“He wouldn’t do that,” Niles protested, shaking his head.
Eliza arched her pencil-thin eyebrows at him. “Are you sure? Are you sure if it comes down to it, he’s not going to try to make his case at your expense?”
“I don’t—” Jordan’s hands tightened on Niles’s shoulders as he shrugged helplessly.
“My brother is a victim here,” Jordan said firmly. “He’s being menaced by someone who seems to know something about these murders. Detective Wyatt’s job is to protect him too.”
“Well, let’s make sure the detectives see it that way, shall we?”
Jordan was jerked out of his memory when Detective Payne came bustling into the room, carrying a small stack of files. “Sorry I’m late,” she said and leaned down to confer quietly with Tim. He gave her a startled look and cleared his throat as she handed him a file.
“Is this Fortesen?” Tim asked, sliding a picture from the top of the folder toward Niles.
Niles drew in a sharp breath and swallowed hard. Jordon thought for a moment it looked like he might vomit. “Maybe? Hard to tell with all that, um, damage to his face. But I think he was wearing that jacket when I met him. What happened?”
Tim’s mouth tightened as he thumbed quickly through the pages in the folder, skimming. “Hit and run. There was no ID on the body, so we’ve had him in the morgue as a John Doe since Friday. We’re waiting on dental records from Seattle.”
“Jesus,” Rosie muttered, covering her mouth. “They really are putting their own ending on outtakes from the game.”
“You said he was killed Friday?” Eliza asked sharply.
Tim nodded as Detective Payne sat down. “Yeah, the afternoon he supposedly left Portland.”
“I’ve got the computer forensics guys going after the identity of whoever posted these to your web boards.” Payne started spreading out the series of drawings on the conference table. “Look, we don’t use this term lightly, and we’re not making it public yet, but this is starting to shape up like a serial case. According to these sketches, there are four more characters whose deaths are depicted. We need to go through them and see if we can match them up to any open homicides, and if not, we need to figure out who the perp—or perps—is going after next.”
Tim tapped the plastic bag on the table in front of him, with the latest hand-delivered letter inside it. “‘Final wave.’ What does that mean?”
“It’s a gaming term.” Rosie leaned forward. “You might have noticed when we were introducing you to the game that combat generally happens in waves of mobs—enemies. The usual formula is three waves. You defeat one, another spawns, you defeat it, another spawns. The last wave is generally the most difficult, and if there’s an elite—meaning more difficult than usual—mob, that’s where it’s going to be, when your power and ammunition and whatever else you might rely on has been depleted.”
Niles frowned, drawing Jordan’s eye. “What is it?”
“The notes. They’ve all been from the games until now.”
“They have?” Tim blinked at him. “Why didn’t you mention that?”
“I didn’t realize until now. ‘Watch yourself.’ It’s what one of the companion characters says in PF1 when the PC is in danger of tripping a booby trap. And ‘You were warned’ comes from PF2, something one of the boss mobs yells during combat.”
Detective Payne wrote that down. “Does anyone say ‘Final wave’ in one of the games?”
Niles shook his head. “No. Like Rosie said, it’s just a generic gaming term.”
“Could it also be a reference to your company name?” Tim asked.
Rosie nodded. “Possibly. The company name is a bit of a play on words. It refers to the common mechanics of game combat, yes, but also to third wave feminist theory.”
“So this could be a statement on gender politics, as well.” Tim gestured to the letter again.
“We’ve known that all along,” Niles interjected quietly. “We’ve always known the harassment was about Third Wave’s philosophy. We just didn’t know it was linked to murders.”
Fear for his brother constricted Jordan’s lungs, making his breath tight and shallow. “If it is a reference to the company name, it’s a threat. He sees himself as facing off, getting ready for combat,” he observed.
“So let’s go over the other characters. Sang.” Payne spread out the series of sketches. “What’s his story?”
Niles drew a breath. “He’s the doctor. Alien. His species’s culture is vaguely analogous with early-century Chinese culture. He comes into the story as a political dissident seeking asylum. In these sketches, the player character doesn’t grant it, so he’s killed by assassins, who make it look like a suicide. They hang him.”
