Adventure VII – Episode 4
On the stairs below, Sapphire was wiping the dried blood from Steel’s
face with his handkerchief.
Silver smiled to himself. She still looked at him with the memory
of the pleasure they had given one another. But now it was different.
Now Steel came first.
Was this jealousy?
Would Steel ever consent to him?
Silver sighed softly. He seriously doubted it.
“I know what’s happening here,” he declared finally. “I know who
they are. And I know why they’re here.”
Carefully resting his head back against the wall behind him, Steel stared
up. “Well?”
“Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.”
The way Silver spoke, it was as if the names were supposed to mean something.
Steel glanced at Sapphire as she retrieved the data.
“Sherlock Holmes – a fictional detective created in the late 1800s by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr John Watson, also a work of fiction by the
same author. Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes adventures for a London
news sheet called The Strand.”
“Fictional?” Steel shook his head. “That can’t be, they lived
here. I’ve seen them!”
Silver smiled gently and started down the stairs to join them.
“Sherlock Holmes was so popular that he became a legend. He lived…
in the imaginations of Conan Doyle’s readers. We’re not in the early
1900s, are we Sapphire? The year is 1982.”
He sat down on the edge of the step up from them, watching Sapphire’s
face blank for a second as she tried to pinpoint a date.
“I don’t know,” she admitted finally.
“Listen, the both of you have been saying this place, these people, don’t
exist from the moment we all arrived here. You were right, they don’t
exist.”
“But we’re inside,” Sapphire pointed out.
“Yes. I think we’re in a re-creation. I don’t think Time
has broken here. I think reality has.”
Dropping the red-stained handkerchief, Sapphire slid her hand into Steel’s,
holding his fingers, rubbing them gently. She didn’t take her eyes
from his face when she spoke.
“Then why are we here?”
Steel regarded her for a long time.
“I was told….” He hesitated. “I was told I’d been sent here
to die.”
Sapphire’s fingers tightened.
Silver looked from one to the other, mouth open.
“What? No… you must have been mistaken!”
Grey eyes met his own. “It’s the only way, Silver.”
“No. You don’t have to do this, we don’t have to do this.”
He tried to think. “They never lived. You can’t die for something
that never lived.”
“Silver….”
“I won’t let you.” It was an arrogant statement, he knew.
“In the journals upstairs… they’re Dr Watson’s journals and they talk
about the two of them being lovers. But they weren’t – not in the
books, not in the fiction. In their time, in Conan Doyle’s time, for
two men to engage in… well, it was against the laws of the day.”
They both stared at him.
“So. What?”
“I don’t know!” He sounded desperate even to his own ears.
“But… it’s as if they have lived here. They’ve taken on a life of
their own, don’t you see? Somehow… they’re fighting to survive and
why shouldn’t they? They haven’t done anyone any harm. There
are no real people here. There’s just them and us.”
“We can’t leave it like this,” Sapphire explained patiently. “It’s
wrong.”
Silver thought that through, throwing his hands up. “Then let the
reality experts handle it. You two deal with Time.”
Steel smiled. “We’re multi-talented.”
Silver’s next sigh was one of defeat.
“What are you going to do?” He saw the too-human gesture, Steel
nibbling nervously on the inside of his cheek. “Oh, no. No.
You’re committing suicide because they told you it’s what you’d do!”
“Silver, it’s not….”
“Of course it is!”
“They won’t let me leave.” The murmur overrode Silver’s shout.
"And I won't let you die."
The silence stretched between them until Sapphire broke it.
"Then we do this together."
Steel nodded. "Where?"
"The first bedroom." A tiny smile touched her lips. "Sherlock
Holmes' bedroom."
"Why there?"
"Because what I felt in there was a strong affection, a warmth.
Maybe... love."
"All right." But it was hesitant.
Silver rose, starting back up again to the first floor.
Sapphire helped Steel to his feet, sliding an unnecessary arm around
his waist.
For a moment, they didn't move.
"If you don't come back... I'll miss you," she told him carefully, looking
at their feet.
He didn't look up either when he said, "They'll replace me."
"It won't be you."
Another pause, then they started up the stairs together.
When they reached the first bedroom, Silver was standing just inside
the door, rubbing his palms together. Creating.
"The instant I go in there it's going to attack again," Steel told them
with absolute certainty.
"Yes," Sapphire agreed, "but this time we'll be ready for it."
Silver opened his hands and showed them the faint blue glow sitting in
his left palm.
"All you have to do is send them back through the tear," he stated.
"Then all I have to do is close it."
"Right."
She saw the fear flash momentarily in Steel's boyish features and squeezed
his arm gently.
"Ready?"
