Sherlock dragged them deeper into the Chinatown neighborhood. "It's an ancient number system," he explained, walking quickly alongside the stand of a marketplace vendor selling produce. "Hangzhou. These days, only street traders use it. Those were numbers written on the wall at the bank and at the library."

Emili looked at all of the stands. The merchant was dealing with another customer after talking with Sherlock. Stakes were glued or nailed to the backs of carts, and cardboard signs with black Hangzhou were mounted to the tops of the stakes. Underneath the Hangzhou were English translations in the same color. Everything from fresh apples to stalked corn to recently-pulled leeks had a Hangzhou price. Em couldn't believe how fortunate they were to find someone else who used it and who could explicate.

"They're numbers written in ancient Chinese dialect."

"That helps," Emili said, suggesting brightly, "Our killer's probably Chinese. Van Coon traveled to Asia to manage accounts, and Lukis was a travel journalist. That's where they overlap." She frowned. "But if they had already met in China, what were they both doing at the Lucky Cat Emporium?"

She lowered her voice to ask her latest question, mulling over it quietly. She started to follow after John's tan-colored sweater, her feet moving on autopilot. John pointed up at one of the signs. "It's a fifteen," he said, matching the English to the now-familiar ominous cipher. "What we thought was the tag – it's a number fifteen."

Damn, Em thought, slightly impressed. Onions are expensive.

"We've found it!" John cried, a grin growing on his face triumphantly.

Em did a fist-pump in the air and held a hand up. John smacked their palms together, laughing. Emili smiled at Sherlock, biting down on her lip, inviting him to join in with their silly celebrations. Their excitement made Sherlock chuckle, but he made a flick of his wrist to gesture them onwards and went to leave the market stand.

Discovering what the cipher was didn't equal learning what it meant. As she fell into step behind the doctor, who followed after Sherlock pleasantly without objection, she reflected over what they didn't yet know. Em had assumed that the cipher was a clear message, one that translated to words. A number, no matter what that number was, didn't really tell her the significance of the graffiti. There remained context that they needed to know but didn't have. With both people who had known shot through the head, their best hope at translating the code seemed to lie with finding the killer.

That was almost an entirely different battle. The killer left no DNA evidence at crime scenes, had never been caught on tape, and worked efficiently. Britain was part of the European Union, which meant that it was incredibly easy to travel from the UK to a neighboring country. As every hour passed, it became more and more plausible that the culprit had snuck across sovereign borders. All he had to do was get far enough away. If he made it back to China, Emili doubted Scotland Yard could make any charges stick.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Emili remembered suddenly the origami pieces that had been left at the crime scenes, stuffed into the banker's mouth and dropped in with the writer's luggage. That has to mean something. It was weird. It was serial killer-y. It was a signature or a warning.

She stopped in place and took out her phone from her pocket. The people milling around her faded from the forefront of her mind, intently fixated on the screen of her mobile. Her thumbs hovered over the keypad.

What should she search for? She decided on entering "flower origami." The color could've just been a warning of its own, so she wanted to ascertain the shape first.

The first photograph was a black paper flower with five distinct, sharp petals. A white thin-tipped marker had been used to make a design. After that was a bouquet of purple and pink origami flowers; after that, a crimson rose glued to an ivy-colored roll of craft paper to create a stem. She scrolled down. There. In between profile photographs was a flower with a fairly flat bottom but upward-bent petals, curled and folded in on themselves all around the edge of the flower. It looked like the one from Lukis' closet, albeit more pristine, and she could imagine that the one found with Van Coon could've looked like the picture before it had been shoved in his throat.

The girl tapped the photograph to bring it up larger and then chose the link provided to the source. Her phone had been provided to her by the same people who'd provided her with clothes and necessities until she was given money and told to buy what she wanted – which was to say, Anthea had chosen the same kind of phone that she herself possessed, and so Emili had the best service and data plan she could possibly get. The page loaded quickly.

It was to an independently owned crafts website. Under a general tab of paper crafts, there were embedded videos on making origami. First there were animals, then flowers, and then miscellaneous shapes. To the right of each video was a brief written step-by-step guide, followed by a photograph of the finished project. She found the one she'd identified and read the header.

Lotus Origami Flower (Turquoise, Friendship)

She swallowed, growing excited, and went up to the Google bar at the top of the page. This time, she searched "lotus flower colors." In the very first result, she found a list of different lotus flower colors and their meanings. From pale yellow indicating purity to a gorgeous purple-blue symbolizing balance and unity, she saw a rainbow of colors… but none of them were black.

