Alright, I have an apology to make. In three parts.
Part 1: The time it's taken me to upload this: you have all been such a great audience, and I thank you all for sticking with this even though it's taken longer than expected.
Part 2: Erm...once again I seemed to have misjudged the length of this fic. Rest assured, the last chapter is nearly complete, however, erm... this isn't it. I didn't exactly count on this turning into an actual story. It was originally just meant to be a oneshot.
Part 3: This chapter was meant to be called "Guts and Guesswork", the last chapter was supposed to be called "Shock and Blood".

Anyway, enjoy!

Captain Pole watched the soldiers drag the livid Holmes down the hall toward the detention area. It probably hadn't been used in decades for anything other than storage (to lock someone up here at Baskerville would probably constitute a security breach) but the cells were probably the most secure in the world- even a Holmes' reputation or his friend's rank wouldn't be able to get him out of one unaided.

Pole sighed and headed back into the room. He felt in over his head for some reason; all he'd had to deal with in the last four years of working here were chemical burns, animal bites, and the flu. With recent precautions initiated, it hadn't even been that.

But shock? That shouldn't be so much of a biggie. Even after years out of practice, an army medic should be able to treat for shock. As long as the source was known and could be rectified, and as long as there was a way to bring up the blood pressure, as long as not too much time had passed, the patient would live.

And that's what they were doing. One of his underlings had already started a large-bore IV, and he'd ordered the start of vasopressors before leaving to talk to Holmes. But even with the generic interventions and no evidence that John had moved beyond the compensatory stage, Pole had to admit John wasn't doing well. An oxygen mask obscured his face, but looking at the monitor, there was very poor perfusion. If they didn't find the cause soon, John would suffer severe organ damage, and possibly-.

"Sir, his blood-oxygen content is down to 90, and he's already on 100% oxygen. Do you suggest intubation?" One of the younger medics said, pointing at the screen.

Crap.

"Yes. Go!" He paused for a moment, watching the medics scramble to recall knowledge they hadn't used since being assigned here. He needed to find the cause, and his only lead –that John was suffering from an overdose of the mystery compound Holmes had alluded to- was bust. The Narcan hadn't worked, and everything else he thought of seemed unlikely. It was distributive shock, but within that definition, there were hundreds of causes. He was running out of useful ideas.

Well, he thought ruefully, there was one.

Ok, ok, Sherlock, think! Pole isn't going to be able to save John. That's fine, it just means you need to.

Sherlock was no John, though, when it came to this sort of thing. He only knew about the Narcan because John kept two doses in the drawer by his bed, should he at some point find Sherlock overdosed on heroin. He only knew about the types of shock because he'd experienced them. The rest had basically been a confident mix of guts and educated guesswork. Damn. He had to think of something.

The cell was small and impenetrable. It was in the basement, some type of converted bomb shelter, most likely. Or possibly just a bomb shelter; it was a military base after all. Sherlock slumped against one of the concrete walls. The door was steel and opened inward: no way to force an escape. His only possible contact with the outside world was the 10cm by 40cm bulletproof glass window set into the door with industrial rivets. Through it he could see a guard seated at a desk in the corner of the room, with his back turned and watching black-and-white security feeds on a computer screen. If Sherlock were to suddenly catch on fire, the man probably wouldn't notice until he toggled to the camera feed from inside Sherlock's cell.

At least for now, fear was winning out over boredom. He could barely comprehend what boredom in this cell would be like without the need to escape. For one thing, he'd long since given up pounding the door with his fists or shouting. Either the cell was soundproof or the guard had been instructed not to react to anything he did. It wasn't that Sherlock had expected anything different, on the contrary, he'd more or less come quietly, explaining to various guards, scientists he'd been marched past, and finally the man who'd taken his coat before locking the cell door behind him, what was wrong with Captain doctor John Watson.

They'd all ignored his plea.

There was only one thing now that could save John, and Sherlock hoped it wasn't merely desperation that drove his mind to the thought. Captain Pole may be closed-minded, officious, and callus, but when it came down to it, he was still a medic. It might get dangerous, but eventually, if nothing he did worked, he wouldn't let John die if there was a chance that Sherlock's information could save him. Unless he was wrong and that was just John's mentality. He hoped he wasn't wrong.

Sifting back through their conversation, though, Sherlock began to realize that even this might be far too hopeful a thought. In the control-panicked state he was in when he first saw John, he had assumed the Captain had been in on the experiment. The medic's reactions made a bit more sense now, if he'd had only what Pole knew, he might not have grasped- No, wait, he would have been able to do it, there had been hints, just not ones the normal person would have spotted. John's position on the floor, the pain he was in, the clear setup with the bent metal of the cage. He could have done it.

But that wasn't the point now. He'd lost control of himself, failed to assume that this man was not his intellectual equal. And in so doing, entirely failed, once again, to help John in the slightest.

There was a hint of movement beyond the window and Sherlock leapt up to see what was going on. Captain Pole had come back. He handed the soldier at the desk a piece of paper, and signed another, then walked over to Sherlock's cell. Oh, happy days Sherlock's deadpan mind-voice intoned. He had a second chance at explaining.

Pole didn't open the door. Instead, he pressed a button on an intercom to the side of the cell, and Sherlock heard a popping sound as it activated.

"Mr. Holmes." The voice was staticky but level. Pole hadn't given up on confidence, and his clipped tone suggested John wasn't dead. Yet. "Start from the beginning. Tell me everything that happened." Sherlock took a breath before responding. Pole's request posed a problem. It was one thing to tell the Captain what was happening right now to his friend, but it was entirely different to give away the information that he knew things about what was happening at Baskerville. He decided to sidestep the question. "He was drugged with a hallucinogen, but the damage to his body comes from a place far more deadly. His mind." Pole raised an eyebrow, but motioned for Sherlock to continue. "We were performing an experiment to test the effects of the compound on human subjects." Not technically a lie. "We set up an environment which would induce fear. That fear, heightened by the hallucinogen and fed by rumors of a hound on the moor, created the creature that mauled him. He sustained major blood loss and-"

"He didn't sustain any blood loss, he hasn't been mauled. We've been over this."

"He thinks he has." Sherlock reminded Pole. "And, strengthened by the drug, that thought became a reality for his body. You still don't know the cause of the shock because you can't see it. But try to imagine it from John's point of view. From his vantage point, he's bleeding out on your bed in the infirmary, and nobody seems to be treating him." Pole closed his eyes for a second, clearly not understanding.

"You have to understand that your idea is completely preposterous. You're saying that because the drug is in his system, everything he thinks becomes reality?"

"For him, yes. But to John, he's not just thinking it, he's experiencing it. That's the interesting part. The drug isn't just making him hallucinate; it's giving his very mind the wrong signals. His mind receives the false feedback, and channels it into the shock process in order to do what it thinks is keeping him alive. But it isn't, it's killing him instead, and that's what makes it so genius. It tricks the body into unconsciously committing suicide."

"How did you work that out?"

"I had an idea, and it went too far. Now we have to find a way to reverse the process." Sherlock said guiltily.

"Any suggestions?"

"Maybe if we treat him as though he were mauled, his body might realize it and reverse the process itself? I don't know. You're already treating him for shock, get him some blood and start bandaging the parts of him he thinks are bleeding freely."

"We don't have blood to give him. This is an army research base. People don't get shot or mauled here." Pole said. Sherlock's eyes widened for a moment, his mind quickly recalculating the scenario with the new information. "What?"

"Well then, we have one other option. We find a way to break the hallucination."

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