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The Royal Diner was busy that morning. People ate breakfast while servers moved from table to table, taking orders, bringing food, and cleaning up. Everything ran smoothly.
Booth, Brennan, and Sweets sat together for breakfast. Sweets listened to the couple talk, but his mind was elsewhere.
“I’m just saying, Bones, kids need to be with other kids,” Booth argued.
Brennan calmly took a sip of her drink. “If Christine is smart enough to skip grades, we should consider it. A demanding academic challenge is beneficial for development.”
“Yes, but what about the social aspect? Being a kid is about playing, eating paste,” Booth countered.
“Our daughter should not be eating paste,” Bones argued.
“It’s a metaphor, Bones,” Booth sighed. “I’m just saying that being a kid shouldn’t be about studying all the time.”
“Doctor Sweets skipped a grade,” Brennan pointed out. “And he seems socially adjusted.”
This finally snapped Sweets back to reality. “Sorry, what?”
“So much for socially adjusted,” Booth joked, noticing how spaced out Sweets was. Honestly, it wasn’t unusual for Sweets to drift off like that.
“As I was saying,” Brennan butted back in. “You must have skipped grades as a child, given your young age.”
“Oh, yeah, I started high school when I was ten, and then I finished my first year of college when I was fifteen,” Sweets replied, although his thoughts were clearly still elsewhere.
“You okay, Sweets?” Booth asked, noticing that something was clearly on his mind.
Sweets glanced around, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “I got an email this morning from my mom,” he said quietly. “My birth mother.”
Booth’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s big,” he said. Unsure what else to say, he asked, “What did she want?”
“Nothing really,” Sweets replied. “She said she was in town and wanted to see if I wanted to meet.”
“Do you think you’re going to meet her?” Booth asked, not sure how supportive he was meant to be.
“I don’t know,” Sweets mumbled. “I thought I was done wanting to meet my birth mother when I turned eighteen, but now I feel like a little kid again.”
“Scientifically speaking, when a biological parent wants to meet their biological child, it’s often for medical reasons,” Brennan explained. “Maybe she wants to see if you’re a match for an organ donation.”
“Bones,” Booth said sharply, clearly thinking she shouldn’t have said that. “I’m sure your mom just wants to see you.”
The buzzing of phones stopped any further conversation. Brennan and Booth both pulled out their devices.
“We got a body,” Booth said. Standing up, he grabbed his coat, and Bones followed soon after.
Sweets stayed at the table, lost in thought. His coffee sat untouched and cold, its bitter smell rising, but he didn’t notice.
Suddenly, he remembered a morning from years ago, watching dust float in the weak light as his foster mother set a bowl of cereal on a shaky table. The loneliness he felt back then still sat heavy in his chest, mixing with the same ache he felt now. There were always questions that kept him up at night: why did she leave? Was he not enough? Would she even know his face if he showed up at her door? Did she ever think about him on his birthday? Did she keep any photos or even just a memory of his small hand in hers at the hospital? Would meeting her fill in the missing pieces, or would it make him feel even more lost? Deep down, he was afraid to find out he had been forgotten, or worse, that she wished she’d never had him. Still, he hoped she might tell him something about who he was supposed to be—something he had never figured out on his own.
The body turned up at a landfill outside the city. The air was heavy with the smell of rotting garbage, sticking to their clothes and burning their noses. Gulls circled above, and flies swarmed everywhere. Each step crunched over glass, plastic, and trash. When Booth and Brennan arrived, Hodgins, Cam, and Angela were already at work.
“Maybe meeting her will be good for Sweets,” Brennan suggested. “It was good for me and my dad to meet again.”
“It’s different with you and Max, Bones,” Booth explained. “Max left you to protect you and your brother. Sweets' mom just left him.”
The fact that his mother left him with his incredibly abusive birth father was also important. Booth felt his jaw clench at the memory—he remembered the day Sweets had first let slip just how bad things had gotten, and it still made Booth angry on his behalf. Even now, Booth kept this knowledge close, protective, understanding how much it cost Sweets to share. But it was also something Booth knew the psychologist wanted to keep private.
“What about Sweets?” Cam asked, having noticed the couple's arrival.
“Sweets' biological mother reached out to him,” Brennan replied, getting down to take a closer look at the body.
Cam paused, a pair of forceps hovering in mid-air. “Wow. That’s… incredibly heavy. Is he all right?”
“He says he’s fine, but he’s got that look,” Booth said, crossing his arms and surveying the surrounding piles of garbage. “You know, the one where it looks like he’s trying to solve twelve different Rubik's Cubes in his head. He’s spiralling.”
“Do you know why she wants to meet?” Hodgins asked. “I didn’t even know Sweets was adopted.”
“I think he’s still thinking about it,” Booth replied. “And yeah, he would have been about six years old when he was taken in.”
Brennan crouched beside the body, pulling on gloves and reaching for her field kit. With practised motions, she gently parted the tangled hair and carefully examined the scalp. She traced her gloved fingers along the skull’s sutures, noting the surgical precision of the incision. Brennan retrieved a penlight and shone it into the empty cranial cavity, her brow furrowing. “That’s strange,” she said. “Someone removed the brain.”
