Massive Dynamic had been one of the ten largest corporations in the world every year for the last decade. It had top secret contracts with governments around the world to develop everything from advanced weapons to autonomous drones to inoculations for biological weapons.

Massive Dynamic also had competitors, and to some extent, enemies. Corporations and foreign governments sometimes resorted to espionage to get at the secrets it held. As a result M.D. had one of the most elaborate security systems ever devised, consisting of ubiquitous electronic surveillance and a cadre of highly trained armed guards that would put some national armies to shame.

Of course, none of that mattered if you had someone working from the inside.

A plain, white van, similar to any other van used by the multitude of service companies in New York, pulled into the secured parking lot of the corporate headquarters of Massive Dynamic. It was well past midnight on a Saturday, and there were only a small number of vehicles in the garage.

The van was owned by a vending machine company with a contract to service the machines in the building. Unfortunately for that company, which would surely lose its contract after this, the van had been stolen just five minutes before it pulled into the lot.

Inside, three people were having a discussion about the job they were about to undertake.

"I have a bad feeling about this one," the athletic man said to the other occupants of the van.

They were dressed almost identically in grey coveralls. The speaker was tall and muscular, with close cropped blond hair and blue eyes. He was somewhere in his middle thirties, and had a noticeable scar on his left cheek, the mark of some past violent misadventure.

The second was a young black man, wiry, goateed, wearing a pair of thick prescription eyeglasses. He sat in the driver's seat and typed rapidly on an expensive laptop propped against the steering wheel, but listened intently to the conversation between the other two.

The last was a young woman. Slim and fit, she also had blond hair and blue eyes, and bore such a resemblance to the blond man that they must have been related. The hacker thought they were siblings. She appeared to be in her late twenties to early thirties in age.

"You always have bad feelings," she said, "...and it's never done you a bit of good."

The woman had a very slight European accent, the black man noted. A hacker for hire, he had never met them before today.

The blonde man frowned.

"My feelings are never wrong!" he growled.

The woman smirked, reached over and caressed his cheek, the one with the scar.

"Then how did you get that?" she asked, then slapped him playfully.

"By not listening to my feelings," he muttered.

The black man interrupted their banter.

"I'm in. I can take the cameras offline anytime, but I don't know how long 'til the admin notices. I'd guess fifteen or twenty minutes. And... Easton is headed down to his car. He'll be there in thirty seconds."

The woman nodded to her companion, and they both pulled black wool ski masks over their heads. The man opened a black plastic case at his feet, to reveal a bulky, sci-fi looking firearm, which he hefted enthusiastically.

"Do it now," the blonde woman said, and opened the rear doors of the van without waiting for an acknowledgement.

The pair strode rapidly through the underground parking garage of Massive Dynamic, woman in the lead, toward an older man who was just about to open the door to his black sedan.

"Doctor Easton?" the woman called.

When Easton looked up, her companion pointed the bulky device at his chest and pulled the trigger. A barely perceptible shimmer flowed through the air, followed by a perfectly straight burst of blue-white lightning, a loud electrical crackling noise, and the smell of ozone.

Easton dropped unconscious where he stood.

"I love this thing," the tall man said with a smile, brandishing the energy weapon, "...it's better than hitting the poor schlub with a rifle butt!"

The woman smiled. "Unless the poor schlub happens to have a pacemaker. Thankfully, none of our targets do."

The kidnappers each grabbed one of Easton's arms and dragged the unconscious scientist to the waiting van their accomplice had pulled up behind them, and placed him into the back. They jumped in after him, closed the doors and the van was on the streets of New York seconds later.

It was three o'clock in the morning, and Peter Bishop was wide awake, wearing a tee shirt and boxer shorts, sitting at the kitchen counter with a cup of Walter's homegrown herbal tea. With his right hand, he played intently with a deck of cards. He cut the deck, shuffled it, and dealt to imaginary players sitting at the table, all with his off hand. He smiled to himself, as it brought back memories of the year he'd spent dealing blackjack in Vegas. That'd been a good year.

