A Long Two Years
TITLE: A Long Two Years
AUTHOR: barhaven
CHARACTERS: Mohinder, Sylar (gen)
RATING: PG-13 for zombie gore
NOTES: Blame forsquilis for this. She provided the idea of Mohinder ending up in possession of Hiro's katana, and this was where my brain ran with it. Thanks to she and ibroketuesday for commenting on the first draft.
Everything is better with zombies. TRUFAX. Even if there's pretty much no point to this particular zombiepocalypse beyond "BADASS KATANA!MOHINDER IS BADASS."
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The dead reach out through the hallway, clumsy and ravenous and greedy. They gasp their hunger in wet, voiceless gurgles, purposeless and entropic. They stumble, wander, trail decay across the blood-dried concrete and stained walls.
They fall under each slash of the katana. Heads. Skullcaps. Brain matter. Grasping hands. Mohinder's sword lashes out, over and over, scattering the dead. He struggles to keep moving down the hallway, so the roamers don't become a swarm the way they did back at the entrance.
Keep moving. Press ahead. Behead the corpse on the left, the one wreathed in its own tangled hair where the scalp hasn't slipped away. A few more steps. Arc the sword through the neck of the one with the exposed ribs. The two on the right are beginning to take notice, reaching out, closing in. Two strikes, drive them back, press on. The dead are still spread mercifully thin through the corridor, and he's fortunate that he can rely on Hiro's sword for now instead of wasting precious bullets.
Even as the katana swings out to sever a jumble of clutching fingers that wander too close, the intersecting corridors ahead flash bright with familiar, searing bursts of energy.
There's an intense relief in that. Mohinder lost sight of Sylar ten minutes ago, when the dead overwhelmed them back in the lobby. They'd known this building was infested, but they hadn't known there were this many.
It's easy to guess why. A building this secure was seen as a safehouse two years ago, back when everything started to fall apart. Perfectly safe...until the biggest threat was no longer the corpses clawing at the front doors and moaning in the dead streets. When they were suddenly surging and tearing through the survivors' ranks from within, like a parasite through its host.
All it takes is one person hiding one bite. One death going unnoticed. One ignored room harbouring one waiting, hungry, restless corpse.
Another of the undead catches his eye, clumsily lunging at him from the right. Small. Aim low. Mohinder takes its head off with one swing. The body staggers, spasms, and falls into a twitching pile.
He thinks of them differently now. Back when this all started, he couldn't even shoot one to save his life without being caught up thinking of them as people. Dwelling on them as victims. Being sloppy and sentimental enough to think they looked strangely sad under the decay and blood. Convincing himself they deserved better than being shot as monsters and left to rot unmourned. Who were you? How did you die? Are you still in there somewhere? Is your family still alive? Did you kill them? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...
He doesn't ask those questions any more. Now, if he looks, he doesn't see the reanimated corpse of a child who could have been Molly's age. He doesn't wonder if the boy's parents took him here thinking it was safe. He doesn't notice the Pokémon t-shirt under all the blood, or the remaining sneaker's colourful shoelaces, or the crooked wires of braces jutting jagged from the thing's mouth. He doesn't wonder if the boy believed everyone who told him the world wasn't ending. He sees only what's there: snapping teeth and clawing hands, a monster hungry for his flesh, another corpse. He sees the most effective way to deal with a threat, gain a few more feet of ground, and make room for the next one. The one after that. The three that could be around the corner after that. The ten that could be lurking down the tangle of hallways and stairwells after that.
It's been a long two years. All that's left of the world are reminders. Memories. Corpses. Scars and tears. Death and loss. Hunger and violence. The inevitability that things will find a way to get worse. The promise that as soon as a friend or loved one's heartbeat stops, they become the enemy.
Yet somewhere amongst it all, the barest fragments of hope dig in like glass shards. There's the promise of fixing this somehow, if only he and the others can decipher what Hiro and Peter left behind before they disappeared. That collection of notes, plans, traced connections mapping past and future. Dates and times and tasks. Rambled speculation about timelines, and the possibility of dissecting them carefully enough to pry apart. Promises that things will fall into place if they all do their part, even if they're acting blind.
And there's the katana, of course, left along with the rest. Japanese lettering is scratched out on the hilt. 'Mohinder' is scratched in its place, along with a cryptic date, time, and location that grows closer every day.
"The lab is three floors down," Mohinder says as another corpse crashes rotting and spasming and headless at his feet.
He knows Sylar can hear him. The killer's abilities have advantages that make it well worth enduring the man's company. Mohinder could whisper from a mile away and Sylar would still hear him perfectly. They're here for information, and it will be up to Sylar and his abilities to coax the two-years-dead computers to life, pry out what they came for, and memorize anything they can't take with them.
The killer complains about that, bitterly and often. As far as he's concerned, the end of the world is a wretched enough twist of fate without his role in it being little more than glorified amanuensis.
