Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK

A Curse Marked Fate

54: Making Chances

There were few things more frustrating than doing nothing while you knew that trouble was brewing and about to break forth right over you. It felt as though the very air itself was slowly congealing, making it more and more difficult to breathe. Shinichi was beginning to feel a little faint.

"Shin-chan? Are you all right?"

The sound of Kaito's concerned voice penetrated the fog that had descended over Shinichi's thoughts, and he blinked. The red and black dots before his eyes resolved themselves into the familiar shapes of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. He stared at the cards blankly for another second before remembering belatedly that he had been asked a question.

"Oh, uh, sorry, what was that?"

Kaito gave him a long, scrutinizing look then tossed his handful of cards onto the table. "All right. That's it. It won't do anyone any good if we both end up catatonic from boredom. How about I show you the spells I prepared? Then we can put together our plan of attack."

"That sounds good," Shinichi agreed, relieved. In truth, he would probably have agreed to just about anything if it got him away from more card games.

Kaito swept the cards up into a neat stack with practiced hands then made the whole lot disappear. He proceeded to whip out another set of cards, these with a different pattern on the backs.

Shinichi eyed the new set of poker cards with trepidation. "I thought you were going to show me the spells you were preparing?"

Kaito grinned. "I am. I used these cards as amulets. They're not the most suitable vessels, so they're single use only, but the fragility of the connection means you can set them off just by folding or ripping them."

"That's cool," Shinichi said, interested. He picked up a two of clubs and looked at it. There was no writing or any other sign of what spell the card might be carrying.

"All the clubs are Monster Masks," Kaito explained, and it was clear from his grin and the energy with which he described the spell in question that he was excited.

Shinichi couldn't help but smile back. Kaito's enthusiasm was infectious. He loved that light in Kaito's eyes.

Shinichi's mind blanked for a moment at his own admission, and he completely missed the rest of the Sky Mage's explanation.

"Er, sorry, could you go over that again?" he stammered and blushed with embarrassment when Kaito raised his eyebrows.

"Are you all right?" the older boy asked.

"I'm fine," Shinichi assured him, though, now that Kaito had mentioned it, he was still feeling a little lightheaded. It was as though he wasn't getting enough air even though he didn't feel like he was having difficulty breathing.

Clearly unconvinced, Kaito hopped up and jogged over to the snack cabinet. He returned with a bottle of water, which he pressed into Shinichi's hands.

"Here."

Knowing better than to argue, Shinichi accepted the drink. "Thanks."

One swig, and he decided that the water was exactly what he'd needed.

Kaito went over his poker card arsenal again. In essence, each suit of cards had been imbued with a different type of spell. The heart cards produced fires that increased in strength according to the number of the card. The diamond cards were essentially flash bombs while the spades produced smoke. The clubs, which Kaito had dubbed Monster Masks, were the most complex, with each card housing some kind of illusion meant to misdirect and confuse.

"We know our host can see through disguises and invisibility, but I'll bet he can still be distracted. Of course, if we can leave while he's sleeping like we planned, we may not need any of these."

"It's nice to have the option though," Shinichi said, carefully committing the contents of each card to memory.

"True," Kaito agreed. Though in all honesty, he'd made the card amulets more because he'd needed to be doing something than because he thought they would actually need them. That wasn't to say he'd been haphazard. He'd put a lot of thought into what might be useful because he had always believed in having backup plans—the more the better. "It was just too bad I couldn't get a hold of any sleeping gas in here."

Shinichi snorted. "Yeah, well. If you'd been stocking sleeping gas, I'd have started to wonder what exactly you were planning to get up to."

Kaito snickered. "I can see it now. A pocket-sized super spy lair!"

Shinichi might have laughed, but suddenly the world around him swayed—no, wait, he was the one swaying. Kaito's voice grew distant as though Shinichi was hearing him through a long tunnel that was growing longer by the moment. His arms and legs tingled, and his head spun. He gasped, trying to draw in as deep breaths as he could, hands clenched tight on the cushions beneath him as he stared blindly at the table.

