Chapter four
o-oOo-o
Day 3, 8:25 a.m.
Traffic in the morning was hell in Tokyo.
Shinichi cursed himself for not thinking about that. He should have taken the train or bus, then he would have been faster and would not be stuck at this thrice-damned crossroad. At least it gave him ample time to make diverse calls, because it seemed to be problematic to get a hold on a person in custody this early.
He'd explained that it was an emergency and that he needed to talk to the man as soon as possible, but the bureaucratic nightmare that was the Japanese legal system got in his way.
When he finally arrived at the jail where Matsuoka had been brought to, Megure was already waiting for him and led the way to the room where Matsuoka was currently speaking with his lawyer.
"Kudou-kun, are you sure about this? Is this even possible?"
"Anything is possible, Inspector," he answered with a grim smile, gesturing at himself and reminding Megure what the Black Organization had done to him.
They came to a stop in front of the door and Shinichi barely bothered to knock before he entered the room, the guard coming short in their attempt to hold him back after a hand sign of Megure.
The two men sitting at a table inside the room looked up in surprise. The one not cuffed to the tabletop jumped out of his chair. "What-?"
"Matsuoka," Shinichi roared, no longer caring about honorifics. He stopped at the table and pressed both hands on its surface, leaning close to the man.
"What did you do to Asai Kazuma? What was in that spray can?"
Matsuoka looked at him perplexed, then he laughed. "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. How is he doing by the way?"
Shinichi gritted his teeth, itching with the urge to hit Matsuoka and just beat it out of him. "You used some kind of spray on him in the night of the interrogation and the next morning he develops an unknown disease. Coincidence? I don't think so."
He was getting louder now, overwhelmed by his feelings, professionalism thrown out of the window. "You tried to silence him in case he would remember anything that would point to you as the culprit. Too bad that we found out anyway, so spit it out! What did you do?"
Matsuoka gave him a smug smirk and leaned back – the picture of arrogance.
"Detective, why so upset? What happened to keeping a level-head?"
"You son of a-"
"Kudou-kun!" Megure cut in and put a calming hand on Shinichi's shoulder. The young consultant was losing his temper and while Megure could understand his behavior, it would only hinder the interrogation.
If what Kudou had told him on the phone was true, then they couldn't waste any time here.
"Matsuoka-san," Megure began, making use of years of experience and throwing in all the weight of his rank as Inspector. "You're already going to be charged with first degree murder, there is no way around it, but now there are lives on the line that can be saved. If you are cooperating, you might avoid a charge of premeditated murder in two cases and I highly advise that you do cooperate, because if you refuse, I will personally ensure that you will rot in your cell and never see the light of day again."
"Two cases, huh?" Matsuoka said and sent a musing glance at Shinichi.
"Stop pressuring my client, Megure-keibu," the lawyer complained meanwhile, but was silenced by a wave of Matsuoka who watched Megure with narrowed eyes, weighing his options while Shinichi stared at Megure whom he had seen confront many murderers, but rarely had acted like this.
Megure was like an uncle for him and though he sure had his temper and wasn't above swearing, he never threatened suspects. But obviously, he took this case as personal as Shinichi did, because the only times Shinichi remembered he had behaved like this, had concerned his wife and well, he had been furious about the whole Black Organization case of course.
He absolutely did not tolerate when someone he felt was under his care was targeted – be it his family, his officers or someone from the Mouri or Kudou family.
Shinichi himself had a hard time suppressing the oh-so-familiar fear that came with the knowledge that again, his line of work was somehow to blame that Ran was in danger. He had lived this personal nightmare once already years ago and now it had come back to torment him once more.
So, when Matsuoka finally gave in and told them what they needed to know, they were partially relieved and partially horrified by the information he gave them.
o-oOo-o
Day 3, 11:18 a.m.
Shinichi stormed in the direction of Shiho's lab, alternating between swearing and shouting her name, just to come to a full stop when he saw some tape with the bio-hazard sign sealing off the door.
