Ch. 1 Split

Peter walked behind her down a very long hallway. Massive Dynamic lived up to its name and his hands that had never shaken before all of this, not even in Iraq, tremored against his gun. She did not appear affected at all; the chains at her wrists barely clinked with each steady footfall. He had a sense that she would quiet any such evidence that she had been captured.

He had been the one to find her out. But not right away, a thought that always caused pain to radiate across his collarbone. With every passing hour since their return from the Other Side, her side, his side, there had been a growing tension like waiting for a rubber band to snap. Her hair had been a pull, her eyes had been a pull; she didn't like the taste of alcohol.

He had felt it and not been able to figure it out, a frustrating problem for a man of his usual mental agility. Even now in the way she tracked his proximity over her shoulder, her movement was different, off. Was she taller? She stopped at a closed door and he used the door frame as a measuring stick. No, he concluded, she was shorter.

The trembling in his hands stopped as he pushed the door open; the comparison had comforted him somehow. The windows to his left let in the only light. The moon and the console of lights surrounding Astrid glinted off her curly hair as she moved from one screen to another. A tripod stood in the middle of the usually unused lab; dusty scrapes on the floor showed that boxes had been shoved against the filing cabinets on the opposite wall. The tripod's device, which looked somewhat like a camera, was oriented toward the bare inside wall to his right. Peter saw Astrid's eyes glance toward him, to the scientist at the tripod, and finally to the still woman beside him. The scientist did not look up, but Massive Dynamic's Executive Director certainly did, the moonlight burning her red hair in the corner of the room. The tall FBI agent next to her was silent, his dark skin all but allowing him to disappear in the shadows; they were a fascinating contrast.

Peter put a hand up in the direction of his prisoner, as if that were enough to keep her where she stood and walked over to Walter, the absent-minded professor. Before, in a stuttering fit of anxiety, Walter had explained the purpose of the device, and how they could use it to rescue Olivia from the Other Side. He had used it before, to retrieve and save his dying son, and however conflicted Peter felt about that the parallel between the rescues gave him hope. If he had believed in any kind of grand design, he would think that there must be some kind of meaning or balance to be found in the creation of these windows.

That was the mission; create a window, and make a trade.

When the woman who seemed so much like Olivia had shown him the silent typewriter waiting in the pawnshop's back room, its call-and-answer reflected in an over-sized vanity mirror, he had not believed her. After all these months of seeing biology and technology spawn miracles and catastrophes he could not bear to think that everything hinged on this plunky machine. But it did. Everything.

As he stood now beside Walter and with the tingling awareness signaling exactly where she stood, he knew that the trade arranged through that mirror would not occur like those words stuttering across the paper. Paradoxically, he felt emboldened by the predictability of just how dire the situation was. When had it ever been different?

Walter shuffled back a few steps before murmuring, "Son," hands in a familiar wringing gesture. Peter suspected he said it both out of habit and wanting, but he could not make eye contact, and he moved back to stand next to his prisoner. He knew that Walter would gesture to Astrid, could imagine the tension on Broyles' face and the severity of Nina Sharpe's, and did not need to hear the minute hand move to strike 9.

In one moment he was looking at a bare wall, and in the next the room seemingly doubled in size. A kind of glow dissipated like fog, and they were noticing those across the way even before their eyes had fully adjusted. It was not a reflection of this room and Peter wondered why he had been picturing it that way. If their room had physically crossed over they would be hanging 180 stories above the street. Now only their windows lit both rooms.

She stiffened next to him and he saw with a surreal start that the figure closest to their side was her dead partner and lover John. And then Peter realized it was not John, just a very similar looking man whose feet were obviously straining to run across and rescue the brown-haired woman.

"Frank," she murmured. Peter wondered where the Other side's John was right then, when a light switched on in the other room and his eyes finally found Olivia.

Olivia stood all the way to his left, Walter's device almost obscuring his line of sight. She looked thinner, but no less brave. Her hair was blond again at its roots, bangs long enough to be tucked behind her ears. Her hands were clasped in front of her; she was not bound. Her eyes fluttered up to meet his for a moment, then looked back down.

Peter's eyes scanned the back of that room then, his jaw slightly falling as he spotted the Other Astrid, the Other Broyles. Standing imperiously in the middle of it all by his own device affixed to the top of an identical tripod, was the Secretary. Walternate. Peter's biological father. Another tingling of awareness radiated through his left side and he noticed that Walter had sidled up closer to him, fingers twitching as if to grab Peter's sleeve.