With an quick sweep of his hand, he gathered the cards together, and switched to his left. Cutting the deck was no problem, but when he tried the one handed shuffle he could do since he was ten years old, his hand cramped painfully, and he sprayed the stack of cards onto the floor.

Peter sighed. This year wasn't turning out to be such a good one. For two months now, ever since a telepathic Rottweiler had gnawed on his arm, he'd lost much of the fine coordination in his left hand. But then, his definition of "fine coordination" was different than that of most people. His near ambidexterity meant the injury didn't really affect his day to day living, just his treasured self taught musical and sleight of hand skills.

He hadn't gone near the piano in the lab since the dog attack. The thought of playing at anything less than his virtuoso best filled him with absolute dread.

Peter crouched down on the floor, picking up the cards. Behind him, on the counter, his phone rang, startling him, and he clunked his head on the underside of the counter. Swearing, he reached up and grabbed his phone, sat down on the floor to answer without looking at the display. Only one person ever called the Bishop house at 3 a.m.

"Hey!" he answered, "I take it we've got a case?"

"Hey! You were up, already?" Olivia said, "...is everything alright?"

"Yeah just...having a little trouble sleeping, that's all. What's up?" Peter said.

"Broyles just called. He wouldn't give details over the phone, but he wants us to meet at the lab in an hour."

"Okay...I'll get Walter around and meet you there."

"Would it help if I picked you guys up on my way in?" Olivia asked.

"Actually? It would. Thanks!"

Peter hung up the phone, guzzled the last of his tea, gathered his cards and replaced them in a drawer in the kitchen island, then walked into the living room, where his father normally slept on the foldout couch.

"Walter, wake up! Olivia will be here soon." he said loudly, with a clap of his hands.

Walter woke instantly, his face lighting up at the mention of the FBI agent's name.

"Excellent! Do you need to borrow a condom?" he said.

Walter threw the covers off and sat up, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Although he wore a tee shirt, the scientist was wearing nothing below the waist.

"No!" Peter paused, his train of thought broken by his father's state of partial undress.

"Good! Stay safe, son. Who knows how many siblings you would have had, eh? Although if you wanted to give me grandchildren with..."

Fortunately, the doorbell rang at that moment, causing Walter to forget the topic at hand. Peter would have to compliment Olivia on her timing later.

"Who in the world could be at the door at this hour?" Walter asked.

"Walter...put your pants on." Peter insisted.

"Every year, four people die while putting their pants on," Walter grumbled.

He bent down to retrieve his boxer shorts from the floor.

"And a hundred people die from falling coconuts," Peter replied, "...it's no reason NOT to live in the tropics."

Unsurprisingly, both Phillip Broyles and Astrid Farnsworth, always the most punctual of the Fringe team, were already at the lab when Olivia, Peter and Walter arrived. They were sitting on either side of one of the labs monitors, sipping coffee.

"Agent Dunham, Doctor Bishop, Peter," Broyles said when they had settled in with cups of coffee around him, "...sorry to wake you up so early, but it's an urgent matter. Agent Farnsworth?"

Astrid clicked a mouse, and a grainy black and white video began playing. They crowded around the screen for a clearer view of the kidnapping that had occurred earlier that morning.

"Four hours ago, a Massive Dynamic research scientist, Doctor Melvin Easton, was kidnapped - right out of the secured parking garage at Massive Dynamic in New York. Apparently the kidnappers stole a service van, hacked into the security systems, turned off the surveillance cameras remotely, and were waiting for him at his car."

"Then how do we have video of the kidnapping?" Olivia asked.

"The kidnappers underestimated William Bell's paranoia. There is an entirely separate security system that only he and Nina Sharp have knowledge of or access to."

They all smirked at that.

