Chapter 2: Bang
Bang. Bang. Bang.
John shot the three targets in the main training room in what seemed like half a second the following morning, with Mary standing a foot or two behind him. Each shot was a direct hit, creating a small hole in the chest area of the holographic person.
The training area was one of the most high-tech segments of the building. The holographic images dancing across the empty hall before them could take the form of any human being, so that each target looked almost uncannily real.
But, he was used to it. John turned around towards Mary, a small smirk of satisfaction written across his face. Mary raised her eyebrows in turn and looked back at him.
"Oh, so you think you're going to impress me like that?" Mary scoffed playfully.
"Well, it was worth a shot," John said with a shrug, handing Mary the standardized issued handgun.
Mary gave him a mock-offended look and pulled out her own— a new model he did not recognize. She then pulled the earmuffs back over her ears and safety goggles over her eyes (John followed suite) and held the gun in position.
John pressed an activation button, and the area in front of them lit up with what seemed to be human targets. They zigzagged across Mary and John's vision, and John realized that the targets were not very randomized or varied this time— they vast majority were considerably young, and many of them were children. John turned instinctively towards his girlfriend. She's not going to want this playing field, John decided, but before the words could leave his lips, his eyes drifted across Mary's face, and he stopped himself. Her face was strangely slack and expressionless, an aura of extreme concentration hovering about her. But there was something else there that chilled him. Something more gruesome…a strange glint in her eye that he could not quite identify…
Her hands recoiled slightly, but she didn't even blink as she knocked down five young moving targets in the same amount of time it took John to do three. She then tilted the gun to the side, and with the same precision, blasted all of the targets hovering in the back without a moment of hesitation, without a moment of discernable thought. She was no longer Mary. She was a machine gun.
And then the earmuffs went off, the goggles hung limply at her collarbone, and she was smiling at him.
Well, John couldn't say that he wasn't impressed. He rarely got the opportunity to practice with her, and most of their missions did not entail an all-out gunfight (most of them were quick, silent assassinations) and so he hardly ever saw her take down so many moving targets. That was brutal, he found himself thinking.
When John did not respond, Mary's grin faltered slightly. "What?" she looked back at the set in confusion, and upon finding nothing out of the ordinary, she looked back at him. "What? What is it John?"
Oh, this is only a simulation, idiot! John silently hissed at himself. She wouldn't actually kill those children without reason. This is a simulation.
"How did you get that good?" John said, allowing a smile to reappear on his lips. Yes, that was the problem. Not the people she shot; the thing that was most interesting about her bout of shooting was the fact she could execute each shot with such infallible precision. "You're a new recruit. You couldn't have been on more than five or six missions." He had done a grand total of five so far himself, and even he, the top in his class, did not have a skill level to match Mary's.
Mary laughed. "Oh, is that what you're on about? I'm just that good, John. No secret to it," she said. She nudged him playfully on the arm. "Just accept it; I'm better than you."
"No, you're not," John replied, half-laughing. "You just got lucky. And I've never seen that kind of gun before, is it a new, more accurate model? Cause if so—"
Mary rolled her eyes. "Alright, alright John, maybe it is more accurate, if you want to make yourself feel better," she said impatiently. "But I could do the same thing with a normal handgun."
"Let's see then," John said.
Mary motioned to John's handgun, still limply clamped in his fist, but he shook his head, slightly sheepishly. "I think this one's out of bullets, though."
Amusement blossomed on Mary's features. "Why'd you offer it to me in the beginning, then?"
"No reason," John replied, looking away obviously, trying to show himself as if he were a child caught in the act of setting up a prank. "So, about those bullets, huh?"
"Fine, fine, I'll be right back," Mary said.
She turned to leave, but stopped suddenly in her tracks. And then, as an afterthought, she turned around and planted a kiss on John's cheek. Taken aback slightly by this, he made no move to stop her as Mary retreated towards the weapon's supply room.
But, even as he watched her, something inside him stirred.
A strange feeling. A gut feeling.
Suddenly, John did not want her going into the supply room at all. He did not want her to go. She couldn't go. Didn't she feel it? Why was she going?
Wait, Mary, John thought, but could not find the voice to speak aloud. Something was about to happen. Something.
And then, a flash of shame shot through him. His fear was unfounded. What was he doing, thinking so superstitiously? Was this how John Watson was supposed to act? John Watson the assassin?
Don't be ridiculous, John, he thought. However, he didn't think it in his own voice. For some inexplicable reason, despite the fact he had not heard the voice in years, the voice in his head was not his own.
It was Sherlock's.
And that was the moment when he understood what was about to take place. What was about to happen.
John took a step forward, about to call out to her despite the fact she wouldn't be able to hear him. But, as it always frustratingly was, it would prove to be too late.
He closed his eyes a second too late.
But, also a second soon enough.
