The hotel suite that doubled as an undercover headquarters was deadly silent, as every member of the police task force stared ahead at the security footage streaming through the monitors. In the background, the faint ticking of a clock could be heard.
Onscreen four different video outputs played, featuring four different people, all placed in a separate solitary confinement cell. In one room Light Yagami, the young man with the light brown hair, sat quietly on the floor with his back against his cot. In the next his father, Soichiro Yagami, the Chief of Police, sat at the foot of his cot with his head in his hands. In the last two rooms, two young women were strapped to vertical cots with blindfolds over their eyes. The first woman, still just a girl really, was blonde and petite—Misa Amane, the teen pop star who was currently all the rage among tabloids. The second woman was Jubilee.
Closest to the monitors sat a pale man who was crouched on his chair like a monkey, hunching over to stare intensely at the screen. Thick black hair fell into his eyes but he didn't blink as he chewed the tip of his thumb, observing the four people onscreen.
"Watari," he said in a soft voice, breaking the silence. "Remind me again what Misa Amane revealed during the first seventy-two hours of her confinement."
An elderly gentleman in a suit stepped up beside the man crouched in the chair. "Very little," he replied. "As you may remember, she pleaded to be killed, then attempted to, quite literally, bite her tongue before we were able to restrain and gag her. Since then she has not spoken...until as of late."
"Hey, Mr. Stalker Man!" cried the young girl's voice from onscreen. "Are you still watching me, you pervert? Just you wait until my boyfriend Light gets a hold of you!"
"Hmm," said the pale man, eyes narrowing. "Yes, I remember."
"This is wrong, L!" cried a younger policeman all of a sudden. "We can't—"
"Don't call me that, Matsuda," said L sharply.
"Sorry, I mean...uh...Ryuzaki. Or...Ryuga?" He turned to the older police officer standing next to him. "Which alias was it that he uses here again?" he whispered. The older man, Aizawa, rolled his eyes.
"Well, whichever!" declared Matsuda with renewed vigor. "We can't keep two young ladies tied up, underground, for almost a whole week! It's injust!"
"That's not a word, Matsuda," said the man in the chair calmly.
"Er...unjust! Either way! L—I mean, Ryuzaki...this is not right."
The other officers in the room remained silent, shifting uncomfortably.
"Watari," said L again, ignoring the young police officer. "Please pull up the initial interrogation for the other young woman."
"Yes, Ryuzaki," said the older gentleman obediently. An image of a video from six days ago immediately popped up on the screen and began playing.
"What is your name?" came an artificial voice from off camera.
The young woman in the video lifted her head, startled. Dark brown hair fell away from her face. Her eyes were blindfolded, like they still were now.
"I—" she began, her voice a nervous high pitch. "My name...is Julie. Julie Amachi."
"As it says on your ID."
The woman nodded slowly in assurance of this fact, though the gulp in her throat suggested something otherwise.
"Miss Amachi," continued the voice. "You are here on charges of being the second Kira. Do you confess?"
"Kira?" The woman's brow furrowed over the blindfold. "You mean...'killer?'"
"Surely you do not profess to not know who Kira is, Miss Amachi."
"Well, I—I've—heard of him," she stuttered. "I, um, don't watch the news much. And I'm a bit of a recluse." She sounded embarrassed. "Sorry."
The artificial voice seemed to take on a tinge of stern reproof. "Kira is the glorified name that the general public has assigned to an unapprehended serial killer, who has been steadily killing off victims everyday, for the last six months, remotely and seemingly from afar, by somehow mysteriously causing heart attacks in his or her targets. Most of the victims are incarcerated criminals, but a number of innocent civilians and law enforcement agents who stood in Kira's way have also fallen prey. This has been a matter of global speculation for the past half year."
"Right," said the young woman weakly. "I did hear something about that...I think."
There was a brief pause.
"You were observed following the suspected first Kira for at least three miles," the tinny metal voice continued. "Why?"
The woman froze at this statement, clearly in fear. She seemed to mouth something silently, but did not speak aloud.
"Why were you following the first Kira, if you did not know who he was, and if you are not the second Kira who is working alongside him?" the voice repeated.
The woman, Julie Amachi, tilted her head as if trying to listen for something, but said nothing.
The video ended.
"Interesting," murmured the detective, L, to himself as he bit down even harder on his thumb. "There is no record of a Julie Amachi anywhere in Japan."
