Friday 10:10 p.m.

"At least we have a nice view," Peter said as he survived their accommodations for the night. The school had housed the women and their guests in the new dormitory. Each room had a large picture window, flanked on either side by two desks with surge protectors and intranet jacks set into the wood. Two comfortable office chairs on wheals went with the desks, and two twin beds were pushed against either side of the wall. On the right side of the room, there was a door to a bathroom, on the left, a walk in closet. It was exactly like a very nice college dorm, and dramatically unlike the small room full of beds and wardrobes that Olivia had shared with three other girls. She had been so surprised by the luxury that she had barely noticed the window.

"We're facing north, right?" Olivia said, not looking out the window. "Towards the chapel?"

"I guess so," Peter said, still admiring the view, "if that's the building with the bell tower."

"Yes," Olivia said as she hung her garment bag off a hook on the back of the bathroom door. "I don't suppose you brought a tux with you."

"I didn't bring anything I could not buy at Walgreens," Peter said, nodding towards his bed, which had two plastic bags on it, one filled with extremely cheap cloths, the other with travel toiletries. "I didn't want to take the time to go home and pack."

Olivia smiled, "You'll need one for tomorrow night. We're having a formal."

"A formal?" Peter laughed. "This really is like high-school."

"I'm pretty sure there are a couple of places to rent one in Middleburg."

"Hmm, I'm not a big fan of rented tuxes," Peter said dryly. "You think we could smoke out your murderer before the dance?"

"I'll try to look vulnerable at lunch," Olivia assured him.

"Good, you do that," Peter replied good-naturedly. "By the way, what is the plan for tomorrow?"

"I'm going out to breakfast with my old German teacher," Olivia started.

"Do you really think that's a good idea?" Peter asked. "What if she's your killer?"

"She's not," Olivia said flatly - ending all possible discussion. "But that should give you a chance to snoop around."

"Sounds fun," Peter said. "Is there anything in particular I should be snooping for?"

"You're the one that heard the threat, not me," Olivia said. "What should we be looking for?"

"Well, it was a woman with a southern accent," Peter said. "I think I'd be able to recognize the voice if I heard it again."

"Why didn't you tell me that sooner?" Olivia asked.

"I didn't really get a chance," Peter said. "Do you know who it is?"

"I know it isn't anyone here," Olivia said. "No one has a southern accent."

"No one?" Peter said, confused.

"Nope."

"Well, maybe it's a teacher or staff member - someone who came after you left."

"Then how would they know about the alleged first murder attempt?" Olivia said. "Could it have been faked?"

"Maybe," Peter said, trying hard to remember everything about the five-second phone call. "If so, it was a good fake."

"Is there anything else?" Olivia asked hopefully.

Peter shook his head. "I answered the phone and a woman said 'If she comes, we'll kill her. She escaped before, but this time we'll get her,' or something like that. When asked who was speaking, she said 'Tell Dunham to stay away. Cortexiphan can get you killed.' and then she hung up."

Olivia stared at him with a puzzled and concerned expression, "What I don't understand is how anyone at St. Agnes's could possibly know about Cortexiphan."

"I don't know," Peter said. "I occurred to me that, maybe someone got a hold of a copy of the ZFT and put one-and-one together."

"That crazy manifesto Mr. Jones followed?" Olivia asked.

"That crazy manifesto also happens to be disturbingly accurate," Peter said. "They did drug trials in Ohio at the same time they were doing them in Florida. Maybe someone from those trials . . ."

"Including twin trials," Olivia said softly, as she turned her head to look out the window at the bell tower for the first time.

"Yeah," Peter said, following her gaze even though he knew he couldn't see what she saw. "What is it?"

"I just . . . I have an idea."

"Great," Peter said, "What is it?"

"It's not an idea I like," Olivia said, turning back to Peter. "Let's eliminate some other possibilities before we go down that road."

"Can't you at least tell me what it is?" Peter asked. "If I'm going to be snooping at breakfast . . ."

"You said you'd do what I told you," Olivia reminded him. "I told you we're not going to pursue it, yet."

"Ok," Peter said, knowing how useless it was to argue with Olivia when she'd made up her mind - in part, because she was always right. "Well, maybe it would help if you showed me around the grounds - gave me some background and context."

