The decision to split up had been pretty unilateral. "Because why work as a team when we can sulk around in the dark like homeless lunatics?" Emili muttered, crossing her arms. She was cold and wishing for a jacket but she knew she wouldn't hear the end of it if she left just then. They had to accomplish their goal, and then follow after Sherlock a while longer to finish the case.

Working with Sherlock was definitely fascinating, but, Emili noted emphatically, there were downfalls. One of them was the way he had a one-track mind when he got hooked on a case – which was just strange and infuriating, giving how well he could multitask. He was used to having John and Emili working with him, and he got insufferable if they didn't. What this meant for his roommates was that they had to either sacrifice their own schedules or deal with his sulking. Emili's sleep schedule would go to hell just as soon as she'd gotten it straightened out again.

There weren't streetlights by the train station. It seemed like it was meant to be used during the day, or just stopped while the conductors rested at night, like a lay station. Her eyes had adjusted pretty well, but it was still dark and she couldn't see very far in front of her with clarity. For the most part, Emili kept her eyes to the ground, watching where she stepped, and looked up at the large metal storage containers' sides as she walked by them.

She cracked her knuckles and shoved her hands underneath her upper arms, huddling tightly down to preserve her warmth. While her eyes roamed over spray-painted and stenciled tags, she longingly thought back to Pride and Prejudice, sitting by her very soft pillow, her very cuddly sheets, her heated mattress pad…

The teenager groaned and stopped walking for a second, rubbing her eyes exhaustedly. "I'm way too young to want to read Jane Austen," she complained.

Crunch!

The ground was growing sparse grass, but it was mostly covered in crunchy, dead leaves and small rocks. Her head shot up quickly when she heard a leaf crumble behind her and she turned around swiftly.

"Hello?!" She called, uncrossing her arms and holding her fists level with her elbows, which were pulled back to her sides in a wary, defensive position. "Who's there?!"

With dead bodies and threats piling up, Emili didn't want to write it off as a small animal. Besides, she reasoned, if it were a small animal, I wouldn't have just heard the one noise. She tried thinking back to when she was walking to see if she remembered any crunches that hadn't come from under her feet but wasn't sure.

If she'd had to guess, then she'd guess that the sound had come from the end of the storage container to her right. She swallowed and listened carefully, though didn't dare to close her eyes. She couldn't see anyone, but her same thoughts from the bridge applied – if someone were athletic and spry enough to scale a building, they could probably move faster than she could.

The more she tried to hear, the less she actually heard. It was unnerving. Other than the gentle splashes and rocking from the Thames not too far away, there was nothing but her own breathing. There weren't even the sounds of crickets, raccoons, or other nocturnal animals. The hair on the back of her neck raised, the feeling of being in danger coming back threefold.

"Raz?" Emili called, rooted in place, hoping against hope that the street artist was just trying to pull a prank. She'd thought that he'd left after Sherlock strut off to search on his own, but maybe she was wrong. "This isn't funny!" Her heart sank when no response came.

She considered how far away she was from the skate park. There were probably still people there, but she had come a fair distance up the train yard, and she was already at least ninety percent sure that she wasn't physically fit enough to outrun whoever was following her, assuming that they were with the smugglers. The only other person she might think would want to watch her was Moriarty, but given that she still had no idea who that was or what he wanted, other than Sherlock's attention, that seemed like too high of a coincidence for her to seriously consider at the moment.

The bottom line that she focused on was that she strongly doubted she was as alone as she had thought, and safety seemed very out of reach.

Em swallowed thickly, feeling her throat catch.

Her only other options were to… what, scream or fight? She barely fought off the assassin the first time, and that was with Sherlock's help. Screaming would hardly work – even if John or Sherlock heard, by the time they found her she could already have been attacked and killed, her body lying on the ground. As fear built up, Emili involuntarily imagined herself on her back, her pink hair caught with leaves and dirt, a bloodstain on her shoulder, eyes glassy and face greying.

Thud-crunch!

