A/N: August 30, 2014: Exactly two months after the final release of Something About Mark, I present my latest work - A New Divide, a Fringe/Good Son crossover story.

Chapter 1 - The Quarry

Rock Harbor, Maine

December 17, 1993.

Trees. Snow.

A massive sheet of ice, spread perfectly flat as if it were a man-made rink.

And people, many people, bundled in warm, brightly-colored winter clothes skidding about at breakneck speeds.

These had all become a blur as twelve year-old Mark Evans stumbled down the slope toward the frozen surface of the quarry below. Great puffs of white vapor trailed behind him as he crashed through thickets of dead underbrush, having long since veered off the beaten path.

The air burned in his lungs with every breath. His feet throbbed with the exertion of having run so far so fast. But Mark knew that he couldn't stop.

He had to find Henry and stop him.

Before it was too late.

The time spent with his Uncle Wallace's family had started out all right. At first, it seemed as though Mark, and Wallace's son, Henry – who was also Mark's age – had some very similar interests, and would get along quite well together. But all it had taken was a few short days for the truth to be revealed:

There was something very, horribly wrong with Henry.

In the beginning, Mark had taken some of his cousin's stranger habits to be part of a 'feeling-out' process that anyone had to go through with a new friend.

But then the dog had happened along, and steered Mark's opinion in an entirely different direction.

Utilizing a homemade bolt-shooting device, Henry had killed the poor animal without a second's hesitation. Even worse, he had seemingly enjoyed it, too.

"Where's your sense of humor, Mark?" Henry had asked him after disposing of the 'evidence.'

After spending the better part of a day avoiding each other, Henry had dragged Mark out to the garage to participate in his latest scheme, at which point he had apologized – or, at least, tried to apologize – for the incident with the dog. He even went so far as to suggest telling his parents, but, as they both very well knew, saying anything would get them into a whole mess of trouble neither boy wanted.

As a result of this, and out of sheer boredom, Mark had decided to simply drop the matter altogether.

But what happened next had been impossible to ignore.

Out in the garage, Henry had made a dummy out of old clothes, pillow stuffing, and a lampshade, and named him 'Mr. Highway.'

Not knowing what his cousin had in mind, Mark had agreed to help him carry the dummy to an unspecified destination. That destination turned out to be a local overpass, under which ran one of the main roads into and out of Rock Harbor.

At first, this had all seemed like a harmless game, with Henry seating the dummy on a railing, and making up a story as to why Mr. Highway wanted to commit suicide. But then Henry threw his creation into the roadway below, and the game took a sudden, deadly turn.

The drivers at the time must've thought that someone had actually jumped from the bridge. In trying to avoid the body of the fallen 'man', at least three cars were wrecked and the traffic in those lanes was backed up for hours as a result.

Thankfully, no one was seriously injured. But Mark knew that it could have been much worse. Had he suspected that Henry was planning anything of the sort, he never would have agreed to help in the first place.

But that was just it.

He hadn't.

And the worst part of it was, Henry didn't even seem to care about all the hardship and pain he had caused so many people. Like with the dog, he had seemingly enjoyed it, too! It was sickening.

That same evening, Henry had issued a rather poorly veiled threat against his own sister, six year-old Connie.

Mark could still remember the exact words.

"Such a sweet little girl... It would be too bad if something happened to her. If she got...hurt. You'd be sad, wouldn't you, Mark?"

Henry hadn't said exactly what he was going to do to her, but nonetheless, Mark knew he was going to do something, and for that reason alone, he had to keep Connie safe.

Throughout the next day, Mark kept a close eye on his younger cousin, even going so far as to escort her to a nearby playground and keep watch over her for several hours. In a way, he had become Connie's self-appointed protector. And with Wallace and Susan having gone out for dinner that night, Mark was the only thing standing between their daughter and whatever Henry had planned for her.

Indeed, when the power went out, Mark had seriously feared for Connie's safety.

Fortunately, even though Henry got to her first, all he did was tickle his little sister, scaring the bejesus out of Mark in the process.

In the vein of protecting her, Mark promised to read her multiple bedtime stories, and got her away from Henry as quickly as possible.

Keeping true to his word, Mark read Connie three stories before she finally fell asleep, exhausted. Then he tucked her in for the night and left.

