As she pushed open the interview room door, Olivia Dunham caught the tail end of a sentence.
"-- cancel all the good shows. Firefly, and Dollhouse. I think they just don't like Whedon."
"Well, they've still got one or two that are worth watching," Peter Bishop said as he half turned. "Let me help you with those, Agent Dunham." He pushed back his chair and stood, taking the paper cup from the top of the pyramid Olivia was balancing. His hand brushed hers in the process, which she firmly did not notice.
"I don't really like coffee," the interviewee said. "But it's better than nothing."
Olivia smiled as she slid into an empty chair. "When I was in college, I swore I'd never drink the stuff," she said. "Then..."
"You're a cop," Peter said, as if that explained everything.
They spent a few moments getting their cups sorted out, and then Olivia said, "All right. Ms. Liu, I understand this may be traumatic for you--"
"No, it's OK," the interviewee broke in. "Talking about it doesn't make me any more freaked out. Or any less, either." She grimaced a bit. "My friends and family don't want to talk about anything else, but it's not like they're going to be able to do anything. It's nice to discuss it with someone who has...I don't know..."
"A gun?" Peter suggested, and Olivia shot him a half-exasperated glance. He met it with his trademark expression of Perfect Innocence. She had to suppress a smile.
"I was going to say authority, but a gun's a pretty good stand-in, I guess. So, you want this in order of how it happened, or in order of what I remember?" Ms. Oliver asked.
"Just tell the story," Olivia said. "As it comes to you." In her experience, that got better results than trying to dictate things.
Ms. Liu blew out a breath, like someone about to pick up a heavy weight, and put her hands down flat on the table in front of her. "Right. OK, a week and a half ago, that'd be the thirteenth, I left the house to go to work. On my bike, because it wasn't raining, or too cold. I left at 7:30, which is my usual time--it takes about half an hour to get there. I can show you my route on a map, if you need to know." Olivia nodded encouragingly. "I remember getting to downtown, going under the train bridge." She paused, looking troubled, for long enough that Olivia was about to prompt her.
"Now, there's a bagel place on my way in, a few blocks from my building. I stop there pretty much every morning and get a poppyseed bagel with cream cheese."
"Breakfast of champions," Peter said easily. Olivia suppressed an urge to snap at him when she saw the tension in Ms. Liu's shoulders let up a notch. Peter's instincts for getting people to talk were damn good--better than hers, in some ways.
"Yeah, I guess. Anyway, my check card shows that I went in there and picked up my usual. I left the place, and the one employee who was not buried under the morning rush told the cops later that she saw me get into a brief altercation with someone outside, but she couldn't see who because I was in the way. Altercation was her word, not mine." Ms. Liu stared at her hands. "When I didn't call Rob to let him know I'd gotten to my office, he called my cell and my desk phone. An hour or so later, he called my boss--her number's on the whiteboard in the kitchen--and she told him I hadn't come in and they were wondering where I was. He started calling hospitals and so forth." Another long pause. "The next thing I remember is standing in front of my house, complete with everything I had when I left for work, wondering why I was so tired. I opened the door and went inside, and walked in on Rob and a policeman who was taking his statement. That was when I found out it was a day and a half later." She made a rueful face. "Things got a little exciting at that point."
"I'm sure," Olivia said, matching her tone.
"And that's it. I remember everything up to a certain point on my commute, and being at home, and nothing in between. They checked me at the hospital and they say I wasn't injured, or raped, or anything like that. But I can't remember." She looked up, and there was fear trying to break out from behind her composed face. "I hate not being able to remember."
With considerable feeling, Olivia said, "I understand how you feel." She'd had a few experiences now with worrying that her memory wasn't reliable, and had found it horrible each time.
"The policemen who set up this interview--they said you're looking into other cases like this?" Ms. Liu said.
"Yes," said Olivia. "You're the fourth."
"Oh, man," Ms. Liu said. "I'm not big on alien abduction and stuff, but this is just getting creepier." She peeled her hands from the table and grabbed the braid that had been hanging down her back--her hair was just as long and straight as Olivia's, if much darker. She studied the end of the braid with the appearance of deep concentration. Peter and Olivia traded looks, and after a moment she answered his raised eyebrows with a shrug.
"Ms. Liu," he began.
"You can--both of you can call me Jenn," she said, and he nodded and started again.
"OK then, Jenn. If you think you can, we'd like you to come back to Boston with us--just for a few days."
"OK," she said. "What for?"
"Mr. Bishop's father is a researcher," Olivia said. "He's...multidisciplinary. For the last few months he's been working on methods for recovering memories." Hopefully he's come up with something that tastes better than the flatworms, she thought.
"He's a shrink?"
"I think one of his degrees is in psychology," Peter said. "But he's not going to try a lightning-speed talking cure, if that's what you mean."
"I'm not exactly in favor of shock therapy," Ms. Liu said warily.
"We wouldn't let him strap electrodes to you without your permission," Peter said.
Notes: Yes, this is just the teaser--now imagine the credits.