The sounds started again, but this time, they were definitely footsteps, and they had lurched into action suddenly, coming towards her. Emili nearly shrieked when she realized they were getting closer before she saw that there was no one in front of her, and then she understood that the initial crunch had been her stalker moving to hide behind the container. He'd probably been spooked by that she'd stopped to complain and wake herself up a little, then hidden, and now he knew his cover was blown and was racing up the other side of the container.

Whether he was trying to get away or come up from behind her and choke her to death, Emili wasn't going to wait around and find out. As suddenly as she had been paralyzed in terror, she was released from the ground and her feet were flying, sprinting back down the length of the container.

As she reached the end of the container, she sped up while she crossed the gap between it and the next one in line. In her panic, she could almost feel herself being tackled down to the ground by the killer, whom had doubled-back just to catch her as she passed by the space. She couldn't hear his footsteps anymore, not over her own and the thundering pounding of her heartbeat and the blood rushing through her ears.

She'd never run faster than she was running now, not even when she'd been pursued onto the rooftop of the Roland Kerr college. She just fled as quickly as she could, adrenaline shooting through her veins, terror clouding her mind nearly out of reason-

She bolted past another container and a few yards further, her right foot caught on something hard. She let out a short scream, both in pain and in fear, and bowled over. Her balance was ripped away so abruptly that she crashed violently to the ground, slamming her left knee into the dirt. She tried catching herself, but her right hand landed on a line of metal that dug into her palm painfully before her momentum carried her onto her side. Her head smacked on the ground, although not very hard, and Emili rolled past the obstruction in the ground.

As she tumbled from her side to her back again, she felt momentarily weightless before she realized she was falling. Then, before she could really process and react to that, she landed hard with a wheeze, the air knocked out of her lungs. Her head bounced on softer dirt and she groaned.

"Em?!"

A man's voice called for her and, for just a second, between the panic and the hits to her head, Emili thought it was her father.

What's he doing here…? I thought… "Dad?" She mumbled, rocking onto her side and getting on her knees. Her chest felt sore, her right hand burned, her knees and her foot stung, and her head ached like crazy.

"Em! Is that you?!" More footsteps, but this time there was the voice with them, and as she blinked, dizzily regaining her balance and clearing her mind, she recognized it. It was John, not her father; but, given how close she thought she'd come to dying only moments ago, she was still relieved enough to almost start crying.

"John?!" She called back, wondering how far he was and sitting up on her knees, looking for him. It seemed even darker than it had been before. "John!" She shouted, wanting company. She wanted to feel safe. John reminded her of being safe and protected.

The footsteps just paused and then a heavy thud landed behind her. Emili turned her head to look over her shoulder and saw John had jumped down the short, maybe three-foot drop-off on their side of the train tracks. He quickly crossed the short distance to her and moved in front of her, reaching for her wrists, moving his hands up to her elbows, and helping her stand.

Her legs shook, knees feeling like Jell-O. Emili sniffed and took a hand to her face, delicately touching her cheek. Her face felt hot, but didn't hurt, and the ache in her head, while not going away completely, was significantly lesser than it had been a minute ago.

John took her by her shoulders and looked her over, squinting to see in the dark. "We've only been apart ten minutes!" He exclaimed, seeming shocked. "Oh, Jesus, Em. What happened?" He moved a hand to her face and Emili started to pull away before remembering that she'd hit her head and he was a doctor. Instead of touching her hair, John gently rubbed the hem of his long sleeve over her cheek where she'd touched. "You're bleeding," he said with a frown. "From your hand."

Emili looked down at her right hand, the one she'd used to touch her face. Her palm and fingers shone in the little moonlight there was to see by. That explains why it hurts so much. When I tried catching myself on the track, I must've hit a nail or piece of glass.

"I was being followed," she hurried to explain, distraught and wiping off her bloodied hand on her jeans. "I heard them!" She moved her other hand to cover her mouth. The sound felt like it rang in her ears and the sinister footsteps, although she couldn't hear them anymore, felt like an ax hanging over her head.

John looked to the side quickly, moving as if to fight and protect someone, and stilled when he listened but didn't hear anything.

She rubbed her nose. "I'm not crazy, John, I'm not," she insisted shakily. Emili was calming down, and she knew that she'd freaked out, but she also knew what she had heard.

