FOUR
the file
John came out of his bedroom in the morning, yawning and heading to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He opened the pantry, tossed aside a few dried out eyeballs, and saw a knife.
Sherlock, apparently, had stuck a note into the side of John's box of tea with a knife, knowing that that was the first place John would go in the morning.
The letter said:
John - out. Must pry information from brother dearest on Moriarty's stronghold. If Lestrade calls, tell him to text me. ~ Sherlock.
P.S. We're out of milk again.
John sighed, pulled the knife out of his tea box, and put the kettle on.
Alana opened her eyes. There was something in front of her face, dark and blurry. Blearily, she rubbed them, and opened them again.
She gasped and jerked back.
It was Moriarty.
"Had a nice sleep, sweetheart?" he smiled. Far too brightly. Something bad was going to happen. "You've been sleeping for ages. Getting used to the idea of being my best assassin?"
She spat in his face.
"Ooh, feisty. That's the spirit. Today, we're going to take a little… field trip. Do you like field trips, Alana? I do, ever so much. And even better, we're going to go see a… friend of mine. I believe you know him? His name is Doctor Watson," he said.
Alana was surprised. She thought that he would want Sherlock. He read the look on her face perfectly.
"Oh, are you surprised? Don't worry, this is just more practice. But NO KILLING!" he shouted. "Because then, poor Sherlock wouldn't know what to do, and we want him on his best game, don't we, sweetie? We want Sherlock Holmes on par for you… otherwise, it's too easy, isn't it?"
Alana despised him with a passion for being right. It was easy. One snap of her fingers and the bones would crack, the heart would stop. It was easy, and that's why she had to escape.
She didn't know what would happen to her if she stayed.
"Sherlock, we don't know. Goodness me, don't you think we'd have tried to get him by now if we did?"
Sherlock frowned. "Nothing at all? No large bunkers built recently? No signs of him or his accomplices?"
"Nothing," Mycroft Holmes stated bluntly. "However, this may be of some interest to you."
He held up a large, brown file. "This is the girl you wanted, I believe? The police did a DNA test… it matched perfectly. Lestrade told me to give it to you, though if I wanted, I most certainly could keep it."
Sherlock snatched it out of his hands and opened it. He scanned through the files. Father (dead), mother (dead), younger brother (kidnapped at time of parents' death), and her. Alana Emilia Cooper. 16 years old, brown hair, grey eyes, 7 stone, 1.7 meters tall. Also kidnapped, (presumably by Moriarty) approximately two weeks ago.
He pulled out a newspaper clipping and furrowed his eyebrows.
It stated that several walls had collapsed onto a couple of teenage boys outside of the school where Alana went. Apparently, they had been talking with her, and she had gotten upset. The argument hadn't gone any further, because at that point, the walls had collapsed. Both the boys had survived, but had had to be hospitalized.
Alana had sustained no damage.
The walls had missed her by inches. It was remarkable coincidence.
Sherlock didn't believe in coincidences.
"What is this?" he asked. "It's nearly impossible that the walls could have missed her like that."
"That's why we have a file," Mycroft said. "There have been some other… incidents concerning her that are remarkably similar."
"Perhaps she had created some kind of new technology that allowed her to do this," Sherlock said.
"Mmm. Perhaps she's a young Sherlock Holmes," Mycroft said sardonically.
Sherlock ignored him, and responded with his own kind of cutting reply.
"Well, good day, Mycroft. Try and lose some more weight, hmm?"
He smirked, and walked out the door.