Brennan had fought the instinct to look back. She didn't know why she was doing this—she didn't want to be here. She didn't even really want to see Angela—partly because Angela was so nice to her, and she had just shaken off Booth... If she went into the lab, she'd end up breaking down in front of Angela. She just wanted to be in control of herself right now.
She knew where she didn't want to go, but that left her standing around awkwardly in the entrance hall. Maybe she should just go down to bone storage for a while, but somehow even going to the lab was just more than she could handle. She didn't even know why. She just felt all blocked up, emotionally and mentally. She hit the wall with one fist out of frustration.
Maybe she could go to the Jeffersonian gym, and run on a treadmill or punch something. She didn't feel remotely fit right now, but building up muscle mass was something she had to do eventually. And since time was flying by faster than she could process, right now was a pretty good time to start.
She was wearing stretchy yoga pants, since she wasn't exactly going in to work. Perfect for the gym. A lift dinged on the ground floor and a few people got out, so Brennan jumped into one and pressed the button for the third floor. When the doors opened she barrelled out and into the gym opposite.
Even though she hadn't really eaten, she felt like burning off some energy. It would give her something concrete to focus on. Moving forwards. The gym was almost empty—the early-morning fitness junkies had come and gone. Some treadmills were free, but she spotted a cycle and went over to that instead. She could at least sit down while she exercised, that would give her some muscle tone without such a cardiac workout. She slung her bag onto the floor and climbed on, set the resistance to low and started to pedal.
There was a tv screen on the wall playing some inane talkshow. Luckily the sound was off, and some supposedly motivational music was on instead. She pedalled while the talk show ended and a long boring infomercial started. When she'd been going for 20 minutes, she got off and went to get a towel and some water.
'Dr Brennan?'
She turned around to see Micah, the night watchman standing behind her. He was still in his uniform—he mustn't have gone home from work yet.
'Oh, hi Micah,' Brennan said. Though it felt a little confronting to be called 'Dr' right now. It just felt too soon.
'I was just dropping off some papers to the gym office, I really should start coming here again,' he smiled, gesturing around them. 'I heard you were safely home. How are you doing?'
Micah had a way of asking personal questions without being intrusive. Brennan liked how easy he was to talk to. She tilted her head thoughtfully, wondering how to respond. 'I'm… I'm well.'
'It's nice to see you around here again. I can't imagine you without the work you do at the lab.'
Brennan smiled. She couldn't imagine Micah without his guard's uniform. 'I don't know when I'll be back there,' she confessed. 'It will probably be soon.'
Micah considered her carefully. 'You don't sound too happy about that,' he commented. 'Don't you want to go back?'
'I do,' she said at once. 'I just… it's been a long time, and I need to get better, and I will, but…' She trailed off.
'What are doing now, until then?'
'Oh. I'm staying with Booth…'
Micah nodded understandingly at this confidence. He suspected that if anyone else had asked her that, they could have got a punch in the nose. 'That sounds pretty perfect,' he commented. 'He's a good guy, Booth.'
'Yeah, he is,' she said quietly, looking down.
Micah straightened his tie. 'You know, not all good things have to come to an end. It can be hard to think about the future, sometimes, but people grow, things move forward… You get to choose. Don't just let life happen to you, Dr. You have to live it.'
Brennan looked up, slightly wide-eyed at this advice. Micah smiled, and after a moment, she smiled back.
'Well— I should leave you to the gym. Maybe I'll see you around sometime soon.'
Brennan tried to say something, but found herself rendered slightly dumb by what he'd said. 'I—yeah,' was all she could get out. Micah seemed to think nothing of this, and raised a hand in goodbye, before turning and walking out the gym doors. Brennan stood there for a good minute, staring after Micah, before she noticed another patron of the gym frowning at her and headed back over to the equipment.
.
Slightly upset after Brennan's mood swings, Booth had dived into the case and was now sitting with Sweets, talking tactics. He'd decided Sweets could shrink them and he could cuff 'em.
'I just want a read on McCullough,' Booth said again, about the third time that morning. 'Kraus is a big player, but McCullough is a total wild card. If I could just get him in the interrogation room, I'd feel a lot better about this. I need to get a sense of him, you know?'