"No. But let's do it anyway."
Silver stepped back as Steel stepped forward into the room.
The pressure in his mind was sudden and excruciating, like a vice around
his skull.
Every breath was fire in his lungs. Every thought was a razor edge
slicing into his mind.
So he stopped breathing.
So he stopped thinking.
He stopped struggling.
And somewhere inside him he made the decision to trust Silver and Sapphire
to bring him back. To save his life.
He accepted the ghosts of Holmes and Watson into his mind as he opened
himself to Silver and Sapphire.
He let them flow through his head, let them see those things he'd seen,
share the experiences he'd had.
He entertained them with the memories of the easy years of upbringing
and the rough times he'd had as an operator.
He kept them rapt with recollections of joy and pain.
And carefully, without them noticing, he started to inch them towards
the rip in reality they'd slipped through.
Sapphire watched all of this.
She watched Silver as he waited by the hole in the fabric of reality.
The light - the seal he’d made - held with infinite care between his hands.
She watched Steel bait the lost souls who had never existed with the
truth of his own existence.
And as they neared the place in his mind that he'd made the doorway to
another dimension, she smiled to herself with pride.
Then it darkened.
//They know!//
She by-passed Steel, sent the words straight into Silver's head.
//It's too late - they're too close.//
They were.
Steel had already guided them to the tear. The pull of it was too
great.
They fought then, claws of rage striking out blindly, ripping into Steel's
mind in a frenzied attack he couldn't hope to protect himself from.
Sapphire and Silver surged forward.
The darkness focused on her, lashing out, trying to ride the connection
between the operators into her mind.
She screamed, breaking away just as the furious presence of Holmes hurled
itself at her.
The force of it threw her across the room and she slammed hard into the
connecting door. She reached up to try the handle but it wouldn't open.
//Get them through!//
Silver put the order directly into Steel's mind and reeled from the violent
shudder of pain the communication caused the operator.
In the room, the door slammed itself shut just as Steel stumbled back
against it.
Escape impossible, the battle was inevitable.
In his mind, Steel reasserted himself against the alien presences of
Holmes and Watson. He struck out at them through the red haze of
agony, driving them back towards the opening.
Silver reached for them, managed to get a hold of Watson and drag him
back, throwing him through the tear as hard as he could.
Steel was weakening quickly and as he turned, he saw the bright core
of the element pulse once.
//No!//
This time the backlash hit him hard. He thought he heard a faint
call of 'stop' pressed into his mind but he couldn't think straight enough
to confirm it.
Watson dispatched, Silver pulled himself back together and moved forward,
reaching for Holmes, seeing the darkness now, knowing it was far from being
the detective brought here by the power of imagination and belief.
Holmes' black energy screamed - a high-pitched sound of anger and terror
- and threw itself over Steel, swamping the fading energy, smothering it,
choking the life from it.
//Silver,// he heard Sapphire's calm voice in his head, //end it.
Destroy him.//
He ignored her, made a grab for Holmes and started to pull him away with
//Silver! Do it!//
//No!//
Focusing his entire being, he yanked hard.
The darkness flowed back and he flung it with all his strength at the
hole in Steel's mind.
//Seal it! Now!//
He didn't have to be told twice. Taking the light from his hands
into his flesh, he transferred it to his mind and threw it over the rip
in the fabric of reality.
Steel collapsed and Silver followed him down, panting hard for breath.
Leaning in, he rested his forehead against Steel's and curled his hand
around the back of the other's neck, thumb and index finger cradling his
skull, caressing gently the hairs at the base of his scalp.
"It's over," he told the room in general. "It's over."
Steel came around slowly.
His head felt as if his skull had been smashed in with something heavy
and blunt.
His mouth tasted coppery. Of blood, he realised.
There was something warm on the back of his neck.
Gingerly, he opened his eyes.
He was propped up between the wall and the end of the bed. Next
to him, Silver was sitting close, one hand still cradling the base of Steel's
head. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow.
"Sleeping."
Steel moved only his eyes to see Sapphire crouch down in front of him.
He smiled, hoping it wasn't as gruesome as he thought it probably was.
"I'm still here."
"Only just," she murmured. "Silver refused to let you go."
"Thank you."
She lifted a hand to the side of his head and touched his hair, smiling
warmly.
"You need to rest. It's safe now. I'll watch over the both
of you until you're ready to leave here."
"And where is here?"
"A museum now, nothing more."
He nodded and closed his eyes again, feeling Sapphire's lips touched
to his.
Then she moved away.
Steel reached out and found Silver's left hand. Threading his fingers
between the other man's, he settled back to sleep.
fin
elfin
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