Chapter Two: Alive
"Temperance?"
"Rick! I'm here." Brennan's voice trembled. "Talk to me so I can orient myself to your voice."
"Are you hurt?" Castle's voice cracked.
"No, I don't think so." Brennan groaned as she shifted her weight. "Keep still, we don't know what we're dealing with. If it's an earthquake there may be aftershocks." She tried to sit up, but her head bumped up next to something and she flattened herself back on the ground.
"You think this was an earthquake?" Castle's breathing was labored.
"Maybe, I don't know what else it could be."
"Your phone... I lost mine when we fell." He huffed out the words.
Brennan pulled hers from her jacket pocket. She pressed the button and it lit up. "We've been down here for almost an hour, I've got a flashlight app on it." She touched the face of the phone and a white screen came on.
She pointed the light around and realized how lucky she was to be alive, she lay in a pocket created by the connected chairs that were in the lounge and a big piece of wallboard wedged together. Turning the light, she could see Castle, a large metal beam lay diagonally across him, one end of it higher than the other. The building had crumbled, wires were pulled loose, some dangled haphazardly, the walls were reduced to pieces of rubble, shards of glass mixed with insulation and pieces of rock covered the floor. They were trapped under a layer of the destroyed building.
She scooted commando style toward him. "Are you hurt?"
He grimaced. "No, I don't think so, but my leg is pinned, I can't move."
"I'm calling Booth. He'll get help, let them know we're alive." She pressed the well used speed dial number on her phone.
Across the country, Booth was in a sound asleep when his phone rang. He checked the caller I.D. "Jeezus Bones, you know what time it is?" He sank back down in the comfort of his bed, his head still groggy.
"Booth, I need help. Rick Castle and I are at LAX and there's been some kind of earthquake. The part of the building we're in collapsed."
"What?" Booth sat up and swung his legs out of bed. He listened to his partner explain how they were trapped underneath the caved in building. "Bones, are you hurt?"
"I'm not hurt, but I can hardly move. There's a metal beam that fell on Rick, he's pinned down." She tried to keep the panic out of her voice, but hearing her partner on the other end of the phone caused her fear to surface.
"Listen to me. I'm going to hang up and call the Bureau, let them know what's happened."
"Booth? Please hurry." The desperation in her voice scared him.
"I will Bones. I promise, I'll get you out of there. I promise." He hung up, a fleeting thought of the Gravedigger crossed his mind, but he shook it off and dialed the FBI Switchboard.
"It's going to be okay, Booth knows we're down here. He's calling for help." Brennan struggled to regain her composure.
"Temperance, will you call Beckett?" Brennan nodded and Castle recited the numbers.
It was 3:02 am in New York City when Kate Beckett's phone buzzed across her night stand. She rolled over, switched on the light and picked it up. "Beckett... who is this?"
"Detective Beckett, it's Temperance Brennan, we need your help." Her voice was tight and desperate.
"Dr. Brennan?" Beckett knew something was wrong. "Where's Castle?"
"He's here…" Brennan reached over and handed him the phone. "Beckett, it's me."
"Castle? What's happening, where are you?" She propped herself up in her bed.
"We're at LAX, we were in the VIP lounge waiting for our flights. Something like an earthquake or an explosion, I don't know what the hell it was… it caused the building to collapse. We're trapped."
"Oh my God, are you hurt?"
"Listen to me, you have to help get us out of here. Temperance called her partner with the FBI, his name is Seeley Booth, find him. You need to let them know we're down here."
"Castle, answer me, are you hurt?" Beckett knew he was when he didn't answer.
"I'm all right, but Kate, I need you to let Alexis and Martha know I'm okay. I need you to call and reassure them. Please, will you do that?"
"Yes, of course… Castle..."
"Kate, tell them I love them." He gasped out the words.
"I will. Castle, I'm coming to get you... Castle?" Beckett waited for a response, but all she heard were muffled noises before the call ended. Had she been there, she would have known that more of the building and the wall of dirt surrounding them had caved in.
"Broyles, Department of Homeland Security" He flashed his badge. "This is Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop, we're here to conduct a preliminary investigation." His tone was clipped, abrupt and imposing. During the night they had been contacted, dispatched and flown to Los Angeles. By the time they arrived, the sun was peeking over the horizon and lighting up the sky.
"Who can debrief us?" Dunham asked showing her badge to one of the police officers.
A tired looking Port Police officer with a clipboard stepped forward. "The airport terminal has been secured. There are four confirmed deaths, and three still missing including a Dr. Brennan and Richard Castle. The injured have been moved to area hospitals and the rescue effort is underway."
The officer motioned for them to follow him. "You have to see this for yourself." He led them to an area that had been cordoned off with yellow police tape.
"Whoa..." Peter said in a hushed tone. "You think they could still be alive under there?"
The devastation looked unreal. One entire section of the airport terminal had broken off and collapsed into a gigantic hole. Workers were steadily working to clear away parts of the building by hand.
"The area won't withstand the use of heavy equipment." The CBI Agent walked up, fatigue was etched into her face. "I'm Teresa Lisbon, California Bureau of Investigation. We were here investigating a homicide when this event occurred. By all accounts, the damage was isolated to this one area. Nothing else was destroyed including the parking garage and runways."
