Failing Upward

Chapter 19 (part 1): Before I Sleep

Hardly home free, but I was relieved to be with Sherlock, so relieved that I fell asleep. It wasn't the first time the serum knocked me out. Trapped in my unconscious, I kept remembering Moriarty crushing me. Eyeless, weeping gore, he still saw me. In the dark closet, he still saw me. As blind and all-seeing like one of the Graeae, oozing evil that seeped under my nails and into my skin. Face sliding off like melting wax, he decomposed. I turned my head. The rotting flesh on his fingers left a trail.

I screamed.

"Hey! Hey, wake up."

I jumped as Sherlock slapped his hand over my mouth. Peter jostled my shoulders while Sherlock held me against his chest.

"We'll be lucky if no one heard you," Deal whispered as he switched on the light. My eyes darted around trying to see the stranger holding me. Sherlock, in one of his many disguises. He looked like an old history professor: forty years older and fifty pounds heavier, but he smelled like my Sherlock, coffee and cinnamon and Menthol cigarettes. He'd been smoking. Not good. I looked around, wondering if Moriarty was with us in the closet somewhere. Fuck, my dream was so real.

"You have to put these clothes on fast. We don't have much time," Deal insisted, grasping my elbow, which Sherlock slapped away. "Come on, get him up."

I fell back as I tried to stand. "John?" Sherlock asked.

"Is he okay?" Deal asked.

"Of course he's not okay," Sherlock hissed. I grabbed the clothes he'd thrown at me and began struggling to shove my legs into the stinky janitor coveralls. "You could have at least found something clean."

"They'd notice him then. No one will look twice at a janitor."

Stiff from unknown filth, I pulled the coveralls over my hips.

"Is this some new shade of green?" I asked. Covered in some kind of slop— ew-w-w, gross . I finished buttoning the front as Sherlock handed me an equally grimy hat. I think it once matched the overalls, but now it was brown and khaki camouflage. I guess after all I'd been through I shouldn't be too concerned about head lice, but I shuddered nonetheless.

"I turned surveillance off in the lobby and stairwells," Deal said. "You need to get going. I'll ride down in the elevator with you and get off at the lobby with Sherlock. John, you'll need to go to the basement and out the service entrance; it will be less conspicuous. As you get off the elevator, walk straight down the hall. Turn to the first hallway on the left. You'll see the doors to the service entrance. An old blue truck is out there near the ramp. Get in and wait for us. This is my usual time to check out. I'll meet you out there."

"And from there?"

"Mycroft's arranged for a private jet to get us out of here, but we'll need to stay at a safe house tonight."

Surprised that Sherlock didn't insist he come with me, it struck me why Sherlock wasn't arguing with Deal.

"What are you up to, Sherlock?"

"It's best to check out where I came in."

"Sherlock!"

"And there's something else I need to do."

"And that would be..."

"There is information Mycroft wishes me to procure."

Highly unlikely he'd be doing it just for Mycroft, but I didn't have the energy to argue with the dickhead.

Deal reached in his pocket. "Here, put these on," he said, handing me a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses with the right earpiece duct-taped.

"Do I look like Buddy Holly?" I whispered.