seekevolution | Quarantine

Hold on. Hold the phone. Whatever the saying was in English? Do that. Mohinder stared at Matt with big, brown doe eyes wide. He'd get to his conclusion in a moment, but at the end of his thought process, he realized Matt's mouth had been full of tuna fish and white bread.

He hadn't slurred. No flecks of fish dotted the desk.

You can-- When did you discover that?! Excited thoughts took precedence to red tags and white tags and immunity right now. He reached across the desk in fact in his shock and scientific joy, dark skinned hand against Matt's paler tone.

He generally curtailed the 'Asian' touchiness but this was important!

"I, uh --"

Matt blinked, a little ... surprised, to say the least, at the way Mohinder was staring at him. At the way he seemingly dropped all his other thoughts to focus that one, all his attention on him. Matt wasn't usually good with spotlight like that. And even if it was just the two of them, he made a face and looked away, taking another bite of the sandwich, moving his hand away from beneath Mohinder's to scratch at his neck.

Thing was, eating wasn't an acceptable stalling option anymore, was it?

Few days ago. My dad ... He shook his head and started eating the sandwich with a bit more aggression than was really needed. Guess I picked up a few things from him.

Well perfect. Was he suppose to send his congratulations or his condolences? Mohinder decided, and wisely for once, on neither as the option and sat back in a chair that luckily has some sort of support to catch him. He'd tried it once on the stool a few hours ago and...that hadn't gone over well save for the children in the room. Unfortunately for them, it had been red bracelets in the end and laughter gave way to worry as soldiers took them to makeshift classrooms outfitted to be sick wards.

Mohinder could almost hear them whimpering through the ducts. It was all in his imagination of course, but guilt had a way of personifying itself evilly like that.

Useful, he replied, never bothered by Matt's attempt at distance. Especially now. I'm sorry, what were you saying? Give potentially immune people red bands? Why would-- Hold on, hamster wheels turning. Oh. Actually...

"Help me colour these in."

Oh, well, look at that. He helped.

Stuffing the last of the sandwich in his mouth in that way that had often garnered him disapproving frowns from Mohinder from across the table back in New York, he scrubbed his hands on his jeans and reached for a handful of bracelets and one of the markers.

He didn't say much after that and didn't bother projecting a response, either. It took a lot more focus than he was used to - it was like being back at the start, trying to sort thoughts out to even begin with again. That was easy now, came almost naturally. Everything else was new ground.

But he was doing something with it. That was a good thing.

Imagine what else you might be capable of with practice-- Likely, that thought hadn't been meant for Matt to pick up on, Mohinder's thoughts switches languages so easily that it was hard to follow along. He was more or less busy trying to imagine what could happen down Matt's evolutionary tree, if his children might one day have even greater powers than he did...or their grandfather did before him.

Probably not appropriate.

The soldiers weren't gone all that long and Mohinder is startled when they parade in the next group of people. He wasn't quite sure why he was surprised so many of them were in handcuffs... Not if these last few (out of the good two hundred or so processed) were the hold outs.

"Doctor--" The word through the air mask was eerie. Mohinder stood slowly, looking more at the frightened people shuffled into the room. "Here's your next batch." Batch. Like they were biscuits or dinner rolls. None of these people looked immediately ill but Mohinder knew he'd find the virus in all of their samples. His teeth were gritting.

"We know this is airbourne," he said stubbornly, hands balled into fists. "Why are you bringing potentially healthy people here when you're keeping the sick here too?!"

"Just do the damned tests," the soldier grunted.

"I won't see any more people here! I'll go with you to collect samples. In a suit. Contact with me could be spreading the virus!"

Not smart, Mohinder. Already agitated people did not need to hear any of that!

Matt had moved to stand with Mohinder when the soldiers came in, immediately taking his side in quite a literal sense. For all of their issues - and there were many - Mohinder was still the person he trusted most in this situation. He had by no means forgotten the sense of betrayal from the knowledge of what Mohinder had done and yeah, if he thought about it long enough it came with a sense of wariness, but right now that had to take second place to the fact that these likely-Company people were running the show.

And were doing it in a way Matt couldn't at all see eye to eye with.