But, of course, Henry had been just outside her room, lying in wait for Mark.

"That was a darling story, Mark," Henry said with a smirk.

Mark immediately tensed. Henry had started to go around him and into Connie's room. Reflexively, Mark's arm shot out to stop him.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I just want to check on my kid sister," Henry replied, pushing Mark's arm out of the way. "Got to make sure she's tucked in."

"She's tucked in," Mark said tersely, stepping into Henry's path.

"We'll see." Henry quickly faked to his right and went left around Mark, who instantly turned and followed him into the room.

Henry went to the bed and switched the reading lamp back on. Then he bent over his sister. Connie had fallen asleep with her head bent back and her neck vulnerably exposed. Mark watched nervously as Henry reached out to touch it.

"Such a sweet little thing." Henry's words were filled with ominous mockery. He straightened up and turned toward Mark in the half-light. "Do you really think I'd hurt her?"

They stared into each other's eyes. Mark nodded slowly.

"Yes," he said.

He thought perhaps Henry would get angry, but he only smiled. As if he was proud of that fact.

Connie stirred and muttered something unintelligible under her breath. Both boys turned and looked at her. Mark felt Henry's hand on his shoulder, and it squeezed uncomfortably.

"What are you going to do?" Henry asked. "Stay here and watch her all night?"

Mark slapped his cousin's hand away. "Yeah, if that's what it takes, I will."

And so he had.

But when he woke up that morning, Connie was gone. According to Susan, Henry had taken her ice-skating at the old, abandoned quarry, under the pretext that he hadn't been spending enough time with his little sister.

From that moment on, Mark hadn't been able to stop running.

Now, here he was, stumbling and sliding on the snow beneath his feet, dead branches slashing at his face and hands and giving him a multitude of cuts that he'd have to explain away later. But right now, Mark didn't really care.

All that mattered was getting to Connie, before it was too late.

He could see her – and Henry – about halfway across the flooded old quarry, skating toward a bend in the rock face that obscured what was on the other side.

With a final grunt of exertion, Mark heaved himself through a thicket of underbrush and stumbled out onto the ice.

"Hey, watch it, kid!" someone shouted.

"Interference!" someone else yelled.

Mark suddenly realized that he'd run right into the middle of a hockey game. There were a dozen guys all around him, looking a little put-off at this sudden interruption.

"Sorry!" Mark gasped. "Really, sorry!"

When he started running once again, he noticed that his boots had little to no traction on the ice. But slowly, surely, he moved forward, stumbling and sliding with ever-increasing speed.

Far ahead, Henry had entered into a long, arching curve, with Connie hanging onto her brother's hand for dear life. Her cries of exhilaration and delight now sounded a bit more fearful.

"Connie, let go!" Mark shouted at the top of his lungs as he slipped and slid farther out onto the ice. But of course, she couldn't hear him. It was too loud here, and there were too many people. His voice was just one of many, lost in the din.

And now, he could see what lay beyond the rocky bend:

A long, thin wooden barrier painted red and white that stretched across the entire breadth of the quarry, warning skaters of thin ice ahead.

To his horror, Mark could see that Henry was skating in that direction. As his cousin hit the top of the arc, he seemed to stumble ever so slightly, and then suddenly, he just let Connie go.

The centrifugal force threw her forward, skates hissing on the ice as she tried her best to slow down, but her best simply wasn't good enough. Connie cried out in fear as she crashed headlong into the barrier, shattering it and sending the girl flat onto her stomach.

But she still didn't slow down. She continued to slide across the ice, which had now turned from white to a dull gray and had a thin sheet of water across its' surface. Seconds later, the ice opened up beneath her with a loud, wet crack, and in the blink of an eye, Connie vanished from sight.

"Oh, my God, Connie!" Mark screamed. He tried to run faster, but as if he were in a nightmare, the faster he ran, the slower he went.

As he slowly stumbled in the direction of the barrier, Mark suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. Simultaneously, a slight, barely discernable tremor ran through the ice under his feet.

Out beyond the broken barrier, there was now a three-foot diameter hole in the ice...

And absolutely no sign of Connie.

"Connie! NO!" Mark screamed again.

