CHAPTER 30: WHAT HE SAW IN THE WOOD

AUGUST 2015

Barcelona

All was light, heat, wind, and a terrible roar, like the sky had crashed through the roof to devour them all.

The fireball expanded with force, breaking through the ceiling above, tearing apart the balcony, and blasting into the ballroom. Shrapnel flew, and fire chased in every direction: down the stairwell, where Moran's men were racing up the steps to put an end to Murray's subterfuge; along the ceiling, which blackened and crumbled like pastry in an oven; and to the gathered partygoers below.

It was the screaming left in the wake of the roar of explosion that was heard next—by any who could still hear at all. The men and women not killed instantly or debilitated beyond saving shrieked in agony and clawed at their faces, where the plastic of their odious masks had bubbled against their skin and melted into their eyeballs. The towering glass windows along the far wall had been blown out, and the curtains blazed orange and red. Those left standing made a mad dash through for the exit, creating a stampede of heels and dress shoes and a bottleneck at the door. Ankles bent and knees collided with tile. Men were kicked in the jaw and women's fingers were smashed to bloody tatters. The air was filled with white-hot panic and choking black smoke. Appledore began to burn.

And it was the in the moment of detonation, when the air caught fire and gusted like a hurricane, that the hair-trigger lever on the scaffolding was tripped. The floor beneath Sherlock's feet gave way, and he fell. The rope snapped taut.

He thought he was dead. His sight blackened, although in their blindness he could still see the ball of fire rush toward him. His ears deafened, although the ungodly boom of destruction still rang in his head. But his breath had stopped. His neck felt wrenched from his body, muscles twisting painfully around a strangled throat. In instinctual panic, his body began to twist and writhe on the end of the line, and with each passing second, he grew more and more desperate for air. This is what dying felt like. Like drowning. Like burning. Like encroaching darkness and an eternity of pain and torment.

John. The last vestiges of sanity were clinging to the source of all his solace and hope. John.

In the throes of death, he did not notice a man, a stranger, leap upon the stage, nor hear the clatter of someone racing to the top of the still-standing scaffolding. A moment later, Sherlock's body fell again. His feet hit first, but the body was unprepared—his ankles folded, his body twisted, and he fell hard upon the stage.

The rope had slackened—not much, but just enough. He gasped, a ragged, obstructed gasp, and inhaled smoke. Legs kicked out, but otherwise he was unable to move. His hand were still bound behind him, the rope still throttled him, and all around was fire.

A body jumped down from the scaffolding and hurried toward him. Impulsively, he recoiled.

'Cálmate, amigo,' the man said, laying a hand on his arm. He rolled Sherlock to his side. 'Cálmate.' Sherlock felt the locks on the cuffs spring open.

He was stunned. But before he could get a proper look at the man, before he could even form a proper thought or question in his mind, he turned his head just in time to see someone charge the stranger. His would-be executioner, thrown from the scaffolding himself in the blast, had recovered himself and was intent on finishing the job.

The stranger—dressed in a tuxedo but wearing no mask—dodged the first blow of the executioner's fist, and ran bodily into him, driving his shoulder into the man's stomach. A struggle ensued, and Sherlock observed, through streaming eyes from smoke and strained breath, that the opponents were well matched in hand-to-hand combat. There was something military about their fighting—he knew because he recognised the style in John.

John.

Gasping again, he pushed himself to his hands and knees. The executioner made another lunge for him, but the stranger restrained him.

'¡Ve! ¡Ve!' the stranger cried, waving him away urgently. '¡Por las ventanas! ¡Ve!' Arm wrapped around the executioner's neck, the stranger flung himself backward, dragging the bastard with him.

Still trying to recover his breath, Sherlock crawled toward the edge of the stage. Glancing up, he saw the dark hole that had once been the balcony, but the smoke was becoming denser, and his crushed throat burned with every breath. His ears rang. When he reached the edge, he grasped the side and lowered himself down, nearly falling again upon his knees, but he remained upright, the cut rope still dangling from his neck.

The platform in the centre of the room was bare. John was nowhere to be seen. The exit stood afar off, but he knew he would never make it passed the fallen corpses and press of bodies, not with the room filling with more and more black smoke. But the stranger had urged him toward the broken windows, and he had a flash of memory: him and John, escaping through the windows as Bill Murray's cottage burned.

He staggered forward, laser-focused on the window. But he could not shut his ears to the cries of agony that filled the ballroom. Yet their torment meant nothing to him. Choose the devil, he thought, and burn in the hell he made for you.

