(Part VI) -2016 & 2036-
{Peter}
All he can remember after she'd gone that morning, after he'd tucked away the note and traced his team back to the danger zone of their old lab is his father, frantic, hurried, obviously anxious over something while Astrid attempted, vainly, to calm him down.
"He's been like this since we got here." she'd explained, as he'd made his way to his father. "He said we had to come back to find something, and the whole time, he's been acting like this."
"Walter, what is it?" He'd asked, trying his part and then, already, he'd felt his heart beating so hard it could have pounded out of his chest, "What's going on?"
"They'd been followed," his father had said, as he'd scrambled above the table, mining through gadgets with his free hand, firmly focused on some private task. "They managed to pin-point their wavelength, and I have the unfortunate knowledge as to how."
It was a tracer, he'd recognized then, in his father's other hand, a digital remote that tracked specific propagation beacons; the radio signals transmitting on the enemy's private-stream pathway.
They'd decided, months before, they'd never risk using it.
And so it'd been panic that set in then, a quick jump of his insides that fused into his every bone, spryed his body with conscious fear but before he could question the danger, his father forced a small, hockey-puck device in his hand.
"What is this?" he'd asked, flipping it over and again until he found the red button, ignited it's hologram.
"It's a Rune Matrix, Belly's secret side-project." his father had answered, "I found it when I broke into his belongings."
It'd been years ahead of its time then, the hockey-puck port and it's three dimensional data, more advanced, more complicated then anything his MIT mind had dissected before, and it'd rose questions, ignited his suspicion but he couldn't ask again where it was found before Walter continued.
"It only proved my theory right," his father had said, his mind firm on his own concentration, "that William had an escape plan should his initial scheme prove otiose, futile.
"I shouldn't have trusted him, Peter!" he'd shouted, "Shame on me for being fooled again by his treachery, his selfish wiles, his vile intent!"
"What are you talking about?"
There'd been so many lost points, he couldn't grasp a sound reaction while his father grew more impatient, running about in the lab, grabbing this, this and that in his wake.
"Walter, slow down!" Astrid tried to interject, but he'd breezed right past her.
"Belly!" he'd finally answered, briskly, "He never meant for her to come out of this. It was never his intent for this to work. Not for the purposes he lead us to believe, anyway."
"What? Walter-" he couldn't finish the thought before his father held up a finger.
"He'd lied to us, Peter, he'd wanted her in that machine. It was the transceiver in Belly's vehicle that They tracked. He re-installed it, with a filter circuit, I assume, so we wouldn't know. I discovered the signal after making my own altercations to the remote tracker. He turned it on intentionally, Peter. It's how they found them. He'd led them straight to her."
Already he'd been ready to react, ready to move.
"If they know where she is-"
"My grandchildren, Peter," his father interrupted, "your children. That's what this is about."
"What?" he'd asked, stopped in his tracks from his father's words, from the muffle of his detached understanding.
"You and Olivia, you're from two separate universes," he'd begun to explain, "you from over there, she from over here." his hand motions accompanied the words, "Individually, you resonate at two seperate frequencies, 261.6 megahertz and 392 hertz. Diatonically, C and G.
"And as I'm sure you can't forget, it was years ago, when a William Bell-," he'd said the name with new spite, "-attempted to collapse the two universes by tuning them both to 329.6 cycles per second. An E, in effect."
And when his father turned from him, still, he'd been at a loss, unable to connect the dots, desperately trying to overturn all the puzzles pieces without the full picture.
"Walter, I don't understand-"
"A new universe, my son," his father had stated, "that's what Belly's providing them, that's why he needed Olivia in the machine, not because of her ability, but because of the fetus growing inside her." his posture was intense, serious as his words echoed off the basement's walls. "Your offspring Peter, any heir you and Olivia produce, will be a natural product of two worlds," he'd held up the identifying fingers, "two frequencies harmonizing together, a stable wavelength of two, individual oscillations, brought together to vibrate on one organic level, 698.6."
"An F?" he'd questioned, tasting the statement, the jagged ends starting to fall together, slowly, meticulously.
"Yes." Walter had affirmed, "The complete opposite of E, its companion note, if you will. It's the yin of creation to the yang of destruction." he'd rolled his hand in the air. "If a key of E can destroy worlds, then it stands to reason-"
"A key of F can create one." he'd interrupted, bracing himself against the lab desk, suggestion careening into him so hard, it knocked his breath away, tightened something like metal coils under his rib cage.
"A genetic attribute your children biologically possess." his father had said, "The first humans born of two separate universes with one resonating outcome. Now you see why we had to keep Henrietta safe, why we had to keep her hidden."
"You're telling me," he'd said, absorbing, "that William Bell wants to use my children to create a third universe, a universe that doesn't physically exist... by what?...harnessing the frequency they're specific to? That essentially, my kids have the power to materialize an entire world from nothing?"
He almost couldn't believe his own words.
"Nothing comes from something, son," Walter responded, sure, "Essentially it's matter, anatomically configured, structured by protons and neutrons into something substantial, tangible, so yes, through the power of the Machine, I believe it's possible yes, that's what I'm saying." his father confirmed, his voice gruff, his hands still searching for something as Peter processed the clusterfluck he'd been hit with.
