[Act 11] - ||Foreshadowing||
Random AN: Cannibal-me is suddenly all addicted to Lemon FFs o.O D Dunno why I came to them, but I enjoy 'em a lot… would my precious readers mind me writing one myself? Maybe with LillIchi, or would that be too awkward?! xD Ah well, forget that~ but if you wanna help me you could take part in the poll at my profile :} pleaseee~
-Conan-
Kato leaned himself against the door to room 2111 and peeked through the milk glass window ever and anon what brought him dispraising glares from Genta and Mitsuhiko which he answered with his tsk-sound. Conan had adopted his thinking attitude and pondered. 'Would Kato's antidote work?' was the main question that kept him busy, but he saw no way to get it answered at the moment; at least he couldn't simply ask Kato. Another question kept rushing through his mind…
"You didn't had any hints it's Alice who is the cannibal right?" Kato, Mitsuhiko and Genta tilted their heads around to Conan and he saw Kato raising an eyebrow. Conan hadn't made his question sound like an accusation, he just needed to get some more information and finally Kato smirked admitting.
"You're right. We came to the conclusion a cannibal is on the loose. At least some of the powder we did experiments with vanished and then Ito-sensei got hijacked and when he returned he and this nurse, Sekai, behaved weird, but… we couldn't be sure who this cannibal was."
Conan nodded, he saved and sorted this information; he had expected it. "So why do you think it's Alice?!" Genta asked and in contrast to Conan's question he sounded a lot like accusing Kato. "They already injected the antidote to everyone else" Conan answered before Kato could and because of his confused look Conan explained "you couldn't know Alice was here while the powder got stolen, since you don't exactly know when it got stolen, right? If you really did experiments on it you must have a lot of this powder, you would only have recognized something of it missing if you had really looked for it and you don't seem to be the type of man who checks his inventory every night before going home. So when this story of the 'monster-child' appeared you started to wonder and checked your inventory; some of the powder was missing and you put two and two together and understood it was a cannibal, then you cured everybody who had once been infected to be on the safe side; Alice simply is the last one on your list, what makes you this sure that it has to be her."
Kato looked at him for a moment with a surprised look "w…who are you boy?! How do you know all this?"
Conan smiled up at Kato "Edogawa Conan; tantei-san." Kato shook his head seemingly amused "wow, well you're right tantei-san, but if you're this smart you should be able to see only your little bow-girl is left; we made sure all the others are cured, so why did you fought this hard for her, huh?"
Conan ignored Kato's question, he didn't know when he would be able to question this man again and so he wouldn't waste time with explaining this idiot any of his feelings. "With these experiments you did… did your team found out anything interesting?"
Kato's smile vanished and he returned to looking seriously at Conan; Conan answered his look and after a while Kato said "I study this disease since 20 years and most of the stuff I had to learn in hard legwork you learned within a single night."
"Lucky us" Conan replied sarcastically and Kato continued "You know cannibals are dangerous. They are pale, strong, don't feel pain and they simply can't die. Also all cannibals I ever met stopped being really human. They were dumb carnivores with nothing more on their minds than their next meal, which always has to be fresh human flesh. Also they hunt for humans since this raises the adrenaline of their prey which leads to less sugar within their blood because they can't stand sugar; it also works as an antidote how you know yourself. If they don't get any flesh they, as I said before, can't starve though."
Conan inwardly sighed; he knew all this, but suddenly Kato added "but now… thanks to the bow-girl… all this changed; 20 years of studying for the birds."
"How did she change it?" Conan asked, he remembered Ai saying the APTX4869 within Alice's body mutated the disease but he still needed more details.
"We don't know how… we only know the girl has some weird chemical in her body that changed the disease. For some reason it leads the cannibal-disease to spare a huge part of the nerve-system. We did our experiments on animals and all who got infected with the disease we mutated with the blood of the girl didn't seem to lose their intelligence, they simply grew stronger and longed for flesh of their conspecifics while they weren't willing to eat usual food anymore… also their curt and skin didn't lost any color anymore and the antidote… the sugar… simply didn't work so we had to invite this new antidote; plainly we can say the girl created some sort of cannibals 2.0."
