Chapter 21: In Which John Starts Fires (Part 2)
"Yoo-hoo!"
Sherlock groaned involuntarily, no longer unconscious, not quiet awake. Mrs. Hudson's ascending steps vibrated in his hear. Quite literally, too, as his ear was pressed into the floorboards beneath the sitting room table. Slowly, his body was coming online, and he blinked, but even with eyes wide open, he saw nothing.
Then a lamp turned on somewhere above and behind him.
"Sherlock, what are you doing on the floor?"
He groaned again and lifted his pounding head, and a trail of saliva dripped from his lips to the pool that had accumulated under his cheek. His head. God, it was like a jackhammer had taken a fancy to it, almost like he had been . . . struck. No, stuck. Stuck? Struck? Stuck.
Fuck.
"Mrs. Hudson," he moaned, pushing himself upright, "what time is it?"
"Nearly nine o'clock."
"At night?"
"Of course, dear! Don't tell me you've been down there all day." She laughed at the absurdity of the thought. "Anyway, haven't you got a case on?"
"What? A case?"
Damn, his head was in such a fog. What had he been doing? Last thing he remembered, he was getting ready to go out. Go out? Where? Oh! He'd spent the night alone! John was in hospital! The Alphas from the park! He had to get to John!
But then . . . what had stopped him? There had been someone at the door . . . Yes! That's right, the scientist! She had tracked him down, needed to talk to him, wanted him to . . .
Struck. Stuck. He remembered the needle.
John!
"I should think so," Mrs. Hudson was prattling on. "Isn't that why the police are here? I told them to wait downstairs, that you wouldn't be a moment. Gracious, Sherlock, are you ill?"
But the police, evidently, had tired of waiting and were ascending the staircase. Lestrade, he noted, was not among them. Instead, they were five Alphas. And as a rule, the Met never sent five Alphas together anywhere, not unless it was to—
"Sherlock Holmes, we have a warrant for your arrest."
"Oh my God," he whispered.
"What's that? What did you say?" Mrs. Hudson's neck swiveled from the officers to Sherlock, looking like someone had just told her she'd given birth to an alien.
"On what charge!" he demanded.
"Omega endangerment."
"What?"
They wasted no time, answered no questions, but surrounded him, a ring of five Alphas against whom he would be a fool to put up a fight. His wrists were cuffed in iron, not the dainty steel bracelets reserved for Betas and Omegas, and not only his wrists but his ankles as well, and a steel contraption called a muzzle across his nose and mouth, preventing him from smelling, from speaking, or from biting. And they escorted him away.
xXx
They left him overnight in holding, all binds and gags in place, because no one could be bothered to process or interrogate him until morning. Technically, this wasn't legal, but the system hated an Omega abuser, alleged or otherwise. Still, the hours alone gave Sherlock plenty of time to recall what had happened, and to consider his way forward.
Dr. Jacqui Stapleton had drugged him. A tranquilizer. Why? When? He had scoffed at her claim that the only way to swap John for John was for John to die. Preposterous. Oh, but then, what had he said to that?
"John probably wouldn't be opposed. He hates it here."
He had meant it flippantly, while at the same time wondering if there was a kernel of truth in his words. Was John desperate enough that he would risk death to escape this reality? Sherlock didn't think so. And he would fight tooth and nail to stop him from trying anything rash.
But when Dr. Stapleton learned about the second attack that had landed John in hospital, she concluded what Mycroft had suggested after the first: that Sherlock was doing an inadequate job of protecting his evidently suicidal Omega. In Sherlock's hands, John was going to get himself killed. It was shortly after that, when Sherlock's guard was down and he assumed she was on her way out the door, that she had produced the syringe with enough tranquilizer to fell three full Alphas. He caught sight of it only briefly, in the mirror. Next moment, he was crashing to the floor.
"All right there, Mr. Holmes, let's have a chat."
They sat him at the interrogation table, in the interrogation room, with the interrogator. Though they took off the muzzle and ankle chains, they left the iron cuffs.
"Where's John?" he asked the moment he had use of his mouth again. They set water before him, but he ignored it. "I want to talk to him."
The unsmiling detective inspector, a Beta-Y named Dimmock, sat across from him and glowered. "You don't get to make demands. And we're the ones asking the questions. We take Omega abuse very seriously in the Omega Crimes Division."
"I am not an Omega abuser. Anyone will tell you."
"An Omega did."
Inspector Dimmock pulled out a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve and slid it across the table.
"How do you answer that, Mr. Holmes?"
Sherlock's eyes fell to a short, typed letter, and read:
To the Metropolitan Police, Omega Crimes Division:
My name is John Watson. I didn't know if I could write this letter. I've tried so many times and lost courage, but I'm at my wits end, and I don't know what else to do.
