Chapter 570

"Good to meet you, Mr. Holmes. Ms. Watson."

The office doors swung open, and the Eredar twins swept inside.

Holmes and Watson had been waiting for some time. Out of courtesy, they started to rise, but the twins waved them down and went straight to their seats.

Once they were settled, Salorass got straight to the point.

"We already know why you’re here, so let’s skip the formalities."

Holmes appreciated the efficiency.

"We were told that your company can resolve the problem with our bodies. Is that true?"

"Of course."

Oleses nodded without hesitation.

"You’ve already seen enough evidence to answer that question yourself."

Holmes nodded.

She was right.

After drinking the substance they’d called the red potion, the unstable energy inside his body had become calmer than it had ever been. That alone was proof that the company possessed technology, magic, or both, far beyond anything he understood.

Still, Holmes had assumed the effect was temporary.

After all, he’d only just arrived. He hadn’t even met the people in charge yet. They hadn’t negotiated anything.

Why would a company simply hand over a cure to strangers?

"But..."

Salorass’s lips curved into a faint smile.

She raised her eyes and fixed Holmes with a gaze that seemed almost hypnotic.

"You’re not here merely to get rid of the problem, are you? Otherwise, there would have been no reason for you to come to us."

Holmes’s expression didn’t change.

But the twins already knew the answer.

When Evenson had rescued Holmes and Watson from the shipyard, he’d awakened them before Tony had finished performing his own one-man rescue operation.

He’d explained the situation plainly.

Killian had transformed them into Extremis-enhanced humans.

The process had given them extraordinary strength and elevated them beyond normal humanity.

But it came with a serious flaw.

Without a specialized suppressive drug, the unstable energy inside their bodies would eventually spiral out of control and cause them to explode.

Evenson had then offered them two choices.

The first was to wait for Tony Stark.

Once Tony learned what had happened, he would probably be able to remove both the dangerous energy and the enhanced strength from their bodies.

They would return to normal life.

Holmes could go back to being a consulting detective, Watson could return to her own work, and the two of them could spend the rest of their lives solving murders and dealing with ordinary criminals.

The second option was different.

Evenson could introduce them to a place capable of removing the instability while preserving the power.

They might even come out stronger than before.

Which path do you want?

"We want to keep the power."

Holmes spoke calmly.

There was no hesitation in his eyes.

Holmes had always been obsessed with deduction.

Justice mattered to him, certainly, but the thing he truly loved was solving the puzzle itself.

Yet this incident had shown him something he’d never fully appreciated before.

A brilliant mind wasn’t enough.

He needed the ability to act on his conclusions.

After a brief discussion with Watson, he had chosen the second option, exactly as Evenson had anticipated.

Evenson had subsequently drawn a large amount of energy out of their bodies.

That had served two purposes.

First, it temporarily calmed the Extremis energy inside them, making them appear almost completely normal.

Second, it left them physically weak.

That weakness made it look as though Evenson’s own attempt to deal with their condition had failed.

Given Tony’s personality, he would never willingly let Evenson continue experimenting on them once Pepper could provide proper medical treatment.

That kept the truth hidden.

As for the explanation Evenson had given Tony about the process...

Well.

Holmes suspected Evenson believed it about as much as he did.

"That’s not a problem."

Oleses answered immediately.

"We can resolve the instability easily. And we can optimize the enhancement while we’re at it."

She smiled.

"Just as that little warlock told you. We can make you stronger."

Holmes noticed the way the twins referred to Evenson.

The little warlock.

That was interesting.

Was it because the powerful Avenger’s strength meant nothing to them?

Or was there something else behind the nickname?

"However..."

Salorass deliberately drew out the word.

"This is a company."

Holmes understood immediately.

A company needed revenue.

Watson leaned forward slightly.

"So... what’s the price?"

Oleses leaned forward as well.

Her expression became solemn.

"This whole thing..."

She suddenly snorted.

Then she broke into laughter.

"Sorry."

She waved a hand.

"I was going to make a dramatic speech, but there are too many reasons not to."

She composed herself.

"The reasonable price is..."

"Join our company."

Oleses’s voice became formal.

"You’ll work as our intelligence analysts."

"I see..."

Watson murmured.

Then she glanced at Holmes.

As expected, he looked deeply conflicted.

Holmes was an intensely independent man.

He disliked joining organizations.

He disliked working for other people even more.

His cooperation with the police and his willingness to accept private cases weren’t exceptions to that rule. He simply took cases when they interested him.

This was different.

He would be working for someone.

"Is this really such a difficult decision, Mr. Holmes?"

Salorass tilted her head.

"You came here because you realized that a brilliant mind alone isn’t enough."

She paused.

"But have you considered that even possessing superhuman strength won’t be enough?"

Holmes narrowed his eyes.

"A case. A society. A country. Even the entire world."

