“Well, shit,” he finally said.
Lewis laughed. His dad had never been averse to the art of swearing. “Yeah, it’s… it’s been an interesting week.”
“What do you think made this guy Charlie lose his marbles?”
He played a game possibly designed by the government to make you kill people. “I have no idea. Probably something personal, maybe a mental health issue he was keeping hidden. Perhaps he was on antidepressants and they just didn’t work the way they were supposed to. They’re still investigating it.”
“I’m truly, terribly sorry. Your mother is out walking Lucy, but she’ll be back soon. Do you want me to call you when she’s here so you can tell her in person?”
Lewis smiled at the memory of Jenna hugging his family’s dog, an old German shepherd, on Christmas morning. Lucy had really liked her; he always took it as a good sign when his dog was fond of someone. Lucy had absolutely hated meeting one of his college girlfriends, and about a month after that Lewis had found out she’d been cheating on him.
“Nah, that’s okay,” he said, snapping out of the reverie. “Just let her know I’m alright.”
Alright. The word took him back to the dream of the woman and the child by the wreck of the car, gazing up at the stars as she tried to comfort her son with a soothing tone and a single phrase, repeated over and over.
Everything’s gonna be alright.
He wished he could believe her.
“You should take the rest of the week off too. Today’s not enough,” Richter’s voice said over the Bluetooth speaker in his car. He was stuck in westbound traffic on the 10, his Ford Fusion sitting amidst a sea of stationary vehicles.
“Jenna and I are still flying to Vegas tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “The tour at Arcadia is too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
“I already lost one writer in the past week, I don’t want to lose another.”
“So you do believe there’s a connection?”
“Between Arcadia and Charlie? I don’t know what to believe anymore. If what you say about this game is true…” The traffic had barely inched forward in the ten minutes it took to fill her in on the Rogue Horizon part of the equation. “I mean, you have no evidence Jake Miller played it,” Richter said.
“No, but I heard the phrase ‘Arcadia awaits’ in a dream, and then out of Charlie’s lips as he lay dying. We both played the game. I don’t know if Jake heard those words too, but him having an accident a few miles from a place called Arcadia seems pretty suspicious. Not to mention Charlie had also just got back from Vegas; he probably went out there too.”
“But since you’ve played it, wouldn’t you be at risk of going postal too?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t spend as much time with it as Charlie did. And if the game was enough to have the complete intended effect, whoever made it wouldn’t need to lure players out to Arcadia. There must be something else that goes on out there.”
“Jesus… How sure of this are you? I mean, what if we’ve got the wrong Arcadia? What if this place has nothing to do with it?” she asked.
“I have no clue. We start back at square one. But think of it this way: if I’m right, you are going to have one hell of an exclusive story.”
“I mean, yeah, but if you’re right and there really is some top-secret government project… You shouldn’t mention this to anyone else. How much does Jenna know?”
“Enough, but she doesn’t believe me.”
“Good. Keep this quiet… and Desmond, stay safe.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The call ended. He was glad he used WhatsApp, but even though the call had been encrypted, he knew that if who he thought was behind this was truly behind it, they would have other ways of keeping tabs on him.
A car honked behind him, jolting him back to reality. He looked forward. Not a single vehicle was moving. He sighed.
Just another glorious morning in L.A.
Ricky was playing video games, his PS4 hooked up to a 32-inch LCD screen in one corner of the small living room. He immediately paused it and got up as Lewis entered the room.
“Hey man, Jenna filled me in on everything after you called. That’s some fucking crazy shit.” He gave him a hug.
“That’s one way to put it, yeah,” he said as Ricky patted him on the back. He turned to the TV. “What are you playing?”
“The latest Black Ops, getting ready for the Call of Duty championship this year. I’m still pissed they removed the campaign mode. Fucking cheap bastards, charging $60 for a game with no story.”
“I think Jenna’s been practicing that one a lot.”
“Yeah, CoD is her shit.”
Lewis sat down on the couch and sighed. He needed to get everything off his chest, all of it, to someone who would understand. Richter had the right idea of not telling people, but nearly every rule had an exception, and he’d been friends with Ricky Ramirez long enough to trust him with his life.
“There’s some stuff I need to tell you.”
“Yeah man, sure,” his friend said, sitting down in a chair opposite him. “Anything.”
Lewis noted how people would go out of their way to treat you extra kindly following a brush with death. “It’s a long story, and it’s already gotten pretty weird.” He filled him in on everything from Jake Miller’s voicemail, to the dreams, to Arcadia, to the website of Andromeda Virtual Systems, to a highly detailed rundown of the events at Charlie’s house.
When he was done, Ricky sat back in his chair. “Whew. I have heard some crazy shit in my life, but that takes the fucking cake.”
“You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you, man. It’s just fucking nuts, that’s all. But it explains a lot.” He scratched his chin. “This reeks of Polybius. What did I tell you?” He laughed. “And that was just supposed to be a joke… Christ.”
“We don’t have the full story yet, but it’s definitely looking that way.”
“And this Victor Zhao guy,” Ricky said. “I swear I’ve heard that name before.”
Lewis leaned forward. “You have?”
“Yeah, yeah… It was from a while ago, like five years back or something, when I was working at EA the summer after junior year at UCLA. Now, people like Jenna’s parents are always going off about video games being ‘murder simulators’ and what not, but one time there was this dev making a game where you literally played as a serial killer.
“Like, there wasn’t even much story, it was just kind of a sandbox thing. And it was really in-depth. You had to choose your M.O. and be consistent with it, had to stalk similar types of victims. And you would drive around the city following these people, observing their habits. The graphics weren’t great at this stage, but a lot of detail had been put into the gameplay. The AI of the people you stalked was pretty advanced; they were all randomly assigned habits and paths around the city they would take before returning home at certain times of the day.
“And then you had to kidnap them and choose how to kill them, how to arrange the body, whether you wanted to make it ritualistic or whatnot… Like, it was crazy how much fucking thought they had put into it. ‘Disturbing’ was the best word for it. The team tried to get EA to back it and publish it, but all the execs were just like, ‘No fucking way. Are you people insane? A serial killer simulator?’ It was going to be called Bloodlust or some shit. But the lead dev’s name was Victor Zhao or something like that, I swear.”