“Wait, what?” Booth asked, turning back to Brennan.
Brennan used a flashlight to get a closer look alongside Cam, who was more the expert on the flesh. “She’s right.”
Back at the lab, the team surrounded the Angelator. The bright fluorescent lights cast sharp reflections on cold steel surfaces, making shadows dance around the clutter of evidence trays and computer screens. The low hum of machinery mixed with the soft, rapid clicks of keyboards. Tension lingered in the air, each member focused and alert as they waited for the next clue to reveal itself.
“Why would someone take someone’s brain?” Hodgins asked, his mind racing. “Oh, maybe someone is trying…”
“Dr. Hodgins, you better not suggest someone is trying to create a Frankenstein,” Cam said.
“Frankenstein’s monster,” Brennan said, crossing her arms. “Mary Shelley’s creature was never named. The creator was Victor Frankenstein. Thus, it’s Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Thank you, Dr. Brennan. Always appreciate the literary clarification,” Cam said dryly. “But Frankenstein or not, we still have a victim whose brain was surgically removed. We need an ID.”
On the Angelator, the face started to take form. “I got it,” Angela said, as she started to run the face through her facial recognition software. “Alice Brooks.”
Sweets, who had just entered the room, looked at the screen. “I knew her,” he said.
Booth turned from the screen. “You knew her? From where?”
The FBI agent didn’t know everything that the younger man got up to, but he was pretty sure Sweets didn’t remove the brains of his patients. Even so, a flash of confusion crossed Booth’s face as he quickly sized up Sweets, searching for any hint of guilt or discomfort. He hid his unease behind a measured tone, forcing his features into a look of steady patience while he waited for an explanation.
“No, she wasn't a patient; I was ten when I knew her,” Sweets said, his eyes locked on the reconstructed face. “My parents thought it would be good for me to spend time around kids my own age… who were like me. So they sent me to an after-school programme for gifted kids.”
He offered a faint, nostalgic smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Alice was part of the group and a year older than me. She was a mathematics genius,” Sweets said, his voice softening.
Staring intensely at the reconstruction, Brennan tilted her head. “If she was a mathematics prodigy, her parietal lobe likely showed advanced structural complexity. It’s a shame it was truncated so prematurely.” She hesitated, and her gaze softened a little. “She must have had a remarkable mind.”
“I think you would have liked Alice,” Sweets said, thinking about his childhood friend. His voice stayed quiet, but it carried the weight of someone he had not forgotten.
An hour later, Booth and Brennan sat across from a distraught, sharply dressed man in the FBI Hoover Building: Arthur Brooks, a high-level actuary and Alice Brooks' husband of five years. The man was visibly shaking, nervously adjusting his glasses.
“I don’t understand,” Arthur said, his voice cracking. “The police said Alice vanished. They said she probably cracked under pressure and walked away. Now you’re telling me you found her?”
“Mr. Brooks,” Booth said, his tone softening. “We found human remains that match your wife’s description. We need to ask a few questions about what led to her disappearance.”
“Remains.” Arthur’s face drained of colour. His hands clenched together on the table as if he was barely holding himself upright. He shook his head repeatedly, his voice trembling. “No, no. Alice is smart. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. She wouldn’t just vanish.” Arthur stared down at the table, shoulders shuddering as a memory seemed to flicker across his face—the last time he'd seen Alice laughing in their kitchen, her hair catching the morning light. His voice broke. “Who would hurt her?”
Brennan hesitated, glancing at Booth before she spoke. “Statistically speaking, in over three-quarters of homicide cases involving a female victim, the perpetrator is the intimate partner.” Her voice was quieter than usual, as if she understood the weight of her words.
Arthur's eyes went wide. “You think I might have killed Alice? I loved her!”
“We have to ask,” Booth said.
“Look, I was at a conference in Chicago these past couple of weeks. I have flight receipts, hotel logs, and a dozen colleagues who saw me speak.”
Booth quickly stepped in, leaning forward to cut off Brennan before she could delve into the biomechanics of spousal homicide. “We’ll check your alibi, Mr. Brooks, but we need to know: was Alice acting strange before she disappeared?”
Arthur swallowed hard, wiping his hands across his forehead. “Her brother, Michael. They’ve been estranged for years, but he emailed her and asked to meet.” He hesitated, the words catching in his throat. “They had a falling out over the family business. Alice blamed Michael for something that happened, but she never wanted to talk about it. She always said some things were better left in the past.”
Back at the Jeffersonian, the lab was busy with both forensic work and personal conversations. Glass beakers reflected the bright lights, and monitors showed streams of data. The quiet hum of machines mixed with the sound of people talking. Staff leaned over tables to look at photos and samples. The air smelled like coffee, cleaning supplies, and latex gloves, with the occasional beep from lab equipment. People in lab coats moved quickly between workstations, their shoes squeaking on the floor as they focused on the case and the latest news about their coworkers.
“I’m just saying,” Hodgins began, waving a pipette for emphasis. His blue nitrile gloves snapped softly as he gestured. “The psychological implications are a minefield. Sweets is a psychologist, and his own biological mother showing up out of the blue is an emotional ambush.”