Her fingers hovered over her phone contemplatively and Emili cocked her head. The color had to be significant for it to be the same over multiple attacks – if colors had different meanings, then maybe the Hangzhou wasn't the lead to pursue. Maybe the message to follow up on was in the origami. But if there wasn't such a thing as a black lotus flower, and it didn't have a meaning, then how could there be more to it?

"Em!"

A shout of her name broke through her thoughtful, intent reverie. She jumped, startled, and looked up from her phone. It sounded like John's voice, concerned and worried, having noticed that she wasn't with them. She looked around to try to pinpoint where they were.

The black color stood out to her. Maybe it was because Chinatown was a place full of hot colors, or maybe it was because she was thinking about black flowers, but she locked in on a woman wearing all black, face covered by sunglasses, across the narrow, uneven street. The Asian woman had a camera covering the lower part of her face, and her expression was unreadably blank.

That's her, Emili realized, her eyes widening nervously. She was on Baker Street.

"John!" She shouted back, realizing suddenly how exposed she was. There she was, a sixteen-year-old, alone in Chinatown, standing in the middle of the street, while someone with a camera had followed her across London. She lowered her phone and backed up, away towards the wall of the storefronts to her side of the road.

"Em!" When her name sounded again, much closer, Emili turned quickly to see. It was John, returning to her, his mouth pulled to a disapproving frown. His stride was quick and long.

Emili quickly turned to look back across the street. Just like before, the black-haired woman had left as soon as the American took her eyes off of her.

She reached out impulsively for her neighbor and grabbed tightly onto his wrist. John looked like he'd been about to chasten her for stopping without telling him, but saw her pale face and anxious glances. "What is it, Em?" He asked, reaching for the small of her back and pressing a hand against her spine.

"It's that woman again," she said hurriedly, standing up on her toes to see over heads. It didn't help. She was gone, and Emili knew it was futile, but couldn't help but try. "From outside Baker Street? I saw her again. It was definitely her."

What does that mean? The occupants of 221B had begun to make names for themselves. Although Emili's name never did come out in the press after the failed bank heist, eyewitness accounts still let it drift around that the robbers had been distracted and derailed by a young adult with long, pink hair. John's blog was getting more popular, as well, and it was becoming common knowledge to local Londoners that the stories were about real events. It wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility that they'd gathered a stalker.

More importantly, though, Emili had seen this episode a dozen times. Getting too close to a dangerous case got the protagonists hurt. Whatever the Hangzhou or the origami meant, she was further in the investigation that any of Scotland Yard. She hated to think she was racially profiling anyone, but it didn't help her nerves that the woman was Asian. Given what they knew now about the killer likely being Chinese, it worried her even more that the two were connected.

That wasn't even to mention how scary it was that someone was taking photographs of Emili in her candid, daily life. Moriarty – the faceless name that drifted in the shadows – had asked someone to kill her. Jeff Hope hadn't been able to finish the job. She'd gotten the impression that Moriarty cared more about screwing with Sherlock than hurting her, but there was always the chance he would try again. It was why she felt so much safer after she learned John kept his carrying license, and why she never objected when Mycroft asked her to return to the Diogenes Club to check in. Even though she had to wait in a stuffy room with people watching her closely, she knew that it was one of the safest places she could possibly be.

John looked around for anyone suspicious, and came up empty, just like Emili had. "I don't see anyone," he told her, but didn't act as though this assuaged or negated Emili's insistence. "What's she look like?"

She felt more frustrated. No one was there. She already knew the stalker was gone. "Wearing all black and dark-tinted sunglasses," she answered, increasingly agitated. She wanted to move. She wanted to get out of the open and find her brother. "Black hair, camera. She was there just a moment ago." She pointed across the street.

John looked back to face her with his brow pinched in worry. "Do you think we're being followed?" He asked her seriously. Emili could've hugged him right then for not dismissing her as being paranoid.

"Well," she shifted. She didn't want to be the girl that cried wolf, but she also didn't want to psych herself out of what she knew. "Someone staged Van Coon's death as a suicide. I don't suppose they wanted it getting out that it was actually a killer on the loose."

It went unsaid that perhaps the tenants of 221 Baker Street were loose ends that needed to be tied up.

John had many virtues but lying was not one of them. Emili could tell easily that he wasn't really comfortable or confident that they were safe, but she appreciated that he tried to act calm and casual. "Come along then," he urged, politely steering her with the hand at her back. "Let's catch up with Sherlock." He was more worried about the situation than he was letting on, but if he wanted to pretend that things were okay, then Emili would let him. "We'll stay together, yeah? And if you see her again, we'll phone Dimmock."