"Well, I suppose paranoia isn't all bad," Olivia said, as she accepted a thick manila file folder from Broyles, and began rapidly paging through it, committing the information inside to her eidetic memory.

"Ah, but it isn't paranoia if somebody is really after you," Peter said with a grin.

Broyles ignored their banter and continued his explanation.

"I have people downtown running facial recognition software on the two visible kidnappers. We should hear within the hour if they get any hits. Although technically he worked for Massive Dynamic, Doctor Easton was regularly contracted out to the Defense Department to work on advanced weapon projects. Any one of those projects could be the reason he was abducted."

"So, somebody has to ask," Peter said, "Kidnapping isn't our usual bailiwick, even if it involves an important scientist. How did we get the case, and not the regular FBI?"

"We're getting the case because it isn't a kidnapping. He was found two hours ago, at home asleep in his bed. Doctor Easton claims he was there since he left work at midnight."

"Okay, that does make it one of ours," Peter answered with a wan smile.

"Sir?" Olivia interrupted, holding up the file she was reading, "...most of this is useless. Any details of what Easton was working on have been redacted."

Broyles nodded. "That's all right. Massive Dynamic has a plane waiting at the airport for us. We can get the information we need from Ms. Sharp directly, and then examine Doctor Easton at their labs."

"Melvin Easton, Melvin Easton," Walter muttered, "...why is that name familiar?"

Peter's eyes shot wide open with sudden recognition and he choked on a mouthful of coffee. Astrid pounded on his back while he coughed, until he finally recovered.

"...because you talked to him on the phone last week, Walter," Peter finally managed, his voice hoarse.

All eyes turned to Walter.

"I talked to him last week?" Walter asked, dubious.

"Yeah, he called the landline at the house, and asked for you by name. I gave you the phone and went downstairs to fold laundry. When I came back up, you were just finishing your conversation with him. You called him Mel. I figured you knew him from school, or something."

"I don't remember that, at all," Walter said sheepishly, "...it's the change in my meds, my system is out of whack."

"His psychiatrist changed his prescription last week." Peter explained, "Since then he's been..."

Peter broke off, searched for a polite term, then shrugged.

"Well, it can't have been important, or I would have remembered. He may just have been an admirer." Walter said with a shrug.

"You have...admirers?" Astrid said, so low that only Olivia heard.

"Well, we have to get to the airport. If you can recall what the conversation was about, Doctor Bishop, it could be helpful," Broyles said.

"I'll try my best," Walter replied with a nod.

Broyles phone buzzed and he answered, then listened for a minute before replying.

"Good work. Send the details to Agent Dunham's email, and call me if you get anything else."

Broyles hung up and spoke.

"They got a hit on the man in the video. Carl Gessler, former Army Ranger, dropped off the radar about ten years back and may have been working as a mercenary overseas. Let's head for the airport."

Ten minutes later, the team was in the big black government SUV and on the way to the airport.

"Okay, my neurologist appointment is postponed until Tuesday," Peter said, stashing his phone back into his coat.

"Tuesday." Olivia repeated, "What time?"

"You don't have to drive me," Peter said.

"I want to! What time?" Olivia repeated.

Peter rolled his eyes.

"Okay...Nine thirty."

"For some reason, I associate Mr. Easton with seahorses," Walter blurted, from the back seat, "Why would that be, Peter?"

Walter was gesticulating spastically and humming to himself, behavior that Olivia hadn't seen in the scientist in over a year.

"I don't know, Walter. I was in the basement, remember?" Peter replied.

Walter nodded, and continued humming. The tune was distinctive, but Olivia had never heard it before.

She looked over at Peter, her eyes asking a silent question.

"Sumner had Walter keep a diary last month, of what drugs he was taking. Of course, when he saw the twelve page list, he freaked out, and insisted Walter stop self medicating and stick to only his prescribed meds. This..." Peter sighed, "is the result."

