AN: This is Primes, back after a long absence. This chapter, important as it is, has not been proofread. My apologies in advance for grammatical errors, stylistic issues, etc. I hope you'll enjoy it, as I hope you've enjoyed the whole.

Questions at the end are more than welcome. This is a short chapter; this has not been a short story. Thank you all for bearing with me, particularly after my long absence. I have my doubts as to the literary merits of Primes, but this has been a learning experience, and an enjoyable one, one which would not have been possible without all of you.

My next story, Binary Helix, also features Mello and Matt, albeit older. Fun in the present tense. I hope to see some of you in the future--in Binary as well as elsewhere, because I don't plan on quiting writing. Now: enough self-promotion.

Sayonara; because it must be so. Twenty-three is a prime number, you know.

-Fly

He opens the phone.

"Virgil here."

"Good. Have you found him?"

"No. He keeps running. Not that I blame him, you know."

There was a pause, and he waited, until finally—

"Yes. Of course."

Now that the error had been admitted, both were finished with the other. The line went dead, severed on both ends simultaneously.

"So," Matt said. "You going to tell me where we're going?"

"Nope."

They had slowed to a steady jog, which gave Matt a chance to catch his breath. Acer, however, was telling no tales. Matt considered opening his mouth to demand a better answer, but thought better of it.

Fine.

Acer was wearing a watch. It was an odd thing to notice, but in the dim, post-curfew halls, the gleam of metal caught his attention.

Or maybe Matt was just a little bit clairvoyant, because the watch—it beeped, and Acer stopped in his tracks to examine it.

"Hello," he began, and Matt stopped short.

"L," Near began, "you owe me something."

L tipped his head to the side. "Do I?"

The answer to that question was already evident, and it showed in the flat impatience behind the boy's eyes. L sighed and fixed his gaze on the hallway ahead. "I suppose I do, Near. But somehow I think that an explanation on my part has been rendered unnecessary."

Near's hands remained comfortably in his pajama pockets, away from the mop of white hair that normal found itself entangled in his fingers. "Yes," he said blandly. "I believe that deduction would be correct."

L nodded and reached into his jeans pocket. Like the awkwardly jointed limbs of a spider, his fingers drew out the phone, a slim bar of blue-brushed silver metal pinched precariously between an index finger and thumb. With a jerk, his thumb snapped the lid open, and L looked at Near. "I have a call to make," he said. "I hope you don't mind. Your deductions—however complete—will not include certain elements, and I don't particularly enjoy explaining myself repeatedly. It will be easier to gather the others."

Now Near's fingers jerked themselves free of his self-control, twisting along the pale strands of his hair. "The others," he repeated in a soft murmur, and L nodded.

"You'll see," he declared confidently, and his fingers scrambled over the keys. Near watched him as the cheerful, simulated ringtone sang through the speakers, and L sighed. The boy's patience was probably wearing thin.

Thankfully, the voice on the other end picked up almost immediately. "Cook here."

The detective didn't bother with a preamble. "Acer's got him?"

"Yes, naturally. I can do my job."

L scratched the skin of his left calve with his right toe as Near watched, silent, like a stone-eyed angel judging the denizens of its courtyard. "I'm quite aware of that. Thank you for your cooperation, Agatha." He wouldn't call her by her chosen name, the pseudonym taken as a none-too-discrete bit of mockery. It's my profession, she had explained simply at the time. Isn't that what you approve of, sir? The belief that one's job ought to become one's identity?

Her sigh crackled over the line. "Things are going to change, you said?"

"Yes." His disinterest was thinly veiled. Neither of them—L or Near—was particularly talented in the social realm. Such abilities were rather superfluous.

"Good," Cook retorted, and she hung up the line.

The only remaining variable was Mello.

The hallways of the orphanage were less than complex. Secure in his location, Mello headed towards what was to him the only logical destination: the exit. He had had enough of this, and so far the House had taught him two things.

