---
title: "Casework"
author: "Basser"
lang: en
id: "OLD-1"
fandom: "Detective Conan / Case Closed, crossed with House, M.D."
rating: "Teen And Up Audiences"
warnings: ["None filed (FanFiction.net, rated T)"]
words: 36585
chapters: 24
date: "2007"
status: "complete"
written_by: human
summary: "A small boy with an aortic dissection, a concussion and no one to claim him turns up at Princeton-Plainsboro, and Dr. House cannot make the story add up."
---

# Casework

## Chapter 1: One

> *"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."*
>
> Sherlock Holmes, *The Adventure of The Blanched Soldier*

He stared straight ahead as he walked through the half-empty bus terminal, nervously gripping the straps of his pack as he tried to keep tabs on everyone around him. Anxiety that had been growing ever since he entered Princeton was slowly culminating to an all-time high, his heart pounding so loud he was sure everyone near him could hear it. He rubbed his aching chest nervously, wondering how each and every person could look so sinister. *Just nerves,* he told himself, trying not to return the stare of an elderly woman to his right. *It's all nerves, you'll be fine. Everything's planned, they can't find us. We'll all be fine.*

He kept this mantra up, running circles through his head. It wasn't long before he found himself out on the street and safely concealed in the thinning crowds of the late afternoon. Now all he had to do was walk a few blocks and he'd be safe. For now, at least.

There was the hotel, dead ahead. He allowed himself a small smile as he neared it. It had been a long trip. Hopefully they weren't… no, they should be there, he told himself, they *will* be there. There were plenty of reasons why he couldn't reach them without jumping to conclusions. Just because someone wasn't answering a phone or two didn't mean they were—

He cut himself off with a small shake of the head and pushed his way through the ornate glass doors. The lobby seemed far too empty, leaving him with a curious sense of vulnerability. As if he was a mouse suddenly caught out in the open without a hole in sight to dash into.

*Pointless thoughts and metaphors*, he thought irritably. *I'm not a mouse, and there certainly aren't any cats here. The sign says 'no pets' right in front of your nose, idiot. Just calm down and get to the room…* He refrained from swallowing nervously and set a determined expression to his face. This was nothing. He'd been in worse before. The cave, even! He'd been shot and still gotten three kids out alive. And that was *really* nothing. This would be even easier. All he had to do was get… to the… room.

He coughed and winced slightly as his chest began to ache again, but steadfastly ignored it. It was probably heartburn. He'd been living on takeout and travel food for, what, four days now? Frowning, he made his way to the nearest staircase and began climbing as fast as silence would allow. Elevators were too risky, too confined, held too many bad memories.

The room number ran through his head as the mantra had earlier. *Two-oh-six, two-hundred-six, two-zero-six…* Opening the door to the second level he was met with a deserted corridor. Where was everyone this time of day? He began his cautious journey down the hall and scowled lightly as the room numbers jumped from 205 to 207 for no apparent reason. *Across the hall*, he reminded himself sternly, *simple organization*. He turned towards the desired door with a relieved sigh, happy to be done with the journey at last, and suddenly froze. A flash of pain behind his ribs accompanied the sickening realization that the face in the open door was not, by any means, the welcoming smile he'd expected.

Instead a silent grin held him in place for a few precious seconds before he thought to run. The delay was more than enough for the man in the door to draw his weapon and aim.

He bolted down the hall and stubbornly fought the temptation to look back, air coming in painful gasps as he ran back towards the door he'd just come through. The soft crack of a silenced pistol behind him and a searing pain in his upper arm announced that he'd been shot; grazed at least. The wound sent him flailing for the stair door and he crashed through it, flapping his arms in vain as his momentum sent him tumbling down the staircase.

A sharp crack echoed through his head as skull met concrete.

## Chapter 2: Two

If she had to decide, she would probably admit that keeping House entertained was actually one of her least irritating jobs. Oh, sure, she'd bitch and moan and make sure he knew she was annoyed, but really sifting through stacks of weird and complicated cases looking for one that House would find interesting was, if not fun, at least a good deal more entertaining than paperwork.

She hummed to herself quietly as she picked up the file of a 20 year-old woman, admitted last night to Princeton General. Doctors there and in the surrounding hospitals had a habit of faxing puzzling cases to her at odd hours of the night, perhaps out of some strange desire to see if theirs was actually worthy of the great maverick diagnostician of PPTH. She couldn't really imagine any of them actually checking around to see which case he took, since most of them seemed to hate him, but in the rare event that House (or more likely one of his fellows) wrote up an article on a case she was sure there had to be some practitioner in the area smiling proudly to himself as he read it. The experience must have been quite fulfilling for somebody, because she was pretty sure the amount of cases she received on a weekly basis couldn't be normal for your usual teaching hospital.

Cuddy sighed into her second cup of coffee as she scanned the patient's data and scowled. Somebody at General didn't know what they were doing if they thought this was anything interesting. Basic heart attack went to one of her other doctors, even if the patient was a little young for it. Heart failure in young adults was rare, but not unheard of. She made a small note to herself on the pad by her hand, just in case she couldn't find anything better in the next few charts. Maybe House would be happy enough coming up with grand theories for the girl despite her seemingly obvious ailment.

She set the file atop the small pile in front of her and reached for the next in the dwindling stack she'd started with. This one was from her own hospital, for once. Well it was always nice not having to cart them around, she supposed, sipping gingerly from her still-steaming mug. She read quickly down the page and was vaguely wondering what exactly had qualified this case for her 'House' stack, before she turned the page and set her cup down. The look of confusion on her face quickly melted into a relieved smile. She yawned as she stood to take the file to her secretary in the next room, frowning when the realization hit once more, as it did every week: she still had to do paperwork.

It was nearing nine-thirty by the time House entered the conference room. He'd bought bagels again, thinking that perhaps if the ducklings were well-fed, they'd be content to leave him to his usual Monday lollygagging. Granted, they would leave him to it anyway, but the lack of Cameron's annoying nagging was really that last magic ingredient to make his day utterly perfect.

"Greetings, minions. I gift thee with bagels," he stated grandly, tossing the bag onto the table and grabbing one for himself. The table was strewn with the contents of a file.

"Got a new case," Cameron said brightly. She grabbed a bagel and began coating it in complementary cream cheese, eyes still scanning the medical records before her through those prim little reading glasses he'd always suspected were just to make her look smart. Foreman tapped a pen on the whiteboard, obviously having decided to start on the differential rather than wait for the boss to arrive.

"Thought I'd save you the effort of writing the symptoms down," Forman intoned, catching House's mock-horrified glare. He rolled his eyes and handed the marker over. "Not much there anyway. Six to eight year-old with apparent memory loss and an aortic dissection. He came into the ER last night with a broken wrist and head trauma, the technician caught the dissection during a scan by accident. ER docs patched him up but-"

"Six *to* eight year-old?" House interjected. He took a bite of his bagel and stared at the symptoms. Aortic dissection in a kid. Definitely not normal. Also definitely not caused by any of the diseases he could think of at the moment. Leave it to the ducks to land one in the middle of what was *supposed* to be his well-earned downtime.

"He won't tell anyone his age. Says he doesn't know," Chase muttered around a bagel. "No parents have come forward either. Knows his name though. Nurse says he muttered 'Conan' during a neuro check last night."

"Who the hell names their kid 'Conan'? That's a wedgie waiting to happen." House snatched the marker from Foreman and quickly scrawled *MYSTERY KID* across the top of the board. Cameron smiled slightly. Chase simply shrugged. Apparently the Holmes reference was lost on him.

"Right. I'm assuming the ER ruled out the aforementioned *trauma* as the cause of all this fun?" House frowned. Of course they had, or the case wouldn't be here. Still, he had to ask.

"There was no obvious damage to the chest area. And the aneurism was already pretty far progressed when they caught it. It might have been worsened by the fall but they say it must have been ready to tear beforehand for that much damage to occur." Chase was absorbed in the file again. There couldn't have been much to read, with no patient history or personal information. House leaned over his shoulder and made a point to chew as loudly as possible as he read over the scant information. Nothing he hadn't already figured out.

"Fell down the stairs, huh?" House muttered. Chase was valiantly continuing to read despite House's best efforts to unnerve him. He finally gave up and plucked the file out of his subordinate's hands. "So they patched him up and sent him to us. Gotta love the work ethic down there. Alright. Differential for a crappy aorta. Go."

"The most obvious would be a bicuspid valve weakening the aorta," Cameron offered. House rolled his eyes.

"Nope. Surgery checked. No obvious heart abnormalities. Aside from the aneurism, of course," Chase said, saving her from the scathing retort House had been preparing.

"How about Ehlers-Danlos. Causes elasticity which could have weakened the valve…" Foreman started. House cut him off.

"Also causes frail skin and joints which would have left him a tangled pile of bruises after a trip down the stairs. Says plain as day he only broke a wrist. Remember how we talked about practicing our reading *every day*, Foreman." He earned a full glare for that one. House awarded himself a mental pat on the back as he turned to stare down the whiteboard once more.

"Syphillis?" Chase muttered from behind him.

"In a six year-old?" Cameron gaped.

"We don't know anything about him. He could have been molested, raped…"

"Dark, Chase. Very dark." House finished his bagel and flicked crumbs off his shirt. "Alright. Chase and Foreman, run an STD panel. Throw in whatever infections you can think of and get the lab working on any genetics we can test short-term. Cameron, go wring me some information out of the kid. Don't come back till you've got mom, dad, and a complete medical history." The fellows finished bagels, gathered papers, and left promptly for their respective duties. There was beauty in power.

House turned thoughtfully back to the whiteboard, cane beginning its usual idle spin as his gaze scanned the symptoms.

## Chapter 3: Three

The incessant beeping was beginning to irritate him.

As much comfort as it was to know that, yes, his heart was still beating, Conan couldn't help but grind his teeth with each new electronic pulse, trying to sort some sort of coherency out of the decidedly scattered form his thoughts had taken. Each idea, words, pictures, all flowed out of his head like so much water; and each time he felt the glimmerings of concentration there would be that damn heart monitor and-

*BEEP*.

He slammed his head back into the pillows in irritation and immediately regretted it. His skull throbbed with pain and he rolled on his side to groan into the hard hospital mattress. That noise couldn't possibly be as loud as it seemed. Something told him there was a reason for that, something to do with hitting his head earlier, but damned if he could- Wait. Concussion. He had a concussion. That's what it was called. There was absolutely no way he could have forgotten that, but there it was. The nature of the disease. Was it a disease? He couldn't remem-

*BEEP*.

"Mnrrgh!" He groaned quietly to himself. A fresh wave of pain throbbed across his temples with the slight movement as he growled into the sheets. There was something he should be deadly concerned about. Something deep in his mind told him so, but he just couldn't muster the will to-

*BEEP*.

"*Damn it!*"

"That's no way for a little boy to be talking," a soft voice chided him gently, and he felt the warm pressure of a body sitting next to him. "Conan? That's your name, right? Can you please look at me? I need to ask you a couple little questions…"

He grimaced, head still down, to hear the lilting, simplified speech that heralded a clueless adult about to coddle him. Granted, this was probably a clueless adult with a medical degree, but that didn't change the fact that-

*BEEP*.

"Make that thing stop beeping," he grumbled, still face-down. The sound was muffled by the blankets and most likely came out as some sort of garbled mess. Apparently his visitor got the message, though, because the weight at his side shifted for a moment and, suddenly, he was at peace. The abrupt silence was nothing short of beautiful.

"Conan, honey, I really need you to look at me now."

He turned his head reluctantly and squinted at her through the harsh light of overhead fluorescent lamps. She was quite pretty. The thought bounced out of some hidden seam in his mind and tumbled out just as quickly as it had come. He muttered a faint hello and tried not to look as dazed as he felt.

"Well.. your pupils look okay. How does your head feel?"

Some insistent voice in the back of his head reminded him that he was meant to be six years old, and so instead of the *like goddamned shit* that would have gladly passed his lips, he murmured something about bad and hurt and shifted himself carefully back to his pillow. She was watching him with a kind smile on her face, a mixture of pity and sympathy he'd come to associate with being in the hospital. Hospitals.. well, that would explain some things. He glanced around and let his gaze settle on his own body, quietly studying an IV line running into one arm, a thick white cast around the other, and his torso clad in a thin white gown. Now that he was without the incessant beeping of monitors he realized he could finally voice the thought that had been trying to wriggle its way out since he'd woken up.

"What happened?"

The pretty woman placed a hand on his head and flashed him a sympathetic smile. The nametag pinned to her bleach-white coat drifted into his vision as she leant over him and he spent several seconds staring at it as she began to answer him. Something about an accident, falling and staircases. That made sense, he decided. After all his head did feel like he'd run into something quite hard. ('Cameron', that's what that thing said. 'Allison Cameron'; why had that taken so long to read?)

"Conan? Conan are you listening to me?"

"Hu- what?" He blinked and stared dumbly into her face. She gave him a light pat on the shoulder and smiled that sugar-sweet smile again. An eerily similar expression on a familiar face matched up all to clearly in his mind and he found himself staring back down at his IV, trying not to think about certain dark-haired, blue-eyed girls. (So his mind would let him remember *her*, but not why he was here? He glowered at the cruelty of it all.)

"I just need to ask a few questions so I know your head is okay. Is that alright?"

He nodded slowly and turned his gaze to the other arm in an attempt to divert his thoughts. The entire forearm was encased in white and hurt to move. *Broken*… A faint memory of falling rushed back to him and he frowned.

"Alright, can you tell me your name?"

"… Conan." She'd called him that about a dozen times by now. Of course, he had no idea how they had come up with it, or why he would have given *that* name of all things for them to call him. Another case of his memory playing cruel tricks on him? Or was that just the name he'd become most familiar with…? It probably was. And ruminating on that fact was a little too much for his cotton-filled brain to take at the moment, he decided gloomily. Some things were better left alone..

"And can you tell me your last name?"

"Uh." He glanced up at her smiling face, derailed from his slight tangent in thought. A feeling of dread accompanied the sudden memory of what, exactly, he'd been doing near that staircase in the first place. "Um.. N-no."

"No?" Her face fell, she laid aside her clipboard and stared with earnest concern. He focused on keeping the face of a confused child as he hurriedly pieced together jumbled events and tried to settle on a plan. No, giving his full name now would definitely be a bad idea.

"I mean… I… I dunno!" Fake tears blurred his vision. It was fairly pathetic how good he had become at this. "Where's mommy! I want mommy!" He began to wail. First lesson of being a child: learn how to cry.

"Shhh, shhh… It's okay. You'll be fine. We'll find your parents…" He half-listened to her anxious mutterings with a mixture of bemusement and irritation. His head was still throbbing, crying was certainly not helping that, but more important was his waning ability to recall the events of the past few days. He needed time to formulate a plan if he was to survive much longer, he'd remembered that much. The fact that they'd known where he was going to be-

"Conan? Conan just calm down…" Doctor Cameron was brushing his bangs back and he realized that he'd stopped sobbing rather abruptly. Self-preservation of his bruised brain, probably. He sniffled a few times for good measure and buried his head in her blouse. Hopefully he'd get it dirty and she'd leave sooner. Being coddled while trying to think around a concussion didn't seem like it would help anything.

"Conan, I really need to know the names of your parents. Are you absolutely sure you don't know your last name?" She was trying to keep her voice kind and neutral, though he could tell she was skeptical of his excuse. It wasn't one of his best, though he'd plead extenuating circumstances if asked.

"I… M-mommy's name is-" he cast about for a suitable replacement and settled on the vase of flowers faintly visible in the lobby. Roses, carnations… "Lily. Mommy's name is Lily…" Sniff. His head was starting to really throb now. He wished she would leave so he could lay back down and have some peace and quiet.

"That's a pretty name. Can you tell me your daddy's name…?"

Conan grimaced into her blouse and concentrated on recalling as many common English names as possible.

"Steve."

"Steve and Lily. Do you have any idea where they work?" Cameron didn't seem to mind him burying his head in her shirt, which was annoying. If he couldn't piss her off, she wouldn't leave.

"I dunno." Playing dumb might do it. "Miss doctor, my head really hurts.."

"I'm sorry, honey. I know. Just a few more questions. Do you live around here?"

"No!" He pushed away from her and allowed himself to tear up again. If there was anything good about being six, it was the license to yell and cry for no apparent reason. Kids were so damn weird. "I want my mommy!"

"I can't find your mommy if you don't tell me where she is, Conan. Where do you live? In New Jersey? New York? Anywhere near here?" She was getting exasperated. Conan smiled inwardly and began to cry again.

"I wanna go home!"

"Yes, I know. But where *is* home? Conan? Conan stop crying for just a second, I know you're scared…" Cameron reached for his shoulder, trying to get him to look at her. His head was still pounding and the slight movement gave him ample fodder to cry harder. She looked fairly scared now.

"Lemme go! I want mommy! I want mommy!" He squirmed out of her grasp and threw everything he had into his tantrum, painful as it was getting both in his head and his chest. Cameron blanched. It was painfully obvious that this woman had never had a child. She scrambled to pacify him, shushing and promising to get him juice or meds or anything he needed.

"Conan! Calm, lie down.." She grabbed his shoulders and attempted to lower him lightly, eyes on the silenced heart monitor beside his bed. Lightening up on the tantrum was a bad idea at this point, control-wise, but he had to admit he'd seen better days as far as pain was concerned. His good hand absently sought his suddenly painful chest as he allowed the doctor to lay him back down on the sterile sheets.

He glanced up at the woman and was pleased to see that she looked positively frightened, probably trying to figure out how to calm him down and still get the answers she needed. *Well too bad, no answers for you. Conan is a bratty little boy with a bump on his head and he won't be talking coherently until you go away and leave him alone…*

## Chapter 4: Four

"I couldn't get anything out of him!" Cameron slammed down her clipboard on the lab bench and glared viciously down at the scant information written on it. "As soon as I thought I might be getting somewhere, he freaks out and I have to try and calm him down before his blood pressure pops the graft." She stared down her pen, as if perhaps it was the reason she'd almost killed the patient with questioning. With a sigh she calmed slightly, still looking down in consternation. "He says he doesn't know his last name. What kind of a person doesn't know their *last name*?"

Chase stared at her, startled by the sudden intrusion into what had up till now been a very quiet and uneventful series of blood tests.

"Couldn't he… maybe have just not learnt it?" he stammered.

"Nobody *doesn't learn* his last name!" she exclaimed, exasperated, and turned away from the clipboard to frown at the semi-dark lab. Chase leaned over slightly to look at what information she'd managed to gather. Only a handful of words were written on her patient history form.

"That's all you got? His mum and dad's first names?" He stared incredulously. She'd been up there for half an hour already. "He couldn't even tell you what city he lives in?"

"*Exactly*." She huffed and sat down in the chair next to him. "After a few minutes he just started *crying* for no reason, screaming that his head hurt. I was worried about his blood pressure so I tried to calm him down… but he just kept on sobbing! Look what he did to my shirt…!"

She unbuttoned the vest she'd picked up from her locker and exposed her blouse, mottled with tear and mucus stains. Chase stared, acutely aware that the moisture was making the fabric semi-transparent. Cameron continued to complain, completely oblivious.

"Um, Cameron…" he jumped suddenly as a centrifuge beeped. Glad to have an excuse to force his eyes away, he clambered around to collect samples from the machine.

The layered plasma and blood particles were suddenly intensely interesting, and he made a point to stare at them as Cameron buttoned her vest back up and turned to glare down at her papers again.

"And you just know House is going to make some smartass comment…" she imitated House's low, mocking voice, "'Uh oh! Looks like Cameron got outsmarted by a first grader! What's wrong I thought you were on their level? I guess we'll save you for the next toddler…'"

She sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair. Chase lowered his sample tubes and stared at her glowering face.

"Erm… Maybe, I could try?" he suggested, attempting nonchalance and ending up with awkward. Cameron probably thought he was kissing up to her again. Ah, well. The kid sounded like a complete brat, but really anything was better than sitting around for the next few hours watching particles creep down an electrophoresis plate.

Besides he wasn't entirely sure Cameron would be able to go back there without throttling someone. 'Failure' was apparently still not a part of her vocabulary.

"Sure, be my guest. So long as I don't have to see the kid for the next few hours," she muttered icily. She grabbed the test samples he'd been studying from his hands and handed over her clipboard in return. "Oh, and-" she scooted past him to the centrifuge and plucked a tube from the machine. "I gave him a small dose of IV Ativan before I came down here, so you might want to wait a bit for it to kick in."

"Ativan…? Wha- because he was crying? You don't have any history, he might be allergic-"

She shrugged innocently. "I was worried about his blood pressure..." Chase glared at her and she sighed. "Look, he's not allergic." She pointed to the note she had made on her history form proclaiming that fact. "And, anyway, I figured he'd be a bit more *open* this way…"

Chase shook his head. "How much did you give him?"

"Two milligrams."

"Tw-? If he's asleep by the time I get up there…"

"It'll be fine. Just go." She picked up a pipette and hunted around for a test tube rack. "Hey, do you know where-"

"Second drawer on the right." He grumbled, turning towards the door. He could see Cameron in the glass wall's reflection, rummaging around and organizing the enzymes she would need.

She looked up, their eyes meeting in reflection for a split second before Chase coughed slightly and headed out of the room, hiding the blush that had somehow crept across his face.

## Chapter 5: Five

It didn't make sense.

