Fringe & the Dead

by cotillion66

The Fringe team struggles to survive and find answers in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Set early in season 1. AU

37. The Prick of a Needle

Chapter 37 - The Prick of a Needle

-August 2009

Olivia fought to keep from gaping, stop her eyes from goggling.

Nina Sharp? How could Nina Sharp be here? Her mind raced into overdrive, buckling under the deluge of questions. What were the chances? After all the chaos of the outbreak, after the very end of human civilization itself, what were the chances of running into someone she knew, now, almost a year later? And in a random building in the middle of New Jersey? What were the odds of that happening? Astronomical, surely. Or, at least, improbable beyond belief.

The silence in the office stretched out, for what felt like a full minute. Nina had turned her music off — something from the Sixties, that had sounded vaguely familiar — and in the quiet aftermath she heard the tick of a clock somewhere out of view. She could feel the others out in the hall behind her, could sense Peter peering over her shoulder, trying to get a look inside.

Nina Sharp broke the stasis for her, rising from her seat. "I can see my presence here shocks you, Agent Dunham," she said, nodding sagely. Her hazel eyes dipped up and down, studying, as if she were a drill sergeant making inspection. They widened momentarily on the sword hilt sticking up in clear view over Olivia's shoulder, before coming to rest on her face once more. "And I see that you've changed since we last spoke. The young agent who so thoroughly enjoyed barging unannounced into my office to make her demands — much to the chagrin of Danielle, my assistant, Danielle, bless her soul — is gone, I think, and in her place? A warrior? Or just a survivor. You've been through a lot, haven't you?"

"I... I'm the same person that I've always been," Olivia said, finally managing to open her mouth and speak. She felt Peter close behind her, and caught a whiff of his scent that sometimes drove her wild with lust, but not now.

"Hmm? Yes, it does often seem that way, from our own perspective, at least," Nina agreed with a trace of amusement creasing her lips. Her gaze went past Olivia to the others crowding the doorway out in the hall, and then she started around her desk. "Well... I suppose I should take a look at what you've brought me then, or rather, who you've brought me, I should say."

Olivia stepped all the way into the room, and the others began filing in after her. Peter was the first to enter, and the former Massive Dynamic executive's eyes widened on his face, before darting between their matching swords with a look of cunning speculation.

"Peter Bishop?" Nina said, stopping him just inside the doorway. "I was informed that you might be accompanying Agent Dunham here, if you were still alive. It's good to see you again."

Before Peter could reply, Nina had moved on, greeting Astrid and Claire as they entered with warm smiles, and the same for Gina who was looking around with wide eyes. Lincoln Lee received the same treatment, as she politely introduced herself and shook his hand. Much to Olivia's surprise — and of everyone who saw — she seemed truly delighted to find Broyles still among the living, and greeted him by way of a kiss, full on the lips.

"Phillip," Nina said, pulling away from him. "You made it. I'd given up hope long ago. You look older, my dear friend."

"As do you, Nina," Broyles replied, his normally stern tone softening only slightly. "I've been lucky. Very lucky. We all have."

"Nina? Nina Sharp, is that you?" Walter said, bustling into the office. "How marvelous! It's strange, I was just thinking of you. That song was always a favorite of yours, wasn't it, my dear? The Zombies? You remember, don't you? The acid parlor? The Green House Galas?"

Nina turned to him, pulling him into a hug. "Walter," she said, smiling. "I was hoping you were one of those with Agent Dunham. It's been far too long. I'm so sorry about dear Elizabeth. She was always a good friend to me."

Some of the joy fled from Walter's face. He nodded, his eyes turning glassy and inward. "Yes. She was always a kind soul. Far too good for the likes of me."

"You've met Nina Sharp before, Peter?" Olivia whispered fiercely in his ear. "Why didn't you tell me back then?"

"I've never met her before," he replied, his expression unreadable, eyes never leaving Walter's face. "Not that I'm aware of, at least. I have no idea what she's talking about."

"And who have we here?" Nina continued, letting Walter past. Rachel and Ella were the last to enter, and they stopped inside, their faces uncertain. "You must be Rachel and Ella Blake, Agent Dunham's sister and niece."

Olivia stiffened. What the hell? The old suspicions she'd held for the Massive Dynamic executive resurfaced in an instant. "How do you know my sister, Nina?" she said, taking a step toward the woman. "Or Ella, for that matter? How can you know them?"

Nina met her gaze, her delicate eyebrows arched innocently. "It is, or was, I should say, common practice to know one's adversaries when billions of dollars were at stake," she explained. "And... you impressed me, Agent Dunham, which was not easily done. If you'll recall, I offered you a job, and I make it a point to know everything I can about prospective employees, especially those whom I felt had great potential."

"Is that what I was? Your adversary?"

"Perhaps adversary was a poor choice of words. But that's all moot now, isn't it?" Nina Sharp glanced around her office, taking them all in while picking at the fingers on the glove covering her right hand. "And as pleased as I am that you're all here," she said while moving back around her desk. She sat down, then gestured for them to do likewise in an array of plain chairs pushed out to the office's perimeter. "Please sit down, all of you. Now that the pleasantries are all out of the way, why don't you tell me why you're really here. I can only assume that you haven't shown up out of the blue just to pay myself a visit. What is it you want? Sanctuary? This facility is quite secure, the fence surrounding it is electrified and quite effective against the undead population. You're quite welcome to stay, of course, though you'll be expected to contribute in some fashion, the same as everyone who lives here. Or is it merely supplies you're after? I'm afraid I can offer you little, as my people would certainly frown on my giving away our livelihood."

"Actually, as strange as it may seem, we did come to find you," Olivia said, taking a seat beside Peter. "Or not you, so much as Massive Dynamic. I need access."

"Ah. And now we come to it." Nina hesitated, rubbing her palms together. Her eyes drifted to Walter for a moment. "Unfortunately, Massive Dynamic, and all of Lower Manhattan, for that matter, are off limits, at least if you want to stay alive, that is."

"We heard the radio broadcast," Broyles said. "Which was how we ended up here. I assume that was your voice we heard? What does it mean?"

"It means just what it says, Phillip. Massive Dynamic and all of the areas around it are... contaminated."

"Would you care to elaborate?" Peter suggested, spreading his hands wide, before crossing his arms tightly. "The whole corporate obtuseness shtick you've got going on probably worked fine in a board room, but we're talking about the extinction of the human race here. Is this contamination some kind of radiation? Or are you just talking about the infection? Cause we're pretty familiar with that at this point, what with ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the world's population turning into walking corpses. And how the hell did you end up here, anyway?"

Olivia laid a hand on Peter's thigh, squeezing gently. His frustration she could understand, having dealt with the woman's vague responses and insinuation before, but he wasn't helping the situation. They needed Nina Sharp's help, not her enmity.

Nina regarded Peter coldly. "You were less rude when we last me, Peter Bishop," she said, eyes glittering. "I'm quite certain your mother, whom I knew and respected as a friend, raised you better.

"As for how I ended up here, it's quite simple. Prior to several months ago, we'd been living quite successfully at Massive Dynamic, several hundred feet below the surface of the earth, where our secure vaults and research labs resided. Successfully, that is, until my people began undergoing the transformation from living to... unliving."

"It was spontaneous, Nina?" Walter said, sitting up. "None of them died or were bitten by other infected first?"

"Correct. The first occurrence happened in the middle of our mid-day meal, precluded by seizures and convulsions, at first, but then by no warning at all. The others followed shortly after. We had no choice but to flee, and it was only when we left the proximity of Manhattan that the transformations stopped. Any and all subsequent attempts to return have been met with similar results. Those living in this facility are all that made it out."

"And you have no idea what caused this?" Astrid said, exchanging worried looks with Claire. "None at all?"

Nina shrugged, swiveling her chair slightly. "Brandon, my new chief of research, has been trying to come up with a hypothesis, but he's found nothing concrete that could explain it, any more than he can explain the sickness itself. What exactly was it you wanted from Massive Dynamic, Agent Dunham? A cure? I hope you don't have your hopes pinned on such, as Brandon assures me that there is no cure, nor will there ever be one. But you're already aware of that, aren't you? Surely, you've come to the same conclusion, Walter."

"Yes, I've suspected such from nearly the beginning of the outbreak. There is no corresponding biological component. Its source lies elsewhere, or so I believe."

"Elsewhere...?" Nina's eyebrows lifted expectantly.

"Cortexiphan, Nina," Olivia said, cutting in before anyone could reply. All this talk and rehashing was wasting time. "I was looking for cortexiphan. I need a sample. Or the formula itself, so Walter can make some."

Nina Sharp went still, her palms flat on her desk. "Cortexiphan? I'm not certain what you're talk-"

"Let's cut the crap," Olivia interrupted. The woman's gaze had gone to Walter, before she'd started into her lie, just for an instant, except that she had been watching for just such an occurrence. It all added up to one thing: Nina knew the truth. And was it a surprise? The woman was a close associate of William Bell, the person he'd trusted to run his multi-national conglomerate. What else did she know? "I know everything, Nina. We all do. From the experiments William Bell and Walter conducted on me when I was a girl, to Peter, and the other side."

Except she hadn't known that Nina had known; Walter had excluded her from the story altogether. Why? Had he forgotten? Or was there some other reason for it?

"I see...," Nina said after a moment of stoic silence. "Very well. William told me it might come to this. That there was a high probability you would turn up before this was over, that the stress and harsh conditions of our new environment would likely bring out the best in you. I must admit, I had my reservations, as you no doubt understand. But, he said if we did meet again, I was to help you in any way I could."

"He said all that?" Peter said with a snort. "What, could he see the future?"

"In some way, yes. William was quite gifted at drawing the correct conclusion with only limited information at hand. As I understand, you are also, Agent Dunham."

"Where is Belly, anyway?" Walter said, leaning forward in his seat. "Is he here? Is he well?"

"I'm afraid William is dead, Walter," Nina said with a sigh.

"Oh... I'm so sorry to hear that," Walter said, his voice crestfallen. "That's... that's terrible news."

"We were in communication for a time after the outbreak," Nina continued. "He'd been... on the other side for years, keeping tabs on your other self, among other things. A few weeks before we were forced out of Manhattan, I received a message from him, indicating some sort of... gravitational singularity had formed on the Atlantic seafloor, far off the coast. He said they were unable to contain it, and soon after conditions worsened, with some kind atmospheric anomalies spreading across the globe. His last communique was that he... he was down to his last tank of oxygen." Nina's voice cracked, her eyes misting over. "I've... never heard from him since. I'm afraid the other side is more than likely gone by now."

Lincoln let out a low whistle, eyes widening. "That's the nightmare scenario," he said, shaking his head, "the one situation we could never account for. A vortex opens up some place inaccessible to us, like below the earth's crust, or on the ocean floor. The amber needs air to disperse. Underground, underwater. A breach like that would be theoretically impossible to seal. It'd just grow and grow, until a critical mass is reached, and then... that's it. Game over."

"And who are you again?" Nina asked, eyes suddenly sharp like a predator's. "What experience do you have with such phenomenon?"

"Lincoln is from the other side," Broyles said. "Only... from what I can gather, from a different other side..."

Olivia stopped listening as the others continued the discussion. Her mind raced, seeking answers. The other side was gone? How could it be gone? And if that was the case, then what reality had she been crossing over to then? She glanced at Peter and saw his chin dropping onto his chest, mouth opened in a silent gasp. Something that felt like a fist slammed into her gut at the sight. Peter's family. His real family. Oh god, they're dead. There was no going home. Not for him. Horribly, a secret part of her rejoiced at the realization. He wasn't going to leave her, or their baby. Not now, not ever. But the elation lasted for an instant only before she quashed it ruthlessly amid a surge of intense guilt.

No one but herself seemed to notice his reaction. He leaned forward, staring at the floor. She placed a comforting hand across his back, rubbing gently. She wished they were alone, that he could talk to her about it, tell her what he was feeling.

"I'm sorry, Peter," she whispered softly, continuing her ministrations. "I'm so sorry."

Peter glanced back and shrugged, his eyes red-rimmed. "Well... it's not like I really knew them, or was planning to go back any time soon, anyway," he said in a quiet and bleak voice that made her heart swell with sorrow. Then, as if sensing her own sadness, he forced his lips into the shape of a smile. "I hope you aren't getting tired of me yet, Liv, cause it looks like you're stuck with me for a while, still."

Stuck with him? At least he still had his sense of humor. Before she could reply to that, however, Nina was addressing her, tapping her lips with her index finger, eyes narrowed.

"Agent Dunham, suppose I did have access to the formula for this drug you're looking for. What would you do with it?"

Olivia met the older woman's gaze without blinking. "I would find whoever it is that's causing the infection, and stop them. One way or another, whatever it takes."

Nina Sharp stood slowly, her palms flat on the top of her desk. "In that case, you should come with me," she said. "This facility, has among other things, a hardwired connection to the Massive Dynamic mainframe. Or it did. Years ago, William had certain policies put in place, policies which, I suspect, neither he, nor anyone else ever expected to actually come to fruition. I certainly did not. In the event of a certain class of catastrophe, world paradigm changing events such as nuclear war, or a... a... planet killing asteroid strike, or even a worldwide pandemic, if it were terrible enough, complete backups of all of Massive Dynamics accumulated knowledge, technology, and theoretical research were to be pushed to all branch servers connected to the system. It was William's intent and hope that preserving such information in as many places as possible could help ensure its survival, and, accelerate the recovery, if at all possible. I initiated the sequence almost a year ago, when it became clear that the world as we knew it, for all intents and purposes, was gone."

