel as the trailer too is lifted up off of the ground before the entire truck twists in the air, slouching to one side as the entire burning vehicle sails over Rafe, casting both him and his car in shadow.

The big-rig sails nearly one-hundred feet through the air, crashing nose-first into the upper deck of the narrows, launching the trailer up-end and over the top of the cab as the entire truck flips upside down, the roof of the trailer smashing into the snow-covered concrete as its aluminum walls rupture and long sheets of metal buckle away from the frame.

A stray tire bounces down across the roar, burning, before it comes to a wobblling stop in front of Rafe. The entire truck is silent, a rolling plume of smoke rising up from the cab, flames enveloping the front of the vehicle before there is another — smaller — explosion, blowing out the engine and filling the front cab with crackling flames that leap up through the broken windows.

The only sound now, is clinking glass and creaking steel.

Being a terrorist? It wasn't something Anne had really thought changed her life all that much at first. There had been all the new people of course, as well as a couple of transportation missions, and the whole bomb thing. But, really? Those things weren't all that bad. But this? Standing dressed up in kevlar and combat boots and gloves and godonlyknows what else, waiting for a mysterious phonecall to leap in with a much scarier guy than any of them? Well. That was all the much different, wasn't it. Not to mention the explosions and other things that were going around now. The weight of the gun at her side felt almost uncomfortable, and despite the quick lesson in how to aim and fire, she hoped it wouldn't come to her having to use it, but. Who knew?

Still, they were going after Volken. Oh holy lord, they were going after Volken.

While waiting for the word, Anne lowered her head and mumbled her prayers, trying to keep her breath even. 'Lord, I don't know if what we're doing today is what you want us to. I never knew your ways well enough to tell, but I don't come before you today to ask for anything for myself.' She raised her hand and wrapped her fingers lightly around the pendant she wears around her neck. 'But I've come to you on behalf of my daughter. Please, whatever happens to us tonight… will you watch over her?' A phone started ringing, and Anne lifted her gaze up again. 'Thank you.'

She exhales once more, before getting a more buissnesslike facial expression. "Okay then, guys. I need everyone to hang on tight. This might feel slightly strange for a moment, but any sensation of pressure is supposed to be there. All it means is that I haven't lost you, and you're not leaving crap behind." She nods firmly to this, and when Gillan's hand touches her face, both women start to glow a soft, dark purple. Anne blinks, straightens up and just grins for a moment. "Now I could get used to /this/ feeling."

With the location given, and the players in line, Anne focuses and pulls on her inner strength, now boosted by Gillan's power as well. All people present, one at a time, get the sensation of something sneaking across their skin, pulling it together perhaps just a little too tight, at the same time as they're locked to Anne. She's holding them tight. Then, they vanish from the room they were standing in, and half a blink later they're standing about fifty metres from an inferno.

It's go time.

There is so much Helena wants from this. The news has filtered to her - Teo, presumed dead. Alexander, captured. the Con Edison team, unheard from. Each and every one of them is a splinter in her heart, echoed by a small voice in her mind chiding her, telling her that each one is her fault, her responsibility. Ethan never really convinced her that Danielle was her fault, her guilt almost guiltily minor, but these people who've committed themselves to battle, each has made a choice, and she convinced them to arrive to it, in minor and major ways.

One way or another it will all be over soon. Either Cameron will be avenged, or Helena and all the others will join him. The Phoenix resurrects from its own ashes, but people do not. Helena feels the pressure buildup from Anne's teleport, casting a final glance at the faces of those around her as she waits for the moment when she is firmly anchored in space on the bridge.

Trask is wrapped head to toe for a blizzard, as he feels the teleportation affect he blinks, never having felt the like before, and then he is somewhere else. His power snaps back on, and he begins moving away from his companions, his rifle in hand he starts looking for targets.

Standing very close to Gillian, the young man casts her a little look, then looks past her to Helena, and Abby. So many people he cares about, some already dying or dead. Including himself. His heart is a flurry of emotions, mostly rage. After the pressure passes, Brian unshoulders the rifle he has brought. Holding it to his chest. He casts a wary gaze to Trask. His lips tugging downward. Then his eyes go wide — the party has already started — and from the look of it ended. "He blew up the truck… Does that mean we can go home?" Brian asks softly, bringing up his rifle anyway. Hey, if anyone's going to make a joke when the world is about to end, it should be him.

Ever seen a healer twitch? Abigails doing that. A tremor in her hand, leg, and ramped up heartbeat is not from fear of Kazimir. It's from the couple caffine pills, four redbulls and two huge cola's that the southern blonde consumed just prior and throughout the day. The kevlar vest under her scooter jacket, she's bundled against the weather and keeping close to the others. her leg bounces up and down quickly, ready, waiting. She's focused on the task at hand, a litany of prayers running through her mind. Prayers for the others, prayers for the fallen, prayers for the island as a whole. Then Anne reaches out and it's go time. Abigail's hand closes tightly around someone elses, waiting, twitching, bouncing, sucking in her breath at the teleporters job when she's gone from where they were to a bridge and cold air whistling about them, snow. She has to check herself at the sight of the explosion, a jerky movement to move forward but stops. 'Where is he?" Immediatly shuffling to trasks outer radius.

"I don't second that," Gillian murmurs as soon as she feels everything pull back together. Somehow— Taxi Cab's teleporting doesn't seem half as bad as that feeling. After sharing a lot of energy with a certain guy who grows other guys, she's already feeling a little winded. The teleportation didn't change that. When they shift once, then twice, she keeps holding on, a glowing hand touching the other woman's face. Only then does her hand drop away, the cold making her wish she had been able to wear gloves on both hands. The fire may just help with that, luckily, even if she's staring, hands shaking a bit. Not completely from the cold.

The glow disappears.

The truck has been blown up. By who? As soon as her ability gets put back in order, she feels the pull again, tries to knot it up. Except for the one closest to her. He might still need it— but she needs to save some for the rest of the team. The hand with the glove on reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a weapon. A glock. Something she took from an apartment before she left. Though her hand isn't near as steady as she might wish.

Behind the twisted heap of metal that was once Kazimir Volken's truck, the sleek little black car idles, its engine purring happily away like a giant kitten. The driver's side door pops open and Eileen climbs out, dressed in her heavy gray pea coat and a form-fitting kevlar vest beneath it. The remains of the truck dwarf her tiny frame as she approaches it, bits of broken glass and ice crunching beneath her boots — as tempting as the urge may be, she doesn't run.

Sylar is in there, somewhere, but so is the man responsible for the death of Zhang Wu-Long, and now Elias de Luca and Doctor Odessa Knutson as well. Her gaze drifts from the carnage to where Anne and the others have suddenly blinked into existence, and she comes to an abrupt stop, absolutely still but for the wind in her hair and the cashmere scarf fluttering at her throat. She recognizes the faces of Abigail Beauchamp, Brian Fulk, Helena Dean — and most of all, for the first time through her own eyes rather than the eyes of a bird — Gillian Childs, though she says nothing to any of them.

What now?

A beckoning hand is tossed over his shoulder at the recently arrived rag tag gang of Phoenix members. "Come on then!" A deep tug is taken on the cigarette before it is simply spit out. "Let's kill the beast."
Gunfire is let out at the cab of the blown up vehicle. Keep him distracted, give him things to do, let him deal with all the bullets and the kiddies then bend him over and stick it where it counts. Bleed this bastard dry for all the pain he has caused, for all the pain he would have caused. The bullets continue to fly at where he imagines Kazimir will be emerging from the wreckage. Another look is cast at Eileen.

"Princess, get down!" He commands.

There's something sinister on the wind.

