Testament of the Two

by Unknown_qhost

Summary:

Book 3 of the “Gods of Death Can Bleed” series.
"To the public, L was still alive. And to Japan, Aria Mordain was officially listed as missing."

Aria Mordain disappears into America’s criminal underworld, aligning herself with Mello and the mafia to unearth a ledger of names and power known only as the Testament. Back in Japan, Dove Rosewood remains bound to Light Yagami’s shadow, torn between loyalty and survival.
As Kira’s Gospel spreads and the world tips further into chaos, every choice carries blood, betrayal, and the risk of becoming the very thing they swore to resist.

Chapter 1: In the Absence of God

To the public, L was still alive.
And to Japan, Aria Mordain was officially listed as missing.

No one knew L collapsed into Light’s arms. No one knew those same arms closed around the pen that killed him. No one knew the calm voice behind Japan’s new ‘L’ was his. The one on the screens wasn’t the original- just the echo Light taught them to trust.

Everything unfolded the way I feared.

I learned it in scraps: Dove’s voice over a bad connection, whispering from stairwells and bathroom stalls when she could. Light took L’s chair. Light directed the men who would die for him to hunt the killer who spoke with his mouth. And with no one left to contest him, Kira’s reach thickened- like fog that turned every streetlight into a halo and every citizen into a confession.

That failure was mine, too. Two years of following threads until they cut my fingers- slipping into rooms where I didn’t belong, trying passwords that weren’t mine, buying drinks I couldn’t afford and truths no one would sell me. I bribed the wrong people and the right ones- but doors still shut. Leads ran cold. Names dissolved.

The only reason I didn’t starve was the money L parceled out to the Task Force after he died. I shouldn’t have seen a single bill of it- not with the suspicion he always wore around me like a lab coat- but the envelope came anyway. It wasn’t much. Just enough to keep the lights on in places with thin walls and cheaper locks. Enough bus tickets. Enough silence. Enough time.

Time to aim at the only target that made sense.

His successors.

It took four months just to prove they existed.

I’d suspected it before then- the way L said Light could “take over,” the clipped mentions of Watari’s orphanages, the newspaper clipping I kept folded to a soft crease. I followed the thread: orphanages first, then England, then Winchester.

Whammy’s House. The original. The one that made him.

The kids were ghosts by design. If you asked the wrong questions, people shrugged. If you asked the right ones, flashed the right business smile, hacked the right logins at two in the morning with coffee gone cold, the shape of them appeared: initials only, no photos, no birthdays, no edges to hold onto.

Two stood tallest in the files I pried open: M and N- same age, different angles. L was supposed to choose- he died before he could.

I thought N would be easier. The notes described him as compliant, hyper-precise, a mirror with fewer cracks. Trackable. Predictable.

I was wrong.

Finding them wasn’t the hard part. Touching them was.

N gave me nothing. Months of nothing: dead ends dressed up as leads, sleepless nights burned blue by monitor glow, every clever trick I had tossed in and swallowed. Every IP I chased died after one use, like someone unplugged the world behind it. I kept hitting a wall I couldn’t see.

Then I stopped aiming for the wall.

If M had run, maybe I could catch the mess he left behind. His file painted him as impulsive, less careful in the small ways that bleed evidence. Not stupid- never that- but human enough to slip.

So I stopped staring at N’s silence and started listening for M’s noise.

A supplier in England liked money more than loyalty. Watari’s old pipeline still shipped a specific brand of chocolate to a P.O. box in the States- gold-foil wrappers, case lots. M’s favorite, according to a note buried three folders deep.

It wasn’t proof. It was a smell. I followed it.

L.A. picked up a whisper I recognized: an outfit taking contracts that slid from personal to impossible- jobs that sounded like riddles with bodies at the end. That was Wammy’s flavor: make the unsolvable blink first.

I moved. Cash, a fake name, a flight that left no footprint Japan could trace. My English was clean enough. I drifted where the air was loud and the lights never slept. I learned who to buy drinks for and who to shut up around. Someone slid me a rough sketch- angles, a scowl, hair too bright to blend. It wasn’t much, but it gave the name a face.

Mello.

They said he’d been leading for a year. They said his people followed like it was religion. They didn’t say where he slept.

He was careful. He was smoke.

Until today.

I was in a car I’d bought for cheap- engine rattling like a pocket full of screws- scanning police chatter just to feel less blind. Routine noise. Codes. Street names. Then the signal bent. Dispatch rerouted mid-sentence, like a hand reached in and turned the dial from somewhere else.

Only one crew in the city had the gear- and the nerve- to hijack police radio like that.

Mello’s.

The call pinned a spot on the map: an underground club in an abandoned building, the kind with boarded windows that still leaked bass. Gambling, raves, men who don’t use their real names. A door only opens for people who look like they belong.

I almost laughed. Almost cried. Two years of chasing smoke; finally, a burn mark on concrete.

I didn’t have time to be precious about it. Mello was violent when cornered, quick when crossed, and cautious whether or not you were bleeding. If I showed up looking like a cop or a beggar, I’d never see his face.

So I built an answer I knew he’d respect.

Black dress- thin as an excuse. Thigh-highs. A fur coat to fake warmth. Makeup that made my mouth a bolder thing than I felt. Cash in the purse. Evidence in the lining. Names I could drop without getting shot for them.

I drove fast enough to make the speedometer nervous and rolled onto the scrubby patch of grass that passed for a lot. The building squatted in the dark like it had grown there. Two men at the entrance. Arms crossed. Eyes that measured worth.

The bass punched through the boards like a heartbeat too big for the chest holding it.

I stepped out. Air tasted like oil and night. My pulse hit hard against my ribs- hard enough to hurt- and I told myself that was good. It meant I was still alive. It meant I’d finally gotten somewhere.

The line outside curled like a snake guarding heat. I took my place in it- coat tight, mouth neutral, fingers steadying at my sides despite the shake under the skin. The pistol sat high against my thigh, weighty and invisible under fur.

Men in front of me looked carved from gym mirrors- necks thick, knuckles split, eyes bored. Behind them, a couple of hollow-cheek kids jittered for the next hit, and two girls with diamond wrists hung off older men who smelled like leather and gasoline. Bass leaked through the boards in a slow, predatory thump you felt in your ribs before you heard it.

The guy ahead turned, suit too tight across the shoulders, gel-dark hair, breath like cheap whiskey. His shoes ground the gravel as he sized me up.

I swallowed once and held his stare.

“You’re a fine lookin’ one,” he said, a smirk creeping. “Who you with?”

I blinked slow, slid into the calm voice I wore when I was scared. “I’m here with Sniper.”

He barked a laugh a little too loud, folding his arms. “Sniper? You’re here with that pussy? Why ain’t he in line with you?”

Sniper… Known, not feared. A safe name to drop- visible enough to be plausible, bland enough to have no sworn enemies. A drug dealer in L.A that didn’t stray outside of his territory.

“I’m meeting him inside.” Up ahead the bouncer murmured to someone, the rope twitched, the line inched. “I’m just here to have some fun.”

“Fun, huh?” His smile sharpened to mockery. “If money’s a problem, I got you covered, baby.”

The line moved again. I let my mouth curve like I might say yes, like I might be exactly what he thought I was, and kept my eyes on the door. The bass hit harder. Two more steps and I’d be under the light, within arm’s reach of the men who decided who belonged. My heartbeat tried to match the music. I told it not to.

The rope was a rumor; the real stop was two men with shoulders like doors. Buzzcut lifted his chin at me. The other one- beard, bomber jacket- patted his glove once and stepped in.

“Name.”

“Azalea.”

Cold hands, practiced. Collar. Ribs. Hips. His palm paused at my thigh.

“Hold up.”

He skimmed the hem, found the strap, and came up with the revolver. The bass from inside thumped through my teeth while he turned it in his hand- short barrel, dull blue and dust.

He squinted. “What’s this, a snub .38?”

Buzzcut took it, flicked the cylinder, counted with his eyes. “Five-shot. J-frame size.” A beat. “Nambu? That a Japanese cop piece?”

I made my face bored, not nervous. “Police surplus. It’s clean.”

“Uh-huh.” Buzzcut leaned in, testing for a flinch. “You a cop? Why’s Tokyo steel on your leg?”

“If I were a cop, I wouldn’t walk in here saying I’m meeting Sniper.” I let the name land and shifted my purse so the folded bill peeked the right way. “He doesn’t like me showing up unarmed.”

Beard’s mouth twitched. He looked at Buzzcut. “Sniper’s inside. Table left of the cage.”

Buzzcut weighed the revolver, then me. “House rule- no heaters unless the house says so. Special privileges an’ all that.”

I palmed the bill- it disappeared. “Then hold it for me. Tag it. If Sniper wants me disarmed, he’ll tell me himself.”

They traded a look that said they liked money and not problems. Buzzcut slid the gun into a lockbox behind the stool, tore a claim chit, and stamped my wrist with ink that smelled like rubber bands.

“Don’t make me regret this, Azalea.”

“I won’t.” I met his eyes just long enough to sell it. “Five in the wheel. You’ll still have five when I come back.”

Beard lifted the curtain. Heat and light bled out, thick with smoke and luck and bass. I stepped through, lighter by a pound and a secret, heart trying to sync to the music and failing on purpose.

The lights washed the room party-purple. Heat moved in waves off a floor packed shoulder to shoulder, bodies slick, bass hitting like a second pulse.

I wasn’t here for Sniper.

I shouldered in, flashed a twenty, and tapped twice. Two shots landed- rail tequila in cloudy glasses. I knocked them back one after the other. Squeezed the lemon into my mouth. Fire climbed my throat- my face did the thing it always does. Good. It meant I was awake.

I turned with the burn still in my mouth and let the room resolve: cage to the left, DJ booth strobing, a catwalk overhead, doors in the back guarded by men who didn’t dance. Too many faces. Too much noise.

Where was he?

If he was here.

He was here. He had to be. I let the music pass through me, not into me, and started moving- slow, like I belonged, like I wasn’t counting exits and measuring shadows with my eyes.

I mapped the room fast- cage on the left, DJ pulsing on a riser, a roped stair guarded by three men who didn’t dance. Mello wouldn’t be in the pit with the amateurs- he’d be where the air cost more.

The chocolate sat heavy in my pocket- gold-foil squares, English import, too expensive to be a bluff. I palmed the edge of the wrapper just to feel the ridges and remind myself I had leverage. Obvious bribery, sure. But leverage nonetheless.

Back to the stairs. Three bouncers: dreads at the base, a mountain with a leather jacket, and a third halfway up, watching the floor through mirrored shades.

That was my way in.

I went. Chin up. Shoulders level. The walk you use when you belong.

“Hey.” I let a smile touch my mouth, not my eyes. “Sniper’s plus-one. I need to speak to Mello.”

