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The boy doesn't go easily into sedation. He's too smart to waste his energy on screaming; he saves it for writhing, kicking, biting at the doctors trying to hold him down so the anesthesiologist can press the mask over his face.
Mycroft rests his forehead against the glass of the observation window, looking down on the operating theater. He promised to watch over his brother, and he always keeps his promises- even though watching is so often the only thing he is able to do.
“Step back, lift your head up,” Stephen says sharply. Mycroft's immediate obedience is a conditioned response to the minder's command.
“There's no need to be distressed,” Dr. Piers says. He lays a comforting hand on Mycroft's shoulder. “It's a low-risk surgery.”
Mycroft wants to scream and slap the man's hand away. He doesn't. He won't. Since he was taken into the Academy, the only thing he's had to himself is his mind. His control is iron, and his face stays completely placid despite his fury.
“It's no fun getting those shots every day,” Piers goes on, “and there's always the risk of a vein blowing out.”
Below, they get the mask over Sherlock's mouth and nose, finally. He holds his breath a long time, for a boy of ten, but eventually he gives in, as he must.
“It's really in his best interest.” Mycroft doesn't trust his control to hold if he replies. He keeps his mouth shut and his eyes fixed on the window until Piers leaves him.
The minder remains, as he always does whenever Mycroft is in range of someone he could conceivably Push. Mycroft could Push the surgeon, tell him to pick up an instrument and kill himself. He could Push more than one of the medical team, get them fighting each other. He could derail this surgery entirely.
But the minder is there watching his eyes, and at the first sign of pupil dilation he'll tase Mycroft and short-circuit his effort. Even if he succeeds, there are other surgical teams. Mycroft did the cost-benefit analysis the moment he was informed of Sherlock's transfer to this facility; he knows any notion of 'saving the day' is just a childish fantasy.
Mycroft can't fault Sherlock for giving in. It's what he himself does on a daily basis.
The anesthesiologist checks Sherlock's breathing and steps back, nodding to the surgeon. Mycroft stares fixedly at the small, limp form on the table. His eyes are prickling, so he concentrates on keeping his posture relaxed and his hands unclenched until the urge to cry passes.
***
They let Mycroft visit Sherlock in recovery. He looks even smaller and paler than usual lying on stark white sheets, in a bed sized for an adult. He's always fidgeting and picking at things, and Mycroft's, “Stop that!” as he enters the room and sees Sherlock trying to pry up the edge of his dressing is nearly automatic.
“I want to see,” Sherlock says. “It's my body, I should be allowed to see.”
“You'll have plenty of chances to see when the dressing comes off,” Mycroft says, sitting down next to the bed. “More than you want, I shouldn't wonder. If you start poking it now, you'll end with an infection.”
Sherlock sees the sense in this and lets his hand drop to his side. “Did you bring me something?” Mycroft brings him a new object from outside the facility every day that he is able to visit. He finds the eagerness with which Sherlock greets each lesson a distressing reminder that the staff here do not challenge Sherlock sufficiently, despite their recognition that his mind is exceptional.
Mycroft drops a pair of latex gloves onto his stomach. “Normal senses first.” Sherlock swiftly pulls the gloves on and holds up his hands to receive the palm-sized rubber ball that Mycroft drops into them.
Sherlock turns the ball over in his hands, examining it minutely. He raises it to his nose, and Mycroft frowns disapprovingly. “I'm just checking that it's actually rubber,” he says quickly. “Synthetics can mimic the firmness and texture.” Mycroft nods, and Sherlock takes a brief sniff, then lowers the ball again. “It is rubber,” he says confidently. “It has a number of dents and cuts caused by bouncing on a hard, uneven surface. But they're small, so dropped or bounced from not very high. Someone playing jacks, so probably a young girl. The ball's larger than a regular jacks ball, so someone making do with what she has- probably poor. There's a larger cut here, smooth and recent. Made by a knife.”
Mycroft nods placidly. “Good. Now your ability.”
Sherlock pulls one of the gloves off with his teeth, almost fumbling in his eagerness. He takes the ball in his bare fingers and raises it to his face again, this time inhaling the scent deeply. He closes his eyes momentarily, face screwed up in concentration. “You're the one that cut the ball,” he says almost at once. “The owner was a girl, about your age. She was at a comprehensive school in London- I know it, it's near the Academy. She hasn't touched this ball in- five years.”
