(no subject)

[evowhisperer]

  

-----

"Stand aside, please, I'm a doctor!"

 

Chaos. Pure, grainy, cheaply recorded chaos. The cellphone trembles violently with its owner's hands, and frightened shouting in Spanish from all around threatens to drown out the wails of a child. The dirty sidewalk is no place to treat the wounded.

 

The seven people bleeding out on the ground may not be alive to care, soon. The child screaming at a young couple's side is unhurt, but rightfully frightened.

 

Several someones pass in front of the camera. The owner moves to the side, and a loud male voice blares out, 'Are they alright? Are they alright?' when no one answers. The owner continues to move, and a frilly sleeve is pushed out of the way.

 

There's a man in a white labcoat kneeling over one of the bodies, pressing a cloth flat against a puddle of red.

 

'Hey, are they going to survive?'  the phone owner repeats. The doctor snags the cuff of someone standing too close, and orders them to keep pressing down. They step forward with shaking hands and kneel also, and soon the doctor stands and moves on.

 

Someone's voice is rising and falling hysterically. There's shouting about police, and an ambulance. The camera turns to look, but it doesn't seem that either have arrived, and when it looks back several people have begun to grab shirts from the store's open sidewalk display, following the doctor's example. 

 

The doctor is wearing a large woman's hat with a tag sticking out of it, now, conspicuously snatched from a knocked-over shelf. He's facing a direction that would normally let the camera see his profile, but the hat is big enough to hide all but his neck. He slows as he reaches a body that stares vacantly away--it's not the first he would've reached, but it is the first the camera has seen--and moves on.

 

Finally, there's the body that no one seems ready to approach, curled up and with its back to the crowd. Broken glass litters the ground around it, and when the doctor pushes it onto its back, he kicks a gun further out of reach.

 

Someone passes in front of the camera. "Hey..." The owner complains. No response, and the owner moves around. "Hey, why's he helping that fucker when there's people here who need help?"

 

The doctor's back is to the camera. It's impossible to see what he's doing until he glances towards the crowd, loops the hat's strap tightly around his jaw, and starts CPR.

 

No one stops or helps him. The camera continues to watch, eventually panning over the wounded, and the unhurt victims still milling around. Someone shouts about the police again, and more people are kneeling over the wounded victim's bodies, pressing down more cloth. The child has climbed into a sitting woman's lap, face buried in her hair.

One of makeshift medics calls out to the doctor tearfully, but they are ignored.

 

There's an outcry. The camera snaps back to the doctor, who's lifting his head from the shooter's chest, pushing down arms that have begun to move sluggishly. More shouting, with more than a couple of screams. The crowd is starting to shuffle back, and the doctor throws up a blood-soaked hand, shouting urgent assurances. The camera glimpses part of his face, and he's young, and very clearly aware of the new dangers--both from revived shooter, and the crowd.

 

"He's not armed!" Triple checking. The doctor kneels on his wrist, shifting the man to check underneath. Quadruple checking. "He has no more weapons! He's unconscious!"

 

The shooter's eyes are glazed but open, and the confusion in the crowd eddies and swirls. Before anyone can do anything, there's armed men in uniforms of the law shoving through the crowd, taking control of the situation. The crowd's din reaches a new high, and the man with the camera is forced back. It becomes impossible to see anything else, as people move back and shake the camera every which way.

 

There's only a glimpse left of the doctor left in the clip, and it's from one last ditch effort. The phone gets held high in the air, and it shows a white coat turned to one of the uniforms, hands forward, bloody, and earnestly reassuring.

 

The clip cuts out.

 

Comments

[dead_black_eyes]

If L's beleaguered Task Force was run ragged before, they are absolutely beyond the point of worn-out now. The only exception is L himself, and perhaps Watari, though the others operate under the suspicion that the elderly British gentleman is simply very adept at keeping a stiff upper lip and concealing his exhaustion and stress. The robotic, driven obsession is a trait unique to the detective; in the last short while, he's encountered a prime suspect who fits his psychological profile of Kira at his university, been faced with the appearance of a "second" Kira he'd deduced to be allied with but motivated differently from the original, and he is still running with the micro-robot theory for how Kira killed and how his victims could be revived (if only temporarily). It's a punishing to-do list, but the only indicator of how it affects him is the growing piles of high-sugar, high-calorie foods Watari stacks near him while he works.