The one with dreads looked me over, one brow tipping up. The diamond-plate step clicked under his boot as he shifted. Then he laughed- short, like a test I’d just failed.

“Are you serious?” He snickered, flicking me away with two fingers. “Beat it. Nobody goes up without house permission.”

I didn’t share his laugh. I kept my face plain, pulse steadying against the stamp on my wrist. “Tell him it’s from Winchester,” I said. “He’ll know what it means.”

Something in his smile shut off. The lights threw color over his cheekbones; his eyes narrowed against it. For a beat, the music was all teeth. He jerked his chin, called the leather-jacket mountain to cover, then turned and took the stairs two at a time.

Heat climbed my neck. I let it pass. Shoulders level. Hands visible. Belong.

Time stretched- eight bass hits, then sixteen, then a hundred. A song played I kind of recognized. A server pushed past with a tray of lime wedges- the air smelled like salt and smoke and someone else’s luck.

Dreads came back down. He slid toward me, close enough that I could hear his breath under the music. “He’ll see you.”

I nodded- too fast- and slowed it into something cooler. “Lead the way.”

We went up into the dark. The bass moved from sound to structure, rattling through the rail under my palm. A hallway unrolled along the indoor balcony: a row of shadowed booths with their own guards, slivers of light cutting the glass panels, murmurs stitched between the beats. From up here the dance floor looked like weather.

We stopped at a booth. Not just a booth.

The booth.

And with a rosary catching the strobe light- there he was.

Chapter 2: Terms of Engagement

Summary:

Aria steps into Mello’s world with nothing but a false name, a hard drive, and two years of preparation. In a room heavy with suspicion and gun oil, every word is a test and every silence a threat. To win Mello’s attention, she must prove her past, risk her present, and offer him the future he was denied- the chance to dethrone the new L.

The air lifted and the temperature dropped.

He sat dead center- not because it was comfortable, but because it forced everyone else to the edges. Low table in front of him, chocolate unwrapped to the foil- two squares gone. A rosary lay across his knuckles like an afterthought. His men weren’t furniture- they were sightlines.

Younger than the rumors. Too young to be the gravity in the room- but the room orbited anyway.

He looked at me once and the booth stilled. Light eyes, flat affect. He leaned back, snapped a square of chocolate clean in half, a neat click that sounded like a clock starting.

Breathe. Shoulders level. Sell the calm.

“Name,” he said. Not loud. Final.

“Azalea.”

A glance to the guard who’d brought me. Back to me. “And why are you in my booth.”

I swallowed the fear down where it belonged. “Winchester.”

He didn’t move. The men around him did- small shifts, as if the air had changed pressure.

I stopped dead. The men flanking him didn’t blink- eyes on me like I was something tracked across a scope. The big one at Mello’s right- bald, white suit- kept his hand low, elbow pinned. Gun oil hung faintly in the air. Whatever he carried was heavier than my snub that the door took.

I could do this. I had to. Two years for ten seconds that mattered.

“I don’t think your floor needs the details,” I said, matching his stare and keeping my voice level. “But I brought you something.”

I slid the chocolate across the table- gold foil catching the purple LEDs- until it stopped in front of him. The same brand I’d chased through Watari’s pipeline, squares that cost more than my insurance.

Mello’s gaze dropped for a heartbeat. He didn’t touch it. A small tilt of his head, and the bald man lifted it away, and the foil crackled once and disappeared. Mello looked back at me like nothing had moved.

Offer accepted? Warning ignored? I held my ground, heat tight in my throat, and let the silence measure me.

He didn’t lean so much as take a millimeter of air. The beads clicked once against his knuckle.

“You one of his?” A beat. “That what this is?”

I let the words pass through and leave no mark on my face.

Winchester did its job. Wammy implied. He means the other letter. Not a cop. Not a rival crew. N.

Don’t say the name first.

I kept my shoulders level, breathing even. 

“Wrong group,” I said. “And I don’t work for him.”

He watched me like he was timing a fuse. The sleeve zipper at his wrist ticked once against the table edge- small, metallic, deliberate.

“Say what you’re here for again.”

I did. “Winchester.”

A flick of his gaze- annoyance, not surprise. “Not on my floor,” His voice stayed even. “You don’t say that word here.”

He didn’t look away. “Phones.”

White suit tapped the table with two knuckles. I set my burner down, face-in. He flipped it, skimmed the screen, set it back exactly where my hand had been. The quiet one by the curtain touched his earpiece and went distant, eyes unfocusing the way people do when they’re listening to another room.

Mello let the silence count- four bass hits, eight- then shaved it off with one question. “How did you track me down?”

“Your reroute hit,” I said. “Metro dropped to simplex on four-sixty. They always do when the patch dies.”

He didn’t blink. “Check.”

The quiet one’s chin tilted, mouth close to the mic. Four more beats. “She’s right.”

Mello’s attention returned to me like it had never left. He rolled a rosary bead once between thumb and forefinger, the click soft and precise.

“What do you want?”

“Leverage,” I said. “Against the face on TV with borrowed initials. Against this new L.”

His brow rose a millimeter- almost condescending, more like inventory. He let me keep the floor without giving me an inch.

This was it- my selling point. I had to play it right. Appeal to him, not the room.

I leaned into the table a fraction, kept my shoulders level, met his stare. “I want to replace him. I worked for the Japanese Task Force assigned to the Kira case two years ago. I left because I hated the way he operated things. I know you were next in line, and I want you to take that spot.”

A chair rasped. One of the scrawnier men at the edge sprang up too fast, metal flashing as a gun whipped into my face. Heat climbed my neck and I swiftly took a step back on instinct. He snapped his head toward Mello. “She was a cop? We gotta blow this bitch’s brains out!”

I looked at the muzzle with narrowed eyes, wishing for the weight of my revolver where the door had taken the weight off my leg.

Before the moment could tip, Mello raised a hand in the man’s direction- just a flat palm.

“Stand down. Hear her out.”

The man made a face, jaw working, then- begrudgingly- lowered the gun and sat. The bass filled the space his threat had occupied.

“Convince me.” Mello tapped the table once- the sound landing like a stamp. His eyes locked with mine. “One sentence at a time. Why in the world would I help you?”

I let a small smile show- enough confidence to read. “Because I didn’t come with just your chocolate.”

I slid another object across the table- the hard drive. The same one I’d carried for two years, wrapped in felt inside my coat lining, heavy as a kept promise.

Mello glanced down, then back up like the weight didn’t impress him. “The fuck’s this?”

“The Yotsuba meetings.” I folded my arms, elbows off his table. “Before Higuchi was taken in as Kira- which I’m sure you know, given your interest- L had them under glass for months. Every Friday. They talked about the killings like they were quarterly goals. I have all of it- audio and video. Only the Task Force had access. I took the only physical copy when I left.”

He reached back lazily, all wrist, and brought the drive to him. Turned it once in his palm like a weapon he didn’t plan to use yet- thumb finding the scuffed label, nail tapping plastic. Then he set it back down exactly where it had started. Not accepted. Not refused.

The men around him didn’t breathe louder, but the air felt closer. White Suit leaned a fraction forward- the quiet one’s head cocked, earpiece catching light.

Mello’s eyes stayed on mine. “If you’re lying,” he said, “this is a paperweight.”

“I’m not.”

He didn’t look away. “Check it,” he said, not raising his voice.

“Air-gapped,” the quiet one answered automatically, already moving- a slim laptop appearing from a canvas sleeve, a short cable snaking out. The hard drive left the table without ceremony. No one watched the screen. They watched me.

I could hear the faint whir when it spun up, the bass folding over it like surf. Thirty seconds passed in beads and breath. Forty.

The quiet one spoke, low. “Directory matches the dates she said. Names are coded. Pulling a clip. Sending it over to Matt.”

A beat. Then, tinny and distant from the headphones around his neck: men laughing; a voice saying “Friday’s numbers track with the last incident- keep it.”

The quiet one didn’t smile. “It’s real.”

Mello didn’t move like anything had changed. His face was blank, guarded.

“Rod, pass me the bar she just handed over.”

The bald man- Rod- dug a little and pulled it out and onto the table. Mello grabbed it, held it up to me.

“If you’re so confident about this, and you’re not working for someone against me,” He smirked a little, voice bordering on cocky. “Eat it.”

I stared down at the chocolate bar in his hand. Then back to him. I raised a brow. “You think I’d be stupid enough to poison you?”

“Guess we’ll find out.” He nodded the chocolate a little closer. “Go on.”

I took it from his hand. Smiled. Looked into his eyes while I unwrapped the foil, and bit into it with a snap.

Swallowed it. Damn, I kind of understood his obsession. This shit was great.

Mello eased back into the booth like he was testing for give, something satisfied flickering and gone.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll play your little game, Azalea.” A small shake of his head. “But we go by my terms. You don’t get a chair. Hands where I can see them. Don’t touch anything unless I hand it to you. Don’t lie to me even once. If I like your answers, you get a follow-up tomorrow. Maybe even a ride.”

My face stilled. “To where?”

He smiled for real this time- brief, edged. “Exactly.”

He didn’t let me keep the air. “You worked the Kira case. So you know the rules. You gave me a fake name.”

I hesitated a beat, then nodded.

“What’s the real deal.”

“Aria.”

His face flattened. “Not enough.”

“Aria Mordain.”

He dipped his chin once, eyes taking stock. “Alright, Aria. You look young. How old are you?”

I shifted my weight- the men in the booth watched like a test they wanted me to fail. “Eighteen.”

His brows climbed- exaggerated, theatrical, not surprise. “So you joined a high-ranking police Task Force with the world’s greatest detective at what- sixteen?” A slow tilt of his head, voice dry. “You must be a very impressive girl.”

He was mocking me.

I straightened a fraction, refusing the leash. “If I recall,” I said, “you’ve been the runner-up for the position since you were younger than I was. We must be very similar, Mello.”

His smile went out like a pilot light. His necklace ticked- one bead, then another- faster than before. The chocolate square in his fingers snapped a little too clean.

“We’re not similar,” he said. Flat. “Don’t use that word around me again.”

He didn’t look away. “Rod.”

White suit stepped half a pace into my space- close enough that I could smell gun oil and clean leather. Not a threat- a measurement.

“You had five minutes,” Mello said, eyes still on mine. “Now you have sixty seconds. Earn them.”

I kept my shoulders level. “How.”

“Prove you were where you say you were.” A beat. “One detail I can’t pull from a newspaper.”

I didn’t blink. “He briefed at three in the morning because he said the world was quieter then. He stirred sugar into coffee he never drank, and he never sat with his feet flat. If anyone corrected him on posture, he ignored them and ate more cake. His favorite was strawberry, and he died right in front of my eyes. I could recite the gravestone we gave him off the back of my hand. Off the books.”