~*~*~
Jubilee sagged against her restraints. Her back ached terribly. For what felt like the hundredth time, she desperately tried to reach out to Hellenos.
Hellenos. Hey.
Silence. She could feel a slight tingle along the back of her neck, but that was it.
Dad?
Nothing.
She mentally cursed to herself. This was her fault. She knew Hellenos was there, knew everything was just as it had been, but the moment they had tied her up and thrown her into this room she had been paralyzed with fear. She couldn't hear well when she was afraid.
She didn't know what to do.
Dad, she pleaded in her mind, If you can hear me...of course you can hear me—help me...show me what to do. Help me figure out what's going on.
"Miss Amachi," the tinny voice came on over the intercom.
The sound of her mother's surname—which she had taken as her own when she moved to Japan—was like a call of salvation. Her head snapped up. "Yes?" Her voice was hoarse from disuse.
"We would like you to answer the question posed to you previously. Why were you following that gentleman—Light Yagami?"
Jubilee paused. Over the past few days, she had mulled over how she should respond to this question should she be asked it again. She still hadn't received any guidance on the matter.
You know the way, she thought she heard a voice say all of a sudden.
The Way.
The Life.
The Truth.
She cleared her throat. "The truth," she began, "Is that...I have no idea who this—this Light Yagami is. The truth...well, I don't think you'll like the truth very much."
There was a moment of silence.
"How is that, Miss Amachi?"
She licked her lips, which were chapped. "Well I mean...I just mean, I'll tell you, but I don't think you'll believe me."
"Try me."
Jubilee took a deep breath. This just figured. It just figured that the only possible way she could ever be bold enough to tell the truth was if she was blindfolded in a room where she wouldn't have to look people in the face. Oh, and solitary confinement for a week. That too.
"The truth is that I can see in the spirit," she heard herself say. "And I saw a spiritual being of darkness following—and talking to—the one you call Light." Which is ironic, she added to herself.
She suddenly felt the light sensation of angelic chuckling beside her.
Where have you BEEN? she almost hissed aloud.
You know the answer to that, said Hellenos' familiar voice, somewhat sternly. I've been right here. The question is, where have YOU been? Stuck in your own fear, that's where, he answered for her before she could protest.
"I see," the voice over the intercom finally quipped in reply. "Thank you for your input, Miss Amachi." The intercom clicked off.
"Great, now they think I'm crazy," she said aloud. More quietly, she muttered, "You could have at least given me a hint on what to do or something, earlier on."
I was talking to you for three days straight, declared Hellenos. I finally decided to just stand back and wait until you snapped out of it and came to your senses.
"Oh? And what determined when that happened?"
When you surrendered your fear and told the truth.
Jubilee sighed. "Okay, fine," she said under her breath. "So now what?"
She sensed Hellenos pause. Then, with what sounded like an apologetic tone, he replied, Now you wait.
Days rolled into weeks. Jubilee was sure that at least a month had gone by, but there was no way to confirm the passage of time. They fed her well everyday—an elderly-sounding man with a kind voice entered the cell each day and spoon fed her what tasted like a wonderfully home-cooked meal, called her my dear, and replaced the bed pan underneath her. This last part she had long gotten over the embarrassment and mortification of during the first two weeks of confinement. Now, deeply resigned, she simply rolled with it. Twice a week someone—a woman she hoped, but by now she barely cared anymore—came in and sponge bathed her and washed her hair in silence. She wondered if she would still remember how to walk after all this.
At one point, in a state of weary delusion, she had asked if she could take out her contact lenses, because she didn't want them "to permanently stick to my eyeballs." They had sent someone in a couple hours later who, with latex gloved hands, had removed her blindfold—it was pitch black, so they must have found someone who either had extremely tactile senses or a pair of night vision goggles—and gently slipped the lenses out of her eyes. That had been a bizarre experience.
These days she remained hanging there in almost complete silence, talking to Hellenos in her head and reliving better days. She was relieved to find that, for whatever reason, she felt acceptance for her current fate. The sensation was similar to the incident that had first caused her to begin hearing and seeing Hellenos and the ones like him. She figured her brain had simply decided that it was much less stress to surrender to the facts rather than reason against them. Or perhaps it had something to do with the dispensation of grace that Hellenos sometimes talked about. Whatever that meant. In any case, she had asked for something new to happen, hadn't she? This was certainly something new. Not exactly what she had had in mind though.