“All right.” Detective Payne pulled out a laptop from her bag and began entering data. They all fell silent, watching her, until she looked up. “Okay, here. Keilana Savanh. Lived in Beaverton. She’s Laotian, not Chinese—what are the odds we’re dealing with a white perp who thinks all Asian cultures are interchangeable?—admitted to St. V’s and subsequently died after allegedly hanging herself in her closet. Her family is contesting the ruling of death by suicide and has requested an investigation. They say she’d never do that, that she was happy and had far too much to live for.”
Tim nodded. “Wanna bet she was a gamer or a cosplayer?”
“Doesn’t say.” Detective Payne stared at the computer a while longer. “There are no reports of men matching that pattern.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rosie said dismissively. “Lakshmi was cosplaying a male character. In gaming, the character is an avatar; it can be a woman or a man controlling it.”
“Okay.” Tim nodded slowly, looking at Niles’s laptop, which was open to the companion-selection screen of PF3. “So that’s Issis, Gairi, Sang, and Halliday. Which leaves us with . . .”
“Marc, Grace, and Chino.” Niles shuffled through the printouts of the sketches. “This is Marc. He’s young, barely more than a teenager. He’s also not a full-fledged companion. He’s the foster brother of the player character, a student, and it’s his abduction by terrorists that propels the PC on his or her quest. Unlike the other companions, there’s no crisis moment where a choice or action by the PC can change the fate of the character. Marc is kidnapped, no matter what. You recover him later in the game, but you rarely have the option of having him on your team the way you do the other companions.”
“Abduction?” Eliza piped up for the first time since she’d apparently decided no one was threatening her clients with legal action. “You mean like Patrick Rutledge?”
“Oh God.” Rosie’s breath hitched.
“So Patrick’s Marc.” Niles frowned at the sketches, particularly the one where the terrorists set Marc on fire.
“And that makes the first two waves.” Detective Payne took the sketches of the various characters and divided them into rows. She pointed to the pictures of Issis and Gairi in the first stack. “Charity and Lakshmi the weekend before last, and Keilana, Daniel, and Patrick—possibly—this past weekend.”
Tim rapped his fingers on the surface of the table. “If not for Rutledge, I’d point out that the victims have all been women or queer men.”
Jordan glanced at Niles and Rosie, both of whom appeared to be biting their tongues. Of course they weren’t going to say anything, but fuck it, this was a police investigation. “Patrick’s gay. He was with us for a while that night at the club, in fact.”
“He’s not out to his family or, presumably, his friends,” Niles hurriedly added. “Please respect that when you question him or people he knows.”
“So that pattern is consistent.” Tim spread out the sketches of Chino and Grace and glanced at Niles. “That leaves us with the final wave. Now is Niles Grace or Chino, and who is the last person?”
Payne looked from the drawings to Niles and Rosie. “After the player character, Grace is the leader of the company.”
Rosie blinked. “Me? You think I might be a target?”
Jordan laughed, though it was bitter. Nothing about this was a damn bit funny. “Rosie, when haven’t you been a target?”
“But he’s been leaving the notes for Niles.”
“Because you have a doorman and security. He can’t get to you, and if he sent them via email, they would just get lost in the thousands of other threats we file and ignore. He wanted our attention, and the emails and texts aren’t the way to get it.”
“You’re the boss,” Niles said, staring at Rosie. He had a quaver in his voice that Jordan didn’t like, as if he were moments from falling apart. “To get to the boss, you have to go through his or her lieutenants, right?”
Detective Payne nodded grimly. “It has to be you both. Chino is her right-hand man and best friend.”
They shifted awkwardly in their chairs. Jordan cleared his throat, covering a smile. “Slightly more than that by the end of PF3.”
