Backward

“The illness was genetic. Savage. Wasting. I tried everything. There was simply no hope. At least… not on this side. But over there…”

Among the other mysteries he took with him when he vanished, Walter Bishop had left precious little information behind about the disease that Peter ultimately died from.

His Peter, Olivia corrected herself, as she waited outside of General Broyles’ office. Her Peter was different; he had to be…

Two weeks after the lab incident that made Etta disappear — and seemingly brought them Henry in return — Astrid had found Peter on the floor of Walter’s lab, surrounded by shattered equipment. He claimed exhaustion, which was probably true, as he had barely slept since the accident. But that wasn’t the whole truth; of course it wasn’t. Exhaustion didn’t cause simultaneous kidney and liver failure, anemia, petechiae.

Peter wouldn’t leave the lab, even when Nina offered all the medical resources at Massive Dynamic’s disposal, and insisted he could still work. What had caused the relapse, no one understood. Was it just massive stress, or yet another diabolical side effect of the new machine?

To Olivia, it felt like their lives had gone disastrously backward in time. And when Broyles’ office door opened, she could already tell that his answer would be a grim but firm no.

Fringe Division General Order No. 1 was not to be controverted. There would be no going to the other side, ever again. No communication channels opened. The risks to the universes were just too great. There could never again be the sacrifice of two worlds for one boy.

After hearing this news, Astrid drove until midnight to New York to see Nina… who, surprisingly, was already expecting her.