Title: Dramatic Jurisdiction (1/?)
Author: smithar
Rating: PG
Fandom(s): Alias/Bones
Pairing(s): Eventually Brennan/Booth & Sydney/Vaughn
Summary: Brennan and Booth's latest case takes a turn for the worse when they get wrapped up international conspiracies and dangerous men who will do anything to keep what they know a secret. Will the CIA help them?
Notes: My knowledge of the Alias universe is spotty at best, so please bear with me. All I know is that Sydney kicks ass. I don't own anything Bones or Alias related. Unbetaed.

---------------------------

Dammit. She had lost her earpiece in the struggle with the security guard and now she was flying blind. There was nothing left to do but keep going, to get what she had come for and leave before anyone responded to the security breach.

The layout was exactly as she had memorized: long hallway with a sliding door entry to the right. She bypassed the touchpad and the doors slid open with a quiet hiss. The lighting was dim inside the institute, all the lab workers having gone home. She circled the raised platform at the center of the lab, knowing where she had to go: past the platform, into a room on the right corner of the lab, where the stored all the remains and related evidence.

The room was large and silent as a tomb, faintly white drawers stacked across the wall and to the ceiling. She needed to find drawer 1097C. Quietly grabbing a step stool nearby, she found the drawer she was looking for and scooped out the sealed envelope that held all the evidence relating to the victim. She had found it. Now she had to get out.

She was just leaving the room and turning the corner when she nearly ran into a large man and a young woman. Dammit. If she hadn't lost her earpiece, Marshall would have told her to watch out for them. The man was dressed in a suit and tie, and his entire persona screamed government official. She knew he had to be carrying a weapon. The woman looked like an administrator, someone who worked inside the institute, but she couldn't be sure.

The man frowned warily. "Who are you?"

Sydney smiled, smiled the way she knew made her look innocent and youthful. Then she took a step back and delivered a roundhouse kick to the man's face, knocking him out cold. That took care of the bigger threat to her mission.

Unfortunately, she had misjudged the woman.

Instead of freezing or asking questions or yelling for help, the woman lunged forward, throwing powerful and precise punches that caught Sydney off guard momentarily. The woman tried to knock her feet from out under her, but Sydney stepped aside easily, having regained her composure. She managed to grasp the woman's wrists from behind, twisting them into a moderately painful position. With the other hand she covered the woman's mouth. It was a long couple minutes and the woman would not stop struggling against her.

"I don't want to hurt you, I really don't. But if you don't stop..." Sydney made sure the woman saw her put her boot on the unconscious man's neck. ".. I will crush his throat. Understand?"

When the woman nodded, Sydney pushed the brunette down to the ground, allowing herself enough time to draw her weapon.

She pointed the weapon at the woman. "Do not follow me. I want you to count to one hundred before you alert the authorities, got it?"

"Got it." The woman's voice was eerily calm and even, but her eyes flashed with anger. And a little bit of embarassment, if Sydney wasn't mistaken. As if she were ashamed that someone had beaten her at hand-to-hand combat. Who is this woman?

There was no time to contemplate. Grabbing the package that had fallen on the floor, she backed away from the woman and the fallen man, retracing her steps until she was out of the Jeffersonian Institute and ready to be extracted.

---

Three days earlier...

"So? What's the scoop on this guy, Bones?" Booth glanced up at the sky, which had been threatening to rain ever since they had arrived on the scene.

Brennan's gloved hands drifted over the body, poking and prodding at the remains. "Male, epiphysial fusion suggests the victim was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five years old. I see cut marks on the third and fourth costal grooves, and there appears to be severe burning trauma to the dermis and epidermis. But I won't be able to determine if being burned was cause of death until I get the body back to the lab. Cam will probably be able to tell us more about the body, like if he died from smoke inhalation."

Booth frowned. "Smoke inhalation? You mean like being trapped in a burning building?" He gestured to the field and the pond that they were standing next to. "I don't see any burning buildings around here."

She finally looked up at him. "Do you see any signs of recent fire activity? Any charred plant life?"

"No." Booth conceeded. "So... he was caught in a fire somewhere else, then stabbed, and his body was dragged to the edge of a pond in the middle of nowhere? Sounds suspicious. Makes no sense, but it's still suspicious."

Brennan pondered at his comment as she gave directions for the body to be packaged and delivered to the Jeffersonian. "Regular suspicious or murder suspicious?"

"Well, why don't you tell me, Bones?" Booth replied with a slight grin as she stood up.

"I can't do that. Doing so would undermine my objectivity." Something caught her eye a few feet away and she walked towards a tangled patch of weeds, kneeling down.

"Found something?" Booth peered over the forensic anthropologist's shoulder.

She picked up the glossy disk, holding it between her fingers and examining the prongs and ridges that ran along its black edges. "It looks like a data storage device of some sort, but I can't be sure. I've never seen anything like it."

"Me neither. That's pretty high tech stuff right there."

"What would you know about high tech stuff? I thought you were more of an old-fashioned, hurt the street sort of agent."

"It's 'hit the street', Bones." Booth corrected, swiping the drop of moisture that landed on his cheek. "Let's just bag that thing and get out of here, okay? It's starting to rain."

-------------TBC-------------