Chapter 1.

The Jeffersonian Museum was quiet and still. Empty, one could hardly believe just a few short hours ago there had been a cadaver on the metal slab with its bloated insides spilling over the clean, shining surface, reeking of death. A small, dark-haired man bustled into the room humming to himself and thinking hard. He paused his humming and spoke aloud.

"So if the water was full of squid then he must have drowned in salt water… so why was the body dredged out of fresh water?" Then, it seemed to hit him in a blinding flash. "Of course!" He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialled a number.

"Dr Brennan? It's Zack."

"Good work, Zack!" Temperance Brennan grinned at Zack and her partner, Seeley Booth slapped him on the back so hard Zack nearly fell into the pile of decomposing flesh.

"Thanks, Dr Brennan," Zack murmured, his cheeks flushed with success. "It all made sense once I remembered the squid. You see, we thought he had been eating the squid, but then I saw the exact way the digestion was affected and bingo."

"The salt traces we found weren't sweat; they were salt water particles embedded in the eroding pieces of bone," Brennan explained to a confused Booth.

"Bones, I don't really know what you just said. But it sounded good, and good old Zack here has solved his very own case! I think he deserves a drink for that, don't you?"

"It's not sanitary to drink in here, Agent Booth," said Zack, and Booth rolled his eyes.

"No Zack, we're taking you out of here. You kinda need a life outside of the lab."

"But… why?"

"Just shut up and get outta here, okay kiddo?" Booth placed a hand on Zack's shoulder and started steering him towards the door, accompanied by Brennan. As they departed, Booth said,

"What were you still doing here anyway? You guys are supposed finish at one on a Saturday if you're working, and it's three now."

"Oh, I was doing an analysis on an old piece of bone. You see, there's a pattern I read about in an anthropology journal which says that if you take the diameter of the bone laceration and cross-multiply that with the…"

"Yeah, I'm not interested."

In the bar, the three sat at a table with their drinks; Brennan with her glass of wine, Booth with his bottle of Bud and Zack with his cranberry juice.

"How d'you drink that crap, Zack? Jeez, as if you weren't around sticky red stuff enough at work… Have you never heard of switching off?"

"Yes. I just don't." Booth looked at Brennan and sipped his beer.

"I give up." Brennan smiled gently at Zack and played with the stem of her wine glass.

"Zack just doesn't work the way you do, Booth. He's like me; he gets so immersed in his work that he thinks if he takes his mind off of it he won't function properly. Anyway, he's a genius, and he didn't get this way by taking days off."

"I thought this was a celebratory drink, not a game of taunt Zack."

"Yeah Bones, leave the prodigy alone." Although his friends were only playing, Zack took it to heart, and pushed his chair back roughly.

"I'm going home now." He stood up and left the restaurant, fumbling for his keys as he ambled along the sidewalk, and promptly walked into someone.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry!" Zack apologised as he tried to pick up the items rolling around on the floor. A cell phone, a mirror, a hairbrush, a purse, an iPod, lip gloss…

"No worries, I wasn't looking where I was going. Too busy staring into my purse and decided lack of funds," said the girl, and as Zack handed her the contents of her handbag back, he stuttered. She looked to be about twenty two, and was a little shorter than him, with dark blonde shoulder length hair styled in layered waves. She had a pair of bright green eyes and a mouth with plump, glossed lips. Smiling awkwardly under his all too obvious scrutiny, she pushed her hair back behind her ear and the piercings in her ears and nose sparkled in the streetlight's garish light. A flash of ink on her wrist caught his attention briefly, and her rings clicked quietly as she tucked the hair back. She moved her feet in awkwardly, and her posture slipped into a slouch.

"I beg your pardon, it's rude of me to stare," Zack managed to say when he found his tongue again. "But you're very beautiful."

"Thanks, that's sweet," smiled the girl. "I don't usually get a guy who's that open with me." Her voice had a southern lilt, perhaps Creole.

"It's okay, I'm just socially inept." Now it was Zack's turn to smile awkwardly as the blonde put her head to the side, puzzled.

"Are you kidding or are you being serious?"

"Serious. Deadly so."

"Oh right… well, thanks for helping me anyway. I should really get going, I'm late for work and I still have about eight blocks to walk."

"Would you like a lift? I have a car." Zack pointed to it, and she smiled slightly.

"That's kind of you, but you don't have to."

"I'd like to. By way of an apology?" The girl graciously accepted, and got into the car.