"But...Walter was a lot better before..." Olivia whispered.

"Yeah. Walter is more sane on more drugs, go figure."

"What are your thoughts on how Doctor Easton didn't know he'd been kidnapped?" Olivia asked, as she pulled into a parking spot near the runway they'd been directed to.

Beyond the fence, a sleek private jet was revving up its engines, the Massive Dynamic logo glittering pink and orange in the rising sun on its side.

"First guess? Replaced by a Shapeshifter. If he isn't, then this becomes one of our really weird cases."

Olivia smiled. "Sad that Shapeshifter's don't qualify as weird anymore."

"What I want to know is what he talked to Walter about. But then, that would have been the human Easton. We may never learn what that was about."

"Is there anything I can do to help with that?" Olivia asked.

Peter shrugged. "I don't know. Get Sumner to let Walter go back to his old drug regimen? He really was better on that."

"I could talk to Broyles. Maybe he could lean on him for us."

"Worth a shot."

Two hours later, Olivia stared through the one way glass at the perturbed figure of Doctor Melvin Easton, as he sat alone at a white plastic table in a white walled room.

The plane ride had been disturbing. She hadn't seen Walter for over a week, since the dolphin assassin case had closed. In that time, his medications had been changed and the mentally disturbed scientist had regressed terribly.

On the plane he had begun hallucinating, convinced he was seeing something crawling across the wing. Peter and Astrid had spent the flight reassuring Walter that the monster on the wing wasn't going to crash the plane, and Olivia and Broyles had spent the flight reassuring the pilot that his passenger wouldn't cause said crash.

When they had touched down, fortunately, Walter calmed down considerately, only occasionally muttering something completely off the wall to himself, or bursting into song.

Peter of course, was now a complete wreck. The tension evident in his shoulders made hers hurt, and he wouldn't take his eyes off his father, watching him for the slightest disturbance.

As for Doctor Easton - he looked pretty good for having been violently kidnapped just hours before. Remarkably so, in fact.

"Ms. Sharp, did you do a blood test, to see if he is a Shapeshifter?" Olivia asked.

Next to her, the Chief Operating Officer of Massive Dynamic nodded. "Practically the first thing we did when he insisted he hadn't been kidnapped. He's human."

Peter and Walter stood behind the two women, peering over Olivia's and Nina's shoulders, respectively.

"Have you examined him, physically?" Walter asked, "The kidnappers were kind of rough. I would expect there to be physical indications."

Nina nodded. "Yes, over his objections. There are signs of a struggle. Ligature marks on his wrists and ankles, and a burn or bruise on his chest, where the energy weapon seemed to strike him. He doesn't remember getting them."

Behind them, the door to the observation room opened, and Brandon Fayette, clad in his ever present lab coat, entered.

"Which is it?" Walter asked, "...a burn, or a bruise? They are distinct trauma."

"Both." Brandon answered, "He suffered a flash burn, and a bruise underneath. And we found some sort of markings on his head, eight of them."

Brandon shrugged before continuing.

"As far as I can tell, it's Melvin, and according to the polygraph, he sincerely believes he was asleep in bed, while we have him on tape being kidnapped in the parking garage."

"Interesting. That gives us a clue as to how the weapon operates, at least...I'm still going to want to examine him, to find what you missed." Walter said, arrogance dripping from his tone, "...do I have a forensic lab at my disposal, or do we have to fly him to Boston?"

Nina gave Walter an appraising look, seeming to assess where he was on the scale from psychotic to lucid, then nodded.

"Brandon will get you everything you need."

The younger scientist led Walter out of the room.

Peter sighed.

"I'd better stick with Walter. I'll call you if we find anything."

Peter followed Walter and Brandon out of the room.

"How is Walter?" Nina Sharp asked. "He seems...out of sorts."

Olivia glanced at Broyles before replying.

"He...had some difficulties on the plane."

"So I heard. Something about a change in his meds?"

