Consulting Sniper (Moran's Story)

Chapter 22: Time and Place are Relative (Part II)

"Oh, really?" Mycroft responded to me. If I wasn't mistaken, she might have been slightly flustered.

"Take everything you said. Remove my name and insert yours wherever you mentioned me."

"So you propose..."

"That you change your name and get plastic surgery. You don't look like me anymore. I don't look like you anymore. Your name is different. I don't have all these unnecessary expenses because, let's face it, you know I can't afford any of this crap, and we both benefit. I can go on living my life, and so can you. You don't have the burden of my face, and I don't have the burden of yours."

"Why is my face a burden to you?"

"You and I both know I can't go anywhere anymore without people looking at me really sideways. I'm a criminal."

"The second most dangerous one in London. I must say, you are doing well for yourself in that position."

"I can't have the face of a government official while trying to be a criminal. For obvious reasons."

"Alright. I get it. How about this. What if I gave you money to go get plastic surgery? I'll have your name changed as well. That might work."

"Well, don't you still want to kill me?"

"I didn't forget about that."

"I figured as much. That's why I won't do it. I can't trust you."

"And what makes you think I can trust you, a criminal?"

"Because unlike you, I've got nothing to lose."

Mycroft thought for a second, looking down at the floor and away from me. "Realize what you are saying, Ms. Holmes."

"And you must realize what you are saying, Ms. Holmes. You think I'm expendable. Why aren't you? Oh, because you're a government official. You don't want to mangle up your pretty little face for the cameras because you're so special and destined to do great things and-I want to VOMIT when I think of it. You physically sicken me."

"You physically sicken me as well. But mostly your face does."

"Who had the shit idea that we had to be twins, Mycroft? It really was a shit idea, you know. Screw mom and dad."

"You know they're probably both dead now anyway."

"Screw them still."

"You can't screw a dead person. But as it would seem, you are certainly screwing Moriarty."

My face went pale, and my eyes wide. "Fuck you, Mycroft Holmes-" I said before I was cut off by a loud explosion.

It was in the wall on my left side. The blast completely knocked over Mycroft, the table, and her chair. But I was untouched. First time that shit ever happened to me and not Mycroft, it would seem.

Jim burst through the hole in the wall after shooting ten or eleven rounds off into the room he came from."

"Let's go!" Jim yelled to me, throwing me a knife, which I used to loose my bonds and escape.

Jim also tossed me my rifle and I began to shoot at ever moving thing I saw. Between the two of us, we must have shot off over one hundred rounds that hopefully landed kill shots.

Finally, after all lay on the ground, I stole their weapons.

I slung a bullet belt over my shoulder as we prepared to walk out, also in a blaze of explosions, Jim in his usual Westwood and carrying a pistol and I trying to lug along all the weaponry I could find.

"There weren't any cameras, were there?" I asked Jim as we stood in the entrance that led to the main lobby.

"No. The explosion destroyed all of them. Now we just have to get out through the lobby. Prepare yourself, it's gonna get messy. And presumably bloody."

"Can't wait," I said, as we broke though the glass door and began to shoot around us. I grabbed my gun bag and threw it at the door as we continued to shoot. Another explosion toward the side of the room detonated, and we ran for the door.

One of the pistols from the bad went off as the bag hit the floor by the door, and the bullet hit someone aiming at me. Fate was on my side today.

Finally, as the last explosion went off, Jim and I ran out of the building.

"So how did you like that?" Jim asked me. "Nice show, right?"

"Jim Moriarty, you have officially outdone yourself. That was amazing!" I said, still a little bit out of breath and a little bit covered in blood. It was the next night; in the dark, no one could see us.

"Ready to go back home?"

"Yep," I said, pulling Jim in for a sloppy, bloody kiss just as the final explosion went off. It displaced a few bodies and blood went flying again. Some of it hit Jim and I.

We were so shocked that we took off running at full speed down the block and away from the government building that we had just decimated.

I decided that night that there was no longer a need for me to have a conscience. It would have no bearing on me.

There is no such thing as a criminal with a conscience. For a person such as that, there can be only pain and death.

So fuck conscience. And Mycroft Holmes.