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A Curse Marked Fate

7: Lucky Misfortunes

The cheers of a televised crowd and Kogoro's manic hollering crashed over them the instant Ran pushed open the Mouri Agency door. The man was jumping up and down in front of the television as, on screen, a herd of racehorses galloped down the tracks. The trio of newcomers performed a collective cringe at the noise. To no one's surprise, the man didn't notice their arrival at all.

"Dad? Dad!" Ran shouted over the din. "You have a client!"

She had to repeat herself twice more before the lanky man finally took note. He pivoted about with a befuddled expression, one arm still upraised. One look into his eyes told Ran and Shinichi that he was more than a little inebriated.

"Oh Dad," Ran sighed in mixed exasperation and embarrassment. "I'm really sorry about this. Just wait here a moment, all right?" she said apologetically to their guest before grabbing her father and dragging him into the kitchen. Shinichi could hear her scolding the man in hushed tones beneath the sound of running water.

"You can sit anywhere," he told their guest, gesturing to the couches as he moved to turn off the television. The sudden cessation of noise was almost a physical shock.

The little girl perched on the edge of one of the couch seats with her hands folded primly on her knees. She never took her eyes off Shinichi as he climbed onto the couch opposite her. He noted again the odd intensity of her stare.

Shifting uneasily in his seat, he cleared his throat. But she spoke before he could utter a word.

"You're Kudo Shinichi, aren't you?"

Shinichi sat there with his mouth open for several seconds before he forced a nervous and extremely unconvincing laugh. "I guess you noticed that we look alike. Ran-neechan says it's really amazing. She says I look just like Shinichi-niichan did when he was my age."

The corners of the girl's lips twitched upward. It was a peculiar smile—like she wasn't used to making such expressions and wasn't sure how to smile but was too amused not to make the attempt. "No. I wasn't talking about you resembling Kudo. I meant that that is who you are."

"My name is Edogawa Conan," he corrected her, struggling to keep his anxiety hidden behind a façade of childish ignorance. "I'm Shinichi-niichan's cousin. I came here because I was hoping I'd be able to learn some more about being a detective from him and Uncle Kogoro, but, when I got here, Shinichi-niichan had already left for America. But the Mouris are letting me stay here while he's away since they have the room."

"I suppose that's as good a cover story as any," the little girl murmured, tone still calm and beliefs unshaken. "But it will only be a matter of time before they realize the truth."

Shinichi opened his mouth then shut it again. Who was this girl? The way she talked and her certainty that he was Kudo Shinichi… It was almost as though…

"Are you…" he started then stopped, not sure how to phrase the question without giving himself away. As it turned out, his concerns were wasted.

"Like you?" the girl finished for him. "Indeed I am. In more ways than one, I expect."

The two 'children' sat regarding one another in a tense silence as Shinichi digested the odd girl's words and tried to decide how he was supposed to respond. She didn't seem to be here to hurt him or the Mouris, but she knew too much to just be another victim of circumstance like he had been. After all, a mere fellow victim would have no reason to even suspect that there was someone else like her or him out there. He certainly hadn't considered the possibility as he had assumed that the only reason he was alive now was that his Curse Mark had saved him. That suggested that this girl must be connected to the men who had assaulted him in some way.

Shinichi's thoughts were still whirling when Ran returned with a tray of teacups and a steaming pot of tea. She set the tray down then looked from one child to the other and back.

She frowned. "What's going on here?"

Later, Shinichi would look back on that moment and marvel at the courage that it must have taken for the stranger to make the decision she made—to take that leap of faith and put her trust in a detective she knew only by reputation and his surrogate family, who she knew nothing about at all.

She sat there, small shoulders squared and face serene as she spoke, "My name is Miyano Shiho, and I am eighteen years old. I am here because I need your help—and because you need mine."

X

They talked all the way through the night and well into the morning.

Shiho, it turned out, was indeed connected to the men Shinichi had seen at the amusement park. She had been both a researcher and a research subject at the Choice Foundation where her parents, both doctors, had worked as medical researchers up until they had died in a freak accident, leaving her a ward of the Foundation.

