Chapter 1

Just a few words on the timeline before we begin: for the Fringe section, it is set in season 1, episode 19. Everything is canon up to this point (which point, I hear you ask? Read on and find out!) and for Angel, it is set in season 3, with a couple of minor differences: Detective Kate Lockley is still in the LAPD, and is on (fairly) good terms with the Angel team, and Lilah ran away from Wolfram & Hart when Lindsey got promoted, instead of the other way around. She has been on the run for several months before this fan fiction begins. This story is told from Olivia's viewpoint, in the first person. Other than that, just read and enjoy! Although some feedback would be nice too...


There stands Sanford Harris, grinning faintly to himself as though watching me being trapped in a room with someone at imminent risk of exploding was merely TV program he was fond of.

Fortunately, although there may be no way out of this room for me, the incandescent woman beside me may hold the key to our escape. All I have to do is convince her to channel her power away from herself, lest she ends up like her twin. No easy task, given that, already, she's too hot to touch.

Nevertheless, what can I do but try? "Susan! You have to focus! Try and push the heat away from you... imagine putting it in an object, an object outside the glass!" I shout, trying to get through to her. That manipulative bastard Harris' grin only got wider as he enjoyed the show. He waved at me jauntily, saying "Bye-bye, Olivia."

Perhaps my words got through to her. Or perhaps it was the Sanford's sadistic smile on the other side of the glass that enraged her so much that she felt she simply had to lash out at him, in the only way she could. I could sense the sudden calmness in her, as her inner fire focused on another target.

Evidently, Harris knew it too, if the sudden look of panic on his face was anything to go by. I had a brief struggle between professionalism and the sheer hatred I felt for him. Unsurprisingly, the hatred won. I stood up, walking calmly over to glass, looking contemptuously at the the wildly-sweating, wide-eyed man. "Feeling a little hot under the collar are you?" I mouthed at him ostentatiously, to make sure the man who had tried to make my life hell for months understood exactly what was happening.

I felt an undefinable change in the air. I turned to Susan, and saw not the coolly focused, steely gaze that she had worn but moments before, but a look of fear. I couldn't tell what had frightened her, and I didn't have much time to find out. The whole world went white.


I awoke some time later, I couldn't tell how long. The room looked suspiciously like the lab room I had been in earlier, at least from my lying position. I swung myself upwards, grunting with pain as I move. I touch myself cautiously, to find that almost my entire back has been burnt. How had that happened?

Not that I'm going to find any answers just sitting here. I glance around myself, to find that I was not, as I had first suspected, in the lab room. No, the sparsely furnished room, containing only a bed and a toilet, was a prison cell.

I didn't bother to try the door. If I was in a cell, it would undoubtedly be locked, and people would probably arrive here soon. No, I preoccupied myself with asking myself why I was incarcerated. Had I been captured by ZFT?

That idea is soon disproved by the arrival of the familiar, gangly figure of Agent Broyles, my boss. So, evidently, for some reason my one side had decided it was necessary to imprison me. That would mean that Sanford survived, as only he has the power and the inclination to do this to me.

I'm interrupted from my thoughts by the calm interjection by Broyles, saying "So, you're awake then. Tell me, what do you remember of the incident?". For a moment, I contemplate refusing to answer, to demand why I'm here. But he's my boss, and I trust him go do the right thing. Besides, it would be futile.

So I tell him. I leave nothing out, not even what I'd thought would be the parting words I'd said to Harris. Broyles sits impassively throughout my tale, his face inscrutable. His only reaction comes after I'd finished. He pursed his lips. A bad sign, I knew, from having worked with him for months.

"That's strange, because that's not the way that either Agent Harris or Ms Pratt tells it. Both of them say that it was you that locked them in the lab room, that you encouraged Ms. Pratt to focus her... power on Sanford."