It's quiet on the first floor- the action from above echoes from the stairwell to John's left. The centre of the place is completely hollowed out to the ceiling- there are offices that line the edges of the warehouse up to the third and final floor, but everything else is open space. There are about a dozen cars parked in this spot with plastic dust covers over them for protection. One of the cars has a completely shattered windshield regardless.
They can't cross this open space without risking being seen through the office windows above. Most of them- windows- are in some way obscured; whether they're boarded up or covered with ancient, browning blinds- instead, John secures the area and checks to see if there's anyone guarding the stairwell before he ushers Craig into it. He takes the stairs first, one flight at a time, constantly reminding Craig to tread lightly because quiet in any sense of the word is just not a mode that the younger male can work on. He can't hear any more gunfire, and he can't tell if that's good or bad. His only instinct is to keep Craig closer. Luckily, Craig's not having a hard time keeping up- he follows John's footsteps exactly, trying not to alert any attention and, thankfully, succeeding.
But he can't help from jumping when he hears another round of gunshots starting up.
John whipped around to make sure that Craig stayed quiet, but decided after a split second to use the noise as a decent cover for Craig's concrete footfalls; he finds them both on the third floor with no problem bigger than a squeaky door.
There's no one in the stairwell- the bottom floors are cleaned, and the door is closed. They're in relative safety for now- for now.
John turns to Craig, who looks very afraid of the door itself.
"Just-"
Craig nodded.
"Stay close to you. Believe me, I'm stayin' close to you, no doubt about that. We-"
More gunshots. When Craig didn't continue, John took up the conversation.
"Do you know where they'd be? What're they doing?"
"They need- a computer. Jen's going to use it to get information. I don't know the specifics, I was just told to get you out of the w-"
John shut him up- Craig obliged.
A collection of footfalls- John knew better than to assume that they were friendly. He readied the revolver, preparing his mind not straight to kill, but to protect himself and Craig. If that meant killing, he felt no pang of guilt at that.
After giving Craig a telltale stay here face- with a superiority that felt extremely gratifying given how their night was supposed to go- he swept around the door and into the hallway.
He was greeted with three guns to the face and Jennifer's half-choked squeal.
Three trained soldiers standing down at the sight of an ally- even an unlikely one. John had earned himself suspicion just with the way he held his gun, he could tell- he'd be answering questions, he knew that.
There was little time for that, however.
Before the six had settled as a single group came the clatter of a door opening behind them- a slight frame came running out of a room down the hall and sprinted into the northern stairwell, carrying easily in his arms a desktop tower.
"Oh, shit."
Mary and Tony shot off down the hall to follow them while Angela and John set on racing down the Western Hallway to cut him off from the multiple cars on the first floor. Judging by the extra footfalls John assumed that Craig and Jen had decided to follow them, but he was too busy leaping down staircases to take a look back- he could hear Angela breathing behind him, reloading her gun.
"You got anything on you a little more useful than this?"
John used this time to raise the revolver in his hand to see.
"And why would I give you anything more useful than that?"
Angela fit her words between heavy breaths- before John could answer, Craig's voice came from the top of the staircase to defend him.
"He's got some secret double life, Ang; he saved us up at the cabin-"
"You took him to the cabin?"
They sprinted out to the main floor- a deep red Jeep was speeding circles around the rest of the cars about fifty metres away. Mary and Tony were closest- they shot at the tires, but ultimately had to duck out of the way when the vehicle lurched towards the North garage exit.
Without planning, the six met up and sprinted out the North entrance- the van was parked in an alcove in the building, hidden from view. Angela had thrown it into drive before the doors were all closed- she was still screaming at Craig.
"- And you took him three hours away to an enemy outpost? I don't care if it was disestablished, it was three-hours-away!"
Craig was trying to yell over her.
"- And there were these two big, beefy guys and a hot pocket in the microwave and we would've been dead if Will hadn't fucking turned into the chosen one or something-"
With the air of someone who's seen one too many arguments between the same two people, Mary cleared her throat.
"Does the objective still stand, Angela?"
Angela didn't need to look back to glare at the other woman.
"Of course it does."
"We've lost sight the Jeep. Best bet's to go to the airport. Overheard some others getting instructions to meet there."
"Fuck, I just passed the on-ramp."
Angela made to spin the van around, but pieces of a paper map pinned up over a crack in his motel were connecting themselves in John's brain.
"No, take Roosevelt."
