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He stared somewhat skeptically at the exterior of the utterly unremarkable building. The signage on the outside proclaimed that the front door was the entrance to a nondescript children’s clinic that catered to the poor and homeless—which then begged the question of why a shady children’s clinic needed all five floors with no other businesses occupying the building interior. Yet even as he stared at the façade, he could not help but feel a sense of foreboding curl heavily in his gut.
Edogawa Conan, eight years of age, had been reported as missing two days ago. A discrete inquiry into the police’s records revealed that Mouri Ran had been the one to file the claim, and hacking into the CCTV systems of various institutions—specifically, the railway companies and police traffic department—had proved that Conan had been nabbed as he had passed a narrow alley while on the search for a clue to an open murder case at around nine in the evening.
The footage was unable to get a look at the kidnapper’s face, blurry and green as it was from having switched into night vision mode. The boy had put up a decent struggle, but when blindsided with what appeared to be a doused handkerchief of sedative, his fight was unfairly cut short. The man had then taken off in a vehicle that had a false license plate, and that was how Amuro Touru, amateur detective, had ended up in Ueno late Sunday night. Running a hand through hair he had temporarily dyed black, Touru hoped that he had not missed a spot with his much-lighter-than-his-own-skin-tone foundation on either his face or hands. He took a steadying breath, fixed his posture into a somewhat weary slouch, and walked into the building, looking for all the world like any other salaryman coming back from overtime spent in the office with a briefcase at his side.
A jarringly clean, well-lit reception area greeted him, the waiting area tidy but oddly devoid of both people and play items that would cater to children. A professionally dressed man behind the desk greeting him courteously. “Welcome, sir. Do you have an appointment with us today?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Touru answered as he set his briefcase down by his feet, “but I was referred here.”
“Oh?” The receptionist’s eyebrows rose slightly with interest. “May I ask for the referral’s name?”
“Tanaka Ren,” he answered, rattling off the name he had found after hours of footage hunting for a man who was a member of the Kageyama-kai, a smaller but powerful affiliate of the larger Inagawa-kai. “He told me to ask for the ‘special treatment’.” He marked the location of the security camera behind the desk, noted how it was aimed to capture the faces of anyone who walked in.
The man’s eyebrows lifted a fraction more. “I see. One moment while I check, please.” He clicked through several things on the computer before him—A shame he doesn’t wear glasses so I can see what he’s looking at, Touru thought—and typed out something. The unnerving hospitality he was receiving was highly indicative of the fact that regulars who came here were not necessarily other yakuza members. No, it likely meant that people of high class, of money—normal, ordinary, should-have-been-non-criminal Japanese citizens—walked these floors. There was perhaps half a minute’s pause before he typed again, indicating that he was on some sort of instant messaging application before he nodded to himself. “It appears we have an opening at the moment. What is your name?”
“Fujimoto Daichi,” he said. It was one of the several other false identities he had prepared for emergency situations like this.
The man nodded and tapped his name into the system. “Now, might I ask your preferences?”
Touru was somewhat taken aback, but quickly rallied after an almost imperceptible falter. “Preferences?”
“Male or female? Age? Appearance?” the man casually listed, watching him closely. “We will always try to cater to your desires.”
Forced child prostitution, he realized. I figured human trafficking, but "renting" for use before they hit the marketplace? It made him want to vomit. “Male, seven to ten years of age, blue eyes if you can find one,” he answered surprisingly steadily. “Aside from personal preferences, why does it matter?”
“First timer, I take it.” The man typed in his answer, waiting for another reply as he responded, “Well, the price will differ based on what you would like. Virgins command a higher price, as they are always in high demand. Would you like us to arrange for a virgin?”
“No, that… that won’t be necessary.” Touru swallowed the bile he felt rising in his throat. The fact that he had been asked if he would like one—did that mean that this entire building housed kidnapped children being used for money? Touru abruptly felt terrifyingly underprepared for the scale of the operation he was trying to bust. It was not like he could call in backup from the PSB: this was not an official mission, and he had come here as Amuro Touru, not Furuya Rei. And he was also not foolish enough to try to fight his way to freeing the children he suspected were housed in here. There were too many hostages and not enough law enforcement.
The chances of Conan being here had jumped exponentially, but had also proportionally inverted his chances of finding and rescuing the boy. The Kageyama-kai running this operation was one of the better-known ones in the city; not only were the known for human trafficking, they also dealt drugs and smuggled weapons. These anonymous men that Touru faced knew what they were doing and would not hesitate to kill him. His only recourse now was to leave as quickly as possible without raising any suspicions in order to bring in a team of officers.
“Five-thousand American dollars,” the man said, snapping Touru out of his troubled thoughts. His face must have given away his confusion, the man repeated, “Five-thousand American dollars for an hour’s worth of time. If you enjoy your time enough, we would be amenable to negotiating for a purchase price afterwards.”
“I see.” The detective’s jaw clenched as he produced the requisite cash and watched as the man efficiently counted out the hundred-dollar bills. He was lucky that he had brought along enough, and in foreign currency, too.
The receptionist stowed the money in a lock box, checked the computer one last time before locking the screen, and said, “This way, please.”
There were six rooms in the hallway he was in; based on the square footage of the building, Touru estimated that this floor had perhaps fifteen total examination rooms if room sizes were comparable to other doctors’ offices he had been to. The schedules had to have been staggered, since for all the time he had waited out in the front, there had been no others going in or out. The idea of “customers” had his skin crawling in revulsion.
A muffled sob caught his attention in the otherwise eerie quietness of the hallway. The sound came from one of the patient rooms, the door somehow had not been fully closed—and therefore not completely soundproofed. It was a child’s cry, one of terror and agony. But the pitch and the tone—that was somehow familiar even though he had never heard the noise in his life before. It nagged at him.
