Nothing but Lies, X
Summary: x. Crash. Her phone rang at half past four in the morning. Needless to say Olivia was already awake.
Warning: To be honest, I have no idea whether there is a train in Rochester. For the sake of the story let's pretend there is.
Disclaimer: No copyright inFringement intended.
For those who stayed behind.
Olivia's phone rang at half past four in the morning.
Needless to say she was already awake.
"Dunham," she answered, sitting up in her bed and pushing back a few strands of hair that had fallen in her face. Phillip Broyles' voice was crisp and clear.
"There was a train crash in Rochester, New York. We'll take a look at it. How fast can you be there?"
Olivia squinted at the clock on her nightstand.
"I'm on my way in ten minutes."
"Good. Bring the Bishops."
He hung up before she could answer. Not that she had anything to say that she would have told him. Sighting, Olivia dialed Peter's number.
-v-
"Since when does a train accident require our presence?"
When she had picked up Walter and Peter, Peter was in a remarkably bad mood. She couldn't tell whether it was because of their confrontation the day before or because she had called him in the early morning hours, demanded him to get ready and hadn't been able to offer more information than what she had been told by Broyles. Which was nothing, she now realized.
The train hadn't only crashed.
It had been lifted right off the tracks, had been shoved aside with brute force and resembled more a heap of aluminum, steel, broken glass and polymers than a conveyance. The axes of the craft had been twisted and torn out. Smoke was still rising from areas in which the train had caught fire and bitter ashes filled the air. Ambulances and police cars stood everywhere, blue lamps flashing. People were running to and fro, carrying injured or guiding shocked passengers.
And there were the people who didn't need treatment or attention anymore.
"Why always trains?"
She only realized she had spoken out loud her thoughts when Walter answered.
"Trains were the first means of transportation mankind had in store to cross large distances, did you know that, Agent Dunham? In the middle of the nineteenth century, industrialization and progress were only due to the railway systems. The train made long-distance-travelling possible and exceedingly more comfortable. One could say it is a symbol of mankind's drive for freedom and independence and… Fascinating."
She was used to his changes of topic. Even though she still couldn't say she found the picture fascinating. Horrible would have described what she saw more accurately.
"What happened here, Walter?"
The old man was circling around what once had been the cockpit of the train. Its entire nose had been smashed, steel crunched together like aluminum foil in an angry child's fist. Nobody inside could have survived the impact. She shuddered. Peter, who had finished talking to Broyles, came to stand next to her. He carefully kept his distance.
"Seems like it has gone head-first into a wall."
"Only there is no wall here."
Her neutral comment seemed to calm him a bit. "No. So what happened?
"I was hoping Walter would be able to tell us."
"Peter, look! This piece of metal has the shape of a star! Do you think they have chocolate almonds? I would like some now."
Despite the atmosphere – or maybe exactly because of the atmosphere – Olivia almost burst out laughing. She laughed because she knew she would cry otherwise. Peter gave one look at her and his scowling face turned into something much more Peter-like. Immediately, she had to turn away. Thankfully he didn't notice. Sighing, he turned to Walter.
"Walter, what do you think about this accident?"
"Was it an accident, Peter?"
"You tell me."
-v-
It took Olivia two days to put together the puzzle pieces. Not because nobody wanted to talk about it but because there were few people left who could talk about it. Every time she saw the list of casualties – fifteen dead, sixty injured, more than ten in grave danger – she felt like screaming. Or crying. Or like barging into Walter's lab demanding answers. But she had done this already once this week and she knew the scientist worked best when she left him alone so she concentrated on what she was good at: asking questions, finding people, putting together the pieces. And then, two days after the catastrophe had occurred (strange that little things like that compared to the greater context of two worlds being at war currently still counted as a catastrophe on her personal scale) she walked into Walter's lab and found him buried behind an army of oscilloscopes, Geiger-counters and other devices she didn't even want to recognize.
A young lab assistant was close to tears and widely ignored. When Olivia came through the door, Astrid saw her and, in the process, noticed the young man.
"Oh, it's fine," she told him. "Go get a coffee or something. And don't worry about the machines."
The man gave a look at the ancient mess and fled the room.
"I'm sorry," Astrid sighed as Olivia came closer. "He's terrified the old transformators might cause a blackout. But Peter has it all under control."
"Agent Dunham!" Walter was staring at a brand-new LCD screen intently. It seemed oddly misplaced in his post-modern surroundings.
"What have you found, Walter?"
"Do you see this, Agent Dunham?"
On the screen before her, lines and peaks were alternating in an otherwise unreadable diagram.
"What, Walter?"
"The energy schemes, the energy schemes! I ran pieces of the train debris through the mass spectrograph yesterday and I found…"
He turned another display towards them.
"You see those lines? They were caused by a normal piece of aluminum-steel-alloy from a normal train. And those…" He turned over the paper. "Those were the ones I found on the crash site. So you see it?"
"There obviously is a difference…" Olivia fought not to lose her patience. Normally – in her definition of normal, which had failed her almost three months ago – Peter would have translated Walter's scientific nonsense into plain US-English. But she wouldn't turn and ask him, no, she definitely-
"The concentration of isotopes is almost three times as high as it should be. There is nothing in our world that would match those diagrams."
She almost jumped. He had snuck up on them and now regarded the screen, frowning. "Of course, it only matches your theory, doesn't it?"
"Yes." She shouldn't wonder how he had come to the same conclusion she had already had. And how the heck he knew she had had it, too.
"I don't like it."
She chuckled without humor.
"You don't like the fact that they have somehow managed to create a wall between our universes and now are testing it either? Or that they, in that process, caused a train to crash? Believe me, I don't like it either."
"What would they need a wall for?" Astrid inquired. "Especially one that appears and disappears again?"
"A wall that can withstand the crash of a train at highest speed is most likely able to hold off anything," Walter threw in absentmindedly. "They could barricade themselves and would most likely be safe from any attempt to cross over. It would shield them, of course, from anything that might happen on our side…"
"Like explosions?" Olivia asked.
"Yes, like explosions. I wouldn't wonder if it could hold off an atomic bomb…"
They exchanged glances. Or the destruction of our world. They had the same thoughts, Olivia could see it in Peter's eyes. And she wondered whether she should feel happy because he had meant their world or plainly terrified at the possibilities that suddenly presented themselves.
A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay but I won't promise it won't happen again. My entire last week was absolute horror, this day was hell and it doesn't seem to get better. Except I have an idea for the next chapter... The little things make life colorful.