Chapter 6: The Awakening

For the first time in a long time, Emily opened her eyes.

"Well, well, Weeeell." An impish voice spoke.

Emily was very confused, she was laying on her back, and she couldn't move anything, not even her mouth to speak.

"Don't worry dearie, in a few days you'll be able to move again. You've been asleep for a long, loooong time." Emily still couldn't see the man that was speaking, and she couldn't move her head to look around. "Work on your head, hands and feet first." She heard the clicking of steps as he walked away.

It took some number of hours, but eventually, Emily was able to move her jaw and tongue with ease, along with her hands, but her feet were a little trickier. A few hours more and she could move her neck and elbows. In fact, she could move most of her upper body when the strange man finally returned with a sandwich.

Emily sat up as much as she could, and the man looked at her with an impressed expression on his face, "Well look at you, I see I have an overachiever on my hands."

"Where am I?" She asked, her voice was rough from disuse.

The man smiled and shook his head. Emily realized that whoever he was, he wasn't going to tell her what was going on.

"Are you hungry?" He asked.

Emily nodded slightly, "Starving."

"Good, all you need to do is write down one thing for me."

"What?"

"Sherlock."

John had never seen Sherlock in such a case of frenzy. He was frantic to solve this case.

"So, tell me about her," John said.

"Why would I do that?" Sherlock asked, looking into a microscope.

"Because I want to help, but the case is about her right?"

Sherlock sighed and looked up, "What's there to say?"

John sighed, "Well, what was she like?"

Sherlock sighed again and pushed his chair back from the microscope, "Emily Smith is... the most deceptively ordinary person you'll ever meet." John furrowed his eyebrows but decided not to comment further, instead letting Sherlock get back to work.

John recapped the evidence, they had found a shoe, and Sherlock was analyzing... something.

Suddenly the computer let out a bleep, and Sherlock immediately looked at the screen. "I know whose shoe this is."

"Who?" John asked.

"Emily had an older brother, his name was Markus. He died in a house fire when she was 10..."

"So where's your brother?" Sherlock asked Emily.

She looked up from her homework and looked at him strangely, "What?" She asked.

"Something I just noticed, you have a brother don't you?"

Emily was silent for a moment, "He's dead. He died a few years ago."

"Oh," Sherlock said awkwardly.

Emily shrugged, "Why are you asking now? You've known me for two years."

"I don't know, I just noticed something I guess..."

"So how do you know it's Markus' shoe?" John asked. Sherlock lifted the tongue of the shoe, and John could see the outline of a name. It wasn't clear what the name was, but John could certainly tell it began with an M. "Okay, so the name starts with an M, that's not exactly hard proof."

Sherlock shook his head, "Look at the shoelaces, little flakes of skin. The owner of the shoes had eczema, I ran a DNA sequence and it's a sibling match."

John scoffed, "Maybe you could've started with that."

"There must be something about the fire, something he wants me to solve."

"What if it's something about the fire?" John asked.

Sherlock nodded, "I don't think it was an accident. The fire report said that the fire started in the kitchen, the oven wasn't turned off... the thing is Emily's mother never cooked, and certainly not that day. Emily had had a concert, they were out since the morning."

"So you're saying someone started the fire?" John asked.

Sherlock nodded, "But how... and why?"

"How old was he when he died?" John asked.

"15," Sherlock responded.

John thought for a moment before saying, "Do you think it might have something to do with school? Maybe there was a fight? Or something else?"

"Speculating on the motive won't help us now John, we need data."

There was a doctor there when Emily woke up again. He took her pulse, blood pressure, reflex tests, and then he left.

As the doctor left the small room, the strange man from before entered.

"Hellllloooo Emily!" He called as he entered.

She looked up at him strangely, "Are you going to tell me who you are?"

The looked at her in thought for a moment, "Sure, what's the harm? You won't be around much longer." Emily's eyes widened, "My name is Jim."

"What did you do to wake me up?" She asked.

"We flooded your blood with so much morphine that you had an overdose, it shocked your system, made it restart. Rather simple really," Jim explained.

"But why?"

"Because I wanted to play a game with Sherlock Holmes."

"Why involve me?"

Jim chuckled, "For two reasons, one, Sherlock cares about you; a surefire way to get him interested in playing. And two, you almost killed my best man."

"What?"

"When you crashed your car? I must say, I wasn't expecting that from you."

Emily swallowed, "So you're going to kill me? Why wait? Why even wake me up?"

"Because I want him to see you, to see you scared and afraid, and I want to see his face the moment he realizes that there is nothing he can do." Emily's heart was pounding, she had to get out of here.

Emily was sitting on the side of the bed and Jim was standing in front of her. There were no windows in the room, only one door, so she knew she would have to get past Jim to make it out. She was weak right now, and she knew that Jim knew that, so he wouldn't expect her to run right at him. If she could get one good hit in...

"Sherlock's not afraid of anything," Emily said.

Just as Jim was about to reply, Emily stood and quickly moved forward with a closed fist aimed right at his neck. But it didn't work. He caught her hand out of the air like it was nothing.

"Good, good. I like your spirit Emily, I really do. It'll be such a shame when I have to kill you." He jabbed a needle into her arm and she gasped.

Emily felt the effects right away, she couldn't stand, her eyes would barely stay open. She clawed at Jim to keep herself upright, "Don't worry darling, when you wake up again you'll see your Sherlock."

"No, no..." She managed to mutter before falling unconscious in Jim's grasp.