While the rest of the world seems to be going snowblind, there is a countermeasure about to be introduced that might ready and willingly bathe the world in shadow if it could. Rafe's bullets let fly but there's another brand of buzzing to be heard now, whizzing by in the opposite direction. Return fire. But, wait, no - something else. Something sinister.

The first one zips by his ear - a near miss. The second grazing his cheek with a sharp sting. What is it that Shakespeare said about sorrows again??

When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions.

And that is what Rafe's facing now… a battalion of buzzing and furious darkness. A cloud of wicked wasps directed his way just as sure and swift as any bullet. And their source? Not some mysterious hole in space and time but from beneath the heavy cloak of a very corporeal shadow now revealed in the brilliant blaze of the inferno that was a semi-tractor trailer. Just on the outskirts, in the fringes of the fray, a hooded figure draws forth an angry army of black creatures of cleaving wing from the depths of her heavy-hung shoulders and drowning hood.

Amidst the patter of gunfire, amidst the crackling pop of the burning wreckage, a low harmonic resonance begins to build. A rumbling sound, like the hum of metal vibrating against metal, and an instant later, the passenger side door of the rig's cab explodes off of its hinges, flying up into the air to whirl around in a vicious arc before smashing down onto the street with a clatter of snow. "Persistant. The voice-modulation Sylar has not used since his killing sprees makes his normally soft, gentle tone seem so much more feral and monstrous. It suits Kazimir, suits the monster he has become.

But knowing that Kazimir Volken is a monster, and seeing what he has become are two wholly different things. As he rises up from within the belly of the burning wreckage, Kazimir looks less like a man, and more like some horrible creature. The first sign of his presence is a darkening of the area surrounding him, tendrils of black, ashen fog snaking their way out of the wreck to ten feet around him. Amidst the umbral cloud of leeching energy, something no longer resembling Sylar climbs out of the fiery debris. He wears the tattered and smoking remains of a long jacket, now burned through and through, along with his torn black dress shirt and slacks. His skin, seen through the holes in his clothing, is scaled, covered in layered plates of biological armor like some gray-brown armadillo hide. His face too is covered by these layered plates of organic armor, all but his black pits of eyes visible. Standing on the burning wrekcage of the tractor-trailer, pieces of the truck rise up around Kazimir, held by unseen telekinetic hands, whirling sharpnel of steel spinning in the wind. Rafe's bullets are deflected away from Kazimir's body by a crackling field of a white telekinetic forcefield, whizzing down and around Sylar's possessed form.

"Persistent dead, clinging to a hope that cannot be. Dark eyes focus around the group, two fingers moving, flinging Eileen to the side and out of his way like a ragdoll, but only tossing her down to the snow. He had made a bargain with Hugin, with Tamara for her safety, even in his insanity he seems to uphold his agreements.

Helena.

She catches his eye, the young blonde girl that had seen him siphoning the life of one of his first victims in New York, a member of Phoenix from Ethan's intelligence reports. "Begone." Raising one hand, blue-green pinpoints of light flicker to life on Kazimir's fingertips, and four sharp rays of laser energy streak out towards the leader of Phoenix.

Boots can be heard clicking on the ground at a run; midnight hair can be seen from under a hood that is white. The figure, presumably a woman breathes softly as she charges for Helena. The woman wears a pure white dress that makes it nearly impossible to see her in the blizzard. Covering the dress to give her warmth is a long white coat with the hood concealing the woman's face.

When the jacket moves away from the dress two pistols can be seen strapped to the woman's white leggings covered legs because of how the dress is cut for easy movement. The figure can be seen coming from the side of the bridge, moving fast.

Weaving in and out, the woman in the white dress flying tackles Helena to the ground before the laser can hit one of Phoenix's leaders. The laser hits Helena's helper instead in the shoulder, a hiss can be heard as the figure falls with Helena and rolls to a crouch facing Kazimir.

The hood has fallen back and a soft and clear voice rings out for everyone to hear but these words.. they are /just/ for harbinger of death. "Life… is but a walking shadow… Kazimir." The familiar light grey colored eyes to the various Phoenix members that know her and Gillian are narrowed on the man that is using Sylar's body. The woman places a hand to her shoulder and presses it against the blood, luckily the laser just grazed her and didn't actually cut all of anything. The woman looks at Kazimir with a tilt of her head from her crouched position. Nothing else is said for the moment as Eve takes several breaths.

My, many familiar faces. Sylar says nothing to Kazimir. Gillian. Eileen. How is a good question, one he hasn't the luxury to answer. Locked in Kazimir's skull, Sylar watches as the horde of insects some buzzing in like a cloud, the swarm as audible as it is visual. Sylar calls out, without a voice, not even a telepathic voice. The silence is telling, to Kazimir, that something is bound to happen, the same steely concentration, like a slip of ice down his neck, that occurred when Sylar summoned Wu-Long's ability to bring about the darkness. This time, he calls on something different.

On the coasts of Staten Island, seabirds of various shapes and sizes and colours puff up their feathers for warm, where they roost on the jutting rusted metal hulls of sunken ships in the boat graveyard. Then all at once, they launch into the air with a cacophony of wings beating against the air, rising up in a flood of brown and white feathers. They go to the bridge like so many solders. A flock in the distance as they navigate through the blizzard, unnoticed for now.

Holy shit. Poo. Crap. Inverted monkey gonads. Anne is almost bouncing on her feet, moving away from Trask so as to be able to use her own abilities. Kazimir comes out, or Sylar, or.. a scaly monster thing, shoots Helena. Who is saved by an "..Angel." Or maybe not. Really, it doesn't matter. Anne glances around for a short moment at the chaos around her, before she leans forward, takes a few steps and then starts running to the side. Not towards Kaz, or one of the others, as one might think, but to the side. Then, once she's out of Trask's range?

She vanishes.

Only to reappear a moment later inside most of Kazimir's defenses, the flying truckparts and such. However, the shock to her system once she lands in there is a bit too much, and she cries out in pain and alarm, only to be hit a moment later by flying shrapnel, sent flying backwards and.. she flickers again. Lies on the ground a bit further off, bleeding from several cuts, coughing, wheezing and trying to get her breath back. She also seems.. a bit unstable. There one moment, gone the next. Then there, only to be missing once more.

If Eve thinks Helena's going to be grateful, or that she somehow thinks it absolves her of any of the multiple sins that Helena holds against her, Eve will be in for, as Shannon Doherty says, some 'serious fucking disappointment'. She darts for cover, expecting the others to do the same until they can figure out how to salvage things. Over their comms, she says breathless from effort, "That truck…it's like the one we found in the warehouse!" They need to keep Kazimir distracted until Anne can try the jump again, so Helena concentrates, and wind starts to swirl and flutter snow flurries in the form of something rather like a cyclone - snowclone? - in miniature, right in Sylar/Kazimir's vicinity. Hopefully distracting enough.

Glancing down at the wasp that grazed his cheek, it's more like an annoying child tug at his sleeve rather than anything of a threat. His glance shoots to the mysterious woman for just a moment before flicking his gaze back to Kazimir. An oncoming swarm of bees, Eileen being thrown to the side like a doll. His lips pull back. Time for immediate action. The gascap for the idling vehicle is opened with a snap of his wrist, and with another flick of motion, his grenade is shoved into the tank of gas. Leaping away from the vehicle, Rafe goes to Eileen's side, on one knee.

The heat of the sudden explosion barely affects his facial features as it engulfs the swarm of bees in flame and wrecked car parts. It also provides a good cover for Eileen. "Stay down." He murmurs.

Sorry Kain

Back on his feet, Rafe approaches again, frowning at the appearance of Anne. Come on kids, be careful. A few bullets are let out, more to get Kazimir's attention rather than do any harm to him. "'Oy! Fucker!" The man yells as he approaches. "I 'ave something for you!" With his free hand he reaches into his coat to pull out a sullied red sack of cloth. Undoing it he throws it on the icy ground before him, sliding out is a severed hand. "Do you know whot my name is, you dumb fuck?!" He yells out, staring down the devil at the gates of hell.