Olivia nodded. "Yes. Apparently Doctor Sumner convinced Walter to stop self-medicating."

"Hmm. Well back to the matter at hand. How would you like to proceed, Agents?"

Broyles finished his coffee before proceeding.

"I think we need to figure out how the kidnappers turned off the normal security cameras."

Nina nodded. "I'll make our Mr. Becker, our chief system administrator, available to you for an interview. He should be finished the preliminary audit by now."

"Ms. Sharp? We'd like to interview him alone," Olivia interjected.

Sharp produced her phone, "Of course. I'll make the arrangement. You can do the interview in the conference room down the hall."

"...And you're sure you've never seen me or talked to me before?" Walter asked Doctor Easton, as he reviewed the results of the various tests Easton had been given in the last two hours.

"Yes, I've never seen you, or talked with you on the phone, Doctor Bishop. I have heard of you, though." Easton replied.

Easton was reclining in a comfortable looking chair,, similar to those used in dentists offices. He was shirtless, with the painful looking brand of the burn/bruise from the energy weapon in full view. Around him were arrays of medical instruments and several scientists in white lab coats. He was remarkably calm after all that he'd been through in the past few hours.

"What have you heard?" Walter asked, using a finger to trace down a list of printed test results.

"Oh...people talk, you know. Wild rumors."

Walter smiled. "Most of those are probably true, actually."

"Then...I don't know what to say." Easton said.

The odd calm the man radiated was an anomaly in itself, Peter decided. It was as if he was on some sort of sedative, but nothing out of the ordinary had been detected in the numerous blood tests Massive Dynamic had conducted on him.

"Huh. That's funny." Walter said.

Walter seized a pen and drew several lines on the paper he was reading. Peter quietly stepped behind him and peeked over his shoulder. What Walter was drawing on was a cutaway drawing of Easton's skill. There were several dots on the outside, describing odd markings that had been found, eight in all. Walter had drawn lines connecting dots on opposite sides of Easton's skull, and drawn a circle around where all the lines crossed in the center.

"Brandon!" Walter yelled, "...shave Easton's head!"

"Walter," Peter interrupted him by stepping close and putting his hand on his father's shoulder. If Walter was slipping into one of his manic states, he wanted to within easy reach, if restraining him would be necessary.

"...Why do you want to shave his head?" Peter asked.

Walter pointed to the drawing he was holding. "All of the lines intersect in the upper part of Doctor Easton's hippocampus. The part of the brain that deals with converting short term memory to long term."

"That's interesting...considering that Easton doesn't remember being kidnapped. Do you think the kidnappers somehow erased his memory?"

Walter nodded, then reconsidered, waggled his hand in the air, a "so-so" gesture.

"Not exactly. I think the kidnappers somehow prevented those short term memories from being transcribed into long term memory. It would explain why he doesn't remember things that only happened a few hours ago. It's just a hypothesis, but one that fits to facts."

"Why do you want to shave his head?" Peter asked.

Walter gave Peter an odd look - as if he were the one behaving strangely.

"Why would I what?" he asked, clearly puzzled.

"You told Brandon to shave Easton's head, just a minute ago."

Walter hummed a few bars of an obscure song to himself, lost in thought, then shrugged.

"I don't remember that!"

Peter frowned. "Walter..."

The two of them were startled out of their conversation by Doctor Easton suddenly breaking into song.

"Little seahorse

Swimming in a primal sea

Heartbeat like a

Leaf quaking in the breeze

I feel magic as coyote

In the middle of the moon-wild night"

Easton nodded to Walter.

"That's the song you were just humming. It's stuck in my head, too."

Walter smiled broadly.

"Marvelous! I hear that song in my head all the time!"

The two scientists broke into song, leaving Peter and Brandon puzzled, and slightly embarrassed.

