The bag was removed from Sebastian's head about an hour after it had been put on. In the meantime he'd been jammed into a van, then into a much smaller car that had been too confining for a man of his size. Now, it seemed, he was in one of the basement holding cells at HQ. Good to be home.

Lorna woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, her head throbbing. She was tied to a chair, in a room too thoroughly ordinary to be anything permanent. The one thing she knew was that this was not the network. This was bad.

Jim entered the questioning room quietly, without any of his usual flair. This was serious. This was deadly serious. He needed to know if his right-hand had been stabbing him in the back all along. This would be a battle of reading, and of pain, if he had anything to say about it. Which, of course he did. "Holmes," he drawled, taking a step into the harsh light, emitted by the fluorescent lights overhead. He needed Holmes well-lit. "I hope you know why you're here."

"Yes, I figured that thrilling puzzle out about half a second after I woke up. I'll admit, I was slow, but that's minor head trauma for you," Mycroft drawled, looking bored. The trick with the cologne had fooled him for a minute, but he wouldn't admit that. "How have you been, James dear?

"Let's skip the chitchat. You tell me the truth, and I'll let you go. Simple as that," Jim snapped, the impatience that had been growing in him the past few days showing through, dark eyes blazing with intensity. "Tell me the truth. We both are aware that I'll know if you're lying."

"Very well, the truth," Mycroft sighed. "You won't want to hear this, you know." He looked up at the ceiling, then back down. "That suit really isn't at all your color. Navy just ill fits you."

His face didn't change expression, except for maybe a slight twitch of irritation. "Very well," he said shortly, turning on his heel and walking to the closet in the corner. A few seconds later, he wheeled out a terrarium, filled with squirming insects, and then rummaged around for a few moments more, coming up with a pair of tongs and some rather sturdy rubber gloves. "I'm told you'll recognize those."

Mycroft nodded, externally unaffected. "Impressive. Did you steal a sample, or have your lab boys been working up duplicates?" He watched the terrarium with hidden trepidation, estimating the number of insects inside. This could rapidly become unpleasant.

"Duplicates. Ever since I saw the effects of them, in fact. I suppose you'll see how far we've gotten in the meantime," he said, mockingly pleasant. He flashed him a toothy grin. "I don't suppose the mere sight of them has inspired some chattiness?"

"No, you don't," Mycroft agreed pleasantly. "It is a tad unoriginal, wouldn't you say? I expected more flair from the supposed King of the underworld."

His grin grew into something that brought to mind sharks. "Oh, I'll work up to original. Don't you worry your little head."

59 hours later, Jim walked into Sebastian's holding cell, his posture tired, hands in his pockets. He was expressionless. "Welcome home, Moran," was all he said, pushing a hand through his unruly dark hair.

He looked up as Jim walked in. The boss was exhausted, that much was for sure, but the words were an utter relief. He stood slowly. "It's good to be back, sir," he returned quietly.

"I should hope so," he snorted, leaning back against the door frame with a huff, shutting his eyes. He'd gone almost a week without sleep now, and it was starting to wear on him. "You should know I have no idea where Harrison is. She disappeared in the commotion."

That settled like a stone in his gut, but for the moment he didn't let it bother him. There was no use becoming concerned until he investigated the situation further. "What, six, seven days since you last slept?" he guessed, reading familiar signs. "Tell me what needs doing and go get some sleep. We'll deal with Harrison later."

"It's all on my desk," he sighed, waving his hand vaguely in an upwards direction, pushing sluggishly off the doorframe and turning to grasp the handle, opening it. It looked like he was supporting his weight on the wall. "I'll alert you when I'm awake. Goodnight," he muttered, giving another wave of his hand and disappearing out the door.

Word had apparently been spread that he had been cleared. He was given no trouble in the halls, just a few approving glances and respectful nods as he made his way slowly from the basement of the building to the penthouse.

Had he been the sentimental type, it would have felt very poetic.

As it was, he was more concerned with catching up with all he'd missed, and on finding Harrison.

