End Transmission

Suggested Listening: Scream with me by Mudvayne

Chapter Nineteen: Breaking

Mello stood in complete silence for a moment before he took a deep breath, silently, and reached for his phone; guns safely away. There was much to do, and not a lot of time to do it. They couldn't have been gone all that long; the only thing he could think of was that perhaps Viktor had been able to tip them off before he had been killed, a missed phone call or some sort. It happened, even in his own dealings, but it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

In a worse situation...

Yuriy picked up on the second ring and Mello found that he just couldn't stay in that room anymore. "They were gone before we got here. I need the surveillance feeds from any traffic cams there are around here, any accidental recordings or surveillance from the surrounding stores that might have caught it." he barked into the phone.

He shut his eyes against the stillness of night that surrounded, a stillness that was so much like death. "They will probably be in a van or hearse of some kind." he didn't answer the unspoken questions that radiated in between the spoken information and the quiet chatter from the other end. He didn't feel like discussing it, and he was certain that if Sasha had understood he would tell them later anyway.

"I can check on the cams... but you know that I'm not all that great with hacking, so I won't promise anything." Mello could hear the frustration in Yuriy's voice and understood it well. Failure was failure just as uselessness was uselessness. Neither of them were doing too well in that department at the moment.

Mello hesitated for a moment before sighing. "Expect a call from someone who may be of some help to you. He will call himself N." he didn't really want to bring Near into it but knew Near would do what he wanted anyway, as Mello knew he wasn't the only one who care about the redhead, and so long as Near stayed far away from the actual base he would be fine.

Near had leaned to hack from Matt, but he had never been one to put himself into the real world so paring him up with Yuriy was a good idea. Yuriy knew people where Near didn't, and hopefully, Near knew more than enough about hacking to do some good. Because they probably had hours, not days, in which to find Matt.

"Give Kain a message. I want him to find out if anyone else at the base was involved or has plans to be involved with something like this. If it's the latter get rid of them. If not then I want them brought to me." he paused for a moment before his brain switched gears on him.

"I may have some potential information so watch for Sasha's call." because Mello simply didn't want to talk anymore. He closed the phone and glanced to Sasha who looked on curiously at him.

"I want you to get those cigarettes analyzed, and I don't care how. If we are lucky perhaps it will give us a name." but Mello's mind was not on the cigarettes but the contents of the fallen folder.

There would undoubtedly be nothing big in it, information wise, but it was all he had for the moment, and he would take what he got. But first he knew he had to call Near and inform him.

It had been a quick and to the point conversation, Mello not knowing what else to say at any rate, and Near had been more than willing to help. They both knew however, that he was not Matt so results were not guaranteed. Mello doubted anyone was like Matt.

After the phone was stuffed ungracefully into his jacket he bent down and snatched up the papers with a scratching sound as they slid across the floor. They were in no semblance of order, having been tossed halfway across the floor in all directions with boot marks across them, some his own and some not, with tear marks and holes.

He ignored Sasha's voice as he called up someone, probably another Mafiya member, and sat heavily on the wooden chair just inside the building with the stack of papers in hand and on the table.

The folder itself, from which they had spilled, was blank except for a small scrawled name that was indecipherable. He moved onto the mess of papers and despite the urgency of the situation forced himself not to merely skim. His eyes narrowed every so often in confusion as he read; there was mention of a shipping company at least once a page, but it was not one that Mello recognized. And surely he would have if it delivered, or had delivered to that area. And moreover, the documents were dated mere days ago, when the actual business that had required the deliveries of meat it was suggesting, had been closed for well over two months prior.

Normal authorities may not have checked into that, but Mello knew that something was not right, and he didn't believe in coincidence anymore. Matt being abducted two days after the earliest dated 'meat' delivery left a foul taste in Mello's mouth. That, along with the other seemingly random orders of things that a butchery would probably not need, had clenched the notion that the documents were related to the abduction somehow.

There were also mentions of board meetings, having been held and upcoming ones, that a place like a butchery wouldn't have not being the right type of business. At least not the kind of meeting's being talked about. Two of the times, and accompanying dates, had already passed and another was three days from then, so Mello took the closest one, a mere seven and a half hours away, and scanned the message all the way through again.

