damned_institute | Day 32: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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Day 32: Cafeteria, Breakfast

Sylar's gears were still turning as the nurse and a burly orderly escorted him down long halls and through a strange, sunlit room. He'd been forced to drop his pen when the orderly had seen it, and since then, he'd realized that this place had better security than he'd originally anticipated, as well as a large population of patients. It looked like he'd have to bide his time for now, pretending to be this 'Zachary Blaine' and trying to figure out how the hell he'd gotten here.

His mind went over and over the events in Mohinder's lab, tracing every second that led up to his unconsciousness. According to the computer logs and the decked-out loft, Mohinder was working for the Company now, so had that woman with the electricity been an operative? Was this all a Company front? Even so, it didn't make sense for them to drop him off somewhere without any close supervision. They knew how dangerous he was. How special he was.

But right now, his abilities had been nullified and he was left only with the option of playing along. It was a very good thing that it was something he excelled at, even with his sudden loss of the cure clouding his thoughts and telling him to do something drastic.

Still, it was fun to take ahold of strings and let someone think they were pulling him when in fact he was the puppetmaster. Who knew? Maybe he could find a new toy now that his last one had worn out.

Sylar took his syrup-covered waffle to a table and tried to keep track of both the security and the people flooding in. Soon, he'd find an opening, a weak link he could exploit. It was only a matter of time.

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"Not a hospital," River replied simply, apparently unconcerned with the fact that she wasn't who he thought she was. She waited in between the drop and the pick up, riding the maddeningly long path for the 15.6 seconds it took to help herself to another portion of scrambled eggs. He was lost again, and this time no one would be coming. Not yet.

"Spontaneous time travel isn't logical by all laws of physics and reality," she finally continued. "Should be more concerned with the theories of multiverse and cosmic inflation. More statistically relevant." River leaned forward, mimicking his posture even though she sported a somewhat vacant expression.

"We don't sleep here."

"No, you don't sleep but we mere mortals do," John smiled, shaking his head. She was talking strange again though it was more disjointed then normal. That worried him a little.

"And future me might have known all about the quantum mechanics of time travel but current me hasn't gotten to that chapter in physics yet. Still in high school."

John leaned forward, reaching to touch the top of her head. "You're speaking in riddles. I hope that I didn't knock something loose when I put your chip back in your head. Are all your circuits functioning?"

"Some sleep more than others. Typically teenagers because their bodies require more rest than most human beings belonging to other age groups," River replied, mechanically for reasons other than the act she seemed to be carrying out in her own, little world. She paused and smiled again.

"I slept last night. They cut my circuits and replaced fluid with blood." As if to prove her point, the girl lifted her leg up so that he could see and pulled the pants leg of her uniform up to revealed the bandage wrapped around the wound she'd received from the king the other evening. Traces of scarring from other wounds could be seen as well. "They made me a person."

John stared at Cameron's leg trying to piece together what she meant. She'd been 'injured' before, which is to say the flesh covering her metal skeleton had been damaged, and it had taken a bit for the wounds to heal but they had never left a scar before. Was it some defect in the engineered cells? Perhaps when they had jumped here it had caused some sort of mutation. The science made John's head explode but he was comfortable in the knowledge that one day he would understand it all.

"Pinocchio became a real boy," John reminded her, moving around the table so that he could sit next to her and look at her leg more closely. "The Tin Man was shown that he actually had a heart. If you'd like us to change your call sign all you have to do is ask."

He smiled at her, ignoring the fact that touching her leg made his cheeks flush. She was just a robot no matter how real her leg felt. "What did this?" he asked, inspecting the scars. "You've never scarred before. If there's something wrong maybe I can fix it."

"A man who pulled swords out of the air," came the automatic answer. Finding herself less able to maintain an expression sewn together from nothingness and circuitry, River had to flush a little when he reached out to touch her leg. Guilt. A measure of it to be sure. Right along with the memories of having the wounds bandaged. She hadn't been a machine then. She hadn't been a weapon or a teacup. She'd been a girl, and here she was. A girl again.

"And I'm a girl," she had to correct him as she eyed him warily. "Pinocchio and the Tin Man hailing from legends of Earth That Was aren't applicable."

