Scarborough Fair
Summary: Kuroba Kaito finds himself in a sticky situation when he's kidnapped by a man who's also guilty for the abduction of three others. How can even the Kaitou Kid escape drug-induced paralysis, a psychotic doctor, a blackmailed housekeeper, and a mansion filled with traps and dungeons?
Pairings: Very minor hints.
A/N: I own nothing except Dr. Hailey, Anita Hailey (though I don't own their names), Kojima Daisuke, Diana, Colin, Armagnac, Champagne, Cognac, Amaretto (though I don't own their designs) and 'A'. Okita Soshi and Nagashima Shigeo are actual DC people. Think Yaiba and Yoban Saado. Title comes from Simon and Garkunkel song. Also loosely based around Mothy's song, 'Little Garden Girl' feat. Hatsune Miku. May be called alternate name of 'Clockwork Lullaby 2'.
Prequel: "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"
Side Story: "Clockwork Relations"
Shinichi stepped back from the file cabinet and dusted his hands. This was his fifth cabinet and there wasn't anything important or relevant to his objective in it. Thirty minutes of his life wasted on crawling through dusty rooms and furniture to look for an unknown needle in the metaphoric haystack. Not very productive.
Maybe it was time to eavesdrop a bit on the two known residents of the house.
Shinichi had four bugs activated at the moment. The two tossed in the front room, and the two stuck on the doctor and Diana-san. Since he was now inside the house, the bugs in the front door area were no longer necessary. He pressed the button that would deactivate them and turned his attention onto the other two still active.
The listening device on Dr. Hailey gave him nothing but muffled thumps. He was walking around somewhere, but he wasn't talking. No use listening to him.
The housekeeper didn't prove to be better. Her footsteps were softer than the doctors, but like him she wasn't making any sounds.
Shinichi was about to go back into digging when Diana-san stopped walking. A shrill, sharp bell went off for a few seconds before it was abruptly shut off.
"Amaretto," his bug on Diana-san crackled. There were some more muffled sounds transmitted and he turned the volume up using the small dial, not wanting to miss anything. Amaretto was a type of liquor made with either almonds or apricot pits.
He had been right. The Black Organization had gotten to him. For some reason They had let him go back to his house - maybe he could only work in his environment? - but with one of Their own keeping an eye on him, most likely in case he tried to run away or slack off on work. And who better as a spy on an introverted person than a housekeeper?
Diana spoke again. "I do, and they're secure." The person on the other end must have asked about something. Something she had been sent to secure. Something or someone.
But what was secure? His hand went warily to the self-destruct remote installed on his glasses. If the bug was found by her he'd detonate it but he needed more information at the moment. Information he was having a hard time getting because the bug wasn't doing a very good job on picking up the fake housekeeper's soft voice.
Shinichi strained his ears just enough to catch the next sentence. "I will. I love you."
Wait, what?!
Through the muffling of the apron surrounding the bug he heard a muted crunch. She must have smashed the phone.
He shouldn't have been surprised by the declaration of love by the housekeeper. Haibara's parents were both in the organization, and they had two daughters together. He knew for sure that the shrunken girl's mother had loved her, and the sisters had had a deep bond with each other. That was enough to convince him that members of the organization were capable of feeling love. He just didn't understand how murdering people could act like what they were doing wasn't immoral and face innocent children and their loved ones with a smiling face, but that could have just been him. After all, he never did understand why people killed each other.
Diana-san – Amaretto – must have been talking to a lover, a spouse or a member of her family. Someone she cared about that was also in the Organization. They were up to something, as usual, and They had what they wanted here based on the one-sided conversation he had heard.
If They had what they wanted Amaretto had no need to stay behind here anymore. She'd leave as soon as she could get away without being suspicious. What were the chances of Them destroying this house and everyone within the walls to get rid of any evidence left behind by her?
He knew the answer; very high.
Just when he had come to that conclusion, a loud exploding sound came from somewhere in the wing Haibara had been in. He got to his feet. That did not sound good. What it did sound like was a bomb going off and in his experience, bombs meant police swarming over everything.
