A/N: Thanks to those of you reading for sticking with me so far on this. I appreciate any feedback.
Disclaimer: I own nothing Bones related except my imagination. (10/02/2016)
Later that afternoon, Agent Aubrey made up an excuse to leave his office and head over to the Jeffersonian. Since they didn't have a current case, Booth looked at him a little skeptically, but didn't give him any grief. After all, Booth had been thinking of sneaking away early himself and was hoping to entice his wife to play hooky for the rest of the day too.
As Aubrey entered the Medico-Legal lab, he spotted Angela right outside of the entrance to Cam's office and headed that way.
"Hey, Angela. You got a sec?"
"Of course." She lowered her voice. "Is this about what I called you for earlier?"
When Angela had called Aubrey, she only told him that something had happened to make her and Hodgins curious about Oliver's background, asking Aubrey if he could use his resources to quietly run an under the table background check on Dr. Wells. She did NOT mention anything about Daisy's suspicion that Oliver might not be human. Angela considered herself an open-minded individual and, unlike her best friend, firmly believed there were mysteries in the universe that couldn't be explained with just facts and science alone, but there was a huge difference between believing in the abstract possibility of alien life forms and believing your co-worker was one.
Aubrey nodded in confirmation. "Yeah. I didn't think it should wait."
"So, what did you find?"
"Nothing, that's what. A whole lot of nothing, to be honest." Aubrey shook his head, perplexed. "Before taking his job here at the Jeffersonian, Dr. Oliver Wells never filed an income tax return, never visited a medical professional, and didn't have a registered phone number. Hell, he never even received a single speeding ticket as far as I can tell. That PhD and the handful of Master's degrees he supposedly has . . . the universities he claims to have received them from have no records of his ever attending their campuses. The man may be a brilliant, super-genius, polymath, who can ace complex video games in no time, but he didn't get his education where he said he did." He shrugged and tossed his head her way. "How about you? What did you find?"
"Me?" She gave him a crooked smile. "What makes you so sure that I checked him out too?"
"Oh, c'mon. Really, Angela?" Aubrey stood there with his hands on his hips, his jacket pushed out of the way. "I thought you and me played straight with each other. There's no way I'll believe that if you are suspicious enough about Oliver to ask me to run a background check on him that you wouldn't have done some digging on your own too. I know you better than that. I'd even bet dinner on it."
Angela chuckled. "Well, you'd win that bet. You're right. I did do some digging too and like you, I came back with essentially nothing. I don't know what's going on exactly, but I can't find any indication that Dr. Oliver Wells actually existed before he started working here."
"Oh, God. Please tell me I am not hearing what it sounds like I am overhearing you say," Cam's unhappy voice carried through the open door to her office as she injected herself into their conversation.
Angela and Aubrey exchanged guilty looks as Cam joined them in the doorway – they hadn't intended to share their information (or lack thereof) with Cam, not yet anyway. "Oh, hey . . . Cam," Angela stalled, waving an arm towards Aubrey. "We were just . . . I'm sure it's nothing . . . just, you know . . ."
"Listen people, I'm the head of this forensics lab and I need to know if there's a concern about one of our employees that could damage the credibility of the evidence we uncover. Every applicant that submits a resume for a job here is supposed to be vetted by the FBI before the applications even get to me. How can it be that neither one of you can find any information on one of our interns who made it through the initial screening process?"
"Umm . . ."
"Aaangiee!" They all turned at the sound of Hodgins excitedly calling to his wife from his ookey room. Ever since his paralysis, he tended to simply shout for her when he wanted her attention on something as opposed to tracking her down, the way he used to. With a resigned sigh, Angela headed that direction, knowing Aubrey and Cam would follow along behind her.
When she walked into the room, Hodgins looked up from his lab table. "Oh, good. You already told Cam and Aubrey what's going on."
"Actually, no. No, I did not."
"Told us what?" Cam asked, head swiveling between the married couple. "What the hell is going on folks?"
Over the last few hours, Hodgins had looked at the evidence and, as a scientist, was convinced there was definitely something abnormal and inhuman about Oliver. As a conspiracy theorist growing up under the influence of Star Trek, he was certain aliens existed and was quite willing to accept the possibility that Oliver Wells could be one. So, when he responded, his tone was very matter-of-fact. "Oh, you know, just that we discovered that Oliver Wells is not really a human being."
