Blackbird, Fly Chapter 25: Independent of Desire, a sherlock fanfic

CHAPTER 25: INDEPENDENT OF DESIRE

AUGUST 2015

'You're not supposed to be here.'

Though Anthea's tone was firm, she was not one for dramatics. Not in the sense that she would overturn a table or shout while flinging an arm at the door. Rather, she rose from the dinner table slowly, which somehow made her appear even more authoritative, though like a seasoned monarch, not an unhinged despot.

Lestrade had not been to Mycroft's luxurious flat for many weeks under self-imposed rule. The less traffic to and from the better, they had agreed, lest watchful and unfriendly eyes take note. His contact with Mycroft was therefore minimal and usually came through Anthea, consisting primarily of instructions and, less frequently, updates on Mycroft's health. Though still struggling with aphasia, Mycroft was nevertheless greatly improved in mobility and was sharp as ever, and her personality was intact. He frowned at Lestrade's rather unceremonious entrance, and if he'd had the wit of tongue to express it, might have berated him for interrupting what looked to be dinner, based on the two plates set across from each other, and two glasses of wine. Brilliant deduction, Lestrade thought with internal sarcasm. Though, if he hadn't known better, he would have presumed he had just interrupted a dinner date.

There was no time for false contrition.

'I need to talk to you,' he said, addressing Mycroft.

Mycroft had not risen, but he lifted the serviette from his knee and set it on the table. Interlacing his fingers, he set his elbows on the table, perturbed but resigned.

'You . . . hear something . . . from him?' he asked. He meant Sherlock, and Lestrade sensed he was bracing for bad news.

'From Murray.'

Mycroft's eyebrows rose a little. 'Our fly on the wallpaper,' he said, getting the phrase nearly right. His speech was improving.

Lestrade was pulling out his phone, slightly out of breath. 'Moran knows Sherlock isn't in London. They've been looking for him since Scotland Yard was blasted apart, and they can't find him here, so they know.'

'Show me,' said Anthea, hand outstretched for his phone.

But he was unwilling to part from it and instead pulled up the three texts he had received within the past hour.

'He believes you're out of the country. Is it true?' Lestrade read aloud. He lifted his eyes from his phone. 'Well, I couldn't bloody well say yes, could I? I didn't answer at all, and he sent me another: He thinks you've killed his men and he's coming after you. Then the last: Leaving NOW.'

'He can't know where Sherlock and John are,' said Anthea. 'Even we don't know, day to day.'

'He's got eyes all over the world. You think it'll take him long?' asked Lestrade impatiently. 'I need to contact them, warn them.' He pointed his phone at Mycroft. 'I know you know how.'

Mycroft was as still a statue, his face ashen but otherwise unaffected. Nevertheless, for as long and as well as Lestrade had known the Holmes brothers, he could see that something intense was going on behind the mask. At last, quietly, and with great deliberation, he said, 'Ann. Phone.'

Anthea nodded sharply and left the room.

Lestrade crossed to the table. 'I should text Murray back. Shouldn't I? Maintain the ruse that he is still texting Sherlock. But what do I—?'

'Mis— mis—' Mycroft struggled for the word, and so tapped the side of his head, frustrated. 'Bad data.'

'Misinformation,' Lestrade supplied.

'Yes.'

'Feed him misinformation to pass along to Moran.'

'Yes.'

'Of course.' It would keep him off the scent for a time, perhaps, though Lestrade doubted how long that would hold. Maybe it was time they come home. But the threat at home was no less. In fact, perhaps it was greater. Not for the first time, he began to feel hopelessness burble up inside him, fearing his friends were doomed no matter what course they took.

Anthea returned with a mobile in her hand, a white one. Lestrade had not before seen it but suspected it was used for this sole and infrequent purpose: to contact Sherlock. 'What do I say?' she asked Mycroft.

'He is coming,' said Mycroft. 'No hotels. No restaurants. No shops. This is where his people be . . . secret. Move. Move. Hide.' He circled his wide face with a splayed hand, suggesting a mask. 'Code it.'

Anthea nodded. As her fingers flew over the keyboard, she said, 'He'll need to do a little deductive work,' then read it aloud, earning Mycroft's nod of approval.

'My brother is . . . smart.' He touched the centre of his forehead lightly with a finger. 'He'll understand.'

In a quiet town in Serbia, in a hotel with no website costing four-thousand dinars a night (approximately thirty pounds sterling), John lay flat on his back atop the made double bed, hands folded together on his stomach, listening to the shower run, when a second sound interrupted the white noise: a single ding on the mobile phone.

He pushed up on his elbows, eyes travelling to Sherlock's jacket slung over the back of a chair. That phone had been silent since Albania.

His once-calm pulse began to race as he rose to his feet, crossed the small room, and dug into the pocket of Sherlock's jacket. A single text lit the screen.

He needs sleep. Is your mum
coming home? How many
TV shows are you still
watching? I will hide
the remote.

With furrowed brow, John stared at the nonsensical message, trying to puzzle through the encryption on his own, though he knew he didn't really have the mind for puzzles. Once explained to him, he saw them for their simplicity, and Sherlock had been training him to recognise the different types of common encryption. Maybe if he spent enough time with it. But as with all messages that came to this mobile, there was an expiry date. He had five minutes before it would self-destruct, and he didn't trust his capacity to figure it out in that time, nor his memory to recite it to Sherlock later.

He cracked open the door to the loo and put his head in.

'Sherlock,' he called.

The shower was behind a half-wall separating it from the toilet. Sherlock turned and poked his head around in answer.

'Text.'

He retreated from the bathroom. Seconds later, he heard Sherlock kill the shower, and only seconds after that he emerged with a towel around his waist and water dripping from his hair down his chest and back. John held out the phone for him to read.

'. . . I will hide the remote . . .' Sherlock's own brow wrinkled now.

'Do you recognise it?' he asked.

Sherlock squeezed his eyes closed, retreating to a place where he could puzzle it out quickly and on his own. It took only seconds. 'It's a skip code,' he declared.

'What's that?'

'Beginning with the first word, skip over every two. Read it now.'

John did so, slowly. 'He . . . is . . . coming . . . many . . . are . . . watching . . . hide.' He looked up.

