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John had not woken to this level of absolute darkness in over 30 years. Ever since he had received his very first vision augmentations he had always been greeted by blinking symbols, letters or numbers insistently flashing and flickering in front of his eyes, regardless of whether they were open or closed.

Not now though. Everything was blessedly dark and still for one eternal moment in time.

“...-hn. John!”

Sadly, that was where the peacefulness ended. Everything hurt. His muscles burned worse than during his first days of basic training. His left arm felt like it was on fire. His lungs were groaning and creaking in protest with every laboured breath that he took. He felt thoroughly waterlogged and his head was pounding.

>>>\U.I.: [20.976] … #error{u914}: incomplete reb0ot

He flinched back as the first bits of information started filtering back into his vision - nonsensical error messages, ruthlessly bright. Everything felt strangely … lopsided. Tilted. The more he concentrated on the strange sensation, the more nauseating it became.

“John, can you op-...-r eyes?”

>>>\U.I.: [20.978] …stARt-up TFG66 successfu1

>>>\U.I.: [20.979] … #error{r708}: failure to ac%ess peripheral modificATIOns

A voice was speaking close by, but it was barely audible, as if underwater. His eyebrows knitted together as he tried to chase the noise, his eyes still closed.

“Please?”

But the more he tried to concentrate on the speaker the more elusive the words became. Drowned out by a swelling wave of sound, high-pitched and relentless, stabbing at his already tender head. He groaned.

“-hn?”

Something about the distraught tone felt deeply wrong. This was not how things were supposed to be. The sharp noise continued to fill his head and showed no sign of subsiding. He braced himself. If his hearing refused to cooperate, the only thing left to do was to open his eyes.

>>>\U.I.: [20.983] … Partia9 reboot: WelcomE back, user John H%. Watson

\U.I.: Curren$ time 23:377, Tuesday the 2nd -

  Account balance {John H Watson}: 7$6 credits, last updated {02/03/66},{20:30}

  11 avail@ble software upgrades.

His vision was not doing much better. Everything was swimming in and out of focus. Some spots seemed worse off than others and everything was topped by the incessant blinking of nonsense notifications, filling up the few flecks that were still seeing clearly. He blinked sluggishly.

There was a face hovering right above him, long and angular ... and distorted into a rather unusual expression. Wide-eyed and frantic, the mouth drawn into a deep frown.

Sherlock was sopping wet, his dark curls plastered flat against his forehead and water clinging to his skin. His face, hair and clothes were coated in a fine layer of grey dust or dirt and there was an angry gash across the bridge of his nose.

“John!”

He could more see than hear the word, as he watched Sherlock's face lose some of its tension. Wavering fingers smoothed out the material of John's cardigan sleeve on one side – the uninjured one – before gently grasping his shoulder. His friend continued speaking but it grew more and more difficult to follow along.

Instead, John let his head roll to the side, blinking away the water droplets that had fallen out of Sherlock's curls. There was movement all around them - flames lighting up the room and dancing up the wall ... And emerging from between them there were dark shapes - huddled closely together ...

Maybe another hallucination? His vision was still hazy but no amount of blinking seemed to be able to clear it.

He frowned as the shapes drew nearer. Not huddled together, a far corner of his brain supplied, marching in formation, protected head to toe behind black riot gear. Armed. He felt a spike of worry. Maybe he should warn Sherlock.

But when John blinked back up at him the other man's gaze had already followed his. He was glaring at the approaching figures, crouching close to John – like a feral animal protecting its territory with hackles raised and fangs bared.

John knew that under other circumstances it would fall on him to talk his friend down, to mediate and bargain – Sherlock was no good at diplomacy even at the best of times. But everything hurt and he had little recollection of how they had even ended up where they were right now – and he really did not like the look of these looming, faceless soldiers.

And beyond all that exhaustion kept tugging at him like a lead weight. Pulling him down below the surface of consciousness and deep into a pool of sparkling lights and cold darkness. There was something about this that rang uncomfortably true.

The image of a snarling Sherlock began swimming out of focus. Just this once he could let his friend take care of things, he decided fuzzily. He knew that he was safe with the other man, knew that he would not allow any harm to come to John while he was out. He allowed his head to loll to the side until his forehead rested against Sherlock's arm, facing away from the encroaching soldiers.  

He was pulled away from the flickering flames, and the high-pitched whining and the trembling tiles under his cheek. But the hand that was still holding onto his shoulder never let go.

\U.I.: Good aftern$on! It is currently 16:27, in London on Friday the 5th of March, 2066.

Account balance of user John H Watson: 715 credits, last updated {05/03/66},{16:00}.

Above ground, the weather is stormy today with occasional rain showers!

WARNING: dangerous1y high levels of nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide have been detected over ground and in settlements without certified air filtration units. Do not enter polluted environments without adequate PPE.

You have 19 available software upgrades, 5 of which are safety critical. Please connect to a licenced MilvertonMods terminal as soon as possible, to acquire outstanding upgrades. If you have any further questions concerning your MilvertonMods software, please contact our Software su%port services [HERE].

The next time that John broke through the murky surface of unconsciousness, it was to the sight of a small grey hospital room. He blinked against the dimmed ceiling light panels, his augmented vision blinking lazily in and out. He waited a couple of seconds for the flickering malfunctions to subside but no such luck.

At least the pain was gone, he determined dazedly, as he closed his tired eyes for a moment. There was a hazy blanket of heavy sedation spread over his entire body. He could sense a vague pressure in his shoulder and along his left side, but nothing compared to the bright, stabbing pain that had been in its place when ... when ... oh ...

He kind of jerked in place at the realisation, his eyes opened wide and scanning the room around him. His head throbbed at the sudden movement and his vision flashed more violently, unable to follow up on all the new input, but he ignored it stubbornly.

Instead his eyes zeroed in on a lanky shape that sat folded up in an uncomfortable-looking metal chair, knees drawn up against one of the armrests and his whole upper body slumped to one side so that the unruly curls rested against a nearby wall.

Sherlock, his skin looking even paler than usual, with a wide bandage on his forehead half hidden behind his dark fringe and a thin bed sheet drawn around his shoulders like a cloak. There was just a sliver of Sherlock's blue dressing gown visible underneath the white cotton - so he was here as a patient, not just as a visitor.

John's eyes softened as he took in the nuances of the other man's appearance. His friend looked haggard and even thinner than usual, with dark circles underneath his eyes. Even just to see the other man sleeping felt like an aberration.

Someone cleared their throat pointedly, just on the other side of John's bed and he flinched for a second time, only to catch the unwelcome sight of Mycroft Holmes sitting primly in another one of those horrible chairs and looking like he had not slept in a while either.

The older Holmes raised an eyebrow, as if in question and John belatedly took in a twitching message hovering on the side of his vision. He blinked, trying to decipher it, even as his headache intensified, but the shaky letters refused to cooperate. Something was very wrong with his implants, that much was glaringly obvious.

He carefully shook his head in Mycrofts direction, mindful not to aggravate his aching head even further, and the other man frowned back. "How are you feeling, Doctor Watson?", he asked in a hushed voice and John noted with relief that at least his hearing seemed to be mostly functional again.

"Like someone fried my implants with stun-interference twice within a couple of hours", he replied hoarsely, wincing at his scratchy voice.

"You were asleep for a couple of days, which had both your doctors and my brother quite worried about the state of both your brain and the implants attached to it."

"I have trouble focussing on any of my visual modifications", John admitted. "And right out of the water I could barely hear, but that seems to be better now." He frowned, trying to remember all the events that led up to his impromptu dive into the water reservoir, but his memory was choppy at best. "Some thugs knocked me out to get me to the cistern. And when I woke up in there, Moriarty had me hooked up to some sort of computer, doing who knows what with my implants ..."

At the mention of the criminal's name - no matter how quietly - Sherlock woke with a start and proceeded to almost tip out of his chair in the process of sorting out his limbs. As soon as he spotted John awake he was on his feet and hovering right by the bed, staring down at his friend with frantic eyes.

"John! You are awake!"

The prone man cracked a tired little smile. "Obviously."

The weak attempt at humour was completely lost on the detective. "How are you feeling?"

"I have been better", he confessed, carefully trying to prop himself up a bit higher. Sherlock made some clumsy attempts at helping before admitting defeat and just standing by, his worried gaze never leaving John and his hands twisting into the sheet around his shoulders. "My implants are acting a little weird too."

"I will consult some of my experts to ascertain that whatever Moriarty did is all out of your system now", Mycroft chimed in while picking up his coat from a peg by the door. "And I will inform the doctors that you are awake and talking. Do you need anything else at this moment?"

John blinked at him blankly for a beat. "Wait, what happened to Moriarty? Did he escape?"

Mycroft gave him a tight smile that was probably meant to be reassuring but did no such thing. "I am afraid that information is classified and nothing that you two need to concern yourself with", he declared, before opening the door. "It is good to see you awake, John, have a good morning!"

"Git", Sherlock muttered. "I have been pestering him for days to tell me what happened to Moriarty."

John shuddered, not particularly happy with not knowing what the criminal could be up to next. It seemed unimaginable that the other man would have been able to make a escape after what happened, he had stood closest to the bomb after all, there was no way he got away unharmed.

But as long as the older Holmes refused to divulge any information, there was little to be done about that. Instead, John attempted to fill one of the other gaps in his memory about the events in the cistern. "What exactly happened after we jumped into the water?"

At that his friend broke eye contact, his bright eyes flitting away - looking anywhere else than John really. The grip of the long pale fingers on the bedsheet tightened. "I was being stupid at the worst possible time", he declared harshly. "I completely forgot about the stun-interference. It was only when I was out of the water and saw that you weren't following me that I remembered it. Thankfully I managed to find you quickly ... but ..."

He looked ... heartbroken. John had been out of it for days so Sherlock must have had ample time to beat himself up over this - no wonder that he looked so worn-down.

"Well, I am glad that someone taught you how to swim ... I assume at that posh school of yours", John replied jokingly. "Had the roles been reversed I would not have been much help, I'm afraid."

The joke landed with the grace of a parachute made from concrete and John regretted his words immediately, as he watched Sherlock's face grow almost grey under the stark hospital lights.

"You don't know how to swim?!"

Thankfully John could just catch hold of the tightly gripped cotton sheet to pull his unresistant friend a bit closer. "It's fine! Everything worked out in the end."

"The fact that you wouldn't have been taught to swim as a child did not even occur to me!" Sherlock seemed genuinely appalled by his own oversight and John had to tug on the sheet several times to regain the other man's attention. Pale eyes were staring down at him with trepidation.

" It's fine! As soon as that stun-interference got to me knowing how to swim would not have made any difference and I would have ended up here either way." Sherlock opened his mouth as if to object, but John gave him a hard stare and the other man's mouth promptly snapped shut again. "Now, get that chair over here, you look like you are about to fall over. And then you are telling me everything that I missed since the explosion!" Another glare. "Just do it."

And Sherlock, his eyes never leaving John, complied.

\U.I.: Current time 14:03, Tuesday the 16th of March, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 679 credits

13 available software upgrades.

Sherlock and John were bickering with each other over the background murmur of some obscure reality TV show - a dubious holdover of their Connie Prince investigation - when there was a chime at the door of the hospital room.

Sherlock's face immediately fell into a gloomy frown at the interruption, but he still unfolded himself from his chair and strode over to open it. On the other side, two figures were waiting side by side.

Harry waved at John with a wide grin. "See who I met by the entrance Johnny, it's a crime that I haven't met your girlfriend yet!"

"Not the girlfriend." Emma, who was standing by her side, interjected with a bit of a blush, but Harry just made a dismissive gesture and pushed past Sherlock into the drab room with nothing more than a terse nod in the taller man's direction.

John's recovery was taking much longer than he had initially anticipated. There was the physical damage - mainly a bullet graze to the back of his arm and an elbow fracture - but what actually extended his stay for so long were his persistent implant problems, especially concerning his vision augmentations as well as his sense of balance. The analysis of Mycrofts experts had come back normal, but being knocked out by attacks to his implants repeatedly had still left its marks.

Thankfully there seemed to be an almost infinite stream of visitors dropping by, otherwise John would probably have found himself pacing the tiny room with the aid of his cane until his footsteps were etched into the ugly linoleum flooring. Especially now that Sherlock had been discharged, which meant that he could only drop by during visitor hours.

Mrs Hudson, Murray, Sarah and Harry had spent many hours with him in this grey hellhole and Greg and Mike came by to say hi whenever they found the time to as well. Even Emma dropped by every couple of days.

"Imagine my surprise when I returned from my holiday - still a bit pissed off about John ghosting me before I left on the trip - only to learn from Sarah that he was in the hospital all this time!" Emma recounted and Harry who was sitting on the other side of the bed nodded in sympathy.

"It took me several days to find out what happened to him as well, and I am his bloody sister. I was worried sick when he did not answer my messages." She threw a nasty look across the room to where Sherlock was sulking on the chair closest to the door. "I ended up finding out from Bill, who only knew what happened because he dropped by at Baker Street and stumbled across their landlady there."

Sherlock rolled his eyes theatrically and glowered up at the ceiling.

It had come as a bit of a surprise to John when he learned that Harry was currently occupying his room at Baker Street. She had travelled to the city as soon as news of John's injuries had reached her and had apparently struck a fast friendship with Mrs Hudson within just a couple of days. Things had been going great ... well until Sherlock returned home from hospital.

It came as much less of a surprise to John when he learned that Sherlock and his sister got along approximately as well as gunpowder and an open flame. Between the two of them, they combined just the right amount of snark, short temper and biting vitriol to drive everyone in their orbit to the brink of double murder.

"I felt like a right arse once I found out from Sarah", Emma admitted with a self-deprecating smile. "I might have sent a few not-too-favourable messages when he stood me up."

John winced. He remembered reading those messages as soon as he had been able to use his augmented vision without it sparking a massive headache.

"And even now no one is willing to explain what actually happened", Harry complained, this time frowning at both Sherlock and John. "Even though everyone knows that something happened up there. I've read the conspiracy theories online and they are going absolutely wild. My favourites so far are the ones about aliens that want to overtake the underground." Sherlock let out a derisive snort, which earned him another nasty look. "I am not saying that I believe them, but that is what happens if you try to keep everything a secret. It will just cause even worse panic and conspiracy in the long run." Emma nodded.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. "I am sure a meeting with you and my brother would be just delightful ."

John shuddered at that mental image. The city probably would not survive such a get-together.

But his sister was not entirely wrong. There was no way for the city's leadership to hide the fact that something big had happened. Both Sherlock and John had been visited by several rounds of stern government agents that had them swear secrecy in about every wording imaginable.

But the explosion at the cistern had caused a partial cave-in of the level 4 ceiling on top of the industrial district. The damage had caused massive evacuations throughout 4 and had been very visible all over that level of the city. John had seen pictures of it online. It looked like a scene straight out of that horrific hallucination from months ago.

So the government was not exactly hiding that there had been an attack of sorts. They had quickly implemented a curfew in the evenings and due to the damage to the infrastructure drinking water was being rationed quite strictly while the repair works went on. In a city full of people who still remembered Carl Powers' supposed terrorism plot, the implication of these measurements was clear as day.

"Going by the state of the kitchen of these two, you could believe that they are rationing food instead of water", Harry continued her general complaints, causing Sherlock's frown to deepen.

"It's good enough for me. If you need something special, you are very welcome to drop by Tesco and get it", he responded icily.

"There is only one packet of tea, a package of biscuits and about five jars of strawberry jam!"

Raspberry, actually", John corrected absentmindedly.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"These are brainfoods", Sherlock muttered with a dark expression, "I don't require much additional nutrition."

"Yes, you do", John interjected sternly but was thoroughly ignored by everyone around.

"Brainfoods, sure" Harry scoffed derisively before turning back to Emma with a determined expression. "Would you care to join me for some takeout dinner tonight? I can tell you anything you need to know about that one!" She stabbed in John's direction with a careless thumb.

Emma gave her a thoughtful look. "All I had planned was an evening with some paperwork and whatever I can scrounge together from the bottom of my fridge" She gave John a hesitant look. "We would probably have to leave soon though, If we don't want to run into any problems with the curfew later tonight."

John just shook his head with a mild grin. "Don't feel obligated to stay on my behalf, visiting hours are almost over anyway."

As the two of them slowly got ready to depart, John mused about the fact that by the end of this evening, Harry would probably have spent more time with his ... maybe-date than he had - and he was not sure how to feel about that.

\U.I.: Current time 10:56, Monday the 22nd of March, 2066.

Account ba1ance {John H Watson}: 629 credits

15 available software upgrades.

John was filled with a sense of overwhelming relief when he finally shuffled up the last step of the stairs and stepped into their living room. He made directly for his armchair, relying heavily on his cane for balance, with Sherlock hovering right behind him like an overgrown shadow that occasionally gave smart commentary.

The last week at the hospital had been pure mental suffering. He had indeed ended up pacing the small space that he had been confined to just as anticipated, limping back and forth until his still recovering body had screamed at him to take a break. He would be happy to never see the ghastly shade of grey of those walls ever again.

"That was miserable", John summed up their travels back to level 6 with a groan while he sank into the chair. "As if all life was sucked from the city."

"It was even worse right after the explosion", Sherlock reported earnestly, extending a hand to accept John's jacket. John complied somewhat surprised after shimmying out of the garment, a dark blue jacket that Murray had loaned him since the bright orange coat had never turned up again after the ordeal with Moriarty. Or maybe it had and it was now kept in some classified box deep below the city together with anything else that concerned the incident.

"Any idea when they are going to lift that curfew? 11 in the evening is bloody inconvenient, never mind 10 pm on level 4."

Sherlock just scoffed. "I suspect that they will keep it going as long as they can possibly stretch it. Less hassle all over when no one is about at night, and they even save energy costs on city lighting. At some point cries for human rights will grow too loud for them to ignore, but until then they will milk it. I can see it going for another few weeks at least."

Sadly Sherlock's prediction did not seem too far off from reality. You could sense the stench of fear and insecurity in every corner of the city. Police and military seemed to be everywhere. And everyone out on the street kept their gazes down and their steps quick - even in the middle of a normal Monday afternoon.

"I appreciate that you are helping me get around", John admitted sincerely in the direction of his friend. "But don't feel obligated to stick around all the time, especially if there are any cases you would miss out on." He gave his friend a tired little smile. "Emma also offered to help out whenever."

That offer earned him a deeply irritated stare. "I doubt that Emma could be of much help", the detective declared dismissively, once he had returned both their coats to their pegs by the door.

"Oh really?"

Another disgruntled eye-roll. "She does not know where anything is kept around the flat and she has never seen you in your pants. I do and I have."

The unexpected answer had John spluttering some mostly indistinguishable sounds. "As if ... That's not ... You don't know ..."

"And as a matter of fact, before her departure your sister hid all your tea on the top shelf. Given that Emma is even shorter than you she wouldn't be much help in that regard either."

" What ?"

"I assume it was meant as some kind of practical joke among siblings." Sherlock hesitated. "But telling you beforehand might have taken the punchline out of it a bit."

John shook his head at the other man's ridiculousness. "You bet. Is that something that Mycroft and you did as kids? Hiding each other's tea on the top shelf?"

His friend stared at him with absolute indignation. "Mycroft is barely any taller than me! Just a couple of centimetres."

"Same for Harry and me", John countered with a shrug before adding with a small smirk: "Maybe I should ask Mycroft to retrieve my tea."

Sherlock pouted. There was no better word for it. "As a kid, he used to have a terrible posture. Always hunched over. It took him several years at university to fully shake the habit and unfold."

"And of course, the same wasn't true for you, the athlete that you were. All those swimming and dancing lessons."

Sherlock made a dismissive little gesture before stepping in the direction of the kitchen. "Our parents insisted that we both did those. Even though I cannot imagine that Mycroft enjoyed himself very much."

John snorted at the sudden image of a pouting Mycroft taking dance classes. "Well, he probably is still better than me at both anyway."

"You would be surprised!" John was glad that his friend seemed to have overcome the immediate panic that any mention of swimming had triggered just a few weeks ago. It had been deeply disconcerting to watch his friend battle these kinds of demons, especially since there was little that John could do to help.

"Tea, John?"

He let out a huff of laughter. "Oh very funny, Sherlock - Oh .." He stared at the steaming mug in front of him and then up into the expectant face of the man who was offering it. "Thank you, Sherlock."

"You're welcome." The other man fetched a second cup from the kitchen, then ambled over to his own chair opposite Johns. "I always wanted to take fencing classes as a kid but they did not allow me to join because of my lack of implants", he admitted between careful sips.

John's heart ached for young Sherlock and all the rejection he must have received throughout his life, even before people got to know his tendency for ruthless deductions. "I am sure you would have made a great fencer", he declared confidently. "You did pretty damn amazing in the fight with that Czech assassin, and that guy was enhanced to hell and back."

"Oh, that was actually because of the street boxing that I did in my twenties."

John proceeded to very nearly choke on his tea. " The what?"

"Oh, we used to meet up two or three times every month, at different places all over the city, preferably remote car parks or storage areas. There was a separate group just for fighters without implants. I really enjoyed the tactical nature of it and it was a fine way to release frustration."

John's imagination was working very hard to try and incorporate this new fact into his image of Sherlock. It was a surprise to learn about that aspect of Sherlock's past but also frighteningly easy to see why he would have enjoyed boxing so much.

"Why did you stop?"

Sherlock's gaze wandered off. "Oh, the fights were very much entwined with the drug scene. Once I got clean it was no longer a particularly safe place for me to be around. A shame."

Once again John wondered how incredibly lonely a younger Sherlock must have felt. But not anymore, he decided grimly, never again.

\U.I.: Current time 13:34, Thursday the 8th of April, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 432 credits

15 available software upgrades.

"John?"

He almost walked past her on his way out of Barts after a quick lunch with Mike. His thoughts were already back at Baker Street with everything that he needed to get in order before he could finally return to work in the clinic next week.

But when he heard her timid voice calling out after him he could feel his heart sinking with the sudden realisation of his oversight.

"Molly! Hi ..." She looked tired and wary, with dark circles under her eyes and a pinched look to her mouth. "... how are you doing?"

He felt like a right wanker. It was pretty unlikely that Sherlock had reached out to her even once after the explosion but ... well, neither had John. He could only imagine that instead she probably had been visited by some of Mycrofts horrible government drones about the safety of the nation or something equally ridiculous.

Moriarty had posed as her boyfriend, gotten so incredibly close to her only to fulfil some weird curiosity and catch a closer look at Sherlock before the finale of his game. He felt icy cold at the thought. She must have felt horribly exploited if not worse after learning the truth.

Molly's wide eyes wandered over the cane that John was still relying on and the arm that he had to wear in a sling for another two weeks at least. She let out an unhappy sound but no words, shock and dismay written all over her features.

He really could not leave things like that. Instead, he gave her a tight smile and gestured towards the lifts that he had just exited from.

"Maybe we can catch up a bit", he looked around the busy hall. "Just not in here!"

Realisation dawned. "Oh yes!" She followed him with a jerky nod. "I really don't need another lecture from this horrible brother of his."

John did not need to ask who she was talking about.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Sherlock Holmes

← You really need to talk to Molly sometime soon.

→ Why?

→ Oh.

→ Is she very upset?

They walked down the much emptier corridors of the morgue in silence until they reached the tiny little break room. Molly pulled two chipped mugs from a cupboard, as well as a couple of tea bags.

← what do you think?

← I am having some tea with her now but you should also drop by at some point.

→ I will!

"So you also got a visit by Mycroft and his goons?", John asked awkwardly. "I am sure he was very ... pleasant about it."

She snorted wetly and quickly swiped one sleeve over her face before turning back around and pushing one of the now-filled mugs into John's direction.

"I think I prefer Sherlock's rude honesty over whatever polite slime oozes from his brother whenever he opens his mouth", she proclaimed strongly, before shaking her head apologetically. "I am sorry."

"Don't be, Mycroft deserves it", John responded earnestly.

"He came by the day after the explosion", she explained quietly. "Didn't tell me anything, really, just that ... that Jim was not who he pretended to be and that he was trying to get to Sherlock through me." She shrugged, helplessly. "I assumed that he was involved in this terrorist attack and that you and Sherlock must have been involved as well, given that I did not hear from any of you afterwards."

"I am sorry about that, there was a lot going on, but we should have still found the time to at least send you a quick message." Her gaze was resting on John's cane again, so he quickly added: "We both got a bit beat up in the process. But we are all better now. Sherlock is back on his cases already and I will be back to work soon enough too." He lowered his voice. "But you are right, Mor- ... Jim was involved. And not in a good way." He struggled for the appropriate words. "I am ... I am so sorry that you got pulled into all this mess, Molly."

"It's not your fault!"

"And it isn't yours either."

She fell silent, her fingers tightening around her cup until the knuckles turned white. "But Sherlock was right in the end, he took one look at him and knew that Jim was using me to get to him."

John sighed and allowed himself to sink into one of the cheap plastic chairs, propping his cane up against his knee. "Except that he didn't - not really. He saw exactly what ... what Jim wanted him to see, same as you. When we met him, he had been looking into Jim's true identity for a while already. He really did little else unless there was an active investigation. And still, that arsehole could flaunt around right in front of him and none of us were the wiser." His voice grew bitter and he swallowed down many more harsh words that were ready to soldier out into the open.

They sat in silence for a moment, nothing to be heard other than the whirring of hidden fans in the ceiling and the scrape of metal spoons against ceramic.

"Do you know what happened to him? If he got away?" Molly's voice was barely audible and there was a deep furrow between her brows.

"No idea, Mycroft did not tell us anything", it was John's turn now to flex his tight fingers around the mug in his hand.

"That's a pretty scary thought ... That he might still be out there."

John nodded because it really was.

\U.I.: Current time 11:21, Wednesday the 28th of April, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 604 credits

8 available software upgrades.

\U.I.: 1 new message: {now} by Samira Barnes {office}. [EXPAND]: Doctor Watson? Could you come by and have a quick look at a patient of mine? - Sammy {end of message}

John looked up in surprise. Sammy Barnes was the newest addition to the clinic staff, significantly younger than most of the other doctors around, but no less capable.

With a puzzled frown, he stepped out into the corridor and knocked on the door right across, before peaking in with an apologetic smile. He was immediately gestured inside to where Sammy was sitting with her patient by the examination table.

"Hey John, thanks for coming over. I just really would like your opinion on something - if you have the time. I am feeling a bit stumped over here." She turned around to her patient with a reassuring smile. "Victoria, this is Doctor Watson."

"Sure, what's the matter?" John made his way across the room and extended one hand towards the frail-looking woman by Sammy's side. "Hi, I'm John Watson."

"Victoria Heatherley." She took his hand, her skin feverishly hot against his. She looked pretty miserable but unfortunately, that was not a very uncommon sight up here. Her face was gaunt, her cheekbones way too prominent and her eyes sunken too deeply, her hair and clothes were dishevelled and her feverish gaze kept darting all over the place. "I did not know where else to come." She confessed waveringly. "But I think I was kidnapped and experimented on."

John blinked at her, a little perplexed, his hand still loosely holding onto her bony fingers. His thoughts immediately wandered to drug abuse or some other cause of hallucinations, a symptom that was not particularly uncommon with his usual patients either. The tricky part would be to narrow down the cause without upsetting her so much that she would refuse any further help. Tricky, but not impossible.

On Victoria Heatherleys other side, Sammy piped up once again with a troubled expression. "I know what you are thinking, but I don't think ... can you show him, Victoria?"

The woman nodded, her trembling fingers wandering up and unzipping her tattered cardigan, revealing a loose-fitting, low-cut tank top and ... bloody pieces of gauze, taped haphazardly all along her collarbone, a couple of them just at the base of her neck, a few other below her shoulder or close to her armpit.

"Can I?"

She nodded and after pulling on some gloves and disinfecting his hands, he carefully peeled one of the gauze patches back. The cut hidden underneath it was deep and angrily red with irritation and inflammation. The same could also be said about the next couple of wounds he uncovered. Small but deep cuts, precise in both placement and execution but not very well taken care of afterwards. He had never seen this kind of wound pattern before and due to the position and angle of the cuts it seemed unlikely that she could have caused them to herself.

"I have no idea what happened. I remember that there was a job ad that I was planning to check out and some community work that I had signed up for but I don't know if I ever got around to either of those. That was almost two weeks ago now ... and then nothing until yesterday morning. I woke up not too far away from home, looking and feeling like hell!"

He sat back, his mind whirring as he took a closer look at the exact locations of the cuts. Something was troubling him about that. But it could not be ... if his suspicion were correct, then Victoria would be complaining about more than memory gaps and inflamed wounds.

"How are your implants doing?", he asked cautiously, his eyes wandering to where the bunching of the top's fabric promised even more injuries.

She frowned at him. "My implants? Oh, I don't have any. Not anymore. I had a strong reaction to the few that they had installed when I just started primary school." She looked down at her mangled chest. "Oh shit ... is that where ...?"

John's mind inevitably returned to the butchered corpse of Alex Woodbridge, the body ruthlessly divested of all his military-grade body modifications. Could that be it? Was this a case of some kind of black market implant harvesting gone wrong because the perpetrator picked one of the few people who did not have any modifications installed?

What did Sherlock like to say? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Maybe it was time to get help from the one person who would be able to make sense of all this.

"I ... I know someone who might be able to help. A private detective of sorts."

Victoria's face lit up all of a sudden, her eyes much brighter despite the exhaustion and pain. "Do you know Sherlock Holmes by any chance?" At his surprised stare, she added. "It's just, that I have read some stories about him, a friend of a friend sends them over occasionally and your name sounded familiar."

That ... that was something else to ponder, once the wounds were taken care of and Sherlock was summoned. "I will send him a message", he promised.

As Sammy and him began to carefully clean out the wounds another question came to mind. "So where did this happen? Did you come back to consciousness on level 4 or somewhere else in the city?"

She shook her head, wincing when one of the incisions was stretched. "Not in London at all, actually. I came in this morning by train from Amersham."

"Oh ..." Truth to be told, that was not the kind of place that John would have suspected as the scene of a brutal kidnapping.

"Well not actually ... I don't live in New Amersham. It happened overground, in the Old Amersham Commune. That's where I'm from."

Things just got stranger and stranger. "I will tell Sherlock to come meet us here", he assured her before returning to the wound care.

\U.I.: Message draft, to Sherlock Holmes: New case! Come to the clinic, ASAP. It's a strange one. - John {end of message} [SEND]

\U.I.: Current time 11:21, Monday the 3rd of May, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 712 credits

17 available software upgrades.

WARNING: Avoid prolonged exposure to the surface air without appropriate PPE!

John had forgotten how warm and humid it could get overground, even so early into summer ... especially when you added several layers of protective gear to the mix. And this was not the high-tech gear that the army could afford, but the kind of crafty mix of goggles, ill-fitting respirators, and cowls that were more common for mercenaries, rebels and commune dwellers.

John felt excitement thrumming underneath his skin as their ramshackle truck drew to a stop close to the settlement. It had been several days since Victoria had shown up at the clinic but it was only now that she had been well enough to travel back up to the surface. The journey had been somewhat of an adventure by itself, they had to take the train to Watford and then find their way up via a hidden elevator in the storage room of a shabby pub on the outskirts of town. There they had been picked up by a friend of Victorias who was driving deliveries between the settlements in his old truck and who had carted them through old city ruins and windswept wilderness for another 45 minutes.

The moist heat got even more intense once they opened the car doors and jumped out onto the hard, dusty ground in front of the grey mess of a structure that was their first glimpse at Old Amersham. From the outside, it was an outlandish mix of old brick and concrete, combined with newer additions of wooden boards, metal plates, and brittle, yellow plastic. In the mess of old roofs there was the occasional reflection of light off the surface of what he presumed to be greenhouses and the whole complex was topped with a whole army of chimneys, poles, wires and antennas, sticking up into the air like a peculiar shell of spikes into the steely grey sky.

"The entrance is just over here", Victoria directed them to a reinforced metal gate, located right next to a rusty metal sign declaring this place to be Amersham, the letters barely visible amidst colourful drawings of flowers and ornaments in peeling paint, clearly added onto the metal over many decades.

John made sure that Sherlock was still following. The other man managed to radiate absolute miserableness, even with most of his facial features obscured behind his gear. He stood hunched, his arms drawn tightly around his body and he had barely spoken on their travels to the commune. The doctor was well aware that despite his curiosity about the case, the other man had only joined the trip to the surface to keep an eye on John, who still had the occasional spell of vertigo from time to time.

They entered the actual living quarters after a change of clothes and a thorough scrubbing down that left Sherlock even more cranky. Victoria led them down a long dim concrete archway, flickering lamps along the ceiling their only source of light. It was not too dissimilar to the maintenance tunnels all over London.

"Wait until you see the main square", their guide announced cheerfully, clearly very glad to be back home after the week underground. And she did not overpromise.

Old Amersham's market square was a surreal experience. A huge space packed full of small market stalls selling food and handcrafted items, surrounding the grey brick ruins of an old church in its middle, everything covered by a high dome that was being held up by the occasional decorated pillar. Glittering glass and metal ornaments had been strung from the support beams and were diffracting and reflecting the ceiling lights in all directions, bathing the whole space in bright colourful spots. The concrete of the walls had been covered in colourful murals depicting landscapes, animals, flowers and abstract shapes. None of it was digital, it was all solid and real and charmingly scrappy.

Next to John Sherlock had stilled his fidgeting, his head craned up to take in his surroundings. For a few precious moments there was a look of absolute wonder in his eyes that John had never seen on him before, not even during the most intriguing cases. It was both heartwarming and -breaking at the same time and he held his breath, afraid that any sound or move could shatter his friend's trance.

The moment did not last very long, soon the taller man blinked, his eyes sharpening and he scanned the place with more intent. He turned back to Victoria, all child-like wonder hidden away even though John was sure that it was still simmering in the background.

"Could you show us where exactly you regained consciousness?"

She nodded. "Sure, it is a bit of a walk though."

