Wait for the Ricochet (4a)
The straps of the bomb were cutting in his ribs uncomfortably, leaving him hardly space to draw a proper breath. The short man in a Westwood suit circled him again, admiring his work.
“Zip up,” he ordered. “Wouldn’t want to rob him of his moment of surprise.” The grin on the man’s face was gleeful and almost childish, like a boy eager to unwrap his birthday present.
“Imagine that, Johnny. The moment he sees you he’ll think that you’re me.”
“Just because you stole his memories doesn’t mean he couldn’t know the difference once he saw you. I could feel you.”
John shouldn’t be saying those things so boldly, not in the presence of the masked men with a light finger on the trigger, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe that the Navigator would kill him right there. He needed John, if only for a while.
“I could feel who you were the moment you stepped into the room.”
The Navigator laughed, delightfully and beast-like. “That’s why you’re a nuisance, Johnny. And, by the way, the sensation goes both ways.”
***
“I-I’m sorry, shouldn’t be interrupting-” the young man stammered, gentle and just-so-slightly overdone accent to his voice strangely at odds with his intensive, hungry eyes.
“I’m Jim, from IT upstairs.” He walked closer to Sherlock, eyes locked admiringly on the detective’s back, seemingly oblivious to the way his move all but forced John to step out of his way.
“I heard that you’d be here working on a case.” Jim’s attempts at conversation trailed off as he wasn’t getting any encouragement from the object of his curiosity. Sherlock didn’t even tear his gaze from the computer screen. Jim stopped awkwardly near the table, then, as if deciding to throw the towel in, he turned to say something trivial to Mary and John- only to knock a metal dish off the edge of the table. It clattered loudly on the tiled floor and Sherlock nearly jumped with irritation.
“You can save your number for yourself. I’m not interested,” he lifted his head to bark out and then he focused on his experiment again, completely ignoring the way Jim blushed and Mary pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle a giggle.
Without any more ado, Jim put back the dish, pocketing the card he was hiding in his palm before, and beat a hasty retreat. With a hand on the door handle, he stooped to cast one last longing look towards Sherlock Holmes.
“So, um...it was nice to meet you.” Then his eyes skimmed over to John, fixing him for the briefest moment with an unreadable stare.
“And you too, John.” The smile accompanying those words was a little shy but the eyes were of the blackest, oily colour, reflecting more light than there was in the lab. “See you.”
Leaving the challenge hanging in the air, he closed the door behind him. John swallowed, hoping that no-one noticed how his normal colour made only slowly its way back in his face.
Mary remarked: “Well, it seems he’s had his own motives to smuggle me in - maybe he just wanted an excuse to get in here himself?” She winked meaningfully in Sherlock’s general direction. John briefly wondered if one’s shoulder blades could look disgusted - Sherlock’s body language could speak volumes.
***
“Carl Powers.”
John looked up sharply to find Sherlock staring unseeingly ahead of himself, mouth slightly open.
John got up from the chair he had been occupying since Mary left the lab - some time ago. She was a bit disappointed at John for not joining in on her plans for the evening. He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to shake off the stiffness brought by long hours spent in waiting for Sherlock. The inner numbness left by his encounter with the Navigator still slowed him down, clothing everything he perceived with a thin veil of fear. It reminded him of the kind of dreams occurring in the early stages of sleep; when the body was still too connected to the mind, where you wanted to run but your limbs would move slowly and heavy through the air thick as molten lead, where you’d be dragging your feet behind you like wounded comrades from a lost battle.
Mary didn’t understand. She couldn’t feel the Navigator the way John did, she didn’t recognise any threat in the shy and awkward young man from IT. However, she could tell that John wasn’t all right, and she didn’t press him for an explanation. John didn’t want to share his fears with her anyway - regardless of how nice her girlfriend roleplay was, she was still another dangerous element in this game and John already felt outgunned and cornered.
John walked up behind the revelation-struck detective and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
“What is it?”
“Carl Powers, John.” Sherlock snapped into awareness. “It’s where I began.”
***
“This is where you began? This is the pool where you killed the Powers boy?”
John could see it now. The pool and the cold murder were the bifurcation point of Sherlock and Moriarty’s lives. At one point in the past, Sherlock must have stumbled upon the Carl Powers case, his path of destiny almost colliding with Moriarty’s. In reality, he never pursued it - but the memory remained and the Navigator chose it as a starting point of his alternative reality.
Black and changeable eyes gleamed in amusement. “Oh, I see our dear Sherlock schooled you all right. Yes, quite a nice rounding off here, isn’t it?”
John’s tongue stuck dry in his mouth from all the talking and the chlorine-damp silence of the pool, the silence of the stage waiting for the appearance of the last actor, was getting on his nerves even more.
“You used your past crimes to play wi-”
“Tsk tsk,” Jim interrupted him, pulling an annoyed face. “Don’t get dainty, Johnny. Crime is pedestrian. I am an artist.”
“But all those - coups -” John rephrased carefully, “were your own. Real ones. I remember the Vermeer. It was sold for thirty million quid.”