Those 59 hours had not been fun for Lorna. The first day, she'd remained alone and silent, in what she'd come to call the waiting room. It was on the second that she saw someone again. A woman came into the room and checked her bindings, then left. It took a few more hours for her to return, a tray of food in one hand and a pistol in the other. Lorna was untied long enough to eat, be taken to a restroom, and then it was back to being tied down again. She was grateful that she was being held in what was obviously a government facility not quite used to visitors, instead of a crime network. She'd already be in real pain if she'd been captured by a group like that. As it was, they just didn't seem to really know what to do with her. She got the sense they were waiting for something. She was pretty sure she knew what that was.

Sure enough, late into the third day, two men walked into the room, untied her, and promptly manhandled her out the door. They didn't bother to cover her eyes with anything. That made her just a little worried. When they walked her into a room containing nothing but an IV set and a hospital bed, she grew to be on just this side of panicked. She managed to jerk an arm free and elbow one of them in the nose before they overpowered her, picking her up and slamming her onto the bed. Before she knew it, she was strapped down, completely immobile. This did not bode well.

The men checked her restraints and left without another word.

Moran spent the next few days searching before he finally decided she was well and truly missing. There was no record of an arrest, no reports of any bodies matching her description, and no contacts had seen or heard from her. He put more feelers out, but other than that, there was little that he could do.

Those days had been excruciating. Someone had come in and plugged her into the IV, and then it had been hell on earth. She started to see things, hear things, feel things, and it was so vivid she could no longer tell whether or not they were real. The only stimulation she was certain was based in real life was the infrequent cold that spread up her arm. Whatever drug they gave her, the hallucinations grew worse afterwards. Unpleasant. Terrifying.

"How's she doing?" the man asked, walking into the room and taking a look at the woman strapped to the bed through the two-way mirror.

"She's managed to fall asleep," his companion said, sipping at coffee. "But that never lasts for too long. Last time she was awake she was screaming about beetles."

"Weird."

Jim called Moran up to his office when he read the reports on Harrison. Or rather, the utter lack of them.

Moran knocked and entered quietly, shutting the door behind him. "You called, sir?"

Jim nodded, leaning back in his chair. "Given the lack of information on Harrison's whereabouts, I think we can assume one of two things has happened. Either she took advantage of the commotion and ran, or one of Mycroft's people grabbed her. Where they might have put her is another story. Being held by the same organization for the third time... They won't have any questions for her. If I were the one who'd grabbed her, I'd have killed her and cremated her corpse. You might want to start thinking about that."

"No offense, sir, but the last time you informed me that Harrison was dead, your information was a tad bit unreliable," he quipped, walking over to stand in front of Jim's desk. "They don't have a clue where we're holding Holmes, and she was part of his capture. They won't kill her until they're sure they don't need her."

"You're right," he shrugged. "Which is the only reason I've held Holmes for this long. He's useless to me, and a waste of resources." The unspoken but I know how you'll react if she dies hung in the air. "In a few days I'll reach out to his people. Maybe they'll admit to something."

He was quiet for a moment, getting his thoughts in order. "I know you've come to consider Harrison as a valuable asset..." he began, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. "I don't suppose you'd consider brokering a trade...?"

He drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. "I'm not sure I'm willing to risk throwing the cards on the table for everyone to see like that," he sighed, leaning back and bending a little to open a drawer in his desk. He pulled out a bottle of scotch and a couple glasses. "But if there is no other alternative, I might have to anyway."

Moran accepted a glass with mild surprise but a nod of thanks, taking a sip and sighing in appreciation. "If there's another way to go about it, I'm all ears. And if we need to just... forget about it..." He took another long sip of scotch. "Well, personally I'd object, but professionally I'd back you."

He nodded, swallowing a good portion of his own scotch. Normally, he would have been watching Moran like a hawk right now, looking for signs of weakness, but if he was being honest with himself, this whole ordeal had left him a little drained. It had been hard, wondering whether or not his right hand had been spying on him or not. He'd put a lot of trust in Moran this past decade, and fearing that it had been disastrously misplaced had been unpleasant. "We'll see how it turns out."

