Things are about to get somewhat dark in this chapter...

'There isn't any time to waste then, is there?'

-Mistro-

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"And then he said to me, 'You can't just say those things in public, Jane!'. Can you believe it? As if he has a right to dictate me!"

"No, no, no. She was never his wife, only his-"

"More wine, Sir? Will that be the white or the red?"

"This place is awfully expensive. I don't know why you decided to bring us here, as if we could pay for it."

My eyes flickered open, the voices of others now a familiar and yet still uncomfortable intrusion. Being surrounded by sounds did not normally bother me, but voices were different. The idea of so many thoughts flooding around one room was altogether unnerving. How would you be able to detect the truthful from the liars? Sherlock Holmes had a similar predicament. I recalled our few dinners out on the town which had always ended with his constant picking of the table's wood and the unstoppable flickering of his chocolate eyes. It didn't matter that my hand was there to rest upon his, he oftentimes could not handle such a setting.

"Perhaps you really are like the great detective." Stryker mumbled behind the rim of his crystal wine glass. I glanced down at mine, noting how the brim was stained for my persistent ignorance of it. "He must really hate public settings like this. As do I, but I'm much better at hiding it." He smiled slightly, his lips tainted red from the drink. "I'm good at hiding many things, as it would turn out."

"You knew he was alive." I recalled to our conversation on the ship. Stryker had said that Holmes was a 'sick' man, and perhaps he had been right considering his abandonment of me. "Had you always known that he survived the falls? Why did you say nothing?"

Stryker rolled his eyes dramatically, the blueness of them disappearing for a brief moment. "Oh, where's the fun in that? Sherlock Holmes likely knew about me too, or at least had an inkling if he chose Morocco to disappear to. Did he bother to fill you in, despite this? Of course not."

"Why were you in Morocco?" I couldn't resist trying to put the puzzle pieces together.

Stryker kept his answers sweet, just like his wine. "Business."

My eyes were scanning him like a ravage dog. His suit was perfectly pressed, no doubt a symbol of his wealth. However, it was somewhat too small for his muscular build, implying that he did not have a wife to feed him confident advice and boost his ego. As if it needed boosting. The ring missing from his finger was a further component of that deduction. His cravat had a clip on it, however small, but certainly unable to be missed. It was a silver plaque with the same caduceus that had been staring us all in the face since Blackwood.

"Radio signals, weapons and death." My eyes remained fixated on his red scarf. "That's what you all wanted. I just can't put my finger on why Samuel Sedgwick wanted to be involved in all of this. What would be gain from it?"

Stryker choked on a piece of beef bourguignon that had recently been brought to him. "I'm sorry, who are you speaking about? Samuel Smelt… What?"

I set my fork back on the table beside my pasta, suddenly unaware of my appetite. "Samuel Sedgwick. He was a loyal student of Moriarty and Cambridge University who travelled around Europe leaving behind a trail of symbols. A trial that captured the attention of others wrapped inside your game."

Stryker laughed, something of a snort, behind his napkin. "Oh, right. That foolish boy. That was awfully stupid of him to be so indiscreet, wasn't it? But I suppose every man wishes to leave his mark on the world." Stryker's eyes scanned me over somewhat uncomfortably from the other side of the linen tablecloth. "And perhaps every little girl, too."

I was beginning to annoy him. Admittedly my mind was filled with so many thoughts about New York, Stryker, Holmes, and Sedgwick, but if I wanted to gain his trust, I had to play along. There were rules to the game. I couldn't simply tilt the edges of the board and watch the pieces crumble.

"Mister Stryker…" I began just as I had in my room. My fork lazily dug its way into the noodles. "Do you dare to tell me about yourself?" Something about my voice was playful, almost seductive, as I looked up at him from my tilted head.

He seemed taken aback by the question, but the smile that cracked across his face implied that I had finally done something right. "Do I dare…? That's an awfully strange way of putting it."

"You must be quite the interesting man, what with a family like yours."

The mention of family seemed to off-put him. His eyes briefly trickled to the table beside us, though nothing interesting was going on with the overweight duo droning about their taxes. It was a clear implication of his sudden discomfort. "My family do very well for themselves, you see. My father takes the care of medical business very seriously. He's particularly invested in the mental health concerns sweeping the nation, which will no doubt tragically increase after the great war."

