Chapter 6: There is No Cure~
Molly has had an extremely bad day.
She would have to say that it has been even worse than the day she and Major drugged themselves and climbed inside of a box headed for the Caribbean. At least she had been having an adventure then.
Today she had tried for the 3rd time to patch things up with her most-recent long-term boy friend Tom. But when she had arrived at the café they were going to have coffee at and just talk, he had been there with another woman. An extremely gorgeous woman who had flicked hot coffee all over her, and had ruined her favorite sweater.
Needless to say, Molly had thus broken up with Tom for the very last time. Gone home, and showered for 20 minutes just to get the hot latte with cinnamon and some other sickly sweet stuff smell off of her.
Then she'd had to go to work to find a body that had been turned literally "Barney the Dinosaur from our Imagination" purple and green ,from death by collapse of a hardware's paint shelf, ( she was left wondering why she needed to even do the autopsy if the cause of death was already known? And on top of everything he or she was rather squashed...)
Things had finally slowed down a bit. She no longer smelled like roasty cinnamon, and she had cleaned the paint off the cadaver and determined exactly where the death-blow had come from (large can of purple paint upside the noggin'), and she was just about ready to send the man's ( for extremely old man it was) paperwork off , and was quietly shushing her quiet-inside-Sherlock voice (which is what she affectionately called the angry ranting inside her head at Tom, but rather than her own voice, it was Sherlock's, making observations, and adequate insults, like only Sherlock can).
"No, seriously, stop!" she laughed aloud to the imaginary counterpart of her best friend, when in stormed Major Sholto with the real-life version of Sherlock sprawled rag-doll limp across his shoulders, John walking beside him, holding Sherlock's wrist to monitor his pulse. Greg Lestrade was walking behind them, still dressed in a hospital gown, walking awkwardly and cross-legged. Sally Donovan was beside him, chewing her lip fretfully. And behind her walked Mycroft with two agents on either side of him, that each had a hand grappling a woman that Molly didn't recognize, but it was Meredith Lestrade.
"Molly! Thank God!, we're gonna need your help." John gasped, smiling like he had seen a ministering angel, and by rights he had, for he had always thought of Molly as being Sherlock's ministering angel.
"Oh my God! Is he...what happened...will he?...Is he ok?!" Molly basically chirped.
"That's why we've brought him to you...to see how bad off he actually is. It's too much to explain at the moment, but he's been poisoned...We will need you to run some blood tests ,on the chemical she used, to see if there's an antidote, and how much time we've got to get it to him before it gets bad...Also, If you could call someone down here to bring me a heart monitor ,that would help."
"And if you've got any popsicles, we will be needing those too, please ma'am." Major declared.
"...Sorry,...popsicles?" Molly sputtered.
John looked at the Major, brows twisted in extreme confusion.
Undaunted, Major shrugged.
"A sick man needs popsicles! It's a given fact, and the first medical thing that you learn in your entire life, usually from your grandmother..."
John nodded, "Well, if you could just take care of the blood tests and the heart monitor, for the moment, I would very much appreciate it!" he gasped, taking Sherlock down from the Major's shoulders, the Major adjusting him in his arms, like one would pass a very sick toddler to their father. Which is rather difficult when the very sick, rendered child-like person in question is several centimeters taller than you.
Somehow, perhaps the need ,and the anxiety of said pressing need to do thus, John had lifted Sherlock up like one does a bride, head resting on his chest, long legs dangling over his arm, and had carried him to a table meant for the cadavers, and laid him down on it. The cold metal against the back of his neck made Sherlock's eyes pop open. His pupils had shrunken almost eerily, the eye whites were milky and a strange bluish color.
"New York City..." he groaned.
"Sorry..what?" John asked, smoothing his sweat plastered hair back from off his forehead. Mycroft's eyes lit up, immediately understanding what the only half-conscious Sherlock was trying to say.
"What about New York, brother mine?" he asked, taking one of his clammy,shaking hands into his own.
"It's...where we have to go...To stop her...Stop...Mary..."
Molly rushed about to do as she was asked, head burning with anguish. Oh yes this had been a VERY bad day indeed! And then she stopped short at the name.
"Mary?,...Who's...who's Mary?" she asked, feeling sick on a sudden, thinking she might know who they were talking about already.