"My name is Ethan fucking Holden. And I'm 'ere to tear out your bloody fucking 'eart." If that's not distraction, what is?

Sergei takes his position, on the catwalk with his rifle and they years of military and police force training come into this moment. He lines up his target for a perfect head shot, firing off two rounds. The first hits a barrier a few feet in front of Kazimer a shimmering of telekenitic force field crackles and shimmers, the second hits the same barrier again, in exactly the same spot — punching through. The bullet whistles through the air, though luckily for Sylar, Kazimir saw the disturbance of the first shot hitting the field and turned at just the right moment to see what it was, the second bullet sketches itself in a long thin burn across his cheek, missing the center of the forehead by a split second. The muzzle flash is easily picked out by Mr. Volken in the snow.

Bullets, bee's, screaming men about how they're Ethan and here to kill them, lazers heading for Helena only to be saved by …Eve? Abigails got the vest on but she's not taking chances. Down she crouches, finding a girder to hide behind, keeping between Trask but not so near and Gillian, waiting for her part in this all. She's got a gun on her, but she's not about to use it. "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted" Her voice probably not audible to anyone not near her due to the noise.

Lasers. Lasers are very bad. Gillian ducks down with a yell, cause she's standing close enough to Helena to be worried about it. She saw those lasers cut apart a Company agent into pieces— she knows what they're capable of. And then someone comes barreling out of nowhere. "…fuck," she says softly, as she moves to follow after Helena, looking back at Eve in sheer surprise. "Nice timing." At least someone will be grateful to the woman, even if— the first thing that runs through her head after 'oh fuck we're all dead' is 'who the hell is going to look after Chandra when we all fucking die now?' Poor cat.

And here the beatings of wings that make her mildly curse again, and she sends a little energy in the direction of Helena, to assist what what she's doing, while Anne worries about… getting Sylamir close enough to do Edward's plan. And those fuckers better not kill him first.

Not for the first time, Eileen feels a familiar pull — even from where she's laying prone in the snow, the breath knocked from her lungs by the impact of her body connecting with the ground, she is as innately aware of Sylar reaching out with his ability as she is her own. They are, after all, one and the same, mirrored in the bond shared between them — the bond that was established here on this very bridge, at Kazimir's own bequest.

She does as Ethan commands and does not rise from the snow. But elsewhere, as the seabirds rise from the perches along the coast of Staten Island, so too do the pigeons and crows of Manhattan, summoned from their roosts by a disembodied call that cries: Come.

I feel you, she says, let me lend my strength to yours.

"It's what I do." Eve says softly and she grabs her gun from the holster, she offers a small grin to Gillian and nods her head. "Be careful." She says and whether Eve has left or whether she is still there in the shadows but waiting for an opportunity to take again is left unknown.

Lucrezia has no special bond. No shared strength. Not anymore. She's been left with nothing but grief, rage, and the empty echoes of old emotions she'll no longer be needing. The miraculous resurrection of 'Ethan fucking Holden' right before her very eyes comes as nothing short of bitter revelation, especially once his gauntlet is thrown. The creature that Kazimir has become may not recognize the trophy tossed into the snow but she knows damn well who suffered for the sake of its earning.

The loss of one legion barely registers as anything more than a mere pinprick when held against the sheer agony of the damage she's already endured tonight; silent witness to calamity, disaster, and death. "«I'll fucking kill you!»" she shrieks in Sicilian from beneath her voluminous hood. Rafe - Ethan -whomever. Suck bees. Lots and lots of angry African bees. I'm full of bees, who died at sea. It's a wonderful life.

(Bees that, coincidentally, really happen to hate this cold weather… some of whom don't manage to last more than a minute outside of the warm confines of her enveloping cloak.)

Meanwhile, somewhere, still in the shadows, another army musters in ranks… eight-legged freaks awaiting their cue before beginning to pour like a black wave over the snow, marching toward whatever it is that Kazimir has become…

Too many distractions, too much everything. Kazimir's focus is directed in so many areas he can hardly concentrate. His eyes narrow, jaw clenching tightly as the bullet skims past his head, a woman nearly teleports in and then flickers away, gunshots, screaming, women in white, birds and Ethan.

Kazimir slouches down, hands shaking as he breathes in ragged and choking breaths. His eyes, frantic, scan around his surroundings, a battered and broken house with thrown furniture. Nearby, a window is shattered, and his breath catches into a hissing choke, "No." Standing in the doorway of this shattered kitchen, Sylar's arms are folded, dark brows lowered. With his focus so drawn, Kazimir's mental prison has shattered, giving his once enslaved host some semblance of movement.

Outside of this yellow-painted kitchen, there is nothing but blackness, a churning and dark voice of swirling shadows and whispering voices, where the edges of the kitchen crumble away into gray and broken plaster and wood, floating in a void of tormented voices. "You — " When Kazimir goes to look for Sylar again, he is not there. Instead, a young girl, perhaps ten years old stands where Sylar should be. Pale, blonde, a young and adoreable girl with a quirky streak of white in her hair, eyes a soft shade of pink like an albino. "No." Kazimir hisses, covering his mouth with one hand. The girl tilts her head to the side, and Kazimir looks away, "Gabriel!" Panic, he uses the wrong name, "Gabriel do not do this! Stop!"

This horrifying figment of his imagination, this memory, this distorted and incorrectly remembered sequence of events horrifies Kazimir, reminds him of his humanity, of his fragility, and reminds him of his past failure. The girl approaches his side, looking up to him, and the skin around her mouth begins to rot. Flesh peels, turns gray and ashen, tendons dry out and lips curl back revealing teeth and bone. "NO!"

"NO!" Kazimir spins around wildly in the physical world, a battle fought on all fronts now, both internal and external. One hand flings in the direction of Sergei, five blue-green lasers streaking across the bridge towards the sniper. Three of the lasers slice through the support cables of the suspension bridge like a hot knife through butter, sending them lashing in every direction, girders sliced through, causing a split and a crack in the support structure as the bridge groans loudly. But the lasers directed at Sergei, these beams flicker and sputter when they get within the ten feet surrounding the negator, harmlessly disappearing before reaching him.

"Ethan!!" The name is snarled out, this all has to be Ethan's fault. "I will end you!" The voice modulation rumbles inside of Kazimir again as the armor-plated man leaps from the burning wreckage of the truck, landing on the street to rush towards the Wolf in sheep's clothing. Fenrir, Ragnarok, the irony is not lost on Kazimir in any way. But amidst all of the insects moving towards Ethan, Kazimir spots the spiders crawling towards him, the vicious and lethal spiders that Lucrezia commands. It can't be betrayal, impossible, this has to be a part of her plan — It has to be.

Kazimir's hand moves in a sweeping gesture, and a haze of cold mist rises up from his hand, freezing the ground in thick sheets of ice, ice that soon gathers around Ethan's feet, sticking his boots to the deck of the bridge, shooting pain up his legs as the somehow changed Wolf begins to painfully freeze from the drop in temperature below, even while Lucrezia's deadly bees swarm in from above where the temperature is not nearly as arctic.

It is a drop in temperature Helena can feel in her bones, in her heart, and in her very blood. Not because she's cold, because the weather-witch is never any temperature other than comfortable. She can feel it, because she can control it.

Someone needs to be taught a lesson in meteorology.

