She sighed, just wishing for this day to be over, even resorting to counting the seconds as they passed. Ai had the urge to do something akin to cursing Conan's good name till she was old and wrinkled. But she had better things to do. Right?

Trudging down the stairs, taking care to make as little sound as possible, Ai cleared an area on the couch to sit on. Piles of magazines and newspapers were stacked unceremoniously on the floor while cans of numerous beverages had to be dumped into the recycling bin.

She couldn't help but smile a bit. The mess reminded Ai of her college days when she was too young to care for messes, and Mackwell too busy to care for anything else at all. To this day, she still didn't know what to think of him as.

A close acquaintance? Homicidal babysitter? Cruel guardian? Sarcastic brother?

Maybe a little bit of everything. Although, crazed, overzealous alchemist might've suited him best.

She curled in her spot on the couch, hoping Conan wouldn't come down just yet. Ai wanted to be as far away as possible from him at the moment, but she wasn't all that eager to leave the house either.

She thought of herself as some stupid, indecisive, little girl whose mind and emotions were really thrown out of whack by one egotistical male.

"I'm going out now."

Ai waved carelessly from where she was. "Don't forget to close the door."

Conan gave her a look of—disappointment? And then stepped out.

Ai shrugged it off, figuring it was just her imagination.

Ring, ring.

The man looked away from what he what doing and walked over to pick up the phone. "Guten Morgan."

"Hello, yes, this is Yoshiro Ayane from the Japanese Social Services. May I please speak to Professor Agasa Hiroshi?" A woman on the other end spoke in Japanese.

He smiled thinly and returned his reply in Japanese. "I'm sorry, the professor isn't available. Would you like to leave a message, Miss Yoshiro?"

"Who am I speaking with?"

"This is Vincent, his assistant."

"Please tell him that I called concerning the whereabouts of his adopted daughter, Haibara Ai and property damage. He can contact me at…"

The man had tuned out the woman at this point. Something else had caught his attention, and he was intent on checking it out. He stepped around a slumped bloody figure and turned to a burly man standing by the door.

"Quickly." He spoke to him. "Gather the documents and meet me at the rendezvous in an hour. Take anything that would possibly identify him and leave no traces."

The other man nodded, showing that he understood and slipped on a pair of latex gloves, beginning his search. "Yes, Aniki." And despite his size, he was surprising quiet.

The other stepped out the door chuckling. "Adopted a daughter, Benedictine? Heh, this won't do. Not at all." He tilted his black hat down low enough to cover his eyes and pocketed his hands in his black trench coat. He wasn't sure why, but one word—or rather, name, kept echoing in his mind.

"Sherry."

Ai was about to open the door when she sneezed. She shook her head and hoped it wasn't another cold.

Ding dong, ding dong!

She mumbled something about impatient people and asked who it was.

"I'm Hattori from the clean up site at that burnt down building, and I was told I could find the person who lived there here." Claimed a man outside.

Curious, but cautious, Ai cracked the door open. "Yes…that's true. May I ask why you are looking for this person?"

"We found what looks like a suitcase under the rubble. Here." He slid said suitcase through the door and left.

Ai blinked, looking at the thing. She never would've imagined Professor Agasa having something like this in his house. It looked like one of those titanium suitcases that carried expensive or fragile things like maybe a bomb or millions of dollars. Well, it certainly looked the part. It even had a combination lock.

The first thing she wondered was if it was a bomb.

Then she ruled out the thought. If someone really wanted to blow her up, the bomb wouldn't have been placed at Professor Agasa house, and certainly not buried under all that rubble like the guy had said. But, despite her reasoning, Ai couldn't help but press her ear against it, listening for anything suspicious.

She fiddled with the dials, wondering if the wrong combination would trigger an explosion.

Maybe she was a bit too fatalistic.

What she wanted to do was call Professor Agasa, but he left her without any information to contact him. All she knew was that he was somewhere in Germany. Well, death by a bomb at point blank didn't sound too bad.

"Hmm…three digits…"

Always try the obvious first, right?

000? Nope.

111? Not that either.

222? Boy, isn't this random?

333? –cough-

444? Guess not.

555? Maybe I was a little too hopeful.

666? Mark of the Devil?

777? Jackpot! Hey! What the…?

The top popped open and nearly took her nose with it. Ai fell over from surprise. "Triple seven…jackpot, but corny." She thought. Ai looked at her prize. Inside were…

Odd looking rollerblades.

Two identical wire thin earpieces.

A bunch of strangely detailed notes and diagrams.

A funky looking contraption that seemed familiar. A motor maybe.

And pictures.

She ignored everything else and went straight for the pictures. Ai carefully examined each of them carefully. The ones in the front seemed to be in worse condition than the ones behind it. She realized it was the same person in each picture, each one when the person gradually aged. They seemed to be taken from all around the world as the backgrounds differed like water and oil. Some of them were taken with a group of people, some smiling and others scowling.

The same person that kept popping up in each photograph was hauntingly familiar. She just couldn't match the face with a name. Some of them were obvious where they were taken like the one with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Or another with the big Hollywood sign.

The ones of him in New Zealand made her crack a smile. One had a big sheepdog with its tongue hanging out about to pounce him from behind when the picture was taken. The camera had caught the action like an excerpt from time.

Slowly as she came near the end, the man in the pictures grew increasingly familiar. She also noted another boy in his late teens that stood beside the man. Now two people she thought she recognized.

