seekevolution | Quarantine

Quarantine

News had a way of spreading a little too quickly. The moment Nathan had fallen at the press conference, media began having it's field day. Mohinder paid little attention.

He arrived at Odessa fourteen hours after the incident, severely jet-lagged and with a computer pre-loaded with all of the information that the Company thought he'd need. Mohinder had been down this road before, though never with such dire circumstances. The Shanti Virus was a subject near and dear to his heart, though it was far less stressful when all he needed to cure it was a bit of blood. Even though it was his own blood, at least he felt as if he was doing something.

Knowing from experience that not everything was black and white anymore, Mohinder kept his laptop and medical kit close at hand and made his way to the quarantine line with a grim look in his redrimmed black eyes. "Mohinder Suresh," he said, forgetting his title again for just a moment. "Doctor. You need to let me through."

The National Guard service man looked wary before radioing it in through the barricade. It was tense. Mohinder's shoulder bag slipped twice and he nearly dropped his sample kit. "All right, cleared to go in. Good luck, doctor."

Mohinder nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. He'd gone from New York to India and back again in two days, bringing Molly to stay with his mother. After what Sylar did to her, again, he could not risk leaving her in anyone else's care. Not with Matt gone.

Seeing the man, however, after he'd just gone off on this quest to find his father at the expense of helping him with a child they both sort of promised to look out for, did not make Mohinder smile. If anything, it only made the lines on his face etch in more deeply. He stood in front of him, looking as tired as Mohinder felt, ill fitting clothing a bit more rumpled than usual. Never mind, of course, that Mohinder had done his fair share of leaving too on his attempts to bait the Company through lectures across the globe. "Do I have a lab yet?" Mohinder asked. No greetings. No necessities. That's what happens when you abandon people, Matt.

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Around the front of the school, it was just as empty. There weren't the soldiers that Matt had run into when he was escorted back. A cluster happened to be over by the tent in the field but they were just standing there, posture perhaps slightly tense but Mohinder didn't linger to try and figure out what they were doing. He pushed open the door and moved through the hallway toward the stairs to the second floor. There was commotion in that direction but Mohinder just decided to go with it. He opened the door--

"Move!" One soldier knocked him almost violently out of the way, clearing a path for half a dozen men in hazmat suits carrying stretchers. Dead. Mohinder didn't even have to stop and check them. All dead.

Another group of soldiers were almost right behind them. Mohinder slipped through and crawled along the wall to the landing. He probably should have headed right to the science lab, but instead, he had to see the sick for himself. Soldiers were arguing at the end of the hall about having enough room in the morgue tent. And about when their superiors would pull them out. No one even looked at Mohinder as he stared at them. He was so far under their radar that they didn't notice him at all.

Lucky too, considering the faint voices coming out of the helmets were all violent and terrified. "We should just fire bomb the town!"

That was all Mohinder needed to duck back down the hallway. He could hear feet moving above him, likely soldiers tasked to bring down bodies from the upper floors. It was time to get Matt. It was too late for Bennet.

Finally outside the door, Mohinder rattled the knob. "Matt?" he hissed. "No key!"

It had been an interesting little exercise to try to keep track of Mohinder's thoughts even when he couldn't see him. It hadn't been successful for a very long time at all before Matt gave up and alternated between sitting by the desk and pacing the room, always keeping his mind open for any changes. That was something Mohinder would probably love to know and prod at some other time, the fact that Matt at times instinctively relied more on hearing thoughts than trying to actually hear the people thinking them.

And while Matt did catch enough thoughts and footsteps to know that there were definitely people still in the building there was alarmingly little activity outside of this particular door. It was probably a good thing, and it made sense given the room's location in the building, but it still kept Matt on his toes. He'd much rather know something than not. Silence meant you didn't have a place to begin.

So when he recognised Mohinder's thought patterns he breathed a sigh of relief and rushed to the door, meeting him. Not that the update was all that optimistic. If it had been a colleague, a cop or a fed, he'd have just told them to kick the door in, but he didn't think Mohinder could do it and definitely not without someone noticing.

