Once they enter Baskerville Sherlock's off to talk to Major Barrymore and John and Kate make their way down to the lab they've been in before on floor -1 to search for Doctor Stapleton.
When the lift doors open they find the lab empty, except for two scientists that are leaving through another door to their left and turn off the light, in the same moment as John and Kate enter.
The remaining emergency lighting reveals that the cages for the animals are now covered with huge cloths.
Kate and John stop for a moment, look around with a frown and exchange a look before they make their way over to the other side of the lab to the first door.
When they reach it, John swipes the security card, they've been given for unlimited excess, through the reader.
On the door is a sign saying 'KEEP OUT UNLESS YOU WANT A COLD!' which they casually ignore and walk through without exchanging a word.
The next door has a little glass window and John gently taps against it, but nobody replies. They shrug and enter the room.
It's even darker inside this room and the light that is there, is rather dark orange. Their vision is also clouded by some kind of smoke that hangs in the room. They find several science equipment and files on the tables, but otherwise the small room is empty. Kate eyes some tubes that come out of the wall while John checks out a drawer to see if he can find any clues for the hound. After a few moments Kate nods towards the door and John opens it for them to leave again.
With one last look inside Kate closes the second door behind them. Just when it clicks shut and she turns towards John again they're blinded by a bright light.
Kate quickly squinches her eyes shut and tries to shield them with one hand while reaching out for John with the other. When she gets hold of his shoulder he reaches for her hand and drags her forward, away from the light. But then a loud alarm starts ringing and he let's go of her to cover both of his ears. "Oh, no! Jesus! Ow!"
She does the same, but after a moment she lays her eyes on the elevator and pushes John towards it with a painful groan.
"Bloody hell?" John mutters in pain.
The alarm is so loud that Kate feels like her brain might explode any second, so she takes the security card from John and swipes it through the reader of the elevator as fast as she can.
'ACCESS DENIED'
Kate frowns and swipes it through again.
'ACCESS DENIED'
"Come on." John exhales and takes the card out of her hands to try again.
Just when Kate's wants to snap something like 'It's not like I'm too stupid to do it.' the alarm stops and the lights go off.
They freeze for a moment.
"What the-?" Kate starts but is interrupted by John who takes a flashlight out of his pocket and switches it on.
"Hello?" He shouts into the room.
Kate reaches in her coat pocket but her flashlight isn't there, it must've fallen out in the car. Great.
She takes her phone and tries to turn on its flashlight but it's hard to focus cause she's still seeing little white blotches from being blinded by this bright light.
Besides her, John groans again and rubs his eyes.
"When you look into light there are particles called photons coming into your eye, which stimulate your cells by changing retinal, a light-sensitive pigment, into a slightly different form and the stimulated cells send electrical impulses to your brain. But light as bright as that gets the cells a bit overexcited and it takes them a while to calm down again." Kate mutters more to herself to collect her thoughts.
"I know Kate, I'm a doctor. Don't you start acting like I'm dumb now like Sherlock does."
"I was talking to myself, John." She half-snaps cause her brain is still in pain.
"Hello?" John shouts into the room once again.
After another moment of silence, Kate growls angrily. "Is this suppose to be some kind of joke?"
There's a rattling sound and slowly Kate's eyes adjust to the darkness again. John looks around with a frown and Kate nods towards the covered cages cause the rattling is coming from there.
Slowly they approach the first cage and while John lights with his flashlight, Kate removes the cloth with a quick motion.
It's empty.
They let out a breath and make their way to the next cage. There's another sound and John lights around the room.
Kate waits for him to light back to the cage before removing the next cloth, she has her gun in one hand by now.
Again nothing, but the cage door is open and John swallows thickly before they step up to the next cage.
Kate gives him a nod before she lifts the cloth.
A monkey jumps in their direction and screams. While they jump pack in horror Kate fires a shot out of reflex, that gladly misses the monkey.
"Jesus, Kate." John curses with a ducked head.
"Sorry." She breathes heavy and puts her gun back in the holster.
"Kate." John's worried voice reaches her ear and she looks in his direction and then follows his flashlight.
It's pointing at the edge of the last cage and Kate can see that the cage is broken and something strong must've bent it apart.
Suddenly there's a growl behind them. They freeze again and stare at each other with big eyes, not daring to move a muscle.
Kate takes the card from John's hand and hurries to the other door they've gone through earlier.
'ACCESS DENIED'
"No, come on, come one." John whines as he steps up beside her.
"This doesn't make any sense." She curses and tries again.
'ACCESS DENIED'
"Shit." Kate whispers and she gets out her phone again to call Sherlock.
"No, you...don't be ridiculous, pick up." She mutters in panic when he doesn't pick up. "Oh, dammit!"
She ends the call, switches on her flashlight and takes her gun out again.
