Authors' Note: Despite a dreadful disease ravaging our household (also known as the really annoying case of multi-person seasonal head congestion) we have persevered to write yet another chapter each. Again we wrote largely independently, again we wound up with interesting and unexpected parallels.

Another parallel between our lives and those of our characters has come to mind. John is methodical, he plans, he works things out in advance and then he does them (except when Sherlock drags him off before he gets the chance). Catslyn fully plots her stories and has the whole chapter written in her head before she starts. Sherlock is an impulsive fellow who changes his mind as new ideas pop into his head, and while he can predict events that might be coming in the future, he doesn't generally plan that far in advance. Eideann writes by the seat of her pants, making it up as she goes. She knows something about the destination, but the route is ever changing.

Or, we could just be overthinking this.

Hmmmm . . .

Anyway, enjoy. And remember, reviews are love.

Chapter 3

John had no external way to judge the passage of time for the first while as they traveled. He could count, he could guess at the turns they were making, but none of it had any real basis in fact. Sherlock could probably have given him a map reference.

At a rough guess, it was forty minutes after they'd started moving when a large, bright light came up to John's left. Forty minutes of traveling to God knew where. Forty minutes of helpless immobility. Forty minutes of Moriarty playing with John's bare feet and calves for whatever insane reason.

Down by John's feet, Moriarty sat forward eagerly, leaning towards that light. "Hullo," he said. "How disappointing. You're not Sherlock. Is he there?"

Lestrade's voice spoke, and John wondered wildly what was going on. As if reading his mind, Moriarty reached up his body and turned his head so that he was facing the door. A large screen had been hung there. It showed two images, one superimposed on the other. Lestrade's face and a countdown. If it had started at the moment the light came up, it appeared to be set for an hour. John failed utterly to take in what Lestrade said, but the man was whipped out of sight a moment later to be replaced almost instantly by Sherlock. John's flatmate looked manic under a valiant attempt at a flat affect. Moriarty relaxed back to his seated position, his hand drawing all the way down John's body.

The madman greeted Sherlock warmly, as though they were old friends. Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "Moriarty. Where is John?"

"Your pet is perfectly safe, Sherlock, and will remain so for as long as both you and he behave yourselves." Wiggling John's toes with his hand, Moriarty tsked. "He doesn't seem to like stroking. How is it you reward him?"

A wave of helpless fury swept John, and he saw the rage in Sherlock's eyes. "What do you want of me?" Sherlock demanded, and John wanted to tell him to shut up and stop playing the game. He needed to let it go.

"Have you found the puzzle I left you?" Moriarty asked, making John wish even harder that he could interject himself into this confrontation. For once Sherlock needed to fjust ignore a puzzle and get on with catching Moriarty.

"I was looking."

"Well, then, go back to looking," Moriarty said, lifting John's legs and sliding beneath them. It wasn't comfortable for more reasons than the obvious. It put his back at a very odd angle, pulling at muscles already strained from the explosion. "If you find it before the timer finishes, the bomb won't go off. Otherwise . . . boom boom." He knocked on John's cast with each boom.

Bomb? Another bloody bomb? So that was what the countdown was for. Now they had fifty-four minutes. John wanted to call Sherlock back as he slid away. The microphone on this camera had to be really strong, because they could hear Lestrade suggesting that they take the computer and leave, a plan John wholeheartedly supported.

"I don't think so," Moriarty sang, and John closed his eyes. Of course. Moriarty wouldn't want to miss a minute of his game, would he? "For every minute that I can't see or hear at least one of you, ten minutes will be shaved off the clock." Within seconds, Lestrade appeared before the camera again, sort of dragging himself into position. The camera appeared to be very close to the floor, pointing downwards. John couldn't figure it out. Where was the ruddy thing?

John listened and watched while Moriarty taunted Lestrade and then forced him to send the bomb squad away. After that there was a long silence. John could see Lestrade texting and reading texts for a while, but apart from periodic mutterings and grunts, Sherlock might as well not have been there.

