Baskerville Sherlock pov
Stapleton lead us along a corridor and uses her card to swipe them into the area leading to Major Barrymore's office. As we go into the room, I point back to the door we just came through.
"John."
"Yeah, I'm on it." He turns back to keep an eye on the door as Stapleton goes over to sit down at a computer.
"Project HOUND. Must have read about it and stored it away. An experiment in a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana." I stand behind Stapleton as she types her User ID onto the computer, then adds her password. A request to "Enter Search String" comes up and she looks up at me as I dictate the letters. "H, O, U, N, D." She types in the letters and hits Enter. A message comes up saying "NO ACCESS. CIA Classified" and requesting an authorization code.
"That's as far as my access goes, I'm afraid." Stapleton told us.
"Well, there must be an override and password." John said.
"I imagine so, but that'd be Major Barrymore's."I spin around and walk into Barrymore's office.
"Password, password, password." Switching on the lights in the room I sit down at the desk. "He sat here when he thought it up." Folding my hands in front of my mouth, I slowly spin a full circle on the chair, looking around the office as I go. Stapleton comes to the doorway. "Describe him to me."
"You've seen him." She said.
"But describe him." I repeated.
"Er, he's a bloody martinet, a throw-back, the sort of man they'd have sent into Suez."
"Good, excellent. Old-fashioned, traditionalist; not the sort that would use his children's names as a password." I gesture towards the drawings that Barrymore's children have done for him and which he has pinned on the board above his desk, like Eiric with Teddy's work. "He loves his job; proud of it and this is work-related, so what's at eye level?" I rapidly scan around everything in the room without altering the angle of my eyes. Gesturing to the right, "Books." Pointing to the left. "Jane's Defense Weekly – bound copies." I look to the right again and at the subject matter of some of the books on the bookshelf. "Hannibal; Wellington; Rommel; Churchill's "History of the English-Speaking Peoples" – all four volumes." I stand up and look at a bronze bust on a shelf.
"Churchill – well, he's fond of Churchill." I look back to the bookcases again. "Copy of "The Downing Street Years"; one, two, three, four, five separate biographies of Thatcher." I look down to a framed photograph on the desk of a man in uniform standing with his teenage son. "Mid nineteen eighties at a guess. Father and son: Barrymore senior." Looking at the uniform of the older man.
"Medals: Distinguished Service Order." I look around to John.
"That date? I'd say Falkland's veteran." He answered.
"Right. So Thatcher's looking a more likely bet than Churchill." I walk out of the office and head back towards the computer.
"So that's the password?" Stapleton asked following me.
"No. With a man like Major Barrymore, only first name terms would do." Leaning down to the keyboard, I start to type Margaret Thatcher's first name into the "Author code" box but stop as I reach the penultimate letter, narrowing my eyes and delete everything back to the first letter, then retype it as "Maggie". Looking into the screen and gritting my teeth ever so slightly, I hit Enter. The computer beeps happily and announces "OVERRIDE 300/421 ACCEPTED. Loading ..." John comes over from the door to look at the screen. After a slight pause information begins to stream across the screen as everything related to Project H.O.U.N.D. becomes available. My concentration becomes intense as I take it all in and focus on certain phrases like "extreme suggestibility", "fear and stimulus", "conditioned terror", "aerosol dispersal". A photograph comes up of the project team posing happily together and he identifies the five project leaders amongst the larger group: Elaine Dyson, Mary Uslowski, Rick Nader, Jack O'Mara and Leonard Hansen. Clearing the photo from the screen I rearrange the names into another order:
Leonard Hansen
Jack O'Mara
Mary Uslowski
Rick Nader
Elaine Dyson
Standing beside me, Doctor Stapleton finally begins to understand.
"HOUND." She stares in growing horror at the screen as more information from the project appears and words and phrases are highlighted such as "Paranoia", "Severe frontal lobe damage", "Blood-brain" "Gross cranial trauma", "Dangerous acceleration", "Multiple homicide", accompanied by photographs of some of the subjects of the project screaming insanely.
"Jesus." John said softly. I was still scanning the information as it flows across the screen
"Project HOUND: a new deliriant drug which rendered its users incredibly suggestible. They wanted to use it as an anti-personnel weapon to totally disorientate the enemy using fear and stimulus; but they shut it down and hid it away in nineteen eighty-six." I told them.
"Because of what it did to the subjects they tested it on." She said.
"And what they did to others. Prolonged exposure drove them insane – made them almost uncontrollably aggressive." I said agreeing with her.
"So someone's been doing it again – carrying on the experiments?" John asked.
