Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John H. Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson are the intellectual copyright of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I hold no claim upon them.

A/N: This story, although set in the modern 21st Century, is highly influenced by the structure of the original stories about Sherlock Holmes.
I'm highly enjoying writing this- and I hope anyone who reads it will highly enjoy it too!
Rated T, but this may move up to M as events unfold later on. Enjoy! :)

Miss. Corrina Drylie hadn't gone away during her week of annual leave – the address that had been provided by the head of department led John and Sherlock to a residential area full of red-brick tenement flats. Sherlock's intimate knowledge of every street in London led him to know exactly where the two of them were headed, and exactly which door in the street would be the one which would lead to the flat where our recipient resided.

It was clearly obvious from the instant that the door was opened inwards that the woman that we were there to interview already knew the circumstances in which we had come. Miss. Corrina Drylie was a young woman, not yet in her thirties – her features were clean cut and handsome, even though the expression painted across them was mingled with distress and agitation.

"Miss. Corrina Drylie?" John questioned, noticing that Sherlock was keeping his mouth pointedly shut and observing all that was possible in the few seconds that were presented to him; the woman nodded pushing a lock of brown hair out of her red-rimmed eyes.

"I guess you're here about Terri?" She croaked, her voice very weak and retained the definite sound of her having been crying prior to their arrival.

"Yes, my name's Dr. John Watson and this is-"

"Sherlock Holmes." Sherlock finished the sentence for John.

"Are… are you policemen? I've already spoken to some police officers." She asked, looking John and Sherlock up and down, evidently taking in the absence of a uniform.

"No. We're working independently alongside the police." Sherlock answered rather curtly.

"We just have a few questions that we'd like to ask you." John continued, shooting Sherlock a rather reproachful look and attempting to procure an invite inside, not particularly wishing to converse on her door threshold. "May we…?"

"Yes… of course." She held the door open to allow them to pass her into the hallway. "Straight along the hallway." She informed them as she closed her front door, proceeding to follow them along the hallway and into an extremely tidy sitting room. It struck John instantly that she was a tidy, clean woman – every surface was sparkling clean and all items appeared to be settled in their allotted place; no doubt Sherlock would be able to deduce much more from the room than he would. John could see his companion's eyes flickering from place to place – taking in every minute detail as he always did. "Please, sit down." She indicated to the sofa and sat herself down in one of the chairs, there was silence for a few seconds but it was clear that Miss. Drylie was collecting her thoughts into a sentence. "Can… is there no way that you could get the answers to your questions from the police officers that I spoke to earlier?"

"Inspector Lestrade and Sergeant Donovan never ask the correct questions, or on the occasion that they do, they never draw the correct conclusions from them." Sherlock stated in a rather matter-of-fact manner, John saw the woman's eyebrows rise as she had made no mention of the two police officers who had spoken to her previously, the prickly silence was somewhat broken by Miss. Drylie's resigned sigh.

"Alright, but I don't think there'll be much more I can tell you other than what I said to your colleagues." She answered quietly, clearing her throat and pulling distractedly at the sleeve of her jumper.

"I've already spoken to all your colleagues at the office – they all said that you were the closest to Mr. Milner." John said before Sherlock could make another declamatory comment about not being Lestrade's colleagues.

"His name was Terri!" She stated vehemently, her voice was strong, but her blue eyes were sparkling as tears began to well up inside them. "Don't make him even less than what he is – was…" She covered her face with her hand – John suspected that she was trying to supress a sob, he glanced over at his friend and was incredibly annoyed to notice that Sherlock had rest his elbow on the arm of the sofa, sunk his head into his hand and was looking about the room with a mixture of boredom and irritation, at the woman's display, painted across his features. The reason for this, seeming, lack of interest was completely unfounded – this was usually his ultimate interest, finding out any tiny pieces of small information which might fit together and make the whole work of art form a complete one in his mind, one that he could only finish by sealing it with his signature. "Sorry… sorry," Miss. Drylie apologised thickly, "Terri – he was, my best friend." Her words came in a stilted way, sounding forced and slightly unnatural.

"Of course." John reassured her, nodding. "How long have you known Terri?" John had twitched his notebook from his pocket, but he doubted he would be required to take verbatim notes as Sherlock's intellect stretched to an unbounding capacity when he needed to store information about cases.

