for elementarysaidhe ; Escaping Karachi

[irene_adler]

It’s a strange feeling, knowing you’ll never see the sun again.

For the past week, Irene Adler had not seen the outside world at all. Her world had consisted of a small, damp room with a tiny window too high to reach. More than once she had tried, even taken a running start from the other side of the room and jumped as high as she could (in bare feet), reaching in desperation for the iron bars. Her fingers had barely touched the edge, but she hadn’t been able to get hold. A moment later she had fallen, taking most of the impact in her right shoulder. She didn’t cry out when colliding with the ground, not because the fall didn’t hurt, but to avoid drawing attention to herself. Two armed men stood outside the door, their guns shouldered and ready for any unexpected sound (or potential escape attempt).

Almost five months had passed since Belgravia, when Irene Adler had fled with a hastily packed suitcase and adrenaline pulsing through to the tips of her fingers. Kate, devoted to a fault, had followed her employer up the staircase.

“Miss Adler, is -?”

“Kate, bring me the contents of my safe.”

“Yes, Miss Adler.”

Minutes later Kate returned, her hands filled with stacks of currency. A small furrow appeared between her eyes at the sight of Irene hurriedly throwing clothes and shoes into a suitcase. She nearly tripped over one of the Louboutin shoes that had been hastily discarded as soon as she entered the room.

“Here you are, Miss Adler.”

“Thank you, Kate.”

Irene took the money and buried it deep in the suitcase, dragging the zipper closed. A slight tremor in her hands prolonged the process, and she made a sharp sound between her teeth.

“Miss Adler, are you all right?”

“No.”

“Has something -?”

“Kate, there isn’t time. You need to leave the country now.”

“Miss -“

“There isn’t time, Kate!” Irene’s voice rose sharply, and she whirled to face her assistant. “You need to pack a suitcase and leave. Now.”

Kate turned quickly and left the room, her heels clicking rapidly down the hallway. Irene disappeared into her own closet, the black crepe dress and stockings thrown into a corner. Minutes later she emerged in dark pants and tunic, a pair of mid-calf high boots on her feet. She gathered her hair in one hand, twisting it up atop her head with the help of two pins. A black knit hat was pulled on, the edges rugged down to her ears.

There wasn’t time for anything else. Irene Adler fled into the night, shadowy in dark and discreet clothing, and she ran.

She’d run for months, never staying in one place longer than three days. The cities and countries began to blur together, initially only distinctive by their files on her (former) camera phone. A photo of a diplomat’s wife tied to a bed, the royal who preferred kneeling to being knelt before - nearly anything possible with anyone in a position of power. Irene Adler had collected blackmail (protection) on them all, and as a result there was nowhere safe to go. All she could do was run, and keep running.

Pakistan had been where her luck ran out. Irene Adler had been taken prisoner while trying to leave Karachi by boat, caught by both arms as a cloth bag was pulled over her head. She had fought, but the soldiers had been too strong and in too great a number. One struck the back of her head, and she had lost consciousness.

The days to follow had been a blur of interrogation, both verbal and physical. Irene Adler was kept in the same room the entire time, her only company the soldiers who yelled questions and struck her regardless of the answer. She was by no means a stranger to pain, but her previous line of work involved limitations, a mindfulness for the other person - consent. The soldiers didn’t care what Irene did or didn’t say. They knew she was vulnerable now - no protection, nothing to hold over anyone - and now they wanted revenge. Revenge that would be taken with canes, leather straps, a strike with a gun if they so chose - it didn’t matter, as long as a mark was left. Irene Adler’s neck, back and shoulders held an array of bruises and welts, and her side still showed the multicolored bruise left by a soldier’s boot where he kicked her. She had fought to not cry out.

When the door of her cell was opened, pulled wide to show the outside world, Irene had known something was different. The soldiers opened the door only slightly, not allowing any light in to keep her as disoriented as possible. If that no longer mattered, then something else was coming. And it was with that realization a cold knot of fear formed in Irene Adler’s stomach. Her Urdu was not strong, but it didn’t matter. Many residents of Pakistan also spoke English, and there was no mistaking the calls outside the door.

They were calling for her death.

Hands pulled Irene from the ground and dragged her outside. The sky was dark but the artificial lights were blinding, and after several days in the cell she was disoriented, squinting every way she turned. Her bare feet caught on the ground, causing her to stumble, but the soldiers pulled her onward and to the tarmac. There more soldiers waited, heavily armed - and the executioner, light glinting off his silver blade.

Unceremoniously, Irene was forced to her knees before the executioner. Guns were trained on her, but it didn’t matter. There was nowhere to run any longer.

One soldier spoke, his accent thick but his words clear.

“Final words, Miss Adler.”

“May I have my phone?” In that instant, knowing her death was at hand, Irene Adler’s voice did not waver. There was only the slight hitch in her breath before she spoke.

Some dissent rumbled among the soldiers - why allow her to have her phone? - but in the end, the one who addressed her had given her the BlackBerry. All navigation and tracking had been disabled on it long ago, but it still worked the way it had in London. Her eyes trained on the screen, Irene slowly pressed the buttons for a final text message.

Goodbye Mr. Holmes

The soldiers were becoming restless now, demanding the return of the phone, but Irene didn’t hurry. The outcome would be the same. Pressing the SEND button, she handed the phone back to the soldier and turned her gaze straight ahead. Behind her the executioner’s blade whistled as it was raised, and Irene Adler closed her eyes.

