Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Morgue," Sherlock says shortly, dropping a slide on the worktop and getting up.

John can't count the number of times he's found himself sitting on a stool in Barts' lab of an afternoon with nothing in particular to do. Sherlock likes an audience, and John, pathetic bastard that he is, likes being Sherlock's audience. He followed Sherlock down here at the slightest hint that Sherlock might want him to. They're not even in the middle of a case, this is just Sherlock doing experiments and John having nothing better to do than stare at Sherlock's hands while he does experiments.

And now he's going to watch Sherlock's hands while Sherlock does something unpleasant to a corpse. John gets up and follows, more out of the desire to avoid explaining why he doesn't want to watch Sherlock experimenting on a corpse than because he actually wants to follow.

"Molly," Sherlock says, flinging open the morgue doors and swooping into the room.

She's just unzipping a corpse out of his body bag. "Done already?" she asks, glancing up. Her eyes follow Sherlock faithfully across the room as he walks over to fish gloves out of a box and snaps them on. John sympathises. He feels like he spends all of his time either watching Sherlock or watching other people watch Sherlock.

"Change of scenery," Sherlock says cheerfully, wriggling his fingers in the gloves and stalking over to the body.

John leans against the other autopsy table and crosses his arms. Sherlock prods at the corpse's neck. The dead man looks about 45 and according to the text from Molly Sherlock read out in the cab on the way here, "tragic heart attack, and he wanted his body to go to science so don't do anything horrible and trivial to it." This resulted in John making embarrassing apologetic faces at the cabbie in the rear-view mirror and probably will have no effect on Sherlock's behaviour.

"Uh, how are you?" Molly asks, stepping around the table towards John. "Sorry I didn't, earlier--" She'd rushed off after letting them into the lab to take care of an autopsy, and seems to think John was expecting her to make small talk.

"What? No, you're fine. I'm fine." He looks at Sherlock sticking two fingers in the corpse's mouth. "We're all fine."

"Good, that's good. Sherlock's fine?"

"Yes," John says firmly. "Sherlock's fine."

Sherlock's always fine. John isn't entirely sure he's fine, given that he's watching Sherlock prod at a dead man with total robotic coldness and wanting to put his mouth on Sherlock's wrists.

"John," Sherlock says, in the voice that says Sherlock expects John to do whatever he's about to suggest. "I need you to bite the corpse on the neck."

John's mouth hangs open as he tries to find a reasonable response to that. "No, hang on, did you just tell me to bite a dead bloke's neck?"

Molly giggles, and John turns to look at her. She puts a hand over her mouth and looks sheepish. "Sorry. Just picturing you as a vampire."

"Yes, Sherlock, tell me you're not testing post-mortem vampire bites. Vampires aren't real."

"Though very prevalent in fiction," Sherlock says, raising his eyebrows. "There must be some reason for their popularity."

"Vampires aren't real," John repeats. "I know you don't care the earth goes round the sun but it seems relevant to know that vampires aren't real."

Sherlock's mouth twitches. "You're winding me up," John says. He turns to Molly. "He's winding me up. Fine, why do you want me to bite a corpse?"

"I am not testing vampire bites, which in any case wouldn't necessitate your biting the corpse, as I have plenty of evidence you are not a vampire. I am testing post-mortem bite marks, and I need evidence of your jaw size and strength. My own won't do."

"You're serious."

"Yes, I am serious." Sherlock looks confused, as if he can't possibly grasp why John might be suspicious of this request. He might be putting the confusion on to wind John up even more. It's hard to tell.

"I'm not biting a corpse."

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Molly? It would be worthwhile testing a woman's bite as well."

"That's awfully unsanitary, Sherlock," Molly says, as if this is the only thing stopping her from biting a corpse.

Sherlock looks put out, and is leaning down in a way that looks ominously like he's about to bite the corpse himself, when the door opens and Lestrade walks in. "Sherlock!" he barks. "You're not answering my calls again."

Sherlock looks at John, like it's John's job to deal with this. To be fair John hasn't done much to dissuade him from the idea that dealing with tedious social things is John's job. He's not in the mood to come to Sherlock's rescue, though.

"I was running experiments," Sherlock says, after a pause in which he waits for and gives up on John's help.

"John, didn't you hear it ring?" Lestrade asks. Apparently he has the same idea of John's role here as Sherlock does. So John has fallen from roboticist to personal assistant.

