HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Walter was waiting for them when Peter and Olivia walked into the lab.
"Excellent, you've arrived. Astrid was convinced you'd booked into a motel for coitus." Peter cringed and Olivia looked aghast at Astrid. She rolled her eyes.
"No Walter, that was you, remember?" Walter considered this.
"Really? It doesn't sound like something I'd say. Never mind." He presented Olivia with a petrie dish with the grey dust in it. "This is from the crime scene at the warehouse. It's the same nanites that were used in Los Angeles, though these have been cultured to reproduce using human fat molecules. I posit that the individual responsible for this used a human victim to create the medium in which to 'programme' these nanites." Olivia stared at the dish.
"Walter, what kind of equipment would you need to 'programme' these nanites?" Walter shrugged.
"You'd need a suitable container and time, Agent Dunham. If you wanted to speed the process up, you could artificially control the temperature and the concentration of material in suspension to programme them, but nothing complex." Peter looked from Walter to Olivia.
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking our guy has a plan, but he's probably on his own. I'm wondering if he can reproduce these things alone?" Walter shook his head?
"I doubt it. These nanites are easy to re-programme but very difficult to make from scratch. It would help to know how many he has left." Olivia put her hand on Walter's shoulder.
"Walter, I need you and Astrid to figure out a way to stop these things. Can you do it?" Walter looked insulted.
"Of course I can. What a question." Then it dawned on him. "Oh, you mean quickly. Well, I do have some theories….." Walter wondered off talking to himself and Astrid followed. Olivia took Peter by the arm and led him to her office. She shut the door behind them.
"Yesterday, you made reference to something called grey goo. What did you mean?"
Peter poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down.
"There's a mathematician called Eric Drexler who wrote a book on nanotechnology like nanites and in it, he puts forward a hypothesis that nanites would eventually evolve to the point where they would be able to utilise any substance to reproduce, reducing the surface of the planet to a thin layer of grey goo. A sort of nano-apocalypse." Peter studied her. "Why do you ask?"
"Because if Young did employ our guy to run some under-the-counter field test of these things and he went rogue, I need to know the worst case scenario."
"Hey, the guy could be being paid to hand these over to the competition, for all we know. Trade secret like that, I'm betting hits have been put on people for less." Olivia considered the thought for a moment.
"Maybe. We need to sweat that list of employees out of Young." Olivia's phone rang and she answered it and listened before snapping it shut. "Whatever he's doing, he's gonna do it soon. Crime scene guys at the warehouse think he took the melted guy's town car." Peter stood up.
"Nothing this guy has done so far suggests stupid. He's got to know we have Young by now." Olivia nodded.
"Whatever he's doing, it's going to be soon."
FRINGE DIVISION HEADQUARTERS, BOSTON.
Olivia and Peter walked into Young's interrogation room. He looked at them and didn't speak, though some of the swagger he'd displayed during the initial questioning had drained out of him. Olivia didn't waste any time.
"Mr Young. I want that list." Young's voice was steady, but his eyes darted from Peter to Olivia.
"And I want a lawyer. I guess we can't always get what we want." Olivia leaned across the table and when she spoke, her voice was full of malice.
"We just don't have the time to screw around. So I'll offer you this deal. You give me the list, and I don't walk out of this room and leave you with him." She nodded in Peter's direction and on cue he waved and smiled.
"Hi." Young looked amused.
"I was expecting more than good cop, bad cop."
"Suit yourself." Olivia turned to Peter. "He's all yours." With that she left . Peter walked over to the chair opposite Young and sat down. Young stared at him but didn't speak. Peter just smiled.
"My name's Peter. I'm not an FBI agent, they just bring me in when I'm needed. I guess I'm a contractor of sorts." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a plastic tube with a glowing green liquid in it. He placed it on the table in front of Young and left it there. Young stared at it as Peter continued.
"We took this from your lab, so I'm guessing you know what it is. Here's how this is going to play out. You're going to ring your office and get them to fax a list of everyone who has ever worked on your nanite programme. Then, if you're lucky, you won't die by lethal injection because of your immediate and full co-operation. If you don't, well then I guess I'll take the top of this tube and empty the contents of it over…"he paused for a second…"lets say your right hand." Any bravado Young had left shrank at the site of the tube.
