The kill screen flashed red. Another perfect run. Matt let his thumbs fall away from the analogue sticks, the plastic warm and smooth against his skin. He didn’t feel the victory. He just felt the familiar cascade of programmed light, the sterile chime of a mission complete. For a tenth of a second, the screen was a black mirror. He saw the reflection of his own face, striped by the green glow of the terminal beside him: goggles pushed up into his hair, the ghost of a cigarette between his lips, eyes that had looked at nothing but pixels for the last eighteen hours.
Then Mello’s reflection moved in the dark glass, a phantom of white and black leather passing behind him.
The air in the room, already thick with stale smoke and the hum of overworked processors, went taut. It was a skill Matt had perfected over a decade: reading the atmospheric pressure around Mihael Keehl. Right now, it was low, dense, the kind of quiet that precedes a storm. Not the explosive, chair-throwing fury. Something worse. A dead, cold vacuum.
Mello stopped by the window, his back to Matt. He didn’t look out at the rain-slicked LA street three floors below. He just stood there, a silhouette cutting a sharp, impatient line against the grimy pane. One hand rested on the hilt of the pistol tucked into his waistband. The other was clenched into a fist at his side. He hadn’t said a word in three hours.
Matt’s game console pinged, offering a new mission. He ignored it. Some problems couldn’t be solved with a sequence of button presses.
“Need anything?” Matt asked, his voice rough from disuse.
Mello didn’t turn. “What could you possibly have that I need.” It wasn’t a question.
Right. Gas station coffee it is, then. The stuff was swill, brewed too hot and left to burn for hours until it tasted like battery acid and despair. Matt hated it. He hated the flimsy cups and the lids that never quite fit, but it was the only brand Mello would tolerate when he was like this. A specific kind of self-punishment, maybe.
He grabbed his keys and jacket. “Be back.”
The squeal of the hideout’s metal door was the only reply.
The twenty-four-hour convenience store smelled of lemon-scented disinfectant and old hot dogs. It was an assault on the senses. Matt moved with practiced efficiency, grabbing two coffees, black. He paused by the candy aisle, his fingers hovering over the selection. His gaze settled on a bag of small, chocolate-coated candies with colourful shells. He could already feel the satisfying, obsessive calm of lining them up on his desk later, sorting them by a perfect gradient, from ochre to crimson to deep violet. He added the bag to his haul, along with a pack of cigarettes and a single, pristine bar of 70% cacao chocolate. Insurance.
When he got back, the air was even heavier. Mello hadn’t moved from the window, but the ashtray on the sill was now overflowing. Smoke curled from a fresh cigarette pinched between his fingers. It was the only part of him that wasn’t perfectly still.
Matt set one coffee on the edge of his own desk, the heat a welcome anchor in the cold room. He placed the other, along with the cigarettes, on the windowsill next to Mello.
Mello’s eyes, narrowed and sharp, flicked to the coffee and then back to the window. He ignored it.
The silence spun out, thin and fragile. Matt took a sip of his own coffee. It was as vile as he remembered. A necessary poison. He booted up his main terminal, the familiar glow of his decryption programs a comfort. He could lose himself in the code, pretend the brooding nexus of rage ten feet away was just part of the furniture. He owed Mello his skills, his resources, his life. He did not, however, owe him conversation.
But his focus wouldn't settle. The lines of code swam, meaningless. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mello’s hand tremble just once before he crushed the cigarette out with brutal finality.
Fine. Plan B.
Matt walked over and placed the chocolate bar next to the untouched coffee. It was a precise offering, a ritual honed since their days at Wammy’s. Sugar was Mello’s fuel and his truce flag.
This time, Mello reacted. He picked up the bar, tore the foil wrapper with a vicious little rip, and snapped a piece off. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room. He chewed, his jaw working, his gaze still fixed on something only he could see.
“He’s getting bolder,” Mello said, his voice a low growl. “Kira’s people are moving without trying to hide. They think he’s made them untouchable.”
“They’re sloppy,” Matt countered, leaning against the wall. “Sloppiness leaves a trail.”
“Not this trail.” Mello turned from the window at last. His eyes were flinty, but underneath the anger was a raw, unfamiliar flicker of something else. Something Matt hadn’t seen since L died. He was holding something in his other hand, shielding it from view. It was small. He’d been staring at it, Matt realized, not the street. For three hours.
“We’re fighting a god,” Mello jeered, the word 'god' thick with contempt. “And I’m stuck here, pulling at threads. Wasting time.”
“You’re not wasting time. You’re building a weapon,” Matt said, keeping his tone level. He was the ballast to Mello’s storm. The ground wire. It was always his job.
Mello gave a short, humourless laugh. He looked down at the object in his palm, his expression closing off completely. The shift was absolute. The brief crack in his composure was sealed over with cold resolve. He uncurled his fingers.
It was a photograph. Old, creased at the corners, the colours faded to sepia and pale blue.
It showed a woman with dark, kind eyes, smiling faintly. Next to her, holding her hand, was a small boy, no older than five or six. The boy’s hair was blond, almost white in the washed-out light. He wasn’t smiling. He was staring directly into the camera with an unnerving, adult intensity.
Mello held it out to Matt. It wasn’t an offer. It was a command.
Matt took it. The paper was worn soft, almost like fabric. He could feel the ghost of Mello’s body heat on it, a stark contrast to the cold dread coiling in his stomach. He had hacked into national security databases, military mainframes, and the private accounts of world leaders. He had seen the absolute worst of humanity scroll past in lines of text and classified files. None of it felt as dangerous as this little square of paper.
“Find them,” Mello said. His voice was flat, devoid of all emotion. “Her. The boy.”
Matt looked from the photo to Mello’s face. The boy in the picture had the same piercing eyes. The same set to his mouth. The same blond hair.
“Don’t ask questions, Matt,” Mello warned, his gaze locking with Matt’s. One of his rules. “Just get it done.”
Matt looked back down at the photograph. The game on the television screen behind him had gone into standby, its cheerful music a grotesque counterpoint to the weight of the image in his hand. The mission had changed. The world had shrunk to the face of this unknown woman and a five-year-old version of the man who now trusted him with his past.