"Attempting to refine it, perhaps, for the last twenty years." I answered him.
"Who?" Stapleton asked. John nods at the screen, indicating the names of the project leaders.
"Those names mean anything to you?" he asked her.
"No, not a thing." She said. I sighed.
"Five principal scientists, twenty years ago." I pull up the photograph of the team and begin zooming in on individuals within it. The closer footage shows that they are all wearing identical sweatshirts. Looming out of a diamond pattern in the centre of the sweatshirts is a large snarling wolf's head and the legend "H.O.U.N.D." is printed underneath. There is some smaller text underneath but it's not yet clear what it says. I continue to zoom in and out of the photo to look more closely at the faces. "Maybe our friend's somewhere in the back of the picture – someone who was old enough to be there at the time of the experiments in 1986 ..." I stop as I see a face I recognize, and rolls my eyes a little as I realize the truth. "Maybe somebody who says "cell phone" because of time spent in America. You remember, John?"
"Mmm-hmm." John nodded in agreement.
"He gave us his number in case we needed him." I said.
"Oh my God. Bob Frankland. But Bob doesn't even work on ... I mean, he's a virologist. This was chemical warfare." Stapleton said still staring at the photo on the screen.
"It's where he started, though ... and he's never lost the certainty, the obsession that that drug really could work. Nice of him to give us his number." I reach into my pocket and takes out Bob's card. "Let's arrange a little meeting." I walk away from the computer. John walks closer to it and looks at the last image – a very tight close-up of one of the sweatshirts. Stitched below the "H.O.U.N.D." legend is the name of the American town and state where the project was based: "Liberty, In". Just then John's phone begins to ring. He digs it out of his pocket and frowns at the number on the screen, apparently not recognizing it. He answers.
[Hello?] Initially the only sound he can hear is a woman crying. [Who's this?]
[You've got to find Henry.] John looks round to me.
[It's Louise Mortimer.] He told me. [Louise, what's wrong?] He asked her.
[Henry was ... was remembering; then ... he tried ...] She gasps. [He's got a gun. He went for the gun and tried to ...]
[What?] She breaks down in tears again.
[He's gone. You've got to stop him. I don't know what he might do.]
[Where-where are you?] John asked.
[His house. I'm okay, I'm okay.]
[Right: stay there. We'll get someone to you, okay?] Lowering his phone, he begins to text.
"Henry?" I asked.
"He's attacked her."
"Gone?" I asked him.
"Mmm." hitting a speed dial on my own phone.
"There's only one place he'll go to: back to where it all started." I told him. [Eiric. Get to the Hollow with Lestrade, now. And bring a gun.]
TPSH
We race across the terrain in the Land Rover. Not long afterwards I pull up presumably where the woods begin and John and I get out and continue on foot. We found Henry squatting down, with the pistol in his mouth as he aims the muzzle towards it.
"No, Henry, no! No!" John and I scramble down the slope, shining our torches at him. Henry stands up and stumbles backwards, waving the pistol vaguely in their direction. His voice is high-pitched and hysterical.
"Get back. Get – get away from me!"
"Easy, Henry. Easy. Just relax." John said to him calmly.
"I know what I am. I know what I tried to do!" Henry yelled.
"Just put the gun down. It's okay." John tried again.
"No, no, I know what I am!" Henry said his voice hoarse with anguish.
"Yes, I'm sure you do, Henry. It's all been explained to you, hasn't it – explained very carefully." I said as reassuring as I'll ever sound.
"What?" he asked confused.
"Someone needed to keep you quiet; needed to keep you as a child to reassert the dream that you'd both clung on to, because you had started to remember." I begin to step closer to the young man. "Remember now, Henry. You've got to remember what happened here when you were a little boy." Henry's gun hand begins to droop momentarily but then he raises it again, his face full of his struggle to understand.
"I thought it had got my dad – the hound. I thought . . ." He loses control and begins to scream in anguish. "Oh Je... oh Jesus, I don't – I don't know any more!" Sobbing, he bends forward and aims the muzzle into his mouth again.
"No, Henry! Henry, for God's sake!" Eiric appeared from the woods and stumbled down the slope to the boy.
"Henry, remember. "Liberty In." Two words; two words a frightened little boy saw here twenty years ago." I said urgently. Eiric was getting closer to him putting me a bit on edge. Henry begins to calm a little but still remains hunched over with the gun's muzzle against his mouth. "You'd started to piece things together, remember what really happened here that night. It wasn't an animal, was it, Henry?" Henry starts to straighten up, blinking. "Not a monster." Henry turns to look at me. "A man."