"We were at university together." She answered after composing her exterior. "I was in the year below him; I got to know him when he was a third year."

"What was he like?" John asked, "As a person, I mean." He added on a moment later.

"Quiet, genuine. He used to be the archetypical geek-" She had relaxed back into her chair and her eyes had attained a somewhat dreamy look even though they were filled with tears that she was trying desperately not to let spill over onto her cheeks. "He didn't socialise much outside of class, his own year group didn't really know him well… The first time I met him he picked me up in the corridor outside one of our classes – I had been out the night before and I was definitely worse for wear." She had relapsed into a reminiscence, but neither John nor Sherlock remonstrated her for this – any small detail might build a more accurate character reference of the dead man. "Most people would just walk past a drunk student, leave them to get on with it, sort of thing, but he stopped and picked me up. He took me home and made sure that I was alright, I was too embarrassed to speak to him for ages; it took me three weeks to pluck up the courage to thank him for looking after me – but ever since the moment that I thanked him we became friends and I got to know him a lot better… he, he was one of the most caring people I've ever – sorry." She had begun to cry now, large tears were running down her face and dripping off into her lap.

"Was he ever more than just a friend?" John asked tentatively, understanding that the pain and distress that Miss. Drylie was feeling wasn't going to subside in a matter of minutes – no, it would be present for a long time to come – but in the long run asking a few questions wouldn't have that much of an effect.

"He was gay, wasn't he?" Sherlock broke into the conversation exceedingly precipitously; Miss. Drylie paused, eyeing Sherlock with some disdain.

"He never said in so many words, but I believe so…" She answered finally.

"He never really talked about anything like that in regards to himself – he was interested in my relationships…" Sherlock had become more interested in the conversation for some reason, like his brain had disengaged itself from what he had been considering before.

"Was he very deaf?" Sherlock inquired quickly, taking the conversation in a completely new direction.

"Yes." She nodded looking slightly bemused, "Without his aids he couldn't hear anything at all."

"And he had been so since he was a child?" Sherlock continued.

"A teenager, I think. He had meningitis when he was twelve which left him almost completely deaf, then he had an operation to implant his hearing aids."

"Had he ever made any comment about his hearing aids, or anything that they did that he didn't like?" John couldn't quite see where Sherlock was leading with this line of questions, but it seemed as clear as day to himself.

"Nothing major…" She answered slowly, looking like she was thinking over her answer. "I remember him getting annoyed about it once or twice at university during lectures… something about interference." She shrugged it off, but Sherlock's eyes had lit up with the sort of fire that meant he was on to a trail of some sort.

"Interference?" Sherlock commented, "Has he sent you any encrypted messages or emails recently?" A look of utter amazement passed over Miss. Drylie's face; at first she just stared at Sherlock dumbfounded, then her expression changed to one of bemusement and distrust.

"How… how did you know about that?" She questioned, sounding immensely worried; John stared at Sherlock for several seconds before he realised that his mouth was gaping slightly, and closed it. "He told me not to delete any of them or to show them to anyone."

"So you still have the messages?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't speak of them to Inspector Lestrade or Sergeant Donovan?"

"No… I didn't think they were of any importance…" She replied eventually.

"How many messages are there?" Sherlock asked leaning forwards, his thin hands clasping and unclasping as he addressed her.

"Seventeen."

"Could I get a copy of these messages?" She hesitated for a moment, but her resolve seemed to fade as she considered the current situation.

"They're all on my phone." She answered, plucking her mobile phone out of her jeans pocket; Sherlock held out his hand in request and she moved to hand it to him. John and Miss. Drylie watched Sherlock handling the phone, John could see from his position on the sofa that Sherlock was sending each one of the messages on to his own phone as a way of obtaining a record of all of them.

"The investigation going on within the department…" John started suddenly, taking the attention away from Sherlock; he observed that Miss. Drylie shifted in her chair. "Do you think that any of your colleagues would have reason to cover something up?"

"No!" She looked genuinely shocked at this question, and Sherlock paused in his activity to look up at her, "Why would you even ask a question like that?"

"It's just a line of inquiry…" John tried to pacify the obvious hurt he had caused. "We're not clear on whether an outsider was present in the department at the time of Mr. Miln – of Terri's death."