"You can't do that, it's torture!"
"It's expediting the inevitable. The clock is ticking Mr Young." Beads of sweat formed on Young's forehead but he kept quiet.
"So be it." He took the top off the tube and grabbed Young's hand. Young yelped and tried to pull it back, but Peter hauled him over the table.
"Wait!, wait. I'll get you the list, I'll do whatever you want, just don't spill that." Peter let him go and put the tube down, passing him his cell phone. Young made the call and sat back, panting.
"You're insane!" Peter smiled and drank the fluid down in two gulps. Young looked at him in astonishment. Peter laughed.
"7up and food colouring." He tossed the empty tube at Young. "I'd get comfortable if I were you. I doubt you'll be going anywhere for a while."
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The list of names was forwarded to Astrid's computer and she and Olivia were systematically going through all thirty seven names, looking for anything that might have been out-of-the-ordinary. Walter was working furiously trying to find a way of stopping the nanites reproducing. Peter felt like a spare wheel. He looked across the lab and saw everyone he cared about doing their thing – Olivia and Astrid being the dedicated G-women, Walter doing his usual half Jerry Lewis, half Peter Cushing turn at his desk. He thought back to his drive through Alternative Manhattan with the other Walter, how different his life might have been had Walter not abducted him in 1985. Would he have spent so long travelling through the hell holes of the world? Would he have felt the same sense of belonging as he felt now, watching his family, a family he never thought he'd have, all under the same roof. He smiled to himself and walked over to Walter.
"Hey Walter, can I help?" Walter looked up.
"Of course. Two sugars in mine please."
"You want me to make coffee? I have an IQ of over 180, you do know that?"
"And I'm very proud son." Walter stared expectantly at Peter who rolled his eyes.
"Fine"
Astrid didn't look away from the computer.
"Me too, please"
Olivia just put her hand up and smiled slyly at Peter, who threw his hands up in mock exasperation.
"Great. I'm a teas maid in a Hammer horror movie. That's great."
Astrid was scrolling through the names that Young had sent them, Olivia looking over her shoulder.
"Wait – scroll back." Astrid stopped and scrolled the screen back. "That guy."
"Brandon Crown?"
The list included dates of employment. Crown's ceased six weeks before the LA Subway crash. "That's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it? Olivia pulled out her cell phone. She dialled the number of Rigsby-Halliwell.
"Hello, I'd like to speak to Human Resources please. Yes, I'll hold." Astrid looked at her quizzically. Olivia winked at her. "Hello, my name is …." She looked around the lab and saw Peter walking back into the lab with Coffee…"Jean Cowan. I'm working for JGR healthcare and we have a client named Brandon Crown, we seem to have a problem here as we have no records of recent payments from your company into his healthcare insurance. Could you confirm whether payment was made?" There was a pause. "I understand you're not supposed to give out that sort of information, but our computers are on the glitch and I don't want Mr Crown to default on his insurance." Another pause. Olivia smiled. "Thank you, that's most considerate. Goodbye." Peter put her coffee in front of her. "No time. You and I are paying Jack Young a visit." Peter looked confused.
"Why".
"To ask him why he's still paying health insurance to a man who, according to Rigsby-Halliwell's employment record, no longer works for them."
FRINGE DIVISION HEADQUARTERS, BOSTON
Olivia walked straight into the room in which Young was sleeping, kicking the bunk he way lying on. Young shook himself awake and stared up at Olivia, sly smile crossing his face. Then he saw Peter stood behind her, and it disappeared.
"What did you recruit Brandon Crown?"
"Agent Dunham, I have no idea who that is." It was Olivia's turn to smile.
"Really? Employee of Rigsby-Halliwell, worked in 'special projects' after a brief spell with your nanite team. You poached him from Massive Dynamic, or at least he worked there before he worked for you."
"Rigsby Halliwell has twenty-two thousand employees, Agent Dunham. How many do you think I know?"
"The question really should be how many of them have you been paying via a bank account in the Cayman Islands, even after they've left your employ." Young's voice was steady, but his eyes gave him away.
"You'll have to do better than that. There's no way you got that information from the Cayman Islands that quickly." It was Peter's turn to speak.
