Trouble Beyond Deduction

The S.H.I.E.L.D. team was on site by the time the sun broke over the horizon, which was faster than Dean expected, but that could've been the shock warping his sense of time.

In all his years of monster hunting, ghostbusting, demon slaying, and angel-sitting, the sight of the bloated, mangled mass of orange flesh mired in thick globs of grey-green goop, coupled with the heavy and oddly salty stench of rotted flesh like that of an old drowned corpse . . . needless to say, Dean's jeebies were thoroughly heebied.

At least he seemed to be doing better than Sherlock.

After the Doctor ushered the other men outside, he made them do a deep clean of their hands. "Ideally we would be using bleach or kerosene," he'd said as he furiously scrubbed their hands with a cloth soaked in hand sanitizer. "Something to really get the goo off. But this will have to do."

Thank God, thought the two atheists.

Since then, the consulting detective has been silently and intently staring at a wall in the front of the building, smoldering cigarette held inches from his lips. His shoulders were hunched forward, one arm wrapped around his midsection and serving as a rest for the elbow of his cigarette arm. When S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived, they got the story from Dean and the Doctor before locking the place down and suiting up in protective gear. Though the clinic didn't open for another several hours, Agent Harris made the call to contact the owners of the shopping center to let them know there was a gas leak, and the area needed to be closed down for the rest of the day.

While Dean and Sherlock waited outside, the Doctor assisted the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with cleanup. The three operatives—Agent King stayed behind to supervise the plane—bustled in and out of the building, one time bumping into the consulting detective, but Sherlock remained frozen in place the whole time.

Dean, needing time to process himself, left the detective alone and sat on the curb. While he waited, he flipped his phone open and closed over and over. He listened to that last voice message from Sam only to cut it off halfway through. The quiet became too heavy after that, so Dean said, "You doing ok there, Sherl?"

"Don't call me that," Sherlock grumbled.

"Fine. You doing ok there, Columbo?"

"I'm fine," Sherlock replied evenly.

"Look, pal, you don't have to pretend with me," Dean said, looking over his shoulder. "In fact, I could go for a smoke myself."

"How unfortunate, this is my last one."

"Liar, I saw you had a whole pack—"

"And besides," Sherlock interrupted, "I've seen far worse."

Dean guffawed. "You have not."

"I have."

"Please. You're a detective in England. What's the worst crime you had to deal with—couple of corgis get into some rosebushes?"

"How does that—forget it, you're putting me off my cigarette."

Dean opened his mouth to respond—something about how Sherlock puts everyone off breathing—when Agents Saunders and Gordon walked out with a large black box. Both agents wore thick padded body suits that covered everything below the chin, large gloves, and SHIELD-branded gasmasks that covered most of their faces. Gordon led the way, holding on to the box's handle with one hand, while Saunders struggled behind him, gripping the sides of the box with both of hers.

Dean started to stand up and help, but Saunders said cheerfully, "Don't worry! We've got it taken care of. There might still be some leakage, so I don't want you touching this without gloves."

Dean sat back down. He wanted to argue, but even with the alien secured inside the tough-looking box, the memory of the inside of the vent held him back.

The SHIELD agents loaded the containment box into their waiting van. Dean could hear Saunders radioing King about their status.

"Tell me, ghost hunter," Sherlock said suddenly, rolling the last two words in barely veiled disdain, "what do you see in this wall?"

"Your face, if you keep acting like an ass," Dean grumbled as he pushed himself to his feet. Still, he obliged the detective and stood beside him to look at the front wall of the doctor's office. The building was brick, nothing special.

"I see a lot of brick," said Dean. "I see someone left their gum right here." He pointed.

"Mmm," Sherlock replied in a tone that could've been disapproving or encouraging. "What else?"

Dean huffed. He looked up, face scrunched to see through the dusky twilight. "I see someone hasn't power-washed their gutters in a while." He looked down. "I see a couple ants. No, wait, make that a bunch of ants. No, wait," Dean turned his body to look at the sidewalk behind him, "there's a whole conga line of these bastards."

Sherlock sighed. "Is that all you see?"

Dean glanced over at Sherlock's face. Sherlock's gaze directed him to the small steel plaque next to the door. Dean squinted.

"I see . . . the building's address?"

"Good!" Sherlock sounded genuinely surprised, which naturally pissed Dean off. "And what about the building's address seems important to you?"

"It lets me know where to send the paramedics after I shoot you," Dean said impatiently. "Why are we doing this?"

Sherlock closed his eyes and mentally counted to twenty. This was a lot more fun with John, he thought.

"I would think tracking intangible beings like ghosts and ghouls required special level of observational skills and deductive intelligence," Sherlock said coolly. "Evidently not."

Dean scowled. He opened his mouth to reply when the Doctor stepped out of the office, stripping his hands of latex gloves. "That should be the last of it," he said, then noticed the looks on Dean's and Sherlock's faces. "What are you on about?"

"Playing 'I Spy' with Lurch over here," Dean grumbled.

"Sounds fun. May I join?"

"Certainly," Sherlock said with ironic joviality. He gestured to the wall. "What do you see, Doctor?"

The Doctor studied the wall. "Well . . . I see quite a bit of brick."

"That's what I said!"

"Not now, you had your turn. Go on, Doctor, what else?"

"Mmmm. . . ." The Doctor leaned in and squinted. "There's the building's address here. . . ."

"Doing marginally better than the Winchester boy, do go on."

Dean threw his hands in the air and rolled his eyes in defeat.

The Doctor moved in even closer and put his hands on his knees, screwing up his face. "Looks to me like this plaque is fairly new. Whoever did this rushed it a bit, though, probably on the cheap."