The man swiftly closed the door shut completely, and any noise from beyond was immediately silenced. Insulated rooms, indeed. “Apologies.” Touru shrugged in response, memorized the number of the room and continued on, following the receptionist to another closed door as he noticed another security camera. “Here is your room.”
He unlocked the door and allowed Touru in first. There was another man inside, standing next to a somewhat dirty, naked, and shivering boy within the stipulated age range. The boy’s hands were tied in front of him, and the detective could clearly see that the other end of the rope was wound in one of the man’s hands. The other hand forced the child’s chin up, allowing Touru to see his facial features. Hazel eyes. He was not Conan.
The receptionist closed the door. “While we did have one specific to your preferences, he is currently unavailable.” It was an effort to keep his face straight. “You’re free to use or tie him up however you like, though we request that you do not harm him overly much. Nothing debilitating.” He gestured to several sturdy hooks attached to the wall and ceiling, along with a small step ladder, then to what would have been the medical supply counter, complete with a sink. “Toys and the like are all stored inside, sterilized and ready for use. Please press this button—” here he indicated a small, white call button by the sink, “—if you require any assistance.”
Touru was handed the free end of the rope, and the two men summarily left him inside the room with the terrified child, the lock clicking behind them. He stared dumbly at the coarse line in his palm, still and silent and horrified.
Conan was here.
Conan was being used at this very moment.
“I—I promise to be really loud if you don’t make it hurt too much.”
The quiet sentence twisted Touru’s insides in a way that all of his years as an agent of the Organization had not. Frankly, the man was not sure anything could top the sheer disgust he felt at this very moment. The boy before him shook violently, posture cowed and so very afraid. He was thin to the point of verging on ill; his skin was sallow and his black hair greasy. There were marks, both fresh and healing, across his entire body: bruises that spoke of bites and rough handling; scars that spoke of knife and blood play. The boy did not dare look up from his own bare feet.
“I’m not going to touch you,” Touru replied, as gently as he could manage. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “In fact, I would like to get you out of here,” but to speak it aloud would be to commit to escaping with this boy and abandoning Conan to this worse-than-miserable fate. Instead, he gestured to the room at large and cajoled, “Please sit anywhere you like,” and dropped the rope from his hands. “All I ask is that you remain quiet.”
Turning without bothering to get some sort of confirmation or see what he would do, Touru briefly glanced around the room, checking for any overt security cameras before conducting a brief but more thorough search for hidden ones. He was unsatisfied with his search but hesitant to spend too long on it. Task completed, he unlocked the door and slowly eased the door open a crack.
There was nobody in the hallway. Without knowing when the next customer was scheduled, it would be incredibly risky to hop rooms—but Touru knew he had to take that risk, and that he needed to be fast. He had no idea if Conan’s time in that room was up or not, but he could not chance losing the boy at all. He blew out a breath. Steady, he coached to himself.
Touru squeezed himself out into the hallway, shutting the door firmly but quietly behind him. He darted as quickly as he could to the door that he remembered was opened before, and counted away precious seconds as he picked the lock. The detective all but threw himself in the room, pressing it as gently in his haste as he could behind him.
The first thing to catch his eye was the very much unwanted sight of the pale, bare buttocks of some middle-aged pervert bent over a small form on the examination table. The sweaty, disheveled man was clearly done with his business, as he simply stood at the end of the table and suckled on the neck of the tiny form beneath him. His clothing was folded neatly on a nearby chair, his feet still clad in black socks and black leather loafers.
The detective audibly snarled, and the man jerked up to stare at him. “Who are you?”
“You have two seconds to get off the child,” Rei growled, his rage spiking once he saw how man and child were still connected. “Get. Off. Them.”
The man fully straightened and pulled out with a truly sickening squelch, his flaccid cock and general groin area stained a lurid, shiny red and there was no condom. “Now see here—!” he began angrily, but Rei’s temper snapped, and he smashed the man in the jaw with all of his weight behind the punch. The man pirouetted as he tipped over, crashing to the ground and out like a light. Chest heaving with righteous fury, Rei stared furiously at the naked man for a long moment before ire morphed into dread, and he apprehensively turned his gaze onto the examination table.
Edogawa Conan lay, barely conscious on the vinyl cushioned surface, chest stuttering weakly with his breaths. He had been positioned so that his backside was lined up with the edge of the exam table’s cushion and restrained in place. His hands had been likely bound behind him, as a length of rope slithered out from beneath the small of his back to the tiled floor. His shoulders and hips had been taped with reinforced packaging tape to the table itself with his torso bowing upwards to accommodate his restrained arms, and his feet to the extendable stirrups used for pelvic and rectal examinations. He had been rendered completely immobile and entirely exposed.
Various bodily fluids were everywhere. A red and white mixture of semen and blood coated the boy’s torso, with an additional clearer fluid swirled in on his lower abdomen. A few droplets of white even dotted his chin and cheeks. But the worst of it—the worst was the partially inverted colon hanging outside his body and the fresh blood that coated the entirety of the space between his legs and smeared across his inner thighs. The brightness of it painted a solid line of crimson where he was pressed against the vinyl surface, and it dripped in braided forks down the table exterior to form a small puddle at the base of the table, which was flecked with darker bits of fecal material.