Emili thought about the two men who had seen something life-threatening and rushed home. She remembered the gun in a limp, cold hand and a hastily thrown-aside suitcase. She couldn't help but think that they had been doomed from the minute the killer had decided they needed to die. Someone as skilled and efficient as the one they dealt with was effective because they struck without giving their victim an opportunity to escape or defend themselves. She shivered and walked a little closer to John when she realized that she had probably only seen the woman to begin with because she wanted Emili to know there was someone watching her.

She feared that if she called Dimmock, the detective inspector wouldn't catch anything but smoke; and she fretted that if there were ever a time when she really needed the police, they would be too slow to help.


She didn't know whose idea it was, but Sherlock led the way into a restaurant across the street from the Lucky Cat Emporium on their way back out of Chinatown. It was dark and poorly lit, but warm and filled with the smells of oriental food. Emili sank down into a chair between John and the floor-to-ceiling front display window, feeling comfortably secure with glass on one side of her and very strong, good fighters on the other.

After their food was delivered (very quickly), John tucked his napkin on his lap and picked up his silverware. Emili chose to try her chopsticks. "Two men travel back from China. Both head straight for the Lucky Cat Emporium." John took a mouthful of beef and dumplings with steam still rising from his dish. Then he looked across the street, to the tacky waving cat over the door. "What did they see?"

"It's not what they saw," Sherlock corrected, his arms folded on the table. He opted out of eating, instead leaving a mostly full glass of water abandoned by his right elbow. "It's what they both brought back in those suitcases."

Many afternoons at Panda Express were paying off. Emili wasn't embarrassing herself too terribly with the chopsticks. "Yeah, you mentioned one of them had been stuffed full, but there was just a few days' clothes." She looked over at the Lucky Cat Emporium again. From further away within the restaurant, she could see that there was an apartment above it. The alley to the right was narrow, just like the streets, and halfway down, there was what looked like a shadow where there could've been a doorway.

Chinatown was gradually emptying out. It was past time for dinner and most of the tourists were going back to their hotels. The Londoners were departing for their own boroughs, while the locals were beginning to close up their shops and tidy up to go home. This left the trio with more room to move and less people to navigate around. The restaurant felt a little more private.

Sherlock drummed his fingers on the table. "Think about what Sebastian told us again, about Van Coon – about how he stayed afloat in the market."

"He lost five million one day and made it back by the next week." Em took a drink while she frowned, puzzled. That had seemed weird at the time, but she'd taken it at face value because she had other things in higher priorities. "How did he do that?"

John was the one who caught on first. "He was a smuggler," he realized aloud, then hummed in appreciation of his dinner.

The answer was clear once it was spoken out loud. It explained why there was such covertness and cleanliness to the kills. They didn't want the deaths to be linked to their operation; they didn't want law enforcement to realize that the smuggling operation even existed.

"Of course." She looked to the emporium with a more critical eye. It was the kind of annoying trinket shop she'd usually avoid going in, and she was no doubt not the only one with that opinion. "That shop must be their drop site for the operatives in London. He makes up enough illegitimate money that he can replace what was drained from the bank."

"For a guy like him, it would have been perfect." Sherlock agreed. "A businessman making frequent trips to Asia. And Lukis was the same – a journalist writing about China. Both of them smuggled stuff out, and the Lucky Cat was their drop-off."

John and Em kept trying to participate in the conversation, but they were starving, and so Sherlock had to wait until one of them could speak again. John ate faster.

"But why did they die?" The vet asked persistently. "I mean, it doesn't make sense. If they both turn up at the shop and deliver the goods," which they knew they had, because they'd found it in their agendas, "Why would someone threaten them and kill them after the event, after they'd finished the job?"

There was nothing to suggest either victim had had anything to do with the other except for that they were apparently in the same smuggling ring. Depending on its reach, they might not have even known each other. Some rings were frighteningly large. It did beg the question what they had done to be killed, even after attending to their duties as smugglers, and why the warning had been given.

"They would have to know who dropped off what, for their own inner liabilities and tampering purposes." Em put down her chopsticks and crossed her arms, sucking on the inside of her cheek. "… They might not know who smuggled what, though." The Lucky Cat saleswoman could only take what she was given, but if someone took something they shouldn't have – the timing could've narrowed it down to the two operatives, but without knowing which it was, they decided to take both lives to send a message. "The assassin killed both because he didn't know which one had whatever wasn't given over."

As she was giving herself a mental pat on the back, Sherlock sat straight up again, his hands stilling. "Remind me. When was the last time that it rained?" He asked either of them.