Not that he hasn't violated any kind of professional standards he ever had by wanting to put his hands on Sherlock's arse while he had Sherlock's metal open to the air.

"No, he must have had it--" rerouted to his system "--on silent. Why didn't you just call me?"

Lestrade shrugs and grimaces. He does sometimes call John to get hold of Sherlock, but he also seems a little awkward to John. Like he's not sure whether he can commiserate with John about Sherlock or whether John's altogether on Sherlock's side.

Or like he's uncomfortable around roboticists.

"How did you know we'd be here?" John asks.

"Obvious," Sherlock interjects before Lestrade can even get his mouth open. "He's in communication with Molly."

John glances at her and then does a double-take when he sees her go pink around the edges.

"Ah, yeah," Lestrade says, shoving his hands in his pockets and glancing vaguely at the corpse on the autopsy table. "I've got a case for you, Sherlock."

"An interesting case?" Sherlock asks, stripping off his gloves as though he can already tell it is. John may have to thank Lestrade later for getting him out of an argument about the advisability of biting corpses.

"Well, I don't know, but sex bots come into it. Is there something in the air this time of year that makes people commit crimes involving sex bots?"

He's right, John realises. It was almost this time last year that John and Sherlock met and solved the case of the murderous sex bot. He hopes to some vague sense of deity that the sex bots in this case aren't the ones committing the crime. John gets a sick, Moriarty-flavoured feeling in his stomach whenever they encounter any robot that comes close to violating the Three Laws.

"Tell me about it on the way," Sherlock says, happily abandoning both his experiments in the lab and the corpse. He tosses his gloves in the bin and starts chivvying Lestrade out the door.

"You're coming in a police car?" Lestrade asks, raising his eyebrows.

"John can sit in the back."

John rolls his eyes, waves vaguely at Molly, and follows them out the door.

Of course, Sherlock spends the first five minutes in Lestrade's car complaining about the fact that Lestrade isn't taking advantage of his license to use aerial roads.

"It's for emergencies only," Lestrade repeats. "This is not an emergency. The poor bugger's already dead."

John grins at the backs of their heads. This, of course, is the perfect strategy to distract Sherlock--focus on the crime.

"Fine," Sherlock says. "Who's dead?"

"Vincent Hallen. Shipping manager for Synthex Corporation. Know it?" Lestrade glances at the rear-view mirror, though he probably can't actually see John in it from this angle. Lestrade seems to consider John Sherlock's unofficial robotics consultant in addition to personal assistant, despite the fact that the vast majority of their cases have nothing to do with robots. But John's used to that. A roboticist is a roboticist first and everything else second.

"They make high end companion droids," John says, leaning forwards with his hand on the back of Sherlock's seat. His fingertips brush against Sherlock's shoulder--unintentionally, of course. "I don't know much. I was never interested in sex bots. Did they make the ones last year? The Company Co. ones?"

"No," Sherlock says. "Those were Prallor droids. And Lestrade had tech crimes investigate any role they may have had in the droid's malfunction. The First Law wasn't stripped until post-construction. Assuming the Metropolitan Police can be trusted to do their jobs, the manufacturer had nothing to do with it."

"Right," Lestrade says, sounding like he's trying to convince himself this is true. "Anyway, Hallen was found dead this morning in the Synthex warehouse. Forensics thinks he died yesterday evening."

"Cause of death?"

"A shipping crate fell on his head," Lestrade says, his accent suddenly more noticeable.

"Christ," John mutters. He tightens his hand on the back of Sherlock's seat and Sherlock leans forward, his body moving away. Was that--pointed? John can't tell. He takes his hand away and wraps it around his seat belt instead, holding it away from his neck.

"We know exactly who was in the building because of security; everyone swipes their coms to get in. And CCTV accounts for everyone who was in the building at the time except Hallen, because there's a two hour window yesterday evening when the cameras in the warehouse were out."

"Hacked?" Sherlock asks, twisting himself around so he's folded up sideways in the passenger seat.

"Well it certainly wasn't routine."

Sherlock hums and waves a hand at Lestrade. "Don't tell me any more, I want to see it for myself without your bias polluting my expectations."

Lestrade snorts and concentrates on driving. John concentrates on Sherlock. He's still twisted in his seat but looking past Lestrade out the window. Or, more likely, in his own head. His head is tilted sideways, pulling his jaw into stark relief. John blinks several times to clear his own head and sits back.

