Chapter 17

The sun was filtering through the large window panes, a sweet wave of heat caressing his neck. Leaning back in his leather armchair, the cup of smoking coffee feeling hot in his hand, he was watching with a nonchalant detachment the video playing on his screen. He knew it wasn't live, it was only a recording of what had happened the day before. That was how it worked, and how it had been working ever since the secret mission had started. His agents crossed into the other universe, and filmed every single minute of what happened, even if it proved to be irrelevant with the experiment. Then the records were analyzed by a scientific team, tons of notes were written down and saved, copies were made and archived. That was the reason why he only had access to the data the day later.

Walter Bishop was a man of power and could give orders to make things go faster, but he wanted the experiment to be successful, and hurrying things just to quench his need for knowledge was not his priority. He skimmed through the few pages of the file spread on his desk, taking a sip of his coffee, and put down his cup when he spotted what he was looking for. He smiled for himself when he read the lines at the top of the page. He hadn't believed his agents were smart enough to conduct the experiment properly, but it seemed that he had been wrong. According to the report, both the Olivia from his universe and the other had been injected with the serum. Things were going a lot better than he had first expected. And he would have his answers sooner, too. When he had witnessed that bizarre scene a few weeks earlier, two thoughts had crossed his mind : first, they had lost their minds. But then he hadquickly pushed this thought away -he perfectly knew that they were both far from insane-, so he had come to the conclusion that some kind of unexplained scientific phenomenon was happening in front of his eyes. He had only half-believed his guess, but all those hours of spying on them in the other universe had comforted his theory, especially when he had watched the footage of his doppelganger explaining the pheromone thing. But his lunatic alternate-self had lost most of his scientific instinct and had not felt the need to go deeper into the question, to try and enhance the chemical reaction and had just tried – unsuccessfully – to develop an inhibitor instead.

The Secretary maybe didn't work very often in his lab anymore, but the need to prove theories right or wrong, especially when they were about alternate universes and their undiscovered particularities, was still stirring in him whenever he had the occasions. And so he had worked a lot with his partner to develop a serum that would have the desired effect. Within a few days they had created the perfect solution in a very reasonable quantity. They even had had enough of it to test it on animal subjects. They had stolen a chimp from the zoo of Boston in the alternate universe – which had not gone unnoticed – and took the same one from their own. The result had been quite conclusive : the chimps had developed extraordinary abilities, like sharing thoughts, and an amazing complicity had bloomed. One of the result had particularly been interesting : when one of the chimp got hurt, the other one instantly found itself hurt too. It had been proved then that the connection between the two animals was so profound that if one of the chimp was wounded, the other one would share the wound and both of them would suffer the same pain.

So of course, the Secretary had been more than enchanted and his desire to test it on human subjects grew even stronger. The first purpose of this experiment had been to discover what kind of effect such bonds could have, but now that he knew he wanted to go further and find out to how far that could be pushed. He wanted to cross the limits, achieve a scientific knowledge that no one had ever reached before. And by pushing the experiment further maybe he would discover ways to become even more powerful and impose his policies beyond his universe's frontiers. Because if this serum could give that much power to simple chimpanzees, it could probably do wonders with human-beings. He would just have to find a way to make his own pairs, but that shouldn't be very difficult.

Yes. Walter Bishop was on his way to make a major breakthrough in science history, and he would be the only one to benefit from it.

He straightened in his armchair when someone knocked at his door.

'Come in,' he said sharply, erasing the smile of satisfaction that had spread naturally on his lips.

'Hello, sir', his lab partner greeted, not daring to look directly at him. 'I've just come to give you yesterday's footage. There's some pretty interesting stuff that I'm sure you'll be glad to see.'

'Thank you.'

The Secretary waited patiently until the tall man left and then hurried to take the CD that had been carefully put on his desk. He inserted it in his computer and clicked on the 'play' button that has just appeared on the screen. There wasn't much to see on this one, and yet he knew that the little he was going to witness would be one of the most important step of the entire process. The first thing that appeared on the plasma was the image of an empty room. After a few seconds, one of his infiltrated men entered the room pushing a woman – whom he recognized as his Olivia – in the small of her back. The Secretary took in every single detail of the scene, although it was not necessary. Their mute conversation wasn't of any particular interest. He grinned when another man finally entered too, carrying a small suitcase, and took out the serum.

'This is perfect,' he whispered in his silent office when what he wanted to see the most finally happened – meaning the two shots of serum injected in her arm. He hadn't the video of the other Olivia being given the precious solution but he knew from the report the operation had also been a success. All was going smoothly – a lot more than he would have expected it to.

He watched the last part of the sequence, which only served as a visual confirmation of what he already knew. He did nothing the hide the victorious smile of pride spreading on his face when he watched his supposedly unbreakable agent falling to the floor, her tee-shirt smeared with blood. That was the only clue that proved his serum was working. She was sharing her alternate's wounds, just like the chimps had. Now, he would have to wait and see what would come next, but he had no doubt it wouldn't be long before other effects of his serum would be felt.

I'm so sorry it took so long to update this story but I really don't have much time these days!

This chapter is short, but I think I'll stick to this format from now on, it's easier and hopefully that will allow me to post regular updates more often !

Thanks for reading and please comment if you like it (or even if you don't, just let me know why ! ;))