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

Kiryu Yan chuckled softly, glancing up at Amuro Toru's gun-gripping hand, his spectacles reflecting a cold light. "You two are quicker than the police, though. Looking at your posture, you look like detectives who've been around alleys. So, are private investigators now meddling in the organization's affairs?"

He refolded the application form and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Those of you who rely on clues for a living probably don't know the ins and outs here. The Metropolitan Police Department's internal system looks tight, but in reality, it's full of loopholes.

Back when Shenxue and I were in charge of file encryption, we left a secret line in the prison system—using an old version of the police communication code to bypass surveillance, just like when we passed those 'disobedient' lists to Rum.

Kudo Yuki suddenly spoke up, "Is your secret clue hidden in the backup database of the Witness Protection Program? Last year, the Nagano Prefectural Police's system was hacked, and someone downloaded a witness list from five years ago using the same vulnerability."

Kiryuken's eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses. "Miyuki occasionally mentions a detective with a keen sense of smell who's always investigating old cases. It seems that's you. Unfortunately, she can only count floor tiles from the visitor window now. Even the most perceptive mind can't be detected by the prison walls."

"At least she won't have to be Rum's executioner anymore." Kudo Yuki took a step forward, a cold glint in her eyes. "Back then, the Scottish files were tampered with. It was you who tampered with them, right? Then you had Kurokawa Miyuki destroy the original records. You used the police's internal encryption protocol to disguise it as a system. You two were quite cooperative."

"Miss Detective, you've been investigating very thoroughly." Kiryuu Yan finally pressed the combination lock with his right hand. "But investigating old cases also comes with a price. Miyuki always says she's unworthy of the name 'Kurokawa,' but she forgets that once you enter the organization, everyone still wears a mask. Just like you, detectives chasing clues with magnifying glasses, don't you also break into places like the cold storage area?"

Amuro Toru's gun moved forward half an inch. "The fingerprint verification for the combination lock used Kurokawa Miyuki's old fingerprint, right? Rum kept her biometric information just to let you use this secret line today."

Kiryu Yan didn't deny it, but his fingertips danced rapidly on the password key: "She voluntarily entered the backup fingerprint before she was imprisoned, saying that in case the organization needed it one day... You see, she never really left until the end."

"That's not loyalty, it's the tragedy of being coerced." Kudo Yuki suddenly took out a silver chip from his pocket, which glowed coldly in the light.

"This was extracted from the tracking code you left in the authorization email. It contained Kurokawa Miyuki's psychological evaluation report—she had been wanting to leave the organization long before her assassination attempt on the Superintendent. It was you who changed her distress signal into a mission confirmation."

Kiryu Yan's fingers, which were pressing the password, suddenly tightened. The wind from the vent blew through, carrying broken frost. His lenses were covered with a layer of white mist, and it seemed as if he suddenly couldn't see clearly the two detectives who had suddenly broken in front of him.

"She shouldn't have had that thought." His voice dropped, with a stiffness that seemed to convince himself. "Rum trained us for ten years, from the police academy to the Metropolitan Police Department. Our lives are no longer our own..."

"So you replaced her commutation request with a coded mission?" Kudo Yuki pressed on. "You made her deliver messages for you from prison, using the false pretense of 'good behavior' to trade her sentence for time. In reality, you turned her into a mute intelligence relay! Kiryu Yan, do you dare say you don't feel the slightest bit of guilt towards her?"

"Shut up!" Kiryu Yan suddenly raised his eyes, the emotions behind his glasses finally breaking. "She and I are Rum's right-hand men, and we have never been friends! Just like you detectives, we only seek the truth for the reward. Why bother pretending to be so righteous?"

Before he finished speaking, the low-temperature cabinet No. 37 made a slight "click" sound, and the cabinet door slowly opened a gap.

Amuro Toru took the opportunity to rush forward, but Kiryu Yan suddenly threw out a short knife from his sleeve. The blade brushed against Amuro Toru's ear and nailed into the door frame of the low-temperature cabinet, shaking off a piece of thin frost.

"I can't take the sample away, but you can't keep it either." Kiryu Yan pressed the crown on his left wrist, and a micro display screen popped up on the dial with a countdown jumping on it.

"I've locked the temperature control system in the cold storage area. In ten minutes, the temperature will drop to -50 degrees Celsius, and the samples will be completely ineffective."

Kiryu Yan turned and rushed towards the ventilation duct.

Kudo Yuki suddenly raised her hand and threw out the flying rope, which got stuck in the gap of the vent's fence.

Kiryu Inu's movements were delayed for half a second.

Toru Amuro had already rushed forward and held his shoulders, and the two began to wrestle on the frosty ground.

