Sherlock hurried down the escape and flipped over the steel rails to the ground when he was close enough. His brows drew down. He tucked his hands in his pockets and walked up to John. "Afraid of heights, John?"

"No."

"Lots of helicopter rides in Afghanistan." Sherlock tugged his jacket gently and paced past.

"Yes." John turned to follow the man's motions.

"News helicopters are rolling on every inch of the downtown right now. If I had done this, I'd sit back in the flat and do math on the flow of traffic. There's a ton of data." He held up his phone to John who glanced over the screen. It was split into four feeds, two from choppers, and two from traffic cameras. "This is a cell. Imagine what I could do with a decent laptop."

John glanced from the screen up at Sherlock. "Will you be able to find whoever they're looking for with this?"

"I stand a better chance than this lot." Sherlock indicated Lestrade and the police around him. "They still can't pick the signal from the noise." He snickered as a loud, percussive, whud-whud sounded overhead. Sherlock looked up as a sleek black belly of a helicopter passed over the top of the alley. He considered John for a long moment.

"John, stay with Lestrade." Sherlock started up the alleyway. "If there is any development with these fires I will need to know immediately. It will change my search pattern. Once I'm up there, I'll lose track of the finer points. Please pay attention."

"I'll… I'll do my best," John said. "Where are you going?"

"Harrods. I have need of their helipad," Sherlock's mouth quirked into a smile.

"Traffic is a nightmare." Lestrade opened his arms.

"I'm sure I'll manage," Sherlock started for the top of the alley. "John, watch them." He shot out of the alley at a dead run.

Lestrade heaved a sigh, "He'll never get through the traffic in time."

"He doesn't have to. They're waiting for him. He's for the tube, for sure," John heaved a breath and looked up at the sky. "I'm pretty sure that was an Augusta A109, pricey to rent out even for an hour." He shook his head and turned in Lestrade's direction. "Sherlock's got some good friends, uh… clients."

"Come on," Lestrade riffled his short hair. "We're heading across to Lambeth."

John didn't lay eyes on Sherlock again until 11AM the next day when he walked through the apartment, threw his coat on the floor, and headed in for a shower. John stood staring. After a moment he went to lean on the door to Sherlock's washroom. Steam obscured the shower stall. John sighed with relief. "Where were you?"

Sherlock sputtered water, "Watching footage. The fires are out, have you been to see?"

"No," John rubbed his cheek. "You?"

"Flew by," he scrubbed his hair. "I mean in a cab this time – figure of speech. Not much to see, really. The contents of those locations really didn't matter to the people who set the fires."

"No one died," John told him sharply. "In case you wondered."

"That's nice." Sherlock said lackadaisically, a sure sign that it hadn't crossed his mind. When he shook his head, suds shot across the paneled shower door. He waited what he thought was a decent amount of time before changing the subject. "Get yourself together. We'll be leaving as soon as I'm out and dry."

"What happened?" John rubbed the back of his neck.

Sherlock flicked his head upward. Water struck the ceiling, he was so tall. "What do you mean?"

"To your hair?"

"Had it cut. It was singed. Just had it evened out."

To say the least. "You were too close to the fire, Sherlock."

A sigh emerged from the shower, and then nothing for almost a minute. "I'll grant that it was a close call with the falling timber, John. You weren't hurt, were you?"

"Just some burns." John looked at the red marks across the back of his hands. The worst burn was on the back of his neck, and quite angry. It was the bandaging there he rubbed in order to keep it snug. Sarah had tended to it early this morning when he'd worked to fill in for a late-arriving doctor.

The water cut and the door opened behind John's back. There was a sound of rustling fabric, and Sherlock drifted by. His shower robe was a tremendous affair in dark blue velvet pile. It swept the floor behind him. He shuffled a small towel over his short hair, the curls all cut away except for some survivors framing his face.

John left him that way and switched on the television. They were covering the fires and broke, shortly, to Sally Donovan addressing the media about the investigation. John turned it up, "-traces of accelerants involved in all the fires. It has been confirmed that no lives were lost, but the property damage, particularly in the Lambeth area, where a tailwind burned through four more homes, is extensive."

Sherlock was tucking in his shirt as he walked out of his room.

John did a double take as Holmes pulled on his fitted jacket. Really, the hair….

It was very shortly cut, apart from the brief trademark curls at the top and sweeping along the sides. The overall effect for his face was odd. While he was still masculine, without the thatch of curls, the combination of his smooth, pale skin, balanced features, bow lips, and high cheekbones gave his handsome face a conspicuously feminine underpinning of fascination. It was distracting. And it made him look younger, more innocent. This was entirely unexpected. It made John realize he really didn't know how old Sherlock was. Looking at him now… not very. Not as old as John had assumed.

