The Righteous Man in the Shallow Grave 2/3
Chapter 2: The Evidence
Tessa felt it happen.
She was in Indonesia, about as far as she could get from the ground zero of Dean Winchester's return without making it obvious she was hiding. She was reaping an old, sick man when it happened: the world around her flexed, expanding like a rubber sheet and sending quivering ripples across the fabric of the universe itself.
It'd begun.
She finished up with the old man -- whatever Death might think of her patience, she was still a professional -- then shifted her focus westward. In a moment, she was standing in the parking lot of a large, grand campus of buildings, an area littered with domes and fountains, architectural elegance and modern efficiency -- sirens and humans in uniform and reapers.
Dean Winchester had not come quietly.
"What the hell happened to my extra security?" A man strode up, pale and tall and confident and so. Very. Young. He wore a dark suit and tie, his hair sticking up in the artful, swooping spikes that Tessa supposed must be in vogue, right now. His belt buckle said "cocky" and his socks were brightly striped. A man in black uniform and body armor stood at attention near a hastily erected line of yellow tape, a soldier saluting his commander.
"No word, yet."
The suit cursed, turning in place to stare at one of the buildings as another person, a dark-skinned woman wearing a black blazer pulled over jeans and a casual top, made her way over. "This is the part of being a cop that I don't miss, Seeley." She came to a stop next to the first man, narrowly missing walking straight through one of Tessa's fellow reapers. "What the hell happened?"
"Pull you from a hot date, Cam?" The man, Seeley, shook his head. "Some kind of explosion. Set off every alarm in the place. That's all we've got so far."
"Biohazard?" Cam stared at the building, biting her lip.
"That'd be one of the alarms, yeah." Seeley kicked at something on the asphalt. "Systems are all locked down. No one's been able to get in or out."
"Biohazard," Cam said again, nodding. "The lab'll be under automatic quarantine until the computers get the all-clear."
"Right." Seeley clapped his hands, then rubbed them together, turning back towards his soldiers. "You heard the lady. Let's 'all-clear', already!"
A soldier in glasses shook his head. "We can't, sir. Something's overloaded the mainframe. All the security systems are down."
Cam frowned. "What about the back-ups?"
Glasses gave her a sympathetic look. "All the security systems are down."
"Then how the hell are we in automatic quarantine?" Seeley spread his arms out to either side, as though welcoming the world to answer his question, and Tessa leaned back to avoid getting a hand through her face. Glasses swallowed.
"They must have frozen in lock-down mode."
"Then go unfreeze them!"
"Seeley." Cam tried, but apparently Seeley was the sort who just liked to rant.
"What the hell good is a back-up system if it goes at the same time as the front-up?"
"Seeley." Cam put a hand on his arm this time, getting his attention. "I'm sure they're already on it." She had a phone in her free hand and split her attention between Seeley and its screen. He followed her gaze.
"Was anyone still in there?"
Cam shook her head. "Without the security logs, it's hard to tell. A request went out to check in, but it looks like there's still a bunch of people who haven't responded." She took a breath, and a flicker of a wince crossed her face. "Including Hodgins, Angela . . . and Dr. Brennan."
"Bones is in there?" Seeley turned to start pacing, pulling his own phone out and dialing, then pressing it to his ear. "Of course she is. She's always --" he cut off, pulling the phone away. "Straight to voicemail."
"Same with Hodgins. I'm trying Angela." Cam dialed, listened for a moment, then shook her head.
Seeley swore. "Dammit, Bones. If you're dead, I'm going to kill you."
Tessa stepped away and looked up at the building, illuminated eerily in red and blue flashes. "She's not," she said, though she knew Seeley couldn't hear her.
The building was locked down, alright, and no one was going in or out, right now. Not even the reapers.
*
Brennan stared down at the blank screen of her phone. She pressed several buttons and when she got no response, she gave in to the urge to smack it and give it a few shakes. As she had hypothesized, the actions had no visible effect. "My phone's dead." She looked up, shooting the man on her lab table a hard look before glancing to Angela and Hodgins.
Angela held hers up, showing a similarly dark screen. "Mine, too."
"Dr. Hodgins?"
Hodgins shook his head. "Nada."
Brennan frowned. "It must have something to do with the explosion."
"I'd lend you mine," said the man on the table, and though Brennan of course knew he was still there, she couldn't help a slight reflex of surprise. "But I guess I left it in my other pants."
"Yeah," said Hodgins, folding his arms. "I've got your other pants on my work table, man. There's no phone in 'em."
Brennan frowned. "Why do you have this man's pants?"
Angela shot her a glance, then went back to staring at the man on the table. Like herself and Dr. Hodgins, she seemed reluctant to let him out of her sight. "It was a joke, honey."
"Was it?" Hodgins glanced back at her. Both of them were holding their shoulders high and tense, though Brennan was certain that, if she had to, she could subdue the man on the table. She'd observed Booth subduing suspects on any number of occasions.
"I take it," she said, looking back at the man, "that you're implying that this man is the same as the one whose remains we've been examining." She shook her head. "Then Angela's right. You have to be joking."
"Um," said the man on the table. "Either way? Still naked, here."
"I don't see what you want us to do about that. It was clearly your own misjudgement and none of our clothing would fit you."
"Also," Angela said, giving the man a stern look, though Brennan noted that she remained in the doorway, well out of his reach. "We don't give our clothing to serial killers."
"Alleged," said Hodgins. Brennan huffed.
"Dr. Hodgins, please."
Hodgins raised his hands. "Hey, I'm just sticking to the facts."
"Look at him, Tempe," Angela said, waving in the man's direction. "He looks exactly like Dean Winchester."
"No," said Brennan. "He doesn't." Angela raised her eyebrows and Brennan went on. "I will admit that he's the same height and build as the skeleton and that he bears a marked resemblance to your reconstruction sketch --"
"It's not just marked," Hodgins said. "It's uncanny."
"He's even got the tattoo," said Angela. "That wasn't in any of the reports, but it's the same placement and angle and everything."
The man glanced down and poked himself in the pectoral, just next to the tattoo in question. "That's a relief," he said. Brennan chose to ignore him.
"Even if we assume that the completely skeletonized remains could spontaneously regenerate epithelial, connective, muscle, and nerve tissue -- which is completely irrational -- this man's skeletal structure bears none of the markers I noted in Dean Winchester's remains." Brennan stepped up next to the table, gingerly working her way around the bone shards she could see scattered about. Hodgins let out a squawk of protest, which she ignored. She grabbed hold of the man's left arm, avoiding the mass of keloidial scar tissue on his deltoid, and set her stance in case he struggled. He stared at her, shock apparent in the contraction of his levator palpebrae superioris muscles, but didn't resist. "The remains showed significant remodeling to the Coracoid process from what I surmise to be at least two gun shot wounds, approximately one year apart, the most recent occurring no more than four months prior to death. Even without the significant scarring one would expect to see, doing this --" she worked the man's arm up, down, and around, "-- would be incredibly painful." She looked closer at the keloid, noting the distinct and startlingly accurate hand print shape. "This brand is impressive," she noted. "I assume it bears some sort of tribal significance."
The man craned his neck to look over at his shoulder, his eyebrows drawing together as though he'd never seen the brand before, then turned his gaze from Brennan to Angela and Hodgins. "Is she for real?"
"No," said Hodgins. "She's entirely imaginary."
"Furthermore," Brennan said, putting extra emphasis on the first two syllables as she shifted her grip from the man on the table's biceps to his wrist, filing the scar away in the back of her mind as a possible indicator of identity. "This man's phalanges show no indication of the multiple remodeled fractures I observed on the remains." She released the man and stepped back, looking him over. He wiggled his fingers, eyes still wide. "As a matter of fact, barring the bowing of the legs," which she did have to admit appeared to be very close to the bowing on the remains, possibly even a precise match, "I'd say this man's skeletal structure is in perfect condition."
The man shot her a weak-lipped leer. "Lady, I can't wait to see what you do on a second date."
Brennan scowled. She found this man exceedingly irritating, even setting aside the fact that he had somehow gotten past the Jeffersonian's guards, Booth's added security personnel, and the various check points and alarms in order to destroy her lab. "Which brings me back to my earlier questions." She grabbed his arm again, this time wrenching it up and around, behind his back, putting pressure on his glenohumeral joint. She had it on good authority that such a position was very painful. "Who are you, and what did you do to my lab?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me --" Brennan tried to think of a suitably obscene and intimidating insult. "-- Testicle-face!"
"Testicle-face?" said the man.
Hodgins took a step forward. "Dr. Brennan --"
Brennan wrenched the man's arm harder. The man gasped -- then moved far too quickly for Brennan to counter. He somehow twisted out of her hold, an act which must have nearly dislocated his shoulder, and spun her around, getting to his feet and pushing her away with the same movement. She slammed into the table, then turned to look where he'd gone, adrenaline pouring into her system and accelerating her heart rate and breathing in preparation for his next attack.
He stood at the far wall of the room, next to her very expensive -- and very broken -- standing display, bent at the waist in a defensive posture with his hands at shoulder level, fingers spread.
"Woah," said Angela. She and Hodgins had retreated once more to just the other side of the doorway. "Let's all just calm down, here."
"You broke into my lab," Brennan said.
The man snorted. "Naked?"
"Whatever floats your boat, man," said Hodgins.
Brennan was out of patience. "Who are you?"
The man grinned. At any other time, Brennan supposed she might find the expression physically stimulating.
"Dean Winchester," he said. "Nice to meet you."
*
"Okay." Geier, one of the FBI's techs, came up while Booth was zipping up his hazmat suit. "We've got the main door to the building open and clear, but it'll take awhile before we can confirm presence of any hazardous materials." He whistled softly through his teeth. "Whatever happened in there, it's not pretty."
Booth grimaced. He didn't like the mental image that was painting.
Cam, holding Booth's suit's helmet, looked like she felt the same. "Bodies?"
"None yet, but we haven't gone in very far." Geier shrugged. "We got the security team by the front entrance out. Looks like they were knocked out before it all went down."
Booth looked over to the waiting ambulances not far from the hazmat truck, but the angle was wrong for him to be able to make out much of what was happening over there. "Did we get anything from them? Like how the attacker got in?"
Geier shook his head. "One of them's awake, but he's not really in any shape to answer any questions yet."
Booth cursed under his breath and held out his hands for the hazmat helmet. Cam made a face as she handed it over.
"I really think you should be leaving this to the hazmat team, Booth. Or at least wait for back up to be ready."
Booth shook his head. "Three members of my team are in there."
"We don't know that." Booth gave her a look and Cam winced, but continued. "And they're my people too, you know. More than they are yours."