"What did you change about the antidote?" Conan asked and Kato threw a long peek through the milk glass window before he turned around to Conan again and smirked "I can't tell you, it is my secret and it's pretty complicated anyways; sugar is just the basis of it, I added a lot chemicals; it works 100% but badly one can't get it as simply as sugar; it takes days to produce it."
"And I bet it taste not half as good as sugar" a female voice appeared and Conan saw the door Kato leaned against was pushed open by Ai. Kato stepped aside and let Ai leave the patients room; behind her a brown-haired girl left the room who made Conan, Genta and Mitsuhiko's jaws drop. She wore grey sorties, a white shirt and a blue suit jacket; from her usual outfit only the bow within her hair was left; Conan saw she had used the red bow-tie to tie the strokes of her hair together behind her head.
Shyly she looked at the faces of the men and uncomfortably she smoothes the trousers; it was obvious she disliked wearing trousers but Conan's eyes were glued to her anyways. "Stop drooling" Ai's sober voice pulled his mind back and embarrassed he averted his gaze. "Let's go" Kato ordered and the group started to walk down the corridor. "So uncomfortable!" he heard Alice hissing to Ai who annoyed pushed her to walk on.
-Alice-
"In here" Kato's rough voice ordered them while he unlocked a huge wooden door. A brazen name plate on this door showed everybody that the room behind the door must be Kato's office, though Alice recognized that also this plate told them his first name; his second name remained secret. With a clear clicking sound the door's locked snapped open and their group went inside just to see Kato locking the door behind himself, who entered the office last; they were caught in the tiny room.
Alice looked around; all in all the room looked more like a laboratory than an actual office. The white walls and laminate gave it the same sober atmosphere like all other rooms in the hospital. Its walls were covered with odd tools which Alice had never seen before and the whole room was fulfilled with the smell of chemicals. The only hint that this room was used as an office was a huge wooden desk in the middle, even though it was piled with even more tools and small glass dishes. Alice saw the kids nearly forgetting their situation about all this curious tools and they spread in the room to examine everything very carefully what made Kato run after them to prevent his, obviously expensive, tools from getting destroyed. Also she recognized Conan and Ai standing in front of a shelf with ominous test-tubes where they held a whispered conversation she decided not to interrupt.
Instead she walked over to the wooden desk where she found a glassy cage with some mice in it, running around and doing mice-things. When she reached the desk she recognized she was much too small to see a lot more of the cage than the lowest level where one could see the nests of the mice which were abandoned. She sighed, but before she could turn away she recognized something else; on the clean glass she could see the reflection of some dark brown eyes glaring at her. Out of a pale face they blinked and then she even saw the mouth of this face twisting. She glanced at her own reflection and recognized how the lack of sleep had left marks on her face.
"You look tired… you should take a nap." Only the silence around her kept her from screaming out loud; the lips of the refection doubtlessly just spoke to her and now they smirked malignly back at her. She backed off away from the glassy cage still staring at it, but of course she wasn't able to see the reflection from this point anymore. "I'm really tired" she tried to calm herself "I'm even hallucinating!"
"Maybe you should say we are hallucinating" her own voice appeared again, this time from her left and she tilted her head around. The voice doubtlessly came from a dark cupboard with glassy doors, but this was ridicules. She could only see her own body in its windows looking straight at her. "But I don't stand all straight". Shot through her head while the facial expression of the reflected Alice changed to an evil smile. While Alice felt her body freezing the reflection slowly walked closer to the glass that separated them from each other and then reached out her hand "You can't avoid me forever" she said and Alice back off once again. "Impossible!" she mumbled still walking backwards "you can't…!"
"Alice?" a low voice ask and suddenly Alice felt a warm touch on her arm, she turned around and saw Ayumi looking at her all worried. "A…Ayumi-chan!" she gasped; eased to see and hear a real person again. "Are you ok?" Ayumi ask and Alice nodded; this lack of sleep really went too far now, but what could she do? She hadn't slept for some time now since she simply couldn't stand those dreams anymore, so why did they had to enter her life now even while she was awake?
