A/N: Here is the penultimate chapter, folks. The final one is already written and will be up by Thursday.

Chapter 8

London, 11:15 am

Traffic in London was horrific. After sitting at an intersection with non-functioning lights for 10 minutes, Sherlock and John gave up and began walking to the Museum. They passed tube entrance after tube entrance along the way whose gates were shuttered, some of Sherlock's homeless network huddled in front of them. The city had a vaguely apocalyptic air about it which both men found disturbing.

As they rounded the corner at St. Paul's Cathedral and continued trudging toward London Wall Street, the ground gave a sharp jerk, throwing them off balance. A freight train sound filled the air, even though no vehicles were in sight. Suddenly a cyclone of dirt and debris swept toward them as if being blown down the street. Seconds later, people began to emerge from the fog of dust, faces painted with it, more stumbling than running toward Sherlock and John.

On the upside, none appeared to be seriously injured. But the face of each bore the unmistakable shock of people whose worlds had been violently upended without warning.

As the men fought against the tide of people moving away from the Museum, they began to see a number who were moving purposefully around it. The flashing blue lights of a couple of Met Police cars were fuzzily visible in the cloudy air. The ground was coated in what seemed to be thick mud, but was really great piles of glass and stone shards.

The London Wall entrance of the Museum was gone, a hole where the double glass doors to the lobby had one stood. The café across from the information desk was mere rubble, as was much of the adjacent gift shop. Double decker bus replicas perched incongruously atop bricks and a Downton Abbey themed scarf fluttered from an exposed pipe. Across from the Museum, the glass façade of a prominent law firm was shattered, giving the outside offices an unplanned open air view. Sheaves of paper floated down to the ground.

John began to cough, the air being unsuited to breathing. He shook off his scarf and wrapped it around his mouth and nose. As Sherlock did the same, his arm was grabbed. He turned to see Greg Lestrade with a paper mask over his face.

"What are you two doing here", Greg asked.

"I got a message this morning asking that I come to the Museum," Sherlock replied.

"Well, it's a good thing you didn't get here earlier. We got word of a bomb in it just 20 minutes before it went off. Evacuated everyone there and in the surrounding buildings, thank God, but there were still injuries. It's a bloody mess." Lestrade wiped a hand over his face, leaving streaks. "Just a warning, your brother is here, no idea why. But he'll probably want to talk to you. I get you first, though. Meet me over there-" Greg gestured to a delivery truck which had been pressed into service as an impromptu command center. "I've got someone else to talk to then want to hear all about this message you received."

Sherlock waved toward the delivery truck as Greg walked away. "Meet me over there. I need to see Mycroft," he said.

John planted himself in front of Sherlock, his face the picture of stubbornness. "Absolutely not, you know he'll find you. This isn't anything to mess with, Sherlock. There'll be victims, possible additional fallout from the damaged buildings—let's not make things worse by bumbling about the crime scene this time, yeah? We can wait for Greg and Mycroft over there."

"It's fine, I'll just-" A rumble interrupted Sherlock as a piece of the law firm's entrance broke off, hitting the ground with force. John spun to look. When he turned back, Sherlock was gone.

As John stomped and swore viciously in his wake, Sherlock used the confusion around the Museum's former entrance to slip around the crime scene tape into the building. Inside, it was eerily quiet, the gravelly debris acting to muffle sound. He kept one eye on the ground and another on the structures around him, some of which creaked ominously. Once he reached the decimated service counter in the café, he stopped.

"I'm here," he shouted. No answer.

Sherlock picked his way around the café. He lifted a woven handle of a tote bag from the remains of a table and put it in his pocket.

"I thought you meant to destroy me," Sherlock called out. "Not sure how blowing a hole in a 40 year old building full of boring old exhibits does much to affect my life. I will say, though, I always did like the reproduction of the Queen's carriage horses. Although the horses whose hides were used to make them up may not share my opinion."

"I was told that you were highly intelligent, Mr. Holmes. I didn't realize that you lacked imagination," came a response in slightly accented Chinese.