Thank you, Kazimir will only barely hear, directed to the original bird whisperer. It's a coming storm, never mind the broiling clouds and the thick blizzard that turns the air to ice. Blots of grey, black and dirtier white approach the bridge, the sound of cawing of different tones. And in the next moment… it's a Hitchcock film all over again. The masses of crows, pigeons and seabirds flood the area, and it's damn loud, a tide of avian cavalry winding through the bridge's structure and the people on it. They're gone again, in a flash, pinwheeling around the scene once they've made their presence very well known. Wasps are caught in beaks, the swarm forced to disperse, although under the Bug Queen's control, no doubt they'll manage. Sylar's birds won't die for him.

And inside the sanctuary of their shared mindscape, the little girl tries to smile up at Kazimir, at her father, but of course, she can't. She doesn't have the face for it. Eyes wide, she lifts a hand as if wishing he would take it, and Sylar's voice cuts like a knife through the mental scenario.

"Hurts, doesn't it," he murmurs, stepping out of shadows. There's the sound of the rattatat of distant gunfire from another time and place, and paper, burned, drifts through with the scent of smoke and warfare. They catch Kazimir's attention, turn his head. "To know that everything you touch turns to ash."

Sylar stands at the mouth of a Belgium library, arms folded. There's a scenario playing out behind them, a familiar one, between father and son. Soft German prayer whispers through. "You died a long time ago, Kazimir."

Ow. Ow. Ow. Whatever that black foggy stuff was, it hurt more and in a different way than the flying schrapnel. The latter is more like a kind of pain Anne had felt before, familiar if highly distracting. But the fog? It felt like the very essence of her was being sucked out through her pores. Not something she'd recommend, even for the very fat. Or something. None the less, and despite flickering all over the place so as to avoid getting shot by laser and other unpleasant things, Anne bites her lip and steels herself for another go around. This part? Kind of dangerous. Kind of insane, even.

For fricks sake, she was going to try to wrestle with Kazimir Volken. This is not sane. No. Not at all.

Standing up on her feet she shruggs off best she can, flickering a short distance so as to be out of his sight, and then the tiny darkskinned woman goes for him again. This time, she's prepared for the sudden loss of energy, though she still winces when it hits her. Pain. She steps forward and wraps her arms around Kazimir from behind, holding on tight. It almost looks like she's giving him a hug there, in the middle of fire and gunshots and all manner of crazy things, though of course that's not quite it, though he's sure to feel the warmth of her seeping through his clothes. Instead, he'll feel it now, Kazimir. The tightening of his skin, the moment when he's locked to Anne, and then they move. They shift.

The effort on her part is immense, pulling him with her despite the rapid loss of energy. Thankfully, she doesn't have to carry all that junk he's flinging about in the air, though possibly it gets a couple of issues doing the flinging thing ones the boss is out of the way. Unless, of course, it was flying up there on its own or something. Either way, Anne appears /exactly/ outside Trask's range of nullification, with a sense of spatial awareness that very few people are likely to be able to match. There, she lets go and shoves him with what little strength she has left, that last step in, before she really does go down herself. Just enough energy left to breathe.

Helena's night is full of fail. The pinnacle of which is not even her unexpected rescue, but rather, the sudden realization that Ethan, for better or for worse, is if not on Team Phoenix, then avidly on Not-Team-Kazimir. And he's a rook on the board of this great game in which the stakes are billions of lives.

And so to save the rook, the White Queen must counter the Black Queen's move.

The crack of thunder that results when Helena begins to swap out the warmer air keeping the bees alive with the frigid cold front in miniature that's slowly turning Ethan some interesting shades of blue is relatively muffled. But the ice will melt, and Ethan's lungs will breathe easier, and Lucrezia's bees will start to drop like well, err, flies, from the cold.

Yes well he may be immune to laser beams, mostly because Sylar/Kazimir loses control as it enters his sphere of influence. Unfortunately whipping metal cords severed by laser beams are still dangerous. He rolls away from them. He rolls toward where Anne lets Sylar drop. He crosses the last few feet and reach down to grab the serial killer by the shirt, trying to take advantage of the post teleportation and loss of power confusion. He has lost his rifle somewhere, but that's ok, he still has his big Russian fist. Five Fingers of Frozen Fury ball up and rear back, to come to a landing in Sylars face, trying to knock the Kazimar out of him.

Rafe, the wise wolf. The cunning wolf, who planned out his betrayal to perfection. Yancey, his loyal hound who took on his face with the help of Doctor Bianco's ability. The man who's life was sacrificed so that Ethan may break the chain, take Tyr's hand, and devour Odin.

But there are a few setbacks, the first being a swarm of African bees and the inability to move. His breath catches as his lower body freezes. He would be forced to his knees, but the ice won't allow him the movemement. And so he's helpless when the bee's come. His lips remain tightly shut, he won't yell, will not even grunt. If he is to die by bee, then so be it:

But then there are birds, and frozen temperatures, then warming temperatures. The stings of the bees are still throbbing at his neck, though the insects fall dead at his knees, or eaten by the swarm of miraculous birds. Ethan falls forward onto his hands to support him as he takes a sharp breath, filling his poor lungs with that warm air.

His hand slowly reaches up to take the weapon from his pants. The pistol with the Wolf. His eyes go over to make sure Eileen is still safe, then his eyes move to Lucrezia…

So much is going on once again. Gillian's starting to think her life would've been so much easier if she never met Sylar— never met Vanguard— never met Phoenix— All of which led her right here. The bridge is getting rather dangerous. Though she's out of the way for the most part, something flies out of nowhere and hits her cheek, causing blood to well up immediately. She lets out a curse under her breath, then looks across at Sylar. Gabriel.

"Gabriel!" she can't help but yell when she sees him get moved. God he better be okay when this ends… She's still wearing his coat. Over a thick black sweater. Over a bullet proof vest. That won't protect her too much if the god damn bridge collapses thanks to lasers.

She starts to stand up. That will be their cue. She looks over at Abby. They need to get closer soon. Even if she's limping a little now. A small touch will make all of it go away, though. And she's getting closer to do just that, reaching out with her ungloved hand.

"Come on!" Brian calls out his rifle raised, waving his hand to Abby and then Gillian. The young man leads the way, rifle up, running through the wreckage towards the man who would destroy the world. Hopefully with a pair of chicks in his wake.

Dragged into proximity of Trask, there is a horrible sensation that comes over Kazimir, and a delightful sensation that washes over Sylar. To Kazimir, this feeling is like drowning, like suffocating in his own skin as the world around him is peeled away to nothing but choking black, all sensation of touch, taste and smell lost. To Sylar, it is like finding the surface of water and escaping a deep abyss. Suddenly there is vision, there is the prickling of cold, the smell of Trask's breath and the pain of a fist striking him square in the face, shattering plates of hardened exoskeleton to fall down around his revealed face — Sylar's face. Gillian can see him now, as if the cracked plates broke away the monster that was, and revealed the man who is.

"No. Sylar — Do not do this! Do not — Aagh!" Kazimir lets out a howling scream, dropping to his knees amidst the bombed out shell of the library where he consumed his father's life, and awoke to his own ability. It is like some terrible mirror playing out a reversed echo of the past. As Kazimir drops to his knees, the young Kazimir lying nearby gripping his father's hand begins to come alive, and his father wilts and screams as his son drains his life force.

"Gabriel! No!" But it isn't Gabriel's doing, this is someone else's handywork. He lurches forward, watching his father die as Sylar approaches slowly, hard-soled shoes clicking on stone beneat his feet. He stops, even as Kazimir rises up to his knees, grabbing at Sylar's shirt, "Don't — Don't let this — I can make you a God!"