The first was that life actually could be decent, to the point of actually being enjoyable. The warping of the mind to accommodate new riddles, the predatory play of Puzzle Board, the quiet lulls in which he was free to simply exist—life at Wammy house had been, for a time, fun.

The second thing he had learned was that fun was entirely unsustainable and unlikely to continue.

Such a pity, that. When even the children are cynics, you just know that the apocalypse is around the corner.

In retrospect, it was quite the grievous error on my part to label Mello as the only variable.

Ringer had a single goal: escape.

All that he wanted was to get out. Away. He had long since grasped the underlying purpose that served as Wammy House's brittle foundation. As an outsider, as a prop, as one of a hundred unnecessary fifth wheels, he could see things far more clearly than Mello or Near, and perhaps more importantly, he cared enough to see them. Ringer wanted out.

The sawed-off towel bar still gripped in his hand, Ringer trotted grimly towards the front doors. He really did hope that the old man was still breathing; if not, he'd be more than a simple runaway, and that really wasn't something he wanted to bother with.

Not right now.

"I was right," Near said. It wasn't quite an assertion, but it certainly wasn't a question, either; it simply was. Regardless of its validity, Near had thrown it into open air, a sail woven of estimates and predictions, a sail that could only be tested in the winds of reality. Such a sail had to be treated as if it was correct, simply because there was no other alternative. Caution had few merits.

"Partially," L replied. He folded the cell phone back into a slim bar and continued walking. "This is going to be interesting, you know."

"Good," Near said, and they continued onward.

"Who was that?" Matt demanded. His skin felt like it was laced with nettles; every muscle in his body was taut with distrust, and the fight-or-flight intoxication of adrenaline was well on its way to swamping his bloodstream.

"L," Acer replied shortly. He motioned for Matt to follow. "We're going to get Mello. Apparently he's headed for the front doors."

"Apparently?"

"L seems to have more resources than he told you," Acer retorted. "Surprising, eh?"

Matt wondered. In the two seconds it took him to reply to Acer's jibe, his mind skipped from possibility to possibility, ferreting out the most likely truths behind this new information. Something, he concluded, had changed; the real question was—did anything really matter, at this point?

"We're almost there," he said again, opting for the simple truth of observation, and Acer made a noncommittal grunt.

"I'm leaving after you get him," he said abruptly, and Matt shrugged.

Good.

When Mello finally stumbled into the front hall, he was struck by the immense darkness more than anything else. The lights were dimmed, of course, as they were throughout the building, but more important were the windows. The great panes of angled glass lined the wall from floor to ceiling. During the daylit hours, the sun creating blinding patterns of rainbows along the hall, like the shadows of so many captured butterflies imprisoned within the glass. At night, they served simply as windows into the darkness of the grounds, reminders of the very empty world of England's night. Looking out past the glass—it gave one the feeling of standing with one's toes curled around the edge of a canyon overhang, perilously close to the thin line between exhilaration and oblivion.

And then there was the door. The entrance to Wammy House was sealed with a pair of mahogany slabs, locked with a wooden beam. The faint ceiling lights brushed the wood with gray-yellow shadows, and the effect convalesced into a single gleaming rectangle set apart against the darkness, like some sort of celestial portal. Mello staggered towards it slowly until his hands rested comfortably on the beam. The blood he had earned upon escaping from the room had long since dried on his hands, and all he could feel was the grain of the wood, smooth and dark and solid.

"Mello."

It took his mind a moment to process the voice, and once he had, he wondered if this latest development would turn out for good or ill. He turned around, facing the voice's owner with a surly expression, all too ready to shove the wooden beam securing the doors out of the way and flee to god-knew-where. In front of him, L regarded him steadily, his inky eyes dark and unreadable. Near stood at the detective's side, silent, and Mello felt an abrupt surge of hatred for the boy's calm implacability. What had the albino invested in any of this that had brought L to drag him along?

"I'm going," he said aloud.

L's back hunched further still, if that was possible, and the curve of his spine rendered Mello the taller of the two. "Please wait," L said.

