FYI! I've noticed some readers have been skipping straight to the last chapter with this update. I posted two chapters at once, so you might be missing a chapter if you do so!
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Chapter 38
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-Worcester, Massachusetts
Peter watched the pigeons circling lazily over the building in front of Olivia's suv. It had been less than ten minutes since Olivia and the others had gone into the building, without him, he thought bitterly, and he was already getting antsy.
The pigeons appeared to be getting worn out, as some of them had dropped down to the edge of the building, where they gripped the edge of the flashing, imperiously watching over the parking lot. It occurred to him that he wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to get the birds back to Tony. If Walter's reprogramming was permanent, they might have a problem. He picked up his phone off the center console and dialed the lab's number.
"Astrid," he said when she picked up. "Lemme talk to Walter."
His father was on the line a moment later. "Hello...this is Dr. Walter-"
"Walter!" Peter cut in. "It's me, Peter." He really needed to work with him on answering the phone.
"Oh...Hello son! How's Agent Dunham doing?" Walter said brightly.
"Hey," Peter said, ignoring the question. "How long will the pigeons' sensitivity to the magnetic field you programmed them with remain in place?"
"Hmm..." Walter began, "I should think not more than a few hours at most, depending of course on the variance of-"
"So they'll fly back to their original programming when it wears off?" Peter interrupted again.
"I believe so, yes." His father replied after a moment deliberation. "Though...we can't really can't be sure of course, until..."
Peter didn't hear anything else his father said as the engines of Olivia's suv and the other FBI vehicles next to hers, suddenly roared to life, and all thoughts of pigeons went out of his head. His eyes went to the ignition, which was still clearly in the OFF position.
"Woah." he said out loud, twisting around in his seat, trying to spot the source of the truck's unusual behavior. The parking lot outside was empty, with not an electro-man in sight, but he still felt uncomfortable sitting inside a vehicle that seemed to have a mind of its own.
Peter pushed open the door and climbed out, still craning his neck for anyone out of place. He could hear the roaring of more racing engines that seemed to be coming from the behind the multi-colored building. His mind conjured up an image of a man, wreathed in arcs of electricity, stalking around the corner of the structure toward him. The image was complete with bolts of lightning shooting out of his eyes wherever he cast his gaze. He laughed uneasily to himself at the disturbing picture as he moved towards the rear of the vehicle.
The door to the front entrance that the agents and Olivia had gone through suddenly opened, and one of the men Peter didn't know raced outside, and began circling around towards the rear of the building from the left side, his gun outstretched as he rounded the corner and disappeared.
Peter watched the direction he'd gone anxiously for a moment, wishing he had a weapon of his own. Thinking that Olivia might have something in the back of her suv that he could use, he lifted the hatch and looked inside. Her trunk was immaculately clean, completely empty except for a green duffel bag, which he unzipped to check for anything useful. Inside was a towel, that he pushed aside, exposing a pair of black yoga pants and a white t-shirt. When his fingers brushed silk underneath the shirt, he jerked his hand back like he'd touched fire and zipped the bag shut in hurry, feeling his face grow hot.
Nice, Bishop. A voice voice that sounded suspiciously like Charlie's berated him. Very classy!
Ignoring the seventh grader in him that wanted to take another look, he pushed the bag to the side and lifted the floor panel covering the spare tire. A black tire iron was clipped in place in the recessed area.
That'll do nicely, he thought to himself.
Peter quickly removed the iron and moved away from Olivia's truck, toward the other two vehicles parked next to hers. He stopped at the rear of second one, peeking around the corner of the suv to watch the right side of the building. After a moment, he decided to move closer to get a better view. Olivia could lecture him about staying behind all she wanted, but judging from the all engines he could hear in the area, they needed all the help they could get.
He sprinted across the parking lot toward the front of the building to the right of the entrance, and then worked his way down the wall towards the corner. As he neared the end of the wall, he heard a shout that sounded like Olivia, and he peered around the corner toward the rear of the building.
There was a bearded man running toward him, a thin looking fellow, his blue shirt open and flapping behind him. Peter pulled his head back a little, watching as the man looked back over his shoulder at Olivia, who had just come into view, trailing after the man with her gun aimed at his back.
A transformer, mounted up high on the side of the building, suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks, and arcs of electricity shot out of it in all directions. Olivia recoiled at the conflagration, her gun wavering as she moved for cover.
Peter pulled back from the corner, his finger's grip on the tire iron tightening almost to the point of being painful as the sound of the man's footsteps grew closer. He waited until the last possible moment, and then stepped around the corner, swinging the tire iron with all his might.
