DN -- Chocolate Always Loves You Back XIV: The Worst Idea Ever
Title: Chocolate Always Loves You Back
Chapter: 14. The Worst Idea Ever
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light/L
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,372
Warnings: AU
Summary: Light Yagami is not having a good Valentine's Day. Between the new guy with the candy fetish, his partner, Matsuda, and the unsettling new case... the chocolate may be the only thing that loves him at all.
Author's Note: Haha, "sleep." Good joke. XD
XIV - THE WORST IDEA EVER
The city was a dark, unfriendly labyrinth as Light raced heedlessly to the warehouse, fingers cramping where they were clenched too tight around the wheel.
Then again, it was probably a good thing he’d never sprung for a dashboard GPS.
To stop a bloodthirsty mass-murderer turned kidnapper, please turn left in thirty feet.
Twenty feet.
Ten feet.
Please proceed to kick some ass.
It is advised that you try not to die in one of many available ways.
Then again, he could program it to speak to him in any accent he liked.
Thus it was that, as a cumulative ninety-eight percent of his mind focused on planning madly, suppressing panic, and navigating the treacherous topography of a city built entirely on hills, a tiny portion of him wondered what it would be like to have Lawliet’s soft, smooth voice guiding him to his destination.
Light then realized that that was what the passenger seat was for.
In the meantime, his heart was multitasking, too-at once pounding wildly in his ears and throbbing in his throat, a tightening knot that made it increasingly difficult not to resort to hyperventilation to reduce the strain.
The city thinned as he neared the ill-lit, impressively secluded dock at the designated address. The warehouse rose from an old, abandoned pier-four stories of broken glass and corrugated steel, gray, black, and rusted brown in the anemic glow of the last few streetlamps that craned their necks to see. Stacks of crates and towers of barrels crowded boarded-up windows and shipping doors, sketching out a wonderland of ruthless industrial decay.
Light swallowed hard, striving to slow the thudding of his heart, flung his car into a vague approximation of a parking space on the street, and climbed out onto the creaking boards of the aging pier.
He snapped his cell phone open and hit his first speed-dial.
“Hey, what’s u-”
“Matsuda,” Light cut in, “come to Bosworth’s warehouse as fast as you can. There’s a box of chocolate in my desk-bring it here. And bring a gun.”
And a miracle, if you have one handy.
Matsuda’s voice was sharp, and, distantly, Light heard objects clatter as the other man leapt to his feet and started to obey.
“You’re there?”
“He’s got the kids,” Light explained, eyes narrowing as he plotted his route to the lit window on the second floor. “I’m going to reason with him as much as I can, but I need backup, and if he won’t negotiate, we’ve got to give him what he wants.”
There was a sound like something banging shut-but Light didn’t know if it was a car door or a desk drawer, and he didn’t know how long he’d have to stall.
“That’s an amazingly bad idea,” Matsuda managed to say.
“Might be my worst ever,” Light agreed. “Suggestions welcome.”
“Be damn careful,” Matsuda advised.
Light mustered up a small, thin smile. “Hurry,” he said, and shut the phone.
Only the pools of weakened orange that lazed beneath the streetlamps guided him to the open doorway, a square of deeper darkness in the closest wall. Light’s knuckles were white where he gripped his pistol, white again where he held his flashlight under the barrel with his other hand, and the bleak pallor of the tiny beam swung wildly as he crept willingly into Richard Bosworth’s trap.
Yes, this was definitely the worst idea he had ever had.
Light set his jaw and struggled to map the room out in his mind-corners, crates, and chains; steel tables gleaming starkly when the flashlight struck their faces; haphazard piles of scrap metal scattered here and there. Bosworth knew this place, and Light didn’t, and that put him at a disadvantage he knew he couldn’t afford.
A staircase materialized in the dark, and he took it slowly, panning the flashlight back and forth until the brightness he’d seen from outside filled the hall and overwhelmed his contribution to the light.
He didn’t dare to close his eyes, but he filled his chest with two deep, fortifying breaths before he stepped into the room where everything might go irreparably wrong.
The good news was that things weren’t going to go irreparably wrong.
The bad news was that this was because they already had.
The first thing Light perceived when his eyes acclimated to the searing white was Matt and Near at the left wall-cowering against it, clinging to each other as if every lifeline in the world had snapped.
