Detective Conan: The System Takes Me to Zero's World

Karasuma Renya's impatient voice came from behind: "Useless things, let the medical robot deal with it."

The moment she pushed open the security door, the phone in her pocket vibrated again—the message from Amuro Toru contained only two words: "Action."

The night wind blew in from the entrance of the rooftop, carrying with it the noise of the distant city.

Kudo Yuki looked back at the building shrouded in shadows, the molecular structure of APTX4869 and the data stream of ES Dark Amber overlapping in her mind.

It turns out that those fragments scattered in time had long been strung together by Karasuma Renya into chains leading to hell.

The parameters she had just adjusted were not only the key to weakening control, but also the explosives hidden in the chain - they would explode completely as long as the right moment was right.

The rooftop door was gently pushed open, and Amuro Toru's figure appeared in the shadows: "Do you need to analyze the backup data in the USB drive immediately?"

Kudo Yuki shook her head and tossed him the micro memory card hidden in her sleeve. "The USB drive is bait. The real core data is here." She looked up at the night sky. "We need to let more people know about the connection between APTX4869 and ES Dark Amber."

The faint sound of sirens came from the distance, and the figure of the female secretary appeared at the stairs and made a safe gesture to them.

Kudo Yuki took one last look at the building, turned and walked towards the helicopter on the edge of the rooftop - their counterattack had just begun.

The helicopter's propeller stirred the night wind. As soon as Kudo Yuki sat down, Amuro Toru transmitted an encrypted file to the onboard terminal.

The moment the curtain lit up, there was a slight rustling sound in the pocket. Shushu poked out his little head, and his fluffy fur rubbed against Kudo Yuki's fingertips, bringing a familiar warm touch.

Its voice trembled slightly. "Xiaoxue, the locations of all the video equipment in the basement of Karasuma Group headquarters have been marked—but are you sure you need to note the backup surveillance in the incubator area and the pinhole cameras in the gene bank ventilation ducts as well?"

Kudo Yuki tapped the palm of his hand lightly with her fingertips, signaling it to be patient.

Amuro Toru was adjusting his headset when he caught a glimpse of the small shadow from the corner of his eye. A very soft laugh escaped his throat: "It's even more nervous than us."

"Hmph!" Shushu wagged his tail in dissatisfaction. "Those cameras hidden in the dark are the most troublesome! The cameras in the ventilation ducts are hard to defend against.

"Got it." Kudo Yuki rubbed its head, her tone soothing, "Follow your target, don't miss any. When we take action later, Matsuda will be responsible for cutting off the main line, and the remaining backup equipment..."

She raised her eyes to look at Amuro Toru, and they exchanged a glance, "Leave it to our 'secret agent' to handle it."

Shushu tilted his head as if he understood something, and retreated back into his pocket, leaving only a pair of bright black eyes staring vigilantly at the shadow behind the curtain - there, a holographic map of the Karasuma Group headquarters was projected, and dense red dots flickered in the basement area like scattered sparks.

As the helicopter passed through the clouds, an encrypted message suddenly popped up on the onboard terminal.

Amuro Toru's slender fingers slid across the screen quickly, and the decrypted text illuminated the cold light in his eyes: "Kagekawa Luo has arrived at the designated coordinates. Stand by at Exit 3 of the side entrance of the Nagano Prefectural Police Department."

Kudo Yuki's fingertips unconsciously rubbed the magician's divination cards in her pocket. The edges of the tarot cards that Hei Yu Touyi gave her had been rubbed smooth.

"The core algorithm of the ES Dark Amber is hidden in the underlying code of the gene bank," she suddenly said, her voice fragmented by the roar of the propellers. "Those numbers we saw in the incubator area just now correspond to the families of the thirty-seven political figures who have disappeared in the past five years."

Amuro Toru turned the head of the plane and his eyes swept across the safety signal sent by Morobushi Keimitsu on the screen - a string of short sentences written in coffee stain code.

"News just came from Yingchuan that Nagano Trading's surveillance system has been taken over by Hagiwara." He paused. Matsuda Jinpei's casual voice came through the headset, with a faint electrical noise in the background. "Matsuda said the main line will be disconnected at 3:00 AM, which is right between shift changes."

The rat in his pocket suddenly trembled, its fur tickling Kudo Yuki's palm. "There's an unusual fluctuation in the oxygen supply pipe in the incubator. Just now, when I was marking the location, I thought I heard someone humming a nursery rhyme."

Kudo Yuki's heart tightened. "That nursery rhyme is the organization's secret code for contact. Could there be an informant who slipped through the net?"

