Sinner's Run Ch. 07

The day Funki vanished, Garthex hadn't thought much of it when he logged into Sinner's Run for the evening. He knew life happened, and figured that Funki was dealing with a work-related matter that had cropped up out of the blue, or some family business that wasn't his place to ask about. His companion on the Run would be back soon enough.

Another day passed, and he still didn't think about it very much. But as they day stretched into a week, he began to wonder. Probing messages of "Hey" and "You alright over there?" went unanswered, and none of the other members of their lore-hunting group had heard from him either. More outlandish scenarios began to press in on Garthex's mind. Had Funki been in a car accident? Had he been committed? Had he found a girlfriend and spent the past week balls deep in her?

He got his answer two weeks after Funki's last message, when a knock came at his apartment door.

Garthex blanched as he was met with two cops in uniform, a man and a woman. The latter held a clipboard with several pieces of paper on it. "Mister..." The female officer raised an eyebrow, looking between him and the name on the paper as if she couldn't quite believe the skinny, slightly hairy gay guy in the doorway had the same ostentatious name that was on the paper. "Bernadotte? Edwin Bernadotte?"

Garthex coughed. "Please, call me Ed. Can I, um, help you, officer?"

Her partner, an older sheriff with salt and pepper hair and a Tom Selleck mustache, nodded. "We wanted to ask you a question, son."

Garthex looked between the two. "Okay?"

"Have you seen or heard from Noah Welkin in the past two weeks?" the female officer asked.

"I...don't know anyone by that name." Then he registered the time frame they asked about, and it clicked. "Wait, do you mean-"

"I believe you knew him better as..." She looked at the paper again. "Funki55?"

"Yeah, I know him," Garthex said. "Did something happen to him?"

"Mister Welkin vanished without a trace two weeks ago," she said. "We collected his computer and cell phone, and have been reviewing text logs between him and everyone he messaged the most. His family and roommate don't know anything about what happened, so we've been reaching out to everyone else he messaged on a frequent basis."

"You live close enough that we were able to drive here in person," her partner added.

Garthex felt a yawning void open up in his stomach. He stepped back and held the door open. "He... vanished? Like what do you mean, vanished?"

The officers told him the whole story sitting on his living room couch, while he paced back and forth like a caged jaguar. How Noah's roommate hadn't suspected anything until he looked outside and realized that Noah was gone with his car still in the driveway. How during a search of the apartment they found Noah's wallet, keys, and cell phone, along with an assortment of clothes in the bed arranged as they would've been if a person sleeping had just disappeared like a Houdini trick. The strangest bit was that there were absolutely no signs of any kind of foul play in and around the apartment - no fingerprints, no tracks outside, nothing missing from his room at all.

"We have nothing," the female officer said. "No leads of any kind. Frankly, it's the most bizarre disappearance case I've ever seen. We have an agent from the FBI at the station helping us, but even they haven't made any progress. So if you have anything you can add, any possible hypothesis as to what might have happened to Noah and where he might be, we'd appreciate your help."

"I mean..." Garthex stopped and took a deep breath, hands on his hips. "I just played games with the guy. I didn't even know his name until you told me just now. He was always just 'Funki' to me and the rest of the group we were involved with. You know about that right?"

"Yes, the..." The female officer lifted a couple sheets of paper on her clipboard. "'Kolegis?'"

"It's Polish," Garthex answered quickly. "One of the other guys came up with it, it just means 'colleague.' We played games with each other and talked about them. That's the extent of our interactions." He ran a hand through his hair. "Shit, I don't even know what Fun...Noah looks like."

"Who lives here?" the male cop asked.

"Just my boyfriend and I."

"Does he talk to Noah at all?"

"Not really." Garthex gestured to the large plasma TV on the Ikea mount in the corner and the game consoles tucked away underneath. "All the game stuff is mine. If you go into the office there there's two distinct halves. One half is my gaming stuff, the other's his hipster art workstation."