One aortic dissection, a concussion, and a broken arm did not a compelling nor interesting case make. But here he was trying to solve it. The kid had tumbled down the stairs, for god's sake. Of course internal injuries made sense.

House turned up the volume on his silver Gameboy DS and carefully shifted his legs into a more comfortable position. On-screen a small and somewhat ugly blue squirrel, affectionately dubbed "SYPHILLIS", was pulverized by a much larger and much more threatening breed of cartoon monster. He frowned and poked the DS's touch pad, selecting the next combatant. A slight crescendo in the battle theme accompanied the entrance of his next chosen beast.

"I choose you, turtle-thing…" He muttered.

The turtle, luckily, was subjected to a fairly weak attack, surviving with more than half of its health intact. House quickly touched the spot marked "TACKLE" and happily watched the enemy's health diminish to zero. A tinny victory fanfare celebrated his win. He smiled to himself.

"You're not playing Pokémon again?" Wilson groaned, announcing his presence in the doorway. House didn't bother to look up as he manipulated his digital sprite through yet another patch of tall grass. "You realize that game is made for ten year-olds, right? I suppose that *would* be the ideal level for you, but you know some people around here have this weird notion that you're a forty year-old man. It just doesn't seem kind to shatter their illusions so mercilessly."

"Ah, Wilson. You underestimate the tactical complexities of my tiny pixilated monsters." House gestured grandly to his Gameboy, and smiled as ominous battle music sounded to announce he'd encountered another enemy. "I'm enriching my mind! … Good god, look at this poor bastard."

Wilson strode over to peer over House's shoulder, grimacing at the screen. "It's hideous."

"I'm thinking razor leaf." House touched the attack button. Wilson bemusedly watched a few tiny leaves pop out of House's cartoon turtle and fly towards his unfortunate enemy.

"… Right. Anyway, does this mean you're going to be too busy for lunch? I can see how pressing the current matter is. What with the… rat-beaver… and- what the hell are you doing?"

House gave him an innocent look and pressed A, sending the newly-named "WILSON" to the storage box. "Catching a pokémon."

"You-" Wilson was cut off by the fellows, all three filing into the room with varying looks of frustration on their faces. Foreman tossed a folder into House's lap.

"Test results. Everything's negative. No infections, no STD, no disorders on what we could test quickly. Kid's healthier than half the population."

"And we checked with the police and the hotel. No children have been reported missing in the area for at least six months," Chase said. He quickly passed a clipboard along to Cameron, who glared at him with a mixture of outrage and alarm. House watched the two of them intently as he lowered the volume of his game. New symptom time, hopefully.

"And the history…?"

Cameron cleared her throat loudly, and tried glaring at Chase again. The young Australian ignored her, staring placidly at the far wall.

"Ah, well…" she started. Her eyes scanned the clipboard quickly. "The information we managed to gather…" she paused, eyes widening, and gave Chase another look. This time he merely glanced at her and shrugged his shoulders. "Ah… Well, his parents names are Lily and Steve…"

House and Wilson stared at her, obviously anticipating more. Cameron shifted uncomfortably on her feet. "… and that's it."

"That's all? His parent's first names?" Wilson gaped. "How long were you up there?"

"Cameron was there about half an hour," Chase said, trying not to smirk as he avoided looking in Cameron's direction. "I tried later, but the patient was asleep for some odd reason."

"It was only- !" Cameron started.

"Shut up, you two." House barked. He slowly rose to his feet and handed his Gameboy off to a somewhat startled Wilson, watching as Chase and Cameron flushed red and leaned away from each other. "So after all that marvelous *effort*-" he glanced at his subordinates "we still know nothing."

"We know he has parents." Wilson mused. He was staring down, fiddling with House's Gameboy. "… hey, House, which button do I press to talk to people?"

"'A'… and don't kill my turtle." House limped off towards the conference room.

"We still ruled out everything we could think of! If we know he doesn't have any diseases, what difference does it make if we know his family history or not?" Chase trotted along behind House to the other room, Foreman and Cameron following behind.

"Why the hell would we be diagnosing him if he doesn't have a disease?" Foreman asked irritably.

"What we know is that most of the zebras are out of the way," House grumbled, citing the popular horse/zebra adage of the medical profession; too lazy to come up with a more obscure metaphor. He grabbed a marker and began crossing possible causes off his whiteboard. "Which leaves us with a boring old horse. It must have been the trauma. ER made a mistake."

The red marker in his hand stopped suddenly in its circling of the word 'trauma' as four pager alarms set off simultaneously, filling the room with a symphony of shrill electronic beeping. Wilson stuck his head into the room curiously as the fellows all reached for their beepers. House glared at the whiteboard and capped his marker without finishing the circle.

"It's Conan!" Cameron shouted in alarm. She turned and sprinted out of the room, followed closely by Chase and Foreman as both confirmed the same message on their pagers and hurried after her.

House reached down and silenced his device without bothering to look at it. Wilson came into the room, handing over House's open Gameboy and stylus.

"… Your turtle died," he said after a pause, still looking at the door the fellows disappeared through.

"Asshole," House grumbled. He closed the toy and tossed it on the conference table on his way out the door. "You coming?"

"Yeah, sure."

## Chapter 6: Six

*"Shinichi?" Her voice reached his ears slowly, warbling as if through water. He opened his eyes and smiled as her blue gaze met his. Later, much later, he would think of her as beautiful. Now all that his child's mind could think of was how she had woken him up, and how annoying girls could be. "Shinichi, you were sleeping again," she said, tucking a strand of her long, dark hair behind an ear and smoothing out her little blue dress, the one she always wore during the summer. She had that look on her face that told him she was irritated. She was always upset about something, he remembered. Usually it had to do with him.*

*"I was tired," he grumbled. He rose slowly to his feet and looked around him, at the park, trees, grass. She walked around to stand next to him, gazing out over the same landscape.*

*"Shinichi, what do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked, softly. He gave her an odd, sidelong glance.*

*"You know what I want to be." She was going to make fun of him now. Leading him into the question just to tease him. That's how girls were. Always teasing you.*

*"I forgot," she smiled, giggling a little.*

*"I'll be Tokyo's greatest detective."*

*"The next Sherlock Holmes?" she asked softly, and he wasn't surprised to see her face no longer a child's. She was tall, slender, and beautiful as he remembered her. They were teenagers again, almost adults really, standing together under their favourite oak tree in the neighborhood park.*

*"Yeah, the next Holmes." He smiled back at her. She laughed and tapped him on the shoulder. Suddenly they were children again. "Tag! Shinichi, you're it!"*

*"Wha-? Hey!" He jumped and ran after her. His legs sunk into the tall grass as if through sand, allowing her to get away. A sharp crack echoed through the park and he knew he'd been shot again. Once in the abdomen ('... may damage the kidney, he's lost a lot of blood...') again in the arm. The sudden pain left him gasping, and he toppled over-*

His eyes shot open. Visions of Organization operatives swimming through his consciousness. Breath came in gasps, as he tried to sit up, find the cause of this painful crushing sensation in his chest. Monitors beeped somewhere above him, an alarm began shrilly, warning someone of... something. He coughed a few times and was relieved to find his breathing easier, his chest less constricted and the pain dulling.

"Are you okay?" He startled. Hadn't noticed anyone come into the room. They were already there. Two, no three.

"Y-yeah..." Nurses, checking his pulse, feeling his forehead. *Why? Nothing your monitors can't tell you..* he thought dizzily. Running footsteps, voices speaking by the door, asking how he was doing. Not good. What's happened? Don't know. He coughed and felt a nurse pat his head. The room spun lazily around him as he laid back and passed out once more.

"He had a heart attack," Foreman said simply, handing a sheet of paper to his boss. House stared at the neatly-typed, precise, computer-generated lab report. Everything you ever wanted to know about a kid's blood composition but were too afraid to ask. They were back in his office after their collective trip downstairs and subsequent lab tests by the ducks. House sat in his desk chair using his cane to push off the bookshelf next to him, rotating his chair slowly side to side as he thought. The ducklings stood in front of his desk.

"He's six!" Cameron exclaimed, upset. Her mommy instincts were taking over. Dissention in the ranks. House scowled. Cameron needed to shut up. The sheet told him very clearly that Foreman was right. People were idiots, but blood didn't lie.

"We *think* he's six," Chase reminded her. They still hadn't gotten an accurate history.

"It doesn't matter he's obviously too young to-"

"He's obviously too young to be getting shot, but that apparently hasn't stopped him. Don't judge people based on their age," House interjected. He wasn't in the mood for one of Cameron's let's-ignore-the-facts-for-the-sake-of-human-goodness things today. His vaguely difficult case had just gone up a few notches, making it something he'd actually have to think about. He twirled his cane a few times, trying to decide if this fit anything already on the whiteboard.

"Getting *shot?*" Cameron, recovering quickly from her previous sentence, obligingly provided the necessary catalyst for him to point out something they should have noticed themselves. He rolled his eyes slightly.

"If any of you had taken the time to look at the kid's abdomen while they were dragging him back into the world of the living, you'd have noticed the mark there. It might have looked a little something like this." He leaned back in his office chair and pulled up the left corner of his shirt slightly, exposing a circular scar; remnants of one disgruntled patient too many. The three doctors stared for the second the scar was exposed, before he quickly dropped his shirt hem and resumed swiveling the chair idly. No sense giving them a peep show, jeez.

They still looked unconvinced, though he could tell Chase had seen the same thing but not realized what it was. Well, House supposed he was the resident expert on bullet wounds now; that actually had a pretty cool ring to it.

"The patient has a scar from a bullet wound. If we felt like looking I'm sure we'd find evidence of past surgery in the area. Kidney damage, whatever. Cut to now: ER team bandaged up a weird cut on his upper right arm that didn't fit into the whole falling-down-the-stairs thing. Nobody bothered with it until now. We know he's been in trouble before, so who wants to bet the cut came from something round and lead flying almost as fast as Superman?"

"Just because he's been shot before doesn't automatically make every weird injury another bullet wound," Foreman pointed out irritably. Apparently he took anything involving guns personally.

"Right, but it makes all the weird injuries that *look* like bullet wounds, and that fit with the situation, a lot more *likely* to be bullet wounds. If we assume he was shot, then we have the kid running away from whoever's got a gun leveled on him, getting grazed in the arm by the guy's crappy aim, missing a step in surprise and crashing into the stairwell. The stress of running for his life coupled with trauma from the fall causes the aneurysm and his chart ends up here, it all fits."

"And what about whoever shot him? Why wouldn't they finish the job?" Foreman was continuously doubtful, as always. Irritating.

House shrugged. "Ran after the gun shot. Didn't realize they'd missed. Crappy hitman. How should I know?" He didn't need to answer these things. It was the diagnosis he was paid for not detective work.

"You want us to believe that this kid is being targeted by some sort of *assassin*?" Chase asked. His skepticism was mirrored in his colleagues, each looking more doubtful than the last. House glared at them. Why couldn't they just see what was right in front of them? It fit the situation. The kid's weird location, his irritating lack of useful information or parents, even the small stature for his age... Stress impedes growth. Nothing much more stressful than being a target. So what if it sounded like a bad spy movie? Diagnosticians just had to learn to look past the clichés.

"So if you don't believe it, prove me wrong. Chase and Foreman, you two go to the hotel and look for evidence of a bullet. Figure out how the kid fell and where he landed, too. Might be important."

The two doctors began to object simultaneously. They weren't *policemen*, it wasn't their *job* to search for bullet holes, they were needed *here*. They were *doctors*. Blah blah blah whatever.

"Cameron." He turned to her, cutting the other two off and leaving them with no choice but to grudgingly leave to do his bidding. He was almost sure they'd find the bullet hole. And if they didn't, well... he'd just pin it as Chase's idea. All the dumb ideas were Chase's ideas. "I want you to watch the kid. Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."

"He's not even conscious right now," she said, still obviously doubtful of his assassin's-target-kid theory and not willing to back down without a fight. She was gearing up to try and convince him how stupid this explanation was. He could see it in her eyes.

"All the more reason to get down there quick, before he wakes up. Congratulations, you're a bodyguard." He quickly turned his back on her, ignoring her continued presence as she debated whether to pursue the subject. Finally, she left, her footsteps retreating towards the hall. He listened intently, letting her get almost to the door before adding; "And no drugging him this time."

He turned to see her face redden as she left the room. Score one for omnipotence.

## Chapter 7: Seven

*It had been nearing three that afternoon, when he had finally ditched the kids and headed over to visit her. She'd skipped school again today. While a common enough occurrence since neither of them ever wanted to be there, he couldn't help but feel just a little slighted. He generally counted on her presence to keep him relatively sane throughout the long hours of second grade. Elementary school, at least to him, had been boring the first time around. Back when he was a real eight year-old. Now, trapped at odds with the body of a child and the mind of an adult, the tedium was nothing short of torture. Two by two is four… Two by three is six… Two by four is oh please god just kill me while I've got a shred of sanity left.*

*So, while he couldn't quite blame her, he nonetheless approached her front lawn with a less-than-pleased expression on his small face. The both of them generally had the good grace to tell the other when they planned to take a break, so at least they could brace themselves to deal with their tenacious little group of 'friends' on their own. As it was he had been left with no warning, and spent the day making up feeble excuses for her, wondering what she was actually doing and how much less mind-numbing it was than the fractions lecture he was forced to sit through. The day crawled by in much the same way as he was roped into game after ridiculous game with the Kids. No Haibara to save him from the tedium of childhood and remind him, at least once in awhile, that he was actually nineteen. That he still had a brain in that shrunken little noggin of his. Today he'd even been reduced to fighting with Genta over a cookie, just to break the monotony. Haibara, he decided, would pay dearly for ditching him.*

"*Oi, Haibara. Haibara!" he called irritably to the darkened house, ringing the doorbell and receiving no answer. Trying the doorknob, on a whim, found it unlocked. Surprised by the lack of security, yet undeterred from entering, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. In all likelihood she had just returned home and had yet to lock the door behind her, he thought. It was a simple mistake.*

"*Shitsure shimasu..." he muttered the traditional welcoming phrase, somewhat ironically as he was not at all 'sorry for the intrusion', and peered curiously into the entryway. Empty. Apparently the ever-cautious Haibara had quite suddenly become uncharacteristically lenient with her home security measures.*

*Hoping his suspicions were nothing more than detectives' paranoia, he stepped into the house proper, slipping off his shoes at the entrance before moving down the hall. Usually around now his long-time neighbor and friend, Professor Agasa, would be greeting him with talk of his newest invention. Agasa was the owner of the house and Haibara's caretaker. He was a large and portly man, with gray hair, thick glasses, and the general demeanor of everyone's favourite uncle, slash mad scientist. Surprisingly (and a tad infuriatingly, on Shinichi's part) Agasa had approached the problem of his young neighbor's forced return to childhood with some odd sense of excitement, and, after warning Shinichi –now 'Conan'- to reveal his identity to no one, least he be caught and killed by the very same people who poisoned him in the first place, proceeded to invent as many super-spy gadgets as he could think of. Most were useful. Many exploded. Even now he could see the various scorch marks that had yet to be cleaned up; no doubt remnants of something very cool yet entirely useless.*

*All fond memories aside, however, Shinichi would not be seeing his old neighbor around today. The man was currently on vacation, off to attend a science convention in Kyoto and take in some of the sights. Haibara had declined to attend, pointing out that the presence of a small girl within a scientific community would be sure to tip off the Black Organization as to her true identity. Conan, for his part, just figured she wanted the house to herself. She never was one for company, he thought, as he completed his check of the living room and kitchen and moved on to the hallways. Her scarcity despite his calling was proof of that. (Or, rather, that was proof of the explanation he had willed himself to believe for the time being. Best to find the facts first, before giving in to worry. Nothing pointed to trouble yet.)*

*Feeling calm as he could expect himself to be, given the situation, he carefully poked his head around a corner and squinted into the darkened hallway. Light was leaking up from her downstairs laboratory, a good sign. She was home, absorbed in her work like always. She'd just forgotten to lock the door because she was on the brink of a big discovery. Certainly nothing new about that.*

"*Oi, Haibara… Itsu fuchuui ni nattaka?" he chided her for her carelessness, making sure to sound as annoying as possible as he rounded the corner and headed for the lab door. It wasn't often that he got the chance to lecture* her *for a change. Best make the most of it, even if she got back at him later. "Baro! Gengan no kagi o... kake-" Suddenly he halted, mid-lecture, words trailing off as he reached the head of the basement stairs. The heavy, unmistakable scent of blood hung thick in the air around him. His heart began to pound and he quickly ran down the stairs, leaping the last four despite his short legs. "Haibara! Daijobu ka!"*

*Every murder case he had ever examined rushed through his head in ever-more gruesome scenes as he reached the lab, casting around desperately for her small body amongst the scientific instruments she so carefully maintained. This was probably nothing, just a typical lab accident and Haibara had cut herself, ran out the door for bandages… Doing some new experiments with blood samples… She would make fun of him for being upset. Obviously, there was no reason to jump automatically to thoughts of murder. That's what he got for being a homicide detective, after all, too much death-*

*Then he saw her, suddenly, collapsed by her lab bench. Her white lab coat, too large for her child's body, had covered her and blended in with the floor, keeping him from noticing her in his distress. As he ran to the lump in the tiles that was her small body he could now clearly see the puddle of blood forming below her face, dripping steadily from her open mouth and staining her auburn hair a deep red. It was everything he'd feared and more.*

*Luckily, years of crime scene investigation had prepared him, prevented him from hyperventilating and passing out right along with her. The same instincts that had once made him a name as the star detective of the east now quickly took his mounting panic and smoothly converted it into action; he found himself automatically checking her pulse, scanning for clues, dialing 110, all before he'd even properly registered what was going on. She was alive, barely, the ambulance was on its way, no he wouldn't stay on the line, sorry, better things to do. He flipped his cell phone shut and hurriedly checked for brain damage, stroke, poison… every diagnostic field test he'd ever learned. Anything just to feel like he was doing something. Any little thing he could think of that might somehow help her.*

*When shaking her awake produced no results, he instead knelt desperately beside her, speaking quietly and earnestly in the hopes that she might still hear him. As he talked, she moved, coughed, just slightly, and let her hand drop limply into his. The feel of cold glass startled him, and he looked down to see a small, clear vial resting lightly in her grip. It was uncapped, still cold with whatever liquid clung to the interior. A test container, though none he'd ever seen her use. He stared at it, then back at her, questioning, but her eyes remained closed.*

*He hadn't let the paramedics leave without him. Wouldn't let go of her wrist until he was allowed in the ambulance. Long years of practice had made him the master of childish tenacity, the gifts of renewed childhood only enhancing his own natural stubbornness. And with his victory secured he sat silently by the gurney and watched her chest rise and fall, barely breathing, as the paramedics checked vitals and attached monitors. It was strange, being on this side of the equation. In his life –in both of his lives- he had seen literally hundreds of victims being loaded into ambulances, and never gave it a second thought. He was the detective. Always too absorbed in clues, suspects, answers… His business was with the killer, the murder method, uncovering the truth. Nothing else mattered.*

*Now, though he gripped the unknown vial in his hand, had mapped every bloodstain, every crack, every single little discrepancy of the lab in his mind's eye, all he could think of was her. Suddenly, to a man who had always been obsessed with bringing justice to the dead, nothing was more important than the life of one girl.*

*He started out of his thoughts as her eyes fluttered and he quickly jumped from his seat. The paramedics began to question her, can you hear me, do you know where you are, what your name is…? He pushed through them to her side, staring desperately into her glassy eyes. He knew she wasn't dead, she wouldn't leave him…*

"*Kudo-kun…" she whispered.*

## Chapter 8: Eight

Cameron sat silently in the darkened room of their patient, trying and failing to digest the text of a medical journal. Initially, she'd doubled back and brought a stack of House's paperwork with her, thinking that if she had to sit and watch over an unconscious patient she might as well be productive. The thought was quickly abandoned when she found herself drifting off, staring at the small boy lying prone on the bed at random intervals and daydreaming of what her colleagues might have found by now. Of course she didn't believe House's idiotic assassin theory for a second. The thought that this little boy was some sort of… *target*.. was nothing short of ridiculous. A situation that made sense only in the movies. She figured the speech had simply been another one of House's non-sequiturs, throwing them off-track while he hunted around for the answer to his puzzle on his own before sharing with the class.

Of course, the fact that a theory was stupid and unbelievable had never stopped House from somehow making a convincing argument, planting the seeds of doubt in their minds. That small doubt was what had kept her from staying after her coworkers had left, telling House off for wasting manpower on a pointless search for an imaginary bullet hole. She'd even come down here, sat in a dark, quiet room with an unconscious child, trying to quell a sudden and very unprofessional curiosity about what, if anything, might be hidden on the skin under the boy's thin hospital gown and sheets that she'd missed seeing while assisting the nurses.

It was a perfectly legitimate curiosity, she told herself, as she stared over the pages of a particularly wordy article on the latest developments in cancer prevention. It was true, she'd been in the room when the patient coded, helped the nurses revive the oxygen-starved, failing heart with defibrillation and CPR. The symptoms had gone as quickly as they'd come, House had walked in and apparently seen something they hadn't, called for blood work, and left before the pulse had even stabilized. Cameron had been too preoccupied with the revival of her patient, and then with blood samples, to even think about getting a look at the boy's exposed chest and abdomen. House had said there was a bullet scar. He'd even shown off his own to make clear his basis for comparison. At the time she'd been surprised, then amazed by the knowledge that such a young boy had been shot. It didn't occur to her to doubt her employer until after the fact, when everyone had been shooed out of the conference room and she'd been the only one left to point out the idiocy of it all.