Amuro Toru had obviously thought of this as well. He quickly pulled up the heat map of Nagano Prefecture and pointed at where Morobushi Keimitsu was. "Kagekawa has already checked the surrounding area. It's probably some residual surveillance footage that wasn't cleaned up during the cleanup."

He turned his face to the side, the moonlight falling just right on his taut jawline. "The gene sequence analysis results you included in Yingchuan's resume are quite appropriate, but I added two 'academic stains' - the paper he retracted in Cell Reports last year, and the record of his participation in a failed clinical trial."

Kudo Yuki raised an eyebrow and tapped her knee with her fingertips: "Did you leave this flaw intentionally?"

"That lord's research department hates perfect resumes the most," Amuro Toru adjusted the helicopter's altitude. The city lights outside the window shrank to stars. "They need a 'controllable ambitious person,' not a flawless genius. The embryo gene editing technology you added should be enough for them to consider this person useful."

The rat in my pocket suddenly popped half its head out, its chubby paws tugging at the fabric as it slid down. "The oxygen supply data in the incubator area jumped again! When I was marking the location just now, the camera in the ventilation duct seemed to have turned at a different angle."

Kudo Yuki's phone suddenly lit up, and an anonymous text message popped up on the screen. The sender column displayed a string of garbled characters, but the content was as concise as an instruction:

Heading 330, avoiding the West Tower's surveillance.

Attachment: Simple diagram of the above-ground floor structure of the headquarters.

Her fingertips paused on the screen, and out of the corner of her eye she saw that Amuro Toru's movements as he adjusted the equipment paused slightly.

The moment their gaze met, they both understood the message in each other's eyes—this was Vermouth's handiwork. That woman, always navigating the lines between light and darkness with disguise and innuendo, even delivered her message with the precision of a stage play.

"It seems someone knows Karasuma's current situation better than we do." Amuro Toru turned the plane smoothly and naturally, as if he had already planned this route. "The 330-degree heading will just allow us to take advantage of the cloud cover and avoid the newly installed thermal imaging system of the West Tower."

Hagiwara Kenji's brisk voice came from his headset: "Nagano Trading's surveillance system has been almost completely dismantled. The reconfigured false signal will last until four in the morning. That's enough for you to deal with."

Kudo Yuki clicked on the structural diagram in the attachment. The corridors and stairs outlined by blue lines extended on the screen. Several locations marked with red circles were particularly conspicuous - they were all security blind spots on the ground floors of the Karasuma Group.

She recalled the last time she met Vermouth in a dark alley, the cigarette between her fingers flickering in the night: "I'm helping you because we have the same 'garbage' to clean up."

She should have guessed then that this granddaughter of Karasuma Renya knew more about this cage than anyone else.

"How's things going with Captain Ida?" Kudo Yuki put her phone back into her pocket, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing against the edge of the divination cards.

Amuro Toru's voice came through the noise-canceling headset, a hint of subtle tension in it. "Just received word that he's leading his men in welding shut Hatch No. 3 of the Nagano Trading. That's connected to the underground transport tunnel. After it's welded shut, even if there are any escapees who want to move the test subjects through here, they'll have to remove the steel bars first."

He turned his head, the moonlight illuminating the coldness in his eyes. "Matsuda has already followed the transportation route towards headquarters. The guy said he wanted to leave a 'surprise' for those who 'delivered' the goods."

Shushu's little head rubbed against Kudo Yuki's palm, making it itchy. "When I was marking the location just now, I saw a faint light flashing in the ventilation duct. It seemed like... the camera was moving? Didn't Vermouth say that the camera had already been moved? Could there be something missing?"

Amuro Toru had obviously heard what Shushu had said. He quickly called up the real-time data stream from the headquarters and slid his fingertips across the screen. "It wasn't a leak."

He pointed to a group of pulsating green dots. "That's Vermouth shifting the surveillance camera's perspective. She's turned all the cameras toward the empty corridor, giving us a five-minute window."

He raised his eyes to look at Kudo Yuki, his tone more certain, "Karasuma is taking a nap, this is the time she calculated."

Kudo Yuki remembered the last call from Rum, when she deliberately mentioned the secret behind Cohen's assassination mission. In the moment of silence on the other end of the phone, Amuro Toru next to her was holding a freshly brewed coffee, and the heat from the rim of the cup blurred the emotions in his eyes.

Now that I think about it, the reason why Vermouth chose to take action at this time might also be related to that phone call - that lady is best at finding her own chessboard from other people's flaws.

"There's a strange spot on the ground floor's structural diagram." Kudo Yuki zoomed in on the red circle on the screen. "It's labeled 'Equipment Room,' but proportionally, it's three times larger than an average equipment room."

