AN- So here's the next chapter! I tried to help explain some of your questions, but if you have any more, feel free to ask! I've officially put off studying to write this chapter, so hopefully you all appreciate it ;) So without further ado, here's chapter four...
Chapter Four
A Massive Discovery
Federal Building, Boston, MA
Olivia Dunham ran her hands through her hair as she sighed into the deserted office building, releasing her pent up frustration. She'd been sitting there at her desk for hours now, wishing away the clock as she poured through file after file, write-up after write-up. Although Broyles had spoken to her and Peter separately about their newest mystery detainee, the Board had only today cleared them for investigation. It seemed nowadays that you had to jump through more hoops a day than cases you worked on in a full year, making Olivia more restless each time she had to bring something to the Board.
The Board of Generals had been put into place five years ago when Fringe Division had become a subsidiary of the Department of Defense. At first most agents who dealt with the alternate universe had been a bit weary of the idea, wondering if by mimicking some of their choices they might end up making some of their alternates' mistakes too. But yet, the new president had just been inaugurated and he immediately became a pioneer in Fringe protection, having made the division public as one of his first presidential announcements.
From that day on not only was a Fringe Division badge common place, but the Division was completely restructured according to the new Defense Act of 2032. The Chief of Fringe Division now answered to a Board of Generals, whose tasks included approving all actions made by agents of the division, overlooking restructuring efforts, and keeping the division efficient and productive. And yet, sometimes, Olivia felt they did the exact opposite.
This mystery man had classified information on cases she and Peter had both worked long ago, meaning surely she had an invested interest on solving the mystery. But, just as they always did, the Generals needed to mull over whether or not that investment meant a conflict of interest or a stronger will to succeed.
She would never understand why it took them so long to always conclude the same thing.
So now, racking up a massive overtime, she sat in the lonely offices devouring the case files they'd collected so far about the man in captivity. There was a collection of finger prints, DNA and blood tests, physical examinations, and psych evaluations all at her disposal, yet none of it revealed much. There was also a transcript of Etta's interrogation as well as some from Broyles, though the latter were mostly centered on the man asking to speak with Etta.
Most of it appeared completely useless.
She sighed again as she shut her folder, grabbing her coffee mug and making to take a sip. She glared at the bottom of her cup however as she realized it was empty, probably had been for hours.
"Great, just great-" Her muttering to herself was interrupted, however, by her phone ringing loudly beside her and shaking the desk.
The caller ID flashed the name Peter Bishop.
"Hey," she whispered into the phone, exhaustion sweeping over her.
"Hey there," he responded, worry sketched into his voice. "You didn't come home last night. Where are you?"
"I'll be home in a bit. I'm just at the office finishing up a couple things and then-"
"Olivia," he interrupted. "It's eight in the morning. You're telling me you've been at the office all night?"
"It's... What? What time is it?" She asked, scrambling to uncover the part of her computer screen that she'd covered with a sticky note. The clock read 8:17.
"It's a quarter after eight, Liv. Saturday? I was just about to start packing the truck."
There was a silence over the phone as they both breathed gently into the receivers.
"Oh," she said, hardly believing that she'd forgotten. "I completely forgot. We were going to the Lake this weekend, weren't we?"
"Yes, 'Livia, we were."
His voice sounded almost sad, but she knew him well enough that it was more concern than anything. She hated the sound of it.
"Okay, well I'll leave now and be home in twenty minutes, tops. I'll even pick up Etta on the way. Sound good?"
"All right," he said, some of the concern lifting from his voice. "See you in a bit."
As he hung up, Olivia began pushing the stacks of paper on her desk together, sliding them into a file folder marked "Suspect in Captivity: Name Unknown". It only took her another ten minutes to get her things together and head down to the parking garage, where she hopped into her black SUV and started the ignition.