But, still. If he was right about the bullet wound- if it really was there… she shook her head. There was no way House's theory could hold water, with or without a mysterious circular scar that probably wasn't there anyway. There was no reason for her to check, risk waking the boy. Her duty right now was to wait, watch over him… make sure he "didn't do anything stupid…"

She glowered. Speaking of stupid, this was a stupid job. House was just getting rid of her by putting her down here with nothing to do. And if he thought she was just some disposable baby-sitter-

"*Ma…tte..*" Cameron nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden noise in the otherwise quiet background of hospital machinery. A quick glance around left her feeling like a complete idiot when she realized the source of the noise had to have been her patient. There was nobody else in the room, and the sliding glass doors to the hallway were shut against the noise of passerby. She stood up and moved to the side of the bed, glancing at the monitors. His pulse and blood pressure had risen slightly above the languid numbers of medication and sleep, showing stress, fear… He was having a nightmare, apparently.

"Shh.. Conan, it's okay.." she muttered quietly, wondering how well the ACE inhibitors were working if they allowed his blood pressure to rise enough to show stress. The boy groaned behind his oxygen mask, rolling his head slightly.

"*Tasukete… Haibara-*" He opened his eyes a fraction, coughing as his words caught in his throat. Cameron hurriedly leant in from where she'd been standing over him in an attempt to hear what he was saying. Either a sharp decrease in hearing had escaped her attention or her patient hadn't been speaking English. Bright blue eyes opened a fraction more and fixed her with a questioning gaze, reminding her unsettlingly of the stare of her boss. The two of them shared that colour of startling sky-blue irises. "*Ran…?"* the boy spoke quietly, sounding confused as his mind drifted slowly back from the haze of drugged sleep. *"Ran, naze koko ni iru?"* The tone of his soft, still-drowsy voice told her he was asking a question, though she had no idea what he'd said. What was that? Korean? Japanese…? She was starting to regret only ever studying latin-based languages.

She leant slightly forward again, trying to keep the confusion off her face and wondering if she should page House. Their patient was getting more interesting, exactly the sort of thing her boss would love.

"I'm sorry Conan… I don't know what you're saying…" she said, uncertainly, as she reached out to touch the boy's dark hair. His eyes widened a fraction at the sound of her voice, and he looked around the room for a split-second before realizing where he was.

"I- ah… What-" he was broken off as he tried to sit up, and was immediately felled again as he put a free hand to his head and groaned. Aside from concern for his pain, Cameron was relieved that at least the inhibitors seemed to be having some effect. Headache, dizziness, and, eventually, a dry cough would all mean that the treatment prescribed to keep his heart functioning at a low, non-taxing level was working.

"Don't try to sit up, the medicines we gave you will make you dizzy," she said calmingly, glad that the boy had switched back to English. She wouldn't need to page a translator or anything drastic like that. The bilinguality, as a new development, would reach House eventually. At the moment she didn't feel the news to be more important than the comfort of her patient. She was caring that way.

"What happened?" the boy muttered feebly, pinching the bridge of his nose in a strangely adult gesture of pain. She patted him on the arm and smiled reassuringly. Now that the kid wasn't yelling or crying, she figured she had a much better chance of having a civilized conversation with him.

"You had a little problem with your heart, but it's okay now. We're working to make you better." Cameron congratulated herself on her ability to simplify his situation so well, without frightening words. She should have gone into pediatrics.

Her satisfaction was short-lived, however, as she spotted a slightly irritated look from under her patient's hand, before the expression was quickly masked with one of childish happiness and the hand removed. She was given the distinct impression of a seasoned performer donning a well-known persona. "I'm sure the doctors can make me better," he said with the heart-warming grin of the most trusting sick child you'd ever seen. She gave him a somewhat half-hearted smile in return, still a little startled by the sudden change in mood. She patted his hair lightly before standing up.

"Can I get you anything, Conan? You must be thirsty. You were asleep for a long time!" She was in full caretaker mode now. Of course House had given her this job… he knew she wouldn't walk away from it. The thought caused a momentary scowl before she managed to drown it out with a smile for her patient. House would get his comeuppance later. For now, the patient came first.

## Chapter 9: Nine

House paced his office, trying and failing to think of some explanation to fit the symptoms he'd glossed over in the last meeting with his ducks. Injuries and aortic dissections he could explain. The heart attack… that was a slightly different matter. He was a firm believer in the coincidence theory. Such that, there was no reason a freak vasospasm couldn't have been triggered by nearby heart trauma. Then again he also wished to leave no stone unturned. There was coincidental heart failure in a 40 year-old man and then there was coincidental heart failure in a gradeschool child. Not exactly of the same diagnostic importance. A difference worth exploring.

His lackeys, he was almost certain, would find a nice little bullet hole buried in the hotel walls. Being shot was the only way to obtain an mark anywhere like the circular scar he'd noticed earlier on the boy's abdomen. He should know, after all. For one thing, the scar exactly matched his own (both in placement and size- another coincidence) and furthermore, damage to the kidney sustained by the old wound accounted well for the slightly reduced performance of post-surgery diuretics. Matching past to present, and he figured he had a fairly sure bet as to where the upper-arm cut had come from as well. It certainly didn't fit with a simple fall down the stairs; a cut in a hard-to-fall-on place on a body where every other injury was concussive. It just didn't jive.

Pausing in his paces to rest his leg and twirl his cane a bit, he allowed his mind to wander somewhat. He'd thought over the heart attack, couldn't make a definite decision without the bullet hole… The kid certainly had some weird genes in him, he thought idly. Uncommon features. The black hair coupled with bright blue eyes, particularly. Difficult combination to come by. Add to that the vaguely Asian features and the kid's blue eyes were even more unlikely. A rare genetic combination in the brown-eyes masses of Asia. Must be half-and-half, House decided. That way there was a good 25 chance of blue, plus the light skin and brownish hue to the hair. Now the question: Was he American, or actually from the orient…? He hadn't heard the kid speak yet so he couldn't be sure, but-

"House!" He faltered slightly, startled out of his thoughts, and was forced to catch his cane as it careened out of his grip. Cuddy had appeared at his office door, all fire and flames. He glowered at her sudden smirk. She'd noticed him jump.

"How long did you plan to get away with this?" she questioned irritably, smirk disappearing in favor of a disapproving glare. "And stop looking at my chest while I'm talking."

"Hm? Oh, I'm sorry.. couldn't ignore the top so loudly instructing me to look there." Despite his quip, he reluctantly moved his gaze upwards to the glaring face of his boss. He honestly had no idea what she was mad about. Damned if she needed to know that, though. Besides, she was always mad about something.

"House, I'm serious. My hospital's been harboring a missing child for almost *two days* without reporting it! Cameron said you don't have any information on the parents, home, anything! Why haven't you called the authorities yet?" Oh, that's what was up. At least she hadn't found out about that pizza order under Coma Guy's name he'd made last week.

"Technically, Chase called. Something about looking for recent reports of missing children. Didn't find any."

"And you didn't feel the need to inform them of the one you *already had?*" Her hands were on her hips again. Mommy pose.

"Apparently not," he shrugged. In truth he'd figured she'd already done all of this. She'd been the one to send the chart, why hadn't she taken the time to locate parents and all that crap? Of course it would severely compromise his omnipotent status if he were admit to not knowing something, so he kept his mouth shut. Cuddy would manage to sort it all out.

"I'm calling child services, and *you* will be the one to explain all this to them. Is that clear?"

He shrugged and resumed twirling his cane, not particularly worried. What was there to explain? 'We've got this sick kid, and we don't know where he came from', all he had to say. The state would claim custody, but there was nothing they could do about relocating the kid before he was pronounced fit. No danger of not being able to solve the case. Plus the government would be picking up all the tabs. Score for the patient, House could freely use any and all expensive techniques he would think of. Case gets solved twice as fast.

Cuddy turned but stopped. She'd forgotten something, apparently. "And don't forget clinic duty this week. I'm doubling it."

"Wha—? Hey! Why!" He hadn't done anyt- oh damn it…

"Somehow a comatose patient managed to order a pizza last week, conveniently from a pizzeria that no longer delivers to a certain doctor after he verbally abused their employee. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

House opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again. Oh, well. The pizza had been totally worth it. Those guys were some sort of culinary geniuses, despite their delivery boy being a pimple-faced moron.

He waited for Cuddy to turn and leave, all happy thinking she'd finally gotten a point on House -which was stupid because he hadn't *lost*, he'd simply refused to participate-, and walked over to his phone to page Wilson. Might as well score a free lunch before he served his sentence.

## Chapter 10: Ten

*His last few hopes vanished the day she left. Standing silent, watching her grow smaller, disappearing amongst the crowds as she made her way through security, to the plane that would take her to the rest of her life. She was eighteen now, no longer a giggling high-school girl (though she'd never been much of that in the first place) but an adult. An intelligent and responsible woman, leaving to pursue her education at one of the top schools in the country. The school he would probably have been sharing, if things had gone differently*

*He stood silently as she turned one last time to wave to them before rounding a corner out of sight. Her parents were crying, smiling through their tears because their baby, their little flower had finally made it. Grown up and off to college, following in her mother's footsteps on the road to success. They laughed and hugged as they turned to walk back to the car, barely noticing the small child still staring at the spot where their daughter had just been. This is how she'd felt, he realized. Years ago when she'd watched him run off, with nothing but a hurried 'I'll catch up with you' as his teenage self disappeared into the night. That had been the last time she'd seen him, truly* him*, with no lies veiling his actions or guarding his words. She'd let him go that night, trusted in him, and then spent two years waiting for him to come back. But she was disappointed time and again, each broken promise wearing her down until, finally, she caved. And still in the end it had been Conan, her beloved adoptive little brother, who had to convince her to let go. You can't keep waiting, he'd said, and smiled even though he could feel his heart break with every word.*

*He touched the glass partition in front of him lightly, suddenly wishing he could break straight through and stop her.* Stay with me! *He'd yell, tears streaming down his face. She would stop, turn, surprised. She had never seen him cry.* Please stay! I can't live without you.

*A sigh breathed past his lips as he let his hand drop. Stopping her would be selfish, she was headed to college, off to find herself and start her career. What would he accomplish by keeping her from that, aside from filling his own personal void? No, she had lived without him, and she was finally moving on. She would meet new people, make new friends, and in a few years all that would be left of the boy she'd once claimed to love would be memories.*

"*Conan." He didn't move as a hand appeared on his shoulder. It was the large, calloused hand he knew to be Kogoro's. A second's pause stretched between them. All he could think of was how he couldn't remember Kogoro ever willingly calling him by name. "… ikkou." It was a gentle persuasion, not a command, and he allowed himself to be lead away from the glass. A glance at Kogoro's face then back to the floor, their expressions mirrored. They shared this loss; her father and her long-lost love, both left behind with tears down their cheeks.*

*She got the letter a month after she left. An innocuous envelope addressed to her dorm room, with no return sender, postage from inner Tokyo. Her silent tears greeted her roommate as the girl entered their shared room and picked up the letter which had dropped from the hands of its grief-stricken recipient: 'Ran, if you're reading this, I'm already dead.'*

...

"The worst part is, if we do find something we're never going to live it down," Chase muttered as he examined a yet-to-be cleaned bloodstain on the concrete landing of the stairwell. The boy had managed to smash his head against the bottom-most stair, and blood from his head wound had formed a tiny pool where he'd lain face-down on the floor. The maid had been complaining about it for a good fifteen minutes before she finally left them to their work. Apparently blood was something of a challenge to get out of concrete.

"It doesn't matter. There's no way this'll hold water. House was probably just trying to throw us off while he figured out what's really going on." Foreman was leaning on the railing watching Chase work. After all there was really nothing besides the blood to look at, and he'd already scouted around looking for anything "suspicious". There'd been nothing he could see. Of course they still had the hallway to check out. Hopefully they wouldn't end up having to break into a room or something.

"Nothing weird about the bloodstain. Matches with the scrape on his forehead, and the stain on that middle stair fits. Any sign of a bullet hole?"

"Nope." Foreman pushed himself off the railing and continued up the stairs, Chase in tow with the sample kit. Not that there was anything to collect, the bloodstain had dried too much to really get anything out of. "Just have to walk down the hall a little ways, then we can go back and tell House how stupid this-" He stopped suddenly, door to the second floor half open, glaring at the hole on the opposite side of the wood paneling. "Oh damn it."

"What is it?" Chase leant around him, and groaned as he followed his colleague's line of sight. "I told you. Never going to live it down."

## Chapter 11: Eleven

"Conan? Is there anything else I can get you?" Cameron said sympathetically, her hand resting on his mattress. Conan had eventually acquiesced to her offer of a drink, the dry mouth of a night on nothing but IV fluids all but forcing him to. Now he sat with the paper cup in hand, doctor smiling away over him, and suddenly found that old detective's paranoia creeping up on him again. He'd seen far too many crime scenes in his time to take anything at face value anymore. A cup was poison, umbrellas shielded gunpowder, the scent of almonds forever linked with cyanide. Who was to say she hadn't slipped something in here? A replay of last time when she'd drugged him via IV?

*Oh, just shut the hell up.* He told himself, and took a sip. The sweet taste of juice was a godsend after who-knew-how-long drinking intravenously. He paused, forcing himself to wait after the first sip for any telltale signs of tampering. (Whether or not he trusted the source, a lifetime of watching others die had ingrained a certain level of cautiousness that he just couldn't seem to shake.) A half minute or so passed with no ill effects, and with a mental declaration of safety Conan quickly downed the rest of the cup. Dr. Cameron patted him on the arm affectionately.

"Feel better?"

For once he didn't have to force the nod and smile. With a belly full of juice and whatever nutritional supplements they'd dosed him with, he actually did feel much better. His mind also felt significantly less clouded, probably his concussion healing. He fiddled with his empty juice cup before Cameron took it away from him and refilled it.

The sight of the small watch on her wrist as she handed the cup back sparked a sudden idea. Cameron thankfully missed the devious smirk playing across his lips as she turned to adjust the settings on one of the many machines surrounding them.

Wiping the smile from his face with the ease of almost three years' practice, Conan lowered the cup from his lips and fixed Cameron with the most plaintive look he could muster. "Miss Allison?" he asked sheepishly. Her face turned to him from where she'd been studying the monitors, smiling. "I… could I maybe.." He paused. Dramatic effect. Nothing more adorable than a stuttering child.

"Anything you need, Conan." She'd regret those words later, he knew. The internal grin didn't show on his face as he slowly brought his eyes up to meet hers.

"Well… my dad gave me this watch, see. And… it's my favorite one.. But it's… I think they took it." He let his eyes well up with tears as he held up his uninjured right wrist listlessly to show her that his watch was truly gone. Of course that wasn't actually the wrist he usually wore the watch on—but his left was broken.

"Hold on just a second, I'll see if I can find it." She patted his shoulder briefly and made her way out of the room, on a mission for his belongings. Finally he allowed the wicked smile he'd been suppressing to come to the surface, then dropped it and shook his head. Honestly, he was getting to be no better than that no-good thief Kaitou Kid, manipulating people like this.

Conan had begun to doze off by the time Cameron returned, holding a small, labeled bag containing an assortment of items, as well as his backpack. "I found your things!" She smiled, pulling a few items out. Conan smiled happily when he eyed the watch. Oh sweet freedom…

"Is this the one you wanted?" she asked, holding the silver item up for him to identify. His smile grew wider, and by no means did he have to fake his happiness. The fact that all his gadgets had survived his tumble intact was a point of immense relief. "Oh, and also I found your glasses. You didn't tell us you needed them, or I would have gotten them to you sooner."

Oh, glasses. He'd forgotten about those… It had been a brief period of respite when he'd arrived in America and was finally able to ditch the fake eyewear. Would the imbedded digital map even work here? He wasn't sure if it was worldwide or not.

"Thanks!" he chirped happily, placing the glasses on his nose and quickly attaching the watch around his right wrist. It felt strange there; not that it mattered, the thing worked well enough on either arm. Cameron sat across from him again as he gingerly tested the fingers of his left hand. Yep, they worked well enough.

"Miss Allison?" he said sweetly. Cameron smiled at him. She'd been about to page someone; her beeper was out and she had her thumbs hovering over the buttons.

"Yes, Conan?"

"Um, can you check this needle thing in my arm? It kind of hurts.." He looked down at his IV with a grimace. Cameron leant forward to inspect the site, unwittingly providing the perfect target and giving Conan his chance to strike. With a skill borne of hundreds of 'Sleeping Kogoro' cases, he pointed the anesthetic gun-slash-watch at her neck, and pressed the dual firing buttons with the thumb and forefinger of his bandaged left hand. The woman jerked back at the sudden sting in her neck, putting a hand to the spot in confusion and staring at the boy who was now smiling devilishly at her. Her mouth opened to ask what he had done, but she only got as far as "Wha-?" before her legs gave out under her and she collapsed backwards into her chair, asleep.

## Chapter 12: Twelve

As soon as Cameron collapsed, Conan set about forming a plan of action. Until now he had been either unconscious or too drugged-out to form any level of coherent thought, but with medicines waning and his concussion easing off, he found his mind working double time. So many things had happened in the last week alone, it would be hard to keep them straight even without brain injury.

First things first, he had to get out of here. Experience had proven that the longer he stayed in one place, the more dangerous the situation became. Two years living at the Mouri residence had been quite the lesson in that respect. The complacency he'd inadvertently let himself feel there had eventually put everyone he loved in danger. Never again, he'd vowed, face grim as he boarded the plane that would take him away from his homeland. He would keep on the move until the Organization fell, or until he was caught. Whichever came first.

Coughing slightly, he braced his good arm against the hard mattress and sat up. A wave of dizziness threatened to knock him straight back down, but he stubbornly fought the urge to pass out. The anesthetic dart from his watch usually lasted no longer than fifteen minutes or so, and he wanted to be long gone before the doctor came anywhere near consciousness. So, against all protests of his aching body, he slowly managed to sit up. Once upright, he was forced to pause and catch his breath, waiting for his head to stop spinning. What the hell medicines had they been giving him, anyway?

A tug on his arm as he made to move forward brought his attention downwards. He grimaced as he caught sight of the IV line running out of his arm. Other leads and wires caught his eye, and as he gave himself a cursory glance he realized for the first time just how many devices he was hooked up to. Machines monitoring pulse and blood pressure, regulating his medication, oxygen, all with some electronic lead to his body. He would have to disconnect every one of them without being noticed if he wanted to escape. He coughed again and glared to himself. Well it was this or die. Even if the Organization had initially presumed his trip down the stairs to be fatal, they would have been sure to see the ambulance. Operatives were probably combing every hospital in the area looking for him while he sat here dumbly looking at wires.

So he set to action. With a quick glance around for any prying nurses or hospital employees, Conan grasped the IV, grit his teeth, and pulled. The needle and tape came free with a sharp stab of pain, spitting a stream of medication and blood onto the sheets and floor. That probably hadn't been a great plan, health-wise, but drastic times called for drastic measures. As long as he didn't die in the next few minutes it was fine.

He stopped to let another wave of dizziness pass, eyeing the heart monitors warily. He had a feeling they wouldn't be disconnected quite as easily as the IV had been. Didn't an alarm always sound when people took those things off in medical dramas? (He had to smile at that one—for once he actually *had* learned something from television. How many times had he used TV as an excuse for knowledge of things well beyond first-grader level?)

Glancing around for some solution to this predicament, he paused as his eye caught the power outlet. Would that…? He racked his brains for any consequence of pulling the plug he could think of. Well, what could happen? The machine wouldn't be able to sound any alarms if it was unplugged. He glanced at Cameron, snoring peacefully, and quickly made up his mind. If she woke up and figured out what exactly that mysterious sting in her neck had been while he was still here... Well, he was better off trying and failing than waiting around for *that* unpleasant inevitability.

Gathering up any wires he could find on himself and draping them over the cast on his left arm, he slowly edged to the side of the bed. Amazing how long a drop of a few feet looks when you're barely as tall as the railing. Nothing doing but to go for it… He lowered himself as far as he could on one shaky arm, then dropped. The ground came up much too fast and he stumbled but managed to keep his footing, leaning on the bed as the world teetered around him. Best not to think about what this was doing to his body.

There was the outlet, a few feet from his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut, reached out, and pulled.

Nothing happened. He opened one eye carefully, then both as he realized that most of the machines around him had been silenced. He looked up and tried to work out what he'd accomplished. The heart monitor was down, at least. That was the one he'd been aiming for. He disconnected a sensor, and hearing no shrill beeping announcing he'd done so, quickly removed the rest. He was now wire-free, standing behind the bed on the opposite side of the giant pane of glass that doubled as a wall. The blinds were shut as he peered around the edge of the mattress. A plus for him, although he would still have to work out how to get out of the room without being noticed. The white hospital gown would surely give him away the second he stepped into the hall, say nothing of his broken wrist and the thin line of blood dripping down his arm from where he'd removed the IV.

