FIC: If You Were the Last Man on Earth: Book One (1/4)
Title: If You Were the Last Man on Earth
Book One: Winter (1/4)
Author: seraphtrevs
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: R
Word count: This part: 3,726
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made, etc.
Spoiler alert: up through the end of season 2
Summary: AU - It's been a year and a half since the Shanti virus dropped and devastated the planet. After refusing to conduct inhumane experiments in the search for a cure, Mohinder is made into an unwilling test subject by his former colleagues. When Mohinder thinks that things can't get any worse, he is unexpectedly rescued by Sylar, who has plans that include world domination, ultimate power, and domestic bliss. Mohinder isn't sure he's better off.
A/N: This is going to be a three book series; each book is about 10,000 words, give or take. Book One is FINISHED, Book Two is about 95% complete, and Book Three is moving right along, so I hope that will reassure those of you who are allergic to WIPs. :P
ETA: I will be posting parts every Wednesday and Saturday, to avoid spam and give me some time to put the finishing touches on Book Two and complete Book Three.
Eternal thanks to my beta, marenpaisley - this is as much her baby as it is mine.
Mohinder wondered what time it was.
It was something he had never thought about before - how reassuring it was to know the time. Looking at a clock was something that was almost subconscious, something he didn't miss until it was absent. Now, he longed for the neon green of an alarm clock, or soothing tick of a watch, or the sturdy black arms of a clock tower. He also yearned for a calendar or at the very least a bit of paper he could use to mark off the days. Not that he knew when the day began and ended anymore. There wasn't a window in his room.
It was sort of funny, he reflected, how his list of desires had changed since being here. When his former colleagues first imprisoned him, he wanted a great number of things. Firstly, he wanted to escape and, of course, have his revenge. He wanted to save the other people who were being subjected to the same testing (if any of them were still alive). He also wanted to know what progress had been made on the cure because they'd stopped telling him. And he still wanted to save the world.
More than anything, he wanted Matt and Molly back. He wanted to know where their bodies were, at least, so he could mourn them properly. He wondered also when his mother had died, since he didn't have any illusions that she was still alive.
Now, though, he wanted three things: to be released from his restraints (which had been implemented after the third time he'd tried to escape); to have a meal that was not provided by a feeding tube (which had been used since his attempted hunger strike); and to know what bloody time it was.
He'd also like a little conversation every now and then. His caregivers had apparently been instructed not to speak with him. He didn't really know what he'd have to say to any of them anyway (other than "Let me go, you murderous bastards"), but he knew the effect that a complete lack of social interaction could have on a person, and he was fairly certain that he was going insane.
For example, he was now hallucinating that the door to his room was being blasted open, and that Sylar had stepped into the room and was walking towards him.
"Hello, Dr. Suresh," Sylar said, looking down on him. He was dressed in army fatigues.
"Sylar?" he said, once he was capable of talking. He must have really snapped the tether this time if Sylar had started to play a major role in his escape fantasies.
"I knew I'd find you here, but I had no idea you'd be on this side of the microscope." Sylar pulled out the IVs they had him hooked up to and helped him up to a sitting position. "Do you think you can stand?" Mohinder nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood up -- and promptly crashed to the floor. "Apparently not," he said, and Mohinder got the distinct impression that Sylar was laughing at him, which he thought was very rude given the circumstances.
Sylar gathered Mohinder up into his arms and carried him out the door. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out of his room - weeks, maybe even months. A few bodies lay crumpled on the floor. Before Mohinder had been imprisoned, people in the hospital were only required to wear surgical masks. The bodies he saw all wore full gas masks, making them look less like people and more like swatted flies.
They made it halfway to the elevator before the alarms started to sound. Mohinder cringed violently; the loudest noise he’d heard in a long time was the thud of footprints. Sylar stopped for a moment and made a small motion with his head. There was a loud crashing sound, and then the alarm stopped. At least, it stopped on the floor they were on. He could still hear the faint echo of ringing in the distance.
“Is that better?” Sylar asked. Mohinder nodded. The Sylar of his imagination was surprisingly courteous.
Another body lay slumped by the elevator. There was a large splatter of blood a few feet above it; it appeared that the person had been thrown violently against the wall before crumpling to the floor. A walkie-talkie lay in one half-curled hand. Sylar made a slight movement with his head, and the walkie-talkie floated upwards.
“He’s making his way towards the elevator!” Sylar said into the device, affecting a panicked tone. “He’s - oh god, no!” And then the walkie-talkie went flying into the wall. He smiled down at Mohinder. “We should probably wait a few minutes to let them get themselves together,” he said.
“Why?” Mohinder asked.