#

---

#

His family was dead.

Peter walked silently behind Olivia, his eyes following the sway of her silken ponytail over the fabric of her white t-shirt. The knowledge was of portentous magnitude, and yet despite that, thinking of it, what it must have been like for them, only made him feel tired. And numb. When he tried to force his thoughts down a different path, his mind kept circling back, caught in a strange kind of gravity created by the bomb dropped so casually by Nina Sharp. The explosion had left him barren on the inside, somehow empty of emotion.

Numb.

The woman herself was at the front of the group, giving them a guided tour on their way to wherever it was she was taking them. Much of what she showed them, several common areas with sofas and TVs and game tables, offices converted into sleeping quarters, a full kitchen — with fully stocked refrigerators, no less — he hardly noticed. Indeed, none of it made more than a blip on his radar.

His true parents were dead, de-atomized inside some kind of gravitational singularity, by all accounts. He had no memories of them, yet he still ached for the loss. What had his real mother been like? Had she been haunted in the same manner as the mother he knew? Had his real father been gifted with Walter's particular brand of madness? He would never know, now. Not that he had made any plans to find them. How could he? The only way back was through Olivia, and he could have never asked it of her.

The pain she'd tried to hide while offering to do just that was more than his soul could bear. He never wanted to hurt her, not ever, no matter the cost to himself. Nor could he leave her, even if he wanted to. Somehow, Olivia Dunham had become a part of him, in a way he'd never before considered possible. A part so vital that the thought of being without her was like having his heart ripped from his chest. He could not leave her.

And yet her plan, her mad idea to hop from one universe to another until she found the one she was looking for among an infinity of them, would more than likely take her away from him, forever. He watched her stride ahead of him, sensing her singular focus in the way she waited impatiently for Nina Sharp to move on, to get them to their destination. Why was she suddenly so determined? Was it merely Sonia, and the sudden change in the infection? Why she often seemed on the verge of confessing something, lately? Whatever it was, it was present in the back of her mind, always. It was in her distant gazes, in her distracted silences. Yet he could do nothing but trust her. He loved her, and knew that she felt the same. Though at the same time, she was pulling away from him, from them all, bit by bit. He knew the reason why, and Nina Sharp would only hasten the inevitable. He found himself eyeing her coldly as she continued her tour.

The Massive Dynamic executive was a diminutive woman with hair the color of burgundy wine, perfectly coiffed above her shoulders and framing an angular face only touched with a few stray wrinkles; around the corners of her mouth, and a pair of crow's feet spreading out from eyes colder than slate, despite the remnant of a smile that seemed to always crease her lips. And despite the woman's earlier insinuation, he had never seen her in his life. But he remembered Olivia's descriptions of their encounters, what seemed like a lifetime ago now. Back when all their cases seemed to involve Massive Dynamic in one way or another. The shock of finding her here, alive and well, and living in relative comfort had yet to wear off.

He passed beneath an air vent in the ceiling, through a blast of cool air that caressed the moisture saturating his shirt. The coolness brought him back to the present, back to the wonders of their surroundings. Air conditioning. It was difficult to fathom after being so long without. How could they be running air conditioning units? He listened for a generator running somewhere but heard none as Nina Sharp led them through the facility. The maze of corridors was endless, the layout of rooms and spaces almost haphazard, as if its construction had taken place in separate phases, with each not taking the previous into account.

"In case any of you were wondering," Nina was saying, stopping in front of a pair of closed doors, "this facility was the sole operations and manufacturing home of SolTech, a highly advanced solar energy research venture — and full subsidiary of Massive Dynamic. Before the sickness, this building was energy self-sufficient, and in fact fed power back into the grid during peak hours. Over ninety percent of the roof's surface area is covered by a grid of prototype solar cells, and coupled with a battery array several generations beyond what was available for public distribution, we have a net energy surplus which far exceeds our demands, even on the hottest of days, even taking our water desalination system and the other... modifications we've made into account."

"What sort of modifications, Nina?" Broyles asked from behind Peter.

"Let's find out, shall we?" she said with a smile, then pushed through the double doors.

The doors opened into a huge, brightly lit space filled with rows upon rows of plants, hanging in the air, suspending above layers of white piping. There were all shapes and species; tomatoes, huge and red and juicy-looking, potatoes and onion, carrots and lettuce and spinach, to name a few.

Peter's mouth flooded with moisture at the sight, and he wasn't the only one, from all the slight gasps echoing around him. Humid air slightly hotter than the corridor outside pressed down on his skin. Above each row of greenery, grow lights of varying shades of red and blue cast conflicting auras, while the low trickle of running water tickled his ears. A dark-haired, boyish-seeming man in a white lab coat moved among the rows with a clipboard, inspecting each closely before moving on to the next.

And how do I get his job? he wondered, glancing around.

"And this is our hydroponics grow room," Nina said, sweeping her gloved hand ahead of her as she led them further into room. "Where we produce the majority of our fresh food." She motioned toward the man inspecting the plants. "Brandon estimates we could provide enough for four or five dozen people, once we're producing at full capacity." As she spoke, the sleeve of her blouse slid up her forearm, revealing a distinctly mouth-shaped tear in the leather.

Peter started at the sight. She'd obviously been bitten, and it hadn't been a love bite, either. And yet she somehow lived. What the hell? "What happened to your arm, Miss Sharp?" he asked, getting her attention. "If you don't mind my asking?"

Nina stopped and turned back to him, eyebrows raised, then held up her arm for inspection. The sleeve fell back, showing off the long glove that went all the way up her forearm to her elbow. "My former head of biological research transformed as I was reaching for the mashed potatoes. Luckily, I'm made of sterner stuff than I appear."

She pulled the glove back, revealing a prosthetic limb unlike any he had ever seen before underneath. The exterior was made of a transparent, but darkly tinted plastic or resin of some kind, through which he could see gears and servos spinning and actuating as she moved her wrist about. It was highly advanced, and Peter could only assume it was some heretofore unknown Massive Dynamic technology. She let the sleeve fall back into place, glancing briefly at Olivia as the dark-haired man approached.

"We have some new arrivals, Brandon," Nina said as the man came to her side. "Agent Dunham, this is Brandon Fayette, former head of Massive Dynamic's theoretical research division, and now my lead scientist in all manners of research."

Olivia went to greet the fellow, but he barely gave her a passing glance. Instead, the man's eyes went past her, past Peter, and whoever was behind him — Broyles, he noticed, following the man's gaze — all the way to the rear of their group where Walter was bent over rack of tall upright plants, with distinctive star-shaped leaves. The dark-haired man brushed past him, his eyes full of wonder as he made his way to Walter's side.

Peter took a second look at the plant his father was bent over and cursed inwardly. Of course Walter would find the pot plants before anything else, he thought, scrubbing his hair back. Great. Perfect. I'm going to find him later today, bombed out of his mind somewhere.

"Doctor Walter Bishop...?" Brandon Fayette said as Walter leaned in close to one of the marijuana plants, sniffing with his eyes closed.

Walter jerked at hearing his name, spinning away from the plant as if he'd been stung. "Eh? What's this?" he said, eyes darting about before settling on the man standing beside him. "I didn't touch anything! I swear!" He paused, his brow furrowing. "Wait. Who're you?"

Brandon Fayette held out his hand. "Doctor Bishop?" he said again, his voice growing excited, bubbling over, his boyish face beaming. "It really is you. Oh man! This is far out! I can't tell you what an honor it is to actually meet you in person. I'm a huge fan of your work... your research! It was so far ahead of its time — it still is, in some cases. Tell me you've found a cure! That's why you're here! There's something I missed, I knew it!"

"Peter!" Olivia hissed in his hear. "What the hell is happening?"

"Well... apparently, Walter has just met his number one fan," Peter replied, watching as the man continued to gush over his father — who was soaking up the attention like a dry sponge. Of course, he is. This is probably the proudest moment of his life.

"Yes," Nina Sharp said with a hint of amusement. "Brandon can be a bit, shall we say, over-exuberant, at times. But he has an exquisite mind. He just needs some... direction, occasionally." She raised her voice. "Brandon! You can fawn over Walter later. Right now, I require your assistance."

Brandon turned away, clearly reluctant. "Sorry, Miss Sharp," he said, hurrying over to them. "It's just that, well, it's... Walter Bishop! He's the last person I thought I'd meet when I woke up today."

"Yes. Well. Agent Dunham here is looking for the chemical formula for a drug William developed in the late Seventies. Cortexiphan. It's unlikely that you've ever come across it before, as it was never patented or produced in any great quantities. In fact, only enough was ever made for several field tests, if I recall. But there should be a record of it in the archives. Somewhere."

Peter grimaced. Field tests. That was what she called what had been done to Olivia, and who knew how many other children? He fixed the woman with a glower that could have peeled the paint off the walls.

"Cortexiphan?" Brandon muttered with a frown. "In the archives? You're right, Miss Sharp, I've never heard of it. What's it do? Does it have something to do with the sickness?"

"It's got nothing at all to do with the infection," Olivia told him. "I need it to cross over to another universe."

Despite how intensely he disliked what was happening, Peter couldn't help but grin. If Brandon Fayette's eyes had been huge for his father, they came close to popping out of their sockets at Olivia's explanation.

#

---

#

The man Brandon Fayette led them to a nondescript office buried deep within the facility's interior. Other than a fingerprint reading locking device on the door outside, there was nothing to differentiate it from any of the dozens of others they'd passed by — certainly nothing to indicate that inside lay the full breadth and width of Massive Dynamic's technological might. Nina Sharp pressed her left thumb and then her index finger to the reader. There was a bright blue flash, and then a metallic snick of a bolt being drawn back. She swung the door open, and motioned them inside.

The room was small and unassuming, little bigger than the one Olivia had shared with Peter back at the asylum. In the middle of the room sat a single desk with a mouse and keyboard and a widescreen monitor spread across the desktop. Brandon Fayette sat down without a word and typed in a password at the cursor that seemed long enough for a paragraph. The screen flashed once with the iconic Massive Dynamic logo, and then he began typing and clicking away flying through menu after menu, mouthing softly to himself as he did so.

While she waited, Olivia eyed Peter's profile on her left and found his gaze focused coldly on Nina Sharp's face. From the thin set of his lips and clenching jaw, it was obvious he was more than a little unhappy about what was happening. She had never expected him to be. But he'd said nothing, put up not a single word of protest when she'd explained in broad terms to Nina and her subordinate what she was planning to do. Either that, or he was still thinking of his birth family, and how could she fault him for that? Or for any of it, for that matter. If their situations were reversed, she undoubtedly would be the unhappy one.

The office was silent other than the taps of keys being pressed. When it became clear that they would be taking up Nina on her offer of sanctuary, Rachel had elected to stay behind, wanting to settle herself and the girls into the rooms that had been found for them. Olivia suspected it wasn't the entire reason, however; Peter wasn't the only one who was unhappy. Astrid and Claire had offered to stay with them, and it was a good thing they had, as the tiny office was a tight squeeze. She snuck a glance back at the remaining members of her party.

Broyles stood at the back of the room, as stone-faced as ever, with Lincoln beside him, his gray eyes narrowed on the man sitting at the computer. Somehow, he had recognized Brandon Fayette. The glimmer of shock that had flickered across Lincoln's face when Nina had introduced him had been all too easy to read. And in addition to shock, something else had been prevalent; a sharp look of distrust. He hadn't been happy to find the man here, which made her wonder just who Brandon Fayette was on his world, and why the sight of the man had set Lincoln so on edge. Making a mental note to find out, Olivia shifted her gaze to Walter.

He had stayed with them also — not that she had given him any choice in the matter — and was busy examining an odd contraption made of interlocking gears and a funnel-shaped spiral of wood sitting on a shelf in the corner. After a moment, he plucked a shiny metal ball out of a depressed holder on the device's base and placed it on top of the wooden spirals, which appeared to have grooves running down their center. The metal ball raced silently down the curling track, faster and faster until it reached the bottom and disappeared into a small hall in the side of a gear shaped like a waterwheel. The gear clicked into motion, and then stopped. Walter waited expectantly for something else to happen, and when nothing did, he turned away, face wrinkled with dissatisfaction.

"This device in an utter sham," he muttered in an outraged voice. "Doesn't even work! Perpetual motion my-"

"It requires sunlight to function properly," Nina cut in smoothly, noticing his disgruntlement. "Note the miniaturized photo-voltaic module on the backside. Fully patented, of course."

Frowning, Walter turned the contraption around and his face lit up. "Ahh...," he sighed, suddenly delighted, and Olivia thought it might even be genuine. "Ohh! How ingenious! Where can I get one of these? Are they for sale, Nina? Name your price."

"Walter..." Peter sighed, exhaling as he shook his head.

Nina waved her gloved hand. "Feel free to take that one, Walter. Its prior owner is certainly in no condition to care about its whereabouts." She turned to her man, still typing away on the computer. "Any luck, Brandon? Have you found anything at all?"

"Actually... yes?" Brandon Fayette replied without taking his eyes of the screen. Menus flashed, lists of files and folders scrolling past. "Check this out. I found a reference to cortexiphan in a fold called Project Genesis!" He looked up with a grin, glancing between them. Clearly, he was expecting some kind of reaction or response from one of them, but whatever it was, Olivia hadn't the slightest clue to what he was referring. "C'mon, genesis? Khan? Anyone?"

"Khan...?" Peter said after a moment. "As in... the wrath of?" He raised his left hand, splitting four fingers into a v-shape.

"Yes!" Brandon Fayette smacked his hands together, then thrust a stubby finger back at Peter. "Star Trek! About time somebody around here gets one of my cultural references. You, I like."

