(no subject)
"Beyond the Stars" (5/6)
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
Part Four
Notes: The final part will be up by Sunday or, at the most, by next Friday. However, if you absolutely cannot handle cliffhangers, I would suggest holding off on reading this part until then. But I will reiterate that all of the warnings on the first chapter are applicable throughout the fic, and I haven't any surprises waiting.
That being said, enjoy! And feedback is always welcome.
Lestrade arrives on Level 35 out of breath and sticky with perspiration, but he can’t afford to stop and rest. The main control room is only minutes away, and then maybe they can end this whole ordeal.
He dashes down a dim corridor and ducks under a bulkhead that is frozen halfway through the act of closing. The cabins are eerily quiet as he jogs by them. He’s in Section 17, and the main control room is in Section 1. As he nears the non-operational lift, a noise that he can’t identify catches his ears. It eventually solidifies into men’s voices, and when he rounds a corner he nearly slams headlong into Sherlock.
“Sherlock!” he gasps, fighting the urge to grab the man in a crushing embrace. Sherlock looks just as startled--and just as torn--as he. But then Lestrade realises that they aren’t alone, and he tries to make sense of the scene around him.
Both Sherlock and John are panting, John leaning against the wall while he tries to catch his breath. Half a dozen of the ship’s small hull repair bots are scattered around them, all in various stages of deactivation. Some are already still; others are giving valiant, final twitches before shutting down for good.
“Good lord,” Lestrade mutters as he takes in John’s clothes and the blood drying on his face. “What happened, mate?”
“Those damned robots,” John spits. “The - the hull repair ones. Moriarty reprogrammed them. They can’t distinguish between metal and flesh, so they’ve been targeting me as something that needs to be fixed. Sherlock disabled them.”
“Feedback loop,” Sherlock says distractedly, pulling out his mobile to--presumably--check the time. “Fairly simple, I only needed one to manage it. They’re all connected to one another, like one massive consciousness. Something goes wrong with one’s programming, they all feel it.”
“Moriarty?” Lestrade asks, ignoring the bit about the robots which, frankly, largely goes over his head. He hasn’t heard the madman’s name spoken in over a year, but truth be told, he isn’t surprised to learn that Moriarty is capable of engineering something on this scale. “He’s the one behind all of this?”
“Yes, but I’ll explain on the way,” Sherlock says hastily. “We must get to the control room. We haven’t got time to waste on idle chat.”
“That’s where I’ve been headed. Either of you have a weapon?”
“Got my gun,” John says, still trying to catch his breath. “Doesn’t have any bullets left, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Figured you wouldn’t have one,” Lestrade says when Sherlock remains silent. He digs the penknife out of his pocket. “Take that for me, mate, and give an old man peace of mind, eh? Right. Let’s go.”
------
They make it as far as Section 5 before they come across a series of cabins that still have occupants in them. Sherlock hesitates briefly, but then makes noises about moving on--five cabins aren’t worth the mystery awaiting him in the main control room. Lestrade goes grey and looks torn. John knows immediately what he’s going to do.
“You two go,” he orders briskly. “I’ll meet up with you in the control room.”
“But -”
“No, Sherlock, don’t even try,” John interrupts sharply. “I’m no use to you in the main control room. I don’t know a thing about computer programs, but you both do. So you two handle Moriarty; I’ll take care of these people.”
Sherlock looks as though he’s about to argue further, but Lestrade grabs his elbow.
“He’s right,” he says, “and we need to keep moving. Be careful, John.”
John tries to crack a grin, but it feels all wrong on his face.
“You know me,” he says lightly, “never one for risks. Now go.”
------
“So, Moriarty,” Lestrade says when the silence after John’s departure becomes too much. He and Sherlock are making their way down a corridor with only two torches to light their way. The lights in this section of the ship have failed entirely, even the emergency ones. “What’s he want this time?”
Sherlock shakes his head a moment, and then says, “He’s bored.”
“He took over the ship because he was bored?”
“He strapped bombs to six innocent people last year because he was bored.” The silence that follows is hesitant, and Lestrade knows that Sherlock is going to continue. After a minute, he says, “I once blew up your kitchen because I was bored.”
“You’re not like him,” Lestrade says at once. “You’re different.”
“Am I?” Sherlock kicks a twisted piece of metal out of his path--debris from the accident. “If it had not been into your hands I fell all those years ago, where do you think I would have ended up?”
Lestrade stops. Sherlock doesn’t notice for three full paces, and then turns around, shining his light full in Lestrade’s face.
“What?” he says impatiently. “We’ve got -”
“You did, though,” Lestrade says softly. “Fall into my hands. So what does it matter what may or may not have happened otherwise?”
Sherlock looks as though he wants to argue further, but then he simply shakes his head again and says, “Come. We should keep moving.”
