They run through anonymous streets. Sherlock pulls the flashlight out of his jeans once they turn the corner, and guides them, holding Joan's hand tightly, until finally they stop in a street where there are people again, a throng of power outage defiers who have stepped into the city to party while the lights are off. There are restaurants and takeout places, plus travel agencies with the signs in Chinese, and a festival atmosphere which Joan finds somewhat shocking after the tension in the alley.
The restaurants are open - candles on the tables. "Come on," says Sherlock, heading for a Chinese place.
"Food, now?"
"No," he says, "Light. More light."
He tucks the flashlight under his arm and leads her up the steps into the restaurant. He looks around, sees what he is after in a jar on the counter. Brandishes a handful of glowsticks at her. "They give them to the children." He offers the owner cash for them. The man smiles, accepts the note, gestures goodwill at them both.
"Just a backup," says Sherlock, outside again in the fresh night air. "In case we get separated. No batteries, reasonable life, and easier to put in your pocket than a candle." He gives her a bundle of them, puts some for himself in his inside jacket pocket.
They sit on a low wall beside a parking lot, people swirling through the street, and get their breath back properly. Candlelight illuminates the scene, giving it a medieval aspect.
Joan hears many languages, and laughter as people from different cultures swap cheery greetings in the near darkness. Thumbs ups and the smile which says, We are New Yorkers and this? This doesn't even slow us down.
Sherlock looks around in satisfaction. "There is insufficient diversity in modern urban life, Watson. We are too infrequently exposed to the new and the strange. Society wraps us in the familiar and the routine and we embrace it. We have lost our fearlessness."
She remembers the alley. "You were scared back there. I felt your respiratory pattern change. Why?"
He gives her a look - pleased that she detected this. "I hoped that this would turn out to be a software thing," he says. "A system interference. The kinds of people who would do that are certainly linked to more unpleasant types, but the unpleasant types remain in the background."
He calls out in Mandarin to a street seller with LED Christmas lights draped around her body, and purchases two sodas. Cracks one open, hands it to Joan. "But it is more than that. They have taken out the power and also they have committed to keeping it out for a period of time." He drinks. "I need to find out why before that reason is thrust upon us."
"We need to," she says.
"Yes. We need to. Although I am starting to regret bringing you with me. It may be dangerous." His eyes are on her, brooding.
"When has that ever stopped me?" The drink is cold, sparkling, and sending chills through her stomach.
"It's not about you stopping. It's about me stopping you. Safety, Watson." He gulps at the drink. He is not much for savouring. Eating, drinking, duties to be carried out in order to maintain his body so that his mind can function.
"It's too late for that now," she says. "We're here and there's no taxi back."
"True. We must make the best of it."
They sit and drink. Joan thinks again about the alley. Ignores the heat in her face as she remembers his body against hers.
"Sherlock," she says, "if you're scared I am too."
He turns to her, and with curled, hesitant fingers touches her chin. Snaps his hand back like a dog meeting a wolf. Shakes his head. "I know you, Watson. You're not scared of anything."
Joan finishes her soda and throws it into a trash can. The force sets the can rattling. Sherlock's eyes turn to her, then away. She says, "So when you said you were waiting for something like this to happen-?"
"That was the literal truth, yes."
They are sitting in the ethereal blue light of one of the glow sticks, clutched in Sherlock's hand like a wand. Joan has pink, green and yellow sticks stowed in her coat pocket.
"Who would want to take down New York? Terrorists?" Her heart goes cold, thinking of the kind of group who would want to do this.
"Of a sort, yes. But not, I think, the sort who invoke God or political ideology. No, I think this particular terrorist only wants one thing although it is quite a big thing."
"What," says Joan.
"Control of the money markets."
She stares at him. Lit in blue, he could be an expert in anything. And is, as she knows. He sucks up knowledge, is brimming with it, how does his brain stay in his skull?
He speaks. "If you knew that the New York Stock Exchange was going to be out of action for a while, you could make some trades which rely on some New York players being out of the game." He is twitching, the lip-shrug which shows he is coming to conclusions he does not enjoy. "Or you could use the confusion to carry out some shady system changes behind the scenes. Imagine if you could get the exchange out of sync, even by a minute, think of your power, knowing already which trades were happening across the world and being able to react, apparently before anyone knows about them."
"You'd be caught instantly," says Joan.