"We were thinking about visiting them," Ran gasped at the news.

The small girl smiled a very thin smile. "It's a good thing you didn't."

The Choice Foundation, she explained, was merely the shiny front for a much darker nest of ambitions. It was true that they were dedicated to studying Curse Marks, but though their research did involve studying ways to alter curses, they were not doing so out of some altruistic desire to help people.

"Curse Marks contain powerful magic," Shiho said, eyes dark with memories. "Magic that they want to control." Rolling the sleeve of her slightly tattered sweater up as far as it would go, she showed them a dark blue birthmark on her upper arm just below the shoulder. They all recognized the familiar interlocked rings of a Curse Mark, but what made Shinichi draw in a sharp breath was that he recognized this Mark. It was the same one that had burned blue in his mind that evening when those men had tried to kill him.

"My blessing allows me to turn back my own biological clock," Shiho said, her matter-of-fact tone belying the astounding nature of her revelations. "However, my curse is that I have one hundred years to use—that includes the time that passes in the ordinary course of life. By turning my own clock back by ten years now and adding on the time I've used before that, I have used up twenty nine so far. Once I have used all one hundred years, I will die no matter what my age or physical condition at the time. Of course, that's assuming I don't get killed before that. The Foundation was very interested in my blessing. They thought it might hold the key to eternal youth."

"But you just said—" Ran started only to be cut off by a raised hand.

"Not for me. But they thought they could use my blessing to stay young."

"What do you mean by use your blessing?" Shinichi asked. Curse Marks weren't just some form of spell, after all. They were not things that could be learned or emulated. Or so he had been taught.

Apparently, the Foundation had had other ideas. The Curse Mark and its powers were tied to the particular people who bore them, true, but, when they exerted their curses or blessings, magic was indeed involved. And since that was the case, those energies could be studied, analyzed, and maybe even duplicated.

"Most of their attempts were complete failures," Shiho said with clear contempt. "But they recently had a breakthrough. They found a way to use some of a Curse Marked person's blood to create an amulet that can then be used to exercise that person's curse or blessing."

Shinichi inhaled sharply, trying not to let the horrified disgust he felt at the news show on his face. "They use blood?"

The girl shrugged. "They tried hair first since it's easy to collect surreptitiously, but that didn't work. Now they collect blood samples under the guise of medical research and basic health analysis. It's not a harmful process, though I suppose it sounds grizzly. Most of their subjects believe they're just getting normal blood tests."

"So you're saying that all they need to create Curse Mark amulets is a blood sample from a cursed person?"

"Technically. Though the amulets lose their power if the source person passes away as every Curse Mark is intimately tied to its bearer."

But a magical breakthrough or not, the curse amulets were still unreliable and, it seemed, uncontrollable. What, for Shiho, was the power to turn her physical clock backward to whatever point she chose, became a deadly regression when used on anyone else that simply turned their bodies back in time all the way until they ceased to exist. So instead of a tool for capturing eternal youth, the Foundation had created the perfect spell for assassinations—something that they were already taking advantage of, though they were taking care not to overplay their hand lest it draw attention.

"But what they really want is true immortality," the little girl said, letting her sleeve slide back down to cover the Mark of her fate. "You were lucky that you met them when you did."

"What do you mean?"

"They recently acquired data from the government's registries on all Japanese citizens who carry Curse Marks. I believe you saw the man who provided it. He's one of the Foundation's financial backers, and he was demanding proof that their research was progressing in exchange for the registry information. Anyway, your information was in there too along with the image of your Mark. I recognized the Blessing of the Cat and guessed that you had likely survived."

Shinichi's blood ran cold. "So they know too."

The girl's lips quirked into a sardonic smile. "Don't worry. I wiped your information from the database before I left. Your blessing is one they would love to get their hands on. If they'd known you had it when they met you, they would have taken you captive instead of using you to demonstrate the power of the amulets they'd created."