And then he noticed it with a slight barring of teeth. The letter 'L', in a seemingly random spot in the middle of a sentence, was capitalized when it shouldn't have been. There was also a vague reference to the mystery shipping company and Mello's eyes narrowed further.

That shipping company was probably a mention of the place where they would take Matt by L's orders, or a place in which they were taking him in which to meet L. If L saw Matt, Mello knew he would never see the redhead alive again. And according to the paper, if it were to be believed despite all the evidence pointing towards it being correct, there was only less than seven hours remaining before that happened.

Or before whatever had been planned for Matt happened.

He slipped almost silently from the building until he stood right beside Sasha. "I want you and everyone else to look into something else instead." Sasha looked slightly surprised but listened intently as Mello explained everything. He had Sasha pass it on to Yuriy even though the other gave him an odd look; Mello supposed it was odd as he generally didn't retract his orders. Then again, he didn't generally let his emotions get in the way either... not anything beyond anger at any rate.

"Follow me back to base." he muttered gruffly, not bothering to wait for an affirmative.

There were so many things going on at once, and Mello prayed he was focusing on the right one. He didn't bother to shut the lights off in the building as it wouldn't matter in the long run. Instead he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Near's number to explain things to him; Mello didn't want Yuriy wasting time having to tell Near everything.

His leg was slung over the side of the motorbike before the call had even connected and he was roaring down the sidewalk and onto the street before he had even finished their conversation.

If Yuriy gave Near any trouble then he knew the man would call him. He doubted it very much though, as his phone found his pocket without him crashing, as he had referred Near to Yuriy. Yuriy would not question Near so long as the request wasn't outlandish.

Mello knew someone was following him, and only glanced in the mirror once to make sure it was only Sasha. He would still go back to the base by the long route; if they were all found out at this stage everything would be meaningless.

Mello attempted to keep his mind clear for the drive but found it next to impossible with a thousand and one scenarios rushing across his mind. There were so many variables, so many things that could go wrong, could change...

So many things against them.

He grit his teeth and urged the machine faster, but not dangerously so, though he more than wanted to be there already.

The base was silent, as always, when he finally arrived. He walked the bike to the side and wandered though the same concealed entrance as before, knowing that Sasha would follow when done. He knew they would all be congregated in that same crappy room, not wanting the prying eyes of the Mafiya on them.

He barged in the room, Yuriy hardly looking at him as he conversed with Near on the phone, Near's responses partially heard though the speaker, and typed away at his laptop. Mello didn't bother with demanding to know if they had found anything, it would be told to him when and if anything was found.

Mello settled irritably onto the rotted crate and stared absently at the stain on the floor. Oh what he would have done to that man if he was still alive... he ignored Sasha as he came inside the room, the door opening quietly as opposed to his own loud entrance.

It was the waiting he hated most, being unable to do anything himself through his lack of talent in that area that was hacking. Mello despised feeling useless.

He sat there, time ticking away almost cruelly in its haste, and at first glance there appeared to be nothing on that company, as though it didn't exist as anything else other than the paper, but after more than two hours of searching something was found. Something that had Mello stalking out the door before Yuriy could finish speaking. If it was something important, something more than he had heard, he would be called or stopped.

There was a warehouse with the leasing made to that company and it was an hour away and in a slightly secluded spot. Too much time had already passed and Mello knew that there would be no time to plan, not seriously, if he wanted to make that seven hour deadline.

He noted how the car, pulled alongside his bike, blinked into life as he started the motorbike, and knew that by unspoken agreement that Sasha had followed him. Yuriy was needed by the computer and Kain was off with the Mafiya gathering intel.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl thought the entire drive. Mello had memorized the directions, Yuriy having gotten them and had them on screen for Mello to see while explaining, and had no problem navigating the twists and turns, especially when he got to the more secluded parts, houses miles and miles between one another and finally disappearing to a row of buildings, not quite together.

He skidded to a stop before the last turn, rolling his bike into the hidden brush of dead bushes and trees on the side of the road. As much as he would have loved to simply drive in there, gun blazing, not that what he would be doing was all that different, he simply didn't know how many people would be there.

