Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ When Pandora's Box Is Opened ❯ Dead Air ( Chapter 37 )

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Dead Air

Ran jumped a mile when the phone rang. “Moshi moshi?” she said rapidly, picking it up.

“Ran? It's Sonoko. Any news?”

“Sonoko...” Ran said, trying to swallow the crushing disappointment. She'd been praying that the call would be news. “No... nothing new...”

“Oh... How are you holding up?”

“I'm... well...” Ran slumped onto the couch. “I'm just... so worried...” her voice broke and she sniffed. “It's been four days... And they haven't found a body or anything, but there's been no demands from kidnappers either... We just don't know if he's dead or alive or...”

“He's a really tough kid,” Sonoko said reassuringly. “I'm sure he's still alive...”

“Yeah, but we don't know,” Ran sobbed. “We don't know who's got him, or why... I mean, he's just a little boy! Why would anyone want to...” She trailed off as she started sobbing again.

“Ran! Oh, Ran, don't cry!” Sonoko said. “No news is good news, right? You know that kid, he's probably knocked out the kidnapper somewhere and is headed home as we speak.”

“I hope so,” Ran said with a sniffly laugh. Still, it felt thin, weak, artificial. “I'd better go, Sonoko. It's nearly dinner and we're expecting a call from Megure-keibu.”

“Sure. I hope it's good news...”

Ran didn't move when she'd hung up, even though it nearly was dinnertime. She kept staring at the phone, almost willing it to ring. Four days. Four days. Anything could have happened to him. He wasn't the sort of boy to bear captivity easily, so it had to be dangerous people who had him... maybe they'd hurt him... were they feeding him properly? Why wouldn't they make any demands? Why wasn't anything happening?

It was not knowing that always hurt her most. With Shinichi, now Conan... not knowing, letting her imagination run free, her mind spinning in circles, possibility after possibility... yes, not knowing was the worst feeling of all. Not knowing and the loneliness.

She'd barely realized how much she had come to depend on Conan in Shinichi's absence. Whenever she felt lost, or alone, Conan was always there, chattering to her about some interesting new fact that he'd learned or book that he'd read, or sometimes, just when she needed it most it seemed, a few quiet words of encouragement, reassuring her that Shinichi would be back because he'd promised. A child's faith, unwavering belief... Ran smiled sadly. She missed being able to believe that, the belief that intertwined pinkies meant that nothing in Hell or earth could prevent a promise from being fulfilled. But the world didn't work like that. Promises...

See you later!

I'll be right back!

I'll solve this case and be back soon...

I'll be done soon, I swear...

I'll be back before you know it, I promise...

It might not be for long...

So many promises, so often broken. She knew he didn't want to, but...

That little doubt was always there, the one that said that if she let him go, she'd never see him again. It whispered that if he left he'd never come back. The thought was enough to choke her, with a feeling like her heart had stopped and the air had been crushed from her lungs. She needed him, she could no longer pretend to herself that she didn't. She needed him, she needed some reminder that he would be back, and Conan-kun, with his unwavering resolve and his childish cheer and his quiet little eyes so like Shinichi's...

But now he was gone too, and she didn't know when- or if- he'd be back. Like Shinichi. Like her mother.

They'll all leave you.

Ran curled up against the almost physical pain. She raised her hand to her throat, gently clutching it around the delicate red orchid, praying. Prayers and hope... right now, they were all she had.

“Please... don't leave me alone...”

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Kaito strapped the helmet on as he booted the rented motorbike to life. He held up the stolen glasses, clicking them on for a moment to check that she was still within range. She was nineteen kilometres away. He cursed. He'd quickly found that the glasses only had a twenty kilometre radius, fine for tracking criminals in the middle of Tokyo but not so great for tracking them across the whole of Japan.

He roared down the road at quite a bit above the speed limit, stifling a yawn. He was used to sleep deprivation. He'd once pulled heists three nights in a row, although admittedly he'd been pretty much about to keel over by the end of it. He'd slept a few hours since starting the chase four days ago, but he couldn't afford to stop for long. She certainly didn't.

“What the hell's going on?” he thought. “The longest she's stopped for was half an hour, and I'm betting that was at that gas station with the broken pay machine and the brain-dead service worker. She's not stopped to sleep once. Surely she'll conk out soon?” but the whole chase was odd. She didn't seem to have any one destination in mind. Like she knew she was being followed, she was weaving all over the place, going north, going west, avoiding cities and sometimes seeming to stop for long stretches in the middle of nowhere, like the middle of a forest or once halfway up a mountain road. She was heading south again now, and Kaito had never gotten closer than ten kilometres to her, even though he only stopped to eat when filling up the bike or sleeping in brief catnaps, more than once while actually on the motorway. He knew he should stop properly soon, but the erratic nature of her travel pattern meant that if she got outwith the range of the glasses than it would be pure luck if he found her again. And he couldn't let her get away.

