Chapter 17 – Disruption 1
Sherlock's elongated return to consciousness was accompanied by nausea and a profound headache.
Before he was halfway alert, some automatism kicked in and started a high alert routine, triggered by the discomfort.
The first thing his dazed mind understood was that he was not in his bed.
Then vague memory flashes of hasty movement and pain assaulted him.
From distressed dozing he was thrown into a mental position of attention.
As if on autopilot, his body froze, preventing him from rolling onto his back to be more comfortable.
Something was not right and even though he wasn't thinking clearly it had become an instinct to be careful and observe first. The routine seemed to work without his brain keeping in step with it, which swamped him with bewilderment.
Realisations came in slow; his almost painfully intense heartbeat distracted him additionally.
It was essential to find out what was happening before he even moved.
He was on his side, his head on the ground, his neck bent at a painful angle.
Showing to the outside world that he was awake might prevent him from collecting valuable intel. Because as long as he seemed out his attackers might be not too careful about talking.
It took a lot of concentration to slowly relax again and keep his breathing under control.
His face so close to the ground meant there was another dire problem.
The smell of leather combined with stale urine and other nasty things was hard to endure. The more shallow his breaths the lesser the olfactory assault.
Nevertheless, he had to forcefully hold back a gag and his stomach responded with cramps.
He tried to block out the smells but it didn't really work, which was no surprise, because it never did.
Maybe he drifted off again, or maybe his senses were not working full force. Because it took quite some time until he realised that his hands were wrapped around his waist and he couldn't move them.
Pinioned.
With as little movement as possible, he tried to explore the unnerving touch, move his fingers carefully, turn his wrist a bit.
Fixated somehow.
It felt... different.
The perceived touch was caused neither by conventional ropes nor handcuffs.
That his hands were not exposed to air was the only thing he could sense - except that he couldn't move.
He was unable to feel at which point exactly his arms were fixated.
Had the tangled position cut off his blood supply temporarily so that he was unable to feel things properly?
Information were coming in unnervingly slow and his brain still had issues handling them.
The most intense sensation after the pain in his head was something very irritating pressing into his crotch, he had to fight the impulse to wind himself away from - whatever it was.
He repeatedly had to remind himself to concentrate on finding out what he was lying on.
The same was true for any other action.
It seemed the ground was neither made of concrete nor wooden floorboards.
Oddly firm, but smooth and resilient.
The closest thing it came to was the padding of an examination table.
It took a lot of concentration and time to take stock of the data his transport was providing.
Further down his feet were bare, it added to his discomfort because they were cold and felt wet.
He had to take a break after that, overwhelmed by the discomfort and the struggle to relax.
Several minutes later, he attempted to open up his senses to the general situation.
First, he listened.
Wherever he was, there was no one close by, there was absolute silence.
The relief about this was short-lived, because he realised that this meant John might not be close by either.
For a moment, he considered if it was wise to continue faking unconsciousness. The need to know where his friend was felt urgent and raw.
Therefore, it was an easy decision to carefully scan his surroundings before finally giving away he was awake.
Maybe it would go unnoticed in case someone was watching him.
As slowly as he could, he opened his eyes halfway, hoping to find himself and John incarcerated by some villain he would be able to remember soon.
The room was dimly lit, which was an alleviation. But his eyelids were irritated and swollen, moving them felt like sandpaper on his eyeballs.
The first thing he understood was that John was not there – or at least not in the half of the room that was in his range of vision.
It took almost a minute until he had blinked away the blurriness enough to actually see his surroundings.
However, his mind failed to process what his eyes delivered.
At first glance, the room looked like Moriarty's cell in his mind palace.
Same colours, same padding on the walls.
Why was he here?
Why was Moriarty not here?
Confused, he tried to roll onto his back.
Then, with a jolt of horror, he understood he was wearing a straight jacket.
How had Moriarty overwhelmed him and changed places with him?
Panic blossomed, deposited a heavy weight on his ribcage.
It was a struggle to kick the mind-over-matter-routine into action and remind himself to think!
In order to roll into a supine position without the use of his hands he had to lift his knees and plant his feet on the ground.
The effort made him grunt from the pain the movement caused.
When he was finally lying in a supine position, he was breathing hard.
He carefully turned his head so he could see the other half of the room and there was no one there either.
He was completely alone.
Strange sensations of abandonment and loneliness pressed into him. They were so intense they caused additional nausea that seemed to be located in his chest instead of his stomach.
He closed his eyes to concentrate on forcing the unsettling emotions down, but had to open them again only seconds later when the darkness amplified them.