The path that followed was a bit of a fever dream. They walked down more grey tunnels, sometimes crossing through random colourful segments or past sculptures that had been left abandoned along the corridors. They even crossed through two greenhouses, filled up to the ceiling with plants in complicated hydroculture setups, shelves and shelves of them growing under bright magenta lights. Outside the clouds had burst open and heavy raindrops were pelting against glass and plastic, another phenomenon that seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect on Sherlock.

"How long have you been living up here?", John asked, while they ducked into yet another narrow corridor.

"Almost six years now, I came here right after finishing my degree. I wanted to go into implant tech first but I somehow ended up in bioengineering. A classmate with similar implant issues told me about communes like this one and I fell in love with it right away." Her gaze flicked over to Sherlock for a moment but the other man did not show any reaction to her words so she continued. "Usually I can find something to do around here, I am fine just helping out around the place, wherever help is needed." She hesitated.

"But the commune faced supply shortages after the underground cities increased their security measures so you haven't held any noteworthy employment for a while now", Sherlock deduced. "Which makes the sudden appearance of a vague job offer that explicitly asks for a bioengineering degree even more suspicious."

She nodded. "After waking up I could find no proof of that job ad anywhere. But I know what I read. And I remember how relieved I felt when I first saw it. This year wasn't kind on us, not just because of the shortages. We had pretty bad storms all throughout winter and even had to evacuate for a couple of nights. There is still a lot of outstanding repair work even months later, and there is little to spare for anyone."

The parts of Amersham that they were now striding through had lost most of the initial colour and glitter, there were a lot of boarded-up doors, thick layers of dust and no noise to be heard save for the quiet hum of the lamps and the echo of their steps. Victoria pushed open a creaking metal door, allowing them to pass into yet another greenhouse, this one overgrown with bushes and slim trees. Above them, the rain still pattered on. They crossed through the space quickly but once they reached the other side, the woman wavered, frowning at the concrete of the wall in front of them.

"I must have woken up somewhere around here, I remember walking through the old Arboretum ... But I am not sure ..."

Sherlock immediately sprung into action, his eyes scanning the entire place. He got to his knees, studying the dirt on the ground - undoubtedly looking for hidden footprints - and examining the variety of plants that surrounded them. Victoria was following along with visible trepidation now, her arm slung tightly around herself and John wondered whether it might have been a bit early for a return to the place of her supposed kidnapping. But before he could offer any comfort there was a triumphant cry from Sherlock, who was back on his feet within seconds, prowling through the underbrush like a predator that was stalking its prey. They followed behind with more difficulties, barely dodging the stray branches and vines that obscured their path. Ahead of them Sherlock turned towards the far wall, jumped ... and suddenly all that remained visible was the unruly head of dark curls within the greenery. Hidden between the leaves and branches was an overgrown flight of stairs that led to a doorway below ground level. The metal door stood slightly ajar and Sherlock was already on his way in, leaving John silently cursing as he tried to keep up.

"Sherlock, don't just go ..." He trailed off as he stared into the dark room that lay beyond. It was cleaner than most of the rooms that they had passed through close by, barely any dust to be seen. It was also completely empty, save for a few bolted metal workbenches and a large fume hood in one corner. Victoria had stopped right by the door, her eyes wide and her face chalk-white as she took in the space.

"I wasn't sure whether I just imagined all this after all ... but this is definitely the right place", she whispered with a thin voice.

Sherlock had taken out one of his phones and was shining the little flashlight into every corner. "And they cleaned up after they were done here, quite thoroughly I am afraid." He laid flat on the ground swinging the light to all sides with a dissatisfied expression, before he sprung back and began exploring the fume hood.

"Is the only way into the city through the front gate?", John asked with a frown.

Victoria shrugged distractedly, her eyes still roaming with dread over the remnants of what must have been a laboratory once. "I am sure there are other ways into the commune, it is basically a labyrinth. But this is not a military base, there is very little surveillance of who comes and goes."

"So they could have a back entrance somewhere around here and would have been able to clean up once they were done with whatever the hell they were doing and nobody would have been the wiser."

"I guess so." She shuddered.

"John!" Sherlock had put on gloves and was holding up a little piece of paper against his phone light. "I need your eyes!"

"Still attached to the rest of me, I am afraid."

"Not ideal, but it'll do. Check this out! It has very small print on it. " He held out his finding. "Someone burned a lot of paper in here. Curious, who is still handling paper records nowadays?"

"You do."

"But I am not performing secret experiments on unsuspecting fellow citizens!"

"Good to know." John drew closer, squinting down at the burned shred of paper. There were indeed tiny letters, barely legible to unenhanced eyes.

/U.I.: Visual module: Milverton II.1.04 { 10x magnification }

→ Image stabilisation active

→ Caution! Do not lose awareness of your surroundings while utilising image enhancements.

And even with enhancement it looked mostly like gibberish, at least to John. "It's a bunch of numbers and formulas, I can send them to you if you'd like, but they don't make much sense to me", he admitted. "The title of the document is 'Project number 239b: Snow white' ..."

"Snow white as a colour description or as a reference to the fairy tale?"

John shrugged. "I wouldn't know." He looked around the barren room once again with unease. "What the hell were they doing in here, Sherlock?"

The other man hummed, lost in thoughts. "Not sure yet, but I am going to find out!"

\U.I.: Current time 18:54, Monday the 10th of May, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 587 credits

9 available software upgrades.

"Alright, I'll need you to explain to me again how your investigation led to you two getting arrested !"

John ducked his head in embarrassment, unwilling to brave Emma's unimpressed stare. Instead, he glanced down at the last remnants of fried rice on his plate. "Just for a night", he mumbled out in the general direction of his maybe-girlfriend. She just lifted her eyebrow even higher, so he reluctantly continued. "We made sure to be back in the city before 11 but forgot that the train only stops on level 4, where the curfew already starts at 10."

He did not mention how they had almost managed to sneak into the nearest maintenance tunnels anyway and how only a very unluckily stationed police constable right by the train station had thwarted their escape. He also kept to himself that they probably would have gotten off with a stern reprimand after all, if Sherlock had not chosen that time to deduce the officer's addiction to snus, his strained relationship with his parents and the fact that he had spilt ketchup on his uniform earlier that day.

At least Lestrade had had a good laugh when he came up to the level 4 holding cells personally the next morning, grinning widely and with no sympathy whatsoever.

\U.I.: active chat with: Sherlock Holmes

→ If you are considering bringing your date back to the flat – don't.

Well, that was pretty rude, even for someone as direct as Sherlock. John frowned at the message for a moment, debating whether he should even answer but his curiosity won out after all.

← Any particular reason for that or are you just cranky?

He focused back on Emma on the other side of the table.  

"To be fair, it is a bit silly that those curfews are still up", she acknowledged with a shake of her head, thankfully oblivious to the message that was flickering gently in front of John's eyes. "I heard that they are at least talking about changing it to a midnight curfew on all levels soon, but still." She poked at her food. "So you did not actually find out what happened to your client?"

Another sore topic. "Not yet, no. Whoever did it was very thorough when cleaning up. But Sherlock is still doing some research into it. I think he is just glad that he can do it from down here."

She nodded. "At least she is doing better physically now."

There was a short lull of contented silence as they finished up their meals.

→ Not cranky. The kitchen and living room are currently filled with iodine fumes.

John sat up a bit straighter, alarm coursing through his body all of a sudden.

← What?

← Are you alright?

← Open a window and get out of there if you haven't already!

Emma gave him a cautious look. "Everything okay?"

"I am not sure ..." He hesitated, torn between staying for the rest of the date and finding the fastest way back to Baker Street at once. Public transport would be hell this time of day, but he was pretty sure that he could figure out a way through the maintenance tunnels using one of the access points just around the corner.

← Sherlock?

→ I am fine, just a bit dizzy. I am afraid clean up will take some time. The gas is surprisingly purple but the residue it leaves behind is sadly just plain brown.

John sprung to his feet. "I am so sorry, but I think I need to get going."

"Another case?", Emma asked with a raised eyebrow, a note of resignement in her tone. He gave her an apologetic smile.

"Something like that."

\U.I.: Current time 9:23, Tuesday the 8th of June, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 6?5 credits

16 available software upgrades.

"That is a bit unsettling to watch", Lestrade declared with a furrowed brow, wiping sweat off his forehead and staring across the street and the blinking police barriers.

John had to agree. "I don't think I have ever seen the two of them being so ... polite with each other", he shook his head. "It does feel wrong, doesn't it?"

They continued to watch with some kind of sick fascination. Sherlock and Seargent Donovan stood side by side next to the battered entrance door and smashed windows of a high-end shop for smart devices, bouncing ideas and observations back and forth at an alarming rate. They were not exactly behaving friendly, but just the fact that they were not constantly antagonising each other felt pretty novel.

"What are we watching?" Another guy joined their little get-together, another inspector going by the look of his rumpled and sweaty suit, but at least 10 years younger than Greg, with reddish-blond hair and a narrow pale face.

"This guy next to Sally? That's Sherlock", Lestrade explained with a crooked grin.

" The Sherlock? The one that she cannot stand to even be in the same room with?"

"Yup." Greg popped the p.

"Well, how did that happen?"

"I'm not sure. They cooperated on a case a while back and ever since ... they just kind of stopped fighting ... at least most of the time." Greg turned back to John. "Oh, this is Sam, by the way. The guy who is actually in charge of this crime scene."

The other inspector extended a hand and a friendly smile. "Samuel Gregson. And you must be Doctor John Watson! So happy to finally meet the two of you, your stories are kind of famous around the office by now."

John shook the offered hand with a rueful smile. "Still not quite sure how I feel about that, but good to meet you too. So what were you investigating before the dead guy turned up?"

"A series of break-ins into small tech businesses and warehouses over the last couple of weeks. We suspect that it is gang-related, maybe smuggling of tech parts out of the city."

Lestrade nodded grimly. "That would fit with our investigation. There has been a series of dead and injured gang members turning up all over levels 4 and 5 during the last 2 days." His gaze wandered over the damaged storefront and he let out a sigh. "Can we go inside? If I spend any longer out here I am going to melt in this suit."

Donovan and Sherlock had already vanished - presumably in the same direction - so the three of them followed at a more sedate pace.

June had swept in with a heatwave of almost unheard-of proportions, turning the whole city of London into one giant slow cooker. It was a nightmare. The maintenance tunnels were especially bad which led to at least one or two of the irregulars camping out on the 221B couch almost every night but it was pretty uncomfortable all throughout the city regardless. Tabletop cooling units had been basically impossible to get a hold of for weeks now and almost half of the patients that John saw at the clinic were coming in with heat-related ailments.

Stepping into the messy interior of the shop came with a cool wave of instant relief. The front room had several small sleek disks on display all over the counters and in several of the showcases. The gentle whirr of the hidden fans within the climatisers filled the air with constant white noise, but that was an easy tradeoff considering the blessedly cool air that they provided.

"If there is one definite proof that this wasn't an ordinary burglary, then it is the fact that the climatisers weren't taken", Gregson offered with a sigh, as he led them through the room and towards an inconspicuous little door in the back. "And before you ask the owner ... I already did. Sadly none of them are up for sale ."

They followed a narrow little corridor into a small workshop ... and to the dead body of a middle-aged guy sprawled out on the floor next to a cabinet with spare electronic parts.

"Well, that's him. Not sure what to make of him, but I guess that's what you are here for."

John nodded. "Can you send me your files on the other break-ins?"

"Sure thing."

\U.I. Files shared by Samuel Gregson {office}. If connection is trusted, receive data [HERE], otherwise [DISMISS].

Gregson turned back to Lestrade with a little bit of a frown. "So why is it that you got the wonder detectives here involved? No offence, but it does not look like a big mystery to me. There was some kind of gang dispute concerning these break-ins. This guy was involved and got in the way."

John had crouched down next to the body and began his cursory examination. "Well for one, I am not quite sure what actually killed him", he began, a bit baffled at the lack of visible injuries. "There are no obvious wounds, but given how and where he was found, the death must have been almost instantaneous." He took a couple of moments to check the mans eyes and airways. "It's weird though, he almost looks like he died from some sort of allergic reaction. If he wasn't in his fifties I would even think that maybe he was having some sort of a reaction to his implants." He looked around the room again. "Would be a bit ironic if he died while robbing this shop but for completely unrelated reasons."

"Well, and the other weird thing is that for all intents and purposes, this guy shouldn't be down here at all", Lestrade added, sounding a little more severe now. "The name is Martin Kerry and he was arrested and convicted for a bunch of homicides 8 years ago. According to our records, he should be spending the rest of his life in one of the high-security detention centres overground. No word anywhere of him escaping or being released."

Both John and Gregson stared up at him in astonishment. "Are you serious?", the other DI asked incredulously. "Well, at least this case just got a lot more interesting all of a sudden."

"Watson, I need your calming influence over by the back exit." Donovan had come up behind them, leaning through the door with a pinched expression. "Your boyfriend is verbally abusing our crime scene drone again!" There was a choked-off sound from Gregson's direction.

"Not my boyfriend", muttered John, but he got to his feet regardless, ignoring Lestrades grin as he followed Donovan further down the corridor.

\U.I.: 1 new message: {received now} by Samuel Gregson {private}. [EXPAND]: If you fancy a drink anytime after hours, I would love to hang out :) - Sam {end of message}

He resisted the temptation to turn back around to the younger detective in surprise and instead followed Sherlock's angry shouts as they slowly gained in volume the closer he got to the door in question. There would be time for that later.

\U.I.: Current time 15:32, Thursday the 7th of July, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 621 credits

3 available software upgrades.

The sweltering heat did not ease up during the following weeks. Quite the opposite in fact. London had officially exceeded all previously documented temperature records, drinking water rationing still had not been lifted and the whole city was slowly but steadily baking towards absolute insanity.

221B was no different. Even after countless attempts, no climatiser had been procured for the flat, so it just kept getting closer and closer to boiling point with every passing day. If you combined that with the still persistent biting smell of iodine all over the first floor and the current lack of interesting cases, the whole atmosphere was set to explode on them sooner rather than later.

"Alright, ready to go!", John declared loudly on his way down the stairs.

He was greeted in the living room by Emma - leaning against the wall by the door with a bemused smile on her face - and Sherlock who was lounging sprawled over the sofa and wearing ... oh Christ, nothing but a thin wide bedsheet that he had artfully wound around his lanky form.

It took John a few seconds of standing at the bottom of the steps and staring incredulously at his berk of a roommate before he was able to collect himself. Sherlock lifted his gaze lazily from his phone and met his stare head-on.

"What?" He turned over in one fluid movement until he was sitting upright, feet on the ground, the bedsheet rising up to reveal a sliver of pale thigh. Nope, not going there.

"Er, right. Maybe you could, you know, put something on while we have a visitor?"

The proposal was met with a deeply deadpan expression. "I am wearing something, am I not?"

Smart-arse. John tried his best to out-deadpan his friend, even though it certainly was an uphill battle. "How about clothes ?"

The other man scanned over John's own attire with so much disdain that it had him bristling. "I am not the type for shorts, I'm afraid", he offered dismissively, the word sounding more like a curse than a garment when he uttered it.

The thing was, until a few days ago John would have claimed the very same. It was only sheer, heat-driven desperation that had brought him to the point where he had retrieved the at least a decade old cargo shorts from the most hidden corner of his wardrobe.

"I refuse to suffer this kind of discomfort while simply existing in my own living room, guests or not“, Sherlock added definitively.

Johns mouth pulled into a thin line at that, but before he could let loose another pointless argument, Emma chimed in with an amused grin. "It's alright!" She gave him a little wink. "Shall we get going?"

They had decided to spend their afternoon in one of the parks by the water with a couple of drinks - most likely surrounded by hundreds of other people with equally unoriginal ideas for the day. But really, there was nothing else to be done with temperatures like that.

"Alright", he sighed. "See you later, Sherlock."

John did his best to ignore Sherlock's persistent scowl, as the detective pulled his makeshift toga a bit tighter and shuffled into the kitchen without another word.

He did not yet know that they would not even make it close to the park before he would be swept away in yet another fateful kidnapping.

\U.I.: 1 new message: {received now} by Mycroft Holmes. [EXPAND]: Dr Watson. Please excuse my rude interruption, but your presence is urgently needed in a case of national importance. Please convey my deepest apologies to Ms Clements and get into the car posthaste! - M.H.

Ps. If you could convince my brother to put on some clothes I would be eternally grateful!

{end of message}

Chapter Text

Sherlock sat on a pompous sofa in a chilly concrete chamber, his bedsheet drawn tightly around himself and scowling at the opposite wall while annoyance and boredom were warring inside him.

There were three obvious ways out of the room that Sherlock's kidnappers had deposited him in. Two doors leading to either side and at least one access point to the air vent system above him. He scanned across the ceiling until he spotted a slight discolouration of the narrow plastic panels that indicated the ventilation tunnels behind them ... very narrow plastic panels.

Maybe he should withdraw that one from his list of hypothetical escape routes. Which was a shame, really. Sherlock had vaguely fond memories of a time long ago when he had been around 17 and had been condemned to spend the day with Mycroft, who at the time had still been somewhat new to his government position. It had started as a rather boring experience but had at least ended somewhat more amusing with Mycroft dragging a hovering footstool from room to room to poke his beet-red head through every vent opening that he could find, all the while whispering bloody murder under his breath. Sherlock had spent a delightful hour in one of the very corners of the ventilation system, hiding above an empty meeting room and listening to his brothers muttered curses as they carried all the way to his hideout.

But alas it seemed that he had grown too broad in the shoulders in the almost twenty years since then so the vents would be out.

That left two doors. Through one of them he had entered just moments ago. It was probably the most direct way back to where he had come from but also well-frequented by all kinds of staff, agents and security personnel. The other door would be more of a wild card but he was certain it would also lead out of this hellhole eventually. From his limited visits to level 9, he knew that the whole place was an absolute labyrinth of grey concrete and metal, with all corridors, rooms and even their inhabitants looking scarily alike. If he had to choose, he would probably go for the unfamiliar door, just for the thrill of it. Not that it would matter for now.

He shifted on the sofa, refusing to get too comfortable with this farce of a meeting. Yes, under normal circumstances he would have been out of the door as soon as the agents that had accompanied him were out of the room. He was fairly certain that there was little to no camera surveillance in any of these buildings. Too high of a risk that the camera feeds could be accessed by those who had no business seeing them.

Since this level was so very isolated from the rest of the city, there were few ways to get in or out of it, except for the official ones. There were the official lifts at different points all throughout the district as well as the bigger car lifts within the walls. He had tried sneaking into both of these before, on previous more or less voluntary visits down here. But no matter how hard he had tried to blend in, he had never once managed a proper escape. It required an appearance of absolute confidence as well as a certain lack of personality that was so common with Mycrofts office drones. It also ideally required access credentials that Sherlock did not possess and his lack of implants did not help in the matter either. On the other hand, he had been either high or distracted by withdrawal symptoms for most of these past occasions so maybe he would still stand a chance after all.

There were two obvious ways out of the room and under other circumstances he would be out of the door already, stalking through unfamiliar corridors, determined to find his way back up or at the very least cause a massive headache for all the schemers and puppeteers that were steering the rest of the city from their little horrible offices down here.

But no. Not now. The risk was too big, no matter how much he despised to bow to his brother's wishes.

Sherlock's eyes wandered over the exposed concrete of the opposite wall. There was a sleek table made from dark wood that supported a metal miniature of old London - a snapshot of the time before the war, going by the undamaged towers all over the little city. An unsubtle reminder of what had been lost. It probably meant to encourage some sort of misplaced patriotism in whoever was waiting here - or better to encourage a common animosity towards a perceived enemy.

There also was a potted tree that almost reached to the ceiling of the small sitting room - plastic, but well made and without even a spec of dust, suggesting that some poor sods job was to clean it regularly ... or maybe they had drones for that kind of thing down here. On the other side of the room, there was a huge painting depicting a view of the sea, rough waves breaking along a dark rocky beach, foaming and sinister and dangerous.

Sherlock had never shared John's fondness for the wild expanses above ground. Sure, their investigation in Old Amersham had been surprisingly intriguing, the world much more detailed and colourful to Sherlock's unenhanced vision than anything New London could ever offer. It had almost been overwhelming, the movement and contrast everywhere, to the point where he did not know where to look first. But beyond that, the surface was first and foremost an incredibly inconvenient place to live. Their transport between the overground settlements had been bumpy and drawn out, the protective gear had been an absolute pain to wear - clunky and scratchy and sweaty - and the network connection had been atrocious.

No, Sherlock was surprisingly content with his existence underground, even with all its drawbacks considering his condition. There was one kind of freedom that was represented by the infinite stretch of land and nature above, and yet another very different kind that could only be felt when running through the maintenance tunnels completely unimpeded, knowing all the shortcuts and secret doors and hidden staircases - and he knew which one he preferred.

But beyond his general aversion to the overgrounds, there was something especially ghastly about the ocean going by every depiction of it that he had the misfortune of laying his eyes on so far. Sherlock had learned how to swim at school - but that had been in a light-filled pool of relatively clean water. The churning, dark and murky waters of the sea seemed to him about as appealing as a dive into one of London's sewage treatment plants.

The moment when he had broken through the dark surface of the pool up in Effra Cistern, dodging debris as he followed the dancing lights of the flames above - only to realise that he was all alone ... that had felt like being swept under by the waves of an icy cold ocean. He had been so sure that John had been right behind, had still been able to feel the phantom grip that his friend had had on his coat. It had felt like hours, hours of diving down again and again, until his searching fingers had stumbled upon the still form of his ... of John.

The picture of the other man's body, waterlogged and bloody and far too still, would stay etched into his brain forever. Even now that the other man was almost back to his old form, walking unimpeded most of the time, going on silly dates with boring people and spending too much time on a job that seemed impossibly dull for someone with Johns skill level and his penchant for adrenalin ... Even now the knowledge of how close he had come to losing the other man shot through him like ice-cold lightning in the most inopportune of times, halting him in his tracks and bringing his thoughts to a screeching halt. He was sure he would have nightmares about it every night if he had any kind of regular sleep schedule.

Faint steps. There were faint steps in the distance. Sherlock wrenched his gaze from the dark expanse of the painted sea and went back to staring straight ahead, at the small table in front of the sofa that he was currently sitting on. There were two especially fancy climatisers whirring quietly, cooling the room to a point that was just below comfortable. He scowled at the small machines while listening in on the approaching steps. Yes, that definitely was John's slightly uneven gait. Good. He wrapped his sheet a bit tighter around himself and readied himself for the other man's imminent arrival. It was about time that he finally got here.

The steps approached the high double doors of the room, the door swung open and silence filled the air around them.

"I just had a very fun car ride down here", John began slowly, not moving from his place by the door. "Two of your brother's agents, all courteous and bland and emotionless, the way they usually are." Sherlock hummed in acknowledgement. "Until suddenly one of them started cursing. Caught me quite by surprise. And then we had to make a detour that took us in the opposite direction of the lifts."

Sherlock finally allowed himself to turn his head and take in his roommate. He was still wearing those regrettable cargo shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He must have arrived on level 9 only minutes ago, going by the way that his hair was still sticking to the sweat on his forehead. His shoes were still clean, so he and Emma had not even made it to the park before Mycrofts goons had swooped in.

"That detour would explain why it took you almost 15 minutes longer to get here. Not very good planning on the part of your kidnappers."

"Oh, you see, we ended up detouring parallel to one of the maintenance tunnels very close to Baker Street“, John began with a smirk. „And combining that knowledge with the message that I got from Mycroft, I had to ask myself ... would Sherlock Holmes try to out-run his brother's minions as soon as he knew they were coming, and -" John finally drew closer, looking down at him with a raised eyebrow. " And would he really do all of this barefoot and dressed in nothing but a bedsheet?"

Sherlock flexed his toes on the cold concrete floor, before drawing them underneath the cloth. "I didn't very well have time to get changed, did I? You saw how quickly they caught up to you and Emma."

John looked over at the neat pile of clothes on the table right next to the climatiser. "Just out of morbid curiosity ... are you wearing any pants?"

Sherlock could feel the corners of his mouth twitch, but he forced them back into a neutral expression with immense difficulty. "No."

John sank into the sofa right next to him with a huff and a nod and it took Sherlock an embarrassing amount of time to realize that his friend was not shaking because of the temperature drop or some misplaced adrenaline rush, but because he was silently laughing. Which was not fair at all, because Sherlock had been holding it together so very well until now, but as soon as he realised the other man's state, all dams broke open for him as well and a series of low giggles bubbled up. They spend a good minute just laughing stupidly side by side, their shoulders bumping into each other and their laughter echoing off the too-empty walls.

"What the hell is even going on here, Sherlock?", the other man managed to gasp between giggles. "As far as I know, I have just been kidnapped to a level of the city that does not even officially exist. Where the hell are we?"

He did not sound particularly intimidated or scared by the situation, just mildly perturbed ... which was good. All good. All as it should be. "I assume we are in the palace", Sherlock explained with a hoarse voice.

"What?"

"The palace. We are on level 9, but right below the palace proper. Therefore I assume that this is an extension of the royal quarters and that Mycroft wants us to take a case that has some royal implications."

As the laughter slowly died down, he could feel John's incredulous stare against the side of his face. "Seriously? The palace?" He looked around the room with arched eyebrows. "So does your brother live here alone or does he share with all of his goons?"

More breathless laughter followed and it was warm and comfortable and familiar, regardless of their cold surroundings somewhere far below the rest of the city.

John looked down at himself. "Well, at least I put on my very best shorts for my first visit to the bloody palace."

Sherlock followed his gaze and shuddered theatrically. "I hope these are your only pair of shorts?"

"They sure are!", the doctor declared cheerily.

"Maybe you should have opted for jeans instead, it is a bit chilly in here, don't you think?", Sherlock nodded in the direction of the sleek and gleaming climatiser on the table in front of them.

John gave his bedsheet another long once over. "Oh, you would know, wouldn't you? What, are you getting frostbite in unfortunate places?"

The laughter that followed the question was loud enough to drown out the heavier pair of approaching steps until it was too late. "I usually try to work under the assumption that the two of you are fully grown adults but every meeting makes me question this anew." Mycroft had walked in, with a distinctly sour expression, not too unlike that one time that he had bitten into a cupcake with coriander-flavoured buttercream - one of Sherlock's favourite experiments growing up.

Sherlock made no effort trying to hide the grin that this memory evoked and his brother's demeanour darkened even further. Beside him, John just shrugged goodnaturedly. "On our first visit to the palace, I am wearing a 10-year-old pair of cargo shorts and he is wearing a sheet! What else is there to know?"

"Not my first time in the palace", Sherlock corrected nonchalantly, earning him an astonished stare from his friend. "But his point stands. The shorts are hideous!"

"Well, I won't insult your sheet, because I know for a fact that it wasn't bought by you but by Mrs Hudson."

Mycroft approached, regaining his composure step by step. "And I would be forever grateful if you could exchange it ..." He picked up the neatly folded suit insistently. "And change into some proper clothes ."

Sherlock bristled at the command, gathering whatever dignity he was able to pull around himself when dressed in nothing but a bed sheet. "Why would I?"

He derived great joy from his brother's pained expression. He could basically hear Mycrofts jaw protest as the older man ground his teeth together. "I doubt that you would want to meet your new client dressed the way that you are."

"Do you know him at all?", muttered John right beside him, sending the corners of Sherlock's mouth twitching up once again and it was only with a great amount of self-control that he was able to prevent another fit of laughter.

"Excuse me?"

John gave him his most innocent smile. "I said, that I believe you are massively underestimating your brother's potential for contrariness", he replied sweetly, before folding his hands neatly in his lap. Mycrofts eyebrow twitched in response.

What followed was more snappily hissed back and forth and the introduction of Mycrofts acquaintance. Harry Baker was a thoroughly forgettable person with an obviously fake name and even worse taste in ties - and probably many years of experience working as an international spy, going by the state of his implant scars, his posture and the two guns hidden within his bland suit.

The introduction unfortunately ended with Sherlock almost getting unceremoniously disrobed by his clot of a brother, but at least he felt somewhat heartened by the fact that Mycroft would feel much more embarrassed about that display of childish quarrelling than Sherlock himself did at the moment. Mycroft really abhorred the public display of any emotion other than smugness.

Now Sherlock was begrudgingly back in his suit - a horrible match of shirt and jacket that had sent Mycrofts eye twitching yet again, but he had no one to blame but his own unfashionable agents.

John continued to smile mildly at the absurdity of the situation - there had been no change of clothes for him, which was a shame, but he embraced the cargo shorts like the stoic soldier that he was.

He was now cradling a cup of tea and staring at their client with polite interest.

"My employer would prefer for anything that is said here and now to be kept extremely private", Baker began. "Mycroft assured me that that would not be a problem and that there wouldn't be any records of this investigation ...", his gaze flickered to John. "digital or otherwise."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "This wouldn't be our first confidential case“, he informed him dispassionately. "And not every case proves interesting and detailed enough to warrant any documentation anyway. Though I still would prefer to meet my actual client in person."

The agent gave them a placid smile. "I am afraid they are not available for comment right now. They have a very busy life."

"I don't care for a comment, but I would appreciate the truth. And if not that, at least observing the lie with my own eyes would prove much more informative than hearing it told second-hand."

"I can assure you that I have been entrusted with all the ... relevant details." There was a slight twitch of the other man's nose, a hardening of his eyes. Disapproval. So the details might be a bit ... sordid. "And I have been assured that everything else can be handled anonymously."

Sherlock opened his mouth, ready to retort, but caught the icy stare of his brother and - with great reluctance - snapped his mouth shut once again. He hated cowering to Mycroft.

"I am certain that you will have more than enough information to work with. I am equally sure that if you really need to know more about the identity of your client, then you can simply observe what you have been presented with and draw your own conclusions. That way no one has to betray any promises."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him and his brother raised his eyebrows in challenge. Fine.

He snapped his gaze back to Baker, who had observed the stare-off with wry amusement, not betraying any thought, even under Sherlock's scrutiny. He was probably used to Mycroft's methods and highly trained on top of that. Probably a retired agent of the state agency, but it could only have been a couple of years since he stepped down from active duty considering that he still seemed to be in decent enough shape. Sherlock sniffed. If that was how they wanted to play that game then he was ready to do the same.

"A member of the royal family, pretty high in the pecking order, given that their assigned minder is a senior official and ex-agent." No reaction on the agent's face. "This is not your client's first run-in with scandal, probably a drug problem as a teenager or young adult, but you managed to keep it quiet enough, though I am sure there always was some public speculation on the matter."

Still no visible reaction, only a plain: "And we would very much like to keep it that way, Mr Holmes. I am sure you can understand the need for discretion when it comes to addiction." Next to him, John sat up a little bit straighter, a furrow appearing between his brows.

"So the drugs are not the acute problem. An affair then, most likely going beyond what the general public would deem ... vanilla." A boring problem in the grand scheme of things, but that did not come as much of a surprise considering who Sherlock was dealing with. The British crown, an institution that had been just one scandal away from dismantlement for the better part of a century now and that just could not risk any of its members appearing even remotely human and fallible.

That, and the higher-ups were just a little too fond of dramatic obfuscation and unnecessary secrecy - exhibit one: this meeting. He sighed again. "A young woman going by your age and the smell of perfume that clings to your suit very faintly. Beloved enough by the public that it was decided to sweep her faux pas under the rug instead of letting her take the fall as a scapegoat for any general unhappiness with the crown."

"Splendid! Now that you have had your fun ...", Mycroft began impatiently.

"It's Princess Aurelia then?" A hushed silence filled the room, as everyone turned around to John - who took another slow sip of tea before setting the cup onto its saucer. "At least that's what I assume going by Sherlock's description. Of course I wouldn't want for you to confirm or deny, it is a secret after all."

Sherlock gave him an empty stare. The name did not ring a bell but that did not come as much of a surprise - he really did not follow royal gossip - John though?

John's eyes met his and when the confusion on Sherlock's face did not clear up he added: "The Crown Princess having an affair, that would be dicey news indeed." Still no recognition even though Sherlock really tried to follow along. John gave him a look of mostly fond despair. "Didn't she just have her happy fairytale wedding to Prince Albert a year ago?"

Finally, Sherlock's thoughts caught up to his ears. Beloved Princess, next in the line of succession, big public wedding not too long ago - extramarrital affair that definitely would not go down well with the public. He had to suppress his delight at John's observations and instead schooled his features into a more neutral expression. "Clearly their marriage is not quite as happy as they would like to make the public believe."

John leaned forward to place his cup on the table in front of them and bumped his shoulder into Sherlock's on the way back up, a small smile playing around his lips.

Mycroft let out a sigh. "Now that this is out of the way, may we return to the actual business at hand?" He exchanged a quick glance with Baker before pulling a tablet out of a briefcase and sliding it over to Sherlock. "The matter that we would like to utilise your skills for is the retrieval of confidential documents as well as compromising photographs and video footage that has fallen into the wrong hands." He shot him a pointed look. Sherlock scowled but reluctantly closed his mouth against any protest as he accepted the sleek device.

While John had been surprisingly forgiving about the way that Sherlock had gambled with the secret military plans to get to Moriarty, Mycroft had been much less amused about their use as bait. His people had been able to successfully retrieve the data drive after the explosion and it did not look like it had been tampered with, but his brother had still made it abundantly clear to Sherlock - overtop of John's unconscious body in that blasted little grey hospital room - that several officials in high places were aware of Sherlock's blunder and not very happy with him at the moment. He had been sternly warned that he would do well to try and be on his best and most helpful behaviour for the time being if he wanted to avoid any retribution.

And while he was reasonably sure that there was little those slighted officials could do while he was kept safe by his brother's name and reluctant protection, he also did not want to strain the matter too much. Not now when he was truly happy with the state of things for the first time in what seemed like forever.

Sherlock clenched his jaw and looked down at the documents that were displayed on the screen. The picture of a pale woman, with dark hair and impeccable red lips. In one picture she wore a short evening dress, revealing a gleaming prosthetic arm and scarily high heels. In another she wore the crisp uniform of a military pilot, the name Irene Adler flashing on the digital display along the collar. She looked perfectly comfortable in both, neither her face nor her posture betraying any hints of who she really was. Deducing Agent Baker - or whatever his name really was - had been child play in comparison to this person. Her unreadableness was fascinating, even considering Sherlock's general disregard for any cases that came to him via his brother.