"Get Peter", he said back, hushed and quick. They needed to find him anyway, if they were going to figure out what was happening and make a difference.

Get Peter. Mohinder stared at the door for a moment and actually thought about asking one of the soldiers for a key instead. Thankfully, the thought was dashed from his head almost immediately after it came to mind. Sometimes he did realise that his ideas weren't entirely fantastic.

Finding Peter still seemed impossible. He hadn't seen him since the man pushed him away that morning with a force all too like Sylar's for Mohinder's comfort. If he's still in that mood, who knew what might happen?

There were still soldiers running the dead from the upper classrooms to the makeshift morgue but no one seemed to think to stop him. Hopefully that meant being locked in hadn't been any executive order, just an attempt to protect him from the sick.

Soldiers sometimes didn't always think things through either.

Standing outside with his lab coat and his name tag, he looked from the field towards the main road across the parking lot still filled with cars from teenagers that never got to leave school that day or parents that initially, voluntarily, brought their families here.

He blinked when he saw Peter sitting against a tree within view of the tent, head in his hands, and rushed across the lot to him. "Peter--"

It still took him half an hour to get through to the man and therefore, to get back to Matt. He's somewhat surprised that Peter ends up taking the door from the hinges rather than simply unlock it but-- Well he supposed in the end that he might do the same. Picking a lock, even with telekinesis, sounded difficult.

Peter looked bad. If he had slept at all it couldn't have been for many minutes - the darkness beneath his eyes and the redness in them clearly told of both exhaustion and grief, but he still stared at them with that grim frown and on-edge expression.

Matt gave him a lingering look to sort of assess that, but ultimately just gave him a grateful pat to she shoulder when he exited the room, very happy to be outside of it. Peter looked less like he might snap and more like he just wanted to break something and there was a difference between the two. Especially now when the sorrow was starting to show.

Mohinder didn't look hurt. Still somewhat shaken, but not hurt. Matt turned to him, voice low. "We gotta move. I don't know who's calling the shots, but whatever's going on, the soldiers are getting antsy. How's it look outside?"

That question mostly directed to Peter. Little had happened in their half-hour absence, but the bits and pieces Matt had caught from the people moving through the corridors had seemed either shaky or way too darkly determined.

Peter looked between them. If his brother hadn't just died he might have dropped a remark about a locked-in situation, but his answer was in a fairly clipped tone. "Bad. It's spreading fast." A brief nod to Mohinder, who would have seen it too: "They don't even know where to take the dead."

"Forty-eight hours on the outset," Mohinder said, looking around the corner before moved towards the stairs. "Viruses don't move that quickly. It's acting like radiation sickness. The fever. The nausea. It's the most excelerated version of the strain I've ever seen and--" All Peter had to do was glance at him. "And that was the point," he supplied. "There's a potential cure. Noah Bennet's daughter--"

"Claire?!" Peter's hostility was frankly a little frightening to the Indian. "I have her power."

Mohinder's head tilted down but his eyes lifted for just a moment before he turned on his heels and ran back to his lab. Peter was on his heels, however.

"It won't work! Don't you think I tried to give my blood to Nathan again?!"

"You didn't have my blood to mix with it!" And this was the problem with groups. No one felt the need to tell everyone else anything. Mohinder's thoughts were erratic and guilt strewn and so very hopeful. "This cured the strain they gave to Sylar." What? He failed to mention that? And now it sounded like he happily cured their number one enemy?

Whoops.

"Sylar?"

Whether Peter or Matt said it louder probably didn't matter. It was Peter who reached out to grab Mohinder's shoulder and practically whip him around, but it was Matt who caught up, looked him in the eyes and got a read on him.

"He's alive?!"

It was fortunate that Mohinder wasn't a mind reader himself at that moment because two telepaths clashing into his mind wouldn't have been the least bit comfortable. Peter made to grab him by the collar, close in his face, reacting immediately.

