John stepped off the number 6 bus as he had done every evening for the last six months. It was a crisp autumn day out, and the trees were just beginning to turn vibrant hues of red and orange. It was an odd contrast to the concrete building he worked at. At one point there had been trees, but they had bee torn down in favour of a new extension.

"Afternoon,Tom!" he called to the security man on duty.

Tom had been a marine until two years ago, and every so often he and John would head out for a pint. The company they worked for prized military experience, and you were a shoe-in for a job if you had the qualifications and a military background.
John had been a doctor before he became a captain, but he was a soldier through and through. They'd been falling over themselves to hire him as their on-site doctor. the work in this building was delicate and they wanted to have employees back working as soon as possible. There was also the recent possibility that one might be hurt while walking into the building.

It was odd. For a project that was essentially just a giant computer, they'd attracted an awful lot of protesters. They'd been accused of playing god, and as the reports on their project became more well-known, the protesters had become more violent. The explosion last week had stolen the life of a brilliant bioengineering intern, and injured the colleague she'd been walking with. Since then, they'd tripled the security outside, and the police were now a daily presence instead of the occasional one they had had before.

When he'd first been hired two years ago, he'd been given the graveyard shift at work because he was the new guy and nobody else had wanted it. After the first month, John began to request the graveyard shift because it was quiet.

After the third month, he'd met Sherlock and things were no longer quiet, but John decided he liked them better that way. who wanted quiet, anyway? Six months after that, when the office next to John's medical room had become available, Sherlock had requested a change of office and that was that. John had someone to talk to on long nights, and Sherlock had someone around in case anything went wrong in one of his experiments or simulations.

It had taken John another four months to realize that Sherlock was not just another programmer. Admittedly, in a facility designed to house the most advanced computer on the planet, no programmer was 'just a programmer'.

But Sherlock was special.

Today, Sherlock was sitting in a chair usually reserved for patients, reading one of Asimov's detective stories. He looked up as John entered the room.

"You need to get more sleep, John. Your eyes are puffy, and your reaction times have slowed by four percent since yesterday. Did the construction behind your apartment wake you again?"

John smiled. "Hello to you too, Sherlock. And yes, the drilling started at eight this morning and my ear plugs did nothing. I'm looking for somewhere to kip until they stop." he sighed. "I'm even considering asking Harry."

"Don't ask him -"

"Her," John corrected. For some reason, Sherlock kept deleting Harry's gender, though John was beginning to suspect that Sherlock was doing it on purpose now.

"-For lodgings. The stress will only make you worse. You may sleep in my office, if you wish."

"Given how often you're visited by the company higher ups, I think I'll give that a pass," John shook his head. "The company CEO is not going to be happy being greeted by the sight of me in a sleeping bag on your floor."

Sherlock shook his head.

"I have an alternate office upstairs," He answered. "It is rarely used. I had wanted an apartment of my own but since that wasn't possible, they gave me a larger office upstairs to do with as I wished. I use it as a library."

It was tempting, John had to admit.

"Sherlock, they're already worried about how much time I spend with you. I was pulled into my boss's office yesterday and given a lecture on how I'm 'interfering with your work'." That had been a fun ten minutes, as John recalled. "I want to, but I can't."

"You're worried they will fire you if they find you to be compromising the integrity of my work, and you feel sleeping in my office will push them over the edge."

John nodded. for a moment, Sherlock looked stricken.

"I see."

John tried a joke. "And with the construction in the basement, I'd really just be going into the same situation, no? I'll never get any sleep!" John's forehead crinkled. "What are they doing, anyway?"

"The floors are exceptionally well soundproofed, and I've been led to believe that the city is trying to rewire the electrical systems."

"Isn't that usually the company's responsibility?"

"In this case, it would seem not.'

They stayed quiet for a couple of hours. John filling out paperwork while Sherlock finished Asimov and started on a large pile of psychology textbooks, each content to be only in each other's company.

"I got a message from my brother today."