Reality is a horrifying thing, and the truth of what Kazimir Volken is represents this very horrifying reality fully. The sound that slips from Sylar's mouth is nothing human, it is the bellowing wail of a thousand voices screaming from the depths of a dark well. It is the pained cries of countless devoured lives singing a song of freedom as Sylar's limbs begin spasming, a brief struggle for control where there can be only one victor. A hissing howl of pain erupts from the man to accompany the other wailing voices, and a billowing pillar of black smoke and crackling ashen flames rises forth from Sylar's body, issuing forth from beneath his clothing, out his eyes and mouth as though he were exhaling the exhaust of a furnace.

The noise only grows louder, a cacophonous wailing as the billowing and dark cloud swirls thorugh the air, bulging with amorphous shapes that from the right angle look like vague suggestions of faces, as if fragments of the people he has consumed still linger with him, as though he were a black prison of torment to which they have been eternally consigned to.

Sylar's legs buckle the moment the ashen form has risen free from him, collapsing to his knees with a dry wheezing breath, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he falls forward, but catches himself with the heel of his palms, hunched over on hands and knees.

Kazimir's dark and incorporeal form blazes with heatless tongues of gray flame, dripping with the ephemeral ash of shadow and smoke as he coils through the air, wratihlike and ghostly, a tattered mass of darkness, smoke and cloth-like blackness that immediatlye flies past Trask as though his very presence brought discomfort and pain. "Lu-Cre-Zia." The voice is a chorus of suffering, with Kazimir the grand conductor, all crying out in halting syllables for the form that will next house Lord Volken's disembodied soul.

Amidst the emergence of Kazimir's true form, the bridge shakes from the slicing of the suspension cables, and the girders that were strained under their scission finally snap apart, raining pieces o fmetal down onto the side of the top deck. While Trask has moved from the falling debris, it is Anne that finds herself the victim. Sheets of bent steel, falling pipes and collapsing concrete topple down around her, and while she begins to flicker to avoid it, the sharp smash of a piece of debris to the crown of her head sends the woman crumpling to the ground unmoving, a few narrow bars and smaller pieces of debris landing around her after she falls.

The black smoke rises up into the air after departing from Trask, fanning out and widening as though a man shrouded in cloth were spreading his limbs, letting the smoky tendrils of night snake through the air, appearing against the white-gray sky as some darkly clad representation of death — the pale rider himself. "I-Need-You." The wailing cry of the damned creature spirals around the Black Widow with a rattling howl of disembodied voices, desiring her flesh as his vessel now.

The birds do their part, but some spiral down, down when stung too many times, others disperse as Sylar's concentration fragments, and his powers are nulled. The vortex begins to thin, as Eileen's strength becomes the remaining link.

Meanwhile.

Sylar catches on to Kazimir calmly, mouth parting in shock at the sudden feeling of warmth and renewel as the ghost of Kazimir is forced from his body. And yet he remains here, clinging to his shirt. It's about opportunity. Moments.

It's about who is the best in every instant.

The ceramic blade in his hand sinks softly into Kazimir's stomach, a whisper of impossibly sharp substance against flesh, and Sylar's eyes hood a little as if such a move gave him great pleasure. The blood drowns his hand, rich and red and warm with life. His hand comes up to grip Kazimir's throat, stare into the face that so closely resembles his own. With a twist, the ceramic blade splinters and snaps, leaving deathly sharpness buried inside him. "Blink."

And then, the light, the glorious light.

The howl that comes tearing from Sylar's throat after the ethereal wails of Kazimir's ghosts is primal as he's handed his senses back like an even more metaphorical knife in the gut, staring up sightlessly into the sky as the smoke of Kazimir whirls above him, a look of pain and horror and then, almost, bliss crossing his features now visible. He lets out a hiss as his knees connect with the cement underfoot, stumbling without even realising it, scrabbling to gain back control over his own self.

It's silent in his head.

His breathing comes rasping, his body is exhausted from the fact that Kazimir never really rested it, and shakily, he attempts to get to his feet, the cold blizzard battering at him. It hurts. And it feels good to hurt.

It's not hard to keep track of everything when your not needing to mess with tempurature or portal or shoot guns. So when Anne finally appears with kazimir, Abigail's upright. "A time to kill and a time to heal. a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing" Gillians hand is taken, held tight as Brian leads the way towards the edge of Trask's range.

"A time to lose and a time to seek; a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace" She finishes the prayer "please God forgive me" There, she see's what he is now, where he is, that ghost and ash and flame. "Kazimir Volken!" the blonde yells out. "You don't need her! You need to go to HELL!" She can't grasp the incorporeal, but she can sure as hell shove her hand right into the middle of it and turn all that healing outwards through her palm and wrist.

Helena struggles to keep herself awright, narrowly dodging some debris falling her way. "Brian!" she hollars, "Get Anne!" Because her eye, her eye is on that truck, one what she thinks could be in there, and what she might be able to do to make sure what may be found inside isn't released on the world. Helena starts picking her way toward it, casting back glances at the altercation between Abby and Kazimir and Gillian and Sylar. Please, God.

Where her hand touches the healer, there's that glow again, brighter than ever. Gillian's pouring a good amount of her remaining energy into the woman in hopes that it stops things, that she isn't even paying full attention to how much she might need for the 'worst case scenerio'. The cut that she just got on her face heals over without even a scar, and she starts to feel her ankle untwist, aches and pains she forgot about heal away in the warmth. The scar on her forehead, while healed to the point it looks months old, remains untouched. Her eyes glow as she looks away from the swirling light, pushing everything into Abby, denying anyone else in range even a drop of her energy. But she looks toward the man left behind. Luckily she's not got too much hurt, but considering the situation…

"Gabriel…" she says, even hinting toward a smile. The doom, the gloom, and everything else just seems like it's happening somewhere much further away. Also helps that she feels really good thanks to the healing going on inside her. Even the draining of the energy from her doesn't seem quite as bad— not with this woman. Not with her power.

Sergei rears back to nail Sylar again, I mean Kazimer is gone, but Sylar /did/put 7 bullets in him recently, and betrayed them at the company facility, and may have nuked his mom. Oh Sylar is no damsel in distress, but as he is about to, the whipping whine of one of the loose bridge cables flys through the driving snow to catch Trask and whip him off his perch, missing Sylar by a hair's breadth.

Snarling, the gun is practically thrown as Brian sprints at the fallen body of Anne in compliance with Helena's orders. The young man rushes towards Anne, throwing the debris off the woman and doing some heavy lifting. Brian lets out a rough cry as he tries to gather the unconcious teleporter into his arms.

The snow is strewn with carnage and ash; charred debris interspersed with the fallen forms of bee-stung birds and the little, black bodies of frozen insects almost as far as the eye can see.

Is this it? After everything, this is it? The icy pins and needles sensation prickling the surface of Lucrezia's perfect skin is not due to the blizzard caressing her complexion but rather the irresistible longing of a beast become death incarnate. However, the Black Widow's will is not so easily subsumed. Should this breath be the last that she takes of her own volition, she's determined to make it mean something - something more than the nothing that everything else has become.

"Vaffanculo!" she literally spits at the stalking shadow waiting to claim her soul. She's not so much shaming the Devil as she is just giving him directions home.

Slowly getting off his knees, Ethan glances over his shoulder at the approaching Helena. His lips pull back into what could pass as a smirk. A gesture that means and everything and nothing in the same moment. Then his attention is gripped by the shadows of Kazimir passing onto Lucrezia, the woman who tried to take his life via bugs. The Wolf-Headed Pistol comes up and a shot is squeezed off at the woman. The bullet flies neatly through the cold air, piercing Lucrezia's abdomen, and instantly she crumples away from the smoke approaching.

No Kazimir, you may not have another body. Eyeing Abby for a moment the man turns his back to the fiasco.

"You need to get your people, off this bridge." Rafe says gruffly in passing to Helena, the man is on his way to Eileen. "Princess, come on. We're getting out of 'ere." It's like he didn't even just shoot a woman.

