Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

“Definitely,” Walter said. “It’s been made terrifyingly clear that there’s a direct link between pain or heightened emotion and his strange radioactivity. We don’t want him going off like an atom bomb while we’re trying to put him through.”

“Agreed,” Bell said. “You go and drop off the trick letter and I’ll work on formulating an appropriate anesthesia blend for our friend. Meanwhile, Nina, we need you to talk to the band, and see if you can get them to join us at the cabin for another epic acid trip.”

“Free acid in a beautiful pastoral setting?” Nina smiled. “Won’t be that hard to convince them.”

“But...” Walter stood, pacing. He pictured dumb, sweet Abby sleeping on the couch downstairs. “I mean... well, it’s not exactly ethical to experiment on human subjects without making them aware of the potential dangers inherent to their participation.”

“It’s even less ethical to let this monster continue to kill without restraint, just because we got squeamish about ethics,” Bell countered. “This isn’t just an ordinary experiment, Walter.

“Besides,” he continued, “you were the one who always used to say that free acid for everyone would make the world a better place.”

“Nevertheless,” Nina said, “we don’t want to plant the note for the killer to find until we’re absolutely sure the band will be willing to participate in setting up our chemical trap. They have a gig tonight night at a club called the Downward Dog. We can talk to them when they get off.”

“Yes,” Bell said. “Meeting them after the show would be the best way to gather them all in one place and, more than likely, in an inebriated and agreeable mood.”

Walter remained silent. In spite of everything, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of excitement at the prospect of seeing his favorite band live. While it was true that it would have been ideal to see them at the height of their fame, back in ’66, and that their psychedelic folk style was considered by many to be passé, his own inner teenage self was doing a little happy dance.

He hoped that they would play “Hovercraft Mother.”

Yet that excitement was tinged with guilt. He still felt that it was wrong to involve the band members in something so dangerous, and he would feel absolutely awful if something were to happen to one of his musical idols.

It was like mentally weighing the value of the band members’ lives against the lives of Miranda and all the other Zodiac victims yet to come. Could there really be a lesser of these two evils?

Unfortunately there was.

There was every chance that the band would come out of the experiment unharmed. But there was no question what would happen to Miranda if they didn’t send the Zodiac back to his own world.

“I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?” Walter said.

“No,” Nina said. “We don’t.”

26

Having come to that decision about what had to be done, they still had a whole day to kill before the show at the Downward Dog. They were getting more than a little bit ragged around the edges, and Nina didn’t have to ask Walter to leave her bedroom so she could get some rest.

He staggered down the stairs and found Abby awake and bustling in the kitchen. He waved to her in a haze and collapsed on the couch that she had recently vacated. It was still warm from her body. Cat-Mandu snuggled up to him, seeming unfazed by this personnel change.

Within seconds, he fell soundly asleep.

* * *

He didn’t budge until Nina shook him gently awake several hours later.

“Come on,” she said, “let’s get some lunch. A little fuel to stimulate proper brain function. What do you say?”

Walter stood slowly, brushing an avalanche of cat hair off his sweater and pants. His brain felt as fuzzy as his clothes. He realized that he had slept in his shoes.

Nina took them to a restaurant called the Swan Oyster Bar. It was a narrow, almost claustrophobic place with a long marble counter and some of the smallest stools Walter had ever seen. He perched reluctantly on the tiny round wooden seat, not entirely confident that it would hold his weight.

The guy behind the counter was a jovial and burly fellow whose massive hands were surprisingly deft and delicate with the oysters. He shucked them from their rough shells with a practiced twist of the wrist, smiling and joking with the customers while he worked.

Walter himself was not a big fan of raw oysters, but he loved clam chowder and was pleased to see that they made it there just like they made it back home. He ordered a bowl, along with a large plate of Crab Louie. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a nice bowl of clam chowder, and couldn’t. It was as if his life had not existed before this whole Zodiac thing.

Nina and Bell shared a huge plate of oysters, and while Walter was tempted to make some kind of joke about the supposed aphrodisiac properties of the legendary bivalves, he just didn’t have the heart. In a strange way, this food felt almost like a last meal.

“I’ll tell you one other thing that is bothering me about all of this,” Bell said, pausing to slurp an oyster out of its shell.

One thing? Walter thought. More like everything.

“What’s that?” Nina asked, adding a dollop of horseradish to her cocktail sauce.

“Let’s say it works,” Bell said. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the band agrees to help us and the whole plan goes off without a hitch, and we send that bastard back where he came from. We will have saved an unknown number of lives, no doubt about that, but...” He downed another oyster. “We may never know exactly what he was or where he came from.”

“So what?” Walter said. “You’re saying we should be trying to capture him and study him? Try to turn him into some kind of profitable commodity? Or a weapon? Are we no better than Latimer?”

“I’m not saying that studying him is a feasible possibility,” Bell replied. “But aren’t you even the slightest bit curious about him?”

Walter looked down at the pink mess that remained of his Crab Louie, thinking of that heady moment where he’d actually considered going through the gate himself.

“Of course I’m curious!” he replied. “I couldn’t call myself a scientist if I wasn’t. I wonder about him constantly. Is he human? If not, what is he? What sort of world is he from? Another planet? Another universe? So many intriguing questions.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Nina asked, giving Bell an intense but wary look.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Bell said. “I realize that it would be impossibly dangerous to capture and study him. But I’m curious. That’s all I’m saying. I feel as if we’ve stumbled on something really astounding here. Something historic, on the order of splitting the atom. Something that I suspect might alter the course of all our lives, forever.”

He and Nina exchanged a complex look that Walter couldn’t even begin to interpret. He poked at a shred of crab on his plate, but he seemed to have lost his appetite.

He was afraid that Bell was probably right.

What was more, he wondered what would happen to that world on the other side, if they succeeded. Had he been radioactive before he came through the gate? Or were they saving their world by sending a killer to prey on victims in another?

He shook his head, but couldn’t dislodge the doubts.

* * *

They paid their bill at the oyster bar and headed back toward Nina’s house.

“Do you suppose he’s following us right now?” Walter asked, looking back over his shoulder.

“He must be,” Nina replied. “But stop looking around like that. We don’t want him to know that we’re on to him. If we tip our hand, he may go to ground or execute a preemptive strike against us. Possibly even kill us. The key here is to make him think that we are totally naive. Lull him into a false sense of security.”