There were a few moments of silence in which K watched them both, a small grin playing at the corners of his lips before he sauntered over to Sherlock "Shall we pick up where we left off" he taunted, running a finger down Sherlock's pale cheek while Johns stomach churned in disgust.
"Get your filthy hands off him" he growled, squirming in his chair, futilely trying to pull his hands from the cuffs, the sharp metal digging painfully into his wrists.
K turned to smirk at John, a sinister look lurking in his dark eyes.
That was his first mistake.
As soon as the assassin turned his head, Sherlock pulled his leg free from the ropes he had managed to loosen during Rykov's speech and delivered a hard blow to the back of K's knees with his heel. The man gasped in surprise, falling to the ground heavily. As he twisted angrily to see his attacker, eyes flashing, Sherlock swiftly rose from the chair so it hung off his back by the handcuffs and then in a move so fast John almost missed it, he spun on the spot so the chair shattered across K's head, knocking him out cold. Shaking off the broken remains of the chair, Sherlock then gracefully stepped through his handcuffed hands so they were in front of him. He grabbed the keys from K's pocket, awkwardly fiddling it around one handed before there was a satisfying click and the cuffs fell off.
He hurried around behind John "Are you alright?" he asked anxiously as John felt the cuffs snap open.
"Yeah fine" he replied, rubbing his wrists and unknotting his feet "You?"
Sherlock nodded glancing down at the unconscious form in front of him.
"Suppose we should do something with him" John said reluctantly, thinking a bullet was probably the best solution.
"Too loud, someone might hear," Sherlock replied as if he had read Johns mind.
The two men stared down at K again, his arms and legs splayed on the thick rug awkwardly, his mouth was open slightly, drooling on the carpet. They glanced at each other and John sighed, bending to grab K's feet while Sherlock grasped the assassin's shoulders. They half dragged half carried him across the floor towards the tall cupboard next to the fireplace. Gagged and bound they shoved K unceremoniously through the door where he slumped against a broom, his face resting against an old ironing board and his legs curled beneath him in what looked like a supremely uncomfortable yoga position. They pulled the door shut and John snapped the handle off so it locked.
"What now?" he asked turning to Sherlock who picked up K's gun from the carpet, slipping it into his jackets internal pocket.
"We need to get a copy of OASIS's plans to Mycroft, the location of the bombs, the intended targets. If Mycroft's people can get it to the right places fast enough we might be able to stop it, buy us some time to get to Crawford and Rykov"
"And the missiles?" John asked, he could feel adrenaline pumping through his veins.
"If they never get launched the signal to begin never gets sent to OASIS's network. He'll have a back up plan of course, some other way of communicating to them without the missiles, but that gives us sometime to warn the targets, disable the bombs, arrest the members of OASIS in governments and corporations he's using. All we need is more time."
"How on earth do you plan to stop a missile launch" John asked, throwing his hands in the air exasperated, this was ridiculous, they weren't agents, neither of them had any idea what they were doing, the fact they were still alive was sheer luck more than anything else.
"No idea" Sherlock replied moving towards the door "Mycroft will have people who can."
"Yes but Mycroft isn't here, in case you've forgotten Josef didn't even contact him, for all he knows we're still blundering around the streets of Split."
Sherlock put his ear to the door, listening for footsteps outside "Mycroft has a tracking device in my phone, thinks I don't know about it. If Josef lied about contacting him then its been three says since he's heard from us. He would have heard about the break in at Rykov's office, which means he'll be looking for us. Whatever they did with our phones, Mycroft will have the signal from the last place we were, his trail will end here and even he can figure that out."
John could almost dance in relief, so they weren't alone, so someone was coming.
"We don't have much time" Sherlock continued, "We need to get whatever information we can before Mycroft arrives. His men will attract attention, if OASIS destroys evidence of their plans before Mycroft's people get here.."
He didn't need to finish.
John nodded grimly, whatever happened they had to get their hands on the details of OASIS's plans, without them there would be no way to stop it. Rykov's words from only moments before seemed to spin round and round in John's head. It wasn't real, this sort of thing didn't happen, it couldn't happen.
But...but if it did. What would become of Europe, of the world, would it all happen as Rykov had said? John knew from experience what fear did to people, it stripped them of reason, of logic. The simple fact is that people will do whatever it takes to stay alive, it is our most basic instinct as human beings and when its life or death, the constraints of right and wrong seem to crumble. And when all is said and done, there is nothing more profoundly dangerous than someone who believes without question that their situation is life or death. A person who believes their path and actions are of necessity not choice, who has nothing left to lose, those are the people to fear, and OASIS's plan would create from Europe's citizens an entire population of such people.
Sherlock pulled the old wooden door to the room silently open and motioned at John that it was safe to continue. They crept along the deserted corridor, the stone floor covered in a long old fashioned carpet which silenced their footsteps. There were dozens of closed doors lining the hallway and John was half expecting one to fly open, for them to be discovered, for bullets to ring out behind them.
But impossibly, miraculously, they reached the end of the corridor unfound. Sherlock held out a hand to stop John, glancing around the corner where the hallway turned to meet a spectacular, stone staircase. He could hear voices rising up over the banister from the large marble foyer at the bottom of the stairs; he pressed his back into the wall next to Sherlock, heart pounding in his chest. He hazarded a quick glance past Sherlock down to catch a glimpse of the people milling about down there.
There were several familiar faces, a major London CEO, the Spanish minister of defence, a women he recognised from the papers, she had been at a major UN peace conference a few weeks before. They were all disappearing into a room off the foyer. John couldn't believe what he was seeing, could it be true that these people were part of OASIS, that they wanted what Rykov wanted?
Suddenly there were footsteps coming the corridor behind them, John cursed under his breath crouching down he and Sherlock sped around the corner, hurrying past the top of the stairs and along the parallel hallway on the other side. Sherlock paused, standing out against the lines of old fashioned wooden doors was a modern archway where a thick metal door stood. There was no handle on it, no gap beneath it, it seemed infused into the wall. On the wall next to it was a large keypad with a glowing green backlight beneath the keys.
The door screamed top secret. If they were going to find anything, it would be in there.
The footsteps were getting closer, Sherlock grabbed Johns hand and pulled him into the boiler cupboard across from the steel door pulling it shut behind him. They were cramped together face to face in the darkness, Johns back digging painfully into the shelf behind him, the whole cupboard smelt like bleach. The footsteps were outside now, heavy on the wooden floors. John heard a floorboard creak right outside their cupboard and the footsteps paused, he held his breath, certain the person would hear his heart pounding through the door. He imagined the mans hand reaching out, pulling the door open. There would be no time to run, no way out.
But instead John heard the beep of the keypad as a long series of numbers were punched in, there was a pause and then a low hiss as the doors slid open and closed again. John let out a sigh of relief, detangling himself from Sherlock he squinted through the crack between the door and the wall, the hallway was empty again. They spilled out of the cupboard, john rubbing his back where the shelf had dug into his spine "Did you hear the code?" he asked anxiously.
"Of course"
Sherlock punched in a flurry of digits, he didn't pause to think, he didn't need to. There was another pause and then the doors slid open again. It was an elevator, brightly lit and probably with a security camera inside John thought resignedly as they stepped through the doors. The elevator whirred into life, there were no buttons inside but it moved of its own accord taking them down, deep into the heart of the castle.