Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXXXIX - Guillotine

She lies amongst the shattered glass, a twisted doll; broken blood vessels in her eyes, open mouth, broken voice, cracked mid-scream. Broken skin, split in a perfect circle just above her pelvic bone. Broken sinew. Broken spine.

Her fingers curl a fraction – an involuntary twitch – and her eyes move, rapidly, from side to side, straining at the miniature ligaments that keep them in their concave cages. She tries to move her lower body. It is cut off entirely: she feels nothing from the waist down, save for the pain that moves from an unplaceable point in the space below her chest out into her torso.

Почему, she mouths at the shadow man. Почему.

The shadow man walks around her in a slow, soft-footed circle. He doesn't smile. She hears the gentle click of his shoe soles on the wooden floor, feels the vibrations in her head.

"I never liked hackers," he says.

He gestures at the man behind him – taller, much taller, holding the glittering eye of the gun – and he steps forwards, shifting his rifle over his shoulder. She can't see either of their faces, she can only hear their voices, their language strange and intonations stranger.

"Safiya," he says. She recognises her name. "It was Safiya, wasn't it?"

When she doesn't reply, he crouches down, to her level, balancing easily on the balls of his feet.

"Computers are hopelessly overrated."

"Почему."

"I'll tell you why. Computers can be hacked by people like you. Books on the other hand," he says, lowering his voice, "books can't be hacked. Paper. Paper and pens. Do you know who else likes books?"

She makes a hoarse, blood-saturated noise at the back of her throat.

"Let me give you a hint. He's got lovely teeth." The shadow man holds out a hand as he talks. "He's Russian too, just like you. Ringing any bells? No?" A camera is placed into his waiting palm: he turns it on, squinting at the little red light. "He adores his books."

Her eyesight focuses then, and she sees the shadow man for the first time. He's dark: black hair, black eyes, suit the colour of ink on blue paper. White skin. There's a fluidity in him she can't quite place – even in her pained paralysis she picks up on his energy, that humming, untrappable, furious buzz that sets the air trembling like a taut string. She can't stop looking at his tie pin. It sits in the centre of the silk, a fox's head; thumb-sized snout and pinprick eyes.

He was waiting for her when she stepped into her apartment.

The morning had been perfectly unremarkable. It was snowing heavily, and she'd struggled with the lock – the metal was frozen stiff – for five long minutes before the door had given way. When she succeeded in breaking into her own flat, she had shrugged off her furs and her coats and headed towards the kitchen. She knew exactly what she wanted – the vodka she'd been given by the minister, one of Vladimir Putin's little rats, in payment for the quick data removal job she'd conducted earlier. It had reminded her of Emily Yakovich née Schott, the English woman with the ringlet curls and bottled temper. 

As she walked into the kitchen, she wondered what had happened to London's famed female delinquent. All had gone silent. Near seven months had passed since those hazy days spent hacking with Emily Schott and the other women, and she was beginning to forget her memory. She missed Ivan's company too – their business arrangements, their intoxicated nights, the occasional carnal tryst – but wasn't overly concerned with his lack of communication. He often disappeared without notice. They were longstanding friends. He'd have been in contact if he needed her.