'He is coming,' Sherlock repeated.

'Moran,' said John. His racing heart felt like it was being squeezed in a fist.

They knew—they had known from the start—that it was only a matter of time. One deposed kingpin, easy enough to dismiss as tragic happenstance. But a second, so shortly thereafter . . . Moran may not have been a genius, but neither was he an idiot. It was the kingdom of his inheritance, after all, and he would protect it, and if not, avenge it.

There was a plan in place. If Moran was mobilising, then they needed to work faster, as well as in greater secrecy. A.G.R.A. had too many eyes in too many heads, well disguised and so virtually invisible. That meant no more hotels—any one of them might have operatives. It meant no more restaurants, for the same reason, and best to avoid most shops except in greatest need and with heightened caution. It meant they would be sleeping in boltholes, where they could be found, and wearing inconspicuous disguises to make them seem more ordinary: glasses and hats, beards and wigs, changing the way they walked and being careful not to walk together when it was safe to do so. They had been practising such indiscretion already. Now, all that had come before felt like mere rehearsal.

'You okay?' asked Sherlock, touching John's arm, and John realised he had retreated for a spell.

He shook his head to clear it. 'Yeah. You?'

Sherlock simply nodded.

'So what now?'

'We wait for sundown,' said Sherlock. 'Then we slip away.'

'Like ghosts.'

Sally Donovan awoke with a start and shot upright in bed.

'Hey.'

The body beside her fumbled for a moment before finding the switch on the bedside lamp. Then Thomas Dryers, blinking in the sudden light, scooted to sitting and placed a hand on her damp back.

'You okay?'

'Fine, fine,' she said, but she pulled aside the too-hot blanket and swung her legs over the side of the bed. It was then she realised she was awake, and though her body was bracing to stand, she didn't know where she was intending to go. So she stopped. She lowered her face into her hands and breathed.

Funny, really. After so many months of chasing after torturers and serial rapists, after watching her boss's head burst in front of her and after breaking an elbow in a car wreck while actively trying to stop a murder, all it took to break her was being trapped for a few hours in the dark. Now, she could hardly close her eyes without feeling like the walls were closing in.

Dryers shuffled through the blankets, coming up behind her. She was glad of it. Of him. Having him there, night after night, had been a comfort she did not easily admit she stood in need of. At first, they had said words like 'for the sake of security' and 'just for now', especially in the wake of the attack on NSY and her unanticipated midnight visitor. But if it had been merely a security measure, she would have left him on the sofa. She didn't. Night after night, she brought him into her bed. She gave herself into his arms. They found solace in one another, and something more, and now she never wanted him to leave.

'What can I do?' he asked.

'Just give me a moment.'

'Of course.'

If she had dreamed, she did not remember it. She didn't often remember her dreams anyway. All she was left with was that oppressive, suffocating panic like she had been buried alive. Quite contrary to her nature, she had confided this to Lestrade, wondering—hoping, actually—that she was not alone in her suffering. He had been there, too, in the darkness.

I'm struggling, he had said. I'm thinking of going back to Dr Quinton. You can come with me.

She hadn't said yes. But she hadn't said no.

Things had been chaotic since the explosion. Her father had hardly let her out of his sight for a solid week, and agreed to return north only after making Dryers promise not to leave her side, and to call him every day, even if only for a minute. Dryers had readily agreed, and it seemed strange to her, this alliance of her dad and her, well, boyfriend. Dad had never liked any of her former partners.

There had been depositions in the wake of the attack, too, and hospital visits and media interviews. They eyes of the world were turned to London, and Lestrade and Donovan—among the few survivors—were in the public spotlight. So they hadn't returned yet to Moriarty's flat, and their covert investigation was put on hold.

She was troubled by a thousand things, but tonight, at the forefront of her mind, was the visit from the mysterious old man, who had laid a hand on her leg and given her instructions . . . But not only that. A confession.

'I want to talk to Mycroft Holmes,' she said.

The best intel suggested that the remaining linchpins were in Belgrade and Barcelona, respectively. They were tracking the former, whose hitman Kaminski had been recently spotted in Timişoara, presumably en route to the Serbian capital. They were dealing with an arms trafficker, so they believed, but one who went about in the guise of an entrepreneur and philanthropist who was responsible for donating massive amounts of money as charity to hospitals throughout Eastern Europe. It was a strange profile, to be sure, one John couldn't quite puzzle out. The so-called altruist made his money through elicit arms deals, selling weapons that enabled crime and destruction and murder in multiple countries, and then turned around and donated that money to charity? To hospitals that might treat the very victims of those assaults? It was a baffling psychology.

'Don't try to find reason in psychopathy,' Sherlock told him. 'But if you cannot comprehend the man in any other way, think of him only as a power-hungry narcissist. He wields the powers of life and death and in so doing has achieved his own brand of godhood.'

'Despicable,' said John.

'An advantage for us.'

'How's that?'

'If he believes himself omnipotent and untouchable by likes of we mere mortals, he will not count us as much of a threat.'

They made their slow way toward Belgrade, and like spectres, they were mindful to leave no traces of themselves along the way. They paid for everything in cash, avoiding public transportation like buses and trains, kept off the main roads even while walking to avoid CCTV, and wore disguises to help them blend into the crowds.

At night, they slept in woods and fields, abandoned trailers and train cars, basements and slums. They ate sparsely, and John knew they were both losing weight. He could feel it in the way his clothes hung more loosely and how his belt needed tightening. He saw it in the gauntness of Sherlock's face. The constant gnawing sensation in his gut put him in mind of a basement kitchen he had once known, which paradoxically made him nauseated and unable, sometimes, to stomach the thought of eating, especially if the food came from a tin. But Sherlock pressed him to eat whenever he noticed John's refusal, and he was both irked and grateful. Whatever happened, he would need his strength.

The city of Belgrade was home to well over a million people with a long history of empires, from the Romans to the Byzantines to the Franks to the Bulgarians to the Ottomans, each civilization built atop one another like geologic periods, sediment upon sediment, a city of stone. Now, modernity intermingled with the past: Avala Tower stood a mere stone's throw from an old wooden Orthodox church; the Temple of Saint Sava was within eyesight of pizza bars and the ReproMarket; and a hidden world lay below their feet in a system of sewers and tunnels unknown and unseen to the public that wandered above. Within that labyrinthine city, among the dozens of hospitals and healthcare centres, they hoped to find their man.