Their eyes were pleading and heartbreakingly hopeful, and the next thing Light saw was Mello, perched on one of those cold, industrial tables, curled up smaller than Light would have thought possible. Tear streaks striped his cheeks, and he had extended one trembling arm, pale fingers clutching a complicated mechanism that looked like…
“It’s a detonator,” Richard Bosworth remarked, idly admiring the way Mello’s yellow hair parted around the black barrel of his semiautomatic .45.
Bosworth was an ordinary man-at least as far as appearances belied. His plainness had probably worked immensely to his advantage: he had a forgettable face, oval-shaped and unassuming, excepting only the keenness of his eyes, a feature Light remembered in painstaking detail from the cell phone photograph taken of their chase. Bosworth had a runner’s build, which explained a bit more still, and his hair was an utterly average brown, the color flat and lifeless under the fluorescent bulb above.
“The funny thing,” he mused, “is that I don’t remember which detonator it is.” He grinned. “Silly me.”
Light was shaking simply from the effort of not bursting at the seams. “What-” he started to demand.
“Put the gun down, Yagami,” Bosworth ordered, pushing on his own firearm until a softly-sobbing Mello bowed his head.
Light wanted to kill him. Light wanted to put a bullet through Richard Bosworth’s forehead, wanted to watch blood bead out of the clean little hole, wanted to see the challenging intelligence fade from those sickeningly memorable eyes. Light wanted to watch the bastard die.
Instead, he slowly raised his hands, and then he slowly bent to set his pistol and his flashlight on the floor.
The latter rolled six inches away, presumably to spite him for a thousand nights spent locked in the glove compartment of his car.
“This is very simple,” Bosworth told him pleasantly. “Mello here has his thumb on that little red button, and if he lets it go, something is going to go sky-high. But that’s the thing-I can’t recall if that detonator goes with the charges I rigged up all around us, which are more than enough to level this place… or if it’s the one that’ll turn Quillish Wammy’s house into a pile of rubble and dust.”
Bosworth smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and the thing that frightened Light the most was that this madman looked perfectly sane.
“Fifty-fifty,” was the conclusion, quiet, curious, and intent. “How do you like those odds?”
“I dropped my gun,” Light replied, meeting the other man’s gaze. “Get rid of yours.”
“Show me the money, Yagami,” Bosworth fired back. “Show me my fucking shipment and get me a ticket out of here, and Blondie gets off scot-free.”
Light raised his hands again, palms out. “My partner has your chocolate,” he said. “He’s on his way, but I don’t know how long it’ll be before he gets here. Please stop pointing the gun at Mello’s head, all right?”
Bosworth smiled again, genuinely amused. “You’re not in much of a position to give orders, Officer,” he pointed out.
“I’m not a threat,” Light maintained. “Just stop pointing a loaded gun at a child.”
“When is your partner due to arrive?” Bosworth inquired. “Shall we discuss my terms?”
Light gritted his teeth and held his tongue. “What terms are those?”
“I want what’s left of my goddamn chocolate,” Bosworth responded, “and time to go pack up everything I have at home. And then I want to be well out of the country before anyone tries to follow me.”
“Fine,” Light spat. “Will you put the gun down?”
Bosworth actually laughed, the barrel shifting against Mello’s skull and setting the boy to trembling anew. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a one-track mind?”
“We’ll give you what you’re asking for,” Light repeated. “Just put the gun down.”
“You can quit it with the broken-record talk-me-down routine,” Bosworth informed him with an infuriating calm. “We both know the gun is the only reason you’re listening to me now-and the only reason you’re going to let me get away.”
“He’s a kid,” Light insisted. “Point it at me. I’ll still be listening.”
“Ah, to have more hands,” Bosworth sighed, smirking, as he curled the fingers of his left one in Mello’s hair, garnering a whimper and a darting of pale blue eyes. “He’ll be fine as long as you help me out.”
Light wanted to help him out of the atmosphere and watch his asphyxiate in the vacuum of space.
Or help him into a wood-chipper.
That would be a sufficiently fantastically horrible way to die.
“Hasn’t he been through enough?” Light demanded. “He’s terrified, which seems to be one of your primary objectives. Does victimizing children make you feel powerful, Bosworth?”
“No,” the man answered idly. “But your frustration does.”
Light was really, really hoping he would get the chance to shoot this asshole in the kneecap.
And, if he was lucky, in a few more places than that.
Before he could develop a checklist, he heard cautious footsteps on the stair behind.
“Hi,” Matsuda said, sidling carefully into the room, holding a familiar white box in both hands. “What’d I miss?”
