A young woman was stumbling along the road, holding a pistol in one hand and pressing the other to her stomach. When she saw the motorcade she wobbled back a few steps and tried to take aim, but her face contorted in pain and she sank to her knees.

Hearing a click as Alex Morrell deactivated his gun's safety catch, John cried, "Wait! I think I know who that is." He leaned forward and tried to make out her features through the tangled brown hair covering them. "That's the girl who was with Diabel! Her name's Petra."

Mycroft rolled down his window. "Petra!" he called in a firm yet reassuring voice. "This is Mycroft Holmes. Please put your weapon down. We're here to help." To John he added tersely, "Cover your ears until I speak to her."

"What? Why?"

"She might say Diabel's real name."

"Oh. Right."

John pressed his forefingers into both ears and continued to watch the young brunette, who got unsteadily to her feet, lowered the pistol, and lumbered toward them. Mycroft and Morrell slowly got out of the car and approached her. When Petra caught up to them, she spoke and gestured wildly in the direction from whence she had come. She was in mid-explanation when her eyes rolled suddenly and she fainted.

Mycroft gathered her quickly in his arms and held her while Morrell checked her pulse and carefully lifted her blouse hem to examine the injury she'd been protecting. When he saw red smears on her skin, John went cold all over.

Something had clearly happened at Elena's hideout. Something that caused Petra to be wounded.

Oh God, Sherlock…

Heart hammering, John leaned out the window. "Mycroft- bring her here. Let me examine her."

Mycroft carried Petra over to the car while Morrell went to speak to Lestrade and the occupants of the second vehicle. John opened the door, stepped out, and helped the elder Holmes lay her out on the seat. When Morrell returned, he handed her pistol to John.

"Stay here with her. There's a first aid kit in the glove compartment," Mycroft ordered as John examined her wound. He quickly determined that she had been grazed by a bullet, resulting in an ugly-looking but nonlethal injury. "We'll continue to the house. It's five minutes away."

John whirled around. "Did she say what's happening?"

"Sergei Ragulin's associates are here looking for someone named Alexei. Diabel resisted them and there was shooting. The gunmen are still there."

Alexei was here? John's jaw dropped.

"And Sherlock?" he managed.

Mycroft's expression was grave but his eyes registered a wild alarm. "She didn't say. John, I've got to go. You need to stay here. I can't risk you hearing Diabel's real name somehow." To the driver, he added, "Anders, come with me."

John knew he was right, but the thought of staying behind while Sherlock was in danger was unbearable. Seeing his reluctance, Mycroft said, "It'll be all right, John. I'll get him. Now please text Anthea and tell her what's going on and where we are."

"Mycroft, for God's sake be careful."

"Always. If she regains consciousness before I return, caution her about not saying Diabel's name." A pause. "I'll return as soon as possible."

Without waiting for a response, Mycroft turned away and strode toward the second car. When he climbed inside with Morrell and Anders, the vehicle circled carefully around John's sedan before disappearing down the road.

Heart hammering, John tried to focus on his patient. He texted Anthea as directed, and then got the first aid kit out of the glove compartment. Petra regained consciousness while he was cleaning her wound with alcohol.

"Dr. Watson," she whispered weakly.

"You're going to be fine. It's just a graze. Before you say anything further, I have to warn you not to say her name. I know it sounds silly but-"

"I know. She told me what's been done to you." Petra licked her dry lips. John took a bottle of water from the stash in the side compartment and held it for her while she gulped down the lukewarm contents. When she moved her mouth away, he said breathlessly, "Where's Sherlock?"

"He's… he's back at the house. When we saw him trying to sneak out of the car El knocked him out and put him in an upstairs bedroom. We were going to take him to Exeter, rent a hotel room, leave him in it, and let you know where he was. But before we could leave, Alexei showed up."

"What happened?"

"He escaped from the Surrey facility where the Consortium placed him. He's a brilliant boy- after he accessed their records and determined where his mother was, he disabled their surveillance system long enough to escape. El was shocked to see him. Then, two hours later, a Consortium retrieval team showed up. El didn't want to let them take him back, and the guns came out."

"Was anyone injured besides you?"

"I don't know." Her voice broke. "How- how did you find us?"

John forced himself to smile as he applied an adhesive bandage to the wound. "Mycroft is resourceful."

Petra nodded, satisfied. "That's what El always said."

"You're going to be all right. That wound bled quite a bit, but it's not that serious. Do you feel dizzy? Like you're going to pass out?"

She shifted experimentally on the seat. "No."

"Okay. Good." John took a deep breath. "Have you still got ammunition in your gun?"

She picked it up off the seat, ejected the clip, and examined it. "Yes."

He slid his service revolver out of his coat pocket. "I'm going to go help Mycroft and Dia- I mean, El. You should be safe here."

Petra clasped her weapon in both hands. She was still pale but some colour was returning to her cheeks. "Please bring her back to me, Dr. Watson. She is everything to me."

"I'll do my best. I'll be back as soon as possible."

With that, John slipped out of the vehicle, closed the door, and ran down the hedge-lined road. The greenery exceeded his own height by at least two feet, giving the route a maze-like feel.