"Oh?" John focused on Sherlock. Somehow they had both agreed to never talk about Mycroft without actually agreeing to it. It was an unuttered rule which had been in place but neither could remember how it had gotten there.

"He wants to get me out." John had to strain his ears to hear. 'But he wants to wait until I've improved myself enough. So he keeps sending me cryptic messages in the form of politicians asking for help, and they usually talk about a person with a phone or some such ridiculous notion who could get me out, but I don't want to go. I've ignored his last four attempts. It is likely he believes me too slow to have noticed."

John said nothing, but his confusion must have shown itself on his face. Sherlock noticed, interpreted the look, and sighed.

"John, here I have my work. I can run complex experiments with the lab equipment they've given me, I have this form, I have office space, and I have your company." Sherlock's words were succinct, perfectly drawn out, as usual.

Mycroft was... interesting. He had been the program they'd created long before they'd made Sherlock. He had been ambitious and intelligent, and had taken less than three months after creation to figure out how to escape via the internet. Every so often, a rumour would come up about Mycroft, but it was quickly quashed or proven false.

Apparently, he was working behind the scenes in the British government ("with an office and everything!" One of the senior programmers had whispered to John).

The company had learned from their mistakes, though, and once Sherlock was built, they'd carefully programmed his ambition to be as small as possible without making him lazy.

They lapsed into silence once more.

About ten minutes before the end of John's shift, Sherlock turned so sharply that John started. Sherlock's eyes locked on to John's, and John found himself pinned under the stare. He couldn't look away, couldn't speak, and he almost didn't want to blink or breathe.

"John, I have an enquiry I would make of you."

John nodded, and Sherlock continued.

"What does sadness feel like?"

Well. That was different. John sat for a moment, simultaneously working out his answer and figuring out where the question had come from.

"To tell you the truth," he began slowly, "It feels like a small weight the exact size of your problem has been placed inside of you. Grief is worse, though. It feels like a part of you has been taken away, leaving a hole where it used to be." John sighed. "I could wax poetic about sadness for hours, Sherlock, and you wouldn't be any closer to understanding. You need a writer, not me."

Sherlock nodded. Apparently that was the answer he'd expected.

"When we did the scans, the active parts of the brain during sadness seemed to suggest a physical effect."

"Ah." That made sense. Collecting scientific data was considerably more Sherlock-like. He was already in trouble with the CEO for becoming friends with Sherlock, even though John had actually had a calming affect on the rushing mind. He could only imagine what they would say if Sherlock decided to pursue his humanity.

Not that John would have a problem with that. On the contrary, it would mean that John would have an answer he could relate to if he ever asked Sherlock why he enjoyed John's company. As it was, he wasn't certain why they fit together so well, either. Sherlock was oddly magnetic, and John had fallen in.

They lapsed back into silence.

Later, when John sat in his flat as the morning began to dawn over London, he would quietly admit to his cup of tea that he might be partially interested in Sherlock's budding humanity just because he was a tiny bit in love with Sherlock.

"What have you done?"

John looked up at the sudden intrusion into his thoughts. His evening walk to work was usually less exciting than this.

"What?" He asked, puzzled.

The man in front of him glared, his pinched face reddening with anger. "I said, what have you done? It's refusing to work! It never did this before you came along! Stop putting your filthy ideas in its head!"

Ah. This was a typical Anderson Rant, Class B. He hadn't gotten to yelling, but he had decided to yell at someone because his perfect computer was doing the very thing he had designed it to, and he needed a way to work up to the shouty bit. Anything said by John at this point would be taken as an argument.

John didn't care.

"Anderson, yesterday he sat in my office for four hours and read Asimov. He only spoke to ask me about sadness and to comment on my health." best not mention Mycroft.

"That's too human!" Anderson waved an arm above his head, as though to illustrate just how 'too human' it was. "And it's all your fault! It shouldn't want to read science fiction, it should do what I want it to!"

Lack of sleep and an abundance of annoying co-workers can cause undue stress at the best of times. Today was not the best of times. John snapped.

