No Time Like The...

Participants:

r_edward_icon.gif eileen2_icon.gif kazimir2_icon.gif peter4_icon.gif sylar_icon.gif

Scene Title No Time Like The…
Synopsis Sylar is sent home. Relatively speaking.
Date December 15, 2018

The Underground


Sylar remembers that he used to be patient. He could spend hours at a time on a single watch repair without even remembering to stand up once in a while. Hours? Try years, in some cases; his personal projects, restoring timepieces they don't even manufacture anymore. It wasn't about the achievement, it was about the journey, the process, the mathematical, mechanical journey.

He can imagine that figuring out time, rather than just an object that keeps it, would be much more difficult. And yet, he's impatient.

It's been a few days since he was found unconscious on the roads above. It's been a few days since he's breathed fresh air but then again, for some of these people, it's been a few years since they've done the same. It's been a few days since his world was cracked apart and reordered. At least, he's had a few days to think.

Almost like a gargoyle, Sylar sits hunched upon the railings of a catwalk just a few feet from the room he's supposed to be locked in. He's started to look a bit like those that dwell down here. Rough around the edges, wearing old clothes, seeming on the verge of unhealthiness and constantly with that sheen of sweat and grime that clings to you when you live down here. Below him, machinery works so relentlessly he's not quite sure of what time or day it is. His broken watch yields nothing to him.

The sound of foot steps sound out, and Sylar turns his head to listen, suddenly wary, but relaxes. Eileen. He swings his legs back over the railing to land heavily on the catwalk once more with more dexterity than his shoulder should permit him. He's approaching her before she can even fully round the corner. "Is it time?" he asks.

You don't need ears like Sylar's to hear the sound of his feet connecting with the catwalk. The resounding clatter that cracks through the open air like a gunshot makes Eileen jump — she didn't expect him to stay inside his room like she requested, but that doesn't cause her to be any less surprised when she hears it. She rounds the corner, her pale face pinched and furious, one hand on her rifle and the other cupped over her ear in an attempt to muffle the ringing noise that's now bouncing merrily around the inside of her skull. "What the fuck are you trying to do?" she demands in a thin hiss. "Wake the dead so you have somebody else to play with?"

She's angry, though this probably shouldn't be news to Sylar. There was, undoubtedly, a small part of her that hoped he'd take her advice to heart and behave himself in her absence — because God knows he wasn't behaving himself the last time the two of them were standing here.

It takes a little while for the metallic clang to stop reverberating around the space. This place does echo when such feedback isn't drowned out by the hum of machines. It makes it hard to pick up individual sounds when he attempts to Listen to the world around him, and even harder to shut it out. Just another reason to feel cagey. Sylar pauses his approach when Eileen snaps at him, head cocked to this side as he narrows his eyes at her. "If people did as they promised it shouldn't have mattered by now," Sylar points out, not kindly - tension in his voice betrays his impatience and his voice sounds through gritted teeth. "Is it time?"

"You have all the time in the world." While Eileen's response bristles with audible tension, her body is considerably more relaxed and at ease. Either she isn't worried about someone else having overheard the noise, or that possibility hasn't yet occurred to her. She adjusts the strap of her rifle as she moves toward him, her footsteps sharp and staccato against the metal grates — she's only swift and silent on her feet when she needs to be, and now isn't necessarily one of those times. "Nothing is going to change while you're still here," she adds, coming right up on him, "so stop your sulking."

It's a long way coming, the sound of other footsteps clanging down the catwalk from one floor up and across the other side of the underground facility's spacious turbine chamber. But it's footsteps, breathing and a heartbeat Sylar has come to know well, that of Peter Petrelli. Making his way down the iron grate stairs, he looks different. There's something more energized about him, something less hopeless. Perhaps it's the thought of sending Sylar back, perhaps it's the thought of getting Sylar out of here. But something seems to have enlivened him.

