closed.

[bosewicht]

WHO: Sylar, Sarissa Theron, Sarah Manning, Cosima Niehaus, Clara Oswald
WHERE: De Chima: home of Cosima and Clara, an old meatpacking plant, and an estate.
WHEN: The very end of the black out.
WHAT: Let's play a game.
WARNINGS: Psychological torture, physical torture, violence, and character death.

Comments

recruitment: clara + cosima. de chima residence.

[bosewicht]

The rain is coming straight down in sheets of silver, and it's getting late by the time there's a pounding at the door. It might be vaguely off-putting, the strikes hard enough to make it rattle on its hinges, followed by a moment of quiet, and then another round.

"Sorry--"

A man's voice, likely unfamiliar, but apologetic, muffled coming through the door. "Is anyone home? Is-- I'm looking for Cosima? I didn't-- I'm sorry to disturb you, I wouldn't come if it wasn't..." His voice dwindles out towards the end. Sylar, on the other side of the door, is already play acting, his arms wrapped around himself, wet with rain beneath his coat, his prescription glasses speckled with droplets.

He listens intently. It would be ideal if he didn't have to break his way in.

[ohshutup]

Clara eases the door open, peeking from behind with owl-eyed wariness. Some of the usual edge is gone from her posture, replaced by clear exhaustion - combined with pajama bottoms and messy hair, it's evident that he's interrupted an evening nap. It's a brand new luxury, an allowance of her recently obtained humanity, and it's the only reason she isn't answering the door with a weapon after all the news of escaped criminals.

"She's down at her lab." A lie - what Clara's best at. She may be tired, but she isn't dumb. She's seen his face before, and she can't imagine what he would want with Cosima. "What do you need her for?"

[bosewicht]

His study of her, through that sliver of doorway, is focused and intent, quasi-recognition and calculation in spite of his best efforts. He doesn't have to pretend it's cold, though -- steam funnels its way on the back of his words, hands gripping the edges of his coat in an anxious kind of grasping.

"I know it's late," he says. She'd been sleeping. He seems sorry. "It's about Sarissa. I was her-- I used to be--"

Gabriel's next breath out is a quasi-laugh, self-deprecating, quieter; "It's complicated." He glances back out at the street, the rain, then back at Clara. "Will Cosima be back soon?"

[ohshutup]

"Hold on - is Sarissa okay?"

The door stays firmly at a six-inch window, but Clara leans out just a fragment. She tries to mask her worry with irritation, not wanting to seem taken in. Behind the cover of the door, she reaches for her communicator. It's a foot too far away.

recruitment: sarah. de chima residence.

[bosewicht]

cosima niehaus | n/a
Can you meet me in De Chima? At home? It's important.

It's late when Sarah gets that text, and beyond some curt confirmation in return as to urgency, location, some fluttery reassurance, it's likely radio silent on the end of Cosima's line by the time Sarah reaches her destination.

The street is dark. It's dark everywhere. There is a faint glow at the window of the familiar building. Candles.

It's raining down hard, but the front door is open by just a sly sliver of shadow.

[coppelganger]

Sarah is used to getting texts from Cosima at all hours of the day and night, but not like this. It's unlike Cosima not to explain herself, and especially with the blackout still going on, it means that by the time Sarah reaches De Chima—after a quick drive to the Porter, thankfully up and running again—she's worried. Very worried. If Cosima's not telling her what's wrong, it might mean someone's hurt, or maybe there's some kind of Clone Club shit hitting the fan and she doesn't want to put it in writing. Either way, not like the Cos she knows. Either way, not a good sign.

Once in De Chima, she runs, boots thudding down the dark and empty streets, until she can hail a taxi. Once inside, she's got nothing to do but fidget and text Cosima—Almost there—and try to tamp down her worry. When the cab pulls into the driveway of Cosima's new place, Sarah's pushing money at the driver and climbing out at the same time, not caring that the price the guy asks for is substantially higher than it should be ("Blackout prices," he says), only caring about getting to her sister and figuring out what the problem is and working to fix it.

She hears the cab backing out of the driveway as she approaches the front door. Of course, the house is dark. Quiet. She tries the doorknob first, used to letting herself in. "Cos?" she calls as she does. "It's me."

[bosewicht]

The door gives under Sarah's hand.

In spite of the candles set up to provide some light, it's cold inside. Nothing seems disrupted, certainly nothing like the mess they'd come home to when they walked in on the grisly scene of Sarissa's murder. But there isn't any Cosima running out to greet her with the same urgency that seemed to thrum behind her texts. Further exploration yields the same lack of success, and the only sign of recent life is that someone helped themselves to some cereal recently enough to have left the milk out on the table in the kitchen, and the half-empty bowl in the sink.

