Chapter 37
-Harvard University
Peter glanced back over his shoulder at Olivia as he bounded to up the steps to the Kresge Building entrance. Olivia was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk as she spoke into her phone with Broyles, finally letting him in on the plan that Walter had come up with for track down Joseph Meegar. Her left hand kept creeping up to her hair, running over her pulled-back locks, a gesture he'd noticed before that she seemed to find comforting.
She finally noticed his regard, and looked up at him questioningly, raising her eyebrows. Seeing several black government looking SUV's pull up at the curb behind her, he flashed her a quick smile and shook his head, and then turned away. He pulled the door open, still feeling troubled by what he'd witnessed in the hallway outside the lab earlier, and moved toward the stairwell down to the lab, intending to get himself and her cups of coffee.
What had she been doing down that corridor? She'd been standing still, and her back had been to him when he'd rounded the corner with her head tilted upwards in an odd manner...
"You okay?" he asked, not liking how pale her face seemed when she turned around. She looked like she'd seen a ghost.
Her eyes were huge as she stared at him for a moment, and then looked back the way she'd been facing, before finally looking back at him again. The panicky, confused look that had been on her face when she'd fled their hotel room was back, only about ten times worse than it had been then.
"Yeah..." Olivia said, swallowing visibly. Her voice was almost a whisper. "I'm fine."
Peter stared at her. She didn't look at all fine, and she sure as hell didn't sound fine, considering the way she'd just answered him. "'Livia, are you sure?" he said keeping his voice low. "I don't want to pry but...you've been acting kind of...oddly, lately."
"I...I don't know what you mean." she said, her eyes refusing to look at him.
Olivia started to brush past him then, but he stopped her with a hand on her elbow. She let out a little gasp at his touch, and he could feel her trembling through the sleeve of her suit coat, but she didn't pull away like he expected her to.
"What is it?" he said, his voice lowering almost to a whisper as leaned closer to her. "What's going on with you?"
Olivia's mouth opened, her lower lip fluttering as she seemed to struggle to keep her composure.
"Peter, I...I've been..." she faltered, her eyes dropping down to his hand on her arm. She looked up at him, and then shook her head sharply once, with a quick jerking motion, almost as if she were coming to her senses. "It's nothing." she said, in a voice a little closer to her normal tone. "Please, let's just get on with the case."
He detected a touch of pleading in her voice, and decided to drop the matter, for the moment. She'd almost told him whatever it was that was bothering her, and it gave him some hope that she might, eventually. Though it was by no means a guarantee, Olivia could be damn stubborn when she wanted to be.
He nodded, and a look of relief passed across her face. Letting go of her arm, he flipped a thumb back toward the lab. "Well...I think we're all ready with the birds." he said as they turned back toward the lab. "Walter's attaching the GPS chips now..."
Peter hurried through the lab doors toward Olivia's office to collect their coffee. Walter and Astrid were huddled around the cages of pigeons. There was a disgusted expression on her face as she watched his father clip one of the tiny GPS chips on to one of the racing pigeon's legs.
"Walter, you should at least put on some gloves." Astrid was saying as he moved toward them. "You know what kind of diseases those things carry?"
"Of course, dear." he replied offhandedly, counting off with his fingers. "Cryptococcal Meningitis, Viral Encephalitis, Salmonella, Listeria...and my personal favorite Escherichia coli, as well as numerous other-"
"I get it!" she said, covering her mouth and stepping away from the cages. She turned toward Peter as he approached. Her cheeks were noticeably pale as she fled past him in the direction of the lab's only bathroom. "I think I might be sick..."
"Peter!" Walter said jovially, looking up from the cage he was reaching into. "I'm just about finished, and then we'll be to send our feathered friends on their way." He looked past him toward the door. "Where has Agent Dunham run off to?"
Peter stopped at his father's side, looking down into the cage at the pigeons. One of them seemed to be staring straight at him through the eye turned toward him. "She's uh...outside, on the phone with Broyles," he said slowly. "Briefing him on the plan you've cooked up."