They have to park the next street over from Synthex Corporation's headquarters, a square block of an office building and central shipping hub. Probably the designers and the business side of things operate here, John guesses as they approach the big glass atrium of the building, which is full of uncomfortable-looking futuristic chairs and useless tiny tables. That's another thing John never liked about corporate robotics--the fussy, self-conscious decor. There's a police constable parked at the security gate, leaning on the security guard's desk and looking bored. The rest of the atrium is empty; John supposes they've told most of their employees to stay home today.

Synthex security involves a metal detector (John's not carrying his tri-wing driver, thank God) and a com swipe. He watches Sherlock go through the metal detector first. It doesn't beep, and on the other side Sherlock picks up his com and angles his face just so that John can see him grin.

Lestrade leads the way down a hallway with no windows but big screens in the walls showing pictures of tropical beaches and evergreen forests designed to look as three-dimensional as possible. It's distracting and seems bad for business--why show your employees everywhere else they'd rather be?

There's another little atrium, with one side narrowing to an escalator leading up to what's probably the offices and the other a double glass door. Lestrade pushes open the door and leads them down another hallway and through another double door, this one solid and windowless.

The warehouse is huge and bright. Stacks of shipping crates make up row upon row, each one about the right size to hold a single sex bot. Above the crates, integrated into the ceiling, is a robotic shipping crane for moving the boxes. There's a line of police tape just inside the doors, and a couple of forensics techs are milling around on the other side of it, still in their blue anti-contaminant suits but obviously idle.

"Anything new?" Lestrade asks, ducking under the tape and walking towards the startled techs.

"No sir," one of them says. "Won't get anything more off him until the autopsy."

"We'll see about that," Sherlock mutters to John, and cuts left toward an aisle between the boxes.

Somebody has moved the crate off the body; it's sitting on its side with a bloody edge. Sally Donovan stands next to the body with her arms crossed over her chest, watching them approach. "Hello, freak," she says, without much heat. "Sidekick."

"Sally," Sherlock says, nodding. "Vincent Hallen." He looks down at the body, and John can't help but look too.

The man must be in his late 30s, with a full head of hair that looks slightly artificial and a lot of heft to his shoulders. He looks as if he could have lifted the shipping boxes on his own, though from the weight of the average droid and the shape of the boxes John guesses this probably isn't true.

Blood puddles around his neck and the lower half of his face. It looks as if the box caught him on the chin and then slid down.

"What do we know about him?" Sherlock asks Sally. He crouches, flinging the tail of his coat back dramatically, and fishes a pair of gloves out of his jacket pocket.

Sally makes a show of looking reluctant, but she pulls out her com, unfolds it smartly, and pulls up a file. "Vincent Michael Hallen, 37, no family to speak of. He'd worked here for six years, always got decent performance reviews although there was an inquiry into a missing shipment that later turned up just fine."

"Did he usually work late?" Sherlock asks, prodding at the victim's eyelids.

"Yeah, his superior--that's Lucinda Kreis--says he was a bit of a workaholic."

Sherlock tilts back, planting one hand on the floor and looking up at the row of boxes to their right. There's a gap where the box that killed Hallen would have been. Sherlock glances between the gap, four boxes high, and the body.

"So he died between 18:35, when the cameras went dark, and 20:15, when they went on again."

"Actually," Sally says, "this bit isn't covered by the cameras. He could have died earlier or later, technically, but we're assuming the CCTV outage was to cover the murderer coming and going, otherwise what was the point?"

"Lestrade said everyone else in the building was accounted for," John says, looking at Sally instead of the body.

"Yeah, but if they hacked the CCTV to knock out the cameras in here there's no reason they couldn't have replaced the video on other cameras."

"I assume you've tracked down everyone who was here," Sherlock says, rising from his crouch.

"They're being questioned upstairs," Lestrade says, coming down the aisle behind them. "Try to avoid terrorising the witnesses, Sherlock, if you don't mind."

Sherlock bares his teeth in what's probably supposed to be a grin but just looks predatory. "How many people are there?"

"Seventeen. Mostly cleaning staff, a few people working late. Sally and I talked to some of them already." Lestrade sticks his hands in his pockets and hesitates, then says, "I know you don't want me to bias your opinion, but there's one of them I think is pretty suspicious."

"And is your opinion based on your tedious distrust of roboticists, or is it founded on actual evidence?" Sherlock asks, sneering. John winces. It may not be an unreasonable question, but John wishes Sherlock wouldn't point it out.

