Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK

A Curse Marked Fate

23: Smoke on the Horizon

Miyano Shiho, now going by Haibara Ai, paced across the floor of the small laboratory she had set up in the basement of Professor Agasa's house. Every now and then, her gaze would flicker up to the clock hanging on the wall before her brows would furrow. Then she would resume her restless circling of the room.

Shinichi had said he would be at the professor's by six. That was only ten minutes away now.

He had also said he would be bringing a friend.

What was he thinking, telling all these people about their problems? Did he not realize the risk? She shook her head at the thought, half exasperated and half, loathed as she was to admit it, frightened. Clearly, he did not yet understand exactly what kind of people they had set themselves up against.

Sometimes she wondered if she had made the right choice in seeking him out. On the other hand, the logical part of her (the part she had always made it a point to listen to) reminded her that, thus far, he had proven her trust well placed.

Stopping in the middle of the room, she let herself drink in again the clean and modern furnishings, the shelves of books, the worktable complete with a variety of tools, and the computer humming softly on the desk. It wasn't the facilities that she was taking in though but the atmosphere. In terms of equipment, she had had access to far better at the Foundation, but here… Here, she felt free. For the first time in years, she felt—dare she say it—at home. Strange to think that she had only been living under this roof for a handful of weeks.

The old professor, though sometimes absentminded, was kind and cheerful, and his enthusiasm for his sometimes silly, sometimes disastrous, and occasionally brilliant inventions had brought a real smile to Shiho's face for the first time since her sister had passed away. She had never known a grandparent, but she had found herself beginning to think of the old man as a kind of surrogate grandfather. In this house, always full of light and exploding experiments, every passing day seemed to take her one step farther from the coldly clinical existence of her past life. And she was grateful—more grateful than she would ever be able to find the words to express. And yet…

And yet the more she grew to like this place, the more this place became home, the more she worried about the day when she would have to leave it all behind.

But that time, if it ever came, was beyond her control. For now, all she could do was to put all of her considerable intellect into protecting this place and these people from the monsters they did not yet know were already creeping into their midst.

She would have to begin by teaching Kudo Shinichi and whoever this latest recruit of his turned out to be the real darkness at the heart of the Foundation.

The long arm of the clock ticked over, and the clock read one minute to six.

Pivoting sharply, Shiho, now Ai, strode out of her lab and up the basement stairs into the house's spacious living room. There, she checked that the tapes she needed were in the VCR and turned on the TV.

X

"So this girl we're going to see is like you, right?" Kaito asked as he allowed his Sky Cycle to coast to a stop on the driveway of a large, circular building with a lot of windows. He plucked Shinichi's helmet from his head, grinning at the way the small boy's cowlick immediately sprang back up, then lifted the boy himself from the motorcycle seat.

"I can get off on my own you know," Shinichi grumbled, but he made no move to stop Kaito from picking him up and setting him down on the ground. "And yes. Her name's Miyano Shiho, but she goes by Haibara Ai now. Her curse is what they used to create the amulet that made me a child again."

Kaito whistled. "That's some curse."

"Yes, well, unfortunately, that's the problem."

"Perhaps that's only to be expected. Countless people throughout history have obsessed over the fountain of youth. It's one quest that no number of failures seems quite able to stop people from pursuing. Just look at the cosmetics industry. More than half of it is built on trying to maintain or acquire youthful good looks."

They rang the doorbell. There was the thudding of heavy footsteps. Then the door opened to reveal Professor Agasa. The old man's beaming smile turned into a look of confusion when his eyes landed on Kaito.

"Shinichi-kun?" he stuttered before his gaze dropped to where Shinichi was standing next to Kaito. He blinked again and looked back up at the Sky Mage, focusing this time on his wild bird's nest of hair. His brows furrowed. He opened his mouth then shut it again.

Shinichi cleared his throat. "Professor, this is Kuroba Kaito. Kaito, this is Professor Agasa. He's actually an inventor. You might have heard of some of his gadgets."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Kaito said, sweeping into a polite bow. "I read about your work with sound manipulating magical gadgets. They sounded really cool. I'd love the chance to see some of them."

"Oh." Both flustered and pleased by the unexpected recognition, the professor gestured for them to come in. "Well, I do have a few prototypes that I feel are quite promising. You can try them out after dinner, if you'd like. The rice will be done in another five minutes or so. Then we can eat. In the meantime, make yourselves at home."

"Thank you."

