The Streets Forget
By Any Unborn Child
It was early evening when the power outage occurred.
As luck would have it, the denizens of central London were deep in the mire of their daily lives. The sixty percent chance of rain that was supposed to arrive arrived. Trains came on schedule. Meals went on as planned. Busybodies met other busybodies for dinner. People escaped from other people into the comforting glow of evening telly. Business went as usual.
Moments later, everything went dark.
6: 11 PM
Molly was overseeing the last of the bodies when the blackout occurred. As of late, she had taken to the routine of making sure all of the bodies were packaged up, properly refrigerated, all before walking towards the station to catch the 6:30 tube home. It was a nice routine – a lonely one, but one she became used to over time.
All of the bodies were put away. Molly just finished getting the last of her things, mentally preparing herself for the trip home, for all of the people who would be lining the inside of the tube like sardines. Just then, the gentle hum of the fluorescent lights above her abruptly stopped.
Molly froze. She could barely see her hands in front of her face. Blackness overcame Molly's vision. A flash of clarity went through her mind. It had never occurred to her before that moment. While she did recognize how lonely or how solemn it was in the morgue, she never realized how dark it could be.
A light bulb must have burn out. Perhaps there must have been a fuse.
A simple explanation.
Molly trotted to the light switch next to the silver doors, and tried it. Nothing.
She fumbled through her pockets for her mobile, found it, and tried to call maintenance. Maybe one of the workers was still in the building and could help. Her fingers shook with a nervous energy as she moved them over the digits, a semblance of light finally appearing. The glare was surprisingly blinding as she pushed the buttons. She put the mobile to her ear, but found a busy signal instead.
She scrolled down to Lestrade's phone number, quickly passing the folder that contained drafts of texts that were never meant to be sent, dialing it and putting the mobile to her ear. While she waited for an answer, Molly paced around the room, and, with the faint light, looked around the room for something more manageable - a torch, a light bulb, anything would do right now. She rummaged through the drawers, and became increasingly frantic, not to mention frustrated. The busy signal hit her ear suddenly, so Molly tried the number once more. Still, nothing.
"Shoot," Molly muttered. There had to be something she could do. She went through the silver doors, and looked around for the Exit sign, using her mobile as a flashlight. Needless to say, her composure was a bit on the frazzled side. Blackouts were nothing new, but this was just ridiculous. She could barely hear herself think, with the entire ruckus going on upstairs.
Wait.
Ruckus.
She stopped to listen. Sure enough, she could hear a cavalcade of busy footwork above her, no doubt frantic or otherwise distracted.
There were people still up there. She could talk to them and find out what's going on.
Oh goodness. Talking. Not one of her strong points. That could be a problem.
No matter. She could overcome anything. No problem. None whatsoever.
It was no sooner after she noticed the noises upstairs that Molly took in her surroundings. Her vision was enveloped by black. She was away from the escaped light that windows left behind. She had walked down this hallway a million times before, but she had never really noticed how long it was until now.
Molly fumbled over the digits of her mobile once more, which lit it up. She grimaced as she took note of the battery life – one bar left. Damn.
She had to keep going.
Molly held out her arm, feeling for the wall with the hand that wasn't grasping tightly to her mobile. When her hand got to the wall, she ignored the darkness and walked forward. The darkened hallway became more of a tunnel, an obstacle – it was something to get through. There would be light at the end. There would be something at the end. There had to be.
After a while, she found the doors, and opened them towards the staircase that led to the main floor of St. Bart's.
Once her foot hit the last step, Molly sprung her hand away from the wall. She wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow, and looked at her mobile once again. Still one bar. Thank goodness.
She looked around the lobby of the hospital, bracing for the impact of fluorescent lighting. But, it too did not have light.
There was no one there.
6: 12 PM
Today was clearly not Lestrade's day.
He had already endured another one of his ex-wife's rants over the phone. It was always over the phone. It was almost as if an invisible clause had been written in the divorce papers stating that all communication was to be yelled and to be over the phone, or in this case, over the mobile. He did not need the entire city of London having a power outage. He did not need all of the phone calls, thin voices yelling for attention like congested kids.
Lestrade had just put his head in his hands, supporting it with sweaty palms, when Donovan ran in his office, stray papers in hand.
"Sir, I need you to look at these files now from the case hanging over our heads-what's the matter, you look like hell.."