John looked back to her and squeezed her shoulders comfortingly. "No, you're not," he agreed without hesitation. His voice was soothing. "Okay? Of course you're not." He pulled her towards him and Emili hid her face in his shoulder, despite being a little taller. She could see even less with her vision obscured by his sweater, but she also felt safer, because all she could see and smell were familiar things she associated with her friend.

John rubbed her back, leaning his cheek on her head and patiently giving her time to catch her breath and regain her wits. After about thirty seconds – a long hug, but a very helpful one – Emili shuddered.

"I hate the dark," she muttered, laxing her grip on his clothes. "I just – I hate it."

"Well, lucky for you I've got a torch, then, isn't it?" John gently assured.

Emili took a small step away and rubbed her face again with her uninjured hand. John took a flashlight out of his belt, felt along its length, and clicked on the button. Immediately, a flood of artificial, slightly yellow light shone out the end and illuminated the ground. John, able to see better, rubbed her shoulder as another comfort and swung his wrist around, lighting up the space around them and showing that there was nothing slinking just out of reach. Em tried following the light, seeing for herself.

As John flashed the light around to his right (Emili's left), it landed on the side of yet another long container. The teenager was starting to feel like she was in a maze of them. The white color on this was interrupted by a splash of yellow paint – or, as Emili noticed when her eyes were drawn to it, it was more like a line of yellow paint.

John was looking the other way, checking the scene and ensuring their safety again. They knew the container was to that side, so it wasn't a priority. Emili was glad that John had the flashlight with him, though, because without it, she probably wouldn't have seen the Hangzhou graffitied on it.

"There…" Emili whispered, crossing her arms to protect her hand and relieved to have found what they were looking for.

John, softly, kept comforting her. "Yes, that's right," he encouragingly soothed. "You're safe now, I promise. I've shot someone hurting you once before, haven't I?" The doctor offered her a protective and sweet smile that Emili couldn't help but return. Not for the first time, she was incredibly glad that John had decided to stick around at 221 Baker Street.

"No-" she started to correct, but then frowned. "Well, I mean, yes," she amended, confirming that he had, in fact, gone pretty far to save her life before.

Emili didn't really like thinking about that. While it was reassuring that someone would kill to protect her, it was also distressing to recall that John had shot Jeff Hope. Admittedly the shot hadn't intentionally been fatal, but it had still taken his life. Maybe he'd deserved it, maybe he didn't – it wasn't Emili's place to say. She was just grateful that her own life had been prolonged.

"But no, I meant there," she specified, uncrossing her arms and pointing out towards the container's side. "Look."

The man turned the flashlight back to the container after giving her a confused frown. The expression changed to one of understanding seconds later as he recognized the paint color and the symbols. Then, continuing to rove the light over the side of the structure, the comprehension transitioned to shock. The entire side was covered with it – it was probably ten or twelve feet tall by at least twenty feet wide. If the one graphic they'd been seeing had only been a simple threat, then the Hangzhou on the entirety of the container wall could have composed an entire letter.


Finding Sherlock again was a great deal more time-consuming than it should have been, considering that the area of the train yard wasn't really that large. When there's what seems like a maze of freight containers, despite the regular spacing and placement of them, and the person being sought doesn't answer their phone, it takes a lot longer than it should to locate them, as John and Emili discovered.

In the end, it was the glow of another flashlight that gave away where Sherlock was. They saw the light bouncing off of metal and illuminating the corner of an adjacent container while they were walking down a row. It was a great relief to Emili to see her brother again – especially given how formidable the assassin had proved to be. When Sherlock hadn't answered his phone, Em had really started to worry.

John had Emili's wrist in his hand and was pulling her with him, too on-edge to want to let go of her. She was alright with this. It was comforting, in a way, even though she should've been affronted that John didn't already know she wasn't dumb enough to wander off on her own.

"Excuse you!" John hissed tetchily. Emili knew him well enough to read that he'd been concerned about Sherlock's radio silence, too. "Answer your phone!"

Sherlock lowered the flashlight from where it was resting in the crook of his elbow, angled up towards the top of a container, while he was doing something on the very phone that he hadn't deigned necessary to answer several times in the last few minutes.

