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A friend of mine kept pestering me to write this chapter, so I'm dedicating it to him ;)
"Did you get any sleep?" John asked Sherlock who was already dressed and ready as he walked into the kitchen the next morning.
"Sleeping's boring when there's a case like this." Sherlock answered and tossed John his coat. "We're leaving," he says "We have to go talk to the rest of the parents and the ones of the previous victims."
"Wait a minute," John said "Do you want to be seen walking around the streets of London with me in my pyjamas?" He'd only just woken up.
Sherlock groaned "Be quick." he ordered and John rolled his eyes at him before going to his bedroom to get dressed. When he was finally ready, he pulled his coat on and followed his flatmate out the door. Sherlock got a taxi for them and they were soon outside the Smiths' house. They knocked on the door and a young boy around nineteen opened it.
"Police." Sherlock said and walked in, not waiting for the boy to invite him. John stared at him before asking "Umm... May I?" and the boy nodded. He walked in, smiling at him.
"You're here about my brother?" the boy asked.
"Yes," Sherlock answered "Now, if you wouldn't mind summoning your parents."
"Of course." Steven's brother answered and rushed into another room, soon returning with his mother and father.
Mr. and Mrs Smith's answers were the same as the ones the Greens had given them the day before. John could tell that Sherlock was getting bored as Mrs Delta started crying over her daughter. The only interesting thing about the Deltas was that the parents were divorced and they had to go to two houses. Their visit to the Jones' and Garcias' house turned out to be as disappointing.
Sherlock decided it wasn't worth going over to the previous victims' houses, so they stopped at Angelo's and he called them. How he got their numbers, John didn't know. John had something for breakfast, though it was after noon by then and the detective kept asking questions on the phone. The father of Megan Blare, who disappeared three years ago, said something rather impolite to him because he had reminded him of his daughter who he had been trying to forget, and hung up.
"Where to now?" John asked as Sherlock frowned at the phone.
"Scotland Yard," his friend answered "They may have found some important evidence I can steal and observe."
John decided to ignore the word 'steal', though he knew that Sherlock always had a way to get things to go as he wanted. They took a cab to Scotland Yard where they met Lestrade.
"We didn't find much," he informed them "But there were some small things. Bits and pieces."
"I'd like to see them." Sherlock insisted.
Lestrade led them to a room in which Sergeant Donovan was looking over some pictures and exactly as Lestrade had called them, bits and pieces. "Hello, freak." she said to Sherlock as they walked in.
"Lovely to see you too, Sally." he answered and looked down at what they had. "Explain everything." he ordered Lestrade.
"This," Lestrade held up an evidence bag containing a hair pin with a small silver butterfly "Was found near the girls' bathroom and the teachers say that they'd seen Lily Delta wearing it."
Sherlock put the gloves Donovan gave him, opened the bag and pulled out the hairpin. He examined it closely. "I'll have to scan it for DNA to see if it really is hers," he says "But I fail to see how it would help solve the case." He put the pin back in the bag.
"Then there's this," Lestrade showed them another bag "It belonged to Phillip Garcia." Inside was a phone. It was a pretty expensive model, new technology.
"He probably dropped it." Donovan said.
"Your evidence is useless." Sherlock commented "Is there anything worth showing me? What about pictures?"
Donovan groaned and gave them a big envelope. "Pictures are in here, but we'd like them back." she says.
"Can't make any promises, Sally." Sherlock says and pulls out his phone. He taps something on the screen and then turns back to John. "Heading home, then." he says, picks up the evidence bags and leaves the room. John sighs and follows him.
"We'll have to stop by some of my homeless network first." he says and so they do. They stop by a homeless woman by the park and Sherlock gives her a slip of paper, he'd been scribbling on since they left the Yard. Then, they went back to the flat.
Mrs Hudson offers to make them tea, so they wait upstairs. John collapses in his armchair while Sherlock goes to his chemistry set and begins examining the evidence. Mrs Hudson brings the tea up, commenting on Sherlock being reckless and that he won't rest.
As John is sipping on his tea, Sherlock's phone beeps. "John," he calls without looking up from his microscope "Can you get me my phone?"
John reluctantly gets up. "Where is it?" he asks.
"In font of me." Sherlock answers. John sighs and picks up the phone.
Sherlock has a text which reads
Taken from right across the road. Didn't even know it could help in something. He just like the car.
There is a video attached.
"Sherlock," John tells him "I think your homeless network texted you."
At the sound of the words homeless network, Sherlock gets up and seizes the phone from his flatmate's hands. He plays the video and smiles. "Brilliant!" he exclaims, nearly jumping with excitement "Try to explain that, Scotland Yard! A person back from being thought dead. It's amazing."
"Care to explain?" John asks him, not understanding what Sherlock is saying.
