Play the Game - Sherlock fanfic (Sequel to Painting Murders)

Lighting the spark (part 2)

We watched the screen of my laptop with the progress bars intently. I was scared to breath. Maybe we were all over paranoid. There was a chance that maybe the trigger hadn't been replying to the emails.

John finally dared to shuffle and change his position as we waited. I could hear Mrs Hudson's radio downstairs blaring out a show that she occasionally laughed at. Apart from that, all was deathly silent.

Just then my whole screen darkened like the laptop had shut itself down on its own.

"What even ..." I muttered, more annoyed now then scared, as I pressed the spacebar trying to get it to reboot.

A tiny text box appeared at the top of the screen.

"Did you do that?" Sherlock asked, pointing at it.

"No."

Whoever had opened it began typing.

"Welcome, Miss Everly Sapphire."

Ah crap.

"Thank you for the activation."

Super crap.

"Welcome to the Playground."

The screen lit up suddenly to show my confused face staring at the screen, like a mirror.

That got me to snap out of my trance.

"They've hacked me! Sonofabitch!" I shouted, smashing the webcam at the top of my screen and then smashing up my mic. Someone had been listening in and watching, possibly for the whole time. How else would they know my name?

The progress bars on the screen began changing to 'complete' as each IP address became infected.

"Make it stop, Miss Sapphire!" Mycroft warned as John's phone buzzed wildly.

"It's Lestrade. Apparently, all of Scotland Yard's computer systems just went down."

Just like a bomb, I thought as I mindlessly watched each progress bar. I had approximately twenty seconds to stop this thing before Mycroft's computer became infected.

I tried to block out everyone shouting at each other, Sherlock and Mycroft about how it had been Sherlock's idea to do this and John about how Scotland Yard thought they were under attack and who knew who else.

I tried not to listen.

"Shut up all of you or I'm just going to let it run!" I shouted above them all before smashing out every line of code I knew of.

It wasn't working.

Ten seconds.

Then I remembered the back door. The failsafe of all programs. The off switch.

I opened a new page and churned out the reams of code, like a magic spell engraved in my mind, a habit. I knew the code backwards and forwards and any other way it was required. It was all coming back to me, like remembering a dream.

I submitted the code with three seconds left to go.

The progress bars stopped and the system paused. Then it began working in reverse, each bar went back to zero percent.

I grabbed my phone and dialled the only number that mattered right now.

"Greg!" I cried as he picked up.

"Everly? What's wrong?"

"Are the computers back online yet?"

"Umm hang on . . ." some movement as he checked, "Oh look at that, yes everything seems to be working again. Probably just a glitch ...?" He sounded hopeful of the fact that maybe it wasn't me that had caused it by doing something stupid and illegal.

"Get someone to check that nothing is missing. There shouldn't be, everything should be okay." I said briefly and hung up.

Everyone still seemed to be in shock. Apart from Sherlock. He seemed to be still watching me with calculating and cold eyes.

I puffed out my cheeks, "Well that was fun, let's never do it again."

"You're lucky I don't have you all arrested this second." Mycroft bared his teeth, picked up the laptop he had brought and stormed out. We heard the door downstairs slam and a car pull away on the street outside.

"I wonder if he'll have Nick arrested?" I said slowly, turning the screen slightly so that Sherlock and John could get a good view.

"What's that?" John asked tiredly.

"I ran a trace to see if I could track the virus back to its origin. It's come back with Nick's address."

"I'll phone Lestrade." John got us and left the room.

I caught Sherlock still staring, "You want to explain why I need to be watched?" I snapped impatiently.

"How did you stop it?" Sherlock asked curiously, but his eyes were still cunning. It was as if he had solved everything, knew everything, and he was just waiting to see what kind of quality lie I could tell him. I refused to play his little mind games.

"You're smart, you work it out." I glared at him and turned away, getting to my feet and rearranging my jeans before silently slipping my laptop into its bag.

Sherlock remained silent as john walked back into the room, gesturing to his phone, "Lestrade wants to meet us down at Scotland Yard, they've sent dispatch to pick up Nick Cringdale from that address."

"We better get a move on then. I think I want to have a chat with our aspiring criminal hacker." Sherlock got to his feet, and made a point of walking as far away from me as possible to get his scarf and coat.

This was going to be a long case.