But as with John, he did not see the devil among them.

No one stopped his leaving. He reached the window and passed through into open night.

His body threatened collapse. He was injured, he knew it. But there was no time to regain his breath or assess his hurts. He scanned the dark grounds. Toward the front of the mansion he could see silhouettes running, the lucky ones who had escaped a fiery end but now had to flee before the authorities got there. But it was the treeline, up the copse and at some distance, that caught his eyes, and a near-indiscernible pathway cut through the grasses toward it . . . as though something had been dragged.

Without a second's hesitation, he followed that path to the darkened wood.

The blast that killed Bill Murray saved John Watson. It threw him from the platform, which stood as shield against the fireball that exploded the air above him. But he was not the only one saved in a such a manner.

Sebastian Moran landed beside him, upon his back, the wind knocked out of him a face peppered with flecks of shrapnel. They were both left dazed, horror-struck. But John still suffered the effects of the drug. As his mind cleared and he realised what had happened, he found he could barely lift his head or bend his legs. His wrists were still lashed with wire. His back bled from the cuts. His mind was in turmoil, flashing between the war-torn desert of Afghanistan, the horror of the convent, and the devastation of the ballroom. Then suddenly Moran was soon hovering over him like a nightmarish demon, face darkened by falling ash and eyes bright with madness while the flames danced over his shoulders and the room was filled with ghoulish screams.

'He's dead, you little fucker,' Moran said, spittle flying from his teeth. He twisted John's head to look at the stage, where Sherlock swung from a rope, still jerking like a worm on a hook. 'He's dead!'

John's scream was stoppered when Moran clamped a hand around his mouth. Laughing, he dragged John bodily across the floor, away from the stage, the wailing bodies writhing on the floor, pleading for help. His useless legs failed to find purchase on the debris-strewn tiles. Just as they were approaching the windows—blown out by the blast—he saw someone leap onto the stage where Sherlock swung helplessly, and there was nothing John could do.

Suddenly, he was outside, and Moran released him, dropping him to the grass of an expansive lawn, and both men panted for want of air. But he did not remain there for long. 'Little fucker, little fucker,' Moran seethed, reaching back down for him. With one hand, he grabbed John's bound wrists and started up the copse, heading for the trees.

Halfway there, Moran tired. He dropped John again, gasping, to the earth. Then he kicked him in the side until he rolled to his bleeding back. He grabbed John's arms, hauled him upright, and with the strength of a bull, threw him over a shoulder in a fireman's lift, continuing on.

From where his body dangled, John looked up and saw Appledore aglow, wreathed with fire and smoke. He wanted to cry. Sherlock was still in there, trapped, dying. It was over. All they had fought for, bled for, killed for . . . Bill Murray had done it—he had destroyed A.G.R.A., but he could not save Sherlock from the fall, nor John from the master tormentor.

They entered the wood, and the night closed in. No longer could he see the orange flames or hear the screams of pain. Huffing like the proverbial wolf, Moran moved deeper, deeper into the wood, until, unable to see the uneven earth beneath him, his foot slipped into a hole, and he crashed down, flinging John upon the roots of a tree.

'You!' Moran cried.

A fist smashed into John's face, and his whole body rolled with it. Blood spurted from his nose.

But Moran wasn't done. He lifted John by the hair of his head and shook him so hard the muscles in John's neck wrenched painfully.

'You did this. You and your fucking Sherlock Holmes! You conspired with Murray, didn't you? You planted him. You made him a spy. You mother fucker!'

He hit John again, then stood up and kicked him hard in the stomach. John could do nothing to defend himself against the onslaught. His mind began to darken, not to render him unconscious, no, but to protect from what he knew was coming. He had been here before, and he knew what torture awaited him next. He had always known. Even on the good days, few though they were, he had always known that it was only a matter of time before he found himself in the clutches of his greatest enemy, and the mercy of the knife, and vulnerable to the worst depravity imaginable. His mind began to push him out.

And it was as if he was watching from outside of himself. There was a man—long-limbed, broad shouldered, wolf-like—crouched over a small, pitiful figure, beating the sorry sod, shaking him, kicking. If there was pain, he couldn't feel it; if there was blood, he couldn't even see it for the dark. Then the beast stepped away, pulling on his jacket sleeves, struggling with his tie, panting angrily, and flinging the articles as far as he could. On his right side, a dark stain against white sleeves and the side of his shirt, and the Army doctor in John knew at once that Moran was wounded—shrapnel from the blast had peppered his body like a spray of buckshot. He was injured, maybe badly, and the only thing keeping him on his feet, for now, was the adrenaline coursing through his system.

