Static and triggers

Snowy static. A distorted hand. A silver gun barrel gripped tight.

The violently shaking image, lasting less than a tenth of a second, branded itself into my vision like the final spasm of a dying system. It would not fade.

"Calibration" had not merely been interrupted. It had descended into utter chaos and loss of control. The static, the distorted hand, were no longer dispassionate error reports, but outward manifestations of an internal collapse. He gripped his revolver, but that hand conveyed no resolve. Only... struggle. An extreme struggle on the brink of collapse.

He was standing at the edge of a cliff. I had not pushed him there. The backlash and chaos within the very system he served and upheld were tearing him apart.

Ryuk, in the corner, seemed to sense this unusual collapse as well. He stopped grinning, his huge body tensing slightly, his crimson eyes shifting warily as though assessing an approaching storm. "That guy... is he rotting?" he murmured hoarsely, a trace of uncertainty in his voice. "From the inside... pfft, like overripe fruit..."

I did not respond. A cold, almost absolute clarity settled over me.

I could not let him collapse like this. I could not let the chaos inside him swallow him, or let him simply end everything with that revolver.

That would be letting him off too easily.

His collapse, his end, had to be defined by me. It had to become the perfect footnote to my final judgment.

I needed a target. One that could become the last straw that broke him, that could wrench him out of the vortex of his internal chaos and force him to face me, to complete the final ritual of this pursuit. This target had to hold irreplaceable, symbolic significance for him personally.

Someone... he had to protect at any cost, someone he might even try to "dispose of" himself as he lost control.

My mind worked faster than ever before, stripping away all irrelevant information and driving straight toward the core. His behavioral patterns, the few emotions he had revealed, the details in that blurry photograph, the structure of the system he belonged to...

A name, a possibility, gradually emerged from the fog.

Lina Adler. Former chief behavioral analyst of SRO-7, a legendary figure who had retired early years ago for unknown reasons and withdrawn into seclusion. Internal rumors held that she had been Mentor's first teacher and early protector, one of the few people who truly understood how his mind worked. She might even have been someone he relied on emotionally. Her existence was the last human connection between him and that cold system. If the wave of internal purges had already spiraled out of control, then a "legacy asset" like her, who knew too much of the past and was no longer under their control, would very likely make the list as well.

Her death should be a... farewell. An ironic farewell brought about by his own hand, yet one he could not prevent.

I walked over to the desk and silently opened the Death Note. The tip of my pen touched down with the weight of finality.

[Lina Adler]

Cause of death: legacy reclamation. Time: tomorrow at dusk, beneath the porch of her secluded farm in rural Virginia, while she watches the sunset. Cause of death: the nanobots implanted in her body years ago for emergency tranquilization (standard equipment for senior SRO-7 personnel) will activate fully upon receiving an untraceable erroneous command over her former personal encrypted frequency. They will far exceed the safe dosage, causing cardiac arrest in a state of profound calm. Before her death, her personal terminal, isolated from the world for years, will receive a single message through a communication protocol she believed had long been abandoned, one belonging only to her and Mentor. It will contain only two words: [Rest peacefully]. The source IP will be disguised as that of SRO-7's current security department, which is embroiled in internal recriminations over the Night Watchman incident.

Location: a peaceful farm. Cause of death: "care" from the past. Message: [Rest peacefully]. Source: his out-of-control system.

Let him watch, amid chaos that left him unable even to protect himself, as the person he least wanted to hurt died peacefully because of an "error" in the crumbling system he belonged to. Let her receive a message that seemed to come from him, but was really my mocking wish for her to "rest peacefully."

Mentor, you held the trigger tight, yet fought the static inside your mind.

Let me help you

identify your target.

The next day, at dusk.

A remote farm somewhere in Virginia.

Lina Adler sat in a rocking chair on the porch, wrapped in an old blanket, watching the distant sunset stain the sky orange-red. The years had left their marks on her face, but her eyes remained sharp and calm.

On the old wooden side table beside her, a device resembling an old-fashioned radio, seemingly long out of use, suddenly lit up with a faint green indicator.

The screen came on, displaying a simple line of text: [Rest peacefully].

The sender identifier was a code she recognized, but had thought long buried in history.

She paused briefly, her brows drawing together in apparent confusion. Then an extraordinarily peaceful expression settled over her, carrying even a trace of relief.

She slowly let out a contented sigh, leaned back in her rocking chair, and closed her eyes, as though she had finally put down some heavy burden.

The hand clutching her blanket slipped gently down.

The last light of the sunset fell warmly over her, as though she were merely an elderly woman dozing in the twilight.

A few minutes later.

The green light on the old device went out.

As though nothing had happened.

In my room, the screen displayed a brief obituary announcing that former senior government analyst Ms. Lina Adler had passed away peacefully at home. It was buried beneath the much greater uproar sparked by the Night Watchman incident.

Ryuk remained silent, even forgetting to take out another apple. He merely looked at the screen, then at me, his crimson eyes revealing, for the first time, something close to... bewildered awe.

I was waiting.

Waiting to see how the man swallowed by static and that distorted hand would face this ultimate, quiet judgment aimed at his most vulnerable point.

This time, there was no wait.

Almost the instant the obituary appeared.

The phone screen flared to life!

There was no more static, no more imagery, no more text.

Instead-

An unbroken, frenzied barrage that nearly shattered the speaker-

Gunfire!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Five shots in succession! Deafening, violent, utterly unrestrained! They erupted wildly through the earpiece!

As though someone had pointed a revolver at the phone's microphone and emptied every chamber!

The gunfire stopped abruptly.

All that remained through the earpiece was heavy, desperately suppressed breathing, like that of a wounded beast.

Hiss... huh... hiss... huh...

Then came a voice, so hoarse and broken it was almost unrecognizable, yet extraordinarily clear. No longer electronically synthesized, it brimmed with raw, undisguised pain and fury:

"...Found you."

The connection cut off abruptly.

Dead silence.

True, absolute dead silence.

I slowly lowered the phone.

The earpiece still seemed hot. Those five deafening gunshots and that hoarse roar lingered in my ears.

Found you.

At last, he

had stopped calibrating.