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[thewarningafter]

@beyonce

You've reached Dr. Stephen Strange. Leave a message and my secretary will get back to you.

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->video

[thewarningafter]

[Unseen, Stephen leans in close to look at the man's eyes on the screen -- he seems focused, even cheerful. Stephen sits back and flicks on his own video, unaware that his face will appear obscured with static now that his own personal anomaly has vanished without having been murdered. His mind is still on checking his patient's mental acuity.]

Can you tell me a little about our conversation last night? What we talked about before I authorized the procedure?

[termineur]

[ His face falls as soon as he sees Stephen on-screen. First Al, and now him. The expression gets smoothed over quickly, however. He'll ask about it later. For now? Let the doctor do his check-up. After all, Sylar wants to know if he's missing anything, too. ]

You had to verify who I was, due to the compound agnosia. We talked about why I wanted to go through this whole thing in the first place. Eventually, we got on the subject of death losses and how and why they work the way they do. Think we agreed it's probably some form of ridiculous punishment.

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen gives his tablet an uneasy look, not getting why his patient suddenly seemed so unhappy to see him. There's the recall he was hoping to hear, though, confirmation that the guy can still remember.]

Good -- you do remember. I'm just going to ask you a few questions, make sure everything's in working order.

[And Stephen will put Sylar through some basic paces to check his cognitive functions.]

[termineur]

[ Sylar obligingly goes through all the questions- he wants to know if he's got anything to worry about, too. Thankfully, it all seems to be in proper working order. Unfortunately, the end of the testing means that he's got to get to the whole static-face subject. ]

So. Not sure if you knew this- [ There's no way Stephen knows. ] -But I can't see your face. It's covered over with static distortion.

[thewarningafter]

...You what?

[No, he did not know that. Stephen taps at his tablet, changing the settings until he can see his own feed. When he sees it he feels something twist in his gut; he doesn't know what it means but something tells him it's more than a technical malfunction.]

That's...probably not good....

[termineur]

Yeah. It happened with Al, too. We figure it's because he didn't kill his personal anomaly. I'm going to assume you're the same way?

[thewarningafter]

[His personal anomaly. He'd known, the same as all of them, what he had to do in order to get his light back. He remembers her staying at his side as he died, still telling him it hadn't been enough.]

No. Of course -- no. I didn't kill her.

[termineur]

[ Sylar heaves an over-dramatic sigh and gives the tablet a wan smile. ]

I should've run a class- Murdering Your Friends for Fun and Profit.

Okay. I'm not sure what that means, other than perhaps you didn't take your 'light' back, whatever the hell that is. I'll be with Al, but you should find someone to travel with that doesn't have the same problem. If some sort of data corruption or something starts happening to you two, it'd be better to know about it right away.

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen draws a ragged breath, unable to take the joke for what it is.]

Don't.

[He desperately doesn't want to talka bout this. Doesn't want to talk about the old friend who came here in pieces, and doesn't want to talk about the very real possibility that he's going to lose himself again.]

I'll figure something out.

[termineur]

[ He narrows his eyes at the protest, trying to discern what he can from the little bit of Stephen he sees on the video. ]

We'll figure something out. I'm going to need control of the nanites, too, if I want to be able to figure out a permanent solution to my little impulse control problem. I'm sure there's plenty of other people out there that didn't do anything with their anomalies. We need to sort that out, preferably before we leave.

[ He looks to the side, and after a pause looks back at the tablet. ]

You okay?

[thewarningafter]

No.

[It's the first time in a long time he can remember admitting that he's not doing okay, but he can't bring himself to try to take it back.]

I don't know what I'm doing anymore.

[termineur]

[ Sylar's kind of surprised to hear the admission. It shouldn't be a surprise to hear that he doesn't get a whole lot of people confessing their true feelings to him. He usually has to ferret them out. So he's quiet for a long moment before he responds. ]

Welcome to the club. There's a lot of us here now.

If it helps at all, currently you've been really helping me out.

[thewarningafter]

[At another time, he likely wouldn't have. There aren't that many people Stephen's decided to trust here that are still alive, and fewer still he can actually identify at the moment. Stephen is very alone right now, and loneliness is not a condition with which he copes well.

He's quiet a moment. It doesn't feel like much -- scratch that, it doesn't feel like enough -- but that does help. It gives him something to hold onto.]

Thanks. That...that helps.

[termineur]

[ He looks down and sighs slightly. After a moment of silence, he decides to share, too. ]

After I first got here, the world slowly turned into nothing but static. Nothing felt real. My powers were gone- everything I'd worked so hard for just disappeared...and then it got worse. I thought I was alone, at first, and then I thought that nothing was real. That I wasn't real. It was such a visceral feeling. I didn't handle it well. I didn't know what to do. What I ended up doing- I killed Mohinder Suresh. And I miss that mad scientist. Even if he hates my guts, I miss him.

