***Sorry for the late update(s) m(_)m In an unrelated note I had a dream the other night. It had something to do with Rin ripping Len off to pieces, organs by organs. I watched House and Dexter before I went to sleep so that explained the flying organs. ***

Chapter 14: Maze

'What's important right now is to stop the bleeding.' Len said to himself, as he was having a hard time trying to wrap his wound. The only thing he could use there was his own vest.

Then, it happened again.

Everything around him turned black, and for a heartbeat he just knew he blacked out, something he still hadn't gotten used to ye. What happened during every blackout he gets? Len took out his notebook and read through the entries. He didn't want to die yet. Despite his acknowledgement that he could only end up in bad end, he still didn't want to die.

"Knock, knock." Apparently Len was thinking too hard and he didn't even notice the footsteps. Kaito opened the door, wearing his usual cheerful smiley self and opened the cell door. "How are you, my lovely friend?"

"I've been better." He noticed that not only was Kaito wearing his smiley... Face, he looked more than that. He looked far more cheerful than that. "...Did something good happen?"

"That's not important right now, I'm pretty sure you've noticed the ship's not moving. Well, we've reached shore by now. So I need you to wear this blindfold for me, Mayu's orders." He helped him wear his blindfold and continued. "After this we're going to ride the train, it's a two hour trip. That done, we'll ride a carriage up and we'll reach our destination."

"Why do you want me to wear this blindfold? What's there for me to see?" It didn't make all that sense to him. What was Mayu trying to hide? The way to his doom?

"I don't know, that girl's abnormal." Kaito shrugged, Len's blindfold finally on tight. "Once we're there, you'll be taken to a cell. Try and get yourself out and I'll get Rin out somehow."

"Somehow."

"Yes, somehow. We'll live through everything somehow." Kaito pulled him up and led him out of the cell. "If we're lucky enough, and trust me we haven't been real lucky the past week, you might get the same cell as Rin."

"How big is this 'prison' anyway?"

"As big as your mansion, I guess. There are lots of 'prisons' like these; the one we're going is probably the smallest one there."

"I can't imagine how much money you people get every month to keep everything running up so well." The ocean, Len could finally smell them. Being locked up for so long... he smelt freedom. At least the illusion of it.

"More than you could imagine." Kaito patted his shoulder. "You know, if you were well, I'd push you off the ship right now so you don't need to go through what's going to happen next."

"...What?"

"Ah, nothing. You'll be locked up in a coffin up while we're riding the train. Not sure why, Mayu's orders." Kaito said blankly.

"I'll be using a blindfold even though I'll be locked up in a coffin?" It made him want to open his blindfold more. He just couldn't come up with a reason on to why Mayu would want to hide anything from him. He'd die in two days anyway.

"I don't know what went in her head, but frankly I'm too afraid to disobey her. Sorry man."

Len woke up, his fingers felt all numb. He forced himself to open both his eyes and found himself lying on an empty grey hallway; he hesitated for a second and wondered if he was dreaming at the moment. In the middle of the hallway with no other soul but himself. Where was he? And more importantly what happened? Len tried to stand up and reached for the plain white wall, solid and hard. He started to walk and knock for every step he took. The hallway didn't look like it had an end, at the moment at least. There's an end in every tunnel, nothing is endless. Unless it was a circle.

What was he doing before... In a coffin, he remembered that but he didn't remember 'leaving' the coffin. Maybe someone carried him out the coffin and just left him there? If everything was as "planned" (as Kaito said it would be) he should be in his cell, not in the middle of the hallway. It didn't look like a cell at all; it was just a long endless narrow hallway. If he couldn't find an exit soon, or at least a room, or a door, anything, maybe that really was his cell. Who knows?

'I should put a mark...' Len took his notebook out from his pocket and ripped a small piece a paper from it. He let it fall on the ground... Hopefully he would never see that paper again.

He hadn't noticed anything different from the walls he'd been knocking the whole time, he was hoping for something hollow along the way. All he did was walk in a straight line, and still nothing in sight. For some reason, the hallway there... It reminded him of the hospital he once visited when he was young; he couldn't remember why he was there in the first place, though as his father always say, a hospital is a deadly place, "most" hospitals that is, and that was what his father told him. "Gateway of deaths", "Gateway to hell". The failure rate of surgeries was far higher than successful surgeries. People have more chances of catching an infection, virus, or germs in hospitals. The lucky and wealthy ones would call a doctor to home, while the poor on the other hand have to visit the hospital with not much guarantee of being cured. Len wasn't sure how many times his father told him the hospital 'talk', though for every talk he'd always wonder why people even bother to go there in the first place.

