Sherlock sat hunched over the microscope on the kitchen table, intermittently checking the chemical solution to his right dissolving at a snail's pace and pouring over his notes. The seemingly endless rush of murders, all connected in some unfathomable way, making for a very interesting case, were running him ragged. That measly apple exactly forty-three hours and seventeen minutes ago, coupled with the restless two and a half hours of sleep yesterday were doing nothing to help his situation. His mind raced; he'd figured out the connection between each death so far, and judging by the frequency with which the murderer struck and the last victim, there was little time left. Mycroft had tried to offer his help but the detective told him to frankly keep his fat nose out of it. Now, if only he could just figure out the composition of the sample taken earlier…

The detective called for John to bring him his laptop, repeating the action when there was no reply before remembering that John had gone out with that new girlfriend of his earlier…Layne or Lois or Laura or whatever her name was. Briefly, Sherlock entertained the thought of getting up and retrieving the laptop himself, then decided against it. He would just have to find the information in his mind palace somewhere.

Truth be told, this case was frightening him. All of the murders had been exactly linked to him. It had started with the granddaughter of Sherlock's mother's midwife found strangled in the peds ward of a hospital. Then his childhood nanny's nephew was beaten to death in the stables of Sherrinford estate, where he and Mycroft grew up. It continued; an old primary school bully turned up on the shore of the Thames; the girl Sherlock's parents had betrothed him to at age fifteen (whose own parents had been scared off by their future son-in-law long before either of them came of age)stabbed in a chapel; the professor who'd taught him chemistry for his entire education at Uni died of severe chemical burns. Eventually, it had dawned on the detective that the murderer was killing off people related to events in his life in chronological order. Sherlock's suspicions were proven right when a drug dealer (who he may or may not have had contact with in the past) was forcibly overdosed, a cabbie shot, a Chinese acrobat impaled, a young boy drowned, a prostitute beheaded, a dog trainer ripped apart and an actor pushed from a building all turned up within a week, following some of his most notable cases. All of the bodies were branded with a symbol. It was hard to make out, but by the looks of it, the mark appeared to be some sort of bird. Since his return, Sherlock had kept a mostly low profile, and the trail of murders had gone cold. They were caught up to his life in the present. Sherlock feared the next death would be someone he'd rather have alive.

Memories of tracking down the assassins hired to kill Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade and John invadid his otherwise preoccupied mind, but the detective quickly locked them in the rubbish section of his mind. If they had been anything but relevant to Moriarty's web of lies or the case at hand, they would have been long since deleted.

Sherlock turned his focus back to the task at hand. Using the zoom on the microscope, he could see the genetic makeup of the crumbly substance found scattered over the actor's body. By the looks of it, the crumbs were common, non-lethal or explosive items. Very dry. Smelled odd. There were few materials that it could have been; dried dirt, bark, breadcrumbs, sand, preserved droppings of the Guatemalan flying…

Breadcrumbs.

Something clicked. Sherlock excitedly dashed to the other room, nearly colliding with John's chair on his way to the bookcase. Skimming quickly through the titles, he found the one he was looking for crammed between his Database Issues in Geographic Information Systems and John's copy of 1984. The book in his hands proclaimed the title Grimm's Fairy Tales in bold black print, surrounded by colorful decorations of little children playing on vines or whatever nonsense happened in those stories. Sherlock flipped open to the inside cover and grinned; the mark branded on the victims' bodies stared back at him in blood-red ink. It was a magpie, with a bit of treasure wedged in its beak. The same as…

Downstairs, the door to 221A opened, presumably to fetch the post which had just arrived about twenty-three minutes ago. Mrs. Hudson's pointy shoes clicked against the tile flooring as she sorted through bills on her way back to her flat, and Sherlock would have paid her no mind had her footsteps not stopped in front of the stairs.

"Post here for you, Sherlock!" His landlady called up, "Nice letter by the looks of it, haven't seen a real wax stamp in ages."

That caught his attention. With a lightning pace, his mind sorted through the myriad of details revealed in the past two minutes.

Breadcrumbs.

Magpie.

Wax seal.

Moriarty.

Sherlock had never made it down those seventeen steps fasted in his life, startling Mrs. Hudson as he seized the envelope out of her hands. Just as he'd suspected; Bohemian. A note inside, small, crisp paper. There was a heavy weight too, and by the feel and sound of metal clicking, he'd assume it was a necklace of some sort. The detective barely made it back to his flat before ripping open the envelope with no second thoughts and poured the contents into his palm.

His blood ran cold.

Two circular, military-issued ID tags rested in his hand, already-warm metal weighing so much more in his head than it actually did. Unconsciously, Sherlock's thumb traced the distended metal lettering he had memorized ages ago. A POS, 28498373, WATSON, JH, M. It wasn't considered normal for John to wear his dog tags when he went out, but on particularly bad days—when memories and nightmares from his army days became a bit too much to handle—his flat mate could be seen slipping the two small disks underneath his baggy jumper. He and Sherlock had running joke that he should wear them out on cases, in the event that he was found by one of the murderers and could be identified easily when his body eventually turned up.

Fist closed tight around the tags, Sherlock fumbled for the note which had fluttered to the floor upon his haste to open the letter. An unknown fear gripped him as he read the short, terrifying sentence:

Lost something?

-Moriarty XXX

I know, I know, I already started this and then deleted it, but that version just wasn't working for me. Here's the new version! :D Yay! Tell me what you think! Comments and criticisms are very appreciated.