Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

Lewis shook his head. “They’d never believe me. Besides, the Sheriff might be on their payroll, remember? He didn’t want people investigating Jake Miller’s death.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you.” He sounded concerned. “Look, Des, maybe it was just a dream. The whole thing sounds very unlikely. It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just… Look, if there actually is a conspiracy, and this place is the epicenter of it, and you snuck in there after dark and nearly made off with an important file… Then you, my friend, are very fucking lucky to be alive. Walk away while you still can.”

Lewis walked up to the Dolphin Bar’s counter. “I need two pina coladas. And a shot of rum.”

The bartender smiled. “Luck run out at the tables?”

He looked off at the pool. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“It’s about to change again.”

The voice sounded familiar. Lewis turned around and was surprised to see Special Agent Sara Gonzalez standing to his left, wearing much more casual clothing than she’d been in on Tuesday. She looked like any other tourist with her L.A. Kings t-shirt, leather jacket, and jeans.

“Taking a vacation?” he said.

“Officially, yes. Unofficially, I believe I’m here for the same reason as you. Let’s get a seat over there once you get your drinks.” She turned to the man behind the counter. “I’ll have a margarita, please.”

They waited there in silence for a few moments, watching the bartender make the two pina coladas and then pour some Bacardi Black into a shot glass. While they waited, Lewis’s mind ran through the implications of what she had just said. Gonzalez was investigating this by herself, which meant her superiors probably didn’t believe her. Or, maybe they were in on it.

He downed the shot, waited for her to get her margarita, and carried the two pina coladas over to a table by the edge of the bar area, as far away from other people’s conversations as they could get.

Gonzalez immediately got straight to business. “After our last conversation, I looked into Rogue Horizon . I’d originally told you the name hadn’t come up before in the other investigations, but I realized that wasn’t true. No copies of any game by that name were found on the perpetrators’ computers, but in two separate cases, some friends of the killers mentioned that they’d been playing a strange horror game set in space that had, and I quote, ‘really disturbed them.’ One of these witnesses said the game had the word ‘rogue’ in the title but couldn’t remember exactly what it was called.”

Lewis nodded. “I knew it. Installing the game must give the people behind it a backdoor into the computers, one that allows them to delete the game if anything goes wrong.”

“I thought the same thing,” Gonzalez said. “But my boss said the theory was nuts. Then I noticed that in all of the cases, the perp had visited Las Vegas about a week before their incidents. In some cases, they mentioned visiting a place called Arcadia to their friends. Once I found there was a virtual reality theme park with that name in the desert about an hour north of here, I started connecting the dots. Especially when I heard about the mysterious death of a tech journalist named Jake Miller, about twenty minutes from where Arcadia is located. Then I looked into the Technologist and found you listed as a staff writer on their website. Small world, huh?”

“How’d you find me here?”

“I called your boss, Valerie Richter, to ask her some questions about Miller. She didn’t want to go into details, but when I said I was taking the case into my own hands because I didn’t trust the higher-ups, her lips got a little looser. Mentioned you were heading out here, staying at the Mirage. Looking into this Arcadia place. I decided we needed to have another chat. So let’s have one.”

He gave her an abridged version of everything that had happened since coming to Vegas. The strange emptiness of the VR park, the creepy behavior of Victor Zhao toward his girlfriend, and finally the late-night trip back there that may or may not have happened.

Gonzalez sat back, letting her eyes drift around the bar while the gears in her mind turned. “And everything was the way you had left it?”

“Exactly the same.”

She nodded. “Highly trained operatives could definitely pull that off. As for how they got your same parking space, I’m sure they’ve had people watching you since the moment you landed at McCarran Airport. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to move someone else’s car in the middle of the night just to put yours back in the same space and maintain the illusion.”

“How would they do that?”

“Towing. Or maybe hacking, since it’s a little more discrete. There were documents from WikiLeaks a few years ago about how the CIA has been hacking cars, sometimes to kill targets by making them look like untraceable accidents. The 21 stcentury is a scary fucking place.”

Lewis took several big sips from his pina colada. He wished he’d ordered a double. Maybe even a triple.

“There’s just one thing I need to know,” she continued, leaning across the table. “Did you play Rogue Horizon ?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

She slouched back in her seat again. “That would have been helpful to know when we first talked at the police station.”

“I wasn’t sure if I could trust you, then.”

Gonzalez sipped her margarita. “That’s fair. You figured this had government written all over it. I flashed you an FBI badge, but you had no idea if I really worked for that agency. Who knows, I could’ve been a CIA spook.”

“Or NSA. Hell, any of the three-letter agencies could be behind this.”

She nodded. “My money’s on the CIA for now, though. The NSA is mainly just a bunch of pervs who like to spy on people’s phone calls. When it comes to brainwashing conspiracies like this, they’d be a little out of their league.”

“That would explain why there was so little security at Arcadia,” he said.

“Maybe they’re underfunded. Or they don’t want to have too many guards to arouse suspicion in the few normal visitors they get there.” Her face grew stern again. “We’re getting off-topic. Has the game affected you?”

“What, do you think I’m gonna go postal like Charlie?”

“I don’t know, but if these people wanted you dead, you’d be dead. But if you’ve been brainwashed and are ready to lose your shit in a couple of days like some uncontrollable Manchurian Candidate…”

He shook his head. “I didn’t play the game nearly as much as Charlie did.”

“And your girlfriend, Jenna, how much did she play?”

“I’m honestly not sure. She always skirts around the question.”

“That’s suspicious.”

“Everything seems suspicious to me these days.”

“And you both played games at Arcadia?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible that could have been where a second round of subliminal psychoactive imagery was implemented?”

“It’s possible, but I don’t see how they would’ve done it. We were still playing games in headsets, just like Rogue Horizon . Anything they had the chance to do to us yesterday, they should’ve been able to do with the game alone. I still don’t get why they need to lure all the gamers out there.” He told her about the dreams, about how Arcadia awaits must’ve been burned into his subconscious by Rogue Horizon , and how those two words were the final ones Charlie spoke.

“Well, that’s concerning.” She took another sip. “Has Jenna displayed any of these symptoms?”

“Not that I can tell. She won’t talk to me about it.”