8. Flight

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L was not sure of Ann's reliability, but he had no choice — he had entrusted her with too much. Now he had to either rely on her or wait for Norrington to find out that he had figured it all out.

Despite finishing work on time, due to the experiments, L returned home late in the evening again. For several hours after returning, he pondered over this exceptional discovery and what had happened on the highway that day.

It all added up: every time after following the road his watch began to be slow, which meant that he had passed through the distortion area four times.

The first time, when he had arrived at the office, L remembered that the wall clock in the room had been fast by five, or more precisely, four and a half minutes. But assuming that it was his personal watch that had been slow, and the time on the road also slowed down by 1.3 times, then through simple calculations it could be figured out that the first time he had spent fifteen minutes in the distortion area.

Upon subsequent calculations, it became clear that each of the four times he had travelled along the highway, his watch had been slow by a value directly dependent on the time he had spent in the distortion area. This meant that each time he had gone to that office, he had encountered this area.

It was incredible that none of those present in the new office had noticed this. And this not only meant that Norrington had lied to him but also indicated that he was in collusion with all the office employees.

With this, all his speculations came to an end, yet millions of questions still remained unresolved.

Didn't the white-haired consider that L would notice his watch was slow and figure out that the road was a simulacrum? Or was he testing him again? Or perhaps L was truly going mad and kept taking a wrong turn every time?

He once again confirmed that the deputy director was hiding something from him, but he had suspected this even without discovering the time distortion.

However, he could no longer leave the game: his desire to reach Earth was too strong. He would have to accept the rules dictated by Norrington and try to become a winner in this game.

And at this moment, he had to stop thinking about anything other than designing the rocket — if he did not manage to complete its construction in a few years, there would be no talk of any flight.

* * *

The next morning, when L arrived at his workstation, he looked at the drawings left behind and immersed himself in work. He reached the final stage of design: the precise, perfectly coherent drawing of the photon rocket was taking shape before him.

'It should work,' he thought.

L looked at the result of his work, saw that the future was becoming even closer to him, and could not let it slip away.

There was no point in waiting any longer.

He found out who was responsible for transporting the reflector and headed to the corresponding room. He had to go through yet another mister on his way to the goal.

L was not sure if he was doing the right thing by revealing his skills to at least the entire company, and he realised there would be no turning back.

'Mr. Thompson?' L asked as he entered the room. 'Good afternoon.'

A robust man in a T-shirt sat at the desk. He was attentively looking at the computer screen through his glasses, clicking the mouse and scratching his thick beard.

'What do you need?' he asked without taking his eyes off the monitor.

'I want to inform you that I can safely transport the reflector to the spaceport in two and a half hours.'

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