by S. K. Lloyds
John’s hands on the back of his shoulders.
“Yeah.”
Reese nodded, “Stay with him.”
He opened his eyes again.
“Sherlock?” John’s voice broke with relief. He stooped. John took his hands from Sherlock’s shoulders and circled around. He ducked down and pushed Sherlock’s hair out of his eyes. “Hey, are you actually in there this time?”
Sherlock reached up and rubbed his aching head. His arms felt weighted, but… he was okay. He winced up at John. “That… was extraordinary.”
Reese ruffled his hair and grinned. “You memorized the street map and traffic lights of London?”
“No,” Sherlock stretched his tender arms carefully. “But, well, yes. It wasn’t intentional.”
“Oh my God,” she laughed. “Well, whatever. You gave us directions, lights, arrows, four-way crossings. It was crazy. We can get to the general area.” She stood and smoothed her skirt. Reese looked down at him. “Sherlock… you’re something else.”
After that, she left him with John.
Sherlock blinked slowly. His head throbbed, but he could finally see the world without things being awash in vibrating colour with razor edges that hurt his brain. It was surprising that he was so winded, and so gratified at once. When he sucked in a deep breath he touched his throat. It hurt. John came to stand before him and offer a hand to help him up. He took it and got to his unsteady feet.
“You okay?
“Spectacular,” Sherlock brought his flattened hands together. “What happened?”
John’s expression clouded. “It was kind of… intense.” One moment, Holmes had been his customary – if that word could be applied to him – opinionated self, impatient and wholly disinterested. And then he’d broken apart at the seams, clearly in pain, clearly in distress. John had politely excused himself from observation and burst into the room right through the CIA guards.
At six feet plus, and well built, Sherlock was more than strong enough to snap bones. But John also didn’t want Scott or Lewis to lay a hand on his friend. To John, they looked like ham-fisted giants who would inadvertently do Sherlock harm. So he and Reese had handled it.
John rubbed a sore muscle in his neck. “You were definitely… elsewhere.”
“I’m sorry I missed it, but I was busy,” Sherlock finished unrolling his sleeves, went after his jacket, and pulled it on, even though his cuffs weren’t buttoned. “Amazing stuff, John – was talking to Ree, and the room went red. Then I realized I was in this old, discoloured hall, and it was like an overexcited cocktail party – some kind of fetish thing with a human centrepiece to play with, only that was me. A bit rough on the wrists, weren’t you John? That’s going to be bruises, for sure.”
John was still recovering from the description of the room; the party; Sherlock as a plaything in this Club’s incomprehensible game. He shook himself. “Sorry. I had to hold on to you.”
Sherlock sobered. After a few intervening seconds he asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Ree?”
“Close thing, but no.”
“Good.” Sherlock ducked his head and caught up the long coat. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” John zipped his jacket. His voice lowered, “Let’s not wait for this lot.”
“Uncanny,” Sherlock replied quietly, “I was thinking the same. And, by the way, did I tell her it was the Chiltern Street Fire Station?”
“Oh my God,” John said under his breath. “God. Why didn’t they just drop you home after?”
“The question, John.”
“No. I mean, your directions cut off before you got there. You were getting too hard to handle, and she just sort of – I donno – pulled you back out. Could you hear her?”
“Eventually, yes,” Sherlock dropped gratefully into a chair and closed his eyes. He joined his hands under his chin. “Could you… recon the observation room and report? I’d like to leave now.”
John did just that. He found the CIA and Met police in a nearby break room. They were trying to be quiet, though Lestrade was rather angry with the CIA. He hadn’t expected anything like what had happened. He’d expected a kind of interrogation. Well, John could understand the feeling. But now Lestrade was furious, and that John didn’t follow. Reese was busily explaining that it didn’t matter how he felt, and that she’d simply created a safe zone for Holmes to access the memory – which he’d badly wanted to do to begin with. She was frustrated with the delay.
