Chapter 3: Darkened Rooms

Thunder clashed overhead, but Akako didn't hurry her stride. Rain didn't dare land on her. Or rather, the rain gods knew better than to allow a single drop to spoil her divine countenance. She was furious. The nerve of that low-level scum! The school was her hunting grounds, her territory. Those teenagers were hers to pluck, like popping strawberries in her mouth.

As she crossed the threshold of her mansion, the lanterns and torches flickered to life, and her uniform melted away to her ceremonial robes. Her mansion wasn't in reality, so to speak. More like a pocket dimension that was under her complete control. She strolled past the gallery of portraits – made in many mediums: paint, ink, thread, crushed stone… all of them offerings to her beauty. Each one from a different moment in time; each one of a different incarnation, a different name uttered in breathless lust by a different artist. Scattered memories from her previous lives were all that remained of them, and these fair portraits.

Speaking of breathless lust… Aoko had surprised her, helping out so readily. It had been a while since she last tasted a maiden. There was divine symmetry in their names: Red and Blue. She licked her lips at the thought. That would hurt Kuroba, leave him in agony! She paused at the top of the dungeon stairs, shuddering with anticipation. Now she really wanted to do it. Kuroba didn't deserve a sweet morsel like Aoko anyways.

But, even she could see the problem with her plan. Kuroba had a way of fowling up her magic. Even if it worked on him for a moment, he'd end up shaking off her spell. He effortlessly evaded her control. He might be able to destroy her hold on Aoko too. She'd seen him negate her love-spells on others – like Hakuba. The tall boy had followed her with his big, soft brown eyes like a puppydog, but then he'd started carrying a strand of Kuroba's hair in his pocket, and her power over him piddled out at only the barest of suggestion. It was infuriating. She thrust the doors to her summoning chamber open, letting them strike the walls with a tremendous noise.

It wouldn't take much, she figured. Just a summoning circle entwined with an entrapment spell. She threw a handful of chalk into the air, and the fine grit fell into place, forming the plain interlocking circles. Then she flung her handkerchief into the circles, still moist with the slime she's found on her school chair (HER chair!). The spells leapt to life, infernal flames churning and stealing some squealing wretch from the world. The room filled with smoke and the scent of decaying flesh. In the murk, a cage appeared, signaling the completion of the two spells. A wave of her hand condensed the pollution into a single, hard ball, that dropped harmlessly into the waste paper basket.

From the gloom immerged a truly pitiful thing. A renfield, she diagnosed. Its flesh was already starting to decay, flesh turned mottled purple. It had been neglected a long time. Vampires were vile monsters, to leave their servants in such a state. An eerie whine escaped its swollen lips, droll dribbling uncontrollably down its chin, joining a fowl streak of putrid mucus on its chest.

"Who owns you?" she asked, her voice soft as the scent of violets.

Its dull eyes gazed at her with insatiable lust, lust it would never be able to act on. "Higure."

That took her aback. Higure wasn't known as a cruel vampire. He'd led the charge for adjusting to modernity. The bloodsucker was one of the more civic-minded of the monsters, realizing that they'd have to hide from humans and their technology. It had been Higure that had established the council which decided territories for the various supernatural creatures' appetites, including hers. He was known to be a peace broker, and rigidly kept to the laws, until now.

"Why were you in my territory?" She added a little smile, like a gift to the poor thing.

"We need a Null." It interlaced its fingers in the wire of its cage, trying in vain to get a little closer.

A Null was something very, very difficult to find. They were mostly human, but they negated all magic around them. How could you find one without casting a spell on every single human? A flame kindled in her chest. They couldn't be talking about… but it'd make sense… but he was hers!

"Why do you need a Null?" She stepped closer.

It whimpered, falling back from the cage wall. "A mutation!" the little thing gurgled. "It's killed over two hundred people in Beika alone."

She stepped back. Whatever mutated monster this was, it didn't need a Null. It needed an exorcist, demon hunter, or a slayer. "Tell Higure that the Null is mine," she commanded. "Just kill the beast that's killing his prey."

The renfield was sobbing now, falling to its rotting knees. She dismissed the creature, sending it back to its master.

The hallway leading to Conan's room was darker than the rest of the hospital. The other rooms that attached to the hallway were vacant, their doors left open, nothing but their cold silence watching them as they passed.

Hakuba pulled his jacket closer around his broad shoulders. "Do you feel that?" he whispered in the empty hall. "It's like we're entering a crime scene."

Kaito opened the door to Conan's room and ushered Hakuba in.

Conan's lips weren't as blue as they had been the day before, at least, that's what Kaito's optimism was telling him. Hakuba halted and stiffened up when he laid eyes on the little form. The room was echoing with the sound of labored breathing. Kaito's own chest tightened sympathetically. The mass of tubes and wires attached to the still form suffocated and restrained him. There were more of those than Kaito remembered.

"Is he asleep?" Hakuba said in a low voice to Kaito.

