Author's Note: An idea I had a while ago. Technically, I've written nothing in here that isn't possible canon since, you know, we know so little about the Organization's members and the inner workings.

Disclaimer: Gosho Aoyama-sama is the creator of Detective Conan; I'm just playing around with characters and concepts.

Impossible

Sherry was gone. Vanished into thin air with the handcuff still locked tight and nothing left of its prisoner in the room except for the black-heeled shoes she'd worn that day, like someone who left their shoes on the edge of the roof right before they jumped. It was an apt metaphor, given that Sherry's running away from the Organization was suicide.

Gin was furious, 'that person' was informed, and orders were given. The normal containment procedure: find her and destroy any places associated with her. The secret existence of the Organization must never come to light and she was a person who knew too much to be let loose in the world. The Organization was already mobilizing to minimize the damage her flight might cause by destroying all evidence of the criminal activity she had been associated with, but finding her was both most important, and a special challenge to figure out where to look for her.

For those that knew her, and especially those that knew her well, this was a spontaneous and unexpected decision on her part with no planning or forethought ahead of time, so logically-speaking, it shouldn't be difficult to find her, but the question of how she got out of the handcuffs and the locked gas chamber she'd been tossed into without unlocking either was baffling. It really was like she'd become a ghost that could slip out of solid objects and walk through walls.

There was nothing more to be gained from this room other than the proof that this was the last place Sherry was known to be, but still Gin lingered, unable to believe his eyes and unable to understand how this was possible.

He tried not to ponder too much on 'why'. 'Why' didn't matter.

(He felt he knew the answer anyway).

He knelt there on the floor in the place where Sherry would have been before him a mere couple hours ago, holding one of her shoes in his hands. He'd already checked them thoroughly for any secret linings that could have held a hairpin or some other makeshift lockpicking device, but it was empty and there was nothing anyway. He kept coming back to two questions in his head. How did she escape and why did she leave her shoes behind?

He focused on the latter question because that one was ironically easier for him to work through at the moment. Did she really leave them behind as a message that she was committing suicide by leaving the Organization? That was the obvious answer and it would very much fit with her personality to do something poetically morbid like this, but leaving her shoes behind would mean walking around with bare feet which would both draw attention and be potentially hazardous. Gin had a hard time believing that Sherry would forsake basic foot safety, even to make a bold statement like this, so did that mean she couldn't take them with her for whatever reason? Why? It'd be one thing if the shoes were badly damaged or didn't fit her, but they weren't, and they were own shoes, so they fit her just fine...

Gin's thoughts paused and his eyes slid sideways almost of their own accord. Slid sideways until they landed on a laundry chute not too far away within the room. He stood up and walked over to it, still holding the shoe in his left hand and pulled the chute door open to examine it. It was impossible. It was too small. A young child could probably do it, but as small an adult as Sherry was, she wasn't that small. But there was no sign that either the handcuff or door lock had been picked and Sherry left her shoes behind.

He clenched her shoe tightly in his hand. It was impossible.

Gin shook his head as if to rid himself of the ridiculous notion he'd entertained as he tossed the shoe aside, ruining the evident suicide message, and left the gas chamber at once. He never informed anyone of the suspicion he'd oh so briefly considered. His mind kept wandering back to that idea every time a potential lead on finding her or figuring out how she escaped led to a dead end, but he refused to think about it further.

He refused to.

The idea of an adult shrinking into a child was absurd.

(He didn't want to think of what it would mean if it wasn't. If it was possible).