Booth gestured to the truck. "Then why aren't you putting on a suit?"
"Because I happen to know how dangerous a hazmat situation can be." Cam folded her arms over her chest. "There could be anything in there."
Booth secured the helmet over his head and switched on the internal lamp. "Which is why the special agent is going in first." He held out his hand again. "Gun."
Cam sighed and handed his weapon over. Booth checked the magazine and held it carefully in both hands, turning toward the doors to the building. "Alright people!" He didn't turn to see the rest of the hazmat squad that would be following him in, his eyes glued to the door that would lead them to the lab. The suit's helmet made his voice bounce back oddly in his ears, putting him even more on edge. "Everyone stays behind me till I give the all clear!"
He heard a few calls of assent and started forward.
The hallway to the lab was still and eerie, lit sporadically by dim yellow emergency lights, the floor speckled with broken glass. Whatever explosive device had gone off had taken out almost every window on the first floor, but that was the only damage Booth could see. He felt his skin prickle and breathed slowly through his teeth. The closer he got to the door to the lab, the more the sense of wrongness grew, as though the air itself was thickening around him. Whatever had happened here, it wasn't something any of the FBI's technicians or agents had seen before. And Bones was likely right smack in the middle of it.
Not that that was much of a surprise. Bones had a talent for ending up right in the middle of things.
Booth slowed as they approached the double glass doors leading to the lab. Like all the windows, the doors where shattered, only the frames remaining, still locked together by the automatic security system. Booth pressed himself against the wall next to the doors, leaning his head back to listen. The hazmat suit muffled everything, but he could make out the sound of voices under the shrill cry of the alarm.
"Angela." That sounded like Bones. Booth felt himself relax incrementally. "Go get my gun." And that tensed him right back up.
"What?" Angela sounded as unhappy with the idea of Bones needing her gun as Booth did.
"It's in my office, in the top drawer of my desk. I'd get it myself, but I have to be ready to restrain him if he tries anything."
"It's an obstacle course out there. I'm not sure Angela could even get to your office." That was Hodgins, which meant all three of Booth's missing team members were conscious and speaking. He glanced back at the rest of the hazmat team and raised his hand, signalling them to keep back, then edged his way through the frame of the door.
The lab was in ruins. Tables were overturned and the floor was covered with broken equipment and a fine coating of tempered safety glass. Some sort of force had swept through from the back of the lab towards the doors, but Booth couldn't see any evidence of burning. The explosive techs were going to have a field day with this one.
Stepping carefully so as not to make too much noise, Booth made his way through the lab towards the back. He could just make out the forms of Angela and Hodgins standing in the doorway to the bone room, which seemed to be the center of the explosion. That'd be where Bones was, along with whatever man she was talking about restraining. Booth stepped up his pace, dropping the attempt at stealth in favor of getting to the room with his gun before Bones did anything stupid. His foot knocked aside a metal canister, and Angela and Hodgins both startled, then turned to look.
"Booth!" Angela smiled, her shoulders slumping. "Thank god."
"Booth?" Bones called. Booth heard a grunt, followed by cursing in a gravely male voice. "Booth, in here! I have a suspect in custody!"
"Dammit, Bones." Booth hurried over, gun still held at the ready. Angela grabbed Hodgins' arm and pulled him out of the way with her as Booth reached the door. He swung in, leading with his gun, and swept the room before centering on where Bones stood over a kneeling man, pinning him down with an armlock.
Booth stopped, straightening. "Okay, why is this guy naked?"
"No idea, man." Hodgins was back in the doorway, Angela still hovering behind him. "We found him like that."
The man kneeling peered up at Booth, making no move to break out of the armlock. "Why are you in a spacesuit?"
"Hey." Booth stepped forward, lowering his gun slightly and wishing he'd thought to secure his cuffs to the hazmat suit. "You're not asking the questions here, buddy." The man smirked tiredly at him and Booth frowned. "Wait, is this --"
"He claims to be Dean Winchester," Bones said. She wrenched the man's arm up higher, almost vengefully. "He destroyed my lab."
"We don't technically know that," Hodgins said. "It's not like we've caught him red handed."
"Not helping, Hodgins." Booth scanned the room again, half turning to shoot a glance back towards the door. "Anyone else suspicious?"
Angela shook her head. "I think we're the only ones here."
Booth nodded. "There's a hazmat team in the hall. Let them know we're clear." Booth scowled at the naked man under Bones' grip. "And tell them to bring this guy some pants, would you?"
The man rolled his eyes. "Finally."
"You be quiet." Booth had to know. "Why are you naked?"
"How should I know? I've been asking for pants for the last ten minutes."
"That's true," said Bones.
Booth rolled his eyes. "Why didn't one of you lend him a lab coat?"
"Angela said we don't lend clothes to serial killers."
"Alleged," said Hodgins. The man shot him a nod.
"There are a great many cultures for whom nudity is not a taboo." Bones fell into lecture-mode, as though she weren't currently keeping a naked man pinned to a glass- and dust-covered floor.
"Yeah, well." Booth patted down the side of his suit, looking for a good spot to tuck his gun so he could take over control of the prisoner from her. "This is America. We don't have nudists, here."
"That's not true," said Bones. "There are recreational nudist retreats in more than half of the fifty states. The American Association for Nude Recreation has around 50,000 members --"
Booth held up a hand. "Okay, yeah, fine, but we don't have that here, in this lab, do we?" He finally gave in with a small wince and handed Bones his gun after making sure the safety was on. She stepped back, training it on the man, and Booth stepped in to take hold of the man's arm. "Alright, then. Dean Winchester. You're coming with me."
"Dean Winchester's dead," Bones noted.
"Yeah, we've thought that before."
"And they say third time's a charm," Hodgins said. Booth noted he was still keeping well back from the man himself. At least he had some sense of self-preservation, even if he didn't know when to keep his mouth shut.
"I like that guy." The man twitched in Booth's grip as he was pulled to his feet, though Booth could tell he wasn't using his full strength. "Shouldn't you be showing me a badge or something?"
"I'll let you take a good long look once we get outside." Booth tugged harder on his arm, then paused as the man winced. For all his time in the army and on the job, he still hated it when someone got injured. Even an alleged killer like Dean Winchester. "Angela! Tell them to bring shoes!"
"Got it!" Angela called back. She reappeared a moment later with a spare hazmat suit. "I think this will fit him. They're looking for a spare pair of boots. We can't leave until they finish testing for biohazards, anyway."
Bones was apparently still stuck on the identity question. "Before, we didn't have a positive identification of Dean Winchester's remains in the Jeffersonian."
"Is that what this place is?" The man -- who really looked a hell of a lot like Dean Winchester, dammit -- looked around the lab consideringly. "That would explain the stockpile of bones."
"Like you don't know." Booth steered him towards the lab table, the only unbroken and un-broken-glass-covered surface around. "Sit down."
The man sat, raising his hands in surrender as he shrugged out of Booth's grip. "Look, I don't, okay? I have no idea what happened here. I just . . . woke up."
Booth frowned. He knew from the files that Dean was an accomplished liar, but something about the tone of his voice and the look on his face -- and the fact that the guy was naked -- made Booth want to believe him.
"So, what, this is some fraternity prank gone awry?"
The man smiled roguishly and shrugged, then abruptly dropped the cute act. "Yeah, okay, probably not. But seriously, man, you can check the place for fingerprints or . . . footprints or whatever. I'm willing to bet you won't find a trace of me anywhere but in this room."
Booth leaned in, staring him hard in the eye. "Trust me, we'll do that. But you're still coming with me."
The man's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I kinda figured."
*
It was a thirteen and a half hour drive from Pontiac, Illinois to Washington, DC. Sam decided to do the whole drive in one shot. Ruby tried to convince him that he wouldn't do Dean any good if he got to the Jeffersonian all exhausted, but Sam wouldn't hear it. It was close to two in the morning by the time they reached the outskirts of the city, and Sam still insisted on going straight to the museum's offices. Ruby wasn't looking forward to busting him out of whatever cell he ended up in when he got caught, but capitulated easily enough. She had to make Sam think she was as interested in getting Dean's remains -- and Dean -- back as he was.
They spotted the flashing lights from a block away. Sam circled around three times before they found a space from which they could watch the action without being spotted. Sure, it was a no parking zone, but Ruby was pretty sure no one would come by to give them a ticket. It looked like every emergency vehicle in the district was already outside the Jeffersonian.
Sam leaned forward in his seat, hands tight around the Impala's wheel. "What the hell?"
Ruby shrugged, her own hands clenched into fists. There was something in the air here that set her teeth on edge and made her want to get as far away as possible. Something really strange was going on here, far more than just Dean's rotted body getting shipped off to get picked over by some scientists. Something big enough to fill the Jeffersonian's parking lot with ambulances, cop cars, fire engines, and what looked like it might be a hazmat truck. She leaned back in her seat, ducking her chin down to her chest. "We should go. Sam, turn around. We can watch the news and then come back tomorrow."
Sam shook his head, his eyes glued to the building. "No way. Dean's in there, Ruby, I know it. I've almost found a way to save him. I can't lose him, now."
Ruby bit her lip. That'd been a sticking point in their relationship over the past few months, ever since she'd gotten him sobered up. Drunken Sam had been -- well, not okay, really, but at least more content with the fact that Dean really couldn't be saved. But the driving ambition to increase his power until he could storm the gates of Hell itself was one of the few things keeping Sam from reaching for another bottle, and if it played into Ruby's plans for him, she couldn't really complain.
It was really irritating, though.
"Hang on." Ruby sat forward again. "There's people coming out." She squinted through the windshield, trying to see past the flashing lights. Beside her, Sam reached into the back seat, pulling out a large, battered pair of binoculars. Ruby made a face as he held them up to his eyes. "Hey, you got another pair of those?"
"No," said Sam. He shrugged without looking at her. "Sorry."
Ruby huffed and stared back through the windshield. She could make out a line of people, mostly wearing hazmat suits, making their way out of the building. A few dressed in dark lab clothes formed the tail end of the line, lead by two men about the same height and build, one frog-marching the other towards the waiting police vans. To her left, Sam scanned the line, then let out an explosive curse. He threw the car back into gear before Ruby could work out what he'd seen and tossed the binoculars at her as he twisted in his seat to start pulling out of their space. Ruby squawked in surprise, then grabbed the binoculars and looked through them.
The man being frog-marched was wearing a hazmat suit, but no helmet. As he passed out of the shadow of a fire truck, she got a good look at his face and let out a curse of her own.
If her eyes were to be believed, Dean was alive and well, and currently in the custody of the FBI. She watched as the agent manhandled him into the waiting van, then lost sight of the whole scene when Sam pulled them back into the minimal traffic. When they could no longer make out any of the flashing lights, she rounded on him.
