Sherlock had pinned so many photographs on the wall along with maps, seemingly random news clippings and odd bits of paper John just knew they were going to have to take down the wall paper and re spackle the drywall just to make the walls look presentable again. He wondered what Lyssa would think and had to half smile. She had made noises about redoing the paper a few months back after a tube of some chemical or other had started making the paper in Sherlock's kitchen start peeling off the wall in long strips. Sherlock was standing in the center of the sitting room a long length of red twine in his fingers with a lost look on his face. He was staring at a picture Lyssa had framed, it was of all of them sitting around the kitchen table playing cluedo. John remembered that game, he'd won for a change.
"Sherlock…" John cleared his throat.
"They were somewhere between Cafe Barberry and St Barts when the bombs went off…" Sherlock said softly.
John nodded and approached his best friend, hell more than that if he was honest with himself. "I've checked all the hospitals and… Morgues… they haven't turned up."
Sherlock looked at John his sharp blue eyes focusing and John wanted to back away at the sudden heat and intensity in the gaze then his friends face softened and he looked lost again. "I can't focus." He whispered. "I know they're out there somewhere and I can't focus on the case until I know where."
John nodded. "Let me make a cuppa and we'll find them."
Sherlock nodded and followed him into the Food Kitchen. John checked the electric kettle, Lyssa had just started brewing tea in large batches and leaving it in the electric kettle so all they had to do was push the button and within a minute they had hot tea. He poured out two cups, fix them the way they prefered and they sat at the table."Alright," John said when they'd drunk. "Lyssa always picks Rosie up at 2:20 on thursdays, by 2:30 they are at the cafe. By 2:55 they are on their way to St Barts. Greg said the CCTV was hacked."
Sherlock nodded focusing his long fingers tapping softly against the table as he ran through the details. "The Bomber managed to penetrate the intranet and shut them down. We know Lyssa has a number of prefered transportation methods, she takes a cab 35% of the time, the Tube 42%, is picked up by one of the police or Molly or another friend 11% and walks the remaining 12%." Sherlock steepled his fingers.
John hummed thoughtfully. "She might have walked, it was a brisk day, the kind she likes for lengthy walks."
"Unlikely, our lesson was at 3:15pm. She likes to be early for any appointment, even one so long established as this. She would need faster transport."
"And since no one we know picked her up that leaves cabs or the tube." John finished.
"Quite." Sherlock stood up and paced.
"Why don't we try pinging her cell? It's got GPS." John suggested.
Sherlock shook his head. "I tried when I reached the flat, either the phone was destroyed or someone took the chip out. Rosies phone as well which makes sense, a blast such as the six today would be enough to damage the devices irreparably."
"Has your homeless network turned anything up?" John asked hopefully.
"Many of them are dead as a result of the explosions, the rest have gone frustratingly into hiding." Sherlock flopped gracelessly back into the chair and drummed a rhythm on the tabletop.
"So tube or cab…" John hummed again.
"None of the trains reported serious injuries and no one saw anyone matching Lyssa's description exiting the tube station." Sherlock replied.
"And they'd recognize her, she was on the cover of the Star last week with that new dye job." John said with a little sigh, Lyssa had kept her habit of dying her hair every unnatural shade imaginable though she'd stopped getting new tattoos. John was secretly grateful for that, she was running out of skin to decorate and he wasn't keen on tattoos in the more intimate regions of her now rare bare skin.
The phone rang and Sherlock snatched it up then discarded it not recognizing the number. John answered it. "I'm looking for Mr Holmes." The speaker was male and a little nervous if his quavering voice was any hint.
"He's busy at present." John replied feeling annoyed, now was not a good time for a new case.
"Oh… um well...you see…" John struggled not to snap at the caller.
"Sir, we're in a bit of a crisis right now. I need you to take a deep breath and speak quickly and clearly." He'd slipped into his Captain voice and it seemed to do the trick.
"Right, sorry it's just that I work for the Subway yard. It's my job to fix up the cars and well sir, there's a lot of them in bad shape from the blast, it collapsed some of the tunnels you see." John had the feeling that this was something Sherlock needed to hear and put the man on speaker phone.
"I was counting up the cars for repairs you see and well there's one missing and I thought to myself that in one of the cases Mr. Holmes solved there was a missing car too and it was part of a bomb. I'm a big fan of the blog you see and I read every entry and I thought to myself what if that's what happened this time? What if the bomber used a subway car as a bomb and that's why there's one missing."
Sherlock was staring at the phone as if it had grown legs and started scuttling around on the table. "All of the bombings happened above ground, if you had been paying attention you'd have seen something so obvious."
"Oh… well then… I'm sorry to waste your time then…" He trailed off and John took him off speakerphone and started making their goodbyes when Sherlock's eyes fastened on the phone again, realization dawning on his face and John knew he was mentally tracking something.
"That train car! It was on the 272 Westbound Route, six stops between Westminster and St Barts; always runs two minutes behind, the conductor does it to give himself time to sober up for the end of his shift report." Sherlock waved his hands in the air tracing an invisible map in the air.
"It runs parallel to Hyde park for 3 minutes 26 seconds. John they took the Tube!" He snatched the phone from John, "Incidentally you should see a psychotherapist for anxiety and a Doctor for the hypertension and stop eating greasy burgers. Not my Doctor though, he's very busy." He hung up and started scrolling through his contacts.