John withdrew carefully, and helped steady Sherlock out the front doors of the Yard. A few streets over, they stopped for a container of orange juice. It seemed to replenish Holmes depleted sugars.
The skies had finally cleared, and watery, slanting, sunlight penetrated cloud cover above their heads. Sherlock leaned on the wall of the convenience store and licked sugary drink off his lips. Sarah had introduced him to this brand during the Ninth Muse case. He smiled at the bottle. “Mm. If they crystallized this and ground it up, I could cut and snort it.”
John snatched the empty bottle away. “Oh, shut up. You would not.” He chucked it in the nearby Recycling and dusted off his hands. “I think you’ve had quite enough, really. How’s your head?”
“Getting better,” Sherlock started a second drink. “Sugar.”
“Yes, I know what it is. You’re hyperactive enough, don’t you think – and don’t bother telling me no one has proven the connection between sugar and hyperactivity, either. And… and we should get moving. It’s too close to Scotland Yard here.”
“It’s certainly making you nervous.” Sherlock leaned over to his ear, “We need to wait a little longer. I need to pick up my tail.”
John’s head turned a little. “Your what?”
“The person tailing me,” Sherlock told him. He leaned back to the wall and said, “I’ve had one since shortly after the tête-à-tête with… our mystery boy, I think, among other Photographers. Of course it could just be one of my brother’s underlings. They’ve followed me around before. Do you have the Browning?” He took out his phone and began checking his mail.
“Yes, since right after you vanished, in fact. I picked it up with Reese. I honestly should just carry it with me.”
He looked up from his screen. “Why don’t you?”
“No holster, and it’s bloody illegal without a license, Sherlock. I could only get a carry permit for a revolver anyway, if I could get through the background check to begin with. I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist, remember?” John leaned closer, “This is no revolver. This is a military issue Browning in my pants.” He really needed to spring for a good holster.
Sherlock’s mouth pulled into a smile that lit his green eyes. “Oh, I see. Well, I’m well warned.” His fingers flew across the keyboard of his phone. “However… I’m police, and I believe you have good reason to possess a firearm. Do you solemnly promise to properly maintain it, and carry it without jeopardising public safety, or disturbing the peace?”
John tipped his head to loosen the tight knots in his neck. “I won’t go shooting happy faces into the walls, if that’s what you mean.”
“You won’t go blind if you play with it, John.” Sherlock made a final flourish of taps and pointed his phone at John’s reddened face. “By the way, fee paid, form filed and properly buried. You are approved. I expedited the mailing; you should have a paper copy in 24 hours.” Sherlock put his phone away and smiled down at John. “Renewable, every five years.”
John’s phone pinged. When he checked it, he found the e-mail copy of his carry permit. “Oh God, you are the devil. They let the devil in by the door of Scotland Yard.”
“Don’t be superior, John. You decided he’d be a good flatmate.” Holmes turned and walked toward the far end of the street. Clearly, he’d spotted what, or whomever he’d been waiting on.
John found he was laughing under his breath. It caught a boyish look from Holmes, almost something he’d expect out of a particularly
good, definitely unruly, schoolmate. John fell in beside Sherlock with a comfortable exhalation. This was the man he knew and – frankly – couldn’t get enough of. “So we’re going to Chiltern Street? Not a long way from there to the Embankment, really.”
“Good drop site for when you’re done banging up your party favour with everything in the medicine cabinet.” Sherlock’s brows drew up. “Need to get a cab now. Carefully. Stay in full view.”
“We want to be followed.” John tried not to look around him, anxiously, and tried not to worry about the police finding them.
“Quite.”
John studied Sherlock on this. He was more practiced in setting traps than men in charge of handling vermin. In the cab, Sherlock glanced over the driver – his habit now – and the front seats, and then sighed heavily. Surprise-surprise: he actually dialled out on his cell phone. John’s brows went up.
“Yes, hello Anthea – where is he?”
Sunset sprayed the back seat golden and made Sherlock’s still face seem cut out of sandstone. He was looking for Mycroft’s help? John was surprised.
