A/N: new chappie! enjoy!
Chapter 28: Brainstorm
"God!"
Quennel jumped as she looked to Sherlock when he shouted in agitation.
"What now?" she frowned, turning to step toward him as he remained in the center of the lab they were still in. She leaned next to him, crossing her arms as he still stared ahead, thinking, and she smirked, "Mind Palace too big?"
"Too many things are coming to mind," he replied, ignoring her snark. "I need a clear path."
"Care to brainstorm?" she wondered, making him look to her with a frown and she shrugged, "Might work to help 'clear a path' as you say."
He gazed at her for a moment before turning to face her, crossing his arms as well, nodding, "Alright. We'll start with Liberty."
"What's that?" she wondered, facing him as well.
"Something Mr. Knight saw in a dream of his recently. Liberty In. Let's just start with Liberty."
"Liberty…pattern?" she tried, both looking away in thought.
"Liberté," he countered.
"Liberty bell!"
"Liberty Bell March."
"This isn't working, is it?" she sighed.
"No," he grumbled. "In."
"A place to stay," she began.
"India," he countered.
"Ingolstadt?" she shrugged, then shook her head, "Nien."
"Indium, with the atomic number of 49," he added. "This isn't working. Hound."
"Ridgeback is a type of 'hound,'" Quennel replied, making air quotes.
"Wolfhound," Sherlock offered.
"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," she sang, pulling an Elvis move with a huge grin, making him unable to help scoffing before he suddenly stared wide eyes at her, making her frown up. "Sherlock?"
"That's it!" he cheered, grabbing her face and planting a kiss to her lips. She stared at him with wide eyes as he released her, turning to grab his coat to pull it on, looking back at her to explain, "Liberty In is Liberty, Indiana…in America."
"Ok…" she muttered, still in shock, even as he grabbed her hand to pull her toward the door. "And Hound?"
"Acronym," he replied, still pulling her along. As he went through the door, they saw John and Stapleton heading toward them from down the hall, John with a coffee in his hand, both frowning at the couple heading toward them. Sherlock looked to Stapleton as they all met halfway down the hall, reporting, "I need to see a file in your database."
"Remembered something?" John asked, handing Quennel her coffee as they turned to head back the way he and Stapleton had come from, and Quennel looked to it in surprise before taking it with her free hand, Sherlock still holding her other hand.
They made their way down the hall, Stapleton in the lead as Sherlock explained, "Something has been going on here, and it's probably nothing to do with actual dogs."
"Probably?" John echoed with a frown of wonder as Stapleton opened a door for them, letting the three in after her.
"Project HOUND," Sherlock continued as John remained by the door, looking through the window in it to be sure no one was following them. Stapleton made her way to one of the computers in the room as Sherlock finally released Quennel's hand, letting them both step up behind Stapleton as she typed. "I must have read about it…stored it away. An experiment in a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana."
Stapleton logged into the computer, allowing it to prompt her with a search bar and she looked to him for guidance. He spelled out HOUND, letting her type it in, his eyes never leaving the screen, but when it finished loading its search, another prompt appeared, saying the file was classified and an authorization code was needed.
"That's as far as my access goes, I'm afraid," she apologized as Sherlock rolled his eyes in agitation.
"There must be an override," John guessed. "A password."
"I imagine so, but that'd be Major Barrymore's," Stapleton replied.
"Oh, and we all knows he's your best friend, isn't he, Sherlock?" Quennel added, sarcastically before frowning when he marched off somewhere and they all watched him in wonder. "Sherlock."
"Password," he muttered, making the three head after him, and Quennel set her coffee down, not needing any caffeine after all. He marched into Major Barrymore's office and instantly flipped on a light to sit in the chair at the desk. "He sat here when he thought it up. Describe him to me."
"You've seen him," Stapleton recalled, knowing he was speaking to her.
"But describe him," Sherlock asked again, spinning in the chair and looking around the office.
"What's he like," Quennel added, stepping into the office to look over the books on the shelves.
"He's a bloody martinet," Stapleton replied. "A throw-back. The sort they'd have sent into Suez."
"Good, excellent," Sherlock murmured. "Old-fashioned. Traditionalist. Not the sort of man who would use his children's names for a password. He loves his job. Proud of it, and this is work-related. So what's at eye level? Books."
"Jane's Defence Weekly," Quennel read out.
"Bound copies," he noted.
"Hannibal," Quennel continued. "Wellington, Rommel. Lord…Churchill's History of the English-Speaking People's. All four bloody volumes."