“Oh, Conan-kun,” he breathed, beyond sickened by the boy’s condition. The jiggling of the locks tore his attention away from the child, and Rei’s mind spun as he frantically looked around for something to arm himself with. Knives, he thought, recalling the linear scars that traced themselves across the body of the other boy that he had abandoned. He leapt at the supply counter, throwing the cabinet doors open to view the contents. A variety of various shaped and colored dildos, vibrators, anal plugs and beads, and cock rings greeted him, along with bondage cuffs, collars, and padded chains, gags, whips, crops, paddles, rope, electroshock equipment, pocketknives, syringes, needles, candles, lighters…
What the fuck, he thought, blinking in astonishment. They actually have all this fetish shit here? The lock jingled one last time, and Rei snatched the largest knife in the collection and tucked it into a pocket as backup—he knew it was utter idiocy to bring knives into a firefight, but the additional weight gave him an odd sense of comfort. Weight on the balls of his feet for easy maneuvering, he waited behind the door hinge for the door to open as he reined in the murderous urges he felt. He wanted them out cold but not dead, because he wanted answers regarding just who the fuck was running this joint—and having a knife in his hands at this point it time was not conducive to that goal.
As soon as the door banged open, he was on the first man—the receptionist—swinging an upward block meant to both throw off the aim of the gun in his hands and wrench it away entirely. The bullet no doubt meant for his head went into what he hoped was harmlessly into the ceiling, and he followed wrenching the man’s shoulder through with a punch to the gut that knocked the wind out of his opponent hard enough to make him throw up on the spot. Rei grimaced as his right side was showered in vomit, but ignored it in favor of ensuring his survival.
The second man, who had been right behind the receptionist, squeezed out a shot close enough that Rei felt the heat of its passing by his ear. Using his grasp on the receptionist, he shoved the dazed man backwards with enough force to knock both men to the ground and stun the second man. Several swift steps and a sharp kick to the head later, and the detective had two men passed out in the doorway of the little room.
He snagged the other man’s gun as well, shoving both weapons into his back trouser pockets as he turned his attention to Conan. Another grimace, and he tossed his jacket away in disgust and rinsed his hands in the sink before darting towards the prone form on the exam table. “Conan-kun! Conan-kun, can you hear me? Conan-kun!” he gently but urgently whispered as he ducked down to gaze into the boy’s eyes while tamping down the desire to carefully pat the boy’s cheek. Conan stared vacantly back at him, pupils dilated and unfocused, his mind somewhere beyond Rei’s reach. Drying tear tracks stretched from his half-lidded blue eyes and disappeared into the hair at his temples, and a sticky line of milky spit snaked its way from the corner of his mouth down to the vinyl. “Shit, he’s drugged,” he realized as he grabbed the knife from his pocket and flipped it open.
Rei immediately set to work freeing the child from his restraints while doing his utmost to keep from physically contacting the catatonic boy, whispering earnest apologies as he sawed through only the strips of tape binding him to the table and stirrups—the strips still adhered to his skin would have to be removed later, and there was nothing he could do about unbinding his wrists in the time that he had available. Conan weakly struggled against him and hoarsely screamed in response to his touch; the hand-shaped bruise Rei noticed around the boy’s neck indicated that he had, at some point, been brutally choked. He did not even want to imagine what other kinds of abuse his throat had been put through, much less what other bruises the child sported beneath that layer of colored fluids.
The moment Conan was freed from his restraints, he immediately rolled onto his side and curled into a violently shuddering fetal position. Rei roughly swiped the jacket off the unconscious man who had not vomited. He wrapped the boy as best he could in the fabric though he hesitated on how to deal with the exposed innards, all the while wondering how much time he had left to get out with Conan relatively unscathed—those two shots had happened with the door open, after all.
After coiling the rope around a forearm, he carefully scooped the child up, doing what he could to give Conan’s backside as much support as possible without actually touching anything. He breathed a constant litany of apologies and reassurances as he shuffled his burden more comfortably in his arms, Conan quietly whimpering all the while, and in some part of his mind he was grateful that the boy was as high as a kite as he was, if for nothing else than to mute the immense amount of pain he had to be in.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he murmured, and without further ado he jumped over the pile of bodies in the doorway and bolted for the lobby. He must have had a lucky break, for he did not encounter anyone in the hallway or the lobby. The moment he dashed outside, however, he yelped as the pavement at his feet cracked and exploded. He ran in a haphazard zigzag across the street, a line of bullets tailing him as he dodged.
He ducked into a narrow alley between two buildings across the street, not stopping in his running until he had cleared two blocks. He knelt against a wall in another alley, gasping for breath as he dug his phone out from his breast pocket and dialed his subordinate. The moment the call picked up, the detective hissed in clipped tones, “Kazami, send teams to this place now. Ueno 6-9-17. Sex trafficking. Five story building utilized under a single children’s clinic. I want that place shut down in an hour, tops.”
“Of course, Furuya-san. 6-9-17, copy.”
“And Kazami,” he added, allowing some of the bone-deep weariness he felt to leak out in his voice, “The quicker the better. The victims are children.” He hung up after that, tilting his head against the grimy brickwork of the wall behind him as he pocketed the device. He took several moments for himself before checking the condition of his precious cargo.
Conan’s facial expression and entire body was lax from what Rei suspected was some sort of sedative. Now that he was no longer under immediate threat of death, he could feel a warm, sticky patch on his clothes where Conan’s bottom had been pressed against his belly, and he could hear a thin, reedy whine that sounded faintly every time the boy exhaled. Conan’s head, which had been shielded by the tucked curve of Rei’s shoulder during their flight, suddenly lolled away from the man, and he vomited onto the concrete. Rei gently manipulated the boy’s head back in place, carefully wiping bile off his chin. His white handkerchief came away pink, and now that he checked, the child’s forehead was worryingly warm. “Fuck, kid,” he swore as he wrestled himself back to his feet while trying not to shift the boy too much, “Right. Hospital. Now.”
Rei moved as briskly as he could without unduly jostling Conan further as he made a beeline for his car. He settled the boy in the passenger seat, buckled him in, and dove into the driver’s seat after sloughing off the coils of rope on his arm. Breaking more than a few speed limits, Rei dialed emergency services and informed them that he had a child rape victim in critical condition en route to Rei University General Hospital, the one closest to his current location—severe hemorrhaging, inverted bowels, definitely drugged, possibly in shock—and could they please have staff ready to receive them when he pulled into the emergency department bay?