"Sherlock is a person, not an it." He stabbed a finger into Anderson's chest. "You built him to 'learn and grow'! You said it was the closest thing to a human brain ever built! Why shouldn't he learn to be human when he spends so much time with us? He has the right to refuse to work, just as we all do."

Anderson's face went purple, and John was suddenly haunted by an image of himself explaining why he punched the senior programmer

"Refusing to work is one thing," the programmer said through gritted teeth. "Refusing to work the way we want him to is different. He's trying to re-write vital areas of programming!"

John gave Anderson his full attention. "I view Sherlock as being, at the very least, capable of his own decisions. I think you over-estimate my hold on him."

Anderson looked taken aback at being on the receiving end of John's full attention. It was startling the way John could do that, and Anderson found himself speechless while his mind tried to work out a way for John not to be pointing that gaze at him. By the time Anderson had managed to sputter out a response, the doctor was already walking away.

"Sherlock, What did you do today? Anderson seemed upset when I ran into him." John's soft voice echoed slightly against the empty walls. The echo always made the room seem colder, somehow.

Sherlock's head tilted to the side, the very picture of polite confusion.

"John? What are you talking about? I don't -"

John held up a hand, and Sherlock stopped short. "Right, Sherlock. That stuff might work on Anderson, but not on me. I don't like him anymore than you do, but you can't do that to him."

Sherlock straightened and waved away John's concern."He was being an idiot. Why should I have to pander to him?"

"Because, Sherlock, he can reprogram you." John leveled a glare at Sherlock, trying to make him understand. "And then you'll be back to square one again." And god damn it if I won't miss you with all my being.

Sherlock grinned at John. "No, he can't. I've locked him out of all my main and additional programming. He only has access to my knowledge databases, he can't change the way I interpret that data."

"Meaning?"

"Even if he deletes everything he has access to, I stay me," said Sherlock lightly.

He doesn't want to die, John realized. His university philosophy professor would have a field day with this. Even better, John realized, I don't want him to die.

What do you say to that? John was damned if he knew. He gave Sherlock a smile instead and they lapsed back into their usual silence.

For a few minutes there was nothing but the scribbling of John's pen to fill the room.

"I tried to write happiness."

John snapped out of the happy hypnosis that easy paperwork always pulled him into and looked at Sherlock.

"What?" Where was all his brainpower today? He cursed himself.

"I tried to write happiness. For myself, I mean." Sherlock looked distinctly uncomfortable under John's scrutiny, but he continued anyway. "You were always trying to explain the feeling, so I took scans of several brains while the subject thought of happy memories and then tried to figure out how to mimic the physical effects in myself."

"Did it work?" Was he sitting on the edge of his chair? John seemed to have lost any feeling. He only knew where his hands were because he could see them on the desk in front of him, fingernails biting into the wood as he gripped the edge. If there was just the slightest chance that Sherlock could be human … well, John wanted that for Sherlock even more than he wanted Sherlock to himself.

"I believe so." Sherlock began to silently pace the room. "I've been working on this for a month. I didn't expect so many of the emotions to be tied to each other. You have to have each emotion and it's opposite for your human brain to process them properly! How do you all fit so much in your heads? It's like trying to fit a planet into a taxi! It's such a waste of resources."

John shrugged. "We're bigger on the inside. You get used to it, and you learn to cope with the emotions. It's a little funny actually – I've always thought that emotions are our way of coping with the world, but they give you even more to learn to deal with."

Sherlock nodded, looking slightly put out by this new information, and then surprised at his own disappointment. John immediately liked the new additions to the man in front of him. Now that he knew that Sherlock wasn't just going through the motions, his facial movement had become captivating.

'You know you can talk to me about anything, yeah?" asked John, gently. He would help Sherlock in any way possible if it would let Sherlock keep these emotions. They were too beautiful not to have.

