Considering that she hadn't been convinced she was ever going to actually wake up, it was a pleasant surprise for Emili when she did. The pleasant surprise quickly turned sour when she was awake for more than one heartbeat and became aware of the splitting headache in her skull. It throbbed with every pulse of blood in her head.
The voices around her didn't help matters. Sherlock snapped angrily. His voice was close to her ear. "You're a doctor!" He accused, and Emili belatedly realized that she was lifted up by arms under her torso, keeping her held to a man's chest.
"I don't know, Sherlock!" John shouted back, sounding panicked and upset. "All I know is that she's breathing, and she's not been shot!"
Emili slowly opened her eyes. The lights left a lot to be desired, but now she was glad that they were so low and ineffective. She could see Sherlock and John's faces. Both were worried, John was a little guilty and his face was red. It registered that she must've been unconscious for a little while and given how awful her head felt – like she actually had been shot – she wasn't sure that was a bad thing.
"Sh'rlock…?" Emili asked groggily. Her mouth felt a little numb and she slurred a bit.
"Yes, we're here, Em." Both men had gotten quiet when she spoke, but Sherlock was much calmer and softer when he spoke to her. The clever detective shifted his arms to prop her up a little more vertically. "What did he do?"
"Ow." Emili was already distracted, grimacing and squeezing her eyes shut. "My head…" she moaned.
John's relief was palpable. He touched her head and pushed his fingers through her hair soothingly. "It looks like you have a nasty cut," he said sympathetically. "Maybe even a concussion. I told you to stay hidden!"
"He found us," Emili whined. It wasn't fair for John to scold her. She had a nasty cut, after all.
"Oh my God." Suddenly, John remembered there was another woman Zhi Zhu had actually been trying to attack. "Where's Soo Lin?"
Emili winced and stretched her jaw a little bit. Before she could actually tell, Sherlock answered for her correctly. "She's in the basement. Isn't she?" He asked Emili as an afterthought and already knew he was right. "You're wearing her jumper, I presume to trick her brother into chasing you away from her."
Emili weakly clenched her fist and stuck her thumb out affirmatively. Sherlock snorted.
"'ey, guys, I saved her life." Emili smiled for a second until the next wave of pain in her head hit. "Oh, fuck."
"Em!" John exclaimed, shocked.
Sherlock chuckled. "Yes, you did. That was very brave of you, Em." Emili smiled a little bit again. Sherlock didn't give meaningless platitudes. If he said she did it, then she could trust that she had done it. "Tremendously stupid, of course," he commented with an air of stating the obvious. "But also very brave."
She smiled happily between both of them. Emili didn't get validation from Sherlock very often. It was nice to have him treat her as something more than a total nuisance, and to hear that she did a good job, even though she'd been so afraid.
Sherlock shifted his arms a little bit to help her sit up, but it changed where she was looking and she shut her eyes again with a groan. Light made her head hurt worse. "… Can I go to a hospital now…?" She asked, grimacing.
Both of the men laughed. John's was very nervous and concerned. Sherlock sounded slightly more affectionate, and he moved one arm out from behind Emily's back and pushed his hand underneath her knees.
"You get Soo Lin," he instructed John, lifting himself off of his knees and picking up Emili with him. She felt weightless with how easily he lifted her. "Tell her it's safe to come out now."
Emili mumbled. Right after being told she did good, she was being carried around like a little kid. "Let me up," she protested quietly.
"Nonsense," Sherlock stated briskly. "I'll carry you. For all we know you could be concussed to the point of walking right off the steps."
After a ride in the taxi, Sherlock was more willing to let Emili help herself, but neither of them trusted her ability to hold her own. John was far more patient, and he pulled Emili's right arm over his shoulders. As much as she wanted to insist that she wasn't badly hurt, when she let John help her out of the car, she was hit with a wave of queasiness and felt her head throb with a renewed vengeance.
