Prologue

Approximately two weeks before the unfortunate incident at Tropical Land which forced teenage detective Kudo Shinichi to become Edogawa Conan and sent him into a whirlwind of intrigue and all those other nasty things associated with the Black Organization, there was another accident.

This accident involved a member of the aforementioned Organization who was unfortunate enough to be apprehended by the American FBI when in that country. He and his captor, an FBI agent whose identity is as yet undisclosed, were seen to be struggling moments before their car drove off a precipice into a particularly deep area of the Pacific Ocean. Currents swept the wreck out to sea; neither it nor the bodies of those inside were ever found.

The public assumed that the prisoner, in a wild attempt to take control of the vehicle and escape, had accidentally caused the car to run over the edge.

The Organization knew differently. Their operative was silencing both of the only two witnesses against them--his captor, and himself.

They were wrong.

The operative, and his captor, survived. Neither of them returned to their normal life. The agent was smuggled away and given a new identity. The operative returned to Japan in an effort to track down the Organization which had stolen his life.

The operative had many things going for him, including the fact that he was the best hacker on the planet, though probably the least known, in addition to having been with the Organization for nearly two years. He knew their computer systems like the back of his hand.

Then he ran into an interesting development. One of his former coworkers was accused of treachery and scheduled for execution. She somehow managed to escape at the last minute.

Fascinated, Mitchell Reed finally found her again, thanks to her research data on the computer of one Agasa Hiroshi. She had apparently taken an experimental drug labelled APTX-4869, which had caused her to revert to the state of an eight-year-old.

Reed followed her activities at a distance for quite a while, careful not to reveal himself to her lest she still retain some loyalty to the Black Organization.

Finally, he decided, he was ready to take the next step.