Chapter 13: Desperate Men and Desperate Games~
John held his breath.
The Crips didn't receive as "unbiased" and "fair" a warning as the Bloods did. But there was no gang partiality here, it was only that Sherlock Holmes had grown impatient, as the poison rendering him practically accursed would now unleash its pent-up rage.
Here they stood, in the park on Riverside. To clarify, John was standing on solid ground, and Sherlock was beside him, seeming to emanate darkness in this broad-daylight scene.
" If you need to ask how I found you, I merely solved my way to your haunt." Sherlock purred, holding up the end of a power-cord.
Before him, hanging by the backs of their shirts,along the edge of the bridge that ran alongside Donald Trump's add-in to Riverside South, coat hooks affixed to their belts, were 20 members of the Crips, the leader of the entire organization in New York City in the center, dangling like a worm on a fish hook. They were wrapped in live wires not yet hooked to an electrical outlet, as well as cocooned in Christmas lights, that Sherlock had already lit up making them easy to see in the day or night. He'd taken the materials from their own hide-outs, that he had looted for the last 3 hours, only adding insult to injury.
John held his breath, astonished. Sherlock Holmes has just completely busted up the drug operation of the Crips in New York City, within the last 3 HOURS.
"This...this has been exhilarating. I'd rather like to let the dogs out more often, for a good run..." Sherlock smiled, teeth barring white and savage, the man turned wolf, a creature of the night. The leader of the Crips was shaking,
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU, AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?!"
"I've come to negotiate the terms of Pandora's game."
All 20 gang members got eerily quiet, and Sherlock continued, drawing up pompously, exuding a victorious air over them, to keep their jaws clamped shut. John swallowed, wondering how this ended.
Sherlock was completely unleashed. Not "out of control". John was amazed by the amount of resistance he was showing to this poison.
But in a single afternoon, and in the time it had taken them to leave from the tenement Blood's hideout to the park here in Manhattan, he had practically deduced the life-story of every citizen of New York City they had crossed paths with, as if they were all just pieces in the Game. He had eliminated ones that were just "pawns" and had very quickly identified ones that were actual combatants. Out of crowds of thousands, within less than 5 minutes John saw Sherlock single out members of the Crips from the Bloods. He had ended whole gang wars, acts of terrorism, drug operations,robberies...It was his entire career captured in a window of 3 hours...
"I gave your rivals the first warning, but rest assured... Because I gave them first warning, I rounded up their thugs for arrest first. So far I have eliminated around 300 of them from the opposing drug operation. The police most likely are already responding to the "tips" I've left them. While they are otherwise engaged, it's time for our little council. You will have to understand...time is growing short. We now have 31 hours left before the Ahkyls Hour strikes. And I'm not a patient man. I'm going to warn you, and eliminate you at the same time."
"Eliminate...?" asked the leader, thinking he was about to die.
"From the Game..don't be stupid! I may be utterly cruel, but I do have an extent of morality! Not to alarm you, but it isn't a vast extent...So, we'll just have to do it like this."Sherlock smiled, waving the cord in the air.
"You're going to be arrested, and eliminated from the Game. I have all the evidence of your trade with the drug bosses in Turkey strown out, and stick-note labeled here at your feet. Saves time in the court case, saves me time as I have "bigger fish to fry" as the expression goes. A rather large fish indeed,- The Exterminator himself is my focus...he's the big fish in this rather small pond..."
"You...you're talking about NEW YORK CITY, fool! How is that a little pond...?!"
John looked at Sherlock with a renewed sense of concern. After this, how could he go back to the way he was? His eyes were filled with a strange bluish hue caused by the poison, that had heightened all of his senses, giving him a moment's advantage. The hallucinations, the part of the serum meant to slow him down, put him on equal fields with the Queen, hadn't begun to release its active ingredient yet. That is when true madness would set in. For now he was only raving, like a tiger in an aquarium. Fish out of water, cat off the land, processing everything much too fast. For a moment elysium, the very thing that he craved, the thing he was addicted to ,thrill itself. When he crashed from this all-time high, what would happen to him? Sherlock had abused drugs in the past. Never mind that it was a forced addiction, he had still been an addict, and this was still his one weakness,the need to be stimulated, the need to fuel his overly powerful mind. When he crashed, would he sink into a depth of depression and boredom from whence he could not rise again?
Or worse, and perish this thought!, but John couldn't help but think it?