"I assume this is not my client?", he asked mildly, before starting to scroll down the page, tilting the device in John's direction as he did so.

"Indeed. This is Irene Adler, the other party to the unfortunate liaison that you so rightfully deduced", Baker explained. "We have been informed that she was able to acquire access to several classified documents during one of her meetings with my client in addition to the aforementioned compromising footage."

"Informed by whom?"

"By her. Miss Adler got in contact - via official channels this time - approximately a month after their last get-together and informed us of the existence of these documents."

"A blackmailing then, what is she demanding in exchange for the return of the documents?"

There was the first real hint of annoyance on the agent's face, a squint of the corners of his eyes, a downturn of his mouth. "Nothing. She has demanded nothing. She merely wanted to make known her possession of those documents and that - for now - she is not planning to release them unless it becomes necessary."

Sherlock sat up a bit straighter, leaning forward. "Not blackmail then ... a power play. This is for protection." He gave the grey official another hard stare. "Is there anything that she would need protection from then?"

The previous anger had already been snuffed out again, just sickening indifference in a forgettable face. "Nothing that we would know of."

Well, that was a blatant lie. But it was also clear that any further questioning on the matter would not bring them any closer to the solution. Sherlock would do better to investigate the matter via his own channels. So he moved on. "I assume there have been previous attempts to get the information back?"

Baker gave them a tight smile. "There has been a successful breech of her personal cloud storage but it appears that no copies of the data were stored anywhere with network accessibility. We therefore presume that she has a physical data drive hidden away somewhere and despite several attempts to find and retrieve it, we haven't been able to locate it as of now. That is where we are sure your specific set of skills will prove convenient." He leant back and picked up his until now untouched tea, clearly signalling that this should be more than enough to convince Sherlock to take the case.

The detective hesitated. There still was a lot left unspoken. Why would this woman – Adler - suddenly start threatening the British royal family? You did not go around and poke at people so high up the food chain in a country that could banish you to a prison camp on the surface under some bogus pretence of justice if you overdid it. No, chances were that she had a very good reason to do so and to do so now, a month after the affair had ended.

"Is this the first time she collected blackmail material like that?"

"No, Miss Adler has been well known in certain circles for her ... expensive taste in dates and how she likes to combine these with the acquisition of sensitive information", Mycroft acknowledged. "But this has been her most daring act so far and we hope to ensure that it is her last time accessing information that is not meant for her eyes."

Next to Sherlock, John's mouth drew into a thin line, a clear sign of his displeasure. Mycroft made it an art form to sound as menacing as possible and it was quite obvious that it was not going over well with Sherlock's roommate. No, this case definitely would warrant more independent research into what had really happened between Adler and the British government. At least this was shaping up to be a decent enough mystery if nothing else.

"So I assume she must be hiding out somewhere secure to have evaded all your ... enquiries so far", he drawled, having one last glance over the documents, before shutting down the tablet and passing it back to his brother. "But can you at least give us a hint where we can find her?"

He got a stale smile with entirely too many teeth. "Oh, more than a hint. She is in London. Residing very comfortably on Level 7 I believe."

Sherlock could not quite hide his surprise at that. Adler must be pretty confident in her position if she left herself so out in the open. But no use in speculating about it now ... maybe this investigation could benefit from a direct visit to their person of interest. No use delaying the confrontation.

He scooped up the crumpled bedsheet from the table in front of him and got to his feet. "Send me her address and anything else we need to know and I am sure I'll be in touch before the end of next week."

"You assume that you will have new information so quickly?"

He gave the agent his fakest smile, before turning towards the exit. "I am sure I will have eyes if not hands on your displaced documents by then." Behind him, John hurried off the sofa.

"I just want to remind you again that everything that was said here needs to remain out of the public outreach that surrounds your usual cases no matter what."

"Please rest assured that I do not run any danger of accidentally exposing all your secrets online - you know, the terrible affliction that I have to live with. Even my chronicler types his little stories completely the old-school way. Maybe you should consider doing the same with your documents from now on. Laters!"

Later in the car that was taking them back into the less dreary parts of the city, John stared out into the grey hellscape of level 9 with a shake of his head. "All this ridiculous posturing about a couple of pictures. People cheat all the time. I am not excusing it but all this was a bit much."

Sherlock gave his friend an amused side-eyed look. "Oh really? And here I thought you would be more sympathetic to their conflict."

He got a confused frown back. "What? Why?"

"I knew about Mrs Hudson and your obsession with reality TV but I did not take you for an avid follower of royal gossip. What was her name again? Aurora?"

The other man let out a sudden bark of laughter, looking back out of the window for a moment. "Aurelia. And I did not know much more about her than her name before now. I looked her up while you were describing the situation. There were really only a very limited number of people who could fit your descriptors."

Sherlock stared at him in wonder. "You just looked it up online?"

"Of course. I may be typing my stories the old-school way but I do know how to operate a search engine."

The car approached one of the lifts in the outer walls. Sleek and metallic grey and about as cold and unwelcoming as everything else down here.

"So what's next?", asked John after a short moment of silence. "Are we just going to drop by this Miss Adler and see if she has a data drive labelled 'top-secret, don't touch' lying around on the coffee table?"

"It might need a bit more sophistication than that. I was thinking about coming up with a little bit of a disguise for the occasion. But other than that, it all depends on your plans for tomorrow."

"My plans? How so?"

Sherlock suddenly felt a spike of anxiety at the thought that John might choose to do something different with his day. "Well, are you going to attempt another date with Emma in one of the sweltering parks of the city or are you joining me on the data drive hunt?"

John's face fell at the mention of the date before drawing into a complicated frown. Clearly he had forgotten about his earlier plans after the much more intriguing events that had followed.

"I reckon it might be a bit late to go back to the park now", he pondered slowly, as they drew into the lift cabin, surrounded by quiet darkness. "And I probably need to apologize for my weird departure today - a lot. And maybe assure her that I wasn’t really kidnapped – much. I’ll call her later today and see if she maybe has some free time on the weekend. So whatever you got planned for tomorrow I should be able to join." He winced. "While I am happy to get back to the less secretive parts of London, I am not looking forward to the miserable heat up there." They could already feel the increase in temperature as cabin and car slowly inched upwards. "I am not sure what they do down here to keep things cool, but they really could spare some of it for the rest of us mere mortals."

Sherlock shifted the pile of bunched-up cotton sheets that was resting on his lap with a smirk of giddy anticipation. "As always you see - but you do not observe!"

"Oh really?"

"Yep!", he popped the p, before pulling one of the climatisers from the folds of the bedsheet. "I finally found us something to cool down Baker Street a bit!"

John stared at the little metal disc for a couple of seconds before breaking out into loud laughter, listing sideways a bit until he was just shy of leaning against Sherlock's shoulder. The detective joined in the laughter, tossing the disc into the air once, before catching it and handing it off to the other man.

"I will - however - still wear whatever I deem most comfortable when I am within my own living room", he admonished playfully between the giggles.

His friend rolled his eyes. "So is that going to be your disguise for your meeting with Miss Adler tomorrow? Another round of the bedsheet toga?"

Sherlock genuinely contemplated the suggestion but ended up shaking his head. "No, I think I might need something different for that!"

\U.I.: Current time 16:57 {London}, 11:57 {Washington DC}, 22:27 {New Delhi}; Thursday the 7th of July, 2066.

User code: 03549α56, security level: DELTA

\U.I.: 65 urgent messages, 21 classed critical

"No offence meant, Mycroft, but your brother is about as insufferable as I expected." Harold had gotten to his feet as soon as their meeting had concluded and was now walking ahead through the maze of unchanging corridors of the royal offices. "But at least this meeting is out of the way now. Do you actually believe that he can manage what he promised?"

Mycroft gave the other man a perfectly pleasant little smile, while under his neutral facade, he bristled over the mans dismissive tone. "I believe that he stands about as much chance as any of the other agents that you have sent so far. Sherlock is good at what he does and she won’t expect his kind of methods."

That seemed good enough for the other agent. He gave a little nod and they stepped into a passenger lift that had just opened from what seemed to be a smooth metal surface to their right. As soon as the doors had closed behind them, the cabin plummeted downwards.

"I have been way too distracted by this whole affair over the last couple of weeks", the grey-haired agent complained. "You will have to update me on the status of our guest."

"Of course."

\U.I.: Status Update: J. Moriarty {alive}

→ Security level DELTA

→ latest check-up 16:15 (Dr R. Beckett)

→ Primary blast injuries to lung and abdomen, perforated ear drums, head trauma and eye damage, full thickness burns to >20% of total body surface area, extensive damage to periphery modifications

→ next surgery scheduled for 9th of July, 11:00 (Dr R. Beckett, Dr S. Thornhill)

"His status is mostly unchanged for now. The doctors are confident that he is recovering. For now, it has been deemed best for everyone involved to keep him under for as long as possible. The medical team agreed that it will take him several more weeks to recover sufficiently."

Baker nodded. "Certainly. However, this won't be an acceptable solution in the long run. We would like to see some progress on his front soon."

"I understand that."

\U.I.: Access granted to level GAMMA {User code: 03549α56}

→ Welcome, Mr Holmes!

The doors parted again and they stepped out into a corridor of metal and linoleum, their steps squeaking and echoing uncomfortably as they started to follow it further into the underbelly of level 9. "I still maintain that this is going to be a very risky undertaking. Our modification experts have been trying to gain access to his implants for months now, but to no avail. If anything he is even better at what he does than we initially assumed. Chances are high that we will not have any way of adequately containing him, once he has fully convalesced."

"But then again, the possibilities that his cooperation could grant us are practically infinite. Not only for domestic security but even in international matters!“

Mycroft had to work hard not to show his disdain at that declaration, Harold's hubris and grandeur oozing from every word. He had never been particularly fond of the other agent neither on a personal level nor on a political one, but as of late his pursuits for greatness were taking worrying directions. Sooner or later something would have to be done about that. Rather sooner if it was up to him.

\U.I.: incoming message from: Susan Ambrose

→ I will be joining your meeting forthwith. {end of message}

"That is if you can find a bargain that will be of enough interest to him to even consider cooperation. And even then he is just as likely to cross you."

"I am sure that as long as we can find something that will be sufficiently tempting to him, we will be able to work something out." They stepped through another automatic door into a new set of corridors that were filled with the stinging smell of antiseptic and a sweet cloying scent. There were more people around now, doctors and nurses in white and green uniforms who did not bat an eye at their entrance, instead walking past them without as much as a glance. They were well-advised to be absolute experts at discretion in this line of work.

"Well, as of now his injuries don't allow any negotiations regardless of our plans." Mycroft took the lead around a corner and towards a heavy set of doors, that was flanked by several heavily armed security agents. "He is just this way.“

\U.I.: Access granted to level DELTA {User code: 03549α56}

→ Welcome, Mr Holmes!

Despite her message, Ambrose was already waiting for them beyond the door. Her hands were crossed behind her back and her pale blond hair had been slicked back into a neat bun. She gave both of them a cold smile, before turning back to the other occupant of the room.

He was hidden behind several layers of see-through plastic, covered beyond all recognition in bandages, metallic mesh compressions and blankets, and only accessible through robotic arms that were placed all along the hospital bed. The patient's vitals, treatment plans and drug regimens were blinking in the air above them.

"Have you finished your meeting with the younger Mr Holmes?"

"Yes. We will see if he can prove himself more useful now. He seemed fairly confident so far." Harold's smug disbelief was radiating off of him.

"Splendid. We will have to wait and see how he fares. And if he does not succeed, we might consider recruiting Miss Adler permanently for the project. Dr Oliver has been pushing for that for a while now."

"Yes, he told me that a close genetic relative might indeed prove very interesting for his work. Of course, compared to Mr Moriarty she will probably prove insignificant in the grand scheme of things", Mycrofts fellow agent added, still a tad too eagerly for his liking. "If we can get our hands on the Fairy Godmother ... Adler would be only one of many problems that could be solved within seconds."

"Ah yes. Are we sure by now that Moriarty's network did not exaggerate the potential of his code?", Ambrose's eyes were back on the patient.

"Even if it can only do a tenth of what was promised it would be a crucial building block for our security strategies of the next 20 years at the very least."

"But going by our current intel, there won't be any way to access it without Mr Moriarty's explicit consent. And it is highly unlikely that he would lower himself to any true cooperation with the government."

\U.I.: incoming message from: A.

→ S.H. and J.W. have arrived at Baker Street. {end of message}

Ambrose nodded benignly at both their objections. "I understand your caution, Mycroft and it is good to have a voice of reason, especially when facing a tempting opportunity like this. But I am also certain that we will be able to work out a compromise that works for both him and the government. Concessions will have to be made on both sides but I am sure we will able to come out on top, especially considering where we have him at the moment. The ball is in our court. This is an unprecedented opportunity gentlemen, maybe something good will come out of your brother's impulsiveness after all, Mycroft."

They watched as somewhere buried beneath bandages, wires and tubes a chest continued to rise and fall.

Mycroft stamped down on the squirming tendril of unease and doubt, buried it deep inside himself and remained perfectly silent and still.

\U.I.: incoming message from: A.

→ Your brother nicked a climatiser. {end of message}

For now, all they could do was indeed to wait and see.

Chapter Text

It felt like plummeting to the ground from the highest point of level 4 all the way to the lowest bunker of level 9. One moment Sherlock was soaring high, elated by the feeling of having solved a case within just a couple of hours, the adrenaline of the victorious fight with those blasted foreign agents still thrumming through his veins. And in the next blink, there was a barely perceptible piercing sensation to the junction of his neck and shoulder, a cold rush and suddenly his world tilted sideways, the room around him bleeding into a white and beige smear as his legs suddenly refused to hold him up.

Cool metal fingers took hold of his shoulder, guiding him toward the floor gradually, until he lay slumped on the cold wood, reeling, trying to figure out what had just happened.

“No offence, but if you and Jim could have waited just a couple more weeks before blowing each other up, then all my problems would have been solved by now.” The fingers wandered down now until they closed around the memory stick in Sherlock's unresisting fingers. “I understand that this wasn’t exactly your call to make, but still it was very inconvenient to lose my most trusted tech support this far into my mission.”

The drive was gone. Just plucked away. Poof. Sherlock flexed his empty fingers. He was trying to keep his eyes open, even though the world still swam violently in front of him. It was almost impossible to keep a steady gaze on Adler, her delicately painted features blurring and stretching.

“I will have to remember the trick with the fire alarm, though. That might come in useful in my line of business.” She probably winked. It sounded like something that she would wink at. Or maybe that was just himself. “And you can assure Her Royal Highness that I have no actual interest in becoming the new consort of the kingdom. Kate and I are quite happy together and only occasionally invite guests into our relationship. Her secrets will be safe with me as long as her goons keep out of mine.”

All he could see now was the blood red of her lips and the dark halo of her ebony hair against the pale ceiling and walls ... she was shaking - or maybe his vision was shaking. Same, same. He blinked and blinked again and the overhead lights blinked and sparkled back in time with his heartbeat, trembling with the sound of her chuckle. And then she suddenly was all close-up again, looming over him imposingly. He flinched back, his head slamming into the floorboards as he did so.

The hands were back, one warm and skin-covered, the other cooler and with less give. Patting down his pockets, ... retrieving something - right trouser pocket, kind of heavy against his side until it suddenly was not … - his phone!

And that was just not fair, was it? He needed his phone. It was his favourite one, too.

He made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat and tried to make a grab for it as it floated away, but all that his muscles allowed was a bit of uncoordinated flailing, his arms just kind of flopping about. Not fair, and embarrassing on top. The phone moved up, up, way out of his range.

“Don’t pout, you will have it back in no time. I just want to keep in touch.”

He frowned. He did not pout, never. And neither did he want to keep in touch. He did not like being touched. Not by her at least ... not by most. Some people were somewhat more tolerable than others ...

His head lolled to the other side and he dazedly stared at a dark brown square blob within his swimming vision of broad white walls ...

Window?

No, door.

John!

He needed to warn him. John really would not like this kind of drugged state ... He did not like drugs or disorientation. Whatever this was, it was not like anything that Sherlock had taken before. Not nearly as fun or relaxing. This was stressful and muddling and downright nasty.

Right, John! He needed to keep focussed, needed to warn the other man before his return. But how? A phone would be useful for this ... he tried to fumble for the one in his pocket, but it felt awfully empty ... right. The woman had stolen it. The woman woman.

“That I am. Hush now.”

He pouted. Usually, he carried more than one phone. There must be at least one other one, he just had to find it. Probably hidden in some other pocket. He really had too many of those, he decided woozily. Pockets. Who needed that many of those anyway? A hand patted his searching fingers, guiding them back to his side, and he was too weak to resist.

More unnecessary touching - he tried to growl his disapproval but was not quite sure what actually came out.

“Don’t get so worked up about this. Your John is quite safe from me. I have everything that I need from you for now. But it was a lot of fun to finally meet, Sherlock Holmes.”

There was a click - the swish of a door and a clattering sound. Metal on wood. It reverberated through the floorboards right to Sherlock’s ears. “What?”

That was John. There was no need trying to warn him now at least. John would know what to do. He always did. At least with most practical matters. And when interacting with people. John was good with people and Adler was a people - a person. A woman woman.

“Oh, don’t look so terribly alarmed. He will be a bit out of it for a couple of hours, but if you let him sleep it off, he will be right as rain by tomorrow. Especially under the observation of an attentive doctor like yourself.” Another almost audible wink, then quick steps getting closer and two warm hands pressing into Sherlock’s shoulder, grabbing onto his wrist. “And please tell dear Harold to go fuck himself and not in a fun way! He will know what for.”

The world continued to spin around in circles, stretching and shrinking in a nauseating fashion. He felt his eyes moving with the imagined motion, almost as if they had a life of their own. The familiar hand wandered from his wrist to his cheeks, warm and steady, before fingers gently tugged at one of his eyelids. He let out a disgruntled sound. There was the vague shape of a face, a familiar face, swimming in front of him. John. He hummed and allowed his eyes to slide shut again.

“What did you give him?”

The question was uttered in a controlled and quiet tone, but there was a threat of tightly repressed violence lurking under the unassuming words.

There was no answer, only slow steps not too far off. That was foolish, Sherlock decided. John really did not like being ignored like that. There was an unamused snort next to him. A tense sound. The warm hand was now resting against Sherlock’s shoulder, almost directly over the mark of the syringe, still radiating a phantom sting.

“If you ever need a recommendation for an expert in prosthesis and exoskeleton engineering, Doctor Watson, please reach out. I know someone who does great work and has remarkably fair prizes. She has done stuff for both Kate and me.”

Sherlock was not quite sure if the tone was mocking or not. It was difficult to concentrate on nuances right now. The wood underneath him felt like jelly.

“No offence, Miss Adler, but kindly go to hell!” He wanted to smile at John’s angry snark, but it did not feel like his facial muscles would cooperate if he tried. And he did not want to look foolish - or even more foolish, at least.

“None taken. And it is Mrs Adler, actually. We just haven’t got around to ring shopping yet. Very busy times.” The sharp, high-heeled steps drew closer again. “I would love to keep talking, but I really need to get going. I am sure we will meet again at some point. Be careful, I think some of these brutes are about to wake up.” There was a dull thudding sound. “There, now they should stay down until your backup is here!”

The steps got fainter and fainter. Sherlock strained his ears, trying to follow them through the room, then through the house. It was a weird feeling as if drifting away or flying off. He wondered if he would be able to just follow the noise indefinitely with the aid of the right implants. What was the limit? And how could anyone stand having to hear everything around them? It sounded exhausting.

Insistent fingers tapped against his cheek, and he wrenched himself back into the here and now.

“Sherlock? Are you still with me?”

Where else would he be ... If he tried to walk away right now, he would just fall straight on his face and that would be mortifying.

Time continued to feel weirdly elastic. The air around him was warm and stuffy and he felt sweat gather on his forehead and along his collar. There was a stretch of silence, only interrupted by John’s soft voice as he continued to speak to him. A continuous murmur that just washed over him and the occasional sharp insistence for Sherlock to stay awake for just a little longer. At some point, something soft was placed under his cheek and the top button of his shirt was undone. And through all of this, dry warm fingers remained pressed against the inside of his wrist, a steady, reassuring touch.

He only snapped fully back into reality to the sound of shouting and clanging and heavy steps. The floor under him trembled with the fall of heavy boots and he groaned, annoyed at the disturbance. The noise crescendoed until the entire room seemed to be vibrating with it. Then the voices finally returned to a more tolerable level and Sherlock let out a sigh of relief at the blessed stillness.

“What did he manage to do to himself this time?” A familiar voice asked in an exasperated tone, causing Sherlock to frown into his makeshift pillow. This was not his own fault, at least not entirely.

“He is actually telling the truth.” John squeezed his wrist before letting go. “Our suspect injected him with who-knows-what.” He did not sound pleased. Sherlock immediately missed his friend’s touch. He did not appreciate being left alone, not while the floor under him continued to sway dangerously. That sensation got even worse when suddenly firm hands took hold of his shoulders and began heaving him upright.

He tried to voice his discontent, but what actually came out sounded mostly like a startled squawk. After a lot of nauseating back and forth, he was barely standing on his own two feet, with his legs feeling much more heavy and gangly than they had ever before. He was leaning heavily against someone else’s shoulder ... not John. This person was too tall to be John. He could feel himself swaying, his body and limbs feeling wrong and clunky ... misshapen. Nothing more than an unwieldy piece of luggage that was struggling to stay upright ... maybe a contrabass, that would be a good shape for him, a familiar shape. He would enjoy being a bass, even though he personally preferred the violin.

The shoulder that he was leaning against smelled like sweat, coffee, cigarettes and biscuits ... Lestrade then - what’s his name? Gordon? George?

“You really are completely out of it, aren’t you?” The voice sounded fonder now, no longer accusatory. Sherlock preferred it this way. He did not like it when Lestrade thought he was high again. He was clean, had been for years. So he hummed into the shoulder and the sound had his ribs and his throat vibrating ... just like a bass, a warm, lanky, human double bass. The person connected to the shoulder chuckled.

A second set of shoulders appeared ... lower, so this must be John, then. Good, he had wondered where his friend had vanished to. And then they were moving, Sherlock’s arms thrown haphazardly over two sets of uneven shoulders, his slow feet struggling and flailing to follow their pace. They eventually reached the street, the air out here humid against his skin, the faint sound of traffic and occasional snippets of quiet conversations filling his ears. A few steps away, somebody laughed. Rude.

He was unceremoniously folded into some sort of compartment, immediately slipping sideways until he was lying with his face pressed uncomfortably into stinky upholstery. The odour of sweat, tobacco and a barely noticeable metallic note wafted up into his wrinkled-up nose. And over it all hovered the almost overwhelming stench of some sort of disinfectant ... Behind him, a door was slammed shut. This was not how you should treat a contrabass!

Another door opened on the other side and he found himself lifted just enough so that he could now sit slumped against a familiar shoulder and a reassuring hand returned to close around his wrist.

“I cannot stop you from taking any videos, but if I catch wind of it being shared around the office the same way that my writing is, then I will put a few of your most embarrassing drunk escapades into my next story. Like the one night on the anniversary of your divorce.” There was a threat in there somewhere, but Sherlock had trouble placing who it was meant for. It could not have been meant for him. He was pretty sure that he was not divorced.

The fingers squeezed around his wrist once. All was well.

Getting out of the car and up to the flat after was an even worse ordeal than getting to the car in the first place. Sherlock was drifting in and out for most of it. He tried to give some helpful advice when they were struggling up the stairs, but was largely ignored. Rude. He forgot all about the frustrating journey when he was suddenly surrounded by the smells and sounds and colours of home. He even struggled to pry his eyes open just to take it all in, to finally feel utterly safe and at ease. His vision was still blurry and shaky, but he did not need his eyes to know his way around Baker Street.

“Alright, let’s get you to bed.” Hands were prying him out of his suit jacket. They were the wrong ones, but he tolerated them begrudgingly. Then he was pushed further into the flat, past the sharp smell of one of his experiments in the kitchen - he really needed to check up on that soon ...

“But not now! Come on, just a few more steps.”

And then he was dragged through even more doors ...

“There you go!”

The good hands were back. John supported him on his slow fall as he was tipped forward until his cheek hit cool, soft cotton. A hand patted his shoulder and he sighed into his pillow contentedly.

“I will be off now. Just text me once he is back to normal, I guess?”

They listened to the sound of Lestrade’s steps leaving 221B. Sherlock felt very heavy, almost too heavy. Should a bass feel like it was made of lead? Maybe he was something else altogether after all. He could not remember the bed ever feeling that soft - granted, he rarely spent much time asleep in it - but it felt so soft that it could almost swallow him whole. It was not a nice feeling. He did decidedly not want to get eaten by the mattress.

Next to him, John was fussing. Sure fingers were checking his pulse again, even going so far as to check his eyes once more, which Sherlock answered with a muttered curse. Ridiculous behaviour.

“Oh, I am being ridiculous?” There was a hint of laughter in John’s voice. “You do get yourself into the most bizarre of situations, but when I make sure that you are still alive, then I am the ridiculous one.”

Sherlock was being chided, but gently. He felt like rolling his eyes at that, but they had already slid shut again. Which was odd, since he had not told them to.

“I am pretty sure there is not much we can do to get you through this any faster, unless you want me to ask your brother for help.”

Absolutely not. Anyone but Mycroft.

“Thought so. So I guess you’ll just have to sleep this off.”

He was pulled onto his side and found himself on the receiving end of yet another encouraging shoulder pat. The room around him was thick and humid and the air tasted stale. “I will come to check up on you later. If you need anything, just shout.”

No, that was not right. He really did not want for John to leave. Not now. The world was still spinning and it was too warm and the bed was trying to eat him ... and he felt so very heavy and slow and a bit stupid. It felt like there was a real chance that he may never wake up again, if he were to let go now.

“Hey now, don’t worry. You are going to be alright. I’ll make sure of that!” The hand came in again, presumably for another encouraging pat to Sherlock’s side, but this time he was prepared to strike into action. He wound his fingers around the unresisting wrist, determined not to let go. Better safe than sorry. And John did not shake the hold off - even though he probably could have.

Instead, there was a deep sigh and a tired chuckle. The mattress next to Sherlock dipped down - great, now they would both be eaten by the bed - and his hand was pulled sideways until it rested securely in John’s lap. That was fine, great even. John could have it. It was only his left hand anyway, he probably could get around just using his right.

There was another fond chuckle above him. “I will give it back, I promise.”

They continued sitting in warm silence, listening to the sounds of the street outside the window, quiet voices downstairs, a barely audible mechanic whirring and John’s deep calming breaths.

“This case certainly took a bit of a turn,” John mused quietly beside him, his voice sounding far, far away. Sherlock had to fight to stay awake so that he could continue listening to the other man’s words. It would not do to miss a single one of them. “And to think that 24 hours ago I was only expecting a lazy afternoon on some dried-out lawn with Emma and about half of London’s population, drinking cheap synthetic wine and sweating into those ridiculous shorts.”

Sherlock snorted into the pillow. Oh yes, the shorts were atrocious. Appalling. Alarming. Offensive to any sense of fashion decency. Maybe he should prepare to accidentally burn them during one of his future experiments.

“I will pretend I did not hear that.” Sherlock let out another disbelieving grunt. John was a godawful actor. “Wait, is that what happened with my brown jumper?”

Sherlock ignored him, instead thinking sluggishly back at what John had said before mentioning those barbaric shorts. He would have gone on a date with Emma, drinking horrible wine and hating every second of it. Sherlock was certain of that much.

The sterile uniformity of underground parks was too far removed from any real nature overground to bring his friend any comfort. There would have been way too many people in a wide open space, being loud and annoying and obnoxiously drunk. John would have been on edge the entire time, maybe without fully realising it. He had been somewhat blown up just a few months ago. You could not just shake off an experience like that. They both knew all the ugly aspects and dangers of the city.

But Emma ... Emma did not know any of that. Sherlock flexed his fingers, as they were still being loosely held in Johns. She had got spooked by the explosion in the cistern and John’s injuries - to be fair, most normal people would have got spooked by that - but that was the problem, that was why normal people were so boring and difficult to deal with. Emma would think that the explosion had been an outlier, that it had been a one-off thing. But it was not and it would not be. And while she would initially try to keep a brave face about it, it would fester and annoy and maybe at some point truly anger her.

And there was going to be another explosion sometime in the near future. Not an explosion explosion. But emotions and hurt feelings and frustration bubbling over like a pot of milk ... No, more like the delayed boiling of acid in a test tube. All ugly and stinky and violent. And it was going to cause burns and marks and scars on everything around it. Which was not fair. Not to John and maybe not even to Emma, no matter how boringly normal she was.

The space next to Sherlock had grown still. He was not even sure if John was still there ... or if Sherlock himself was still there. Maybe the bed had eventually eaten one or both of them after all. Pity. And a bit rude.

John could not see the emotional explosion coming because he liked having both options a little too much. The adventure and the thrill and the risk of serious bodily harm as well as cosy evenings with tea and a boring job at a boring surgery with normal colleagues and drinks with friends after hours. What he needed was someone who could do both, too. Not someone who would start resenting John for seeking out the kinds of adventures that kept him away from the slow rot of monotonous boredom and eventual depression ... and worse.

The room was quiet except for the steady white noise of the street in front of the window and Sherlock could feel himself slowly drifting away.

“I hate how you can be so damn right about things, even when you are high as a kite.” John’s soft voice, still sitting beside him. Gentle fingers were stroking along his wrist. And even quieter: “I should just marry you and be done with it.”

Of course Sherlock was right, he was always right. He sniffled into his pillow. The pull of the bed became even stronger, and he eventually allowed himself to be lulled in, pulled under. It no longer felt like being eaten by memory foam. No. Instead he just sort of melted into the mattress, just one heavy - warm - tired clump of vaguely human-shaped matter. But always watched, always watched over by John. Just don’t leave, he pleaded into the pillow.

His fingers were squeezed gently. “I won’t.”

And he didn’t.

---

\U.I.: Current time 12:01, Friday the 15th of July, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 501 credits

7 available software upgrades.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Harry Watson

→ For real, John?!

→ I am not even angry, just disappointed.

→ She is such a great woman!

John stared at the blank grey ceiling for a couple of deeply exasperated moments, while his sister’s accusatory messages continued to blink insistently in his line of sight.

← Oh, come on.

← You’re one to talk.

← I really wanted this to work out for us, but it just really didn’t.

There was a ping from the direction of the door and a small nervous figure with short, dark hair entered the consulting room. The person paused at the door and coughed noisily into the corner of his elbow, before hesitantly raising his gaze to meet John’s.

He sighed internally. Mr Henderson was one of his regulars at the surgery. A guy in his late forties, working long hours in construction and with little to no money to take care of all the damage that working heavy physical labour since being a teenager would wreak on even the fittest of bodies. While he had never asked for details, John was pretty sure that the man was involved in the repair works of the damage done to the cistern and the levels below it. The clinic had seen an unfortunate influx of construction and maintenance workers who were coming in with severe back problems, days-old concussions and broken or sprained bones after working technically illegal extra hours in the locked-off areas on levels 4 or 3. It was pretty devastating to observe.

→ Are you really sure that you even tried?

→ From what I’ve heard, you had to suddenly drop out of at least half of your dates.

→ And that’s not counting the one time that you ended up in hospital.

He gave the man a reassuring smile and got up from behind his little desk. “Mr Henderson! Is the knee acting up again?”

“Ah, not the knee, this time,” the older man rasped. “I got a strongly worded notice that I need to get my vaccine up-to-date or they are going to fine me.”

That was actually good news for once, at least going by the cases that they usually treated up here. “Well, then this should be done in no time. Let me quickly check which ones you’ll be needing and I can get you out of here in a couple of minutes.”

The other man grimaced. “Are you sure you cannot just ... you know, tick the right box so that they’ll leave me be?”

John shook his head with a rueful grin. “Oh, I can do that - after I have given you the vaccines. It’s no good risking my licence over something like that and even beyond that -” He gave his patient a somewhat sterner look, one of the looks that he had perfected through months of cohabitation with Sherlock Holmes. “We are all living packed like sardines in a big concrete box, buried underground and with most of our air being recycled through a filter system that probably should have got a complete overhaul at least 10 years ago. I personally am a big proponent of vaccines, if just to make my workload somewhat manageable.” The other man winced and looked away at the rebuke.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Harry Watson

→ Your dating track record really is a mess, John.

→ I’ve seen you charm anyone who was even remotely into guys while you were still at school. I don’t know how you have grown so bad at this.

He ignored the steadily incoming messages and instead started looking through Mr Henderson’s medical records. There were only a few overdue boosters, so this really should be an easy enough issue to resolve.

“And besides that, this is one of the few treatments that we actually get fully covered by government funds. Which is a minor miracle by itself.”

John’s patient sighed but agreed reluctantly. “If there’s no way around it, I guess.” He hesitated for a moment. “A mate of mine, Leon Kearney mentioned that you could help him with his breathing issues. I’ve had this really bad cough for weeks now, ever since my team changed to this new location on level 3.”

So this would be a bit of a longer consultation, after all. John gestured for the other man to continue his description of the breathing troubles while he began preparing the necessary vaccines.

→ And I am going to keep writing with Emma, just so you know.

→ If you cannot appreciate her, that’s on you.

← Please do, if that makes you happy.

← Our investigations are very unpredictable, but you are right. It wasn’t fair to her. That’s why I wanted to break up.

← Now please stop spamming, I am at work.

Besides the quick booster shots, there was little that he could do for Mr Henderson in the end, other than promising him that they would try to get him an appointment with a pulmonologist if the lung problems did not get any better. The clinic's newest volunteer, Nemo, was a kid who was barely out of school but wielded their snarky politeness like a martial weapon. Within their first week, they had proven astonishingly good at contacting other doctors in the posher parts of the city and sweet-talking them into taking on one or two cases for a fraction of their usual fees. But while John rationally knew that this could at least make some difference in Mr Henderson’s life, he still felt pretty useless, as he began disposing of the needles that he had just used.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Harry Watson

→ Actual work or detective work?