The Inspector looked up. "Wha-what? Oh, the ex-wife."
Donovan shook her head, "Again?" She rolled her eyes, exasperated. The excuse was getting rather dull. "You've really got to be firm with her about this divorce thing. We are getting more calls within the past five minutes than we have gotten this entire month! Nobody within the 15-block radius has electricity, and no one knows why. And don't get me started on the tubes. Who knows what's going on with them?"
"Good God, what is going on – Wait, how are they calling us if they don't have any power?"
"Mobiles! It's the ones that are not calling that I'm worried about." Donovan walked over to Lestrade's side and slapped his desk with the papers, jolting him to alertness.
"Bloody hell, Donovan!" Lestrade exclaimed, shaking his head roughly as he leafed through the papers. The files entailed a list of all of the callers within the past five minutes. The amount of callers was truly maddening. "How in the hell did you print these off so quickly?"
"Crap coffee, sir. Anderson and I are going to scout the area."
Lestrade waved her away as he shook his head again. "Yeah, you do that."
Donovan roller her eyes as she exited Lestrade's office.
Lestrade looked over the list of callers again. All mobiles, like Donovan had said. They had called pretty much right away. That wasn't an issue. No.
Donovan bounded back into Lestrade's office. "Why call the police when anyone with faulty electricity could call EDF Energy?"
Lestrade blinked. "I thought you and Anderson were going to patrol."
Donovan walked as she said, "I don't know what I didn't think of it sooner – I sent a few squad cars to go around the area and make sure those in their homes, without mobiles or otherwise, are all right." She stopped right beside Lestrade, indignant. "I just realized this! Nothing about this makes any sense. First the power goes out, then everyone calls from their mobiles right out of nowhere. Then we don't know what's going on anywhere."
Lestrade looked up at Donovan. "What are you saying?"
"Something's amiss here. And we have to find out what."
6: 15 PM
At 221B Baker Street, the lights in Sherlock and John's flat flickered, and then disappeared. John had been in the den, haphazardly typing up a new entry for his blog. The events of their most recent case weighed heavily on his mind. No matter how hard he tried, John could not forget the running of imaginary hounds, the foraging hunger of blood red eyes, and the barren black darkness that were branded onto his brain. The explosions that erupted in front of him were akin to the ones that erupted in his mind. They were the ones that he remembered from the days of Afghanistan, the days when everything that could possibly be hellish was, the days when he couldn't tell if the dirt on his hands was actually blood, the days when all he could see was the incoming wounded turned dead. And yet, as soon as those flashes of memory came, they escaped from thought. The flashbacks that he suffered escaped from his mind and into the Internet's fickle grasp.
The din of rain was the only background music to his musings when the light from his laptop suddenly dimmed. Moments later, the electricity clicked off, extinguished.
"Damn," John muttered under his breath. Making sure to put the computer in sleep mode, he hoisted it off his lap, and gingerly put it on the table in front of him. He scooted his almost empty cup of tea away as he tried to make room—make space as he headed towards the kitchen to try the lights there. He flicked the switches multiple times, but nothing.
Sherlock probably wasn't going to be back for a while. Earlier in the afternoon, he went off without saying a word. He also left without an umbrella. He wouldn't know about the power being out until he returned. Might as well check on Mrs. Hudson now, John thought. It's not like Sherlock's going to do it.
He trotted down the stairs leading down to Mrs. Hudson's flat, stumbling slightly as faint wisps of vanilla-scented candles made their way to his nose, lingering like a rumor. He raised his hand slowly, curling it into a fist. He moved closer to her door but then went against it. She was fine. Of course she was. Mrs. Hudson was nothing if not resourceful in times of crisis.
John made his way up the stairs again, holding onto the railing tightly this time, and managed to get back to the flat without incident. Before he could get in, however, he realized that the door was already open.
"Sherlock?"
There was no answer. He called out once more, but again, no reply.
"Sherlock, where are you?" John said as he walked into the shadow fringed flat towards his bedroom, frustration seeping into his speech, "I know that you can't be bothered to talk anyone whose intellect is lower than yours, let alone answer them, but if you're here please say something. Anything."
Almost immediately, his flat mate's voice came from the kitchen. "You might want to speak up a bit, John. Your desperation is showing."
