Authors Note: Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is owned by DIC. Sherlock Holmes and Professor James Moriarty are owned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Beth Lestrade is owned by DIC as is John Watson the 2nd.

I've had this idea floating around in my head for a few days now, and I'm finally ready to put it to paper. It is an…odd premise, I'll grant you; however, I wanted something that someone has not attempted before. I hope you enjoy it, and please, if you 'fave' me, which I love and appreciate, please leave me a review telling me why you thought this story was good enough to 'fave'!

Authors Warning: As of right now, I am not positive on the maturity level of this particular adventure. It is safe to say however, that it deals with some serious subject matter, and that it is not to be taken lightly. You should have a pretty good idea of where this story is going and what the story is going to entail by the end of the first chapter. Therefore, due to the subject matter that I know will be involved just from the first chapter alone, I'll rate this story 'Teen' for now.

Wanted: Criminal Dynasty

Beth's eyes were normally a light indigo color. This was a color that was indicative of her normal state of mind and mood. Generally, it meant she was of normal cheer; there were no obvious strains on her mental or emotional stability, she was physically well…

At present, her eyes had taken on a dangerous bloody purple, an almost dark plum color. Mental, emotional, and physical stress were all accounted for in copious amounts when her iris morphed into this particular shade. There wasn't much in Lestrade's life that could shake her to her core, but what she'd just heard with her own ears and witnessed with her own eyes was mostly certainly a step in the right direction for whoever had the need and desire to push her off the deep end.

Sitting across from her was a man of about 40, she should say. In all actuality, age wasn't really an issue with him; 40 or 240, he was of a particular breed that could be snuffed out and brought back at the whim of any intelligent and learned geneticist. His hair was mostly black, save for the two streaks of cloud white that flew through the sides of his head. A full beard covered his chin and jaw line while eagle like blue eyes pierced her very soul, and in so doing, made her feel incredibly violated. He was still smiling, as though what he'd just requested of her was an easy task, doable in 24 hours with no pain.

"Moriarty," she finally ground out, "I think you've finally lost your mind. Or your original's mind, whichever one of you is up there doing the thinking, or lack thereof, because you cannot seriously believe that I would ever consider taking on that kind of a request from the likes of you."

"But think of the merit's, my dear-"

"Call me 'your dear again', and I will rip your head off your shoulders and fashion your skull into a decorative fruit bowli, clone head!"

Well. That certainly seemed to have gotten the professor's attention, for the smile that had been playing upon his features disappeared entirely, and with the forward motion of two of his fingers, four men who Lestrade assumed to be his body guards came out of the wood work. One placed himself at a table next to the couple, one leaned against the fence surrounding the outer terrace of the café, and two positioned themselves at both an entrance and exit, one to each.

"It really is a shame the school's in your age don't teach etiquette, Miss. Lestrade, for you are sorely in need of a few lessons." James Moriarty took a sip of the coffee that he'd ordered quite cavalierly earlier and locked his eyes with her once more. "As much as it pains me to have to admit, Fenwick cannot continue to create clones of me for his entire life. I need a true heir to all my work, someone I can train and teach and mold to carry on after I am gone-"

"Which will hopefully be very soon," Lestrade seethed, clenching her hands together under the table. Damn it for not bringing her ionizer! Public place or no, she could have had at least two of the criminals wrapped up in a jiffy, at the very least she could attempt to make an escape. That however, was not possible presently.

"-and I can't trust just any woman to assist me in this matter," the criminal continued, crossing his legs at the knee and placing one hand on the table, leaving the other conspicuously out of sight. Beth knew where the other one was, and what it was holding; she needed to get out of here. "So, you see…I am in a bit of a jam. I want a child, preferably a male, to carry on my name, but I have no wife to tend to that duty. So, I come to you, dear Lestrade." Beth wanted slap the smirk off Moriarty's face, but she didn't dare move. Instead, she leaned forward and said only one word, and it was as definite and final as any answer she'd ever given in her life.

"No."

"No?" Moriarty smiled. So did Lestrade.

"You heard me. I can't even believe that you would think I would be inclined to help you out with your little problem. I hate you, I hate everything you stand for, why, oh why would I bring a child into the world that would be exposed to you and your criminal empire?"

A stalemate ensued, with Moriarty calmly looking over Lestrade's very un-calm one. Finally, he cleared his throat and snapped his fingers. The lackey that had been standing at the entrance to the patio came to attention and was immediately by his boss's side, leaning down and listening carefully to what he was being told. Beth watched intently as the man stood straight again and moved back to his original position.

