Chapter 11: Dreadnought Down
As far as Oliver was concerned, it had been a long morning. He'd had to bundle his cantankerous houseguest into his car at six o'clock in the morning to get him into London for twelve, then had to make contact with a friend and fellow Dreadnought, who was meet them in Trafalgar Square with 'Serenity269's computer, and then had to sling his things into a suitcase that Violet was sharing and taking down to London on the train. Yes. It had definitely been a long morning.
But it had all been worth it to take his shiny, black Hayabusa down the M1. Christ! He loved the feeling of speeding down the longest motorway in Britain; he almost wished that he could have gone without the helmet, just to feel the wind screaming in his ears.
It was just a shame that this was business rather than pleasure.
Surprisingly, it took him less than an hour to get into the city centre after battling his way through the M25, but that didn't make the unease he felt at the sight of the looming Metropolis dissipate. If anything, it increased – grew stronger. If he could get into London so quickly, then what prevented the Secret Service and so on from tracing him up to Manchester?
Shoving that thought as far out of his mind as he could, he proceeded to 221b Baker Street, where Violet was already waiting with their things, her features carefully emotionless. Oh no – something had gone wrong – they couldn't afford for anything to go wrong.
He pulled up on the curb and pulled his helmet off. "What's wrong?" he asked, dispensing with all preliminaries. Violet's lips pursed almost imperceptibly before she said: "I got another 505 on the train."
"Who?" he asked, feeling a horrible sinking feeling in his gut. Please don't be Bob…
"'Dumbledore' – Bob Downey…I got his 505 about an hour and a half ago. I'm so sorry. I know he was your friend." She murmured, not looking him in the eye, as if this was her fault.
"Shit." He breathed, his chest tightening against the loss and the fear that had just swamped him. He'd thought that bringing Sherlock Holmes back to life would be fun, challenging, but fun. How wrong he'd been… He inhaled deeply, and looked at Violet, trying to figure out whether or not he blamed her – whether he could blame her. If she hadn't come to him with this 'project', he wouldn't have put in all his resources, like the lovestruck fool he was, he wouldn't have asked Bob for this favour - and Bob wouldn't be dead...
"Well. He knew the risks. We muck around in dealings like this all the time; there's always a chance that we'll get killed for it. This time's no different, so can we stop moping, get inside and get the bastard who did this, hmm?" He snapped. Leaping up the steps and knocking on the black door.
"Just a minute!" a lady cooed from inside, just before she opened the door. Her eyes widened and she fluttered ever-so slightly.
"Mrs Hudson." Oliver said grimly, "may we come in."
"Oh. I wasn't expecting anybody at the moment-"
"We're here to see Mr Holmes." Violet interjected with a charming smile, figuring that seeing unexpected, leather-clad visitors (she was wearing her hooded trenchcoat) on your doorstep could be a bit intimidating – at least if you weren't used to it.
Oliver pulled out his phone and began typing.
"Well, I'm sorry, but you must be mistaken. Mr Holmes has been dead for two years-"
Just then a phone inside rang, and Mrs Hudson slammed the door to go and answer it, leaving Violet and Oliver twiddling their thumbs on the doorstep, until she yanked the door back open and then said brightly "Come in – come in. I'm sorry about that, I was told you'd be here at about five, you see, and, well…you're early." She ushered them inside and up the stairs to what was presumably Sherlock's old flat. "That's absolutely fine, Mrs Hudson." Violet beamed in that self-assured way that always seemed to calm down fussy old ladies, and for some reason always resulted in being offered a cup of tea. This time was no different. "Yes, that'd be lovely, thank you," she replied, "would you like one, Oliver?"
"Could I have a cup of coffee, please? Black, two sugars." He murmured absently, unzipping the suitcase to grab out their laptops, external hard-drives and various other bits of equipment.
"Yes, dear." Mrs Hudson smiled before leaving the flat.
"Are we setting up in the kitchen?" Violet enquired.
"I suppose." Oliver answered shortly, taking the computer equipment into the kitchen and plugging everything in.
"Look, I am sorry-"
"No." he sighed, "Don't apologise. It's not your fault; you didn't kill him. You didn't. Ok? I just…I just need to get to work. So…"
"Right." Violet nodded, shrugging off her long coat and making her way into the kitchen, where they switched the laptops on and donned headsets, ready to examine Bob Downey's 505 and work out where his body – and the laptop was.
…
It was another hour before Sherlock came back to the flat, John following not far behind, just like old times, and in that time, the police had discovered the body of "Robert Downey, aged 39" twenty feet into the Northbound tunnel of Euston Underground.
"What I would give to be at that crime scene, now." Sherlock growled, stalking into the flat, shrugging out of his coat and scarf. "You and me both." Oliver agreed bitterly from his position at the kitchen counter.
Sherlock whirled around, his eyes wide with outrage at the sight of the two Hackers all set up on his kitchen counter. "What! – no – you can't sit there; that's where I do all of my experiments – I'll need to do experiments, so you can't go there."
"Well, where do you expect us to be?" Violet demanded, to which Sherlock danced on his heel whilst the bejumpered John Watson looked on with no surprise whatsoever showing on his lined face. Honestly, if Sherlock ever behaved in any other way, he fully expected to see pigs flying past the window, wearing spandex and glitzy platform heels.
"There. You can go there." Sherlock gestured absently to the dusty bombsite that was the sitting room.
"How about 'no'." Violet murmured dismissively.
"Is no one going to introduce me?" John asked mildly, flexing his fingers. He remembered his first meeting with Mycroft Holmes, who had, with his peculiar brand of polite obnoxiousness, informed him that the fact that his hand shook was not a sign that he was haunted by the battle that he had left in Afghanistan, but that he missed it. Right now, he was gladder than he could say that his hand was not shaking at all. In fact, watching Sherlock throwing a strop at two unknown figures in the kitchen was pretty much making his year.
