A/N: Happy New Year everyone. I hope all goes well. This is a very random idea I had after I was reading about this massive storm that hit Britain in 1953 and so I decided to update the setting. I wrote it all in one day, but it ended up so long I split it into chapters, and since I have them all written alread, I'll probably post the rest of them today too. And yes, the science is correct. Because I'm a loser like that. Or a winner. Whatever.

The storm surge began far out at sea, in the north Atlantic, but in a short time it had pushed its way to the British Isles. Scotland took the first brunt of it, hurricane-force winds slamming into the largely unprotected coast, felling trees and sinking ships, until an atmospheric depression pulled it away from the Scottish coast and to the south, down England's eastern coast, toward London and the Thames flood barrier.

"Do you think it'll hold?" Sam swung around in her chair to face her boss. Robert was almost sixty years old, and for the last five of those years he had been her boss at the Storm Tide Warning Service station. He ran a hand through his grey hair and blew a breath out through his lips in a half-sigh.

"There's no reason it shouldn't," he responded. "They'll just have to raise the barrier and it should do the trick." He turned back to his own computer and checked on the latest set of predictions. Oh boy, were they in for the long haul. This was the largest storm surge in living memory, and it was fixing up to be the first really true test of the Thames flood barrier. The barrier was designed to stop exactly that kind of surge from out of the sea from coming into London and wreaking havoc.

"But they've been having trouble with them, though, haven't they?" Sam responded. "I was talking to their technical man earlier and he said there was some kind of fault in them they needed to fix." Robert frowned heavily. This was the first he'd heard of it, and that was not good.

"Why wouldn't they tell us about that? Do they not think that's the kind of thing we need to know?"

"Calm down, Rob, I'm sure they were going to tell us, they just…" Sam didn't really know why they hadn't bothered to alert the station that there was a potential problem with the flood barrier. She could only suppose that they didn't think it was necessary so long as the higher-ups had all the facts to put together. But still, it was slightly galling to figure out halfway through a potential disaster that it might get far, far worse very suddenly. "I'm sure they know what's going on and how to fix it. Besides, we still have at least three hours before the surge gets here. That's certainly enough time to figure out what's going on. And even if they can't fix the problem, we can just have the higher-ups call for an evacuation." Robert shook his head slowly; Sam's optimism wasn't contagious, and Robert had seen a lot in his fifty nine years.

"Even if they can't fix it and we tell them to call for an evacuation, by the time it gets through the ranks and the order gets out the storm surge will almost be here; to get even a chance of success they'd have to approve and start it right now. Call your friend the technical man again; see if he knows what's going on. If the flood barrier fails we have to evacuate as soon as possible." Sam nodded and swung back around to her desk phone. Five minutes later she wrapped up her conversation.

"So do you-? Yeah, yeah, and that's it, there's nothing else you can try? Damn, okay, thanks for telling me, I'll pass it along to Rob." She hung up the phone and slid her desk chair across to Robert's station. "The fault turned out to be more complicated then they'd thought. There's no way they'll be able to fix it before the storm surge moves up the river. Now, it's no guarantee that the barrier will fail, but it's definitely a possibility now." Robert nodded slowly as he processed the information. It didn't take him long to come to a decision.

"I'm going to call in an evacuation request. We can't risk it, not if there's a chance the flood barrier won't work. I need you to go down to the police station and coordinate with them."

"What if they don't listen to me? I'm not exactly an imposing figure." It was true. Sam stood barely over five feet tall and probably didn't crack a hundred pounds. She pulled her brown hair into a pony tail and went for her coat as Robert snorted.

"I'm sure they'll listen; they're not stupid. Let's just hope they don't have any murders to solve too quickly."

As it happened, however, they did. Almost five minutes after the station called in the evacuation request a body was reported in the East End. No name or murder weapon, and he had a gun with him that hadn't been fired, despite the fact that he'd obviously been attacked from the front. The crime scene had been sealed off already by some uniforms, but the CID officers had yet to get there. The heavy rain pushed inward by the approaching surge had been making traffic a nightmare, and minor flooding had already begun in some of the city's more low-lying areas. Pressure was rapidly increasing on the emergency services and police, leaving no time to spare, and with the potential failure of the barrier and coordinating the evacuation, that pressure was only going to increase exponentially.