"Excellent! Very good!" Sherlock pulled a Twinkie from his pocket and tossed it to the Doctor, who fumbled with it but managed to catch it. Sherlock pointed to the plaque and turned to Dean with a school teacher's stare. "You see here, these cracks in the brick? Poor craftsmanship."

"Ok?" Dean folded his arms, annoyed at the hoops Sherlock was putting him through, confused at how and when Sherlock snuck the Twinkie in his pocket, and hopeful that he had more because Dean's stomach's been barking at him most of the morning. "So someone's bad at their job. What's your point?"

"My point, you unobservant twit," Sherlock said impatiently, "isn't that the plaque was installed improperly, it's that it was installed at all."

Sherlock gestured down the sidewalk to the other buildings in the plaza with a flourish that made Dean groan internally. "Observe. None of the other buildings have a plaque like this even though they are all businesses that require the utmost level of professionalism." He started pointing to each business. "Lawyer, optometrist, real estate agent, lawyer, veterinarian, bank, lawyer, pediatrician, lawyer—all using signs, typographical installations, and vinyl lettering on their doors. But this is the only uses a metal plaque next to the door. Why do you think that is?"

Dean turned in a circle to look at the buildings Sherlock gestured to then back to the detective. "Aesthetic?"

Sherlock sighed a heavy, longsuffering sigh.

"My first thought is age difference in the buildings," the Doctor chimed in, mouth full of Twinkie. "Those over there look more uniform, like they were built at the same time, and this one seems a bit worn. However, aside from the grime Dean pointed out, this building doesn't seem that much older than the others."

Sherlock shook his fists. "Yes! Precisely! I don't know about you lot, but this all screams something suspicious happened, likely long before Jeremy Keatley's murder, and I may know what that is."

Dean and the Doctor watched the detective for a moment while his dark eyes, alight with some hidden knowledge, stared off into the distance.

Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. "So you gonna tell us what it is?"

"No. I like to be certain first."

"You like to be theatrical, more like," the Doctor said, but he couldn't help but grin. "Don't want to tease anything that could spoil your big reveal, I know how you work."

Much to Dean's surprise, Sherlock cracked a small grin, too. "Perhaps."

"Well I have a bit of an observation myself," the Doctor said. "The Yllri's been dead for at least two weeks based on the rate of decay and amount of energy it gave off. I'm willing to bet whoever did this killed the poor thing and stuffed it in that vent right before your brother arrived."

"You suspect foul play," Sherlock said.

"It had to be," the Doctor said. "For one, it was crammed into a vent. Couldn't have crawled in there on its own, doesn't have the upper arm strength. Second, I couldn't get too close of a look yet at the body, but the poor thing only had one injury, and that was a hole right in the back of its head. I gave it a bit of a poke, and there was definitely something hard rammed into its brain, likely either plastic or wood."

"Brilliant work, Doctor. Have another." Sherlock tossed the Time Lord a second Twinkie, much to his delight and Dean's chagrin.

Just then, the glass door opened, and Agent Harris stepped out. "What a mess," he grunted, removing his padded gloves and stuffing them in the pocket of his uniform. "Thankfully that's the only one in the area, the only one we could find at least, but given the way those things light up our machines like Christmas trees, I'd say it's a safe assumption." He looked at the three of them and narrowed his eyes. "You three bickering again?"

"Of course not," Sherlock said amicably and flashed his most winning smile, which terrified the three men. "We were simply discussing observations related to the case."

"I've won me a Twinkie," the Doctor said proudly, grinning widely and holding up the last of his packaged pastry.

"Right," Harris said, eyeing the Time Lord curiously. "You boys called us at just the right time. We just finished wrapping up our side of the investigation."

"What were you doing while we were here?" Sherlock asked.

"We checked out an amusement park not too far from here that experienced some strange happenings in the past couple months," Harris said. "Found out about it when we first scoped out the area, and the reports sounded similar to what we were experiencing with the murder victims."

Sherlock and the Doctor glanced over at Dean, who kept his face neutral. The looks weren't lost on Harris, though. "I take it this might sound familiar to you, Winchester?" he said.

Dean shot his two companions a dirty look before saying hesitantly, "Yeah, my brother and I were investigating it when he disappeared. I didn't think to mention it because I didn't think they were related."

"Well they are," Harris said. "We found scraps of goopy meat that we can now identify as the same material as what came out of that vent. Doctor, I'd like you to help study these in the lab with Melly—ah, Agent Saunders when we get back to the plane."

"Will do."

Dean cast a somber look over the building. "This office is probably the last place he'd be before he disappeared," he muttered, mostly to himself. "When I got back to the motel that night, it was obvious he hadn't been there all day."

"If that's the case," Harris said, "then we should be able to find him. I'll have Saunders pull up the information of everyone who works here and see if they know anything about what happened the night your brother went missing."

"Agent Harris," Sherlock said, "there are still some things I would like to check inside before we leave."

"Go for it. We have time before we need to be at the next location."

Sherlock nodded and strode inside.

"Don't I at least get a Twinkie?" Dean called after him.

"No, they were only for those with intelligent contributions."

Dean scowled. The Doctor, with bits of cream and sponge on his face, handed Dean his other pastry. "Here, you can have mine."

Dean hesitated for a moment, then took it. "Thanks."

"Any time." The Doctor smiled and patted him on the back. "Can't do good work on an empty stomach."

Dean watched the Doctor follow Sherlock. He turned the packet in his hands a few times before stowing it in his pockets and following the others.

Inside, Sherlock was once again a whirlwind of deductions. He rifled through trashcans, desk drawers, file cabinets, and even the storage areas of the breakroom.

