The New World

Reiji Namikawa glanced over at the fairy lights dancing out of the corner of his eye. As if he didn't have enough to worry about already just being the Vice President of Sales, he was moonlighting, like everyone else at Wammy House, with the additional duty of monitoring other employees' online statuses. Several screens occupied the corner of his desk, and upon them the vital signs for the employees currently logged into the game at Wammy House Headquarters in Winchester, England blinked erratically. He didn't think it was that important a duty when there had been no adverse health effects thus far, but common sense dictated that someone monitor them since this was still a developing technology.

There had been an unusual flicker out of the corner of his eye so he scrolled through the screens just in case, looking at the names and checking things like blood pressure and heart rate, but there were no abnormalities. At this time of the morning, the only people that were on were the odd developer or technician and the few Moderator volunteers for this particular shift. He was glad he had been promoted from the Japanese branch to the Headquarters and wouldn't be asked to do something so trivial. Someone with his level of education shouldn't have to ask questions of the beta testers, who were largely unwashed, housebound recluses with barely enough social skills to fill a handbag. The irony that his job relied on these asocial masses was not lost on him, however.

Well, since nothing was wrong, he should get back to his reports on projected sales for the next quarter. Pre-orders alone would start to compensate for the enormous cost of building this game and they might finally start to see profits a few months after the game's launch.

As Reiji settled back into his early morning routine, the screen continued to show that the employees' vitals had not changed drastically. What he had failed to notice was that one name had dropped off completely.

Light logged off after the incident with Mikami. Even in a stupid video game, things like killing someone couldn't be taken so lightly. It had been so real, nothing like shooting monsters and sniping pixelated people on other gaming platforms. There was a real person behind Mikami's avatar, not an AI. He had seen the horror and shock on Mikami's face, watched the horribly convincing life fade from his eyes as the second smile under his chin opened up and vomited gore all over them both.

This was a sick game. Rather, the Death Note gave it that potential.

It was too much to think about, so he hadn't even allowed Ryuk to explain and just woke up. His hands were clammy with sweat, and it ran in rivulets down his face as he set the visor aside. Even if he really wanted to throw it, that might damage it and he couldn't justify the waste. He touched the sweat and pulled his fingers away, making sure it wasn't the phantom blood that had felt so real for a few moments.

He shook off the nervousness with difficulty and got out of his bed with the intent to head downstairs. He needed to see and interact with real people for a little while.

His bedside clock showed that only an hour had passed since his login. His sense of time in the game was slightly skewed since it hadn't felt that long, but that was what the alarm was for, after all, to keep him from being logged in too long.

Light could take a few hours off and maybe log back in after dinner. He had to find Ryuk and ask about that killing power since the man had said he would be off the next two days as well. He was just a little too rattled to ask the right questions right now.

He just kept seeing Mikami's face.

The next time Light logged back into The World, Ryuk showed up while he was still in the map room.

"Hey, kid, I thought I'd scared you off earlier." Light tried to shrug, but the nonchalance was forced. Ryuk hung in the air like something out of nightmare, his normally white face blue from the glow of the map and no less sinister for the change.

"How'd you find me so quickly?"

"You pinged me earlier when you appeared in Ravenloft, and that gave me your character's 'address' of sorts. It's something in the Death Note that lets me find you." Light cast a baleful glare at him, but Ryuk continued before he could ask the inevitable questions about his identity. "Only I can trace it since I made the Death Note. It just lets me see when you log in and find you right away. I can't see any personal information, remember? You have more questions?" His grin was maniacal.

"Sure. For one, how am I here again? The narrator said I would only be here the first time." A few hours being around his family for dinner and watching television had returned him to relative normalcy. It was easier to remember that this was all just a game when he spent a few hours being bored by his real life.

It was real life versus his virtual life. Already his existence had split between the two. How pathetic.

"The game thinks you have a beta account for now. Since the beta testers are essentially beginning anew every time they log in, they appear at the start screen each time. You're not a beta, however; you're sort of an NPC."