The clinic was an A&E – which Emili learned when John took the job was like the British version of urgent care – and so it was open all around the clock. The waiting room was mostly empty except for a small, sleepy boy and his either mother or aunt, and a young woman who'd been waiting so long she'd fallen asleep and was snoring with her head back against the wall. The lights were fluorescent and bright, and she squinted and looked towards the floor. John let her come in slowly. Her legs were working fine, but moving too quickly made her feel dizzy.
"Excuse me," the doctor called. In a snap, all the nice things the teenager had been thinking about his manners were gone. The volume was totally uncalled for. It did the trick and got attention. The receptionist looked up from where she was tapping at her computer and cocked her head, beginning to stand up when she recognized John. "Yes, my friend's just been attacked. She needs to be seen to."
Part of Emili was flattered to be called his friend, and another wondered what it might look like to a stranger that a man almost in his forties was calling an unrelated sixteen-year-old his friend. Yet another remained distantly curious where Soo Lin was, and a fourth fraction was a little annoyed that instead of her brother taking care of her, it was her brother's roommate. She liked John, but it was the principle that mattered.
The receptionist, Emili realized on second thought, squinting, wasn't actually an average receptionist. Maybe a doctor, or a nurse. She wore scrubs, had her dark hair tethered back in a low ponytail, and dangled a stethoscope around her neck. She walked out around the desk as another woman, also in white scrubs, entered the waiting room from a door to the left. The new one had blonde hair in a shorter ponytail.
"Any major trauma?" The receptionist-slash-nurse-slash-doctor asked, coming to them and taking Emili by the arm. She tried to tip Em's head up, but the girl twisted her head away to avoid the light.
"Possible head trauma," John answered quickly, and changed his voice to seem softer and more coaxing. "Come on, now, Em, let us check your eyes."
Emili nearly had her eyes shut, but reluctantly raised her head and followed the nurse's finger when she was prompted. As she did that, the brunette asked her if she could talk.
Her brother had deemed it fit to follow them inside, finally. Sherlock joined them, standing about a foot behind the two, and stated with mild annoyance, "She's hardly stopped talking since she woke up." The concern that had warmed Emili's heart had gone away soon after it was established that she wasn't going to die.
The blonde came closer. "John? Your shift doesn't start for hours."
"I'm not here on call." John shifted his shoulder a bit and Emili put a foot forward so she didn't sway. Her reaction was a bit slow, and even she noticed. "Can you see my friend? She's been attacked," he repeated. Frankly, Emili was surprised there wasn't some more urgency in the situation when he kept saying something like that.
"Of course," the doctor answered, taking her hands out of her deep white pockets and canting her head to observe Emili. The nurse shared a look with the doctor, nodded, and then left for a moment. "It's a slow night."
Again, Em felt there wasn't enough urgency motivating these people. Hello, I was attacked. "Hi," she said aloud, hoping to get a little more attention. She wanted to say she was fine, but she knew she wasn't. She hoped it would go away, but just in case it didn't, medical aid would be much appreciated, and she didn't feel like the blonde doctor was fully grasping that she'd been pistol-whipped so hard that she lost consciousness and had blood in her hair.
The blonde smiled. She looked to be near John's age or maybe a little older, with blush-warmed cheeks and beautiful brown eyes. "I'm Dr. Sarah Sawyer," she introduced herself politely. Em looked away from her and towards John, and saw that he was just staring at Sarah like the model had stepped off the Sears cover. Emili sighed – she'd seen that look on John before, and she knew what it meant. The doctor had a crush.
"I if need to wait so you don't get on trouble for skipping patients, that's okay," she said to them both. Her head was still pounding, but it was already less painful than it had been right after she woke up. With a head wound like hers, she wasn't sure what they could do, anyway. "I have a headache, but I fine feel otherwise."