"You cured him?" he growled, probably nowhere near as angry about the fact that Sylar was alive as he was taking his anger out on a different (but still deserving) cause. "He's out there?"

Matt, on the other hand, had different priorities. "Molly", he said immediately, less a question than an outright demand, keeping a hand out towards Peter's chest, trying to keep him from strangling the poor scientist. Molly was potentially the most valuable target Sylar had. And Mohinder had specificly asked him not to ask where she was, what had happened, to not read his mind - well, he would now, if Mohinder didn't offer something.

Mohinder had to deal with fear before. Walking into his apartment to find a strange woman cooking and Sylar sitting at the kitchen table that he and Matt and Molly had breakfast at was the most horrifying experience he'd ever had because he knew Molly was in the back bedroom. He could almost hear her behind the door and saw a shadow move of her small feet--

There was nothing Peter could do to him that would make him as afraid as he'd been almost three days ago now. Nothing. Peter wanted to growl in his face? The two telepaths wanted to pull all of his thoughts out at once? Let them. He gave Peter a shove that did little good.

"What the hell was I suppose to do?!" he shouted. "I opened the door and there he was. With Molly. The Company took away his powers, gave him a version of the virus--" And he'd had Mohinder's gun. "A version that would keep people with abilities from being able to access them. I had the cure. He knew it."

Even with Matt holding them apart, Peter was much stronger than Matt could ever hope to be and Mohinder was reaching levels of frustration that could very well make him shut down.

"What would you have had me do!?"

"Where is he?"

Peter shrugged Matt off without much difficulty and advanced on Mohinder. It was clear what Peter would have done in the situation. He hadn't managed to kill Sylar at Kirby Plaza where Nathan very nearly died. He hadn't killed Sylar in Odessa or in Brooklyn because Sylar had killed him first and now Sylar was alive and Nathan was dead. Something in that equation had to be fixed. Sylar was an easy target. Peter was showing teeth.

Matt's reasoning wasn't nearly as fractured, but then, nobody had died - he hoped, very sincerely, but Mohinder had said Molly was safe and he wouldn't lie about that, or if he had, there'd be hell to pay - and he'd actually gotten to sleep. To him, the list of priorities was easy to follow. First, make sure Molly was safe; second, everything else. It was difficult to ... to dig, to filter through memories, that was new too, he mostly just listened, but while he heard the memory of Molly's agonized whine (she would never have to make that sound again, ever) he also heard Mohinder's surprised but thankful voice telling someone that they'd saved them.

That was all he wanted to know.

He was tossed back to earth by the ominous thud of Peter shoving Mohinder against a wall, looking dangerously intense, and despite the pounding in his head Matt refocused his efforts.

"Peter!"

It was a yell to get his attention. It was quickly followed with a mental command to Back off.

Peter resisted it, much like he had the first time Matt had tried to push him. His mind darkly telling Matt's no made him grit his teeth, but he tried again. Back off, Peter. Let go.

It was like having his mind dragged across broken glass and Mohinder flinched. The pain was bearable but strange to have, nothing like a headache at all; his thoughts were just tore and left exposed to be sifted through. Peter was new at this and too angry to try a bit of finesse. Mohinder's thoughts of Sylar were a cohesive, heartsick sort of mess in his head already, after all. 'Zane' had been the first person he'd definitively met with a demonstrable power. They'd had long, intense conversations over coffee on their road trip. Zane had been shy...sort of. But well read. He'd been kind, he'd been interested in Mohinder's work.

And Mohinder thought himself lucky to make a friend like that. Perhaps he'd been attracted to the dark eyed, intense younger man too. Just a bit. Just the budding of attraction at least. It'd gone so sour after Dale, however. The ride back from Montana to Brooklyn had been agonizing. Mohinder was hurt. Betrayed. And then ruthless, too.

The tea. The drugging. The bullet-- Peter walking into the apartment in the middle of Sylar's playing with him like a cat with an injured mouse he wasn't quite ready to eat--

Hatred, lust, fear, betrayal, blackess-- There'd been so much, so much for Peter to wade through that he ended up spilling it all out by the time he got to the information he'd wanted. And what he wanted?