"Ugh, yes, of course, John." Sherlock muttered with a scowl, "The one with the long hair and the obvious lack of maturity is Count Frederick Oliver Pearce, Earl of Stockport – otherwise known as: 'Dracula', 'Oliver', 'Gaoler'…I can think of a few other names for him-"
"Mind your mouth, Sherlock." Violet said, not looking up from her screen, her tone that of pleasant warning.
"And the one with the purple hair and the dress sense that will hopefully make my brother cry is Violet-"
John's eyes widened as he took in the sight of the girl whom Sherlock professed to be Mycroft's dau- no, it couldn't be right, surely? Every part of her seemed to be the perfect antithesis of Mycroft's debonair, unhurried, elegantly groomed aspect: from the shabbily styled purple hair; to the odd earrings and array of necklaces; to the gothic cut of her wine-red shirt and black leather waistcoat; to the leggings, black denim shorts and scuffed ankle boots. Not forgetting the glasses and the conspicuous lack of umbrella.
Strangely enough, though, there was some resemblance. It was in the way she held herself, like someone with a hell of a lot of power, who knew precisely what they were doing. It was in her voice; the soft, cynical mockery and the neatly clipped consonants.
"We've spoken." She smiled warmly at John, whose brows rose slightly.
"I'm not sure that taking possession of my computer in order to type up a vague message really counts as 'speaking'. At least not in my experience." He muttered acerbically, eyeing the pair at the kitchen counter with their headphones and wires and laptops and such whilst Sherlock leapt like a hyperactive jungle cat into his chair. The one whom Sherlock had identified as 'Dracula'…or 'Oliver' – that sounded more normal – smirked. "It's her trademark." He murmured before admonishing her: "you know, you really should stop doing that: at some point, someone is going to work out how you're doing it – "
"And when that day comes, I'll stop doing it." The girl teased.
Ok, John decided that he wasn't even going to touch that. Damn, Mycroft was in for a shock.
Just then, Sherlock's baritone jerked them all out their reveries: "I'm going out-"
"No." Violet said firmly, the teasing note in her voice gone. She stared at Sherlock in a way that was creepily familiar and would undoubtedly have had many quaking in their shoes. Not Sherlock though.
"I can't just sit here and do nothing. Not when there's this case! You want it solved – you want the murderer – so let me go and get him-"
"Do you honestly think that you'll get anywhere near the crime scene? The Filth are all over that tunnel – and they all think you're dead. Very likely most of them think of you as the fake genius who committed suicide-"
"Oh come on, you've been working on that for over eighteen months!"
"The process is not complete! That was the point to Emily Strange's article – that was going to be the clincher, and even then we were going to have to wait awhile for the effects to take root-"
"Well we haven't got time for that-" Sherlock shouted, his face a mask of anguished frenzy.
"I know!" Violet roared, making everyone in the room stop.
When she next spoke, her voice was cool, though her cheeks were flushed with stress.
"Look. I know that the last two years have been hell for you. I know that you're bored and frustrated – I can empathise with that. But marching down there, collar up and coat swishing, is going to do nothing but undo everything that I've built over the last two years. All of our work will be wasted because you like to show off.
"I would just like to point out that, right now, this is no longer about you. I'm sorry if you can't handle that fact because you're a child; that'll mean that the lot of us are screwed. We're going to be picked off, one by one, for supporting you, when you can't be bothered to stick to the plan we've laid out."
At this, Sherlock looked, uncharacteristically, down at his feet, duly chastened. "You're right. I'm sorry."
"'s fine." She muttered, turning back to her computer screen. John looked at Sherlock, brow furrowed; the number of times someone had given him such a lecture, and it had been water off a duck's back…what exactly was going on, here? How big, really, was this case?
"What d'you think?" the long haired man asked the girl on a whisper.
"It sounds like a good idea. He's the one most likely to listen, from what I've found-"
"It will speed things up, just that little bit-"
"Let's do it, then."
"Do what?" John enquired, bemused for the third time in the last five minutes.
"They're going to track down Lestrade and arrange a meeting." There was a subtle smile in Sherlock's voice as he said this, as if he approved of the plan. John rolled his eyes; there was one glaring flaw with this plan: "Lestrade thinks you're dead. If he sees you, God knows what'll happen – he'll probably arrest you for all you know-"
"Yes, that's more than likely. Which is why I'm not the one who's meeting him."
"Well, who is?"
"I am." Violet smiled in a way that chilled John, just a little bit. It was a slight smile; polite, friendly, sweet even. But there was a funny sort of gleam in her eye.
"Have you sent the text?" Sherlock asked of Oliver. The other man nodded and said:
"I've told him that we have some information that he may find of value. He is to go to London Victoria Station and he is to wait there. Alone."
John blinked: "You know he won't agree to that – he can't. He'll be bugged with all sorts."
"We know. That won't be a problem." Oliver chuckled mirthlessly.
Author's Note: I am so sorry that it's taken this long to write. And I'm sort of anxious about it, because it does seem to be clogged up mainly with dialogue. I hope this chapter doesn't suffer for it, though. It was mostly an expositional chapter.
Ok, just for any non-British readers: 'The Filth' is one of our names for the police…I love how much that says about us as a nation-lol.
Soundtrack, if anyone cares, is: Narcissistic Cannibal by Korn.
As a relatively pointless incentive to shamelessly ply you lovely readers for reviews, I'll dedicate the next chapter to the first person who does. Fair? No? Ah, well }-)