“It’s not an ambush, Jack, it’s an opportunity,” Angela countered, leaning against the railing that overlooked the lower level. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her eyes bright with conviction. “It might give Sweets a chance to ask the lingering questions about who he is.”
Cam walked over, holding a digital tablet with preliminary post-mortem scans of Alice Brooks' remains. The blue glow from the screen highlighted the concern etched on her face. “I lean towards caution on this one,” Cam said, lowering her voice as if wary of being overheard. “We don’t know her motives. She could be looking for financial support, or she might have issues that Sweets feels obligated to help with.”
“Exactly!” Hodgins pointed the pipette at Cam. “Thank you, Dr. Saroyan! Plus, let’s look at the statistics of adult-adoptee reunions. It's a rollercoaster of expectations.”
“You two are being so clinical,” Angela argued, shaking her head. She crossed her arms, her bracelets jangling softly. “Sweets deserves a chance to get to know his birth mother.”
“And what if the door leads to a brick wall?” Cam asked. She didn’t want to see her friend get hurt.
Suddenly, their phones went off in a discordant chorus of ringtones, slicing through the tension. Each of them instinctively reached for their devices, eyes scanning for the latest alert from the field.
“Another body?” Hodgins asked, looking at his screen.
An hour later, the brisk morning air did nothing to cover up the grim reality of the crime scene. The damp earth released a faint, metallic tang, tinged with the stale sweetness of overturned leaves. Yellow police tape snapped gently in the breeze, and somewhere nearby, a radio crackled with unintelligible voices. Footsteps crunched over frost-hardened grass. A young man sat slumped against the base of a massive oak tree, his presence disturbingly quiet amid the scattered sounds of the investigation.
Brennan knelt immediately, her gloved hands gently examining the victim's head. “The cranial vault has been surgically opened,” she noted, her voice steady and clinical. “The calvarium was removed with extreme precision, likely using a surgical oscillating saw.” She paused, studying the exposed bone. “This level of skill suggests our perpetrator has advanced medical or anatomical training. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing—and why.”
“And let me guess,” Booth said, hovering over her with his hands on his hips. “The brain is completely missing.”
“Yes,” Brennan confirmed, looking up. “Just like our first victim.”
The two new victims were later confirmed to be Julian Batey, a chess prodigy, and Elena Rostova, a computer prodigy. Both were renowned in their fields for extraordinary intelligence, leading Brennan to frown as she considered the potential implications. A pattern began to emerge—each victim, starting with the first, had demonstrated remarkable cognitive abilities. It was too specific to be a coincidence.
“Three victims,” Booth said. “I think we have a serial killer on our hands.”
Booth and Sweets were in the car, about to drive to the next of kin for Elena Rostova. There was an awkward silence that Booth finally felt the need to break.
“Okay, talk,” Booth said. “I can practically hear the gears turning in your head.”
Sweets, still lost in thought, looked out the window. “Do you think I should do it? See my birth mother? I keep turning it over, and I can’t tell if I’m being careful or just scared.”
Booth sighed. “I don’t know, Sweets.” As much as he wanted to avoid the conversation, Sweets needed a friend right now. “But what changes if you don’t see her?”
“Do you remember the first time your dad hit you?” Sweets asked, his analytical tone making it clear he was more interested in the psychological reaction than the person.
“Watch it,” Booth hissed. Then he listened. He knew Sweets had been abused as a child, and it was probably worse than the psychologist had ever admitted.
“I remember everything. I can’t forget; my mind won’t let me.” Sweets looked back out the passenger window, streetlights casting fast-moving shadows across his face. His voice dropped lower, shaking slightly. “I remember being hit. I remember the whip—how it stung, how I’d flinch at every sound. I remember being forced to eat expired food, stuff that made me sick. He made me wear a shock collar, like a dog, and sometimes he’d press the button just to watch me jump. I had to sleep in a crate, barely big enough to turn over. Sometimes he’d leave me in there for hours, or all night, and I’d just stare at the wall and count the cracks, trying not to cry because it became so normal that I didn’t know anything else but pain.” Sweets swallowed, struggling to keep his composure.
Booth reached over, hesitated for an instant, and then put a comforting hand on Sweets' shoulder. He squeezed gently, just enough for Sweets to feel the real, steady support of someone who understood. "You're not alone, okay?" Booth said quietly, his voice steady. "Not anymore."
“It’s the downside of all this,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward his temple. “Everyone thinks it’s great having a mind that remembers everything, but it means the bad stuff never fades. I can barely sleep at night because I’m still trapped in that house.”
Sweets took a deep breath. “I’ve accepted that I’m some kind of freak—that my brain was wired wrong from the beginning.”
Booth glanced over, his expression softening. “You’re not a freak, Sweets. You’re an annoying squint, but so are half the people we work with.”
“Do you think my birth mother just knew? Like, she looked at me one night and just knew I would never be normal?” Sweets asked. “Do you think by meeting her, I’ll get the answers—or just more reasons to doubt myself?”