They pass through three more sections in silence before Sherlock breaks it again, wrenching Lestrade from his troubled thoughts.
“You’re wrong.”
“Hey?”
“You,” Sherlock’s eyes flick to him, “are wrong.”
“Yeah, got that, but what about this time?”
The pause that follows is lengthy, and Lestrade doesn’t believe he’ll get a response until Sherlock speaks again.
“About what you said back there. You aren’t old.”
Lestrade snorts.
“I could be your father.”
“Only if you started in your teens.”
“My parents did.” Lestrade softens his words with a crooked smile. “I am old, but it’s all right. It doesn’t bother me like it used to.”
And isn’t that the truth, Lestrade thinks as they set off once again. Five years--hell, even three years ago--that wouldn’t have been a sentence he ever could have uttered. Things were bad when he first met Sherlock, an event that coincided with his fortieth birthday and seemed to drive home the fact that his generation would be gone in another few decades, leaving humanity’s fate in the hands of humans who had never been to Earth. It had been difficult for Lestrade to reconcile sleeping with--and, eventually, coming to care for--one of the ship rats, and he had spiraled during their first two years together. But somehow they had managed to pick one another up; had even kicked their respective addictions together.
No, it doesn’t bother him any longer that he’s growing older, even with a lover eighteen years his junior who could certainly do better than a harried Inspector from Scotland Yard.
It doesn’t bother him, because of Sherlock.
“Sherlock?”
Lestrade slows to a halt. Sherlock, some feet ahead of him, stops and turns around.
“What now, Lestrade?”
A thousand words claw at Lestrade’s tight throat.
You’re amazing. You’re bloody brilliant and downright gorgeous. You’re infuriating and spectacular, and sometimes I don’t know what to do with you but I wouldn’t trade that for the universe.
Instead, he says, “This is my grandfather’s ring.”
He holds up his left hand, and the gold band he’s worn there since his eighteenth birthday glints in the beam of Sherlock’s torch.
“Yes, I’m aware,” Sherlock says slowly, confusion furrowing his brow. “Look, this isn’t really the time -”
“It was his wedding ring,” Lestrade interrupts. “It’s the only thing left of him, actually, the only thing my mother had time to grab before we left the planet. And... And I always thought, if ever I found someone, someone as important and rare as this... I’d give it to them.”
Even in the darkness, Lestrade is sure that Sherlock has lost what little colour he had left in his face.
“Lestrade -” he starts, and then stops abruptly. “You are being foolish.”
“No,” Lestrade says with a laugh. “No, I think this is probably the wisest thing I’ve done in a while.”
Lestrade slides the ring off thickened fingers with minimal difficulty.
“Take it,” he says, holding it out. “Please.”
“I can’t -”
“You say,” Lestrade interrupts, “that you don’t know where you’d be now if you hadn’t fallen into my hands. Well, the truth is... I don’t know where I’d be without you. And I also don’t know if we’ll see tomorrow, but I do know that you’re the reason I get up in the mornings. So... take this. For me.”
Sherlock, his face carefully neutral, considers the ring for a beat before plucking it from Lestrade’s hand and sliding it onto his own. It fits only because his hands are warm and swollen from their exertions, and Lestrade decides that he likes the look of it on Sherlock’s hand.
They then stare at one another, silent, until Lestrade finally clears his throat.
“Keep moving?”
Sherlock nods briskly, almost relieved.
“Yes.”
They press on.
------
The sliding door to the control room is open only a fraction, and there is nothing but darkness beyond. Lestrade curls a hand around the door and shoves it open a few more inches, enough so that he can slide a shoulder through and force it open halfway. He then pulls out his torch and flips it on again.
A man’s body is propped up in a corner, a blanket from an emergency first aid kit drawn up to his shoulders. Dried blood cakes his face, and his eyes have been closed. His death looks like it was painful, and Lestrade sends up a swift thanks that it appears to have also been quick.
Another man is slumped over his workstation, but his back rises and falls, indicating that he’s still breathing. He has simply been knocked unconscious. There’s an unconscious woman next to him. Lestrade verifies that they’re both relatively unharmed otherwise before casting a glance around the rest of the room.
In the center of the room, up on a dais, is Mycroft Holmes’s empty chair--his home for the past ten years. Wires and cables hang from the ceiling and snake up from the arms of the contraption. Once, they had hooked into his mind and body. Now, they hang loose, and some had obviously been ripped away in a hurry--those still have blood on the ends of them.
Mycroft is nowhere to be seen.
Lestrade lets out a low whistle as he surveys the chaos. Sherlock, if he is affected by any of this, doesn’t show it. He turns to the controls instead.
“Right, then,” he mutters to himself, bringing a computer panel back to life with just a touch, “let’s see what’s been going on here.”
All around the room, one by one, computer screens start to flicker on again. Lestrade taps the screen of the one nearest him while Sherlock busies himself with another.
