The Strange Case of Doctor Watson and Mister Ives 05
Lestrade followed the directions that Sherlock gave him after a few minutes of a rapid fire argument into his cell.
He had never heard the two brothers bicker before but he had to smile that it sounded so...normal.
“Of course you know why I’m cross, don’t hand me that, leave Mummy out of this!”
Finally, Sherlock gave Lestrade an address, as he turned on the next street he thought he saw a taxi make the same manoeuvre to get into the correct lane, but he decided that it was London, cabs do what cabs do.
Sherlock was fuming. “I can’t believe that Mycroft knew what was going on and said nothing.”
Lestrade glanced over to see if this was a monologue or did it demand his participation, deciding that he needed to say something he settled on, “I believe you’ve mentioned that your brother is a secretive sot before.”
Sherlock let out a derisive chuckle. “Saying Mycroft is secretive is like saying that America is fiscally responsible.”
They both had a chuckle at that.
The directions that Sherlock gave him led them to a rundown business district in the East End, he pulled into a sparsely populated car park and followed the directions down into the lower deck.
Mycroft was standing there with his umbrella, he looked posed and poised, a dark car was parked nearby and Lestrade felt the prickle of extra eyes in the dark.
Sherlock exploded out of the car and strolled toward his brother in swift long legged strides, oblivious to the danger.
“You stood there with John and me in the examination room, knowing that something was wrong with John and you said nothing!”
Mycroft’s face showed no trace of emotion. “I was not sure at that time.”
“Are you sure now?” Sherlock demanded.
“Completely,” Mycroft replied nodding toward the ramp leading to the floors above, there was a dark figure strolling toward them; Sherlock recognized the silhouette and began to call out to his friend when the man came into the light.
He was casually smoking a cigarette and his dark eyes were amused, hair carelessly parted in a modern style and his walk was purposeful and determined without a trace of the limp that John Watson still kept to this day.
“Hullo there, Mycroft, you are a very difficult man to nail down,” he stated with an accent that Sherlock had never heard out of John Watson.
“Not as difficult as you have been, Mister Ives,” Mycroft responded.
Suddenly there were red dots on Ives’s chest. He stopped and chuckled. “Why Mycroft, is this any way to treat your brother’s only friend?”
Sherlock had not moved a muscle, so Lestrade stepped in. “Who are you, and what have you done to John Watson?”
The look he got was empty but amused the look one might expect from a Serengeti lion that has spotted potential prey within easy reach. “John is as safe as I am at the moment, you have my word, since Mycroft is probably going to subdue me any moment now and take me to a secure facility,” he finished with a cold empty smile obviously meant to be charming.
“That’s not John Watson, then again it is, his mannerisms, stance, personality and even his accent has changed, the eye colour has darkened and the hair seems to as well, and the bone structure under the face is the same but the musculature has shifted subtly,” Sherlock stated his voice cold with shock.
He turned to Mycroft. “How is this possible?”
“That is not a question for this environ, I’m afraid, if you will but follow me, Mister Ives is indeed correct, we are going to take him to a secure location,” Mycroft replied making a small elegant motion with his umbrella tip as men melted out of the shadows surrounding the well dressed interloper with deadly purpose, all armed with assault weaponry. Suddenly Howard Ives’s chest sprouted several tranquilizer darts.
“Couldn’t you at least let me finish my fag?” Ives complained flicking the cigarette away and casually pulling out the darts and blithely tossing them to the side. “Oh...very well, since you insist,” he remarked before pitching forward to land insentient.
While they watched his hair colour changed with subtlety and his face shifted and became more familiar.
“God in heaven,” Lestrade exclaimed.
“Believe me, God had nothing to do with this,” Mycroft informed with a weary sigh.
Sherlock crossed the distance to go to his friend but he was stopped by an armoured guard. “He might be faking it, sir.”
“Sherlock,” Mycroft called, “he will be in good hands, but we need to get him there immediately.
Sherlock managed to nod, he turned to Lestrade, ”will you take care of the Yard involvement until we can get this sorted?”
Lestrade gave him an impatient look. “I’m in this up to my eyeballs, Sherlock, I need to know what’s going on more than you do at this point with two bodies in the morgue. I will make some calls but I am coming with you, it’s not open for debate.”
Sherlock turned to his brother. “Very well, I suggest we get on with it?”
Mycroft nodded as a black panel van pulled out of the shadows and the guards began to shackle the unconscious John Watson, like he was the most dangerous creature alive.
Sherlock had to grimace at the two crime scene images that flashed in his head.
Who knows...right now he might be.
~-o0o-~
They watched the man in the room through a thick pane of glass.
