Thanks to the people who have read and reviewed! Sorry the chapters are so short, but the good news is that short chapters come more often! =) Hope you enjoy. I don't think I really captured Zack, Hodgins and, Angela that well, but oh well, practice makes perfect!
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"The bones were laid out anatomically?" Zack asked he and Dr. Brennan began their exam. Angela and Hodgins were on the other side of the table, looking on curiously.
"Yes," she answered him, "and this"-she gestured towards the femur-"is what is even more puzzling."
Zack leaned in to get a better look at the letters on the bones. "Exactly 16 letters, burned into the bone…with a wood-burning tool, maybe? It looks like an anagram, maybe a code…Why would someone burn a code on a bone?"
At the word code, Hodgins' head popped up. "Code? I'll take a look at that, maybe I can break it." Bones nodded. "Go for it" she said, "I can get any particulates to you after my examination." Hodgins smiled, giddy to have something besides bugs and slime to work on, and copied the letters onto the paper on his clipboard and went to his area to work in peace.
"Ok, so, I am ready to put a face on our victim" Angela said.
"I haven't put the tissue markers on yet. I still need to examine it more closely. You can have it when I'm done." Bones told her.
"Figured out what our mysterious letters mean yet?" Bones heard a voice from across the lab. She turned to see Booth bounding up the steps, stopping just long enough to swipe his card key before stepping onto the forensics platform.
"It's either a code, or an anagram, or both. We need to break it to find out. Hodgins is working on it now." Zack told him, and both he and Bones noticed the confused look on Booth's face.
"That could take forever, right? Can't you just run it through some computer thingy to figure it out?" Booth asked.
"Impossible" Zack said. "I could use a program to rearrange the letters but it could extend into infinity."
Suddenly, Hodgins walked up excitedly. "It's a Caesar's cipher box." he said with a very proud smile.
"What's a Caesar's box thing?" Booth said with a confused look on his face, a look that had become a common occurrence in the lab.
"Caesar was one of the first code writers in history" Hodgins explained with a little more than a hint of excitement in his voice. "When his messengers kept getting ambushed and his messages stolen, he devised a relatively simple way to encrypt his messages so the messages looked like gibberish." He paused to make sure everyone was keeping up. Booth still looked confused, but Hodgins knew he would catch up in a minute. "Each message consisted of enough letters to make a perfect square- 9, 16, 25, 100- depending on how much he needed to say. He would then alert whoever was on the receiving end of the message to arrange the text into a square. They would then read it from top to bottom, and the message would become clear." He stopped, and waited for any questions.
"Well thanks for the history lesson Hodgins" Booth said, still looking a bit confused, and now a little annoyed, "but did you figure it out?"
"Yeah," Hodgins said, handing Booth the clipboard. Booth looked at it, but couldn't quite make out the chicken scratch that was Hodgins handwriting. "It only says 4 words." Hodgins said. Everyone looked at him expectantly.
"'Let the games begin'."