He didn't say anything when he tried to touch their minds, still exhausted from the rounds outside, the day before, the lack of sleep, but the focused look he got when he tried to read minds would be unmistakable to anyone who knew it. If Mohinder looked, he'd see it immediately.

He'd also see the trickle of blood coming from Matt's nose, might notice the high tension in his shoulders and the increasingly shallow breathing before he fell forwards. He only barely caught himself with a hand against the desk, his other elbow having hit the edge of it painfully, and he bit back a groan.

The soldiers seemed frozen for a moment, confused, torn between two orders, two loyalties.

Ultimately, you fight uncertainty with violence. Fear makes you aggressive. A failed attempt to alter someone's mind would probably leave you with a deep sense of unease, and if you were trained to fire at will ...

Matt was still trying to make the room stop spinning when he heard the yell.

Mohinder was not the most observant of men and it wasn't until Matt stumbled and two of the men stepped forward that he understood something was going wrong. His first thought was on the virus. Could he had been incorrect about his working theory on immunity? Could he have missed a step analyising Matt's blood? Matt's had been the first he looked at from this strain, had been the test comparison he'd used against everyone else when trying to identity protein markers. If he'd gotten this wrong--

Stepping in between his friend and the soldiers was the wrong move, not because the soldiers sought to physically remove the slight Indian from the equation, but because it allowed everyone to be distracted. Those in handcuffs turned to flee. Attentions were divided. Guns were raised.

The first time Mohinder heard the shots, he'd been asleep, neck aching, on the carpet. They'd been far away, dream like really. This time, it happened right in front of him.

Mohinder was already shell shocked enough by gun fire in the last two days. The kick of a weapon hot in his hand was a memory he hated. The smell of cordite coming from Maya's corpse as she cooled at his feet caused him to nearly tumble over Matt as he stepped back.

"Soldier! Weapons up!" a commanding officer shouted from down the hall as the sound of troops in heavy protective gear charged towards the fleeing civilians.

One more dead. This time not from a virus at all. Luckily, he and Matt were ingored in favour of an attempt to regain order outside of the lab. Mohinder sunk to the floor beside his friend, still without looking at him.

His thoughts were singular and afraid.

If Matt was sick, Matt would die. If Matt died, he'd be alone.

How could he care for Molly on his own?

It was a very parental view point.

Matt flinched at the gunshot, the sound almost splitting his skull in half ... he wasn't sure when, exactly, he'd wound up on the floor, but he kept his eyes shut and his teeth grit in pain as he listened.

The running footfalls sounded further and further away from them. The shouts were coming from a distance.

Breathing in slowly, he pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. When he felt Mohinder by his side he calmed a little, but only so much - meant they were both fine at the moment, whatever 'fine' meant these days. Meant they weren't being apprehended, it seemed like. Unless one had remained to point a gun at them.

But when he opened his eyes for a moment he found the room to be empty. He listened to the sound of Mohinder's thoughts - just the sound, not the words - as he willed the room to stabilize. When he dried the blood from beneath his nose it smeared across his hand and he looked at it for a moment before he finally tuned in to what was happening in Mohinder's mind. He did so very carefully, his head still pounding from the inside, but whatever Mohinder was thinking was on loop and it was usually important when it was ...

His name. His name was everywhere. And Molly's.

It took him a moment to really decipher that, but when he did, it seemed to only make his headache worse.

"Don't- don't think like that." It wasn't much reassurance when it was said in such a low, tired tone, but it was all Matt could manage right then.

Bloody nose didn't fit at all with the symptoms of the virus. High fever, yes. Dizziness, yes. Coma usually quickly there after. But they were lucky that this virus wasn't hemorrhagic. In a way, it was clean. When bodies shut down, that almost never happened. Mohinder took blessings where he could find them, and right now, Matt's bloody nose was a relief.

Soft hands on a warm, soft face, Mohinder played medical doctor with a little too much voracity than he could with skill and tilts back Matt's large head to get a look at his eyes. His skin wasn't clammy. His eyes could still focus. Relief-- Relief was the only emotion the Indian had as he dropped his hands and his own head in relief.