When Etta was around four years old, and they'd been having talks of possibly having another little Bishop, Peter had tried to convince her that they needed to buy a proper family van. He'd even gone as far as to choose one out at the local dealership that he'd had his eye on. And although today Massive Dynamic, like most industries, had a near monopoly on automobiles and now owned almost every dealership in Massachusetts and even more in New York, back then there had still been Hondas and Toyotas. The one he'd picked out was big with sliding doors and little TV screens for the kids, cup holders that were easy to wash, and removable seat cushions. The worst part, in Olivia's opinion, was the dreadful colour. She didn't really think of herself as the kind of woman who when they went shopping for cars only saw the colour, but this one was purple.
And frankly, to her, no car should ever be purple.
So perhaps it'd been a blessing that the second time around they just didn't seem able to get pregnant, just so she could keep her clean and very-not-purple SUV. And although nowadays Massive Dynamic had installed virtual reality viewing in the backseat instead of TVs and spill-repellant fabric seats instead of removable ones in all their vehicles, she still felt victorious.
With all this running through her mind, she'd hardly noticed passing by street after street, eventually finding herself pulling into Henrietta's apartment parking lot, almost like she'd been on autopilot. Shaking her head to clear it, she took out the key and jumped out of the car, heading towards the lobby entrance.
When Etta had first moved into the building, Peter and Olivia had been a little considered. It wasn't exactly in the best part of town, as Etta stubbornly refused to take any money from her parents and had to settle for what she could get on a Junior Agent's salary, and frankly Olivia wasn't crazy about what drew it to her daughter in the first place. It was one thing to be dedicated to one's job - Olivia knew more than most when it came to career tunnel vision - but it was another to completely revolve one's life around it. She wasn't even sure if Etta had any friends outside work, Simon being the only person that came to mind. Every so often she knew her cousin Ella took her out for drinks, but she was married with a newborn. She was hardly best friend materiel.
And yet, it was very reminiscent of "Olivia Dunham: The Early Years", so she really couldn't be too surprised. Like mother, like daughter it seemed.
When she finally reached the door with the bronze numbers 76 on the front, she knocked softly. Immediately she heard some dishes being pushed around and then feet approaching, soft and quick.
"Who is- Oh..." Etta said, shocked, as she opened the door. "Hi, mom."
"Hi," she responded, shifting on her feet and smiling weakly. "You ready to go?" She pointed towards the hallway with her thumb. "Dad's waiting for us at home."
"Ready to go..?" The same blank expression Olivia had felt herself wear earlier crossed her daughter's face as she tried to think through what her mother meant, having obviously forgotten too. Like mother like daughter indeed.
"Reiden Lake? Your dad's big plans?"
"Oh my god," she gasped, turning suddenly back to her apartment and bolting towards her bedroom. "I totally forgot!" she yelled from the other side of the wall as Olivia heard frantic movements and clothes being thrown about.
"I'm just going to call Peter and tell him we will be a little late!" Olivia yelled back, taking out her phone from her pocket. They had this new technology where you could have a phone in your contact lens and then it wire to a piece in your ear - at least that was the simplified explanation she'd been given by Nina - but Olivia preferred the comfort of a simple handheld. Both Etta and Peter seemed to think the same.
The phone only rang twice before he answered.
"Let me guess," he began without so much as a hello. "She forgot too."
"Well can you honestly tell me you expected differently?" She asked, with a smile in her voice.
"No," he said with a chuckle. "But I always hope a little."
"Hey, you knew what you were getting into when you married a Dunham, need I remind you," she joked, making herself a spot on the couch in the main room.
"Need I remind you that you were the one that got knocked up. 'S not my fault I had to be a gentleman and propose."
"Ooh you are so not getting any ton-"
"Ready!" interrupted a frazzled looking Etta, effectively killing her mother's suggestive comment.
"Oh she's just finished packing," Olivia said to Peter over the phone. "We should be there in ten minutes."
"Okay," he responded. "See you in a bit. Love you."
She paused for a moment before answering, lingering on the sound of it.
"Love you too."
Tapping the screen, she hung up to a silent room. Etta was staring at her, her eyebrows furrowed and concentrated.
"What?" asked Olivia, standing from the couch, her phone limply held in her left hand.