He nodded just a little, watching his boss quietly, evaluating his health out of habit. "Don't shoot me for asking this, but when was the last time you took a break?" he asked, taking another sip of scotch and rolling it around his tongue.

Jim glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist, which handily displayed the date. "Four months and two days. Too long. I try to get one in every three months, but," he shook his head, taking another sip. "People just keep fucking that up."

"Noted," he muttered with a smirk, raising his glass apologetically. "Next time I'm accused of being a traitor, I'll try to work it into that schedule." He sighed. "I'll deal with Harrison for the time being. Take some time off. Bodyguard's orders."

He rolled his eyes, but didn't look like he was going to argue. "Fine. I will. Try not to fuck up, if you wouldn't mind. I don't really feel like having my vacation interrupted."

"I'll endeavor to live up to your expectations," he sighed, nodding a little. "You going to go abroad or stay here?"

The boss shook his head. "I'll stay. Having you as a bodyguard in the Florida Keys while you were remotely searching for your live-in would hardly be my idea of a fun vacation," he rolled his eyes. "No, I'll find a way to amuse myself here for a few days."

He nodded a little, setting down his empty glass and sighing. "You know, it used to be that someone wasn't kidnapped every time I turned around. Now it is, and half the time it's me. We need to find that goddamned mole."

"I've narrowed it down to the team that retrieved you from Sara Moran's house, and the medical staff. They were the only ones who could have passed on knowledge of your amnesia," Jim sighed, running his finger along the edge of his glass. "I'd start your search there. For now, I'm going to go and catch up on a little sleep. Goodnight, Moran."

Lorna's sleep didn't last long enough. Every time she awoke, it was something new, something worse, something less abjectly horrifying than deeply personal. Her throat was hoarse from screaming.

He didn't get much rest himself. When he wasn't running the network, he was looking for Lorna. He knew by now she was either dead or somewhere deep in the government, but it seemed like every feeler he sent out led to a dead end. Finally he decided that he didn't have much choice (not that he really wanted one). He would need to get what he needed out of Holmes.

The hunt for Mycroft was equally fruitless, but that didn't mean they stopped the experiment. They were under strict orders to record and observe only. And so Lorna Harrison stayed uncontacted, in a white, featureless room.

Jim returned from his mini "vacation" a few days later, and the first thing he did was contact Moran.

What's the word? J

He got the text when he took a break, and returned quickly.

Elbow deep in Holmes' intestine regarding the subject and eager for some advice on his workings if you have it. S

I found force-feeding him to be shockingly helpful. J

I'll try that next. S

Two hours later he decided that he wasn't going to make much more progress that day, and left Holmes unconscious on the table, heading for his apartment to scrub up, dejected and exhausted.

Left in front of the door to his apartment was a bottle of bourbon, sitting on top of a folded note, that simply read;

If you're not going to cheer up you may as well be smashed off your arse.

-Who the fuck do you think it is

He considered the note for a long moment, before heading into his apartment. He showered and changed, before picking up the bottle and heading upstairs to Jim's office, knocking.

"Come in," Jim called, distractedly. He was flipping through the newspapers he had missed while shut away up in his penthouse.

He entered, shutting the door behind him. "Came to make sure you hadn't hit your head or something. Since when do you leave cryptic notes? Well... honestly if you were going to be leaving notes, they'd be cryptic, but it was more the note-leaving I was questioning. And the booze."

Jim gave him a dry look over the top of a day-old newspaper. "Are you registering a complaint?"

"No, more seeing if you wanted some. Along with the check for the concussion," he said, raising the bottle in his direction.

He set his newspaper down, leaning back in his chair. Then he shrugged. "Alright. I do not have a concussion, though."

"I knew that already," he said, walking over and setting down the bottle between them, unscrewing the cap and leaving it to Jim to produce glasses.

