(no subject)
"Beyond the Stars" (4/6)
Summary: “You have a choice to make, Sherlock Holmes. Your friend... or your lover?”
Forty years ago, humanity left behind a dying Earth and fled to the stars. But life in space is fraught with danger, and some of it is found inside the very walls that are supposed to keep them safe.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Notes: Some dialogue in this installment was taken from TRF.
John abandons his medical kit in the access tunnel on Level 3 and climbs blindly, as quickly as he can manage, until his legs are burning and his heart is threatening to break free of his chest. The first time he takes notice of his surroundings, he’s on Level 10--back where he started. The robots are below him, climbing slowly but steadily, their lights cutting beams through the darkness. They whir and click with such frequency that it sounds as though they are chattering with one another, and perhaps they are.
John reaches through the hole between Levels 9 and 10 and pulls the hatch closed, sealing off the ladder and throwing the access tunnel into complete darkness. He stumbles forward down the corridor, ears straining but picking up nothing apart from the blood pounding in his head.
Twenty minutes later, he’s made it all the way to Section 100, and another ladder. He climbs with pinpricks at his back, knowing the robots are following him relentlessly, even if he can’t see them.
There are lights on in the tunnel on Level 35, and John collapses there, chest heaving, clothing soaked through and clinging uncomfortably to his skin. Every door he’s come across has been sealed so far, and he fights down a crushing wave of panic. The tunnels are narrow--not noticeably so, not until one was trapped in them with no way of escape. Then they become cramped, made smaller still by dim-to-nonexistent lighting. John breathes, deeply and slowly, through his nose, and tries to think.
He has only a few bullets left in his gun and an army of robots advancing on him. He can only keep running for so long; they can keep it up indefinitely. The robots are light, but sturdy. A bullet can cut through their outer plating, as John now knows from experience, but landing a physical blow with fists or feet probably wouldn’t do much damage.
All right, he can’t beat them, not with what he has on his person, and he can’t get away from them... so what does that leave?
John groans and tips his head back against the wall.
Down the corridor, beyond where he can see, there is a whir, a pop, and then the sound of dozens of tiny legs clattering across the floor.
John pulls himself up, his muscles protesting every movement.
This isn’t going to be pleasant, but at least he can face it on his feet.
----------
Sweat beads at the nape of Sherlock’s neck and speeds in rivulets down his spine. He’s sprawled on the floor of the Engine Room, buried up to his waist in a maintenance hatch, pulling apart and connecting delicate wires in an effort to reprogram the ship’s internal sensors. He needs to find out where John and Lestrade are, but searching on foot throughout the entire damaged city is foolhardy at best, and at worst will see them all dead.
Their only hope--his only hope--is to filter out all the other people that the sensors are picking up, until they are narrowed down to just two.
The only ones that matter.
Sherlock has no doubt that Moriarty is watching him, but the man has made no further attempts at contact and Sherlock isn’t in the mood to chat.
He fits together the final two circuits and then crawls out of the hatch. He pushes himself up onto his knees, his aching joints protesting the movement, and glances at the computer screen suspended above him. On his first attempt, he had managed to eliminate fifty percent of the green dots; now, he has cut that number in half.
It still isn’t enough. The ship is too large, and they have too many inhabitants.
Suppressing a groan, Sherlock squeezes back into the maintenance hatch and tries to figure out where he went wrong.
“Any luck, my dear?”
Sherlock ignores the question, but decides to keep Moriarty talking. Maybe he’ll give something away without even realizing it.
“Some of those breaches weren’t made naturally,” he says as he pulls apart his earlier work. The schematic above him shows the damaged areas of the ship, and some of the breaches are much too large to have been formed by anything flying past them in this part of space. “There’s no way the Yard would have suffered that much damage from a cloud of micrometeoroids. I’d wager you used bombs for most of the hull breaches.”
“Mm, very good. The micrometeoroids wouldn’t have inflicted the amount of damage I wanted, but they’re a nice added flair, don’t you think?”
“Are there more? Bombs, I mean.”
There’s a smirk in Moriarty’s voice.
“I think you’d be disappointed in me if I said no. And I know how much you loathe disappointment.”
Above Sherlock’s head, the clock in the corner of the computer screen marks the passage of another minute.
Two hours to go.
-----------
The robots are closing in.
John, never one to run from a fight, nonetheless finds himself backing up rapidly. He throws up a hand in front of him, palm out, as though that gesture could possibly stop them. They neither speed up nor slow down--they know they will catch him eventually.
If the robots were people, he would try to fake a distraction and then make a break for it. But it’s impossible to distract a robot, not even one designed to analyze and problem-solve in any number of situations -
Oh.
“Right, you want to fix things, is that it? That’s your... purpose?” John mutters, more to himself than the robots, though in his imagination they have just given an affirmative click. His back collides with the wall, and he stops moving. The robots do not.
“Well then, boys, piece of advice,” he says quietly, pulling the gun from his belt. He holds it out at shoulder-height, aiming it at the wall across from him. “You really should have reinforced this ship better.”