There must have been something of his uncertainty about Olivia showing on his face, as Walter gave him a shrewd look.
"What ever is the matter, son?" he said, closing the small cage door and turning to face him. He wiped his hands down the front of his white lab coat.
With a shrug, he leaned against the table across from his father. He mulled over whether or not to tell his father anything for a moment. Walter had already witnessed Olivia's strange behavior once, and didn't see what harm could be done by telling him more. "Olivia..." he said finally, glancing over at the restroom door Astrid had disappeared into. "I found her out in the corridor, looking like she'd seen a ghost. She wouldn't say why though."
"A ghost, you say?" Walter said, cupping his elbow and rubbing his chin. His voice was casual, but there was slight stiffening to his posture that drew Peter's attention.
"Yeah. Why?" Peter pushed off the table, stepping closer to his father. "Do you know something?"
"No...no." his father replied, and pulled a red vine from the breast pocket of his lab coat. "I...I was merely curious. It is rather strange, along with her behavior in the hotel, don't you think?"
Peter's response died on his lips as his father began to munch on the chewy candy. "For fuck's sake, Walter...wash your hands first, at least." He pointed to the lab sink recessed into the countertop the next table over. "There's a sink right behind you. Use it, please..." he said, turning his father by the shoulders, and directing him toward the sink in question. He could fully understand Astrid's aversion.
He watched as his father sullenly turned the faucet on, the red vine hanging from hips like a limp cigar, and reached for the hand soap. The cognitive dissonance he could display about such things was troubling, on more than one level. To think that he'd been working for the Department of Defense at one point, albeit before he was committed...but still, the possibilities for destruction of biblical proportions were staggeringly good. He hoped he'd never been responsible for the securing of any biological agents in his day. Though if he had been, he supposed he would have heard of it by now if there had been an outbreak of anything worth mentioning, in addition to the fact that Walter was still among the living.
Pushing Walter and his dangerous nonchalant behavior aside, he moved into Olivia's office and poured them each a cup of coffee, added in Olivia's sugar, and then pressed a plastic lid over the top of each styrofoam cup. Sweeping up the cups in both hands, he left the office and moved back into the lab proper, where Astrid had returned from her possible bout with sickness.
"You all right?" he said, moving to her side.
"Your father could use a lesson or two in practicing safe hygiene." Astrid said curtly, slipping on a pair of white latex gloves. "How was he ever the head of Harvard's Biochem Department?"
Peter chuckled, "I asked myself almost the exact same thing." he said, looking over at his father.
Walter was standing near the pigeon cages, dropping what looked like sunflower seeds through the thin mesh. Where he'd managed to find them was a mystery, he had certainly never bought him any. Apparently, pigeons really would eat anything, including sunflower seeds nearly two decades old, if his suspicions on the seed's origins were correct.
"Walter, is everything ready?" he asked, moving toward the stairs out of the lab.
"Yes...I believe my friends here are eager to take flight, son." Walter replied proudly, bending over one of the cages. "Let Agent Dunham know that they're quite excited to do so too, I might add." He looked over at Astrid, who was watching him with the perturbed look she'd given him. "Come dear, show me how to attach these chips."
"Your friends, Walter?" Astrid said with a scowl as she moved reluctantly to his side. "Really?"
Peter looked back at the two of them as he reached for the door, juggling the coffee cups in one hand. It was less than two days after his father had drugged her, and Astrid had already put it behind her. Though if he wasn't mistaken, she seemed less meek around him than she'd been before the incident, and had stopped addressing him as Dr. Bishop, as well. It was probably for the best, his father's head was big enough as it was. He didn't hear Walter's response as he pulled open the door and left them to it.
.