"So you think it was someone within the department?" Miss. Drylie had a touch of anger colouring the tones of her voice now. "No. No one within the department had anything to hide – the investigation has shown nothing so far, and I don't think it will… mistakes and accidents happen, especially within the care system. I don't know how those children went missing, but it wasn't down to anyone within the department."

"Alright, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"Did Lestrade not ask you that question?" Sherlock cut across John as he was speaking, his tone was one of incredulous glee.

"No! Why would they ask anything like that?" She shook her head.

"Good, good…" Sherlock was clasping and unclasping his hands again as he thought over the statement, he leant forwards and placed Miss. Drylie's phone upon the low coffee table as he was finished. "Right, thank you, that is all we needed to know." He moved to stand up and John followed him, pocketing his notebook again, slightly amused at the abrupt ending of the interview.

"Oh…" Her look of surprise mirrored John's as she stood up to follow John and Sherlock along the hallway and to close the door behind them.

Sherlock's pace was brisk; he seemed to have been imbued with a new sense of thrill from the second half of the interview with Miss. Drylie. John marched along behind Sherlock, who had his eyes fixed upon the screen of his phone, completely oblivious to the cars and traffic speeding by along the dual carriageway.

"I didn't finish that interview Sherlock – I didn't ask her half the questions that I was planning to." John remonstrated Sherlock, who had returned his phone to his coat pocket, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and loped along in his usual fashion.

"You didn't need to ask those questions, they were clearly lucid." He spoke offhandedly, but there was a mere lofty trace about his air.

"Not to me…" John muttered in an undertone

"John, oh John – it's always interesting to find out just how little you observe when we're involved in a case like this." Sherlock appeared to be rather amused by the conversation, a smirk was dancing across his features and John scowled at the sight of it.

"I may not be as trained in the art of deduction as you are-"

"Science of deduction John… it is unquestionably a science. The observations are the creative formulations; the end result is the art." Sherlock conjectured, his smirk still firmly present on his face. "You have the opportunity for observation, just lack the capacity for the intricate details of deduction."

"Alright Sherlock, I know how wonderful your brain is, now shut up about yourself and tell me what you 'deducted' from the half finished interview." John snapped rather waspishly, yet understanding Sherlock's need for grandiose gestures when it came to the results of a case which he was working on.

"I've not finished evaluating yet, I'd prefer to have the full picture before I give the final account… I'm not quite clear on all of the details, I'd like to clear a few things up first." John sighed – sometimes working alongside Sherlock Holmes could be the most infernally irritating predicament; but it was easily admitted that Sherlock fully stimulated with a case was definitely more bearable than a bored Sherlock. Stimulated Sherlock could be condescending, overexciteable, would go without sleep for days on end when he felt a case needed sufficient attention, would survive on the sparcest amounts of food, fuelling his mental brainpower with large quantities of nicontine gained through cigarettes and nicotine patches often in combination with one another; but that was nothing in comparison to the bored Sherlock, who either became sulky and taciturn, or extremely irascible, spending hours bent over a microscope, or playing his violin for long stretches of time (generally in the early hours of the morning, thus disturbing John and everyone elses' sleep), taunting any client that presented themself with a problem that was "not worthy" of his expertise, or in the most extreme case, resorting to some chemical to provide a means of stimulation that would prevent his over-wired brain from descending into boredom-induced madness in which he would tear his intellect to shreds.

As John had been debating internally as to which "version" of Sherlock he preferred he had continued to march alongside Sherlock (in his deeply ingrained militaristic style) he had failed to pay attention to exactly which direction they were headed; it was only when he came out of his reverie that he realised he wasn't sure in which direction they were headed. Of course with Sherlock's knowledge of streets and locations it was practically impossible to get lost – but that didn't account for the direction they were walking in, away from Baker Street.

"Uh… Sherlock?" John started, breaking the silence as they walked, "Where are we going? Isn't the flat in the opposite-"

"We're not going to the flat, not yet anyway." He replied, "We're going back to the offices."

"Right…" John paused, Sherlock had drawn out his phone again and was riffling through the messages that he had forwarded on from Miss. Drylie's phone to his own. "Why?"