Holmes got into his coat and touched his pocket to confirm his cell phone – this was just comforting habit, Sherlock did not forget his phone. It would have been like forgetting his shirt. John looked away and shook his head. Okay. Sherlock had officially past the point of modish and now more closely resembled a billboard than the obsessive, possibly mad genius John knew was actually inside there. It was comical. "You'd best stay clear of St. Bart's looking like that."

"What?"

John motioned at his head, up and down, and nodded, "Tidy."

"I know how it looks; shut up!" Sherlock exclaimed cloudily. He pulled on his gloves and collapsed into the chair across from John. "I think I've got it worked out… but we can't run in there with police. However, you'll need your gun."

"What's this about?"

"Working on it." Sherlock shot to his feet. "Just be happy, for now, that I've worked out where we need to go next. Pray my equations are better than theirs, and faster. There are a lot of variables, and we'll get one shot at this. With hope, I've chosen right." He slid his fingers down into the bends of his gloves to pull them tight. "The shower – such a good place to think about maths."

"Oh my God," John laughed.

"What?"

"No, nothing. Quite common, really." John got to his feet and went to retrieve his Browning, "Thinking about maths in the shower. Can't understand those people who don't."

Sherlock gave only a soft moue. He knew when John was having fun at his expense.

And he should have been kinder, considering that Holmes had gotten him an expensive holster and shoulder rig – that had been the purpose behind the annoying spat of measurements Sherlock had carried out in the kitchen one night. It hadn't been for a body bag, as John had grumbled while trying to turn his spaghetti sauce. The tatty, ill fitted holster was now a thing of the past.

John picked up the freshly cleaned firearm and checked the safety before strapping on the shoulder rig. He'd practiced with it and was, he found, faster than before, which was impressive. He'd had a reputation during the war.

Once John had settled his coat on and was satisfied that the gun didn't show, and Sherlock resettled his coat on his shoulders and he was satisfied, they were off. They went down into the street and almost directly into a cab. There was nearly no delay.

Sherlock drummed his fingers excitedly, impatient to be off. They drove across Horseferry Road into Bishop's Ward, in Lambeth. John was quite confused and in a state of anticipation when they did so. Sherlock, meanwhile, ignored his ringing phone as Scotland Yard tried his number. John's rang next, but he didn't even reach for it, knowing who it would be and that he and Sherlock were going off radar. Sherlock had the driver stop the cab at St. Thomas' Hospital.

Holmes led the way along walkways that stitched the large, lumbering hospital buildings. It was a quite intimidating edifice, its many buildings crouching over the Thames like misshapen blocks dropped from Olympus. It had quite the august reputation, this place. Sherlock walked around it, deep in thought. He clearly knew where he meant to be, John just had no idea how. They came out of the South Wing and into the Children's Hospital. There, he slowed his steps considerably.

It was odd to notice how patrician his features, the short hair, fine suit and high-collared coat made him seem. Sherlock appeared quite the sophisticate, and, now and again, the foot traffic around him would throw curious and admiring looks in his direction. But that didn't interest him at all.

He knit through hospital halls easily, as if he belonged there, and stopped, eventually, beside a small cluster of chairs used by waiting patients.

There he turned and asked, "John, will you call a cab for the nearest exit?" He indicated the map beside the elevators. "Make it for within 10 minutes."

"Cutting it close," John said as he called for a cab and followed Sherlock's long, willowy form, which was cut out in silhouette in the strong light from the waiting room windows.

There was a collection of misery in this small section of the hospital, most of it, chest colds, and respiratory infections. Sherlock drifted by coughing children, and their mumbling parents, to a small bend in the waiting room. Overhead, a boxy television ran daytime soaps. John hung up with the cab company and noticed that Sherlock had come to a stop beside one huddled woman whose child was crumpled on the floor. The child's upper body sagged against the woman's knees. The woman – a mother, surely, if you asked John – rubbed the girl's back in steady rhythm. Her fingers were quaking as she did so. Her bowed head was covered in a kerchief.

Sherlock reached into his coat pocket and brought out an inhaler. "I believe you dropped this."

The woman jolted to her feet. John got a flash of a young face, very lovely, with generous lips and large dark blue eyes. The child almost vanished, half under the coat the woman wore, half under the chairs. Only the girl's pathetic coughs – thick with asthma – indicated she was still there. Sherlock hadn't moved.