'Why does this remind me of a hospital again...?' Len thought back. Well, some significant differences would be the fact that there were no doctors, nurses, patients, or doors there. 'It's just... Another building yet... It has an aura of a hospital or some sort.' Len took a deep breath... there was a familiar smell, herb? Medicine? Cologne? It was on the tip of his tongue. It was a smell that reminded him of hospitals.

Len stopped walking at the moment and realized something was out of place. Something which he should have noticed earlier. Since the time he woke up, he didn't feel dizzy, his head didn't throb every other five seconds and he didn't black out at all. Would that be a good sign or a bad sign? It might be the end of his head's suffering, but it could be the beginning of something far worse than that.

With five luggage in his hands, Kaito struggled to open the door knob to Mayu's office. Sure, he could just put down the luggage first and then open the door knob, but life wasn't that simple for him. Mayu mentioned earlier; the second he put down the luggage down the floor before they reached her room, it would explode. Of course that could be just her way of saying "slack off and I'll kill you" but with Mayu, it could actually be true. On his second attempt, Kaito finally opened the door and set the luggage he'd been carrying for over twenty minutes down.

"It's nice to be back home!" Mayu stretched her arms and sat on her chair.

"Do you still need me? Or can I take my leave now?" He made it sound like he wasn't in much of a hurry.

"You can go if you want; you can stay if you want." She pulled out her doll from her pocket and put it on her table. Mayu's office / room, was colorful, that's what she'd always say. Once you step in you have that child-like feeling, like stepping in to a luxurious toy store. Unless you knew who you were really facing, her room wasn't all that scary.

"By the way, have you decided who you would kill? He's in the same cell as that girl, right?" Kaito was a bit forward on that, but he can't help it.

"I thought a bit of a challenge would be fun, but knowing him, he should find his way out just about now. He's in a maze, you see."

"We have a maze here?" He never heard of a maze inside that building... Well, that building was already a maze itself for 'non-workers' there. One room and another (a special exception would be Mayu's room) was completely alike, it was a five story building with over fifty rooms and each of them were completely alike; white walls and grey marble floors with most of the furniture such as chairs or tables made of wood. Other than the fact that every room / hallway looked like an exact copy of itself, there were no signs or marks saying "prisoner room here" or "emergency exit here", even the toilet there had no male / female gender sign.

"I call it a maze, but it's really just our torture chamber for some victims."

"Hnn... Will he be fine by himself?" As much as Kaito would love to help Len, it'd be too risky. He had no idea where the both the entrance and exit were. It exist, he knew that much, somewhere around the building; he just wasn't sure "where" it was. Hell, it was the first time he even knew the maze existed in the first place. "You said you want him live until the last day, right?"

"I'm pretty sure he could take care of himself there." Mayu stayed silent for a moment and looked as if she was reconsidering her own words. "Then again, he should be in the verge of dying, not to mention the wounds all over his body, so he might not make it. Either way, I think it's fun to imagine his moves."

"If you say so." Kaito let out a sigh, he tried to calm himself down, or rather, he was trying to stop himself to panic in the first place. Mayu seemed to trust Len enough, a part of her had faith thathe was going to make it out alive. Did he had enough faith in Len?

"Why don't you stay here for a while, though? Let's make a bet." Mayu pointed the chair opposite to her, as usual it wasn't an offer, it was a command. "I bet he's going to find us and enter this room within an hour."

Len didn't like where he was headed. At first it was the familiar hospital-like smell, a minute walk later he could sense a disturbing smell in the air, something he knew well of. It was the smell of something rotten and he was close to it. With the rotten smell in mind, there were a few possibilities Len think could happen or had happened there, if what came to his mind first as to what caused the smell in the first place was true of course. Theory number one: he could be in some sort of graveyard; a place Mayu keeps all of her dead victims. Theory number two: it was a trap victims had fallen to and their bodies had been there ever since. If that was true he should turn around and leave, the problem was; there was no other place to 'leave'. Theory number three: he really was in the afterlife and that hell had rotten smell. That theory was unlikely.

For every step he took, Len felt anxious. The scent became stronger and stronger he had to cover his mouth and nose with his hand. He wasn't sure what made him did it, but Len decided to run, until he finally reached an intersection. The difference between the path on the left and the path on the right was clear at first sight. To his left was a path covered in blood and numerous corpses as far as his eyes could see, blood splatter around the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling, while to his right was a 'normal' path, empty and clean with no blood whatsoever. Out of the two paths, the right path seemed safe, though his instincts cried out the fact that there were more traps there than the path on the left.