When the white sports car rumbled into the hospital’s emergency department driveway, Rei was, to his immense relief, greeted with a team of doctors and nurses with a gurney and other assorted supplies. Conan was swiftly transferred onto the stretcher, an oxygen mask attached to his face, and he was wheeled off in a flurry of medical personnel. Rei requested that a rape kit be used on the child to identify his assailant, and the appeal was readily accepted. He was hastily informed that the boy was bound for immediate surgery due to the rate at which he was bleeding, and that he was not allowed past the swinging double doors—
—which left him standing dumbly outside the surgery bay, brain so fried by the crash in adrenaline he was now experiencing that he was at a loss as to what to do next. A nurse, who had been standing at the front desk of the emergency department, gave him a soft smile and asked if he would like to clean up. His expression must have indicated his confusion, since she gestured to the rather massive bloodstain that painted his front.
“I take it there’s no spare clothing available to change into?” he asked tiredly.
“You could try the gift shop, though I’m not sure it’s open at this hour,” she answered sympathetically.
He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Then I’d like to go home and change.”
The nurse held him with a light touch on his elbow. “Sir, does the boy have a guardian here if you leave? We need someone to fill out the paperwork.”
“I am actually not his guardian, though I can call for them to come here,” the detective said. “I’ll stay until they arrive.”
She bobbed her head in assent and gently guided him to a row of plastic seats along the hallway to the operating rooms before depositing a clipboard with an attached pen in his lap. The attached papers asked for information on the patient being treated, and it reminded him to call the Mouris to not only inform them of Conan’s status, but to ask them to meet him at the hospital. He did not know enough about the boy to satisfactorily fill out the paperwork.
Touru slid the clipboard behind the small of his back, propped an elbow on his knee, and rested his cheek on a fisted hand. A blink—or more like thirty minutes later, he was gently shaken awake by a concerned Mouri Ran. “Ran-san, Mouri-sensei,” he greeted with a yawn, “Thank you for coming.”
“Amuro-san,” Ran said with a watery facsimile of a smile, “Thank you so much for rescuing Conan-kun!” She huffed in shy amusement as she remarked, “You look different with dark hair and lighter skin,” before her gaze dipped below his chin and widened in shock. “Amuro-san, your clothes!”
“About that,” he said with a grimace as he also eyed the rusty red stain, “It’s not mine. I had planned to go home to wash up once you arrived.” He yawned again and took a few moments to coax himself to a more conscious and coherent state of mind as she took the chair next to him.
“Conan-kun got over his head this time, didn’t he?” Mouri asked rhetorically. He sighed, a troubled expression on his face. “Should have left it to the adults.”
“This wouldn’t have been the first time Conan-kun’s been out and about so late by himself,” Ran argued.
The older detective grunted. “Should have been more aware of his surroundings,” he said gruffly.
“Before I forget, Mouri-san,” Touru interrupted. “If you wouldn’t mind, could you fill this out for Conan-kun?” He held the clipboard. “I’m afraid I don’t have all the necessary information.”
The martial artist accepted the clipboard with a nod. “Of course,” and began scribbling in the required information. Mouri settled himself into the other seat beside Ran.
Touru rose. “I’ll be headed home now. Please keep me informed on Conan-kun’s condition.”
“We will,” Ran said with a nod. “Take care, Amuro-san, and thank you.”
The detective nodded at the pair and left the hospital. The drive home was long, quiet, and unnerving. It took some effort to not stare at the unobtrusive stain that he knew painted the black vinyl of his passenger seat. Rei decided to buy a new bucket seat and trash the current one after ensuring that Conan’s DNA was destroyed. The boy’s blood was bound to have soaked into the cushion beyond where he could easily reach, and plus, with what he knew about the Organization, he was not taking any chances with the child’s safety when he knew that Conan was one of a number of people trying to take them down.
His phone rang moments after he stepped into his apartment. “Kazami,” he greeted as he measured out coffee grinds and water for the coffeemaker in his kitchen.
“We got them, Furuya-san,” his subordinate stated, and something that had been wound tightly in his chest loosened and relaxed at the man’s words. “Detained eighteen men total—seven of which are part of the Kageyama-kai. We also found eighty-seven children and more than enough narcotics to give everyone in Osaka a hit.”
Rei blew out a breath, his brain stuck on the number of children found. Fuck… that’s—that’s still eighty-seven too many, he thought with sorrow. “Good job,” he said instead, pushing the heartbreaking thought away and focusing his rekindling ire on the men responsible for this atrocity. “Are they detained at headquarters? I want to question them.”
Kazami replied, “Yes.”
“See you in forty.” He switched the brewer on and padded towards his bathroom with rage simmering in his gut. It would be one of the quickest showers he had ever taken in his life.
---
Money. It had all been about money, in the end. Rei leaned back in a plastic chair in the hallway housing the various interrogation cells and bit back a hysterical giggle. The hours-long interrogations had been brutal, and he had spared the yakuza members no mercy grilling them for information as he darted into each room for short periods of time to participate in the ongoing cross-examinations. By the time all of the questioning had been wrapped up a full nineteen hours later, he had been beyond drained physically, mentally, and emotionally.
The PSB officer did not want to even think about the eleven other men that had been captured alongside the Kageyama-kai members, waiting in holding cells for questionings of their own. Working, productive, and otherwise model well-to-do citizens, some of them single and others with wives and even families with children of their own.
How could they do that? he wondered. How could those sick fucks do such horrendous things to a child?
The eighty-seven children had been relocated to hospitals throughout Tokyo for treatment. Kazami’s reports of the initial findings had stated that they had been found naked and tied up in rather deplorable conditions on the upper levels of the building. All of them showed signs of starvation and some dehydration along with signs of drug addiction; many of them had been repeatedly abused and raped with the physical and mental scars to show for it, along with fevers from infection and lack of treatment.