"I feel obliged to tell you that unless you agree to leave with me, willingly and quietly, Mr. Stephens will take some violent liberties with the rather nice looking family sitting in the corner over there."

Lestrade paled considerably as Moriarty continued on. "It would be no large matter for him to follow them home and pay them a visit. The child would find him especially entertaining, I'm sure."

Beth tucked a stray hair behind her ear and rested her chin on the heel of her hand, clearing her throat as she pondered her options. The criminal would make good on his threat, she had no doubt of that. It was nothing to him to take a few lives, so long as he got what he wanted in the end. The tales of adventure Holmes would recite to her proved that point quite aptly. But she couldn't take part in this scheme of his; it was disgusting, unreal, the idea of having Moriarty's child literally left the taste of vomit in her mouth just thinking about it. But, as she looked across the table and swallowed nervously, she knew that, presently, she had no choice but to go with him, at least appear as though she were cooperating.

"Are you finished?"

Lestrade nodded.

"Good." Moriarty raised his hand for the check and the server brought it by. Lestrade reached for her credit card, but Moriarty had already placed his own (or someone else's, Beth was certain), on it. "Don't be silly, Inspector. For the service you will do me, the least I can do is treat you to a lunch, wouldn't you agree?" She didn't answer as the waiter came by once more to pick up the card, only to bring it back in under a minute. She could feel the triumph radiating off of her enemy as he stood and beckoned her to do the same. A few minutes later, she was being ushered into the professor's hover car. Two of the thugs sat up front, separated from the back seat by a partition. The other two henchmen followed in another hover vehicle a small distance behind them. The inspector cleared her throat.

"So, how exactly is this going to work?"

"I assume your parents gave you the 'birds and the bee's' talk, yes?"

Lestrade grimaced and looked out the window, resolving that she would indeed kill herself before lying with Moriarty in such an intimate way.

"Yes, I can see they have." James paid her no mind as he continued to watch her out of the corner of his eye, quite relaxed in his currently seated position. "Not to worry, Lestrade, I would never think of defiling you in such a manner. I merely want an heir, not a bed mate. I can get that elsewhere, and frankly, with much less of an argument than you would give me, though I have no doubt were you and I to copulate, it would be a rather frenzied coupling."

Not frenzied for the reasons you're thinking, buddy, Lestrade thought to herself as she turned her gaze on him. "In vitro?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"You want to fertilize me, keep me under lock and key for nine months, and then have me raise the child with you?"

Moriarty tsked. "No, no, no, no, no, Lestrade, you misunderstand. The procedure will be very simple. I will simply gather the egg I need from you, fertilize it with my sperm, and then, once the embryo is ready, place it in the womb of another woman, whom I actually can keep under lock and key. And you will be free to go, live your life as it were."

There was a moment of silence in the car. "Why me then? Why not just use the other woman's egg, why do you need me?"

"Because of the genes, Lestrade, the genes!" Moriarty shifted towards her a little more, engaging with her, or at least trying to. Beth moved as far away as she could get without hopping out of the window. At present though that idea was sounding more appealing by the minute. "Can you imagine a child of our conception? There is a reason you were made an inspector at 25 years of age. You are smart, capable, strong, you have very nearly caught me once or twice, though don't ever tell Sherlock Holmes that, it may severely hurt his ego."

"He has actually caught you a couple times, Moriarty; I think his ego is safely intact."

"Be that as it may, your intelligence, your creativity, your ability to think quickly and efficiently…those are the things that attract you to me as a donor. Not to mention that, if this child turns out to be female, she will be able to use her considerable beauty to her advantage as well; no doubt the best of the looks she would receive would be from her mother."

Lestrade blinked. Did he just compliment her?

"There is of course, one other reason, and that should be fairly simple for you to figure out, Inspector." Lestrade waited patiently, unconsciously clasping her hands together tighter and tighter as an all too familiar glint appeared brightly in her captor's eye.

"Were you and I to conceive a child together, it would utterly destroy Holmes. It would bring him to the brink of madness to know that one day, in the distant future, he would have to combat your offspring." The professor chuckled. "Can you imagine the position it would put him in? Do you think he could apprehend your own son or daughter and bring him or her to you for their lawful punishment?"

To Beth, Moriarty's words seemed muffled, from another world. Genes my ass! He's just using me to get to Sherlock! And yet, Moriarty was dead on with his analysis. For all the work Holmes did to hide his true emotions and thoughts, Lestrade knew it would cause him an incredible amount of pain and suffering to go after a child of her own…a young man or woman that, by all rights, if things continued as they were, should be his as well.