Every couple of days the intercom voice would come on and ask her questions. She would answer simply and truthfully, occasionally pausing to see if Hellenos had some counsel for her on what to reveal or be discreet about. For the most part, she kept nothing hidden.
"What are you doing in Japan?" the voice had asked during the first few days after she'd begun answering its questions.
"I live and work at the Wakahisa Children's Home," she answered. Her heart ached a bit as she wondered how Meirin and the rest of kids and staff were doing there. They must be worried sick about her.
"Yes, we found that out already. Your coworkers have been informed of your detainment and you are on leave from work until further notice. We have kept the details confidential."
Ah, so they had made a cover story for her. The kids wouldn't be missing her then. Though they were probably pretty mad at her for never coming home for lunch that day. Meirin would never forgive her, even in light of her being arrested.
"Um, thank you," she said.
"The question, however, is not what you were doing in Japan, but what brought you here."
"No it wasn't."
A pause. "Once more, Miss Amachi?"
"I said, no, that wasn't the question. You literally asked me, 'What are you doing in Japan?' Well, that's what I'm doing. Working at a children's home."
The words had come out on autopilot. She could barely believe herself for her own impertinence. Perhaps not being able to see or walk for a week was causing her to lose her grip on common sense.
"Sorry," she said quickly before the tinny voice could respond and possibly have her executed. "Not that I won't tell you what brought me here. I was just, uh, stating facts. Not important. Anyway..." She trailed off.
"You are American, correct?"
"Yes."
"From where in America?"
"I grew up in Virginia, but was living in Chicago before I moved to Japan two years ago."
"And what made you decide to move to Japan?"
She hesitated as memories swirled through her mind. "I—my mother, was half Japanese. She brought me here one summer when I was fifteen. I still have a valid visa, and...I was...looking to turn a new leaf and start a new life. I wanted to get away. Um..." She paused as past images of living off the road, snatching boxes indiscreetly off of shelves, and picking the pockets of intoxicated passersby invaded her head. Surely I don't have to tell him...everything, do I?
Beside her, she felt Hellenos shrug. You can if you want. I never said to tell your life story. Just to be honest as best you can. And honestly, you humans are pretty bad at being concise.
She cleared her throat. Aloud, she declared, "My parents are dead—cancer got Mom, car accident got Dad—I was going through a rough patch, hanging with a bad crowd, made some bad decisions, then one day woke up from it all and decided to change...yadda yadda. A new country felt like the best way to cut old ties." The words spilled out of her roughly and quickly.
"And this...gift, of yours...did you have it since birth?"
She felt her throat get tight. "No. Funny thing...it started right around when I 'woke up.'"
"I see. And this was two years ago."
"Yes."
"How is it that you have remained here for so long?"
"I had wanted to relocate permanently from the beginning. It was a matter of finding a way to stay once I got here. I applied for the long-term missions program at Wakahisa, and now receive sponsorship funding to stay on for at least three years total."
There was a moment of silence, then the voice abruptly said, "Thank you Miss Amachi, that will be all for today," and then the intercom clicked off.
In the days of silence that followed, she reflected to herself on whether the man behind the voice was like Dad, and she was like all the people in the world—confined to a cell that was her only reality, while the man behind the voice watched her from somewhere beyond, her and everything else happening in the world outside of her cell.
Except, Hellenos broke into her thoughts, The Father speaks to you to tell you that you are actually free of your restraints, and that the door to the cell is open and all you have to do is walk out of it, if you so wish.
Yeah, small chance of that happening with this guy, she thought.
Is 'this guy' greater than the Father?
Jubilee didn't answer for a moment. Then, with a tired sigh, she murmured in reply, "Everything He allows is for a reason."
The next time the voice came on, there was no preamble.
"Miss Amachi?"
She raised her head, still half-asleep from dozing before this sudden interruption. "Present," she said sleepily.
"I would like to go back to that moment that you said you 'woke up.' Please explain how you came to acquire your gift."
She froze for a second. "That's...a long story."
"I have time."
She settled back against her restraints and thought for a moment. How much should she divulge, and how much should she hold back? Hellenos was silent beside her. Which was usually an indication to just go with the flow.
"Well," she began, "Things were very different, two years ago."