Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter, I got distracted by the BBC Drama trailer and had to get some ideas out of my system... in the form of a 221B which you can find on my profile.

Thanks to my beta MrsNoggin for her endless patience dealing with confused writers! All remaining mistakes are my own.

Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to ACD and the Masters Moffat and Gatiss. Until they invite me into their club on genius writers I shall own nothing!

Hungary, village near Budapest, 13 October 2012

Sitting alone in the dark, the boredom threatened to take over again. His thoughts wandered back to his friend. He'd missed John every single day since he left London, but convinced himself that it was better this way. Until he saw him again, he'd never realized just how wrong he had been about that. Had it really only been a few hours since he had walked back into his life? It seemed so much longer; but then, they had been a rather eventful few hours. The arrival of John and the following reveals by both his friend and Jake had shaken Sherlock more than he would ever admit. All of his life he had been able to get any relevant information by simply looking at a person and suddenly his own deduction skills had been proven unreliable. It was unsettling and Sherlock, for the first time in his adult life, felt insecure.

He had trouble fitting the new information into his mental picture of John. He was a Special Forces soldier. Had he done to prisoners what had been done to him? He had more or less confessed it. Could he really be that cruel? Just how much of his Andrew personality had taken over during these events; how much of it had been John's own doing? Despite his earlier reassurance to John, the seed of doubt had been planted in his head and Sherlock could not stop the pictures that flashed before his eyes.

John's screams as Jake forced the knife deeper and deeper.

Feeling helpless as he knew he could do nothing to help John, any interference could only make things worse.

More screams, blood staining Johns trousers, making the black fabric shiny as it was sticking to his leg.

John finding and holding his eyes, pleading with him to remain silent.

Jake's gleeful grin as John finally passed out from the pain.

Then the scenery changed, suddenly John was the one that held the knife, threatening a faceless prisoner. As Sherlock looked closer he recognised the face, it was his own.

'No!' his rational mind argued, 'John would never hurt me. He's my friend.'

'Is he though?' his tortured, confused mind answered, funnily enough using Jake's voice. Or was it Jake talking to him? Reality became blurry. 'He kept things from you. Important things. How can you still trust him? He hurt people before, and he will do it again and next time it will be you.'

'He would never betray me. He is too loyal. He went through hell for me just now!'

'You left him behind. You hurt him first. He is angry about that, what if he decides to take revenge? He and Jake were once friends, what will stop John from going back to that friendship?

"NO!" He yelled out loud, desperately trying to make sense of the pictures in his mind.

Faces started to melt together; John, Jake, himself, reality and fantasy becoming one and the same as his mind went into meltdown.

Sherlock let out a desperate whimper and curled up into a tight ball, his hands clamped around his head, trying to hold it together. His own mind failed him, just as he had failed John. He tried to access his mind palace, to sort through all the information that was whirling around in his head, confusing him.

But the door was firmly locked. He could not enter. His mind palace was not available to him anymore. He frantically tried to breach the door, but the harder he tried, the further he felt himself slipping away. 'Too much,' he screamed inside his head, 'all of this is just too much!' Succumbing to the mental onslaught, he fell into the streams of darkness.

Hungary, village near Budapest, 14 October 2012

All things considered, John had been in worse situations. Ok, his knee was killing him, but apparently Jake did not want him to die of an infection, because he found strong antiseptic powder and several packs of sterile gauze in his cell. After cleaning the wound he assessed the damage. It didn't take him long to figure that he was in trouble. His range of motion was severely limited and he could not even support minimal weight on his right leg. Not good. Even with immediate medical care and reconstructive surgery chances of full recovery were slim. Being trapped in a basement cell miles away from the nearest hospital, the chance was zero.

John got as comfortable as possible on the bare concrete floor. The fight for survival had only just begun and he was already severely wounded. He needed to replenish his energy in order to make it through more of Jake's 'entertainment' sessions. His mind was still on high alert from the joy of being reunited with Sherlock and the challenge to save his friend and escape from Jake's prison. He used an old trick he had learned from a seasoned Sergeant in Afghanistan and concentrated on the most boring, yet easy subject he could find. John started reciting the bones of the human foot, beginning with the distal phalanx of the little toe. It was one of his favourite methods to shut down his mind and get to sleep in even the most inhospitable places. It worked, and he managed to sleep for a few hours and that left him somewhat refreshed.

His general position was unchanged after his nap, and his knee hurt like hell. On the positive side, he had found Sherlock, and they were still alive. He was provided with food and water and the cell even had a toilet, of sorts.

The other thing that comforted John was that Mycroft knew exactly where he was. Calculating back to his last text, he estimated that he had been captured by Jake Moriarty more than thirty-six hours ago, which meant that Mycroft should be getting worried right about now. If he did not get in touch within the next twelve hours, Mycroft would activate a search and rescue team to check up on his last known location. John winced – it would most likely end up in a blood bath; most of Moriarty's men were former military and not shy to shoot on sight. He really needed to find a way out of here, maybe–

Before he could finish that thought, the door opened and two of the guards entered, grabbed John by his arms and hauled him to his feet. His knee gave out under the sudden weight, but the guards paid no attention to it, instead mercilessly dragging him out of the cell and down the hallway. John recognised the way they were going from before; they were taking him to the torture chamber again!

He tried to resist, but stood no chance against the two guards and soon found himself bound to that same chair again. Only this time his hands were tied behind his back with rope, instead of handcuffs and this gave him a bit more freedom to move. His feet were free, but with only one leg working he doubted he could get out of the chair.