John inhales deeply before turning towards the room again. "Right."
Together they try to light as much from the room as possible. With a last nod, they hurry through the room to the other door, through which the scientists left earlier.
Kate's about to slide the card through the reader when they hear the sound of claws walking on the clean lab floor and a louder growl's echoing through the room.
"Oh sh-" John breaths and lights into the room in panic.
There are more, louder noises and John covers his mouth with his hand to silence his heavy breathing.
When there is silence Kate gives John a push. They run towards the cages and through the open door of the second one they checked. John slams the door shut behind them and pulls the cloth down to cover them.
They huddle together and turn off their flashlights, while trying to breathe as calm as possible, which is hard with all the adrenalin and fear.
Somewhere in the lab is more movement and Kate drops her phone in her lab to hold onto John's arm while he covers his mouth with his hand again.
Suddenly Kate's phone starts to ring and they gasp. She shoves the gun in John's free hand, before picking up the phone with shaking hands.
"It's here. It's in here with us." She whispers as softly as she can.
"Where are you?" Sherlock speaks in a normal volume and Kate's forehead drops against John's shoulder from relieve to hear his voice.
"Get us out, Sherlock. You have got to get us out. The big lab. The first lab that we saw." She describes just as quietly as before, hoping he can even hear her through her heavy, shaking breath.
There's another growl, closer this time, and John and Kate let out a whine at the same time.
This time Kate covers her mouth for a moment and closes her eyes to collect herself while John moves even closer to her.
"Kate? ...Kate?"
"Now, Sherlock. Please." John whines in a high pitched voice.
"All right, I'll find you. Keep talking."
"I can't. It'll hear me." Kate whispers again this time.
"Keep talking. What are you seeing?" Sherlock asks in a calm voice.
Both of them stare at the little gap between the cloths over the cage for a moment.
"Kate? John?"
Another growl.
"Yes, we're here." Kate inhales deeply.
"What can you see?" Sherlock asks more sternly. Fuck him.
She leans forward to look through the gap. "I don't know. I don't know, but I can hear it, tho."
Another louder growl.
"Did you hear that?" Now Kate's voice is also high pitched.
"Stay calm, stay calm. Can you see it? ...Can you see it?"
"No. I can..." Kate's about to snap but then a dark shadow appears right before her with another growl.
She stiffens and falls back against John and stops herself from screaming with a hand on her mouth.
John's stares at it with wide eyes and swallows before whispering into the phone. "We can see it. It's here."
The shadow moves closer to the cage.
"It's here." Kate approves.
Her and John are closely holding onto each other and she's nearly crying now. She's seen much in her life but a genetic experiment hound tearing them apart is new and not appreciated.
The shadow reaches the door, the cloth is removed and the lights turn back on all at the same time.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock looks at them with worry and eyes John, who's pointing Kate's gun at him, for a moment.
They stare at him with wide eyes while he opens the door of the cage. "Kate, John ..."
"Jesus Christ ..." Kate pushes past John and reaches out for Sherlock, who's crunching down to their level, with shaking hands and panic in her eyes.
His eyes meet hers and all of a sudden she feels safe.
Kate hides her face in Sherlock's neck and holds on for dear life. The whole situation really triggered her.
John pulls himself up on the bars after Sherlock lifts Kate out of the cage and places her back on her feet. She's still leaning against his chest with her forehead against his ribcage.
John's breathless and the panic is still audible in his voice. "It was the hound, Sherlock. It was here. I swear it, Sherlock. It must ... "
Kate comes back to reality and looks around in panic, taking the gun back from John, but the hound is nowhere to be seen. "It must...did...did...did you see it? You must have!"
She turns towards Sherlock who takes hold of both her shoulder to steady her. "It's all right. It's okay now. "
"NO, IT'S NOT! IT'S NOT OKAY!" Kate steps away from him and shouts in desperate, still looking around to check for any signs of the hound, pointing her gun in several directions.
"I SAW IT. I WAS WRONG!" John also shouts at Sherlock who's now being the calm one about this topic all of a sudden.
Sherlock just shrugs. "Well, let's not jump to conclusions."
"What?" They snap in union.
"What did you see?" He asks calmly, holding a hand out to both of them in a protecting motion.
"We told you: We saw the hound." John says.
"Huge? Red eyes?"
"Yes."
"Glowing?"
"Yeah." Kate breaths.
"No." Sherlock says simply.
"What?" Kate snaps at him again.
"I made up the bit about glowing. You saw what you expected to see because I told you. You have been drugged. We have all been drugged."
"Drugged?" John states emotionless.
"Can you walk?"
"'Course I can walk." Kate mutters and John gives Sherlock a nod that is accompanied by an angry glare.