"I've been busy," he answered, fixated on whatever else he was looking up. He checked the graffiti he was looking at again as a reference before going to his phone screen again.

John was having none of it. Emili, too, was starting to get angry. What if she hadn't been able to run? What if she'd been in serious trouble and had called Sherlock for help? Oh, she was sure he would have come to help her if he had known why she would try to contact him, but if he didn't bother to answer his phone, then he would have no way of knowing to begin with. The assumption that her, or John's, potential needs were less important than screwing around with his phone and vandalism was enough to make her blood boil if she thought about it long enough.

John started to yell. "You-!" He stopped, squeezed Em's wrist a little, and swallowed, forcing himself to calm down and talk in a marginally more polite tone, with a significantly lower volume. He forced himself to remain civil. "Yes, well, your sister just about had a heart attack when I found her. Being chased.

"We should never have split off on our own while trying to locate a dangerous hitman in a smuggling operation!" Now that he summarized what they'd done out loud, John looked astounded that he had even let it happen in the first place. Em felt a little foolish, too. "Em could've been killed!"

Em had been about to take a turn expressing her own sentiments, but after John's last exclamation, Sherlock actually did look up from his phone. His expression wasn't one of concern the way it was typically expressed, but just giving her his undivided attention in a sharp look over her body was sign enough for Emili that he cared, and some of the aggravation she'd carried evaporated away.

"Is that true?" Sherlock asked with narrowed eyes, seeming to fixate in on how Emili was leaning heavily on her left leg and keeping her right hand up higher than her elbow.

"You think I would lie?" John asked, sounding like he was again getting mad. Meanwhile, Emili nodded solemnly at Sherlock, not wanting to show how shaken she was. She felt a lot better, but still was a little lost for words in shock.

Sherlock tipped his head slightly in acknowledgment that John was really not the type to make jokes or stories about someone being in danger, but pointedly allowed, "You do have a tendency to exaggerate."

"He's not," Emili cut in before John's temper had him raise his voice again. Now she shared what she'd been noticing for days with Sherlock. "Look, earlier, I noticed someone watching us – John and me – and then, again, in Chinatown. I swear someone was following me around the yard, maybe since we left the museum."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, though she got the feeling that it wasn't at her so much as he was thinking, trying to remember if he'd seen anything suspicious and just hadn't paid attention at the time. Her voice, thankfully, was solid and confident, though perhaps a little fast. She attributed it to the leftover adrenaline and the eeriness of the yard right after the serious spook.

"Interestingly, they laid off when we found this other container down the tracks." Emili took her hand away from John's and pointed down in the direction they'd come and a little to the right. "We found it. The cipher. Ran blind right to it."

Sherlock's gaze snapped in that direction and he craned his head slightly as if to see further and through the containers in the way. "Show me," he commanded, to John's exasperation.


And show him, they did – or, tried to, at least, but were sorely disappointed when they returned to the scene.

The container they brought Sherlock back to was painted over in solid black. It shone wetly when John aimed his flashlight at it, and when Emili touched her fingertips to it, black stains were left smudged on her skin. Despite that the paint was fresh, it still effectively covered up every inch of the cipher. Gooseflesh chased up her arms. This was proof that she really had been followed. She had been the only one to hear the footsteps, feel watched, but all three of them could see the hidden evidence.

"It's been painted over!" John gasped.

"You're sure this is the place?" Sherlock asked Emili sharply. He didn't sound disappointed, but after a while, Em had learned not to expect things like disappointment or resignation from the detective. It wasn't the way he operated. If there was something to be disappointed about, he wouldn't waste his energy on that feeling when he could instead focus it on finding another solution.

"Yeah, sure." Emili waved her phone light around. Even if the paint hadn't been a dead giveaway that there had been something they weren't meant to see, when she walked over to the train tracks, she found the stretch she had tripped over and found her blood smeared on the copper-colored rail. "Look, that's where I fell."