Bosworth’s eyes were on the box, and his grip on his gun tightened. “I was hoping you’d be reasonable,” he noted. “I’ve been telling Officer Yagami about my conditions. It would be lovely if you’d put any and all weapons on the ground by his.”
“I’m not armed,” Matsuda assured him cheerfully, settling one hand under the box to bear its weight and raising the other as he turned in a circle for inspection. “See?”
The box had not been that heavy when Light had tossed it into his desk.
Bingo.
“Near,” he blurted out, “your nose-!”
The boy immediately clapped his hair-twirling hand over it, and Matt seized the other anxiously, looking close.
“What?” he prompted, squeezing Near’s defenseless wrist. “What about your nose? What’s wrong?”
Mutely Near shook his head, and Bosworth glanced over, impatience in every line of his pose.
“What, is he bleeding? He looks fine. As I was-”
Light waved a dismissive hand and started towards Near.
“Stop!” Bosworth barked. “Don’t move-”
“I’m not armed,” Light reminded him, crossing the room to Matt and Near. “Chill.”
Matsuda made a discontented noise and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “Please never say that again.”
“Don’t move!” Bosworth repeated, louder and with an edge of hysteria, and out of the corner of one eye, Light confirmed that the man was swinging his pistol back and forth, torn between Mello and Light, incapable of targeting them both.
“It’s fine-” Light began again.
“STOP!” Bosworth roared, bolstering the gun with both hands to aim it directly at Light’s head.
Light stopped and cautiously lifted his hands in surrender.
Bosworth gave him one last glare and shifted to turn his attention back to Mello.
A gunshot rent the air, earth-shattering in the confines of the room, and Light hit the deck.
He scrambled to his feet, ears still ringing, head like a carousel, even as Bosworth’s handgun spiraled down and clattered dully to the floor, its screaming owner clutching desperately at the torrent of blood that spurted from his arm.
Matsuda, best marksman in the office for five years running, lowered the pistol he’d hidden in the chocolates’ box, having nailed Bosworth’s elbow spot-on-presumably shattering bone and snapping tendons like so much kindling. Light really didn’t give a shit about the details as long as Bosworth was in a lot of pain.
Mello slipped off the table and scuttled to take cover behind his savior’s legs, still clinging to the detonator to keep the button carefully depressed, strands of blond hair sticking to the tear trails on his cheeks.
Light barely had time to enjoy the geyser of blood emanating from his enemy before Bosworth spun on his heel and ran.
Matsuda’s jaw dropped, but before he could muster any words, Light snatched his own standard issue semiautomatic from the floor, cement scraping greedily at his fingertips, and gave chase.
“Light!” Matsuda yelled after just a second’s delay-but by that time, Light had shouldered through a curtain of ripped plastic and disappeared into the dark.
Bosworth had taken to the stairs-over the echoes of Matsuda’s shout, Light detected the thumping of footfalls and the wheezing of ragged breath, and he raced towards them at a heedless full tilt.
The protests of his own body were so distant that they might have belonged to someone else. His heart pounded fit to shatter his ribcage, but the adrenaline drowned everything in uncanny lucidity-a clarity so complete that his adjusting eyes picked out logos on the crates, patches of rust on the grotesque shapes of looming machines, gradations of dark to darker all around. None of that mattered; nothing did, except that Richard Bosworth was not going to get away.
He had, however, somehow gone quiet. Light couldn’t fathom how it was even possible given the man’s current state, but the next floor of the warehouse was one vast room draped in the sort of silence reserved for horror movie crypts.
Horror movie crypts and awkward family moments in front of people you had been hoping to impress.
Light’s index finger curled around the trigger. He was vaguely aware of the clamminess of his left palm where it anchored his right wrist, but both his hands were steady and still.
He took one step forward, then another, the dimness giving way to heaps of bent steel and broken circuitry, tangled wires spilling everywhere. Only the faintest hint of streetlamp orange reached him through the cracked window with its drifting plastic shade. There was enough assorted junk here to build a dozen computers from the parts, but the one thing Light couldn’t find was the man who’d put it here.
From behind him came the rattling jingle of thick, thick chains.
Light whirled, gun extended, hearing his heartbeat gallop to keep pace, but there was nothing but the dark-the dark, and the gently-swinging chains, sinister hooks dangling at their ends.
Very, very belatedly, Light realized that he’d voluntarily trapped himself in an poorly-lit room with a mass-murdering psychopath.
On the upside, he had the gun.
