The Detective Agency Hostage Crisis — Conclusion
With the incident finally wrapped up, Conan set down his phone and let out a sigh he couldn't quite hold back.
"What's the matter? The great detective didn't get to be of any use, so now you're disappointed?" Haibara shot Edogawa Conan—still wearing that deflated expression—a silent eye-roll.
"It's not that..." Conan turned his head and caught the distinctly contemptuous look in her eyes. "...Fine. Maybe a little."
"Heh."
"Only a little," Conan hastened to defend himself. "What I'm really thinking about is how fast the Jade Chamber developed their terminal. It doesn't feel like all that long since the Noah's Ark incident, and yet barely any time after they acquired Thomas Schindler's technology, they had a finished product ready for market."
He frowned, turning the thought over. "I suspect they may have already possessed something similar all along—they were just waiting to get their hands on Schindler's core technology so they could round out their own ideas."
"You're saying the Jade Chamber knew Schindler was going to go under from the start, and just sat back waiting to swallow them up?" Haibara shot back. Then she paused, giving it a moment's thought, and decided that wasn't outside the realm of possibility.
Conan nodded. "I do have my suspicions. My old man told me that when the Schindler scandal broke, Miss Ningguang's Jade Chamber Corporation reacted far too quickly. And now that we know their product was developed this fast, it only deepens my doubts."
"Then by all means, great detective—suspect away." Haibara filed the whole matter away almost instantly, and with that she abandoned the frowning, brooding Conan and went over to the kids to start tidying up again.
Truthfully, Haibara figured that even if Ningguang really had known Schindler was headed for disaster and simply let it happen, it wasn't anything worth losing sleep over. Schindler had reaped what it sown, after all.
She was hardly a good person herself, and she didn't see anything wrong with Miss Ningguang's behavior. It was just...
Haibara's gaze darkened as she looked at Edogawa Conan, still wrestling with the question. It was just that a certain great detective who wanted to save everyone might have a bit of trouble accepting it.
"Mouri, my friend—you've gone and gotten yourself into trouble again." Inspector Megure, summoned by Mouri Kogoro's phone call, finally arrived at the scene and greeted him with the easy familiarity of long practice. "And Ran, Xia Yu—you two are here as well."
His gaze then shifted to Albedo and Sera Masumi, questions written plainly in his eyes. "And these two would be?"
"This is a friend of mine, and Klee's older brother—Albedo," Xia Yu introduced to Inspector Megure.
"Sera just transferred into our class," Mouri Ran added right after her.
"Xia Yu, we meet again—and this time it's bombs again, huh." A figure stepped out from behind Inspector Megure, sunglasses on, an air of lazy nonchalance about him as he spoke to Xia Yu.
"Officer Matsuda!" Xia Yu stared at him in surprise.
She'd known for a while that Matsuda Jinpei had been transferred under Inspector Megure's command, but somehow the timing never quite worked out—he'd never shown up at any of her scenes.
Then again, Xia Yu thought, it made sense for him to be here. A bomb had gone off, and someone with the right expertise had to handle it.
"Honestly, how do you keep running into bombs?" Matsuda Jinpei sighed in resignation, then walked over to Sawakuri Kaoru. Ignoring the way the man squirmed in his chair even while tied up, he bent down to examine how the bomb had been rigged to his body.
"Good news—the bomb's fairly stable in design, and it won't be hard to remove." After his inspection, Matsuda's verdict put everyone considerably more at ease.
"By the way, this is quite an unusual way to tie up a suspect. He's been struggling this whole time and hasn't budged an inch. Was that your work?" With that, Matsuda looked over at Albedo, who stood quietly beside him watching him work.
"Mm. Nothing special. I just tied him up in passing," Albedo said, offering nothing more.
Matsuda Jinpei wasn't the type to let curiosity run away with him. He'd asked in idle passing, and with no real answer forthcoming, he didn't press.
Sera Masumi, however, who had overheard the exchange, couldn't help sneaking another curious glance at Albedo.
Just as Matsuda had said, dismantling the bomb was simple—it took him barely a few minutes.
After that, Inspector Megure led the suspect, Sawakuri Kaoru, away along with the rest of his people. Before leaving, he reminded everyone not to forget to come in and give their statements.
Not long afterward, Sera Masumi said her goodbyes and departed as well.
Back at the hotel where she was staying, Sera Masumi opened the door to her room.
It was pitch dark inside—apparently no one else was there.
She thought nothing of it, pressed the light switch by the door, closed the door behind her, and called out to the empty-looking room, "Mom, it's me. No one else is here."
Click. The bedroom door opened, and out stepped a blue-eyed blonde middle schooler whose face bore an unmistakable resemblance to Sera Masumi's own.
She was Akai Mary—the mother of both Sera Masumi and Akai Shuichi, shrunk to a child's age by the very same poison the Black Organization had forced upon her daughter.