The officers asked him a few more questions, mostly innocuous things. They didn't seem to suspect anything of him, because they didn't even ask to poke around the apartment. Once they had asked all their questions, they left the apartment. Garthex sat on his couch for a long time staring at the TV despite it not being on.

His boyfriend Marty came home a few hours later. "Hey you," he called as he opened the door, expecting Garthex would be on his computer. Marty did a double-take as he stepped into the living room and saw him sitting on the couch. "Hey. You okay?"

Garthex held out an arm and beckoned with his fingers. Marty didn't even ask. He set his bag down on the floor and joined him on the couch, the pair of them hugging without a word passing between them. Later, Garthex would explain everything.

The next few days, Garthex felt like he was sleepwalking. He didn't log into Sinner's Run at all, taking the time to play other things for the first time in a long while. It was as he lost his hundredth game of Minesweeper in a row that he realized the Run was calling him. It couldn't be denied.

After he'd broken the news of Noah's disappearance to the group, the mood in the messenger channel had become decidedly muted. Several members had taken days off to focus on their own lives. The event had all come as unexpected to them, with many of them saying in the days that followed they'd also been contacted by law enforcement looking for answers they couldn't give. It seemed that it wasn't just the trail was cold - there seemed to be no trial to begin with. It was the stuff of conspiracy theories talked about on Soundcloud podcasts.

He sat back in his chair as the update downloaded, a rather large one at that. File names flicked past on the download client - cosmetics, a few bugfixes, some files that were part of the map directory. Any other day Garthex would've immediately gone into super-sleuth mode and made notes of which parts of the map the changes were made to, as they usually preceded some event or hinted at new Primes to come. But he was too out of it to really take notice.

Garthex signed into the game, deciding that some solo matches would take his mind off things. After all, that's what video games were for in the first place, right? He selected Larka in honor of Noah, settling into his ergonomic chair. A win for Noah was required, and many more besides, until he was found. If he was found. Don't think that.

He dropped into the game, quickly racking up two eliminations at the landing zone in the far south part of the map that didn't have an official name. Decked out with a Chakram shotgun and an N-99, he took the long route up the side of the map around the closing Zone, picking off another player as he went. It was methodical, easygoing, and incredibly boring. It was so much more fun of a game with Noah in his ear making comments and watching his back.

With some time before the next Zone closure, Garthex decided to make a detour. He cut across some rolling hills and headed for the spur of land that jutted out to the side of the map called Talon. It wasn't a popular landing zone, so there was a chance it had been skipped altogether and there was still some gear there.

He checked the first building and came up empty. But as he passed through the second building and headed out the back door, he spotted something unusual on the ground. Lines had been scraped into the dirt, the lines straight but in a configuration that made no sense.

At least until he walked around and looked at them from another angle. They formed letters and words, and the message they spelled made his blood freeze.

Garthex. This is Noah. I'm alive. Send help!

Garthex's eyes flicked across the message again and again, trying to process what he was seeing. "No way," he said, leaning in towards his monitor. He got close enough that the LED nodes seared into his eyes. "No fucking w-"

Someone he couldn't see sniped him with Montana, her amplified damage combined with the rifle she was using eliminating him with one accurate shot to the back of his head. He'd been standing still, there was no way they could miss. The sudden sound made Garthex jump in his chair, rolling back several feet from his desk. He sat still for a time, breathing heavily, his thoughts racing. I'm losing it, he thought. I'm actually losing it. Now I'm seeing things in the game.

Unless...

Garthex rolled his chair forward, back up against his desk. He clicked past the post-match scorecard, jumping back into the game queue. "Come on, come on," he muttered, fingers tapping the desk as he waited for players. When the queue popped, he selected his main, Nala, already knowing where he was landing.

Talon was only contested by one other player, and Garthex made quick work of him upon landing. He didn't even bother picking up more gear, just went out the back door of the building to find the message again.

It was still there, and he sat there staring at it for a long time to make sure it was real. He keyed in a quick keyboard macro to take a screenshot of the message. Then he remembered that there had been several map files updated during the patch. Garthex quit the game, not even concerned with getting a win anymore. He got up, went to the kitchen, and retrieved an energy drink out of the fridge. He had work to do, and needed to focus.