In the time Peter had been gone for the coffee, the campus around the Kresge Building had been overrun with men in black suits driving black suv's. The vehicles he'd seen arriving were now parked in a line along the curb closest to the Kresge Building, around the corner from the entrance. Students and faculty alike were watching with interest, huddled together on nearby benches and in groups standing up and down the sidewalk in either direction, pointing and talking excitedly to one another. In the windows of the Kresge Building itself, he could make out faces staring down at them through the dark windows. He grinned to himself as they pulled back away from the glass when one of the dark-suited agents would glance upwards at them. It would be interesting to learn someday what students and faculty at Harvard thought of the FBI keeping a semi-secret lab in the basement of one of their buildings. There were probably already conspiracy theories aplenty, with the bodies that had already been carted through the hallways, and they'd only been in business for a little over a month.
Olivia was nowhere in sight as Peter moved toward the group of agents hesitantly, looking for a familiar face. He recognized Charlie Francis in a pair of aviator sunglasses, and along with his dark suit, looked every bit the agent that he was. He was about to go ask him where Olivia had gone when he spotted her light green suv pull up to the row of vehicles. She pulled over to the curb then backed into the spot at the front, assuming the lead position. Veering in the direction of her suv, he nodded at Charlie, who was leaning against the suv closest to Olivia's, arms crossed over his chest.
"Hey, Charlie." he said, walking past him.
Charlie reached out, stopping him with a touch on his arm. "Bishop." he said gruffly. "How's that face and your chest? You sure you should be out here today?"
Peter stopped and turned back to him, not sure if he was being serious or not. From his stiff-necked demeanor, he appeared to be. "I'm fine." he said. "It's not a big deal."
Truthfully, his chest had been aching a bit since the bear hug Tony had engulfed him in earlier, but it wasn't anything debilitating. His face felt fine though, other than some soreness around his nose and eyes. He was just hideous to look at, like he'd run face first into a brick wall.
The other man shook his head, and Peter thought he might be rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. "You've been hanging around Liv too much." he said dryly. "You're just a consultant, Bishop, you could have taken a few days off, you know."
"Would you have?" Peter said, trying not to sound testy. He didn't care for the inference that he was less than fully invested in the work they were doing. Things had changed with the events of the past few days, not that he was planning on enlightening the man about his change of heart, but still.
They stared at each other in silence for a moment before Charlie nodded slowly, acceding the point. "Probably not..." he admitted grudgingly after a moment. "Though…I imagine my wife might have a different opinion if I looked like anything like you do."
"Then luckily I don't have a wife, Charlie." Peter said sarcastically, finding the very idea fear-provoking. He wasn't even close to marriage material; with his past, coupled with the added baggage of his less than sane father, the prospects for entering into that kind of relationship with anyone not insane already were negligible. "And I don't have any plans or prospects for acquiring one." he added, turning to close the distance with Olivia's suv.
"You never do," Charlie replied sagely behind him. "It just creeps up on you."
"It ain't gonna creep up on me." he stated, looking back at the agent over his shoulder. "Glad we had this little discussion, Agent Francis." he said, grinning at the strange turn the conversation had taken.
Charlie gave him a stoic nod in response, and Peter moved toward the passenger door of the green suv. The window was down, and he could see Olivia inside with a fingertip pressed to her temple, chewing on her lower lip distractedly.
"Hey." he said, bending down and extending her cup of coffee towards her through the open window. "I thought you could use some."
Olivia looked over at the sound of his voice, her lips curling into a relieved smile at sight of the coffee cup. "Oh…you didn't have to do that, Peter." she said, reaching for cup despite her assertion.
"I think I did. When was the last time you slept, Olivia?" Peter said, pulling open the door and sliding into the passenger seat. "Unless you want to let me drive?" he asked impudently, reaching over his shoulder for the seatbelt. "I mean to try out those sirens sometime, remember?"
She seemed to consider his offer seriously for a brief a moment before her expression transformed to one of amusement. "Umm…no." she said, taking a sip of the hot beverage. She let out a sigh as it went down, and then placed the cup in the cup-holder. "Thanks for the offer, though, but I'll manage."
