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A Curse Marked Fate

42: The Edogawas

"Thank you for inviting us over for dinner," Ran said to Professor Agasa as she and her father slipped into their shoes and jackets.

"And thank you for the fruit tarts," the professor replied warmly. "They were delicious."

The idle chatter continued for a few minutes more before the Mouris finally said their goodbyes. Some of these goodbyes were directed to Shinichi, who would be spending the night at the professor's along with Kaito. The story they had told the Mouris was that the two boys would be helping Agasa and Ai out testing some prototypes he had recently completed, at least one of which needed to be tested overnight. Since this was not the first type that Shinichi had helped the professor out in such a manner, neither Ran nor her father had questioned the story.

It was, however, just a story.

"I do not believe this is a good idea," Ai said bluntly the instant the door had closed behind the Mouris.

Shinichi sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to stave off a headache. In truth, part of him was beginning to have second thoughts as well, but he squashed it with a will.

"We've been careful and thorough setting it all up," he said instead and hoped his growing anxiety didn't show through. "And it's too late to stop now. They'll be expecting us. If we don't show, they might get suspicious."

The frown on the little girl's face deepened, but she conceded the point. Or rather she refrained from any verbal commentary and instead directed them towards their guest rooms—rooms the two had grown all too familiar with in recent times.

It had been two weeks since they had last convened.

A very busy two weeks.

The decision to visit the Foundation had been a simple one to make, but preparing for the visit was another story entirely. Plans had had to be made and props and tools prepared. Fortunately for the boys, they had an inside source in the form of Shiho. From her, they had learned a great deal about the Foundation's operations, security, and personnel. She could even provide them with floor plans and the locations of assorted equipment and information. There was no guarantee that things hadn't changed since she'd taken her leave of the organization, but she had been gone only so long. If there were changes, they were unlikely to be overly major ones (or so their reasoning went).

While they had been making their plans, Kuroba Toichi had been released from the hospital and returned home, where he had discovered that there had indeed been an attempt by an unknown party to break into said home. The culprit or culprits had not made it into the house, but they had severely damaged several layers of the protective magic around the property. After a thorough examination, a grim Toichi had announced that he suspected the culprits had gathered enough information from their first attempt on the house to make a much better go of it should they return again. As such, he and Chikage had immediately set to work completely overhauling their security. Many of Toichi's Clover Institute colleagues had offered to help, but, wary of potential moles (or the magically compromised), the Kurobas had declined, opting instead to do all the work themselves along with the help of Jii, whose loyalty (and caution) were beyond doubt.

The renovations being made at the house, however, had meant that, for the time being, Kaito was still staying over at the Mouris. The Nakamoris, being right next door to the Kurobas, had offered to let him crash with them, but he had declined since his own parents and Jii were staying with the Nakamoris while they worked on the house, and the place was getting really crowded. That, and he strongly suspected that his father would realize immediately if they spent too much time together that Kaito was up to something he might not approve of. And Kaito really didn't want to have to lie to his dad when the man had only just gotten out of the hospital.

Fortunately for a variety of reasons, Aya had woken up a few days ago to the great relief of her family and friends. She still needed time to recover, and then she would have to undergo physical therapy, but she had suffered no brain damage from her head injury, and the doctors were feeling optimistic. This piece of good news had gone a long way to cheering everyone involved in the situation up. Her information, however, had not.

Aya had seen her assailants. She hadn't known who they were, but, as soon as she was able, she would be working with the police sketch artists to provide the officials with their likenesses. She had only seen as much as she had, however, because those assailants hadn't expected her to survive. They had gotten into the Institute using official keys and codes, both magical and mundane, and therefore come upon Aya at her work unawares. They had stunned her with a spell then hauled her through the building to a flight of stairs closer to the wing of the building where Toichi's office and workroom were located. They had, she told the police, been fully aware that the archmage was in the building working late. It was there at the top of the landing that one of them had broken her leg. Then they'd thrown her head first down the stairs. She'd cracked her skull against a hard surface, she wasn't sure whether it had been the floor or a wall, at the bottom, and everything had become distant and disjointed. She could remember vaguely the sound of running footsteps and the timbre of Toichi's voice, but then she had blacked out completely. The next time she'd opened her eyes, it had been to the startled but pleased face of a young nurse.

"These people are bastards," Kaito declared when they'd heard Aya's story with an almost violent vehemence.

"Agreed," Satou-keiji had said, and he had seen the same cold fury in her eyes that he could feel burning in his chest.

The police were still looking at the Institute's competitors, focusing naturally on those with the money and personality type to hire hit men.

They had yet to stumble over the potential link to the Foundation.

Shinichi, Kaito knew, very much wanted to give the police that link, but they couldn't until they had proof. Without something solid to work with, the police couldn't divert resources into what might otherwise appear to be a totally unrelated project.

