Title: 50 Reasons (The Q-Branch Edition)

Disclaimer: I don't own or claim any rights. I don't get paid. I'm just playing around with the characters.

Reason 37 – Air Conditioning

"Wake up John, we have a case!"

I rolled over and pried my eyes open to look at my obscenely cheerful flat mate who was practically vibrating with suppressed excitement in my doorway. I glanced at the clock. 6:30. Gah. Didn't he know better than to wake someone up at the crack of dawn especially after the night I'd had.

"Come on John, it's a locked room in an R&D lab. At least an 8." He sounded absolutely gleeful.

"Give me 10," I muttered as I levered myself to a sitting position and attempted to determine exactly how much effort it was going to take to make me feel human again.

Sherlock made a sound between a snort and an affirmative hum back at me before leaving the doorway and bounding down the stairs.

Surprisingly I wasn't terribly hung over. Only a moderate headache, no nausea and the room wasn't spinning. Even better I didn't seem to be light or sound sensitive which was a surprise given the amount I'd had to drink. The 28th of December was generally not a good day for me. While Sherlock had been off gallivanting around taking down Moriarty's network, his hiatus he called it, I had ended up finding a person who I thought was my soul mate. Unfortunately, we'd not had the time to find out whether that was true or not because less than two months after we met she'd been diagnosed with a rare cancer. It had taken four months to kill her despite the best efforts of the medical professionals. I had added her name to the list of those I'd lost both personally and professionally and, despite my dislike of marking anniversaries, taken to raising a glass, or two, or more in remembrance of all of them on the date of her death. I managed to get to my feet and stumbled into the bathroom only to find a glass of orange juice and three paracetamols sitting on the sink. There were days that Sherlock's propensity for deducing everything and anything came in useful.

It was only 15 minutes later that I managed to make it into the sitting room. There was no sign of Sherlock and I wondered if I had time for toast. As soon as I had thought that Sherlock slammed in the door with a take away cup from Speedy's in his hand. He snagged my jacket and tossed it at me saying, "Come along, Lestrade is holding the forensics for us!" He handed me the cup after I had struggled into my jacket and we were off.

The body was indeed in a locked room. A locked clean room to be exact. We walked in just in time to observe a major argument between Lestrade and the facility manager regarding whether or not anyone could enter the lab without full protective gear to avoid contaminating any of the components which were on the tables. As if the presence of a dead body in the room hadn't already caused the very contamination that the manager was going on about. Sherlock didn't even pause. He simply walked over to the keypad lock, examined it for a moment then punched in a few numbers. The door swung open which had the side effect of stopping the manager in mid rant. Sherlock proceeded to enter the room and I was hot on his heels.

"John?" His eyes indicated the body so I knelt and examined it. 30 something, male, fit, lab rat by the faint scars on the back of his hands. His skin was bluish in color and the conjunctiva was slightly swollen. Judging from the progression of rigor mortis and without a liver temp my best guess was that he'd expired between 2 and 4 am.

I looked at Sherlock. He was standing in the middle of the room slowly turning about eyes darting everywhere. Lestrade and the manager were hovering in the doorway. Lestrade raised an eyebrow at me and I related my findings. Sherlock grunted softly so I know he had registered my words. I was just about to stand up when my stomach grumbled loudly. I really should have taken time for toast.

Lestrade coughed which I could tell was an attempt to cover a laugh then said, "Didn't let you get breakfast did he?"

"It wouldn't be so bad," I remarked "if it didn't smell like Ms. Hudson's peanut butter biscuits in here."

"Ha! Check his pockets for an epi-pen." Sherlock ordered.

I did. "Nope."

Sherlock smiled, "Our victim died from anaphylactic shock. He was recently in San Francisco, arrived back yesterday but came here rather than delivering his package," Sherlock gestured to a bit of foam packaging and a computer part on the table, "to its intended destination. He'd obviously set up a deal to sell this CPU to some third party. The recipient was expecting something like this and assassinated him by placing an allergen into the air conditioning system. It was a professional job. They would need decent intelligence to know about the peanut butter allergy as well as time to set up the delivery mechanism so I doubt you'll get any forensic evidence from where ever they put the peanut butter. Your assassin or a proxy will most likely show up to retrieve his," Sherlock took a closer look at the CPU on the bench, "GL2367 relatively soon. Come along John. I owe you a proper breakfast for rousting you out of bed this morning."

00Q/00Q/00Q

Q carefully backed out of the computerized security system then sighed. He paused for a moment and opened a com line, "007 how do you feel about a foray into the NSY evidence locker sometime next week?"