He unloads the rest of the bullets in his gun in rapid succession, grouping them close together so that an entire chunk of the wall weakens, breaks, and gives way under pressure of the relentless vacuum. Air starts to rush from the tunnel, sucked out into space, and the robots--as predicted--start to flock to the growing hole.
They have their priorities, after all. It would seem that Moriarty didn’t think to tamper with that portion of their programming.
John fights the pull of the vacuum with a strong grip on the wall, turns, and bolts down the corridor.
This time, the robots don’t follow.
----------
Sherlock finally narrows the live schematic down to fifty green dots that are scattered around the screen. Some he can rule out automatically based on location, knowing that John or Lestrade would only be in certain parts of the ship, but it’s still not enough. He brings down his hand in frustration on the computer panel, and the smack of it rings through the empty and still room for several long seconds.
Silence.
He’s not used to it, having lived his entire life with engines beneath his feet and a brother who tracked his every movement. He hasn’t gone more than three days since his eighteenth birthday without Mycroft making contact with him in some manner. Now, they haven’t spoken since Monday, and while he doesn’t necessarily miss Mycroft by any stretch of the imagination, he finds himself... adrift. Cut loose. He has nothing to fall back on, not this time.
Sherlock jabs uselessly at the controls on the computer panel, trying to call his brother. It hasn’t worked the past three times he’s tried it, and the main control room is dark according to the ship’s schematic. He tries anyway.
“Come on, come on,” Sherlock hisses into the persistent silence. “For once in your life! Do I have to say it?”
He leans over the controls, bracing his hands on the flat computer panel.
“I need you, Mycroft,” he mutters. “Do you hear that? I need you.”
“Too bad he isn’t coming, then, isn’t it?”
Sherlock leaps back at the unexpected voice, and fights down visible anger.
“What do you want now?” he growls at Moriarty.
“I can see why Mycroft so enjoyed being hooked into the computer. It’s exhilarating. Have you ever tried it, my dear?” Without waiting for an answer, he goes on. “Of course, Mycroft was a little slap-dash about the whole thing, wasn’t he? Part flesh, part machine, not human but not computer either. He’d been hooked into the network so long, he didn’t know what to do with himself when I disconnected him.”
“What have you done to him?” Sherlock asks, dread sitting uncomfortably in his stomach. Mycroft hasn’t left the main control room in close to a decade; he’s been part of the ship for even longer.
Moriarty ignores his question.
“He could barely even walk when I had him... removed. Have you ever heard of anything so pathetic?”
“One person might come to mind,” Sherlock retorts.
“Oh, oh, careful with that tongue, my dear. I could do so very many things here, you know, now that I have wrested complete control of the computer from your brother,” Moriarty muses. “I could alter you, Sherlock. Perhaps you aren’t quite the detective people believe you to be.”
Cold floods Sherlock’s veins.
“What?” he blurts despite himself. Moriarty chuckles.
“There are so many things I did before taking over this wondrous piece of technology. Consulting criminal, as you so aptly put it at our first meeting. And business has been booming, Sherlock. Who do you think killed that woman your little pet was slaving over yesterday morning? Her husband wanted her dead... and since he came to me, that’s exactly what happened.” Sherlock can almost hear Moriarty smirk over the line. “But petty crimes become so tedious after a while, don’t you agree? Please, Jim, will you fix it for me? But now, with this computer--with this ship--I can do anything. I am limitless. And the first thing I’m going to do is erase you.”
“You can’t do that,” Sherlock says automatically. “You can’t erase a person.”
“Oh, but I can! Sherlock Holmes is an ordinary man. That’s the easiest way to sell a lie, Sherlock, didn’t you know? Wrap it up in a truth, makes the whole thing more palatable. More believable. Especially when it’s something you want to believe. No one wants to believe you’re as clever as you are; they want you to be ordinary, down at their level. And you know what? I can give that to them, Sherlock. You hired actors to be the murderers, didn’t you? Maybe you even got bored, concocted a few of the puzzles yourself and then solved them with the whole Yard watching you. I can make you into anything I want. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“You’re insane,” Sherlock hisses through his teeth.
“You’re just getting that now?” Moriarty chuckles. “Run along now, Daddy’s got work to do. And you have a choice to make, don’t think I’ve forgotten. You’re stalling, my dear. Out you get!”
A sudden hissing noise fills his ears, coming from high above his head. Sherlock glances up, and sees that gas is starting to pour out of the vents affixed to the ceiling.
He doesn’t wait around to see what it will do to him, and bolts from the room.
---------
Lestrade is, very nearly, in the middle of the ship. The Yard is on Level 17. Sixteen decks below him, the engines are still; eighteen decks above his head, the main control room sits in eerie silence. All of the lifts are down, and emergency electrical power is questionable at best. He has a torch he took from his desk drawer, in addition to his weapons, and little else. He’s going to have to make a climb for it, if there’s any hope of him reaching the main control room at all.
He finds an access hatch in Section 22 and pries it open with the blade of his small knife when the panel refuses to respond to computer controls. He climbs in, finding the access tunnel thrown into partial darkness as the emergency lights flicker and threaten to go out entirely. Lestrade sighs, and feels his pockets for the torch. He doesn’t pull it out, just reassures himself that it’s there. He can navigate a ladder in the dark, if need be, and there’s no sense in using up the light right now. He might need it in the control room.
