Apocabigbang Fic - The Man Who Sold the World - Chapter 2
Title: The Man Who Sold The World - Chapter 2
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Adam/Peter, Mohinder/Sylar
Words: 3426/15,520
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, m/m relationships-but no graphic sex, spoilers for S2 and part of S3.
Summary: In a world where over 99% of the population has died, decimated by the release of the Shanti virus, Adam has worked hard to build an outpost of civilization for survivors in a paradise, a new Garden of Eden, where humanity can be shaped into the image of his choosing. But while most of the survivors have resigned themselves to this new world and struggle to find their own place and build lives within it, Peter refuses to do so. Despite the feelings he and Adam share, Peter won't rest until he manages to undo what was done, no matter the cost, and Adam must find a way to stop him before it's too late, and his perfect apocalypse is destroyed.
Parts: Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
Notes: Thank you to my wonderful betas: kirsteena, risingfire and keep_them_safe
Fanmix to accompany: The Future Never Happened - by entwashian
June 2009
"You lied to me," Peter said, as he stormed into Adam's office.
Adam arched an eyebrow and looked up from the papers he'd been studying. "Actually, no. I didn't."
"I went back and told myself..."
"Yes, I'm quite aware," Adam interrupted. He waved away the security who'd hurried in behind Peter. However angry the empath was at him, killing him here and now served no purpose. It was the past that concerned Adam. "You've really got to stop doing that."
Peter stared at him, dumbfounded, as Adam looked back down at the paperwork. "Stop? After what you've done?"
"I've saved the world, Peter. You haven't any idea where it was heading, hurtling toward its own destruction..."
"So you decided to help it along."
The argument was an old one, repeating itself like a needle stuck in a groove for the past two years, and Adam took a moment to close his eyes, pressing his fingers to his temple as if that would ward off the onset of the headache he felt creeping up behind his eyes. "I decided to save it from itself."
"By killing everyone?"
"Peter, look outside. There are people on the beach today, people going to work, people doing their best to rebuild a better, stronger world. I gave them a fresh start..."
"You killed billions of people."
"Who were going to die anyway," Adam snapped, looking back up at him. "Either from a nuclear holocaust or biological warfare at the hands of extremists or old age, they were all going to die, and when they went, the world was going to be in worse shape than it had been. Now, at least, there is a chance for something better rather than a continual hurtling toward a wasteland."
Peter stared at him. "Who gave you the right to decide this was better?"
"God," Adam said, staring back, "When he made me what he did. Made me watch as the world declined, watch as humanity repeated its mistakes over and over and over again. Made me live through war after war, plague after plague, one dictatorship and extremist political regime after the next."
"You're insane," Peter breathed after a moment's stunned silence.
Adam shrugged slightly. "I've been called worse. I'm also right. You'll see, in time."
Peter was slowly shaking his head. "I'll stop you..."
"So you've said for nearly two years now, and yet, each time you fail. Don't you think it's about time you admitted this was meant to be, Peter? It's fate, destiny, the way things are supposed to be--whatever you want to call it. Nothing you do changes it, no matter how many butterflies you heedlessly trample. When are you going to resign yourself to that?" Adam stared at him, truly baffled.
"I can't," Peter said quietly. "I can't live with this, with what you...what we did. I have to change it, or die trying."
Adam closed his eyes for a moment, not wanting to show how much that hurt. "Is that how you really feel?"
"Yeah. It is."
"So be it, then."
Peter's eyes widened as the Haitian stepped into the room, glancing at Adam, who opened his eyes and gave him a nod.
"Adam...?"
It was almost amusing how the boy could still manage to look betrayed. Adam forced himself not to look at him, focusing on Rene instead. "Take him."
He could hear Peter's protests hanging in the air for a long time after the larger man had dragged him away.