Peter shrugged his acceptance. He hadn't expected anything else, really. "Did I miss anything out here?" he said, looking around at the gathered agents.
Olivia nodded toward the Kresge Building. "Not really." she said. "But, I think the show's about to start."
Walter and Astrid had rounded the corner of the building closest to the entrance, carrying the pigeon out in front them with both hands. Astrid held her arms fully outstretched, hold the cage as far as possible from her body, while turning her head away from it with a grimace.
"What is she doing?" Olivia asked, focusing on her assistant as her and Walter moved out into the grassy area of the quad, diagonally away from the Kresge Building entrance.
"She really doesn't like pigeons." Peter said, thinking of her flight to the restroom. "I think Walter might've made her sick earlier."
"Really?" Olivia glanced over at him, her delicate eyebrows raised inquisitively. "How'd he do that?"
"Let's just say that Walter's ideas for personal hygiene aren't quite up to her standards." he said, meeting her eyes briefly, and then looking back at his father through the windshield. "Or anyone's standards, for that matter."
"I don't think I want to know." she replied, her lips crooked with distaste.
"Yeah…you really don't." Peter said, watching as his father and Astrid stopped about thirty or forty feet from sidewalk in a wide open area of the quad with no nearby trees.
They set their cages on the ground next to each other, and sat on their heels as Astrid picked up the GPS receiver for the tracking devices off the top of the she'd been carrying. Walter smiled down at his cage fondly and made some remark to Astrid, who seemed less than amused. Her response seemed to leave his father taken aback, as the junior agent pushed off her knees and stepped back from the cages, manipulating the controls of the receiver. Several moments later Walter looked over at Olivia's suv, giving them two thumbs up enthusiastically.
"Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines." he said, grinning at Olivia as she pulled on her seatbelt. She flashed him a smile in return as she turned the ignition and the little suv rumbled to life.
Charlie motioned to the other agents. "Start it up." Peter heard him say, twirling his index finger in a circular motion. The agents piled into the government vehicles and waited to follow Olivia's lead.
Walter flipped back the tops of each of the cages and stepped quickly back next to Astrid, as if he expected the birds to recognize their freedom at once, and make the most of it. The pigeons seemed loathe to leave their cages however, much to Walter's distress, and he began gesturing at them impatiently with both hands.
Peter glanced over at Olivia, hoping none of the doubts he was feeling at that moment were apparent on his face. She was frowning worriedly at the scene in front of them as his Walter's gesturing grew more frantic at the birds' refusal to take flight. Just when he was about to push open the door and go calm his father down, Astrid put her fingers to her lips, and let out a high-pitched whistle he could hear clearly from inside the vehicle.
There was an immediate rush of feathers as the pigeons took flight, rising toward the blue sky in a dizzying spiral. Walter laughed delightedly, dancing a little jig as he clapped his hands in excitation, staring upwards at the dwindling forms. Even Astrid seemed to have forgotten her disgust for the creatures and had a smile on her face as gazed up at the sky.
Olivia exhaled a nervous breath and they exchanged relieved glances as she pulled away from the curb and drove toward the main road.
"Seriously, if this works-" Peter began, pulling his phone from his pocket.
"You're gonna have some more faith in your father?" Olivia interrupted facetiously, looking over at him with a smile.
Peter shook his head emphatically. "No." he replied cheekily. "I don't think so."
Olivia rolled her eyes, but the smile remained on her face as she leaned forward, looking upwards through windshield, driving in the general direction the pigeons had flown, which was to the west. He thought it might be good sign that they didn't fly straight back to Tony's farm north of Boston. His phone rang and he answered it at once, putting it on speaker for Olivia to hear as well.
"Hey Astrid." he said, holding the phone in his left hand closer to Olivia. "You're on speaker."
"Hey guys." Astrid said, her voice sounding distant. Peter thought her phone might be on speaker also. "You still see the rats with wings?" she asked.