→ But really, I mean it, John. You have to work on your priorities if you ever want to make it past the first weeks of dating.

He allowed himself an annoyed grimace while he was facing away from his patient. If there was one person in England who had no business lecturing him about his failed past relationships, then that would have to be his sister.

← Thank you so much. If I had actually asked you for relationship advice, I would have been absolutely delighted by your message.

→ Just telling you how it is.

→ You know I am not a big fan of Sherlock so it would be easy to claim that he is the one driving away all your dates - but I don’t actually think he is the problem here.

“We will get in touch with you as soon as we hear back from the specialist and if you have any bad trouble with your arm tomorrow because of the vaccines, just send us a message and we can arrange a sick note for a day or two.”

His patient gave him a wry grin. They both knew that the man probably would not even call in sick if the arm were to fall right off overnight. He needed the money, and he needed the overtime, just like everyone else up here.

→ He expects you to just drop everything if he asks for your help, which is one thing, but it wouldn’t actually make any difference to your relationships if you were not happy to do exactly as he tells you every single time.

“Thanks for the help, doctor. Have a nice afternoon.”

“Same to you! Take care, Mr Henderson!”

→ And don’t get angry with me, just because you cannot acknowledge it’s the truth.

The door closed and he allowed himself to sink back into his chair and pressed the heels of his hands into his tired eyes. Harry’s snarky messages seamlessly switched to nightmode.

← Listen, I really am working at the clinic right now. Talk to you later.

→ Sure, take care.

There was the faint sound of knuckles against the door, followed by the click of the handle. He glanced up reluctantly overtop of his fingers, just to spot Sarah, as she was peering in on him through the cracked door.

“Have you finished with your patient?”

He nodded. He had no illusions about why Sarah was dropping in on him now. And indeed ...

She entered the room fully, doing her best to give him a somewhat solemn look, even though there still was the remnant of a grin tugging at her lips.

He sighed. “Alright, have at it.”

Her face moved through several stages of amusement, pity and eventually ended at mild exasperation. “Ah, no need, I think. I can see that Harry got to you first. And at least you did not break up with Emma over text message or something.”

He glanced up at her with an offended grimace. “Please, I am not that bad.”

She shrugged. “No, you are not. But I am obligated to be just a little more on her side than on yours. Just letting you know. With both of us sharing the same ex-boyfriend now and all that. And I knew her way before I ever met you.” Her expression lightened. “Lunch?”

“Sure.”

“I really don’t think there was any way that we were going to work out in the long run”, he lamented to his boss a couple of minutes later over a soggy sandwich and a lukewarm horrible tea from the break room coffee machine.

“No, you would have needed to want to change something about the relationship for it to have worked,” Sarah countered unimpressed over the rim of her coffee.

He gave her a hurt look, somewhat taken aback by her bluntness. He expected this kind of directness from Sherlock or his sister, but not necessarily from her.

“Hey, I am just saying it how it is.” Her eyes softened. “And I am not saying that you were obligated to change anything. It takes a lot of work and hard choices to maintain a relationship. There are always concessions and compromises involved, and if you are not willing to make those, it might just be another sign that it was not meant to be.” She sighed. “I really thought it could work, you know. I wouldn’t have tried to set you two up otherwise. Emma has always been a bit more adventurous and curious than me. But also ... back when we two were dating, you maybe got yourself kidnapped or beaten up a little, not ... whatever happened to you to land you in the hospital for weeks.”

“Well, there was still quite a bit of gnarly fighting even back then.” He scrunched up his nose. “And this really spooky hallucination with the rats.”

She shuddered, staring down at the remnants of her lunch with dismay. “Oh yeah, I think I was kind of trying to forget about that one. Maybe I was being a bit too optimistic.” She poked around for some wilted lettuce with her plastic fork. “So, what brought on the change of heart for you? Why break up now?”

John thought back at Sherlock, drugged up to the heavens and flopping around in his bedsheets like a human-sized jellyfish. One minute he was mumbling groggily into his pillows that his bed was trying to eat him and in the next moment he was monologuing with a slurred voice about how John and Emma could never work out. It had been quite jarring to witness when you were used to Sherlock's usually so sharp mind and biting tongue.

From what he could tell, Sherlock had no recollection of that afternoon - which was probably for the best anyway - and so John had decided to leave the other man be. But the incoherent words had still hit a sore point within him and after several days of pondering over it, he had finally decided to break things off with Emma after all.

But there was no way that he could ever tell anyone that, least of all Sarah, so he tried to deflect to the best of his abilities.

“Well, I think it was kind of obvious for a while now, how our priorities did not really match,” he began haltingly. “I think it just dawned on me that it wasn’t really fair for either of us to just pretend everything was going well when it really wasn’t.”

Sarah’s eyebrows had crept far, far up on her forehead as she gave him her most sceptical stare. Well, Sherlock never grew tired of emphasising how John was an atrocious liar, so maybe he should have expected this reaction.

He decided to play things off casually and proceeded to grow very focused on his sorry excuse for a lunch sandwich until Sarah dropped the subject with another sigh.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Bill Murray

→ Hey! Sorry to hear about the breakup.

→ Are you still up for tonight?

← Yes, please!

After over a year of sharing a flat with Sherlock Holmes, John had grown quite accustomed to the near-constant ping of message notifications, the humming of vibrating smart gadgets and the frequent blinking of laptop, tablet, and phone screens practically all over the place. But during the last week, he had found out that a smartphone could get a hell of a lot more annoying if you programmed it to moan with every incoming message sent by a certain woman woman.

It had started the day after Sherlock had slept off his involuntary high and it had not stopped ever since. John had not thought it possible for his dislike for Irene Adler to grow even bigger, but he soon learned that he had been very wrong in that regard. What did she even have to message about? Sorry for injecting you with some mystery drug? Let’s meet again next week to beat up some more armed foreign agents together? What wedding band looks better, silver or gold?

John was in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge, looking for something quick to eat before leaving for the pub, while Sherlock sat hunched over one of his chemistry experiments, test tube holder in one hand, a blowtorch in the other. Somewhere underneath his slightly singed lab coat, the phone moaned.

“I never had much use for smartphones myself, but I am pretty certain that you can change the ring tones, you know!”

Sherlock’s eyes never left the bubbling brown liquid in the test tube as he spoke. “An astute observation. I will be sure to tell you if I ever get around to testing it.”

Another two moans, less than a second apart. It gave John some petty satisfaction that the sudden noise almost startled Sherlock into dropping his experiment. It was probably better for the integrity and safety of their kitchen that he did not, but it would have been very gratifying to watch, nonetheless.

“What is she even sending you all this time? This must have been easily the 20th time that she texted you this week!”

Sherlock muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘But who’s counting.’ More loudly he added: “If it would help your curiosity, I could ask her to add us all to a group chat. I am sure she would be absolutely delighted at the suggestion!”

John closed the fridge door with just a little too much force so that it sent some of the close by chemistry glassware rattling. “Please don’t.” He checked the time and cursed under his breath. “I need to get going!”

“Going? Where? It is not Thursday!”

Sherlock squinted over at his friend, eyebrows knitted together, the still flaming blowtorch adding a certain air of unhingedness to his appearance.

“Yes, and?”

“You usually meet with Lestrade for drinks on Thursdays,” Sherlock explained impatiently.

“Well, today I am meeting with Bill and some friends from the army who are on leave for the week”, John explained, while he began shrugging into the jacket that he was still borrowing from Murray. The sulphurous smell of burned hair filled the kitchen and Sherlock quickly yanked down the torch. “Please don’t blow up the flat again while I’m out. We finally got rid of the iodine smell.”

A distracted hum was his friend’s only response, but unfortunately his phone chose this exact moment to chime in with yet another lewd moan.

“For god’s sake! I am off!” He did not wait for an answer.

\U.I.: Active navigation to: The Three-eyed Sharpshoot, 10 Northumberland St, Level 6, London. [EXPAND] to view on the map.

There was plenty of shoulder clapping and hugging to go around when John finally made it to the pub. He had not seen most of these guys since his violent retirement from the overgrounds, after all. Murray was already there, as well as Mel Tindall, who had retired earlier this year and had come down from Sheffield to meet the others today. And then there were Ugonna, Dyers and - to John’s surprise - even Azadeh, who had grown out of her teenage face and was looking much more grown up and serious. That was until she cracked a wide smile when someone brought up John’s detective stories.

“I am not sure that there will be enough time during this leave, but I really have to meet this flatmate of yours sometime,” she exclaimed, while they pushed two tables together and began collecting drink orders.

John shot a disapproving glare in Murray’s direction, but the other man just shrugged without showing even a spark of remorse. “Well, what else can I do? People are asking after you and you are absolute shite at answering your messages in a timely manner.” There were plenty of solemn nods. “Plus, I occasionally need someone to rant at, whenever the two of you pull another one of your especially dangerous stunts and it cannot always be Josy.”

“Don’t bother, Captain,” interjected Ugonna, his big face a picture of earnest innocence. “Your stories are an absolute crowd favourite by now. There would be riots overground if you suddenly kept them to yourself.”

John let out a sigh and decided to let it slide. He could only lose this fight - at least when faced with this kind of crowd.

“So ...” Azadeh surveyed him curiously over the rim of her drink. “Have there been any interesting cases recently?”

He grimaced. “There actually has been kind of a lull over the last weeks”, he claimed, not mentioning the one top secret case that had got them both onto level 9 just a couple of days ago. That way he also did not have to mention the very unsatisfactory conclusion of said case, Sherlock’s dubious trip on some mystery drug and the many disappointed and patronising messages from Mycroft bloody Holmes that had followed in the days after it. It would probably be for the best if he kept that one to himself, both to avoid being vanished by the British Government and - more importantly - to avoid the risk of ever having to talk about Sherlock’s drug-induced philosophical ramblings.

Dyers had a dangerous smirk on his scarred face. “So, there is one thing that I have been wondering about while reading your writing,” he began slowly. He elbowed Murray in the ribs. “And this guy refuses to give me any clear answers: This Sherlock fellow and you, are you colleagues or ... you know ... partners?”

John was painfully aware that all eyes were on him at that moment, and equally aware that his face was probably going through all five stages of grief at the by now age-old question of his and Sherlock’s relationship status. He glanced over at Murray imploringly.

“Tall, Dark and Handsome is married to his work,” his friend added with far too much glee. “He told John so the day that they met. A shame really.”

There was all kinds of murmuring travelling around the table, ranging from disbelief to genuine sympathy.

“Wait, how did this topic even come up? And just after you two first met?”

John quickly hid his flaming face behind a too-large gulp of beer while the others laughed at his embarrassment. “Just a misunderstanding, nothing more,” he emphasised to no one in particular. “We are roommates and friends. Sometimes we work together on cases and even more occasionally I write down our experiences - literally with ink on paper, by the way, but for some reason they are still being spread all over the country.”

He had hoped that the topic would be over with that declaration, but he should have known better. Plenty of meaningful looks were exchanged and Murray just leaned back and let it all happen, the traitor.

“So, if nothing is happening with Sherlock - or what did you call him? Tall, Dark and Handsome?”, Ugonna began.

“Please don’t start calling him that.”

“Of course not, that would be very silly of us”, Dyers' dangerous smirk from before stretched impossibly wider.

“What I actually wanted to ask,” continued Ugonna. “If you and Sherlock are just friends, is there anyone else then?”

Murray winced, actually looking somewhat apologetic for the first time during this meeting.

“I actually just broke up with my girlfriend a few days ago,” John explained, and there was a moment of awkward silence.

“Ah, sorry, a sore topic then.”

“It’s alright, you didn't know.”

“Do ... you want to talk about it?”, Tindall asked tentatively.

John shrugged. “There is really not much to say. There wasn’t a dramatic breakup, it just didn’t work out in the end.” While he said it, he surprised himself with how true these words rang. It was not that he had disliked his time with Emma, on the contrary, their dates had been a lot of fun and a great and grounding distraction from the everyday frenzy of existing in the orbit of Sherlock Holmes ... but he was not feeling nearly as broken up about the breakup as he maybe should have. And perhaps that was a clearer sign than anything else that they had not been meant to be. “it was just a matter of ... I don’t know, our priorities not aligning, I suppose. Especially with work - the detective work, that is. Sherlock and I, we get ourselves into dangerous situations sometimes ...” There was an exasperated snort from Murray’s direction. “And she was worrying a lot. I think she would have been very happy if I just switched to working at the clinic full time. I guess I should probably look for someone who is more accustomed to the occupational danger of routinely running after criminals. Maybe I should have thought of that a bit earlier, but still. That’s where I’m at now.”

There was a wave of general agreement. Not surprising, given that this was a topic that most of them had dealt with at least once in the past, given their work overground. Most of them had either gone entirely without long-term relationships or had ended up dating someone who was at least military adjacent - everyone except Murray, and John had never really understood how Josy and him had managed the separation before his friend had moved to London permanently.

Speaking of which. “By the way, how is Josy?”

Murray took the not very subtle hint and swooped in with a wide grin, ending the interrogation of John Watson for the time being.

“Oh, she is doing well, great really. I actually wanted to take the opportunity and make a bit of an announcement.” He rubbed his hands together nervously before returning them to the drink in front of him. “It is still a while off, but we finally decided to tell friends and family now. We are expecting a baby next year!”

As far as distractions went, this one worked far better than anything John could have ever come up with. It also caught John by surprise as much as anyone else - he had not seen Josy in person in a while and he did not have Sherlock’s impossible deduction skills after all.

And so it was only much later when the rest of the group had already said their goodbyes and there were only Murray and John left, nursing their last round of beers, that the discussion unfortunately circled back around to the state of John’s love life.

“So you are really doing okay after the breakup?”

John nodded earnestly. “Yes.” He chuckled. “Actually, I think Harry might be trying to continue things where I left off. She warned me earlier that she wouldn’t stop writing with Emma just because we are no longer together.”

Murray grinned softly. “Well, good for the both of them then ...” He hesitated. “But seriously, what’s next for you?”

John let out a puff of air, suddenly very interested in the droplets of condensation that clung to the side of his glass.

“I really don’t know yet. There was someone at the Yard, a colleague of Greg’s, who gave me his number a while back. Seemed like a fun guy.” He shrugged.

There was the fleeting shadow of a frown on Murray’s face. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

John gave him a shrewd look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The other man held his gaze, unfazed. “It’s just ... you’ve put so much time and effort into dating lately and it sometimes feels like you are just doing it because you think that’s what you are supposed to do, and not what you really want to. You just broke up. Maybe it would be better to give it some time.” The other man's gaze turned even sterner. “And perhaps you could even go and try to actually work out things with Tall, Dark and Handsome before you jump right into the next relationship -“ John opened his mouth in protest but was cut off immediately. “And don’t pretend that I am imagining things.”

John felt helplessly vulnerable and useless under the other man's observant stare. What was he even supposed to say to that?

“I don’t know, Murray. I think I would give it another try with Sherlock if I actually thought anything had changed.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? He told you ‘No’ once before, I don’t think he would hesitate to do so a second time if that was really how he felt.” Murray’s tone had grown softer now, and he emptied his glass in one large gulp.

“I really don’t want to make things uncomfortable between the two of us, though,” John cautioned. God forbid he said something that would bring back Sherlock’s memory of their conversation in his bedroom a couple of days ago. “We have a great thing going. And I have realised that I will need someone who’ll be happy to be with me both for the dangerous and the boring bits, you know?” And now he was basically quoting drugged Sherlock, and wasn’t that a new brand of mortifying? “I think most people would baulk at the dangerous parts, but Sherlock might just grow bored with the other stuff. He gets antsy when we are without a case for less than a week. He would die from boredom if I tried to go for a quiet night out with him. Besides that, I am not even sure that he is interested at all in romance or sex, you know.”

Murray had placed his chin on his interlaced fingers and was staring at him softly overtop of his glass.

“Well, would that be a problem?”

John faltered. “I suppose so ... or maybe not. I don’t know ... shit.” He shrugged before taking another sip of beer. “I am really not sure what I am even looking for, I guess. “

He looked at Murray and thought of his wife and the kid that they had on the way. He was ridiculously happy for the other man and was definitely looking forward to spoiling the child rotten. But not too long ago he had thought that this was what he wanted out of his life as well and now, now he was not so sure anymore. If he was envious of his friend, then it was more about the companionship, about having a person in your life who was willing to commit to - to all aspects of him.

“I don’t know, it just would be really great to have someone, someone who would always place you first and that you could place first in return. I think anything else is kind of ... just secondary, I guess.” He stared down into the murky remnants of his drink in consternation. “I am sounding really cheesy now, don’t I?”

“Nah ... besides, I think I am getting drunk so be as cheesy as you like.” Murray leaned forward on his hands now. “But that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“What is?”than now

“You know that you already have a person that you are willing to prioritise over everyone else, right? Including all your dates so far.”

So there was just one big question: Would Sherlock - married to his work and normal people are boring - Holmes be willing to do the same for John, including embracing all of his boring silly parts? And, almost more importantly, would John ever feel brave enough to actually go and find out?

The emotional conflict must have been more than obvious on John’s face since Murray just levered himself to his feet somewhat unsteadily and made his way over to the bar once again. “One last round of beer, but then we are off!”

Chapter Text

Sherlock was sitting hunched over an empty morgue table at Barts, poking at a tiny electronic device with a pair of pliers while staring through a mounted magnification lens, when a moan sounded from his trouser pocket all of a sudden. He checked his watch with a sigh.

\Message received from: Irene xxx

→ Cardiff is very charming if you ever have the chance to visit.

He rolled his eyes and ignored it. Another moan echoed lewdly through the tile-covered room only seconds later while he continued picking through the discarded personal implants of dead people. His watch blinked insistently.

→ They have this amazing new art installation spanning all city levels. My sister was always the one for art, I preferred music, but they are still very fun to look at ;)

And another one.

→ The Christmas decorations are a bit much though.

"Is there any way that you could turn down that sound a bit?" Sherlock raised his head in surprise looking up at Molly on the other side of the lab who was observing him with a bit of a pained expression while wrist deep in the chest cavity of another dead body. "It just ... it's a bit distracting, that's all”, she added defensively at his stare.

"Curious, John thought the same." He sighed, peeling off one glove and fishing for his phone. He gave the barrage of messages on the screen one last scornful look, before lowering the volume somewhat.

"John? How long has this been going on then?"

He untangled the glove and wrestled it back onto his free hand before picking up the pliers again. "Five months, give or take."

The answering silence from the other side of the room was distinctly judgemental and he raised his gaze once more. "What?"

Molly met his eyes defiantly. "Well, tell him he has my full sympathy then, I would have gone mad about four months ago."

He felt his cheeks heat with indignation. "It's just a ringtone. And we are not pubescent teenagers last time I checked."

She glowered right back at him. "Yeah, no. I know that you are not this clueless about this sort of thing. This ringtone is irritating to say the very least. Regardless of any preferences or teenage humour."

"Well, if you say so", he sniffed. "I am sure John can find a way to cope. Maybe Samuel can distract him from his suffering." He looked away quickly, trying to hide his bitterness. He finally managed to pry open the device's protective casing and began carefully picking at the delicate pieces of metal and plastic that lay beyond it.

"Samuel?" Molly's head shot up at the detective inspector's mention. " Wait, Samuel Gregson? Him and John?"

Sherlock's glare darkened and he hunched over his experiment as if trying to hide behind it, which was quite the hopeless endeavour given that none of the devices was wider than the nail of his thumb. "Apparently. They have been going on dates for two weeks now."

Molly blew out a breath, staring into space for a moment. Whether in thought or because she was looking something up on her user interface was difficult to say from Sherlock's angle of view.

"Well, good for them, I guess." Her eyes softened. "Gregson is a really good guy from what I can tell." A small grin spread on her face. "And cute!" She looked back down at the post-mortem that she was still in the middle of and froze. "Wait! Are you sulking because John is dating Gregson?!"

"Of course not!" He shot out immediately. He did not sulk - and even if he ever did, he would not be sulking about this. He could not care less who John was dating. This most recent development had merely been ... unexpected. Not that he had many expectations when it came to John's love life. After all, the other man seemed to make it a habit to baffle Sherlock in the most unexpected ways with every turn that he took, including his usually quite mismatched dating decisions.

But after what had happened in the summer … Sherlock was not completely clear about what exactly had been said after he had been knocked out by Irene's mystery drug, but it still felt like something significant had shifted the morning after. He took a moment to glare at his silent phone that was resting on the other side of the bench for good measure. Sherlock was pretty sure that they had talked ... and probably touched on a couple of sensitive issues in the process, going by how contemplative John had behaved in the days immediately after. But he had never outright asked and his friend sure as hell had not offered anything either.

Needless to say, Sherlock had been more than happy to forget all about this particular afternoon. Not only had it been a thoroughly mortifying experience and he was pretty sure that Lestrade had taken at least one recording of his incoherent ramblings, but on top of that he also had to deal with his brother's disappointed messages and the lack of any further clues to follow Irene Adler’s steps. No reason to think about his drug-fueled heart-to-heart with his friend and roommate ever again.

But then John had gone and broken up with Emma and Sherlock had felt a tendril of hope sneaking out of its hiding place deep inside of him and he had allowed it to linger ... looking back, that had been his first mistake.

He had been hopeful because while he did not remember what had been said, he did vaguely remember the feeling of his hand cradled between John's fingers. He had been hopeful, because for the first time in a long while it felt like something had moved forward between the two of them, like they had come to an understanding of sort about their relationship. About how important they had both grown in each other's lives. And he had been hopeful because no matter how often he could hear his brother’s admonishments in his mind about not growing attached he had always been so dreadfully bad at it with John.

He had known for a while now that he could not imagine an existence without his friend in his everyday life anymore. And while he still struggled to fit this knowledge into societally dictated relationship categories, he knew that he would do almost anything to keep the other man in his orbit.

And then Samuel Gregson had come along and ruined it all.

"Oh, you really are broken up about this, aren't you?" Molly's tone had softened and he kept his eyes glued to the table so he did not have to see her expression. Sentimentality was such an exhausting hassle. Mycroft really had it far easier.

"Oh, do shut up", he shot back weakly, not quite able to muster the vitriol that he had meant to infuse his voice with. Quiet stretched out between them while he pushed the auditory processing board that he had just opened up to one side and began working on the next piece of tech right beside it. He had not even realised that Molly had started cleaning up until her soft steps crossed over the tiled floor to him and she joined him by his little project with the discarded implants.

"Did you try actually talking to him about it?", she asked conversationally. He finally raised his head and eyebrow at her but she was long past cowering at his unimpressed looks and instead just raised her eyebrows in return. "You know, talking soberly and without sarcasm?"

With a pinched expression, he returned his eyes to the magnification lens, determined to steer their conversation somewhere else. "These two modifications here were probably not damaged by electromagnetic interference." He pointed out the auditory processor and the remains of a muscle enhancer control module. "You see those dents in the casing? Whoever wore these probably took a bit of a beating or a very unfortunate fall a few months or weeks before their death. I assume most physical signs of the injuries had been healed at the point that you got to work on them but the damage to the tech had already been done."

"That would make sense", she pulled the auditory processor from his hand with gloved fingers and turned it until she could check the registration number engraved into the part.

"Pretty sure this guy was working in construction up on level three." She sighed. "Poor sod. I feel like I see someone from the construction sites up there at least once a week right now." She placed the part back on its metal tray. "Seriously though, you cannot expect John to just be able to read your mind on this. We normal people cannot just deduce what someone else is thinking. That's a you thing, I'm afraid!"

He scowled down at a partially dismantled vision unit, that showed no signs of any physical damage so far, turning it slowly between his fingers. "Oh please, what else is there to talk about?"

"Well, first of all, you once told him that you are married to your work and he has no reason to believe that that has changed. Maybe start there", she replied sarcastically.

" Everything has changed since then", he spat out more vehemently than he had intended. "I was a fool back then."

"But does he know that?"

"That I was a fool? I am pretty sure he is aware. He likes to remind me regularly that I can be a colossal idiot."

He ignored Molly's eye-roll and focussed back on the task at hand, touching the electrodes of a voltmeter to different parts of the device's inner workings.

There was another, quieter moan from his phone and Molly threw her hands up in exasperation. Sherlock checked the message with a glance at his watch.

\Messages received from: Irene xxx

→ If you want to take John here, I can give you the name of a very charming little restaurant.

→ Czech cuisine, a very romantic place but not too overwhelming. I think you would like it. And he would too ;)

He scowled and poked the measuring electrode back into the device that he was testing with just a little bit too much force. There was an uncomfortable crunching sound and he cursed under his breath.

"Listen, Sherlock, I cannot tell you what to do, but doesn't John at least deserve to be asked properly? Not as a joke and not while you are high or while you are both bleeding out after having been blown up."

"That's not what happened."

She ploughed on. "Pity, but that's not my point. Remember, we are normal human beings, we cannot read your thoughts! He does not know what is going on inside your head until you tell him."

He sneered at her. "Well, I cannot read minds either, and really, why would I want to? Most people are dreadfully boring and I would rather not know what they think most of the time. I would probably either die from boredom or be driven mad by their stupidity." He faltered, the sneer freezing on his face as his thoughts caught up with him. After a blink, he gave Molly an especially shrewd once-over. "But I am slowly starting to believe that you don't actually want Gregson and John to be a happy couple together."

She shrugged, unrepentant. "I like Gregson. He is very nice. A little bit too nice maybe." Her fingers twitched around the devices on the table and she began circling another muscular enhancer unit around her gloved fingers. "No offence, but I kind of can see John taking advantage of that."

He stared up at her both genuinely baffled and offended on his friend's behalf. "What?"

"Oh, come on! I am not saying that he would do it intentionally, but he can be a bit of an arsehole sometimes. Very single-minded, just like you. The 'Happy to go on a date with you unless there is a case that he deems more interesting and then he is off chasing criminals' - kind of an arsehole. And if Gregson is a bit too fond of him then he might actually let him get away with it." The enhancer unit slipped from her fingers and landed with a loud clatter among the other parts and she quickly clasped her hands behind her back. "All I am saying is that John needs someone who can be a bit of a bastard back at him, from time to time."

"Like me?" Sherlock asked, unimpressed.

Molly only gave him her most innocent smile before pointing at the dismantled device in front of Sherlock.

"So what's your verdict on that one?"

He stared at her slack-jawed, his mind reeling. "This one probably died from a known hardware fault", he murmured eventually. "There are two more known cases of faulty electronics for this batch of CAM implants ..." He trailed off when a sudden thought had him abandoning his project once again. "Wait ... you never asked me out directly when you were still fancying me!"

"And see where that left the two of us." She shrugged again while pushing the remaining implants into the middle of the bench. " But that's what friends are for. I give advice that I am absolutely rubbish at following myself and if I am really lucky, you might follow it."

He harumphed, a smile tugging a the corners of his mouth against his will. His gaze returned to the remaining parts. "Can you keep hold of these for me? I am not quite sure what to make of them yet. I will have to do some more research."

"So not a simple technical defect for them?"

"No, from what I can tell the devices themselves are working perfectly fine, though your findings on the body certainly seemed like the problem started around the clavicular distribution nodes." He held up one of the parts in question while Molly's eyes stared into nothing, probably looking up the file in question. "Ah yes, the person was in their early twenties. My working theory was a spontaneous immune reaction to the implants."

He frowned. "I read the file as well. 20-year-old student, working three jobs and living up on level four. A spontaneous implant rejection is extremely unlikely even under those circumstances. No family history of rejections or autoimmune disorders. No medications that might favour this kind of immune reaction."

"I know. But there are no other possible causes and there was certainly a lot of inflammation around the module itself. And if you say that there was no technical defect or tampering with the implants ..."

"I did not say that!" He turned the device around on the table holding it underneath the magnification lens for show. "Do you see those scratches? Very thin, they look like they have been caused by a needle of some kind. The only damage is to the device's housing and it does not look like its function was compromised but it is still very suspicious. Any doctor should know to avoid implants when injecting and it is not where you would inject drugs for recreational use."

Molly leant forward, squinting sceptically down at the minute scratches on the device. "But how would that cause a reaction or even the death of an otherwise perfectly healthy kid?"

"I don't know." He straightened up and began peeling off his gloves. "But I want to find out. That's why I would be very happy if you could keep these for a bit longer before disposing of them. I would take them home to Baker Street but I am not sure my brother would bail me out if I did. He has been a little bit tense lately."

"Tense? Your brother? Impossible!"

He grinned and threw the balled-up gloves in the direction of one of the rubbish bins. "I keep forgetting that you had the misfortune of meeting Mycroft."

A ping sounded from his pocket. He glanced at his watch.

\Message received from: John Watson

→ I am about done here, what about you?

Sherlock fished for his phone and started to type his answer right away.

←Still in the morgue with Molly.

He looked up from the small screen just in time to see Molly storing the mysterious implants in a box of their own before putting everything else in a yellow plastic bag for disposal. She was grinning. He frowned.

←Lunch at Angelos?

→ Sure, meet you outside Barts in 10?

He looked back up. Molly's grin had widened.

"And that’s why things never worked out between the two of us!"

"You have no idea what and to whom I just wrote a message."

She scoffed. "Well, you never asked me out for lunch, that’s all."

"How did you ...?" He swallowed the rest of the sentence and scowled when her grin widened almost shark-like.

"Maybe I am secretly a master of deduction as well!" She labelled the box before peeling off her own gloves and getting out of her lab coat. "Anyway ..."

They walked towards the lifts together. The narrow corridor located underneath the rest of the hospital was grey and chilly. Even though it was in the middle of the day no one else was around down here. They rode up to the hospital's lobby in comfortable silence. Sherlock would have loved to claim that his thoughts mostly revolved around the case of the mysteriously dead student and their suspiciously inconspicuous implants, but instead, he kept circling back to everything Molly had said before.

The foyer was crowded and loud, especially in direct contrast to the morgue. Voices echoed off grey concrete that stretched up several floors, each of them with glass-covered windows to look down at the press of people and service bots. The bright lights gleamed off the sleek metal of the lifts and decorative pillars that held up the high ceiling. Sherlock sniffed against the fresh smell of antiseptic and floor cleaner in the air and resisted the urge to complain about the linoleum squeaking under too many busy feet. He probably could not quite hide his distaste anyway.

"It gets me every time I come up here", Molly muttered darkly beside him. He frowned down at her but did not comment, surprised at the vehemence in her voice.

John was waiting dutifully just by the doors, his posture straight, hands crossed behind his back. His eyes were flickering gently back and forth - he was probably browsing through the news or exchanging messages with someone. Once they had crossed halfway through the atrium his friend's empty eyes caught on to Sherlock and immediately snapped out of the virtual world and into reality. He was holding the jacket that he had borrowed from Murray folded over one arm and started shrugging into it as they crossed the last couple of steps to reach him.

"It's a bit over the top, isn't it?", he commented casually once they had caught up to him, his eyes flickering over the room behind them.

"It's a bloody nuisance", Molly snapped back with a weary expression. "It lost its charm approximately a month ago when they first put it up just a couple of days into November."

Sherlock threw a quick glance over his shoulder just in the unlikely case that he had missed something very obvious, but there was no difference to the countless other times that he had seen this foyer. Glass, steel and concrete, filled with the sound of coughing, children’s whining and too many people trying to speak in a respectably low voice to one another. One of the lighting panels above was flickering slightly, which was annoying to him but usually not something that other people were particularly bothered by. And about ten of the many uncomfortable blue plastic seats had been replaced by new ones that were just slightly off-colour. But he knew for a fact that this eyesore had been in place since at least June, so it was unlikely that this was what Molly was so unhappy about.

"I mean, it is Christmas and I am all for decorating, but this feels like a genuine risk for epilepsy patients to be honest. Never mind that those reindeer look genuinely terrifying."

"Well, they asked us if they should also decorate downstairs and I have never been so glad that my boss is a cheapskate." Molly rolled her eyes. "Are you two ready to get out of here?"

Sherlock managed one last look back into the building, while the other two were already on their way out of the door. He spotted a couple of children - maybe 5 or 6 years old - who were sitting on some of the wrongly coloured plastic seats, their knees drawn up to their chins and staring open-mouthed up at the empty ceiling, that - to Sherlock's knowledge - was nothing but grey plastic panels and long light stripes. Unless ...

He hurriedly followed his friends outside, the confusion mostly cleared up. There clearly was some kind of digital holiday decoration that had both Molly and John so thoroughly unimpressed. One more mystery solved. He stopped next to John, his eyes already scanning the street for an empty cab.

"Well, I am going that way!", Molly declared with a wave. “Meeting with an old friend from university. Just let me know if you need to have another look at those implants. I will be in the city until the 24th. See you around!" She walked off in the direction of the shopping centre across from them.

Sherlock spotted a cab as it turned around the corner and got out his phone to wave it down. Once settled inside they sat in companionable silence for a bit, while Sherlock updated his file on the implant tech, his fingers flying over the touchscreen. If there was any way that whatever had scratched up the device had also caused the implant rejection symptoms, then he would have to have another look at the toxicology report and the exact findings of Molly’s examination.

The phone in his hand moaned. John said nothing. He said nothing in the loudest way possible though. The message popped up on the top of his screen a moment later.

\Message received from: Irene xxx

→ I will be busy visiting my sister for a couple of days but don't you worry. I will be back and chatting in no time. ;)

Next to him, John shifted in his seat and Sherlock quickly let his phone glide into his coat pocket, readying himself for yet another discussion concerning the unfortunate ´´ ringtone.

"You could not actually see the decorations at Barts, could you?"

The detective's head snapped around in surprise.

"They were really obnoxious, and blinking and moving in circles all over the ceiling and around the pillars. Dancing Reindeer and glitter, too many fake, flickering candles and a big rotating Christmas tree in the middle of it all."

Sherlock blinked. "All virtual I am afraid. But maybe that’s for the better. It did not sound like Molly and you appreciated it very much." He hesitated. "Why would the reindeer be dancing? I am no animal behaviourist but that does not particularly sound like something they would do."

"I haven’t got the faintest, it looked pretty horrendous when put all together though. I don't think even our primary school classrooms ever looked this bad and we generally got to decorate those ourselves and right after getting the first visual implants installed so things usually went pretty bonkers there." John twisted his fingers in his lap, obviously not done yet. "The entire city is decorated by the way."