Their search was conducted in daylight and with heightened discretion, but at night they retreated to one of Belgrade's many abandoned buildings, leftovers from the former Yugoslavia, from hotels to commercial buildings to factories. Taking things in shifts and deprived of basic comforts such as beds and blankets, neither slept well, but sleep they did, in fits and starts, driven by exhaustion.

Paranoia and fear of discovery made their feet itchy, and they wanted to move on, and keep moving, flitting from one village's shadow to the next, but a new mission detained them. Perhaps they would not have to tarry long in the city, however. They had identified four charity hospitals and found a list of donors, and on each list they found the same name.

'Our next step is to research everything we can about this Kovač fellow,' said Sherlock as they walked an unremarkable street behind a row of flats line with chain-link fences and garage doors.

'And tie him to arms trafficking,' said John glumly.

Perhaps sensing John's despondency, Sherlock cast him a sidelong glance. After a few steps of silence, he said, almost under his breath, 'I want to go home, too.'

John's pace slowed, and he looked up, a little surprised. They had talked about nearly everything since leaving London, at first to follow Ella's instructions but later because . . . well, the floodgates had finally opened, hadn't they? And John found that he wanted to talk, and he wanted to ask questions, and Sherlock was willing to give answers, and neither seemed keen to shut that down. They had shared intimate details about their childhoods and families; they had talked about school and work; they had talked about chemical dependencies—alcohol and hard drugs—and what those kinds of things did to them; they even talked about movies they liked, for Christ's sake, as if they were normal people and not what they really were. What they had never talked about was this: going home. For his part, John tried not even to think about Baker Street at all, as if doing so would jinx them, and they would never again see their own familiar doorstep.

Returning his gaze to the street ahead, John asked softly, 'Is this how it felt for you for you . . . back then?'

'Hm?'

'After the fall. Did you think often about England?'

Sherlock's mouth pulled down a little. 'I tried not to.' He cricked his neck, shoved his hands deeper inside the pockets of his jacket. 'I had a job to do.'

'Like now.'

'It was different. Back then, I had no hope of ever returning. In all ways both practical and metaphorical, I was dead. So pining for London was futile. And . . . painful.'

'Of course.' John was sorry he had brought up such a terrible memory. On top of all the unpleasantness they now had to endure, he didn't need to compound it. 'Sorry.'

'You do know why I left. Don't you, John?'

Even more surprised now, John said, 'We've talked about this.'

'Yes, but do you understand?'

Sherlock stopped walking, halting John with him, and stepped around to face him.

'To save my life,' said John, a little baffled by the intensity he now saw in his friend's eyes. It was strange looking into them these days, given the contact lenses that made them appear brown. 'And Lestrade's and Mrs Hudson's.'

'Yes, but do you understand?'

John tried to smile, to joke, but he couldn't quite reach a note of humour. 'I thought I did.'

Sherlock's gaze intensified. 'You told me, not long ago, that you didn't. When you told me you wish you had died down there, with Mary—'

'Sherlock—'

'You said, I don't understand why you did all those things for me. Why I left, why I died, why I lied. And why I came back. For you. You said you didn't understand.'

'I . . . Listen, Sherlock. When I said that, I was in a bad way. You know my head wasn't right. I do understand. I was your friend, like you were mine. But . . . you loved us all. Had it been Lestrade down there, or Mycroft, or any of our friends . . .'

Sherlock was shaking his head, not in denial of John's words but at the spirit of them. 'Forgive me, but you are doing yourself a disservice. I have known many people in this world, but made few friends, and I can safely say—'

John held up a hand to stop him. Something had caught his eye, like a nail snagging a jumper. His attention travelled over Sherlock's shoulder to the end of the street from whence they had come. 'Hot spot,' he said, breathless.

Sherlock's mouth closed, adjusting to the abrupt change in energy.

'That's the third time I've seen that man in the last hour,' said John. It was a man in a blue polyester jacket, halfway unzipped to reveal with a striped t-shirt. He was bearded and wore sunglasses, unremarkable as strangers went. But then, Sherlock had been training John to be observant and recognise repetitions and patterns, so he was positive this was not the first time he had seen this man today. He looked meaningfully back at Sherlock. 'I think we're being followed.'

Sherlock nodded sharply, swallowing. 'Don't stare. Let's keep walking, and lose him on the next street.'

They continued on, casually, but certainly with longer strides than usual, eager to reach the junction. John fought the compulsion to glance backward, lest he tip off the man that they knew he was watching them. Then, as they neared the end of the one-way, narrow street, a white transit van pulled onto it, blocking their path.

Instinctively, they turned back, searching for an exit route, but when they did, they saw that the bearded man was no longer alone. Three others had joined him and were advancing steadily, their eyes shaded but their intent clearly on Sherlock and John. One of them flicked his wrist, and a baton sprang into being.

'Shit, shit,' said John under his breath.

The van stopped, and the back doors opened, and four more men jumped out.

'Shit!'

'We run,' said Sherlock, careful to keep his voice low enough so that only John could hear. 'When they get close enough, we break through the barrier, and run.'

From behind and in front, it was an ambush, and the men were closing in fast. There was no time to plan further, not even to say where they would run to. Fighting so many men—armed with truncheons—was not a viable option, only a matter of last recourse.

'Go!'

As one, they sprang forward, darting between two men, but even as he charged, John knew he wouldn't clear them. A sharp pain erupted from his leg, a well-aimed blow from a baton, and he was down, skidding into the pavement and flaying the skin on the side of his face and hands. The glasses he wore as disguise flew off his face and skittered across the pavement. He heard Sherlock shout, but in pain or anger he wasn't sure, and the voices of the men cried out in Serbian. John tried to roll over, to flail or kick or punch, but he was pinned, and next he knew, his world went dark. Someone had thrown a bag over his head, black and thick. In that darkness, and as they pulled him to his feet, he felt himself gasping for air, and panic washed over him like the tide.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

He was wrestled down the street, a thousand miles if only ten feet. When he tried to break free, something cracked him in the side of the head, and his vision burst with stars in the blackness. He was lifted. He was wrangled into the transit van. He was manoeuvred onto a hard metal bench, his back against the wall of the van. On either side of him, strong hands held his shoulders and elbows. He felt a hard metal pressure against his temple through the bag, and an order in a foreign tongue. 'Ne miči se.'

