A/N: Alright, this is it. From here on out things only pick up speed, they will not slow down.
Here. We...
Go.
Chapter Eight: Shatter
It was only after Astrid pointed out the hidden word that others took shape. He scanned over the other letters, mentally scrambling them until they fell into cohesive patterns of words.
It was when some of the letters formed the word OLIVE that he snapped a piece of chalk and scribbled the words on the board. An avalanche of combinations tumbled through his brain, careening through any other notion of things previously considered.
If the message had something to do with Olivia (which he was assuming from the term 'Olive'; it was a nickname that she'd told him that Nick Lane had called her) then it had just jumped a few meters up his priority list.
He apparently worked on it for hours and only realized how late it was when Astrid said she was taking Walter home, and that Olivia had already left hours before.
She didn't even say anything, Peter thought. How unusual.
"Son," Walter had said to him. "You will come home later... won't you?"
Peter nodded, not turning from the chalkboard. "Yea Walter I will, I just want to finish this first," he said.
It was three in the morning when he finally set the piece of chalk down, whittled to little more than an ivory stub. The board was laced with curves and swoops of letters that were later crossed over with thick slashes and scratches as he went through each combination.
By that time, his eyes were heavy like lead and the farthest he made it from the chalk board was the couch in the lab.
He dreamt of olive trees that night, but for some reason, one had red olives instead of green.
The milkshake was like a creamy explosion of strawberries and sugary syrups on Walter's tongue as he shuffled along the sidewalk back to the lab. He was delighted when Asparagus had agreed to let him go the shop; it was only a few blocks from Harvard after all.
The sidewalk was surprisingly vacant for a Thursday afternoon, something that Walter was grateful for as he paid little attention to his path as he devoured his milkshake.
It was when he bumped into a rigid form that didn't move in the slightest did Walter look up. He was extremely exasperated as he had been down to the last drops of his strawberry milkshake.
"Hello Walter."
Walter looked at the face of September, completely stoic under the shadow of his impeccable black fedora. Walter hadn't seen him in a long time, and the last time he had didn't bear the greatest amount of fondness in his mind.
"What are you doing here?" Walter asked.
"We need to speak," September said. "Those letters are important, you need to pay attention to them."
"Do they have something to do with Peter?"
September answered with a tilt of his head and moved to walk past Walter, who grabbed September's arm to stop him.
Walter was extremely surprised to discover that September's arm was warm, more so than one would normally expect for a humanoid body.
But then, Walter had no evidence to suggest that Observers were human in any sense.
September looked at him again. "The letters are important Walter."
"But how could you know that unless you were there?"
September dislodged his arm from Walter's grasp.
Walter looked from September's arm to his face and ran his hands through his hair as his hands trembled. It all made so much sense and yet confused him to a dizzying degree.
"You're the pyrokinetic," Walter said.
"Yes," September answered.
"But... but why kill those people?" Walter stammered.
September's face didn't waver in the slightest. "These events were destined to occur... and thus... I could not avoid them."
When September finished he stepped away from Walter and carried on.
And when Walter turned on his heel with a thousand questions ready to spill from his mind, the Observer was gone.
Walter was running at an incredible pace through the halls of Harvard University when he slammed (literally) into Astrid.
"Walter," she said. "What's the rush all about?"
Walter stood up quickly as he explained, his hands whipping through the air in frantic gestures.
"And that is why I need to find Peter and Agent Dunham immediately," he said.
"Okay Walter, Peter's in the lab but I haven't seen Olivia yet."
"Well then let's go. Besides, I'm sure Gene needs to be milked."
Peter was trying to the resist the urge to smack himself in the face for utter stupidity as Walter explained the encounter that he'd just had with the Observer.
If there were an Oscar for stupidity... he thought.
The pieces were coming together in a frightening tapestry before him while it felt as if the ground beneath his feet was breaking apart. The Observer said that the letters were important.
Having deciphered the message, Peter understood why.
"Walter, let me show you something," he said and led him over to the chalkboard that he'd whittled ivory chalk on; the white streaks on his clothes was evidence of that.
"This is what I got from those letters after Astrid pointed out one word to me."
"And what word would that happen to be?" Walter asked, not yet looking at the chalkboard.
"Secretary," Peter answered.
Walter's face tensed, fell and shuddered all in one jerky motion as he slowly turned to look at the chalk board.
Peter almost told him not to.
But when Walter saw the message scrawled over the board, he only said two words, almost too quiet to be a whisper, but heavy with guilt like an anvil.
"My God," he whispered.
Astrid, who had stood silent behind them both now spoke. "Peter, if this is right..."
He nodded. "I know."
Like hell he knew how to deal with this. It was like he had been taken blindfolded from the Andes and when the blindfold was lifted he was in the Sahara. It was like he'd just played Mozart and Bach on the piano but played them both in the style of Mozart.
He looked at it again.
THE SECRETARY HAS THE OLIVE
He ran his hand over his face, his eyes squinting into the darkness of his palm. He sighed heavily.
"We brought back the wrong Olivia."
It was twenty minutes later that she showed up. They hadn't called it in to Broyles because they didn't want to be pre-emptive if the message was a load of bull.
But Peter doubted that, as a dishonest nature didn't seem very becoming of the Observers.
He found out that she was there when she placed a hand on his shoulder gently, almost like a feather. He suspected it was her before he even turned to see her face; she was smiling, it reminded him of a doll.
He remembered when he'd first met Olivia's alternate over there. He'd said that his Olivia was darker in the eyes.
Olivia's eyes were green.
This Olivia's eyes were lighter, almost a blue.
After a moment, she spoke. "Hey, what's going on here?"
He pursed his lips slightly, trying not to scowl.
"Olivia, do you remember what you said to me when we met in Baghdad years ago?"
She shrugged lightly as her lips curled into a wry half-smile. "That you should have picked a better meeting spot?"
Peter wanted to drown her in the sarcasm that dripped from her voice, a wanton syrup from the fruits of her rotten labour.
She frowned when she saw his expression and what he guessed were the similar of Walter and Astrid.
"What?" she asked.
"No," he answered.
"No what?"
"When I met Olivia Dunham she asked me back here on a case, she blackmailed me to come back by saying that she had a file one me, a file that no one else supposedly knew about."
She was eerily silent.
"My Olivia Dunham would remember that," his hands were in fists now as he tried to keep the growl out of his voice. "You're not my Olivia," he said through clenched teeth.
He moved to grab her arm and said to Astrid. "Call Broyles, tell him to ge-"
Olivia's alternate punched him in the face.
The entire right side of his face burned as Walter rushed to his aid.
"Peter! Peter are you alright?"
He nodded lazily. "Yea, Walter I'm fine. Where'd she go?"
Walter motioned towards the door that led out of the lab and Peter tore into the hall as another door to the parking lot clicked shut.
He dashed down the hall and smashed the door open, an audible creak drowned out by the hum of a car engine.
Peter looked over to the parking lot to see Olivia's alternate driving away in her car, and for one instant he saw her face, roiling with fury and determination.
He felt like he'd just pushed a slinky off the top step of a flight of stairs.
Except that he had the distinct notion that the slinky would hit a detonator switch when it reached the bottom.
Well... what did everyone think? Thoughts, theories? Leave me a review and let me know :D