Disclaimer: I don't own the Pear Wiggler
Chapter 26
-Baskerville-
Sherlock squinted into his binoculars. "Okay, here's the plan: I'll distract the guards, then you sneak inside and create a diversion, allowing me to sneak inside. We make out in one of the closets for five minutes, then put on our disguises and look for the hound."
"Wait, what was the middle part?"
"I sneak inside."
"No, the part after that."
"We pour gasoline into the lake."
"Um, can I help you?" a guard standing in front of them asked. They were standing in the parking lot outside of Baskerville, Sherlock's binoculars focused on the man's face. He was using them backwards.
"John! I think one of them spotted us!"
"You know you could just ask your brother to give us access."
-Later-
They'd switched the plan around a bit, what with asking Mycroft to give them access. Now John was doing the searching alone and Sherlock was talking to Major Barrymore, the crotchety asshole that we've yet to meet.
"Oh, you know I'd love to. I'd love to give you unlimited access to this place. Why not?" the man said sarcastically.
"Great!" Sherlock said. "So when do we start?"
Barrymore growled. "Fine. Twenty four hours, and not a second more, or I'll set you on fire."
"Oh, I thought you would have initially elected to have the aliens you keep on 5B freeze me with their freeze ray from Batman, then use advanced technology to erase my memory, and then use SPACE LASERS to burn a hole in the two outer layers of the earth, through which you will launch me into the inner core using dilithium crystals and hot sauce," Sherlock said.
"Well, that was oddly specific."
"But, like, seriously. Would you do that?"
Barrymore rolled his eyes. His expression became serious and he leaned in, eyes glinting with darkness and evil. The lights dimmed. "No. We put all the naughty and bad children in the Pear Wiggler to atone for their crimes." He straightened up and turned back to his computer. "Good luck, Mr Holmes."
-A Few Floors Below-
John walked out of the elevator and into the lab that they'd gone to the day before. The lighting was pretty dim. Most of the scientists were gone by this point, so it was just him, some cages, and a leaky gas pipe.
"Huh. Weird. Maybe the next floor will—son of a FUCK!" John covered his eyes as a bunch of really bright lights turned on and a bunch of alarms started blaring. It was almost as much of a sensory overload and trying to watch all six Star Wars movies at once.
Without warning, the lights and alarm system went off. John shook his head and checked his lower half. "Last time this happened, I woke up missing my pants and one kidney."
This unnecessary comment was interrupted by a rattling from one of the cages nearby. John slowly walked over and pulled the sheet off of it.
"SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER!" A monkey with the voicebox of Willem Dafoe screamed, rattling the bars. John shot and killed it.
He looked over at the adjacent cage. The bars at the bottom had been bent away, clearly by something strong, sexy, dangerous, and powerful. Just then, a low growl sounded within the room.
John spun around, waving his gun. "MAKE ONE MOVE, I SWEAR!" He sidled over to the door and swiped the car to leave.
ACCESS DENIED. BICH.
"Oh, shit." He swiped the card again, starting to sweat.
The sound of heavy footsteps came closer. Something pushed aside a pile of equipment and…
"Hey, John!" It was Golem from like six chapters ago. "Need some help?"
"Oh, thank god. Listen, there's a—"
Something reached out from the shadows and pulled Golem into the darkness. There was a lot of screaming and blood, then silence.
John crossed himself, then started firing blindly into the shadows. He ran out of bullets after two shots. "Fuck me."
The lights turned on and Sherlock came into the room. "You called?"
John stared at him, his eyes rivaling the size of Mike Stamford's. "Jesus Christ."
"Not really."
"It was the hound, Sherlock. Is was here, I swear. Giraffe legs and everything!" John said.
"Nah, I made that part up. You saw that because that's what you expected to see. You've been drugged." Sherlock climbed onto one of the tables and cupped his hands around his mouth. "WE'VE ALL BEEN DRUGGED!"
"Who are you shouting to?"
-A Lab-
Sherlock was looking into a microscope, a pile of white, powdery substance next to him.
John walked into the room, saw it, and ran over, knocking it to the ground. "Hell no! Not while we're on a case!"
"You bitch!" Sherlock jumped to his feet. "That was an experiment!" He got down onto his hands and knees. "Oh, well, only one way to get this off the floor…" He began rolling up a pound note.
"Sherlock…"
"Don't worry, it's just sugar. I didn't find what I was looking for anyway."
"And what would that be?"