"I'm Sherlock Holmes," he said softly. "You are Katrya Vahtin, and that must be Svetlana." The woman looked terrified. Sherlock turned the inhaler. John could see that the pharmacy label was written in Cyrillic and dark with smoke. "I almost couldn't make out her name here. You're lucky that I managed to remove enough soot to read it. I was also able to determine it was undamaged and is safe for use."

A soft rustle of fabric was followed by the emergence of a dark eyed little girl from the folds of her mother's long, camel-coloured coat. She had echoes of her mother's stunning looks, but her eyes gleamed with more practicality. She took the inhaler from Sherlock's outstretched hand, shook it, and took two deep draws on the puffer. John listened closely to her breathing and shook his head. "Uh, Sherlock, we need to get across town and take her to the clinic and give a good listen to her chest."

"We just wanted to be here, in a hospital," the woman said in a rolling accent, "in case it got worse. I waited all morning and it isn't getting any better." With that, she let out a soft cry and crumpled against Sherlock's chest. "It is my fault. I lost her medicine."

He twitched – that was probably instinct – but stilled. It was actually quite odd to witness. He didn't try to touch the woman on his chest. He did note, "And you saved her life."

"Spasibo," the Russian woman murmured. She looked impossibly posh lying against Sherlock's grey shoulder, the pair of them like fugitive models until a rattling gasp ruptured that chic symmetry.

Sherlock looked down at the little girl, Svetlana, at the same time they all did. The little girl sank to the floor in a small heap. Her mother went down after her. "Sveta! Sveta!"

Her small voice wheezed. "I'll be fine. I just need…" the rest was lost in a sudden fit of coughing.

John crouched down beside them to take the girl's pulse against his wrist watch. The thing had cost him only about 30 quid. He'd had it in Afghanistan. It helped him to save lives. "Sherlock, we need to get her across town to-"

"Thus the cab," Sherlock said. "Carry her."

Capital idea. John estimated the girl he hefted could be no older than eight or nine. Her lungs were badly irritated. He couldn't imagine the discomfort, so John tried to walk lightly, so as not to bounce the girl in his arms.

The Russian red-head began to flag as she neared the exit.

Sherlock spoke in a soft, loaded voice, "If I found you, Ms. Vahtin, they can't be far behind. Cover your hair. Come with us if you want to live."

Good Lord, John thought, who used such a line? For whom was such a line mesmerising?

Holmes made it sound like exactly what it was: life or death. Sir Ian couldn't have delivered it with such finality.

So Katrya Vahtin tucked thick coppery hair under her kerchief fastidiously. They made for the door with the girl's small hands clinging to John's shoulders. She was like a frightened cat. Huge-eyed. Sherlock made them all wait in the foyer. He stepped outside and lit a cigarette quite casual. Within only a few seconds, he pinched it out in favour of opening the cab door. Sherlock gestured everyone along. Once inside, Holmes had Katrya crouch on the floor. The woman didn't complain, but stroked her child's dark red curls with a gloved hand.

"Is she okay?" The driver asked.

"It's packed in there," John said. "We're taking her to a clinic."

This was enough to spur the man along.

The child lay prone across John's lap, and he gently tapped her back. John cursed the lack of a stethoscope with which he could listen to her constricted lungs. She didn't sound congested to him. There were no wet, gurgling breaths. He could fairly hear the passages in her chest shrinking.

"But she's had her inhaler," Sherlock muttered. He offered a red light his best vexed stare. It was always strange, to John, when Sherlock sounded helpless.

"I don't trust that nebulizer," John replied quietly. "The soot on the label says it was too close to the heat. We'll get her proper samples. As many as she needs."

"Thank you," Katrya said softly. "Thank you, sir."

"John," Sherlock told her. "His name is John." And the woman reached up and squeezed John's hand in gratitude.

The tension in the cab was palpable right up until Sherlock had the driver pull up to the clinic door. They stopped only about a yard from the entrance. Holmes overpaid the cabby enough to forget they'd ever been, and herded everyone inside. John stalked into the clinic first, and was, greeted by curious staff.

"Doctor Watson, your shift is over," said the pretty receptionist. Her voice was guarded, "You here to see Sarah? And who's the pretty little girl?"

Svetlana smiled graciously.

John asked, "Is Sarah busy?"

But he was too late. Her eyes had skipped.

"Who's that?"

John didn't even have to look. "Sherlock."

"That's Sherlock?" She blinked.