"Ryuzkai," Soichiro asks. "Do you really think that my son could be Kira?"

"He claims to know nothing about the machines that were found... though he admitted to sharing my interest in them. It's likely that he saw through my suspicion of him and decided that showing no interest in them at all would be even more suspicious..."

"It sounds to me like you really want to pin it on this kid," Aizawa says, narrowing his eyes under his bushy hairline. "The evidence just doesn't support him; what we have is embarrassingly circumstantial. I wouldn't think that someone with your reputation would latch onto it this way. None of us are 'the great detective L', but we're no gumshoes, either."

"Aizawa..." Matsuda says fretfully, glancing L's way, waiting for the hammer to drop at the insubordination. It does not; in fact, L's demeanor doesn't change in the least.

"And what would you suggest, Mr. Aizawa?" he inquires.

"You should really be trying harder to find that doctor. The one using the machines to heal that heart attack victim."

"You believe that we are not? Since the broadcast in which the Second Kira announced himself, all we can do is wait for him to reveal himself at this point. While that happens, I don't think it's unreasonable to pursue other leads."

Aizawa huffs impatiently. "Maybe, but I just feel like there's more we could be doing while we are waiting for a move."

"Kira started off experimenting," L muses. "I think it's more than likely that this doctor fellow would want to experiment, too. Especially considering that the shooter expired a few days later of a heart attack... I think he'd be looking for a more permanent fix. And we have an advantage in tracking him that we don't have when tracking Kira; Kira strikes unseen and from a distance and so we can't easily predict where he'll strike without lives being on the line, but when Kira's victims are already dead... well. There's one place most of them end up, isn't there, Mr. Matsuda?"

"The... morgue?"

"Since Kira's killings have grown more concentrated in Japan since I called him out as being himself Japanese, I've had Watari put cameras in all the major ones, and redirected the bodies of Kira's victims to the most major ones. While we are confined, for the moment, to watching and waiting, I don't believe we will be watching and waiting very long."

[evowhisperer]

Caesar is not a detective. He's not a cop, security specialist, or even a very good common thief.

He doesn't see the cameras. They record him for several visits, always at major morgues, always with no one on the ground ever coming close. Occasionally Caesar will take samples of fluids and tissues, storing them in a well-padded case. Usually he sweeps the bodies with a phone-like device, lingering over the heart.

Then comes a time where there's a victim that's in the process of an autopsy. The body's organs have been emptied through an opening along their front, each one packaged and ready for testing. After freezing at the sight of the caved in thorax, Caesar lifts his phone, looking around. It takes him to some refrigerators by the wall, which he starts opening one by one, obviously searching.

It's not an in-and-out night. Caesar's watch beeps, and he grabs a packaged liver, unwrapping it with forced calm.

[dead_black_eyes]

Conversely, L is all of those things to the point where it makes a difference, and he's very good at the skill sets that accompany them. A few strings pulled, a character created, several books read and videos voraciously absorbed, and he was ready to step into the guise of a new temporary profession. It's one that suits him uncannily well, to the point where it actually disgusted some members of his Task Force, but he insisted on taking the role himself, rather than sending a proxy, just as he had when it came time to confront Light Yagami at his university.

He cuts an odd, angular figure in his fake wire-frame glasses and white lab coat, which is, purposely, the same brand and color as the one that had been stolen from the medical supplies store in Argentina. He can pass for Japanese from behind, with his shaggy, straight dark hair and slender frame, but his skin tone, round eyes and prominent nose speak of the western world rather than the east. He's noticed a pattern, because this is what he excels at, even if Caeser was trying pointedly to avoid revealing anything like that. Always afterhours, recognized by none of the normal employees, always collecting negligible samples, and tonight, L intends to speak with him.

He unlocks the otherwise deserted lab and enters, too quickly for Caeser to hear and hide. At first, he behaves like he doesn't notice the other man, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and glancing along the rows of drawers. He begins to pull one open, examining the tag on an unshriveled toe with pink-painted nails, but he stiffens, glances up, and exclaims loudly when he "notices" he's not alone in the lab.

Altogether, it's a very convincing performance. He slams the drawer shut, looking glaringly like someone caught in a very dubious act.

"What are you doing here? It's after-hours, and... you don't work here. I would have seen you."