At the same time, the Doctor turned on every computer he could find and scanned it with the metal cylinder from before. "Is that some kind of magic wand?" Dean asked, coming around the front desk to look over the Doctor's shoulder.

"Sonic screwdriver," explained the Doctor. "I'm scanning these computers for anything weird and downloading any data stored on their hard drives so we can analyze later."

"Weird?"

"Alien tech, superviruses, digital mites. The usual fare."

"Well that's handy. What else can it do?"

"Oh all sorts of things." The Doctor moved to another computer. "Locking and unlocking doors, detect things, put up cabinets . . ."

Dean looked confused. "Really?"

"Of course." The Doctor stowed the device in his coat. "I did say screwdriver, didn't I?"

"Winchester," Sherlock's deep timbre called from another part of the office. "Could you come here a moment?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "What do you want?" he called back.

"I need your help with something."

Dean and the Doctor raised their eyebrows at each other. "You need my help?" Dean called incredulously. "What happened to 'no observational skills or deductive intelligence'?"

"Would you just get in here?" Sherlock snapped.

Dean rolled his eyes again and begrudgingly followed the voice. The Doctor smothered a grin and went back to his work.

In the room where the Yllri corpse was found, Sherlock once again rifled through the patient files. He didn't stop to read them thoroughly, but even so words and images floated about his vision, slowly coming together into one big picture that he still couldn't quite make out.

Dean tromped up to the detective, hands shoved insolently into his jacket pockets. "What do you want?" he gruffed.

Sherlock straightened but didn't look up from the files. "I need you to take pictures of every file in this cabinet," he said.

Dean scoffed. "You're joking. Why can't you do it?"

"There are still parts of this office I haven't examined yet, and there's no time to waste. Here." The consulting detective held out his phone to Dean. "Use my phone."

Dean glared down at the phone like Sherlock just offered him a rotten piece of meat. He brushed the arm out of the way. "I'll use my own."

Now Sherlock was looking at him. "Excuse me?"

"I don't want to use your damn phone," Dean said angrily and pulled out his cell. "I'll use my own."

"Oh don't be ridiculous. Mine is newer and has a better camera."

"Either I use my phone or you can take the damn pictures yourself." Dean leveled a steely glare at Sherlock. Sherlock met it with steel of his own. Then, in the spirit of bitter cooperation and lack of time, Sherlock chose to not fight this battle. He pocketed his cell phone and said, "Fine. But those images better be crystal clear or I'll have your hide."

Sherlock stormed off. Dean watched him leave, making a face at his back before getting to work.

After a very thorough searching, Sherlock came to the last room in the office building. He saved it for last because it was locked, so he was mildly surprised to find the door partially opened. Inside, he first thought he stepped into a storage room. Towers of boxes crowded the already small space; at the center, Sherlock found the Doctor typing away at the desk computer, the only indication that this was once someone's office.

"Find anything interesting?" Sherlock asked, picking his way through the cardboard jungle.

"This was that previous doctor's room," the Doctor informed, not looking up from the screen. "What's his name? Price? The hard drive's been wiped and new stuff added, but I was able to restore his old things."

"Excellent," Sherlock said, moving to lean over the Doctor's shoulder. "What did you find?"

"Nothing of too much interest,' he replied. "I've downloaded everything from the drive already, but looking through this . . ." He trailed off as he skimmed through documents, images, and spreadsheets. He was quick, but not too quick for Sherlock to keep up.

Dr. Price, it seemed, was a very average man. No-nonsense, disciplined, orderly. The few personal files he kept on this computer were pictures showing an older, portly gentleman with vaguely Greek features and a severe frown. Some showed him with his family—a wife and two kids, one when the kids were toddlers, and one where they're all grown up. In all of the photos, he wore the same serious expression.

"Seems a charming fellow," the Doctor murmured. "I wonder what happened to him."

The two kept browsing, mesmerized by the stream of content. Accounting sheets, tax forms, emails upon emails upon emails. So many emails, the man probably never deleted them. Time-off requests, memos, requests to host seminars (soundly refused), inquiries from other doctors about creating a group practice (also soundly refused), and a great deal of thank-you emails from former patients. Digital versions of his patients' records were present, which Sherlock recognized immediately, but something wasn't right.

"Doctor," Sherlock said. "Stop a moment. Go back to . . . yes, that one."

The Doctor removed his hand from the mouse to let Sherlock scroll through the document. This belonged to a patient whose name Sherlock recognized from the filing cabinet. He remembered the name because he remembered how long and messy the notes were in his records.

Here, there was only the one sheet with a few notes.

Sherlock leaned back and steepled his fingers.

"What are you thinking?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm thinking," Sherlock said, "that perhaps Dr. Price did not leave of his own volition."

"Oh?"

"Mm."

That was the only information he offered. After they were satisfied with the room, the two left. As the Doctor locked the door again, Sherlock glanced around the doorframe and then down the hallway. He inhaled sharply.

"Doctor."

The Doctor looked at Sherlock, then down at his hand. Sherlock's fingers were pressed on the blank space next to the door. The Doctor looked around the hallway and then back at the blank space. No, not entirely blank. Every door had a little steel sign next to it with labels for what lay behind it, but not this one. Instead, there were two very faint, circular indentations in the wall where there were once holes, now filled and painted over.

The Doctor let out a breath. "Not of his own volition indeed. But why cover it up? Why not just get a new sign?"

Sherlock didn't answer because he didn't have one. "Let's find Dean and return to the plane," he finally said, and the two left without another word.

The group arrived back on the plane right on schedule. Once everything was loaded up and the box containing the Yllri corpse was whisked away to the lab, everyone met in the space the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents called "the war room."