"Monday night," Em answered almost immediately, a little disappointed not to have a response for her theory. "Remember? I made that quip at Sebastian."

Whether or not Sherlock remembered, it appeared that he was done with the conversation. Without another word, he narrowed his eyes and stood up from his seat. He took some cash out of his pocket and laid it on the table for the check without counting it out.

Although he hadn't left yet, it was just a matter of time. Emili and John shared impatient, wistful looks between themselves before they grabbed their respective silverware and started shoveling food in their mouths, finishing their dinner as quickly as they could.


When Emili and John made up the little bit of distance between them and the third member of their party, Sherlock was standing in the alley beside the Lucky Cat Emporium. He handled a delivered phone book in one hand. The thing looked thick, heavy, and waterlogged, despite being in a thin plastic slip. Tiny droplets clung to the plastic, slowly beading towards Sherlock's warm skin.

John shoved his hands into his pockets for the warmth they offered. Emili wrapped her fist around the strap of her messenger bag, looking up at the plaque by the door. It was a single-person apartment, since there was only one address listed on the side. A mail slot was in the center of the dark green door, and a dull, dirty welcome mat that had certainly seen better days was currently welcoming Sherlock's shoes.

Sherlock passed the phone book towards Emili, who took it instinctively before she really realized it. "It's been here since Monday," he told her informatively. She looked down at it, grimaced at the feeling of slick plastic on her fingers, and bent over to plop it back down beside the door. "No one's been in that flat for at least three days."

"Maybe they're just really lazy when they don't have something to do," Emili grumbled, shooting Sherlock a meaningful look. He didn't notice – or, more likely, just didn't care.

John shrugged, unsure why they cared. "Could've gone on holiday," he offered.

Sherlock sent him a chastising and exasperated scowl. "Do you leave your windows open when you go on holiday?" He asked, tilting his head back. Emili and John both looked up the side of the brick wall. To the right and on the second floor, there was an open window. Emili could see some pretty navy blue curtains fluttering slightly from within. Underneath the window was a shiny-looking metal fire escape.

She followed the fire escape along the side of the building. A couple of yards from the window, the platform ended. A vertical ladder was pulled up and locked in place. The bottom of the ladder, when moved out of reach of the street, was probably ten feet off of the ground.

Her eyes landed on the city dumpster near the ladder.

Mind made up, if only so that Sherlock would be satisfied and let them go home, she ducked her head and lifted her messenger bag (now a little heavier, thanks to her lucky cat) off of herself. She took her phone out of her pocket, just in case she was too clumsy and fell, and put it in the same hand as the strap of her bag. Em turned to John and offered both of her belongings to him. Bemused, John took her phone in his right hand and used his other to shoulder her satchel.

Emili had been a well-behaved kid. She'd rarely gotten into trouble at school or at home. If her parents hadn't died, and she hadn't been adopted by the Holmes seniors, she figured she would still be the straight-A student who liked to read and go horseback riding, but who was typically quiet and unassuming, not some weird straight-A student who didn't second-guess herself when she went to climb on top of a dumpster.

The lid was closed, thankfully. She stepped up on the edge of one of the protruding sides that the forklifts slid their prongs into to lift the container, braced herself by leaning over the top, and jumped. Her arms strained and shook for a second until she managed to get her right heel up on the dumpster top and rolled her weight. The lid made a popping noise, but didn't break, and she slowly stood up, holding her arms out to both sides.

"Em, get off of there," John wearily instructed. His heart wasn't in it.

"Hold on," she said, walking up to the edge. The garbage bin was taller than it had looked. She was impressed that she'd been able to climb on it without help. Although it was against her instinct to look down, she tipped her head back and surveyed the ladder. The bottom rung wasn't too far away, and it wasn't much higher than her hands would be if she held them over her head.

She did the calculations in her head. If she missed the ladder, then she'd only be falling five or six feet. She might scrape her knees if she stumbled the landing. She'd also have to be careful to make sure she bent her legs when she landed. If she grabbed it and her hands slipped, she'd just have to make sure to throw her hands back in case she didn't have time to get her feet under her after swinging.

Before she could psych herself out of it, the girl jumped off the edge and threw her arms up. It felt for a moment like flying; then her hair was blown out of her face and she felt the weight lifting, and gravity kicked in. The inertia was extremely temporary, but still gave her stomach a lurch.

When her hands hit the rung, the jarring sensation felt like it rattled her teeth. Her body swung. Emili bent at the waist and tried to keep her elbows from going completely straight. As she swung back, still clinging to the ladder, something squeaked, shrieked in protest, and a loud clack! signaled the defeat of the lock mechanism on the fire escape. The ladder dropped, sliding down. Thanks to the grace period while her weight stressed it, she'd had the time to regain her center of balance, and Emili dragged it down and landed on her toes.