Though it is the hardest thing I've ever done, I have to do it. I am leaving my Alpha. I don't think I have a choice. He frightens me. I'm afraid of what he will do to me. When he gets angry, he hits me. When he's bored, he torments me. When he's high, he Compels me to hurt myself. If I stay, I think he'll kill me.
I've gone into hiding with someone I trust, at least until after the dog fight. If the situation is not then resolved, I call upon the help of Omega Services to relocate me permanently, keep me safe, and sever the bond. Please help me.
Sincerely,
John Watson
221B Baker Street
London
When Sherlock reached the end of the letter, he was so beside himself that he started laughing.
"Think this is funny, do you, Mr. Holmes? Scaring your Omega so badly he's gone into hiding?"
Sherlock shook his head. "You idiots. John didn't write this!"
"Of course, we expect you would deny it—"
"Open your eyes! That"—he jabbed a finger at the bottom of the letter—"is not his signature. Compare it to anything in the flat! It's not even a good fake. For one, it was written by an Alpha-X! It's plain as day. And a right-handed one at that. See the angle here? The pressure points in the dips? Aren't you people experts? John is left-handed. Left-handed people don't write like that." Sherlock threw himself back into his seat, perturbed. Then he suddenly slammed a fist on the table, making Inspector Dimmock jump. "My Omega is missing! Kidnapped! And you've got me locked up in here on false charges, when I should be out there looking for him!"
"All right, he's getting violent," said Dimmock, looking pale and trying not to show how intimidated he was. "Get him back into holding until he calms down."
"Her name is Stapleton! Jacqui Stapleton! She tranq'd me and abducted John from the hospital! She's the one who wrote the note! He's in danger! Why aren't you looking for him!"
The officers pulled him to his feet, then through the door and out of the room. They were taking him back to a holding cell until he could be officially charged, then arraigned, then taken to court. He knew how these things worked. Even when it was proven that he didn't pen the note and that John was taken against his will, the paperwork alone would slow his release.
Unacceptable.
He had an obligation, not to the cops or the system or the law of the land, but to John, first and foremost. Biological or not, he would honor that. In fact, the more he thought about it (and Sherlock could think an awful lot in the space of about two seconds), the more he realized that, for him and John, biology no longer had much to do with it at all. They could both be Betas, and he would feel the same.
And that's why, at the earliest, most opportune moment during his short transfer from interrogation room to holding cell, Sherlock decked the Alpha to his left and drove him to the ground, disarmed the Alpha to his right in three swift moves (iron cuffs be damned!), and turned the gun on the other three officers in the hallway.
"Hands in the air!" he cried. "And face the other way." When they hesitated, he added, "I'll give you to the count of one before I start popping off rounds and shattering kneecaps!"
He leveled the gun at the knees of a Beta.
They twirled like ballerinas.
And that was how Sherlock became a fugitive.
xXx
He went to Exeter because he believed that Dr. Stapleton had taken John to Exeter. But when he arrived at her house, it was empty. The office was closed. The lab was deserted.
So he did what any good detective would do, and started looking for clues.
He started by ransacking her paper files, then rummaging through her bins, then hacking her computer, collecting data in his head and organizing it into neat little rows of pertinent and not-evidently-pertinent-but-you-never-know. And it was while combing through her emails regarding the correspondence Western Americans and New Russians and Japanese that she had mentioned, that he came across a sent but never answered email to the elusive Serebryakov, metaphysicist extraordinaire:
To Dr Serebryakov:
It is urgent that I speak to you regarding your theories of mind displacement relating to the infinite-dimensional matrices acting on quantum states. Please contact me at the following number at your earliest convenience.
Signed,
Dr Jacqui Stapleton
Her number was included at the bottom of the email.
Would it be so simple, just to . . . call her up?
Sherlock was without his own mobile (it had been confiscated during his booking), but there was a landline at his elbow. He started to punch in the number on the screen when he realized that it was the very same number printed out on the phone. She had asked the metaphysicist to call her here. That wouldn't be useful at all.
Unless . . .
Well, what if he didn't email her back, but did call her? What if she had mentioned John? What if she had discussed what she intended to do with him, or where she would do it, or some other information that would give him a clue as to how to find his Omega? Sherlock didn't have the New Russian's phone number. But suppose his was the last call to come to the lab? Maybe it was that phone call—and this was a mad guess, but was it so far-fetched?—that had prompted Dr. Stapleton to rush to London and find out who had been displaced: Sherlock or John? If that were true, then it was imperative that Sherlock speak with Dr. Serebryakov immediately.
He picked the phone up from the cradle and punched in a code to dial the last incoming call. Listening to the tone dial, he knew it was an international number. He held his breath, not daring to hope.
After six rings, he was about to call it a loss, when there was a soft click. A pause. A breath. Then a gruff voice saying, "Zdravstvuyte?"
Fortunately, Sherlock spoke Russian, and the rest of the conversation proceeded in the foreign tongue:
"Dr. Serebryakov, I presume?"