Finally Ayumi smiled and another voice appeared. "Go away from her." Before Alice or Ayumi understood this voice came from behind Ayumi, the little girl's eyes widened and she collapsed in front of Alice who froze again. Alice now looked into the eyes of Genta who looked all calm at Ayumi's body on the floor; a heavy looking microscope in his hand. "G…Genta-kun, what….?!" Alice stuttered while she saw a deep red puddle spreading form Ayumi's head, it was the same kind of red that covered the microscope in Genta's hand. "He must be infected too." Alice heard a scream from her left side and the next second the cupboard with glass doors fell over and on the place where Genta had been standing Alice saw nothing more than the remnants of the cupboard that broke while crushing the boy beyond its weight. "N…no!" she said, her throat denied her the ability to scream while she glared at Mitsuhiko who appeared in the corner where the cupboard had been standing. "It's ok Alice. They had to die, he was a cannibal and so was she" Mitsuhiko explained, lunacy in his eyes while he walked up to her. "No…! M…Mitsuhiko!" she wasn't even sure if she had said or though this; her voice fully gave up, so she couldn't do anything but shaking her head in disbelieve. "They… they were our friends! Why did you kill them?!" she ran her hands over her eyes and her hair, searching for something supporting to grab.
"Because he's a cannibal!" a sober voice interrupted them, followed by something slightly bigger than Alice hitting Mitsuhiko so he and this person hit the floor hard. Alice rushed over to the two fighting kids to see that Mitsuhiko had been attacked by Ai who stood up after sometime, running her hands over her trousers to smear of some blood from them. "A…Ai!" Alice forced her voice to say; she couldn't believe what she saw, this must be wrong! But doubtlessly Mitsuhiko lay on the floor behind the cupboard; a scalpel stuck in his throat and wide, empty eyes. Alice couldn't stand this anymore, her legs gave in and she fell down onto the floor, just some inches away from Ayumi's corpse. She glared at Ai, unbelieving and desperately searching for an answer. Ai was only focused on getting off the blood of her hands with this sober and slightly annoyed look of hers while she said to Alice without looking at her. "Don't you hate killing someone without being prepared to do so, too? The blood just won't come off."
"That's why I prefer shooting someone" a distinctively rough voice replied, followed by a screaming shot, a bright light and Ai hitting the floor close to Alice. She couldn't move, she glared at the person who just shot her best friend and couldn't even speak. Kato was standing there, the smoking weapon in his hand and finally he lowered it, looking at the corpses on his floor. "Cannibalism gets people to doing horrible things to their friends. Parents kill children, wives kill husbands… but I killed them, didn't I?"
Kato's look changed into an untypical melancholy and he raised the weapon to his head "that's why no one should blame them for what they do, but we do it though… Well in the end we can only judge ourselves, right bow-girl?" and with a last shot Kato shot himself and collapsed and left back Alice who couldn't do anything more than glare. She barely recognized the horribly insane laughter that came from the desk, everything happened too fast, everything had ended to fast and now she just looked at the desk and saw a little brown haired girl sitting on top of the desk; laughing this hard that she nearly fell off of it.
"Bravo!" she cheered with a kind of happiness only a child could show, while she clapped and laughed with tears in her eyes. "Everyone's dead! And I didn't need to do a thing! Soo much fun." Alice simply glared at her while the Alice on the desk slowly calm down, finally she breathed out and smiled directly at her "weren't they awesome? They were so cruel and I could still feel their character behind it."
"She's talking about them, like they were actors performing a play" Alice last piece of sanity recognized, while her cannibal-self gave her a sudden dispraising look "geez, you could at least be a little happy. You don't get the chance to see something like this very often." The little cannibal looked at her like a mother who was slightly disappointed her daughter didn't like what she showed to her, but then she smiled again "anyways, this was only the beginning and I'm sure you will enjoy the main part; believe me!"
"The main part?!"
"Come over here." The cannibal ordered happily and pointed at the place to its right side; next to the desk where some sort of chair waited for Alice; she hadn't seen it before. "The point of view is much better."
Alice couldn't tell what made her stand up, but obediently she walked over to the smiling child and sat down on the chair; judging from her size she was Lilly again but also this seemed absolutely normal to her by the time she sat down and looked at the room, covered with corpses that stopped looking like her friends; it were just people and though she felt sorry for them she didn't knew them.
"They didn't really die… right?" Lilly ask lowly, like speaking to someone more important than herself and though the cannibal-Alice didn't seemed to dislike the question it replied reluctantly "nah, it's a play. It'd be horribly boring if everyone would die in the beginning; I'm sure they'll appear again."