"Drugs! Like a narcotic or something that would make us hallucinate the hound. Liberty...In...Hound...what does it all mean?" Sherlock thought very, very, very hard. A little blood trickled out of his ear. He gestured dramatically. "Get out. I need to go to my mind palace."
John rolled his eyes as Sherlock put on an admittedly high-quality Victorian style top hat: his thinking hat. "Whatever you say, genius." He got up and left the room.
Sherlock checked to make sure he was gone, then pulled out his phone and opened Google.
Ten minutes later, he'd somehow ended up on a Buzzfeed quiz. "Wait, what was I supposed to be looking for?"
-Another Ten Minutes Later-
Sherlock had a eureka moment! "Liberty, Indiana! And HOUND is an acronym! JOHN! TELL ME HOW SMART I AM!" He ran out of the lab.
-The Moors-
Henry was sprinting through the moors, the hound chasing after him. "Please God let me live! Oh, wait." He realized that he had a gun in his hand. "DIE, MOTHERFUCKER!" He turned around and shot the hound between the eyes.
"HOLY SHIT!"
The extremely sleep-deprived Henry was broken out of his hallucination by Louise's screaming and cowering, the bullet having barely missed her.
"Oh. Whoops."
-Back at Baskerville-
They'd broken into Barrymore's office to find more information about HOUND, which, according to Sherlock, was some sort of experimental program based in Liberty, Indiana. "John, watch the door," Sherlock said.
"No." John shut the door and pushed a bookcase in front of it.
Sherlock sat down in front of the computer and typed "HOUND" into the search. The computer made an annoying buzzing sound and flashed, NO ACCESS. CIA CLASSIFIED. BICH.
"There should be an override and a password for that," John said.
"Password...hm…" Sherlock started spinning in the spinny chair. "Password...password...password...password…"
"Well?" John crossed his arms.
"I got it!" Sherlock jumped up from the spinny chair and immediately stumbled and hit his head on the desk. "Ugh...I'm dizzy. How did I get on the floor?" He jumped up again, ignoring the bleeding gash on his head. He sat down at the computer and typed in I AM SHERLOCKED
The computer buzzed. WRONG PASSWORD. BICH.
Sherlock sighed. "This might take a while."
-A While Later-
John found the password on a Post-It under Barrymore's keyboard.
"Who is Vegeta?" Sherlock wondered as he typed it in.
"No idea."
The computer whirred, accepted the password, then said SOFTWARE UPDATE REQUIRED. THIS COMPUTER IS LIKE A THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS OLD. DOWNLOADING AUTOMATICALLY. APPROXIMATE DOWNLOAD TIME: SEVEN HOURS AND THIRTEEN MINUTES.
John yelled in anger, then turned and punched the wall, breaking through the layers of wallpaper, plaster, blue cheese, and concrete.
-7 Hours and 13 Minutes Later-
After a lot of waiting around and no sex, the screen finally finished loading and displayed all of its data on HOUND. There was a lot of sciency stuff, along with a picture of the heads of the project: Elaine Dyson, Mary Uslowski, Rick Nader, Jack O'Mara and Leonard Hansen, and a few other people.
"Wait a minute…" Sherlock rearranged the names in midair.
LeonArd Hansen
JAck O'Mara
MAry Uslowski
Rick NAder
ElAine Dyson
"You just highlighted the A's in their names," John pointed out.
"ExAAAAActly." Sherlock turned back to the screen, which had words like "severe frontal lobe damage" and "paranoia" and "werewolves".
"Jesus," John said.
"Project HOUND was a drug used to create fear and hallucinations. Chemical warfare. But it was shut down in 1986," Sherlock summarized.
"So someone here has been continuing the project, trying to refine it," John said.
"Yes...someone old enough to have been there…" Sherlock zoomed in on a portion of the grainy picture until it was just a bunch of pixels. "Hold on...what's that?" He pointed at the screen.
"That's a bit of dust."
"Oh."
John zoomed the picture out. "There's a caption right here. Doctor Frankland was one of the team. He must be our man!"
Sherlock pondered this. "Really? I never suspected him."
Just then, John's phone rang. "Hello?"
"Hey, this is Louise. Henry was having flashbacks, and he tried to shoot me, then ran away."
"Uh...are you okay?"
"Yep. But you should probably make sure that he doesn't go on a killing rampage. Bye." Louise hung up.
"There's no time to waste. Let's go!" Sherlock jumped and ran for the door...and straight into the bookshelf. Which fell on him. "Ow."
You guys use pound notes in Britain, right? I'm a dumb, ignorant American so feel free to help me out here.