He gapes at me as the truth reasserts itself in his mind.
"You couldn't cope. You were just a child, so you rationalized it into something very different. But then you started to remember, so you had to be stopped; driven out of your mind so that no-one would believe a word that you said."
Quietly Eiric steps forward, holding out her hand encouragingly towards Henry as Lestrade arrives and calls out as he trots down the slope towards them.
"Sherlock!" he panted out.
"Okay, its okay, Henry." She said gently to Henry. She carefully takes the pistol from Henry's fingers. Henry speaks tearfully to me.
"But we saw it: the hound, last night. We s... we, we, we did, we saw ..."
"Yeah, but there was a dog, Henry, leaving footprints, scaring witnesses, but it was nothing more than an ordinary dog. We both saw it – saw it as our drugged minds wanted us to see it. Fear and stimulus; that's how it works." Henry stares at me in confusion. I return his look sympathetically. "But there never was any monster." The hound has different ideas, however, and now its anguished howl rings out in the woods above us. Everyone's head snaps up and John and Lestrade aim their flashlights upwards to the top of the Hollow where a low shape can be seen slowly stalking along the rim and snarling.
"Sherlock . . ." I stare up in disbelief as Henry turns to me, horrified.
"No." He begins to wail in panic. "No, no, no, no!" He backs away as I try simultaneously to hold out a calming hand towards him while keeping my own torch shining up towards the creature above them.
"Henry, Henry . . ."
"Sherlock . . ." The creature continues to slink along the rim of the Hollow as Henry begins to scream in abject terror. He crumples to his knees, continually screaming, "No!"
"Henry!" Eiric whispered yelled. The hound turns towards the Hollow and looks down at all of us, snarling viciously. Its eyes glow in the torchlight as Henry continues to wail.
"Shit!" Lestrade said staring up at the rim. John turns and shines his torch into his face and Eiric's.
"Greg, Eiric, are you seeing this?" he asked him. Lestrade glances at him momentarily and his expression answers the question but Eiric is paying more attention to the panicking young man. I take a quick look around to the inspector and Eiric to see their faces before turning back to stare up at the hound.
"Right: they're not drugged, Sherlock, so what's that? What is it?!" As Henry continues to wail behind us, I screw my eyes shut for a brief moment, trying to handle the overload in my mind. I stare upwards again.
"All right! It's still here . . ." I pant heavily for a moment before pulling myself together, ". . . but it's just a dog. Henry! It's nothing more than an ordinary dog!" The hound doesn't think so as it raises its head and let out a long terrifying howl.
"Oh my God." Lestrade said stumbling backwards. And now the hound turns and leaps a short way down the slope, its eyes flashing red in the torchlight. "Oh, Christ!" John and Eiric stare at it as it stops again, its red glowing eyes now clearly visible as it opens its mouth and reveals a mouthful of long pointed teeth that you would never see on any dog. Its snarl is completely terrifying. Henry has fallen silent, gazing up at it as if he knows that it is going to kill him shortly. I'm still trying to believe what my own eyes are telling me and now there's movement behind us. Eiric and I look over our shoulder and see a tall human figure through the mist. The new arrival is wearing a breathing mask with a clear visor over his face. I turn and rush towards him, grabbing at the mask and ripping it upwards to fully reveal the man's face and Jim Moriarty grins manically back at him.
"No!" I yelled staring at him in appalled horror. Eiric turned fully and started walking towards me, concern and worry written on her face. Behind me the hound growls ominously again. Jim's expression becomes intense and murderous but then his head begins to distort and flail about, morphing between Jim's face and someone else's so quickly that it's impossible to keep up with the changes. I grimace, groaning at the insanity going on in front of me as Jim's face keeps reasserting itself. "It's not you! You're not here!" I exclaimed frantically.
"Sherlock!" I could hear Eiric call in worry, not that far from me. Grabbing at the figure, I spin him around and then head-butt him in the face. The figure crumples slightly and raises his hand to his face as he straightens up ... and now the man in front of me is Bob Frankland. I cling onto his jacket, my breathing panicked and frantic but then I turn my head to one side and look at the mist surrounding us as suddenly it all begins to make sense to me.
"The fog." I muttered.
"What?" John asked still aiming his torch up at the hound.
"It's the fog! The drug: it's in the fog! Aerosol dispersal – that's what it said in those records. Project HOUND – it's the fog! A chemical minefield!" Lestrade instantly throws his arm across his face, trying to stop himself from breathing too much of the mist. The hound stalks closer to the group, snarling.