Plastic met plastic off to his right, and Light spun again-just in time to have a strobe light flashed in his face.
Howling, blind, Light stumbled backwards, flinging one hand over his eyes, knowing better than to drop the gun-
Bosworth barreled into him, the force of the man’s weight colliding with his chest hard enough to make him sympathize with vehicle crash test barriers, and they both went sprawling to the floor. Something that might have been a clenched fist slammed down on his wrist, and the gun popped out of his fingers and skittered away.
Hot blood was oozing all over Light from Bosworth’s ruined right arm, and he scrabbled wildly to get out from under his adversary, whose good hand was fumbling for his throat. Light brought his knee up, jamming it into Bosworth’s stomach, earning a gasp, a wet cough, and a feebler assault, and a proper shove sent Bosworth rolling off of him and into a pile of crates. Boards split at the sudden pressure, and Light leapt on the opportunity and on his opponent, pressing Bosworth into the dust, struggling to hold down all four limbs at once-
At least there weren’t any serial-killing octopuses. Christ.
Flailing, Bosworth caught a hefty sliver of the broken crate and buried its jagged tip in Light’s right side.
Biting back a cry and fighting off the agony, Light shoved the heel of his hand directly into Bosworth’s gunshot wound.
He thought his eardrums would shatter at the screech the man unleashed, and he grimly crushed his hand down a little harder still.
With a cornered tiger’s final burst of strength, Bosworth heaved him off, and Light tumbled to the dusty floor, hands slick with both of their blood. His quarry melted into the shadows, uneven steps and raspy breaths betraying another retreat up another flight of stairs.
For a moment, all Light heard was Bosworth’s ungainly exit and his own panting breath as he lay dazed on the floor, the dry air scouring at his throat.
Then he detected a subtler sound-a voice from the story below, a voice that was calling out his name.
Some small miracle saw fit to intervene, guiding Light’s fingers onto the barrel of his gun. He curled them around it and made his decision-he’d rushed headlong into a dark room, grappled like a wildcat, and been staked like an anatomically-backwards vampire as his reward. They’d cornered Bosworth at the top of his complex, and now it was time to fall back and let the SWAT team do their job.
It was only fair; those guys got paid a lot.
Light peeled himself off of the floor and staggered down the stairs.
-
The adrenaline was fading now. In a battered, bloodied haze, Light let Lawliet drag him back to the makeshift base camp that had sprung up around his car-which he leaned against, knees quaking, as they waited for reinforcements to arrive.
Lawliet was squeezing the life out of Light’s mortifyingly filthy hand, and they joined a trembling but brave-faced Mello, the detonator button still secure beneath his small, pale thumb. The bomb squad was on their way, Lawliet explained, the medics not far behind, and SWAT officers would join them any moment now.
Light focused on not touching his injury, as his palms were still smeared with Bosworth’s blood-and God only knew what he’d been shooting up.
Light was so relieved-and filled with such a bone-deep contentment-as he watched Matsuda comforting Matt and Near (whose button nose was utterly unscathed), as Lawliet and Quillish manned one of Mello’s shoulders each, that at first he automatically dismissed the small red dot that flickered on his pants leg and wavered just an inch.
Then it jumped up to his chest and settled over his heart, and frigid cords of terror tightened around every part of him.
Slowly, Light looked up.
In the highest window of the warehouse, he could just make out the shadow of Bosworth cradling a sniper rifle, and there was no doubt of what was in his sights.
No no no oh God no please-
A streak of movement snatched his attention-Lawliet, who jerked the detonator out of Mello’s hand.
The warehouse exploded into a solid wall of red and orange flame.
The shock wave made short work of Light’s weak knees, and it deafened him for good measure-he watched from the ground as, in perfect silence, the building collapsed, steel rippling like mercury as concrete and supportive architecture crumpled into the pier. Salt-warped boards, further compromised by the raging fire, couldn’t sustain the weight, and Light’s hearing gradually returned in time for him to bear witness to the rumbling finale as the shreds of Bosworth’s headquarters crumbled into the sea.
Lawliet was gasping out something about Richard Bosworth not being a man who planned ahead, about how he would have had to rig the house when the chocolate was still there, about how many charges he would have had to tow up to Pacific Heights and install without being seen, and a thousand other things that made no difference now.
Light gathered himself to his feet, grabbed Lawliet’s arm, and kissed him to shut him up.
Lawliet made a sound like “Mmf,” and then a sound like, “Mmm.”
“Holy shit,” a small voice said.