"Yes. Who is this?"
"My name is Sherlock Holmes. I am a . . . colleague of Dr. Jacqui Stapleton. It is my understanding that you and she recently spoke concerning"—he searched his Russian vocabulary for the proper lexical terms—"alternate universes. Mind . . . exchanges."
"Yes," said the voice on the other line, sounding curious. "I already told her, I haven't done work in that field in almost two decades. What is this about?"
"Just some, erm, follow-up questions, if you don't mind."
Despite his initial confusion and reluctance to engage, Dr. Serebryakov, once he got going, was a faucet that wouldn't turn off. Twenty years before, he had given up his work on metaphysical displacement when no one in the scientific community would give him the time of day. But suddenly, there seemed to be an inexplicable resurgence of interest in his work, and his excitement was reignited. He talked so much and so fast that Sherlock did something he hadn't done since uni: he took notes.
Forty-five minutes later, as the conversation was winding down, Sherlock said, "So three ingredients. Velocity, sudden transference of energy . . ."
"To counteract the prolonged state of inertia, yes."
". . . and space-time coordination."
"Synchronicity, if you prefer."
"And those criteria would, theoretically, work?"
"Theoretically. The mathematics is sound. But if one criterion is not carefully accounted for, then failure is inevitable."
"Of course. Thank you, Dr. Serebryakov."
"Always a pleasure to discuss my work. Call me anytime. Dr. Stapleton is lucky to have such a bright assistant in you. Tell her I would be happy to accept her invitation to discuss these theories further at her estate."
"Her . . . estate."
"In Chelmsford. The old family home? She did mention it. The family sold it to an experimental teaching hospital sometime midcentury, but it went broke and she bought it back. She was telling me all about her father's chemistry lab and state-of-the-art equipment that was just sitting there, collecting dust."
"Chelmsford. Yes. Of course. That estate. I'll be sure to tell her."
"Good day, Mr. Holmes."
"And to you, sir."
They hung up. Sherlock stared at his notes, and his ears rang with Chelmsford.
xXx
It was night, and the cab dropped him off somewhere not far outside of Chelmsford on a country road, just before a tall iron gate leading to a Jacobethan-style house of brick. A quick survey of the gate, fence, and grounds revealed a single surveillance camera, a remnant of 1980s security, and easily dismantled. Hopping the fence was just as easy, and he was halfway across the grounds when he stopped short. He had just smelled it:
Another Alpha had passed this way, not long ago. Not Dr. Stapleton, he would have recognized it. Someone he'd never met. But there . . . he took a few steps into the trees. There she was, the Alpha-X scent. A few days old, but Sherlock's senses were very sharp. Yes, it was definitely her, and she was definitely here. Another dozen paces, and—he inhaled deeply—John. The trace of him was so faint, days old, but it registered for Sherlock like the ringing of a bell. He was here. And captive.
A growl began to build deep in Sherlock's chest, which had begun to swell. He stalked purposefully toward the house, hoping he would meet Dr. Stapleton on the way.
xXx
He did not.
Breaking in was easy. The house was locked, but a window pried open on the ground floor without much resistance. Once inside, he left the lights off and followed his nose. John's scent was everywhere. He just had to follow the freshest trail.
The trail led him up a grand staircase, down a long hall, and around several corners, growing more and more potent with each step. Sherlock's insides twisted with the urgency of his hunt, his mounting desperation to find his Omega, and get him far, far away from his captors. Mixed with John's scent, the unmistakable Dr. Stapleton, and the other Alpha he had smelled out on the grounds. If they had marked him . . . if they had hurt him, in any way . . . His fingers curled into claws, and he had barely enough control to keep himself from snarling.
His feet stopped directly before a closed door.
Sherlock rested his head against the hard wood, and breathed. This was it. John was behind this door. And—he breathed again—Dr. Stapleton was not.
He grasped the handle, but the door was locked. But no damn door was going to keep them apart. Clamping his powerful hand around the handle once more, he twisted it with all his might until something snapped, something twanged, something crunched, and the lock was busted. He threw the door open.
If his nose hadn't been telling him differently, he would have thought he'd busted into the room of a child. Despite the dark, he could make out the bright yellows, friendly blues, and happy reds of the wall paint, curtains, and woven rugs. But in the twin bed in the center of the room, curled up in a fluffy duvet, was John. And John, upon hearing someone storm into his room, flinched and curled tighter into himself, drawing the duvet up around his head as though he could hide himself.
Sherlock waited. He quelled the desire to rush to John's side, gather him up in his arms, scent him six ways to Sunday, and rush him out the door. It would be best if John recognized him, first. But John must have been holding his breath, because seconds passed, and he didn't respond to Sherlock's scent.