He knew that Mycroft wouldn't be happy about his disobedience, but John couldn't sit there like a fretting civilian and wait for the crisis to pass. His soldier's instincts were too strong, and three of the people who he cared about the most- Mycroft, Sherlock, and Lestrade- were in danger, as well as a fourteen-year-old boy who was still a child, for all his supernatural intelligence.

There was also the fact that when he was in action, he thought less about horrible things like dying violently. Another army mind trick that he was now grateful for.

When he heard gunshots in the distance, his heartbeat quickened along with his running speed. The road veered to the left, and when John rounded the curve he saw a two-storey stone cottage at the end of a hundred-yard drive. Instinctively he crept into the bushes and advanced along the tree line, keeping to the shadows.

No one was on the neatly groomed front lawn, but the acrid smell of gunpowder and a bluish haze in the air verified that a battle had taken place only moments before. Mycroft's car was parked at an angle near the small flight of stone steps leading into the cottage. Another vehicle, this one an unfamiliar black SUV, stood approximately ten feet away from it.

Must be the car that brought the Consortium search party, John thought as he approached.

Three men appeared suddenly in the open doorway. John's trigger finger flexed, but quickly relaxed when he recognized Lestrade and Alex Morrell, who were escorting a rumpled-looking man in handcuffs.

"Greg!" he called.

Startled, Lestrade stared about until he spied John in the shadows. Then he waved. "Perimeter's clear!" he shouted.

John sprinted over. "Where are Sherlock and Mycroft?"

"Out back. Sherlock's a little nauseous from whatever he's been given, so Mycroft took him outside for air."

The prisoner snarled something in Russian. Morrell propelled him roughly toward the government sedan, leaving Lestrade free to talk to John.

"What about Diabel?"

"She's not here. Neither is the boy. Apparently he escaped from wherever he was being held and came here looking for his mother. That's what Diabel's girlfriend told Mycroft."

"She told me the same thing. Anyone wounded?"

"One dead in the sitting room. Probably killed by Diabel or the other woman. There were two others going through the house when we showed up. They shot at us and escaped."

"Right then. I'm going to see how Sherlock is."

"He's better off than he deserves for pulling such a stupid trick."

John hurried through the cottage's ground floor, catching glimpses of overturned furniture and scattered papers. He easily found the open door leading to the back garden and paused in the doorway, looking about.

Like the one at Mycroft's Exeter headquarters, this one was dense with shrubbery and flowering bushes. The air was several degrees warmer than it had been out front, and thick with the cloying scent of lilac, honeysuckle, and roses. Sniffing appreciatively, he descended the stone steps and listened for voices. He soon heard two of them: one was deep but feeble, while the other spoke in scolding tones.

"Back off, Mycroft. I suspect that your nagging is making me feel worse than the injection."

"I've only just begun. Does your childish impetuosity know no bounds?"

Instead of replying, the younger Holmes retched loudly. John tried to summon some sympathy, and failed. Now that the crisis had passed and Sherlock was safe, fear over his own situation was creeping back in like a wet fog, chilling his skin and making breathing difficult.

Following the direction of the voices, John stumbled over something solid and nearly lost his footing. Looking down, he saw a woman's low-heeled heather pump on the gravel path. When he bent over to pick it up, he spotted a long, pale shape partly concealed by the lower branches of a lilac bush. Peering at it, he realized that it was a woman's bare leg.

Eyes widening, he held his revolver ready and manoeuvred slowly around the bush. He could vaguely hear Mycroft snapping "I have no sympathy for you right now, Sherlock."

What he saw on the other side of the bush made him gasp. Elena, still wearing the waitress uniform from the pub, was lying on her side in a trampled patch of grass, eyes closed and face chalk-white. Hovering over her, cradling her head in his lap, was a teenaged boy.

John had seen pictures of the Holmes brothers when they were children, and the young man who now eyed him with suspicion and alarm was a carbon copy of Mycroft at that age. Auburn hair with a faint wave crowned a sharp, intelligent face, and his slender frame already showed promise of above-average height.

John had no more doubts about his paternity.

"Alexei," he whispered.

"You are not taking me back," the boy hissed, his diction precise and controlled despite his obvious anxiety. "Not that you could do it on your own anyway. You have a stiff shoulder from an old wound and you're already winded from running for at least ten minutes. Not an impressive result for a soldier, but you've been off of active duty for at least two years."

John was bewildered. "You know who I am?"

"I know what you are. You're here to retrieve me, and I'm not going to let you do that or hurt my mother." Alexei slowly, reverently lowered Elena's head to the soft grass and stood. "You're a doctor too. That's interesting. Did they send you to jab me full of something to make me compliant?"

John didn't realize until it was too late that the boy had been –instinctively or otherwise- playing the old Holmes trick of disarming people with uncanny insights and deductions. He was still trying to figure out what made his medical status so obvious when Alexei produced a pistol from his waistband and took aim.

"Now I have to kill you, and those other two men in here," he said angrily. "I don't want to, but you leave me with no alternative."

Then he fired.