Infestation
TITLE: Infestation
AUTHOR: barhaven
CHARACTERS: Mohinder, Elle, Niki, Bennet, Sylar
RATING: PG-13 or so
NOTES: ibroketuesday requested a Heroes/Cloverfield story, so I took a shot at it. I was in a very "LOL MONSTERS" state of mind when I wrote this, and it shows. It helps if you've seen Cloverfield, but considering it borders on crack, it's probably not necessary as long you're entertained by Mohinder vs. monsters.
ETA (25/7/2008): Best Action/Adventure at the heroes_slash fanfiction awards! Thank you to everyone who voted for this. You made my day.
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Mohinder's life has to be running out of ways to get any stranger. There's only so many ways the world can prove it hates him. Even after exhausting the weird, impossible, and insane, it's still determined to try.
And it's succeeding. Between the scattered news reports, what he's seen first-hand on the streets in the last few hours, and a situation currently freefalling its way from bad to worse... Somehow, it tops all fucked-up precedents set by super powers, viruses, and psychotic serial killers.
If he had more than a few seconds left to live, that might seem impressive. In a terrifying, insane, "what-the-hell-is-THAT-and-why-does-it-want-to-chew-my-face-off?" sort of way.
"Mohinder!" a voice calls. He can barely hear it over the crackle of Elle's electricity, the shouting, things breaking... And the unmistakably horrible sound of a few lightning-singed monsters jumping at the chance to chase him out of the room and into the hall. There's no choice. There's too many of them, even for Elle and Niki to handle at once. A distraction should even their odds.
It does. Great. Now what?
He runs. The chittering screeches and skittering of oversized spider-legs tell him exactly how close those things are behind him. Considering how effortlessly they can crawl around on the ceiling and walls, the ones he hears scuttling after him could be creeping along above his head, ready to drop down for some dramatic death from above.
At least some scrap of luck seems to have drifted close enough to give him a lifeline. There's a red-bordered case against the wall a short distance down the hall. Glass crisply shattered, and the fire axe from the emergency kit lying abandoned.
Mohinder snatches it off the floor. There's so much blind desperation that it's already in his hands before he realises how slippery the handle is. Or notices just how much blood is splattered across the walls and floor. Or sees the smeared red marks that drag a short distance down the hall, until the trail disappears into a dark open stairwell.
Wonderful. That's fucking encouraging.
There's a fine line between bravery and suicide. When he turns around in time to see the first creature drop from the ceiling and lunge at him like a rabid pitbull, it's hard to tell which side this falls on. Whichever it is, the monsters seem happy about it.
He's probably imagining that. Though judging from everything he's seen tonight, the entire point of their existence is pure, single-minded devotion to being horrifying. Maybe evolution was spiteful enough to give them the capacity to enjoy it.
The creatures have some kind of carapace or exoskeleton. Tougher than flesh, but still no match for an axe being swung for dear life. Axe-blade and over-eager monster connect with a wet, satisfying crack that sends it crashing to the floor. Thick, black-green fluid gushes from a wound cleaved deep into its head. That doesn't stop the thing from crawling its way back towards him, snapping that gaping, saw-bladed maw.
Mohinder kicks it. Hard. He just barely avoids getting a bite in retaliation, but that does the trick. It knocks the thing off balance just long enough for axe to meet thorax.
The monster doesn't stop moving, and wailing, and thrashing. But with a few more clumsy axe-blows, its legs curl up and it's writhing more than attacking.
There's a messy spurt of haemolymph as Mohinder yanks the axe free of its body. Just in time for another creature to drop from the ceiling to take its place. A second later, another one joins it.
Mohinder looks at them. They look at him. One of them alone could out-eyeball him. Two is just unfair.
Serrated jaws click and hiss. He's almost positive it's the giant-insect-thing equivalent of "you are completely fucked."
Fear-fuelled adrenaline only goes so far against monsters with numbers, strength, and sharp bits on their side. Even as Mohinder manages to catch one of them with a wide swing of the axe and spill out a gush of viscous blood, he's already screwed. The other one darts it, lunges at him in a knot of legs and teeth, and knocks him to the floor with an impact that feels like being hit with a chunk of scrap metal.