"Yeah...I see them." Olivia said, glancing over at him and grinning at Astrid's words. "They seem to be headed west, maybe a little south." she said. "They haven't changed course since we started following them."
"I've hooked the GPS into the FBI mainframe." Astrid reported. "According to this, the flock is heading just as you said...west, southwest."
"What's southwest of Cambridge?" Peter mused out loud, rubbing his his chin. "...It's mostly residential. Not the exactly kind of hideout I envisioned for electro-man."
Olivia nodded slowly, and opened her mouth to reply, but she closed it with a snap. Her eyes went wide as if she'd just had revelation. "Hey Astrid," she called. "Let us know if the birds change course. I think we're gonna lose them for a while."
Peter looked over at her. "You know something I don't?" he said as Olivia made a left turn on to JFK Street, and the pigeons went out of sight, off to his right somewhere.
"Jospeh Meegar lived in Worcester, Peter." Olivia replied as she accelerated the suv southwards toward the Charles. "Why are we assuming he's in Boston?"
Peter's mouth fell open, and he blinked as her words penetrated. Why was he assuming Meegar was in Boston? Worcester was west-southwest of Boston... "Astrid," he said. "Can you extrapolate-"
"Already on it." Her voice cut in from the phone speaker. "The flock's current flight path will take them straight to Worcester." she said a moment later. "On the north side if I had to make a guess."
"Good work, my dear." Walter said, his voice barely audible in the background.
Peter glanced at Olivia. There was a small smile of triumph on her face. He could tell that she reveled in a hunch of hers being proven correct. "I assume you're heading for I-90?" he asked as they crossed the bridge over the Charles.
"Yep." Olivia replied. The smile was replaced by a look of fierce determination.
Peter took a large sip of his coffee and smiled to himself as he settled back in his seat, preparing for the forty-five minute drive to Worcester. He almost felt sorry for Joseph Meegar if he crossed paths with Olivia. Almost.
Olivia ended her call with Charlie as she guided her suv through the streets of Worcester. They were coming in from the north, as Astrid's constant updates on the pigeons' location seemed to indicate that they were heading for some location on that side of the city. She wasn't all that familiar with Worcester, and required nearly constant direction from Peter, who seemed to know exactly how to get them to area of the city that Astrid had said the pigeons should be headed based on their current flight path. She scanned the sky as she guided their caravan through traffic, looking for the pigeons, but had yet to see any sign of them since in arriving in Worcester.
"And how's Agent Francis?" Peter asked from the passenger seat.
"Irritated." she said with a chuckle, tossing her phone on the console between the seats. "Wants to know how long we're gonna keep following around a flock of birds."
Peter grinned as he tapped his finger in rhythmic beat on the arm rest. "I don't think he's spent enough time at the lab yet to fully appreciate our kind of crazy." he quipped.
Olivia chuckled again, and momentarily considered telling him what Charlie had said about spending more time at the lab, before deciding it probably wasn't the best idea. "Somehow, I don't think that's gonna change anytime soon." she said diplomatically instead.
"Well…that's too bad for him." he said sarcastically, glancing over at her. "He doesn't know what he's missing out on."
"Yeah…" she agreed. "Who wouldn't want to watch your father pluck out a corpse's eyeball or make a dead heart beat again?"
"You're forgetting re-wiring a man's brain to receive-" Peter began, but was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. "Hey Astrid." he said, answering the call and holding the phone up to his ear. "What have you got?"
He listened for a moment, then leaned forward in his seat, searching the sky ahead of them. "I think we're almost there…." he said. "But I don't see them." He pointed toward a street sign ahead of them. "Take a left on Mill Street. According to Astrid, they should be right around here."