Abruptly, his voice rose above a mutter. "Hannah Walter!" he said. John heard a click by his feet and the countdown froze with fourteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds on the clock. Unusual for Sherlock. He seemed to want to take up the time till the very end of his limit, whether to show off or to extend his opportunity to investigate other leads seemed a moot point.

"Very good, Sherlock," Moriarty murmured too quietly for the microphone to pick up.

"Hannah Walter?" Lestrade repeated, his brows knitting. "Who is Hannah Walter?" His eyes were on his phone, so he hadn't yet noticed the halted countdown.

"No one," Sherlock said. "Hannah Walter stands for John."

Lestrade craned his head sideways, as though trying to see what Sherlock was looking at. "How do you know?"

"Well, for one thing, she was admitted to the hospital with full vital statistics shortly after John was removed," Sherlock said. "For another, she was born on John's birthday, but five hundred years earlier."

"That could be a typo."

"Idiot," Moriarty muttered.

Sherlock was continuing his explanation. "Hannah – Grace of God, John – God is gracious. Watson – Walter's son. It fits, Lestrade. It fits."

"Oh, very well," Lestrade said, looking impatient. He turned his head so that he was looking up again and said, "Bloody hell, you're right. The timer's stopped."

"Finally," Moriarty said, his voice sharp and loud this time. His hand, which had been idly stroking John's foot, suddenly gripped hard, nails biting painfully into the sole. John couldn't move, couldn't react beyond a muffled and involuntary sound of protest. "Now get out of there, you fool, and let Sherlock come back."

John saw Lestrade's eyes widen, and then he was sliding out of view. Sherlock was abruptly there again, gazing intently up at the screen. John wondered what he could see. "What now?"

"You've found the puzzle, sexy," Moriarty said gaily. "Now, if you ever want to see Johnny here again, and I know you do, solve it. The faster you work, the less time I have to play with your toy."

"I want to speak to John," Sherlock said firmly.

"Speak all you want," Moriarty replied. "If you're expecting a response, though, you'll be disappointed."

"I want to hear John's voice," Sherlock growled.

"Proof of life, eh?" Moriarty said. "That's a bit of a problem just now. See, he's paralyzed. I think it might be wearing off a bit, thought. Let's see if I can get him to make a noise."

Sudden pressure on the stitches on John's leg rocketed past the pain meds he was still getting from his IVs. His voice came out in an uncontrolled moan, a truly humiliating sound.

"Stop, stop!" Sherlock exclaime urgently. The pressure ceased. "So, I'm to solve a puzzle?" Sherlock asked. "But you're not giving me a deadline."

"No, take all the time you want," Moriarty said. "However long you think Johnny can stand my company." John heard another click, and Sherlock's eyes went wide, the pupils dilating to an enormous extent. Then the screen went completely blank and black, turning into a mirror. Moriarty met John's eyes in that mirror and smiled. He turned and lifted the hem of John's hospital gown to peer at the stitches he'd abused earlier. "Doesn't look like I did any damage," he said. His eyes met John's again. "I do so want this game to last," he added with a fervor that made John's flesh creep.

Sherlock stared straight up at the now blank screen of the bomb, frozen with fury and another emotion, one entirely unfamiliar to him. It had something in common with anticipation. His gut had that feeling of having no bottom, but there was nothing whatsoever pleasant about this sensation. He felt almost queasy. His heart was beating very hard, thumping in his chest, which could be due to his anger, but it was also beating quite rapidly, which he did not associate with feelings of anger. His mouth had gone dry. Correlating the symptoms in his mind, he was startled to realise that what he felt was fear. He didn't like it.

For one brief second, he had seen an image that would haunt him until he could find his flatmate and bring him back to safety. John lay on his back, his head turned towards the camera, but his body had an unnatural stillness to it, especially given that his legs appeared to be lying across Moriarty's lap, Moriarty's hand resting just above the stitches on John's left leg, giving mute evidence of just how that sound had been forced out of him. Moriarty had waved coyly, and then the image had cut off.