“No way am I letting Them frame me for child kidnapping,” he fumed taking a sharp corner, “and no way am I letting Them kill tantei-kun!”

He held up the glasses again to check that he was headed in the right direction and frowned. He was gaining fast- in fact, she didn't seem to have moved. “Three possibilities. One, she's finally stopped to sleep. Two, she dumped anything trackable. Three...” he swallowed back the bile rising in his throat. “It's not just the tracker she dumped.”

The road he was on was pretty quiet, a back road going around a mountain. The signal was less than a kilometre away. He reduced the range of reception to pinpoint it.

The signal led him to a cliffside road. He paused, looking over the safety barrier, and cursed the glasses for only working in a two-dimensional axis. He looked over the barrier again, but there was no sign of a road below- just forest.

A few minutes later, he was climbing down the branches of one of the trees, slightly hampered by the padding he'd used to disguise himself as an older- and larger- man. He caught a flash of colour out of the corner of his eye- red. He climbed over to it. It was a little red bow tie with odd dials and antennae at the back- Tantei-kun's voice modulator. It was draped over a branch. It seemed to have been dropped there. “All right, that leaves two possibilities, neither of them good.”

He climbed down more and found another pair of glasses hooked over a branch lower down. Stuck to them was a sort of button- a stack of sticker transmitters. Further down was an oddly thick metal belt with a deflated football dangling out of it and a pair of badly stretched braces.

Kaito gathered all of these up and then dropped through the last few branches to the ground, landing in a catlike crouch on the ground. His heart froze when he saw a pair of trainers peeping out of a bush, but they were just that- trainers. No sign of their owner. He breathed again. “Looks like the lesser of two evils,” he sighed. “She dumped his toys, but not his body- so there's a good likelihood that he's alive, just untraceable now.”

He scoured the surrounding bushes, turning up a badge with a broken antenna on the back, the smashed remains of what looked to be that odd little mobile that tantei-kun sometimes used, and two identical normal mobiles, both battered and one with the charm torn off but still functional, as he found out when he pressed the power button. They were both codelocked, though, and Kaito couldn't be bothered to hack them right now- there was no useful purpose for it anyway. He had another look around and found one last thing. An empty bottle- chloroform, judging by the smell.

“No wonder it's empty,” he thought, shaking his head to dispel the dizziness that had come of sniffing the bottle. “It's been four days and this stuff doesn't keep you down for long- and if she only dumped his stuff now, it'd be dangerous to have him any sharper than a drugged stupor. On the other hand, without his stuff he's just a little kid- a disturbingly sharp little kid, yeah, but brains don't deflect bullets, or even just a good fist to the face. He'll be helpless. I can only hope that she'll think so too and let her guard down... brains don't deflect bullets but they do leave a trail to follow.”

He climbed back up the tree, pocketing all the evidence. Maybe he should drop it all off with the next cop or FBI agent he saw. They were active all over Japan- evidently they knew exactly how sharp a kid he was. Within a few minutes he was back at the motorcycle. He turned back, heading for the highway.

“I'm not too far north of Osaka, come to that. Maybe I should get in touch with tantei-kun's friend Hattori-tantei.”

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“Oyaji?”

Hattori Heizo looked up in surprise to see his on leaning in the doorway of his study, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Heiji sometimes wandered in if there was an interesting murder case, but there was nothing except robberies today, and in any case he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the easygoing boy look so worried. Granted, it could be because that little ward of Mori's that Heiji doted on like a little brother was missing, but Heizo's instincts told him there was something else- even more so when, in an unusually paranoid move, Heiji closed the door behind him before speaking.

“What's wrong, Heiji?” Heizo asked. “Has something happened? Any new developments with Conan-kun?”

“Oh... nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothin' about the kid, unfortunately, although it's sorta linked...”

Heizo raised an eyebrow as Heiji hedged, waiting for him to get to the point. Heiji sighed and did.

“I need ta have a look at th' personnel files fer the Osaka Police.”

Heizo's other eyebrow shot up. “Those are strictly confidential,” he said, “and I'm afraid that I'm not going to abuse my position to let you have a look unless you have a very good reason.”

“Flushin' out evil criminal bastards who've infiltrated the cops?” Heiji suggested. “Listen, it's kinda a long story, but... basically, there's this Organization that pulls all kinda evil shit, an' they've been doin' so for a while... mastermindin' robberies, blackmailin' an' murderin' people, whatever ya like. They ain't ever been caught fer anythin' `cause they got a million pals in the cops all across Japan. I'm pretty sure there's at least five in Osaka, prob'ly more, but I need ta check a coupla things in th' personnel files ta be sure.”