First things first. Cameron had stupidly brought him his entire backpack, rather than just the watch he'd asked for. It was a fortunate boon for him, since new clothes, along with the glasses now perched familiarly on his nose, would probably disguise him quite nicely from the nurses. He placed his good hand on the bed for support, and slowly moved along the mattress until he came to the other side, where his old brown bag leant on the wall next to the bed. He quickly rifled through it and procured a pair of faded jeans, one of his old "Beika City Junior Soccer League" t-shirts, socks, and a spare set of shoes he'd been carrying around ever since he discovered that his usual electronically-powered pair were now a size too small. The professor had been working on a new set for him, with added modifications besides just the electrical strength-enhancement, but he'd been forced to abandon the work… A brief thought of exactly why he had been forced to do so stopped him momentarily, but he shook his head violently to get rid of it, then reeled at the sudden careening of the room. Unpleasant thoughts or not, he probably should lay off the excessive head movements. At least the nauseating spinning did a fair job of distracting him from bad memories.

After the swaying and the rushing in his ears calmed down, Conan quickly dressed himself and wiped the blood off his arm with the hospital gown before stuffing it into a drawer on the bedside table. Best hiding spot he could find on short notice. If the hospital staff didn't realize he'd changed they would be more likely to search around for a boy in white hospital garb, letting a fully-dressed, bespectacled child walk right past them.

As soon as he was clothed he stood up, and had to fight another bout of dizziness before managing to gain his bearings. It had been, what… Five minutes? He moved to the end of the bed and peered around it. Cameron was still dead asleep, a thin line of drool creeping its way down her chin. He smiled and moved back around to the window-facing side. About ten minutes left before she woke up and started panicking.

And now the question: How to get out?

*What I wouldn't give for a floor plan…* he thought irritably to himself, testing his weight before pushing himself lightly from the bed-railing he'd been hanging onto. His legs were growing stronger quickly, he could stand on his own now. Things had also thankfully stopped spinning so violently when he moved, now merely careening in small waves around his head as he tried to think. Knowing the layout of the hospital would help immensely; he would stand a far greater chance of escaping if he could find a stairwell or supply closet to duck into if chased. Visions of white-clad thieves disappearing into hidden alcoves flitted across his mind, and he scowled as he cast about for any sort of map he could use. Surely there was *something*…

A placard on the wall caught his eye, and he turned a little too quickly in excitement. The room spun a few times before he could begin moving towards it. It was the fire escape route, white paper in a clear plastic holder that indicated the fastest route from this room to the exit. Oh this was just too perfect… He grinned somewhat manically and climbed onto the nearest chair to pry it down. A few good tugs left him with the cheap plastic holder and he slid out the printed map. He wasn't too far from the main exit, it seemed. He continued to study the map carefully as he made his way to the huge pane of glass that doubled as a wall. (Honestly, this was one of the strangest interior design jobs he'd ever seen.)

Pressing his ear to the door, and hearing no obvious sounds, he carefully parted the blinds. A blank wall decorated with generic hospital paintings greeted him, illuminated dimly by lights spaced evenly down the hall. He turned his head and took in the nurse's station down one end, doors to patients' rooms like his own stretching down past it. All the nurses seemed to be busy with patients as they hurried from room to room, barely taking stock of anything but their immediate tasks. Chances were he'd just look to them like a kid visiting his poor sick mommy.

He glanced down at his makeshift map, gauging distances, and slid the door open just enough to squeeze his small body out. The nearest nurse disappeared into a room, and he took his cue to jog to the other side of the hall, duck into an alcove, and peek around the corner. No one in sight. He closed his eyes momentarily to ward off a bout of dizziness, then quickly rolled to his right and placed his good hand on the wall before he began to walk along in the direction indicated by the fire route. Strangely, despite the myriad of other complaints his body was suffering, it was his wrist that hurt the most. He tucked the thick cast against his stomach as he walked. Just had to hope nobody noticed the lack of a hospital-issue sling.

## Chapter 13: Thirteen

The dizziness had finally begun to abate by the time he made it to the second nurses' station. To his immense relief, he found he could turn his head and even jog a little without feeling the need to keel over. In fact, compared to the drugged haze of the last few days, he felt almost normal again.

He paused as one of the nurses turned his way, flashed her his heartwarming childish smile as she plucked a chart from one of the shelves and hustled away. This hospital must be incredibly busy if the nurses weren't even taking the time to question him... He grimaced slightly as soon as she'd turned away and moved his right hand back to supporting his wrist. Looking pained or holding his fractured arm at an odd angle would get him noticed, but at the same time trying to pretend that a fresh break was healed enough not to need support was becoming incredibly painful.

"Were you looking for a sling, honey?" a woman's voice said out of nowhere. He jumped, turning hard enough to make his head spin again, but just managed to paste on his usual naïve expression before fully facing this new nurse who'd managed to sneak up on him.

"Um… Yeah. The one they gave me b-broke," he said, attempting to hide a cough behind a stutter, "-and my mom said I should come here an' get a new one."

"Oh? Well I can certainly go and get one for you." She was an older woman, in her forties, and by the way she smiled down at him he could tell she had children. Something about that motherly look was just incredibly telling. He gave her a relieved grin and waited patiently as she ducked behind the counter and emerged with a swatch of blue and white.

"Here you go," she said, handing him the cheap hospital-issue sling. He thanked her and put it on gratefully. He hadn't realized how painful just trying to hold up a cast could be. "Now, do you remember which room your mother's staying in? I'd be happy to walk you back there."

"Ah, no… I don't remember the number. But I know how to get back, so it's okay! Thanks miss nurse lady!" He gave her another smile before turning tail and running off. He could hear her startled protest as he dashed through a set of double doors at the end of the hall, but he deftly ignored her. He vaguely wondered if he would even be able to *count* the number of times he'd used that trick, even just from the time he'd been shrunk—probably fifty, at least. He sighed as he rounded a corner out of her sight, noting that she'd gone back to work already; all this sneaking around and subterfuge was turning him into a downright con-artist.

With a slight cough and brief pause to check the fire escape map and get his bearings, he again set out along his path. According to the map the main lobby was just down this hall… he'd be walking straight out the main entrance. Quite bold of him. Folding the map with one hand proved a tad difficult, so he made due with just stuffing it into his jeans pocket. Not like it would be useful much longer anyway. The plain line drawing only detailed the hospital and how to get out, nothing around campus.

Speaking of which—he moved to the side of the hall and stopped along the wall, out of the way of passerby. While dawdling wasn't an amazing idea, he decided he'd rather test out the map function of his electronic glasses now, before he got outside. Better chance of finding and stealing a map here in the hospital if it turned out that the locator function didn't work. He paused and grumbled something irritably to himself as his hand pressed the wrong side of the glasses' frames. Damn these things for being left-handed. He quickly crossed over and pressed the proper side, then turned slightly towards the wall in order to mask the small antenna rising from the side of the lens.

A bold-faced message, *'HANI GAI'*—"Out of Range" flashed over the lens in front of his left eye, the three bolded kanji characters blinking red over a zoomed-out map of Tokyo. He scoffed and was about to turn the device off, as much good as it was going to do him, when another message appeared—'*Chotto matte kudosai, zenchikyosokui o kanraki…*'

He blinked a few times as the flashing red text scrolled across the eye piece. The glasses were contacting a satellite network. This thing ran on a GPS system…? In retrospect it obviously had to, coming up with up-to-date maps without upgrades and the tracking function. Still, Professor Agasa had never really seemed the type to allow his inventions to rely on satellites rather than some grand scheme of his own design. He ignored a few odd looks from passerby as he continued to apparently stare at the wall. A loading bar appeared for a few seconds, before—

'LOCATION FOUND'. For half a minute or so he merely stared dumbly at the screen, trying to figure out what the thing was trying to tell him. His already-stressed brain scrambled valiantly to catch up with the abrupt switch from Japanese to English. Apparently the glasses felt a need to flip to the local language when they reset location. *Yeah, great idea Professor… just be glad I didn't end up in France or something.* He rolled his eyes slightly at the thought of his eccentric scientist neighbor spending hours coming up with such an incredibly useless feature, painstakingly implementing the software into his design. The mental picture was actually quite fitting, though why the man would have assumed a native Japanese speaker would wish to read bright red, boldfaced English while in a foreign country was beyond him.

He shook his head slightly of these thoughts and studied the map of central New Jersey now being projected in front of his eye. What the hell was a 'Township' and what kind of a name was 'Plainsboro'? Well, whatever. At least he had a map. He hit the side button again to turn off the locator and retract the antenna before continuing down the hall.

Passing a few more patient's rooms and dodging the questions of yet another nurse, Conan finally found himself in a in a wide, professionally-decorated space. Doors and short hallways branched out to the sides of the atrium, while the far side before him opened to another of those ridiculous glass walls, the word "CLINIC" emblazoned on the door in large red letters below the hospital's logo. Doctors and nurses buzzed around but took no notice of him. Just another patient, maybe a visiting relative. Either way he wasn't their problem.

He looked up to the high ceiling, noticing hospital employees and patients wandering in and out of sight along an overhanging walkway from the second floor. In the middle of the lobby sat a front desk and reception area, employees and patients milling around it as they went about their daily hospital business. A doctor talking to some patient, a few nurses filing charts— nothing alarming. He would be able to slip past easily.

A grin split his face as he spotted the entryway. Glass doors again, letting bright, noonday sunlight filter into the lobby and brighten an otherwise sterile and impersonal environment. He fought the urge to run to the door, walking calmly, deliberately, as if he had somewhere to go and no great hurry to be there. People were more likely leave you alone if you looked like you were doing something. A polite smile at the woman behind the front desk as he passed, allaying her suspicions, and he was practically home-free. He once again turned his attention to the entrance, not bothering to hide his relief, happily thinking of the warm sun and freedom just beyond the doors in front of him—

His eyes had been focused entirely on the entryway, which proved to be a mistake as, suddenly and quite painfully, he tripped.

For the second time in as many days Conan watched the ground come up to meet him much too fast. This time, however, he was spared the sickening sound of his skull hitting concrete and instead was greeted by his jaw slamming into hard flooring. A short yell -more of a grunt, really- escaped as the wind was knocked out of him by the cast on his arm ramming hard into his stomach. He managed to roll over onto his back in an effort to save his now-throbbing wrist and chest, coughing and sputtering as he tried to catch his breath, and grimacing at the sudden flood of pain.

"Shit, House! Look what you did!" A man's voice exclaimed from somewhere above him. Conan opened his eyes reluctantly, still struggling to breath, and found himself face-to-face with the black rubber tip of a walking cane, apparently the source of his ill-placed fall. He watched, confused, finally managing to take in enough oxygen to constitute a full breath, as the cane moved out of his field of vision and its owner glared down at him with a pair of ice blue eyes, only a shade or two lighter than his own. It was the man he'd seen by the front desk when he'd first walked into the lobby, whom he'd assumed to be a patient talking to his doctor.

"Hey, are you okay?" The same voice that had yelled before was now at his side, and a hand was turning his head away from the strange, unshaven man who had tripped him and forcing him to look into a set of earnest brown eyes. A very concerned-looking middle aged man in a white doctor's coat and rather ugly green tie knelt over him, gaze flicking over the cast Conan was cradling, to the already-bruising jaw. "House, I think you might have broken his jaw," he said in a voice of mixed sympathy and exasperation. Something in that tone suggested that such an action as tripping small children was not entirely unexpected behavior from this 'House' man. (Conan briefly struggled with that name. Houses… Were things you lived in, right? Disorientation was playing havoc with his language centres.)

## Chapter 14: Fourteen

After twenty plus years practicing, and eight of those dealing specifically with the weird and strange, Greg House liked to think there were very few medical situations that could honestly baffle him. As he stared down at his current patient, however, he found himself truly at a complete loss. By all accounts the kid should have died after a fall like that, at least started having another heart attack or clutching at his chest as his barely-healed aorta tore open again. He was doing none of these, however. Just gasping for air after being winded, and cradling his broken wrist. Both normal reactions, and both far from being dead or dying. Of course House knew it had been stupid to trip him, (in retrospect an entirely idiotic thing to do) but he'd been short on options. The sight of his patient calmly walking across the lobby towards the doors, even smiling at a nurse! The medical impossibilities had briefly thrown him, and he did the only thing he could think of to stop the boy before he escaped— before the answer escaped. So he'd stuck out his cane at the last minute, sending the boy sprawling. Effective, and now with the added bonus of providing a new… Was it a symptom? Or complete lack of symptoms?

Realizing Wilson was complaining about his behavior, and already having visually examined the patient's jaw for signs of obvious fracture, he made a slightly irritated face, eyes still on the patient. Wilson could be so melodramatic. "It's not broken. He barely landed on it," he said distractedly.

"Oh yeah, good thing the cast on his *broken arm* managed to take the brunt of it," Wilson grumbled. He glanced up, noticing House's obvious distraction from the current situation, and made an annoyed noise before turning back to the patient. The boy was now breathing normally enough after a fall like that and looking rather dazed. "Are you okay? Do you think you can walk at all? I need to check your mouth, if we can move to a chair it'll be easier."

The boy looked momentarily confused, before he tentatively nodded. House continued to stare him down, as if watching him long enough would elicit some sort of new piece to the puzzle. (Well, who was to say it wouldn't? Patients keeled over and had seizures all the time when he stared at them.)

The closest nurse had come over to help, and together she and Wilson managed to get the kid into one of the chairs by the wall. House hung back, preferring to watch the patient rather than offer what limited help he was capable of. The boy seemed to be walking fine, balance intact, slightly shallow breathing from diaphragm trauma, but overall nothing abnormal for a fall onto his jaw. Which in itself was incredibly abnormal. With furrowed brows the studied the boy's face carefully. It was definitely the patient he'd seen when he and the fellows responded to the heart attack code. There was no mistaking the strange mix of blue eyes and asian features. Still, just to be certain…

He moved closer to the boy, sidling up next to Wilson and completing the semi-circle of adults surrounding their patient. The kid looked slightly alarmed (irritated, as well? The facial expression was hard to read) by being closed in, but he hid it well. Claustrophobic, on edge. Another tally for his previous theory concerning the assassin's-target circumstances. Ignoring Wilson's muttering to the nurse as they examined the jaw, he sought out the boy's gaze and leveled him with one of his steadiest glares.

"How did you get past Cameron?" There, that would do it. If the kid knew who Cameron was, he'd be sure this was his patient and not some coincidentally identical boy.

The reaction was exactly as expected. Shock, slight panic. He'd been caught and he knew it. But then he did something unexpected. Instead of stammering denials, trying to get out of it, the kid just blanked. His face smoothed, panic and worry either expertly masked or repressed entirely. Wilson and the nurse had pulled back from examining, the nurse trying to figure out what House was talking about, and Wilson looking shocked. (Of course, House had been consulting with him over lunch. He knew the details of the case, and appreciated exactly how impossible this was.) With skill borne of deceiving people constantly, House managed to hide the surprise on his face and return the glare the kid was now staring him down with.

Finding nothing to say that would be of any use in the situation- he couldn't exactly *ask* the patient how he'd managed to circumvent every symptom of recent heart trauma and go traipsing around the hospital—House merely pulled out his cell phone and pressed the three speed dials of his employees' pagers. (He wasn't sure if he expected Cameron to respond or not, but might as well give it a try.) Tucking the phone into his coat pocket, he kept his level stare at the kid, having to work to keep a disturbed expression off his face –the boy had an incredibly piercing stare- and turned slightly towards Wilson.

"Get an x-ray on the jaw," he said tersely, and turned to limp off in the direction of the patient's room. He wanted to check on Cameron; either she was running around like a headless chicken trying to find her patient before House found out she'd lost him, or had somehow been incapacitated by a mere child. Either way the situation would be interesting –possibly diagnostically relevant. He ignored Wilson's stuttered protests, trying to get him to stay behind and help, or something, and flipped open his cell phone as it started vibrating.

"Go down to radiology when you get back," he ordered as soon as Chase's voice started babbling about what they'd found. He sounded excited, so they'd obviously found the bullet hole. He flipped the phone shut on his employee's confused voice, and tucked it back into his pocket.

More and more pieces to this puzzle... He just wished he knew where any of them fit.

Conan relaxed his glare as the strange, limping man broke eye contact and walked away, pulling a cell phone out as he went. He was immediately disgusted with himself. One mention of Dr. Cameron and he'd reacted like a rookie thief caught in a bluff. Still, the realization that he'd actually managed to run into one of the few people in this hospital who seemed to know who he was had been a low blow to his confidence. What was it about fate that just threw him into situations like this? Only after the initial reaction had Conan thought to mask his expression, and by then all he'd been able to do was go completely neutral. Not the best façade, true, but adequate to hide his feelings from those staring eyes.

And of course, he'd stared right back. Glared, even! *Good going, idiot…* he thought irritably to himself. The proper course would have been to look away, act ashamed and wait for the man's reaction to decide what to do next. But no, that old stubborn streak had chosen that moment to shine through, and he'd adamantly held the man's gaze.

It was one thing he never really could get over –being stared down like a criminal. He'd used that same hard look so many times, directed at such deplorable men and women… he wasn't a murderer, or a crook, for god's sake. There was no need to stare like that.

His thoughts were broken as the brown-eyed man from before moved into his line of sight, blocking his view of the cane-wielding nutcase limping down the opposite hall. Again he was assaulted by faint claustrophobia, and edged away from the man now kneeling not two inches from his face.

"Your jaw doesn't seem broken, but we're going to have to take an x-ray of your mouth to be sure." The man placed a hand on his shoulder in what was meant to be a comforting manner. In his current state the unwanted contact just put Conan more on edge, wishing he could be anywhere else. "I'm Doctor Wilson, by the way," he smiled genially, saying nothing for a few seconds. Conan realized he was waiting for a reciprocal introduction.

"Ah.. Edo- I mean.. Conan. My name's Conan." He exhaled evenly and tried not to look angry with himself for the near-slip. He'd almost said '*Edogawa Conan desu, yoroshiku.'* It was as if his mouth longed to form familiar words again, to speak in its proper language. Fluent or not, English always had a way of tiring him out, making him feel as if a simple sentence required far more work than necessary.

"Just Conan?" the man asked, smile tinged with something like irritation.

"I can't remember my last name." Conan said absently, not really wanting to be confronted about it, but not trusting himself to come up with a decent-sounding alias on the fly. He'd never been good at making up names; his current pseudonym was proof enough of that, having been haphazardly constructed from the names of two titles on his bookshelf back home. And while his friend could sit for a few minutes and come up with *Haibara Ai*, a pseudonym with symbolism even he probably didn't fully appreciate, Conan was left sitting on an uncomfortable chair in an unfamiliar hospital, still trying not to blurt out *Kudo Shinichi* to anyone who asked. (Would this man even recognize those sounds as a name? He had to remember he was in America now.)

"Well I'm sure you'll be able to remember soon. Doctor House might not seem like a very nice guy, but he's a great doctor, always gets his patients better." Wilson smiled at him again, somehow managing to avoid sounding patronizing while still using vocabulary designed for a six year-old. The nurse from before –who Conan hadn't even noticed leaving—had apparently decided to make herself useful and reappeared with a foldable wheelchair. He eyed the device warily.

"I can walk," Conan grumbled.

"I'd feel better if you let us take you in the wheelchair, we don't know exactly what's wrong with you yet, or what could make it worse," Wilson said. Again with that placating voice… he glared to himself. Finally he scooted to the edge of his chair and smoothly shifted to the wheelchair with little more than an annoyed sigh, slouching into the too-big seat with his short legs dangling well above the foot rests.

"How's your jaw feeling?" Dr. Wilson asked soothingly as he took the chair from the nurse and pushed it toward the lifts. Conan sank lower in his seat, frowning deeply in anticipation of another bout of forced acting. He was tired, trapped, and certain of his impending death by assassination—a bruised jaw was the least of his worries. None of this could be revealed to the kind-faced man pushing him, however, so he settled for another frustrated sigh. Wilson either didn't notice the gesture or had decided not to comment.

After a few seconds (in which they entered the lift and Wilson pressed a button for the lower levels) Conan muttered something quietly. Wilson made to lean over the top of the wheelchair and ask what he'd said but then remembered to crouch down by the side and ask instead. He'd taken quite a few courses on comforting patients, had to as an oncologist, and unlike certain colleagues of his he'd taken them all to heart.

Bring yourself to the patient's level—avoid making them look up if at all possible—and speak gently, but with authority. Don't make demands. Healthcare is about the patient, first and foremost.

"Did you say something?" he asked gently, but with authority. Ten of ten for technique, he thought idly.

"I said, 'hurts a little.," the small boy muttered impatiently, looking anywhere but at him. The kid seemed frustrated, though whether it was with himself for getting caught or for some other reason he couldn't tell.

"I'll be able to get you some medicine for it once we get off the elevator. Think you can hold on till then?" Wilson smiled. Conan glowered.

Straightening up, he allowed his features to sag back into a frown. This case was incredible. Unbelievable, even. Just over lunch he'd been trading ideas with House over the possibility of cancer being the underlying condition, trying to come up with something that could both simultaneously cause and rapidly repair an aortic tear—they hadn't come up with much. And now this…!

He'd love to get a scan of the heart while he was down there—no doubt House would appreciate it. The elevator dinged and he wheeled the patient out into the hall. Hopefully the CT was open.

## Chapter 15: Fifteen

The hospital room was dark as he limped through the curtained door. A flip of the light switch showed him what he'd been half-expecting.

Cameron was limp on the chair beside the bed, head down with her hair covering her face. She seemed to be deep in sleep. The sheets on the bed next to her were dishevelled, with specks of blood and medicine surrounding the needle of what had once been an IV leading to their patient's arm. Only half the lights were on, creating a dim and somewhat eerie atmosphere, devoid of the usual beeping or whirring of your average hospital room.

