Warning! You're about to enter a very unhappy place. There's blood and torture and questionable morals. You don't want to read it? That's fine, just reread the happy stuff I wrote! (I just couldn't resist the possible ways everything could have gone down the wrong road!)

Her shoes make a harsh sound on the ground. Normally she wouldn't bother to wear high heels, but today was special. Today they got a new packet. And she decided to wear appropriate clothes for this special visit.

Ran slowly drags her hands down the blazer she wears.

Kaito crosses her path. He looks worn out. His eyes search hers and she nods. It's true she tells him without words, this time we have him. The former magician manages a smile. It's cracked and ugly and Ran thinks for a moment, that nobody really smiles anymore in here. Maybe it had been the trade for all of this, the building, the floors, the network.

She, however, doesn't miss her smile, while she studies her appearance in a small hand mirror. Her short hair gives her strict look, her black trousers go well with the white shirt and the black blazer. She looks like she wants to. Good, victorious, unbreakable.

"Come with me," she says to her friend, the one that became a close call to Shinichi but didn't manage to fill out the spot exactly. She believes that the feeling of not being enough to fill out this ugly hole goes both ways. They are close, but not that way.

She closes her eyes and allows her mind to wander through these past years. They are at war. Sometimes she loses the focus on whether they are gaining ground or if their enemies managed to. On some days, it hardly matters to her. Today will not be such a day. Today is a victory.

They walk in lockstep. She looks at him. She searches for that young boy she once looked at.

"We changed," she whispers. The hallway is empty, the grey walls are meaningless. And still, she isn't sure if she wants to leave this building. It was a part of her.

"Its worth it Ran," Kaito answers but there's no faith in his words. But they are still moving forward.

A mob of red hair appears in a doorframe. Ai looks at her and Ran asks herself if the younger girl sometimes looks in the mirror and thinks that she's Sherry all over again. But there's no regret in the eyes of the other.

All three of them gather around the doorframe. They were the beginning, the three first people that decided to do something. For Shinichi. For the world. It's only fitting that they are doing the next step together.

"No word from Vermouth so far," Ai tells them. Ran suppresses the urge to smoke. It's an annoying habit and in cynical moments she thinks that it was about damn time that she developed an addiction on her one. Kind of runs in the blood she reminds herself.

"The last time I heard from her was 3 hours ago. She even gave me a last goodbye note. Goddamn actress, always so dramatic," snorts Ai, doing her best to sound nonchalant. But there's a hint of emotion inside these words.

Ran tightens her back.

"How many goodbye notes we have from her until today?" Kaito asks while rolling his eyes. "That woman just wants to make sure that when she bits the dust, her ending will be epic. I bet that in 6 hours she will tell us about how she escaped her fate again."

His humour is darker now, sharper but Ran likes it that way and so does Ai. So they laugh, even when they don't really mean it and the sound is strange and foreign to their vocal cords. Nobody laughs in this building. Ran's not even sure if nowadays the world laughs in general.

The war is still raging and with it, death still spreads across humanity. She never thought about just how much blood could run.

Not once she imagined her job as an easy one, not even in the beginning. It would be hard, dark, bloody and dirty. But this all went a long time ago over her imagination.

"Ready?" she asks. Somehow she became the leader. Not only of their little group but of all this. She sometimes thinks that the burden will one day crush her and suffocate her. But it had been nothing against the things her friend experienced. And for him, she and all of them would carry on.

She always likes to imagine, that one day, maybe he could join them. Giving them a purpose again aside from the aim to tear apart an organization. But deep down she knows that no matter how effective they were and how good their connections are, Shinichi would never think about joining them. Just explain it to him, she tells herself in such moments when she thinks about her best friend looking at her in disgust. He will understand.

The other two just nod and they make their way towards their destination.

There's a room in this building. A dark room with two chairs and a desk. With a one-way mirror. And inside this room is a monster. And Ran can't wait until his blood will paint the walls.

Maybe, she muses, she lost something deep inside her to feel such emotions in such a grotesque context. Or maybe they all simply broke apart since that night. Whatever it is that allows her to be this way, that part will feel very, very good after this.

The door is simply, almost blending with the wall. Nothing is special about it.

Ran takes a deep breath.

"Give it to me," she commands Ai. Once the girl would have hesitated. Moral conflicts. A sense of overprotection. Maybe she still thinks about her own, silent promise to Shinichi, the one where she swore that the dark wouldn't touch any of them. Another broken thing added to a long list. Alongside, I'm going to protect you and everything will be fine.

Ai hands her the suitcase.

"You look like a lawyer," she jokes. Ran nods.

"And now I'm going to have a nice conversation with my client." Her voice isn't her own for a moment. Darker and more primal. Her blood rushes through her body and her ears are drumming. There's excitement in her body.

Just a few seconds, then she's cold and efficient again.

Her hand opens the door and she takes a moment to take everything in. She offers the other a moment to take everything in. Then she looks one last time at her friends, partners in crime and comrades.

Satisfaction is painted on their faces.

And Ran closes the door behind her.

The room is poorly lighted. The only lamp is small and sometimes turns off without reason. Ran never looked for the problem with the electric. It suited the atmosphere she decided, no need to change that in the near future.

The silence stretches through the room. They look each other over, the grey-haired man and the brown-haired woman.

After a while the man, former assassin and sniper, known under the code name Gin, smiles.

Ran never met the other in person. Close contact yes, even eye contact once, but being inside a room with the other was another thing. His smile is more of a movement of the mouth on its own than anything else. It seems like this man never knew how to smile because his teeth are showing too much and his face just simply looks like a grimace.

His long hair, an unnatural grey, gleams in the light. It reminds Ran of the barrel of a gun.

