Adult-FanFiction.org : Anime

Fifty Days	By : sashocirrione Category: Death Note > Het-Male/Female > L/Misa Views: 2868 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 38
- 39
- 40
CHAPTER 39: Deviation
After the large door closed L just stood there staring at it for a while, feeling paralyzed and panicked. He'd noticed something odd about the small door, but he had a bad feeling about it and didn't want to look at it closely. He kept his eyes averted, feeling as if he were rooted in place.
Then he told himself he needed to be doing something, so he carefully went through all the supplies, looking underneath and inside everything he could, and then stacked them up against one wall just as he wanted them. He was disappointed in not finding a portable TV, books, puzzles, or any other way to pass the time. There was no clock of any kind, either, so he'd need to estimate what day it was by how often he ate, drank, slept and used the toilet buckets.
The only additional things he discovered were a toothpaste tube, a toothbrush, a tiny mirror, a small supply of tissue paper, and a letter. These had all been inside the rolled-up sleeping mat.
The letter was just a scrap of paper, saying:
I have placed listening devices inside your vault. If you have any confessions you wish to make, speak them and I will hear. You can still choose a merciful death for yourself.
L looked up at the air vents. Probably, the bugs were inside the vents. The vault was almost entirely bare and smooth on the inside. There were almost no other suitable locations for bugs, except maybe inside the light fixtures, but they would have to be installed behind the bulbs in order to not be highly visible.
He then went to investigate the large door. Around the outer edges, it was mostly just a smooth, blank metal surface, encircled by a narrow crack that L could barely slip the edge of a fingernail into. The middle portion of the door had an extremely thick glass panel through which he could see numerous cylinders, gears and shafts, all interlocking in a complex pattern. A label affixed to the other side of the glass announced it was bulletproof. After eyeing the glass from several angles, he was sure it was thicker than the widest part of his arm.
On the right side of the door, at about elbow-height, there was a messy-looking weld, as if something had been cut off and then the hole sealed back up. The missing part was almost certainly a safety handle, a feature that would normally prevent any person from being locked inside.
The next thing to investigate was the little door, the one that could not possibly be an exit itself. It looked like the door to an average small safe, except for one feature. In the very center there was a little rounded glass bulge that looked suspiciously like the front door peepholes used for viewing a visitor before deciding to open a door.
The bad feeling in his stomach increased as he approached, intending to peer through it. Instead of looking through the peephole, he knelt there for a little while, resting his outstretched fingertips on the coolness of the metal wall. There was no rush, no need to worry. Whatever happened, it was out of his hands. Nothing he could do any longer would possibly influence the outcome.
When he felt ready he bent down and looked, and immediately wished he hadn't. His mind was already putting together scenarios. He could feel his fingernails digging into his palms, and he tried to concentrate on the better possibilities instead of... those other... uses.
The inside of the safe was lit up by an inner light fixture, showing several objects. The nearest was a large jar, entirely filled with glass shards. Then there was a collection of scalpels of various shapes and sizes, a large knife, and a hammer. Just barely visible, poking out from behind the jar, was part of something plastic, something that was mostly obscured from view. There was also a white envelope. It was possible that a few additional things were also concealed behind the jar, but if so they were small.
He didn't want to imagine being forced to slice himself open, to fill the wounds with glass, and to break his bones with the hammer.
It was possible that the large door had been rigged so that the knife or the scalpels, if jammed into the right place in the crack around the door, might open it. It was possible, though very unlikely, that the hammer could break through the thick bulletproof glass and allow him to then access the remaining portion of the cut-off safety latch or otherwise operate the door to open it. In that case, then hopefully the plastic thing was safety goggles, or otherwise he'd need to wrap his head in the sleeping mat to protect his eyes during the process of hammering the glass.
However, his mind kept returning to ever more creative scenarios involving far more sinister uses for the scalpels, the knife, and the hammer, and there was no way that the jar filled with shards of broken glass was anything other than a threat.