All three of the adults turned their attention onto her. Sarah and John stared at her with open worry, and Sarah with a little startled confusion mixed in. Emili didn't feel stable enough on her feet to twist her head and look at Sherlock, but she felt like she had eyes on the back of her head and guessed that she was receiving a similar stare from the man behind her.
"What?" She questioned.
Sarah reached for her arm slowly like she thought the girl with pink hair was going to spook and skitter away. Her hand closed around Emili's upper arm and she gently pulled her forward. Emili dropped her arm from around John and let the female doctor lead her away.
"Come on, sweetie," Sarah urged, giving Emili's arm a firm squeeze and moving so that they were side-by-side. The blonde put her arm around the girl to help her stand straight. "Let's get you into a bed, yeah?"
Emili started to turn her head to see if John was coming, but moving her head, plus the bright light, plus walking all made it really hard for her to keep moving in a straight line while trying to concentrate on something else. She gave up and aborted the action, opting tiredly to trust John's judgment on Sarah. From behind her, she heard both of her companions still talking. It sounded like they were making plans.
"You can stay with Emili," Sherlock briskly told John. It wasn't a suggestion. "I'll take Soo Lin to the Yard. I imagine she can get into some protection detail in exchange for insider information on the Tong."
After more than an hour of being spoken to, prodded, and tested by Sarah and John, both of the doctors decided that Emili had a concussion, but her head trauma was luckily mild. The cut on the side of her temple wasn't large enough or deep enough to need stitches. It hurt like a bitch, but Em was thankful they didn't have to shave any of her hair off. Instead, Sarah pulled her hair behind her back and cleaned the cut with an antiseptic-soaked swab, put some gauze around her head like a sweatband, and sent her off with John to go home.
She wasn't allowed to take pills right away, and she also wasn't allowed to sleep. John kept her up for almost an hour after they'd gotten home but had given in once she'd been awake for almost three consecutive hours following the attack. Emili slept like a baby until her phone went off to wake her up. It had only been a few hours, but she felt much better, except for her headache. She took some aspirin, switched out the gauze wrapping for an ice pack, and grabbed her shoes. Like hell was she going to sit back while the adults finished the case. Zhi Zhu hadn't killed her, but he had very intentionally scared the daylights out of her. It felt more personal now.
The problem was that although there were many potential leads, the most promising ones were linked to information that Scotland Yard had. It was John's idea to go to the police, and although Sherlock grumbled and crammed four separate insults into one muttered sentence about Dimmock and Donovan in the same room, he acquiesced.
As expected, it wasn't particularly well received when they started asking for favors. By now, John was over the line of bureaucracy and into the realm of being pissed off. "How many murders is it gonna take before you start believing that this maniac's out there?" He demanded hotly, coming around to stand at the side of Dimmock's desk and glare down.
Sherlock and Emili both remained on the other side of the detective's desk. There wasn't a ton that they could do if they pissed off the inspector, but Emili hoped that he'd be reasonable, if only because catching Tong operatives would look good on his resume. "You have a former smuggler who'll tell you about one of their most skilled assassins – who almost killed me last night, by the way," she added, irked. She wouldn't have been in that position if the police would just do their jobs instead of turning their cheeks when they were told they were overlooking key facts. "And you still think we're being overdramatic?"
Dimmock's rounded face had turned to Emili and started to appear bewildered. She realized suddenly that she hadn't actually asked how much of the story Sherlock had reported when he brought Soo Lin in for protective custody the night before. Before he could make any inquiries, Sherlock took over, possibly to distract everyone before there were questions about a teenager being put in danger by the independent investigators. Emili knew that what she did was her choice, but the legal system wouldn't necessarily see it that way when her age was taken into account.
"Brian Lukis and Eddie Van Coon were working for a gang of international smugglers. The Black Lotus is operating here in London, right under your nose," Sherlock accused, somewhat snide. There was a degree of satisfaction he felt whenever he thought he had performed higher than the police – which was always, but especially now.
