Chapter 10. Alien in a spaceship.
Brennan woke up in the darkness hearing only a radio. "Oh God. What – What happened? Where am I?" she asked frantically feeling around to try and figure out where she was, quickly figuring out that she was in a car. She reached up and turned the key in the ignition. She feels a pain on her neck and feels along it finding two burn marks. "Ugh. Oh god." She reaches up and turns on the inside light and takes in her surroundings. She tries opening the car door. "Come on!" she said failing and tried rolling down the window only to be rained on by dirt and quickly rolled it back up. She turns off the radio trying to think with her scrambled brain. She turns hearing a moan from the back seat and realizing she's not alone. Hodgins is there looking to be in worse shape than her.
She quickly climbs into the back seat. "Hodgins. …Hodgins. Are you all right? Can you talk?" she asked placing her hand on one of his legs causing a groan and she pulls it away seeing the blood. "Your legs. What happened to your legs?"
"Where are we?" He mumbled disoriented.
"We're buried alive. He must have gotten us." She said trying to remain calm.
"Who?" Hodgins asked confused.
"The Grave Digger." She said looking around at the dirt covered windows.
Meanwhile. At the diner. Booth sat having dinner with Cam.
"Come on come to New York. We'll go to a musical" she said smiling.
Booth laughed. "Talking and singing and talking and dancing and more singing" he said pulling out his phone to check his voicemail. "Ya know if you want to stop what we're doing – just say so." He smiled putting the phone to his ear.
"You can fantasize about pulling out your gun and shooting everyone on stage. You know you like that" she offered. "Seriously, we'll do something you like. Like, Climbing the outside of the Empire State building or swimming the East River…or." She sees panic in Booth's eyes. "What? What happened?" she asked scared.
Booth puts the phone on speaker and replays the message. It's from the grave digger. "Temperance Brennan and Jack Hodgins have been buried alive. Wire transfer $8 million to the following Grand Cayman account or they will suffocate to death. Upon receipt of the wire transfer, I will provide you with Brennan and Hodgins GPS Coordinates. This will be my last communication."
"Oh my god!" Cam said stunned.
15 minutes later. Back at the FBI.
"It will be his last communication too. He's never varied." Vega said. "He learned from the Kent boys. He's got two of them so he cut the deadline in half."
"Why is The Grave Digger demanding so much money? It's doesn't make any sense." Someone else asked. "He's always been reasonable at knowing how much people can raise within the time limit."
"Has Dr. Brennan made that much money from her books?" Vega asked confused.
Booth shook his head. "It's Hodgins. He's the sole heir to this thing called The Cantilever Group"
"What's that?" Someone asked
"Just the third largest privately owned corporation in the country…" Vega answered
Underground.
"I was on my way to karate class, so we have lots of bottled water." Brennan said going through her bag.
"What happened? Where are we?" Hodgins asked still hazy.
Brennan shrugged. "Last thing I remember is being at the lab."
"I'm really confused, what happened to my legs?" he asked looking to Brennan. "Where are we?" he asked again.
"Underground. Buried. I have a burn" she said pulling her hair back and showing him the burns. "It has to be 'The Grave Digger'. I think he ran you down with his car, and then pumped you full of drugs to ruin your short term memory – same as Ryan Kent."
"How long have we been down here?" he asked getting worried.
"Um." She looked at her watch. "…2 hours… I think?"
"Okay, so this vehicle is 6…60 - 60 cubic feet of air, uh, it's just 20 percent oxygen – two people – my brain is not working..." he said frustrated and unable to do the math.
Brennan shook her head. "The Grave Digger is very consistent. If we started with 12 hours of air, we'll be unconscious in 10. After that if – if no one pays the ransom…"
"We're dead." He finished with a sigh and Brennan nodded.
Back at the lab.10 hours:43minutes :04seconds.
"How are we gonna get our hands on $8 Million?" Cam asked concerned.
