Disaster scenes were always more or less the same. Conan had seen enough yellow tape in his life to paint all of Tokyo the color, and enough police cars to write a manual on them. Ambulances constantly came and went, always leaving a ringing in his ears by the end of the night while panicked relatives tried to follow. And crying. Lots and lots of crying. The half-collapsed mess that had once been Baxter Hotel looked much the same to Conan as he arrived, even hours after the initial blast, various officials shouting into their radios and flashing blue lights illuminating the dark building. All the fires had already been quelled, but the smoke still hung thick in the air. He glanced towards the parking lot; no sign of the Porsche.

"What's a kid doing here?" A very familiar voice demanded loudly. Conan looked up to see Hattori jogging towards him with a quick reassurance to some policeman that he would escort him off the premises. With a quick wink, Hattori grabbed his hand and led him away from the front of the building with a very authoritative expression (a little over the top, in Conan's opinion) before dropping it as he started to circle back around out of sight in the nearby alleyways.

"The back entrance doesn't have as many people around it," Hattori whispered. "I can distract anyone there for a minute while you slip in. After that, I'll join you to help you investigate." He grimaced. "We both know that this wasn't a 'gas leak' or whatever they'll be saying on the news tomorrow morning to cover it up. Let's just hope that some clue is still standing in that big pile of rubble."

When they had gotten around the building, Conan watched Hattori march into the area and start throwing around his Interpol authority by declaring that every single person was going to have to be checked for their IDs and licenses to be there. Any murmur of an argument was quickly shut down with the flash of a badge. It was enough to keep all attention on him for a moment while Conan slipped in quietly without a hitch. Pausing a beat to wait for Hattori, he soon appeared and they proceeded with caution inside the ruined hotel.

It was in about the state that Conan expected—all the lights were out, obviously, and he once again thanked himself for his habit of carrying a pocket flashlight with him. This section of the hotel was pretty intact, but the debris littering the floor and the cracks in the walls got more and more numerous the further in they went. Thousands of pieces of shattered glass crunched under their feet from the chandeliers, glimmering under the gaze of the flashlight. A burning smell still lingered in the air, stinging Conan's nose. Even so, they had a job to do. They had no idea which room Gin had been staying in (if he had been a client at all), so they were going to have to check them all. Luckily, Hattori had thought ahead and had already gotten an override key for all the doors.

The further in they got, the more agitated Conan got. Upon investigation, all the hotel rooms were empty or just had the personal items of a normal client inside. Conan was starting to get worried that they wouldn't find anything in the section of the building they could go to reasonably safely. But then, it was possible that the origin point of the explosion had been wherever any evidence was left in the first place. Why an explosion though? That seemed like an awfully conspicuous way of getting rid of evidence. Sure, it wasn't the first time that Gin had done it, but it seemed a little unnecessary when he could have just as easily packed it all up and left without a trace.

"Last room," Hattori remarked behind him as he reached over and slid in the key on the ash-smeared lock.

The room looked like it had been uninhabited at first glance, but a sweep of the room revealed a torn piece of black cloth hidden under the mattress and leftover materials for a manually made bomb jammed inside a messily cut pocket in the bottom of the armchair in the corner of the room. Conan frowned at the objects in his hand and furrowed his brow.

Hattori gave a long sigh. "This is all off. What kind of highly seasoned criminal leaves such incriminating evidence lying around for any detective worth his salt to find? Definitely not this one."

Nodding, Conan deposited the evidence into a bag that Hattori had brought. "I was thinking the same thing. I can't help but wonder what the point of all this was. An explosion that doesn't even hide anything? Gin doesn't make these kinds of mistakes. What do you make of it, Hattori?"

"I don't know," Hattori pondered with his hand on his hip. "Either someone here was his target and he didn't have a readily available scapegoat for a normal murder, or he was trying to get the attention of the police. Why, I can't imagine—he's been spending all his time up until now trying to avoid the attention of the police. He's been on the run successfully for four years, so I don't see why he would jeopardize his freedom now."

"Maybe he caught wind of the fact that the FBI is on his trail." They left the room, the door closing behind them with a soft click. "That would give him a reason to try to both confirm it and sniff out the principal agents on the project. Or…" Conan's eyes widened in alarm. "Or this is a distraction so Gin can leave town unnoticed!"

"Shit," Hattori cursed as he grabbed his phone from his pocket and immediately dialed a number. "Jodie-san, we think that Gin might be making a dash to skip town right now. Block every road immediately. Tell your agents to be on their guard."

Conan instinctively reached for his gun as he followed Hattori out of the building, but Hattori gently put away his own before putting a hand on his shoulder. "Kudo, I know you're capable of taking care of yourself, but if you're right about this, the last thing we need is for him to catch sight of you. I need you on support, not on the front lines. And besides, you know better than anyone how to predict his movements."

"Hattori, you know I can't stay on the sidelines while he's getting away," Conan snapped, a nervous edge to his voice. He'd always known the danger and continued on his mission anyway; he wasn't about to change that now. Gin was going to pay for what he'd done, one way or another.

