The Cab Ride With A Machine

"I can't believe he escaped. We had him, and he slipped through our fingers," hissed Sherlock, still furious over losing their Chinese acrobat, who, also, had happened to be a trained assassin. "The only thing we can do now is report to Inspector Dimmock what Soo Lin Yao told us back there at the museum."

"Dammit, Sherlock, I left her there."

"Hm?"

John tore his gaze from the passing desolate nightlife of London to stare at his dark, curly-haired companion covered in a black Belstaff coat and blue scarf around his neck, raising his voice so that the distracted detective would give him his attention rather than sulk about losing the assassin, "Soo Lin Yao, Sherlock, the woman we were supposed to protect." The image of the young, Chinese woman's lifeless body entered his mind, hanging on the display table with a dripping, bloody hole on her forehead.

"Ah. Yes." replied Sherlock almost automatically, not showing any sort of emotion or interest.  "At least, she did gave us the missing pieces, so not a total loss."

"Sherlock."

Sherlock turned his head to look upon him with a intense, cold stare of grey, nose wrinkled, "What?"

"You should had stayed with us, Sherlock." When the lights of the antiques' room had cut off,  he had shouted at Sherlock when he had made a dash towards the double doors, telling him to stay with them; he had ignored him, running off to the main hall to face the killer, who had the dexterity of a gymnast. Unarmed.

Back in Afghanistan, a soldier like that was a danger to his unit and to himself. Too many times he had seen young soldiers ripped to shreds by bullets with the commanding officer screaming at them, if the young soldier lived. If the soldier died, the only thing the commanding officer could do was secretly curse their recklessness and write to their families with a lie of how their son sacrificed his life for his countrymen, sparing the surviving family any humiliation.

As mumbled sounds of thunder rung out, as the idea of finding Sherlock's tall, slender body bleeding out on the marble floor, he jumped to his feet. He had told Soo Lin Yao to bolt the door behind him before he raced off to help Sherlock. He had choose to leave a poor, defenseless woman to the hands of a professional killer to defend someone that he still wasn't even sure was human.

"I needed to catch the assassin. We needed to find out where the Black Lotus were carrying out their operations here. He would have been able to tell us." His hand came up to his mouth, index finger tapping his lower lip in thought, "I need to prove to Dimmock that Van Coon, the journalist, and Soo Lin Yao were linked. That tattoo she showed us on her foot. They must have one too."

"What?"

"Remember she said that all those who hold for them bear the mark."

His jaw dropped. The cab parked to the closest curb beside New Scotland Yard. Was he even here? Did Sherlock even listen to what he was saying? Did he not care about the fact that a woman was dead because of them?

Did he even care at all?