He waited, impatiently, for Sasha to pull up and vacate the call before stalking off in the direction, he hoped, of the warehouse. It was cold out, his breath coming out in a white cloud, and he felt half frozen. He hadn't noticed it before, too much going on at the time, but with nothing but silence and darkness around him, the only light his cell pone, it was hard to concentrate on anything else. And perhaps he was the slightest bit thankful for that...

They slowed their pace once the looming structure came into view, only being seen by the way it blacked out the moonlight, not wanting to make too much noise on the gravel like road least they be immediately noticed. The structure, upon closer inspection, was well rusted and seemingly abandoned despite the few cars in the front, but Mello knew looks were very well deceiving.

Mello motioned for Sasha to stay put, outside, as he squeezed in through the small opening beside the door, impossible for most but Mello had never been one of stocky build; and if only for this once he was grateful.

He stilled once he was inside, but found the place still as silent as ever, and had to tread carefully least his boots make too much noise on the floor. He could only see in the vaguest amount but noticed nothing on the floor that would be kicked.

Mello slid through the darkness like a panther, silent and dangerous and despite his frustration reminded himself the entire place need to be searched. His fingers clenched around his phone, the small amount of light being his guide, until the sounds of multiple voices could be faintly heard.

It was difficult to follow, as the sounds echoed off the nearly hollow structure, but when he saw the light further down he knew he hadn't strayed in the wrong direction. His heart beat loud in his ears and his palms felt sweaty beneath his gloves, adrenaline flowing through him and bringing all his senses to high alert.

He inched as close to the doorway, where light spilled out almost blindingly, as he dared and listened to the men argue angrily about what L had ordered done with the captive without so much as looking at him. It made Mello's blood freeze.

They had buried him?

He controlled his breathing, hardly making a sound as he continued to listen in. L was sending a message out to known members of both big Russian Mafiya families, one that needed to be responded to. And whomever responded would be shown the video the grunts had taken of the beating the captive and told they were to reveal their Mafiya's location for the release of the person, not being told they only had a limited amount of time in which to do so before the air ran out in the jerry-rigged coffin.

Mello felt his anger flare but silenced his rage. Matt was buried and would soon be out of time. L probably would wait until an hour before the air ran out to contact the families, and that was only twenty minutes away; though L had to know that most would sacrifice their friends and family...

Matt's air would run out in just under an hour and a half. Mello only had that long to find him. He took a step back but his boot kicked something in the darkness and all the sounds around him stilled. Mello didn't allow himself to even breath but the second he heard the boots and chairs skittering he took off towards the exit, not caring about the noise he made.

Shots rang out around him as well as the men's shouting for him to stop; he would have been an idiot to listen to them. He whipped his gun out and shot randomly behind him as he navigated through the building, going on memory alone and when he finally noticed the opening the wall he sank to his knees and squeezed through it while they had to take the time to unlatch the doors.

Sasha rolled next to him in a hotwired car he had prepared, presumably at the first sound of gunfire. Most men would have busted in to help Mello but that would have only ended in both their deaths. Mello hopped in and they screeched down the gravel road.

Mello forced himself to let go of his gun and place the safety on before he stowed it in his pants. He wondered how loud they had been for Sasha to have heard them. Mello jerked foreword, hand going to the dashboard to stop from slamming into it, as Sasha skidded to a quick stop. "Get out. I'll keep them going in circles for a while." Mello looked at him for a second before reaching for the handle and getting out; his thoughts firmly on Matt.

He had barely shut the door before Sasha was off. Mello didn't wait to see if the idiots from the warehouse were still following and rushed off into the darkness of the brush to lie low. He heard the roar of engines and the crunching of gravel as it was crunched under the squealing tires of the speeding cars. He didn't dare move until he no longer heard them and immediately yanked his phone out.

"I need you to look for any nearby cemeteries that have had new plots dug recently and or a funeral within the last ten hours that didn't have many people attending it." Mello didn't bother to explain the situation at the moment, as it could just as easily be done later when there was more time to do so. Yuriy had barely gotten out an affirmative before he had ended the call. It would take him an hour to get back, but if the cemetery was in his area...