"Nothing, it's-" she paused, shaking her head. "It's nothing."
With that she smiled, picking up her suitcase - which was characteristically tiny for a weekend trip - and making towards the door.
"Let's get out of here, shall we?"
With that the two blond women loaded the car and headed out, all in a very tension filled Dunham-silence.
To an outsider they looked practically identical: center parted hair, serious expression, and black-and-grey-clad from head to toe. The only difference were Etta's eyes, which instead of being her mother's delicate green, were instead her father's bright blue.
The strangest thing, though perhaps not that strange in 2037, was the fact that for fifty-eight year old mother, Olivia Dunham looked no more than in her late thirties. It had been sometime ten years ago that Nina Sharp had convinced her to test one of Massive Dynamics stranger products. Nowadays, almost everyone over the age of thirty popped Massive Dynamic's Rejuvenating Supplements like their morning vitamins, but Olivia was a little embarrassed to say she was the first. Peter had told her he didn't care whether she looked eighty years old or twenty-four, he just wanted her to be natural. However, Nina had made a pretty strong argument that once this started flying off the shelves, it wouldn't be long before her look made her weak instead of knowledgeable; damaged instead of strong. So with that, she embraced her almost immortal look.
In 2037, science had come so far as to increase the average life expectancy to an amazing 130 years old, news reports saying it increased a year around every thirty-six months. Technology was developing at an exponential rate, their means finally catching up with their imaginations. Sometimes she wondered what the world would come to in a hundred years, how they could develop so far as to have invented the Observers they knew today.
And yet, when she watched the news or wandered the labs at Massive Dynamics, she didn't think it that impossible.
"I kind of remember the lake."
Henrietta broke the silence and unwittingly interrupted her mother's train of thought.
"I know we haven't been in forever, but I do remember it a bit, you know? Like the smell of Dad's pancakes, or the way the bed sheets were always kind of scratchy and stiff."
"We always used to forget to pack fabric softener," Olivia laughed, the memories of a young Bishop family flooding back. "And your father would let you eat ice cream in bed. So of course I'd end up spending the weekend washing your sheets of chocolate stains."
Despite her reservations toward her mother, Henrietta smiled at the thought.
"I remember that too," she said, the smile growing larger as she turned to her mother, seeming to have forgotten how she was supposed to despise her, and instead nearly jumped from her seat as she spoke of her childhood. "He'd always say that I couldn't tell Mom, because you're favourite thing in the world was chocolate ice cream. You'd be mad if you knew I'd eaten the last bit."
"Well, you can't knock his creativity."
"Or his love of late night snacks."
They both laughed at this, Olivia turning onto Berkeley Court, a cull de sac in Brookline where the house Peter and Olivia had bought in 2012 was. It was quaint and suburban, but it had turned out to be almost perfect for their blooming family. If they wanted to give Etta a normal life, they had to go all the whole nine yards. Just as she pulled into the driveway, smiling faintly to herself as she saw the wind chime Rachel had given her on their wedding day hanging from the porch, Etta interrupted her thoughts.
"Hey Mom?" she asked, hesitant and watching her mother intently.
"Yeah, what is it?" Olivia asked, glancing at Etta as she took the keys out of the ignition.
"I just-" she began, pausing. "I just wanted to say-"
At this she seemed to close down, glancing up at the house where her father had come out with a box, waving at his wife and daughter from the porch. The silence stretched on for a moment with Olivia watching her, waiting for her to say what was on her mind, curious to see what was bothering her so much.
"You know what? Never mind," she said suddenly, flashing her head to her mother with a brief smile, though it looked more like a grimace to Olivia. "Let's just get on the road."
"Yeah, all right."
Olivia didn't follow Henrietta immediately as she hopped out of the car, and instead took a moment to sit alone in the car, enjoying the silence. Sometimes she just couldn't figure out what had happened between the two of them. Had it been her fault in raising Henrietta? Should she have not been so hard on her when she was starting out in the Fringe Division? She knew, realistically, that if she thought too hard on it she'd only serve to drive herself crazy, but she just couldn't help it sometimes. She was her daughter and she was a mother. Wasn't this supposed to be natural? Easier?
