So this chapter isn't altered that much either but I swear the other ones are.
And I know this probably won't be finished by Series 3 but whatever. At least the rewrites are being uploaded faster than the originals, even if it has taken so long for me to get this far...
Sherlock woke up and groaned. His head was killing him for no immediately obvious reason.
What day was it? He genuinely didn't know, although that wasn't the most unusual thing in the world with his erratic sleeping patterns and what small amount of work he managed to get.
He turned and checked the clock by the side of the bed in another hotel room he didn't particularly recognise. Apparently it was Tuesday. The last thing he remembered was yesterday morning in that horrible cafe and he wished he didn't, grimacing at the memory of the tea.
There were no fresh marks on his arms, so that couldn't have been the reason for the mental block and lost time.
He leaned out of bed and looked at his phone. Three missed calls from Mycroft but that was nothing unusual. It hadn't taken long for Mycroft to discover his brother was alive but that didn't mean Sherlock had to answer his calls. Underneath the phone there was a business card. It had 'MiB' stamped into the card. '504 Battery Drive, 9am' scrawled on the back. A man's handwriting, probably older. What was MiB?
Sherlock tried again to remember the events of the previous day. He vaguely remembered taking a photo of something but couldn't remember what. It must have even something interesting otherwise he wouldn't have bothered. What could have caused him to forget? Could his day have been so boring except for that one event that his mind had deleted it on its own? He'd kept a lot of the memories of the boredom since he'd arrived here to remind him not to get into similar situations with master criminals.
And friends...
He sat up slowly and looked at the photos on his phone. Nothing from the previous day. He knew he'd taken photographs but they'd disappeared. This was getting interesting, for the first time he could remember since the first few weeks after that day on St Bart's.
It was 8:15 and he had a knowledge of the streets better than most of the city's lifetime residents. If he ran, he could get to the address on the card on time and find out what was going on here.
Sherlock stared at the man explaining to them what they were here for. He was using a lot of long words, Sherlock observed, but not really saying anything in particular. A standard sort of 'best of the best' recruitment speech found in most of the world's agencies and special forces, which was a slight surprise. Sherlock hadn't guessed he would be here to be hired. The speech seemed to satisfy the surrounding morons. These military fools weren't even as intelligent as John and Sherlock's best and only friend wasn't exactly a genius. He rolled his eyes then turned his focus back to the man who was obviously in charge of whatever organisation was based here. MiB presumably, although he'd never heard the abbreviation before, despite some rapid googling on his phone when he'd got into the building. Definitely founded by the government but probably separate now, judging by this man's god complex and attitude.
Going back to his looks, Sherlock could tell he was definitely the boss. He had heavy lines around his eyes from the sort of lack of sleep only found in those extremely and constantly absorbed in their work and the sort of look in those cold eyes that Sherlock had seen in John and so many other old soldiers. Having seen things that he shouldn't have had to, and a lot more than most. He probably had been in the actual army at some point, judging by his age and posture, but a long time ago. He was obviously comfortable in this environment; it was his domain.
That look in his eyes made Sherlock think back to yesterday, trying desperately to remember what had happened. He couldn't just have forgotten, which suggested that someone had drugged him. The business card meant he'd seen someone from here so these people had probably done it. That meant he'd seen something he shouldn't have. There was a ridiculously long list of 'things that civilians weren't supposed to see', although Sherlock reckoned he'd seen most of them and read about the rest when hacking into Mycroft's computer. Most of the secrets kept by important organisations, people and countries weren't as interesting as most people seemed to think.
At that point they were given question papers which temporarily stopped him thinking about it. Sherlock finished the paper in under a minute. Boring and easy. Although he almost wished he'd remembered what John had told him about the solar system now, instead of deleting it as useless information. It had never been useful before but some part of his mind, the part that wouldn't let him see any of the previous day, told him it would continue to be functional knowledge for today.
The other men were glaring at him as he reached across and put the paper back on the table in the middle of the room but he didn't pay any attention to them. New York had even more idiots than London. Especially these men, there wasn't even anything interesting to deduce from them.
Bored, bored, bored.
It felt like years before the assorted army men finished their papers.
The boss walked in again, gave Sherlock a look then spoke.
"Right, gentlemen, on to the next test."
The men all walked out quickly after him. Sherlock rolled his eyes and traipsed after them, taking in the location of every door on the impeccable white corridor.
"The next task is for you to shoot the things you consider to be threats" he said, gesturing at a table with enough guns for them.
The man walked out of the room again and the lights flashed. Sherlock watched cardboard cutouts of monsters, possibly aliens, swing forward. The one on the right, a tall blue thing, looked familiar, it might have been in one of the crap television shows John watched. He deduced all of them quickly.
Sherlock watched the other men shoot repeatedly but didn't even raise the gun.
"Well done, gentlemen," the older man walked in as the lights came up. "Except Holmes. What the hell?"
"None of them are a threat." Sherlock shrugged, not bothering to justify his actions.
His eyes narrowed. "Right then, gentlemen, one last test and you can all go home"
A man who looked vaguely familiar stood in front of Sherlock, stopping him from following the rest of the group.
"Ah, so I didn't fail. Of course, I never thought I had." Sherlock said.
"I could be here to escort you out." he was an older man, voice of a former smoker, lived alone and had been working here for decades, probably since the sixties. Familiar, in some fuzzy, distant kind of way. Possibly the one who'd drugged him.
"You're not though, are you? You want to separate me from those idiots and leave them to whatever happens in that room, which presumably is what you, or at least someone who works here, did to me yesterday"
He took his sunglasses off and stared at Sherlock, who just gave a smirk of satisfaction.
"Well done." he said finally.
"So what am I actually doing here? Other than the obvious."
"Congratulations. You're now an agent of of the Men In Black."