Sherlock's Chinese was limited to the Mandarin dialect, but he understood the speaker's meaning well enough. He answered in kind.

"I have plenty of imagination. I just don't find any in bombs. Blowing things up completely lacks finesse. I expected more from you." Sherlock said condescendingly.

A slight man dressed in a hazmat suit stepped out from a stairwell behind the collapsed gift shop. "I hate to disappoint," he said softly, this time in English. He kicked at a tarp-covered bundle at his feet, which groaned. Pulling the tarp away, Mary was revealed to be on the ground, bound at the hands and feet, her pregnant belly protruding grotesquely from her body as she tried to twist away from her attacker. A trickle of blood drained from her nose.

Unconsciously, Sherlock's hands formed fists.

"Ah, Mr. Holmes. I see we've now come to something which does affect your life. How do you think John Watson will feel about you if he finds out that you're responsible for killing his wife?"

Sherlock schooled his features into a mask of contempt. In a carefully casual voice, he answered "John wouldn't be happy, of course, but it would be what I believe some cultures call 'good karma'. After all, she once nearly killed me. She acted a bit more directly—a bullet fired from a few feet away tends to get results quickly—but the outcome here will still make us fairly even." Sherlock glanced down. "Sorry, Mary."

"Sherlock," Mary moaned. "The baby…".

"Oh, yes. Yes, that is unfortunate," Sherlock responded. "I suppose whether she survives will depend on the method of murder, won't it, Mr…?" he ended questioningly.

"Dong. Wang Dong, but we're all friends here, Mr. Holmes. You can call me Jack," the man answered.

"Jack, then. Well, Jack, do you intend to add infanticide to your list of crimes today, or will you settle for terrorism and murder of a pregnant woman? Oh, yes, and of me. I assume you don't intend for me to walk out of here today either." Sherlock took a step toward Mary, just enough to adjust his view so he could see her full body.

"No, no, Mr. Holmes. You will live, I assure you. The only other person dying here today other than her," Wang toed Mary. "Will be me. You see, I cannot return to China. The authorities there have given into the imperialist demands of the United States and plan to make—what do you call it?—oh, yes, scapegoats of myself and others who worked on our government's behalf to delve into the most sensitive data of other countries. I was particularly proud of our efforts with the US Office of Personnel a short time ago. So useful to my country to know who the US's spies are." Wang smiled grimly. "But, alas, they need to offer up a villain so they appear to cooperate with the West. I would be that offering, but am afraid that I have no intention of participating in the game. I will die here, a martyr to the cause of striking the British Empire at its core."

"Taking out some dusty antiquities and a few I Love London T-shirts hardly makes you a flag bearer for your countrymen, Jack" Sherlock sniped, rolling his eyes.

"Perhaps not. But then I will have accomplished my main objective, which is to render you a pariah among all who know you. You see, when this one dies," he gestured to Mary. "It will be left to you to save the baby. If you succeed, you'll be hated for letting the mother die. If you fail, you'll be hated even more for both their deaths. Either way, I win and you will spend the rest of your life knowing that your closest companion hates you more than life itself. Which, for him, may be hardly worth continuing to live. All because of you."

"I didn't kill your aunt. That was Moriarty. Her Black Lotus crowd didn't get the job done for her—it wasn't my doing. I didn't even know what she was looking for. Her death was her fault for looking in the wrong place." Sherlock said.

"Shut up!" shouted Wang. "She would have succeeded if not for you. Her employer hated you, you were more his target than the jade pin she'd been sent to London to retrieve. Had you not gotten in her way, he wouldn't have cared about the pin. It was the fact that you survived which led him to take her life." Wang was breathing harder and leaned down over Mary.

"Enough," he snapped. "It is time to end this." He brought a gun to Mary's head. She moaned and tried to pull back, but was impeded in her movement by her belly and the rubble around her.

A shot rang out. Sherlock shouted and more debris fell from the ceiling, striking him in the head and knocking him to the ground.