She nearly jumped from her seat when a rapping from her window interrupted her thoughts, grabbing her chest in shock.
On the other side of the glass was her husband, a single eyebrow raised at her as he stared at her in front of the wheel. She smiled faintly, her heart beat returning to normal as she calmed herself, nodding as he made a gesture towards the car, which looked sufficiently packed and ready to go.
She waited until he'd walked away before opening the door and getting out herself, pausing to take a gulp of the fresh air around her. Though Massive Dynamic had air filtration units all around the city, she found there was nothing quite like good old photosynthesis. After she'd finished her moment, she grabbed her bag from the truck - which Henrietta had left open after she'd grabbed her own luggage - and joined her husband and daughter in packing the car.
"Hey, luv," greeted her husband, kissing her cheek as she made it to them. "We just need to squeeze your bag in back, and we should be off."
"Sounds good," she said, letting him take her bag and watching him with her hands on her hips.
Only a few more hours now and she'd be away from it all. She'd just be with her family, alone; it was just what she needed.
Reiden Lake, Schenectady, NY
It took them precisely two hours and fifty-seven minutes to get to the lake house, the sun blazing over the beach and bouncing through the windows on the side of the house. Olivia's breath caught as she looked out over the water, flashes of a young girl running across the beach in her polka-dot one piece, screaming at the top of her lungs. She could so clearly feel Peter's arms around her as they watched their daughter play in the sand, the absolute beauty of the perfect afternoon.
She'd almost forgotten how amazing this place made her feel.
"You've got that look again," whispered Peter as they unloaded the truck, Etta having gone in with a couple suitcases before them.
"Yeah?" She distracted herself with a box of food, checking the labels of a couple cereal boxes uselessly. "What look is that?"
He leaned towards her, placing a hand on hers to stop her from reorganizing everything in the box alphabetically, and whispered in her ear. "I think normal people call it happiness."
"Happiness? Nah," she joked, smirking up at him as she slipped her hand from his, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I think you may have me confused with someone else."
"Mmm, must have," he whispered, smiling into the kiss as his lips touched hers, in a brief tender second.
His hands found their way around her waist, pulling her closer to him to deepen the kiss, neither of them wanting to let go. She stretched her fingers out and weaved them into his hair, which he hadn't cut in ages and was starting to look a little too scraggly for her taste. She smiled herself as he hugged her even closer, feeling as if she'd forgotten what it felt like to kiss her husband like this. Forgotten what it tasted like.
"Get a room, would ya?"
Their daughter's voice immediately broke them apart, both of their hands immediately falling to their sides and their faces glowing a fierce red. Peter broke into a grin, chuckling to himself as he winked at her and then promptly turned on his heel, patting his daughter's shoulder as he passed on his way to the house.
"Just be glad you didn't walk in on something worse," he joked, making Etta's face contort in disgust.
"Thanks for that image," she said, groaning as she dragged her feet towards the car, picking up the last bag from the back.
Olivia chuckled to herself and lifted the box of food she'd been organizing, and followed Peter into the house, Etta close behind.
"So what do we do now?" Etta asked as they entered through the French doors and into the main living room, which was almost as haphazard as Walter had left it. Peter had always been adamant to leave it just like it was when he'd come as a child, refusing to put in a TV or even florescent light bulbs.
"What do you mean?!" exclaimed Peter from the kitchen door, hands extended in front of him. "We're in paradise, darlings, you can do whatever you like."
"I think you need to look up the definition of paradise," she quipped, dropping her bag on the floor and throwing herself onto the plaid-patterned couch, a cloud of dust rising around her.
"Oh no you don't," her father said firmly, wagging his finger at his daughter's back. "We're not gonna waste our times here lying on the couch." Etta stared at her father, not seeming convinced. "We're going swimming."
"Swimming?" Olivia asked, leaning on an end table near the entrance, arms crossed over her chest. She was getting a little anxious to change, still being in her work clothes and the stitching in her blazer starting to irritate her tired skin. Maybe getting into a bathing suit wouldn't be such a bad idea.
