PARA/DOX

Doctors Out of Their Depths

Sherlock's fingers clenched across the handles of the chair, grinding his teeth and trying to blink his eyes shut in protest. They wouldn't shut; the doctors had made sure of that. There were long strips of tape keeping Sherlock's eyes open, forcing them to water into large tear drops every time the machinery began to spark. At the moment Sherlock was attached by the pupils to a most painful device, a contact lens that was wired to a large box in front of him, one which was supposed to process the light that was streaming in from his cornea and displaying it through a projection screen. He couldn't see the device, at the moment he was staring into a cold and empty warehouse, an abandoned steel mill by the looks of it. There were gaping holes in the sides of this strange building, there were abandoned birds' nests in the rafters, piles of scrap metal on the floors. Sherlock could see the contact lens, somehow they traveled through, and he could feel the slight tug they had upon his eyes, the wires falling prey to gravity and sucking his stuck eyes down with them. Sometimes it felt as though the machine would rip them right out of their sockets, and other times they would go haywire and send a painful electric shock straight into his brain. Sherlock seethed, writhing in the chair and listening to all the scientists as they rushed around him, tending to the machine, trying to calibrate it to do what it was supposed to do. It was a straight forward machine, yet the doctors seemed to be having a lot of trouble. By the looks of the box (caught in glances when he still had his glasses) Sherlock could tell it was old, at least old enough to have been tested on his brother. Well of course they had designed it for use of Mycroft, considering he was the only other boy who had eyes worth looking closely at.
"Could you stop shocking me please?" Sherlock wondered hopefully.
"Sorry, sorry Mr. Holmes." Cooed a voice from the outside, staying quite flat even though the current landscape he sat in would have enforced an echo. "It needs an electric pulse but I think the wiring is..."
"Ow!" Sherlock exclaimed, jumping in his chair as a massive shock fed through his ocular nerves and into his brain.
"Sorry, sorry!" the Doctor exclaimed miserably.
"Shut it down, for God's sake. You'll fry him before you get anything good out of it." Victor's voice insisted, coming in from behind Sherlock's right shoulder. Well of course his shadow couldn't have gone far. It was regretful that Sherlock found that voice to be comforting, one of the only octaves he recognized. Victor hadn't made a very good first impression, though after a week of testing and mirroring the man seemed to at least be trustworthy. He wasn't always very warm hearted, nor did he ever remember his manners, though he was at least doing his job of protecting Sherlock very well. Ever since Victor showed up Sherlock hadn't had an incident with Moran, in fact he hardly ever got looked at the wrong way by any passerby. It would seem as though not even the school bullies would dare scuffle with someone who got picked up by a man in a sleek black car every day. Sherlock could hear the sound of the engine cutting off, the buzzing slowing before ultimately stopping. Fingers pressed against his cheeks, against his eyelids. The contacts were removed, suctioned off with enough pressure that Sherlock began to panic. When at last he felt the pulling subside he pressed his fingers up against his eyes, trying to be sure that they were still in their proper place and not bulging three times their normal size. His head felt normal, his eyes felt a little bit invaded, though all in all the shocks didn't seem to do anything but irritate him.
"Victor, can you find my glasses?" Sherlock pleaded, ripping the tape from his face and blinking thankfully a couple of times. He wiped the collected tears from his jawline, staring around the factory and shivering from the cold wind that was cutting through this particular time period. He felt Victor's hands brush against his cheek, and before long the glasses filtered out any pretended timelines. He was back where he started, sitting in a plastic chair in the middle of a white, windowless room. The lights were turned down low, as the projector was displaying its picture in a large box upon the opposite wall. At the moment it was showing only static, for the doctors were prodding at the wires and lenses in an attempt to subside the shocks that were being admitted.
"Are you alright?" Victor wondered, looming in front of Sherlock and blocking most of the room out by his massive proximity. Sherlock nodded, thankful that he had at least come to care.
"Times like this make me wonder if they even know what they're doing." Sherlock admitted miserably, resting his head upon his hands and folding his legs daintily. With one dangling foot he hit Victor's knee, as if trying to insist that he was a little too close for comfort. A scientist came over with a flashlight, pulling up the glasses and shining the harsh light into his eyes. Sherlock winced, as he was staring into a dark room all the while his pupils were being forced to absorb light in a different time period.
"Even the best of the best are over their heads with you." Victor assured when the Doctor had gone, mumbling to herself and going over to a computer to change some algorithms.
"Were you here with Mycroft?" Sherlock wondered, looking up towards Victor and finding the man's eyes cast down, staring upon his patent leather shoes.
"Yes, but not as an agent. I was still a boy, much as he was. Much as you are now." Victor admitted.
"Did they know what to do with him?" Sherlock asked quietly, remembering that it was this very ignorance that had cost his brother his life. Victor hesitated with his answer, tapping the toes of his shoes together as if this was a very difficult question.
"No, I should think not." He admitted at last. "No one knew what to do about him."
"What was your role here, if you weren't an agent?" Sherlock asked, remembering that Victor had claimed to be Mycroft's friend back at their kitchen table. It had seemed impossible at the time; though Sherlock had never understood the time commitment it took to be a government guinea pig. Certainly Mycroft would have had to reach out to someone for entertainment; even he wouldn't have managed two years of utter silence.
"I was just a friend." Victor managed at last, his voice coming at a much less confident level than it had before. Almost as if he was ashamed of the role he played all those years ago.
"He never told me about any friends." Sherlock protested, feeling as if that was reason enough to discredit Victor's bold claim. In retrospect there were probably a lot of things Mycroft didn't tell him, starting with this suctioning contact torture device. Sherlock had been too young; he would have been shielded by something much less physical than a body guard. Mycroft must have been trying to keep the world filtered from him; he was probably trying to keep his brother as far away from the agency as possible. Any overflow from his work life, even the friends he made within the fortress, had to be kept secret. Sherlock looked over towards Victor again, this time finding the man's lips pursed, his fists clenched, and his eyes watering. Sherlock dropped his gaze, realizing that there was a time to pry and a time to stay quiet. This time, undoubtedly, it was the latter.