Chapter 13.
"There you are Booth." Brennan said walking in the room. "What's going on?" She asked at the silent stunned glances and opened mouths she saw around the room.
"I'm figuring out how to commit Sweets here to the looney bin." Booth said still staring at Sweets quick suggestion.
"I'll help sign." Emma said staring daggers at Sweets. She was abruptly changing her mind about him.
"No, no, no, you misunderstand what I am saying." Sweets said reading their faces. "I just mean virtually. Virtual bait."
Booth and Emma sighed though they still wondered about this plan.
"What's going on?" Brennan asked again.
"Sweets has an idea…wait, what are you doing here?" Booth asked.
"The lab is shut down. It was reported there was a chemical spill. Despite our efforts to assure FEMA that there was not they still had to follow protocol." She explained.
"Protocol and orders originated from a computer." Booth said.
"Yes, I think it would be safe to assume it came from Pelant." She explained.
"He is wanting to shut the Jeffersonian down, render us useless." Sweets suggested.
"Well he is effective so far." Brennan said.
"Okay, we need to check in with Angela, see if we are safe here and tell her about your idea." Booth said to Sweets.
Booth and Brenna walked from the room and Sweets slowly got up from the floor but it was quite painful against his ribs. Emma quickly came to his side and helped him up.
"Oh I'm fine." Sweets said trying to play it off. His mind was in a better place than before but his body was slow to catch up. Emma developed a small smile in the corner of her mouth along with a raised eye brow.
"I'm fine. Really." Sweets repeated thinking perhaps if he said it enough even he might believe it.
He walked to the door and Emma began picking up papers.
"You coming?" He asked and Emma felt a surge of excitement to be included in the efforts.
"Oh that's right." She said jogging the files and setting them on the desk. "I am the human bait." She added slipping on her shoes.
Sweets cheeks reddened. "I really didn't mean it like that. I would not put you in harm's way. I promise." He added and felt a bit giddy inside when he looked at her.
"Okay. I trust you." She said as they left the room.
Booth and Brennan arrived in computer central first and saw all the techies a buzz with activity. Hodgins and Cam were already there so Booth assumed Angela knew about the Jeffersonian incident.
"It's weird having you all here." Booth said.
"What do you mean Booth?" Brennan asked.
"Well, you guys are always at the Jeffersonian, now you're, here, at my place." Booth said looking at the team. "What's going on anyway?"
"Pelant is trying to invade us." Angela said just as Sweets and Emma entered. Sweets introduced her and they all nodded with smiles. Angela ran the thought thru her mind that they sure did look cute standing next to her. Hodgins and Cam smiled because she looked a heck of a lot quieter than Daisy.
"Invade us, what do you mean?" Booth asked confused.
"He's trying to crack into our systems. Mark here caught it and we've been throwing up shields." Angela explained. "We're keeping him out but he's a persistent bug."
"Wait, he's trying to hack into the FBI files?" Emma asked catching on.
"Oh not just the files." Angela explained. "He's trying to set off the sprinklers, the alarms, sick the National Guard on us, you name it."
"He must be getting frustrated it's not working." Hodgins said with a smile of delight on his face.
"He's still a computer right?" Emma asked catching up some still.
"You get frustrated at computers, why shouldn't one get frustrated back." Sweets teased Emma and she blushed with her former outburst at it.
"Well the good thing is it's keeping him busy." Booth said. "Because Sweets has an idea."
Angela was delighted at the thought and left the shield process to the techie squints while they worked on the new plan.
Sweets preferred to think and talk on his feet but his body wasn't allowing it so he leaned against the long conference table. Everyone noticed and while they hated that Sweets was working thru a great deal of pain and exhaustion they needed him and that made them feel worse.
"So Pelant desires Dr. Brennan and he will want to impress her. On the other hand, he is directing his anger at me. Right now the only person I can really think of him to target, close to me is Emma." He explained.
"What about us?" Angela asked a bit incensed. Sweets smiled inwardly that they thought of themselves as close to him.
