"Don't shoot!" Peter yelled, and quickly stepped between September and Simon and Etta, who had drawn their pistols upon sighting the Observer in their living room.
There was a brief, but tense, standoff as the two Fringe Division agents stared over the sights of their guns and past Peter, while September simply stared back, his head cocked at a strange angle. Olivia wondered how the fedora stayed on his bald pate and about the new eyepatch.
"Don't you ever knock?" Peter asked September over his shoulder.
His response was apparently casual enough to set Etta and Simon's minds at ease; they both holstered their weapons, though they continued to be wary, and some of the tension in the room faded.
"I... do not use the door," said September.
"Maybe you should start," suggested Peter.
"So fill us in, September," Olivia said. "The last I saw you was six months ago. You'd been shot by a patrol."
The Observer turned to Olivia and nodded slightly.
"After being shot, I displaced myself several million years in time, far enough that the Observers would not care to pursue me. There, I could treat my injuries... and determine how they were able to track me. I suspected it was one of my implants, one that only functioned when I moved through time. After several months of trial and error… I determined that the implant in question resided in my left eye."
Everyone stared at September in shock, as he gazed at them with his remaining eye, the missing one covered by a black leather eyepatch. Finally Simon spoke up from where he sat on the couch beside Etta.
"So...you plucked it out?" he asked.
The Observer nodded.
"And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell," Walter quoted. "...how very biblical of you."
September nodded again, to acknowledge Walter's words.
"Indeed. The Observers can not track me when I move through spacetime now. And I now believe that the implant had other functions. It imposed a... certain uniformity of thought among my brethren."
Peter nodded. "It brainwashed you."
September stared at him, clearly puzzled by the colloquialism.
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, trying to forestall the tension headache he felt approaching. "It's a figure of speech. I meant it controlled you."
"Not exactly. It seemed to forbid certain lines of thought. Now that I have removed it, I have no such constraints."
Peter sighed. "That's what I said..."
"That doesn't matter..." Walter interrupted. "September, we need your help."
The others listened quietly while Walter explained the purpose of Eunice, the device recently assembled in the basement, which was to trap the Observers in a pocket universe it created around itself. When he finished with the explanation, Walter sighed.
"The problem is due to the missing anti-matter. Eunice isn't fully powered, she will only enclose a sphere one hundred meters across. We need your help to come up with a plan to get as many Observers as possible within the area of effect."
September stared into space for a full minute before replying.
"That... is a difficult problem. One that I do not see an immediate answer to. But I can foresee an additional difficulty. The state that... Eunice will put the Observer's into is not unlike mine, when they locked me out of the universe as punishment. I must find and disable the Beacon, or the Observer's might be able to return just as I was able to."
Peter stared at the shorter man. "I thought you couldn't touch it yourself..."
"I cannot," replied September, "...I need someone to travel with me."
The Observer looked up at Peter, clearly intending for him to be that person, without coming out and asking. Peter rubbed his face, lines of worry showing on his brow.
"How long will this take?" Peter finally asked, after a moment of consideration.
"Objectively? Very little time at all. To your friends you may only be gone a day or two. Subjectively... you will perceive some time passing."
Peter sighed. "Okay."
"Wait...you're going? Right now?" Etta objected, as the Observer pulled a small device out of his pocket and began fussing with it.
"It'll only be a couple of days, Princess. And I trust September," Peter stepped forward and embraced his daughter. "Be careful while I'm gone."
Peter let Etta go, and turned toward Olivia.
"Peter..." Olivia started to say, and then September reached out and touched his arm, and the two of them were gone, almost as if they'd never been there at all.
"...be safe," finished Olivia, addressing empty air.
Everyone stood looking at each other, unsure of what to do now. Finally, Simon cleared his throat and asked, "Is it always like this around you people?"
Olivia shrugged. "Pretty much."
Phillip Broyles groaned softly, and shifted in his chair uncomfortably, but the pain in his side remained, his constant companion these last few weeks. Finally, he sighed and gave in, producing a bottle of pills from his pocket. He shook out two, and swallowed them with a sip of water from the glass on his desk.
It was the first time he'd taken the narcotics he'd been prescribed. He had feared the painkillers would interfere with his work, but over the days and weeks the constant ache in his side had increased to the point where it was becoming an issue in itself. He would snap randomly at agents who made the smallest mistakes, stalking around the offices of Fringe division like an angry spectre. Of course, the outbursts weren't actually random – at each one, he was riding the crest of a wave of pain. Just like now.