'I agree we need to see him before we can accurately guess what his role was,' Sweets said. 'But finding this guy—I mean, we know finding Broadsky is hard, but McCullough's just plain smart. I mean, I don't know I'd call him a genius, but he's experienced. He knows how to disappear.'
'"We're not going to find him unless he comes to us",' Booth parroted— what Sweets had been saying all morning. 'I know, I know. But we can't just sit here waiting, there have to be other leads. Do you have the results of Kraus' search?' Booth asked.
'Oh, yeah,' Sweets said. 'Here you go—they even x-rayed him.'
Booth took the file and opened it. 'Ah-ha! I knew it. They got a mic/receiver out of his teeth, even I could guess that one. It's straight out of 'Get Smart'.' Booth looked ready to spit fire as he flipped through the pages.
'I can see you really hate him,' Sweets commented.
'Yeah well, the guy tortures defenceless hostages for a living. I'm allowed to hate him. Scum like that should be put away.'
Sweets nodded. 'Fair enough, and I'll help in any way I can. Oh—excuse me—' The phone rang and he picked up. 'Sweets….. yeah… Oh, really? That's – wow….. Yeah he's right here, I'll pass that on… uh yeah, we'll probably come down soon. Thanks.' Sweets ended the call. 'That was the tech department—they've just finished examining that tooth-bug they found on Kraus.'
'Examining it. Did they find something?'
'Yeah. It was pretty hard to crack, took them about a week but it's got data stored in this tiny chip, records of conversations.'
'Conversations, between Kraus and…..'
'Well it doesn't say who, but… we should take a look at the transcripts when we go down. My shrink's gut, it's telling me Broadsky and-or McCullough. They're bringing Kraus up to the interrogation room so we can question him.'
'Come on then,' Booth said, slapping his palm on his leg and jumping up. 'Grab the file, let's go.'
They didn't talk much on the way down. Both were thinking of what this equipment might be able to tell them. The lift stopped on the techs' floor and they made a beeline for the workroom where various tech gadgets and equipment were fixed and examined.
'Dr Sweets, Agent Booth,' said the tech as they came in.
'Hey Rob. What've you got for us?' Sweets said.
'Okay, well this little beauty is totally next-gen. I reckon it's Swedish, there's some manufacturers over there that use this type of plastic. It can almost entirely pass a metal-detector test, because the metal is just a tiny wire, I nearly needed a microscope- and the chip is silicone. And it's all embedded in a false tooth.'
'Ouch. So how did you find it on Kraus then?' Booth asked.
'Extensive searching,' said Rob in an undertone, flinching slightly at the thought. 'I didn't have to do it, thankfully. Rough gig. But we're just about certain we didn't miss anything this time.'
'Ha, there's always brain implants,' joked Sweets.
'Yeah well, with this guy? I wouldn't put it past him. Didn't he inject a time-release drug cap into Dr Brennan?'
'Yeah,' said Booth. He didn't really want to think about Bones right now. 'So, you got some data off the silicone chip?'
'Yes,' said Rob, moving round the table. 'Here it is by the way—tiny,' he said, pointing at a petri dish containing a tiny white spec.
'Wow,' Sweets said, looking at it like it was a magic bean. 'This is up there with the time Cam let me touch a brain.'
'These are the transcripts. It was all in Morse code, looks like the guy's got a soft spot for the classics.'
'How did he get it to work?' Sweets asked as Booth picked up the transcripts.
'It sends tiny shock waves- miniscule electric currents, just enough to make it vibrate so you can feel it in your tooth. My guess is Kraus sent messages by opening and closing his mouth, banging his teeth together.'
'That is so cool,' Sweets effused. 'This is real spy stuff, like CIA. Though, I s'pose McCullough was with the CIA, or at least on friendly terms with them…'
'Look at this,' Booth said as he read the transcripts. '"Doesntnegotiatewithterrorists". I knew there was something up when Broadsky said that same thing to me when we went looking for him. This must have gone to Broadsky...'
Sweets looked over Booth's shoulder at the messages. '"Outbythewall", whatever the hell that means was the first one…'
'I'd say it means he got caught,' Booth guessed, 'it's the first one. Are these outgoing or incoming?'
'All outgoing, far as I can tell,' the tech said. 'The incoming messages were… sort of streamed, as opposed to downloaded.'
'Oh, like a Youtube video,' said Booth.
'Something like that. The only way to find out what was said to him is for Kraus to tell us himself.'