He felt like he would throw up. His heart was trying to escape his ribcage. He felt like there was a stinging in his nostrils and a knife in his skin and fluorescent lights flickering above him, and a whistling . . .

Not again. Not again.

A foot knocked into his, gently.

'Joseph.'

His head came up sharply, surfacing from under water, only to hear a painful oof across from him, and the foot withdrew. The van began to move.

He was in a dream. He had to be. This could not be real.

The world was quiet, but for the hot blood thudding in his ears. Out of the van, he heard the creak of heavy metal swinging on a hinge. Beneath his feet, metal grating. Then, with the nose of a pistol pressed into his back, he began to descend. Down, down, fifteen winding stairs, then fifteen more. Then straight ahead, ten steps, twenty, fifty, a long, uneven, dank corridor, fetid and chill. He heard the splash of water beneath his every footfall as rough hands guided him along.

He stopped counting footsteps when they brought him to a sudden stop. Then, large hands gripped his shoulders, pushing downward. 'Na kolena,' a gruff voice said. But John, in terror, grew rigid, expecting a blow to the head or a knife to the back, and he refused to move.

The blow came, to the back of his legs, and he crashed to his knees.

A second later, the black bag was ripped away, and he blinked against the dim light. In front of him were four silhouettes, outlined by very dim lighting. The ceiling above him was curved, the walls and ceiling made of old brick. Very old. Some of the old brown brick seemed to be laid into even older brown stone, which shone with damp and moss. An old tunnel, a sewer maybe, that had run underneath the city for centuries. He looked to his left and saw Sherlock, also on his knees, when one of the men grabbed the bag on his head into a fist and tore it aside.

Sherlock's nose was bloody, his eyes wild. They roved frantically until they locked onto John's, and he opened his mouth to say something, but another of the men strode forward, pulled Sherlock's head back by the hair, and spat down on him. 'Imam te sada,' he said, then laughed. In his thick Siberian accent, he said with relish, 'Holmes.'

'Ne ne ne,' said Sherlock, shaking his head. 'I—I don't understand. English? Anyone speak English?'

'Drkadžija se glupo glumi,' one of them muttered.

'Français!' Sherlock said, and when no one responded he tried, 'Magyar!'

They began to laugh.

'Russkiy!'

As the laughter ebbed, one man said, 'Da, ya govoryu po russki.'

'Khvala Gospodu!' cried Sherlock. 'Pozhaluysta. Prover' moy karman. Prover' oba nashikh karmana. Vy naydete moy identifikator. Menya zovut Doyl, Artur Doyl.'

John's head was spinning with fear and disorientation, but he gathered well enough what was happening, as at a signal two men came forward and dug their hands into John's and Sherlock's jacket pockets, extracting their wallets and flipping through them. They also removed a mobile phone from Sherlock, their link to London. Soon enough, they were staring at IDs for Arthur Doyle and Joseph Conan. They were passing them around, and though the leader sneered with suspicion, there was an air of doubt about him.

But John's terror was only escalating. If he believed they really were Doyle and Conan, then it meant these men had made a mistake, and surely they would be killed without further debate.

The apparent leader held the two cards in his hands and read the names out loud, sceptical. He asked a question, and the Russian speaker translated for Sherlock's ears alone. 'Pochemu ty v Belgarde?'

Sherlock nodded to John. 'On doktor. On konsul'tiruyet v bol'nitse.'

'V kakoy bol'nitsa?'

'Novi Beograd. On osobennyy drug Kovacha.'

The leader cocked an eyebrow and looked up from the phone he was unsuccessfully trying to access. 'Kovač?'

The men began to argue in a language neither of them could understand. They were angry, gesticulating wildly at Sherlock and John and getting in one another's faces. This went on for some time, and all John could do was focus on his breathing while trying to ignore the pain in his knees and the cold air on his skin. He dared just once to look over at Sherlock, but Sherlock was intent on the men's every action, expression, and tenor. Whatever he was calculating based on his observations, John was conscious not to disturb that.

Finally, the leader shouted above the rest. He seemed to have come to a decision and was now barking orders. He pointed at men in their turn, and last of, threw a thumb over his shoulder at Sherlock and John. Next John knew, he was being seized under the arms, and he and Sherlock were hauled away.

Again, their heads were bagged, and this time they weren't removed. Sherlock had to rely on his other senses now to tell him to tell him that they were being kept in something of an alcove of the underground, disused sewer. He could hear sounds echoing off three walls, though the fourth was open to the corridor that ran parallel. He was shoved into a corner, back onto his knees, facing the wall. From what he could discern from the shuffling feet and heavy breathing, John was in the opposite corner, presumably similarly situated. Two armed men guarded them, but they weren't the chatty sort, and they didn't allow their prisoners to converse, either. When Sherlock tried, he didn't get two words out before the butt-end of a rifle cracked the back of his skull, and the front was driven into the stone corner.

He knew John was on the verge of panic, if not already spiralling. He wished so desperately to speak to John, to say anything. If given sixty seconds, he would have explained all of what he had said and understood, that these men believed they had captured the fugitive Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, but by insisting they were Arthur Doyle and Joseph Conan, he had inserted doubt to buy them more time. They couldn't call Moran to Belgrade unless they were one-hundred percent certain, and they couldn't kill them for the same reasons. Sherlock had claimed a working relationship with Kovač, saying that Conan was a doctor in consultation with one of the local hospitals, and it sounded just credible enough. He wasn't entirely sure, but he thought they were now en route to confirm the story with Kovač himself. That meant the clock was ticking, though how many minutes or hours were left to them was uncertain.

If he had only ten seconds, he would tell John that they would fight and survive. Go for the guns at the earliest opportunity. Take out these two men before others could arrive.

If he had only two seconds, he could think of only three words worth saying at all.

