"Oh Christ!" Greg jumped off a circuit board his foot had crunched into while trying to traverse the minefield that was better known as Sherlock Holmes' flat. "Sherlock?" he called, peering around the disassembled computer , enormous manuals, and other assorted books haphazardly strewn around the flat.
Greg sighed. He hadn't seen Sherlock for months after he was fired for alleged illegal conduct. Sherlock was… different. Greg had been one of the few at the office who could even attempt to deal with him. He had been a brilliant programmer for Encom, but very difficult to work with if you weren't up to his standards.
However, with the problems he was facing at Encom, he knew there was only one programmer he could trust to explain what he had been encountering. Greg had been fiddling with the system one lazy afternoon after he had finished his assignment for the day and came across some unusual coding at one section. Immediately, he knew that something wasn't right. He created several small programs to approach the almost insignificant error he was detecting to see what analysis they could provide; when the analysis was nearly complete, the programs would mysteriously disappear.
He had tried what he could, some of which probably wasn't completely legal. Greg knew some outside assistance was needed from someone he had to trust to get the job done, to discern what the problem was. He had been feeling uneasy about the company recently; he desperately wanted to know he wasn't going crazy.
Sherlock was cut-off from the company; he didn't harbor any positive feelings for Encom, that Greg knew for sure.
"Sherlock! I know you're hiding somewhere." Greg slid between two ridiculously tall stacks of books to reveal Sherlock huddled behind one of the armchairs with an actual functional laptop.
"Oy! Holmes!"
Sherlock kept on typing furiously away at his laptop, scrunched in a position that held the laptop precariously on his knees. It looked extremely uncomfortable to Greg.
Greg threw what looked to be a hard drive of a computer and several notebooks on the floor to make room on the seedy looking couch near Sherlock to wait until he decided to acknowledge his presence.
Ten minutes passed and Greg was getting impatient already. He started going through his phone, repeatedly glancing over at Sherlock, who was still madly typing.
"Sherlock? I don't have all night. I think you'll find this interesting."
Another minute passed, until finally Sherlock closed his laptop and stood up.
"And what could be so interesting that a man I haven't seen in 4 months and 7 days decides to break into my flat and grace myself with his presence?" Sherlock asked coldly.
"Now hold on, I didn't break into your flat. The door was unlocked."
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"
Greg began to explain the problem to Sherlock. He silently listened to the whole story, intently watching Greg's face.
"… So I was wondering if you could come down to Encom and have a look at the OS and confirm or deny my suspicions. It would be a huge favor, I know, but I'm willing to—" Sherlock shook his head.
"You don't want to—" Greg started to ask, slightly surprised.
"No. You were going to tell me you would pay me for my troubles. I don't need the money. Breaking into Encom and rooting through their system will be reward enough."
"All right. Fine. That's fine. Thank you."
"Do we want to do this tonight?"
Greg looked taken aback. "Tonight?"
"Yes. What's stopping us? No time like the present, as people say. Of course it's exceedingly trite the majority of the time but it applies well enough here."
"Right. Shall we go in my car?" He stood up, motioning to the street outside.
"No. I don't want to be seen arriving with you, if someone looks at the security cameras later. I will take a taxi and find my own way in."
Greg raised an eyebrow but nodded. "Meet me in room 34 on the first floor. It's large and houses most of the large scale experiments. You know the one."
After Greg was down the stairs and out the door, Sherlock felt a surge of excitement and purpose. There was finally something to do to ease the never-ending boredom that was these past few months. It had been absolute torture. He had taken small jobs here and there but nothing as thrilling as this. He practically ran to grab his long, dark coat and a scarf, and then dashed down the stairs. A way to possibly prove he wasn't the one who stole the information while obtaining evidence to prove how corrupt that damn CEO of Encom really was? Sherlock could barely suppress a grin.
He directed the cab to stop a few blocks before reaching the main building downtown. What they were doing tonight was dangerous and highly illegal, two of his favorite things, but it did require some discretion.
He walked the rest of the way, his shoulders hunched and the lapels of his coat up to cover part of his face. When he had been abruptly separated from the company, the CEO, Mr. Moriarty, was very pleased to have him go. He had been accused of a lot of things, only half of which were true. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble trying to convince the world that he had leaked several crucial security components online and stolen other significant data from the OS and company. All of which did occur, only Sherlock couldn't truthfully claim responsibility for it. However, everything led back to him and so he was removed from the company. His brother was the only reason he wasn't criminally charged with anything too serious.
