Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

Allan spun to face a young Chinese man with long, shaggy hair and a concerned expression. He was wearing a grease-stained mechanic’s uniform.

Something let loose inside of Allan and he launched himself at the concerned stranger, tackling him and knocking him down. The young man was surprisingly strong, but his hard, angry punches and vigorous struggle inflamed and infuriated Allan more that they hurt him. The flare of sparks in his hands and forearms became hotter and brighter than ever, burning the flesh off the stranger’s skull like a blowtorch as Allan smashed his face against the curb again and again. The unfortunate stranger stopped screaming and went limp in Allan’s grasp, but he couldn’t stop battering the lifeless body for several endless minutes.

Cracked and blackened teeth scattered down the alley like loaded dice.

His hands felt as if they were being attacked by angry hornets, deadly sparks flying with every blow like a blacksmith hammering hot metal. When he finally forced himself to stop and back away from the charred corpse, he felt spent, but calm.

He couldn’t allow the idiot hippies to get the upper hand. He had to keep a clear head and think, to rely on the superior mental acumen that had gotten him this far.

He easily hefted the slender young man’s body and tossed it into an open dumpster, covering it with damp, moldy cardboard and newspaper. He closed the lid, and then gathered up the scattered teeth, slipping them into the left front pocket of his fatigue pants. There was a rather substantial amount of blood around the edge of the curb, but it had turned dark brown and lumpy, flash-cooked on the concrete by Allan’s furious heat. It looked more like the sludgy leakage from old rotten garbage than the evidence of a recent murder.

Allan had nothing to worry about.

He stuck the shopping bag under one arm and strolled casually back around to the door of the warehouse. No one was there. No authorities had been called. He slipped in unobserved.

* * *

He didn’t find his notebook.

He scoured the stairwell and the whole of the third floor. It was gone. Which could mean only one thing.

They had it. The hippies from Reiden Lake had his notebook.

Well then, he thought. Let the games begin.

11

Back at Nina’s thankfully empty house, the three of them sat on the soft, musty couches in the dim living room, trying to rethink their strategy, to brainstorm and see if they could make any headway with the coded notebook. But within minutes, the fear, anxiety, adrenaline, and stress—combined with the lack of sleep the night before—caught up to them with a vengeance.

Before long they were all out cold, as if they’d been sapped.

Walter woke to the soft, gentle clink of a teacup and saucer. When he peeled his sandpapery eyelids open, he saw that the fluffy Himalayan cat had curled up on his chest and Abby the pregnant blonde was sitting crosslegged on the floor, drinking a cup of tea and leafing through the pages of a large book featuring the art of Alphonse Mucha.

“Hi,” she said with a sunny, childish smile when she saw that he was awake. “Would you like some tea? I just made a fresh pot.”

“My dear,” Walter said, knuckling the sleep from his eyes and gently moving the placid cat from his chest to the couch so he could sit up. “In this moment, I believe my body needs caffeine more than it needs oxygen.”

“Did somebody say caffeine?” Bell asked from underneath a purple and red paisley throw pillow.

“Four hundred and fifty milligrams, administered intravenously, please,” Nina said, sitting up, rotating her neck, and twisting her tangled hair into a topknot. “With cream and sugar.”

Abby looked at Nina, then back at Walter with her big eyes even bigger than normal. Walter followed her gaze back to Nina and saw what Abby was seeing. The bruising, the spit lip, the signs of their ill-prepared hand-to-hand struggle with the killer. Walter’s hands flew involuntarily to his own face, running his fingers over the damage there. Even the slightest contact made him wince.

His body hurt, too. Everything hurt.

Nina, noting the shocked look on Abby’s sweet, simple face, shook her head, letting her red hair fall back down.

“You should see the other guy,” she said.

“Wow,” Abby said. It was all clearly more than she could wrap her pretty blond head around. “I mean... wow. I’d better... you know... go get that tea.” She got to her feet with minimal struggle, considering her enormous belly, and then drifted away into the kitchen.

Walter took the killer’s notebook from his pocket and was about to open it when Nina gave him a sternly arched eyebrow and a terse shake of her head.

So he slipped the notebook back into his pocket as Abby returned from the kitchen, balancing a tray of steaming mugs, a fancy silver Victorian creamer, a bouquet of mismatched spoons, and a whimsical ceramic sugar bowl shaped like an octopus. The minute she set the tray down, the three of them fell on the tea like animals. Walter drained more than half of the scalding hot liquid in one foolhardy gulp, utterly unmindful of his burnt tongue.

“Thank you, Abby,” Nina said, getting to her feet with her mug in one hand and gesturing toward the stairs. “Now, will you excuse us? We’re going to go on upstairs. We’ve got a few things to discuss.”

“Oh...” Abby said. “That’s cool.” She picked up the lazy cat. “I’ll just hang out down here with Cat-Mandu.” She turned the feline over and cradled him like an infant, any shock or questions about their bruises long gone from her mayfly mind. Even if she realized that they didn’t want her overhearing their conversation, she didn’t seem to care at all.

She set the cat down and went back to her book without another word.

Walter and Bell followed Nina up the stairs, mugs in hand.

Back in Nina’s large Spartan bedroom, the three of them plunked their sore, beat-up frames into the same seats they’d chosen before the madness. Nina and Bell together on her tightly made bed, and Walter at the desk by the windows.

“Okay,” Nina said. “We’re all thinking it, but I’m going to say it. That was really, really stupid. If I hadn’t brought my gun, we’d all be dead.”

“But we saved the passengers,” Walter argued. “You said so yourself—isn’t that what matters?”

“Nina’s right,” Bell said. “We didn’t think things through, but we got lucky. Next time, we might not be so lucky. We need a plan.”

Walter nodded, duly chastened.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “So from here on out, we need to find a way to fight the killer with brains, not brawn. Attack this problem like scientists, not... Dirty Harry.”

“Right,” Bell replied. “And what is the first thing a scientist does when confronted with surprising or atypical results?”

“Repeat the experiment.”

“Repeat the experiment?” Nina echoed. “We almost got ourselves killed today. If you want to repeat that, you can count me out.”

“I’m not talking about repeating the events of today,” Bell began.

“Repeat the original experiment,” Walter finished. He felt that old familiar flush of excitement—the one he got when he and Bell were perfectly synchronized in their thinking process, on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough. “Recreate the original formula. We need to see if we can reopen that gate.”

“Because if we can do that,” Bell said, pausing to let Walter finish.

“We can send him back.”

Nina looked from Bell to Walter, a slight frown creasing her brow.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” she asked. “I mean, the last time you opened this gate, you let a killer stroll right in to our world. What if it happens again?”