"Swimming," he confirmed, a new swagger in his step as he grabbed his bag from the front and headed towards the bedrooms. "Get dressed you two!"
Olivia laughed as Etta groaned on the couch, throwing an arm over her eyes and looking reminiscent of a fourteen year old who didn't want to get up for school.
"Come on," Olivia prodded, leaning over the couch so that she could run her fingers through her little girl's hair. "Play along. Just for the weekend at least." Etta simply sighed, turning her head towards the fireplace. Olivia took her hand away and smiled weakly. "Hey, just wait and see: maybe you'll even have a good time."
"Yeah," she answered, rolling her eyes with a smile as she pushed herself up. "Maybe we all will."
Ten minutes later the three of them had set up camp on the beach, towels laying out side by side and an umbrella stuck in the sand behind them. Peter had packed lunches in a cooler as well as a couple beers and snacks. Etta's favourite thing as a child was licorice, something her grandfather had hooked her on since age three, which was probably not the best parenting technique, to say the least. So as per tradition, Peter always packed a packet of red licorice and a couple snack sized custards – another little honour to his father.
"Steamy romance novel?" asked Peter from his spot next to her, eyes closed as he lay on his stomach, head resting on his folded arms.
She simply laughed at him as she flipped the page in the Mystery Man file dossier, another page of DNA tests and psych evaluations. Even after spending a good eighteen hours pouring over these files, she was still at a loss for who the man was or what he wanted with them. The only real thing linking him to them was his knowledge of their past cases and an odd interest in their daughter. Who could they possibly have known back then that they wouldn't recognize now? Was he a shape shifter? Some phantom that had been stalking them over the years? Perhaps if she could just speak to him alone, see if she was forgetting something or the picture they'd taken of him was off or something…
"Getting interesting huh?" Her rolled onto his side and balanced his head in his hand, smiling sleepily at her. "Getting kinky?" He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively, grinning wide. "Please do share."
"Oh shut it," she said, with yet another smile, worrying that her cheeks might be sore tomorrow if she kept this up. Flipping the page, her face grew serious again, sighing and running her fingers through her hair. "I just-" She paused and looked out at the water, where Etta had been wading, every so often floating on her back and staring up at the clear sky. "This guy, he's just a complete mystery. There's nothing here that has gotten me any closer to figuring out who he is, why he's here, and what he wants. It's just so frustrating, you know?"
"I know." He moved closer to her and placed his free arm around her waist, staring up into her eyes. "But, Livia, you're not going to find something new in those files. You've already looked them over a million times."
"I can't just let it go, though." She ran another hand through her hair, her neck tensing as it always did when she became nervous about a case. "It's not just about us this time." She watched Etta dip her head under the water, pushing her hair over her shoulders as she resurfaced. "She's everything, Peter. I can't lose that. We can't lose that."
"I know, Livia. Trust me, I know."
The two of them lay there just like that for a while, staring at one another and comforting each other with their simple proximity. The sun felt like a warm bath, something almost surreal in the life she'd become accustomed to living. She'd almost thought it impossible for her to have a quiet, perfect moment.
Maybe this place just brought that out of her.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Peter said breaking the silence and lifting his arm from her midsection and reaching into the cooler for a beer. "Want one?" She nodded and he opened one for her, passing it on. "Right before I left the lab last night I found something kind of strange in that body Astrid and I were working on. The one from the Kruger case?"
She nodded patiently, taking a long sip from the bottle.
"You see I passed it off as just an anomaly in the first victim, thinking maybe it was a misread on the test or something. But I found a strange chemical in both victims' blood stream. And not a common chemical."
"And what does that mean exactly?"
"It means that whatever the chemical is, it's nothing I've ever seen before," he said, his eyes seeming to light up with a strange curiosity. "Which leads me to believe it's not something you can simply pick up from your local supermarket. It's fabricated. And by a pretty genius chemist, at that."