Joseph Meegar's eyes went wide as he ran straight into the swinging tire iron, which hit him in his upper chest with a sickening crunch. He let out a grunt of pain, his feet flying out in front of him as his upper body was knocked backwards from the force of the blow. His head connected with the pavement first with a loud thud that made Peter wince, and then the rest of him came down and he lay still.
Peter stared down at him, following the path of the blood running down his face from his beard up to what looked like studs of metal sticking out of each of the man's temples. He didn't know what the hell he was looking at, but they looked extremely painful. Walter would have loved to see them, he was quite sure of that.
"Nice timing. You're pretty good with that."
He looked up to see Olivia approaching them, looking exhausted but content as she slid her gun back into its holster and snapped it into place. There was dust on her face, but she looked as nice as ever in the bright afternoon sun.
"I try." he said with a grin. "You okay?"
Olivia nodded, and ran hand across her forehead, wiping away a bead of sweat. "Yeah." she said after a moment, and looked down at Joseph Meegar. "He wouldn't stop running. I was afraid I was gonna have to shoot him."
Peter moved the her side and she nodded down at the tire iron. "Where'd you get that?" she asked.
"Your trunk." he answered, looking back toward her vehicle. "It was the best I could come up with on short notice."
She grinned faintly and pulled out her cell phone. "I need to call for an ambulance." she said, glancing down at the unconscious Meegar. "What do you think those bits of metal are?"
"No idea. That would be a question for Walter." Peter said, and crouched down over the man to take a closer look at the metal studs in his temple. "They look painful as hell, though."
Olivia just grunted in reply, and then moved away from them, putting the phone up to her ear. Peter watched her for a moment before pushing off his knees and rising to his feet as Charlie Francis came around the corner of the building.
He looked down at Joseph Meegar's unconscious condition, frowning at the metal studs and the blood on his face, and then glanced at the tire iron Peter was still holding. Charlie raised and eyebrow but made no comment on it, to Peter's surprise.
"This the perp?" Charlie said. "Liv didn't tell me we were chasing down Frankenstein's monster."
Peter chuckled at the agent's unexpected quip, "Tell me about it. Luckily, this guy might have been a little easier to take down, though."
Siren's began to wail in the distance, the alternating high and low pitches evidence of Olivia's contact with the ambulance district. As the sound grew steadily nearer, he realized that the roar of the heavy equipment engines in the background was gone, and had been for sometime. Apparently Meegar's ability only worked while he was conscious.
The arrival of the ambulance and a whole fleet of police cars ended any further conversation between them as Charlie moved to intercept the police while a team of paramedics rushed toward Meegar carrying a stretcher and a bulky-looking first aid kit.
Peter moved away to let the medics work as they formed a huddle around the unconscious man. He returned the tire iron to Olivia's trunk, and then looked around for the woman herself briefly, before spotting her pacing a track off to one side away from the commotion, on the phone again, most likely briefing Broyles on the situation.
The paramedics working on Meegar seemed to have come to an agreement on what was to be done with him, and they wrapped a gauze around the wounds on his head, and then two of them began working him onto the stretcher. He let out a groan at the jostling, and a third paramedic removed a syringe from their kit and tapped out the air bubbles. He jabbed it into the bicep of Meegar's right arm, and depressed the plunger, informing the others that he'd been instructed to sedate the man if he showed signs of waking, that he was extremely dangerous to himself and to others.
The injection seemed to wake Meegar briefly and he tried unsuccessfully to sit up as the medics began pushing the stretcher toward the open rear doors of the waiting ambulance. Peter trailed after them, and spotted Olivia waiting with arms crossed, standing near the back of the ambulance.
"I heard one of the medics say that they were instructed to keep him heavily sedated." he said as he moved to her side, "I assume that's your doing?"
Olivia nodded expressionlessly, keeping her eyes on Meegar as waited to be loaded into the back of the ambulance.
"I guess you don't want him pulling his whole electro-man thing again." Peter joked, hoping to break her reserve, they'd just solved the case, after all. She should be happy, instead of looking like her dog had just died.
She ignored his comment, and moved toward the stretcher, motioning for the medics to give her a moment with Joseph Meegar before he was taken away.
"Mr. Meegar." Olivia said as she approached the stretcher.
"Miss!" Joseph said desperately. "Do you know where they're taking me? No one will tell me where I'm going!"
"They're taking you to the hospital." Olivia said severely. "They're going to perform some exams. Check to see that your head's okay...And then I'm gonna have some questions for you."
"I just want to go home." he replied groggily, as the sedative began to take effect. "I...I never meant to hurt anyone."
"We're going to try to help you get better."
"That's what they said, too." Meegar reached out for her, but Olivia stepped back, unwilling to let him touch her. "Please...I just want to go home. I want to go back to before..." he gasped, his arm dropping limply to his side.