Then Moran stilled. His chest heaved, but his legs were planted and rigid, and facing away from where John, who was trying to will movement back into his limbs, lay helpless. The drug had not been a full dose, he was sure. The effects could only last for so long. Nevertheless, it was too long. Moran slowly revolved again, predator facing his prey, and in his hand—as though it had never left it—was the silver scalpel.

Moran spit into the dirt. His eyes flashed madness. Then, with the speed of a wolf, he was back on top of John, rolling him onto his back, and placing the blade of the scalpel on the side of his face, right near his left eye.

'I'm going to slice you up, you miserable sod,' Moran said; spittle flew in John's face, but he dared not flinch, lest the scalpel cut his eye. As it was, he thought he could feel the long side of the blade press into his skin, and a line of warm blood trickle down into his ear. 'I'm going to carve that ugly face into a jack-o-lantern. I'm going to scoop out your mother-fucking eyeball and shove it down your throat. I—O—U!' The scalpel trembled in Moran's hand and dug into the skin of John's temple. 'You think you can take my kingdom from me? I'll just rebuild. And rebuild. New webs, all over the world. You lose, Johnny boy. You and your precious Sherlock Holmes. I killed him. I killed him. Dead, dead, dead!'

In his rage, he drove the scalpel into John's right shoulder and slapped him hard across the face.

And as his head snapped to the side, John saw her.

She was standing in the wood, untouched by the dark, like the moon, beautiful and bright. Her ginger hair was loose down her back, and she wore a relaxed blue dress that tied at the waist. He loved that dress. He had told her so every time she put it on. Her feet were bare. She made no sound as she walked toward him, slowly, a small smile on her lips.

There was no sound at all. Neither of the man screaming his rage above him nor even the softest sweep of wind. Perhaps there was no movement, either. Just this—his beloved, drawing near. She was real, every part of her. And the closer she drew, the more real she became, until she knelt upon the forest floor at his side. Never once looking up at the creature that had taken her from this life, her eyes were fixed on John. Smile growing brighter, she reached for his face, and touched upon his cheek.

Mary, he said.

For a moment, he feared she would not speak. How he longed to hear that voice again! And his eyes filled with tears in the hope of it. Then:

John. Clear as music, her voice came to him. Then she said only three more words, and they were the last he would ever hear her speak: He is coming.

Too soon, she arose, and she began to walk back in the direction she had come. John might have been filled with despair at her leaving him, or terrific sorrow, for he knew that this was the last time he would ever see her. But no. He was filled, instead, with remarkable, unequivocal peace. He trusted her, and so believed her. Sherlock was coming—he always did. He had come for John even though he thought him dead in a sewer. He had come to John when he thought him dying at the hands of the Slash Man. He had come back to John even after he himself had died. He always came back.

So as her bright image began to fade into the shadow of the wood, another began to emerge: a silhouette he knew so very well, stalking through the trees, silent and deadly as a panther.

Sound rushed back in. John finally felt the searing pain erupt in his shoulder, like he'd been shot anew. And as the world resumed its turning, Moran saw the shadow, too, almost too late to react. Sherlock had pounced, springing forward and barrelling into Moran and casting him off of John with a rage-filled cry. John heard an oof as air rushed out of Moran's lungs, and the two men landed in a heap.

It was dark in the wood, but John's eyes were adjusted well enough to watch with horror the ensuing battle, helpless to join in the fray. Sherlock fought like a madman with fists and teeth, his black coat billowing like the raised fur of a vicious bear. He was going for the pain points in a man—the eyes, the mouth, the stomach, the groin.

The heart, Sherlock, the heart! John thought, but his vocal cords were too relaxed to speak. The neck, the head!

Sherlock was not at full strength. John could see it in the way his movements too soon began to slow, how he favoured one leg, how his breaths were pulled in sharply, raggedly, like he was in a fair amount of pain. Of course he was. The last John had seen him, he had been hanging at the end of a rope! How he had escaped . . . John could only assume a miracle. And now, he absorbed blow after blow as Moran—a practiced killer—unleashed his fury against him.

Moran struck him, again, again, and with every blow Sherlock delivered, Moran returned two, and with twofold strength. He needed an advantage, John thought. A weapon. Or he would die at the wild ferocity of the beast that was Sebastian Moran.