* * *
Night time was his favorite time to walk through the city. For all his aching desire to be the hero of the world, it had its drawbacks and simple freedom of movement was one of them. The survivors of the Shanti virus looked to him as their savior, both for bringing a cure to the world, and, for those here, at least, for bringing them here to a place they could live. Adam had chosen the island very carefully. It had the infrastructure in place to house people, and the climate they would need to grow food and survive. The feel of paradise was a balm to battered souls, as well, with lush vegetation, beautiful wildlife and crystal clear oceans. It was isolated from the devastation that was the mainland of America. What cars there had been littering the streets here had been removed, and much of the island had always been natural beauty, not built up with habitations that stood empty now.
They couldn't escape it all, of course. Even with the ships of survivors who'd come in droves, their population was under a quarter million on an island which had been home to almost a million before the plague. They tried, but they couldn't fill it up. Empty houses echoed when the wind blew through them, and businesses stood abandoned, with those wares not deemed supplies gathering dust. But it was better here than it would have been in Los Angeles or New York or one of the cities that had housed millions, now standing broken and abandoned. Honolulu's isolation had left it mostly untouched by looters, the bands of bandits who had drawn together when civilization fell, seeking power rather than community. There were a few broken windows to repair and kitchens to clean, but not nearly as much as would have been necessary had they stopped in any of the desolate cities they'd driven through on their trek to the ports that would bring them to the Mecca Hawaii had become.
Adam had planned this for too long, executed it too well. Gas guzzling cars were disposed of, hybrids and electric ones brought in on ships he had manned by crews he'd saved just for that purpose. Getting gas to the island would be a problem, and when they ran out no one wanted rusting heaps of junk on the side of the road as a reminder of what had been. Nature would creep back, retake the rest of the world, pull man's monuments down and leave something for the survivors of humanity's children to rediscover one day, but until then...until then he would keep them here, safe in their little piece of paradise, rebuilding a world based on a new paradigm, one he'd be around to make sure stayed in place.
Still, in the quiet of the night, the city still had an aching feel of emptiness to it. The lights of apartment buildings that glowed in the dark only seemed to highlight the desolate emptiness of streets where neon had once lit up entertainment after entertainment. No car horns broke the stillness, no music called like a siren to the pedestrians, no laughter rang from the bars that stood empty on the white sands of the beach. They would come, he knew. Human resilience demanded it, and he hadn't lied when he told Angela he'd had petitions for permits to reopen some of the entertainment centers. The population would support it, and while they had abandoned capitalism here in favor of a far more communal spirit of war torn survivors, finding a way to run a business wasn't out of the question. He supposed he'd have to set up some form of currency eventually, before everyone started bartering. He'd asked Nathan to think about it, actually.
He had far more pressing things on his mind, right now, like how to keep it all from just disappearing from under his fingertips.
Adam kicked a loose stone as he turned off the sidewalk and made his way down to the path that ran along the beach. Melvin was the only one who knew for certain how many times he'd gone back, but Peter's attempts to change things were reaching a new level of desperation. If he'd gone so far as to talk to himself, what would he try next? He could tell himself something he couldn't dispute. He might even go so far as to attempt to assassinate Adam. He hadn't yet, caught even after everythingl in the same threads of fondness and dependency that Adam felt wrapping around himself, but that didn't mean he wouldn't eventually, not if it meant saving the world.
Adam couldn't let him do that.
The sand shifted under his feet as he made his way down to the water, its rise and fall drawing his gaze as it seemed to so often these days. His thumb traced back and forth across his lower lip as he contemplated it. Killing Peter, as he'd killed Hiro, was the obvious and simplest solution. He regenerated, which meant he was immortal. Even if Adam could get him to acquiesce, now, there was no saying that Peter wouldn't spend a century gathering his will and strike when Adam least expected it, when he'd finally dropped his guard. That's what Adam would do, if he were him. Peter wasn't a strategist, but he could learn, and Adam couldn't allow that. All logic said he should put a bullet to the boy's brain and end him, no matter the pain it caused. It wouldn't mean he was alone forever, not anymore. There was the girl, Claire, and Sylar, as well. He could still build some sort of lasting connection with Peter gone.
But Peter would be gone.
Funny how he hadn't let those brown eyes and crooked smile sway him from doing what had to be done when he made this world, but he couldn't find the will to do what must be done to keep it.