Olivia shook her slowly. "I'm afraid that's not going to happen, Mr. Meegar." she said gravely. "I'll be seeing you soon."
She nodded at the paramedics to proceed, and then stepped back to Peter's side wordlessly as they lifted the stretcher and pushed Joseph Meegar into the rear of the ambulance. When they slammed the doors shut, she turned to him, a hint of questioning in her gaze, as if she thought he might disapprove of her handling of the situation.
Peter shrugged, watching the ambulance as it pulled away from them. "What's really gonna happen to him?"
"I don't have the clearance to know that yet." she replied with more than a little irritation. "After we're done questioning him...His fate is in hand's of Broyles, and whoever he reports to."
"Nice." he muttered. "What...Broyles doesn't trust you?"
Before Olivia could reply there was a commotion at the entrance to the building. A man in handcuffs was being lead outside through the throng of onlooking police officers and medical personnel by Charlie, who was applying steady pressure at his back.
"Who's this guy?" he said, nodding at the man as Charlie forced him into the back of one of the government vehicles practiced efficiency.
"That's Jacob Fischer," Olivia said darkly. "The man responsible for giving Joseph Meegar his abilities. He's real bastard."
"So what now?" Peter asked, feeling his stomach grumble. Lunchtime was hours ago, and his body was beginning to let him know it.
"No we go to the hospital, and pay a friendly visit Joseph Meegar, when he's ready." Olivia replied, mating actions with words and began walking purposefully toward her parked suv. She looked back at him. "You coming with me?"
"Can we pick up some food on the way?" he said, hurrying to catch up with her.
"Do you ever thing about anything but food, Peter?" she said, casting an amused look his way. "How can you be hungry after all that pie you ate this morning?"
Peter grinned, showing his teeth. "That was this morning. I'm a growing boy, Olivia." he said playfully. "Besides, some of us require more than one meal a day." He gave her a nudge with his elbow for emphasis.
Olivia returned the favor with a quick elbow of her own in his ribs, which nearly knocked the breath out of him. She really was stronger than she appeared.
"Oww!" Peter protested, rubbing his side. "I think that was a little uncalled for, Dunham."
"Get in the car, Bishop." she said pertly, moving around the hood to her door. "We'll get you your food if that'll make you happy."
"Oh, it will." he assured her with a smirk, and slid onto the seat beside her.
Olivia sat beside Joseph Meegar's hospital bed, watching the man struggle to keep his composure, while Peter hovered in the background, leaning against the wall near the door with his hands in his pockets. The metal studs had been removed from his temples, and the top half of his head was wrapped with a thick bandage which resembled a white skull cap.
"So tell me," she said gently. "How was it that the man you knew as Dr. Foster, was able to lure you into his facility?" When he didn't respond right away, she continued. "I know this is difficult for you, Joseph, but we need to determine if there's anyone else like you out there, anyone that was...taken advantage of in the same way you were. Do you understand?"
After a moment Joseph nodded, and then began to speak, staring upwards at the white ceiling, his head shaking futilely. "There was this ad in the back of a magazine..." He swallowed, and his eyes began to glisten with tears, and Olivia thought he was on the verge of breaking down again.
"Do you happen to remember what magazine it was?" Peter said from his place near the door.
"It was...it was a men's...magazine." Joseph admitted, sounding embarrassed, his cheeks coloring as he glanced her direction.
"Hey, we've all been there." Peter grinned sympathetically. "No worries."
Joseph grinned weakly at him, and seemed a little more together than he had been. Olivia was pleasantly surprised at Peter's ability to put him at ease with just a friendly word. She wondered if it was something in his unknown, less than savory past, of which he'd told her very little as of yet, that had given him his ability to read people, or it was just a gift he'd been born with. She tended to think he'd been born with it, and wondered idly if he favored Walter, or his unknown mother more.
"Joseph, what was it about the ad that drew you to it?" Olivia asked, catching his eyes.
Joseph hesitated, and took a deep breath. "My whole life, I've never...never really been...one of those people. Everything...comes hard for me, you know what I mean?" he said, looking in Peter's direction. "My mother..." he began, and then stopped, wiping at his eyes, before continuing. "My mother...she used to tell me that there were two kinds of people in life, the winners...the people that for them...everything comes easy. And the rest were the losers. People like me, she would say." His voice broke then, and tears flowed freely for a few minutes, before he was finally able to speak again. "Anyways...the ads talked about...they talked about untapping your hidden potential, making a better you, they said. I thought...I thought it couldn't hurt. It couldn't make me any worse, at least." he finished bitterly.
"What happened when you responded to the ad, Joseph?" she asked, keeping her voice light.
"They wanted me to come in to their office." Joseph said through a sniffle. "So that they could run some tests on me...to see if I was a candidate for their procedure."