"What-"
"Kudou-kun," came Shiho's voice out of the intercom installed next to the glass door. "I hope you bring good news, but considering that I could hear your shouting a mile away, I'm afraid it's the opposite."
Perplexed, he looked into the room, seeing how she turned to him from where she was sitting in front of a microscope with a serious face and waited for his answer.
"Good news? What the hell happened here?"
"An unfortunate combination of a jumpy rookie and me being splattered by contaminated blood," she informed him, absolutely unfazed.
It took a moment to sink in, but then Shinichi gasped. "You've been infected?"
Shiho shrugged. "Positive, though there are no symptoms so far and all tests came back without results, but we don't know what to look for after all and it's more like poking around in the dark. So, tell me – do you have anything useful? Because my time is kind of limited now and I have to work here alone. Everyone entering this lab would be compromised to the virus, but at least I don't have to work in full protective gear anymore."
Shinichi gaped at her. Leave it to Shiho to talk about her own situation in such a clinical way.
"Kudou-san!"
He looked around when he heard his name from behind him. Shiho's assistant, Kobayakawa Emi, came out of the neighboring laboratory.
"Thank god, maybe you can talk some sense into Miyano-senpai. She refuses to go to the quarantine station to get treated."
Shinichi snorted at the thought alone. "Sorry, Kobayakawa-san, but I've never been able to talk this stubborn woman out of anything. Miyano," he asked, turning back to her to try anyway. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Making a cure for your wife, idiot. I'm not the head of the biochemical lab for nothing, you know? And if I take Asai's and Ran-san's course of disease into consideration, I have at least seven hours before the fever will strike and I intend to make good use of them instead of idly lying on a hospital bed." She made a face at the mere thought. "So, I'll ask you one last time: Do you know anything that can help us?"
Thinking back on his conversation with Matsuoka made his anger flare up again. "Do you know what this ass-hole did?" He had to gulp in some steadying breathes before he could continue.
"Matsuoka – he tried to make a deal with a company named Yokoyama Incorporated. At first, I thought it was only about illegal medication, maybe drugs, but you've told me that this mysterious virus is conveyed by droplet transmission and I remembered how Matsuoka used a spray on Asai-san the night before he collapsed. Turned out Yokoyama Inc. wanted him to create and produce a biological weapon and they offered him connections into the military black market if he could become the head of the company and would then continue to 'support' them. They had loose connetctions to the BO back then and were trying to find a new... supplier. Unfortunately, is seems that one can make a fortune with death and Matsuoka is a greedy bastard."
A bitter smile tugged at his lips and he lowered his head. His bangs covered the fury in his eyes.
"He realized that Asai-san could get in his way if he remembered something incriminating about the night of Sawada-san's death and decided to test a prototype on him."
His hands clenched into tight fists and his whole frame shook. "It is an altered version of the Epstein-Barr virus that causes the glandular fever, but with a much shorter incubation period and much more aggressive. It is highly contagious and resistant to all known vaccines. It also lacks the usual symptoms, so that the infected person won't realize what's wrong until it is too late."
Shiho's eyes had grown large at his explanation. "What about the antibodies in Ran-san's blood? In my blood? We should be able to-"
"No," he interrupted her. "You won't find anything in the blood work. Well, there will be antibodies, but none against this particular virus. The body stops creating antibodies two hours after the infection. The virus blocks them. That's why the disease progresses so fast and why the fever won't break. At least that is what Matsuoka told us," he finished, his voice trailing off into a whisper at the end.
Shiho looked over at the experimental setup that should have been able to give her the answers to help Ran, now knowing that whatever results they would get, they would be useless. She had drawn her own blood directly after she'd been infected, but it already had been used up for other tests.
"But…" For once, she didn't know what to say. She had to tell him what also had happened in his absence, but he already looked so hopeless.
