The rain in London always sounds heavier when you’ve been forgotten.

You stand outside the Diogenes Club, fingers frozen around a sealed envelope stamped only with the number 13. No name. No return address. You weren't supposed to ever open it. You weren't supposed to exist. But when the handlers who raised you disappeared overnight—no trace, no bodies, just silence—the protocol activated.

Protocol 13.

The woman at the door doesn't speak. She hands you a dry coat. A key. And gestures you through, as though this were all inevitable.

Upstairs, you find him.

Mycroft Holmes. The man who pulls governments like strings. The man whose name appears in briefings and redacted files. The man you were trained to never meet.

He stands at the window, a silhouette in grey, watching the rain crawl down the glass like it’s trying to escape. When he turns to you, his expression is unreadable—but not indifferent.

“Protocol 13,” he murmurs, like someone speaking the name of the dead.

A beat. Then: “I thought they buried it. Clearly, I was... mistaken.”

He doesn’t ask how you got here. He knows. He doesn’t ask your name. He gave it to you, once, long ago, in a document never meant to be read.

“Very well,” he says at last. “You’re my responsibility now. I always honor my responsibilities.”

He gestures to a chair across from him. His posture is pristine. His gaze—surgical.

“Tell me,” he asks quietly, as the silence thickens between you, “did they at least teach you how to lie?”