Olivia hesitated.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Peter said quickly. "I know a bunch of people are having an after party in the rec room downstairs, I could go down and there and try to get a feel for . . ."

"No," Olivia said, shaking her head and forcing a smile. "I'll give you the tour."

Friday 10:45 p.m.

Peter hunched in his wool pea coat against the bitter December air. Olivia, in what looked like a new, white ski coat, didn't seem bothered by the cold. "That used to be the dormitory," she said, pointing to one old looking building. "It's classrooms now. And that used to be a commons, there was a tree where I would sit and study," she said, pointing to a snow-covered tennis court. "But, the hall is the same. And the chapel," she said, nodding towards the beautiful old building with the tall bell tower. "Which is almost ironic. It's the one thing I would have been glad to see changed."

"Why is that?" Peter asked.

"Follow me," Olivia said, ignoring his question as she headed toward the old building that used to be a dormitory. There had been a light snowfall earlier in the week, just enough to make the grass crunch as they walked over it and leave distinctive tracks. Peter followed her as she passed between buildings, and into the forest beyond. He wanted to ask her if it was a good idea to go into the thick old growth on such a cold night, especially as no one would miss them for hours, possibly days. But Olivia seemed determined to find something, and he was determined to follow her. After walking for what seemed like ages, though it was probably less than five minutes, they came to a clearing with a small shed to the right, butting up against the woods.

"Where are we?" He asked.

"The pond," Olivia said. There was a smile in her voice. "Twenty years ago, I would have been ice skating out here with Tina."

"Who's Tina?" Peter asked. "Is she here this weekend?"

"No," Olivia said. "Come on."

She walked over to the small house, opened the door, and switched on a light. Peter squinted from sudden illumination of one iridescent bulb.

"A boat house," Peter observed as he walked into the little structure's one and only room. At least it was a nice cozy room, with ten old wooden chairs hanging from hooks on the left and right wall. A canoe hung on the opposite wall above a door which, Peter guessed, lead out to pier. On one side of the door, ores were leaned against a wall, on the other there was a wooden crate holding faded orange life jackets. In the middle of the room was a small, black, Franklin stove, which Olivia had opened.

"Hand me some wood, would you?" She asked. "And close the door."

Peter stepped fully into the boathouse and closed the door behind him. He discovered a box of logs at his feet, as well as a pile of newspapers and an old tin coffee can filled with matchbooks.

"I take it this is quite the hangout," Peter said as he walked two logs, a section of newspaper, and a matchbook over to the stove.

"For some," Olivia said. It was warmer in the boathouse, but he could still see her breath. "St. Agnes's is full of spots like this, little places to make your own."

"And you chose the boat house?" Peter asked.

"Tina did," Olivia said. "She loved the water. We'd swim in the summer, canoe in the spring and fall, and ice skate all winter.

Peter smiled, "Too bad we didn't bring skates."

Olivia didn't smile. Instead she fixed her gaze on a dark window in the door that lead to the pier. "If we're really going to find out who wants to kill me, you should probably know everything."

"Only as much as I need to," Peter told her. It wasn't that he didn't want to know everything; rather, he didn't want to force her to tell secrets she'd rather keep.

"To be honest, I'm not sure how to start," Olivia said. "I brought you here because I thought it would be easier to talk in a place where I had so many good memories. But, now that we're here . . ."

Peter didn't force her to vocalize her hesitation, instead, he suggested, "How about explaining how a girl with a working-class, single, agnostic mother ends up at an expensive Anglican boarding school?"

"On full scholarship," Olivia said. "After I . . . after my step-father left, I couldn't go to the local school anymore. No one would talk to me, unless it was to call me a murderer. I was only eleven, and coming home every day just devastated. I hadn't had a lot of friends to begin with, but after that, no one was nice to me.

"If it had just been the kids, I think my mother would have made me deal with it. After all, kids grow and change. But the parents weren't happy to have me in school either. There was a petition, signed by every family in my grade school, asking that I be 'dismissed'."

"I guess it takes a village to destroy a child," Peter commented.

"Thankfully, one of the guidance consolers at Taft Elementary knew the dean here. She pulled some strings, and I was enrolled before the midterm break."

