CHAPTER FOUR
"Dragon's Den"
The instant the icy water splashed on his face Light was jolted awake. He gasped, then shook his head and snorted, water had gotten up his nostrils. He coughed. His hair was drenched and droplets of water fell into his eyes, stinging them. He blinked several times to clear the foggy film from his pupils. How long he had been unconscious?
Light saw a big brusque, bald, tanned man with a bucket in hand, standing before him. He wore an airy tank top shirt that exhibited his muscular physique with a weight-lifers belt wrapped around his stomach, dark pants, with steel tip leather boots. The man looked like a bruiser.
Restrained in a chair, his hands bound behind him, ankles wrapped with wire to keep him from moving, Light couldn't move. The chair secured to the floor. The room appeared to be some sort of large storage house. It was dark, and windowless, expect for a few dim overhead lights. There were a few crates stacked up against the far wall, and Sai was sitting, observant on one of them eating an apple. Light momentarily compared the squirrelly man to a Shinigami, remaining neutral, watching, and eating, as if enjoying the entertainment. And Light wondered for a split second if Sai was indeed a god of death, knowing Shinigami did have the ability to transform into a human-like shape if they choose.
He turned back to the brusque-looking man and noticed a tattoo on the man's chest peaking out from his tank top. He couldn't quite make it out because of the man's shirt and the dim lighting, but judging from where he was, he figured these two were part of the Dragon Sect, a division of the Yukaza, possibly members of its drug cartel—or perhaps just members.
Light eyed the man with distain.
"Oh look, Naz, the guy looks angry," Sai said with a throaty chuckle, jumping down from the crate. Sai came over and cupped Light's chin tightly and turned his head from side to side, looking at his face. "I gave you some good bruises after I knocked you unconscious. I'll have to apologize to the Mistress for that later. But you gave me a lot of trouble, Yagami, and you murdered my friend. So, you deserve every last one of them."
No wonder he felt sore. Light spat in Sai's face. Sai retaliated by delivering a back handed slap. Light recoiled, a small stream of blood began to descend from the left corner of his mouth.
Sai stood up straight, but he was a dwarf to this Naz. "He probably knows tons of juicy secrets, but we've been barred from drawing them out. The Mistress wants him now." Naz punched a fist into a hand frustrated. Sai put a hand on the man's arm calmingly, patting the man's large, tree trunk forearm. Light observed that the man was probably nothing more than an enforcer and was probably stupid. "Don't worry, Naz. They'll be others. When the Mistress learned Yagami was here—that we have an NPA detective, and I sent a picture of him to her—she immediately wanted him to be brought to her. So, we can't touch him now."
Who is this Mistress they refer to? Light wondered.
"I'll never talk!" Light said adamantly. "I'll never betray my colleagues at the NPA." If only you knew who I was, you'd beg for your lives, he thought. "They say size makes the man, but I bet you're just as small as your stature."
Nazareth chuckled.
Sai sneered. "Why you…" But Naz held Sai back with a single hand, cupped around Sai's head. The man's hand was large enough to cover the back of Sai's head and part of his forehead. The enforcer wasn't a talker. "You're right," Sai agreed. Naz released him. Sai immediately calmed down. But he leaned in close. "But you won't be so brash when the Mistress gets through with you, detective. No one has ever resisted her devilish charms."
"What do you mean he's gone?" Soichiro Yagami yelled at Misa in Light's apartment. "I was supposed to meet him here this morning to take him to breakfast before the task force came over to go over a few fresh leads regarding the Kira Case!"
"Don't yell at me!" Misa retorted with a snort. "He got a call late last night to participate in some sort of video surveillance job, he didn't give me a lot of the details. Only that he was requested by the Director of the NPA personally, saying Light's expertise was needed. Light said he didn't know when he was going to be back, but it's been nearly half a day."
Misa checked her phone, no texts or calls from Light. Even his GPS locator was checked. He always switched it on whenever he was out on police business, just in case he was in any trouble. She pinged his phone, but it came back as an undetectable location. It was either switched off or he was in a dead zone.
Soichiro apologized, putting a hand to his face abashed. "I didn't mean to yell, it's just Light knows protocol. He shouldn't have left without notifying at least one of the task force members. At least he told you, so we have insight into how much time has lapsed since his disappearance." Using his cell phone, Soichiro dialled the front desk to police headquarters and asked to speak to the Director at the NPA.
