by Janina Woods
“And what makes you think we would agree to that?” Watson said through gritted teeth. “This doesn’t sound like a very fair offer to me.”
“Oh, because the only alternative is my agents detonating the explosives while we are all in here,” Moriarty shrugged. “I’d be killed, as well, but this would eradicate all chances for your precious Sherlock instantly. Your call. Please, take your time discussing. I will be right here.”
He raised part his robe to reveal a bag hanging around his shoulders under the cloth. From this he produced a small package made of paper. We all braced ourselves, but felt a bit silly when all the professor pulled out of it was a pastry dusted with sugar. He bit into it with vigour.
“Anyone fancy a bite?” he held the baked good out to us. “No? Fine. More for myself.”
We turned towards each other, but I still kept an eye on Moriarty while we talked. Watson was of the opinion to take the chance. The explosives weren’t directly above us. If we could take out Moriarty, we should try our luck. Victoria was cautiously agreeing, but not quite as sure about the placement of the explosives. Myself, I wasn’t sure about anything, but least of all I wanted the catacomb to crash down on us.
“I do have to thank you, Mycroft,” Moriarty smiled then. “The curse was meant for your brother only, but it seems it worked just as well on a person sharing the same blood.”
“Curse?” Watson asked.
“More of a... tracking spell. It fell on you when you touched the sand in London, so we could always know where you are. Don’t worry, it was canceled out when you touched that stone before. But that doesn’t matter, because I’ll know where you’ll be until the end of your life: Right here.”
I bristled at the notion that I should’ve been under a spell, but it explained so many things that I couldn’t find the words.
“Liar,” Victoria spat.
“It doesn’t matter if you think me speaking lies. I have bent ancient magic to my will, and it will only be a matter of time before I bend you as well. Oh, talking about ancient magic, do you have any wishes for your last meal before I kill you all? When I come back, I can bring you your last supper.“
I stayed silent while Victoria and Watson discussed our options. Both brought forth good arguments, but I had never been the person to listen to the opinions of others. We had to get out of here, and there was only one way, I was sure of it.
“No need to watch out for your figure anymore, either. Eat whatever unhealthy things you want. That is the privilege of those about to die,” the professor continued.
He seemed intent to throw us off at every corner. Watson became visibly annoyed by Moriarty’s comments.
“If it’s quite alright with you two, I think I’d prefer an afternoon tea spread,” I said then and made the decision for us all - doing what I always did best: improvise.
“Excellent choice, my dear Mycroft. You should expect me back in about... well, let me see... a week?” Moriarty smiled like a cat who got the mouse and the cream at the same time.
I ignored the disbelieving stares of my companions and returned the professor’s expression. “A week it is. See you then.”
“Wait!” Victoria shouted. “What has gotten into...”
I grabbed her arm and stared into her eyes with silent emphasis, then shook my head. Watson was silenced much easier with just a glance, telling him to refrain from contradicting me or trying anything. He was conditioned to listen to the orders of a Holmes - it didn’t seem to matter which one it was. But then something surprising happened. The good doctor visibly steeled himself and turned towards Moriarty, smiling.
“If I might... could you look into some strawberry jam? I can’t have my scones without a bit of strawberry jam,” he added.
“Indeed, indeed. Absolutely fantastic,” Moriarty clapped his hands excitedly. “I will send out my associates at once. We should be able to find some strawberry jam in Egypt.”
I had to suppress my laughter at the doctor’s performance. Victoria wasn’t as happy. “Are you all mad?” her shoulders slumped and she put her face in her hand. All of us looked at her, including Moriarty. Then she broke out into a nervous laughter.
“How wonderful to see that we are all on the same page now,” Moriarty nodded and popped the last piece of his pastry into his mouth, which was now also dusted with an obscene amount of sugar. “I will be leaving now. Just to remind you: My agents are still inside the catacombs. Trying to come after me would result in an ugly death.” Moriarty turned around with a flourish, which made his robe fan out like a cloak. Within seconds he had disappeared into the darkness behind the entrance of the room.
We waited until the sounds of Moriarty’s footsteps on the wooden planks disappeared completely. Victoria sank to the floor, head in her hands, and Watson seemed like he wanted to do the same. Instead he looked to me, waiting for an explanation of my plan, silently hoping I had one at all.
“If all fails, we’ll at least have a nice last meal,” I offered.
“What were you thinking?” Victoria sighed.
“That’s not the man, who left London all those years ago. His injuries, the years watching his network being dismantled and the influence of this dreadful cult have made him a different person. I could see only a small spark of the rational math professor underneath it all,” I shook my head disappointedly. “If he was dangerous before, he was at least predictable to a certain degree. You could reason with him, if only within a small margin. This man is crazy. These people are the most dangerous, because you can never predict their actions.”
“So all that talk about keeping us here was a lie?” Watson asked.
“No, I think he intends to keep us alive, at least for as long as the sacrifice hasn’t been made. He is going to great lengths to make sure Sherlock’s death is benefitting him by making sure all conditions that the cult requires are perfect. And these conditions seem to include following the rules of this dreaded game. House of Water indeed.” I spat.