"Oh, I see" she said, not sure if she really understood what the cannibal said, but she had understood something else; this was one of these dreams again. She had fallen asleep and was dreaming and though this meant her friends were still alive there was something that made her feel sick.
"If this is one of my dreams with you again… it means you are the one in control at the moment, right? You are out there with them."
The cannibal turned around to her and tilted its head in serious confusion. "Huh? How can I be out there if I'm here?"
Lilly clenched her teeth angrily "see, I'm no idiot! I know enough about split personalities! The host, me, falls asleep and the alternate ego, you, can be active then; afterwards the host doesn't remember a thing. That's why I don't know about what you did! So this silly antidote didn't work."
The cannibal grinned "funny. You say you are no idiot and then you say something that proves you are."
"What?!" Alice snapped, hating not to know what this thing was doing with her, but to her surprise the cannibal smiled caring and says with a gentle tone. "Why don't you get it? Cannibals don't work like a split personality; they never did before and don't do today. You don't remember attacking anyone, because you never did; neither you nor me."
Alice stared at it with wide eyes. This couldn't be true! Most likely it just wanted to play a game with her; of that she felt sure. "In this play" the cannibal continued and looked at the heavy door of the office "we don't even play a bit part. We are just the audience; we never know what happens before it actually happens. We can only sit here and watch what goes on, we can decide which characters we do like and which we hate, we can even judge them and clap when it's over, but that's it."
And with something very sad in its tone it said "we are separated from the actors; unable to get involved with them no matter how much we'd want to; we are the audience, just the two of us, while the rest of the world will get its chance to play a role; though just a small one."
Lilly knitted her eyebrows; what did it want? This was no usual game it played with her… A sudden move in front of her made her wince and the cannibal Alice laid its finger on its lips and whispered "here we go. The main part is about to start." And with these words the handle of the door got pushed down and slowly the heavy wooden door opened, just like it had never been locked. And while the leading part, the actor everyone had waited to see entered the stage Lilly felt choked.
-Ai-
"In here" Kato's rough voice ordered while he unlocked a huge wooden door. Ai and the others entered the office that looked so much like a laboratory, but she didn't look as much at the room as she looked at Alice. Ever since they had left the room Alice seemed unwell, but Ai'd though she simply disliked her new outfit; now she started to doubt this theory. Alice was sweating and seemed to have some trouble with breathing and no matter how Ai tried to blame this on the hot weather it worried her.
While she saw the kids keeping Kato busy she pulled Conan aside; he must have seen it too. "Kudo" she whispered when they had reached a place where she thought they could talk and his look told her he'd really seen it. "Yeah, I know… Kato said he used a lot of chemical for the antidote… maybe one of them causes such symptoms."
Ai knitted her eyebrows "Kato really told you what his antidote contains?" she wondered and Conan nodded, fast he explained to her what Kato told him while she'd been with Alice and in the end she twitched her mouth. "So he recognized APTX4869… well I think as long as he doesn't know what it is actually is doing we should be safe... also it shouldn't be too easy to find out about it for him, since APTX4869 was designed not to attract attention, even during a autopsy, but still…"
A gasping sound interrupted their conversation and when Ai turned around she saw Alice glaring at the glassy cage on the desk with white eyes; her face had lost all color and she mumbled something Ai couldn't hear. Then Alice threw a glance at the cupboard close to her and even though Ai couldn't spot anything at this cupboard, it seemed to scare Alice to death. "Something's wrong!" Ai mumbled and within this second Conan rushed past her and up to Alice who backed off of him like he was a ghost. "Alice?" Ai saw that now Ayumi, Genta and Mitsuhiko had recognized something was wrong and they slowly approach Alice who doubtlessly suffered from some kind of panic attack.
Ai saw her turning around to Ayumi and to her surprise she made a weak step up to the girl before she collapsed on the floor. "ALICE!" the little girl shrieked and now even Ai and Kato walked over to them. Alice was shivering all over while she lay on the floor, half conscious. Conan raised her body slightly up and a clam voice said "dun worry. 3 out of 5 don't tolerate the antidote without side effects like fever, hallucinations, headache, etc." Kato said and Ai saw him reaching into his pocket; she hoped for something that would help Alice's condition, but he simply pulled out a lighter and some cigarettes and started smoking while walking up to his desk. "You!" this hating shout had left her throat before she could stop it; she simply couldn't stand scientist like him, who only cared about their experiments without thinking about people who could get hurt during those, too often Ai had have to deal with them in her past.