"Churchill," Sherlock latched on, standing to step next to her. "He's fond of Churchill. Copy of the Downing Street Years. One, two, three, four…five separate copies biographies of Thatcher."
"I'm seeing a bit of a theme," Quennel retorted as Sherlock looked to the picture on the desk.
"Mid-1980s…at a guess," he reported. "Father and son. Barrymore Senior, medals, Distinguished Service order."
"That date? I'd say Falklands veteran," John replied, knowing he was asking.
"Right, so, Thatcher's a more likely bet than Churchill," Sherlock decided, sauntering out of the office and back toward the computer, Quennel and Stapleton following.
"So that's the password?" Stapleton guessed.
"No, with a man like Major Barrymore only first name terms would do," Sherlock replied as he leaned toward the keyboard to type in Margaret but when there wasn't enough room he deleted it and tried Maggie instead.
When he pressed enter it began loading everything that had to do with Project HOUND. Subjects, brain scans, side effects, words upon pictures upon more words, and Sherlock took it all in. He came to a picture of a group of people, their names listed to make up the acronym of HOUND with the first initials of their last names, but as he scrolled through there were more pictures of patients…each one more disturbing than the next.
"Jesus," John breathed as they all stared at the screen, unable to look away.
"Project HOUND," Sherlock began. "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 1986."
"Because of what it did to the subjects they tested it on," Stapleton guessed.
"And what they did to others," Sherlock added. "Prolonged exposure drove them insane. Made them almost uncontrollably aggressive."
"So someone's been doing it again?" John guessed. "Carrying on the experiments?"
"Attempting to refine it, perhaps," Sherlock confirmed. "For the last twenty years."
"Who?" Stapleton asked.
"Any of these names mean anything, Dr. Stapleton?" Quennel asked her.
"No, not a thing?" Stapleton replied.
"Five principal scientists," Sherlock sighed, still reading, thinking aloud. "Twenty years ago. Maybe our friend's at the back of the picture? Someone who's old enough to be at the time of the experiments in 1986—? Maybe somebody who says 'cell phone' because of time spent in America? You remember, John? He gave us his number in case we needed him."
"Oh, my god," Stapleton breathed in realization as Quennel frowned in wonder between them all. "Bob Frankland."
"Am I missing something?" Quennel wondered, looking to John.
"He helped us out of the jam we were in when we were caught the other day pretending Sherlock was Mycroft," John quickly explained, and she nodded in understanding.
"But Bob doesn't even work on… He's a virologist. This was chemical warfare," Stapleton recalled.
"That's where he started, though," Sherlock replied. "And he's never lost the certainty, the obsession that that drug really could work."
"Well…nice of him to give you his number," Quennel smirked, drawing their attention to her as she shrugged, "We should arrange a meeting."
"Very good thinking, Miss Yule," Sherlock smirked, standing tall, their gazes locking. "My thoughts precisely."
"God, get a room, you two," John muttered, making Sherlock frown at him as Quennel rolled her eyes, but his phone started ringing, making all of them look to him in wonder as he answered with a frown of his own. "Hello? Who's this?"
They all waited before he looked to Sherlock, explaining, "It's Louise Mortimer."
"Who?" Quennel asked Sherlock.
"Henry's therapist," he replied.
"Louise, what's wrong?" John asked into the phone as they all watched him. Quennel noted how alarmed he looked as he paced, asking, "Where are you? Right, stay there. We'll get someone to you, ok?"
"Henry?' Sherlock asked as John hung up the phone.
"He's attacked her," John confirmed.
"Gone?"
John hummed the affirmative as Quennel pulled her phone out to start dialing.
"There's only one place he'll go," Sherlock reported. "Back to where it all started."
"Greg, it's Quennel," she called into her phone when she heard him answer. "You need to get to Dewer's Hollow, right now."
"Tell him to bring a gun," Sherlock told her, making her frown up at him before she nodded, repeating the order into the phone. Once Greg confirmed he'd be there and she hung up the phone they all made their way back toward the door, Stapleton leading them back through the building toward the exit. "Miss Yule, head back to the inn. You won't be needed for this."
"The hell I will, Mr. Holmes," she laughed, sardonically. "Lestrade has an arm in a sling and I told Mycroft I'd stick to you like a fly to fly paper."
"Quennel, it might be best if you do what Sherlock says," John suggested. "It's not safe."