"A Non-Playable Character? But how is that possible?" Ryuk's smile in answer was frightening with that oversized mouth of his.

"Because I designed the Death Note to leave a trail like that. The game thinks you're a beta right now, but when the game goes live, it won't know what you are and will just think that you're an AI. It's really technical and not very interesting. Essentially, you appear here at the map and pick wherever you want to go."

Light looked over the map for a few moments, his list of questions now scrambled after getting that kind of information.

"It thinks my character is being controlled by a program?"

"Yes, so it won't keep tabs on you. Do you know how much processing power it would take to create logs of every NPC in the game individually? If you do some truly off the wall things, it might set off an alarm on some techie's workstation, but then you can just log out and your trail is gone."

"Wow." Light didn't have any more to say than that. The game had sounded lame at first, but the prospect of doing something that wouldn't connect to him in any way sounded appealing.

That was where all these virtual reality games became trouble. In this day and age, every seemed to have online activities and screen names that were carefully guarded by their owners so people couldn't connect their online selves with their real life identities. Everyone was living a double life with their public personae in addition to their anonymous pennames. Light had avoided things like that mainly because the Internet was full of idiots. It made sense since the morons around him were the same people polluting the Internet, and he highly doubted their intellect increased by being anonymous. If anything, people probably let loose more online due to its anonymity.

"Any more questions? You must have more than that." Ryuk's comment woke him from his musings.

"Yes, but it's more personal preference. Can I make myself look any more different since I still look a lot like myself? You look nothing… well, almost nothing like you do in real life."

"Of course. You can make more modifications once the game goes live. A beta looking like me would get a Mod's attention faster, so I only allowed you the basic changes available to everyone. Once The World is full of people, I'll unlock the controls so you can make yourself look like a monster if you want to. You can also buy scarves or hoods to cover your face with. People like doing that sort of thing."

"Last thing for now, I think. This killing power the Death Note has… What am I doing when I kill someone?"

"You destroy their avatar." Light waited, but Ryuk offered no more information.

"Am I doing anything to the real person?"

"No, you can't affect a real person by doing things to them in-game. You can't even hurt their characters that badly. Pick a town and I'll show you." Light pressed a random location and opened his eyes to the empty hotel-like room from before. The transition was almost immediate into the actual game. The voice from before echoed faintly over his head, telling him the name of the town, but he ignored it. Ryuk popped into existence over his shoulder, floating above the tiled floor with his bony wings.

"Don't go outside yet; there's probably a Mod hanging around waiting for newcomers. Now go punch that wall." A hand bedecked with silver rings pointed at part of the building.

"What?" Light laughed, hearing his own voice bouncing around the otherwise-empty chamber. Ryuk chuckled, which sounded much more hideous coming from that body.

"Punch the wall. It won't hurt." Light moved closer to the wall and drew back a fist, contemplating the wisdom of doing this even if this was just an avatar's flesh and bones and not his own. It was pixels, a mere game, not real at all; it just looked real since he was seeing it from his eyes.

Decision made, he struck the wall with a moderate amount of force. His hand stung as if he'd slapped it instead. No permanent damage.

"Now hit it as hard as you can," Ryuk ordered imperiously.

Rolling his eyes and wondering when he'd started taking orders from a stranger in a monster's body, he punched it as hard as he could, which probably would have shattered his hand in real life. Now a small explosion of pain danced along his nerve endings as blood seeped from his split knuckles. However, the pain passed from one breath to the next even if the blood stayed for aesthetic purposes. It continued to tingle like limbs gone dead from lack of circulation, more a signal that his hand had been damaged than anything else.

He breathed in wonder; he couldn't help himself. The fact that a simple headset could give him this kind of sensation was astonishing. Wammy House was sitting on a gold mine.