After a short conversion, the Director confirmed he had indeed called Light late last night for a video surveillance job, but than it subsequently turned into a drug raid on a Yukaza hideout at the old matinee theatre. It was supposed to be a simple job, then…
"But I have some bad news, Yagami," the Director said further. "The raid was a complete failure. It appears the Yukaza had inside information and all ours teams was wiped out. Two SAT and two Field Teams, including Ito, our main video surveillance tech, whom Light was assisting. One of our detectives that was sent to collect Light from his apartment was also found dead from a gunshot and the other is missing. We have no information on his whereabouts. We looked into their backgrounds after the incident. We are now under the assumption they were on the take. Currently, your son is missing in action."
Soichiro Yagami gasped. Light…please be okay.
It had been over two hours since he had awakened, and during that time Light had not been asked one question, nor tortured in any way. He had been left alone with his own thoughts in a closed-up storage area, restrained, and left to dwell on his possible fate.
And he wondered if the worse was yet to come.
He wondered who this "Mistress" was that Sai referred to?
The term was a label for "the woman of the house" or it was another term for "Madame", a dominating woman—or dominatrix—who punished men in "torture dens", rooms or places where unspeakable horrors resided. He had been told about a few of these places when taking his foundation courses and even had to review a few cases. He had seen pictures with dead bodies on meat hooks, without their genitals, blood spattered on walls, organs removed to sell on the black market, but left in petri dishes or left to rot, along with other instruments of bloody torture, including chain saws and electric carving knives used to slice meat.
Suddenly he became very aware of the gravity of his situation. Most assuredly, the Yukaza would want to torture him for NPA classified information. He was part of the Information Bureau before transferring to the Kira Case. But on occasion he worked collectively for both and became privy to many internal secrets.
He wagered if the NPA—or even Misa—were searching for him, the GPS locator in his phone would show them his position. But it was probably either switched off or he was in dead zone, which was why they hadn't stormed the place yet.
By now, his father had probably called the Director of the NPA and was told what had happened with the raid, and at this moment, the area—the abandoned matinee—was probably being scoured over with a fine tooth comb, but the Yukaza butchers that attacked the teams were probably long gone, and all potential-suspected items removed. Forensics would probably be on scene for clean-up, and they would find the man Light had shot at point-blank. Other murdering with the Death Note, that was the first person he had ever killed—with his gun. And he had done it without feeling regret. It was kill or be killed, as simple as that.
The entire raid had been doomed from the very start, he wagered. The slaughter and a waste of valuable man power was costly. And even as Kira, he couldn't do anything about it. If he had names and faces, he could've written their names down in the Death Note long before now to prevent this. But not even he—Kira—was clairvoyant and omnipresent.
The only thing that concerned him now was his current situation.
A wooden sliding door moved back at the far end of the storage room and illumination burst forth from the outside, paisley coloured corridor walls were seen. He had seen the corridor before when both Naz and Sai left him hours ago, but with the chair secured to the floor and him tied up, he couldn't move to see anything else. I have to be underground, he thought, looking up at a squeaky rotating ceiling fan. The air from the ventilation system smells recirculated. Am I in one of their hideouts?
When Kira burst onto the scene, the Yukaza went underground to hide from his judgements.
In the darkness of the room, the sudden illuminance gave the person that had opened the door a god-like silhouette, his features masked out. But Light knew by his stature alone it was Sai.
"She'll see you now, Yagami," Sai said with a chuckle.
Sai stood at the threshold of the doorway, then Naz came lumbering in, and went straight to Light. The chair was not bolted to the floor as Light had thought, rather clamped down, and Naz released the clamps, lifting the chair with Light strapped in over his shoulder. Light felt blood rush to his head as he was flipped turned upside down and carried through the door.
Light looked at Sai as Naz carried him down a corridor and the short man seemed to smile with a sinister grin, as if knowing what was waiting for Light.
"Where are you taking me!" he demanded.
"That depends on your answers," Sai replied. "What you say will determine that." He laughed.
Light could only see what was behind him as Naz carried him down a corridor, then they turned a corner, then down another corridor, and then left, down another corridor, and so on.
