A/N: I just wanted to thank everyone for all the interest in this story already and the kind reviews that people have left :) It's very encouraging. I'm updating so soon because I most likely will not be able to post any new chapters for at least a week. If I have a chance tomorrow I will post chapter 4 but that will be all for a little while. Rest assured thought that during that time I will be writing. I have the first fifteen chapters of this story written, and will hopefully be able to write a few more in the coming week :)
Also, a HUGE shoutout to my friend ab89us for reading all these chapters and being a constant source of encouragement :D
Chapter Three: Open Inquiry
The weather had absolutely no relation to why beads of sweat formed on Kyle Andrews' forehead that cool morning.
He'd walked out of his apartment at exactly 6:10 am to head to work and only minutes later he felt particularly warm, as if the temperature had jumped a good ten degrees.
This is ridiculous, he thought as he punched the small white button at the crosswalk of a bustling intersection.
The lights shifted, and for a brief second he caught a reflection of himself in a stopped car's window. His face resembled a tomato, tinged a frightening shade of red.
His heart sped up.
He stepped onto the pale lines of the crosswalk, and breathing became a much more laboured task with each step. Then he couldn't breathe at all, as if someone had clenched his airway shut and his pleas for air went unanswered. His skin boiled, sweat dripping off in a churning rain.
People gathered around him, asking if he was alright. Why didn't they do something? Kyle tried to scream, but it was like a serpent had coiled around his throat, suffocating words from his lungs.
He felt like there was a sun roiling inside him. Then he saw his hands; they were on fire.
And in that Boston intersection, Kyle Andrews burst into flames.
Among the ruffles of darkness that filled Olivia Dunham's apartment, a cell phone chimed to life.
Olivia rolled over to the side table and contemplated answering it for a moment, but that was before she saw the caller ID on the neon display.
Broyles.
She reached for the phone and wondered for a moment how to answer, this Broyles didn't know her. He knew her as this universe's Olivia Dunham.
The phone chimed again.
Well, she supposed that not answering the phone would certainly not be a brilliant plan in these circumstances.
"Hello?" she said into the phone.
"Dunham, get the Bishops. I've sent you a location, be there in twenty minutes, we have a case." Then silence met her ears.
She lowered the phone slowly, not only did she work with this universe's Walter Bishop, but she ferried them around too? The notion made her stomach wring into some rather intricate knots.
She pressed another button on the phone and found Peter's number, near the top of her speed-dial list. That's handy, she thought with the quirk of an eyebrow.
The phone rang once before a voice said "Hello?"
"Hey, it's me," she said.
"'Livia, hey. What's going on?"
"Well Broyles just called and it sounds like we've got a case."
"Terrific," he said sarcastically. "By any chance did he mention where?"
She cycled through the messages and found the one from Broyles. "Yea, I'm sendin' it to you now."
"Alright, I'll see you there."
Perhaps she didn't ferry them around after all.
The decay of the fragile fabric that bound the two universes together had caused many strange and bizarre things to occur. Olivia had been witness to many such things; but this made several memories rouse from their deep slumber and peer out from the caves that they'd been nestled in in her mind.
The intersection was quartered off, yellow police tape strung in a cautionary web around the scene. In the middle lay a body, charred like an old fire log with the embers extinguished and the ash hardened. Charcoal marks sprayed out from the corpse, like an explosion of black ink.
Broyles approached them from a congregation of officers; his face a stoic pane of opaque glass, impossible to see through.
"What've we got?" Olivia asked.
Broyles moved aside so they could see the victim as crime scene photographers snapped images from multiple angles, the brief flashes illuminating the haunting angles of the victim's face.
"No name yet, but according to witnesses he went to cross this intersection and had difficulty breathing, then burst into flames."
"Remind you of anything?" Peter asked.
"Roast chicken," Walter interjected.
They all turned, Peter's expression was the most flabbergasted. "What?"
"Oh don't you remember Peter? When you were ten you tried to help me cook a roast chicken and we forgot about it and when we finally took it out of the oven it was burnt to a dark, black crisp," he chuckled. "We tried to cut it open and ended breaking three knives before I finally got out my chainsaw..."
"Lovely memories Walter," Peter said.
"This incident seems remarkably similar to the Susan Pratt case," Broyles said.
Olivia remembered the case, but hadn't that involved Pratt's twin as well?
"Pyrokinesis?" Peter asked.
"We don't know yet."
Walter pushed past them then and looked over the body.
"What do you make of this Doctor Bishop?"
Walter inspected the body some more, his shoulders shifting about suspiciously before he answered. "I suspect that it could be either pyrokinesis... or spontaneous human combustion."
"But last time you said that you were wrong," Peter answered.
Walter turned. "Yes, but if we assume that it's pyrokinesis we could be equally wrong." He turned back to the body and said with a disgruntled huff. "One must consider all the possibilities."
Broyles held up an evidence bag and handed it to Olivia. "This was found next to the victim, the letters appeared to be burned into the paper. With what and how, we're still not sure."
Olivia looked at the paper through the wrinkled plastic. Two words were scorched into the brown paper: TO ERR.
She felt hot breath cascade against her neck; Peter was looking over her shoulder. Another thing that she wasn't used to; Frank's breath never made the hairs on her neck stand on end.
"To Err," Peter recited. "As in to 'to err is human'?"
Olivia shook her head. "I dunno, what does Walter think?"
"Eh, Walter," Peter called and the old man hurried over. "What do you make of this?" and handed him the evidence.
He looked at it for a moment. "I have no idea, however I would very much like to stop at that lovely milkshake place on the way back to the lab. Do tell Agent Broyles that I'll need that body transported to my lab." And he hurried away, the prospect of a new body clearly exciting him beyond anyone else's understanding.
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