“Because it will be easier to take them all out if they’re all in one place,” Sylar said, as if it were obvious.
“This hallucination is unusually detailed,” Mohinder said.
Sylar raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think this is a hallucination?”
“Well, you’re dead. Or you ought to be. Everyone else is. Well, nearly everyone.” Mohinder frowned, trying to bring his scattered thoughts together. “Wait. You did have an infusion of my blood. Maybe you are alive, somewhere.”
“I am alive, Mohinder,” he said. “And I’m right here.”
Mohinder laughed weakly. “And why would you be rescuing me? What possible motivation would you have? No, this is most definitely not happening.”
“All right, if that’s the case - why are you imagining me rescuing you? Could it be that, somewhere deep within your heart of hearts, you miss me?”
That set Mohinder off laughing even harder. “Oh yes, I’m sure that’s it. My serial killer in shining armor.”
Sylar shushed Mohinder and cocked his head. “Sounds like our welcome party has assembled itself. It’s time to go.” He pushed the elevator button, and as soon as the door opened, stepped inside.
It was a quick trip to the ground floor, and unsurprisingly, a squad of about ten soldiers was waiting for them. They were all wearing gas masks.
“He’s got Suresh, hold your fire!” one of them said. It was impossible to determine whom.
The man at the head of the squadron slowly started to move towards them, keeping his rifle trained on Sylar. “All right, son, I don’t know who you are and I don’t much care to,” he said. “The man you’re holding is humanity’s last, best hope for a cure, but I’m sure you know that.”
“I didn’t, actually,” Sylar said. He looked down at Mohinder. “Is that true?”
“It might be,” Mohinder said. “Guinea pigs generally aren’t kept in the loop as to how the experiments are progressing.” He felt dizzy; was this a hallucination after all? It seemed too vivid.
“We don’t want to hurt you, but we can’t allow you to take him,” the man said as if he hadn’t been interrupted. He continued his slow progress towards them, never letting his gun waver for an instant. “You’re out-numbered, out-gunned, and cornered. It’s over. So just put him down, and put your hands on your head where I can see them.”
Sylar winked at Mohinder, and then raised his hands. Mohinder remained hovering in the air.
The man lowered his weapon in surprise. “What the - ” Sylar made a little motion with his finger and the man went flying back, crashing into the others. Sylar stepped in front of Mohinder’s floating body and made his way slowly towards them. Some of the men recovered quickly and raised their weapons again. One of them shouted, “We’ve got a special here - repeat, we have a special here!” A gun was fired. The bullets froze in midair in front of Sylar and then flew back towards them. One of the men shouted and crashed to the floor. The others rushed towards them, but then fell back as if they’d run into an invisible wall.
In the confusion, one of the men dropped his gun. It slowly started to rise, and then turned on the men and began firing rapidly. Two more of the men went down; the others retreated. Sylar put his arms under Mohinder and released his telekinetic hold. He kept the gun floating ahead of them as he walked out of the building. Mohinder squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see anyone else die. The sounds of their screams were bad enough.
He didn't open his eyes until he felt the warmth of the sun on his face. The brightness of it made it difficult for him to see clearly; the first thing he could make sense of was the black outline of Sylar's silhouette against the sun like an eclipse. Sylar let go of Mohinder for a moment and left him floating in the air. He held his hand up. A bright orange sphere flickered into existence in the palm of his hand. Once it had grown to about the size of a grapefruit, he lobbed it at the building as if he were throwing a baseball. It crashed into the building, causing a good portion of it to explode. The rest quickly caught fire.
Sylar turned back to Mohinder and carried him over to a large vehicle that was parked outside the building. He opened the passenger’s side door and started to put Mohinder in, but Mohinder managed to squirm his way out of Sylar’s grip.
"Wait, let me down."
Sylar raised an overgrown eyebrow, but complied. "Do you really want to stay here? Don't you think you'd be better off taking your chances with me?"
Mohinder shook his head. "No, it isn't that. I just need to know something before we leave."
"Ask away."
Mohinder stood there for a moment, swaying unsteadily. He squinted at the smoking remains of the building he’d been imprisoned in. "What time is it?"
Sylar blinked, then looked at his watch. "It's one thirty-two pm and twenty-eight seconds."
Mohinder sighed in satisfaction. "Thank you," he said, before passing out.
******
He woke up with a terrible headache. The pain made it difficult to make out his surroundings. The first thing he became aware of was that his face was resting on a cool pane of glass. He then surmised that he was in a vehicle of some sort - a hummer, by the looks of it. And after a moment, he realized that the vehicle was being driven by Sylar.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Dr. Suresh," Sylar said with a smile.