"I assumed as much", Sherlock agreed easily.

"And Mrs Hudson put some decorations up in Baker Street as well. I just kind of assumed that you knew." It was stated quietly and matter-of-factly. Not in the sweet condescending tone that some people liked to choose for this topic, not that he expected John to be this kind of person. Sherlock had not in fact known that Mrs Hudson had put up decorations. Maybe he could check them on his phone - later at night when everyone else was asleep of course.

"And that's fine with me. Since I am perfectly capable of reading a calendar I still have a vague idea of when Christmas is, without the assistance of seasonal graphic design, no matter how tastefully or distastefully it is done."

John nodded, his gaze now pointed outside, presumably studying the aforementioned decorations all over the street. Sherlock could not remember ever looking those up - or if he did, he had deleted the memory long ago.

"You know, we could go and get some physical decorations. Just to lighten the flat up a bit."

Sherlock scoffed incredulously, staring at the side of his friend's face with raised eyebrows. "And why would we do that? Those are for toddlers!"

John rolled his eyes as their cab drew into the lifts up to level 5. "No, they are for people who don't have implants. Many of which are kids who are too young to have them.” He shifted around again when Sherlock did not answer.“They are still fun though. I vaguely remember a great aunt of mine who always decorated physically, because she never got the more advanced optical modifications. Many people would probably even agree that physical decoration tends to look more classy than the virtual ones." He stared at him expectantly in the dim light of the cab while Sherlock stared intently out into the darkness of the lift cabin beyond the window.

“I really don't feel like you need to put up children's decorations just because you suddenly realised my lack of implants again." He tried and probably failed to soften his tone a bit towards the end of his statement. But the harsh words did not seem to faze his roommate.

"Can I put up decorations because I think they are pretty and you would like them, even though you would never admit it out loud?", he asked instead, his voice perfectly steady.

"You are being ridiculous John. You just spent several minutes moaning about how bad Barts was looking."

The other man chuckled. "I cannot emphasise enough how horrible those looked. Nothing that I could do to the flat could ever compare to that. Just putting up a comparable amount of lights would absolutely kill our electricity bills and probably bring down the neighbourhood for a couple of hours. Mycroft would probably hunt us down for crashing the electricity grid so close in time to exploding one of his water cisterns."

Sherlock could not quite prevent the curling of his lips at that mental image. While the thought had its merits it did not change his fundamental opinion on the matter. "Still, there is no need to put up decorations just for me. I am perfectly happy to enjoy the Christmas magic through Molly and your vivid descriptions!"

\U.I.: Current time 19:38, Friday the 24th of December, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 564 credits

11 available software upgrades.

"Thank you so much for inviting us to the Party, Dr Watson!", Mo chirped when he pooled into the entrance followed by another four of the Irregulars kids. "The place looks amazing. I haven't seen stuff like that in ages!"

John stepped to the side so that they could all squeeze into the festively lit-up corridor and get to the stairs before he closed the door behind them.

"We have some leftover decorations if you want to take them with you later", he offered with a grin. "Sherlock would be happy to get rid of them since they are supposedly 'cluttering up his space'."

There was plenty of knowing laughter as he followed their guests up the stairs. "Did Sherlock help with putting all of this up?"

There was the unmistakable cackle of Carla. "He had to, he is the only one who could have reached all the way above the door to place the lights up there!"

"I can reach the top of the door just fine", John exclaimed from a few steps behind the kid at the same time that Sherlock's voice from the living room proclaimed: "We are in possession of this new and exciting invention called a footstool, Carrie! It is a great help for those of us who find themselves vertically challenged. You are welcome to try it!"

Getting non-virtual decoration on such short notice had been quite the challenge but John had not felt like backing down. First, he had been determined to manage his new task all by himself, but after some rather disappointing visits to three different supermarkets and a hardware store, he had gone for his secret weapon and had gotten Mrs Hudson onboard.

Within half a day she had scoured the neighbourhood as well as all of her extended family and had gotten her hands on a total of two big plastic boxes filled to the brim with discarded decorations that the children and grandchildren of their neighbours had long grown out of. John and Mrs Hudson had taken one long evening of sorting through her impressive haul to put away anything too silly or childish but they had still gotten a fair amount of light chains, ornaments and plastic tree branches out of it.

When it came to the actual decorating, Sherlock had of course pretended to have no opinion whatsoever on colour schemes and light chain placement. Instead, he had spent his day hidden away in his room, pulling torturous sounds from his violin and grumbling about childish holiday traditions.

Still about a quarter of the decorations had mysteriously vanished back into the box that they had come from during the first night after putting everything up - John suspected it had been the mixing of gold and silver details that had pushed the other man over the edge. There had been some more mutterings about investigating crimes against the most basic rules of good taste the day after, that he had deliberately ignored.

But it was all worth it because, in the following days, John had more than once caught Sherlock staring up at the gently blinking lights of the light chains as if in trance, often while strumming his violin or watching the splatter of artificial candlelight that was diffracted by a couple of crystal ornaments and dotted the wallpaper behind the sofa. He even had hooked a couple of red gleaming baubles onto the stand of his chemistry set and had allowed a snowflake embroidered throw blanket over the back of his chair in the living room, which basically was a stamp of approval if there ever was one.

John followed the Irregulars kids into the living room, where Lestrade, Molly, Samuel, Mrs Hudson, Murray and Josy were already having some of Mrs Hudson's homemade mince pies and chattering amiably among themselves. Sherlock was keeping himself busy in the kitchen, tinkering with what seemed to be an unnecessarily complex construction of glass flasks and water baths to keep the Christmas punch at exactly the right temperature.

"Everyone? These are Tommy, Mo, Hayat, Carla and Ben. They often help out with the investigations and keep an eye out for anything weird." John made a vague gesture at the newcomers while joining Samuel by the mantlepiece. The other man immediately draped an arm around his shoulder and gave him a radiant smile.

"They are invaluable for most of our investigations!", Sherlock chimed in from behind. "You could learn a lot about undercover investigation from them, Gary!"

"It's Greg!"

Carla immediately bounced over to join Sherlock in the kitchen, staring at the different heaters and beakers with blatant fascination. All brand new glassware and never before in contact with any of Sherlock's countless experiments, or so the detective had promised.

"So happy that you are joining us, Cay, you can start filling some mugs", Sherlock exclaimed immediately, gesturing to an assortment of all their mismatched mugs on the other counter. “Just don’t move the water bath, the heating plate has a bit of a loose contact and don’t touch the flask over there without oven mitts, it gets quite hot!”

The kid stopped mid-movement and frowned as if suddenly deep in thought. John was ready to come in and correct Sherlock's ever-wrong name guesses but the teen beat him to it.

"I think I actually like that one."

“Hmm?”

“Cay, I like it!”

Sherlock, visibly thrown off by the unexpected approval nodded slowly. "I will try to remember it then?"

That earned him a very familiar cheeky grin from the teen. "You do that!" And to everyone's genuine surprise, he did.

There were more introductions and more compliments for the decoration and Mrs Hudson's baking.

Sherlock wandered around the room, pressing punch-filled mugs into unresisting hands with a minimal amount of intrusive deductions. There was a short argument about which of the kids would have to settle for non-alcoholic punch, but given that they had several police officers present, the teenagers did not argue back … much. Sam squeezed John's shoulder and wiggled his eyebrows at him, before toasting him with his old chipped Medical Corps mug. Behind him, Sherlock scowled and shuffled on.

\U.I.: active chat w!th: Samuel Gregson {private}

→ How old are these kids exactly?

← I think Mo is around 16. The others are a couple of years older.

He did not mention that he knew of at least two more kids who occasionally dropped by and were definitely younger than Mo. Neither did he let the other man know that Sherlock had known Mo and his mother for almost all of the boy's life now and that they had always lived up in the tunnels. It was an unfortunate truth that there were always new kids joining the ranks of those living in the maintenance tunnels and with the stories about Sherlock's investigations being spread far and wide it was not particularly rare for the newest teens and young adults to shyly drop by and ask if they could also help out in exchange for occasional access to their shower.

"So does anyone else need to travel tomorrow morning?" Sam asked out loudly. "The trains are going to be stuffed!" John remembered that the other man had told him about four sisters back in Birmingham and was secretly very glad that he had declined the invitation to go to Chelmsford yet another year. Especially since that might have turned out extra awkward if - as he suspected - Harry was spending the holidays with Emma of all people.

He squeezed Sam's arm back and leaned closer to the other man’s ear so that he could hear him over the din of the room. "The offer still stands if you want to spend a couple of days here instead."

His boyfriend shook his head, amused but resolute. "Fiona would kill me! And rightly so. I need to go and finally meet my new nephew." Fair enough. Some people supposedly actually enjoyed spending more than a day or two with their family, John reminded himself guiltily. "Plus, I get to compare Christmas decorations now! You guys set the bar pretty high, I already sent Fi a picture."

There was a chorus of agreeing murmur and John could not quite quench the swelling pride in his chest. He really enjoyed how the flat had turned out as well. He had almost forgotten the appeal of real decorations. No matter how much better the animations and virtual designs got every year, they still had a somewhat uncanny perfectionism to them that was kind of unsettling when you looked at them for too long. Compared to that the flat looked charmingly real, incredibly festive and cosier than ever before. The fact that there were no dancing reindeer and singing elves anywhere to be seen was just the cherry on top.

"Well, lucky you for getting time off at all. I will be on call for most of the holidays anyway", Greg sighed. "And we don't even have virtual decorations over at the office."

"You can take some of ours", Sherlock chimed in immediately. Mrs Hudson shot him a disapproving glare. "What? The silver and blue ornaments don't fit the colour concept, even though you keep putting them up in the corridor whenever I am not looking. It just clashes with the rest of the place. Most of the house is warm-toned. And mixing silver and gold is a travesty to good taste."

He sounded so much like Mycroft that it was almost uncanny. Going by Greg and Molly's knowing smirks they were thinking the same.

"Didn't you have some Christmas music that you wanted to play for us, dear?", Mrs Hudson asked, her face a picture of serene innocence while her tone clearly showcased her intention to just shut down his snarky backtalk already.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Should I also recite a poem for Father Christmas while I am at it?", he shot back, but he was already crossing the room on the way to pick up his violin. Not fast enough to avoid their Landlady swatting at his arm with the tassels of her shawl though.

"It's Christmas, you have to be nice to me!", she chided with a fond smile.

Soon they were surrounded by festive music wafting around the room as Sherlock played effortlessly in front of the window. The animated fire below the mantlepiece was dancing along in time with his songs and the lights all around them were blinking gently. Their reflections were shimmering in the dark of Sherlock's curls and glittering in the ornaments around the room.

Sam's hold around John's middle tightened again and he gave him a fleeting smile before leaning back into the taller man's chest. It was a short moment of serenity and comfort, especially considering how wild and unpredictable his life had turned ever since he had returned to London and gotten to know Sherlock. He would never want to change that chaos, not for anything, but it gave him a new appreciation for moments like this, no matter how fleeting. Sam hummed happily when Sherlock finished one piece and moved almost seamlessly on to the next. It was like someone had spread a blanket of contentment over the flat, all worries and troubles forgotten for a couple of precious moments.

Later in the evening, the punch was mostly gone though its effects continued to linger in the form of the occasional unbridled laughter and a general lazy haze that had settled around the room. Their guests were sitting and standing in small groups all over the kitchen, living room and corridor. Molly and Murray stood hunched together by the stairs, deep into an animatedly whispered discussion. Samuel had sat down on the carpet by the mantlepiece and was surrounded by most of the Irregulars kids. John knew that his boyfriend was a really good storyteller but right now he seemed to be listening intently to something that Ben was recounting to the rest of the group instead. His face was an adorable picture of earnest concentration, probably trying and failing to keep up with all the new names, that even John still struggled with, never mind Sherlock.

Mrs Hudson and Josy had settled down in the armchairs and Sherlock was lounging in one of the kitchen chairs. He was leaning precariously on two of four chair legs, while staring up at the blinking lights that were strung up in the doorway, twirling the bow of his violin between his fingers.

The warm domesticity was somewhat broken by the unmistakable sound of a familiar moan. Around the room, several heads shot up immediately and the murmur died down.

"What the hell?", asked Cay from down on the carpet.

"Oh my", gasped Mrs Hudson, definitely over-exaggerating a bit since John was pretty sure that she had heard the unfortunate ringtone at least a good couple of times in the weeks and months before.

"Never mind, that was just me", Sherlock clarified nonchalantly, not even lowering his gaze from the lights above him.

"Seriously?", Greg asked half amazed half scandalised.

John, who was standing right next to the inspector winced.

"Not him. His phone", he sighed. "Long story!"

It did not take long for the quiet buzz of conversation to resume, though even once he was back to talking with Greg about their latest case, John could not completely shake off his own curiosity. While he could have just missed it the last couple of days because of how busy Mrs Hudson and him had been, he was pretty sure that he had not heard that particular ringtone for at least a week now. Not that he was counting or that it was truly any of his business, but it still was a bit of an anomaly that irked him, deep down.

Maybe she just wanted to wish Sherlock happy holidays, he mused. He had no idea what those two had been exchanging messages about after all. But no matter how long he kept track of his roommate from the corner of his eyes, the other man did not check his phone or watch even once. He did not even have a quick look at the tablet on the table that he had been using for his sheet music earlier.

"You alright?", asked Greg after a moment of silence that had stretched out too long. John quickly snapped his gaze back to the DI but the other man just gave him a knowing smirk.

"Sorry, just lost in thoughts", he grumbled embarrassed, feverishly trying to remember where they had left off their conversation.

"If you say so. I sure as hell am not going to ask for details", Greg gave him a crooked grin. "I am seriously so glad that you guys invited me. My only other Christmas party this year was the one at work and that wasn’t nearly as much fun as this!"

"Don't believe a word he says, it was glorious!", Sam interjected from the other side of the room. "We did Drone Karaoke. Sally did a drunken duet with Anderson. I did not take any video, unfortunately, but someone must have and I am going to find them!"

"That definitely was the highlight of the evening", Lestrade agreed. “Such a shame that you two couldn't make it because of the investigation. Which one was that again?"

"The Speckled Blonde, I think." John could almost hear Sherlock's eye-roll as he said it.

"That was a very fun one to read!", Hayat interjected politely, probably just in time to drown out Sherlock's snappy remark over the silly case name. Now there was merely a put-upon huff from behind him. And John just barely stopped himself from glancing at his roommate yet again, knowing full well that Greg was still watching him like a hawk.

"Remind me that I never want to find out what Anderson's singing sounds like!", the Consulting Detective rumbled with disdain.

\U.I. Files shared by Greg Lestrade {pri§ate}. If connection is trusted, receive data [HERE], otherwise [DISMISS].

\U.I.: 1 new message: {received now} by Greg Lestrade {private}. [EXPAND]: Don’t show the others though, Sally would kill me! {end of message}

It was much later, way past midnight, when Sherlock and John were left alone in the flat again. Sherlock was shuffling stuff around in the living room. To John's eyes, the place was looking just slightly more cluttered than it usually did, but the other man was muttering darkly under his breath about how nothing was where it belonged anymore.

Josy and Murray had left first, soon followed by Mrs Hudson who had gone downstairs to calm down with a bit of tea before bed. Sam had to leave next with one last kiss to John's cheek because he would have to get up early the next morning to catch his train and at that point, the party had just kind of fizzled out.

Sherlock had spent the last half hour tidying while also intermittently eyeing the assortment of presents on the mantlepiece, undoubtedly deducing their contents from afar. John on the other side had done what he did most of the time when dealing with his flatmate's moodiness and had embraced the remaining chaos while preparing some tea for both of them.

"So what am I getting for Christmas?" John asked over his steaming mug while leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen.

"A pair of socks from Mrs Hudson, some kind of fancy paper notebook from Samuel and some kind of very flowery tea from your sister!", the detective answered immediately, not even looking up from where he was straightening out some books on the shelves right next to the parcels.

John grinned into his cup. "We will have to wait and see if you are correct, I guess!"

There was an indignant grumble. "Of course I'm right. It's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

He snorted. Even if he had not had at least 4 cups of Sherlock's punch concoction this evening, John was sure that it would not be pretty obvious to him no matter his state of inebriation.

When he did not immediately answer, Sherlock continued lecturing. "Mrs Hudson asked for one pair of your socks as a knitting reference almost three weeks ago. Samuel is the biggest fan of your writing - for whatever reason - and the shape of his gift explains the rest." He scrunched up his nose. "And I could smell Harry's tea from the other side of the room all day long!"

John drew closer to the assortment of brightly wrapped parcels. And yes, even he could smell a pretty strong floral scent once he got close enough, even though he would not have been able to tell where exactly it was coming from.

"There is another pretty big parcel though", he pointed out. "The one in the blue paper!"

Sherlock only shook his head. "Well, it wouldn't be much of a challenge for me to deduce that one, would it now?"

"Why?", John asked before his tired brain had time to catch up to his words. "Oh."

Sherlock still had his back to him but he was suddenly looking a bit hunched over while his fingers were restlessly flickering along the spines of the books.

"We could ... exchange presents now if you'd like." Maybe the alcohol would make things less ... awkward. John placed his mug on a nearby table with a barely suppressed wince, before wobbling back to the selection of presents and picking up both the large blue one, as well as an even bigger one with dark green wrapping paper.

"Watch out!"

Sherlock turned around just in time to catch the soft parcel as it flew his way. John was happy to report that his throw had been only slightly off target and wandered over to his chair armed with both his present and his tea. His friend on the other side decided to just drop to the carpet and sit down crosslegged in the middle of the room while studying his gift with eager curiosity.

John definitely had not drunk enough to fully combat the embarrassment as he watched him, so he quickly turned his attention to his own present, trying to ignore the sound of curious rustling from the floor.

He peeled away the paper to reveal ... A jacket. Dark grey with a bluish tint. It had black shoulders and was made from heavy durable material ... He leaned forward in the chair so that he had room to shrug into it … And of course, it fit perfectly. "How did you know which size to pick?"

The question earned him an unimpressed stare. "After seeing you in two different hand-me-downs that were certainly not your size, it was more a process of elimination than anything else", he groused, still feeling the weight of his own parcel.

"I guess it also is a bit more my style than the orange one", John voiced jokingly. It felt a lot more expensive than both Harry's and Murray's jackets. And suddenly, John felt even more self-conscious about his own present for Sherlock. "Thank you! It's great!"

With a tearing sound, the green paper fell away. "It's ... a blanket?", the detective said slowly. There was more rustling and then the sound of the heavy fabric unfolding. "But it has pockets?" More swishing. "And sleeves?"

John felt heat flooding his cheeks. "I thought it would be a good alternative for whenever you felt the need to leave the house without getting dressed", he explained weakly. "You know, instead of wearing a bedsheet to visit level 9."

Sherlock held the fabric up high, mustering it in the dim Christmas lights.

"Are there little bees stitched onto it?"

John buried his face in a nearby pillow at the mention of those. He definitely did not stay up extra late a week ago, looking up embroidery tutorials for hours, before he had to admit defeat and tiptoed downstairs for midnight crafting instructions from Mrs Hudson.

There was the distinct sound of Sherlock pulling the blanket on but no further words. The room around him was warm and still, the gentle haze of alcohol continued to soften his perceptions and it was way too late in the night anyway.

"Thank you!" The murmur was barely audible but it made him smile into the cushion with a sigh. He was about to fall asleep where he sat, his face still smushed against the Union Jack pillow, when Sherlock spoke up once again, a frown audible in his words now.

"There is one extra gift." John hummed, confused. "It was hidden under all the other ones."

"Hm?"

"Red paper, immaculately wrapped. Small and flat. Moderately heavy for its size. Very likely an electronic device. Most likely a phone." He hesitated. "But why would anyone get me another phone?"

"Mycroft perhaps?", John muttered without lifting his head.

"No ... he knows that I would destroy it immediately. He already spies enough on us as it is ... That, and the wrapping paper really isn't his colour!"

There was more rustling and then a short moment of quiet.

"'I decided to take inspiration from you, Mr Holmes. Merry Christmas!'"

John peeled his face out of the pillow and stared blearily up at Sherlock, who was reading something off his phone now, a small parcel with an elaborate red bow in his other hand.

"That sounds a bit ominous."

Sherlock was picking at the ribbon now, letting it drop to the floor carelessly as soon as it gave way. Inside there was a new phone, just as he had predicted. Something twisted in John’s guts as he saw it, even though it looked nothing like Jeffrey Hope’s phone.

John got back to his feet with difficulty and staggered over to the other man. "Is there anything special about it?" He leaned heavily into the other man's side while he stared down at the thing. It certainly did not look very different from all of Sherlock's other phones.

His friend did not raise his gaze from the device but his eyes seemed far away.

"Sherlock?"

"I think it is time for bed”, he murmured eventually. “Thank you for the present and good night, John! Don't have any more punch and don't fall on the stairs!"

The taller man turned sharply on the spot and began moving toward his room as if in a trance, leaving John to take hold of the bookcase for balance when his support suddenly vanished.

"Sherlock?" He felt like he had been doused in cold water all of a sudden. "What's going on?" He followed his friend on shaky legs. "What does this mean?"

"It means that we are probably going to find Irene Adler very soon!"

Now it felt like his inside had gotten drenched in cold water as well. Of course, this was about the blasted woman. "We will?"

Sherlock had reached his door and flung it open with more force than necessary. "Someone will. Dead." He stepped into his room, John still stubbornly following.

"Sherlock? Are you okay?"

The detective turned around. "Of course I am ..." His tone softened a bit. "Go to bed, John! Merry Christmas."

The door was closed in his face and he was left in the kitchen, still reeling with the whiplash of it all. The bedroom behind the door was eerily quiet. And despite the buzz of the alcohol, the warmth of the flat and the otherwise lovely evening, John suddenly felt very lost and empty.

He turned around with a shudder. After that ominous prophecy about Irene Adler's future, he was pretty sure that he would not be able to fall asleep anytime soon. But neither did he want to keep waiting in front of Sherlock's bedroom door like a lost puppy. He began shuffling in the direction of the stairs with an unhappy huff.

The track upstairs was a long and arduous one and he cursed everyone from Sherlock, Irene Adler and the last cup of Christmas punch for how dreadful he felt until he had finally reached his destination and faceplanted into his mattress with an oomph. But despite his deeply felt and maybe slightly irrational anger towards the woman woman, he genuinely hoped that they would not wake up to the news of her sudden death the next morning.

Chapter Text

\U.I.: Current time 11:56, Saturday the 25th of December, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 543 credits

11 available software upgrades.

John really had wished for things to just go back to how they had been before Sherlock had discovered the mysterious red parcel among their Christmas presents. It was his very first thought when he woke up around noon on the 25th and blinked up blearily at the off-white ceiling of his bedroom, his mouth feeling sticky and tasting stale. For a couple of moments, he quietly but fervently hoped, that maybe he had just imagined it all. Maybe he would stumble down the stairs to see two big presents, one wrapped green and the other blue, still sitting innocently among the others while Sherlock was melting up their Christmas decorations or dissecting the Christmas tree or something similarly festive.

The whisper of hope was shattered immediately once he managed to roll over and detangle himself from his blanket. The new bluish-grey jacket was draped haphazardly over the side of his chair. What a pity.

He shuffled into the kitchen to find the flat empty and motionless, the party leftovers still littering every surface. Knocking on Sherlock's bedroom door he did not get any answer. After a few minutes of awkward shuffling in front of it, he carefully pressed the door open only to find the room behind equally empty.

\U.I.: active chat with: Martha Hudson

← Do you know if Sherlock has left?

→ He went out about two hours ago.

→ Is he alright? He seemed a bit distracted.

←Not sure yet. It seems like an old case might have come up again.

With a sigh, he looked around the kitchen one more time. There was not much he could do about the issue of the mysterious phone while his roommate was not even at home. On the other hand, he should probably get started on cleaning up the chaos.

But first, tea.

Yes John, had hoped that things would simply even out over time. But while a few days later things might have seemed back to normal from an outside perspective, he was painfully aware that they were far from it.

The flat was quiet, but not the right kind of quiet. It was not the 'I am busy with an experiment and do not want to be disturbed' quiet. Neither was it the ' I am bored and five minutes away from shooting the wall ' kind. It was cold and mournful and gloomy. And it made John wonder yet again what exactly had been going on between Irene Adler and Sherlock. The unlikely relationship between these two was like a sore spot that he just could not help prodding at again and again. She definitely seemed to have the sort of brain that was needed to keep up with someone like Sherlock. And John was painfully aware that that was not something he could offer no matter how dearly he would have wanted to.

The detective spent most of his time playing the violin while staring out of the window or locked away in his room. They were not working on any cases and Sherlock was barely eating - not even the crackers and raspberry jam that John had stocked the cupboards with. Greg had sent several requests for assistance investigating the murder of a businesswoman on level 8 but Sherlock had declined every single one. Needless to say, the situation was growing more and more dire with each day.

John was about ready to lift his ban on mild explosives in the kitchen just to see the other man's manic grin again. If he got any more desperate he might even consider sending a message to Mycroft asking for advice.

In the end, it never came to that. Instead, the older Holmes had dropped by on his own accord on the 28th, supposedly as a late Christmas visit even though Sherlock determined with one side glance at his immaculately dressed brother that he had simply come by for a bit of snooping. John noted that Irene's phone, which had been the sole focus of Sherlock's musings and experiments these past few days had been conspicuously absent as soon as Mycroft entered the flat.

"I would like for you to have a look at a little problem that my agents have run into. Our recruitment office has been in the process of hiring a young student from Oxford who has shown quite remarkable skills working with implant tech and visual integration software. She suddenly stopped all communications just before Christmas and seems to have gone missing. We would like for you to find out what happened to her!"

Sherlock stared up at his brother dispassionately. His fingers were wandering along the strings of his violin distractedly, plucking different notes at random. "After my last investigation has been such a bitter disappointment to you and your department? I think I'll pass."

"We are rather concerned about her well-being." Mycroft gave him a tight smile while brushing an invisible piece of dirt from his sleeve. "There is a real possibility that someone could have taken her to try and replicate Moriarty's hallucinations."

"Oh, is that what you were trying to recruit her for? Good on her for finding someone who pays better." He leaned forward in his chair and snatched his bow from one of the lower bookshelves. "But if I ever meet an up-and-coming computer genius looking for a new place of employment I will happily refer them to you."

Something in Mycrofts jaw ticked. "Sherlock! This is not a joking matter! I will leave the file with you. Let me know when you make any progress."

"Certainly", he raised his instrument while holding Mycrofts gaze defiantly. "Await my answer in two to three business years!" He lowered the bow to the strings and began coaxing the most toe-nail curling screeches out of the poor instrument, his eyes never leaving his brother's. "Happy Holidays, brother dear!"

John winced but Mycroft did not even twitch. After almost a minute of wordless staring accompanied by the violin's mournful squealing the older Holmes finally let out a sigh and walked towards the stairs. "Happy Holidays to you too, Sherlock."

\U.I.: 1 new message: {received now} by Mycroft Holmes. [EXPAND]: A word, Dr Watson. {end of message}

It was John's turn to sigh but he dutifully stood up from the sofa and followed outside. The instrument's cries of despair followed them into the corridor and down the staircase.

"How has my brother been doing lately?", Mycroft asked bluntly as soon as they both had reached the bottom of the stairs. No beating around the bush then. It was probably better that way. John was not exactly talented in subtle espionage, or so Sherlock constantly told him.

"He has been in a bit of a mood since Christmas. Why do you ask?"

Mycroft just gave him a long, unimpressed stare. "I am very pleased with how Sherlock has been doing since the two of you became ... pals." He drawled. "And I know that you are aware of his past issues with addiction. I would like for you to keep an eye out for his well-being these next couple of weeks."

"I always do that", John countered, unimpressed.

"Yes, you do. Just be aware that he might be at a higher risk of relapsing than usual."

Above them the screeching intensified, filling the entire house with the wavering howls of the strings. John took a very deliberate calming breath. He would not shoot the wall and neither would he shoot a Holmes. The paperwork would not be worth it.

"Yes, well, I think after living with Sherlock for over a year I can recognize the signs."

The violin got impossibly louder.

"I am sure you can." Now even Mycroft looked slightly pained. "Whenever he gets like that, I always comfort myself with the knowledge that it could have always been worse."

John winced. He was sure that there must be a breaking point for such a delicate instrument, even in Sherlock's capable hands. "How so?"

Mycroft blinked up in the direction of the flat with the barest hints of a smile. "For a short time around age 3, Sherlock was absolutely set on learning to play the trombone. As you probably can imagine, I am eternally grateful that he changed his mind."

There was a very entertaining picture in this confession. John could indeed just imagine the small, dark-haired boy and his trombone marching after his older brother like the smallest and most determined one-man brass band. "I can see how that would have made life quite difficult for you", he acknowledged. "How did he change his mind?"

The older Holmes smiled wistfully. "We watched a children's cartoon show about pirates and one of the lead characters played the fiddle." The soft expression was there and gone again. Mycroft turned towards the door. "I better get going, please see that he at least considers the case of the missing student in Oxford."

\U.I. Files shared by Mycroft Holmes. If connection is trusted, receive data [HERE], otherwise [DISMISS].

Moments after the other man had closed the front door behind himself, the screeching thankfully stopped. John allowed himself a few moments of respite, simply enjoying the blessed silence before he trudged back upstairs.

As soon as he stepped into the room, Sherlock's intense gaze was on him. He did not necessarily look suspicious, more genuinely curious. "Did he ask you to spy on me again?"

John sighed and sank back into the sofa where his latest cup of tea was barely lukewarm by now. "Sadly he didn't offer any money this time around." He met his roommate's eyes. "About that case that he was proposing ..."

"It is a distraction."

John shrugged. "I mean, I guess it is, but you are not doing anything but waiting and torturing your instrument right now anyway, so ..."

Sherlock shook his head vehemently, before springing out of his chair and circling around to the window, squinting down at the walkway and the street below. "Not that kind of distraction. Mycroft . He is trying to distract me from something. Something that is going to happen very soon." He hesitated. "Not tomorrow, I would never agree to any of his cases so quickly, but soon. This student of his might be real or completely imaginary. But if she is real, then I can assure your ever-bleeding heart, that it is fully within my brother's capabilities to get her back." He paused, his fingers wandering back to plucking the violin strings absentmindedly. "He wants my attention elsewhere. Out of the city. Investigating this student could potentially take us all the way to Oxford. So the question is, what is he trying to hide?" After one last twang of the violin strings, Sherlock passed over to the kitchen and peeled away the old tablet that he kept taped to one of the cupboards. Behind it, there was a small space, just big enough for him to fish Irene Adler's phone out of it.

John sighed. "You think this has to do with Adler too?"

"It has been four days. I still haven't heard anything from her." He stared down at the little device. "And Mycroft really does not want for me to have this phone", he mused. "Irene Adler was so dangerous to his department because she knew too much. She had information. Pictures, documents, plans. I doubt this was ever about something as mundane as sexually provocative photography with a royal." He turned the device around in his fingers. "Originally she kept all that she had on the data drive that we discovered back when we first met her. We saw it. The Americans saw it. I am certain at some point Mycroft's people got ahold of the footage as well. Her original way of storing the information was compromised so she needed to come up with something else. Especially if she feared that she might wind up dead or captured." His eyes flickered back down to the innocent little smartphone. "So she transferred the data and stored it somewhere where it would not be discovered."

"She put it on a phone and sent it to the guy who owns at least 50 phones", John realised. "That is pretty clever. But you cannot access it?"

The detective shook his head. "No, it is locked. And there is no indication on how to unlock it."

He returned to the living room and turned the device around so that John could see the screen. It was filled with a photograph of two women surrounded by pillows and tousled bedsheets. One was Irene, her dark hair pulled into an intricate bun, lips painted red and her gaze fixed intently right at the camera as if she was in the middle of setting it up. She was wearing nothing but a silky camisole. Right behind her, the other woman was sitting with her back turned to the camera, long red hair curling around bare shoulders.

"Well that's ... intimate", John mused. He felt a bit self-conscious just looking at the phone now. He furrowed his brows and tried to reach out to the device.

\U.I.: 1 New Log in Attempt!

→ Access DENIED!

Well, it would have surprised him immensely if it had been that easy.

"I tried looking Irene up, but there was no information about her anywhere online, which is quite suspicious by itself", Sherlock rambled on. "Then I asked Donovan to look her up in the Police database. Nothing. It is as if she never even existed. The last time someone was this untraceable, they were a criminal Master Mind ready to blow the city to pieces."

John shuddered at the mention of Moriarty. "You think Moriarty helped her become invisible?"

The detective shrugged. "Maybe he did, or maybe someone else from his organisation did. But it is just as likely that she once had some kind of association with the government and they are responsible for her lack of a digital footprint."

"So what now?"

Sherlock stared down at the small screen once again, his features determined. "The key lies within the phone. I will just have to find a way to get to it!"

\U.I.: Current time 19:08, Friday the 31st of December, 2066.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 489 credits

17 available software upgrades.

John flipped the switch to fill and start the water kettle with a dejected sigh. Over in the other room, Sherlock sat in silence and darkness.

\U.I.: Act!ve chat with: Samuel Gregson {private}

→ I will be back in London tonight. Do you want to come over?

→ We could watch the Turn of the Year celebration together?

A familiar tendril of shame squirmed insistently in the back of his mind.

One side effect of the last week of uncertainty and gloominess was that he had barely been in contact with Samuel. Thankfully the other man had been kept more than busy by his sisters and numerous nieces and nephews, but there still had been several occasions when John had guiltily realised that he had not answered the other man's messages in over a day. He really would need to work on being a better boyfriend in the year to come.

He hesitated, lingering in the middle of the kitchen as his gaze inevitably wandered over to Sherlock in the living room. The detective had turned his armchair around so that he could stare out of the window and was now sitting draped over the chair in a most uncomfortably looking kind of sprawl, his legs dangling over the armrest to one side. He had wrapped the bee blanket tightly around his upper body and was cradling one of his books in his lap, but John was pretty sure that he had not turned a page in almost half an hour. Not that he stood much chance of reading anything while the room was this dark. He looked utterly miserable.