"What the hell, Sam?!"
Sam's jaw was set angrily. "I don't know."
"Like hell! Did you make a deal without telling me? Did someone offer you a deal?!"
Sam thumped his hand down on the wheel, running right through a yellow light and nearly pulling the wrong way around a traffic circle. "Of course not. None of the crossroads demons will bargain with me, you know that. It must be something else. A revenant or a shifter or something."
Ruby shook her head, remembering the terrible foreboding she'd felt when they first arrived on the scene. That sure as hell hadn't been any revenant. "A shifter needs a living model to create that specific of a form, Sam."
"A demon then? Or a zombie?"
"He didn't look real undead to me."
Sam swung them around corner after corner until they reached one of the larger roads, then pulled out his phone. "Here, use the GPS and try to find us a motel. Something not too nearby. The FBI knows about the Impala."
"Then why didn't you let me drive?" Ruby huffed and started poking at his phone, trying to work out how the GPS system on it worked. "Sam, what are we going to do?"
"We're going to find out what the hell is impersonating my brother and we're going to kill it."
Ruby swallowed. She really didn't want to bring up what had sprung to mind -- she didn't even want to think about it as a possibility -- but she and Sam were at a crucial point. She had to make sure he didn't think he had any reason not to trust her, and that meant playing devil's advocate sometimes, even when it wouldn't immediately work in her favor. "Sam, what if that's really him?" She glanced over. "Something was wrong with that building. What if someone else brought Dean -- the real Dean -- back?"
Sam glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "What are you saying?"
"Something happened there. Something powerful. Maybe more powerful than anything I've seen before. Sam, this could be really big. And really, really dangerous."
Sam's eyes went wide and Ruby watched as a range of emotions crossed his face: shock, denial, disappointment, shame, more shock, and then anger and determination. His jaw set and he lowered his chin, practically glaring down the road. "Then we'll find out what it is. We'll get Dean back. And then we'll kill it." He tilted his head, then swung down another road. "I'm going to need some practice," he said. He glanced over again, this time turning his head to catch her full gaze for a moment. "Can you find me some demons?"
Ruby smiled, reaching out to pat his arm. Maybe Dean was back or maybe something decided to take his form to mess with people. Either way, Ruby could see this working out very well for her plans. "Of course, Sam. I'll give you any help you need."
*
Dean lay back on the cot in the holding cell, staring at the ceiling. He'd gotten the feeling as he was being loaded into the police van at the museum that the FBI agent would have liked to put him straight into an interrogation room, but the others on the scene had nixed the idea. Something about getting a chance to rest up and gather more information. So Dean was moved to the local jail, given a jumpsuit to replace the plastic hazmat one they'd loaned him in the lab, and thrown into a cell for the night.
They'd given him a phone call when he'd insisted that he should get one, but Sam's number had been disconnected. He'd lucked into a sympathetic guard, who'd offered to let him try one more number -- and Bobby had hung up on him. Honestly, Dean could hardly blame the man. The last thing he remembered was being used as a chew toy by a hellhound. That wasn't the sort of thing that one expected a person to survive.
The calender on the wall of the office where they'd fingerprinted him had said September. It was the only hint Dean had as to how much time he was missing. Four months. Four months he'd apparently spent at the tender mercies of Hell and he had nothing to remember it by except a vague sense of unease and flashes of darkness, blood, and pain every time he closed his eyes.
While he was glad enough not to be subjected to an endless line of questions he had no idea how to answer without getting thrown into a loony bin, he almost wished the FBI agent had taken him right to interrogation. At least with other people around, it was easier for him to ignore those flashes. To ignore the fact that he was entirely on his own for perhaps the first time in his life, without Bobby's gruff expertise to call on, without any idea where Sam might be or what he'd done to bring Dean back, without even the knowledge of his dad out there somewhere, roaming the country and ignoring Dean's calls.
God, but he missed his dad. He'd missed him the moment Sam had come into his hospital room, seemingly so long ago, and told him that Dad had collapsed, and had continued to miss him every moment after. But that ache returned a hundred fold now as Dean lay in a dark cell, surrounded by people who hated him on principle, with no idea how to get out or if he would have anything to run to even if he did escape.
What had Sam done? Was he okay? Had he traded himself for Dean, the same way Dean had traded himself for Sam? Was his brother in Hell now, in his place? Or did he have a ticking clock hanging over his head, like Dean had had all last year? At the moment, it seemed like Dean would never know. He was a wanted fugitive, in FBI custody, found in a decimated laboratory, with no other obvious suspects around and no explanation for what had happened or how he'd gotten there. Not one they'd believe, at least. There'd be no Deacon around this time to help facilitate his escape. No sympathetic public defender to talk into getting him the information he needed. And -- hopefully -- no ghosts or armies of demons storming the building to prove what Dean claimed was the truth. At best, Dean figured he could look forward to spending the rest of his life in prison, getting his ass kicked by guards and giant prisoners named with ironic nicknames. At worst, well. It wouldn't be the first time a demon possessed a member of the FBI. Dean could easily "disappear", and probably get sent right back to Hell.
He rolled over onto his side on the cot, pulling his knees up. He hadn't felt this hopeless since he'd sat vigil by the side of Sam's corpse in Cold Oak. At least then he'd known he had a way out. A crappy one filled with pain and guilt, but one that left him knowing that at least his brother would be alive.
Dean was wallowing. He knew he had to get up, had to start thinking about what he was going to say to the FBI, how he would try to explain away the damage to the lab. It'd be no use trying to deny who he was, even if he hadn't admitted it outright to the scientists who'd found him. They had his fingerprints on record, had mug shots from Arkansas. It wasn't the first time they'd seen him "come back from the dead" either, even if it was the first time Dean actually remembered doing so. There was no point in trying to convince them of the truth, but there had to be some story he could spin, some emotional response he could trigger to get them on his side, at least long enough for him to find someone who could actually help. Bobby's list of contacts was a mile long -- surely one of them must have some sort of lawyerly credentials.
But that lab was going to screw him. Dean didn't trust the FBI to actually conduct a thorough investigation. They had a scapegoat already locked up, they'd have no need to look any further. And Dean didn't have any idea what could have actually done that kind of damage. If Sam had made a deal to bring him back, whatever demon he'd made it with had some serious mojo and was probably laughing himself sick at the fact that Dean got the blame for it. He really, really hoped that Sam hadn't made a deal, would have thought his brother was smarter than that, stronger, but he couldn't see any other way that he wasn't a mess of chewed flesh and damned soul.
His thoughts kept going around and around. He'd never been good at inactivity. He wished he could sleep, but was terrified of the dreams he was certain he would have. The last thing he wanted was to remember Hell, but the memories seemed to be lurking just at the edge of his conscious mind, hulking and terrible.
He was so distracted by his thoughts and fears that he didn't notice the rising sound filling the cell until it was already loud enough to hurt.
There was light, too. A harsh and sourceless white light like a magnesium flare surrounded him on all sides, wiping out the shadows of the cell. Dean pushed himself up from the cot, staggering away from it and looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. The light spilled out through the barred door, marking thick lines along the floor of the hallway outside. Dean clapped his hands over his ears as the noise grew, but it seemed to move right through his palms, rattling his whole skull and making his joints ache. He hissed and sank to the floor, eyes squeezed shut, and wondered if this whole thing wasn't Hell after all, some cruel, creative joke the demons liked to play when they got tired of ripping people's skin off. He was just reaching the point of hoping he'd pass out before his head exploded when the sound of guards shouting in the distance penetrated the feedback-like buzz. He curled up on the floor, arms wrapped tightly around his head, and caught a glimpse of a guard throwing up an arm as he approached the cell, before the light and sound cut out abruptly, and Dean dropped into blessed, silent darkness.
*
Hodgins stepped carefully over the overturned mass spectrometer than had once sat next to his work table and winced inwardly. The Jeffersonian had the whole lab well insured, so the cost of replacing the thing wasn't much of a worry -- even if it weren't insured, the Cantilever Group had more than enough funds to rebuild the place from the ground up, though talking the board into doing it would have been interesting. Still, that single piece of equipment could run a good five figures, used, and it would be awhile before the FBI tech team got the place cleared enough to even bring insurance adjusters in, let alone start the process of getting everything replaced. The Medico-Legal lab was going to be crippled for at least the next month.
Maybe he and Angela could take a break. Head down to No Name Key themselves and talk Birimbau into signing the divorce papers, then tool around the Caribbean until the lab was back in order. Lord knew they needed it. He'd been considering asking her if she wanted to go since Zack was arrested, but the siren call of science, of catching other killers and preventing them from doing to others what they'd done to his best friend had been too strong. Dean Winchester had forced their hand, now. Maybe it was a blessing. Maybe Hodgins could turn this into something positive for him and Angela, at least. Let someone else catch serial killers for awhile.
Hodgins pushed those thoughts aside as he made his way over to where the FBI's team was working, taking measurements on the blast radius and swabbing surfaces for particulates. Officially, he wasn't supposed to be helping out with the investigation -- Caroline had ranted for a good five minutes about conflicts of interest and hadn't he learned his lesson the last time? -- but he'd made his way past the police tape with talk of checking on his office, making sure his slime molds and beetles hadn't been adversely affected in the blast. None of the FBI's team wanted to get near any of that. As long as he promised not to actually touch anything that wasn't directly slime- or bug-related, they were willing to let him observe.
"You guys found anything yet?"
One of the agents looked up from the pile of glass she was examining and frowned at him. "Doctor Hodgins," she said. "What are you doing in here?"
"Agent Frost." Hodgins tried for a smile and hoped she wouldn't try to get him kicked out. They hadn't parted on the best terms when they'd worked together on the June Harris case. "Just checking on my slime. Got curious."
Frost huffed, then turned back to her work. "Well. I'll admit, I'm curious, too. Judging by the directionality of the blast, the explosion initiated from the table in the bone room, yet it's the only piece of furniture or equipment in the area that's been left undamaged. And we haven't been able to find anything to suggest what sort of incendiary device was used." She turned to look over the ruins of the lab, her frown going from annoyed to intrigued. "Frankly, I've never seen anything like it."
Hodgins frowned as well, following her gaze. "You haven't found any residue?"
"And I haven't even thrown out any air filters."
Hodgins snorted, glad she didn't seem to be harboring any hard feelings. "Good to know. What about the security guards? Any idea what knocked them out?"
"Sorry," she said. "Not my field. The security office is outside the blast radius. It wasn't the same device that took them out."