“Mello,” Quillish warned.
[Chapter XIII] [Chapter XV]
Chapter: 14. The Worst Idea Ever
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light/L
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,372
Warnings: AU
Summary: Light Yagami is not having a good Valentine's Day. Between the new guy with the candy fetish, his partner, Matsuda, and the unsettling new case... the chocolate may be the only thing that loves him at all.
Author's Note: Haha, "sleep." Good joke. XD
XIV - THE WORST IDEA EVER
The city was a dark, unfriendly labyrinth as Light raced heedlessly to the warehouse, fingers cramping where they were clenched too tight around the wheel.
Then again, it was probably a good thing he’d never sprung for a dashboard GPS.
To stop a bloodthirsty mass-murderer turned kidnapper, please turn left in thirty feet.
Twenty feet.
Ten feet.
Please proceed to kick some ass.
It is advised that you try not to die in one of many available ways.
Then again, he could program it to speak to him in any accent he liked.
Thus it was that, as a cumulative ninety-eight percent of his mind focused on planning madly, suppressing panic, and navigating the treacherous topography of a city built entirely on hills, a tiny portion of him wondered what it would be like to have Lawliet’s soft, smooth voice guiding him to his destination.
Light then realized that that was what the passenger seat was for.
In the meantime, his heart was multitasking, too-at once pounding wildly in his ears and throbbing in his throat, a tightening knot that made it increasingly difficult not to resort to hyperventilation to reduce the strain.
The city thinned as he neared the ill-lit, impressively secluded dock at the designated address. The warehouse rose from an old, abandoned pier-four stories of broken glass and corrugated steel, gray, black, and rusted brown in the anemic glow of the last few streetlamps that craned their necks to see. Stacks of crates and towers of barrels crowded boarded-up windows and shipping doors, sketching out a wonderland of ruthless industrial decay.
Light swallowed hard, striving to slow the thudding of his heart, flung his car into a vague approximation of a parking space on the street, and climbed out onto the creaking boards of the aging pier.
He snapped his cell phone open and hit his first speed-dial.
“Hey, what’s u-”
“Matsuda,” Light cut in, “come to Bosworth’s warehouse as fast as you can. There’s a box of chocolate in my desk-bring it here. And bring a gun.”
And a miracle, if you have one handy.
Matsuda’s voice was sharp, and, distantly, Light heard objects clatter as the other man leapt to his feet and started to obey.
“You’re there?”
“He’s got the kids,” Light explained, eyes narrowing as he plotted his route to the lit window on the second floor. “I’m going to reason with him as much as I can, but I need backup, and if he won’t negotiate, we’ve got to give him what he wants.”
There was a sound like something banging shut-but Light didn’t know if it was a car door or a desk drawer, and he didn’t know how long he’d have to stall.
“That’s an amazingly bad idea,” Matsuda managed to say.
“Might be my worst ever,” Light agreed. “Suggestions welcome.”
“Be damn careful,” Matsuda advised.
Light mustered up a small, thin smile. “Hurry,” he said, and shut the phone.
Only the pools of weakened orange that lazed beneath the streetlamps guided him to the open doorway, a square of deeper darkness in the closest wall. Light’s knuckles were white where he gripped his pistol, white again where he held his flashlight under the barrel with his other hand, and the bleak pallor of the tiny beam swung wildly as he crept willingly into Richard Bosworth’s trap.
Yes, this was definitely the worst idea he had ever had.
Light set his jaw and struggled to map the room out in his mind-corners, crates, and chains; steel tables gleaming starkly when the flashlight struck their faces; haphazard piles of scrap metal scattered here and there. Bosworth knew this place, and Light didn’t, and that put him at a disadvantage he knew he couldn’t afford.
A staircase materialized in the dark, and he took it slowly, panning the flashlight back and forth until the brightness he’d seen from outside filled the hall and overwhelmed his contribution to the light.
He didn’t dare to close his eyes, but he filled his chest with two deep, fortifying breaths before he stepped into the room where everything might go irreparably wrong.
The good news was that things weren’t going to go irreparably wrong.
The bad news was that this was because they already had.
The first thing Light perceived when his eyes acclimated to the searing white was Matt and Near at the left wall-cowering against it, clinging to each other as if every lifeline in the world had snapped.
Their eyes were pleading and heartbreakingly hopeful, and the next thing Light saw was Mello, perched on one of those cold, industrial tables, curled up smaller than Light would have thought possible. Tear streaks striped his cheeks, and he had extended one trembling arm, pale fingers clutching a complicated mechanism that looked like…
“It’s a detonator,” Richard Bosworth remarked, idly admiring the way Mello’s yellow hair parted around the black barrel of his semiautomatic .45.
