Chapter 12: Melodramatic Madmen.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here."
-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Someone was shaking him. John noticed this in some part of his mind, while the rest of him focused on trying to get back to sleep. It had been so lovely, resting in that cool oblivion, it hadn't been long enough, and his head hurt. But he recognized that voice, it registered somewhere in his fuzzy mind, and he had to open his eyes.
"Doctor? Doctor!" One eye open. Other eye open. There was the red-haired girl, staring down at him worriedly. He had told her to wake him up if someone was dying.
"What's happened?" he asked, blinking himself into awareness. The red-head glanced over her shoulder, at something out of John's sight. Then she turned back to him seriously.
"Your patients are fine. They all made it through the night, except for the one that died before you fell asleep. I'm sorry for waking you up, but someone's here to see you." John pushed himself up with one arm, and rubbed at his eyes, then his temples.
"Who wants me? I've got to check on my patients first." The woman simply gestured towards the door. The first thing John saw was the bodies, still on the tables, many of the morphine drips running low, and the people who were there to apply pressure to the wounds. Then he saw Sebastian, leaning against the wall. He'd changed, combed his hair, and was looking a lot better than John felt.
"Hey," he greeted John, coming towards the bed. "Congrats, I see you haven't lost your touch. You saved four lives in as many hours. Not bad, not bad at all." John swung his legs over the side of his bed, avoiding his friend's eyes.
"I let one of them die," he muttered. Sebastian rested a hand on his shoulder.
"That's not true, it wasn't your fault. You did all you could to help them."
"I could have saved him." John finally raised his eyes to meet the surprised gaze of the other man. "If I cauterized his wound, the child would have bled out. If I saved the child, his lungs would fill. I had to make a choice, and I let him die."
"But you saved the girl," Sebastian said. "There's something I've learned while working here, and that's that you've got to always look at the positive side of what you've done. It's the only way to stay sane. Or, you know, as sane as you can get around here." He smiled. "Listen, you did a great job, and my boss wants to meet with you to thank you personally."
"Well, that doesn't sound ominous," John said sarcastically. He pushed himself to his feet and stretched, feeling his spine crack.
"No, he's not going to kill you." Sebastian said, rolling his eyes. Then he muttered something under his breath, which John cynically assumed to be 'at least, he'd better not'.
"Sounds reassuring," John said. "But I have to redo some of the stitches, change all of the bandages, and set up a bit of a system with the workers I have. None of them will be recovering for several weeks, so whichever one is the doctor will be out of service for a while. In fact, I'd recommend keeping them under for two more days, and a moderate morphine dosage for ten days after that."
"I'm not the one that needs to know all that. Tell it to the boss."
"I'm not leaving this place for at least three hours, I'm sure you can tell him that," John said firmly. Sebastian stared at him disbelievingly.
"Listen, you don't know who you're dealing with here. I do, I know him, and telling him to just wait a few hours is not going to go down well. You want him in a good mood when you first meet him, you've got to trust me on this."
"I'm sorry, Sebastian. I don't mean to get you in trouble. But I'm not leaving my patients, no way in hell. Okay? Thank you. Now, I'll text you when I'm done here, and then you can take me to meet this mysterious boss of yours."
"John, you don't know-" Sebastian began halfheartedly, and John cut him off.
"No, I don't know. But believe me, I don't care, and I've probably dealt with worse. You don't know the types of people I've had to deal with." Psychopaths and sociopaths, consulting criminals, consulting detectives, and the British government personified. No, nothing could phase him now.
"Fine. Your neck," Sebastian said impatiently, and walked out. John stood up with a groan, and shook the remaining sleep-fuzziness from his head. He knew his friend was angry with him, but it couldn't be helped.
"Alright. What's your name, then?" he asked the red haired woman, who had been watching the entire exchange with wide eyes.
"Kathy," she answered, almost shyly.
"Well, Kathy, I'm John. I guess we'll be working together for a day or two. And these are the people you recruited to help?" He gestured towards the people he had noticed earlier. "Do any of them have actual medical knowledge?"