Which was why Shinichi had proposed this plan.

Since he had already told one of the Foundation reps that he had an unidentified Curse Mark and been given a business card just in case his parents wanted to seek aid from the Foundation, he could now, in theory, make an appointment to go in as a potential patient to learn more about the Foundation from a client/patient perspective. They all knew and Ai had confirmed that, when the Foundation figured out exactly which Curse Mark he had, they would want very badly to make sure that he wanted to work with them.

He would be considered too valuable a resource to risk. In other words, they were unlikely to hurt him or do anything that might scare him off. They would want instead to develop good relations with him and his 'family', and that would provide their investigation with an in so long as they did not suspect who Shinichi and his compatriots were and what they were up to.

From there, they would have a variety of options from simple observation and intelligence gathering to actual, physical infiltration. The end goal, according to Shinichi, was to get a hold of some kind of actionable proof that the Foundation was committing crimes that they could then turn over to the authorities who actually had the power to do something about it.

Kaito had extremely mixed feelings about Shinichi's plan.

Part of him liked the plan a great deal. He'd always been a schemer by nature, and there was something both thrilling and satisfying about the thought of using these underhanded bastards' greed to trick them into giving themselves away. The part of Kaito that was still angry also liked this plan. He wanted to see these people fail. He wanted to show them that their selfish dreams and underhanded tactics were nothing but billions of yen of trash that would buy them nothing but a handful of cold hard prison cells.

Another part of Kaito, however, despised the plan with a passion because it would mean putting Shinichi square in the crosshairs of unscrupulous lunatics. And Kaito couldn't help but be concerned that, should they realize that this child was in fact a false identity, well… What ideas that might give them, Kaito shuddered to think. He could come up with several possibilities without really trying, none of them good.

The fact of the matter was, however, that it didn't really matter whether Kaito liked the plan or not because he knew that Shinichi was going to go through with it either way. That being said, all Kaito could do was make sure he thought everything through and prepared properly.

"These are the identities we've set up," Ai said as she, Agasa, Kaito and Shinichi stood and sat before the largest computer in Agasa's lab. "I know we've already discussed the details extensively, but I still advise that you all spend some time reviewing the information tonight."

She handed each of them a slim, black binder.

"I've organized the information and highlighted sections that I feel you should pay special attention to as they are likely to come up in your interview. You will find your IDs in the binder's inside pocket, though I doubt you will need them for this visit."

"And here are the phones I prepared for us," Kaito said, unzipping the backpack he had brought with him and producing four simple, mobile phones. "We're all on the Edogawa family plan. The blue one's little Co-chan's. This black one's mine. The silver is Dad's." He handed the silver phone to Agasa with a cheeky grin. "And the gold one is mom's." The second phone, he handed to Ai, who took it with a supremely unimpressed face.

"I put a voice modifier spell on yours for just in case we need to call you while we're there," the Sky Mage told her. "Then they won't be able to tell that it's you. And you can ask all the hard questions you want as the suspicious, overprotective mother who thinks none of this is a good idea."

The corners of Ai's lips quirked up at that, and Shinichi thought with some amazement that Ai might actually be looking forward to the advent of such a conversation.

Feeling it best to interrupt the two schemers before their wavelengths synced up any further, Shinichi cleared his throat.

"Can anyone else think of anything we should bring? Or shouldn't bring?"

"Our real IDs and anything else that could be used to identify us," Kaito said immediately. "But I'm sure we all knew that. We should also make sure to call a taxi when we go instead of driving the professor's old buggy. Less easy to trace. And it would support the part of our story that says we're relatively new to Tokyo."

"They will likely want to talk most to Edogawa Takashi," Shiho said, nodding to the professor. "As he will be the only guardian present. They may ask to speak with you separately from your children. If you ask, they may agree to introduce you to some of their other staff and patients."

"That would be perfect," Shinichi agreed. "It would give us the opportunity to learn more about the people working there, the environment in which they work, and how they do things."

"We'll see what they want us to see," Kaito agreed, lips curving into a razor grin that was all edge. "And what they don't want us to see."

X

"If you stare at those papers any harder, they're going to catch fire."

Sighing, Shinichi straightened from where he had been bent over the open binder on the desk in one of Agasa's guest bedrooms. The movement caused him to wince as muscles that hadn't moved in far too long protested their treatment.

"I thought you went to bed," he said, swiveling stiffly in his seat to see Kaito standing in his doorway.

Kaito shrugged. "I did for a bit. Then I woke up, and I saw that your light was still on. You do realize we all need to be sharp tomorrow. That means we need to be well rested."

Shinichi leaned back against the edge of the desk, resisting the urge to grimace. "I know. I just couldn't sleep."

"Nervous?" asked Kaito.

"A little," he admitted.