Ignoring Cameron for the moment—she obviously wasn't going anywhere—he gazed curiously around the small space. The monitors to the side of him were dark and silent, the culprit immediately obvious in the plug lying next to its outlet. Wires and leads lay on the floor where they'd been ripped off in a hurry, and the plastic hospital bracelet of their patient lay on the floor next to them. He poked it with a toe to turn it over, noting the ragged, but obviously cut, edges. His eyes strayed idly to the blood specks on the sheet and floor.

"Nnnngh…" House's attention snapped back to Cameron. Her head had lolled over to one side, hair now only covering half her face to show her eyes opening slightly. She was waking up. With a few limping strides he was next to her, fingers already seeking out her pulse. Slow, but not life-threatening. A lack of any obvious contusions suggested she'd been drugged… With what? He took a cursory glance at the floor around her, seeing nothing unexpected. No needle marks on her arms—he lifted one of her hands and examined it anyway, just to watch it flop back down when he dropped it. "Ugh.. H-House?" He looked up to see Cameron's eyes opening slightly, hazy, not quite lucid, but awake.

"What happened?" he asked. She blinked a few times to clear her vision, looking confused, but then abruptly sat up.

"Conan! He-whoa…" She swayed a little, House just managing to catch her before she toppled face-first out of her chair. Whatever this stuff was, it was potent.

"No sudden movements," he warned impatiently.

"He… Some sort of needle or something.. Got me in the nec-" She hadn't even finished her sentence before House was tilting her head to one side, already examining the tiny, red pinprick on the side of her neck. Straight into the carotid artery—the kid had good aim. She must have gone down like a sack of bricks. He ghosted a finger over the site, noting a sticky residue over the wound that seemed to have sealed the puncture before it had a chance to bleed. A dissolving needle, maybe? "House…?" Cameron asked awkwardly.

Releasing her head, he turned his back on her and limped over to the other side of the bed, hunting around for whatever information he could gather from the surroundings. Cameron straightened up slowly and put a hand to her own neck with a wince—as the drug wore off the puncture started to sting, like an insect bite. She resisted the urge to scratch it.

Scowling at an open blue backpack full of clothes in the corner, and deducing from there that the hospital gown must be hidden somewhere, House began opening drawers. Second down he found it, frowning as he grabbed the thin garment. Red flecks dotted the front and one of the sleeves. Not enough blood. The post-surgery anticoagulant wasn't working. Neither were the ACE inhibitors, if the lack of symptoms earlier was any indication. Maybe the IV… No, it had obviously been connected, and the medication still dripping languidly out meant there hadn't been a blockage…

Behind him Cameron was getting up, somewhat unsteadily but quickly gaining strength.

"We have to find him, he can't have gotten far-"

"Stopped him in the front lobby," he cut her off. Her shocked expression mirrored his own feelings. "Wilson's taking him down to-" he came to a screeching halt as he realized his mistake—Wilson, *alone*, was taking the patient down to radiology. House turned on his heel and left the room as quickly as his leg would allow.

"House? House! Wait- ugh…" Cameron stumbled slightly as she took off after her boss, but quickly righted herself and managed to catch up with him. "There's something I needed to tell you-"

"Save it," he said tersely, coming to the first elevator available and punching the 'down' button about twenty more times than was necessary. Cameron swallowed the lingering drug-induced nausea and followed him into the lift.

## Chapter 16: Sixteen

Wilson stood in what by now was probably an all-too-familiar position. Hands on hips, he stared down at his young charge and tried very hard not to look too irritated. Conan was making no such concessions, preferring to glare up at his captor with an openly pissed-off glare. Neither had moved for several seconds, locked in an all-out staring contest, and Wilson was beginning to wonder if it was even humanly possible for anyone to be more stubborn than House. He sincerely hoped not.

"You can't wear the watch, it'll interfere with the scan," he said for what must have been the fifth or sixth time.

"Then don't do the scan," Conan replied icily. His good arm was tucked protectively behind the thick cast on his left wrist, hiding the watch in question and keeping Wilson from trying the quick-snatch technique he'd attempted earlier. If nothing else, the boy certainly had fast reflexes. Wilson irritably rubbed the tender spot on his thigh where he'd been kicked for his troubles. That was going to bruise.

"I need to see if your jaw is alright," he stated—again. His only response was an even darker glare. The boy was currently seated on the CT table, though only because he'd been small enough for Wilson to pick up and put there. Conan had refused to climb up on his own. Fine, Wilson had accepted that and worked around it. He'd even allowed Conan to keep his jeans on, since he had no plans to scan the lower half of his body and the thought of trying to wrestle a six year-old out of his clothing was in no way appealing.

"It feels fine." The boy bit out.

"No, it doesn't. I can see you trying not to move it." In answer, Conan promptly attempted to open his mouth, winced, and closed it again. His tiny glare increased twofold. Wilson stopped himself in the midst of rolling his eyes. Patient, not House. Do not treat the patient like House.

"It's not broken," Conan maintained.

"We can't know that unless you let me do the scan," Wilson said, slowly, clearly, and most definitely *not* angrily.

"You can do the scan if I can wear the watch." A flicker of amusement lit up those dour eyes, and Wilson sighed in exasperation, took his hands from his hips and rubbed them down his face in frustration. They were back to the start of the circular argument, where Conan had been leading him every five seconds for the last few minutes. The kid knew what he was doing, too, and making it painfully obvious. Combine the logic loop with the hard, blue-eyed stare and Wilson could have sworn he was arguing with a miniature version of his best friend.

"I'm not going to say it again," Wilson replied finally, crossing his arms in what he hoped was an intimidating gesture. It wasn't; Conan merely smirked. "Just hand it over."

"No."

"I'll take it off by force if I need to."

"No you won't."

"I almost did a second ago!"

"But you didn't get it."

"Because you kicked me!" Wilson practically yelled. He stopped, brought his hands back up to his face again, and breathed out a long sigh. This was getting him nowhere.

"Tell you what. You can do the scan…" Conan started. Wilson kept his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew where this was going. "… If I can wear the watch." They said in unison, Wilson's voice drowning out Conan's in an irritated monotone.

"Wilson? What's going on?" an accented voice said from the doorway. Wilson could have cried in gratitude. Finally, backup! He could dump the problem on them and get back to his actual job. He turned to see Chase and Foreman stepping into the room, watching Wilson and the patient with puzzled stares. Turning back to Conan for one last word he suddenly realised the boy's attention had been diverted. Conan was watching the new arrivals warily, giving Wilson a chance to…

"Ha!" The oncologist cried triumphantly, pouncing on the boy. Conan briefly struggled to escape but was quickly thwarted by Wilson grabbing his unbroken wrist and holding fast. The watch's latch had been nearly undone by the last futile attempt, and Wilson easily unclipped it with his free hand before coming away with the offending item held tight in his grasp.

"Hey! Give it back!" Conan yelled. He made to jump off the table after the retreating Wilson but was stopped by Chase, who'd stepped up and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders before he could escape.

"Whoa there, keep still," Chase said warily. He was obviously still under the impression that the boy's heart was a walking time bomb. Foreman moved in as well, looking just as concerned. He shot Wilson an angry look.

"What are you doing? He just had surgery! He shouldn't even be sitting up much less being manhandled!" Wilson held up his hands in a placating gesture and backed up a few more steps. He noticed Conan eyeing the watch in his left hand and couldn't resist waving it back and forth a few times; the boy glared venomously.

"Something's happened with the graft, strengthened it somehow. House tripped him earlier in the foyer-"

"He *what*!" Foreman exclaimed. Chase looked equally shocked, though not angry. He seemed more interested than anything.

"Nothing happened, just a bruised jaw." Wilson gestured to the purple and red blotch spreading up the boy's face. "I was just about to do a CT to try and determine the status of the graft. Needed to check the jaw too."

Foreman's expression shifted to confusion as he turned back to look at the furious boy now being held down by his co-worker. "But that's…"

"Impossible, yes, hence the scan," Wilson replied.

Conan—having been somewhat forgotten in the midst of the conversation—suddenly piped up, a serious expression on his small face. "How long do I need to stay still?"

The now-cooperative Conan had been easily persuaded out of his jeans, and now lay quietly on the sliding CT bed in his boxers and t-shirt, listening to the workings of the machine thumping around him. His sudden complacence was vaguely unnerving to the small group of doctors, who nonetheless had taken their opportunity and gotten straight to work in the readout room.

"The heart looks… normal," Foreman said in wonder. Chase leant over and stared at the monitor over his shoulder with a similarly surprised expression. A few typed commands and the completed slices of the boy's heart formed into a 3D model, a near-perfect image of a juvenile human heart.

"There's the graft—look you can see where it's healed over." Chase pointed to the screen at a white section covering a short length of the aorta. The graft looked to have been completely enveloped by aortic tissue, overlapping the ends and darkening the overall shade of the fragment from a bright white to a lighter grey. "That's amazing…" He breathed.

"That's impossible," Foreman countered in a clipped voice. He was having trouble believing any of this. Something had to be wrong… There was a mistake somewhere—maybe the CT was malfunctioning…

His thoughts were cut off as the door to the room suddenly burst open, both of them having missed the approach of two people as they stared at the bank of computer readouts. They jumped and turned around nearly simultaneously, seeing House looking around the room with a stormy expression. Cameron trailed behind him with a slightly dizzy weave to her step.

"Where's Wilson?" House barked. Chase and Foreman looked at each other briefly, each trying to gauge the other's thoughts on what the hell their boss was upset about.

"He had a consult, left after we scanned the jaw-" Chase started, trailing off as soon as he realized House was no longer paying attention to him.

"Show me the jaw scan," the older man said. Foreman, confused, gestured to the monitors behind him, showing various slices of the boy's heart.

"Shouldn't we talk about the heart? Look at the graft—it's already-"

"Move," House commanded. Chase obligingly got up from his seat and moved over to Cameron, the men jostling around each other in the small space.

"You alright?" he asked softly. Cameron nodded, still looking a bit ill but determined not to show it. She stepped lightly away from Chase's offered hand and kept her eyes glued to the images House was now calling up.

"We already determined-" Foreman started again.

House, having called up a partial image and taken the barest of glances at it, cut Foreman off by turning on his heel and leaving the room. He pushed past Chase and Cameron and into the main testing room, where their patient still lay quietly in the CT machine. The cutoff switch had been pressed before any of the fellows knew what was happening and House slid the stretcher out from the bulk of the machine, exposing a confused and somewhat dazed Conan.

"How old are you?" House demanded. The patient's eyes widened momentarily in alarm, before switching quickly to a look of naïve confusion. Another expertly-applied façade. House glared stonily into the eyes of his patient, trying to elicit an answer through intimidation. The boy's expression was one of exaggerated fear— an act. His eyes were a mix of panic and anger. Something was hidden there. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on one's point of view) Gregory House was a man who prided himself on his ability to uncover secrets. "Answer me," he growled. Conan continued to stare with a feigned, wide-eyed innocence.

Foreman had gotten up and followed House into the main room, his co-workers behind him with similar expressions of annoyance or, in Chase's case, interest. "What does his age matter? You didn't even *look* at the heart scan-" the neurologist demanded. House growled irritably to himself.

"Heart doesn't matter!" The slam of wooden cane against the plastic CT table punctuated his outburst, making everyone else in the room jump. "You three, outside." He pointed his cane at the door. The fellows predictably reacted with varying degrees of indignation.

"House, what-" Cameron started. Some of the colour in her face had returned, making room for her usual look of concerned worry. House sighed angrily and finally broke his one-sided staring contest to turn his glare on the three of them instead. There was no danger of the patient drugging him— Wilson had been safe, so it was a sound assumption that whatever device the boy had used on Cameron was now either confiscated or out of ammo.

"Did I not say *out*?" he asked. Foreman threw up his hands and turned, shaking his head, to exit the room. Chase, after just a moment's hesitation, shrugged in Cameron's direction and did the same. They didn't know what he was on about and didn't care—good men. Cameron, on the other hand… "You too sleeping beauty," he added irritably.

"You shouldn't be alone with him," Cameron said quietly, her eyes flicking to Conan warily. A hand had made its way protectively to her neck. Conan, for his part, coloured slightly and looked away with a vaguely sheepish expression. House growled to himself. Some days it seemed like everything needed spelling out.

"If he had any ammo left he would've stuck Wilson twenty minutes ago," he pointed out. Cameron's eyes moved back to him, brows furrowing. Ammo? "Now get out," he repeated. Finally, *finally* she turned and left, though not without one last glance back at her boss and his unfortunate patient. The door clicked behind her as House reached for his pocket and the sweet Vicodin within. He popped open the pill bottle as he turned his eyes back on his patient. The boy cautiously sat up, looking nervous. House knocked back a pill. Neither spoke for several moments.

"… What do you want?" Conan finally asked. House nearly smiled to himself, but kept his expression carefully neutral, eyes still trained on the child in front of him. He was leaning heavily on his left leg at this point, unwilling to move far enough to retrieve a chair in case the little bastard made a run for it.

"Answers," he said bluntly. Conan's gaze lowered, settling somewhere near the far left corner of the room. "Just you and me, no ducks squawking in the background."

Conan looked briefly confused by the 'ducks' comment, but recovered quickly and raised his eyes. "I've told you everyth-"

"*Wrong*." Another smack of his cane against the CT machine made the patient jump. High-strung. Good for interrogating. "There was never any memory loss. You've been faking— badly," he added, seeing the boy wrinkle his nose in annoyance.

For a few tense seconds both were silent again. The boy picked idly at the cast on his left arm, looking anywhere but at his captor. House continued to stare. The ache in his leg slowly receded in the face of the Vicodin now coursing through his system.

"Why age?" Conan asked suddenly, breaking the silence. His large blue eyes came up to meet House's, matching his intense gaze. The little-boy act had been quite suddenly dropped, the high, lilting voice lowered an octave as the boy stopped trying to sound childish. "My name, parents, home… Those are what you want. You can guess the age. So why ask that first?" Conan's eyes narrowed, looking past House into the semi-lit monitor area as if able to see through the thick glass to the readings within. "What did you find on my scan?"

House was momentarily thrown, though he shouldn't have been. He was expecting this, after all. Still, the sudden change was distinctly off-putting, no matter one's theories. Six year-olds confronting you with complex logical deductions… disturbing. His mind flicked unwillingly to CIA cover-ups and weird, military experiments involving child super-soldiers. No, that was stupid. There had to be a better explanation; this wasn't a comic book or some dumb primetime sitcom.

Conan's too-old eyes came back to meet his own and House quickly glared to cover his discomfort. Do not show weakness, stay in control of the situation… stop thinking about miniature versions of The Hulk.

"Teeth," House offered simply— partly because curtness was effective and partly because he was still distracted by odd visions of his patient with green skin and huge muscles.

Conan gave him a blank look. Now *that* was more in-keeping with what a six year-old should look like. Comic book delusions quickly dismissed, House rolled his eyes theatrically as if the answer should be obvious. Well anyway it should be, except to his employees who never noticed any of the important things even when he shoved the evidence in their faces. Honestly, one look at the scans…

Suddenly struck by an idea, House turned and quickly made his way to the monitoring room, throwing a quick "don't move" over his shoulder. Conan, thankfully, obeyed, an edge of curiosity creeping into his wary expression.

House returned a minute later with a mobile readout unit, the screen displaying a semi-3D representation of a human mandible. He spun the cart around to face Conan and waited, plopping himself down on a rolling office chair he'd brought along with the cart. His leg needed rest—he couldn't think standing up for so long.

Conan was staring at the screen blankly, eyes flicking over the patient label and image several times before suddenly widening. House finally allowed himself a smug smirk.

"There aren't any…" Conan trailed off, good hand moving to his own bruised jaw as he continued to stare at the monitor. His small brow furrowed in confusion. House was impressed—and also vaguely irritated— by the fact that his (fake) six year-old patient had noticed what his three other qualified doctors had missed.

"You have a complete absence of primary milk teeth," House supplied as Conan leant forward to examine the screen more closely. "All but the back two molars are permanent. A real kid's scan would have teeth all over the place, no straight rows, no long roots. You're a fake."

"Wonder if Haibara knew…" Conan muttered to himself. It was House's turn to furrow his brow—this wasn't exactly the reaction he'd been going for. Who the hell was Haibara? In annoyance he pushed the mobile cart away and moved to fill the space it had taken, scooting himself along in the rolling chair with his cane.

"What are you?" House asked, eyes narrowing. Conan's gaze snapped back to meet his eyes.

"What do you mean, 'what am I'?" the boy asked, raising a brow at the strange and apparently obvious question. "Human. Male. Mixed rac—"

House ignored him. "You're obviously not a child—can't be. So what are you… How old are you?" he asked. He continued to stare, thoughts racing. Conan didn't answer immediately, allowing House's mind to wander as he waited for a response. Maybe this was just some sort of hormone deficiency… At what age did adult teeth usually come in? No, too old… Dwarfism was definitely out. Wrong body proportions. What else was there..? He rested his chin on the handle of his cane, tapping it lightly, watching the puzzle in front of him with a contemplative expression. He'd almost forgotten he'd asked a question when Conan suddenly broke his thoughts.

"Twenty," the boy said quietly. Their eyes were still locked—though House hadn't noticed.

"What?" he asked. What did the number twenty have to do with anythi—he stopped suddenly, the tapping of his cane coming to an abrupt halt as he raised his head. No, that was impossible. Ten, maybe, twelve—not… "That's impossible," he said flatly.

"Twenty-one in May," Conan added with a false air of cheer. The boy was watching him warily, on the lookout for calls of psychosis, probably. House found himself staring blankly. The kid was lying, surely... Maybe he'd hit his head harder than they'd initially thought.

"You're lying," he said, despite having no prepared rebuttal besides '*that's impossible'*.

"You're right. I just chose a number that sounded believable," the boy said sarcastically. House glared slightly. Damn it, sarcasm was *his* game. He tapped his cane a few more times, roughly, and made a nonverbal noise of annoyance. Whatever, just ignore the age for now— he would mull it over later. He cast about for a different line of questioning to pursue. Heart.

"Even if I did believe you—which I'm not saying I do— that doesn't explain anything besides the teeth. And unless that epic facelift you've been hiding comes along with some magical disease that causes heart defects, resistance to medications, and *unnaturally* rapid healing, we've still got a diagnosis to find." House's expression was sarcastic—Conan's was… nervous. Almost… Knowing. Oh, no.

"I think I might have the answer to that." The boy said slowly.

## Chapter 17: Seventeen

Conan took a deep breath, allowing his gaze to drop away from House's intent stare and instead focus on white linoleum, sterile floors… the wooden cane that had tripped him earlier now rested partially in his field of view. He toyed for a moment with the idea of simply making a run for it. Surely he was faster than a crippled man? He could easily avoid being caught at least until he'd made it out the door—where he'd run into the trio of doctors on the outside. Damn… Well, in a pinch he could kick them.

The cane moved, shifted as House idly rolled his chair forward a few centimeters closer to the table. Near enough to reach out and grab him if he made any sudden movements. Conan allowed himself a small glare in the man's direction.

"I'm not going to run," he said irritably. House merely swung his cane back and forth a few times, managing to look menacing despite the bland expression on his face. Conan grimaced slightly. Yes, that stick would most *definitely* hurt if it came down upon his head.

"You were thinking about it," House said.

"I wasn't," Conan replied, though he very much had been.

A tense silence followed. House made no move besides the slight rocking of his cane held loosely in front of him, watching Conan intently. The doctor clearly had no plans to speak until he'd gotten his answer. Conan was actually grateful for the silence. He needed time to think—keeping secrets for four-plus years involved a lot of *not* talking about things, and here he was suddenly trying to decide how to go about revealing parts of his life to some stranger. How much should he tell? Did he think this man might cure him, when the scientist directly responsible for his condition could not? And in the likely event that he couldn't be cured, died here in this hospital, how much did he want this man knowing? What would satiate the curiosity behind those ice-blue eyes?

In the end it was the ache of his chest and the persistent throbbing of his wrist that prompted him to speak. Damned either way—House was certainly not about to let him go. The most he could reasonably do was to try and keep the critical facts to a bare minimum.

He cast about for a place to start.

"I was… poisoned," he began. Then stopped, unsure of himself. Silence stretched for another few seconds, while Conan tried to decide what more he was going to say. House slowly raised his eyebrows.

"Quite a story," he said dryly.

"Oh shut up, I'm not done," Conan snapped. Unconsciously he raised a hand to straighten his glasses, and was briefly thrown when he found himself grabbing at thin air. With a disgruntled noise he tucked his arm back in front of his cast. This was stupid. It was just a story; an explanation of events. If there was anything he was good at, it was explaining events. He took another deep breath.

"Four years ago I was normal. As normal as a sixteen year-old high school detective can be, I mean. I did a lot of work with the police department and managed to get pretty famous for my skills," he paused, huffed as he realized he was giving away more than he'd intended. Well it wasn't as if he'd had much time to think this over. "The point is, I got pretty cocky. I started to investigate things on my own instead of calling the police. I was just a kid, but I thought I could handle anything. Eventually I made a mistake; got caught eavesdropping on an illegal transaction." He wrinkled his nose at the unpleasant memory that followed—being knocked out with a lead pipe… He could probably leave that part out. "There were cops nearby, so instead of guns they decided to get rid of me using an experimental poison their organization had created: a toxin meant to kill without leaving any trace in the body."