“Can you see where she is?” Mycroft says. Sherlock frowns slowly as he concentrates, his eyelids fluttering slightly. “If you don't know the place, just describe what you see.”
“White rooms with vaulted ceilings,” Sherlock says. “An altar with three tall candles to either side. A small interior garden, with brick walls. A brick facade with white stone, a large crucifix set over a window- and there's a cupola on the roof.” Sherlock opens his eyes. “That's where she is, inside that building.”
“Tyburn Convent,” Mycroft says, holding out his hand. Sherlock gives him the ball back. “On the north edge of Hyde Park. Very good, Sherlock.” The boy smiles proudly. “However, you should have been able to tell that I cut the ball without using your ability. Your visual inspection revealed that the cut was recent and that it was made by a knife, but you stopped there.”
“It doesn't matter,” Sherlock protests. “I got it anyway, in the end.”
“It does matter,” Mycroft says. “Never rely on your ability to make up for carelessness in your thinking. Never settle for being an ordinary Sniff, when you can be extraordinary.”
Sherlock nods, then hesitates a moment, staring up at the ceiling. “I said I didn't want surgery and they didn't listen,” he says quietly. “No one ever listens to me.”
“I do,” Mycroft says.
“You don't count, no one listens to you either,” Sherlock says disdainfully. “I told Dr. Piers I don't want to be an experiment. The last time they did experiments with psychosteroids they killed about a million people.”
“One thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven in the United Kingdom,” Mycroft corrects. They'd carelessly murdered an estimated half of the country's psychics; an error that the Division was still trying to recover from. “They've refined the formula now, and you know they've already tested you to make sure you can metabolize it.”
“That's what Doctor Piers said,” Sherlock says, turning his head to glare at Mycroft. “He lies to me all the time. I hate him.”
“He's an idiot,” Mycroft says. “But I've read his experimental protocol, and it's perfectly safe. You'll be fine.”
Sherlock suddenly launches himself out of the bed at Mycroft, flailing at him with startlingly strong fists. “You're lying!” he shouts in his shrill, pre-adolescent voice. “They all think I'm so stupid they can lie and I won't know! You aren't allowed to lie to me too, Mycroft, you aren't!”
There's so much enraged betrayal there that it takes Mycroft aback. He catches Sherlock's hands in his own and pushes him back onto the bed. “All right,” he says. “It's not perfectly safe. You're risking early burn-out and possible neurological degeneration. You'll be the youngest test subject and one of the first long-term case studies. But you aren't just going to drop dead when they inject you, like in the first experiment.”
“Promise you won't lie again,” Sherlock demands, his small body still vibrating with tension.
“I promise. I won't lie, Sherlock, not ever,” Mycroft says. Sherlock searches his face for conviction and finding it settles him like no other reassurance could. Mycroft keeps a tight hold on one of his hands and watches his breathing calm.
“It's not fair,” Sherlock says. “I have to stay and be an experiment, and you get to go home.”
Mycroft is older than Sherlock and he remembers more; he remembers their mother, and the pretty cottage in the West Country where the three of them lived together until Agent Henry Vernet tracked them down. Sherlock has been a ward of the Crown since he was three years old and it's natural for him to think of the Academy as home; it still kills Mycroft to hear him say it.
“My father wasn't an Asset, so I'm only second generation on one side,” he reminds Sherlock, pushing the grief and anger down. “I won't be there long anyway. They'll send me out to Bern for advanced training soon.”
It will take him away from his little brother, leaving him even more vulnerable to these cretinous sadists and their attempts to artificially enhance his mind. But Mycroft longs for Bern like he longs for his next breath of air, because he's going to be learning from some of the best Pushers in Europe. He's already perfected his skills in social engineering with seven years of maneuvering through a maze of teachers and doctors and his powerful, dangerous peers. Now he's going to perfect his mental engineering: he'll learn to implant and erase memories, become someone's oldest friend, create their deepest fear. To manipulate people so subtly that they'll never realize he was in their heads at all.
They'll stop assigning him minders when he goes to Switzerland, because all the faculty and staff there are Assets. They think that makes them safe. They never learned the lesson that he has been drumming steadily into Sherlock. Mycroft is already more than just a Pusher. He's going to become more than just an Asset.
He's never going to be stuck just watching again, if he has his way. And he will.