Sherlock’s lip curled in disbelief, “What do you mean who? My brother. Or did you think I was calling to ask after the Queen of Eng-” he rubbed his forehead, between his brows. “I don’t care that she’s ‘doing quite well’. Where is-” now there was a long pause, followed by Sherlock’s soft response of, “Yes. Right.”
He hung up the cell and tucked it back in his pocket. Immediately, his hand propped his chin and his gaze flew out the window. He nipped his bottom lip and rolled it out from the bite. Something was wrong. He didn’t wait for the question. “It’s Mycroft they want. Not me. Not Reese.”
“I thought everyone in the Club had to have a photographic memory,” John asked.
“Yes,” Sherlock half-turned. “What about it?”
“So you both do… aren’t those long odds?”
“It’s genetic John.” Sherlock scowled at him. “Plus, science can’t even agree that it really exists. They go about studying it all wrong, failing to understand the degree of concentration required to photo everything, not seeing that it isn’t always accident. Flawed understanding leads to flawed methods and invalid research.”
“Fair enough, so why Mycroft?”
“Because he’s in the Home Office,” Sherlock flicked his cell out into one hand and began to text his brother. “They know he’s unattainable as is, so they took me. They believed I was leverage. Only I couldn’t answer many of their questions.”
John settled back in his seat: “If it’s Mycroft, then you are leverage, answers or not. If it’s Mycroft, well, he can’t really help himself, I expect.”
But Sherlock had stopped texting to look at him. Everything about his expression was taut. He clapped the phone between both hands. “Oh, I see,” he said to himself, and then to John, “Mycroft left the office for the day, but he didn’t take the girl.”
“Anthea, you mean?”
“Yes, his girl,” Sherlock nodded. “The human algorithm he left running. She’s sitting, waiting on his timer to alarm. And me… I’ve been,” he sighed and closed his eyes, “had.”
John didn’t understand.
They took the turn onto Chiltern Street and continued until Sherlock called to the driver to halt. The firehouse was fenced in and abandoned. It wasn’t red in the sense of a fire truck, though all the doors were. The brick was a ruddy orange.
“Super-saturated colour,” Sherlock muttered as he pulled the handle and gave the door a push. John wasted no time getting out after him. He was already walking along the fence boards looking for a way in. John could already see where that would be and zagged in front of Sherlock.
“The wire’s cut,” John gave the clapboard a push and it slid out of the way. “Come this way.”
“Looks wide enough you could get a car through.” Sherlock said from inside the lot. He sized up the hole in the fence and then looked at the ground around him. “So it was Mycroft who detected the cause of the black-out. He doesn’t like people messing with his city, and he’s been having us much more closely monitored than before.” Sherlock grimaced. “The street I was on went dark, Mycroft’s people reported an anomaly, he probably checked for the cause himself. It was suspicious, so he reversed it, and then he texted me. It was less than 10 minutes afterward.” He showed John the phone. The text looked innocuous.
It said: ‘What mischief are we up to tonight, Sherlock?’
“Oh, so he thought you’d done it. I mean the blackout. But he wouldn’t worry about it, Sherlock. There are lots of times you don’t bother to reply to him. I think it’s more likely you won’t respond, in fact.” John nodded.
“And there are lots of times he ignores it,” Sherlock agreed, “but not this time. He looked into it this time.”
“And you think he’s gone because the Photographers lured him out alone?”
Sherlock looked at the ground before him, thinking aloud, “No, I did that. I lured him out.”
John followed him in through the red front door. Sherlock inhaled the dusty air beyond, deeply. He closed his eyes. “They took me in one of the bays. I was in the car until the door closed behind us.” That meant he didn’t know his way via this route. Nevertheless, he led on through the dust and abandoned furnishings, until he reached a windowed door. There he paused to look at the darkened room beyond.
John could guess why. “It was in there? Their party?”