At long last, people finally began to notice his cries and turned their attention toward the area where Connie had disappeared. People began to shout.

"Someone went through the barrier!"

As one, the entire crowd of well over a hundred people stopped dead in their tracks. There were a few mortified cries and shouts of urgency that Mark couldn't quite decipher. Then, with slowly gathering momentum, everyone began moving in the direction of the barrier.

Once again, Mark found himself being left behind.

To his surprise, Henry was now belly-crawling across the thin, gray ice, toward the spot where his sister had gone under.

Was he really trying to save her?

Some of the crowd had started to venture beyond the broken barrier. Pieces of splintered wood were scattered across the ice. Mark could see Henry looking over his shoulder at them.

"The ice is breaking! Don't all come too close!" Henry shouted at them as a loud, splintering crack suddenly echoed off the nearby rock walls.

"I can't find her!" He was screaming hoarsely. "I can't find her!"

Another, sharper crack rang out through the air as Henry neared the hole in the ice, where water now lapped at the jagged edges, and his sister was nowhere to be seen.

New shouts came from behind Mark as he edged his way through the crowd.

"Out of the way!"

"Make a hole!"

He spun around and saw two men skating toward him, one carrying a tall, metal ladder, and the other, a sledgehammer.

A third crack brought a scream and few murmurs of fright from the crowd.

"What's happening?!" someone asked.

"Too much weight all in one place!" the man with the sledgehammer shouted. "Get back, all of you! Get back and –"

The loudest noise yet put some needed emphasis in his words, and the crowd began to do as they were told. But it was too little, too late.

Just as the men reached the gap in the barrier, a spiderweb of ragged, milky white cracks rapidly spread outward from the hole nearly ten feet in all directions.

Right in the rescuers' path.

Right beneath Henry.

A loud, genuinely surprised cry went up from Mark's cousin as a sudden wave of freezing water splashed him in the face.

With one final, agonizing noise, a massive section of the ice shattered and caved in, taking Henry with it and plunging him below the surface. A collection of simultaneous gasps and screams of terror went up from the crowd as they stumbled backwards, not wanting to suffer an icy fate of their own.

Mark, however, still couldn't give up. He just couldn't.

Unlike Connie, Henry bobbed to the surface almost immediately, floundering in the frigid water and spluttering like a beached fish.

The man with the sledgehammer stopped and laid the heavy mallet aside.

"It's too thin!" he yelled. "You'll have to go it alone!"

Now the other man gingerly continued across the ice toward Henry, dragging the ladder behind him.

It's taking too long! Mark thought, still working his way through the crowd. Finally he reached the gap in the barrier and started through it. Suddenly a hand landed on his shoulder, halting his forward progress and pulling him back.

Mark turned and saw the man who had been carrying the sledgehammer.

"It's too dangerous out there," the man snapped.

"But... but those are my cousins out there," Mark replied, stumbling over his words.

"Cousins? Kid, that Western tan of yours must've gone to your brain. There's only one out there."

Mark stared hard into the man's eyes. "Why do you think he went out there at all? His sister went under first."

The man blinked in shock. "My God..."

The man with the ladder crawled on his hands and knees up to the edge of the brand-new hole as Henry swam toward him, the boy's movements growing slower and more lethargic with every second.

Hypothermia...

Out on the ice, the man suddenly cast the ladder aside and reached a hand out to Henry to pull him in. The crowd around Mark had been murmuring, but now it simply watched in stunned silence as the man struggled to get a grip on Henry.

In the distance, Mark heard an ambulance siren approaching. His throat felt constricted. His heart beat like mad, blood pounding in his ears.

This can't happen. Not again.

Connie had gone under barely a minute ago, and there was still no sign of her on the surface.

NO!

At the moment, everyone was a little too preoccupied with Henry's predicament, something Mark could probably bet that his cousin hadn't bargained on.

The rescuer's arms plunged into the freezing water, and with a mighty heave, he dragged Henry up onto the ice.

A sudden cheer went up from the crowd, and the man who had stopped Mark breathed a small sigh of relief. Utilizing this minor distraction to his advantage, Mark slipped from his grasp, and before the man could stop him, he was out beyond the barrier. He stopped and kneeled on the ice beside Henry and his rescuer.