Pausing for breath, Conan shot House a look, daring him to say anything. The doctor's face was unreadable—still watching him with those hard blue eyes. Conan shifted his gaze uncomfortably, choosing to focus on the huge bulk of the CT machine to his right instead of House's unsettling stare.

"I survived the poison, but woke up in a different body. For some reason I hadn't been killed… I'd been… Ah.." Conan stopped himself, searched frantically for a less childish word than *shrunk*. "I'd.. lost ten years."

"You shrunk," House supplied. Conan glared.

"If you want to put it that way," he replied tetchily, crossing his arms as best he could and shooting House a sidelong glance. The man's expression was inscrutable.

More silence. More staring. It was nearly unbearable now that so much was on the line. Conan tried very hard not to squirm childishly. If this damned man would just stop *staring—!*

"Okay! Look, I know I sound insane!" the boy finally burst out, unknowingly interrupting House just as he'd opened his mouth to speak. House closed his mouth again, looking faintly shocked. "People don't shrink, I know, it's impossible! But talk about impossible all you want; I *know* who I was—I spent sixteen years growing up just to be hurtled back a decade in the space of a few, very painful, minutes." The boy had turned back towards House, glaring. "And in the last few years I've been shunted back and forth between the two ages so many times I have actually become *used* to the process. You have no idea how unimaginably painful it is to grow ten years in five minutes, and I'm actually *used* to it!" He took a deep breath to continue, tirade just beginning—

"You can turn back?" House interjected, brows furrowed in a curious expression.

"And I—ah… um. What?" Conan stopped, stumbling to a halt as he was thrown off track by the question. Was House actually taking him seriously? He shot the older man a dubious look. "There… there used to be a temporary antidote. My friend," he paused, reconsidered; "a girl I met— turned out to be the creator of the original apotoxin formula: APTX 4869. She'd tried to commit suicide with her own drug—"

"—and ended up like you," House finished for him, finding the ending obvious. Conan glared at the interruption. "And you've been able to switch back to sixteen again."

"Temporarily," Conan reminded him, watching House with a wary eye. "And I'm twenty now."

The doctor ignored him. He was tapping his cane again, quickly, as if trying to decide what to do; finally, with one last drop of the rubber tip against the floor, he held the cane still and fixed Conan with a hard stare. "Give me one reason why I should believe you."

"… Besides the teeth?" Conan ventured, shifting his still-aching jaw.

"Besides the teeth."

Another brief silence stretched between them. House watched his patient suspiciously, searching for any signs that the boy stringing him along. Up to now he'd shown none of the usual signs of deceit—he was nervous, but not unusually so considering he had just been forced to divulge what was obviously a very close-kept secret—not many speech errors; the story was… cohesive, despite being ridiculous. House narrowed his eyes at the small boy in front of him. He either had a very deeply psychotic patient on his hands, or… no, he didn't even want to think about it. Shrinking teenagers? Maybe he should have re-considered that whole comic book scenario.

Across from him, Conan was biting the inside of his cheek nervously. Again his good hand came up to adjust glasses that weren't there, only to drop back down to his lap after grabbing at nothing. House noted this habit; filed it away for future reference.

Slowly, the boy spoke. "What if… I could prove it?"

House was immediately intrigued. "What do you mean?"

"There's a… a sort of test. Blood, mixed with a catalyst. Get it right and the toxin forms clumps big enough to see under a microscope." Conan's mind was racing; sifting back through memories he'd tried very hard to forget. "I think I could re-create it," he added. His gaze moved back to House, watching the older man closely for signs of his opinion on the idea.

"And you're asking me to let you use one of the medical labs for this... magical blood test," House asked, voice sarcastic as ever, but with a hint of fascination. He was interested despite himself.

"You wanted proof," Conan shrugged. "That's the only thing I can think of."

Another long, silent stare. This time Conan held the man's gaze steadily, waiting.

Finally House broke the silence, standing as he spoke.

"Get dressed."

Outside, the fellows had not been waiting patiently. Foreman leant against the wall, hands in pockets and face stormy. He was torn between his urge to demand House explain everything, and his instinct to stay well out of the man's business. Chase, after ineffectually asking about Cameron's role in allowing the patient to escape, had eventually settled for a similar pose. He stood moodily next to a potted plant, arms crossed and brow furrowed in thought. What had House seen on that jaw scan…? Cameron, for her part, was thinking furiously. Nothing made sense… None of the symptoms fit with each other—the majority of them were *impossible*. It was like this kid wasn't even human.

All three of them looked up as the door to the testing room suddenly opened, pushed open by their eccentric boss. Conan emerged behind him, fully clothed again and apparently in the midst of a conversation.

"—ably be best to do a before and after. I assume you have a previous sample," the boy was saying, all traces of childishness gone from his voice. He glanced warily at the fellows, but hurriedly followed after House as the man made his way down the hall. House gestured vaguely for his employees to follow him as he moved towards the elevators.

"If you mess this up, I'm sending you to psych ward," House replied.

Foreman jogged to catch up with them, intending to find out what exactly their diagnostic status was now.

He only got as far as "What-?" before House pushed the 'up' button on the elevator and rounded on his ragtag group of followers.

"The patient," he paused to look down at Conan, who gave him a look which was entirely out of place on his childish face; "is going to do a blood test."

"We've already got plenty of blood in his file," Cameron said, completely misinterpreting the statement and assuming the boy was with them to supply a sample. "We should get him back to his room, there's no telling when that graft is going to fail." Foreman silently agreed. House rolled his eyes.

"That's not what he meant…" Chase said slowly. His co-workers shot him questioning looks, while House just watched him intently. "He meant the patient is actually going to *do* the blood test… Right?" He asked. The jaw scan had suddenly clicked in his mind, implications making him see the small boy beside his boss in a whole new, if completely illogical, light. Well, why not? This case was already impossible enough.

"Bingo."

The elevator dinged, allowing Chase to dodge Foreman and Cameron's incredulous looks by moving past them into the lift. House and Conan followed, with the last two fellows in tow. Cameron was still staring at Chase, while Foreman seemed to have moved on to more pressing matters.

"This is insane. There's no way we can let some kid run rampant in a medical lab," the neurologist pointed out irritably. House had pushed the button for their floor and leant back on the handrail casually.

"Which is why he'll have four qualified doctors watching his every move," he supplied, tone implying that the fact should be obvious—which really it should have been.

"So the jaw…?" Chase started, but trailed off, still not entirely sure of what he'd seen. This could all be some grand prank, knowing House. Instead of mocking him, though, his boss merely nodded.

"Yep," House said, intentionally vague. Foreman and Cameron looked to each other for clarification, then, finding none, turned to Chase. The young doctor was busily staring at a rather uncomfortable-looking Conan. The lift dinged again, and House moved quickly out into the hall. Conan darted out along with him, apparently feeling the need to stay close to their acerbic boss. Foreman, Chase and Cameron followed a few feet behind, keeping in step behind their employer.

"What was so special about the jaw scan?" Foreman asked when it became apparent no explanation was forthcoming. House deliberately ignored him in favour of flipping on the lights of the empty med lab they'd come upon. The lone medical student passing by looked at them curiously. House shut the blinds over the room's glass wall, blocking out the young girl's confused face.

Conan had broken from his temporary guardian and was busy rifling through the lab, checking the contents of what few cabinets he could reach.

"There were no baby teeth," Chase explained finally. The three fellows had gravitated together by the shuttered door, watching House and the patient gather supplies. It was very strange, seeing their boss actually *cooperating* with someone. Cameron and Foreman turned to him, surprised.

"Are you sure?" Foreman asked.

"Yeah." The fellows looked at each other, each puzzling over their own thoughts. Nothing, no piece of this insane case was fitting together.

"I just need a microscope and some slides," Conan said to the tall man limping along behind him. The other doctors had stopped and gathered by the door to watch them. Their distance didn't make him feel any less crowded, and he resisted the urge to glance back nervously as he stood on tiptoes and peered into an open drawer—syringes. He grabbed one and risked a look back towards the door. The fellows were talking amongst themselves. At least they weren't staring at him anymore.

"What else?" House asked. Conan turned right around in a circle as he gazed along the high shelves. He hoped to God he'd listened to enough of Haibara's lectures to do this right.

"Phenol. Something with phenol." Unable to reach anything else, he pulled out a stool and clambered onto it, kneeling to reach the microscope set up on the lab bench.

"Disinfectants don't usually mix well with blood." House said dryly, nonetheless rifling around for some cleaner. He set a bottle of sterilizing solution in front of the boy, who was busy hunting around for a pipette.

"I didn't come up with the test." Conan replied tetchily. He wasn't even sure if he *remembered* the test. "I need a heat source, too. Like a… A lighter or something."

House turned away for a moment, and returned with a Bunsen burner. A flick of the spark and the metal tube held a flickering blue flame. "Anything else, captain?" The tall man asked sarcastically.

"*Eeeeto*…" Conan hummed. His natural sound for thinking, a sort of Japanese version of 'um', escaped his mouth without his noticing. House blinked and regarded him suspiciously. Conan, oblivious, moved on. An image of a bland-faced Haibara came to mind, explaining the steps of the simple test for apotoxins she'd devised to check the effectiveness of her cures. "I think that's it." He once again leant forward, reaching out for a pipette he'd spotted on a shelf in front of him. Before he could fall headfirst into the microscope, House's long arm came over him and easily handed him the instrument. "Thanks." The boy muttered distractedly.

A prick of blood from his finger, mixed with a drop of phenol… Conan carefully grasped the slide in a pair of tongs and held it over the open flame of the Bunsen burner. Immediately the solution began to bubble and smoke with a thin cloud of carbon dioxide. House would have scoffed—boiling phenol wasn't exactly a miracle test— but was suddenly interested by the CO2 cloud… It wasn't rising. The ball of gas was instead being almost… Drawn into the blood. "What…?" He asked blankly. Eloquent.

As soon as the reaction calmed, Conan slipped a cover slip over the concoction and quickly fixed the slide into the simple light microscope. House, along with the fellows now staring from the door, watched the young boy stand on his stool to peer into the microscope, twisting knobs this way and that to bring whatever it was into focus.

"There." The boy leant back from the eyepiece and blew out a low, shaky breath. Somehow he'd managed not to botch things up too terribly—though whether the doctors were willing to believe what they saw was a different story. "I told you, I'm not lying. It's a chemical that binds with the DNA. Something with telomeres, regeneration of cells… I don't really know." The boy shrugged helplessly, gesturing to the microscope. "Something about heat and whatever's in phenol solutions makes it bind to CO2 and become visible."

As Conan spoke, House had scooted the microscope over to stare into the eye piece. Broken shells of red blood cells floated around under the cover slip, interspersed with strange, globular shapes in varying shades of blue-green. Images of Bruce Banner testing gamma radiation cures and watching his cells swell up with green goo inevitably came to mind. He raised his eyes from the microscope to stare at Conan. If the kid started turning green he was definitely not sticking around to find out what a miniature Hulk looked like.

Moving away from the bench House ignored his employees crowding in to get a look, instead gazing contemplatively at his patient. Conan had hopped off his stool and stepped away to allow room for the three fellows, and now leaned on the cabinets across the narrow aisle between lab benches, looking pale and tired. House stepped forward suddenly as he realised the boy was still shaking and breathing quickly. Could be nervousness or exhaustion… But with the way this case was going one really didn't want to assum—

House just managed to dive forward and catch the small body as it crumpled forward. Pain shot up his leg as he stepped down too hard, forced to put weight on it as he dropped his cane to manoeuvre the patient safely onto the floor. Cameron, Chase and Foreman whirled around in surprise as he put a hand to the boy's neck, checking for vital signs. "Not breathing. Call a crash cart!"

## Chapter 18: Eighteen

*They wouldn't let him see the body.*

*For all that he screamed, bit, and kicked they held him back, the nurse whispering words that meant nothing, doctors shaking their heads at the 'unfortunate loss.' It hadn't been twenty minutes since she'd gone into the operating theatre, and already they'd given up? Called her dead and thrown in the towel? He wouldn't accept it.* Couldn't *accept it. Nobody was dead until he said so, he was a homicide detective, he knew what corpses looked like. And she wasn't one. She* couldn't *be one.*

*"Haibara!" he tried to scream. Dimly he was aware of the nurses taking his cell phone from him, dialing and talking to someone on the other line. Who was his speed dial? Ran. Oh, gods, Ran. Thank everything he knew that she was home for Spring Break. He'd never wanted to see anyone more than he wanted her right now. Ran would fix this. She'd figure it all out and tell them that Haibara wasn't dead. Ran would fix it. Ran-nesan would make it better.*

*It wasn't until later, when he was safely enveloped within the soft embrace of his surrogate elder sister, did he realize what his frenzied thoughts had revealed to him. In a moment of panic, sheer, unadulterated fear and desperation, it wasn't Ran—the friend, the partner, the not-quite-lover, that he had wanted. It had been Ran-nechan. The sister. The protector. The parent.*

*He had to crane his neck to look up at her. Her eyes, shining with grief as she consulted with the doctors, tears just beginning to fall. And it didn't quite surprise him that what he felt for her was no longer the awkward, teenaged love of his younger years. He'd been her charge for far too long. Long enough for those feelings to wither away and die. Oh, he still loved her. More than anything, really. But this love was new. The love of a boy for his big sister. Ran was no longer an object of amorous desire, and could never be again.*

*Swallowing the lump in his throat, Shinichi—no, Conan, could he ever be Shinichi again?—stared hard at the linoleum floor. Two things had died today. One was a woman, snuffed out too young while trapped in an even younger-looking body. After months of mistrust and suspicion, he had finally come to count her as one of his closest friends. She was the only one who knew the whole truth of his world, who shared the same challenges and worked towards the same goal. A goal that was now impossible, barring his finding another genius scientist who just happened to know the entire structure of the apotoxin off by heart.*

*The other death, one that had perhaps been over and gone long before this, was that of Shinichi Kudo. Because what, really, had defined the life of the teenaged detective he had once been? His memories, his childhood all remained, but not the purpose. He had built a life for himself as Conan Edogawa. Missed nothing except for the occasional wistful memory of height as he gazed up at a high shelf. All that he had ever fought for, these last few years, had been the opportunity of a life with Ran. Find the cure, get Ran, marry her and live happily ever after. But did he really want that anymore? Did he want to marry a girl he had come to view as protector? Would she, after finding out the truth and knowing all that he had done to deceive her, still want to marry him?*

*In his heart he knew the answers, and in that moment of clarity realized that what was best for her and what he had wanted for so long were two very different things. Claiming a need for the restroom, he clambered out of her grasp, digging out his returned cell phone as he walked away. One call—that's all it would take.*

*He held his breath, staring at his own blotchy reflection in the bathroom mirror as the phone rang.*

"*Hello, Yukiko Kudo speaking!"*

"*Mom?" he whispered.*

## Chapter 19: Nineteen

House slammed his cane against the ground for perhaps the tenth time that minute, staring fixedly at the hospital bed and the small form ensconced within sterile white sheets. Discussion had ceased almost the moment he'd dragged in an office chair from the nurses' station and sat himself down beside the monitors. His fellows, looking nervous and uncomfortably baffled, stood or sat around him. Chase had leant his head against the glass wall, staring into the middle distance. Cameron was seated in the same chair she had occupied earlier, getting over her initial misgivings over the location by the fact that Foreman occupied the only other seat in the room. Nobody spoke. There wasn't anything to say.

"None of this makes sense!" Foreman suddenly interjected, breaking the silence to lean forward and cradle his head in his hands. "There is no drug that can shrink a human being from a teenager into a child!"

"You saw what that CO2 cloud did. No drug that can do *that* either," Chase admonished, still not really focusing on the room at large. Cameron merely shook her head, looking lost.

"How do you treat someone who's a medical impossibility?" she asked blankly, staring at the far wall.

House tapped his cane again, frowning. For once he couldn't fault his employees for being lost. He himself wasn't sure what, if anything, he could be expected to do in this situation. Years of medical training refused to let him entertain the possibility of chemical-induced radical body modification, and yet, clearly, there was something going on here. Occam's razor didn't provide much help when none of the explanations were simple.

A swatch of blue caught his eye as he turned his office chair slightly, drawing his gaze down to see what it was. The kid's backpack. A split-second decision had him bending over to grab it. A roll over to the patient's bed and he'd quickly dumped the contents of the pack onto the blankets.

"House, what-?" was as far as Cameron got before she seemed to give up, instead sighing and picking up an item from the small pile he'd created.

"A lockbox?" Chase asked quizzically. In Cameron's hand was a small, metal box about the size of a paperback novel. At the front, where normally one might find a keyhole, was a set of dials for a combination lock. The doctor shook it lightly, causing the contents to rattle.

"It's heavy," Cameron noted. Before she could begin fiddling with the dials, the whole box was snatched wordlessly out of her hands by House.

"All of these books are in Japanese," Foreman muttered, flipping through a novel which, judging by the picture on the cover, was a translation of a Sherlock Holmes story. Several other novels littered the pile, most of them appearing to be mysteries of some sort.

"He's from Tokyo," House interjected in a monotone. He'd reclined his chair back and was flipping the numbers on the box's combination lock with a concentrated expression on his face. At his employee's silence, he gestured vaguely to a pile of papers resting in the midst of a few haphazard articles of clothing. The topmost document was a plane ticket, clearly showing travel times from Tokyo Narita airport to New York.

A soft *pop* came from House's direction as the lockbox suddenly clicked open.

"That was fast," Chase muttered, watching as his boss extracted documents from the little metal box.

House's only answer was a grunt, too distracted to entertain further commentary. He held up two red, faux-leather bound leaflets emblazoned with large, golden flowers surrounded by Japanese characters.

"Passports?" Cameron asked curiously.

"Conan Edogawa, born the fifth of May, 1995 in Tokyo, Japan," House read, flipping through the passport before tossing it Chase's way and opening the second one. "*Or*, Shinichi Kudo, also born in Tokyo, on the fifth of May… 1985."

Chase lowered the passport he and Foreman had been looking at, as House set down the second pamphlet in the middle of the bed with the first page folded open. The picture emblazoned to the left of a set of bilingual information was that of their patient… if he were ten years older.

"Bloody hell," Chase muttered.

House ignored his employees as they crowded together over the passports, instead continuing to rummage through the box he'd opened. He had to hand it to the kid for security—this was an exceptionally well-made lockbox, probably custom designed. Unfortunately, however, his patient suffered the common human condition of being extremely predictable. Taking the titular character from so many of the books scattered around—Sherlock Holmes-, and converting it to Japanese phonetics had given him a word that could be converted into numbers. Specifically, shi-i-ro-ku, 4169. He'd been prepared to guess the last two numbers of the six-figure code by trial and error until he caught sight of the topmost title in the small stack of books—a foreign mystery titled simply, "Truth." Adding together that, plus a well-known quote from the Holmes books again, and he'd had the last two numbers: 41, shi-ichi, or read another way, one truth.

Lifting up a stack of several folded pieces of legal documents, House made a mental note to viciously mock their patient for being so easy to read. If the kid ever woke up, that was.

The bottom of the small box held nothing particularly surprising. A small mobile phone, battery removed to thwart tracking, was nestled in a corner, alongside a small photo and an empty glass vial. Ignoring the phone and vial for now, House removed the colourful image. It was a picture of a teenage girl, around sixteen or seventeen, smiling gleefully into the camera. A cascade of brown, wavy hair fell around her face, highlighting blue eyes and the rosy hue of her cheeks. A man's arm was around her shoulders, the design of his blue school uniform jacket suggesting him to be the same age as her, but the half of the photo he must have occupied had been chopped off, leaving nothing but the girl. House studied this for a moment, going over the implications. A sweetheart, obviously, but already taken? Unrequited love, or…

He grabbed up the elder of the two passports from his fellows, comparing in a second the skin tone of the young man in the passport photo with the bit of skin showing at the end of the unshown young man's sleeve. Perfect match. So, Shinichi-slash-Conan kept a picture of he and his girlfriend, from which he'd cut himself out. Interesting.

In that moment, staring contemplatively at the pictures in his hand, House made a decision. All of this was insane, yes, implausible, maybe, but buried under the impossibilities was just enough cohesion to make this whole tale work. And what was that favourite of doubters everywhere? Occam's razor? The simplest explanation was best. And in this case, even though the given answer seemed absurd, the fact remained that the boy's tale of body-shrinking toxins, girl-scientists, and an underground organization of murderers was the only explanation that could quickly and concisely explain everything.

"Differential diagnosis," House barked suddenly, startling his employees. He pulled a marker from the inside pocket of his coat as he stood and limped over to the far wall. "For the lethal mechanism of an unknown toxin. Symptom one: upon ingestion, body rapidly mutates, losing mass until subject resembles a child."

"House…" Foreman started from somewhere behind him. House ignored him, continuing to list symptoms on the wall as he spoke.

"Neurological faculties are not impaired by sudden shift in body mass. Symptom two: weakening of the aorta leading to spontaneous dissection, followed by rapid healing of aorta once repaired. Symptom three: heart attack due to vasoconstriction. Symptom four: unconsciousness caused by sudden pleural effusion of blood into the lung cavity."

"The poison's attacking the blood vessels," Chase spoke up, drowning out another complaint from Foreman. "It must have moved from the aorta to the pulmonary artery."

"If the pulmonary artery burst like the aorta did he'd still be bleeding into his lungs," Cameron offered, sounding resigned.

