The next day, John took a haggard route back to the coffee shop he'd visited the night prior, purposely getting lost so he could set his bearings- he had thought that he was good at directions, but as it turns out London, his hometown, and the roads in between them were all that he knew.
He did the same thing the day after that.
And the day after that.
John had set a daily ritual- he'd wake up at eight o'clock. He'd go for a short run, just enough to keep himself in shape without straining himself. He'd take a shower, get dressed, and sit in the coffee house with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, scouring and cutting out things that seemed suspicious. He'd, at least for the moment, become one of the regulars- along with an older couple, three or four university students and the red-haired woman. The baristas knew his order and would pour him a cup of coffee (milk, no sugar) before he'd even walked up to the counter.
After the fourth day, he had a hell of a lot of things that seemed suspicious, that seemed wrong, or were just a little fishy, pinned up around the map of Atlanta. He'd moved the articles to the outskirts of town because they were obscuring his view of the actual map- something that he wanted to learn rather well, if he was going to be here for an indeterminate amount of time.
As of yet, he'd received no word as to his 'assignment'. Not from Mycroft, nor from the woman who met him at Holmes Manor, nor from the group that was supposed to contact him.
By the fifth day, he'd accepted that he had successfully been stranded in America.
Well, he figured, there were worse place he could have been stranded- hell, he'd already been stranded in worse places in his lifetime. He was getting a daily allowance that, so far, he'd not found a bottom for- paid for either by the Holmes' family estate or the government itself, he didn't know. He spent his days running and drinking coffee and looking for Moriarty in newspaper articles and memorising road names and alleyways. Really couldn't be compared to the places he'd been stranded in while he was in the army.
But it was just so damned boring.
The end of the week found him looking at apartments online, something a little more permanent than a dingy hotel room.
That was when the phone call came.
His mobile was clear on the other side of the room- when it started ringing, John threw his laptop off of where it had been perched on his knees and tumbled after the noise- after a few seconds of jumbling with the touch screen he answered the call and held the phone to his face.
Restricted Number.
It had to be them, the group of people that were supposed to call him days ago, ages ago, they had just gotten a little tied up but that's fine now we've got John or Will and we're ready to plough on-
"H-Hello?"
"Is that really your best impression of an American accent, Doctor Watson?"
Or it could just be Mycroft.
John cleared his throat, about to tell the Holmes brother off-
He never got the chance.
"Spend the night practicing, it is insufficient. They should be calling you soon."
And that was that.
He'd been given a twelve hour warning- the next morning, he received another phone call.
He stared at the odd ringtone for a whole second, unmoving, before reacting- he'd been ready for this one, and not so excited to get to the phone.
The woman on the other end replied before he could answer. They shared a short, vague conversation that told him to meet her at the café he'd been frequenting in an hour. That gave him very little time- he showered and dressed, speeding out the door. It was 'another hot one,' as the news had called every day so far, and in shorts John felt rather unprofessional; but in trousers he would have felt disgusting.
He stood in the entrance of the café, peering around for- what? A group of camouflage-clad men with their sleeves cut off and oversized guns in their lap? He looked around the room, spotting a larger group to the corner, where he'd been sitting for the past week.
As he approached, the red-haired woman that he'd sat behind almost every day (smiled at, tried to flirt with) waved him forward, impatient.
Oh.
Well, no harm done, right?
He anxiously sat himself in between the people grouped around her- two other women and two other men, all looking equally displeased with his presence.
"Will Sigerson," John greeted, holding a hand out to anyone that would take it. "Hi."
One by one, they took turns stealing glances at his hand, then at his face, offering no greeting.
Well.
"I- I wasn't told a code word or anything, if that's what you're waiting for-"
He stopped talking as the stares intensified.
"Sorry. Continue."
And continue, they did- They made no effort to bring John up to speed or fill him in on what they were talking about, nor any small pretense to the fact that he was there at all other than the occasional glare at the fact that he was given permission to sit in on their conversation.
Which was either so heavily drenched in code that it was useless for John to try and understand, or he had flown across the sea to join a book club.
"The alienation of the protagonist, especially in the last half as his sanity crumbles-"
A young man started- younger than John, with long dark hair and a dark complexion. He sat leisurely, grin on his face. College educated, set up by his parents for an extended period of time- unworried face.
The older man replied:
"I'd have to argue that he had very little to begin with. Care to explain away his whole Superman complex, then-"
Balding. This one was easier- an obvious career man, he'd been in the army a long, long time. He was large, with a dusting of facial hair roughing his otherwise weathered face- he had something of an accent lying underneath the Standard American English he was using, and John wondered if that was what he sounded like to the rest of the group, if any of them were actually American at all.
"We've already covered his superman complex."
"We've covered it?"
"Yes, Craig. We've covered it. Rather successfully, too."
They stopped and looked at John- as if they had shared a secret, accidental, potentially dangerous-
Craig. So he'd gotten one name- or, probably, alias. The young one with the longish hair was Craig.
They were more careful after that- they didn't want him to know even their aliases, that was certain. For the next half hour that they sat talking about literature/strategy and John studied them with as Holmesian of an eye as he could, listening as names filtered in.
Jennifer, the youngest- really she couldn't have been more than twenty- had dark hair and more freckles than exposed skin, and a nervous tic of playing with the cross hanging from her neck whenever they mentioned the hard-working foil to the protagonist.
Tony, the aging career man, who cracked his knuckles often and must have been a native speaker of Spanish, who continues to bring up the pawn broker's house no matter how many times they had spoken of it.
Angela, the red-haired woman with a familiar face who obviously held the position of power over the rest of them, sat with her back straight and her knees pressed together, had died her hair and retouched it either very often or very recently so her natural colour was impossible to guess, wore glasses even though they obstructed her reading-
And the woman who sat in between Jennifer and Tony, elbows propped up on the table as she jumped from topic to topic, dark eyes shining brightly behind dark lids, a familiarly violent smirk slipping onto her face every time they spoke of the axe, the murders, the gold under the bed. The woman named Mary who, contrary to the others, met John in the eye and, if not welcomed his presence, questioned him.