The thick fog in front of my eyes slowly starts to dissipate and the familiar voice starts to take shape. Hope seizes me: I may be not blind after all. Even if...
"I'm old enough to make my own decisions and live with the consequences..." I whisper to Harry.
"Indeed, I think you are."
"Did you catch a cold? There's a nasty bout of flu still spreading," I say, remembering that almost a quarter of Sarah's patients who came to the clinic last week showed the symptoms. Was it last week? Time is like my sight at the moment, a bit fuzzy.
"Nope."
Weird. Has Harry resumed smoking? Confused, I try to focus on the blurry silhouette next to me and realise with great surprise that my sister dyed her hair black and...
"You're sitting... on a chair..."
"Er... yes. Indeed I am sitting. We're definitely making some progress here. Another question?"
"Why?"
"Why... well, why not? What do you think? No. Don't answer this. Your neurons are still too sluggish to form a complex thought. Let's stick to simple observations. I am sitting on a chair. What more can you say about me?"
"Harry..." I whisper, not in a mood to play another round of a Rorschach game with her.
"Ah... maybe not making any progress after all."
Still not Harry's voice. More like...
"Sherlock?"
"YESSS! Ah, finally. Your eyes are now seeing reality. Welcome back, John."
The heavy weight that kept me under a dull, dark curtain suddenly lifts and the face of my pale friend appears, still a bit blurry but perfectly recognizable.
"What do you mean... reality?" I ask.
How weak and raspy my voice sounds scares me. A concern that grows when I notice that I am lying in a bed, hooked to a monitor. Hospital bed then. Steady beats. That's good to hear. My heart's beating.
"Oh. Merely that your eyes are opened for two hours now but somehow were watching a different channel."
"What... what channel?"
"What channel? You want to know what channel."
"Not making sense..."
"No, you're not. But don't worry, John, I've been there before you so I know what you are going through. With a little training, you'll be able to jump back to reality with more efficiency."
"Reality?"
"Yesss... reality."
"What happened?" I ask after taking a deep breath and wince at the pain shooting through my ribcage. Broken ribs. No doubt more than one.
"How do I tell you without alarming you... Harry was particularly adamant on this particular point and I can't disagree with her-"
"Sherlock!" I cut him, not knowing what alarms me more: that my friend is worried about causing me some distress - which is too late by the way - or that he agrees with my sister on something about me, which incidentally also means that Harry was here then and that I did not completely hallucinate her presence at my sides. A good point for my sanity, right?
"Let's just say that it would have been more fun to follow Virgil at the bottom of the ninth circle than you in an Afghan rabbit hole."
"Afghan..."
Feeling like I'm suddenly on the high seas on a heaving ship, I close my eyes to keep my stomach under control. When I open them again, relief wash over me upon noticing that Sherlock's silhouette is a bit sharper than a couple of minutes ago.
"Sorry. Maybe I should not have said the A word so soon."
Jaw clenched tight, I focus the few neurons that seemed willing to work on figuring out how poor my physical state is to prevent my mind to rush toward dark memories. For once, my right arm is in a sling, but I can't see much more for my neck won't allow such a degree of rotation. My eyes turn toward the left side of my body for further inspection.
"Sherlock?"
"Hmm?"
"Could you let go of my hand, please?"
"Oh, sure. Harry insisted that one of us always stayed and held your hand in order to give you a sense of reality, like a mental bridge. She's very spiritual for a psychiatrist your sister. Almost mystical I'd say."
"Mystical? Harry?" I almost choke at the thought. One could wonder who is high! "First, she'd need to believe in something else than her own mighty powers. W-wait a sec... you said: o-one of us?"
"Yes. Mrs. Hudson, Harry, Sally, Lestrade, Andersen at some point though he did not hold your hand, it made him uncomfortable, just talked to you to boredom. Harry chased him away, saying that hearing a voice like his would convince anyone to dig one's own grave. I think she was too legal on this if you want my opinion. But you should have seen Andersen's terrified face. Priceless."
"She kicked him out?" I ask, imagining the scene and feeling a guilty joy. Andersen does not deserve being humiliated. For a psychiatrist, I always thought Harry lacked empathy. "She shouldn't have done that..."
"Ah... here we are. The disapproving and bitter younger brother."
"Barely two minutes..."
"And forty seconds. Insignificant and yet crucial to the development of-"
"None of your business, Sherlock."
"Right."
"Where is she?"
"She left ten minutes ago to catch her bus. Want me to run after her?"
"No… no, thank you," I whisper through clenched teeth as pain irradiates through my lower members. "My legs... broken?"
"Right side: double fracture tibia-fibula, three broken ribs, greenstick fracture of your clavicle. Your left side also took some damage, the worse being your torn ankle and wrist. Numerous bruises, a mild concussion. As for your eyes, Pattinson said the operation was a success and the blurriness is only temporary. You should get your twenty-twenty vision back in a couple of months."