It was simply Mohinder's failure to be a good parent again, no matter how hard he tried.

In disgust, Peter did let Mohinder go and the scientist slipped to the floor, trying not to panic. It hadn't just been Peter holding him to the wall. Sylar's power had been there as well. And of course it was. Peter was channeling Sylar's emotions. Unlocking telekinesis was easy for him. Second nature.

Mohinder pressed his hands against his head to try and mentally pick himself back up. He'd never felt so exposed in his life.

Peter's hands balled as he looked back at Matt. "If he's out there, no one's safe."

When Matt had accepted to live with Mohinder and Molly, he'd taken Mohinder aside to tell him about what it was that he could do. Mohinder had figured that he had some kind of power since he'd been involved with the Company and was on Chandra's list, but the topic of that power hadn't exactly seemed appropriate to bring up when Matt was recovering from four bullets in the chest and a divorce. It had seemed the polite thing to do to say "You should probably know that I can hear what you're thinking" before you agreed to live with someone. In that same conversaton, Matt had pre-emptively promised he'd try not to hear anything personal.

Naturally, he'd overheard a few things. A fair few. But usually these were idle thoughts, note-to-selves and observations, and when they had been personal they'd been more along the lines of Mohinder's current state of mind. Feeling exhausted, guilty, homesick or those rarer moments when he'd found himself perfectly happy. Matt rarely commented on those kind of things when he caught them even if he'd on occasion try to help out if it was something bad. Sometimes, yeah, he'd brought those things up when they were fighting. But it was fighting dirty and it hurt Mohinder when he did and he tried not to.

Mohinder hadn't let many thoughts slip about Sylar - or Zane. Matt hadn't known they were the same person. And now there was a whole lot of additional information he'd never asked to see right at his feet and he couldn't help looking.

Again, though, he didn't say anyting about it even if he looked momentarily stricken when his eyes went to Mohinder. He tried to shake it off though. Those were things to deal with later. Sylar was something to deal with later. He had to get that through to Peter.

"Come on, Peter", he said, holding his hands up and approaching him slowly, like he would talk down a criminal. "Look around! No one's safe with this out there. What are you gonna do, go after him? Spread the virus? It won't bring Nathan back."

Peter's eyes narrowed dangerously but Matt kept going. He'd gotten a taste of the telekinesis earlier at the vault and wasn't looking forward to another round of that - or whatever else Peter could do - but he couldn't let him run off.

"Look, we'll fix it, alright? But we gotta do this first. We have to work together. Then we'll get Sylar. Trust me, I want him as badly as you do. Okay?"

He did, too. He was furious. But it had to wait.

Mohinder was just tired. When Peter agreed that yes, they could go after Sylar the moment Mohinder was done being useful to them, the Indian got to his feet and pulled the vials of blood out of the fridge. He felt numb, emotionally exhausted, and right now, he couldn't even think to fight the other two. He didn't have to be a telepath to know what they were thinking when they looked at him--

Or worse, didn't.

Neither of the other two were touched by personal tragedy at the hands of Sylar the way that Mohinder had been. He wasn't particularly close to his father, but Sylar still killed him, that still left a mark. And worse? He had no abilities at all, not like Peter. He couldn't protect himself from Sylar--

Either time.

As he sat at the desk, turning right the chair, to prepare to draw Peter's blood, his mind was filled with a buzz Matt might not have felt before. Sorrow, frustration, anger, contentment, enjoyment-- Yes, all of those emotions were healthy in reasonable doses.

Perhaps it was just that Peter had exposed too many nerves, perhaps it was just that a person's mind, already under stress, wasn't meant to be so open to others-- But Mohinder felt so violated and victimized. Matt had likely seen it in others before too. He was a cop, after all.

Strangely quiet, the geneticist took four vials of Peter's blood without a single word. He prepared the solution in the syringe like he'd done for Maya...and then for Sylar. It took a moment for his hands to stop shaking so he could offer the syringe to Peter without looking at him.