"I don't understand." John shook his head. Emili doubted that was fully true; John was very clever and it was a pretty simple explanation. "It – it was here! Ten minutes ago, I saw it!" It was a large and tall container, and there had been a lot of cipher. Then again, there could be more than one of the smuggling operatives in the area, and they already knew the assassin moved fast – he had to. "A whole load of graffiti!"

"Somebody doesn't want me to see it," Sherlock mused.

Emili raised her eyebrows and wasn't too sure that he was supposed to have all that emphasis. She strongly doubted she or John were supposed to see it, either, which was probably why her stalker got closer to her when she came close to the cipher. Standing in the dark, surrounded by tall freight containers, it was easy to worry that she was somewhere she definitely wasn't supposed to be.

Before she realized Sherlock had moved for her, his hands grabbed onto her shoulders and turned her around. She tensed up all at once, still prepared to run, and Sherlock moved his hands to both sides of her head and started to move in circles, forcing her to move along with him.

While not the strangest thing Sherlock had ever done, Emili was very not in the mood to put up with his personal-space-invading, unexplained quirkiness.

She sighed and glared up at him. Standing much taller than her, he had to look down to see her, and he was very intently focused on her face. "This is not the proper means of comforting a traumatized teenager, Sherlock," she educated sternly.

"You're not traumatized, you're fine." Emili frowned and opened her mouth to object to that on principle – she was bleeding and stalked by a homicidal smuggler, so no, she felt like she wasn't fine – but Sherlock cut her off. "Shh, concentrate. I need you to concentrate." Well, if it'll help you, Emili sarcastically thought. "Close your eyes."

Keeping her eyes open on Sherlock, who was moving with her, kept her from getting dizzy. Emili wasn't feeling up to another tumble, and she still didn't feel willing to play along with his antics. "I don't think so."

Thankfully, he moved his hands off of her head. The downside was that he moved them to her upper arms instead, and he squeezed her arms tightly, spinning her still. Emili kept trying to steal glances at the short drop-off to make sure she wasn't about to fall over it – again.

Losing her patience, she accused, "Are you trying to make me trip?"

"I need you to maximize your visual memory," Sherlock impatiently explained. Emili raised her eyebrows. "Try to picture what you saw," Sherlock commanded, trying to coach an uncooperative non-volunteer. "Can you picture it? John, take notes. You're next."

"I'm what?" John asked, alarmed.

"Yep." Emili flatly stated. "Got it."

"Can you remember it?" Sherlock prompted, not letting go of her.

"Ab-so-lutely." She dryly replied, eyes locked on his to show just how very unimpressed she was with his behavior.

"Can you remember the pattern?" Her brother was not deterred by her lack of enjoyment.

"Uh-huh."

"How much can you remember?"

"All of it."

"Are you sure?" Sherlock stressed, highly skeptical, "Because the average human memory on visual matters is only sixty-two percent accurate."

"Mine's one-hundred percent," Emili sassed back at him. She knew the claim wasn't true, but Sherlock was being ridiculous, so she thought she was allowed to make some ridiculous statements, too.

Sherlock's scoff let her feel his cynicism. "Oh, really?"

"Yes!" Emili shrugged violently and reached up to shove his arms away from her. "Or, at least, it will be, when you let me get to my phone!" Sherlock didn't move back but he let her shove his arms down. She cradled her right hand to her chest and reached into her pocket with the other. "I took photos. We're not idiots, we realize someone doesn't want us to find these."

Truthfully, she'd taken the photos on the off chance that she could convince Sherlock to leave the train yard sooner. Despite knowing her hopes were far-fetched, John had agreed that it was a good idea, if for no reason other than being able to reference the cipher after they eventually did leave.

Em let her fingerprint scan open the lock screen and pulled up her most recent apps. Photos was the last one accessed, and she drew up the large, flash-enabled photographs of yellow Hangzhou. When she turned it around to obnoxiously shove the screen in his face as payback for making her dance around like a monkey, Sherlock actually looked a little embarrassed – or, at least, as cowed as she had ever seen him look, which probably amounted to about the same thing.


Emili didn't get her phone back for over an hour. Sherlock didn't want to take his eyes off of the cipher for any longer than he had to. She thought it was kind of funny – he was so fascinated by something he couldn't understand, and it was frustrating, so the longer he worked, the more agitated he got.