Peter blinked at the man's intensity. "Um... okay, then," he said, exchanging a confused glance with Olivia.

"What in god's name is this fellow blathering on about, Nina?" Walter said, approaching her with a scowl. Clutched to his chest was the strange contraption he'd laid claim to.

"Yes, Brandon," Nina said, peering over her subordinate's shoulder. "Have you located the formula or not?"

"Yep. I think so. Just let me..." He fell silent, eyes intent on the screen as he made a final double-click of the mouse. The screen flashed, before being filled with a picture, clearly a scanned image of a piece of faded notebook paper covered with scribbles of messy, slanted handwriting surrounding what appeared to be a highly complex molecular diagram, with hexagonal branches of chemical compounds off shooting in all directions. "Voila!" Brandon exclaimed with a grin. "Cortexiphan. Or... at least I think it is. I don't recognize the formula, but the name was embedded in the file properties."

Walter leaned in close to the monitor, scrutinizing the image. "That's Belly's handwriting," he said, nodding his head. "I'd recognize his longhand anywhere. It's quite distinctive, and worse than mine ever was."

"Is it cortexiphan, Walter?" Olivia said, peering at the screen beside him. "It doesn't say that anywhere."

"It could be," he said, rubbing his chin. "Or, it could be Belly's failed recipe for longevity in the bedroom. The two of them shared some common compounds, if I recall. The only way to be sure, however, is to make some. I'll know it when I see it, though. Cortexiphan had a very distinctive flavor and odor. Citrus, similar to that of an overripe kumquat. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to a lab to try and make some."

"Huh...?" Brandon said, twisting around in his chair with a frown. "Didn't Miss Sharp tell you, Doctor Bishop? We have a lab. Apart from the solar power, it's the main reason we chose this site. There's a lab right below us. Fully stocked, organics, inorganics — and anything we don't have, there's a chemical manufacturing and storage facility less than a block away, also one of our subsidiaries. It's still intact, and anything we don't have on hand, it'll have what we need to make it ourselves. And I mean anything." The younger man's eyes lit up, filled with a kind of hope that reminded Olivia of a puppy looking worshipfully at its owner, begging for a treat. "You want to see it?"

Walter gave a broad grin. "Young man, nothing on this earth could would make me happier."

#

The laboratory in question occupied close to half of a spacious lower level, the rest of which was crammed full of strange machinery and shelves of odds and ends, all unrecognizable to Olivia's eyes. The lab itself seemed as modern as any she had ever seen, white and sterile and bright, and made Walter's lab space down in the basement of the Kresge building seem positively antediluvian.

She stood off to one side, waiting, watching as Water and Brandon Fayette went about searching the shelves of chemical supplies for the compounds they would need. Lincoln wandered about, exploring the lab and its various pieces of equipment. From the hints of recognition that flickered across his features as he paused here and there, it was not his first time in such a place.

She looked around for Broyles and found him gone, him and Nina both, though she hadn't noticed either of them leaving. What were they up to? And why had she kissed him like that before? As strange as it seemed, the two of them had a history — one which he'd failed to mention, or even hint at, at any point during their investigations before the outbreak. The failure to do so was incredible, considering the high standards that Broyles had always demanded from his subordinates, and himself, but if it was romantic in nature, she supposed she could understand why.

Peter watched the proceedings impassively from her side, arms crossed over his chest. His jaw clenched and relaxed, repeating, each breath audible in the silence. His eyes shifted, following his father as he moved among the rows of supplies, grabbing what looked to Olivia's unpracticed eyes like bottles and jars at random. Peter had spoken little — to herself or anyone else — since they'd left the others behind. What was he thinking about? What was he so intent on?

"Hey...," Olivia said quietly, taking his hand. Much to her dismay, he stiffened for an instant at her touch, before relaxing, curling his fingers gingerly around hers. Oh, Peter. What is going on with you? Is it me? Was there a part of him that could sense the secret she was withholding? God, I wish I could tell you, but it's for the best, my love, my Peter. Wasn't it? Sometimes it seemed like all her time was spent trying to convince herself that it was so. But the simpler truth was that he would try to stop her if he knew. Walter would do as he wished, and if she insisted anyway, it might very well destroy their relationship, which she could not allow, either. She smiled up at him. "You okay?"

"How soon will you leave?" he replied softly, sparing her a bleak look. His voice was wound tight, a coiled spring quivering for release. "Today? Tomorrow? Tonight?"

Olivia swallowed. So that's it. Of course. "Um... well, I was planning on testing it first, but, tomorrow, if I can, or whenever your... whenever Walter has it ready."

"Testing it how?"

"By taking Lincoln back to his world. Peter, I think it might have been where I've been going all along. Or at least, once your world was... " She trailed off, unable to say the words out loud.

"Destroyed? Turned inside-out?"

"Yes."

Peter's lips thinned, turning white under the pressure. "Then I'm going with you when you get back."

No... Olivia shook her head. "Peter, I don-"

"I'm going with you," he interrupted. "If you can take Lincoln, than you can take me. You're not invincible, Liv. You need somebody to watch your back over there."

"Did I hear somebody mention my name?" Lincoln said, sauntering toward them. His lips were angled into a smirk, but he was watching the two of them carefully, particularly her.

She glanced at Lincoln. "Peter, we can discuss this later."

"There's nothing to discuss," Peter said, then leaned close, for her ears only. "I'm going with you... or I'll tell Walter to stop what he's doing. And you know he'll listen to me."

Olivia stiffened, her face suddenly suffused with heat. "You wouldn't dare," she hissed, tearing her hand away from his grasp. He wouldn't, would he? He couldn't. Didn't he understand what was a stake? But he doesn't understand, because you haven't told him, a voice inside her head reminded her. But if I tell him now, then he'll make Walter stop anyway. It was a catch-twenty-two, and she'd caught herself right smack in the middle.

"I'm afraid I would, Liv," Peter said in a whisper. His blue eyes were bright and full of misery as he turned to Lincoln, who looked decidedly uncomfortable having witnessed the exchange. "Cheer up, old pal," he said, clapping the other man on the shoulder as he started past him toward the door. "Looks like you're going home."

"Peter, wait," Olivia called to his retreating back, reaching out a hand. "Peter!" But he didn't stop, and an instant later he was gone, vanished through the door. She rubbed her eyes, then pushed her hair back out of her face and let out an irritated huff. "Shit..."

"What did he mean I was going home?" Lincoln said, glancing back through the door where Peter had disappeared. When he turned back, his eyes narrowed. "You two all right?"

Olivia stared through the floor tile. She couldn't stop him. Peter would do exactly as he had said. Goddammit. Yet deep down, had she truly expected him to sit idly by? They were partners, after all, in every way possible. She could see herself doing the same for him, would have insisted on it, no matter what he'd said. Part of her was relieved that he'd played out his remaining hand, in spite of the rest wanting to keep him as far out of danger as possible. Perhaps this was just how their lives were meant to unfold.

She met Lincoln's gaze coolly. "Peter and I are fine, Lincoln," she said, shaking her head slightly. The ease in which the man often inserted himself into their relationship was becoming increasingly annoying. So much so that she was beginning to miss the days when he'd been in terror of her, of being torn limb from limb by her mind alone. "We were just... discussing what happens next."

"What does happen next?"

"If Walter's successful, then I'm going to try to take you home, back to your world. If I can, I'd like to talk to the Secretary. It'll be a way of testing whether or not I can stay on the other side, and find the world I want to." She hesitated, at the string of emotions flickering across his face. "That is, if you still want to go, at least," she added. She always assumed he would want to go home, even jump at the chance, despite the conditions on his own world being less than ideal. Whatever was happening there, it had to be better than her world, didn't it? But who knew what resided in the thoughts of any man? "Do you want to go home, Lincoln?"

Lincoln snorted. "You mean, do I want to leave all this behind?" he said, throwing his hands wide. "The walking dead? The great food? The fair weather we've been having for the last few months? No offense, Liv, but apart from you and your sister and the rest of your little crew, your world kinda sucks. So yeah, I'm all about getting the hell out of here. If you're willing to take me, that is."

Olivia cocked an eyebrow. Her world sucked? I suppose it does, at that. At least in its present incarnation. Which is kind of the whole point of this, isn't it?

She nodded toward Brandon Fayette, who was busy juggling an armful of plastic jugs filled with liquids whose colors ranged from clear to bright orange. "I saw your face, before," she said in a low voice. "You recognized him. Who is Brandon on your world?"

"He worked directly for the Secretary," he replied, barely moving his mouth as he spoke. "I only met him a couple of times, but the dude always rubbed me the wrong way."

"In what way?"

"I don't know, exactly. Something about him seemed off, though. It was just a feeling. Like we were all insects to him, maybe. This guy here, though, not the same."

Olivia nodded. She could appreciate the sentiment. Similar feelings had come upon her before; from suspects, from perps, even from witnesses on occasion. Some people gave off certain vibes, and once the brain was attuned to receiving them, they were impossible to ignore. "Did you recognize Nina Sharp, too?" she asked. "Is she the CEO of Massive Dynamic on your side?"

Lincoln shook his head. "No, I've never heard of her, or of William Bell, or of this Massive Dynamic. I don't think it exists on my world. At least, not in the way it does here, if at all."

She supposed it made sense in a way. Not everyone existed in every universe. Simple probability insured that. Anything could and would happen over the course of someone's life; accidents and mishaps, decisions made or not made, the randomness of life. She had never given much thought before to the chance of her own existence, of how many odds had fallen in her direction. Or her parents, or her grandparents, and on down the line. At any point, the lines of causality might have failed, forking new branches of reality in which she never existed. Perhaps it was the same here.

She eyed Lincoln's profile as another thought occurred to her, a potential issue with his going home. "Are you sleeping with my sister?" she asked bluntly.

From the way he seemed to jump inside his skin, it was not a question he'd been expecting. Swallowing, he met her gaze for an instant before looking away. "I... thought sisters told each other everything," he said, rolling his shoulders. "Would you have a problem with it if I was?"

Olivia shrugged. "No, not really. Rachel's a grown woman. She can do what she likes. But, you will say goodbye to her, before I take you home."

"Of course I'll tell her goodbye," Lincoln scowled. "What kind of an asshole do you think I am, anyway?"

"Sorry...," she apologized with another shrug. "I just had to make sure. Big sisters and all that, you know? She's been through a lot already."

"I know, she told me all about her husband," he said softly, eyes full of regret. "I'm just sorry I never had the chance to meet her in my own world."

"Olivia."

Walter's voice cut across the room, ending the conversation. She turned and found him and Brandon Fayette standing behind the elaborate set of chemistry glassware erected atop a long island of cabinetry in the center of the space. He had found a white lab coat, and with the addition of tinted safety glasses, looked more like the Walter of old, the Walter who had been so rejuvenated by his return to the Kresge Building than he had in recent memory.

"Do you have everything?" she asked, crossing over to the two men. "Everything you need to make cortexiphan?"

Walter wrung his hands. "I... I believe so, yes."

"Great. And how long will it take?"

"Well, assuming this is the correct formula, then by sometime tomorrow, I should have several doses ready." He hesitated, tongue peeking out as he wet his lips. "Agent Dunham. My dear, Olivia. Are you certain that this is the path you wish to take? It is not without... risks, my dear. There is no way to test the drug's efficacy, no way to be certain that I have the formula exactly right. I'm afraid Belly's notes are rather vague in a few areas, and if I'm wrong, even in the slightest, the drug could kill you, or render you utterly mad, at the very least. The areas of the brain affected, they're very delicate, yes? That you've been exposed to cortexiphan previously, should mitigate some of the risks, but there was a reason we gave it to children, whose brains had not yet fully formed. In a normal, mature and healthy adult, serious brain injury would more than likely occur, followed shortly by a very painful death. Do you understand what I'm telling you? Have you discussed this with Peter?"

Olivia exhaled slowly, a knot of icy fear sinking down into the pit of her stomach. "I have," she admitted. Sort of. "I don't have a choice. We don't have a choice."

Lincoln stepped up beside her, grabbing hold of her forearm in the familiar way he had probably done with this other Olivia Dunham he knew a thousand times. "Liv, you do have a choice," he whispered harshly in her ear. "You don't have to do this. Not for me. As much as I wish I was home, it's not worth your life. There has to be another way."

"I'm not doing it for you, Lincoln," she told him, pulling firmly out of his grasp. I'm doing this for my world. And for myself, and for Peter, and for our baby. Those last might be selfish of her, but there it was. "And there is no way other way. Do it, Walter."

Walter sighed, then nodded slowly, his eyes downcast. "Very well, Olivia. I'll do my best."

"That's all I can ask," she said, then brushed past Lincoln, leaving the three men behind.

#

She went in search of the others, and found them gathered in what must have been the staff lounge or break room in the building's former life as a high-tech solar power research and development facility.

Overlapping voices and laughter echoed out into the hall outside. They sounded relaxed, carefree in a way Olivia hadn't heard in what seemed like eons — even counting the months spent in the relative safety of the asylum. At least, until Sonia had happened. She stopped just outside the doorway, where she could observe unnoticed.

On one wall was a full kitchen, with a sink and what looked like a wide commercial stove, refrigerator and several microwaves. Food was cooking, steam rising up from pots and pans being tended to by a man in a white apron — a man she recognized as one of the security team that had brought them in. Pasta? Hints of oregano and rosemary floated in the air. Her mouth watered, her stomach growled, reminding her that her body was no longer wholly her own.