"Shinichi-kun, you should show your cousin around then take him to the living room. Ai-chan is waiting for you there. She's been recording a lot of news clippings lately. I believe she wants to go over them with you."

"All right," Shinichi called back as he slipped out of his shoes and put on the indoor slippers he always wore at Agasa's. "But Professor, Kaito's not my cousin. He's a friend I met at the magic expo. He's actually Archmage Toichi's son."

The old man's head popped back around the corner to gape in surprise at Kaito with a new level of assessment. "Ah, I see the resemblance now that you mention it. You do take after your father."

Kaito blinked. "You know my dad?"

The old man laughed. "Well, I wouldn't say that exactly. But I did meet him once when he was visiting Yukiko-san. She used to study with him, you see. But that was a long time ago. I trust your father's doing well?"

"He is."

"Good, good. I'll go put the kettle on for tea."

They found the girl they had come to see watching television in the professor's living room.

Haibara Ai both was and was not what Kaito had been expecting. Despite appearing comparable in age to his Shin-chan, she somehow managed to exude an air of confidence and maturity so that he had no trouble at all believing that she was actually older than him. Actually, he would have believed she was even older than that, but he knew better than to voice that thought out loud. She showed none of the signs of anxiety he might have expected to see in someone who was in hiding. But then he saw the guarded wariness with which she regarded him, and he knew that her calm was only a well crafted Poker Face.

He introduced himself with a smile, hoping to put her at ease and earning only a skeptical quirk of the eyebrows for his trouble. She looked him over from head to toe and back again before offering him a curt nod. This was apparently the extent of what she considered necessary as far as greetings went because she immediately turned back to Shinichi.

"I assume you follow the news," she said.

The boys traded befuddled looks at the random comment before Shinichi nodded. "It's part of being a detective. You need to know what's going on."

"Then do you remember this incident?" Ai picked up the television remote from where it had been sitting on the couch next to her and pointed it at the TV. The video that had been paused there launched back into motion as a reporter's voice began to speak, introducing the miraculous recovery of one of Daihan General Hospital's critical care patients.

The boy in question had been knocking on death's door after a year long struggle against illness until he had abruptly and completely recovered overnight.

"We don't know what happened," one nurse told the reporter. "The doctors all agreed that he had maybe a week left at best. It was tragic, especially with him being so young, but we'd done all we could. We knew all any of us could do for him now was to make sure his last days were comfortable. But then I went in to check on him in the morning like I always do, and he was completely better. And I don't just mean that his symptoms had all gone away. I mean that he didn't look like someone who had been sick for months at all. It was a miracle! That's the only way to explain it."

"I remember hearing about that," Kaito remarked when Ai hit the pause on the video. "A lot of people wanted to see the boy who recovered, but his family refused to let anyone near him. They wouldn't talk to anyone about what happened either."

"Indeed." The small girl flashed him what Kaito thought might be an approving look. "And do you remember who his family were?"

Kaito frowned, trying to remember. "I think they had something to do with investmets."

"The boy's father was the head of an extremely successful investment firm," Shinichi filled in. He had seen the news too, although he wasn't at all sure why Haibara was bringing it up now. "Is that important?"

"Perhaps. What about this man? I assume you recognize him."

This time, Ai played a clip from a report on Wakamiya Toroki, the heir to a massive hotel chain, and a scandal he had been involved in involving bribes, unsafe buildings not built to code, and workers who had been fired then relentlessly harassed at their homes, online, and subsequent workplaces for blowing the whistle. The news had been huge, and the investigation was still ongoing. It was common opinion that the mastermind, Wakamiya, would probably get away with it as he had already begun pushing the blame onto several of his underlings with the aid of his team of unscrupulous lawyers, but the police were determined to dig all the way to the bottom of the matter. And Shinichi had faith in the police.

He recapped the situation since Ai had muted the video, but she waved away his explanations with an impatient hand.

"Yes, yes, but did you know that he was suffering from a wasting disease? One that attacks the lungs and the circulatory system."

Shinichi blinked. "Well, no. I've never heard anything about that."

"Isn't that Wakamiya guy always bragging about how perfect he is whenever he comes on TV?" Kaito pointed out. "I heard one of his speeches once when they were doing a grand opening for one of his new hotels. He only talked about the hotel for like fifty seconds. He spent the rest of the time going on and on about how amazing he was and how he's the only reason his family's business is thriving. Of course he didn't mention that the family business has been sinking for the last ten years. The whole thing was just ridiculous. I kind of wanted to laugh."

"Well this isn't about his self delusions. This is about the fact that his disease also vanished overnight."

