The Case of the Displaced Detective

by Stephanie Osborn

  Lovely, Skye, she thought in disgust. What a filthy mess this is, and all over your little pet theory. Murder, and blackmail, and espionage, and the good Lord only knows what else. And if they manage to get their hands on it, who knows what they’ll do with it? Set up a little crime syndicate, and hope they don’t try to tamper with the timelines? It’s too much to hope they’ll only damage the apparatus, and not actually use it.

  Her shoulders sagged in discouragement.

  * * *

  The slight movement attracted Holmes’ attention, and he studied her face for long moments, reading her thoughts with all the accuracy he had once demonstrated to Watson, a lifetime and a universe ago. Slim fingers on a long, thin hand walked their way unseen along the back of the sofa behind Skye, finally creeping down to her far shoulder.

  * * *

  Skye abruptly felt herself pulled into a wiry body, which had twisted around to provide a cozy backrest.

  “Stop that,” a deep, English voice murmured in her ear. “I’ll not have you blaming yourself yet again because other members of the human race are not possessed of the same moral fibre as the persons currently in this room.”

  “Yeah,” Skye murmured, subdued. “I think I’m just tired, Sherlock. I might go to bed early tonight.”

  Holmes held her gently, pondering her response.

  “Is that all that is wrong, Skye?” he asked finally.

  “Yes—no—oh, I dunno,” she exclaimed in frustration. “It’s like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it’s about to drive me crazy! If I do go to bed, I probably won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Then perhaps…you should go to bed, but not go to sleep.”

  Skye tilted her head back and saw the gleam in his grey eyes.

  “Oh,” she said, as a smile spread across her face. “That’s not a bad idea at all.”

  They stood up hand in hand and turned toward the bedroom door. They didn’t get far.

  Williams burst in.

  “Jenkins is dead!” he exclaimed.

  “What?” both investigators said, spinning toward him.

  * * *

  In short order, a portrait of the day’s events was painted, as Williams gave the pair several additional reports. Major Scott met Jenkins for lunch, passing on the name of a contact on her staff for Jenkins’ “professor.” Per cellphone records, Jenkins passed this information to Professor Haines. Haines got in touch with the contact, and Jenkins went home to meet the government contractor Parker, whose son was one of Jenkins’ last students. Parker came and went, and Jenkins’ house was quiet the rest of the afternoon and evening. But at sundown, the lights in the house did not go on, even though Jenkins was there. This was suspicious, as Jenkins was a man of strong habits, and prone to being a night owl.

  The FBI quickly arranged for a search warrant, and the investigatory team found Jenkins dead in his living room. Cause of death was not yet known.

  “That’s it, then,” Skye said in stunned amazement. “It’s over. ‘Sauron’ is dead.”

  “Do not be so certain, my dear,” Holmes murmured thoughtfully.

  “I dunno about that, either,” Williams agreed, handing them another paper. “I got the Canadian report back, and I’m pretty confused. They’ve been doing some investigating of a particular well-to-do entrepreneurial family suspected of having connections to organized crime, and it turns out that’s the family our little mess seems tied into. Patriarch’s clean, though a few of the kin may be a different story. But the funny part is that Jenkins wasn’t related to ‘em.”

  “But Andrews said he was,” Skye protested.

  “That’s the funny part,” Williams pointed out. “It’s Haines that’s related to ‘em, not Jenkins. In fact, his mum was the patriarch’s sister. Andrews is related too, but not as close, as he said. Seems Haines’ middle name is Peter, which is what the family calls him, and that’s why we got him confused with Jenkins. Here, have a look. It…gets weirder.”

  He handed the Canadian report to Skye. Skye scanned through it and gasped, paling.

  “Oh, no. You gotta be kidding.”

  “Nope. Wish I were.”

  “What is it?” Holmes asked, taking the report from Skye’s limp fingers. He read swiftly down through the report, grey eyes narrowing. “Damnation,” he cursed bitterly. “As I feared. The Moriarty family. Originally of England.”

