'Good luck, John', he still heard Sherlock whispering behind his back, solemnly.
As the two best friends split up, John's protective instincts were flared up and gunning at every Holmes in the property. As a soldier, John's instincts had served him well. They had kept innocent victims of war safe, had steadied his hands as he healed patients, had made his thread stealthy when breaching enemy ground. John leaned on all that acquired experience now. He had a mission and he was determined. Adrenaline coursed through his veins at every pump of blood rushing in his heart, it made him feel alive, and defiant, and daring.
John knew he may come across as one short doctor with a rusty knife in his hand, but he was also so much more than that. His hands were skilled, steady and precise. His footsteps were light and fast, virtually noiseless across the carpets and rugs covering the floor. Senses hyperaware, dismissing the expected noises - the grandfather's clock, the old woods creaking, Sherrinford's experiment - separating them from the first signs of break-in.
Where was that butler that Sherlock had mentioned? Was there really a butler? Had it been a lying excuse to leave John and the Holmes of the house alone for a chat?
John frowned to himself. No one had welcomed them into the house. They had walked in to an open manor with no interruption. Presumably Sherlock had a key if the door had been locked.
It's very careless to leave your door unlocked when there are killers after you.
Sherlock should have locked that door after them.
With a headshake, John leaned ramrod straight with his back against the library's wall, listening in. Sure enough, the target had been located. There was more than just Sherrinford's voice audible from within.
And Sherrinford didn't appear to have a pet skull to talk to, in any case.
That second voice, answering back, was crude and raw.
John glanced over his shoulder, by instinct. Too used to finding Sherlock at an arm's reach all the time. Not finding his partner in crime, although expected, only gave the former soldier an edge of anxiousness. Bad things happened when Sherlock vanished from sight; he had learned that the hard way. No, John shook his head. Teams split up, strategically, all the time. John had a mission. Sherlock had entrusted him with an incredibly personal mission; to keep Sherrinford Holmes safe. That meant John needed to turn the tables on the rapidly escalating meeting taking place inside the library.
As John inched closer to the heavy wooden door of the library, he found it ominously open ajar. The former soldier cursed under his breath, again sweeping the corridor on each side with cautious glances. Better being paranoid than getting caught. He could hardly recognise the path ahead or that he had come from with that almost darkness that now dwelled on the house. No lights filtering in from the library either, with the flashing exception of the dying out lightenings coming from the glass tank, where Sherrinford's experiment kept rumbling low with a deep growl of discontentment. All of a sudden the rusty theatrical blade in John's hand was little source of comfort or protection. As if to materialise his fears, he heard sharp, dangerous voices hollering from within in some foreign language John didn't quite recognise. Sherrinford's voice answered those worded threats with stammered monosyllables, giving John the impression that he knew the language but not the required answers. No time for deductions of his own, John was sure. One thing the elder sibling had got absolutely right about John: he was a man of action.
John took his hand to his almost empty pockets, fishing out a loose coin, and swung it across the air, aimed at the centre of the room. The resulting noise attracted all attention in the room at once. Immediately the voices dropped to become more cautious, darker, contained. The source of the sound was searched for at once.
On the corridor, the white light flashes that shone on the wooden floor at brief intervals got interrupted by the silhouettes of those in the room, as they interposed themselves between the glass tank and the door by which John hid. Sherrinford, tall and lean, and two other figures, bulkier and one of them clearly armed with a pistol, matching the sounds of short footsteps John had heard and the angry toned voices.
Old childhood tricks still paid off, John thought with a smirk. Little did his sister know that all those times they played castles and dragons (his sister was usually the dragon because she didn't want to be the princess, and John invariably played the white knight) would one day come in handy in John's adult life, at war and by Sherlock's side.
Two against two, John assumed, optimistic. After all, Sherrinford was a Holmes, surely he was up for a challenge when the opportunity arose.
Now John knew numbers and weapons, it was time to upgrade his efforts, though John had promised Sherlock to keep the brother safe. Those two half-wit villains weren't about to make John break his promise...
John had riled himself up with surprising ease. After all, he was once a soldier, and that wasn't something that simply faded in time.
Now the soldier had to use his instinct to pull this off. He had been in the room for approximately ten minutes. Could he recall enough of its recesses, the potential defence weapons within reach, and the revealing angles of light?
John was about to get some fun.
Smiling inappropriately, John catapulted his plan into action.
Child's play upgraded, really.