"Hodgins is rich." Zack said working the keys of his computer.
"He is?" she asked surprised.
" 'Rich squared to the power of ten times four' is how he describes it."
"You're gonna pay the ransom, right?" Angela asked Booth, trying to remain calm.
"Yes. FBI standard ops, they won't work. Grave Digger operates outside statistics." Booth said reassuring her.
"They'll fire you." Cam said certain.
"That's cool. One less reason to wear a suit." He turned to Angela "Call Bone's brother, Russ, and tell him what's going on. I'm gonna go talk to the chairman of The Cantilever Group." She nodded and they separated.
8hrs 30mins left.
Underground.
"We have water, towels, my mini kit, ibuprofen, two cell phones no batteries, a digital camera with a back up battery and uh, a handful of pens."
"That one's a laser pointer…" Hodgins corrected.
"And… a copy of my novel."
"Hey. We can read it to each other if we get bored." He suggested.
"Too bad there's nothing to help us in here…. What's this?" she asked pulling a thing of perfume from a pouch "Deep Rhapsody?"
"Careful. That's 3 grand a quarter ounce." Hodgins grimaced in pain
"Yeah. I'd make that face too, if I spent $3,000 on perfume." She said putting it back.
"Oh man. Something – something's wrong… my leg."
"Here." She said handing him some water and a few ibuprofen. "I'm worried you have compartment syndrome."
"Is that terminal? I mean within the next few hours?"
" No."
"But…" he said knowing there was more than she was telling him.
"It's gonna get painful." She said honestly. " 'Slip into shock and die' painful."
"Well, there's nothing we can do about that."
"…Actually, there is."
"I'm not gonna like this, am I." he said seeing the look on her face.
"No"
Hodgins tears a page out of Brennan's Book and writes something, folds it up and sticks it in his jacket pocket.
"I'm ready." He said taking a deep breath to relax himself.
"Was that a note to Angela?" she asked curiously.
He nodded. "Just in case whatever you're gonna do to me sends me into shock and I might die. … The Upside is, me not breathing, doubles your survival time".
"I'm not interested in surviving that way." She said seriously. "What I'm going to do is make a long incision in the fascia to release the pressure inside." She said telling him what needed to be done.
"And...How long is a long incision? Wait.. Don't—don't tell me" he said changing his mind.
"It's best if I do it very fast and without empathy." She said separating her feelings from herself. "Here bite on his so you don't bite your tongue." She handed him her black belt. "Hang onto something and don't fight passing out" she held the knife to his leg ready to make the incision and Hodgins held onto the emergency handle. "You ready?" He nods and just as she is about to cut she sees something stuck in his leg. "Wait…"
He takes the belt from his mouth."What is that?"
"Evidence of what happened to you. Let's – let's worry about it later." She stuck it in her book
"I'll take a look at it later." he puts the gag back in his mouth and mumbles something.
"It's best if you don't talk right now." She said readying herself once more.
He spits the gag out. "I'm nuts about Angela. Over the moon. Stupid in love with her. That's why I bought her that – that crazy, expensive perfume. A man give you a bottle of perfume like that, it says - it says 'I Love You'. There. I said it out loud." he puts the gag back in his mouth and gets back into position, Brennan makes the incision and he screams.
5 hours.
"Thank god I didn't kill you." Brennan said relieved to see him coming around.
"How long was I unconscious?" he asked curiously.
"A while. How's your leg?"
"Better. Lots better. What are you doing?" he asked noticing she was playing with wires in the front seat.
"Hotwiring the phone to the horn so we can send a message."
"From underground?"
"We get radio reception." She pointed out.
"A direct current 12 volt will burn out the circuits in a 4.2 volt cell phone in a microsecond. Better jury-rig a resistor." He suggested.
"Smart." She said not thinking of it herself.
"Might work long enough to send a single burst transmission." He said hopefully.
"A very short text message. Booth can trace it to a cell phone relay tower."