Filling the space across from the kitchen were couches and love-seats, table and chairs and recliners — and people, her own and a dozen or so of Nina's. Peter was among them, lounging with his long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Rachel threw her head back, covering her lips to contain peals of laughter elicited by either Astrid or Claire, who were sprawled across the cushions of a love-seat. Her sister looked happy, and that was all that mattered. Others were there; men and women she didn't recognize. If they minded having strangers in their midst, they didn't show it. Unsurprisingly, Nina Sharp ran a tight ship. Were they all former Massive Dynamic Employees? She suspected some at least, had probably been part of the CEO's security detail.

Mounted high up on one wall, a wide television flickered. A movie was playing, an old action flick about out of control dinosaurs, of all things. Ella and Gina sat below it, enraptured, staring up with wide eyes. She dimly recognized the movie, having seen it in a theater in her youth. Once upon a time, she might have considered the movie inappropriate for six and seven year-olds. Too scary, maybe, or too violent — but that was in another life, a life not filled with death and horrors far beyond anything that had ever appeared on the silver screen.

Pain squeezed Olivia's heart, clenching ruthlessly. She memorized their faces, their smiles, the sounds of their voices. Against every imaginable odd, everyone of them had made it. Everyone of them was still alive. They were survivors, all of them. And she had to leave them, and maybe for all time if it all went south on her.

Her gaze lingered on Peter. Despite sitting among them, she sensed he was somewhere else altogether. Arms crossed, his eyes were turned inward, locked in some inner struggle or torment. Then, as if he had somehow sensed the pressure of her regard, his eyes sought her out, locking onto her through the doorway. The sadness present in his glance burned into her soul.

Meeting Peter's harrowed gaze, she inclined her head, motioning for him to join her out in the corridor. They had to talk; stubbornness would get neither of them far. For several pounding heartbeats, he remained utterly still, unblinking, before finally rising to his feet and crossing the room, coming to a stop before her in the doorway.

"Peter," she said, giving him a hopeful look.

He graced her with a self-deprecating smile in return. "Olivia."

"Look, can we talk?"

"What's there to talk about?"

Olivia pressed her lips together. "Don't be an ass, Peter," she scolded lightly. "It doesn't suit you." With that said, she reached out and took hold of his arm, hooking through it as if he were walking her down an aisle somewhere. "Please. Walk with me."

To her intense relief, he offered up no resistance when she turned and led him back down the hall, seemingly content to go where she led. It might be considered an allegory of their relationship up to that point, and she didn't know what she would have done if he had decided for once to do something different. Despite her stated intention, she found that she couldn't speak, not right away. She wasn't ready to say what she had to say, her normally ordered thoughts in disarray. Or perhaps she simply didn't know what she wanted from him, yet.

So they walked in silence. Through the twist of corridors, past offices and board rooms, past workshops converted into armories and other rooms packed with bundles of food and supplies of all sorts. She wondered where it had all come from. Some of it she'd seen on Nina's impromptu tour, some not. The building was a huge rectangle, several city blocks long and at least one or two wide. The side they had entered was mostly administration, offices, and such, but the opposite end was wide open, filled with hulking machinery. And robots, she noticed also. Robots suspended in stasis, knuckled arms and turnbuckles poised on the brink of their last commands.

"What was this place?" she asked, just to say something. "What did they do in here?"

Peter glanced down at her, shrugging slightly. "Automated robotic assembly lines, I guess," he said. "From what I can tell, this place produced nearly every part of the voltaic modules in house from the substrates down to the bending and bonding of the structural framework. It's pretty impressive, actually."

"It's a shame," she mused, eyeing a wide workstation with dozens of lifeless computer screens. "All this technology — this will all go to waste."

"In the short term, at least," he agreed, "but I could see Nina Sharp starting a little empire out of this place someday, couldn't you? She's got the market cornered on electricity for the foreseeable future, and tell me she's not gonna leverage the shit out of that."

Olivia found herself grinning. At least he was talking to her, and sounding something like himself. It was as good an opening as she was likely to get. "If we can ever stop the infection, at least," she said, nudging him with her arm.

Peter grunted. "Yeah. There's that."

She took a breath, filling her lungs. "Peter, about before... it's not that I don't want you to go with me."

He pulled them to a stop between two massive robots yawning on either side and turned to face her. "Then what is it? Don't you trust me to watch your back? I think I've been doing an okay job of it for the last year or so. I thought we were partners."

"We are," she said quickly. "Of course we are. And I do trust you, more than I trust anyone. It's not an issue of trust."

"Then what is it?" he said again.

"It's... I'm afraid I'll lose you, all right?" she said, looking away from his burning eyes. She felt her own eyes beginning to sting, and a shudder went through her. "Or what if I fail? What if I can't do whatever I'm supposed to do? What if I get lost in the spaces between worlds? Or if I can't find my way back? What if we get wherever we're going and I can't bring you back with me, Peter? I can't... bear the thought of knowing that I was the one who-"

"Olivia," he said, drawling her name as he reached up, cupping her face. "You won't fail. You know you're the most amazing woman I've ever met, right? From the moment I've met you, all you've ever done is the impossible. Over and over. And maybe you're right. Maybe this will be the time when our luck runs out. Maybe we'll get lost, maybe we'll both die in the process, but we'll be together, at least. When I said I wasn't going to leave you, I didn't mean only unless it got hard."

She trembled against his palm, letting her eyes slip closed. Oh Peter. What have I done to deserve such blind faith? To deserve you? She couldn't refuse him. And upon further reflection, she didn't want to. If she was going to her death, which was a distinct possibility, who better to have at her side than the man she loved? Not that she wanted either of them to die, or to fail — she wanted to fix the world, after all. She wanted to have his child, to have a family, to start a life together, a life that went beyond the day to day survival of the present. Maybe having him with her would be a good thing. Maybe it would make all the difference. Was it worth the risk? Was his life worth the risk? Was hers? Their baby's? The secret she held was a malignant tumor growing between them. She despised it, despised the necessity.

Reaching up, she took his hand, pressing it to her lips. "All right," she said, meeting his gaze. "All right. You can come. After I take Lincoln home, if I can take you with me, I will. That's the deal."

Peter relaxed then, the tension seeming to evaporate out through his eyes. He rubbed his face, letting out a long sigh. "That's all I wanted. There's no reason for you to do this alone, Liv."

"Would you have really stopped Walter from making the cortexiphan?"

"I don't know. Maybe. It was all I had to work with."

Olivia stepped into his arms. "What'll we do when this is over, Peter?" she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. "Suppose we actually succeed. What then?"

"What then?" She felt him shrug. "I suppose we'll try and start over somewhere. Assuming the weather goes back to normal, I was thinking somewhere tropical, with white beaches and coconuts and hammocks and pina coladas. What do you think?"

Lifting up on her toes, she brushed a kiss across his lips. "I think I like the sound of that, Mister Bishop," she said. "C'mon. Let's get back to the others. If we are leaving tomorrow, I'd like to spend as much time with Rachel and Ella as I can, just... just in case, you know..."

"Liv, we're going to be fine," Peter said, tucking a length of her bangs behind her ear. "You'll see."

Olivia nodded, but couldn't help the cold feeling that slowly settled around her heart. Yes, a part of her was relieved that he'd convinced her, but there was another part of her, the larger part, that was utterly terrified of the prospect.

#

Upon waking the next morning, Olivia found the sleeping pad beside hers empty. Confused by this oddity, she sat up, glancing around the room in which she and Peter had passed the night. Peter's bag lay where he had left it in the corner beside hers, along with his sword, his gun also. But of the man himself, there was no sign. She touched his pillow and found the fabric cold. So he had been gone for a while, then. The room contained a single window covered by horizontal blinds, and when she rose up on her knees and peeked out between them, the sky was touched with just a hint of orange to the east.

She wiped the sleep from her eyes, frowning down at the empty pillow. A nervous tremor went through her as she went about pulling on her clothes, her boots. It wasn't like Peter to be up so early, and even less like him to leave without telling her. How often was he even awake at this hour? And without her being the one to wake him? The answer was never. What was he up to? Springing to her feet, she rushed out of the room.

The corridor outside was empty, the other rooms dark, with not a single hint of light showing beneath. Rachel had a room beside hers, Ella and Gina in a room of their own beyond. Astrid and Claire's room was somewhere nearby, same with Broyles and Lincoln. There were living areas spread throughout the facility, and some of Nina's people had rooms nearby, though unsurprisingly, the woman herself had a room elsewhere. Of Walter, there had been no sign when they'd finally called it a night. She had left him to his work, and as far as she knew, he had never emerged from the basement lab. There was not a doubt in her mind that he had slept there.

Leaving the block of sleeping quarters behind, Olivia hurried toward a red exit sign casting a paltry glow at the far end of the hall. Suddenly a dull noise intruded on the edge of her hearing, just loud enough that once she became aware of it, it was all she could hear. Coming to a stop, she glanced around. The noise seemed to emanate from everywhere at once. What is that sound? she wondered, starting forward again. And then it came to her, and her cheeks began to burn, despite her being the only witness to her own embarrassment. The noise was the building's central air conditioning system, the passage of air through the ducts. What else would it be? After a year of not hearing it, the white noise seemed deafening, ten times louder than it should.

Shaking her head at her own stupidity, she pushed through a door and hurried down another hall that would take her back to the break room, if her internal compass was at all accurate. Of all the places Peter might go, the room with a kitchen and food seemed the most likely place to find a wandering Bishop in the early morning hours.

She rounded a corner and gasped. What the hell? She sniffed the air, detecting delicious, mouthwatering morsels floating on invisible currents. Her feet propelled her forward, faster, moving of their own volition, her mouth suddenly flooded with saliva. What is that? It smells like... like... Shoving through a metal door, she found herself in the break room she'd been looking for.

Olivia froze in the doorway. Her mouth fell open, jaw hanging slack. For several confused instants, she thought it must be a dream, that she was still in her bed, that what she was seeing couldn't possibly be real. Just to make sure, she pinched her thigh hard through the fabric of her shorts, until pain lanced up and down her leg.

The image remained the same, however, unchanging. She wasn't dreaming.

Peter was standing diagonally across the room from her, facing the stove top. He wore shorts and a white t-shirt with a yellow towel thrown over one shoulder, trailing partway down his back. Filling the room was a faint sizzling, clearly the source of the incredible aromas she'd smelled from outside. On the counter beside him was a cutting board laden with what could only be mounds of fresh vegetables; green peppers and onions, tomatoes, and even what looked like chopped potatoes. And there, sitting on a towel were handfuls of brown eggs, shells cracked open. Peter's elbows moved as he worked a spatula into a frying pan, making... something. He was whistling, she realized with growing amazement, some tune beneath his breath that sounded jazzy and whimsical, and vaguely familiar.

He was cooking.

In all the time she had known Peter, not once had she ever seen him cook anything. She hadn't even known he could cook, beyond mixing packages of dried oatmeal with water or heating up a can of pork and beans over a Bunsen burner. But now that she'd seen it — the ease and efficiency in which he went about it — it made all kinds of sense. He'd been a man alone for years before she'd barged into his world. Alone. Isolated. Of course he knew how to cook, how to take care of himself.

Watching him silently, unaware, the slight sway of his shoulders, it struck her that she barely knew him. Oh, she knew she could trust him with her life, of course; that he was a fierce warrior, and would keep his head under pressure; that family was dearly important to him; that he would watch her back, always; that he would do anything for her; that he could be oh so gentle; that he loved her, and that he'd been willing to forsake his world to stay with her... but what else did she know? Beyond what she'd learned by riding out the apocalypse beside him?

What of the little things? What did she know of them? How did he take his eggs? She didn't know, they'd never had real eggs together. What was his favorite food? Why had she never asked him? Because it was depressing when all they'd had to eat was the detritus of the world's ending? What had been his favorite television show as a kid? Had he been a biker? A skateboarder? Neither? Both? Such information wasn't remotely vital, but at his core, however, such information was what made him, him.

A tremble went through her at the realization. She gulped down the lump of sadness rising up her throat, then stepped into the break room, closing the door quietly behind her.

The aromas rising from the stove were intoxicating. Peter reached for a handful of vegetables and tossed them into a second skillet to saute, head and shoulders swaying as he continued whistling his familiar tune. Olivia drew close, crossing the room silently until she was directly behind him. He was tall, almost a full head taller than herself. His wavy hair had grown long in recent months, and lately looked more like Shaggy from behind than himself. She resisted the urge to run her fingers through his hair, and instead reached out, touching the small of his back through his t-shirt.

Peter jumped as if she'd touched him with a live wire. He spun around, eyes bulging for an instant before relaxing upon finding only hers standing there. "Jesus, Liv! You scared the crap out of me," he said, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. "How about a little warning next time?"

"Sorry," Olivia said with a grin, then raised up, kissing him as an apology before stepping back, taking in his work station. "Peter, what is all this?" she asked looking past him at the skillet. Inside, a perfectly formed omelet was sizzling away, eggs bubbling up around the edges. The sight of it made her stomach soar with hunger, intense and immediate.

"Veggie omelets," he said with a flourish of his spatula. "Breakfast of champions."

"But... but, where did you get this food?" she stammered, motioning toward the skillet. The smell of it was driving her mad, clouding her thoughts in a way she'd never considered possible before. She wiped a hand across her mouth and was distantly surprised there was no drool present on her lower lip. "This... this isn't ours. We can't just eat their food, Peter."

"No, it's all good," he insisted, turning back to the stove. "I checked with Nina last night. She told me it was fine... as long as I agreed to make breakfast for everyone. Which, in my opinion, at least...," he said, flipping the omelet inside the first skillet with a practiced flick of his wrist, "seemed like an excellent trade-off just to see that look on your face."