“I don’t care why he does it. Just what do we do now?” Victoria groaned. “This is nothing like I’ve ever encountered before.”
I took a seat next to her on the floor. “I can now understand how he might have threatened Elizabeth into working for him - why she was frightened enough to perform these abominable tasks. For now, agreeing to his plan was the quickest way to get rid of him.”
“You are right, of course,” Watson nodded. “But we need to get out of here quickly. If we really need two days to get to the sacrificial site, we cannot afford to waste another hour.”
“We need to scout...”
I Saw the Face... of a Demon
I couldn’t finish my sentence, because we were interrupted by a loud, echoing noise and a strong vibration in the ground and walls surrounding us, which knocked Watson off his feet. He stumbled and fell between Victoria and me. We immediately grabbed him and dragged his body underneath the large desk to seek shelter. It hadn’t been a moment too late, as the shelves started collapsing and a large number of books and various other objects fell around us as the ground continued to jerk violently. The cacophony of breaking glass and metal instruments hitting the stone floor told me that even the chemical instruments were being destroyed by the shaking.
I closed my eyes to protect them and so the only things I could sense were the noises of rumbling stones, that rubbed against each other in the walls, splintered wood and fractured glass. Years of dust were disturbed and flared up, filling the air with the particles of ancient things and made it hard to breathe. I covered my head with my jacket, hoping to avoid breathing it in, knowing it could prove hazardous, should I even survive this whole ordeal.
After what seemed like a small eternity, the stones stopped their vibrations and the dust started to settle again. I opened my eyes to behold the devastation around us. The room was utterly ruined.
Like a small miracle, a single candle was still alive in the middle of the rubble, illuminating a small radius around it and the dust particles floating in the air.
“Do you still have the lamp?” Victoria asked and the question seemed so normal in the midst of this destruction, I had to huff with a small bout of laughter, but then shook my head.
“I left it near the candles. Sorry.”
“No worries,” she nodded and got up from underneath the desk to search for the lamp, as if nothing had happened.
“Are you alright, Dr. Watson?” I asked the man, who was still holding onto my jacket, which he quickly remedied with a muttered apology.
“I don’t seem to be hurt. Thank god for your quick reaction.”
“This is what I warned you about - he’s completely unpredictable! He detonated the explosives anyway!” I shouted as soon as I emerged from the space under the desk, then punched the wall accompanied by a rather violent shout. “I should never have tried to reason with him, just shoot him right there and then. Now he walks free, Sherlock will be killed and all we can do is sit here and die slowly!”
Victoria had found the lamp and lit the wick on the small candle. She turned around to us and frowned. “Mycroft, stop this right now. There is no time to wallow in self-pity, so don’t even start. As you might have noticed, the fresh air supply has been cut off, so we need to act quickly if we are to have even half a chance of ever getting out of here.”
I turned around, still breathing heavily. My eyes were narrowed and there was no mistaking my expression for anything but barely restrained wrath. ‘How dare she talk to me like that?’ my mind readily supplied, but through years of practice the words didn’t leave my mouth. I clutched my fingers tightly in order to regain some resemblance control, but knew I would fail if pushed any further.
“Give me a minute,” I managed tensely and closed my eyes.
“One minute,” she replied and turned around.
I sat, willing the heat in my heart to go away and return to rational thought. Watson had the good sense to stay quiet and busied himself by searching through the scrolls. Then the room turned brighter and I and opened my eyes to see Victoria emerge from the doorway again. Her shoes and trousers were dripping on the dusty floor.
“I have good news and bad news,” she said.
“There is good news?” I answered in a sarcastic tone of voice.
“Stop that infernal attitude at once, Mycroft Holmes. I gave you your miserable minute! You’re insufferable once you get like this, and I won’t have it. Not right now!” Victoria shouted with a vengeance, almost throwing the lamp to the floor in the progress. “If your inactivity is what leads to us dying down here, I will personally bring you back to life and kill you again with my bare hands!”
We locked eyes in a silent dispute - one even the doctor dared not interrupt. I had half a mind to start up a fight, but by now my own fiery anger had burned down to just a little flame, and I made a conscious effort to extinguish it for good. Then I rose carefully and righted my clothing, getting rid of creases and patting dust from the surface. Finally, I smoothed down my hair in a gesture familiar to my companions.
“The detonation happened in the upper levels of the cistern. It seems that Moriarty wasn’t lying when he told us that the explosives were hidden inside the mummies. Most of the stone slabs, which served as stairs, are also destroyed, so I regret to say we don’t have the option of climbing them to get out,” Victoria explained. She held the lamp into the doorway, and we walked closer to see that the water level was now much higher. “The rubble of the collapsed stairs has accumulated in the water and made it rise, but we can still walk through the tunnel.”
“We have to leave before we run out of air,” I frowned. “There is no telling how much longer this chamber will hold up. Moriarty might have let the explosives go off to trap us here, but this is an old structure and even he couldn’t know what the consequences of his actions would be.”
