Location: London—Baker Street
Time: 11:38 PM BST
Sherlock sat in his chair at 221B Baker Street. His hands folded in front of him, his eyes closed. He heard John in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, a bit late for tea but their evening had been rather stress inducing. Sherlock couldn't hear Mrs. Hudson down in her share of the flat, he assumed she was in bed with a book.
"Do you think he'll come?" John queried, handing Sherlock a cup of tea and sitting down with his own cup of tea, across from Sherlock. "The man in the box?"
Sherlock glanced to the black and white wallpapered wall, which he had tacked several unclear images of an old Police Box and a man in a bowtie, each connected with string. Sherlock didn't know how the bow tie man would know to find them. The thought itself make him feel absolutely mad. He wasn't thinking clearly, that much was obvious. In his rushing thoughts, Sherlock hadn't realized that John had been tapping his foot rapidly with anxiety, rambling the same event of tonight over and over in different words.
"Sherlock are you listening?" John crossed his legs.
"Mm," the detective muttered a few words under his breath.
"What was that you said?" John egged for a conversation.
"It doesn't make sense, John," Sherlock set his tea aside, "What we saw today, it isn't possible." He thought back to the hour before; the statue…it's face. The Baker Street detectives barely made it out of the building, let alone back to the flat. Before John had made tea, he and Sherlock stood shakily, staring at the mobile on the table.
"We should call Mycroft." John had stated. "He might know what to do. What those things were!"
"No! What we saw isn't feasible, John," Sherlock stood up violently, ready to explode. "John, John, you're a doctor—
"Well spotted,"
"—As my friend, please. Tell me this is drugs. Tell me I'm high! Something!" Sherlock had knocked over a chair in rage. Hoping that for once he did have a problem. "Statues aren't capable of, of—vanishing people!"
"Sherlock, sit down, just sit down dammit! I won't call your brother. Just sit and calm down. Then we can figure this out."
"The man in the blue box," Sherlock crafted each word carefully, enunciating each syllable like he had to do in finishing school. "The case that we might never crack."
The photographs on the wall had been printed from old newspapers and blogs. Tacked to the wall with claims of eye-witness accounts, some dating back before John or Sherlock had been born. But this made no sense. The man in the pictures was a young man, late in his twenties. His face appearing briefly in tiny modules of history. All throughout time.
As Sherlock considered as many and all of the facts he knew. In the same instant, a strange wheezy-groaning noise echoed down the quiet street. Sherlock jumped up from his chair, spilling his tea over the floor. He and John pulled the curtains back from the window. Out in the street, the blue police box from the picture on the wall. When the wheezing sound ceased, Sherlock and John watched wide-eyed in silence. Sherlock could hear his own heart beating rapidly through his chest. He hadn't been convinced that he wasn't high.
The door of the box creaked open and out stepped a man in a tweed jacket, a red bow tie and a grand smile. He had seen Sherlock and John in the window and waved at the Baker Street detectives.