There is also a semi-automatic pistol lying next to it. When Sylar makes himself known, Sarah is much closer to it than he is.

"In the future, you guys should come up with some kind of code word." His voice is silky in the shadows, mockingly casual. He leans against a doorway, vaguely defined in the semi-dark in all black aesthetic. No glasses. No weapons, but he does hold up a communicator and hit send. A :) from Cosima pops up on Sarah's. "To prevent something like this from happening again. Maybe a super secret handshake while you're at it."

[coppelganger]

She doesn't recognize his voice. They've only spoken once, and he's standing in shadow, just a tall, dark shape in the doorway. All she knows is that he's a threat—that Cosima isn't here, but this strange man is, and the house is cold and empty aside from the two of them, and there's a gun on the counter.

She turns to face him, one hand reaching behind her and grasping for the gun at the same time. Squinting into the darkness, she can almost make out a face, but the familiarity is lost to her. She hears the alert on her communicator and glances down just briefly enough to see the :) on the home screen, sent from Cosima.

"Where's my sister?" she asks, sounding braver than she feels—all annoyance and bluster, like he's interrupted them at dinner instead of... whatever this is. "What do you want?"

[bosewicht]

There's no one to welcome Cosima and Clara to the world of the waking. But there is a voice. Two voices, in fact.

"G'day g'day, Tiger girl. How you goin'?"

Sarissa's bright voice sounds a little hollow, coming over speakers of some kind. The next voice that comes after has the same tinny quality. That of a man's, whom they have both been recently acquainted.

"That's very sweet. I got a nickname for a while too, right? Sparky. That was nice. Anyway..."

Sarissa, again, but her voice has changed: fear, anger, sinking dread. "Where's Cosima? Gabriel, what've you done with her?"

The room is strange in that it's a very ordinary room in many ways. Someone's been dropped onto a plush sofa, and someone else might get the fold-out cot on the far wall. There's a mini-bar, a television in the wall, and the power seems to be running, albeit from its own source. Everything is within the one room, save for an uncomfortably cramped bathroom with a chemical toilet. Part parlour and part fall-out bunker, the room offers temporary luxuries. There are no windows. The door leading out is solid steel. The room itself is hermetically sealed.

It should go without saying that both women are without their communicators, and dressed just as they'd been when--

"Sylar."

--rolled into their lives.

"Kind of a nickname too, I guess, but I'd prefer it, going forward. Keeps things cleaner. Clearer. Running smoother."

[ohshutup]

The harsh speakers jolts Clara awake like a slap, and for several blessed moments she's confused. The edge of the cot is rough under her cheek, but the familiarity of Sarissa's voice doesn't set off any alarms. Then -

I got a nickname for awhile too, right?

Oh. Oh.

"Shit-" She chokes on her own whispered curse, her tongue dry and heavy. Her eyes scan clumsily across the room, cataloguing what details she can make out "Dammit. Cos-"

Cosima is on the couch, and she's not moving, and Clara's sure that her newly beating heart is going to stop. With Herculean effort she manages to sit up, but the movement makes her head spin.

"Cosima."

[doubleblind]

It's not the speaker but Clara's voice that jolts Cosima from her deep sleep on the couch. She awakes in a rush, her mind reeling and putting the events of the last few hours together. It takes a moment to remember it fully, though one things for sure: Something is wrong and Clara is upset. That's enough to move her to feet.

She stumbles forward, hit with a wave of dizziness and the reality of the situation. "I'm okay," She manages to slur out, offering Clara the weakest of smiles before she falls to the ground.

[ohshutup]

"Cos!" There's a shuffle of frantic movement, a clatter of metal against concrete. Clara tips off the cot clumsily, gripping it with weak hands. Her head is pounding beyond belief, and she falls against the sofa arm with a sharp breath.

In another context, it would almost be comical - two grown women failing and falling across a small room, sheer slapstick. But Clara's hair is still stiff with blood, and she doesn't even know what he did to Cosima, and there's a sickening panic rising in her throat. She's suddenly quite positive that she's about to be sick.

"Cos, you okay?" A stupid question, but she needs to hear her girlfriend's voice.

places: sarah. skyler brothers meatpacking.

[bosewicht]

"Hey. Sarah. Sarah." A whistle, like morning birds.

And then the slap to her face, which is more of a quasi-gentle pat, but when it comes to waking from a drowsier, blurrier place, it might feel more like a jolt.