What if Sherlock became addicted to the very thing that was killing him? What if he had come to enjoy this visit with Akhlys just a little too much? Would the Lady of the Night claim his dearest friend at last? Would the third death be the charm?
No.
John wouldn't allow it. He had the power to save Sherlock. He was his conductor of light. And as long as light exists, utter darkness does not. He was not going to let this blackness, this Icarus he had become, take him.
In the end, when the Akhlys hour was over, John was going to have Sherlock standing beside him. As Sherlock. If any one died that night, it would be Icarus, gone back to his mistress in the belly of Hades.
John smiled at the thought of losing Icarus. It would be good riddance.
"Because there won't be so many fish left in the sea, when I'm rid of all her pawns! The police are apt to find you soon; there's no getting down from this device, I've tested too many of these first hand not to rig it right. Your career as a crime-lord is done, justice is coming to glean you, all in a day's work...But there's still time to hurt you...No,not just for fun. I may be a monster...but even beasts have to feed. I am ravenous for information...You will tell me what you know about Pandora and the Woman...Tell me what they are plotting to do here. It will save me quite a bit of time in eliminating the Queen from the Game..."
"AH,So you think I'm just going to tell you, and you win just that easy, right? If its supposed to be a game, there are rules though ,aren't there? Aren't you supposed to be the great detective and all that stuff? Aren't you supposed to go to her ,and have some dramatic conversation, and then guess? You rat her out, she drinks poison, or sticks a dagger in between her tits, and the cops don't come after her-just like in the movies?"
Sherlock laughed, a bout of dark laughter. " You have honestly bought into that illusion?"
"Well, there are criminals. That's me. People who grease the wheels,and keep the enterprise running. Like an engine. Something that real people, in a real world with real lives actually use. Then there are people like...you and Morstan...the Woman and this Exterminator guy...All Shakespear, cloak and dagger stuff, that never happens to real people. A load of Hollywood dramatic bull...I know all about you, Sherlock Holmes. How could you have possibly survived all of that stuff they did to you?It's all make-believe, to make weaker minded people scared. Well not me...I'm not buying it...I'm not playing this game..."
Sherlock nodded darkly,"I see...Real people in their real lives...have never witnessed the realm of evil from Ahklys kingdom, and never felt a twinge of pain like it, and so it's all make-believe. Because you haven't seen hell...hell doesn't exist. I might have shared your sentiment,...once..."
Suddenly he put the power cord together, and all 20 of the men hanging from his contraption were wriggling in electrocution. A moment of excruciating pain, that made John gape in horror.
But only a moment. Sherlock may have become this utterly dark thing, but he wasn't totally without mercy. In the end, trapped inside Icarus' broken bones and burned wings, there still haunted the spirit of Sherlock Holmes before he had fallen. A good man...despite what people said. He pulled the cord apart again, and waited for the leader to get done throwing up and crying from pain.
"But now you see the forest for its trees...don't you? Now you understand...that evil really is in the world, just in the dark where you can't see it. That it does exist...and people like me exist to stop it. To keep it in the dark, to keep simple fools like you from opening Pandora's box. Because whilst you might think that crime is just a machine, the longer you live off of credits, the more debt you accrue to your masters. These invisible men that you serve, are more devious than you can possibly imagine. Rejoice that I found you first; that I'm turning you in. That I gave you a taste of the pain that they created. I did it to save your life... as well as the lives that I care about. Because I was a man once, and I do care...I know exactly what realm of Pain that is, never mind that I can't feel it any more. You are going to tell me what Pandora is planning, for your own sake. Because you are human too... I know what it's like...There's someone that you want to protect too, isn't there? Once you've had even a taste of the Pain, you will never be right again, but you can spare her...your fiancee..the ring on your finger gave it away. Pandora solicits young girls...please...you've got to tell me what she's doing...whatever you know...I may know HOW to hurt you, but I don't necessarily enjoy doing it...I'm trying to help you...and I need your help to..."
The man coughed, and looked up...face twisted in wondering pain...
"You did...that...to me...in order to help me?!..."
Sherlock swallowed, "The stories...about me...are all true. And there's a lot more that isn't in a story, because it was too terrible to share with the world. Pandora will open that box though, and it won't just be me she destroys this time. Innocent lives, people that we brought into our games...just because they made the mistake of caring for us...Love...a very human mistake...the most vicious motivator. Yes, I'm trying to help you, if only because there are people I am viciously desperate to save..."
The Crip Leader nodded...
"There's a guy...you need to talk to...That works in the Empire State Building..."
Sherlock nodded,
"I'm listening..."