I'm sad to see this tale come to an end, but all good things do, don't they?
A million thanks, again, to my betas and cheerleaders, Bryn & Nikki Greenleaf. A billion kisses to all of you who've spammed my askbox, sent me notes, and prodded me along to post — I've never had that happen before, and it has not only given me great confidence to try another one of these multi-chapter casefics (currently being written!), but cheered me considerably on some ucky days.
I am just blown away by how awesome everyone's been in support of my little story! This is a bittersweet post, but know for sure you have NOT seen the last of me and my fics! And this is all because of each of you beautiful reviewers, followers, and those who click those little red hearts.
xoxo,
miss kira
Chapter Ten
A waterfall of metal jars Astrid from sleep; she shoots up on the brown leather couch in the Bishops' living room, limbs all akimbo, rocking to her feet with worst-case scenarios running through her head. She crosses the room in a few quick strides, rounding the corner into the kitchen, where Walter stands frowning at a pile of pots and pans on the floor.
"You scared me!" she says, holding a hand over her pounding heart. Astrid laughs a bit, more nervous than amused, and finally takes in the state of the kitchen.
There is flour everywhere. Eggs cracked on the counter. A box of baking soda on its side. When she follows the trail of pecans to an opened bag holding more, she gets a clearer picture of what, exactly, Walter's been trying to do.
"How long have you been awake?"
He blinks up at her, shoulders still stooped. "Awake, dear?"
"Oh, Walter," she sighs, finger drawing circles that overlap in the flour. The spilled ingredients paint a picture, an abstract piece, a collage with deeper meaning she can see written in every wrinkle of Walter's face. Glancing at the clock, she holds back a groan and bypasses the pile on the floor to reach the coffeemaker, where yesterday's batch remains dried on the glass.
"We tracked Underhil's research papers to the virology and pathology departments at Boston College. He's been moonlighting there for the past year, ever since he returned from a research trip to Africa. The college had no idea he was working at Synergy."
Olivia parks her SUV with one hand and hops out, ponytail swishing against the black wool of her jacket, loose strands whipping around her face in the icy wind that's begun swooshing through the labyrinth of streets of Boston. Two more pull up behind her, flashing lights catching the attention of students trudging through iced-over snow, red and blue creating a dichotomy of hues under a cloudy sky.
Agents fan past her as she scans the area, finishing her call.
"Why wasn't this information in his file?" Broyles asks over the line. She can hear the hum of a car's engine whining in the reconstituted crackle behind his voice.
"Because Underhil was fired six months ago," she answers, following the agents up the steps. "We're checking his office."
"I'll be there in ten."
Olivia hangs up, unwilling to wait. If Underhil's here, he won't remain holed-up for long; he has to know they'd figure this out, even if it took a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, and be coming to search whatever he's left in the unused space. If Walter's lab could remain untouched for seventeen years, gathering dust in the basement of Harvard, Olivia's sure Underhil has something here.
Sweeping into the administrative building, Olivia leads the team to the security alcove, flashing her badge before the guard behind the desk can say a word. "I need to know where Richard Underhil's office was."
"Ma'am?" the guard remarks, caught off-guard, raising an eyebrow.
"Underhil. He used to teach here, right?" she half-barks. "Where was his office?"
"Is, ma'am. Dr. Underhil is still leasing space from the college."
"Show us."
They move quickly down the halls, past bewildered students and faculty alike, agents in black their own little parade. Olivia easily keeps pace with the security guard, gun in her hand, dropped down at her side, almost hidden by the fabric of her jacket. Unorthodox, around so many students, but necessary. Underhil is here; she can feel it in the way her blood starts pumping and her instincts scream for her to move faster.
She can tell they're nearing their destination because of the way the walls seem to brighten yet dim, clean science in old buildings. She's used to the smell of labs, and while these may not be the modern marvels of Massive Dynamic or the dust-covered tables of the Harvard lab, they exude the same feel.
As they move deeper into the building, Olivia wonders if it's something imprinted on her when she was young.
