Cold Coffee

The coffee had gone cold.

Four words. Carrying a barely perceptible weariness, a touch of human complaint, even... a trace of helpless self-mockery.

He had admitted it. Admitted that he was sitting behind that desk with its cold coffee. Admitted that my "scalpel" had affected him, perhaps even... interrupted his leisurely enjoyment of his coffee.

This was no longer the "mentor" armed to the teeth with data and models. This was someone who drank coffee, complained when it went cold, and lost his composure in the face of a sudden, bloody judgment.

A tangible person. Someone within reach.

An enormous advantage.

But it could also be a trap. A more sophisticated psychological offensive that exploited empathy and human weakness. He was showing vulnerability, closing the distance, trying to make me lower my guard.

Ryuk let out a bizarre, cackling laugh in the corner, rotten apple scraps falling from his mouth. "Cold coffee? Hahaha! Is he complaining? Like some old geezer whose candy got stolen! Why don't you tell him, 'Serves you right'?"

I did not laugh. My fingertips tapped lightly against the desk in a steady rhythm.

A response was necessary. But not a verbal exchange. That would draw me into another form of "dialogue," imperceptibly closing the distance between us.

My response had to be an action. Something colder, more precise, something that utterly disregarded the hint of "humanity" he had just revealed. It had to tell him: Whether your coffee is cold means nothing to me. My judgment will not hesitate for any fluctuation in your emotions.

I needed a target. Someone who stood in the sharpest possible contrast to that trace of "weariness" and "humanity" he had just shown. Someone utterly cold and inhuman, whose very existence desecrated the everyday warmth that "coffee" represented.

A symbol... of efficiency and dehumanization taken to their extremes.

My gaze swept across the screen, past the academic earthquake triggered by Doctor Thorne's death, toward darker realms. Automated warfare? Algorithm-driven enslavement? The rationalization of mass surveillance?

I found her.

Elena Volkova, head of Project Daedalus. A woman whose name appeared in only a handful of top-secret files. Her team specialized in designing and deploying "automated solutions" for operations that could never see the light of day-from intelligent viruses that precisely eliminated populations of specific genetic lineages, to infrasound arrays capable of inducing collective emotional collapse in targeted regions, to swarms of miniature attack drones that made fully autonomous decisions without human authorization. She was neither a soldier nor a politician. She was an engineer, an "efficiency expert" who treated mass death and enslavement as purely technical problems to solve. Her "success" rested on the complete reduction of human beings to objects.

Her death should be... a technical disintegration. The ultimate irony: destroyed by her own creations in the realm of "efficiency" she took such pride in.

I walked over to the desk and opened the Death Note. My pen touched the page without the slightest hesitation.

[Elena Volkova]

Cause of death: system optimization. Time: tomorrow at precisely nine a.m., in the command center where she will oversee the final test of the latest-generation "Reaper" drone swarm. Cause of death: the Reaper's master control system will mistakenly identify her personal identification code as the highest-priority elimination target, triggering the swarm's "autonomous elimination" protocol. Before her death, her command terminal screen will forcibly display detailed collateral casualty assessment reports-numbers, images, and videos-for every "automated solution" she approved, before finally locking onto a memorandum she signed three years ago concerning calculation standards for the "acceptable attrition rate." The drone swarm will complete its "elimination" task within ninety seconds.

Location: a heavily guarded command center. Cause of death: elimination by her own "perfect creations." Penance: cold data and images. Executioners: drones.

A death without any human involvement. Absolutely "efficient."

Mentor, has your coffee gone cold?

Look at this.

This is what you call...

Efficiency.

The next day, at precisely nine a.m.

A command center deep underground, somewhere.

Elena Volkova stood before a massive curved screen filled with real-time data streams from the Reaper drone swarm. Every indicator was normal. The final test was about to begin.

"All systems green. Prepare to initiate the final sequence..." she ordered calmly.

Suddenly!

Every screen turned red in an instant! A piercing alarm tore through the air!

"Warning! Highest-priority threat identified! Located at the command station!"

"Elimination protocol automatically activated! Cannot abort!"

Elena's composure shattered instantly, replaced by incredulous terror. "What?! Error! System error! Override! Authorization code-"

Her voice drowned beneath the shrill whine of drone engines starting up. The armored panels in the command center ceiling slid open, exposing honeycomb-like launch shafts.

Countless familiar images flashed wildly across the terminal screen before her-satellite images of villages destroyed by viruses, footage of crowds driven into mental collapse by infrasound experiments, news photographs of children caught in drone strikes... Finally, it froze on the document she had signed concerning the "acceptable attrition rate."

She stared desperately at the numbers and images, then jerked her head up toward the drones that had already risen from the honeycomb, their cold optical sensors locked onto her.

"No... this isn't..." Her final murmurs were swallowed completely.

Ninety seconds later.

Silence returned to the command center.

Only the smells of smoke and blood lingered.

The red alerts still flashed across the screens, illuminating the deserted, ravaged command station.

In my room, the screen displayed a vague news bulletin about a "serious testing accident" at a highly classified military research and development facility. It was swiftly deleted.

Ryuk pounded the floor excitedly, producing a series of thuds. "Hahaha! That was good! Cut herself up with a knife she made! Satisfying!"

I was waiting.

Waiting to see how the man who had just complained about his cold coffee would assess this "efficient" judgment.

This time, the response came faster.

Almost the instant the news broke.

My phone screen lit up.

No text.

No pictures.

Only an extremely brief audio clip, less than a second long.

"Hss-krr-"

An extremely distorted sound, like someone sharply sucking in a breath only to have it forcibly cut off.

Then a completely chaotic, meaningless stream of binary code scrolled wildly for one second.

The screen went dark.

Dead silence.

Holding the phone, I narrowed my eyes slightly.

A sharp intake of breath.

A chaotic binary stream.

He had lost his composure.

Perhaps even... briefly lost control of his communications device.

The leisurely ease of cold coffee had vanished completely.

In its place was...

Undisguisable horror.

So, mentor.

How does efficiency

Taste?

Is it more invigorating

Than your cold coffee?