As Helena makes her way to the semi truck, she can hear something within. The sound of pained moaning, and fitful screaming, muffled through the truck's walls. The air is colder around the back of the semi's trailer, and as she approaches the vehicle, there is a cold mist seeping out of a containment breech in some reinforced back chamber. Red light spills out from within, and as Helena hesitantly approaches, peering in through the opening, a nightmare scenario is revealed to her.

Inside of the truck, many people are toppled atop one another, strapped to gurneys that have flipped over, with IV bags spilled onto the floor. Roused from their comatose states, these incubated infected are groaning in pain, some curled up and crying, shivering, while one of them, a ragged looking man with a full bears, is screaming and clutching at his head, all around him the metal of the truck is buckling and bending from his magnetokinesis. But worst of all, his flesh begins to bubble, sizzle and peel away from the bone, as he starts to liquify from within.

Just like Edward had warned, the Shanti Virus has come into contact with the Rage-Dementia virus, from Kazimir using homeless people as his test subjects, and the birth of the supervirus that would wipe out the world starts here.

Starts now.

The moment Abigail moves to the choking cloud of black smoke surrounding Zia Lucrezia, and raises her hand into the umbral fog, there is an immediate reaction. The mere presence of Gillian beside her would empower the young woman's ability to unbelievable heights, but the touch of her hand to Abigail's increases their strength, increases the faith and devotion that fuels the young woman's greatest strength — life. She is unharmed by the tainted touch of Kazimir Volken's dark essence, where all others would wither to dust and bone, she — just like Daniel Linderman discovered — cannot be so tainted.

Her touch is anathema to Kazimir's umbral form, and the caress of her fingers thorugh his smoky body is like a sword through flesh. Her hand is radiant, painfully so to look at, with a white warmth that burns away the billowing clouds of black that she touches, glowing orange-gold on the edges like the embers of some great fire. Her touch spreads thorugh Kazimir, like a wildfire through dry fields, a surge of fiery consumption that swells through the dark clouds, as though roaring wisps of flame had been brought alife, as though the air itself were on fire.

the scream is a sound that cannot be forgotten, the chorus of so many voices crying out at the same time, but unlike before it is not in pain. Somehow, in their torment, this scream is one of finality, a scream of release and freedom, a baleful cry of rebuking to the monster that took everything from them with his tainted caress.

Light bathes Abigail's arm and down through her hand, bones glowing white thorugh her skin, too bright to look at directly. The light mixes with the fiery combustion of Kazimir's shadowed form, and in a burning blaze of warmth the screams are joined by a singularly unique voice — only one voice now that sounds in pain, a wrathful and spiteful scream of agony at the beginning, but a scream in the end that too joins the call of the others.

No longer is it a scream of pain, but a scream of release — of freedom.

Boiling away in the air, the howling voices begin to diminish as smoke and flames consume one another, replaced with lightly falling flakes of white ash that blow and drift, mixing in with the snow, swirling around luminous fingers that radiate warmth. The surge ends, the glow from Abby's hand beginning to fade as the sudden and overwhelming sensation of fatigue weighs down upon her like a mountain set on her shoulders. The young woman's legs immediately give way, sending her slouching back into Gillian's arms.

The lasts wisps of smoke burn away in the air, lingering with tiny burning embers of gold-orange that sparkle and fade into nothingness. In her blurred and heavy-lidded vision, Abby can see that all the blackness has passed, vanished before her darkening vision.

Kazimir Volken, is no more.

Sylar can barely make it to his feet before Trask fists connects with his face. Biff!, is the correct term. Tasting blood, the once serial killer crumples back down, barely even noticing when Trask is suddenly whipped away from him, biological armor cracking all the more with the movement, revealing skin beneath all the burned, ruined clothing. He waits for the next blow, which doesn't come, before casting a look around at the mess he's no longer merely a passenger to, a streak of blood coursing down his chin. With a grunt, he climbs to his feet, looking around a bit like a shellshocked bystander in the middle of a war.

His eyes land on Gillian, attention naturally gravitating towards her. Though she bleated his name, he can't quite summon up words, and his gaze jerks up to watch the show— for it is as spectacular as a show— of Kazimir's so very overdue death. Trembling uncontrollably, Sylar backs away from the thinning smoke that becomes only ash, nothing, and it's over. As the bridge groans in protest of itself and test subjects scream from the truck and time hurtles forward into the most uncertain future the world will ever know as a virus escapes, for Sylar, it's over.

"Gillian," he says, harshly, finally remembering what it is to speak. Long strides carry him forward at a loping run, haphazard, as if he could collapse at any moment.

Ethan - or Rafe, whoever it is, is unheard as Helena stares in horror at the contents within the truck, stumbling back and away, her mind going numb and chaotic for a few moments before revelation comes in crystal clarity.

So many dear ones gone. So many who could die, if the contents of the truck are allowed to spill further into the air, it would start the reaction, and everyone they've lost, all the risks they've taken, would be for nothing. None of the mortars have managed to project their deathly contents into the sky, and so it is only this that remains. But all it takes is one.

In Africa and the Caribbean, they call on Oya, the orisha of storms. She is the goddess of wind and lightning, and also chaos and death.

It is said in Ireland that Morrigan too, holds dominion over storms, but she is also a divinity of battle and blood.

And so to Tempestes of the Romans, Atlacamani of the Aztecs, and Pele of the Hawaiians. All goddesses of storm and sky, and perhaps not surprisingly, goddesses of death, chaos and destruction.

But there's just Helena. And she's not a goddess. She's just a girl.

Helena raises her hands as if in invocation, closing her eyes and thinking not of swirling whirlwinds, but of positive and negative ions intermixing in the sky above her. Light begins to flash up there in the clouds, arcing horizontally as it begins to build. Helena's hands tighten into fists as she concentrates, smelling and tasting and knowing the way the storm is rising, rising in her, rising in the sky above. The air fills with the taste and scent of ozone, so much so even those not attuned to the weather can taste it, and then suddenly the air is filled with brightness, with the sharp bite of electricity, as the storm in climax sends down the wrath of Oya and Morrigan and Tempestes and Atlacamani and Helena Dean in the form of lightning that pieces slams as much down on the truck as in it, the stimulus of the electric current charging and discharging all within…including the virus, to its very atoms.

But lightning can strike in more than one place in a single arc. Currents run along some of the beams of the bridge, grounding out before they can conduct themselves into people and automobiles, but adding to the destruction of the bridge itself, and thereby creating even more life threatening danger.

Helena doesn't even feel the drop of blood that trails down her upper lip from her nose. She does however, feel like someone stuck her finger in a socket. She whirls around and looks to Abby, Gillian, and Sylar. "GO!" she shrieks, trying to push her own body into quicker movement and having trouble doing so. "GO!"

Eileen is back up on her feet, her body weakened from siphoning her physical energy into the now-dissipated vortex of birds — glossy black feathers stick to her cheeks, plastered to her pallid skin by sweat and a glistening spatter of blood, though none of it belongs to her. She can hear Ethan's voice calling her, but just as Sylar's attention gravitates toward Gillian, hers takes a turn toward Sylar. Not to run to him, but to ensure that he's safe.

As it turns out, he is — and, by the looks of things, about to stumble into the arms of the woman he loves.

Eileen wouldn't have it any other way.