Dimmock crossed his arms, visibly aggravated by the tone of her brother's statements. "But can you prove that?" He asked, tipping his head up challengingly, clearly thinking that they couldn't.
Although the morgue was a part of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, New Scotland Yard used it almost exclusively for their storage and lab procedures. It was part of the deal that had been struck when the NSY was relocated and created ties within other government-run facilities in London. Molly, as the head pathologist of the St. Bart's morgue, was the corresponding liaison between the morgue and its bodies and the police figures who came through.
Molly, although just as mousy as last time Emili had seen her, was still cute and friendly, albeit nervous around Sherlock in a way that gave the American some serious second-hand embarrassment. Her crush on the detective was so obvious that even Anderson could've seen it, and although he feigned obliviousness, Emili was certain that Sherlock knew, as well. What she didn't know was whether he played naïve because he thought it was a kinder way of letting her down or because he didn't think he should do anything.
Either way, he was still a total ass, exploiting Molly's obvious interest in him whenever it benefitted himself. It was one of the few things about him that Emili couldn't overlook as inapt or rude, but tolerable. That kind of manipulation was underhanded, and she knew he was better than that if he wanted to be, but he insisted on being the special kind of bastard who took advantage of the people who had the softest spots for him. Every time she saw it, she wanted to smack the handsomeness right off of his face.
With Dimmock on their side, it wasn't necessary in this instance for Sherlock to honey the pot, so to speak. With the headache Emili sported, she was glad not to have to deal with annoyance on top of it. Dimmock just waved at Sherlock somewhat rudely when Molly looked at him, unsure who to obey, and so she hurried to do what her crush asked for. She pulled out the slab with Van Coon's body first, which Emili saw when she read the tag tied to the end.
Before Molly could unzip and pull open the body bag, Sherlock stopped in place at the wrong end of the stainless-steel slab. "We're just interested in the feet, thank you." His etiquette was clipped and ineffective, and it was clear that he didn't expect Molly to waste a single second in pleasing him. Em glared at him.
Molly, instead of immediately jumping as high as she was asked, stopped and did a double-take. Her warm brown eyes blinked twice and she forced an awkward laugh like she'd heard wrong. "The feet?" She repeated.
"Yes," Sherlock confirmed with an impatient nod. "Do you mind if we have a look at them?"
Although the lack of further questioning could've been because Molly didn't want to irritate the genius, Emili was pretty sure that it mostly stemmed from bemusement. There wasn't a much better response to something like that when it was taken out of context. She left the head of the bag alone and moved down to the bottom, moved the identification tag to the left, and pulled the zipper open. With her gloved hands, she pushed apart the sides of the bag to show both of the banker's feet up to his ankles.
The cadaver's skin was pale and almost turning a faint grey color. On the underside of his heel, there was a pure black tattoo of a black lotus inscribed inside a circle, just like Soo Lin's. It looked like the restorer was telling the truth about the mark. Sherlock pointed it out to Dimmock and put a hand on the table to prevent Molly from zipping it up just yet.
"Now Lukis," he prompted.
Molly nodded and didn't comment on that Sherlock wasn't wearing gloves, though she glanced back a couple times like she wasn't happy about his uncovered hand being so close to her soon-to-be-autopsied body. She checked a couple tags, found the one belonging to Lukis, and pulled the right table further out into the room. Right away this time, she unzipped the bag from the feet to show the ankles. Again, there was the black lotus tattoo on the underside of the heel.
By now, Dimmock looked uncomfortable and chastened, even without anyone having said anything. "Oh…" he muttered, the tops of his ears turning pink.
Sherlock nodded his agreement, a slight smirk playing over his lips when he heard the quiet concession. "So either these two men just happened to visit the same Chinese tattoo parlor, or I'm telling the truth."