It smacks of someone desperately trying to change the subject, divert the scrutiny from himself.

[evowhisperer]

Caesar almost doesn't bat an eye. Almost, because he does react, and when L turns around, Cesar's face is still pale, and there's still sweat at his temples. His (swiftly regained) calm is a lie.

"Dr. Yamanaka asked me to come in late." The words are fluent, if accented. "I'm double checking results, away from the day crowd."

Caesar's eyebrow arches, and his eyes snap briefly to the drawer L just pressed shut. This scene playing out before him stinks of something worse than the roomfull of corpses, and his stomach turns.

"What are you doing here?"

[dead_black_eyes]

L bites his lip, hollow-eyed gaze lingering on the tells in Cesar's expression. He stares just long enough to hint that he doubts that Dr. Yamanaka had anything to do with Caesar's presence here tonight. But inevitably, he has to go on the defensive when the young man, fairly, turns the scrutiny back on him.

"Not what you seem to think," he responds, rolling his eyes. "People just love that mortician stereotype, but I work here, like you, and like you, I have a good reason to be here afterhours. But it's strange... I know Dr. Yamanaka, and he never said anything about someone coming in tonight. Since I usually work the graveyard shift, he usually keeps me up to date on these things."

[evowhisperer]

"Actually, your shift was canceled. There must've been some confusion in sending out your notification, or you'd have known that before coming here." He puts his hands on his hips, curling the one with liver juices so that it doesn't actually touch his coat.

It all sounds perfectly reasonable, unflapped, and unconcerned. Clearly this is all just a regular mistake, and can be resolved with just as little fuss.

[dead_black_eyes]

L's nonexistent brows shoot up; admittedly, he's surprised and maybe even bizarrely impressed by the audacity it takes to tell a stranger when he works or doesn't work. "I never did receive a notification," he admits. "They never do these things last minute, the... cadavers can wait, obviously, but the thing about death is that it's always occurring and we only have so many drawers. Especially lately."

The implication is an obvious one.

"If you got the notification, perhaps you can show me. It would help me plan my workload more efficiently, since I was going to do a lot tonight and hearing that my shift was canceled is not good news."

[evowhisperer]

"Sorry." Audacity? This is the man with the cojones to storm Providence armed with nothing but a strong magnet and a cellphone. He doesn't miss a beat now, grimacing.

"I'm afraid that might not be possible: I left my laptop at my regular office, and last I checked the computer here wasn't accepting my access code. Perhaps you could log on, and I could sign into my inbox from there?"

He has to get out of here. If this man had kicked up less of a fuss he might've considered finishing his collection, but at this point he just wants to leave.

[dead_black_eyes]

He nods once, accepting the apology, and therefore elevating himself as the one in the morgue who has some actual authority.

"Not accepting your access code...?" he echoes, sounding remarkably surprised. Maybe too surprised. Imagine that. You can't get into the computer in a place you don't belong.

Let's see where this is going.

"Sure," he replies easily, with just the barest hint of a smirk. "That's probably happened before at some point. Just show me your inbox once I've logged into the database; it'll help me a lot."

More than you might know.

[evowhisperer]

"Sure."

The signals the man was giving from the start has always been scattered. Now they're concentrating, and the message doesn't confirm what he's said out loud: he doesn't look like he's worrying about emails at all. He keeps his right hand very still, close to his side: There's nothing in his coat pockets, but his pants are more obscured by the volumes of loose white. His eyes never leave L, and if his attention seems a little too keen, L would be right; it's easy for a predator to recognize a clumsier hunter's vigil.

The computer is off to the side. If L steps past him, he'll have his back towards the man. Caesar is hanging back.

[dead_black_eyes]

What are you up to?

He notices immediately that the man isn't moving toward the computer right away, that there's something a little off an unnatural about the way he's hanging back. It's almost like he's waiting for the detective's back to turn.

He moves languidly; though there's not much power in his steps, they are patient, almost feline with delicate purpose. He keeps the corner of his eye fixed on Cesar, never turning fully away from him.

I know that you're staring. I want you to know that I know you're staring.

"For someone who works with corpses, presumably on the regular... you're really stiff," he observes. "They don't bite, no matter what you do to them, so seriously. Relax," he chuckles, easily logging in to the system. For tonight, at the very least, he has ensured that he has the exact same privileges a man actually filling this position would. He wonders if Caeser has done the same.