It was well over an hour spent on his knees on the uneven stone floor. His whole body ached, and his head pounded from an earlier blow. Then there were voices shouting commands. The men were not gentle, dragging them both to their feet and forcing them onward. Counting his steps and minding the turns, Sherlock believed they were retracing their path back to open space they had first been brought to. Open, that is, in the sense that the room was circular and domed, where four tunnels converged. They were still very much underground.

For a third time, they were placed on their knees. When the bags were torn away again and Sherlock squinted against the light, he saw, in addition to the eight men from before, a new player: a short man, shorter than John, and perhaps of an age with Mycroft. He wore a well-tailored blue suit, a striped white shirt, no tie, shining shoes, and a clean haircut despite a receding grey-white hairline. He was not a handsome man, and when he smiled, his yellow teeth stood crooked in a slanting mouth. This was the charitable Kovač, the man who would determine their fate.

He was holding the IDs for Doyle and Conan in one hand, and a mobile phone in the other, which Sherlock deduced—based on the way his eyes flitted from phone to IDs to their faces—was showing an image of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

'Mr Conan,' he said, his English heavily accented, 'you work in one of my hospitals?'

Sherlock turned his head slightly to see John, who looked worse for wear. His Adam's apple dipped low as he swallowed, then croaked, 'Dr Conan, if you please.'

'He consults,' said Sherlock.

Kovač signalled to a man. 'Začepi ga.'

The man came forward suddenly and punched Sherlock soundly in the face. He barely had time to turn his face to protect his nose. Nonetheless, blood spurted from his mouth and across the stones.

John's shoulders flinched violently. He looked like he would be ill.

Kovač stepped forward and lifted Sherlock's hanging head by the hair. 'It's good,' he said. 'The disguise. With the'—he stroked his chin—'beard, shorter hair. The clothes. You've lost weight. But it's you, isn't it? Sherlock Holmes.'

Sherlock affected a look of confusion convincing enough that Kovač referred again to his source material. Then he stepped sideways, standing in front of John.

'That makes you . . .'

'Dr Joseph Conan,' said John dully, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing.

'Is that right?' He tapped three times on his screen, and a second later, the voice of a dead man could be heard.

Ride him hard, ride him raw!

It was Sherlock's turn to flinch, and the blood drained so fast from John's face that it was a wonder he didn't faint dead away.

Kovač turned the screen to face John. 'This is you?'

John was visibly trembling, but his head shook no. His jaw was so tight a vein in his forehead pulsed, and he began to sweat.

'I could call him,' said Kovač. 'Sebastian Moran. He is looking for you. But if you are not Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, he will be very angry.' He shrugged. 'Let us find out for certain, yes?'

He turned on his heel and said something to his men, something Sherlock did not understand, not until the men started forward, toward John. They seized him by the arms and lifted him to his feet. John cried out in distress and began to struggle.

'What are you doing?' asked Sherlock in fear. 'Don't touch him!'

He started to his feet, but two other men advanced on him. One drove a fist into his stomach. He bent double, and another blow landed him back on his knees. Then they held him, one man to each outstretched arm. He lifted his head and saw that they had driven John onto his back on the stony floor, but the men blocked him mostly from view. Nevertheless, Sherlock could tell that they were pulling at his clothes. First, they flung aside his jacket, then grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked until the buttons burst.

John's shouts grew more frantic as as they tore his clothes from off his back, leaving him bare from the waist up. Someone kicked him in the side, someone else punched him in the face, and the shouts stopped. Then they flipped him onto his front. One man held his head down with his boot, pinning his cheek to the stones; the others pressed down on his arms and legs. And as they moved to hold him down, Sherlock saw that John had stilled completely; and his expression had gone blank.

Kovač stepped closer to the ring of men and looked down. Then he spun toward Sherlock in triumph.

'Ožlici!' he shouted, and his voice echoed throughout the tunnels. 'I thought this was so! I! O! U! These ožlici, how you say . . . scars, no? This man is Watson, companion to Sherlock Holmes. There is no doubt, eh, Mr Holmes? We all have seen these things. The pictures, the videos. There is no doubt who he is, so there is no doubt who you are.'

'Please,' said Sherlock, 'don't hurt him. It's me Moran wants, not him.'

'Hurt him?' Kovač tsked. He walked around his men, observing John's prone form.

'Turn me over to Moran, and you can let him go. Just don't . . . don't touch him.'

Kovač snarled. 'I am not Sebastian Moran. Moran is čudovište. How is this you say in English? Ugly, not human . . . monster, yes? To fuck a man in this way.' He spat on the ground. 'This'—he waved his hand over John's body—'is something Moriarty never do. Moriarty?' He tapped the side of his head. 'Genius. Artist. A man to admire, no? I cannot respect this Sebastian Moran, with his zlo, his crude work. He does not deserve the A.G.R.A.'

Sherlock stared, almost disbelieving. 'Then . . . help us. Help us take him down.'

For a few seconds, Kovač stared back, expressionless. Then he laughed. 'No no no. Idiote. Moran will not be the new Moriarty. I will. Get Sherlock, Moriarty said.' He shrugged. 'I did. Here you are. This one'—he flung at hand down at John—'I do not need at all.'

Turning away from Sherlock's fallen face, Kovač addressed his men, and suddenly they were lifting John back to his feet. He seemed very far away from himself. His eyes were dead, and he didn't look for Sherlock in the room. Then they began to drag him away.

'What are you doing?' Sherlock asked, a new surge of panic rising within him. 'Where are you taking him!'

Cool and business-like, the kingpin in Moriarty's master web answered him. 'Three shots. One here'—he pointed to the centre of his forehead—'and two here.' He tapped his chest, just over his heart. 'Is quick, painless.'

'No!'

Sherlock wrested himself from the arms that held him, springing upward. But all was futile. Without warning, John had disappeared down a long tunnel, flanked by three men. The others fell on Sherlock, but he struggled on like some wild thing, pleading with Kovač not to kill John, and he would do anything, anything.

'Surrender?' asked Kovač.

Sherlock looked up at him through a swelling eye, not even tasting the blood in his mouth. 'Yes.'

'Announce to the world that you are mine, and that you work for me now?'

'Yes. Yes, I'll do it. I'll say it. Please . . .'