"For God's sake, kill it! Kill it!" Frankland yelled in fear. The hound's movements become jitterier as if it's winding itself up to attack. Lestrade aims his pistol and fires three times at it. His bullets fly past it and it flinches momentarily but then rises up and leaps towards them. John's aim is truer and his bullets strike the hound accurately and throw it backwards as it squeals in pain and crashes to the ground, unmoving. As John and Lestrade watch it anxiously for any signs of movement, I run over to Henry and pushes him towards the hound, leaving Eiric by Frankland.
"Look at it, Henry." I told him.
"No, no, no!" he cried digging his heels in.
"Come on, look at it!" I said shoving him forward determinedly. I bully the young man forward until we can both clearly see it lying on the ground. In my torchlight it is clearly nothing more than a huge dog. Henry stares at it for a moment and then turns back to where Eiric and Frankland are, Frankland still holding his injured face while Lestrade has his hands over his mouth as he tries to draw breath and come to terms with what he just experienced. Henry looks at Frankland.
"It's just ... you bastard." Hurling himself at the older man, he screams with rage. "You bastard!" Bundling him to the ground, he screams into his face as John and Lestrade run over and try to pull him off. Eiric just steps to the side and stares out into the distance, her eyes glassy looking.
"Twenty years! Twenty years of my life making no sense! Why didn't you just kill me?!" Finally the others manage to pull him up off.
"Because dead men get listened to. He needed to do more than kill you. He had to discredit every word you ever said about your father, and he had the means right at his feet – a chemical minefield, pressure pads in the ground dosing you up every time that you came back here." I hold my arms out wide and spin slowly in a circle as I gesture around the Hollow. "Murder weapon and scene of the crime all at once." I laugh with delight. "Oh, this case, Henry! Thank you. It's been brilliant."
"Sherlock . . ." I turn to him.
"What?" John glares at me pointedly.
"Timing."
"Not good?" I asked.
"No, no, it's – it's okay. It's fine, because this means . . ."Henry starts to step towards Frankland. John moves with him, ready to intervene if he should try to attack him again. ". . . this means that my dad was right. Frankland gets up onto his knees as Henry still tries to move towards him. John and Greg both put a gentle hand onto his shoulders to keep him back. "He found something out, didn't he, and that's why you'd killed him – because he was right, and he'd found you right in the middle of an experiment." He said tearfully. Frankland gets to his feet but before he can say anything there's a savage snarl from behind the group. Everybody but Eiric, she stood watching Frankland, spins towards the dog as it whines in pain but gets up off the ground. John aims and fires towards it twice and it goes down again. Frankland takes the opportunity of the distraction to turn and run off in the opposite direction with Eiric right behind him. Like the single-minded idiot that I am, I run right across John's line of fire, forcing him to lower his pistol, and chase off after the scientist and my fiancée. John turns and follows us up the slope.
"Frankland!" we could hear Eiric yell, angrily.
"Eiric!" I yelled to her. Frankland run through the woods with Eiric behind him in hot pursuit, John and I in pursuit after her, Lestrade and Henry a little behind us.
"Frankland!" Eiric's voice sounded farther away. "It's no use, Frankland!" we heard her scream. Reaching the barbed wire fence surrounding the minefield, Frankland doesn't hesitate and jumps over, Eiric stops a few inches away from the fence watching him with a murderous look. His feet tangle in the wire and he falls to the ground on the other side. He jumps up and runs on a few yards but then stops abruptly as his foot thumps down onto a mine, which makes a distinctive clink indicating that he has activated its pressure pad. He stares down at his foot, shining his torch onto the mine underneath and realizing that unless he remains completely still and doesn't lift any pressure off it, the mine will blow. He looked towards Eiric, her eyes widen a little in shock and begins to back away. As we hurry towards the barbed wire, he raises his head, sighs in resignation and deliberately lifts his foot. We skid to a halt and duck down as a massive explosion rips into the air. Eiric is blasted back a few feet and forced to the ground.
"Eiric!" I yelled in panic as I ran to her. She groan in pain as she sat up. I kneeled on the ground, checking her for any injuries.
"I'm okay, Sherlock." She whispered, I stared at her. My breathing a bit heavy before pulling her into my arms, holding her tight. As the blast dies down, Henry sinks back against a nearby tree.
TPSH
Cross Keys inn Eiric pov
John was sitting at one of the outdoor tables. Billy brings out a plate containing whatever is the vegetarian equivalent of a full English breakfast and puts it on the table in front of him.
"Mmm. Thanks, Billy." As Billy walks away, Sherlock and I bring over three mugs and put one down on the table for John. I sat down beside John and took a sip of my tea.