Olivia turned on the street he had indicated, leaning forwards in her seat, looking upwards for the birds as she drove slowly down the block. The area of the city they were in had gone from a mostly commercial district, peppered with shops and restaurants sandwiched in between residential neighborhoods similar to her own neighborhood of Brighton, to an older, more industrial area. The structures had become nondescript and larger, more functional than aesthetically pleasing, of the sort typical for manufacturing and production facilities. Many of the properties were surrounded by rusty metal fencing with barbed wire coiled around the top edge to keep out interlopers. Graffiti marked the sides of many of the buildings, a testament on just how well the fencing actually worked at keeping out trespassers.
The road ahead of them dipped under an overpass, and when they came out the other side, there was movement in peripheral vision which drew her attention. High in the sky, about a block over from their position, a number of birds were circling in a chaotic manner.
"I think I see them!" she said, pointing across Peter's chest through the windshield at them. "Is that them?"
Peter squinted through his window at the birds. "Only one way to find out." he said. "Make a right at the next street. It should take us straight to them."
Olivia made the right and the circling birds shifted to a front and center position in the windshield. She checked her mirrors and saw the other two FBI vehicles make the turn behind her. The road they had turned on was sprinkled liberally with potholes, and the area was run-down, with trash littering the empty parking lots in front of vacant-looking buildings on either side of the street. The birds appeared to be particularly interested in a gated property about halfway down the block. They dove and swooped above a low building set far back on the property in a coordinated manner, as if they were being guided by a singular consciousness.
"That's definitely them. I think I can make out Lola and Ginger." Peter said, leaning forward in his seat as they approached the gated parking lot. "Well, what now boss?"
Olivia smiled inwardly at the moniker. For some reason she got a kick out of him calling her that. "Now..." she said with a grin, "We go catch a man who can control electricity."
She slowed the suv to a crawl, and then to stop. An agent jumped out of Charlie's vehicle, and approached the gate. It was unlocked, and he pulled it open without difficulty. She quickly accelerated through the open gate, and into the parking lot, followed in turn by the other two vehicles.
The building which the pigeons had guided them to was a two-story structure, and an oddly colored choice for someone trying to be inconspicuous. The upper half was painted a bright white, while the lower half was a deep red, all the way down to the foundation. There were two garage-type rolling doors at either end of the building, and a line of tinted, barred windows set high off the ground breaking up the up white paint at regular intervals. The only obvious entrance was single door set back into a narrow alcove centered in the middle of the building.
Olivia gunned her suv across the parking lot and came to a screeching halt not from the entrance. The other vehicles pulled up parallel to them, doors flying open before they were at a complete stop. She removed her seatbelt to get out, and saw that Peter was doing the same.
"You stay here." she said, with a shake of her head. "We'll check it out first."
Peter's lips thinned momentarily, but then he shrugged. "Whatever you say, boss." he said flippantly, waving her away.
Olivia glanced back at him as she shut her door. She hoped he wasn't too upset at not being allowed to go with her. They way he'd called her 'boss', didn't have quite the same ring to it that it had before. It was something he was going to have to get used to it. She couldn't do her job effectively and have to worry about him at the same time.
Charlie and four other agents joined her as she hurried toward the entrance to the building.
"I'm not even gonna ask how you got a flock of pigeons to lead us here, Liv." Charlie said as they approached the single door.
"Probably a good idea." she replied, dropping her hand to her pistol at her belt and removing it in a fluid motion.
Charlie and the other agents did likewise, and moved toward the recessed doorway guns drawn and held out before them. There was a narrow vertical window to left of the entrance, and she moved to the side of it. Charlie took up position opposite her, on the other side of the door. The other agents fanned out behind them against the brick wall of the building.
Olivia peeked around the edge of the window, looking in through the slight tint in the glass to the interior. She could make out what looked like a small waiting room, with a receptionist's desk in one corner next to a door leading further into the building. There were no one in sight.
"No movement inside." she reported, looking over at Charlie, and then reached for the door knob and gave it a twist. "It's locked."
"Stand back." he said, and then smashed the grip of the his pistol against the square window set in the upper half of the door. The glass shattered easily, and he knocked the broken fragments aside with his gun barrel, and then reached through and unlocked the door. He pulled it open and held it back against the wall as Olivia and the other agents filed past him into the building.