Most of the children had ended up in the clinic through two primary means. The clinic had advertised that it would treat children for little to no cost, and that reputation had spread by word of mouth on the streets. It was located in Ueno, which had one of the highest populations of homeless in Tokyo, along with high amounts yakuza-related activity. It meant that there were a lot of unwanted pregnancies and not enough money to feed extra mouths. It meant that the clinic could buy children off from their mothers for a pittance. It meant that abandoned children went to the clinic if they felt unwell. They were all children off the grid, children that no one would miss if they disappeared, save for the select few that had been kidnapped for specific reasons.
Rei had discovered through the cross-examinations that Conan had been snatched due to the fact that he was something of a local celebrity. It had been a request from a repeat customer with a thing for one-upping those in legal positions of authority—and what better way to fulfill that secret desire than to brutally defile a child detective who had viable connections to the police? His stomach lurched, and he counted his breaths to settle the roiling sensation in his gut.
“Coffee?” Kazami asked, and Rei glanced up to find his subordinate approaching with two steaming Styrofoam cups, two thick folders tucked under an arm.
“Thanks,” he murmured as he accepted one and took a careful sip of the terribly bitter brew. “What’ve you got?”
“We’re still compiling and sifting through the data we took from their computers, but expect to have it completed this time tomorrow with final numbers on the drugs and arms smuggling they’ve done from that location.” His subordinate tugged another chair over and sat down next to him. He placed both folders on his lap and flipped the top one open one-handedly, rifling through multiple stapled walls of font and a few with attached pictures like a flipbook. “Full transcripts of each Kageyama-kai member we examined, plus criminal records from the ICPO database. Documentation of the building in Ueno, including photographs.”
He closed the folder and handed it to Rei before opening the second, equally thick folder. A pile of individual papers greeted him, each with a stapled photograph of a child’s face. The detective felt his insides clench as Kazami murmured quietly, “These contain all the information we could find on the victims.”
Rei accepted this folder with careful reverence. “These are all of them?”
Kazami hesitated to answer. “Yes,” he finally said, “All eighty-eight… including the one you took to the hospital.”
He blew another heavy breath through his nose as he set the folder down atop the other one on his lap and hefted them with one hand before standing. “Thank you, Kazami.”
The other man stood up as well. “Will that be all, Furuya-san?”
“Yes,” Rei answered with a nod as he walked away, his destination his tiny, barely used office, “That will be all for now.”
He slipped into his office after passing a handful of colleagues in the hallways. The PSB headquarters, much like the TMPD located within the same building, was never without staff running at all hours of the day, though the night shift crew tended to be fewer in number. The motion detector automatically flipped the overhead light on, and Rei settled at his desk with little fanfare after booting up his computer. He plugged his phone in to charge it, as it was running low on battery, and checked his messages as he waited for his computer to pull up the sign in screen.
Mouri Ran [01:27:53]: Conan-kun’s out of the operating room and into the surgical recovery room.
Mouri Ran [01:28:18]: Still under due to anesthesia administered during surgery.
Amuro Touru [01:28:34]: Thank you for keeping me updated, Ran-san. I hope you get some rest tonight.
Mouri Ran [01:29:02]: You too, Amuro-san. You’re probably exhausted beyond belief. I’m staying in the hospital overnight with Conan-kun.
Amuro Touru [01:29:41]: Sleep well.
Done with text message replies for the time being, he checked his emails, answering and deleting as necessary to clean out his inbox first before turning his attention to the folders he had brought with him. He first skimmed over the transcripts to get an idea of what he would be reading before he settled in for hours of slogging through the typed dialogue. A highlighter and pen accompanied his study as he emphasized key words and made notes in the margins. His cup had needed to be refilled twice and a break for food once, though he knew he had dozed off sometime overnight before waking and picking up where he had left off.
A quick check on his phone revealed another update text from Ran.
Mouri Ran [02:01:37]: He woke up for a few minutes and is being transferred to the PICU.
Rei decided that a response at this hour of the morning was unnecessary and dove back into the transcripts. By the time he resurfaced from the word of good cop-bad cop accusation-denial-confession scripts, there was a dim glow in the eastern sky, the sun not yet having risen. He blinked dry, tired eyes several times to ease his discomfort and winced at the stab of pain in his lower back when he shifted. “Need to get ergonomic furniture,” he muttered as he rubbed out the stiff muscles that delineated his spine. He heaved himself up and nearly fell over when his sleeping legs buckled beneath him, sardonically laughing at himself as he used his desk for support.
“Also, too fucking old to be pulling this all-nighter-in-the-office shit,” he muttered as he suffered through the pins and needles sensation. When he felt reasonably sure he could properly stand, Rei went to refill his cup in the break room before making a trip back down to the interrogation cells as an excuse to stretch his legs. They were all empty at this point, all of the sex offenders questioned and carted back to their holding cells to await trial.
A trip to Kazami’s office revealed the man had not yet arrived for the day. Rei returned to his office to snag the two folders before heading home in opposition of the Tuesday morning—had he really been holed up in PSB headquarters for an entire day?—commuter traffic. He popped into a convenience store to buy some prepackaged miso, rice, and vegetables that he could heat up in the microwave, foregoing the coffee because he direly craved sleep. He mechanically ate once he made it back to his apartment before passing out on his couch, too exhausted to make it to the bedroom.
Morofushi Hiromitsu-Scotch dying by Akai Shuuichi-Moroboshi Dai-Rye’s hand—morphed into visions of Conan—lying exactly as he had found him, after he had died of blood loss on the exam table, screaming at him for help as he was taped down, crying as he was repeatedly violated. Rei jolted awake sometime midafternoon, still feeling exhausted due to the nightmares that plagued his sleep. The couch had done him no favors for his sore back, either.