"You look …" Gin runs his eyes over her body and Ran thinks about Ai, about her experience, and shots a look at the mirror. She made them watch, of course, it had been their choice but Ran didn't think any of them would have refused. But not for this. Not for this man to look at her like this.

This is her game. For once she knows exactly how this will play out.

She takes in other details. The handcuffs. The table between them. The way his arms had been forced behind his back in a way that looks painful.

She sits down on the other chair, laying the suitcase in front of her.

"Is it true that you don't remember the faces of your victims?" she asks, passing over his suggestive comment.

"You know," he draws out, "after a couple it gets hard to distinguish between all of them. So petty things like names, hair colour, and eye colour. They are not important."

Ran thinks about a special victim. Blue eyes, black hair. He doesn't remember Shinichi. Maybe he remembers the warehouse, what he has done to the body, but the face will hold no meaning to him.

"You know who I am, don't you?" Her fingers touch the locks of the suitcase. The metal is cool and calming. It's going to get her through this. She despises the other person, she never realised how much until they finally managed to meet face to face. And the hatred feels wonderful in her veins.

"You're the boss of this thing," the way he titles her organization, her home, her people, makes Ran's blood boil. "Or are you just the secretary?"

Normally she would have broken a nose for such a comment. Instead, she opens the suitcase, slowly and expertly. She reaches out for a very special thing inside and holds it up for the other to see.

"You know, I'm more of a gofer. And I believe that I'm actually good at all the things I do." The scalpel catches the light and gleams. It's brighter than the silver hair and somehow this reassures Ran. She's the winner.

Gin lifts a brow in an unimpressed manner.

"Torturing? How boring, I dared to imagine something more creative of you and your dogs." He rolls his head. "Go one, enjoy yourself girl. Try your worst."

She smiles a cold smile that made enough people piss their pants to prove its effect on normal human beings. Let's look what she can do with this psychopath.

"This is not torturing Gin. This would imply that I want something from you." Her voice is like ice, sharp and cold. She enjoys it. "No, this is something way simpler. This is just about pain. Pain and revenge."

She circles the chair and the table. Her shoes make harsh clicks on the ground.

The knife flickers in her hand in a way that Rei thought her.

"This is for Akai," she whispers sweetly while pressing the knife into flesh. "This is for putting a bullet in his head." The hand of the killer twitches a bit but no sound escapes him. His eyes are knives on their own but Ran knows that they will not haunt her nor hurt her.

Maybe he expects her to be soft, to be human, and to have a crack in her armour. But not today, not with him. He is searching for a myth. His hopes are built on the belief that she was still human. She wasn't, not in this room and not today.

"And this is for Jodie," she continues while twisting her knife. To be exact, it wasn't really Gin's fault that they lost Jodie. But it was the fault of the BO.

She goes one, whispering name after name into his ear while putting her marks on him. Sera, Heiji, Megure. Almost Takagi. Almost Chikage. Almost Kaito. Their victory had been paid a heavy price and she will not allow one death to be forgotten. She will feed them to Gin, will burn them into his brain. These are the ones that he will not forget. They would be the one that would accompany him in this room.

"And this one," she says while standing in front of Gin, towering over him, "is for Shinichi." And then she makes him scream.

Kaito watches the scenario with a twisting feeling in his guts. He thinks about stopping Ran. It made no sense. They don't need information.

This is about pain. This is twisted.

He looks at Ai. The eyes of his friend are glued to the mirror. Her face is white. Her hands are trembling.

"This is it Kaito," she whispers and he puts an arm around her. He can feel the other presence, even through the glass. He can't even imagine what it had to be like dealing with something like that for years like his friend did. "Now we finally lost ourselves."

Personally, he thinks he lost himself a long time ago. Maybe after the first bullet. Maybe after the first time, he aimed for a kill and not just a way to stop his enemy.

"I think we are just broken beyond repair. He will never forgive us."

Kaito thinks about a room in this building, so different from this one. One that is high up, where huge windows show the sky and the sun and at night the stars and the moon.

There's a bed inside this room. And a person inside this bed. There's peace in this room and good. All their reasons lie in this room.

Wasn't it worth it, to defend this contrast between these two rooms?

"I think he will understand," Kaito lies. "We will be able to explain it to him and he will understand it."

But the only thing he can imagine is Shinichi walking away from them.

Ai looks at Gin, the way her worst nightmare gets torn apart by her friend. She always had been under the impression that Gin was unstoppable. She thinks about Shinichi, about his face, still peaceful and unaware of the war that is around him.

She tightens her hand, wrapping the other arm around Kaito. They watch, close as lovers but far apart.

They are broken, she thinks. All of them. Broken. Unfixable. But maybe one day at least the world will be able to build something from the ruins.

She turns away.

"Let's go," she says and her voice isn't her own anymore. This isn't what she imagined all those years ago.

No killing had once been the rule of her friend. But she knows that he long ago depraved this rule.

Maybe they are all going crazy down here, she thinks while stepping into the other room. Kaito follows her.

Gin instantly glues her eyes on her and Ai suppresses the urge to run. This is what she wants, she tells herself.

Ran doesn't even look at her. This is no surprise to her. Instead, she makes a vague movement of the hand towards the suitcase. Ai breaths in deeply before reaching inside the suitcase.

"Sherry," Gin whispers but Ai isn't afraid of him. He can look at her all he wants. She's stronger than that. And she isn't Sherry.

"It's Haibara Ai actually!"

The metal is familiar. Maybe she can pretend that this is just an experiment inside her lab. But no, she furiously shakes off this thought, there will be no more running away.

They are standing in front of the killer of their friend, in one line.

They are no longer human. Not in this room, not this day.

They started this together, it's only natural that they end it together as well.