← Not quite sure if we have an active case tonight, I will let you know once I know.

→ You are working too much ;)

→ But alright then. Let me know once you are sure.

John tried his best to keep himself distracted with the cooking. He got out a can of sauce from the cupboard as well as the last sad and wilted vegetable leftovers that their fridge was able to offer. It would not make anything close to Angelos' standards, but it would do for tonight. Especially considering that John was most likely the only person who would eat it anyway. Next was chopping up the ingredients and cutting away the especially unappealing bits before piling everything in the cooker with the sauce and some hot water, topping it up with tomato paste and a bit of some random seasoning mix that he found in the back of a drawer. Afterwards, all he could do was close the lid and hope for the best.

Outside the windows, he could hear the distant wail of sirens and much closer a group of young children running along the street with much screeching and giggling.

There was the prospect of watching the annual New Year's light show projected onto the underground walls and ceiling of their level at midnight. Given the location of their flat, they would even have a decent view of it from the comfort of the living room windows. Around them the flat was still illuminated by a variety of fairy lights and the air was filled with the smell of some kind of pastry that Mrs Hudson had baked earlier today. All in all, it could have been really cosy if there was not the ever-present shadow of Irene Adler, her mysterious phone and the uncertainty of her survival that loomed over everything like a dark omen. It was a shame. John had really been looking forward to the holidays this year. Especially to spending them with Sherlock if he was completely honest.

With another sigh, he went to search for a clean mug and began preparing another cup of tea with the leftover hot water. He decided against preparing one for his roommate too, mainly because there were already two stone-cold cups of untouched tea on the desk right beside the other man.

The sauce continued to bubble merrily, smelling overwhelming like the store-bought base and not much else, the carefully chopped vegetables merely an afterthought. While the tea was steeping, John went looking for some pasta to go with the sauce, rummaging first through the cupboard and then through the part on the counter that was inofficially reserved for a certain variety of Sherlock's experiments that strictly speaking were mostly edible and non-toxic.

"Did you use the last of our pasta for something?", John asked dubiously after several minutes of fruitless investigation.

The dejected heap by the window huffed. "No."

"Alright, I will ask Mrs Hudson if she has some then."

There was no answer as he took the stairs down.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Martha Hudson

← Do you have some pasta that I could use? We must have run out.

→ Of course, dear!

The door already stood open, so he entered with a little knock do the door frame and went right through. With each step, the sweet smell of baking intensified. In the kitchen, their landlady was preparing her own dinner, some kind of soup by the look of it. On the counter next to the hob, there sat a tray of biscuits out to cool.

When he entered she had already pulled a package of pasta from her cupboard. She gave him a concerned once over. "Is he still moping around?", she asked in an almost whisper.

John let out a breath and shrugged helplessly. "The same as the last days, I guess? Hard to tell. He still isn't talking."

She tsked, her brows knitted together. "Well, maybe he is not using his words, but his actions seem to say plenty. I can hear the yowling of that poor instrument of his all the way down here!"

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"Not your fault, dear." She thrust the package into his hands. "Do you want to come down later, just for a little toast to the New Year? I don't think I will stay up all night for the lights, but maybe around 10?"

He gave her a grateful smile. "I would love that! Thanks for this", he lifted the pasta. "And see you later! If he picks up that violin again, I will hide his bow or something like that."

She sent him off with a chuckle but not before insisting that he really ought to take some of the biscuits up with him since she could never hope to eat all of them just by herself. So it took a couple more minutes before he finally climbed back up the stairs, only to be almost run over by his roommate, who was all of a sudden fully dressed, coat and all, and on his way down.

"Whoa, you are leaving?", he asked surprised as he stared up at the other man.

" Obviously !", Sherlock rumbled while looping his scarf around his neck. At John's questioning look, he added: "They found Irene Adler."

That stopped John in his tracks. "They did? Is she ... ?"

Sherlock barely spared him a glance and instead began squeezing past him down the stairs. "Dead, just as I predicted. Mycroft send me some pictures." He fished one of his tablets from his coat pocket and pressed it into John's hand who had to shift the pasta and the biscuits to take hold of it. "But I'd prefer to see the damage with my own two eyes first, for confirmation."

John, ingredients still in his hand, tried to catch up to this new development before the other man was out of the door. "Please tell me you don't plan to break into a level 9 morgue", he rushed out in sudden dread at the very real prospect.

Sherlock's mouth curled into a grim smile. "Oh no, it's even worse I'm afraid! Mycroft invited me to come and have a look."

That gave John pause. A year ago he would not have suspected anything from the older Holmes' offer. Now, it felt distinctly out of place and deeply suspicious.

"You think he is trying to throw you off track again?"

"I am not sure what to think yet." Sherlock smoothed out the lapels of his coat and began taking the last couple of steps to the ground floor.

"If you give me a sec to put this away and turn off the stove I can come along!", John offered, reinvigorated by the sudden call of adventure after the slog of the last few days.

But to his surprise, his friend simply shook his head. "No need."

He began hastening up the stairs nonetheless. "It's only going to take a minute at most."

"John." The tone had him stop in his tracks once again. "I really ..." The detective cleared his throat, sounding almost embarrassed. "I'd rather do this alone, I think."

John faltered, cradling pasta, shortbread and tablet to his chest in sudden uncertainty. "Are you ... I mean ... sure ! Sure, if that's what you'd prefer." Why would he rather go alone ... unless.

"It is", answered Sherlock earnestly. He opened the door. "No need to wait up for me!"

John snorted bitterly. "It's New Year's Eve!"

"Is it? Happy New Year then, John."

The door closed with a click. "And he is gone", muttered John into the empty stairway. His only answer was silence.

He returned to the flat with heavy steps as if on autopilot. The tablet went to the sofa table, the pasta went into a second pot and the sauce needed some stirring before burning too badly.

He hesitated, staring into the dim and quiet living room with trepidations. There was no debate whether he would wait up for his friend, no matter how late it would get. There was even less of a debate about whether he would leave and drop by Sam's. He could not tolerate the thought of Sherlock returning from seeing the dead body of his ... of ... of whatever Irene Adler was to him with no one in the flat to make sure that he was alright. That he was save.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Samuel Gregson {private}

← Hey! I am really sorry, but can we maybe find another time to meet? Sometime soon next week maybe?

← The dead body of the cold case I mentioned just showed up.

Technically it was not a lie. Emotionally it very much felt like one though. Especially considering how he ended up spending most of the evening alone on the sofa with too much mediocre food while aimlessly jumping through pointless videos and sensational news headlines until his eyes strained with the effort of staring into nothingness and his stomach felt both stuffed and hollow at the same time.

As promised he dropped by downstairs for celebratory beers with Mrs Hudsons around ten, but that still left him with at least one and a half more hours to kill before midnight, never mind however much longer it would take Sherlock to return from level 9.

When he returned to the empty flat, his gaze fell to the abandoned tablet on the sofa table. At this point, he would have taken the most gruesome images of dead bodies over more aimless scrolling online.

So he sank into the sofa cushions with a sigh and after one short moment of uneasy hesitation turned on the screen.

The pale dead woman in the pictures definitely looked like Irene Adler, at least to him. But her face and body were thinner, all her angles much sharper than when he had first met her in the summer. Her dark hair had been shorn short, but it was a patchy haircut at best, with longer clumps in some places and completely shaved patches in others. Her eyes were looking sunken in and dark-rimmed. Scars, both old and new as well as unhealed wounds were spread all over her ashen skin. And then there was the bruising. It looked like she had taken quite a fatal fall or maybe had been hit by something very heavy and fast.

Suddenly John was very glad that he had not looked through these during his solitary dinner earlier. He had not doubted Sherlock's prediction about Adler's death but it was something different to see the gruesome proof of it. He had seen many dead bodies both before and after he had started working cases with Sherlock, but it was different if they had a familiar face. It reminded him of a few recovery missions that he had participated in during his days on the surface. It was just such a jarring realisation that a living, breathing person that he had once met and talked to, had turned into nothing more than a dead, beaten-up corpse. A voice that had suddenly gone silent. Even if that voice came in the form of a lewd and incredibly annoying phone ringtone that had absolutely driven him up the walls before.

And it still left the burning question of what had actually happened between Sherlock and her. It was more likely than ever now that John would never find out. What would the certainty of her death mean to his friend? How would he cope?

Midnight rolled in at a glacial pace. In the end, John almost missed it, sunken so deep into the cushions of the sofa that it felt impossible to ever find his way out of them, while his eyes continued to flicker aimlessly between different apps while a video feed was flickering in the background. He did not even initially realise that outside the light show had started and only took notice of it once he was shaken out of his stupor by the first New Year's messages popping up on top of his doom-scrolling.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Bill Murray

→ Happy New Year, John!

→ We need to catch up sometime soon!

He blinked into the dark room, trying to clear his vision from way too many open applications. Outside most of the regular lights had been dimmed to be replaced by much more colourful flashes. With a groan, he levered himself to his feet and padded over to the window so that he could follow the spectacle.

Geometric forms flashed over the level 6 ceiling and some of the taller buildings close by. Dots of light danced merrily all over the place, some of them merging into the shape of cartoon-like animals that started to chase each other from one wall to the next. On the faraway city wall pixels of light were raining down like a shower of flashing confetti, slowly forming what looked to be the familiar shape of the Old London skyline. And colourfully lit drones bounced from rooftop to rooftop like some kind of huge bioluminescent insects.

Several group chats had popped up by now, familiar and unfamiliar names exchanging generic New Year's wishes and shaky pictures of parties and lights all over the country. John tried to keep them confined to one corner of his field of vision so that he could keep most of his attention on the view outside.

There was one picture taken by some of his old army buddies who were still stationed overground.

\U.I.: Active group chat: SCWAS (Save Captain Watson's arse - squad!).

→ Image shared by: Obasi Ugonna

→ Image description: {7 men and women in military fatigues, huddled close together in front of a plain concrete backdrop. Some of them are clinking bottles together. One of them is wearing a yellow and green party hat.}

→ Attached Message: Happy New Year straight from the very cosy storm bunkers! Currently hiding away from the 70mph gales outside. And the storm is only getting started! Yeay, us! Hope you have it more comfortable underground. {end of message}

→ Bill: Stay safe and Happy New Year!

John left the window after a few more moments of following the extravagant showcase. He felt his way through the now even darker living room and toward the kitchen where he turned on a small lamp. This was probably a good time for the first tea of the year. Especially if he was planning to stay up however long it would take Sherlock to come back home. He switched on the kettle and waited as it began to rumble.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Harry Watson

→ Harry: Happy New Year, little bro!

→ Image shared by: Harry Watson

→ Image description: {The dark silhouette of two women, kissing, almost black against the bright backdrop of colourful splotches projected onto a tall wall.}

→ I got a New Year's kiss! Can you believe it?!

← Happy New Year to you too, Harry. And all the best to Emma too!

Outside the lights continued flashing, bathing the dark living room in changing colours. He could recall the New Year's Eves from back when he was a kid. The changing lights that had been projected onto the dark sky dome far above their heads. How they had travelled into the city centre in the middle of the night just to get a better look at them. He wondered if they did any light show on level 9 but decided that that was rather unlikely. And even if they did, Sherlock was probably in some dark, creepy morgue without any windows to see it.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Samuel Gregson {private}

→ Hey! Hope you are having a good start to the New Year!

→ I know you are very busy but you'll need to take a couple of days off later this week. I will make it worth your while! ;) You are working too much.

→ Miss you!

John stared into the dark, empty room and sighed before he finished preparing his tea. Very busy, indeed.

← Miss you too.

He picked up his cup and returned to the sofa, ready to curl up next to the abandoned bee blanket and pass the next couple of hours with more dosing while staring at random TV shows. He really needed some kind of hobby that he could pass the time with when there were no new cases to write down.

Instead, there was one more message that demanded his attention, blinking insistently in the corner of his eyes. And it had him back on his feet, tea abandoned and trudging down the corridor to Sherlock's room with a curse and a yawn.

\U.I.: 1 new message: {received now} by Mycroft Holmes. [EXPAND]: Tonight might very well turn out to be an especially dangerous night for my brother. I would be much obliged, if you could keep an eye out for him. I would hate to see him return to his old habits of seeking refuge in chemical comforts. Not after so many years of staying clean. Please let me know if there is any way for me to assist. - M.H. {end of message}.

Time for a drug bust of the non-police variety.

It was much later when Sherlock finally returned. He entered the room, gave it a dispassionate once over and then let out a world-weary sigh.

"You messed up the flat again!"

John, who had eventually returned to his cold tea, blinked up at him equally unimpressed and about ready to fall asleep where he sat. "You know, it is never not funny when you of all people accuse me of untidiness. I found a bag of rotting ears in the cabinet behind the rubbish chute."

"Ah, I was wondering where those had gone." Sherlock turned in the direction of his room. "But I hope you left my socks alone this time. I had just found the perfect space for the new ones that Mrs Hudson made."

John, determined to not be shut out again this time followed right behind. Better get right to it then.

"So? Was it Adler?"

Sherlock stood with his back to the door, peeling out of his coat and scarf, carelessly tossing them over the open door of the wardrobe.

"Yes, it was her. If they faked this body then they went to tremendous effort to make it look the way it did."

"And I assume Mycroft told you to close her case now that you have confirmed her death."

The detective snorted derisively. "Of course. He is getting a little bit predictable with old age, isn't he? Silly of him to even try." He started pacing up and down the length of his room, his fingers steepled against his chin. "I am just getting started!"

"I saw the pictures", John admitted eventually. "Of Adler's injuries."

Sherlock just made a dismissive little wave in the air, before his fingers returned to his chin. "Good, I was hoping you would."

"She looked absolutely awful ... What happened to her?"

His friend stilled, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above John's head. "I am still working on that. But you saw the state that she was in. There were some older scars and wounds that must have happened long before everything else. I cannot remember seeing those when we first met her but she could have easily covered them up for the occasion. I am going to concentrate on those for now."

"I could have come and looked her over myself", John argued. He could not help the little bit of wounded pride that crept into his words. "I am a doctor, remember?"

Sherlock continued avoiding his imploring gaze. "I wasn't sure to what length Mycroft would go to mask what happened to her. That's why I did not trust the pictures alone and why I asked you not to come."

Realisation dawned on John about as gently as hitting a concrete wall at full running speed. It had him flex the fingers of his left hand as he reeled with the implications.

"Wait, you suspected that your brother or whoever else would do the same thing that Moriarty did? That they would try to use my implants against me?"

"Against both of us", Sherlock corrected absentmindedly. "I trust your judgement - Mycroft knows that. If he did it right, even just a subtle hallucination to change your perception of the injuries could completely alter my view of the case. I couldn't risk that."

It took John a moment or two to shake the phantom images of a caving-in ceiling and a flood of supernaturally large rodents from his mind. He shuddered. "So what now?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Surprisingly little has changed, all things considered." He crossed over to his discarded coat and fished a familiar device from the pocket. "Our biggest clue remains whatever is being kept on here."

"You brought the bloody phone down to level 9? Really ? Right in front of your brother's nose?"

"Funny isn't it? How someone so clever can be so oblivious at times."

John almost choked at the rare words of wisdom, even though they were spoken about the other Holmes brother. No time to go into that now.

"So, just to get the timeline of her injuries in order ... when was it that you last heard from Irene?"

Sherlock pulled a second phone from his trouser pocket. "10 days before Christmas. 'I will be busy visiting my sister for a couple of days but don't you worry. I will be back and chatting in no time.' " His thumb swiped across the screen once more. "And then nothing until Christmas Eve."

John nodded contemplatively. "So it only took two weeks for her to wind up in the morgue, looking like she had been hit by a train?"

"As well as looking severely malnourished and with a plethora of older wounds that she wasn't sporting back in summer, exactly." Sherlock tapped his phone against his chin thoughtfully. "Two weeks is not enough time for all of this to have happened to her. But on the other hand, I cannot be sure if all of her messages were actually sent by herself. Maybe she had an accomplice writing those instead. Or whoever had taken her was trying to use her to get to me." He sighed and strode past John and back into the kitchen, where he pulled up his laptop as well as two additional tablets. "There must be some kind of hint on how to unlock it. Or some weird exploit to get to the data anyway. It does look to be custom-made, so there could be all kinds of gimmicks hidden inside."

At this point, he was more talking to himself than to John. A familiar state, even though John did not particularly enjoy it. At least he was not very likely to take any cocaine while he was still busy exploring the phone. Small mercies.

"Let me know if I can help somehow?"

"Sure", came back distractedly between the increasingly technical murmurs.

"There is food in the fridge, in case you want some!"

Another non-committal hum. "Not now, I am on a case."

"Of course you are."

\U.I.: Current time 13:41, Sunday the 2nd of January, 2067.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 435 credits

14 available software upgrades.

John barely saw his flatmate the next two days but he also did not dare to leave the flat for longer than it took to stock up on tea, milk and beans. This meant that he had been sulking around the flat for so long that he slowly started to get why Sherlock got so tetchy whenever they went without a case for too long. He was not shooting the wall yet, but it was only a matter of time. The yellow smiley was definitely taunting him.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Samuel Gregson {private}

→ Still busy?

← Kind of, difficult to tell.

← It's a cold case.

← Sherlock is definitely getting annoyed though.

← And to be honest, so am I.

In somewhat better news, Lestrade had eventually found his killer without the help of a consulting detective. Sam would be going back to work next week as well. John on the other hand had declined most of the shift offers at the surgery for now and was waiting for ... something. For something to happen. For something to save him from the ever-same boredom of their flat. For the last clue to slide into place and tell them where to turn to next.

The dramatic slam of the downstairs door and heavy footfalls up the steps preceded Sherlock's arrival. He waltzed into the flat with a stormy expression, placing Adler's phone on the kitchen table with a scowl before draping himself across his armchair with a put-upon huff.

"No luck?"

He shook his head gloomily. "I had Molly do a scan of it. The phone is rigged to self-destruct if it is tampered with too much. Not sure if it also contains a failsafe to send the data to another safe device before it does so." He threw a venomous glare at the little device. "She definitely went out of her way to keep whatever is on there safe. Can you hand me my tablet?"

John stared at the desk between them and counted a grand total of 5 tablets among the papers, books and tableware that were strewn across the surface. When no further specification came, he let his hand hover over the closest one.

"No, not that ... no, the one to the side ... the other side. Yes! Thank you!"

John rolled his eyes. "You're welcome." He took a moment to glance over the other man's shoulder at the screen only to be once again greeted by the beaten-up body of Irene Adler. He sighed. "What exactly do you still hope to find in these? I am sure by now you could draw me the exact location of every bruise, laceration and injection site with your eyes closed!" He took a deep breath, trying to will away the mounting frustration. "If you'd just tell me what you are looking for, maybe I could help. If not I might as well go back to work at the surgery next week. No use for me to just sit around and do nothing", he muttered the last part more to himself than to Sherlock. Not that the other man seemed to pay him much mind anyway.

The detective scoffed. "If I knew what I was looking for ...", he began in an irritated tone, before he trailed off, his eyes glued to a picture of Adler's torso. "Oh that's it ... John, you are brilliant! Illuminating! Enlightening, even if it is by accident!" He zoomed into the picture before turning it around for John to better see it. "There is a variety of scarring and unhealed wounds. Marks along the arms akin to injections, maybe IV placements. The abrasions and lacerations are all over her. So is the bruising. But what is almost lost amidst the sheer quantity of injuries is a series of long-healed but very prominent scars", he stapped his finger at the marks in question. "Especially along the collarbone, towards the armpits and along the base of her skull and hairline." He handed the device back to John and sprung to his feet with a new bout of energy. "I need to go and see if I can borrow some equipment from the lab at Barts." He pointed one finger at John excitedly. "How quickly can you arrange for us to get to Old Amersham?"

John stared at him with wide eyes, overrun by the sudden barrage of new information. "Old Amersham? Why would we ..." He could feel the blood draining from his face as his doctor brain caught up to the information that his friend had just rattled down and the realisation hit.

"You think what happened to Adler is similar to Victoria Heatherley's abduction!" He turned back to the tablet and frowned down at the pictures again - one after another. Meanwhile, Sherlock began darting around the room, collecting a wild array of devices, wires and tools.

"You are right, the placement of the scars is pretty much identical to her wounds," John exclaimed. "I should have noticed before ..."

"You only had the pictures, and never saw the actual body", Sherlock reminded him. "Plus those scars look like they have been healed for years."

John was still looking through the photographs, his brain feverishly trying to make sense of it all. "Even if she had those covered up when we first met her. What about her implants? She had implants, right?"

Sherlock nodded. "Yes, she had. And they were still within her body when I saw it. But maybe whoever took Victoria Heatherley wasn't actually trying to get to her implants after all. There is something more intricate at play here." He looked up from his hastily collected pile of curiosities and stared at John with earnest pleading eyes. "Can you find a way to get us to Old Amersham? Please?"

John nodded jerkily. "I'll figure something out! But we will need to travel soon, they are expecting a storm up there."

He would have to get back into contact with Victoria, but if she could not help out there were still some old contacts of his who were working with mercenary troups back in the days. Chances were one of them could probably help them out with overground transport. That just left them with the task of actually getting there, preferably unnoticed by Sherlock's nosy older brother. Unless ...

"If we happen to take the train to Oxford first and get to the surface from there ... how long do you think we can shake off your brother?"

Sherlock's face glowed with utter delight at the proposal. "Oh, at least half a day! I am sure he is dying for me to find out what happened to his bogus missing student." He began scouring the kitchen for more things he wanted to bring. "Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!"

And John, fueled by the sudden rush of adrenalin and a new purpose that he had so sorely missed over the last couple of days, got to work right away!

Chapter Text

Their arrival at Old Amersham was accompanied by hefty gusts of wind that were jostling the truck that was dropping them off at the compound. Dark grey clouds were hanging low in the sky and the spidery bushes and grasses that littered the otherwise barren wasteland were almost lying flat with the constant wind.

Their drive out to the mismatched commune had been even more bumpy than during their previous trip. And while Sherlock was holding on for dear life - as any sane person should be in a situation like this - John seemed to be enjoying their nightmarish journey a bit too much.

Large potholes and craters on the ground had filled up with mud and rainwater, which was the cause for much swerving and a few quite impressive curse words uttered by the driver of the vehicle. They even had to go around a group of uprooted trees on their way out of the remains of Old Oxford, the last sad husks of overground civilisation vanishing on the horizon behind them, as they drove through several miles of pock-scarred landscape and the occasional much older ruins of smaller villages on their way east.

When they finally had to leave the dubious safety of the vehicle and make the short jog to the town gates by foot, the wind was pelting them with fine grains of sand and leaves, tearing at their clothes as if it was determined to rip the protective gear right off their faces.

Victoria Heatherley had arranged beds for them in a small guest room that was part of a group called the Living Collective and was located quite close to the city centre. She had also arranged for someone to greet them at the gates, but could not join them on their explorations of the base right after their arrival. Due to the storm that was still looming threateningly on the horizon, she was busy helping with the efforts to secure the compound for the uncomfortable days to come. On the flip side, that meant that they were free to roam the city to their heart’s content as long as they stayed out of the way of the construction efforts.

It was already late in the afternoon after they had changed out of their contaminated clothes and dropped off their luggage in the city centre. Sherlock’s first goal was for them to retrace their steps back to the hidden lab that they had found when they had been here last.

“Not sure how much more you can gain just from looking at the place again”, John mused next to him as they strode through the maze of concrete corridors that led towards the outskirts of the city, the echo of their steps bouncing off the curved walls and back in their direction until the abandoned tunnels sounded much more crowded than they actually were.

“I did some research”, Sherlock noted, as he pushed open the heavy metal door that led to the arboretum. “Before the famine and the war, there were industrial laboratories very close to this part of the old city.” He was quite certain that they had not been built with this kind of experiments in mind, but beggars could not be choosers. Not even beggars that were running some kind of mysterious medical research programme and testing their findings on innocent people.

The overgrown greenhouse that they stepped into was eerily dark and quiet. All glass surfaces had been barricaded with plywood from the outside and heavy plastic sheets had been taped in front of the glass from the inside. The wood was rattling with the wind, the sound mixing with the general groaning and screeching of metal poles and antennas far above them and the faintest rustling of leaves.

The only light sources in here were magenta light panels hanging from the ceiling. In their pink lights, the plants looked almost pitch black which just added to the otherworldly feeling of the whole place.  

“If - as I now suspect - Victoria’s case was much more elaborate than a simple augmentation harvesting operation, it would stand to reason that whoever was responsible for it, took advantage of the old facilities that were already in place somewhere around here.” Sherlock led the way purposefully towards the hidden door and down into the deserted lab that was much more dusty now, but stood just as empty as in May. The people in charge of running these experiments would have been stupid to return here after Victoria had escaped their clutches, but that did not mean that there could not be any further clues. Quite the opposite. After all, Victoria’s escape had rushed the clean-up. The scrap of paper that he had discovered earlier was enough proof of that.

Sherlock pulled out a flashlight and began pointing it from one corner of the room to the next. There were plastic panels against the walls and dust-covered tiles on the floor. Metal tables - bolted to the floor and scrubbed clean - as well as the empty fume hood against the far wall were the only features that had been left behind. Too big to get them out of the settlement without being spotted.

Fume hood.

Ventilation!

He froze, before pointing the light straight up and towards the ceiling. Most of it was covered in greyish-white panels, but there was a grid-covered air vent right in the middle. He grinned and crossed the room until he stood right underneath it, shining the light through the dusty slits in the cover.

The room’s ceiling was low enough that it should not be too much trouble to get up there ... that just left one little problem. His gaze wandered to John, who was observing him with visible unease. Smart man.

“Do you remember that time when you heroically broke into a bank and prevented a robbery?”

The smaller man groaned. “Really?”

“Please?”

It did not take more than a couple of seconds for the other man to break. “Dammit, alright. Give me a hand to get up there!”

While John was busy exploring the laboratory from above, Sherlock returned to the fume hood, where he originally had found a scrap of burned paper among the ash of what must have been pages and pages of detailed experimental notes.

Why would someone who was secretly kidnapping people to perform medical experiments on them keep paper records?

Why did he himself rely on paper so much?

Because when handling digital documents, you could never be entirely sure who was reading along from a distance.

He rubbed the ash between his fingers while pondering the mystery at hand. Who were these people hiding from? Were they hiding from the government and their invisible spies, from Mycroft’s ever-too-curious eyes? Or was this meant to fly under Moriarty’s all-seeing radar?

His phone beeped in his pocket and he immediately checked the incoming messages.

\Messages received from: John Watson

→ I think I found something.

→ It’s another lab room, but it has also been picked clean.

→ And an operating theatre. Creepy stuff.

→ There is a door, give me a moment …

The messages popped up one right after the other, probably delayed due to the horrible network connection that was plaguing the entire compound.

And indeed, there was a new noise, almost swallowed by the storm that still shook the barricades outside. A scratching sound was coming from right behind one of the plastic panels next to the fume hood.

Sherlock began patting the wall down until he stood right in front of where the noise was coming from. And when he knocked against the plastic, the material sounded much more hollow than it should.

After a bit more searching and some strategic pointing of the flashlight, he found the hidden seam between the panels and managed to pry the boards away from the wall.

Underneath it concrete was revealed, and set within it a heavy metal door that looked much older than the rest of the room. Sherlock pulled his lock picks out of his coat pocket just as someone started rattling the doorknob from the other side. His watch vibrated with another message.

\Message received from: John Watson

→ There is a second door right behind the first. It is locked.

Instead of typing out a response, Sherlock began meddling with the door lock. When it finally swung open, John was waiting in the small space behind it, his clothes a lot dustier than before and a troubled furrow between his brows.

“This whole thing just keeps getting weirder”, he muttered as he stepped to the side to let Sherlock in.

There was a tiny connecting chamber that ended in a second door. Behind that lay another dark room, another lab by the look of it.

Tiled work benches, heavy metal lockers and filing cabinets. More dirt and the broken grid of the ventilation opening that John must have dropped into the room through. A lot of yellowed, brittle-looking plastic was spread all over the place.

Sherlock began a first cursory inspection of the lab and just as John had warned, everything was once again picked clean. One thing was still obvious just by looking at it though. This place was old. Much older than anything else that they had seen in Old Amersham so far, maybe with the exception of the old church in the city centre.

“These were the original laboratories”, he muttered excitedly. “The stuff outside was added later, and so this ended up hidden and forgotten within the rest of the city.”

There were two observation windows on each side of the laboratory, both looking into other rooms. One of the windows was smashed in, the other one looked intact but had been boarded up with cardboard from the other side.

Behind the smashed window Sherlock could see an empty chamber, occupied by a much more recently added metal table and a set of surgical lights mounted overhead. There was little imagination needed to understand what this room had been used for. He snapped a few pictures with one of his phones before returning to the central room.

Whoever had organised this cleanup had been thorough. But there was always the chance that something had been missed. Especially when handling heaps of paper.

He laid down flat on the cold floor, shining the light in every possible direction, under tables, benches and cabinets until ...

“There you are!”

Something was catching the light between the thick tufts of dust under one of the filing cabinets at the very back of the room.

Back on his feet, he crossed over to the cabinet in question immediately, pushing all his body weight into the heavy metal in the hopes of moving it just enough ... it barely budged.

“Could you give me a hand, John?”

There was no answer. He glanced over at his roommate who was still standing close to the door and was staring off into space.

Oh no, he was making a face. A very specific, somewhat constipated face. That always meant trouble.

“John?”

The other man startled out of his reverie with a blink and a sharp intake of air. “Ah, sorry. It’s just that Sam was trying to call me earlier when I was halfway through the bloody ventilation tunnel.” He grimaced and Sherlock almost did the same at the mention of Samuel. “I’ll have to remember to call him back later. If I can find a place with decent network reception, that is.” He blinked again. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

Sherlock tried his best to ban the bitter knowledge of Samuel Gregson’s existence from his mind - at least for the moment. “Some help with moving this cabinet, please!”

“Oh yeah, right, sorry.”

Together, they manage to force the cabinet a few centimetres to the side. The sound of metal scraping against rough floor tiles made John wince, but it moved just far enough to free a single piece of paper that must have slipped under there long before the clean-up.

Just as with the previous notes, this paper had been inscribed with almost indecipherable small writing. But Sherlock had come prepared this time around.

He would need time to look through all of it though ... and better light.

He spared one last look for the rest of the room in all of its ominous glory. “We should get back to the guest room for tonight. Maybe we can talk to Victoria some more and keep an ear out for anyone else who went missing before or after her case.”

John let out a yawn that he was barely able to cover with his hand. “Well, some of it will have to wait till tomorrow. I am knackered.” He gave the piece of paper a sceptical glance. “Unless you will need my assistance with deciphering this?”

Sherlock shook his head and carefully slid the paper into one of his coat’s inner pockets.

Later in the evening, John and Sherlock returned to their room with the Living Collective. It was a peculiar place, much like most places in this strange town.

It was all cold concrete walls and exposed metal pipes snaking along the walls and ceilings, but at the same time much more adorned than a similar place would have been underground. Gently blinking fairy lights had been shoved into cracks in the concrete while other gaps were filled with small beads or covered in colourful glass shards.

One wall of the room had been painted with a very detailed mural that depicted a view of the sea - Sherlock mostly avoided looking at it - and the air was filled with the gentle sound of wind chimes that had been strung up in front of the ventilation slits somewhere over their heads.

The room had a total of six bunks but thankfully only their two beds were occupied at the moment, the rusty ladder on the wall that led up to the other ones looked like it could give way at any time.

They were located approximately three levels above the ground. Thanks to that it was easy to tell that the storm outside was still increasing in intensity, even without any windows that faced the outside. Heavy gusts of wind were shaking the whole framework of the city. The howling of the air sounded as if the roof was going to be blown right off and the occasional groans of the buildings did not help to dispel that impression.

John had gone to bed almost immediately after their return, murmuring something about catching up on sleep after staying up way too long to organise their transport overground. Now he was snoring gently just a couple of steps away, completely oblivious to what sounded like the surface of the earth being wiped clean of the last crumbling signs of human inhabitation, his blanket-covered chest rising and falling with the soft sounds of his breaths.

On his bed, Sherlock had spread out the newly discovered piece of paper as well as some of his notes. Mounted just above the paper was one of his phones that he had equipped with an extra magnification lense. With its help he was able to decipher the minuscule writing with relative ease. That still left him with the challenge of actually making sense of what he was reading, of course.

By the looks of the notes, whoever had done their shady experiments in the old laboratories had been conducting some very extensive and honestly impressive research on immunology and virology. It looked like they had been looking into a way to trigger a sort of immunological storm.

Despite Sherlock’s interest in the subject during his time at university, he was struggling quite a bit with the shorthand used in the protocols. He felt like he was still missing crucial information about the experimental scope and set-up. Therefore, he was still puzzling over the true meaning of all of this by the time he had reached the end of the page.

But what he knew so far was certainly grim. Someone was trying to trigger an immune reaction, a violent one. Going by the notes, there were several stages to the project that went beyond the immune reaction itself, but they had not been elaborated any further, so he concentrated on the information that he had.

From what he read about test subjects that had been less lucky than Victoria Heatherley, the artificially triggered reaction seemed to set in almost instantaneously, killing the patient within a couple of minutes if it was working as intended. A gruesome way to go for sure and a worrying kind of biological weapon ... but there were plenty of other ways to kill someone instantaneously. Chemical, mechanical and even software-based approaches, as Moriarty had proven with the Hope murders. Why go to such lengths just to end a life?

But even though Sherlock was still very clearly missing too many pieces of the puzzle to truly make any sense of it, a general feeling of unease filled his stomach when he looked through his notes.

He needed to find out a who and a why ... Only one thing was certain so far: this was a much bigger operation than anything they had initially assumed when they had taken on Victoria’s case. Even bigger than what he could have ever predicted once they had gotten entangled with Irene Adler.

And Mycroft knew more about it all than Sherlock would have preferred. There was an acrid, bitter aftertaste to all of this and he did not like what it said about the kind of politics that his brother was involved in. Maybe - hopefully - he was wrong about his brother’s level of involvement in all this.