He pressed a trembling hand over his eyes, gulping in breaths of air as he rode through the aftershocks of the dream. Seeing Hiromitsu die while he slept no longer triggered the visceral mixture of terror and anxiety that they had when he had begun his career as an agent of the Organization. He had seen it too many times to wake up with limbs shaking and tears leaking down his face.
But Conan… That was a new horror his psyche had introduced, and it was different. Instead of simply replaying memory—which was what the other one had been—Conan’s situation twisted into different scenarios that, he realized to his absolute horror, could perhaps have been attributed to the fact that he had failed to act sooner.
Logically, Rei knew that by the time he entered the building of the false children’s clinic, Conan’s assault had already been well underway. But the long moment he had spent staring at the façade just outside the entrance, the small amount of time he had taken to reassure that other boy that he would not lay a hand on him, the time he took to check the room for cameras—could those precious few minutes have helped to decrease the severity of Conan’s current condition?
Rei gave himself ten minutes to pull himself back together, to sort through his feelings of guilt and inadequacy and failure. It was a necessary process, meant to help him cope with what he had needed to do in order to protect Japan.
It still fucking sucked, regardless.
He eyed the two folders, which he had tossed onto his coffee table. Swallowing, he reached for the one containing the children’s files. No time like the present, right?
It was punishment.
It was torture.
Each child Kazami’s assembled team had rescued had their own file: one sheet of paper listing as much of their legal information that was available. Names, date of births, age, eye color, weight, height, blood type, mother, father, Individual Number, if applicable. Included were the hospital physician’s notes on the condition of each victim. Physical injuries. Psychological assessment. It was all there, written out in clinically damning black and white.
Rei forced himself to read each file and study each photograph. Every single one of these children… he had failed to protect. Again, he knew that rationally—logistically—there was no way for him to do so unless he suddenly developed the ability to spontaneously clone himself, but the deadened eyes that stared back at him from every glossy photograph cut him to the quick.
The second to last file he read was that of the boy that he had left behind. The picture was of a horribly battered and bloody face, one that Rei could barely recognize. His chest tightened with unease as he flipped the photo over to read the documentation. There, stamped in bold red ink across the top of the page, were two kanji characters: 死亡.
Deceased.
Passed away.
Gone.
“What…?” he breathed, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. His eyes scanned the initial lines of the file.
Name: [No surname given] Hiiro
Date of birth: XXXX/10/19
Age: 7
Eye Color: Hazel
He skipped over the rest of the information and zeroed in on the physical injuries description:
… collapsed dextral zygomatic arch, ruptured dextral globe, collapsed nasal bone, multiple contusions on cranium, dislocated mandible with upper sinistral canine and lower sinistral molar missing with blood and semen found inside missing tooth sockets. Sinistral 4-6 and dextral 5-8 ribs broken with associated hematoma. Handprint-shaped ecchymoses on face, neck, wrists, and thighs. Multiple penetrative wounds in abdomen, all profusely bleeding when found. Fourth degree perineal tearing of the anus with copious amounts of blood and semen. Patient found in severe hypovolemic shock. Went into cardiac arrest en route to hospital despite administered intravenous therapy. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation attempts after hospital admission failed. Pronounced dead at 00:25.
The psychological assessment section was chillingly blank.
Rei released a shuddering breath, allowing the page to fall away from numb fingers as he propped his elbows on his knees and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. In the time between his escape with Conan and the PSB’s storming of the building—barely an hour’s passing—he had been tortuously beaten and raped, and he had died of his wounds on the way to a hospital. Seven-year-old Hiiro had died because of him.
The knowledge made him feel physically ill.
I’m a fucking monster, he thought in horror, I mean, I always knew that I was one because of what I do for a living, but this… I’m a monster just like those fucking child rapists. I allowed this to happen to him. I killed him because I chose to leave him behind in order to rescue Conan… I’m just as bad as them.
It was one thing to allow an adult to die because he needed to prove a point or required that someone be taken out. Rei had no qualms about doing such a thing if it meant furthering his own goals—be it gaining leverage against that bastard Akai, or increasing the trust Ano Kata had in his capabilities.
It was an entirely different matter to allow a child to die because of his decision to abandon him to his fate. In making such a decision, he had given his tacit consent to allow the boy to continue being brutalized and violated. And now the boy was dead.
“I’m sorry,” Rei whispered—pleaded—as he curled his fingers painfully into his hair, “I’m so sorry, Hiiro.”
How long he sat there mentally apologizing to the ghost of a terrified boy with hazel eyes, he did not know. But when he came back to himself, his eyes were damp, his head ached, and…
… he still had one last file to read: Edogawa Conan’s.
Conan’s photo had the same distant stare as all the others had. Rei swallowed thickly and proceeded to read the file, not daring to skip a single word as penance. The moment he was done, however, he launched himself off the sofa and barely made it to the toilet before he emptied his stomach.
Reading about Conan’s injuries had somehow been worse than actually seeing them. It listed out things he had seen, but also detailed what he had missed because he had not been trained to spot them.
The boy had been dangerously close to an overdose of fentanyl. It was the reason for his lassitude during the entire rescue, the reason he had not been screaming in agony the entire time. Typed in the psychological assessment were the recommendations that he required medical detox and opioid replacements for his addiction, as well as psychotherapy to address the impending depression, anxiety, and PTSD that came with surviving sexual assault.
So what did all of that mean for a child as bright as Conan? Rei was, frankly put, terrified to find out. Conan was so intelligent, so aware and understanding of the world around him that it was impossible for him not to be able to comprehend the severity of the transgressions that had been committed against him. And even if—no, when—he learned to smile again, there would always be an additional, lingering shadowy dimension to him that had not existed before. It would be an outward sign that marked him as both victim and survivor, invisible to all except those who knew to look. Rei hated that he was one of the unfortunate people able to easily see those shadows.