He locates the ladder that services this side of the ship and takes a deep breath, steeling himself. Eighteen decks is a hefty climb on a good day, and this is certainly not one of those.
But the ship is dying around him, and he can’t let that happen without a fight.
----------
Sherlock runs, though he doesn’t know where he’s running to.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to wonder what he’s running from, but Sherlock doesn’t permit himself the luxury of following that train of thought. It is irrelevant, and he needs to focus all his concentration on two things.
Find Lestrade. Find John.
“Ninety minutes, my dear,” a voice says as he jogs down a corridor several levels above the engine room, and Sherlock forces himself to go faster. The voice follows him anyway, the ship’s construction allowing for communication nearly everywhere.
“Until what?” he snaps, deliberately obtuse.
“Until I take matters into my own hands, and kill them both.” There is a beat of silence. “Surely you saw that one coming, Sherlock.”
His name, his name. Why did Moriarty always call him by name, and his given one at that? It grates on his already-brittle nerves, and Sherlock grinds his back teeth in irritation.
“I am this ship, Sherlock. I know every rivet, every bulkhead. I know where your two... toys are. And if you don’t find them within the allotted time, I will kill them both. So I would suggest haste, Sherlock.”
“Why three hours?” Sherlock flies past a computer panel, stumbles to a halt, and then backtracks hastily. He calls up the screen and then tries to tap into the internal sensors. The last computer was obstinate, yes, but perhaps this one would be better... “Back in the engine room, you said three hours. But the compromised areas won’t run out of air for much longer than that. So why three hours?”
“Why not three hours?” Moriarty chuckles. “Eighty-eight minutes, by the way. Hurry along, now.”
Sherlock closes his eyes, blocking out unnecessary sensory input.
Think.
John had been in the Infirmary when the accident occurred, but Moriarty had said something about repair crews breaking through to the lower levels. The Infirmary was on Level 10--was it under siege, somehow? Why would repair crews need to go through the Infirmary to get to the lower parts of the ship?
It didn’t make sense, which meant that John had likely left the Infirmary. In a crisis such as this, the only thing that could get him to leave his post and his patients would be serious injuries in other parts of the ship. And in a disaster such as this, John would be forced to use the internal access tunnels, as all the lifts were offline.
And Lestrade... where would Lestrade have gone? The Yard, under normal circumstances, but Sherlock knows that portion of the ship has been evacuated due to heavy damage.
No. He has to be more basic than that. What is Lestrade’s natural instinct, in a crisis or times of hardship? What is his default?
To fix things.
It had been his automatic reaction years ago, when Sherlock had first stumbled across his path. It’s a default state of being for Lestrade. And he isn’t as much of an idiot as Sherlock likes to point out at his crime scenes. He is competent in a number of different ways, Sherlock knows, and if he can’t fix things from the Yard, he’ll go straight to the heart of the ship and do it from there, if necessary.
“Oh, my, what have we here?” Moriarty croons as Sherlock opens his eyes, fixing his gaze unseeingly on the panel in front of him, which is now unnecessary. “You’ve come to a decision, haven’t you? What fun! This is finally getting interesting. Which one of them is it, my dear?”
“Sod off,” Sherlock snaps finally, shoving away from the computer panel and sprinting down the corridor. He has to find an access tunnel.
He needs to get to Level 35, now.
----------
Sherlock scrambles into the first access tunnel he can find and climbs until his legs threaten to give out and send him tumbling back down all the levels he has just passed. Gasping for breath, he pauses on Level 30. It takes several minutes for the sound of his racing heart to fade from his ears; when it does, he realises that he isn’t alone.
A high-pitched whir reaches his ears, and a repair bot hurtles around the corner, flashes by Sherlock, and disappears down the corridor.
Odd, he thinks. There aren’t any microbreaches on this level, according to the schematic. Why is there a robot here, then?
Probably for the same reason why none of the repair bots seemed to have made any effort toward repairing the breaches--Moriarty has tampered with them, Sherlock would guess. He’s intrigued, to be certain, but he can’t spare a thought right now for whatever poor soul Moriarty has decided to target with that particular distraction.
He needs to find Lestrade.
Minutes later, he is forced to pause on Level 35, his body betraying him in increasingly infuriating ways. Now his arms have joined the rebellion his legs are staging, each muscle gone weak and rubbery, and every step up the ladder might be his last. But Sherlock can’t fail now, not when he’s so close to his goal.
Another repair bot whips past him while he rests, and two more scuttle along the floor just beyond reach of his feet. It’s almost as though they are gathering; converging on a single point.
And then, from down the corridor: “Oi, you stupid bastards, don’t you have anything better to do?”
Sherlock’s breath stills in his chest.
John.
He hesitates, and hates himself for it. Lestrade is likely on this level somewhere... but John is here, now, and in trouble.
And maybe, this way, he can save them both.
Sherlock shoves himself to his feet and, with a grunt, runs toward the sound of John’s indignant voice.
------
Part Five
-----