Author's Note: I don't actually have much to say today :P

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, or anything remotely associated with it.

The chase continued for another five blocks. My lungs were ready to bust but I wouldn't stop, my legs were ready to collapse beneath me but I wouldn't give up the chase. With one final burst of speed and agility I leapt at the side of the bike and sent it, its rider and myself tumbling and scraping onto the sidewalk.

I was panting and wheezing, and could barely lift myself off the pavement but I managed I crawl over to the unmoving cyclist as wary pedestrians shifted out of the way of the wreck.

With my bloody and road burned arms I pulled at the riders helmet.

I tore it off and stared at the face of a man I didn't know.

"SHIT!"

"W-what's g-going on?" some poor, startled, middle aged man asked me.

"Who the hell are you?"

"M-me! W-w-what about y-you?"

"Damnit!" I muttered angrily as I pulled myself up off the sidewalk. 'Damnit,' I cussed to myself. What had happened? What had gone wrong? This wasn't even close to the guy I had been chasing earlier. There's no way I could have been so off. I listened intently for the sounds of another motorcycle, but between the gabbing onlookers, the city noises and my own pounding heart I couldn't hear much of what I needed to. "Damnit."

"What happened Jewel!" was the question that greeted me when I finally made it back to our headquarters.

"Your mom's condom broke, that's what happened Gevanni." I walked over to the far end of the room, being especially careful not to bump into anything. I reached my desk and slid open the top drawer. After just a moment I pulled out a glasses case and replaced on my face, the glasses I had lost in the shoot out. Much better; I had been starting to come down with a migraine. I had numerous pairs of spare glasses stashed around the city. This happened to me quite a lot.

"Don't get fresh! This mission was a complete failure!"

"And you're blaming me!"

"I'm blaming you!"

"Quiet both of you," Near cut in. Gevanni and I just continued to glare at each other. "How did they know you were there Jewel?"

"Didn't you see? They hacked into my feeds." That had to have been the explanation. The one with the laptop had somehow hacked into my frequency and channelled my feeds onto his computer. There were small nods of agreement around the table; it made sense. "Now, what do you mean a 'complete' failure?" I finally asked. I had gotten them the briefcase, that's what the objective was.

"We didn't get the bomb," Near answered flatly, and Gevanni and I finally took our respective seats around the long, rectangular table.

"Shit, I must have grabbed the wrong briefcase," I sighed as I realised what must have happened. They must have done the switch while I was still inside the building, while I was being shot at or just after I had made onto the roof.

But what was said next had me thinking otherwise. "You got a briefcase? Gevanni asked hopefully, and instantly the mood around the table improved. Smiles and optimistic eyes focused in on me instead of expressions of disappointment and disdain. Near's own expression was questioning. Maybe they thought I had an additional briefcase, a different one than that which I had given to the member of the S.W.A.T. team.

"Just the one from the blonde. I passed it off to the other guy. What was in it then? The money?"

The mood shifted again, to one of confusion. "Jewel, we never got ANY briefcase," Near explained and I felt the blood flush away from my face.

"And you're asking ME what happened? Guys! I got a briefcase! I passed it to a member of the S.W.A.T. team before I took off after the other guy. I had it in my hands and I passed it to one of ours!"

Pairs of people around the table shared awkward glances and small mutterings. They had no idea what I was talking about. "S.W.A.T. never gave us a briefcase."

"You need to call them to find out what happened to it Near!"

"You should have just stayed with it," Gevanni charged.

Another bout of glaring at each other ensued.

"Listen," Near cut in again, "I'll call the S.W.A.T. team. The rest of you, there isn't anything else you can do here right now. All of you go home."

No one moved for a second, and then, like a puppet master was manipulating all our strings, we all got up and moved at once. I decided to take the stairs down to the main floor, rather than ride down twenty stories in an awkward sardine can with fifteen other people that may or may not blame you for the day's problems.

I made it down half a flight before I heard someone calling me.

"Jewel, just wait a second!"

There was no way I could deal with this right now.

"What Gevanni?"

"Look, I think we need to talk about-"

"You know what, its fine. I don't want to talk about it right now.

"But-"

"Not right now!" I asserted, putting my hands up in a defensive gesture. "Not. Now." I sun on my heels, dropped down to the next floor and let myself out of the stairwell. I didn't want Gevanni following me all the way down to the first floor. I skirted around to the far end of the building and took the second set of elevators. I needed time alone; I needed time to think.

The motorcycle issue was still playing in the back of my mind. I wasn't worried about the bomb, about Gevanni, I wasn't even worried about my job. What worried me the most was how could I have completely mistaken my target. The only time I had lost sight of the bike was when it had turned a block ahead of me. But I had seen it on the other side! Unless...

I made my way back to the side street where I had first lost contact with the motorcycle and its rider. It was much later in the evening now, and the pavement and buildings were wearing a burnt orange hue from the street lights. The traffic density was already low for this part of town, so this late at night there were only a few stray cars and trucks driving around.

I stood in the middle of the sidewalk for a good five minutes, just staring and wondering what the heck I was looking for, wondering what the heck I hoped to accomplish. I wanted to leave and just go home, but some nagging thing inside kept telling me that I couldn't have been that wrong. Who was the guy on the motorcycle? How had he magically disappeared?