Hodgins turned until he was facing the front entrance of the lab, taking in the layout of the rubble. He couldn't tell anything more just by looking than what Frost had just told him. If Zack were here, he'd be running the calculations to determine force and directionality in his head, and already compiling a list of chemical reactions that could create such an effect. But Zack wasn't here, and it wasn't likely he ever would be again. He pushed the thought aside, determined to refocus on the present. "And here I was hoping there'd be some part of this case that wasn't bizarre."
"I can't help you there." Frost gave him a searching look. "Is it true that the suspect was found naked?"
"As a jaybird." Hodgins decided against going into his half-baked theory about how that had happened. Still, the evidence was piling up a little too high. They'd had remains they'd been certain belonged to Dean Winchester, complete with a signed receipt -- okay, signed "D. Hasselhoff", but it wasn't exactly unheard of for Dean to use an alias like that -- and then, the same time the remains disappeared, possibly even the exact moment, a baffled-looking, naked Dean Winchester appeared, right in the center of a blast none of them could yet explain. Combine that with perimortem wounds from an animal they couldn't positively identify, what appeared to be a completely new subspecies of giant flea found on the victim's clothing, the massive amounts of sulfur, the evidence of voodoo involvement and the claims from across the country that the Winchester brothers were heroes taking down unexplainable, murderous creatures. . . . Well, it was the ghost of Maggie Cinders all over again. At least the pieces there added up -- a student film, a mess of hallucinogens, and a deeply disturbed older brother leading straight into murder.
Of course, then there was that figure he and Angela had spotted in the last bit of recovered video. Moonlight on fog, they'd decided, but Hodgins couldn't help but wonder.
And this. Was this another case of moonlight and fog, the mind finding patterns where patterns didn't exist? Hodgins' scientist side -- which these days tended to sound a lot like Dr. Brennan -- was saying yes, of course, it had to be. He was a fool for even questioning it. But the other side, the one that followed conspiracy theories and hopped up and down like a little boy when there might be pirates to be found, that side kept pointing at all the bits and pieces and insisting "but what if it's true?"
Well, there was one part he could put to rest easily enough. He turned toward the bone room and gave Frost a hopeful look. "Hey, mind if I take a quick look, here? Everything was so confused last night, I want to see what it looks like in daylight."
That earned him another frown, this time accompanied by a pointing finger. "Don't touch anything."
"Please." Hodgins pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm a professional."
Frost eyed him suspiciously, but nodded. "We've finished up in there, anyway. You've got three minutes."
Hodgins gave her his best innocent smile. "That's plenty. Thanks." He slipped into the room before she could change her mind. It was empty, save for Hodgins and the scattering of glass and bone left by the blast. The light table stood proud, front and center. As Frost had said, the damage all seemed to radiate out from it -- the force in this room had been great enough to break the fronts off the plastic bone storage bins that lined the walls. Dr. Brennan was incredibly lucky to have been out of the room when everything went down, though Hodgins wondered if luck were really involved at all. No one had really been injured, last night, not even the security guards who'd been knocked unconscious.
He spotted a few darker spots on the floor and crouched down. Almost no one, anyway. Dean's feet had been cut a few times by the glass, which meant tiny amounts of blood were left behind on the floor. He dug into his pocket for one of the baggies he kept on hand when he was working, then carefully scooped up a few bloodied glass pebbles and zipped the bag shut. He hoped it'd be enough. They'd managed to get a DNA work-up on trace evidence before, but that was when Cam was working with the Jeffersonian's top-of-the-line equipment. He'd have to outsource this one to another lab. Dean hadn't bled that much, and Hodgins ran the risk of getting caught if he took too much from the floor, here. They weren't going to get a second chance to run the tests.
He wrapped the baggie in a few tissues to add a buffer zone between his clothes and the plastic-wrapped glass, then slid it back into his pocket. There was plenty of organic material left on the clothing that'd been found with the remains. He could send that and the blood traces off to one of his colleagues out of town, and when it came back as being from two different individuals, he could put the crazy side of his mind to rest.
And, well, if it did come back as a match. . . . Then he'd worry about rewriting his whole world view later.
*
Booth rewound the tape a third time and watched again as Dean threw himself off his cot and clamped his hands to his head before the feed dissolved into static. He glanced over at Angela, who leaned forward, staring into the monitor and carefully not looking through the glass next to her at the prisoner sitting at the table. "Well?" he asked. "What do you think?"
"I can't be sure without using any of my software," she said, "but this looks pretty legit to me." She tilted her head, looking thoughtful. "The light grows too slowly to be a flare, but it might be attached to some kind of electromagnetic pulse generator. Although I don't know why that wouldn't have wiped the whole hard drive."
Booth nodded along to the yappy tech talk. Angela tended to be better about that stuff than any of the real squints, but she still sometimes got a little too into her job. "But that's about what happened in the lab? The light and noise and everything?"
Angela straightened and nodded. "Well, the lab had more flashing lights, and it all seemed to happen a lot faster, but that's definitely the noise we heard. Felt like it was drilling right into my head." She snuck a quick glance towards where Dean sat slumped in the interrogation room and shuddered. "At least none of us ended up with our ears actually bleeding."
"We had a doctor look him over before we brought him in." Booth folded his arms, studying Dean's posture. Henricksen had collected a fair number of witness statements and video clips, but Booth hadn't seen any indication of Dean ever looking this . . . defeated. "It's nothing permanent. His ears are probably still ringing, though."
"Yeah, well." Angela sighed. "So are mine. You think he used the same device?"
"A smaller version, maybe. There was some broken glass at the jail, but nothing on the level of what happened in the lab."
"I don't even want to think about where he must've been hiding it."
Booth grimaced. "Yeah." He decided to change the subject. "You've spent more time face to face with this guy than I have. Do you think he did this?"
Angela shrugged. "I'm not exactly the professional here, Booth."
"I'm not asking you to be. I just want your opinion."
Angela nodded slowly, her arms wrapping tight around her chest. "I don't know. Just six months ago, I would have said no. He looked as shocked as we were, last night, maybe even more. But." She took a deep breath and let it out, looking down at the floor. "I can't put anything past anyone any more, you know? If Zack could do what he did. . . ."
"Yeah. I know what you mean." Booth put his hand on her arm, rubbing it until she met his eyes, then let the moment go. "According to Henricksen, this guy's willing to do just about anything."
"But according to Hodgins' websites, Dean and his brother were just trying to do good for people."
"If you ask Zack, so was he."
Angela shivered. "What about you, Booth? Do you think he did it?"
Booth shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I think. This guy is wanted for a list of crimes longer than my leg. It's my job to bring him in."
"But you don't, do you?"
Booth stared through the glass at Dean, who stared at his hands and wiggling his fingers. Angela was right. He didn't think Dean had done this. But that was a dangerous thing to be admitting out loud before he went in to question a prisoner. "I think we've got a lot of questions, and only one person around who might be able to answer them."
"But it doesn't make sense. Why would he set off another . . . whatever that was? He was all by himself. What could he possibly have gotten from doing that, other than a massive headache and bloody ears?"
"Us," Booth said. "Asking exactly that question."
The door opened and Sweets peeked his head in. "Hey guys. Is it time yet?"
Angela shot Booth an amused look. "You called Sweets in?"
"Are you kidding?" Booth jumped right on to her lighter tone. "He'd pout at me for weeks if he missed this."
"I would not!" Sweets protested. "Okay, maybe I would, but come on. This is Dean Winchester here. A case like this only comes along so often."
Angela smirked at him. "Yeah, well, thank god for that. You two have fun, okay?" She slid past Sweets at the door, flicking Booth a wave. "If you want me to take a closer look at that video, email me the file. I don't have my full set up, but I can do some stuff from home, at least."
"Got it." Booth flashed her a smile. "Thanks, Angela." She smiled back, took one last quick look at Dean, then hurried off, shaking her head. Sweets watched her go, then turned back to Booth.
"You've got video?"
"Of what happened last night in the jail, yeah." Booth hit rewind, and played the tape in question again. The whole thing, from the moment the noise started to build to the crackle of the static, only lasted about a minute and a half.
"Woah." Sweets' mouth hung open. "That is some serious self-flagellation, there."
Booth frowned. "Self-fle-whatsit?"
"Flagellation. Like, punishment." Sweets held up his hands. "I looked over Dean's psychological profile again last night. Dude has got some serious issues, man."
"He digs up graves for funsies. I'm thinking that's a given."
"Yeah, okay, but dude. Think about it. As near as we can tell, this guy was, like, glued to his father's side for twenty-six years of his life, right? And then, bam. Dad's suddenly totally AWOL, not on any radar that we know about. So Dean attaches himself to little brother, and they go on, like, a three-year crime spree across the country. They're totally untouchable, going from place to place too fast for the FBI to keep up, and even when they do, the Winchesters, like, vanish, right out from under everyone's noses. They take out an entire jail in Colorado, faking their own deaths in the process, and then suddenly, poof, Dean turns up in the middle of a highly secured laboratory with strong connections to the FBI?" Sweets tilted his head down, his eyebrows shooting up. "I mean, come on! Who does that?"
Booth raised his eyebrows back, shaking his head slowly. "Yeah. So he's crazy. Using crazy logic."
Sweets frowned at him, lips all pursed up in a prissy little knot. "Okay, first off, that's some totally ableist language you're rocking, there."
"Able-what?"
"Second, you're missing my point. He had a reason for it, Booth. No one does anything for no reason, not even people using 'crazy logic'."
"Okay, fine, Sweets, what's your magical shrinky insight on this one?"
"He's finally feeling guilty. He wants to be punished for his crimes, and when you guys weren't doing it fast enough, he set off a secondary device to punish himself in his cell."
Booth stared at him for a moment. "Yeah. That's definitely crazy logic."
"I will bet you it happens again. Maybe not tonight -- he might see the interrogation as some penance -- but definitely soon."
"Sweets, we can't even figure out how he got the second device in there, let alone a third. The guy was naked."
Sweets frowned again, brows pulling together. "Yeah, that's weird. I haven't figured that part out, yet."
"I'll tell ya what, Sweets. Why don't you ask him?"
"Oh, dude, no way, you're letting me do the interrogation? In the room and everything?"
"I'm letting you sit in. If you're good."
Sweets straightened, eyes wide. "Oh, I'll be good. I'll be totally good. Oh man, my friends are not going to believe this." He paused in the doorway. "I mean, not that I'll tell them. This being an open investigation and all --"
"Sweets." Booth held up a hand. "Let's just go do it, okay?"
Sweets smiled. "Yeah. Yeah. Awesome."
Booth shook his head. With Sweets in the room, Dean would be guaranteed to get enough "self-flagellianating" to last him for weeks.