His expensive clothing was loose and there were monitors attached to his body, a cap of sensors on his head, he was on a reclining table and held down with metal bars that conformed to his body as technicians and doctors roamed around attaching more apparatus.
Sherlock’s hands were white knuckled as they pressed against the glass like he wanted to claw through to reach his friend.
“If you don’t explain yourself to me right now, Mycroft, and completely with no secrets kept, I will kill you now, I kid you not!”
He turned to his brother as the elder man impassively stared through the glass. “You couldn’t leave him alone, the one friend I’ve managed to make, well the one man who wanted to be my friend, you just had to get involved didn’t you?” he growled.
Lestrade stepped between them to intervene.
Mycroft turned to his brother, regret etched in his features. “I had nothing to do with this, Sherlock, the program that created this was not under my purview until it had already concluded, and had been sanitized.”
“You mean erased and all subjects murdered,” Sherlock spat back.
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” Mycroft replied, “stop being tedious.”
Lestrade stared at Mycroft with open astonishment, the man had just admitted to the death of an unknown quantity of persons with the same causality as a lady checking her manicure.
“The program was based on a document that was found in the old Diogenes Archives, it was the personal notes of a brilliant biochemist in the Victorian Era, he was trying to extract his baser nature from his elemental make up, postulating that if that could be accomplished then the world could be made into a peaceful utopia by chemical means, a castration of the id as it were,” Mycroft informed.
“He experimented upon himself, all he accomplished was to create a dangerous alter-ego which was animalistic, cunning, had an almost unlimited supply of adrenaline which caused him to be extraordinarily strong and agile, but criminally insane. At first he changed voluntarily finding the freedom the fiend experienced to be an addiction of sorts. Eventually, the changes began taking place without the formula, and to save humanity from the monster he had become, this biochemist killed himself in one of his last moments of lucidity.”
“Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?” Lestrade inquired, “Robert Louis Stevenson, I read it as a lad, are you trying to tell me it was true?”
Mycroft smiled. “Stevenson was a Diogenes member, he used our archives on several occasions, however, the man who Jekyll was based on was a personal friend, and he brought that man’s work to our attention posthumously so we could cover up his activities and save the man’s reputation. Stevenson wrote that book as a cautionary tale using those notes. We acquired the man’s work and his formulas, but the problems with the result kept us from experimenting on it in depth, until microbiology had advanced enough that someone in this organization felt that it was time for an attempt.”
Mycroft’s eyes flashed with anger. “I was not informed.”
Sherlock absorbed all this in silence; Lestrade wondered how he was taking such a fantastic tale considering his stance on anything remotely metaphysical.
“Why was it not a success?” Sherlock inquired, “With modern technology, advances in bio-chemistry, what happened that a serum could not be distilled?”
Obviously, Holmes was looking at it from an intellectual standpoint, but Lestrade saw that his hands were still clenched in anger.
Mycroft studied his brother a moment before answering. “The problems were many, but primarily, the human psyche is a system of checks and balances, the good and the bad, if you remove one then insanity is inevitable. The man we know as Jekyll was a madman even after he separated his good and bad sides from each other, his first desire to make himself of purer intent was what unleashed that creature upon the world, some of the worst things humanity has ever done to itself was done with altruism at its heart.”
“What does the serum do?” Sherlock inquired his tone flat and emotionless.
Mycroft nodded to a white lab coat clad man nearby, the man rolled a monitor over showing a colour gradated schematic of Watson’s body.
Mycroft pointed to the brain scan. “So much of what the body is capable of is regulated by the brain, the serum alters the brain chemistry so that it makes changes to the body, muscles are tightened, the limbic system is sped up, there is enough adrenaline produced to make a Rhinoceros hyperactive, but most importantly the moral centre of the brain is completely subjugated leaving the subject instinctual, primordial and cunning, most of the test units wound up criminally insane, with enhanced strength and speed and reflexes, the mind literally tells the body that it has no limits, it is truly fascinating to realize that we are capable of so much more than we think simply by removing the governing entity from the front of our consciousness and leaving the body and mind in its most primitive state.”
“Fascinating?” Sherlock growled, “THAT’S JOHN IN THAT ROOM!”
Lestrade had to stop the tall detective from lunging at his aristocratic brother.
“That’s enough Sherlock!” he ordered giving the man a shove until he stopped moving forward, he turned to Mycroft. “How did it get in John? How can we cure him?”
“How very practical of you Inspector,” Mycroft replied shooting his glowering brother a simper.
These two need family counselling like MAD! Lestrade grumbled to himself.
Mycroft pointed at one of the scientists with the tip of his umbrella. “You sir, inform them of Watson’s current predicament.”