The guard slows as they reach a nondescript wood door. There are no names etched here, simply a black label that reads D-148 in white, san-serif script. He steps forward and inserts a key into the lock, then takes two steps back as something crashes to the ground inside; Olivia is almost pushing him out of the way as she reaches for the knob and turns it quickly, shoving the door open so hard, it bangs against the bookcase near its hinges.
"Freeze!" she shouts into the office. Sunlight streams from a single window, eye-level with the ground outside, and Underhil's managed to break the glass enough to free the frame. Cold air wooshes in so fast, it nearly steals her breath.
There isn't time to warn anyone behind her. Olivia turns and shoots down the hallway, gun in hand now out for all to see as she runs. Takes a right, and then climbs the steps two at a time up to the doorway. Bursts out and wonders, in the back of her mind, or maybe even later, why this suspect seems to like leading her outside.
The guilty always run.
Ahead, Underhil is stumbling in the snow, a black duffle bag clutched under one arm. His loafers lose traction and he slips, catching himself on a snow-covered bush, bare hand sinking into the icy snow.
"Underhil!" screams Olivia into the blistering storm. Snow falls around them, giant flakes solidified and tossed by frigid air, catching on her lashes when she's trying to line up a shot. "Freeze! I will shoot!"
He seems to hear her, somehow, and turns, breath coming out in quick gasps.
"You're not going anywhere," Olivia adds, feeling stronger, invincible. Her steps crunch along the sidewalk on oversized grains of salt, winter's own soundtrack, and she steadies her aim with a hand cupped around her wrist. "Put the bag down."
"I don't know if I should, agent," Underhil answers, clutching it even tighter to his torso. "The zipper may fail or maybe there's a loose seal."
"We know how to counteract them."
Underhil pauses. "Really? So fast?"
"Just put the bag down and put your hands on your head."
In a desperate last-ditch effort, Underhil tosses the bag at Olivia. Unprepared, it hits her arms, sending her aim off wildly – she unintentionally lets off a shot, the bullet grazing old brick – before she loses her footing and falls back into a snow drift. The other agents must have caught on by now, or at least she hopes so, because Underhil runs faster than any college professor should, heading for the parking lot.
Crushed salt stings her palms as she pushes off the ground. Olivia leaves the bag in the middle of the sidewalk and takes off, feeling the cold burn of winter air in her lungs as she runs. It feels a bit like what low atmosphere did, Over There, when she ignored the warning signs in order to catch her prey; burning and constricting, except here, there are no canisters of oxygen to help her catch her breath.
In eleven seconds, she's caught up to Underhil and takes a shot off his left side as a warning. Next time, I'll hit you. He continues to run, though Olivia doesn't suspect he thinks he'll be getting away. There's a mad desperation to his movements, a fight-or-flight that can't be switched off. What else is there to do but surrender and admit failure?
"Stop!" she tries one last time.
She's reaching out for him, fingertips brushing the heavy fabric of his coat, when a shot rings out and he falls forward, almost pitching Olivia into a tree. She alters course, runs off the sidewalk, and stops. In-between sucking breaths, hands on her knees, she looks up to see Broyles standing beside his SUV, gun in his hands.
Smiling, Olivia goes back to breathing, puffs of white-hot air fogging her focus. Shooting a suspect has less finesse than tackling him to the ground, but does the trick. Maybe she should give Peter a little more credit the next time they take down a suspect for his creative and sometimes foolish capture techniques.
It still hurts to breathe. Olivia re-holsters her weapon and wonders who picked up Underhil's duffel.
Never has Peter Bishop been so glad for an interruption as he is at that moment.
Olivia knocks twice on the glass before the front door swings open, her head peeking in before she enters the foyer, a habit she quickly developed after the last time she simply walked in unannounced and Walter was, well, being Walter. In an extreme way. She smiles in Peter's direction and unwraps her scarf from around her neck, holding onto the ends as she enters the living room.
"I would have thought you'd be in bed by now," she comments. Peter shifts his legs and she sits in the space he makes while he closes the laptop on his stomach.
"What can I say? You've turned me into a workaholic. Something I have to admit I've never really been called before," he answers.