"Even though the pages burned the stories are still there in the future, I'm sure," John murmured, too preoccupied with inspecting the wounds. He began to unwrap the bandage and was growing more and more uneasy as it seemed as though injury had bled a bit, spots of blood on the white gauze. This wasn't normal and he jumped a little when he saw the wound.

"Holy shit," he said, looking up at Cameron quickly. "You're leg! I mean... you're ... what... Ok, explain to me why you're missing certain metallic body parts?"

River looked away, suddenly seeming every bit as guilty as she felt. Games weren't meant to go on and on. Games weren't meant for forever, and she'd been bad. An imp, Daemon would say.

The words. The words were somewhere.

"I'm a liar, John Connor. I'm a liar, and I'm sorry," she mumbled, drawing her leg away and into the shroud of clarity again. The girl, the doll, the Tin Man... "I'm also River."

John stared at her with his eyes wide. If she wasn't Cameron then she wasn't a Terminator then... Shit, he'd been touching a girl's leg without her permission!

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, his cheeks flushing as he re-wrapped her leg. "River, then. If you're not Cameron then... how do you know my name? How do you know who I am?"

River let her hair hang in her eyes, shrouding her face from scrutiny or anything at all. Even the rays of the sun weren't currently welcome. Skin cancer and all.

"No, it's not... I-" River mumbled, back to babbling laced with a touch of girlish embarrassment. She didn't know many boys her age, after all. She didn't know many boys that weren't giant man-apes or brothers or captains or dead. "River is a complicated problem," she finally admitted with a sigh.

"And I suppose it's complicated that you look very similar to someone I know," John replied, finishing wrapping her leg as he put the dressing back as it had been. He looked at her carefully, amazed that he hadn't noticed before. Cameron always had a strange blank look where he could almost see someone looking back at him but not quite. River seemed to be the other way around. Someone looked back but there was a strange blankness that kept that person back. It made John squirm a bit.

"I'm sorry," he apologized again, trying to back track so that she didn't think he truly was insane. "I don't normally go around and jump on girls like that. And all that talk about circuits and robots... you know, that was a joke. My sister, Cameron, we like to play a robot game. Silly, right? Well she's pretty weird sometimes."

River didn't say anything. She only looked back at John as he rambled, trying to pick up the breadcrumbs he'd scattered once he realized that there were bears in the wood - vicious ones at that. When he was finished, she simply reached out with a finger to poke him in the nose.

"Goof," she said, amused smiles dancing on her lips.

John laughed, relieved that she had bought that horrible lie that made him sound like such a dork. He rubbed his cheeks and picked up his fork, turning back to his breakfast. "Yes, we are goofs," he said. "Especially when we're together. Mom doesn't know half of the trouble we get up to."

That was normal, wasn't it? Siblings plotting against their parents, normal kids did that and it wasn't so far off base. He had made Cameron promise not to tell his Mom certain things. At least the fabrication that Cameron was his sister was easy to stick to, even here.

"So, now that I've made a complete idiot of myself, maybe you can tell me what sort of place is this? I mean, I figure the cops wouldn't put me here without a reason. If they have, I better get myself a good lawyer, right?"

"Not a hospital," River replied, her voice carrying a lightness to it. It was like floating on the wind, drifting off and down a path shrouded in too much mist. "Lights won't work in this much fog..." she mumbled a moment later, though it wasn't directed at John. "Shortcuts need to be avoided. Too much roadkill."

In an instant, she was sharp and alert again, perhaps disturbingly so, as she turned her curious, half-blank, brown eyes back on him. Staring into souls always hurt, always bled bits and fragments and gallons.

"They make believe so you won't see them crawling out from under your bed at night."

Her words made John shiver, his skin pebbling into goosebumps. His mother would have said that someone had just walked over his grave and he would have just rolled his eyes but here, listening to River, it felt all too real. "Monsters under the bed, huh?" he said, shrugging his shoulders to shake the bad feeling. "At least you know where they're at. Easier to avoid that way."

River was odd but John didn't mind. He'd made 'friends' with plenty of odd people before, not to mention the fact that Cameron usually weirded him out.

"Waffle?" he said, noticing that she didn't have a plate in front of her. "I'm probably not going to eat it all."

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Day 32: Cafeteria, Breakfast

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