"There has to be another way," Adam murmured to the ocean breeze, and though he knew there was, he found himself sick at the thought of it, as well. No bullet to the boy's brain, no, but he would lose him just the same, in the end.
Unless...his smile flickered slightly, though it had a sick edge to it, and he reached for his cell phone. Brilliant boy, Micah, getting the towers on the island to work again, he thought, as he punched in a number.
"Tell Suresh I need to see him."
* * *
The knocking on his door wasn't something Mohinder could ignore, though he gave it his best try for a few minutes. Night had fallen hours ago, and while he probably should have headed back to the apartment he'd claimed as his own, he found his time in the lab far more soothing than the attempts at pretending to have some sort of a normal life. Life wasn't normal, not anymore. People died. He couldn't save them, hadn't been able to manufacture an antidote fast enough, and for all that the antibodies in his blood mixed with Claire's and Adam's was a cure...he only had so much blood he could give at a time. Without a synthetic cure...
Without a synthetic cure, the world died in agony around him. The only blessing he could hold onto was that it had been quick. Once infected, most people died within a matter of days, some of them hours. Only a few lingered in agony, and those he generally did his best to save, to find his own strength and blood supply from one of the world's healers. All of it wound up being so little, in the end, though. Before the official governments collapsed completely, the decimation had been estimated at 93 percent. People had kept dying for weeks-months--after that. The latest statistics he'd heard were well over 99 percent, 99.6, 99.7...the exact numbers were uncertain. Ninety-nine percent of the world's population just...gone. Dead, lost for all time, wiped out in a matter of months.
Even now, even here in this paradise Adam Monroe was trying to build, the survivors moved with a shell-shocked gaze in their eyes. There were distractions, at least, and a desperate reminder of the beauty of the world around them. Mohinder had to give them man that--he'd planned well. But even the survivors carried still bleeding wounds in their psyche that they could only dream of one day becoming scars. This wasn't the generation that would prosper, Mohinder knew. Suicides were common, people giving in to the despair of having watched the world die. No, if Monroe was going to have his shining new world, it would be the next generation to start to bring it to fruition. Children forgot, children saw sun and water and flowers. They had food and people to love them, and they moved forward.
Maybe that was what the immortal was counting on, the geneticist thought wearily, as the knock sounded again. And that was why he slaved in this lab, as well, day after day, to help that generation. Because evolution favored the strong and in a society where the population had shifted to incorporate an overwhelming percentage of specials, non-specials were the ones most at risk. If he could tweak evolution, give it a helping hand...then even the children born without abilities naturally would have a chance.
Pushing back from the table, he moved to the door, staring at the man on the other side with an inquiring look laced with resignation.
Sylar smirked slightly. "Adam wants to see you."
"Now?" Mohinder asked, trying to find some flare of anger to remind him of the life before, the man he'd been. But the virus outbreak provided a sharp line of demarcation, and what had come before had ceased to matter long ago.
Sylar reached out, brushing fingers lightly down his cheek in a caress that was becoming more and more familiar. "That was the impression I got, yes."
However much he wanted to lean into that soft touch, to let his own exhaustion take over and accept the offered comfort, Mohinder resisted, not flinching away, but rather straightening and giving the other man a slight nod. "Let me get my things."
Sylar shrugged, moving into the lab and leaned against the wall, and Mohinder tried not to think about how at home he looked there, instead moving to grab what he needed and push it into a messenger bag.
"Let's go."
* * *
The house he'd claimed was on a bluff outside of the downtown limits, overlooking the ocean he'd loved since before all of this journey began. The boy he'd been then was lost in some mist of time Adam couldn't quite recall, but the ocean stirred the memory, as if it were buried in his pores, of something simpler, of something normal he'd been denied for too many centuries. He was sitting in one of the lounge chairs, sipping another whiskey for all the good it did when he heard the steps. Glancing up, he gave Sylar a slight smile, then nodded to Mohinder behind him.
"Thank you for coming so promptly."
"Did I really have a choice?" Mohinder said, shifting the bag off his shoulder and moving to lean against the balcony, fixing him with a glare Adam was fairly certain would be impressive if he were a man easily quelled.