"What kind of tests?" Peter asked.
"Hypnosis, some kind of brain scan." He dabbed at his nose with the edge of his bedding. "I don't really know. They said wanted to...to...realign the electrical impulses in my brain, and that it would make me a more confident person."
"Did you ever see anyone else at their office?" Olivia asked. "Anyone else undergoing the same procedure as you?"
Joseph shook his head, "No...there was never anyone else there." he said, and then covered his face with his hands. "God, I'm such an idiot! My mother was right...I'm so stupid...I'm so stupid..." He kept repeating the phrase, over and over, clawing at his face.
When the lights in the room began to flicker, she looked over at Peter, and nodded toward the door. He got the message and exited the room, hopefully to find someone to re-administer his sedatives. Peter returned a moment later with a nurse, who moved to the Joseph's IV pole and went about replacing his fluid bag.
They weren't going to get anything else useful out of him, she decided. Jacob Fischer was too smart to have let anything slip in front of one of his patients. Olivia rose from her seat and moved toward the hallway outside the room, dragging Peter along in her wake.
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Olivia pulled over under a streetlight near the curb at Peter's hotel. Walter was already back, courtesy of Astrid who had called earlier to notify them the she would be dropping him off there.
"You should get some sleep, Olivia." Peter said, looking over at her while he unbuckled his seat belt. "It's been what, nearly thirty-six hours?"
"I plan on it." she said, feeling amusement and some wonder at his concern. He'd come a long way from the angry man she'd dragged back from Iraq. "Good work today, Peter." she said, meeting his eyes. "With the pigeons and stopping Meegar, and at the hospital, getting him to open up to us."
Peter shrugged indifferently, brushing her comments aside. "Just luck, I think. It was Walter's idea." he said modestly. "Right place, right time." He went to open his door, but stopped, and looked back at her like there was more he wanted to say.
Please don't, she thought at him desperately. He wanted to talk about the hallway outside the lab, she was sure of it. Not right now, Peter, please.
She didn't know if he'd received her thoughts subliminally, or if there was something showing on her face, but after a moment he sighed, and dropped his eyes, then pushed open his door and slid out of his seat and onto the curb. He leaned down, with one hand on the door and the other on side of her car.
"Olivia...if you..." he started, then stopped, looking downwards. "Nevermind...I'll see ya." he said, and closed the door before she could reply.
Olivia watched him move down the sidewalk, his tall framed waxing and waning in the light cast by the streetlights as he moved toward the hotel entrance.
"See ya." she whispered, as he pulled open the glass door and went inside. He greeted the concierge stationed inside the entrance vestibule and then was gone. She pulled away from the curb, and watched his hotel dwindle in the rearview mirror until she was forced to turn and it was gone.
The thought of going back to her empty apartment was not at all appealing, so she went for a drive instead despite her exhaustion, taking the east ramp instead of the west onto I-90 at the last possible moment, as downtown seemed as good a direction as any to go.
Olivia drove in silence, as was usual for her, thinking confused thoughts about Peter and about John, replaying the day he died over in her head, and then the hallucination she'd had outside the lab. They hardly seemed like the same man. Why had she allowed herself to kiss him like that? If he were still alive, his denial of attempting to kill her would have surely fallen on deaf ears. If she were that desperate for physical contact, why not head to her bar in Brighton? Judging by how often men, and women occasionally, had offered to buy her drinks there in the past, she would have no problems finding some faceless stranger to take home. She had always turned them down with a glance and a quick shake of her head before, but what if she didn't? What if she were to accept the drinks, and see where they took her? She turned the idea over and over in her head, weighing the pros and cons of doing such a thing.
She finally came to the conclusion that it was a bad idea, a product of an overextended and exhausted state of mind. Fucking some random man was not going to make the hallucinations stop. If it were that easy, she was certain that she knew of someone who wasn't a stranger, who would be more than willing to oblige her. No, there was something physically wrong with her, she was almost sure of it. Maybe she had brain cancer, or some other horrible malady.
Bright red neon letters, mounted atop a building off the highway caught her attention. Olivia stared at the sign, confused as to how she could be at Chinatown so soon. She didn't remember driving through the intervening space between Cambridge and her current location. Coming out of her haze, she took the next exit off the highway which curled around to the west. She opted for staying off the highway for the drive back to Brighton and continued west through Chinatown, past the street that would take her to her favorite chinese restaurant in the city.
