He was clad in pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, lying flat on his back staring, unblinkingly at the ceiling

He was clad in pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, lying flat on his back staring, unblinkingly at the ceiling. What else was there to do? In a psych ward, your options were pretty limited. He had been committed for being an apprentice to the Master… For his calculated murder of the lobbyist. His parents had come and gone… Tears and questions he couldn't answer had left him tired. His colleagues from the Jeffersonian had come and gone… Giving him assurances they'd be back to see him soon… But, mostly from them, he just got looks of… Pity? Confusion? Reading people wasn't his thing.

Now, Zack was left with only his thoughts as companionship. Furrowing his brow, he tried to focus on his feelings. Never much of one for all things emotional, this was hard for him. Was he sad? Yes… Quite possibly. He was lonely for sure. He missed the lab and his friends there. He had grown so accustomed to the camaraderie of the "squint squad" that he truly felt that they were his family, more so than the people whose DNA he shared.

Closing his eyes, he continued to plumb the depths of his emotions. He had killed someone. Was he mad? Full of a hidden rage? No… Zack and Hodgins had once had a discussion about anger. Zack remembered punching Hodgins, but it hadn't been out of anger or even frustration. It had merely been to please his best friend because that's what the entomologist had wanted Zack to do. Frankly, the punch had hurt Zack's hand, though he would never have admitted it.

But I stabbed someone. I killed a man for no reason other than faulty logic, the thought jolted Zack to his very core. I'm a murderer. He concentrated on that statement to see if he could conjure up the memory and analyze his emotional state retrospectively. His memory was muddled. Wait… The gossamer thin thread of a memory tickled at his brain. Him holding a weapon, hitting it down into the chest of… A cloth dummy. No, no. This wasn't the memory he wanted. This was just an experiment in the lab. He remembered Hodgins and Booth teasing him for his lack of force. He could remember thinking that it was ridiculous to make sane people pretend they were stabbing someone. That memory made him frown. Sane people. Did that mean he was he insane? Why couldn't he pull up the memory of killing that man?

Sighing, Zack turned his head to survey his room. He hadn't been allowed all of his prized possessions. There was a possibility he could club an orderly over the head with his "King of the Lab" trophy… That he could fashion a shiv from the harmonica Booth had given him… That he'd give himself a debilitating case of carpal tunnel with the pocket Kama Sutra from Hodgins. See? he thought wryly, It IS possible for me to make a joke. Even if no one gets to hear that I can. A frown creased his youthful features and his eyes continued to scan the barren room. Hanging on the wall were the drawing from Angela and his acceptance letter from Dr. Brennan. He wasn't allowed frames or nails or even thumbtacks. So, taped up, they were. These two creased pieces of paper were the only reminder that Zack had of his life outside of these heavily disinfected padded walls.

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His hands were filled with a searing pain. Needles, knives, a mouth bristling with an inexplicable number of human canines, a gush of liquid flame, the silver bones of a skeleton piercing his flesh… All of these things conspired together to torture him.

His childlike whimpers reverberated off of walls in the alley. In front of him stood a blue door… A door he'd never seen, but he knew where it led. He was blindfolded… And yet, he knew of this door. His eyes burned with tears of pain under the rough cloth of the blindfold. Why did his hands hurt? A key! There's a key to the right of the door. With fumbling, stiff fingers he reached into the crevice for the key. His hands lacked the dexterity he was used to. Feeling clumsy and useless, he knocked something to the concrete ground. It clattered noisily. A key? No… A mandible. Scored with… Bite marks? He held it closer to his eyes to examine it in the dim light and it came to life, teeth scraping at his face... He was going to be eaten.

Dropping the bone he stepped back and stumbled over a mangled silver skeleton. Clumsily, he fell into a pitch-black chasm. He scraped his fingers painfully into the jagged walls to no avail…He was falling… Falling… Falling…

"No!" Zack sat up and looked around wildly. A slick of cold sweat coated him and he was gasping for air. There was gloom, but no darkness. And the blue door was replaced with a regulation windowed hospital door. He realized that he must've called out as he was jolted awake because he saw a burly ward attendant looking in through the reinforced window at him. Zack knew he looked wild-eyed and… Well, crazy, not to put too fine a point on it.

Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he lay back against his pillow and lifted his hands as if to examine them. Watching the man at the glass with his peripheral vision, Zack winced as he examined the tightly stretched, scarred skin. He was praying that the man would assume Zack had awoken in pain rather than in some kind of psychotic state. As the shadow at the glass moved away, he turned his hands, further scrutinizing the damage. It was no longer as extensive as some believed. Against his objections, Hodgins had actually flown in two specialists—one an orthopedic specialist, one a plastic surgeon. Thanks to some in depth surgical procedures, Zack had regained 85 dexterity in his left hand and almost as much in his right. The ligaments had been badly damaged, fused to the bone unnaturally at places. Living in the 21st century had its advantages. The plastic surgeon had been unable to prevent the scarring, but through careful salvaging of the remaining tissue and multiple skin grafts his hands were whole—if not attractive.

These were the hands of a murderer. Zack wanted to look away, to be disgusted, to remember what he had done, but he could not, was not, and had not. He remembered telling Booth how to find The Master. When he and Dr. Brennan had shown up at the door to his hospital room, he'd felt… Relieved. His part was almost over. Frowning, Zack wondered by he'd felt relief. He suffered from a massive case of hero worship that encompassed the both of them. Wouldn't shame have been more apropos? Or embarrassment at being caught? He was, after all, a genius. A prodigy, if you will. He was smart enough to cover his trail sufficiently. He knew exactly how big that explosion would be. The boiling point of his compounds and the ensuing blast were calculated to the fraction of a second, the enthalpy to the very degree in his mind. He had known that he would not walk away unscathed.

"You would be proud of me," he whispered into the darkened room. "He first approached me three months ago at a symposium on burning plasma diagnostics…" His voice trailed off. There was no one to talk to. Speaking into an empty room was irrational. Yet, he felt like he was in the midst of a recitation. His Asperger's Syndrome was characterized with a mild form of Obssessive Compulsive Disorder. That was normal and did not interfere with his life. However, once Zack had begun a recitation, he always felt compelled to complete it. It had driven his siblings insane when he was younger and would recite the periodic table, physics equations he had learned, even bits of dialogue he'd enjoyed from a TV show or a movie.

"I don't know his name. I've never known his name... But, I've been to his house. I was blindfolded when he first took me there, but I remember every turn he took and I was able to estimate a speed… So when he brought me home, I found it on a map. It's in Beddingridge. On a street called Savoy Crescent. It's a big place—almost as big as Hodgins' house, but run down. There's a flight of stairs at the back, outside. There's a blue door. It'll be locked but there's a key hidden in a crevasse to the left of the door, just above eye level."

Zack mind and heart had begun to race. If I was blindfolded, where do these details come from? I found it on a map… So, obviously, I was never told where it was. What am I doing? I'm insane. I pled guilty. I killed that man. But, I wouldn't kill anyone. I'm not aggressive. I've never fought back, even when my family and friends said I had the right. I'm just trying to justify my insanity. I should tell a doctor that I'm rationalizing. But… I don't feel rational. I feel like I've got to play my part out. Like the time my older brothers made me tell mom that I broke her Tiffany lamp when I was little. I stuck to the story and they got away with it… Zack sat upright, allowing his compulsion to take over. Pulling his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth rhythmically, he continued, his voice barely above a whisper.

"You will see a hallway. If he's found someone, you'll smell meat cooking. And that's how you'll know when you're getting close. One last door… And you'll have to be fast. He'll be at the bottom of an incline in the floor. He'll have a knife. He's very fast and he's very strong."

Zack's breathing had sped up, as had his murmured speech… He waited for the rest of the dialogue to come to him. There was none. He could feel tears streaming down his cheeks as he buried his face into his knees. He wanted to wail and sob, but silent tears were all that came.

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