But at that moment. A gunshot rang out, echoing down the corridor like a clap of tremendous thunder. Sherlock gasped, and his vision swam dark. Only a heartbeat later, the second round fired, and then the third. Sherlock's mouth stretched wide in a grotesque but soundless scream. He was beyond the human capacity to scream, or to cry.

'Ne, gospodine Holmes. You will join him soon. All the world will see you die, but at my hand. Then they will know. I get Sherlock, and A.G.R.A. is mine.'

They seized him roughly under the arms to haul him away, and for the last time that day, they threw a black bag over his head. The world went dark.

John had fallen into a dream, watching from outside of himself as his body was wrangled into submission and his clothes were torn from his body. He waited, looking on in horror, for them to take the rest of it, and to assault his body with theirs. And when they did, he would leave. He would close his eyes and walk away and leave his body to endure on its own.

But it didn't happen. Suddenly, he was on his feet. He heard Sherlock crying for him, pleading for him. He didn't understand what was happening, not at first. But now, he was stepping out of the dream, feeling his body settle back around him. It was cold and in pain, still trapped, and now moving, moving away from Sherlock and into a long, dark corridor that was curving along an unseen path so he could not see the end of it, illuminated only by a torch carried by one of his captors. Adrenaline pumped through him, fuelled by fear. And as he began to feel every inch of his body scream out in protest, his mind made sense of what was happening. These men were going to kill him.

His synapses were on rapid fire, taking in, sorting, and making sense of everything he could see. Three men, each armed with a pistol, though two were holstered. The third, a Zastava PPZ, if John wasn't mistaken, was carried by the man on his right. He was right-handed, and the pistol was pointed in John's direction as they walked. Based on the man's casual grip and the way he pointed the gun, John discerned that the man was accustomed to handguns, though not formally trained. Not like him.

A few more things to his advantage: He was not blindfolded. No need to blindfold a dead man, of course. Nor was he cuffed or restrained, but by their own hands and the threat of the pistol. On the contrary, they saw in him no threat at all: half naked, despondent, pliant. Theirs was a quick job, easy as shooting a placid and unsuspecting dog.

He could give them no time to reassess, not if he meant to save himself.

John came alive. He went for the gun.

It was a matter of an upward thrust, throwing the man's arm out of his own control while simultaneously disarming him, spraining his arm, and gaining mastery over the pistol. The bloke didn't even see it coming. Two violent but controlled motions, up and down, and the Zastava was in John's hands. He whirled, kicked the man in the stomach to send him reeling backwards, took aim, and fired a bullet straight through his heart.

The other two men had only a second to recover their shock. The quickest to go for his gun was whom John took aim at first. A second deafening blast that shook the stones around them, and the second man fell dead, a bullet wound in the centre of his chest. Finally, he pivoted on a foot to face the third man, who held the torch and was nearly blinding him with it. Never mind that; the black outline of the man bearing the torch was as useful as a silhouette target at a shooting range, and John treated him just the same. For the third time, he pulled the trigger, and the light dropped to the wet stone floor along with the body.

John exhaled, but there was no time to recuperate. He stooped to pick up the light and survey his deadly work. Only then did he see that his third shot had taken out the apparent leader, second in command to Kovač, the man who had taken their IDs and the mobile. John checked the corridor over his shoulder and head, then released the magazine, counting five more round and one in the chamber. Satisfied, he picked up his feet, quietly making his way back whence he came, with only one more objective on his mind: save Sherlock. He spared the three corpses no second thought.

He followed his torchlight. Again, the corridor curved, blocking his view of what lay just beyond, but in short order, he came to the aperture and slowed his pace as he approached the room with high domed ceiling. It was empty. Sherlock was gone. He checked his pistol left, right, and stepped further in, observing the tunnels that branched away like the points of a compass. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to remember. Which tunnel had they brought him down at the start? He had a map in his head, one built from counted steps and noted turns and twists. How accurate it was, he could only hope. To his right was the way he was sure they had led him and Sherlock away to the alcove to hold them as prisoners. To his left was the tunnel through which he believed they had first arrived and which would lead back to the street. Ahead was the unknown. Were they keeping Sherlock here, or returning him to the street for a new destination?

Frustrated, he hesitated, but each passing second felt like an eternity of torment. If he didn't choose fast enough, or if he chose wrong, he might lose Sherlock forever, and it was a paralysing thought he could not abide.

He no longer felt the cold subterranean air against his bare skin, nor the contusions and scrapes in his skin nor the aches in his bones. He went straight left.

John picked up his feet and began to jog, making sure that each foot fell lightly, soundlessly. His ears strained for voices or shuffling shoes, and then he came to another fork in the path. His mental map did not account for this. Both ways were dark with small rivulets of muddy water that shone along the stones. Licking his lips, he said a silent prayer and chose the right path. He held the pistol down by his side with both hands, but he kept a steady finger on the trigger.

It happened suddenly. He rounded a corner, and there, walking casually toward a wide staircase of stone leading to a metal door, were four men. At the sound of his shoes scraping stone, they whipped around, and he recognised one of them as Kovač.

Their surprise at seeing him was to his advantage. Before they could unholster their weapons, John opened fire. One, two, three, precise and deadly. The first hadn't even hit the ground before the third took a bullet to the heart. Then he turned his weapon to Kovač, whose hands flew into the air.

'Where's Sherlock?' he asked, steadying his weapon, inching forward dangerously.

Kovač's eyes flicked down and his head twitched slightly, drawing John's eyes to the metal door. 'Dr Watson,' Kovač said breathless. 'Let us reason together.'

'You have three seconds to tell me where he is.'

'I . . . I can help you. To defeat Colonel Moran, I can help. He is not knowing I have found you. I not tell him yet. Together, we work togeth—'

John fired, and Kovač, the third linchpin, crumbled senselessly to the bloody stones.

'That's three,' John muttered.

Within Sherlock's mind palace, all was pandemonium. It was a jungle of chaos beneath a raging black storm, and a strident, discordant howl filled his ears. He saw John's body riddled with bullets on a cold, rocky floor somewhere beneath the surface of the earth, and at the same time John torn to pieces in the darkness of his own bedroom, and at the same time John drained of blood within the confines of a hidden freezer, his naked body shining with carved IOUs. And all around him, the laughter of a maniacal genius.

