Scarborough Fair

Summary: Kuroba Kaito finds himself in a sticky situation when he's kidnapped by a man who's also guilty for the abduction of three others. How can even the Kaitou Kid escape drug-induced paralysis, a psychotic doctor, a blackmailed housekeeper, and a mansion filled with traps and dungeons?

Pairings: Very minor hints.

A/N: I own nothing except Dr. Hailey, Anita Hailey (though I don't own their names), Kojima Daisuke, Diana, Colin, Armagnac, Champagne, Cognac, Amaretto (though I don't own their designs) and 'A'. Okita Soshi and Nagashima Shigeo are actual DC people. Think Yaiba and Yoban Saado. Title comes from Simon and Garkunkel song. Also loosely based around Mothy's song, 'Little Garden Girl' feat. Hatsune Miku. May be called alternate name of 'Clockwork Lullaby 2'.

Prequel: "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"

Side Story: "Clockwork Relations"

The door opened just when his hand was at his other wrist. A few more minutes, and he would have gotten to the IV drip.

'Shit,' he thought-swore. All that work, and everything he'd been working towards was about to be reduced to absolute nothing. He felt like tearing his hair out, only he couldn't. And since that was the reason for his immobility, it really just accomplished nothing. Except maybe an impenetrable Poker Face.

And then . . .

His eyes fell on the newcomer, and his brain registered the image, consciousness taking a trip down memory lane to the Kirin's Horn heist, when he'd spent two hours running from the police, wondering how they were finding him so easily till Jii had magically appeared and ripped the sign alerting everyone of his identity off his back. Hard to forget details from a heist when his very own tricks had been used against him to an extent where his entire body was aching by the next day.

Even harder to forget about the girl that looked identical to the doll currently having a tea party with him.

'What? WHAT?! That's the creepy girl! Why the hell is she here?!'

He gritted his teeth. Where there was smoke, there was fire. Where the crew of child detectives were. . . . 'Tantei-kun, prepare to say hello to an eternity of pink hair.'

Okita and Kojima, apparently, also found the random appearance of a seven-year old girl – who looked almost exactly like the mannequin they were supposed to be 'entertaining' – quite unbelievable, because their eye sizes doubled in size.

Nagashima blinked questioningly at him. The baseball player had his back to the door, and he couldn't see who had just snuck into the room.

Well, he was going to have to live with that curiosity, because Kaito had no wish to give an explanation via Morse code through blinking. He had more pressing issues, and no one else here other than him knew Morse code (morons). His ears, sensitive due to his line of business, picked up the sounds of someone walking down the hall. Apparently Okita heard it too, because he suddenly looked at the door with wide eyes. The girl – Haibara Ai – glanced at the door she had just closed, hearing the same thing, before darting under the safety of the bureau at the corner of the room.

The footsteps were now loud enough for the other two to pick up, and when the door opened, they greeted the doctor with forced silence and wary looks.

He obviously didn't care about them. "Anita," he said, all smiles and rainbows, before his expression turned into one of pained duty. "Boys."

Oh, like they were so enthusiastic to be here.

"Daddy's sorry," he apologized to the lifeless doll that could have been the older version of the girl hiding under the desk in the corner. "But he has to take you somewhere safe. Bad people are coming, yes they are . . . and daddy wants you to be safe."

Kaito just kept staring at the doctor. He didn't let his eyes flicker to the direction where Haibara Ai was hiding – she must have hidden under the desk to not be seen by the doctor. She knew something about him, but he didn't know she was here yet. Judging from the stories he heard (both from Inspector Nakamouri as 'Kaito-kun' and in disguise amongst police officers during Kid heists, of course) the Detective Boys got into a lot of trouble. It wouldn't have surprised him if they had unintentionally ended up being the trigger for the doctor going on a random spree of kidnappings.

The doctor wheeled 'Anita' out, and came back in a few minutes. "I'm afraid you boys will have to hide as well," he said, though there wasn't much apology in his voice.