Panic gripped him, and he tried frantically to open the door, which was, of course, locked.
"That's probably not a good idea. We're traveling at seventy miles an hour."
"Where am I? What's happened?"
"Don't you remember?" Sylar said. "I rescued you."
Mohinder did remember. He just didn't think that any of it had been real. "Are you going to kill me?" he asked, biting back his panic.
"Why would I go through the trouble of rescuing you if I was going to kill you?"
"You're a psychotic killer - I don't pretend to understand any of your motivations."
Sylar glared at him. "If you thought I was going to hurt you, then why did you agree to come with me?"
"I only agreed to go with you because I thought I was hallucinating," he snapped.
"I don't think I like your tone, doctor." Sylar's voice had become deep and threatening. Mohinder cringed so hard that he hit his head on the window. "Oh, don't look at me like that," he said, his tone conversational again. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you. I've forgiven you."
"Forgiven me," Mohinder said.
"Yes. For torturing me, and trying to kill me. And for your betrayal." He gave Mohinder what he guessed was supposed to be a reassuring pat on the leg. "There's been a lot of bad blood between us, but we're going to have to leave all that unpleasantness behind us if we're going to move forward together."
"'Unpleasantness?' Is that how you think of my father's murder - as something unpleasant?"
Sylar rolled his eyes. "Here we go again."
"What do you mean 'Here we go again?' You killed my father!"
"Because he betrayed me!" They stared at each other for a tense moment, then Sylar sighed and turned his gaze back on the road. "I knew this would happen. This is so typical of us -- always the same argument."
"'Us?'" Mohinder sputtered. "There is no 'us.' And this isn't an argument -- an argument suggests that we disagree about something, which we don't, because we both know that you. Killed. My. Father."
"See? Like a broken record. 'Oh Sylar, you killed my faaaaaahther.' 'Oh, Sylar, I've got to finish my faaaahther's research.' Give it a rest."
Mohinder gaped at him. "Are you - are you mocking me for being upset that you killed my father?"
"Come on, Mohinder, it was like two years ago. Don't you think it's time you moved on?"
"I - but - you - you killed my father!" Mohinder was horrified to realize that his voice had become a hysterical screech.
Sylar made a little circle motion with his finger. "Like a record. I mean, my mother was murdered, and you don’t see me going on and on about it.”
“Wait - your mother was murdered?” Mohinder said. He wondered if that had anything to do with why Sylar was the way he was. “Who killed her?”
Sylar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, I did. But it was an accident. And the important thing is that I haven’t let it define my whole life.”
Mohinder opened his mouth, then shut it. He stared out the window, utterly bewildered, and wondered what to do. Escape was obviously impossible at the moment; not only was he in a hummer traveling at a high speed, but he was also dressed in a hospital gown, wrapped in a blanket (well, two blankets - Sylar had apparently wrapped him in a large army blanket on top of the hospital one), and had no shoes. He also still felt incredibly weak, a feeling which actually seemed to increase the longer he was conscious. That couldn't be a good sign.
They rode on in silence. After a little while, Mohinder asked, "What time is it?"
"Six fifteen pm and seventeen seconds." Sylar looked at him. "So why were you an experiment-ee rather than an experimenter? I remember that before the media collapsed, the papers said you were spearheading the search for a cure."
"I was, at first." Mohinder looked down at his hands. A small wound on the back of his hand from where Sylar had ripped out the IV had started to scab over. "When the virus broke out, I contacted the CDC. They were a bit skeptical about my claims at first, but once the death toll began to rise, they set me up as head of their research team. The CDC began to collaborate with the Army, and we were moved to Fort Leonard Wood, since it was the home of the Chemical Defense Training Facility. Which you just destroyed, incidentally."
"Don’t be melodramatic," Sylar said. “The base is huge; I only destroyed one building.”
Mohinder ignored him. "I was so hopeful, at first. I thought that with my blood and Claire Bennet's, we'd be able to synthesize a cure or a vaccine. But Claire had disappeared, and we couldn't locate anyone with the same ability. I'm sure that there were others with some sort of regenerative ability - well, there probably are still, since anyone who could regenerate like she could would likely survive this, but with the country in such chaos, locating such a person was impossible despite our best attempts.
"They put our team into isolation to protect us as we worked, and as things got bleaker, some of the public tried to break in. Molly was killed then. She had survived the first outbreak; we think it was because she had been infected previously, even though it was with a different strain. It was so chaotic; one minute I was holding her, and the next she had fallen, and the mob came between us, and then -" Mohinder stopped. He took a deep breath in and let it out in a shudder.