And there behind Olivia was the Machine, its great claws reaching down, reflected in the white tiles of the floor. There were the DNA-driven holds for each of his limbs, and large braided cables running straight into a huge distribution board set into the back wall. Walter's hands did grab Peter's sleeve then.

Peter stepped forward until he was in front of the Secretary, but kept his prisoner in his periphery.

"Here she is. Your very own Olivia Dunham," he made a sardonic bow but the Secretary's eyes merely slid in her direction. His hands did not twitch.

"Thank you Peter. Why don't you bring her over to us and we will see if she's been treated properly?"

All this time Olivia had been watching with a guarded expression but Peter saw her mouth quickly open as if to protest, and then close. The Other Olivia noticeably started as well.

"The trade is for them." He made his gesture nonchalant.

This was, of course, not going to plan. In every scenario he imagined he had given himself that inevitable choice: Would he cross over and risk this world to save Olivia? She had confessed to needing him, but if he confessed anything to himself it was that the reverse was also true. She had surprised him that night, both with her daring rescue and that admission, but it was more like uncovering what he already knew.

Yet regardless of how his arms twitched to touch her, there was no way he would cross over only to be strung up in a machine designed to destroy a universe. A chill had been in his abdomen since he had discovered the purpose of the technology and his role in it, and now the cold crept upward like heartburn.

"You know that will never happen."

The Secretary responded by smoothly mimicking his bow and motioned to the Other Broyles, who started toward Olivia.
The tug-of-war appeared to have started, but Peter was not willing to play. With a sudden move to his right he grasped the prisoner by the backs of her arms and growled, "Go home." And he shoved. He was unsure what traveling through the window would do to her; he could not remember his childhood experience, and the Secretary had used a different method. Brown hair flying she stumbled through, apparently safe as she crashed into Frank's arms. He was pulling her behind the jutted out wall of a closet before anyone else had the chance to react, other than the Other Broyles gripping Olivia firmly by the upper arms.

The Secretary had been mid-turn and he spun around, eyes ablaze with anger. Peter knew he had inherited that look; his eyes could radiate while his face remained impassive. He had not seen Walter make that face since before Saint Claire's; perhaps he could not, so Peter made it now.

"The balance is off," he stated, a warning as much as an admission. "I'm never coming across, and someone," he tried not to put too much hope in the word," of the same mass must come back."

A slight squeak came from behind Peter but he was watching the Secretary lay his hand calmly atop the tripod, eyes back to their flat and inexpressive blue. Face suddenly twisting in an expression of haughty triumph that Peter had not once seen on Walter, the Secretary snarled with disdain, "This side is used to inequality. I guess now I have an extra agent and you get him."

Peter yearned to check Walter's reaction when suddenly the Secretary jerked his arm backward. Peter heard the squeak again. Then he knew nothing as the floor lurched under his feet and he stumbled backward, almost swiping through the legs of the tripod in the process. He vaguely saw Astrid disappear below the console with a screech and Nina and Broyles slide together toward the windows.

As if the building were splitting like a banana peel, the great glimmering window rose up as Peter struggled to maintain his position on what was quickly becoming a very steep incline. Peter looked down to see Walter with his back to the console, his legs stretched forward to steady the tripod. The soles of his shoes lightly squeaked with every tremble of the floor. Peter realized that Walter had known exactly what the Secretary was trying to do, and had copied it.

Only the window had not broken as the Secretary had wanted to surprise them with, and it had not moved in unison as Walter had planned. It was as if the window had taken their building up with it. Peter's suspicion was confirmed as he craned his head upward to see what was going on on the other side. Their floor was tipped too, but toward the window. Peter could see that the Other Astrid had disappeared behind that console as well and Frank and the still handcuffed woman were struggling with tangled limbs against the closet wall they had slid into and consequently, been saved by. The rooms had not moved together and that floor now towered above Peter's head by at least 8 feet; a fall would not have ended well.

Peter looked left and saw that the Secretary was using one hand to hold onto the console and the other to hold the tripod. He did not appear to know which was the better decision, to hold onto the tripod and see what would happen, or drop the tripod and hope for his originally intended result. Some dust from the splitting walls was now clearing so that Peter could find Olivia; the Other Broyles was using a bookshelf nailed to the wall to keep himself from sliding down while trying to grab Olivia at the same time. She however, was using the incline to slide feet first toward the window. Peter spotted their own filing cabinets lining the wall to his left, also nailed to the wall.