He flicked his wrist again, tossing the omelet up and over. Olivia watched the way his hands moved, mesmerized by the ease with which he performed the feat. It was a skill of his she'd never seen before, never even considered until that moment, and told stories all at its own. Suddenly, electric tingles zinged across the surface of her skin. She pushed her hair back, intensely aware of the fabric of her t-shirt, of the way it chafed lightly across her bare chest like a lover's caress. The atmosphere in the break room was abruptly suffocating, and growing hotter by the second. Her mind was trapped in a wave of lust, rational thought blotted out — on top of the intense hunger rising up from her mid-section.

Not again, she thought, trying to force the surging emotions back to the straight and narrow. I can't deal with this right now.

"You want yours now?" Peter asked, glancing back over his shoulder, oblivious to the fireworks going off inside her head. He reached for the second skillet, tumbling its contents onto the nearly finished omelet with his spatula. "I was going to try out the whole breakfast in bed thing, but I guess that's out the window. I think this one's about ready."

Olivia nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak at that particular moment. I love you, Peter, she said inside her head as he slid the omelet onto a waiting plate. He folded it carefully over with his spatula, spilling its luscious guts out like an overripe taco. A blast of steam rose up, supplying a fresh wave of titillating aromas, and longing. Of pure bliss. On top of the raging hunger was the overpowering urge to take him right then and there, on the break room floor, no matter that anyone at all might walk in on them at any moment.

Peter shoved the plate into her hands, the passed her a fork. "And here you are, Miss Dunham," he said, brandishing a smile. "Your breakfast awaits."

"Um... thank you, Peter," she murmured, blinking up at him, the rush of blood filling her ears.

His smile continued, quirking to one side. Then his gaze dipped momentarily downward, where her sudden arousal was no doubt on full display through the thin fabric of her t-shirt. "You, uh... feeling all right?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

She nodded, spinning away from him. "This looks... amazing, Peter," she said, moving toward the nearest table. And it did look amazing. Better than amazing, whatever the word for that even was. Now that the goods were in her possession, the lust melted away, replaced by an intense need to stuff her face. She considered the distinct possibility that she'd never been hungrier than at that moment. It seemed impossible, yet why did her stomach feel as if it had taken control of her body?

Olivia sat down. At the first bite, a groan that bordered on orgasmic escaped her lips. The omelet was piping hot, and a bottle of ice cold water was quickly passed her way, followed by a cup of coffee, black with one sugar, just the way she'd always liked it. A wave of nostalgia crashed over her, and she thought she might cry from the normalcy of it all.

"So how is it?" Peter asked over his shoulder as he started on another omelet, cracking more eggs and stirring them together in a stainless steel bowl. "Need anything? More salt? Pepper?"

"Peter, this is... incredible, really," she said, forking up another bite. "It's perfect, just like this. Where did you learn to do that? To flip an omelet like that? Don't tell me you were a chef somewhere, too, were you? Otherwise, you've got some explaining to do, mister. I don't recall you ever cooking for us back at the lab."

He glanced back, eyeing her over his shoulder. "Nope, nothing like that," he assured her with a chuckle. "My mom taught me that when I was twelve years old. She was a big believer in the whole breakfast is the most important meal of the day thing. I guess I've gotten better over the years."

Nodding, Olivia gulped down another delicious mouthful. It made sense. That was near the time of the accident at Walter's lab, and his subsequent committal to St. Claire's. Had his mother figured that with just the two of them, Peter would be on his own more often? Had she guessed at the solitary path his life would take? Chewing thoughtfully, she studied Peter's profile as he finished making his own omelet.

"Where do you suppose they got these eggs from?" she said after he sat down across from her and began to eat. "I mean, I haven't seen any chickens anywhere, have you?"

"They've been trading with another group of survivors," he replied, motioning abstractly with his fork as he did so. "I asked the same question when Nina gave me the okay to do something special for you this morning — which, I might add, she only agreed to after extracting her pound of flesh for my rudeness yesterday, as she called it." He rolled his eyes and Olivia grinned, imagining how that conversation had gone. "There's some kind of farming community west of here. She supplied them with some solar panels, in return for eggs and meat and things they can't make or grow here. They've got at least a dozen cartons in that fridge over there." He grunted, shaking his head. "What'd I say? It's the start of her little empire."

Olivia snorted softly at the comment, tucking her hair back out of her eyes. For a while, they ate in silence, the soft clinks of their forks on their plates the only sounds. Their eyes brushed occasionally, and she couldn't help the small smile that kept creeping over her lips. Within the comforting confines of the air conditioned break room, she could imagine that they were some place normal, a cafe or a coffee shop, or even the kitchen of her apartment. Just the two of them, eating their breakfasts together like any couple might do. It was a glimpse of what their lives might have been like had the course of history taken a different path. She wondered at the breadth and width of infinity, of universes where untold possibilities were playing out in kaleidoscopic blurs. There must be multitudes of them where history had in fact unfolded differently, where their lives could have come together in any number of ways.

As always, the thought of other versions of herself brought to mind the red-haired one from Lincoln's world, who had born her and Peter's child. Accompanying those thoughts were thoughts of another. The other. Thinking of that one made her cold inside. As if the life was being sucked out of her. She forced the icy feeling down, forced her mind down a different path, one that led back to the present, back to something Peter had said earlier.

Nina Sharp. What had he told her? And why?

"Peter... what's this all about, anyway?" she said finally after scooping up the last bite of her omelet. She gestured toward the remains with her fork. "This breakfast? Wanting to do something special for me? Don't get me wrong, it's really great, and I appreciated it, but why? It's not because of yesterday, is it? Because there's no need to-"

Peter reached across the table and took her hand. "Liv, there is a need," he said. "Look, I'm sorry about yesterday. I shouldn't have gone about it the way I did. But it's not really about that." He hesitated, massaging the back of her palm. "This thing you're going to do, these abilities — I've seen the way they affect your body. And I think I know you well enough by now to know that you're not going to wait, that you're going to jump in head first, today, if possible. If Walter has the cortexiphan ready. Am I right?" He waited for her to deny it, then continued when she didn't. "But here's the rub... I love you, Olivia, and if at all possible, I want you to come back. I want us both to come back. And anything that I can do that'll give you an edge, anything that'll increase the odds of that happening, of us continuing on once this is over — including force feeding you and loading you up on protein and vitamins — I'm gonna do. I may not be able to shift between universes or blast bad guys with my mind, but I can do that, at least."

Olivia swallowed a sudden lump in her throat, trying to forestall the tremor running through her chest. Not for the first time, she wondered what she had done to deserve him. "Well... I guess I can't argue with that, can it?" she said quietly, lowering her head. After a moment, she met his gaze again, willing her eyes to remain dry and clear. "So I guess Nina knows about you and me then?"

"Well, I didn't say it in so many words, but I wasn't trying to hide it. Why? What difference does it make?"

Did it make a difference? Maybe? The woman was devious. If there was a way she could use the information to her advantage, she no doubt would, and without hesitation. Or, at least, she would have, before the end of the world. But now? Who knew what even motivated the woman now? Broyles seemed to trust her, and she and Walter apparently went way back. But in spite of all that, Nina Sharp had been a manipulator in the old world, and Olivia doubted that part of her personality had just gone away. Still, she had offered them all sanctuary, so there was that.

"I don't know, probably not," she admitted with a shrug. She took a gulp of coffee, savoring the flavor before swallowing it down. It was good coffee, finally. "I guess it's hard for me to trust her fully. I don't really know her all that well, you know? And during our cases before the outbreak, she wasn't what I would call forthcoming."

"You may have a point there," Peter said, chuckling as he forked up an absurdly large piece of egg and green pepper, then wolfed it down. "But then again, she was the CEO of a multi-national technology conglomerate with billions of dollars at stake. I'm sure she had shareholders to think about, not to mention William Bell."

"Now you sound like, Charlie," she muttered, rolling her eyes. "He told me almost the exact same thing during the Flight 627 investigation when I wanted to bring Bell in for questioning."

"Charlie was a wise man," Peter said in a somber voice.

Phantom pain shot through Olivia's heart at the memory of her old friend. "You're right. He was."

#

Not long after they were both finished eating, people began trickling into the break room, and a line quickly formed behind Peter, who was soon busy serving up made to order omelets for everyone. The room became loud with layers of competing voices, conversations and ringing laughter.

Olivia found herself cajoled into the action, working the other skillet beside Peter's, despite having never been particularly adept at forming omelets. It was easier to just scramble it all together, and she dared him with a dangerous glint in her eyes to say a word in comparison. Wisely, he did not.

As the orders rolled in, she got a sense of the mood and hierarchy of Nina's people. Most of them had been security or technicians in the old world, before accompanying the executive — or escorting her, more likely — on the journey from Manhattan to Newark. They seemed pleasant enough, and from what she could gather, had spent most of their time below ground in the Massive Dynamic archives and research facility. Until they'd been forced to flee, at least. If any of them resented a group of newcomers joining them and eating their supplies of food, they gave no sign of it. She found herself flooded with questions on the conditions outside the New York metro area, on Boston, and the surrounding countryside, what they had seen, what they had heard. Either their interest was genuine, or Nina's control over her people was ironclad, and both possibilities suited her just fine.

The others from her group arrived before long; Astrid and Claire, Lincoln, Rachel and the girls. Broyles, not long after them, followed suspiciously by Nina a short interval later. Both of them pointedly ignored each other, which seemed odd, all things considered. Had they spent the night together? Olivia found the idea difficult to fathom, but there was that kiss between them as evidence.

While finishing an egg scramble for a man from Hoboken who served on Nina's security detail, she glanced to her left and found Peter serving up eggs for Gina and Ella, both of whom seemed ecstatic to eat real eggs for a change. Sneaking covert glances their way, she observed Peter as he tried to teach them his flipping trick, his voice patient as he explained how it was done. Continuing to watch unnoticed, her free hand strayed down to her womb, to where their unborn baby was growing inside her. Unbidden, images of a faceless child peppering him with questions flooded her mind.

She noticed her sister watching their interaction also, her expression wistful. Their eyes met, and Rachel grinned. Olivia returned the look, wondering who her sister was thinking about. A certain sharp-haired man from another universe? Lincoln was seated at a table with Astrid and Claire, and both women looked on the verge of falling into hysteria from some story he was regaling them with. If they were sleeping together, Rachel had yet to mention it to her, and it seemed likely she would have by now. Had he told her he was leaving yet? Perhaps that explained her earlier look.

Near the end of the breakfast hour, Walter at last emerged from the basement looking as if he hadn't slept a wink. Deep bags resided under his eyes as he strode in behind Brandon Fayette. Upon entering the break room, he hesitated, glancing around, his gaze quickly finding and settling on Peter, before finally shifting to herself.

Olivia lifted an eyebrow in a silent question. Had he done it? She directed the thought his way with a pointed glance.

Walter's lips trembled. He looked away, wringing his palms together, his face slack. Finally, he swallowed visibly, then met her gaze once more from across the room. With a sigh, he nodded once, then moved forward without looking at her again, stepping into the short line behind Peter.

He did it, she thought, and gasped silently at the electric thrill that traveled up her spine, tingling the nerves at the base of her skull. He made cortexiphan. Peter's word's from earlier echoed between her ears.

...you're going to jump in head first... am I right?

Peter knew her all too well. And he was right. She would try it that very instant if at all possible, but, she supposed waiting until after Walter had eaten his breakfast before approaching him was the least she could do. As he moved closer to the front of the line, the huge bags under his eyes came into focus. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically, if the dullness behind his blue eyes was anything to go by. She wondered if he had pulled an all-nighter, and felt a surge of guilt at the thought.

When Walter reached the front of the line, Peter seemed unsurprised to find his father standing there. He shot a glance her way, then leaned in close and whispered a question in his father's ear, which elicited another weary nod.

Peter pulled back, his face grim. "I guess it's a go, then," he said softly, giving her a sideways glance before turning back to his skillet to prepare Walter's omelet.

"I guess so," Olivia murmured in reply. Across the room, she noticed Brandon Fayette whispering in Nina Sharp's ear. Of course he would report to her. She wasn't sure why it bothered her, but it did, for some reason, which she could only attribute to her natural distrust of Nina Sharp showing through. "Are you sure you've got it, Walter?" she asked, turning back to him and Peter.

Walter gave a tremulous smile and shrugged. "After much trial and error," he began, "I'm reasonably certain the formula is correct. The taste and color are there. I believe it is cortexiphan. But again, as I told you yesterday, my dear, the only way to test it is to inject it into the base of your skull and see what happens. Are you certain you wish to proceed, Olivia? If you will give me more time, perhaps I can come up with another, safer, alternative." He hesitated, frowning as he peered over Peter's shoulder. "And please pay attention to what you're doing, Peter. You're going to burn my breakfast! Eggs are very delicate, son. You should be aware of that."

"I am aware of that, Walter," Peter grumbled, shaking his head. "This may come as a shock to you, but this is not the first omelet I've made in my life — or even this morning."

"Walter, how soon can you be ready?" she said, giving in to her rising impatience. "All I need is a shot?"

"A shot is one way, an IV drip another, I suppose, though it would take a bit longer. The choice is yours, dear. And I can be ready as soon as you are, but... I would like to eat first, if at all possible. Any maybe hit the crapper, also," he added with a cagey grin. "I've been horribly constipated as of late."

"Um, that's a little... too much information, Walter," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Finish your breakfast and your... other thing, and then we'll talk."