Mr. Becker was an extremely nervous young man, more used to dealing with computers than with people. Of course, he was currently being interviewed by three Federal agents over a criminal incident that occurred under his aegis - something that would probably make anybody nervous.

According to his file, which Olivia had paged through and memorized just before the interview started, he had a Ph.D in computer science, and mild cases of Asberger's Syndrome and social anxiety - which suited his employment with Massive Dynamic perfectly. If he did his job well, he wouldn't have to deal with people.

"The system was accessed through a hard-coded administrator account that we weren't aware of. That was how they turned off the cameras," Becker had blurted as soon as the interview began.

"Define 'Hard Coded'," Astrid asked.

"We...we found a chip on the main server board. Direct line to the CPU. It wasn't listed in the specs. It has a...shadow administrator account."

"Well, that's not good. Did somebody insert the chip recently?" Olivia asked.

Becker shook his head spastically. His hands hadn't stopped moving since the interview began. He was now tearing a paper coffee cup into strips of paper and arranging the strips into geometric shapes on the conference table.

"You don't understand. Everything we use here is homebrew. The hardware, the OS, everything. The chip was there since before I came to M.D. , since the system was installed."

"How long?"

Becker's shoulders shrugged.

"I think this system was installed ten years ago. It's been upgraded since, of course, but that chip was always there."

Broyles eyebrows shot for the ceiling.

"Are you saying that someone has had unfettered administrator access to Massive Dynamic's network for ten years?"

"Well...yes."

Broyles sighed and stood up. "I need to go make some phone calls..."

Peter, Walter, and Brandon were in another, smaller lab down the hall from where they had been examining Doctor Easton. After he had complained of being fatigued, they had let Easton return home, because what else was there to do? Easton didn't remember anything useful, and they'd already examined him as completely as anyone could without invasive surgery.

After Easton had left, the conversation had turned to the burn/bruise on his chest, and what sort of weapon could have left it. They had witnessed its use on tape, and had seen the result of its use on Easton's chest, and Walter and Brandon wanted to come up with a working theory as to the weapon's operation.

That was when Brandon had led them down the hall to his collection of zappers and rayguns.

Of course, he didn't call them that - to Brandon they were "prototype directed energy weapons". But to Peter's mind, they were zappers and rayguns.

Peter had experience with such weapons, having been zapped by an Observer gun last year, and using one himself a few months ago. He had apparently used up the gun's charge, or ammunition or whatever, because it had been non-functional afterwards, and given to Massive Dynamic for further study.

And here it was, inside a plastic display case, standing out among the collection of sci-fi weapons by its ordinariness.

Behind him, Walter and Brandon were happily arguing about the weapon seen on the kidnapping video.

"No, it couldn't be a laser," Walter was saying, "...lasers are only visible by reflected light. There wasn't enough particulate matter in the air to..."

"Well, if the laser ionized the air..." Brandon argued.

Acting on a hunch he'd had for months, Peter seized the small handgun he was staring at, pointed it at the far end of the room, and squeezed the trigger. A scintillating burst of light struck the wall, leaving a faint scorch mark and a small dent.

In stunned silence that followed, Peter grinned and put the Observer gun back on the table.

"Sorry. I had a hunch." he said.

"How...how did you do that?" Brandon asked. "That was so...cool!"

"This is the gun that Observer passed to me during the gunfight a few months back. It worked for me then, I figured it would still work. Somehow the Observer keyed it to only work for me."

Brandon gave him an excited grin.

"Do it again!"

At the end of a long day, the persons concerned with investigating the Easton kidnapping gathered in a conference room on the 20th floor of the Massive Dynamic building: Nina Sharp, Brandon Fayette, and Becker from Massive Dynamic; Agents Broyles, Dunham, and Farnsworth, Walter and Peter Bishop from Fringe Division.

Nina seemed to be showing off her technological toys - the conference room was a wonder, with a holographic projector in the center of the round table, and floor-to-ceiling touchscreen displays embedded in the walls.