"It must have been his bargaining chip with them," his father said, "Belly's. In return for his freedom, his life, he promised the enemy a new world, a new universe of their own, unstained, untainted from human wear, human life." he'd turned to him then, "I know it seems inconceivable son, impossible even to digest, but I've no doubt of the verity of this."
Too many emotions had hit him then, all at once through the fog of his grappling ascertainment, bounced up, down and around inside, leaving him both cold with new numbness and hot with anger, repudiation.
And through it all he'd somehow found the thinking space to ponder how his father had known so much, could have come upon such monumental knowledge in such a short time.
Hours before, he hadn't any idea, no evidence at all that pointed to anything he'd just said.
"Walter how do you know all this?" he'd questioned, carefully curious, looking up from the table he'd braced himself on, but the interrogated dodged the question, ignored it's importance to the task at hand. "Walter," he'd said again, cautiously, "how-"
"It's not relevant," his father interrupted, dashing to the back of the lab, searching, impatiently, for that something they came back for in a far-end closet. "The how doesn't matter, what matters is that we know it, and what were going to do now because of it."
Two more seconds and the distraught man found what was hidden, a eureka moment accentuated by the quick rise on his toes, the relief in his eyes.
Too suddenly, Peter'd recognized it, the detonator, the hand-held remote that controlled a cylindrical vessel he hadn't seen in ages. In a half a second, the realization choked his chest, rose the hair on his neck, squeezed his lungs until he'd thought they'd pop.
"Walter what are you-," Astrid begun to ask, from her listening point in the middle of the room, but there'd been an abrupt and loud shrill around them, red and orange lights flashing above their heads, the invisible alarm they'd configured set-off, tripped outside by invading encroachers.
He hadn't been able to properly react, to think through the noise before he'd heard Bell's voice, the man barging in midst their panic in under half a run.
Nothing else is as clear after that, as vivid to his memory, not after he'd taken in the empty space then where she should have been, the place behind Bell where she should have followed. In that moment everything his father had told him, the mass extent of everything that'd hit his ears minutes before, had caved down, buried him whole with violent truth.
And then it's Bell's voice, he hazily remembers, defensive shouts through his pressured eardrums, his paralyzing shock.
There was no time Peter, he'd explained, through the whirlwind security, if I'd attempted to save us both, there wouldn't have been a chance for either of us.
A lie from a liar.
And then, it's his father's snarled accusations that play out in his mind, the cornered awareness Walter slapped on his old partner when he'd told Bell they knew the truth, they were on to his game. And in finishing, he'd shoved the detonator under the taller man's nose, switched it on, and vaguely, Peter remembers seeing the tank, hearing the drawn-out beep of the countdown over his pounding heart-beat, remembers watching as scattered Loyalists, guns drawn, broke down the door, and forced their way in.
Then the Amber erupted, and everything went dark.
He shakes the blackness from the forefront of his mind now, dry washes his face to release himself from slipping back into the fog of it. All the while, trying not to let the feel of his wedding band direct his thoughts again to somewhere else.
And it's when he drops his hands, that he notices Astrid in front of him, her small smile attempting to reassure him that she's a friendly interruption in the war of his revolve.
"Hey," she says to him, quietly, a hushed whisper to prevent from waking the rest of his family.
And in return, he smiles up at her, thankful all of sudden that she's saved him from himself. She looks to his right, her mouth's curve gaining width as she observes, affectionately, the sleeping woman.
As in all those years ago, she still has a soft spot for her self-proclaimed niece.
"Hard to believe she doesn't need a night light to sleep anymore."
He says, reflectively, not that his daughter was ever afraid of the dark. She just somehow always knew, life was better where the light was.
It shone brightly through the crack once.
"She looks just like her."
Astrid says to him, as she comes to sit on his vacated side.
"She always has."
He responds, his voice soft, being brought back, unforgivingly, to a thought he'd tried to escape with earlier distraction.
"I wish she could see her," he finds himself admitting, absently flipping over the note still in his hands. "That she could know our daughter's okay. That all the heartache we went through when we gave her up was worth it."
It's a lower of his chest to the floor, his immediate regret, a lamentation of a beautiful smile, an affection in eyes of olive-green gold he just won't see anymore.
All those years, he'd been too damn lucky to love something that loved him.
He swallows again to keep down the sudden hiccup of his heart, a sharp slice of ache that pierces through his whole body and numbs every muscle it can find.
"Hey, we'll figure out what happened Peter." Astrid assures, rubbing his arm gently, a motherly comfort to a scared child.
"What if we can't?" he questions, a rhetorical fear broke into the open, "What if we just...never know?"
It's now that he looks at her, and her eyes are slightly glossed, dark-cinnamon orbs that reflect the same fear, the loss of someone she cared for so deeply, too.
"Let's not make that an option now, okay?" she says simply, her voice too thin in her strive to console.
There's a tiny hope in the lines in her forehead, the bend of her lips' corner, and simply because he's not alone in the grand scheme of this, he finds himself taking it in stride, letting himself feel a tiny glimmer of it too.
To thank her, he smiles back, before his daughter shifts against him, sighs. And still looking at Astrid, his grin stretches.
"If she inherited her mother's stubborness, I'm in trouble."