Olivia took the lead, holding her gun out with both hands in front of her, the barrel shifting with her eyes as she cataloged the room. The receptionist's desk was clean, with not a trace of pen or paper, and no computer present to indicate that the desk had ever been used by anyone. There were no magazines in the holders, nor any pictures or any other decorations hanging on the wall above the seating.
"Whoever put this room together, didn't try to hard to make it look legitimate." she said to Charlie as he moved back to the front of the group.
Charlie grunted. "Either that or it's just a vacant building, Liv." he said as they moved toward the door next to the receptionist's desk. "We did follow a flock of pigeons, after all."
Olivia didn't have a response to that that didn't sound crazy, so she pulled open the door and let Charlie and the others pass by. She followed after them into a corridor with an open doorway at the opposite end, and a stairwell leading up to the floor above just to the right of the door they'd just come through. There were other doors, leading to rooms adjacent to the hallway and a viewing window to her left, through which she could see objects covered by white sheets, and a what looked like dental chair. It reminded her uncomfortably of one of Walter's chairs back at the lab.
"You two," Olivia said to two of the accompanying agents, "Check upstairs, we'll go this way."
The two agents moved up the stairwell and out of her view, and the rest of them moved forward toward the doorway at the end of the hall. She kept her gun outstretched ahead of her, and glanced in the slender windows of the doors to the adjacent rooms off the corridor as she passed them by. The rooms were dark, and she couldn't make out much more than obscure, shapeless forms through them that could be anything. She ignored the rooms for the moment and continued toward the opening at the end of the hall, with Charlie keeping pace opposite her on the other side of the corridor.
She was about to motion for Charlie to precede her through the open door, when a man suddenly stepped through it, moving purposefully toward them. He was dark-haired, with a badly receding hairline and a dark beard with wisps of gray just starting to show through on his droopy cheeks and chin. His ears were large, and stuck out oddly from his head and he was wearing a dark gray lab coat with a white pinstriped shirt and a maroon colored tie. The man's eyes were dead, emotionless voids that made her feel soiled when they focused on her.
Olivia's eye went wide as his identity came to her at once.
It was Jacob Fischer.
The man Broyles had spoken to her of the night before.
The man John's...vision...or whatever it was, had warned her about! She had to talk to Walter.
"Stop! Get those hands up, buddy!" Charlie said, training his gun on the man's head.
Jacob Fischer came to a stop, and his flat gaze shifted to over to him wordlessly, examining Charlie like he was cockroach in need of stepping on.
"I said get those hands in the air!" Charlie ordered harshly. He clicked the hammer back on his pistol in warning.
Fisher slowly complied, holding his hands out in front of him, and then raising them upwards in an exaggerated motion.
"Joseph Meegar." Olivia said coldly. "I know he's here, Mr Fischer. Where is he?"
His gaze shifted back to her, his head tilted as if assessing her. If he was surprised that she knew his name he didn't show it. "I'm sorry." he said in a condescending tone. "Who are you referring too?" There was a ghost of a smile behind his beard as he spoke.
Olivia started to reply when she picked up noise through the doorway behind him. It had sounded like a car starting. She focused her attention over his shoulder and on the room behind him; it appeared to be a lab of some sort. There was electronic equipment and another one of those chairs, similar to the one she'd seen a through viewing window.
Why had Fischer surrendered himself so easily? As soon as the thought formed she knew the answer.
"He's stalling, Charlie!" she said, glancing over at her partner. "You two take him." She looked back at agent behind her. "You with me!"
"Turn around!" Charlie said, moving toward Fischer and putting his gun in his face. "Face the wall!"