"Not if it closed up as quickly as the aorta did. Remember that was healed up less than a day after surgery, probably quicker. If the pulmonary was a smaller burst, and healed just as quickly…"

House nodded to himself and scrawled 'vascular attack' under a heading he'd titled 'mechanisms.'

"Look, even if we believe this stupid story—*which I don't*—" Foreman cut in irritably, "then we have to assume he's been living with this toxin for at least two years. The latest passport was filed in 2001. If all this is happening due to the poison it would have to have been triggered somehow, otherwise he'd be dead from the start."

"We have his name now, we could request medical records, see if there's been any similar symptoms in the past…"

"No," House cut Chase's musing off with a smack of the end of the marker against the wall. He turned to face them, leaning against the dried portion of his impromptu chart. "We work with what we've got now. Lock those passports back up in the box."

"What? Why? House, if we have more information we can—" Cameron started. House cut her off with a glare.

"Not even counting the endless pile of bureaucracy necessary to get medical records from foreign countries, a request for anything related to this kid's name is going to send a red flag out to anyone watching this hospital. So, yeah, if you were looking for the quickest way to kill the patient, records would be great." House spun his cane lazily as he spoke, seemingly unsure whether to glare at the patient or his employees.

"We need to get more information *somehow*," Cameron said, "we're just guessing with what we have."

"Then we get more information," House said with an air of finality. "What's his O-sat?"

"Er… 96, looks like," Chase answered, peering at the oxygen monitor. House limped over to the bedside and looked for himself, before grabbing a pair of latex gloves off the wall. Before anyone could stop him, he'd removed Conan's ventilation and drainage tubes in a few practiced motions.

"House!" Cameron exclaimed, leaping up and twisting the monitors so she could see them. Instead of blood-oxygen levels dropping like a rock like she expected, though, the numbers dipped only minimally as their patient coughed and started breathing on his own.

Ignoring her, House instead bent low over the patient, considering his options. He could either rummage around for a shot of ephedrine to wake him up, or…

"WAKE UP," House shouted, loudly, into the boy's ear.

"*Nandeko—*ack!" the boy yelped, coughing and spluttering around his suddenly dry throat. Chase, Cameron and Foreman watched with some sort of morbid fascination, the latter two having been poised to pull their boss bodily away from the patient.

Unconcerned, House produced a glass of water from the bedside table and presented it to Conan.

"Morning, sunshine," he quipped blandly.

## Chapter 20: Twenty

Conan put a hand to his head and stared upwards blearily. House's face was hovering just above his head, glaring at him with some sort of unreadable expression. A cup of water was nearer, being held just outside of his field of vision by, he assumed, the same man.

For about half a second, Conan considered rolling over and going back to sleep. His chest ached terribly, abated only marginally by a splitting pain in his head diverting some of his attention away from other hurts. Still, though, he was awake. And that water looked heavenly…

Ignoring his chest, and numerous wires and tubes that he had no desire to learn the function of, Conan sat up gingerly and took the glass of water. There wasn't nearly enough to quell his sudden, massive thirst, but it did do a good job of soothing his dry and scratchy throat. He recognized the feeling as meaning that he'd had a breathing tube inserted at some point. The circumstances of such a necessity, though, he rather fancied remaining ignorant of. Quite enough had happened today without learning what new and exciting thing he was dying of, thank you very much.

"Your left lung filled with enough blood to drown a small cat," House, who had sat down in a rolling office chair, informed him matter-of-factly. Conan leveled the man with the best glare he could muster and was rewarded with a set of raised eyebrows.

"To think, I could have died without that mental image," Conan eventually responded with an annoyed glare. He heard a quick intake of breath from somewhere to his right, and whipped his head around a little too quickly. The swimming visage of House's three employed doctors greeted him. How had he not noticed them earlier? He sent a glare their way too, partly because he was angry with himself for becoming sloppy enough to not notice a horde of adults right next to him, and partly because the blond one was smirking at him.

"How many times have you been in the hospital since you were poisoned?" House interjected, apparently not up for a snarking match. Conan gave him a quizzical look, remembering to turn his head more slowly this time to avoid the unpleasant dizzy feeling.

"Why?" he asked blankly.

"We need a more accurate history than the one you, er, initially gave us," Cameron chimed in, interrupting House before he could voice any cutting remarks. "This… toxin you were poisoned with.. it's nothing we've ever seen before. We need all the information we can get."

"*Claim* to have been poisoned with," the dark-skinned doctor muttered irritably.

"Just treat it like a mental exercise, Foreman, we're still getting paid anyway," the blond, foreign-sounding doctor muttered back.

"We shouldn't be playing into his delusions!" Foreman, the black doctor, hissed back.

"Either shut up, or leave," House cut in. Conan tore his eyes away from the arguing men to look back at his… was it captor, still? He didn't trust House as far as he could throw him. However, as the sarcastic man was literally the only thing standing between him and various methods of death, he didn't have much choice but to side with him. Not friend, though, certainly. Confidant, maybe.

"Answer the question," House turned his attention to Conan, who was still puzzling over his own internal dialogue. The boy snapped his head back up, then held it as if dizzy.

"*Ano*, ah, I mean, um…" he stuttered. After a few seconds, however, he regained composure, "Hospital stays, right. Erm," the boy looked to the ceiling, seemingly thinking, "only times I've had to stay overnight was when I was shot during that whole cave fiasco," for some reason House smirked to himself over this. Conan ignored him. "And a second time when a bomb flung me into a tree."

"And times when you didn't stay overnight?" House prompted.

"Too many to count," Conan sighed, then began counting on his fingers, "after the skyscraper bomb scare, the kidnapping case, the *other* kidnapping case, the mansion, the hotel robbery, almost stabbed, almost shot, strangled, nearly drowned, strangled again, broken leg, sprained wrist—"

"Enough," House stopped him. Conan trailed off and looked at the doctors, most of whom looked fairly alarmed. House, though, remained unreadable. "Did you ever go to the hospital because of unexplained symptoms, or spontaneous bleeding?"

"You want to know if I've ever presented the same symptoms as I'm having now," Conan said. House merely held his gaze, not needing to confirm the statement. "No, I haven't. Aside from a couple of bad colds, I've been healthy."

"How many colds?" House asked, apparently latching onto the first symptom-like thing he heard. Conan rolled his eyes, wishing he could just have another drink of water and go back to sleep. All this talking was making his chest hurt.

"I dunno, ten? Twelve? I seem to get one every month or so. I hang around with first-graders, they're not exactly the best with hygiene."

House *hmm*'d to himself and leant back, staring at his scribbled-on wall of symptoms. Conan followed his gaze and quizzically regarded the angled letters.

"A higher incidence of infections could point to a compromised immune system," Cameron spoke up. She seemed to be over the slight queasiness Conan's list of accidents had left her with. Both she and her foreign co-worker seemed deep in thought. Foreman still seemed miffed with the whole situation, but spoke up regardless.

"White count was normal after the heart attack."

"It could be happening in waves," the Australian (Conan decided he'd really need to figure out his name soon) added.

House, getting up and pulling a whiteboard marker from his jacket pocket, limped over to the wall and scrawled '*immunosuppression*' under the underlined word '*mechanisms*.' Another line sat above it, and Conan found himself staring at the words.

Blood dripping from her open mouth, forming a puddle and staining her auburn hair red. Crimson stains on her lab coat, splattering the oxygen mask when she coughed…

"Haibara…" Conan muttered, transfixed by the images replaying themselves over and over in his mind. He hadn't thought about the day of her death in so long, afraid to admit to himself the finality of her demise.

"How did she die?" House asked, devoid of any emotion. Conan didn't bother refuting the man's assumption of her fate. It didn't exactly take a rocket scientist to fill in the blanks, after all.

"Suffocated on her own blood," Conan responded quietly, still staring blankly at the defaced wall. His eyes had gone strangely unfocused, though, his gaze far in the past. Her pale face and ice-blue lips as she whispered her last words to him… He shook his head violently, clamping his eyes shut. The dizziness and flare of pain from his abused skull distracted him well from his own memories.

"Who?" the Australian doctor asked, perplexed.

"You discovered the body?" House asked again, ignoring the fact that none of his fellows knew what the two of them were talking about. Conan grit his teeth, annoyed that he wouldn't be allowed to drop the subject. It was, he knew, a good lead as to the cause of his own illness. That hardly meant he wanted to talk about it, though.

"Yes," he paused, clenching the sheets in his lap with his good hand. Alright, fine, if this discussion had to happen, best to just get it over with. He took a deep breath and looked up to the wall again, deliberately focusing on nothing in particular, "*'Cause of death…'"* he recited, "*'… asphyxiation due to inhalation of approximately 2.4 litres of blood. No rupture of pulmonary artery or supporting structures located. No internal bleed located. No external trauma located. Underlying cause of death unknown, recommend further investigation*.'"

In his mind's eye he could see the autopsy report, a copy of which he'd stolen, written in some coroner's sloppy hand. He must have read the notes a thousand times in the weeks after her death, looking for any reason to doubt his own theories. The vial, the one she'd all but handed him when he found her, had been tested by a tearful Professor and found to have once held apotoxin. Not one of her half-completed formulas, either. Pure, distilled poison. As to where the contents of the vial had gone… the ghosted imprints of child-sized lips on the container's opening left no doubt. The doctors at Tokyo Children's Hospital had no way to treat her because there *was* no way. She'd been as good as dead the second the toxin hit her lips.

*Murder*, Conan told himself again, squeezing his eyes shut and dropping his head. *It was murder. Had to be. They found her and forced her to drink it. She wouldn't… The antidote wasn't finished. She wouldn't have left it unfinished. She wouldn't have left…*

House, his calculating gaze never leaving his patient, wisely chose to interrupt the boy's roiling thoughts before he could work himself into another heart attack.

"How long?"

Conan jumped, slightly, and opened his eyes. He fixed the sheets with a determined glare before answering.

"About a month ago." The waver in his voice, he told himself, was just stress.

Cameron's expression was conflicted as she brought a hand to the still-sore spot on her neck. Chase, oblivious to her distress, leaned forward interestedly.

"You think she was poisoned with the same thing?" the Australian asked.

Conan nodded mutely and fixed his sheets with a glare again, fighting not to squirm under the scrutiny of too many people. All the doctors were watching him now. All except House, who had turned around and was busy scribbling on the wall again.

"Maybe there's a timer on it. If she was initially poisoned at the same time, I mean. It could take about two years for the initial immunity to fail," Chase continued, looking towards his boss. Conan felt his mouth narrowing into a thin line as he fought with his own emotions.

"It wasn't a… a *timer*. She was *murdered*," he bit out angrily, "someone forced her to drink a vial of pure apotoxin. Twelve times the initial dose that shrunk us. They killed her then left her in her lab for me to find."

He raised his eyes to glare at House—who was now looking at him again—while his defensive posture silently dared anyone to disagree. After a few seconds, he relaxed. All this stress was making him snappy, he told himself. Just acting weird because of the situation. It wasn't because of the conversation matter. He'd gotten over this. Over everything. He dropped his glare and stared at the sheets again, feeling somehow defeated. House's gaze was still on him, watching intently. Conan unconsciously slid further down into his pillows and scowled. He hated being watched almost as much as he hated showing emotion.

"So 'they' poisoned you, too," the black doctor spoke up, unknowingly cutting off the start of a rather vicious self-depreciating spiel in his patient's head. The exasperated note in his voice left no doubt that he was only going along with this to humour his co-workers' insanity. "We'll do an hourly scan for bleeds, patch anything up, and wait for whatever it is to get out of his system. Are we done with this yet?"

Conan, vitriol quite suddenly riled, snapped his head up to glare at the man. He'd told them *everything* about his past, basically put himself on a silver platter for the Organization, almost cried like a baby in front of them, and this guy *still* didn't believe him!

"*Kisama!* *Boku bakayaro nai, kono* *zouchoutengu-*" he spit out quickly, defaulting back to his native language in anger. When all he got was a blank look back, he shook his head lightly, "I mean, I'm not an idiot," he translated, toning his language down a bit and leaving out the mostly-unnecessary 'conceited ass' part, "I watched all my food and only ate what I could see made in front of me. The toxin has to be fresh in liquid form or pressed in a pill to have effect. I *haven't* been poisoned again."

"Obviously you have. Slipping some powder into a Happy Meal isn't exactly rocket science," the doctor countered flatly, matching Conan's glare.

"*Kuso kurae,*" the boy answered icily. His tone provided translation enough, though House snorted to himself. Foreman had just been told to 'eat shit.'

"This is getting us nowhere," Cameron broke in before Foreman could respond.

"If we trust that he hasn't been given a second dose, then we need to find out what triggered this episode and find a way to stop it," Chase summarized helpfully. House had turned his back on all of them and now stared at his scribbled-on wall, head cocked to one side in thought.

"Lunch break," the tall man said suddenly, spinning on his heel. "All of you, out. Foreman, talk to Cuddy and get us unrestricted CT access every two hours for the rest of the day. And you," House pulled out his wallet and tossed a few bills in Cameron's direction, "reuben."

Cameron rolled her eyes as she caught the money. She thought about arguing that now was hardly the time to be going out for sandwiches. Debating with herself took about a second. After a slight pause, she laid a hand on Conan's shoulder, then left. House, she decided, could just do what he wanted.

Chase scowled to himself as he got up. This was getting really interesting. Still…

"Back in an hour?" he asked, sighing a little. Best to just go along with it. House gave him a dismissive nod and sat down again in his stolen office chair. Foreman, ignoring all of them, had already stalked out. Getting permission from Cuddy had been the most annoying job House could think of, and he was pleased that Foreman saw it for the punishment it was.

After the doctors had all left, Conan turned a sideways glance at the room's only remaining occupant.

"What do you want?" he said, getting straight to the point. There really wasn't any other reason House would have shooed all his employees out, if not to ask a private question or demand something. Conan braced himself for interrogation.

Instead, he found himself having a silver gameboy DS tossed into his lap.

"A sandwich," House replied lazily, then answered more seriously. "You wanted space, I wanted to think. Don't delete my file." With that, the man popped a few white pills into his mouth and leant back, staring at the wall in front of him. Conan shot him a quizzical look, but nonetheless opened the flip-top of the gameboy. Might as well entertain himself.

He scrunched up his face as he recognized the tinny music emanating from the device.

"You play *Pokémon*?" he asked exasperatedly as the title screen for 'Diamond Version' loaded up.

"You don't?"

"No way," Conan answered with a grimace of revulsion. Visions of his first-grader friends arguing over Charizard or Blastoise danced in his mind.

"Has anyone ever actually believed you were a gradeschooler for more than about five seconds?" House asked him sarcastically. Conan pressed his lips together and tried not to look too annoyed by the dismissal of his acting skills. Quite a lot of people had been duped by his first-grader act, thank you very much. He glared at House, received no response, and promptly pressed start on the gameboy. Call *him* a bad actor, would he?

"Yaaay, you've got a Turtwig!" Conan cheered shrilly. House winced at the tone of voice and glared, only to find the twenty-something shrunken super-genius of a patient beside him replaced with what appeared to be an overexcited six year-old.

"I didn't mean that as a challenge," he tried, knowing it to be futile.

"I'm gonna catch a Rattata!"

House groaned to himself and settled in for a very long hour.

## Chapter 21: Twenty One

Wilson walked in some twenty minutes later, reuben sandwich in one hand and a bagged lunch from Subway in the other. He'd run into Cameron and Foreman on the way back to his office for lunch, and had found himself unceremoniously saddled with an extra sandwich and instructions from Foreman to 'talk some sense into House.'

The scene he found when he opened the door wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting. House sat contemplating the writing on a defaced-wall-turned-whiteboard, feet propped up on the hospital bed, while his patient busily fiddled with a gameboy.

"Why did you choose *grass-type?* All it does is shoot leaves at everythin'!" Wilson blinked at the childish tone coming from the normally-reserved boy.

"It has tactical advantages. Now shut up," House responded irritably, apparently nursing a headache. Both occupants of the room looked up as Wilson stepped through the door.

"Delivery," the oncologist said, holding up House's reuben. He tossed the sandwich to his friend, who caught it easily and began unwrapping it even as he looked back to the wall.

"Shut the blinds," House ordered as he took a bite. Wilson huffed a bit but obeyed. The fabric slid back over the glass door, cutting them off from the scrutiny of passers-by.

"Hello again," Wilson greeted a suddenly-serious Conan as he took a seat on the other side of the boy's bed. The child watched him warily, but muttered a hello. He tried a smile, which Conan responded to by returning his attention to the gameboy. Wilson frowned. Had he traumatized the boy?

Shaking his head, he allowed his gaze to settle on the far wall. What he saw there made him blink several times, as if the words might rearrange themselves if he stared long enough. He opened his mouth,

"House…"

"Theoretical exercise," House answered quickly, heading off the inevitable argument. "Chase leant me a comic book, main character gets poisoned, shrinks to the size of a five year-old, starts dying… great read, really." House waved a dismissive hand as he spoke, still studying the wall.

"And this comic book character… just happens to have the same symptoms as your patient?" Wilson edged. He wondered if he should inform Cuddy that House had finally gone off the deep end.

"Holy crap, really! ?" House exclaimed, sitting up in his chair and putting up an air of surprise. He looked back and forth a few times from the wall, to Conan, and back again. "Why didn't you tell me you were the Incredible Shrinking Man! ?"

Conan rolled his eyes in response.

"They are my symptoms. I was poisoned four years ago," the boy told Wilson, sounding resigned. Wilson felt his eyebrows traveling further towards his hairline.

"Oh… kay.."

"I assume Foreman failed to inform you of the nature of my newest insanity before sending you down to talk sense into me," House said, unsurprisingly hitting on the exact reason for Wilson's visit.

"House, this is really…" Wilson started.

"*House, this is insane!*" House parroted in a high-pitched voice, flopping one of his wrists for effect. "Of course it is. Half the cases I solve are insane, this one's just more crazy than usual."

"Nobody can *shrink* ten years, House, you can't—"

"Ignore the shrinking then, it's not important! Cross it off, whatever. Something is causing major arteries to fail spontaneously and then heal up again faster than surgeons can get to them. I can't think of anything that would *possibly* do that, so we're moving on to the *impossible*."

"Improbable," Conan interjected, staring at his video game.

"What?"

"'*When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,'"* the boy quoted, looking up. "It's impossible for any disease you know of to be doing this, so, however improbable, I must be telling the truth."

Wilson regarded the boy blankly, trying to parse the strangeness of hearing such a small child use a direct quotation from Sherlock Holmes. House simply nodded, turning his gaze back to the wall and taking a bite of his sandwich. Wilson was starting to get the uncomfortable feeling that he was the only person in the room in his right mind.

"But people *don't shrink*," he tried again, unwilling to believe that a firmly logic-based House would go along with such an outlandish story so easily.

"Why is it so difficult to believe!" Conan cut in irritably, apparently at the end of his patience. "If I had any temporary antidote left I'd switch ages fifty times if it would get you people to shut up for half a second."

"Switch… ages?" Wilson asked weakly. He needed to call Cuddy, immediately. House was treating a mentally unstable patient and had apparently caught the crazy as well.

He couldn't help looking up at House, though, to see if maybe the absurd statement had snapped his friend out of whatever lie he'd been bought into. To his chagrin, though, the man had frozen in one of his 'eureka' moments.

"What in that statement could possibly—" Wilson started.

"How long ago did you last change back?" House suddenly asked, sandwich forgotten as he rounded on his patient.

"Huh? Oh, er… A year, maybe more. I haven't had any reason to."

"How long after you were poisoned did you first change back again?"

Conan racked his brains, trying to think. After the emotional disaster of recounting the demise of Haibara, he was happy to discuss a less distressing topic.

"About a month. Some idiot fed me *baikaru* when I had a cold, thought it would help or something, but it ended up changing me back for about ten minutes. We based the next batch of antidotes on a variation of alcohol but it never really worked right," the boy wrinkled his nose, "and Haibara kept infecting me with viruses to get me sick so she could test—"

Before he could finish, House had risen and was halfway to the door. The half-eaten reuben lay forgotten on Conan's bedside table.

"Tell the ducks to take the day off," House threw over his shoulder, presumably at Wilson, before disappearing.

"House! Wait! I, damn it," the oncologist swore to himself before following after his friend. It wouldn't do to have a crazed and possibly unstable diagnostician running around the hospital alone after god-knew-what. "Uh, er, I'll have the nurses bring you some lunch," he told Conan, poking his head back through the glass door and blinds, and then was gone.

Conan sat, blinking, at the place where the doctors had gone. That was… odd. He racked his brains to try and think of a reason why mentioning *baikaru*, the Chinese wine his friend had once given him to get over a head cold, would make House run out like that. To the nearest liquor store? Conan snorted. He already knew well enough that straight *baikaru* never had more effect than getting him drunk.

Oh, well, let House run on his wild goose chase. Conan leant back into his pillows and picked up the doctor's Game Boy again. He wouldn't find out anything Conan himself didn't already know. And if the Organisation found the hospital's location while the man was out… well, what had he really expected? The boy frowned to himself as House's cartoon turtle was gunned down by a fire-type pokemon. All he'd been doing for four years now had been… pointless. Delaying the inevitable. And now it was all going to end. He was going to die. Alone. Seven-thousand miles from home.

He sniffed once and swiped his eyes hurriedly. A glint of metal next to his bed caught his eye. His lockbox! Laying atop a pile of all his other things… the doctors had been going through his stuff. He shook his head before an annoyed thought could form, and reached for the box. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well try to do something useful with the time he had left.

