(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]

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.

[evowhisperer]

For a moment the higher distortions in the camera's voice sound stronger than the lower, and Caesar knows he's hearing someone else's words through them. 'Help us, Caesar, and we'll help you.'.

The Black Knight isn't here. That doesn't mean that people like her don't exist everywhere. Caesar has worked with this before, and he straightens in his chair, attention narrowing to a single focus.

"I knew that the most recent cadavers of Kira's victims were at the morgue. I was curious, and hoped that they would have clues that others might have missed."

There are too many ways that this could go disastrously wrong. Most people would dither and hesitate, but Caesar isn't most people. This is all familiar in its own way, isn't it? Like chemical reactions, catalysts and products... If he plays this right, it could even be a good thing that he was captured. 'Mutually beneficial' indeed.

[dead_black_eyes]

L's nonexistent brows shoot up. "Well then," he comments to his task force, taking care that Caesar can't hear him.

Soichiro pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose as he leans closer to the screen showing them the captive, restrained man. "Ryuzaki, what do you think the chances are that he's lying?"

"He doesn't seem like he is," L admits, tugging at his lower lip with his thumb. "This is highly unusual... most people at least initially try to sound innocent, or like they're detained on false charges, or something, but... he's almost being too cooperative."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Matsuda asks. "If he isn't lying, and he's giving us good information... it means that he knows something about Kira that we don't!"

L seems to entertain that for a moment, before he switches his microphone back on so that Caesar can again hear his scrambled voice. "The IDs that were on your person say that your name is Cesar Sanchez. That being said, there's no record of your fingerprints in any database on earth. In fact, we've been able to find precious little about you. Where are you from?"

Matsuda starts speaking, but immediately stops when L shoots him a glare. He averts his eyes, waiting for L to turn off the microphone again.

"R-Ryuzaki, why aren't you asking him about the computer phone?"

"It's definitely slick. He might have built it himself, but... let me handle this, Matsuda."

[evowhisperer]

They--didn't take the bait? Worse, they lept straight for a direction that could run him straight into the ground. He had answers, but they only led so far... No one knew more than him how little he'd really been able to do to establish himself in this world.

Hopefully his luck wouldn't give out too soon.

"Argentina." Denmark, actually. "My passport is back in my hotel room, at the Imperial."

[dead_black_eyes]

Ah. There it is. A jaded half-smile tugs at the corner of L's mouth; something about this hasn't gone as Cesar Sanchez had hoped, and it means that there might be room for questions he wouldn't have thought to ask before.

"Is this verifiable? I can send someone to the Imperial and they can bring it back, if you give me your room number. That's really the thing, Mr. Sanchez... helping you means that we need to know who you are, as completely as possible, even if you've taken steps to obfuscate that in any way."

[evowhisperer]

Ah, well, shit.

"Sorry for the confusion." A fake, polite smile. "My things are in room twenty-three oh five, in downtown Tokyo. You'll find my passport, and it has my real name."

The name he put more effort into establishing, but not much. He was never supposed to come under scrutiny. Can he really say that he's confident it will hold up against these professionals?

"It's Caesar Salazar."

And it is, both in reality and on paper. The passport is modeled after one of his real ones (left back at his lab), and everything but the date and place of birth was held constant. He has no idea how it will be received. He has no idea if the passport designs even looked the same, over the years.

Caesar seems slightly apologetic for blatantly forging identification and breaking into a morgue and attacking the mortician on duty. A faint sheen of sweat has appeared at his temples, and there's stress lines around his eyes.

[dead_black_eyes]

"It's no trouble. Thank you for being forthcoming.

L switches off the microphone, grinding his teeth only slightly. "Watari, I need you to start running a background check on 'Caesar Salazar' right away."

"Already doing so," the old man at another computer station replies crisply.

"At least we have a control now, for seeing when he's lying and when he's not," Aizawa shrugs, exchanging glances with Mogi.

"No, it's not so simple," L replies. "All it establishes is that he's a pretty good liar. It could just be because the names are similar enough that it seems like a minor variance to him, but... in my experience, people who can lie convincingly about the small things don't have a much of a problem with the bigger ones." He turns. "Mogi, Downtown Tokyo. Room 2305, at the Imperial. Please search it thoroughly and bring back everything you find, not just the passport."

"On it," Mogi nods, turning toward the door.

L turns on the microphone and scrambler again.

"Your actions indicate that you have taken a personal interest in the Kira killings. Are you afraid that Kira would see your actions as an affront to his goal of wiping out criminals? Do you have any strong feelings about Kira, in general?"

[evowhisperer]

"There's no other way to take my recent actions except as an affront."

Fact. Nothing more, nothing less. Did they really need his input? If they were fishing for the fear of a desperate criminal, they missed their target. There isn't even the fear that swept through the former Task Force, though at this point it might just mean he's disassociating everything altogether.