“Well, I think we’ve already established this guy isn’t going for literalism.” Niles reached for the sketches. Like the others, they were sorted by the character they depicted. “The thing with Chino and Grace is that their crisis moments come together, shortly after they escalate their friendship. Unless the PC makes a very specific set of choices throughout the game—a few of which are rather ethically ambiguous—you lose one or the other of them. The only other alternative is that, if the PC plays it just so, she’ll have the choice of sacrificing herself instead of Chino or Grace. See?”
Jordan watched Niles shuffle the sketches around as they spoke, his attention more on his brother than on the discussion. He arranged them like puzzle pieces until they came together to form a set of panels in sequential order. What had looked like separate death sequences for Chino and Grace were actually a single series of events, with the perspective moving back and forth between the characters, culminating in an ending that did not happen within the game, namely both Chino and Grace dying.
Tim rose and stood leaning over Niles’s shoulder to take in the entire tableau, and Detective Payne joined him. “So, they’re going to try to take the two of you out together.”
“Maybe.” Payne frowned. “They may be trying to put their own ending on scenes from the game, but like Niles said, we know their methods aren’t literal. They had to have taken Charity and Lakshmi together, after all, and that isn’t depicted in the sketches. Their crisis moments aren’t together. Hell, they’re not even in the same game. Marc’s and Halliday’s aren’t together, either, for that matter.”
Rosie chewed the inside of her cheek. “I’m going to hire more security. If they want to go after both of us, here is the obvious place.”
“Good idea. We’ll be having units doing frequent drive-bys of your residences and this building, as well,” Tim said.
They continued talking about security arrangements and risk factors, but something niggled at the back of Jordan’s mind. He drummed his fingers on the table, trying to shape the nagging sense of unease into a coherent thought until he felt Niles’s eyes fix on him from across the room.
“What is it, Jordie?”
“Why did he try to crush my skull?” Jordan blurted, bringing the chatter to a halt.
“What?”
“If you’re the final wave, why did he go after you—mistakenly clobbering me in the process—this weekend when he went after Patrick and Daniel?”
Niles’s brow furrowed. “Maybe he wasn’t coming after me, yet. Maybe he wanted to deliver the note, and he thought you’d seen him or would see him?”
“But he’d already delivered the note. It was in the house, below the mail slot. Why would he stick around after that, if he wasn’t lying in wait?”
“I don’t know.” Niles rubbed his forehead wearily. “The dude—or these dudes—is killing people based on a video game. I don’t think logic has much to do with his thought processes.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss them,” Payne cautioned. “There’s always a logic to the way these people work. It’s just not necessarily a logic we understand, or that’s readily apparent. Don’t write them off.”
Niles nodded and slumped in his chair a little more, chastened.
Tim frowned, looking back and forth between Rosie and Niles. “I notice the three of you are defaulting to this being a male perp. Now, statistically speaking, that’s probably correct, but we have been trying to stay open to the possibilities. Still, from people with your politics, it makes me wonder if you know something about the perp that we don’t.”
Rosie shook her head, her mouth twisting in a bitter smile. “We’re not being sexist. Look at the drawings of Issis and Grace. See how sexualized and powerless their death poses are? I’ve seen a lot of art in my day, and done a lot of study into feminist media criticism, and I can tell you, this is male gaze stuff. Women don’t draw women like that.”
“And the drawings were from a fan site with a lot of traffic from cis-male gamers who don’t like Third Wave’s position on women in gaming,” Jordan added. “And you said it yourself earlier, there’s a good chance this is a statement on Third Wave’s gender politics.”
“From the height and build, the person I saw running from my house after leaving the note tonight was probably male, and it’s always been cis men who have threatened us,” Niles agreed, then bowed his head, covering his face with his hands. “Sorry. I just— I need to get home. I’m exhausted. And thinking of Patrick and Daniel, and that Rosie and I are probably next . . . I can’t. I just need to go home, now. Please.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.” Tim pushed his chair back, but his expression was conflicted as he looked back and forth between Detective Payne and Niles. “I need to stay here, keep working on this, but—”
“I’ll take you back to my condo.” Jordan stood, watching Niles’s face with concern. It was obvious the events of the last two days were catching up and crashing in on him. He looked overwhelmed, almost in shock. Jordan wasn’t sure he wanted Tim Wyatt and all the complicated shit that came with him around Niles just now, even if Wyatt did carry a gun. “Third floor, closer neighbors, cameras in the lobby. It’ll be safer there than your house.”