"Over did it?" He knew that look, after all. Matt on painkillers without much ability to control his power? That's what this Matt looked like right now. Mohinder didn't assume anything else was at play, just that too many people with too many loud thoughts had infiltrated the telepath's mind. "You scared me, Matt. Just...sit. Here, have some water."

Matt let Mohinder touch him however he wanted to reassure himself mostly because he didn't have any energy to fight it. He wasn't good in a spotlight, and in a similar vein, he'd never particularly liked being fussed over either. Here, though ... his head was still pounding so bad he felt like he might be sick. He hadn't felt that way since - since months ago in the convenience store when he'd first collapsed from all the voices in his head.

It stood to reason that that's what Mohinder would assume had happened. For now, Matt only nodded, because it wasn't wrong and he didn't feel up to explaining. He gladly accepted the glass of water and kept his eyes closed again as he drank half of it, still touching his forehead, grimacing.

"Molly would be, uh ... cross with me if I went out that easily", he told his glass weakly, not quite willing to lift his eyes. It was a deliberate mimic of Mohinder's usual choice of words though and that should show that Matt was ... okay. Not sick, not hallucinating, not feverish. It was just that his head was splitting open. "I just need an Aspirin. Or ten."

"That, I actually might be able to help with," Mohinder said in a somewhat self disparaging tone because he hardly felt as if he'd done much good here. Matt's somewhat playful response at least gave the geneticist a smile on his face, no matter how soft and he stood up from his hovering, fly-like buzz around the telepath to see to the pills he'd found that afternoon in the drawer of the desk.

Not Aspirin, but close enough. He'd had some himself too, just before the tuna sandwich incident. If he'd not thrown up after that, he doubted these pills to be mislabeled. Alieve sounded rather like proper stress and ache medication. Plopping two pills, not ten as requested, into the larger man's palm, Mohinder was just getting back to the desk when the door to the lab was pulled closed.

It was impossible not to figure out the clicking that came after, but that didn't stop the Indian from cursing in Hindi and, upon trotting over to try to knob, announce what they both already knew.

"Locked in."

Mohinder's forehead hit the frosted glass before he turned and slid back down to the floor.

"This might rank up there with the night I attempted homicide with a bed pan," he muttered.

Funny. The click of a lock had never been so loud before. The distorted, enlarged sound actually took a while to register to Matt, who was just drinking the rest of the water to swallow those pills, so it did take Mohinder to announce this new change in their already bad situation for him to react.

And he did, quite immediately.

"What the-"

Standing, and standing quickly, proved immediately to be a very bad idea. But Matt held onto the desk like the best of them and was growling at it like it had personally offended him until he could look up to instead glare at the door.

"- no, just- what the hell do they think they're doing?! Hey!"

Oh, that was kind of dumb too, making loud noises. He clenched his jaw, shoulders tensing.

If anyone remained outside the door, they didn't answer. There was a shadow clearly passing, but whether they truly left or simply wanted to remain out of sight ...

A lockdown. A lockdown on the geneticist of all people, the one who was supposed to be working with the CDC to fix the entire thing. Yeah. Why would you do that? You wouldn't, was the short answer. And so Matt's initial distrust levels went through the roof.

Matt might have snapped but Mohinder felt suddenly very far removed from the scene as he watched his friend -- possibly the only one he had -- stagger to his feet like a tranquilized grizzly and try to be intimidating to no one. Their captors (for that was who they really were now) were no where around. Their reasoning was lost to them until Matt could calm himself down enough to heal. For all Mohinder knew, though he felt it unlikely, it was for their own protection. After the mess with the gun, after the riots that morning, the media black out, Mohinder probably was the villain here. He did the testing. He gave out the wrist bands--

Ah, and there was the guilt again. The Indian looked at his palms, not at Matt, for several very long moments until he felt the world give way. He'd been suffering for days now, constantly in a state of terror, unable to tell any more who to trust, and the weight of it finally broke down upon him.

It was with wet lashed eyes, shining too brightly to be mistaken for anything but tears, that Mohinder moved once more to Matt's side and, hands to the larger man's shoulders, attempted to calm him down with a shaking voice that highlighted the agitation and fear he was trying to old back.