"So who could do this?" she asked, her Special Agent side clicking back on like an old friend, her brow furrowed and her right hand picking at the label on her beer. "What kind of person would be smart enough to brew something like this?"
"Well, I'll tell you where you can start," he said, a look that said it was almost too obvious. "I think it may be time for another visit to Massive Dynamic."
That evening Olivia found herself not being able to focus on anything; the information that Peter had revealed to her was weighing too heavily on her mind to think of anything else. She kept trying to invest herself in the conversation at hand, nodding and smiling with the two of them as they bantered about the agency or the latest football game, but with no such luck.
So when Peter and Etta had pulled out the box of board games that was hidden in the crawl space, she excused herself to hide away in her and Peter's bedroom. Her comm sat on the night stand, and crawling into the bed, she laid it in front of her, legs crossed over one another. She slid her finger over screen, the little light it emitted lighting up the room with a blow glow. Finding Nina Sharp's name, she tapped it once and sat back, waiting for her to answer.
It rang three times and then suddenly Massive Dynamic's CEO was in front of her, her face translucent and blue, a hologram projected before her.
"Olivia?" Nina Sharp asked, her eyes confused as she stared at her. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
"No, no, of course not," she answered quickly, sometimes forgetting how Nina felt about her. It was hard to imagine a life where she'd grown up with this woman as a mother, but not impossible. Over the years, specifically once Etta was born, Nina and Olivia had become close, almost like niece and aunt. Almost like mother and daughter. And yet, at times, she still forgot. "I just have a few questions for you. About a case."
"Oh, well of course. Anything you need, Olivia."
"That's very kind of you, Nina." She paused for a moment, thinking over what she was about to ask. "You see, we've been investigating a series of murders. The bodies we've found have certain… discerning characteristics. Their flesh seems to have simply disappeared from their bodies, their hearts are missing, and their eyes are glassed over."
She paused again, trying to see if there was any reaction from the woman before she continued.
"However, Peter just found a very odd chemical in the victims' blood streams. He says it's something he can't even identify, advanced beyond what we're even capable of doing as human beings."
"I'm confused, what can I do to help?"
"Well we were wondering if Massive Dynamic was maybe working on a similar compound," Olivia explained slowly, hands clasped over her knees. "Maybe you might be able to lead us to some scientists that might be capable of this kind of chemical engineering."
"I'm afraid I don't know of any scientists that are capable of such a drug," she answered, seeming to look over Olivia's shoulder as he spoke. "However, I may know a subject that could."
"A subject?"
"It's what we call our beta testers. Individuals who sign up to be the first on a line of some new drug. Similar to when I gave you those Rejuvenating pills, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember." Olivia felt herself growing anxious, concern washing over her. "So what, you think they were testing this drug? This is Massive Dynamic's work?"
"No, you see we were testing a very different drug. One that stimulated the parts of the brain that worked with logical reasoning and innovative thought." Olivia leaned closer to the hologram, enthralled by the information. "We theorized that by sending a sort of adrenaline to these areas one could expand a person's mind at an almost impossible rate."
"So what?" She asked, curiosity evident in her voice. "You were fabricating geniuses?"
"Essentially, yes. We were."
"So then you think what? That one of these subjects is behind the murders?"
"Well if you're right and this new compound is something only a genius scientist could make, it stands to reason that it could be."
"But don't you monitor them?"
"That, Olivia, is precisely why I bring it up." Nina paused, Olivia almost thought selfishly so as to keep her hung on her every word. "A few months ago something went wrong, you see. The subjects were having some sort of adverse reaction to the tests."
Olivia gulped audibly as she stared at Nina Sharp waiting for what she could only dread was coming.
"They escaped, Olivia. All of them."
So I wanted to quickly say, that if you're enjoying this story (which I really hope you are) and you want to see more, please go to my profile and follow the link there to my blog where you'll find lots of goodies including chapter art, extended author's, fact sheets, etc. etc. I'm testing this companion idea out on this story, so please check it out and let me know what you think. If anything, you might learn something cool.
With that said, thanks for reading and reviews make me happy :)