"Oh God," Sherlock shut his eyes and muttered, and then he leaned over the counter and shouted down the hall. "Sarah, come here!"

The patients waiting in the room behind them fell into a hush. Somewhere in the exam rooms, a baby burst into tears. John pinched the bridge of his nose and exchanged a look with Katrya, who winced and gave a small shrug.

In response to the bellow, Sarah fairly shot out of the break-room, a pair of nurses trailing behind her. She saw that her ears hadn't deceived her, and sputtered, "Sherlock? We don't allow yelling in the-" another baby began to wail.

"Come now, Sarah, they're only children," Sherlock gave one of his quick, half-smiles and removed one gloved hand out of a pocket. He caught Katrya by the elbow, distracted, just as John was, by the glint of her magnificent coat's belt, and steered her down the hall like a piece of luggage. "John, bring the child."

Now Sarah blinked. She stepped up to bar his progression any further on into the examination rooms, "Sherlock, what are you doing?"

"I'm-"

"First, let the woman go."

Sherlock released Katya and tucked his hand back in his pocket. "Sarah, step out of the way so that I can continue my excellent work of saving this woman's life," Sherlock said briskly and then motioned at John, "and that of her-"

John strode by with Svetlana up in his arms. "Asthma; frequent coughing; steady wheeze; lungs aggravated by smoke last night and she didn't have her inhaler."

Sarah almost followed, but shot a look up at Sherlock and realized he wasn't someone you left alone to wander in a clinic. Not if you wanted to keep the peace. She sighed heavily and caught hold of his sleeve; his keen green eyes followed the action. Then she pulled him with her. "God knows we can't let you wander around this place. You'll clone someone. And it will be an evil clone."

"Because they're the only kind that's any fun," John smirked just ahead.

"Not a child." Sherlock gave his arm a flick that, unfortunately, was too gentle to dislodge the elastic grip of a doctor accustomed to giving booster shots to five year olds. He was honestly surprised.

As though he hadn't spoken at all, Sarah turned to John, "Don't you encourage him. He needs not to move from this door and to stay out from underfoot." She turned Sherlock's way. "Do you hear?"

Holmes stepped aside so that Katrya could pass. This seemed to be a force of habit rather than an attempt at politesse, but the woman appreciated it as she rushed into the room after her gasping child. The door closed, leaving him outside. Sherlock, hands in his pockets, turned and leaned his back on the wall. He looked at the faces pointed in his direction, listened to the rising saw of babies wailing, and wrinkled his nose. "Noisy business, being a doctor. Bad for thinking…. Should've considered forensics. Dead babies: Still need help. Much quieter."

"Oh my God," someone breathed.

The door to Sarah's examination room opened. John reached out to hook a hand around Sherlock's elbow and yank him inside the room. At the same time he uttered a single, heartfelt apology, "Sorry!" to his colleagues. The looks on their faces…! He wasn't sure what Sherlock had said, but there was a 99.9% change it hadn't been good.

Inside the examination room, Katrya waited for John to finish his survey of Svetlana. She was breathing poorly and suffering from smoke inhalation which complicated her asthma symptoms. It was clear that Katrya was the child's mother, simply from the distress on the woman's face. At least to John's eye. Sherlock seemed no more aware of it than he probably was the current number of planets in the galaxy. That was exactly the sort of thing that Sherlock thought of as nonessential information.

It was decided that Svetlana would not need to go on an oxygen mask. She seemed really relieved to hear this. However it was clear to everyone involved that Svetlana would need continued monitoring, and that both mother and daughter could use a good meal.

As their assessment wound down Katrya sat heavily in a plastic chair in the examination room and stared emptily at the floor, seemingly unable to cope with the situation any further and in need of the safe harbor. Eventually, Svetlana went to sit beside her mother, and the pair of them managed to look so pathetic and dispossessed that John was unable to simply call Lestrade and have him intervene. Instead, he looked to the tall genius who leaned on the door and tapped his phone steadily. "Now that downtown London has had extensive remodelling, I think it's legitimate to ask for the full story, Ms Vahtin."

The beautiful Russian immediately looked down at her daughter.

"We'll step outside." Sherlock said and glanced at John. "Any way we could make use of the break room?"

Sarah decided, "It should be possible, though it's not quite busy today, and, you know, people will want their breaks." She noted with a shrug. "I'll keep Svetlana here with me in the meantime. Maybe she'd like some chocolate chip cookies? I made some. They're in the fridge."

"They're delicious." John confided with a final pat on to the girl's narrow back. He hadn't had a one, but he was bloody sure of that. To Sarah he said a low, "Keep an eye on her."