And the envelope... that was most likely instructions, but it could also be a test. If it held a piece of the notebook... then Mikami had perhaps rigged the vault so there would be no way to escape without killing a person, committing a murder just to be let out. Mikami might be too suspicious about the fact that "Kira" and "Kira's husband" had yet to kill a single person in front of him.
No, Mikami obviously wasn't relying only on the paternity test, as he'd claimed. He was also hoping to use scare tactics, and perhaps other things as well. There might be additional hidden tests for Rem or Misa, while they were by themselves and potentially more vulnerable.
L was glad that he'd taken some time to whisper warnings directly into Misa's ears late at night, telling her to never let her guard down or break character for even a moment until Mikami was certainly dead, telling her that Mikami might try to create a trick that seemed to be the real conclusion, a trick for the purpose of observing her behavior after she thought the crisis was past.
Everything depended on Misa's abilities and determination. If anything went wrong and Mikami decided the story was fraudulent, L would spend his last days trapped in the vault, dying slowly, torturing himself.
L turned his mind back to that envelope, and to the possibility that Mikami might mean for him to commit a murder in order to escape. All he needed was to know the address of where he was staying, and then he could control a person to go to that address and open the vault there. Even if the person did not have any expertise in vault-opening, L could write that they were determined enough to refuse to give up until the vault had been opened, which would cause that person to recruit or pay whomever they needed to in order to get the vault open.
If Mikami had intended that course of action, there was an obvious way to avoid it. L knew he could not be fated to die anytime soon, or Mikami would have done things differently, just as he had said. Even with a very sparing use of the water, death by thirst would occur in much less than a month, something that would have been apparent in his lifespan and certainly would have affected Mikami's actions.
L knew that he must be fated to either escape the vault alive or to be killed by having his name written, a death that would not show in his lifespan. Those were the only two possibilities. Assuming that Mikami was not going to kill him, then resisting the urge to murder in order to be set free would certainly result in an escape or a rescue before death.
A close brush with death that way would not incur a risk of acquiring a disability or a permanent impairment, because the death L was facing was from dehydration. Being trapped with limited supplies, dehydration would set in long before any other cause could. And dehydration was something that, if you were not killed by it, did not have any long-term effects.
Although, if there is a piece of paper from the notebook in that envelope, then there is a possibility that I could become so unhinged that I decide to write my own name. No, I must be determined. I can use this knowledge of fate to my advantage. If I refuse to kill myself or anyone else, I will get out of here. As long as Misa does not make a mistake to cause my death, I will escape.
Examining the logic of his own thoughts cheered him only slightly. They might be logically satisfying, but they were not emotionally satisfying. His conclusions felt hollow, forced, inadequate. He realized, from the posture he was standing in, that he was trying to shrink away from the small door, the door that held his future one way or another.
Vivid images kept leaping into his mind.
Determined to rest, he arranged the sleeping mat in the center of the vault, lay down, and attempted to go to sleep. He couldn't quite get to sleep, but he often got to the edge of it, twisting on the thin, inadequate mat, blinking his eyes open from time to time and feeling as if the walls were too close, the lights too bright. There was no way to turn off the lights.
He continually felt a little bit hot, a little bit sick, and soon he was sweating. He stared at the wall for a long time, then closed his eyes and tried again. It only got worse. He didn't feel any hotter, but he was sweating more, and his breathing felt constricted.
After what seemed like many hours, but probably wasn't because he hadn't needed to urinate even once, he gave up on sleeping and went through the cans of food, trying to decide what to eat. There wasn't anything nasty, like natto, but it was all rather bland, a limited selection. Most of the cans were herring wrapped in kelp, beets, beans, mushrooms, or pickled plums. He found a few cans of sweeter fruits and set them aside. There were also three cans of coffee. He arranged those items as his special stash in a corner by themselves and resolved to wait until he felt as if he truly needed some comfort.
His first meal left a sour taste in his mouth and settled into his stomach as if he'd eaten a brick. He kept burping and tasting the herring, and just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, a sudden wave of nausea hit him so hard that he was barely able to make it to one of the plastic buckets in time to vomit into it.