Lestrade looks embarrassed. He glances sidelong at John in a way that says he's trying not to not look at John too obviously. "Sally agreed, and I know you trust her not to be biased about robotics," he says.

Sally's eyebrows shoot up practically to her hairline. Apparently she was unaware Sherlock has ever expressed anything so friendly as trust towards her. John's not surprised by it, though he hasn't ever actually heard Sherlock say as much. Sally Donovan used to work in Tech Crimes, so she's seen enough of the robotics world to know both the stereotypes and the truth. And she's smart. John would like her for that, if she weren't so awful to Sherlock all the time.

"Fine," Sherlock says, not looking at Sally. "Show me."

Lestrade jerks his arm in a "follow me" gesture and turns back toward the entrance to the warehouse. Sally stays with the body, but as they leave John looks over his shoulder to see her staring thoughtfully after Sherlock. She catches John's eye, and makes a face that could be a smile if you looked at it right.

The Metropolitan Police has taken over an open plan office area on the second floor. Most of the witnesses are milling around, while a constable talks to one of them at a desk in the corner.

"Who were you referring to?" Sherlock asks, leaning in towards Lestrade.

"Bloke in the green t-shirt," Lestrade says. John's eyes automatically seek out green, and it's a minute before something clicks into place and recognition hits John square in the chest.

"Luke Pinter," John breathes, shocked.

-

October, 2062

John drops his stylus on the desk and scrubs his hands through his slightly-too-long blond hair. The screen is starting to blur, too many reference schematics and scribbled designs hovering in front of his eyes even when he looks up at the two other members of his project group. Both Julian and Marina are still absorbed in the work for their final Robot Kinematics design, but John needs a break.

He saves his work and folds up his com, shoving it into his slightly too small jeans pocket. "Break," John says to the other two, "taking one." Marina raises one short and cheerfully offensive finger in his direction. He grins and shoves through the door to the lab. The air in the hallway isn't quite so dead and still, but it's late and the lights are dimmed. This isn't helping John wake up, though--he shakes out his legs a bit and bounced on his toes--it's certainly worth a little lost time.

John starts walking toward the drinks machine at the end of the corridor--if the London School of Robotics is good for anything, it's keeping its students caffeinated. The soft white ceiling lights in the hall are aided by the lights spilling out of the windows in the lab doors. Most of the rooms are occupied; this is a popular study space for students because it's so well-equipped and generally quiet. Most of the people in the rooms are sitting around tables designing or reading, but a few are building things. John can't help peering in at the different projects as he walks past.

The second to last door before the drinks catches his eye. He thinks for a second that he's seeing the most conspicuous ever instance of horny students making use of roommate-free rooms, but when he looks again (of course he does) he realises what he's actually seeing.

John stops, looking in at the naked white back of a humanoid robot. He can tell it's a robot because it currently lacks any legs. Propped up on a work bench the robot is so far just torso, head, and arms, but what is there is incredibly realistic. After a minute of John's impressed staring a head pops up from behind the work bench, followed by the rest of a bloke John recognises vaguely. An older student, John thinks.

And because he is curious and this is much better than the mess of schematics on his com, John pushes open the door and walks in.

The other student catches sight of John's impressed looks at the robot and grins. His smile is enormous and very white. "Like him?" he asks.

Job steps around the side of the table and sees the android's jaw and toned, economical chest. He should have known the robot was supposed to be a man from its broad shoulders and minimal waist, but somehow he was expecting such a humanoid robot to be female. Stereotype. Old stereotype, at that. He nods. "You built this yourself?"

The robot's face is a bit rough--none of it's enough to pass for human, but it gets damn close and somehow it sidesteps the possibility of going all Uncanny Valley. It's incredible, really.

"I did." The other boy offers his hand, transferring a tri-wing driver out of it first. "Luke Pinter."

"John Watson. What's its primary function?"

Luke's smile turns clever and amused. "Sex," he says, making the word sound like a chewy sweet.

John's eyebrows climb. "They let you use university resources to build sex bots?"

"I'm their star student. They pretty much let me build what I like." It could have come out sounding absolutely arrogant, but it doesn't. Instead it sounds honest and almost frustrated. As if Luke is tired of not having enough university-sanctioned robots to build. But there's something compelling about it, too. "This is my pet project," Luke adds. "I've been building all the other robots so they'll let me do this one."