"What the hell are you doing out here, kid?!" the man snapped angrily. "It's not safe!"

"He's my cousin. His..."

Henry suddenly mumbled something incoherent. Mark leaned in closer, and heard him again.

"Connie..." Henry mumbled again, his voice slurred. "Connie..."

Then he went limp, head lolling to the side. For a second, Mark panicked, but then he saw that Henry was still breathing.

His rescuer looked at Mark in confusion. "Who's that? Who's Connie?"

Mark swallowed hard. "She's his little sister. Also my cousin."

The man before him blinked, still uncomprehending of what this boy really meant.

"Why do you think he was out here?" Mark said, blinking back tears from his eyes. "It was Connie. She went under first."

The man's eyes went wide and he stared out over the open water, which was once more growing still, almost mirror-like, with ice and bits of wood from the barrier bobbing gently on the surface. He turned to Mark and shook his head sadly.

"With how long it's been..." he tried saying, but his words trailed off.

"The EMTs are here!" someone from the crowd shouted.

Mark turned his head and saw a man and woman hurrying toward the edge of the ice through the snow, carrying a stretcher and an oxygen tank.

With some difficulty, Henry's rescuer dragged the boy's limp, water-logged body across the ice toward the shore, Mark crawling along behind them as fast as he could. Once they got there, Henry was quickly hefted onto the stretcher, and an oxygen mask was placed over his mouth. Then he was carried back up the path through the woods.

Mark had followed them all the way to the ambulance before they noticed him.

"What do you think you're doin', kid?" the man asked in somewhat of an annoyed tone as they bundled Henry into the back of the vehicle.

"I'm his cousin..." Mark started to say.

"What happened to your face?"

Mark shrugged, unable to find his words.

"In any case, you might need some stitches," the woman said. She turned to her partner and he reluctantly nodded. With that, Mark was hustled onto a bench in the back of the ambulance and the doors slammed shut behind him.

A loud thud sounded on the doors, and the ambulance began trundling forward, slowly gaining speed until it was out on the main road into town.

The female EMT sat across from Mark and silently watched as the boy dropped his head into his scarred hands and started to sob.

Connie was gone. Henry had won, but very nearly at the cost of his own life.

Mark's body heaved as he wept, the tears now flowing freely from his eyes.

He had failed.

SOMEWHERE ELSE...

Chief Foreman Paul Anderson cringed and turned away as the loud rumble of a dump truck worked its' way even through his earplugs, and totally drowned out what the man walking beside him was saying.

"What was that?!" he yelled.

Charlie Cooper, assistant foreman, waited until the infernal beast of a vehicle was out of earshot before finally responding.

"Crews in the central pit managed to get the drill working again before they left last night," he said. "Think we should check it out?"

Paul nodded, and they continued in the direction of the central mining pit.

"Speaking of last night... What'd you think of the game?"

"Which one? Pats or Dodgers?"

"Well, both, I guess," Paul replied.

"Hmm..." Charlie scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Pats definitely aren't on their way to another championship, that's for sure. Not with Sutton getting sacked that many times... Ouch. As for the Dodgers... well, they're the Dodgers. Not a whole lot to be said there."

Paul nodded in agreement.

"True."

"Hey, Boss?"

"Yeah?"

"You ever been to down to Brooklyn?" Charlie asked. "Or Manhatan, for that matter?"

Paul laughed. "On this salary? You gotta be joking."

Charlie shrugged. "Just askin'."

"But now that you mention it, the kids have been begging for a Christmas vacation for the past month," Paul said.

"Well there you go," Charlie said, grinning.

With that, they started their descent into the central pit. Below sat the currently inactive Main Drill No. 3, which had been giving them the biggest of hassles for the past week and a half.

"What exactly did the crew down here do to get that old monster working again, anyway?" Paul asked rather quizzically.

"Supposedly... they did it just by power-washin' its' guts."

Paul raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

Charlie nodded in reply.

"Almost sounds a little too simple," the chief foreman scoffed.

As they descended to the bottom of the pit, nearly fifteen meters below ground level, Charlie slapped a hand at the back of his neck.