"No, but they're smart, and they learn fast. We all do," Kathy said defensively.
"I believe you," John said simply, then paced up and down the row of beds once, assessing as best he could with his eyes. "Right, so. I've got to redo the stitches on her, her, and him," he said, pointing to the patients in question. "Then I've got to calculate a regular morphine dosage, and write that down for you so that you can adjust it daily. You know how to do that?" Kathy nodded. "Good. Well, I'll start with the stitches, and then I'll have to change all the bandages. You'll be doing it next time, so I can run you through it." John pulled on a new pair of gloves, and got to work.
The afternoon passed with the typical post-surgery work, cleaning up the patients and changing their bandages, checking their stitches, weighing and calculating dosages. His last stop was the little girl, whose leg had to be re-stitched. Once she was done, he paused to stare at her, as he had done yesterday.
She was probably only seven years old. Only in Year One. What was she doing here? Earlier, the situation had seemed completely natural to John, but now it didn't line up. Why choose an ex-army doctor, who had done no previous work for the group? Why not take the men to a hospital, or hire a professional surgeon? And how on earth did a young child get shot, and why were her parents not with her, and why wasn't she in a hospital? Why all the secrecy? What was going on?
He turned to Kathy, who was putting antiseptic onto one of the men at the end of the row of beds. He'd dismissed the other workers, who had traipsed out happily. Now it was just them and the four surviving patients.
"Kathy," he said, and she looked over at him. "Where am I? What is this place?" She blinked, then glanced around as though expecting someone to be standing in the corner of the room.
"It's Brewer's," she said quietly. Unfortunately, that didn't help John very much.
"And what is that, exactly?" She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, clearly nervous.
"To be honest, doctor, I don't know much more than you do. My friend brought me here when my life got, well, over complicated. They helped me to disappear, and gave me a new job helping the doctor. But I don't really know what the whole place is for. People come and go, but they don't talk to me. Everyone's rather tight-lipped, I'm sure you've noticed."
Well, that was helpful, John thought sarcastically. Then he decided he was being too hard on the young woman. She obviously hadn't had an easy life, and was scared of crossing the wrong people. Speaking of which…
"And who's this mysterious boss that I've supposedly offended?"
"He's called M," Kathy said in a hushed voice. "No one ever sees him, but everyone knows about him. He controls who does what, who knows what, and who gets in or out."
"But who is he?" John pressed. "Surely you must know something."
"Only rumors," the girl shrugged. "Some people say it's a council that's pretending to be one person. Lots of people think that Mr. Moran is M, because he's the closest anyone's ever seen. Some people say that he doesn't even exist, that he's a computer. And other people have ridiculous theories. He's actually a child, or an alien, or some sort of mythical creature… stupid things like that."
"Oh." John hesitated, taken aback. He'd known that Sebastian was the second in command of some sort of secret organization, but he hadn't expected something of this scale, or this level of secrecy. Even the employees didn't know their own boss, for Christ's sake! Then again, Kathy could be lying, keeping him in the dark. But she seemed rather transparent, and at this moment, sincere.
And then who was this 'M'? There was Moriarty, of course. But John had never heard him called simply 'M'. Moriarty, yes. JM, yes. But never a single initial. It seemed too simple for such a melodramatic man. Mycroft, on the other hand, signed his texts with an 'M,' and he was certainly paranoid enough to make this whole setup. But something was definitely off about the situation.
As Sherlock would say, he was speculating with insufficient data, which could only lead to incorrect conclusions. It was best to wait and see what happened. In the meantime, he could give Kathy a lesson in infection and shock, so that he could actually get going. He didn't want to keep the ominous 'M' waiting too long, despite his earlier confidence in front of Sebastian.
He turned his attention to the patients, taking Kathy along with him and teaching her what to keep an eye out for while he was gone. He patted his phone, ensured that it was on, and entered his number into Kathy's cell, just in case. They should all be fine for the moment, but there was no reason to take chances.
