You don't have to see something to know it's there; you can know it's there by the way it affects the things we can see.
- Dr. Steven Weinberg
Prologue
Olivia Dunham has never been a sound sleeper.
Over the years, she's become accustomed to sleeping a few hours at a time, floating in and out of consciousness over the course of the night. Not very conducive to dreaming, but that was okay, too.
Since the Bridge Room, though, her usual sleeping habits had changed. At first, she thought it might be the stress of living in a temporary apartment in New York, seeing her alternate every day, or seeing the pressure that the Other Walter seemed to impose on her Walter. But as they became more familiar to each other, the stress lessened, and she had no good excuse for waking more often, for what little sleep she was getting was increasingly less restful.
That fuzzy area between wakefulness and sleep was the worst, followed only by its morning counterpart. Usually she woke quickly and immediately, but now she was spending more and more time in that in-between state, not quite asleep and definitely not awake.
Those were the times that she heard his voice.
She wasn't sure who HE was – it wasn't John; he'd been gone long enough that the memory of his voice was fading. It wasn't a voice she recognized from seminars, from interviewing victims or perps, from meetings with Massive Dynamic scientists, or from standing in line at the Indian take-out around the corner back in Boston.
It was just a voice, quietly intruding as she took deep breaths and tried to relax as the therapist had advised.
Olivia… Olivia, I miss you.
Hold on to me. You have to remember.