All at once, Sherlock's presence was a great welcome and a general annoyance. John walked back to the kitchen and noticed Sherlock, still clad in his trademark coat, kneeling on the floor in front of the fridge, his ear to the floor.
"What are you doing?" John asked the detective, even though they both knew the answer.
"Checking."
"On what?"
"My specimens. I do not want them to go to waste. Your eyesight is not failing yet, is it?"
John rolled his eyes, his irritation growing. "Never mind the fridge – your specimens will be fine if they stay in there… check on them if you want."
There was a slight pause, again. John could still hear the noise of the rain outside, its rhythm sluggish. Sherlock noted aloud, "Fair enough. You're anxious again."
Good Lord, am I always this easy to read? John thought. "How do you know that I'm anxious?"
"You're foot-tapping. Not hard for someone to hear when only a few inches away. Might want to keep that in mind next time."
John nodded, agreeing in a sarcastic manner. "Yes. Of course. How silly of me. How remarkably dull of me to do something as remotely inane as tap my foot."
"Indeed." Sherlock replied.
"Foot-tapping? Really? Is that what's bothering you? Because I'm just great right now! I can barely see my hand in this darkness, and your comments aren't helping by any means." Almost immediately, John believed that he could see Sherlock's back bristle, becoming tense, as if bracing himself for an impending strike. "I thought you'd be used to it by now, given everything that we've gone through so far."
For a short while, Sherlock stayed on the floor. To John, it almost seemed as if the floor was anchoring him, in an odd but necessary way – who knew what else would happen if Sherlock slipped? But then, Sherlock rose from the floor with an easy grace, a pensive glint in his eyes as he glided past the doctor, right into the living room with the urgency of an impending case. He paced around the room like a caged animal, his speech now eclipsed in tangents. As far as John could tell, he was in his own world. Again.
"You're right, John. I can't do anything about the specimens right now. They'll have to stay secure in the fridge until the power comes back, if it comes back, who knows, we'll have to light candles around the room in order to pretend that everything is normal, do we even have candles, I haven't the foggiest idea, what do you think John, oh right you don't want to hear me, of course not."
The guilt did not come until later. The few candles and torches that Sherlock and John could find circled the perimeter of the sitting area in the living room, the flickering flames transient, lingering against the dying light from the windows. The two sat in their normal spots across from each other, thinking, pondering, drawing lines in the slab of silence that lay between them. Sherlock still wore his pensive expression like an escape, while John took to staring past the detective and towards the rain-lined window.
"Something wrong, John?" Sherlock finally asked, sincerity thinly coating his voice.
John blinked twice, now firmly back into the present, and utterly confused. "No, no. Nothing's wrong. What made you think something's wrong?"
"Your eyes. They shift relentlessly when you're nervous. Your pupils were dilated as well."
John paused for a moment, trying to think of an accommodating answer. "Well, other than the power being out, no, nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. Just…I was worried. About you." He swallowed, and noted again, "That was all, and nothing more."
At that moment, Sherlock squinted, his eyes thinning, the curious glint in his eyes evident even in the dimmest of light. John shifted in his chair, at first uncomfortable at the amount of attention Sherlock was giving him. It was as if trying to decipher what John was really saying amused him. But then John settled down, only now becoming curious about just what the detective was ruminating about.
6:21 PM
The chaos had come quicker than expected. At least, to him anyway. People tended to wallow in their circumstances before taking action. In his experiences, that was usually the case.
But here? Now? Was he getting rusty already?
That couldn't be it.
He had been perfectly content letting the people of London squirm, if only for a really short while. But not too much. No. It wasn't time for true chaos. Not yet, anyway.
On an encrypted mobile he dialed the number of EDF Energy's head honcho; they would no doubt still be tied up. He could still hear their paralyzed, fear-laden breathing as he spoke,
"It has been oh so delightful keeping you on your toes. But alas, your time is done. You're free. Just stay alert out there, all right? Keep an eye on your loved ones."
He clicked off.
Sitting in his easy chair, on his personal mobile, he decided to text Sebastian. His message was simple:
That'll be all. You know what to do.
Everything had gone off without a hitch. They, the people of London, those poor, ordinary fools, had no idea what would happen next.
The blackout lasted for fifteen minutes.
What everyone else was doing at the time could be anyone's guess.