"See?" Ryuk's voice brought him back to reality. "You can barely hurt yourself in-game. That's about as much pain as you'll ever feel. After all, who would want to play a game in which you could actually feel yourself getting disemboweled by monsters? That's sick!" Ryuk laughed, and Light belatedly joined in. "The most you did to Mikami was give him a little spike of pain before he got logged out. Don't worry about him. He's a pompous ass anyway."

"He sounded like it." Light flexed his tingling fingers, smiling a little. Ryuk had done much to ease his fears. After all, he didn't want to hurt anyone in real life by killing them in a stupid game, but if all Mikami had felt was the little flash of pain, that wasn't that bad…. Right?

It was just a game, after all.

Mail Jeevas strolled through the corridors of Wammy House Headquarters before reaching Reiji's open door. He banged on the doorframe unceremoniously, interrupting the older man's phone call. Reiji glared at him and motioned that he'd speak to him in a moment, gesturing at the earpiece in his ear.

No one used Mail's real name, instead calling him "Matt" which was his screen name. Few people at Wammy House used each other's real names, instead referring to each other by their aliases or screen names, except for the executives that didn't play the game and only stuck to the administrative side of things.

Matt ignored the unspoken request to wait outside and tossed a small pile of reports on Reiji's desk, chewing gum in a manner that was sure to annoy the prim executive. He couldn't smoke indoors away from his tiny office so he needed some sort of oral stimulation in place of cigarettes.

Sighing exasperatedly, Reiji terminated his call and shot an annoyed look at Matt. "What is it?"

"I brought the reports from the development team that you need for the meeting this morning."

"You could have emailed them to me. There's no need for you to come up here."

"Yeah, but I want to check out your monitor. Mikami's been out for almost two days and you never noted it, so I think there's something wrong with your feeds."

"Teru Mikami?" Reiji let Matt behind his desk to fiddle with the monitor he used to watch vital signs. "What do you mean he's been 'out' for two days?"

"He's still unconscious from his last Moderator shift. Mello found him yesterday like that, asleep in his office with his headset on, but he's not logged into the game. He won't wake up either." Mello had used some rather unorthodox methods in an attempt to wake him, which had been funny at first, but nothing had worked.

After that, Mikami been moved to the infirmary since dehydration was setting in. If he wasn't awake the next day, they were going to move him to the hospital and treat him as a coma patient, but the doctors working for Wammy House weren't willing to cause a media scandal already by exposing him to the public. The media would blow anything that concerned Wammy House out of proportion because their game generated such great ratings. Wammy House didn't need to feed the fire with fears that people were becoming trapped in the game.

"Ah, I thought so," Matt said, peering at the logs. "He dropped out of the system about 30 hours ago. It doesn't look he logged out, so his vitals just quit being monitored. That's weird. I wonder if there's something wrong with his link to the game."

"I'll tell the President at this morning's meeting. Is there anything else I should know?" Reiji was shuffling some papers behind him, but he didn't turn to look.

"Nothing other than the basic reports in that stack right there," Matt gestured at the pile on the desk as he inspected the computer's hardware. It would be alarming if it turned out that Mikami was actually in a coma due to some technical malfunction.

"I'd just let Mr. Wammy know about Mikami's condition before the meeting." Matt added. "No need to worry more people than necessary." He didn't have that much interest in visiting the President this morning, so he was willing to let Reiji do it instead.

Reiji waited long moments to tell Mr. Quillsh Wammy news that could potentially be damning to them as a business. If this turned out to be more than an isolated incident, governmental regulations would come from every direction and cripple them, possibly even prevent them from producing the game. Then Wammy House would go under, bankrupted by the millions they had already spent on development that would go nowhere when they had no hope of recouping the money.

Wammy had been a humble inventor as well as a founder of several orphanages in England. However, he had generated one of the biggest technological advances of the century and would revolutionize online gaming and interaction with this creation. Now this former tinker was the President of Wammy House Corporation, a company poised to be as successful as the best in the technological industry. However, he was a better parent than a king, and he insisted on being a part of almost every facet of development, which made him a very busy and very distracted man.