Sherlock beamed. "Good girl!" He praised, sounding slightly impressed. Em grinned back at him, surprised she'd been able to do it. She kicked up one foot onto the lowest rung and held it towards the ground so that it couldn't retract, then looked up to the fire escape. It was even higher than she'd had to jump to. She rolled her shoulders back and began the daunting, ninety-degree climb.

Sherlock grabbed onto the ladder as she climbed, waiting until her feet were about six feet up the ladder before he started to scale it after her. Em tried not to look down. She was fine on airplanes, but being in a position where she could so easily fall and get hurt spooked her when she saw the ground below.

The fire escape was reached without incident. Although it was a little awkward, she managed to hook her fingers through the grid of the platform and crawl onto her knees, moving out of the way so her brother could join. As soon as Sherlock's weight was off of the lowest part of the ladder, it started to retract again.

"Sherlock!" John called up in irritated protest. "Em, come on," he appealed to her.

She hesitated before the window and moved to the railing. Emili popped her head of the edge, conscious of Sherlock moving behind her to make his way in through the open window.

"Come on," she parroted back to John with a very different inflection. "Why don't you just jump?" She invited, nodding to the side at the garbage bin.

John held out his hands demandingly. "Because I'm not a six-foot-tall gymnast!"

Emili giggled. "Neither am I!" The extent of her gymnastics practice had been getting on and off of horses, and managing to stay on them – assuming that she was excluding the rooftop climbing from Roland-Kerr. "Jump from the dumpster, like I did!" Though John was shorter, she bet he had a more powerful jump.

He crossed his arms, still holding onto her things. "No, thank you," he huffed.

She shrugged. John had to know by now that Emili's curiosity was a force to be reckoned with. She had come this far; she was going to get something out of it. "Suit yourself," she called down, waving. "If Mycroft calls, send it to voicemail!"

Sherlock was already inside when Emili turned back around. She sized up the window briefly. If it was large enough for Sherlock, it would be big enough for her; still, she felt like she was trying for flexibility she didn't have. She braced her hands on the window, reaching into the apartment for purchase, and stretched a leg up and inside.

Through some nimble contortion, she got her other leg inside, then ducked and slid down the inside of the wall to enter the apartment in full. She batted a blue curtain away from her face and knocked her hip on the side of a table. She pressed a hand to the side of a blended vase so that it didn't fall, then took a step. Sherlock had already ventured further inside to explore.

Her foot squelched. Grimacing on instinct, she stepped back and looked down at the floor. There was a dark spot on the carpet to the side of the table. She looked to the vase again suspiciously. She knew she'd caught it before it spilled. The carpet had absorbed too much of the water for it to have been from Sherlock knocking it off the table.

The resident lived modestly, but right away, Emili knew it was a woman's apartment. As if the pastel wasn't enough of a giveaway, there were bras hanging up on a laundry line by the open laundry room. There was a washer, but no dryer. There was a changing screen pulled on a curtain in part of the parlor. The kitchen was small but seemed well-equipped. More interesting was the bedroom; it and the bathroom were accessed from the hall they had entered into. It felt weird to go straight to the personal effects, so Em wandered into the living area.

The loud buzzing from the doorbell made her jump, but then John's voice came shouting up from the mail slot in the door. "D'you think you could maybe let me in? Please?" Emili covered her mouth. Sherlock looked up, appeared to consider, and then shook his head. John sighed when no one answered. "Can you not keep doing this, please?"

Sherlock pried open the washer. Emili found a day planner on the kitchen island and plucked it up.

Sherlock pulled something out of the washer and sniffed it. Waterlogged, the fabric was just a crumpled mess until it was put up to dry. The pink-haired girl chose to ignore Sherlock's habits of smelling things that didn't need to be smelled at. He put it back and closed the machine.

The day planner was a bust. Emili herself couldn't keep up with day planners. Her memory and her alarm calendar on her phone kept her where she needed to be, but she hated constantly carrying and editing planners. The first two months were organized, but after that, it seemed like the owner had practically forgotten it existed. She closed it and dropped it back where it had been.

Sherlock mumbled. "We're not the first."

Emili frowned, thinking about the vase. "I noticed that."

Her brother bent down to look at the carpeting. Em stuck her hands in her pockets and went to go look at the TV. Whoever lived here had been halfway through doing her laundry, had left her things out, and her windows open. She hadn't planned on leaving. Emili hoped desperately that she hadn't been an innocent civilian caught in the crossfire of the smugglers operating downstairs.

