Chapter Seven
Evidently, I'd had better plans.
My head was throbbing, which meant I was injured, but also that I had enough consciousness to think. That was good, considering. If I was right, a higher dose of exposure to a nerve agent like Tabun, Sarin or VX could've easily rendered me unconscious, comatose, paralyzed or dead.
I forced my eyes to open. My surroundings were blurry, as could've been expected. What I could see didn't look real. The luminescent white eyes of an angry dragon filled with lightning stared down upon me with a stare so intense, it tasted of lemon juice and cleaning solution. Its sparks tingled across my skin. Or the ceiling. It was probably the ceiling. It still looked like a dragon, though. Hallucinations were a known effect of nerve agents. I shouldn't have been too surprised.
Slowly, I struggled to tilt my head off the weight of my torso. It shifted about a centimeter before two mechanical hands held me down across the sidewalk. The screech of a metal rattle echoed through my skull. No, wait. Those were restraints. Restraints made sense.
A harmony of growls, snaps and jingles filled the air. I couldn't trust that those were there, either. Sweet smells of baking sugar melded with formaldehyde and still more cleaning solution. I was on a slant. The walls were plain. Maybe it was a morgue? Or a dentist's office. It still looked like a dungeon—one which, for whatever reason, was now changing colors.
My forehead pounded. My tongue stung as if rotting from being stuffed with acid and candy floss. The room twirled into itself, each object becoming less distinguishable as more than an expanding sphere of fractured light. I gagged accordingly. No. I had to stop perceiving. I had to think.
However long I'd been unconscious, it was enough to put me in this room. If I was restrained, I was either violent or had been taken captive. I could remember father, faintly, though perhaps it wasn't him after all. I knew that I'd been poisoned, so that was a memory as well. Maybe I should've called Mycroft. Endless torment was better than death. Then again, maybe he heard it regardless. Tapping my phone sounded like him.
I closed my eyes. Disorienting smells cluttered my brain. My body continuously fell through the floor, still being pulled by the tightening metal. I tried to wiggle my hand. Another shriek dug into my mind in reply. Ok. I could move.
Next, I tried my leg. A louder shriek sounded. I grit my teeth, which, for some reason, seemed to mush together. I ignored that to reach for my mobile. The restraint yanked me back. An ache ran through my arm. Something clunked against the ground. It may have been the phone.
"You're awake? Shit," a voice echoed, the pitch reverberating just enough to make my head spin more. It was muffled and distorted, but vaguely reminiscent of father.
I took a deep breath. My chest tightened around it. I tried to make a noise, yet, nothing.
A block of ice pressed against my forehead, pushing it down. The chill coursed down my spine, prompting an involuntary shudder. The chains screeched once more.
"I'm sorry, Sherlock. Really. There's nothing else for anesthesia." A second hand pressed down on my arm, holding me in place. The weight of the chains was nothing in contrast to the spike. "But I'll be here. I promise. I won't leave you. Not again. Never again." The sentimentality in his tone was meant as a comfort, yet I couldn't help to hear it as a threat.
I tried to open my eyes, to turn my head and speak. A human-shaped blob, presumably father, knelt down beside me. It may have been an attempt at support, but the grip on my wrist numbed my hand. He leaned what I presumed to be his head against the possible embalming table.
"Then, don't," I moaned.
The hand of ice ran up my sleeve, pushing something out of the way, maybe the shackle, or perhaps clothes. I struggled to turn towards him.
For the first three seconds, I could barely feel the bite, only a faint warmth tingling at my wrist. In that fleeting moment, there was almost a sense of relief as the cold subsided. Then, it hit.
From the tips of my fingers to my elbow, I was searing, boiling from inside-out. My jaw snapped open and my head snapped back with an oncoming screen. The sheer reflex to do so pounded on my eardrums to the verge of bursting.
Father shoved a piece of cloth into my mouth before I could. Both of his hands pressed the fabric inside, gagging me. The cold of his hands fought against the searing fire that was creeping through my throat. No infections spread this fast, and fevers didn't move. Whatever I'd been infected with was in my bloodstream, so, a rapid-spreading toxin. Probably not a hemotoxin, then, in spite of it spreading in the blood. It was too fast. Tetrodotoxin was fast, but that was numbing, and I could feel every second. Necrotoxin, perhaps, not that I could see to confirm. Not that it would help.
If this wasn't dying, then it was worse, even more so because so much was missing. I knew the voice. I knew the face. This was my father. Was he mad, maybe late-onset paranoid schizophrenic, or was there somehow a circumstance where murdering me was a legitimate, logical decision?
I suspected I was sweating, but it wasn't going to help. The shake of the chains was nothing in contrast. Nothing I'd ever felt before could. My eyes snapped shut against my will. My body writhed against the table, fighting against itself. I struggled and failed to roll off the table.
"It's long now, but this'll pass. I promise," father called, his words tasting like coal. I think he was shouting, but I could hardly hear him over my pulse.
I writhed again. The table rocked beneath me, then stopped just as soon. The pressure in my mouth lightened accordingly, so I presumed he was holding it still. I struggled to speak past the cloth, yet all that escaped was a low, muffled scream.
A stream of light trickled through my eyelids. Even they were searing, now, yet they didn't feel the same. An all-consuming whiteness flooded the room.
