Valiant Warrior
"Thank you for your timely appearance, gentlemen," Sherlock smirked, "glaziers are rarely that puncutal when one needs them." With a click, he opened the handcuffs and slipped them off.
"Our pleasure, Mr Holmes," came the immediate reply, "but burglars have a good sense of timing. Need to."
"Of course." Sherlock took off his coat and shoes, slipped out of his suit jacket and donned the dark work clothes of industrial climbers. With the help of his two companions, he also put on the harness-like gear that was meant to secure him while they attempted a bit of abseiling in ghastly weather on wet glass down a very tall building. More than 300 meters tall to be precise, and if the rope broke, there was nothing to stop his fall. Apart from the pavement, of course. Thank God John couldn't see him.
It wouldn't be easy, but climbing up had been a lot more difficult, yet not impossible: the edges of the Shard offered barely a foothold, and you had to freeclimb a few meters on extremely slippery glass without a rope before you could attach yourself to it. A labourious and dangerous task. Going down should be rather straightforward compared to this.
His companions, all experienced cat burglars in the most literal sense, had taken out some of the glass panels a few storeys below in one of the as yet uninhabited residential apartements. It had been surprisingly easy to get entry disguised as glaziers; it turned out they were a common sight on the brand new building sporting 11000 glass panels. Problems abounded, apparently.
All he had to do was go down. He had done it many times, with less equiment and under more pressure. Still, it was shockingly high, the wind drove the rain against the glass, making it as trecherous as ice and chilling his fingers so that he barely felt the rope anymore. His muscles started trembling almost as soon as he felt his whole weight tear on them – and a few feet down he almost hit the wall, literally, scraping knees and knuckles, and metaphorically, running out of energy.
But he made it. Of course he did. With an elegant jump, he landed inside the apartment, where he was instantly captured by the helping hands of the third member of the party. He didn't need the support, though; he never so much as swayed, despite his weak muscles.
"Brought all the stuff you wanted, Mr Holmes," the lanky girl greeted him. "Including your feathered friend."
"Thank you, Miranda," he smiled. She was an audacious freeclimber and not homeless at all, but as a rather too dedicated Greenpeace activist, she had gotten in trouble over some overly-aggressive campaigning involving the sinking of a ship. Mycroft would be so annoyed, he chuckled inwardly.
He quickly stripped off the harness, but left the glazier's outfit on. He also ripped open the twinpack of energy tablets and chewed several, swallowing them with some sort of ghastly tasting energy drink, knowing it would give him a stomachache, but he desperately needed the sugar, and solid food would only make him retch.
When his two assistants climbed in, he asked casually, "How about some housbreaking, gentlemen?"
"Always!" they chorused.
"I should warn you," Sherlock said rummaging through the bundle that was his coat. "It is rather dangerous and we might get killed, but if we succeed, one of the richest and most powerful men in this country will be indebted to you. Are you up to it?"
They raised eyebrows; then nodded eagerly. Sherlock smiled – and it was only half-faked.
"But first things first," he muttered, searching his coat for the tiny gem hidden inside: a secret state-of-the-art gadget, minute and monstrously expensive – one of Mycroft's more useful gifts. And there it was: the smallest ever data carrier which now held all the information stored on his precious phone.
He smiled, a rare sense of elation spreading through his body, giving him more energy than the tablets. Moriarty thought he had the phone and the data – and so he did; but Sherlock had a copy. While connecting the two phones, he had slipped the tiny device into his lost phone, easily concealing it with his fingers; and while his normal phone had been downloading the diary at the usual agonizing snail's pace, the tiny device had done its job at high speed. And more than that: it had also uploaded something; something extremely useful.
A Trojan horse.
Easy-peasy, he thought, remembering Moriarty's words. Just a sleight of hand and a good old-fashioned trick.
Retrieving a new phone from the backpack his 'glaziers' had brought him, he slipped the data carrier into it and transferred the information needed to follow the trail of the Trojan horse, then he took it out again and sealed it into a small capsule. The data was safe. All he had to do was get it out of the building, and since Moriarty had jammed all signals, it needed to be done stone-age style. Well, not quite.
Sherlock knelt down and carefully took off the cloth covering the small cage. He only realized that he had been whispering under his breath when small cooing noises greeted him. A tiny head eagerly squeezed through the rods and pearly eyes blinked up at him with – what? Affection? Seriously? Sherlock smiled wryly. Well…
He opened the cage and carefully took out the bird. It seemed Alfred knew the procedure by heart and found nothing wrong with Sherlock holding him and attaching the capsule to his foot. Rather, he snuggled into his hand, cooing and looking up trustingly. "So, valiant warrior," Sherlock chuckled. "Hurry home."
He released the bird, and Alfred leaped into the air, wings flapping noisily, heading straight out towards the shore of the Thames, with an infallible sense of direction. 'Straight as a die, indeed,' Sherlock thought, 'even in semi-darkness.' He had been worried about the lack of light, but it seemed Alfred knew his way even at dusk and was all the more eager to get home. There, he would be greeted by Billy, and the lanky kid would take the data to Mycroft. Unfortunately, that part of the plan wouldn't work due to the idiocy of his brother, but still, the data was safe. Better in the hands of a timid teenager with a brain than Mycroft's mindless underlings.
He suddenly felt Miranda's eyes on him; turning around, he met her gaze, and she quickly looked away. "What?" he asked sharply.
"N-nothing," the usually brazen girl mumbled. "It's just – I never thought you could … look like that."
"Look like what?" He demanded, scowling.
"So lov-, uhm," she coughed, "… affectionate, I mean."
Sherlock blinked in confusion. He hadn't been aware of himself at all – which was unusual in itself.
"I've always found the company of animals more enjoyable than that of humans," he answered stiffly. 'With a few exceptions, maybe,' he corrected himself belatedly.
"Let's get to work."