His breathing escalated involuntarily and he fought for control.
The room swallowed the noise but it was painfully loud in his ears nevertheless.
Lifting his gaze to the ceiling he noticed that he was not chained a wall like Moriarty.
In addition, the cell was a lot bigger than the Moriarty's.
… and the light panels were absent.
The differences were obvious, really.
He should have discerned that immediately, especially since he had built Moriarty's prison himself.
Also, this cell had a life like touch he had deliberately not added to his mind palace's padded cell: odours.
To get his attention off the annoying bodily perceptions he tried to focus on his surroundings. One section of wall padding had a slightly different shape than all the other rectangular panels. It was slimmer and appeared to be a doorway, equipped with a cushioned loophole at eye level.
But for the moment the hole was closed, all he could see was whatever blocked it.
Which meant no one was watching him - at least not from there.
There might be cameras, though.
His gaze wandered up to the ceiling and the areas above the padding, looking for any surveillance equipment.
The batting went up at least until a height of three metres, which was a bit ridiculous.
No one could jump that high or climb up the flat walls.
Above the padding, directly under the high ceiling, there was a row of small rectangular windows that allowed a bit of light in.
It was no direct light, looked more as if there was another room outside, which had windows to the outside.
He tried to sit up; it turned out to be an ordeal. Unable to use his hands, his bruised muscles had to do all the work. He involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut due to the pain it caused. No matter what, he needed to get his face away from the smells; he feared he might vomit otherwise. Not only would that cause even more pain but it would also worsen the smell.
The action made him acutely aware of the fact that he was still suffering from broken ribs. Memories of being beaten by John resurfaced, because he felt similar to back then.
Pain in his ribcage.
Shaking from the sheer emotional drain the situation caused.
Paralysing fear that he was failing at the only thing that mattered – saving John.
This time it hadn't been a suspect who had tried to escape, it had been his only friend and he didn't want to think about it, it was not the time. He tried to push the memories away.
In fact, his most pressing issue was that he wanted his companion to be present or come to his aid.
It was quite a bit of work until he finally sat upright, the effort left him feeling even worse.
He unconsciously licked his dry lips and the taste that exploded in his mouth made him gag, luckily he got it under control before anything came up.
Carefully, he breathed through his mouth to keep it that way.
Then his hampered intellect finally connected the dots.
It was definitely not Moriarty's cell.
Neither was it Moriarty who had left him here.
This was real.
Must be real, there was no other logical explanation.
A real padded cell and he had been forced to inhale chloroform he could still taste.
No wonder he was feeling sick.
After several minutes of intense effort, Sherlock finally managed to remember things from the recent past.
He had had a bath at home after hallucinating a fire in his room.
John and Greg had been there.
He hadn't trusted himself to not sneak out and buy drugs.
Had he managed to leave?
Ran into a dealer who had a bone to pick with him?
He must have been overwhelmed by a perpetrator he hadn't seen.
Had John been with him?
Was he in another cell nearby?
He felt uncharacteristically nervous about not knowing where his companion was.
No matter how he had gotten here, his wits were supposed to save the day.
But he was just sitting there, restrained and tottery.
No brilliant ideas or good plans.
Frowning, he just stared at the leather covered brown walls.
The deductions that usually just flooded in and that he then only had to sort into useful categories, didn't come.
There was only crippling exhaustion.
He had to actively seek out more facts from his surroundings.
The inability caused more anxiety to roll in, instead of deductions.
Then, finally, he noticed an odd detail. The leather was relatively new, although the cell looked well used.
He desperately tried to puzzle the meagre facts together.
Who had a padded room in a cellar?
Some kind of fetish?
Some kind of museum that had restored an old sobering-up cell to show people what it was like in past times? Because this was in use, not an abandoned old hospital.
He looked down on his body, the only other object in the room that held information.
Other than the straight jacket, he was wearing some kind of dark blue trousers.
The simple cut was clearly that of nightwear, but more robust than he liked.
Definitely not his own.
He could barely see anything else than his lap and the pant legs, everything else was covered by the straight jacket.
The jacket had a strap running around his crotch, which was more than uncomfortable and would make it difficult to get out of the restraints.
Luckily, the pyjama wasn't made of polyester or any other kind of itchy synthetic fibre.
Concentrating on his legs, he could feel something itchy that was probably a bandage on his lower left leg. When he used his toes to shove the pant leg up, his suspicion was confirmed.
He could not remember how he had been injured and who had patched up the wound.
There was absolutely nothing else in the room. His own clothes were gone, as were his socks and shoes.
