Welcome! This is the authorized translation of a German Bones fanfiction. It was written by a friend of mine and I have translated it myself. This story is rather dark and contains psychological as well as physical torture. If that is not your cup of tea, please turn back now. Oh, and there might also be a bit of a shipper element in there. Consider yourself warned.

Enjoy!

Her eyes were studying the skull, scanning it, looking for something that wasn`t the way it should be. She didn`t find anything. And when she didn`t find anything, then there was nothing to be found. Satisfied, she put it back onto the end of the metal table and looked down at the complete skeleton. Dr. Temperance Brennan, usually called "Bones" by her friends and colleagues, was satisfied with herself. She had received a heap of bones from a grave and 'created' seven complete people out of them. They had been identified and their remains could now be released to their families. She regretted the in her eyes senseless death of those people. They had voluntarily died for ideals that were complete nonsense in the scientist`s opinion.

Those people had been members of a religious cult, living on a farm in the mid western of the US. They had given their leader, the Guru, their money and in return they had been allowed to listen to his mental outpourings and to work on his farm for him. And sometime they had died at his command and been buried by him. Now, the Guru was sitting in jail, awaiting his trial, and the remains of his followers could be buried by their families.

"I hope you found what you were looking for," she said quietly before averting her gaze from the skeleton and walking to her office. Being a scientist and rationally thinking person, something like this would never happen to her. Running after a guy who promised salvation and eternal life in exchange for money. In her eyes, guys like that were all frauds and the people who followed them were either naive or stupid.

Relaxed, she fell into her chair, finished her report and then leant back, deep in thought. It didn´t happen very often, but she didn`t have anything left to do now. Her thoughts wandered over to the collection of ideas for her new novel. For a while, she skimmed the small slips of paper but she simply couldn`t completely concentrate on them.

When her phone rang, she found herself hoping for it to be Booth, distracting her with a new case, but on the other hand she didn`t want to work again right away. Angela was right, she needed some time for herself every now and then. The persistent ringing made her thoughts shut up for a few seconds and she answered.

"Dr. Brennan," she said.

"Bones, it´s me."

'Of course, who else?,' she thought. Cam or anyone else from the team would simply come to her and everyone else who wanted something notified her via mail or e-mail. "What have you got?"

"A mass grave..."

"...again."

"Huh?" Booth seemed confused because usually his partner was always excited about new cases.

"I`m sorry. I just finished putting together seven members of a cult."

"What do you mean, put them together...?"

"A heap of bones and no one knew how many people they once were," she explained, feeling a certain inner calm settling over her that she had only got to know after she and Booth had become friends and she had learned from him to talk after a case every now and then.

"Oh, I see..." He fell silent, feeling a little unsure.

A smile tugged at her lips as she imagined how he was now sitting in his office or wherever he was right now, wondering whether he could, should, dare to bother her with a new case.

"What is it?," she therefore demanded.

"A camp at the Mexican border. 500 people live there and the government doesn`t know whether we can keep them here or have to deport them. There has been a riot, several deaths, many injured."

"And what does the FBI have to do with that? And, more importantly, where do I figure in?" She was confused. Surely the local officials had jurisdiction in cases like this?

"They found bones on the terrain. And bones with ... adherences."

"Now you sound like one of us," she said, smiling, but quickly went back to serious. "So the bones differ in age."

"Yes. Many of them. I don`t know more yet, either."

"Okay, let`s go." She wanted to get up.

"Bones, wait. I can`t come with you."

She froze mid-motion. Then she remembered the drugs ring Booth had recently bent open or whatever he called it. "When will you be finished with the case you`re working?"

He was silent for a moment. "In a few days, I guess," he then said carefully. "Usually the culprits all get sentenced to prison and the rest is paperwork, but I just don`t want there to be any mistakes made. One wrong word in a file and some dodgy lawyer manages to bail the bosses out. We`ve spent five years working this case and many people died, including two agents I knew very well."

"It`s okay," she said. "I do understand that you want to finish this first."

"Thanks. I`ll come to the Jeffersonian as soon as you get the first results." He paused. "Thanks for taking over the case."

"I always do that," she told him somewhat confused and then proceeded to let him give her the data he had so far. She decided to take Hodgins with her. He was always happy to get out of the lab for a change and she didn`t want to do all the work on her own.

Thomas Briggs, director of the reception camp for South American refugees at the Mexican-American border, wiped the sweat off of his forehead. His hand was shaking slightly. He was 55 and up to now nothing had ever happened in his camp. His people took quick and drastic measures when something went wrong and therefore the refugees had always remained calm and had hoped and prayed. There weren`t too many other ways of killing time in the camp.

Then there had been trouble with the drinking water, two people had died and the others wanted a resolution. He had immediately tried to deliver such a resolution, because in his eyes every life was worth as much as his own. However, it had taken too long for the camp inhabitants` liking. The atmosphere had become heated and then escalated. His men had given a warning and then shot with live ammunition.

Four dead men, seven dead women, two dead children. More than 50 injured. And lots of trouble. That had been the balance sheet. Briggs sighed and ran a hand through his thinning grey hair which looked like a wig that had been pushed too far back. He`d have to talk to his deputy again about those dead children. The boy was only fourteen and might actually have participated in the riot, but the six-year-old girl had hardly done anything wrong.

And on top of that there were the bones. Sighing, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a woman with brunette hair was walking towards him. That had to be her. She had been announced and he had promised his full support. He wanted to keep that promise, so he smiled a slight, tentative smile.

"You must be Dr. Brennan."

She nodded and they shook hands. "Temperance Brennan, Jeffersonian Institute. The FBI wants me to look at the bodies found here. This is Dr. Jack Hodgins," she introduced her companion.