Sherlock had left with inconsequential criminal charges, a grudge against the company, and a suspicion that Mr. Moriarty wasn't all that he seemed.
Someone had actually gotten away with these things and might still be getting away with them, and Sherlock was the only one who knew it wasn't him. It was an intriguing thought if they were related to the inconsistencies Greg had encountered. Definitely something Sherlock had to look into once he was locked into the system later tonight.
Once near the building, he slipped down a side alley to reach a back entrance that janitors used. Sherlock pulled an ID out of his pocket that read "Gregory Lestrade". Smirking at it, Sherlock swiped it on the receiver. He used to enjoy nicking them from Greg, as he had higher clearance than Sherlock, and tonight wasn't any different.
The door slid open, and Sherlock stepped inside. He took off down the hallway, knowing exactly where he had to go. He had been away from the company for months, but he still knew this building inside and out. Before he was fired, he had practically lived here and knew all the dark corners he could work in peace.
Rounding the corner, Sherlock practically rammed into something solid. Grunting, he managed to catch himself from falling.
"Watch it!"
Sherlock straightened up to see Greg regaining his balance as well.
"What are you doing there, hovering in front of the door?"
"Waiting for you, you dolt."
"I knew where the room was." Sherlock strode past Greg, pushing at the door. It swung open, revealing a large room, more than two floors high, filled with small desks and very large, unique looking instruments. Sherlock's eyes swept across the room, eager to observe what the company had been up to in his absence. This wasn't his department, but he had loved sneaking in here every once in a while, as they did design some intriguing and even sometimes useful gadgets.
Making a bee-line to the nearest computer in front of a ray-looking machine, Sherlock sat in the chair and swiveled around to face Greg, arms crossed. "Well?"
"Well what?" Greg asked, bemused. "Just do your thing. What do you want? A tip?"
"I need your access password," snapped Sherlock, giving Greg a look that clearly said, "Who's the dolt now?"
"Oh." Greg stepped forward to enter it in for Sherlock.
Once in the system, Sherlock went to work. Greg stood awkwardly behind him for a minute or two before Sherlock turned around, his face in a frown. "So what sort of programs did you send in?"
"The first two were nothing special. Basic inquiry programs. The third was a bit more involved but came to the same end as the first two. It was frustrating, to say the least," said Greg haltingly.
"You were beginning to suspect something was stopping you from finding what was wrong?" Sherlock asked.
" Yeah," Greg sheepishly responded. "Nothing in this system should behave like this… unless you want to hide something. I then took off two days from work and wrote another program, different from the others. It's primary function, or I say, outward appearance, was that of an inquiry program. But it was more than that. It also could gather evidence of faulty programs, creating sort of a report, and if it saw something it could fix, it attempts that. But it disappeared like the rest eventually. The weird thing is I still get fragments of reports from it. I really can't tell what's happening."
"Of course you can't. You're an idiot. Well, not as much as an idiot as everyone else at this company, but enough of one. You are convinced that there is something bad going on with the CEO though? That he's behind this?"
Greg nodded, his face resolute.
"Good." Sherlock smiled. "Oh, and another thing. Could you go elsewhere for a bit? Just anywhere but here. You're thinking too loudly."
"Thinking too-? Never mind" He shook his head. "I'll just sit in one of these side lab rooms then." Greg walked off towards a row of doors at the end of the large room.
"Finally. Quiet," muttered Sherlock, tapping on the desk with his left hand as he stared at the screen displaying lines of computer code. "Interesting. This is all wrong. Either the person who programmed it was an idiot too or…" Sherlock bit his bottom lip.
Deep in concentration, Sherlock didn't even notice when the machine behind him switched on of its own accord. It was only a quiet hum after all. The lens flared with an iridescent blue light, which projected on to Sherlock's back. Sherlock didn't realize anything was wrong until it was far too late. By then, he had almost completely disappeared from this reality. Pain flared across his body for a second and then as quick as it came, it vanished. Utterly confused, the only thing Sherlock Holmes could sense was that this was the start of something new.