The Contingency Plan

Chapter 3

Intercept

The days leading up to the gala had been a whirlwind of activity for Conan and Haibara. There was simply too much to do. Wardrobes had to be bought and packed, flights booked, hotels found, alibis forged, miracles of the dark alchemic arts conjured, and passports obtained.

This last task came with an additional complication as Haibara's passport was located in her old apartment. An apartment still possibly under the eye of her former employers.

However with a soccer ball, a call to his local undercover FBI agent and a wildly liberal interpretation of fact, Conan had been able to resolve this dilemma and retrieved the wayward booklet with as much plausible deniability as one could reasonably hope for.

That left distillation of a new antidote as the last major hurdle to clear. But with her years of experience and study, it was a challenge Haibara Ai was up to. In a spirit not far off from Dr. Frankenstein, she locked herself away from the rest of the world, deep in the lab, running endless simulations, tests, and analysis until satisfied with the result.

Kudo reflected on the warning she had given him when first presented with the strange looking green pill.

"Listen carefully." She said, "This isn't like the other antidotes you've had. It'll be weeks before you can safely take another once the effects of this dosage wear off. If I did the math right, it should last us about four days. We'll take it three hours before the departure. That'll give us one day to fly out, one to retrieve the hard drive, we'll lay low in the hotel for a day, then fly back. No funny business. We can't afford to get mixed up in any of your foolhardy nonsense."

"You say that like I do it on purpose." He grinned.

She gave him an unimpressed glare. "I know you. Here's the important part. Have you noticed that when you revert, it feels like your chest is about to explode? Apotoxin is particularly hard on the cardiovascular and skeletal systems. Not even you can overthink your bones, but with this long-lasting variant, you need to keep your heart rate down." She paused slightly after each word for emphasis. "If you get excited, it could drastically reduce the effectiveness of this drug and take years of your life. Anything above 150 beats per minute, and you can die. No extraneous exercise, no thrill seeking, no flirting. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." He took the medicine and inspected it in the light. "Say, I've been thinking. Is there anyone there, other than Dr. Wei, who might recognize you?"

It was an idea she had lost some sleep over. "It's possible but unlikely. My old classmates shouldn't be at an event like this, and it seems Dr. Wei isn't in the academic department anymore, so we don't have to worry about faculty."

"Does the organization have a footprint there?"

She shrunk a little and turned her face, clearly uncomfortable with the notion. "One that I know of. My former handler. But he died shortly after I returned to Japan."

"Tell me about him."

"Codename: Moonshine. Smart, dangerous, theatrical, and way too full of himself. Not unlike you, to be honest." She grabbed her elbows. "He was also a creep. We never met in person, but you could tell he was always watching. He made sure I was a social pariah, scaring off anyone who was friends with me."

It wasn't much to go on. A depressing fact that they had plenty of time to mull over during their flight across the Pacific. Customs, check-in, a sleepless night, breakfast, every spare moment they had was consumed by the looming, faceless specter.

However, once in the midst of all the gilded grandeur and ceremony San Francisco had to offer, their trepidation seemed to fade away. The tantalizing prospect that Moonshine was actually dead, the idea that they just might be able to pull it off now merely churned their stomachs like one gets at the top of a roller coaster.