November - December 2006; location unknown

[watchmakers_son]

There's nothing remarkable about this room, nor anything inside of it.

It's a perfect square lit in sickly yellow and off-white tones, the walls irregularly patterned from years of repainting. One of the fluorescent lights strobes every so often; when it doesn't, it buzzes, almost subaudibly, like a distant insect's whine. The single bed in the corner has a thin mattress and thinner sheets, and medical equipment -- all of it small and carefully cased and free of exposed wires -- arrays around it, holding sentinel.

The shoes by the bedside are the same dingy white shade as the walls. They have no shoelaces.

The window's crisscrossed with thick bars.

On the bed, Sylar makes a small noise -- something between pain and grogginess -- and cracks open his eyes.

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[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

As he does, Peter reaches swiftly for a small plastic object by his wrist, and it's crushed between them as Sylar lurches forward.

Peter tries to pull it back, and for a moment they're falling

(8:12 and the clock whirs smoothly)

but the floor they land on is smooth tile, not concrete. Peter's finger finds the emergency button.

[shimmershift.livejournal.com]

Within seconds, five orderlies lead by a single nurse burst through the single door leading into the room (that was there before, wasn't it? With its discolored paint and squeaking hinges?).

The orderlies are on the fighting pair in a flash, and the nurse is pulling Peter out of the fray and out the door. Sylar is now being held down by four large men with another keeping his head still.

The nurse returns, still pretty and neat with a bright smile. She kneels down next to Sylar's head and takes out a small flashlight. "Gabriel? Do you understand me, Gabriel?" She forces Sylar's eyes open one at a time and flashes her light to check his pupils.

[watchmakers_son]

He scrabbles against their hold, trying to twist his head away from the light. It doesn't work.

(Nothing works; it clamors over and over, like a mantra, nothing works, nothing works, nothing is working -- )

"Let go of me." He bares his teeth. "Let go."

[shimmershift.livejournal.com]

The nurse leans forward even more, almost nose to nose with her patient.

And smiles.

"Not going to happen."

And then she is pulling back with a syringe in her fist and slamming the needle down, through the thick muscle and breast plate, and into Sylar's heart. She is still smiling as she pushes down on the plunger.

"I've always wanted to do that," she tells him. "How does it feel?"

[watchmakers_son]

Sylar chokes, frozen in surprise as much as from the freshly burning sear of pain. His entire body spasms as his eyes roll back.

How it feels is like raw, hot wire plunged into his chest and scraped up the inside of his veins, radiating out further and further with each pulse of his heart. It feels like weights settling onto his stomach, and arms, and mind.

He doesn't articulate that. He can't even begin to try.

His arms jerk again, on reflex; then he is still.

[shimmershift.livejournal.com]

"Now," Candice whispers as the world begins to fade into a creeping and crawling blackness. "...let's try this again..."