"Please--" Oh, he'd beg. He was generally too proud but today, of all days, he just needed a moment of calm. "What good will it do," he started, velvety purr becoming shrill, "if you hurt yourself more?!" He'd often thought of himself as capable of defending himself but time and time again he'd been proved so very wrong. He needed Matt for more than just a little stability now. "Stop yelling!" he shouted, not that it helped any. It just made his throat seem to close up all the more. "We need to stay calm!"

There was a moment there when they were both yelling at different things and although Matt was beginning to come out of the lightheadedness at that point since he wasn't trying to use his power, his headache still protested about as loudly as their voices. How did he tackle that? With more yelling, of course, but only for as long as it took to make sure everything else was quiet. "Okay, alright, alright!" became a mantra until there was no other noise and he shrugged Mohinder's hands off for no other reason than the fact that he was worked up.

He took a breath, wished the pounding would go away, and started speaking. "Look, just - don't you get what they're doing?" he hissed, turning towards Mohinder again, one hand on the desk like he was still bracing himself against it. "They're keeping us out of the way. That has to be it. If they're working for the Company ..."

Mohinder was all trust, at times. Matt was the opposite. Right now he could see several ways this could end badly with either or both of them dead. He was going to say something like that, probably, when he stepped closer to Mohinder. But when he really looked at him, he seemed to recoil into himself instead.

He looked upset. Matt hadn't seen that look on him before. He didn't know what to say or do in response to it. He kept eye contact but was silent, feeling his head throb with every damn heart beat, but ... well.

He shook his head, in the end, and glanced away.

"Sorry", he muttered, but seemed to mean it.

Mohinder's eyes immediately shifted. He was pent up, frustration and terror and sorrow and very poignant feelings of guilt had collided inside of him. Screaming was a good way to let it out, but Mohinder was just a little too soft spoken for that and the tears were already coming any way. Americans had such issue with crying. Rather than being therapeutic or a valve to release pent up energy, they saw it as weak. Confusing. He was too tired to play into Matt's stereotypes right now. A blink of long lashed eyelids caused the first in a string of droplets to trace down his cheeks; first the left, then the right. He turned his face away too the moment Matt shoved him off.

Mohinder didn't really understand the need for the other man to exist in an island unto himself. He'd cleaned stabbing over stitches and staples for nearly a month when Matt first came into his care from the hospital. He'd never complained about that--

Then again, it did set off a lot of arguments. Could that have just been Matt's discomfort with closeness? Was it something else? Mohinder was in no mood to try and pick apart his flatmate's psyche right now.

He rubbed a hand across his eyes and gave Matt the space he craved. His posture was awkward, shoulder back but head still down. His fingers tangled in curls that had seen much better days.

"Just-- Just sit down before you hurt yourself even more." Mohinder has his own island. He was very use to existing alone. And yet, give him a home to return to where there were two people genuinely happy to have him there and...something had changed.

Matt could hear more than half of that in the space between them. His mind was still open - blocking things out was a conscious effort he hadn't even thought to pull off right then. And he didn't like listening to those thoughts but only partially because it made him awkward. The other reason was because Mohinder had it wrong.

"I'm fine", he dismissed the request, fingers once again finding the way to his temples as he felt Mohinder's thoughts build. He shook his head again like he was trying to shake it all off. Everything. There were a lot of things he wanted to disappear right now.

"It's not- it's not that", he started explaining, because now he felt like he had to, didn't want that look on Mohinder's face when he looked at him. "Look, I'm bad at this, alright? Janice, she ..." Cutting himself off, he changed directions. He didn't like talking about her. How their relationship had ended still stung him deeply. "Point is, I know you're feeling ... guilty", he said, finding the word from Mohinder's mind. "I get that. I don't think you're weak, Mohinder. I just ... I can't let anything happen to you. You and Molly."

Though Janice had been frequently angry with Matt for accidental -- or otherwise -- scoping out of her mind, Mohinder was less bothered by it. He'd been a human yo-yo once, hadn't he? Being held captive by those with abilities was more a scientific privilege than it was a violation of his personal space. Hadn't he originally felt that way when Sylar stopped the bullet? If only for a second, before feat overwhelmed him? Mohinder was a strange fellow in many ways. And very much his father's son.

