The Most Dangerous Game | Sherlock Holmes

12

The one that tortured her on end with samples and shots and blood draw.

The reason she could no longer bear children.

Vladimir enjoyed the way her face contorted in horror at the mention of his partner. "Demitri, Alexei, and I were the only ones left. Over the years we have been recruiting. Our numbers are not as great as they once were, but they are sizeable."

"What is it you want from me?" Galina questioned, noticing the way Vladimir's eyes were gleaming with anticipation.

"To continue on with our legacy," he put simply, standing up slowly and circling the chair like a shark who's just spotted his prey. "You are our only perfect specimen and we have found it hard to recreate what we have accomplished with you. Since Mycroft burned all of our research, we knew that we had to find you eventually."

Galina- even though she should have been paying attention to the situation she had found herself in and plotting ways to escape- could only process one simple phrase.

"You have more children," she gasped, feeling her eyes pool with tears. She could recount every single detail of the eight years she spent imprisoned. It was cruel and it was humiliating and her heart cracked at the idea that it was happening to more children.

"More than you can imagine." He seemed to take great pleasure at her misery. He loved the look of panic and terror in her green eyes. To him, Galina was her most radiant when she was horrified. "Oh, Oksana. Mycroft should never have let his little birdie out of her cage."

Galina gritted her teeth. All of her life she had either been kept by men who treated her like an experiment, or men that treated her like a wounded bird needing protection. 

However, through her time at 221B Baker Street, Galina had learned that she was in fact not a bird.

She was a hawk.

"I will not help you," she said definitively, urging him with her eyes to just dare to challenge her. 

"You will have no choice."

"I choose death."

Vladimir chuckled as he took a handful of her hair and yanked her head back painfully. "Too bad that is not an option."

As his horrid fingers were trailing down her neck, she spotted something in the corner of the room, high up on the walls, that made her heart race.

Nestled in between two metal pipes was a tiny camera, almost invisible if you were not looking in the exact angle she was. She could see that it was off, but she recognized it immediately as a government-issued camera.

Her captors had made a mistake. In their hubris and frenzy, they had chosen an abandoned military building.

And every military building was under the watchful eye of one Mycroft Holmes.

So, tuning out all the pain and all her violent emotions, she chose her words with impeccable care and consideration.

"So..." she began, her eyes wandering only briefly to the camera. "What is it you are going to do?"

Vladimir claimed to be a smart man but he paid no attention to her and her wandering eyes.  "We have been waiting a long time to continue what we started. We want to show you what we have been working on. After that, it is back to Mother Russia."

"So, we are going back to Russia?" Galina gulped, hoping that by repeating his words slowly and deliberately, by some miracle the camera would spring to life, but it didn't. However, she did not lose hope. "When?"