The war room was more of a central hub than actual room; it took up most of the central deck and connected all of the corridors leading to the rest of the plane. The narrow spiral stairwell leading to the cargo hold, laboratory, and infirmary stood off in one corner. At the center of the room stretched a large, round table with a glass top. Short, round stools tucked neatly into the sides of the table to conserve space. A wall of screens overlooking an elaborate control panel stretched along the wall.

Harris stood at the head of the table. This would've been impossible, considering the table was a perfect circle, but the way Harris carried himself made his spot the indisputable place of command. With everyone gathered, Harris began the meeting.

First, the new recruits gave their report. Sherlock did most of the talking with the Doctor interjecting once or twice when he refused to mention a part that was particularly supernatural or alien. When he got to the part about Dr. Boiga's office, much to Dean's surprise, Sherlock casually glossed over the fact that Dean broke orders and snuck away from the rest of the group. From there, Dean took over with his story of his and Sam's investigation two weeks prior.

The agents listened to their story intently. Only once did King stop them to clarify a point, but for the most part they were silent and stern. Only Saunders seemed to show an emotion stronger than "stoic;" her eyes widened at Sherlock's retelling, and they widened even more at his deductions. The entire time she scribbled furiously on her notepad.

When they finished, Saunders adjusted her glasses. "Preliminary analysis confirmed that the biomaterial we found at the amusement park, which we are calling Material A, shares the same origins as the creature we found at Dr. Boiga's office, Material B," Saunders informed. "However, we didn't get nearly the same energy readings off Material A as you did with Jeremy's corpse or Material B."

"Two weeks minimum, yeah?" said the Doctor. "That's a fair amount of time for the charge to die out from its body. Plus being chopped up would disrupt the Yllri's natural electrical cycles. Their bodies are essentially just flesh and cartilage around the universe's most efficient electrical generator. Severing the circuit halts the generation of more electricity and causes whatever's left at the time of death to just—" he waved his hands "—dissipate."

"Wait a moment," King said. "What do you mean about flesh and cartilage around a generator?"

"Exactly that. Yllri don't have bones, just bits of cartilage holding themselves up, giving their bodies a definite form. Instead of blood, they live almost exclusively on the electricity that flows in their veins. They don't even have proper brains, just a thick network of electrical charges firing off in a mass of goop." The Doctor rubbed the back of his head. "Because of all that, the most effective way to kill an Yllri is disrupting that network of charges, usually by stabbing them in the head with an insulator, like a wooden stake or sharpened plastic."

"So if they have electricity instead of blood," King said, "then that means . . ."

"Yup," the Doctor said. "The electromagnetic field you detect from their corpses is essentially—"

"—the Yllri bleeding out," Saunders breathed. "Oh my God."

"That's impossible," Sherlock scoffed. "Only electricity? How does it sustain itself? Where does its waste go? Do its wounds never clot and its immune system have no means to transport antibodies? Living things need more than just energy to survive, Doctor."

Dean barked a laugh. "Did you seriously ask how does an alien lifeform take a sh—"

"There are other ways the body eliminates waste, Mr. Winchester," Sherlock growled at him before rounding on the Doctor again. "I don't know what you serve to gain from misleading the investigation with your talk of alien life, but at the very least introduce some level of believability to your fanciful notions?"

"Sherlock," Harris barked. "That's enough."

The Doctor met the detective's gaze coldly. Something in him finally snapped.

"I've met a lot of humans in my life, Mr. Holmes," he said with venom, "but you are quite possibly the single most closed-minded, willfully ignorant, knuckle-dragging ape I have ever had the misfortune to speak to. You saw the same thing Dean and I did. You saw the mass of flesh and goo in the doctor's vent. You saw the EMF reading from Dean's device, and you saw it break under the strain of reading all that energy in the room. You felt it, too." He waved an arm at Dean, the agents, and then the rest of the war room. "Look at where you are. Look at the people you're with, and the experiences they've talked about. You mean to tell me there is not one spark of imagination in that primitive brain of yours that believes in the possibility of something beyond the observable world?"

"That mass of flesh could be anything," Sherlock shot back. "Take raw, fetid meat, color it some, give it a bit of goo. As for the EMF, that's not so hard to replicate."

The Doctor's chest heaved as he fought to keep from strangling the detective. Suddenly, he had an idea. "You know what?" He looked across the table. "Agent King, you're the team's medic."

"I am," she said smoothly.

"Do you happen to have a stethoscope on hand?"

"Why conveniently, yes, I do." She reached into her lab coat and passed the instrument to the Doctor.

"Thank you." The Doctor handed them to Sherlock. "I take it you have at least the modicum of biological experience necessary to know what the human heart is supposed to sound like."

"Of course," Sherlock said. His voice reverberated barely controlled anger.

"Good." The Doctor shrugged off his coat and suit jacket, handing them to Dean and Saunders with a polite "Thank you," and faced Sherlock with his hands on his hips.

Sherlock glared at him suspiciously. The room was dead quiet. All eyes were on him. Still glaring, Sherlock put the stethoscope in his ears and placed the chest piece over the Doctor's heart.

"A little over here, actually," the Doctor said and moved Sherlock's hand.

Somehow Sherlock shot even more disdain in his glare. He listened. After a moment, he could clearly hear the beating of the Doctor's heart.

Sherlock pulled away. "I hardly see how this—"

The Doctor took his hand back and placed it on the right side of his chest. Sherlock frowned.

And then he paled. Sherlock moved the chest piece back to the left, then back to the right, then back to the left. When he met the Doctor's eyes again, all the venom drained away and was replaced with shock and, to the Doctor's pleasure, a touch of fear.

