Twenty-Five Minutes Ago
A black, windowless surveillance truck sat idling in a derelict alley, its engine a low thrum against the crumbling brickwork a single block from the Ariake warehouse. Inside, the air was cold and blue, illuminated by a bank of high-resolution monitors. Near sat on a small bench, his knees drawn up, quietly assembling a complex, three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking silver pieces.
Before him, a technician, his face pale with concentration, worked frantically at a laptop. Flanking the door, two heavily armed FBI agents stood like statues, their eyes fixed on the feeds. One of them, a large man named Gevanni, glanced at a monitor displaying a first-person view from inside the warehouse.
"You have to admire the craftsmanship," Gevanni rumbled, his voice low. "The Apex team really outdid themselves. That... chassis is convincing. That bunny suit... gotta say, someone in R&D has a sense of humor. It's a nice body."
"Agent Gevanni," Near said, his voice a high, clear monotone, not looking up from his puzzle. "Your professional assessment of the unit's aesthetic is irrelevant. Does the decoy respond to basic motor commands?"
The technician answered for him. "Testing motor functions... now." He tapped a key. On a secondary screen, a close-up from a different angle showed a gloved, feminine hand—Akane's hand—flexing perfectly.
"Good," Near said. "Upload the personality sub-routine. The 'Akane' protocol. We need him to believe she is who she appears to be. He must believe in the resurrection."
"Uploading... now," the technician said, his fingers flying. "It's a heavy file, but the connection is stable." He watched a progress bar fill, then hit the Enter key with a decisive click. "Upload complete. The unit is active and autonomous."
On the monitor, the kneeling figure of Akane Tanaka, her head bowed over the body of the android Connor, suddenly jolted. A small, blue LED, tucked just behind her ear and hidden by her matted hair, flashed once and then went dark.
Near snapped the final, intricate piece of his puzzle into place. He set the finished object—a perfect, silver sphere—on the bench beside him. His face was a mask of placid, analytical calm, but his mind was a whirlwind of calculations, a maelstrom of high-stakes probability.
It is done, he thought. A perfect, synthetic replica, built from the salvaged and repaired core of the android L 'shot,' housed in a new body, and overlaid with a protocol based on the real Akane's psychological profile. All this… this entire, insane, theatrical performance. The betrayal. The murders. The public disgrace.
L was gambling everything on a single, psychological theory. He was betting that Beyond Birthday was not just a killer, but an artist, and that an artist's greatest weakness is not logic, or force, or even capture. It is his own ego. It is the violation of his own art.
Near stared at the monitor, at the dark, empty warehouse where their bait now knelt, waiting.
I hope you know what you are doing, L. I truly hope you do.
Present Day
B.B. stood frozen, his mind a screeching, dissonant chord of impossibility. His triumphant, manic energy evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp, and utterly profound sense of wrongness.
He had killed her. He knew he had. The razor. The spray. The light fading from her adoring, pathetic eyes. It was a fact, a memory seared into his being with the finality of a signature on a masterpiece. A true artist knows his own work.
And this… this was a forgery.
"Master," the creature rasped, the sound a grotesque parody of Akane's voice, the stitched-together flesh of her throat pulling tight. She held up the glowing blue sphere she had just pried from Connor's shattered skull. "You came for me. I knew you would."
Rage. Pure, demonic, and absolute. It flooded B.B.'s system, hotter than any drug, clearer than any moment of intellectual ecstasy. This was not a miracle. This was an insult. It was a violation. Someone had taken his perfect, final statement and had scrawled graffiti over it.
"A forgery," he hissed, his voice dropping to a low, trembling growl. He stepped out of the shadows and into the shaft of moonlight, his red eyes burning. "A cheap, little, fucking forgery."
He circled her slowly, his gaze fixed on the crude, puckered scar on her throat. "My cut was not a suggestion," he whispered, his voice a sibilant threat. "It was a final statement. That scar… it's a bit shallow, isn't it? My work is never that clumsy. Who did this? Who fixed you?"
The android, still running its Akane protocol, smiled, a beatific, adoring, and utterly empty expression. "But you saved me, Master. You are the only one who could."
That was the last straw. The saccharine, idiotic devotion, the mockery of his perfection, the sheer, unadulterated wrongness of her presence. B.B.'s face contorted into a mask of pure, murderous hate.
"Alright," he snarled, and with a series of sharp, metallic clicks, a butterfly knife appeared in his hand, the blade gleaming in the moonlight as he flipped it open. "I'LL RIP YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF AND FEED IT TO THE T—"
He was cut off. Not by a sound, but by a sensation. A circle of cold, hard, unmistakable metal pressed firmly against the base of his skull.
He froze. Every muscle in his body locked. The manic energy, the rage, the confusion—it all vanished, sucked into a vacuum of pure, cold shock. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, a wild, trapped bird.
