In the end, they leave the guards on the floor.

Ran strips the second guard like she strips the first one. She attempts to pull him from the middle of the hall, but she doesn't have the strength. Already the maintenance coveralls she's wearing are pooling at her feet, even as rolled up as they are.

She bounces experimentally, wincing as the movement jostles her aching joints. She doesn't feel like she's shrinking any farther, but the length of the leg fabric doesn't lie. Biting her cracked lip, she takes the second guard's keycard and gives it to Shinichi, who accepts it with wordless thanks. She looks around, finding the red blinking dot of a camera trained directly on them.

The cameras have certainly caught them, but there's still no sign of an alarm. Could Vermouth have done something to them? It's something to think about as the clock ticks down, inexorable in its cruelty. Thirty-eight minutes.

One hour whispered directly to Ran can mean a whole host of things, and each one curls at the bottom of Ran's stomach, fraying her nerves until she's hanging by a thread just thinking about it. The cameras, Shinichi wanting access to the data….how much does she know? And what does Shinichi mean "with Vermouth, it's hard to tell?" The woman is manipulating them, this Ran knows, but why? What purpose does it serve? And that gentle hand stroking her brow...Ran is certain now that she didn't imagine it. But what does it mean?

Behind her, shifting in her arms, she hears Shinichi's loud, rattling breathing. He doesn't sound too good, and it reminds her all too well that they're running out of time. "Ran? You okay?" he says.

Her face is numbing from exhaustion. "Just taking a moment. Let's go." She's tired, stretched to the very edge of her limit, but she can't stop now. She can't rest now. Not until they have what they came for and they're both out and safe. She'll rest if—no, when—they get out of this. They've already been in so much danger. Could still lose each other before the night is over.

Ran loves him. Ran knows he loves her. She doesn't care if it's not usually how it's done. If they make it out alive, she's going to ask him out. They've already been through so much, and if she does lose him, she wants it to have mattered. They've wasted so much time dancing around each other, time they could have been spending together. No more. Not if she has her say.

"We can rest for a bit, if you need to," he says. No, she really, really can't afford to take the time. She's not going to be the reason they get caught again. With that thought, she moves with purpose down the hall, looking for the door that calls to her.

She licks her chapped lips. "Which door?"

Ran keeps walking down the hall as Shinichi is quiet for a long moment. "I don't know," he says, and his voice is very small. They'll have to choose very carefully. Though the guards have been taken out, Shinichi is probably right in his assessment of how these people work; any number of these doors can hold scientists, more people with liquor in their names. Even if they do manage to luck out and find a room empty of people, there's no guarantee that it will hold a terminal Shinichi can use to access the data.

But they won't make any progress being indecisive, so Ran takes a deep breath, in and out. She does it again, again, calming herself, ignoring the pain, focusing on the tingling numbness of her face, on the feeling of Shinichi's rapid heartbeat against her back. His head is down, and leaned against her shoulder. She's almost afraid he's lost consciousness again. He won't be of any help, not in his current state.

If she were Holmes, if Shinichi wasn't drugged, which door would they choose?

She reassesses the hall, feeling vulnerable being out in the open where anyone can spot her at any time. She bites her lip again, making a soft noise as it starts to bleed.

Well, the doors all look the same. They're numbered, but there's nothing particularly odd about that. Even numbers on the right, odd numbers on the left. No directions, no place markers on the wall save the ubiquitous level four painted in white on a green backdrop.

Like the first floor, there's a door with a biohazard sign. But that could be where the experiments happened, not where the information about said experiments is necessarily kept. In fact, it might not make any sense to keep them there, especially if some biological contaminant were to escape. It might make it harder to retrieve the data. If it were her, she'd want the room to be close by. Any farther away, and it might be an inconvenience. If the elevator is at the far end of the hall, and the biohazard marked door is at the other end of the hall near the staircases, then it maybe it is one of those three doors next to it.

Is her logic sound? She doesn't know. Ran has to make the right choice. She's got to give Shinichi enough time to find and get the data.

Sharp intense pain shoots through her, making her loosen her grip on Shinichi, nearly bringing her to her knees. She works her jaw; it takes all her strength to keep standing, not to give anything away to him. The pain settles in her heart, and it almost feels like it's bursting. She regulates her breathing, rides through the pain. It's hard, but she's had worse menstrual cramps. She's running out of time. The guards could wake up at any moment.

Think, Ran, she says to herself. Shinichi would have already have figured it out. No. She can't compare herself to him. He's depending on her. She can't let him down. She can't let herself down. She owes it to her father. What would her father think if he lost her? Her mother? All their family? Their friends?

They're all depending on her.

She adjusts Shinichi again, his head lolling. Oh, that's not good. She's running out of time in more ways than one.

Think, Ran. Think! Her eyes flit up and down the hall. There's a solution, she knows there is. It would take too long to check each and every room, not with the threat of more operatives out to get them.

Suddenly, her eyes catch the camera focused on her. That's right. There are six CCTV cameras in this portion of the hallway, each covering the other's blind spots, moving in a pattern.

All save one, focusing on the door across from the biohazard placard. She walks down the hall to it, each step agony. She shifts Shinichi up, grabs the keycard, swipes it through, types in the password—still 394869—and she's in.

She was right. It's empty, but dimly lit with emergency lights, and filled with several computers and workstations. It looks promising.

Thirty-two minutes.