Still, here he is. Whatever his hubris is telling him and however selfish his motives, the simple fact that he hasn't abandoned or killed Mohinder and the others after these five long, tense months speaks volumes.
Mohinder expects to have to fight through another corpse-scattered corridor to reach Sylar, but it's not necessary. He turns the corner to see the last stragglers of a former horde of undead, thrown aside by bone-crushing telekinesis and charred by a flash of nuclear fire.
Then the hallway is still, and it's just the two of them. The remains of the walking dead litter the floor. They twitch in sick, oozing, squirming throes, losing whatever unnatural spark has kept them reanimated.
Mohinder walks over to Sylar, reluctantly pulling away the mask over his mouth and nose. The air is heavy with decay and death. Even after all this time, it's still difficult to bear.
"The rest of them will be here soon," Mohinder says matter-of-factly. The guttural, gagging moans of the dead are fewer now, farther away, but never far enough. "If we make it downstairs, we can barricade the doors and buy enough time to retrieve the data-"
A thick, wet sound gurgles up from the floor.
Mohinder looks down in time to see one of the corpses - half a corpse now, severed spine and tattered intestines dragging behind - reach up out of the pile of charred, shattered dead at Sylar's feet. Its fingers dig into the killer's leg before he can pull away. Bloody teeth flash as the thing surges forward.
It never gets the chance to land a bite. Mohinder's sword slices through the corpse's neck in the same instant that Sylar's telekinesis lashes out with the force of a sledgehammer. The lower half of the thing's head shatters into fragments of teeth and jaw and flesh.
"Too slow, Doctor Suresh," Sylar says. He steps away, tugging his leg free from the creature's twitching fingers.
"Your gratitude never ceases to amaze me," Mohinder replies. There are some things that even the end of the world doesn't change.
As Mohinder moves toward the stairwell indicated by the fire exit signs, Sylar speaks up again.
"Mohinder."
One word. That's all it takes. In that one word, Mohinder knows.
He knows before he turns back to face Sylar. He knows before the killer holds his arm out. He knows before he sees the blood soaking through the man's torn sleeve, down his fingers, pattering gently to the concrete. He knows before he spots the gore peeking out from the depths of the stained sleeve, or sees the chunk of bite-marked flesh torn away below the man's wrist.
"Too slow," Sylar says again. There's a faint smirk amidst the numb anger. Arrogant to the end.
Sylar yanks his sleeve back. Patches of burned flesh stand out amongst the oozing blood. A clumsy attempt to cauterize the wound with his powers in the few seconds he could spare while fending off the dead. All it accomplished was mutilating his wrist further. The wound bleeds on, indifferent.
Mohinder has seen this before. Too many times. Too many names and faces, rising up to haunt his memory. Too many lost friends.
The torn flesh is already discolouring. Veins spider out around it, burn and flood, the taint of infection creeping further every second. The wound drools blood and pus like a greedy maw, and they both know all too well what it promises. It's going to infect, ravage, devour Sylar until there's nothing left but one of them.
"How long has it been?" Mohinder asks simply.
"Two minutes. Maybe three." Sylar swallows, and the smirk turns into a grimace of pain.
Mohinder stares at Sylar, and grips the katana. His lifeline. The symbol of the unknown task they've been entrusted with, and the hope that all those cryptic notes and instructions are going to mean something when they come to pass.
His voice is utterly dispassionate when he says, "Hold your arm out. Now."
Sylar's expression twists. Things tumble out in a tangled, knotted string of gut reactions. Denial. Refusal. Pain. Anger. Defiance. More pain. Arguments. Threats. Murder. Contempt.
Then, with a glance at the seeping, hungry wound...the pointed lack of a glance at the dead things scattered on the floor around them...
Mohinder sees the closest thing the killer has ever shown to fear.
In the end, Sylar manages to fight back anger and agony long enough to give Mohinder that familiar, murderous glare. "If you say 'this is going to hurt'," he promises, "I will feed you to them, Suresh."
"Fair enough."
Sylar thrusts his arm out. He takes a breath, squeezes his eyes shut, and nods.
One mistake. One person. One bite. That's all it takes.
Mohinder moves. The sword slashes down.
Even knowing what's coming, Sylar's screams wake the dead.
A long time ago, Mohinder would have been worried - albeit grudgingly - whether the infection has already spread too far in those few minutes. He would have worried about more than simply whether the killer will survive shock and blood loss to finish the task at hand, or how many precious minutes this mess is going to delay them.
Back then, Mohinder would have been appalled at how tempting it is to ignore the outstretched arm completely. How easy it would be to slice the katana clean across Sylar's throat while the man's eyes are closed, in this one vulnerable second of implicit trust.
There was a time when it would have sickened Mohinder to realise that the only reason he doesn't put a sword through the man's neck or a bullet in his brain is because Sylar is the only one who can retrieve what they came for. He's simply too useful to let him die, if it can possibly be avoided.
'Worried.' 'Appalled.' 'Sickened.' Mohinder Suresh doesn't think about those things any more.
It's been a long two years.
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