"Miyuki keeps a cactus in prison." Kudo Yuki's voice was as calm as if she were discussing the weather. "Last month, when I visited her, she had the guards give you a drawing of a cactus with white flowers in bloom—do you think it was just a random drawing?"

Kiryuken paused.

Amuro Toru seized the opportunity to pin him against the cold cabinet, handcuffs snapping onto his wrists. His head rested against the cold cabinet door, his shoulders heaving violently. After a long pause, he uttered a hoarse question, "What does that mean? Don't you detectives know everything?"

"The Kurokawa family motto is, 'When frost and snow weigh down the branches, the white flowers reveal their true nature.'" Kudo Yuki walked up to him and slipped the silver chip into his pocket. "She's telling you she hasn't forgotten who she is. But you, bearing the badge and working for the organization, do you still remember the oath you swore on your graduation day?"

The wind from the vent suddenly grew stronger, picking up the broken glass on the ground and spinning it into small vortices in the light band.

Kiryu Yan looked at his handcuffed hands. The cuff of his left hand was rolled up, revealing a shallow scar on his wrist - it was the shrapnel scratch he received when he and Kurokawa Miyuki were in bomb disposal training at the police academy. The shape of their scars were almost exactly the same.

He suddenly sneered, "A detective is a detective. No matter how carefully they investigate, they still don't understand our business. Do you think catching me is the end? Rum's plan is far more in-depth than you see."

Amuro Toru grabbed the sample box from the cryogenic cabinet, his palms numb from the cold air on the metal surface. He glanced at his watch. "Seven minutes left. We have to go."

Kudo Yuki took one last look at Kiryu Inkyo. His head was still against the cabinet door, and his expression behind his glasses was hidden in the shadows, making it hard to see clearly. When she turned around, she heard him whisper something, something like "Don't waste your energy," or "She can't wait any longer."

The door to the cold storage area closed behind him, isolating the increasingly low temperature inside. The emergency light in the corridor was on red.

Shushu poked his head out of Amuro Toru's pocket and said, "I just saw a reflection on his glasses. He seemed to be crying."

Kudo Yuki didn't say anything, but just quickened her pace.

As Toru Amuro looked at her back, he suddenly remembered that the information given to him by Manager Kuroda said that before going to prison, Kurokawa Miyuki had tried to destroy a list. In addition to the undercover police officer, seven names were deliberately crossed out on the list, one of which was Kiryu Inoue.

"Will he..." Amuro Toru wanted to say something, but was interrupted by Kudo Yuki.

"He's Rum's man, from the very beginning." Her voice was soft, yet filled with unquestionable certainty. "As for Kurokawa Miyuki... she planted cacti in prison, not to wait for anyone, but to remind herself that even in the most difficult places, flowers can still grow."

The morning light poured in from the window at the end of the corridor, stretching the shadows of the two people very long.

Amuro Toru clenched the sample box in his hands, the coolness of the metal crawling up his palms as if to penetrate his bones. He suddenly understood that some undercover agents, like Gin, burn like a blazing fire, while others, like Kurokawa Miyuki, live as the only light in the darkness.

And Kiryu Yan may have chosen the wrong direction from the beginning, and could only be caught between loyalty and betrayal, and eventually forgot who he was.

As for the two detectives who suddenly appeared, were they involved by chance, or did they have other intentions?

Kiryu Yan was frozen stiff by the icy cabinet door, but suddenly felt that the most dangerous thing in this game might not be Rum's orders, but these "outsiders" who seemed to be out of the matter but could easily move people's hearts.

The iron door at the end of the corridor was pried open by Amuro Toru with a hairpin, and the morning light was flooding over the stair railings.

Kudo Yuki stepped out of the door first, and the roar of an early morning train passing by could be heard in the distance.

Toru Amuro stuffed the sample box into the trunk. The dull sound of the metal box colliding with the car body startled the pigeons on the eaves.

Shushu squatted on the car roof, combing his beard, and suddenly pricked up his ears: "I heard sirens coming from three directions. Did someone report it?"

"It was Kiryu Yan's backup plan." Amuro Toru opened the car door, a cold look flashing in his eyes. "When he pressed the temperature control lock, he also triggered the positioning signal."

Kudo Yuki got into the passenger seat, his fingertips swiping rapidly across the screen of his phone, pulling up the nearby traffic surveillance: "The southwest road is blocked during the morning rush hour, and there's a construction crew at the northeast entrance, so we can only take the coastal highway."

The moment the engine started, the alternating red and blue police lights could be seen in the rearview mirror.

Toru Amuro turned the steering wheel quickly and decisively, and the tires rolled over the accumulated water, splashing water half a meter high, barely avoiding the police car rushing into the alley.