After ensuring that he was no longer in danger of further vomiting, Rei rinsed his mouth out and washed his face. Cool beads of water ran down his tanned skin and fell in single droplets from the point of his chin as he stared at the reflection in the mirror. Tired, haunted blue eyes with bruised bags beneath them gazed back at him, backdropped by the coppery skin and blond hair courtesy of his partial Melanesian heritage. While the traits he received from his Japanese father showed themselves in his facial features, most people only saw the outward coloration he inherited from his mother. It had made him a consistent target for bullying when he had been younger.
I don’t even need to smile to the shadows in my expression, he thought with flat objectivity, though he frowned as he thought of Conan. Is this what he will become, too?
Rei knew that he was an angry, bitter man who held grudges far longer than was considered healthy. He also knew he was very Machiavellian in nature, possessed a streak of sadism—and if he was to be brutally honest with himself, possessed certain characteristics that marked him as what psychologists would call “psychopathic”—or at least planted him somewhere on the psychopathy spectrum. It was likely what made him such a talented double agent.
He lied frequently and easily due to the nature of his position as an agent of the Organization, he manipulated people with astounding ease and frequency, and he did not particularly care about how the manipulation affected the people he used it on so long as it helped him in the end—unless they were children, of course. He was generally indifferent to most people in his adult life, and only the precious few that had mattered to him as a child still held powerful sway over his emotions—which was really kind of convenient, as they were now all dead and that really was not a weakness his enemies could exploit…
… unless that enemy was Akai, the motherfucker.
Furuya Rei was rotten at his very core, and he knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Social mores dictated that killing people was bad. While Rei found he did not really care if adults died either way—they all had enough time to get a feel for life and figure out what their purpose was—he found that children were a different story entirely. His general lack of empathy for adults, which was sequestered away behind charming smiles and little acts of kindness, disappeared in the face of puppy eyes and innocent smiles, and he found he wanted to protect that.
It was a very strange dichotomy, he knew, and one that he had contemplated much more after meeting and getting to know one Edogawa Conan. Conan brought forth all of those parental instincts he had regarding children to the fore, while simultaneously bringing forth that callousness he regarded most adults with. It was, perhaps, why he allowed and even helped the boy with schemes pertaining to murders and bombings and assassins. Conan was someone to protect, true, but he had the skills and tools necessary to defend and take care of himself. It kept Rei intrigued, and better yet, ensured that he would protect the child for all he was worth.
A notification sound from his phone broke his musings on the broken state of his mind, and after drying off his face, he checked to see what he had received while he had been metaphorically dead to the world.
Mouri Ran [09:04:13]: Conan-kun is awake right now. He’s getting breakfast amd1p0*wj##jgd*atw
Mouri Ran [09:04:35]: Sorry, he stole my phone and button mashed.
Mouri Ran [09:04:49]: He’s still very out of it from the anesthesia.
Enomoto Azusa [10:02:59]: Should I be worried that you haven’t shown up for work yet? You’re usually pretty punctual.
[10:04:19] Missed Call from Enomoto Azusa
[10:09:42] Missed Call from Enomoto Azusa
Enomoto Azusa [10:10:36]: I’ll cover your shift for you, Amuro-san, but please call me back!
[14:46:02] Missed Call from Enomoto Azusa
Mouri Ran [17:27:29]: Conan-kun was awake but groggy for small amounts of time throughout the day today. He wanted to know how he ended up in the hospital and I mentioned that you brought him in. When you have a chance, would you mind visiting him? Thanks for everything, Amuro-san!
It was still early enough to visit the hospital. Rei decided to do that first, and then swing by headquarters briefly before heading over to Poirot to give his excuses to the manager. He tapped on Azusa’s contact information and dialed her phone number as he tidied up the files on the coffee table. It rang once before she picked up.
She greeted him with, “Amuro-san?” and he could practically feel her worry radiating through the phone.
“Hey, Azusa-san, sorry for not responding earlier,” he apologized, and he did not have to feign the tiredness he felt through his voice. “I slept through all of your calls and messages.”
“Are you ill?” she asked.
“A little,” he fibbed, though it was more of a half-truth than anything else. No way was he going to admit that he had just helped bust a child prostitution ring and was currently wallowing in a pit of guilt. He grabbed the two folders and made a beeline for his closet in his bedroom. There was a safe tucked behind his clothing that he used to store materials of a sensitive nature.
“Oh no!” she fretted. “I can bring—”
He interrupted her before she could begin listing everything she wanted to purchase. “Thank you, but I’ll be fine, Azusa-san. I am fine.”
She huffed. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. I feel much after getting all that sleep.” It was nice, he supposed, that she cared so much. “But thank you anyways,” he added as he opened the combination lock and slipped the folders inside. A twist of the dial and the safe was secured.
“All right then. Feel better, and I’ll see you soon, Amuro-san,” she said as she finally relented.
“Thanks Azusa-san. I should be back in the café tomorrow. See you then.” He hung up, switching back to the text messages to respond to Ran’s request.
Amuro Touru [17:28:20]: I’m headed for the hospital now.
Mouri Ran [17:28:29]: See you soon.
Rei stuffed his phone and wallet into his pocket and grabbed his keys, and was almost out the door before he remembered to grab a spare bath towel. The towel ended up being carefully arranged in the passenger seat to appear as though he had merely tossed it there and not as though it was hiding something beneath it. The two previous times he had driven it had been dark out. With sunlight, even despite the black color of the vinyl, he could still trace the outline of Conan’s posterior and legs based on the pattern of rust-colored stains. Yes, he was all in favor of burning the seat once he procured a replacement.