According to the computer, at least two hundred cabins have lost atmosphere. If they were occupied, then at a minimum the ship has lost that many people. Casualty reports from the Infirmary indicate that dozens more are injured, many gravely, and that the medical staff has lost a good number of people.
“Sherlock, take a look at this,” Lestrade says finally, his gaze drawn to the clock at the corner of his computer screen, and Sherlock comes to stand over his shoulder.
“Interesting,” Sherlock mutters under his breath, staring at the readout. The clock is counting down, not displaying a time, as Lestrade had first believed.
“Yeah, strange, isn’t it? Why do you think it’s doing that?”
Sherlock shakes his head.
“Moriarty has been so adamant about the time. He gave me five hours to figure out how to repair the breaches in my cabin. Having passed that test, Moriarty then gave me only three hours to find you and John. But I found you, and yet the clock is apparently still ticking. We’re down to less than one hour. But what happens in one hour?” Sherlock glances at Lestrade. “This section of the ship is safe. Relatively, at least. It could survive for several more months even if we don’t fix all of the breaches. So what’s so important about one hour from now?”
Sherlock’s face lights suddenly, and he whirls away. He jogs over to Mycroft’s chair and sits in it, heedless of the bloody wires dangling in his face, and starts to manipulate the computer interfaces on the arms of the massive chair.
“He’s up to something,” Sherlock mutters. “He must be. And I don’t just mean the breaches and the robots and the game.”
“That’s all a distraction,” Lestrade ventures, cold flooding his veins, and Sherlock nods.
“Very likely. But what could he possibly need to distract us from?”
“Something big,” Lestrade puts in. He folds his arms across his chest and watches Sherlock work. “But he’s already done about the biggest thing there is, and that’s to connect to the main computer. He has the ship. What could be bigger than that?”
Sherlock blinks, and looks at him.
“Unless...”
Lestrade feels his eyes widen.
“Unless... unless he’s not quite as connected to the ship as he wants us to believe.”
Sherlock springs from his chair and bolts across the room, heading for the main computer panel. Lestrade can only guess at what he’s looking for, but his expression is frantic.
And then, a moment later, it is triumphant.
“Look at this,” he breathes, and Lestrade comes to stand by his shoulder. He can’t make sense of the lines of code Sherlock is pointing at as he taps the computer screen with one long finger, but Sherlock’s expression tells him that they have stumbled onto the key to this whole ordeal.
“What is it?” Lestrade asks.
“This entire thing,” Sherlock says slowly, “was manufactured by Moriarty as a distraction. The meteoroids, the game, getting me to choose... he needed to keep me busy. He knows I’m the only one on this vessel capable of figuring out his plan, and the only one capable of stopping him. And so...”
“And so what?”
Sherlock looks up. The dim red light emanating from the computer screen lights his face from below, and the strange shadows cast across the sharp planes of his face make him appear severe.
“And so he manufactured a distraction built around the only thing in my life ever to give me pause,” Sherlock says gravely.
Lestrade stares at him blankly for a moment, uncomprehending--and then he flushes. He breaks Sherlock’s gaze, passes a hand over his mouth, and finally says, “What’s his big plan, then? Why’d he need you out of the way?”
“He’s trying to integrate himself into the computer,” Sherlock says in a low, rushed voice. “He’s trying to become the ship. But it’s not an instantaneous procedure. It took Mycroft decades to become what he is now. Moriarty figured out a faster way, I don’t know how, but he’s manufactured this entire day so he can manage it unmolested. And he’s nearly there. Fifty-five more minutes and we’ll have lost the ship. Forever.”
“How do we stop him?”
But at that moment the door creaks open again, and John staggers through.
“Got everyone out,” he says before they can ask. His eyes flick to the bodies of the staff strewn about the room.
“Unconscious, near as we can tell, except for the one,” Lestrade says quickly as John starts for the nearest staffer. He begins checking them over anyway, and Lestrade turns back to Sherlock and repeats, “So how do we stop him?”
“Oh, my dear Inspector,” a voice croons from the intercom. Red lasers cut through the darkness, and bright dots begin to dance over Lestrade and John. “You don’t.”
-----
“You didn’t really think it was going be as easy as all that, Sherlock dearest?”
Sherlock’s gaze darts between Lestrade and John, and he watches in horror as the two of them are caught in the beams of a dozen snipers, red dots moving about their chests and foreheads, any one of the points a perfect kill shot. John rises from his crouch, slowly, holds his hands up in the air and locks his jaw in anger. Lestrade doesn’t move, except for his eyes, which settle on Sherlock.
“I did say that you were going to have to make a choice,” Moriarty goes on. “And I wasn’t about to leave that up to chance, now, was I? You certainly didn’t think I was going to let it happen without an audience; where would be the fun in that? And don’t bother looking for the snipers, dear, this is all automated and completely under my control.”