John felt himself lose contact with the ground as the blossom of fire exploded several dozen yards from him, and he seemed to hover through nothingness for what seemed like hours. And then came the feeling of crashing, the feeling that came with having a car intercept with one's back.
Darkness fogged his vision as the pain bolted to his skull. He could not think; he could not breathe. Everything was a swirl of red and black and the smell of fire, and of thick smoke that suffocated him.
I can't breathe.
Helplessness. That is what he felt, it was helplessness. He could do nothing as terror flooded through his mind, confusion clouding every inch of his rational thinking process; panic, terror, confusion.
Jesus Christ, was the only thought he could formulate. What the hell…?
The left side of his face might as well have been on fire. Pain sprouted on every inch of his flesh, and despite the fact that his breathing had returned to him, it was labored and shallow; quick and painful.
Get up. Yes, he had to get up. John had to get up. Get up, get up, get up.
John blindly felt for the hardness behind him. His head was pounding, his face was burning; his back was crippling him. An agonizing cry tore from his throat as he slid his body up the wall. This small action took every ounce of his strength and willpower, as even this small movement sent a ripple of agony up his spine.
Get the gun. His mind was giving him instructions. He couldn't think, but John's mind read the instructions off god knows where. Get the gun now. Get the gun.
What gun?
John's eyes opened slowly, mechanically, and a blur of color returned to him. That was when he realized that he could not hear anything.
Only a buzz.
It was a faint, omnipresent buzz that could have been there all along.
You need to find Mary, the mechanical voice in John's head said. Find the gun so you can find Mary.
John did not immediately recognize the correlation between the two events, but nonetheless he yielded to his instincts and, well, promptly fell to the floor.
You're so helpless. Useless. You can't do anything. You're at the mercy of events. Riding the current.
Whose voice was that? So full of malice and spite. Why was it in Sherlock's voice? He never said any of that.
John crawled, feeling the panic and terror coursing through him, intermingling with desperation, as he moved slowly nearer to a gray blur with a metallic tint several feet away from him.
So quiet. So deathly quiet. What was happening? How did everything change so suddenly?
There.
John felt his fingers hit against the metal and curl around it. Gun. Yes, it was a gun.
He swung his arm around. It hit against a sturdy surface— a wall.
John, feeling the blackness edge around his vision, pushed himself up the wall. He became conscious of a shaking in his knees; shaking and pain.
Find Mary.
His face was burning so violently… It hurt so much. But what had happened to Mary?
Find Mary.
And then a different kind of terror submerged him. This terror had nothing to do with confusion. It had nothing to do with the unknown. This terror, in fact, spawned from the very opposite: of knowledge. It spawned from knowing.
Once he realized what must have inevitably happened, the pain did not seem so intense. It didn't hurt anymore. His frying flesh, his convulsing muscles, the stabbing agony in his back, the shaking of his body— none of it hurt anymore.
His knowledge hurt.
His knowledge was torture.
The blurriness around his vision was subsiding. Color was returning. Fuzzy edges were sharpening, as if he were putting on glasses.
Smoke coated everything, bathing everything in blackness. He could see fragments of what previously had to be wall now rubble on the once smooth ground. In fact, he could hardly make out the sleek grayness of the training room floor— did it ever even exist? All that existed was rubble.
He became suddenly aware that something was penetrating the wall of ringing that made him unable to hear.
Muffled tones and voices became evident. What were they saying? No, what did it matter, he had to find Mary.
Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy.
As he tried to step forward, the world hazed over and spun around him, like he had just gotten off of a merry-go-round.
"—'s one here."
"He—sur—?"
"O—"
Disconnected syllables and phrases hit against him, but only entered one ear. The other ear was still buzzing.
"Who's there?" That's what John said, in his drunken, half-conscious state.
Figures suddenly came to view. However, their faces were hidden in shadow and blur. He could not make them out even if, he reasoned, he saw them without having his head smashed against a wall.
John watched as the figures drew closer to him. John tried to stumble back, and did so successfully. He, however, found himself ungracefully sprawled against the wall.
The gun.
He raised the hand with the weapon, which was the one thing that his hope still stemmed from. It shook violently, his hand, and he was unable to position it accurately at the figures. All he knew was that these figures were the source of this sudden chaos.
Suddenly, the gun was flung from his grasp as one of the figures smashed their hand into his own.
He was completely helpless, completely on his own.
And suddenly he wasn't here, at all.
Suddenly, he was in the interrogation room.
Why else would he hurt so much?
"Where is Sherlock Holmes?"
"I don't know."
Pain.
"Where is—"
"I don't know."
Sobbing.
But— no. No, he wasn't in the interrogation room; he was in the training room as it had exploded, and John had to fight back. He had to go and see what happened to Mary…
One of the figures raised their hands, which seemed to be far too long to be a hand. No, it wasn't a hand. It was some sort of baton or bat…
Pain only momentarily shot through his head as the world once again spun out of control, and then darkness completely fogged over.