And so, Kaito found himself being wheeled to some kind of closet that turned out to be an entrance to a downward sloping tunnel that lead to some kind of bomb shelter – a bomb shelter with prison cells. Six of them.

The doctor placed them in separate cells, and (much to his extreme frustration and the worst FML moment of his life) unplugged the drip from the needle in his arm. Because the extreme annoyance and devastation he had felt when his efforts for trying to free them all from this place had been smashed to dust wasn't enough. No, now the doctor had to unplug him from the drug dripping cursed thing, just like that.

Kaito felt, just for that small space of time, like all his efforts in making his hand crawl desperately towards that stupid needle in his arm had all been for nothing.

It was, but that didn't keep him depressed for long. When the doctor closed the bomb shelter's door (and locked it) Kaito felt his hand's mobility return.

With some difficulty, he clenched his fist. And then opened it. Close, open, close, open.

Eventually, it stopped trembling like a hand belonging to a drug addict. By that time – it could have been hours, his internal clock was messed up and probably wrong– he could move most of his upper body.

Good enough. He'd crawl.

Kaito took a deep breath, and threw himself off his wheelchair, meeting the ground with the palms of his hand, bending his elbows, and limply rolling on the concrete floor to lessen the damage and pain. He wasn't hurt.

"Ya arrigh'?" a slurred voice floated towards him from somewhere. It sounded like Okita was regaining the use of his tongue. He and Nagashima would recover faster – they exercised regularly, and were sportsmen. Kojima would have to take longer to wear out the drugs in his system.

"Yeah," he mumbled back as he began to crawl towards the lock using only his arms. With the amount of time he spent on that hang glider of his, it was a piece of cake.

Cake. When he got home, he'd get cake. Chocolate cake. And chocolate ice cream. And chocolate ice cream soda, because he liked it.

But no fish. He shuddered at the thought of the scaly evil things, and then pulled himself up using the bars of his jail cell. The lock was large, bulky, and old-fashioned, the kind that required a key. Unless it had some kind of special electronic chip in it like the one they used in the cooking show Aoko liked to watch, he could pop it open with wire-

Crap. Major, serious, god-damned crap.

Kaito groaned, and smashed his head against the steel bar, careful to not hit it too hard. A concussion would do no one good. Wire. He didn't have wire. Or lockpicks. Actually, all he had was the fancy costume on him, and fat lot of good it did him now. He'd have traded it for a paper clip.

Falling off Touto Tower with Aoko handcuffed to that motorcycle had definitely been easier.

"Hey," he called as loud as he could. It wasn't that loud, but he knew the other three could hear him. "Any of you have some kind of wire on you?"

"Aur yu sturpid?" the slurred but still rude voice of Kojima replied first.

"No."

"No."

Damn it, damn it, damn it, he was so close! So close! He began to raise his hand to his temples, feeling a migraine come on, when he saw the needle still stuck in his arm.

That's right. There was the needle. And if he remembered correctly . . . .

He hastily crawled back with mostly his arms and some help from his legs, and knocked the IV drip to the ground. Like he'd thought, the clear plastic bag of the paralyzing drug had been tied to the pole with wire. A length that would fit into the lock, and still have some left over to grab onto. They probably didn't use wire like this for IV drips in actual hospitals, but Kaito wasn't complaining about the difference here.

He untied it as quickly as his fingers could before crawling – this time on his arms and knees – back to the lock.

"We're," he grunted as he set out to work with the wire and the needle in his hands. "Getting – out – of – this – place."

Two weak cheers and one moan that could have meant anything rang out in the room after his declaration.

All four of the boys – all practically mirror images of Kudo-kun – were wheeled out, one by one. None of them betrayed her presence in the room, though, judging by their lack of movement and the IVs hooked up to them, they really couldn't tell on her any more than they could run out of this place.

