A Consulting Detective, Ex Army Doctor, and Child Mercenary Walk Into A Room

Chapter 6: The Reichenbach Fall

Sherlock sits at the back of the taxi, lost in his thoughts. About some ways into the journey, the small TV screen in front of Sherlock glitches on and an advertisement starts to play. "This is a stunning evening wear set," the voice over said. "From us here at London Taxi Shopping." Sherlock rolls his eyes and says to the driver, "Can you turn this off please?" But the driver doesn't listen and the advertisement keeps on going. "As you can see, the set comprises of a beautiful ..." Sherlock was getting impatient. "Can you turn this off!" he says angrily. The image on the screen begins to fritz out as it is being replaced by another video. The advertisement disappeared and all of a sudden, my father was on the screen. He's smiling cheerfully, gleefully and Sherlock jumps back further into his seat in surprise. "Hello. Are you ready for the story? This is the story of Sir Boast-A-Lot."

"Sir Boast-A-Lot was the bravest and cleverest knight at the Round Table, but soon the other knights got tired of his stories about how brave he was and how many dragons he'd slain," Moriarty drones on and on. "And soon they began to wonder ..." Moriarty's bored look turned into that of a cruel smile. "Are Sir Boast-A-Lot's stories even true? Oh no, so one of the knights went to King Arthur and said, 'I don't believe Sir Boast-A-Lot's stories. He's just a big old liar who makes up things to make himself look good.' And then even the King began to wonder ..." Moriarty played along with the dialogue as Sherlock narrows his eyes and gnashes his teeth in anger. "But that wasn't the end of Sir Boast-ALot's problems. No! That wasn't the final problem. The end." The screen freezes with Moriarty just staring with a small smile on his face.

Sherlock comes to his senses and quickly takes charge. "Stop the cab! Stop the cab! Sherlock shouts angrily. The cab pulls up to a curb and Sherlock jumps out, hurrying towards the driver's door. "What was that? What was that?!" The cabbie turns his head and there he is! The whole time it was Moriarty just a few inches away from Sherlock, right in his grasp. "No change," father says. He accelerates away as Sherlock tries to grab a hold of him. Forced to let go, Sherlock tries to chase after Moriarty but it speeds away. He glares at the taxi, unaware that a car was driving up right behind him. As Sherlock barely hears the sound of the horn warning him, a man hurries off the pavement, grabs him, and pulls him out of danger. "Look out!" Sherlock, who still doesn't realize what the man was doing, strikes out at the man but then stops as the car roars past him and Sherlock realizes what has happened. But he notices that the man looks at him warily. "Thank you," Sherlock says while catching his breath.

He holds out his hand for the man to shake and tha man, reluctantly, takes it when all of a sudden, three bullets are fired into the man! For a few seconds, the man stands there still before jerking like an afterthought and then slumping to the ground dead. Sherlock spins around searching for the source of the gunfire. John and I were just in another cab close behind Sherlock when I heard the faint sounds of gunfire. I saw Sherlock in the distance standing near some human shaped lump. "Stop!" I screamed. "Lune what-" I nearly tore off the cab door to get to Sherlock. John followed close behind, clearly worried as well. "Sherlock!" John and I yelled. When we got to him Sherlock nearly flinched from me. It was very brief and then Sherlock regained his composure but I saw it. No, no, no, no. My father, Jim, was really really back and he was going to burn the heart out of Sherlock.

John looked down at the dead man. "That ... it's him. Or at least one of them. The assassin that Mycroft told me about. Sulejmani or something. He showed me his file and lives two doors down from us ..." "Excuse me?! Sulejmani?" Quickly, I whipped out my phone and clicked on Mycroft's file which exploded into a bunch of files about assassins living on our block. "Well shit!" If only I had looked at the message sooner. Okay plans plans plans - "He died shaking my hand," Sherlock muttered. "What'd you mean?" John said. I was too focused on figuring out how to eliminate the assassins without trying to kill them. Maybe. "He saved my life but he couldn't touch me. Why?" "Wait what -" Before John can ask what Sherlock is thinking, Sherlock storms off and John drags me along. "Someday I'm going to kill that bastard."