Stubbornness and pride had gotten him through six weeks. It would have to do.
Twenty minutes later, Broyles had the relief he desired, along with the fuzzy headedness he'd feared. He wasn't even upset when Captain Windmark barged into his office, unannounced.
"Two dead Observers!" Windmark said, in the raised voice that counted as a shout among his kind.
Broyles looked at him placidly. Without the pain, he actually felt something like his old self again. "And this concerns me how? I'm Native-On-Native crime... even if you suspect a Native killed your evolved brethren, this isn't my purview."
"They were killed by hypervelocity weapons... similiar to ones used by Fringe Division, twenty years ago," Windmark said.
Windmark's agitation revealed itself in tiny movements throughout his frame, the Observer equivalent of a nervous tick. Nobody would notice it unless you knew what to look for, and Broyles had been dealing with Windmark for two decades.
Phillip found he was enjoying this for once.
"You still have a fugitive member of the original Observer team. It was September, most likely. He has access to that kind of technology, and can match your Observers, as far as time shifting and mind reading goes."
"We have... methods of tracking him. He has not moved through spacetime in other than a normal manner for six months."
"Really? That's interesting. I did not know that," Broyles replied.
Phillip bent down and opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a large burlap sack, which he threw on his desktop and opened to reveal hundreds of the illicit holochips. He randomly grabbed one, placed it on his desk and activated it.
"September has been busy," Broyles said, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice, "...maybe you can't track him as well as you thought."
"If your office has any involvement in these incidents..." Windmark started to threaten...only to be interrupted by a loud noise from the holochip. Both of them looked at the device in question.
The hologram of the rogue Observer, wearing a medieval jester's hat, leaned forward and loudly blew a wet raspberry at his audience. Broyles burst out in laughter. Windmark turned and left Broyles office without another word.
"Damnit," Peter said. "You didn't give me a chance to say goodbye to Olivia or Walter."
The house – and the neighborhood, and the entire city of Boston, for that matter, had disappeared around them, replaced by a dense forest. It was mid day, judging by the height of the sun. After a few seconds, they heard the noises of startled woodland wildlife start up again.
"Where are we?" Peter asked.
September looked up from the instrument he was consulting.
"Where is the wrong question. We have traveled through time, not space," he replied.
"When are we, then?" Peter asked.
September didn't answer, choosing to fiddle with the instrument in his hands. Peter recognized it as the device used to track the Beacon; he had used it himself years before. He realized that it wasn't emitting the tones that indicated it was tracking the device.
"Problem?" he asked quietly.
September continued to fuss with his instrument as he replied.
"No. The Beacon has not arrived yet, which is ideal. We merely have to move to where it will be, which is not far. Follow me."
September walked off in a southeasterly direction, and Peter followed him through the forest.
Travel through the dense forest was more difficult than Peter could have ever anticipated. The ground was covered by an inches thick layer of composting pine needles. Their feet sank deep, making it twice as hard to move as it should have been otherwise.
Although Peter heard creatures scurrying through the trees around them, they were remarkably wary of the pair of travelers, and stayed out of sight. He only caught a few glimmers of eyes or a fuzzy tail.
"Do we have to worry about a saber toothed cat leaping out and trying to eat us?" Peter asked.
September glanced back. "No. This is soon after the disappearance of the dinosaurs. The dominant wildlife is small mammals. I doubt a proto-squirrel would pose a threat to us."
Peter did a double take. Had an Observer made a joke, weak as it was?
The next morning, Etta sat beside her mother on a bench in the park, watching the weeds grow and the river slowly flow past them as they waited for Nina to arrive.
"If you don't mind my asking," Etta said, "why did you want to come? You don't seem all that close to Nina."
Olivia sighed.
"We were once very close. She actually raised Rachel and I, after your grandmother died. It's just... complicated." Olivia stared out at the river, "I mainly just want to find out if she dosed you with Cortexiphan, when you were a child."
Etta spotted Nina approaching from the entrance to the park. "Here she comes."
"Olive!" Nina said, as she slowly rolled up in her motorized wheelchair. "I wondered if you would find the time to visit me. I wish we could've arranged a proper reunion."
"Hello, Nina," Olivia said, as she and Etta stood up.
Nina clasped Olivia's hand and squeezed it affectionately.
"I didn't dare hope I would ever see you again. I watched over Rachel and Etta from afar, but I just couldn't..."