"We," Emili mumbled, disgruntled. When Sherlock was the one getting pistol-whipped, then he could take all the credit. Until then…
Dimmock sighed. He looked at Lukis' foot again, then slipped his eyes to Van Coon. His shoulders drooped as he caved. "What do you want?" He asked, pleading with his eyes to make it quick.
"All of the books in the victims' possessions," the pink-haired student answered before Sherlock had to. They knew that it was a book code, and very few people had brains like Sherlock's, so the key was somewhere in their book collections. "And a chat with Soo Lin," she added quickly, because no one would understand Zhi Zhu better than his sister and, perhaps, General Shan themselves.
The inspector shook his head as soon as she had mentioned the Chinese. "You can't see the girl; she's being held in protective custody until Interpol arrives to talk to her." Emili pursed her lips. It was unfair. Soo Lin was helping their case, but now they couldn't be trusted to talk to her? It didn't make sense. "She can get a deal with them and be even safer than she is here." He changed the subject swiftly before the teen could argue. "What are you going to do with their books?"
"The code," Sherlock replied. "Soo Lin explained that the ciphers use a book code. We won't know what they want until we know what book the victims had in common." Of course, from there, Emili wasn't sure what the next step would be. Even if they found it themselves, it might be hard to keep it out of the Tong's grasp, much less to arrest them or drive them out of England.
Dimmock didn't seem happy about the answers he was getting, but he was keeping up with the logic. He assented, "I'll have them delivered."
"Excellent." Sherlock dryly remarked and zipped up Van Coon's body bag with finality. Molly hurried to do the same for Lukis.
What? That's it? They were right, and after all that hemming and hawing, the only acknowledgment they got was permission? Pride's a powerful thing, but so are pistols, and after having one slammed into her head, Emili was even more convinced than usual that she deserved the same respect that the inspectors gave to their colleagues.
She cleared her throat loudly and crossed her arms, shooting pointed looks at Dimmock. "Let's start all this with an apology." Dimmock wet his lips like his mouth had gone dry and he avoided her eyes. Sherlock rolled his. "I'm waiting," she urged, miffed.
"Um…" Dimmock kept his head down, eyes on the floor, and raised a hand up to uncomfortably scratch at the back of his neck. "I'm sorry…" he said fumblingly. It didn't sound spectacularly sincere, but it didn't sound sarcastic, either. "… For not listening."
"And?" She pushed persistently. The last several days had been very stressful.
The older man sighed and looked up again, pursing his lips together tightly in embarrassment. "And for being disrespectful to you and your brother," he quickly spat out, looking like they left a distasteful flavor on his tongue. He squirmed a bit.
The pink-haired woman rolled her eyes. She had heard more genuine apologies from high school dropouts who smoked pot behind the bleachers and had had higher expectations for a well-respected investigator within Scotland Yard. As she grew up, especially in the last year, she was learning very quickly that life was full of frustration and disappointments.
"Thank you," she permitted to get it over with and behind them. Besides, it was probably the best that she could hope for. "Now, the books."
Sherlock had paid the taxi extra to wait for them outside the Yard (though since he was cut off and income was spotty at best, Emili wasn't sure that was the best use of his money, but she wasn't going to stick her nose in it). His coat flapped behind him and he didn't even look over his shoulder. One of these times, Emili was going to see him walk off like the king of the place and wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of having a little entourage. That day wasn't this one, but it would come. Eventually.
Sherlock was texting on his phone before John had even gotten in on Emili's other side, squeezing the three in the backseat. Emili leaned toward John to keep her brother's elbow from pressing into her side. The phone screen reflected at an angle on the car window and put a light up towards his face, making his already high cheekbones look even sharper. Sometimes he looked like a vampire, with his pale skin, his angular face, and the sharp, dark contrast of his black hair and dark blue coat.
