Another boring day. Sherlock opened his eyes, prepping for the onslaught of the inevitable agony of tedium, even though he was finishing up a case. Well, he called it a case. It was really just the emotional manipulation of someone who used to have the nation in her claws, but now had come to him, pleading for mercy. He saw no reason to give it to her.

He stared at her phone. There were secrets in here, she'd said, that could topple empires. Financial empires? Governments? Both? He didn't know and didn't care. He just wanted that information. Of course, he was only on this case to begin with because Mycroft brought it to attention, and he'd only accepted because he enjoyed tangling with the people who enjoyed toying with others (he liked to play with them right back). He didn't know her password, had tried three times and only had one go left at it before it would lock forever. He could feel the answer staring him in the face, he just couldn't see it for some reason. She looked at him pleadingly from across the room, gulping, and he was hit with a bolt of inspiration. "Disguise is a reflection of oneself," he muttered. "But this is far more intimate. This is your heart." He smiled at her. "And you should never let it rule your head."

I AM
SHER
LOCKED

Simple enough, once he'd realized that she could fall prey to sentiment. She fell silent, deep into shock. She didn't expect him to think of it, of him being the key, but when he did, her whole world crumbled. Lestrade escorted her out of Sherlock's flat, and, just before turning over the phone to his brother, Sherlock copied all the information to his hard disk, just for fun, just to give him something to do.

That was his mistake.

Three solid days of sleep later (as usual, he'd not slept on the case except for the occasional catnap), he was looking through the files. Irene Adler had been right. This information, in the wrong hands, could undoubtedly destroy all sorts of organizations, from government secrets to banking empires to world-wide scandals, possibly even starting World War III. Sherlock smiled. Somehow, the power pleased him. The thought that he knew something almost no one else did made him glow with secret pride.

He read the entire file, nearly two gigabytes of information, before noticing he was lightheaded. He hadn't had anything to drink in days. Ah, he thought. Disorientation as a result of prolonged dehydration and sleep-deprivation. He watched as the milk swirled into his tea, thinking about the molecules of humanity bumping up against one another in their lives.

Their boring, simple, pointless lives.

The swirling was hypnotic, and Sherlock found himself staring as the milk and tea spun in circles, in a tight funnel of liquid, both stimulant and sedative, focusing, almost…mystical. What was he thinking? Mystical? It was hardly a force of unusual properties, just tannins and water and lactose and sucrose. He blinked heavily. He hadn't felt like this since Irene had used her knockout drug on him, but this was taking its sweet time about it.

It was about that time that he realized his head was actually spinning. He staggered over to the sofa, intending to rest it off, but his mind decided it had other plans—as soon as he was down, he was up again, looking for the source of whatever was causing the alarming wooziness. He didn't know if he'd been poisoned or simply drugged, and he felt alarm bells and alerts going off in his head as his brain stopped being able to make sense of what was around him. He wasn't unconscious, it just took far too much effort to interpret his senses.

"Mnghf," he said, keeling forward. The last thing he registered was that the room was still tumbling about even as he knew he was still.

In the brief moment in which he regained consciousness, he registered a few things.

Humidity not that of London.

Laboratory or hospital.

Medical personnel observing—preliminary examination.

Man, numbered badge (58), age late thirties to early forties, naïve, doctor, comfortable life, single, generally content.

There was a sharp pinprick and he blacked out again, but Sherlock was determined not to forget that man's face.