Then Sherlock smelled something else, something about John's scent, something . . . wrong. It was sharp in his nose, making him twitch, making his skin crawl and his blood boil and his Alpha nature take over any reasonable or tolerant course of action. He strode across the room, seized the duvet, and jerked it aside. John gasped and scrambled up the bed, nevertheless somehow managing to maintain himself in a defensive little ball that shielded his head with his arms. Sherlock fell on him, then, quite unable to stop himself. He swept John into his arms and crushed him tightly to his chest. His nose pressed firmly into the side of John's neck where the scent glands were the most pronounced, and he smelled her there. He growled.
"What's going on?"
John's voice was high-pitched, strained, warbling.
He lifted his head from John's neck. John's eyes were wide with shock, and even in the dark, by the light of the moon pushing through the window Sherlock could see the pale blue gaze struggling through the haze of sleep—or something else—as he registered the sight of his Alpha.
"Hey," said John, a hand slowly reaching for Sherlock's face. "I . . . know . . . you . . ."
In his mind's eye, like standing outside of himself, Sherlock could see it happening—John touching his cheek, guiding him closer, their mouths would touch, their lips would part, it would be a reunion like they'd never had, and this would be what John had meant about kissing and intimacy, he was going to show Sherlock exactly what he'd been missing, and Sherlock realized he wanted it, he wanted to find out, he wanted to put his mouth on John's mouth, and—
John's hand went from a cupped shape to a single extended digit. He tapped Sherlock on the tip of his nose and said, "Boop!"
Sherlock pulled back, bewildered. "Excuse me?"
John started giggling.
"John!"
"You look just like my Sherlock," said John, aiming a finger at his nose again. Sherlock dodged.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Same eyes. Same cheekbones. Same floofy hair." John twirled a finger into Sherlock's curls, still giggling.
"I am Sherlock."
John shook his head. "My Sherlock." He sighed, almost dreamily. "Do you think he thinks about me at all, Sham Sherlock?" He snorted. "Sham Sherlock. Sham-lock. Shamrock. You're a very handsome leprechaun, Shamrock." He tee-heed some more and continued fluffing Sherlock's hair.
"Oh my God, are you drunk?"
"High." He chortled in his nose. "Hi! Hi!"
"High?"
"Happy drug."
"She drugged you?"
"Slapped me. Stuck me. Drugged me. All the things."
"What was it? E? LSD? MDMA? LSZ? AL-LAD? 5-MAPD? DDXEUYG78A-PP?"
"You made that last one up," John laughed, and Sherlock supposed there might be such drugs that one world had and the other did not. "Dunno what it was. The doc said I was too depressing. But it didn't fix it. I wasn't really happy until just now." He pinched Sherlock's cheeks. "You're my happy."
"That's it, I'm getting you out of here."
"Happy happy happy."
John's arms draped around Sherlock's neck; so Sherlock used that to his advantage to pull him upright and out of the bed. But John's legs were uncooperative. He didn't seem to have the strength—or will—to stand on under his own power. After some awkward shuffling, hefting, drooping, and slipping, Sherlock exited the bedroom wearing John like a cape.
"You smell terrible," Sherlock griped, holding onto John's wrists to keep him from sliding down his back and onto the floor.
"Not my fault," said John. His chin was resting on Sherlock's shoulder like the second head of a two-headed monster. "She's crawling inside of me, like termites through the wooden bones of an old house."
"You really are a writer, aren't you?"
"I feel her. Like poison. Caustic." Then he started nibbling one of Sherlock's ears.
"Cut it out."
"You taste good." His tongue flicked the lobe back and forth between tiny, contained, bursting giggles.
"You're not yourself, John."
John tittered. "Just catching on, are you?"
"I mean, either way, you're not you."
John began to hum I'm a Little Teapot.
"That's it, I can't take this anymore. You smell toxic, and it's affecting more than just your hormones."
At the end of the hallway, just before the stairs leading down to the first floor, Sherlock spotted a door, which turned out to be a broom closet. This will do, he thought. And driven by the need to set things right with his Omega, to purge the intruder Alpha from his bond-mate, he shoved John inside.
"Hey!"
"Shut up."
"At least buy me dinner."
A closet wasn't ideal. Given the potency of the interfering scent, this might take some time, and there wasn't a lot of space to get comfortable. But also given that they were, technically, on the run and would need to be furtive (and if not, combative), he needed John to be of sound mind and able body—he needed the John Watson that had some experience with this sort of thing. So a twitterpated, addlepated, scent-intoxicated version was no good. No good at all.
In the dark closet, he crowded in, pushing John up against the wall. He felt the small body beneath his tense up, and John's giggle added a note of anxiety. "Oh, do we have to do this again?" He was trembling a little.
"Shh. You want to be rid of her, right?"
"More than anything."
"I'll be gentle."
"M'kay."