At Mello's back, the darkness hummed. He could feel its weight—an oppressive, ominous presence, like a wave of humidity pressing at one's throat. So very close to the void…

"Why should I?"

L sighed and looked away, beyond Mello and through the glass. The stars flickered feebly outside, no match for the overwhelming presence of night without the moon to aid them. It would be days before the white mirror returned to cast the sun's shadow into the darkness. His hands shifted in his pockets as the detective settled his weight on his right foot. "Please, Mello," L repeated. He worried his lip between his teeth, then stopped, as if becoming aware of the motion. "I'm…sorry, for what has happened. You need…well, food and rest, certainly, but you can get those on your own, without my aid." Mello's eyes flickered, and L continued. "I owe you some explanation," L said. "But you're not the only one to which it is owed. Don't act like a child, Mello."

"I'm not," Mello retorted. "Look, just—just go away."

"I can't do that."

"And why the hell not?" Anger, seeping into his voice with the quiet savagery of any human emotion. "I don't trust you."

"Mello."

"I don't."

And through it all, Near: plain, bland Near, with his white pajamas and granite eyes. Near, who listened, and did not speak.

"I don't," Mello repeated.

"What can you do?" L looked beyond the blonde again, to the darkened grounds. "Where will you go, Mello? Will you run away, like last time? Life waits for none, Mihael Keehl—"

"Don't call me that—"

"—and you don't have a choice." L redirected his vision to the boy in front of him. "Why do you want to leave?"

Mello looked at L, looked at Near, looked at the grand, sweeping foyer of the House. He saw it all: a stooped-back man, an elderly child, architecture that was marooned in the past as surely as its inhabitants. So much for grandeur; so much for futures and dreams and tranquility. Mello leaned against the door and looked down at the ground. "I just want it to stop," he said, his voice breaking ever so slightly. Near's attention piqued; his flickered with the faint wariness of one accustomed to lies.

L shrugged, a smooth rolling of the shoulders, and maintained his gaze. "Are you accompanying us, then?" he inquired. "If so…"

Mello turned around and rested his forehead against the cool, smooth surface of the door. "I'll come," he said dully, refusing to face the detective, refusing to face his pending return.

"Good." L half-turned, waited. "In that case—"

He broke off before he could finish the sentence. Mello, ever the charlatan, lifted the thick beam securing the door with a lurch; he managed to pull the right door open before the beam clattered to the ground with a wooden thump.

Giving up had never been in the cards. He honestly hadn't known his own intentions until his hands had latched onto the door, but Mello finished what he started.

L turned and saw Mello in the process of escape. His hands, still secure in his pockets, sprang to life as the blonde darted out of the doorway like a minnow through water. A wave of crisp night air slammed into him, a sledgehammer to his senses, and Mello--he breathed. This was it. The air burned in his lungs, frigid and harsh, and Mello's legs tensed in preparation for a lunge.

L took out what looked, to Near's thoughtful eyes, to be a gun.

His left thumb clenched firmly in his teeth, L pulled the trigger, and there was a soft, sibilant hiss as the dart flew through the air and landed squarely in the flesh of Mello's shoulder: on target.

Mello's muscles twitched in a valiant attempt at retaliating, and then the full force of the blow sank in, and his nerves suddenly ceased functioning. He collapsed. His legs crumpled underneath of him, suddenly drained of any power, and he fell.

L's hand dropped limply to his side. The gun dangled loosely from his fingers, almost forgotten, and he stared. His dilated pupils swallowed the dark irises and reflected a murky depiction of the scene, like a pair of demented carnival mirrors distorting reality.

Near took a shuddering step backwards, staring, freezing into a perfect impersonation of a granite statue. He made no noise.

Mello didn't, either.

At that moment, Ringer was scant meters away from the foyer. He heard the swift crack, and like any proper Wammy boy, he drew the correct conclusion: it had been a gun.