Eyeing her sister and Ella at their table, Olivia steeled herself, then gave Peter's forearm a gentle squeeze before leaving him and his father behind and crossing over to them. They were just finishing their eggs, and Ella wore a huge smile when she pulled out a chair and sat down across from them. She met Rachel's gaze. Her sister frowned, perhaps sensing what was coming.

Now came the hard part.

#

Olivia leaned back in the office chair, resting her head on the back cushion's top edge. A ring of concerned eyes surrounded her, Peter and her sister's the most prominent among them. Next to the chair was a tray with several cotton swabs and alcohol, and a pair of small vials, each filled with a reddish-brown fluid that looked almost like tea, except it wasn't. Sitting beside the vials were a pair of syringes, equipped with needles that looked freakishly huge.

You've got to be kidding me, she thought, eyeing the syringes with more than a hint of trepidation. Those look big enough for a fucking horse.

"Are you sure those are the right needles, Walter?" she said. "I mean, they're... a little big, aren't they?"

"Eh...?" Walter gave the syringes a frown, then shook his head. "No, they should work just fine. This is the only size we have on hand, in any case, so I'd say we're rather lucky in that sense."

Lucky? Gulping, she tried to work moisture back into her mouth. She hadn't given much thought to the administration of the drug, but now that it was upon her, the uncertainty of what she was about to do began to sink in. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple. You asked for this, Olivia. Stop being a coward. It's the only way.

Taking in a deep breath, she looked up at Walter. "All right. Let's do this. How's it going to work?"

"Well, there's not too much to it, really," he replied. "You'll receive a pair of injections, each into the back of your neck, just above the C1 vertebrae. You may feel... something, initially, but don't be alarmed. It's all perfectly natural."

"There's nothing natural about any of this, Walter," Rachel said, still glowering, arms crossed tightly. "What guarantees do you have that this isn't going to hurt my sister?"

Walter turned to regard her. "There are no guarantees, Miss Dunham," he said in as sober a voice as Olivia had ever heard from him. "We are navigating beyond the realms of known science in this endeavor. All I have to offer is the knowledge that the cortexiphan was safe before, when Olivia was a child, and in all likelihood, it will be safe again, with her brain already having been acclimatized to its effects."

Olivia didn't miss how Walter neglected to mention his uncertainty that he'd even made the drug correctly, and that cortexiphan would more than likely kill a normal adult full stop. It seemed he knew Rachel well enough to recognize the need to edit his explanations. She glanced at Peter and found his face wooden, utterly emotionless. He was taking the whole thing about as hard as she'd expected. But, to his credit, he made no attempt to stop her. She held his gaze, until the facade he was wearing began to crumble. I'm going to be fine, she thought toward him. We're going to be fine.

"How soon until the drug takes effect, Walter?" Broyles said from where he was standing between Nina and Astrid. He wore a deep frown that made clear his discomfort with what was happening. "She's not going to just vanish, is she?"

"Vanish? I should think not. Not unless she chooses to. As for how long, the drug should take effect immediately." Walter picked a syringe and one of the vials. "Are you ready, my dear? Are you certain you want to go through with this? No one could fault you for being hesitant."

"She's already made up her mind," Peter said, speaking for the first time since they'd made their way down to the lower level laboratory. "We're just wasting time here debating it."

"Peter!" Rachel said, skewering him with a furious glare. "I can't believe you! That's my sister you're talking about. That's Olivia! The woman you love. She's not a fucking lab rat."

But I am Rachel, Olivia thought sadly. Sometimes I think it's why I was born. "Peter's right, Rach," she said before Peter could respond. "I have made up my mind." She motioned for Walter to begin. "Let's get this over with."

Walter sighed, glancing between Rachel and herself. "Very well," he said, then began preparing the two syringes, drawing copious amounts of the reddish liquid into each. He talked as he went about it, his voice taking on a lecturing tone, explaining how the first dose was merely to prep her brain for the influx of cortexiphan, and how the second — which was far greater — would bring the amount of cortexiphan in her brain to levels far beyond what he and William Bell had ever envisioned. Enough, in theory, to allow her to pass freely between universes.

"How old was I the first time?" she asked, watching uneasily as he filled the second syringe, holding it up to the light overhead. "Do you remember?"

"Three? Four?" Walter shrugged, setting the hypodermic needle down on the tray. He circled her chair, until he stood directly behind her. She glanced upward, where he was holding the first syringe up, tapping out the air bubbles. "I'm afraid I can't recall the exact date. Young enough that your neuron pathway development was still at its peak. Ideally, according to Belly's theory, introducing cortexiphan before the natural limiting process of the human brain's potential could even begin to occur would give the highest probability of success." Olivia felt his hands on the back of her head, pushing the mass of her hair aside, exposing the back of her neck. Then his fingers began probing, pushing on the top of her spine until he found the spot he was looking for. Something soft and wet dabbed at her skin. "Lean forward now, my dear," he murmured, and then something sharp pressed against her skin, just below her hairline. "Yes, I suspect, given the chance," he continued, "Belly would have preferred a newborn, or even a child still in utero to test the process on, but how could we have asked that of anyone?"

In utero? Olivia frowned, all at once frigidly cold on the inside. In utero. She was just beginning to grasp the meaning of his words, and more importantly, what that might mean for herself when the pressure on the back of her neck became a fiery splinter, stabbing inward.

Olivia gasped, and then an explosion detonated inside her head, banishing all thought.

Her eyes bulged out of their sockets. A tempest of pain blasted through her skull as blinding colors intruded on the edges of her vision, dilating inward. Her heart bucked inside her chest, pounding like gunshots. Her body jerked, skin prickling with alternating hot and cold flashes that left her breathless. Mouth gaping open, her fingers clamped around the arms of the office chair. The room blurred into a rainbow of insubstantiality. The faces surrounding her drew back, receding away from her. Her mind was floating through time, her body falling through space.

She became aware of someone else.

Peter. He was in front of her, kneeling. Covering his face was a satin sheen that sparkled and glinted. His mouth opened and closed, but there was no sound, only torrential chaos flowing through every particle of her self. Her mind was on fire. Her mind was splayed open, melting like soft wax. She felt Peter's hand on her knees and at the same time felt her knees through his hands. She felt a strange doubling, as if she were more than one person, more than two. Suddenly she saw herself, sitting on the chair; a thin, blonde-haired woman with a wan face and vacant eyes. The view shifted, moved to the side, then vanished beneath a raised hand.

I'm dying... The thought dredged up from the bottom of her soul. I'm... dying...

But she didn't die. Instead the chaos began to recede, instant by instant, eternity by eternity. She became aware of clamoring voices, speaking from the other end of the earth. They started as a faint buzz, then grew louder, louder, until they were megaphones shouting beside her eardrum. Pain blasted through her skull, pain like a thousand needles puncturing her flesh at once. She tried to scream but her body was gone, only her mind remained, floating in the vastness of space.

One voice stood out from the others. She focused on it, bringing every ounce of her will to bear, until it alone echoed inside her head. As it did so, other perceptions became apparent. She felt her body again. She felt other feelings, other sensations, outside of herself. She felt her sister, emanating waves of terror. And there was Broyles, stern as an old oak tree, and Nina Sharp with her robotic appendage. The woman was colder than ice. Astrid with her heart of gold. Lincoln Lee, watching nervously from across the room. The man Brandon Fayette, brimming with unbridled glee. Walter was nearby, filled with terrible consternation. She felt their hearts beating, the blood rushing through their veins.

And there was Peter, in front of her. She could feel him, feel inside his skin. He was bursting with beautiful light. With love. It burned through him like wildfire. Peter...

She felt the atoms in the chair beneath her, shifting like liquid silver. The floor. The ceiling. The walls. The shelves of lab equipment; the beakers of glass, the vials and tubing, the jars and bottles. Their structure was messy, disorganized. Without understanding how, she inserted her self, her inner eye, into their granularity, into the vast distances between swirls of mesmerizing particles. A series of running thoughts broke across the surface of her scattered mind.

So much space. There's nothing here... Why aren't they floating? They should be, like clouds up in the sky? Floating...

"Olivia! Olivia. Stay with me. Look at me!" Peter's voice intruded from the other side of the universe.

She looked then, meeting his gaze with her own eyes. As she did so, a resounding crash rattled the void in which she drifted. What was that?

Peter's voice came into focus. "That's it. Look at me. I've got you. I've got you. Come back to me."

"Peter...?" Olivia blinked, and the shuttering of her eyes seemed to take decades. In the interim, she became aware of her body again, of a dull ache behind her eyes, in the back of her neck. "Peter?"

"It's me, sweetheart," he said softly, touching her face. "You're back. You're okay."

"What happened? How long was I out?" she asked, shooting glances around the room. Everyone was still there, though she thought her sister might be on the verge of fainting. Even Nina Sharp looked stunned, and Broyles, too.

"You were out only for a few moments, my dear," Walter said, stepping into her line of sight. In his left hand was another syringe, its barrel filled to the brim. "Furthermore, I believe it's safe to say it's working."

"Working? Oh... wow!" Brandon Fayette exclaimed, hands on top of his head as he looked around with apparent amazement. "That was wild! Did you guys see that? A full on psycho-kinetic episode! It was freaking amazing!"

Only a few moments? It felt like an eternity had passed. She met Peter's gaze. "What does he mean? What did I do?"

Peter threw a nervous glance behind him. "Well... uh, you may have damaged some of the glassware," he said, turning back to her with a crooked grin. "Or all of it. But it's nothing that can't be replaced. All that matters is that it worked, and that you're okay."

"How did you do that?" Brandon Fayette said, his pudgy face animated as he suddenly appeared over Peter's shoulder. "What was it like? Can you do it again? What else can you do?"

"Brandon, that's quite enough," Nina Sharp interceded sharply.

Olivia ignored them both. There had been something, right before Walter had injected her. Something he'd said. Something about... in utero. The baby. Fear blotted out the room, blotted out everything except for the sound of her own breaths, harsh in her ears. Oh my god. What have I done? Panic seized her by the throat, squeezing inexorably, followed by a spike of stark terror crashing down with the weight of a mountain. What have I done? What have I done to my baby? She met Peter's gaze. To our baby?

"What is it?" Peter's voice intruded. He took hold of her hand. "Olivia, what's wrong?"

She shook her head, unable to speak. Drowning beneath waves of surging guilt and fear, she reached out with her mind, trying to sense the tiny life growing inside her as she had done once before, when the fresh had taken a bite out of her shoe. It was remarkably simple to do so, far easier than it had ever been. Though whether from her current state of mind, or from the increased level of cortexiphan in her system, she couldn't say.

"Liv...?"

Olivia exhaled slowly, relief making her head spin. It was there; a minute spark glowing in an endless void. Had it changed? Was it any different? She couldn't be sure. It seemed the same, mostly. So small. So helpless and feeble. And I'm the one that's supposed to protect you,she thought, feeling utterly wretched. I promise I'll be better. I just have to do this, for the both of us. For the three of us. She sent the tenebrous spark inside her thoughts of love and warmth and safety. And did it flare up? Even for a microsecond? Did it respond? Perhaps it was her imagination. Perhaps it was merely her own desire talking back to her.

"Liv!" Peter said again, squeezing both of her knees. "Are you with me?"

"I'm here," she said, taking in a breath. She wet her lips, mopping a hand across her brow. "I'm sorry. It's... all a bit much. I can't explain it."

"I get it," he said, relief blooming in his eyes. "I thought you were checking out on us again for a second there."

Walter loomed over Peter's shoulders. "Agent Dunham, unless you want to experience what you just experienced again," he said, still holding the second syringe aloft, "I suggest we do the final dose now, rather than later, before the cortexiphan has a chance to fully dissipate into your system."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Rachel spat. Her face was red, her eyes dark, brimming with anger and fear. "I don't care if you can make stuff float around. That shit looked like it was frying your brain, Olivia. And you're going to let him give you more? Do you actually like being his lab rat?"

Olivia met her sister's gaze calmly. I'm sorry, but this is what must be. "Rachel, if you can't watch this, then you should leave. This is what I'm doing. I'm sorry."

Rachel pinched a hand over her mouth, shaking her head. Her eyes filled with tears. Without another word, she twirled around and stalked out of the room, brushing roughly past Lincoln who stood watching silently from the doorway.

"I'll go after her, Olivia," Astrid offered in a quiet voice, glancing back toward the door. "If you want that is. She wasn't there before, after Flight 627. She doesn't know."

She doesn't know her sister was already a freak? The thought came automatically, almost in reflex. She forced herself to smile at her former assistant, now her closest friend other than her sister and Peter. "I know, Astrid," she said. "And thank you. She means well. She's just worried." She waited until Astrid was gone, then glanced up at Walter. "Let's get this over with."

Walter nodded, his lined face looking even sadder and more aged than was usual of late. "Very well. Lean forward once more, my dear."

As he had intimated, the second dose was easy compared to the first, as if her brain were still saturated, her senses still acclimated to the drug's effects. The moment passed with barely a glimmer, and she kept her abilities in check. And though the pain and confusion were gone, the lingering guilt and fear about what she was doing to herself, to the baby, and to Peter, remained, ever present.

#

A few hours later, Olivia found herself skimming across the choppy waters of Upper Bay. The little boat surged and bounced, skipping and hopping over the waves, instead of cutting through them, as a larger craft might have. The boat was flat bottomed, with bare metal exposed all around. Other than a thin cushion atop the pilot's chair, there was not a hint of comfort to be found. The outboard motor blared, screaming with indignation at every bouncing impact. The baleful eye of the afternoon sun glared down, impossibly bright as it glinted off the water. Hot and humid air roared in her ears, whipping her hair about. She looked back, eyeing the arcing rooster tail of water spaying up behind them as they chugged along. The v-shaped foam of their passage swerved steadily westward, back toward the wreckage guarding the mouth of the channel.

