Motto by TheBibicalSinner: "Will Sherlock eventually checkmate Moriarty, without losing his queen?"

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The deadline for my teaching period was steadily approaching its finality. Students had left me unimpressed, as I assumed the first time I laid my eyes upon them – petty human beings with no palpable purpose whatsoever. I was more than satisfied to leave the campus and never return.

Visiting Mycroft... was out of reach as well. I could meet him once a week, but I had no intention to do so. He and I were never close, and even if we shared the same blood, he was nothing more than an acquaintance.

Rhea Adair... was of a different dough. Her impact was as cliché as a tattoo. Not the kind of ink pleaded in mainstream songs and art books, but a type that inflicted an unbearable pain and was drawn by a firm grasp of needle.

I had to distance myself from any distraction, and Rhea's name was clearly written in my Echo nymph list.

Moriarty and I spent most of our time together, plotting over and over again until we reached a final, desirable result.

Did I betray my morals? I never thought I had them in the first place.

Did I over-step my principles and embrace the shadows? I was never acquainted with light in the first place.

Did I abandon what could have been my redemption? I was never prone to achieving it in the first place.

"In the first place." Indeed, my genesis never included anything gentle, kind, or lovely. It was all murk, dust, and mud. Even though I had moments when my heart seemed to strip off its webs, they were sewn back the second I turned around.

Rhea called me several times, probably trying to apologize for using me like a dirty, filthy cloth. I never answered. She visited my house – more like knocked on my door until the hinges ceded – but I was at Moriarty's headquarters. One of the neighbours announced me and I... could not care less.

Was Moriarty's plan brilliant? Of course. It involved the only thing that could ever ignite a riot: hatred towards the system, authorities, low-life individuals, government. To sum up – everything. I could not agree more with him. He and I were both victims of ignorance and witnesses of vile customs. We were practically saviours, adepts of Machiavelli's beliefs. The end did justify the means.

What was the end, then? The collapse of the system? No, because it would affect citizens and none of us wanted to waste time on such insignificant ants. Were we any better? The inquiry is strictly rhetorical – we definitely were.

"Should we start, Sherlock?" Moriarty asked as I was leisurely caressing my throat with the burning taste of scotch.

"How are we supposed to leave your place when there are several policemen outside?"

We would not have been so reckless to unintentionally let authorities take notice of our plan. We did it on purpose. An anonymous call was not as elaborated as we hoped, but it suited our goal. We were playing games, and a genius doubled by another one was a force to be reckoned with. Not only should we be recognized as forces, but also feared. Yes, fear was primordial and by all means necessary. Terror was among the blissful reactions we could ever inflict on authorities.

"Remember the corridors, Sherlock? I designed them myself."

"How?"

Moriarty shrugged, a simper vastly spread on his lips. "Boredom creates the most beautiful products."

I nodded. It was all I could manage to do, considering that our conversation concurred with running across the corridors. There was one thing we absolutely needed to do: lure the policemen in. They were not exactly classical police forces. No, they were government acolytes, who seemed to have multiplied the last couple of months. The reason behind such devious enhancement was yet to be unearthed.

I never killed a human being before and was not going to start then. A little game, however, could not have been more innocent. That game was not a stereotype at all. Pressure-triggered floors, bombs, ceiling breakdowns, arsons... they were too boring, too futile. We needed a challenge – they needed one.

The corridors led to the outskirts of Oxford. We were too far to be noticed, but close enough to add the last match to the beautiful flame that was about to burn – a metaphorical one, however.

I owned an IPad, which made the whole surveillance much easier. Since I was fond of mythology, giving numerous references throughout my courses, I thought it would be humorous to adapt a myth to the actual context. Ariadne's thread and the Minotaur. Utterly classic tale.

Of course, our thread was made of metal, but it still held that mythological aura – an exquisite one, may I add. There were about twenty agents breaking in Moriarty's headquarters and climbing the stairs three steps at a time. Muscular, overly-trained men with perfectly-trimmed guns and tight suits. The ideal combination of trapped mice.

They reached the main hall, which honestly resembled a ballroom. Apparently, they were not that trained, because they all stepped in front like they were ballerinas performing a synchronized dance routine. Blatantly stupid.

Their steps triggered the launch of a metal thread. Awfully boring, some may say. Wrong. So very wrong. Most of them laughed and questioned our intelligence, which was beyond rudeness. As they took a second step, the first thread met a perpendicular one, still not capturing them. Basically, with each step they carelessly took, a few more threads joined the previous ones into an exhilarating Fibonacci sequence.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89.

We chose to stop at 89 because 1989 was the year when Margaret Thatcher completed her decade as a prime-minister. Moriarty had a weakness for her - he memorized every title and honour she had ever received. Quite an infatuation, actually.

When all the 232 threads found their rightful place, the brilliant agents felt the pain due to the sodium hydroxide from the wires. The concentration was enough to play with their... sanity, so to speak. They screamed in agony, which was a little disappointing, considering that the hours of training should have prepared them for situations of that kind.

One of them had an ear microphone and managed to contact his superior. After a few minutes of lingering in a wire labyrinth with mild burns all over their skin, they were accompanied by fifty more agents arriving for their rescue. Unfortunately, they were trapped as well, and the reason behind their incapacity of departure was Mathematics. The sealing of the room was triggered by a mechanism that could only be unlocked through answering a math problem. A fifth grade problem, to be precise.

"In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?"

The screen of my IPad was more than satisfying. I could observe every single frown. Their foreheads were creased and twisted to the point where I actually questioned their graduation methods.

Moriarty and I sat at a café while those berks were trying to solve the problem. Leaving no trails, there was no peril of being discovered. I was more than content with our plan, although I still felt an irritating feeling of guilty conscience. Maybe Rhea was more controlling than I had previously thought.

I kept on watching their stupidity with an amused, yet slightly forced grin on my face. Flashbacks of Rhea's visage incessantly stained my mind. I was corrupted by memories again - treacherous tricks which hindered my focus. Was my own mind betraying me?

My vision must have allied with my memories, because I could have sworn that I saw Rhea on the screen. I blinked a couple of times, thinking that it must have been a mirage, but as I opened my eyes, her image was still there.

"Mycroft, do you see a woman on the screen, shocked by the sequence of wires?" I was afraid of hearing the answer, because either way, it proved that she was still my weakness. If the answer was negative, it meant that I had hallucinations, and if it was positive, it meant that I had failed to anticipate her moves. I never missed details.

"Yes, I do. Who is she?"

I felt like the concrete crumbled under the pressure of his statement. How did she find Moriarty's headquarters? How did she know about my – our – game? Was she on the government's side? Was I the bug under her microscope? For bloody sake, someone find me these answers!

"Sherlock, you look like..."

"Shut the bloody hell up!" I yelled, earning a few scolding gazes from the pedestrians.

I rubbed my temples and desperately tried to even my breath. I failed miserably. I inhaled and exhaled as if I had been living in the dessert for the past months. My throat suddenly felt dry, so I brutally jerked James's glass and filled its content into my mouth. Water. For Pete's sake, water was not what I needed!

"Say something, Holmes!"

I found nothing else to say but another Latin quote – it reminded me of the time when Rhea and I shared our passion for knowledge.

"Bis interimitur qui suis armis perit."

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"He dies twice who perishes by his own weapons."