Beside the TV, there was a small little picture frame. Em looked at it thoughtfully and then pulled her sleeve down over her hand. She lifted it by the frame to see the photograph inside. It was of two Chinese siblings, standing side-by-side. They had the same eyes, high cheek arches, and hair color. The girl looked younger, but she was smiling slightly. The brother seemed far more serious and beaten down. There were smudges over the little girl's face and hair. She knew that fingerprints wouldn't work, but she still had to wonder why someone had broken in and touched something they didn't then steal. If they had been the woman's fingers, then why was the fixation on the girl who Emili could only assume had been herself?

"Size eight feet," Sherlock determined from a shoe imprint. Em glanced at him over her shoulder, his back hunched, his Belstaff pooling over his heels as he knelt. "Small, but… athletic."

Petite and athletic seemed like it would be a good physical description for someone who could climb up the outside balcony of Tower 42 and escape unscathed. She didn't want to get too hopeful, or jump to conclusions, but given the location of the apartment in relation to the drop-off, it was looking more and more like the tenant had gotten caught in a very bad place. Maybe she'd seen something she shouldn't have.

She chose to go the bedroom and look around a little bit. Sherlock didn't say anything as she left the main room. Em kept expecting her shoes to make the floor squeak, giving away that there were people upstairs above the emporium.

As she went into the bedroom, she had to pass by the open window again. She sent a short look at the table. It was a strange location for anything practical, but the flower vase made for a pretty decoration – or, it would, she imagined, if there had been flowers in it instead of just the water.

Why put water in, but not flowers? Unless the flowers died, but she hasn't been here to move them.

"Small, strong hands," Sherlock made his deductions out loud for Emili to hear. She appreciated that he went out of his way to do that. It didn't always clear the air, but it made it a hell of a lot easier to keep up with his thought processes.

Emili looked around the bedroom. It was small, cozy, and mostly empty. The linens on the single-sized bed were a pale lavender, and the room smelled like cherries. A scented air freshener was clipped to a vent. There was a stuffed bear on the table by the bed, the sheets were neatly turned down, and although one of the drawers was open slightly, nothing seemed broken or out of place. There was no TV, no computer, no phone – nothing of value that Emili could see, unless there was something sewn into the stuffed animal, but that seemed unlikely.

The vase and the water spill kept worrying her. She knew that she had almost knocked it over getting in, but there had already been water on the carpet when they'd broken in; which meant someone else had knocked it over, too, and more recently than the phone book had been delivered, because otherwise the carpet would've absorbed it all and dried. The window had been opened for the killer, possibly by the killer, and the water was spilled in the break in.

How long did we miss him by? Emili wondered, disheartened. If we'd been a bit faster, we might've caught him here. Listlessly, her mind elsewhere, she pulled out drawers to look inside for anything suspicious. We should've noticed that the window was open when we were walking past earlier. It was fortunate that it had been left open for them. It was unusual for the person they were chasing to make a mistake, but leaving the window open for them to notice and break in through had been…

… Had been sloppy. Sloppy and forgetful, which an assassin for a Chinese smuggling ring couldn't ever afford to be. Emili was fairly sure that sloppiness and forgetfulness in an assassin would only get said assassin assassinated.

"Why didn't he close the window?" She called out to Sherlock, standing up and bumping the drawers shut with her knee. "Makes it a little obvious someone broke in."

She couldn't think of what they would get out of people knowing there had been a break-in. If people noticed, the police would be called. Why would they want law enforcement so close to their drop-off site? They wouldn't. Why take the risk? The only logical assumption was that the window was supposed to be closed, but the killer hadn't had the opportunity to close it yet.

Because they had shown up.

It seemed that she and Sherlock realized they weren't alone at the same time. From the main room, Sherlock's low voice requested her, deceptively calm. His alarm was only noticeable from the authoritative demand in his voice. "Emili, come to me, now."

"Yeah," she replied, slowly stepping away from the bed. She had a flashback to watching a Child's Play movie, where a victim had stood too close to the mattress and gotten their heels sliced because they hadn't seen who was underneath. "Yeah, we should probably… go…"

As she looked at the edge of the shadows under the bed, she saw something irregular, just a slight change in the hue of the shadow, like there was even more light being blocked there. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck rose with anxiety, but, like those idiots in horror movies, she couldn't bring herself to just walk away. She was scared that if she turned her back, the assassin would come up from behind her.

She had come very close to losing her life more than once already and was in no way keen to repeat the experience. Although she was afraid, she was never one to be paralyzed in fear. Emili was good at running. She wasn't as great at fighting, but she was determined, and she wouldn't let herself be slaughtered like a lamb if she was caught.