"Sylar." The name comes out harsh and abrupt, halting as Eileen's silhouette is spotted near to the time-spanned killer. Dark eyes narrow slightly, and he looks between the two with a momentarily conspiratorial glance, then cranes his head to the side with a tightening of his jaw and a click of his tongue. "Edward's finished with his calculations, he's plotted out the best destination to send you back to, and the time in which you potentially will do the least amount of damage to the timeline and still be able to…" He falters, having a hard time believing his own words, "Be able to save the world."

Peter's stony gaze shifts from Sylar to Eileen, softening some as he watches the woman he's known for all of these years, lingering like a spectre in Sylar's shadow. "Do you want to see him off?" He wants to say it with a level of vitrol and sarcasm, but hurtful words at a time like this won't help anyone, especially with so many frayed edges.

Whatever argument Sylar is summoning, possibly picking a fight with this woman out of sheer boredom, it's aborted readily when the sound of Peter's footsteps join them. The man could not be met with a stranger reaction, considering their track record: Sylar lets the relief and optimism flash briefly across his features and tension unwinds. He even sneaks a glance towards Eileen at the words Peter almost snarks, a subtle raise of an eyebrow, before he's moving to sidestep the woman - to go where, he supposes, he's meant to go in order to go home. "Come watch the show," he invites of Eileen, sparing her another look that's far less sarcastic or taunting.

Eileen isn't sure there's going to be much to watch, but she gives her assent just the same — a faint nod of her head that's barely noticeable, especially in the flickering half-light of the hallway. "May as well," she agrees, "in case you and Edward cock it up." It was meant to be a joke, but it falls a little flat. She reaches up, rubs her palm over the back of her neck in an almost self-conscious manner. Green eyes flick from Peter to Sylar and back again, a faint trace of guilt in the way her gaze lingers just a little too long on the younger of the two men. Regret? Not likely. Remorse? Very possible.

There's a moment where Peter seems to give extra scrutiny to Sylar and Eileen, but only for that moment where his brows scrunch together in a way that only furthers the remind Sylar of his missing scar. "Come on then," Peter motions with his head towards the nearby room, its paper-plastered windows concealing the goings on within. Peter doesn't give further regard to the pair, something icy, something uncertain cooling his otherwise vivacious expression a touch as he makes his way to Edward's lab.

The door is opened, quietly, just as footsteps begin coming down from the floor above, and following much in Peter's earlier approach is Edward's more slight and meek frame. Removing his glasses, he folds them up, sliding tem carefully into a manilla envelope that is sealed shut with a flick of his tongue across the glue strip. "Ah, good, Mister Gray, I was worried I'd have to go looking for you." Feet hurriedly clatter across the iron grating to fall in line with Peter's footsteps, "Our window of time is limited, if we're going to do this we have to do it soon," Edward's words begin to take on a harried urgency, one that causes Peter to turn around and look at him askance.

"Window?" Dark eyes level on the small mathematician, who crinkles the envelope in his hands, shooting an exasperated stare at Peter, then lobs that same gaze towards Sylar and Eileen, "We can stand here all day and speculate about what I meant or we can just get on with it." Edward shoulders past Peter, pushing the door to his office open, "Either way nothing is going to matter much if we don't get Gabriel out of here soon."

He doesn't have to be told twice. Sylar steps inside, anxiety and anticipation a fast tightening coil in his chest. The idea of a missed opportunity— of staying here forever and either winding up as a melted, infected corpse or a depowered nobody who only looks like somebody— "Well I've been waiting," he snaps, with barely contained impatience for all three of them. A look is settled in Edward, and he manages to rein in his obviously frazzled nerves to ask, "Where and when are you sending me?" Figuritively speaking - the scientist doesn't exactly have the capability to send him anywhere, just the knowledge as to his question.

Peter briskly steps into the room, one now entirely devoid of the string web that was once s prominently displayed. Now there are just old chalkboards covered with equations, and tables littered with loose thread, yarn, strips of leather, lace and cloth that all once made the elaborate web of time and relationships. Peter pauses, taking in the sight, and then watches as Edward quickly moves over tone of the chalk boards. Sylar's question doesn't fall on deaf ears, but Edward pretends as much for a few moments, double-checking his calculations and formula on the boards in the way an artist makes fine last-moment details to a painting.