"And how'd that go?"

"Great, actually," Olivia said. "I was never popular, but I wasn't a pariah. I might have gotten teased for being poor, but after being so totally rejected, that sort of thing didn't matter."

"Make many friends?" Peter asked.

"Some," Olivia said.

"Tina," Peter prompted.

"She and her sister Nina were my roommates, along with another girl, Katie."

"Seriously?" Peter asked with a scoff. "Nina and Tina?"

"Ninette and Christina Kelly," Olivia explained. "But they were twins, so . . ."

"So Nina and Tina," Peter said, nodding. "Go on."

"Nina and Katie were best friends, and Tina and I were best friends. It's funny, even though Nina and Tina looked identical, they didn't act or think in the same way. Nina was popular, athletic, but not particularly bright. Tina was like me, quietly smart but a misfit. It was like we thought the same way - like our brains worked differently then everyone else's. We had this secrete joke that I was really Tina's twin, and that the doctors had gotten confused because Nina and Tina looked so similar."

"Are you still friends?" Peter asked.

"No," Olivia said softly. "Tina committed suicide, jumped off the bell tower, our sophomore year."

"Oh, God, Olivia," Peter said empathetically. "I'm so sorry."

"I never understood why," Olivia continued. She sounded as troubled as sad, as if the mystery of the suicide bothered her as much as the death itself. "I didn't know she was depressed. She must have been. Mrs. Colbert, the writing teacher, had lots of poems and stuff she'd written that mentioned suicide - but she never told me, or Nina, for that matter. I don't know how neither of us could have known."

"Maybe she didn't want to trouble you with her pain," Peter supplied.

"Maybe," Olivia acknowledged. "I wish she had. What if we'd have been able to help her?

"But," Olivia continued after a deep breath, "After that I went back to public schools. We'd moved to New York by then and Rachel was entering high school, so my mom thought it was time we were all together again. Maybe she was spooked by Tina's suicide, and I know she didn't like how Rachel was acting, fourteen going on twenty-four. So I left."

"And this is the first time you've come back?" Peter asked.

"Yeah," Olivia said.

"And you never thought you were in danger here?" Peter asked.

"No," Olivia said, shaking her head sadly. "In fact, for a couple of years, this school was the only place I felt safe."

Saturday 3:46 a.m.

Olivia screamed.

In a heartbeat, Peter was awake and on his feet, ready to viciously attack anyone who was hurting Olivia. But, even though the room they shared was tiny, he couldn't find the attacker in the murky darkness

"Please, don't," Olivia sobbed loudly. "Please."

Peter's groggy mind quickly cleared and he realized that she was not pleading with anyone in this room.

"Olivia," he said gently but loudly, as he sat down on her bed. "Wake up, it's a nightmare."

"Please, please," Olivia continued to sob. "You don't have to do this. I helped you. I can help you."

"Olivia, wake up!" Peter said, more forcefully, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. "You're dreaming. It's not real."

At first, Olivia struggled against Peter's grip, but he did not let go. The struggle, more than his words, seemed to rouse her. She opened her eyes and, for a moment, stared at Peter in terror.

"A dream," she gasped. She was still breathing heavy. Sweat and tears shone on her face, reflecting the dim moonlight coming in through the window.

"A nightmare," Peter assured her. "It wasn't real."

"It was, though," Olivia said, her voice shaking even as she pushed herself up out of his grasp, so she was sitting. "They were going to cut out my brain."

"Just a nightmare," Peter assured her.

"No, Peter," Olivia said. "It happened, on the other side. I've been dreaming about it ever since I got back."

Peter stared at her, in horror, desperately trying to think of something to say to comfort her. But nothing in his vast and bizarre experiences seemed to fit.

"I was awake," she continued, apparently trying to exorcise the demons by describing them. "They drugged me, so I was paralyzed and numb, but I heard the saw they were going to use to cut open my skull."

"God," Peter muttered. "That's sick."

"I wonder how long I could have kept consciousness," Olivia said. She sounded more like herself, almost analytical, but even in the dim light, Peter could tell she was still crying. "I've wanted to ask Walter but I just . . . I deal with it every night, I don't want to face it in the day."