The cold probably comes in slower than everything else. Restraints at her wrists and her ankles, a strap across her chest. A pounding headache, probably, because few people are going to get out of this without some form of concussion. A throbbing ache low down on her arm. But when the cold does come, it's there to stay. Her winter clothing layers have been shed down to the essentials. Her fingertips tingling.

"Stay with me," is a little singsong. Sylar is tending to her arm, where some fresh injury has pierced the skin deeply beneath fresh bandages. Just visible is the tail end of a detached IV catheter, where the needle is buried and tape securely.

The space around them is the size of an ordinary room. Grey cement, silver metal, and the ceiling is made of rolling racks where once carcasses hung, but the smell of meat and refrigeration has been long ago replaced by the smell of water damage and a ghost scent of ammonia.

"This takes me back," Sylar is saying, as if in an effort to keep Sarah conscious. "I couldn't tell you how long I spent in a room just like this one. Time gets a little screwy after a certain point."

[coppelganger]

Sarah comes awake with a gasp, but it takes longer for her to comprehend what's happening. The pain in her arm, and the cold, and the fact that she's strapped down. She blinks, looking wildly around for anything she can use to save herself, but each movement of her eyes causes a stab of pounding pain behind them, and there's nothing. She can't move her arms, her legs. She's trapped in this freezing place with a psychopath, and she can't get out of this.

"Why are..." she swallows thickly, mouth dry. Her eyes move to the IV and bandages, then back to him. "You doing this?"

[bosewicht]

"Why?"

Sylar moves -- the rattle of chair wheels on the hard concrete floor as he swings himself around towards the head of Sarah's cot. His voice coming from somewhere above, beyond, the sense of his hands resting on the edges.

"I know how this is going to go after you all survive this. He was a monster. Crazy. A bad thing that happened to good people, like a car crash. Or stroke."

Through all the cold, she can feel, then, the edge of his thumb touching her hairline.

"Sarissa didn't understand. I tried to explain it."

[coppelganger]

"So explain it to me."

Desperate, because the longer she keeps him talking, the longer she stays alive. Because maybe something she says can change his mind. She doubts that will be the case, but Sarah is the survivor—didn't Cosima say so, after all? "You're the wildtype. You propagate against all odds. You're restless. You survive."—and will claw and fight for every extra second she can. She doesn't even let herself flinch at the feel of his thumb against her hairline, where Sarissa's head had been cut open. Just stay alive.

lure: sarissa.

[bosewicht]

From up here, Sylar can see where the lights are coming back on. In little constellations, mapped out on the dark landscape. It'll be a little longer before the utter chaos lifts like a dream, but it probably won't take nearly as long as anyone realises.

It's a shame. He was really starting to enjoy himself.

Rainfall with these temperatures means the roads are gonna have ice on them in the morning. He breathes out gusts of thick steam just sitting here, feeling the cold creep into his fingers. The rooftop of the old meatpacking plant is empty and grey, out of sight from the street as he turns the communicator over and over in his increasingly numb hand.

Finally, switching to speaker, he uses Cosima's phone to dial Sarissa's number. The sound of it ringing rattles in the oppressive quiet like a little canary in a cave.

[magnitudes]

Sarissa is tired. In the past collection of days she's lifted cars, gotten stuck in a lift, fought criminals with weird, food motifs, and been more social than she has in weeks, so much as fighting crime and poorly staged rescues can count as socialising. She's tired, but it feels like the pleasant fatigue of pushing herself harder because she wanted to, rather than the awkward, shambling exhaustion that has been heavy in her muscles and bones ever since she died.

She wanders down the street, hands in her jacket pockets, and rolls her shoulders to try and loosen them up as she fishes her phone out of her pocket. The ringtone is uniquely assigned to Cosima and incredibly chipper. Probably something from Happy Feet, or something of the like.

"G'day g'day, Tiger girl. How you goin'?" She's tired, but there's a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and her cheeks are flushed and pink as her words fog the air.

[bosewicht]

"That's very sweet."

They've talked over the communicators enough times that Sarissa won't need too long to recognise Sylar's voice, moments of cognitive dissonance aside. "I got a nickname for a while too, right? Sparky. That was nice."

Idly, he glances at his empty hand. No sparks flying, though he remembers a little what it felt like to generate them. An absence of active powers makes him almost feel ordinary.

"Anyway."

match: sarissa + sarah.