He knew her well enough to see that she was holding something back. "What is it, Miyano?"
"Kudou-kun," she began uncertain, gathering her courage. "This morning, at 10:32, Asai Kazuma died."
His head flew up, horror in his eyes. If Asai had died that quickly, that meant that Ran would… and Shiho as well…
Shiho broke him out of his stupor. "Ran-san is strong! Her constitution is much better than Asai's. Also, she has been infected much later than him. We still have time to run some tests, to infect some mice if need be, to-"
"I will do it."
She almost stumbled over her words at his quiet statement.
"Excuse me?" she said, hoping she had heard wrong.
Shinichi straightened, determination radiating from him. "I will do it. Infect me with the virus and use the antibodies my body will create in the first two hours to make a cure."
She stared at him.
He always was prone to rash decisions, and when it came to Ran's safety even more so, but this was just… she couldn't allow that.
"What about possible complications due to your run-in with the APTX? There's no trace of it in your blood anymore, but your immune system is not that strong. We can run some other tests before we restore to that. I will not-"
"Ran doesn't have the time for other tests and you know better than me that you need to run the tests on a human or the results are not reliable."
"But- you can't do that to your heart. It has suffered enough and I'm honestly not sure if it could take another escapade of yours."
"I'm afraid it has to," he laughed bitterly, knowing that it would shatter anyway if he lost Ran.
He placed his hands on the glass doors and fixed his intent gaze on her, his blue eyes dark with worry and despair.
"Miyano, please - I don't give a damn about complications, just do it already!"
o-oOo-o
Day 3, 3:20 p.m.
He was typing in the data, Shiho dictated him while she observed the blood-culture under her microscope. It was all he really could do to help as he was not that experienced with lab work and they had only this chance to get it right.
Failure was no option.
Shiho had drawn his blood every twenty minutes after the injection to get the highest rate of antibodies and it had topped out after forty minutes. After that, it had dropped rapidly, and the virus had taken over even before the two hours mark.
He thought about Ran and how she was fighting for her life on the quarantine station.
Shinichi cursed Matsuoka and his damned scheming that had dragged his wife and his friend into this dire situation. His teeth grinded against each other, pressed together by tightly gritted jaws. Sweat ran down his forehead for a while now and he felt exhausted, but he should be okay for a while longer.
For Ran it had been about ten hours before the virus really had struck. Maybe he had a bit less due to the APTX that had wreaked havoc in his body, but it should be enough to finish this. It had barely been four hours since Shiho had infected him and she herself still showed no symptoms so far.
Time.
So little time.
They would make the most of it and they would succeed!
Through the closed glass door of the laboratory that had been sealed off again after he had insisted to help Shiho, they could see concerned faces peeking in every now and then. Shiho's team was on standby and waited for any word of them to take action. They supported them from the other labs as good as they could, processing the data they sent to them via intranet. Especially Kobayakawa was often watching them, the worry for her mentor written all over her face.
He looked over to Shiho, who had gone silent a few minutes ago and was currently extracting something with a syringe from the culture dish and carefully added it to a solution in a vial. She inserted it into a machine that began to spin it around at high speed.
The rotating motion caught his gaze and even though much too fast to follow, put him in a trance-like state until someone snapped their fingers before his eyes.
"Hey, Kudou-kun, you still alright?" Shiho asked and with some difficulty, he tore his eyes from the spinning machine. "I called you three times already."
"Yes, fine," he answered weakly, though not even he himself bought that obvious lie. His whole body suddenly felt hot and he swayed on the spot.
"Okay, that's it for you," she told him decidedly and activated the intercom again, despite his protest that he could keep going. "Kobayakawa? Send someone in to get Kudou-kun."
She saw how his shoulders slumped in defeat and sighed. "Kudou-kun, I know how you feel and that you want to do everything possible to help Ran-san, but you won't do me or her any favor if you keel over here. I've only let you stay in the first place because I knew it would drive you up the walls to twiddle your thumbs and that wouldn't have helped your health any, but now you are going to be an obedient patient and lie down."