Booth took a slow breath and let Sweets’ words hang in the air. He felt an old ache, thinking about his own troubled family. The anger and disappointment came back, along with the times he wished someone had told him he wasn’t alone. Booth gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, wanting to protect Sweets but not sure how. He almost looked away from the pain in Sweets’ eyes, but he stayed. Booth wondered if he was really helping, or just trying to do for Sweets what he had once needed himself.
“Look,” Booth said quietly. “I don’t know if she has the answers, but if you need to do this, I’ll be here.”
After deciding to meet his birth mom, Sweets headed to a coffee shop. His stomach twisted with nerves, and his mind jumped from hope to dread. He wondered if he would even recognize her, or if she would recognize him. The air buzzed with the chatter of students and the hiss of the espresso machine, but he barely registered the noise. He gripped his phone tightly, rehearsing the conversation in his head, trying to hold back a swell of old resentment for being left behind. He kept telling himself he just wanted to talk, nothing more—he was not looking for answers, and he definitely was not giving her his kidney.
Outside, a battered silver sedan idled at the curb, its trunk gaping open. A woman in a red jacket rummaged inside, occasionally glancing over her shoulder. The engine vibrated faintly in the background, and the faint melody of a radio floated from inside.
Right before Sweets was about to enter the coffee shop, a sharp bolt of electricity stabbed the back of his neck. The world spun. A metallic taste flooded his mouth. Before he could cry out or turn, everything went black.
When Sweets woke up, the fluorescent lights hummed with a sterile, aggressive vibration that rattled directly against his temples. Trying to lift his hands to rub his eyes, his wrists jerked back with a sharp, heavy clank.
It was then that Sweets started to panic.
He was strapped to a heavy, reclining medical chair, thick leather bands binding his wrists, ankles, and chest. On his temples were electrodes, their taped wires trailing to large, beeping machines.
“Ah, you’re awake.” A voice echoed. It was calm, measured, and completely devoid of empathy.
Sweets forced his eyes to focus. Standing near a cart laden with surgical instruments was a man in his late fifties, wearing a pristine white lab coat over a dark turtleneck.
“I know you,” Sweets rasped. His throat felt incredibly dry. “Dr. Ronald Throp.”
A memory popped into Sweets' mind. He would have been eight years old, right after it was discovered that he was a genius. Some doctors had paid his parents a hundred dollars just to have Sweets come in for some tests. He remembered walking into the hospital with his mother, the smell of antiseptic drifting in the air, and feeling small and confused as adults in coats shuffled him from one cold room to another. During the sessions, they hooked stiff wires to his head and asked him to solve puzzles faster and faster, the pressure in their voices growing with each question. One day, Dr. Ronald Throp came in with a clipboard, and his calm voice felt sharper than the machines around him. Throp was the only one who would pause the testing to ask deeply personal questions about Sweets' dreams and, once, about his birth family. That question had made Sweets tense up, his hands clenching the plastic armrests, uncertain and wary.
Sweets remembered getting upset. He remembered his dad getting upset.
“I knew you would remember me,” Dr. Throp said, preparing something that Sweets couldn’t quite see. “You were always such a bright child.”
Sweets struggled against his restraints. The cold panic in his chest deepened as he realized not only his life was at risk, but everything he knew—classified case files, sensitive psychological profiles, and the secrets entrusted to him—could be ripped from his mind. “People will come looking for me. I’m a federal agent,” Sweets said, forcing confidence into his trembling voice, trying to use the authority of the FBI to scare Dr. Throp. “And I work with some of the most intelligent scientists at the Jeffersonian.”
Dr. Throp made a tsking sound. “That is a problem. I was awfully disappointed to hear that about you, Lance.”
Sweets could now see that Dr. Throp was preparing some kind of anesthesia.
“Such a smart child, and you chose something as low-class as working for the FBI?”
“I help people,” Sweets answered, his eyes dancing around the room. Right now, Sweets' hyperthymesia was working overtime. He knew where he was; he could tell how many bricks the building was made of just by the size of the room. The only thing Sweets didn’t know was how to get out of his restraints, and that made every second feel more dangerous.
“No, you hide,” Dr. Throp replied, placing an oxygen mask over Sweets’ face despite the psychologist’s attempts to struggle. “But your brain will help thousands. Imagine if we could decode the genetic and neurological map of genius—imagine the breakthroughs for science and medicine if I can understand what makes someone like you different. That’s why I need you, Lance. Now, I’m going to need you to count backwards from a hundred.”
Back at the Jeffersonian, the team was running out of leads to advance their investigation. Every clue led to a dead end. Frustration simmered in the lab as time slipped away, and the stakes rose with each passing hour. They knew that if they did not make a breakthrough soon, another life might be lost.
“We’ve run their backgrounds through every database we have,” Angela said, gesturing towards the screen. “But besides each one being a former child prodigy, there’s no connection. No mutual friends, no shared employers.”
“Maybe they knew each other as children,” Hodgins suggested.
Angela shook her head. “Nothing. New data show that, aside from Sweets’ connection to Alice Brooks, there’s nothing there. But Alice’s brother and Sweets’ mother may still connect these cases.”
