Credit for the prompt goes to Skendo
I don't own Sherlock or Harry Potter
"Did Andy ask you out again?" Harry asked, incredulous. "And you said no again?" Soo Lin nodded, sighing. Harry shook her head, pushing her glasses up her nose. "I don't know why you insist on having no connections here."
"I have you." She said defensively.
"Yeah, and I'm not dead yet am I?" A look. "Alright, I know I'm not exactly easy to kill, but even so! Might be worth breaking your rules for that one, he is cute." That earned her an elbow to the ribs, and a scarlet faced Soo refused to comment so they moved down the corridor in silence.
They made an odd picture. Soo Lin with her dark eyes and blue flower dress looked very put together next to Harry, who's hair stuck out in odd directions as though she'd just rolled out of bed, partially obscuring her bright green eyes and a curiously shaped scar. The only feature they shared was their dark hair, but even there Harry's hair was several shades deeper, pitch black.
Rolling up the sleeves of the white shirt she was wearing Harry turned the handles, opening the door for Soo Lin. As she carefully put away the tea set she called out to Harry.
"Are we going to risk going back to the flat tonight? He hasn't done anything since I sent him away." She poked her head around the door. Harry was standing in front of a statue, blocking it from her view, with the cover crumpled in her fist.
"Soo, you need to see this." Her voice was steady, but held a note of panic that Soo Lin recognised, and it was enough to make her hurry forwards to see what about the marble had made her voice so.
She almost screamed.
"It's his mark isn't it?" She nodded mutely. Harry nodded to herself, seeming to think something over, and then held out a hand to her. "Well come on then." She looked at her blankly.
"What?" The younger woman shook her head. "He will find me, you must leave. If he finds out someone else knows that he is here."
"No." Harry pulled at her hand stubbornly. "If you think I'm just going to leave and let one of my friends get murdered you've got another thing coming. Now come on." She looked around the room appraisingly then back at Soo. "We need to hide you."
"Somebody left here in a hurry three days ago."
"Somebody?"
"Yes, Soo Lin Yao. But there's something else." Croaked Sherlock as he loosened the scarf around his neck, reminding him uncomfortably of the strangling a few minutes previously.
"Oh yes?" Asked John, still irritated from being locked out.
"Yes." Answered Sherlock, oblivious. "There were two people living in that flat."
"So what? Boyfriend?"
"Female. They haven't been back either, so they're probably hiding with her. Or nearby."
"And where is she?" Sherlock glanced around, looking for the answer as he so often did. He spotted a note on the floor, stooping to pick it up. Flipping it over, he saw the logo for the National Antiquities Museum, flashing it to John he stepped out onto the street, closing the door behind him.
"We can start with this."
"When was the last time that you saw her?" He strode round the room, eying everything, looking for anything that would give him a clue on her location.
"Three days ago, here at the museum. This morning they told me she'd resigned, just like that..." Sherlock tuned him out, still looking for evidence. He felt eyes on him and looked up, but there was only an assistant, talking to a tourist. He tried to deduce them, the man was American, married, but cheated on his wife last night by the wrinkles in his shirt. Unimportant.
The assistant, was... What was she? He couldn't get much more than an age and an irritation at the American. Consoling himself that he was a distance away, Sherlock turned back to the man. He'd deleted his name.
"What was the last thing that she did on her final afternoon?"
As they were lead away, he felt her stare on his back again. Turning his head to look at her he saw she was glaring daggers, if he were anything less than a Holmes, he would have recoiled. He merely gave her a haughty stare of his own, unsure of what he might have done to offend her, but then that was nothing new really. He had a tendency to irritate people.
Only a day later, they were back in the museum. John and Soo Lin sitting either side of her station while he stood beside them. Well, Sherlock thought, she did well. She hid for four days with no one finding her, but she did have an accomplice. However that was not of importance for the moment.
"I had to finish, to finish this work. It's only a matter of time. I know he will find me." Soo Lin tells them of her old life as a smuggler for the Black Lotus. Of footsoldiers and Bosses and Zhi Zhu, the one behind the message.
"I managed to leave that life behind me." Tears well up in her eyes, and John has to look away for a second. He knows that now, whatever happens her past will always follow her. "I came to England. They gave me a job here, I had friends. Everything was good. New life."
"But he came looking for you."
"Yes. I hoped that after five years, they would have forgotten me. But they never really let you leave. In a small community like ours, they are never very far away. And now I have put others in danger." Tears slip from her eyes and roll down her cheeks as she thinks of Harry. They are not above blackmail, she knows.
"Do they know you were sharing a flat?" John leans forward, worried that a fourth person might have to die because of this whole mess. Soo Lin nods, fresh tears now streaming from her eyes.
"She was not there when he came to me, but they are always watching."
"She helped you hide. Did she know about your past?" Sherlock asked this time, wondering how much she could tell them, if the Spider did catch up to Soo Lin.
"Yes. Even when she saw my mark, she refused to leave me. Even when he threatened us."
"This man, you knew him well?"
"Oh yes, he is my brother." That surprised him, but he really should've expected it from the fingerprints on that photograph in her flat. "He came to me and asked me to help him recover something that was stolen."
"And you have no idea what it is?" She shook her head sadly.
"I refused, for my brother has become their puppet, in the power of the one they call Shan. Black Lotus General. He said I had betrayed him. Next day we found the cipher."
"Can you decipher this?" Sherlock slapped the pictures of the code onto the table in front of her.
"These are numbers."
"I know."
"Here, across the man's eyes. It is the Chinese number one."
"And this is the number fifteen. But what's the code?" She sat back in her chair, knowing that revealing the code was a death sentence if she did not already have one. Ignoring this (she was going to die anyway, no matter how hard Harry tried) she started to explain.
"All the smugglers know it. It is based upon a book-"
And the lights went out.
"God." John almost moaned as he took in Soo Lin's body, splayed out across her table, eyes wide and glassy with a lotus placed on her palm. He was about to move forwards when he felt something hard and cold dig into the back of his neck. He froze.
It didn't feel like a gun barrel, maybe a knife point? Whatever it was, it was being pressed against his skin like it should cause harm, so he didn't want to take the chance of moving. He could just sense, that there was somebody behind him, could almost hear their light exhales. But no voice came, no threats or warnings. He opened his mouth to speak but the object twisted harshly in warning, so he kept his mouth shut.
Running footsteps reached his and his captor's ears as he felt them tense behind him. Not their ally then? That meant that it was Sherlock, and even though the bloody bastard was late, they had a better chance of getting out of here alive. When Sherlock rounded the corner and saw John's predicament he froze. His eyes flashed with recognition as he recognised the assistant from yesterday. But it was the weapon that she held to John's neck that made his blood run cold.
"Let him go." The dark haired woman looked from the lifeless form of Soo Lin to him, back again and the straightened further. She took a half step back, but looked up before removing her weapon from his skin.
"This thing doesn't need skin contact to do damage."
And for once in his life, Sherlock Holmes was speechless.
This was kind of a prolouge, showing how Harry (her full name is Harriet) has fitted into the plot of Blind Banker. More details on everything will be next chapter. There will be around three chapters, depending on how much people want. Please review,
Thanks,
Em