But that wasn't something Moriarty needed to be made aware of just yet, if ever. The inspector and the criminal mastermind continued the flight in silence, Moriarty gloating, and Lestrade just barely managing to keep her wits about her, for the further away from the main city they flew, the more disheartened Beth became.

Wanted: Criminal Dynasty

Without signaling his arrival, Holmes punched in the general access code to Grayson's office and swept in, Watson hot on his heels as he stalked up to the desk and leaned over it, placing both his hands on the unforgiving steel as the Chief Inspector of New Scotland Yard looked up.

"Inspector Lestrade has not reported for her shift this morning, is that correct?"

"It is," Grayson stood up and walked around the desk to punch the panel controlling the sliding door closed and turned to face Holmes and Watson, his arms crossed over his chest. "We've located her hover craft at a small café called Tea Leaf in the Garden Sector. I have a team over there interviewing the staff and watching security footage to see when she was there."

Holmes tapped his chin with a finger, his eyes crinkling in concentration. "There was no one released from prison recently that Inspector Lestrade had apprehended that would have done been able to do this." At Grayson's questioning look, Holmes shrugged. "She would have said something on the subject if that were the case."

"Who would want to kidnap Inspector Lestrade?" Watson mused, looking out the rather large window that took up almost an entire wall of Grayson's office. "More importantly, who could have done it? Inspector Lestrade isn't a woman that would let just anyone take her, and in plain sight?"

"No," Holmes agreed, his mind flying to an assumption but choosing not to voice it yet. "No, she was taken against her will, but she had no other choice but to cooperate. Her hover-car was found at a café which suggests she was in public when she was abducted, but felt the need to keep her silence about her." He stole a glance at Grayson again. "Was an ionizer found nearby?"

The plump man shook his head and Holmes harrumphed. "Meaning she didn't have one on her yesterday."

"How do you come to that conclusion, Holmes?"

"Elementary, my dear Watson; if Lestrade had an ionizer on her person, she would have felt more inclined to take a stand and resist her captors. As it is, her hover craft was found with no ionizer in it, and unless I am very much mistaken, which I don't believe that I am, the investigators at the Tea Leaf are finding that there were no altercations at the café yesterday, which leads me to believe that Lestrade was not armed, and our antagonist or antagonists either were, or were too plentiful for her to have possibly escaped."

Silence loomed over the office, each of them mulling over the possibilities until the quiet was broken by an incoming audio message. Grayson crossed to the desk, read the I.D. on the call, and tapped a few buttons. "Constable Kramer, report."

"Sir, we've completed our investigation at the café. Inspector Lestrade was here between 1:00pm and 1:45pm yesterday and was seen sitting with an older man with dark hair, a fairly muscular build, and dressed in non-modern clothing. It appears that there were at least two other men in his company. All three men were seen leaving with Inspector Lestrade."

Grayson looked up at Holmes who was staring through the transmitter on the desk as though he were zeroing in on a target. "Is all of that verified by security?"

"Yes, Chief, security cameras were all up and running at the time. We have two good angles of the Inspector and the man she was sitting with, as well as a clear shot of two of the men who left with her."

"Constable, this is Sherlock Holmes," the detective broke in, ignoring the rather annoyed expression that materialized almost instantly on the Chief Inspectors face. "When did you start with New Scotland Yard?" There was a rather pregnant pause on the other end of the line, and even Grayson raised his eyebrows. "Two months ago next week, Sir," came the slightly startled answer. Holmes nodded his head and continued. "I'm not sure if you have ever seen me, Constable-"

"I have, Sir."

"Excellent, then answer me this; this man who was sitting with Lestrade…was his dress of a similar fashion to mine?"

"Yes, Sir, he seemed to have your…flare for clothing, if you will."

Holmes traded a look with an alarmed Watson and nodded his head, heading for the door. "Chief Inspector, if I were you, I would begin by identifying who those other men were with Moriarty."

"And what will you be doing in the mean time, Holmes? And how did you know that Constable Kramer hadn't been with the NSY for long?"

"As to the second question, anyone in New Scotland Yard who doesn't know who Professor James Moriarty is on sight cannot have been with the service for long. In regards to the first question…" Holmes waved Watson on, as he turned around to gaze at the Chief Inspector, "I will also be working on the identification of Moriarty's henchmen. Once I know who they are, I shall know where to find them. Once I find them, I will know how to find Lestrade."

i This is a quote from episode 16 of season 6 of The West Wing entitled 'Drought Conditions'. I could very easily hear Lestrade saying this to Moriarty.