It's not over 'til your underground...

Michael stared at L. L stared back. Neither of them had spoken a word since the shower room. Night had fallen, they were back in the cell, but both of them knew too much to be the one to break the silence. They were waiting for the rest of the world to fall asleep.

L had sat down on the lower bed, not caring that it was not his. Michael had just stood in the middle of the cell for a while, scratching the back of his head and looking like he was thinking hard. Then he finally turned towards L and hunkered down on the floor in front of the bed to get more eye-level with him. A long, loaded silence again, and at last it was broken. Michael spoke first. "Before you say anything, I think you should know that I know who you are, 'L'."

So, he was feeling threatened. L could hardly blame him. He countered with an off-balancing statement of his own. "Yes, I figured the nurse would have told you."

It worked. Michael's stare intensified another few degrees. L could almost see the thoughts racing through his head. For the first time since he had ended up in here, L felt like he had some control over the situation. He knew what he was doing. Of course, what he would be doing was totally dependent on Michael's plans, and so L was totally dependent on him. That was less than optimal, but... he was getting ahead of himself. It was hard to know where to start.

"Why are you here?" L asked.

"Officially?"

"Both."

"I held up a bank."

"But that was just a method to get in, wasn't it? I heard about your brother."

Some information had leaked through L's own shock. He had been gathering knowledge on auto-pilot; overhearing snippets about his cell-mate from various sources and storing it without even reflecting on what any of it meant or how it fit together, until now. Michael's brother—Lincoln—was on death row for killing the vice-president's brother. Michael was nothing like any of the hundreds of criminals L had come in contact with during his career as a detective. The rest, he just intuited. He was rarely wrong.

"What about my brother?" Michael said.

"He'll be executed. In a few days. Unless you can break him out before then. No wonder you're feeling the pressure. I'm in your way, am I not? Hmm... in fact, the easiest thing for you to do would probably be to kill me. But you won't. Because you're not a proper criminal."

Michael gave him a tiny smile, looking like he might get sick with nerves.

"You're putting an awful lot into your character assessment skills..." he said.

"Yes. But I'm right."

Michael's nervous smile widened a little.

"I'm guessing you wouldn't be telling me this if you had any plans of stopping me?" he said. "You want in on it, don't you? Before gen-pop find out your true identity?"

"Too late. One of the men who attacked me today already knows. I don't know what happened to him, if he was taken to any kind of solitary confinement or not."

"Who?"

"He calls himself 'T-bag'."

Michael sighed and covered his head with his hands. This was bad news, obviously.

"Shit. Ok. So, tell me, how did you figure it out?"

This was not doubt from his side, nor did L believe it to be an assessment of the flaws of his planning. No, this was about him, to see how smart he really was. An audition of sorts. Michael was cleverer than he had thought, and it made L very happy. The better the plan was, the less he would have to change.

"What did you do on the outside?" L asked.

"Structural engineering."

L nodded. "Yes. Something to do with the prison. That's how you got the blue-prints. That's how you know what pipes go where. Some acid has been poured down the grate in the nurse's office; there is the beginning of a larger hole. That's how we will get into the room when it's locked. Those cables you can see through the window is the way we get out. I'm guessing the way into the room below is from somewhere out in the yard, where you work during the days. I've seen brick and plaster dust on your clothes. It will be soon, too. Tomorrow? The day after?"

Michael stared at him again, but the smile was gone. "You worked all this out today? They didn't exaggerate about you, did they? You really are some kind of genius..."

"Your plan is not bad. You are probably quite gifted yourself."

"Alright, enough of the mutual admiration, there's one more thing..."

Michael looked away, then back at L with a sudden piercing stare. "My brother was set up. If I get you out of here, will you take his case? Will you help us figure out why this happened?"

American internal politics. Not very exciting, but as it happened, L would have to get into it anyway. He had—although not strictly speaking been set up—also been a victim of fickle American politics. Someone had wanted him in here. In here, specifically... It wouldn't surprise him in the least if he found out their cases were connected. Perhaps, someone out there wanted the truth about the vice president's brother to come out, and this someone had pulled some strings to bring Michael and L together.

"Yes," he said. "If we get out, I'll help you."

Michael let out a sigh of relief and nodded. He stood up and stretched, then bent down and looked in at L. Waiting. Finally, when the silence started getting uncomfortable, he spoke up. "Um, L? Can you get out of my bed now?"

The next morning found L sunken deep into the mattress, his body so heavy that he could hardly move. He had not so much slept as lost consciousness. It was the low blood sugar, it had to be. It was not normal for him to sleep this much.

Struggling to sit up, his body painfully reminded him of the beating yesterday. He was bruised all over, his head hurt, and every muscle was stiff and sore. A pained moan slipped through his lips and he collapsed back onto the mattress.

They shuffled through the same grey corridor, heading for the same exercise yard with the same patchy yellowing grass. This was how they got you; the repetitiveness of the days, and the stress of constantly having to watch your back. L marvelled at how easy it was to combine fear and utter boredom. But enough with that; he was getting out of here. Soon. If he could just keep from collapsing into a hypoglycaemic coma before then.