Two pairs of eyes stared at her. "You mean like with the boy at the hospital?"

"Yes. Exactly like that."

There was a brief silence during which the boys digested this new information and Ai waited, watching each of their faces in turn.

"You're saying these incidents aren't miracles," Shinichi said softly, watching Ai's face just as closely as she was watching his.

"I don't just think, I know," the little girl replied, tone clipped. "They both have ties to the Choice Foundation. More specifically, they have made large donations. And there are others just like them. I singled these two out as examples as they have been featured prominently in the news."

Shinichi frowned. "Are you saying that the Foundation healed these people in exchange for the donations?"

"Exactly."

"Well," Kaito said after a moment's pause. "It's not exactly admirable, but it's not exactly unusual or illegal either. People always charge exorbitant prices for rare or difficult services."

"I wasn't finished," Ai replied coolly. "You will recall that the Foundation's focus is Curse Mark research. My curse was not the only one they managed to place inside an amulet. There were several, some more successful than others though none entirely true to its origin. One of these involved a rather famous blessing generally referred to as the Healing Hands."

Shinichi straightened in his seat. "That's the one where the bearer has the power to heal wounds and diseases just by touching a patient, isn't it?"

"It is. And it typically comes paired with one of two curses. The first is a curse that demands that the healer feels everything his or her patient experienced during their convalescence as they perform the healing. The second form of this curse causes the patient's maladies to be transferred to the healer, who, due to his or her magic, is guaranteed to recover if given rest and food. As you have probably noticed, both forms of this curse demands a price from the healer, but it is not a dangerous price. Not physically anyway, as I suspect the mental toll an be quite great."

Ai paused to gaze at something only she could see. Not wishing to break her train of thought, the boys stayed silent and waited. Eventually, the small scientist continued.

"Three years ago, a six-year-old girl was brought to the Foundation by her parents. They knew she had a curse but not what it was. But they had seen her heal a bird with a broken wing. They would have been excited except they saw that her arm had broken. The bones mended much more quickly than they would have for anyone else, but the incident still scared her and her parents. They have been regular guests at the Choice Foundation since then. They go in for counciling and regular checkups. What they do not know is that Little Emily's Curse Mark has been made into an amulet. One that can transfer any disease from one person to another, curing the former."

"And the other person?" asked Shinichi, dread knotting in his stomach. He felt suddenly like a character trapped in a movie—knowing what was going to happen next but unable to break out of the script.

"They die," Haibara said simply. "The diseases transferred by these amulets become incurable. And the rate of deterioration for the recipiant's health inevitably speeds up. Even if they were a healthy person who could have survived the disease had they contracted it normally on their own, they would stand no chance against the amulet version. That's just how it goes. No amulet can fully utilize the powers of a Curse Mark. There will always be a flaw."

"But then," Shinichi began as a growing horror began ballooning in his chest, threatening to block off his words. "You're saying that, for those miracle recoveries—for Wakamiya and the other boy… Someone died so that they would recover."

Ai's eyes were like steel frosted over. "Yes. I don't know who, but, if you investigate, I'm sure you'll find that someone has paid their price. Perhaps willingly, perhaps not."

"They're not offering miracle cures," Kaito growled. And there was a cold fury in his eyes that Shinichi had never seen there before. "They're selling murder in the guise of good deeds."

"And that," Ai said, voice soft but cutting straight through all other sounds in the room. "Is what I needed you to understand. I know that I told you only that the Foundation is searching for eternal life, and that they believe the key to this lies with Curse Marks. But these are not people who are content to stay in the shadows, studying and working beyond the public eye. These people want more than just to live forever. For them, life has no appeal if you have no power. They want money and influence every bit as much as they want to stay young for eterminty. And they will do anything to reshape this world into the one they want to have when they finally find their Fountain of Youth."

"Do you understand now?" She leveled her gaze at Shinichi. "This is about more than just a handful of ambitious scientists. This is a movement centered on the greedy and the selfish. It's still small now. But with the progress they've made these last few years, it isn't going to stay small for long. If it is allowed to grow…"

She let the thought hang, allowing them to fill in the rest for themselves. It was unfortunately easy to imagine what might follow. The world would most certainly change, it was unlikely to be for the better.

TBC

A.N: I have to say, this story is turning out way longer than I planned… But anyhow! I will be posting a 4-chapter DCMK/Harry Potter fusion (KaiShin of course) before I get back to this. You're welcome to check it out. Until next time then. Take care! :)