"Walter!" Peter snarled. "Let it go! I'm sorry I brought it up, alright?"

Olivia couldn't help smiling at Peter's exasperated tone. He had accidentally revealed that for a period of his past nomadic sojourns, he had been, for all intents and purposes, a homeless man, which had triggered Walter's guilt over his absence during most of his son's life.

Of course, it was all unfolding as they zoomed down the highway on their way to the raid on Metzger's house; Broyles had lost the coin toss, and was leading the simultaneous raid on Metzger's lab at MIT.

"I refuse to let it go!" Walter said from the back seat. "I can't believe that my son was once a vagabond!"

Peter growled with frustration.

"Look at it this way, Walter. I was backpacking in Europe. I just didn't sleep in the same place twice for two years. It was the perfect life for a twenty year old!"

Walter spoke with genuine anger now. "Perfect? You should have been in college! You had a scholarship at MIT! Why would you choose to squander your intellect instead of putting it to good use?"

Olivia decided it was time to interrupt before they could veer into ugly territory. She glanced over at Peter, who was trying to speed-read a stack of files on Metzger they received just before they left the lab. "Anything?"

Peter shook his head. "Not yet. We know Broyles isn't going to find anything at the lab, and I doubt there might be anything left at his house. Metzger has to have another lab somewhere."

Olivia pulled the Navigator to the side of the street, a block from Metzger's home.

"He made a mistake somewhere," she said. "They always do. Stay here until I give you the all clear."

She exited the vehicle and ran up the street, joining the small horde of SWAT team members and FBI agents pillaging a large Colonial style home.

Walter stirred in the rear seat. When he spoke, Peter could tell from the tone of his voice that he was having one of his fleeting moments of full lucidity, so he listened carefully.

"Dr. Metzger was a cybernetics researcher. The quantum entangled mesh around the dog brains were placed so precisely; I doubt it was the work of any human surgeon. Perhaps he used a surgical robot. Metzger could automate the procedure, write a program and have the machine do the surgery."

"That's good, Walter," said Peter. "Surgical robots are expensive and there aren't many manufacturers." He grabbed his cell phone and called Astrid. "Astrid? I need you to work your magic. We need a list of surgical robot buyers in the Boston area. They cost over a million each so there can't be many." He listened for a moment. "Okay, call me when you have something."

Walter sighed behind him, fidgeting nervously. When he spoke, his voice had a nervous tremor to it.

"I can't imagine not sleeping in the same bed every night. Not...waking up in the same place."

Peter wondered whether his father had skipped some of his medications that morning; he was certainly having strong mood swings. He looked over his shoulder at Walter, took in the stressed expression and tense posture, and realized that he was really struggling with this.

All due to an offhand comment to Olivia he made half an hour ago.

"We're just wired a little differently, Walter," assured Peter. "I don't get as attached to places as you do. As most people do, I guess." Peter looked Walter in the eyes. "It was nothing you did. After...you went to Saint-Claire's, Mom and I moved around a lot, and I guess I just...never felt comfortable anywhere."

Walter avoids his gaze, speaks quietly. "You don't get attached to people, either."

Peter wondered how this conversation had gotten so uncomfortable so quickly. He never talked about his nomadic tendencies directly because it triggered the wanderlust in him. He wanted nothing more at that moment to jump out of the Navigator and hail a taxi to head for the nearest train station or airport. At the same time, he didn't want to shut down a coherent conversation with Walter, something as rare as a white buffalo; so he clenched his jaw and powered through.

"No, I guess I don't. What's really bothering you, Walter?"

Walter's eyes didn't meet his. "I found a leather satchel in the basement yesterday. I wasn't snooping, but I did look inside."

"You found my bugout bag."

Peter actually hadn't thought about it since he moved in. He'd hidden it behind the furnace in the basement of the old house he and Walter shared, when they first moved in. It had everything Peter needed – cash, a change of clothes, a prepaid cellphone, a debit card and a list of contacts – in the event he needed to bail from Boston at a moment's notice. He'd since completely forgotten about it.

Peter sighed. "Don't worry Walter. I'm not going anywhere. That's just something I need, like a security blanket. I...need to know I can leave if I wanted to. It doesn't mean that I will."


Olivia followed the entry team into Metzger's house after they battered their way through the front door. Search teams fanned out, calling out "Clear!" over the common radio frequency they were using as they moved through the various rooms.

She holstered her gun. Peter was right; they were just going through the motions with these raids. But Metzger couldn't have known the timing of their raids, so he might just have left something useful behind. She used her walkie-talkie to order the evidence techs into the scene, then called Peter on her cell phone, informing the Bishops that it was safe to come up to the house.

Olivia walked about, overseeing the collection of evidence and trying to get the general feel of Metzger's mind from his dwelling place.

"Agent Dunham?" A young male evidence tech approached her, eager as a puppy."We found something you should see."

She followed the tech down into Metzger's basement, nodding as she listened. "We've found a few weird things in the basement. He has quite the collection of dog brains, for instance." The brains in question were arranged in jars of clear fluid on wooden shelves lining the walls, some of them adorned with the silvery mesh. "And then there's this one."

The jar the tech pointed toward contained a much larger brain, wrapped in silver mesh.

It was unmistakably human.

She shivered. "We're going to need Dr. Bishop down here. We need to find out if this is a...fresh brain, or if it's something from a research supply house."

The tech was practically bouncing up and down, waiting for her attention. "And we also have this..." He led her to another room. From inside Olivia heard Peter's incredulous voice

"Oh, you have to be kidding me!"

The room in question was, for lack of a better term, a Nazi shrine. Black and white pictures of Hitler, Nazi soldiers, maps of various WWII battles; a plethora of documents adorned the walls. One wall had a distinct emphasis on pictures of Nazi soldiers and scientists with dogs. At one end was a Nazi flag with a picture of Hitler in an honoured place, a candle burning before it.

Peter rolls his eyes. "Gee, how original. A German scientist who also happens to be a Nazi."

Walter approached them. "It is somewhat cliché, isn't it?"

Olivia touched the scientist's arm, giving it a fond rub. "Walter, did you take a look at the human brain out there?"

"Yes, dear. I can't be certain without a tissue sample, but it looks fresh. I suspect that it's been sitting in the jar for no more than two weeks."

"Agent Dunham?" the evidence tech interrupted; he was practically vibrating with energy. "There's more..."

Olivia nodded. The tech guided the Fringe team to a small room, outfitted as an office, with a desk and computer. The desk was covered in typed papers, most of them yellowed with age.

Olivia skimmed the papers. Her German was good enough to read 90% of it, faltering only on obscure scientific terminology; but that's what Walter and Peter were for. Her eye was drawn to the signature on one of the papers. The scrawl itself was barely legible, but typed beneath it, in capital letters, was a single name.

ROBERT BISCHOFF.

"Oh my," Olivia said, shocked, her voice echoing in the small room. Peter moved to her side, curious, looked down at the paper she's reading. His head sagged and he sighed tiredly. When he spoke, it's as if he'd been expecting exactly this.

"It just never fucking ends, does it?"