"You'll need a test case."

Oh yeah, Matt had seen that kind of thing before. He'd done that kind of thing before, been responsible for it. He was usually the good cop (wanted to be, tried to be), but when he'd forced Angela to tell him about Victoria Pratt he knew he'd damaged something. It wasn't surprising at all that Mohinder now tried to distance himself from Peter for doing basically the same thing. Matt was just hoping he wouldn't get the same treatment.

So when Peter nodded and left - with the distinct impression that he'd have slammed the door if it had still been attached to its frame - Matt remained in that uneasy silence. He wasn't sure what Mohinder even wanted to hear. He didn't want to outright admit that he'd seen everything Peter had pulled up, but at the same time ...

He went around to the desk and touched Mohinder's shoulder with a hand that was a bit more steady than he admittedly felt. "Hey", he said, hesitating. Mohinder's mind was almost crackling, like static. It wasn't right. "We'll figure it out."

Mohinder was better with a plan. Better with a goal. He tried to latch onto one, but it was slipping through his fingers. He almost jumped when Matt touched his shoulder and forced a smile instead. He was never hesitant when it came to physical contact, but it bothered him at the moment. It made him itch.

"We had Peter this entire time," Mohinder said, well aware that he was shifting the topic around, or perhaps attempting to play off his distress on something else. "I wasted so much time. People might not have died."

He busied himself cleaning up. That no soldier had passed their doorless lab yet didn't mean that one wouldn't soon enough.

"There ought to be enough here for two dozen people." And that was no where near enough.

Silence made it all the more awkward and Mohinder felt the pressing need to...explain. Not talking was ruining them and Matt might well be the only one left on his side in the world.

If he even was any more. "I have only ever tried to help," he said, a little defensively. He wasn't a bad person. And he didn't want to become one. "I'm not sure how to atone for what I've done and have been led to do. I'm-- I am very, very sorry, Matt."

Matt let him go and shifted to lean against the desk instead, arms crossed over his chest as he looked on as Mohinder picked at things, contemplating. Hoping the blood would really work but uncertain what it meant if it did. Could it be a bargaining chip? It should be. But you couldn't make Matt trust the company to save his life.

Then came the explanation, the apology. Matt frowned slightly, searching Mohinder's face. He didn't really have to since it was all in his mind, but he didn't want to add insult to injury.

"Yeah. I know."

He said it with enough certainty to be convincing, but there was still the tentativeness that clearly spoke of how uncertain he still was of the situation they were all in. And the ones they had been in, for that matter. But he did know, because the amount of regret in Mohinder's mind had been clear enough. And he'd heard it earlier in the day. The guilt.

"Look, we'll ... we'll stick together. We'll fix this. Figure Sylar out later." His expression was troubled for quite a few reasons now, and it took him another moment to voice one of them. "Just tell me you don't still ..."

He gestured vaguely, but thought Mohinder would get it. He looked a bit apologetic to ask, but at the same time wary of the answer - it was something he had to sort out. Needed to hear.

It took Mohinder a little longer to figure out what Matt meant than he perhaps would have liked but knowing his memories and his mind were open and knowing what Matt had seen were two different things. Mohinder narrowed his eyes slightly, unconsciously mirroring the head tilt Matt did when he was puzzling through a person's thoughts, until black eyes widened so abruptly that they could have well just fallen from between heavily, long lashed eyelids and rolled to the floor.

It had been bad enough to be vaguely aware that his dupe by Zane had become public knowledge. But that?--

"Yes, Matt," Mohinder spat. "Upon learning Zane Taylor was actually lying dead in Virginia and that the person I might have fancied a bit was actually the man that killed my father, I was willing to overlook those particular personality quirks and see if I could swing myself a date!" He probably should stop yelling, just in case anyone heard them. "What's more, I'm actually a closet masochist and his willingness to break a few ribs and kill Peter in front of me was quite the turn on!"

"That's not -!"