The plastic lid helped to contain the smell, but did not eliminate it. Once he started using the second plastic bucket as a toilet, that smell bothered him as well, both stenches permeating the vault and contributing to further problems with vomiting.
He left the herring and pickled plums entirely alone, but even with the worst offenders missing from his diet, approximately ever other meal would still come back up his throat.
Waiting, without a clock, was extremely difficult. There was almost nothing to distract his mind. It felt like waiting for his own death.
L's hands itched to access a computer. He wanted to receive evidence, make deductions, and give orders, not to be trapped and helpless. His hands needed to be busy; his mind needed more to work on, some new information at least. He took to stacking and rearranging the items that were in the vault with him, forming patterns, lining everything up again and again. It did not even come close to filling up the time he needed filled.
His life was a numbing series of routines. He spent a great deal of time crouched near the big door, his head resting against the bulletproof glass as he allowed his eyes to trace the intricate machinery and his brain to decipher exactly what needed to be done to open the door, if he could just get through the layer of bulletproof glass.
He didn't have expertise in everything, and safe-cracking was a specialized field. Still, with the mechanism partly visible, he was almost sure how he could cause the large door to open, if only he could get at its inner workings. The problem was that he wasn't sure he could do it without losing a finger. He wished very much that Mikami had left him some pliers, but if he could get through the glass, perhaps some improvised tools would help.
L counted the cans of food he'd eaten, kept track of how often he had to use the toilet bucket, and examined the number of water bottles he emptied. Trying to estimate the amount of time he'd been trapped was one of his most frequent activities.
Sometimes he even counted numbers in his thoughts, tapping a fingernail against the floor with each number, reaching into the thousands before starting over again.
His hands and feet were nervous. He knew he was developing twitches, moving too frequently and erratically. Sometimes he took up pacing to relieve the tension, but he tried to limit it so he wouldn't exhaust himself and eat through the food too quickly. He watched his food supplies get low, and the water. He watched both plastic buckets gradually fill with waste products and vomit. He knew it had to be soon, it had to be, but the small door still didn't open.
He forced himself to lay down more often to conserve his energy, but he didn't sleep much. Sometimes he stared at the small door until it felt like his mind was being pulled apart, willing it to open.
Finally, it was a tiny click that alerted him, bringing him out of a restless, shallow sleep. L almost thought that it had to be a dream, but the small door did look as if it might be open a crack.
L crawled over to it, breathing quickly, his hands shaking. He was afraid to touch it, afraid that he might accidentally push it closed and cause it to lock again. He pressed one hand against the wall to steady it, and then slid it toward the door slowly, easing it until his fingernail was firmly in the crack and then pulling the door open, swinging it wide.
He took out everything: the scalpels, the knife, the hammer, the jar full of broken glass, the envelope, and a small flat plastic object with buttons. There was nothing else. His hands still trembled a little, and his clumsiness caused him to cut himself just a bit on the scalpels. Still, he had no urge to start torturing himself, and that was a good sign.
L opened the envelope to find another note inside it. The note simply said, "I have made a deviation from the plan. I am certain you will figure it out."
Deviation? The most logical deviation for him to take would be slightly risky and very selfish. Is that what he did? Or is it something else? He cannot tell me directly, because it is impossible for him to betray secrets relating to the death note or anything new that he has learned recently. He is counting on me to guess correctly.
L turned his attention to the plastic object. All the buttons were labeled with numbers, except for two large buttons at one end, one green and the other red.
L tried pressing the green button and there was a kind of slick grinding noise as the large door opened. He stared at the opening, in shock, almost unable to believe it, before suddenly running to the door, pushing it fully open, and finding himself in a large room like a den or a study, with muted light, expensive furniture, and dark, rich colors everywhere. His heart felt like it was bursting with relief, and the air was so much clearer that it almost made him dizzy to breathe it.
A computer was sitting on a desk in a corner, and he went to it immediately. He crouched in the stuffed leather chair in front of it and turned it on.
To himself, he muttered, "Now, let's see what you've been doing during my absence, Mikami."
- 38
- 39
- 40
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Fifty Days