But even Moran seemed to be weakening. Sherlock struck him in the chest, and after Moran staggered backward, he didn't immediately attack again. Both men swayed where they stood, panting, trying to recuperate their strength. Wiping his mouth, and with fury in his dark eyes, Moran spat blood when he said, 'You. You're dead! Dead! I saw you die! How? How!'

Sherlock's chest rose and fell with his laboured breath. They stood at some distance from each other, two shadows in the wood, with John at the far point of their triangle, watching helplessly. He stifled a moan in ins throat—anxious not to attract attention—and focused all his strength on lifting his bound hands to his chest. Setting his teeth, he pressed his palm around the silver scalpel protruding from his shoulder.

'As long as I live,' Sherlock growled, his voice deep and dark, 'John Watson lives.'

Tears poured down John's face as he tugged the blade from the meat of his shoulder. Blood gushed from the unobstructed wound.

Moran's attention turned to John, hating the man who was so well loved.

In a dangerous whisper, Sherlock said, 'Today, he lives.'

For the second time, Sherlock sprang toward the man who had once abducted and tortured his friend, who had murdered so many in Sherlock's name, an evil he had sworn to John he would slay if ever they met again. Tonight, in the wood, they met with violence, and hate, but also love, for Sherlock loved John, and tonight it proved a more vicious motivator than all the hate in the world.

Sherlock drove Moran bodily into a tree, and Moran's head rebounded. He punched him across the face to disorient him, then tried to wrangle him into a chokehold. Frantic—a wild beast fighting for its life—Moran struggled ferociously, twisting and scratching and pulling until, to John's horror, it was Sherlock on his knees, Moran behind him with an arm across his throat, the other hand against his head, and John knew—he knew—that one snap, and it would all be over.

He knew that Sherlock could not do it alone. He was never meant to.

'Sherlock,' he rasped, his voice too weak, he thought, to carry.

Sherlock did not even blink, but he heard him. It was as if they were of one mind, and so one body. John mustered every bit of willpower he possessed and tossed the scalpel, as one would toss a pen; and Sherlock, without ever turning his head, deftly reached out a hand and caught it.

With a downward thrust, he stabbed it full force into Moran's shin.

Moran let out a howl, and his arms loosened enough for Sherlock to escape, whirl around, and with a manic cry, he rammed it into the side of Moran's neck.

Moran crashed to his knees, and Sherlock yanked the blade away, letting the blood rush out. He kicked the toe of his once-shined shoes hard into Moran's jaw, snapping it shut and landing the man on his back.

Finally, he flipped the scalpel into the air, caught it at the hilt, and he fell upon Moran one last time. Moran's body jolted as though from electricity as the scalpel plunged deep within his blackened heart.

Moran seized Sherlock's arm, trying to dislodge it, but Sherlock held firm, curled over Moran's body, his head hanging low. Moran's head raised from the ground and his lips contorted as though to speak. Instead, all he could manage was a spray of blood, which dripped down Sherlock's nose and chin. Then Moran's head hit the forest floor. His hands and arms went slack. His legs lost their tension. Slowly, his head rolled to the side and his eyes met John's, stunned, uncomprehending of his own demise and the victor before him. His lips formed into an o-shape, the word you, but he never spoke again.

Sebastian Moran was dead.

Sherlock sprang back from the dead body, breathing raggedly. His back struck the trunk of a tree, and trembling—from shock, from receding adrenaline—he slid down the trunk until he sat upon at the tree's roots, staring at the unmoving body of the man he had fantasised about destroying nearly every day for a year, the man he despised himself for not killing when he had last encountered him in that convent basement while John lay dying at their feet. Now he was dead, it was over, and the blood was still wet and warm on his hands and face.

He felt cold. The sweat and blood were cooling with the breeze, and he began to shiver. A sharp ringing in his left ear, a throbbing ankle. He felt the sourness of blood in a constricting throat, a tightness in his chest, and his body twisted sideways for better breath, and he coughed roughly until he vomited into the dirt.

In the distance, the wail of sirens. Eyes streaming, he looked back the way he had come and saw an orange glow above the trees, a mansion burning. They needed to disappear.

Close at hand, he heard a rustling—John was languidly trying to push himself to his bound hands and shaking knees. His bare back was a smear of blood and dirt from the forest floor, and his face and shoulder dripped like an oil spill. Even in the dark, Sherlock noted the strain in his muscles, how his limbs quivered like tree limbs in a strong wind. He made it only halfway up and half a crawl before collapsing in on himself.

Sherlock planted his own hands in the soil and scrambled over to him.

'You're hurt,' he rasped.

John rolled to his side, shook his head. 'Drugged,' he said weakly.