Matt pushed away from the desk and went up to the other man. Not quite close enough to be intrusive, but enough to hopefully lower the volume, something he also tried to accomplish by hissing instead of yelling in turn.

"I'm sorry, okay? Okay? Calm down!" He threw an arm out towards the door to show exactly why that might be a good idea. "I didn't mean it like that! I'm just ... no, just listen ..." He seemed to struggle with how to word whatever it was he wanted to say, but finally said somewhat quickly, "You can't help it sometimes, alright? Liking- people who are bad for you."

He'd seen it at work, heard talk around the station; abuse, violence. People protecting their assailants. Had lived it, to some degree. He wouldn't want to put Janice in that category at all but he remembered being a kid and desperately wanting his father's approval despite the way he'd hurt both Matt and his mom. Maury hadn't been Sylar. But Matt believed you couldn't control emotion.

"Look, I- Sylar's a monster, Mohinder. He needs to be taken down. I need to make sure he can't hurt us."

Edited 2014-01-20 20:41 (UTC)

Mohinder wasn't a child, Matt. He wasn't a teenage girl suffering from love-sickness. "You're acting as if I don't understand that. No one wants to see Sylar put down more than I do," he growled. More growling? Mohinder's teeth flashed so very white against his skin, lips peeling back. It seemed as if when he spoke low like that, his velvety voice really could only purr or growl, there were very little in between tones to use for his range.

He stood unconsciously on his toes as Matt came closer. They liked to hiss in one another's faces, if this continued dance proved anything at all. Matt was just so physically imposing that Mohinder needed something in his arsenal to back him up.

Witty retorts didn't exactly cut it all the time.

"He killed my father. He killed Molly's parents. He used me in order to get a map to each and every person on my father's list. You were on that list too, Matt!" he said, emotion weighing heavily on his mind. "He used me to kill a woman in Montana. If it wasn't for me, she'd be alive!"

Didn't Matt understand the guilt he carried?

How horrible it weighed on him?

How badly he wanted to do good in the world to make up for the evil he helped to unleash?

"I had been momentarily attracted to him. We didn't sleep together. We were not romantically linked in any other way. Stop acting like a jealous lover or my knight in shining armour. We're on the same page about this, Matt."

Matt didn't understand, not really. He couldn't because he'd never been that kind of target, hadn't been used that way. He was just a cop - it was his job to get bad guys and do good. He didn't carry the same guilt Mohinder did because he hadn't had people die. Matt had guilt, just a was a different kind.

But that didn't mean he didn't understand that it was there. It had been humming in the other man's mind since he'd set foot in Odessa, an undercurrent to every other thought, every action. And it was very very loud now with all the words backing it up.

"Fine", Matt said, dropping it, turning away. Mohinder had proved his point. It had been a bad move, besides. He'd earned the shouting. "Sorry I asked, it won't happen again."

Going back towards the desk mostly to have something else to do and look at, he peered out the window, still having mixed feelings about the lack of movement outside.

Peter wouldn't have any trouble finding someone to test it on, but managing it without anyone else allowing it or noticing, that's probably what was taking its time. Hopefully.

He didn't want Matt to just pull away. He really didn't. It felt like being left on his own, mind still hanging open like guts, was horrible. It wasn't what his friend (still friend after all of this?) likely meant and Mohinder was not the sort of man to beg. He was just about to sit down again when Peter returned.

The shake of his head left Mohinder feeling as if the blood was rushing out of his face and into his chest, a tightness there giving him no relief at all. "I don't understand," the Indian said before Peter was gone again.

He blinked, standing up, and grabbed another sample mixture of blood. He needed to see for himself.

That..was a terrible idea.

They -- because Matt would never be left in the lab himself with Mohinder running around like a loon -- didn't run into a single soldier on the way up to the fourth floor. And, unfortunately, not a single person on the floor floor at all. Where had they all gone? "I don't--" Oh. "Oh God..."

The third floor was the same story until the far wing. There were people struggling to breathe there, but no one tending them at all...save for Peter, kneeling by bedsides.

