Chapter Eighteen

"Angel!" Jake hissed.

Both Owen and Watson stepped up protectively, edging in front of Katie, who looked both alarmed and irked.

Diana's hand tightened momentarily on the arm of her captor, but then her eyes went to Taydin's. He was making a subtle gesture with his hand, turning the palm down and lowering the fingers. It was a calming gesture. Diana didn't look at all pleased at being signalled to wait, but gave a slight nod, her hand loosening. She flicked her own eyes upwards, and Taydin followed her gaze.

There was another person in the warehouse, up in the rafters, near the top window, creeping along very softly. They were in the shadows and seemed to be wearing black, so it was impossible to tell much about them. Taydin gave a slight drop of his own chin to indicate that he had spotted the newcomer.

"Annoyed, were they?" Holmes said in such a commanding tone that he drew the attention of the man with the bowler hat. "Your employer? When they found that their octave was one note short?"

"It's not one note short, guv'ner, it's right there," came the response. "'and we're not patient men. 'and it over!"

"Look out!" Holmes shouted for the second time. He was looking, not at the four men, but at the ceiling.

A flash of silver streaked through the air directly at Aislynn's head. She dodged and the thrown knife sheared off a lock of red hair before embedding itself into the crate just beyond. Caught by surprise, the dodge was clumsy, and she lost her grip on the tumbler. It dropped to her thigh, then rolled in a short arc down her skirt before bouncing to the floor edge-first.

It was as if someone had struck an enormous tuning fork. The ruby-red tumbler wasn't ruby-red at all, but a glorious cobalt blue of extravagant richness. The note it produced was absolutely pure, perfect in every way, and so vividly piercing that everyone momentarily stopped, grimacing in pain at the vibrations in both eardrums and teeth. The two nearest windows burst, blowing outwards to glitter in the rain. The panes in the next four spiderwebbed abruptly, but the glass didn't fall from its housing. The dust on the floor fanned outwards in a visible ring. The tumbler, now displaying its original ruby-red coloration, rolled around but didn't bounce again.

Diana was the first to move, driving her elbow hard into the stomach of Tall Blond, her other hand knocking the pistol upwards, and everything dissolved into chaos. Tall Blond, like his fellows, was taken completely by surprise. He doubled over with a "Whoof!" and Diana was out of his grasp instantly.

She had little time to follow up. Bowler Hat turned and fired his stubby pistol. The off-the-cuff shot went wild, but Diana dodged anyway, more out of a desire to make sure Aislynn was all right than of fear of the round. Watson moved towards Aislynn, his pistol drawn, while Owen drew his own pistol and Katie reached into her medical bag.

Holmes and Aislynn both scrambled for the tumbler, but the other figure was there first, dropping down from the ceiling between them.

The newcomer was a woman, but it was hard to tell much more about her. She was dressed like a ninja, in black silk from head to toe. She wore a stocking-mask that covered her entire head, with a veiled slit for her eyes, black gloves, and tight black silk boots with a separation for the big toe. There was a series of sheaths on her thigh, one of which was empty. On her back she wore a black box, quiver, and bow. In a moment she was between Holmes and Aislynn, one black-gloved hand reaching for the tumbler.

"YOU WITCH!" Stripes burst out. In a moment the air was full of a handful of throwing knives. Aislynn and Holmes both dived for cover, but the newcomer chose to make a grab for the goblet instead, and when the blades plunked into the crate next to the newcomer's own thrown blade, one of them was delicately edged with blood.

Undaunted, the black-garbed woman snatched up the goblet and made an impressive leap, onto the nearest crate, then off the wall, using it to flip backwards onto another stack of crates, this one too high to reach with a straightforward jump. The boxes were surprisingly solid, not even budging at this rough treatment.

"Oh no you don't!" Diana roared. "Jake! This guy is bothering me!" Tall Blonde had reached for his own gun, but Diana jumped away from him and towards the black-garbed woman.

"Can't have that," Jake agreed, and charged Tall Blonde.

Owen made a jump at Stripes, but Stripes was too quick, spinning out of the way.

From her medical bag, Katie drew a small bottle. She heaved this at the girl in black silk, who wasn't quick enough in dodging. The bottle splattered harmlessly off of her arm but released its contents, making patches of the matte silk momentarily shiny because they were wet.

Limp was tracking around with his own gun, getting off a shot before Watson was on him, landing a punch that staggered him backwards.

Aislynn jumped to her feet, her eyes on the silk-clad thief, and drew in her breath. Taydin lunged, grabbing her forearm more roughly than he had intended.