John felt a rush of fondness for Sherlock, even with Lyssa's mellowing effect on the man he was still a rude berk with no patience. He held the phone to his ear then barked into the phone. "Lestrade the girls are in a damaged section of the Tube parallel to Hyde park, Tube line 272." He hung up and ran for the door pausing only long enough to grab hs Belstaff and scarf yanking them on as he careened down the stairs John hot on his heels.
True to Lestrade's word there was a patrol car with a cop inside at the curb. Sherlock and John threw themselves in and gave breathless instructions. The officer turned on the siren and drove through a city that was practically deserted. Lestrade met them at the Hyde Park Tube station and they clattered down the now still escalator. "They shut down the power to this bit." Lestrade said and hefted a huge halogen torch, the impossibly bright beam cutting through darkness so deep it was like walking around in an inkwell.
Sherlock took off down the Tunnel to the left towards St Barts running at full tilt heedless of any obstacles and John kept pace with him Lestrade lighting their way from the rear with several other police officers in pursuit. They had to slow to conserve energy and breath when the ruins of the Train Car didn't appear after a 10 minute sprint, Sherlock kept up a brutally brisk pace with John beside him and within half an hour they came upon the tunnel collapse. It was floor to ceiling, tightly compacted rubble filled the space and they both knew it was going to take time to get through it. Lestrade radioed another team to approach from the opposite train station then called the Subway system and told them they needed a Subway Collapse team. Sherlock moved towards the wall of rubble and started yanking stones loose but Lestrade grabbed him. "If you do that the whole thing could go!"
Sherlock was breathing hard and looked half mad. John took his arm and led him back a few feet, Sherlock was muttering and John managed to catch a series of statistics. "46% of collapses not resolved in 8 hours lead to total loss of injured parties… been… hours…"
John shook him gently and Sherlock focused on him. "Stop that. We have no idea what we'll find on the other side of the collapse. They could be perfectly fine, trapped in the car, but fine."
Sherlock glanced at the wall of rubble again and John gave him another little shake. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater until we know for sure."
Sherlock clamped his jaws together to stop the angry and frankly unfair retorts that filled his mouth like bitter ash, John's face was a mask of hope and fear and belief that the girls were just fine, only unable to get through the rubble that blocked the tunnel. Lestrade's radio went off and the voice of the second team crackled through. "This end is collapsed too, looks like this whole section just fell in."
John felt his knees go weak but he rallied and kept looking up at Sherlock whose face was a mask of fear and worry. John squeezed his arms. "Put it on a shelf Sherlock. Tell me about the Bomber."
Sherlock frowned but he understood what John was asking him to do, his emotions, his dangerous sentimentality regarding John, Lyssa and Rosie was making him behave like a goldfish and that would not do. He took a few minutes to center himself and scooped all the worry, the fear, the anger into a metal case which he locked and ruthlessly shoved into a locker in his mind palace. He slammed that door shut and left it there focusing only on the details of the case. He didn't realize he was talking aloud until John asked him a question.
Lyssa's head pounded like someone was beating on it with a hammer. Black streamers flickered in the edges of her vision and she was doing her best to just stay conscious. The smaller space had less oxygen and she knew it was only a matter of time before they suffocated. She was shivering in little bursts as her body tried to squeeze every molecule of oxygen out of the stifling air. They were near the broken window with its heavy mound of rubble. Lyssa was hoping that even a small amount of air was seeping through the packed rubble. She glanced around breathing slowly and shallowly at the other survivors who looked every bit as suffocated and miserable as she was. Most of them were unconscious, Rosie had passed out an hour ago and Lyssa was holding her cradled against her chest the way she had when they had first met all those years ago.
She felt her eyes prickle with tears but refused to give in to the urge to have hysterics, all that would do was sap their limited air. 'We're going to die down here, we're going to run out of air and…' She shook her head trying to dispel that thought. ' They'll find us, they have to, they'll find us.'
She blinked rapidly but all that did was make her long to close her eyes and let the blackness at the edges of her vision engulf her so she opened them wide and tried to see how long she could hold them open. Another passenger sagged against the floor, finally succumbing and passing out. That left her and a tired looking young man in a Letter Jacket conscious. She tried to focus, to put the skills Sherlock had been teaching her into practice. 'Not his Jacket.' She deduced.
'Why not?' Sherlocks voice was so clear in her mind that she glanced up and thought she could just see him sitting beside it in the faint red glow of the emergency lighting.
'It's too big for him by two sizes, if it were his it would fit better. See how it's too long in the sleeves, if it were his it would fit better, he'd be too proud of it to not get the right size. He's trying to impress someone.'
'Really?' Sherlocks voice was dry and carried a hint of condescension, it only sounded like that when she was wrong about a deduction, she looked back and thought about it.
'No, he's borrowed the coat to fool someone, he's lied about who he is and what he does at school and now he has to prove it. Not a bully… friend? No… parent or other family member.'
She was gasping by now her chest rising and falling in little jerks, the young man had passed out too. 'What else?' The Sherlock hallucination prompted.
'He… the family member is important enough to want to impress.. Grandfather… parent would know… grandparent who doesn't… visit often... manly man… He disapproved of… the kid not playing sports…' The blackness was filling her vision.
'Very good, tell me one more thing about the kid and you can sleep.' She swore she could feel the Sherlock hallucinations hand on hers.
'He's a violinist… or cellist….' She was sliding sideways. 'Plays left handed… calluses…' Her vision went and she slipped out of consciousness.
