“Fox?” I called out, so many emotions slamming into me at once. He was alive. He wasn’t dead. He was here. Rosalie. Rosalie. ROSALIE. I WAS GOING TO LOSE HER. Nothing else mattered. My feelings no longer mattered. Fox was here. He was going to go to her and take her away.
“Hey,” he greeted me softly. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I can say the same,” I said, stepping over and staring down at him in his bed. He was smaller than I remembered him being. An ugly scar ran down one side of his face, and that eye was milky white. He had tattoos now down his arms, and even some on his neck. I suspected they filled his torso, too.
He looked away from me, his cheeks reddening.
“Sorry. I look like hell,” he muttered, reaching for a pair of aviator glasses on his bedside table. He pushed them onto his face and breathed out. “How are you?”
“I’m terrible,” I murmured. “But I think you might be worse.”
He chuckled at that. “I think you’re right.”
I shook my head and took a seat in the overstuffed chair next to his bed. I noticed he was watching a fantasy movie in the background with the sound off, and his handwriting littered the pages of his notebook. In fact, he had stacks of notebooks piled on the bedside table and his mattress.
“It’s usually Alessio who sits with me,” he said. “We have a routine. I write and ignore him while he comments on the weather and poor American television programming.”
I smiled at that. Alessio hated watching TV.
“What…what happened?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Alessio never misses a shot. He drugged me in the underground and then took me out through a side tunnel with Sylar. I woke a few days later, busted to hell, and thinking I was dead. Turns out, I am. I’m Evan now.”
That tracked. Matteo had sent Alessio in to handle the situation once Fox—Evan—pressed the button. I always assumed it was meant to kill Fox. I suppose, in a way, it had.
And Sylar…
That little fucking weasel. He knew this entire fucking time. When I got my hands on him…
Fucking prick. An asshole just like his old man.
“So what do you want to do as our routine?” Evan asked.
I shook away my shock and irritation at Sylar and offered Evan a quick smile.
“I-I don’t know. Do you… like Monopoly?”
A sad smile graced his face. “Rosalie loves Monopoly.”
I swallowed hard at his words. “I know.”
He snapped his attention to me. “How do you know?”
“Fuck.” I scrubbed my hand down my face. “Evan, I fear I must tell you an ugly truth because I think you’re a good man and deserve only the truth.”
He frowned at me and set his notebook aside. “Is it about Rosalie? Is she OK?”
“She is well,” I said, holding up my hand to stop his panic. I knew he lived and breathed for her.
I could empathize.
I launched into me, not knowing, and Matteo saying Sylar told him and Alessio not to tell me. That it made no sense until I saw him.
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t it make sense?” he asked.
“Fucking Sylar,” I muttered, shaking my head once more. “He told me some time ago to visit a diner called Merv’s. To try a blueberry muffin. I had never heard of this place, but one day, there it was. Curiosity overtook me. I went in. She was there. Rosalie. She was waitressing.”
Evan’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he stared back at me.