"Everyone here knows the danger Pelant poses, he may assume Emma does not."
"Okay." Angela said nodding along. "Then I have an idea." She said picking up her tablet. "So I will have the team come up with a stream of emails between Brennan and Booth, all made up of course, suggesting there is marital trouble. They will be back dated and appear to be building in nature, Sweets you can help me with that?"
"Yes of course." He said and nodded to Emma who went to grab a note pad.
"Wait, why Sweets, shouldn't Bones and I come up with our own fake arguments?" Booth suggested, annoyed.
"I'm sure what Angela is thinking is that Dr. Sweets profiling, and well, Booth let's face it, sometimes I think he knows us better than we know ourselves." Brennan said with a sense of defeat.
Sweets smiled as it was a near compliment coming from Brennan.
"Okay, the tech team will allow Pelant to have access to that, make him think he got in. While he is busy processing those emails he will get a signal that we may be able to access where his server is at. Sort of like drawing him out."
"He's a computer though, how can he access emotions like that?" Hodgins asked.
"The computer is programmed to act and think like Pelant. He is not associating himself as being a computer, he is merely acting on the impulses and tendencies he uploaded." Sweets suggested realizing that profiling a computer was a first for him.
"We will overload Pelant with information. While he is trying to process the emails and the scenarios we can present the lovely Mrs. Gardner as bait." Angela said tapping on her screen more.
"Ms." Emma corrected and Booth recalled her email from a few days before. "And how exactly? As bait?"
"Pelant reguarly monitors all the survelliance cameras, traffic cameras, etc." Angela began. "If he believes you have left the building, and our protective shield, then he will find a way to, uh, elminate you. Once he tries that we can lock in on his location and make a move towards the signal coming from that computer. He should be too distracted to do both effectively."
"Pelant is highly intelligent but tends to focus intently on the task at hand to an obsessive point. We can use that to our advantage." Sweets explained.
"Okay, where should I go?" Emma asked.
"No, no Sweetie, we're not using you as live bait." Angela said and the team shook their heads vigorously to affirm they were not monsters.
"We will superimpose your image on to other footage and upload that." Angela exclaimed.
"Yeah, we're not going to chance you going out there, that would be crazy." Booth reinforced.
"But you were willing to." Sweets observed.
"I've known worse." Emma said under her breath to the point Sweets wasn't sure she heard that correctly.
"Okay, this is going to take some time, so let's get comfortable." Angela said as she and Hodgins went to work with the tech team. "Emma, I'm going to get this set up, you and Sweets can work on some dialog for those emails. We'll record you walking later so we can impose that on footage."
Booth and Brennan looked at each other along with Cam and declared they would make a run to the break room for coffee and snacks.
Once there the three of them realized for the first time they felt useless.
"I don't like being…" Brennan began.
"Useless?" Booth said emptying the machine of Snickers bars.
"We're not useless. We're getting coffee, and chocolate." Cam said trying to smile but sighed. "We all have a part, this is just not our part right now."
"How is Sweets?" Brennan asked Booth. "He looked better, better than earlier."
"He looks like he is in a great deal of pain he is trying to hide." Cam observed.
Booth suspected so but he wanted to believe it wasn't true.
"He has quite the endurance. I don't believe I would be able to, after all he's been thru." Brennan said softly.
"He's grown quite a bit." Cam said gathering the snacks with the others and heading back to the room.
It was nearly nine p.m. when Sweets was satisfied with the language in the emails that he and Emma had composed. He wanted to be sure and include any collioquisms that Brennan or Booth would have used. Once they were finished Booth and Brennan insisted on reading them and were quite impressed. Emma slipped out of the room to use the restroom.
"Okay, I'm going to have these guys upload them in a series of time lines I've already worked on…" Angela said tapping away.
"Hey that was fast work." Sweets said looking at the screen.
"What was Sweetie?"
"Wait, when did you get a chance to film Emma, we've been working non-stop…" Sweets said stopping as he figured it out.
The rest of them looked up on the screen to see Emma leaving the FBI building, and it wasn't doctored footage by Angela.