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| Master post | 1 | 2 | 3 | Notes and Credits |
Tessa felt it happen.
She was in Indonesia, about as far as she could get from the ground zero of Dean Winchester's return without making it obvious she was hiding. She was reaping an old, sick man when it happened: the world around her flexed, expanding like a rubber sheet and sending quivering ripples across the fabric of the universe itself.
It'd begun.
She finished up with the old man -- whatever Death might think of her patience, she was still a professional -- then shifted her focus westward. In a moment, she was standing in the parking lot of a large, grand campus of buildings, an area littered with domes and fountains, architectural elegance and modern efficiency -- sirens and humans in uniform and reapers.
Dean Winchester had not come quietly.
"What the hell happened to my extra security?" A man strode up, pale and tall and confident and so. Very. Young. He wore a dark suit and tie, his hair sticking up in the artful, swooping spikes that Tessa supposed must be in vogue, right now. His belt buckle said "cocky" and his socks were brightly striped. A man in black uniform and body armor stood at attention near a hastily erected line of yellow tape, a soldier saluting his commander.
"No word, yet."
The suit cursed, turning in place to stare at one of the buildings as another person, a dark-skinned woman wearing a black blazer pulled over jeans and a casual top, made her way over. "This is the part of being a cop that I don't miss, Seeley." She came to a stop next to the first man, narrowly missing walking straight through one of Tessa's fellow reapers. "What the hell happened?"
"Pull you from a hot date, Cam?" The man, Seeley, shook his head. "Some kind of explosion. Set off every alarm in the place. That's all we've got so far."
"Biohazard?" Cam stared at the building, biting her lip.
"That'd be one of the alarms, yeah." Seeley kicked at something on the asphalt. "Systems are all locked down. No one's been able to get in or out."
"Biohazard," Cam said again, nodding. "The lab'll be under automatic quarantine until the computers get the all-clear."
"Right." Seeley clapped his hands, then rubbed them together, turning back towards his soldiers. "You heard the lady. Let's 'all-clear', already!"
A soldier in glasses shook his head. "We can't, sir. Something's overloaded the mainframe. All the security systems are down."
Cam frowned. "What about the back-ups?"
Glasses gave her a sympathetic look. "All the security systems are down."
"Then how the hell are we in automatic quarantine?" Seeley spread his arms out to either side, as though welcoming the world to answer his question, and Tessa leaned back to avoid getting a hand through her face. Glasses swallowed.
"They must have frozen in lock-down mode."
"Then go unfreeze them!"
"Seeley." Cam tried, but apparently Seeley was the sort who just liked to rant.
"What the hell good is a back-up system if it goes at the same time as the front-up?"
"Seeley." Cam put a hand on his arm this time, getting his attention. "I'm sure they're already on it." She had a phone in her free hand and split her attention between Seeley and its screen. He followed her gaze.
"Was anyone still in there?"
Cam shook her head. "Without the security logs, it's hard to tell. A request went out to check in, but it looks like there's still a bunch of people who haven't responded." She took a breath, and a flicker of a wince crossed her face. "Including Hodgins, Angela . . . and Dr. Brennan."
"Bones is in there?" Seeley turned to start pacing, pulling his own phone out and dialing, then pressing it to his ear. "Of course she is. She's always --" he cut off, pulling the phone away. "Straight to voicemail."
"Same with Hodgins. I'm trying Angela." Cam dialed, listened for a moment, then shook her head.
Seeley swore. "Dammit, Bones. If you're dead, I'm going to kill you."
Tessa stepped away and looked up at the building, illuminated eerily in red and blue flashes. "She's not," she said, though she knew Seeley couldn't hear her.
The building was locked down, alright, and no one was going in or out, right now. Not even the reapers.
*
Brennan stared down at the blank screen of her phone. She pressed several buttons and when she got no response, she gave in to the urge to smack it and give it a few shakes. As she had hypothesized, the actions had no visible effect. "My phone's dead." She looked up, shooting the man on her lab table a hard look before glancing to Angela and Hodgins.
Angela held hers up, showing a similarly dark screen. "Mine, too."
"Dr. Hodgins?"
Hodgins shook his head. "Nada."
Brennan frowned. "It must have something to do with the explosion."
"I'd lend you mine," said the man on the table, and though Brennan of course knew he was still there, she couldn't help a slight reflex of surprise. "But I guess I left it in my other pants."
"Yeah," said Hodgins, folding his arms. "I've got your other pants on my work table, man. There's no phone in 'em."
Brennan frowned. "Why do you have this man's pants?"
Angela shot her a glance, then went back to staring at the man on the table. Like herself and Dr. Hodgins, she seemed reluctant to let him out of her sight. "It was a joke, honey."
"Was it?" Hodgins glanced back at her. Both of them were holding their shoulders high and tense, though Brennan was certain that, if she had to, she could subdue the man on the table. She'd observed Booth subduing suspects on any number of occasions.
"I take it," she said, looking back at the man, "that you're implying that this man is the same as the one whose remains we've been examining." She shook her head. "Then Angela's right. You have to be joking."
"Um," said the man on the table. "Either way? Still naked, here."
"I don't see what you want us to do about that. It was clearly your own misjudgement and none of our clothing would fit you."
"Also," Angela said, giving the man a stern look, though Brennan noted that she remained in the doorway, well out of his reach. "We don't give our clothing to serial killers."
"Alleged," said Hodgins. Brennan huffed.
"Dr. Hodgins, please."
Hodgins raised his hands. "Hey, I'm just sticking to the facts."
"Look at him, Tempe," Angela said, waving in the man's direction. "He looks exactly like Dean Winchester."
"No," said Brennan. "He doesn't." Angela raised her eyebrows and Brennan went on. "I will admit that he's the same height and build as the skeleton and that he bears a marked resemblance to your reconstruction sketch --"
"It's not just marked," Hodgins said. "It's uncanny."
"He's even got the tattoo," said Angela. "That wasn't in any of the reports, but it's the same placement and angle and everything."
The man glanced down and poked himself in the pectoral, just next to the tattoo in question. "That's a relief," he said. Brennan chose to ignore him.
"Even if we assume that the completely skeletonized remains could spontaneously regenerate epithelial, connective, muscle, and nerve tissue -- which is completely irrational -- this man's skeletal structure bears none of the markers I noted in Dean Winchester's remains." Brennan stepped up next to the table, gingerly working her way around the bone shards she could see scattered about. Hodgins let out a squawk of protest, which she ignored. She grabbed hold of the man's left arm, avoiding the mass of keloidial scar tissue on his deltoid, and set her stance in case he struggled. He stared at her, shock apparent in the contraction of his levator palpebrae superioris muscles, but didn't resist. "The remains showed significant remodeling to the Coracoid process from what I surmise to be at least two gun shot wounds, approximately one year apart, the most recent occurring no more than four months prior to death. Even without the significant scarring one would expect to see, doing this --" she worked the man's arm up, down, and around, "-- would be incredibly painful." She looked closer at the keloid, noting the distinct and startlingly accurate hand print shape. "This brand is impressive," she noted. "I assume it bears some sort of tribal significance."
The man craned his neck to look over at his shoulder, his eyebrows drawing together as though he'd never seen the brand before, then turned his gaze from Brennan to Angela and Hodgins. "Is she for real?"
"No," said Hodgins. "She's entirely imaginary."
"Furthermore," Brennan said, putting extra emphasis on the first two syllables as she shifted her grip from the man on the table's biceps to his wrist, filing the scar away in the back of her mind as a possible indicator of identity. "This man's phalanges show no indication of the multiple remodeled fractures I observed on the remains." She released the man and stepped back, looking him over. He wiggled his fingers, eyes still wide. "As a matter of fact, barring the bowing of the legs," which she did have to admit appeared to be very close to the bowing on the remains, possibly even a precise match, "I'd say this man's skeletal structure is in perfect condition."
The man shot her a weak-lipped leer. "Lady, I can't wait to see what you do on a second date."
Brennan scowled. She found this man exceedingly irritating, even setting aside the fact that he had somehow gotten past the Jeffersonian's guards, Booth's added security personnel, and the various check points and alarms in order to destroy her lab. "Which brings me back to my earlier questions." She grabbed his arm again, this time wrenching it up and around, behind his back, putting pressure on his glenohumeral joint. She had it on good authority that such a position was very painful. "Who are you, and what did you do to my lab?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me --" Brennan tried to think of a suitably obscene and intimidating insult. "-- Testicle-face!"
"Testicle-face?" said the man.
Hodgins took a step forward. "Dr. Brennan --"
Brennan wrenched the man's arm harder. The man gasped -- then moved far too quickly for Brennan to counter. He somehow twisted out of her hold, an act which must have nearly dislocated his shoulder, and spun her around, getting to his feet and pushing her away with the same movement. She slammed into the table, then turned to look where he'd gone, adrenaline pouring into her system and accelerating her heart rate and breathing in preparation for his next attack.
He stood at the far wall of the room, next to her very expensive -- and very broken -- standing display, bent at the waist in a defensive posture with his hands at shoulder level, fingers spread.
"Woah," said Angela. She and Hodgins had retreated once more to just the other side of the doorway. "Let's all just calm down, here."
"You broke into my lab," Brennan said.
The man snorted. "Naked?"
"Whatever floats your boat, man," said Hodgins.
Brennan was out of patience. "Who are you?"
The man grinned. At any other time, Brennan supposed she might find the expression physically stimulating.
"Dean Winchester," he said. "Nice to meet you."
*
"Okay." Geier, one of the FBI's techs, came up while Booth was zipping up his hazmat suit. "We've got the main door to the building open and clear, but it'll take awhile before we can confirm presence of any hazardous materials." He whistled softly through his teeth. "Whatever happened in there, it's not pretty."
Booth grimaced. He didn't like the mental image that was painting.
Cam, holding Booth's suit's helmet, looked like she felt the same. "Bodies?"
"None yet, but we haven't gone in very far." Geier shrugged. "We got the security team by the front entrance out. Looks like they were knocked out before it all went down."
Booth looked over to the waiting ambulances not far from the hazmat truck, but the angle was wrong for him to be able to make out much of what was happening over there. "Did we get anything from them? Like how the attacker got in?"
Geier shook his head. "One of them's awake, but he's not really in any shape to answer any questions yet."
Booth cursed under his breath and held out his hands for the hazmat helmet. Cam made a face as she handed it over.
"I really think you should be leaving this to the hazmat team, Booth. Or at least wait for back up to be ready."
Booth shook his head. "Three members of my team are in there."
"We don't know that." Booth gave her a look and Cam winced, but continued. "And they're my people too, you know. More than they are yours."