The monsters are cheated out of the chance to take a bite. A sudden, ozone-searing burst of electricity knocks one monster away completely, and sends the other into screeching convulsions.
Mohinder kicks the remaining monster off. Well, tries to. It only manages to knock it to one side in a twitching spasm, but that's enough. It means he's able to push himself to his knees, and bring the axe down until the thing stops moving.
"You're cute when you're covered in monster guts."
Mohinder looks up. Elle grins down at him, gesturing with a casual 'you've got something on you'.
The geneticist runs a hand across his face. Considering the abundance of spider-monster viscera splattered about, he doubts it helps.
"Nice job, Suresh," Niki says as she joins them, dripping with sarcasm and monster blood. "Running away like that? Next time, stick with the people who are supposed to protect you from being eviscerated by-"
"They were swarming you," Mohinder interrupts indignantly. "Maybe you missed me throwing a chair at the three that were about about to jump you from behind."
"I saw," Elle says. "At least you were bravely running away."
Mohinder sighs, and climbs to his feet. "It isn't safe here."
"Like it's safe out there." Elle frowns. "Daddy told me to get you here alive. He said they caught something a few hours ago, and he needed you to see."
"Caught...? Tell me you don't mean-"
One of the monsters on the floor suddenly spasms, hissing and flailing its broken legs. Niki reacts. A few seconds later, it's twitching in significantly smaller pieces.
"That," she says. The creature jerks again, but this time it's the tail end of a death throe. "Guess it brought friends."
"Or made more," Elle suggests. "Looked like something went all Aliens on those guys upstairs." She nudges the monster with one foot, probably trying to decide whether that qualifies as worst possible way to die. Or the coolest, as long as it's happening to someone else.
"I don't have a Ph.D. in monster zoology." Mohinder half expects the creature to jump back to life. Perhaps to spite his expectations, it remains very, very dead. "Considering what's outside right now, it's hardly the time for-"
Not the time for research. But also not the time for arguing.
"How do we get out of here?" he asks instead. He's not familiar with this part of the building, but Elle certainly is. Maybe Niki, too. Who knows what the Company has her doing these days. At least one of her personalities is probably more in the loop than he is.
"That way," Elle says. She points at the trail of blood leading into the open mouth of the stairwell.
Mohinder and Niki stare at her.
"Or there's a detour."
_____
The detour brings them deeper into the labyrinth of a basement, past rooms packed tight with secrets, schemes, and at least a few decades worth of outdated records and poorly organised invoices. For a shadowy company with enough power to guide or demolish the entire course of modern history, they seem to have consistently neglected to hire anyone with the ability to do competent filing.
Sometimes those soft, familiar sounds click and croak and hiss in the distance, or there's streaks of blood on the floor that trail off to where the dim lights don't reach. Thankfully, the lurking creatures don't seem to know they're here. That or they're keeping their distance and waiting for a more favourable chance to strike. Mohinder hopes it's the former. The only thing worse than mindless predatory monsters that want to eat you alive are intelligent predatory monsters that want to eat you alive.
At least the emergency generators kicked in after the building lost power, but that offers about the same amount of comfort. Instead of stumbling around in the dark with things that want to kill them, they can stumble around by orange-washed emergency light and actually see what's trying to kill them.
Sometimes there's a tangible trembling through the walls and floors. They try not to think about it. They have enough problems already without worrying about the one outside.
Elle stops when they reach a place the general public very obviously isn't supposed to be. Or 90% of the Company's staff, for that matter. The door is marked with a prominent yellow sign that reads simply CONTAINMENT. A passcode into the panel on the wall grants them access to a long corridor lined with glass windows and metal doors. At least a few of the security measures are still working on emergency power. Not enough of them, but a few.
"Just be a sec," Elle says, and she walks away before they can object. Mohinder and Niki are left near the door, staring at a posted list of warnings and emergency procedures that, all things considered, were woefully inadequate.