Salorass smiled.

"Each is a gigantic cipher."

"Give an ordinary person enough clues, and they can solve it. Give a genius no clues at all, and even the greatest mind in the world is helpless."

Her gaze sharpened.

"Isn’t that right, detective?"

Holmes couldn’t argue.

He remembered the investigation into the Mandarin.

When Evenson had brought him to Tony’s home, Holmes had immediately recognized that Tony Stark was a genius.

But when it came to deduction, observation, and analysis, Holmes still believed himself superior.

And yet Tony’s progress had been comparable to his own.

Sometimes, Tony had even been ahead.

The reason was simple.

Tony had an artificial intelligence at his disposal.

His digital assistant could search an enormous database and retrieve information almost instantly.

Facts that would normally require Holmes to spend hours or days investigating in the field could simply be pulled up in Tony’s laboratory.

Tony had access to the clues.

That was why Holmes had eventually admitted, bitterly, that he hadn’t lost because he was inferior at deduction.

He had lost because he lacked information.

"So what you’re saying is..."

Holmes rested his right hand against his temple and narrowed his eyes.

He already knew what the twins were trying to tell him.

But he wanted to hear them say it.

"It’s simple."

Oleses smiled.

"Our company has access to an enormous intelligence network."

She leaned back.

"Once you become an intelligence analyst, you’ll be able to use those resources to complete company assignments."

"And, when appropriate, you can use them for your own affairs as well."

Holmes’s eyes sharpened.

"For example..."

Oleses continued.

"You could make sure the American intelligence agencies never discover that Mr. Morland has been conducting uranium transactions with the Iranian government."

Holmes’s mind practically slammed into an invisible wall.

Morland.

His father.

His absolutely infuriating father.

Morland Holmes was practically capitalism given human form. He had spent his entire life treating the world like a betting table.

If something made money, he did it.

Morality came somewhere after the profit margin.

Salorass continued before Holmes could respond.

"Or perhaps you’d like to find your old lover and reconcile with her?"

She smiled wickedly.

"What was her name again?"

Holmes’s expression tightened.

"Irene Adler?"

Salorass pretended to think.

"No, that’s not quite right."

Her smile widened.

"You’d probably prefer to call her Professor Jamie Moriarty now."

Holmes felt as though he’d just climbed out of one mountain-sized hole only to dive headfirst into another.

And this time, someone had driven a knife straight through his heart for good measure.

Irene Adler.

The woman Holmes had loved more deeply than anyone else in his life.

Professor Moriarty.

His greatest enemy.

The one person he had sworn to defeat.

And they were the same woman.

Somewhere above, if there really was a god, Holmes decided that god must have been a particularly cruel playwright.

Irene had once given him a brutal farewell under her old identity, leaving him devastated and eventually driving him into drug addiction.

Later, Holmes had defeated her when she reappeared as Professor Moriarty.

Then she had vanished without a trace.

Now Holmes couldn’t even say what he felt toward her.

Hatred?

Perhaps.

Love?

Perhaps that too.

It was precisely that tangled mixture of love and hatred that made his feelings for her so powerful.

"Fine."

Holmes gritted his teeth.

"I accept."

His life.

His powers.

His father.

And the woman he still had no idea how to face.

The twins had found pressure points in every direction.

Could he really say no?

"Excellent."

Salorass nodded.

She pushed two documents across the desk.

"Sign these, and you’ll officially be employees of the company."

Holmes and Watson opened the documents.

Both immediately looked puzzled.

The contracts had been handwritten.

And the handwriting was atrocious.

Holmes stared at it.

"This is handwritten?"

Watson leaned closer.

"Is that even English?"

Holmes studied the pen strokes.

"Perhaps they were going for an antique aesthetic."

He looked at the supposed quill.

"Although I’m fairly certain that’s a chicken feather."

The feather was so badly split that it looked like someone had plucked it from a feather duster.

The twins simultaneously turned their heads away.

"One more thing."

Holmes and Watson looked up.

"We should warn you."

Salorass spoke with suspicious innocence.

"These contracts were written using a little trick our little warlock learned from Mephisto."

The twins exchanged a glance.

"If you’ve read Faust, you should understand that these contracts aren’t something you can simply break."

Holmes and Watson slowly raised their heads.

They stared at the twins.

Neither sister appeared to be joking.

At this point, Holmes had already accepted that magic existed.

Thor had literally fallen out of the sky.

Aliens had invaded New York.

Compared to those things, the existence of a demon lord wasn’t particularly difficult to swallow.

Holmes sighed.

"If only the Treaty of Versailles had been signed under the same rules."

For once, there was unmistakable patriotism in his voice.

Oleses shrugged.

"Yes."

She smiled.

"Mephisto apparently regrets agreeing to this arrangement more than anything else in his existence."

...