Then, once everything was taken care of, he brought out his phone and sent a short text to Sebastian, telling him that he was ready to go. It wasn't five minutes before Sebastian walked into the makeshift hospital, texting with one hand.
"Come with me," he said, voice professional, almost cold. John blinked, but did as he was told. As they walked out of the room, he shared a worried look and a wave with Kathy. Then they were back in the wide hallway, walking at a fast pace.
"Sebastian?" John asked, and got a sideways look from his friend. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he said gruffly. "The boss isn't very happy, and it took me a bit of talking to get him off the war path. Christ, John, you're already annoying him, and you haven't even met him yet!" There was a moment of silence. John really had nothing to say to that. "Just…" Sebastian started, then trailed off. "Just don't be pointlessly brave, okay?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" John asked. Being brave was never pointless, in his experience. Even if you lost the fight, at least you were making a statement. If you got through to someone, you won the argument, and you had to stand up to do that.
"I know you, John. You don't back down, even when you're hopelessly outnumbered. But that isn't a good strategy here, okay? You've got to give some ground with this guy, meet him on his own terms, because he'll never meet you halfway. I just needed… wanted to tell you that. Give you a bit of warning." John shrugged, obviously unaffected. Sebastian clenched his teeth, unhappy with his friend's nonchalance. "He could kill you and leave you in front of the police department with his signature and fingerprints all over you. And they still wouldn't catch him. I don't want to see you hurt, or worse, John. Promise me you won't do anything stupid."
They were walking down a nicer wing of the warehouse-turned-headquarters now, with light wood doors, and clean floors. There were fewer people hurrying back and forth, and the people who passed them were wearing suits, rather than the mixed style of the people in the concrete hall. John listened to the sound of his shoes on the floor, and worried about the fact that there was blood on his jumper, and avoided giving Sebastian an answer.
"John. Come on, be reasonable. I recommended you. We're both in this together, and I'm the one who knows what he's doing. Just follow my lead, yeah?"
"Yeah, alright," John conceded, with an internal sigh. He didn't want to get Sebastian into trouble, but neither did he want to be bowing at the feet of some man he didn't know, just because he had political power. It wasn't really something John valued. Friends and self were what you had to rely on. Not money and business partners.
"Thank you." Sebastian sounded relieved, and John did his best not to feel offended. But he was the one that always took the stand. Sebastian preferred to solve things in other, slower ways, but they were just as effective. John had to trust him in this strange new world, trust him to get them both through it.
They took a series of strange turns, and John began to feel as though he were in a labyrinth, making his way to the center to complete his quest. The center of the web, where the mysterious M waited like a spider… Spider? Moriarty… No, no, that was a name that was proudly displayed, a name that everyone knew. Not a name hidden behind an initial.
Oh, they were slowing down now! John looked around, and realized his surroundings had changed yet again. The floor was marble, and the doorways were open, leading to offices where men and women were watching computer screens that showed street views and office spaces, and other scenes from around the country… Around the world, John corrected himself as he caught sight of the Statue of Liberty in the background of one of the shots.
At the end of the hallway was a black door, and that was where Sebastian was leading them.
"Rather melodramatic," John commented.
"Yeah, that's a word you could use to describe him." They stopped in front of the door, and Sebastian tapped out a short pattern that John automatically translated to "SM" in Morse code. Sebastian Moran, the initials. Melodramatic indeed, considering that he could just call out his name.
"Come in!" the voice called, and John froze. He knew that voice. Sebastian swung the door open, and pushed John in. Black eyes locked with blue, trapping him with intensity. Sebastian entered behind him, closing the door, then felt the tension and looked from one man to the other as they stared each other down. Finally, the man at the desk started to laugh, the sound high and delighted. "Johnny boy! What a surprise!"
"Moriarty," John responded evenly.
A/N: Sorry, this isn't a very good chapter. I was sort of half-asleep when I edited it. The next chapter might take a week or so, because it's being really stubborn. And also, homework. I'll see you then, anyways. Have an exciting week, and remember to leave a review!