Bosworth was an ordinary man-at least as far as appearances belied. His plainness had probably worked immensely to his advantage: he had a forgettable face, oval-shaped and unassuming, excepting only the keenness of his eyes, a feature Light remembered in painstaking detail from the cell phone photograph taken of their chase. Bosworth had a runner’s build, which explained a bit more still, and his hair was an utterly average brown, the color flat and lifeless under the fluorescent bulb above.
“The funny thing,” he mused, “is that I don’t remember which detonator it is.” He grinned. “Silly me.”
Light was shaking simply from the effort of not bursting at the seams. “What-” he started to demand.
“Put the gun down, Yagami,” Bosworth ordered, pushing on his own firearm until a softly-sobbing Mello bowed his head.
Light wanted to kill him. Light wanted to put a bullet through Richard Bosworth’s forehead, wanted to watch blood bead out of the clean little hole, wanted to see the challenging intelligence fade from those sickeningly memorable eyes. Light wanted to watch the bastard die.
Instead, he slowly raised his hands, and then he slowly bent to set his pistol and his flashlight on the floor.
The latter rolled six inches away, presumably to spite him for a thousand nights spent locked in the glove compartment of his car.
“This is very simple,” Bosworth told him pleasantly. “Mello here has his thumb on that little red button, and if he lets it go, something is going to go sky-high. But that’s the thing-I can’t recall if that detonator goes with the charges I rigged up all around us, which are more than enough to level this place… or if it’s the one that’ll turn Quillish Wammy’s house into a pile of rubble and dust.”
Bosworth smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and the thing that frightened Light the most was that this madman looked perfectly sane.
“Fifty-fifty,” was the conclusion, quiet, curious, and intent. “How do you like those odds?”
“I dropped my gun,” Light replied, meeting the other man’s gaze. “Get rid of yours.”
“Show me the money, Yagami,” Bosworth fired back. “Show me my fucking shipment and get me a ticket out of here, and Blondie gets off scot-free.”
Light raised his hands again, palms out. “My partner has your chocolate,” he said. “He’s on his way, but I don’t know how long it’ll be before he gets here. Please stop pointing the gun at Mello’s head, all right?”
Bosworth smiled again, genuinely amused. “You’re not in much of a position to give orders, Officer,” he pointed out.
“I’m not a threat,” Light maintained. “Just stop pointing a loaded gun at a child.”
“When is your partner due to arrive?” Bosworth inquired. “Shall we discuss my terms?”
Light gritted his teeth and held his tongue. “What terms are those?”
“I want what’s left of my goddamn chocolate,” Bosworth responded, “and time to go pack up everything I have at home. And then I want to be well out of the country before anyone tries to follow me.”
“Fine,” Light spat. “Will you put the gun down?”
Bosworth actually laughed, the barrel shifting against Mello’s skull and setting the boy to trembling anew. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a one-track mind?”
“We’ll give you what you’re asking for,” Light repeated. “Just put the gun down.”
“You can quit it with the broken-record talk-me-down routine,” Bosworth informed him with an infuriating calm. “We both know the gun is the only reason you’re listening to me now-and the only reason you’re going to let me get away.”
“He’s a kid,” Light insisted. “Point it at me. I’ll still be listening.”
“Ah, to have more hands,” Bosworth sighed, smirking, as he curled the fingers of his left one in Mello’s hair, garnering a whimper and a darting of pale blue eyes. “He’ll be fine as long as you help me out.”
Light wanted to help him out of the atmosphere and watch his asphyxiate in the vacuum of space.
Or help him into a wood-chipper.
That would be a sufficiently fantastically horrible way to die.
“Hasn’t he been through enough?” Light demanded. “He’s terrified, which seems to be one of your primary objectives. Does victimizing children make you feel powerful, Bosworth?”
“No,” the man answered idly. “But your frustration does.”
Light was really, really hoping he would get the chance to shoot this asshole in the kneecap.
And, if he was lucky, in a few more places than that.
Before he could develop a checklist, he heard cautious footsteps on the stair behind.
“Hi,” Matsuda said, sidling carefully into the room, holding a familiar white box in both hands. “What’d I miss?”
