The Exception (sherlock x reader)

Chapter 18: Sherlocked

~Sherlock's POV~

Was I surprised when another one of Mycrofot's goons handed me a ticket for Flight 007 departing from Heathrow at 6:30, the same flight from the code I had deduced this morning the Woman, Irene, had shown me? Not in the slightest. I was more than used to Mycroft's games.

I also was not surprised when they dropped me off outside of the plane at the airport. I slid out of the car, the cool evening air moving past me as I made my way up the stairs and into the plane. 

The atmosphere immediately changed once I entered, the air was heavy, something to be expected in a jumbo jet filled with passengers. Each row I passed was completely full of unconscious passengers. Unconscious? No...

I flicked on the overhead light over the middle row. None of the passenger's skin looked normal as the light illuminated them, they had gray undertones, and some had hair falling out. These people were decidedly not unconscious, but dead. 

"The Coventry conundrum," my brother's voice broke the silence the company of the dead provided, startling me momentarily. He walked out of the cabin at the front of the plane. "What do you think of my solution" He inquired. "The flight of the dead."

"Plane blows up midair," I explained the plan, more to myself than to my brother. "Mission accomplished for the terrorists, hundreds of casualties but nobody dies."

"Neat don't you think?" I snickered at my brother's dedication. Hundreds of dead bodies collected and plopped in this plane as if they belonged. "You've been stumbling around the fringes of this one for ages. Or were you too bored to notice the pattern?" A challenge, but one I was ready for, I was always ready for this kind of toying with my brother. 

Two girls, probably eight and five, clearly related- sisters most likely, sat in the chair in our flat in our apartment. "They wouldn't let us see granddad when he was dead." said the youngest. The older gentleman with the fake leather jacket and his aunts' urn. "She's not my real aunt. I know human ash." He stroked the urn as he spoke.  

I remembered both visits vividly but dismissed them all, their cases weren't worth my time let alone true mysteries, but had I miscalculated? 

"We ran a similar project with the Germans a while back, though I believe one of our passengers didn't make the flight." Mycroft continued.

He was right, one of them had missed his flight for the dead. A case nearly two months ago he'd been on with (y/n) and John. 

The body lay in the back of a trunk of a car. The car was old, not the car of a rich man. Left in a deserted yard under the hot sun, this would impact decomposition. A plane flew low in the sky overhead, they were close to the airport.

"But that's the deceased for you," he continued sternly, "late, in every sense of the word." Oh how I hated when he tried to be clever, it was quite unbecoming of such an important government official. 

"How's the plane going to fly?" I said and immediately realized the answer. "Oh, of course, unmanned aircraft, hardly new." 

"It doesn't fly. It will never fly. this entire project is cancelled." He sounded disappointed, as if this project had been important to him, personally and not just as a win against terrorists. "The terrorist cells have been informed that we know about the bomb. We can't fool them now."His voice was more flat, lacking emotion which made me feel better, just like the Mycroft I know. "One fragment of one email and months and years of planning, finished." 

"Your MOD man," I put the pieces together, the email fragment he let slip into the hands of a dominatrix cost the government much.

"That's all it takes. One lonely, naive man, desperate to show off," Mycroft seemed tired of dealing with the inadequacies of the idiots he must work with that run this country, sometimes I pity him, but he made his decision to work for the government of all things. "and a women clever enough to make him feel special."