[bosewicht]

It's night time. This part of De Chima is industrial and empty, with the former meatpacking plant utterly abandoned save for, if Sylar is to be believed, Sarah Manning. Getting in was easy, through scaling a stairwell, in through where a window has already been broken and cleared of glass. It's dark, but she can user her communicator to navigate her way to the huge freezers, on his instructions -- or at least, the doors that lead to them. Sarissa's breath hangs in the air as steam. It's very cold, even before rooms built for refrigeration.

The locking mechanism on the door has been re-purposed. The panelling ripped open, new hardware installed, but the only part of the madness that Sarissa has to worry about is where a loose wire hangs for the grabbing. It jacks into her communicator.

"Go ahead," says the constant voice that's led her this far. "Unless you think you can punch your way in before it's too late."

The doors are steel. Large. Spotted with age and neglect. It might not be out of the question, but then he adds; "And that is, if you only want to save one of them."

[magnitudes]

"What is that gonna do? Give you some access to my phone or blow it up, or what?" She hesitates, waiting in case there's some further instruction, but does what she's been told, taking the wire and hooking it into her phone, watching the doors anxiously. Move. Move. Instantly, with the powers of her mind or something, just open up and show her where her sister is.

"Come on," she murmurs to herself, desperately. It's freezing in here, and while she has a jacket and scarf, it's not as warm as it could be, and she's got dread gathering in her in a mass.

[bosewicht]

Her screen goes black. Unresponsive. But the mechanisms of the door creak and shudder, and there's the hiss of the seal coming loose. All she has to do is to pull it open.

The industrial sized freezing room is almost empty. There are no windows, and everything is cement and metal. Light comes from an electric lap that flickers now and then, and casts light on where Sarah Manning is lying on a cot of some kind, strapped down with soft-restrains at the wrists, the ankles, and across her chest. Her arm is bandaged and taped to it is a disconnected catheter from where its embedded in her arm.

Her skin will have, by now, taken on an ashy quality. Her lips are blue.

Sarissa's phone is dead, so when the shrill ringtone fills the room only a few seconds later, it must be from somewhere else. A lit screen and the sound of it vibrating against a metal tray penetrates the shadows a few feet away. Next to it, medical equipment. Tubes. Needles.

and a smol timeskip.

[magnitudes]

( Sarissa bursts into the building, and for a second she feels like she might double over right then. Her heart beating too fast, and she knows she's been running and that the circumstances would push her pulse to double-time, but this is different. It comes with pale, clammy skin, and a feeling of weakness that's hard for her to get around. Her hands close into fists, and while she still has sensation and strength, that strength is shockingly normal. On the weak side of normal, even.

Sarissa needs a second to catch her breath, but there's no such luxury. Instead she's moving, following directions to seek out a safe room. One entrance, then another - two doors, side by side. One is rigged up with some mechanism, and after a second taken to examine it, Sarissa swallows. Another one of Sylar's games was inevitable, but she hopes to God she has the strength in her to get them through this.

The other door has no such mechanism sealing it, and so Sarissa enters, coughing a little as she does. There's a irritant, something burning at her lungs, and the gas swirling through the room is visible, obvious.

Equally obvious: an explosive in the middle of the room, complex, and a quick glance tells her it'd be enough to blow this building away, send it right up in a heartbeat. She notices the glass panel between this room and the next last, and covers her mouth to cough as she walks over to it, banging on the glass. It's thick, too thick for her to break with her current strength (or lack thereof.) For now that doesn't matter, and the burning in her throat and nose is ignored. )

Cosima! Clara!

( A speaker means that her words are easily audible in their side of the divide, even with the glass, and their's will be to her. ) Are you hurt?

( She coughs, again. Jesus, what is this stuff? )

smol timeskip for smol girls

[ohshutup]

[Clara scrambles up from the floor, untangling herself from Cosima's arms.]

Sarissa! [She doesn't answer the question - she's been choking back nausea from her head injury for hours, and Cosima doesn't look to be faring much better. But she's got the sinking feeling that their plight is long from over, and Sarissa doesn't need any further worries on her mind.] We're fine. Where are you?

[magnitudes]

I'm— in some room. Hang on.

( There's a black, heavy curtain, and she pulls at it, dragging it back until it reveals the window into Clara and Cosima's side of the room. The glass is very thick - unbreakable with her strength as compromised as it is now. Her mouth opens and closes, and she looks to the explosive behind her, a sinking feeling in her gut. )

I need to defuse this.

( And another cough. The gas in the room is becoming more apparent - yellow-green, coming in through vents and slowly rising up. She can't see anything like it in their side of the divide, thank God. There is a strange disconnect, though, between now being able to see them through the heavy glass window, and not being able to hear them save through the bloody speaker.)