So you're always going to be better than I was, with that. No matter what you do. You try to help, I throw a tantrum and destroy things. Maybe now it won't be people, at least.

[ Thanks to you, that's the implication there. ]

Al says this place is like a marathon. The most important thing is to endure, until we reach the end. He'd probably add on some sappy thing about having people to help you when it gets to be too tough, too. I wouldn't really know. But he's been right about a lot of things with me, so maybe it means something.

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen hears the implication and is at least a little vindicated by it even if it churns his stomach to know this guy was off killing another arrival from his own world almost as soon as he got here. And he could point out that he's thrown his share of tantrums, destroyed his share of relationships...but it's not the same. Even if it were, that's not who he is anymore. Not if he can help it.]

I came in thinking I was going to figure this out when no one else had. That's...kind of what I do, solve problems when other people can't see the way out, but nothing I've done here has gotten us anywhere. I'm trying, I know there are other ways to help, but I've always had some kind of reason, some kind of meaning for what I'm doing.

[termineur]

[ It's hard to know how his confession went over when he can't really see Stephen's face. At least the audio isn't distorted. He huffs out something like a chuckle. ]

Yeah, me too. And I'm thinking a lot of us are problem-solvers, you know? My ability is literally being able to figure things out. I've thought for awhile that it points towards a specific selection of us, rather than just a random sort of kidnapping.

It became clear to me, after those first few weeks, that we're gonna have to work together, use all of our specialties when they pop up. So I've been collecting tools- I still have fifteen years experience with fixing things. So far, though, it hasn't come up.

[ He shrugs, but he's also not looking at the camera. ]

To say that there's a lot of downtime here is something of an understatement.

[thewarningafter]

...Huh.

[That's...a weirdly comforting thought, in a way. Like they were chosen because someone wanted them to be able to come together and solve this instead of just at random.]

That's not one of the patterns I'd looked for. I'd like to think it's true, though.

[termineur]

[ It's nice to get something positive in response to one of his guesses. He'd spent far too long with Sherlock, apparently. ]

I'd noticed the pattern when we had more children here. Every one of them seemed to adapt to this situation far better than you'd expect. They were all very active in figuring out the mystery of this place, too. All of us are accustomed to pushing through until we find the answer. And most of us are used to being exceptional in some way or another.

That this place neutralizes our 'anomalous states' seems particularly cruel.

[ Even if it kind of worked out better for him. ]

[thewarningafter]

One could be compensation for the other.

[He's still feeling kind of awful about life in general -- the reference to when we had more children hurts in its own special way -- but he's game to turn over this little puzzle piece in an attempt to rationalize something about the life they're being forced to live.]

Say there are two entities working against each other here. One ensures that we're all neutralized, but the other picks people it thinks have the drive to function anyhow.

[termineur]

[ Puzzling out parts of this place always seemed to make him and Al feel a little better about things- he's not surprised Stephen's the same way. The distraction helps. ]

Right. Except I think maybe they're reversed- the first entity picks the best people to survive in this place, and the other interferes and tries to take away any advantages we had. If I had to guess right now, I'd say the first person is Andromeda and the second is the Prophet. Maybe the Prophet's controlling the Admin in some ways, or maybe the Admin's on the Prophet's side. Either way, I think that's where we're at.

[thewarningafter]

[It's almost like Stephen's let himself be alone with his own thoughts too long, without something like this to bring him back down.]

Right -- and if it's Andromeda, that at least explains the drive to pull people from other worlds, if not the means. The admin doesn't strike me as a think-outside-the-box type, generally speaking.

[termineur]

[ This is why Sylar no longer travels alone, if he can help it. He nearly fell apart the past few times. ]

Not so much, no. I'd sure love to find out how the extra-dimensional transport is happening, though. Doesn't it seem completely unlike the rest of the tech here? I mean, I know Andromeda loves space, but...

[ He shrugs. ]

[thewarningafter]

Winter said she didn't think it was possible given this world's technology, and who are you going to trust if not the Russian spybot? Interdimensional shifts -- it's not something you can do with a machine, generally speaking, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility. We interact with other dimensions through alignment of the spirit, not the material.

[termineur]

So that's something you've seen where you come from? And it's controlled via magic? We have a time traveler back home. But considering how many times he's appeared to be specifically obnoxious to me personally, I'm guessing he sticks to a single universe.

[ He thinks for a moment, then chuckles. ]

It's a little sad that Winter's our most trustworthy source of information. I do think she's a reliable one, though. She wants to help us find Andromeda, there's no reason for her to get in our way.

[thewarningafter]

Not to a parallel universe in the sense we're seeing here, but I don't have any reason to think it isn't possible. The other dimension I've been to outside the layers making up my normal reality was...less Earth-like.