She reinforced her statement by pushing him gently onto the gurney that had been brought in by Emi and a very guilty looking Seno.
She didn't need any force to do so, because the moment he was sitting down, he all but tipped over and she had to catch him by his shoulders. She lowered him down and put a hand on his forehead, feeling the fever burning under his skin. It brought back unpleasant memories of the nights he slowly had turned back to being Shinichi for good.
"Go," she ushered the two out of the room. "Give him the antipyretics and keep watch over his pulse. His heart has suffered some damage in the past."
"Miyano-senpai, I'm so sorry!" Seno apologized for the maybe fourteenth time.
"Just take good care of them, will you?" Shiho asked her. "I will fix this!"
She watched as they rolled the gurney with Shinichi on it out of the room and waited until the doors had closed again with a pneumatic hiss, leaving her alone in the lab again.
Emi had given her a sad and worried look through the clear plastic visor of her protective helmet. Shiho was well aware that she herself had most probably also a shorter time span than Ran and Asai before the fever would spike. After all, she had taken the APTX and its antidote as well, even if not nearly as often as Shinichi, but for him to collapse that fast-
'Four hours instead of ten. That's less than half the time, Kudou-kun.'
If that said anything about the further course of his illness, she had no time to waste or he would be dead by dawn. Even before Ran.
She cursed.
Never should she have allowed for him to let himself be infected. She had known what would happen.
Well – so had he.
Her shoulders sagged, thinking back on the grim and determined expression on his face when he had told her to do it. He would have gone through with it no matter what reasons she would have brought. He just wasn't objective when it came to Ran.
More like self-sacrificing, rash and sometimes downright self-destructive. Not that Ran was any better…
Shiho had never loved like this. The only true love she knew so far was the love for family, like for her sister and now for Agasa and the kids as well. Even if she maybe, perhaps, possibly had had a tiny weensy bit of a crush on Shinichi way back, she now knew it hadn't been anything serious. Just the feeling of a bond between two persons who could understand each other's situation, were on an equal mental level and then some parts admiration – even if she wouldn't openly admit it.
So, now it was up to her to save these two lovestruck friends of hers. Very dear friends at that. They were family to her as well, like brother and sister.
'Ha – seems like I'm quite the hypocrite here,' she thought with a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips, because yes – she would go to any lengths as well when it came to her family.
With new determination, she turned back to her computer and set to work, ignoring the weariness in her bones.
She wouldn't let them down.
o-oOo-o
When the numbers on the digital clock behind her sprung to 5:43 pm, she reached her limit.
The formulas danced and blurred before her eyes and her breath was hot as she let it out in heavy pants. With a shaking hand, she reached for the intercom and called for the lab next door. Emi answered immediately.
"Miyano-senpai?" Her voice was laced with concern and Shiho smiled weakly. Emi really was a good girl, who cared for her more than Shiho deserved.
"Kobayakawa," she wheezed. "I think that's it-"
"Senpai!" Emi exclaimed, nearly panicking.
Shiho rolled her eyes, wiping away some sweat that threatened to run into her eye. "Calm down, fool. I'm not going to die on the spot, but I will if you don't finish up my work."
She took a shaky breath and pressed the send-button one last time to mail the last data to her assistant. "It should be almost done."
"Really? That's amazing, senpai! I knew you could do it!"
"Yeah, yeah – stop gushing and come get me. I never thought that a hospital bed would seem appealing to me, but right now, I really want… to lay…"
Shiho slumped in her chair and she would have fallen to the floor if not for the pair of gloved hands that caught her just in time.
She hadn't even heard that the door had opened behind her, but now the lab was swarming with people in protective suits and equipment to decontaminate every nook and cranny.
Shiho herself was oblivious to the bustling around her, as the stretcher she was laying on was on its way to the quarantine station.