Breathe, he thought. He bent all his focus to that one task. Breathe, slow and deep. And gradually, far slower than he would have liked, the world came back into focus again. He could feel the plush armchair beneath him and the hard edges of the table he had ended up leaning on somewhere during his moment of detachment. He could feel his fingers again too, the numbness no longer buzzing over his skin.

He opened his eyes to see Kaito kneeling in front of him with his hands on Shinichi's shoulders. The older boy looked scared—something Shinichi had never seen before, but Shinichi's lethargic mind couldn't understand why.

"Shinichi?" Kaito was saying, voice sharp but steady. "Shinichi! What's happening?"

"I…I don't know," the detective managed to mumble out as the world around him continued to swim and undulate in sound and Technicolor. "I—I think I…need to lie down for a moment."

He was barely aware of what he was saying. But something must have gotten through to Kaito because the Sky Mage scooped him up and laid him down gently on the one long couch. When he withdrew, Shinichi's addled mind wished that he would stay. Kaito was warm. Kaito was safe. But though he wished, he couldn't move or speak, and the fog closing over his thoughts was rolling in faster now.

The world faded away.

Standing over Shinichi's unconscious form, Kaito took a deep breath and ordered himself not to panic. He didn't know what was going on with Shinichi, but, thanks to their conversations with Ai, he thought he had an idea.

Shinichi's sleeve looked like it had gotten shorter.

The change was miniscule, but the fact that it was visible at all was significant. And Kaito berated himself for not having realized that this might happen. The little scientist had basically said as much, but they had been so preoccupied with Shinichi's curse that they had forgotten about his blessing—which was rather ironic, he supposed. As Suki had told them, it was a common problem that people had when it came to the Marked that they had a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of their magic and overlook the positive. The Marked themselves were no exception.

Shinichi was slowly but surely breaking free of the spell that was still trying to kill him.

Technically, that was good, but the timing couldn't have been worse.

"Okay," he muttered to himself as he paced once rapidly around the library before diving back into the snack cabinet. "We can do this."

He needed to stay calm and think. What exactly had the little lady said again?

X

He dreamed that he was floating in a void of pure and shining darkness. And in that darkness, he could see threads. First only a few glimmered at him, reflected light from spider's threads of silk. But then they grew brighter, stronger, clearer, and they began to multiply and gain definition, substance, and texture. In no time at all, they were everywhere all around him, threads of all colors and styles, textures and lengths, woven and weaving in and out of ever changing, mesmerizing patterns that no human eye could truly follow.

And standing in the heart of that maelstrom of living threads that bound and separated and twisted and straightened and whispered and clung, he could feel it—

Something lay in the heart of the madness. Something solid. Something sharp.

Something dangerous.

And in the dream, he reached for it. Its shape was hidden amidst the chaos and the light of a thousand changing threads, but he knew it was there, and he reached—

Blue eyes snapped open, wide and unseeing as his heart raced.

It took several seconds for his thoughts to come back into focus. When they did, however, Shinichi found himself staring up into a pair of concerned, indigo eyes hovering a mere few inches above his face.

And now his heart was racing for an entirely different reason. Shinichi blushed bright red and promptly stopped breathing altogether.

Alarmed, Kaito grasped the smaller boy's shoulders and gave him a light shake. "Hey, come on now, don't go fainting on me again. You need to focus. Breathe."

The command cut through the haze around Shinichi's thoughts, and he gasped. His head spun and lights flashed across his field of vision. Only then did Shinichi realize that he had been holding his breath. Chagrined and still hyper aware of Kaito's close proximity, the detective made himself shut out all other thoughts for the time being and simply breathe as he'd been told. With each deep lungful of oxygen, a little more clarity returned to him, but he found he still couldn't remember how he had ended up in this position.