“Sherlock, what’s he talking about? What choice?” Lestrade asks, a warning in his tone. Six snipers trained on him, and he still finds the reserves to be scolding.
“Shut up, Greg,” Sherlock snaps.
“Oh Greg, is it?” Moriarty coos. “That’s a new one.”
“Choice, what do you mean choice?” Sherlock asks instead, knowing perfectly well what Moriarty means but trying to buy himself some time to think.
“It means, dear,” Moriarty says, his voice silk, “that at your word, one of these dear boys will live... and the other will get a bullet placed in his brain.”
“Why?”
“Because it amuses me.”
“And if I choose neither?”
“Then they both die.” There is a pause. “You have fifty minutes, Sherlock. Take your time. Make the choice.”
“Don’t you dare,” Lestrade says when Sherlock opens his mouth, his words coming immediately on the heels of Moriarty’s. “You know what that means, don’t you? Fifty minutes until integration. You find out how he’s doing that and you stop him, Sherlock. Don’t bother with this game of his.”
“Don’t be a fool, I’m not going to play his game,” Sherlock sneers. He curls his hand into a fist to quell the tremors suddenly wracking it, trying to get his thoughts under control. “I’ll get you both out of this, just - just give me a moment to think.”
“You can’t do both,” Lestrade says levelly. “You can’t save the ship and the two of us.”
“I can.”
Sherlock whirls away and goes over to the nearest computer station, attempting to tap into it and see if he can access the controls for the automated snipers.
“You can’t,” John breaks in gently. “Greg’s right. The ship is more important. You have to save it, Sherlock.”
“Don’t you dare put us before the lives of everyone else on this vessel,” Lestrade says, firm. “Or I swear to God, Sherlock Holmes, I will never forgive you.”
“I don’t care about the bloody ship,” Sherlock snarls, irritated. The ship doesn’t matter, and why should it? London City is only interesting because of John; only enjoyable because of Lestrade. Without them, the ship is nothing.
Without them, Sherlock is nothing.
“That’s irrational, and you know it,” Lestrade admonishes. “Even if you were to get us out, we’d then be living on a ship under Moriarty’s command. What kind of a life is that?”
“Provided we live long enough after that to have a life,” John mutters under his breath, and Sherlock shoots him a glare. Why can’t they see, why can’t they understand? What good is the ship to him if they are no longer alive? There’s no way he’d ever choose ten million strangers over John and Lestrade.
“The clock is ticking, dear,” Moriarty cuts in. “Heartwarming as this all is, I could use a decision right about now. Which one of them will it be?”
“Fuck off,” Sherlock growls.
“Well, that’s not very nice. And it’s not really one of the choices I gave you, is it?”
“You can take your choices and shove them up your arse,” Lestrade says suddenly. He lifts his chin in a gesture that Sherlock recognizes means he’s made up his mind--but about what, Sherlock can’t be sure. “He’s not making one.”
“Lestrade, shut up,” Sherlock hisses.
“Quiet, Sherlock,” Lestrade says gently. “You said it yourself, Moriarty spent this entire day trying to distract you. Trying to keep you away from this room. Now, why would he do that?”
“Because the mechanism for his integration is here,” Sherlock answers automatically. Lestrade nods.
“I’m guessing that the quickest way to stop his integration is by shutting down the main computer, am I right?”
“We can’t,” Sherlock says. The main computer has at least a score of safeguards to prevent it from ever shutting down. Sherlock has no doubt that he could break through the computer’s defenses, but it would take him days.
They barely have minutes left.
“You can’t,” Moriarty puts in cheerfully.
“And I’d wager that these things are designed to go off if one of us makes a sudden movement,” Lestrade goes on, heedless of their answers. “Is that right?”
Sherlock and John exchange an uneasy glance.
“Greg,” John says, warning. “What are you going on about?”
“These... automated sniper things. If one of us attempts an escape, they’ll shoot that person, right? Otherwise, what’s the point? No use having them trained on us if John or I could just walk away without any consequences.”
“What of it?” Sherlock growls, panic beginning to tinge his words.
“Well...” Lestrade trails off, dragging the tip of his tongue across cracked lips as he considers his next words. “Perhaps Moriarty should have thought of that before deciding to use them. Because... turns out, I’m standing in front of the main computer.”
“Don’t - !”
Sherlock’s shout dies on his tongue as Lestrade dodges to the left, his agile movement reminiscent of his football days. There is a brief warning whine, and then six cracks rent the still air.
Lestrade falls.
The shots go clean through Lestrade and slam into the computer console just behind him. Seconds later, the damage causes the main computer to overload, blowing out every station in the room and sending Sherlock and John ducking for cover as fire rains down around their heads.
And then there is silence.