"What is it, Mr. Namikawa?" Wammy didn't look up from his desk after a brief glance at him. He was starting to show signs of stress at the growing frenzy over the nearness of the game's release.

"Just some reports that I wanted to give you in person. Apparently there's a health concern about one of the employees that we don't want the media to know about." Reiji waited, but Wammy didn't even nod in reply, his eyes flickering from one screen to another. The man had two monitors at his desk and papers spread across the entire surface, and it didn't even look like he was paying attention to him.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that Reiji had just talked with his reflection in the window behind Wammy.

"One of our employees is in what might be a temporary coma. He's not responding to stimulus but his condition is stable. There have never been any problems severing a connection with the game before so it's a cause for concern."

No response. He was having a conversation with himself.

"Hmm, the media?" This was Wammy's contribution to the conversation.

"The man concerned is Teru Mikami, an otherwise healthy individual from Legal. He's in the infirmary now, and we're moving him to the hospital if nothing improves. We didn't want a media storm from this, which is why…" Reiji trailed off. It was more than slightly offensive that Wammy didn't even look up, merely humming every now and then whenever he paused for breath. He was frantically typing out an email while glancing unconvincingly in his direction every few seconds.

The man hadn't heard a word.

"Actually, Mikami and I were thinking of getting married, and we want L to be the godfather of our adoptive children," Reiji said dryly.

Wammy actually looked up at that, blinking behind his spectacles as Reiji kept a perfectly straight face. "What about my son?"

Reiji sighed, knowing the older man had heard nothing except the name of his pride and joy. At least now he was paying attention to him.

"Teru Mikami's unconscious, probably due to the game. I won't mention it in the meeting, so I'm telling you now." Wammy nodded.

"Sorry, Mr. Namikawa. I've been distracted lately. Let me know if anything changes regarding that development, please." Well, that was better than nothing. Reiji turned and left the room, wondering if half the things he told Wammy ever got through.

"AAHH!" the scream bounced off the infirmary's walls and echoed down the corridor.

It startled Mihael Keehl out of the task of lovingly peeling the silver wrapper off a bar of Swiss chocolate. As to why he was eating in an infirmary, he had taken to hiding these bars amongst the seldom-used medical supplies in the storage room since he doubted that it would occur to anyone as a hiding place, especially L. The man avoided even the suggestion of disease, so his treats were safe from Wammy House's other resident sugar fiend.

Mello tried to juggle his ever-present chocolate bar without sacrificing it to the potentially dirty floor as it danced out of his grip. After it was safely back in his hands, he abandoned the stash of chocolate in favor of investigating the noise. His heart still racing from the unexpected sound as well as the fear of losing good imported chocolate, he peered around the doorway in the direction that the scream had come from, his inquisitive mind wondering what was going on.

Even though he expected it when he stepped into Teru Mikami's room, the sight still made him laugh under his breath in perverse amusement. The prim and haughty lawyer had tumbled out of his bed and was sprawled on the floor in a tangle of sheets, clutching at his throat with his eyes bugged out of his head. Fortunately, they hadn't redressed him in a hospital gown so he still had on his undershirt and pants rather than a blue or sea foam green mini-dress.

Mello stepped inside as the man continued to gasp and hold his neck, making retching noises like he was going to vomit all over the floor. He hurried to grasp the wastebasket by the door and set it beside him before backing off. He didn't want to stand close enough to get puked on if Mikami was going to lose it.

"You okay?" he asked as he pressed the button that would get the doctor on call to come to the room; Mikami was certainly incapable of doing so.

Mikami was sickly green, sweat trickling down his face. He'd ripped the IV out of his arm by falling, and there was a trickle of blood in his elbow. He kept pulling his hands away from his throat as he gasped, staring at them like he was going to find something.

It looked like Mello wasn't going to get an answer, so he sat in a chair by the door to keep an eye on him until the doctor got there, unwrapping the rest of his chocolate in the meantime. Mikami kept swallowing, finally leaning back against the bed and letting his hands fall to the side. At least he wasn't going to puke; it might make Mello lose his appetite.