Nina broke off abruptly, fighting back tears. There followed an awkward silence, as Olivia and Nina simply stared at each other. Finally, Nina's face fell, like an ice shelf separating itself from a larger glacier and falling into the sea. "You know..."
"Yes, we know," Olivia replied. "Peter had Walter check Etta's blood for Cortexiphan. The result they got was a lot higher than it should have been, even given her childhood exposure from me."
Olivia shook her head. "Nina, how could you? My child? What could make you think that was okay?"
Nina sighed and shook her head.
"You were always so...idealistic. We needed a weapon against the Observers, Olive, and you weren't available. I couldn't afford to wait years or decades on the assumption that you would return. I don't feel guilty for simply doing what needed to be done, for the good of the human race."
Etta had alternated looking from Nina to Olivia during the conversation. Finally, she interrupted.
"What was the plan for me? Surely you didn't think I could take on all of the Observer s by myself. That's...crazy."
Nina studied Etta for a moment, as if weighing whether she could handle the truth. Eventually she spoke.
"No. You were intended as the progenitor of a new type of human being. Your children would have eventually been the ones to bring the fight to the Observers. We foresaw the conflict taking at least another thirty years after you reached adulthood."
Olivia shook her head. "My God. It was a continuation of the Cortexiphan trials."
Nina nodded. "Yes. You were the only successful result of the original trials, Olive. It stood to reason that your child would be a successful seed for the second set, the application phase."
Olivia interposed her hands, as if she were warding off an assault from Nina, then turned and walked away.
"I've heard everything I need to." she said, over her shoulder.
"Olive?" Nina called after her, "I still care for you. That never changed."
Olivia didn't look back.
Nina turned to Etta. "We still have Phillip in place at Fringe Division, but we won't for much longer. He's dying. We can't afford waste a resource like that, Etta."
Ettta nodded. "We have something in the works. I'll contact you soon."
Then Etta followed her mother out of the park, leaving Nina sitting alone, watching the river.
Walter gazed at the back of Bell's skull through a cloud of marijuana smoke. They were in the basement, each of them working on their separate projects.
"William," Walter asked. "I want to ask you about something."
"What, Walter?" Bell asked, as he made a minute adjustment to his prosthetic hand.
"Earlier, when we assembling the machine, you mentioned something about Peter's education."
Walter sat up, as Bell swiveled in his seat to face him.
"What was it you said? Oh yes, you said his design for anti-matter containment was remarkable, for one of his limited education. What did you mean by that?"
Bell grinned and shrugged. "I don't really recall saying that. I suppose I meant that he simply... hasn't applied himself, as he could have."
Bell swiveled in his chair, going back to working on his prosthetic hand. Walter spun in his own chair, swinging a heavy wrench in a long arc, the endpoint of which intersected with the back of Bell's skull. Bell slumped in his chair, unconscious.
"That's for thinking I don't know my own son." Walter growled, "Peter told me he dropped out of high school years ago. But you couldn't have known that, unless you knew him from the prior timeline He made up the advanced degrees in physics and electrical engineering so he could justify a better consultant's fee from the government. But only Olivia and I knew the truth."
Minutes later, Walter had Bell trussed up like a holiday ham. Then he went upstairs to find that boy who was always hanging around his granddaughter.
Two time travelers sat in a small clearing in a vast forest, waiting patiently for their quarry, the Beacon, to arrive.
Peter had put his rusty Boy Scout skills to good use in building them a roaring campfire out of deadwood he'd found at the edge of the clearing. A good thing too, for a chill wind had started blowing when the sun went down. The fire also kept any of the odd wildlife they heard making noises deep in the forest at bay.
Whenever they were, it was far enough displaced in time that Peter couldn't recognize any of the constellations in the night sky overhead. Eons had passed, that much was certain.
It was a testament to the weirdness of Peter's life that, despite all of this, what drove him to comment was what September was doing across the fire from him.
"Are you making s'mores?" Peter asked.
"Yes." September replied simply.
Peter watched, incredulous, as the Observer mashed two graham crackers around his marshmallow and chocolate concoction and held it out for Peter.
"So you just walk around with marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers in your pockets?" Peter said, as he accepted the treat. "Thank you, by the way."
"Yes." September repeated as he prepared one for himself. "Doctor Bishop taught me to appreciate these."
As he munched the treat, Peter sorted several questions he had in his mind. He had an Observer available for answering questions, and wanted to make the best use of the time.