True to his word, Sherlock gently pulled John's head to the right and opened his shirt collar wider to expose the bond mark between his neck and shoulder. Then Sherlock dipped his head. He softly scraped his teeth against the skin—John's breathing hitched—as he searched for the mark. When he found it, he began to press his teeth down.
John shoved him back and slapped him hard across the face.
Sherlock started. "The hell!"
"Sorry!"
"Don't be so jumpy!"
He made a second attempt. And for the second time, John pushed back and slapped him again.
"Sorry!" John cried.
"I'm trying to help!"
"I know! But she's . . . making me!"
Sherlock took John's head, trying to make out his expression in the dark. "What do you mean? She's Compelling you? She can't do that!"
"I told you, she's in me now. She said, Don't let anyone bite you but me. She meant Byron, I think, but she meant it, you know?"
"When?"
"Hours ago, now. Last injection."
"Injection?"
"Stabby stabby," John sighed, tiredly, his head falling back against the wall. But his hands were on Sherlock's upper arms, kneading the flesh. When he discovered the muscle there, his eyebrows lifted, impressed.
"She injected her scent," said Sherlock, cottoning on. His revulsion was escalating dangerously. "But she didn't bite you?"
"No bitey." John's fingers searched for his face in the dark. "She's waiting for you to die." Suddenly, he laughed again. "If that happens, I'll just kill myself." He continued laughing.
Sherlock's gut wrenched. "Don't. I can fix this. John. Let me fix this."
"You can try."
"This will be unpleasant. I may have to be . . . forceful."
"I know."
"But it has to be done."
"Got it."
"I'll be as gentle as I can."
"Just do it already."
Sherlock crowded in again, bracketing John with his body as best he could to prevent escape. John didn't like it. Sherlock didn't either, but that was quite beside the point. He seized John's wrists, one in each hand, and raised them above his head, pinning them to the wall so John couldn't hit him. And for the third time, he lowered his mouth.
John couldn't help himself. Compelled to resist, he resisted. It was just squirming at first, but when Sherlock's teeth sank into the bond mark, he gasped and started kicking, bucking, twisting his body. Sherlock pressed in further. Locking the wrists together in one hand, he used his other to cover John's mouth and keep him from crying out, and utterly laid his body against John's to still him.
Trapped between wall and Alpha, John screamed into his hand. But there was nothing Sherlock could do. If he broke it off, Dr. Stapleton would still be inside of John, having her way with him. If he rushed it, he might do unintended damage in the exchange of scent hormones and the integrity of the bond mark, which he had been so careful with creating. This was a delicate process, and an intimate one. It shouldn't have to be like this. Damn that Alpha-X!
The minutes passed, and both kept at it: Sherlock, purging the unwelcome scent and fortifying his own, and John, putting up a good fight to shake him off, and he didn't seem to be tiring, which likely meant he would exhaust himself in the end. The screams, at least, were fading to whimpers, suggesting that as Dr. Stapleton's scent became weaker, so too did the force of her Compelling. Still, Sherlock didn't remove his hand, even though it was dripping with John's spit.
Sherlock pulled and pulled, and then gave and gave. John's scent flowed into him, and his flowed into John, and somewhere in the mixture, the intruding scent began to dissipate. The drug was dispersed, lessening in John's system and being shared in Sherlock's, so that he began to feel a muted sense of euphoria himself. Was that the drug? Or something else?
Slowly, slowly. Time began to melt. And as it did, something else happened. The closet grew quiet. John grew stiller. Sherlock was barely aware of what they did next. But slowly, he removed his hand from John's mouth and curled it around his head instead, guiding it to rest on his shoulder as he continued his ministrations; and just as slowly, John pulled his hands from Sherlock's loosened grasp, sliding them down to clutch Sherlock's neck and shoulders, an invitation to keep working on the bond mark. They were holding each other, closer, closer.
The cleansing was finished. Order was restored. Sherlock gave his bond mark one last salving lick, then removed his mouth. But the embrace continued. Now that he had John back, now that the danger had passed, the weight of what might have transpired struck Sherlock to the core. He might have lost John completely. And that horrible thought, so stark and raw, sharpened the emptiness at his other loss, his own dear John, and he trembled at how much he missed him, at how terribly he hurt deep inside. The fear that he would never see him again was sharper than a razor. He crushed John to his breast and fought hard to keep from gasping with pain.
And John wasn't letting go. He was latched on like a limpet, face buried in the crook of Sherlock's neck and arms locked around him. His breathing was long and labored, like he'd just run a mile and was trying to catch his breath. He was hot, perspiring, and an occasional shudder crawled up his spine and shook them both. But his grip was unbreakable.
"Where the hell were you?" John asked tremulously into his skin.
"Drugged. Arrested. On the run."
Even though John pulled back to look into Sherlock's face, it was dark in the closet to see him properly. So instead, he reached to find him. Sherlock felt John's fingertips against his cheek. "What?"