The sidewalks were still crowded with young-looking men and women, laughing and carrying on, unaware of all the terrible people and things that she knew were real. She felt envious of their carefree existence and pity for them at the same time, or maybe the pity was for herself. With every case she worked in her new position under Broyles, she sensed the chasm between herself and what her sister Rachel would term as 'normal people', growing steadily wider. There had always been a distance between herself and others, ever since what had happened with her stepfather when she was a girl. Becoming a federal agent had only widened the gap, but now...it was increasing exponentially. It was like Broyles had told her the day he recruited her...she couldn't go back to before, ever.
The bright lights of Chinatown were fading in her mirrors, and she realized that Bay Village was upon her. John's old apartment was only a few blocks away to the north. She wondered if his mother had sold it yet, or was planning on holding on to it. The streets were darker and the nightlife was absent in the area of the neighborhood she was driving through, though she knew there were certainly areas of Bay Village there were lively enough. John had taken her to some them, in what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Olivia spied a man in a suit walking down the sidewalk ahead of her on the opposite side of the street, next to a gray brick apartment building with rusty fire escapes and window air conditioning units hanging over head. She pulled up abreast of the man, glancing over at him she drove past, and only felt a slight shock at seeing John Scott staring back at her. She really was getting used to the whole going crazy thing.
She quickly pulled over to the curb and got out, remembering at least to turn her car off, but not bothering to lock the doors. John had continued at the same pace, his lengthy stride propelling him ahead of her down the sidewalk. A dog began to bark nearby, maybe protesting at her intrusion, or maybe it had sensed John's specter in the area, she didn't know, or care, really. She glanced back in the direction of the noise, then hurried across the street after John's retreating form, increasing her speed when he suddenly turned down a side street and disappeared. Olivia rushed after him, anticipation at seeing what would happen next making her heart thud loudly in her chest. Turning the corner, she saw him hurrying down a stairwell set into the side of another apartment building not far from her. She raced after him, spinning around a fenced gate at the stairwell's entrance, and then skipping down the steps to a narrow landing with a door set into the concrete foundation of the building. Thinking that John must have gone through the door, she twisted the knob, surprised to find that it was locked.
Of course it's locked! You're chasing after a hallucination, Olivia.
She looked around, considering whether to go back to her vehicle for the lockpick set she kept in her glovebox. Impatiently, she decided her pistol would work just was well, and she shot through the locking mechanism. The report was deafening in the enclosed space, and for a moments she couldn't hear a thing, there was just a ringing in her ears. When she could finally hear again, she threw her shoulder into the door, knocking it back on its hinges.
Inside the door was a dark hallway, with brick walls on both sides. It smelled faintly of dust and mold, as old cellars tended to. Olivia moved inside, keeping her gun drawn and held out before as she worked her way toward a turn in the corridor ahead. When she reached the corner, she peeked around the edge with her pistol.
John was standing about twenty feet away from her at the end of the corridor, hands on his hips, ruffling his suit jacket. He was bathed in blue light from an outside window out of her line of sight, and was watching her intently. They stared at each other for a moment, and she waited for him to speak, to tell her more of his lies, but for once, his apparition didn't appear to be in a talkative mood.
Olivia came fully around the corner, and spotted a light switch on the wall next to her. She glanced down at it and flicked it on. Yellow light banished the blue, taking John with it. The space he'd been standing was empty, in his place was a doorway to what looked like a storage room. She moved forward into the room, keeping her gun drawn more out of comfort, than for any real sense of danger.
The room was small, and instead of a storage room, it appeared to be an office of some kind, complete with desk and file cabinets, and rows of tiered shelves stuffed full of boxes. The desk was situated in a corner, with noteboards mounted on the walls above it. The noteboards were a collage of overlapping pictures and handwritten notes, all pinned on top of one another.
Putting her gun back in its holster, she stepped closer to the shelves, inspecting the boxes. Each was marked with a series of numbers and letters, which if she wasn't mistaken, looked suspiciously like the case numbering system that was used at the Bureau. Several were marked in thick black ink with the word Unsolved scrawled hastily across the front of the box. She thought it might be John's handwriting.
"What the hell is this place, John?" she said out loud, hoping he might appear and answer. "Why did you lead me here?"
He didn't appear, or answer.
Her instincts as an agent took over then, and she retreated from the cellar, unwilling to disturb the scene in any further. When she was back on the street outside the stairwell, she called the FBI dispatch and requested a forensic team to her location as soon as possible, which meant immediately, she'd had to inform the disgruntled dispatcher. She waited until they arrived, then gave them strict orders to catalog and process everything, and send a complete inventory to Special Agent Broyles in the morning.
By the time Olivia was able to leave the team on their own, her level of exhaustion was nearly overwhelming, and she barely made it back to her apartment in one piece after nodding off several times, with only the curb saving her from hitting a lightpole on one occasion.
Inside her apartment, she went straight to her bedroom, removing her clothing on the way, and collapsed on her comforter, falling almost instantly into a deep, dreamless sleep.