"Desperate for it?" John jokes.

Luke's smile twists and his eyes go a shade darker. "Don't perpetuate shitty roboticist stereotypes where I can hear you, all right?"

"Sorry," John says, fully aware of just how shitty that stereotype is. He's been to plenty of UCL parties. Luke doesn't make him feel like a dick for saying it, though. "But why is this your pet project?"

Luke puts his hand on the android's stomach, skims it upward in an unmistakably sexual and possessive movement. "Sex is one of the weirdest, most subjective things humans do," he says, thumbing over one artificial pink nipple. "It's practically the holy grail, if you want to build a robot that can do everything a human can."

"That's what you want?"

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe someday."

Luke eyes John, looking him up and down and then grinning suddenly. John's not sure what it is he's seeing, but it makes his skin heat--not a blush, but a sudden whirring processor. Or maybe without the robot metaphor--John's been studying too long. "I'm about to go and do some research," Luke says. He puts his hands under the robot's armpits and hefts it up, carrying it over to one of the lockers along the wall, kicking the door open, and sliding the droid inside. He turns to look over his shoulder at John, raising one suggestive eyebrow. "And when I say 'research,' I mean I'm visiting a robobrothel and running some tests on a professional model. Want to come?"

John's stomach leaps over the double entendre. "Yes," he says.

-

John braces himself on his forearms and looks down at Luke's mobile, oval face. He's not precisely attractive--a bit babyish and funny-looking; he looks awful in photos--but in motion he's irresistible. His grin makes John's mouth tilt all over the place, tending upwards. John caves to the pull of that magnet face and leans down to put his tongue in Luke's mouth.

It started the night they met. John knows now that sex bots leave him absolutely cold, but the look on Luke's face as he watched the droid suck his cock was brilliant. Intent fascination with a side of bright arousal and a hint that some kind of mental note-taking was happening in that head. John watched and tried not to touch himself, and when the droid turned to him and his erection started to die Luke noticed. Noticed and did something about it.

Luke's bedroom is a complete tip, but it has a familiar boy smell and the bed is comfortable when you shove the textbooks off it. John lifts himself up again and kicks the duvet aside so his feet aren't five times warmer than the rest of him. "Are we going to--" John starts to ask before Luke tips his hips upwards and John feels his cock drag across thigh and yes, they are going to go another round.

It's easy not to be bothered that your boyfriend got back from working on his sex bot so turned on that John's pants need a wash, when he's rubbing his cock against your leg.

Luke reaches down and grabs John's naked arse and grinds against him, which feels delightfully indelicate and dirty. They're both damp with sweat and semen and they slide easily together, and John leans down to bite Luke's collarbone. This is really the best possible use of John's time. That Robot Kinemetrics project can go hang.

Luke's face when he's panting with hazy effort looks even funnier than usual, but in an irresistible endearing way. John likes him really a lot. An embarrassing lot. But better to think about that when they aren't both seconds from coming all over each other.

It's not that Luke actually gets off on sex with robots, John knows (and thinks, when he's breathing heavily into Luke's shoulder afterward). He certainly doesn't mind it, as proved by his ability to come down an android's throat in contrast with the sick feeling in John's stomach when confronted by the same prospect. But what really turns him on is the tech, the idea of creating a machine that is clever enough to fuck a human. It's intellectual first--John doubts it would be as sexual as it is at all if Luke didn't have John handy to get him off after a long session in the lab. And John can live with that because--he digs his teeth into Luke's shoulder and turns it into a kiss--because he likes Luke and his enthusiasm and his brilliant brain.

"I worked out the mechanics for Karl's dick today," Luke says, grinning and still almost panting. John closes his eyes. It doesn't bother him that Luke has named the droid, it really doesn't. Everybody names their robots.

"And?" John mumbles. "Did you solve the problem of the refractory period?"

Luke laughs. "I suppose that's programming more than mechanics here." He's quiet for a while. The bedside lamp is still on but even with the light John is almost dozing, nose pressed up against Luke's shoulder. "John," Luke says after a while.

"Hm."

"Will you try him, when he's finished?"

John lifts his head up so he can look Luke in the face, because that question wakes him up and he's not a coward. If it goes badly, it goes badly. "Okay," he says.