  * * *

  Despite injuries, Holmes and Skye grabbed their identification, their bulletproof vests, and their firearms, left the saferoom and headed down to Williams’ MI-5 office in the bowels of the hotel. The place was a beehive of activity, with faxes coming in, operatives scurrying in and out, and several phones ringing. Immediately upon his arrival, Williams was handed a note. He scanned it rapidly, then gave it to Holmes.

  “We have the contact name Major Scott provided for Professor Haines,” Holmes observed. “Skye, does the name Joe Morgan mean anything to you?”

  Skye’s eyes widened in shock and horror.

  * * *

  “HELL, yes,” she exclaimed vehemently, and the entire room stopped dead, turning to watch her. “Joe was—NOW I know why I recognized Major Scott! She heads the group that maintains the ultra-secure facilities at Schriever! Joe Morgan was her liaison for the Chamber! Oh, dear Lord! Sherlock, if he gets to Joe, he’ll have a way straight into the tesseract!”

  “He’s got a way in, then,” one of the operatives said grimly. “I was just about to hand Will this other phone transcript, where Haines contacted Morgan. They had an appointment set up for earlier this evening, right after standard close of business.” He glanced meaningfully at the clock on the wall. It read 8:30.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Skye said, trying to calm down. “Harris and Thompson never got their second virus initiated. Even if he gets into the facility, he won’t have access.”

  “Just a moment, Skye.” Holmes’ brow furrowed. “I seem to recall…Billy, did you not state, at some point in recent days, that the military police officer the security video showed crossing the crime scene tape had been taken off report?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Colonel Jones suspected the video was fake, just like the one Dr. Chadwick found. He thought maybe Harris managed to insert the edit into the video computer system earlier—before Thompson showed up—cued to the correct time, then skipped out.”

  “No. Not before.” Holmes turned to Skye, his face pale, his lips compressed. “He was there, Skye,” he said fiercely, grey eyes glinting with a dangerous light. “Harris was there, the whole time. While we confronted Thompson, while you had the gun battle, while you lay in my arms, bleeding almost to death. Harris was there. The system has already been compromised, long since.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Skye whispered, feeling herself paling as her head spun momentarily. Holmes went into action.

  “Billy, contact Colonel Jones, Agent Smith, and General Morris immediately. We will also need a vehicle. We are headed to Schriever, post-haste.”

  “And notify the Colorado Springs P.D. we’re coming through at speed,” Skye added. Sparing a glance at Holmes, she informed him, “I’m driving.”

  “I defer to an experienced constable,” Holmes said without hesitation.

  * * *

  Skye used every bit of training she’d gotten as a first responder, hitting speeds Holmes had never before experienced as she took them across Colorado Springs and onto the prairie as fast as she could drive. Her emergency blinkers were on, and police cruisers provided escorts the entire way. Holmes buckled in tightly, and braced himself in the seat with legs and arms when necessary, but he trusted Skye; her handling of the vehicle was superb, and he had no doubt they would arrive at the base intact.

  At the main gate, Skye and Holmes held up their badges to the guard and were waved through, as the squad cars fell back and peeled away. MPs picked up where the city police left off, taking them right to the door of their office building. Holmes and Skye tum
bled out of the vehicle, and Holmes began barking orders.

  “Cordon off the building. No one goes in or out.”

  “UNLESS,” Skye amended, “they’re on priority list PT1Alpha.”

  The pair disappeared through the front doors as the MPs fanned out to surround the building.

  * * *

  Just inside the door of the Chamber they found Joe Morgan, dead on the floor, a bullet through the back of his head. They also found the tesseract up and operational, though it was apparently in test mode: No other continuum was visible in the core. Skye ran to the director’s console and surveyed the settings.

  “Well?” Holmes asked, leaning over the seated scientist.

  “Gimme a minute,” she said briefly, waking the computer terminal and scrolling through the history.