"What happened?" he asked and was startled by the raspy sound of his own voice. He was parched. His throat and tongue felt like sandpaper.

As though reading his mind, Kaito slid an arm under him to help him into a sitting position then pressed a bottle of water into his hands.

"Drink," the Sky Mage ordered.

Shinichi obliged.

Kaito waited until he'd finished the entire bottle then replaced said empty bottle with another full one. That bottle was soon emptied as well.

"How do you feel?" Kaito asked, scrutinizing the younger boy closely (a little too closely for Shinichi's comfort, but he was too confused to worry about things like reestablishing his personal bubble).

"Better," he managed to say only to grimace because he knew he didn't sound it. "Still a bit lightheaded. Did I really faint?"

"Yes," Kaito said, and there was no hint of amusement in his tone. "I think it's starting."

"What is?" Shinichi asked, beginning to feel more than a little unnerved by the tension he could all but sense radiating from his typically laid back friend.

"What the little lady said," Kaito replied, looking him straight in the eyes. "You've been separated from Mouri Kogoro for more than two days now. Your curse is gaining strength. And as it grows stronger, the curse keeping you a child weakens. You're beginning to grow."

Turning from where he'd been kneeling by the couch next to Shinichi, Kaito reached out and snagged a pair of granola bars from the table. The bars soon replaced the empty water bottles.

"Eat. Now."

Shinichi frowned. He wasn't really hungry, just sort of feeling ill and headachy, but that tone of command from Kaito brook no arguments. And he had to admit that, once he had taken the first bite, he realized that he was, in fact, quite ravenous. Kaito continued to stare at him in a most disconcerting way, and Shinichi thought with some exasperation that, if Kaito didn't cut it out, he was going to undermine his own efforts by giving Shinichi indigestion. He wished Kaito would back off a little, but, at the same time, he didn't want anything of the sort.

It was unsettling and confusing, and the whole thing was making him uncomfortable. The lightheadedness and nausea weren't helping.

He ate another granola bar.

This seemed to reassure Kaito because he stopped staring at Shinichi like he thought the little detective was going to dissolve into thin air if he took his eyes off him and much of the tension left his shoulders.

"I suppose the powers that be really do want us to get a move on," he said with a lopsided grin.

"They do seem to be intent on hammering us over the head with reasons to get out of here," Shinichi replied dryly, though he found his own spirits lifting some at the sight of Kaito's smile, crooked or not, and the return of his jovial tones. While he was touched that Kaito worried so much about his wellbeing, Shinichi didn't want to be the reason that the magician lost his natural good cheer.

Taking a deep breath, he swung his legs over the side of the couch so that he could sit up straighter. When his head didn't immediately start spinning again at the movement, he let out a breath of relief, noting out of the corner of his eye the way Kaito too settled back from where he had clearly been preparing to catch Shinichi if he toppled off the furniture.

"How long was I out?" Shinichi asked. "Did Takagawa-san go home yet?"

"Quite a while," Kaito said, "And no. I admit I wasn't paying as much attention to what's going on outside as I probably should have, but I don't think I heard anything that indicated he was getting ready to head home."

"Do we at least know where he is?"

"Still in the Foundation headquarters, I believe. The same building as earlier, if I don't miss my guess. I suspect he's either in a lab or computer room area as I can definitely hear the humming of a lot of electrical equipment, and I'm pretty sure I heard someone asking him to look at some amulet designs before offering to let him borrow her workstation. That Ota guy they mentioned before has been by a few times too to complain about the late shipment. From their conversations, it's pretty clear the man's a one of their scientists, and he's been by too often for this location to be too far from his own work area—unless running here to complain is all he's been doing today anyway."

Shinichi blinked. "…You noticed a lot for someone who was distracted. I'm impressed."

"I have a talent for multitasking," Kaito boasted, but his expression sobered quickly. "You should get some more rest. I'll call you when it sounds like he's ready to go home."

