Making the World Perfect Again

Participants:

danika_icon.gif muldoon_icon.gif sylar_icon.gif

Scene Title Making the World Perfect Again
Synopsis They call it tabula rasa.
Date January 29, 2009

Staten Island — Undisclosed Location


He owes them his life.

Muldoon has never needed any justification for the things he's done — separating brothers from sisters, fathers from daughters, mothers from sons, sending men and women to their deaths in the ring simply for the love of the sport — but tonight he finds himself spinning excuses, perhaps to pass the time as he waits for one Ms. Danika O'Shea to keep the appointment she arranged with him shortly after his people pulled Sylar from the water.

Morphine, Muldoon has discovered, does more than dull the pain the other man must be experiencing as he lays on the cot in a ten by ten concrete room at an undisclosed location on Staten Island and fades in and out of consciousness — it keeps him complacent.

He stands by the door, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, one gloved hand in his pocket, the other hanging relaxed at his side. His own gift has given him valuable insight into the abilities of the killer drugged before him, and he knows in his heart that they're running out of time.

If Danika doesn't arrive soon, they may lose him.

A woman is a thing to be valued. She is to be constructed of dreams and bedecked in jewels. Or rather, that is what this one would say if she was asked. There is a brief toss of her golden-red hair that shimmers like bloodied gold in the lights. Danika O'Shea arrives to the location, without haste. For if there is one thing she's learned in time, life is always a constant. It is a constant ebb and flow of change, of death, of life and in the end; she does not need to rush to pull the strings.

Hedonistic to the epitome of definition, she arrives where the man has called her. Long lashes drop in a move of coy submission that truly does not exist as she approached Muldoon. Long, artistic fingers reach out in attempts to pluck the cigerette from his mouth. "I love when a man knows to get the door for me." Her sultry soprano offers all the intoxicating delights of the flesh, yet the glint of her beautiful eyes offer only cruelty. Her lips curve a bit more into the range of a smile to the man before her.

Her eyes turn towards the door. It would be in this moment that a person doubts their existence, that they volley between good and evil. It would be here that a woman hangs her head at her task. Not this woman. Her breathing starts to speed as excitement builds with the questions in her mind. Will this one shatter? Will he bleed out from the loss of his memories? Will his soul cry? All of these unknown elements adds a haste of want upon her gliding sway.

It's the Company all over again. One disaster strikes, a disaster he stands in the heart of, and they swoop in, collect him, dust him off and put him under a warm blanket of drugs. No, Sylar's mind currently rattled by a head injury isn't allowing him to make all those connections just yet, but that doesn't stop the inherent familiarity of concrete walls and sedation. Wordless acknowledgment of a repeated situation.

Of course, this instinct is wrong. It's hard to say if this situation is better or worse.

He's wearing the clothes he'd been found in, minus the coat and shoes - a tattered black dress shirt and matching slacks, burn marks and blood stains not entirely related to just injuries. Bright bruises surround a severe gash at his temple, blood having been cleaned away but still a smear of red remains. A cut at his mouth and various bruising up the side of his face makes him seem like he's been in the losing side of a brawl, and he lies on the cot utterly, chemically relaxed, palms turned to the ceiling and eyes slightly parted, staring blearily up at the ceiling.

Voices. Heart beats. Footsteps.

A low, sickly groan comes up from his chest, and Sylar turns his head, neck twinging as he does beneath the haze of morphine. No one he recognises. He makes no protest as to anyone's approach, just watching them through a hazily narrowed gaze, fingers twitching on the ends of relaxed hands.

Muldoon allows Danika to steal his cigarette away without protest, the hand at his side flicking up to his chin, knuckles scraping across the silvery stubble he wears along his jaw. "My sincerest apologies," he murmurs, though there's nothing sincere at all about his low, gravelly tone. If anything, he sounds annoyed — though that might have something to do with the fact he no longer has anything to purse between his lips and bite at. "You know how much I dislike making arrangements like these on such short notice. The inconvenience is as much mine as it is yours, but we are working on a schedule."

There's a cautionary hint there, a dour note of warning — be careful, this one's dangerous. "I need a blank slate," Muldoon explains. "Don't even leave him with his name. He's no good to me if he has any past to go on."

Danika smiles sweetly towards Muldoon, taking a pull on his cigerette, without leaving the lipstick stain. "Of course. We all have time tables." Her voice pitches just a bit as she sees the intended person upon the table. In fact, her feet stop moving before she turns to look at Muldoon a bit with uncertainty. "Truly?" The word slides off her lips before she approaches the man, studying his state. "Oh sweetheart.."

Those are her words to Sylar as she slides her hand across his face to study the bruising and the damage. "It is almost like kicking a prized poodle to bruise such a face. As well, it is almost like destroying the Mona Lisa to take your mind." Her lips curve with cruel intent, "It is a good thing I have no appreciation for art." Her fingers splay like a lover's to his skin, in his drugged state.

"Esto va a lastimar."

It is here that she studies Sylar's eyes. Her hands upon his head as she starts to scan over his memories, attempting to pull them from his mind. A catch of her breath as she almost seems to be sorting through records or reading something. Her icy eyes shifting from left to right as she prepares to delete his existence.

Warmer, brown eyes focus on her colder ones in a moment of lucidity, but nothing more, barely a twitch of acknowledgement when a cool, feminine hand touches his face. His body is still and he remains silent, in sharp contrast to the rush of memory that is an entire human's life, and a good two years filled with such memory that is superhumanly clear. Has Danika ever touched someone with a perfect memory, ever rifled through events that are recorded into the mind with the sharpest of vision and audio? Is it any different? She'll find out soon enough.