"Haibara!" Conan's voice reminded her of where she was and she looked down at her friends, suddenly recognizing she was the only one with medical knowledge beyond them. "W… we can't do much" she said hesitantly "hopefully it's just a shock and will subside soon, just let's get her off of the floor." Genta was the first one to react, he lifted the brown-haired up and they fast found some old pitch they could put her on, then they simply had to wait.
For half an hour nothing happened, then Kato stood up from his papers and told them he'd now need another sample of her blood and since he walked over to her with his weapon ready to hand they had to allow him to get what he wanted though none of them moved away.
After some more time Kato had to see that it was no easy task to spend a whole night with some kids in a small room. Soon one of them needed a toilet, Genta was starving like always and since Alice remained unconscious Kato decided he could unlock the door and he even let them go out on their own. Ai and Conan never moved. "Found anything interesting?!" Ai snapped after a whole hour had past and she felt she could no longer stand the waiting, but Kato ignored her, he still went through his papers, seemingly something confused him. "I hope so, otherwise all this would be for nothing" a low voice said and Ai turned around to the pitch.
Alice had opened her eyes and looked exhaustedly at her and Conan. Ai felt release rushing over her; so it really just had been a shock, but something still kept her from smiling though. Alice looked exhausted but… different. Not different about her surface, but just like something inside had changed, or was this simply Ai's imagination? And if not… was this change a good one? "You really scared us" Conan said while Alice sat up and both exchanged eased looks before Alice smiled "sorry. I lacked some sleep to get everything sorted; a lot happened the last days."
And then, out of the sudden, her smile vanished and she bended a little forward to whisper something so Kato, who was still too focused on his papers to even recognize Alice had woken up, wouldn't hear them. "We are in danger. I never have been the cannibal."
Ai and Conan glared at her while she seriously replied a look and whispered "Ai could you have an eye on the kids? I need to discuss this with Conan; we need a plan!" Ai scanned Alice; her face was still all pale and she was sweating and shivering, it was obvious she didn't feel well, so this must be important to her; that important that she didn't want to waste another moment. Ai fast looked at Conan and he nodded to show her he'd be ok with that so she agreed, too and watched her two friends leaving the room.
"What kind of scientist are you?" she asked when she was sure her friends had have enough time to walk away; now she would question this Kato a little more "you simply let your guinea pig escape in the middle of your experiment?"
Kato looked up at Ai and for a moment she was sure she'd look at exactly one of those scientist she had known from her work in the organization; with arrogance in his look he replied "I didn't let her escape, I just decided to expand her cage a little and offer her a new toy; I'm surprised you let this happen."
Ai blinked, not only that Kato seemed to be aware of what happened around him, he told her she was the one who'd missed out something important "w…what?! What do you mean with toy?!" Kato smiled tiredly and replied "c'mon. You must have recognized her change of character. The last time it was the boy with the glasses she wanted to kill the most right? And now you let her walk away with just him."
Ai felt her stomach tensing "and what about your precious antidote?! Shouldn't she be healed by now?!" Something new entered Kato's mind; frustration and sadness. "Yeah… well I can't tell why, but… the antidote failed."
"What?!" Ai nearly shrieked "but she obviously reacted to it! She collapsed, so how can you tell it failed?!" Kato reached for two sheds of paper and held them up so Ai could see them and though Kato couldn't know it but Ai understood them, he explained though "The reaction could have been a fake… maybe it was real and she reacted to something, I dunno. I just know that her blood values are exactly the same as before… Your friend is a cannibal, and not even my antidote can change this."
Kato was right and Ai saw that; nothing had changed at that meant the antidote had failed; not only 'not fully worked yet'… it had done nothing. Ai hooked her fingers into the pitch. Alice was a cannibal, no antidote seemed to be able to change this and now she was alone with Conan. While Ai slowly understood this fact Kato got up and walked over to the door. "What are you doing?" she called after him and he replied with one hand around his weapon "erasing the cannibal. If you're lucky I'll be able to rescue your friend, too."
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