There had seemed no point in waiting.

Water travel was fairly routine for Nina's people, apparently, and a boat was already waiting for them, fueled up and ready to go. There had been several to choose from, but only two were small enough to find a path through the floating junkyard that occupied the narrow channel stretching between Newark and Upper Bays. After seeing the wreckage up close, she had not a single doubt that the Coy Mistress would have never made it through, not even close. She had spotted the yacht several minutes ago, still docked where they had left it, off to the west. She had plans for the boat, if by some miracle it all worked out.

She held no illusions that it would work out, however. Things rarely worked out, all nice and tidy, wrapped up with little red bows. No, in real life, in her experience, at least, and especially as of late, most endeavors ended in tears, and suffering. Part of her expected no different from this one, no matter how much she might wish it otherwise.

Saying her goodbyes had been difficult; to Ella who had been sad and quietly afraid; to a still tearful Rachel, who had refused to even speak to her; to Astrid and Claire, both of whom had put on hopeful faces for her benefit; to Gina, the little girl who'd been through so much but was still struggling on. Even to Nina Sharp, who had told her she would do well, as if the woman thought herself some sort of guide or teacher, as ridiculous as the notion seemed. And finally, to Walter. The elder Bishop had been tearful and contrite, his voice a quiet whisper as he'd stepped forward, hugging her gently, as if he were afraid of breaking her, or more likely, of her reaction. He'd smelled like marijuana, and she couldn't fault him for it — indeed, part of her wished she had been one to partake in such activities, if for no other reason than to calm her nerves.

My dear Olivia, he had said in her ear. I couldn't be more proud of you were you my own daughter, my own flesh and blood. I know I've told you before, but... I am so, so terribly sorry. For everything that I've done. Thank you for... for choosing to look past it, and for making my son as happy as he can be. And for Peter's sake, you must come back to us, you simply must.

Of course she had assured him she would do everything in her power to do so. She hoped to come back. She hoped to see them all again, to live out the rest of her life in peace, with Peter and her family, and even start her own little family unit. But who knew what the future held? For any of them? The way ahead was fraught with peril.

She shot a glance at Peter, seated beside her on the widest bench in front of Broyles. His overgrown hair fluttered in the wind. Locked forward, his gaze never left the northern horizon, where the Manhattan skyline rose in the distance. He and Walter had said their goodbyes, also. Much to her surprise, he had pulled his father aside, and whatever he'd said, in the end, Walter had choked up, engulfing Peter in his arms, clutching him to his chest. Even more surprising, was that Peter had allowed it, even going so far as to pat his father's back, offering comfort of a sort, if a bit half-hearted. She wondered what had passed between them, but Peter had not spoken of it, or even uttered a single word since they stepped onto the boat — to her, or to anyone. He was on edge, like a high tension wire cranked tighter by every passing moment. No doubt, in part, at least, to the pale green figure rising above the water in the distance.

Liberty Island lay dead ahead. The island's mass was just coming into view, below the ripples of Lady Liberty's skirts.

"You sure about this?" Peter said suddenly over the whine of the motor. His eyes stayed focused forward, locked on the horizon.

Olivia blinked. How did he always seem to know when she was looking at him? In her mind, at least, she'd been fairly covert.

Was she sure about crossing over? Not even remotely. But if her goal was to speak with Walter's counterpart in Lincoln's world, then crossing over where he spent most of his time seemed the most obvious way to go about it. Lincoln had agreed, though he had warned her the plan was not without a certain amount of risk. On his world, Liberty Island was under heavy guard twenty-four hours a day and off limits to the public, reserved for those with only the highest of security clearances. He had not come right out and said so, but she'd had the distinct impression that being shot on sight as foreign agent, or at the very least, detained, was not out of the question. Predictably, Peter hadn't cared for the idea, not one bit, and neither had Broyles, but they were out of options. Instead of being stable, the infection had changed, and not for the better. Who knew when it would change again, and what new terrible effects it might have? Walter was all but certain that it was the result of some event or agent from another universe, perhaps on purpose, perhaps even inadvertently. And now that she had a lead, even one as tenuous as this, it had become a case like any other. Which made her first witness to interview the Secretary.

"Peter, I don't see any other way, do you?" she said, then paused as the little boat hit a particularly rough of water. "The Secretary might know something. He might even be willing to help us. They've been at war for years with this other universe. He must know something."

"Have you considered the possibility that he's the one responsible?"

"For the infection?" Olivia said, taken aback.

Peter shrugged. "I have the distinct impression that Lincoln doesn't trust him, and everything he's told me makes me think he's nothing like Walter. When we were prisoners together, I could hear him in his cell, going on about his secretary. I thought he was out of gourd, but he wasn't. He was talking about this man, this Secretary. Olivia, he didn't have anything nice to say about him. Quite the opposite."

Olivia hesitated, glancing back at Lincoln seated behind Broyles in the bow. Hearing Peter speak so about a man that was likely another version of his real father was surreal. She had thought he might feel something toward this version of Walter, some kind of pseudo-connection, possibly, but that didn't seem to be the case. Far from it.

"So what are you saying?" she said. "That you don't think I should go? I already knew that. Peter, the night Walter took you from your world — that event seems like it's the center of everything that's happened. In Lincoln's world, and maybe in our world, too, for all we know. If anyone knows something, it's Walter. Be it ours, or theirs, or some other version of him somewhere else. And if we have to track down every single one of him until we find the answer, then that's what we're going to do. But I don't think it will come to that. You heard Walter's theory. Whatever's causing the infection, he thinks it's near us in terms of... how did he put it?"

"In terms of spacial and relative probability?" Peter supplied, glancing over at her.

Olivia snorted. "Yeah. That. Whatever that even means."

"Well, according to Walter, it means that some realities may be closer, more... accessible, than others, based on the differences between the originating probability sets, or in real world terms, based on things that had happened or didn't happen. If you think of the multi-verse as a giant tree, then every time something big and world changing happens or doesn't happen, you could say a new branch is formed, and each branch has small stems or branches, based on smaller events. In theory, I would think, realities on a common branch would likely be closer to one another, spatially if that term even means something when we're talking about dimensions beyond the three we can see and touch and feel." Peter looked at her and smiled, emotion creeping back into his face for the first time since they'd stepped on board. "Does that help at all?"

Olivia pursed her lips, considering. His eyes were incredibly blue and vivid at that moment. She found herself wondering if it was the stark sunlight or his terra-cotta t-shirt with a yellow smiley face across the chest bringing the color out. "Did I ever tell you that you're kind of cute when you go all professorial on me?" she said squinting up at him.

Peter's eyes lit up, a grin stretching his lips from ear to ear. "Is that so?" he said. "Maybe I'll keep that in mind, Agent Dunham."

She gave his thigh a squeeze. "It's gonna be fine, Peter. I can feel it."

"Can you?" he said, eyeing her askance.

"No, not really," she admitted with a shrug. "But it's what I want to happen. More than anything." She glanced ahead of them, where the one-armed Statue of Liberty now towered overhead. "Look, we're almost there."

The island was close. The patina figure of the Lady Liberty loomed only several hundred yards away. Overgrown grass made a green carpet that lapped up against the old star-shaped fort that served as a pedestal beneath the statue's feet. Set back from the shore was a retaining wall of weather bricks covered in algae where they met the earth. Having visited the island once nearly a decade ago, she remembered the sea wall encircling the island in its entirety, and that a pair of docks jutted out into the ocean off its eastern and western shores. Of the missing arm with its torch, there was no sign of yet, or Lady Liberty's assailant. The motor's belligerent tenor changed as Broyles swung the little boat starboard, angling toward the eastward facing shore.

"See anyone?" Lincoln called up from the back of the boat. "Or anything?"

Peter pulled a pair of binoculars from the duffel bag behind their seat. He scanned the shoreline, chewing on the corner of his lip. "Looks deserted," he reported after a moment. "No, wait. I see something. Looks like a soldier. Right there on the path leading up to the fort."

Olivia looked but all that was visible was the faint form of a person, standing upright in the distance. As they drew closer, it became clear that it was a man, or had been. The infected began lurching eastward as they rounded the island's southern tip, trawling toward the low dock now visible above the water. A tangle of wreckage came into view, previously hidden by the bulk of the statue's base. Planted upside-down in the soil was an enormous fist, still clutching the missing torch, crushed nearly flat like a stomped-on can of soda. Buried among the mounds of rubble and furrowed earth surrounding the dismembered statue were hunks of twisted metal that vaguely resembled parts of an aircraft, already showing signs of rust, of settling into their final resting places.

Broyles killed the motor as they approached the dock, turning sharply at the last moment and sliding them in as if he'd been driving watercraft all his life. And maybe he had. What did she actually know of his life outside of the FBI? Nothing. Maybe he'd been a fisherman, or had loved to water ski. She'd never even thought to ask until that moment.

As the boat bumped up against a wooden piling, slick with slime rising up from the water, Peter jumped out, scrambling up a rusted ladder bolted to its outward face. He tossed them down a thick rope, clearly made for tying off much larger craft than theirs, and Olivia looped it awkwardly around one of the bench seats. It would hold, hopefully. She tossed Peter their gear, the followed him up the ladder, with Broyles and Lincoln joining them on the dock a moment later.

A lone infected rushed toward them on the shore, following a waist-high fence of cast iron that topped the sea wall. The creature's eagerness to make their acquaintance was obvious in the way it continually bumped up against the fence, as if taking the fastest possible route was thought in the remnants of its brain. Or, she thought grimly, maybe it was a geometry teacher in its former life.

Lincoln glanced down at the dock, shaking his head. "This isn't here on my world," he said quizzically. "The only way onto the island is by helicopter or by one of the official transports at shift change."

"Where's the best place to cross over?" Olivia said, keeping one eye on the approaching infected. It had nearly reached the opening in the fence that led out onto the dock. "Inside? On the grounds somewhere?"

"Definitely not inside. That's just asking to get shot by some corporal with a loose trigger finger. Somewhere out in the open, where they can see us. We may have to... convince them we are who we say we are, and my Show-Me is long gone. On my world, at least, there's a landing pad on the backside of the statue. I say we try to cross over there."

"Show-me?" Peter asked with a frown. "That some kind of ID?"

"Yup. It's illegal to walk around without one. People can go to jail for that."

Now it was Olivia's turn to frown. "Really? For not carrying an ID? Sounds kind of... I dunno, fascist, to me, don't you think?"

Lincoln shrugged, crossing his arms and scratching uncomfortably at one elbow. "Hey, I didn't make the rules," he said. "I just have to live by them. We've been at war for a long time, first with nature itself, and now with this other reality that's doing its best to kill us all. It may not be what you're used to, but we do what we have to do."

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean anything by it. It's just... surprising, that's all."

Broyles spoke then, eyeing the shoreline at the opposite end of the dock. "There's a similar open space behind the statue here, too, Lincoln." His dark eyes were turned inward, filled by some distant memory that stained his face with sadness. "New arrivals go there first. There's a big flagpole in the center, a lot of benches where visitors would sit and eat and people-watch, taking in the view. It was peaceful, when the wind would come in off the water, the seagulls wheeling." He swallowed, eyes closing briefly, and then seemed to shake himself free of some memory. "Anyway, it seems like as good a place as any."

Without another word, Broyles turned and began the long march down the dock to the shore. Lincoln, glanced between them, then turned and hurried after the bald man, whose limp, while still pronounced, had lessened considerably over the last few months. A moment later, Olivia and Peter stood alone. Her hair danced in gusts of salty wind coming off the bay. She gave up trying to contain it, and met Peter's gaze.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"I should be the one asking you that," he replied. He gave her a self-deprecating smile that was all Peter — the old one, from before. "This one's all you, Liv."

"Do... you want to meet him, this Secretary?" Olivia asked carefully. "Maybe... maybe I could take Lincoln first, then come back for you if all goes..." She fell silent, seeing the look on his face.

Peter shook his head slowly. "No. Now that we're here... this man, he may look like Walter, or my real father, I guess, but he's not. He won't know me, won't understand me. He has a son. And his wife is dead. Beside, this first time is just a test, right? That was the deal."

A dull ache went through her chest at the pain in his voice. "Right," she agreed softly. "That was the deal."

Lugging her gear up onto her shoulder, she reached out and waited for him to take her hand, which he did after a moment's hesitation. They started for the shore, strolling at a leisurely pace. Lincoln and Broyles were far ahead of them, almost to the end of the dock, where the lone infected had finally made its way out onto the boardwalk, precariously near one edge. As it drew near the two men, a gunshot cracked the air, sounding flat and echo-less. Broyles lowered his pistol as the undead soldier pitched off into the water. He glanced back, as if to make sure they were following him, then limped off onto the shore.

Peter remained silent as they made their way closer, his thumb rubbing lightly across the back of her hand. Tension built in the air between them, palpable, like opposing magnetic fields coming together. Olivia felt it in her gut, winding ever tighter, and saw it in the hard line of Peter's jaw. Several times, she was certain he was on the verge of asking something of her, but each time chose to keep the question inside. She wondered if he was hoping she would break the silence. He might be expecting her to, but she could not. There was something between them, all right. Something ugly. And it was her lie, the secret she'd been keeping from him — from everyone she loved.