"I speak hypothetically. What I'm saying is that this man has done something, and that people are being paid - perhaps by him although there is no proof of that as yet - to continue it, extend it. And we need to get proof of exactly what." He gives a muttered curse of frustration and hurls his own empty can at the trash. It misses. He jumps off the wall, picks it up, puts it in the trash. Comes back frowning. "And the truly annoying part is that I have no record of my conversation with the man who sought my advice. If I had, I could prove that this was premeditated. But I dismissed it. I was not interested on helping him to do his job and I never took notes."
"Ok," says Joan.
She reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the pink glow stick. She snaps it and candy coloured light spills onto her fingers. "We can find proof," she says. "But first there's something I need to do."
He is looking at her curiously. Sits back down on the wall.
Joan takes Sherlock's right hand and holds the glow stick over it. The skin on the back of his hand is ripped and bloody, with grit and dust trapped in the tears.
"We need to get you cleaned up," she said.
"Don't fuss, Watson."
But he allows her to turn his hand over in her fingers.
"Let's find a drugstore," she says. "This really needs cleaning up or it could get infected."
He makes a sulky face.
She bends close to the wound. It is not deep, a graze, but it has damaged his skin and she wants to get at the dirt and dress the wound. Her fingers automatically check the rest of his hand and wrist for damage.
"You have amazing hands," he says. "Hands which can part ribcages, discover organs, snip sinews, repair veins." He speaks dreamily.
"That wasn't my specialty," she says.
"Strength and delicacy," he says, not listening. "Wasted hands." He darts a look at her.
"No," she says mildly. "They're not wasted. And they're just my hands, now." She gives him his own hand back. "Let's use the restroom in one of these places. If you won't let me stop and dress it properly at least let me get the dirt out for you."
They are walking. Sherlock has a plan but he is not saying anything yet. This is what he does, walks the plan even as he is still forming the plan in his mind. Joan sees they are heading back towards the water's edge.
There is a glow there, lights are on.
"This district has its own supply," says Sherlock. "Or more accurately, the manufacturing plant there insisted on a supply separate from the main grid. To ensure the production line never stopped."
They aim for the glow. It draws them nearer, a primordial drag.
They are not alone. People are on the streets, even more than before, but away from the restaurants there is a different atmosphere. Groups of young men are gathered, strolling, looking around speculatively. They have flashlights and bandanas on their heads and some of them carry sports bags.
They are... shopping. Eyeing the storefronts.
"Opportunists," says Sherlock in a low voice as they pass one group outside an electrical store. "Keep walking."
Joan has no intention of stopping.
Sherlock is carrying the flashlight with his fingers wrapped around the barrel in a way which means he could twist the flashlight up and use it as a weapon. He sees Joan looking and briefly grins. "Maglite," he says. "Not always the best, but usually the heaviest." He hefts it in his hand.
"And thank God I've got those glow sticks," she says.
He laughs.
She sees figures out of the corner of her eye, grouping together, moving in their direction. She slips her right hand into Sherlock's left. "We should walk quickly," she says.
"They're not interested in us," he says softly. "Just keep moving."
The classic city manoeuvre: outfacing the unknown, playing cool, showing no fear, walking on past the threat. If a potential threat sees weakness it becomes an actual threat. But if it sees strength, the threat becomes weakness.
She read that somewhere. Now she walks tall, confident, a woman out walking with her man, they are going somewhere they are expected, and they are not worried about being mugged. There are no threats.
The group close in behind Joan and Sherlock. Joan looks around for where to run. They are in a run down district, ex industrial mixed with some low rise manufacturing. The power plant of the lit up factory, where she assumes they are heading, is by the water. She can make out its forest of transmission towers and transformers behind their safety fence.
Sherlock's fingers clasp her own in a pattern of downward taps. Alert. She looks at him. "We may need to run," he said. "Our companions seem a little too keen on us."
"There's a subway exit there," Joan says. "We could get inside."
"Already seen."
She squeezes his hand and is poised to run when the sky overhead explodes into dazzling white light.
Joan shrieks and Sherlock tugs her towards the subway. They stagger forward and reach the steps, stumble down into blackness now flicker-lit by millions of volts, and drop to the ground. Sherlock has been hit, and Joan presses her fingers onto his head to stop his burning hair and then wraps her arms around him, crouching with her hands over both their heads, blinded by lightning as sparks rain down silver fire all around them.