The trip to the hospital included a call to Kazami for updates. His subordinate informed him that transcripts of the eleven other men had been completed, along with the digital data compilation. Rei instructed for Kazami to find and arrest the other people who had visited the clinic for “special treatment.” Pedophiles were the absolute scum of all criminals and deserved worse than death, in his personal opinion. But alas, such decisions were not for him to decide.
Touru parked in the hospital’s visitor parking garage and signed in as a visitor. A nurse led him through a maze of corridors to a nondescript room, where, after a warning knock on the door, he found Edogawa Conan, asleep on the bed, with Mouri Ran seated in an armchair doing her homework.
Ran glanced up, weary eyes lighting up at his appearance. “Amuro-san!” she whispered. “You came!”
He smiled at her in response. “Ran-san.” His gaze shifted to the bed’s sole occupant. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s been waking up more frequently and for longer periods of time. Kinomoto-san—the nurse on duty—says he’s doing well.” There was an air of overwhelming relief in the young woman’s voice.
“I’m glad.” Touru settled himself into the only other armchair in the room and murmured, “If you need to go, I can watch him. I had been planning to stay for a little, anyways.”
Ran’s smile was warm and grateful as she packed up her schoolbag. “Could you? I need to go back home and make sure Otou-san isn’t drunk and out playing pachinko again.” The last part had her expression tightening into a frown bordering a scowl.
Touru snorted, more than familiar with the elder Mouri’s irresponsible mannerisms. “Of course. Have a good evening if I do not see you again, Ran-san.”
“Same to you, Amuro-san,” Ran said as she nodded her thanks and left the room.
The went silent once the door shut save for the steady beep of the electrocardiogram and the hiss of gas from the compression sleeves that Rei knew patients wore around their calves to prevent the formation of blood clots in the lower extremities. Conan looked so tiny and pale on the bed, the steady rise and fall of his chest the only outward indication that he was still alive. Nasal cannula snaked from his nose and around his head to a port in the wall, feeding him oxygen. A needle taped to the back of his hand fed him antibiotics and fluids from a bag hanging attached to a hook on a rolling stand. His wrists had been wrapped with gauze where he had developed rope burns where he had been bound. The hand-shaped bruise around his neck had darkened from faint purple to deep violet, and the sight sent a brief but violent wave of homicidal fury rolling through him.
All my fucking fault. I can’t even save one fucking kid. He sighed, slumping back into the chair as he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. You’re doing a fantastic fuck up of a job, he scolded to himself.
Rei was unaware of the passage of time as he continued his mental self-flagellation. A weak cough startled him, his head snapping up to find a pair of clouded blue eyes wearily watching him. “Zero-no-nii-chan,” Conan sighed.
“Conan-kun!” Rei whispered, leaning out of his chair in muted elation at the boy’s awake state. He crushed his forward momentum in reaction to the boy’s involuntary flinch and subsequent hiss of pain, and any excitement he felt at the boy’s awakening was instantly snuffed out. He eased back into his seat to force more distance between the two, and something in him ached at seeing how Conan relaxed the further he moved away. “Sorry,” he apologized quietly as he carefully placed his hands on his knees to keep himself from doing anything that would further scare the boy. He suddenly felt extremely awkward under Conan’s hazy stare, as though the child could read the shame that he felt in his failure to keep him safe and sound.
Conan blinked his eyes blearily, and then the softest smile Rei had ever seen slowly curled the boy’s lips even as tears welled up in his eyes—and something inside him broke. “Thank you,” the child breathed, his voice quiet and raspy and so very terribly grateful, “for coming to get me.”
“I…” He swallowed thickly, mouth suddenly dry and throat abruptly too tight. “You shouldn’t. I didn’t get to you fast enough,” he confessed, and he bowed his head at the admission of his failure. He fisted his hands briefly before he slid off the seat and unceremoniously prostrated himself on the tiled floor in a perfect dogeza. “I’m so sorry, Conan-kun.”
A pained gasp had him straightening and rocking back on his heels to find the child trying to position himself so that he could see past the side of the bed. “Oh, no, please, please don’t move!” he quietly babbled, distantly aware of his words as he waived his hands helplessly in the air. “I don’t want you hurting yourself further!”
“Then stay off the floor,” Conan ordered sharply in reply as he flopped back to his original resting position, riding through the self-induced pain with gritted teeth. Rei resettled himself in the chair, watching with silent worry as Conan struggled to catch his breath. “You know,” he softly wheezed between pants, “if you had brought me here thirty minutes later, I would have been dead.”
Rei felt as though a boulder had crushed his innards. “If I had…” he croaked, unable to comprehend nor finish the train of thought.
Conan huffed, closing his eyes to focus on his breathing. “I’d have died from blood loss. Thankfully, Ran was around to donate. If you hadn’t been around, I would have been dead, and she wouldn’t have been here to donate. The other kids wouldn’t have been found, that group would have continued making money off of drugs and child prostitution, and no one would have been the wiser. Really, all of it came down to you, Zero-no-nii-chan.” Rei’s speechlessness must have manifested in his silence somehow, for Conan opened tired eyes to grin at him. “So don’t beat yourself up so much, okay? You did enough.”
Furuya Rei was a monster—of that, he had no doubt. He lied and killed, manipulated and cheated, day in and day out. He was self-aware enough to know and understand his faults. He knew his strengths and weaknesses inside and out, knew the kind of guilt that would weigh on him and the kind that he shed like water off his back. One was of little consequence to him, but the other was a veritable noose around his neck. He also knew what lines to never cross of his own volition in order to tighten that chokehold further.
He had failed eighty-eight children in one night. There was no dancing around that fact, and it was something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
But Edogawa Conan’s words, though small and inconsequential and did absolutely nothing to ease the remorse he felt regarding Hiiro, helped to loosen that noose just by the tiniest of margins.
Perhaps it was enough.