"That game is… disgusting." Mikami eventually gasped, his eyes coming to rest on Mello.

"What do you mean?" Mello asked, nibbling at the edge of the chocolate. Mmm, he did love milky Swiss chocolate. He would have to get more of this.

"I just had my throat cut!" His raspy voice was almost shrill compared to his normal soft speech. "I thought couldn't happen, and it felt pretty damn realistic!"

"That's not possible." Mello answered in a flippant deadpan. "Player characters can't get killed. We tested that." He and Matt had been forbidden to continue wrestling, pulling pranks, and making improvised weapons during work hours. Instead, they had spent plenty of time attempting to kill each other in game. When Ryuk had still been on the team, he had been creating a fighting arena that would have allowed players to take each other on in single or group combat.

However, Wammy had shut down his idea and directed them to make it impossible to kill or hurt another player character. It was not so much Ryuk's idea that Wammy objected to but rather Ryuk's best friend and Wammy's own foster son. The older man didn't want to indulge anyone's violent or malicious tendencies, even at the cost of taking important elements out of the game.

Therefore, the only things that could hurt or kill players were environmental disasters, dungeon traps, and monsters or other creatures. That was a pity since hurting each other had been loads of fun.

"So what happened?" Mello prodded Mikami, curious about what had really happened.

"I was talking to one of the testers." Mikami had to stop to swallow, his breathing still elevated. "I was explaining the fact that you can't kill other players, and… and he cut my throat! Then I woke up here." He suddenly looked around, seemingly surprised at his surroundings. "Where am I?"

"The infirmary. You've been out almost three days."

"Impossible." Mikami's voice sounded lost. "It just happened… Three days?" Mello had never seen the older lawyer look as confused as he did right now but he couldn't say as he disliked the sight.

Fortunately, the doctor appeared at that moment, so Mello zipped out now that he had some interesting news for Matt.

"I've got it!" Wammy's voice sounded unusually animated.

"What have you found?" L pinched the phone between two fingers and continued devouring his miniature mountain of melon balls soaked in honey glaze with a tiny dessert fork.

"I've finally settled on a name for this thing, this game that's consuming all our lives right now."

"And…?" L prompted, hearing the satisfied smile in the man's voice.

"I'm calling the game 'The New World.' Seems fitting since I want it to be a place for everyone to meet regardless of economic status or citizenship or background…" he trailed off, lost in thinking about it for the moment. The lapse in his attention was forgivable since L knew him well.

This game was to be Wammy's most significant accomplishment, the most visible legacy he would leave behind. He'd put more thought into this virtual world than anyone else so it was perfectly understandable that he would be overwhelmed by it finally coming to fruition.

L was relieved, frankly, that this was finally about to start. He had spent years being a sounding board for ideas along with his loose association of 'brothers', the other orphans that Wammy had welcomed to the original Wammy House orphanage. Wammy's drive to create and educate genius children had given him the most gifted creators, designers, and software techs in the world to work with now that they were older. Granted, Near was only 16 as the youngest of them, but things like age hardly applied to genii of their caliber. L himself had reminded them that this was paying back Wammy for his generosity years ago even if the older man had never asked for it. None of them had ever objected to the task after that.

"So, Watari," L continued. 'Watari' was the first alias that Wammy had worked under online, and it was the name he gave to people when he didn't want the notoriety of being the head of Wammy House to come into play. "I take it you've already informed Marketing so they can start the campaign?"

"I'll tell them soon enough. I wanted you to be the first. Thanks for all your hard work, son."

"Always a pleasure. I'm looking forward to fulfilling my job when the game goes live."

"I trust the Watchers will have plenty of work. People are always willing to make mischief."

I'm counting on that, L thought as he snapped his phone shut.

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A/N – Sorry for the incredible delay. I really hated my first draft of this chapter, and I've been highly distracted lately. Maybe I did shoot myself in the foot by having so many stories!