"This is a mistake," Sherlock whispered. "You had a surgery. It's been done, people getting a second heart when theirs isn't strong enough." But he knew that was a poor excuse the moment it left his mouth. From the depths of his mind, several articles on piggyback hearts filtered into the forefront, reminding him that both hearts beat at different rhythms.

The Doctor's hearts not only beat in unison, but each had its own pitch that harmonized with the other.

The Time Lord smiled. "I'm not from your planet, Mr. Holmes. Not even close. And I'd be happy to prove that there is more to the universe than your tiny little world if you're willing to see it."

Dean shot to attention. "You have two hearts? Can I hear?"

Sherlock numbly passed the stethoscope to Dean and left the room, coat flapping behind him.

Harris opened his mouth to order him back, but King put her hand lightly on his shoulder. "Give him some time, Shaw," she said softly, just barely audible enough for Dean and the Doctor to catch. "I'll talk with him later." Harris nodded, but still didn't look too pleased.

Dean, on the other hand, made zero effort to hide his pleasure. "That was great, Doc," he said, grinning, and passed the Doctor his jacket. "I wish I took a picture of his face. Priceless."

The Doctor shrugged his coat and jacket back on. As satisfying as it was to finally get under that jerk's skin and make him see the truth, he feared that all he did was shatter what little chances they had at becoming a proper team. Just as well, he thought. Clever or not, we can do this without him, if he's going to have an attitude about everything.

"I know we've all had a long day," Harris said, balancing between annoyed and placating, "but our next stop is in Illinois, only a few hours away. I want you all to analyze as much of the data and the creature as possible before then. Meet back here with what you've found in an hour and a half."

"Yes, sir," the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents said in unison. Dean and the Doctor murmured the same.

The group dispersed, but the tension they left behind didn't.

Sherlock didn't notice time pass, so engrossed he was in pouring over the data collected by the Doctor and the pictures taken by Dean. Sherlock clicked through the images irritably on Dean's small screen, leaning in close to squint through the pixilation that's just enough to make the text hard to read, and clicked through the files from Dr. Price computer on the S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued laptop. He really wished he put his foot down on using his phone instead of Dean's, or perhaps just took the pictures himself. Sherlock shifted in his seat, further irritated by the protests coming from the lounge's leather seats.

From what he could tell, the files from the cabinet were riddled with contradictories and discrepancies, especially compared to the digital counterparts. Some patients were diagnosed with one condition by one doctor only to be diagnosed with something else from the other doctor. Treatment plans wildly differed between patients with the same illness depending on which doctor they saw—several patients had their plans crossed out and replaced with something else. Prescriptions written by one doctor were canceled by another. Some of the physical files were thick with handwritten notes responding to each other and multiple forms with differing information.

Statements from Dr. Boiga's employees likewise yielded unusual results. Most of the people listed in the practice's records were fairly easy to contact, especially compared to squinting through Dean's bad photography. (Sherlock was almost surprised how good the reception was on the S.H.I.E.L.D. plane.) They all agreed that Dr. George Price was a gruff, standoffish type who genuinely cares about his patients. They confirmed that he hated working with other doctors and hated the idea of a group practice even more, but when asked why he chose to allow Boiga to join the practice, they all said something vague about financial reasons and refused to elaborate further. Answers about the circumstances surrounding Price's departure from the practice were even vaguer: retirement, death in the family, falling out with the medical board, scandal, personal injury—no two people had the same explanation.

One call proved incredibly productive. Her name was Latoya Devereaux, and the only evidence that she ever worked in that doctor's office is a single email she sent to Dr. Price letting him know she needed to leave early that day.

This was five years ago.

"I don't know what came over him," Latoya said with a mix of irritation and some measure of frustration. "The man had a temper like no other and a mouth that could offend Gandhi, but when that woman walked into the building asking for an interview, he didn't even bat an eye. Next thing I knew, he was ordering new business cards with her name on them."

"By 'that woman,'" Sherlock said, "you're referring to Dr. Boiga, correct?"

"That's right. Everyone in the office loved her. Not me. I smelled a rat the moment she walked in. I tried to talk to my coworkers about it, but they just looked at me funny and said I was being paranoid."

Sherlock fiddled with a pen. "Do you know why Dr. Price changed his mind? About working with someone."

"I have no idea!" she exclaimed. The pen halted in his hand. "I don't remember what was said exactly, just that it was total bull—but George went with it! I have worked with that man almost since the day he opened up shop in Boulder, and he'd never been more of a stranger to me then. I tried talking about it in private with him, but that damn woman was always right around the corner, or coming up out of nowhere." Sherlock opened his mouth to ask another question, but in her rising anger, she kept going. "I got so sick of it that I just started saying my piece whether she was there or not. Then that witch pulled me aside and told me that my behavior wasn't 'conducive to a healthy workplace environment' and she let me go! The one time George takes a small vacation—she planned it that way, too. I know she did because George would've never let me go. Not like that." She inhaled. "Almost twenty years I worked at that clinic. She walks in and a couple weeks later, I'm gone. I'm retired now, but those couple of weeks still haunt me. I'll never understand it."

The pen starts to move again, this time slower and more methodical. "Do you still keep in touch with Dr. Price?" Sherlock asked.

Latoya sighed. "I did, for a little while," she said a little sadly. "Right after George retired, I reached out to him. I'd been pissed at him for a while, but his family and mine got pretty close over the years. I wanted to check up on him. . ."

". . . And?"