Olivia moved past them into the next room, keeping her gun up. It was a lab, equipped with electronic devices she didn't recognize. Peter could probably make sense of them, but she'd left him behind. A large surgical light was focused on a patient chair in center of the space, with a vitals machine and an IV pole on casters standing close by. There was bag on its hanger, filled with a clear fluid. The hoses trailing from the bag were dangling, as if they'd just been removed. Sitting next the chair across from the IV pole was a tray with uncapped syringes lying on its surface. He eyes fell on black straps, sitting on cushion of the chair, and she clenched her teeth, remembering the crimes Fischer was accused of from Broyles's file on the man. There was another door in one corner of the room, with an exit sign illuminated above it.
"This way!" she said to the agent with her, and hurried toward it.
Olivia pushed the door open and ran down a short hallway with two doors on the left side, clearly marked as restrooms, and another closed door at end. She ignored the restrooms and threw herself at the closed door, banging it open into a large garage and moving inside, keeping her gun at the ready. There was a man standing in the center of the concrete floor on other side of a chain-linked fence, staring over at them with wild eyes.
It was Joseph Meegar! He was wearing a light blue button down shirt, which was open, exposing his chest, and pair of blue jeans. There was blood dripping down his face and into his thin beard from some kind of wound he had on both temples, and he had a bandage on one wrist, which she guessed was from the IV she'd seen a moment ago. At his feet was another man in a black leather coat, groaning and moving around weakly. There was gray suv stopped not far the man, its engine running and the passenger door swung open.
"Freeze!" Olivia said, pointing her gun at him through the fence, which had been erected to form a narrow corridor, running the length of that side of the garage. She and the agent moved toward an opening in the fence not far from them.
Their movement seemed to break Joseph Meegar free of his shocked state, and he turned and ran around the corner of the suv, and then toward an open garage door on the back of building.
"Stop, Joseph!" she shouted after him as she raced around the edge of the fence toward the suv and the man on the ground. "Check him!" she called back to the trailing agent, and pointed down at the man on the ground as she passed him by, before sprinting out into the daylight after Meegar.
Outside the garage was a narrow drive, and then a parking lot, which was actually the backside of the property behind the Jacob Fischer's hideout. It was being used currently as parking for some company's heavy equipment. She caught sight of a flapping blue shirt as Joseph Meegar disappeared around the corner of a bulldozer, sitting on a trailer nearby. She hurried after him, keeping her gun low as she entered a maze of trucks, cranes, and loaders, all packed close together like sardines in a can.
Suddenly the vehicles around her roared to life, their engines gunning as if someone were pushing their throttles all the way to the floor. Olivia swallowed, feeling very aware of her vulnerable position, being in the midst of all that heavy metal. She moved slower then, trying not to touch anything if possible, and tried to make her way to the outside edge of the parked vehicles. She didn't know the extent of Meegar's abilities, but Walter had said that all of the people in the elevator had been electrocuted, so it seemed like a good idea to her.
Olivia moved cautiously between the treads of an enormous crane and a cement truck, toward what looked like open space, wincing at the noise from the still-running engines around her. It was impossible to hear anything over the cacophony. As she emerged from the maze, she saw Meegar's blue shirt again, running to her right.
"Stop right there!" she shouted again as she rushed after him.
Joseph looked back over his shoulder at her, and a dump truck she'd been about to run in front of suddenly lurched forward, black smoke shooting from its exhaust stack.
She narrowly avoided the truck, skidding to a stop mere inches from its side, as it shot in front of her and crashed into a telephone pole, which tilted over drunkenly to the side. The truck came to a stop, and though the engine was still running, she could hear a metallic clamor coming from it that gave her hope that it wouldn't be much longer.
Jesus! Olivia said to herself, moving carefully around the back of the truck to resume the chase. That was too close.
Once she was around the truck, she ran forward, spotting Meegar as he raced around the corner of the red and white building toward the front. She had hoped to not have to use her weapon, but after being nearly flattened by a dump truck, he'd left her no choice.
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So here's the next part of 1x05. I originally planned to only have one more chapter, but I thought i was getting too long so I split it in two.
As always, thanks for reading!