-

Sherlock interrupts his assessment of the witnesses to round on John, leaning close and analysing his tone. Surprise, certainly, but it's unclear whether positive or negative. "You know him?" Sherlock asks. Obvious, but the question is supposed to lead to an elaboration, not just an obvious "yes."

"We were at uni together," John says, and swallows thickly. That is obviously not the whole story, but getting more detail out of John may take time.

"Why do Lestrade and Donovan think he's suspicious?" Sherlock puts his hand on John's arm and steps in front of him, blocking John's view of the man and giving John time before he's noticed and presumably recognised. John's arm is tense; his whole body is tense. Negative surprise, then. Or merely apprehension, awkwardness. Some combination thereof; emotions are so inconveniently murky.

John shrugs, just enough that Sherlock's hand slides down his arm. "I haven't seen him in years."

That fits with John's usual relationship patterns, and doesn't give any indication of their past relationship. John doesn't keep up with anyone from university except Mike Stamford, and he can be put down to proximity and Mike's acquaintance with Sherlock. John shifts under Sherlock's hand, but it's impossible to tell whether he's trying to shift away or push his arm more firmly into Sherlock's grip. Sherlock lets go, and John's eyes widen slightly. He bends his elbow and then relaxes and looks around past Sherlock.

"Introduce me," Sherlock says, attempting to infuse the words with enough urgency that John will follow the order. "He'll remember you, yes?"

"Yeah," John says, breathing it out as a sigh. He pushes his chin forward in a characteristic sign of determination, and says, "Fine."

John brushes past Sherlock and heads towards the man. Luke Pinter. Lestrade said he was a designer, which makes his past--friendship? acquaintance? sexual relationship?--with John seem slightly off the mark, given John's distaste for companion droids. But Mr. Pinter's interests may have changed since university. Sherlock follows John across the room.

Luke Pinter is approximately John's age, with brown hair (still brown, John has more grey) cut very short and a long, rounded face. As a point of curiosity Sherlock attempts to extrapolate Pinter's likely appearance during his acquaintance with John, but there are too many factors to do so accurately, certainly not in the time available.

The moment when Pinter recognises John is quite obvious. His eyebrows climb and his mouth opens slightly. Sherlock has looked up photos of John at various stages in his life, so he knows John's appearance hasn't altered enough to make him unrecognisable except possibly to the most face-blind. And Pinter obviously recognises John. After a moment his mouth widens into a tentative but broad smile.

"John," he says. Sherlock picks up hints of both pleasure and anxiety in his voice. Their past relationship obviously held some weight--most people are happy to renew their acquaintance with old friends if the friendship was casual and had no awkward ending. So, either a less casual relationship or an unpleasant parting. Or both. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm--" John starts, and Sherlock steps sideways just enough to get a look at his face. It breaks into a forced-looking smile and John begins again, "Luke." He holds out a hand.

Luke pushes himself up from the desk he's been leaning on and takes John's hand. The handshake lasts longer than the statistical average. "God, John, it's been years. Are you--?" He looks around the room, searching for an explanation for John's presence. His eyes pause fractionally on Sherlock and then skate by. "Are you here with the police?"

"Sort of. Luke, this is my--" hesitation "--friend, Sherlock Holmes. Luke Pinter." John gestures vaguely between them and Sherlock steps forward to shake Pinter's hand, turning on a friendly grin. Out of the corner of his eye Sherlock registers John see the expression and wince, slightly. John's ability to tell when Sherlock's expressions are more forced than usual is a perpetual source of curiosity. Pinter's gaze flickers between the two of them, and Sherlock files the reaction away for later categorisation--another assumption that they have a romantic partnership, or mere confusion about their presence?

"I'm a consultant for the police, yes," Sherlock says, still smiling. "It's a nice surprise to meet an old friend of John's, though."

Best way to ascertain their real relationship--drop an assumption about it. But there's nothing to counteract the statement, just a brief glance back at John. "And you, John?" Pinter asks. "Are you, uh, consulting too? Robotics advisor, or something?"

John's mouth tilts in half acknowledgement, half discomfort. "Something like that," John says.

The demands of the case are pressing their way back to the top of Sherlock's priorities. "So you were here at the time of Mr. Hallen's death?" Sherlock asks Pinter.

Pinter frowns and looks away from John. "Yes, I was here until half nine or so, in my office."

"Do you usually work that late?"

"Lately, yes. I've got a lot of work at the moment, and--" Pinter glances at John again "--I don't have much to tempt me home."