"He seemed to be doing all right," she said. "But he sounded off. Tired, a little dazed. Then about a year or so later, I'm talking to his wife, and she tells me that his mind is going. He forgets things—important things—and a doctor diagnosed him with early onset dementia. It breaks my heart to talk about; I'd only been gone from the practice for a few years, and he seemed fine when I left."

"I see," Sherlock rumbled. "Thank you very much for your help, Mrs. Devereaux, if I have further questions, I'll be sure to be in touch."

"And what was your name again—"

Sherlock hung up and sat back in his chair. So, an antisocial doctor suddenly takes on a group practice agreement, no one has a solid answer why, and the one employee who pushed back is suddenly let go.

There's also the matter of the confusing patient information. It was obvious that Dr. Boiga and Dr. Price did not agree on anything when it came to their patients—a testament to Dr. Price's antisocial leanings, but then why keep her? Why bring her on to begin with?

Lastly, there was Jeremy Keatley. Dr. Boiga became his regular pediatrician when he was nine and stayed that way until his death. Sherlock thought it a tad odd that Jeremy still saw Boiga when he was older, especially since he noticed that any other child Boiga oversaw transitioned to Dr. Price's care when they turned eighteen. To add another confusing layer to this mystery, Sherlock found several memos from Dr. Price to all employees (but especially directed at Dr. Boiga) about new rules and procedures for the clinic, one of which was patients eighteen and over fell strictly under Dr. Price's care. Never had Sherlock heard of a hard-and-fast age limit to pediatric care.

Sherlock thumbed his phone. Only one more step—possibly the most important call. Sherlock punched in the number for Dr. Boiga's personal cell phone. His thumb moved to the call button and—

"You got a moment?"

Sherlock jumped and saw Agent King leaning against a wall with her arms cross, a coy smile playing on her lips. She reminded him of another woman he knew—The Woman. Swallowing hard, Sherlock set his phone carefully on the table and said, "Agent King. How can I help you?"

"I just came to check on you," she said, sitting in the chair next to his. Even in heels, she hardly made a sound. Her perfume was faint, but enticing—warm and spiced, with a touch of sandalwood. More images of The Woman filtered into his mind unbidden, and he brushed them away. Still, when she looked into his eyes, he could help but note there were touches of amber in the dark of her irises. "You ran out of the room pretty fast," she said. "Are you all right?"

"Of course," he said flippantly. "My time was wasting in there, and I had much to research, so I left."

"Right," she laughed and waved lazily at the mess on the table in front of him. "And how is that going? Find out anything interesting?"

"Indeed." He summarized his conversations with the employees and some of his observations. "There are some questions in need of answers," he concluded, "but the pieces are falling into place, and more and more I am seeing the bigger picture. Dr. Felicia Boiga did not join that practice by chance, that I am certain of, and I suspect that she had something to do with Jeremy's death."

"Interesting," King replied. "And how do the aliens fit in?"

Sherlock's expression darkened. "They don't."

"Sherlock," she said, leaning forward and tilting her head to the side. "Why is it you are so averse to accepting the existence of extraterrestrial life when you have real-life evidence they exist?"

Sherlock's jaw tightened. He refused to look at her, leaning away and covering his mouth with his hand. Agent King pressed further. "I understand it's a lot to take in—believe me, I had a hard time with it, too, when the attack on New York happened. But then Greenwich happened, London, Mexico City, San Juan, Siberia, the Congo—real events involving alien and supernatural activity cropping up more and more, it's getting hard to ignore. So why, then, does a man of your intellect and devotion to science choose to disregard all observations and bury his head in the sand—"

"Because I have to," he snapped, turning on her suddenly.

King jerked back, startled.

Sherlock settled back into his chair again, but his eyes still burned. "I have to," he repeated a little more quietly. "I am a man of science, yes, but I am also a man who once understood the patterns and laws of this world as established by science. I can name every type of poison and its cure. I can tell you the atomic structure of most chemicals known to man. I know the anatomy of the human body so well, I can tell you how many ways you can kill a man with just a thimble—surprise, it's seventy-three.

"What I cannot do," his voice wavered, "is explain how a portal rips a hole in the sky and spits out thousands of flying creatures and ships made of metals not found on this planet." His voice started to rise. "Every case I have solved thus far had a clear, logical solution; I just needed to find it using the power of observation and the laws that govern our world. How, then, am I supposed to solve a case involving rules and principles not from this world? How do I factor in these things that exist beyond the logic of this world—these aliens and spirits and what have you—when I make my observations? My deductions are flawed and baseless if there are pieces of evidence I do not or cannot comprehend." Sherlock took a shaky breath. He resumed his position of leaning away from Agent King, hand covering his mouth. He didn't mean to say all that, but the words had been burning in his chest ever since they left Dr. Boiga's office. Actually, if Sherlock were being honest with himself, his mind hasn't been clear since that day. Before the alien in the vent, before Boulder, before S.H.I.E.L.D. . . .

King watched him patiently, her dark eyes with the hints of amber revealing no emotion. Sherlock lowered his hand and continued quietly.

"John didn't go missing. He disappeared." He swallowed. "We just left the scene of our latest case, I stepped into a shop for a moment—just a moment—to speak to a witness, and when I returned, he was gone. Vanished. No one saw him go anywhere, no one saw any suspicious characters. He just . . ." Sherlock waved his hand. "Disappeared. I dropped the case immediately—it wasn't anything interesting, to begin with, or so I thought—and searched everywhere for him. I pulled every string, contacted every connection I had—no one had seen him, and no one knew where he'd gone."

King laid a hand on his arm. He turned away.