"Aislynn, no!" He howled.

"But we'll lose the goblet," she protested.

"I don't care if we lose the goblet!" He countered. "I can't lose you!" He said with such intensity that Aislynn stopped what she was doing and blinked owlishly at him.

The real action was happening in the rafters.

The girl was making for an upper window with all haste, and Diana was hot on her heels, over boxes, around a pillar, catching a rafter. The girl was quick, but Diana was quicker.

"Gotcha!" she shouted, and made a swipe. The thief jumped back, but Diana had hold of her mask, pulling it right off with an enormous yank. Then she stopped and stared.

She was looking at her twin.

They were the exact same height to the millimeter. The veiled eye slit in the mask had served to hide the telltale luminescence of her irises. Diana's short hair was tied back in a ponytail, while the thief had hers done up in a tight bun, but had they changed clothes and hairstyles, it wouldn't have been possible to tell them apart.

"Bloody hell," muttered the thief.

"Stop!" Holmes bellowed in such a commanding voice that the thief actually did stop for a moment, staring down at him in surprise. "Listen to me! Watson always carries antivenom! It's your only chance!"

The thief stared down at him, surprised, uncertainty written on her face. For a moment she hesitated. She seemed to be trembling as she looked at him, clearly tempted by his offer. She shifted her weight as if considering the descent.

"That's right," Holmes said, holding out his hand. "Come on, come along now, you have to be quick."

"You bitch! You bring that back!" Stripes turned around and fired.

The sound of the gun seemed to startle the thief into action. She darted away towards the topmost window, leaving Diana slack-jawed in her wake, holding the forgotten mask in one hand.

"Damn!" Holmes spat as the top window shattered. The thief was gone.

"She's rabbiting!" Stripes howled.

Tall Blonde was having a difficult time with Jake. The leader of the Torchwood team was superbly trained and Tall Blonde was feeling the brunt of it.

"Bugger this!" He cried as he scrambled backwards from the onslaught, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth, and one eye already swelling closed.

"I'm with you, Mate!" Limp made an enormous swing with his cane. Watson tried to dance back, but the cane made a truly ugly cracking noise when it came into contact with his temple.

Bowler Hat spun as a second bottle impacted on his shoulder, sending the bluish liquid splattering across his shoulder, neck, face, and nose. "Is this supposed to hurt me?" He snarled at Katie. "Meet at the light!" He shouted and lunged, knocking Owen right off his feet.

"Right!" Stripes drew a second spray of knives from their special pouch.

Taydin looked about ready to charge him anyway, but Holmes shouted, "No! They're deadly!" He was diving to one side and Taydin, taking his cue, dived to the other. Knives plunked in the spot where Holmes and Taydin had stood only moments before.

"Holmes?" Watson staggered to his feet. His head was bleeding but he looked more angry than hurt.

"No, let them go!" Holmes waved this off. "Diana! Diana!" He called. His voice seemed to snap her out of her shock.

"They're getting away!" She said suddenly as she flipped down to land on the floor again.

"No, let them." He turned to Diana. "You were made to be a weapon of war," he told her intently. "Were you given any resistance to poison?"

Diana looked taken aback at his vivid, burning eyes.

"Poison?" She repeated blankly.

"Particularly venoms." He took her shoulders, his eyes searching her face.

"Oh," she mused. "We can't be poisoned. We're not immune exactly, but poison will burn itself out."

"What would you do? If you were poisoned? Badly poisoned?" Holmes insisted, whirling her around in a sort of pirouette. "Think hard now, think!"

Diana looked surprised but accepted his frenetic energy and went along with the spin.

"How badly poisoned?" She prompted.

"Tremors begin within fifteen seconds and escalate to convulsions within a minute and a half. A human male weighing ten stone will be dead within four minutes," he recited. "What would you do? Think! Think!"

"I…" she thought hard. "I'd find a place to hide and sleep it off. Especially if I think I'm being chased."

"Towards Threadneedle Street or Rabbit Row?" He persisted.

Diana shook her head.

"Neither." She jerked her chin towards the window. "Off the end of the pier and straight to the bottom. Swim as far as I can, go into torpor when I need to."

"You can breathe underwater?" It was Watson who asked the question. Both he and Holmes looked extremely surprised.

"Yes," Diana confirmed.

"Damn!" Holmes swore again, and was off like a shot.

The others followed, but there wasn't much to see. The warehouse led almost directly to the dock, now soaked not only by the sea, but by the rain. It wasn't coming down as hard as it had been before, but things were rapidly moving back towards another downpour. The wind was blowing hard, smelling of salt water and ice, and the waves were beginning to whitecap. Holmes scowled, shaking his head as he looked around.