“Learning the science too much like legwork for you?” Sherlock hissed.
Mycroft shrugged, “Indubitably.”
The scientist in question, a balding white haired man with blue eyes, turned one of the monitors around to Sherlock and Lestrade.
“This is a detailed brain scan, as you can see there are two overlapping patterns, the brighter red one is the newly created persona, pieced together from parts of his psyche, most likely deeply buried tendencies or personality traits picked up from relative’s or persons he was acquainted with...as the secondary persona is activated it over laps and will eventually overwrite the original, essentially John Watson will become Howard Ives permanently.”
“Who is Howard Ives?” Lestrade interrupted.
The man exchanged a glace with Mycroft. “He is John Watson, at least John Watson with no restraints or moral compass, reduced to baser elements with some personality quirks added by the new identity. They would be completely independent of one another, so the Watson persona is not necessarily complicit with the underlying personality.”
There was a sudden change to the screen causing a warning beep to sound as the red on the monitor got brighter.
In the room the features shifted and soon cold dark eyes were staring out into the room. The hands tried the restraints but instead of anger there was curiosity.
“Since I am completely restrained, can we have that chat, Mycroft?” Ives called out to the glass.
“I want to talk to him,” Sherlock insisted.
“You can do that here,” Mycroft replied pointing to a microphone.
Sherlock crossed his arms and gave his brother an adamant look. “He won’t hurt me, all his behaviour so far seems to indicate that he is trying to protect me.”
Mycroft sighed. “He has attacked men I have assigned to keep watch over you, how is that protecting you?”
Sherlock tilted his head and stared at his brother. “You tell me.”
Mycroft rolled his eyes. “Very well, but I want guards in that room with tranquilizer guns at the ready.
“Fair enough,” Sherlock replied before turning in a swirl of his black overcoat and swept out of the room, soon they saw him enter the room on the other side of the glass, bracketed by the two armoured guards with tranq guns.
Ives studied the other man. “You’re not Mycroft.”
“Astute observation,” Sherlock replied.
The two men stared at each other, neither giving an inch.
“Who are you? Why are you here, you allowed yourself to be captured for a purpose,” Sherlock inquired breaking the silence.
“I’m Howard, pleased to meet you Mister Holmes, but I really wanted to talk to your brother, man-to-bureaucratic scum, so how about you putter off and go get the old bastard?” Ives replied with the toothy smile of a man at a cocktail party instead of someone strapped to an inclined bed with sensors all over his body.
“Who was Howard Ives, John?” Sherlock insisted.
The other man sighed. “For a genius you can be dense, Mister Holmes, John isn’t here right now, he’s curled up in a ball letting me handle things as usual.”
“How long have you been handling things, Howard?”
“Since we were young,” Ives growled, “little Johnny was too weak to do what needed to be done, I had to take over and do what he wouldn’t, how do you think we survived Afghanistan?”
“You are who John becomes when he has to be dangerous?” Sherlock asked sliding a chair over to the restrained man, turning it backwards and straddling it.
Ives gave him a condescending glare. “You can fumble around like a lad with his first girl in a broom closet, or you can ask what you really want to know.”
“Why are you here?” Sherlock repeated.
“Because John isn’t strong enough to keep you alive, Mister Holmes, he always seems to wind up tied to a chair, or strapped to a bomb, and you keep putting yourself in harm’s way, now you’ve gone and ran afoul of the second most dangerous man in all of England and John can’t protect you, can he?”
Ives spat on the floor. “He’s too weak.”
“But you’re not,” Sherlock encouraged.
Ives gave him those dead shark eyes. “No, I’m not.”
“Who’s the most dangerous man in all of England?” Sherlock inquired.
Ives smiled. “Me.”
o0o
They had to slow down the digital feed later to see what Ives did in the next few seconds later, in the aftermath.
With a snap of the linkages, Ives broke the bolts holding the straps that held him to the table, in the next moment, he threw with amazing accuracy a tranq dart he had secreted in the parking garage into the guard on the left’s neck dropping the man instantly, he grabbed Sherlock tossed him to the side as he moved on the next guard before the man could raise his rifle and fire, that man was tossed nearly the length of the chamber through the thick glass into the control room, Ives followed the flying body past a stunned Sherlock through the shattered viewing panels and jumped into the next room, the flying guard had taken out the scientist and a bank of monitors, Ives bent down and pulled a pistol out of a stunned Inspector Lestrade’s holster and grabbed a very surprised Mycroft.