Like any proper human child, he also possessed an iota of curiosity that often had the ability to overpower tenscore tons of reasoning and logic. And so he darted around the corner, towel bar clutched carefully in his hands, and he was met with the peculiar sight of Mello, slumped over with his face pressed against the brick stoop of Wammy House's front door, his legs crumpled beneath him. A thin wind gusted through the open door, rich and dark and cold, twirling Mello's hair like so much gilded thread. Ringer stood there for a long minute, mesmerized, captured by the strange, strange scene before him.

L. L, with his Sonic hair and his raccoon eyes; L, with his froglike squat and his spider-limb fingers. L, the detective; L, the overseer. L.

Ringer saw—not red—but black, the dark shade of nonexistent irises and dilated pupils, the unlit color of matted hair, the shade of the void. Black. Ringer saw black.

When he swung the towel bar, he didn't know what to expect. He wasn't thinking, really. Near was. Near skidded backwards, his pale eyes widening still further, his hair flying into disarray as he landed squarely on his rear. L, though, L—L stood there. His head turned. His dull, ever-dilated pupils took in the oncoming threat. They didn't twitch. He didn't move to defend himself, either, just stood there, and the bright flash of metal was reflected even within the dark pits of his eyes.

Ringer was…detached. He watched in fascination as his muscles moved of their own accord, a bystander in the wings.

This is it.

The first blow sent the detective staggering. It streaked across the flawless swathe of pale skin, leaving a skittering line of bright scarlet where the jagged metal broke through his forehead. L's knees bent, but did not crumple; his spine simply accommodated for the change in angle, contorting with serpentine agility in order to compensate. It wasn't enough, not for Ringer. L's eyes stayed open.

The second blow was blocked by Matt's arm. He might have growled something, but as it was, he had just bitten his tongue, and he was so very glad that he had trained himself to be ambidextrous.

"Moron," he whispered, and the slim, silver baton rapped Ringer sharply between the eyes.

This time, when Ringer saw black, it was punctuated with the starlit explosions that tend to accompany such blows. He fainted.

L drifted in and out for a while. He wouldn't talk at first. Wammy continued his ministrations. The gash on his forehead had been a particularly nasty one; it had required stitches, and it had to be constantly cleaned. It ran like a river down his skin, a thin, white line that tapered off just above his brow.

One day, in the midst of sponging L's scar, Wammy was mildly surprised to see a faint flicker of eyelids. The detective, apparently, had returned to the conscious world.

"Quilish Wammy," L had breathed, and he fell back into his sleep. Wammy was used to this. L would probably be comatose for another four hours or so, and then he wouldn't sleep again for two weeks. He had never been particularly bothered by injury.

Matt's fingers threaded through his hair like interlocking bones. As time passed, he tugged and pulled at the roots, testing for pain, trying to elicit of a response of some kind. Any kind. His body refused to deliver: he had been rendered numb.

And then there was Mello. Mello, who had been shot by the tranquilizer—he had been out for a while. The IV feed continued its steady drip, slowly replenishing the malnourished boy's bloodstream as the minutes ticked past.

"He needs to recover," Wammy had said. Matt had let that slide. If anything was obvious, it was that simple recovery was going to take a lot more than food and water. But—he let Mello sleep. It was something Matt wished for himself: his nerves were still hot-wired, and the adrenaline flooding his system had rendered him useless for anything but nervous jittering in the infirmary chair. He watched Mello. Dozing was out of the question.

As for Near, he was in the room with L. His pupils had yet to contract, and try as he might, Wammy couldn't gain a word from the taciturn observer. Near watched.

The night passed on.

Seven in the morning. Dawn long since over. Breakfast, brought by Agatha Cook at Wammy's request.

Nobody eats.

Ringer, he's still unconscious, handcuffed to his chair and on an IV of his own. There's something in it, though Wammy's the only one who knows what. It'll keep him asleep. Out of the way. The casualties of war can be sorted out later.

Acer, he walks in to see Matt. His eyes are rimmed with red, the veins obscenely pronounced and angry. Matt's body doesn't even have the energy to make his eyes inflamed. Instead, he just looks…dead.