"I have no strong feelings, though I would really rather not die at his hands in the near future." Also fact. "My interest is purely curiosity. If he's killing from a distance, like the broadcast on December 5th seemed to suggest, then he must be using technology far beyond what we knew was possible. If this is true, then he's not infallible, and sooner or later someone will find a sign of it."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Mere curiosity?" Aizawa asks, scratching the stubble on his chin and shaking his head. "It doesn't add up, Ryuzaki. Why go through such lengths to hide what he's doing? Why attack you in the morgue? He's acting like someone desperate and under a time constraint."

"Maybe..." L muses. "It does say something that he's working alone... a reputable doctor or scientist wouldn't be, especially with an undertaking this potentially groundbreaking. Reviving the dead, even for a few days, is pretty remarkable."

He switches the microphone and scrambler back on.

"As it happens, Mr. Salazar, certain minds are working diligently to find a sign of how he kills, and we've been considering your potential to help in this aim since the shooter in Argentina's death, and subsequent resuscitation, was broadcast. It was remarkable, the first known instance of one of Kira's victims coming back to life, even if it was only for a few days. You made some efforts to conceal your face, then, but you weren't entirely successful."

[evowhisperer]

... Hm. Caesar genuinely can't tell where this is going, and if he should give in to growing hope or growing alarm. On the one hand, he was right, he's somehow accidentally wound up exactly where he needs to be, and has already started cooperating with the people who could plausibly get him more information than he could shake a stick at.

On the other hand? What would Providence have done if his records had been gone, and he'd had no DNA to compare to? All of this was on a different scale, of course, and it wasn't as though he'd walked right into the Kira investigation's headquarters and started riffling through documents, but it was still very serious. What would he do if (when) they eventually took him to task over his forged passport?

He didn't have many options. He'd probably lie.

"You're referring to the incident on Calle Bolivar." The smile doesn't falter, but the stress lines in his face are deeper than before. "I tried, but suppose I couldn't account for everything." No apologies. Technically, not even an admission of what he even did.

[dead_black_eyes]

Soichiro takes off his glasses, rubbing at his temples. "We could be at this for a long time, Ryuzaki. I'm sure you're aware, since you've dealt with situations like this before."

"I haven't," L contradicts. "Not beyond a certain degree, at least... this individual recognizes he's backed into a corner and would probably say anything to get out of it. If that means telling us exactly what we want to hear, I think he's determined to do just that. I will confess that this much is a familiar scenario."

"So... what about it is new to your experience?"

L sighs. "The fact that he's working with technology that's potentially decades beyond what we have access to, to the point where he can restart hearts that have stopped beating. I admit, I want to see where it goes, even if it's not linked to Kira. I should say, even if it wasn't linked to Kira prior to the Argentinian shooter. By this point, there's no separating him from that association."

"I can't tell if you're suggesting what I think you are, Ryuzaki, but I must tell you that I have serious misgivings about involving a man who attacked you in our investigation."

"Friends close, enemies closer," L murmurs, turning on his microphone and scrambler again for Caesar's benefit.

"No one person can account for everything, but experts in different fields can often assist one another in shedding additional insight on a matter. As someone driven by the pursuit of knowledge, by your own admission... you must recognize that you're at a disadvantage, working alone."

He switches off the microphone.

"What if he's not working alone?" Aizawa asks.

"Then he might very well tell us that much, but it seems likely that he is."

[evowhisperer]

"... I am." The smile was never very large, and it doesn't take much for it to subtly fade.

His mind leaps ahead, trying to guess where the voice is going by bringing this up. Will the next question be cajoling him to share his 'miracle cure' with a team? He can't. More than his morals chafe at the thought of someone like Kira having the power that he does, Caesar knows that there's no way he could willingly release nanotechnological know-how into this world.

If they ask him directly, it will be an extremely difficult question to tiptoe around. He probably won't succeed. What will the consequences be? Starvation? Another strangulation, this one that he doesn't wake up from? Release with all his possessions tossed after him in neat little baggies?

Torture?

He's holding up moderately well, but he hasn't forgotten the fact that he's tied to a solid chair by something much bigger than he is. If they don't like the answers they hear, no one has to ever find the body.

Perhaps he could steer this conversation so that when it approaches the subject, it will do so on his terms. (Would they let him? Could the attempt at taking control from is captors only make them angrier? He doesn't know.)

"If you've seen footage of the shooter's revival, then you may have also seen the later talkshow presentation by Dr. Montenegro."

He knows this feeling. It's been plaguing him since he saw the camera, and he's felt it before; he's on a rollercoaster, and it's jumped the tracks. Each step is a gamble, and if he could think of any alternatives, he might try for a less reckless approach. Unfortunately for him, he can't.

[dead_black_eyes]

"Ryuzaki..." Watari's voice, stronger and clearer than most of his age, draws L's attention. "So far, the search results are turning up nothing for this Caesar Salazar, either."

"So it's either a fake name, or he really is just that good at staying off the grid," L muses, staring at the face his monitor shows him, propping his chin up on his knee and sighing. "I guess we'll see when Mogi calls telling us what he found in the hotel room."

He switches on the microphone again.

"Yes, we saw the talkshow presentation with Dr. Montenegro. What did you think of it? If anything, it must have driven the point home that if Kira was able to catch you at work, you'd be in serious danger."