"We always have choices, Doctor," he said mildly. "Would you like a drink, either of you?"
Sylar shook his head, leaning against the balcony door, putting himself between Mohinder and the exit in a move that made Adam smile slightly. Mohinder declined as well. Adam shrugged.
"I won't keep you long. I just wanted an update on the progress of the formula."
"And that couldn't wait 'til morning?" Mohinder asked.
"Did Sylar wake you?" Adam asked in return.
"No," Mohinder confessed after a moment. "I was working."
"Then I don't see the problem. The formula, Doctor?"
Mohinder sighed and ran a hand through his curls. "With the addition of the catalyst from Claire, it seems to have stabilized. I think it's ready for human tests."
"Good." Adam smiled, a ripple of pleasure running through him. He took a sip of his drink, held the burning liquid in his mouth for a moment before swallowing for the only real sensation he could get from it anymore, then sighed. "I have a hypothetical to put to you."
Mohinder arched an eyebrow, looking as if he was trying to not be intrigued and failing miserably at it.
"Say one of us were to lose our abilities, be rendered a non-special. If such a person were to be given the formula, do you think it would restore the same ability the person had before, or would it give them something completely different?"
"How would someone lose their ability?" Mohinder asked, looking confused. "The Company looked for a cure for thirty years without success..."
Adam rolled his eyes. "Let's not bring what the Company did or did not do into this, shall we? Say something existed which could render us non-special. A cure, if you will, or something else entirely, it doesn't much matter how..."
"But it could," Mohinder objected. "If a person lost their ability due to genetic altering, that would be one thing. When they are unable to access it due to drugs, or the virus, that's another all together."
Adam hesitated, then nodded slightly. "All right. Give me both scenarios."
Mohinder stared at him for a moment, then started slowly. "The formula wouldn't affect someone rendered incapacitated due to drugs or illness, I don't think. We're talking about genetic mutation, here, awakening the part of the brain that controls these sorts of thing. A person who is just ill or drugged still has their ability, still has their mutation and full access to it. Something's just blocking them, and the formula isn't intended to remove those sorts of artificial blocks."
"And if they had truly lost it? Had it...taken from them, say?"
Sylar shifted behind him, his discomfort with the conversation more than obvious, but Adam didn't glance back. He wasn't planning on threatening his second-in-command, after all. Sylar could live with the discomfort for a little while.
"I would think that it would be more successful on such a person. Those who have abilities versus those who don't is genetically hardwired in, in some ways, but every human being has some evolutionary potential locked inside them. If a person had theirs shut down, the formula should reopen it, and if it were on a person whose natural state was that open, it should do so even more easily."
"And the ability they gained back...would it be identical?"
"Theoretically," Mohinder said slowly. "The abilities humans develop are based upon our blood, our unique DNA signature. If they developed one way naturally, I would think that the formula would retrigger the same thing and cause them to develop the same--or at least highly similar--again."
Adam fell silent for a few long moments, finishing his drink while the other two waited, standing where they were, looking at each other over his head in some sort of silent communication he figured they had worked out through the years.
"So...correlating to that, say something stripped Sylar of his powers," Adam suggested, and caught Sylar standing up fast from the corner of his eye. He waved a hand at him and shot him a glance with a bit of a frown. "Hypothetically. And then you gave him the formula. Would he regain all of what he had before, or just his original ability?"
Mohinder stared at Adam for a long moment, something conflicted in his eyes, then glanced at Sylar for just as long, before looking back at him. "I can't be certain, but I would assume he would regain his aptitude, and have to set about collecting the others again, since those were, in effect, learned or acquired and not naturally his. Losing his abilities would erase them from his neural pathways and the formula couldn't give them all back."
Adam smiled, though it wasn't at all warm, and held an edge of dangerous glee. "Thank you, Doctor. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Why don't you go home and get some rest? We'll start trials on the formula in a few days."
Mohinder gave him a nervous look, then nodded, taking his dismissal and moving toward the door. Sylar didn't move out of his way for a long moment, but finally stepped back, letting him go. One glance at Adam, though, and getting a nod of dismissal of his own from the immortal, he followed the geneticist back out into the night.