Wyatt looked at Niles as he nodded and gathered his computer and jacket. “When we’re done here, I’ll come check on you at Jordan’s place.”
“Just make sure Rosie gets home safe, would you?” Niles murmured, neither approving nor refusing the idea of Tim coming by.
“We’ll take care of that,” Detective Payne assured him as Rosie stood and hugged Niles tightly.
“Don’t worry about me. We’re not gonna let this bastard stop us, okay?”
“Okay.” Niles kissed her cheek and bowed his head again, subdued as he accompanied Jordan out the door.
It was nearly 2 a.m. when Detectives Wyatt and Payne left Third Wave’s studios with a list of every beta participant for PF3 and the names of everyone who might have access to the story script for the upcoming DLC. Rosie sighed and rubbed her eyes. The identities would be cross-checked against the IP information of the most vitriolic critics of Third Wave’s politics to find out who was in the Portland area and would have the sort of access to commit the crimes in question.
“What are you thinking?” Eliza asked, stacking her papers and slipping them neatly into her briefcase. She’d offered to give Rosie a ride home and see her safely inside her house. As a lawyer who in her spare time had made a fair number of men angry taking divorce cases for abused women pro bono, she had a concealed-carry permit, put in monthly sessions at the shooting range, and had periodic lessons to hone her skills.
“That this could be it for us.” Rosie rubbed her eyes again, leaning back away from the conference table. “EEU might decide to shut us down if they think we’ve attracted too much negative publicity. They’re run by corporate men, and they’ve never been comfortable with Third Wave’s in-your-face politics.”
“Then you’ll start a new studio, and you’ll find a new distributor. Come here, sugar.” Eliza pulled Rosie into
her lap, laying an arm across her shoulders and kissing her temple gently. She let herself relax into the hug. She and Eliza had been friends—and occasionally more—since college, back when Eliza Muldrake had still been Elijah Muldrake. Their personalities were too strong to ever make a relationship work, but just then she was willing to take any reassurance that came her way.
“Will it be worth it?” She wrapped her arms around Eliza’s waist and leaned her head on the soft swell of her breast, yielding to the rare moment of self-doubt. “Have I put my employees in danger?”
Eliza stroked her close-cropped hair, kissing the top of her head. “Niles knew what he was signing on for. He believes in what you’re doing. Hell, he’s just as passionate about it as you are, if that’s even possible.”
“Patrick Rutledge didn’t.”
“No. He didn’t. Innocents are always the ones to suffer when terrorists attack. And make no mistake—that’s what this is. If it’s true that this is targeted at Third Wave’s politics and philosophy, then this person or these people are using fear and intimidation and violence to silence a message they don’t want the world to hear. That’s the definition of terrorism.” Eliza leaned back, moving away to meet Rosie’s eyes.
“I’m getting burned out,” she confessed, giving words to the thought that had been there since before all this had begun.
“Oh, sugar, of course you are. You’ve been through hell the past couple years. First the tumor and now this?” Eliza hugged her tightly. “You know we all get to the point where we wonder if it’s worth it anymore.”
“What am I going to do? How can I lead a company with a mission statement like ours if I’m just phoning it in?”
“It’s okay to dial down the intensity for a while. Not to give up, but just to give yourself some breathing room until you find your passion for it again.”
Rosie closed her eyes and didn’t let herself ask if that would save anyone else from being killed.
Tim fidgeted with nervous energy as he knocked on Jordan River’s condo door. He hadn’t been particularly comfortable with the stare Jordan had been giving him at their meeting, but he was damned if he was going to let that keep him from checking in on Niles. When Jordan answered the door, he did so without uttering a greeting, staring at Tim with his arm braced against the doorframe, denying him entrance.
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