By M. Giant
Olivia thinks that kissing Peter was only an aftereffects from being in Westfield during last week's reality storm, but now she's migraine-ridden and embarrassed at having kissed Peter. Meanwhile a mental patient named Sean seems to be experiencing a man's home invasion murder remotely and in real time. The case lands in the Fringe team's collective lap, and they interview Sean, who describes his experience of the crime as "hearing voices," like the kind of voice-hearing that landed him in the schizophrenic ward in the first place, only more violent. Walter suspects that since the voices are real, Sean isn't schizophrenic after all, as previously assumed, just telepathically connected to the killers. What a relief, right? Walter decides to test the theory by taking Sean off his meds and seeing what the voices do then.
Olivia's also having some difficulty concentrating on the case, what with having come around to remembering everything about her original timeline. Including, one assumes the Peter and Olivia Sexytimeline. Obviously this is unsettling news to Peter, who's been operating this whole time under the mistaken assumption that he's in the wrong universe with the wrong people. And a session with a suddenly calm Olivia under Walter's magic hair dryer doesn't improve Peter's mood, especially when Walter blames Peter for somehow projecting his memories into Olivia.
Meanwhile, they get a break in the case, suggesting that Sean may be a brother to one or more of the killers -- which is odd, because he was an only child. Except that his mother conceived him with IVF from an anonymous sperm donor, through a clinic that was being looked into by the very man killed early in the episode. Walter forms a theory that Sean and his "voices" are operating as a hive mind, like a colony of bees with a powerful protective instinct, while Peter and Olivia track down the fertility doctor in question at an assisted living facility. That gentleman calmly informs them that he messed with the embryos' DNA (all of which came from his own nasty loins, of course) back in the day, so now his science-demon seed are killing anyone who might make their story public. When Peter and Olivia go to check out a stash of the doc's data, they walk into an ambush, and the doctor himself is killed. Plus, Sean is cut out of the hive mind loop, which he takes pretty hard, even after being comforted by Astrid.
Meanwhile, Walter figures out from a hair sample that Olivia's currently being dosed with cortexiphan -- like, as we speak -- so he and Lincoln go and brace Nina Sharp, all but accusing her of being behind it. And since Nina boasts about being the only one who still has access to the stuff, they soon stop pretending not to be suspicious. After surviving the ambush and closing the case, Olivia and Peter end up kissing for real, even though Peter's understandably gun-shy about repeating the mistake he made with Fauxlivia. And while Walter and Lincoln arrive at Massive Dynamic to find Nina's tightly guarded stash of cortexiphan swapped out for fakes, Olivia disappears from the gas station where she and Peter stopped. She wakes up, beaten and bound to a chair in a dank basement, facing an equally battered… Nina Sharp. The real one, I assume, and not the presumably fake Nina currently enduring the accusatory stares of Walter and Lincoln. On the bright side, at least now we know the real Nina isn't evil. Unless of course she beat up a Mark Two shapeshifter that looks like herself and stuffed her in a basement with Olivia. Probably shouldn't rule anything out.