Sherlock gently stroked the line of John's jaw with a thumb. Huskily, he said, "Never mind. It was you who was in danger. You who I was worried about. I thought I'd lose my mind."
He heard John's hard swallow. A thumb touched his bottom lip, and Sherlock's heart skipped a beat, like missing a step in the dark.
"Sherlock, I . . ." John started, breathless. "We have to . . . we can't . . ."
"I know," said Sherlock, but oh, how he hated saying it, because he wanted to so badly. So, so badly. This John and his John were getting all confused in his head, fuzzy with desire, and would it be so bad, so wrong, if just for this moment, both of them could forget that they belonged to different worlds. Just . . . one . . . moment? With the softest nuzzle, he let his nose trace John's cheek, and breathed.
"I mean," said John, placing a hand on Sherlock's chest and pushing back gently, "we can't leave here. Not yet."
Some of the haze dissipated. "I hope you mean this closet."
"I mean this house. Listen. Dr. Stapleton's research—"
"Cock and bull, that's what it is."
"No, Sherlock, listen. She's spent the last however many days running all sorts of, erm, experiments. She has a ton of information on me! Brain scans, blood samples, and I'm pretty sure I gave a walloping testimonial to her digital recorder."
Sherlock's brow furrowed, concerned, as it dawned on him what John was saying. Even if John switched back to his own world and his John returned to this one, Dr. Stapleton's obsession would not be ended, not with the kind of evidence she had acquired. He would challenge her, of course, and win, but others might take up her work. The existence of her work and any evidence she had acquired needed to be destroyed, or no John would be safe.
John held Sherlock's head in both hands to make sure he was paying attention.
"We have to destroy the lab."
xXx
John had wanted to pluck the veins from his arms, one by one, like pulling hair from the drain, just to get rid of it, to get rid of her.
Fortunately, such drastic measures hadn't been necessary. Sherlock had come at last.
For hours (days), however, he had existed in fear, not so much of the pain but of the Compelling, and of what would become of him if the bonding she designed was successful. He wondered, too, what would happen if it wasn't. What if he died? What if her attempts to knot him against his will resulted in the poisoning that had nearly been the end of Molly, that had been the end of Charlotte Bernstein? His mind, this body, shutting down together. Would the other John feel it? Would the other John survive? Were they in any way keeping each other alive, even universes apart?
It was not a question he wanted to test.
John and Sherlock navigated the grand old building's spacious hallways, John leading Sherlock by the hand. It seemed . . . appropriate, linking themselves together like that. When they reached the door to the laboratory, however, Sherlock let go, reached into the back of his trousers, and produced a pistol. John's eyes widened in surprise.
"Took it off one of the arresting officers," he explained simply, passing it over. "As I understand it, you're a pretty good shot."
"When I have to be."
"You may have to be."
John nodded. Then he pulled open the right side of the double doors, and both men slipped inside. John's hands got fresh with the wall before he found the switch and illuminated the space. Still hanging on the illuminating boxes were his MRI scans, and he ran to those first, yanking the photographic paper off the wall and briefly attempting to tear them up, but he knew better. He would need scissors for this kind of work.
Meanwhile, Sherlock threw himself into a swivel chair on wheels and rolled to the computer in the corner, bringing it to life.
John next spotted the notebook in which Byron had been recording results. Keeping the scans in hand, he snatched up the notebook, and then a folder full of bloodwork, and another with transcripts of his interviews. He rifled through a drawer and found the digital recorder, and added it to the pile. Every scrap of paper within sight, whether it had his name on it or not, he considered somehow incriminating, and he gathered it all together and dumped it into a metal bin.
"Password cracked," he heard Sherlock murmur under his breath, a little cockily. He then cracked his knuckles and started clicking away.
John tore a sheet from the notebook and rolled it up like a straw. He stepped to the lab counter's Bunsen burner and twisted the valve to release the gas, only then realizing that a striker or match wasn't readily at hand, and he had no way to light it. Shit shit shit. Had Byron not left his cigarette lighter lying around somewhere? Panicking, he returned to the drawers to rummage, hoping to discover a striker or box of matches or lighter or anything to set the evidence aflame.
"This computer has no internet," said Sherlock, "no server connection to any other systems. That's good. That means nothing outgoing. If anything is on here, it's all right here, and we can destroy it with a quick—"
"I need matches. Do you have matches? A lighter. Something to ignite this shit and send it to a fiery hell?"
"I do love it when you swear," Sherlock quipped.
"Is that a no?"
Just then, through the door on the opposite side of the room, the jiggling of a knob. Sherlock's hands froze on the keyboard, and John spun around to face the door. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock slowly rising from the stool, transforming in much the same way he had in the park, shoulders squaring, back curving, and fingers curling into claws. Damn, if John didn't find that sexy as all hell.