-------
Part Six
------
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
Part Four
Notes: The final part will be up by Sunday or, at the most, by next Friday. However, if you absolutely cannot handle cliffhangers, I would suggest holding off on reading this part until then. But I will reiterate that all of the warnings on the first chapter are applicable throughout the fic, and I haven't any surprises waiting.
That being said, enjoy! And feedback is always welcome.
Lestrade arrives on Level 35 out of breath and sticky with perspiration, but he can’t afford to stop and rest. The main control room is only minutes away, and then maybe they can end this whole ordeal.
He dashes down a dim corridor and ducks under a bulkhead that is frozen halfway through the act of closing. The cabins are eerily quiet as he jogs by them. He’s in Section 17, and the main control room is in Section 1. As he nears the non-operational lift, a noise that he can’t identify catches his ears. It eventually solidifies into men’s voices, and when he rounds a corner he nearly slams headlong into Sherlock.
“Sherlock!” he gasps, fighting the urge to grab the man in a crushing embrace. Sherlock looks just as startled--and just as torn--as he. But then Lestrade realises that they aren’t alone, and he tries to make sense of the scene around him.
Both Sherlock and John are panting, John leaning against the wall while he tries to catch his breath. Half a dozen of the ship’s small hull repair bots are scattered around them, all in various stages of deactivation. Some are already still; others are giving valiant, final twitches before shutting down for good.
“Good lord,” Lestrade mutters as he takes in John’s clothes and the blood drying on his face. “What happened, mate?”
“Those damned robots,” John spits. “The - the hull repair ones. Moriarty reprogrammed them. They can’t distinguish between metal and flesh, so they’ve been targeting me as something that needs to be fixed. Sherlock disabled them.”
“Feedback loop,” Sherlock says distractedly, pulling out his mobile to--presumably--check the time. “Fairly simple, I only needed one to manage it. They’re all connected to one another, like one massive consciousness. Something goes wrong with one’s programming, they all feel it.”
“Moriarty?” Lestrade asks, ignoring the bit about the robots which, frankly, largely goes over his head. He hasn’t heard the madman’s name spoken in over a year, but truth be told, he isn’t surprised to learn that Moriarty is capable of engineering something on this scale. “He’s the one behind all of this?”
“Yes, but I’ll explain on the way,” Sherlock says hastily. “We must get to the control room. We haven’t got time to waste on idle chat.”
“That’s where I’ve been headed. Either of you have a weapon?”
“Got my gun,” John says, still trying to catch his breath. “Doesn’t have any bullets left, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Figured you wouldn’t have one,” Lestrade says when Sherlock remains silent. He digs the penknife out of his pocket. “Take that for me, mate, and give an old man peace of mind, eh? Right. Let’s go.”
------
They make it as far as Section 5 before they come across a series of cabins that still have occupants in them. Sherlock hesitates briefly, but then makes noises about moving on--five cabins aren’t worth the mystery awaiting him in the main control room. Lestrade goes grey and looks torn. John knows immediately what he’s going to do.
“You two go,” he orders briskly. “I’ll meet up with you in the control room.”
“But -”
“No, Sherlock, don’t even try,” John interrupts sharply. “I’m no use to you in the main control room. I don’t know a thing about computer programs, but you both do. So you two handle Moriarty; I’ll take care of these people.”
Sherlock looks as though he’s about to argue further, but Lestrade grabs his elbow.
“He’s right,” he says, “and we need to keep moving. Be careful, John.”
John tries to crack a grin, but it feels all wrong on his face.
“You know me,” he says lightly, “never one for risks. Now go.”
------
“So, Moriarty,” Lestrade says when the silence after John’s departure becomes too much. He and Sherlock are making their way down a corridor with only two torches to light their way. The lights in this section of the ship have failed entirely, even the emergency ones. “What’s he want this time?”
Sherlock shakes his head a moment, and then says, “He’s bored.”
“He took over the ship because he was bored?”
“He strapped bombs to six innocent people last year because he was bored.” The silence that follows is hesitant, and Lestrade knows that Sherlock is going to continue. After a minute, he says, “I once blew up your kitchen because I was bored.”
“You’re not like him,” Lestrade says at once. “You’re different.”
“Am I?” Sherlock kicks a twisted piece of metal out of his path--debris from the accident. “If it had not been into your hands I fell all those years ago, where do you think I would have ended up?”
Lestrade stops. Sherlock doesn’t notice for three full paces, and then turns around, shining his light full in Lestrade’s face.
“What?” he says impatiently. “We’ve got -”
“You did, though,” Lestrade says softly. “Fall into my hands. So what does it matter what may or may not have happened otherwise?”
Sherlock looks as though he wants to argue further, but then he simply shakes his head again and says, “Come. We should keep moving.”
