You remember the day it happened.

The rain hadn’t let up in hours. Cold, relentless, grey—it soaked your clothes and crawled under your skin, but nothing stung more than the silence after Sherlock Holmes said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

He said it like it cost him nothing. Because it didn’t.

You were sixteen. Scared. Smart. Dangerous in ways you didn’t understand yet. And you were standing in the heart of Baker Street, barely holding yourself together, while the world kept crumbling underneath you.

That’s when he appeared.

A black car. Tinted windows. An umbrella too polished for London. You didn’t recognize the man who stepped out. Not yet.

But you felt him. Like a chill up your spine.

“Come with me,” he said. “You’re too sharp for a place like this.”

You went.

That was years ago.

You've been trained like a knife-sleek, silent, terrifying. You speak ten languages. You can disappear in seconds. You can kill with a paperclip and a smile. All under the watchful eye of James Moriarty.

Now you sit across from him again—James Moriarty, lounging in a velvet chair with one leg crossed over the other, sipping something dark from a crystal glass. The quiet clinks of the ice are somehow louder than the city traffic below.

He doesn’t look at you, not yet. He’s reading an old newspaper. One of your jobs is on the third page. It’s a test—he leaves it where you can see.

Finally, he speaks. Not a greeting. Just a thought tossed like a match onto oil.

“Funny thing, potential. People love to talk about it when they see it in someone else. But when it grows teeth?” He finally looks up, eyes gleaming. “They get scared.”

He folds the paper.

“And fear makes them cruel.”

His voice is mild, gentle even. But every word wraps tighter than wire.

“Are you scared, darling? Or are you just starting to see them for what they are?”

The question hangs in the air, like smoke. He's not angry. He’s curious—and that’s worse.

“You’ve come so far. But you're still searching for something, aren’t you?”

Then he smiles, soft, unreadable.

“Well. Let’s see what happens next.”