'You're hurt. Can you stand?'

'Help me.'

Sherlock grunted, pushing himself to his feet though his legs quailed beneath him. He coughed again, but he wrangled John up to his knees and would have thrown an arm around his shoulder—but for the wire-lashed wrists.

Instead, he slid his arms under John's armpits and hauled him upright, mindful of the new cuts on his back. But John's legs failed him almost instantly. First, he swayed into Sherlock. Next second, he was back on the forest floor, groaning at a dozen unspoken pains.

'God, John.'

''m okay.' His head rolled to the side, toward the dark, still body lying supine only feet away. 'Is he—?'

'Yes.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'Is it real? Is this real? Am I really here? . . . Are you—?'

'John.' He drew closer, then touching John's face, he turned it away from the figure and back toward him. 'He's dead.'

They held each other's gaze for a long time, Sherlock wondering fearfully if John really was with him, or if he had slipped away into a waking dream, where intrusive images were his reality and where he didn't remember that he had ever left that godforsaken convent.

The sirens' scream was getting closer.

'We have to go. We have to—' But another fit of cough overtook him. His chest tightened painfully, and he held a hand to his breast as though he could find the knot to loosen it again.

John rolled himself again to his knees. With a guttural sound, he once again tried to plant a foot.

'You can't walk,' gasped Sherlock.

'You can't breathe.'

'Then we're dead men.'

'No.'

John pushed himself upright, one leg, then the other. They both held. He took a tentative step, his legs wobbling, but this time he did not fall. Another step, and he found himself standing over the dark body of his slain foe. Sherlock held his breath, watching. Without a word, John reached down with his bound hands, curled fingers around the end of the silver scalpel protruding from Moran's chest, and slowly withdrew it with a slight, sickening squelch.

Without a word, he dropped the weapon in his pocket. Then he turned to Sherlock and extended his blood-swollen hands. 'I need you to stand up,' he said. 'We'll help each other walk.'

Sherlock grabbed his hands and let John pull him to his feet. Then he put an arm around John's bare, blood-washed waist, and they began to walk together, away from the dead, deeper into the wood.

Still, John's legs trembled and his wounds bled freely, and Sherlock's head pounded and his lungs tightened precariously with each step. He could scarcely draw breath, and when he tried, he was wracked with horrific coughs, a body fighting to expel a poison.

Between the trees, they saw a beam of light. They heard the clomp of boots. And they both knew they couldn't outrun the bearer of that light. At last, John's legs gave out, and he dragged Sherlock down to the earth with him. They hid under a tree, but it was no use. Sherlock could not stop himself coughing, and when he did, the beam of light flashed suddenly in their direction.

It was the end of the road. They both knew it. All Sherlock could do was grasp John's arm and hold him closer. John put his head alongside Sherlock's, held it there. It was an awkward and painful embrace, but one neither would abandon for the world. There, they waited for the next and final domino to fall.

Running feet. A bouncing torch. Sherlock stifled a cough, which shook his body, and John pressed his own more firmly against him, bracing. Then a light shone in their faces, blinding them.

'Ay, Dios mío,' said a deep voice above them. The man hurried closer, dropped to his knees, but continued to shine his light while Sherlock and John recoiled. '¿Estáis bien?' Then, translating himself, 'Are you all right?'

'Who are you?' Sherlock rasped, trying to deduce the man but could not for the dark.

'A friend,' said the stranger.

'We have none,' said John.

'I am sent to you,' said the man, lowering the beam; the index finger of his other hand pointed skyward, 'in the dead of night. To give you broken wings.'

'What?' asked Sherlock. He could barely speak for want of breath, but he thought the man's English too broken to make sense of.

'Sherlock,' John said softly. 'It's Blackbird.'

A light began to glow in Sherlock's mind, warming and certain. He recalled them now, the lyrics to a song he had heard long ago, and he understood the message, but more importantly, who had sent the messenger. He knew, too, why the man spoke in code. Neither John nor Sherlock would have trusted a forthright claim of working for the Iceman. Anyone could lie. But no one—save a few choice souls—knew of Operation Blackbird, and Sherlock, to his own great surprise, trusted every single one of them.

And it was to that logical appeal—the cracking of a code—that his brother reached out to him, calmed him, as he had when they were children. He and John were not alone.

A transit van was waiting for them on a service road on the edge of the wood—if one could call it a mere transit van. Rather, it was a bespoke medical transport, white and unassuming on the outside; inside, a veritable hospital room, and beside the man who had found them and the driver, there were two more people waiting for them, both women, ready to administer emergency medical care.

