CHAPTER 61: PYRRHIC VICTORY
No one dares to breathe as time passes. One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds.
Nothing happens. The sword remains immobile on the ceiling, innocuous. The fire nozzles don't switch on, and the room temperature remains constant, even though everyone is covered in a cold sweat from the tension. Then, an unexpected noise reaches their ears; it is the clinking of ice cubes swirling in a glass. They frown at each other and turn their heads in all directions before Moriarty's disappointed comment booms through the speakers. "Well, that is anticlimactic."
His grimacing face appears on the screen; he is peacefully sipping a glass of whiskey.
"For the briefest moment, I thought you might guess wrong and start some fireworks." He gives them a cruel grin. "All those speculations about the wrong objects, all those entertaining attempts to connect the other items to the epic poems kept me on the edge of my seat," he exclaims in ecstasy. He loves making them dance with his puzzles, confusing them until they start questioning everything they know.
He shifts his eyes to Thomas Wellington, and his expression changes dramatically, turning into a bored scowl.
"I won't lie. I would've loved to kill him off. But I am a man of my word, so he's free."
His words are accompanied by the entrance of two armed men in Thomas's room who start freeing him from the shackles.
"And I'll keep up my end of the bargain entirely, so you can now proceed to the next room." As soon as he stops speaking, the automatic door at the end of the room swings open.
John shoots a wary glance at the line of jets on the wall before limping towards the exit. Giulia and Sherlock straighten up, ready to follow him.
As the armed guards grab Thomas by the arms to drag him out of the room, he wiggles out of their grasp and runs to the glass before Giulia can step away.
"Giulia, wait. Let me just thank you," he yells, slamming a hand onto the glass.
She stops and lifts a stern gaze on him. "Don't bother. I didn't do it for you. Sure, we used to be very close, and yes, it hurt like hell when I had to push you away and we parted ways. That night, I lost one of the most important people in my life. But until today, I didn't know just how far gone you were. I thought I was the one who lost you, but by betraying me, you lost me, forever. Now I can't even recognise the person in front of me. For the record, Moriarty was wrong about me. I didn't choose to play out of love," she snarls, stressing the last word. "If your survival truly depended on how much I love you, you'd be lying in a puddle of blood now."
He flinches at her icy tone, then nods. "Fair enough. You should've let him kill me, then. I deserved it."
"No one deserves that. And what about me? What about what I deserve?" She points a finger at herself. "I deserve justice too, and I swear I won't rest until I have made you pay for your betrayal. I'll do everything in my power to ensure that you will be punished for what you did to me."
She pauses and shakes her head. "But I wasn't entitled to sentence you to death. I'm not a judge or an executioner. I'm just a victim, and I want my payback." She glances at the screen with a bitter smile. "Because Moriarty was right about one thing: traitors are the worst kind of people. If I had let him kill you—if I hadn't at least tried to save your life, I would've betrayed everything I believe in. And I simply couldn't do it. I'm not like you. I stayed true to myself." She holds her head up high with pride, glaring at him.
Jim looks at her, and his high-pitched laughter echoes from the monitor.
"But at what cost, Giulia?"
She turns to him and comments sarcastically, "Gutted that my victory wasn't among the expected outcomes of this round."
Moriarty frowns, feigning utter confusion.
"Victory? What are you talking about? There was no winning this round." He shakes his head and puts up the most compassionate expression he is capable of; he smiles almost tenderly at her lack of understanding.
"Oh, Giulia, look what you did to yourself. You started questioning your moral code, your system of beliefs; you almost convinced yourself of the necessity to kill a man. And look at what you did to others, too. You put your friends' lives in danger just because, against your better judgment, you care so much even about the life of a traitor: you just care about the right thing to do."
He gulps down the rest of his whiskey and rolls the glass absentmindedly between his hands, making the ice cubes clatter against the crystal. He tilts his head and looks offended at her insinuation that he could have made a miscalculation about the game.
"The only outcome I expected was that this round would break you. As always, my predictions were spot on."
He signals his men to force Thomas out of the room and enjoys the view of him struggling and fighting while calling Giulia's name at the tops of his lungs.
Giulia turns her back to that spectacle, places a hand on the table at the centre of the room for support, and closes her eyes, taking some deep breaths. Moriarty is right. She is completely broken now.
When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself staring at the marble Muse a few inches from her face. A guttural scream of exasperation erupts from her throat while she grabs the statue and flings it at the weighing scale. The force of the impact topples the machine and detaches the metal plate from the base, activating the mechanism that releases the sword. Behind the glass wall, the blade drops down with a sibilant swoosh, plunging into the headrest of the armchair, right where Thomas' head was leaning a few minutes ago.
Giulia turns around and stares at the scene, a rapt look in her eyes. Then, all the emotions of that round swoop on her at once; she sinks her head into her hands and sobs uncontrollably while hot tears stream down her face.
A few feet away, Sherlock and John gape at her, speechless. Unsurprisingly, John is the first to react; he walks up to Giulia and is about to hug her to comfort her, but she recoils.
"No, don't touch me!" She yells, stepping backward, appalled.
He does a double-take at her reaction; she looks frightened rather than angry.
She raises her tear-streamed face to him. "Why would you even try to console me? Why don't you hate me?"
Watson shoots her a confused look. "Giulia, what are you talking about?"
"You should hate me. I had no right to dispose of your lives like that. I was playing God, deciding who lives and who dies."
His expression softens in front of her self-deprecation. "We would never hold it against you. It was all a matter of circumstances. It was Moriarty's doing. He forced you to make that choice," he specifies calmly, not a note of blame in his voice.
"And I made a selfish decision by putting you in danger," she protests. "What does it say about me? That under pressure I just become a self-centred arrogant? Why don't you hate me?" She screams again.
Before John can reply, Sherlock talks for the first time.
"You want us to hate you," he deduces, studying her. "You want us to be mad at you for choosing to play the game because you think we were opposed to your decision. Even though we survived, you believe it doesn't erase the fact that you deliberately put us in danger. That's why you are trying to push us away right now; you think that if it had been up to us, we would have never made that same choice. This tore you apart: believing that we were against you in this round."
He takes some steps forward. "In the end, that's probably your worst flaw—you seek the approval of others," he says, and she nods slightly, acknowledging the truth in his words.
John glowers at him. Most awful timing ever.
Sherlock ignores his death stare and keeps walking until he is towering over Giulia, forcing her to look up to meet his eyes. He speaks in a softer tone.
"You are wrong. Had you asked our opinion, we would have always said yes to this round. And not because preventing a homicide was the right thing to do—that was your reason for playing."
She furrows her brows, confused. "Why would you have chosen to play, then?"
"Because it mattered to you. I don't care about the life of a stranger, but I saw how much it counted to you. Listen, what I said in my hospital room when I was shot… I meant it. We are with you until the very end. That's how much we care."
Author's note: We have finally reached the end of this emotionally charged round. With all the detailed information about epic poems and several red herrings, I feel like this round resembles more a Dan Brown novel than a Sherlock Holmes story, but I hope you enjoyed the characters' way of reasoning and the adrenaline rush, as well.
I've tried to explore Giulia's moral dilemma by presenting her internal battle and her final breakdown, and I hope I conveyed the whole rainbow of her conflicted emotions.
Can anyone guess what the next round has in store for our exhausted characters?