But before the door swung open and admitted his captor, John's eyes fell on the mini refrigerator, and he remembered one more thing that needed to be destroyed.
John yanked open the small fridge door, grabbed the case of glass vials containing Dr. Stapleton's scent, and held it aloft over his head.
" Put that down!" Dr. Stapleton bellowed.
Nothing. No instant rush to obey, not even so much as a tingle. A smile slowly spread across John's lips.
To his right, darkening the doorway, Dr. Stapleton stood like a mad scientist, hair wild and eyes bulging while wearing a white lab coat and pointing an imperious finger at him to put down the vials.
To his left, Sherlock filled the room like the reckoning, curls in disarray and eyes flashing while his black trench coat fluttered and his arm extended toward John as a lifeline, silently beckoning him to come closer, stand behind him, be protected by his true Alpha. John didn't move. Dr. Stapleton's will had no influence over his own anymore, and Sherlock would not impose his. So it was a choice. And he wasn't moving.
"John?" Dr. Stapleton's voice betrayed a note of fear, and her eyes were fixed on Sherlock. "John, come here. John?"
"You," said Sherlock, and John shivered at the rumbling bass in his voice, "bitch."
As Byron's face appeared behind her, she held out her hand to John. "Come here, baby, I'll protect you."
John laughed; Sherlock growled.
"He's dangerous!" To Sherlock, she returned a growl of her own. "I'm saving him, Mr. Holmes. From you. I know what you mean to do to him, to get your John to come back. But I'm telling you right now, it'll kill him. I will fight you for him, and the law will be on my side."
"Oh, believe me," said Sherlock stalking forward, "there will be a fight. I'm going to make you wish you had never made that call to Dr. Serebryakov."
She blanched. "What do you mean?"
"I spoke to him today. He gave me some very interesting information."
"He'll kill you, John, I see it in his eyes!"
And she started forward, intending to rush to John before Sherlock could reach him. But John dropped the vials to the floor. The glass shattered, the solution ran all over the floor, and John whipped out the pistol and pointed it in her face. "Back! Stay back!"
She came up short and asked breathlessly, "What's that?"
"Never seen this before, have you: a gun in the hands of an Omega. Or, as I call it, the great equalizer."
"I mean, where did you get it?"
"A gift."
"Gift?"
"From someone who both cares about me and trusts me. Now back the fuck off. You. Byron. I know you have a lighter in your pocket. Toss it over. Now."
John could tell they were both startled by the tone of command in the voice of a lowly Omega.
Byron stood dumb, mouth hanging open with nothing to say.
"Do it!" John leveled the gun at him, and there was something in his eyes, the steady confidence in his hands, that made them realize he knew exactly what he was doing, and he meant exactly what he was threatening. Byron dug into his front pocket, extracted the lighter, and tossed it through the air. John caught it, and without taking his eyes off his targets, tossed it again over his shoulder. He heard Sherlock catch it.
"Light it up, Sherlock."
He heard Sherlock flicking the lighter on, testing it, as he walked over to the rubbish bin of evidence.
"What are you doing? Light what up?" asked Dr. Stapleton.
"Your 'life's work,' dear doctor," John taunted.
He watched as her confusion turned to understanding, then shock, then outrage. "No!" she cried, just as Sherlock set the crumpled paper alight and dropped it in the bin.
When she sprang forward, John fired off a warning shot, intended to terrify her in her tracks, but it wasn't enough. And Sherlock, seeing her sprinting toward him, crouched, snarled, and launched himself at her. They met in the middle, colliding with a force that sounded like a thunderclap in John's ears, almost as loud as the explosion from the gun, and they knocked over a stand of flasks and beakers on their inexorable crash to the ground.
Before he could fly to Sherlock's aid, he saw Byron charging at him, taking advantage of his momentary distraction and spurred on by the confidence that an Omega, gun or no gun, was no match for an Alpha, and he was determined to wrangle him into submission. John felt his adrenaline spike, but his focus was clear, and his hands steady as ever. In two seconds, he was about to be mauled, laid out on the ground, helpless. Before one second had passed, he fired the weapon.
Byron's right knee ruptured with blood. He collapsed to the lab floor, screaming.
The sound of it startled the fighting Alphas, who feared their Omega had met some terrible violence. Sherlock shot to his feet, breathing hard, three parallel deep scratches trailing across his neck and his shirt ripped at the sleeve. Dr. Stapleton, just behind him, sported a swollen lip and a dislocated shoulder. It had been all of three seconds since their collision.
John was just about to turn the gun on her when her attention was suddenly diverted. The fire in the bin roared yellow, and the smoke billowed black and puffy to the ceiling.