"Come on, then. It's time to lay this ghost." Sherlock hurries off and they stumble after him with shaky legs and one last glace into the lab.
They find Dr. Stapleton in a smaller room with rabbit cages all over the wall to their left.
Dr. Stapleton herself is placed behind a table in the middle of the room and looks up from examining a white rabbit when they enter. "Oh. Back again? What's on your mind this time?"
Kate can John hear still breathing heavily beside her.
"Murder, Doctor Stapleton. Refined, cold-blooded murder." With that Sherlock turns around and switches the light off.
The rabbit on the examining table is indeed glowing green and they look at it for a good second, before Sherlock turns the light back on.
"Will you tell little Kirsty what happened to Bluebell, or shall I?" He gives her a small fake smile.
"Okay." Stapleton sighs. "What do you want?"
"Can I borrow your microscope?"
She leads them into another larger lab and Sherlock takes off his coat to get to work.
While he's busy crushing something, that looks like crystalline, to look at it under the microscope and is making notes every now and then, Dr. Stapleton gets something to drink for John's and Kate's pale faces.
Both of them got rid of their jackets too and sit on another lab table with Dr. Stapleton, to let Sherlock work in peace.
Kate's staring a hole into the bottom of her glass, still thinking about what just happened.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Dr. Stapleton rids her out of her thoughts. Kate can see that John was also staring holes into the air and now blinks at Stapleton in confusion.
"You look very peaky." She adds.
"No, I'm all right." John tells her and Kate nods before taking another sip of her water.
"It was the GFP gene from a jellyfish, in case you're interested."
"What?" Kate furrows her eyebrows.
"In the rabbits."
"Mm, right, yes." John hums, not really interested at the moment.
"Aequoria Victoria, if you really want to know." She continues proudly.
"Why?" Kate asks and rests her head on her hand.
"Why not? We don't ask questions like that here. It isn't done. There was a mix-up, anyway. My daughter ended up with one of the lab specimens, so poor Bluebell had to go."
"Your compassion's overwhelming." John mutters ironically and lifts his coffee mug to his mouth.
"I know. I hate myself sometimes." She mocks back and for some reason Kate thinks she could like her if she wouldn't be experimenting on animals, but on pedophiles and rapists.
"So, come on then. You can trust me – I'm a doctor. Kate's a pathologist. We know stuff and can keep secrets. What else have you got hidden away up here?" John looks at Sherlock for a moment before turning back to Dr. Stapleton.
She sighs deeply. "Listen: If you can imagine it, someone is probably doing it somewhere. Of course they are."
"And cloning?".
"Yes, of course. Dolly the Sheep, remember?"
"Human cloning?" Kate specifies John's question.
"Why not?"
"Obvious reasons." She shrugs casually. "What about animals? Not sheep...big animals."
"Size isn't a problem, not at all. The only limits are ethics and the law, and both those things can be...very flexible. But not here – not at Baskerville." She assures them.
"I still think I will have to meet up with Mycie about all this shit." Kate turns towards John who nods.
Suddenly Sherlock shoots up from his chair and throws something against the opposite wall which lands with a shattering of glass. "It's not there!"
"Jesus!" Kate curses and jumps from her chair.
"Nothing there! Doesn't make any sense." He paces around.
"What were you expecting to find?" Dr. Stapleton asks unbothered.
"A drug, of course. There has to be a drug – a hallucinogenic or a deliriant of some kind. There's no trace of anything in the sugar."
"Sugar?" Kate asks with a frown as she steps closer to stop him from pacing around.
"The sugar, yes." He turns to face them. "It's a simple process of elimination. I saw the hound – saw it as my imagination expected me to see it: A genetically engineered monster. But I knew I couldn't believe the evidence of my own eyes, so there were seven possible reasons for it, the most possible being narcotics. Henry Knight – he saw it too and so did Kate but you didn't, John." He points at John. "You didn't see it. Now, we have eaten and drunk exactly the same things since we got to Grimpen apart from one thing: You don't take sugar in your coffee and Kate doesn't take much so that's why she only saw something moving but not the same as me and Henry."
"I see. So-" John starts but is overruled by Sherlock and he gives up with an exhausted sigh.
"I took it from Henry's kitchen – his sugar." He throws another look into the microscope before pushing himself off the table with anger again. "It's perfectly all right."
"But maybe it's not a drug." Kate states.
"No, it has to be a drug!" Sherlock says fanatically as he sits down again, facing away from them and places his head in his hands to think with closed eyes. "But how did it get into our systems. How? There has to be something ..." He slowly lifts his head and his hands pause mid-air."...something...ah, something...something buried deep."
He takes in a sharp breath before turning around and waves towards the door. "Get out."
"What?" Dr. Stapleton snaps confused.
"Get out." Sherlock repeats. "I need to go to my mind palace."