"About anything in particular?"

The younger boy opened his mouth then closed it again before letting out a rueful laugh. "I could say it's the usual concerns about what, if anything, we might have overlooked or what we'll do if they see through our story. But I… It'll sound silly, but I think it's the idea of actually talking about my Curse Mark. It's…not something I do much. And these aren't even people I know."

Kaito's expression grew solemn, and he moved to sit on the edge of the untouched guest bed. "It's not silly. Most of human society sees Curse Marks as a sensitive subject. People know they're there, and quite a lot of people enjoy bandying about the history or indulging in related fiction, but real Marks make people uncomfortable. People tend to be wary of things they don't understand and can't control. It would take a strange kind of person to want to be on the receiving end of that sort of attention."

Shinichi shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat. He was all too familiar with the sort of wariness Kaito was describing. He'd never blamed his classmates for their unease though since he could understand where it was coming from. It wasn't like Shinichi couldn't tell that the death rate around him was unusual. Trying to argue the finer details of cause and effect (or the lack thereof), therefore, had always struck him as rather futile. And so he had become accustomed to doing his best to avoid drawing attention to his Curse Mark. Perhaps doing so really had become so ingrained a habit that the prospect of doing the opposite was now unsettling.

It was a mildly disturbing thought for a multitude of reasons. None of this was going to help him get some sleep.

"I say you need to get your mind off things," Kaito announced, hopping to his feet. "I have just the thing. I'll be right back."

That said, he was gone, footsteps inaudible even in the stillness of the late hour. He was back almost before Shinichi had registered that he'd been gone.

"Here," he said. "Call it an early birthday present."

Shinichi blinked at the small, leather-bound book that had just been pressed into his hands. Elegant and unmarked, it resembled a pocket diary. When he flipped open the cover, however, he was met with a title page. On it was printed three words.

"My Little Library?"

The words had no sooner left his mouth then he was falling because his chair had disappeared. He landed with an extremely undignified yelp of pain on a hardwood floor—but the guestroom had had a carpet. His chair and the carpet were not all that had disappeared however. The book he had been holding was gone too.

As was the guestroom itself.

Shinichi closed his eyes, counted to five, then opened them again to stare at what, for all intents and purposes, looked like a spacious, unfinished sitting room.

In the middle of the floor was a pair of large, plush armchairs and a sofa situated around a stately table of polished wood. Past the furniture, he could see a wall paneled in floor-to-ceiling windows. The curtains were drawn, but whatever lay beyond those curtains was clearly not the night it was supposed to be outside because he could see light seeping in around the edges of the curtains. Every other inch of wall space was lined with empty shelves and cabinets to the point where he couldn't actually see any walls at all.

"What do you think?"

The sound of Kaito's voice nearly had Shinichi jumping out of his skin. As it was, he jerked around where he was still sitting on the floor to find himself face to knees with the Sky Mage, who was surveying the room with an expression of deep satisfaction that seemed a bit premature for the unfinished look of the place.

"Are we in a Vision Book?" Shinichi asked as his thoughts pieced the evidence together and came to the most likely conclusion.

Kaito beamed and held out a hand to help him up. "Sort of. The concept is the same, but with a lot fewer frills. No time discrepancy, for one. This is just an alternate space being kept enfolded in that book. I started designing it way back during that summer when you told me about preferring real books over digital ones. It took me time to mold the space and build what I had in mind, and I wasn't able to stock the place the way I planned to. But I figured you'd probably have plenty of books you'd like to add yourself, so yeah." He shrugged. "I put in a few I've wanted to recommend over the years and some books on other things I thought you might find interesting. They're on the shelves over there. Come on, I'll show you."

Kaito spent the next half hour giving Shinichi a tour of his new personal pocket library.

"It even comes with a snack cabinet," Kaito said, opening up a pair of doors beneath one set of shelves to reveal neatly organized boxes and bags of assorted snacks and bottles of water.

Shinichi shook his head, at a loss for words. "It's amazing."

Kaito beamed, clearly pleased.

"You haven't even seen the best parts yet," he assured the younger boy. "But I think we should save those for tomorrow evening when we have more time. For now, why don't you just pick a book and read a little. It may help you calm down, and that'll make it easier to sleep."

X

The traffic that morning was minimal, and so the taxi that came nosing into the parking lot before the Foundation's main building saw very little in the way of competition.

It pulled to a stop just before the building's sliding doors.

First to step out of the vehicle was a slightly haggard-looking man with thick glasses and a portly build. Behind him came a child and a young man in his late teens. All three were black-haired and blue-eyed.

They thanked their taxi driver then made their way into the building, where they were greeted by a sleek, young receptionist.

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"Uh, hi," the bespectacled man said with an uncertain smile of his own. "My name is Edogawa Takashi. We have an appointment."

TBC