Suddenly, the Angelator went off. Hodgins could see one name: Lily Weir.
“Lily Weir,” Hodgins said, looking towards the screen. “That’s Sweets’ birth mother. You’re looking into his mom?”
“It’s nothing,” Angela said, swiping something on the tablet. “I was just making sure the email was legit, that it wasn’t some kind of scam.”
“And?” Hodgins asked.
“Lily Weir worked as a psychic in a travelling circus in South Florida,” Angela explained. “In 1985, she was in a relationship with a man named Owen Morgan. They had one child together, Lance Morgan.”
Angela was concerned by the sealed records. “In 1991, Lily Weir gave up all parental rights to William and Caroline Sweets.”
Suddenly, another hit came through the Angelator. “Oh, that’s not—” Angela muttered.
“What? What is it?” Hodgins asked, sensing his wife’s growing panic.
“According to this, Lily Weir died in a car crash,” Angela said, pulling up a death certificate. “Two months ago.”
A shocked silence fell over the lab. Angela stared at the screen in disbelief, her fingers hovering uselessly above the keyboard. Cam's mouth dropped open while Hodgins blinked, struggling to process what he'd just heard. For a moment, no one moved as the sudden impact of the news sank in.
Now everyone was standing around the Angelator, staring at Lily Weir’s death certificate.
“That’s impossible,” Hodgins said, leaning in so close his nose almost touched the screen. “If Sweets’ birth mom is dead, who emailed him?”
Booth was trying to call Sweets' phone number; he called over and over again. Each time it went straight to voicemail. “Pick up your phone, Sweets.”
“Anything?” Cam asked. She was becoming increasingly worried about her young friend’s lack of contact.
“He’s not answering,” Booth said, as he kept trying to call, hoping that maybe one of these calls would work.
“Maybe he’s just not answering,” Hodgins suggested, though he knew it was a thin hope. “This isn’t the first time Sweets has gone no-contact after something big.” He was thinking back to Christopher Pelant using Sweets’ work to commit those murders—how, after Sweets temporarily left the FBI, no one had heard from him in weeks.
“No,” Booth said, his jaw tightening. “He was nervous about meeting his mother, but he wouldn’t just walk away from an investigation, especially not one involving a childhood friend.”
“You don’t think... Sweets is the next victim?” Angela whispered. It was what they were all thinking.
“No, because we’re going to find him before some lunatic can remove his brain,” Booth said, his voice stern. “Where would he have taken Sweets?”
“The skulls were opened with standard surgical bone saws,” Brennan explained from her research. “The edges of the cuts are smooth, almost polished, and there are no signs of hesitation or slip marks. There was barely any bone dust left behind, suggesting the saw was cooled and rinsed frequently. It was precise; the killer is likely in the medical profession.”
“All right, a crazy doctor,” Booth said. That surprisingly didn’t narrow things down.
“There weren’t any particles or bugs anywhere on the victims outside of what would have been where the bodies were found,” Hodgins added. “The killer would have needed a sterile environment.”
Booth’s phone went off. “That was Shaw. Alice Brooks’s brother has been in a Chicago prison for armed robbery for the last three years.”
“Wait, Alice Brooks’s brother is in jail, and Sweets’ mother is dead?” Cam started to work it out. “Do the other victims have a family connection?”
“Let me check,” Angela said, typing fast. “Got it. Julian Batey was emailed by his estranged husband, who asked to meet despite moving to Poland years ago. Elena Rostova was contacted by her estranged father, who has been in a coma for the last six years.”
“So all the victims were contacted by estranged family asking to meet,” Booth clarified. “That still doesn’t tell me where Sweets is, but it does show the same setup.”
“There must be something connecting all of them,” Hodgins said. “Sweets and Alice Brooks knew each other as children; maybe the others did as well, through the same kind of connection.”
“No, Sweets would have mentioned if he knew the others,” Booth said. The shrink was never one to lie. “There must be some other link.”
Everyone’s mind was working overtime, each trying to think of an answer. Suddenly, Brennan had one. “A neuroscientist.”
All eyes turned to the anthropologist.
“Once, when I was looking into getting Christine tested for high intelligence to help get her into a good preschool,” Brennan explained, “Sweets told me that as a child, he went to see a neurologist—that a doctor would pay his parents a hundred dollars to have him take some tests.”
“All right, looking into the medical records,” Angela said, pulling up each victim’s file. She scrolled through the screens, her eyes narrowing as lines of data flashed by. For a tense moment, no one in the lab spoke. Angela hesitated, brow furrowing, then drew in a sharp breath. “Wait... I think I have something. Here it is: Alice Brooks, Julian Batey, Elena Rostova, and Lance Sweets were all patients of Dr. Ronald Throp.”
A photo of Dr. Ronald Throp appeared on the screen, and the match was clear.
“He lost his medical licence in Florida and moved to the DC area,” Angela said. “He failed to get his licence approved there.”
“Address! I need an address,” Booth said, as Angela was already sending it to him.
Inside the cold, sterile basement, Dr. Throp had just finished counting. “One,” he said, removing the mask.
