bakerstreet | picture prompt meme.

Correct. There's no sign of a struggle up here, but the bug has been planted recently. We'll find more answers when we find the transmitter and the location the data is being stored.

[He gives Joan a genuine kind of smile. It always feels good when work pays off and he couldn't ask for a more capable apprentice.]

[She climbs down the ladder, thinking. Someone in the building? Maybe someone in the woman's apartment? Was she having an affair, and was killed by her husband?]

[Sherlock toys with all of seven current theories he's narrowed things down to so far as he waits for Joan to descend a safe distance before him. He turns and starts to go down the ladder and after making only half the journey downward the sound of a heavy, metal door slamming causes him a mild start. It's impossible to hide their presence if they're hanging on a ladder, so he hisses a warning to Joan to hurry up.]

[Joan doesn't need the warning. At the sound of the door, she increases her speed, climbing down as fast as she dares. Near the bottom, her foot slips, and she gasps as she clings to the ladder, terrified for a long moment that she's going to fall.]

[When Sherlock hears the sound of polymer slipping from the metal rung, his stomach twists. He looks down over his shoulder to make sure that Joan's managed to hold on. Good, she's still clinging to the ladder.]

Joan, keep moving.

[He's whispering harshly, because the sound of masculine footsteps are just a few metres from rounding the corner.]

[She gets her feet under herself again and takes the last few rungs quickly before swinging over onto the deck and looking for a way to hide.]

[Sherlock finishes his descent only moments after Joan. He'd been scanning the area while they made their way down, so he knows the perfect place to hide. He puts a hand on Joan's back and guides her to the right direction and leads the way from behind.]

Six metres ahead, to the left, duck under the hanging, slight right, twenty-three metres forward, locker room's on the left. Quickly.

[His directions are hushed, but he expects they'll be well-received. Joan's clever enough to keep up with him. Using this particular locker room would benefit them in multiple ways. First of all, there's no swinging door to alert the other person to their presence. Second, because there would be no door, he could still keep watch and listen. Third, there's a ventilation system that they would have access to in case they are pursued.]

Edited 2013-08-07 01:35 (UTC)

[Joan nods, and quickly and quietly follows his directions to the letter. She can hear the footsteps getting closer to the deck, and she ducks into the locker room and presses herself against the wall just in time.]

[Sherlock's only a split second behind and he flattens himself against the wall in just the same way. He closes his eyes to cut off his sense of sight so he can listen more attentively. He has the layout of the building, at least every room he's been in and the map, memorised, so he can picture the man's walking using his knowledge of acoustics.

The unknown man approaches the pool and stops a short distance from it. Shift to the left, shift to the right, and then back to the left - his legs are tired, he's been standing for too long. Seconds go by before he turns their way and paces the perimeter.]

Security?

[That doesn't rule him out as a suspect and Sherlock wants to get a better look. The question is will the man turn to check out the locker room or would he finish the shorter circuit?]

He's lazy, doesn't use his legs much. Wants to sit. We're safe waiting in here.

[He opens his eyes and peeks around the corner, then returns to the more concealed position he'd been in before.

Now that the man is so close, whispering is too risky, so he faces Joan and mouths the words instead.] Wait until he passes, then cover me.

[She listens as well, connecting the sounds to what Sherlock is saying. When he mouths to her, she nods in understanding, and listens as the man walks past their hiding place.]

[Even though he's treading softly, Sherlock matches his steps to the tempo of the guard's footfalls as he makes his way out of the locker room and toward the pool area. He doesn't see anything that immediately alerts his suspicions with the guard, but he doesn't have enough data to rule him out as a suspect. He's wearing a pair of iPod ear buds. Excellent.

He turns back toward Joan and gestures with a nod of the head which direction to move. They could make it back to the main surveillance room that should now be completely empty if they're careful and quiet. If not, a confrontation might ease a bit of the tension in the air.]