A silence that felt like weight. The men around him shifted without sound. The quiet one’s mouth twitched- almost a smile, almost a note to himself.

Mello let the beat run long enough to sting. Then he shaved it clean again.

“Better,” he said. “Now something I can use tonight.”

Truthfully, I had nothing. No fresh evidence to pull, no new angle beyond what he’d already let me have. Just the weight of the drive and the heat of the room.

Maybe that was enough.

“I can’t offer you anything tonight that you don’t already have,” I said, leaning in just enough to show I wasn’t retreating. “But I can work for you. I can give you the pieces L kept off the board. I can help you take the mask off Kira- and take the spot that was owed to you.”

He listened like the room was empty, like the bass was a clock that only I could hear.

“Are you still in contact with the Task Force?”

The question hit like cold water. I felt the lie form- no- and saw it fail in his eyes before I spoke it. I couldn’t risk the tell.

“Yes,” I said. “A family friend. No threat to you or your people. Only a benefit if you’d like to see it like that. But it’s something I’m not lenient on.”

He blinked once, slow. The silence stretched until the lights seemed to pulse slower to make room for it. White Suit didn’t breathe louder, but he was closer- the quiet one’s gaze was a flat line over the laptop lid.

Mello let it hang until the weight settled where he wanted it. Then, even:

“Don’t compare yourself to me again.” A beat, soft as a click. “You don’t want the version of me that answers that.”

He nudged a matchbook toward me with one fingertip, stopping it exactly at my side.

“Tomorrow. Back door. Two. Clean. We’ll bring you to this address and don’t bring anyone or anything with you.”

He leaned back- not relaxed, just done. “Rod.”

The hand at my elbow was light, directional. The hallway breathed- heat and noise poured in. I palmed the matchbook without looking down.

Time, not trust.

I could do that.

I’d already given him two years, after all.

Chapter 3: The Price of Entry

Summary:

Aria makes her move to find Mello- and pays the initiation fee in blood. A phone call with Dove, a blindfold, a van in the snow, and a gun that won’t stop shaking. She wanted into the lion’s den; now she has to prove she belongs there.

“Are you kidding me? You finally did it?”

The flip phone was a hot square against my ear- the hinge clicked every time my glove brushed it. Salt ground under my boots. An orange streetlamp rinsed the fur at my collar so it looked like it was on fire when I breathed out.

“Yeah,” I said, lifting the phone closer. “I’m… kind of nervous.”

“You’d be heartless if you weren’t.” Dove’s breath fuzzed the line. “So what- your rumor was right? L’s other successor ditched England to play mafia king in America?”

Her voice had sanded down over the last two years. The bubbles were still there- just deeper in the glass. Paper rustled on her end, or maybe it was her pacing. I wished I could fold her into my pocket and take her with me. That ship had sailed a long time ago.

I knocked ash off the cigarette and pulled smoke until my lungs stopped shivering. “Seems like it. Word on the street was one thing. Seeing it was… different.”

“No kidding.” A small laugh that didn’t quite lift. “Is he scary? I’m picturing L in a fur coat and gold chain, which is killing me, but-”

“He’s scary,” I said, cutting across before she built it into a joke I couldn’t stand. “Not L. Blonde. Our age. Eyes like he’s already decided who the hell you are, and he doesn’t need to say it twice. Big guys with bigger guns that shut up when he looks at them. He just looked pissed the entire time, even when I thought he was impressed.”

Silence. I could hear Dove swallow. The lamp hummed. My cigarette burned down faster than I wanted.

“Well, sounds like you have some work cut out for you. Just don’t let those big guys point the guns at you, alright?”

I pressed my mouth flat and didn’t answer. No way I was telling her one of them had, last night.

“Anyway,” Dove said, paper-soft on the line, “what I was saying before- things are mostly fine here, except Light put in this new bullshit rule that makes zero sense.”

My brow pulled tight. I dragged on the cigarette until the filter warmed my fingers. “What rule?”

“Okay, so- here’s the thing. He told the cops and the media they’re not allowed to broadcast criminals anymore. At all. No names, no faces, nothing. I tried to ask him why- pulled him aside, did the whole ‘private question’ voice- and he just brushed me off and told me not to bring it up again. I don’t know what his deal is, and I seriously don’t see how this helps him, because if he can’t see the lists, how is he supposed to kill anyone?”

“Whoa, whoa. Dove.” I raised a hand like she could see me, then dropped it, palm stinging from the cold. “It’s okay. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“But why is he doing this?”

I breathed in more smoke and let it sting. “Maybe it’s altruism. Or maybe it’s PR. Either way, he doesn’t need the broadcasts. Kira’s popular enough that the internet does the curating for him- threads, tip lists, ‘do something about this guy’ posts. The minute the police go quiet, the crowd gets louder. And he’s literally in charge of the people with the files. He says please and a folder appears.”

I heard Dove shuffle- carpet? Sheets?- then a sigh. “Yeah… I guess you’re right. Still. He’s been weird for forever. At least Ryuk-”

Tires screamed. My head snapped toward the road.

A black van drifted in too fast, slush hissing under the wheels, and squared to a stop right in front of me. The windows were inked out, snow webbed across the roof. Headlights cut the flakes into white noise.

“Aria?” Her voice was tinny on the line. I’d already lowered the phone.

This didn’t come as a surprise. I’d been waiting for this.

The driver’s window slid down. Heat and engine breath rolled out. A man watched me from behind the glass- dreadlocks neat, white suit, a purple shirt catching the streetlamp.

“Hey,” I said, bringing the flip to my mouth again. “My ride’s here. I have to go.”

“Aria-” Dove started.

I snapped the phone shut and pocketed it. The cold bit harder without her voice.

I stepped to the curb.

“You her?” the man asked. “Azalea, Aria- whatever the hell you wanna be called.”

I nodded once.

“Good. In.”

I opened the passenger door. Vinyl cold through my tights. Heart doing the wrong rhythm. He kept his hands on the wheel for a beat, eyes forward like I wasn’t there. Then he reached into the door pocket, rummaged, came up with a strip of cloth.

I leaned back instinctively. His eyes narrowed.

“Blindfold.”

He leaned in. I made my body stay still while every part of it wanted the opposite. The cloth smelled like laundry and someone else’s smoke. He tied it snug and the world went dark and loud.

A nervous laugh slipped out. I pinched the meat of my thigh to stop it.

“What,” he said. Low. Flat. It vibrated more than it sounded.

“Nothing. Just- do you always blindfold your plus ones?”

The car slid into drive. I heard his disapproval more than I saw it. “Phones off.”

“They are.”

“You ain’t plus.”

The seatbelt clicked across my chest. The van moved. Snow whispered under us and the lamp hum fell away.

✢ ✢ ✢

Time lost its edges under the blindfold. Heater breath, turn signal clicks, the steady animal hum of the engine- everything looped until it felt like we were driving in a circle. The driver didn’t talk. When he did, it was clipped and to someone else- “Arriving. Safehouse.”- and that’s how I got his name. Pedro. I didn’t say it out loud. I just filed it next to Rod and Mello and pretended my pulse wasn’t counting.

We stopped. The engine ticked as it cooled. No horns, no traffic wash- just wind worrying at something metal. Dead zone.

The door popped. Cold rushed in, stinging through my tights. Pedro’s hand found my elbow- professional, impersonal- and the next thing I knew my knees met concrete. Grit bit through the fabric. I sucked in a breath that tasted like dust and old oil.

Footsteps echoed, multiplied- one heavy, one impatient, one measured. Voices blurred closer.

“Is this the hospitality package?” I said, kneeling, hands flat to keep my balance. “I feel so welcomed.”

“This is the nicest you’ll get. So keep quiet.” Not Rod. Not Pedro. A thinner voice with an edge that wanted to be mean. “You’re not a guest here.”

“We on time?” That was Rod- recognizable, the weight in it.

Then the main attraction, calm as gravity. “Yeah. Take it off her.”

Mello.

The cloth peeled away without ceremony. Cold light hit hard- warehouse fluorescents washed to sickly night. The place looked like a dead factory that had put on its good jewelry: cables veined the walls, pipes sweated, graffiti crawled up columns. In the distance, a zebra-print couch in electric blue lounged in front of a too-nice TV. Closer, a bank of computers blinked like a city at night.

Mello stood above me, cigarette parked at the corner of his mouth, eyes narrowed like he was running scenarios and shooting me in half of them. Pedro was a shadow at my back. Rod and the mouthy one flanked him, waiting for cues.

Pedro took my arms- no cuffs, just guidance. I let him have the motion, then set my own pace as he steered me toward a metal stairwell. Each step clanged- the sound stitched itself up the spine of the place. Footfalls fell in behind us, a small parade.

“Where are we going?” I asked, because silence felt like agreeing.

A soft tsk from Rod.

“You’ll find out,” Mello said, and the way he said it made the staircase feel longer.

We took the corner and the hallway narrowed to a cone of light. My eyes didn’t focus on the bulb- it focused on what lived under it.

Breath, wet and ragged. A chair leg ticking against concrete. The small animal sound a man makes when he tries not to.

He was blindfolded and cuffed to the frame, wrists straining white, sweat printing the front of his T-shirt in the shape of panic. Hair stuck to his temples, chest hitching like each inhale had to be negotiated. The room smelled like damp metal and nerves.

I stopped. Everything else kept moving- the hum of the ballast, the drip somewhere in the dark, the pulse I couldn’t talk down.

What the fuck is this.

The oily blond whose voice I hated stepped in close to the captive and looked at him the way you look at something on your shoe. “Fucking bastard,” he murmured, bending until his breath fogged the man’s ear. “How’s it feel now, huh? Strapped up like a BDSM bitch that can’t get it up. Who’s the jackass now?!”

Mello watched with his arms folded, cigarette burning down in clean inches. He didn’t perform disgust or pleasure. He just measured.

Smoke out. His eyes slid to me, then back to the man in the light. “He skimmed from us and sold our blow,” he said, like charting inventory. Like the rasping in front of us was paperwork. “You’re going to take care of him.”

My mouth forgot how to make words. All I had left was a tremor threaded through my hands that wouldn’t burn out.

Mello shifted a fraction. Not surprise- calculation. He slid two fingers into his red coat, came out with weight, and put it in my palm.

A pistol.

Cold bled into my skin. Oil and metal. My hand smelled like pennies.

“If you’re serious,” he said, eyes flat on mine, “you remove our problems.”

I shook. Couldn’t stop. Looked down at the gun, then up at him. Nothing in his face moved- just that steady, bored expectancy that made my stomach try to crawl out.