Michael introduced him to some of the others who were in on the escape but he hardly listened. The human factor was the unpredictable part of any deal, and he would happily leave the HR to Michael. What he wanted to know were the logistics, the layout of the tunnels and the timing of the escape.

"See the shed over there..." Michael pointed discreetly at a small building on the other side of the yard, "There is a hole in the floor there, leading into the sewers. Follow that pipe and it will bring you to a large room with a rope hanging from a grate in the floor of the storage-room. Once we get into the storage room, we can get into medical..."

L nodded and then Michael's voice was a great distance away as he spotted a figure strolling towards them. T-bag. So, he had escaped the guards and not ended up in solitary. L clearly remembered the whispered word into his ear as he lay defeated on the ground. 'Later' he had said. But there was not going to be a later.

"What's this then, pretty?" T-bag said to Michael, nodding his head towards L, "Some charitable meet and greet?"

His lip was swollen and red. And there was worry in his eyes, L saw. Worry at the others, the specific configuration of others. Was he in on the plan? There was no other explanation.

"He's coming with us," Michael said.

T-bag laughed without humour. "Really? Because I seem to remember you telling me that we could impossibly take on any more people? But this is turning to a regular free for all, isn't it?"

He met L's eyes with clear hostility, a smile still smeared onto his face.

"And I seem to recall telling you to let me handle it," Michael said.

Before T-bag could respond, there was an announcement over the speakers that Michael had a visitor and he walked away without another word. The others broke up and wandered off, leaving L alone with T-bag, who leaned closer to him and muttered, "I don't care how smart you are, you're going to pay for this."

He licked his split lip.

"You were lucky," L said. "Try something like that again, it won't be just your lip." He couldn't remember being this angry since... no, he had probably never been this angry.

"No my little fish, you were." T-bag grinned at him and reached out to press his hand against a particularly sore spot on L's ribs. It wasn't hard to find one; all of his ribs were particularly sore. He winced and gritted his teeth but resisted the temptation to kick T-bag's ugly mug in. The guards were watching; this was a provocation to try and land him in solitary, where he wouldn't be able to join the escape. L was not falling for it.

"Hands off!" he snapped.

"Oh, you know nothing about my hands yet. But you will. You will. A lot of people don't like you much in here, they just don't know it yet. I gave you a chance – and you gave me this."He licked his lip again. "You understand I can't let that go; what are people going to think! Besides, now we have another problem, don't we. You're trying to get on a train that's already full. And I'm just going to have to take it upon myself to check your ticket. So, I'll see you later tonight."

T-bag turned and walked away, wiggling his fingers over his shoulders at L who was left shaking with unreleased anger. Some people deserved to die. They really did.

When he got back to his cell, Michael was not there. A letter was lying on L's bed, to his surprise. He climbed up and looked at the plain white envelope. His name on the front, no sender on the back. It was post-marked in Japan though, and it had been opened. The letter inside was short; just half a page of lined paper with a scrawled message:

L,

Under the circumstances, this might sound

silly, but trying to keep your spirits up is

essential in your situation.

There is not much we can do for your from

here, but please let us know if there

is anything you need or any other way we can be of

service. We're all thinking of you.

There was no signature at the bottom. Any 'we' in Japan would most likely be the investigation team, but the inane and rather useless contents of the letter was not something that their natural spokesperson –Yagami senior—would pen. Nor Light. Light had not been in touch at all, and this breezy fluff was not his style anyway. If L had to say who it sounded like, he would say Matsuda. Could Matsuda have been writing a letter on behalf of the group and gotten away with these bland platitudes? Or could he perhaps have been writing it solely on behalf of himself, but put 'we' in an effort to... what? Make it less weird that he was writing to L? It made little sense.

L could see his fingers holding the paper tremble. Almost time for lunch. He would walk over bodies to get some sugar today, he needed it badly. His brain needed the fuel if he was to figure out a workable solution to the T-bag problem—because it was a real problem; he had no intention of letting him sneak up on him and...

His fingers suddenly stilled. He read the letter again and wondered why he hadn't seen it straight away. Even Matsuda knew about the code and it was so obvious, but it wasn't the poorly hidden message that had the blood running cold in his veins.

'L, Use This.'

Use this. This...

He dropped the paper and pulled back into the corner where the bed met the wall. That torn paper, those lines. That paper. They couldn't have. They wouldn't have. The note was securely locked away at headquarters. Of course, with combined efforts, they could get to it.

The trembling started again, worse than before. With shaking fingers, he picked up the letter. There was lots of blank space, and they had not written his full name on it. It could be. It could actually be. They—someone—could have broken every protocol and sent him this. He could feel lump in his throat that was part fear, part some other emotion. Footsteps neared the cell and Michael stepped in.

"L, you alright? You look... upset."

L drew a deep breath and let it out. "Michael, do you have a pencil?"

"Um... yeah..." He disappeared from view while he was poking around in his secret stash, then tossed L a short blunt stump. The deadliest weapon in the world.

He was vaguely aware that he was trembling worse than ever before and he heard Michael's voice, as if it was coming from far away. "Are you really ok? You don't look so hot."

"I'm fine. Michael?"

"Yes?"

"What's T-bag's real name?"