He did not, therefore, jump immediately on Matt for the mind reading. When you were involved in any way with a telepath, you just had to expect that to happen fairly frequently. Of course, that didn't stop him from clicking his thoughts to Hindi as a general hand slapping.

There was something about Matt's confession that did something to him. When people cared, openly, honestly (or even lied really, he could rarely tell at first) about how they felt about him, it was almost impossible for Mohinder not to mirror it, even if it got it so often wrong.

Face in profile to Matt, Mohinder kept his eyes down and his breathing even. "I suppose I might mention that I'm not a replacement for your wife, but Molly is our daughter, in my mind at least, and you two are my family."

Could this little half confession be the reason Matt had never moved into his own flat? One where he had an actual bed and not the sofa?

Misunderstanding would be the death of the Indian one day.

There was a puff of air from Matt when Mohinder pointed that out, the first part - not a snort, not quite a laugh, but something that sounded both disbelieving and amused. Not a replacement for his wife -- that was putting it mildly. Matt had been well aware of the differences between Mohinder and Janice the moment he'd been hit in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher.

The problem was that Matt often had trouble deciding which life he liked better. Mohinder infuriated him almost as often as he didn't, but when they got along they had a much more comfortable rapport than he'd had with Janice for years. But he'd had years with her and cared deeply about her in so many ways ... Things were complicated with her because he didn't understand her, where he often thought he had Mohinder at least mostly figured out. Things were complicated in a wholly different way with Mohinder and Molly. Yet maybe for that reason, it was also easier to handle.

Our daughter. It had been "our girl" so often - the word daughter, that really weighed it down. Family. He kind of had to smile, just a little bit, with that disbelief. To think he'd be cut off from one and find another so damn fast.

"Yeah", he agreed, looking up at Mohinder more steadily, only halfway tuning out the stream of Hindi that acted as a backdrop to his spoken words. "You're right. That's just it, you know?" He gestured vaguely between them, then threw his arm out towards the door. "You protect your family. We can't just stay here."

The biggest difference might also be the sex-- Then again, Matt and Janice had been fairly dry as well. Mohinder wasn't a mind reader, however, and even if he had been, he probably wouldn't have pointed that out. A friend was different from a romantic partner to most people, but Mohinder tended to mould his own version of a relationship based on the way others reacted.

There was a reason he didn't get on much with others, really. He was hard, and understandably so, to deal with. Even before the incessant talking about things no one likely cared about.

Luckily, none of that ended up being a conversation to completely throw Matt for a loop with and Mohinder instead tilted his head back against the door to gaze up at the knob. "I don't see what choice we have for the moment," he pointed out. "They have weapons, ammunition...the key?"

Mohinder had no idea about Peter, about what he could do. Flight, sure. Exploding, yes. It didn't really occur to him to mention waiting for the younger of the three to come and play rescue mission. However--

"Do you have your phone with you?"

Matt was just about to mention Peter, actually, but not so much in a rescue-mission-sense - more that he wondered what the soldiers would do to him if they caught up with him, assuming this was all Company work. Mohinder's question caught him off guard though and he lost the train of thought when he gave the other man a puzzled look and went to give him the phone. He didn't quite trust his aim this time.

He tested the door handle while he was there - the door was locked solid and seemed sturdy - and went to check the windows behind the desk while Mohinder presumably fiddled with the phone in question.

"We could break a window." It was like thinking out loud, challenging Mohinder's idea that there was nothing else to do. The fall distance wasn't too bad since they were on the second floor, but it still would likely bring a fair bit of complications. He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and tilting his head back against the bland-looking wallpaper. Those pills could take effect any minute now, thanks. "Could try the door, but uh ... opens the wrong way out. What are you doing?"

For the most part, Mohinder ignored Matt. He was too busy removing the battery from the back of the flip phone, holding the power button in, and shaking it mightily as if it might coerce a little bit of juice to magically be produced from empty cells in order to let him make one phone call.

