Blank.
There was nothing on the page, as though the dark red writing that had briefly appeared and vanished, along with that rusty, bloody smell, had been nothing more than a carefully crafted hallucination. The notebook lay closed. Beneath its smooth, warm cover, the slow beat continued, but the faint, separate pulse from before was gone.
But it had "awakened" once. That was enough.
Ryuk had finally stopped his hysterics in the corner. His enormous body curled into the deepest shadows like a heap of rain-soaked rags reeking of decay. He no longer looked at me or the notebook. His scarlet eyes stared unfocused at the filthy wall, and his throat occasionally released a weary gurgle of indeterminate meaning. Fear seemed to have drained all his strength, leaving only numb, defeated resignation.
Observation. Nourishment. Approach. Conflict. Truth.
The keywords the notebook had written in blood drove into my thoughts like cold wedges.
L. This subject the notebook had chosen for "observation," this potential source of "nourishment." Who was he? Where was he? What did the notebook want to "observe" through him? What "nourishment" could he provide?
This was no random choice. After feasting on the energy of the Core of Harmony and indirectly clashing with Deep Nest, the notebook's "needs" had evolved. Ordinary deaths no longer satisfied it. It craved a more complex, more... "nutritious" process of death. And L was its chosen test subject, or perhaps... culture medium.
I needed to find him. Not out of curiosity, but necessity. The notebook's "hunger" pointed toward him, which meant he was the eye of the next storm. Whether I wanted it or not, I was already strapped to this war chariot driven by the notebook, bound for an unknown destination.
But how could I find him? I had only a code name: L. The Roman numerals suggested a succession or sequence, pointing toward an old organization or bloodline, possibly connected to the legendary detective "L." But Mentor's archives had been destroyed, the Silent Council's records reduced to ash, and GRI was paralyzed...
There was one other lead.
Richard Voss. GIPA's chairman. His death sentence had yet to be carried out, but had the notebook's autonomous writing temporarily overridden my instructions? No, it felt different. My judgment instructions were still there, like a preset program. The notebook's autonomous writing was another parallel... task, with a higher priority.
Voss's death might offer an opening. As the central authority for global information censorship, GIPA very likely had top-secret files on "L" and his successors in its database. At the moment of Voss's death, when "logical collapse" threw GIPA's systems into chaos, I might be able to seize the critical information.
It was a gamble. A bet that the notebook's "observation" script included an information-gathering phase.
I did not hesitate. I walked to the desk and touched the notebook again. This time, it still felt smooth and warm, but its beat seemed... a little more urgent. As though urging me on.
I opened it. The pages were soft. On Richard Voss's page, the ink was pitch-black, awaiting execution.
I did not lower the pen to add anything. I merely confirmed that the judgment remained in effect.
I closed the notebook.
Snap.
The sound carried a barely perceptible hint of... impatience?
Tomorrow morning. The GIPA summit.
The stage would be ready then.
And I would not be the only spectator.
The next morning.
Dignitaries filled the venue of GIPA's annual summit, the atmosphere outwardly solemn and dignified. Dr. Richard Voss straightened his tie and approached the podium with a warm, confident smile. Once again, he was ready to dress information control in finery with his exquisite logic and compassionate vocabulary.
The cameras broadcasting live worldwide focused on him.
He cleared his throat and began.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we stand at the crossroads of the information age. On one side lies the mire of disorder, and on the other..."
His voice abruptly caught.
The smile froze on his face. His pupils suddenly dilated, as though he had seen something utterly horrifying on the plane of thought.
"Premise... no... conclusion... paradox... loop... impossible..." He began muttering incoherently, yet the terminology he used was rigorously precise, as though conducting a public exercise in reasoning that was rapidly collapsing.
The audience exchanged looks. Some thought it was an unconventional opening; others began to feel uneasy.
Cold sweat seeped from Voss's forehead, and his body trembled slightly. He tried to steady himself against the podium, only to discover that his arms had gone rigid.
Then the strangest thing happened.
Within a spherical space centered on him, roughly one meter in radius, the air suddenly became absolutely transparent, like the purest crystal, and took on the texture of an indestructible solid!
Voss was frozen completely inside this "air glass"! His expression remained locked in utter terror and confusion, his body half bent as he tried to brace himself against the podium, like a meticulously crafted amber specimen charged with tension!
Almost simultaneously!
The surface of the "air glass" imprisoning him began displaying vast quantities of rapidly scrolling data like a projection screen-GIPA's secret censorship directives, lists of sensitive words, detailed files on dissidents he had ordered monitored and silenced, records of secret communications with intelligence agencies around the world...
The entire venue fell deathly silent!
Before the stunned eyes of viewers around the world, the live broadcast continued for a full minute before it was frantically cut off!
But it was already too late.
The truth had been frozen onto a transparent pillar of shame for all to see.
In my room, the screen showed the chaos at the venue and another eruption across the global internet.
I paid no attention to any of it.
My fingers flew across the keyboard. Using a prearranged backdoor and the brief confusion in access permissions that inevitably struck GIPA's systems at the instant of Voss's death, I pierced its innermost database like the most cunning virus.
Search keywords: L. Succession. Roman numerals. XIX.
Streams of data surged past like floodwaters.
Most were encrypted or useless.
But just before access permissions were locked down again-
My script forcibly dragged out an encrypted entry marked "Mythic age-observer-inactive"!
The entry was extremely short, containing only a name and a set of coordinates.
Name: Lena V. Lawton
Coordinates: XX.XXXX° N, XX.XXXX° W. Somewhere on the Greenland ice sheet.
After the name was a small parenthetical note: (L)
Found her!
L did not mean the nineteenth generation. Was it a Roman-numeral variant of the initials L.V.L.? Or some kind of disguise?
The coordinates pointed to the Greenland ice sheet. An "inactive" "observer"?
Was she the one the notebook wanted to observe? This woman hidden beneath the ice at the end of the world?
Just then-
The closed Death Note on the desk
Suddenly jumped on its own!
Like a heart jolting into a beat!
Then,
On the cover,
Across the once-unblemished black surface,
Countless fine,
Vein-like,
Dark red lines suddenly emerged!
Those lines rapidly spread and intertwined,
Until, at the center of the cover,
They coalesced into something new,
Viscous,
And seemingly pulsating...
[→]
An arrow.
Pointing... north.
Pointing toward those coordinates.
The notebook
Was showing the way.
It was already...
Unable to wait any longer.
Before you continue