Slowly, very gradually, she lowered herself down to her hands and knees. She bent her elbows, staying very carefully balanced so she could jump up. She lowered her head, closer and closer to the floor, looking further and further under the bed, until she-

Crash!

In the main room, something slammed and something else shattered. She heard the beginning of a shout, choked off as someone's throat was forcibly crushed. She jumped up in a panic and started to run out of the bedroom. While she'd been distracted by what was probably just storage or clothing forgotten under the bed, the real threat was with her brother.

In the living room, she stopped and held her hands up, still prepared to fight. The curtain that been hanging to one side of the room like a dressing screen had been ripped down, and the photograph Emili had picked up to look at was knocked off the table it had been on, causing the noises she'd heard from the bedroom.

Sherlock laid on his front on the floor, one of his hands clawing at his throat, the other arm trapped between his side and the knee of the man kneeling over him. Emili could clearly see that the figure was male – he was flat-chested and narrow-hipped – and dressed all in thick black clothes. Even his murder weapon was black, an ebony ligature he was pulling tight against her brother's throat.

Without stopping to think, Emili rushed them. The murderer was kneeling over Sherlock's body, so she came at him with all she had, leaping for him and tackling him sideways. Emili landed hard on her shoulder after the man in a full ski mask tumbled in front of her, and before she could really start to feel the ache in the arm she landed on, she wrapped both arms around his shoulders and held on tight.

Sherlock rolled to the side, gasping. Emili caught a flash of the ligature in one of the man's hands, but she insistently held on. She almost lost her hold when his arm jerked back, and a second later, she felt a blooming, stabbing pain erupt in her breast.

Bastard, she seethed painfully. Instead of letting go, she squeezed her right arm around his throat while he tried to push himself into a sitting position, and she sank her teeth as powerfully as she could into his shoulder, the fleshiest part of his body that she could reach. She knew she broke skin, but the thick material of whatever he was wearing only took on a slightly metallic-y tang, absorbing most of the blood.

He jerked like an oily fish. Em kept her teeth in him as long as she could, but the spry movement of his muscles and the power with which he arched and threw himself backwards dislodged her and smacked her head into the floor. Bony elbows and heavy muscle rolled over her, a heel catching on her knee temporarily, and then the assassin was off of her, leaving her on the floor.

She felt vaguely like a pit bull. Nausea rose in her stomach and the ceiling seemed to waver, like it was uncertain how far away it was. Her vision cleared itself to the background noise of Sherlock spluttering and forcing himself to cough, clearing his throat and recovering. Although she still felt a little sick from how hard she hit her head, Emili was more concerned with how she felt certain there would be a big bruise on her upper arm, and how she strongly suspected that her chest would never stop hurting.

Forcing herself to her feet, she blinked hard, forcing the world to right itself. With her left hand, she awkwardly rubbed her breast over her shirt, and pressed the heel of her other hand hard into her forehead, trying to literally push back the headache.

"Em-" Sherlock's raspy voice tried to warn.

She doubted she'd have been able to react if it weren't for the adrenaline rush she got when she saw a flash of black pass by her eyes, and then felt the thin cord pull back around her throat. The assassin had come up behind her.

At first, she panicked. She was going to be choked to death, asphyxiated by a smuggler. Desperately, she pulled forward, eager to get out of the hold, and then harder, because she couldn't escape and needed more force-

And then she realized that all she was accomplishing was choking herself faster by pushing more pressure around the ligature. Regathering her wits, she tried not to feel the rasp in her throat. It hadn't been long enough for her to start feeling lightheaded, but her anger and her fear made her fast and strong. She threw her hands behind her, grabbed onto her opponent's hips, and stepped back into him, pressing her back flush against his front. The moment of slack in the rope let her twist around so that the less fragile side of her neck was to the ligature, and she grabbed next onto the man's shoulders.

Emili hugged him as closely as she could. She knew that, as long as he could tighten the ligature, she was in immediate danger. Her first priority had to be preventing him from choking her. If he pulled on the ligature while she faced him, it would be much harder for him to crush her windpipe. If she held on, it would be much harder for him to turn her back around or get behind her again. She had to stay as close to him as possible so that he didn't have room to cross his arms and wrap the ligature around the front of her throat again.

He was small, but he was still taller than Emili. She pressed her forehead to his chest and started to go on the offense while he struggled to kill her. She lifted her feet and stomped hard on his toes, and whenever she got the option to do so, she kicked the toes of her boots into his shins. He kept stepping back, and Emili kept stepping forward, until she noted that they were close to a wall, and she dropped down suddenly. The cord tried to catch her before she could escape, but although she felt a pull and a sharp pinch in her ear, she was free.