No coat.
Nothing he could use as a weapon or to free himself.
Even after staring up at the windows for quite some time, he couldn't spot any outside movement.
He just sat there and listened for a while, but could hear nothing.
Over time – half an hour might have passed since he opened his eyes – he thought he heard distant steps for a few seconds. There might have even been hushed voices, but in the droning silence he couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining them.
.
After some time had passed, he tried to evaluate the situation in a structured manner.
What had he done last?
After his bath, John had sat in his bedroom with him, monitoring him, he remembered.
No matter how much he tried, he couldn't conjure up anything after that.
The possibility that he was in his mind palace remained, which - in theory - he could leave any time.
So he tried. He closed his eyes and concentrated on opening them in 221b.
But when he did open them again, he was still in the padded room.
It had happened before, that he couldn't depart, he was vaguely aware.
What had he done to return to the real world back then?
He imagined the door in detail and reminded himself how his mind palace worked to ease the process.
But it didn't appear.
The walls remained smooth and padded.
No mental doors, not even the hint of one.
Before, he had found it by sweeping the walls, he suddenly remembered.
His first try to stand up ended in an almost-fall when he staggered to his feet. The second did land him on knees. The impact was hard and it added sharp pain from the joints to his list of ailments.
Panting, he just knelt there, trying to control the agony and his mounting frustration.
Too weak to even walk.
Pathetic.
The inability to use his hands would result in serious injuries if he fell full length and he understood that it was the last thing he needed.
Logical conclusion: get out of the jacket first.
A short time later he had to admit that this also was an aim he was unable to reach.
His body was shaking from the strain just to lift his leg or try to reach the buckle that held the crotch strap in place. The lack of leeway made it impossible; the strap was fastened too tight.
Suddenly, the eerie silence was interrupted by a scream in the distance.
Sherlock froze.
Another cry followed only seconds later.
John.
It was hard to say if the desperate scream was that of his companion.
The voice sounded desperate and as if in considerable pain.
Agitation robbed him off the little energy he had left and he involuntarily sank back to sit and recover from the efforts.
When the scream came a third time he was relatively sure it was John.
What were they doing to him?
He needed to get out!
The only thing that happened when he fought the straight jacket was that the pain escalated and his vision started to get distorted by dark spots.
Panting in panic, he crawled over to a corner and leaned himself against the wall.
Being in the open, in the middle of the room, was too unsettling. He couldn't stand it any longer.
He was trapped and unable to get out.
And even worse: John was, too.
Despite or because of his agitation he blacked out.
.
Some indistinguishable time later, he jerked back to awareness.
He was still in the padded cell.
And still alone.
He frowned when he found memories - or dreams? - were floating through his consciousness.
Ghosts of foreign physical touches and actions he had witnessed, but they were only vague pictures.
It was hard to concentrate on them due to his tripping thought processes. He briefly wondered if he had been drugged, additionally to the chloroform that had been used to knock him out.
He felt somehow disconnected from his self, his thoughts were fragmented at best and he was so very exhausted it rendered him unable to move.
There was nothing else to do so he tried to chase down the odd dreams he had been floating in, clinging to those fleeting impressions.
After some time he worked out what he had done last in his 1867 mind palace session immediately before he had his blackout.
Watson had accompanied him to interview Avery's mother.
The woman had been very hesitant to answer any questions at all, appearing shy and introverted.
Apparently, she was fond of her son's choice of a wife but felt obliged to present her husband's view of things to the outside. The details of the conversation were diffuse and the facts he remembered sparse.
The mind palace session had been uninformative and eventless, so he returned to his current situation.
The most urgent thing was to get out of this cell.
Handling the anxiety for John remained an issue, it was distracting and strong.
Apparently, there were two possibilities: a) for some reason his mind didn't allow him to leave or b) he couldn't because he was really physically in this cell.
It stressed him out, no matter how much he tried to remind himself that all this might just be his imagination.
Did the fact that he had been drugged to be brought here against his will spoke against the imagination theory?
No.
This could be a hallucination.
If it was, it was oddly consistent.
Most of his hallucinations were messy and unpleasant, and didn't make a lot of sense.
Nevertheless, the thought that he might not be in control of something his mind was generating was very unsettling.
The only other time the mind palace had misbehaved like this was when PTSD had destroyed areas of it and left parts of the virtual building in ruins.*
Remembering had taken its toll.
Unaware that his leaden eyelids closed on itself, he drifted off, even though his position was quite uncomfortable.
.
.
*This refers to my story 'Define Vulnerability'.