"Are you crazy? They're already on 14, if we don't get moving-"
"Trust me. We'll be able to cut them off if you don't hesitate."
With a few choice words, Angela swerved the van back into its lane, cutting off cars and running any red light that dared try to stop her-
"You better be some sort of fucking shortcut savant, Will, else I swear to God, I'll have your-"
"- Right here, turn right here!"
They sped the wrong way down a deserted boulevard before John shouted again- "Turn Left! Now!" – and he swore that they turned on two wheels before the van jolted back to the ground.
Even as she turned, Angela voiced her discontent with the plan.
"You do know the airport is the other way, Will?"
"Turn Right!"
This road was more populated than John would have liked- all the same, Angela was good at avoiding cars and the police. Unless the police had been informed to ignore a large red van going ninety three miles per hour on a road marked thirty- which, considering the group was an arm of Mycroft's extended operative, not too much of a stretch.
They could outrun the police, but John didn't want Angela to hit some unassuming pedestrian walking around at two in the morning.
Riverdale Road passed over the clump of highways at one point, and then another- a red jeep could be seen below them, having a much harder time weaving in and around the cars in the much denser traffic. Even with the shorter distance, with a little luck they'd meet up with the other car in time to recover the data.
"Well, shit."
Angela sounded impressed, but most of all motivated- the engine revved just a little bit more and they picked up speed. The van pulled onto the Terminal Parkway, merging with I-85 at an alarming speed-
"There! Right there!"
Jennifer was jabbing her index finger at the tinted glass, pointing obviously at the Jeep could be seen two lanes over- mere cars ahead of them.
Angela sped forward, cutting off a light blue Prius to bring the hulking van side to side with the jeep- she'd rolled her window down and, driving with her knees, started shooting at the tires.
The jeep swerved, and in reaction Angela swerved- her right hand snapped back onto the wheel, and in trying to right the van swerved left into the side of the other car. The Jeep drove onto the shoulder but refused to s low- sparks alit between the two grinding metals, and eventually Angela pulled away from the Jeep, allowing a good distance between the two cars.
Only to ram the van back into the side of the Jeep.
Hardly anyone had been wearing seatbelts- Mary and Tony were leaning over Angela shooting the car out the only window that opened, John was reaching over to take hold of the steering wheel whenever it lay forgotten, but Jen and Craig had buckled safely and thus were the only ones that did not tumble painfully when the two vehicles re-collided.
From inside the Jeep, the man at the wheel was rolling down the window, reading a pistol-
John got to him first. His right hand was steadying the van, his left on the revolver; as soon as the window had rolled down enough and not a second later, he fired a shot.
Sherlock Holmes is not the only man who can think on his proverbial feet. To shoot a man in a moving vehicle from another moving vehicle is just as difficult as shooting a man from long range through a pane of glass without shooting your new flatmate- lots of calculations that printed through his head and had to align themselves before they became outdated.
The bullet connected with the man's skull, just hitting the temple- he had turned his head slightly to glance at the road. The driver's side window was red, and so was some of the windshield. He'd slumped in between the seat and the window- his last act had been to drive the Jeep into the barricade.
"Shit! We still need that computer! Unharmed!"
"He was going to destroy it sooner or later anyways- if it isn't already destroyed!"
Angela was silent as Mary and Tony's arguments delved into an out of Spanish- to shut them up, she rammed the van into the side of the Jeep, breaking slowly to bring both of the vehicles to a screeching stop on the side of the sparsely-populated freeway.
In the darkness between two circles of lamp-post light sat the destroyed jeep and the battered van- in the window, they could see the blood splatters, the entrance wound on the near side of the man's head. John knew from experience that the other side would not be so clean.
Jennifer was the first person to jump out of the car- she ran around the van to the other car and, after a moment's hesitation, opened the passenger door to collect the computer tower.
It was big and bulky in her arms, so Angela scooped it out from them- she was not much larger than Jennifer, but she held herself in a way that suggested mountains moved with her force. The plastic rectangle looked much smaller, much lighter. Safer.
She set it in the van, and Jennifer was eager to follow it- proximity to the body had made her pale and wan. While she fiddled with the casing, Angela wheeled around on John.
"You."
"... Yes?"
"You're from Wisconsin."
"... Yes."
"How did you know the back route was better?"
John bit his lip. The truth, for once, would actually suffice.
"I needed to occupy my time with something useful. Seeing as you lot have been ignoring me left and right. So I memorized a few maps."