Gray-green eyes flick back to Ethan. She does not move to navigate her way around the debris that separates them. "I'm fine!" she shouts, straining to be heard over the crackle of Helena's lightning. "Don't leave Lucrezia, she saved my— "

The eruption of lightning does to the Verrazanao-Narrows what Kazimir's lasers almost did. The bridge explodes beneath the weight of the lighting bolt, as the remnants of the truck fly through the air from the explosion of air-pressure and concussive force that accompanies such a powerful downdraft and stroke of lightning, a blast so strong that most people on the bridge, save for Helena, were thrown to the ground from the shockwave. The remnants of the vehicle upend, whirling through the air once once as the middle of the narrows completely collapse, the upper deck cracking and splitting threatening to fall down and smash on the lower deck where the Homeland Security checkpoint lies. The entire bridge groans, creaks and yawns.

All of the suspension cables begin to snap as the ducks buckle and wobble like flimsy cardboard without the proper support now. But worst of all, in the aftermath of the explosion, his ears ringing, Helena's scream a muffled howl in his head, Rafe cannot find where Eileen is. There's dust and debris everywhere, showering pieces of metal falling from the sky along with the bridge's bucking and shivering.

The sound of groaning steel and cracking stone rises up from the bridge like the horrible roar of some unimaginable monster. A whistling and whipping sound of the suspension cables snapping one by one cracks along with the yawning creak of strained metal and crumbling concrete. Amidst the billowing plumes of smoke rising up from the chasm in the middle of the bridge, screams fill the air.

As the dust cloud begins to settle, the bridge shudders and tilts, pitching towards the north and sending the tractor-trailer's burning remains sliding across concrete until it smashes into the guard rail and flips over the edge of the bridge. The vehicle crashes between the strained suspension cables, swings around like a jacknife and hangs by the front cab. The axels scream with the strain of metal, followed by the rythmic popping of linkages and cabling.

"Help! Help!" Panicked screaming, coming from under the truck, muffled and terrified. Not far from where Sylar was thrown from the blast, the shrill voice of a young woman cries out from between the truck and the railing. At first unseen, but soon visible as a slender and bloodied form, dangling from the burnt and twisted remains of the railing, "Oh god help! Help me please!" Her legs swing back and forth, kicking wildly forsomething to grab on to, only causing the bent limb of metal she grips to flex and bend further.

A shriek escapes from the girl, barely audible over the collapsing of the bridge as an entire span of the middle finally breaks apart under the pressure, stone splitting and dropping down into the river as metal cracks and cables break free, lashing up into the air as their tension is released.

Her grip slips, and Eileen falls, striking the side of the truck on her way down, landing on the crooked top of the dangling trailer, sliding down the slick metal as her hands helplessly try to grasp for purchase that isn't found, "Sylar! S-Sylar help! Please! Help!" She calls out for someone who isn't there, she calls out for her guardian angel to swoop in and rescue her.

The bridge shivers and the support columns beneath the Brooklyn side of the bridge crumble from the strain of the weight, and the upper deck of the bridge begins a slow collapse down on top of the lower deck, entire sections of the bridge pancacking the lower floor, which in turn causes the lower deck to strain from the weight, breaking apart and casting itself out into the frozen riverbed.

"Sylar! Sylar!" Gripping by bloodied fingers, Eileen spins wildly in the air from the bumpter of the trailer, her eyes wide with panic, heart racing in her chest. Her hands shake and tremble, legs kicking wildly as blood flows down from a gash n her forehead. As she feels her fingers slipping, blood lubricating her grip, as if her entire body were fighting her own survival, she whimpers out that name, "Sylar…"

It all happens so fast.

She loses her grip.

Oh… god, she killed Kazimir. That's a sight that's going to haunt her for a long time, the light burned into her eyes and mind. Everything around her is through a fog now though, wiping at some ash that falls on her face, smearing a little piece of dead volken across her cheek. He's everywhere. Briefly, she wonder if Pantene Pro-V is formulated to remove 100+ year old dead guy ashes from your hair. That prompts a very girly giggle from Abigail before Helena's yelling and the hair on her arms standing up from the static electrcity that charges through the air, thanks to the lightning, bring her back to the fore. She's too tired to move, even as the bridge starts it's death dance thanks to the tango with it's intergrity that the lasers and lightening did. Lightning would be warm… but the water would be cold, and there's sooo many more people who will need her after this.

Abigail turns, fingers digging into the rubble and pushing herself up, away from Gillian and Sylar, away from the chaos. Someones screaming for Sylar. Run for the bridge, one foot in front of the other, that's how it's done. Simple bodily commands work better. That and prayer that death by bridge is not the order of the day. That, would be cruel.

While a certain negator known to her only as 'Sergei' might be getting a glare and a half. Phoenix had a deal! But she can't really say much about that— at least he didn't do much worse than she's done to him. Bullet in the chest, sent to the future by his 'enemy' thanks to her and all. Gillian gets distracted by the use of her ability to amplify the healer. She looks over, watching the destruction, destruction that doesn't touch them. It worked. That part of it did, at least.

Part of her may not have expected it to. And then the healer goes limp and starts to collapse. She reaches to catch her, holding onto her even as the purple glow starts to fade. "Hey, healer— don't…"

The screams from the truck make her glance over. There was a backup plan, one that was also supposed to involve her. She holds onto Abby and almost starts to let her go, standing up to her feet as if she might try to move in the direction of Helena. That was the deal. That was the plan. Even if it killed her.

Helena doesn't look about to follow the plan, doesn't even motion for her.

She's just barely to her feet, with Abby in her arms, when she hears her own name. It draws her eyes back. Gabriel's on his feet— Gabriel's moving. He's next to her, offering a hand. Looks a little like shit, but he's alive. He's him. "I…" she doesn't get to finish, but her hand touches him, the bare one. The other happens to be holding the weapon she stole off of him when she took half the money and the cat. The cat who happens to be waiting for her to come home. She hopes Eve made it away…

There's no time to exchange the words she might want, no time for her to do much more than squeeze his arm.

The crash of lightning falls. Her grip on the blonde healer tightens. Helena's working without her. She's too far away to toss a little extra strength at, and she can't even look. It's so bright.

Her yell breaks through even the loud sounds, and she cries out to Gabriel, "We have to move! NOW." Before now. Five minutes ago. Yesterday. Time travel would be handy right now. Too bad Gabriel didn't pick up that one. Of course, when she meant 'we have to move now' she had been included Abby. The healer slips out of her hand, "ABBY— damnit!" Oh fine. Go be a hero. What strength remains goes to her grabbing Gabriel's arms and trying to help him get away— as far away as they can manage.

Must go faster?

With the Snow, and the Light of the Fire, with the Wind, and the scything talons of metal death that use to be the support cables of the bridge cutting through the air. With the Ghost of Kazimar being sucked into the void, it is little surprise that a single figure knocked off the bridge by one of those cables goes unseen. Trask plummets through the air and into the icy river below, where his winter gear becomes more of a weight then a protection from the cold.

"Anne— " Holding tightly onto his precious cargo, Brian looses footing. Starting to slip down on the slant of the bridge. Gripping Anne tightly to his chest, the young man looks around desperately. "Wake up.." He urges, pushing against the concrete with the heels of his feet. He just needs to get back to his feet…

"Come here!" Rafe shouts off to Eileen as he approaches, also sorting his way towards the young woman. And then the earth is diagonal and his world is only hanging on by fingers. His back crashes against the pavement, as his hand reaches reflexively out to catch the girl who is so far away.He presses himself to his knees, and then is hit by a stray piece of debris, collapsing on his chest.

"Munin! Munin!" Comes out the hoarse voice of Ethan, as he watches the only person left on this planet important to him drop off the edge of the bridge. His eyes go wide and his face contorts, wildly the man starts clambering forward, as things start sliding down. She's gone… She's gone. His face twists into rage as he looks helplessly down the bridge. Gone.

Letting out an inhuman cry, the man spins around on his heels, his face the portrait of agony. Practically storming up hill, the man makes his way to the fallen Lucrezia. Going to one knee, his arms tuck under the woman, quickly lifting her to his chest.

