She sat in the darkness. Her eyes were closed, her movements minimal. Quiet, but by far not relaxing, music sounded through her headphones. She was unable to sleep, even though it was nearly two in the morning. She yawned frequently, most likely from exhaustion. Her mind flitted through several subjects. She needed something to do. Sleep was irrelevant, boring. Sleep meant there was nothing to do! What should she concentrate on? Should she go back to the project she had commissioned to herself for the long seven weeks of the summer holidays – the artwork and inspiration she so craved throughout the time of school? School was horrible. You couldn't do anything interesting except listen to the teachers drone on about irrelevant trivia. Who cared if the Sun was the centre of our solar system? It wouldn't matter to her. The other thing she did at school, much to the annoyance of her teachers, was notice all the nuances surrounding them. Mr Jones was sleeping with Miss Blacke, despite the fact that he had two sons and a loving wife. Mrs Laden was falling into depression again and was taking some form of drug for it. She seemed to be nearly overdosing on it.

Music was good. It helped her keep awake. It helped her keep distracted from the normal world, the one she didn't associate with that well. She wanted to sing along, but she couldn't. If she did, she risked waking her adoptive parents, separated from her only by a few feet and a ceiling. Her real father, the one she had through DNA and human reproduction and not the one that had become her father through paperwork, hadn't wanted her. No one did. She was the too smart child. Too intelligent for her own good. Those were the exact words of the staff at the children's home. She was too old for that place. She could have survived on her own. She could do what her father did. Consult the police. But that wasn't enough, not for her. Her espionage skills, her ability to fade from view, her silence in movement and grace in procuring information, deserved much more than that. They deserved spy work. Yes. A teenage spy – how the rest of the world would quake in fear beneath England's new employee. The Shadow. A perfect nickname for her. Maybe she could go to her uncle. He would help her, wouldn't he? He'd employ her, find her a new home. Wouldn't he?

No. No way would she degrade herself like that. Uncle Mycroft was far too busy with whatever the government employed him to do. And how could she confine herself to the very ruling body that she hated? She couldn't go to her uncle. Not without compromising every single base instinct within her. She was just like her father, according to her doctor. Her doctor knew her father, he lived with her father. She had asked for information, after noticing the same things as her father had on the day both Doctor Watson and her father had met. She didn't even know her father's name, just that her birth name, her true maiden name, was Holmes. Now it was Reed. Georgina Reed.

She didn't like her name, not at all. It was horrible. Georgina Holmes rolled off the tongue; Georgina Reed didn't sound right. It sounded like a primal, guttural sound – like that allegedly made in the throes of orgasm. She shuddered. She needed to think of something else, and fast. As soon as she was old enough to do so, she was changing her name back to Holmes.

She grabbed her mobile phone. She loved to text, to surprise people. She would tell her classmates everything she could see about the teacher they had at the time. But that wasn't who she would text. Not tonight. As far as she could see, her father probably had the same insomnia as she did.

I want to talk to my father.

GH

She sent the text to her doctor, who had given her his number reluctantly. She had insisted that she had a right to be able to talk to her father, who wouldn't even acknowledge her whenever she had attempted to talk to him in the past. Maybe that was the way of the Holmes family – inertly intelligent and remarkably stubborn, almost childlike, once a decision had been made.

Her phone vibrated against her thigh, just as she had settled down to go back to her pseudo-meditation.

No.

That single word was the entirety of the message. There was nothing else, but it hadn't been sent from Dr. Watson's phone. It had been sent from a different number, one that she didn't recognise but knew nonetheless. Her father had made a mistake by using his phone. Great, she now had his number. Excellent, even. She could trace it and find her father's name, her father's address, anything she needed to know, she could now find. But for now… she should just text back. She wanted to talk, now she had the opportunity. But what to say?

Insomnia?

Yes, that was right. Ask about the insomnia. Had she inherited it or was it just her who had it?

Go away.

Brilliant. Her father was an infantile prat. Then again, when she was upset or angry, she was one too. That obviously ran in the family, she could see that clearly.

Mr. Holmes? I need your help.

Maybe that could get him interested. She grabbed her laptop, a red Packard Bell EasyNote TJ74. She used a program she had written and tested herself, using her own mobile as the test. It would trace the mobile straight to the owner, where the owner was. Of course, that information could be found elsewhere on the internet. This software, however, would also tell you anything and everything you needed to know about the owner of the mobile. The date of birth. Spouses. Children. Even favourite people. It had taken months to write, but now it was worth it. This was what she had written the software for, but she had been uncertain as to if she would ever gain the information she needed for it to work. Obviously she just had received it. She typed her father's number in and waited for it to load up the information.

Not interested.

Jeesh, what would it take to get her father to talk to her? Maybe… maybe she could blackmail him with something… anything. Her computer screen flashed, indicating the program had finished its job.

She looked through the results.

Name: Sherlock Holmes

Ah. Sherlock, eh? Well, her uncle seemed to have gotten the raw deal in the names department. She wondered who was older. Was it Mycroft or Sherlock?

Please, Sherlock. I just want to know more about my heritage.

Maybe she could find something out from police reports? No. She'd already been arrested twice for hacking into the mainframe of the police network. It was ridiculously easy, though. She had hacked it when she was six, the first time. They didn't have secure firewalls or passwords, that was for sure. The sleeping adults who deemed themselves her parents upstairs would freak if she got arrested a third time. The police had said no more warnings. However, she needed to know. She could just say that she was looking into her father, if DI Lestrade asked anymore questions about it. Surely he would know her father – he had said that she looked a lot like her father...

She searched him on the internet. She looked at pictures. There were no proper pictures of him, just fleeting glances – a bush of dark, curly hair and a long, velvet coat. She had the hair, at least. It was longer, of course – down just past her shoulders –, and it had less of a curl and more of a wave. Maybe her mother had had straight hair – that would explain the wave of her hair rather than the curl that her father had.

I'm not helping you.

Damn it. That wasn't fair. She had a right to know, after all. If she couldn't get it from the source… maybe she could put her espionage into practice. It was always good to have a little hack now and then, and her fingers were itching to access Command Prompt. Not tonight. Tonight she would just think. There was little else to do, after all. She could relax – in as much as she could with her forever active brain – and possibly get some sleep. Bah. She didn't want to sleep, but the lure of it was becoming more and more irresistible. She wouldn't dig into her past… not tonight.