Brooklyn, New York.
Robert Vaughan closed the Black Notebook.
On the television screen in front of him, the body of the New York Police Department's Deputy Director was being carried out of an apartment.
It was the twelfth name he had written that day.
"Is this what it feels like to be a god?" Robert murmured.
At that same second, in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Tanaka, the homeless man, crossed out the name of the last school bully. Behind him were dazzling neon lights; before him lay a deathly silent alley.
In Berlin, Hans sat in the Law School's library, his pen dancing across the black paper as gracefully as if he were playing the piano.
Twenty-four hours. Three cities.
One hundred and twelve targets, all dead from cardiac paralysis.
This slaughter was no longer the mindless venting Shrimp had indulged in.
Every victim was either someone in a gray area of the local justice system or a corrupt figure in a position of power.
After a brief moment of shock, public opinion around the world erupted into unprecedented, fanatical support.
"Kira wasn't caught!"
"He's in every corner of the world!"
"God is watching us!"
Washington, the underground Command Center at FBI headquarters.
"The evidence is conclusive. That weapon can be 'divided.'"
A senior official in a dark blue suit tapped the table, the light falling across his hawklike eyes. "That fellow called Le has one portion of it.
"And now, new fragments have appeared all over the world."
He looked at the screen, which displayed an infrared map of the restricted military zone in Linhai City's northern outskirts.
"Justice is a children's game.
"That kind of power must be in the hands of the United States."
"Deploy the Hunters team. Bypass the Linhai City police. Bypass L."
"Objective: seize the notebook