Charlie ditched his phone and glasses and ran down to the photo lab.
“It has Vanhi.” he told Kenny and Peter.
“Is she okay?” Worry flooded Kenny’s face. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. It won’t tell me anything, and I’m a Watcher now.”
Peter shot a jealous look—he alone should’ve been Watcher level among the two of them—then stuffed it down. “So we only have one choice.”
Kenny nodded. “We have to destroy this fucking thing.”
Everybody looked stricken. They didn’t know if Vanhi was alive or dead. She had to be alive. They simply couldn’t process the alternative. It was Not True. They all sank inward, burying their fear in nonstop coding, pressing harder, faster to launch their virus. They knew anything else would be futile—Vanhi’s mom had already called the cops, but the Game would never let them find her, wherever she was. As the three coded, they did a good job of pretending not to be scared to death, although Kenny did run out and throw up in the hallway. This thing, this impostor god, it had to fucking die.
Alex knew there was only one thing left to do now.
He went home.
He wanted to see his mom. He’d see his dad plenty tomorrow. No question about that.
Alex found her on the couch, repairing one of his shirts, one of his favorites. She knew that. She was sewing with a fine red thread to match the color in the plaid.
He wanted to tell her, Don’t bother. I won’t need it.
Then he thought, I can wear it tomorrow. I will carry a little bit of you with me.
He was a bad son. He knew that. He had tried to make them proud. He never did. His mom deserved so much more, after all she’d suffered. Yet she loved him anyway. She couldn’t stand up to his father, she couldn’t stop the things he did. But she loved him. He did see that.
“What’s wrong?” she asked without looking up from her needle.
I’ve come to say goodbye.
“Mom?” He didn’t recognize his own voice.
“Yes?”
“I’m tired.”
“I know, baby.”
She put down her sewing and looked at him. “You father loves you. He’s doing the best he can.”
“I know.”
“Is everything okay at school?”
They hurt me today.
That’s what he wanted to say. But the shame was too great. Whatever she thought of him, he couldn’t bear her knowing how bad it really was. She was weak, he realized, too weak to protect him. All the love in the world wasn’t enough.
His mind was a house of pain, all exits locked.
He nodded, trying not to cry.
She swept his hair off his forehead. “Tomorrow will be better.”
“It will,” he said, and his heart broke.
An hour north, a man sat in the dark, staring at the message on his screen. He scratched his face out of habit and prayed for the message to go away, but it didn’t.
He was a killer—well, a retired killer, to be fair, if there was such a thing. His story was a miracle. He’d gone into prison bad and come out good. Pure as Christ.
The Game didn’t choose him by accident. It was curious about redemption. What were its edges and parameters?
The man had similar questions. Ever since his prison conversion, he’d wondered, Was God’s grace strong enough to wipe his sins clean? Who forgives murder in exchange for a loyalty oath? It sounded more like a mob boss than a holy spirit. But that’s what the prison preacher was selling, so he was buying.
Beats hell, he figured.
All his sins, gone. There was the drug use, and the trafficking that had landed him in prison. There were the habits that drove him to meth in the first place. The websites he visited, for urges that society would never understand. The arrangements in strip malls he made to satisfy those desires. What was so wrong with wanting something pure? Something unspoiled? He knew the answer to that, but in the darkness the excuses glowed like angels. Meth had dulled those drives. Given him something new to crave.
But now he was clean in all ways. Released early for good behavior. He found a church. A charity paid to fix his teeth. He met a nice woman, and they got married, with—surprise!—a kid on the way. Sure, he sometimes went back to the websites that started it all. But almost every time he refused to click Enter. Even now, just before the message had come, he was saying no. That’s how strong he was. He could face his demons and say no.
But the Game had turned everything upside down. It had started with an invitation, promising him what he wanted deep inside. Now it had blown up in his face.
His whole past was thrown back at him. Every transaction, every chat, every ad in Craigslist or Backpage, things no one knew, all tied together with a simple promise: Do this one last thing, and it will all go away. It was God’s grace in a fun-house mirror: redemption, not through abstention but through one last sin.
And if you had to sin, a last sin was the best kind.
The man knew he couldn’t trust this promise. How many times had he shot people after promising to let them go if they did what he asked? Now he was on the other end of the barrel, and he saw what they saw. There was no choice.
His wife called from beyond the locked door, “Come to bed!” That settled it. He was not going to trade clean sheets, a pretty wife, a kid on the way, for a prison cot and a sharpened toothbrush in the spleen.
So he took the clean gun out of the shoebox in the attic. Why did I keep the gun? I could’ve thrown it in a lake. Did I always know this day would come?
The next morning, he gassed up his car and looked at the photo of his target one last time, before he put a match to it, and wondered what the guy had done. They’d always done something. They always had it coming. Regardless, the guy was nothing to him. Just some asshole who owned a restaurant named Charlie’s.