"Can your devices locate her?" He asked, looking between both Taydin and Aislynn.

"Not much chance if the water is deep enough for ships," Taydin said grimly.

At the end of the pier, Holmes knelt down, his fingers touching the boards, then looked up at them. "Who did…" he started, and then his face cleared. "Brilliant work, madam, absolutely brilliant! Some sort of dye?"

"Medical dye," Kate went to him. "For a procedure that… well, won't be discovered for a long time yet." She knelt next to him and looked at what he was seeing. Owen came and knelt beside her, Jake and Diana bent over to see, and the Time Lords looked over them all.

On the wood of the docks was a small purple triangle, the size of Holmes thumb. It had a ninety-degree angle, the ninety-degree edges perfect, but the third edge was fuzzy and somewhat indistinct, featuring several holes along its otherwise neat edge.

"I'm not familiar with this dye," he scowled.

"You were born a century early," Katie joked, and he gave a curt nod.

"How long does it last?" Was his next question as he stood back up.

"Depends on the substance it touches. On human skin it lasts about three weeks." Katie was looking rather pleased.

The corners of Holmes mouth were twitching.

"How is it removed?"

"Through the use of Ph," Katie said. "Concentrated citric acid and that sort of thing would cut right through it."

"Soap and water?" He persisted.

"Never in a million years," Katie informed him, and they shared a smirk before she turned around, heading back into the warehouse.

"You! Sit." John was surprised at the imperious command and turned to see that Katie was pointing to a nearby barrel. "Let's check that head."

"I assure you, Madame, I have a very hard head. It's been tested many times." In spite of himself, John appreciated her concern. The limping ruffian's cane had been topped with metal, and if John hadn't rolled with the punch, he could easily have been knocked cold. As it was, he had a lump the size of a teacup, and a thin stream of blood staining his collar. He had survived far worse, of course, but these visitors couldn't be expected to know that.

"I would do it if I were you," Owen warned with a gleam in his eye. "Where do you think I learned to bully my patients?"

There was some portion of John's brain that hadn't quite fully wrapped itself around the idea that Katie was a full-fledged medical doctor. That portion was shocked at her actions, but it subsided quickly. As a doctor himself, he knew he would be doing exactly the same to his own patient, if their positions had been reversed. He would not forget again.

"That girl," he asked, while obediently letting his eyes follow the lit match that Katie was holding up from side to side, "Could she be a sister? A twin sister? How would such a thing even be possible?"

Diana had handed the mask to Holmes, who was keenly interested in its stitching, but had his head tilted to one side, clearly listening.

Aislynn shook her head and didn't answer at once. Finally she took a breath and began to speak.

"Dr. Watson… John… Diana's told you a bit about herself, I believe?"

Watson started to nod, feeling grim, but a noise from Katie reminded him to hold his head still. From her bag she produced a square of gauze and began applying it.

"A soldier in your War."

"A weapon in our War," Taydin's tone was equally grim.

Watson was appalled.

"That's horrible!"

"We were horrible," Aislynn said. "The Time Lords, facing extinction… we became monsters. Perhaps it was always so… I don't know." She held up a hand to forestall inquiry. "Diana was made as part of a group. In this group, all members were identical. They were made almost indestructible, but near-indestructibility does not immortality grant."

She leaned against the nearest crate, which creaked mildly but put up no other protest.

"At the time, it was considered crucial to the war effort that Diana's grouping must always contain a certain number of individuals. If casualties were ever to have reduced the group below that number, the entire group would have been considered a failure. Diana and her group were trained as soldiers and sent off. However, to protect against the possibility of that numerical catastrophe, a few… extras were created. Additional members who were not joined to the group, who were never programmed or trained, never in fact removed from their glass tubes where they had been placed into a frozen sleep. Four, to be precise."

"What happened to them?" It was horrifying to think of such a thing, like a fairy tale, four young ladies to sleep forever in icy glass coffins.

"We don't know," AIslynn said shortly. "They vanished without a trace. There were other survivors, Adyra and particularly Guinntashay, who hoped to locate them, but they were never found. Our working hypothesis has been that they were lost in the War. Now it seems that one or more could have accompanied the original Time Lord agent when they arrived in this place."

Holmes looked up sharply.

"That would put them both here more than a century ago."

"We're a very long-lived race," Taydin explained. "We're quite capable of settling down someplace for a century or two. Diana and her sisters are as well."