First, he accessed the game's files on his hard drive, going straight to the folder that held the data for the map of the Run. Two years of datamining had taught him how to pick apart the Sinner's Run code with ease, and he was able to open up the map files and find what strings had been changed. A grand total of seven sites on the map had been altered in some way, nothing more than a few numbers swapped around here and there. But all of them had the same changes as Talon, which could only mean one thing. Garthex wrote down all the locations that had been changed, then closed out the map file.

From there, he rebooted the game. Garthex sucked down half the energy drink in one go as the game booted, then jumped back into the solo queue with Nala. From there, he dropped to the first point on his list, Annex. It was going to be the most difficult place to get a look at owing to how crowded a spot it was, but Garthex was determined.

Bad luck got him eliminated on the first attempt, but on the second attempt there were less people who tried for Annex and he was able to survive the opening scramble. From there he combed the building top to bottom, examining every nook and cranny. It wasn't until he checked in one of the back rooms that he found another message, this one sheared into the metal wall.

Garthex, if you're reading this, I'm trapped here. I don't know how or why, but I am in Sinner's Run. I don't know how long it's been since I got here, if time moves at the same rate. I'm fine - I think - don't want to stay here longer than I have to. As far as I know, I'm stuck here. Get me out of here, I'm begging you. -Noah

"What the actual fuck," Garthex said, taking another screenshot of the words.

Over the next two hours Garthex queued and re-queued, dropping into all the locations that had been changed in the update. He fought in scramble after opening scramble, only being able to hunt for the messages if he was the one to survive. But in each location, without fail, he found another message calling him out by name. By the end of the afternoon when Marty came home from work, Garthex had assembled a small folder of in-game screenshots.

Arms wrapped around him in the chair, making Garthex jump. "You alright?" Marty asked into his hair.

Garthex stared at the screenshot thumbnails on his monitor. "Not sure," he answered. "I'm really not sure."

He must have been giving off 'please don't talk to me' vibes, because Marty left him alone after that. Garthex considered his options. He could drop the folder into the messenger group, ask everyone else if they'd seen them. But every single message was addressed to him and him alone. They might think he was playing a joke on them and not take it seriously. He checked the group feed quickly. Despite the in-game icons of several of the group's members, none of them had posted anything about seeing the strange messages. Had it just been him who was seeing these?

After thinking for some time, Garthex decided he wouldn't bring it up to the group just yet. He'd go right to the source first. He went to the Sinner's Run website, and found the Help and Support form after a few clicks.

Dear Mechantix developers, he wrote. After today's small patch I noticed several messages on the map terrain directly relating to the recent disappearance of my close friend Noah Welkin, aka Funki55. I don't know how they got there, or why. Is someone having a laugh at my expense? Because I'm not laughing. I've attached screenshots of the messages so you know which ones I'm talking about.

He added the screenshots into the attachment field of the contact form, and clicked Send. "And now we wait," he muttered, before getting out of his chair to go join Marty for dinner.

He got a reply the next day.

Hello Garthex. We have received your message and are investigating. The patch that went out yesterday on our end did not include any alterations to the map, only some new cosmetics and minor bugfixes to the most recent Primes. We were not aware of the case of Noah Welkin before your email. In order for your support case to proceed further, please send us the changelogs of your game files, which can be found using these methods. Thank you, and have a nice day. -Mechantix Support

Garthex nibbled on his toast - done until golden with butter and strawberry jam on top - and clicked the underlined link in the email. It took him to another section of the game's support page, where he was able to follow the instructions to produce text files of the changes to the game's code. The particulars of the changelogs escaped him, but he knew the developers wanted to make sure he wasn't pulling their leg and do their due diligence. So he attached the logs to an email and hit Reply, then settled into his chair to do some Googling about unexplained disappearances.

To his surprise, the response came an hour later, but not from the support email that had sent the first reply. This one was from vpeters@mechanix.com.