Bosworth’s eyes were on the box, and his grip on his gun tightened. “I was hoping you’d be reasonable,” he noted. “I’ve been telling Officer Yagami about my conditions. It would be lovely if you’d put any and all weapons on the ground by his.”
“I’m not armed,” Matsuda assured him cheerfully, settling one hand under the box to bear its weight and raising the other as he turned in a circle for inspection. “See?”
The box had not been that heavy when Light had tossed it into his desk.
Bingo.
“Near,” he blurted out, “your nose-!”
The boy immediately clapped his hair-twirling hand over it, and Matt seized the other anxiously, looking close.
“What?” he prompted, squeezing Near’s defenseless wrist. “What about your nose? What’s wrong?”
Mutely Near shook his head, and Bosworth glanced over, impatience in every line of his pose.
“What, is he bleeding? He looks fine. As I was-”
Light waved a dismissive hand and started towards Near.
“Stop!” Bosworth barked. “Don’t move-”
“I’m not armed,” Light reminded him, crossing the room to Matt and Near. “Chill.”
Matsuda made a discontented noise and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “Please never say that again.”
“Don’t move!” Bosworth repeated, louder and with an edge of hysteria, and out of the corner of one eye, Light confirmed that the man was swinging his pistol back and forth, torn between Mello and Light, incapable of targeting them both.
“It’s fine-” Light began again.
“STOP!” Bosworth roared, bolstering the gun with both hands to aim it directly at Light’s head.
Light stopped and cautiously lifted his hands in surrender.
Bosworth gave him one last glare and shifted to turn his attention back to Mello.
A gunshot rent the air, earth-shattering in the confines of the room, and Light hit the deck.
He scrambled to his feet, ears still ringing, head like a carousel, even as Bosworth’s handgun spiraled down and clattered dully to the floor, its screaming owner clutching desperately at the torrent of blood that spurted from his arm.
Matsuda, best marksman in the office for five years running, lowered the pistol he’d hidden in the chocolates’ box, having nailed Bosworth’s elbow spot-on-presumably shattering bone and snapping tendons like so much kindling. Light really didn’t give a shit about the details as long as Bosworth was in a lot of pain.
Mello slipped off the table and scuttled to take cover behind his savior’s legs, still clinging to the detonator to keep the button carefully depressed, strands of blond hair sticking to the tear trails on his cheeks.
Light barely had time to enjoy the geyser of blood emanating from his enemy before Bosworth spun on his heel and ran.
Matsuda’s jaw dropped, but before he could muster any words, Light snatched his own standard issue semiautomatic from the floor, cement scraping greedily at his fingertips, and gave chase.
“Light!” Matsuda yelled after just a second’s delay-but by that time, Light had shouldered through a curtain of ripped plastic and disappeared into the dark.
Bosworth had taken to the stairs-over the echoes of Matsuda’s shout, Light detected the thumping of footfalls and the wheezing of ragged breath, and he raced towards them at a heedless full tilt.
The protests of his own body were so distant that they might have belonged to someone else. His heart pounded fit to shatter his ribcage, but the adrenaline drowned everything in uncanny lucidity-a clarity so complete that his adjusting eyes picked out logos on the crates, patches of rust on the grotesque shapes of looming machines, gradations of dark to darker all around. None of that mattered; nothing did, except that Richard Bosworth was not going to get away.
He had, however, somehow gone quiet. Light couldn’t fathom how it was even possible given the man’s current state, but the next floor of the warehouse was one vast room draped in the sort of silence reserved for horror movie crypts.
Horror movie crypts and awkward family moments in front of people you had been hoping to impress.
Light’s index finger curled around the trigger. He was vaguely aware of the clamminess of his left palm where it anchored his right wrist, but both his hands were steady and still.
He took one step forward, then another, the dimness giving way to heaps of bent steel and broken circuitry, tangled wires spilling everywhere. Only the faintest hint of streetlamp orange reached him through the cracked window with its drifting plastic shade. There was enough assorted junk here to build a dozen computers from the parts, but the one thing Light couldn’t find was the man who’d put it here.
From behind him came the rattling jingle of thick, thick chains.
Light whirled, gun extended, hearing his heartbeat gallop to keep pace, but there was nothing but the dark-the dark, and the gently-swinging chains, sinister hooks dangling at their ends.
Very, very belatedly, Light realized that he’d voluntarily trapped himself in an poorly-lit room with a mass-murdering psychopath.
On the upside, he had the gun.
Plastic met plastic off to his right, and Light spun again-just in time to have a strobe light flashed in his face.