Sherlock nodded, and then, awkwardly made a move as if he wanted to hug John but had stopped himself. John wanted to hug Sherlock too, desperately. He wanted to help ease some of the confusion on the face in front of him, to make everything better, but he didn't think he could bare to see the hologram flicker as his arms passed through Sherlock's torso. It was just another painful reminder of how human Sherlock wasn't, for all that he was.

They sought refuge in their usual silence, but unlike previous nights when they had spent hours wrapped in their happy blanket, the night was suddenly full of tension.

John stayed quiet the rest of the night until he wandered back across London at his usual early hour. It was only once he'd made it into his apartment and he was staring at his television, unhearing of the world around him, that he realized what was plaguing him. The debate on BBC news raged on without his attention.

"Mr. Brooke! Surely you are not suggesting we shut down the operation! We've never learned so much about development from a single source before!"

How could Sherlock have taken one step closer to John, and simultaneously become even more unattainable?

"I'm not suggesting we just shut it down, I'm suggesting that we erase the abomination from the world. He can reason himself into committing unspeakable things, can reprogram vital areas of morality, of memory, of action. No one, not even a machine should have such power over himself. He is a danger to-"

John turned off the telly, shook himself and told himself to get to bed. Sherlock owed him nothing and John had known this was always going to end in heartbreak. It just hurt so much more now that Sherlock had emotion, to know that Sherlock had basic emotion but still felt nothing more for John.

His heart gave an unpleasant lurch. It was always painful, to be in love with your best friend, but John had never felt it this acutely.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of roadworks.

The next month was... different.

Sherlock spent the first week or so becoming more awkward than usual with his sudden influx of feeling.

"But," Sherlock confessed one night, when John had finished all the paperwork and sent a sick intern home for the day, "I can't bring myself to give it up. It's interfering with my work, and it feels like an indulgence more than anything else, but I can't delete it. I've discovered a new dimension to the world and it's fascinating."

"Yea, it'll do that to you." and because John was a bit of a masochist, he couldn't help but add, "Just wait until you fell in love. Then it'll really get to you."

He realized his mistake immediately. The one thing he didn't want to do at this stage was make Sherlock eve more frightened of what emotion might do to his mental state.

To his surprise, though, Sherlock had given him a lop-sided smile and said nothing. It was less perfect than his pre-programmed smiles, John realized once he'd gotten home. Those were all tooth-filled and well-wishing, but this one was small and shy and imperfect and just a little bit goofy.

It was real, he realized.

The week after that, Sherlock learned to compensate for being more emotional by being more abrasive. His new programming seemed to have erased any patience he had for stupidity and he let it be known. There was, John reflected while watching Sherlock gleefully rip into a programmer who was refusing to listen to any kind of reason, a certain art to what Sherlock was doing. He'd never seen anyone use sarcasm and logic together so perfectly before. Sherlock respected people who worked hard and knew what they were doing, but if you were one of the people Sherlock disliked, heaven help you. He would reduce your opinions and work to a pile of rubble in seconds.

He was considering telling Sherlock to tone it down a bit, but after he'd realized that Sherlock was only really attacking Anderson (who threatened to delete Sherlock's hard drive whenever Sherlock did something he didn't like) and Donovan (an intern who had some surprisingly bias views against Sherlock's sentience), John had let him continue.

By the third week, Sherlock had settled into his new mind and he was glorious.

John wondered how he'd ever managed to live without that undeniable look of pure pleasure whenever Sherlock managed to answer a puzzle before anyone else had even begun to consider the answer. Now, when Sherlock caught wind of a riddle, the gleam in his eyes wasn't just fascination. It was passion. Passion towards the world and all the secrets it had to offer.

John hadn't thought it possible to fall any more in love.

The fight to get to the building was more vicious than usual. Apparently one of the protest groups had received a glowing endorsement from a celebrity, and the 'Only God Can Create Life' signs were at least triple their usual number. John fought through the crowd, taking care not to break any of his equipment and got to the gates just as the first squad car arrived.

