Chapter Text
The unfolding events of April 7 2013 are ones I am still unsure how to explain. I have spent months after current events trying to articulate the bedlam the past eight years had brought upon not only myself, but the other families affected by Flight 828’s disappearance and the following cover up which we will bring into perspective further into this recount.
Though I suppose I should start from the beginning. Perhaps with who I am as well as who the other writers of this chronicle are. Why we are personally involved with the missing flight in the first place, and after we can get into the past multiple years which in short have been close to torturous
I am Alexander Holmes better known as Doctor Xander Durham, as my last name suggests I am the only descendant of the man like no other Sherlock Holmes. Who had gone missing on the way back from Jamaica with his friend John Watson subsequent of their latest escapade and mystery. After two years in an African conflict I returned home expecting that nothing could be worse than the bloodshed I witnessed during my time there, but I suppose fate has a hysterical way of proving me wrong
My expectations were quickly shattered only a few weeks following my return. My father's trip to Jamaica was announced and I was met with a scene I was, oh so used to as he left America again on a chase of that next high. It was a familiar scene for both myself and Mrs. Watson— poor dear Mary. The trip was fine, father kept me updated, but when it came time to return the plane was overbooked Sherlock and Watson chose another plane. That should have been the end of that.
What occurred was the exact opposite: the plane never returned when it was supposed to, not a few hours later, not a few weeks later— it had been five and a half long years with no answers to the questions that the still grieving family had. Their best guess is that the plane went down somewhere over the Atlantic and the people aboard were long dead.
Five years changes everything despite the grief; life changes rapidly. Mary has a child now, and took the test a week after the vacation. She carried and birthed that child without her husband. A beautiful baby girl named Shirley. It was the name John had wanted to use to honor Sherlock. Now it was to honor them both.
In the same way Watson had become attached to Sherlock I had grown attached to Mary [whom up until this point we had been only mere acquaintances]. We needed each other, and Shirley deserved a male figure within her life. I helped raise the kid as if she were my own, and she is by far the brightest five year old I know. She has the wit of her father, but the love and empathy of her mother. She also talks incessantly which is detrimental to me especially after a long day of work
Now that I have spoken of myself I suppose I should introduce you to my aberrant group of people— the Outliers. We’ll explain how that name came to be in future notes, but for right now you only need to know that we had always been considered– odd.
In the subsequent months of the plane's disappearance I began a therapy group for the affected families who had lost loved ones on the plane. That is where I met Stephens Croft, an identical twin who had lost said twin and new sister in law to the plane’s disappearance. He was taking it extremely hard, and kept on stating during sessions that the plane could not have just disappeared it made no sense. Things just couldn’t disappear.
I pulled him aside one evening to ask him not to bring up such a controversial topic that may not be true. Instead of backing down he stood his ground
The man started, “You are the son of Sherlock Holmes. You can not tell me you haven’t thought of every possible conclusion. I came to you because I figured you would observe the same thing as I did– There is no way that plane was lost to sea.”
I shrugged,”What do you think happened?”
He gave a frustrated sign, “I don’t know, but I do know one thing. My identical twin can not possibly be dead. So are you going to help me figure out what truly happened or not?”
I suppose that is how the Outliers truly started, but it didn’t feel like a true group until neurologist Ingrid Derian joined in on the conspiracy.
Ingrid Derian is as enigmatic as they come and she is not a great team player. Other specialists have warned me of her slightly twisted mind. She was sketchy. I could feel it bones; her past curtained in black. She seemed relatively normal at first, but the moment Stephens accidentally spoke the words “Flight 828” out to her she perked up. Apparently in her enigmatic mind were conspiracy theories for days. Even more impressive? Some of them could be reasonable to our search. When asked if she would like to confer with us, about the strange disappearance she had immediately agreed.
Our fourth member came to us by coincidence at the time we were meeting up in each other's apartments, and this particular week we had been at Ingrid’s place while her roommate was supposedly on call. Turns out she was able to leave early so Sasha Lubbock found us at their kitchen table with files and arguments brewing. Out of all of us she was the one least involved in the situation, but even still she insisted on taking a look at our passion project. She immediately proved herself invaluable.
Sasha Lubbock had the mind of a detective, it was untrained but she caught things the others on the team missed. Sherlock would have loved her; which may be the main reason why I did not immediately boot her out. Another thing to know of her is the words can’t and impossible mean nothing to her. She believes there is always a way something can happen and always a way to fix it. I wish I had her optimism when it came to the questionable or as some call mysterious.
I come to the end of our introduction though there are plenty more people involved in this cryptic case. We write this not as a story to accomplish fame or money. We’ve had enough infamy for one lifetime. What we wish to do is live in peace. We write this as a warning because what we grasp isn’t always what it seems, and as we sit here with the detritus left from the past multiple years. We wish to warn future generations of the problems of this world, the government, and what seems to be impossible; because sometimes it is plausible.
If you would’ve told us all these years ago where this would lead we'd never have believed the mess we created, but it is in consensus that none of us would have changed a thing. Everything that occurred was for a reason; one we still can not explain, but perhaps can understand more fully through writing this.
My father believed in the fact that most matters could be made quite simple with deduction, that anything could be explained simply if you just observe. I will say this story disproves everything Sherlock had ever believed the world is far less simple than his ideals make it seem. Us outliers have learned this. Still our world is changing drastically, and it needs new ideals so we beat against the current of past society to build a better future for those we love.
This is our story it is not beautiful it is messy and chaotic and mostly unbelievable, but it’s true and we will tell you everything in due time I tell this not as my story but as our
The Outliers