"I don't bite, either," he says, a cruel edge to the teasing tone. "So come on over and log in to your inbox. Name and password, I'm sure you know..."

[evowhisperer]

The other man has to type to log in to the network, and it's the only chance Caesar's going to get. He eases a hand behind his coat, draws a taser, and strikes.

Caesar isn't a fighter. That's never stopped him from trying: he commits fully to the motion, making sure that no tiny stumble might accidentally bring the man out of his reach. It should be easy: the man is a mortician, and a twig besides.

[dead_black_eyes]

L wonders idly if it's going to be as easy as forcing the man to admit that he has no inbox and that there's nothing for him to bring up, thus catching him in a shame-faced lie. He has to admit that this outcome, while pretty neatly open and closed, is on the dull side.

Come on. At least put up a little bit of a fight, it's human nature to struggle a little bit when you're cornered.

And you are cornered, Doctor.

He braces a foot against the tile floor when he glimpses Caesar's subtle movement as he fluidly logs into the system. He tenses his thighs and shifts his weight as the man barrels towards him, doubtless relying on what he has in size and conditioning that L-the-twiggy-mortician so clearly lacks. It's underestimation that he usually counts on, in situations like these.

Thank you for making this interesting.

He's quicker than he looks, and far stronger; in a balanced, informed and fair fight, Caeser would probably win, but it's always to L's advantage not to fight that way. He dodges aside, unexpectedly nimble for a guy with his posture and build, following through on the momentum required to drop kick his would-be assailant with a sweeping roundhouse intended to knock Caesar's legs out from under him.

From there, the priority is disarming him, which means locating that taser and knocking it out of the floored doctor's reach.

"I lied... I do bite," he admits breathlessly, pinning Caesar with a knee to his sternum.

[evowhisperer]

It happens too fast to be anything but a spectator. L darts away from the taser's path. Cesar's feet fly out from under him, and the floor whirls and slams up to meet him, clipping the computer table and leaving him on his back and wondering how to breath.

He grasps his hand, but it's empty. He doesn't know where his taser is. There's something on his other side, and Caesar snatches up the fallen keyboard, chopping at L's neck with the elegance of a lumberjack. The kneecap is grinding against sensitive pressure points, but this is no time to flinch.

If he can, he'll take the moment to surge away from L, pushing him while he's off balance. This is an artless struggle for escape, on is part. Perhaps even survival, though that desperation hasn't quite sunk in yet. He's still thinking too much, and it's hurting his ability to fight.

[dead_black_eyes]

What L lacks in sheer strength and weight he makes up for in leverage he knows how to use. He braces against the assailing keyboard, turning so his shoulder takes the brunt of it. There's very little to cushion it; L's body is spare and not well-equipped to withstand heavy blows, but the keyboard simply doesn't have enough mass to do more than bruise him, and the blow lacks focus. Caesar is flailing and disorganized in his approach.

He's light enough that the attempt to push him and power out from under him is somewhat more successful, and he topples sideways. He scrambles to regain his balance, adapting gamely, able to maneuver close enough to attempt gripping the other man in a headlock.

He is not much of a wrestler, but if he lets Caesar go, he recognizes that he might run, which would require him to give chase... and he is less of a runner.

[evowhisperer]

Caesar manages to scramble to all fours before L's cord-like arms snake around his neck. It's an immediate emergency, and it all but stops his progress. He reaches one arm to try to leverage them to his feet with a table, but he can't breath, and L knows exactly how to lean to make the weight shift all but impossible.

Here's where the differences in skills becomes critical. The fastest way to break the hold would be to curl an arm around L's neck, or attack his face while Caesar knows where it is. Unfortunately, Caesar has never tried to solve this problem before, and especially not while a haze of adrenaline floods his system, numbing his thoughts and resorting him to fight or flight. His hands cling instinctively to L's arm, trying to muscle his way out of the grip. Now he finally frees an arm, but at this point L can just duck the reaching hand, and shift with any backwards hits.

He can't breath. His head is pounding, and this fear is a vicious stranger. He gets stronger from the chemical rush, but even stupider than before: He reaches for the table again, forcing himself up on one foot, and tries to swing L off.

