Chapter Fifteen
Sherlock opened his eyes to see a series of strange symbols, lines and curves outlined in red, the only light visible in the otherwise total darkness. He realised he had to change the visual orientation.
(ROTATE_SCREEN_90_DEGREES)
He sat up on the camp bed and looked at the red lines again as they connected with a stray visual basic programme.
46.12 Then the last numeral changed. 46.11
He groaned. He realised he was more than half way through his allotted time in the locked room. And nowhere near solving the problem. He put his feet on the floor, trying to ground his sensory memory with the cold of the concrete that went straight through the cotton socks. It set off an involuntary shiver. He stood up and staggered a bit in the total darkness with no reference points. He made it to the wall near where he thought the door would be and found the light switch.
Even at the low light of the energy efficient bulb, he gasped, the brightness hitting his visual cortex like a stiletto in both eyes. His left arm ached with a pain that he'd been able to ignore until now. The two bottles of meth in solution were long gone, the empties rolled under the camp bed. And he was coming down fast from the stimulated high. He felt awful. How is it possible to feel both nauseated and hungry at the same time?
He knew that this was the meth talking. And it hadn't even been worth it. His Mind Palace was still in a total shambles. No, actually, it was worse by far than when he started the process. The directory re-build had not only failed; the hard drive was now fried, damaged beyond repair. He had flung his head torch across the room and torn up in rage the red notebook with the fifteen year old's pencil scratchings, the codes to be used in the build programme. Totally useless. Every time he thought he'd managed to put some code together, it just slipped away from him. The neat divisions between declarative, sensory, short and long term memories had been literally blown apart. There was nothing left to string together, just a maelstrom of memory. None of the build tools seemed able to corral the processes into the proper order, the way he needed them to align in order to control what he was. The failure left him pole-axed by despair.
He had no idea what to do. He sat back down on the camp bed and began to rock backwards and forwards without realising it. He felt utterly drained, and all he wanted to do was something to stop the chaos- forever. The idea of trying to cope with a brain that was malfunctioning this badly just…was too impossible. Already, he felt the sensory overload- the scents in the room disgusted him, the visual stimuli were too intense. He could hear his own heartbeat, the sound of his own raspy quick breaths. The cotton sheet was damp with his sweat and made his skin crawl. And all this data just poured in and stopped every other coherent thought from emerging out of the chaos. The pain in his wrist was a stabbing sonata of atonal jolts every time he moved. They tasted pink and made him even more hungry.
He couldn't live like this. Without his Mind Palace to manage the sensory flood, he'd just drown. He fisted his right hand into his hair and pulled, trying to use that pain to override what else was taking hold. He could feel something moving down his face. As it reached the curve of his top lip, he tasted it with his tongue to find that it was salty and wet. Oh, wonderful. Now I can't even control emotions. But it wasn't physical pain that was driving the tears; it was utter despair.
He thought about what was in the metal cabinet. He knew there were no magic bullets- no drug could control the mess in his head. The morphine would only be a form of procrastination, the heroin merely a temporary respite. Neither could help him rebuild. The meth hadn't worked. Cocaine's intense high might make him feel better about his failure, but it couldn't make the old build code work any more effectively. He'd just reached the limitations of his mental capacity to control what was going on in his brain. I've lost my mind. Literally- the structure that made it possible to create order out of his sensory and memory chaos was gone, nowhere to be found. The barriers he had established, the narrow channels to control emotional outflows- they had been swept away by some tsunami. He felt the full force of the Spectrum Affect just grab his brain and shake it like some wild beast killing its prey.
He wondered if this is what "normal" ASD people felt like all the time- a brain that just functioned without conscious control, a rapacious maelstrom that frightened him. He could hardly think of anything other than the immediate moment, the pain, the sensation, emotions. It was quite simply terrifying. He wanted to bang his head against a wall, to punish it for betraying him so badly.
Do something, ANYTHING! He realised that if he left it much longer, then he might not be sane enough to make a conscious choice. He could just lose all sense of where he was or how to function, lapsing further and further into insanity until dehydration or starvation killed him- a slow lingering horrible death. But if he left, then there was a chance he would be found and then he might end up in an institution, imprisoned in another tiny cell like this one, with no hope of escape. He couldn't let that happen. He had to avoid his brother at all costs, or face a perpetual slow lingering death of a different kind.
Trapped, with no way to fight or flee, panic was making his heart beat faster. The room was now too small, too horrible. The criminal who had spent weeks in here hiding out was a stronger soul than Sherlock. He could not bear the thought of dying here. The idea of it was so pathetic, so wretched that he was willing to go through the pain of leaving, just to see the skyline of London one more time. Yes, that goal would help him keep the storm at bay just a little longer. Make it a conscious choice. If there was no Mind Palace, then he wanted no part of this life, but he'd choose the time and place when he would end it.