"You're not going to like the answer," Edward looks over his shoulder, eyes wide, "Move over next to Peter, specifically there, I've marked a spot on the floor with two crosses of tape. Gabriel, stand on the red cross, Peter the white." Peter glances down at the floor, shifting off of the white cross of tape to move to the side, just two feet away from the red one, his eyes drifting to the door — to Eileen — before looking back to Sylar.

"Edward, what's got you so spooked?" Peter pulls his gaze away from Sylar to look the doctor over, and this time his head cants to the side, brows tensing for a moment. Edward shoots a sudden glare up at Peter, one hand raising in the way a parent would threaten to scold a child.

"None of that!" He insists, brandishing his stick of chalk as if it were a sword, "We're running out of time." The notion makes him smirk, despite his seeming haste. A moment after those words, the entire underground facility rumbles, the lights flicker, and dust settles from the ceiling. All Edward gives as a reaction, is a knowing stare to Peter.

There's a pause, Sylar listening to the rumble that sounds just before the lights flicker, which gets a wary glance from the killer. As Edward stares across at Peter, a look from Sylar to Eileen crosses that path. I wonder what will happen to you if I change everything. Don't you? he had asked, just a few nights ago. Several brisk strides take him towards the spot marked on the floor, the tape akin to blocking directions on a stage. "I won't like not getting an answer either, doctor," he points out as he comes to stand.

Eileen's stomach plummets and suddenly, Edward's erractic behavior makes perfect sense. "Vanguard," she says, as if there was any doubt as to the cause of the rumbling. Fantastic. Unslinging her rifle from her shoulder, she turns and points two fingers — index and middle — at Peter as she levels her gaze with his. She says nothing at first; they've known each other so long that the words she says next can probably go unspoken, but she says them aloud for the benefit of the other people in the room. "Stay here, and make sure he gets home safely. I'll go buy you some time." Because they're going to need every last second of it if that's really Kazimir Volken bearing down on their heads. This said, she looks to Sylar, the expression on her pale face growing cold and hard, impossibly un-Muninlike. "We make our own fate." And then she's gone, leaving nary a trace except for the sound of her retreating footsteps, brisk and harried, growing fainter and fainter as she retreats in the direction of the sound.

Carpe diem, carpe futura.

Another sharp rumble shakes the facility as Eileen's form vanishes outside of the room, and this time the lights go out entirely, only to be replaced a moment later by a dull red glow of emergency lights. A klaxon begins blaring inside of the compound as one by one the turbines begin turning off. Edward lets out a ragged, hissing gasp as he takes a few steps over to Sylar, holding out the manila envelope the moment Eileen is out of sight. "When you get back to America," Back to? "You need to deliver this package to the Massachusettes Institute of Technology, the Roger's Building at Seventy-Seven Massachusettes Ave in Cambridge." He pushes the light parcel with his glasses in it to Sylar's chest, a crinkle of paper within accompanying the motion.

"Peter." The building shakes again, and far off, the sound of automatic gunfire fills the air. "Remember what I taught you, how to navigate — December 18th." He points to the chalkboard in the dim light, and a series of coordinates. 90°0'0'S 0°0'0'E "Understand?" Peter's eyes widen when he gets a good sense of just what those coordinates mean, but as he begins to open his mouth, the sound of an explosion — a close explosion — makes him merely nod.

Outside in the generator room, gunfire fills the air, followed by sounds of screaming, agonizing screaming coming from down the hall. The muzzle flash of automatic weapons lightens up one dark concrete corridor, even as a body comes hurling through the air, landing on the ground in a broken heap only moments before slithering tendrils of black smoke come snaking down the hallway, lancing through the body, turning flesh to charred ash and withered, mummified remains in an instant.

Another moment, and a flickering spark of blue-green illuminates the hall as streaks of laser energy cut through the stone walls like a hot knife through butter. Stone grinds and cracks from the stress of the fracture, and Edward lets out a loud cry as one of the beams swipes across his leg from through the wall. The beams just barely miss Sylar and Peter, sweeping over their heads due to their precise placement. "Go! Go send him now!"