He did, pushing the two of them across the table to Moran. "Any clue as to how close you've gotten with Holmes?"

He poured out two generous servings and shoved a glass back towards Jim. "I'm breaking him. Working with you for so long gives me some insight. But he's angry about the fact that he talked about me, and he's firming himself up. It's going to take a while to get the psychological game right."

"Hm. I'll see about contacting his people in a few days. See if you can crack him before that," he sighed into his glass of bourbon. "Until then, you'll have to subsist on pickups from the local pub."

"Hilarious," he muttered downing half his glass in one go. "I'm quite capable of existing for a few days under my own power, thank you."

"Funny, I was under the impression that you were the one with the power in that relationship, anyways," he smirked, with genuine amusement. How long had it been since he'd been able to rib Moran a little?

"Oh, is it amateur comedy night? I must have missed the flyer," he shot back dryly, hiding a smirk of his own. It was nice to be able to forget the stress of the last few weeks for a moment.

He snorted, throwing back the rest of the drink and reaching to refill his glass. "Just because it's amusing doesn't mean it isn't true."

"What, that I'm in control in that relationship? That is absolutely true. Harrison's tried taking the reigns a few times but she hasn't gotten the handle of it yet. It's entertaining, but that's about it." He took the bottle once Jim was finished with it and filled his own glass.

"And my point was that you have ample time to see who's new on the block, if you catch my drift," he chuckled, interested eyes on his sniper. He was curious, whether or not Moran felt...committed. It was plenty obvious that she was smitten (or had been, if she was dead) with him, and that he had a strong emotional attachment, but strong emotional attachments weren't everything.

He shrugged. "Don't really see a need," he hedged. "Plenty to do here, and to be honest I'd rather work on figuring out where the hell she went than get a half-assed lay from a tired whore."

"That's why you pay for the expensive ones," he snorted, but decided to let it drop before the sniper got defensive. He took another long draught. "Here's to solving that mystery," he muttered, and finished off his glass.

He picked up the bottle, filling both of their glasses once more and noting that the thing was almost half empty by this point. "Which one is that, exactly?"

He chuckled. "The one where you've settled for just fucking one person all the time. I'm going to ask you a question, and I don't want you to be offended, but, for Christ's sake, how do keep from being bored?"

Sebastian laughed. "I was in your court a few years ago. You know I was. But with Harrison... There's something about fucking someone who knows exactly how you like it. We change things up but there's always a constant sense of... Fuck if I know. It's just fantastic fucking sex."

He gave a bewildered laugh, leaning back in his seat. "Alright, I suppose I'll take your word for it. I have a relatively small sample size of your sex life thus far. And sex... you really can't tell what it's like just by reading someone."

"Why is that, I wonder?" he asked, staring at the amber liquid in his glass.

"Who knows?" Jim shrugged. "Personally, I think it's the heat of it."

"No, not that," he said, waving him off and looking up. "Why have you had such a small part in my sex life, is more what I was asking."

"Limited opportunity," he replied, with a small lift of his shoulders. He smirked. "That can be amended, though."

He raised his eyebrows with a smirk, taking a sip of his drink. "Ball's in your court, sir."

He set down his drink and stood, turning for the lift to his penthouse, hands in his pockets, posture casual. "Are you coming, or what?"

Moran smiled- actually smiled- for the first time in a long while, and stood, bringing the bottle of bourbon with him and following the boss.

Lorna had lost track of time a long, long time ago, now. Sleep was hard to come by, and an unreliable indicator, since she was so often woken by nightmares. Even her memories, now, were blurred around the edges. Had that happened, or had she made it up? She didn't know anymore.

"I don't like this," the man said quietly as the woman in the room tried desperately to tear her way out of the restraints. "This is going well past the boundaries of ethics."

"Ethics aren't our job," his companion replied.

Everything I fear, always meets me here
In the early hours dancing with my doubts
I can be a hard light to ignite
All my nightmares feel like real life

- Broods - Conscious -