"Matt - that's Matthew Parkman, I'm sure you remember him from the time you shot him - had died in the initial outbreak, before I took Molly to the base. He lived - ”
“Wait a minute,” Sylar said. “I never shot anyone.”
“In Kirby Plaza, Matt shot at you and you turned his bullets back against him.”
“Oh yeah, that guy. He had tried to shoot me before, you know. It was strictly self defense on my part.”
Mohinder glared at Sylar. “As I was saying - he lived for two weeks after being infected. I still don't know what happened to his body. Maya only lasted a matter of days." Mohinder hadn't known Maya for very long, but he had felt a kinship with her since they had both lost a family member to Sylar and had both been similarly deceived. Maya had been so consumed with guilt and grief that she had seemed almost glad when she became ill. She said it was God's will that she died of plague, since she had infected so many others with her ability. She said she was not sad, because she would be with her brother soon. Her death was the most peaceful of all the deaths (and there were many) that Mohinder had witnessed.
Mohinder's fists clenched. The wound on the back of his hand broke open. He searched Sylar's face for a trace of regret or remorse. There was none.
"So your friends died. What happened after that?" Sylar said.
Mohinder swallowed, took a deep breath, and continued. "We weren't getting anywhere. The death toll was increasing exponentially; 93% of the population had died in only a year after the initial outbreak. The fact that the disease was so virulent and spread so quickly made my colleagues panic. They started new experiments. On human beings. On survivors. These people had contracted the virus and survived against all odds, only to be tortured and killed for 'the greater good.’ I refused to be a part of it. But my blood has special properties, as you know, so they added me to their test subjects."
"How long did this go on?" Sylar asked.
"I don't know. Time was a little difficult to keep track of." To say the least, he thought. He looked out the window; the trees were bare. The last time he’d been outside, the trees had been lush with leaves. “Seven or eight months, maybe.”
They rode on in silence for awhile. "Did you kill them all?" Mohinder asked finally.
"Only the ones who got in my way," Sylar said.
A fierce, ugly part of Mohinder thought, Good, but it was only for a moment. "You do realize that you've effectively doomed humanity to extinction on the North American continent?"
Sylar actually smiled. "No, I haven't. In fact, I'm going to save it."
Mohinder stared at him. "And how, precisely, do you figure that?"
Sylar sat back in his seat and steered the hummer with one lazy hand. When he spoke, it seemed like something he'd rehearsed beforehand. "Have you ever heard of the Toba catastrophe theory?" Mohinder shook his head. "Basically, it theorizes that about 75,000 years ago, a super volcanic event occurred at Lake Toba in Indonesia. This event reduced the human population of the world to about 10,000 individuals. So that means all of humanity - all of the progress we've made, the technology we've produced, the forces of nature we've conquered - stemmed from 10,000 people.
"Now let's say this virus kills off 99.9% of the population. That still leaves six million people on the planet. And the population of North America, before the Shanti virus, was about 307 million. So we have 307,000 lost souls in this country right now. People who might be the only survivors of their little town, or a group of a dozen people that are all that's left of a metropolis. I can hear them, Mohinder. They need me to guide them. To shape the future of the human species."
“So what exactly are you proposing? That we travel the country gathering survivors so you can create a society you can rule over like some sort of demigod?”
Sylar quirked his eyebrows. “What do you think?”
"I think you’re insane. I wouldn’t help you with anything, even if you were -”
“- the last man on earth?” Sylar grinned.
Mohinder snapped his mouth shut and glared.
"You don't get it, do you, doctor? This virus has cleansed humanity of its excess baggage. It has wiped out those who aren't fit. And you're immune to it. Don't you understand how that makes you special? That you are superior to all of the dead? Not as superior as me, of course," he was quick to add. "But still. Different. Special. I told you in the beginning, when we first met, that we were destined to find those with special abilities. Do you remember?"
"You mean when you impersonated a man you killed to gain my trust?" Mohinder felt increasingly out of control of this conversation, but his attempts to derail it apparently failed, because Sylar continued as if he hadn't said anything.
"I was wrong, doctor. That wasn't our destiny. I've found the abilities I need on my own. Our true destiny is to reshape the human race. Start it over. Make it right this time. And you are meant to help me do this. We've been chosen by evolution."
"I'm going to be sick," Mohinder said.
"Oh please, doctor. Don't try and pull your sanctimonious bullshit on me. Without me, the human race is doomed to extinction. Do you really think that without a unifying force the survivors will be able to pull together on their own? No, they need leadership. Someone strong, someone with a vision -"
"No, I mean, I'm really going to be sick." Mohinder fumbled to roll down the window but couldn't quite manage it. He threw up in his lap.
"Oh," said Sylar. "Guess we’ll have to make a pit stop.”