“There you are, if you hadn’t sent your little brother in while you cowered in here I wouldn’t have had to break the glass, any injuries or deaths I just caused are your fault, now if you will come with me like a good little hostage we have some things to be about,” Ives growled as he tugged Mycroft toward the door.
“John! Stop!” Sherlock called from the other room, he had a streak of blood down his cheek from a scratch of flying glass.
Ives turned to him. “I told you, John is not in residence at the moment, I’ll tell him you called.”
“You can’t find Moriarty this way!” Sherlock insisted.
“Why do you think Mycroft had you under observation, Sherlock?” Ives informed with a pointed tug on Mycroft’s collar as the fastidious man’s eyes turned frantic. Ives bent close and brushed Mycroft’s cheek with his beard stubble. “Did you think it was just to keep you safe, or so you wouldn’t run into his most vital domestic intelligence asset who he’s been covering for?”
Sherlock met his brother’s eyes and saw the guilt there. “Mycroft...no.”
“There are things you just cannot understand...” he began, but it was choked off by Ives yanking his tie tight.
“I think we’ve heard enough from you, Mister Holmes.”
The door burst open and guards began to file in, but Ives had Mycroft perfectly placed.
“You gentlemen need to escort us out of this facility, or we’ll see just how much of Mycroft Holmes is hot air,” He informed with an empty smile placing the pistol against Mycroft’s chin.
Mycroft nodded to the men to allow them to pass, he dropped his umbrella onto the floor as Ives pulled him out of the room.
Sherlock vaulted the barrier and started to follow but Mycroft shook his head and gave him a pointed look.
An hour later, Mycroft and Howard Ives were lost on the streets of London by their pursuers and the car Ives stole was found abandoned in yet another car park, with Lestrade's pistol and an apologetic note to the inspector for borrowing it, and one bloody subcutaneous transceiver which was somehow removed from Mycroft's body.
Holmes and Lestrade stood in the remains of the room watching the replay as the injured were being checked over, Holmes with a bit of sticking plaster on his cheek.
“I’ve never seen anything...,” Lestrade mused, “If I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes, I’d never believed someone could move like that.”
Sherlock sighed. “Mycroft let himself be taken.”
Lestrade shot him a look. “What makes you say that?”
Sherlock’s eyes were distant and haunted. “It’s common knowledge in intelligence circles that a hostage out of sight is a dead man, however, my brother dropped on the floor a weapon he could have used to get free, he knows I know it. He’s playing his own game with Ives.”
Lestrade shook his head. “Moriarty’s playing a game; Ives is playing a game, and now you say that Mycroft has something planned?”
Sherlock nodded. “And John Watson is playing his own game, he knew about the message, the black outs, the strange places he has awakened and he said nothing, he could have blown the whistle on Ives the moment these things started happening but he did not.”
“This is all bloody insane!” Lestrade blurted out running a hand through his silvering hair.
Sherlock rubbed his chin, his eyes calculating. “At the heart of all this is Moriarty. The only way that serum could have gotten into John is through him. Ives was created by John’s subconscious to remove Moriarty as a threat, Mycroft had to have made the connection between the Jekyll program and Moriarty, and Ives made the connection between Mycroft and Moriarty playing them off of one another. In the end it all leads back to Moriarty.”
“So what do we do now?” Lestrade inquired.
“We?” Sherlock inquired in a cold tone.
Lestrade got two inches from Sherlock’s nose, “Bloody John Watson is the only damned hope I have that someday I won’t be hunting you down, he’s a capital bloke, and someone I consider a friend, and honorary Yarder. Moriarty knows about Ives and Mycroft and you, but he got the bloody New Scotland Yard involved when he messed with one of our own, and you are going to use our resources Sherlock, so help me God...I’m not asking you, I’m bloody telling you!”
Sherlock smiled. “Very well, I think it’s time we moved our own game piece onto the board.”
“Good, what do we do first?” Lestrade asked pulling out a pad and pencil.
Sherlock got a distant look on his face then he grinned that creepy way he had when he had caught a prey’s scent. “First thing we need to do is determine where Howard Ives came from, John created him from something buried deep down, if we can figure out what happened back then we can better understand what’s happening now, and somehow reach him before he becomes Ives permanently.”
Lestrade agreed with a nod as he jotted that down. “So we talk to Harriet Watson, she'll know something if anyone will. I’ll send Sally to pick her up and bring her to the Yard. What’s next?”
“There’s a pink phone in Scotland Yard evidence storage...” Sherlock ventured.
Lestrade grinned. “Yeah...Moriarty’s been messing with us, maybe it's time we started messing with Moriarty.”
“Chief Inspector, you might not be a total waste of Met training,” Holmes stated holding out a hand.