[evowhisperer]

Was that a threat?

"It did," Caesar agrees, and he means it. "That's why I never stepped forward."

It's not quite how he hoped the conversation would go, and he can't redirect it now.

[dead_black_eyes]

"In all honesty, I'm surprised you didn't. As unwise as it would have been, it must have been at least a little infuriating to see an imposter passing off your work as his own."

L turns off the microphone.

All eyes are on Caesar, waiting for him to respond... or, at least, react.

[evowhisperer]

He thinks it over, and then carefully lifts his shoulders.

"I was angry. Then I remembered the danger Dr. Montenegro was putting himself in, and decided to wait and see." The shoulders go back down, and a crease forms between his eyebrows. The expression is fleeting, fading to something closer to his nervous neutrality. Normal people would be distressed by the doctor's execution. Caesar was affected, and he did react, but the memories just aren't attached to the emotion.

"I was right, unfortunately. I'd hoped Kira wouldn't, but his method of execution was unmistakable. Montenegro was a hack, but he didn't deserve the death he got."

It wasn't Caesar's fault, and for once, it wasn't even his direct responsibility. It hit home how much danger he could be in, certainly, but wasn't he in much more danger right now if being imprisoned and tortured indefinitely?

[dead_black_eyes]

"He sounds honest," Soichiro says. "I admit, I want to believe him."

"That doesn't surprise me," replies L. "He reminds me of your son, Chief Yagami."

"Ryuzaki, just what are you implying?" Soichiro asks, a dangerous edge in his voice.

"He's clever..." L starts, trailing off as the older detective sets his jaw but says nothing in response.

Matsuda and Aizawa both look his way uncertainly as L turns the microphone on again.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, Caesar, how would you say you rate your ability to prevent your emotions from influencing your actions?"

[evowhisperer]

"Prevent?" Cesar repeats, slightly surprised. Are these questions connected? And how? There's no clock inside the cell, but a distant ticking in the viewing room will tick four or five times while he thinks it over.

"Eight," he says finally. "In favor of high ability."

He wants to say ten. He knows what it's like to take his fears and loves in one hand, like a soft bird, and to slowly smother them with what's important, and perhaps even what's right. There was nothing else the research group could have done in the time they had, not without an unacceptable amount of risk, and at the time, they hadn't known...

That's not all the question is asking, though. The question said 'actions', not decisions, and people unaffected by themselves don't do the things he's done.

[dead_black_eyes]

"Interesting..." muses L, as he presses the pad of his thumb against his lip.

"Ryuzaki..." Soichiro says, a note between stern and pleading tugging at his voice. "If you're trying to peg him as a sociopath, know that I also rank my ability to keep my emotions out of my decision-making process very highly."

"Most people do," says L mildly, "but consider that you rush to arms every time the possibility of your son's guilt is even broached. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but... most people don't rate themselves accurately at all."

"What about you, Ryuzaki?" Matsuda asks timidly.

"A ten, of course," is L's immediate response. Aizawa makes an impatient sound as L turns on his microphone again.

"What about remorse? On a scale of 1 to 10... how strongly would you say you feel guilt for what happened to Dr. Montenegro, and why?"

[evowhisperer]

He needs an honest answer. Too bad his honest answer isn't a good one.

"I would say that guilt is difficult to quantify, especially when there's a wide separation between you and what you're supposedly responsible for."

'Supposedly'? Dr Montenegro wouldn't have died if it hadn't been for his trying to play hero with those nanites. Caesar killed him in a way, even if he didn't pull the trigger. Or is he trying to sidle out from responsibility to play with his toys, again?

Caesar never forced him to step forward. He never asked him to take the credit, and no one could have saved him after he decided his own fate. It wasn't him.

Caesar's head may be high, but he feels slightly sick, and wonders if he's failing some kind of empathy test.

"Three or four. It depends on the timing."

There's a pinch at his eyes, and signs of discomfort. What scale is he using? There are microexpressions indicating a fluctuation of guilt before their very eyes, stronger than Caesar is describing, but there's also something else L may find interesting: repression. The guilt is inconsistent not because it doesn't exist, but because he's shunting it off where he thinks it won't hurt him.

Maybe someday Caesar will realize that he's just storing it for a rainy day.

[dead_black_eyes]

"It is not an accusation, Cesar. Just a question." The voice sounds as gentle as it possibly can with its current harsh, scrambled quality. L cuts the microphone, however, to answer a phone call.

"Yes, Mr. Mogi?"

"Ryuzaki, I'm here at the specified hotel room. I found a passport, but... well, I know what I feel about it, but you'll have to see it when I come back. Something doesn't seem quite right to me."

"I'm familiar with your thorough nature, Mr. Mogi. Thank you for the update, I look forward to seeing the passport." He flips his phone shut, reporting the results to the rest of his task force. They seem less than pleased, but L is decidedly more animated as he returns to the microphone and the voice scrambler.

"What's important to you, Cesar? What motivates you to get up in the morning, to keep breathing, to bury your identity so deeply?"