The X Sickness X Within (KilluGon)

Chapter 11

The trio of hunters made their way down the sidewalk to the doctor's office. With no other leads, it seemed as good a place as any to start.

Because they didn't know whether or not any of the other people working there were in league with the doctor, they had to sneak in covertly. Cloaked in Zetsu they ran past the receptionist at the front desk one by one. She didn't look up once. They entered the back rooms with their white washed walls and patterned tile floor. The maze of hallways proved challenging to navigate at first, until Gon caught a whiff of the poison the doctor must have had stashed somewhere in his office.

They followed the raven haired boy until they reached a solid wooden door with a plaque that read, Harold Smith in large black bolded letters. Kurapika checked the copper door knob. Locked. The blond looked down both sides of the hallway and, seeing that it was empty, drew two pieces of thin malleable metal. He inserted them into the key hole and maneuvered them until a solid click sounded in the locking mechanism.

He tried the knob again, and this time it turned smoothly. He looked down the vacant hall once more, then entered with the other two behind him. The room looked as if someone had been hurriedly collecting papers, knocking over random things in the process. Folders and patient papers littered the white tile floor of the office. All of the filing cabinets were left hanging open, the desk was slightly askew, and the painting on the wall was hanging by a single nail in the corner, leaving the picture dangling sideways.

A key pad was peeking out behind it. Killua walked over to investigate. Kurapika began skimming over papers looking for anything of importance. Gon tried to pinpoint exactly where the bags had been hidden.

How cliché. A safe behind a painting.

Killua thought that no one in their right mind would try to hide something of importance behind a painting. I mean, of all places you could look that is almost always the place to start. Killua ran his hands along the part of the wall he assumed the safe would be. He knocked against the wall and heard a solid thump.

Well, that's unusual. Is it not a hollow safe?

Killua pulled the front of the key pad off of the wall to get to the wires. He quickly hacked into it like his brother Milluki taught him and unlocked whatever it was that the key pad was connected to. Two beeps sounded directly under where Gon had been investigating and a blue floor tile popped open. Gon jumped back, startled, then looked to Killua with a question in his eyes.

Kurapika looked up from one of his papers and approached the tile. All three of them surrounded it and crouched down for a better look. Kurapika slid his fingers under the lip and pulled it off quickly. Gon covered his nose immediately and Killua and Kurapika both sniffed in disdain. A strong unpleasant odor radiated out of the small foot by foot hole in the ground.

It was too dark to make out what exactly was in the bottom of the hole- almost defiantly drugs of some kind- so Killua grabbed the desk lamp, turned it on, and yanked it over until it shone in the hole. Wilted leaves littered to bottom of the square hole, nothing more, nothing less. It was what they had been expecting really. This was where he would hide the drugs. It probably developed them elsewhere seeing as there was no place that he could do what he needed to here.

It was a dead end.

They searched the rest of his office for another hour and came up with nothing. All of the important documents (if there ever were any) were gone. There were no leads at all on this guy.

"We'll have to figure something else out," Kurapika said.

"Yeah," They agreed.

The trio once again made their way back through the halls, hidden with Zetsu. They walked the maze for a long time before they finally admitted defeat. They were lost. Gon had tried to catch a whiff of outside, but his senses were a bit burned out from the overwhelming smell of drugs he had encountered earlier. They resigned to find a nurse.

When they finally encountered one they quickly asked for directions. She told them that she would lead them instead since she wasn't doing anything at the moment. The nurse continued for a bit but kept stealing glances back at Killua. He promptly ignored her, but the longer this continued the more uncomfortable he became. He was used to being unseen in the shadows, not being gawked at while on a mission.

"Is something wrong?" He asked when she looked over her shoulder once again. She had thought that she had been pretty stealthy thus far and was surprised that he had even noticed.

"Oh... I was just wondering, have you been here before?" He resembled the cancer patient that had come in about two weeks ago. But that wasn't possible, he should be recovering from a surgery or something. Or bed ridden from the sickness.

"Yeah."

"He had come to see Dr. Smith," Gon chimed in.

"Dr. Smith? Oh, do you know where he is by chance? Because I have some papers for him that he dropped when he left yesterday."

"We were just about to go see him, actually." Kurapika cut in, "We were just stopping by to grab some files for him."

"Oh that's great! I'll get those papers for you and you can be on your way," She said.

Those papers had looked important. It's a good thing these nice young men will be able to get them to him.

Wow she's really trusting of people.

So she just goes around and gives important documents to random people.

Good, a lead that will eventually get me to the Phantom Brigade member.

"Here you go."

"Thank you. We'll get this to him right away."

They didn't open the folder she had given them until they had reached the apartment.

"Alright, let's see what we have here." Kurapika opened the folder and pulled out the contents. There were two patient files, a few restaurant to go menu, a notepad. The notepad looked brand new except the first page had been ripped off.

"Nothing. We've got nothing." Kurapika sighed.

"But, don't we have the notepad?" Gon asked innocently. "Maybe if we knew what that first page said we would know where he is."

"Well of course idiot! The problem is that we don't- Oh wait..." Killua ran to the white door on the left and began throwing things about his room. "Where the hell did it go..." was heard before a satisfied, "Ah-ha!" was triumphantly shouted.

Killua walked out of his room holding a pencil out in front of him like it was the Holy Grail.

"A pencil?" Kurapika questioned. A tone of doubt infiltrating his voice.

"Give me the notepad," Killua said and held out his hand. He was rewarded with the stack of paper. Holding the pencil sideways, the shaded the whole page lightly with graphite.

"What are you doing?"

"You don't get it, Kurapika? He's going to shade the last page and if the doctor wrote anything down hard enough then the indent won't be colored and we can see what he wrote. It's like reverse writing." Gon stated like it was the most obvious thing in the whole world.

But, how did Gon figure this out before me. I really need to step up my game.

"I got it!" Killua showed the colored page to the two people in front of him. It read,

Midnight

Tomorrow

Behind the hospital.

"We've got ourselves a lead."