Chapter 4: The First Test
POV: Marcus
December 22nd, 2007, 11:47 PM. The pharmacy existed in a bubble of antiseptic silence, fluorescent lights humming their mechanical lullaby to an audience of pain relievers and blood pressure medications. Marcus counted the till while Lisa restocked vitamins, both of them moving through the familiar choreography of closing procedures.
Three more hours until dawn. Three more hours of serving insomniacs and addicts and the occasionally legitimate customer who needed emergency medication for a sick child.
The door's bell chimed.
Marcus looked up to see a man stumbling through the entrance, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. Wild eyes scanned the store's interior like a predator identifying escape routes. Unwashed hair hung in greasy strings around a face that might once have been handsome but now wore the gray pallor of chronic substance abuse.
The man's right hand stayed buried in his jacket pocket, the fabric stretched tight around something angular and metallic.
"We're still open," Marcus said, his voice carefully neutral. "Can I help you find something?"
"Yeah." The man's voice cracked like broken glass. "You can help me find the fucking OxyContin."
He pulled his hand from his pocket. The gun was small, probably a .32, but it looked enormous in the pharmacy's fluorescent glare. Lisa froze behind the vitamin display, a bottle of multivitamins tumbling from her hands to shatter on the linoleum.
"Sir," Marcus said, raising his hands slowly. "Let's talk about this."
"No talking!" The man swung the gun toward Marcus, then back to Lisa, unable to decide which target posed the greater threat. "Just pills. Oxy, Percocet, morphine, whatever you got. Fill a bag and nobody gets hurt."
Sweat streamed down the man's face despite the store's air conditioning. His finger twitched against the trigger with each word, the weapon wavering in his grip like a compass seeking magnetic north.
Marcus calculated distances. Fifteen feet to the gun. Twenty feet to the exit. Six feet to the emergency button that would summon police who might arrive in time to investigate their corpses.
"Okay," Marcus said. "I can get you what you need. Just stay calm."
The man's wallet had fallen when he'd drawn the weapon, spilling contents across the pharmacy counter. Driver's license, credit cards, a family photo that looked ten years old. The ID was face-up, clearly visible: David Mitchell, Age 34, address in the war zone that used to be downtown Albuquerque.
Lisa was crying, quiet sobs that seemed to enrage the gunman further.
"Shut up!" he screamed at her. "Just shut the fuck up!"
He pressed the gun's barrel against her temple. Lisa's knees buckled, but she stayed upright, her face white with terror. The man's finger tightened on the trigger.
"Pills," he said to Marcus. "Now. Or I blow her brains all over the vitamin display."
Marcus nodded and moved toward the pharmacy counter, his hands visible and empty. Behind the register, hidden beneath insurance forms and prescription pads, lay the Death Note. He'd taken to carrying it everywhere, a black leather talisman that represented power and responsibility in equal measure.
"Don't try anything stupid," Mitchell warned, the gun never wavering from Lisa's head.
"I'm not," Marcus said, palming the notebook as he pretended to reach for medication keys. "Just getting what you asked for."
He opened the Death Note beneath the counter, blocking Mitchell's view with his body. The pen felt warm in his fingers, heavier than physics should allow. Forty seconds. That's how long he had once he wrote the name.
David Mitchell, Age 34. Heart attack.
The words flowed across the page in handwriting that looked nothing like his own. Elegant script that belonged in a Victorian novel, not a pharmacy robbery.
Forty seconds.
Mitchell was still screaming at Lisa, his voice climbing toward hysteria. "Where's the good stuff? The OxyContin 80s? Don't tell me you don't have any!"
Thirty seconds.
"It's in the safe," Marcus lied, slowly standing with empty hands. "Time-locked. Won't open until morning."
"Bullshit!" Mitchell swung the gun toward Marcus, then back to Lisa. Indecision made him more dangerous, not less.
Twenty seconds.
Lisa's lips moved in what might have been prayer. The fluorescent lights hummed their mechanical hymn. Outside, Albuquerque slept on, unaware that two lives hung in the balance of a strung-out addict's rapidly deteriorating judgment.
Ten seconds.