"Jack . . ." Angela chastised him.
Playing innocent, he answered. "What?"
Cam's mouth hung slightly open in incredulity as she looked from Hodgins, to Angela, and back. "What are you trying to imply? That he's like . . . like . . . like a werewolf? Because as much as I may enjoy reading erotic stories about paranormal creatures like that in my down time, I don't actually believe they exist in our world."
Aubrey shook his head, mockery dripping off his tongue. "Nah. He can't be a werewolf, Cam. Wrong physique. A vampire maybe, with that pale complexion and those beady little eyes, or even a zombie, but no way he's a werewolf."
Hodgins just pressed his lips together at their dismissive attitudes. "Here. Come here and take a look at these results from an analysis of his blood." He had done as Angela suggested earlier and visited the men's bathroom. In the waste bin, he had found several soiled paper towels that Oliver must've used to clean himself up after his little accident. Collecting those, he now had lots of material to work with and had run several other tests, all of which indicated there was something really, really not normal about Dr. Wells. "What do you see?" he challenged, looking at Cam, one scientist to another.
Cam stepped forward and looked over his shoulder at the results displayed on his monitor. After a moment, she frowned. "That's odd . . . I've never seen anything quite like this before." She pointed her finger to one series of the data. "What is that?"
"Dunno. I haven't been able to identify it." Cam rattled off a half dozen different databases that they typically referenced when looking for information to help identify atypical results and Hodgins confirmed that he'd checked and double checked them all, assuring her he'd exhausted every resource he knew about trying to understand and explain what he was seeing.
"I'm not sure if I really want to know the answer to this," Aubrey started, "but, how'd you end up with a sample of Oliver's blood anyway? Do you run these types of tests on everyone you know? Because, if you do, I'm not sure that's exactly legal. Seems like an invasion of privacy and a definite violation of HIPPA laws."
"Dude, relax. We don't do this all the time, but in this instance, we had probable cause."
"It was Daisy. Our probable cause," Angela explained with an apologetic nod of her head. She then explained the encounter they'd had with the frequently over-enthusiastic intern that morning which started them down this path of exploration. "Now, Daisy is convinced Oliver is an alien from outer space."
"Hey, Daisy is not the only one," Hodgins admitted, defending her. "I'm pretty certain I've spent more time with Oliver Wells than the rest of you combined. I've always thought there was something not quite right about the guy, but, hey . . . he's into science and since I'm King of the Lab, we kinda bonded in a way. He calls me his brother from another mother, you know."
Cam clasped her hands together and brought them up in front of her mouth, a stance she often adopted while thinking through things. "Okay, let's summarize what it is that we actually know. We know that his blood matrix is atypical and contains some unidentified enzymes. We know that no one, except maybe Hodgins, has ever been able to do more than just barely tolerate the man. We know that the background information he provided us about where he went to school and what his real name is appears to be false, but we also know he's extremely intelligent and well informed, so he had to obtain a fairly extensive education somewhere. Issues to be concerned with, but not anything that indisputably points to an alien being. Is there anything else I'm missing?"
"Well . . . " Angela shifted from foot to foot, looking at Hodgins and biting her lip. "There was that other incident a few months ago when he shot Hodgins with a tranquilizer gun while they were trying to track down those coy-wolves. Remember that, hun? At the time, you told me you were almost certain that he shot you on purpose and then there were those things you hallucinated about while the drug was running through your system and you guys were alone in the woods. Remember them? What if . . . what if they weren't actually hallucinations? What if . . . if he did deliberately shoot you so you wouldn't think that what you might see out there alone with him was truly real? So you'd doubt your memories and perceptions?"
"Huh." Hodgins paused, thinking back to what he could remember from that day. "It's possible, Ange. I mean, that tranquilizer at that dosage should've made me feel tired, a little disoriented, and unable to completely control my muscles, all of which it did, but it really isn't a hallucinogenic, so that part always confused me. What I saw that day makes more sense now, assuming he's an alien."
"Why? What'd you see?" asked Aubrey.
"Yes, tell us," implored Cam. "I don't recall ever hearing you mentioning having hallucinations that day."
Hodgins thought back to the afternoon he and Oliver were sent to the woods to track down the coy-wolves that had feasted on a body found in the woods and shared his recollections of that afternoon with Cam and Aubrey. Oliver had been reluctant to go, at first, but as they travelled out to the site, his increasing excitement had been almost palpable. The two men had driven to where the body of their victim had been discovered as their starting point in their search.