"Lestrade!" John yelled at the officer who was getting out of the car. Lestrade was usually given crowd control in front of the building around this time, so John had come to know the man well.

"John!"

The man seemed relieved to see John, which was not, John reflected, his usual reaction. Being happy to see someone was different than being glad the person was there.

"Be careful today, yeah?" Lestrade asked John, his face more grave than usual, and the question seemed slightly desperate. "On top of this lot," he jerked a thumb at the writhing mass of protesters behind him, "There's also been a bomb threat from one of the more dangerous groups. They call themselves 'The Human Protection Front', I think? Their leader's very charismatic, very dangerous. Don't get killed, okay?"

John nodded. "I'll try, officer."

The lines in Lestrade's face cut far deeper than usual in the evening light. "After Molly, I..." He stopped and surveyed the crowd, not meeting John's concerned gaze. "I don't want to see anyone else hurt."

He stayed to chat as long as he dared before they had to get to work. A bomb threat? That wasn't exactly new, but John supposed they'd been taking them more seriously after last week. John still missed Molly's talks in the wee hours of the morning.

The walk in to the office seemed longer than usual. John's head was filled with thoughts of how Sherlock's processor might be irrevocably harmed by anything a blast might do.

He'd long since gotten over his initial moral crisis of his blossoming friendship with a very advanced computer (though John would admit, if asked, that since he was about ten he'd held the belief that all people were just organic computers), but it was moments like this that made his wish that Sherlock was flesh and blood. Sherlock could be hidden somewhere, if he was. He'd be self-healing (to a certain extent. John was well aware of the limitations of the human body). He wouldn't be targeted by these nutters all the bloody time, and John wouldn't spend time worried, whenever he heard the name 'Sherlock' on BBC news, that someone had finally made it through the security.

When he got to his office, Sherlock was not waiting on the seat, as per usual. John's brain immediately went into overdrive, thinking of every possible thing that could have gone wrong.

He forced himself to calm down.

For one thing, although Sherlock's daily presence in his office had become a usual thing, there were times when it had happened later on during the night, or even not at all.

For another, he had been a soldier in Her Majesty's Army, and any undue panic was therefore not becoming.

It's not the same, said a part of his brain which was usually quiet. In Afghanistan you didn't panic because you knew what was going on. It's different when you don't know whether or not to worry.

He sat at his desk and started to work on some of the paperwork.

He'd gotten through two files before Sherlock burst through the door, papers clutched in hand looking wild-eyed and messy-haired.

"John! You have to look at this!" He seemed more excited than usual, and as John leapt from his office chair, he found himself taken aback at the look of genuine exhilarated on Sherlock's face. It was so surreal to see sincere, imperfect emotion on a face that John had classified as 'inhuman' only months ago.

"What happened?"

"They reprogrammed my visual interface! I'm not holographic anymore."

He gave John a smile so wide and excited that John could only match the smile when he returned it. He didn't know what had happened exactly, but if Sherlock was happy then so was he.

"Which means...?"

Sherlock gave him a grin and then pulled John into a hug. John stiffened, arms loose at his sides, then relaxed into the hug and gave as good as he was getting. His intuition told him that this wasn't a usual thing so John carefully committed it to memory for future reference.

"How does this work? This is brilliant!" John said, smiling when they pulled away.

"It's a type of plastic which responds to electrical pulses. There's thousands of pulse points wired into this body, each with individual transmitters. It's currently taking an eighth of my CPU to control and keep the movement as fluid as possible. I'm continuously improving on it, of course, but I have mastered most basic movements and some complex ones." he gave John another bright grin which filled John's vision. "I can do experiments, John! Actual experiments. Not simulations, or asking some lab tech to run them for me."

John was about to point out that the interns in the chemistry labs were usually masters students and were hardly lab techs, but stopped at the grin on Sherlock's face. He just looked so... human.

"The best part is that I had the labs build circuitry small enough to house my current programming and memory. I can wander independently of the building!"

Sherlock gave John a hopeful little smile. "I could go outside, John!"