"Yes, I heard about the set-back Synthex had with getting their latest model approved by the Robotics Regulatory Service. Too advanced?"

"I'm afraid I'm not authorised to make public statements about that. But yes, we're all working very hard to fix the problem."

"Never thought I'd see you dumbing down a robot," John says. Sherlock looks at him. He's standing at parade rest and there's a challenging tone in his voice. The file of data on John and Luke Pinter's history expands.

"If you must know," Luke snaps, and then lowers his voice. "I'm not. I'm not dumbing it down, I'm just trying to get it through the RRS."

"Bribery?" Sherlock suggests. "Illegal tampering with the Robot Limitations Tests? Or are you producing robots for the black market, now?"

"Hey," John says, cutting Sherlock off. "Sherlock." It's the voice that Sherlock has filed as "shut up and shut up now," and Sherlock's automated response is to comply.

"I thought you were investigating the death, not the company's interests," Pinter says. His face twists into a portrait of anxiety. "Is that why you're here, John?"

John just glares at Sherlock.

"I am investigating the death," Sherlock says, "and if the police think you're suspicious because you have a hand in illegal robotics activity, it's not my job to tell them one way or the other. It's obvious you're too weak to have committed the murder."

"Hey!" Pinter says, puffing himself up in a pre-fight reflex that Sherlock has witnessed before. Then he deflates, obviously realising how stupid it would be to contradict belief in his innocence. He turns to John. "It really is nice to see you, John. I've--I've thought about you, over the years. We should--go for a drink or something, sometime, yeah?"

"Sure," John says. Sherlock can't tell if the insincerity is blatant enough for Pinter to pick it up, or if only Sherlock's more sensitive tone sensors register it. John's smile looks more sincere, if stiff; that may cancel out any doubt in his words. John's unwillingness to spend more time in Pinter's presence indicates that their relationship ended badly--moreso in John's opinion than in Pinter's.

"How interesting to meet you," Sherlock says, intentionally more honest than polite. Lestrade is across the room, questioning another of his witnesses. Sherlock takes John by the wrist and pulls him away from Pinter, back towards the door. John follows with no resistance, and Sherlock adjusts his fingers, relaxing them into a more casual grip. When he glances back over his shoulder at Pinter, his suspicions that Pinter is making assumptions about their relationship are confirmed.

Sherlock stands closer to John than necessary, continuing his observation of Pinter's reactions. "We're done here," he says. "None of these people is a murderer."

"Then you think someone got past security?" John asks. He's still holding his arms tense, but he makes no attempt to shake off Sherlock's hand. In fact that is the most relaxed part of his body, his wrist loose between Sherlock's fingers.

"No," Sherlock says.

"Then you think it was an accident."

"No."

John tilts his head back, brow wrinkling in confusion. He's looking to Sherlock for answers, but John does like to think for himself, and he's obviously thinking back over what they saw in the warehouse. "No," John echoes. "No, it can't be. Not again."

"Why not?"

"You think the bot did it. The shipping crane."

Sherlock calls up the image of the warehouse again, looking over the roboticised system in the ceiling that allows for easy moving of the shipping crates. He's sure. It's the only option that accounts for a perfectly stable box suddenly falling on Vincent Hallen without interference from anyone else in the building. "Yes."

John steps back, trying to start for Lestrade, but Sherlock tightens his grip on John's wrist. "I can't prove it," he says. "There's no point in telling Lestrade. If it gets out that the police suspect another robot of murder there will be another media frenzy, and there is no such thing as justice in this situation."

"Somebody hacked it," John says, voice low and tight.

"Yes. And it's perfectly obvious who, regardless of the fact that we haven't heard from him in months, but telling Lestrade won't help catch him."

John stares Sherlock down, pausing while he thinks about it. John's comfort with allowing pauses into conversation is one of his biggest attractions as a companion. Most humans feel the need to talk over the pauses, and in so doing fail to think about what they are saying.

"Fine," John says eventually. "But if they arrest someone else, if there's a chance someone else is going to get the blame, we'll tell Lestrade."

Sherlock shrugs. "Fine. If there is a danger that someone innocent of this particular crime might be convicted for it, I will prove they are innocent."

"That's all I ask," John says.

Sherlock's pleasure at receiving John's approval seems out of proportion, but he doesn't have time to look at it. He needs to examine this latest evidence that Moriarty may be compromising the Three Laws of Robotics on a far greater scale.