"We looked everywhere," Diana said, heading to the box which now sported all the knives. "All over the station, quizzed Guinn, quizzed Adyra… nothing. I just…" she frowned down at the knives, "Maybe she won't to see me, you know? Maybe she's happy here. She might not want her life turned upside-down." Jake came over and took her hand in his.

"She may not have an option," Owen countered grimly. "If that shielding goes down, no one is going to survive it, including her."

"Be careful," Holmes said, walking over to the knives. "They're deadly poison."

"How did you know that?" Taydin was looking at him curiously.

"The knife-thrower, one Cyrus McDermot by name, is not unknown to me. He is a petty criminal of the meanest sort, indulging in all seven of the greater vices, though he has a special favorite for those crimes involving larceny. If he has graduated to these, however, his fortunes are looking up in the world… or down, as the case may be." He delicately pulled one of the knives away from the wood, being very cautious not to go near the edge.

"These are nasty," Taydin said after pointing his sonic at the set. "I am guessing this is asp venom, though I'm not immediately familiar with the species."

"Very likely spotted asp. They are Oriental, not European. I can't place their origin precisely, but certainly within the Canton area in China. They are too small for his hand." He looked back at the mask. "This, however, has never seen the Orient, or at least not once the silk left its shores. Nor has this." He extracted the thief's throwing knife from the bunch, holding it out for a moment to Taydin. "Poisoned?"

Taydin gave it a quick scan, then shook his head. "No."

"As I suspected. This knife was not meant to harm you," he nodded at Aislynn, who was looking closely, "But rather to startle you, make you jump in the hopes that you would drop the goblet… as indeed happened."

"Look where it landed! You can see the sound waves," Diana was smiling.

Holmes looked confused as he came over.

"What?"

"Aislynn says that sound travels in a wave, up and down, like this, see?" Diana traced a wave pattern in the air with her finger. "Look at the pattern in the dust, with these concentric circles, like a bull's eye. You can see how the sound wave went, up and down, just like she described." She traced the wave pattern close to the dust, without touching it, with the perigee of each wave corresponding to the grooves in the pattern of rings.

"That's quite right," Aislynn beamed a smile at her. "Well done."

Holmes stood up, moving to the windows to examine them, pulling out his magnifying glass and using it to peer at the spiderwebbed panes.

"Tell me about verillions."

"They are musical instruments," Aislynn recited obediently, "made up of fine crystal goblets. The common varieties use glasses that are filled with varying amounts of liquid to change their tone, but in the very best versions, the goblets themselves are individually tuned to produce a specific note." She turned and frowned at the spot where they had discovered the goblet earlier that afternoon. The box was still there, tipped over in the excitement, bleeding dry brown grass onto the floor. "Which bothers me."

"What bothers you?" Holmes said, turning from his examination of the windows.

"You said no less than eight boxes?"

"There were certainly eight, including that one," he confirmed.

"There should have been more," Aislynn said. "Single-octave verrillons generally employ smaller goblets. A goblet of that size and tone implies a range of at two octaves at minimum."

"At least two," agreed Taydin. "Possibly as many as four."

"Four octaves!" Aislynn looked faint at the thought. "It would be a monster to play. But, oh! Can you envision the music that such a thing would produce? It makes me dizzy to imagine it."

"You know, I once attended a concert given by the Ballesteri Seven," Taydin told her with a smile, coming close.

"Live?" Aislynn gasped.

"Live," Taydin confirmed. "In a concert hall the size of King's Cross." His hand crept into hers, looking quite as if he would like to steal a kiss.

"Who are the Ballesteri Seven?" Owen asked.

"The most famous verrillionists in the entire galactic arm," Aislynn said breathlessly. "Two hundred and twenty-eight glasses played by seven men, said to reach nine metres in length…"

"If we could kindly keep on-topic," Holmes interrupted impatiently, clearly disinterested in such foolishness.

"Oh… yes, of course," Aislynn looked properly abashed. Taydin sighed briefly before letting go of her hand.

""Back to Baker Street then," Holmes wrapped the knives very carefully indeed. "We shall see if the theory holds true."

"What theory?" Diana asked.

"That Cyrus McDermot is now in the employ of a gang of ruthless opium dealers known as the Red Dragon."

"Wait," Diana said, trailing after him as he headed out into the rain. "Why do we care if Cyrus McDermot has joined up with these Red Dragon guys?"

"Because the Red Dragons are the enforcers for the Jade Tiger, and the Jade Tiger sends a good portion of their profits to a mathematics teacher named Professor James Moriarty."