He can't seem to manage it, and he doesn't know why.

There's weapons all around. Caesar's head turns towards the nearest counter, and he takes a step.

[dead_black_eyes]

L grits his teeth, clinging to the bigger and stronger man as he attempts to rise. It takes quite a bit of effort to prevent his lanky, 110-pound frame from being easily lifted off the ground, which is why it is paramount that he make as much of his weight as possible completely dead. It pays off; Caesar can't use the table to bring himself to his feet, and L retains the advantage.

As Caesar clings, he tightens his hold, bracing for attempts to scratch or gouge at his skin. Instead, the other man just attempts to pry him off, and is unsuccessful.

Caeser is stronger, though, and L just has time to kick away the taser even further out of reach when he staggers up and attempts to swing him off. L might look just like a scarecrow, but he is slightly more substantial than one, and manages to retain his hold... and begin to guess what the doctor's next plan of action might be.

Bitch, you are NOT going to put a trocar in me.

He tightens his hold, squeezing with intent to cut off Caeser's blood supply to his brain and cause him to black out, and at that point it becomes a race between the man's continued consciousness and L's limited but determined strength.

[evowhisperer]

Caesar reaches, but he's already running on next to no oxygen in his lungs, and it's overwhelming with this much exertion. It's harder than ever to do anything but pry and scratch at the sleeve around his throat, and he forces one arm towards the tube-like weapon. The hand waves aimlessly, falling short.

His knees hit the ground.

Blood roars in his ears. Pure, mindless panic is setting in, but so is weakness, and his struggles are becoming sluggish. In a last-ditch change in tact, he lets himself crumple to the floor, doing his best to land heavily on L. He can see the taser from here. It's across the room, and far out of reach. He pulls frantically at the front of his coat finding--a pen?

He grabs it and stabs it as hard as he can into the thigh behind him, but the pen falls from his grip. He's gaping like a fish on land, and darkness is rushing in to the edges of his vision. Will he wake up dead? He's going to die.

Cesar's struggles slide more and more into the stillness of unconsciousness, and through the rictus of a grimace from the struggle is... regret.

[dead_black_eyes]

That would hurt, even if he only managed to stab the detective sans entrail-liquefying blades and suction capabilities. L is highly motivated to avoid any application of the instrument while it's in the hands of a panicked non-professional person of interest, and fortunately, his efforts pay off. Caeser is losing coordination as his consciousness begins to fade, his knees buckle, and even though he lands heavily on the smaller and lighter man, he manages, even now, to keep his hold tight and firm.

The blunt sting of a pen jabbing into his leg would be far more distracting if Caeser wasn't more far gone, but he's slipping fast. It's fortunate, because strength and effort are both finite and L is approaching the limit of his. Had he ended up beneath Caeser at an earlier point in this struggle, it would have spelled disaster, and he would be the one unconscious or worse.

When he's sure that the other man is out, he doesn't hold any longer; this is already a dangerous way to incapacitate someone, and furthering the risk of death or brain damage is hardly conducive to his goals. He pushes Caeser off him, turning the man over and cuffing his hands behind his back. Then he touches an earpiece, one that's been present the whole time, hidden by his shaggy dark hair.

"Watari, everything's all set. They can come in now."

The words have scarcely been spoken when L's task force warily enters the morgue, staring at the evidence of quite the scuffle.

"Wow, Ryuzaki..." Matsuda comments. "If we'd known it would be this much trouble, we would have come in sooner to help."

"It was no trouble," L replies briskly, brushing off his lab coat. "Transporting him to the interrogation facility alone would have been, though. Pat him down and make sure he's in the back of a secure cruiser with tinted windows, if you would."

[evowhisperer]

Darkness.

Waking up is a sluggish, painful affair. His head is pounding, and his tongue feels thick, and parched dry. Swallowing makes it worse: his throat aches more than it's ever hurt before. He wonders what's happened. Is he sitting up? Did he fall asleep at his desk, somehow without a keyboard for a pillow?

He cracks his eyes open. He's staring down, head slumped forward while the rest of him relaxes against the ropes keeping him in place.

... Ropes?

Whoever he is, he's no trained agent: the idea of playing possum until he knows more about his surroundings has clearly not occurred to him, and he tugs at his bonds with no attempt at subterfuge. He tugs harder. His head hurts even more.

