"Beyond is alive," L repeated in a mumble, his words laced with disbelief.

Naomi's fingertips rested against her parted lips.  She lowered her gaze, and her eyes moved back and forth as she struggled desperately to make sense of all this.

L moved quickly over to the desk, and Naomi snapped out of her whirling thoughts to follow him.

"What can I do?" she asked, her voice mixed with equal amounts of determination and panic.

"Watari's phone has a tracker chip," L muttered with purpose, his back bent as his long fingers typed frantically on the keyboard.  He hadn't even bothered to sit down.

Naomi placed one hand on his back and the other on the desktop as she stared anxiously at the screen.  A GPS locator map came up, and a little red dot, pulsing like a bullseye, began to zero in on a specific location.

With one palm resting on the desk, L lifted a thumb to his teeth, his wide, grey eyes locked on the monitor.

The pulsating dot came to rest on a set of coordinates that were not very far from the hotel.  L and Naomi looked at each other, and Naomi voiced what they were both thinking.

"Beyond wants you to follow the phone chip," she sighed.  "There's no way he is actually there.  It's too obvious!"  She gestured broadly toward the monitor.

L nodded as he swallowed, his averted eyes flickering with worry.  "I agree," he said, his voice low and steady.  "This is another one of his twisted scavenger hunts."  L turned and shoved a hand into his jeans pocket.  As he took a few steps away from the desk, his right hand slid up his forehead, his locks of pitch-black hair spilling between his fingers.  He stopped in the middle of the room and stood like this, staring at the carpet as if in shock.

Naomi watched him, her heart aching with fear and worry.  She knew how much the fatherly old man meant to L, and she could only imagine what this was doing to him.  But she also knew L was someone who needed space when he was this wrought with anxiety.  So she simply stood supportively nearby, holding her elbows and awaiting instructions.

L's fingers tightened in his hair as he squeezed his eyes shut.  "How did he escape..."  His voice was somewhere between a mumble and a groan.  "...how is he alive?  How...?"

Naomi sighed.  Perhaps she was the one who needed to get things moving after all.  "You work on that," she said decidedly, realizing he needed something concrete to occupy his mind.  "I'm going to go find whatever clue he left us at that location."  Feeling that this was a good plan, she began moving briskly toward the door.

L's hand shot out and grabbed her arm.  "No you're not!" he said firmly.

Naomi looked down at his hand on her arm and then back up at him.  "Why not?" she asked incredulously.  "Watari needs us-"

"Watari is most likely dead," L stated coldly.  "Remember who we are dealing with here, Naomi.  A killer who carves Roman numerals into his victim's chest... who gouges out their eyes and severs their limbs.  Do you really think I'm going to let you just go off after him?  It's out of the question."

Naomi stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips.  Her heart was pounding.  "He... he might not be dead, L," she offered in nearly a whisper, wanting so much to give him hope.

But even as she said the words, her heart sank and her stomach knotted.

"You're not going!" L snapped, his grip tightening protectively on her upper arm.

But Naomi lifted her chin stubbornly.  "We have no evidence that Watari is dead," she argued.  "And until we know for certain, we should proceed as though he is alive."  She pulled her arm away and started to walk around him.  "I am going."

"Misora!"  L quickly moved to block her path to the door.  "Do.  Not.  Leave," he practically growled.  "I need you here."

Naomi was beginning to feel irritated.  "No you don't!" she emphatically disagreed with a shake of her head and an exasperated lift of her hand.  "Whatever it is that is going to move us toward Watari is out there!"  She pointed forcefully toward the door.

"No!"  L stepped closer to her then, clamping both of his hands on her upper arms, making her lift her shoulders a bit.  Her eyes flitted between his, unable to look away from the intensity of his fierce expression.  He looked at her through the strands of hair that cascaded over the evident fear in his shaded eyes, and his gaze suddenly softened.  When he spoke again, his words were pleading.  "I need you here," he repeated, this time with a helpless desolation in his voice.  He shook his head, maintaining eye contact.  "Don't go."

Naomi was speechless.  She had never seen him so irrational.

But as she returned his gaze, she began to understand.  Until she had come into L's life, Watari had been the only family he had ever known, the only source of love for a nameless and brilliant orphan so closed off from the rest of humaity.  Looking at the World's Greatest Detective now, Naomi felt the knot in her stomach tighten painfully.  He looked so scared... so lost.

But now was not the time for emotions to overrule logic.  For once, it was Naomi who had to convince L of this reality.