“Very good, Johnny. You could almost make a detective,” Jim teased him. “Yes, that one paid off magnificently. No-one ever missed the wretched security guy and no-one ever made the connection.”
“You wanted to see if Sherlock would be able to solve it? That’s why you replayed for him your - what? Masterpieces?”
Jim moved around him as if dancing to a tune only he could hear, the rustle of his Westwood suit and the soft squeaking of his bright polished shoes impossibly loud in John’s earpiece. The floor tiles, still wet from cleaning, made for slippery ground but Jim didn’t seem to mind. It’s his scenario, John knew instinctively, he’s designing and propelling this dream, and he cannot slip. If he had to cross a road walking on a rope, he would do it running. This world bows to him and to his rules.
“Why all this?” John pressed on. “This fucking smoke and mirrors London, years of it! You blocked his memories from him, you manipulated his totem so he wouldn’t know dream from reality, all that for what? To play with him?”
Jim grinned, shrugged, and shuffled his feet, hands tucked casually in the pockets - slipping back into the personality of the IT boy, easy and affable. John wondered how many layers were there to the Navigator, how many appearances he could forge, and what would he look like if his true colours were to show. Maybe he doesn’t have any. Maybe the only thing that’s beneath all those roles is darkness, a black, bottomless abyss full of madness.
“I was bored, okay? It’s getting lonely when you’re the only one on the top.”
***
“We’ve only had four. Where’s the fifth pip?”
It has to come any moment, John didn’t say aloud. He knew that the game had to culminate soon - the cabbie in the first dream wouldn’t be bleeding much longer. They have two days, maybe three, left. Enough for another puzzle to solve, another countdown, and then they will get to see Moriarty in person. Frailty of genius. John counted on that.
“Promise me you won’t rush off alone when it comes.”
Sherlock snorted derisively. “Really, John? You’re my flatmate, not my bodyguard.”
John folded his arms around his resolve not to lash out on that infuriating idiot right there. “So far, I’ve been your keeper, errand boy, cleaning service and God knows what else you’ve made me do, so when I actually want to do something for you, you better let me.”
Sherlock ducked his head deeper in the upturned collar of his coat and said nothing.
“I mean it, Sherlock. That man’s a fucking bomber. We’ve been in it together from the start, and even when I don’t buy your shit about how youneed an outside perspective, you could at least acknowledge that you need a back-up.”
John checked the battery level on his phone and tapped his jacket pockets to make sure the gloves were there. It was freezing outside. Sherlock’s head shot back up - it reminded John of the abrupt movement of an ostrich, alerted while sitting on eggs - the analogy between the long-necked bird and Sherlock, all curled up in a coat-ball in the chair, made John chuckle.
“You’re going out?”
John chuckled louder. “I told you twice this evening, so maybe third time is the charm: I’m going to Mary’s. This flat is bloody cold - I wonder when they’ll come to fix the windows, it’s been several days since the first bomb. If anything happens, text me.”
“Hmmm,” came the noncommittal reply. Just as John was about to close the door, Sherlock called out: “And get some milk, while you’re out.”
John was still smiling to himself when he walked down the front door steps and nearly ran into Mary again.
“Sorry. I never know when you show up.”
She put her arm through his. “You look a bit tense. Could we take a little walk, to clear your head? Let go of things?” She rested her head on his shoulder as they walked, leaning onto him slightly. Perfect height for this, John thought. She was perfect for me in every way.
“Look at the stars.” Mary nudged his face up. “They’re so bright tonight.”
“It’s because of the frost,” John answered mechanically. Above their heads, the stars sparkled and twinkled, outlining the shapes of constellations John used to know by heart - a definite proof that the Navigator took the dream from Sherlock when they dropped on this level.
They stopped for a while in the middle of a bridge in Regent’s Park, facing south.
“There’s a whole story written in the constellation,” he pointed at the shining spots close to the horizon. Vela, Puppis, Carina - sails, keel and stern, all of it was once one big constellation, the ship of Argo. Ancient Greek legend.”
Mary pressed her cheek to his in order to better follow the direction he was pointing at. John smirked and pulled her closer.
“The sailors of Argo set out on a journey to reclaim the Golden Fleece. One day, they encountered the Symplegades, the Clashing Rocks. They sort of floated in the waters and clashed randomly, bringing disaster to any ship that would try to sail between them. The Argonauts let a dove-” John pointed a little higher on the sky, where the Columba spread her wings- “fly between the rocks, and when she made it, they went after her and made it too. After that, the rocks stopped moving permanently.”
“What a shame,” Mary whispered in the soft skin under John’s jaw, the tip of her nose cold. “I know about floating.”
John drew in a sharp breath, the freezing air stinging in his lungs. Mary’s mind, lost and unreachable after she was killed during what should be just a routine job, and her body, floating between life and death, on a life-support machine and the decision was John’s to make...
“And I know about clashing,” he murmured into her lips and she pressed her palm against the scar under his shoulder, unerringly even for all the layers of clothing, to remind him that no kiss of theirs would ever be real.
***
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