He stops.

The room is white, with its only feature being a single camera positioned directly in front of him, watching him struggle. The bottom drops out of his stomach, and cold dread oozes through his veins. This is right up there with his own personal worst-case scenarios, and it hits him that no one is going to notice he's missing, and no one's coming after him. He's alone.

So much for keeping calm.

He swallows again and starts to speak, and is relieved that after some initial hoarseness, his voice doesn't sound worse than he would with a bad hangover.

"Hello?"

English. Should he have used Spanish? Wait--he was last in Japan, wasn't he? Who are his captors, and what language do they speak?

[dead_black_eyes]

Today, L has opted to remain within the facility, rather than go back to his hotel and remotely monitor proceedings carried out by Watari. If the Doctor cracks quickly, there won't be a need for such drastic measures, and L is all about efficiency. He sits on the other side of that camera, a mere room away, preparing to fully view his attacker and draw all of his secrets out into the great wide open.

Caesar's clothes are gone; in their place, he'll find himself wearing a simple hospital gown, the manner that opens in front and fastens at the sides. He's restrained, tied to a weighted chair, and care has been taken to ensure that his arms and legs are thoroughly pinned. The white room is lit too brightly and fluorescently for comfort, and it is also just a touch on the chilly side, enough to raise goosebumps and make a subject shiver.

"Hello," an amplified voice answers, scrambled through several filters and completely indistinguishable as old or young, male or female. The language is English, the cadence clipped and precise. "In your words, tell me why you think you're here."

[evowhisperer]

Why he thinks he's...? Caesar swallows again, glancing around. The voice didn't come from the camera, but he doesn't see a speaker. It's a head game, he knows, but he still can't help but want at least that one detail explained, like a mosquito hovering just far enough out of reach but still audible. He glances at the ceiling.

Deny everything.

"I attacked a mortician who worked at a morgue that housed the cadavers gathered from a high profile case." Probably the ceiling. It's cold. They don't know what they don't know, and Caesar doesn't want to give anything until he knows how much they know.

"We struggled. I lost."

All truth. Technically.

[dead_black_eyes]

The trick to successful interrogation (one of many that L has picked up over his many years with his title) is to make the person under the bright lights believe that there isno upward limit to the information his captors already had.

I already know everything, but you can't go until I hear you say it.

"Had you seen that man before? What reason did you have to attack him? Surveillance shows that he was there, doing his job, with proper access codes. The attack appeared utterly unprovoked."

Nothing, yet, about the items in Caesar's pockets, or the fact that the morgue did not have him on record as an employee or a contact.

[evowhisperer]

He shakes his head.

"It was unprovoked. I wasn't supposed to be there, and I was hoping I could detain him and get out quickly. In hindsight it was..." A total catastrophe? "... poorly thought out."

Truth. If the attack appeared unprovoked, then they've spoken with the mortician. There might have even been security footage. He can't be sure.

[dead_black_eyes]

It rather is the understatement of the century, and the way Aizawa snorts in disgust just over L's hunched shoulder expresses just how he feels about it. He can't say so out loud, but he still can't believe that the scrawny detective actually went to the lengths he did to personally go after the doctor. Impersonating a fictional college student is one thing, but the more time he's spending on this investigation, the more he's learning about how nothing seems to be too much when it comes to L's cases. Frankly, he's not quite sure how he feels about that.

L turns on the microphone and the voice scrambler again, ignoring Aizawa and addressing Caesar again.

"If you cooperate fully, as you seem to be, we'll do everything we can to work with you," he says, making it sound as reassuring as a scrambled monotone possibly can. "There are a lot of reasons to visit a morgue without authorization, so what was yours?"

The second his fingers are off the switch broadcasting his voice, Aizawa snorts again. "Could you cut that out?"

"What, Mr. Aizawa?"

"That implication. You keep doing it and it's bothering me."

"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're referring to."

"There's no way you don't know what you're doing. The morgue stuff, the bodies, 'many reasons...'" he lets a twisted expression of disgust say the rest for him.

L just gives him a blank, bored expression. "That's a serious crime, Mr. Aizawa. It's probably best not to joke about it."

Aizawa stiffens and his hands clench; Matsuda, out of view of L, shakes his head back and forth wildly and makes a warning, cut-it-out motion with both hands.