Acer says as much. Matt shrugs. Acer leaves, and it's just Matt and Mello again. Alone.

Two days later, a disheveled group gathers in the infirmary. Wammy has ordered the nurse to remove the folding barriers between rooms. Ringer is still out, of course, but the rest of them are here. Near remains locked in his chair, still staring at nothing. L is sitting up. Mello is, too. None of them feel like talking, really. Instead of curtains, this room is draped with silence.

Wammy begins.

"First of all," he says, "my apologies."

If he notices that his words fall flat on dull ears, he ignores it. He pressed a fine-knuckled hand to his lined face and takes off his spectacles. They glimmer in the light.

"This entire debacle is my doing," he says softly. "Damage control. Recite, L."

"Damage control," L repeats in a monotone. "An effort to minimize or curtail damage or loss. Miriam-Webster, 1990 edition."

"Precisely," Wammy says.

He goes on to explain: Leo's death—a true, simple killing. An accident. And caused—yes—by Linel. A murderer, as it turns out. Or simply a killer. Wammy does not judge.

He does, however, go on to say—the need for change. For altering the system. And, perhaps more importantly, doing so in a way that won't render his prodigy—L—crippled by guilt.

"An act of paternal shielding, ostentatiously," Wammy remarks. "Or perhaps an egotistical attempt to disguise my mistake."

Every step of the investigation—a test. A proof. An excuse, so that when Wammy finally plants the "evidence," there will be an excuse to change the system. Drastically: the old ways, obviously, have vast and horrific consequences.

Matt stops listening. So does Mello. Near, he hasn't been listening to anything for a while. Or maybe he has. He's lost—drifting, as it were. Silent. Realizing, somewhere in the echoes of his mind where thought processes still churn feebly, that, yes—it was Wammy interfering with his program. And isn't validation a bitter wine?

At some point, the specifics don't matter. Wammy's network of student proxies, each carrying out tasks that he himself was unable to, each ignorant of their instructor's identity. L's discovery of his teacher's improbity. Wammy's ordering of Mello's capture, all to put pressure on L and bring about a change. It doesn't matter anymore, really.

Damage control. Eventually, Wammy admits, it had morphed into a conscious attempt at manipulation. The flaws in the system had always been there; now was the opportunity to change them. Wammy had had the perfect motivator within his hands.

What does matter: there are clouds hovering over the grounds. It's going to rain. Near is still mute; Roger is stitched up. Ringer still has to be dealt with, Matt's arm nearly broke from the towel bar, Mello's hand is banged up, and the world's greatest detective is currently out of commission. L spends his time staring out the window. He really should be working on this case, or that one, but—he doesn't.

After a week, Matt goes to the library. He doesn't encounter any teachers along the way. Many have been let go. Most of the students have, too, dispersed to various orphanages and homes that Wammy is acquainted with. The old way revolved around picking out a series of primes candidates, and then filling the ranks with half-decent kids in order to reduce stress while keeping up the semblance of competition. The new crop, when they arrive next fall, may give Matt a run for his spot, if he cares enough to defend it.

The Puzzle Board—it's gleaming, even with the cloudy skies. The holographic interface boots up almost immediately.

Matt fingers his baton. It's still his—L forgot about it, which doesn't surprise him, really. There's a small dent in the tip. Ringer had a hard skull.

Matt smashes the screen. The glass implodes, and electricity hisses; a spark leaps out and bites Matt's clothing. The baton whips out, again, again, crushing the delicate interface and pummeling it into so much rubbish.

And then he stops. The Puzzle Board coughs weakly, tries to chirp. Tries to boot. Again, again; it fails. Matt kicks the cord out of the power outlet.

After that—he smiles, and leaves the library. All memories of sanity, of happiness, of contentment—effectively boxed away. He's quite efficient. And, honestly, Puzzle Board has no place in this new world.

Matt tosses the baton in the trash on his way out. He doesn't need it anymore. As for the smashed Puzzle Board—well.

He has better things to do.