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The next day Olivia slept in, and wasn't able to drag herself out of bed until the insistent ringing of her cell phone out in her living room finally woke her from her stupor, early in the afternoon. Her phone had been chock full of missed calls, one each from Peter and Astrid, and several from the office, including two from Broyles. He left a message with last call, telling her to find him when she made it in.
In the Federal Building, after stopping by her office to check her email, she moved the short distance down the hall to Broyles's door, knocked once, and then stuck her head in.
Broyles looked up at her entrance, and rose from his seat in greeting.
"Dunham." he said, motioning for her to come inside. "How are you doing?"
"Sorry for being so late, sir." she began, "I just over-"
"Don't worry about it." Broyles interrupted, waving her excuse away. "You gotta sleep sometime."
Olivia noticed that there was cardboard box sitting on his desk. It looked like one from the cellar she'd found. "So what all did they find in the cellar?" she asked.
Broyles sat back on the edge of his desk. "The team is still cataloging all the files that were in the cellar." he said, and then hesitated. "But from what we've found so far...they seem to indicate that John Scott was conducting his own investigations."
Olivia steeled her face into a mask before replying. "Did the files give any indication of who he might've been working for?"
Broyles shook his head, staring down into the cardboard box. "Not that we can see." he said grimly. "But it appears that many of the cases he'd been working on were Pattern-related."
"He knew about The Pattern?" Olivia said, feeling dumbfounded by this new revelation. Had she ever really known John at all?
Broyles nodded sternly. "He also knew about our friend Dr. Fischer." he said, and reached into the box. He pulled out thick file folder. "In fact, he knew quite a bit more than we did. Including seven other potential Joseph Meegar's that Fischer was subjecting to treatments."
He opened the file and passed it over to her. Olivia quickly glanced through the contents; newspaper clippings with the ads of the sort Joseph hand mentioned highlighted, and what looked like medical records, complete with pictures, of a number of men she didn't recognize.
"Fortunately, none of them had activated yet." Broyles continued. "We were able to locate all seven. Medical services is examining them now, but they appear to be fine, thanks to you. Good work, all around on this case, Dunham."
"You should thank the Bishops." Olivia replied, closing the file and handing it back to him. "We would never located Meegar without both of them. What about Jacob Fischer? Has he given us anything?"
"Fischer's still refusing to cooperate," he answered, his voice showing some irritation. "But I suspect six weeks in solitary confinement might change his mind."
Olivia wasn't so sure. Fischer had seemed too arrogant and sure of himself for her liking. "Well, I hope you're right about that." she said dubiously.
"There was also something else." Broyles said after a moment of strangely uncomfortable silence. He reached into the box and pulled out a small black box. "John Scott's personal effects." he said, handing the box to her across the desk. "It would seem that some of them were intended for you." Their eyes met briefly, and then he turned and left, closing his office door behind him.
Olivia stared down at the box like it had Pandora written across the top. She didn't want to open it...didn't want to see whatever it was. Nothing good could come of it. Her crept out finally, and she flipped back the lock holding the top shut.
Taking a breath, she pushed open the lid and peered in at the contents. The first thing she saw were several pictures of John as a boy, lying on top of some paperwork, which turned out to be his discharge papers from the Marines. His dog tags were there as well, along with his passport. She picked up the dog tags, examining the imprinted letters and numbers, before putting then down and removing the passport. She was about to open it when her eyes fell on a small, black box that had been hidden underneath.
A jewelry box.
Oh, god...Please don't be a ring...Please don't be a ring... She kept repeating the mantra in her head as she dropped the passport and reached for the small box. It was covered in velvet, and she held her breath as she slowly eased back the top.
Her breath came out in a rush, and she felt like she'd just received a punch in the gut as she saw what was inside.
It was a ring. A diamond solitaire engagement ring, if she wanted to be specific. The diamond was huge, much larger and more garish than she would have ever picked out for herself.
With trembling fingers, Olivia pulled it out of the box to examine it more closely. The diamond glistened in the over head lights, and she wondered how many thousands of dollars he'd payed for it. And when he'd payed for it. They had never talked about marriage before, and had only just reached the point of exchanging I love you's in their relationship when it had come to its deadly conclusion.
There was an inscription around the flat, inside edge of the band. She held it up to the light to read. It was just one word.
Always
His words from the hallucination at the Federal Building came back to her.
You know I loved you. I did. Always.
Olivia squeezed the ring in a tight fist, wishing she'd never opened the box. It didn't change anything, it couldn't. He'd never given it to her, never mentioned it or marriage to her. What the hell am I supposed to do with this, John? She thought angrily, and slid the ring back into its slot in the jewelry box. She snapped the lid shut and put the box in her coat pocket, then picked up the larger box and carried it to her office. She put the box in one of her desk drawers, leaving it to deal with at another time.