Lestrade was busy yelling into his phone when Sam arrived at the police station. "What are you talking about? I only need twenty minutes to get down there and look at the crime scene, I can't wait. I know you need everyone you can get to help, but they already have the scene cordoned off, and we can't just leave the guy lying there." His boss, on the other end of the line, responded and finally the inspector relented. "Yes sir, alright, I'll send Sergeant Donovan down there." Lestrade hung up the phone and turned to face Sam. "Can you give me just a minute? I'm waiting for someone to get here, I need his help if I'm going to be so bloody busy today." Sam didn't want to wait, but she agreed. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said a minute, and not much after that a very tall, dark haired man arrived at the station.

"What do you need my help for, there's nothing unusual about this," he said. The inspector gave a long suffering sigh and handed him the file.

"I need you to go with Sergeant Donovan to the crime scene because I have to stay here and help with all the accidents the weather has been causing. I'd go if I could, but my boss feels otherwise." Sam coughed.

"Um, excuse me, sir." Lestrade looked surprised. He'd forgotten that she was even in the room. "My name's Samantha Robertson, I work with the Storm Tide Warning Service. I'm afraid you're about to get a lot busier. We've put in a request for the government to issue an evacuation order for the city of London. I've been sent here to inform you; as soon as the order is issued you'll have to start getting everyone out." Lestrade's stress level was ratcheting up fast.

"Why are they ordering an evacuation?"

"Because of the flood barrier." When the others looked confused, she elaborated. "There's a storm surge moving in from the north of Scotland, a massive one; it's the largest on record. Normally, what would happen in this situation is that the Thames flood barrier would be lifted to block the surge and keep the river from flooding the city. But there's a problem; there's a fault in the wiring of the barrier, and they don't know if they can fix it on time. If they can't, there's an extremely high chance that the barrier will either malfunction or won't come up at all, and if that happens the river will flood the city the moment the storm surge hits. We have to start evacuating people now, as soon as the order gets through, or we'll run out of time." Lestrade swore and turned back to her.

"How long do we have before the storm gets here? There's a murder scene to process and clear up." There was slightly over two and a half hours until the surge would sweep up the river and hit the broken barrier. The police force would need all hands on deck to even begin attempting to evacuate London's massive population in that short amount of time. Lestrade turned to Sherlock and spoke so bluntly that even the detective didn't bother to argue.

"You and Donovan go down to the crime scene and get everything processed. Get back here as fast as possible." Sam spoke up when he was finished.

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think that's safe. With the traffic the way it is they'll be pushing their limit just to get out there and back without even looking at the scene. If they get caught in the flood they could be killed." Sherlock spoke up with a wry smile.

"Don't worry, I have a long history of pushing my limit. This case isn't that complicated; we can get there and get finished in time." Sam could tell that he was obstinate, but he was certainly not the only one with that personality trait.

"If you insist on going, I'm coming with you." Lestrade protested, but she cut him off. "I study these storms for a living. If you're going to risk your life you're going to need someone with you who knows how to keep you alive. You do your job, and I'll do mine." Reluctantly, Sherlock and Lestrade agreed and so Sam accompanied Sally and the detective down to the East End.

As he had predicted, the crime was easy to solve. They could get the body's identity when they got him back to the morgue, and as they prepared to cart him off, Sally finished processing it while Sherlock took care of his area of expertise.

"He knew his killer. He had a gun but didn't use it even when the killer got close enough to stab him in the chest. So, he knew him, but they didn't just run into each other; they were meeting here, otherwise he wouldn't have brought the gun along with him." He turned the dead man's wrist over and pulled his sleeve back, exposing a tattoo on the lower inside of his right arm. "He was in the mafia. Chances are he was killed by someone in a rival organization. It was probably a staged meeting just to kill him. If we can figure out which gang he was working for we'll have a good lead on his murderer." Sherlock finished up his spiel just as Sam got a call on her cell phone. It was Robert.

"There's a problem. The pressure in the depression increased and it swung south quicker than we thought it would. The storm surge is moving in right now."