Sherlock nodded mutely. Inside of his head, he was watching the car door open off to his right. They roped his wrist and dragged him out of the warm, glowing safety. The shot they’d slammed him with in the car, had been a mix of one of his favourite things, MDMA, and… something else. He didn’t know what yet. MDMA had always made Sherlock feel warm and loved. Within minutes, the world was better; there was hope; people were humane, bearable, and he wanted to be among them. This had been his gateway drug. Having taken it young, he could remember lying in a fabric of skin and stroking hands, and shivering with delight. MDMA turned him into an alien: it made him want to be held and handled. And these people, oh, they’d handled him, all right. They’d roped his arms and neck and hauled him into the echoing room beyond. The drugs had ravaged him, left him depersonalized and in an altered state. That was when they’d begun questioning him. It had started before they’d brought out the coke and heroin and alternated comforting him with harming him to see which way he would break.
Because they’d wanted him too, in fact. They’d come to London to collect all three.
Problem for the Club was, Reese rarely left the CIA’s or Lestrade’s side.
And if Lawrence had failed, what could they use to draw her out?
Sherlock had a sinking feeling he knew the answer.
His head saw the tug-of-war as a Club ritual.
The sort of thing one saw in a Fraternity.
Which side had won him?
That was their nature. There were two sides to Club Parliament. It came clear to Sherlock as he remembered that one speaker had been identified as a Lion, and the other as a Lamb. In other words, there was someone to bang the coke, act like god, and do the highly unpleasant things the Club had to, and there was someone to bang the heroin, love mankind, and save the world.
“Oh my God,” Sherlock gasped. It was brilliant.
John gripped his shoulder. That was when Sherlock realized he’d covered the majority of his face with his hands and John read this strong reaction as fear or horror, and had moved to defend. “Yeah. I’m here this time.” John said flatly. He chambered a round. “Let’s kick the tires, shall we?”
They pushed the door and walked into the near blackness of boarded windows.
“Let there be light,” Sherlock said in time with flicking on the overheads.
John looked up. “I expected them to be red.”
“I expected the floor to be covered in chaff and puke,” Sherlock replied. “But the clean-up crew has been through already. After they dropped
me, this place would have been spic and span within the hour.”
Sherlock walked to the middle of the empty room and stood. He closed his eyes. His memory filled in the blanks – kneeling with the ropes pulling between one side of the Club, and the other. The strain played across his chest, to break him. Each side slid their needles into his bloodstream, and each side made their case. It was his reaction that they waited for.
This system corralled incredible minds, good and bad, and restricted their activities by way of highly structured ritual. He remembered Reese and her hatred of ape rules.
“This was never supposed to happen to you.”
Sherlock didn’t have to turn to know it was Mycroft.
Sherlock’s older brother stood at the back of the house where Sherlock could remember his questioners: the grey-eyed girl, and the young man. She’d put something acrid in his eyes, so their faces were amorphous and indistinct. He was sure of the genders.
“Afternoon, Mycroft. You should know your girl is waiting back at Home Office, absolutely clueless about where you are.” Sherlock said dryly.
“Come now, Sherlock. Calamity aside, try to be reasonable. They have to be turned to the good,” Mycroft picked up his umbrella and strolled along through the open space.
“Your good,” Sherlock corrected his elder brother. They glared and walked to meet one another.
“What’s going on?” John pointed the gun at the floor. “Uh, hello?” He followed Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded in response. “There’s a reason that MI6 rebuffed the CIA. Think Tank is the US government’s elite program; and the Photography Club…” Sherlock motioned across at his brother.
“No,” John drew out the word. “No way possible. They’ve murdered a man, Sherlock. For God’s sake they hacked him apart.” He looked to Mycroft, utterly at a loss.
Mycroft set the tip of the umbrella on the concrete floor and frowned. “Ah. They do enjoy a certain degree of autonomy. The problem here is that the Speaker died unexpectedly. There’s been a power struggle. Lions moved quickly with candidates hidebound to their credos-”