Light figured the underground complex was similar to a maze, but there had to be a main hub. This obviously was only one part of the overall complex. He wondered how large it was. But all he saw—upside down—were typical corridors, as Naz and Sai lead him down a series of more corridors. He tried to memorize the path taken, but all he got was dizzy.
They took him to a reception area on the other side of a red curtain when they finally reached the end of a corridor. Inside, the room was lavishly decorated with a love seat, painted with purples and reds. Naz placed the chair down next to a wall. In one corner of the room sat a young woman in her early twenties. She was sitting up straight in a basic wooden chair and she seemed to be staring at nothing, her eyes glazed over. An old style telephone sat on a small round flat fabric covered table next to her. Was this some sort of reception area?
She acknowledged both Naz and Sai when they brought Light in with a small nod.
There was a large landscape picture of the Japanese countryside on the wall above him that Light saw in the reflection of a mirror behind the woman. It was a serene picture and it was probably the last calming thing anyone every saw before—he didn't want to think about it. Another blood red curtain separated the reception area from another area. The sitting woman starred at the picture behind Light blankly, Light observed. Was she brainwashed?
Seconds later, as if timed, without saying a word, she picked up the telephone, as if knowing what to do, waited for a moment, and then spoke, informing whomever, saying that "He" was here. She waited, as if listening for instructions, then hung up the phone. She informed Naz and Sai of what was said, then just returned to her static sitting stance, saying nothing else.
Just then, a young man pulled back the curtain. He had a face that looked very young and had a thin figure. He had thick, black, long hair braided in a pony tail that fell over his left shoulder, half way down his black sleeveless shirt. He also wore black pants, black boots with steel tips, and a silver skull and crossbones on his belt clamp. To end the ensemble, he wore a plain black choker collar as if he belonged to someone. On his right arm was an intricately designed black and red tattoo of the Dragon Sect of the Yukaza, the full version of the same Light had partially seen on Naz earlier. It was a coiled, scaly dragon, wrapping itself around his arm all the way down to his wrist. On his wrist was a metal decorative band with his name on it in kanji.
Light had indeed found himself in the Lion's Den—or rather the Dragon's Den.
The young man cocked his head slightly and then looked Light up and down. Light did the same, forming a mental profile of the young man if only by physical appearance. The young man then crossed the distance and brought his face close with Light's. Light looked into the teen's eyes, memorized by the sprinkling green colour.
"Greetings," the individual said cordially, his voice sounding boyishly young. "Detective Light Yagami of the NPA, is it?" Light said nothing, but his silence was confirmation enough. "My name is Riki, and I am the Mistress's Prime Assistant. My Mistress is engaged with another matter at the moment, so I will be conducting the particulars of your 'Evaluation' to determine if you are a suitable candidate for an audience with her. But if you do not measure up, then there is no reason for you to see her. Your compliance will be mandatory in this matter."
"Compliance? What does that mean? What sort of 'Evaluation'?"
"Are you not aware of where you are, Detective?" the young man looked at Naz and Sai. They both shook no. "Ah, so they haven't been told. Then it will be a surprise, very good. You look very healthy, Detective Yagami, but physical prowess means nothing to my Mistress. It will be your reactions that will determine the cursory outcome."
Riki turned and looked at the young woman who was sitting in the corner and nodded. The woman picked up the telephone and then spoke quietly into it. Moments later, two taller, bigger men, similar to Naz, entered the reception area wearing all black clothing, and came to stand on other side of Light's chair. They looked like basic Yukaza thugs.
"What's going on?" Light insisted.
"I'll be conducting my Evaluation elsewhere, Detective. Please, do not be alarmed. It should only take about an hour or so. If you're compliant, you will not be harmed—much. If you are defiant, you will be punished—severely. All will become obvious soon, if you don't figure it out before hand. If I find you agreeable, only then will you be given to my Mistress for further Evaluation."
"Further Evaluation?" Light's widened with trepidation.
Light protested, but his demands were useless, struggling against his binds.
Riki bowed to Sai and Naz, as was Japanese tradition, and then the two men picked up Light's chair between them, and carried him through the adjacent curtain.
Riki followed suit.
To be continued...