The door opened again and Sherlock was brought in, secured to the other chair in the same way as John. The guards left and they were alone.

John looked up, expecting to see Sherlock's deductive look, but instead all he saw was a blank face.

"Sherlock?"

John waited for a reaction from the detective, but he didn't even appear to have heard him. Pushing the shock aside, John went into full medical mode and analysed his friend's appearance. Sherlock seemed, for the lack of a better word, vacant. His face held no expression; his eyes were unfocused and blank. He had shown no resistance when the guards brought him in, just quiet compliance. John briefly closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to control the panic that was threatening to take over.

"Sherlock! Please. Please don't leave me now!" This time his voice was pleading, but John did not care. If Sherlock was really lost in his own mind, and all signs pointed to that, then he would do anything to reach him. Anything at all.

If Jake came in now, he would recognise Sherlock's state for what it was. The guards had hopefully believed this to be the detective's usual attitude and neglected to realise that it was not played this time. Jake would not be that easy to fool. He was waiting for Sherlock to break, seeing him in such an unresponsive state would be one step closer to success for the maniac.

"SHERLOCK!" John was screaming at the top of his lungs. He didn't know what else to do. "Wake up!" The high pitched scream seemed to have some kind of effect, and John saw a minute twitching of an eyebrow. So his friend was still in there somewhere. He changes his tactics slightly.

"It's me, John. I could really use your help here, Sherlock." He tried again and again, calling out to Sherlock, giving his friend something constant to focus on. The signs of consciousness slowly increased; there was more movement, more response to John's words. He kept talking, encouraging Sherlock to keep trying, hoping that the sound of his voice was enough to prevent Sherlock from slipping back into his mind again. And then, finally, recognition seeped back into Sherlock's features, he blinked a few times, trying to get the world back into focus.

"John?" Sherlock's voice was faint and weak. John let out a relieved sigh.

"Good to have you back. You scared me for a minute there. How are you? What happened?"

"Pain, hurt... mind palace...no, broken..." He shook his head, whimpering.

Now John was truly scared. Even when woken up in the middle of the night, Sherlock was always fully alert within seconds. He had never seen Sherlock in such a state, so utterly lost and broken. And while he was not completely catatonic, he was far from being fully conscious. He was reacting to stimulus, had some degree of recognition, but was unable to form coherent sentences.

Suddenly John heard footsteps from outside. Jake. Shit. They were running out of time.

"Jake is coming, do you understand what that means?" John spoke with a sense of urgency and hoped to God that his friend would pick up on it. "He must not realise that anything is wrong."

Sherlock furrowed his eyebrows but gave no other indication that he understood John.

"Listen to me carefully Sherlock. I will distract Jake, and while I am doing that, I need you to free your hands. They used rope this time; you should be able to wriggle out of it. Think you can manage that?"

Sherlock gave John no sign of acknowledgement. At first John thought that he had slipped back into his unresponsive state, but then he noticed a rhythmic motion in Sherlock's arm muscles. So he had heard him.

Jake walked in with the same knife in hand as the last time, but at least this time there was no hammer. When he turned around to close the door behind him, John got a glimpse of a gun tucked into his trousers behind his back. He frowned. Guns were not exactly preferred torture tools during his time in the SRR, they were used to end things. So this was it. Jake's ultimate game.

"How was your night? I hope you had a good rest?"

Neither of the two captives reacted to the question.

"Not very vocal this morning, are we? Well, I can change that."

He strode over to John and slapped him hard in the face. John suppressed a hiss and remained rigid in his chair. Sherlock just stared blankly at them.

"Now, Sherlock, the game has not changed since yesterday, it is still in your hand to stop me from hurting John. Are you going to do anything about it?"

There was no response. And then understanding washed over Jake's face.

"Or, could it be that you can't do anything?" He brutally grabbed Sherlock's chin with his right hand and tilted his head upwards, staring into the pale eyes of the detective, and found his suspicion confirmed. With a dismissive motion he let go of Sherlock and walked to the wall, leaning against it with both his arms and rested his head against the cool and damp concrete.

At first John thought that Jake was crying, but soon it turned into full out laughter. It took several minutes for the criminal to calm down and John was appalled by the hysterical noise.

He looked over at Sherlock with a concerned glance. His head hung down and there was no movement at all. He desperately hoped that Sherlock was at least partially pretending to be so far gone, hoped that he was still conscious and aware of what was going on, biding his time for an attack. But John knew that it was just as likely that with Jake's entry Sherlock had reverted back into his catatonic state and that thought scared him more than anything else.

"Well, well, Johnny, looks like you helped me achieve something in hours which I could not do in weeks. You broke the great Sherlock Holmes. You should be proud of yourself."

John didn't feel proud. He felt miserable. But with the misery came a familiar strength. Backed into a corner, with seemingly no way out, John let Andrew's power and savage wash through him.

"Now that I have reached my goal with our dear detective, I can finally take my revenge on you. Prepare yourself John; this will be neither quick nor painless!"

John swallowed hard and steeled himself for what was to come. He would not give in to Jake's taunting; he would not give him the satisfaction of begging for his life. The real fight for survival had just begun and he had not come here to lose. He had come to save his friend, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

AN: This story has been viewed by readers from 50 countries! You guys are a truly international bunch. Thank you all for your continued support, be it by reviewing, favoring, following or simply reading this story!