  “Hurry, Skye,” Holmes urged impatiently. “You know what this means.”

  “Nobody knows better than I do, Sherlock,” she answered shortly, reviewing commands in the toolbar. “Okay, got it.” She shook her head. “It’s not good.”

  “What has he done?”

  “He activated the tesseract, dialed it into another continuum, put it into full focus, and went through. Evidently one of the little features of Thompson’s most recent modification was the ability to shunt the tesseract through multiple continuums once Haines logged in, then drop it into test mode. That way we’d have a hard time telling where he went. There’s probably fifty or more continuums this thing went through before it went to test mode.”

  “Ah. Psychologically, he seems unwilling to have destroyed his only link to his own continuum.”

  “It looks like it,” Skye murmured, then, as a message popped up onscreen, she gasped in horror. “Oh, shit, not quite. Hang on!”

  * * *

  Skye sat down and typed faster than she’d ever typed in her life, hacking the system with every skill she possessed, entering commands into the computer at a machine-gun pace, trying to circumvent what was happening.

  “What is it, Skye?” Holmes demanded to know.

  “HUSH!!” Skye ordered, not taking her eyes from the screen. “Gimme a minute!”

  * * *

  Holmes raised an eyebrow, unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a manner, even by Skye; but he silenced, seeing the tense, frantic expression on her face.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, entering commands and opening the debugger, “come on, come on…work with me, here! THERE! Command aborted!” she exclaimed triumphantly, as the automated sequence was halted. She drew a deep breath and looked up at the detective with a contrite expression. “I’m so sorry, Sherlock. I didn’t mean to bark at you like that, but I had my hands full.”

  “I could see that,” he replied dryly. “Now what happened?”

  “Haines really did try to destroy the tesseract, only not physically.” Skye shook her head. “He had a sequence set up called ‘End World.’ It would have automatically deleted every single bit of information on this computer network. If we’d gotten here two minutes later it would have been too late. We’d have been weeks recovering. And by that time…” Skye paused, paling as the possible implications hit. She stared at Holmes in horror. “Oh, no. He’s trying to destroy the whole continuum set.”

  “Or, more likely, become a new Moriarty. Although in which timestream remains to be seen.” Holmes paused, thinking rapidly. “Of course. There can be only one possibility.”

  “You know which continuum?”

  “I do. The only one in which he knows there is no one to stop him. My own. Skye, can you look through the listing of continua and check?”

  “Give me a couple minutes to recover from this disaster command, and I’ll see.”

  Holmes nodded in reply, and Skye ran through the debugger, finding the point in the software that had been edited to initiate the “End World” command and erasing it. She then saved the software down.

  “I really wish I had help in the software back room, ‘cause then I’d just upload the backed-up version,” she sighed. “Cross your fingers.”

  Skye re-initiated the software and held her breath. Holmes stood over her shoulder, watching tensely.

  When it initialized correctly, and nothing happened, she drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  “We’re back on track. Now let’s see what I can do about finding the right continuum.”

  * * *

  Skye minimized the software window, then scrolled back through the command line.

  “Bingo,” she said after several minutes. “Continuum 114, date January 21, 1892. Enough time for the heat of the investigation to be off, and your ‘death’ to be known, but not so much time that what little was left of Moriarty’s crime machine would have completely fallen apart.”

  “It stands to reason,” Holmes smiled wolfishly, nodding his satisfaction. “He would not want me there to stop him. Good. It means I will not cause problems by being there twice.”

  “But you can’t stay long,” she pointed out, scribbling equations on a nearby notepad. “I estimate no more than about twenty-four to thirty-six hours, tops. Otherwise the continuum collapses due to non-uniqueness.”

  Holmes sobered quickly, and somewhat sadly, Skye thought, trying not to cringe with guilt.

  “I understand, my dear. I will act rapidly,” he told her in a subdued tone.