Silence. Angela was giving him probably the strongest non-Holmsian gaze he'd ever felt.
"You shot him."
"He was going to shoot at us."
"Yes, but you actually made contact. You-"
From her inside coat pocket, her phone began to ring.
"Hello- Yes. Well, Craig brought Will to that cabin and there were people there, we're thinking they tipped them off- yes, I know. I know. I- What?"
Whatever was being said on the phone apparently warranted a glare John's way- she swerved around and snarled at him.
"We're not finished with our objective. This was-"
She scowled.
"Yes sir."
And hung up.
"We're to stay here. A car will come to pick us up and take us the rest of the three steps to the airport. Then we're to-"
"But we're not finished, I thought?" Craig offered- redundantly, but with his own incredulity.
"Well, now we are. They've already got all of our stuff, I guess. We're to board a plane to New York. We're to hand over whatever it was we were doing here to whoever they decide to bring in. Any questions?"
She asked this in same way a professor would shout no questions! To the class.
"Good."
No one spoke until the plane was well into the air. Which was awkward- they were the only ones on the plane, their general affects scattered in the front seats.
Everyone picked a different section of the plane to sit. Not even Tony and Mary were sitting together.
John had the feeling that this was partly Angela's doing- she was fuming, and it was making everyone else on edge. Leaving like that had been- well, not what she had expected, nor wanted, and John was pretty damn sure that she blamed him for it. There was no one else to blame.
His fault or no, John couldn't just sit here in silence. Not with these people. It made him uncomfortable.
Jennifer was sleeping under a faded green duvet. Craig was playing- some sort of gameboy. Tony was staring out the window- Angela was refusing to be approached.
Mary was trying to pull a bullet out of her own arm.
"Here- let me help."
He practically whispered that, but it sounded loud- he flinched, and she looked up from her arm quickly.
He sat down next to her, holding his hands out- he wasn't going to touch her until she gave him the go-ahead.
She gave him an untrustworthy look, but ultimately decided that he could be trusted- she let down her arms and pulled up the sleeve of her tee-shirt a little more so that he could more easily see.
"Do you have any- instruments, of any sort? Anaesthetic?"
She sounded offended.
"I've dealt with far worse without anaesthetic."
"Well, sure, but it's not a competition. If you've got something that might help then you might as well use it."
"You got something for me, then, Doc?"
He thought back to his suitcase.
"Probably. One second."
He let himself out from the aisle and took a few large steps to the mess of suitcases that sat in the back of the plane. A few minutes later and he was back with the clear plastic bag Mycroft had his men put in John's suitcase- a doctor's first aid kid, something John was all too used to using.
Mary wasn't entirely impressed with the syringe.
"You know what you're doing with that?"
"Of course I do. Do you want it or not? You're going to need to get that bullet out of there, and you're not going to want to do it alone."
"I've done it before."
"And it was a pleasant experience, was it?"
She quirked a smile at that- small, only using the tiniest portion of the left side of her mouth, but it was genuine. It completely changed the way her face looked- John had always found her attractive, but in this light, with that sardonic smile, she was positively beautiful.
"It'll sting a bit, but after that you'll be numb. Ok?"
She didn't say no- he gave her the local anaesthetic and went to work opening the hole very slightly, pulling the bullet out gently with tweezers. He worked but at a pace comfortable to him- forceful and accurate, but quick enough to account for a battlefield.
"You're lucky it's pretty shallow. Else we'd need an X-ray... Didn't even knick anything too drastic. Not too much blood- well. For a bullet wound."
Mary was about to laugh at that- one of her short, hollow laughs, one single chuckle that meant just as much as any other laugh- but instead her eyes lifted up to greet the person behind him.
Tony, by the looks in her eyes.
"And what the fuck do you know about bullet wounds, Mr. Advertising?"
John heard the understandable suspicion in Tony's voice, but also an underlying jealousy- was this Tony's job, to patch up Mary? As it was Mary's job to patch him up? He was bleeding too, he could form a queue if he wanted. He looked as if he liked that idea just as much as Mary had. Self-sufficient, then? Or Co-Dependant?
The last thing John wanted was to get in the way of a romance between two ex-military assassins.
Instead of making things awkward, John feigned ignorance- he twisted his head behind him and smiled to the other man.
"Oh, the usual, I suppose. I was in the- er. The Peace Corps. After college."
Smooth thinking, Watson. The Peace Corps.