Svetlana appeared anxious, even paranoid, at the idea of separating from her mother, it was unspoken testimony to what she'd endured already, but she swallowed hard at the mention of cookies. John hoped the milk in the break room was fresh.

Sarah walked with them to the break room to get it. She stepped inside and nodded at the two nurses within. "Lise and Emily, this is Sherlock Holmes."

"Oh wow, we've heard a lot about you," Lise, a short, plump woman, got to her feet and looked up at Sherlock as if starstruck. It was Emily who came bounding along and extended a hand to him.

"I feel like I know you, John and Sarah talk about you so often! Emily Baird."

He glanced at her hand and up along her arm to her shoulder. "Really. Have the stable girl take him hacking the evening before you ride him. He's too much horse for you. Make no wonder your shoulders ache." He bypassed her to look out the window to the streets of Islington beyond.

"Uh," Emily pointed over her shoulder at him, though her eyes were on John.

Lise gawped, "He really does do that? I can't believe it." She turned to watch Holmes.

"He really does," Sherlock said dryly before John could respond. "Now please leave. I have need of the room." He turned their way, "It has to do with yesterday evening's fires."

Both women fell silent.

"Sorry about this,"John told them. He leaned on the wall by the door and watched Sarah pull the milk and cookies out of the fridge. "He needs to get to the bottom of this."

"How exciting," Lise's face flushed. She caught hold of Emily's sore, stiff arms, lightly bruised, between the pinkie and ring finger, by her horse's merciless tugging on the reins, and pulled her out of the room.

"I'll send up Ms. Vahtin, but you'd better tell me absolutely everything when this is done, John." Sarah withdrew down the hall toward her examination room, wafting coconut and some soft perfume in her wake.

John shut his eyes and let the scent wash across his senses. God. That woman was going to drive him to distraction.

Across the room from him, beside the table, Sherlock flipped through a phone book and sighed, "What a boring little place. How do you stand it?" before he slumped into one of the few chairs in the break room.

John exhaled and considered the man who was quite possibly the most intelligent in the British Isles. What an arrogant twonk he could be.

Katrya Vahtin inhaled and stepped around him into the room. Really, her long camel-coloured coat was distinctively Designer. The smell of her perfume wafted subtly into the room. Her shoes had more breeding than anything John had ever owned. It was testimony to her wits that she'd managed to hide in London for so long. For hiding had been what she'd been doing.

She looked down at the floor as she stepped in, and finally took down her darkly elegant kerchief to reveal a blaze of coppery gold curls.

"What is it you want to know, Detective Holmes?" she made no attempt to get closer to him.

"Sherlock," Holmes rose and walked slowly, stiffly, in her direction. He pulled in close to her and she cringed. John had seen him do this sort of thing to women in the past, but could confess he didn't quite understand it. Now Holmes drew back slightly. "Just Sherlock."

She looked up through her thick lashes. "And I do hope you are just."

"Very good," he told her. "Tell me why. All this destruction, why?"

She leaned a little closer, her dark eyes darting as she examined him. "I believe you know."

Sherlock's lips thinned a moment, and then: "Fine. Tell me about Rurik Zyza."

A chill passed through John at the sound of that name. Rurik Zyza was one of the Russian Mafia's most prolific criminals. He was rich beyond John's imagining. What he had to do with this debacle, John was afraid to ask. However, from the look on Katrya's face she had expected this question. Her eyes were downcast as she began, "Our relationship has never been affectionate, it could never be, but we had reached an understanding, I thought. So I never foresaw that it would end this way. But please try to understand Mr. Holmes, I have to get away from him. It's not even that he's jealous, or that he has many affairs – I don't care about him – but he thinks we are his possessions, and he will not let Svetlana do the things she needs to do to be happy. Simple things like go places with her friends, or to birthday parties, or be out of his sight at all. No vacations, no freedom – he's becoming so controlling. She's just a little girl, and Rurik has such a temper. He does not like to be disobeyed. However, Svetlana is growing up now, and there are times when she won't do what he wants."

"And you're afraid he'll start to beat her, like he does you when it turns out you can't be perfect either." Sherlock said with a glance over her long-sleeved coat.

Katrya hugged herself around her ribs and nodded. It seemed like there was nothing more she could bring herself to say on the matter. After a moment, she reached up and wiped the lower lashes of one eye. She nodded, shamefaced, "I don't think it is selfish of me to want to protect my child from her father, do you Mr. Holmes? Sherlock?"

Continued in Part 3.