Ai was become more and more suspicious by the second. Something about those two standing together made her skin crawl. Then, she had it. That boy…he…that—there was no mistaking it!

That was Mackwell!

But who was that other person? She nabbed the last one at the back, the most recent, and to her shock, the man who was in all those photos was Professor Agasa himself. She sat there stunned, wondering why that hadn't occurred to her sooner. All this was found at his house.

The sudden realization that Mackwell and Professor Agasa knew each other backhanded her in the face.

Her mind exploded into numerous possibilities of how that was possible. If he was connected to the Black Organization in any way…

"Oh. Holy. Freaking. Shit."

But she could always tell if the person was part of them, right? But what if when he was still in his prime…maybe he had quit long ago…Ai didn't know how far back the organization extended…even her parents were a part of it…

There had to be a logical explanation for all this.

"Professor Agasa was once part of the Black Organization, and I hadn't the foggiest clue about it. Talk about screwed over…what more don't I know?"

She sighed, and picked up the photos she hadn't seen yet. Apparently, Ai dropped them at the right time, because the rest of these pictures contained a mechanical behemoth in them.

If seeing Mackwell and Professor Agasa standing together wasn't shellshocking enough, this was. This…these were pictures of Project Theriac! There was no mistaking it. After all, she had the pleasure of experiencing was it did up close and personal.

"Ladies and gentlemen! It is an honor to stand before you today and present to you the Elixir of Life: Project Theriac!" Polite applauses sounded around the ballroom where the demonstration was taking place. Many were excited but the rest sat in disbelief as Mackwell set the final preparations.

Project Theriac was designed with only one purpose in mind: to cure the ultimate disease.

Death.

Mackwell believed that if you could take the human regeneration process and kick it to high speeds, it was possible to continuously heal our deteriorating bodies, in short, you'd never age. With the help of nanobots, so small and light weight that you'd need the most powerful microscopes to see, injected into your body, they'd boost your physical performance much higher than anyone thought possible.

Shiho still looked uncertain about the whole thing. Sure, the machine was big and impressive, but there were so many things that could go wrong…

She had heard many times how his associates deemed Mackwell insane. They helped him build it, but all of them agreed that Theriac wouldn't be able to handle human specimens just yet. They hadn't even got it to work with lab rats.

Mackwell refused to listen to them. Even the organization threatened to pull the plug on the project if they couldn't come up with any progress. He absolutely refused to let years of his hard work go down the drain like that. His team abandoned him. They claimed it impossible and they refused to have their reputations go down like he would.

He was forced to work alone, but the project was too much of a strain on him. In his desperation, he asked Shiho for her help. The man was distraught, falling apart. She couldn't say no.

In her spare time, she helped him improve and tweak little things to the best of her knowledge that in the end, made a substantial difference, and for that, Mackwell was grateful. At times, Shiho had to skip her classes just to overcome the smallest of problems. In her free time, she studied numerous blueprints, engraving each and every one of them into her mind.

Her priorities shifted from the Apotoxin and her studies to Theriac, and that deeply crippled her grades. Her professors questioned her, and what little friends she made there also noticed how weary and distracted she looked everyday. Her team on the Apotoxin was ready to kick her out if she didn't start pulling her weight.

Now it wasn't just about Mackwell's wellbeing, her life was slowly falling apart as well.

But today, today was when they would prove it all.

He stepped into the machine and nodded to Shiho. She hesitated for a brief second, then flipped the switch.

For a moment, everything seemed to go exactly as they planned. That was until they heard Mackwell's bloodcurdling scream.

Shiho thought her heart froze.

Ai still remembered that horrible night. She wasn't able to attend his funeral a few days later. How would she explain how she knew him anyway?

She flipped the picture over when she felt something written on the back. One word was scrawled diagonally across it.

"Godspeed."

A/N: I'm back, I'm back! Whoo! –does a little dance- Things are really thrown for a loop in this chapter. Hope I didn't lose any of you mid-way through it. xD Now that I'm finally settled in my new home, I've got more time to write. I think. X.x Oh, by the way, this fanfic is an AU, meaning it takes place in an alternate universe.

SN 1987A: -showers you with chocolate chip cookies- x3 One thank you is simply not enough. But you beat me at updating this time. oo Grr. Lol. I'm just worried this chapter seems…fake. X.x I'm bad at building suspense.

Kanika MeskhenetPeople have been known to do strange things. Ai included. xD

Crystal Snowflakes: Oh…sooner? Eh heh…sorry. –sweatdrop-

Fic revr: I'm relieved that's how you feel. xD

Fanfic Maniac: Glazed donut…no can do. I ate 'em all. xD

Anime obsessed fan: Much thanks. –has a big grin- Well, the plot's getting a kick in the rear, so hopefully it starts moving along now. Good luck at understanding the last chapter. xD Although, it's been so long…you've had three months. Lol.

Vash: You give the best one-liners, you know that? Lol.

Anime-obsession260: Lol, tension between Conan and Ai. xD Is anyone hoping it's more than that?

CrimsonCat: He is, he is. –nods- Lol, and he's told me to tell you that he just likes the sport.

jack-adam: Lol. Gee, thanks for the, "doh". xD

First Silvera: Lol, do you think it could be considered as flirting? xD

wayupi: I hope this chapter answered your questions. I don't plan on giving up this story either. –grins-

joeshen: Heh, I wish.