Onto Chapter Two!
Book One: Winter (1/4)
Author: seraphtrevs
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: R
Word count: This part: 3,726
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made, etc.
Spoiler alert: up through the end of season 2
Summary: AU - It's been a year and a half since the Shanti virus dropped and devastated the planet. After refusing to conduct inhumane experiments in the search for a cure, Mohinder is made into an unwilling test subject by his former colleagues. When Mohinder thinks that things can't get any worse, he is unexpectedly rescued by Sylar, who has plans that include world domination, ultimate power, and domestic bliss. Mohinder isn't sure he's better off.
A/N: This is going to be a three book series; each book is about 10,000 words, give or take. Book One is FINISHED, Book Two is about 95% complete, and Book Three is moving right along, so I hope that will reassure those of you who are allergic to WIPs. :P
ETA: I will be posting parts every Wednesday and Saturday, to avoid spam and give me some time to put the finishing touches on Book Two and complete Book Three.
Eternal thanks to my beta, marenpaisley - this is as much her baby as it is mine.
Mohinder wondered what time it was.
It was something he had never thought about before - how reassuring it was to know the time. Looking at a clock was something that was almost subconscious, something he didn't miss until it was absent. Now, he longed for the neon green of an alarm clock, or soothing tick of a watch, or the sturdy black arms of a clock tower. He also yearned for a calendar or at the very least a bit of paper he could use to mark off the days. Not that he knew when the day began and ended anymore. There wasn't a window in his room.
It was sort of funny, he reflected, how his list of desires had changed since being here. When his former colleagues first imprisoned him, he wanted a great number of things. Firstly, he wanted to escape and, of course, have his revenge. He wanted to save the other people who were being subjected to the same testing (if any of them were still alive). He also wanted to know what progress had been made on the cure because they'd stopped telling him. And he still wanted to save the world.
More than anything, he wanted Matt and Molly back. He wanted to know where their bodies were, at least, so he could mourn them properly. He wondered also when his mother had died, since he didn't have any illusions that she was still alive.
Now, though, he wanted three things: to be released from his restraints (which had been implemented after the third time he'd tried to escape); to have a meal that was not provided by a feeding tube (which had been used since his attempted hunger strike); and to know what bloody time it was.
He'd also like a little conversation every now and then. His caregivers had apparently been instructed not to speak with him. He didn't really know what he'd have to say to any of them anyway (other than "Let me go, you murderous bastards"), but he knew the effect that a complete lack of social interaction could have on a person, and he was fairly certain that he was going insane.
For example, he was now hallucinating that the door to his room was being blasted open, and that Sylar had stepped into the room and was walking towards him.
"Hello, Dr. Suresh," Sylar said, looking down on him. He was dressed in army fatigues.
"Sylar?" he said, once he was capable of talking. He must have really snapped the tether this time if Sylar had started to play a major role in his escape fantasies.
"I knew I'd find you here, but I had no idea you'd be on this side of the microscope." Sylar pulled out the IVs they had him hooked up to and helped him up to a sitting position. "Do you think you can stand?" Mohinder nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood up -- and promptly crashed to the floor. "Apparently not," he said, and Mohinder got the distinct impression that Sylar was laughing at him, which he thought was very rude given the circumstances.
Sylar gathered Mohinder up into his arms and carried him out the door. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out of his room - weeks, maybe even months. A few bodies lay crumpled on the floor. Before Mohinder had been imprisoned, people in the hospital were only required to wear surgical masks. The bodies he saw all wore full gas masks, making them look less like people and more like swatted flies.
They made it halfway to the elevator before the alarms started to sound. Mohinder cringed violently; the loudest noise he’d heard in a long time was the thud of footprints. Sylar stopped for a moment and made a small motion with his head. There was a loud crashing sound, and then the alarm stopped. At least, it stopped on the floor they were on. He could still hear the faint echo of ringing in the distance.
“Is that better?” Sylar asked. Mohinder nodded. The Sylar of his imagination was surprisingly courteous.
Another body lay slumped by the elevator. There was a large splatter of blood a few feet above it; it appeared that the person had been thrown violently against the wall before crumpling to the floor. A walkie-talkie lay in one half-curled hand. Sylar made a slight movement with his head, and the walkie-talkie floated upwards.
“He’s making his way towards the elevator!” Sylar said into the device, affecting a panicked tone. “He’s - oh god, no!” And then the walkie-talkie went flying into the wall. He smiled down at Mohinder. “We should probably wait a few minutes to let them get themselves together,” he said.
“Why?” Mohinder asked.
“Because it will be easier to take them all out if they’re all in one place,” Sylar said, as if it were obvious.
