Kidnapped

"How could Redbeard have been a dog, Sherlock?" Ashton's voice was sharper than the scalpel pressed against his neck, slicing precisely into a long-sealed wax corpse and releasing its noxious, putrid gas.

"Have you forgotten what your father was allergic to? Forgotten what he would never allow, no matter how much you begged him?"

Boom!

It was as if a sledgehammer had struck Sherlock's brain. The orderly halls of his Mind Palace collapsed and twisted in an instant, and a second before he fell, a surging torrent of memories engulfed reality.

Mr Holmes was allergic to dog hair, which meant the Holmes family had never owned a dog.

It was an evening of torrential rain. Eight-year-old Sherlock's frail figure swayed in the gale, his hands clutching a rain-soaked chemistry notebook.

On the rocks, Victor's hearty laughter still echoed in his ears: "We found it!" The next second, a huge wave struck like a black beast!

Victor was swept into the churning surf like a helpless leaf. His pale fingers clawed futilely at the freezing surface of the sea, tracing desperate arcs... and then he vanished completely.

Sherlock looked sharply toward the shore. A man in a crisp military uniform stood there, the gear-shaped stamps on his epaulettes glinting silver. His utterly unfeeling gaze watched everything that had just happened.

"That's not right, you're lying to me! Get out of my head. It didn't rain that day!"

Sherlock fell to his knees, his racing brain leaving him utterly drained, his vision covered in white light. Sitangna tried to go to him, but Watson stopped her. "Ashton has a syringe."

"Is a poor child your memory refuses to acknowledge really worth your tears, great consulting detective?"

Ashton's voice dragged him back from the memory in which he seemed to be drowning. With deliberate cruelty, the professor ground the heel of his leather shoe over Victor's face in the photograph, where eternal youth and laughter were frozen in place.

"It was you." Sherlock's voice was hoarse, filled with incredulous chill.

"Oh, heavens! What an injustice! In your hallucination, was I the one who killed Victor?" Ashton crouched down and patted Sherlock's face, looking deeply apologetic.

"You're remembering it wrong. Think again. Use that brilliant brain of yours and think carefully." That way, the neurotoxin could penetrate deeper.

Seeing that he still wasn't bleeding, Ashton wondered whether to give him another injection.

"Stunner!!!"

Sherlock quickly grabbed Ashton, who was within arm's reach, and slammed into him. While Ashton was disoriented, he called for Sitangna. The girl gripped a palm-sized communicator and smashed it into the top of Ashton's head with all her strength.

Beep, beep, beep-

As blood poured from the top of Ashton's head, the communicator sent their exact coordinates to someone's office. At the same time, a loud, piercing alarm sounded, drawing the attention of the agent squad, who hurried to block and guard every exit.

Only when Sherlock had reached into his pocket earlier had he discovered that the venue's signals were being jammed again. Ordinary communications couldn't get through at all.

He had used the pretense of holding her hand to slip the communicator into it. With things as they were, they could only take a gamble: smash open the protective casing to unleash its strongest satellite signal.

"Perfect! What a double entendre," Watson couldn't help exclaiming. Stunner was Nana's name, meaning a person of great charm, but as a noun it could also mean "a stunning blow."

"You hit him so hard. Does your hand hurt? Come give me a hand." Sherlock took two deep breaths and shakily got to his feet.

"I'm fine. Can you still stand?" Sitangna shook out her hand and helped Sherlock up. It actually hurt quite a bit. The old man's head was really hard.

Watson gripped his pistol and pressed it to Ashton's temple. The three-person team took the leader hostage and retreated toward the exit.

Though they didn't know why Ashton had suddenly turned around and captured them, it certainly wasn't anything good.

Click! Click! Click!

All the ceiling lights in the exhibition hall went out at once, and darkness swallowed their vision. Immediately afterward, eerie green emergency lights came on in the corners, making their shadows flicker like ghostly flames.

From behind the sarcophagus, beside the pillars, and within the shadows, more than a dozen figures in black robes and golden pharaoh masks emerged without a sound. Like undead priests resurrected from the dust of history, they were silent but deadly.

"John!" Sherlock warned sharply.

Watson reacted quickly, a soldier's instincts making him draw his gun in an instant, but an almost invisible streak of silver sliced through the air-

Pfft!

A tiny tranquilizer dart struck the gun precisely, knocking it from his hand. The sharp clang of metal hitting the floor was especially jarring in the dead silence.

"They have night-vision equipment." Sitangna had also been hit in the arm by a dart. In her daze, she couldn't hold up the two collapsing men and fell to her knees, searing pain shooting through them.

She paid no mind to herself and hurriedly pulled the darts from her own arm and Watson's, then flung them far away.

[Candy! Candy! Exchange for an antidote, a strength pill, and a new Golden Bell Shield for me.]

[Exchange successful, but the Golden Bell Shield is on cooldown and can't be used. I got you a low-level shield instead. Its effect is a little weaker, but it can still save your life. It lasts five minutes.]

[Okay.] Sitangna watched warily as the strange figures surrounded them in the dim light. Pretending to pull a small bottle of pills from her pocket, she quickly fed them to Watson and Sherlock.

The skill items were too heaven-defying, and their sudden effects might arouse the others' suspicions. Sitangna planned to lie afterward and say they were a one-use miracle drug.

Amid the chaos, a voice boomed from speakers hidden throughout the exhibition hall, accompanied by static and a mocking tone.

"Want to play a treasure hunt game, Sherlock?"

Moriarty's voice rang out, every syllable striking the most vulnerable part of their nerves.

Faced with the accursed bastard who wouldn't leave them alone, Sitangna had no energy to look through the shop and could only tell Candy to hurry and choose suitable items.

"Please~ listen carefully to my clue. How many cubic meters of oxygen does a drowning victim need-to ignite the flames of revenge?"

"Three-"

"Two-"

"What did you say?" With the item's help, Sherlock had barely managed to regain consciousness, but Moriarty gave him no time to recover.

Hiss-!

Time ran out for an answer. Without warning, choking white smoke erupted from the base of the sarcophagus, filling the entire space in an instant.

"Nana!" Sherlock called through the thick smoke, trying to grab the girl who had been beside him just a moment ago.

In the darkness, he heard only Sitangna's brief scream, forcibly cut off halfway through. Then came Watson's furious roar and the sounds of a struggle. Sherlock followed the sounds but found nothing.

Next came the sound of bodies being dragged across the floor. This time he was certain it came from the direction of the sarcophagus, where a deep, hidden passage seemed to have opened.

Thugs in golden masks roughly bound Watson in a shroud that smelled of ancient tar and dragged him toward the dark passage.