How could they all be... I don't understand. It's not enough time. How could it spread so-- Two days to kill an entire population...minus those that were immune? Mohinder looked so very defeated as he held one little boy's hand a few gasps away from dying.

The blood hadn't worked.

Nothing had worked.

Matt had to stop and lean against a wall to gather himself at the sight, eyes wide as he just ... tried to process it all.

It made sense, he realized quickly. The antsy soldiers, the quiet - no one wanted to be up here, had probably gotten orders to leave. It was part of ground zero. It made sense to lock everyone in to prevent passage in and out. It made sense to move the perimeter of the area out when they obviously had a bigger area to cover, if it wasn't just a neighborhood anymore, or a school, or block. No wonder everything was so still. So quiet. No wonder he hadn't heard many thoughts, because these people were all too feeble to even think with any strength.

If the officials had all fled, the situation was a lot worse than Matt would have wanted to consider. He punched the wall when he pushed away from it. It didn't make him feel any better.

Now when they were up there ... Mohinder had his lab coat and Peter was obviously trained, so with the three of them showing up, people started reaching out to them, murmuring pleas of help, thinking desperate thoughts about death and life and pain.

Matt hated it. He felt sick, he didn't know how to deal with this, felt lost where Mohinder and Peter looked much less so. He swallowed when he followed along the rows of the dead and dying. They couldn't have been abandoned long ago at all and that made the whole thing even worse. He wanted to get out of there, wanted to hunt down some officials and shake them up and have them clear things up and handle this properly.

Mohinder's racing mind was enough to tell him that protocol hardly applied anymore though. Peter was still angry, grim, hurting, but he treated the dying with so much care anyone else wouldn't have guessed that he was likely to go off doing something stupid if he wasn't needed here.

It's okay, Matt tried to ward off all he thoughts reaching for him. His head wasn't quite pounding anymore but it still hurt, putting forth any actual effort. Thing was, he knew it'd hurt even more to let any one of those dying pleas into his head. It's okay. Hang on. I'm sorry.

He followed Mohinder because he didn't know what else to do. He kept quiet, but he was staring. He looked bad and felt even worse when he watched Mohinder giving someone the blood transfusion again and it failed.

Mohinder tried until there was nothing left. Saving even one would have been worth it, but they were cut off and alone. It took another two hours for the last gasps of life to stop, until there was only stillness in the final room that the soldiers have left to their own devices rather than process them in the tent outside.

Had he known that Matt was instrumental in granting these people peace and calmness in their final moments, he might have given the larger man a hug, then and there, once he'd taken off his gloves and stood. Perhaps it was better for them not to reveal anything else for today. Matt could keep he secret of his telepathic powers. It would save a lot of yelling that no one actually had the power to do.

Peter ended up doing the majority of the reconnaissance as Matt and Mohinder sat silently on the stairs leaving into the high school. The Texas air was dry and warm, though sun would be setting soon. Mohinder's thoughts were more or less even keel, a litany of Hindi streaming through his mind. He was not religious but he recited sutras to himself any way.

Peter's face as as stoic as it had been for the last few hours when he returned. "There's no sign of anyone. They must have been helicoptered out."

Mohinder surprised. "That means that they have a decontamination centre they believe works. That's good news. They will come back for answers soon. Come back for survivors in a day or two. They must understand the incubation period."

Matt would have wanted to make the rounds with Peter, but he felt utterly exhausted. Sitting down with Mohinder in silence was a welcome change. Hell, the Hindi was a welcome change. So he breathed in quietly with his head in his hands, shoulder touching Mohinder's, and tried to find at least a little bit of peace.

It worked, for a while. But when Peter came back with his theory and Mohinder reacted the way he did, Matt shok his head, looking up.

"Or they just bailed. Saved their own asses."

Peter looked like he was more inclined to be on Matt's side, and Matt realized that he didn't necessarily like that, given Peter's mindset at the moment.

"We could be left for dead", Peter started. His thoughts were louder than Mohinder's. There was nothing else but the three of them. It was a ghost town.