'Got your knight,' said Moriarty, rocking with glee. 'It was easy, too. I used a rook. Not even the queen. A rook!'

Sherlock paced, distressed, tearing at his hair and scraping fingers down his cheeks. No no no, it did not happen, it could not have happened. John!

'I'm disappointed, actually,' Moriarty continued. 'I had wanted this game to last a little longer, but, oh let's see.' He leant closer to the board. 'Is that what I think it is? Ah yes.' His eyes rose slowly, and a sadistic grin spread his lips wide. 'Checkmate.'

'No!'

Sherlock spun around and swiped a hand across the board. It passed through all the pieces like smoke.

Moriarty's eyes darkened. Planting two hands on either side of the table, he rose menacingly to his feet.

'You have to play, Sherlock. There's no getting out of this. You're going to lose, but you have to play.'

He was moving blindly through the tunnels, his feet staggering, his back prodded, his arms locked, until they came to a winding staircase of grated metal, and they pushed him upward, cursing at him as he stumbled, jerking him upright. Then up, up, until they passed through a heavy metal door that groaned loudly as it opened.

He knew where he was: back at the start, where the white transit van had dropped him. He heard the back door of the van open again.

At last Sherlock began to order his sensory input. They were taking him away. Where to, it didn't matter, but it was away, away from the tunnels and from John. His body wanted to break, or to sob, but he couldn't allow it. Not yet. The man behind him was positioning him, readying to thrust him into the back of the van. Not yet.

He threw his head back, his skull smashing into the nose of his captor. He heard a cry of pain, and with a free hand, he ripped the black bag off his head. Whirling around, nearly blinded by the light, he saw the man staggering backward, bent over and holding his nose. The other man rushed forward, fists raised. Sherlock trapped the man's fists in his own hands, compressed his head low, and shot upwards, the hardness of his head colliding with the softness of the man's face, knocking him out cold.

Wasting no time, he went back for the other man, seizing upon his shoulders to hold him in place and driving a knee into his stomach, once, twice. Then he threw him inside the open van and slammed it shut.

Breathing hard, Sherlock reached down to the unconscious man at his feet, going for the holster at his side. He withdrew the firearm. But when he returned to the metal door leading back to the sewers where John had been left for dead, he found it locked from the inside. He would have to find another way.

John burst through the metal door and into daylight. For a moment, he stood stunned. He had been so sure that Sherlock was being held captive beyond this door in a room still hidden beneath the city. He had not expected to find himself on the street.

With a loud clang, the door fell closed behind him, and he spun, only to find the door locked from the inside.

He reeled back, trying not to panic. He'd made it this far, and Sherlock needed him to make it a little further. He just had to think. This wasn't the way he had come in. Before, there had been winding stairs made of metal grating, leading down and into the sewers. He had just run up straight, stone steps to get out. Clearly, obviously, there were multiple entrances and exits. He just needed to find another.

Though loathe to hide it away, John tucked the Zastava into the back of his trousers. He was in the open world now, and it wouldn't do to brazenly tote a handgun around the streets of Belgrade. Not that he wasn't conspicuous enough. His face was a mess of scrapes and bruises as it was, but he was also wearing a tailored blue suitcoat with no shirt beneath. Then, as he started down the street and around a corner, looking for something else that might serve as an entrance, he felt the pocket of the suitcoat and found inside Kovač's mobile phone. Deal with this later, he told himself, returning it to his pocket.

He didn't know quite what he was looking for, beyond a metal door. But the tunnels beneath his feet had twisted and curved and didn't necessarily follow the streets. He didn't know how he would find another entrance just wandering around. He needed to get to a computer and research, but God, what were they doing to Sherlock? How much time did he have? It seemed folly to take time to research, but worse to wander blind. John felt utterly alone in this foreign land, more than he had yet felt since leaving British soil, and the desperation was crushing.

Coming upon a junction, he hesitated. He had just entered a pedestrian street filled with shops, kiosks, and a press of people going about their shopping and socialising. Feeling it would be better to lose himself in a crowd, John started forward, clutching the suitcoat close around him and keeping his head down, but his eyes flitted anxiously, fearing pursuit. The handgun felt heavy in his waistband, and every pair of eyes he passed seemed a sleeper agent on the verge of awaking.

Then, abruptly, John came to a stop. Because of the multitude of weaving bodies, he should never have been able to discern among the throng the solitary figure of one wandering, as desperate as he. So startled was he by the sudden apparition that he was instantly convinced that he was hallucinating, which was not an unknown phenomenon to him. But as he continued to gape, his stare acted like a magnet, only a hundred feet away, Sherlock's head stopped roving as his eyes met John's. Incredulous, neither moved. Until both of them did.

John made a beeline through the press of bodies, knocking into elbows and shoulders, and Sherlock was doing the same, never once looking away, as though by so doing their connection would be lost, a fishing line would be snapped, and they'd be lost to one another forever. Then suddenly he was there, close enough to touch. John reached forward, intending to embrace him, hold him close and never again let go, but Sherlock, it seemed, had other prerogatives. He reached for John's face, as though to verify that he was real. But then he seized upon John's wrist, made a sharp about-face, and marched away from the street, pulled John in his wake.

Hand in hand, they walked briskly and in silence. Where they were going, John didn't know, but he was much too volatile to ask and so focused instead of placing one foot in front of the other, all the while casting his eyes to the shadows, looking for hidden threats, and suspecting every man in sunglasses of nefarious intent. It was all he could do to keep moving, and his grip on Sherlock's hand was firm to the point of bruising him.

Away from the noise of the street now, Sherlock wove them around corners and through short alleys. John barely noticed their route, trusting wholly to Sherlock and to the pistol tucked in his own trousers. Then Sherlock slowed on a quiet street near a fence and a sign reading Ne puštati unutra. He checked up and down the street, then found a weakness in the fence, and they slipped inside. John remembered. This was one of the locations they had scouted earlier, a disused hotel, though they had yet to use it as a sanctuary. It was made of concrete, blockish and unsightly, designed during a more utilitarian, bygone communist era.