John rolls his eyes and Kate huffs.
"Your what?" Dr. Stapleton sounds even more confused now.
"He's not gonna be doing much talking for a while. We may as well go." Kate explains.
"You stay, Kate." Sherlock says, facing away from them again with closed eyes.
They pass him and Sherlock opens his eyes again to give Kate an insisting look. She rolls her eyes and sits down on another chair beside him.
John and Dr. Stapleton keep on walking towards the door while he explains her what exactly Sherlock's mind palace is.
"So this imaginary location can be anything – a house or a street?" She asks.
"Yeah." John shrugs.
"But he said 'palace'. He said it was a palace."
"Yeah, well, he would, wouldn't he?" Kate mocks and throws Sherlock a look even if he's closed his eyes again.
Tiredly she lays her head on his shoulders with a sigh and watches him moves his hands through the air like he's swiping something out of the way or grabbing things in the air to combine them.
Kate watches Sherlock's face from the side with a frown. He seems quite stiff and concentrated, but sometimes he opens his eyes stares in the air in front of him and makes a grimace before he continues to swipe around in the air.
After some minutes when Kate nearly fell asleep Sherlock lets himself fall back in the chair and her head nearly slips off his shoulder.
"What?" Kate asks straddled as she sits up.
"Liberty, Indiana, H.O.U.N.D."
"What?"
Without another word he hurries out of the lab, probably to get John and Dr. Stapleton, Kate follows him with a yawn.
They find them in the next room, another small lab, talking. Before either of them can ask, Sherlock speaks to Dr. Stapleton. "I need a computer that has access to all the important files."
She sighs, walks off and they follow her till they reach a small room that looks like an office.
"John." Sherlock says with a nod towards the door they just came through.
"Yeah, I'm on it." John assures and turns around to look out the window in the door to keep an eye out for intruders.
Dr. Stapleton sits down at a computer and Sherlock starts to explain. "Project HOUND. Must have read about it and stored it away. An experiment in a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana."
Stapleton types in her access data and then looks up at Sherlock, who's leaning over her shoulder, for further instructions.
"H-O-U-N-D." He spells out for her.
Kate leans over Stapleton's other shoulder and stares at the loading display.
'NO ACCESS. CIA Classified.'
"That's as far as my access goes, I'm afraid."
"Well, there must be an override and password." John suggest.
"I imagine so, but that'd be Major Barrymore's."
Sherlock spins around and walks into another office at the side of the room, behind a glass wall.
"Is that his office?" Kate asks with a knowing smirk and Dr. Stapleton nods.
"Password, password, password." Sherlock mumbles and sits down in the office chair. "He sat here when he thought it up."
He places his hands together in front of his mouth again and spins around, taking the room in. Kate and Stapleton make their way over.
"Describe him to me." He demands.
"You've seen him." Stapleton states.
"But describe him." Sherlock spins around again.
"Eh, ...he's a bloody martinet, a throw-back, the sort of man they'd have sent into Suez."
"Good, excellent. Old-fashioned, traditionalist, not the sort that would use his children's names as a password." He talks in his fast deduction voice again and points at the mentioned things. "He loves his job, proud of it and this is work-related, so what's at eye level? Books. Jane's Defense Weekly – bound copies. Hannibal, Wellington, Rommel, Churchill's "History of the English-Speaking Peoples" – all four volumes. Churchill – well, he's fond of Churchill. Copy of "The Downing Street Years". One, two, three, four, five separate biographies of Thatcher. Mid-1980s at a guess. Father and son: Barrymore senior. Medals: Distinguished Service Order." Sherlock swirls around to John who just walked over to the doorway of Barrymore's office.
"That date? I'd say Falklands veteran." John suggests and leans back to check the corridor again.
"Right, so Thatcher's looking a more likely bet than Churchill." Sherlock explains as he passes them and leaves the office to get back to the computer.
"So that's the password?" Doctor Stapleton frowns.
"No. With a man like Major Barrymore, only first name terms would do." Sherlock leans towards the keyboard and starts to type "Margaret" before deleting it again and going for 'Maggie'.
He hits enter and the computer makes another sound.
'OVERRIDE 300/421 ACCEPTED. Loading...'
John joins them again as they stare at the screen. It's showing various information about project H.O.U.N.D. but Sherlock is scrolling too fast for any of them to really read something. Kate can only see a few words when Sherlock slows down for a second, like 'conditioned terror' or 'aerosol dispersal'.
Then a photograph of, most likely, the project team appears. It shows the people's names underneath: Elaine Dyson, Mary Uslowski, Rick Nader, Jack O'Mara and Leonard Hansen.
Kate leans further and steadies herself with one hand on Sherlock's shoulder as her eyes scan the names and the picture.