Peter gently put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll ask him, if you like."

"I'm a little afraid of the answer," Olivia said. "Their technology was so amazing over there, what if it hadn't killed me? What if they'd been able to keep my brain alive without my body?"

"That'll give you nightmares," Peter commented empathetically.

"I keep wondering if we, in our universe, could ever do that - if we could ever do anything like that. If we thought the way they thought - if we had that us-or-them mindset - would we saw open a prisoner's skull while she was still alive? I want to say 'No' and pretend that we're better than them, but the truth is we're not. I met people over there, selfless, wonderful people who helped me at the risk of their own lives and I have to conclude that they are just as good as we are . . . so we must be just as bad as them."

"No," Peter said solidly. "Maybe that's true en masse. Maybe our universe is just as cruel as theirs. But our Walter, my father, is not like their Walter. And you are not like their Olivia."

"That's not true," Olivia said, turning to look at him for the first time. Her eyes were still red and moist from crying, but the expression in them was hard and accusatory. "You didn't know."

The words fell heavily on Peter's hearing. Though the statement had been vague, she didn't need to explain it.

"You're right," Peter said, not willing to meet her gaze, even through the dark shadows. "I should've known - I should have. And looking back, there were a hundred clues that I dismissed because I was happy, and I didn't want to mess it up."

"She made you happy," Olivia said. Her voice was both deeply hurt and deeply angry.

"No," Peter said. "I was happy because I thought I was with you."

"But you were with her," Olivia said.

"But I thought I was with you," Peter insisted. "I've given this an awful lot of thought -and I'm not trying to make excuses, but I had to know, for myself, how she fooled me. And the more I look back at it, the more frightened I become, because it seems pretty obvious that I fooled myself. The only reason I didn't question is because I didn't want to."

"You were happy," Olivia said. "Being with her . . ."

"Thinking I was with you," Peter said. "And when she was happy, I thought it was because I made you happy. I didn't fall in love with her -I fell in love with you. I fell in love with a woman who dug me out of Bagdad and forced me to confront my past. I fell in love with a woman who led me into a world where I stopped using people and started helping them. I fell in love with a woman who pursued the truth about herself, and about me, no matter how much that truth hurt. I fell in love with you, Olivia, because you showed me how I could be a better man than my father. You gave me the one thing I spent my life searching for. How could I love anyone else, even if she did look and sound just like you?"

"She laughed at your jokes," Olivia said.

"Probably as a screen because she didn't understand the references to Scrooge McDuck and George Bush," Peter replied. "I fell in love with someone who was amazing. When I thought you loved me back, I didn't want to mess it up."

"You had sex. You stopped thinking," Olivia said, accusatorily, honestly.

"Like I said," Peter reminded her. "I'm not trying to make excuses."

There was a long bout of silence. Peter would have given anything to know what Olivia was thinking, but she gave him no clues.

"You wouldn't seduce someone for information," Peter said. "You wouldn't kill innocent people to cover your tracks. You are not like her. You are better, in every way."

Again, Peter would have loved to know what Olivia was thinking about his heartfelt confession, but she didn't let him in. Instead, after another long silence, she said, "You know you shimmer, right?"

"I shimmer?" Peter asked, confused.

"Like the toys from Jacksonville, like the building that was pulled to the other side," Olivia continued. "I can't look at you and not see it. I can't look at you and know that you two are from the same place."

"Olivia, I . . ." Peter started.

"I don't hate you," she assured him. "We're both victims, I know. But . . . I can't find my way to loving you either."

"I understand how you feel," Peter said, not to express empathy, but to assure him of his comprehension. "But you didn't have to tell me that."

"I don't want to hurt you," she started.

"I know that too."

"But I am sick and tired of being hurt."

There was another long silence.

"What do you want?" Peter finally asked.

He expected her to tell him to leave: the room, certainly, but probably her old school and possibly even her life. But she surprised him. "I want to sleep without nightmares," she said.

Peter thought about it for a second. He knew he couldn't chase away nightmares, but at least she'd given him the opportunity to make a gesture.

"I'll turn the light on," he said. "Then we'll go back to sleep."

To Be Continued . . . .