"Thomas Briggs, I am the director of this camp. Do whatever you want and if you need anything, just let me know."

Bones raised one eyebrow, slightly surprised by the good will. She was used to different responses. "Thank you," she said warily, not completely sure if that was the appropriate reaction. "Where were the bodies found?"

"After the incident, several people tried to dig through the fence over there and then found the remains. Right here, behind the warehouse. We shooed them away and left everything exactly the way it was."

"That`s good. We`ll take a look at the scene and then send everything back to Washington. You won`t have any more work with this, then." With those words she walked past him in the direction he had indicated.

Briggs was a little taken aback by the woman`s directness, but when it came down to it she had said exactly what he had wanted to hear. Slightly calmer than before he went back to his office, where he was surprised to find his deputy. "Giorgio? What are you doing here?" He pointed at the deputy`s arm, which was bandaged and in a sling. "You`re on sick leave."

"I heard that bones were found and wanted to know what that is all about." The man all but fell onto a chair in front of his boss`s desk.

Briggs took a seat as well. "No clue what kinda mess this is."

"Probably something our inmates..."

Briggs looked at him disapprovingly. "Immigrants, Giorgio. They are immigrants, not inmates, prisoners or scum. You especially should know the difference."

"I am an American citizen. Not my fault that my dad just had to run to El Salvador with my mother."

"I still want you to change your tone, got it?"

"Meh," the man made, waving dismissively with his good hand. "Whatever. They probably killed each other. I always said they didn`t run away. At least not all of them."

Briggs pondered that. Could that really be the missing people of whose possible escape he had alerted the authorities? That wouldn`t be good. Now he was back to being worried. "I`ll be glad when those bones are gone. Hopefully that woman will hurry up. We`ve got enough to do after that riot, especially because of that dead six-year-old girl."

"Ricochet," Giorgio mumbled.

"That`s what I wrote down for now and I hope the investigation will have the same result." The camp director looked at his deputy menacingly. Giorgio Angeles was a very good employee, but sometimes he seemed to have a heart of ice.

"What woman?," Georgio asked after several minutes of silence. "What woman has to hurry up with what?"

"Some anthropologist from Washington. The FBI sent her to find out what happened to the dead. She`s said to be pretty good at her job."

Giorgio Angeles pulled his eyebrows together slightly. "What`s her name?"

"Dr... Brennan. Temperance Brennan." Briggs watched as his deputy quietly repeated the name. "You know her?"

"No, no. How should I? I`ve been back in the states for all but three years and I`ve never had anything to do with something like that." His gaze seemed very interested as he slowly stood up and walked to the window. From here, he looked over to the house which kept him from seeing the part of the area where the bodies had been found. 'So it goes on,' he thought and his lips twisted into an icecold smile.

Bones and skulls, half buried in dirt. Hodgins took care of that dirt, taking pictures and samples, collecting maggots and beetles, and then looked at Bones questioningly.

"The bones are getting younger the higher up they are. There is hardly any flesh left on the old ones, but the new ones ..." She was silent for a while. "The pelvic bones I can see are all female. We`ll have to pack them up and get them to the lab. There are simply too many of them."

"How many do you estimate?"

"About twenty. However, there`s a layer of dirt down there, so there could be more underneath that." She looked at him. "I know I promised you a week off, but this is important."

Hodgins stopped her with a wave of his hand. "As usual. I`ll get the bags and sacks and make sure all of this gets to Washington. And then I`ll bring the samples to the lab. Are you staying here for a little longer?"

"No. I`m going to wait until everything is packed and then we can fly back together. We can`t do anything here."

Collecting and wrapping the bones took several hours and happened under the sceptical watch of the guards but especially the inhabitants of the camp. One of the men had pushed Bones rather strongly, yelling at her that she was violating the remains. She had calmly explained to him that she only wanted to put the bones back together, give them back their identity and then hand them over to their families when she was sure which bones belonged to which victim. The man had not been happy but an older woman had pulled him back and given him a stern look.

"Bring our Dira back," she had quietly asked, "so we can at least bury her." In a short conversation it had become clear that Dira was the missing granddaughter of the woman and daughter of the man.

Shortly before sunset they were finished and Bones sat in the car next to Hodgins. She was holding a wrinkled picture of the girl missed by the old lady. Looking at it she noted that she was no more than 15 years old and Bones had already seen that some of the bones would easily fit a girl of that age. She closed her eyes and thought of Angela. Her best friend was responsible for giving the dead their faces back. She would not be happy about victims that young, as usually.

"The way they live here ... " Hodgins` gaze wandered to the stone buildings with their small windows. Blocks of flats, four stories high, with small, dark apartments, most of which containing too many people. The sanitary conditions were horrible and no one here was even the slightest bit overweight.

"They weren`t supposed to stay here for long," Bones murmured. "But it appears that processing the applications takes longer than initially planned."

Hodgins rolled his eyes. "If the people doing the processing had to live here, it`d go a lot faster."

"Or even slower because they`d all get sick due to lack of sanitary installations."

"Hey, Dr. B., that was almost humor! I have to tell Booth about this."

She didn`t know how to respond, so she turned her head and looked out of the window. In front of the main office stood Briggs and waved at her. He seemed very relieved that she was leaving and especially about the fact that she was taking the bodies with her. For him, this case was closed and others could solve it.

The car slowed down, then stopped, and the camp gate opened in front of them. Their driver accelerated and they passed the gate. In the fraction of the second before they left the camp, Bones saw another man come out of the office building. Dark skin, a thin beard, Southern American looks, eyes as cold as ice. Her gaze met his and everything inside her seemed to turn into ice.

Well, that was chapter one. If you liked this, please consider leaving a review.