With that, Conan stirred. His chubby little hand reached out, and hit the button to put the bed in a sitting position but slipped off because his small finger was slick with sweat. He gave up and lay back. To compensate, Hakuba and Kaito came to his bedside. Now that Kaito was closer, he could see that Conan's neck was swollen and a fever-rash had spread across his chest. Conan himself was drenched in sweat. His blood pumped to the surface of his skin to cool him down, darkening his skin with a corpse-like purple tinge because his lungs weren't fully functioning yet. His eyes opened a sliver, and a broad smile broke across his face.

"You figured... it ou-" his speech was interrupted by a rough coughing fit that shook his entire body.

It was hard to hate someone who looked so pitiful. "Yeah, Kudou, I figured it out. And I brought Hakuba, like you wanted."

"Cheater," snickered the impossible child.

"Wait a moment," Hakuba said, holding his hand up. "You just called Conan 'Kudou.'"

"Congrats, mystery solved," Kaito said, thoroughly enjoying watching Hakuba struggle to put the pieces together. "Shinichi Kudou was poisoned by a mysterious crime-syndicate and left for dead, and they accidentally turned him into the most annoying seven-year-old to walk the planet. Then he ropes a poor, unsuspecting magician into pretending to be some lady they're trying to kill, and that benevolent, kind, innocent magician almost gets blown up instead."

Conan's weak voice rasped out an angry reply, "You're forgetting... Shinichi Kudou... has to pretend ...he's someone else... even to his... own friends. His... whole life... ripped away... dead... Only a child-like... ghost... is left... Their spies... closing in... been kidnapped... almost killed... so many... times... at least... you get to... keep your body... and your life." His hands gripped and twisted the bedsheets.

Kaito and Hakuba fell silent, letting the horror of what had happened to him sink in. With no response, the harsh little voice went on, "I want... you to find... out what happened... to the Mouris… and Hattori... They didn't leave... me alone... when I was... in the hospital... before... Something must... be wrong." He looked up at the two teens before him. "Please," he added.

"It'd be our pleasure," Hakuba said with a little bow. "We'll return tomorrow with our findings."

"Thank you," Conan said. He closed his eyes, falling almost instantly back into his fevered sleep. Kaito could have sworn he heard a soft, "Don't die," added on as they left.

Hakuba fled, not stopping until they were on the street. "If I believed in ghosts," Hakuba started, his face pale. He scrutinized Kaito a moment, who was catching up to Hakuba's long-leg stride. "You didn't feel that at all, did you?"

Kaito shrugged. "Are you talking about how sick he is?"

"No." Hakuba resumed walking, this time keeping a slower pace so Kaito could walk comfortably beside him. "I mean the hallway. It's all empty, even though the rest of that wing is pretty crowded. It was dirty too, so they haven't been letting the janitor down there. It hit me when we got near – a feeling of deep unease, like there was something foul in the air, but I couldn't smell it." He stopped briefly to kick a rock down the sidewalk.

"If he really was so sick, then why isn't he in the ICU?" His voice was growing softer as he was becoming more and more lost in his thoughts.

Kaito interrupted, "What do you mean, 'if he really is so sick'?"

Hakuba arched his brow. "You didn't notice? Conan-" he stopped, and shook his head. "I mean, Kudou isn't ill enough to be in that plastic tent. He's miserable sure, but his body is fighting the infection."

"You're not a doctor," Kaito pointed out.

He nodded. "Of course not, and there may be something I'm missing," he admitted. "But, Co- Kudou had a fever and swollen lymph nodes. His immune system is doing its job. And he didn't need most of the machines connected to him. Those were there mostly so they wouldn't have to open up his clean-room tent, which he doesn't need. It's like they're trying to quarantine him without officially quarantining him, which makes no sense."

"That'll be something to ask the Mouris, I guess," Kaito said. He took a quick last glance at the hospital, and found to his surprise he could easily pick out Kudou's hospital room because it was amid a line of dark windows.

"The tent too… I could have sworn it was tinted blue. His face is probably flushed red with the fever, but we couldn't see it." Hakuba stopped suddenly. "The rash, the swollen throat, those symptoms also match an allergic reaction. I think..." he paused to grit his teeth and swallow back some anger. "I think someone is going to great pains to make it look like he's sick, and hiding him from any casual observer."

Kaito gaped, feeling the blood drain from his face. Then, he realized a small nugget of information that didn't match that assertion. "Then why did they bring me over to cheer him up?"

"Good point," Hakuba admitted. Even so, the worry didn't leave his tense face. "Unless you're a target too, for some reason."

Kaito swallowed heavily.

"But," Hakuba said suddenly in an uncharacteristic cheerful tone, "we're probably making conclusions with too little information. 'It's all a big conspiracy' is almost never the correct answer. Maybe our bias of not wanting Kudou to be sick and dying is clouding our reasoning."

The magician nodded, not sure which conclusion he should hope was the right one.