'He'll be just peachy about doing that,' Booth said in an undertone.
'There are only a few messages here, if the first one was saying he got caught… why would he only have used this device since then? I mean, you've got a cell phone in your tooth, you'd want to use the hell out of it for the cool factor.'
'The messages are written over each other. You know like, the old nokia phones, how they could only hold a dozen texts? The chip in this is about 2millimetres square. It holds less data than an MSN display picture.'
'Blast from the past, I thought you said this was next gen.'
'I'd say a prototype,' Rob shrugged. 'It could obviously use some refining—I mean, if you didn't decode the message as the chip vibrated, you wouldn't get a second chance.'
'Well that's the price you pay for a gadget that gets through an FBI search,' Sweets shrugged. 'All of these are in code. "Washingonwednesday", "Eggplant", "Conferencecall". I got nothing, you guys.'
'Then let's go ask him,' Booth said, taking the transcript. 'Can we take the device?'
'Sure,' said Rob, sliding the petri dish into a zip-seal bag for them.
'Good work on all this,' Booth said sincerely to Rob as they headed out to the elevators
'No sweat, this was the most fun I've had at work in weeks.'
The doors slid shut as they descended to the holding floor. 'You think he's going to give us anything?' Booth asked sceptically.
'Kraus? Not really,' Sweets said, looking at his phone. 'But we do have one card up our sleeve—Kraus is being moved to a longer-term holding facility thisafternoon.'
'Really, how come I didn't hear about that?'
'I just got the email on my phone,' he said, holding it up. 'You have it too, you're on the list of recipients.'
'I don't think it'll make much of an impact,' Booth said.
The doors opened on the lowest floor and they went straight to the interrogation room, where Kraus was sitting moodily in orange, his head shaved where they'd gone looking for any more concealed items. Booth clicked the lock open and they went in. 'Mr Kraus,' Booth said. 'Nice to see you again. Hope you're enjoying your stay, using up taxpayers money.'
They pulled up chairs and sat staring across at him. He looked… somewhere between indignant and livid. He kept his mouth firmly shut.
'We have some transcripts here,' Sweets said, laying the page on the table, 'of some outgoing messages, from the time you've been here in custody. Is there… anything you'd like to share with us?'
Booth glared a little at Sweets. Share with us. He wasn't gonna go all touchy-feely shrinky, was he?
'I have nothing to add,' Kraus said in his heavy accent. He jerked his hands and the cuffs and chain clunked loudly against his chair.
'Who were you communicating with?' said Booth. Kraus completely ignored him. 'Well, we don't really need you to tell us, Kraus, we already know one of the messages was to Broadsky. We're just giving you the chance to elaborate, you know, before you're shipped out to solitary.'
Kraus' eyes darted up at this. Sweets widened his eyes and glanced at Booth for an instant, silently telling him nice one, then focussed on the prisoner. 'Thisafternoon, actually. It could be a while before the trial, so just think of it as a last chance to do a good deed.'
'I cannot betray my associates,' Kraus spat onto the table. He actually did spit—Booth was grossed out to see flecks of saliva reflect the light.
'It isn't going to make any difference, we'll catch them eventually,' Sweets said.
'It's not worth it to me,' Kraus said impassioned. Booth hadn't seen him like this once yet. He seemed genuine for the first time.
'Not worth it. To do the right thing?'
'Not worth my life,' Kraus said. 'Men like us, we don't… we cannot betray each other. It is not done. There will be consequences.'
'Well if we have you in custody, and we have them in custody, no one's going to hurt you,' Sweets said.
'We do not forgive. We never forgive, never forget. It is not worth it to betray.'
The three of them sat in silence for a minute, staring at each other, Kraus breathing heavily with the stress of this point.
'We can offer—' Booth tried.
'No. I will not.'
'You could just say we figured it out…'
'He will know. No betrayal.'
'He,' said Sweets. 'You mean Broadsky, or McCullough?'
'I will say nothing,' Kraus said, sitting up rigidly on the chair to emphasise his point.
Booth slid the zip-lock bag onto the table. 'This is yours. We know how it works. It wouldn't be hard to just… send someone a message.'
Kraus looked like he was going to be sick, eyes fixed on the tooth-mic.