"I normally wouldn't be the one to stop you, but what if he finds out that you're still here? Maybe we'll finally catch him tonight, but maybe we won't. And if we don't, then you know what probably happens to you. Gin is slippery. All the security in the world doesn't guarantee your safety, and I…" Hattori paused and took a deep breath. "Can I speak frankly? I've almost lost you during this hunt for the Black Organization. All I see you do is think about the next threat; I never see you smile anymore, take pride in solving mysteries, call me an idiot without meaning it for taking a 3am train to come see you over the weekend. I know all this has been difficult, but I want the chance to see that Kudo again."

"Hattori…" Conan was at a complete loss. How was he supposed to respond to that?

"I just miss you is all," Heiji said softly before his jaw hardened and he stepped back to draw his gun. "Jodie-san is going to contact you soon about your position. If escaping is what Gin is doing, let's hope it goes well." And without another word, he turned and left Conan by the door of the ruined hotel.

In a way, Conan found himself longing for the old Kudo too.

Not that he had time to think too hard about that. His phone buzzed and he left to go meet up with Jodie-san.

The entire night passed with no sign of Gin, not in or around Amity Park. Even with everyone on high alert, he had completely vanished after the bombing. Maybe Hattori had been right—maybe it was a person who had been targeted. But it was still odd, the obvious evidence and the explosion together. It left Conan feeling like he was missing something, but he could do nothing but keep his eyes open and his weapon close. It frustrated him to no end that he couldn't offer much in the way of real help in the case of an Organization-related emergency. Not without putting himself in mortal danger, at any rate.

In another universe, in another lifetime, none of this would have ever happened. Conan wondered for the millionth time how things could have turned out like this. It was unfair. It was just so, so unfair.

Once Conan had gotten back into his apartment an hour before he had to leave for school, he headed straight for his closet and pulled out a shoebox hidden in the back behind his clothes that Haibara had told him to throw away three and half years ago. Inside, was a glass bottle with a single white pill sitting inside. The last temporary antidote. He knew that it was keeping dangerous evidence of his past, but every time he tried to get rid of it, something in the back of his mind stopped him. Taking a peek at the pill was captivating, always sucking him into a black hole of 'what-ifs.' He stashed the bottle back into its hiding place before heading to bed, but it almost seemed to be watching him from its box, laughing at the concept of Kudo Shinichi.

"You seem on edge," Sam said matter-of-factly the next morning before the bell rang in Lancer's class. "Let me guess—it has something to do with the Baxter Hotel thing and your mysterious exit last night?"

Conan absently sharpened a pencil without looking up. His mind was crowded with too many theories and possibilities to keep track of, and he could hardly concentrate on anything. "He might have gotten away last night. We have no way of knowing unless he shows up again, which seems unlikely given the massive amount of police activity."

"Ouch," cut in Fenton after a short pause to ascertain who 'he' was. "What are you still doing here? Shouldn't you be doing…I don't know, police stuff?"

"There's only so much I can do without arousing suspicion. Though, I can't help but feel like he's stuck around. All logic says no, but when you've dealt with these people for long enough, you develop kind of a sixth sense for them. I don't know how to explain it, but I can't shake the feeling that something's not right."

Fenton opened his mouth to reply, but promptly closed it as Mr. Lancer came in and closed the door. He seemed to be trying to pick his words very carefully.

"I'm sure that you've all heard the sad news this morning, or maybe heard the explosion last night. It breaks my heart to see the amount of loss." Lancer sat down at his desk tiredly. "Baxter Hotel was a big source of revenue for the town, so I know that many students here had parents working there. I would just like to give my deepest condolences to those of you who lost someone last night. I understand that you are going through a lot, so I'd like to talk over a revised schedule for schoolwork and absence waivers during this difficult time with Mr. Baxter, Miss Jones, and Mr. Willis. Again, I am truly sorry that this happened."

The class was much more silent than usual during the lesson. Lancer wasn't sarcastic even once during the entirety of the day.

And still, Conan could do nothing about it. He felt like he couldn't think straight, just turning the same facts over in his mind. The obvious evidence left that Gin was the culprit for the bomb. The origin of the explosion seemingly calculated to just miss Gin's hotel room. The race to catch him before he left town. Something didn't add up.

If Conan supposed that the explosion was a distraction so that Gin could get away, that would require that he have knowledge of the investigation in Amity Park, which he was unlikely to have figured out on his own thanks to the extreme precaution. It was possible that someone had tipped him off. Maybe even Spectra, if her apparent ties to the Organization were more than just a source of misery. But if he had known, why would he leave obvious evidence to implicate himself? All that did for him was put the police on high alert in and around Amity. This whole business would have made it harder to escape, not easier. So the question was one big why. It made no sense for Gin to have done what he did. He was a cold, calculated killer with years and years of experience keeping a low profile, even after the destruction of all his safety nets within the Organization. Even if he did know about the FBI and Interpol presence, it would have made much more sense to just leave. It wasn't like they knew where he was or they would have captured him long ago. There was no reason at all to draw attention to himself like that.

So what the hell was going on?

Hope you enjoyed! I wanted to have this out for the one year annversary of this fic, but well, it's a little late. Still, I can't believe the support this has gotten in that year! It means a lot, thank you all for the love 3

Things are gonna start getting very interesting very soon ;)