They pass through three more sections in silence before Sherlock breaks it again, wrenching Lestrade from his troubled thoughts.
“You’re wrong.”
“Hey?”
“You,” Sherlock’s eyes flick to him, “are wrong.”
“Yeah, got that, but what about this time?”
The pause that follows is lengthy, and Lestrade doesn’t believe he’ll get a response until Sherlock speaks again.
“About what you said back there. You aren’t old.”
Lestrade snorts.
“I could be your father.”
“Only if you started in your teens.”
“My parents did.” Lestrade softens his words with a crooked smile. “I am old, but it’s all right. It doesn’t bother me like it used to.”
And isn’t that the truth, Lestrade thinks as they set off once again. Five years--hell, even three years ago--that wouldn’t have been a sentence he ever could have uttered. Things were bad when he first met Sherlock, an event that coincided with his fortieth birthday and seemed to drive home the fact that his generation would be gone in another few decades, leaving humanity’s fate in the hands of humans who had never been to Earth. It had been difficult for Lestrade to reconcile sleeping with--and, eventually, coming to care for--one of the ship rats, and he had spiraled during their first two years together. But somehow they had managed to pick one another up; had even kicked their respective addictions together.
No, it doesn’t bother him any longer that he’s growing older, even with a lover eighteen years his junior who could certainly do better than a harried Inspector from Scotland Yard.
It doesn’t bother him, because of Sherlock.
“Sherlock?”
Lestrade slows to a halt. Sherlock, some feet ahead of him, stops and turns around.
“What now, Lestrade?”
A thousand words claw at Lestrade’s tight throat.
You’re amazing. You’re bloody brilliant and downright gorgeous. You’re infuriating and spectacular, and sometimes I don’t know what to do with you but I wouldn’t trade that for the universe.
Instead, he says, “This is my grandfather’s ring.”
He holds up his left hand, and the gold band he’s worn there since his eighteenth birthday glints in the beam of Sherlock’s torch.
“Yes, I’m aware,” Sherlock says slowly, confusion furrowing his brow. “Look, this isn’t really the time -”
“It was his wedding ring,” Lestrade interrupts. “It’s the only thing left of him, actually, the only thing my mother had time to grab before we left the planet. And... And I always thought, if ever I found someone, someone as important and rare as this... I’d give it to them.”
Even in the darkness, Lestrade is sure that Sherlock has lost what little colour he had left in his face.
“Lestrade -” he starts, and then stops abruptly. “You are being foolish.”
“No,” Lestrade says with a laugh. “No, I think this is probably the wisest thing I’ve done in a while.”
Lestrade slides the ring off thickened fingers with minimal difficulty.
“Take it,” he says, holding it out. “Please.”
“I can’t -”
“You say,” Lestrade interrupts, “that you don’t know where you’d be now if you hadn’t fallen into my hands. Well, the truth is... I don’t know where I’d be without you. And I also don’t know if we’ll see tomorrow, but I do know that you’re the reason I get up in the mornings. So... take this. For me.”
Sherlock, his face carefully neutral, considers the ring for a beat before plucking it from Lestrade’s hand and sliding it onto his own. It fits only because his hands are warm and swollen from their exertions, and Lestrade decides that he likes the look of it on Sherlock’s hand.
They then stare at one another, silent, until Lestrade finally clears his throat.
“Keep moving?”
Sherlock nods briskly, almost relieved.
“Yes.”
They press on.
------
The sliding door to the control room is open only a fraction, and there is nothing but darkness beyond. Lestrade curls a hand around the door and shoves it open a few more inches, enough so that he can slide a shoulder through and force it open halfway. He then pulls out his torch and flips it on again.
A man’s body is propped up in a corner, a blanket from an emergency first aid kit drawn up to his shoulders. Dried blood cakes his face, and his eyes have been closed. His death looks like it was painful, and Lestrade sends up a swift thanks that it appears to have also been quick.
Another man is slumped over his workstation, but his back rises and falls, indicating that he’s still breathing. He has simply been knocked unconscious. There’s an unconscious woman next to him. Lestrade verifies that they’re both relatively unharmed otherwise before casting a glance around the rest of the room.
In the center of the room, up on a dais, is Mycroft Holmes’s empty chair--his home for the past ten years. Wires and cables hang from the ceiling and snake up from the arms of the contraption. Once, they had hooked into his mind and body. Now, they hang loose, and some had obviously been ripped away in a hurry--those still have blood on the ends of them.
Mycroft is nowhere to be seen.
Lestrade lets out a low whistle as he surveys the chaos. Sherlock, if he is affected by any of this, doesn’t show it. He turns to the controls instead.
“Right, then,” he mutters to himself, bringing a computer panel back to life with just a touch, “let’s see what’s been going on here.”
All around the room, one by one, computer screens start to flicker on again. Lestrade taps the screen of the one nearest him while Sherlock busies himself with another.