Lestrade shook it in a silent pact, adding, “That’s by far the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Sherlock.”
Part 06--->This Way
He had never heard the two brothers bicker before but he had to smile that it sounded so...normal.
“Of course you know why I’m cross, don’t hand me that, leave Mummy out of this!”
Finally, Sherlock gave Lestrade an address, as he turned on the next street he thought he saw a taxi make the same manoeuvre to get into the correct lane, but he decided that it was London, cabs do what cabs do.
Sherlock was fuming. “I can’t believe that Mycroft knew what was going on and said nothing.”
Lestrade glanced over to see if this was a monologue or did it demand his participation, deciding that he needed to say something he settled on, “I believe you’ve mentioned that your brother is a secretive sot before.”
Sherlock let out a derisive chuckle. “Saying Mycroft is secretive is like saying that America is fiscally responsible.”
They both had a chuckle at that.
The directions that Sherlock gave him led them to a rundown business district in the East End, he pulled into a sparsely populated car park and followed the directions down into the lower deck.
Mycroft was standing there with his umbrella, he looked posed and poised, a dark car was parked nearby and Lestrade felt the prickle of extra eyes in the dark.
Sherlock exploded out of the car and strolled toward his brother in swift long legged strides, oblivious to the danger.
“You stood there with John and me in the examination room, knowing that something was wrong with John and you said nothing!”
Mycroft’s face showed no trace of emotion. “I was not sure at that time.”
“Are you sure now?” Sherlock demanded.
“Completely,” Mycroft replied nodding toward the ramp leading to the floors above, there was a dark figure strolling toward them; Sherlock recognized the silhouette and began to call out to his friend when the man came into the light.
He was casually smoking a cigarette and his dark eyes were amused, hair carelessly parted in a modern style and his walk was purposeful and determined without a trace of the limp that John Watson still kept to this day.
“Hullo there, Mycroft, you are a very difficult man to nail down,” he stated with an accent that Sherlock had never heard out of John Watson.
“Not as difficult as you have been, Mister Ives,” Mycroft responded.
Suddenly there were red dots on Ives’s chest. He stopped and chuckled. “Why Mycroft, is this any way to treat your brother’s only friend?”
Sherlock had not moved a muscle, so Lestrade stepped in. “Who are you, and what have you done to John Watson?”
The look he got was empty but amused the look one might expect from a Serengeti lion that has spotted potential prey within easy reach. “John is as safe as I am at the moment, you have my word, since Mycroft is probably going to subdue me any moment now and take me to a secure facility,” he finished with a cold empty smile obviously meant to be charming.
“That’s not John Watson, then again it is, his mannerisms, stance, personality and even his accent has changed, the eye colour has darkened and the hair seems to as well, and the bone structure under the face is the same but the musculature has shifted subtly,” Sherlock stated his voice cold with shock.
He turned to Mycroft. “How is this possible?”
“That is not a question for this environ, I’m afraid, if you will but follow me, Mister Ives is indeed correct, we are going to take him to a secure location,” Mycroft replied making a small elegant motion with his umbrella tip as men melted out of the shadows surrounding the well dressed interloper with deadly purpose, all armed with assault weaponry. Suddenly Howard Ives’s chest sprouted several tranquilizer darts.
“Couldn’t you at least let me finish my fag?” Ives complained flicking the cigarette away and casually pulling out the darts and blithely tossing them to the side. “Oh...very well, since you insist,” he remarked before pitching forward to land insentient.
While they watched his hair colour changed with subtlety and his face shifted and became more familiar.
“God in heaven,” Lestrade exclaimed.
“Believe me, God had nothing to do with this,” Mycroft informed with a weary sigh.
Sherlock crossed the distance to go to his friend but he was stopped by an armoured guard. “He might be faking it, sir.”
“Sherlock,” Mycroft called, “he will be in good hands, but we need to get him there immediately.
Sherlock managed to nod, he turned to Lestrade, ”will you take care of the Yard involvement until we can get this sorted?”
Lestrade gave him an impatient look. “I’m in this up to my eyeballs, Sherlock, I need to know what’s going on more than you do at this point with two bodies in the morgue. I will make some calls but I am coming with you, it’s not open for debate.”
Sherlock turned to his brother. “Very well, I suggest we get on with it?”
Mycroft nodded as a black panel van pulled out of the shadows and the guards began to shackle the unconscious John Watson, like he was the most dangerous creature alive.
Sherlock had to grimace at the two crime scene images that flashed in his head.
Who knows...right now he might be.
~-o0o-~
They watched the man in the room through a thick pane of glass.