"Any time you want to include me!" John shouted up from the mail slot, impatiently waiting for them to let him in or finish their examination. Emili had practically forgotten he was waiting outside.

"John-!" Sherlock started to yell, no doubt to tell him they were being attacked, but his voice was hoarse and dry, and his shout had very little volume. He coughed and rubbed his throat.

John, oblivious, started to mock them. ""No, I'm Sherlock Holmes, and I always work alone because no one else can compete with my massive intellect!""

The assassin came back at Emili, this time slamming into her and taking her to the ground. She tried to turn around but didn't quite make it; still, she didn't bash her head this time, so she supposed that counted for something. With a spry and strong man atop her, she had no chance of getting up.

He started to try to get his hands on either side of her head again. She could guess what would be reacquainting itself with her neck soon thereafter if she let him continue.

The man wasn't as interested with her hands, since he assumed she would futilely try to protect her throat; so she managed to get her palms on the carpet in front of her, and then, with as much power as she could muster, she threw her head up, arching her back and pushing against the floor. She connected the back of her head into the assassin's face. She heard a quiet, distinct crunch as she broke his nose.

Feet came near them, the footsteps quick. Sherlock joined the fight, grabbing onto the killer by his shoulders and forcefully lifting him off of Emili. She rolled over onto her back and kicked, slamming the heel of her boot into the black-clad male's kneecap. That, combined with Sherlock's well-timed shove, sent him sprawling out on the carpet.

He wasn't down for long. The monster rose, quick and nimble, to his feet. His first step with his left leg, the one Emili hit, was more like an uncoordinated stumble than a stride, but although he had a strange gait for a few paces, he was still incredibly fast. He bolted towards the hall to escape out the open window. Emili prayed that John wouldn't notice, and that he wouldn't try to intervene. She doubted the man would be beaten in a one-on-one fight, and she didn't remember John bringing his gun today.

Seeing that he wasn't going to come back for another round, Emili let herself sink back down. She thudded her head softly onto the carpet, let her leg drop solidly onto the floor, and relaxed her arms, all with a loud, pained sigh.

Her neck was sore and her throat felt raw, like she'd been coughing for days. Her chest, admittedly, was not as painful as it had been, but it was still a discomfort to be reckoned with, and now both of her arms had been landed on with the majority of her weight. Her ear stung, her head hurt with both a general headache and with a more concentrated ache where she'd used it to break someone's nose, and she could almost feel a divot in her spine where she swore the man's knee had caused a permanent indentation while he was struggling to hold her down.

Sherlock, still standing, breathed heavily. After a few seconds, he bent over and offered her his hands.

"Are you alright?" He asked, voice rough.

"Mm," she answered with a groan, reluctantly taking his hands and letting him help her to her feet. She moved slowly, wary of getting up too quickly. "I'll be fine. Just – my ear." Her hand flew to her earlobe and felt the telltale warmth of a small amount of blood. "One of my earrings was pulled out," she sighed disappointedly. It didn't feel like it had been ripped, but the pull at an odd angle had aggravated her piercing. She was going to have to disinfect when she got home, and she'd have to stop wearing earrings for a couple of days until it healed. "How about you?"

Sherlock, in answer, rubbed over his throat. She nodded in understanding.

"Turning into the ligature," he started to rasp. "Where did you learn that?"

Em flushed and shrugged. "Read it somewhere," she explained with a slight redness to her face. She was a little embarrassed to admit that she actually looked up self-defense tips after the Moriarty character paid the taxi driver to poison her. "If someone can start choking you, they always have the option of finishing unless you attack them right back. It's counterintuitive, so I guess it's not common sense."

Sherlock nodded. It made sense to him. "That was good," he told her honestly, coughing and wincing. "What you did, that was… good." She got the feeling that he wasn't referring to her fighting anymore, and instead was intending to comment on how she'd rescued him.

"Good," she echoed faintly. She was a little guilty that she hadn't known he was being choked until he'd clearly been overpowered, but she was proud that she had had the courage to interrupt. "Ow," she repeated sulkily, wiping the blood on her fingers off on her jeans. She reached up to smooth down her hair, feeling frazzled, and felt her hair a little damp and matted. She froze. "Ew!"

"What?" Sherlock asked warily.

She took her hand around. Sure enough, there were light red stains on her palm. She wiped it furiously on her thigh. "The guy's blood got in my hair!"

That would teach her not to break someone's face while they were on top of her again.