"Neither was going with him to that construction site when I was kidnapped, but I did it," she retorted, making Sherlock sigh and roll his eyes. "Nor was it safe when we caught the White Dragon, but I did that, too. You're stuck with me. You're both stuck with me."
"Quennel," Sherlock called, stopping her by gently grasping her arm and turning her to face him just before they reached the main door to let them out of the building. She looked up at him with wide eyes as he resumed, "I'd rather not have anything else happen to you because you followed me into danger."
Her gaze of disbelief locked with his very serious one before she scoffed and shook her head, making him frown in confusion.
"Oh, you and I are going to have a serious talk about that little guilt complex you have going there when this is all over," she smirked, taking his hand and leading him out of the building and toward the car. "Let's go get Henry."
The Hollow...
Sherlock led the way toward the Hollow, John and Quennel hurrying behind him, all with torches they'd had in the car. They stopped at the top of the slope, seeing Henry pacing around below them, a gun in his hand, and as Sherlock rushed down toward him, John made to help Quennel down without tripping, but she was quicker and hurried after Sherlock. Their pace quickened when they saw Henry take a knee and pull the gun up into his mouth.
"Henry, don't!" Quennel shouted as the three ran toward him, making him stand again and stumble away, aiming the gun in every direction.
"Get back!" he shouted as the three stopped a few feet away from him. "Get away from me!"
"Easy, Henry, easy," John soothed, everyone aiming their torches at Henry to see him. "Just relax."
"I know what I am," Henry sobbed, aiming the gun toward them. "I know what I tried to do."
"Henry, put the gun down, please," Quennel called, chancing to take a small step forward, hand outstretched to take it.
"No! I know what I am!" Henry screamed.
"Yes, I'm sure you do, Henry," Sherlock began, calmly as he began taking small steps forward. "It's all been explained to you, hasn't it? Explained very carefully."
"What?" Henry frowned.
"Someone needed to keep you quiet," Sherlock explained. "Needed to keep you as a child, to reassert the dream you both clung onto because you had started to remember. Remember now, Henry, you've got to remember what happened here when you were a little boy."
"I thought…it had got my dad. The hound. I thought…" Henry began, but began panicking as he became confused and screamed, "Oh Jesus! I don't know anymore!"
He turned and placed the barrel of the gun in his mouth again, making them all shout at him to stop. Quennel took a step forward to race to him and try taking the gun, but Sherlock grabbed her by the arm and effortlessly tossed a step or two toward John.
"Henry, remember, 'Liberty In'," Sherlock called, still taking small steps toward him as Henry hesitated. "Two words. Two words a frightened little boy saw here twenty years ago. You'd started to piece things together. Remember what really happened the night. It wasn't an animal, was it, Henry? Not a monster. A man."
Henry lowered the gun and stared up at Sherlock in realization, and Quennel took a small step forward.
"You couldn't cope," she murmured, glancing at the gun, now at his side, when he looked to her. "You were just a kid. So you told yourself it was an animal."
"But then you started to remember and you had to be stopped," Sherlock resumed, turning Henry's attention to him once more. "Driven out of your mind so that no one would believe a word that you said."
"It's ok, Henry," Quennel nodded as she stepped forward, grasping his wrist in one hand when he looked to her and slid the gun from his hand with the other, smiling reassuringly as she did when their gazes met. "It's alright now."
"Sherlock!" Lestrade called, hurrying toward them down the slope as Quennel handed the gun over to John when he stepped forward.
"But we saw it," Henry panted, drawing everyone's attention to him again. "The hound, last night. We did—"
"No, there was a dog, Henry," Sherlock began to explain. "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. But there never was any monster."
A howl suddenly echoed through the night air, making everyone freeze and glanced at each other in terror. A snarl came from overhead, making them all look to the top of the Hollow and aim their torches at something stalking the ledge. Henry started screaming and panicking as everyone else watched it, John panicking as he called for Sherlock, looking for an explanation. Quennel raced toward Henry as he coiled into a ball on the ground and she grasped his shoulders, her own heart thumping in her chest as she looked to the other three men staring up at the dog.
"Quennel, are you seeing this?" John demanded, aiming his torch at her and she nodded, her eyes wide as saucers and feeling more fear than she'd felt in some time. John aimed his torch at Lestrade and asked him the same before looking ahead again. "They are not drugged, Sherlock, so what's that? What is it?!"
"Alright, it's still here," Sherlock shouted as everyone's panic heightened. "But it's just a dog. Henry! It's nothing more than an ordinary dog."