Leonard Hansen
Jack O'Mara
Mary Uslowski
Rick Nader
Elaine Dyson
"HOUND." She breathes.
Sherlock scrolls on and in the next documents words like 'Paranoia', 'Severe frontal lobe damage', 'Blood-brain', 'Gross cranial trauma', 'Dangerous acceleration' and 'Multiple homicide' pop up, sometimes even with pictures, and John, Kate and Dr. Stapleton stare at it in horror.
"Jesus." John gasps.
"Project HOUND: A new deliriant drug which rendered its users incredibly suggestible. They wanted to use it as an anti-personnel weapon to totally disorientate the enemy using fear and stimulus, but they shut it down and hid it away in 1986."
"Because of what it did to the subjects they tested it on." Kate states and Sherlock nods.
"And what they did to others. Prolonged exposure drove them insane – made them almost uncontrollably aggressive."
"So someone's been doing it again – carrying on the experiments?" John throws in. "Attempting to refine it, perhaps for the last twenty years."
"Who?" Stapleton questions.
"Those names mean anything to you?" John asks her with a nods to the computer screen and she reads them once again.
"No..." She shakes her head. "Not a thing."
Sherlock sighs deeply. "Five principal scientists, twenty years ago."
He scrolls back to the photograph of the team and zooms in on the persons.
Kate can see that their shirts say 'H.O.U.N.D. Liberty, In.' and she rolls her eyes.
"Maybe our friend's somewhere in the back of the picture – someone who was old enough to be there at the time of the experiments in 1986 –" Sherlock suddenly stops and stares at a man in the picture.
As Kate narrows her eyes to take a closer look at the man Sherlock continues to talk, but now in his annoyed half-sarcastic voice and turns around to them. "Maybe somebody who says 'cell phone' because of time spent in America. You remember?"
"Mhm!" John hums unimpressed and Kate has a flashback to Dr. Frankland giving Sherlock his 'cell number'. She smirks to herself. That bastard.
"He gave us his number in case we needed him." Sherlock nearly growls.
Dr. Stapleton stares at the screen in disbelieve. "Oh my God. Bob Frankland. But Bob doesn't even work on...I mean, he's a virologist. This was chemical warfare."
"It's where he started, though...and he's never lost the certainty. The obsession that that drug really could work. Nice of him to give us his number." He reaches into his pocket and reveals Frankland's card. "Let's arrange a little meeting."
Sherlock gets up and steps away from them while John takes one last closer look at the screen. Suddenly his phone starts to ring and he frowns at it once he got it out of his pocket to answer it. "Hello?"
Even Kate can hear a loud cry through the phone from a few feet away.
"Who's this?" John asks and Sherlock stares a hole in the back of his head.
"It's Louise Mortimer." He tells Sherlock before talking the phone again. "Louise, what's wrong?""
Kate just hears the word 'gun' and steps up besides Sherlock.
"What?" John gasps.
More cries.
"Where - Where are you? ...Right, stay there. We'll get someone to you, okay?"
John hangs up and stares at his phone.
"Henry?" Sherlock asks, his own phone still in his hands, ready to call Frankland.
"Mhm! He's attacked her." John nods and tries to call Henry.
"Gone?" Kate asks.
"Mhm."
"There's only one place he'll go to. Back to where it all started." Sherlock says and types in Frankland's number from the card. "Kate, call Lestrade, tell him to come to the Hollow with his Gun. John, call the police for Louise Mortimer."
It's already pretty dark outside when they leave Baskerville. Kate hadn't noticed how long they've been in there.
As fast as they can they drive towards the Hollow. Lestrade hasn't arrived that but they can't wait for him. Henry might be in real danger.
When they approach the Hollow they can see the silhouette of Henry who's about to take the pistol in his mouth and shoot himself in the head.
"No, Henry, no! No!" Sherlock shouts and stumbles down into the Hollow, followed by John and Kate.
"Get back. Get – get away from me!" Henry, who's now in the light of their flashlights, shouts back at them.
"Easy, Henry. Easy. Just relax." John tries to sue him with his calm doctor voice.
"I know what I am. I know what I tried to do!"
"Just put the gun down. It's okay." Kate assures him with a kind smile.
"No, no, I know what I am!!"
"Yes, I'm sure you do, Henry. It's all been explained to you, hasn't it – explained very carefully." Sherlock holds out a calming hand towards him.
"What?" Henry asks in normal volume now.
"Someone needed to keep you quiet; needed to keep you as a child to reassert the dream that you'd both clung on to, because you had started to remember." Sherlock slowly walks closer to Henry, holding his hand up calmingly. "Remember now, Henry. You've got to remember what happened here when you were a little boy."
Henry lowers his gun for a second before raising it back at Sherlock again. "I thought it had got my dad – the hound. I thought ... OH JE- OH JESUS, I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE!"