On the chair, Sweets was fully unconscious from the general anesthesia—a dose deep enough to suppress even involuntary movements and awareness—despite his best efforts to stay awake. Dr. Throp would have preferred to keep him in a lighter state of sedation to ask questions about the process. Still, after the previous attempt resulted in agitation and significant distress, full induction had become necessary for both compliance and safety.
Dr. Throp pressed play on a recording device.
“Patient: Lance Sweets, twenty-six years old,” Dr. Throp clinically started, talking about Sweets like the psychologist was just another specimen. “Patient’s early developmental history indicates a profoundly elevated intellectual capacity. First evaluated at age eight. Exhibited exceptional hyperthymesia and accelerated analytical reasoning.”
Dr. Throp methodically removed the electrodes from Sweets’ head. “The patient has been reported to suffer from insomnia, depression, anxiety, and CPTSD from early childhood physical abuse,” Throp’s voice droned into the recorder. “Patient was treated for absence seizures in youth.”
Dr. Throp adjusted the overhead surgical light until the bright beam fell directly across Sweets’ face. The psychologist lay unnaturally still, the anesthetic having relaxed every muscle in his body. Somehow, not moving, Sweets looked even younger.
The doctor continued dictating, his tone carrying the detached fascination of a scientist describing an unusual subject.
“Patient demonstrates unusually high baseline neurocognitive function despite childhood trauma. Such preservation of function under prolonged physiological stress is… atypical.”
He reached for Sweets' eyelid, lifting it first and shining a light into it, then doing the same with the other.
“The pupils remain equal and reactive following induction. No evidence of anisocoria.”
Dr. Throp lowered the light and made another notation.
“Patient exhibits exceptional memory retention consistent with hyperthymesia,” he continued into the recorder. “Unlike conventional high-functioning individuals, whose recall is dependent on deliberate encoding strategies, Lance Sweets demonstrates involuntary autobiographical recall. Emotional memories appear particularly reinforced, likely due to early exposure to chronic stress.”
He paused, looking down at the unconscious man.
“Interesting.”
The word was spoken with the same curiosity someone might use when observing an unusual animal in the wild.
“The traumatic experiences did not diminish cognitive function. Instead, they appear to have created a heightened pattern-recognition response. The patient demonstrates an extraordinary ability to identify behavioural inconsistencies, predict emotional reactions, and construct complex psychological models of individuals with limited information. Such adaptive skills are consistent with findings from resilience and neuroplasticity research, which suggest that certain individuals exposed to early adversity may develop enhanced social cognition and threat detection abilities as compensatory mechanisms. Studies on post-traumatic growth and the development of hypervigilance in trauma survivors further support this pattern of heightened awareness and analytical acuity.”
Dr. Throp walked around the chair, carefully studying Sweets. “He became a psychologist,” he said. “Facilitating adaptation. Rather than using his abilities to dominate, he dedicated them to understanding others.” His mouth tightened slightly. “A waste.”
He adjusted the setting on one of the monitors. The machine beside Sweets gave a steady rhythm of beeps. Dr. Throp checked the reading again, making certain everything remained stable.
“Heart rate within expected parameters. Oxygen saturation stable. No adverse response to induction.”
He reached for another instrument, but paused before continuing.
“There is one notable anomaly.” For the first time, there was something close to genuine excitement in his voice. “Despite extensive childhood trauma, the patient maintains a remarkable degree of empathy. Previous theories suggested that prolonged abuse during critical developmental periods would significantly alter emotional processing.”
He looked down at the man who had once been an eight-year-old child sitting in a testing room, answering impossible questions.
“Your brain adapted,” Throp murmured. He picked up a blue surgical marker, leaning over Sweets to meticulously trace a dotted line across the young psychologist's hairline, mapping out the precise path the blade would take.
“A highly developed prefrontal cortex,” Dr. Throp muttered, setting the marker down and reaching for a pair of medical clippers. “The density of your neural pathways will provide an answer that the others simply couldn’t.”
The clippers buzzed loudly in the cold, sterile basement. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic and bleach. Throp shaved sections of Sweets’ hair, the clippers brushing his scalp and making his skin prickle. Dark curls fell onto the metal headrest, which felt cold against Sweets’ skin. Sweets stayed completely still, breathing slowly under the heavy sedation.
Throp switched off the clippers and brushed off the loose strands from Sweets' forehead. He set the clippers down, the mechanical hum dying out, leaving only the steady, rhythmic beeping of the monitor. Throp reached for a bottle of amber-coloured iodine, soaking a sponge stick to prep the exposed skin. He painted the liquid across the drawn lines, disinfecting the surgical field with methodical, sweeping strokes.
“Mapping the parietal-frontal boundaries,” Throp resumed into his recorder, his voice chillingly calm. “I will begin with a standard craniotomy to expose the superior sagittal sinus. Given the patient’s hyperthymesia, special care will be taken during the excision of the temporal lobes to preserve structural integrity for immediate chemical fixation.”
