3 years later
A tall, black silhouette of a man can alone be seen in the night. He stands, looking down into a Moroccan alleyway. The moonlight shines on his back, and the man disappears.
He lands on a balcony, and dust flitters all around him. The man draws a thin pistol from his jacket pocket, and after taking a deep breath, punches through the window behind him.
He rolls onto the floor, avoiding scraping himself on the broken glass. Gunshots are fired at the man, but he is too quick–he avoids them at no cost. The man returns fire, and his target is now dead. He bends down to check the pulse of the neck, and feel his heartbeat through his bare chest.
Sebastian Moran is now dead.
The tall man stands upwards, wiping a thin layer of sweat from his brow. He turns on his heel, and leaves the small house in the slums the same way he came in.
The moonlight now shines on his face. Sherlock Holmes scales the stucco wall, over to a drainpipe. Sliding down it, he quickly hops onto a stranger's motorcycle, and rides out of the city.
Just hours later, Sherlock Holmes is sitting in a Rio de Janero taxicab, reading a list. Half the names on it are crossed off in red ink, the other half normal. A few minutes later, he turns on the "Off Duty" signal, and exits the taxi. He crosses another name off the list.
He hails another taxi, and asks to go back to the airport. The driver, an old man, obliges, based on the fact that Sherlock is still holding the gun, with a little blood splattered on his face. Sherlock wiped it off with his jacket sleeve.
Less than an hour later, Sherlock was aboard a plane to Miami.
-.-.-.-.-
"Excuse me, sir, would you mind if this passenger takes the neat next to you?" the flight attendant bends down to ask Sherlock.
"No, not at all." He gives her a nod, without smiling. A short woman shuffles past him to get to the window seat.
"Traveling? I thought I told you better." Lizzie muttered. Sherlock groaned.
"What are you doing in Rio? Didn't you and John just get engaged?"
"I could ask you the same thing, minus the getting engaged part."
"Alright then. I have a hit list. And I am making progress." He whispered to her. "Your turn."
"Not yet." She reached inside his sport coat, and removed his list. She scanned it. "Sherlock, most of the people on this list are in no relation to you."
"I am aware."
"Then why are they on this list?" she furrowed her eyebrows at him. Sherlock shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"I may or may not have been employed by a person of interest." He shrugs, snatches the list back from Lizzie, and stuffs it in his coat.
"You are a hit man?" Lizzie stares at him, astounded. "Do you realize just what you are getting into?"
"I know perfectly well of my situation, Elizabeth. I am under a false name so that my employer does not know of my true existence."
"Oh, and what would that be?"
"If I told you, I'd have to kill you." He muttered, irritating Lizzie even further.
"Sherlock Holmes, if you don't get out of this right now–"
"What could you possibly do? Tell my brother on me? Remember that the whole word thinks I'm dead. Again. So please, do keep yourself calm, and tell me why it is that you have decided to visit Rio and take a plane directly to Miami."
Lizzie looked at him, stunned. She knew he was right, though. Reaching into her carry-on, Lizzie pulled out a file.
"I came to find you. Good thing my training with Moriarty's people taught me how to hack into CCTV." She opened the file. "It seems that Molly Hooper has gone under the radar. I don't mean under your kind of radar either… she quite literally disappeared from thin air. No body, no prints, but the last place she was seen, well, killing somebody in an alley in south London." Lizzie produced photographs that obviously came from a CCTV camera in said alley. Sherlock studied the slightly blurry image. The man that lay dead on the floor, Sherlock recognized to be a man on his list. He immediately crossed it off.
"That's my girl." He muttered, putting the list back.
"Sherlock, if she's going after the same men you are, she's gonna find you." Lizzie reminded him. Out of the file, she pulled a document printed from a computer. "This was found on her at the time of her arrest."
"Wait, she was arrested after the murder?"
"Oh yes. And she disappeared straight from the back of the patrol car. The cuffs they had on her sat on the seat, nicely folded. She disappeared while they were driving. Neither officer heard anything. It's quite the mystery, isn't it?" Lizzie handed him the document. Sherlock studied it.
His eyes narrowed as he took out his hit list. Pairing them side-by-side, he noticed that the people on his list matched the same ones on her list. The Company title at the top was different, instead of a star cut in half inside a circle, there was a red lotus flower. There were three more names on her list than on Sherlock's:
101: John Watson
102: Mycroft Holmes
103: Dejan LeDuca
"That's why she left." He muttered.
"Who the hell is Dejan LeDuca? He's not on your list." Lizzie pointed out with her finger.
"I'm Dejan LeDuca." Sherlock muttered.
"What is more important, Sherlock, is that she's after you, your brother, and John, and nobody in the bloody world can find her. Trust me, all your brother's men are out looking for her. John's being put through witness protection, thus cancelling our engagement, and Mycroft is somewhere under the city in a secret bunker that absolutely no one can get in but him!"
"She's a member of the Red Lotus. She obviously didn't choose to become a member, they abduct you off the street and brainwash you. They pick people who are small but nimble, able to fit themselves through tiny spaces, like air ducts. Molly is an incredibly small person, its no surprise they got to her. If she does find me, she'll have a hard time to not kill me."
"I'm just surprised that I'm not on this list." Lizzie muttered, rolling back her shoulders.
"You don't exist, the Red Lotus doesn't know you're alive. To them, you're just Mary Mostran, the girl who was going to marry John Watson."
"Right, I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be called that." She leans back in her seat.
"Never forget your alias, Ms. Mostran. It is what keeps you breathing." Sherlock sighed. He removed a cigarette from his coat pocket, and immediately lit it up. The flight attendant glared at him, but did nothing. He was in business class, after all. Lizzie only groaned inwardly at his act of annoyance, and crossed her arms over her chest.
-.-.-.-
In Miami, Lizzie parted ways with Sherlock. She took a plane back to London, while he left the airport, in search of his next target, one Cassandra Keys. As he researched her on his smart phone, his taxi driver talked away at him, saying that hardly anyone takes yellowcabs anymore. Sherlock chose to ignore him, and upon the cab stopping at one of the most expensive hotels in Miami. Sherlock paid him with one of the many hundred dollar bills he was given by his employers, and swiftly exited the cab. He walked right past the front desk, and proceeded to the elevators, where the annoying elevator attendant tried talking him up.
"Let me guess, a recent college dropout, looking for money, but has no real skills. You heard about this place because someone you know recommended it to you when you told them you were broke, and took the job without much consideration; you hate working here because your day is so terribly boring but you cannot find work anywhere else, so everyday you try to strike up a conversation with anyone riding the lift because it made you feel less lonely but everyday you are stood up by wealthier people of higher power. Oh yes, and you're shagging one of the maids." Sherlock finished when the lift doors opened.
"Shag-whatting?" the attendant demanded to know, but the doors had already closed behind Sherlock.
The wide hallway was lined with many doors, and eventually gave way to a single, empty corridor, with one large door at the end. Sherlock wasted no time in forcing the door open. The large suite opened into a massive sitting room, with large windows overlooking the coastline. He crossed the room, stepping directly over furniture, to get to the master bedroom. His gun was already in his hand as he opened the door, and saw the woman, patiently awaiting him by the window.
"Irene?"