"Because there is something missing. I'm more than positive of that, and I believe it is imperative to this case." Sherlock sighed rather dramatically. "Miss. Drylie commented that he was a geek – I don't think that he was a geek; I do, however, think that he was intensely clever, much more clever than any of the people he worked with gave him credit for… I've no idea why some of the people with the most reasoned analytical minds end up in such mundane jobs like a social worker." Sherlock scorned his last words, wrangling something inside John.

"Maybe he wanted to do something worthwhile…"

"Worthwhile?" He was virtually laughing in open contempt now; John regrouped quickly from Sherlock's scoffing.

"Okay – so maybe he didn't decide to wage a one-man war against the criminal underworld or anything as great as you have, but maybe helping abandoned kids within the care system was his way of doing something worthy within society." Sherlock was eyeing John with one eyebrow raised so high that it was in danger of disappearing into his hairline.

"Alright, alright!" Sherlock conceded in obvious beguilement. "But my main post still stands – he was far more intelligent than people thought." He was fiddling about with his phone again, John suspected he was still looking over the messages.

"How did you know about-" He started to ask, but Sherlock cut in over once more.

"The messages?" He broke over. "Technically I didn't they were a bit of a lucky estimation. I was considering what he had been writing about the time of his death, and why someone would want to remove it…"

"Because it would be incriminating?" John suggested, attempting to focus his own thought process in on the methods Sherlock used when forming conclusions.

"That's one possibility, or the other is that it wasn't removed." John's attempted at following Sherlock's brain process halted at this point; where Sherlock had come up with the possibility that the notepad/ paper hadn't been removed was completely foreign. "If he had been writing a message, it's most likely it would be encrypted – just like the previous messages all had been-"

"What do you mean by 'encrypted'?" John asked, for his answer Sherlock thrust his phone into John's hand with one of the encrypted messages open.

"Look," He commanded, "Look, that's what I mean by encrypted!" John stared down at the screen of the phone; there were no words on it, just string after string of digits.

"What?" John questioned, slightly confused. "What is this?"

"That is the reason I knew that he wasn't given enough credit for his intelligence." Sherlock stated, sounding pleased with himself.

"That's nice – but what actually is it?" John repeated, trying to ignore his friends' avoidance tactics.

"It's a code – an encrypted message that he didn't want anyone else to see; he's broken it down so that pretty much no one else would be able to understand it without him explaining it, or someone having a similar level of intellect as him – which amounts to very few people!" Every syllable sounded overcome with expectant glee at this new found discovery of his.

"But you are one of those people who can match his intellect." John stated.

"Match and easily surpass – easily so… but I'd prefer to have the full set of messages so that I can crack the code correctly first time." Sherlock answered.

Sergeant Donovan was still in her post stationed outside the building offices; along with several other police officers who had clearly been stationed there deliberately. It was a little after half nine when John and Sherlock arrived at the office building.

"Back again freak?" She exclaimed, blocking John and Sherlock's path into the office; the lights were still on inside and John wondered whether the departments complied with the normal nine to five working hours, or whether they would remain open all hours – it's not as though all children in the care system only needed attention during the day. "I thought you would have figured it all out by now, you've had – oh, five hours to think about it all." Her voice was dripping in sarcasm as her eyes flickered from Sherlock to John and back again.

"It's not possible to form an accurate conclusion when you are not in requisition of all the facts." Sherlock denoted glibly, his actions towards Sergeant Donovan were generally blunt, to say the least, but he attained a greater impatience when she became a blockade to his completion of a train of thought.

May we go in?" John interrupted as both Donovan and Sherlock glared at one another; Donovan with suspicion and Sherlock with impatient petulance.

"Go ahead…" She replied, stepping to the side and freeing the entrance to the reception door. Seemingly Sherlock didn't feel the need to dwell upon the altercation between Donovan and himself because as he began to ascend the stairs his eyes had retained the dreamy quality that was common when he was in deep thought. John followed; feeling slightly like he was a tag-along puppet, there for no other reason than to marvel at Sherlock's revelation, whenever it came.

The office where Mr. Milner had been murdered had been cordoned off and was shrouded in darkness; Sherlock disregarded the police tape and turned the light on. He then proceeded to stand, stock still, his eyes darting from object to object throughout the room, for what felt like an exceedingly long time. John leant against the door frame, not completely sure of the complete relevance of this return visit to the office, and feeling rather scathing as to whether it would genuinely uncover any fresh evidence with the case.