I forced myself to look at the man in the chair. Blindfold soaked dark at the edges. Sweat crawling down his throat. The tiny, hopeless clatter of cuff on metal every time he pulled. My heartbeat got so loud it ate the room.

I wanted to cry. To bolt. To hand the gun back and beg.
I wanted to live more.

The oily blond stepped in and kicked the captive’s shin. Hard. The chair jumped- a strangled sound ripped through the damp cloth.

“Yeah, fuck you, bitch!” he laughed into the man’s face. “If it was up to me, I’d rip out your goddamn teeth and mount them on my mantel-”

Mello moved before the sentence finished. One step, forearm across the blond’s chest- metal rang as the guy hit the support. The cigarette didn’t even tremble.

“Enough.” The muzzle kissed the man’s forehead. “One more word and I’ll strap you in myself.”

Silence. The oily blond swallowed it and backed off, jaw tight.

Mello turned back to me like nothing had happened. The room narrowed to him, the chair, the gun in my hand.

“Now,” he said, voice low and impatient, “are you going to do this, or keep me fucking waiting?”

I looked down and realized the barrel had found him without me. The sightline snapped tight- just me, the gun, the small square of his sweaty forehead under the light. Everything else smeared. 

My hands shook so hard the muzzle wobbled- and I knew they could all see it. He tried to beg through the cloth, the sound wet and high, words turning to animal noise.

My jaw locked until something clicked. My fingers crushed the grip- they went numb and hot at the same time.

I’ve done this before. I’ve killed more than these men have. Same math, closer range. Same math.

My teeth chattered. I squeezed my eyes shut and the dark bloomed with afterimages- the blindfold, the chair, the white of his shirt- floating dumber and closer. Make him a name. Make him paper. Make him the scratch of a pen, not breath, not warm, not-

I looked at Mello before I could stop myself. “What’s his name…?”

His nose wrinkled. He took the cigarette in, slow, and let smoke out like boredom. “Does it fucking matter?”

It shouldn’t. It couldn’t. “No.”

“Then go on with it already.”

The leak from a nearby pipe wouldn’t shut up.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.

It crawled under my skin until it was the only sound left. Rod’s shoe tapped off-beat.

My palms slid on the grip- I couldn’t tell if it was sweat or the gun sweating for me. My heart had moved to my throat and was punching up, trying to get out.

Fuck. Fuck, do it. Do it. Do it now.

Plink.
Plink.
Plink.

Do it. Now.

I leveled the barrel and the world narrowed until all that existed was a thumbprint of skin under the bulb. My hands shook so hard the front sight jittered.

I set the pad of my finger where it needed to be.

Breathed in. Failed. Tried again.

Same math. Closer range. Same-

I pressed.

The sound wasn’t a bang- it was a metal door slamming inside my skull. The light hiccuped. Hot grit blew back into my face- burned powder, dust, something copper. 

The chair kicked an inch and scraped a scream out of the floor. His head snapped and the blindfold jerked sideways- red feathered the wall in a fan that didn’t look real until a warm dot found my cheek.

For a second I thought I’d missed- the room was white noise and ringing- and then everything snapped back wrong. The captive sagged against the cuffs. The leak stopped, as if the pipes held their breath with me, and then started again, louder.

My wrists throbbed. The gun felt welded to my hand. I realized my mouth was parted like I’d been trying to drink air.

Someone exhaled behind me. Rod’s shoe stopped tapping.

I didn’t feel the recoil. I felt the room decide I could stay.

Mello’s hand came into my vision, calm as a metronome. He took the pistol out of my fingers like he was removing a splinter.

“Good,” he said, voice level, as if we’d finally finished a chore. “Now we can talk rules.”

The pipes started again.
Plink.

I didn’t wipe the warm dot off my cheek. It felt like proof. It felt like a target.

Mello holstered the pistol, shook ash from his cigarette, and spoke like he was reading stock.

“Rule one. You don’t leave without me. Not for a smoke. Not for air. You’re on-site until I say otherwise.”

Door. Lock. Keys you don’t get. My fingers twitched around nothing. You asked for this.

Plink.

“Rule two. No names. Not his. Not mine. Not yours. You’re Aria here or nothing at all. Anyone slips, I correct it.”

Make people paper. The word Aria felt suddenly breakable in my mouth.

Tick. Rod’s shoe again, smaller now.

“Rule three. Phones stay dead. No calls out. No calls in. You don’t talk to cops. You don’t talk to ‘friends.’ You don’t talk.”

My throat closed. Dove. I tasted copper because I’d bitten my lip. “No,” I heard myself say.

The room adjusted around the word. Jack’s eyebrows went up, interested in getting hurt again. Mello didn’t move.

“No?” he repeated, mild, like the word was a marble he rolled in his teeth.

“It’s non-negotiable.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone who didn’t shake. Lucky her. “If I disappear, the person who I call starts asking questions. That brings heat you don’t want. It is in your best interest that I don’t fall off the map.”

He looked at me a second too long. The corner of the cigarette burned down in a clean line. “You sure you’re not working for N?” he asked, almost bored. “Last chance to admit it to me. Sounds like his brand of insurance.”

“No. I’m not. It’s personal.” I held his eyes because looking at the wall meant seeing the spray again. The gore I refused to believe I had caused.

The leak kept time.

He let the question hang until it went stale. Then: “For now, rule three stands. You breathe where I can see it.” A beat. “Convince me you’re not a cop, we revisit it.”

It wasn’t a win. It was a wedge.

Plink.

“Rule four. You don’t touch weapons unless I put them in your hand. You don’t touch product unless I tell you to move it. You don’t touch my people unless you’re told to fix them.”

He just put one in your hand- something in me said, not sure whether to laugh or be sick.

“Rule five. You answer to me. Not Rod. Not Jack.” He didn’t look at Jack- he didn’t have to. “If they have a request, it comes with my voice attached.”

Jack shifted, chastened by gravity rather than name.

“Rule six. Your room is where I say. First nights, the lock is on our side.” He shrugged one shoulder, casual. “You pass tests faster, it opens faster.”

My knees remembered the concrete. First test. Passed. At a cost I can smell.

He watched me take all of it in- the blood dot, the ringing that made his voice feel far. “Questions?”

I swallowed. “And if I have to pee in the middle of the night or something..? You gonna keep me locked in?”

He smiled without warmth. “You can hold it. Or you can knock. You’ll have a neighbor.”

Silence stretched until I heard the pipes again.

“Knock twice, you get an escort. Door open, hands where I can see them. Ninety seconds.” He tipped his chin at Jack. “If she makes it a hundred, start counting.”

“Counting what?” Jack asked, too eager.

“Fingers,” Mello said, and turned back to me like he’d ordered coffee.

He let the patience drain from his face and it made him look younger and much meaner. “Prove you’re worth keeping, and I’ll decide how loud your tether is allowed to be.”

The temperature in the room felt wrong. I nodded once because nodding was cheaper than speaking.

Mello exhaled smoke toward the bulb, like he was testing air currents. “Jack,” he said without looking. “Show her the room. If she tries a door, break a wrist. One. She needs the other.”

The blood dot cooled on my cheek. I still didn’t wipe it.

Pedro’s hand found my elbow again, professional, impersonal. Jack hovered, chastened and eager. Rod fell in behind us, a shadow with boots.

On the way to the stairs, the leak counted me out.

Plink. Dove will worry.
Plink. Make a plan.
Plink. Breathe where he can see it, until you don’t.

The hallway breathed, and I didn’t.

Chapter 4: The Room the Size of a Thought

Summary:

Aria arrives at the safehouse Mello assigned her to- if you can call it a safehouse. A closet-sized room, a blinking camera, cold metal stairs, and Matt, sprawled on a bed with a controller in hand. While the Task Force disappears behind government silence, Aria tries to settle into a life made of wires, smoke, and the kind of quiet that makes old memories crawl.

They walked me to the shithole they called my room without touching me- just close enough that their boots set my pace. The stairwell clattered like hot dust and old bleach- the handrail left a gray line on my palm. My fingers were still curled like the gun was there. I told them to unclench. They didn’t.

This wasn’t the Task Force- the neat keycards, the quiet carpet, L’s antiseptic air. This was wire and weld. Dove didn’t even get the highrise building anymore. She and the rest of the Task Force were back to those same hotels we’d been in since Light was incarcerated. We were all downsized versions of ourselves.

Light’s name tried to surface more than it already had. I shoved it back down. Every time I thought about it, my lungs asked for smoke.

Rod stopped at a steel door with a welded number plate and a peephole mounted on the wrong side. The corridor hummed- electric, awake. Somewhere, a radio whispered and then thought better of it.

“Can I smoke in here?” I asked.

Rod’s laugh started in his stomach and rolled up mean. “No shit, kid. We’re not the NPA you’re used to.”

I thinned my mouth and didn’t give him anything. The lock kicked once, twice- and the bar slid. 

The door swung in on a room the size of a thought. Cluttered with bottles and old takeout. Crowded. A boxy TV threw a rectangle of cold light over everything while some game ticked and chimed in loops.

Heat lived on the left- red lived there, too. Plaid blanket. Hazard placards bolt-gunned into brick. Overhead pipes knuckled down the wall and turned the space into a maze. A controller cable draped from the mattress to the floor like a tripwire.

I blinked twice. There was a man on the bed- probably the same age as I was. Leaning against the wall with a controller in his hand and a striped shirt on.

“Twice if you gotta knock,” Jack said from the hall. “Door stays open. Hands visible.”

“Noted,” I said, and that cost less than breathing.

He let the door kiss the frame and lingered just long enough to make it clear I still belonged to the hallway. Then his boots faded.

The TV beeped. A thumb clicked a pause button.

“Closet assignment, huh?” the boy on the bed said without looking up. Goggles were pushed into his hair- copper lenses caught the TV light like coins at the bottom of a fountain. He lay diagonally across the plaid like he owned geometry. A cigarette smoldered in a chipped glass ashtray on the nightstand.

I found my half. Through a tattered sheet instead of a door. Not red. Army-olive cot. Ladder shelf. Two black cases stacked like a plan B. The canvas curtain pinned into place to pretend I had a wall- it breathed when the corridor breathed. On the opposite brick, a palm-tree neon buzzed pink and cyan like a joke that never learned when to stop.

The air tasted like stale dust. A draft crawled around my ankles from somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Matt,” he added, finally glancing over. The look was a flick and a file. “You’re that cop chick, aren’t you.”

“Aria,” I said, because I wanted one thing of mine in the room. The neon painted my hands borrowed.

He followed my gaze to the corner camera and tilted his chin. “Yeah. It blinks when Rod gets bored. Try not to teach it new tricks.”

I set the cases down. The cot made a sound like it wanted to refuse me.

“Smoke?” I asked, already thumbing the lighter.