Goodbye, Mr. Holmes

Comments

[elementarysaidhe]

John Watson returned to 221 B Baker Street twenty minutes after he left it, but in significantly different comportment, bearing the indignity of another failed exercise attempt. In the days and weeks following their involvement in the Irene Adler Affair, it had become increasingly clear to the former army doctor that a certain degree of physical fitness was required when you were in Sherlock Holmes' vocational orbit and that his habit of thrice-weekly fish and chips from Speedy's cafe was not doing him any favors. So, he had bucked up his pride and gone down to the high street for a pair of expensive trainers and wind-resistant running gear, bought a fitness tracker, and had Mrs. Hudson do a thorough purge of all of the sugary sweets from their kitchen cabinets. ("I'm your landlady, doctor, not your housekeeper. But I will take these biscuits off your hands.")

Unfortunately, all of the preparation and expensive gear in the world could not withstand the predictable onslaught of a London sudden shower, and John Watson burst back through the door of 221 Baker Street shortly after he'd set out, soaked and bedraggled, tracking mud up the thirteen steps to the second floor. His watch beeped insistently as his heartbeat decelerated --

"PLEASE RESUME YOUR SESSION --" came the tinny voice from his wrist "-- NO PAIN, NO GAIN."

Watson dug his fingernails under the strap of the watch and tore it from his wrist, flinging it across the parlor in irritation. He toed out of his wet trainers and rolled them inconspicuously underneath the divan. Tomorrow for sure, he told himself, running his fingernails through his hair to disturb the damp. It was then that he noticed the eerie silence that held command over the flat.

“Sherlock?”

When he’d gone out moments before, his flatmate had been hunched over his workbench with an array of odious chemicals at his fingertips, face pressed against the eyepieces of a microscope. It was unclear whether John Watson’s departure had even registered with the man. Now the workbench was empty but the chemical samples still present, standing like loyal soldiers around the base of the microscope. A cup of black coffee steamed next to a packet of ammonium nitrate.

Watson padded in stockinged feet down the hallway toward their suite of rooms, pausing to glance around the open doorframe of Sherlock’s bedroom. No movement there, either. The flat hummed with its gaunt occupant’s non-presence. Sherlock’s absence was, in and of itself, not unusual. He often went on spur-of-the-moment errands and rarely, if ever, alerted Watson to his departure. It did not strike the doctor as strange, therefore, that the detective had apparently abandoned his chemical work for the chase of something else.

That he did not return by that evening – or the next morning – was slightly worrying, however. Still, Watson demurred from alerting the authorities or (heaven forbid) Mycroft Holmes. That evening, full of endorphins following his first successful exercise session, he submitted to texting Sherlock a single message:

Where in the world are you?




TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER
24°51′36″N 67°0′36″E
Korangi Industrial District, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan

The smell of the sea and freshly-laid asphalt. The hollowing orange-yellow glow of sodium bulbs perched atop industrial light fixtures, lending tepid light to the tarmac that stretched, seemingly for miles, in either direction. Upon this road, a tiny retinue of military vehicles crawled: two jeeps, their doors stripped of identifying insignias, and a white passenger van, similarly anonymous.

The Jeeps stopped near the end of the runway, their running lights illuminating the dark beyond. A man stepped down from the driver’s seat of the passenger van and swung around to the sliding passenger door, rolling it heavily aside. Darkness within. The man gave a command in an indiscriminate tongue and reached into the black of the van, grappling with something inside. A moment later, another man joined the first, having descended from the front passenger seat. Both men were similarly garbed – a loose shalwar, a long chadar, and a pagri of cotton cloth – all in black. The second man, taller than the first, carried a wicked sword in the belt at his waist. He stood back while the first man handled the occupant of the van onto the runway.

Irene Adler would not -- could not – be stooped or cowed in any circumstance, least of all in the moments preceding her imminent demise. She descended from the back of the van with the haughtiness of a queen, stone-faced, resolute. It would be impossible for her not to grasp the severity of her situation, yet she seemed steadfastly opposed to letting her captors know that she was afraid. The road to her present circumstances was unquestionably written on her skin -- that at least, she could not hide. She flinched, just for a moment, when the first man wrapped his fingers around her upper arm to lead her to the center of the tarmac. Bruises there, perhaps; maybe even a temporary dislocation. Forced to her knees, her captors allowed her the small mercy of last words – the very last text message she believed she would ever send.

The second man – the executioner – stepped forward while the first man turned on his heel and lit a cigarette, eager to keep his shoes out of the line of fire when it happened. A moment later,

a sigh,

and the executioner hissed a warner to the condemned: “When I say run, RUN.”

The wicked blade sawed through the air, catching the driver across the middle and slicing through a quarter of his spine. The cigarette tumbled, partially lit, from his lips and hit the pavement in a small shower of sparks.

Sherlock Holmes wheeled on the ball of his foot, dropping low to avoid the spatter of gunfire that erupted from the other occupants of the Jeep, catching three of them across the shins and groin and finishing them with an undignified upward chop of the blade. He reached into the depths of his shalwar and produced a pistol, cutting down the final two soldiers before they could climb out of the Jeep. They fell, indignantly, beside their associates.

Sherlock tugged the scarf from his nose and chin, tossing the pistol to the stunned Irene Adler.

“Run. Jeep. Now.”

He jerked his head toward the idling vehicle.