He looked from Tony's face- blank, unassuming- to his shoulder, where his shirt had been stained a dull red.
"You wanna get in line? I got plenty of time, I can stitch you up too if you need."
He nodded to the other man's bloodstained shoulder, then twisted back to finish his work- he didn't want to be distracted for too long. He didn't give the air of ending the conversation, however- just that of someone who was a little preoccupied.
Tony got the hint- he sat himself in the row in front of himself and Mary, leaning over the seats to watch John's work. Suspicious still- of course. Were they dating? Was Tony afraid that he would hit a nerve, cause an infection? Hurt his girlfriend? His wife?
Mary smiled up at him. Tony, that is. It was a different smile than the one she'd given John- it held a multitude of layers, the foremost being one exuding a general feeling of hey, it's okay, I'm okay.
It wasn't even in the smile, really- it was the same one as a few moments ago. It was her eyes- she just looked at Tony differently. He looked at her quite the same way.
Well- there goes that idea.
Tony didn't need to be stitched up, it turned out- a bit of antiseptic cream and an oversized bandage and he was fine. He didn't much like the idea of taking either of them- he and Mary shared the notion that accepting medical attention somehow made them weaker- but seemed more comfortable after he'd been patched up.
While he had the opportunity, he might as well go and check on- or apologise to- Angela. He left the two (Friends? Love birds?) to the back left corner.
"Any injuries here?"
He was standing near her row, leaving quite enough space not to disturb her while still making it clear that it was her that he was talking to.
She looked up at him, then to his first aid kid, and then back to him.
"You don't work in advertising."
He narrowed his eyes at her- he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with such a blatant statement. How closely was he supposed to protect his alter ego? It was better, he decided, for him to be trusted by the people around him than to be protected by one of Mycroft's lies.
But he didn't have to tell her everything- she didn't ask him a question, he didn't have to answer. But he did have to respond.
"That seems to be the general consensus, yes."
"Who are you? Really, who the hell are you?"
He sat down next to her- she wasn't inviting him, but she started a private conversation, and he was planning on keeping it private.
"How's your sister doing?"
It was her turn to narrow her eyes- she was much better at it, her expression far more effective than his. He'd treaded on hallowed ground.
"Is that a threat, Will?"
He laughed. The last thing he wanted to do was threaten Mycroft's favourite assistant and her murderous sister.
"Oh, god no. God no. Just figuring out where we both stand."
"Well, you're not putting yourself in a very good position. You haven't been in a very good position all night."
He quirked an eyebrow.
"I thought I'd helped."
"Yeah? And now where are we?"
"Not dead. And we got the information, didn't we? We did everything we were supposed to."
She studied him closely. He wasn't affected, and this seemed to dissatisfy her- she had a strong gaze, to give her credit, but he'd endured much more intense stares. When she finally spoke up, she spoke truths in a whisper-
"I don't know who you are, but you're important. They trust you to take care of yourself but they still don't want to take any chances."
John shrugged.
"I wouldn't say I was important."
"We've never been pulled out of anything before. This was bad, but not the worst we've seen. You're the only thing that's different. They want to keep you alive."
He took a second to think about that. The softness of his new expression seemed to have softened her mood- when she spoke next, it was less accusatory.
"You- you did end up being... A lot less useful than I'd expected."
He allowed himself to grin- accepting the implied apology.
"Why, thank you."
"And I see you're giving free stitches out to people."
"There's plenty to go around if you've an urge for a set of your own."
"Army Doctor."
Was John the only one who didn't have deductive superpowers?
"Nope. I work in advertising."
"No one who knows my sister works in advertising."
"Maybe, maybe not."
She stared at him for a long time- her eyes were a dark blue and held no mercy for him. He took another stab at quirking an eyebrow up- he'd wait for whatever it was she had to say or do. She buried her eyebrows into the aisle her nose made onto her pre-emptively- lined forehead.
"You shot that man."
"He was going to shoot us. You were driving; no one else had a decent angle. I took the chance."
"We were going ninety miles per hour. That window was hardly open, yet there wasn't a chip on it. You had three inches of leeway. You shot that man with a .22 revolver from a moving vehicle."
"With all due respect, I did ask for something a little better."
She laughed at that- it was hollow and dark, but it was genuine. She reached into her bag and pulled out a pistol- handed it to him. It was nothing special, but it didn't need to be. The sentiment was still there.
"Good answer."