“Use the tray,” Matt said, pointing to a dented tin perched on the shared shelf. “Vent’s garbage. If the alarm yelps too loud, Rod gets creative.”

I gave this ‘Matt’ a sidelong look and ducked behind the canvas into my half- window with bars and frost, the ladder shelf, the vent he’d warned me about ticking like a bad clock. Two cases down. Cot tested. Then I pushed the curtain back and stepped into his territory.

He was propped sideways on the sheets still, goggles pressed tight, eyes glued to the CRT. The room had that TV-whine you feel in your teeth. Controller cable snaked to the floor. The screen threw a smear of streetlights and palm trees while tires squealed, a radio hook cut in and out, and somebody yelled off-screen.

“Dammit,” he hissed, sitting forward, elbows on knees. “Drive-by.”

A spray of pops on the speakers- his car fishtailed- big red WASTED wiped the screen.

I watched a second longer than I meant to. “GTA?”

He glanced over, mouth ticking up. “San Andreas.” A thumb tapped the start button- the disc whir spun up again. “You play?”

I shifted on both feet. “I’ve seen it.”

“Cool. Don’t trip the cable- it kills the run. And put your cases where the camera sees them. Saves everyone trouble.”

I swallowed, nodded. “Thanks. I won’t brick your save.”

“Appreciated.” He still didn’t look over. “Fire door’s the one next to ours. If you need air, crack it and stand on the landing. Don’t go past the rail. Camera’s on the stairs. Mello counts steps.”

A thin draft slipped under the door, smelling like wet metal. The EXIT sign hummed through the wall.

My eyes went to the steel. “You and Mello- close?”

Matt flicked the pause button with his thumb, finally cutting me a glance. “Close enough that he eats his chocolate in here.” A half-hazard flick of the wrist. “Close enough that if you breathe on that landing, he knows.”

My eyes flicked to his hand on the controller, then back to the door. I let the silence sit long enough to hear the EXIT sign buzz through the wall.

“So he’ll get mad if I go out there?”

“Not if I’m here.”

He said it like a keycard phrase, not a favor. Exception handler. Noted. If Mello parked me with him, there was a reason- eyes, access, leash.

I shifted, dug in my bag until the cellophane crackle gave me away. Matt didn’t look up until the Marlboros cleared the zipper.

“You got any extras?”

I weighed the pack in my palm. “Trade you if you’ve got menthol crush balls.”

Sideways smirk. He reached to the nightstand, slid a drawer, came up with a tiny zip bag and a toothpick- blue beads like candy. He tossed it and it clicked off my knuckles.

“Good taste.”

I pressed a bead into the filter and popped it- soft snap. Menthol bloomed sharp and cold. I flicked one out for him and passed it over- he took it without taking his eyes off the CRT.

I lit up. The first drag scratched through the cordite ghost still living in my throat. Smoke lifted, hit the stale air, spread thin. The camera’s red dot blinked once, bored.

Matt set his cigarette in the chipped glass, finally glanced over. “Landing’s fine,” he added, nodding at the fire door. He went back to the game.

I nodded, and followed his words, pulling open the heavy door with a sound so loud it made me flinch. Matt didn’t. The cold winter air rushed in, and I sighed in it before walking out.

My boots clattered against the metal floor. The fire stairs were a steel switchback welded to the wall. Frost filmed the handrail. Below, the alley narrowed into a black throat: cracked asphalt, frozen slush shoved into gray ridges, a dumpster shouldering a busted pallet.

Landing only. Matt had said. Mello counts steps. 

The words sat still in my brain. The camera’s red dot watched me breathe. I squinted up at it and tried to decide if he was watching right now.

Did it matter?

I leaned into the rail. The menthol filled my lungs and bloomed cold- smoke lifted and got chewed to pieces by the floodlight. The handrail bit through my glove. 

I wasn’t planning to bolt. I wasn’t planning to betray anyone. I’d fought to be here. This was the door I’d picked.

My hands still trembled. Ash jittered off the tip like it wanted to confess.

The picture came back anyway: blindfold skewed, head snapping, the fan of red that didn’t look real until a warm dot found my cheek. The pipe’s tick in the basement had the same rhythm as the drip out here. It threaded my ears and tightened my throat.

Menthol tasted like toothpaste over pennies. Nausea climbed, considered me, and sat down.

Sleep, I told myself. Close your eyes, let your body do the forgetting.

I palmed the bar and shouldered the door. Matt was in the same sprawl, only the TV hissed broadcast now instead of game beeps. Maybe he’d rage quit. Maybe he’d gotten bored of dying.

I angled for the canvas curtain- then the TV did that urgent chime that means it wants you to listen. Anchor voice, lacquered. The banner at the bottom flipped to SPECIAL REPORT, and I turned my head without moving.

“Japan’s National Police Agency has issued a nationwide directive effective at midnight that prohibits the public release of criminal information. The order instructs police departments and media partners not to broadcast or post suspect names, photographs, charges, or investigative details on TV or the internet. It’s unknown as of right now if the United States will follow in this directive, but that’s the information we have for now.”

Matt grunted something I didn’t catch, exhaling a ribbon of smoke that curled toward the ceiling before he tipped his chin at the TV. “These your guys?”

I stared longer than I needed to. Faces I knew too well. Suits that used to mean safety.
“They were my guys,” I said. True enough to hurt.

He didn’t dig. Just hummed, thumbed the remote, and the screen snapped back to pixel blood and respawn timers. Controller clicks, low gunfire- white noise swallowing the room.

I slipped down the hall, tugged the canvas curtain across the doorway until it kissed the wall- privacy performance- and dropped onto the bed. Springs complained. The overhead bulb buzzed like it was counting.

The camera in the corner blinked its little red pulse. No blind spots. Not that I had Myru to check- just me and the steady monotonous of being watched.

“Hey,” I called, voice flattening around the word. “These camera feeds trackable online? Like- could someone hack into them?”

Buttons rattled. A digital death yelped. Then Matt, from the other side of the wall:
“Nah. I burned ’em off. You got a tail?”

Light’s name tried to climb my throat. I swallowed it back down where it belonged. Maybe I was clear. Maybe he’d let me go. Maybe last year’s search had finally burned out.

“No,” I said, rolling onto my side, facing the wall so the lens could have my back instead of my face. “Just making sure some pervert isn’t watching me sleep.”

A snort. Chair creak. Another shooting on his screen.

I let the curtain sway once and settle. Let the red blink become a heartbeat I could ignore. The room smelled like smoke and dust and old carpet mold. Somewhere in the building a pipe ticked in that slow, patient way metal learns.

I closed my eyes and let the noise cover me. Then I slept.

Chapter 5: House Rules

Summary:

Aria wakes up with the weight of yesterday still on her skin and the safehouse breathing around her- pipes, static, and the camera’s red blink. A conversation through the vent suggests her mistake hasn’t gone unnoticed. Matt keeps watch, Mello keeps score, and the crew learns one of their runners died of a “heart attack.” Aria is pulled deeper into Mello’s world, whether she wants to be or not.

For a few soft seconds I sold myself a lie: the smell of the hotel sheets, Dove in the next room, a day I could still choose. Then the ceiling was wrong. The air shifted into metal and old smoke. The cot wire pinched my spine. The camera’s red dot blinked like an eyelid that never closed. 

It didn’t happen, I told myself.
Not the head slipping sideways. Not the warm dot on my cheek. Not the weight in my hand. 

I lifted my palm anyway and there it was- the faint bruise where the grip had lived, a shadow of gun residue in the lines. My stomach folded in on itself. I tried to smooth it all down with routine: stand up, find the makeup bag, make a face that could pass. My hands shook like they didn’t believe me.

The room answered back with clutter and noise- bent shelf, paper bag bowing in on itself, the thin whine of the TV through the wall, a run of game bleeps like somebody else’s heartbeat. I chased the dream again, told myself I could still crawl back into it if I didn’t move too fast. 

But the building cleared its throat and didn’t let me live out that delusion.
Voices, low and braided, faintly echoed like water through pipes. Real. Here.

I followed the sound to what appeared to be the source- the vent. I sank into a crouch, heels on the concrete, not quite knees. Timed my inhale to the fan so it would swallow it. The words sharpened as I leaned in, trying to discern which belonged to who.

The vent hummed against my ear.

“…shot clean, but before it happened she asked his name. Right before.”

The grills were cold under my fingertips, ridged metal biting skin. Menthol still sat at the back of my tongue like bad habits.

“…which name did you say?”

A dry laugh- maybe a cough. “Nothing.”

Numbness crept into my fingers. I shifted, careful, and breathed shallow.

“…rules that need names and faces.”

A chair scraped. My heart tried to answer it.

“…usual lockdown. No paperwork, no surnames.”

Silence stretched long enough to hear the building choke. Then: “House rule. Keep her close till we know if it was curiosity… or-”

The voice drowned into static.

I let the breath go and pushed back from the vent. So that was that. Keep it in mind. The slip-up cost me. I couldn’t afford another.

I couldn’t afford to be under the same scrutiny I was with L and Light. Not again.

“Hey, cop girl.”

I spun. Breath caught high.

Matt lounged in the doorway, unreadable. If he’d clocked me at the vent, it didn’t show on his face.

“Briefing downstairs in a minute.” His voice was almost bored. “Here.”

Something arced through the air. My hands moved before my head did.

McDonald’s..?

Warm paper hit my palms- grease, salt, the shock of it. A chicken burger, wrapped and waiting.

“Eat up. We’re not starving you here,” he said, already turning the corner. The heavy door shut, the lock thumped, and the room went quiet enough to hear my pulse.

All that adrenaline had eaten hunger alive- I hadn’t felt it. Not until now. Now it rushed in like a tide. I tore into the paper like I was an animal and took a bite.

I ate the sandwich like a woman starved- oil on my fingers, the patty waking up my tongue. The wrapper sighed when it was empty.

Then my stomach turned. Nausea rose hard and fast. The smear of ketchup on the paper went redder, wetter- blood on plaster, blood on my hands.

I bit my tongue to anchor myself. Copper. No relief. I desperately scrambled to the step-shelf, yanked a menthol from the drawer, thumbed the lighter- wheel, spark, flame. My hands shook so badly I almost missed the filter.

First drag burned, second cooled. Mint cut the metal in my throat and nicotine ironed the edges flat. The nausea slowly turned into nothing. 

I tapped ash into Matt’s tray, and ground the butt out in a ring someone else had left, then told my legs to move.

The metal door groaned as it shut behind me.

I tried to tell my brain to shut up. To calm down. That this was just part of the same game I’d been playing for years and I knew how to handle suspicion against me.

But then-

Blip!

A text. My hand was already in my pocket.

Dove.

I flipped the phone open. Blue light washed my hands.

Dove: You settled in okay?