She brought her arms up to wrap around him as she stepped in to lay her head on his shoulder.  L's long arms responded immediately, encircling her tightly, and his forehead came to rest at the base of her neck.

Naomi didn't say anything right away.  She held him close, her own emotions drawing strength from inside his arms.

But at last, she spoke softly, turning her whispered words into his hair.

"You know I have to go."

After a long pause, he nodded, his forehead still pressed against her neck.

Gently, Naomi pushed his shoulders back so that she could look at him.  He searched her face desperately.  And then, like a switch had been flipped inside him, his countenance became void of all worry and fear, and it was all at once as steadfast as it had ever been.

"Stay on comms," he instructed.

Naomi nodded up at him.  His hands rested on her waist as hers moved from his shoulders to his face.  She said nothing, for what was there to say?  No guarantee could be given, no promise could be made.

Tucking her bottom lip inward, Naomi turned away and headed toward her room to change from her gym clothes into jeans and a sweater.  She stepped out only a moment later, and L swiveled to look at her from his place at the desk.  Naomi gave him a subtle, albeit firm nod before turning to exit the suite.

The blinking dot on the map led Naomi to a strange and unfamiliar part of Los Angeles.  Train tracks ran beneath an overhead highway, and the buildings that surrounded Naomi as she switched off and dismounted her bike were scattered and plain. 

Naomi's boots scraped against bits of gravel on asphalt as she cautiously walked forward, looking around and squinting against the brightness of the late afternoon sun.  Not a single person was in sight, save for those included in the highway traffic that was flashing by on the overpass.  Large parking lots spanned out amid what appeared to be run-down warehouses and large shipping and storage containers.

Naomi tucked a breezy strand of hair behind her ear as she stopped walking and looked down at her phone screen.  Her own GPS locator was directly atop Watari's.

"Naomi?"  L's voice came over the comm in her ear.

"I'm here," she answered, returning the phone to her pocket as her eyes again surveyed her surroundings beneath a furrowed brow.

"I'm looking at the area via satellite imagery," L informed her.  "It doesn't look like there's much to go on."

"What should I do then?" Misora asked, once again swiping wisps of hair out of her face with her leather gloved hand.  The day was pleasantly warm and sunny, but the wind was enough to be a nuisance to anyone with long hair.

"Do what you do best," L answered simply.  "Search for clues.  Look for anything out of the ordinary.  Remember that we are dealing with a criminal who enjoys leaving breadcrumbs."

"Right." Naomi began to walk forward again with her arms at her sides.  Her keen, brown eyes traveled over the structures before her.  A couple of them were larger with broken windows and faded brick.  Others were small and boxy and windowless.  All in all, it looked like some sort of long-abandoned industrial compound.  Naomi turned and walked backwards as she moved among the symmetrical set-up of storage units, the spaces between them like aisles in a grocery store.

"Am I going to have to search through all of these?" she wondered with a sinking feeling.

But it was then that she noticed each container had a letter painted on it in its top corner.

"The units are lettered," she informed L, already searching for the one stamped with a 'B.'  She found it rather quickly, and naturally, it was locked.  Pulling out her gun, she looked around as she held it out before her with both hands.  Then she took aim and fired, and the padlock burst into fragments, releasing the mechanism.  Naomi tucked the Glock back into her jeans and opened the heavy metal door with a hollow, grinding crrreeeaaaak...

Then, using her phone's flashlight app, she peered into the looming steel cave.

"...it's empty," she said with a sigh.  She stepped inside, guiding the light up and down the walls and all along the ceiling and floor.  Her footsteps echoed in the metallic chamber.

"He may have left a clue somewhere on the surface of the interior," L's voice suggested.

Naomi shook her head, moving the light  slowly over the elongated intersection of the wall and ceiling.  "No... no, there's nothing.  We may need a blacklight or a fingerprint sweep..."

"Then where's the cell phone?" L pointed out in the form of a question.  "Or at least the tracking chip..."

"...I'm not seeing anything," Naomi sighed.  "It's just a big empty box."

"Is there an L?"

"What?"

"A unit with the letter L."

"I dunno..."  Naomi turned and exited the storage container.  After a moment, she spotted what she was looking for.  "...got it," she said, quickening her steps toward the large, industrial container marked with the letter L.  She reached for her gun again, but then stopped.

This unit was already unlocked.

