Chapter 4: The Shoreditch Antiques
Rain fell on Shoreditch like London's memory of better times, turning Victorian brick into something that gleamed with the ghosts of gaslight and horse-drawn carriages. Sherlock felt the temporal displacement before he saw it—a subtle wrongness in the air that made his skin prickle with electricity he couldn't name.
The antique shop sat wedged between a Starbucks and a mobile phone store like a anachronism that refused to acknowledge the passage of time. Its windows displayed objects that seemed to shift when observed directly, as if reality couldn't quite decide what they were supposed to be.
"Chen's Curiosities," the faded sign proclaimed in gold letters that had somehow avoided a century of weather and neglect.
Sherlock paused on the threshold, his mind palace already cataloging inconsistencies. The paint on the door frame was Victorian-era lead-based, but applied over modern polymer primers. The lock mechanism dated to 1885, but the security system's infrared sensors were clearly current-generation technology. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make this place appear both ancient and contemporary simultaneously.
The bell above the door chimed with a note that resonated longer than physics should have allowed. Inside, the shop unfolded like a puzzle box designed by someone with too much time and too little regard for Euclidean geometry. Victorian scientific instruments crowded next to modern electronics, which somehow coexisted with objects that Sherlock's extensive knowledge couldn't categorize at all.
Mrs. Chen emerged from the maze of impossibilities with a tea service that belonged in a Dickens novel and a smile that suggested she'd been expecting them for quite some time.
"Mr. Holmes," she said, as if his presence in her shop was as inevitable as sunrise. "Doctor. Please, sit. The Earl Grey is particularly good today."
The Doctor moved through the shop like a cat in a room full of loaded mousetraps, his sonic screwdriver painting the air with readings that made his expression increasingly grim. "Vortex manipulator," he muttered, examining what appeared to be a Victorian pocket watch. "Broken, but still radiating temporal energy."
"Sontaran scanner," he continued, lifting a brass telescope that shouldn't have existed for another three centuries. "Military grade. Someone's been very busy."
Mrs. Chen poured tea with the unflappable composure of someone who'd grown accustomed to hosting conversations about the impossible. Sherlock studied her with the intensity he usually reserved for three-pipe problems, cataloging details that refused to arrange themselves into coherent deductions.
"You've been operating this establishment illegally for years," he said, employing the direct approach that usually cracked even the most practiced liars. "No proper business registration, taxes paid under multiple identities, inventory that appears and disappears without any record of purchase or sale."
Mrs. Chen laughed with genuine delight. "Illegally? My dear Mr. Holmes, I have all the proper documentation."
She produced a leather portfolio that smelled of Victorian London—coal smoke and horse manure and the particular dampness that predated central heating. Inside, business licenses and registration documents bore dates that made Sherlock's rational mind rebel against their implications.
"Impossible," he said.
"Family business," Mrs. Chen replied, eyes twinkling. "The Chen women have been running this shop for quite some time."
Clara examined a music box that played a melody in mathematical progressions no human composer would have conceived, while John studied what appeared to be a medical instrument that predated germ theory but somehow incorporated principles of quantum mechanics.
"The victims," Sherlock said, abandoning subtlety for direct interrogation. "Seven people, all murdered after visiting your shop. All purchased items exactly two weeks before their deaths."
Mrs. Chen's smile faltered for the first time. "Harmless curiosities. Antique pocket watches, Victorian scientific instruments, old books. Nothing that should have caused anyone harm."
Sherlock spread the transaction records across her counter like evidence in a courtroom. "Same date for all purchases. All items from a single estate sale. Whose estate?"
The silence stretched until the shop's impossible geometry seemed to hold its breath. Mrs. Chen set down her teacup with the careful precision of someone buying time to construct a lie that wouldn't immediately crumble under scrutiny.
"A Victorian gentleman," she said finally. "Very interested in time. Very interested in games. He called himself... the Professor."
The name hit Sherlock like ice water in his veins. The Doctor's head snapped up from his examination of what appeared to be a Time Lord data core masquerading as a Victorian music box.
"Professor what?" they demanded in unison.
"He never gave another name." Mrs. Chen reached beneath the counter and produced something that made Sherlock's careful composure crack like glass. "But he left this."
A chess piece. Black king. Hand-carved from some dark wood that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. And engraved in the base, small enough to miss unless you knew to look for it: the letter M.
Sherlock reached for the piece, his deductive mind already racing through possibilities and implications. The moment his fingers made contact with the carved surface, the world exploded into fragments.
Time fractured.
He saw Mrs. Chen's shop across decades—Victorian gaslight giving way to electric bulbs, then fluorescent, then LED. He watched customers enter and leave, their clothing changing with the fashions of eras that blended together like watercolors in rain. And in the shadows, always watching, a tall figure in Victorian dress whose face remained frustratingly obscured by temporal interference.
The vision expanded, showing him crime scenes not yet discovered, victims not yet selected, symbols carved in languages that wouldn't be written for centuries. He saw London burning across multiple timelines, reality itself becoming a casualty in a game whose rules he couldn't comprehend.
"The game begins," a voice whispered from somewhere beyond the edge of perception. "The detective returns, the Time Lord arrives, and the board is finally set. Time to play, Mr. Holmes."
The Doctor's hand on his shoulder dragged him back to linear time with the violence of emergency surgery. Sherlock stumbled, his legs threatening to fold as his nervous system struggled to process experiences that human consciousness wasn't designed to contain.
"What was that?" he gasped, the words emerging in fragments that didn't quite convey the cosmic scope of what he'd witnessed.
"Temporal sensitivity," the Doctor said, his ancient eyes showing something that might have been concern. "Your mind palace—it's creating structures similar to Time Lord memory architecture. You're accidentally evolving temporal perception."
"Fix it." The words came out sharper than Sherlock intended, driven by a fear he couldn't quite name.
"I don't think I can," the Doctor admitted. "More importantly, I don't think I should. Whatever's coming, you might need to see it from outside linear time."
"That's what scares me," Sherlock thought, but didn't say. The loss of control, the inability to contain his perceptions within rational boundaries—it felt like madness disguised as evolution.
Outside the shop, London's familiar chaos seemed almost comforting after the temporal vertigo of Mrs. Chen's impossible inventory. Sherlock walked in uncharacteristic silence, his mind struggling to incorporate what he'd witnessed into a worldview built on empirical observation.
"Doctor," he said finally. "What aren't you telling me?"
The Time Lord's expression suggested he was calculating exactly how much truth the human psyche could process without fracturing completely. "Time sensitivity in humans is extraordinarily rare. The last case I encountered was—" He stopped, his face closing off with the particular suddenness that meant painful memories.
"Was what?"
"Irrelevant. The point is, you're changing. Becoming something that exists partially outside normal temporal flow. That kind of evolution doesn't happen by accident."
John and Clara exchanged the look that had become their default form of communication—two companions recognizing when their respective geniuses had encountered something that genuinely frightened them.
In the shop window behind them, Mrs. Chen watched their departure with satisfaction that went beyond commercial success. She waited until they'd disappeared around the corner before lifting a communication device that belonged to no terrestrial technology.
"He's ready," she said to someone whose voice carried across dimensions that existed between seconds. "The temporal sensitivity has manifested ahead of schedule. The game can begin."
The response came in a language that predated human speech, but the translation was clear enough: "Excellent. Release the next piece. Let's see how well our detective handles a problem that spans centuries."
Mrs. Chen smiled and began preparing her shop for customers who wouldn't arrive for another hundred years.