"Oh, God... I hate being on pain meds for a long period."
"You're not authorize anything stronger than paracetamol considering your body is still recovering from the mother of all overdose. I must apologize for one of the broken ribs but my concern at the moment was to restart your heart."
"Restart my... Oh. Thanks," say I, overwhelmed by the list of my injuries and the knowledge that I nearly died.
"For how long am I here?"
"Two weeks, five hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds," says Mycroft Holmes' cold, clear, sharp voice from the right corner of the room.
"Now that the patient is calm and lucid, enough chit-chat. What do you remember, Doctor Watson?" asks Mycroft as he steps into my field of vision and walks to stand next to Sherlock who stands up, in clear disapproval of his older brother's move. Tension is rising around me faster than the pressure in Miss Hudson's pressure cooker.
"What happened?" I ask, unable this time to keep my mind from rushing back to the never-ending, crumbling tunnels, chasing Allaoui, Allaoui chasing me... the walls reverberating gunshots, bombs... Major Sholvo's voice in the radio encouraging me to keep progressing, to find where the others are being held captives... no! ordering me to retreat... I'm hurt and so exhausted when I find Matthews' and Johnson's bodies tossed in the far left corner of a dark room... wait... they were not there, this is not real. This is an incursion of my last nightmare in my memories.
"You killed a lieutenant coming to your help, John."
I slowly turn wide eyes toward Sherlock. I feel confusion seizing me as violent images assault my mind.
"No... I did not kill Allaoui... I thought I killed him but it wasn't him...in the tunnel..."
"Focus, John. You are not in Afghanistan. You are in London. Try to remember what happened after you left the biosafety level four facility."
"Biosafety... You were suffocating... in your suit... in the lab..."
"What is he talking about?" asks Mycroft when Sherlock's hand springs in the air to silence him.
"I was in the lab, that's right, and you suddenly left. Where did you go?"
"To the staircase giving access to the hospital... Allaoui, I saw a picture of him in Pattinson's office. He was their interpreter. Pattinson, he told me that he was working at the hospital."
"We found the man in question, John. There's no doubt there's a resemblance with Allaoui but he is clear. What happened when-"
"He's not clear, Sherlock!" I brusquely say. Pain shoots through my whole body and I collapse on the bed, panting. "He found me first. He was waiting for me. We fought in the staircase. Tumbled down. I followed him into a parking lot and in a service corridor beneath the facility. That's where... we fought again... there was no winner, Sherlock. Until he came."
"A third man?" asks Mycroft.
"Who came, John?"
"Moriarty... Moriarty shot him and then.. he..."
"What did he do?"
Blinding, excruciating pain...
"I thought he shot me in the head. Did I really kill a man, one of our own?"
An awkward silence spreads until Sherlock says:
"With the intervention of a third party, I have to redo the ballistic."
"I'll see to it," Mycroft says, as the door open.
A nurse brings a bunch of flowers and hands it first to Sherlock before turning toward Mycroft.
"No, I'll do it," Sherlock says, confusing both the nurse and me.
"As you wish, brother of mine," Mycroft says with a deep sigh, taking the flowers and putting them on the table next to the window. "White Lillies, how touching," he adds, picking one up and coming back toward us.
"Even with my poor sight, that's not a Lilli," I say, frowning. "Who brought the flowers?"
"Good question," mutters Sherlock as he takes the flower his brother hands to him.
"What is it?" I ask, unable to decipher the shape.
"A poppy," replies Sherlock as he takes the ten by fifteen centimeters card from his brother's hand and opens it.
A heavy silence installs itself.
"What is it?" I ask again. "Who sends the flowers?"
"After all, you might have retained a glimpse of lucidity during your psychedelic trip," Sherlock says, showing the card to me.
"It's blurred... sorry."
"Do you remember seeing Uccelo's painting of Saint George slaying the dragon?"
"Yeah... vaguely."
"This is the reversed version," says Sherlock.
"There's a capital M on the dragon's left wing."
Silence spreads again, this time broken by Mycroft.
"Well, I guess this explains a lot of the things that happened this month."
"Explain yourself, brother."
"Moriarty has gained access to a critical piece of our defenses through a Trojan horse. Doctor Watson? How many times do you think you submitted yourself to a retinal scan?"
"One to enter at the main gate. Another to enter in the core facility... perhaps another one... I'm not sure."
"You said you thought he had shot you in the head so I guess at that moment, you experienced a blazing pain. Could that blazing pain have been caused by another retina scan?"
I nod. Sure. Any light in my eyes at that time would have hurt badly.
"Three was all he needed," Mycroft says.
"All he needed for what?" asks Sherlock.
"The first to enter the virus in the system, the next to download the files, the last to retrieve them."
"What files did he retrieve?" Sherlock asks, his sharp voice clearly showing how strained his mood had become.
"All the files that matter for our country's defense: the Saint George Protocols."
THE END
The Saint George Protocols