It didn't take him long to make a decision, he'd go both of the paths there. First, he wanted to examine the corpses on the left path. He wasn't sure how long the hallway was, but there were at least four corpses for every meter there. Len crouched down on the corpse near him and looked closely. It was the body of a man around his mid-thirties, judging by his attire he looked like a peasant; his mouth was wide open many of his teeth were missing. That man there had lost several of his fingers, in fact he only had four fingers left on his right hand, the rest of his fingers were nowhere near him. Len noticed his skull looked oddly deformed, and found the man's head must've been bashed with something. There were blood on his shirt and pants, though nothing from the inside.

Before he could conclude anything Len went on to check two more of the corpses. The three of them had some things in common: several of their fingers and teeth were missing, they all received a large blow on the head, and they were all men. The only way to judge their background was their clothes; the first man was a peasant, the second seemed to be a noble, and the third looked middle-class. Many things didn't seem in place there, it was odd. There was blood everywhere, yet their wounds didn't seem enough to let out such amount of blood. Where did the blood from the walls come from? And where were their fingers and teeth?

Len had a guess on where he actually was and he didn't like it one bit. It was a trap from the beginning; somebody had put him there (at least that way the 'after life' theory could be crossed out). The blood splatter on the left path was just a decoy; he assumed it was some sort of distraction. The corpses there were victims of torture, and not just 'ordinary' torture, they were interrogated before. It had been done since decades before, the use of tong in interrogation; people would forcefully cut their victims' fingers and pull out their teeth to extract information; in some parts of the world it was common. Whether they gave in their information or not, it didn't matter, they all received a large blow to the back of their head. Of course being a detective, he may mislead and lie to suspects during interrogation, but there were lines he could never cross when it comes down to interrogation.

They weren't interrogated there on the hallway, which explained their missing fingers and teeth. If 'they', the interrogators, had time to clean up their mess with their teeth and fingers then they'd have time to burn the corpses or bury them somewhere rather than taking them all to a 'random' hallway. It was a distraction, 'they' purposely put corpses there and for what? What were 'they' trying to distract him from?

Suddenly, it clicked. He couldn't believe he didn't notice it earlier.

He knew just where to go.

"So, what will you put on the line? I bet he's going to find us within an hour. Unless he's still passed out then I don't think it's possible then." It looked like Mayu was reconsidering her bet. "Is he awake or isn't he..."

"I have to disagree on you in this one; I don't think we'll be the first people he'd look for. The second you see him you're just going to catch him and put him somewhere else, right?"

"He doesn't have much of a choice." Mayu shrugged. "What do you want to do for the next one hour?"

Neither of the two answered the question, and the first to break the awkward silence surrounding the room was a loud thump on right side of the wall. Kaito averted his attention to the colorful empty wall on his right as the thumping sound grew harder. Mayu frowned and walked towards the wall.

"We haven't even decided what to bet on..." She pressed (what Kaito thought was) the light switch, the wall was a sliding door all along and Mayu gently slid it. Whoever designed the building there had to be given some credits. "There he is!"

It was hard to decide whether it was good news or bad news to see Len again. He was alive and that was great, but he was facing Mayu and that's nowhere near great, it's could never be great. Mayu called that 'maze' earlier a "torture chamber" or something along the lines, though other than his previous wounds and droopy eyes it didn't look like he was hurt or tortured or anything.

"Take a seat there and tell us how you escaped from there." She pointed to Kaito and told him to stand up, telepathically.

"The smell was odd. If I had to estimate everything; the walk from the spot I started, and the intersection where I found corpses was around eight meters or so. The number of corpses there were around twenty, and some had died a week or two before." Len sat down and started off. He tried to be alert as possible around Mayu, he could be killed on the spot right there and then. He didn't like the fact that he had to sit face to face to her. Len was close, really close; he was in the same building as Rin was and he didn't want anything to ruin that chance to see her again. "If the smell of the corpses was so strong I should've smelled it on the spot where I first woke up. There had to be a hole or some sort, a proper air ventilation somewhere around that place, that was the only lead I had and apparently that 'hole' was large enough for me to fit in there."

"I'm pretty sure you skipped one little detail but I'll let that slide. Somehow you ended up here though, you must've heard us talking." Mayu smiled. "Now that you're out, I bet you want to find that girl, right?"

"Yes." Len didn't care if that was an obvious rhetorical question, would she be 'kind' enough to tell him where Rin is and better yet put him in the same cell as she was in one piece?

"One final quest for you, then. Watch closely." Mayu took out a mirror from her desk and stood up; she dropped the mirror to the ground and stepped on them with her heels. All what was left from the mirror was its frame and shattered pieces of the mirror. Len stood up from his seat surprised and confused.

"I want you to return this mirror to its previous form."