“I trust your judgement, Mycroft,” Watson said calmly, and it felt strange for him to sound so sincere just after he had seen me acting badly, but I could detect no lie in his voice. Victoria put a hand on my arm and nodded at me with a smile. I nodded in response and motioned for her to show us the way out of the ruined room, but not before I stopped and picked up some of the candles.
With my face turned away from the others, I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath in an effort to compose myself. This wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. I’d get them out of here, and if I was to die in the process, so be it.
To immerse myself in the water, which reached up to my waist, was an expectedly unpleasant experience - made even more so by the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to dry off until I’d reached the surface again. Icy cold and dark, the water sloshed around as we carefully waded through it. The explosion had agitated the foul air and made the rotten smell even worse. I held my arms high and kept both hands on the ceiling of the tunnel to keep them at least a bit dry. The collapsed walkway lay strewn around on the bottom of the tunnel and we cautiously inched forward so as to not misstep and fall completely into the dirty liquid. It was impossible to see through anything in this murky atmosphere. Even though I was walking right behind her, the light of the lamp in Victoria’s hand only reached me partially, and I had to fumble through the darkness, more feeling than seeing.
Oh, Sherlock would pay dearly for making me go through this.
We reached the central cylinder, and while there were enough steps left for us to all stand inside, the way upwards was clearly cut off. Victoria examined the remains of the few steps still left embedded in the wall and the holes left by other, completely collapsed ones, while I observed the water in the light of the oil lamp. Watson did his best to illuminate the wall for Victoria with a candle he had lit on the lamp wick.
“We might be able to climb this,” Victoria shrugged. “But there is no telling if the upper tunnel is collapsed or not. I don’t know if we should risk it.”
“Do we have another option?” Watson asked. “If the tunnel is open, one of us could lower a rope to help the others.”
“I should do it - I’m the lightest. If we are to take the chance, we have to do it now while I still have my strength,” Victoria offered.
“That might not be necessary,” I interrupted their discussion. “Do you see the water level?”
They turned around to see me point at the wall next to me, where the water now stood about half a metre above the platform in front of the doorway. Then I pointed to the stones lying in the water behind me.
“The stone stairs were about a metre wide and I counted forty-eight of them, roughly forty of which could be down in the water right now. Given the volume of stone, the water level should be much higher, but it has only risen this little,” I explained. “There must be a way for the water to escape, and we could take the same route.”
“But how can we tell where that is?” the doctor asked nervously. “We would have to dive, but it’s pitch black down there!”
“The staircase goes all the way to the bottom. I believe there was never supposed to be water down here, but it filled up over the centuries. It would have risen further if not for a possibility to escape somewhere else. There may well be another tunnel down there, that we are missing,” I explained. “And, yes, the only option to find out for sure is for one of us to dive into it. I will do it.”
“That sounds dangerous, Mycroft. We don’t even know if a person can get out that way,” Victoria said. “I wouldn’t...”
“No, I have to do it. The only other options are to climb or starve. Climbing will most certainly lead to injury, and to just sit here isn’t really an option at all. If I find nothing, we can look to other possibilities, and you can do what you like.”
She nodded reluctantly
“The doorway can only be beneath us,
following the progression of the steps and the remaining height of the space,” I sighed inwardly. “Hold this as close to the water surface as you dare while I dive.”
I handed Victoria the same silver device she had previously employed to light our way through the catacombs. It was a standard issue item for the Secret Service and would provide a much brighter light than the oil lamp, but only for a few minutes. I strapped all clothes tighter to my body, before slowly I descended the steps that were still immersed in the water. As soon as it reached to my shoulders, I took the plunge and swam over to the platform the other two were standing on. Victoria, also in the water up to her thighs, smiled at me and twisted the little cylinder, which immediately started to emit a light so bright it was almost blinding in contrast to the dim, flickering fire.
“See you in a bit,” I smiled and took a deep breath.
The cold assaulted all my senses at once as my head was fully immersed in the murky depths. Since the water was still partially clear, I had a bit of vision, and I carefully kept above ground to avoid stirring up any more mud.
House of Water, indeed...
As expected, there was another opening right beneath us, and I dove straight down to examine it. The platform above had protected it from being obstructed with debris, but while I could make out the rough shape of objects in my vicinity, what lay behind the door might as well have been a bottomless abyss in pitch black darkness. There was still air in my lungs, so I opted to swim into the tunnel. My eyes took a few moments to adjust, but as they did I could make out a partly collapsed hallway disappearing into the distance. My first thought was that the explosion made it collapse, but on closer inspection I could scratch years of sediment from the rocks. Well, if it had held out that long...
Now my air was running out. I turned around and swam straight towards the single light above the surface, almost bumping into the lamp that Victoria drew back at the last second. Gasping for air I managed to position myself sitting on the platform, head just above the water surface, shivering. Still, there was no reason to leave it, as I would have to dive again. My skin was red from the cold and I wiped my eyes, blinking into the bright, artificial light of the small cylinder.