"Why New York...what makes you think that?" Greg gasped, utterly amazed by his consultant, who was, even now on death's doorstep ,for the third time in too recently, still able to solve their case.
"Don't...don't think. Observed it...when she had...needles in my chest...Her...well...clothes, hair, makeup, stains on her assassin's suit...little things like always...except...it's...hard to talk..."
"Shh...it's ok...you don't have to talk..." John said, making him lay all the way back.
"He will need to talk if we're to find where she is. And stop her, before something worse happens to him, and to the lot of us..." Mycroft said.
John gave him a "I am a doctor. My word is law." sort of look, and said,
"See what we're up against first, if we can cure him, or slow it down...or whatever we've got to do to help him survive it, and then we'll deal with her."
"Who is she?"
"Not important now, Molly." Mycroft gasped, irritably.
"Only maybe it is ,Myc!" Molly shouted,and everybody looked at her stunned, and she swallowed,
"Sorry...it's just...a woman...a woman was here...last night...named Mary. Asking...questions."
"Questions? What kind of questions?"
"Well...not the "about to commit murder kind" if that's what you're all thinking...It's...well... um...she wanted to know...if I had a man by the name of Charles Youngblood ... on my list? I didn't...never heard any such name...and besides I wouldn't tell anybody but Sherlock information confident to the hospital so...I ...well...called security on her..."
"Security? Or...do you mean Yard officers that patrol here after visiting hours ,ever since Sherlock fell?...Were their names " Clearfield" and "Smith"? "Donovan asked, eyes going wide.
"Yes?" Molly's voice was suddenly very small.
"They're friends of Anderson's ,... work on his team. And they didn't show up for work today, either." Sally gasped, eyes crossing, suddenly terrified.
"Oh God..."Greg moaned.
"Blood...Young...blood...YOUNGBLOOD!" Sherlock gasped, sitting bolt upright.
"EASY! What is it?!" John cried, reaching and taking him by the shoulders...
Sherlock is suddenly panting, eyes fluttering..."Youngblood...Charles...Youngblood...Moriarty's...supposedly mythical..." he stifled a low, agitated whine, and the others looked at him in horror, because he is seriously terrified, and the poison is making it harder for him to conceal it like always before.
"His "exterminator"...His personal exterminator,... unlimited knowledge of toxins...One that was believed to be just an urban legend...But I know better. He-he-he's the one that Mary ...solicited as mediator...in...our...bargain...And...even Moriarty...hated him...The order...was given for him to be offed...before he could...perfect his poison of choice. He was thought dead before Moriarty committed suicide...and later...I..well...I thought I had ..killed him..."
He looked at his chest then, and swallowed a sob, fingering the lacerations the needles had made...
"Oh my God..." he whispered, so quietly the others thought they had imagined it.
He looked up at John then, and the look on his face told them that he was weighing the choice that he had made, and had convinced himself, logically and otherwise, that it was indeed the right one. And suddenly his face was the same hard mask that it usually was, although his eyes were still bluish and dilated from the toxic waste inside him.
"...Never mind the tests...Molly...There is no cure...There is nothing that can stop it or slow it down...If that viper Youngblood is the one she went to, then there is only one way to live,...and that is to allow it to run through my veins unbridled..." he smiled ,grimly. "But...if she can't find his body, then it probably means she's willing to turn herself over to us...to escape him...because ,for once, Pandora failed to make the kill..."
The others were stunned into utter silence. And then Sherlock looked at Mycroft and whispered...
"Charles Youngblood...publically goes by the alias "Magnusson"."
Mycroft looked like he was about to vomit.
"Oh dear God, Sherlock!"
Sherlock nodded, and felt John nervously take his hands, shaking his head like this was not happening.
"Donovan?" Sherlock called.
"Yeah?" she asked, really confused, and upset, and came and sat beside the gurney in one of Molly's swivel chairs.
Sherlock reached up, clinging to her sleeve.
"Anderson's life...is in danger...You need to find him for me...I'm going to need his help..."
"Wait...you...need...Anderson?"
Sherlock nodded..."Yeah...And...we ,...all of us...need to get to New York City. Take a holiday ,take a sick day, however you "proper" police officers do it...Just get away from the Yard somehow...we all have to be in New York for the Akhlys Hour."
"Why?" Greg gasped.
But Sherlock had used all the strength he currently had in him, and had passed out cold.