## Chapter 22: Twenty Two

House had just managed to shake Wilson, having had to promise not to do anything 'stupid' and duck away when his friend's pager went off. A quick trip in the elevator and he was soon limping towards the front entrance, already planning the fastest route to find what he needed. He'd gotten as far as the front desk before he was stopped by Cuddy.

"House," she started. Since she was quite firmly blocking his way, he decided to try a different tactic to be rid of her.

"Look, I'd love to chat but I'm actually going out for a bit. Hookers won't pay themselves," he quipped loudly. A nurse at the main desk looked their way but rolled her eyes, obviously used to House's antics.

"House, this is important. We've located your patient's parents," Cuddy interrupted.

"What?" House blinked down at her in shock. Parents? Where? How did they—

"They combed every hospital in the state looking for a boy named Conan," House's boss explained, looking somewhat horrifyingly misty-eyed, "and they're sure this is the right one. I was just taking them to see their son."

As Cuddy spoke, an Asian couple approached behind her. The man was tall, solidly built, with a square jaw and vicious sneer to his mouth. His eyes were covered by a pair of sunglasses which obscured most of his face, leaving him with a distinctly sinister look. The woman, on the other hand, was small and petite, with a thin face and hair the orangey hue of someone who'd tried and failed to bleach black hair to blonde. She sported a tattoo of a butterfly wing under her left eye. As House stared, she flashed him a half-smile, managing to make her pinched face even more weasel-like with the action.

"They're fakes," House blurted out before he could think. Cuddy, surprised by his apparent concern, narrowed her eyes at him.

"They have his birth certificate and a photo ID. How exactly are they fake?" she asked lowly, intending for only House to hear.

House forced himself to keep his face neutral. Even if he weren't convinced someone was out to kill his patient, just one look at those two was enough to determine their motives. They were *not* here to pick up their beloved son.

The woman was eyeing him carefully. House glared lightly at her and turned back to Cuddy.

"They look nothing like him!" he pointed out, gesturing towards the couple. Conan, by his own admission, was born of mixed-race parents. One of his parents had been either white or half-white. The couple in front of him, however, were both quite obviously full-blooded Asians. House leveled Cuddy with his best glare, daring her to object…

"I am so sorry I interrupt," the woman spoke up, suddenly appearing at House's side. He edged away from her quickly and scowled at her simpering features. "Our little Conan-kun… we adopt him from baby. He is not blood child, but we love same," the woman said in broken English, trying and failing—in House's opinion—to look anguished. He shot an exasperated look at Cuddy. Surely she wasn't falling for this? But no, his easily-manipulated boss was patting the woman on the shoulder, reassuring her. She sent a glare House's way, which he returned with a sneer.

"Please pay no mind to him, he's had a long few days taking care of your son. If you would please follow me, I'll take you to him right away," Cuddy said, taking the woman's arm lightly. The tattooed girl nodded gratefully, simpering into her kerchief. House narrowed his eyes at the small square of dampened fabric… it was festooned with a pattern of assault rifles. No, these two were *definitely* not going near his patient.

Steeling his reserve, House turned a repentant look on Cuddy and her two guests.

"I apologise, Mrs…?" he started, taking the woman's hand and giving her a hard, not entirely sympathetic stare.

"Kisaki. Chie Kisaki. This is my husband, Tobi," she waved the large man over. He stopped and nodded in their direction, saying nothing. "He speak few English," 'Chie' explained.

"Charmed," House said, though he was anything but, "I'm Greg House, I've been your son's doctor since he arrived here," beside him, House could see Cuddy's slightly flabbergasted expression as he politely introduced himself. Her face quickly morphed into one of suspicion. "I'd be perfectly happy to take you to see your… son. I'm sure Doctor Cuddy is very busy with hospital duties. Wouldn't want to inconvenience her." He resisted his urge to shoot a warning glare in his boss's direction. It wouldn't help anything.

"Ah! Of course, yes, *arigatou-gozaimasu*," the woman exclaimed, bowing. She turned to her 'husband', relaying the information to him in fast-paced Japanese. House only managed to catch something about 'doctor' and 'follow' before he was lost. He made a firm mental note to refresh his Japanese after all this was over. It was useless to only remember half a language.

"It's no trouble for me, really," Cuddy started. House butted in.

"Nonsense! You've got work piling up, I can see it from here," he squinted in the direction of her office where, indeed, a pile of paperwork sat in her inbox.

Cuddy suddenly grabbed his arm and guided him a few feet away, tossing an 'excuse us a second!' towards Conan's fake parents.

"House, these poor people have lost their only son and you're trying to play some kind of… of game with them!" she hissed, leaning into his face. He schooled his features into something resembling baffled ignorance.

"I'm offering to take them to his room!" he said with a note of insult. "You're the one always trying to get me to be nicer to patients."

"Yes but… I mean," Cuddy growled quietly, shooting a furtive smile at the couple before turning back to him, "I know you're up to something," she added lowly.

House held up his hands in a placating gesture.

"Nothing, honest. The kid's been crying for his mommy, just wanted to make sure they were the real deal."

"Can't Cameron-?" Cuddy started.

"At lunch."

Finally, his boss sighed. She put a hand to her forehead as if warding off a headache, and finally glared once more.

"If you insult them, *just once*, I'm putting you on triple clinic duty," she threatened.

"Deal."

With a huff, Cuddy quickly pasted a friendly expression on her face and apologized to the couple.

"Doctor House will take you to see your son now," she said gently, waving them in his direction. Over their heads, House caught the tail end of her glare as she mouthed something like 'don't be an ass' to him. He flashed her a rather fake smile, and turned to lead his new guests towards the elevators.

"We so worried for Conan-kun!" the woman exclaimed, clutching her macabre kerchief to her chest tightly and doing a very bad impression of a frazzled mother, "so happy he is safe!"

"Yeah.." House muttered, punching the button for the elevators, "and I'll make sure he stays that way," he added to himself in a low voice, unnoticed by the couple filing into the elevator with him.

## Chapter 23: Twenty Three

House took his time getting out of the elevator. His two 'guests' followed behind him as he stepped slowly into the hallway and took his phone out. A few quick commands and he put it away again, limping now at a quicker pace down the way to a conspicuously-placed nurses' station. A recent trauma code ensured that nobody was currently manning the station, which suited House just fine. All he really needed was the video surveillance camera positioned overhead.

"Conan-kun is down this way?" the woman asked with barely-disguised impatience. Her partner stood behind her, looking stern and foreboding despite the sunglasses covering most of his face. House turned slowly and leant on the high-walled desk behind him, mustering his best cold stare as he regarded the couple in front of him.

The woman's gaze darkened at his look, matching him glare for glare. The man, of course, he couldn't see, but the subtle shift in jawline told him enough. He was pissing off the assassins. Good. Well, bad, really, but good for what he needed them to do.

"You're here to kill Shinichi Kudo," House said without preamble. The reactions of his audience were enough to erase any lingering doubts he may have had. The woman had balked, taking a step back and gaping at him angrily. The man, apparently unable to understand English, nonetheless stiffened at the sound of their target's name.

The woman cleared her throat a few times, regarding House somewhat nervously, before taking a glance at her partner. His eyebrows had risen over the top of his glasses in question. Obviously he wanted to know what was going on.

"*Aserazuni,*" she muttered to her partner. Not nearly quiet enough to keep House from hearing, however. Having once been a trouble-friendly teenager with equally trouble-friendly Japanese acquaintances had taught him those words quite well. 'Keep cool.' He almost snorted to himself, except that doing so would have destroyed his current imposing image.

"*Sumimasen,* sorry, sorry! We do not know… ah, Kudo-sama, yes? We wish to see Conan-kun, please!" the woman said quickly, sounding completely insincere. House wondered if she'd only been chosen for this job because she spoke English.

"*Urusai!*" House snapped. 'Shut up!' He was pleased when the woman's eyes widened. That was the thing about foreigners, they never expected you to know what they were saying. He had their undivided attention now. "You both suck at acting," he informed them with a glare, "you got lucky with Cuddy, she's gullible. I'm not. There's no way I'm letting you near my patient."

The change before him was almost too quick to spot. In a split second the simpering, irritatingly fake expression had vanished from the tattooed woman's face and was replaced with a vicious glare. Her partner, though still probably unaware of anything being said, took his cue from her and tucked a beefy hand into his jacket. House eyed him warily, ready to dive for cover if the guy pulled a gun on him. Being shot once had been quite enough, thanks.

"Maybe we make too hard for you? Need things more simple?" the woman said, bringing House's attention back to her. She was holding a tiny revolver tucked into the palm of her right hand, careful to conceal the weapon from the security cameras above them. "Here, simple: take us to Kudo, or you die."

House raised his hands in surrender, cane dangling limply from one hand. Two guns, great. He swallowed a surge of vaguely irrational fear (accompanied by knots of phantom pain in his neck and abdomen) and managed to keep his glare steady.

"Cute gun to match your cute name, *Chie-chan?*" House asked, intoning the childish suffix in a voice he knew was annoyingly patronizing. Not an easy thing to do with a miniature revolver pointed at your sternum.

"It's *Chianti*," the woman growled lowly.

"And what's he, Zinfandel?" House quipped lightly.

"Shut up," Chianti ordered with a cock of her gun. House found himself having to work to keep his face neutral. When he got out of this he was going to petition Cuddy to install metal detectors on all the doors. "You tell us Kudo's room number."

"Why would I do that?" House asked blandly.

He barely managed to keep from shouting as a shot suddenly rang out, the wood paneling of the nurses' station behind him splintering from the bullet now lodged less than an inch from his bad leg.

"Tell us room number," Chianti ordered again. House held his hands up further, trying to think of anything he could say to keep from having what was left of his thigh muscle blown to pieces.

"It's…" he started, hesitating. The woman cocked her gun again, eyes locked with his.

"Next your leg," she warned. Behind her, the male partner had also drawn his gun, a much larger pistol. House took a second to glower darkly at the security camera behind the woman's head. What the hell was this, group lunch break for the security staff?

His stalling had gone on too long. Chianti raised her gun, aiming carefully despite the close range. He opened his mouth to blurt out something, anything to distract her until someone showed up—

"You—ungh!" the assassin was suddenly cut off. She clutched the side of her neck briefly, a perplexed expression on her pinched face, before pitching sideways to land in a heap on the linoleum floor. House's brain took a few moments to catch up with events, leaving him staring dumbly at her prone form. What was-?

"*Oi, Vodka! Hisashiburi!*" a high-pitched voice yelled from somewhere to the right. House looked up to see that the giant of a man had turned to face the newcomer, a vicious expression on his face. The man drew his gun up, opening his mouth to yell back—

"*Ku-*oof," was all he managed to get, interrupted mid-word by a cane snapping in two over the back of his head.

House winced and rubbed his shoulder, dropping the splintered handle of his favourite cane at the feet of the criminal he'd just brained with it. At least the guy was unconscious. He looked up to the end of the hall, meeting eyes with a faintly shocked-looking Conan.

"What?" House asked, trying to appear nonchalant while still rubbing his probably-dislocated shoulder.

"What the hell is going on here! ?" a shrill voice yelled. House rolled his eyes at Conan—who smiled thinly—and turned around. Cuddy stood, horrified, flanked by several nurses, doctors, and security guards.

"About time," House muttered to himself. Where the hell were these guys five minutes ago?

"House, what did you—they—*what did you do!*?" Cuddy practically shrieked.

"Excuse me! Excuse me, please! Coming through, excuse me!" another voice said, rising above the muttering of the small but sizeable crowd that had gathered at the sound of gunshots. The staff parted reluctantly, allowing a small, blonde woman with a thin face and overlarge men's glasses to make her way past them. Behind her followed a posse of large men in dark suits, each wired up with official-looking communications devices, who began dispersing the crowd.

"Hi, Jodie."

House looked down quickly to find that Conan had approached, and now stood level with him facing the approaching officers. He narrowed his eyes at the sound of laboured breathing, taking note of Conan's pale complexion against the white of his t-shirt. Apparently the kid had taken the time to change clothes again when leaving his hospital room.

"Cool Guy, long time no see," the woman—Jodie—winked at House's patient and smiled before turning back to an irate Cuddy. "You're the dean?" she asked. At Cuddy's blank nod, she held up a badge, "My name is Jodie Starling, I'm with the FBI. We've been tracking these two criminals for quite some time."

"Y-you have?" Cuddy asked, taken aback. She shot a glance to House, who did his best to shrug without wincing. He wondered if there were any slings in the nurses' desk next to him.

"Yes, and we'd like to thank your hospital for proving instrumental in apprehending these dangerous villains. A sizeable sum will be provided for your assistance," Jodie smiled, putting away her badge. Cuddy blinked, unsure of what she was expected to do.

"Th-thank you," she said finally. The FBI agent nodded.

"Baker here will take you for a statement, if you don't mind. Just follow him! Thank you again!" Cuddy found herself being shooed off, glancing back at House as she followed one of the Suits off towards the elevators. House blinked as he finally noticed that the entire hall had been cleared of onlookers. The only people left besides Jodie and her staff were him and Conan, and the two would-be assassins currently being searched and cuffed by agents.

"That was faster than I expected," Conan, mostly silent until now, spoke up.

"Of course we've had this hospital under surveillance ever since we spotted you, Cool Guy. I'm only sorry we couldn't mobilize sooner. They managed to send the only two members without documented criminal history. No grounds for arrest," the woman shrugged, smiling wanly. "Until, of course, one of them was goaded into trying to shoot a doctor." She winked at House. "That was very brave, Doctor House, but next time please leave the taunting of armed criminals to the professionals. If it hadn't been for Conan-kun here you might have been very gravely wounded."

"Wouldn't be the first time," he offered, not really needing to be reminded that his haphazard plan could have been executed better. Using his good arm, he dug into his front pocket and produced his cell phone. A light blinked on and off near the speaker, indicating its 'record' function was still running. He turned it off and tossed it to Jodie. "Might as well use that," he said.

The woman caught the device and tucked it into her pocket, smiling.

"How are things with… how are things back home?" Conan spoke up, eyes averted from the FBI agent in front of him. With all the excitement gone and adrenaline waning, the boy seemed to have shrunk in on himself with exhaustion. He kept his small hand clutched lightly to his chest in an unconscious attempt to soothe still-healing lungs.

"Your angel is safe and sound," Jodie responded, a sad look crossing her features. "Still under surveillance just in case. She misses you terribly."

The boy scoffed, a hard look on his face even as he stared at the floor.

"The person she wants died a long time ago."

"Maybe," the FBI agent said, face still sympathetic. A few seconds passed in which nobody spoke. House, in pain and unable to reach his vicodin without jostling his bad arm, nonetheless afforded the two his silence. There was nothing he could really say, anyway. More and more he was feeling out of his depth, thrown into the thick of a case that not only resisted solving in any conventional method of medicine, but in any conventional method of *thought*. The impossibilities he and his team had been faced with would have landed most of them in the psych ward, if not for House's unique position to do as he pleased with his craft.

A tinny, upbeat tune interrupted House's thoughts, startling Conan as Jodie pulled out her cell phone.

"Yes? Yes… I see. Do you have positive ID? Alright. Good, good. Thank you, James, I can be there in ten minutes," she hung up quickly, suddenly all smiles again. Her gaze softened as she regarded Conan, "Cool Guy, if you need anything…"

"Yeah," the boy said, looking up and returning her smile somewhat half-heartedly.

"And thank you again, Doctor House," she said, offering a hand for House to shake. He did so with his uninjured arm, nodding slightly. With that and a final wave, the woman turned and made her way down the hall, already pulling out her phone to bark further orders to her subordinates. House let out a breath. Well that had been… interesting.

"You should get your shoulder looked at," a tired voice said from his side. House looked down to see that his patient had moved to sit on the floor, leaning on the same nurses' desk as he was.

"And you should never have left your bed. How did you even know about any of this?" House asked, sliding carefully down the desk's side to sit on the floor as well. He stretched out his bad leg in front of him and cradled his injured arm with the good one. Someone would have to be along shortly, to retrieve paperwork from the nurses' station if nothing else. And House, for one, was perfectly content to wait so long as it meant he wouldn't have to walk without his cane.

"Called the FBI right after you left. They'd been tailing those two for awhile and followed them here. As soon as I heard you'd headed off with them I left the hospital room and found you." The boy replied matter-of-factly, breathing easing up somewhat. That toxin was some potent stuff in terms of healing potential. House made a mental note to look into it when he got a chance.

"And you found me by…?"

The boy tapped his glasses, pale lips quirking up in a smile.

"You should check for tracking devices before you go stealing from paranoid detectives," the boy said wanly, "I'd like my photo back, by the way."

House *harrumphed* and tucked his good hand into the inside pocket of his coat, producing the picture he'd found in Conan's lockbox. He turned it over before handing it back to its owner, only now noticing the edges of an oddly-colored backing stuck to the reverse side.

"Who was she?" House asked, though he mostly knew already. Conan tucked the photo away without bothering to look at it, and settled his tired gaze on the wall across from them. His voice was almost too quiet to hear when he finally answered.

"My angel."

It was a mark of how far his opinion on the diminutive boy beside him had come that House felt neither the will or desire to mock the overly-sentimental statement.

## Chapter 24: Twenty Four

***One week later…***

"You're sure I'm cured?" the boy asked, looking down at his own chest as if doing so would miraculously cause any dormant health issues waiting there to appear.

"Well, since you're still three feet tall and sound like a Muppet Baby, I'm pretty sure you're *not* cured," House replied sarcastically. He and his patient were walking through a little-used hallway leading to the freight entrance of the hospital. A lone security camera hung some ways behind them, having been knocked off its mounting by a metal bedpan moving at approximately the speed of a powerful soccer kick.

"But I'm not going to pass out in the middle of the street and start bleeding from the eyebrows or anything," Conan pressed.

"Keep taking the hordenine supplements, and no."

"I still can't believe that's all it took to fix this," the boy said, smiling slightly as he looked up. His faded blue backpack rattled with a several-month supply of herbal pills.

"'Fix' is a relative term. The hordenine-tainted alcohol your friend gave you only made you grow because your body was still getting used to the toxin. Taking more now is just giving your immune system what it needs to keep cell death in check, not reverse it."

"I know, but still," Conan replied, having heard this explanation more than a few times in the last few days, "it just seems like such a simple thing. And you're sure I can't just—"

House, also having heard the coming argument more times than he had patience for, rolled his eyes.

"All you'll get by overdosing is a killer headache and dead kidneys. I have no idea what kind of magic crazy voodoo-drug allowed you to grow ten years in as many seconds, but this isn't it," he replied.

"Yeah, yeah," Conan answered with a slight huff. He'd been hoping for a real cure out of all this, "All we're doing is blocking the side-effects. One pill every twelve hours, right?"

"Right."

The boy nodded, and the two of them stopped at the wide, load-bay doors at the end of the hall. A quick perusal of the hospital's delivery schedule in the bulk supply room had confirmed that the parking lot beyond would be free of any trucks or personnel. Furthermore, the camera overseeing that side of the building was set up to only record the areas where loading trucks were likely to park, leaving a surveillance-free strip some ten feet wide leading away from the premises. Perfect for anyone wanting to sneak out of the building unnoticed.

"Thanks," Conan said, looking up to meet the eyes of the tall man beside him, "you know, for everything."

"Hrmph," House replied and averted his gaze to the doors. "You've got about twenty minutes before those FBI goons figure out we gave them the slip."

"It's fine," the boy replied, tapping the slightly glowing right-hand lens of his oversized glasses. He'd shown House the embedded tracking device earlier and gotten a suitably impressed response. They were now using the feature to keep tabs on the guards posted outside his room by Jodie and her agents. Conan had been grateful for their help, but the prospect of being taken into protective custody, hidden away in some out-of-the-way city while the government ran in bureaucratic circles trying to take down the Organization, hadn't appealed to him in the least. With House's help he had conspired to sneak away and continue with his own investigations.

The two of them stood silently for a few minutes.

"Good luck," House offered finally, turning to leave back the way they'd come.

"You too."

The boy smiled at the retreating back of his doctor and leaned against the door behind him. He didn't know where he was going to go after this. New York, probably. After some digging he'd managed to determine that his parents had never been reported missing. While in the case of his father this meant little (the man was well-known for dodging editors and deadlines while writing his books), his mother generally liked to keep up with her acting friends and spoke to several of them daily. This, along with no signs of a struggle having been discovered in their hotel room, have the boy hope that the couple had known about the planned hit beforehand, and merely fled. Knowing them as he did, he wasn't really sure he would be able to locate them if they didn't want to be found, but it gave him a goal.

Conan suddenly raised a hand to the side of his mouth and yelled back down the hall.

"Oh, and when Doctor Cameron wakes up this time, tell her I said sorry!" the boy grinned to himself with the statement and quickly disappeared thorough the door.

House rolled his eyes as he walked, but couldn't resist a small smirk. After the amount of times he'd persuaded the boy to lend him his stun watch last week he'd be surprised if Cameron didn't develop some kind of phobia.

Digging his phone out of his pocket, House selected a contact from his phone's list and pressed send.

"Agent Starling? This is Doctor Greg House… Just calling to tell you your patient's ready to be discharged. You can pick him up in the morning. Yep. Uh huh… You too, see ya."

He flipped the phone closed and tucked it back into his pocket as he pressed the button for the elevator. Somewhere in this hospital there was a bottle of vicodin with his name on it.

***FIN.***