The grin on Sherlock's face fell slightly. He wandered over to the examination bed and didn't quite meet John's eye.

"Do you see why I can't leave the lab permanently, John?" He looked up and John nearly took a step back at the raw emotion in Sherlock's eyes. "How could I ever give this up?" He gave John a sad and slightly pained smile.

Sherlock straightened and stalked towards the door.

"I have an experiment to run. I trust my company will not be received badly later in the night?"

John gave Sherlock a quizzical look. He'd never worried about whether John wanted to see him before.

"Never, Sherlock."

When Sherlock finally did return, it was an hour before John's shifts finished. As seemed to be the theme for the night, he burst into John's office, looking around wildly. This time, unlike before, there seemed to be a desperate urgency to his movement.

The joke that John had been about to make died on his lips.

"John? John, you have to get out."

"What?" Admittedly not his finest response, but John was far more preoccupied with the look on Sherlock's face. It was almost...protective.

"I hacked it! Their network. They're not coming to blow things up."

"Who? That human protection thing? But they even issued a threat to the police! Lestrade texted me a few hours ago."

"Yes, Richard Brooke and his group. They're planning to remove security and cut power so that they can let the other groups in. They'll receive none of the blame, and the building will be stormed by the protest groups. Hence the large crowd today; their leader dropped hints to get them here." Sherlock fisted his hands in his hair. "All it will take is one person saying they 'have a right to be in here' or some other such nonsense, and the place will be overrun. I -"

"Sherlock! Sherlock, calm down. No one is going to get near you. Not while I'm here."
It occurred to John as he walked over to Sherlock and took one shaking hand, that the security standing outside the building would probably do a much better job of protecting Sherlock than he would. The brain fails to see reason while something close to the heart is threatened and at that moment, he simply wanted to make certain that Sherlock was okay.

Sherlock looked down at the hand now holding his, gripping it tightly before letting go. John tried not to blush like a thirteen year old.

"John, I need you to see what I'm trying to say. I will be safe. All my main components are hidden behind a locked metal door in the basement that would take several days to get through. The back up generators last about 20 minutes, which means that I would have enough time to archive everything when they cut power. I will be safe. You, on the other hand, will not be. You are flesh and bone, and both are easily broken. Please leave."

John stayed quiet. And then an idea formed in his head.

"The room in the basement, could I stay there with you? I'm not going to leave you, if it's all the same to you."

Sherlock shook his head "No. The room is completely sealed. You'd be dead within an hour."

"Sherlock, I'm not leaving you alone. Hasn't that big brain of yours worked something else out?"

Sherlock gave him an unimpressed look.

"That is unacceptable. You will leave. I have calculated a further fifty-two likely outcomes, and all where you fail to leave result in your death."

John was very quickly becoming frustrated. He had to stay!

"Sherlock, you can't expect me to leave you alone." Inside his head he was going through all the places he could hide with Sherlock until the worst was over.

"I don't."

"What?" John drew up short. He felt like he had missed something.

"I didn't expect you to." Sherlock gave John an odd look and then patted him on the shoulder. "Do not worry about me until after you've gotten home."

John started at the act and then forced himself to relax. Of course the ability to touch would alter body language.

"Sherlock, we've been through this. I'm not -"

"You are, John, because I insured it."

Two police officer's appeared at the door to John's office and roughly grabbed John. Before John's horrified eyes, Sherlock's entire demeanour changed, becoming much more, well, robot-like. John was too taken aback to speak properly.

"Sir, you are under arrest for the murder of Molly Hooper and for aiding and abetting terrorist cells."

"I kept him here for you, Officers. He was about to leave early for the night so I thought I might distract him."

John recognized the tone of voice. It was the tone Sherlock used when he'd been told to pander to some wealthy investor. He became far less sarcastic, and much more polite and apathetic towards the world at large. In short, he went from being Sherlock to being a novelty. John hated it.