"In a world where there are no such thing as aliens, or demons, or ghosts, or werewolves, or whatever, I could find him. I could find John. But if it's true, and such things are real," Sherlock let out a bitter laugh and faced her with a helpless smile, "then I fear I am too far out of my element, and John may be lost to me forever. So I have to deny their existence, because in doing so, there's still hope I can save him."

King studied his face. In the back of his mind, Sherlock knew that she was a complete stranger, that this was their first real conversation. But something about her eyes, her open, understanding eyes with the hints of amber. And her spiced perfume, so familiar and soothing . . .

She gave his arm a pat, breaking the spell momentarily. "I understand what you mean," she said. "But even you have to see how foolish that idea is. Ignoring something doesn't make it go away. It only limits your understanding further."

Sherlock nodded absentmindedly. Then he frowned, and his countenance became guarded. "I don't know why I told you all that," he said coolly. "Forgive me, I'm not usually inclined to blubbering, let alone to strangers."

Agent King laughed and smiled coyly. "I have that effect on people."

"Mmm. In any case, I have research to get back to, if you don't mind."

"Of course." King stood and started for the exit. "Agent Harris wants us to reconvene before we touch down to go over our findings." She paused at the mouth of the hallway. "Oh, and Sherlock?"

He looked up. She smiled.

"I'm always available if you need to talk again. You have more than just an alien and a ghost hunter on your team."

With that, she was gone.

Sherlock breathed a sigh of relief and wondered why he did. Something about the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was so . . . foreign to him, possibly even more so than the Doctor. As the smell of her perfume lifted, so did the fog in his mind.

Just like her, he thought, feeling his mind wander to that person again. He snapped his focus back on the work in front of him.

Jeremy Keatley. Yes. And Dr. Price. Latoya Devereaux, the memos, the confusing employee statements, the patient files. . . . Sherlock picked up Dean's phone and turned it over in his hand.

And then it all clicked. Of course. How could he have missed it sooner?

Sherlock jumped back on the laptop and furiously typed something into the search bar. The file he needed popped up.

As he read through the contents, a smile creeped onto his lips.

Sherlock was in his element once again.

"Another fascinating thing is that they look all flabby, especially when dead, because all that electricity leaking out makes the cartilage less rigid," said the Doctor as Agent Saunders used forceps covered in rubber to widen the wound in the back of the corpse's head. "If the thing's been dead long enough, most if not all of the cartilage is broken down. Seeing how much is left can give us a more approximate estimation of when the Yllri was killed."

"Incredible!" she said. The two had been talking like this for the entirety of the autopsy, which was going quicker than she anticipated. While she felt sad for the creature's demise, it's not every day one gets to dissect one alien life form while learning about it from another. "It's like a blob fish then; what it really looks like when it's in the depths of the ocean is very different from what we see when it's above water. So why doesn't the electricity cause the deterioration while it's still alive?"

"I'm not a hundred percent sure," he said almost absentmindedly and reached for a longer, straighter set of forceps, also covered in rubber. Most of his focus was directed on not doing undo damage to the corpse as he reached for the object lodged in its head. Normally he's steadier than this, but the events of the day were wearing on him. "There is deterioration as they get older, similar to how human bones get weaker as they age. Vitamin deficiency, usage, and all that. From what we've seen, I would guess that the rate of deterioration is slower while they live because the energy stays in its lane, so to speak, and the Yllri makes up for loss with good nutrition. Can't really do that when you're dead and all that energy is just flying right out of you.

And there it is," the Doctor said, slowly pulling out a cylindrical object about the size of a finger and sharpened into a point. "Just as I thought: plastic."

"It's not that long," Saunders remarked, brow furrowed.

"I know. Definitely big enough to disrupt the Yllri's neural network, but it barely touched the central region where most of the 'processing' happens." The Doctor grimaced. "More than likely he didn't die right away, and I have a nasty feeling that was deliberate."

The Doctor dropped the spike into a metal dish. The resulting clang pierced the air in the small lab, a grim death knell for the poor creature.

The autopsy of the Yllri corpse found at Dr. Boiga's office and the pieces from the amusement park didn't take as long as the Doctor expected—just under an hour. It would've been quicker if they hadn't had to safeguard themselves and the lab from the remaining electromagnetic radiation coming off the corpse.

It would've been even quicker if Agent Gordon hadn't insisted on staying in the room the whole time. The Doctor spared a glance over where the large man sat, arms folded, in the same protective suit the Doctor and Saunders wore. They wasted about ten minutes searching for one that would fit the muscular man, and his piercing stare did not once leave the Doctor during the entire operation, which did nothing for his tried nerves.

Saunders put her gloved hand over the tiny claw-hand of the dead alien and looked at it sadly. "Do they have families?" she asked. "How do they bury their dead?"

The Doctor gave her a curious look. "They definitely have families," he replied. "I'm not sure about funeral ceremonies, though. The Yllri are typically a secluded race, and this is my first time actually seeing one."

Saunders nodded and didn't remove her hand. "If they're radiating energy like this," she said suddenly, "shouldn't it be possible to track the locations of other Yllri? Ideally before they're killed, but I worry their electromagnetic fields aren't strong enough for our systems to detect while they're still alive."

"No," the Doctor mused, "but you're onto something." His eyes lit up and his face broke into a smile. "Of course! Why didn't I think of this sooner?"

"What? What is it?" she asked excitedly. The Doctor didn't answer right away; he instead lunged for the EMF-proof box. The action was so sudden, Gordon shot up from his seat and reached for his weapon, and Saunders had to put her

The Doctor paid no mind. "Quickly now," he said. "Help me pack this up and get it to the cargo hold."

Saunders rushed to help him. As soon as the corpse was safely in the box, the Doctor quickly stripped off the protective gear and grabbed one of the handles on the container. Saunders reached for the other, but Gordon put a hand on her shoulder and took it instead.

