Ran thinks about it, as she waits for the elevator to reach the desired floor, how it all was before.
Before all this. When Shinichi was just a crush, someone she'd grown up with. When conflict left her alone, mostly. Left them alone.
Sometimes it still shakes her, how much bigger their problems had become in so short of time. And if she is reeling, she can only imagine how Shinichi must feel.
Sometimes, she just feels so…lost.
As if everything before had been some kind of construction. An illusion, crafted from cardboard and papier-mâché.
She hesitates to call it innocence, but in a way, it's the word that fits the most. Things were simpler, then. She and Shinichi walked to school together, he did something so stupid for someone so smart, she yelled at him, he griped at her, she talked about karate, he talked about Holmes. She hid her crush on him and he hid his on her. Furtive glances when the other wasn't looking, a brush of hands brushed off as something else.
She's still young. They're both still so young. Too young to have been through so much.
Second level.
And the look on his face right now is not different from the look he had that night at that fancy restaurant. When he was going to ask her—well, she still doesn't know what he was going to ask her. So soft. So pained. So far away, even though he's right here, arms linked around her neck.
She pretends not to notice how he tucks his head against her and closes his eyes, nuzzling against her neck, looking for comfort. How her arms are trembling from the exertion of carrying his hollow bird bones. He's so light like this. Like he'd float away if she so much as lets go for even a second.
Third level.
He tightens his grip around her as she shifts him around so he's on her back, tossing her hair out of the way. Her power has always been in her legs; she'll make do if they run into any opposition, even though her left ankle is a little tender still from rolling it.
Fourth level.
The elevator doors open. The halls are silent, filled with flickering ghosts, shadows from the fluorescent lights. Shinichi tenses against her back, and she has to fight to keep her posture loose. There's no one here. There should be. The emptiness scares her more than fighting through lab technicians might. She shifts Shinichi in her grip.
"Which way?" she asks him because somehow he always knows.
"I…I'm not sure," Shinichi says, slowly like it pains him to admit it. He doesn't, this time. He leans his head against her back, his breath hot against the nape of her neck. "Sorry," he mumbles, and regret and shame fill his voice. Like not being able to deduce it is a personal failure.
Why is it so empty? The thought ghosts through her mind. "One hour." There are forty-four minutes left.
She can't stop the nervousness that builds in her stomach, fizzy and bubbling. She fights it down, the same way she fights the hurt and the rage and the anger and the pain. She may be trembling and aching, shaking on her feet, but there's a clarity of purpose. Her mind is razor-sharp, keen-edged.
A whistling in the air and Ran ducks, swallows the reflexive kiai, nearly chokes on it, pivoting on her right foot, bringing up her knee and snapping her leg out in a high roundhouse kick, making neat contact with the side of the person's head. A cry, and they crumple like paper. A baton falls from their gloved hand, clatters to the floor, the dark material standing out against the off-white terrazzo. If it had hit where it was meant to, it might have cracked her skull open.
Ran doesn't like hurting other people. It will never be in her nature. And she's glad. She doesn't understand how people can do it. But she will defend herself and those she loves to the death, if necessary.
She takes a deep breath, breathes it out slowly. Shinichi's grip on her is tight, cutting off her circulation, his nails digging into her skin, but the pain hardly even registers. She waits for a long moment, but nobody else follows.
"Ran," he says, voice awed.
She lets out a breathless laugh. "Yeah?"
He leans his face against the back of her neck again, buries it in her hair, but she can feel how hot it is. He must be blushing. The thought makes her blush too, and she bites her lip, grateful that he can't see it.
Adjusting her grip on Shinichi, who tightens his own when he figures out what she's trying to do, she leans down and searches the guard, grabbing a ring of keys and a keycard. Debating to herself a moment, she picks up the baton as well, giving it to Shinichi. There's a radio, but she ignores it.
And then—A SIG Sauer P226.
She recoils in disgust, then picks it up with two fingers by the grip, holding it upside down with its barrel pointed away when it's a little too heavy for her fingers alone. Ran doesn't like guns. No, that's too light of a descriptor. Ran hates them. Hates them. They're instruments of death. Their only purpose is to kill.
But he'd gone after her with the baton, which maybe means they're still not trying to kill her, regardless of how much force he'd put in that swing. But they'd shot Shinichi. Ugh, this is hurting her head. Ultimately, she chalks it up to the brutality of the clear liquor men. She still doesn't know which one is Gin and which one is Vodka.
She makes sure the slide catch is still on, then she tucks it in one of the pockets of the maintenance coveralls, not sure what else to do with it. She can't just leave it here for someone else to use it.
"Guards usually work in twos," Shinichi says, voice barely audible. "To cover blind spots. Where's his partner?"
As if in answer, he turns down the far corner of the hall, about ten meters away. There's nowhere really for Ran to go, nowhere for her to hide, so she tightens her grip on Shinichi and charges like a bull.
He barely has time to bring up his gun before she shoves her shoulder into his side, knocking him down. He doesn't go down as cleanly as his friend did, and he's already back up before Ran can catch her breath, grabbing for her. She jukes to the side, he grabs her by the hair, pulls her roughly to his face snarling. She'd free herself, but she's still holding on to Conan—she jerks her head away from his face to headbutt his nose, but before she can—
The sound of something cutting through the air, whistling past her ear. A loud thunk.
The man falls like a sack of potatoes.
Shinichi shifts, grinning, having used all of his strength to clobber the man in the head. "Heh. I'm not totally useless."
Ran shakes her head. "Far from it. Now let's get to that lab."
"The sooner the better," Shinichi agrees.
Thirty-nine minutes.