Booth gestured to the truck. "Then why aren't you putting on a suit?"
"Because I happen to know how dangerous a hazmat situation can be." Cam folded her arms over her chest. "There could be anything in there."
Booth secured the helmet over his head and switched on the internal lamp. "Which is why the special agent is going in first." He held out his hand again. "Gun."
Cam sighed and handed his weapon over. Booth checked the magazine and held it carefully in both hands, turning toward the doors to the building. "Alright people!" He didn't turn to see the rest of the hazmat squad that would be following him in, his eyes glued to the door that would lead them to the lab. The suit's helmet made his voice bounce back oddly in his ears, putting him even more on edge. "Everyone stays behind me till I give the all clear!"
He heard a few calls of assent and started forward.
The hallway to the lab was still and eerie, lit sporadically by dim yellow emergency lights, the floor speckled with broken glass. Whatever explosive device had gone off had taken out almost every window on the first floor, but that was the only damage Booth could see. He felt his skin prickle and breathed slowly through his teeth. The closer he got to the door to the lab, the more the sense of wrongness grew, as though the air itself was thickening around him. Whatever had happened here, it wasn't something any of the FBI's technicians or agents had seen before. And Bones was likely right smack in the middle of it.
Not that that was much of a surprise. Bones had a talent for ending up right in the middle of things.
Booth slowed as they approached the double glass doors leading to the lab. Like all the windows, the doors where shattered, only the frames remaining, still locked together by the automatic security system. Booth pressed himself against the wall next to the doors, leaning his head back to listen. The hazmat suit muffled everything, but he could make out the sound of voices under the shrill cry of the alarm.
"Angela." That sounded like Bones. Booth felt himself relax incrementally. "Go get my gun." And that tensed him right back up.
"What?" Angela sounded as unhappy with the idea of Bones needing her gun as Booth did.
"It's in my office, in the top drawer of my desk. I'd get it myself, but I have to be ready to restrain him if he tries anything."
"It's an obstacle course out there. I'm not sure Angela could even get to your office." That was Hodgins, which meant all three of Booth's missing team members were conscious and speaking. He glanced back at the rest of the hazmat team and raised his hand, signalling them to keep back, then edged his way through the frame of the door.
The lab was in ruins. Tables were overturned and the floor was covered with broken equipment and a fine coating of tempered safety glass. Some sort of force had swept through from the back of the lab towards the doors, but Booth couldn't see any evidence of burning. The explosive techs were going to have a field day with this one.
Stepping carefully so as not to make too much noise, Booth made his way through the lab towards the back. He could just make out the forms of Angela and Hodgins standing in the doorway to the bone room, which seemed to be the center of the explosion. That'd be where Bones was, along with whatever man she was talking about restraining. Booth stepped up his pace, dropping the attempt at stealth in favor of getting to the room with his gun before Bones did anything stupid. His foot knocked aside a metal canister, and Angela and Hodgins both startled, then turned to look.
"Booth!" Angela smiled, her shoulders slumping. "Thank god."
"Booth?" Bones called. Booth heard a grunt, followed by cursing in a gravely male voice. "Booth, in here! I have a suspect in custody!"
"Dammit, Bones." Booth hurried over, gun still held at the ready. Angela grabbed Hodgins' arm and pulled him out of the way with her as Booth reached the door. He swung in, leading with his gun, and swept the room before centering on where Bones stood over a kneeling man, pinning him down with an armlock.
Booth stopped, straightening. "Okay, why is this guy naked?"
"No idea, man." Hodgins was back in the doorway, Angela still hovering behind him. "We found him like that."
The man kneeling peered up at Booth, making no move to break out of the armlock. "Why are you in a spacesuit?"
"Hey." Booth stepped forward, lowering his gun slightly and wishing he'd thought to secure his cuffs to the hazmat suit. "You're not asking the questions here, buddy." The man smirked tiredly at him and Booth frowned. "Wait, is this --"
"He claims to be Dean Winchester," Bones said. She wrenched the man's arm up higher, almost vengefully. "He destroyed my lab."
"We don't technically know that," Hodgins said. "It's not like we've caught him red handed."
"Not helping, Hodgins." Booth scanned the room again, half turning to shoot a glance back towards the door. "Anyone else suspicious?"
Angela shook her head. "I think we're the only ones here."
Booth nodded. "There's a hazmat team in the hall. Let them know we're clear." Booth scowled at the naked man under Bones' grip. "And tell them to bring this guy some pants, would you?"
The man rolled his eyes. "Finally."
"You be quiet." Booth had to know. "Why are you naked?"
"How should I know? I've been asking for pants for the last ten minutes."
"That's true," said Bones.
Booth rolled his eyes. "Why didn't one of you lend him a lab coat?"
"Angela said we don't lend clothes to serial killers."
"Alleged," said Hodgins. The man shot him a nod.
"There are a great many cultures for whom nudity is not a taboo." Bones fell into lecture-mode, as though she weren't currently keeping a naked man pinned to a glass- and dust-covered floor.
"Yeah, well." Booth patted down the side of his suit, looking for a good spot to tuck his gun so he could take over control of the prisoner from her. "This is America. We don't have nudists, here."
"That's not true," said Bones. "There are recreational nudist retreats in more than half of the fifty states. The American Association for Nude Recreation has around 50,000 members --"
Booth held up a hand. "Okay, yeah, fine, but we don't have that here, in this lab, do we?" He finally gave in with a small wince and handed Bones his gun after making sure the safety was on. She stepped back, training it on the man, and Booth stepped in to take hold of the man's arm. "Alright, then. Dean Winchester. You're coming with me."
"Dean Winchester's dead," Bones noted.
"Yeah, we've thought that before."
"And they say third time's a charm," Hodgins said. Booth noted he was still keeping well back from the man himself. At least he had some sense of self-preservation, even if he didn't know when to keep his mouth shut.
"I like that guy." The man twitched in Booth's grip as he was pulled to his feet, though Booth could tell he wasn't using his full strength. "Shouldn't you be showing me a badge or something?"
"I'll let you take a good long look once we get outside." Booth tugged harder on his arm, then paused as the man winced. For all his time in the army and on the job, he still hated it when someone got injured. Even an alleged killer like Dean Winchester. "Angela! Tell them to bring shoes!"
"Got it!" Angela called back. She reappeared a moment later with a spare hazmat suit. "I think this will fit him. They're looking for a spare pair of boots. We can't leave until they finish testing for biohazards, anyway."
Bones was apparently still stuck on the identity question. "Before, we didn't have a positive identification of Dean Winchester's remains in the Jeffersonian."
"Is that what this place is?" The man -- who really looked a hell of a lot like Dean Winchester, dammit -- looked around the lab consideringly. "That would explain the stockpile of bones."
"Like you don't know." Booth steered him towards the lab table, the only unbroken and un-broken-glass-covered surface around. "Sit down."
The man sat, raising his hands in surrender as he shrugged out of Booth's grip. "Look, I don't, okay? I have no idea what happened here. I just . . . woke up."
Booth frowned. He knew from the files that Dean was an accomplished liar, but something about the tone of his voice and the look on his face -- and the fact that the guy was naked -- made Booth want to believe him.
"So, what, this is some fraternity prank gone awry?"
The man smiled roguishly and shrugged, then abruptly dropped the cute act. "Yeah, okay, probably not. But seriously, man, you can check the place for fingerprints or . . . footprints or whatever. I'm willing to bet you won't find a trace of me anywhere but in this room."
Booth leaned in, staring him hard in the eye. "Trust me, we'll do that. But you're still coming with me."
The man's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I kinda figured."
*
It was a thirteen and a half hour drive from Pontiac, Illinois to Washington, DC. Sam decided to do the whole drive in one shot. Ruby tried to convince him that he wouldn't do Dean any good if he got to the Jeffersonian all exhausted, but Sam wouldn't hear it. It was close to two in the morning by the time they reached the outskirts of the city, and Sam still insisted on going straight to the museum's offices. Ruby wasn't looking forward to busting him out of whatever cell he ended up in when he got caught, but capitulated easily enough. She had to make Sam think she was as interested in getting Dean's remains -- and Dean -- back as he was.
They spotted the flashing lights from a block away. Sam circled around three times before they found a space from which they could watch the action without being spotted. Sure, it was a no parking zone, but Ruby was pretty sure no one would come by to give them a ticket. It looked like every emergency vehicle in the district was already outside the Jeffersonian.
Sam leaned forward in his seat, hands tight around the Impala's wheel. "What the hell?"
Ruby shrugged, her own hands clenched into fists. There was something in the air here that set her teeth on edge and made her want to get as far away as possible. Something really strange was going on here, far more than just Dean's rotted body getting shipped off to get picked over by some scientists. Something big enough to fill the Jeffersonian's parking lot with ambulances, cop cars, fire engines, and what looked like it might be a hazmat truck. She leaned back in her seat, ducking her chin down to her chest. "We should go. Sam, turn around. We can watch the news and then come back tomorrow."
Sam shook his head, his eyes glued to the building. "No way. Dean's in there, Ruby, I know it. I've almost found a way to save him. I can't lose him, now."
Ruby bit her lip. That'd been a sticking point in their relationship over the past few months, ever since she'd gotten him sobered up. Drunken Sam had been -- well, not okay, really, but at least more content with the fact that Dean really couldn't be saved. But the driving ambition to increase his power until he could storm the gates of Hell itself was one of the few things keeping Sam from reaching for another bottle, and if it played into Ruby's plans for him, she couldn't really complain.
It was really irritating, though.
"Hang on." Ruby sat forward again. "There's people coming out." She squinted through the windshield, trying to see past the flashing lights. Beside her, Sam reached into the back seat, pulling out a large, battered pair of binoculars. Ruby made a face as he held them up to his eyes. "Hey, you got another pair of those?"
"No," said Sam. He shrugged without looking at her. "Sorry."
Ruby huffed and stared back through the windshield. She could make out a line of people, mostly wearing hazmat suits, making their way out of the building. A few dressed in dark lab clothes formed the tail end of the line, lead by two men about the same height and build, one frog-marching the other towards the waiting police vans. To her left, Sam scanned the line, then let out an explosive curse. He threw the car back into gear before Ruby could work out what he'd seen and tossed the binoculars at her as he twisted in his seat to start pulling out of their space. Ruby squawked in surprise, then grabbed the binoculars and looked through them.
The man being frog-marched was wearing a hazmat suit, but no helmet. As he passed out of the shadow of a fire truck, she got a good look at his face and let out a curse of her own.
If her eyes were to be believed, Dean was alive and well, and currently in the custody of the FBI. She watched as the agent manhandled him into the waiting van, then lost sight of the whole scene when Sam pulled them back into the minimal traffic. When they could no longer make out any of the flashing lights, she rounded on him.