Peter probably didn't have his phone on him and...well, it very likely exploded when he did, come to think of it. Luckily, the professor didn't really have to think up a contingency plan after all. There wasn't even a blip of a green light, no momentary spark of a screen lighting up.

It was dead.

"I was attempting to call someone," Mohinder said as blandly as Matt had been speaking, emulating the other without really meaning to before he pulled his long legs under him and pushed himself from the ground. The phone was returned before he glanced out the window. It was a good thing that he didn't fear heights.

They wouldn't even have to break the window...but Mohinder was likely the only one able to shimmy out without the destruction.

And what would he do then? Be rounded up by one of the soldiers? Maybe he could find Peter.

"This is...slightly terrifying. I miss nearly being hit by a car every time I cross the street," he muttered. "Life was simpler in Brooklyn."

When the phone was returned to him he checked it for himself, but he could already tell on Mohinder that there was little point. He snapped it shut, now even more irritated with the situation. Of course he'd forgotten to find a charger - and let's be real, in all this chaos he likely wouldn't have found one anyway - but it seemed almost comical that a dead phone just might be part of their downfall.

Well, if it came to that. It wouldn't.

He looked sideways at Mohinder with a small smirk, finding a bit of humor in the way he'd phrased that particular bit of homesickness.

"Never thought you'd miss the Big Apple, huh?"

"I was quite content to remain in India for the remainder of my life," he admitted. Just because he had been fairly well travelled did not mean at all that Mohinder wasn't the sort of man to find happiness in one place. He'd been thrilled to have a place in New York to work not because it meant being able to do consistent research, but because it felt like home.

Brooklyn, he finds almost incredulous to realise, had become just as India had been. A place to put down roots. He'd been happy with his makeshift family in their too small flat with glitter all over everything and beer cans lining the door of the refrigerator in a kitchen still pockmarked by reminders of when Sylar nearly killed him there the first time.

It'd been much less frightening with the other two there. And though he couldn't get the blood stains completely off of the ceiling, it didn't matter.

"But yes, strangely enough-- When we get back there, I think we should find a larger flat. Your salary as a detective should allow us a bit of extra wiggle room on the location. Closer to Molly's school might be nice."

This was the sort of conversation Matt probably wished he could have had with Janice rather than a too smart to live professor with a penchant for being abnormally interested in him.

Mohinder's smile faded out slightly as he looked back at Matt...looking at him. The corner of his mouth quirked up again almost immediately. His thoughts seemed to mellow out too. "Any way, am I shimmying down the...nonexistent drain pipe?" Oh...this might hurt.

Matt was fairly confused that the topic was even brought up. It had less to do with Janice and their past and more to do with the fact that they were in lockdown in a quarantine zone.

Interestingly, that topic had never seemed to be breached before this, either. There was the agreement that Matt got to stay with Molly because she needed both of them, of course, and when Mohinder started travelling it had made sense for Matt to stick around. And to then just kind of ... continue doing so. But there hadn't been any discussion about the future. There'd often been that undertone of "for now", the expectation (and reluctance to face it, in a way) that things were going to change at some point.

For Mohinder to more or less say that he was welcome to stick around long-term that way, that was something he wasn't sure how to respond to at all. So he blinked and opened his mouth to say something and then just kind of mutely nodded, still trying to figure out where that had come from, exactly.

And then, uh.

"Wait- what?"

Sorry, Mohinder, you're being way too confusing at the moment.

Too many thoughts, too many things to say. Mohinder sometimes forgot that, even for a telepath, Matt might have trouble following his stream of consciousness. It took a moment to determine that the detective did not mean to question the decision to move some place larger when they settled back home and into a proper routine again with Molly.

"Our escape...?" He tilted his head very slightly, eyebrow arching while he made a very small gesture towards the window. To emphasise his point, he even undid the latch and pushed the window up as far as it could go. And that? That wasn't really all that far, now that he looked at it. He could have Matt feed him through on his stomach, feet first and perhaps lower him as much as he could until the fall was six feet? Perhaps seven.

Mohinder was terrible with distance calculations.

"The real question is: how will I rescue you once I'm out there?" he mused out loud, as if this method of egress had already been decided upon.

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