The document in front of him was frustratingly vague on the actual identities of the test subjects, with only minimal notes on sex, age, pre-existing conditions and implant status. Still, he had been able to identify Victoria among them, the tests performed on her not really in line with what most of the other documented patients had suffered and were simply marked inconclusive in the end. It looked like someone had installed simple augmentation implants on her for short amounts of time while monitoring her immune response to the insertion. It was difficult to say for what purpose. Clearly they had not been interested in simply killing her with one deadly reaction - at least not right away.

He ended up sending the descriptors of some of the other test subjects to Donovan, in the hope that maybe she would be able to trace some of them back to existing missing persons reports in the Police database. She had answered that she would not be looking into them that night, but would check up on it whenever she found time in the next couple of days. Good enough.

Sherlock shuffled the papers together and put them to the side, turned off the phone that he had used for magnification and pulled the scratchy woollen blanket around his shoulder with a wince. He suddenly missed the comfort of his bee blanket or even Mrs Hudson’s old bedsheets, softened and faded by many rounds of laundry.

His gaze wandered over to John’s still form over in the other bunk. His friend was lying sprawled out on his back, tangled in the sheets and looking absolutely at peace, while around them metal sheets and plastic panels rattled violently against the more sturdy concrete of the city walls. He wondered if the other man found comfort in his first night back at the surface in over a year or if it brought back bad memories. So far he seemed to have snored away peacefully but he had only been asleep for maybe two hours at this point.

Sherlock leaned back and stretched his long legs in front of himself on the old mattress. Perhaps he could stay up just a little longer and keep an eye on his friend, just in case. If everything was still alright in an hour or two, he would still be able to get a couple of hours of sleep closer to morning. And that was assuming that the weather would allow him to get any shut-eye at all.

Yes, he could stay up for nightmare watch just a little longer.

\U.I.: Current time 9:34, Wednesday the 5th of January, 2067.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 396 credits, last updated {05/01/67},{05:00}

13 available software upgrades.

CAUTION: network connection has been lost {05/01/67},{05:43}

The next day started surprisingly pleasant before it all went to shit. The weather outside the city was still wild and violent, the wind howling intimidatingly around every corner and whistling through every crack. But so far, Old Amersham’s tired concrete shell seemed to hold strong and the situation appeared safe enough for the time being. The most recent weather forecasts predicted that the very centre of the storm would miss the city and pass by it at a relatively safe distance.

The relief at that prognosis could be felt throughout the whole compound all morning. The people who passed them out in the long tunnels looked a little less tense and alert. Most of the fortification efforts had been finished in the last couple of days, so that life within the city seemed to pick up again, now that people were free to go after their own business.

At John’s insistence, they went searching for some breakfast before they would continue the investigation into the strange laboratory and its unsavoury experiments.

Eventually they found their way to a small coffee stand. It was located in one of the narrow main corridors right before the tunnel opened up into the large, cavernous marketplace that stretched around the ruins of the old church right at the centre of the commune.

The fluorescent lights along the tunnel walls were flickering a little ominously and a chilly draft whizzed through the corridors, but at the same time, someone had made the effort to paint the exposed pipes on the ceiling in all colours of the rainbow to brighten up the place a little. Along the other tunnel wall painted metal cans and bits of pipe had been fastened to the concrete, forming a sort of water feature along the length of the passageway. Escaping a damaged pipe right under the ceiling drop for drop, the water gently pattered down along the sculpture, until it hit a couple of big planters at the bottom. If there was one thing to be said about the people who chose a place like this over the underground cities with all their conveniences and amenities, then it was their unmatched creativity and ingenuity.

The two of them got tea and coffee in mismatched clay cups as well as a couple of nutrition bars before wandering into the large hall filled with a colourful mix of market stands and equally colourful people.

The place was not quite as crowded as last year, but most of the stand where still up and selling a wild array of goods, despite the storm watch. The scents of ozone and coffee, diesel and incense, dust and weed mingled and mixed in the air around them, wafting in and out of existence where ever they stepped.

And in the middle of the large hall stood a tall Christmas tree in front of the church, drooping a bit with the days that had passed since the holidays.

“I had a look at the experimental notes that we found yesterday,” Sherlock started as soon as they had found a quiet place to settle for their meal. “From what I could gather, they tried to trigger some kind of massive immune reaction in their test subjects. I am not yet sure how and for what purpose they were looking into this. I also found some more details on what was done to Victoria. It looks like they experimented on giving her implants for short stretches of time before she got away.”

John shuddered at the new revelations, his brain snapping right back to the creepy dark laboratory and especially the surgical set up that they had found the day before.

“We will need to start looking into any other missing person cases around here. Especially people that have gone missing since we have last been here,” Sherlock continued without so much as a blink. “It is going to be curious to see if they could have additional hidden locations somewhere else in the city.”

\U.I.: Network connection reestablished.

\U.I.: WARNING: Heavy winds are being observed on the surface. Remain inside and - if available - evacuate underground.

John sighed and took a long sip of his tea. This day already promised to turn in to a very long and stressful one. “I’ll reach out to Victoria and see if she is any less busy today”, he agreed before holding out one of the protein bars to the other man. “You’ve got to eat something or else you are going to run out of steam halfway through the day.”

The detective rolled his eyes but took the offering.

\U.I.: Two missed calls from Samuel Gregson {private}

\U.I.: One missed call from Greg Lestrade {office} {05/01/67},{8:23}

John cursed inwardly as the list of notifications popped up in the corner of his eye. He had completely forgotten to call Sam back yesterday. Maybe he could find a quiet minute to do so before they started on today’s investigation.

Next to him, one of Sherlock's phones pinged and he pushed up his sleeve to check the message on his watch, while John turned back to his breakfast.

\U.I.: 1 new message: {received today, 8:25} by Greg Lestrade {office}. [EXPAND]: Hey John, we just got an emergency call from Baker Street. It was Mrs Hudson. Not sure if you are home. I am on my way there now! - Lestrade {end of message}

He gazed up sharply. “Something happened at the flat!”

Sherlock nodded, looking equally alarmed as he continued reading the message that he had just received, his hand already searching for the phone in his pocket. More frantic beeping indicated even more incoming messages.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Martha Hudson

→ Oh John

→ I don’t want to bother you two, but I just had a couple of very weird characters break into the flat.

John felt like the blood in his veins had turned to ice.

→ They were waving around guns and wanted me to wait with them until you two got back, but I told them that you were out of town.

→ Don’t worry though, I did not tell them where you went.

→ They started turning the whole upstairs flat upside down and wanted me to help look for one of Sherlock’s phones.

John’s eyes immediately wandered over to where Sherlock had started typing a message of his own. There was little mystery about what exactly those intruders must have been after.

→ I eventually had one of them take me up to your room to look in there. I knocked him out and blocked the door until the police arrived.

→ I am afraid they made quite the mess of the place, dear.

He swallowed as his mind started conjuring images of their dear old landlady, bruised and bloody, while Sherlock and he were too far away to be of any use.

← Are you alright? Is Lestrade with you now?

Tea forgotten, John got to his feet, not even sure where they wanted to take him. It was a hateful feeling of absolute uselessness that filled his chest. And there was not even any way for them to travel back underground until the storm had passed.

→ Oh, the Inspector was here so fast, he took really good care of me. Very sweet man, that one.

→ I am very sorry, dear, I might have got blood on your old cane.

← Never mind about that old thing. Are you really alright?

← We cannot really travel right now because of the weather but we will come back as soon as it is safe to.

Sherlock was still glowering at his phone with a truly thunderous expression. There were very few times that John had seen the other man this furious. Everything else around them, the busy bustle of the market, the murmurs of passersby and the cries of traders, had faded into faint background noise.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Martha Hudson

← Maybe you could stay with Mrs Turner for a couple of days until we are back.

→ Oh don’t fret, I am fine, just a bit rattled.

→ Though I will borrow your cane for the time being, just in case they try again, if that’s alright with you.

→ I assume you took your gun with you, or else I would ask to borrow that too.

→ Just make sure that the two of you are safe, the Inspector could only arrest one of the thugs, the one who was in the room with me. The other three were already gone when he arrived.

So that just left the question of how much those intruders knew and if they would be able to track the two of them overground.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Greg Lestrade {private}

← I just heard from Mrs Hudson. Please tell me those bastards did not put a hand on her.

→ Mrs Hudson is alright. Just a bit scratched up.

→ To be honest, she is scaring me a little.

→ 20 minutes ago she broke the nose of this mountain of a man with your old cane, and now she is offering me shortbread.

→ I should have known that she must be just as mad as the rest of you.

There was a moment of pause before a last message popped up.

→ I am not going to ask where the two of you are right now. It’s probably better if I don’t. But stay safe!

John blinked the messages away and concentrated back on his friend next to him.

“Alright, what the hell do we do now?”, he asked in a quiet tone. “It cannot be a coincidence that someone broke in and searched the flat. They were looking for Adler’s phone.”

Sherlock, still silently fuming, turned around his phone and wordlessly showed the screen to John. It was the other man’s personal chat with Mrs Hudson. Sherlock had posed one simple question to their landlady: ‘Were the attackers American?’

And the answer had come swiftly: ‘Yes! The one that did all the talking was definitely from the States!’

“Shit! Those wankers again?”

Sherlock nodded, taking back his phone just as another ping sounded from it. “They somehow knew that Irene transferred her documents onto a phone and that the phone must be with us. They knew how to find us.” His eyes narrowed. “And crucially ... no one stopped them from breaking into the flat.” His words floated ominously in the air between them.

John swallowed. “Mycroft?”

“He might not be directly behind this, but he must have known that it would happen. He was in on this", Sherlock spat out the last few words and John felt a sudden rush of ice travelling down his spine.

As much as he disliked the older Holmes brother most of the time, he really did not want to believe that Mycroft would just sit by idly and allow armed foreign agents to break into 221B. The sheer suggestion made his stomach tie into painful knots. But could he really rule it out?

“So ...“, he stood up a bit straighter, the newfound adrenaline sharpening his senses. He asked again: “What now?”

The wild mix of market stands around them and the labyrinthine network of corridors that made up the compound suddenly felt a lot less cosy and much more like a security problem waiting to happen. Too many corners, too many hiding spots, too many secret entrances. In the army, they had liked to stage exercises in abandoned settlements like this. “If you are right about your brother’s involvement, then it is only a matter of time before someone turns up here, isn’t it? Maybe not right now because of the storm ...”

“But that is merely going to slow them down.”

John's fingers twisted into the sleeve of his jumper as his brain continued scrambling for any way out of this. “They will be coming right for us and for the phone.”

Sherlock nodded grimly. He had pulled Adler’s phone from one of the inner pockets of his coat and was swirling it between his fingers as he spoke. “I think an eventual meeting is almost inevitable. I do however think it would be fun to send them on a bit of a scavenger hunt first.” He checked the screen one last time - still a somewhat revealing picture of Irene and her mysterious companion - before holding the power button down until the device powered down. “If they want that phone so badly, they might as well put some effort into finding it.”

John shot him a sceptical glance. “Don’t you think they will have some way to track devices like that?”

“Oh, I won’t make it too easy for them.” He placed the shut-down phone onto the ledge that they had been leaning against and pulled out one of his own phones. It pinged with yet another incoming message. He snorted bitterly as soon as he spotted it.

“My brother wants to know where I am!”

John grimaced. “What are you going to tell him?”

“I will eventually tell him that I unfortunately couldn’t answer his messages since I seem to have misplaced my phone.”

“Oh yeah, I am sure he will buy that!”

Sherlock made a show of shutting down this phone as well, before he fished two more devices out of his suit and another three out of his coat, turning off one after the other.

“Technically it won’t be a lie.”

John continued to watch the other man produce a frankly alarming number of phones and tablets from his person, turning them all off before scooping them back into his coat with a satisfied smirk. “This might take me some time. I am sure there are plenty of very amusing hiding places all over the compound that could fit a phone.”

The doctor sighed. “I guess I am not coming with you?”

“No, that might give it away, I’m afraid.” Sherlock did actually look a bit apologetic at that.

“And what if they are already here and after you?“, John cautioned, the whole idea still sitting quite uneasy with him. “Last time we had the misfortune of running into these specific Americans, they had no qualms about threatening to shoot one of us to get to the data. If they want this phone this badly, I am pretty sure we won’t be able to stop them on our own. Hidden phones or not.”

“I am sure they would be more than happy to shoot us on sight”, Sherlock agreed a bit too flippantly. “But if they have no way of finding the phone without my cooperation, it is going to stop them from just knocking us out and taking the phone by force.” He sneered a bit as he patted his heavy pockets. “Every minute that they are forced to interact with us directly is also an opportunity, both for us to find out more about this research that they are so very desperate to keep hidden and maybe even to spoil their entire mission altogether.” His lips drew into a grim but satisfied smirk. “After what they did to Mrs Hudson, I don’t feel particularly bad for potentially leaking some sensitive documents of national importance to the public.”

John frowned down at his feet. He was torn between the thrill of the adventure that Sherlock was promising and the very real danger that would inevitably accompany it.

“Sounds risky!”

“It’s your call,” the detective’s features smoothed into a more neutral expression and he met John’s concerned gaze with wide-eyed honesty. “But I reckon as long as Mycroft is still messaging me in whole sentences, we are not facing any imminent risk of death yet.”

John grimaced, but truth be told, simply giving up on Adler’s phone did not feel like an option at this point. They had not illegally travelled overground for a relaxing holiday, after all.

"All right then, how long is your preparation for this scavenger hunt going to take?"

It was as if some of the frantic tension had bled from Sherlock’s frame at John’s agreement. “Meet you in two hours back at the guest room?” He hesitated for a moment as his gaze swept into the distance. “Maybe make that three, I think I have one or two more phones somewhere in my luggage.” John watched him with an exasperated shake of his head. “Alright, but keep at least one of your phones on your person, okay? Otherwise I won’t be able to reach you at all.”

CAUTION: network connection has been lost {05/01/67},{12:04}

John soon learned that it was much more difficult to concentrate on the investigation, when there was the very real threat of angry agents overrunning the settlement lurking behind every sharp turn and corner.

He had spent almost two hours with Victoria, who got him into contact with a few other inhabitants of the compound, especially those who were living on the outskirts of the city and did not get into the centre a lot.

It seemed like a bit of a waste of his time, if he was honest about it. Places like this had a lot of natural fluctuation in population numbers and quite a few of Old Amersham’s inhabitants preferred to stay by themselves and had little interest in keeping others up to date with their comings and goings. It was not particularly uncommon for someone to just vanish for a couple of months with little notice and then surprisingly turn up again when they needed to restock on rations.

But there were a few curious cases, quite a few people that went missing before Victoria’s ordeal and about two or three that went missing after. John diligently noted all the names down so that Sherlock could potentially crosscheck them if they ever found the time for that.

About two and a half hours after their separation, he trudged back into the general direction of their living quarters, still twitching and turning at every bit of unexpected movement in the corner of his eyes, and approaching every turn in the tunnels with the expectation violence right behind it.

\U.I.: Network connection reestablished.

Outside the concrete walls, the storm was still going strong. It had been announced that the next two nights would be the worst, and the whistling and roaring just added to the ominous feeling that already weighed heavily on him.

\U.I.: Active chat with: Sherlock Holmes

→ Returning now, are you done?

After a few jittery rounds up and down the passage in front of the Living Collective and no answer from his roommate, John decided to pass the time by waiting in a rundown pub just down the tunnel. It really was not more than one narrow, dim room with a dusty bar, a couple of mismatching tables, and flickering neon signs all over the walls. Besides John and the man who was reading on a tablet behind the bar with a bored expression, there were only two other patrons within, all sitting alone and in silence.

The place had wide windows that were only partially blocked by even more blinking neon monstrosities, so he got himself a drink - nothing strong, not with his nerves still frayed by the prospect of the imminent reunion with the American agents that had attacked Mrs Hudson - and sat down at a table right next to the window. It allowed him to sit with his back to the wall and still have an unimpeded view of the tunnel and the people who passed through it. One of the other guests, a redhead who seemed to be about his age, gave him a distracted smile before returning her attention to one of the signs on the wall.

His thoughts circled back to the matter at hand. Either the Americans or Mycroft’s people - whoever would make it overground and through the storm first - would get to them eventually. And even with Sherlock’s phones hidden all over the base, it would only be a matter of time and the right kind of threat that would force them to reveal the location of Irene’s phone. John may have been intrigued and definitely disturbed by whatever was going on with the device, Irene’s death and Victoria Heatherley’s kidnapping, but he was not willing to die over it. Or worse - see Sherlock harmed in the course of this investigation. He was sure that his friend was already thinking up all kinds of potential ways out of this conundrum, but that did not mean that they would get out unharmed - the confrontation with Moriarty had proven as much.

There was also a nagging speck of guilt in the back of his mind. Due to Sherlock’s unique circumstances, he could move almost invisibly, especially in a place like this. With most of his phones gone, not even Mycroft would be able to locate him if he did not want to be found. If the other man wanted to, he could probably evade the agents for much longer if he kept to himself instead of sticking to John.

\U.I.: One missed call from Samuel Gregson {private} {05/01/67},{11:49}

\U.I.: Active chat with: Samuel Gregson

→ Hey, can we talk?

He cursed into the quiet of the room and buried his face in his hands for a few seconds. The woman at the other table chuckled.

He gave her a brief, apologetic smile when he raised his head once again. “Sorry for that.”

She waved him off. “What did you do? Forget your girlfriend’s birthday?”

He winced. “No, nothing like that.” But the suggestion came embarrassingly close.

← I am so sorry, today has been really busy and the network connection keeps coming and going.

←I will call you back as soon as possible, promise!

The redhead finished her drink and got up, giving him a salacious wink as she did so. “No girlfriend then? Good to know!”

He barely suppressed another wince at her suggestive tone. “Sorry, I am not really interested.”

She shrugged, her expression not changing. “Well, fair enough. In case you happen to be in the mood later ...”, she allowed the sentence to trail off into nothingness, wavering unfinished in the air before she brushed past his table on her way out. It was with no subtlety whatsoever that she dropped a slip of paper next to his drink.

He groaned and returned his face to his hands as soon as the door closed behind her. What a day. After allowing himself a moment to wallow in his feeling of general misery, he picked up the slip of paper, ready to scrunch it up and discard at the first opportunity. Instead, he froze the moment his eyes caught hold of the words scrawled on it haphazardly.

Doctor Watson, your medical expertise is urgently needed. K.A.

Noted right next to the words was a set of numbers. Coordinates.

A tingling chill was spreading all throughout his body. He immediately rushed for the door and into the tunnel, but the woman had already vanished in the crowd, no glimpse of red hair anywhere to be seen. He cursed again. There was still no sign of the lanky detective that he had been originally waiting for either.

That left John stranded in the middle of the street, people pushing past him on both sides and his eyes wandering down to the inconspicuous scrap of paper and the set of coordinates that it listed.

\U.I.: CAUTION: There is no map data downloaded for your current location!

→ To purchase up-to-date map packages of all locations within the UK, please connect to a licenced MilvertonMods terminal. The accuracy of overground maps cannot be guaranteed by customary standards because of potential natural changes.

He hesitated. The coordinates did not seem to be too far off, definitely somewhere within Old Amersham, probably somewhere on the outskirts of the compound again.

The prickling feeling of unease under his skin intensified. The chances of this being some sort of trap or trick were absurdly high ... but there was something about this that felt different.

He checked the corridor once again as he dithered, but there were no familiar faces in sight.

\U.I.: Image taken {12:34, 05/01/67}

\U.I.: Sharing image 3aR-050167 with {Sherlock Holmes}

He sent a picture of the message to Sherlock. That would have to do for now. And perhaps it was even better if he at least ran after this by himself. Given the none-too-slim chance of him running directly into a very blatant trap, at least he would not be dragging Sherlock down with him.

The queasy feeling in his stomach only increased in intensity as he followed the coordinates further and further away from the busy heart of Old Amersham. He passed by old warehouses, the compound's power station and into nearly endless stretches of abandoned residential quarters. Despite the squirming mess of anxiety in the pit of his stomach, he pushed on ... no use turning back now. But he also pulled the gun from the back of his jeans and held it loosely by his side, just in case.

His mysterious destination was very close now. Rusty metal doors in the walls led to the remains of empty housing units. In some places, you could see traces of the old ruins that the commune had been built on top of. Patches of old brickwork or wood that had been seamlessly integrated into the tunnel walls. Faint echoes of lives long past stretched all over the dirty concrete. Faded paint, strings of strung-up paper figurines dangling across the ceiling and the remnants of dry and crumpled flowers in pots of dirt along the passage.

Many of the doors stood open, others had been blocked off with wooden boards. The coordinates led John right to one of them. The inconspicuous entrance to one of the many housing units, a wreath of faded paper flowers fastened to the rusty metal.

He wiped his sweaty hand on his jeans before closing it back around the gun. Then he carefully tested the door and it yielded easily, swinging open with the faintest creak of rusty hinges and revealing a dark and dusty corridor behind it. The crumbling brick on the outside transitioned to yellowing plastic and peeling wallpaper once he stepped inside.

A corridor led him past an empty kitchen and what looked to be a long-forgotten nursery. The air was heavy with the earthy smell of mildew and the more pungent odour of old plastic. And at the very end of the short passage, one last door led into another bedroom – and faint light was emanating from it.

The room was mostly occupied by a bed that stood against the far wall and a plethora of survival supplies strewn all over the surrounding floor. Several portable lanterns, a med kit, discarded overalls, goggles and respirators. There even was a small gas cooker and a few cans of rations.

The red-haired woman from before was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over a second figure that was lying motionless on the old mattress. Her movements were gentle and soft as she brushed a dark strand of hair from a pale face, before turning around to him, showing no surprise so ever at his arrival.

“Doctor Watson!”

He did not lower the gun as he pushed into the room, observing it with no small amount of suspicion. She seemed absolutely unfazed by the weapon that was trained on her. Instead, her fingers went back to caressing the prone form next to her. Drawn in by the movement, his gaze also wandered to her lifeless companion. Could this really be about some kind of medical emergency and not the trap that he had been expecting with every fibre of his being?

“What do you want from me?“, he asked gruffly.

“Assistance!” She was keeping a brave face, but there was the tremble of bone-deep exhaustion creeping into her words. She reminded him of Sherlock whenever he was trying to solve too many mysteries at once and ended up running himself ragged. Still functioning and stoically marching onwards, but there was a jerkiness to every movement, the barely noticeable shaking of a body that was running on fumes and a brain that desperately needed a few hours of dark nothingness to recalibrate.

“She was looking like she was on the mend for a couple of days, but yesterday her fever spiked and she has barely been awake since then.” She shrugged, a bit helplessly. “I am no medical doctor and I don’t know how to help her.”

John drew a few steps closer to the bed, lowering the gun somewhat but not putting it away just yet.

It was only there - merely a step away - that he finally was able to catch a glimpse of the sleeping face overtop the other woman’s shoulder. And he stared right into the pale, almost grey face of a dead woman.

Irene Adler. Against all odds. But there was no mistaking that face, not even in the feverish state that she was in now.

John gingerly reached out the hand that was not holding the gun. His fingers, the ones that still went tingly on rare occasions but at the same time, were his only true indicator of reality whenever someone was messing with his augmentations. He pressed them into the supposedly dead woman’s pulse point and they met exactly what one would expect: delicate warm skin, drawn thin over layers of veins and bones and flesh. And most importantly, the dull thudding of an impossible pulse.

Was John the one that was being deceived right now or had Sherlock been tricked?

He took in the woman's haggard face. She was thinner than she had been back in summer and her skin was littered with bruises and scrapes, but she was not looking nearly as bad as the person in Sherlock’s pictures had. The pictures that Sherlock had received from Mycroft. John swallowed against the knot of disappointment.

This version of Irene Adler still had her long hair, it was lying fanned out around her head on the pillow and going by her pallor and the low thrum of fever that he could feel radiating off her skin, he was quite certain that there was a multitude of injuries hidden underneath the covers.

He turned around to Adler’s companion and only now recognised her as well. She had been knocked out by the American agents when they had stormed Adler’s Belgravia Penthouse. He had even looked after her for a moment and was pretty sure that Adler had mentioned her name, but he could not recall it, no matter how hard he tried. And going by the colour of her hair, she must also be the woman who was featured next to Adler in her quite intimate phone background picture. Her girlfriend? Wife?

He had to ask himself how he had not recognised her back in the pub, but she just seemed to have one of those faces that were astonishingly easy to glaze over. John faintly wondered if his face had a similar effect on people whenever he was standing next to Sherlock. He wondered if his friend would have recognised her immediately, or if all his attention had been on Adler back when they first met.

“Will you help?”

He shook his head to shake off his meandering thoughts and settle back on the more urgent matter at hand. “Alright, let me have a look at the materials that you have and tell me exactly what you know about her injuries so far ...”

He finally allowed the gun to go back into its hiding place and got to work!

Chapter Text

The sound of expensive leather shoes slapping against cracked concrete echoed ominously off the curved tunnel walls. It was almost loud enough to drown out the storm that still raged outside and the continuous groaning of the compound all around him. The only thing that rang even louder was the hissing of Sherlock’s own laboured breathing as he hurried on - sweat cooling on his forehead and his thoughts spinning in terrified circles.

The many tunnels of Old Amersham felt especially long and never-ending when you were in a bit of a panic, he mused as he strode past shuttered doors and flickering yellow lights. Everything looked the same this far out from the city centre. He turned onto yet another empty street littered with ever more signs of a long forgotten community of idealists and outcasts. No signs of life, just dust and decay.

Sherlock barely took any of it in. Instead, his eyes kept flicking back to the display on his only remaining phone and the coordinates that it displayed. Slowly - too slowly - they crept towards the numbers that John had sent him about half an hour ago. All the signs clearly pointed to an ambush. And still John, careful, thoughtful, clever John had followed them anyway.

Maybe he had underestimated the other man’s adrenaline addiction.

Instead of taking in the motley architecture, the colours of civilisation from both before and after the wars bleeding together all over the drab concrete walls, his attention was drawn to the countless nooks and crannies that an attacker could hide out in. He could see the phantom image of John when he revealed the blinking mess of cables, lamps and explosives that had been hidden underneath that dreadful parka, the red dots dancing across his chest ... and his dark, sopping wet form only minutes later, motionless and bleeding as the world around them burned brightly.

The coordinates had almost reached their destination now. And looking up, it was easy to spot where they were leading.

One door stood open, revealing a dimly lit corridor behind it. A narrow two-storey house with shuttered windows. Sherlock approached slowly, avoiding the debris that littered the street and keeping himself in the shadows and out of the direct line of sight of whoever might wait within.

If John and him got out of this unscathed, John would never get to comment on Sherlock’s more reckless impulses ever again, he decided. It would make for a neat little retort to throw at the other man whenever he got into one of his lecturing modes.

But first John needed to be alright.

With his heart still beating frantically, he set his first step into the dusty corridor. Over the general white noise of the faintly whirring lamps outside and the air hissing in and out of hidden ventilation shafts, he could hear the faint timbre of John’s familiar voice. Just hearing the other man speak in what sounded like a relatively relaxed tone filled him with an almost overwhelming rush of relief.

“Where did you get this selection of antibiotics again? That’s not the kind of stuff that you normally find in a first aid kit!”

There was a tired chuckle and an unfamiliar voice answered. “We always knew that our plan was risky. We had years to prepare for this. And we know people who can get their hands on proper pharmaceuticals.”

Sherlock slowed his steps to a halt, keeping in the shadows and out of sight of the door right at the end of the corridor. He could not get a good look at the people inside, but he could see shadows moving ... He could easily spot John’s purposeful movements even when he was little more than a dark silhouette projected onto dirty plastic walls.

“Well, they are certainly going to come in handy now. Though I could do with some more sheets of MediFilm.”

“We used most of that already right after the escape.”

There was a sigh, followed by the crinkling of plastic packaging and the swishing of textile. “Well, we will just have to make do with what we have then.” More rustling and the creaking of bedsprings filled the silence.

Sherlock knew that at this point it would have been appropriate for him to announce his presence. Through what must be sheer luck alone, John had not run headfirst into a trap set up by the American agents or Mycroft’s people. Instead, he was doing what he did best. Administering medical care and giving clear, level-headed orders to whoever was in the room with him.

And Sherlock? He took the chance to just bask in the confident tone of his friend, allowing for the previous panic to slowly settle and for his heart to return to its usual cadence. He just did so in the shadows, motionless and quiet.

There was a sharp intake of breath and the sound of coughing. “Always so practical, Doctor Watson. What a surprise to find you here!”

While Sherlock did not recognise the first woman’s voice, this one was impossible to get wrong. It did not matter that most of their communication had been over written messages. The slightly mocking, melodic tone was burned into memories of drug-induced disorientation and embarrassing confessions.

Irene sounded weaker now, her voice raspy and thin. But there was still the hint of banter that accompanied every word she spoke.

“If you don’t tell my wife you have seen me naked, I won’t tell Sherlock.”

The other woman snorted - most likely the wife in question. He vaguely remembered a conventionally pretty red-haired woman that had led them into Irene’s quarters. Not that any of that mattered, given that there was a much bigger question in the room right now.

John did not laugh. “No offense, Mrs Adler, but you are supposed to be dead.”

Sherlock inched even closer. He saw one corner of the bed now and the red hair of Irene’s companion, who was standing with her back to him.

A chuckle could be heard from the bed, but it was devoid of any levity or warmth. Instead, it was tinged with a sort of heavy bitterness. “You must be mistaking me for my sister, Doctor Watson.”

Silence followed the revelation. It was filled with the static murmur of disbelief and the inaudible sound of racing thoughts that were fervently rearranging all the facts.

“I am afraid that sounds even more unlikely than your wondrous resurrection,” John commented drily.

The person - Irene - cleared her throat. “Does it now? Why?”

John stayed silent, maybe out of decency towards the supposedly dead twin sister, maybe because of a sheer lack of words.

Sherlock, on the other hand, rarely suffered such limitations.

“Because it is never twins!”, he announced as he strode into the dimly lit room. John whirled around from where he had been perched on the side of the bed, but apparently he was the only person in the room who was surprised by his entrance.

The red-haired woman - Irene’s girlfriend - wife - whatever, just stepped to the side with a shake of her head, completely unfazed. She revealed the prone form of Irene Adler occupying the bed by the far wall, paler and obviously in pain, but alive and not nearly as gaunt as her lookalike had appeared in Mycroft’s level 9 morgue. Sherlock faltered. Mycroft ... there was no way that he and his cronies had not known precisely who they had spread out on that gurney.

Irene’s eyes found his and she raised a thin eyebrow in challenge. “Do you have a better explanation then?”, she asked steadily. “It appears that you were fooled.”

The honest grief and bitterness in her gaze made him reconsider. A fool, indeed. A colossal one by the look of it. But why? What had Mycroft hoped to gain from the ruse?

The false Irene had been nothing but skin and bones. His eyes wandered to the exposed part of her shoulder where pale skin was abruptly replaced by the elegant gleam of metal. Either the supposed sister had lost the same arm or someone had gone to great lengths to make her look just right.

The body in the morgue had been littered with bruises. And there had been scars. Old scars. Far too precisely placed for comfort.

Victoria Heatherley had looked emaciated as well. Frail and pale and bleeding. Experimented on in a makeshift lab hidden deep inside an overground commune that housed less than a thousand people.

“Your sister was held prisoner somewhere overground”, he concluded, troubled.

“Being a mere prisoner would have been kinder than what was actually done to her.”

He had read the medical reports that they had found yesterday. There must have been so much more. Maybe years of hidden research.

Decades?

Possibly.

But not all of it could have been done behind the Arboretum in Old Amersham. They would have needed to do a lot of foundational research to get to this point and they would have needed much better developed facilities to pull that off.

There was no way that any of this happened without approval and funding of the government. No way for it to stay hidden from his brother’s surveillance.

“My sister was always the clever one. The scientist.” Irene shifted in bed, expertly dodging John’s hands as he immediately tried to get her horizontal again. Her eyes were blazing. “And yet, she spent ages as nothing more than an especially interesting sedated lab rat.”

Sherlock’s thoughts wandered to Mycroft, to his clever, ruthless, know-it-all of a brother - and to the way that his face had fallen when Sherlock had first announced his interest in chemistry and immunology.

Because he had known about this.

And at the very least he had been complacent with it, as long as he knew that his troublesome little brother would stay out of it.

Sherlock could feel something shatter with the momentum of this newfound truth.

“This was what you were after all this time. The data drive, the phone. And it is why those American agents are still coming after us.”

Her lips twitched up at that. “I hope those idiots did not cause any further trouble.”

John gave up on his doctorly efforts and let out a wry snort. “Well, our landlady broke the nose of one of them, but I am afraid that won’t slow them down much. They might very well be on their way here at this moment.”

“Pity. Tell her to aim for the unmentionables next time.”

Sherlock barely registered the exchange, his thoughts still racing with the new facts. “The information that you were collecting. The blackmail. That was you trying to find your sister.”

“Soldiers, scientists, spies, politicians. They are all so absurdly proud of their neat little system up here. All that secrecy does not mix well with that kind of ego. If you know how to lean into that, they barely need encouragement to just spill it all. The experiments are only one unappetising piece of it all. So much effort is put into the survival of their blissfully unaware populace underground. I was looking for my sister.” Her gaze flickered over to the other woman, who gave her a miniscule nod. “But really, we just want to burn it all to the ground, eventually.”

Next to her, John stilled, face drawn into a troubled grimace. In front of Sherlock, the whole scale of the operation began taking shape. This was not a small gang that was harvesting the implants of those who would not be missed. No. It was steadily expanding into a ruthless governmental project that seemed to implicate everything and everyone.

“There must be hidden laboratories and clinics all over the country.”

“Indeed. Though I am happy to say that they are now down one. Charming little compound in the south-west. Lovely scenery, state-of-the-art security. There is a local group of activists that has been trying to take it down for a while. They helped patch us up after we infiltrated the base.”

By Irene’s side, John was looking very pale and very serious. “Your sister, what happened to her?”