Howling, blind, Light stumbled backwards, flinging one hand over his eyes, knowing better than to drop the gun-
Bosworth barreled into him, the force of the man’s weight colliding with his chest hard enough to make him sympathize with vehicle crash test barriers, and they both went sprawling to the floor. Something that might have been a clenched fist slammed down on his wrist, and the gun popped out of his fingers and skittered away.
Hot blood was oozing all over Light from Bosworth’s ruined right arm, and he scrabbled wildly to get out from under his adversary, whose good hand was fumbling for his throat. Light brought his knee up, jamming it into Bosworth’s stomach, earning a gasp, a wet cough, and a feebler assault, and a proper shove sent Bosworth rolling off of him and into a pile of crates. Boards split at the sudden pressure, and Light leapt on the opportunity and on his opponent, pressing Bosworth into the dust, struggling to hold down all four limbs at once-
At least there weren’t any serial-killing octopuses. Christ.
Flailing, Bosworth caught a hefty sliver of the broken crate and buried its jagged tip in Light’s right side.
Biting back a cry and fighting off the agony, Light shoved the heel of his hand directly into Bosworth’s gunshot wound.
He thought his eardrums would shatter at the screech the man unleashed, and he grimly crushed his hand down a little harder still.
With a cornered tiger’s final burst of strength, Bosworth heaved him off, and Light tumbled to the dusty floor, hands slick with both of their blood. His quarry melted into the shadows, uneven steps and raspy breaths betraying another retreat up another flight of stairs.
For a moment, all Light heard was Bosworth’s ungainly exit and his own panting breath as he lay dazed on the floor, the dry air scouring at his throat.
Then he detected a subtler sound-a voice from the story below, a voice that was calling out his name.
Some small miracle saw fit to intervene, guiding Light’s fingers onto the barrel of his gun. He curled them around it and made his decision-he’d rushed headlong into a dark room, grappled like a wildcat, and been staked like an anatomically-backwards vampire as his reward. They’d cornered Bosworth at the top of his complex, and now it was time to fall back and let the SWAT team do their job.
It was only fair; those guys got paid a lot.
Light peeled himself off of the floor and staggered down the stairs.
-
The adrenaline was fading now. In a battered, bloodied haze, Light let Lawliet drag him back to the makeshift base camp that had sprung up around his car-which he leaned against, knees quaking, as they waited for reinforcements to arrive.
Lawliet was squeezing the life out of Light’s mortifyingly filthy hand, and they joined a trembling but brave-faced Mello, the detonator button still secure beneath his small, pale thumb. The bomb squad was on their way, Lawliet explained, the medics not far behind, and SWAT officers would join them any moment now.
Light focused on not touching his injury, as his palms were still smeared with Bosworth’s blood-and God only knew what he’d been shooting up.
Light was so relieved-and filled with such a bone-deep contentment-as he watched Matsuda comforting Matt and Near (whose button nose was utterly unscathed), as Lawliet and Quillish manned one of Mello’s shoulders each, that at first he automatically dismissed the small red dot that flickered on his pants leg and wavered just an inch.
Then it jumped up to his chest and settled over his heart, and frigid cords of terror tightened around every part of him.
Slowly, Light looked up.
In the highest window of the warehouse, he could just make out the shadow of Bosworth cradling a sniper rifle, and there was no doubt of what was in his sights.
No no no oh God no please-
A streak of movement snatched his attention-Lawliet, who jerked the detonator out of Mello’s hand.
The warehouse exploded into a solid wall of red and orange flame.
The shock wave made short work of Light’s weak knees, and it deafened him for good measure-he watched from the ground as, in perfect silence, the building collapsed, steel rippling like mercury as concrete and supportive architecture crumpled into the pier. Salt-warped boards, further compromised by the raging fire, couldn’t sustain the weight, and Light’s hearing gradually returned in time for him to bear witness to the rumbling finale as the shreds of Bosworth’s headquarters crumbled into the sea.
Lawliet was gasping out something about Richard Bosworth not being a man who planned ahead, about how he would have had to rig the house when the chocolate was still there, about how many charges he would have had to tow up to Pacific Heights and install without being seen, and a thousand other things that made no difference now.
Light gathered himself to his feet, grabbed Lawliet’s arm, and kissed him to shut him up.
Lawliet made a sound like “Mmf,” and then a sound like, “Mmm.”
“Holy shit,” a small voice said.
“Mello,” Quillish warned.
[Chapter XIII] [Chapter XV]