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Adam/Peter, Mohinder/Sylar
Words: 3426/15,520
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, m/m relationships-but no graphic sex, spoilers for S2 and part of S3.
Summary: In a world where over 99% of the population has died, decimated by the release of the Shanti virus, Adam has worked hard to build an outpost of civilization for survivors in a paradise, a new Garden of Eden, where humanity can be shaped into the image of his choosing. But while most of the survivors have resigned themselves to this new world and struggle to find their own place and build lives within it, Peter refuses to do so. Despite the feelings he and Adam share, Peter won't rest until he manages to undo what was done, no matter the cost, and Adam must find a way to stop him before it's too late, and his perfect apocalypse is destroyed.
Parts: Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
Notes: Thank you to my wonderful betas: kirsteena, risingfire and keep_them_safe
Fanmix to accompany: The Future Never Happened - by entwashian
June 2009
"You lied to me," Peter said, as he stormed into Adam's office.
Adam arched an eyebrow and looked up from the papers he'd been studying. "Actually, no. I didn't."
"I went back and told myself..."
"Yes, I'm quite aware," Adam interrupted. He waved away the security who'd hurried in behind Peter. However angry the empath was at him, killing him here and now served no purpose. It was the past that concerned Adam. "You've really got to stop doing that."
Peter stared at him, dumbfounded, as Adam looked back down at the paperwork. "Stop? After what you've done?"
"I've saved the world, Peter. You haven't any idea where it was heading, hurtling toward its own destruction..."
"So you decided to help it along."
The argument was an old one, repeating itself like a needle stuck in a groove for the past two years, and Adam took a moment to close his eyes, pressing his fingers to his temple as if that would ward off the onset of the headache he felt creeping up behind his eyes. "I decided to save it from itself."
"By killing everyone?"
"Peter, look outside. There are people on the beach today, people going to work, people doing their best to rebuild a better, stronger world. I gave them a fresh start..."
"You killed billions of people."
"Who were going to die anyway," Adam snapped, looking back up at him. "Either from a nuclear holocaust or biological warfare at the hands of extremists or old age, they were all going to die, and when they went, the world was going to be in worse shape than it had been. Now, at least, there is a chance for something better rather than a continual hurtling toward a wasteland."
Peter stared at him. "Who gave you the right to decide this was better?"
"God," Adam said, staring back, "When he made me what he did. Made me watch as the world declined, watch as humanity repeated its mistakes over and over and over again. Made me live through war after war, plague after plague, one dictatorship and extremist political regime after the next."
"You're insane," Peter breathed after a moment's stunned silence.
Adam shrugged slightly. "I've been called worse. I'm also right. You'll see, in time."
Peter was slowly shaking his head. "I'll stop you..."
"So you've said for nearly two years now, and yet, each time you fail. Don't you think it's about time you admitted this was meant to be, Peter? It's fate, destiny, the way things are supposed to be--whatever you want to call it. Nothing you do changes it, no matter how many butterflies you heedlessly trample. When are you going to resign yourself to that?" Adam stared at him, truly baffled.
"I can't," Peter said quietly. "I can't live with this, with what you...what we did. I have to change it, or die trying."
Adam closed his eyes for a moment, not wanting to show how much that hurt. "Is that how you really feel?"
"Yeah. It is."
"So be it, then."
Peter's eyes widened as the Haitian stepped into the room, glancing at Adam, who opened his eyes and gave him a nod.
"Adam...?"
It was almost amusing how the boy could still manage to look betrayed. Adam forced himself not to look at him, focusing on Rene instead. "Take him."
He could hear Peter's protests hanging in the air for a long time after the larger man had dragged him away.
* * *
Night time was his favorite time to walk through the city. For all his aching desire to be the hero of the world, it had its drawbacks and simple freedom of movement was one of them. The survivors of the Shanti virus looked to him as their savior, both for bringing a cure to the world, and, for those here, at least, for bringing them here to a place they could live. Adam had chosen the island very carefully. It had the infrastructure in place to house people, and the climate they would need to grow food and survive. The feel of paradise was a balm to battered souls, as well, with lush vegetation, beautiful wildlife and crystal clear oceans. It was isolated from the devastation that was the mainland of America. What cars there had been littering the streets here had been removed, and much of the island had always been natural beauty, not built up with habitations that stood empty now.