He set down the recording device and picked up the handle of the surgical oscillating saw. Throp flipped the switch. The high-pitched metallic whine of the blade tore through the basement. Bringing the blade down to Sweets' forehead, small drops of blood began appearing across the shrink's face.
BANG.
The door to the abandoned medical clinic swung open.
“FBI!” Booth yelled, his service weapon drawn and steady, his eyes sweeping the room for a fraction of a second before locking onto Sweets.
Dr. Throp let out a large sigh, as if it were some big inconvenience that he was being interrupted. “You're ruining the sterile environment.”
“Drop the saw! Drop it right now!” Booth's yell echoed like a gunshot through the room. “Sweets!” Booth called out, waiting for the psychologist to respond. “Sweets! What did you do to him?”
Brennan came rushing into the room, despite having earlier been told to wait in the car. “Booth,” Brennan said, seeing the rise and fall of Sweets' chest. “He’s still breathing, and the blood is too minimal to be life-threatening. He’s alive.”
As much as Booth was relieved to hear that, he didn’t lower his weapon, not even by a fraction. It was strange to see Sweets so still.
“I said drop the saw, Throp!” Booth roared, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Step away from him! Hands on your head, right now!”
Dr. Throp looked at Booth with the detached disappointment of a child whose favourite toy had been taken away from him.
“Doctor Brennan,” Throp said, referring to the world-renowned scientist. “Surely you must understand the scientific advancement I am about to make here.”
Brennan didn’t step back. “Scientific advancement requires a rigorous adherence to ethical standards,” Brennan said, her voice dropping a register. “What you are performing is nothing more than murder.”
Throp’s eyes narrowed, his grip tightening on the whining saw. “You are short-sighted, Dr. Brennan,” Throp said, before gazing back at Sweets. “Did you know his brain is still developing? At twenty-six years old, with a higher IQ than most people have combined, his brain is still developing.”
“And how about we keep that development going?” Booth said. From an early age, Sweets' life had been marked by violence; people who should have protected him instead chose to abuse him. Booth was going to make sure that Sweets didn’t meet the same violent end that his life began with. “Drop the saw.”
“Lance really was a remarkable child,” Throp explained. “All my recent patients were, but no, he’s different.”
“Booth, shoot him already,” Brennan whispered, but Booth shook his head no. “The saw is too close to Sweets' head; I can’t risk it.”
Throp continued his rambling. “Genius is such an unknown constant. Why him? Why would a child born into an abusive home in South Florida be given such a high level of intelligence?”
“He’s not a specimen,” Booth growled, his hands still locked on his pistol. “Dr. Sweets is not some lab rat that you get to dissect for your own sick pleasure.”
“Pleasure?” Throp said. “Rest assured, I get no pleasure from this. I knew all my patients as children; if I had been given full access to them, none of this would have happened.”
“Full access?” Brennan asked.
“Dr. Sweets is the centre of a very interesting mystery. Was his genius inherent, or was it something fostered by his later upbringing?” Throp asked. “His early life was marked by such horrific abuse, yet he remains both intelligent and empathic. I tried to get his parents to hand over guardianship to me to help foster his intelligence. But Lance remained attached to his adoptive mother despite his higher IQ. What kind of person who can understand a complex equation still wants to be read Peter Rabbit as a bedtime story?”
“A child!” Booth yelled. “He was a child back then!”
Throp's eyes flickered with irritation. “A child who was a statistical anomaly. Think about what can be learned from studying his brain.”
Throp moved, just a small step away from Sweets, but it was enough of an opening for Booth.
Bang.
Booth's gun went off, and Throp fell backward, slumping down. But neither partner paid attention to him; both Brennan and Booth raced over to Sweets, who was still lying unconscious.
“Sweets, Sweets,” Booth started, gently tapping at the side of the young psychologist's face in hopes of arousing him. “Come on, time to wake up.”
Brennan quickly went to work on the medical monitors, her hands moving with a calm, clinical precision despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins and the worry for her friend. “Booth, he’s under deep general anesthesia. Tapping his face will not bypass the chemical inhibitors currently blocking his reticular activating system.” She traced the clear plastic tubing back to a syringe pump. “It appears to be a continuous infusion of propofol combined with a secondary volatile agent.”
Booth kept one hand on Sweets' shoulder, his other hand transferring his firearm back to its holster as his chest heaved. “All right, just tell me he’s going to be okay, Bones. He’s got blood on his face.”
Brennan took a look at Sweets. “The laceration is superficial; the oscillating blade only penetrated the epidermal and dermal layers before you intervened. There appears to be no structural damage to the cranium or the underlying superior sagittal sinus.”
It seemed nothing short of a miracle when the paramedics arrived, having been called early by Booth. By the time the rest of the team arrived at the hospital, Booth and Brennan were sitting in the waiting room.
“Is he okay?” Angela pleaded.
“Sweets is stable,” Brennan reassured her. “The doctors are finishing up with local sutures on his forehead,” Brennan added. “As the anesthesia completely clears his system, his cognitive functions should return to baseline. There is no indication of a neurological deficit.”
“Thank God,” Cam sighed, sinking into one of the hard hospital waiting room chairs.
