Counting the Stars

Five - The Revalation and the Admittance

I rest my head in my palms, sitting on a chair in the med bay. Bones' somewhat comforting arm is wrapped about Addalynn, and she looks like she is about to break down. This whole situation, this whole day, more so, had been way to hard on my emotions, and I'm sure the same is true for Addalynn, or whoever she is.

"Addalynn, can you just please give me a straight sentence about what is going on? Or maybe even two?" I ask, probably hopelessly.

"My name is Rachel Andrew, I'm seventeen, and, really, I'm just a normal girl. There is a secret, though, but nobody knows it but me. You'll never put me through enough torture to get it out of me." She replies, and I sit in the armchair, my mouth hanging open with shock and awe. Sylar gets a familiar glint in his eye at the mention of torture, but I give him a look as if to say, She's been through enough. Don't get any ideas. He then looks a bit sad, but I shrug it off, thinking that I could solve that mystery another day.

"Alright. That was a wonderful start, but we're gonna need to know who your parents are, so that we can return you to them, and then you can be nursed back to mental health, and lie a normal life. I would help, but psychiatry isn't really my division. If you ever need anything, this is the transmitter code for the shipwide comm on the Enterprise, just ask for me or Taylor or whoever you need." Bones hands Rachel a electronic folder, with a number with 10 digits on it, and his words were only said with a hint of sarcasm. Rachel takes the folder gratefully, and, as she opens it up, I notice there is something inside of it. A transmitter. I reach into my back pocket, fishing for my high-tech phone, and I grab the lump out of my slightly scruffed-up, bloody jeans. I wiggle it in the air in Rachel's direction, mouthing, Call me!

She smiles. "I will. But, I need to talk to Taylor in private for a second, if that's okay." She looks at Bones and Sylar, as if they were her parents and she was seeking approval of them.

"Go ahead." Bones shrugs. "Couldn't hurt." 

"Thanks..." I say, looking at Rachel quizzically. We had been in the med bay for the previous two hours. What could we have possibly not have discussed? I walk into the hall with her anyway, and she looks at me with apprehension.

When we reach the hall, filled with the chorus of beeps and whirrs from the nearby machines, she stops and looks at me with concern lined deep within her face. " Taylor, I can't leave this ship. I have nowhere else to go," she says, the worry building up inside her mind. I can't even read her thoughts, her mind is so filled with the stuff.

"Rachel, what do you mean? You have a family, and they live in Texas. You told me that." I say, holding her shoulder to keep her steady, and hopefully sane.

"I didn't tell you that."

"Okay, it was in your head when we first met." I give a wry smile.

"I planted that in my head. That was the biggest lie of all of them, though. My parents and brother are dead.' She looks like she's about to cry.

"What?!" I shout incredulously. "You just lied to everyone that would listen so that you could get aboard this starship?"

"Well, this starship wasn't my initial destination..." Her voice trails off, and I am left trying to sort out the lies from the truth, which is pretty hard to decipher right now. Luckily, I am saved from this task by Bones rushing into the hall. He probably heard me shouting.

"Sorry, Bones, there's nothing to worry about. I may need you to run a few tests, though." I look at him with a glint in my eye, but he's giving a slightly apprehensive and confused look toward Rachel.

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"Well, it doesn't look like she ever had any abilities at any time in her life. I ran every test they've made for this sort of supernatural thing tat happens, very rarely, let me point out, to very special people. So it looks like the question is,  how were the abilities used by Rachel in the first place, when Khan killed her?"

I look at Sylar, thinking of one of his abilities in particular. "Sylar can heal people." I blurt out.

He looks at me. When I see the anger in his eyes, I know it's gonna turn into something a bit more than a look. I try to dive as he yells and brings his right fist back to hit me, hard. As I duck, my right arm is a bit too slow and his fists connects, hard. I feel and hear a crack and then my arm goes limp. I immediately know that it is broken. I've felt a similar feeling in most of my limbs at this point in the game.

"Gee, thanks!" I say sarcastically, as I give a menacing look to Sylar. Apparently he didn't want anyone to know that he had healed Rachel, and he wanted to stay notorious. I feel the all-too-familiar sensation of my arm snapping back into place, and that feeling informed me that my ability was hard at work. "It doesn't even feel like it hurts anymore. So, nice try." I glare at Sylar, and he looks like he is concentrating hard on my forehead.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was trying to make you let your guard down. I got into your brain and found out how it works. I am now indestructible, just like you." He responds nonchalantly.

"You're nothing like me, you cannibal!" I spit out.

"Bones, Rachel said to me that she had to stay here and that her family in Texas was a complete and total lie. Her family is dead, and she has nowhere else to go but here. And even though he doesn't want to admit it, Sylar healed her after Khan nearly killed her. There. That's it. That's all you need to know." I say the rush of words so fast that I think Spock is the only one that understood it all.

"Did you really heal her?" Bones looks at Sylar.

"Yes. I did." Sylar replies with a clenched jaw and a hell of a pokerface.