He bends forward crying and puts the gun in his mouth again.
"NO, HENRY! Henry, for God's sake!" Kate shouts and rushes towards him to kick the gun out of his hand, but Sherlock holds her back with one arm.
"Henry, remember. 'Liberty In.' Two words. Two words a frightened little boy saw here twenty years ago." He says sternly and Henry calms down a bit. "You'd started to piece things together, remember what really happened here that night. It wasn't an animal, was it, Henry? "
Slowly, Henry straightens up and blinks at Sherlock.
"Not a monster...A man."
Henry's eyes go wide as if he's remembering something.
"You couldn't cope. You were just a child, so you rationalized it into something very different. But then you started to remember, so you had to be stopped, driven out of your mind so that no-one would believe a word that you said."
John steps forward and holds out his hand for Henry to hand him the gun.
Suddenly something moves behind them and Kate turns around to see Lestrade stumble into the Hollow. "Sherlock!"
"But we saw it. The hound, last night. We s - we, we, we did, we saw..." Henry cries as John finally has his gun.
"Yeah, but there was a dog, Henry. Leaving footprints, scaring witnesses, but it was nothing more than an ordinary dog. We both saw it – saw it as our drugged minds wanted us to see it. Fear and stimulus, that's how it works. But there never was any monster."
A howl echoes through the Hollow and they all swirl around to look up the Hollow.
"Yeah well, you sure 'bout that?" Kate half-jokes, gun and flashlight pointed in the direction the noise came from.
Movement.
"Sherlock..." John says nervously.
Kate turns her head for a second and sees Sherlock also staring up in disbelieve.
"No." Henry starts to panic again. "No, no, no, no!"
"Henry, Henry..." Sherlock tries and holds out a calming hand towards him again.
"Sherlock..." John's begging by now.
Henry backs away and crunches down screaming 'No!' over and over again.
John turns to him for a second. "Henry!"
Kate gasps as she sees something move and stumbles back against Greg's chest.
The Hound.
It growls and looks at them with red glowing eyes. The same eyes Kate remembers from the lab.
"Shit!" Greg curses.
Kate steps away from him again and turns around to light him in the face. "Greg, are you seeing this?"
He just stares at her for a moment before starting back up at the hound. That's a yes.
John's also looking back up in fear now, before he exchanges a look with Kate and frowns at Lestrade. "Right: He's not drugged. Sherlock, so what's that?"
"What is it?!" Kate shouts when Sherlock doesn't answer.
"All right! It's still here...but it's just a dog." He turns around to Henry again. "Henry! It's nothing more than an ordinary dog!"
The Hound howls again and Lestrade stumbles backward. "Oh my God!"
"It doesn't look so ordinary, Sherlock! Maybe we're just not drugged and werewolf exists."
"Don't be stupid."
"I'm being rational."
"No, you're thinking of a place of fear."
The hound begins to make his way down towards them.
"Oh, Christ! Could you two s'op bi'erin' like an old married couple and focus on the task at 'and?" Greg curses as he backs away further, one hand taking hold of Kate's arm to drag her with him.
Suddenly Kate sees another person hiding in the shadows and points her flashlight at them. "Sherlock!"
His gaze follows her light and he approaches the person. It could only be Dr. Frankland, but Kate can't tell for sure since he's wearing a breathing mask.
The hound growls once more and takes another step towards them.
Kate's gaze switches between the hound and Sherlock, who's grabbed Frankland now. They're having a little struggle.
"No!" Sherlock screams. "It's not you! You're not here!"
"Sherlock!" Kate shouts for him to get his shit together.
He finally manages to pull the mask from Frankland's face and stills. Dr. Frankland is covering his mouth with one hand.
"The fog." Sherlock shouts.
"What?" John asks nervously, eyes, gun and flashlight fixated on the hound.
"It's the fog! The drug: It's in the fog! Aerosol dispersal – that's what it said in those records. Project HOUND. It's the fog! A chemical minefield!"
Greg immediately covers his mouth and nose with his arm to stop himself from breathing in the fog. Kate pulls her pullover over her nose.
The hound is now down to their level and approaches them with another dreadful growl.
Kate raises her gun.
"For God's sake, kill it! Kill it!" Frankland screams.
Greg and John step up beside her, also with raised guns. She inhales and exhales deeply.
The hound makes himself ready to attack and Greg's the first one to fire. He misses and that's all it needs for Kate and John to fire too.
Finally one of them hits it and it collapses.
Sherlock drags Henry up. "Look at it, Henry."
"No, no, no!" Henry struggles against his grip but Sherlock just shoves him further towards the now dead hound.
"Come on, look at it!"
They reach it and stare down for a moment in silence.
Kate can see a dead dog on the ground. "No!"