"Sherlock? Can you hear me? Sherlock!" From the tone of his voice and his words, Sherlock gathered that Lestrade had been attempting to get him to respond for some time. Taking a deep breath to give himself time to mask his emotions, he slid out from under the bed and stood up. "What's wrong?" Lestrade asked.

"He showed me a picture of John," Sherlock said, and his voice remained steady and calm. "You heard him, I presume."

"Yes, the game this time is to fetch John back from him, but what can he hope to gain from that?"

"I don't know," Sherlock said. "I suspect I'll have rather more information once I solve the puzzle he left me."

"What's the puzzle?"

"Hannah Walter," Sherlock said impatiently, striding back to the computer.

"We have to get out of here, Sherlock," Lestrade said, plucking at his arm. "The bomb squad is coming in and –"

"I must look through her records," Sherlock retorted, shaking his arm free of the other man's grip. "And I don't know that they're available on any other machine. If we move this one, it will have to be unplugged from the network and the wall, and I don't want to risk that either."

"Sherlock –"

"Go then!" Sherlock growled. "Your babble is distracting me." A sudden thought occurred to him. "Where's my phone?" he demanded.

"Your phone? I – I don't know exactly. I –"

"Then give me yours." Sherlock put his hand out and turned when no phone arrived in it. "Now!"

Lestrade pulled his mobile off his belt. "What do you need my phone for?"

Sherlock ignored the stupid question and seized the phone, turning back to the computer.

"I need that!" Lestrade protested.

"Then find mine." Sherlock focused on the data in front of him. Hannah Walter . . . in for St. Anthony's Fire. That rang a bell in his mind. France. Something about France. He found the reference quickly despite the lumbering slowness of Lestrade's phone. Pont Saint Esprit, a village in France that suffered a mass poisoning in the fifties. St. Anthony's Fire was only the most likely of many causes that had been suggested, including illicit experimentation by the CIA. So, Hannah Walter was suffering from ergot poisoning, but St. Anthony's Fire was the way they'd referred to ergot poisoning in the Middle Ages, which matched her birth year of 1472 well enough. There were other diseases which had fallen under that mantle in those days, erysipelas for one, but the symptoms reported matched ergotism best. Convulsions, vomiting, gangrene in the toes and fingers, hallucinations.

Where did that lead him? He stored the question away in his mind and looked at other details in the file. Referring physician, Dr. H.S. Harmsworth. He didn't appear on the registry of physicians currently acting in Britain. He checked the U.S. and found two dentists and a dermatologist. Not a person then, but another clue. Sherlock widened his search away from the medical profession and came up with a number of options, from a professor of physics in Edinburgh to a deceased newspaper baron who was, literally, a Baron. How did any of these persons connect with a medieval disease?

"He's got to leave." The words broke in on Sherlock's ruminations, and he hunched his shoulders, trying to focus.

"He's working on a clue that may not exist anywhere else." That was Lestrade. Sherlock appreciated his efforts, but couldn't they occur across the room where they wouldn't disturb him?

"I'm not having civilians in here while we move a bomb."

"You said it's a very stable explosive," Lestrade said. "Leave him."

They moved further away at that point, and after a bit Sherlock was vaguely aware of barriers being put in place behind him. They baffled the sound of the men talking, which helped his concentration enormously. He didn't usually have this trouble, but every time he was distracted, he'd get that image of John in his head, still in his hospital gown, trapped, with Moriarty touching him.