Heizo narrowed his eyes at the mention of infiltrators. The story sounded a little far-fetched, like an exaggerated mafia, but knowing the kind of things that Heiji has a tendency to get mixed up in... “How do you know there are infiltrators?”

“Well, I've heard a bit about these creeps from Kudo, an' he's caught more'n one fake cop `imself,” Heiji said, “but I got certain on the night a' the Kid heist- the one here. One a' the members a' this Organization turned up an' shot at Kid. Didn't get `im, but then `e escaped in a police chopper. Since all choppers were on Kid that night an' none've `em were hijacked, that means this guy's got pals among our cops.”

“I see.” Heizo closed the folder in front of him. “And you didn't report this on the night because you don't know how many infiltrators there are?” Heiji nodded. Heizo was quiet for a moment, thinking it over. “Who else saw this man?”

“Kudo's oyaji an' the kiddo,” Heiji said promptly. Heizo thought it over again, and decided to err on the side of safety.

“I can't let you look through the personnel files,” Heizo said, “but give me the names and I'll have a look for myself. Rate of involvement in unsolved cases and such?”

“Yeah,” Heiji said, pulling a list out of his pocket. “Arigato.”

“Who else knows about this?” Heizo asked.

“Jus' Otaki-han,” Heiji said. “He's been helpin' me get a little info on a few cases. I'm keepin' it on the down-low, since I don't fancy havin' ta “vanish” like Kudo. I just... one've `em might know what happened ta the kid, y'know?”

“I see,” Heizo said quietly, looking over the five names and thinking about the kokosei-tantei, just like Heiji, who had disappeared so mysteriously and not been seen since...

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Jodie picked up the phone the instant of the first ring. “Moshi moshi?”

“It's Kir.”

“Kir? Perfect. Listen, I have some important questions for you.”

“It's been pretty hectic here, so I might not have long.”

“I'll make it fast. Do you know what Vermouth's up to?”

“Not a clue. She's vanished again. She does that fairly often, wanders off and does her own thing for a couple of months. It annoys the hell out of Gin because he doesn't trust her, but apparently Anokata does so Gin doesn't have permission to track her.”

“Wait...” Jodie said in surprise. “So this wasn't at the behest of the Organization?”

“What wasn't?” Kir sounded genuinely confused.

“Cool Kid was kidnapped by Vermouth,” Jodie explained. “She framed the Kaitou Kid for it but we know it was her.”

“What? Listen, I'm not in the very top confidences like Gin or Vermouth, but I can almost guarantee that whatever she's doing, she's doing it on her own.”

“What the hell?” Jodie whispered. “All right, I'll pass that on. Question two: do you know about an operative called Sake?”

“Not much. I think he's assigned to acquire something, but I don't know what. I do know that the Kaitou Kid is a major thorn in his side. He's been on the top-priority hitlist for about fifteen years. They thought they'd gotten him ten years ago, but evidently not. He's in a bit of trouble because yet another attempt failed on the night of the heist and he's starting to get noticed. As you may have gathered, the Organization is not fond of publicity. I think he knows who the Kid is but whoever he is gave him the slip, which means trouble for them as you can imagine. They seem more... it's not panic, I just feel like some kind of deadline is coming up, badness knows what.”

“So Kid is mixed up with the Organization,” Jodie said. “Does that mean Cool Kid was kidnapped as bait for him or something?”

“There's another possibility and you're not going to like it.”

“What?” said Jodie, in deep trepidation.

“The other day, Gin mentioned something- almost boasting about it. Seems he's been an assassin with the Organization his whole life- he was boasting that he first killed when he was fifteen. He was raised by the Organization, and I think Sherry and her sister were as well- their parents were with the Organization as well. I think his parents were assassins before him.”

“What are you getting at?” Jodie said, her voice carrying an uncharacteristic tremble.

“The Organization loves children. Bright children, strong children, children who are still young enough to be indoctrinated into complete loyalty to the Organization. Think the Hitler Jugend. Children who are born into the Organization are theirs from birth, but if they can capture a child with immense promise... we all know how incredibly sharp that boy is, how dangerous he could be...”

Jodie could see it; Cool Kid, a few years older, with his powerful intellect, but with his strong sense of justice broken, those piercing sapphire eyes staring mercilessly not at a murderer that he'd cornered, but a victim... Cool Kid, a ruthless killer like Gin...

“Oh, hell no,” she croaked.

“There's a chance that that's what Vermouth is up to. I doubt they could convert him easily... but he's a child. He has years before he's old enough to do any real work for them, and in the meantime, if there's nothing for him but relentless indoctrination... they're very effective at breaking people.”

“Listen,” Jodie snarled, “you hear so much as a peep from Vermouth and you call me straight away, got it? So help me, that bitch will pay if she's harmed a hair on that boy's head or a thought in his mind...”