'Oh, come on, you're not even going to help us?' Sweets said, a little exasperated. 'You're a smart man, Yoseph. We can offer you protection. You could cut a deal, reduced sentencing, a better cell in prison. What are you afraid of?'
The man didn't say another word. It was clear that he was not going to budge. He looked away from Sweets, eyeing the transmitter like it was a bomb about to go off.
Booth got up and walked out of the room. Sweets followed.
'He's not going to talk,' Booth said.
'I agree. Well he'll be trucked over around four. Do you… are you going to use the transmitter?'
'Heck yeah,' said Booth. 'Let's get back up to tech.' Booth did consider taking it over to Hodgins and Angela, but Brennan was there and it was just a bit too much to deal with right now. He just wanted to drown himself in the case today. Pissing off some bad guys was going to relieve a lot of stress.
They showed up on the tech floor to find Rob still in the gadget lab. 'Hey, I thought you'd be back. I bet you want to try and use it.'
'Read my mind,' Booth said, handing it to him. 'I want to tell them that Kraus is being moved. If they receive the message, they could show up at the scene.'
'Except we don't know the code,' Sweets said. 'It's all symbolic, I can have a good guess at the meanings but I could also be totally wrong.'
'No code,' said Booth, waving his hand in gesture, 'I don't care if they know it's not Kraus. I want to see if we can track the signal, get a location.'
'Yeah but how do we track the signal?'
'Well I think it's using cell phone towers,' Rob said, 'but honestly we're not going to know until we try. I've got the stuff hooked up here actually, we'll send it off and run the results.'
'Do we know how to work it when it's not in someone's mouth?' asked Sweets. 'Cos like, I'm not putting that in my mouth.'
'Hah, no one has to do that. I can send something, if you tell me what to say,' Rob offered.
'Right. Uh… You know Morse code, right?' said Booth.
'Absolutely.'
'Good. Say… uh… 'moving at four'. Short and sweet.'
'Got it.' Rob held the gadget in place with two fingers and used a weird sort of two-pronged hammer to bang both the top of the transmitter, and the petri dish to simulate a set of teeth chomping. It took about 60 seconds, then he stopped and waited. Ten seconds later, the transmitter buzzed, just enough for Rob to see and hear with his face about six inches from it. 'It sent,' he told them.
'Cool,' Sweets grinned. 'That is so retro. And next-gen. It's paradoxically cool.'
'How do we track it?' Booth asked.
'I've got the computer on it, it's sending the data to our communications expert. As soon as we find anything I'll give you a call, probably take a few hours.'
'Okay great,' said Booth. 'C'mon Sweets, back to the drawing board. Don't know where the hell we're going to go from here…'
Sweets followed him out. 'Hey Booth,' he said as they got into the elevator. 'I uh…
'What?'
'Actually I've been thinking about something,' Sweets said hesitantly. 'An avenue we could take.'
'Okay.'
'Well—and you may not like it—but at some point, I think it would be worthwhile… trying to help Brennan remember some things from her captivity.'
Booth looked at him, his expression unreadable.
'I could… talk to her,' said Sweets, moving his hands around to gesture "a small measured amount". 'I'd be very nonintrusive and we'd go very slow, stop at any point she feels uncomfortable. I just… I mean if finding these guys is the best thing we can do for her, then we should consider that as one option.'
Booth gave a small nod, though he looked pretty tightly wound. Sweets was just a tiny bit scared. 'Well she's at the lab, uh, maybe you should go over there and get her,' said Booth.
'Why me, don't—wait, is something going on?'
'What? No, no, just… I mean, it's been nearly two months she's been back and… we just, need some space from each other, you know?'
'Oh, yeah-yeah, that's fine,' Sweets said quickly. 'Not a problem. I can pick her up, I'll call Angela on the way.'
'Thanks Sweets. Look, I'm gonna go out, I want to visit Broadsky's old place, just check on things with my own two eyes, talk to the surveillance guy… Look you just bring her back and talk to her, give me a call when you're done.'
'Oh, yeah, okay. Hey look—if you two need some help, I mean, if stuff between you isn't so great I could maybe—'
'Thanks Sweets but that's not really our thing, you understand that. I'm just going to grab my files and head out…'
Booth clapped Sweets once on the shoulder as they reached his floor and hurried off around the corner before Sweets could say anything else. '….Ooookay,' Sweets said. 'Right. Dr Brennan it is…'