"No!" she cried, howling like a she-wolf. She ignored Sherlock, forgot John, and ran to the bin. And then she did something that was sear itself in John's memory for the rest of his life. She didn't even hesitate. She reached into the bin and pulled out the flaming evidence, scorching her hands and causing her to shriek, but she flung it away and went back for more. Desperation filled her eyes until the black smoke obscured them, and through the pain and blood and shrieks, she dug through the blaze to save her treasured evidence, the proof of her greatest discovery.
Sherlock and John stared in horror at her madness. She was flinging fire in every direction, and that's when John remembered the Bunsen burner. He'd twisted the nozzle, left it on. It was leaking like a faucet.
"Sherlock!" he gasped, pointing his gun. "The gas!"
"Oh fuck no."
He didn't wait another breath, not to see what happened next, and not to ask John's permission. He sprinted for John, grabbed his arm, swung him around as deftly as a child until he John found himself riding his back, and with the speed of a raging bull, he bolted for the door, leaving Dr. Stapleton and Byron behind.
John held on for dear life. They both knew what was coming. It was as inevitable as landing after a fall. "Go go go go go," John panted frantically in his ear, but there was no need. Sherlock was as self-preserving as an impala with a hungry cheetah on its heels, and before John knew it, they were flying out the door.
And then the air was burning.
They were blown off their feet, ten, twenty feet, landing hard in grass and mud, rolling, as the heat bloomed outward, exploding stone and shattering glass. John face planted before flinging himself onto his back and watching the fireball raise to the sky. But he didn't get to stare for long. Sherlock was suddenly on top of him, using his body as a shield as rubble, ash, and sparks rained down on them. All was heat, and energy, and light.
xXx
It was only a matter of time (minutes, hours if they were lucky) before they were discovered. If the cops hadn't tracked Sherlock to Exeter, an explosion in Chelmsford in the Stapleton Estate was bound to draw attention. They would be apprehended, for sure: Sherlock for his escape and officer assault, and John alongside him for the murders of Dr. Stapleton and her assistant Byron. With the survivors as the only witnesses and accusers, it would take a while to sort out the facts and determine Sherlock had not been lying, but protecting his Omega. After all, Omega protection laws outweighed some of the severest of crimes.
But they didn't have time to mount a defense and wait for the charges to clear. There was the dog fight, for one, an appointment Sherlock would not miss. But more importantly, they needed to get a message to the other John.
On the train back to London, sitting in a private room, on the same bench, hand clasped between them, they devised their plan. Sherlock laid out all the details he had gathered from Dr. Serebryakov and interpreted them. John repeated them to exactness, rehearsing the proposal he would deliver through the mirror. It scared him, Sherlock's solution. A part of him didn't want to suggest it to his counterpart, let alone go through with it. But Dr. Stapleton had said that the treatments of her scent would ignite early heat. If that was true, and if Sherlock's ministrations hadn't counteracted the hormone boost that would send his body craving the knot, then that meant he had only a few days before his cycle started again. He would bear it, if he had to. Knowing what to expect, knowing Sherlock would take care of him, made the thought more tolerable. And if he was entirely honest, a part of him . . . wanted it.
But then he thought of Sherlock, his Sherlock, and he knew he had to go home.
But then he thought of Sherlock, his Sherlock. He would do it. Whatever it took.
And he trusted this Sherlock's calculations. It would work. It had to.
In the meantime, he held Sherlock's hand, and steeled himself.
"I'm going to ask him," he said softly, "if he wants to come back."
Sherlock turned his head slowly toward him, concern etched across his brow.
"I just . . . have to ask."
With a hard swallow, Sherlock nodded. "Of course."
He didn't explain why because he himself didn't fully know. He knew he'd made a right mess of things for the John of this world, and he knew that the other John had started something . . . special . . . with the Sherlock of his. He wanted dearly to return, so dearly he couldn't think about it for too long without risking losing control of the burning sensation in his chest that threatened to bubble to the surface. But at the same time, he feared to.
Trying to hide their faces from CCTV, they took a cab from the train station to Baker Street, riding in perfect quiet, each man engrossed in his own thoughts until they stood before their own door, looking around warily for cops who might be surveilling the area. They let themselves in.
"I'll wait down here, watch the street. If we need to get out in a hurry, I'll signal, give you time to wrap up before the connection breaks. We'll leave out the fire escape."
John nodded tensely.
"Anything else you . . . you know. You want me to tell him?"
Sherlock's chest rose and fell slowly, like he was trying to think of what to say, or how to say it. "Tell him . . . the moment he crosses back, I'll be there. The very moment."
John squeezed Sherlock's arm and nodded. "Got it." His hand lingered, but when Sherlock moved to place his own hand over John's, he let go. He started for the stairs, but his foot had only reached the first step when he stopped and turned back around. "Oh. And Sherlock."
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"All of it, really."
"What, finding you?" he asked, like it was a ridiculous thing to be grateful for.
John shook his head. "Yes, of course. But, well. Just all of it."
And he turned back to ascend the steps, and meet himself on the other side of the glass.