Without letting John go, Sherlock circled around the hotel until he found a viable entrance and forced his way inside. The abandoned lobby was littered with debris—glass, rock, and dirt—giving it the look of a post-human world. Sherlock, though, seemed content with his choice of haven. He made his way straight to the winding staircase in the centre of the room, and they ascended two flights to a long corridor of doors, each standing open or with keys still in their locks. He chose one of the doors with a key, and they entered, extracting the key before letting the door fall closed for the first time in what might have been decades.

John didn't let Sherlock advance any further into the room, not to check for safety, not to breathe a little and collect himself. He pulled back on Sherlock's arm, turning him roughly so they faced each other. He meant to check that Sherlock was well, to clean the blood from his face and tend to the other maladies afflicted upon him. But the reality of their being together again sharpened, contrasted against the very real fact that both had almost died within the last hour. John had once faced a future without Sherlock. He could not stand to do that again.

Sherlock stared at him through one brown eye, one bloodshot. A lump had formed on his cheek where he had been struck, and the blood from a long scrape on his chin matted with the short beard he wore. His lips parted as his gaze darted from one of John's eyes blue eyes to the other. And John . . . he couldn't find the words. He didn't know what to do with all the had just happened. He was burning up inside, and he feared he might dissolve into sobs or collapse into a senseless heap, and the only thing—the only thing—keeping him whole and sane was standing right in front of him, staring down at him, waiting for him.

Grasping the front of Sherlock's jacket, he pulled Sherlock down and into an unrestrained, edacious kiss, and waited for the rocks to break apart beneath his feet, the fire to rage, and the sky to fall, heralding in the end of the world.

Sherlock had fallen outside of time. Slowly, he saw John reach for him, and slowly his eyelids fell like falling leaves. John kissed him. In the whiteness of his brain, devoid of sound, of chaos, of a million eidetic memories of pain and sorrow, he knew this: that John was kissing him. The thought stood alone, novel and exceptional and extraordinary.

The thought held its place for time unmeasured, and Sherlock was frozen inside of himself. Until, that is, he felt a retreat. The lips, so warm and welcome, were drawing back; the hands on his jacket, so insistent an essential, were loosening. And he understood: in his amazement, Sherlock, though not unmoved, had not moved. A statue-like body, he had given the impression that the gesture of love and need had been tolerated, not reciprocated.

John was withdrawing. And deep within Sherlock, a raw, unforeseen, aching need awoke.

He knew what would happen next. As his brain came back online, he followed the inevitable course of consequences, as swift as a rapid river. John would be embarrassed, and it wouldn't matter how much Sherlock denied it because he would always believe he had erred. He would make his excuses—to Sherlock and to himself—and apologise and even laugh it off, but forever more, there would be a rift that could not be bridged and a wound that time would not heal. John was stepping backward now, regret already on his lips and shame in his eyes, and Sherlock knew, surely as the sun rose in the sky, that this would never happen again. If he did not act, right now, the moment would be lost to him forever.

'Not yet,' he begged.

He stepped back into John's circle, slid a hand around the back of his head and an arm around his middle, and drew him back. His mouth fell back onto John's. He felt John's gasp inside of himself, then arms around his shoulders and hands in his hair, guiding him, keeping him close. They kissed one another fervently, driven by a need independent of desire and an adoration absent lust. John kept pulling him closer, and Sherlock pressed himself onward, using the wall to support them both.

John was alive. They both were, and they proved it with every breath and heartbeat, every kiss and caress. All other doubts and fears would have to wait while they verified, with the compulsion of the doctor and the scientist, the existence of that life. But oh, the beauty of it. It was a sweetness Sherlock had never known and had never hoped to. After all, such tenderness was not meant for a boy whose mother called him so hard to love. This was not destiny. Nothing in their pasts had dictated this particular expression of devotion. No, this was a choice, on both their parts, one unforeseen but neither unearned nor undeserved.

In time, their hearts began to slow. Softly, their lips parted, though not far. Sherlock felt John's breath, warm and sweet, but panting, against his skin. They were coming down from the clouds, and as their feet found solid earth once more, their own weight began to settle on them, and they found it heavy. Not yet, not yet, thought Sherlock, arms still locked tightly around John. His forehead lowered to rest against John's, and he thought he might stay there forever, until John, softly, loosened his grip on the back of Sherlock's neck and began to back away.

John's head remained inclined, his eyes downcast, as he took three steps backward, four, five. Then, bracing like a soldier, he lifted his head to look at Sherlock. His eyes shone with tears, and with doubt.

'I don't—' he began in a choked voice. He tapped the centre of his chest, which Sherlock saw was bare beneath a blue suitcoat. 'I don't understand,' he finished shakily. His shoulders rose and fell with his laboured breaths, and he looked to Sherlock with a hope and a fear that Sherlock might be able to explain.

Sherlock swallowed as he tried to find the words for something he had long felt but never thought, a curious sensation. Clarity had taken its time. 'I think it perfectly obvious, John Watson,' he said thickly, 'that I'm madly in love with you.'

The long-suppressed sob broke out of John, and he dropped his face into a hand. But a nearly imperceptible nod followed.

'If,' Sherlock continued, his voice a deep rumble, barely more than a whisper, 'if that is not entirely objectionable to you—'

'It's not. You know it's not.' But there was still a measure of fear in him.

'—and if this sentiment is to any degree reciprocated—'

John dropped his hand to see Sherlock more clearly.

'—I would ask, only, that . . . you love me for my mind and heart. And, you know, not the glorious specimen that is this body.'

For a beat, John stared. Then he laughed. He covered his mouth and bent double, still laughing, in relief as much as joy, for he knew that Sherlock understood him. Sherlock desired nothing more than he could give. In this way, they were entirely on common ground, and beyond what had just been spoken, no further words were necessary. Just these:

John straightened, smoothed out his face, and in a voice strained with emotion, he gestured to Sherlock, saying, 'Of course. Of course, I do. What can I say? You're the love of my life.'

The distance closed between them once more, and they embraced. All they had gone through, whatever they had yet to face, was swallowed up in that embrace. They were alive. And for a time, it did not matter that the battle was won, or that the war still raged on. Here, now, the world could not touch them. They were neither the victors nor the fallen, only two men who, for now, could glory in what it mean to be alive.