"What message should we send? Goodbye? Nice knowin ya?"
"What are we surrounded by?"
"Pain. Despair… and a subsoil accumulation of agglutinate aridosols"
"Dirt".
"I don't like the term 'dirt'."
"Alright" she picked up a handful of dirt from inside the car. "Tell me something I don't know." she puts it in his hand.
"Ash." He said examining it and putting a bit in his mouth. "Hints of nitrogen and sulfur" he said making a face and spitting it out.
"So where are we?"
"We're in Bituminous Coal country. Basically, Virginia."
"We need more than that." Brennan sighed.
"The laser….and we need Benzophenone."
"Benzophenone. Some soaps and plastic packaging, sunscreen – we don't have any sunscreen." She said thinking. "…Angela's perfume."
"Three. Grand. That cost."
"Hodgins, I will split the cost when we get out of here." She promised.
"There's something you don't know about me. I'm rich." He admitted.
"Me too."
"No. No. You're… well off. My family owns The Cantilever Group and there's not many of us left alive. One to be exact. Me."
"Okay. I won't split it with you." She said smiling and pouring the perfume onto the dirt, Hodgins mixed it around with his finger. "It smells nice." She said putting the cap back on.
"I need the camera." She handed it to him and he uses it to look at the dirt more closely. "I know where we are."
FBI. Booth's office. 3hours 5minutes.
"There's not negotiating with The Grave Digger." Vega said for the hundredth time.
"You've been through this what…five times with this guy..."
"Exactly. So I know him, and he does. Not. Negotiate." He repeated.
"Oh, what? What… no - chat room action with him?" Booth asked sarcastically.
"Are you nuts? I hate the son of a bitch."
"Why? He's made you rich." Booth said doing his tough guy routine.
"You know what? You just need to deal with the facts. That if you can't put the ransom together in the time he gave you, your partner is dead." Vega said fighting back.
Booth grabs Vega and throws him down on the table, holding him by his neck. "Here's the deal, all right. You have a relationship with this guy, what they call symbiotic – you benefit from each other – hmm. So know this. That deadline comes around, and my partner is still underground – I will end you. You understand?" he picks him off of the table and slams him back down. "Three hours to live." He said releasing him and throwing him out of his office. "You better hurry."
Underground. Hodgins is examining the thing Brennan found in his leg.
"This thing you found in my leg is anodized plastic film and coated metallic tape with dried out adhesive. I think it's a bumper sticker."
"You mean like 'If you can read this, you're too close.'?" She asked working on the phone now.
"No. Like a prepaid toll road pass." He pauses looking offended. "Someone ran me down with a car."
"We knew that already."
"Yeah, but now we've proved it, and I find that I'm really annoyed." He said kinda surprised.
"We have 4 to 6 seconds to enter a message and hit speed dial." She said turning back to him.
"I've figured out a text message using 8 key strikes."
"How's your text messaging?"
"Thumbs like lightning. I can do it."
"Okay." she hands him the phone "You ready?"
He nods. "Yeah." she presses on the horn and Hodgins enters the message as quick as possible before the phone short circuits "Oh!" he said dropping the phone.
"Did it go?" she asked hopefully.
"I think it went…" he said unsure.
"Me too."
Booth's office. 20minutes.
Booth is pacing behind his chair, thinking, when he receives a message on his phone. He picks it up and opens it, his eyes widening.
Jeffersonian platform. 15minutes later.
The message was on a display "6 7 16 M1.4"
"Does it mean anything to anybody?" Booth asked hopefully.
"They're getting low on oxygen." Cam suggested.
"Hypoxia leads to mental confusion." Zack backed her up.
He shook his head. "It's Bones. It means something. If it was just some random message we would have heard from them before. Or there would have been more of an explanation or something. This isn't mental confusion." He said on the verge of babbling.
"Did you try just dialing the number?" Zack suggested.