He ran through lists of vital and not so vital statistics on all of the H.S. Harmsworths he'd turned up. Reams of useless data flowed through his mind and out again, and then he spotted it. Viscount Harold Sidney Harmsworth, later the 1st Baron Harmsworth, purchased the freehold for the site of Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark in 1930. In previous centuries, Bethlem Royal was more commonly known as Bedlam, and it was the most notorious psychiatric hospital in the world with a history dating back more than 750 years. In fact, Bethlem Hospital was existent and taking psychiatric patients at the time of the fictitious Hannah Walter's birth. It made an obvious place to dump a woman experiencing hallucinations and psychotic breaks. At that time, however, it was located in Bishopsgate. Sherlock shook his head. The year was to orient him to the disease, the man was to orient him to the location. He had been there before on a number of occasions. Once, people had gone there to watch the patients as an extremely peculiar and voyeuristic entertainment. Now, people went to view artefacts of the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

John was a soldier. It fit.

He turned his attention to the list of medications the fictitious patient had been prescribed along with their dosages. None of it made the slightest sense. There was an anti-psychotic, but the dosage was insanely high, an anti-convulsant with dosage at a level that wouldn't stop a shiver, something meant to prevent acne, others, all equally out of place. He memorized the list, making notes to aid recall. The keypad on Lestrade's phone was comfortable to use, almost more comfortable than his own. Family history was blank as was medical history.

"I think I've got what I need," Sherlock said, turning around. He found Mycroft standing behind him, and they were alone in the room together. "Your people were useless and worse than useless!" he snapped.

"Three of them are dead."

"Yes, I'd say that's worse than useless. Where did the other two go?"

"They were drawn off by a plausible threat and ambushed."

"Oh, are they dead, too?" Sherlock demanded.

"No, they're in the A&E," Mycroft replied with a hint of reproach in his voice.

"John was paralysed and forced to lie across Moriarty's lap," Sherlock retorted. "He's in the hands of that bastard, and I now have to dance Moriarty's tune again to free him. Are you satisfied?" He turned. "Where are my clothes? Has Mrs. Hudson brought them?"

"They are in your room," Mycroft said. "As you should be now that you have solved the puzzle, allowing your doctor to see to –"

Ignoring his brother's prating, Sherlock strode out of room 111 and back to his own room. A shopping bag sat on the bed which he presumed contained his clothing, and his doctor stood just inside the door. Sherlock made for the bag, but the doctor started speaking. "Mr. Holmes, if you will just let me look over your stitches. I'm told you were bleeding."

"I'm fine," Sherlock replied, seizing the bag and going into the ensuite loo. Dampening a cloth, he cleaned up the dried blood on his legs. The rest of his toilet would have to wait. He dressed hastily and wished for his coat. Mrs. Hudson evidently hadn't brought it. He emerged from the loo and glared at his brother. "What do you want, Mycroft?" he asked.

"I want you to rest a bit. Reflect. Rushing out will not benefit either you or Dr. Watson."

"Staying here will benefit no one," Sherlock replied coldly. "And the combination of anxiety and boredom could endanger the hospital staff."

"You can't go alone, not in your condition."

"My heart is touched by your concern," Sherlock said, firmly repressing the unexpected twinge the word heart sent through him. If Moriarty was to be believed, that vile monster was touching Sherlock's heart, literally, at this moment. "But I have places to go and puzzles to solve, and you're in my way."

"Not alone," Mycroft reiterated. "I can provide you with a –"

"As if I would take one of your idiots," Sherlock growled. At that moment, Lestrade came in the door. "I have my own idiots." He leaned around Mycroft. "Lestrade, my brother insists I have a minder. You're elected."

"I'm what? I don't understand."

"It's already arranged," Mycroft said smoothly, and Sherlock glowered at him. He hated it when his brother managed to get one step ahead of him. "Your superiors have granted you detached duty to help Sherlock with this Moriarty mess."

"I know, but I rather thought Sherlock was going to help me."

Sherlock stepped around his brother. This conversation had lasted too long already. "Come along, Lestrade," he said, walking swiftly out of the room.

A moment later, the detective inspector was beside him. "Where are we going?"

"The Imperial War Museum."

"Where? Why?"

"Because that's where our next puzzle piece lies."