For whatever reason, the ring stirred her determination to talk to Walter about the visions, and with that in mind, she reached for her phone. Hopefully, she could corner him without Peter or Astrid around.
Walter reached for the last udder, squeezing and pulling on it in a manner he hoped Gene found pleasurable. The milk began to flow, coming out in a squirt with each downward stroked toward the metal bucket sitting underneath. He'd always found milking cows to be relaxing, allowing his mind to think while his hands maintained the repetitive motion, even before his stay in that place, and the practice had come back to him with surprising ease. It didn't hurt that he absolutely loved fresh milk, as well. Unfortunately, he'd been having some difficulty in finding anyone to share it with, as Peter and his young lab assistant both refused to try it, unlike Belly, who'd always been more than happy to drink with him. He heard a moo, and glanced down at his hands. The udders had finally run dry.
"Oh...sorry, my girl." he said rising off the stool and giving Gene a pat on her flank. Her head swiveled toward him, staring at him with one eye. "Let's just keep this between you and I, eh?"
Walter gave her an affectionate pat on the head between her ears, and then grabbed the milk bucket and carried it over to the bunsen burner he'd set up earlier for pasteurization. He poured the milk into a flask and set it over the burner for heating.
"Who was that on the telephone, dear?" he said to the young woman who'd just come out of Agent Dunham's office.
"That was Olivia." she replied, and moved toward the stack of boxes sitting in the middle of the floor. "I think she's on her way here. She asked if Peter was around."
Walter's ears perked up at the mention of his son. "Oh?" he said, turning toward her. "Did Agent Dunham mention why she needed him?"
He had such high hopes for the two of them. It was highly gratifying to watch their courtship ritualistic behavior on a daily basis, even if they would never admit to it being such. Yet. He smiled merrily, thinking about how angry Peter would be if he were able to read his thoughts at that moment.
"She didn't say..." the young woman replied. "Just asked if he was around." She started past him, then stopped and turned back with pretty grin. "Why are you so interested, Walter?"
She was on to him! Walter hurriedly began stirring the milk with a glass implement. "What's that?" he said, feigning distraction. "Oh...it..it was merely a curiosity, my dear."
"Mmhmm." the young woman...Astro grunted, tilting her head in a womanly way. "I'll bet it was." she said, bending down to pick up one of his file boxes. "Now where do you want these?"
"If you could take that one down to storage, it would be ever so lovely, Astro." he said, reading the writing scrawled on the side of the box, and feeling relieved to have successfully turned her attention from his machinations.
"It's Astrid." Astro said through pursed lips.
"Of course, dear." Walter said, tapping the glass rod on the edge of the flask.
Wasn't that what he'd said? Maybe the poor girl had bad hearing. Or she could be suffering from a bad cerumen occlusion. Perhaps he could convince her to let him take a look. It would really be no trouble at all. If his memory served, he had developed a compound which eradicated the substance in the inner ears of rats with just a drop back in 1979. Mostly side effect free too, which was always a plus in his estimation. Now if he could only recall the exact chemical composition... Had he been experimenting with Belly on LSD ingestion through the ear canal at the time? He couldn't quite remember, it was so long ago.
Returning his attention to the flask of milk, Walter leaned forward, wafting the earthy aroma toward him with one hand. It was nearly ready. He removed a beaker from its nearby stand, and then rinsed out the remains of his last experiment into a lab sink.
The young agent returned from the basement storage and grabbed another box from the pile. He caught the writing on the side as she turned back toward the stairwell. It was dated late in 1985. There had been nothing but failed experiments in the latter half of that year. Had he been distracted? Elizabeth...Peter! What had happened? Was it the lake? The...accident? Was that what had caused the distraction? He didn't want to know. He didn't want look at anything from that place in time.
"That...that one can go out the back, we won't be needing it." he managed to get out, before she'd gone a step or two down the stairs. "Thank you, my dear."
"What's my name?" she said, moving back up the stairwell and toward the exit.
"It uh...starts with an 'A', yes?" Walter said, and grabbed a pair of tongs of the table in front of him.
"Astrid." she said, shaking her head at him. "I just told you that a few minutes ago, remember?"
"Ahhh...I knew it!" Walter said with a laugh. At least he would never have to look in that box again.
Gripping the flask of hot milk in the tongs, he poured it carefully into the beaker, leaning forward again to take in the smell. It was perfect. He blew down into the beaker, and then took a sip, closing his eyes to focus his sense of taste. The milk tasted as delightful as it had smelled. Those other fools didn't know what they were missing. When he opened his eyes again, Agent Dunham was moving toward him across the lab.