"The samples need to be kept at a constant temperature. The trunk's cooling function can only last for two hours at most." Kudo Yuki looked at the temperature displayed on the dashboard. "The nearest safe house is in an old warehouse at Yokohama Port. They have professional refrigeration equipment there."

Toru Amuro said nothing, stepped on the accelerator and rushed straight onto the coastal highway.

Kudo Yuki turned her head to look towards the driver's seat: "Do you know why she assassinated the Superintendent?"

Amuro Toru's knuckles tightened slightly on the steering wheel.

Kudo Yuki's voice was very soft. "The file says 'carrying out a liquidation mission under the organization's orders,' but I saw in her cellmate's diary that she had the opportunity to shoot the director in the heart that day, but she deliberately missed by two inches."

Rows of containers passed by the car window, and the crane's boom drew slow arcs in the morning mist, like a silent giant.

"Rum needs a reason to put her in jail." Amuro Toru's tone was as flat as if he was stating an established fact. "Only she and Kiryu Ken can completely crack the Metropolitan Police Department's encryption system. Leaving one person to carry out the mission in the open and hiding the other in the dark as a backup is the layout the organization is best at."

Kudo Yuki looked down at the photo on her phone - it was retrieved from the prison archives. Kurokawa Miyuki was standing at the visiting window in prison uniform. The glass window reflected the iron bars behind her, and she was holding half a cactus in her hand.

"She refuses all visits in prison, except for monthly meetings with her lawyer." She zoomed in on the lawyer's face in the photo. It was a middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and had a mole at the corner of his mouth. "This lawyer died in an 'accidental' car accident last week. A burned encryption chip was found in his car. It matched the model I got from Kiryu Yan."

Toru Amuro suddenly turned on the turn signal and the car turned into a narrow fork in the road.

In the rearview mirror, the police lights had been left hundreds of meters away, like a gradually extinguished spark.

"That lawyer is the organization's cleanup specialist," he said coldly. "He specializes in cleaning up after defectors. I'm afraid Kurokawa Miyuki asked him to take more than just a distress signal."

The car finally stopped at the rear door of Yokohama Port Warehouse No. 3. The rusty iron door creaked as Amuro Toru pushed it open, dust swirling in the beam of light, and the air was filled with the mixed smell of seawater and motor oil.

The hum of the refrigeration equipment starting up broke the silence.

Toru Amuro put the sample box in.

Kudo Yuki walked to the window of the warehouse and looked at the cargo ship anchored in the distance.

"Kiryuu Yan said that Rum's layout is deeper than we can see. What do you think he meant?"

Toru Amuro turned off the indicator light of the refrigeration equipment, and the warehouse instantly sank into semi-darkness.

He leaned against the metal frame, his silhouette appearing particularly sharp in the shadows. "What Rum needs isn't a sample; it's a key that can completely paralyze the Metropolitan Police Department's internal systems. The message Kurokawa Miyuki delivered in prison is probably a fragment of the key."

"And Kiryu Inoue activated the covert line not to get the sample, but to lure us here." Kudo Yuki turned around, a sharp glint in his eyes. "He deliberately allowed himself to be captured and said those things to make us believe that Kurokawa Miyuki was still working for the organization and that we would give up on tracking down the key's true whereabouts."

Suddenly, the sound of a car engine was heard outside the warehouse, and the sound of tires rolling over gravel was getting closer and closer.

Toru Amuro instantly tightened his grip on the gun hidden at his waist.

Kudo Yuki quickly pressed the emergency lock button on the refrigeration equipment.

The heavy metal door slowly fell, completely sealing the sample box in the temperature of minus twenty degrees Celsius.

The engine sound stopped abruptly at the back door of the warehouse, followed by the crisp sound of leather shoes stepping on the gravel, step by step, neither fast nor slow, as if measuring how many secrets were hidden in this semi-dark space.

Kudo Yuki's hand quietly pressed the emergency button under the window sill - that was the alarm set up in advance by Manager Kuroda. After pressing it, the secret base within three kilometers would receive the signal at the same time.

Toru Amuro's gun was loaded, his knuckles against the trigger guard, his eyes fixed on the gap in the back door that was gradually being pushed open.

"Mr. Amuro, Ms. Kudo, sorry for the wait."

Tsushima Shuji's voice was filled with laughter, like melted honey, but wrapped in coldness.

When he pushed the door open, the hem of his windbreaker swept the dust on the threshold. His eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses curved into a crescent moon. His gaze first fell on Amuro Toru's hand holding the gun, then turned to Kudo Yuki's fingertips pressing on the window sill, and finally stopped on the tightly closed cold storage door.

"It seems you two have already placed the specimens properly." He turned slowly, the snake-like carved eyes seeming to stare at them. "Kiryu always says my plans are too in-depth, but if they weren't, how could I have invited two 'outsiders' like you?"

To be continued...