He printed them off at Baker Street and stuck them onto the wall with thumbtacks, along with the news clip-outs and the photographs of crime scenes. He had an entire section of the wall squared away for the case, and honestly, if they ever had normal house guests, Emili was going to have a hard time explaining Sherlock Holmes' Wall of Death and Mystery.

"Always in pairs…" Sherlock mumbled thoughtfully, his head tilted, his back perfectly straight, and his hands steepled under his chin. He stood right in front of the wall as if they were going to speak to him.

John sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea that was beginning to stop steaming. He had barely drunken any of it, too busy fighting with the urge to sleep. Emili was faring little better. After they got home, John cleaned and dressed her hand and made his tea, but Emili was antsy and kept moving, trying to do whatever little she could to keep up her neighbors' flat. She was scared of trying to sleep – afraid she'd have another nightmare so soon after being chased.

Amusingly, John started to drift off again and the hand that had been propping up his head slipped. His chin got halfway to the table before the sudden motion jolted him awake and he shot up so fast that his chair scraped the floor.

"Hm?" He blearily blinked.

"Numbers come with partners." Sherlock stated. Emili wasn't too sure she followed. Luckily, she was ninety percent sure that the timing in regards to John's voice was entirely coincidental.

John blinked again, slow and sluggish, and then decided he could no longer even try to follow Sherlock's reasoning. "God, I need to sleep," he grumbled, rubbing his eyes hard with the heels of his hands.

Sherlock ignored John's complaints. "Why did he paint it so near the tracks?" He wondered, trying to piece together everything he didn't know.

The teenager could keep her eyes open, but it was harder to stay focused. "It's more isolated?" She guessed, but then frowned. "Maybe?" While it wasn't a popular sightseeing destination, it was part of a train station. People passed by it every time a train went by. Not to mention that it was a good place for skating, as evidenced by the skate park, and Emili had seen a lot of empty liquor bottles and crushed cigarettes.

"It's not isolated," Sherlock corrected her. Em narrowed her eyes. Was he really just only deeming them worth responding to if they were wrong and could be contradicted? Yeah… that sounded like the kind of bratty thing he'd do. "Not in that sense, anyway – thousands of people pass by every day. There are far more particular places he could have chosen instead."

"Just twenty minutes…" John groused, rubbing his hands over his face and pulling at his cheeks. He left pale marks on his face that took a few seconds to fade.

"Of course…" Sherlock muttered. Emili looked up suddenly, barely brave enough to hope. Was he actually agreeing that they should sleep? "Of course!" Her brother shouted, making John startle. Sherlock snapped away from the wall and strode to the wall, picking his coat off the rack. Emili groaned. "He wants information. He's trying to communicate with his people in the underworld. Whatever was stolen, he wants it back. Somewhere here in the code, and we can't crack this without Soo Lin Yao."

John sarcastically put his hands down and leaned back. He had had dark circles under his eyes since Emili met him, but they looked darker than she'd ever seen. "Oh, good," he snarked.

Em considered her options briefly. Should she put her foot down and go to bed, or continue chasing after Sherlock? After being chased in the train yard, any sane person would want to stay home. … But Van Coon and Lukis had both already done a very convincing job of proving that home wasn't always safe, and now that Emili knew she was being stalked, she wanted very much to close the case. It would be harder to do if she stayed home while Sherlock investigated and lost out on the opportunity to glean information.

She resigned herself with a sigh and picked up her cardigan from the back of the couch, going for the door after Sherlock. John's chair scraped on the floor as he stood up to follow. Instead of going down the stairs towards the entry at Baker Street, Emili took the staircase to the left, ascending to her flat.

"Where are you going?" Sherlock stopped to demand, sounding miffed that she wasn't just trailing behind on his coattails. "Come this way. We must get to the antiquities museum at once." She kept moving up the stairs, rolling her eyes. "Finding Soo Lin is our only chance at finding what they're after!"

"Sixty seconds and I'll be back," she promised, only because she thought he might ditch her if she didn't. "I'm getting an iced coffee, or I'll fall asleep on you in the taxi."