Sherlock observed her face. Tired and drawn, but not nearly as battered as her sisters had been. There had been old scars and but also plenty of fresher wounds, incisions, injections sites, abrasions. The hair short and spiky. After their discoveries of the previous day, it did not take much to put two and two together. “An artificially triggered immune reaction. That was what they were developing. A scarily efficient bio-weapon of sorts. A perfect internal storm that can kill almost instantaneously. Your sister must have been one of their very first human test subjects.”

“Well, look at you. Looks like you’ve done your homework.” She hesitated. “I found out what they were doing to her a while ago. I read the research and knew the risks. They had written their prototype into her DNA, but it was lying dormant. There was precious little we could do for her if they decided to trigger the reaction. Still … we wanted to at least give her a chance. I consulted experts that I could trust; doctors, virologists, immunologists. We arranged for someone to come up with a potential treatment. It was one of their very first test versions, after all. Maybe we could have ensured her survival for just long enough to get her to relative safety and out of the country.” she took a ragged breath.

“And when we went in, we came prepared. Epinephrine, corticosteroids, a couple more experimental drugs. I did not let her out of eyes for even a second while we were leaving the compound. Always ready to act if she showed any symptoms.”

With each word, Irene’s face grew a bit paler, the skin around her eyes wrinkling and the knuckles of her hand turning white as it clenched tightly around the thin bedsheet that covered most of her body.

“We made it out and fled into the forests that surround the base. She was so weak. It was a wonder that she could keep up for as long as she did. We hid out in the woods for a day, but we needed to get further away if we wanted to get her help. Once you’re out of the forest, most of the landscape there is just moor and rocks. Difficult to traverse and even more difficult to hide in. They caught up with us just half a day later. We got into a fight. And she ... my sister fell. Right off the rock and down a rift. Just bad luck and a weak body. From one moment to the other, she was gone.”

She broke off and they sat in stunned silence. Her story made sense. In the end, Irene had lost her sister to gravity instead of advanced biochemistry. It fit perfectly well with the injuries that Sherlock had observed in the morgue.

“How did you get away?”, John asked in that special tone of his, the one that was gentle without being pitying, curious but respectful. It was a voice that Sherlock had never been able to duplicate. Not a doctor’s voice per se ... more a curious friend asking for clarification. It worked wonders, even with the most difficult of clients.

Irene sagged a bit, leaning more heavily against the pillows in her back. “I didn’t. Not initially. But our local allies managed to ambush the convoy before the agents were able to bring us back to base. And we have been on the run ever since.”

Silence filled the small room. Irene was breathing heavily.

Sherlock’s thoughts were whirling, chasing each other and shaking the foundations of his understanding of the world like the storm that still rampaged outside. Mycroft’s betrayal, all those lies and intrigues, loomed like a dark cloud on the horizon.

“We will have to get further north soon.” She looked down at herself. “As soon as I’m in shape to travel. We will be followed.” Her eyes snapped up and caught onto Sherlock’s, sharp and imploring, despite her visible discomfort. “And I will need my phone back. My knowledge is the only thing that I can trade for safety at this moment. I hope you did not leave it in London.”

“Of course not.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So where is it?”

His lips twitched. “Hidden.”

She furrowed her brows and he continued. “Right now, no one will get into Old Amersham ... or out of it, I am sorry to tell you. I am expecting that the cavalry will be onto us as soon as it gets safe to go outside again. So I took precautions.”

“It won’t stop them. You are not immune to their methods ...” She paused, before her face smoothed out once again. “But that’s not what you are after. You want to force the confrontation.”

“They are too good to run away from. But they might make a mistake when challenged.” John let out a disbelieving snort, but Sherlock barrelled on. “I am not claiming that our chances are good. But they are better than doing nothing.”

“We can discuss this some more later”, John decided, his lips drawn into a thin, unhappy line. “… tomorrow”, he added with a glance at his patient.

“Well, who would I be to disregard doctor’s orders”, Irene acquiesced faintly. Her wife let out a bark of laughter at that and John and her shared a look that seemed to convey a lot of mutual understanding.

“Let’s see how your wounds are holding up and then we can figure out something to eat.” He turned to Sherlock. “Why don’t you see if you can turn up anything edible around here?”

The detective was ready to voice his protest, but the look on the other man’s face shut him up before the words were ever able to cross his lips. He turned around and approached the door with hasty steps.

Behind him he could hear the rustling of the covers and John’s quiet voice. “What was her name?”

“Pardon?”

“Your sister. What was her name?”

And as he stepped out of the room, he could feel how the room’s entire atmosphere shifted, growing softer around the edges, warmer but also heavy with longing.

“Helena. Her name was Helena.”

\U.I.: Current time 17:34, Wednesday the 5th of January, 2067.

Account balance {John H Watson}: 396 credits, last updated {05/01/67},{12:35}

14 available software upgrades.

CAUTION: network connection has been lost {05/01/67},{12:56}

The story of Helena and Irene Adler was all John could think about throughout the evening that followed.

They stayed holed up in the dilapidated housing unit, far from any curious eyes closer to the centre of town. While Sherlock was out scavenging for dinner, John checked and changed his patient’s bandages. He sorted through the mess that he had made of the extensive medical kit and made deliberate use of the pharmaceuticals that Kate had been able to procure from who-knows-where.

And all the while, his thoughts kept wandering back to the pale, bruised face that he had only ever seen photographs of. So similar to Irene but yet so different, now that he knew what clues to look out for. He felt as if he was looking at the woman with fresh eyes now. He felt like he had been granted a rare glimpse at the person behind her sleek, aloof persona.

“Do you have any siblings, Doctor Watson?”, she asked, while he was busy fastening the last bandage over a deep, angrily inflamed gash in her side.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Don’t you know already?”

She smiled, still looking drained after all those revelations. “You may not believe me, but I haven’t done any research on you. I never really had any reason to. It wasn’t you that I was after.”

“I have a sister”, he replied absentmindedly. “Harry. One year older. She is a menace, but I wouldn’t have her any other way ... Though she is not making it easy. She is officially dating my ex as of New Year.”

Irene laughed out loud at that before wincing at the sudden movement. “Well, you can’t blame the ex, I am sure your sister is gorgeous! There must be an interesting story about how that came to be.”

An interesting story indeed. John remembered waking up in the dull little hospital room after their run in with Moriarty. Harry and Emma had met there while he had been waiting for his implants to finally stop playing tricks on him. And he remembered the drug-fuelled confessions in a sweltering hot Baker Street flat that had triggered the actual breakup.

“He always reminds me of Helena ... Sherlock, that is.” Irene’s gaze had softened. As John smoothed out the edges of the bandage and drew himself away, she pinned him with her sharp, knowing eyes. “So clever and single-minded, but also so idealistic. Loyal. You have to keep looking out for him or else all this ugly business is going to swallow him whole. That is what they do best, all the paper pushers and spies in their agencies and departments. The consume people like Helena or him until there is nothing left. Either he becomes a tool in fighting their fights or he is going to be maimed for the greater good.”

He felt the need to tell her that Sherlock already had a brother who was trying to keep him out of trouble - but after all that they had learned today, could he really be so sure about that?

“I can only do so much. It’s not as if I can tell him what to do or which risks to take. Or better, I can tell him, but there is no way he’ll actually listen.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, you keep underestimating yourself. Don’t be dull. He is listening to you. In fact, he is listening to you even if you are not actually in the same room. I can guarantee you that you are that small, annoying voice of reason in the back of his mind that he can never quite ignore.” She shrugged. “At least that is how it works for Kate and me.”

The detective’s return saved him from having to explain the exact limitations of Sherlock and his relationship. Instead, he helped with putting together some sort of stew from a selection of tins and freeze-dried meal rations that would be enough to feed four people - or better feed three and cool into an unappetising glob in front of a distracted Sherlock.

Later they spread out across the room, each with a few pieces of musty smelling bedding from the surrounding housing units. The lights had been dimmed and the doors blocked - not that the worn out material would pose much trouble for anyone who was determined to break in.

John was camped out right next to the door, head propped up on one hand as he kept scanning the room for anything unusual. The day before he had had no trouble falling asleep, despite the howling wind, the creaking of metal and concrete and the steady sound of scribbling and rustling that had come from the neighbouring bunk.

This night he felt wide awake, echoes of today’s adrenaline still rushing through his body, making him feel twitchy and alert. His thoughts kept jumping from one troubling discovery to the next, replaying everything that had been said and trying to make sense of it. On some level he had always known that the peace and safety that he was fighting for overground was flawed. He had seen cruelty, inequity and destruction both above and below the surface. He had met far too many powerful men and women who simply did not care about the harm that they were bringing upon others.

But what they had uncovered here went way beyond what he had ever believed possible. And it made him question everything that he had been fighting for.

Kate was sitting in bed, her back propped up against the backboard, eyes closed and slowly drooping to one side in sleep. She still looked ready to jump into action at the drop of a pin.

Irene was lying pressed against her legs, sound asleep, which made her look uncharacteristically vulnerable. He wondered how the two had found each other - and how the redhead had managed to find a niche for herself next to someone so enigmatic, captivating and overwhelming.

The image of the two of them filled him with a strange, overwhelming melancholy, so he hastily looked away, feeling as if he was intruding on a moment of intimacy between them.

Of course, the only other person in the room with them was Sherlock. The other man was not asleep either - though he probably could have used the sleep, it did not seem like he had got much of it the night before either. Instead, he was sitting in the corner, long legs crossed and his face lax as he stared off into the distance. Had he been anyone else, John would have assumed that he was scrolling through invisible windows, projections, or applications. But this was Sherlock, so it was anyone’s guess what the man was up to. Probably frolicking through his mind palace, or whatever he did when trying to solve a particularly challenging case.

With a deep sigh, John shut his eyes and tried to clamp down on the buzz that still filled his body with static. In front of his eyes, the user interface twitched and blinked for a moment, before settling back into the background. He frowned but chose to ignore it for now.

The digital clocked ticked to midnight, and he froze, filled with an entirely new realisation. How had he almost forgotten about that?

And despite all the very real problems that would need addressing tomorrow - the storm that was predicted to reach its peak and the imminent confrontation with the agents of at least two pretty ruthless government agencies - another idea took shape in his mind. Oh, Irene would love this.

John woke to the indistinct murmur of conversation and a distinct ache in his neck, back and shoulder. He definitely was too old for this, he decided, as he slowly allowed his senses to come online and even out.

“I certainly don’t agree with all of Jim’s methods, but he was a great help in my investigations. We mostly traded in information. There were plenty of little secrets that I could unearth during my conversations with possible informants, that turned out very useful to him. And in turn, he helped me reconstruct what happened to Helena and where they were keeping her.”

There were few things more effective at waking John up than an early morning mention of Jim Moriarty. The name alone still send cold shivers down his spine and his left arm ached in sympathy at the mention of ‘Jim’s methods’.

“He can manipulate the implants of hundreds of people to make them hallucinate the end of the world, but it takes him months to locate a secret government laboratory?”, he asked harshly while he blinked open his eyes.

Irene was sitting up in bed. She was already looking a lot better than she had yesterday. Sherlock stood by her side next to the bed and there were several sheets of paper spread out over the blankets.

Both of them looked up at John when he slowly unfolded himself from his unfortunate sleeping position, wincing with every move.

“Well,” Sherlock drawled, blinking rapidly, before turning back to the woman. “I am sure Moriarty’s little game of ‘Find the Bomb’ set you back significantly on your quest, but as you know, he did not exactly give us much of a choice regarding our participation. Innocent civilians being threatened and people being sedated against their will. You will know everything about that second one”, he gave her a significant look.

She scoffed. “Oh please, I left you in perfectly capable hands! And I gave you barely enough sedative as it was. I would never dream of endangering that pretty head of yours.”

Sherlock’s jaw worked visibly at the statement, but he kept silent and instead began scooping up the papers with a scowl.

All of a sudden and with a surprising amount of agility for someone so recently injured, Irene swooped forward.

John blinked a bit stupidly, not sure what he was witnessing, but just a second later she leaned back again, fingers closed triumphantly around the small dark square of one of Sherlock’s phones - or better the one and only phone that he still kept on his person.

The detective froze in his movements and stared at her incredulously as she turned the device in her fingers.

“I told you that your phone is hidden.”

She sighed, coming to the same conclusion a moment later. “Shame. I just wanted to make sure.”

Sherlock snorted as he folded the papers up. They looked like his notes on the hidden laboratory that they had found two days ago. “Well, have fun with that one. Network reception is rubbish up here and there is barely anything useful on that one, anyway.”

John managed to get to his feet, shaking out his sore legs as he went and joined them by the bed. He gave the phone a cursory glance. “Oh yes, it is barely his fourth-favourite one.”

He ignored Irene’s amused expression and instead turned back to Sherlock. He had a trap to spring, after all.

“Oh yes, before I forget. I am sorry that we don’t have anything to properly celebrate up here. Happy Birthday!”

It was as if all air had been sucked from the little room for a second or two. Sherlock stared at him, slack jawed and in a very rare moment of absolute speechlessness.

Next to him, Irene’s mouth twisted into a grin that almost instantly transformed her into the woman that they had met in summer.

“Oh Sherlock, you never told me that it’s your birthday!”

“Of course I didn’t,” he snapped, his eyes glued to John accusingly. “And neither did I mention it to you!”

John merely gave him an innocent smile while he continued working the cricks out of his neck. “You see, you’re not the only one who can make a deduction now and then.”

The other man blinked before letting out an indignant noise. “Someone must have told you. But who?” He narrowed his eyes. “Mycroft would have told you, but you would never have stooped so low as to ask him. Mrs Hudson? But I always take care to give her a wrong date whenever she asks.”

John let out a surprised huff of laughter at that. “Good to know. I will remember to tell her the right date then.”

The other man paled at the suggestion. “You would not dare!”

He grinned. “Watch me!”

In reality, John had methodically needled Greg into looking it up during one of their pub nights. They both had been somewhat beyond tipsy by the time the Inspector had finally acquiesced. He was sure that Sherlock would figure it out, eventually.

Before the bickering could continue any further, Kate stepped into the room, carrying a plastic bag with what looked to be a mix of granola bars, fruit, and bottled water. No tea or coffee in sight. This would be a long morning and an even longer day.

John yawned before squaring his shoulders and switching to doctor mode, so that he could check up on his patient before breakfast.

Now that Irene seemed to be at least somewhat on the mend, the atmosphere in their hideout felt a little lighter. The storm was directly onto them now, howling and shaking the base, so there was not much to do for them other than sitting tight and waiting. And in the strange, companionable lull, the stories kept coming.

Helena and Irene had been star-students all throughout school and their first two years of university. Just like the supposedly missing Oxford student, they had been recruited into government service before even finishing their degree.

“Helena always was more studious, more focussed”, Irene confessed, her features twisted into a mix of wistfulness and regret. “I thought the program was a fun adventure in the beginning, but quickly grew bored with the politics of it all. I only stayed as long as I did because of her.” Her expression had shuttered there and her spine had grown more rigid against the headboard. “It was only a matter of time until my attention would stray - it always did. Helena knew so too.” Kate had walked over and allowed her wife to lean against her side at that. It was a tiny gesture, but it made John’s heart ache as he watched, his fingers winding into tight knots where they rested in his lap.

“My distraction came in the form of a very pretty woman - not the first time it happened, probably not the last either.” The corners of Kate’s mouth twitched up at that and she rested a hand loosely atop Irene’s tousled dark hair. “Rose, and later also her girlfriend, Alice. An American spy and a European data analyst. Both absolutely gorgeous.” Her eyes found John’s. “Oh, you would have loved them. Absolutely unpredictable, but in the best possible way. Reckless, clever. We met through my program and hit it off right away. And when Rose decided to leave her agency to seek work in the ... private sector, I followed without a second thought.”

Sherlock had perked up at that, his pale eyes narrowing at her and she met his gaze head on. “It would be several more years until they made the acquaintance of one Jim Moriarty, but you are right, that is where they would ultimately wind up. By the time they crossed paths with him, they had already made a reputation for themselves in their respective lines of work.”

“They did? So how did you pass your time, then?”

She shrugged, before explaining that she had kept busy, but also made sure to never quite crossed the same line as her girlfriends. After all, she did not want to pose any danger to her sister’s advancement within the agency. Helena may not have approved of the women Irene chose to date, but as long as she kept out of the crosshairs of the most powerful of people she could cheer her twin on from the sidelines without too much of a risk.

“I kept trying out new fields, meeting new people. I always enjoyed people, meeting them, figuring out what made them tick, and using them to my advantage when necessary. So I went into finance a bit, made some money and met those that made even more. I learned to fly, studied music, travelled as much as possible. I am sure there were people who thought it was a terrible waste of my education, but I always did best when I was just following whatever was looking most interesting at the moment. We two are very similar in that way, I believe.” John turned his head just in time to see Sherlock avert his gaze.

“I probably learned quite a few things that I did not have the clearance to know. Certainly more than most ordinary citizens. But that was alright, I was always good at keeping a secret. Meanwhile, Helena finished her education and started advancing through the ranks, as I always knew she would. Of course I could not know any particulars, but I knew that she spent a lot of time overground and started reading up on biology - genetics, immunology, virotherapy. She worked closely with one of our former mentors - Harold …“ The name sounded like a curse falling from her pale lips. “There is a predisposition for implant rejections on our father’s side, plenty of people who had to go low- or no-tech because of strong allergic reactions to their modifications. Helena was utterly fascinated with the genetics behind that.”

Sherlock shifted from where he sat slouched against the far wall, his eyes sharpening instantly. “So that’s how she went from researcher to research object? I wonder if that is a common occurrence in our national research institutions?”

John shuddered at the implication. He had examined Victoria Heatherley after her own ordeal. He had seen the damage done to her and it probably paled compared to what Helena Adler had been subjected to after all that time in captivity.

By the time she had suddenly gone radio silent, Irene had been distracted with her own dramatics - big and small. She had just separated from Alice and Rose and had got on the wrong side of a couple of people - at that she had wiggled the gleaming fingers of her metal hand in demonstration. But still, she had been more than ready to look for yet a new adventure to tackle.

That new adventure in question would turn out to be her hunt for a woman that, for all intents and purposes, never existed. Helena Adler’s existence had successfully been wiped from all public records. And Irene had turned to the one person with enough of an influence on the criminal and political landscape of the nation for help.

“It did not take him months to track my sister down, Doctor Watson, it took him years. There is a difference between gaining access to civilian implants versus governmental tech. But he was the best at what he does and eventually he managed. You know the rest.”

John’s heart felt heavy at the confirmation that Helena had indeed been trapped for such a long time. Still , he struggled to make sense of the whole situation. He was still missing a piece to the puzzle.

“That’s it!”, Sherlock suddenly snapped. “Civilian implants! They are not meant to be safe.” He sprang to his feet and began pacing the room with furious long strides, his fingers twitching and moving in a way that reminded John of the way that he usually held his violin. He looked pensive and tired, but his eyes were blazing. “That’s what all of this boils down to! Civilian tech is only ever as secure as the government needs it to be. And that is how Moriarty managed to manufacture the kill links for Hope. It’s not a fault in Milverton’s software - it’s a feature! Oh, Mycroft always loved to poke his obnoxious nose into other people’s business. To peek through someone else’s eyes. He would have made it so big if he had gone into tabloid journalism.”

John shuddered. There was no way to grow used to the possibility that the older Holmes supposedly used his own eyes and ears to keep taps on his younger brother on a regular basis.

“This is not just about surveillance”, Kate added soberly. “This way of life confines way too many people within way too small spaces. Surveillance is vital to keep your population calm and quiet. The real issue is keeping everyone alive and fed. We don’t have the technology for that, we knew so from the moment we first considered the move underground. They sold everyone the lie that we can simply leave the surface behind and allow machines and a few specialists to take care of the rest. But it doesn’t work like that. We need the manpower. We need people who stay behind in the mess that we created and hold the fort.”

Sherlock’s face lit up with realisation, invisible puzzle pieces falling into place.

“This goes way beyond prison encampments and overground factories. You are saying that they use implants to ensure the compliance of a cheap workforce overground.”

“Think about it. As soon as the need for a quick solution arose, Milverton had the answer. A network connected remote control directly into the brain.”

"For decades, the government had a monopoly on that level of control." Irene added. “The whole system was built around both controlling and physical enhancing the workforce that was needed to ensure the survival of life underground.”

It was a devastating epiphany. It took the familiar map of the country with its cities and the jagged ruins, industrial hubs and restricted military zones overground and transformed it into a distorted, hideous thing. The well-oiled machinery of survival that they were describing was not happening covertly, it was not hidden deep underground like level 9 or somewhere off-shore like the evacuation rafts during the war. It was right there. And still, most people would never have to lay eyes on it because they themselves were safely hidden away under dirt, metal and concrete.

Not John, though. He had seen of it with his own two eyes. Had seen the expansive factory complexes, and the heavily shielded dormitories for the workers that ran them. He had spent many years of his life defending the areas from rebel groups and foreign attacks. A bullet fired by one of those rebels was the only reason he even had ended up where he was now.

“And then some smart kid comes along and all of a sudden, the government is no longer the only one with direct access to everyone’s minds. Moriarty’s existence alone is threatening to bring down the whole system. He could probably do it with two lines of code. That’s why they were so afraid of him.” Sherlock’s words came faster and faster, stumbling over each other in their haste. With a sort of sickly fascination, John watched as the other man put it all together in its full ugliness. It explained Victoria, and it explained Helena ... and in an especially twisted way it even explained Moriarty.

Irene nodded. “The medical weapon that they are testing out here is their ticket to regaining control. They cannot beat Moriarty at his own game and if he is clever enough to do it, then others will eventually follow in his footsteps. So they are working on something biological to control those who threaten them. Something that they won’t be able to code their way out of.”

A virus of sorts, maybe some kind of gene editing. They were still in their testing phase, but there was no limit to the kind of reactions that they were trying to cause. It made sense that they would test it overground and in remote locations like Old Amersham or in a research compound somewhere in an isolated forest. Within one of the cities, the risk of contamination would have been too high. It made him feel sick to the stomach because it made all the sense in the world if you thought about it like a politician.

John shook his head. “This case had us walk right into an arms race.”

“Welcome to the fray, Doctor Watson, though I think you played your part in all this long before you knew it was happening.” Irene had rolled onto her side and was sitting up with a grimace. “What do you think? Do I have my doctor’s approval for an excursion to the bathroom?”

He clamped down on the reflex to hover, crossing his arms instead and just giving her a quick nod. In his stead, Kate strode over to help, and he allowed his gaze to stray elsewhere as the redhead helped her wife up and into a loose-fitting cardigan.

Quiet murmur followed the two women into the corridor, while Sherlock and him stayed behind in the oppressive silence of the bedroom.

As soon as the other two were out of sight, John allowed his head to drop into his hands as the whole scope of their situation began weighing down on his shoulders. Sherlock continued his brooding on the other side of the room, his head tilted against the wall, exposing a long stretch of pale neck. He wore a pinched expression, his lips pressed into a thin line and his eyebrows drawn tightly together.

John wondered if the other man was still drawing connections, unearthing even more government secrets that could get him killed if the wrong people found out about it? Or were his thoughts on his brother, on all the stuff that the older Holmes had kept hidden? The betrayal that went far beyond the dead body of Helena Adler or the distraction of the bogus case in Oxford. Sherlock always claimed that his older brother was the British Government, which John had usually laughed off as ridiculous. Now he could only hope that his friend had vastly overestimated the influence that his brother really had - and even then, the image that he had had of Mycroft Holmes would be altered forever.

\U.I.: Network connection reestablished.

It made John dread the inevitable moment when the weather would calm down and they would be forced to face the music of their recent discoveries.

A series of faint pings sounded from inside the bathroom. John had a second to wonder about it before his own vision started filling up with the incessant blinking of missed calls, unanswered messages, and incessant notifications.

The sound from the bathroom must have come from Sherlock’s phone then.

\U.I.: WARNING: Gale-force winds are being observed on the surface. Remain inside and - if available - evacuate underground.

\U.I.: WARNING: Extensive structural damage to Levels 1 to 4 of South London after a partial cave in caused by weather. All citizens are required to leave the affected areas immediately if they received an evacuation notice. Evacuation radius will be extended if further instabilities are detected. Follow instructions and report to the nearest shelter.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. He groaned. “What the hell is going on now?”

\U.I.: 7 new messages. [EXPAND] to read more.

→ 1 new message: {received today, 9:45} by Mycroft Holmes. [EXPAND] to read more.

Out in the corridor a door opened and footsteps returned in their direction. “Well, aren’t you popular, birthday boy? Looks like the birthday wishes are coming in!”

Sherlock looked up with an irritated expression that morphed into earnest bewilderment. “I highly doubt that!” In one fluid motion he had crossed the room, hand extended expectantly.

“Well, that message from your brother does not look particularly congratulatory, I am afraid to say.”

“Yes,” John sighed. “I got one of those, too.”

The detective plucked the phone from Irene’s fingers and began typing furiously. “Annoying busybody.”

\U.I.: 4 missed calls from Harry Watson, Bill Murray, Samuel Gregson {private}

\U.I.: Active chat with: Samuel Gregson {private}

→ Please call me!

“Oh, bugger!”

Well, it looked like John would be going straight to hell - and deservedly so. What a stellar impression this must have made on his boyfriend. First, him leaving the city in a mad rush, then being impossible to reach for more than two days while London was succumbing to chaos. And now he could not even use his current circumstances as an excuse, lest he was willing to endanger the other man even more by telling him about all the classified stuff that they had unearthed here. But there was nothing for it. He squared his shoulders and marched across the room, past a bemused looking Irene.

“Excuse me, I just need to make a call really quick.”

Without waiting for a response he ducked into the dim corridor and sought refuge in the remnants of the housing unit’s kitchen - closing the door behind himself just to be sure that he would not be overheard.

Needless to say, it was not a pretty conversation. Even less so, considering that John really only had himself to blame for most of this mess. The fact that Samuel did not even seem to be particularly hurt or angry, just quietly disappointed, did nothing to help easing the sting of it all.

\U.I.: Active call with: Samuel Gregson {private}

“I know that things get stressful when you two are out on a case. And I also understand that sometimes you cannot share details about your investigations with me. But the city is in full emergency shut down right now, and I didn’t even know whether you were in town or not. Most of my messages did not even go through.” Sam sighed and John allowed his head to thump against one of the empty kitchen cabinets as he realised the full scale of his fuck up. The brittle plastic creaked at the impact.

“Listen, I know that I screwed this up, Sam,” he tried. “I was meaning to call you back two days ago and then I fell asleep before I got to it and yesterday ...” How did you even start to describe all the crap that had gone down yesterday?

“John ... you are a great guy, okay?”

Oh darn, that was it, then. John closed his eyes, allowing himself one calming breath before forcing himself to answer. “I’m really not, am I? Shit, I am sorry for all of this. The way things have been going lately, these last couple of weeks, that wasn’t fair to you and you really deserve better.”

On the other side of the connection, Sam chuckled ruefully. “No, John … I don’t need to pretend here. I think you are a great guy, I really do.” Another chuckle, it sounded mostly resigned. “And kind of a rubbish boyfriend, but to be fair, I kind of knew that going in as well.”

John snapped his mouth shut, not sure if he was waiting for a gentle let down or the finishing blow.

“I heard all those stories about you. First from Lestrade and then your writing started being passed around the office. I think I had a bit of a crush on you long before we met in summer.”

John remembered that meeting. The crime scene in the cramped little electronics shop, the unbearable heat and the kind eyed inspector who had sent him his number.

“And you were exactly the way I had imagined you. Sherlock and you swept through that building like a whirlwind. And the first thing that I thought to myself once you both were off again was that I would never stand a chance against that. It was clear that you two were much closer than even your stories would have suggested. I never expected to hear back from you. When I did, I was ecstatic to at least give it a try, but I knew that I couldn’t really measure up to the real deal. Not in your eyes at least.”

John grimaced into the dim room. “No … Sam, really, I promise you that’s not what’s happening.”

“Yeah, I know that you believe that, John.”

They sat in the oppressive discomfort of the following silence for way too long, before Sam continued his previous thought. “My point is, I thought that I could live with being a replacement of sorts. I was happy to at least try it for a while. But it was significantly more difficult than I expected it to be, simply because the guy that I was replacing was right there all that time. And I don’t think I can do that any longer.”

John let out a shaky breath. “I get that. And I am sorry, I really am.”

“Listen, I don’t want to make this more awkward than it needs to be. We gave it a try - it didn’t work out. I wouldn’t mind keeping in touch anyway. Mind you, knowing Sherlock and you it would be impossible for us not to stumble upon the same crime scene again eventually. And while I have no idea what is going to happen between you and Sherlock, I really - truly - wish you the best.”

It was such a lovely sentiment, but John still hated it with every fibre of his being, because the suggestion alone filled him with so much longing that it was difficult to bear.

“Thank you. I mean ... you are being way kinder than I deserve. And I agree that we should keep in touch, I would like that. It’s just ... I knew from the start that Sherlock is not interested in a relationship. He said so from the beginning. There is nothing happening between the two of us, no matter what I might wish to happen.”

It felt incredibly weird to even voice those thoughts, especially considering who he was talking to and how close he was in proximity to the subject of his complicated feelings.

“That sucks. I am sure that is bloody difficult to move past. I mean, as soon as you two are in the same room, it’s as if there is no one else around. Like you gravitate towards each other.” The other mans voice was softer now but it took a determined edge when he continued steadily. “But you need to get over that before you throw yourself into yet another relationship that you don’t really mean! Right now you are just seeking someone to spend your downtimes with. Your non-Sherlock-times. And that’s not fair.”

There it was. And it did feel a bit like getting punched, even though it had been done with kindness. John raked his fingers through short strands of hair. He suddenly felt like he was being thrown back to where he had been one and a half years ago. Feeling very alone and hopelessly smitten with his new roommate.

His eyes were stinging and he had to blink rapidly to clear them. For a couple of moments all that could be heard across the line of their call were breathing and the hum of static electricity.

“I shouldn’t be asking you for advice on this, should I?”, John asked thickly.

“Well, we are here already, aren’t we?”

“Shit ...”, he breathed out, caught somewhere between laughing and crying. “How do I ever get over this?”

There was a snort of laughter. “I honestly don’t know, but I sure hope that we will both get there eventually.”

He slumped against the dusty counter, listening into the quiet. “Might take me a while. For a while I really thought that I was over it, but maybe I was just trying to convince myself.”

“You don’t have to be lonely while you get there, you know. You’ve got plenty pf people out there if you just need some friendly company away from your genius at home from time to time.” Sam sighed. “Alright, listen, I don’t have a lot of time right now. It’s all hands on deck down here.”

John pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh yes, I only just found out when I reconnected to the network. How bad is it?”

“Oh, it’s a right mess. The storm knocked in one of the factories on the surface, which then caused a partial collapse of the construction sites all the way down to level 4. The ones that were working on the explosion damage from last year. They are still trying to pull people out from under the rubble. And at the same time we don’t have any idea where to accommodate everyone once they are evacuated. I just hope that the storm won’t do any more damage.” The other man hesitated. “What about you? Are you somewhere safe?”

He was once again reminded of the fact that Sam did not even know that they were up on the surface right now. And it would probably be better if he did not find out either. “Yeah, should be fine”, he claimed quickly, with much more confidence than he actually felt. “I think we are still waiting for the worst of the weather to pass by. But we’ll hopefully get back soon.”

Sam sighed. “Well, tell me once you are back in the city, alright? Just so I know that you made it back in one piece. I will let you get back to work now - and I probably should too or I’ll get in trouble with the bosses. Hear you later, okay?”

John remained in the dark, desolate kitchen for several minutes after the call had cut. It was as if he was rooted to the floor. Flashes of news, concerned messages and citizen alerts kept popping in and out of existence in front of his eyes. He could hear the wind howling far above him and the barely audible murmur of voices from the other room. They were still sharing a hideout with a supposedly dead woman and her wife and waiting for the agents of several states to catch up with them. In the grand scheme of things both the breakup and his hopeless little crush on Sherlock really should not hold so much weight. Nevertheless - of all the bizarre things happening simultaneously - this seemed to be the one that might just send him stumbling.

Not that he had any time to deal with it at this moment.

He wiped the back of his sleeve over his eyes, drew himself up to full height again, and approached the door with weary steps. Back into the fray once again.

As soon as he returned to the bedroom, he was immediately caught by Irene’s pale, piercing stare and it did not exactly help with settling his nerves.

“Well, that went quickly”, she drawled, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “So, is this one going to start dating your sister as well?”

In the other corner of the room, Sherlock’s head whipped up.

John stared at her far too long, before the meaning of her words finally registered. He could feel hot embarrassment flooding his cheeks. “They are not exactly each others type, I think”, he bit back with contempt. He had the feeling that with her gradual recovery she soon would be back to her full insufferable self. What a joy.

Across the room, Sherlock was staring at him, his brows drawn together and lips slightly apart.

John felt incredibly exposed in the crosseyes of two so observant gazes. He cleared his throat. “So what are our plans for the rest of the day?”

Irene shrugged. “I think, we should go out for drinks.”

John gave her a sour chuckle. “Yeah, sure.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“You cannot be serious! You were about to keel over permanently just a day ago!”

“An astute medical observation, Doctor. But thanks to your hard effort I will live to see another day. That should be celebrated, shouldn’t it?”

John turned around, looking for the one person who he hoped would be able to put a stop to this insanity. But to his surprise, he could not spot Kate anywhere.

“She just went out to run a couple of errands,” Irene explained dismissively. “So what do you boys think? Anyone up for early dinner?”

Sherlock blinked, as if woken from a trance of sorts. He gave her an annoyed look. “I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, come now! He just got dumped, my sister is dead and Sherlock’s brother is going to banish him to the moon once he gets wind of what we are doing up here - on his birthday no less. Let’s get drunk while we still have the chance!”

Of all the horrible ideas, this might be one of their worst. Still, just a few minutes later, they reluctantly followed the woman out into the empty corridors of the compound. All around them, the buildings creaked and groaned with the wind. It was not even five yet, but it already promised to be a long and turbulent night indeed.