The last bit of dock was her only chance. The shore loomed closer. A long shadow cast by the statue towering overhead stretched across the grass, nearly all the way to the encircling fence. Broyles and Lincoln Lee were waiting a short way down the brick path that led to the northern side of the island, where she could make out a tall flagpole protruding above the trees. The tension wound tighter, weighing her down like a block of concrete resting on her shoulders.

She still had time. She could still tell Peter everything, tell him about his child. She could still clear the air between them. He would be angry, possibly very angry for keeping it from him. But he would understand, wouldn't he? She could tell him. There's still time! a voice shouted inside her head.

All it would cost her was everything.

The dock came to an end, just ahead. Trembling, Olivia opened her mouth to speak.

"You're planning on coming back, right?" Peter whispered suddenly, stopping her voice. "You have to come back to me, Olivia."

As he spoke, they passed off the dock onto the shore. Pain cinched her throat, squeezing her airway in an iron grip. "I will, Peter," she managed to say, then wiped a stinging tear away with the shoulder of her shirt.

Broyles's gaze flickered between them, but he said nothing of their tardiness. Instead he turned and led them around the old star-shaped fort that made up the statue's foundation, past the giant hand jutting up from the soil. Up close the pale green skin was bent and wrinkled with kinks. Upon reaching the wide plaza at the rear of the statue, she set her bag down, her sword, her pistol. She didn't want to alarm anyone, and arriving armed to the teeth seemed like a good way to do that.

Lincoln peered about, as if he were searching for some landmark or feature that he had expected to see but was not. After a moment, he shrugged. "Whatever. I guess this is good enough," he said. "It's kind of hard to gauge, but we should be out of view of the checkpoint, I think. It'd probably be better to walk up and introduce ourselves than appear out of thin air." He held his hand out to Broyles. "It's been a pleasure to work with you, sir. I'll never forget it."

Broyles took his extended hand, shaking it firmly. "The pleasure's all mine, Captain Lee," he said with a nod. "It's been a real honor. Take care of yourself."

Turning to Peter, Lincoln held out his hand again. "Well, I guess this is it, Bishop," he said, shaking his hand. "Thanks for saving my ass back in Worcester. I owe you one. If there's anything I can do for you in the next few minutes, let me know." He chuckled then, shaking his head. "You know, the other you is going to lose his shit when he hears about this."

"That wasn't me that saved you," Peter told him. "That was all Ella. She saved us all. You want to do me a favor, Lincoln? Remember her."

Lincoln nodded thoughtfully. "I will, always," he said in a somber tone before turning to Olivia. "What now, Liv?" Do you need to... prepare or something?"

"We'll get to that in a second," she said, then crossed over to Peter.

She stared up into his blue eyes for a handful of solid heartbeats, and then yanked his head down, questing for his lips. She wound her fingers in the cloth of his shirt and he pulled her against him, crushing her to his chest. Their lips mashed together, roughly, softly. Filled with a kind of desperation that bordered on fevered madness, she searched for his tongue, yawing into his mouth. Words poured out through her lips; all things she wanted to say, but couldn't; all the emotions she wanted to feel but hadn't allowed herself to. In the end, she pulled away, panting, nuzzling against his nose. His cheeks were wet, his breath hitched.

"I love you, Peter," she whispered against his flesh. "And I'll come back, I promise you."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," he said, then released his hold on her. He stepped back, giving her and Lincoln space. "Whatever you do, remember it's not your world, Liv, and though they might look like us, they're not us."

Broyles held out his hand, but she pulled him into a hug instead. "Watch Peter's back for me while I'm gone, sir," she said in his ear. "He means a lot to me."

"Don't I know it," he replied in a subdued voice. "And I will, Dunham. Be careful over there. We'll be waiting right here for you when you get back."

Olivia pulled away, stepping back and taking Lincoln's hand without looking away from Peter. His face was haunted, and achingly sad. I love you, she mouthed around the knot of grief in her throat, then tore her eyes away. Steeling herself, she met Lincoln's gaze.

"Are you ready to go home?" she asked.

"You know I am."

"Then think of some way to verify that we're in the right world when we get there. And be quick about it."

She took a breath, and then closed her eyes. Relaxing, she opened her mind. As Walter had predicted, it was starting to become second nature, like opening her fist. She expanded her senses, soaking it all in.

The ethereal world beneath the world was there. Reality was a boiling cauldron of infinitesimal activity, tucked back in one corner of her mind, the far away part, the part of her brain where her inner eye resided. And the eye was open. It had been open, if distantly at times, ever since she'd killed the fresh on their way to Nina's compound. She had done her best to ignore it, but it was as if some barrier inside her had broken, or some unknowable threshold breached. The additional doses of cortexiphan had only made it easier, somehow more vivid — if the word even applied to something that had no shape or form, and existed only as vague impressions interpreted by her brain. And there was more, now.

Upon receiving the first dose, she'd felt more than just the texture of reality. She had felt someone else's emotions, had seen the world through someone else's eyes. A distant part of her wondered what the limit was. What was it like to be a god, to do anything? To mold reality as she saw fit? She thought of the other her that Lincoln had told them about, the killer with no soul. Was that it? What was her limit? Did she even have one? She brushed the errant thoughts aside. Peter was right. They weren't the same. Whatever their faces, they weren't the same.

It was time.

She pushed against the barrier, the veil that lay between the worlds. It was thinner than an atom, yet at the same time as impenetrable as time. The veil was the sum total of everything. It was reality. It was the very stuff that she, herself, and everything else she had ever seen or touched was made of. Or perhaps the surface upon which they were imprinted was a better word. A better thought. The veil was also somehow other, impossibly huge, encompassing the entirety of their existence. She felt Lincoln beside her, all the way down to his base particles, all the way down to his own stuff. He was different than herself, different from Broyles, different than the bricks beneath their feet, than the air blowing across the surface of her skin, than the clothes upon his back. The same, yet different. As different as an oak tree was from a maple, or a cherry. And he was different than Peter, who was also different than herself. She had never noticed the difference before. Perhaps she'd never allowed herself to. The difference was minute, even on an atomic scale, but still vital.

With a burst of understanding, Olivia knew how she might go about locating one world among an infinity. She understood how she might take Peter home, if he still had a home. Or Lincoln. All that was required was the correct combination. Or was it a code? A sequence of repeating numbers? Perhaps it was a sound, a vibration. It was all of those things, and none. But whatever it was, she had all she needed — she'd had it all along.

She willed them across... and the veil parted around them. Or perhaps it passed through them. Doing it consciously felt strange, different than the other times she'd crossed over inadvertently. The sensation defied description, as if her brain were incapable of processing the new data, as if it was the wrong kind of code. Mostly, it felt like an icy ripple moving through the base of her skull, and then it felt like nothing.

#

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#

Peter stared at the spot where Olivia had just vanished.

Exhaling, he shuddered at the dagger of pain sliding slowly through his chest. Watching her go had been the hardest thing he could recall doing, ever. It felt like pulling his heart out, and then dying slowly on the inside.

"Now that's not something you see every day, now is it?" Broyles muttered, shaking his head.

Peter could only agree. It wasn't at all what he'd expected. He'd thought perhaps they would grow insubstantial, turning into ghost-like apparitions before disappearing. But it had been the opposite of that. They had simply vanished, without warning, and all at once, like the flipping of a switch, one instant there, the next, not. If he had blinked, he might have missed it.

He gave the older man a sideways glance, then turned and went over to the flagpole in the wide plaza's center. The flag tethered at the top hung listless in between gusts of wind, torn and threadbare, and colors so faded it was difficult to distinguish between them. He sat down on the little bench formed from the flagpole's massive base — seemingly formed of solid stone — and glared up the one-armed statue looming overhead.

I should have gone with her. I should have insisted, no matter what deal we made. There is no deal if you don't come back.

It was strange to think she might be standing right in front of him, perhaps even in the very same spot he was occupying, their atoms overlapping across the dimensions. She was there, yet not. A full five minutes had passed since she'd disappeared before his eyes — far longer than she'd ever managed to stay on the other side before. Walter had done it. The additional doses of cortexiphan had worked, exactly as he'd predicted they would.

After a few more minutes, Broyles hobbled over the flagpole and dropped down heavily on the bench beside him. The former special agent sighed, then leaned back, propping his head back against the stone flagpole base. His eyelids slid slowly shut, and Peter thought he was on the brink of drifting off to sleep until he spoke.

"I was here, years ago," he said suddenly, eyes remaining shut. "I met my wife here. Right over there." He did look then, stabbing a finger toward a particularly impressive tree hugging the northward perimeter fence. "Right beneath that cherry tree over there. She was leaning on the railing, watching the ocean. She was beautiful — too beautiful." His lips curled in remembrance. "She noticed me watching her and walked right up to me. I figured she was either going to slap me, or give me the rough side of her tongue — and boy it could be rough, when she wanted — but she didn't. Instead she asked me if I wanted to get drinks or not. Said she was getting too old to play games. Diane was like that, always finding ways to surprise me."

Peter wasn't sure when the two of them had become best friends, but the man was clearly in some amount of pain. He was divorced, wasn't he? He wondered what had come between them, and since his former boss was apparently in a giving mood, he decided he could ask. "What happened? Between you and your wife?"

"My job happened," Broyles said with a shrug. "I was too wrapped up in my cases, too absorbed to see that she wasn't happy — that she hadn't been happy for a long time."

There seemed nothing to say to that, so Peter nodded, and gazed out across the bay toward Manhattan. The city was stained with ash, painted with destruction. Nestled far back among the jumble of battered skyscrapers, he could make out the faint outline of the Massive Dynamic building. Guiltily, he recalled being secretly relieved when the city had first come into view, when the building had been hidden beneath the deepening haze of dusk. It if had been gone, then there would have been no chance she would leave him. It had been a purely selfish thought, but then he was a selfish man — when it came to the woman he loved, at least. And perhaps in general, too.

He should have known she'd find a way, no matter the cost.

#

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#

Olivia first became aware of cool wind feathering across her cheeks. Then came the cries of hale seagulls, reverberating over the wind from somewhere nearby. Overhead was a low rumble, constant, and steady. A motor.

She opened her eyes.

Peter and Broyles were gone. The massive hand torch stabbed into the ground, the detritus of a destroyed aircraft, all were gone. The flagpole was gone, the wide plaza with its perimeter benches replaced by a massive helipad, with a giant letter H painted in its center. Her world was gone. Rising tall above them, Lady Liberty glowed with a coppery incandescence that seemed otherworldly, holding her torch aloft beneath an astoundingly blue sky. Several huge cigar shaped vessels floated aloft, high overhead. Her mouth dropped open as she froze, gaping at the sight.

Lincoln took one look around and gasped, his face and eyes lighting up. "You did it!" he said, and before she could stop him, he swept her into a crushing bear hug, sweeping her off her feet. "You did it, Liv! This is home!"

Olivia staggered back as he released her, assaulted by a barrage of conflicting sensory inputs. The Statue of Liberty shone like a polished copper pipe. She looked about, taking in the view. A large number of boats of all shapes and sizes were out on the water; sailboats and speedboats and yachts and even what looked like a racing catamaran, lilting in the wind as it swung about, out beyond where the eastern dock should have been, but wasn't. To the north, however, where the Manhattan skyline dominated the horizon, was the greatest shock of all, though she should have been expecting it. Standing tall and proud above the city were the World Trade Center buildings, the Twin Towers. More airships floated in the distance, weaving paths among the skyscrapers. Airships? The sight was decidedly odd, and somehow wonderful in way she was at a loss to describe. A dome of pure honey engulfed a section of the eastern horizon, just north of Brooklyn.

"Are you sure we're in the right place?" she asked, but even as the words escaped her lips, she found that she already knew the answer. Her inner eye was still open. She could sense the veil and the world around her, feel its stuff. It was the same as Lincoln. Here, at least, she was the outsider.

Before Lincoln could reply, there came the pounding of many footsteps, of boots on concrete. An instant later a squad of soldiers decked out in green fatigues with black and red armbands burst into view, rounding the pointed corner of the old fort at a full sprint. Upon seeing the two of them, the soldiers' eyes widened with alarm — both men and women, she noted dimly — and they threw themselves flat as a unit, raising odd-looking rifles as they did so.

Olivia raised her hands slowly as Lincoln stepped forward, offering them his name. "I'm Captain Lincoln Lee, Fringe Div-"

The soldiers opened fire, soft spits like that of a compressed air weapon filling the air.

"No, wait!" Olivia shouted, holding her hands out even as a series of fiery stings erupted across her chest, her arms, the side of her neck.

Gasping, she looked down and found herself quilled by a handful of hypodermic needles shaped like darts, feathered with puffs of red cloth on the ends not stuck into her chest. She reached up, intending to yank one free, but instead her knees gave out, all at once, as if her bones had become jell-o, or had just vanished entirely. Suddenly she was on the ground, on her back, the blue sky and Lady Liberty gleaming above her. Up high overhead, a small plane tumbled through the air, twirling in a death-spiral. Emitting a stream of black smoke, the plane tore a gaping hole through a silvery airship unlucky enough to float into its path.

How strange..., she thought through a deepening fog. How utterly strange. A dull throb pounded hollowed out beats on the back of her head. The daylight and her view of the disaster unfolding above her eyes turned darker by the instant.

Blinking, with a massive effort, Olivia managed to turn her head to the side. Lincoln Lee lay beside her on the concrete. His gray eyes were open, staring sightlessly. She tried to speak, to tell him that she was sorry, but the world evaporated, sweeping her away in a black mist.

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So here we are, the penultimate chapter. Thanks so much to my beta reader for her hard work, as always, and for all your reviews of the previous chapters. The final chapter should be posted soonish*. I think I'll miss you all when its over. Thanks for all your support!