Vaness was lost. What just happened, she didn't imagine it, did she? She wanted to shout at Sherlock to get back and explain what he just did. But he was already walking towards the plane. Vaness decided to get out of the car and follow Sherlock who turned to talk to Nielson at the bottom of the step.
"Well, you’re lookin’ all better. How ya feelin’?" Sherlock said nonchalantly, in a deliberately fake American accent.
"Like putting a bullet in your brain ... sir." Nielson said.
Sherlock lets out a quiet snigger and starts to walk up the steps.
"They’d pin a medal on me if I did ..." Nielson said.
Sherlock stops.
"... sir." He continued with insincere politeness.
Sherlock half-turns back towards him, then apparently decides he can’t be bothered and continues up the steps.
Vaness stops infront of Nielson, "You did deserve what he did, you know." She said walking up the stairs and not bothering to listen to whatever he replied.
Inside, Sherlock pulls back the curtain obscuring the passenger seating and walks into the aisle. The lighting is very low and it’s hard to see. Vaness entered behind him but didn't walk to see the dead bodies. The smell was enough to dissuade her.
There are people sitting in almost all the seats but none of them is moving or speaking or showing any signs of life at all. Frowning, Sherlock walks forward and looks more closely at the nearest passengers. An overhead light shows more clearly the faces of two men sitting beside each other and Sherlock now realises the truth: they are dead. Although they’re not yet showing any signs of decomposition, their skin is very grey and they’ve clearly been dead for some time. He turns and looks to the passengers on the other side of the aisle, turning on another overhead light to get a better view. The man and woman sitting there are also long dead. As he straightens up, realising that everyone on board the plane must be in the same condition.
"The Coventry conundrum." Mycroft said from behind Vaness. She jumped a little and glared at him. Mycroft gave her a brief apologetic look.
Sherlock turns as Mycroft pushes back the curtain and steps through into the cabin, Vaness moved to the side so Mycroft could stand beside her. For the first part of the ensuing conversation he talks softly, almost as if out of respect for the dead bodies in front of him.
"What do you think of my solution?" Mycroft asked Sherlock.
Sherlock gazes around the cabin, still taking it all in.
"The flight of the dead." Mycroft said.
"The plane blows up mid-air. Mission accomplished for the terrorists. Hundreds of casualties, but nobody dies." Mycroft explained. "Neat, don’t you think?"
Sherlock smiles humourlessly.
"You’ve been stumbling round the fringes of this one for ages – or were you too bored to notice the pattern?" Mycroft asked.
Sherlock flashes back in his mind to the two little girls sitting in his living room.
"They wouldn't let us see grandad when he was dead."
He lifts his head a little, remembering the creepy guy sitting in the same chair on a different occasion, holding a funeral urn.
"She’s not my real aunt. I know human ash."
"We ran a similar project with the Germans a while back, though I believe one of our passengers didn’t make the flight." Mycroft told him.
Sherlock flashes back to the car with the body in the boot and the passport stamped in Berlin airport.
YOU ARE READING
Fandom Traveler (Sherlock Holmes)
Fanfiction1st in the Fandom Traveler Series Vaness Miche has been travelling a lot. But not by cars or airplanes, she's been traveling through dimensions by portal. A portal she created to escape her life. It hasn't been easy, arriving in a dimension she know...