  “Sherlock, I…”

  “Hush. We have been through that, and you have work to do,” he countered, waving a long thin finger at the computer screen.

  Skye scanned through the electronic file, studying its details.

  “Sherlock, I think you can use this to your advantage. This timeframe is about when your Arthur Conan Doyle started getting seriously interested in metaphysical matters. You know, spiritualism, seances and the like. So if you can manage to convince them you’re a ghost or something…”

  “I will be able to enlist both Watson and Doyle. And possibly bring in the Irregulars for good measure. Capital notion, my dear.” Holmes cocked his head, interested.

  * * *

  He paused, thinking.

  “Skye, can you operate the tesseract by yourself?”

  “I can. We did have that emergency failsafe installed, where one person could run it if the facility had to be evacuated.”

  “Do it.”

  “Okay,” Skye said immediately, bending over the director’s console and running through a sequence of switches and commands, re-routing operations. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Skye.” Holmes watched her working intently, considering his words carefully. She paused, looking up at him. “You are a fundamental part of this continuum, dearest. I, on the other hand, am not…”

  “No,” she whispered, the horror in her eyes at his words quickly replaced with agony as the full import of what he had in mind hit her. “No, Sherlock, please don’t. Please.”

  “Not if I can avoid it.” Holmes held up a single, quelling hand. “But you are needed here, to run the equipment. I am loath to take long enough to call in others; I know we could compensate for the time easily, by going to an earlier part of the timestream. But the more people included in the operation, the greater the likelihood of error, in my mind. Not to mention the possibility one or more of your team is…involved.”

  “True. Besides, Smith, Jones, and Morris should all be here soon. I hope.”

  “Agreed. One other question.”

  “What?”

  “Is there a…‘side’ to the wormhole, and how substantial is it?”

  * * *

  Skye stared at him for long moments, suddenly knowing precisely what he was considering.

  “Not exactly. See, you’re only ‘in’ the wormhole when you’re passing between the columns. When we’re in full focus, the core—the area inside the columns—is in that other continuum. The openings between the columns comprise the wormhole. I know that sounds strange, but that’s how hyperspatial dynamics works.”

  “So I cannot, say, shove him through the side, should I need to
end the matter quickly.” Holmes frowned.

  “No,” Skye shook her head. Then she paused, the sapphire eyes going distant. “But that gives me an idea. Maybe…”

  “Maybe what?”

  Skye shook her head.

  “Leave that to the hyperspatial dynamicist. Here’s exactly what you need to do…”

  * * *

  Skye began a quick scan of continuum 114.

  “Okay, it looks like he’s calling himself—now here’s hubris for ya—‘Colonel James Moriarty,’ younger brother of—ah, so that’s where it comes from! Holmesians have often wondered how Watson got the names so confused in the stories. Oh, shit. That means he’s already started affecting the continuum.”

  “Then send me back to just before he went, and I will endeavour to prevent him from doing so.” Holmes gave her a glance of obvious anxiety.

  “No, I don’t think I should. I’ve thought about that off and on ever since you suggested I should go back and stop myself from rescuing you, or building the tesseract, or whatever. If we were to do something like that, it would probably create a thing science fiction writers, and some physicists, call a ‘causality loop,’ and those things are a real mess. Full of potential paradoxes and everything else, and then the Novikov self-consistency principle gets invoked, and all kinds of confusing stuff. Not to mention what it’d do to the string generator; we’d probably have a regular torrent of tachyons condensing out, which would be very bad. Let’s just say I’d rather avoid that if I can.”

  “Then my task becomes even more difficult.” Holmes frowned.

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so. But you know what? Maybe it’s okay. Because Watson had to get the idea for a COLONEL James Moriarty from somewhere; it’s in my Conan Doyle’s version of your adventure at Reichenbach.”

  “It is?” Holmes wondered, surprised. “I had not…bothered to do more than skim through…that particular adventure…as yet.”

  “You mean you weren’t ready to, just yet.” Skye gave him an understanding look.