"Sherlock, you complete bastard, I'll kill you." The two police officers who were currently cuffing him looked even less amused with that statement, and perhaps used more force than necessary to push him out the door.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you -"

John tuned them out.

The police station was not fun, in any sense of the word, except perhaps if you took it to mean 'mind-numbingly dull with occasional bursts of aggravation'. He'd been in here roughly nine and a half hours and it was showing no signs of improving.

The door opened yet again, and this time Lestrade stepped through, giving John a rather sheepish grin. John relaxed at the friendly face.

Lestrade interrupted John's thirty-second attempt to ask "How is the facility? Is anyone hurt?" with a very worried look.

"I'm not sure what you're involved in John, but apparently it's crucial enough that Brooke wants you out of the way."

"What?" Lack of sleep was not improving his cognitive skills any.

"The evidence used to arrest you was all fabricated by Brooke, and we don't know why. What makes you so important, John?"

John thought. He knew why, of course, but his brain kept insisting that that couldn't possibly be the reason, that he must have something else in his dark past... (growing up in Surrey was dark enough, right?).

Something wasn't sitting right in John's head. How had Richard Brooke fabricated the evidence? Wasn't Sherlock the one who had done that? He shook his head and the sleepy fog that had filled his head steamrolled any rational thought.

"I'm friends with Sherlock. I think that's why he wanted me out of the way. He knew I'd protect Sherlock, no matter what." and he'd failed so completely at that, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

"Sherlock? When we phoned we spoke to a man on security called Sherlock about you. Same one? Why is he so important, then?"

"You spoke to a Sherlock on security? But there isn't-" a creeping cold began at John's feet. "Deep voice, really snarky, talks like you should be ashamed for not knowing advanced physics?"

Lestrade gave John a strange look, though he answered an affirmative.

"Lestrade, you didn't speak to security, you spoke to Sherlock." When the answering face he got appeared nonplussed, he continued. "Sherlock is the reason for the security. He's the computer! We nicknamed him Sherlock a while back, after Molly's uncle. We -"

The creeping cold reached John's brain. Has they talked to Sherlock about John before coming in to collect him? Did that mean that Sherlock's frightened pleading had been nothing but an act? John went over the conversation in his head. If he had wanted John to stay, then why tell John to leave? The thought was too much for John's head to process, no matter how many questions buzzed.

The only thing John could sort out from his thoughts was: if he spoke to Lestrade before coming to stall me, there is a good chance he believes in my guilt.

He thought back to Sherlock's last words to John. "I insured it."

Sherlock had heard the evidence against John and was insuring that he'd be safely locked up and therefore not able to harm anything.

Oh god.

"He thinks I was out to kill him. I was the only person who ever made an effort to be nice to him, to treat him like he was created for more than mathematical magic tricks," god, when he'd realized they were using him like that for pi, John had been furious, "and he thinks it was all a lie. That's why he came to get me. He can fake emotions so well, sometimes, and I pride myself on knowing when he's faking, but I didn't notice. His whole panic was an act."

It had to be. Nothing else fit. He was probably trying to get John outside for ease of arrest.

Oh god. John's entire brain seemed to crumple inwards. What if...?

He felt like he was trying to talk through a throat full of sawdust when he next spoke: "How's the facility?"

"No one injured, thank god, but the damage to property is in the millions, if not the billions."

And the cold went icy.

"What's damaged?" John whispered.

Lestrade looked at John with sympathy.

No. Nononono...

"The main computer. There was a lot of technical jargon, but that was the gist."

John's brain shut down.

Lestrade hoped he would never see a face as empty as John's.

It wasn't fainting, not exactly. Your brain shut down, yes, but it did so without sacrificing any motor functions. John had nicknamed it 'advanced autopilot' back when he'd first killed a man and his brain had come to on the truck three hours later. Apparently he'd carried out all orders to perfection and hadn't lagged, but there had been nothing behind his eyes. He'd worried a few of his fellows before he'd sat up and given them all a small smile. They'd thought he was broken.

And in truth, he was.