“This hallucination is unusually detailed,” Mohinder said.
Sylar raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think this is a hallucination?”
“Well, you’re dead. Or you ought to be. Everyone else is. Well, nearly everyone.” Mohinder frowned, trying to bring his scattered thoughts together. “Wait. You did have an infusion of my blood. Maybe you are alive, somewhere.”
“I am alive, Mohinder,” he said. “And I’m right here.”
Mohinder laughed weakly. “And why would you be rescuing me? What possible motivation would you have? No, this is most definitely not happening.”
“All right, if that’s the case - why are you imagining me rescuing you? Could it be that, somewhere deep within your heart of hearts, you miss me?”
That set Mohinder off laughing even harder. “Oh yes, I’m sure that’s it. My serial killer in shining armor.”
Sylar shushed Mohinder and cocked his head. “Sounds like our welcome party has assembled itself. It’s time to go.” He pushed the elevator button, and as soon as the door opened, stepped inside.
It was a quick trip to the ground floor, and unsurprisingly, a squad of about ten soldiers was waiting for them. They were all wearing gas masks.
“He’s got Suresh, hold your fire!” one of them said. It was impossible to determine whom.
The man at the head of the squadron slowly started to move towards them, keeping his rifle trained on Sylar. “All right, son, I don’t know who you are and I don’t much care to,” he said. “The man you’re holding is humanity’s last, best hope for a cure, but I’m sure you know that.”
“I didn’t, actually,” Sylar said. He looked down at Mohinder. “Is that true?”
“It might be,” Mohinder said. “Guinea pigs generally aren’t kept in the loop as to how the experiments are progressing.” He felt dizzy; was this a hallucination after all? It seemed too vivid.
“We don’t want to hurt you, but we can’t allow you to take him,” the man said as if he hadn’t been interrupted. He continued his slow progress towards them, never letting his gun waver for an instant. “You’re out-numbered, out-gunned, and cornered. It’s over. So just put him down, and put your hands on your head where I can see them.”
Sylar winked at Mohinder, and then raised his hands. Mohinder remained hovering in the air.
The man lowered his weapon in surprise. “What the - ” Sylar made a little motion with his finger and the man went flying back, crashing into the others. Sylar stepped in front of Mohinder’s floating body and made his way slowly towards them. Some of the men recovered quickly and raised their weapons again. One of them shouted, “We’ve got a special here - repeat, we have a special here!” A gun was fired. The bullets froze in midair in front of Sylar and then flew back towards them. One of the men shouted and crashed to the floor. The others rushed towards them, but then fell back as if they’d run into an invisible wall.
In the confusion, one of the men dropped his gun. It slowly started to rise, and then turned on the men and began firing rapidly. Two more of the men went down; the others retreated. Sylar put his arms under Mohinder and released his telekinetic hold. He kept the gun floating ahead of them as he walked out of the building. Mohinder squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see anyone else die. The sounds of their screams were bad enough.
He didn't open his eyes until he felt the warmth of the sun on his face. The brightness of it made it difficult for him to see clearly; the first thing he could make sense of was the black outline of Sylar's silhouette against the sun like an eclipse. Sylar let go of Mohinder for a moment and left him floating in the air. He held his hand up. A bright orange sphere flickered into existence in the palm of his hand. Once it had grown to about the size of a grapefruit, he lobbed it at the building as if he were throwing a baseball. It crashed into the building, causing a good portion of it to explode. The rest quickly caught fire.
Sylar turned back to Mohinder and carried him over to a large vehicle that was parked outside the building. He opened the passenger’s side door and started to put Mohinder in, but Mohinder managed to squirm his way out of Sylar’s grip.
"Wait, let me down."
Sylar raised an overgrown eyebrow, but complied. "Do you really want to stay here? Don't you think you'd be better off taking your chances with me?"
Mohinder shook his head. "No, it isn't that. I just need to know something before we leave."
"Ask away."
Mohinder stood there for a moment, swaying unsteadily. He squinted at the smoking remains of the building he’d been imprisoned in. "What time is it?"
Sylar blinked, then looked at his watch. "It's one thirty-two pm and twenty-eight seconds."
Mohinder sighed in satisfaction. "Thank you," he said, before passing out.
******
He woke up with a terrible headache. The pain made it difficult to make out his surroundings. The first thing he became aware of was that his face was resting on a cool pane of glass. He then surmised that he was in a vehicle of some sort - a hummer, by the looks of it. And after a moment, he realized that the vehicle was being driven by Sylar.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Dr. Suresh," Sylar said with a smile.
Panic gripped him, and he tried frantically to open the door, which was, of course, locked.