Elle quickly passes the dark, staring windows, all the way to the far end of the hall. Another quick series of punched numbers open the door with a dull, mechanical click.
"Hey there," she calls. "It's me. Want to not die tonight?"
_____
Bennet takes it all remarkably well.
Too well. He's no fun at all. Elle was hoping for at least a bit of "are you fucking insane?" kinda denial. Maybe a bit of fear. If anything is ever going to make Bennet freak out short of threatening his spoiled pom-pom princess of a daughter, this should be it.
Instead he just sits there on the cot in that ugly white Primatech-issue t-shirt and pants, listening carefully to her story, looking like he'd had a plan for a situation like this all along.
Maybe he's just faking the 'calm and controlled' thing. But somehow, Elle wouldn't be surprised if Bennet had a plan for everything up to and including mystical death cults, ninja attacks, and a zombie apocalypse.
"So it's just the three of you?" Bennet says eventually. Down to business. How boring.
"Yeah," Elle replies. "Dunno who's left in the building besides us. There's no one down here except a few corpses. Everyone else is probably upstairs, running away, or monster food." She looks at Bennet. "...I told you there's monsters, right? Ugly murder-bugs the size of rottweilers. Really, really scary. Seriously. They've got all these pointy-"
"You did. Five times."
"...and I mentioned the big-"
"That too."
Elle sighs. "You're way too cocky for someone without powers."
"If Suresh can kill one, I think I'll be just fine when-"
Bennet frowns.
"Where are they?"
"Mohinder and Niki? Just down the hall. If any bugs show up, they can handle it. Well, Niki can. Mohinder just kind of hilariously hits things until they die."
"You forgot about my neighbour down the hall."
Elle thinks. And she remembers.
"Oh, crap."
_____
"Honestly, Mohinder. You never call, you never write, you never come by to drug me and jam a needle in my spine..."
"They neglected to mention you were alive." Mohinder takes back his earlier assumption. His life still isn't running out of ways to get more insane, but the old stand-bys are still managing to trump the monsters.
"Too bad. If it were you dropping by to torture me, I would have escaped weeks ago. The white-coats down here don't have your entertaining daddy issues."
Through the plateglass window and the silhouetting wash of dim emergency lights, Sylar stares out from the dark cell like the bogeyman Molly always says he was. Is. A pale, bruised, unsteady-looking one, trying a bit too hard to pour out menace from behind the glass. But as far as Mohinder is concerned, still the same monster as ever. Even with the current competition.
For a moment it seems like Sylar is just getting started, but the requisite manipulative lecture doesn't come. Instead he tilts his head with sudden curiosity, and leans against the window separating them to get a better look. "An axe? That's...different. Kill anyone I know?"
"...you don't know what happening out there?"
Sylar gives Mohinder a look. He raps on the window for emphasis.
"Right." Mohinder shrugs. "Well, far be it from me to spoil the surprise."
"Please. Knowing this place, the zombies in the lab downstairs probably escaped again."
There's only split-second of shock in Mohinder's expression before he catches himself, but it's enough to get a satisfied snicker out of Sylar. "If you were any more gullible, Doctor, I'd be embarrassed for you."
"Mohinder!" Elle comes running down the hall with Bennet close behind. It figures. At least that wasn't entirely unexpected. Awkward, possibly a gunshot to the head waiting to happen, but not surprising.
Whatever answers Mohinder might have demanded, excuses Elle might have offered, or threats Sylar might have levelled at them, they never get the chance. Niki is suddenly shouting a warning, inhuman screeches are filling the hall, and arguments are quickly relegated to the least of their worries.
_____
Most of the chaos of the next few minutes happens beyond the small sliver of hallway visible from Sylar's cell. He's left leaning against the window, listening to the lightning-cracks, sounds of impact, frantic shouting, and strange, croaked, clicking voices that reach him from outside.
Still, the battle carries down eventually. He catches glimpses of the monsters that slipped through the door before Niki managed to shove it shut. And he sees exactly what the axe is for.
Well. Maybe Mohinder's gullibility wasn't quite as ridiculous as he thought.