The Federal Agents present were duly impressed and a little envious. Walter showed childlike wonder at the display. Peter seemed unfazed, withdrawn, and worried.

Olivia nudged him and mouthed, "How's Walter?"

"Fine, if you like seahorses," he whispered back.

Broyles stood and began speaking, before Olivia could ask what he meant.

"We're having this conference to sum up what we know and don't know about the investigation, before we retire for the evening. First, a chip was found in the core server of the Massive Dynamic mainframe. This chip supplied a hard-coded administrator account, which the kidnapper used to turn off the cameras in the underground parking garage, while they kidnapped Doctor Easton..."

"Wait," Peter interrupted, "...how do we know this conference isn't being watched, if somebody has that level of access?"

Everybody turned to the system administrator, Becker, who looked startled.

"We've shutdown the main system. All of this..." he gestured at the displays on the walls, "...is being run from a box under the table, which isn't connected to anything outside this room, and will be erased afterwards."

Broyles looked at Peter, who nodded.

"...back to my summary. We don't really have any idea why Easton was kidnapped, but we have to assume they got what they wanted from him, somehow erased his memory of the kidnapping and returned him to his bed in the space of a few hours. Doctor Bishop, do you have any theories about that?"

"Just speculation," Walter said. "...we found markings around his head, which intersect in his hippocampus. Possibly they interfered with his short-term memories being converted into long term ones. Maybe they used some sort of modulated electron beams. I need to run some experiments. When I get back to Harvard, I'll put up a few posters up asking for student volunteers."

Everybody stared at him in horror.

"I'm joking." Walter added, "...You people are always so serious."

Brandon raised his hand, as if he were a student in a classroom.

"We have a working theory as to how the stun weapon used on Easton works. We think it's a two stage weapon - first it fires a laser to ionize a path to the target, then it fires an electron beam, to shock it. Basically, it's an advanced taser."

"Well..." Broyles continued, "I've had an alert out for Gessler, the man caught on the video, all day, but no hits. The stolen service van hasn't been found, either. Apparently they're lying low. Until something new develops, I think we can put this case on hold, and go home."

"I'd suggest...we not take a plane this time." Peter said.

Broyles nodded.

"Don't worry. I've signed a vehicle out from the Federal motor pool. We're all driving back to Boston."

Tuesday morning arrived without anything out of the ordinary occurring. Walter appeared to return to somewhat normal behavior, for him at least. According to Peter, his symptoms had gradually tapered off over the weekend, leaving only a residual obsession with seahorses.

No more progress had been made in the case they were working. Federal, state and local authorities had been alerted to watch for Carl Gessler, but the kidnappers had apparently gone to ground.

There was still no indication as to why they had kidnapped Doctor Easton, who had suffered no ill effects and returned to work the following day.

Massive Dynamic was facing a Federal security audit as a result of the chip found in their computer system. As that was all being conducted over their heads, so to speak, nobody in Fringe Division would have any involvement with that part of the case.

Peter had expressed the interesting possibility that the entire thing had taken place to bring about the audit itself.

It was an odd unsolved case, but for once no one had died. But that didn't leave any less amount of paperwork, which Olivia was doing on her laptop while she waited for Peter to emerge from his neurologist's office.

`Olivia looked up when the big oak door opened. Peter emerged and flashed her a smile and a nod, then moved to the window to talk briefly with the receptionist while Olivia closed her laptop and put it back into its case.

"Friday, 8 am." Peter said when he walked up to her, accepting his jacket from her.

"Surgery?" she asked.

"Yes, finally. After that, I do some rehab and I should have a good left hand again."

"Amen," she said with a smile, "Let's go have lunch to celebrate."

Note: Lyrics are from "Little Seahorse" by Bruce Cockburn, no infringement intended.

6/30/12: Put in segment breaks that screwed up. Thanks Ouroboros75, for the suggestion.