Shinichi reached for his badge, only to curse when he realized that he had left it behind back in the agency. All he could do now was track Haibara with his glasses. He turned on the tracking function and frowned at what he saw. Haibara's badge was moving to the west.
Two more tell-tale sounds of an explosion smashed through the house, and he felt the file cabinet next to him shake. This was getting bad.
He looked out of the window to where the glasses indicated her position. Nothing was there except for a few bushes and trees.
What the hell?
"How th' hell didya do that?" Okita looked at Kaito as he stood outside his cell in all of his freed glory, impromptu lock picks in one hand and the opened lock in the other.
Kaito shrugged it off as he began to work on the teen swordsman's lock. If the doc came back before he could free all of them Kaito wanted someone who could fight covering his back while he freed the others. He cursed when his needle snapped in the lock and scratched his hand. "Give me your needle and wire," he ordered.
Okita removed his needle from his arm and passed it through the bars before dragging the IV over to retrieve the wire tie. "Yer like th' Kaitou Kid or somethin'," he commented as he passed him the wire as well.
Kaito didn't flinch. He didn't blink or make any shocked sounds. His hands were steady and moved exactly the way they were supposed to and the rest of his body didn't make any surprised, sudden movements. In short, he didn't give anyone any indication that Okita might have touched upon a sensitive or a secret topic. "Thanks, he's one of my two top role models in life and magic."
The swordsman's face said it all; interesting role model you have there. "Who's th' other one?"
"My dad," the lock swung open with a smooth, beautiful click. His inner magician couldn't help it and he took a small bow. "Voila. You're welcome. Grab anything that could help you."
Okita nodded and began to dissect the IV stand, stripping off the wheels and the rack on the top to get the metal pole that could serve as a weapon in the right hands.
Kaito went to work on the baseball player's lock. One of the things he learned in the two days they had spent trapped together that Nagashima was a batter on his baseball team. Who better to be violent with a metal pole than a baseball batter? A skilled swordsman, maybe, but since Okita was free Nagashima was the next best choice. "Needle and wire, if you don't mind," he said after Okita's needle snapped in the lock. Damn things. The wires that had been used to tie the bags of drugs had been too malleable and couldn't pick the locks without some kind of stiffer support. The needle could do that, but it was ridiculously brittle. If he ever had to go to the hospital, he was going to refuse any painkillers. He wasn't going to let some quack in a white coat stick him with a needle that broke that easily.
Nagashima handed them to him obligingly. "What's the plan?"
Kaito paused in his picking before doubling his speed to make up for his hesitation. "We get out of here."
The baseball player shot him a look. "Obviously. What I want to know is how?"
He shrugged just as the lock clicked open. He'd have been much faster at unlocking these with better picks, but at the moment this was all he really had at his disposal. He supposed it was better than toothpaste. "I'll figure something out."
Kaitou Kid always did, after all.
"Anita?" the doctor looked at her in wonder and an emotion that looked familiar. Love. Care. Affection. The things that had always been in Akemi's eyes when her older sister had looked at her. "You can walk?"
If the situation hadn't been so serious she would have glared at him with her hands planted on her hips and told him that his priorities needed to be straightened out. Oh, here's a girl with reddish-brown hair! Look! She's on her own two feet! Let's just blatantly ignore the fact that she looked ten years younger than 'Anita'!
Ai suspected that his mind was unravelling far beyond proper functioning abilities and would have said something about that, but she was a bit shocked at seeing the guy that was supposed to be anywhere but here. Kudo-kun was the danger magnet here, not her.
She was trying to figure this out, but the doctor started to speak again. "Daddy knew it," he said proudly, tearing up. "Daddy knew that if daddy completed the drug you'd be alright!"
What drug? The inner chemist in her reared at that word. "What drug?" she asked.
He brightened. "Are you interested in learning about drugs?"
No, but she was good at it. Her standing before him was a prime example of her skills with biochemistry. That answer, though, probably wouldn't be the right response. "Yes."
An explosion came from the other side of the house. Dr. Hailey looked up, and then down at her again. "We have to leave," he said solemnly. "The bad people are back again."