His expensive clothing was loose and there were monitors attached to his body, a cap of sensors on his head, he was on a reclining table and held down with metal bars that conformed to his body as technicians and doctors roamed around attaching more apparatus.
Sherlock’s hands were white knuckled as they pressed against the glass like he wanted to claw through to reach his friend.
“If you don’t explain yourself to me right now, Mycroft, and completely with no secrets kept, I will kill you now, I kid you not!”
He turned to his brother as the elder man impassively stared through the glass. “You couldn’t leave him alone, the one friend I’ve managed to make, well the one man who wanted to be my friend, you just had to get involved didn’t you?” he growled.
Lestrade stepped between them to intervene.
Mycroft turned to his brother, regret etched in his features. “I had nothing to do with this, Sherlock, the program that created this was not under my purview until it had already concluded, and had been sanitized.”
“You mean erased and all subjects murdered,” Sherlock spat back.
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” Mycroft replied, “stop being tedious.”
Lestrade stared at Mycroft with open astonishment, the man had just admitted to the death of an unknown quantity of persons with the same causality as a lady checking her manicure.
“The program was based on a document that was found in the old Diogenes Archives, it was the personal notes of a brilliant biochemist in the Victorian Era, he was trying to extract his baser nature from his elemental make up, postulating that if that could be accomplished then the world could be made into a peaceful utopia by chemical means, a castration of the id as it were,” Mycroft informed.
“He experimented upon himself, all he accomplished was to create a dangerous alter-ego which was animalistic, cunning, had an almost unlimited supply of adrenaline which caused him to be extraordinarily strong and agile, but criminally insane. At first he changed voluntarily finding the freedom the fiend experienced to be an addiction of sorts. Eventually, the changes began taking place without the formula, and to save humanity from the monster he had become, this biochemist killed himself in one of his last moments of lucidity.”
“Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?” Lestrade inquired, “Robert Louis Stevenson, I read it as a lad, are you trying to tell me it was true?”
Mycroft smiled. “Stevenson was a Diogenes member, he used our archives on several occasions, however, the man who Jekyll was based on was a personal friend, and he brought that man’s work to our attention posthumously so we could cover up his activities and save the man’s reputation. Stevenson wrote that book as a cautionary tale using those notes. We acquired the man’s work and his formulas, but the problems with the result kept us from experimenting on it in depth, until microbiology had advanced enough that someone in this organization felt that it was time for an attempt.”
Mycroft’s eyes flashed with anger. “I was not informed.”
Sherlock absorbed all this in silence; Lestrade wondered how he was taking such a fantastic tale considering his stance on anything remotely metaphysical.
“Why was it not a success?” Sherlock inquired, “With modern technology, advances in bio-chemistry, what happened that a serum could not be distilled?”
Obviously, Holmes was looking at it from an intellectual standpoint, but Lestrade saw that his hands were still clenched in anger.
Mycroft studied his brother a moment before answering. “The problems were many, but primarily, the human psyche is a system of checks and balances, the good and the bad, if you remove one then insanity is inevitable. The man we know as Jekyll was a madman even after he separated his good and bad sides from each other, his first desire to make himself of purer intent was what unleashed that creature upon the world, some of the worst things humanity has ever done to itself was done with altruism at its heart.”
“What does the serum do?” Sherlock inquired his tone flat and emotionless.
Mycroft nodded to a white lab coat clad man nearby, the man rolled a monitor over showing a colour gradated schematic of Watson’s body.
Mycroft pointed to the brain scan. “So much of what the body is capable of is regulated by the brain, the serum alters the brain chemistry so that it makes changes to the body, muscles are tightened, the limbic system is sped up, there is enough adrenaline produced to make a Rhinoceros hyperactive, but most importantly the moral centre of the brain is completely subjugated leaving the subject instinctual, primordial and cunning, most of the test units wound up criminally insane, with enhanced strength and speed and reflexes, the mind literally tells the body that it has no limits, it is truly fascinating to realize that we are capable of so much more than we think simply by removing the governing entity from the front of our consciousness and leaving the body and mind in its most primitive state.”
“Fascinating?” Sherlock growled, “THAT’S JOHN IN THAT ROOM!”
Lestrade had to stop the tall detective from lunging at his aristocratic brother.
“That’s enough Sherlock!” he ordered giving the man a shove until he stopped moving forward, he turned to Mycroft. “How did it get in John? How can we cure him?”
“How very practical of you Inspector,” Mycroft replied shooting his glowering brother a simper.
These two need family counselling like MAD! Lestrade grumbled to himself.
Mycroft pointed at one of the scientists with the tip of his umbrella. “You sir, inform them of Watson’s current predicament.”
“Learning the science too much like legwork for you?” Sherlock hissed.