“And Throp?” Hodgins asked.
“Dead,” Booth answered. It was never easy to take a life; that was something Booth had always been aware of. But Dr. Throp made it very clear that in that moment, he didn’t see anything wrong with what he was doing.
And Booth had a choice between a crazy guy and Sweets. Booth is choosing Sweets every single time.
Plus, with Throp being dead, there would be no trial. Booth knew that if there were a trial, then Sweets' childhood encounters with Throp would be brought up. Frankly, Booth was glad to spare Sweets from that.
“The techs are still there,” Booth added. They had found plenty of evidence that Dr. Throp had more victims in mind than just Alice, Julian, Elena, and Sweets.
The doors to the intensive care ward swung open, and a doctor in blue scrubs alerted the team to visit Sweets.
In his hospital room, Sweets was sitting up, propped against some pillows. A white bandage was wrapped around his head, with the hair that Dr. Throp didn’t manage to shave off poking out.
“Hey, Sweetie,” Angela said, coming up toward the shrink.
Sweets paused, looking like he was deep in thought. “My head hurts,” he mumbled, his voice groggy from the painkillers he had been given.
“I’d imagine,” Hodgins replied.
“Booth,” Sweets asked, looking over at the FBI agent. “Did I have lice?” he asked.
Booth blinked, suddenly taken aback by Sweets' question. “No. Why would you think you had lice?”
“Because the last time someone shaved my head, it was in a group home I was living in when I was five,” Sweets explained, before turning his attention towards Cam. “Really, I think the foster mom wanted to pretend at least one of us had cancer to get free stuff,” Sweets whispered. “Don’t know if it worked; they never took us to Disney World if it did.”
Hodgins couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, we'll take you there next summer, if you like.”
Sweets considered that with complete seriousness, his painkiller-clouded mind apparently deciding it was a perfectly reasonable offer. “No, I’d rather not. Those mascots freak me out. Their faces don’t move,” Sweets answered in all seriousness.
There were a few moments of silence; it was almost peaceful before Sweets spoke up again. “That guy was very rude.”
“He was rude?” Brennan asked; that was very much an understatement to say about a murderer.
“Yes, rude,” Sweets replied, attempting to cross his arms despite the I.V. lines. “He tried to steal my brain, like I wasn’t even using it.”
“I can see how that would be considered rude,” Angela offered. She could tell that the painkillers were affecting Sweets a great deal.
“I worked very hard on my brain,” Sweets explained. “I feed it more than just French fries and chicken fingers. I read to it every day, and I make sure to give it at least three hours of sleep.”
“That’s not nearly enough sleep, Dr. Sweets,” Brennan declared.
Sweets paused, thinking very deeply about that. “Oh, I’ll work on that.”
Booth shook his head, a small, fond smile cracking through. “Yeah, you do that, buddy.”
“It was still very rude. My brain is like my best organ,” Sweets insisted, looking personally offended on behalf of his own anatomy. “Didn’t even ask, just tried to take it.”
“I hear it's a big problem with serial killers,” Hodgins offered. “The fact that they're very rude.”
“Exactly,” Sweets whispered.
“I would concur with Dr. Sweets' assessment,” Brennan said, causing all eyes to turn to her. “Dr. Throp’s actions violated numerous social, ethical, and legal protocols,” Brennan continued matter-of-factly. “To systematically objectify other human beings and attempt to harvest their organs without written consent is, by definition, an extreme breach of conduct. It is the literal antithesis of polite societal behaviour.”
Sweets nodded slowly, the motion causing him to wince slightly as the movement pulled at his fresh sutures. “See? Dr. Brennan gets it. Total lack of professional etiquette.”
Two days later, Sweets had been cleared to leave the hospital. It probably would have been sooner, but given he had a history of brain-related injuries from his childhood abuse, the doctors wanted to make sure there was no lasting damage.
“You ready?” Booth asked, standing outside Sweets' hospital room. Booth was here to offer Sweets a ride home.
Sweets looked up from the edge of the bed, where he was slowly executing the monumental task of tying his sneakers. A smaller, discreet gauze pad had replaced the white bandage around his forehead, but the jagged patches of shaved scalp made him look slightly lopsided.
“Yeah,” Sweets said, his voice finally losing the heavy, loopy drag of the hospital narcotics. “I think I came close to breaking my record on how many hospital lime Jell-O cups I can eat.”
Booth let out a small laugh. “Let's not have there be a next time.”
The drive back to Sweets' apartment was at first a quiet one. Before long, Sweets spoke up. “Angela told me about Lily, about how Throp was just using his email in order to lure me to the coffee shop.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Booth offered his support. “I know how much meeting her meant.”
“She wasn’t my mom,” Sweets answered. “My mom was Caroline Sweets. She was the one who raised me and loved me.”
Sweets looked back out the passenger window, watching the familiar DC streets roll past him. “Lily Weir was just a person who gave birth to me.”
Booth turned the car down Sweets' street. “Family will always be more than just blood,” Booth offered. “But you’ll always be family with me, and Bones, and everyone else at the Jeffersonian.”
Sweets smiled. “Thank you.”