She leans forward for a quick kiss, her nose inches from his as she says, "I'll make a law-abiding man out of you yet, Bishop."
He laughs at her comment, eyes crinkling at the edges, and the fact that he doesn't cough for at least ten seconds afterward is a testament to how much better he's feeling. Not that the cough's gone away, or the dizziness and nausea. But breathing, he's discovered, is somewhat easier. He'd rank this a bad flu with the added component of horse-pill sized antibiotics and a strict bed rest policy.
"I wouldn't go that far," he breathes. "But I'm definitely improving."
Olivia smiles and stands, and shrugs off her heavy coat. "I think that has more to do with the unlimited resources of Massive Dynamic and the US Government than any character growth," she says. And he'd usually take that as a criticism, except he's given in and taken a few of the painkillers he was sent home with, so very little has been able to bother him.
Except for Walter's baking.
Which Olivia finally notices in the form of her nose wrinkling. She asks, with her eyes, and Peter smirks.
"You smell that? He's been at it for hours. If they hadn't given me some anti-nausea pills, I think I might have committed my first homicide despite how much I like having the guy around."
"Yeah, I wouldn't blame you. What is he making?" Olivia sits in the chair near his head, a small table between them. He shifts in his cocoon on the leather couch, turning his head to the right to face her.
"I have no idea. I think there was some baking earlier, but he's moved onto more complex dishes as the day's gone on," he replies, trying to remember back to earlier.
The details are fuzzy, at best, his usual attention blurred by the time Astrid brought Walter to pick him up. He's been camped on the couch since after lunch, when, refreshed from his first nap of the day and heading into his second, he found the stairs a little bothersome when coordination and twined ribs got together.
"I'll order some of that soup you like from Chang's," Olivia comments, her words the sweetest he's heard all day. She slouches back in the chair, hair unkempt as it can be in a ponytail, in jeans and a sweater, meaning she went home before heading over.
Peter blinks, and wishes his thoughts would come out clearer than a steady ramble in stereo.
"Thank God," he remarks aloud, making sure she knows how thankful he is that he won't be subjected to Walter's experiments in the kitchen. His father isn't a bad cook, when lucid, but worry over Peter's well-being has him wandering the past thirty-something years, many of those invented fantasies created by heavy drug use. On his own, Peter would have simply foregone eating until his head cooperated long enough for him to grab grab crackers and the jar of peanut butter in the refrigerator.
Maybe, he thinks, having someone to get you food that won't twist your stomach without having to wait a day is part of what a relationship's really about.
"Peter?" Walter calls from the kitchen. His feet shuffle across the floor, and he enters the living room wearing a cautious smile that grows when he catches sight of Olivia. "Oh, Olivia! I didn't know you were here! Did you knock? I don't remember getting the door, and Peter shouldn't be getting up – "
"I let myself in, Walter," she answers. Her tone catches Peter's wandering attention, cutting through layers of clouds to his conciseness; she sounds tired, weary, and ready to go to bed herself.
"Yes, yes, of course. Your relationship with Peter requires some bit of mystery, I suppose."
"Walter," Peter groans from the couch. "We talked about this."
"What? I didn't say anything inappropriate. But now that I think about it, your mother and I – "
"No," cuts in Peter, close to putting his hands over his ears. "No child is supposed to hear that stuff."
Walter frowns.
"What are you making in there, Walter?" Olivia asks, her question – mere presence – an antidote to any awkwardness between father and son.
"I am attempting to mix fried meats with applesauce," he says with childish glee.
"He hasn't given up on that, yet," moans Peter from the couch, burrowing further into his blanket cocoon. "I wish I had nose plugs."
"It isn't that bad, son! It actually tastes quite wonderful. Or will, in a few hours. I'm this close, I know it!" He continues speaking, but only to himself, apparently gripped by a flash of inspiration that has him moving faster than normal back into the kitchen.
As soon as he vanishes, Peter drops an arm over his eyes and takes a small breath through his nose, glad there's not as much congestion in his head as a few days earlier. It's moved, according to the doctors, into his chest, hence all this pneumonia drama he's living through.