They couldn't escape it all, of course. Even with the ships of survivors who'd come in droves, their population was under a quarter million on an island which had been home to almost a million before the plague. They tried, but they couldn't fill it up. Empty houses echoed when the wind blew through them, and businesses stood abandoned, with those wares not deemed supplies gathering dust. But it was better here than it would have been in Los Angeles or New York or one of the cities that had housed millions, now standing broken and abandoned. Honolulu's isolation had left it mostly untouched by looters, the bands of bandits who had drawn together when civilization fell, seeking power rather than community. There were a few broken windows to repair and kitchens to clean, but not nearly as much as would have been necessary had they stopped in any of the desolate cities they'd driven through on their trek to the ports that would bring them to the Mecca Hawaii had become.
Adam had planned this for too long, executed it too well. Gas guzzling cars were disposed of, hybrids and electric ones brought in on ships he had manned by crews he'd saved just for that purpose. Getting gas to the island would be a problem, and when they ran out no one wanted rusting heaps of junk on the side of the road as a reminder of what had been. Nature would creep back, retake the rest of the world, pull man's monuments down and leave something for the survivors of humanity's children to rediscover one day, but until then...until then he would keep them here, safe in their little piece of paradise, rebuilding a world based on a new paradigm, one he'd be around to make sure stayed in place.
Still, in the quiet of the night, the city still had an aching feel of emptiness to it. The lights of apartment buildings that glowed in the dark only seemed to highlight the desolate emptiness of streets where neon had once lit up entertainment after entertainment. No car horns broke the stillness, no music called like a siren to the pedestrians, no laughter rang from the bars that stood empty on the white sands of the beach. They would come, he knew. Human resilience demanded it, and he hadn't lied when he told Angela he'd had petitions for permits to reopen some of the entertainment centers. The population would support it, and while they had abandoned capitalism here in favor of a far more communal spirit of war torn survivors, finding a way to run a business wasn't out of the question. He supposed he'd have to set up some form of currency eventually, before everyone started bartering. He'd asked Nathan to think about it, actually.
He had far more pressing things on his mind, right now, like how to keep it all from just disappearing from under his fingertips.
Adam kicked a loose stone as he turned off the sidewalk and made his way down to the path that ran along the beach. Melvin was the only one who knew for certain how many times he'd gone back, but Peter's attempts to change things were reaching a new level of desperation. If he'd gone so far as to talk to himself, what would he try next? He could tell himself something he couldn't dispute. He might even go so far as to attempt to assassinate Adam. He hadn't yet, caught even after everythingl in the same threads of fondness and dependency that Adam felt wrapping around himself, but that didn't mean he wouldn't eventually, not if it meant saving the world.
Adam couldn't let him do that.
The sand shifted under his feet as he made his way down to the water, its rise and fall drawing his gaze as it seemed to so often these days. His thumb traced back and forth across his lower lip as he contemplated it. Killing Peter, as he'd killed Hiro, was the obvious and simplest solution. He regenerated, which meant he was immortal. Even if Adam could get him to acquiesce, now, there was no saying that Peter wouldn't spend a century gathering his will and strike when Adam least expected it, when he'd finally dropped his guard. That's what Adam would do, if he were him. Peter wasn't a strategist, but he could learn, and Adam couldn't allow that. All logic said he should put a bullet to the boy's brain and end him, no matter the pain it caused. It wouldn't mean he was alone forever, not anymore. There was the girl, Claire, and Sylar, as well. He could still build some sort of lasting connection with Peter gone.
But Peter would be gone.
Funny how he hadn't let those brown eyes and crooked smile sway him from doing what had to be done when he made this world, but he couldn't find the will to do what must be done to keep it.
"There has to be another way," Adam murmured to the ocean breeze, and though he knew there was, he found himself sick at the thought of it, as well. No bullet to the boy's brain, no, but he would lose him just the same, in the end.