I bothered me that he spoke of it so inevitably, but something else about the conversation struck me as more important. "Your father must have loved you very much to hand the business over to you."

Stryker leaned forward slightly, the mocking tilt of his head a somewhat concerning sign of dominance. "You come to the funniest conclusions, Miss Adkins. Shall I take you home and introduce you to my mother? She would adore you. All we would need is a ring."

"I don't think for a second that you would properly be interested in me, Mister Stryker. After all, you do own over half the hospitals in this country and are slowly reaching that number in mine." I shoved a tomato in my mouth, the tenderness of it taking me out of the brief misery of the situation. "But then again if you are interested, I have to question what is it about me that makes me so enchanting. Surely it's not just the fact that I am your key to getting Sherlock Holmes."

Stryker's face fell. He was no longer sad, no longer mocking, but somewhat contemplative. He had never seemed quite so… dare I say it? Nervous. We were presumably alone on a dinner date for two, for which the purpose I was unsure of. There was no doubt in my mind that bodyguards were hiding in plain sight, but otherwise we looked entirely like a couple. "You should eat." He pointed at my food with the tip of his knife. "Your threw up so much on that damn boat; I thought there'd be nothing left of you when we arrived."

My hand instinctively reached towards my stomach. It would only be one more week until I was meant to bleed, and there was a fear within me that if I were with child, the journey would have destroyed that precious chance.

"Mister Stryker." My voice was firm. "Ross, if you don't mind-"

"I mind."

"Mister Stryker, what is it that makes you so desperately want to do this?" We stared at one another, our plates now half empty. The night would soon be over and I still had too few answers. "If you're so unafraid to hide, could you at least enlighten me as to your reasoning?"

The voices twisting about the room seemed to suddenly halt. My entire attention was fixated on him and vise versa. Something about his demeanour recalled echoes of Jacob Irons, perhaps even Edward Brettingham, and uncomfortably still, Sherlock Holmes. There was a loneliness in the way he turned his face away from those he took an interest in. His soft face suggested that he had often spent time in the comfort of his own home, but with whom? His father was clearly a man of action, not a loving one. If he was so desperate to impress his mother with a fiancee, it was clear that their relationship was nothing more than business as well. Who did Stryker truly have in the world, now that his allegiance overseas was dead and his mortal enemy somewhere in the heart of Africa?

"The world is a funny place, Miss Adkins. I don't say funny so as to mean amusing, but rather a place where the words and actions of the people seem to…" He spread his fingers apart, trying to bring them together in a hold that kept crashing lazily into one another. "... exist as separate entities. How many times in your life did people tell you that money could make you happy? How many people told you that money had nothing to do with joy? There have been so many times where those words, both of them, bounced around my head until I felt like it was going to explode." He physically grabbed his black hair, the gel now parting easily from its previously clean look. "And one day, it did. I decided to stop listening and to start doing. I was tired of taking people at their word and not getting what I wanted from them." He let his hands fall shakily to the table, his palms pressing firmly into it as if to steady himself. "Money will buy me happiness because I said so and because I've worked for it. Americans are not like the British. We don't wake up being born with a crown on our head and money in the bank. This country is about building yourself, because your whole world can be taken from you overnight. I can get anything I want with a bit of cash, a few corpses and a lot of mentally ill soldiers." I darted my eyes sideways to see if anyone was listening. "Have you never thought of doing something tragic for the sake of your own happiness? Would you really lie and say that it's not crossed your thoughts?"

I shook my head fiercely. "Unfortunately, you've failed to note how ill you are. Your diagnosis of Sherlock Holmes is incredibly unsettling, but nothing that I wasn't already aware of. I think it's your brain that should be picked at." I brushed my finger against the sharp edge of the knife, making sure he took note of it. "I would be quite interested to take a look, really."

His full lips were spread open in unspoken words. He seemed to rethink his options over and over again in his head until finally settling on one. "Would you like to see where I work?"

I narrowed my eyes, stray hairs from the feather slipping into my vision. "That all depends on where you work."

"The morgue," he said breezily. "It's not far from here and I've been gone for quite some time. I should really have a check-in now that I'm in town." There was a coolness to his tone, a contentedness that fell off of every word. I was now able to see how he had befriended so many powerful men, how he had gain their trust. He could really manage to look sane if he wanted to. "Lots of people dying to see me."

