seekevolution | (no subject)

If there was one thing that Mohinder Suresh was good at, it was getting into trouble. He did it to himself, falling into patterns that placed him in dangerous situations and in league with dangerous people. Yes, he always meant well, chasing after research that would save mankind from and for itself, but the personal toll to himself and those around him tended to be extremely high. This time was no different. A distraction and a slip of a normally very careful hand left a jab through a double layered glove that had him throwing down his tools and heading to the sink to see if he had gotten through the skin. He had only torn off the latex when the first wave of dizziness hit.

Mohinder woke up over an hour later, sweat soaked and shivering on the floor of the lab. Nothing felt broken and for a little while, he forgot what had happened. He sat up slowly, pushed the hair back from his eyes, and glanced down at one blue hand and one skin-coloured palm. Memory rushed back to him and he leaped to his feet to call the company whose drug it was that he was testing and perfecting. There was just a dial tone and a friendly voice telling him that the number had been disconnected. He glanced up and the little red light that usually signaled he was being taped (standard procedure in this lab) was off. The door was unlocked and he shivered again, feeling something move through him.

He should be dead. The catalyst in the drug was enough to kill a man twice his size, the purest form of the component that would make the medicine work against the virus affecting evolved humans. No, he shouldn’t just be dead. He should have exploded all over these walls…and he did not.

The cell phone in his pocket didn’t have reception until he stepped, shaking, into the loading dock. He called the only person he knew might be able to help him. He hadn’t seen Bruce Banner in years. He’d become a consultant for the Avengers in the time since doing humanitarian work in Calcutta, or so the internet said, a frequent guest of Tony Stark of all people. Mohinder didn’t actually have Bruce’s number so he just called the Stark Relief Foundation, where Banner was supposed to be working. It took an hour for him to track down his old acquaintance from his time volunteering with Banner in the slums of Indian. “Doctor Banner? I don’t know if you remember me… My name is Mohinder Suresh. I interned briefly with you overseas?”

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Pausing, Mohinder pressed a hand to the console. The guy that worked here had been killed too. He did not get back up though. He was just dead, dead with diet soda and cheesy puff snacks in his belly. He had been told to erase something first...

Mohinder shook his head. "The footage is gone. We were working on a test subject though..." He couldn't help but frown. "I don't know her name. She was pretty. Blonde. We called her Agent 13."

Bruce might know the name or he might not. He wasn't exactly involved with the initial HYDRA exposure but Nat had a way of talking to Bruce about things that no one else might know about.

Agent 13 wasn't suppose to be HYDRA. She was SHIELD. So what had happened?

Bruce frowned as that name brought up familiarity, but nothing immediately more. Agent 13... where did he know that from? He and Natasha spent many hours together, which surprised him more and more as it happened, but there was something that surprisingly put him at ease and evidently, did the same for her. Somehow, he knew that familiarity had to do with her, but the connection didn't come. He tapped a finger and frowned even more. "That name... I think there's someone who can help identify her. I'll have to get a hold of her when we're above ground." No signal down here.

"We need to find out what happened to this test subject. If they have someone like you in their hands, that's... a terrifying danger. Even more, they'll be able to make more." It was beyond a danger. It could give them a way to win this war most of the world had no idea how big it was.

There wasn't a record of her. Mohinder had scanned through all of the data (yes, in the last half a minute or so) and every part of her testing had been erased. That didn't make Mohinder feel so good. "They only cared to hide her. Everything else...they don't mind who finds it."

The research is gone too. All there is left is what Mohinder took with him from his lab, which now resides with his samples inside of Bruce's heavy duty Hulk-proof case. There was no reason to stay, this place was too enclosed. There was too much suffering here.

Mohinder stood slowly.

"They know-- They know I'm like her. They're going to be coming for me. No where will be safe for you."

Bruce gave Mohinder a quiet, long look. "No where has been safe for me for a long time." Even the Tower could never truly be a safe haven for him. Why did Mohinder think he was halfway around the world when he called originally? No where was safe because he was there. He made it unsafe. "I've been on the run for years now. There's nothing that can be considered safe any more."

He gathered up the discs and shoved them quickly into the suitcase, knowing that it would be the only safe place for all of what remained of this research. "We have to find a way to deal with this before they make more of you. Whatever you've become. If HYDRA begins making more and more... that'll be the end of it all."

Where would they go? What would they do? Mohinder had a hundred questions and nearly as many answers. He just had to settle himself and feel, for lack of better terms, the vibrations beneath his feet of how the world was turning. He couldn’t predict the future, but he could at least plan for it better than others if he really tried.

So he closed his eyes. He breathed in deeply.

“I know a place in Manhattan. It’s obvious, they would think to look there for me and probably imagine that I would know that and stay clear.” The loft. The loft of a painter whose head had been sawn off. A drug addict. A precognitive who drew comics based on what was to come. It was always where Mohinder had been given a lab. Where he had first done experimentation-- Where he had changed to…

Something else. He wasn’t proud of it.

“So it’s so unsafe that it might be the safest place to go. We might-- I think you should let your friends know.” The Avengers could get a better handle on this than he could.

Bruce looked vastly dubious on this notion for a time, but as he stared down at the nearest screen without reading anything on it, he finally decided he had done something similar enough in coming back to see Betty and perhaps Mohinder was right. Not like he didn't come back and hide in New York every so often as it was.

"If you think it'll work," he finally relented, "but the others have to know. They-" there was a quite sound, almost a laugh but something stranger than that, "they would search for me and draw more attention than I think we'd want, otherwise. If they know where, not only will they not... panic," Tony, "but I think they can help. There's information I'm almost certain that they'll know on this."

Something in his mind kept linking Agent 13 and Natasha, but he couldn't have said how without sitting down and really placing it.