Unless...his smile flickered slightly, though it had a sick edge to it, and he reached for his cell phone. Brilliant boy, Micah, getting the towers on the island to work again, he thought, as he punched in a number.
"Tell Suresh I need to see him."
* * *
The knocking on his door wasn't something Mohinder could ignore, though he gave it his best try for a few minutes. Night had fallen hours ago, and while he probably should have headed back to the apartment he'd claimed as his own, he found his time in the lab far more soothing than the attempts at pretending to have some sort of a normal life. Life wasn't normal, not anymore. People died. He couldn't save them, hadn't been able to manufacture an antidote fast enough, and for all that the antibodies in his blood mixed with Claire's and Adam's was a cure...he only had so much blood he could give at a time. Without a synthetic cure...
Without a synthetic cure, the world died in agony around him. The only blessing he could hold onto was that it had been quick. Once infected, most people died within a matter of days, some of them hours. Only a few lingered in agony, and those he generally did his best to save, to find his own strength and blood supply from one of the world's healers. All of it wound up being so little, in the end, though. Before the official governments collapsed completely, the decimation had been estimated at 93 percent. People had kept dying for weeks-months--after that. The latest statistics he'd heard were well over 99 percent, 99.6, 99.7...the exact numbers were uncertain. Ninety-nine percent of the world's population just...gone. Dead, lost for all time, wiped out in a matter of months.
Even now, even here in this paradise Adam Monroe was trying to build, the survivors moved with a shell-shocked gaze in their eyes. There were distractions, at least, and a desperate reminder of the beauty of the world around them. Mohinder had to give them man that--he'd planned well. But even the survivors carried still bleeding wounds in their psyche that they could only dream of one day becoming scars. This wasn't the generation that would prosper, Mohinder knew. Suicides were common, people giving in to the despair of having watched the world die. No, if Monroe was going to have his shining new world, it would be the next generation to start to bring it to fruition. Children forgot, children saw sun and water and flowers. They had food and people to love them, and they moved forward.
Maybe that was what the immortal was counting on, the geneticist thought wearily, as the knock sounded again. And that was why he slaved in this lab, as well, day after day, to help that generation. Because evolution favored the strong and in a society where the population had shifted to incorporate an overwhelming percentage of specials, non-specials were the ones most at risk. If he could tweak evolution, give it a helping hand...then even the children born without abilities naturally would have a chance.
Pushing back from the table, he moved to the door, staring at the man on the other side with an inquiring look laced with resignation.
Sylar smirked slightly. "Adam wants to see you."
"Now?" Mohinder asked, trying to find some flare of anger to remind him of the life before, the man he'd been. But the virus outbreak provided a sharp line of demarcation, and what had come before had ceased to matter long ago.
Sylar reached out, brushing fingers lightly down his cheek in a caress that was becoming more and more familiar. "That was the impression I got, yes."
However much he wanted to lean into that soft touch, to let his own exhaustion take over and accept the offered comfort, Mohinder resisted, not flinching away, but rather straightening and giving the other man a slight nod. "Let me get my things."
Sylar shrugged, moving into the lab and leaned against the wall, and Mohinder tried not to think about how at home he looked there, instead moving to grab what he needed and push it into a messenger bag.
"Let's go."
* * *
The house he'd claimed was on a bluff outside of the downtown limits, overlooking the ocean he'd loved since before all of this journey began. The boy he'd been then was lost in some mist of time Adam couldn't quite recall, but the ocean stirred the memory, as if it were buried in his pores, of something simpler, of something normal he'd been denied for too many centuries. He was sitting in one of the lounge chairs, sipping another whiskey for all the good it did when he heard the steps. Glancing up, he gave Sylar a slight smile, then nodded to Mohinder behind him.
"Thank you for coming so promptly."
"Did I really have a choice?" Mohinder said, shifting the bag off his shoulder and moving to lean against the balcony, fixing him with a glare Adam was fairly certain would be impressive if he were a man easily quelled.
"We always have choices, Doctor," he said mildly. "Would you like a drink, either of you?"
