Chapter One What is coming to pass?

Booth had heard her screams from the second his car pulled up outside the ware house. His heart was racing faster than his feet. He tried the first door he came to. It was locked. Without pausing, or thinking of another plan, he pulled out his gun and fired at the lock. It flew into pieces and he kicked the door open, his weapon still drawn. He scanned the immediate interior of the doorway, and seeing no one, or nothing, he continued further. He could still hear her screams. He let himself be led to where they were coming from.

He came to a set of stairs, and something caught his peripheral vision on the right. It was a SWAT team member who signalled at him to keep going. He went down the stairs, and was immediately followed by about fifteen FBI agents, all dressed in vests and helmets and ready to shoot. Her screams still sounded, but they were becoming hoarse, and suddenly they stopped. The next sound he heard broke his heart into pieces. It was a baby's cry. He came to the room that the cries were coming from. The door was locked.

As he paused, before storming the door, he heard footsteps running to the other side of the room. The baby's cries were fading away as the perpetrator ran. He turned back to the SWAT team member behind him and yelled,

"There's another door!!! He's going out the back." His eyes blazed, the SWAT members shook at the tone in his voice. "THAT sonovabitch has MY KID! Get him!!!"

Half the team ran down the hallway, trying to cut off the bastard at the back, a few of them went back the way they had come, and a few remained with Booth. He shouldered the door open, ready to fire.

The room was quite a bit bigger than he thought, from the other side all he saw was another door slamming shut. He was seconds too late. He looked down, towards the centre of the room, and he knew he had to trust the other guys to get the man. His eyes were glued, in shock, to what he saw.

His wife lay in a pool of blood. There was a hunting knife just to the left of her. Her body was writhing. The child had been cut out of her. One of the SWAT team to his left actually vomited, he ignored it and ran to her side,

"Tempe, honey, talk to me." He was afraid to touch her, there was so much blood. He heard one of the other FBI agents on his radio, calling for the ambulance guys to get down there, and fast.

Her eyes were barely focused and she struggled to say the words that he heard.

"Booth?" She reached her hand towards him, "He took the baby!" Her words were weak and raspy.

"Just hold on, help is here." He held her hand.

He was already covered in her blood. She was fading fast. She had to be when that much of her blood was on the outside. He had no idea how she was even still conscious. Her eyes showed so much pain, that for the first time he could think of, he couldn't look at them. He looked over his shoulder and saw the ambulance personal entering the room. He stood up and yelled at them to hurry.

She was fading fast.

They loaded her quickly onto the gurney and were covering her as fast as they could with absorbent bandages. They had her up the stairs in under a minute, and as they loaded her into the bus, Booth noticed a helicopter flying away in the distance, very fast. He caught one last look at the mother of his child before they shut the doors. She was white. His eyes closed momentarily in pain, and he slapped the door twice, signalling to ambulance to go.

The Leader of the SWAT team approached him slowly.

"Where's my kid?" He asked his voice full of pain and anxiety. The SWAT guy shook his head,

"They got to the helicopter before we could catch them. They were planning for this. They were very well prepared!"

"They had a GOD DamN HELICOPTER?" Booth screamed. "WHO the HELL are these guys??"

"We've called for backup! There are two air force helicopters heading it off as we speak."

Booth momentarily had control of his anger, and a look of ultimate pain came across his face.

"They know there's a child on board right. They know not to shoot it down right!" Booth had grabbed the man to whom he was speaking and shook him roughly by the shoulders.

"They know Agent Booth; it's an intercept mission, not a take down." The Agent pulled away from the distraught man, and walked back towards his team to plan out the next phase.

Booth took one last look at the helicopter, just a spot on the horizon now, and ran for his car. He had caught up with the ambulance in a few blocks, and followed it, with lights blazing and sirens blaring to the hospital. He was swearing and cursing the whole way. Some of the words had not been used since his army days. They arrived at the hospital faster than he thought possible.

This was not how the birth of his and Bone's child was supposed to take place. The wading pool sat on their living room floor waiting for the pre-planned water birth. The midwife was on speed dial, the bassinet was close by. Also on speed dial was the number of the hospital, he had added that without her knowledge, just in case something went wrong. This was not that something. This was so wrong. Her being sliced open on the cold, concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse never even crossed his mind. He felt a little nauseous himself.

He wondered at that moment if he should have heeded Doctor Wyatt's advice all those months ago, that their careers were much too unstable for child rearing and one of them, at least, should back down. It should have been her, he thought, and was instantly sorry for his thoughts. This was not her fault. No way in hell it was her fault.