Naomi furrowed her brow.  Holding the firearm in her right hand, she cautiously reached out with her left.  Curling her fingers around the latch handle, she pulled the door open, and this one, too, drew out a long and metallic groan as it slowly revealed the unsettling contents of the unit.

Hanging from the low, steel ceiling were dozens and dozens of life-sized puppet dolls, their feet nearly touching the floor, but not quite.  Their painted faces smiled hideously like demented circus clowns, and all of them wore gaudy clothing with mismatched colors and dissonant patterns.

Naomi swallowed.  Slowly describing to L what she was seeing, she stepped inside the meat locker of wooden marionettes.  They clattered and swung, knocking against one another amid hollow echos as Naomi made her way through the dark and disturbing forest of hanging puppets, the flashlight lighting up their grinning faces like they were telling grisly ghost stories around a bonfire.

"It's got the creepy factor..." Naomi observed in a low voice, still considering the possibility that the nightmare-inducing collection simply belonged to some innocent circus freak.  But then, the beam of her flashlight fell on a hanging puppet that looked a little different from the rest.  It was bulkier that the others, and the way it slowly swayed back and forth was a bit slower, a bit... heavier.

Naomi squinted, jutting her face out a bit and holding the light up a little higher as she cautiously approached the dangling figure.  Slowly, she held out her hand, gripping the handgun sideways with her first finger and thumb as she extended the other three fingers to touch the peculiar puppet.  The boldly printed fabric was thin and polyester, and beneath it was something that definitely wasn't wood.  It was sturdy, but soft.  It felt organic...

Naomi's eyes widened.

"Oh!"

...it was human.

Naomi jerked her hand away and quickly shone the light up to the corpse's face.  She gasped.  "...oh my god!"

"What is it?" L asked, his voice raising a little.

"...it's... it- one of the puppets is a dead body!"

L was quiet for several seconds before asking the unthinkable.  "...is it Watari?"

"No," Naomi replied confidently.  "Whoever this is has been dead for at least a day.  But the... face is painted like the other puppets, and..."  Her voice trailed off as she tipped her head.  She couldn't take her eyes off the horribly grotesque display before her.

"...and what??" L prompted.

Naomi swallowed again.  "...the mouth is sewn shut."

The victim's lips had been haphazardly stitched together with thick, black thread, the sutures forming jagged X's as they wove in and out of fleshy, red punctures.  The corpse's sealed mouth formed an unnatural grin, its neck hanging at a hideously odd angle.

"...B never does anything without a purpose..." L muttered.  Naomi could tell his thumb was pressed against his lip.

"Keep your mouth shut," Naomi murmured.

"...excuse me?"

"No... not you."  Naomi reached around herself and tucked the gun back into her jeans.  "That's the message.  'Keep your mouth shut.'  He sewed the lips together to warn you not to talk.  He has Watari, so he has leverage, and he doesn't want you telling anyone what he's doing... or that he's alive, I would imagine."

"...oh.  That makes sense," L sighed.  "So... he's telling me I'm his puppet."

Naomi's heart sank.  She hadn't thought of that.  She sighed in a shaky exhale as she brought her hand to her forehead in aching distress.  It was true.  As long as Beyond had his hostage, he would be calling the shots.

"Did you find the cell phone?" L asked stiffly.

"Um..."  Holding the phone with the flashlight in one hand, Naomi patted down the body like she was frisking a suspect.  She located a hard object inside the right pocket of the billowy polyester jumpsuit, and sure enough, it was Watari's cell phone.  "...I got it."  She checked the left pocket then, and extracted a small, red ticket. The words "Admit One" were printed on the front in a circus-style font, and two vertical number sequences lined either side of the voucher.

"Give me the numbers," L said, after Naomi had described her discovery.

"On the left... 061307."

"That's a date," L said flatly.  "One week from today."

"You're right."  Naomi nodded.

"And the right side?"

Naomi read off the next sequence of numbers, this one being eight digits long.

"Hm..." L grumbled.  "That one can't be a date."

"It's a ticket," Naomi stated the obvious.  But then she added, "To attend an event, you'd need a date... and a location."

She could hear L's fingers clacking away on the keyboard.  A moment later, he spoke.  "You're right, Naomi.  It's a set of coordinates."  The hesitant way in which he spoke indicated that the location held some kind of meaning to him.

"Where?" Naomi pressed him.  "What's the location?" 

L swallowed as he lowered his brow toward the map displayed on the monitor before him.  "It's the one place B and I have in common," he said tightly.  "...Wammy's House."