Ai stretched, trying to get rid of the cramp in her thigh. When she didn't hear the doctor come back, she crawled out from beneath the bureau. Okay, so Dr. Hailey was guilty, just like the theory based on circumstantial evidence had said. Great. Now she was going to grab Kudo-kun and get out of here.

She fumbled for her badge, and turned it on. "Kudo-kun?" she spoke into it, and waited. No response. He probably had it off so it didn't go off in a crucial moment and give away his presence.

She pinned it back to her shirt and left the room quietly. The hallways seemed much longer than they'd been on the way here, and her footsteps sounded so much louder.

In front of Anita's room, she paused. The doctor had called the doll (the thing that looked disturbingly like her real body) 'Anita'. Had he gone mad, and decided to treat one of his creations as a living, breathing being? Treat it like a daughter?

Her own parents were dead. Her sister had been murdered. Yet she didn't go around naming dolls after her dead family.

But then again, she'd never really liked dolls.

She shook herself out of it. Enough of this random, wistful thinking. It was time to get out of here.

Ai walked down and turned at the corner of the hallway, and came face to face with the mad genius doctor.

Chiba ran in, chubby face red with sudden exercise he wasn't really used to. "I've got the warrant!" he panted. "Just like you wanted, sir!"

Inspector Megure snatched it out of his hands. "Let's go!" he roared, waving the piece of paper that would allow them to get inside the property of one Dr. Andrew Hailey.

Takagi hastily grabbed his notebook and shoved it into his pocket. "Please wait here, Smith-san," he told the worried husband of the missing woman. "Should anything go wrong, no civilian should be there."

The man's eyes widened with panic. "There's not going to be anything going wrong," Takagi added with emphasis before the frazzled man could die of stress and/or overexcited nerves. "But an extra presence – a civilian – would distract the police, and then something could go wrong."

Colin Smith slumped. "You're saying I'll get in the way."

He could have been nice, but that really took up time. "Kind of . . . ."

The corners of his mouth twitched. "I understand. Just get my wife back, would you?"

Takagi blinked. That had been surprisingly easy. He was very reasonable, and thinking logical despite the pressing circumstances he was in. Admirable. "I will. I swear."

Then he hurried off before everyone could leave him behind. Sato gave him an earful on getting distracted. "You'll get killed that way," she scolded. "You want to be known as the guy that died while not paying proper attention?"

"No, ma'am," he sighed, but couldn't quite help the smile that crawled up onto his face.

With the distraction of the mass-moving officers, no one paid attention to Colin Smith, who went back to sitting in the waiting area. With a surprisingly blank face for a man in his supposed position, he took out a cell phone and dialed a number.

The person on the other end picked up immediately. "Amaretto," she whispered, like she was afraid of being overheard.

"It's Cognac," his face relaxed for a second at her voice before hardening again. "Your time is nearly up. Do you have the objectives?"

"I do, and they're secure."

"Good. Do what you must."

"I will," Amaretto paused. "I love you."

Cognac took a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I love you too. Now get back without dying, and then we'll celebrate."

She hung up. He had no doubt that the phone would be destroyed.

The next number was one he'd memorized when they had first taught him the number sequence. If punched into an older cell phone, the type that made different noises when the buttons were pressed, the number would have sounded like the first few notes of a children's song.

His cell phone was a smart phone, and didn't have that function. He typed in a message reporting Amaretto's success at the mission she'd been sent on, and pressed the section of the screen that would give the command for the message to be dispatched. Within moments, he received a reply.

'You won't get many favours from me for a while.'

The warning was clear. Insubordination wouldn't be tolerated again, not even with a supervisor or a high-ranking scientist.

Cognac pocketed his phone and went back to being Colin Smith, a man frantically worried about the safety of his wife.

Sorry for the late update . . . but on the bright side, I finished two side stories - like Clockwork Relations - in this series, and got the outline for the sequel written out. I'll publish them when I complete this story.