"What the hell, Sam?!"
Sam's jaw was set angrily. "I don't know."
"Like hell! Did you make a deal without telling me? Did someone offer you a deal?!"
Sam thumped his hand down on the wheel, running right through a yellow light and nearly pulling the wrong way around a traffic circle. "Of course not. None of the crossroads demons will bargain with me, you know that. It must be something else. A revenant or a shifter or something."
Ruby shook her head, remembering the terrible foreboding she'd felt when they first arrived on the scene. That sure as hell hadn't been any revenant. "A shifter needs a living model to create that specific of a form, Sam."
"A demon then? Or a zombie?"
"He didn't look real undead to me."
Sam swung them around corner after corner until they reached one of the larger roads, then pulled out his phone. "Here, use the GPS and try to find us a motel. Something not too nearby. The FBI knows about the Impala."
"Then why didn't you let me drive?" Ruby huffed and started poking at his phone, trying to work out how the GPS system on it worked. "Sam, what are we going to do?"
"We're going to find out what the hell is impersonating my brother and we're going to kill it."
Ruby swallowed. She really didn't want to bring up what had sprung to mind -- she didn't even want to think about it as a possibility -- but she and Sam were at a crucial point. She had to make sure he didn't think he had any reason not to trust her, and that meant playing devil's advocate sometimes, even when it wouldn't immediately work in her favor. "Sam, what if that's really him?" She glanced over. "Something was wrong with that building. What if someone else brought Dean -- the real Dean -- back?"
Sam glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "What are you saying?"
"Something happened there. Something powerful. Maybe more powerful than anything I've seen before. Sam, this could be really big. And really, really dangerous."
Sam's eyes went wide and Ruby watched as a range of emotions crossed his face: shock, denial, disappointment, shame, more shock, and then anger and determination. His jaw set and he lowered his chin, practically glaring down the road. "Then we'll find out what it is. We'll get Dean back. And then we'll kill it." He tilted his head, then swung down another road. "I'm going to need some practice," he said. He glanced over again, this time turning his head to catch her full gaze for a moment. "Can you find me some demons?"
Ruby smiled, reaching out to pat his arm. Maybe Dean was back or maybe something decided to take his form to mess with people. Either way, Ruby could see this working out very well for her plans. "Of course, Sam. I'll give you any help you need."
*
Dean lay back on the cot in the holding cell, staring at the ceiling. He'd gotten the feeling as he was being loaded into the police van at the museum that the FBI agent would have liked to put him straight into an interrogation room, but the others on the scene had nixed the idea. Something about getting a chance to rest up and gather more information. So Dean was moved to the local jail, given a jumpsuit to replace the plastic hazmat one they'd loaned him in the lab, and thrown into a cell for the night.
They'd given him a phone call when he'd insisted that he should get one, but Sam's number had been disconnected. He'd lucked into a sympathetic guard, who'd offered to let him try one more number -- and Bobby had hung up on him. Honestly, Dean could hardly blame the man. The last thing he remembered was being used as a chew toy by a hellhound. That wasn't the sort of thing that one expected a person to survive.
The calender on the wall of the office where they'd fingerprinted him had said September. It was the only hint Dean had as to how much time he was missing. Four months. Four months he'd apparently spent at the tender mercies of Hell and he had nothing to remember it by except a vague sense of unease and flashes of darkness, blood, and pain every time he closed his eyes.
While he was glad enough not to be subjected to an endless line of questions he had no idea how to answer without getting thrown into a loony bin, he almost wished the FBI agent had taken him right to interrogation. At least with other people around, it was easier for him to ignore those flashes. To ignore the fact that he was entirely on his own for perhaps the first time in his life, without Bobby's gruff expertise to call on, without any idea where Sam might be or what he'd done to bring Dean back, without even the knowledge of his dad out there somewhere, roaming the country and ignoring Dean's calls.
God, but he missed his dad. He'd missed him the moment Sam had come into his hospital room, seemingly so long ago, and told him that Dad had collapsed, and had continued to miss him every moment after. But that ache returned a hundred fold now as Dean lay in a dark cell, surrounded by people who hated him on principle, with no idea how to get out or if he would have anything to run to even if he did escape.
What had Sam done? Was he okay? Had he traded himself for Dean, the same way Dean had traded himself for Sam? Was his brother in Hell now, in his place? Or did he have a ticking clock hanging over his head, like Dean had had all last year? At the moment, it seemed like Dean would never know. He was a wanted fugitive, in FBI custody, found in a decimated laboratory, with no other obvious suspects around and no explanation for what had happened or how he'd gotten there. Not one they'd believe, at least. There'd be no Deacon around this time to help facilitate his escape. No sympathetic public defender to talk into getting him the information he needed. And -- hopefully -- no ghosts or armies of demons storming the building to prove what Dean claimed was the truth. At best, Dean figured he could look forward to spending the rest of his life in prison, getting his ass kicked by guards and giant prisoners named with ironic nicknames. At worst, well. It wouldn't be the first time a demon possessed a member of the FBI. Dean could easily "disappear", and probably get sent right back to Hell.
He rolled over onto his side on the cot, pulling his knees up. He hadn't felt this hopeless since he'd sat vigil by the side of Sam's corpse in Cold Oak. At least then he'd known he had a way out. A crappy one filled with pain and guilt, but one that left him knowing that at least his brother would be alive.
Dean was wallowing. He knew he had to get up, had to start thinking about what he was going to say to the FBI, how he would try to explain away the damage to the lab. It'd be no use trying to deny who he was, even if he hadn't admitted it outright to the scientists who'd found him. They had his fingerprints on record, had mug shots from Arkansas. It wasn't the first time they'd seen him "come back from the dead" either, even if it was the first time Dean actually remembered doing so. There was no point in trying to convince them of the truth, but there had to be some story he could spin, some emotional response he could trigger to get them on his side, at least long enough for him to find someone who could actually help. Bobby's list of contacts was a mile long -- surely one of them must have some sort of lawyerly credentials.
But that lab was going to screw him. Dean didn't trust the FBI to actually conduct a thorough investigation. They had a scapegoat already locked up, they'd have no need to look any further. And Dean didn't have any idea what could have actually done that kind of damage. If Sam had made a deal to bring him back, whatever demon he'd made it with had some serious mojo and was probably laughing himself sick at the fact that Dean got the blame for it. He really, really hoped that Sam hadn't made a deal, would have thought his brother was smarter than that, stronger, but he couldn't see any other way that he wasn't a mess of chewed flesh and damned soul.
His thoughts kept going around and around. He'd never been good at inactivity. He wished he could sleep, but was terrified of the dreams he was certain he would have. The last thing he wanted was to remember Hell, but the memories seemed to be lurking just at the edge of his conscious mind, hulking and terrible.
He was so distracted by his thoughts and fears that he didn't notice the rising sound filling the cell until it was already loud enough to hurt.
There was light, too. A harsh and sourceless white light like a magnesium flare surrounded him on all sides, wiping out the shadows of the cell. Dean pushed himself up from the cot, staggering away from it and looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. The light spilled out through the barred door, marking thick lines along the floor of the hallway outside. Dean clapped his hands over his ears as the noise grew, but it seemed to move right through his palms, rattling his whole skull and making his joints ache. He hissed and sank to the floor, eyes squeezed shut, and wondered if this whole thing wasn't Hell after all, some cruel, creative joke the demons liked to play when they got tired of ripping people's skin off. He was just reaching the point of hoping he'd pass out before his head exploded when the sound of guards shouting in the distance penetrated the feedback-like buzz. He curled up on the floor, arms wrapped tightly around his head, and caught a glimpse of a guard throwing up an arm as he approached the cell, before the light and sound cut out abruptly, and Dean dropped into blessed, silent darkness.
*
Hodgins stepped carefully over the overturned mass spectrometer than had once sat next to his work table and winced inwardly. The Jeffersonian had the whole lab well insured, so the cost of replacing the thing wasn't much of a worry -- even if it weren't insured, the Cantilever Group had more than enough funds to rebuild the place from the ground up, though talking the board into doing it would have been interesting. Still, that single piece of equipment could run a good five figures, used, and it would be awhile before the FBI tech team got the place cleared enough to even bring insurance adjusters in, let alone start the process of getting everything replaced. The Medico-Legal lab was going to be crippled for at least the next month.
Maybe he and Angela could take a break. Head down to No Name Key themselves and talk Birimbau into signing the divorce papers, then tool around the Caribbean until the lab was back in order. Lord knew they needed it. He'd been considering asking her if she wanted to go since Zack was arrested, but the siren call of science, of catching other killers and preventing them from doing to others what they'd done to his best friend had been too strong. Dean Winchester had forced their hand, now. Maybe it was a blessing. Maybe Hodgins could turn this into something positive for him and Angela, at least. Let someone else catch serial killers for awhile.
Hodgins pushed those thoughts aside as he made his way over to where the FBI's team was working, taking measurements on the blast radius and swabbing surfaces for particulates. Officially, he wasn't supposed to be helping out with the investigation -- Caroline had ranted for a good five minutes about conflicts of interest and hadn't he learned his lesson the last time? -- but he'd made his way past the police tape with talk of checking on his office, making sure his slime molds and beetles hadn't been adversely affected in the blast. None of the FBI's team wanted to get near any of that. As long as he promised not to actually touch anything that wasn't directly slime- or bug-related, they were willing to let him observe.
"You guys found anything yet?"
One of the agents looked up from the pile of glass she was examining and frowned at him. "Doctor Hodgins," she said. "What are you doing in here?"
"Agent Frost." Hodgins tried for a smile and hoped she wouldn't try to get him kicked out. They hadn't parted on the best terms when they'd worked together on the June Harris case. "Just checking on my slime. Got curious."
Frost huffed, then turned back to her work. "Well. I'll admit, I'm curious, too. Judging by the directionality of the blast, the explosion initiated from the table in the bone room, yet it's the only piece of furniture or equipment in the area that's been left undamaged. And we haven't been able to find anything to suggest what sort of incendiary device was used." She turned to look over the ruins of the lab, her frown going from annoyed to intrigued. "Frankly, I've never seen anything like it."
Hodgins frowned as well, following her gaze. "You haven't found any residue?"
"And I haven't even thrown out any air filters."
Hodgins snorted, glad she didn't seem to be harboring any hard feelings. "Good to know. What about the security guards? Any idea what knocked them out?"
"Sorry," she said. "Not my field. The security office is outside the blast radius. It wasn't the same device that took them out."