"Most innocent people generally don't know how Cayman Islands bank accounts work." Olivia spoke slowly and carefully, so that Young understood the implications of every word she spoke.
"Mr Young, here's what I think happened. Mr Crown brought you some information from Massive Dynamic on their nanite programme. You wanted to know whether you were getting the real thing or played by Massive Dynamic. Crown proposed a field test of the nanite technology in the big wide world. You set him up, provided him with the money from an untraceable source knowing that what you were testing would be worth billions to the US Air Force if it worked, but you couldn't risk Massive Dynamic perfecting the technology first, hence the unorthodox field test." Young smiled as Olivia spoke, but she could see the panic rising behind his eyes. She continued.
"I'm guessing that the field test wasn't supposed to be the subway train – not exactly low profile after all, and that you didn't even know that it was Crown until we turned up with the subpoena. That was the point at which you realised that Crown had gone rogue, and you took the best option to end the project with no questions asked. Problem was Crown finished off your band of 'problem solvers' – dissolved them with your nanites." She stepped back and put her hands on her hips. "I can tie you to the deaths of ten people right now and I think I can make a decent argument that they died in the commission of a terrorist act. Do you know what that means?" Young shook his head. Every ounce of fight had left him and he looked like he had aged ten years in the few minutes Peter and Olivia spoke to him.
"That means murder with special circumstances. California still has the death penalty. You do the maths."
"Unless…." Young knew it was over. Olivia sat down on a chair at the far end of Young's cell."
"I want every scrap of information you can give me on Brandon Crown. I want everything he brought you from Massive Dynamic. Most of all, I need to find him Mr Young."
"I'll give you everything I have, but I don't know where he's going. I haven't been able to contact him for a week." Peter leaned over and took a small amount of pleasure from the fact that Young moved back from him slowly.
"The next target might be Logan International Airport, or a Patriots game. You want that on your conscience?"
"I Don't Know!" Young shouted. "He was supposed to test them on a disused place Rigsby-Halliwell owns on Boston Docks. No people. No casualties. We never heard from him." Olivia looked carefully at Young. She put a hand on Peter's shoulder.
"Let's go."
They were silent on the drive back to Harvard, both mulling over what Young had told them. Olivia was driving and when she spoke, it sounded as if she was talking to herself.
"What I don't understand is why choose the subway train? Young set Crown up in Boston, yet he goes back to LA. Why?" Peter shrugged.
"I don't know. Maybe he's crazy, maybe it was a target of opportunity – he had to pick something Rigsby – Halliwell made so he could acclimatise the nanites."
"Yeah but surely he could find something closer to Boston." She chewed her bottom lip as considered this. Peter watched her. Doing that drove him crazy. She noticed him looking at her.
"What?" Peter smiled and blushed.
"Nothing. You know it drives me crazy when you do that." It was Olivia's turn to blush.
"Really?" She stared at him and slowly bit her bottom lip. "When I do this?" Peter laughed out loud.
"You are bad, Agent Durham. Very bad." Olivia thought for a second that he was going to lean over and kiss her, but instead his face clouded over.
"What is it Peter."
"What if the Train was a deliberate target?"
"You mean terrorism? Yeah, we've been investigating that possibility."
"No, not terrorism. What if it were picked for another reason?" He took out his cell phone and called Astrid.
"Astrid, do me a favour – can you do a web search. The parameters? The LA Transit Authority and Massive Dynamic. Thanks." Olivia looked at him. His eyes were lost in thought. It was kind-of moody.
"You know, when you look like that, it drives me crazy!" Peter looked back at her but didn't laugh. His mind was racing.
"Why did Massive Dynamic let the guy go? He's clearly a genius – Massive Dynamic must have had their reasons." Peter's cell phone rang and he answered it. "Hi Astrid. Really? Thanks. We're five minutes out. Have Walter ready to go. Bye." He snapped the phone shut and turned to Olivia. "Guess who signed a twelve billion dollar contract to provide gas turbines for the LA Transit trains?"
Olivia looked shocked.
"Massive Dynamic. So this isn't terrorism, it's a vendetta."
"Yeah, and I think I know where he's going."
"I better call Nina."