He pulled in behind the ambulance and got out of the vehicle, running towards his wife, who was being wheeled in into the building. Someone yelled at him that he couldn't park there, but he ignored them and raced after the stretcher. He grabbed one of the ambulance attendants by the arm and asked him what was going on. How was she?

"She needs to go right to surgery, they need to stop the bleeding, her heart has stopped twice already and she's losing blood as fast as we can get it into her." The paramedic stopped him as he tried to get in the elevator with them.

"You have to wait down here."

"Just do whatever you have to do to save her! Our baby is going to need it's mother." It dawned on him that he didn't even know if the baby was a boy or a girl. This was so not part of the plan.

"That's our plan sir, now if you will step aside, we need to go." Booth was standing in the elevator doorway, and the door would not close while he was there. He stepped back, and took a quick glance at his wife as the doors closed.

"I'm right here Bones! Just where I've always been!" He called into the closing doors. The medical personal in the elevator looked at him with pity, and he noticed their looks. Tears finally came to his eyes. He put his fist through the wall, just outside the elevator doors.

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On the helicopter, flying away from the warehouse, two men strapped themselves into the seats, each taking turns holding the newborn infant while the other secured the safety belt and donned headsets.

"That was close man, they almost had me." One man said, wrapping the baby tighter in the towel that had been waiting for them in the helicopter. The infant shivered, but didn't cry.

"You took too long, you should have just killed her and been done with it. Knowing you, you had to toy with her a little bit."

"Yeah, I never thought that Agent Booth would figure out so quickly where she was."

"Well, don't ever underestimate that man. I hate to say it. But he's good." He held the infant up to his face. "You hear that Junior, your Daddy is a very perceptive FBI Agent... Just a little bit too late to save your Mommy though."

Both men laughed. The pilot informed them that they were approaching the coordinates. The helicopter set down ever so briefly in an empty lot, and the two men with the child ran for the van that was waiting at the edge of the parking lot. The helicopter was back up in the air and continuing its previous flight path. The men noticed immediately that two Chinook helicopters were on an intercept course, they were still ahead of the heat. Just barely.

As they got into the van, they saw the explosion in the air. The detonation they had set before exiting the flying machine went off just as they had planned. The pilot never knew their plan, he had been well paid for his efforts, but they never intended for him to enjoy the rewards.

The woman driving the van looked quickly in the backseat, especially at the baby.

"We good?" She asked the two men,

"Yeah, let's go." One of the men pushed his counterpart out of the open door as they started to move and without hesitation, unloaded three shots into the man's head. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The van door shut and it drove away quickly. The three remaining occupants were heading for their next vehicle, parked only a few blocks away. Their plan was unfolding nicely. The baby cried.

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Agent Booth paced nervously around the waiting room. Waiting for word on either situation that was tearing his heart in two. He knew that most expectant fathers did some pacing as they waited, but he was pretty sure that this situation had never before been the cause of the nervousness. What was taking so long?

He finally noticed two army personal heading towards him, their hats tucked under their arms and their faces stoic. Oh crap.

"Did you find them? Do you have our baby?" His eyes went back and forth between them, waiting for them to say something, anything.

"Special Agent Booth," the first officer finally spoke, "Perhaps you would like to sit down." That could not mean good news. He sat down in the chair beside him.

"We are afraid that we have to inform you that the helicopter containing your and Doctor Brennan's child exploded and went down in a residential neighbourhood just on the edge of D.C."

Booth had his elbows on his knees and his hands on his face. The officers waited for some kind of reaction. He finally looked up at them, pain in his eyes.

"They weren't supposed to shoot it down. They knew it had the baby on board!" His distraught mind went back to the conversation he and his wife had about the window placard that Bones had insisted they place in the window of their car. Baby on Board. It as yellow and diamond shaped; he remembered her pride when it was finally attached to the rear window.

"They didn't shoot it sir, the helicopter exploded. It must have been rigged with an explosive."

Booth looked at both of them; they could see the wheels turning in his head,

"Why would they go to so much effort to get the baby, and then blow themselves up? It doesn't make any sense."

"No sir, it doesn't. We have ground crews scouring the wreckage right now; we'll let you know what we find."

"You do that." Seeley walked away from them.

He refused to believe that their baby was dead. How could that little miracle, who had dominated their thoughts for the last eight months, be gone just like that? It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. He looked up and saw a doctor approaching him. When the doctor was close enough to him he looked the FBI Agent in the eye and he said,

"Agent Booth, My name is Doctor Weaver, and I am in charge of your wife..."