Welcome to Baker Street

104. Epic disaster

When John steps out of that chamber of horrors, he finds Giulia waiting for him in the corridor. She offers him her shoulder to lean on, and he accepts it with a grateful nod of the head. They stump along the corridor as he winces in pain whenever he puts weight on his injured calf. Giulia shoots him an apprehensive look.

"How's your leg?"

"Not bleeding anymore. That's an improvement."

She internally smiles. No matter how bad things get, John's witty sarcasm will never fade.

She looks over her shoulder and watches Sherlock leaving the room after them, and lowers her voice to a whisper, "I know he will never tell it to your face, but he did compliment you. He was impressed with the way you handled and solved the round. I, on my part, would like to thank you for getting us safe and sound to the other side. And I'm really sorry for the price you paid." She steals one more look at the improvised bandage made from a shred of her dress. The bloodstains have blended with the ruby-red shade of her gown, making it vaguely more bearable for her to look at it without fainting.

"I never expected to get out of an encounter with Moriarty without a scratch. But thank you for what you said. I'm rarely complimented, as you can imagine." John glances backwards at Sherlock following them. "Anyway, you were the ones who risked it on that deathly device while I did nothing more than interpret the Morse code signals of the lights, so I'd call it a team effort." He waves the praise aside.

She smiles at his modesty. "Then we're totally going to swap places, next time," she jokes, but instead of laughing or chuckling, John turns a serious face to her, his forehead creased in a frown.

"Wait, are you saying that you know Morse code?"

She cocks a brow at him. "By now, I thought you had learnt not to underestimate me, doctor."

He nods, impressed, and they proceed silently until reaching yet another open door. They step into a room entirely sunk into darkness. As Sherlock enters last, one lightbulb near the entrance switches on to dissipate part of the shadows, but it is still not enough for them to make out the limits of the room; it must be similar to the last one in size, but it is currently impossible to distinguish anything ahead of them. The faint light is barely sufficient to illuminate a small table and three objects on it: a now-habitual marble statue, weighing scales, and a blister pack of meds. As usual, a screen on the wall powers on to show Moriarty's everlasting grin.

"Painkillers for your wound, Doctor Watson," he specifies, nodding to the medicines on the table.

John studies the tablets warily, then turns towards the screen with a sneering expression.

"How very considerate of you," he replies sarcastically. "I'm torn, though. Does it mean you ultimately intend to keep me alive, or do you just hope I'm going to survive long enough to meet a grandiose death?"

Jim smiles at his scorn. "I'll keep you guessing."

In the meantime, Sherlock and Giulia have been busy examining the other objects on the table. The weighting device is a simple machine composed of a metal plate placed on an electronic base. They decide to disregard the scale (which will evidently serve later in the solution of that round) and divert their attention to the new figurine. The woman carved in marble is seated on a truncated column and is holding in her hands some scrolls and books; her hair is crowned in a laurel wreath.

Sherlock points at the statue and affirms in a weary tone, "Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry."

After playing three rounds of that torment (five, if he counts the two murders of the nun and the tenor), he feels all the fatigue descending upon him. He is tired and weak and lost track of time. They have been visiting only the internal rooms of the theatre where there are no windows with a view of the outside world, so he can't even try to estimate what time it is. It doesn't matter, though; time doesn't count in that maze of horrors. Their progress is invariably scanned by those bloody figurines. And judging by the number of the Greek muses, there are still some more rounds to go.