Her ability rakes through his memory easily, meeting no real resistance. The past two years are rich and vivid, supernaturally so, and rife with stories of murder, of men and women getting their heads split open to sate the young man's greed for power. For a while, that's all there is - murder, and traveling in between, and the loathing and confusion and determination of a serial killing sociopath, reduced to nothing but his task. These memories, no longer his.

A memory spikes through, Sylar in the heat of battle watching another man standing in the middle of what was once Kirby Plaza, alight with radiation, and suddenly, it all turns to heat and light and pain as a flimsy, telekinetic shell of protection saves Sylar from immediate death. Danika witnesses the death of Manhattan, pulling it from him, making it no longer his, with no more of a reaction from Sylar than a slight hitch in breathing.

A clean slate makes for a blank consciousness. It's almost a blessing.

But it's not the bad, but the good that makes him stir. Gillian. Eileen. The companionship of the Vanguard, as misguided as it was, these small, precious and few memories drawn away like poison from a wound. Morphine keeps him complacent, but with sudden vicious clarity, a telepathic voice sounds through Danika's head:

What are you doing?

The feel of his flesh does not go without Danika's acknowledgement. She breathes in the scent of his skin, or the violence which clings like death upon it. Her eyes widen at the sheer brutality of his memories. Danika cares little as she removes them, remembering them perhaps herself. It is like sorting through a computer and tagging each file with delete. The murder and mayham makes her lips curve to something more seductive, something wanton.

Something evil.

Danika pulls each of them without remorse, caring little for the victim that is staring into her eyes. The aquamarine growing almost possessed with the Godlike certainty of her powers. Then she hits them. The memories of care and concern. The memories his body fights to keep; tries to protect against her onslaught upon him. Golden brows lower just a bit as her hair swings forwards.

There is silence. Wonderful silence. Which suddenly breaks in her brain. The voice taking over and swimming where it doesn't belong. Her eyes flash with annoyance to the voice; as if these were her memories to claim and to keep.

"I'm making the world perfect again. I'm freeing them." Her voice is low, soothing, sultry. Believe her. Give into her. Allow her.

Danika's eyes stare intensely into his as she begins to battle her powers to pull them faster, erasing not only the people from his mind; but the powers he has taken. She attempts to wipe his existence, his power, to imprison him in humanity's weak shell.

Another groan, eyes squeezing shut as if in pain as he loses touch with those memories. He'd— he'd gotten used to it, being able to remember every single thing he encountered, being able to sit and meditate and going through them like one might leisurely peruse a book.

He forgets what kind of pie Eileen gave him that day he accidentally saved her life.

He forgets how to speak Mandarin.

He forgets the fact he can talk to birds without killing anyone for the cause.

He forgets the meaning of the tattoo imprinted on his arm.

He forgets the bite of a noose around his neck in his own and only suicide attempt, and he forgets the relief he knew to know, for a moment, that he wasn't a bad person.

"No," Sylar breathes out, trying to turn away from her, feeling everything slip away - there's too much to hold onto and the woman speaking to him now is an expert. He forgets names - Ethan, Peter, Wu-Long, Elias, Abby - and he forgets their faces, until he's alone in the world. What did he call himself, the day he killed his first victim? Doesn't matter. The struggle dies as he knows less and less, leaving emptiness and uncertainty.

From his position by the doorway, Muldoon watches the quiet spectacle in his usual detatched fashion. He doesn't speak, lest he distract Danika from her task — only when Sylar is still again does he push away from the wall and approach the bedside, leather loafers scuffing against the concrete floor underfoot. "Is that all of it, then?" he asks, soft, tentative. His ability grants him to discern certain things at a touch. Memories, unfortunately, aren't one of them. "Who was he?"

Was, not is.

A normal person would cry at what they were doing to another person. The problem for Sylar is that the woman doing this is perhaps his equal in sociopathic tendencies. Danika feels him weaken beneath her. She watches the vibrancy of emotions becoming the dull grey of fading sorrows and memories.

Black. Darkness. Nothing.

The words are translated in many different languages. Zwart, Noir, Schwarzes, Preto, Negro. Even in all the cultures that define that lack of color, none of them can offer comfort as his memories drain.

Danika continues to search through them. She takes it to the basic of human instincts. Her mind taking who he was before he turned. She takes everything. His pets, his parents, the memories even he doesn't want to remember. She rapes him from his identity without concern to the criminal process. She cares little to feel his body plead for mercy. Violent, lost. Danika is a God to his mortal shell. It is hers now to control.

Soft blue eyes flare with god-like lust for power and corruption. Slowly, the woman starts to lose her own shaky grasps on reality. She could kill him. She could steal his soul. He is hers. She shudders as the power is her own intoxication and call to madness. She feels her own soul slipping down the slope of evil that knows no remorse.

Then comes the voice. A faded memory of the man she is working for. A hiss of denial at the man dragging her back to the land of mortals and death. A hiss of annoyance leaves her lush full lips. Her brain filtering the words to come up with Muldoon's answer.

"He was is not important. He is no more." Her voice sounds almost haunted, like a beautiful forgotten melody to bring ghosts to dance in the memories of a frightened child.


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January 29th: Not A Cyborg Anymore

Previously in this storyline…
Catch of the Day


Next in this storyline…
The Bad Touch

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January 29th: Release
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