Amuro Toru's fingertip touched the edge of the red circle. "It should be an elevator shaft disguised as an equipment room, leading directly to the gene bank on the third underground floor." He suddenly chuckled. "Vermouth even marked this. Is she afraid we won't be able to find it?"

"There's a pinhole camera in the ventilation duct of the gene bank!" Shushu's voice was filled with anxiety. "I marked it in the lower left corner of the map. It's a small red dot!"

Kudo Yuki rubbed its little head, and Gua felt the warm fur in her palm: "Got it, I'll let the 'dark line' handle it later."

She raised her eyes to look at Amuro Toru, and the glances they exchanged contained a tacit understanding that needed no words - the so-called "hidden line" was none other than Kagekawa Raku, who was being played by Morofushi Kagemitsu at the moment.

The public security colleague who was known for his calmness was now playing the role of an ambitious climber in the research department of the headquarters, carrying a forged resume with "academic stains".

Kudo Yuki rubbed her fingertips along the edge of her phone for a moment, then turned the screen to Amuro Toru. "She's even figured out the parameters of Sita's new thermal imager. The blind spots marked on this diagram are just enough to avoid all the patrolling security robots."

Amuro Toru's eyes swept across the patrol route marked with dotted lines on the screen, and he turned the nose of the plane more and more precisely: "Vermouth has more spies at headquarters than we thought."

He suddenly chuckled. "But she did calculate exactly what we need—the map even has the location of the backup generator marked. It seems she's worried about a power outage when we remove the surveillance."

Kudo Yuki turned the screen of her mobile phone towards Amuro Toru, and the security blind spot marked with a red circle glowed coldly in the night.

The rat in his pocket suddenly pricked up its ears, its fur trembling. "Just now, when I was marking the ventilation duct, I thought I heard Vermouth's voice... She said, 'It's time for the fine wine to move on to another stage.'"

Amuro Toru's fingers, which were turning the phone head, suddenly tightened, and Hagiwara Kenji's teasing voice in the headset stopped abruptly.

He turned his face to the side, the moonlight shattered into ice in his pupils: "She knows your identity better than anyone else."

Before he finished speaking, the onboard terminal suddenly received an encrypted voice message. Matsuda Jinpei's casual voice echoed through the murmur of electricity: "I just found an interesting item in the transport corridor—Cohen's abandoned sniper scope. It's stained with iris perfume from Rum's office."

Kudo Yuki's fingertips tapped the edges of the divination cards, rubbing them. The card Kuroba Touichi had handed her felt warm in her palm. She suddenly remembered what Conan had said three days earlier, chewing a sandwich at the Poirot Café: "Kid has reported that he's planted a micro-eavesdropper in the headquarters ventilation ducts. He said he heard someone discussing 'the loyalty of fine wine.'"

At that time, Toru Amuro was wiping the glass, and the foam slid down the wall of the glass onto the bar, leaving a small stain.

"There's movement over at Yingchuan." Amuro Toru's voice interrupted her thoughts. On the screen, the coffee stain code sent by Zhufu Jingguang was slowly emerging - three drops of ink in the shape of a triangle, representing "contacted the core database."

Shushu suddenly jumped out of his pocket, pointing his little paw at the corner of the screen. "The oxygen supply data in the incubator area has jumped again! The frequency of this fluctuation is the same as the sound wave frequency when Rum called you last time!"

Kudo Yuki's heart trembled.

She remembered that day when Rum called her, there was a faint sound of gears turning in the background. At that time, Amuro Toru was tapping the table with his knuckles, and the rhythm just happened to coincide with the sound.

Now that I think about it, it wasn't a coincidence at all - the antique clock in Rum's office made the same sound every hour.

"Matsuda, cut off the main line ten minutes earlier," Amuro Toru ordered solemnly into his headset, simultaneously pulling up the Nagano Prefectural Metropolitan Police Department's real-time police force distribution. "Once Squad Leader Date has welded the hatch shut, have him lead two teams to the iris bush west of headquarters—that's where the entrance to Rum's private elevator is."

Shushu suddenly screamed, "The camera in the ventilation duct is moving again! This time it's targeting the combination lock of the gene bank!"

Its furry body suddenly froze, its eyes widening. "Vermouth stuck a playing card on the combination lock! The Ace of Hearts!"

Kudo Yuki clenched the divination cards in her pocket. The cards Kuroba Touichi had handed her happened to contain an Ace of Hearts with a miniature gear pattern on the back. Suddenly, she understood—the woman, who always spoke in metaphors, was hinting that the code had something to do with machinery.

To be continued...