According to the computer, at least two hundred cabins have lost atmosphere. If they were occupied, then at a minimum the ship has lost that many people. Casualty reports from the Infirmary indicate that dozens more are injured, many gravely, and that the medical staff has lost a good number of people.
“Sherlock, take a look at this,” Lestrade says finally, his gaze drawn to the clock at the corner of his computer screen, and Sherlock comes to stand over his shoulder.
“Interesting,” Sherlock mutters under his breath, staring at the readout. The clock is counting down, not displaying a time, as Lestrade had first believed.
“Yeah, strange, isn’t it? Why do you think it’s doing that?”
Sherlock shakes his head.
“Moriarty has been so adamant about the time. He gave me five hours to figure out how to repair the breaches in my cabin. Having passed that test, Moriarty then gave me only three hours to find you and John. But I found you, and yet the clock is apparently still ticking. We’re down to less than one hour. But what happens in one hour?” Sherlock glances at Lestrade. “This section of the ship is safe. Relatively, at least. It could survive for several more months even if we don’t fix all of the breaches. So what’s so important about one hour from now?”
Sherlock’s face lights suddenly, and he whirls away. He jogs over to Mycroft’s chair and sits in it, heedless of the bloody wires dangling in his face, and starts to manipulate the computer interfaces on the arms of the massive chair.
“He’s up to something,” Sherlock mutters. “He must be. And I don’t just mean the breaches and the robots and the game.”
“That’s all a distraction,” Lestrade ventures, cold flooding his veins, and Sherlock nods.
“Very likely. But what could he possibly need to distract us from?”
“Something big,” Lestrade puts in. He folds his arms across his chest and watches Sherlock work. “But he’s already done about the biggest thing there is, and that’s to connect to the main computer. He has the ship. What could be bigger than that?”
Sherlock blinks, and looks at him.
“Unless...”
Lestrade feels his eyes widen.
“Unless... unless he’s not quite as connected to the ship as he wants us to believe.”
Sherlock springs from his chair and bolts across the room, heading for the main computer panel. Lestrade can only guess at what he’s looking for, but his expression is frantic.
And then, a moment later, it is triumphant.
“Look at this,” he breathes, and Lestrade comes to stand by his shoulder. He can’t make sense of the lines of code Sherlock is pointing at as he taps the computer screen with one long finger, but Sherlock’s expression tells him that they have stumbled onto the key to this whole ordeal.
“What is it?” Lestrade asks.
“This entire thing,” Sherlock says slowly, “was manufactured by Moriarty as a distraction. The meteoroids, the game, getting me to choose... he needed to keep me busy. He knows I’m the only one on this vessel capable of figuring out his plan, and the only one capable of stopping him. And so...”
“And so what?”
Sherlock looks up. The dim red light emanating from the computer screen lights his face from below, and the strange shadows cast across the sharp planes of his face make him appear severe.
“And so he manufactured a distraction built around the only thing in my life ever to give me pause,” Sherlock says gravely.
Lestrade stares at him blankly for a moment, uncomprehending--and then he flushes. He breaks Sherlock’s gaze, passes a hand over his mouth, and finally says, “What’s his big plan, then? Why’d he need you out of the way?”
“He’s trying to integrate himself into the computer,” Sherlock says in a low, rushed voice. “He’s trying to become the ship. But it’s not an instantaneous procedure. It took Mycroft decades to become what he is now. Moriarty figured out a faster way, I don’t know how, but he’s manufactured this entire day so he can manage it unmolested. And he’s nearly there. Fifty-five more minutes and we’ll have lost the ship. Forever.”
“How do we stop him?”
But at that moment the door creaks open again, and John staggers through.
“Got everyone out,” he says before they can ask. His eyes flick to the bodies of the staff strewn about the room.
“Unconscious, near as we can tell, except for the one,” Lestrade says quickly as John starts for the nearest staffer. He begins checking them over anyway, and Lestrade turns back to Sherlock and repeats, “So how do we stop him?”
“Oh, my dear Inspector,” a voice croons from the intercom. Red lasers cut through the darkness, and bright dots begin to dance over Lestrade and John. “You don’t.”
-----
“You didn’t really think it was going be as easy as all that, Sherlock dearest?”
Sherlock’s gaze darts between Lestrade and John, and he watches in horror as the two of them are caught in the beams of a dozen snipers, red dots moving about their chests and foreheads, any one of the points a perfect kill shot. John rises from his crouch, slowly, holds his hands up in the air and locks his jaw in anger. Lestrade doesn’t move, except for his eyes, which settle on Sherlock.
“I did say that you were going to have to make a choice,” Moriarty goes on. “And I wasn’t about to leave that up to chance, now, was I? You certainly didn’t think I was going to let it happen without an audience; where would be the fun in that? And don’t bother looking for the snipers, dear, this is all automated and completely under my control.”