I paused at the top step. She never texted during the day. I pictured her on the other side of the globe, thumb hovering, chewing her acrylics. The thought made me sigh- and smile, a little.

Me: I’m good. Bed sucks tho. Everything good on ur front?

The reply hit before the hinge finished creaking.

Dove: Same as always. Probs a good thing :p

I killed the vibration, snapped the phone shut, and slid it deep into my pocket. No surprise buzzes mid-meeting. I didn’t need more eyes on me.

The metal stairs rang under my boots, one hard clank per step, the air below smelling like dust and cold steel. Dove’s text shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. A small thing with teeth.

She was still stuck orbiting Light. So was everyone else. That was why I was here- to pry his fingers off the world and take the crown out of his hands.

And Mello- Mello was the fastest way to do it. I just had to remember that.

I turned the corner, and the living room met me back. A big open space with pipes and metal and a large blue zebra-printed couch. I took in everyone’s positions for a second, scanning the room for the quickest second and noting everyone while they looked back. I wanted to gauge the hierarchy here, and their seating positions could be a subtle clue.

Matt was parked at a side desk, shoulders rounded, fingers working the keys in quick, careless bursts. Mello stood front and center- Rod slouched on the couch beside him. Jack, Jose, and Pedro occupied the far end like a barricade- Jack bent over a ledger, pen ticking numbers. Jose and Pedro sat upright, blank-faced, the kind of stillness you hire.

I glanced up at the ceiling camera- the tiny red steady- then back to the room. The way they watched me said enough. Fair. I’d only been here a day.

Mello nodded toward the couch. “Sit.”

The vinyl gave a tired squeak as I dropped into the empty spot.

“I’ve called you all down here because I learned something pretty interesting.” Mello preached, his heavy boots clanking with him as he paced slowly back and forth. I wondered if they weighed him down. “Something about one of our runners.”

Jack cocked a brow. “Which runner?”

My eyes narrowed. Mello didn’t stop. He didn’t even look at me- just kept pacing, slow and tight, like a caged thing pretending to behave.

“Does it matter?” he said. “I saw him on the news. He goes dark, I figure the cops got there first. Fine. But they’re booking him for garbage he didn’t do- worse than the shit he actually did.”

He stopped and finally faced the room. “I’m going to assume none of you knew. Now I’m hearing he’s dead. ‘Heart attack.’ And my warehouse was shut down for four hours. That’s four hours of profit burned, and the police are probably going to be on all of our asses.”

The fluorescent hum seemed louder after that, the only sound echoing being the swift clacking of Matt’s keys. My phone felt heavy in my pocket, but I kept my hands still.

Mello broke the silence first. He tugged a chocolate bar from his pocket, snapped off a square without looking, and let it melt on his tongue like patience.
“Four hours,” he said. “That’s a hole in my calendar. I don’t do holes.”

Matt finally turned, the monitor glare reflecting off his goggles. “The runner left the warehouse at 10:14, and a patrol car chased him at 10:41. The whole ‘medical event’ happened at 11:50 when the news broke. They pushed the coroner fast.”

“Heart attack,” Jack echoed, pen pausing over the ledger.

“Signature,” Mello said, almost bored. “Which means either the cops got lucky, or somebody handed them a name.”

His gaze slid across the room like a blade testing edges. Jose and Pedro didn’t flinch. Rod leaned forward, elbows on knees, weighing the mood. Jack looked back to his numbers. The red dot on the camera didn’t blink.

“Who spoke to him last?” Mello asked.

“Not me,” Jack said, too quick.

Rod lifted a hand. “He checked in with my floor, boss. Routine.” A shrug. “Said he was grabbing lunch.”

Mello made a small noise that wasn’t agreement. “Matt.”

“On it.” More typing. “I’ll have audio off the block mics in five.”

Mello turned to me then- properly, finally. The room seemed to tilt a few degrees with it. “You.”

I kept my hands flat on my knees. “Me.”

“You have a read?”

I swallowed the taste of menthol that wasn’t there anymore. “If it’s Kira, the timing says a leak, not coincidence. He died in custody, clean paperwork, and the news broke almost instantly- someone wanted it tidy. If the name moved, it moved before the arrest.”

A beat. The corner of his mouth twitched- not a smile. Approval, maybe, or just the echo of it. He nodded once and went back to pacing.

“Here’s what happens,” he said, voice sharpening. “Jack, close the books on the last forty-eight. Anything that touches the warehouse goes in the fire. Rod, you pull your floor boss and the two above him. Separate rooms. If they’re clean, they’ll stay clean after I’m done. Jose, Pedro- warehouse sweep, top to bottom. No badges, no paperwork, no excuses. If a cop sneezes near my door, I want the tissue.”

He stopped again. The chocolate bar crinkled as he folded the wrapper shut, precise. “Matt, I want a grid. Overlay arrest time with patrol routes, precinct radio, and news clocks. If somebody primed this, they left a fingerprint in the timing.”

“And me?” I asked before I could decide not to.

Mello’s eyes flicked to mine. “You’re coming with me.”

Rod’s head turned a fraction. Jack’s pen started ticking again, like a metronome for tension. I felt my heart sink and start again like I was on a pacemaker.

Mello went on. “We’re short a runner. Replacement’s green and stupid. Someone’s going to make a mistake and let something slip tonight unless someone holds their hand.” He angled his chin at me. “Congratulations. You’re a hand.”

I kept my face still, trying to hide the way my head spun with a million different thoughts. “And if he panics?”

“Then you don’t.” He peeled another square of chocolate and didn’t eat it. “If Kira’s touching my lines, we move before he learns the shapes.”

Matt’s screen chimed. “Got something. Dockside payphone, 10:28. Our guy uses it, thirty seconds later another call routes to the precinct switchboard. No audio yet, just metadata. Same tower.”

Mello’s eyes sharpened. “So our boy talks, then somebody else talks faster.”

“Looks that way.”

“Pull the number,” Mello said. “If it’s blocked, I want the block.”

Matt’s fingers were already moving. “Working.”

A door slammed somewhere out in the hall, the sound riding the ductwork into the room. Jose and Pedro were on their feet before the echo died. Rod stood, too, slow and deliberate, like a man getting ready for weather.

Mello slipped the untouched square of chocolate back into the wrapper and tucked it away. “We’re done sitting.”

He looked at me one last time, measuring. “You keep your phone off in my car. If you get cute, you get lost. We leave tonight. Subtle.”

“Understood.”

“Good.” He tipped his head toward the corridor. “Walk.”

I rose. The vinyl sighed again. As I passed the desk, Matt didn’t look up, but he slid a folded note toward the edge with two fingers. A frequency and a street, scrawled in quick block letters. I palmed it without breaking stride.

The red light on the camera watched us leave. In the hall, the air smelled like cold metal and old smoke. Mello didn’t slow. I matched his pace.

I thought of the news, the neat little euphemisms, the way a heart could be turned into paperwork. My phone felt like a stone in my pocket. I kept my hands still and stepped into the bright, ugly stairwell.

Chapter 6: Boosted

Summary:

A surveillance run with Mello turns sharp when Aria’s instincts trip a memory she’s been trying not to see. Between warehouse shadows, overheard threats, and a phone ringing at the worst possible moment, she learns exactly what it means to “work for” Mello and what ghosts she can’t afford to project onto the living.

By the time the sun went down, Pedro had me in the back seat, elbow to the glass, the city dragging past in long neon smears. Somewhere outside, a siren thinned itself into the distance. Mello rode up front beside him, quiet, the dash light carving his cheekbones into sharp lines. 

We hit a red.
Mello leaned his arm back- not his body- and passed a slip back.
A number was scrawled out. I blinked up at him, confused, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

“If you see anything, report to Matt first if I’m not there.”

I swallowed and checked the slip again, forcing the numbers into memory before I folded it twice and slid it into the inner pocket- behind the seam, where hands don’t land by accident. “Got it.”

He turned fast. Fingers closed around my wrist- precise pressure right over the pulse. Heat flashed up my arm. Every instinct said yank back- but I locked my elbow instead.

“Don’t improvise,” he said. His eyes were dark and level, the dash light flattening them to glass. Predator-calm. The kind of look that made you remember every lie you were holding.

The seatbelt clicked near my hip when I shifted, making space that didn’t need making. “Wasn’t planning to.”

“Good.” He let go. Blood rushed back- my fingers prickled. He faced front again, profile cut in red brake-glow. “Keep it boring.”

I flexed my hand once under the coat. The ghost of his grip lingered on my skin like a stamp. Boring keeps you alive, I told myself. I could do boring. I just had to ignore the part of me that had leaned forward when he grabbed me.

Pedro took the next turn and the city folded into warehouses- low buildings, sodium lights, wet gravel. We rolled past a line of loading bays to a door stenciled with a crooked 3. The engine ticked as it cooled. I opened the door and half-expected Pedro to step out with us, but he stayed with his hands planted on the steering wheel. Mello’s door clicked after me. The night air was colder when I stepped out. It got into my sleeves first.

Inside, the place breathed work. Chemical-sweet clung to the concrete- plastic, cleaner, something sharp. Through slatted office glass: stainless tables, gloved hands weighing and re-weighing, vacuum sealers chattering; heat guns whispering over plastic, pallets shrink-wrapped into neat, ugly geometry. Blue drums with masking-tape dates slept by the scale. Nobody said the product out loud. The math did- counts, weights, routes.

Door Three was colder, and TV static leaked down the hall from somewhere I couldn’t see. The floor was scored with old pallet scuffs and boot arcs.

Mello posted a few steps off, angled to watch the corridor and me at the same time. He didn’t bother with the monitors. His attention moved like a blade- clean, fast, quiet- as he leaned against a support beam.
“We’re watching people, not cameras,” he muttered, low, arms crossed over the leather on his chest. “That’s Matt’s job tonight.”

I flipped open a notebook from my pocket and drew my grid: Time / Person / Direction /Outside Noise / Notes- even though I already knew the middle column wouldn’t matter tonight. My pen hovered. He came close enough to nudge my hand lower on the barrel with two fingers.

“You write cleaner under stress if your hand’s lower.”

I didn’t look up. “I’ll try not to make it art.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Make it right.”

Down the hall a TV teased a crime segment at the half-hour. I marked it. Footsteps scuffed somewhere behind the next corner.

My eyes stuck to his face a beat too long. He didn’t look over- good- but something in the way he spoke tugged another face up out of me. Not a perfect match, just the outline: quiet that emptied a room, orders that sounded like choices until you realized they weren’t.

L.

The tilt of his voice when he said please like a verdict. Porcelain clink. Sugar, sugar, sugar. The way I used to breathe easier when he was in the room and hate myself for it later.