The two men carried the container out of the lab to the stairs leading to the cargo hold. Saunders practically jogged to keep up. "What's in the hold, Doctor?" she asked.

"My TARDIS," he said. "You're brilliant, Agent Saunders. Absolutely brilliant." Saunders reddened at the compliment, and Gordon smirked at her reaction. "If I'm right, then I can use what remains of the Yllri's charge to scan the world for others of its kind. Like you said, they'd probably be dead already given the amount of energy needed to detect it and the process could take a while, but it's our best shot so far."

"TARDIS?" she asked "What's a TARDIS?"

The Doctor spared a moment to look back at her and grin. "You're about to find out."

In the cargo hold, the Doctor and Gordon set the box down in front of the tall rectangle covered in a tarp. The Doctor unfastened the cord holding the tarp in place.

"Put this on so it wouldn't get any scratches," the Doctor said, tugging on the tarp. "Lots of things bumping around down here. Plus it makes it a little less conspicuous."

Saunders watched with great anticipation. Gordon's face was impassive, as usual. She knew he was excited, too, he just didn't want to show it.

With one final heave, the Doctor yanked the tarp off to reveal . . . a blue police box?

Saunders deflated a little. "That's the TARDIS?" she asked. "But it's just a police box. Don't get me wrong," she said quickly, "it's a lovely piece of history, but—"

"It's not just a police box!" the Doctor said with a laugh. "This is my ship! It's how I get around, traveling through time and space. Come on in, see for yourself."

"But wait, how are we going to fit—" Saunders said, but he was already gone, disappeared inside the TARDIS. Saunders and Gordon glanced at each other. Gordon shrugged.

"Are you lot coming or what?" the Doctor's muffled voice came from inside the box. "Also, would you mind bringing the box in with you while I get this thing warmed up?"

Still dubious, the two agents heaved up the Yllri's box and carried it to the door. Gordon led the way, pulling on the handle carelessly. He froze. Saunders bumped into him.

"Elliot," she said. "What is it? What do you see?"

Gordon didn't respond. Instead, he led the way forward. Saunders followed behind, and when she saw the inside of the TARDIS, she almost dropped the box.

The inside of the TARDIS was massive, a huge circular room with large treelike support columns reaching up to a domed roof, arches leading off to more rooms, and at the center, a large machine atop a metal grate dais that took up almost the entire room.

Saunders gaped. Even Gordon couldn't help but raise both eyebrows as he took in the sight.

"Doctor," Saunders called out.

The Doctor poked his head around the machine at the center of the room. "Over here. Careful now, watch your step. You can set that down right there, thank you."

The agents, still stunned, numbly did as they were told.

"Here we are," the Doctor said as a panel opened up on the machine. He pulled on his thick rubber gloves and opened the box. "I'm going to set this poor bloke here, turn this on here, and . . ." He pressed a button and a nearby screen sprang to life with mysterious symbols and shapes. "Presto! There we have it."

"What's it doing?" Saunders asked.

"Right now, the TARDIS is scanning the biological makeup of the Yllri and its electromagnetic field. It will then use that information to scour the planet for any matching information and present to us the locations of every Yllri that's still on Earth."

"How long is that going to take?"

"Well from the looks of it, about . . ." The Doctor leaned in to get a closer look at the screen and winced. "Six to twelve weeks. The thing's been dead so long, there's not much for the TARDIS to work with."

Gordon scowled. Saunders coughed in surprise. "Six weeks?! That's too long!"

"I know," the Doctor sighed. "If I had more data to give it, then the process wouldn't take so long. But at least this is something. I just hope that we can find something more substantial before then.

"For now, all we can do is wait."

Holy cow, it's been a really long time. I never forgot about "At the Cost of a Penny" all these years, but life and whatnot really got in the way, and my creative motivation took a real hit. But one day I read through my old stuff and got inspired again, so I knocked out a whole bunch of this story for NaNoWriMo this year, and have enough content to finish this once and for all.

I don't know how many people use this platform still (I know SuperWhoLock as a fandom has fizzled out big time in the past several years), or if those who follow/favorite this even read fanfics anymore. But if you're one of the fans from ages ago who happens to find the update notification in your email and remembers this fic fondly enough to pick it back up again - thank you so much. The comments/reviews I got on this story are part of what encouraged me to come back.

If you're brand new: welcome! I didn't change the Author's Notes on previous chapters for posterity's sake, so forgive any cringe, but in essence, this started out as a goofy one-shot for my friends that in high school became a goofy story for other SuperWhoLock fans that is now a goofy story for me.

Please forgive any inconsistencies with the fandoms' canonical timelines. When I wrote the first 6 chapters, I was only familiar with Avengers, Sherlock, and the mystery villain of the story; barely watched Supernatural; and knew nothing about Doctor Who. Since then, I haven't seen Sherlock and Supernatural in a while, a ton has changed in the MCU, and I got real into Doctor Who. (Kinda funny that the fandom I knew nothing about at the start is the one I feel most familair with now, haha.) As a result, while I try to stay as true to canon as possible, there are likey going to be things that don't line up with the original timelines and possibly some OOCness. The latter I especially try to avoid.

I know this chapter's a long one, so if you like the longer chapters, let me know! If you don't, also let me know! I love hearing your feedback because honestly, I feel like my writing ability has suffered from lack of use, haha.

Lastly (I promise), this fic is also posted on AO3 if you would rather read it there. Link is posted in my bio.

Again, thank you very much for reading and supporting this fic. This is the last super-long AN I will write, I promise.

See you in the next chapter!