Apparently, Shinichi had the dubious honor of being one of only two human subjects that the regression amulet had been tested on (it seemed his curse had saved not only his life that night but also the life of an innocent dog). That being said, the men who had used it on him had given the Foundation researchers his description and a report of what they had witnessed of its effects after the fact, which was how Shiho had connected the dots. He had also been lucky that the three men had stayed only long enough to see that the regression was indeed occurring before fleeing the scene for fear of being spotted by some passing teenagers. Luckier still, she told him, his attackers hadn't actually known who he was, though she warned him that they may make the connection at some point even without the information she had deleted from their databases.

It was a lot to take in. Shiho had brought them the answers to many of the questions they had been struggling to solve, but she had also brought with her an entirely new slew of questions and problems.

"You said you needed our help though," Shinichi said. "What exactly did you want our help for?"

A shadow fell over Shiho's face as she looked down into her teacup. For the first time since she had arrived at their doorstep, she appeared uncertain and small. "I…need somewhere to hide."

"From the Foundation?" asked Ran.

The younger girl nodded. "As I told you earlier, my parents were medical researchers at the Choice Foundation for as far back as I can remember. I grew up there, and I followed in their footsteps. As I'm sure you know, people with Curse Marks wield unusual magical abilities. Mine allows me to do things like temporarily suspend a living creature in time and to analyze their physical status. I knew I could do a lot as a medical professional, and I hoped to explore more ways in which I could use my abilities to advance medicine and healthcare. But I realized that the people in charge of the Foundation don't really care about those sorts of things. Their interest in medicine is entirely selfish, and if they find what they want, they will use it only to advance themselves. That was not the kind of work I wanted to be part of—that's not the kind of use I want my research to be put to. So I left. But they want the blessing that comes with my Curse Mark, so they'll come looking for me."

"Why didn't you go to the police though?" asked Ran. "Wouldn't they be much more capable of protecting you? I mean, Dad's a detective, but Shinichi and I are just high school students."

"I came to you because you would know my story was true. You have experienced a part of it yourself. And I was fairly certain that you would not be tempted by the promises that the Foundation uses to entice people into its clutches."

Her points were sensible, and neither Ran nor Shinichi were the sort to turn away an earnest plea for help (Kogoro voiced no opinions on the matter because he had fallen asleep mere minutes into Shiho's story and now lay snoring draped over his desk). With her father out cold, Ran was the master of the house, so she declared that Shiho could stay for the time being. She could bunk in Ran's room for now, though they would all have to put their heads together about a plausible story to tell the neighbors. It would have to be a temporary arrangement though because, as Shiho herself pointed out, she would not be able to conduct any research while under the same roof as Mouri Kogoro, whose Curse Mark was one that the Foundation wanted very much to stay away from.

"I don't know if I can reverse what they did to you," she told Shinichi. "But I will try if you want me to."

He'd returned her serious gaze with a lopsided smile of his own and shrugged. "I would appreciate it. I wasn't really looking forward to repeating my entire school career. But it's all right if you can't. We'll help you either way. Though, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to hear more about the Foundation when you feel up to it."

She looked at him quizzically. "What for?"

"Well, you said I was the second human they tested your amulets on."

"That's right. The first was Tachibana Teuki."

Shinichi had heard that name before. "He was that government official who went missing. The one that wanted to ban all Curse Mark related research."

Shiho nodded. "The Foundation found him to be inconvenient."

"So when he disappeared…"

"They used the first amulet on him. After the one they used on you, they should have five more. Now that I'm not with them, they will be more careful when and on who they use the rest, I suspect."

"That's why we need to learn more," Shinichi said. "They've already killed and might do it again. They're trying to achieve something that could throw the entire world out of order. It would be irresponsible of us to just let them go on doing whatever it is they're doing since we know what they're hiding behind the scenes."

Shiho studied him for a long moment before the corners of her lips quirked up into a sardonic smile. "I see. Well, I will tell you what I can. But it will have to wait for when we have more time. It's a very long story."

TBC