Paul looked over at him in bewilderment. "Another one of your famous phantom bugs?" he asked in mildly sarcastic tone.

His assistant foreman seemed to ignore the snide remark. "Don't tell me you didn't feel that."

Paul shrugged. "Feel what?" he asked.

"That... tingling feeling."

"You sure you're all right?"

"Yeah," Charlie said, shrugging it off.

But then, as Paul strode into the control booth for the No. 3 drill and depressed the starter button, a sudden jolt of static electricity zapped the tip of his index finger, and he jumped back.

"Ow! What the...?"

"Problems?" Charlie asked from outside, his tone snarky.

"Ha-ha. Real funny, Charlie. You put the crew up to this?"

The assistant foreman shook his head and raised his arms in a gesture of surrender. "Much as I would have liked to, I can't claim responsibility for this one. Faulty wiring, maybe?"

Paul cautiously advanced back up to the control board.

Nothing appeared to be damaged, so with that, he once again pushed the starter button, and with a loud, mechanical cough, the old drill grumbled to life.

He stepped outside and listened. Somehow, it did sound better than before.

"Huh..." he scoffed.

"What?"

"Who knew a power washing was all that this old thing needed?"

Seconds later, Charlie slapped his neck again, but this time, Paul felt it as well. The hairs on his neck and arms stood on end, and he could almost feel the static charge in the air.

What the hell?

He didn't have to wonder for long.

A bright, bluish-white flash lit up the sky above, and they instinctively dove to the ground for cover. The electricity in the air crackled as if it were alive, sparking off the nearby control booth and the drill. Then a slight tremor shook the ground beneath the two men, sending a choking cloud of dust into the air around them and letting loose a small avalanche of gravel from the slopes above.

And, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light was gone. In its' place was the dust, and the sound of a million tiny rocks cascading down the slopes.

Both men coughed as they cautiously stood to their feet. Fortunately, the ground seemed stable, and thus there was no likelihood of the drill shaft turning into a sinkhole and swallowing them without a trace. Admittedly, that was a bit far-fetched, but when Paul had first felt the tremor and then the dust in the air, that was what he'd assumed.

For once, he was perfectly happy to be wrong.

"What was that?!" Charlie asked, gagging on a lungful of dust.

Paul shook his head. "Hell if I know... But whatever it was, I'm not gonna risk damaging the drill."

With that, he reentered the now-dusty control booth and blindly felt around for the shutdown switch. Fortunately, he knew this board like the back of his hand.

Paul quickly jammed the switch into the 'off' position, and from outside, he could hear the drill slowly winding down.

"Emergency shutdown initiated," a monotone, computer-generated voice intoned from the speakers above his head.

But then he heard something else.

It was the sound of Charlie, shouting his name.

Paul ran out of the booth and looked around for his assistant foreman. Charlie was kneeled on the ground near an old sand pile, still yelling for his boss.

"What is it?!" Paul yelled over the noise of the drill.

"Come over here!" Charlie cried. "Now!"

The urgency in the man's voice stirred something in Paul and he ran over.

What he saw there left him gaping.

The limp form of a young girl laid half-on and half-off the sand pile, her right leg bent at an unnatural, painful-looking angle.

How did she get there?

But even stranger than her simply being here was the fact that her lower body was submerged in a deep pool of water, in which floated slowly vanishing chunks of ice. Then there was her clothes. She was wearing a white wool hat and a purple, full-body snowsuit, the latter of which was something Paul hadn't seen in years.

Stranger still, she was wearing ice skates.

And to top it all off, she seemed familiar in some way, but Paul couldn't quite place his finger on it. When the dust finally cleared, he gasped as her features came into sharper focus.

That face...

That brown hair...

Beside him, Charlie looked equally taken aback.

"My God..." he mumbled.

Paul kneeled into the water beside the girl and removed the hat from her head.

He nearly fainted.

It was her.

It was Connie Evans.

A/N: Well, here it is, finally. Opinions on this first chapter?

And no, I didn't misspell 'Manhattan' as 'Manhatan'. The latter is the way they spell it in this alternate universe, known in Fringe as 'the Other Side'. If you haven't watched the series, I highly recommend it (aside from the fact that it's a part of this story). For any fellow Fringe fans, I hope you enjoy this.