I stared up at the towering building above me. Like the warehouse I had been in earlier, it looked more or less deserted, with only a handful of lights on throughout the place. The windows on the bottom floor were boarded up and covered with graffiti. The windows on the second to the fifth floor were all shut tightly, and had dark curtains behind them. I guessed that it was an old hotel or an apartment that was going out of business.

Then I had an idea; I looked down instead of up. I checked the street below my feet, walking up and down the length of it over and over until I saw them. Two skid marks on the right side of the street, almost halfway down the road. One skid mark was leading into the street, signalling an abrupt stop. The other was right beside it and leading out of the street, signalling an abrupt start. There had been two motorcycles and they had both been significant.

The second motorcycle, the one that I had eventually caught had been in on it. The whole thing had been a setup in case the original had been followed. "Damnit!" I cussed and punched the sidewalk. I had let them both get away.

This was turning into a really terrible day... and it was about to get worse.

In the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of movement. My head snapped to the street just in time to see a slight figure in a hooded sweatshirt take off running in the opposite direction. It was the same person I'd seen earlier today! It was the guy who had hacked into my surveillance feeds at the warehouse. But more than that... it was Matt.

I was sure of it! My heart leaped in my chest, and my brain screamed at me the impossibilities of the situation, but I knew! I knew it was Matt.

I raced after him without a moment's hesitation.

I ran with all my might and after only a few seconds I was less than fifteen feet behind him.

"Matt!" I called, and for just a brief second the guy in front of me lost his footing. "Matt," I tried again, "please stop!" I couldn't keep shouting after him. It was taking all the oxygen I could pull in just to keep up with this man. I couldn't lose him! I had to keep up, I had to catch him! He was Matt, and Matt was alive! I was sure of it! My heart was pounding and adrenaline like liquid electricity poured into my blood stream as I gained a few strides. "Please!" I cried.

The man slowed for just a second, and I was sure I was going to catch him. However, without breaking stride his hand came back holding a gun.

One shot; two, three. I instinctively slowed my chase to avoid being riddled with bullets, but once the guy stopped shooting I was on his tail again, but he made a quick left turn into a dark ally in front of me.

I couldn't lose him!

I made the turn less than five seconds after he did, but when I entered the ally I saw no one. A metallic clanging above my head however had me glancing up, where I found the male frantically climbing the fire escape of the building to my right.

I started after him, but lost time around ever twist of the staircase. By the time I reached the rooftop he was nowhere in sight. There were no adjacent buildings close enough to jump to, no fire escapes, ladders, poles or drainpipes on any other side of the building. There were no windows, no unlocked doors; no conceivable place where my target could have disappeared to. I spent twenty minutes on the top of that roof before I finally admitted to myself that somehow the guy I was chasing had slipped past me.

"C'mon Jewel, get a grip. That wasn't Matt, and that wasn't Mello you saw earlier. They died. Accept that. They're gone!" I yelled at myself. "They're dead and buried. There isn't anything you can do about it. L is dead, Mello is dead and Matt is dead. That was the price. That was the price of bringing down Kira." It hurt to say that to myself. To have to hear that they were gone, and to have to hear Kira's name again; to bring it all back up after all these years.

But then there was that feeling again. That nagging feeling that wouldn't go away; that nagging feeling that kept asking me, 'But what if they are alive?'

I decided to satisfy my own curiosity; there were some things I wanted to find out. I went back to our organizations headquarters and logged myself into one of the computer mainframes on site and began hunting around. I was looking for information on Mello and Matt, specifically information pertaining to their deaths.

I waded around some security clearance pop-up's and fished around in the older Kira investigation files... the ones of course that had survived. For security reasons, very little data was ever stored on the computers for too long.

'No Information' flashed on the screen.

I went deeper. I dug around the ancient files, the corrupted files, I went as far down as I could go, and then went further still.

No Information

No Information

The Data You Seek Does Not Exist

No Information

These Files Have Been Erased

Security Access Required

No Information

This wasn't possible. How was it that every single smidgen of data surrounding Mello and Matt had disappeared?

I felt my eyes start to burn, but told myself it was just because I was concentrating too hard.

I tried using my outlet to hack into Wammy's old system:

No Information

"No!" I whined silently.

"What are you doing in here Jewel?"

You've got to be kidding me! "It's only my concern Gevanni," I snapped, completely beyond the point of frustration.

"If you have to use the organization's computers to find what you're looking for, I'm pretty sure it concerns the organization."

"Oh, and do you represent the organization?" I had yet to turn around to face him.

"What are you doing Jewel?"

He was going to think I was crazy. He was going to report me to Near and have me removed if I told him, but I couldn't help myself, "I saw them. I saw them today! They're alive! Mello and Matt are alive!"

"So what are you saying? You're chasing ghosts now?"

I wasn't going to take that from him. I packed up my sparse belongings and left the building in an absolute furry. I made it back to my apartment forty minutes later and found a white and red rosary hanging on my door.

Author's Note: Hands up: How many of you think I should continue with the Tri-Chapter Reader Review Poll? I really liked it, and it encouraged reviews, but at the same time I feel like you guys might be getting bored with it.

...Also, sorry for keeping Mello from you all for so long! I'd hate me if I did this to myself too! Next chapter I promise!