I laughed sarcastically. "What a clever clown you are."

"A clever clown." He rolled his neck around in a stretch. "That's a strange way of putting it. I always thought clowns were rather sad."

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

New York's first city morgue was established in 1866 by Stryker's father. Morgues were, according to my late father, unlike cemeteries as they did not require large tracts of untouched land. There was no connection to religion, nor did they need to accommodate the needs of various denominations for their own sacred spaces. The idea had always haunted me, though I was not a particularly religious woman, that a building in the heart of town could foster the souls of so many. Not to mention, New York was a constantly growing city and the business of morgues was no doubt expanding. There was simply not enough space for the dead. It was a fascinatingly good investment, and I admired the intelligence behind it on behalf of the Stryker family. However, I did not admire Ross's desire for piles of lifeless beings out of the thirst for a fat wallet.

I glanced up at the iron gate leading to our entrance in the 'U' shaped hospital. It read, in a somewhat inelegant black text, 'Bellevue Hospital'.

"Interesting choice of name," I muttered. "I would have thought that you were more conceited than that."

Stryker outstretched his hand towards me as he passed through the gate. I did not take it at first, but when he stuck it a bit further, I felt that I must follow his lead. There was a warmth coming from beneath the glove, which surprised me from the idea that he was heartless. "Bellevue was the name of my mother's father. My father respected him greatly, as his own father was a brute. He named the hospital after him and the rest was history."

"It seems like father issues run in the family, no?" I smiled against my words, hoping he would not raise a hand to me. Sometimes, although I warned myself, I could not seal my lips when there was something to be said.

"And your father?" Stryker ignored the response, leading us to a large entrance. "I suspect you get along well."

"He was my best friend." My words stopped alongside the sound of the door closing. Stryker turned around to look at me in the dimly lit hallway, the moon's rays not quite as bright as they were in Morocco. Perhaps the moon did not hold New York so highly. "I miss him every single day."

Stryker nodded slowly, his fingers curling and uncurling against his palm. "Shame he had to pass whilst you were so young." The words shook me. Within them I tried to locate some malice, but it seemed there was none. Stryker continued his way down the hall, not once looking back at me. His hands however, were folded over one another behind him, as if he wanted me to press my own hand to it. Of course, I did not follow suit.

"Prepare yourself. Things are about to get rather unpleasant."

As we turned a long corridor, an indoor window spread itself alongside us. In the single room were perhaps thirty to forty children, all lying in their beds, some asleep and others crying. Nurses rushed to their side, their bottles and bandages at the ready.

"These children are ill?" I whispered, my chest tightening at the sight of them in matching white gowns. "What are they all here for?"

"Many of them were found on the street or in orphan houses. Their diseases are most incurable or far too dangerous to perform surgery on such feeble bodies." Any sentiment that had previously been in his voice was lost. "It is simply a final resting place for them."

Do you make money from them?

Do you make money from the fragile bodies of innocent young children?

"Of course I do." He seemed to read my mind. "Of course I make money from them. But, their way of dying was out of my control. It was not something I could manipulate, nor does it feed into my business of mental asylums. That's a rather new branch that will be expanding in around ten years or so." He paused at the next set of doors. "It doesn't mean that I don't feel any sympathy for them."

I nodded once. There was not much I could say without putting myself in danger of him. Then again, the levels of danger with him were completely imbalanced. I felt as if he would not hurt me, but I was also unaware of what he was capable of.

"This is the morgue." He spoke before pushing open the doors. "It can be rather cold inside, so move closer to me if you can." He winked at the same time as my scoff. "I'm only reminding you that the offer is there."

"Duly noted."

The inside of the morgue was worse than I had expected it to be, precisely because it was so fine. The walls were made of white brick, their smooth porcelain covers reminding me of elegant restrooms in the most posh of West London's restaurants. In the middle of the room were slabs of silver beds, no pillows of course, with covered bodies occupying the space of nearly half of them. Perhaps it was my imagination, but an odour began to emit from the room as soon as we dipped our feet in. My hands fell across my nose, the familiar sickness in the pit of my stomach rising up again.

"Why did you bring me here?" I whispered in horror, the uncovered face of a young girl staring at the ceiling in front of me. Nobody had even the decency to seal her eyes.

