I stopped short and ran into the kitchen. The cold coffee mugs were still there, but Ran and Agasa were nowhere to be seen.

Panic rose in my throat.

"Agasa!" I yelled, rushing into the next room. What could have happened to the Doc and Ran? Surely not the men in black…?

I decided not to finish my thought. The thing to focus on was finding them. Before anyone else did.

With growing dread, I rushed into Agasa's main experiment room. I stopped short. There, sitting calmly in a chair, was Agasa. He turned to me, and I saw he had been starting to set up some sort of experiment.

Before I could say anything –and give him a good talking to- Agasa spoke.

"Ah, Shinichi, there you are! I was about to go looking for you." The Doc looked immensely pleased.

I rubbed my eyes wearily and didn't know whether to be relieved or angry. Agasa continued.

"Ran went home in order to set some things right." He stopped and muttered something about phone calls from angry fathers. "But we both sincerely wanted to apologize-"

I cut him off. "No, Doc. No. It's me who needs to apologize. I was acting a little stupid. I think this is all going to my head. Or maybe it's just lack of sleep," I grimaced and thought of the nights before, when I had decided to run on three hours of sleep four times in a row.

Agasa gave a grin. "Quite all right, my boy."

"But… What are you doing?" I asked, coming around the table to look at the instruments he had taken out.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked!" Agasa looked practically delighted. "You see, since we have no idea what this drug did… I mean, is doing to you, I planned to take a few tests and possibly find out!"

"That's a good idea, Doc," I said, sitting in a chair.

Agasa looked pleased. "Well, I'm no scientist, but I bet my pin-striped suspenders that I can find out a little information that will help us manage this drug!"

I ignored the suspender comment and nodded. "Lets hurry then," I said, scooting my chair closer to the table. "We need to learn as much as we can," I glanced out the window, "before those men in black do."

After an hour and a half of taking my blood, examining my spit, and comparing me to all the previous photographs of myself, Agasa sat back and let out a big sigh.

"Well, Shinichi," he said as he twiddled with his moustache, "I can say with confidence that you are about fourteen years old." He looked at his clipboard where he had taken a few messy notes and made some calculations and continued.

"After the initial dose of that drug that those men in black gave you, you automatically became one year younger than you were. Now I am pretty sure that you are regressing, after that one boost, systematically one year every 24 hours."

He cleared his voice and looked up at me expectantly. I stared at him with a blank face. What did he say?

"Shinichi, you have fourteen days to live," Agasa said gently.

That's when the initial shock soaked in. Fourteen days to live! Never had my life felt so fragile in my hands; not when facing murderous criminals, not when seeing lifeless bodies, not even when I got hurt. Now I had only fourteen precious more days to savor it.

I hardened my resolve. No. I would not just let myself shrink into a nothing until the fourteenth day was up. I would go out and find those men in black. I would make them pay, and then I would get the drug and bring it to Doc so he could make an antidote. And I would save myself, like I always do.

I stood up. "I'll go tell Ran," I said. Agasa nodded and turned to finish cleaning up the lab.

I ran all the way to Ran's.

When I arrived at the doorstep (panting harder than I usually do), I considered ringing the doorbell and waiting for Ran to answer the door. After all, I had walked in on Ran a couple of times at the wrong moment, and I didn't want to do that again. But Ran was an old friend, and I knew that she wouldn't mind me bursting in. Besides, I felt like being a little dramatic for the news I was bringing. Maybe I got a little of it from my mother's side.

After catching my breath, I silently padded up the staircase that led to the apartment above the Mouri Detective Agency. As I passed the cracked agency door, I glimpsed Ran's father, "Detective" Mouri Kogoro, asleep at his desk. Drooling, of course. Typical.

I made my way to the apartment threshold and was about to go in when I herd hushed voices. My detective instinct kicked in and I slipped inside, making sure I wasn't seen by anyone. Not that I saw anyone else.

I made my way to the source of the voices. And snickered. What I had thought might be a dangerous scenario was only a soap opera on the television. I turned off the show just as the whispering couple kissed.

Then I paused and cocked my head. I still heard the hushed voices. Well, except with the television off, now it was only one voice. I found it coming from Ran's room. Feeling a little guilty to be spying on Ran again, I made my way down the hallway and stopped in front of her door. On it was a little cat sticker near the handle. As I crouched down, I stared at the cat's little paws and listened to Ran talking.

"Yeah, I know, Mom. But listen, I have something I want to tell you."