She throws a hand over her mouth to stop a sob.
John and Greg groan and put their guns down. Greg drives his hand through his hair. "It's just ..." Henry blinks, finally back to his senses. "You bastard."
He screams and throws himself on Frankland. "You bastard!"
Greg and John hurry over to drag Henry off Frankland.
"Twenty years! Twenty years of my life making no sense! Why didn't you just kill me?!"
Finally, Greg has Henry in a good hold and they manage to get him off.
"Because dead men get listened to. He needed to do more than kill you. He had to discredit every word you ever said about your father, and he had the means right at his feet – a chemical minefield, pressure pads in the ground dosing you up every time that you came back here." Sherlock explains and turns around slowly with open arms. "Murder weapon and scene of the crime all at once."
Kate's still staring at the dog, crying quietly when John approaches her. "You ok?"
"Yes...it's just he was so innocent. Maybe didn't even attack us. Just a scared dog and we shot him because of this stupid asshole and his fanatic about these drugs!" Kate growls, John gently pushes her back to the others but then keeps a firm hold of her left underarm. Maybe he's scared that she might jump Frankland too.
"Oh, this case, Henry!" Sherlock laughs cheerfully. "Thank you. It's been brilliant."
"Sherlock..." John growls.
"What?" He turns towards him.
John glares at him. "Timing."
"Not good?"
"No, no, it's – it's okay. It's fine, because this means..." Henry speaks up and turns towards Frankland again, who's still laying on the ground. "...this means that my dad was right."
Frankland's getting ready to stand up and John and Greg gently place a hand on each of Henry's shoulders to hold him back.
"He found something out, didn't he, and that's why you'd killed him – because he was right, and he'd found you right in the middle of an experiment."
When Frankland is fully standing on his feet they hear another snarl from where the dog corpse is.
They all spin around and Kate has her gun out and shots without thinking twice.
She gasps in shook and lets her gun fall, while Frankland uses the opportunity to run off.
"Frankland!" Sherlock screams and runs after him.
After a hot second, the others realize what's happening and run after Sherlock who's still screaming Frankland's name into the darkness.
Kate picks up her gun and puts it in the holster before running off, dragging poor Henry with her. "Come on, keep up!"
They've got a hard time finding their way through the forest without falling at that pace. Even Kate stumbles twice and is way slower since the others decided to run off and leave her in charge of Henry, the most inexperienced.
"It's no use, Frankland!" She hears Sherlock shout somewhere to their right and drags Henry on his sleeve in that direction.
When they take another turn Kate bumps into Greg and they're both thrown to the ground by the force of their colliding bodies.
"Sorry!" Greg says fast and pushes himself up with a groan while Henry offers his help to Kate, which she declines.
Then they see Frankland, shortly followed by Sherlock and John and run after them.
Besides Sherlock, Kate's the fastest, since she can abandon Henry with the rest of the group now. John's legs are short and Greg's out of form, so both of them are to first ones to reach the last tree line of the forest.
Kate can see Frankland jumping over and then down into something. In the last second she realizes what it is and her body goes autopilot.
Her left hand grabs as much of Sherlock's coat as it can and she uses all power she has to drag him to a stop.
Then she stops too and opens her arms in front of the others like a human shield. "Everybody stop!!"
But Greg bumps into her and she nearly falls down with a squeak if it weren't for Sherlock wrapping his long arm around her waist.
"It's the minefield." Sherlock notices.
"He stopped." Greg says and stares out onto the field.
"DOWN!" John shouts after a second and they all throw themselves onto the ground as a massive explosion rips through the air.
It's really late when they're finally done explaining everything to the local forces.
Kate falls into the passenger seat only to shot back up and pick her flashlight out from underneath her butt with a growl. She throws it in her handbag on the ground and snuggles back into the seat.
Sherlock drives them back to the Inn and Kate falls asleep.
When she wakes up again she's being carried. By Sherlock. It's only half surprising, cause even if John is strong he could never manage to carry her that long, since she's not the skinniest and he's short, but she'd expected Sherlock to not give two shits and wake her up so she could walk her own ass upstairs. Maybe John made him do it. Most probably.
She shifts, blinks a few times and sees that they just entered the double room. She needs to have a word with John about this, cause she was expecting to sleep in the single bedroom or together with John today.
Sherlock gently places her on the bed.
"Sherlock?" She mumbles into the pillow as she feels her shoes being removed and a blanket thrown over her.
"Kate." Sherlock says in his unbothered voice, from a bit further away.
She opens her eyes again and sees him taking out the laptop from John's bag, before sitting down at a table.
"Sleep?"
"I slept enough yesterday."
"Sherlock..."
"Kate." He looks at her.
"Come to bed. Please, Sher..." She mumbles into the pillow but is asleep before she can wait for Sherlock's reaction.