Stryker strolled over the pretty ginger, his fingers bringing her lids to a close. He then grew uncomfortably near to her face, the breath of him no doubt warming her ice cold skin, if only for a second. "I didn't bring you here, Renadale. I asked if you would like to come and you followed me."

I thought back to the conversation in the restaurant.

"Would you like to see where I work?"

"That depends on where you work."

It was true. He had invited me there, and I had not so much even tried to say no. Was it because I was morbidly fascinated by the idea of his industry, or was it because I was fearful of what he would do if I refused? There was no way of knowing just yet.

Above each bed was a small pipe and a nozzle at the end. I suspected some sort of water came out of it to clean the bodies of any wounds. It was a remarkably tidy place and the care to making the bodies pristine before their burial was almost sentimental. "I suppose, as the daughter of a biologist, I was rather curious to see what your business was like."

"Perhaps you'd like to take a look at the next room." He took the edge of the sheet and flicked it disinterestedly over the girl's face. I could spot a bright curl of her red hair dangling over the edge. It made my stomach churn once more and I was forced to look away.

Stryker then led me to the opposite side of the room. I tried to count the beds as I went past. Thirty-nine, forty… Seven-three… Ninty-two… but it ended up being impossible with his quickening speed. When we were finally against the next set of doors, he pushed it open without a care. What was staring back at me caused my mouth to fall open, the beating of my heart momentarily silenced.

"What is this?"

"My temple." The words were enough to show his complete bewitchment of the place, despite him not moving an inch of his body. He didn't outspread his fingertips, he didn't caress the tabletops… He simply stood, staring at what lay before him. I also could not peel my eyes away from the serenity dancing across his face. "Isn't it beautiful?"

I redirected my gaze back towards the layout before me. Up to the ceiling and stretching a long ways from us were cupboards made of silver. They had small handles and locks on the left side of every one, their uniform nature shockingly familiar to the weapon factories in Germany. I couldn't help but feel thirty degrees colder, but it was not Stryker's hand that I wanted to embrace me. I wanted Sherlock by my side in that moment, perhaps more than ever.

"You're a…" I shook my head, the tears stinging the bottom of my eyes. I did not know whether these compartments held the bodies of anyone, or if he was merely saving it for when the time was right. How had he gotten them all commissioned? How had he so simply gotten away with this sneaking out of the public eye? It was like a second Black Death were to come and only he had the disease in hand.

"Finish that sentence."

When I turned, Stryker was alarmingly close. His hand snaked its way around my waist, lingering on the small of my back. He was taller than me, but not tall enough that his eyes could not pierce into mine. Without warning, he pulled my body close to him, frustrated words slipping into my ear with a rough voice filled with longing. "You think that I'm a monster? Maybe you're right, Renadale Adkins." He brushed his cheek against my forehead, the heat of it alarmingly unusual given the room's temperature. "But I have to wonder why you're not taken by me, when the people you've been so fascinated with are monsters as well… Sherlock Holmes most of all."

I shoved him away, but he kept his balance with the minor fall. I wanted to argue that Sherlock Holmes was the most heroic man I would ever have the grace of knowing. I wanted to scream about the disgusting nature in which he lived, the fantasies that he signed his bills for. But I could not. If I did, I would lose everything that I had built in those last few hours.

"I want to go home." When I spoke, my voice was soft and frail. It was not a guise.

Stryker stared at me with a heaving chest, his own mind trying to work out whether or not I was lying. After a short lifetime of waiting, he finally wagged his finger towards me like an owner and his pup. "The exit is this way. Let's get you back before midnight, as I'm sure you're exhausted."

I followed him sullenly out of the room. The smell, the white and the chill immediately left me upon our exit back into the busy streets of New York. Our cab was already waiting for us, the splendid nature of its build a clear giveaway to onlookers that we were not everyday folks. Little did they know it was not in the ways of money that we were separated from them.

Stryker did not say a word for the rest of the trip, nor did I. I tried to keep my hands folded confidently in my lap, but they were shaking far too much to be seen without mockery. Instead, I tucked them into the sides of my dress where they could warm without intrusion. However, this was not the only chilled sensation I was to take note of.

As our cab clinked along the dusted roads of New York City, I felt the familiar coolness of metal falling against my chest.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

Oooo what could it be? What is it that Renadale has...?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below! I'd love to hear them!

xoxo

Mistro