Mycroft shrugged, “Indubitably.”
The scientist in question, a balding white haired man with blue eyes, turned one of the monitors around to Sherlock and Lestrade.
“This is a detailed brain scan, as you can see there are two overlapping patterns, the brighter red one is the newly created persona, pieced together from parts of his psyche, most likely deeply buried tendencies or personality traits picked up from relative’s or persons he was acquainted with...as the secondary persona is activated it over laps and will eventually overwrite the original, essentially John Watson will become Howard Ives permanently.”
“Who is Howard Ives?” Lestrade interrupted.
The man exchanged a glace with Mycroft. “He is John Watson, at least John Watson with no restraints or moral compass, reduced to baser elements with some personality quirks added by the new identity. They would be completely independent of one another, so the Watson persona is not necessarily complicit with the underlying personality.”
There was a sudden change to the screen causing a warning beep to sound as the red on the monitor got brighter.
In the room the features shifted and soon cold dark eyes were staring out into the room. The hands tried the restraints but instead of anger there was curiosity.
“Since I am completely restrained, can we have that chat, Mycroft?” Ives called out to the glass.
“I want to talk to him,” Sherlock insisted.
“You can do that here,” Mycroft replied pointing to a microphone.
Sherlock crossed his arms and gave his brother an adamant look. “He won’t hurt me, all his behaviour so far seems to indicate that he is trying to protect me.”
Mycroft sighed. “He has attacked men I have assigned to keep watch over you, how is that protecting you?”
Sherlock tilted his head and stared at his brother. “You tell me.”
Mycroft rolled his eyes. “Very well, but I want guards in that room with tranquilizer guns at the ready.
“Fair enough,” Sherlock replied before turning in a swirl of his black overcoat and swept out of the room, soon they saw him enter the room on the other side of the glass, bracketed by the two armoured guards with tranq guns.
Ives studied the other man. “You’re not Mycroft.”
“Astute observation,” Sherlock replied.
The two men stared at each other, neither giving an inch.
“Who are you? Why are you here, you allowed yourself to be captured for a purpose,” Sherlock inquired breaking the silence.
“I’m Howard, pleased to meet you Mister Holmes, but I really wanted to talk to your brother, man-to-bureaucratic scum, so how about you putter off and go get the old bastard?” Ives replied with the toothy smile of a man at a cocktail party instead of someone strapped to an inclined bed with sensors all over his body.
“Who was Howard Ives, John?” Sherlock insisted.
The other man sighed. “For a genius you can be dense, Mister Holmes, John isn’t here right now, he’s curled up in a ball letting me handle things as usual.”
“How long have you been handling things, Howard?”
“Since we were young,” Ives growled, “little Johnny was too weak to do what needed to be done, I had to take over and do what he wouldn’t, how do you think we survived Afghanistan?”
“You are who John becomes when he has to be dangerous?” Sherlock asked sliding a chair over to the restrained man, turning it backwards and straddling it.
Ives gave him a condescending glare. “You can fumble around like a lad with his first girl in a broom closet, or you can ask what you really want to know.”
“Why are you here?” Sherlock repeated.
“Because John isn’t strong enough to keep you alive, Mister Holmes, he always seems to wind up tied to a chair, or strapped to a bomb, and you keep putting yourself in harm’s way, now you’ve gone and ran afoul of the second most dangerous man in all of England and John can’t protect you, can he?”
Ives spat on the floor. “He’s too weak.”
“But you’re not,” Sherlock encouraged.
Ives gave him those dead shark eyes. “No, I’m not.”
“Who’s the most dangerous man in all of England?” Sherlock inquired.
Ives smiled. “Me.”
o0o
They had to slow down the digital feed later to see what Ives did in the next few seconds later, in the aftermath.
With a snap of the linkages, Ives broke the bolts holding the straps that held him to the table, in the next moment, he threw with amazing accuracy a tranq dart he had secreted in the parking garage into the guard on the left’s neck dropping the man instantly, he grabbed Sherlock tossed him to the side as he moved on the next guard before the man could raise his rifle and fire, that man was tossed nearly the length of the chamber through the thick glass into the control room, Ives followed the flying body past a stunned Sherlock through the shattered viewing panels and jumped into the next room, the flying guard had taken out the scientist and a bank of monitors, Ives bent down and pulled a pistol out of a stunned Inspector Lestrade’s holster and grabbed a very surprised Mycroft.
“There you are, if you hadn’t sent your little brother in while you cowered in here I wouldn’t have had to break the glass, any injuries or deaths I just caused are your fault, now if you will come with me like a good little hostage we have some things to be about,” Ives growled as he tugged Mycroft toward the door.