The taxi moved a few blocks before Sherlock put his phone down. In that time, Emili and John shared a few thoughts on the case, speculating about whether or not Soo Lin would be safe. John still worried that Zhi Zhu wouldn't give up so easily, but although he definitely had a point, Emili was convinced that the Black Lotus wouldn't risk sending a man to kill someone inside Interpol. It would be too complicated and would get all sights set on the Tong. Their smuggling operation would have some more snags, and ultimately, their profits were probably worth more than Soo Lin's silence.
"I just can't believe what he tried to do. To kill his own sister." John shook his head and looked to his left, out the window. "When someone's willing to do that, there's more than just a price on her back, there's something wrong with them."
"It's not just a criminal organization," Sherlock interrupted, responding to the doctor's disgusted statement. "It's a cult. Her brother was corrupted by one of its leaders." Corrupted like a virus on a computer. The brain was really just a very complex, chemical-soaked computer, wasn't it?
Emili knew that one of the big reasons that gangs survived as well as they did in some cities was because they served as a function of family for people who had no one else. Orphaned children would be an easy target to indoctrinate. She just wasn't sure how one sibling became so brainwashed while the other learned she needed to run.
The Tong itself wasn't necessarily a cult, but the Black Lotus certainly could be. Cults scared Em because they often had so much power over the people they influenced. She couldn't stop herself from remembering the People's Temple, the cult that committed mass suicide by drinking poison. If General Shan knew which buttons to press – and the best psychopaths always did – they could coerce Zhi Zhu to do anything, even murder his sister.
"Soo Lin said the name." John started to say, and almost hesitated like he didn't want to say it.
"General Shan," Emili supplied in a murmur. The name itself wasn't so intimidating, which was weird, because she'd been expecting something much scarier. It just went to show that shadows are often a lot scarier than the object that casts them.
"But we're still no closer to finding them," John finished his thought in agitation and looked out the window again. His lips were pursed with frustration and his sharp, angry eyes glared through the glass. He has a sister, the American suddenly remembered.
Sherlock snorted softly. "Wrong." John did a double-take and glared at Sherlock instead of the window. The detective must've known but didn't acknowledge. "We've got almost all we need to know. She gave us most of the missing pieces." The girl put her brain to work, trying to forget the nervousness invoked by cults and killers. Sherlock had found something. She wasn't a Sherlock, but she was a pretty damn good thinker. "Why did he need to visit his sister? Why did he need her expertise?"
Good question. Soo Lin had no formal education, probably because to enroll in a university, she might need documentation that she, as an orphaned Chinese runaway, couldn't provide. With a background as a Tong smuggler and a limited job at the museum, the fields in which her expertise could be most useful were limited. The Black Lotus could go to anyone for what they wanted, threaten any professional or expert into giving them information. If it were info on a smuggling skill, then they could ask any one of their many operatives.
"She worked at an antiquities museum." Emili said slowly. It wasn't just that she worked in a museum. She worked in a museum department that specifically handled relics from ancient worlds and empires long dead.
"An expert in antiquities. Mm, of course. I see." John nodded, calming himself slightly as the subject was changed.
Emili had never had an interest in antiquities, but she knew there were people who'd pay millions for things she thought were insignificant and old and unappealing. China, being such a vast, culturally rich country, would have billions and billions of euros' worth of relics and treasures squirreled away.
Sherlock's phone remained in his hand. His eyes glanced to it, but he didn't lift it up again. "Valuable antiquities, John. Ancient Chinese relics purchased on the black market." Emili felt her lips quirk proudly for her theory being validated. Sherlock had been wrong before and probably would be another many times, but if she was coming to the same conclusions as the smartest person in the room (she wouldn't tell him that) then she was doing something right. "China's home to a thousand treasures that were hidden after Mao's revolution."
"And the Black Lotus is smuggling them out and selling them for the money," Emili concluded, feeling triumphant and smart and like the fact that they'd figured it out was a big middle finger to the assholes who thought it was okay to kill people and bludgeon other people with guns. "I guess the drugs weren't lucrative enough anymore."