"The bad people?"
"Yes. Anita, the bad people. They always wear black. Don't trust the crows!"
A chill went down her back. "Um, daddy?" she asked, trying to pretend.
"Yes?"
"What kind of drug did you make?"
He threw on a lab coat and grabbed a briefcase before taking her hand. "I'll tell you on our way."
So maybe he wasn't too unravelled. Or at least he was sane enough to put her in a position of decisions. If she didn't go along with him she didn't learn about his new miracle drugs. To go along with him would be an extremely stupid thing to do, almost worthy of Kudo-kun's irresponsible actions. Who knew where he'd be taking her, or what he'd do to her?
She ran along with him anyways. "What kind of drug?"
He stopped abruptly when he saw a burning room. "It's dangerous," he remarked in an extremely casual voice before picking her up in his arms. "Don't worry, Anita! Daddy will protect you!"
"What kind of drug?" she asked again, this time shouting to try and make her point. She had no idea what Anita was supposed to act like, but she had no intention on sitting still and smiling vacantly like a doll.
The doctor ran through the hallway, ignoring the smoke beginning to gather. He stopped in front of a closet and pushed away all the clothes to reveal a hidden door. "The first one is a refined antipsychotic with decreased side effects."
The first. She didn't have much interest nor need for improved antipsychotic medication at the moment. He was the one who probably needed it more than her. No, what she wanted to know about was the implied other medication he made for 'her'. "What about the others?"
He picked her up again and began to run, holding her close to his coffee-stained sweater that smelt like a disgusting mix of sweat, old food and time. Behind them she heard two more explosions and the sound of something large and heavy falling apart. Kudo-kun would have gotten out of there, she told herself fiercely. She had to believe that.
"One of the last two," he wheezed, sounding like he was dying of a serious lung disease. He wasn't very athletic. "Kills – without – trace."
Her heart nearly stopped but she forced herself to continue asking. "And the other one?" her voice shook at the end of the question. What he described was APTX 4869 without a doubt. The drug her parents had been developing, the project and research she had taken over . . . the drug that had been the reason for her shrinking. That wasn't something he had made all from scratch. APTX was evil in her mind, but it also represented her parents and the hours of hard work and effort she had spent in the organization's laboratory trying to connect with them through their left behind work. Him just claiming the drug as something he had made to heal his daughter (how his logic for that claim worked she didn't know, it was a poison, not some miracle drug) rubbed her the wrong way.
Dr. Hailey was now running down the tunnel at a pace a tortoise could easily beat, but he didn't put her down. "The last one," he panted. "Is the most special one of all."
The police found Diana Smith the housekeeper curled up and shaking outside the burning house. The woman was, to put it in simple terms, a nervous wreck.
The emergency dispatch had been called by someone within the house claiming that her employer was the Clone Kidnapper and that there were bombs placed within the house. Now they had a fire truck and a bomb squad along with the three ambulances and twenty five police officers going to the house.
While Takagi got to Diana-san the fire truck and firefighters began to work on the flames that were spreading.
"Diana-san?" he asked the housekeeper. "Do you remember me?"
She looked up, and recognition flickered in her reddening eyes. "Officer Takagi," she sniffed, wiping away tears as she blew her nose into a handkerchief. "I just sentenced my husband to death."
"What do you mean?"
"The doctor said that he had Colin locked up, and that he'd kill him if I didn't do what he told me. But I had to call the police . . . and now he's going to kill him because I couldn't find him before this."
That was the reason why she hadn't called for help in the house. Fear for her husband's sake. "Diana-san, your husband is perfectly safe," Takagi said slowly, trying to sound as reassuring and as truthful as possible. "He's back at the station, worried out of his mind for you."
She met his eyes with a startled look. "He's safe?" she repeated.
"Always has been."
"So . . ." she frowned. "So I didn't have to . . . ." she couldn't finish that. Takagi had to catch her as she fell forwards in a faint.
"Medic!"
Dear god, I could have sworn this story was supposed to be around five chapters . . . .