“When they move,” Mello said, and I blinked out of it, “your pen moves.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted iron. Right. He was born to be the next L. Of course there’d be echoes. Don’t put a dead man’s shape over a living one. Don’t let grief redraw his face. That’s not fair. That’s not safe.

I set the tip to the paper and waited for the first pair of shoes to show. His shadow slid across my page again. It steadied my hand. I wished it didn’t.

I wet my throat and angled just enough to catch his profile while my pen kept moving. Something rose to say- nothing worth it- so I shut my mouth. The hallway snagged my eye instead.

Footsteps.

Two lean shapes drifted past, stringy, wired, empty-handed. House glaze in their eyes. The one with the hunched shoulders and stringy hair muttered into the other’s ear, then his gaze clipped Mello’s for a beat too long. 

It widened- then snapped away like he’d touched a live wire.

My pen flicked without asking.
23:42- two staff, empty-handed, past door 3.

If he came here often, the air wouldn’t do that thing where it freezes around him. They’d nod, breathe. Instead, they flinched. Mello doesn’t run laps. He whistles. He hosts the game.

A presence warmed my shoulder. I turned. He’d leaned in just enough to skim the margin.

“You think they’re slacking off?”

I blinked. Shook my head. “They don’t look busy.”

The words were out before I could edit them. Before I could tell myself to shut up. “L would’ve called that a tell.”

Mello straightened like a wire unbent. Eyes narrowed to slits, his mouth curled, slow and mean. He looked me over the way you look at something you don’t want on your shoes.

“So you two really worked together, huh?”

Not curious. A near-sneer.

“Yeah.” Heat crept up my neck anyway, defensive despite myself. “You look upset by that.”

Something flashed across his face and disappeared. The rosary in his fist clicked once- hard.

“Don’t project.” His answer came back short, hard in the empty hall. “He called a lot of things ‘tells.’ Favourite party trick.”

I pressed my mouth thin and let it roll off. The name had snagged on something inside him- not my business. Not yet.

I shifted the notebook, looked up. “You asked what I thought. I told you.”

“I asked if they’re slacking.” He leaned that fraction closer, eyes on my notes like he could will the ink to write me to shut up. “And don’t say his name here unless it buys me something.”

So you are upset. I didn’t say it out loud. He snapped a square of chocolate too hard and the foil wrinkled. He didn’t eat it.

“He liked proximity when it made him look clever,” Mello said, voice sanded flat. “I like results. If you see a tell, act. Get their names. Check if door three is actually empty.” A beat. “Unless you were planning to send L a nice little report underground.”

The line landed and rang for too long in my ears. 

“I came to you to do right by his grave,” I said at last, pen still moving. “I hope we still have that in mind.”

“You work for me, not the other way around. You’ll see your results.” His mouth barely moved, the words cut clean. “Work for me, you use my language.”

I let the breath go and nodded. Not worth the argument- not if I wanted him on my side, and Light out of the seat. I closed my mouth before it could open again.

Silence pooled back in. He pushed off the wall and settled against the support beam, shoulders locking like a bolt. Down the corridor a pipe ticked- drip… drip- steady as a pulse. I held my pen above the page. Nothing to write. Nothing to say.

Then the air shifted.

Voices- thin, distant- dragging their echoes toward us.

Our heads both turned in unison, but there was nothing there. Only the voices bounding off of the hallway’s bend.

“You hear he got boosted? Dumb little bastard…”

My eyes narrowed. I flicked a look at Mello, then put my head down and scrawled one word across the page: boosted.

A second voice bled through the dark. “His fault for fucking around.”

Mello pushed off the support beam, brows pulled tight.

I shot an arm out across his chest. He cut me a glare, and I pressed a finger to my lips. Listen.

He peeled my hand off- rough, annoyed- but stayed put, arms folded, shoulder to concrete again.

Two silhouettes slid across the bare bulb, slicing the light into hard angles. No faces. Just boots and the scrape of soles.

“The Liturgist was lurking out back yesterday,” one said. “Watching. Creepy as shit. Told Todd to knock it off- look where that got him.”

A buzzer suddenly cracked the air- long, industrial. It ricocheted down the hall and I flinched. The men just sighed in annoyance.

They didn’t leave.

Their footsteps came our way, voices dipping to a mumble I couldn’t catch.

Mello turned and jerked his chin. Shot me a face that said ‘hide’.

I quickly slipped myself behind the beam, shoulder to cinderblock, notebook flat to my thigh.

They rounded the corner. I could finally see faces- oily skin, beard, nicotine teeth. They clocked Mello and stiffened.

“Hey, boss.”

Mello stared back, unreadable.

My phone lit in my pocket.

Then it rang.

A full-volume, stupid, cheerful ring that made my stomach drop through the floor.

Mello’s eyes snapped to mine, wide and furious. The men turned toward the beam as the sound burrowed straight into me.

“The fuck was that?”

My pulse hit my throat. They started for me. If they saw the pad-

Move.

I slid to my knees, jammed the notebook under my thigh, yanked my hair up in a knot. My hands fumbled with the flip phone until I paused. Let it keep ringing. I wiped my mouth with the heel of my hand, smearing lipstick to hell. Mello’s brow twitched- confusion, then the barest flick of understanding.

They found me.

“Who the fuck are you?” Beard squinted. “Bitches don’t work here.” He tipped his head toward Mello. “Boss, you didn’t see the rat?”

I kept my gaze low, cheeks burning on purpose. “Oh my god, I- this is so embarrassing.”

“What?” Beard snapped.

I popped up fast, keeping my foot over the notebook, and fumbled my zipper like I’d just realized it was down. Words tripped over my tongue. “I’m not- I mean- uh- I’m with him.”

Silence. Then both sets of eyes went huge.

“Oh. Shit.” The other one stuttered, already backing away. He threw a panicked look at Mello. “Our bad, boss. We’ll, uh- yeah. We’ll give you… privacy.”

I have never seen two men evacuate a hallway so fast.

The phone finally stopped ringing. The quiet left a high, electrical whine in my ears. My pulse finally died down enough to let me breathe.

Mello didn’t say “nice save.” He didn’t have to. His mouth took the ghost of a smirk, there and gone, before he looked past me toward where the voices had disappeared and murmured, almost amused, “Boosted, huh?”

I scrubbed at my mouth with my thumb, trying to herd the lipstick back into the shape of a mouth and not a smear. No mirror. No hope. I let the breath leave me and we started down the hall, our steps bouncing off concrete and steel.

“We should check where they said he was hanging around- out back.” My voice sounded steadier than my hands felt.

Mello turned, blond falling messy across his eyes. “You didn’t think to mute your damn ringer before coming here?”

He wasn’t as mad as he could’ve been. I swallowed and shook my head. “I thought I turned it off.”

He clicked his tongue, a small, annoyed sound. “Don’t let it happen again. You covered it, so I’ll let it slide. Next time I won’t be so nice.”

He turned away and shouldered the crash bar; cold air knifed in, tasting like rust and rain. I killed the phone dead- mute, airplane, buried- and slid it to the bottom of my bag, under the notebook, under everything I could stack between me and another mistake. I followed the line of his shoulders into the dark, counting my footsteps and promising he wouldn’t have to be nice twice.

Chapter 7: Cold Hands, Clean Lies

Summary:

Aria waits with Mello behind the safehouse and learns quickly that every word she says is another test she can fail. Three days pass in quiet tension as she tries to understand what he wants- what he’ll tolerate- and what she can use to survive beside him. When the dreams return, they drag her back to the boy she left behind and the guilt she can’t outrun.

The back deck smeared grease on my palms when I brushed the steel railing. The air had that thin, metallic cold that settles in your teeth and breezes through your clothes. Out in the lot, a few tired streetlights threw dull halos over empty spaces. Snow clung in grey, chewed-up piles- more gravel than it was powder. I kicked at a clump just to hear it break and paced the asphalt while Mello stood a few feet off with his phone, voice low on purpose. Supposedly calling Pedro. Supposedly a pickup.

After a minute passed I quit pretending I wasn’t freezing and took to the steel steps. The metal pulled cold through my tights like a cheesecloth. I lit a cigarette, fingers stiff, and let the first pull soften the ache in my chest. Smoke braided with my breath and hung there, pale and steady, until I heard his boots crunching closer.

I glanced up. He was still talking, the black fur on his collar stirring in the thin wind. I caught the tail end as he approached.
“Yeah. Back door three. Check the cams and update me. Uh-huh. We’ll be back soon.” 

The phone snapped shut with a neat click. He didn’t say anything at first, just looked down at me like he was measuring the space between what I’d told him and what I hadn’t. His shadow spilled over my knees.

“So,” he said, voice flat. “You’re good at lying, huh?”

I took another drag and met his eyes. The ember lit the inside of my hand orange for a second. “I’ve had to be,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to be honest.”

He watched the smoke unwind, like my answer might be hiding in it. A gust slid under the stair treads and needled my calves. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets and tipped his head.

“Right,” he said. “We’ll see.”

But he didn’t look convinced. He snapped his head back to me like the thought had just struck- sharp, immediate.

“So.” His voice tightened, the clipped, confrontational tone I’d learned to recognize when he was testing someone. “How can I trust that you’re not always lying? If you’re so good at it, that is.”

I couldn’t tell if he was sneering or sincere. Either way, I let out a small breath- more reflex than relief. I was used to this dance, but ‘used to’ didn’t mean I liked being cornered when I was trying to be honest.
Well… Honest about the things he needed to know, anyway.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and watched the smoke curl between us. “You want to catch Kira, right?” I spoke, keeping my voice calm. “That’s the word on the street- hardly a secret.” 

He raised a brow, the blonde fringe shadowing his eyes. “Yeah. And? What about it?”

“Then we need each other.” I kept my tone level, the words stripped of theatrics. “I’m the closest person you’ve got to the Kira investigation, and you’re the only one who can actually take a shot at replacing the new L. Whether you trust me or not doesn’t change that- you don’t have anyone else to lean on. And honestly, you don’t peg me as the kind of guy that trusts anyone other than himself.”

He kept staring until I blinked, then made that soft, pissed-off click with his tongue. Looked away at the distant city lights like he was bored, then whipped his head back. “Alright. Tell me this- what’s your problem with this new ‘L’?” 

He leaned forward, a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “You his little fangirl? Can’t handle someone else taking the throne? Listen. I’m not him. Don’t expect me to play savior in your little fantasy.”

That idea made my stomach drop sick.
No- that wasn’t it. I couldn’t let my thoughts go there. I didn’t have the right, not after everything.

I squared my shoulders and tried to meet his glare. “You don’t need to know everything about me,” I spoke, keeping my voice level. “Just that I have a personal history with the person who took over, and I don’t think they deserve that kind of power. That’s it.”

He shook his head and leaned back like he was testing how the words sat. “And you think I do?”