The first thing that John was aware of when he realized he existed was the fact that he could not see anything. Then again, once he spent a moment dwelling on this, he realized that he found it hard to breathe as well.
Something's on my head… he decided groggily. So I can't see…
Only then did the pain decide to hit him. He recoiled as his back exploded in a dull agony, as his throbbing flesh became excruciatingly unbearable, as his mind flooded with the events that had recently occurred.
He was sitting down. Rather, he was slouching against something softer than he had imagined, but uncomfortable nonetheless. Car seat?
John forced his aching form into a slightly more dignified position. He tried to move his arms, but they refused to yield to his desire. They were firmly pressed together behind him, held in place by cold metal that he could identify only as handcuffs.
He needed to assess the situation as much as was physically possible if he wanted to emerge from it alive.
The car seat beneath him was vibrating, and he felt himself swaying slightly with the movement of the automobile. With these fragments of evidence in mind, he decided that he was, in fact, in a car, or truck perhaps— just some form of moving vehicle.
Wait, John suddenly thought. He had no idea if anyone was watching him, or if anyone was near him, and what exactly they were planning to do with him. What if they were told to shoot him on sight if he showed any signs of movement?
With this thought in mind, John immediately forced his body to slacken (without much difficulty, given his weakened state), and let his head loll to the side.
Someone was talking in the general vicinity of the front. The ringing in his ear seemed to have died down somewhat, but the sound would not travel through it. The voices only moved through his right ear, and therefore made it hard to hear.
"Here. Stop here." It was a woman's voice.
Someone next to her grunted in what John could only identify as approval, and he felt the car slow until it was stationary.
The sound of a door slamming shut rung through the now-silence, and then there was nothing.
Emotion seemed to have been suppressed in John's disoriented, agonized state. He knew he should feel scared, but he found it hard to feel anything at all.
John suddenly felt air rush in towards him, and hands pulled at his arms. He stumbled out of the vehicle as whoever had grabbed him pulled him away from it.
Pain shot through the spot where the person's hand clamped over his, but he could not find the strength or logic to fight back.
Voice rang out once again.
"Here, this is the only one we have," the woman who had previously spoke said, to…someone, shoving John forward.
"Well, doesn't he look great?" the man who she must have been speaking to replied.
"What do you want us to do with him?" the woman asked. "He survived, and I'm certain he saw our faces. We couldn't kill him, because a bullet wound would have looked too suspicious, and we couldn't leave him, because we'd be indentified."
"Yes, well, I suppose so," the man speaking said in a bored, unimpressed tone. "Do you even know who he is?"
There was a moment of silence. "No, half his face was fried from the bomb, and the other half was covered in blood. A shard must have cut him. It was too dark to see him, anyway."
"Well, aren't you going to uncover him now?" the man asked.
The wall of black covering his eyes suddenly flooded with hazy, dark color, and he blinked into the night, staring at the man before him.
He was tall, with a neat comb of brown hair, and a pointed face that emanated an aura of extreme loftiness. This was a loftiness John had seen so many times on someone else…someone he could not think about now…
The man pressed his lips together and lowered his eyebrows as he attempted to identify John, drawing too close to his face for comfort.
Keep away… John thought weakly.
Then, he shook his head. "No. I don't recognize him. He's not important. They'll think he was fried in the explosion. Kill him. Throw his body off the ledge."
What?
"Understood," the woman said, a tone of anticipation evident.
The woman threw John to the floor, where he fell down onto his knees, head lolling forward.
No.
John heard the characteristic click of a gun in position.
No. No. No.
He could almost feel the coldness emanating from the metallic death machine as it drew closer to his skull.
I don't want to die.
But, he couldn't move. Something stopped him from moving. Even if he did, he would be dead long before he stood.
Please, God, let me live…
John closed his eyes…
"Stop!"
The voice rang out in the silence, like a whistle in the middle of a gymnasium. There was a slight note of desperation, a slight note of panic. Perhaps that was why John did not recognize it at first.
"What? What is it, now?" the man who initially had sentenced John to death said, voice sounding decidedly sour.
"Don't kill him," the man who had halted the attack said. However, this time, the tone had shifted. The initial threat to John's life was over. He could now relax. The voice was cool and calculated. It was even and quick, like the temperament of a lake in summertime, but it was very clearly understandable, and carried the same aura of arrogance that the other man possessed.
"And why not?"
"Because we'll need him, Mycroft. Don't you see? I thought you were cleverer than that."
"We won't need him. He'll only hinder us."
"No, he won't."
That was when the man finally came into John's view. He registered the piercing bluish-green eyes first, the curly locks second, and understood the full impact of these characteristics last.
"You alright, John?" the man asked.
It was Sherlock Holmes.
End of Chapter 2