A voice spoke from directly behind him. A quiet, familiar monotone that was utterly devoid of emotion.
"That would be a waste of good materials. This one was very expensive to build."
Slowly, his hands shaking, B.B. raised his gaze. On the polished, reflective surface of a nearby, grime-covered electrical panel, he could see the scene reflected as if in a dark mirror. He saw his own back, his own hunched shoulders, his own wild, dark hair.
And standing directly behind him, holding a pistol to his head, he saw… himself.
It was a perfect reflection. A man with his same unruly hair, his same pale skin, his same build. He was not wearing a hoodie or a disguise. He was wearing a simple, rumpled white shirt and blue jeans. And his dark, empty eyes, the eyes of the man he had only ever seen on a grainy surveillance feed, were staring not at him, but at his reflection, with a look of cold, analytical finality.
It was the man.
________________________________________
Three Days Later
Light Yagami paced his bedroom, a predator confined. The message from B.B. was a constant, irritating buzz in the back of his mind. Take Hayashi hostage. Erase him. The audacity of the command was infuriating. To ask him, the God of the New World, to perform a common kidnapping was beneath contempt. It was messy, physical, and artless.
But the paranoia, B.B.'s core message, had taken root. 'Dangerous to you.'
He could not ignore the possibility. He was a god, but he was not a fool. To leave a potential threat on the board, simply out of pride, was a mistake he would not make. But he would not play by B.B.'s chaotic rules.
He sat at his desk. "Ryuk," he said to the Shinigami, who was lounging on his bed, contorted into an impossible shape as he read a manga. "I'm going to kill a man named Hayashi Rin. Is that a common name?"
Ryuk cackled. "How should I know? In Japan? Probably. You're the genius, you tell me."
Light's jaw tightened. The Ultimatum note's sixth rule was a treacherous one. He could write the name, but without a face, he risked a 'shotgun blast' of deaths, a messy, indiscriminate act that would attract exactly the kind of attention he was now trying to avoid. Or, worse, if he had the wrong name entirely, the rule of ambiguity would fail him. No. He needed to be precise. He needed the face.
He had spent the better part of a day digging. The man was retired, which meant few recent public photographs. But Light Yagami was not a common hacker; he was a digital phantom. A few clever keystrokes, a piggyback onto his father's network credentials, and he had slipped unseen into the sealed, non-active NPA personnel files.
And there he was. HAYASHI, RIN. A single, black-and-white, ten-year-old photograph. A stern, older man with intelligent eyes and a thin moustache.
Light downloaded the image. He opened his Death Note. He looked at the face on his monitor, burning the features into his mind. He would not be B.B.'s puppet. He would not take a hostage. He would not engage in some grubby, physical confrontation. He would do this, but he would do it his way. The clean way. His signature.
He put pen to paper and, with a hand that was perfectly steady, wrote the name.
Hayashi Rin.
He waited forty seconds. A heart attack. Simple. Clean. A message to B.B. that he was in control.
Simultaneously
Isabelle Dubois stood in a dark, cold observation room. The facility was an undisclosed black site, run by Near's team, deep in the basement of a nondescript corporate building. In the room next to her, she could hear Miss Marple, who believed she was in a different part of the hotel, being "debriefed" by a polite, female FBI agent on the psychological fallout of the L incident. The level of deception was staggering, and Isabelle felt a small, sharp pang of guilt.
She turned her attention back to the monitor in front of her. It showed a live feed of a small, concrete cell. Inside, a man sat on a simple cot, reading a magazine.
Two days ago, this man had been a convicted murderer, a "lifer" in a high-security prison, chosen for his complete lack of family or outside connections. Today, his identity was, for all official and digital purposes, Hayashi Rin. He had been told he was being transferred to a new, experimental facility as part of a parole review.
Near stood beside Isabelle, his gaze fixed on the screen. "The trap is set," he said, his voice a quiet monotone. "My contact in the NPA confirmed that someone, very close to the IP of Light Yagami accessed the sealed personnel file for the real Hayashi Rin from his home IP radius, three minutes ago. There's above 80% chance that light is kira"
Isabelle found herself holding her breath. "He's cautious," she whispered. "He didn't just use the name. He went for the face."
"He is arrogant, but not stupid," Near replied, his gaze unblinking. "He thinks he is being precise. He thinks he is in control. He is confirming his target."
The clock on the wall displayed a silent, digital countdown.
"And now..." Near murmured.
On the monitor, the fake Hayashi Rin suddenly gasped, his eyes going wide with a look of profound, agonizing shock. He dropped the magazine, clutched his chest, and fell from the cot, his body convulsing once before lying perfectly still.
Isabelle let out the breath she was holding, her knees feeling weak. It was done.
Near, however, showed no emotion at all. He simply looked at the dead man on the screen, a piece of bait that had served its purpose, and made his final conclusion.
"85 % chance that Light Yagami is Kira."