"So they didn't have it put down, then – the dog." Sherlock said. John tuck into his breakfast as Sherlock stands next to me and drinks his coffee.
"Obviously. Suppose they just couldn't bring themselves to do it." I said to him, looking up at him.
"I see." He nodded to me, I smiled and taking his hand, placing a kiss on it.
"No you don't." John said smiling.
"No, I don't. Sentiment?" Sherlock asked as I move my hand away, he caught it and kept my hand locked in his.
"Sentiment!" I giggled at John. Sherlock rolled his eyes.
"Oh." He sits down on the bench next to me, letting my hand go and wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
"Listen: what happened to me in the lab?" John asked Sherlock. I looked at them confused. Sherlock looks at him for a moment, then turns around and reaches for a box of sauce sachets, looking worried about how he's ever going to explain all this.
"D'you want some sauce with that?" he asked him.
"I mean, I hadn't been to the Hollow, so how come I heard those things in there? Fear and stimulus, you said." Sherlock was still rummaging through the box of sachets.
"You must have been dosed with it elsewhere, when you went to the lab, maybe. You saw those pipes – pretty ancient, leaky as a sieve; and they were carrying the gas, so . . . Um, ketchup, was it, or brown . . .?" I raised an eyebrow at Sherlock, smirking at him as he failed to change the subject.
"Hang on: you thought it was in the sugar." John said, that made me paid attention. Sherlock stares at him while trying to maintain a neutral expression. "You were convinced it was in the sugar." Sherlock looks away again. I stared at Sherlock for a moment, starting to realize where this was probably going and why.
"Better get going, actually." He looks at his watch. "There's a train that leaves in half an hour, so if you want . . ." John turns his head away as he begins to realize the horrible truth.
"Oh God. It was you. You locked me in that bloody lab." I stared at John in shock then to Sherlock, he looked away.
"I had to. It was an experiment." He shrugged, my eyes soften at that. 'It wasn't just about the dog, he was worried about what happen to me in the woods.'
"An experiment?!" John yelled furiously.
"Shhh." Sherlock whispered looking at people sitting nearby.
"I was terrified, Sherlock. I was scared to death." John said quieter, but still furious.
"I thought that the drug was in the sugar, so I put the sugar in your coffee, and then I arranged everything with Major Barrymore." John sighs in exasperation. "It was all totally scientific, laboratory conditions – well, literally." Sherlock turn to me and stared at me, I smiled softly at him. He gave me a crooked grin. "Well, I knew what effect it had had on a superior mind, so I needed to try it on an average one." I blushed at the hidden compliment. John looks up from his plate. "You know what I mean." John gets back to eating.
"But it wasn't in the sugar." I said to him
"No, well, I wasn't to know he'd already been exposed to the gas." He turned to me. I took a sip of tea, tilting my head to the side.
"So you got it wrong." I told him.
"No." he disagreed, I smiled at him teasingly.
"You were wrong. It wasn't in the sugar. You got it wrong." He grinned at me and chuckled, shaking his head.
"A bit. It won't happen again." Sighing at our flirting, John continues eating, then looks round.
"Any long-term effects?" he asked.
"None at all. You'll be fine once you've excreted it. We all will."
"Think I might have taken care of that already." Sherlock snorts laughter, then looks across to a nearby table where Gary is pouring coffee for two other customers. He smiles apologetically across to Sherlock, who puts his mug on the table and stands up, I get up with him.
"Where're you going?" he asked us.
"Won't be a minute. Gotta see a man about a dog." Smiling down at John, he wraps an arm around my waist, we turn and walk away.
TPSH
Jim Moriarty sits silently and calmly in a small windowless concrete-lined cell with his eyes closed. In an adjoining room, Mycroft walks towards the other side of the one-way mirror which Jim is facing, and narrows his eyes as he looks closely at the other man. Sometime afterwards, the door to the cell is unlocked and Jim opens his eyes but does not turn around as Mycroft walks in.
Later, Mycroft has left the cell again. A man in a suit has opened the cell door and has walked inside.
"All right. Let him go." Jim turns and casually strolls out of the cell. Behind him, the man turns and looks around the room. On almost every plain concrete panel of the walls, Jim has somehow carved a single word into the cement. In different sizes and at different angles, the word repeats all around the cell – and the word is SHERLOCK. And with the dust which was loosened by the carving, he has scratched Sherlock's name backwards on the mirror so that whoever is watching him from the other side of the mirror will see the name the right way round. The man in the suit turns and walks away, closing the cell door behind him.