She paused for a moment and listened to the other end. I figured she was talking to Eri, her mother. She worked as a lawyer, and divorced Ran's dad a while back. A very scary woman, in my opinion.

"Well, it's about Shinichi."

I stopped, my heart frozen. She was going to tell her mom about my condition?! Then I relaxed. Well, that was okay. Eri might be scary, but she could be trusted. I planned to tell my mom, too. Well, maybe sometime later. A lot later.

"Yeah. Well, anyway, it started when Shinichi and I went to Tropical Land. No, nothing happened! Well, maybe it was a little romantic…"

There was an awkward moment and Ran blushed. For the record, I felt a little heat on my cheeks too.

"There was a case, and then-"

Suddenly Ran cut off.

"You know, Mom, I feel a little guilty about telling you all of this. I mean, I didn't really get permission from him or anything…"

Ran listened to the other line for while. I felt a warm glow in my chest. Ran was still good old Ran. I knew I could always trust Ran. But I didn't care if she told her mom, anyway. I trusted Eri too.

"You're right as always, Mom." Ran smiled. She went on to explain everything that had happened last night. I leaned on the wall and was startled to find myself relieved that someone else knew now. There was someone else that could share the burden of fighting against these men in black.

That is, until Ran echoed something that stopped my blood in it's tracks.

"Yeah, it is sort of funny that the men in black were using an untested- Wait, did I say that the drug was not tested before?"

I grasped my arm and gripped it tightly. No, Ran had definitely not mentioned that fact. And how else would Eri know?... Suddenly my world was reeling. I could no longer trust Eri. She might even be partnered with the men in black. Whatever she was part of, I knew for certain that somehow she had gotten inside information straight from the people in black.

"Of course, Mom." She grinned wearily. "I know, I know, I've been really tired recently. I can't believe I'm already forgetting things right after I say them."

I gnashed my teeth in frustration. No, it wasn't true!

Suddenly my foot slipped and I fell on the floor with a loud thump.

"Wait a second, Mom. I think someone's in the hall."

I scrambled up and tried to appear as if I had been coming down the hallway. Ran's door flew open and she stood there, a little surprised, holding her hand over the phone's end. She might've been a little surprised to see me now fourteen, too.

"Dad?..." she trailed off when she saw it was me. "Oh, Shin-"

I held my hand over her mouth so she couldn't finish, and tried to take the phone from her to turn it off. But Ran stubbornly held on to it and kept it above my head, her hand sliding off the receiver in the process.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

"Nothing!" I growled back. "Just give me the phone!" I made a swipe.

"Hello? What is going on over there?" Eri's stern voice sounded from the phone. Suddenly I realized I had made a horrible mistake. I shouldn't have stayed. As soon as I heard Eri's slip up, I should have bolted and hopefully made it to Agasa's before going somewhere where I maybe could have been hidden, at least for a while.

Now, though, Eri knew that I was there and had probably overheard her error. I was in mortal danger.

I abruptly turned and ran down the hallway. To give myself a few more minutes of escape, instead of shouting I made an exaggerated gesture to flee. Ran just looked at me in confusion.

"Ran?" I faintly heard Eri say again.

With one last desperate glance backward, I ran full tilt out of the apartment. I knew Ran would probably be safe. She didn't know that Eri had lied –all she had seen was me acting a little crazy. Hopefully if Eri went over to the apartment in hopes of finding me, she would spare Ran. Ran was her daughter that she loved. But Agasa, on the other hand…

I silently cursed and pulled out my phone. I had made sure not to make any calls on it in case the men in black could somehow find and trace them. But time was ticking. I texted a hasty message to the Doc. It read:

Gone fishing (no time to lose). You should too.

-Shinichi

Yeah, it was cheesy. But hopefully it would save both our lives. I prayed that if anyone hacked into my cell's history and found the message, they would think it was just an innocent plan for the weekend. Of course, hopefully Agasa would understand that fishing meant trying to find and expose or kill the men in black. And that he should get out of his house as fast as he could. All I could do was hope.

Then I tucked my phone away and ran for my life.

Sooo sorry it's been more than a month between updates!! I had a lot of school stuff, and then my computer was acting all sick and stuff. I lost almost half my chapter and learned that I do not enjoy rewriting things, though it does help you…

Thank you to everyone that has reviewed, and favorited, and alerted this story! You don't know how much it means to me, and how much it keeps me going. (Well, maybe you do, but thank you anyway!)

You know, sometimes I wonder if Eri really should be suspected as part of the organization or not. Well, I've made her a baddie now! Heh heh heh. Tell me what you think, please!

-Aleathiel :)