From the safety of his cell, Sylar tries to get a good look at the creatures that dart in and out of the line of sight. Of all the things to wake up to after a few weeks of being drugged senseless. At least he has the monsters to thank for that. They probably killed the guy who administers his meds. Besides, there's something undeniably entertaining about watching four people he holds various levels of seething hatred for, fighting what look like pissed-off camel spiders the size of attack dogs. As if this place's cockroach problem wasn't bad enough.
The novelty instantly wears off when one of the monsters comes out of fucking nowhere and slams against the other side of the glass, an inch away from his face.
The thing scrabbles to reach him, flails and bites against the window with cracks and crunches and scrapes of glass. Even locked in here, he hasn't gone ignored. The creature says hello by showing off every razor-edged appendage that it wants to use to tear his intestines out.
A blast of lightning from down the hall sends the thing tumbling back to the floor, and Sylar loses sight of it when it skitters away. Still. Between the hairline fractures now zig-zagging across the window and the drooling streaks of what he assumes is either venom or blood, he's suddenly less of a spectator than he thought. And he realises just how far he jumped back from the window.
Fine. Point taken.
Eventually, things go quiet. The shouts and struggles wind down, and there's only distant movement at the far end of the hall. The fact that there's hushed voices attached rather than insect chittering tells him there's still someone alive to listen when he calls out, "How long do you plan on surviving, Doctor Suresh?"
For a moment the emergency-lit space outside his cell remains empty. They keep talking among themselves, though all he can make out is someone saying, "It's just a bite, it's fine..." Maybe the geneticist is already dead. That would be...annoying. And pathetically anti-climactic.
Then Mohinder appears just outside the window, sans axe and plus a few scratches on his face and arms. Perfect.
"You're going to die," Sylar says simply.
"We're leaving," Mohinder snaps. With a glance at the roadmap of cracks and smears of fluid across the plateglass from the monster's brief assault, he adds, "If I were you, I'd start trying to smash this window. You might make it through before the rest of those things find you."
Sylar smirks. "Open the door."
"And how exactly would having a serial killer running free be an advantage to us at the moment?"
"Don't kid yourself, Suresh. Electra over there would throw you to the monsters for kicks. From what I've heard about the amazon, she makes everyone down here look like a picture of mental health. Bennet is here because they were afraid he'd escape from anywhere else. And then there's you. You might as well have 'monster fodder' written across your forehead."
"I'm not the one in a cell."
"You're practical, Mohinder. Whatever is going on, it's my problem as much as yours. From the looks of it, you've had plenty of practice burying hatchets tonight." Sylar gestures vaguely to the cell door. "You can open the door, and I can help you. Or I can escape on my own, kill your friends, and spare a few minutes to feed you to the spiders. Your choice."
Mohinder meets the threats with a derisive little glare. It's pitch black beyond the emergency lights, he's likely to be eaten by something horrible, but he still has contempt to spare for Sylar. "You'll have to do much better than that," he says. "There's only one reason you'd be asking me to let you out. Even if I went temporarily insane and thought you wouldn't try to kill us the second it was convenient...you don't even have your abilities."
"I will when the drugs finish wearing off. Then I'll get out of here anyway."
"You think so?" For someone who's bleeding and covered with monster gore, there's a bit too much smugness in Mohinder's voice.
"They're bugs," Sylar says dismissively.
A miniature quake suddenly trembles through the room. The cell shakes around him, and the cracked glass rattles in its frame. Sylar frowns. It's not the first time he's felt the ground shake tonight, but it's noticeably stronger than the last few times.
Another fleeting, alarmed look flashes across Mohinder's face. Sylar catches that one too. Somehow, it's not amusing this time.
When the tremble dies away, Mohinder reaches out. He swipes a line through the smeared stain of gore on the cracked window, enough to see Sylar more clearly. The geneticist leans in close, until there's only a few inches and a pane of glass between them.
Then he tells Sylar what's happening in the city. Very, very clearly.
Maybe they're all going to die tonight. Still, when Mohinder turns away from the glass and goes to rejoin the others, there's an undeniable sense of satisfaction in listening to Sylar bang on the window and shout after him.
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