The next morning Kate wakes up to the sight of Sherlock kneeling directly in front of her, one hand on her shoulder to shake her awake.
"Rise and shine." He says with a sarcastic tone.
"Jeeez, how early is it?" Kate growls and rubs her eyes.
"7 am."
"You do realize that we...well I went to bed at 4 am, right?"
"You can sleep on the car ride back home."
"I can't sleep in a car, and I'm not letting you've sleep-hydrated self drive us home. John drives."
"You didn't seem to have a problem with it yesterday, and I'm fine."
"That's because I was shattered, and you always say that." She gently places her hand on his cheek, eyes still only half-open. He doesn't move away. "What was so much more important than sleep?"
"Work."
She lets her hand wander through his hair and a warm feeling floats from her hand through her body. "Sure is. We're not even in London, Sherlock. Take a day off."
"I solved like 10 in the past 2 hours over the blog." He states. Not at all trying to show off...not at all.
She rolls her eyes. "Of cause you did. Seems like John's blog ain't that bad after all, huh?"
Kate leans forward and leaves a kiss on his cheek, she would really like to kiss him but morning taste is gross.
He stares at her for a moment before he gets up to wake John.
Kate gives John a sleepy smile, which he returns just as sleepy, when they meet up downstairs.
They order breakfast and sit down outside of the Inn, while Sherlock questions Billy about the dog.
"Did you have something to do with me ending up in the double room with Sherlock again?" Kate gives him a look.
"Maybe." He shrugs it off, a smirk playing on his lips.
"...and Sherlock carrying me to bed?"
"Surprisingly, I had nothing to do with that."
She stares at him for a moment and knows he isn't lying to her.
"I don't know what's going on between you two and I accept that you do not want to tell me, but you deserve all the luck in the world. Both of you. Even if he'd never admit it. But you're moving on a small line of being good or toxic for each other and you need to keep an eye on that, ok Kate?"
Before Kate can answer to that, Billy brings them their plates and Sherlock returns too. "So they didn't have it put down, then. The dog."
He places a coffee in front of John and cacao for Kate before taking a sip of his own coffee.
"Obviously. 'Suppose they just couldn't bring themselves to do it." John says and takes a mouthful of his breakfast.
"I see."
"No," Kate huffs. "...you don't."
Sherlock thinks for a moment before shaking his head. "No, I don't. Sentiment?"
"Sentiment!" Kate agrees and takes a bite of her sandwich.
Sherlock finally sits down, besides John.
"Listen, what happened to us in the lab?" John asks directly.
"Do you want some sauce with that?" Sherlock asks and offers John a basket with different sauces.
"I mean, we hadn't been to the Hollow, so how come we heard those things in there? Fear and stimulus, you said." Kate frowns at him suspiciously.
"You must have been dosed with it elsewhere, when you went to the lab, maybe. You saw those pipes – pretty ancient, leaky as a sieve and they were carrying the gas, so...um, ketchup, was it? Or brown-?" He nearly shoves the basket into their faces.
"Hang on." John stops eating and turns towards him. "You thought it was in the sugar."
Sherlock stares into the distance for a moment before checking his watch. "Better get going actually, if we want to be back in London in time, so if you want..."
John turns his head towards Kate, who's angrily glaring at Sherlock by now, in realization with an eye roll. "Oh God. It was you. You locked us in that bloody lab. "
"I had to. It was an experiment." He says calmly.
"An experiment?!" Kate snaps. "I'm not- We're not one of your experiments. I thought we were over that by now!"
"Shhh." Sherlock tries to sue her.
"We were terrified, Sherlock. We were scared to death." John growls
"I thought that the drug was in the sugar, so I put the sugar in your coffee, then I arranged everything with Major Barrymore. It was all totally scientific, laboratory conditions – well, literally. Well, I knew what effect it had had on a superior mind, so I needed to try it on an average one."
They death glare at him.
"You know what I mean."
Kate stands up and walks away with her two sandwiches in both hands and her handbag hanging over her shoulder.
"Kate?" John shouts after her.
"I'm riding with Greg." She says and joins Greg, who just left the Inn and was heading towards his car.
She hands him a sandwich and he takes it with a smile. "Troubow in paradise?"
"He's being a bastard."
"Tell me somevin' new." He chuckles as he unlocks his car and throws his bag on the backseat.
Kate gets into the passenger seat and they drive past John and Sherlock, who just stare at them.
"It's just...every time I think I'm getting somewhere with him there's a throwback. Fuck it!" Kate curses.
"Yes, just scream it out: FUCK!" Greg suddenly shouts loudly and Kate flinches.
They stare at each other for a moment before breaking out in laughter.
"What team-building course did you learn that in?" Kate laughs deeply.
_
Feedback pelase <3