"Watch this." Sherlock plays the video for him.
Daphne, Lily, Christine, Steven and Phillip are standing in front of the school gates. A black car pulls up in front of the school. The windows are also black and they can't see the driver. The car waits and then leaves. When it's gone, the kids aren't there anymore.
"Unfortunately, whoever took this video couldn't include sound." Sherlock says as John replays the video.
"You said something about returning from the dead." John says.
"Yes. The kids didn't vanish from the face of the earth, they left in this car. They trusted whoever was driving it. If they had been forced in, the teachers and whoever else was in the school would have heard it. It couldn't have been their parents, none of them knew what was going on. Could have been a friend but the families contacted everyone they know, even people from other countries, and no one saw them. They wouldn't lie in a situation like this. So it's someone the parents didn't think of, but the children trusted. Who is it that no one would suspect, but had all five children's trust?"
John thought about it. He couldn't think of anyone. And wouldn't that someone call their parents and tell them that the had their kids?
"They couldn't," Sherlock seemed to have read his mind "It would expose them and they wouldn't want that. Their existence is a secret."
"I would say grand parent," John thought "But grand parents have no reason to keep their existence a secret. My other thought would be some sibling or..." he stopped. "No." he finally said.
"Yes."
"She wouldn't kidnap Daphne."
"I never said she kidnapped her. I'm saying that Emma Green took her sister from the school for some reason."
"But she's dead."
"She's thought dead. They never found her and they never found her body."
John couldn't believe it. It couldn't possibly be Emma Green. But Sherlock was so convinced that he was right and he had never been wrong yet. The detective texted Lestrade.
If you find any black car that looks like this one search for hairs or anything that could carry DNA on the driver's seat and send it to me. SH
He sent the video as well so that they knew what they were looking for.
Not long after, Lestrade replied.
On it.
By the evening, the two flatmates were in the lab examining a hair that had indeed been found in the same car, which had been parked at the tube station. Sherlock ran all the DNA tests and soon there was no doubting it. The hair was definitely one of Emma Green's. Emma Green had reappeared.
"Do you want to play with us?" Jake asked. It was evening. Suit man hadn't allowed us to leave this morning when we woke up. He said we should stay for breakfast, but we knew he would keep us for lunch and dinner as well. There was no going home.
This place was weird. Suit man himself was very weird, but it wasn't only him that freaked me out. Megan, Amanda, Ben and Jake creeped me out as well. They were clearly older than us but acted as if they were ten at the most. And not only that, they found things I thought were normal unusual. For example, who didn't know about the internet?
In the morning, the four kids took a small round white pill suit man gave them. When we asked them what it was, they explained that it was a vitamin they took for their health. We didn't really focus on them, though. Our problem was that we only had the clothes we had been wearing yesterday and I myself wasn't too keen on wearing them again.
Suit man promised to go buy us some new clothes tomorrow, so I guess that's okay. After lunch, he said he was going to go out for a bit and told us to play until he came back.
Jake brought a chessboard and insisted he and his brother and sisters play chess because it was his favourite game. He then asked us if we wanted to play with them. Lily and Steven were trying to think up some excuse and I must admit I was too. I'd never played chess before.
"Sure." Christine answered and sat down. She patted the ground and we hesitantly sat down as well.
Chess wasn't too difficult after all. I kept mixing up the pieces at the beginning, but then I got the hang of it. We decided to have something like a tournament and see who was the best. Jake and Phillip made the final and Jake actually won. I had to admit it was fun though. I'd had a good time, the best since yesterday.
After chess, we played pantomime and suit man's kids thought of the weirdest mimes ever. Even though he was good at chess, Phillip was terrible at pantomime. When he mimed driving a car, I though he was pretending to clean a window. That made us all laugh.
I don't know how long we played that game for, but suit man came back some hours later. he hadn't bough us the clothes he'd promised us, he said he'd been busy. He asked his kids if they'd had a good time. "The best, Dad," Ben answered "Phillip, Christine, Lily, Steven and Daphne are our best friends. Can they stay here forever?"
"Well," suit man chuckled and it sent shivers down my spine "I don't know about forever, but they can surely stay another day."
He smiled at us and it made me feel even more uneasy. It was almost as if through that smile he was adding "And the day after, and the day after that, and after that, and the next." I should have known he couldn't be trusted. It had been stupid of us to trust some random guy who live under a station.
"Why, won't you look at the time," he said looking at his watch "It's bedtime for you lot."
He wished Megan, Amanda, Ben and Jake goodnight and sweet dreams and told us that we would sleep in the same room as last night. "Don't let the bedbugs bite," he said "And no going outside."
As I sat on the bed I'd claimed as mine the night before, I searched through my backpack to find something that would calm me down. I pulled out my chemistry notebook and started reading my notes. Reading about the Periodic Table actually did help. But as I started reading about electrons, I heard something like crying from the bed next to mine, Christine's bed.