"Oh John, you ingratiate me with your gift for silence." Sherlock broke the vacuum of noise that had settled between them, John wasn't quite sure whether Sherlock was being completely serious about this, so remained motionless waiting for Sherlock's next comment. "It is fantastic to have someone to spar with verbally when my mind takes that turn, but to also have someone who knows what silence can mean to the filtration of thoughts in my mind is unequivocally incomparable." Sherlock had moved to the desk and, very methodically, begun to lift items from their place and replace them a moment later; he left John no time to take in his previous statement, continuing in some kind of linear progression within his own mind. "Where would you hide it? Where would you put something if you knew you were dying, but wanted someone to find it?" His exasperation was evident as he picked up the inbox tray and then dropped it back onto the desk. "Think!" He exclaimed, more for his own benefit than for John's. "He was clever…"

"Filing cabinets?" John suggested rather meekly, Sherlock had spun round to face the said cabinets, but he was already shaking his head at the suggestion.

"No, he died in his chair, sat upright. If he had gotten up to hide whatever he had been writing on, then I would have expected to find him lying in the middle of the floor – it takes enormous physical strength to be able to resist a high dosage of morphine. No, if he got up under the influence of the drug he wouldn't have made it back to his chair." John moved from leaning against the door frame round until he was standing in front of the desk; with a certain amount of reluctance he sat down in the chair which had once belonged to the dead man.

Although Sherlock had already conducted his own methodic search of the desk, sometimes the things that were the most obvious to other people bypassed over his head. It had been a little while since John had sat behind a desk, like the one in the GP surgery at which he was occasionally a locum. He tried to put his head into the position that Mr. Milner would have been in; probably understanding that he was dying, needing somewhere to hide a message, but not being able to leave the chair that he was sat on. Almost automatically John stretched out his hand to pull open the drawer located underneath the main body of the computer; it was in such close proximity that he wouldn't have to move in the chair at all. The drawer was locked.

"Sherlock?" John started, giving the drawer an extra tug; Sherlock took a few moments to bring his mind back from wherever it had been dwelling. "This is locked." John indicated towards the drawer, within an instant the light had rekindled in Sherlock's eyes.

"Brilliant!" He exclaimed, then swept from the room leaving John still seated in the chair at the desk, slightly bemused. Within a minute he had rushed back into the office with a set of keys.

"How – how did you get those?" John questioned with some suspicion.

"Oh these?" He jangled the keys. "There's a cleaner along the other end of the corridor – cleaners always have master keys." He stated.

"How did you not think of the drawer?" John asked, feeling rather amused at Sherlock's oversight.

"Well I did consider it – but I thought he might conceal it somewhere more difficult to get into… although if the message is encrypted like the others are then it probably wouldn't require to be hidden well… most people would just view it as rubbish, as just a set of numbers with no important meaning." Sherlock shrugged nonchalantly, slotting the master key into the lock and turning it round. The lock clicked at the drawer almost burst open – it was full to the brim with files of cases, with various different names assigned to them.

"Sherlock, these are kids' case files – they're confidential, we can't look through them." John said, but Sherlock was clearly not listening and was already pulling out all of the files and dropping them unceremoniously onto the floor.

"It's not as though we're looking for any personal information." Sherlock screwed his face up as though that was the last thing that he could possibly care about. "I have a brother who practically is the British Government, do you not think that if I wanted to snoop through kids personal files I could do it without breaking into an office and getting the paper files…?" That was true, John thought; Mycroft did seem to be able to access pretty much anything he wanted to get.

The idea of the drawer turned out to be correct, however, as when Sherlock flicked through the second file from the top, a crumpled sheet of notepaper fell out and fluttered to the floor. He stooped to retrieve it and instantly saw the distinctive lines of digits running along the lines. John saw Sherlock's eyes scanning the digits so quickly that his pupils became a blur as they moved.

"This is it – this is what we were looking for." Sherlock nodded, he thrust the rest of the files back into the drawer and placed the sheet of notepaper into his inside coat pocket. "Come on John, there's nothing else that we'll find here – we'd be best back at the flat…"

"Alright." John agreed, following Sherlock out of the office and turning the light out behind them.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed that- I certainly loved writing it! I'd be grateful at receiving any advice or constructive criticism for how I can make it better- so if you have any, drop me a message or a review! Thanks :)