"I tried all the dumb guy, normal stuff. Okay, that's why I'm here talking to the Brain Trust. All right. Think! Eggheads. Work it!"
"Booth. They're not cops!" Cam said giving him a look and telling him to calm down.
"We're running out of time." He said not caring.
"Minor correction. Dr. Brennan and Hodgins run out of air in….4 seconds" Zack said pointing to another screen. "We are out of time." He said as it reached zero.
Underground. As the clock hit zero.
They cut through the back seat into the trunk and punctures a tire to get more air they lean against the seat and breathe deeply
"How much extra time?" Hodgins asked curiously.
"A little. There are 4 extra tires, but we can't get to them. Is there anything else?"
"If the ransom was paid, we'd be out by now. Why prolong the inevitable?" Hodgins asked his hope beginning to fade.
"Booth will find us." She promised.
"You have a lot of faith in Booth." Hodgins pointed out.
"No. Faith is an irrational belief in something that is logically impossible. Overtime, I've seen what Booth can do. It's not faith." She shook her head.
" No offense – and I'm not just saying this because you filleted me with a knife – We are out of air. We don't know if our message got out, much less if anyone understood it and we are buried underground. What you have is faith, baby…. Sorry. The baby thing is a reflex." He apologized.
"We shouldn't talk right now… to conserve air." Brennan said not wanting to believe it.
"I need the camera batteries and the preservative powder from your kit." Hodgins said sitting up.
"Soda ash and lithium? You're going to make a carbon dioxide scrubber?" Brennan said smiling.
"If you can perform surgery out of thin air, then I can pull a little thin air out of thin air." they laugh, knowing that they'll at least be able to extend their time by a bit more.
The Jeffersonian platform.
"Okay. Zack figured out what stun gun The Grave Digger uses and how it's modified. Thanks to Angela, we know that The Grave Digger has a customized aluminum casing in the back of his vehicle…" Cam informed him.
"I got about a hundred agents working that angle. What does this mean, right here!" he said hitting the screen anxiously. "What does that mean?"
"You're forgetting something. Brennan and Hodgins are out of air." Zack pointed out again.
"Great. You wanna give up, huh? This is Bones we're talking about and Hodgins. You really think they didn't find a way to extend their air supply! Hell, they found away to send us a message to ask us for help" he hits the monitor again "and you want to give up because of math."
Back underground.
Hodgins is scraping out the lithium from inside the battery into an ashtray
"Soda ash. Lithium reacts to high concentrations of carbon dioxide." He pours the water in. "and produces oxygen." The mixture start to foam and they laugh relieved.
"That gives us just long enough." She said moving to the front seat. "For my next idea which …will kill us. The airbags."
"They aren't actually bags of air…" Hodgins pointed out.
"I'm not looking to extend our survival underground. I'm looking to blow our way out of here."
"Using the explosives from the air bags? He asked surprised. She nods. "That could definitely kill us."
"So will doing nothing." She sighed and began working on the airbags.
Hodgins hands her a page from her book "Anyone you wanna say goodbye to?" Brennan takes it and begins to write.
The Jeffersonian platform.
"It's not a numerical alphabetical code or an equation." Zack eliminated the options.
"It's not GPS coordinates or indications of topography." Angela said getting rid of a few more.
"Great. Then what is it?" Booth asked pacing.
"Can I make a suggestion? See, this is exactly why I was sent here. You guys are brilliant, but you won't make intuitive leaps." Cam said standing. "This is a message from one of them to one of us. Specific. Focused. Who was it meant to get to?"
"Easy. Brennan's cell to mine, right? The message was for me. We have an understanding, we work together." Booth said stopping.
"We all work together. She's my best friend. And Hodgins – Hodgins…." Angela said growing more worried by the second.
"She's right. We should assume the message is from Hodgins not from Brennan." Cam said realizing the significance.
"Why?" booth asked confused.
"Because they're buried alive… And Hodgins is all about dirt." Cam explained.