Shinichi would have liked to protest. He was feeling a lot better after his impromptu nap and the half dozen granola bars he'd just inhaled. At the same time, he knew that this was most likely a temporary reprieve. The best thing he could do for them both was to try and rest so that he wouldn't be completely useless when they finally made their move.

So he made himself comfortable on the sofa and closed his eyes.

Despite his best efforts, however, he found sleep eluding him. Sighing, he shifted so that he was lying flat on his back and gazed up at the cream ceiling, noting absently how it seemed to radiate the light that filled the library despite not actually glowing. It was sort of odd in an interesting way, and Kaito had gotten the level and texture of the ambient light just right. It was bright enough to make reading easy, but the quality of the light was soft. It didn't hurt the eyes.

Shinichi's eyes wandered along with his thoughts, finding the corners of the ceiling and tracing the lines between them in an idle search for anything that might qualify as a light source. Then suddenly something glimmered—a flash of light across his field of vision like a pinprick shooting star.

Or no, more like light running along a silver thread.

Confused, he closed his eyes then opened them again. The thread was still there. But it hadn't been there before. He was sure of it. Instead, he now counted two threads running nearly parallel. Were there spiders in here? It would have to be a really big spider though. Surely they'd have noticed.

"Hey Kai," he said, not taking his eyes off the threads. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Kaito asked.

"Those threads of light," Shinichi replied, pointing.

There was a long pause before Kaito answered. "I don't see anything."

Frowning, Shinichi sat up and looked over at Kaito. The Sky Mage had turned his back on the dark windows and was scanning the room, brows furrowed. Finding nothing, he met Shinichi's gaze with raised eyebrows.

"You may need to elaborate."

"Over there." Shinichi looked up again to point then stopped. "They're gone."

"Maybe you were dreaming," Kaito suggested. "It's not uncommon to see things when you're half asleep."

"I…guess," Shinichi conceded. It was the most logical explanation, but… He couldn't shake the feeling that it had been something else.

Before he could ponder the matter further, however, the sparrow spoke.

"Oh hey Daisuke, you're still here?"

"Unfortunately," their host's all too familiar voice replied with a tire sigh. "Whoever put this PowerPoint together was a complete amateur."

His colleague whistled. "I hear a lot of frustration there. That's not like you."

"Well, thanks to the aforementioned amateur, I'm going to have to redo the entire presentation. I'm going to be here all night."

"That bad, huh? Well, at least you won't be alone. My team needs to be here to monitor the tests we're running overnight. So a couple of us are running out now to get dinner. We'll bring you something too."

"I would appreciate that. Thank you."

Shinichi allowed himself a groan of frustration. "Maybe we should have played more card games."

Kaito mirrored his grimace. "It's starting to look like we're going to have to make a break for it next time he steps out into a public place and hope we can lose ourselves in the crowds. It'll cause a commotion, but at least we'll be out."

It would also mean abandoning the pocket library, Shinichi thought. The mere thought of it made him cringe. He knew that a thing was just a thing and that warning Ai and stopping the Foundation's plans were more important than saving a possession, but Kaito had put so much time and effort into creating this library. Shinichi couldn't just let it be lost. Not unless there was no other choice. But were there other choices?

Even the option Kaito had just suggested was a gamble. If Takagawa took a car straight from the lab building to Teitan Elementary, they'd have no time to warn Ai even if they did escape.

Wait a moment. The lab.

"He's working in a lab," Shinichi said slowly.

"Yes?" Kaito prompted. "The evidence does seem to point that way."

"There's a lot of equipment in labs."

"A lot of top notch equipment, according to the lady," Kaito agreed.

"Well, a lot of things can go wrong in labs, even when the equipment is top notch."

Kaito blinked. Then a slow grin spread across his face. "So it can."

TBC

A.N: Just a heads up that I'm really busy right now. Anyhow, thanks for reading and see you next time!