I am so, so sorry for the long wait! See, the problem is that I am not that much in the fandom any more but rather in the Supernatural fandom so it's getting hard to write this - I will finish this story though! It might take a bit longer, but on the other hand, there aren't many chapters after this one. Deal with it. :*
They search frantically. John doesn't think he has ever seen Mycroft so worried, so human, but it doesn't reassure him like it used to with Sherlock. No, it scares him. It scares him because it makes him realise that even Mycroft is close to giving up.
He won't, though, John is sure of that, and neither will Sherlock – or Lestrade or John himself for that matter.
Kiara isn't just the daughter of Moriarty who had somehow turned good and gained the Holmes' brothers' trust, she is also someone he knows, someone he might have become good friends with had the circumstances been different.
Kiara's description isn't very helpful. It narrows the search down, sure, but as Melissandre reports a few minutes after she arrived, there are just too many different spots she might be.
It surprises him, when for some reason his head snaps out of the cloud of worry for a second and becomes clear, how many people do actually care for her, are bustling around and searching for her.
After half an hour Sherlock gets up and starts calling people, friends, he calls them, and John can't help but wonder how he knows those people when Mycroft tells Lestrade that he doesn't want to know.
The time flies past, their precious eighteen hours dripping down to fifteen as they try to narrow the possible locations down. If they just searched every one of them, the kidnappers might hear – after all, they are going on the hope that the kidnappers are too cocky to move right now. Besides, it would take too much time.
Sherlock is still on the phone, talking rapidly in both English and German, sometimes shouting with fury in his voice, sometimes speaking so deathly quiet that John is happy not to be on the receiving end of that voice.
However, Sherlock doesn't seem to be exactly angry at the two women he is apparently talking to – John hears him saying the names Irene and Margery repeatedly – he seems angry at how helpless he is.
It is strange, not really being of much help whilst Sherlock is talking on the phone, Lestrade checking records and setting more officers on the case than he technically should, Melissandre running around, glued to her phone but not quite able to keep the surprise off her face when Mycroft gives some orders that show he isn't quite who he told said and the older Holmes himself accessing and hacking into files Lestrade carefully doesn't see.
John himself can't really do much, so he makes another round of coffees and then looks at the map again. There are so many little pins on the map, so many locations, mocking them all, that he wants to vomit.
"Margery is contacting her people, asking about people with the motive and the means to do this. Irene is calling her whole client list as well, undoubtedly blackmailing them into helping – Mycroft, they are both furious." Sherlock suddenly says, loud and spitting the words out like bullets, and John has trouble to understand them all.
In the second it takes his brain to catch up, Mycroft already nods.
"I know. Margery has contacted me as well already, she is sending me data to compare with what we already have. She says she expected something like this." Mycroft is talking nearly at the same speed, but a lot calmer, despite the frantic worry on his face – apparently now that he has some possible leads he can at least partly distract himself with something.
"Wait, Irene?" John interrupts, a thought poking the back of his mind.
"Adler. She's alive, yes." Sherlock says, only barely turning his head towards John, his voice cold.
"And – Margery?" John asks, deciding not to ask further about Irene when the subject is obviously a sensitive one.
"A friend of Kiara's, used to be part of the network." Sherlock replies, his attention already elsewhere, then switching to John again, then to Mycroft's computer and the map.
John feels dizzy from the speed, the feeling and the urge to vomit again only intensifying when he sees that Mycroft is watching the recorded video-call again – trying to find anything, anything at all that will help them find their friend.
Sherlock and Mycroft are grim, but determined and watch. Melissandre is pale, watching the video for the first time, and Lestrade is still focusing on his own files, now and then talking to Donovan, who hasn't made any comment at all towards Sherlock. Smart woman, she's still alive.
John is in the bathroom and vomiting his guts out.
Two hours later they are all desperate. There are still so many possible locations, even with the extra information, and they have received further pictures of Kiara. She seems conscious in most of them, but John mostly wishes she weren't – as a doctor and a soldier and now after the cases with Sherlock he knows there are many ways of hurting a person without killing them.
Sherlock's POV:
John's sitting in Lestrade's chair when he nods off into a restless, fitful sleep. The others don't interrupt him, not even Sherlock. He feels reminded of a situation ten months ago when they had been searching for Mycroft. Him and Kiara. A lot has changed since then.
John wakes up when they have five hours left and the list of warehouses is considerably shorter.
The two hour mark keeps ticking closer when they reach their fifth warehouse. The other four have proven worthless, no sign of entry in any of them, if you don't count some cocaine junkies squatting.
It is one of the more promising ones. The location and availability are more fitting, and even though they know Kiara's information is likely to be slightly incorrect, it fits it perfectly.
It is also alight in flickering flames.
By the time the fire brigade arrives, Sherlock is sure anything they could have found is burnt. Him and John walk through the sodden, black ruins, water still running down the walls and over the floor, and look for anything they can find – anything that will tell Sherlock where Kiara is.
Lestrade is on the other end of the warehouse, searching there, and of course it's him that finds something.
He finds a table, the cracked and molten camera, the room they might have filmed it in. And he finds the bodies.
There are a few, but Sherlock can only concentrate on one. It has the right size, and there are metal hand-cuffs around the wrists, but there is not much else to tell – every data he could have seen is burnt, the corpse black.
When he finds residues of pink plastic in the room, he stumbles outside. Not even quite outside, he vomits.