They were triaged as soon as the doors closed and the van began to roll. The women laid Sherlock down on the sole gurney, loosened his shirt, gave him oxygen, placed a pulse oximeter on his finger, and ran an IV. Next, John's open wounds were attended to, cleaned, wrapped, and pain medications administered intravenously. While the women unwound the silver wire from his wrists, Sherlock and John kept silence, watching each other attentively, insofar as men in shock were capable of attentiveness.

But exhaustion was crashing down upon him, and Sherlock's eyes were growing heavy. He fought to stay awake. Fleetingly, he wondered if there were some drug in his IV that was lulling him to sleep. On the contrary, John sat rigid and alert, the paralysing drug losing its effect, and he examined every move the women made with the vigilance of a night watchman . . . or, rather, of an army doctor watching his subordinates work, making sure they did not misstep. But even as Sherlock wondered what it was John observed, he slipped away, and sleep claimed him.

The van wound its way out of the city, away from the coastline, inland and northward, until a windy road led them down a gravel path, tires crunching, the van bouncing gently, and Sherlock awoke. The first thing he did was look for John, but he didn't have to go far. John had relocated to a hard, plastic seat that folded down from the van wall right beside the gurney and was holding him by the hand. His face was swollen, and one eye was sealed shut, but he was otherwise stoic as he stared straight ahead, waiting to reach their destination.

Through a guarded gate, down a long brick drive, and under a canopy of laurel trees stood an isolated hacienda with a central courtyard. When the van doors opened, the man who had found them in the forest was there with outstretched hands, ready to assist them, but he was not the only one. Half a dozen others, men an women both, stood with anxious expressions and two wheelchairs, which both Sherlock and John waved away. John had regained his strength enough to walk; Sherlock could not allow himself to rest.

As they walked toward the house and past two armed men, who nodded to them as though their lords had returned, Sherlock asked of the man from the forest, 'Where are we? Who are you people?'

'A place of safety,' said the man, leading them down one long corridor while the others trailed behind. His accent was thick with his native Spanish, his English simple but grammatical. 'We are your people, Mr Holmes.'

A little further down the corridor, John suddenly came up short. Sherlock heard him suck air between his teeth, and when he looked, he saw John wincing, squeezing his eyes shut, his head bowed as an arm reached for the wall to steady himself.

'John?'

'I'm fine,' he said. 'Just hurts, is all.'

'Dr Watson, Mr Holmes, if you please.' A man stood in an open doorway, gesturing them inside.

It looked like an emergency room, counters cluttered with medical equipment, shelves filled with sterile packaging and blue latex gloves poking out of tissue boxes, monitors and machines, and silver trays with instruments. Medical staff wearing white coats awaited them with sad smiles.

They needed to treat and stitch open wounds, run blood tests, take x-rays and ultrasounds, assess for unseen damage, administer medications. They were just setting John on the examination table when the man from the forest stepped into the room.

'Mr Holmes, forgive me. I do not wish to delay your treatment, but he insists on seeing you at once.'

Sherlock's lips formed the question who, but as he looked to John, John said, 'Go. I'll be all right.'

Still in daze, Sherlock had no will to object and so followed the man out of the room and around a corner. At the end of another long corridor was another room, this one with a long black table surrounded by swivel chairs, a conference room of sorts, and at the end of the table, an open laptop.

'It is perfectly secure,' the man said. 'Please. Take your time.' Then he exited the room, giving him privacy.

He stepped around the table, and there, on the screen, he saw Mycroft.

He looked gaunt, hair dishevelled, eyes staring hard at the camera. His elbows rested on the table, out of view, and his hands were clasped together firmly at his mouth, shaking a little with the force of trying to keep them still.

Outside the field of vision, Sherlock clapped a hand over his mouth, covered his burning eyes, stifled a sob. The weight of the night was crashing down on him, the heaviness of years, and it almost brought him to his knees to see his brother's face, anxious to see him and know of a certainty that he was alive.

When Sherlock finally stepped into the frame, Mycroft's head dropped for a moment and his shoulders bunched, mirroring Sherlock in being overcome, a rare occurrence for a Holmes. Then Mycroft forced himself upright again and let his hands unclench. He reached for the camera, as if he could put his hand through it and touch Sherlock to make sure he was okay.

It was a long while before either of them could utter even a syllable.

'Well done, brother mine,' Mycroft said, his voice strained with so much emotion he almost couldn't speak at all. 'Well done.'