“Sherlock, what’s he talking about? What choice?” Lestrade asks, a warning in his tone. Six snipers trained on him, and he still finds the reserves to be scolding.
“Shut up, Greg,” Sherlock snaps.
“Oh Greg, is it?” Moriarty coos. “That’s a new one.”
“Choice, what do you mean choice?” Sherlock asks instead, knowing perfectly well what Moriarty means but trying to buy himself some time to think.
“It means, dear,” Moriarty says, his voice silk, “that at your word, one of these dear boys will live... and the other will get a bullet placed in his brain.”
“Why?”
“Because it amuses me.”
“And if I choose neither?”
“Then they both die.” There is a pause. “You have fifty minutes, Sherlock. Take your time. Make the choice.”
“Don’t you dare,” Lestrade says when Sherlock opens his mouth, his words coming immediately on the heels of Moriarty’s. “You know what that means, don’t you? Fifty minutes until integration. You find out how he’s doing that and you stop him, Sherlock. Don’t bother with this game of his.”
“Don’t be a fool, I’m not going to play his game,” Sherlock sneers. He curls his hand into a fist to quell the tremors suddenly wracking it, trying to get his thoughts under control. “I’ll get you both out of this, just - just give me a moment to think.”
“You can’t do both,” Lestrade says levelly. “You can’t save the ship and the two of us.”
“I can.”
Sherlock whirls away and goes over to the nearest computer station, attempting to tap into it and see if he can access the controls for the automated snipers.
“You can’t,” John breaks in gently. “Greg’s right. The ship is more important. You have to save it, Sherlock.”
“Don’t you dare put us before the lives of everyone else on this vessel,” Lestrade says, firm. “Or I swear to God, Sherlock Holmes, I will never forgive you.”
“I don’t care about the bloody ship,” Sherlock snarls, irritated. The ship doesn’t matter, and why should it? London City is only interesting because of John; only enjoyable because of Lestrade. Without them, the ship is nothing.
Without them, Sherlock is nothing.
“That’s irrational, and you know it,” Lestrade admonishes. “Even if you were to get us out, we’d then be living on a ship under Moriarty’s command. What kind of a life is that?”
“Provided we live long enough after that to have a life,” John mutters under his breath, and Sherlock shoots him a glare. Why can’t they see, why can’t they understand? What good is the ship to him if they are no longer alive? There’s no way he’d ever choose ten million strangers over John and Lestrade.
“The clock is ticking, dear,” Moriarty cuts in. “Heartwarming as this all is, I could use a decision right about now. Which one of them will it be?”
“Fuck off,” Sherlock growls.
“Well, that’s not very nice. And it’s not really one of the choices I gave you, is it?”
“You can take your choices and shove them up your arse,” Lestrade says suddenly. He lifts his chin in a gesture that Sherlock recognizes means he’s made up his mind--but about what, Sherlock can’t be sure. “He’s not making one.”
“Lestrade, shut up,” Sherlock hisses.
“Quiet, Sherlock,” Lestrade says gently. “You said it yourself, Moriarty spent this entire day trying to distract you. Trying to keep you away from this room. Now, why would he do that?”
“Because the mechanism for his integration is here,” Sherlock answers automatically. Lestrade nods.
“I’m guessing that the quickest way to stop his integration is by shutting down the main computer, am I right?”
“We can’t,” Sherlock says. The main computer has at least a score of safeguards to prevent it from ever shutting down. Sherlock has no doubt that he could break through the computer’s defenses, but it would take him days.
They barely have minutes left.
“You can’t,” Moriarty puts in cheerfully.
“And I’d wager that these things are designed to go off if one of us makes a sudden movement,” Lestrade goes on, heedless of their answers. “Is that right?”
Sherlock and John exchange an uneasy glance.
“Greg,” John says, warning. “What are you going on about?”
“These... automated sniper things. If one of us attempts an escape, they’ll shoot that person, right? Otherwise, what’s the point? No use having them trained on us if John or I could just walk away without any consequences.”
“What of it?” Sherlock growls, panic beginning to tinge his words.
“Well...” Lestrade trails off, dragging the tip of his tongue across cracked lips as he considers his next words. “Perhaps Moriarty should have thought of that before deciding to use them. Because... turns out, I’m standing in front of the main computer.”
“Don’t - !”
Sherlock’s shout dies on his tongue as Lestrade dodges to the left, his agile movement reminiscent of his football days. There is a brief warning whine, and then six cracks rent the still air.
Lestrade falls.
The shots go clean through Lestrade and slam into the computer console just behind him. Seconds later, the damage causes the main computer to overload, blowing out every station in the room and sending Sherlock and John ducking for cover as fire rains down around their heads.
And then there is silence.
-------
Part Six
------