I turned around and saw that she had pulled her knees up to her chest and was hugging them while crying. I wasn't the only one who had noticed. Lily was rubbing circled on her back, while Phillip and Steven sat on the edge of the bed.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." she kept saying.
"Shh. There's nothing to be sorry about Chris." Lily soothed he.
"It's my fault we're here," Christine sobbed "If I hadn't made such a fuss over my earring, we would have left the school when the principle told us to and would be home tucked in bed now. If I hadn't been so obsessed over something so stupid..." She took her earring off and threw it on the floor.
"You couldn't know what would happen," I said "And you weren't the only one who wanted to get their things. Vanessa wanted her makeup bag, Toby from second year was looking for his jacket."
"But they left on time."
"We don't blame you, Chris," Phillip said "So you can't blame yourself."
"We'll be alright. You'll see." I said and smiled at her.
She wiped her tears and smiled back. We sat together for a while and then climbed into our beds to go to sleep. I knew sleep wouldn't come easy, it hadn't last night either, so I shut my eyes and tried to think of something happy. I thought of the games of chess I'd played today and of Steven pretending to be a cow in pantomime. I thought of how Lily and I had laughed at the joke Phillip had told us two weeks ago.
I finally drifted off to sleep. I dreamt that we were back at school in a chemistry class. I was sitting next to Lily and we were drawing in each other's notebooks. We were laughing at our creations and the whole class must have noticed us. "Miss Delta, Miss Green." the teacher said but we didn't stop. "Miss Delta, Miss Green," she kept saying "Miss Delta, Miss Green, Miss Delta, Miss Green, Miss Delta, Miss Green, Miss D... D. D. D. D!"
I woke up. Steven was leaning over me. "What?" I asked him.
"I can't sleep," he answered "Want to go exploring?"
"But suit man said no wandering about." I objected.
"No, the jerk said that we shouldn't go outside." he said.
I agreed and got out of bed, pulling my socks and shoes on. Steven did the same and we tiptoed to the door of our room. Everyone else was sleeping. Phillip was actually snoring and Lily had had the same idea as me. Her maths textbook was lying on the bedcovers. Steven slowly opened the door and we stepped out.
The apartment was even scarier with all the lights out. "Come on." Steven whispered to me. We looked around. We found the kids' bedroom as well as suit man's or, as Steven called him, jerk's room. I almost ran away, I was scared we'd wake him up.
After we'd been through the whole apartment, I said we should go back to bed. "Yeah, sure." Steven said, but he hadn't even heard me. He was looking at the doors of the closet which this apartment was. I could tell what he was thinking of, and I knew it was a bad idea.
"No, please," I urged Steven as he began walking towards them "We'll get into trouble."
"What's he gonna do? Give us detention?" he replied "We'll just open the doors, go outside just to have a look and be right back. He won't even realise we left and he will never know."
"We could always leave."
"Not without Chris and Lily and Phillip."
I had to agree. How stupid of me to think of leaving and leave my friends behind.
"Okay, fine," I finally said "But only for a few seconds."
"When did I ever not keep my promises?" Steven asked smirking. I was seriously considering counting those times, but decided against it. Steven pushed the doors open and I almost jumped when they squeaked.
We stood still for a while and when we didn't hear anyone coming, we went outside. The room outside was exactly as I remembered it, tiny and full of boxes. I wondered what was actually inside them. We took a few more steps outside. I was about to open one of the boxes when I heard those two same sounds I hard when Emma was shot, a bang and something hard hitting the ground.
I turned around. Just like my sister, Steven was lying dead by the boxes. I looked up to see who his killer was and it surprised me even more. Amanda was standing on the doorstep holding a smoking gun in her right hand. There was a mad gleam in her eyes, one she'd never had before.
She dropped the gun and covered her ears with her hands, as if trying to block out accusations of what she had just done. "He made me do it! He made me do it! He made me do it!" she was screaming. Then she simply ran back inside the house. I thought I would cry but I was more shocked than scared.
My friends had heard the gunshot as well. The jerk's children must be deep sleepers. Soon, they were all there, by me. Christine burst into the tears immediately. Lily hugged her and cried silently. Phillip didn't cry, he never did. But Steven was his best friend, so he had the honor of closing his eyes. He looked better that way, more like he was asleep.
Our moment of peace was interrupted by a strangled scream. That woke everyone up. We followed the sound and found ourselves in the kitchen. I couldn't see well, the jerk and his children were there and they were blocking my view. "My child!" jerk exclaimed "Amanda, what have you done?"
Sure enough, when I got a closer look, Amanda was lying dead on the kitchen floor, one hand around her neck. She had strangled herself.
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