My eyes shot open. In spite of the pain, somehow, my sight seemed clearer, more precise. I could see the rough outlines of a cement box, illuminated by the intense glow of fluorescent lighting. A folding metal door sealed the exit of what was either a garage or a storage facility. Father hovered over me, his hands pinning my shoulders to what I still supposed was a table. The door rattled shut, yet father hadn't moved. Someone else was here.
I gathered my will to take the one action I was capable of and screamed. I'd meant to say Mycroft, but all that made it out was an incomprehensible jumble.
A shot fired across the room, straight over my head. The casing bounced, then clanked against the ground. So did the bullet.
"Step away," the second voice warned. The words tasted of burnt raspberries. I gagged. Sound to taste; a strange form for synesthesia.
The stranger dropped the gun. Somehow, in spite of the fog of agony still cluttering my skull and the lingering flavor of charcoal, the reverberation allowed me to hear the lay-out of the room and the people therein, down to the detail of the opposition's cane twisting into the floorboards. Even before the figure came into clear view, I knew it was John.
Father's hands lifted off of me and slowly backed away. Each methodical step echoed across the walls, bouncing through my brain. On the fourth one, he leapt off the ground and lunged towards the opposing figure, arms outstretched, bracing to attack.
John stepped to his right, casting another sound wave across the room. He ducked beneath father's arm, grabbed it with one hand and twisted it behind father's back.
Father tried to turn his wrist out of John's grasp, but John turned his hand in unison, blocking the move. John pushed forward, knocking father against the metal wall. The sheet clamored from the impact.
I bit down on the cloth and shut my eyes. The vision stayed consistent. Even without sight, I could hear enough to perceive everything. A fridge stood at the front of the room, running from a generator inside. The gas hadn't seemed to be bothering either of them. The embalming table I was on rest at the center, directly beneath the fluorescent lamp.
Father stood still. He raised his free hand, opened his palm and pressed against the wall. His expression softened with resignation and a touch of anxiety. "Surrender. He's yours. Go. Take him," his head tilted with a twitch, gesturing towards me.
John pushed his shoulder into father's torso, still holding him in place. He twisted the top off of his cane, brandishing a knife with the shape of a straightened claw. He pressed the point against Siger's throat. "Stay there."
As John lifted his hand from father's chest, father swiped his leg under John's to knock him over. John rushed to step aside, narrowly evading him. While he was doing so, father sprang towards him. He grabbed John by the shoulder and twisted, turning John with him. John raised his knife to father's arm in a counter-attack that failed to make impact in time. The moment he was in range, Father wrapped his opposite hand around John's head and pulled him down. His teeth sunk into John's throat.
Maybe I was actually on a hallucinogenic in tandem with whatever poison or toxin was involved. That'd explain why this made no sense.
In spite of the gaping wound he may or may not have had on his neck, John took advantage of father's stance to reach under his own arm and stab father in the abdomen. The blade pierced through his clothes, into his stomach and back out again.
Father's mouth detached from John. He pressed one hand against the wound and bent over in pain. His eyes widened with increasing shock. "The hell's that?" he slurred, his words somehow slower than normal.
As father was speaking, John planted his good foot on top of father's. He pulled his arm back slightly, aiming his knife for the center of father's chest. The blade grazed his torso.
Father launched backwards, bounding atop the fridge. John sprinted after him. He plunged his knife towards father's foot. The blade pierced through the freezer door, a small burst of cold air puffing through the new found hole along with the top of father's shoe.
The ceiling light swayed overhead as father found his balance perching on the light. My head ached with the same wobbling inconsistency. Pieces of furniture toppled in his wake, including the refrigerator. John stumbled back to avoid the crash. Bags of liquid spilled across the floor in what seemed to be slow motion. Or everything else was unusually fast. I couldn't be sure of that—couldn't be sure of much of anything, aside from the pain. That was definitely there.
Father and John stared at each other in a held moment of tension, each of them uncertain, waiting for the other to act.
John kept his focus on father as he trudged across the room, each step considerably less energetic than usual. In spite of the smoke, I could smell blood congealing over his wound. Or perhaps it was the floor. Or he'd been handling a coin collection and I'd hallucinated the rest.
Regardless of the circumstance, the table I'd been restrained to lifted off the ground, carrying me along with it. A hand brushed against my wrist, sending a sting and a tingle through it simultaneously. I writhed away from the source and screamed into the blanket. The table shook in unison. John struggled to hold the table as steadily as possible.
The overhead lamp shook. Father sprung back to the ground. The table plunged down.
Before gravity had the opportunity to take over, John threw his knife across the room ,straight towards father, and then picked the table up before it hit the ground. To avoid the trajectory of the knife, father shifted his course by dodging to his left. By the time he'd changed courses, John was already at the door.
For the second time, a burst of light flooded the dimming room, though this one was softer. The door slammed behind us.
John set the table on the floor. A lock clicked, holding the opening down. The metal rattled with another impact. My head pounded in unison. No. I had to keep thinking. Stay conscious. Do something.
John turned his head from one side to the other, checking the facility for something. He muttered a sentence that may or may not have included a person's grudge against a camera while kneeling at my side. He pressed one hand over my wrist, lowered his head and pressed his mouth over the point of injury, sucking the venom out. Odd. That technique was outdated, ineffective. A military doctor should've known.
I opened my mouth as far as I could with the intention to say something. All I could manage was a weak groan before the silence settled into nothing.