"C'mon, Peter, it's not that bad," Olivia chides.
"That isn't the problem," mutters Peter. He takes a deep breath and coughs a few times, leaning forward a bit as the fit takes over, grows. Olivia shifts to kneel beside the couch and hands him the glass of water, holding it close for when he has enough sense of mind to grab for it. By the time he's finished, his eyes are watering and his chest burning, those bruised ribs rising from painkiller limbo to say hello in a most-painful way. He takes the cup from Olivia's hand and tries a few sips, still wincing.
"Hey," she breathes. Peter lets his head fall back to the extra pillow his father brought down for him and closes his eyes as Olivia brushes his hair back from his forehead, her small hand cool against a fever that, while under control, still has him shivering when outside his pile of blankets.
They sit like that, Olivia soothing him with such a simple movement, Peter can't believe how powerful a hold it has over him. He feels like he's melting into the couch, his limbs and lungs relaxing as his breathing steadies.
Then she brushes the back of her hand down his cheek and settles it on his shoulder. "What's going on?"
"When I was in the ER, after you left, I was pretty out of it," he explains, not moving, hoping this will be easier to say with his eyes closed. "And when I woke up, he was right in my face and I, damnit, Olivia, I flinched."
When she doesn't say anything right away, he cracks open his right eye to look at her, check she's still there even though her hand is a steady weight on his shoulder.
"Are you going to say something?" he grumbles, a flash of anger rising inside him.
"Like what?" she counters. "I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose. And our fight earlier couldn't have helped. Have you talked to him about it?"
He just stares at her. Since when have the Bishop men talked out a problem?
She gives a wane smile. "Right. Who am I talking to again? You should say something, explain yourself."
"I barely remember it, Olivia," he replies, opening his eyes.
Except that isn't entirely true, he reminds himself, blue eyes studying the ceiling of their little house. It's a dirty white, that in-between shade of eggshell, with marks where strokes overlapped. The mechanics aren't clear, but the terror he felt was, remains in the back of his mind where he still wonders what else happened in his childhood that he can't remember. There are holes and blocks and watery dreamscapes where others have birthdays and first bike rides and happy times. Things don't clear up for him until eleven or twelve, and while it never bothered him before, Peter cares enough now to see he doesn't really know himself at all.
He never had to think about that before; how can he be himself with Olivia, let her in, when he has no idea who he is under all the masks and sarcasm and witty remarks?
And then there's this destiny, this picture from the past, a drawing of a him he's never met, and the layers just pile on until Peter's suffocating under the weight of it all.
If only he could go back to not giving a damn.
"Hey," Olivia's voice drifts through. He turns his head, her face clear after all the memories he wandered through. "Talk to me. What's going on up there?"
"I'm just wondering if I ever had a choice," he admits. His heart pounds so hard in his chest, she has to be able to hear it. Being honest with himself is hard enough – opening up to someone else has always petrified him.
"A choice?" she asks.
"With everything that's happened – Walter bringing me over here, my mother," – he hits an emotional note and shakes his head; she is still someone he can't bring himself to talk about. "That drawing, the machine. It's like I'm just playing a part someone else wrote for me. What if I'd gone to school or Walter hadn't gone to St. Claire's. I just wonder, sometimes."
She smiles. "I could say the same thing. It doesn't matter what happened before, Peter, just what's going to happen." Olivia cups his face in her hands and looks into his eyes. "You don't have to do it alone," she says, and kisses him, her arms sliding around to his back, holding him tight.
When her face burrows into his neck, he closes his eyes again and inhales her scent and decides he'll tell her next week, when he's back at work, about his side project.
Walter abandons his trials in the kitchen when Olivia mentions ordering from their favorite Chinese restaurant, and when she pushes back through the door with the bags of food, finds Walter's put on one of his records and is in an animated conversation with Peter. Both smile at her when she comes in, then go back to whatever they were discussing. She catches a few words as she goes into the kitchen on the hunt for plates and silverware, and even now, after three years of scientific investigations, still hears some of their conversations as a foreign language.