Shortly before shooting Hodgins, Oliver had been restless and seemed a little anxious even, but when Hodgins questioned him about how he was feeling, he'd just brushed it off, claiming he was hungry. However, as soon as the tranquilizer had kicked in on Hodgins making him feel a little loopy, Oliver started acting very strange. He'd sat down on the ground in the yoga lotus pose, closed his eyes, and started making some sort of chortling noise that a doped up Hodgins told him sounded like he was singing some sort of 1960s do-do-bee-doo tune. Then, after a few minutes had passed, Oliver stripped off half his clothes, painted his body with dirt, and started making imitation wolf howls as he led Hodgins in the direction of where he thought the coy-wolves might be.
When they finally hooked up the computer and spoke to Angela for an update, she had been able to send them GPS coordinates for the victim's fit-step watch that was in the coy-wolf excrement, but amazingly, Oliver had already led them close enough to the location that they would've likely found it shortly after their call with Angela even if she hadn't been able to provide coordinates. Hodgins had joked with Oliver that his Master's Degree in Wildlife Ecology must've included coursework that taught him tracking skills as Oliver seemed to have an uncanny ability to track the animals, finding obscure signs that Hodgins would've not likely seen even without drugs in his system.
"That's consistent. Don't forget," Cam reminded them all, "during the very first case he ever worked on as in intern, he also tracked a pack of coyotes six miles from the crime scene to their den to recover the victim's head. The FBI had a full contingent of field agents searching for the head that had several hours head start over Oliver and they were nowhere close to finding it when Oliver did. Booth and Brennan claimed he was all covered in dirt when he showed up at the diner with the head in a bag for her too, so whatever ritual he performs when he's in the woods sounds to be some sort of routine for him."
Angela nudged Hodgins. "Tell them the rest of what you saw."
"There's more?" Aubrey asked.
"Yeah," Hodgins answered. "This is where I was sure I was hallucinating. See, when Oliver was running around without his shirt off and I was skipping along merrily behind him, making up songs for Angela, I couldn't help but see his back. Dude, it did not look like a normal back to me. His spine was raised, making it much more pronounced than a typical backbone and creating a ridge down the center of his back. Plus, he had this whole series of . . . of horizontal dimple-type depressions, each one about 2-inches long that covered his back, starting at his shoulders and covering his whole back. I didn't get a good look, I mean, I could barely focus, you know, but they made me think of some sort of large follicle." Hodgins bit down on his lip in concentration, trying to recall anything more. "The skin around each mark was discolored too . . . kind of a yellowish-brown tone that you might associate with a bad bruise when it's healing."
"When he told me all this a couple months ago, we just decided there must've been something in Jack's system from food he ate or a beverage he drank not long before he was shot that reacted oddly with the tranquilizer to create hallucinations, although we never did identify anything specific that could've caused the reaction," Angela explained.
"So, until someone can give me a better explanation," Hodgins snickered, "I'm sticking with the theory that Dr. Oliver Wells is an alien from another world, which, by the way, I for one am totally cool with."
"What do we do now?" Angela asked.
For whatever reason, all eyes shifted towards Aubrey. "Hey, don't look at me." He threw his hands up in front of him, like he was fending off an attack. "Scully and Mulder work in a different department of the FBI. This is outta my realm of expertise."
"No. No, I'm the boss and Oliver works for me . . ." Cam started before Angela interrupted her.
"Actually, he works for Brennan."
". . . who also works for me, so through the chain of command, Dr. Wells still indirectly works for me. Therefore, it falls on my shoulders to deal with this."
"What are you going to do?"
"Oh, I know," Hodgins volunteered. "I can build you a special cage reinforced with titanium and stainless steel alloys that we can use to trap him. Or, or, or even better, I can build a high powered stun gun that we can use to knock him out. Or, both if you want."
"Thank you, Dr. Hodgins, but no." Cam crossed her arms across her chest and took a deep breath. "No, I'm going to approach this the same way I would any other administrative complaint. I'm simply going to confront him about it."
A/N: Hmmm. What do you think will happen when Cam confronts him? Even though I've made up a few new facts along the way, I've tried to stay as true to canon as possible. Final chapter is almost complete.