Now that he'd made up his mind, he found some energy to go to the shelving and pull out another sealed plastic container. With a shaking hand, he drew out a change of clothes. No time to wash, even though he was disgusted with himself. He fumbled and struggled, but slowly managed to get dressed. Black socks, then black trousers. A black turtleneck sweater, he rolled the left sleeve up before pulling it on, failing to stifle the cry of pain as it slid over the bandaged sutures, the back splint on his forearm. What does it matter? No one can hear me. He flattened one of the empty water bottles, then used it as the other side to the back splint the hospital had fitted. He wanted more protection, wrapping gauze around and around the plastic to give more rigidity to the broken wrist bones. He was crying with the pain of it by the end when he rolled the sleeve down to hold everything in place. Then he tore a corner of the sheet into a square, and made a sling.
The clothing made him feel warmer, and gave him some semblance of normality which he clung to like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam. He went to the medicine cabinet and removed the bottle of pre-mixed seven per cent cocaine. Then he broke open the syringe pack, and struggled one handed to fill three substantial doses. The first to enjoy, then when the high started to ease, he'd take the second as the piggy back which would probably kill him, but to be sure, the third would be ready to be his safety net. He snorted at the idea. Safety net? Well, yes, if the choice of place and timing was to be his. He replaced the plastic caps on the needles, and wrapped the three in a gauze bandage, then slid it into the sling, up tight and held in place by the splint. He picked up the head torch from the floor. Luckily, it had not broken when he'd had his tantrum. He put it on. At the door, he looked around the room one last time, and then started the journey back to the world outside.
oOo
At exactly the same time as Sherlock made his decision to find a better place to die, John was sitting in his chair, looking at the empty leather and chrome seat opposite him, as if willing it to be full of a long-limbed Sherlock. Right now John would cheerfully accept every acerbic snide comment the man could deliver about how stupid his flatmate was, about how unobservant, and incapable he was of making the kind of flying deductive leaps that Sherlock made without even seeming to try.
In contrast, John was earthbound, slow and thick. His limbs felt heavy with exhaustion. Guilt had driven him onto the streets for the past two days and nights, trying to repent for his unwillingness to let Mycroft have his way and put Sherlock into a secure place. He'd been unable to sleep except when sheer exhaustion took hold, and then it was never for long. He'd woken up from a brief nap this afternoon shouting from a nightmare. This time it wasn't Afghanistan. It was the sight of Sherlock dead in an alley, in a pool of blood, both wrists cut with the man's own ridiculous antique razor. John had gone into the bathroom to reassure himself that the implement was still there. He'd stood in front of the basin in the harsh fluorescent glare with the open razor in his hand, thinking of how Sherlock used it every morning in the shower. John remembered his disbelief the first time he had realised. "You're telling me that you use it without a mirror, with wet hands, slippery from soap and shaving foam? Are you crazy, Sherlock? They don't call that thing a cut-throat razor for nothing, you know."
Sherlock had just smirked at him. "I have a hypersensitive sense of touch, John. I don't need my eyes to find my face."
John had spent hours tramping about London in the vain hope of finding his flatmate. ("Pointless waste of time, John; if I can hide from Mycroft and Lestrade, then there is no chance in hell of you finding me.") As if to taunt him for his stupidity, John's mind was now cheerfully supplying the running commentary that Sherlock would have been saying if the man had been with him.
"Yeah, well, we aren't all blessed with a Mind Palace, Sherlock." That muttered retort raised a tiny rueful smirk on the doctor's face. "See what you do to me, Sherlock? Now I'm the one who is talking when you're not here." He addressed his comment out loud to the empty chair.
He knew that Mycroft had done everything possible. Every hospital and clinic had been alerted. Social services across London and the police had been alerted that if anyone reported a six foot tall dark-haired blue-eyed person because of suspected mental health problems that it had to be instantly communicated. CCTV from both public and private sources was being monitored 24/7. Every known drug dealer in town had been contacted privately and advised that a large reward for information, no questions asked, no repercussions, was available should anyone fitting the image in the distributed photo approach them. John had contacted Sherlock's homeless network; Raz trusted him enough to get the message out. If Siggy was unwell, and someone got eyes on him, they'd let him know.
"Hoo-hoo." There was a gentle tap at the door from Mrs Hudson. "I've brought you a late night cup of camomile tea, dear. You really mustn't fret. He'll be back. I'm sure of it."
John took the tea, but found it hard to raise a smile. She didn't know what he knew about the events of 1994; she hadn't witnessed the panic attacks, the melt down and collapses. She didn't know how serious it was.
The elderly woman looked sternly at him. "Now, John. It's not like you to be so…pessimistic. Sherlock's done this before, you know - gone off on one of his little walk-abouts. Sometimes things just get too much for him. That Detective Inspector can tell you; it used to happen a lot. Sometimes, Sherlock would be gone for days from his old flat on Montague Street. Turned up on my doorstep here a couple of times. Once he was in a bad way- over indulged a bit, but then had the sense to come find some place safe to come down. A couple of nights on my sofa and he was alright."
The doctor didn't want to worry her even more. Underneath that kindly tone, he knew she was worried, too. So, he gave her a weak smile of reassurance. "Good night, Mrs Hudson. If I hear anything, I'll let you know."