"...Keep going?" Ryuk's voice sounded like sandpaper scraping rusty sheet metal. Holding half a shriveled, blackened apple, he rolled his crimson eyes in the gloom before fixing them on me. "He told you to keep going? Wow, what's that supposed to be? Encouragement? Or does he think you can't make any bigger waves?"
He didn't give his usual grating laugh. He merely tilted his enormous head and watched my reaction.
I had no reaction. At least, none that showed.
What coursed through my veins felt like a mixture of liquid nitrogen and lava, absolute cold and absolute heat colliding wildly, yet somehow maintaining a strange calm on the brink of explosion. My fingertips rested on the cold casing of the burner phone, the sensation excruciatingly clear.
The countdown continued.
He had seen through my smokescreen, then "praised" my "caution" and "composure" in a way that bordered on humiliation. He even knew the most deeply hidden stain on the small fry I had picked at random.
This wasn't a warning. It was a show of strength. He had spread the information network under his control before me like an anatomical chart, forcing me to see the hopeless gulf between us.
He was telling me: Every move you make falls within my predictions and surveillance. Your so-called judgment is nothing more than a game I permit, even "coach." Stop, or keep playing your "cautious" role until I lose patience.
An overwhelming sense of helplessness and fury at being toyed with nearly swept away my reason.
But a second later, something colder and sharper pierced those emotions.
No.
He was afraid.
His show of strength was proof that he was afraid. Afraid that my next move would truly escape his control. Zhao Tingting's death had crossed his bottom line and brought external pressure he couldn't fully control. That was why he needed these twenty-four hours-and, even more, why he needed me to stay "quiet" during them.
He was trying to use his absolute informational advantage and psychological intimidation to force me back into my cage and regain control of the pace.
"Keep it up"?
How could I possibly do that?
But I couldn't attack blindly anymore. I needed a key. A key that could pry open his seemingly impregnable information fortress. I needed to know where his information came from. Technical surveillance? Internal access privileges? Or... something else?
A target. I needed a target that could help me test the limits of his information.
This target had to be extremely sensitive, with all related information tightly protected. Once that information was leaked through a "judgment," it would expose the channels through which it had been obtained.
My gaze swept over the analyses and speculation surrounding Liu Jianming's case on the screen, along with the "rumors" that kept being deleted. A name emerged before my eyes, one repeatedly mentioned yet always hidden behind a veil of uncertainty.
"The boss." Not a real name, but a code name. The real big fish behind Liu Jianming, the "people above" obliquely mentioned in Sun Ming's emails, the true mastermind who could suppress the international uproar over Zhao Tingting's case. Everything about him was a mystery. Only a tiny amount of vague, leaked information pointed toward a particular classified unit connected to national security.
Go after him? No, not yet. That would be suicide.
But what about someone with a direct, exclusive connection to him, a connection that was itself classified as top secret?
A... messenger.
My mind raced, searching through every scrap of information, trying to piece together this "messenger's" existence. Liu Jianming's travel records? Rumors about cracked encrypted communications? Secrecy regulations governing special units?
There.
A possibility. Whenever Liu Jianming made contact with "the boss" at the highest level, he didn't use electronic devices. He used a specific person: a confidential courier with a clean identity and a simple background, someone who almost never drew attention. The courier's very existence was a secret.
Find him. Test him.
I opened the notebook, the tip of my pen trembling slightly with excitement. I was walking a tightrope over a bottomless abyss.
[Wu Guoqiang] (The most likely candidate, inferred from behavioral patterns and social connections. Confirmation with the Shinigami Eyes was needed, but they were currently unavailable.)
Cause of death: loss of speech. Time: two tomorrow afternoon, inside his car, during his routine trip to a classified unit on the outskirts of the city to exchange documents. Cause of death: sudden loss of voice accompanied by spasmodic contractions of the throat muscles, resulting in suffocation. Before dying, he must attempt to use his finger to write the code of the actual unit receiving the documents he was delivering this time on the fogged-up car window (I knew what that code represented).
I paused when I wrote "receiving unit's code." This was a gamble. A gamble that my deduction was correct, that this courier knew the code, that he would instinctively try to write it before he died.
It would also be the clearest declaration of war I could hand to my "mentor"-I was trying to touch the most closely guarded secrets.
The next afternoon, at one fifty-nine.
A black sedan traveled steadily along the restricted road leading to the outskirts.
Two o'clock sharp.
Inside the car, Wu Guoqiang, both driver and courier, suddenly clutched his throat. His face turned dark purple in an instant, his eyes bulging with terror. He opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out except horrible, choking rasps. He struggled frantically, his fingers scratching wildly at the fogged-up window.
After a few brief, meaningless scratches, he used the last of his strength to trace a trembling yet clearly legible combination of numbers and letters in the condensation.
[SRO-7]
Then his body stiffened, and he collapsed in the driver's seat.
The car coasted slowly onward before finally crashing to a halt against the roadside barrier.
The news was suppressed as quickly as possible. But the code "SRO-7" slipped like a ghost through some untraceable channel, quietly appearing on the screens of a select few insiders watching the matter closely.
My room was utterly silent.
Ryuk had even stopped eating his apple. He simply crouched there quietly, like an ugly stone statue.
I was waiting.
Waiting for thunderous wrath.
This time, the phone responded faster than I could have imagined.
Just half an hour later.
The ringtone exploded! It was no longer a steady beep, not even an electronic tone! Instead, it was a distorted, genuine roar, mixing extreme rage with a kind of... terror, almost loud enough to shatter the earpiece!
"Are you fucking insane?! Do you know what SRO-7 is?! Do you have any idea what you've touched?!"
The voice was hoarse, stripped of every electronic modification, exposing the natural voice of a middle-aged man driven into fury by sheer terror!
It lasted only an instant before a shrill crackle of electrical interference drowned it out, but that voice had been unmistakably real!
The static fluctuated violently for several seconds as he tried to regain his composure, but failed. When the electronic voice sounded again, it was filled with uncontrollable tremors and hysterical threats:
"You're finished! Do you hear me?! You're completely finished! Whatever the hell you are! I'll find you! I'll..."
The call was abruptly cut off!
A busy signal.
I slowly lowered the phone.
My heart hammered wildly in my chest, almost hard enough to shatter my ribs.
SRO-7.
It wasn't my killing people that frightened him.
It was that code being leaked in this way.
And that genuine roar, its disguise slipping for an instant...
I licked my suddenly dry lips and began to smile silently.
Found you.
Mentor.
So you...
Could be afraid too.
Before you continue