Hodgins turned until he was facing the front entrance of the lab, taking in the layout of the rubble. He couldn't tell anything more just by looking than what Frost had just told him. If Zack were here, he'd be running the calculations to determine force and directionality in his head, and already compiling a list of chemical reactions that could create such an effect. But Zack wasn't here, and it wasn't likely he ever would be again. He pushed the thought aside, determined to refocus on the present. "And here I was hoping there'd be some part of this case that wasn't bizarre."
"I can't help you there." Frost gave him a searching look. "Is it true that the suspect was found naked?"
"As a jaybird." Hodgins decided against going into his half-baked theory about how that had happened. Still, the evidence was piling up a little too high. They'd had remains they'd been certain belonged to Dean Winchester, complete with a signed receipt -- okay, signed "D. Hasselhoff", but it wasn't exactly unheard of for Dean to use an alias like that -- and then, the same time the remains disappeared, possibly even the exact moment, a baffled-looking, naked Dean Winchester appeared, right in the center of a blast none of them could yet explain. Combine that with perimortem wounds from an animal they couldn't positively identify, what appeared to be a completely new subspecies of giant flea found on the victim's clothing, the massive amounts of sulfur, the evidence of voodoo involvement and the claims from across the country that the Winchester brothers were heroes taking down unexplainable, murderous creatures. . . . Well, it was the ghost of Maggie Cinders all over again. At least the pieces there added up -- a student film, a mess of hallucinogens, and a deeply disturbed older brother leading straight into murder.
Of course, then there was that figure he and Angela had spotted in the last bit of recovered video. Moonlight on fog, they'd decided, but Hodgins couldn't help but wonder.
And this. Was this another case of moonlight and fog, the mind finding patterns where patterns didn't exist? Hodgins' scientist side -- which these days tended to sound a lot like Dr. Brennan -- was saying yes, of course, it had to be. He was a fool for even questioning it. But the other side, the one that followed conspiracy theories and hopped up and down like a little boy when there might be pirates to be found, that side kept pointing at all the bits and pieces and insisting "but what if it's true?"
Well, there was one part he could put to rest easily enough. He turned toward the bone room and gave Frost a hopeful look. "Hey, mind if I take a quick look, here? Everything was so confused last night, I want to see what it looks like in daylight."
That earned him another frown, this time accompanied by a pointing finger. "Don't touch anything."
"Please." Hodgins pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm a professional."
Frost eyed him suspiciously, but nodded. "We've finished up in there, anyway. You've got three minutes."
Hodgins gave her his best innocent smile. "That's plenty. Thanks." He slipped into the room before she could change her mind. It was empty, save for Hodgins and the scattering of glass and bone left by the blast. The light table stood proud, front and center. As Frost had said, the damage all seemed to radiate out from it -- the force in this room had been great enough to break the fronts off the plastic bone storage bins that lined the walls. Dr. Brennan was incredibly lucky to have been out of the room when everything went down, though Hodgins wondered if luck were really involved at all. No one had really been injured, last night, not even the security guards who'd been knocked unconscious.
He spotted a few darker spots on the floor and crouched down. Almost no one, anyway. Dean's feet had been cut a few times by the glass, which meant tiny amounts of blood were left behind on the floor. He dug into his pocket for one of the baggies he kept on hand when he was working, then carefully scooped up a few bloodied glass pebbles and zipped the bag shut. He hoped it'd be enough. They'd managed to get a DNA work-up on trace evidence before, but that was when Cam was working with the Jeffersonian's top-of-the-line equipment. He'd have to outsource this one to another lab. Dean hadn't bled that much, and Hodgins ran the risk of getting caught if he took too much from the floor, here. They weren't going to get a second chance to run the tests.
He wrapped the baggie in a few tissues to add a buffer zone between his clothes and the plastic-wrapped glass, then slid it back into his pocket. There was plenty of organic material left on the clothing that'd been found with the remains. He could send that and the blood traces off to one of his colleagues out of town, and when it came back as being from two different individuals, he could put the crazy side of his mind to rest.
And, well, if it did come back as a match. . . . Then he'd worry about rewriting his whole world view later.
*
Booth rewound the tape a third time and watched again as Dean threw himself off his cot and clamped his hands to his head before the feed dissolved into static. He glanced over at Angela, who leaned forward, staring into the monitor and carefully not looking through the glass next to her at the prisoner sitting at the table. "Well?" he asked. "What do you think?"
"I can't be sure without using any of my software," she said, "but this looks pretty legit to me." She tilted her head, looking thoughtful. "The light grows too slowly to be a flare, but it might be attached to some kind of electromagnetic pulse generator. Although I don't know why that wouldn't have wiped the whole hard drive."
Booth nodded along to the yappy tech talk. Angela tended to be better about that stuff than any of the real squints, but she still sometimes got a little too into her job. "But that's about what happened in the lab? The light and noise and everything?"
Angela straightened and nodded. "Well, the lab had more flashing lights, and it all seemed to happen a lot faster, but that's definitely the noise we heard. Felt like it was drilling right into my head." She snuck a quick glance towards where Dean sat slumped in the interrogation room and shuddered. "At least none of us ended up with our ears actually bleeding."
"We had a doctor look him over before we brought him in." Booth folded his arms, studying Dean's posture. Henricksen had collected a fair number of witness statements and video clips, but Booth hadn't seen any indication of Dean ever looking this . . . defeated. "It's nothing permanent. His ears are probably still ringing, though."
"Yeah, well." Angela sighed. "So are mine. You think he used the same device?"
"A smaller version, maybe. There was some broken glass at the jail, but nothing on the level of what happened in the lab."
"I don't even want to think about where he must've been hiding it."
Booth grimaced. "Yeah." He decided to change the subject. "You've spent more time face to face with this guy than I have. Do you think he did this?"
Angela shrugged. "I'm not exactly the professional here, Booth."
"I'm not asking you to be. I just want your opinion."
Angela nodded slowly, her arms wrapping tight around her chest. "I don't know. Just six months ago, I would have said no. He looked as shocked as we were, last night, maybe even more. But." She took a deep breath and let it out, looking down at the floor. "I can't put anything past anyone any more, you know? If Zack could do what he did. . . ."
"Yeah. I know what you mean." Booth put his hand on her arm, rubbing it until she met his eyes, then let the moment go. "According to Henricksen, this guy's willing to do just about anything."
"But according to Hodgins' websites, Dean and his brother were just trying to do good for people."
"If you ask Zack, so was he."
Angela shivered. "What about you, Booth? Do you think he did it?"
Booth shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I think. This guy is wanted for a list of crimes longer than my leg. It's my job to bring him in."
"But you don't, do you?"
Booth stared through the glass at Dean, who stared at his hands and wiggling his fingers. Angela was right. He didn't think Dean had done this. But that was a dangerous thing to be admitting out loud before he went in to question a prisoner. "I think we've got a lot of questions, and only one person around who might be able to answer them."
"But it doesn't make sense. Why would he set off another . . . whatever that was? He was all by himself. What could he possibly have gotten from doing that, other than a massive headache and bloody ears?"
"Us," Booth said. "Asking exactly that question."
The door opened and Sweets peeked his head in. "Hey guys. Is it time yet?"
Angela shot Booth an amused look. "You called Sweets in?"
"Are you kidding?" Booth jumped right on to her lighter tone. "He'd pout at me for weeks if he missed this."
"I would not!" Sweets protested. "Okay, maybe I would, but come on. This is Dean Winchester here. A case like this only comes along so often."
Angela smirked at him. "Yeah, well, thank god for that. You two have fun, okay?" She slid past Sweets at the door, flicking Booth a wave. "If you want me to take a closer look at that video, email me the file. I don't have my full set up, but I can do some stuff from home, at least."
"Got it." Booth flashed her a smile. "Thanks, Angela." She smiled back, took one last quick look at Dean, then hurried off, shaking her head. Sweets watched her go, then turned back to Booth.
"You've got video?"
"Of what happened last night in the jail, yeah." Booth hit rewind, and played the tape in question again. The whole thing, from the moment the noise started to build to the crackle of the static, only lasted about a minute and a half.
"Woah." Sweets' mouth hung open. "That is some serious self-flagellation, there."
Booth frowned. "Self-fle-whatsit?"
"Flagellation. Like, punishment." Sweets held up his hands. "I looked over Dean's psychological profile again last night. Dude has got some serious issues, man."
"He digs up graves for funsies. I'm thinking that's a given."
"Yeah, okay, but dude. Think about it. As near as we can tell, this guy was, like, glued to his father's side for twenty-six years of his life, right? And then, bam. Dad's suddenly totally AWOL, not on any radar that we know about. So Dean attaches himself to little brother, and they go on, like, a three-year crime spree across the country. They're totally untouchable, going from place to place too fast for the FBI to keep up, and even when they do, the Winchesters, like, vanish, right out from under everyone's noses. They take out an entire jail in Colorado, faking their own deaths in the process, and then suddenly, poof, Dean turns up in the middle of a highly secured laboratory with strong connections to the FBI?" Sweets tilted his head down, his eyebrows shooting up. "I mean, come on! Who does that?"
Booth raised his eyebrows back, shaking his head slowly. "Yeah. So he's crazy. Using crazy logic."
Sweets frowned at him, lips all pursed up in a prissy little knot. "Okay, first off, that's some totally ableist language you're rocking, there."
"Able-what?"
"Second, you're missing my point. He had a reason for it, Booth. No one does anything for no reason, not even people using 'crazy logic'."
"Okay, fine, Sweets, what's your magical shrinky insight on this one?"
"He's finally feeling guilty. He wants to be punished for his crimes, and when you guys weren't doing it fast enough, he set off a secondary device to punish himself in his cell."
Booth stared at him for a moment. "Yeah. That's definitely crazy logic."
"I will bet you it happens again. Maybe not tonight -- he might see the interrogation as some penance -- but definitely soon."
"Sweets, we can't even figure out how he got the second device in there, let alone a third. The guy was naked."
Sweets frowned again, brows pulling together. "Yeah, that's weird. I haven't figured that part out, yet."
"I'll tell ya what, Sweets. Why don't you ask him?"
"Oh, dude, no way, you're letting me do the interrogation? In the room and everything?"
"I'm letting you sit in. If you're good."
Sweets straightened, eyes wide. "Oh, I'll be good. I'll be totally good. Oh man, my friends are not going to believe this." He paused in the doorway. "I mean, not that I'll tell them. This being an open investigation and all --"
"Sweets." Booth held up a hand. "Let's just go do it, okay?"
Sweets smiled. "Yeah. Yeah. Awesome."
Booth shook his head. With Sweets in the room, Dean would be guaranteed to get enough "self-flagellianating" to last him for weeks.
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