Instead of eating at the kitchen island, they camp on the floor, Olivia and Walter taking seats in front of the couch. Walter opens a white container and gives a hoot, finding egg foo young, but soon frowns and pokes at it with a chopstick.
"Something wrong?" Olivia asks. "That is what you wanted, right?"
"Yes, of course," he grumbles. "But it reminds me that I never got my hands on the original mosquitoes that caused those wonderful cell growths."
Peter smirks on the couch. "And that's how I, long ago, developed the ability to eat during cases. What do you mean, Walter? I thought you got all the stuff from his lab sent over to yours."
'Well I couldn't well study it when you were in the hospital, Peter! My mind was all over the place," he explains. "While his lab was full of the sorts of things required to engineer the mosquitoes, it was utterly devoid of any notes or actual specimens." He pauses with a bite of egg foo young halfway to his mouth, and adds, "Did he say anything?"
Olivia shakes her head as she swallows her own bite of food. "A lot, but nothing helpful. We haven't recovered the duffel bag he was carrying; he says he thought an agent picked it up, but none of ours recall even seeing it."
"Let me guess: it mysteriously disappeared," Peter weighs in.
"It's bothering me, too."
"Underhil claims he was working on a transmittable cure for malaria, which was the reason he traveled to Africa last year as part of Boston College's research, and thought the vector control would keep those he released into the wild from biting anyone."
"And the cold temperatures, I assume," adds in Walter.
"That can't be the whole story," Peter voices from the couch. "This guy went to considerable lengths to continue his research; most scientists stop after their first fatality."
"There was a woman," Olivia discloses. "He wouldn't stop going on about how she looked down on him for studying a disease but doing nothing to cure it."
"And that's your answer. I bet he's been emailing her progress reports just to stick it to her." Olivia turns to look over her shoulder, eyebrow raised. He tries a half-shrug. "If she was good looking and rejected him?"
She rolls her eyes and pokes at her dinner before frowning. "The only thing I don't get is how Carlile became connected to him. The receptionist at Synergy didn't have any clue, but said he'd been coming in for the past six or seven months. He's the one who orchestrated the deal with the owner of the diner and helped cover up the first death. I just don't see Underhil and a man like Carlile crossing paths anywhere."
"They could have met somewhere," tries Peter. "Even in the diner. If Carlile was out of work, he'd be looking for a new job."
"And there's a way to do that?" smirks Olivia, raising an eyebrow. "A criminal secret password?"
"If there is, I'll never tell," he retorts with a grin. "But I'll bet if his mom's house had the same GPS error, he knew about that diner."
He's given up on the soup in his lap, now swirling it around with his spoon as if the egg were tea leaves he could read. Maybe everything that's been happening with the alternate universe has been affecting him more than she thought. Olivia's always been the vocal one, letting everyone know exactly how she feels, and aside from doing what he could to win her back, Peter's been mostly silent on the subject, the revelation earlier the most she's heard him say on the subject.
He notices her gaze on him and gives that shy, small smile that doesn't fool her anymore. "Any word on Carlile?"
Carlile slips the black duffel over his shoulder and looks both ways before jogging across the street. The weather here is hot but not humid, the highway winding through red canyons under a desert sun.
It would have been easy to simply destroy them; he fathoms, but didn't want to risk it. This new conscious he's developed isn't doing him any favors, and he hopes to release it with the tiny black bugs in the bag – to fly away, sizzle, and die, falling, benign, to earth.
He already has another job lined up.
Later, Olivia will clean up the dishes and leave them in the sink while Walter begins singing along to a record. Peter will fall asleep on the couch, and between her and Walter, manages his way upstairs before he cramps up from the twisted position he's in despite protests that it was good enough for a year. Olivia won't admit she only wanted to feel his warmth during the night, something telling her she should take every moment of it she can get.
He'll snuggle into her and she'll grab the water when he wakes himself up coughing. They'll gaze at each other and kiss and she'll laugh when he suggests going further.
Olivia will fall asleep to the beating of his heart, him to her even breaths, both to the tiny ticking of a doomsday clock over their heads.