“John! Stop!” Sherlock called from the other room, he had a streak of blood down his cheek from a scratch of flying glass.
Ives turned to him. “I told you, John is not in residence at the moment, I’ll tell him you called.”
“You can’t find Moriarty this way!” Sherlock insisted.
“Why do you think Mycroft had you under observation, Sherlock?” Ives informed with a pointed tug on Mycroft’s collar as the fastidious man’s eyes turned frantic. Ives bent close and brushed Mycroft’s cheek with his beard stubble. “Did you think it was just to keep you safe, or so you wouldn’t run into his most vital domestic intelligence asset who he’s been covering for?”
Sherlock met his brother’s eyes and saw the guilt there. “Mycroft...no.”
“There are things you just cannot understand...” he began, but it was choked off by Ives yanking his tie tight.
“I think we’ve heard enough from you, Mister Holmes.”
The door burst open and guards began to file in, but Ives had Mycroft perfectly placed.
“You gentlemen need to escort us out of this facility, or we’ll see just how much of Mycroft Holmes is hot air,” He informed with an empty smile placing the pistol against Mycroft’s chin.
Mycroft nodded to the men to allow them to pass, he dropped his umbrella onto the floor as Ives pulled him out of the room.
Sherlock vaulted the barrier and started to follow but Mycroft shook his head and gave him a pointed look.
An hour later, Mycroft and Howard Ives were lost on the streets of London by their pursuers and the car Ives stole was found abandoned in yet another car park, with Lestrade's pistol and an apologetic note to the inspector for borrowing it, and one bloody subcutaneous transceiver which was somehow removed from Mycroft's body.
Holmes and Lestrade stood in the remains of the room watching the replay as the injured were being checked over, Holmes with a bit of sticking plaster on his cheek.
“I’ve never seen anything...,” Lestrade mused, “If I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes, I’d never believed someone could move like that.”
Sherlock sighed. “Mycroft let himself be taken.”
Lestrade shot him a look. “What makes you say that?”
Sherlock’s eyes were distant and haunted. “It’s common knowledge in intelligence circles that a hostage out of sight is a dead man, however, my brother dropped on the floor a weapon he could have used to get free, he knows I know it. He’s playing his own game with Ives.”
Lestrade shook his head. “Moriarty’s playing a game; Ives is playing a game, and now you say that Mycroft has something planned?”
Sherlock nodded. “And John Watson is playing his own game, he knew about the message, the black outs, the strange places he has awakened and he said nothing, he could have blown the whistle on Ives the moment these things started happening but he did not.”
“This is all bloody insane!” Lestrade blurted out running a hand through his silvering hair.
Sherlock rubbed his chin, his eyes calculating. “At the heart of all this is Moriarty. The only way that serum could have gotten into John is through him. Ives was created by John’s subconscious to remove Moriarty as a threat, Mycroft had to have made the connection between the Jekyll program and Moriarty, and Ives made the connection between Mycroft and Moriarty playing them off of one another. In the end it all leads back to Moriarty.”
“So what do we do now?” Lestrade inquired.
“We?” Sherlock inquired in a cold tone.
Lestrade got two inches from Sherlock’s nose, “Bloody John Watson is the only damned hope I have that someday I won’t be hunting you down, he’s a capital bloke, and someone I consider a friend, and honorary Yarder. Moriarty knows about Ives and Mycroft and you, but he got the bloody New Scotland Yard involved when he messed with one of our own, and you are going to use our resources Sherlock, so help me God...I’m not asking you, I’m bloody telling you!”
Sherlock smiled. “Very well, I think it’s time we moved our own game piece onto the board.”
“Good, what do we do first?” Lestrade asked pulling out a pad and pencil.
Sherlock got a distant look on his face then he grinned that creepy way he had when he had caught a prey’s scent. “First thing we need to do is determine where Howard Ives came from, John created him from something buried deep down, if we can figure out what happened back then we can better understand what’s happening now, and somehow reach him before he becomes Ives permanently.”
Lestrade agreed with a nod as he jotted that down. “So we talk to Harriet Watson, she'll know something if anyone will. I’ll send Sally to pick her up and bring her to the Yard. What’s next?”
“There’s a pink phone in Scotland Yard evidence storage...” Sherlock ventured.
Lestrade grinned. “Yeah...Moriarty’s been messing with us, maybe it's time we started messing with Moriarty.”
“Chief Inspector, you might not be a total waste of Met training,” Holmes stated holding out a hand.
Lestrade shook it in a silent pact, adding, “That’s by far the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Sherlock.”
Part 06--->This Way