"Okay. Great. The message is about dirt, but who's it to?" Booth asked.
"Angela. Hodgins is all about dirt and Angela" Zack said following Cam's train of thought.
"But it's numbers, Zack. It's for you. Hodgins would have written me a line of poetry or something." Angela shook her head..
"6, 7, 16. Carbon, Nitrogen and Sulfur on the periodic table of elements. They are buried in coal rich soil." He said pulling up a map.
"Ya gotta narrow it down, Zack." Booth prodded.
"Keep going, Zack." Angela encouraged.
"Mineral components of coal are all the same. It's the organic components that provide a unique fingerprint." He said working through the facts. "They are called, mascerals. They fluoresce at different levels. A reflectance of 1.4 is quite rare – suggesting a high concentration of inertinite." He said zoning in on their location.
"Zack, tell me what that means." Booth said confused.
He pinpoints their location on the map."I know where they are."
Underground. Brennan has jumper cable set up across the dashboard of the car.
"Can this work?"
"I'm not really an explosives expert…but the dash might shape the charge enough to blow out the windshield. If we're less than 4 feet beneath the surface, this charge could blow us to freedom." Brennan explained her theory.
"And if we're buried more than 4 feet deep?" He asked worried about the answer.
"Then the concussion will turn our brains into jelly." She said honestly.
"Well, then we can run for Congress, so it's a win-win."Hodgins joked,
"We should get as far away from the explosion as possible." She suggested,
"I already am." He said extending a hand. "Care to join me?"
She climbed over the seat taking his hand "Ready?"
He nodded."Yeah. …Dr. Brennan. It's been a privilege." He extended a hand to her for her to shake but instead she hugs him and holds him tightly, fear apparent in their eyes.
Just as they are about to set it off Booth and the gang arrive at the quarry and begin looking around. "Look for freshly overturned dirt of dips in the ground" he ordered the FBI team.
Underground. Hodgins slowly connects the two wires causing the airbags to blow as Booth looks over the quarry and sees a big puff of dust. He bolts over, knowing he has found them and begins digging, grabbing Brennan's hand and pulling her out. As she surfaces gasping for air the rest of the group arrives and begins digging for Hodgins.
"Get. Hodgins…" she said softly.
"They are." He reassured her brushing the dirt from her face. As everyone else digs and pulls out Hodgins.
"Jack." Angela said smiling and brushing the dirt from his face and kissing him.
"Seeley." Brennan smiled sitting up.
"Hi." He said smiling back.
She kissed him. "I knew you'd find me."
He hugged her. "I knew I would too."
"Stay with me tonight?" she whispered in his ear.
"Of course." He said holding her tight.
10 pm. Brennan lay on the couch with Booth at her head. They were finally home from the hospital after hours of poking and prodding and a battery of tests.
"Ouch." She sighed, hand on her head.
"Are you ok?" he asked concerned, running his fingers through her hair.
"Yeah." She said softly. "Except my entire body hurts. "
He smiled down at her. "Just further proof you're alive."
"I guess." She sighed again sitting up. "…what?" she asked noticing he was staring at her.
He shook his head kissing her passionately.
She smiled as he pulled away, her hands on his chest. "What was that for?"
"That was for never giving up." He said smiling, glad that she was still here.
She kissed him more intense than before. "That was for finding me even though time had run out."
"I knew you and would find a way."
"Still. Thank you." She said gratefully.
He shook his head. "… I thought I was gonna lose you… and…"
She stopped him with a kiss. "Shh. don't… don't talk like that." She said straddling him. "I'm not going anywhere." She promised.
"Neither am I." He smiled pulling her back in.
The next morning.
"You know they say you shouldn't make rash decisions after a traumatic event." Booth said as she looked up at him.
"Yeah… but we did this before so..." she kissed him smiling. "I don't think it counts."
He laughed. "Good point." He said pulling her back in.