"That's probably not a good idea. We're traveling at seventy miles an hour."
"Where am I? What's happened?"
"Don't you remember?" Sylar said. "I rescued you."
Mohinder did remember. He just didn't think that any of it had been real. "Are you going to kill me?" he asked, biting back his panic.
"Why would I go through the trouble of rescuing you if I was going to kill you?"
"You're a psychotic killer - I don't pretend to understand any of your motivations."
Sylar glared at him. "If you thought I was going to hurt you, then why did you agree to come with me?"
"I only agreed to go with you because I thought I was hallucinating," he snapped.
"I don't think I like your tone, doctor." Sylar's voice had become deep and threatening. Mohinder cringed so hard that he hit his head on the window. "Oh, don't look at me like that," he said, his tone conversational again. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you. I've forgiven you."
"Forgiven me," Mohinder said.
"Yes. For torturing me, and trying to kill me. And for your betrayal." He gave Mohinder what he guessed was supposed to be a reassuring pat on the leg. "There's been a lot of bad blood between us, but we're going to have to leave all that unpleasantness behind us if we're going to move forward together."
"'Unpleasantness?' Is that how you think of my father's murder - as something unpleasant?"
Sylar rolled his eyes. "Here we go again."
"What do you mean 'Here we go again?' You killed my father!"
"Because he betrayed me!" They stared at each other for a tense moment, then Sylar sighed and turned his gaze back on the road. "I knew this would happen. This is so typical of us -- always the same argument."
"'Us?'" Mohinder sputtered. "There is no 'us.' And this isn't an argument -- an argument suggests that we disagree about something, which we don't, because we both know that you. Killed. My. Father."
"See? Like a broken record. 'Oh Sylar, you killed my faaaaaahther.' 'Oh, Sylar, I've got to finish my faaaahther's research.' Give it a rest."
Mohinder gaped at him. "Are you - are you mocking me for being upset that you killed my father?"
"Come on, Mohinder, it was like two years ago. Don't you think it's time you moved on?"
"I - but - you - you killed my father!" Mohinder was horrified to realize that his voice had become a hysterical screech.
Sylar made a little circle motion with his finger. "Like a record. I mean, my mother was murdered, and you don’t see me going on and on about it.”
“Wait - your mother was murdered?” Mohinder said. He wondered if that had anything to do with why Sylar was the way he was. “Who killed her?”
Sylar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, I did. But it was an accident. And the important thing is that I haven’t let it define my whole life.”
Mohinder opened his mouth, then shut it. He stared out the window, utterly bewildered, and wondered what to do. Escape was obviously impossible at the moment; not only was he in a hummer traveling at a high speed, but he was also dressed in a hospital gown, wrapped in a blanket (well, two blankets - Sylar had apparently wrapped him in a large army blanket on top of the hospital one), and had no shoes. He also still felt incredibly weak, a feeling which actually seemed to increase the longer he was conscious. That couldn't be a good sign.
They rode on in silence. After a little while, Mohinder asked, "What time is it?"
"Six fifteen pm and seventeen seconds." Sylar looked at him. "So why were you an experiment-ee rather than an experimenter? I remember that before the media collapsed, the papers said you were spearheading the search for a cure."
"I was, at first." Mohinder looked down at his hands. A small wound on the back of his hand from where Sylar had ripped out the IV had started to scab over. "When the virus broke out, I contacted the CDC. They were a bit skeptical about my claims at first, but once the death toll began to rise, they set me up as head of their research team. The CDC began to collaborate with the Army, and we were moved to Fort Leonard Wood, since it was the home of the Chemical Defense Training Facility. Which you just destroyed, incidentally."
"Don’t be melodramatic," Sylar said. “The base is huge; I only destroyed one building.”
Mohinder ignored him. "I was so hopeful, at first. I thought that with my blood and Claire Bennet's, we'd be able to synthesize a cure or a vaccine. But Claire had disappeared, and we couldn't locate anyone with the same ability. I'm sure that there were others with some sort of regenerative ability - well, there probably are still, since anyone who could regenerate like she could would likely survive this, but with the country in such chaos, locating such a person was impossible despite our best attempts.
"They put our team into isolation to protect us as we worked, and as things got bleaker, some of the public tried to break in. Molly was killed then. She had survived the first outbreak; we think it was because she had been infected previously, even though it was with a different strain. It was so chaotic; one minute I was holding her, and the next she had fallen, and the mob came between us, and then -" Mohinder stopped. He took a deep breath in and let it out in a shudder.
"Matt - that's Matthew Parkman, I'm sure you remember him from the time you shot him - had died in the initial outbreak, before I took Molly to the base. He lived - ”
“Wait a minute,” Sylar said. “I never shot anyone.”