Sylar shook his head, leaning against the balcony door, putting himself between Mohinder and the exit in a move that made Adam smile slightly. Mohinder declined as well. Adam shrugged.
"I won't keep you long. I just wanted an update on the progress of the formula."
"And that couldn't wait 'til morning?" Mohinder asked.
"Did Sylar wake you?" Adam asked in return.
"No," Mohinder confessed after a moment. "I was working."
"Then I don't see the problem. The formula, Doctor?"
Mohinder sighed and ran a hand through his curls. "With the addition of the catalyst from Claire, it seems to have stabilized. I think it's ready for human tests."
"Good." Adam smiled, a ripple of pleasure running through him. He took a sip of his drink, held the burning liquid in his mouth for a moment before swallowing for the only real sensation he could get from it anymore, then sighed. "I have a hypothetical to put to you."
Mohinder arched an eyebrow, looking as if he was trying to not be intrigued and failing miserably at it.
"Say one of us were to lose our abilities, be rendered a non-special. If such a person were to be given the formula, do you think it would restore the same ability the person had before, or would it give them something completely different?"
"How would someone lose their ability?" Mohinder asked, looking confused. "The Company looked for a cure for thirty years without success..."
Adam rolled his eyes. "Let's not bring what the Company did or did not do into this, shall we? Say something existed which could render us non-special. A cure, if you will, or something else entirely, it doesn't much matter how..."
"But it could," Mohinder objected. "If a person lost their ability due to genetic altering, that would be one thing. When they are unable to access it due to drugs, or the virus, that's another all together."
Adam hesitated, then nodded slightly. "All right. Give me both scenarios."
Mohinder stared at him for a moment, then started slowly. "The formula wouldn't affect someone rendered incapacitated due to drugs or illness, I don't think. We're talking about genetic mutation, here, awakening the part of the brain that controls these sorts of thing. A person who is just ill or drugged still has their ability, still has their mutation and full access to it. Something's just blocking them, and the formula isn't intended to remove those sorts of artificial blocks."
"And if they had truly lost it? Had it...taken from them, say?"
Sylar shifted behind him, his discomfort with the conversation more than obvious, but Adam didn't glance back. He wasn't planning on threatening his second-in-command, after all. Sylar could live with the discomfort for a little while.
"I would think that it would be more successful on such a person. Those who have abilities versus those who don't is genetically hardwired in, in some ways, but every human being has some evolutionary potential locked inside them. If a person had theirs shut down, the formula should reopen it, and if it were on a person whose natural state was that open, it should do so even more easily."
"And the ability they gained back...would it be identical?"
"Theoretically," Mohinder said slowly. "The abilities humans develop are based upon our blood, our unique DNA signature. If they developed one way naturally, I would think that the formula would retrigger the same thing and cause them to develop the same--or at least highly similar--again."
Adam fell silent for a few long moments, finishing his drink while the other two waited, standing where they were, looking at each other over his head in some sort of silent communication he figured they had worked out through the years.
"So...correlating to that, say something stripped Sylar of his powers," Adam suggested, and caught Sylar standing up fast from the corner of his eye. He waved a hand at him and shot him a glance with a bit of a frown. "Hypothetically. And then you gave him the formula. Would he regain all of what he had before, or just his original ability?"
Mohinder stared at Adam for a long moment, something conflicted in his eyes, then glanced at Sylar for just as long, before looking back at him. "I can't be certain, but I would assume he would regain his aptitude, and have to set about collecting the others again, since those were, in effect, learned or acquired and not naturally his. Losing his abilities would erase them from his neural pathways and the formula couldn't give them all back."
Adam smiled, though it wasn't at all warm, and held an edge of dangerous glee. "Thank you, Doctor. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Why don't you go home and get some rest? We'll start trials on the formula in a few days."
Mohinder gave him a nervous look, then nodded, taking his dismissal and moving toward the door. Sylar didn't move out of his way for a long moment, but finally stepped back, letting him go. One glance at Adam, though, and getting a nod of dismissal of his own from the immortal, he followed the geneticist back out into the night.