May 13th, 1864,
Motion for Discovery

"It appeared you were lost in thought for a moment," Sherlock remarked to his apprentice, Amelia Watson, "I wasn't sure if you'd come upon some form of breakthrough."

She had spaced out, hadn't she? But for the life of her, she couldn't remember what she'd been thinking so deeply about. "No, I'm not quite sure what it was, sir," she conceded, "I suppose my mind simply wandered."

"I see…" the master detective took a breath of his tobacco pipe. "Well then, let's get back on task. Amelia, my dear, have you noticed anything unusual about this crime scene?"

Amelia briefly scanned the room one more time, and remembered what had caught her eye before, "…the floors are sopping wet?"

"Precisely!" Her mentor confirmed. "And not only that, but…"

"The water smells richly of salt?"

"Correct! This is sea water!" Mr. Holmes paced about the room. "And why exactly is that peculiar?"

"We're at a high elevation," Watson explained. "The presence of sea water seems to indicate that this house was flooded, but if that were the case, then the entire city of London would be underwater."

"Excellent deductive skills, my girl!" He congratulated her. "Now, however, we must think; how could there have been a flood of sea water in this building, but not in any of the buildings surrounding it?" The sleuth pondered for a bit, struggling to find an answer to such a nonsensical question. "Watson, could you head through that door into the study, and search for some sort of source of the flooding? I'll continue searching over here."

"Yes, right away!"

Amelia sloshed through a couple puddles and pushed open the door to the study. The potent stench of thick, salty sea air rushed out to greet her. The wooden desk was dripping wet, and the white curtains hung by the window were completely saturated. The room had to have been filled to bursting with water fairly recently for it to be in this state. It was as if a small corner of the ocean had been transplanted right into the middle of London. Loose papers lay in a pulp on the floor, all their ink washed off. A book lay open on the desk, but it had been reduced to little more than a dark, inky soup. The bookshelves had ink stains running down their sides.

Finally stepping inside, she froze at what she saw just around the corner. It was a man, sopping wet and unconscious.

Amelia rushed over to him, checking his breathing, his pulse, anything. But the man remained still. His heart did not beat. His chest did not rise.

He was dead.

"M-Master Holmes!" Amelia turned to call for her teacher. "Sir, there's another victim in here!"

She received no response.

Turning back to the collapsed man, she spotted something glint against the evening sun spilling through the window. Kneeling beside the man to lift up the object, she found it to be a shimmering golden pocket watch.

Clasping the timepiece in her hand, she examined the many engravings carved into its metallic surface. They didn't seem to make any sense, and used symbols that were totally alien to her. They were like nothing she'd ever seen before.

She stared at the mysterious clock, this time at its face. The second hand ticked away, making a satisfying click with every movement. But Amelia couldn't help but feel that something was… off .

"Wait… it's not 9 o' clock, what the hell?" She took out her own pocket watch for reference, just to make sure she hadn't lost her mind. "Yeah, it's only 5 right now! The time on this clock is completely wrong!"

She ran her thumb carefully along the watch's rim, and let it come to rest on the nub at the top. It seemed to be a button or a knob; something of the sort. Appreciating the tactile feel of the object in her hand, Amelia mindlessly pressed lightly on the protruding bit, hoping to hear a satisfying click.

Once the nub had sunken into the device, the clock began to tremble, and the symbols around the edge glowed and shifted. The hands of the clock spun wildly, whirring around faster and faster as Amelia felt the whole world rotating. Finally, a loud screech erupted from the device as her vision became nothing but a blur.