“In Kirby Plaza, Matt shot at you and you turned his bullets back against him.”
“Oh yeah, that guy. He had tried to shoot me before, you know. It was strictly self defense on my part.”
Mohinder glared at Sylar. “As I was saying - he lived for two weeks after being infected. I still don't know what happened to his body. Maya only lasted a matter of days." Mohinder hadn't known Maya for very long, but he had felt a kinship with her since they had both lost a family member to Sylar and had both been similarly deceived. Maya had been so consumed with guilt and grief that she had seemed almost glad when she became ill. She said it was God's will that she died of plague, since she had infected so many others with her ability. She said she was not sad, because she would be with her brother soon. Her death was the most peaceful of all the deaths (and there were many) that Mohinder had witnessed.
Mohinder's fists clenched. The wound on the back of his hand broke open. He searched Sylar's face for a trace of regret or remorse. There was none.
"So your friends died. What happened after that?" Sylar said.
Mohinder swallowed, took a deep breath, and continued. "We weren't getting anywhere. The death toll was increasing exponentially; 93% of the population had died in only a year after the initial outbreak. The fact that the disease was so virulent and spread so quickly made my colleagues panic. They started new experiments. On human beings. On survivors. These people had contracted the virus and survived against all odds, only to be tortured and killed for 'the greater good.’ I refused to be a part of it. But my blood has special properties, as you know, so they added me to their test subjects."
"How long did this go on?" Sylar asked.
"I don't know. Time was a little difficult to keep track of." To say the least, he thought. He looked out the window; the trees were bare. The last time he’d been outside, the trees had been lush with leaves. “Seven or eight months, maybe.”
They rode on in silence for awhile. "Did you kill them all?" Mohinder asked finally.
"Only the ones who got in my way," Sylar said.
A fierce, ugly part of Mohinder thought, Good, but it was only for a moment. "You do realize that you've effectively doomed humanity to extinction on the North American continent?"
Sylar actually smiled. "No, I haven't. In fact, I'm going to save it."
Mohinder stared at him. "And how, precisely, do you figure that?"
Sylar sat back in his seat and steered the hummer with one lazy hand. When he spoke, it seemed like something he'd rehearsed beforehand. "Have you ever heard of the Toba catastrophe theory?" Mohinder shook his head. "Basically, it theorizes that about 75,000 years ago, a super volcanic event occurred at Lake Toba in Indonesia. This event reduced the human population of the world to about 10,000 individuals. So that means all of humanity - all of the progress we've made, the technology we've produced, the forces of nature we've conquered - stemmed from 10,000 people.
"Now let's say this virus kills off 99.9% of the population. That still leaves six million people on the planet. And the population of North America, before the Shanti virus, was about 307 million. So we have 307,000 lost souls in this country right now. People who might be the only survivors of their little town, or a group of a dozen people that are all that's left of a metropolis. I can hear them, Mohinder. They need me to guide them. To shape the future of the human species."
“So what exactly are you proposing? That we travel the country gathering survivors so you can create a society you can rule over like some sort of demigod?”
Sylar quirked his eyebrows. “What do you think?”
"I think you’re insane. I wouldn’t help you with anything, even if you were -”
“- the last man on earth?” Sylar grinned.
Mohinder snapped his mouth shut and glared.
"You don't get it, do you, doctor? This virus has cleansed humanity of its excess baggage. It has wiped out those who aren't fit. And you're immune to it. Don't you understand how that makes you special? That you are superior to all of the dead? Not as superior as me, of course," he was quick to add. "But still. Different. Special. I told you in the beginning, when we first met, that we were destined to find those with special abilities. Do you remember?"
"You mean when you impersonated a man you killed to gain my trust?" Mohinder felt increasingly out of control of this conversation, but his attempts to derail it apparently failed, because Sylar continued as if he hadn't said anything.
"I was wrong, doctor. That wasn't our destiny. I've found the abilities I need on my own. Our true destiny is to reshape the human race. Start it over. Make it right this time. And you are meant to help me do this. We've been chosen by evolution."
"I'm going to be sick," Mohinder said.
"Oh please, doctor. Don't try and pull your sanctimonious bullshit on me. Without me, the human race is doomed to extinction. Do you really think that without a unifying force the survivors will be able to pull together on their own? No, they need leadership. Someone strong, someone with a vision -"
"No, I mean, I'm really going to be sick." Mohinder fumbled to roll down the window but couldn't quite manage it. He threw up in his lap.
"Oh," said Sylar. "Guess we’ll have to make a pit stop.”
Onto Chapter Two!