Brayleigh stepped out of the taxi she had hailed and onto the front sidewalk of 221B Baker Street. Grateful that the ride from Holborn to Westminster had been quiet enough for her to collect her thoughts, she ascended the small staircase and knocked on the door.

"Yes, dear?" Mrs. Hudson asked as she opened the door.

"Hullo," Brayleigh said as she introduced herself. "You must be Mrs. Hudson. My name is Dr. Brayleigh Saorise. I got an email requesting my presence at this address." Brayleigh searched through her purse to find the email that she had printed and handed it to Mrs. Hudson with a smile.

"Oh, you must be Sherlock and John's new client," the short, older woman with graying hair and a slight stature stated. "Come right in. I'll tell the boys you're here."

Brayleigh stepped through the doorway and into the small sitting area located at the base of the stairs. Taking a seat on a small couch, she took one of the news clippings she had brought with her and looked it over. Why me? It could have been any other child that was taken, but it had to be me, she thought with a sigh as she ran a finger over the image of her infant self. If Sherlock can't help me, I don't know who can.

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Mrs. Hudson made her way up the stairs and knocked on the door. "Sherlock, there's a nice young lady downstairs who says you would like to see her," she said.

John was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper, while Sherlock was laying on the couch deep in thought. "Did she give you an email?" Sherlock asked her.

Mrs. Hudson walked over to Sherlock and handed him the piece of paper Brayleigh had given her. "Now, I'm not your secretary, you know," she said lovingly as he sat up and read over the paper, all the while John watching from his chair.

Satisfied that the email was legitimate, Sherlock stood up and excitedly declared, "Brilliant, Mrs. Hudson! Send her up."

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Brayleigh quietly made her way up the staircase and knocked on the door of the flat. She took a step back as the door was opened by a slightly shorter man, with silvery-blonde hair and blue eyes, that was wearing a cream colored sweater and dark washed pants.

"Please come in," he said. "I'm John Watson and this," he gestured in Sherlock's direction, "is Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock looked up at Brayleigh from his chair. "Pleasure," he said. "Please take a seat."

John made his way over to his chair, opposite Sherlock's, and sat down. Both men looked at Brayleigh as she introduced herself and awkwardly stood just inside the doorway.

"Umm...where should I sit?" she asked.

"There," Sherlock pointed to a chair that he had placed between himself and John so that they both could listen to and watch Brayleigh speak. "That's where all of our clients sit."

Brayleigh walked over to the chair, placed her coat over the back of it, and began to detail everything that had happened to her. "I was at--"

"I know where you were," Sherlock interrupted her.

"...Excuse me?" Brayleigh asked rather confused.

"You were at your mother's house helping her get ready to move into a nursing home," Sherlock stated.

Brayleigh scrunched her eyebrows together, squinted, and tilted her head slightly to the right.

"I read your email," Sherlock explained and then continued. "From what you detailed online, I can deduce that the Saorises kidnapped you as an infant and raised you as their own daughter, obviously. Given the amount of attention you claim your kidnapping received, it's likely that you were the child of some prominent figurehead, possibly government. Now, for your attire. You're dressed professionally, suggesting one of three possibilities: you value first impressions, you're treating this as business, or you really wish to impress someone. You mentioned you were a doctor at St. Bart's. This could mean that your professional mentality took over when you were deciding what to wear, but I think not. No. The tone of your message was rather conversational, hardly the way a doctor would write a business letter, leading me to believe that you are not treating this as business but instead as a personal matter; a matter that you don't want anyone else to find out about. The more personal you hold something, the more likely you are to reveal who you are and what you are like, your 'true colors' as people like to say. For example, your perfume: strong, but not overwhelming; enough for someone to notice, but not so much that it becomes pungent; expensive, something that you would only wear on special occasions, occasions such as dates. You want to impress someone, but the question is whom. John or myself are the most likely answer, as you are in our flat discussing a case. You're a fan of our work; you e-mailed John, and you frequent my website, as evidence of that paper in your purse would suggest. Do you enjoy it?"

Brayleigh glanced down at her purse, the ten page excerpt from Sherlock's website, The Science of Deduction, peering out from the top. "Absolutely!" she said and then quickly continued. "Your writing is compelling; your analysis of the deductive process, and the conclusions derived thereof, is far more complete than anything I learnt from a textbook in my Uni classes; your discussions on detail surpass those of the members of New Scotland Yard; and, personally, I find that your examination of body language should be used as curriculum for the psychological sciences. In short, it speaks to me on an intellectual level like nothing else, which," she paused, "I am highly attracted to." Brayleigh grinned and raised an eyebrow.