"By the pricking of my thumbs…" A low, rough voice rumbles down the darkened corridor, followed by the slithering tendrils of umbral fog and entropic energy. In the dark, Sylar's voice, rough like sandpaper and weathered with age rings down the halls. "Something wicked…" The buzzing of insects begins to build in the corridor, followed by a swarm of locusts that erupts from the hall, "…this way comes."

The lasers sweep soundlessly through the room but you don't have to hear them— the flash of light is memorable enough and Sylar twitches to duck as they sweep just above his head, hands going up to protect himself as the flying insects swarm the room.

That's new.

Another explosion sounds off, rattles metal and stone, the whole room shuddering as intense heat and pressure batters at it from the outside and locusts whip in a tornado of wings and noise. And somehow, beneath it, beneath the destruction and Edward's cries for Peter to put himself into gear and send Sylar away before the worst can happen… he can hear it.

Thump.

A struggle of life against death, forced to beat against its will as if the vessel's very body was protesting its own survival.

Thump.

A singular, monosyllabic heart beat, a dead muscle pumping blood in steady convulsions of fitful existence.

Thump.

"Peter," Sylar snaps, reaching out a hand, voice drowned out by another explosion, finally sharing Edward's urgency, other hand thoughtlessly, protectively gripping the envelope he was given. Time to go home. Time to save the world. And himself.

The voice, that horrible voice that has haunted the survivors of this world for ten years now brings to Peter a terrified look. He reaches out, raising his hand to rest on Sylar's shoulder, "Don't let us all down." There's a firmness, an adamancy there in Peter's tone of voice, something resolute as he squeezes Sylar's shoulder tightly. Edward leans to one side, crawling across the floor leaving a bloody smear on the concrete as he does. Out the door he watches as the shadows begin to darken amidst the security lighting.

"Peter! Now!" Footsteps draw closer, the low rumbling hum of telekinesis rises as stone begins to crack around the doorway, "Peter n— " Edward lets out a sharp cry as he's yanked by an unseen hand from the doorway and into the suffocating, cloying darkness. Peter looks back to Sylar, closing his eyes and lowers his head even as the darkened silhouette of a man steps into the doorway.

Shadows roll and swirl around a form horribly familiar, and yet so terribly alien to Sylar. It is a darkened, grimy mirror of himself. His face is sunken and sallow, dark circles surrounding sunken eyes amidst pallid flesh. His black suit is immaculate, save for a fine powdering of white ash on the sleeves. A hollow, clattering sound fills the air as dusty, soot-covered skull bounces across the floor, flakes of ashen flesh falling from it with each bounce.

For a brief moment, Sylar is face to face with himself, looking not only ten years older, but nearly thirty years older. His hair grayed, skin sagging, and those life-sucking coils of that painful necrotic energy Kazimir had inflicted him with when they first met surging through him as it if was only barely contained.

It is the last thing Sylar sees, before his world is turned inside out in a sickening rush of air and a reverse of gravity. Down becomes up and up becomes down as orientation spins, warm and tacky air is replaced by dry and cold, bitter winds and blinding light.

Falling.

…and the sudden impact.

Sylar smashes down into a bank of cold and white, the prickling sensation as palpable as it was when he was in the room with himself — with Kazimir. He struggles, pulling himself up through the snow to kneel and look around at the white expanse in all directions. Nothing but snow as far as the eye can see in the darkness of night, a sky full of stars overhead.

The bitter cold whips against Sylar's skin, and the arctic wind drags freezing gusts over rolling hills of snow. But somewhere in the gloom of the night, there are lights. A facility, a building, life.

An ice crusted sign rests skewed, half buried in the snow, bordered by black and white hatch marks.

Amundsen-Scott
South Pole Station

Antarctica.


Previously in this storyline…
Carpe Futura

This concludes the storyline 'The Road to Ruin'.

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