Hello Mister Edwin Bernadotte (can I call you that? Or would you prefer your in-game name?) My name is Vivian Peters, I'm programmer at Mechantix who's head of the team responsible for the map. I was forwarded your support query from the Customer Support team, along with the changelogs. Are you available to speak via videoconference? You can contact me at this email address. -Vivian Peters

Garthex frowned, then slowly wrote a reply.

Miss Peters, Garthex is fine. Why do you need to videoconference?

Her response came less than two minute later.

I've never seen anything like your logs before. It's urgent.

Garthex blinked, then double-checked the connection on his webcam to make sure it was on. Then he smoothed out his shirt and pinged her email from his messenger client.

She picked up on the second ring, her webcam activating out of focus for a second before focusing. Vivian was a professional-looking woman with pale skin, high cheekbones, and full lips, along with a full head of ebony black hair aside from the roots that showed she was a natural blonde. She was dressed in bright orange blouse, a simple necklace hanging off her prominent collarbone. Her eyes were a plain brown, but had a sharpness to them that was obvious to Garthex even though the camera.

"I appreciate your prompt response," she said.

Garthex nodded. "It's my day off," he said. "What's so urgent about this?"

Vivian's head turned to the side, and Garthex saw the glow of a second monitor shine on her face. "I've looked over the changelogs you sent half a dozen times. There are things that are here that shouldn't be. And unless you've gotten hold of administrator permissions, there's no way to fake these either." She looked back at him. "To put it simply, you received something in a patch that you shouldn't have, that shouldn't exist at all."

Garthex's brow furrowed. "Run that by me again?"

"There's lines of code in these changelogs that indicate that somehow you received data that only exists in our in-house build of Sinner's Run. Except as far as I know, those changes to the map shouldn't exist at all. I should know, because everything done to the map goes through me eventually before it becomes part of the live build. Someone changed something in-house, and managed to get it to you, without any of us here at Mechantix becoming aware of it. It's...baffling to say the least. Unless you managed to hack into our servers and this is all some kind of elaborate prank."

Garthex shook his head. "Why would I prank myself about the disappearance of a friend?"

"Exactly, which is why that hypothesis doesn't work out." Vivian looked down at her mouse. "You can share screens, yes?"

"Yeah?"

"Do so. I'd like to see these changes myself."

Garthex did what she asked with a few clicks, then fired up the game and jumped into a match. He went straight to the Talon dropsite as Nala, almost hoping that there wouldn't be anything there when he arrived.

But the words were still there, clear as day. Vivian narrowed her eyes. "Interesting."

"And this is just on my end? It's not in anyone else's version of the game?"

Vivian shook her head, then spun in her chair towards a third monitor. "I have a live version of the game installed on this computer, let me go to the same place."

A few minutes later, Vivian was standing in the exact same spot as Garthex was as Nala, looking at the same sand bank. The message wasn't there. "What the actual hell..." Garthex said.

"My thoughts exactly." Vivian turned in her chair towards the first monitor, he mouse clicking rapidly. "Let me open up the design suite and the in-house build so we can see..."

She trailed off, and Gathex sat in silence as she clicked around. Her eyes were focused, her jaw flexing as she worked. The speed of her clicking made his pointer finger hurt.

Then, all of a sudden, she stopped and leaned towards the monitor. "Impossible," she said.

"What?"

"Here." Vivian shared her screen with him, and Garthex sat up in his chair. A small part of him was giddy at the prospect of looking behind the curtain. The screen Vivian shared showed the design suite used to design the map of the Run, zoomed in on the Talon sandbank. The message was there, clear as day. "It's in the in-house build," Vivian said. "That wasn't there a few days ago when I last looked."

"What about the other messages?"

"I'm looking now." Vivian used her mouse trackpad to fling herself around the map, zeroing in on all the message locations. Each one was there, without fail. "Who made these changes?" she muttered, clicking through a menu and opening up a code tree that Garthex couldn't make heads or tails of. She clicked through the pages, her mouse cursor hovering around certain lines. "Nobody? No way."