Mello hated being unsure, but figured that at least Yuriywas close to the base if he wasn't back in time. He wouldn't drive too fast in case he had to double back, but he couldn't simply stay put either. He snarled. He hated that situation so much...

He made sure to have his phone on the loudest setting and took off once he got to his bike. Hardly twenty minutes later his phone rang and he pulled to a stop to answer it.

"What do you have?" he barked, because there would be no way Yuriy would call and not have something to tell him.

"There are six possibles that fit the description; two of them in the same cemetery and the others scattered about. One of them is about forty minutes from you, and another about ten minutes from that one. And the others... we'll get someone to check them." Mello shut his eyes and withheld the sigh of frustration.

"Send me the directions, I'll head to the first one now..." he closed the phone and waited until it prompted him that he had a new message on his e-mail. He took one look at the directions and promptly took off. He would need to break some damn laws if he wanted to get there in time.

Mello still couldn't believe they had buried him. He hadn't even thought of that possibility when he had noticed the coffin. It seemed that whenever it came to Matt, it was one blunder after another and perhaps Mello should simply be grateful nothing of the sort had happened to the redhead before now.

When he reached the small cemetery he didn't bother to slow down and simply drove passed the guard station, a tiny place where someone sat and made sure no one decided to steal corpses, and flew down the rows, getting lost once and wasting precious minutes before he found the plot.

Which was simply that. An open hole in the ground.

He cursed as it meant Matt wasn't there. Five more places for him to be. He looked at the other set of directions and hoped that he had already been found at one of the other locations, because he was going to end up being late.

Mello rode past the guard, who had chased him part-ways down the rows, and back onto the open road. The next one, a mere ten minutes away, was a much larger and less private cemetery. The wind whipped his hair in all directions and he ignored all traffic lights encountered in the far more populated areas. He didn't have time to worry about the other drivers.

He almost passed the entrance of the cemetery in his haste but with a sharp turn, nearly colliding with the stone wall that surrounded it in the process, he made it. He slowed a bit, the cemetery being far more confusing than the last, and rode carefully down the rows. His heart was in his throat and he was so damn nervous, a feeling he was unaccustomed with, that his body shook. The spot he wanted was in the middle and even he knew better than to drive across the graves with his bike. Especially in the dark, near dawn.

He searched as quickly as he could, bike shut off and left leaned against a gravestone, and his breath stuck as he saw the filled in plot. He sincerely hoped Matt wasn't in there, because he doubted he could dig that out in five minutes.

His phone vibed as he looked for a shovel, one being left about ten plots to the left, and the message stated that two other locations had come up with nothing, leaving half unchecked. The percentage that Matt was buried there had just gone up. And Mello didn't like those odds at all.

Mello took a small breath and started in on the dirt covering what he hoped wasn't Matt. It was easy, at first, to simply fling the dirt in all directions, but as it got deeper it took longer to get the dirt out of the way. His phone vibrated and one more location was out. It was in the fifty percentile...

His breath came in soft gasps and he dug as quickly as he could. He was almost two minutes over the time. It would still be possible for Matt to be alive, no matter where he was, as the coffin's air supply would gradually run out once the system feeding the air stopped. Mello just didn't know how quickly 'gradually' actually was...

His phone vibrated again and he could hardly breathe. Matt was with him. "Fucking hell!" Mello swore and though his limbs burned he shoved he shovel into the dirt again and again.

His shovel hit something and he froze for a precious few seconds. He hit a spot near it to make sure it wasn't simply a rock, and again the shovel thumped against something. Mello put the shovel aside and quickly brushed the remaining dirt from the top of the coffin before frantically knocking the lock off that had kept the lid shut. He was disheartened by the lack of response from inside. There should have been banging, pleas for help, yelling, something.

But there was silence even as he called out Matt's name multiple times. He pried the lock off, it getting caught on the bent handle, and heaved open the top.