"Ah ha, Olivia." Walter said, smiling at the sight of the pretty agent. "Peter told me to tell you, if I saw you, that he was returning the pigeon cages." He took another sip of the milk, and let out a sigh of pleasure.
"Walter," Olivia said uncertainly. "What is that?"
"This?" he said, gesturing with beaker.
Olivia nodded.
"Ah...that's milk, from Gene." he said, looking over at the cow, and then remembering his manners. "Do you want some? It's really quite wonderful."
"I think I'll pass." Olivia said with a grin, seemingly amused at his consumption of something perfectly natural.
"Are you certain?" he asked, pushing the beaker her way.
"Um-huh." she grunted, leaning back slightly.
There was an air about her, a...hesitation, that he wouldn't normally associate with the headstrong agent. Her strange behavior in their hotel room, and the incident Peter had mentioned, but not fully explained, that had happened in the hallway outside the lab, had left him curious. He'd devoted several minutes of thought to the matter while in the restroom earlier that day, as matter of fact. Based on her recent medical history that he was aware of, he'd come to several possible conclusions, and none of them were good. He examined her features, noting the paleness in her cheeks, the slight dilation of her eyes.
"The color in your face." he said finally, when she looked like she might turn and leave. "You're looking a little pallid. Are you feeling well, Agent Dunham?"
"I'm fine." she said, reaching up to tug on her earlobe. "I'm a little tired...that's all." she added with a shrug of her shoulders.
"Well...I don't yet know you well enough to ask this," he began, "But, uh... you haven't seemed yourself lately."
Olivia looked away from him, her eyes darting around the lab. "I haven't been sleeping very well lately, Walter." She hesitated, and her voice dropped to a near whisper when she went on. "I...I've been...I've been...nothing." she gasped suddenly. "Nevermind. See you tomorrow." She turned around quickly and walked back the way she'd came toward the exit.
He was right. It was the procedure. He was hoping that he'd been wrong. "Have you been seeing him?" Walter said to her back. "Your friend...John Scott?"
Olivia froze, and then turned back around, eyes wide. Her mouth fell open as he continued.
"I'm not surprised." he said sadly. "There is a reason, you know."
"I've been having hallucinations." she said in that whispering voice. "I...I thought I was going crazy..."
"No, not crazy." Walter said, shaking his head. "And not...hallucinations."
"Walter?" Olivia said urgently, when he didn't reply after a moment. "What is it? What's happening to me?"
"I...I can't be sure." he admitted, thinking furiously for a solution, and failing. The only solution was time. "The brain is a mystery…but I believe, that when you were in the tank, synchronized mentally with John Scott...that part of his consciousness may have crossed over into yours."
"What?" she gasped, raising both hands to her head.
"And it's still there." he went on as if she hadn't spoken. She had to hear it, to understand it. "His memories, experiences, his thoughts. You understand me, yes?"
Olivia shook her head, keeping eyes on him. "But these aren't memories, Walter!" she said despondently. "He appears...right in front of me, he talks to me. He...he's called me on the phone..."
"Yes...he would, like a waking dream...because he doesn't belong there." Walter said, nodding his head. Her condition was worse than he'd thought. He had only been expecting images, reflections, dreams of her dead lover. Voices out of nowhere, possibly. He gave her a sad smile. "There's only room for one voice in your head, Agent Dunham...not two. This is your brain's way of working it out. Your mind is trying to expel him...exorcise his thoughts from yours."
"He'll...he'll go away...is that what you're saying?" she asked, sounding as if she were being torn in two.
"I don't know." he replied with a shrug. "Do you really want him to?"
Olivia stared at him, her mouth open to reply. Walter could almost hear the thoughts that must be running through her mind. Of course she wanted him out of her head, how could she not? But if he were facing the same dilemma with his Elizabeth, he thought it might be worth it, whatever the consequences to himself, just to hear her voice again. And to see her...alive again, well, he would be willing to do almost anything.
You know all about consequences, don't you? Walter that was suddenly asked.
Walter did his best to ignore the voice. It had no right to intrude at that moment. Besides, he didn't have any idea what it was talking about.
Olivia struggled to respond for a moment longer, then turned and walked slowly out of the lab without another word. Walter stared after her, wondering if he should mention any of it to Peter. She'd never specified secrecy, but...she had waited until Peter was gone to come to him. She must have had a reason for doing so. Whatever it was, he would respect it, and hold his tongue until she told him herself.
Unless of course, she went insane first, he thought idly. That was always a possibility when one went into the tank. He had mentioned that to her, back in the beginning, hadn't he? Surely he had.
Walter drank down the rest of his milk with a contented sigh. It truly was delicious.
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So that's then end of 1x05! Finally. Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!