"Olivia!" He shouted, gesturing toward the cabinets and haphazardly scrambling across the floor. He pointed at Walter.

"You hold it there! Hold it until I say!" and Walter's head bobbed up and down as he continued to warily stare at the Secretary. Peter pulled out file drawers and clutching their sharp sides began to climb. If he could just reach her, help her through the window and down- His head jerked up as he heard Olivia cry out in pain.

An unseen rope tied around her ankle had snapped taut, pitching her head first down the floor. She could not have known it was there; Olivia barely had time to throw out her arms before she hit with full force on her torso, and slid halfway through the window.

Dangling above the slice in the floor with arms outstretched, Peter could see that she was in pain. His eyes swung around to look at the Secretary, who had stopped his taunting gaze with Walter and was now staring triumphantly at Olivia. Peter finished climbing the cabinet and steadying himself with one hand on the wall, reached up toward her. Their hands were still a good three feet apart. Peter saw the rope straining against a desk that had slid partway into the console. As if he had commanded it himself, the desk suddenly spun loose and tipped end over end through the window, crashing down to where Peter and his prisoner had stood. Olivia was released forward a few more feet and with a yelp, her hands landed in Peter's.

Peter caught Olivia's eyes, scared and just the right shade of green, and gritted his teeth.

Her head was shaking in frustration. "I didn't see the rope. I don't know what it's made out of."

"The window?" Peter was staring at the shimmering line across her waist. "Does it hurt?" She shook her head again with the same expression he had seen every time she ignored her own pain. "Can you cut the rope?"

The Secretary, his fore- and middle fingers casually switching back and forth on the leg of the tripod, laughed and called to them, "Nothing will cut that rope; it's made of woven steel with reflective coating."

"I'll come over and cut it," Peter started but Olivia dug her nails into his palms.

"Never." She looked at him with fondness and not a little anger. "Peter you will never come over here. Don't fall into his trap and don't you dare trade a universe for me." He started to object when she stretched as close to him as possible, voice hopeful and steady.

"You'll find a way and I'll be fine. Don't worry." And there it was, that small smile he had seen at every precarious turn and appreciated and loved.

"'Livia, I-" With another lurch the floor started to fall into the building; a supporting structure below them must have been destroyed by their sudden upward action. Peter whipped his head back to see Astrid scramble over the console to help Walter catch the shuddering tripod, while Nina ran to help with the dials. Broyles allowed himself to be carried toward the filing cabinets, which he began to climb.
The floor on the other side continued to tip towards their universe, Olivia's arms slackening as their bodies became level. Peter's flaring hope that he might reach up and somehow untie the rope was extinguished when the Other Broyles snapped a switch on the console, and the rope around Olivia's ankle began to pull her up the incline.

"Peter, you'll figure it out," she said firmly. He grasped her tightly; soon only their fingers remained touching. He could not seem to exhale around his panic.

"'Livia I love you, sweetheart. I love you." He said with frantic breaths and she smiled, babbling over his words, "I love you Peter. I love you. I love you."

Their hands flailed in the air as they tried to reclaim their hold, but she was level with the Secretary now, teeth gritted in pain for her injured ankle. Peter balanced on the filing cabinet watching Olivia struggle against the rope and he knew then that she was right. He could figure it out.

Broyles barked out a sharp, "No!" as Peter tensed his legs and jumped from the swiftly descending universe onto the floor of his so-called home world. The window felt like passing through static. He could see the absurd vision of Walter with his wool-footed dance along the carpet, then shocking him on the ear. It was then he knew that he had one father, and this man who was standing in front of him, looking as if he were in control even while clinging to a desk, was not him. The rope pulling Olivia had stopped, and now being able to bend she was working away at the invisible bind.

Peter reached into the waistband of his jeans and, while his arm swung up to point the gun at the Secretary, he murmured in a low voice, "We can find another way to fix this," he gestured toward the Machine. "Why can't both universes survive? Look at all of these scientists and resources. We can stabilize the windows; fix the imbalance. We can…" his voice died away when he saw the Secretary's reaction as he talked about the Machine. Walternate looked excited; he was eager to use it, wanted to see the result and feel the power of obliterating an entire universe. Peter's hand steadied; it had come to this.

"Maybe not then. But I won't help you." The Secretary smiled, "You wouldn't shoot your own father, Peter. I know you wouldn't."

Peter shook his head. "You're not my father." And he squeezed the trigger.