They all watched the dog stop and stare at them as it snarled, its eyes glowing red and the thing was huge. It jumped closer to the group, and Lestrade cursed as Quennel gave a strangled scream, she and Henry now holding onto each other in terror.
"No!" Sherlock shouted, making her frown and turn to him to see him wrestling with a figure in a gas mask. "It's not you! It's not you!"
"Sherlock!" she called, and wanted to run to him but her legs gave way, making both she and Henry tumble onto the ground from crouching where they were.
"The fog," Sherlock breathed, looking around and she noticed the look of realization on his face as the man he now had a grip on kept his mouth and nose covered with one hand. "It's the fog! The drug, it's in the fog!"
"God, it's everywhere!" Quennel shouted as Lestrade aimed his gun at Frankland, the man Sherlock was still holding onto by the lapels.
"Aerosol dispersal, that's what it said in the records," Sherlock recalled. "Project HOUND, it's the fog! A chemical minefield!"
"It's coming closer!" Quennel screamed about the dog, still snarling and stalking toward them all.
"For God's sake, kill it!" Frankland shouted. "Kill it!"
Lestrade took a few shots at it, but missed, making it snarl and lunge forward, but John lifted Henry's gun and shot it mid-air. The thing squealed in pain before falling to the ground and everyone stared on, making sure it didn't move again as it lay there.
"Look at it, Henry," Sherlock called, hurrying toward him and taking his arm to pull him toward the now dead dog. Henry struggled, but Sherlock insisted as Quennel stood, everyone watching the two as he shined the flashlight toward it.
"It's just a dog," Henry breathed before turning to Frankland and instantly charging toward him, screaming, "You bastard!"
"Henry! Stop!" Quennel shouted as the men tumbled to the floor and the others tried to get him off of Frankland.
"Twenty years!" Henry shouted. "Twenty years of my life making no sense! Why didn't you just kill me?!"
"Because dead men get listened to, Henry," Quennel explained, pushing him back as Lestrade and John kept him at bay once they got him off Frankland. "He couldn't just kill you, he needed to do more than that. He had to discredit everything you said about your father."
"And he had the means right at his feet," Sherlock continued. "A chemical minefield. Pressure pads in the ground, dosing you up ever time that you came back here. Murder weapon and scene of the crime all at once. Oh, this case, Henry, thank you. It's been brilliant."
"Sherlock," John called.
"What?" he frowned.
"Timing!"
"Not good?"
"You think?" Quennel spat, stepping next to him and smacking his arm.
"No, no, it's ok. It's fine. Because this means…" Henry trailed off, looking to Frankland who still lay on the ground, and John watched Henry carefully to make sure he didn't attack again. "This means that my dad was right. He'd found something out, hadn't he? And that's why you killed him, because he was right, and he'd found you right in the middle of an experiment!"
Frankland stood as Henry stepped closer to him, the others closing in to keep him from attacking, but a loud snarl turned their attention to the dog they'd all thought was dead. It moved to get up and they shot at it again, but when they had all turned, Quennel screamed, making Sherlock turn just in time to see Frankland dragging her up out of the Hollow, taking her as a hostage.
"Quennel!" Sherlock shouted, racing after them just as Frankland made it over the ledge and into the woods. "It's no use, Frankland!"
Quennel tried struggling from his grasp as he continued running through the woods, but she was still suffering from the effects of the drug, and when he turned to look at the others chasing him, she didn't see Bob Frankland…she saw Jim Moriarty.
"Sherlock!" she screamed in terror, trying to struggle again, but she felt weaker and weaker with every step as he pulled her out of the woods and toward a clearing.
At the sight of a barbed wire barrier she found something in her to finally pull herself from his grasp and stumbled back only to fall as he left her and jumped over the barbed wire to try escaping. She stared up at the sign in front of her in terror at realizing she was just outside a mine field. She watched him race across, hearing Sherlock and the others calling for them before he stopped, and she realized he must have stepped on a mine. There was a sudden explosion a moment later and she screamed as she stumbled back in shock.
"Quennel!"
She turned just in time to see Sherlock, John, Lestrade and Henry emerging from the woods, and she raced toward them. She threw her arms around Sherlock, who grunted when she landed against his chest, burying her face into his scarf as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"You're not hurt?" he asked, and she only shook her head, hugging him closer. "Good. We should head back to the inn."
A/N: I wanted to show Quennel's value with that brainstorming scene instead of the mind palace. much as i do love that scene in the show. reviews?