[She glances at where the guard has gone, takes a breath, and moves quickly and quietly in the direction that Sherlock indicated. The door to the surveillance room is cracked open, and she slips in, crosses to the bank of monitors, and looks over them. She sees the guard at a vending machine, leaning against it and munching on chips. He doesn't seem likely to be returning right away. She mutters.]

Thank god for lazy guards.

[Sherlock shuts the door and looks around at everything but the monitors. He knows that's where Joan will look first and he trusts her to tell him if she sees anything terribly suspicious.]

I'm sure our killer said the same.

[Their transmitter won't be in here. Too much electrical interference and the risk of the guard finding it would be substantially increased simply because the guard most likely spent 90% of his time in here.]

[She's scanning the monitors when a flicker on a screen catches her eye. She looks at the screen, frowning. There's nothing there, just a hallway with what looks like office doors. What could have caught her eye?

Then it happens again. There's an almost imperceptible jerk in the image. She narrows her eyes.]

Sherlock? I think this feed is on a loop.

[Sherlock walks over to Joan's side and scans the entirety of the display before resting his eyes on the monitor Joan's looking at. Several seconds go by until the camera jerks. To him, it seems entirely blatant and not subtle at all.]

The security here must be blind or stupid.

[Considering their presence hadn't been noticed, he will contribute it to both due to the fact that there is an open copy of Fifty Shades of Grey sitting on the security desk.]

This hallway could be anywhere. A-132. [He finds B-132 and C-132 on the display and both of those camera are inflicted by the same motion jerk.]

132... First floor, but where?

To be fair, it's not exactly the best of jobs.

[As he looks at the screens, she turns to rummage through the things on the desk, looking for something that could tell them what was on those screens.]

Here.

[She hands him a binder labeled "Fire Evacuation."]

This should have basic floor plans for the whole building.

It beats retail.

[Sherlock takes the folder from Joan and he turns so he can lean his back against the security desk as he looks through the papers. There's an overhead map of each floor and he focuses on the ground floor against his natural inclination to think of Floor 1 as the level above it.

He taps the page in three different places, then looks up at the display monitors again.]

Can you make out what that sign over the door says?

[She leans in close, squinting at the screen.]

It looks like a list of office hours. Five days, closed Saturday and Sunday.

Office hours...

[He mumbles to himself as he checks the three places he'd mentally checked off. He grins after a moment, then tosses the folder back down on the desk.]

Let's go see what what they're trying to hide.

Good timing, too.

[She nods toward the screen where the security guard has thrown away the chip bag and is headed toward the door.]

Lead the way.

[Sherlock goes over his mental map of the pool and determines a route that would not put them in the path of the guard at all. They'll have to be extra careful when they get to the area with the looping camera feed, since there's no telling what or who they'll find.]

Walk quickly but quietly. [He warns her as he does as she asks and leads the way out of the security room and down a back hallway that they hadn't come in through.]

[She follows, quick and quiet, through the back hallway. She knows enough about the layout to know that this hallway leads to the stairs, that going to the elevator to reach the first floor would both go out of their way and alert anyone watching to their presence. She whispers.]

What are we going to do about the cameras in the stairwells?

[Sherlock snorts when Joan asks about the cameras.]

We've been caught on the security cameras since we got here. If they haven't noticed us yet, it's doubtful that will change.

[The plan isn't exactly full-proof, but with stationary cameras it's incredibly difficult to get through the entire path without showing up in the footage without implementing their own looped clip. Unfortunately they hadn't had time to stop by the video room and it would be too dangerous to go back now.]

[He has a point. As they go into the stairwell and head down, Joan glances nervously up at the cameras as they pass them by. Hopefully the guard was really into that Fifty Shades of Gray.]

[If they're caught for some reason, Sherlock plans to act like they're a couple looking for something to light a spark in their relationship. It would be fairly believable and he always enjoys making Joan a little uncomfortable when the time feels right.

They turn the corner and Sherlock reaches over to open the door to the stairwell, letting Joan take point.]

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Wrong icon... oops

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