Sylar grips onto Gillian for support as they both go stumbling away after the blast of a vengeful sky hits, and the piercing shriek from Eileen cuts through the air. Looks like something's in the water. Sylar's head whips around, forcing both himself and Gillian to stop as he tries to spy Eileen, but he can barely see her in the wreckage. But he can Hear her. Jaw clenching, he pulls Gillian close for maybe half a second— something is murmured, and then repeated, louder. "Go. Go." He doesn't quite push her, just urges her to run from the collapsing bridge. "Go."

And Sylar turns from her, and runs in the opposite direction, clambering over the newly made ruins. He has absolutely no stamina left in his body, and so his breaths come in heaving sighs and gasps as he goes— it doesn't even seem like there's anyone to save— until finally he sprawls across the trailer and—

Sylar's hand wraps around Eileen's wrist, their eyes locking together, his own betraying the flash of fear he'd know, then steely determination when neither of them go tumbling into the ocean. Suspended, they're frozen in time, it seems.

Bad day. This would be one. But let's face it, it can only get better from here. Right?

With physical strength as well as telekinesis, Sylar pulls the girl up, arms wrapping around her as they balance on the precariously dangling trailer, the metal slick with snow. Scrabbling, he tries to steer them to safety.

Helena feels jerky and unsteady, having a hard time keeping to her feet. It would be accurate to say that being so close to that lightning bolt should have killed her, but for some mysterious reason, it did not. She feels like her neurons are misfiring though, and that's not a fun sensation. Abby's running, Brian is getting Anne, Gillian is with Sylar, even Eileen's getting away…she gives no thought to Lucrezia or Ethan, and starts to clamber toward making her own exit.

Eileen's small hands, clad in leather gloves and numb from the cold, grasp at Sylar's arms, her fingertips pressing hard into his skin. For all her screaming, she didn't actually expect him to come back — but here he is, his physical presence as real as the biting chill or the stinging smell of electricity that pervades the air.

Her first thought is that she never should have opened her mouth or lent her desperation a voice.

Eileen can sense his fatigue, feel it in the way his muscles are straining to keep them both from falling prey to the pull of gravity and the black deep that awaits them below. In flagrant constrast to the blizzard's icy winds, her ragged breaths are like fire against the side of his face, curling hot in the inner chamber of his ear, her nose and mouth buried against his neck.

She should apologize, if not for bringing him back, then for being one of the many people at fault for putting him here in the first place.

It has to get better.

But it doesn't.

The entire section of the bridge where Sylar and Eileen crouch, clinging to one another, simply breaks away. There is no scream, there is no look of fear or horror on their faces, just strange comfort and silence as they suddenly vanish from sight as concrete and steel simply cannot support any further strain. The semi truck's burning remains, along with Eileen and Sylar fall away along with hundreds of pounds of freefalling concrete and broken steel girders, cascading through the air on the long descent from the Verrazano-Narrows, into the consuming maw of the icy cold Hudson River.

The last thing they see is each other, before the darkness of the waves claim them.

A sound in the distance draws closer, a constant thumping in the air, at first hard to pinpoint the location of. Through the swirling snow, spinning rotors of whirling helicopter blades descend from the skies, unmarked black helicopters descending on the bridge, even as vehicles begin to approach from the Brooklyn end of the bridge. Black SUVs and larger trucks come screeching to a halt at the bridge's end, while men in suits come rushing over the barricades at the backs of SWAT teams.

Overhead, a voice booms out from one of the descending helicopters, a man in a suit and tie holding a bullhorn standing next to a SWAT officer with a rifle. "Lay down your weapons and drop to the ground! This is the Department of Homeland Security, you are under arrest! If you do not submit, lethal force will be used! I repeat — This is the Department of Homeland Security, lay down your weapons and drop to the ground! If you do not submit, lethal force will be used!"

Despite the warning, the SWAT soldiers drop to take a knee when within range, raising wide-barreled rifles to launch canisters of tear gas an an upwards arc to crash down near the end of the bridge, sending choking and noxious fumes up into the air. Boots strike the pavement, men with full helmets, gas masks and riot shields armed with batons move in through the billowing waves of smoke.

Along with them, an agent of Homeland Security takes long and confident strides behind, a tall and bald man in the same black uniforms as the SWAT members, his pistol gripped with both hands, trained on the clouds of gas. The moment he draws close, there is a horrible throb that pulses outwards from his mind, a nauseating wave of debilitating numbness and vertigo setting in.

My fellow Americans, it has been a rough road for us. The past two years have been uncertain and half-blinded by the light of the revelation that we as a people have changed - we as a people have Evolved. The task ahead of all of us is humbling in it's scale. It's time to adapt to the changes that have occurred.

Helena collapses first, one hand going to her head as she starts to move away, stumbling as if her body was no longer responding to her, and she crumples to her knees and onto her side, striking the broken bridge hard and unmoving. Rafe is next to fall, Lucrezia's bleeding and unconscious form slipping from his hands as he clutches his head, feeling the pulsing waves of telepathic concussion bombarding his senses. Wavering, staggering he lands down on the deck of the bridge, motionless. The bald agent walks past them, unconcerned, moving to the crumbling edge of the bridge to peer down over the edge, wind plucking at the length of his long jacket, eyes scanning the river as his lips downturn into a scowl. "I want every inch of this bridge searched! Get one of the helicopters to the other side and get some boats in the water! I want them all!"

It will take unity. Those timeless words ring true now more than ever: united we stand, divided we fall. It is my mission for America that we will remain as one. Not divide between race, beliefs, or genetics. And for this to be accomplished…

Two HomeSec squad members grab Helena's arms and legs, picking her up and carrying her away from the bridge, limp and motionless while helicopters circle overhead. "Agent Carmichael!" One of the SWAT members shouts, hustling to approach where the bald man stands, "We're recieving reports of a massive explosion in Long Island City and northern Queens — the Consolodated Edison plant is gone sir!"

…it will take sacrifice. We face a time of hard decisions, questions of liberty, morals and ethics. We must do what we can to remain strong. We need to do what we can to protect those that would jeopardize us, and jeopardize themselves, by whatever means necessary.

Carmichael turns, looking to the squad member, "Gone?" One light brow raises, lips curling into a confused snarl, "What do you mean it's gone?" The squad-leader holds his hand up to the earbud in his right ear, tilting his head to the side, then sputters out a confused response.

All that can be asked is for faith in our people,

"NYPD-SCOUT is reporting there was a massive earthquake in the vicinity, and there's just a crater where Consolodated Edison was. Half of Queens and Manhattan is without power, sir. We're canvasing the areas to see if we can find any more of the terrorists."

faith in our country,

Agent Carmichael stares out over the demolished bridge, holstering his pistol at his hip with a resigned and heavy sigh, eyes distantly focusing at the jagged edges of twisted metal, broken concrete and pules of rising smoke and clouds of dust and debris. A frown becomes strong on his features, and Carmichael nods slowly, looking back over his shoulder to the agent, "This is just the beginning…"

and faith in all that will be.

"…they can run, but they won't be able to hide."

End of Volume 4

Waves.

Water laps across the hull of a boat plying the Hudson. The cry of sea birds mixes with the roaring noise of the surf, and the feeling, painfully of being alive. Water sloshes across Sylar's face, even as rough, grubby hands drag him up onto the deck and slap him down like a freshly caught fish, well-worn shoes scuffing in water as he is pulled bodily from the Hudson River. "This one… looks like a keeper." The rough voice says, peering down as other figures, emerging from shadow, move in for a closer look.

Volume 5: Nadir


l-arrow.png
January 28th: Endgame - Conflagration
r-arrow.png
January 28th: Been Many Things
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License