Mitchell's face was pale now, beads of sweat joining into rivulets that ran down his cheeks like tears. He blinked hard, shaking his head as if trying to clear sudden confusion.
Five seconds.
"Something's wrong," Mitchell muttered, lowering the gun slightly. His free hand went to his chest, fingers clawing at fabric. "Something's..."
Zero.
David Mitchell clutched his heart and screamed. Not words, just a raw sound of agony that echoed off the pharmacy's walls like an air raid siren. The gun clattered to the floor as he staggered backward, both hands pressed against his chest.
"Can't breathe," he gasped. "Can't... oh God..."
He stumbled toward the exit, his movements increasingly erratic. Two steps from the door, his legs gave out. He hit the linoleum hard, convulsing like a fish pulled from water.
Lisa was already reaching for the phone, dialing 911 with shaking fingers. Marcus moved to Mitchell's side, going through the motions of checking for a pulse he knew wouldn't exist.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"We need paramedics at Albuquerque Pharmacy on Central," Lisa's voice was steady now, shock giving way to trained professionalism. "Man just collapsed. Looks like a heart attack."
Marcus watched Mitchell's face go slack, the wild desperation fading into emptiness. Thirty-four years old. Probably had a family once, before the drugs took everything. The photo in his wallet showed him with a woman and a young boy, all three of them smiling at some long-forgotten picnic.
The paramedics arrived in seven minutes. Too late, just as Marcus had known they would be. They worked with efficient futility, checking vitals and preparing equipment for someone who was already gone.
"What happened?" the lead paramedic asked, a tired woman whose name tag read 'SANTOS.'
"He came in demanding drugs," Marcus explained. "Had a gun. Then he just... collapsed."
Santos examined the body with the weary competence of someone who'd seen too many overdoses. "Looks like his heart gave out. Probably been using for years. System finally couldn't take it."
The police arrived twenty minutes later, taking statements and photographing the scene. Detective Rodriguez, a heavyset man with kind eyes, seemed more interested in the gun than the body.
"You folks are lucky," he said, bagging the weapon. "These pharmacy robberies usually end worse."
"I know," Lisa said. She was calmer now, adrenaline fading into exhaustion. "Thank God his heart couldn't handle the stress."
"Sometimes the drugs do our job for us," Rodriguez agreed.
When the police and paramedics finally left, taking David Mitchell's body and his weapon with them, Marcus and Lisa finished closing in silence. She hugged him before leaving, her arms surprisingly strong around his shoulders.
"You saved my life," she whispered. "Staying so calm. I don't know how you did it."
Marcus watched her drive away, then sat in his car for twenty minutes, waiting for guilt to arrive. For horror at what he'd done. For some emotional response to his first murder.
Nothing came. Just relief that Lisa was alive and satisfaction that David Mitchell would never hurt anyone again.
At home, Ryuk was waiting with his eternal apple and that razor-blade grin.
"No hesitation," the death god observed. "Most humans agonize over their first kill. You didn't even blink."
"He was going to murder an innocent woman for drugs. I stopped him."
"You killed him. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
Ryuk laughed, the sound like breaking bottles. "That's what makes you interesting. Light convinced himself he was justice. You know you're just practical."
Marcus opened the Death Note to its first page. David Mitchell's name was still there, written in that elegant script that looked nothing like his handwriting. Below it, in smaller text, appeared a single word: Complete.
"The notebook keeps score," Ryuk explained. "Every name you write, every life you take. A permanent record of your choices."
"Good," Marcus said. "I want to remember them all."
He closed the notebook and put it away. Tomorrow he'd return to work, serving customers and planning the deaths of people who hadn't crossed his moral threshold yet. But David Mitchell had, and now David Mitchell was gone.
The page wasn't blank anymore. Neither was Marcus.
One name down. How many more to go? He'd know soon enough. In a world where he could kill anyone and go anywhere, the only remaining question was how far he was willing to fall in service of the greater good.
Outside his window, Albuquerque continued its slow descent into the drug-fueled nightmare he remembered from television. But now he was part of the story, armed with supernatural powers and a moral code flexible enough to accommodate necessary evils.
The real test wouldn't be whether he could kill. That question was already answered. The real test would be whether he could stop.
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