"Olivia Dunham, FBI, this is Peter Bishop, we're here to investigate the occurrence." She shook Lisbon's hand. "Please, go on."
"The DHS have shut down the airport to commercial flights, they've been diverted to Orange County, Burbank and Riverside. Since the initial event, there's been one more collapse within the site and they've resorted to clearing it slowly. Two of the people trapped down there are presumed alive, they used Dr. Brennan's phone to call their partners. That was over five hours ago.
"Does anyone know what caused this?" Peter asked as he studied the area.
Jane walked up, he had taken his suit jacket off and rolled up his sleeves when he had joined the effort to clear away some of the debris. A dust mask hung around his neck, and plaster dust clung to him even, coating his eye lashes. "This wasn't a terrorist event. There's no evidence of an explosion of any kind, and earthquakes don't isolate themselves to one spot."
"This is Patrick Jane, he's part of my team. One of the engineers ruled out a sinkhole, there's no reason to believe the ground was unstable." Lisbon added. "Something caused the ground to open up and the building went down."
"Something's over there." Jane motioned to an area that had been blocked off with construction screening.
Broyles walked over with his hands in his pockets and a stern expression on his face. "Follow me."
"It's not a bomb, the dogs confirmed it." Lisbon offered, watching the reactions of the blonde woman and her intense looking partner.
Olivia and Peter has already been briefed on why they were here. They looked down at the cylindrical bullet shaped object sitting amidst the debris and exposed dirt. It was two feet tall, a blue strip of light spiraled around it and it lit up and hummed intermittently at an odd pitch. It was identical to the one they had encountered at the construction site in New York.
"Olivia, a moment please." Peter took her aside so they could talk privately. His voice was just above a whisper. "You know as well as I do, the last time this thing showed up, there was no fun party following it."
"I know, and that's why we're here. Broyles wants to transport it to some undisclosed location. Walter and Astrid are on their way there right now. He thinks something incomprehensible is going to happen and we need to be here to deal with it." Olivia looked conflicted. "Peter, two, maybe three people are trapped down there. Can we do anything to help them?"
"I don't know, but if we can, we will."
The bizarre circumstances that brought them together in the first place had now become something very personal for them. The mysterious cylinder was only one of a growing mountain of questions they had.
Olivia's life had gone from losing her FBI Partner and lover, to finding out she could shape events with her mind, to discovering she had been experimented on as a child. She herself was a component in the weird and world altering cases they were investigating. Even if she wanted to, she knew she could never escape her fate, and when she met Peter she had no idea he would be intrinsically tangled up in it.
For Peter, it was ending his estrangement with his father and learning the dark secrets the research scientist held in his mind. He had been thrown into these scientific cases with their extreme explanations and his life had never been so chaotic and dangerous. Peter had always been an outsider and a loner, but something unexpected had happened, he found a family, and for the first time in his life he understood what that meant. And then there was Olivia, she had unintentionally found a way into his heart.
"Maybe I can offer some suggestions on shoring up the perimeter. You better get Broyles to make an introduction, otherwise, they'll think I'm here to do a coffee run."
Olivia gave him a little smile and they walked towards the command center.
"Detective Beckett? Seeley Booth."
She reached out and shook his hand and saw the same concern, fear and anticipation in his eyes that were in her own.
"How's the rescue effort, what are they saying?" The FBI Agent had arrived to find the area was full of activity and anxiety.
"They're digging them out by hand, the heavy equipment caused another..." Beckett looked away, she couldn't finish the statement.
"The command area is there." A group of men with hard hats had blueprints of the terminal spread out on a makeshift table, three of them appeared to be engineers and one was Peter Bishop. "I have yet to find the right person who can give me a straight answer. The only one who seemed forthcoming was a CBI Agent." Her frustration was tangible.
"This is what we're dealing with." They walked over to the yellow police tape.
"Good God..."
"I know, I don't see these kind of things in homicide cases, and whatever is behind that curtained off area is important enough to bring out DHS, an FBI agent and a consultant from Boston." Beckett's dark brown eyes bore a hole through the destruction.
"Has there been any more contact with them? Can't they string microphones down there?" He thought aloud as he analyzed the destruction in front of him.
"The last contact was the call they made to me." Beckett's patient demeanor suddenly vanished and was replaced by rage. "Is there anyone who can tell us what the hell is going on here?" She spat out the words and her eyes flashed angrily, two of the engineers looked up and stared at her.
Booth placed his hand on her arm. "Listen, that's my partner down there too. We will get them out alive, you need to believe that. I want to talk to the Agent from Boston, maybe we can get more information."
She calmed herself by taking a deep breath, closing her eyes and slowly exhaling. Once composed, she walked toward the cluster of people at the command center.
Booth took another look at the men working diligently to clear away the debris. It was beyond painful to know Bones was down there, he remembered the Gravedigger and his own experience being trapped in a confined space. He told himself he had to keep his heart in check if he was going to be effective, but there was a piece of him that was consumed with anguish. He closed his eyes and said a prayer, but his concentration was interrupted when he felt his cell phone buzzing in his pocket.
He checked it and it contained one extremely important word from Brennan's phone. "alive"