Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The violent echoes of five gunshots seemed to linger in the cramped rented room, humming and trembling, mingling with that hoarse, broken, venomously burning declaration-"Found you"-and refusing to fade.
The receiver was no longer hot. It had turned cold. But that raw, unfiltered human voice pierced deeper than any electronic tone, driving straight into my eardrums.
He was no longer hiding. Rage had shredded all his disguises and calculations, exposing the... man beneath, who could suffer, roar, and empty a revolver's cylinder.
Found you.
It was not a guess, not a model's analysis, but some kind of... confirmation.
Lina Adler's death, a blade driven precisely into his weakest spot, had finally forced out his last instinctive response.
In the corner, Ryuk had fallen utterly silent for once. His massive body curled into the deepest shadows, and even the ever-present smell of rotten apples seemed to recede. His crimson eyes stared unblinkingly at me, holding neither mockery nor curiosity anymore, but an almost primal, instinctive wariness of approaching danger. He even parted his lips slightly, exposing his sharp teeth, not in a smile, but in silent preparation for a defensive growl.
"He... caught your scent." Ryuk's voice was extremely low, as rough as rocks grinding underground.
I did not move. Blood flowed slowly through my veins, cold, yet carrying a faint tremor of the most intense excitement.
Found me?
Perhaps.
The location and manner of Lina's death, the faint trail I had deliberately left to pin the blame on the internal chaos within SRO-7... all of it might have given him unprecedented clues to narrow things down. His anger itself was a form of confirmation.
But "finding" was a process, not a result. There was still a distance between "possible" and "confirmed," between "a general area" and "an exact location."
And that distance was my opportunity.
Before rage drove him to marshal every remaining resource and come after me, I had to deliver one last judgment, the most thorough of all. One aimed no longer at any individual, but at him and everything he represented... an ultimate rejection.
I needed a target. It had to be the source of his rage, the symbol of his power, and the embodiment of his present chaos. A living target on which all his pain, fury, and helplessness could converge.
Him? No. The Death Note could not kill him directly-the rules forbade it. Besides, that would let him off too easily. He had to live to witness the end of everything.
Then only one choice remained.
SRO-7 itself. Or, more precisely, its current temporary core of physical operations and collective will-the provisional command center, plunged into a power vacuum and mutual suspicion by the destruction of the Night Watchman and the Winters incident, yet still struggling to function.
Destroy it. Not from outside, but from within. Exploit its utter chaos and distrust to make it end itself.
I walked over to the desk. The Death Note lay open, its pages seeming to sense the approach of the final moment, radiating an unprecedented, heart-stopping chill.
The pen touched down. This time, I was writing not a person's name, but a... command. A command that exploited a loophole in the Death Note's rules to forcibly twist a collective will toward self-destruction.
[All personnel currently on duty at the SRO-7 provisional emergency command center (current head count: 7; identities confirmed through internal duty logs and biometric surveillance)]
Cause of death: collapse of consensus. Time: one hour from now, during an emergency joint crisis meeting in the underground bunker's main command center. Cause of death: all seven participants will simultaneously fall into an irreconcilable logical paradox founded on absolute mutual trust (a real-world variant of the Byzantine Generals Problem), causing a collective physiological shutdown of their brains' prefrontal functions. Before dying, all seven must simultaneously raise their service weapons (standard issue), aim at one another's foreheads, form a perfect standoff, and maintain that posture until their vital signs cease. Their main console screen will be locked by one final, irrevocable global command: [System self-check failed. Initiate final protocol: omega-level self-destruct. Authorization confirmed: unanimous approval.]
Location: the heart. Cause of death: a logical dead end. Posture: mutual destruction. Command: self-destruct.
While he roared "Found you" outside, his "home," his "brain," deep underground, would collectively vote for and approve its own destruction in the most absurd, hopeless way imaginable.
Mentor, can you hear it?
Those five gunshots
were the bells you rang for your own system...
its death knell.
One hour later.
The underground bunker, main command center.
The seven highest-ranking personnel currently remaining at SRO-7 sat around a circular conference table, their faces exhausted, their eyes suspicious, the atmosphere as heavy as lead. Winters, the Night Watchman, Adler... the succession of blows had brought this already clandestine organization to the brink of collapse.
"We must immediately establish a new command priority sequence and reestablish external..." one of them began laboriously.
Before he could finish.
All seven froze!
Their eyes instantly turned vacant, confused, then filled with the deepest distrust and fear of one another! A despair beyond words, founded on absolute rationality, seized them all!
Almost through muscle memory and trained instinct, all seven mechanically drew their sidearms at the same instant!
Swish! Seven gun barrels aimed precisely, tremblingly, at the foreheads of their companions beside them!
They formed a perfect, horrifying circle of death.
No voices. No negotiations. Only heavy, desperate breathing.
Like seven cursed statues, they stood frozen in that absurd standoff. Their eyes were wide open, reflecting one another's equally terrified, contorted faces.
On the main console's large screen, streams of green code scrolled wildly before finally stopping on that blood-red command:
[System self-check failed. Initiate final protocol: omega-level self-destruct. Authorization confirmed: unanimous approval.]
The countdown began to tick: 10... 9... 8...
All seven had their fingers on their triggers, trembling slightly, yet none could move, none dared move, and none was willing to move first.
Until the breath of life faded, little by little, from their deadlocked eyes.
The countdown reached zero.
From deep within the underground bunker came a dull roar of explosions, muffled by layer upon layer of insulation.
The earth trembled slightly.
Then everything returned to deathly silence.
In my room, the screen displayed a brief bulletin about a "suspected minor earthquake" in some remote area. Other news soon buried it.
Ryuk suddenly drew a ragged breath, as though he, too, had been holding it. He stared at me, his crimson eyes filled with an almost disbelieving shock. "...All... all rotten... from the inside... rotted away... nothing left..."
Just then-
Bang!!!
The rented room's old, flimsy wooden door suddenly burst inward! Splinters flew!
A figure crashed into the room like a demon clawing its way out of hell, bringing the stench of gun smoke and blood with him!
He was covered in filth and blood belonging to who knew whom, his hair disheveled, his eyes crazed and bloodshot. He tightly gripped the silver Colt Revolver, wisps of smoke still curling from its muzzle.
It was the very face I had tried to piece together from blurry photographs and video requests, now etched with utter madness and a fury bent on destroying everything.
He roared, his voice broken and hoarse, barely human:
"I! Told! You!"
"I! Found! You!"
The muzzle pointed unwaveringly at me.
Before you continue