“Got it. Shit, I'd better go.” Kir hung up abruptly. Jodie dropped the phone with a shaking hand.

“The Organization loves children. Bright children, strong children, children who are still young enough to be indoctrinated into complete loyalty to the Organization....”

“Dammit,” she muttered, pressing her face into her hands, as if trying to stifle the memory of Kir's voice still resonating in her skull. It was a terrible though, a horrifying thought, but...

Like Kir said, not impossible. “He's just a child,” she muttered, “Just a child!”

And he made it so damn easy to forget that. “Kami, If she hurts him,” she swore angrily, “If she harms him or breaks him... if she makes him like Them then... then...”

She sighed. “Who am I kidding?” she said to the empty apartment. “If that happened, we're fucked.”

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Okiya... I have plans for Okiya, Kinsey Adler... gotta love the enigmatic characters! ^_- I'm the opposite. I hate the English voices and I always try to watch them in Japanese. I'm a big Yamaguchi Kappei fan (Kaito and Shinichi), and I really like Heiji's seiyu too. :)

No, I can't update every day, even though I am on holiday, Mel72000. Can I just put this out as a blanket note to everyone begging for daily updates? While I can write more on holidays, it's not the only thing I do. I do have a life. And there are some days where I just can't write at all. If I tried to update daily, I'd burn through my buffer very quickly, and then you'd only get chapters whenever my muses make their sporadic appearances. So please, please stop begging for daily updates. When I've finished writing the fic, I'll update daily, but until then, tri-weekly's more frequent than most serial fanfic authors, so be patient, alright?

I like the Japanese voices much better than the English ones, KageNoNeko, but I have heard the German ones and they were interesting. Dunno if I like them better, though. I think Japanese is still my favourite. Heiji's taking a gamble by making a move now... after all, his pal's life is at stake...

I'm quite proud of my Heiji-speak, Topaz-tantei ^_- glad I brightened up your day! Nice reviews like yours brighten up mine!

Have I said patience, Padawan yet Pretztailfan95? Jk! And if ya have chapters , you oughta post `em... it's cruel to withhold good fic. This is MY fic, after all, and IT will happen when I want it to happen, alright? I don't have a shiny Umbreon, and the black Charizard is MIIIIIIIIIINEE! I noticed. I thought it was unusual... he just doesn't seem to use the familiar addresses much at all.

Oh yeah. I did say this was epic, Silver Shadowbreeze... I wanted to bring everything together for this one. My other fics are considerably less all-encompassing, but I'll get to them in time. And my brother says thanks for the well-wishes ^_-

I was about to ask if your keyboard was broken, HaibaraDaiFan XD... *twisted* did you notice that the kidnapping scene was sort of in the trailer? I did the best I could... I might make a longer trailer soon. Or a secondary one for the companion fic. (what companion fic? MUAHAHAHAHAHA...)

Yep, everybody loves Conan, FaithlessGirl. He's what brings `em all together...

Arigatou Gozaimasu, Fireline! I do tend to view the characters in terms of being real people rather than just as fictional characters... Well, I've been writing this fic for months now, so they are getting very real to me. But I don't want to give any of them any less than they deserve. That's an interesting comment about the sky, by the way. I think Shinichi would know something about that- it was more of something that I was wondering than him, since I can't think that I've ever seen a green sky...well, I haven't been in America for two years and haven't seen a tornado since I was about six weeks old, which might be why. People here often freak out when I tell them that, but the kind of tornados that occasionally go through my grandparent's neighbourhood in Oklahoma aren't that destructive. One tore their neighbour's garage apart, but didn't take so much as a leaf out of grandma's garden... and the neighbour slept through the whole thing anyway XD as for your second review, thank you again! Glad you like my Yuusaku, he's very important to the story. So are the MK cast. I love Akako especially, and wish she turned up more in the anime and at all in the manga. :( Ginzo's thoughts might not be quite what anyone expected, but after all, he's not stupid, just rather easily enraged. Anyway, I'm glad that you're loving the story and I hope you stick with me while I churn this behemoth out...

Would it sound mean to say that I'm glad you're worried, FHP2208? ^_^; But it means that I'm writing this right. Next chapter: what IS happening to poor little Shinichi...

I do not claim to own any of the characters in Meitantei Conan. They are the intellectual property of Aoyama Gosho. All characters, couples and locations, if Canon, will be faithful to the manga, so if you're into fics with weird pairings like Shinichi and Heiji, the back button is at the top there. The fic may not make sense if you have not read up to chapter 697, which you can do at a site called (read between the lines) O/n/e/ma/n/g/a, but I advise you to buy the official Tankoban novels (up to volume 29 are out in English at the time of writing) so that Aoyama-sensei can afford to continue gracing us with his imagination. Now, I hope you enjoy the fic! (If you don't, please see my previous comments re the back button)