Ballad of Anguish

The clock on the wall showed 02:15 AM. The sound of it's ticking echoed in Ran's ears like a foreboding of doom. She sat in her father's office, unable to sleep, all though tired to the bone. Her eyes burned, tears had puffed the area around them, but now no more fell. Her nose felt thick and her throat sore. She had been crying so much, but what good did it do? The lump of hopelessness in her stomach hadn't melted away, her hands hadn't stopped trembling and her arms were still empty.



He hadn't come back. They had searched for him, they still searched for him, but they hadn't found him. Conan was missing. Fukiko was dead, her ravaged body had been found and an investigation had started. But the police hadn't found any trace of Conan. They were still investigating the area where the star's body had been found, but so far, Ran hadn't heard anything. She only knew that an old friend had been murdered, her new little friend, whom she regarded as her little brother, was missing, and there was still a ruthless murder on the loose.



"Shinichi", she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Shinichi, you know where he is, right? You'll help Conan, right? Can you hear me, Shinichi? Why don't you answer? Oh please... Where are you...?"



Her voice broke, the tears came anew.



In the doorframe behind her, her father stood. He had an unusually solemn expression on his face, and his eyes were dark with worry.



"Kudo is missing?"



"Yes, I'm afraid so."



Professor Agasa looked perfectly devastated. He sat at his table, head in his hands, his shoulders slumped down in defeat. Miyano Shio, or Haibara Ai as she called herself, shook her head in confusion.



"I never thought he'd be so stupid... He'll never learn, will he? He's not superman. He isn't invulnerable and he isn't immortal. Too bad he has to get himself into trouble before he realizes that."



As the young woman with the body of a child talked, she struggled to get her heavy laptop up from a backpack she had left standing on the floor next to the professor's counter. Her small hands had trouble grasping the computer, but she quickly thrust her leg forward, using her lap as support. Still, it was pretty heavy.



Professor Agasa finally noticed her plight, and got to his feet. He took the laptop from her hands and placed it on the nearest desk.



"What are you trying to do", he asked Ai curiously.



"I have no time to explain", she said shortly, but added the second later, her voice softer:



"But thank you."



His world spun around, his head hurt more than he cared to think about, and he felt more than slightly nauseous. He guessed he had a slight concussion, not that it mattered... He still was alive after all.



Conan groaned, trying to recollect what had happened to him. His eyes felt heavy, as if something was preventing him from moving his eyelids. That idol, Ran's childhood friend... He hadn't been able to save her, right? She was dead; he had found her in the darkness. And then what? He remembered hearing a sound. A sound of what...? His head hurt. Had someone attacked him? It seemed like it. He had seen too much, again. So what had stopped the criminal from killing him this time? 'I won't be surprised if they shrunk me to a toddler this time', he thought darkly.



"The little boy is moving... Is the little boy awake...?"



The voice was deep, without authority and with a slight slur to it. Conan instantaneously disliked it. Forcing his eyes open, he could barely make out a dark figure a few meters away from him. The man, because he guessed it was a man, given the figure's height and build, stood leaning against something the teenager-turned-child couldn't make out for the life of him. A car perhaps...? The smell of oil and gas lay heavy in the air, and the floor underneath Conan was cold, like concrete. They could be in a garage, but then again, they didn't have to be. He definitely disliked the situation.



"Sweet little boy, are you afraid? Am I scaring you? Don't be afraid..."



Okay, this was starting to creep Conan out a little too much. The man sounded almost... if he didn't know better, he'd say aroused, but that was just too... But what if it was true? Hadn't Fukiko been raped before she was murdered? But that didn't automatically mean that the guy was about to rape anything that moved, and Conan had the body of a very small child. And a boy at that. Still, Conan wasn't naïve, he wasn't about to dismiss the thought just because he was a boy. Either way, he was in big trouble, as he was kidnapped by a lunatic who had murdered at least once, and was pretty likely to do it again if provoked.



Trying to move, Conan finally realized that he was tied up, his hands behind his back, clogged together with tape that did it's best to cut the circulation to his fingers. As he tried his best to move around without upsetting his aching head too much, he finally managed to get a better glimpse of the man that held him captive.



From what Conan could make out, the man was in his mid-thirties, he had wild, bleached hair that seemed fairly thin and wispy. He was dressed in some sort of jacket with a shirt underneath, and a pair of tight fitting pants. He wasn't thin, but he wasn't overweight either. From the look of things, Conan's best bet was that the man was a regular in some unnamed gym somewhere. To make matters worse, Conan noticed something in the man's left hand: A long, thick steel-pipe.



It couldn't have been the weapon used to knock him unconscious, Conan figured, since a blow from that pipe would more likely crush his skull and kill him on the spot.



"She had it coming, you know", the man suddenly growled. "She had it coming, that filthy bitch... You don't know where I'm coming from, do you, kid? You don't know why I had to take care of her. You think I'm a criminal, don't you? You think I've done something bad, ridding the world of her. You think I'm to blame..."



He walked closer to Conan, with each word his voice grew louder and more menacing. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this man wasn't all there so to speak, and Conan, well... he was a genius, and he felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. This man was a real psychopath, he was extremely dangerous and unpredictable, and Conan was alone with him.



His thoughts were cut short as the man suddenly stopped, grabbing the boy by his collar and pulling him up in the air.



"I'm not to blame", he screamed in Conan's face. "I am fucking not to blame! It's all her fault, don't you understand that? She's the bad one! She's the bad one!"



The man's grip around Conan's collar intensified, forcing the young boy to move his head so that he'd end up in a position where he could breathe more freely. The dizziness that lurked in the back of his head thrust forward with full force, and he found it extremely hard to focus his eyes. With a twinge of desperation he also felt the nausea stir in his far to empty stomach, forcing him to whisper between clenched teeth:



"Please, let me down... I feel sick, so please, let me down..."



Somehow his words seemed to reach the man, as he released the grip around Conan's collar and dropped the boy painfully on the ground. Conan couldn't keep from making a complaining sound of pain and humiliation, but soon enough got other things to worry about besides his aching behind. His stomach took a turn for the worse, and he tried to scramble away as quick as he could, not wanting to vomit all over the man's shoes.



This was so... undignified.



As Conan was pretty occupied throwing up, he didn't notice the man slowly removing his pants...