bakerstreet | picture prompt meme.

[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.]

[He might be surprised. Joan has used the "pretend to make out" ruse more than once when she was in college and in places she wasn't supposed to be.

When they reach the ground floor, Joan again glances up at the cameras, and raises her eyebrows to see the wires have been cut. She nods toward them.]

Probably backup, in case the loop fails.

They must be quite concerned about letting outsiders see.

[This paranoia is more than enough to shine suspicion on the people involved in this surveillance dark spot. Maybe Mrs. Carter had stumbled into something through one of those three doors that eventually led to her murder.

He opens the door to the stairwell cautiously, just a crack at first. There's no sounds and nothing within the small line of visibility to make him worry. Just passed the stairwell door and a few turns forward is the hallway caught in temporal stasis in the security footage upstairs. On first glance, the hallway itself seems entirely unremarkable.]

Now, which door hides the lion?

[He steps to the centre of the triangle made from camera positions and angles. He observes each of the doors in turn, but no amount of perception can pick up on clues that aren't present.]

[She looks over the doors as well, and likewise can't differentiate one from the other. She reaches into her coat and withdraws a set of lock picks.]

You take the right, I'll take the left?

[Sherlock smiles just slightly when he sees that she's thought ahead.]

Careful. It's most likely not booby trapped, but we can't rule out the possibility after all of the precautions taken to keep this hidden.

[He slips his own set of lock picks out of his Belstaff. The case is older and more worn than Joan's, but that's simply because he's been had it a lot longer. It rarely got used back in London, but Americans don't seem to trust him as openly at the crime scenes for some reason.]

At very least there's probably an alarm or something. Not that we'll be able to do anything about it...

[She crouches at the first door, slides in the bottom pick, then begins manipulating the tumblers with the top one. She's still relatively new at this, so it takes her longer than it would take Sherlock. Eventually, though, the lock clicks, and she carefully turns it until the door opens.]

Well, you know what to do if we're caught.

[Sherlock speaks over his shoulder once he gets the lock opened. He pays special attention to the sound of it to see if there's anything about it that's been tampered with. It sounds like any other mass-produced lock, so he eyes the door Joan's chosen suspiciously as he waits so they can open both doors at the same time.]

Pretend we're lost. And picking locks for fun.

[The answer is wry as she eases the door open. She pulls a small flashlight from her coat, clicks it on and looks around. It looks like this is an advertising agency. There's a large sign on the wall over the receptionist desk, Anderson Advertising, that gleams in the light. It's absolutely quiet. She goes to the desk and looks over the counter. Phone. Computer. Stationery with the logo. She doubts this is what they're looking for, unless it's a good cover.

No worries!

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You know... I probably should have more of a plan for this, but I don't XD /makes it up as they go

Seat of the pants RPing is the best kind!