I chewed my lip and took another drag. The smoke tasted like stale ash, but I didn’t let the face show. “You were raised for this, weren’t you?”

Bait.

It seemed to trigger something in him. 

He shot up, anger laced through his words. “If you were that close, why aren’t you in Japan?” He jabbed the air with the question, temper flaring. “You flew all the way here to find me- for what? You were standing right next to him. You could’ve replaced him. You could’ve killed him. So why the hell did you run?”

That shut me up. 

He was right. Of course he was. I’d made that choice years ago, and I couldn’t undo it now- not if undoing it meant getting killed, or putting Dove in the line of fire depending on whatever mood Light was in.

So I put on the mask I’d learned to hone. Small, scared, plausible. I let my face go slack into something almost innocent and said, “That night… in your warehouse. That was my first time killing anyone. I was working with cops back in Japan. Killing him there would’ve been stupid and messy when I didn’t know what I was doing. I shot that guy because I had to prove myself. I had enough faith in our shared motive that I knew you’d clean it up.”

He went quiet, watching me the way someone watches a clock. His expression was unreadable, like a question without an answer. For a moment nothing moved but the smoke, and then Pedro’s headlights sliced the lot bright as a blade and painted his hair gold.

He glanced at the car, then back at me. Without warning he reached down, pinched the cigarette from my fingers, and took a long pull- right in front of me.

“Really?” I snapped, standing and folding my arms, heat sliding up my neck. “You could’ve just asked.”

He smirked, handed the cigarette back without apology, and started toward the car. “You’re sticking around for the long haul, then?”

I exhaled, feeling the cold cut through my ribs as I followed him. 

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I have to.”

✢ ✢ ✢

Three days bled together in the safehouse, long enough for the air to go stale and for me to lose track of time by anything but Matt’s keyboard clicking through the floorboards. He’d caught the guy on the cameras like Mello asked, but the face stayed hidden, and the meetings since then had gone in circles. I hadn’t been part of most of them. I kept to my room instead, the walls close, the quiet too loud. Every thought slid back to Mello- the weight of his stare, the edge in his voice. He was dangerous, and if he decided I wasn’t worth the trouble, I needed something to hold over him. Some kind of leverage.

But if I thought twice- maybe not. Poking around would put me on his bad side, and that was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I needed something cleaner. A real reason to keep him on my side, to keep him pointed at our shared target- especially since, the more I watched him, the less eager he seemed to actually take L’s seat.

Matt was downstairs. I sat in my room with the laptop glow on my knees, skimming headlines. Tokyo feeds. Another tally of heart attacks. Names stacking up- mostly Japan, some bleeding into America. I kept catching myself wondering why mine wasn’t there. Two years gone and Light hadn’t so much as tried. Did he think I’d circle back on my own? Decide I wasn’t worth the effort? Or was Dove just that good at keeping him at arm’s length?

She tried. I knew she did. But Light never trusted her. He never would. Too paranoid. She’d even dusted off the “Aria might be dead” act a few times, eyes red, voice cracking. He didn’t buy it. Most of the Task Force didn’t either.

I snapped the laptop shut before the thoughts could start looping again. Pointless. The same questions chasing their tails. I drifted to Matt’s side of the room, just for air- different bricks, different mess, anything. 

That’s when I saw it: his computer, open on the bed, cursor blinking against the plaid like it was breathing.

I stopped mid-step. Stared.

The laptop sat there like a small dare. Open. Bright. Waiting for fingers that weren’t mine to pry.

For a second my mouth went dry. Was this the opportunity slipping into my lap? A look inside their files- something about the mafia that would make our plan solid, something I could use as leverage if Mello started to wobble. Or at least a thread to pull. I leaned forward before I caught myself-
-and swallowed the thought back down.

Mello had eyes everywhere. I knew that for a fact. He’d put one of his little cameras facing my side of the room.
I turned, slow, and let the tiny black lens find me in the dim. It didn’t cover Matt’s side, true, but not worth the risk. Not tonight.

I eased back from the bed and let out a long breath that fogged in the cold air. I trudged back to my cot and collapsed onto the thin mattress, the blanket against my cheek, the cigarette taste still sour in the back of my throat.

Thoughts scraped at the edges of sleep. What did “boosted” mean, exactly? Something to do with the heart-attacks, probably, and Light- always Light- but the rest of it was a smear I couldn’t make out. I forced the question away. Not now.

I let my eyes fall shut, let the dark press warm and honest behind my lids, and waited for the familiar shift. The room slid, soft as ink spreading on paper. I knew, even before the shapes rearranged, that the dream had come for me again.

✢ ✢ ✢

I was sitting at the Yagami dining table. It was night, and the hallway lights were dead except for a single lamp hanging over me, carving a yellow circle out of the dark. Somewhere past the walls, a small, choir-like bell kept chiming- too sweet for this house, like a music box in a hospital. It sat under my skin.

The chessboard was laid out between us, pawns scattered. It always started like this, a lesson pretending to be a game, and somehow it still threw me like it was the first time.

Light sat across from me, younger than I remembered- fourteen, maybe fifteen- neat shirt, hair clean, that small civilized calm that made him seem older. When I ran a hand through my hair I felt the tug of two braids. My old hairstyle before I let it down. I was young too.

He slid a piece forward with slow, deliberate care. He was winning. Of course he was. He always arranged the board so the ending felt inevitable.

“You’re losing,” he said finally, eyes fixed on mine in a way that didn’t let me dodge. “You have to fight back. You can’t just let me win.”

I let out a groan, leaned back, folded my arms. My hands wouldn’t keep still. “You’re the one who wanted me to play. It’s not my fault I don’t know how.”

His lips thinned as he looked down through his bangs. “I would’ve played with my dad, but he’s working. You’re here. So you have to do it.”
Said like an explanation, landing like an order.

I grumbled and shoved a knight’s pawn forward. The little thud sounded too loud. Light’s face tightened the second I let go.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

The teaching-softness in his voice was just control in a nicer coat. Stress climbed my neck, and the varnish under my fingertips felt slick and cold. “I don’t want to play anymore,” I said, breath a little short.

He looked up and pinned me with it- steady, assessing, unreadable. “You have to play,” he said. “I can’t play by myself.”

The lamp flickered- one blackout breath- and the board flashed like a map of bones. The bell chimed again, closer this time, and I couldn’t tell if the tightness in my chest was anger or fear.

“I don’t want to, Light.”

“You have to.”

He moved another pawn, but this time it was… wrong. Distorted. All of them were. If I squinted, I could make out every pawn. People I knew- Myself, Dove, Misa-

And L. Knocked over. Blurry and glitching like a broken VHS tape.

I glanced back up to Light, fingers trembling against my thighs. “What- What’s wrong with that one?”

I pointed to the L pawn. “Why is it like that?”

But when I blinked, Light wasn’t across from me anymore.

He was. Knees pulled up. Lanky. Wrong. His face jittered- stretching and folding so fast my eyes couldn’t keep it together. I almost toppled out of my chair- and my heart thudded like a fist against my ribs.

He didn’t move. He just watched.

“You-” My mouth closed on the sound. My hands were suddenly too loud in my own ears.

He leaned forward. Closer. The motion should have been comforting- familiar- but his eyes were empty of the knowledge I knew. If there’d been that knowing tilt he used sometimes, it wasn’t there. Instead his voice came out flat, precise, too calm.

“Do you remember what I look like?”

The features on his face reassembled and tore apart again, as if someone were fast-forwarding through old photographs. “I- uh-” I stammered, words shredding.

“Do you?” he asked again. Short. Clinical.

I pushed up from the chair. The wood scraped loud and sudden behind me.

His voice bent, like a radio caught between stations- part him, part something else. “You blocked me out.” The words dropped in neat, awful pieces. “Because you’re Kira. Only Kira would block me out. That implies guilt. Guilt is common in your psychological profile.”

The bells exploded then- tiny at first, then too close, too sharp- so loud my fingers flew to my ears. His voice kept going underneath it, calm and clinical, like a doctor reciting results while someone hammered at the door.

I couldn’t make the sentences line up anymore. Sound and sense fractured. The room narrowed to the slam of my pulse and the clang of the bells and the way his face kept rearranging itself into things that weren’t him and weren’t not him.

And then he was gone.

Light had slid back into the chair- only younger now, the boy I’d first met, all sharp skin and blank stares. The bells cut out. Silence landed like a hand.

He smiled. Not the cruel, practiced thing, but small and genuine in a way that pulled at something raw. “You’re looking for me.”

My hands fell from my ears slowly, like I’d been underwater. “…What?” I breathed.

I blinked. He changed. Faster than a blink. Too fast.

One moment he was that boy- the next he was older- the suit he’d worn to L’s funeral, the last thing I’d seen him in- but his face was wrong in ways my brain couldn’t reconcile. Then he was a child, then a man, then the light in the room shifted and none of it matched the memory in my chest.

My jaw locked. I dug my fingers into my scalp until the braid pinched. “Why is this happening? What do you want?!” I snapped, the words tearing out.

He reached across the board and took my hands like it was the simplest thing in the world. His palms were warm. His grip was gentle- and then it wasn’t gentle. It was precise, like a thread being pulled to see if something would unravel.

“You haven’t seen me for two years, Aria,” he said, voice all honey and accusation. “You don’t know what I look like now.”

Fear climbed my throat like cold lead. He held my hands tighter. “I miss you. Sayu misses you. Dove misses you. My dad misses you. Why did you abandon us?”

His voice slipped into that sick, practiced note he used when he needed sympathy- and for a second I believed him. I believed the missing. I believed the smallness.

He changed then, the faces flaring and collapsing so quickly my eyes watered. High-school Light, funeral Light, the child Light- overlaying, erasing, overlaying again. My head spun. The room narrowed to the sweep of his pupils and the way his mouth moved.

The bells came back, louder, a brutal peal that filled my skull until every thought rattled. His sentences overlapped, layered like music playing too many tracks at once.

“You abandoned us.”
“I loved you, Aria.”
“Come home.”

The words looped and tangled. I felt sick. My hands trembled in his. I ripped them free- jerking so hard the chair scraped- and staggered back, lungs burning, the air too thin.

“You didn’t! You- You don’t.” I forced the words out, each one a jagged breath.

Everything tilted. Sound folded over itself. The board dissolved into white noise. My pulse thudded loud enough to drown the bells.

“I’ll find you, Aria,” he said, quieter now, deliberate, like a promise and a threat braided together.

And then-

I exploded upright.

The cot hit my knees. My heart was a fist in my throat. Cold sweat slicked my spine. For a long second I just sat there, chest heaving, the room around me ordinary and terrible, as if the dream had left fingerprints on the air.

The same dream every night.

Haunting me.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Death Note