"September. I know I've asked this before, but I was wondering if you'd figured out anything about why I came back to the rewritten timeline."
September munched his s 'more for a minute before he replied.
"I do not know. My working theory was simply that Walter and Olivia's love brought you back to the timeline they were in. I have revised that theory, in light of recent events."
"What do you mean? And understand that I'm pretty much an amateur time traveler here." Peter said.
September looked across the flames at him.
"In a much earlier timeline, which has long since been overwritten, your biological father cured your childhood disease. You met Olivia Dunham when she crossed over into your universe as a child, but she returned to her universe soon after."
September paused to char another marshmallow, before continuing.
"In that timeline, the Cortexiphan trials continued for many more years than they did in the one you remember. She never forgot your childhood encounter, and when she had the opportunity, she crossed over again to find you, and seek refuge on that side. That is what put the two sides on a collision course originally. And caused Bell to make the Wave Sync Device... putting both universes on a path to eventual destruction."
Peter thought about that for a moment. "How many times have events been overwritten?"
September shook his head. "We do not know. The original timeline occurred... before our creation. Because it occurred before we existed, we cannot observe or interact with it. To do so would most likely result in our destruction."
"Certain events have an inertia about them. It is difficult to go back and change them. I had thought that by allowing the natural course of events that would result from my mistake - interrupting your father - to occur, namely, you drowning in the lake, that the timeline would rewrite itself again and continue on, breaking the cycle. But it turned out that even the rewritten timeline needed you for something."
Peter stared at the fire and thought for a long time.
"Etta." Peter said, "She has to be the reason I came back. She is unique, and I'm not just saying that because she's my daughter. She's the first trans-universe child, and she has Cortexiphan abilities – which will be passed to her children."
September nodded. "She is the progenitor of a new bloodline of humanity. Her children will all have Cortexiphan abilities, and be able to move between worlds without ill effect. Because the Cortexiphan exposure occurs in the womb, only her female descendants will pass their abilities down. Hopefully this...new addition will be enough to stop the cycle."
Peter swallowed. Suddenly his eyes hurt. He sighed and continued, gazing into the fire.
"My first child, Henry," he swallowed again, "... didn't have that uniqueness."
"No." September said quietly, "He would not have been... special enough to change the timeline. Perhaps Etta will."
Their conversation was interrupted by the Beacon arriving, not ten meters from where they were sitting. It burst up from the ground in a roar of sound and a blast of light, and lay on the edge of the small crater it had created. September crammed his s 'more into his mouth and walked over to where the chrome cylinder glowed and pulsed, followed by Peter.
"I cannot touch the Beacon," September reminded him. "You must be the one to disable it."
Peter nodded. "How do I do that?"
"The outer shell must be touched in a specific rhythm." September scribbled something quickly in his notebook, then tore the page out and handed it to Peter, who found to his surprise that it was a musical score. A long one, but not something that would be difficult for him to tap out on the shell of the Beacon.
Peter cracked his knuckles and began typing out the sequence; on the last tap, the Beacon split lengthwise, revealing it's glowing interior. And to Peter's surprise, it looked familiar.
"September?" he asked.
"We have mere minutes before it closes and moves on. I will answer your questions after you disable it." September said. "Do you see the chips that glow in the primary colors?"
Peter nodded.
"Remove the chips in this order: yellow, red, blue, then replace them in the Beacon in the opposite order, blue, then red, then yellow."
Peter did so, and the Beacon immediately powered down, its exterior lights died out and its hum dropped to a low drone.
"We need to leave," September said. "The Observers will come to investigate when it doesn't move from its last location."
"Why does The Beacon look like Bell's work?" Peter blurted out, unwilling to wait anymore for his answers. "I look at that thing and I understand how it works, because I've seen his designs. The shapeshifters, the Machine, the control matrix for Eunice - they all have elements in common."
"Because Doctor Bell designed it," September replied, apparently knowing that Peter would refuse to leave if he didn't answer some questions.
"A William Bell, or the William Bell back at the house?" Peter asked.
"The William Bell at the house is the Bell from... before. From a time that has since been overwritten. And he is the only one in existence, as far as I know. Because he's killed all the other ones. He has a... powerful survival instinct."
Peter and September stared at each other for a moment, then Peter stood and picked up The Beacon.
"Take us back," he ordered.
September touched his arm, and they were gone.
Sorry for the delay in updating. Thanks to my beta, DixieGirl, and all my readers. CorwinOfAmber