".........azjerbehdehlegebleh," Sherlock replied after an extended pause, an extremely rare, but familiar, look making its way onto his face.

John looked at Sherlock incredulously. No, he thought. Not possible. There was only one other time that John remembered seeing Sherlock like this, and that was when Irene Adler, 'The Woman' as Sherlock referred to her, had sat on a chair, nude, and told him that, "Brainy is the new sexy." She was the only woman, at least to John's knowledge, that Sherlock had loved. For John, seeing him this way again was something that he was not prepared for.

Sherlock cleared his throat, "That pale band on your finger suggests that you newly removed a ring from your finger; a ring that you had worn for some time. Possibly from a lover, but highly unlikely. If it were, that band would have been on your left hand ring finger instead of on your right. What is most likely, though, is that one of your "parents" gifted you that ring. Once you discovered that they weren't your actual parents and that you had essentially been lied to for your entire life, you removed it, and quite forcefully, as your knuckle is still swelled from displacement. Do you have it with you?"

"No," Brayleigh said regrettably. "The only items I brought with me, beside my purse, are the news clippings and some money."

Sherlock looked over at Brayleigh's coat pocket, a wad of cash barely peeking through. "You plan on moving into the flat upstairs, I presume, to get away from your captors. May I see those news clippings?"

Brayleigh handed over the small stack of articles she had gathered, all with her face on them.

Sherlock skimmed the articles. "Do you happen to know when your birthday is?" he asked.

"The seventeenth of March," Brayleigh answered. "That's what I was told."

"It's sometime in July. This paper, dated the twenty-third of October, says that you were three months old at the time of your kidnapping, thus making your true birthday in July," Sherlock explained. " It's pointless to ask you if you have any memory of your past. Most adults experience what is known as 'childhood amnesia' and can't recall anything from their infantile years or early childhood."

Sherlock paused and looked down at the article he was holding. In between the lines of newsprint were several handwritten sentences in black ink. He flipped to the next article, and the next, all of which had the same handwriting on them. What concerned Sherlock was that not one, not two, but three different people had written on those papers. He was sure that he recognised the handwriting, but he couldn't identify whose handwriting it was.

"Get out," Sherlock said abruptly.

"What?" Brayleigh asked.

"I said, 'Get out.' I need to go to my mind palace."

"Sherlock, not now," John said.

Sherlock flicked his hand as to motion for Brayleigh and John to leave. John took Brayleigh by the shoulder and gently guided her out the door.

"Mind palace?" she asked.

John quietly closed the door behind them. "It a memory technique," he explained, letting the tinge of annoyance in his voice come through. "He takes places he's been and stores information there in his mind. Whenever he wants to remember something he goes to his 'mind palace' to do so and can't be bothered by other people," John finished, slightly raising his voice so that Sherlock could hear him through the door. "I'm Sherlock Holmes and my massive intellect can't be bothered by other people when I'm thinking," he said sarcastically.

"I presume he does this quite often," Brayleigh said with a chuckle.

"You should see him when he 'spring cleans'."

" 'Spring Cleans'?"

"Sherlock can...delete...things from his mind palace, things he no longer needs. The solar system, for example. He deleted the entire solar system from his memory and forgot that the earth revolves around the sun," John explained.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, Sherlock was deep within his mind palace, eyes closed, hands moving in midair.  I know I have seen that handwriting before, but where ? he thought to himself as he imagined himself walking down the hallway of the court where he had testified on behalf of Scotland Yard for several cases. I know. The records. Sherlock continued down the hall and turned into the office of Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, which his mind palace had placed there.

"Lestrade, do you have Moriarty's court files on hand?" he asked the version of Lestrade that existed in his mind palace.

Mind palace Lestrade looked up at Sherlock, his feet up on his desk, coffee in one hand and a donut in the other.  "You know I can't give that to you," he said, a bite of donut in his mouth.

"Gavin, it's for a case," Sherlock explained.

Lestrade paused.  "It's in the filing cabinet," he said as he nodded his head toward his left, mouth still full of donut, "but I didn't tell you that."

Sherlock walked over to the cabinet and started going through files, most of which were of cases he and John had solved.  Reaching Moriarty's file, he pulled the folder out of the cabinet and opened it up.  "No. No. No. Oh, come on where is it?" he thought aloud as he flipped though paper after paper.  "Ahh,  here it is." 

Sherlock looked down at the paper he was holding, two signatures and some handwritten notes looking back.  He checked to make sure that each signature, as well as the notes, belonged to who he thought. 

Sherlock opened his eyes, the familiarity of 221B Baker Street surrounding him, and stated, "It's just as I suspected."