"We have to stay here", Matt muttered in turn. "We could be carriers."

The very subtle touch of Matt's arm, more the heat and the presence than anything else, had nearly lulled him into a calmness. He tried to tap into that, to hold onto a little piece of serenity as he looked from Matt to Peter and back again. "Matt's right. We have been breathing this air. We've touched the victims. None of us are sick and it's been too long now for any of us to get sick. We need to let the virus incubation period pass again, perhaps twice, before it's safe to go. And even then, we'll need new clothes, we'll need to have showered as well as possible. The virus is airbourne, but I've seen them jump mediums before. For all we know, we could carry it in the oils of our skin."

Mohinder was asking for four more days here, four days before he thought it safe for any of them to leave. Peter, obviously, was the only one capable of ignoring that, considering the landslide and barricades effectively kept anyone from leaving on foot. Mohinder gave him a very significant look. Asking Peter for so long when Sylar was out there--

Four days was a very long time to let a murderous asshole loose. Mohinder knew that, even as he put a hand to Peter's arm. "Please."

The hospice nurse pulled away from Mohinder and teleported out of sight. Mohinder darted forward as if to snatch him, but it was too late. He swallowed, throat dry. When was the last time he'd had water.

"I hope for everyone's sake he is still somewhere behind the barricade." Mohinder ended up sinking back down to the stairs and turned sorrowful, exhausted eyes towards his friend. "What do we do now?" In all honesty, Mohinder knew the answer. Find shelter. Find food and water. Rest as much as possible. Stay away from any dead zone as much as possible because death brought other diseases. He just wanted someone to take over for awhile.

"We'll look for him tomorrow", Matt said tiredly, eyes fixed to where Peter had last been. He should have been faster, probably. Tried to make him stay put. It was difficult to make another telepath do anything, but he knew it was possible. He'd trapped his father, after all.

He was silent for a while, going over that, before he stood and turned towards Mohinder, offering a hand to help pull him to his feet.

"Let's get away from here."

It was a start. The sun was on its way down - not quite setting yet, but it was approaching dinnertime fast, and although Matt didn't feel particularly hungry right now he knew he'd regret it later if he didn't eat something. The same went for Mohinder. The thirst was making itself known too but it was difficult to feel like any of that was actually important when you were surrounded with at least triple digits worth of dead people.

So he said it out loud, that they should probably eat something, and so began the all-too-silent walk through the deserted streets. It was rare, but blood tracks or splatter could be spotted on occasion, grim reminders of all life that was already lost. Some cars were left unlocked on sidewalks, hazardly parked. Some houses with doors broken in or otherwise ajar.

For the most part, though, there was surprisingly little sign of what had happened. It was almost enough to trick you into thinking things were just eerily quiet, that people had left. That they'd be back.

There wasn't a whole lot to say about that, but when distant birdsong could be heard, it did break the monotone and ease the melancholy slightly.

It looked nice, really. A slice of Americana. All of the houses along the blocks they passed were just like the last with different painted shutters or different siding. A bird bath sat in front of one, a trellis of roses climbed up the side of another. They were just different enough to distinguishable but under it all, it was the same wood, the same sort of small, lost lives of the families that once fought and loved under their roofs. Mohinder didn't mean to wax poetic about it, but this little town looks nothing like the one he'd left behind in India. The colours were so subdued. And if American sitcoms were to be believed, neighbours really didn't know each other. Perhaps he was just prone to melancholy when he was so run down. The thought made him smirk.

An hour of walking was just about too much. He still had a pint's less blood in his system and almost nothing had been done to restore it. If anything, his little James Bond drop from the window that morning could have just exasperated his condition. Mohinder was anemic. His legs were giving out. He actually needed to grasp for Matt to keep himself upright.

"I hate to say this," and he did, "but we need to... It's not stealing. It's surviving. I've money on me. We'll let it for when people are allowed to return for the use of their beds and their food."

Zonked again. :(

haha, no worries. c:

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