Mello's breath caught in his chest at Matt's bruised and bloodied form. There was a large cut just over his eyebrow, like some heavy object had caught him there, and many smaller cuts that tore at his clothing. But what really caught Mello's eye, was how utterly still Matt was. So still in fact, that he didn't appear to be breathing.

But Mello didn't allow himself to panic just yet, it would do him no good, especially in that situation. He quickly checked for a pulse and felt fear rise to the surface when he didn't immediately find one. He placed his hands on the redhead's chest and brought his lips nearly all the way to Matt's before he felt it, a tiny exhale of breath, so small and infrequent that his breathing couldn't have been regular for some time beforehand.

He paused there, wanting more than anything for it to be real and not something out of a hallucination and was rewarded with a few more extremely shallow breaths, each one getting slightly deeper. "Matt?" he shook the redhead gently and called his name loudly twice more. He bit his lip and wondered how long it would be before Matt's body caught up to the fact that there was more than enough air to breath.

Mello could already see his chest moving more steadily up and down, taking slow and shuddering breaths without hardly making a sound.

Mello didn't really want Matt to wake whilst still in the coffin, but he equally didn't want to risk moving him and have Matt wake while he was trying to lift him from the grave. If he dropped Matt it would only further aggravate what injuries he already had...

Matt took a loud and choked breath as his eyelids fluttered; he thrashed slightly and finally took a sharp breath as his eyes snapped open. "Matt calm down, you're fine now." he told the redhead soothingly. He pulled Matt into his arms and held the redhead as he came back to awareness, still struggling weakly for a few moments before relaxing heavily in his arms.

"Mello... you came..." Matt whispered and his weak grip on the blond tightened. Mello finally let his worries slide away as Matt was awake and, relatively OK, in his arms. He was so damn tired and drained from the past few days, but damn if it all wasn't worth it just to see him again.

"Of course I came to get you. Fucking idiot..." he told the redhead. If he had been any later, had found the connection a little slower, Matt would have died. He would have been digging out a corpse. And it would have killed him.

Mello pulled away slightly, Matt looking at him unsteadily, and grasped Matt's face in his hands, kissing him before he could talk himself out of it. He had wanted to kiss those lips for so damn long but had always invented reasons not to. The main one being that keeping Matt at a distance would keep him safe. That obviously hadn't worked out so well...

He broke the kiss shortly after, Matt having trouble breathing as it was, and Matt panted heavily in the near silence but there was a large grin on his bruised face. "Maybe I should have gotten abducted sooner if it made you do this..." Matt joked lightly, leaning heavily against him again.

"Idiot..." he murmured into Matt's hair. "We have to get you out of here, especially before the guard see's me walking off with you. I don't need to be arrested for grave robbing."

Matt snorted and winced as he was lifted out of the coffin.

It was by no means easy getting them both out of the hole, especially with Matt being so weak and completely useless as help, but Mello managed after a few tried and using the shovel to make a few footholds in the sides of the grave to help him.

And maybe it was cruel to make the others wait, especially Near, but Mello knew he had to get Matt out of there before the guard came, and before anyone else came snooping. Mello settled Matt onto the bike, Matt slumping against his chest completely boneless.

Mello gently kissed his ear and felt Matt's contented sigh, despite how tired and in pain he must be. It wasn't the time for any deeper talks... but later, when Matt was at least bandaged and had slept... then they could figure out where exactly they were going in terms of a possible relationship; but only then.

Mello rolled into a start and smirked at the shouts of the guard, whose flashlight hit his shoulder and missed his face, and he rode them out of there. It had been close, but he was bringing Matt home.

And despite that, Mello's gaze darkened. L was going to pay dearly for messing with Matt.

-End Breaking-

AN: *feels like falling over* I wrote 3016 words of this in one go. I about DIED. Lol. But i'm happy at this point, I FINALLY know where the hell this fic is headed (It hadnt had an ending planned at all until now)

All I can say is prepare for epicness. :)

9/10: Um... XD I had no idea what the chapter was about until I edited it as its been MONTHS since I wrote it. Other than that... if someone wanted (though i doubt it) could they possibly draw Mello and Matt in the coffin scene? That would be awesome... or really any fanart would be awesome... XD