Consulting Sniper (Moran's Story)

Chapter 10: An Awkward Conversation with Mycroft Holmes

I did not leave the jungle of the place below the equator, however, before going on those survival missions my boss promised me. He promised me five short ones, but all he could give me was one really long one for three months.

I guess I'm pretty lucky I even got that one shot. If I hadn't killed the tiger one month before that offer came to me, there is no way I'd have ever gotten that opportunity.

So I survived out in the jungle, living off the land, for three months straight. And it wasn't even like at base camp where we had some conveniences. I mean I was basically living more primitively than some of the old primitive tribes that lived here thousands of years ago.

And I made it a point to tell the archaeologists when I got back. They told me to fuck off.

When I got back to base camp, I wrote an entire survival manual about how to survive in the jungles of that island. The manual was over one hundred pages long. And when I was done writing that, I realized I needed to write more. So I went ahead and wrote about my personal experiences.

Upon my return to London, both manuals were published. The first was called Three Months in the Jungle and the second was called Heavy Game (or: How to Kill, Skin, and Behead a Tiger if you don't already know how to do that)

I never got the opportunity, however, to kill any more big game. I guess when I dragged the tiger through the jungle that day, its scent of death warded off other animals. Or at least that's what Wikipedia told me when I got back to London.

Speaking of which, when I returned to London with only my guns and the clothes on my back after the expedition ended, I was still at a fallacy at what I was actually supposed to do with my life.

I mean, I wasn't thinking that when I went away it would all become clear to me and that when I got back, I'd know the secrets of the universe.

But I did expect a certain degree of clarity that I felt I did not get from my trip.

Oh, here I go again. Sounding like Mycroft and Sherlock. Fuck me and all those who let me live past age seven.

Anyway, I knew Mycroft was still in Oxford. I was now unemployed, but over twenty-one. But I had a fair amount of money in the bank account that I'd accumulated from my trip. I'd made a good forty-five or fifty thousand a year from working as a guard for that team in the jungle, unbeknownst to me of course.

So I decided one night, after waking up in a cold sweat and thinking I was still in the jungles of that place below the equator even though I was actually sitting in my apartment at Conduit Street, that I would enroll myself in Oxford.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Bad idea on my part.

But what else could I have done?

The year was 2022. It was spring, early in the year. I enrolled myself in Oxford beginning with the Summer Semester of that year. I remember the day I told Mycroft; she was not at all okay with it.

"Hey, Mycroft!" I said when I got on the line. I was kind of holding my breath a little bit; forgetting to breathe while associating with Mycroft was a side effect of her literally breathtaking tendency to ice up on you during a conversation.

"Sabrina Moran Holmes?" She asked me. I had hacked the phone in her dorm room from one of the only call box pay phones left in London as of 2019 or 2020.

"Just Sabrina Moran now. Nice to talk to you too."

"Why are you calling me?"

"Oh, I thought you'd have already deduced that by now."

"I did. Why are you coming to Oxford, is a more reasonable and apt question?"

"I need an education. Badly. What was the last you've heard from me?"

"You escaped into the dark depths of London with nothing to recall you from the hostile environment which you'd so called home. That's about it."

"Well, there's more. I was in the army. Got dishonorably discharged for shooting someone I loathed. I was on an archaeological dig as a guard. Barely there for a year before I killed a tiger and survived in the wilderness for three months on end. And now I want a more formal education."

"Wait, you SHOT someone?!"

"Oh, please. He wasn't the first one. I've killed people, Mycroft. Years ago. While I was on drugs."

"How did you ever get accepted into Oxford?" Mycroft asked me, presumably pained.

"I'm a Holmes. Do you really think I couldn't pass those placement tests in my sleep? Pretty elementary, if I do say so myself."

"Placement tests. For an equivalency to high school grades..."

"No shit, Mycroft. I'm coming to Oxford, whether you like it or not. And I'm staying at Conduit Street, by the way. I'll commute. I don't care. But I can't afford a dorm and I want to go to school for real."

"Do you really think that'll last?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?!"

"No need for the repulsing language, Ms. Moran-Holmes."

"Do NOT call me that ever again."

"Sabrina Moran, do you really think you'll even last a full year in Oxford? It's not exactly your métier, if you know what I mean."

"How do you know what my métier is? And yes, I do know what all those big words mean. I just choose not to say them."

"Well, it's not attending a university with strict rules and regulations and a strict academic syllabus. I can't see you there for more than a year. And you're a little bit late to the party, also... You do realize that college is not a party, correct?"

"The hell do you mean by that?"

"I mean, I'm graduating from law school this spring. You're about seven or eight years older than the average freshman."

"Who cares? I've done a lot more than they have. I've lived, Mycroft Holmes. What have they done?"

"Not what you've done, I can tell you that."

"I'm done talking to you."

"Fine, then. I don't care. I have better things to do than talk to my long-lost better-lost-forever sister. It is better that you'd been lost to me forever, you know. I thought you were dead, Sabrina."

"What the actual fuck?"

"I searched you on the Internet. I couldn't find anything about you. I thought perhaps you'd been killed or committed suicide or something."

"I was on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. There's a difference."

"Why isn't there anything about you on the web, Sabrina? Are you into anything illegal?"

"No... What name did you search?"

"Sabrina Moran Holmes."

"My name isn't Holmes anymore. I told you. It's Moran now."

"I didn't think you'd even disowned us in your medical records and official citizenship documents."

"Yep. I started over. Sabrina Moran was born in February 2016 as an eighteen-year-old girl. And she's not dead yet."

"You're sick. You're insane."

"I'm perfectly okay with that. As long as you'll stop looking like me."

"I have to go, Sabrina Moran."

"Go, then. I'll be seeing you soon anyway, right?"