“Not really,” Jemma said. “From what I understand, the quests are single-player challenges until you reach level fifteen, and then players either group themselves or are grouped in some way by the game, and the challenge is to work together. Maybe we need to find someone who has played the game to obtain additional information.”
“Were there other players logged in when the three missing boys were logged in?” I asked.
“Sure,” Jemma said. “A lot of players seemed to be logged in at any given time.” She frowned. “I was going to try to use Zane’s account to reach out and contact some of the others, but I never got that far. Maybe we can send a message to one of the other players who’ve been mentioned and see if they’ll respond.”
“I remember the names Zork, Halo, Nomad, and Reaper,” I said.
“Reaper was the one who was supposed to meet with Zane, Kalen, and Trevor. I have a weird feeling about that,” Jemma said. “Let’s try the other three.”
“What are you going to say?” I asked.
She looked at the screen. “I think I’m going to say that I’m a friend of Zane’s who knows he’s missing and is trying to track him down. I think I’ll just ask if the gamers I contact are willing to talk to me. I’m not sure they’ll want to chat in person, but the message board used in the game is too public, so I’ll create a private chat room for them to log into. I just have this feeling that there’s a predator out there using this game to recruit kids for one reason or another.”
“What reason?” Josie asked.
“I don’t know,” Jemma admitted as she typed.
“Did you share what we’ve found out with Deputy Todd?” I asked Parker.
“I did. The man seemed unimpressed by my research. According to Todd, there seems to be evidence that the three boys planned to run away together. I guess he found texts to support this. And that may be what happened, but if the boys planned to run away, why didn’t they just meet up and go? Why spread things out over three days?”
“Maybe they wanted to make it look more like an abduction than a runaway type situation,” Josie suggested.
“Maybe,” Parker agreed.
“I feel like both scenarios could be true,” Jemma said. “It seems to me that if there is a someone who is using the game to recruit kids, then this someone might convince these kids to run away.”
“Run away to where?” I asked.
Jemma shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a commune. Maybe the person who’s using the game to recruit teenage boys is a cult leader of some sort.”
“Okay,” Parker said. “Then how do we put a face to this guru?”
“It seems that the key to finding out who might be using the game would be to find someone else who has made it to the upper levels of the game,” I said.
“What about one of the kids who were on the other two teams the guy at the comic book and video game store mentioned,” Jemma wondered. “One team is based in New Mexico, and the other is in California.”
“Do you have a way to track them down?” I asked.
“Maybe. Give me a minute. I’m going to message Zork, Nomad, and Halo first to see if I can get one of them to respond. Once I do that, I’ll see if I can find anything relating to the two teams who reached the final level before the team from Gooseberry Bay.”
After several hours of phishing, Jemma was still unable to track down the real names of the three individuals from New Mexico who had completed the game, but she had found their usernames. Two of the three usernames were no longer being used in any game that she could find, but one of the usernames, Xenon 1426, had been used recently in another multiplayer game that Kalen had played from time to time. Taking a chance that the Xenon 1426, who was currently playing Ultimate War, was also the Xenon 1426 who was part of the team to make it to the final level of End Days, Jemma messaged him. No one answered for a good half hour, but eventually, Jemma received a reply.
“So what are you going to say to this person?” Parker asked. “Are you going to pretend to be a player looking for information?”
“No. I think I’m going to pretend to be Ainsley and tell Xenon 1426 that I’m a private investigator trying to find a missing teen. This may scare the kid away, assuming that Xenon 1426 is a kid, which is not something we know with any degree of certainty, but if no one from this group has leaked the details of how the game works beyond a certain level by now, then someone has convinced them to keep what they know to themselves.”
Jemma typed out her response to Xenon 1426’s inquiry and waited. After a few minutes, a link to a chat room appeared. Jemma followed it. Once she was logged into the chat room, she explained about the game and the missing boys and wondered if the person she was chatting with was one of the first three to conquer the game, End Days. Eventually, Xenon 1426 answered that he was. He asked what she wanted to know. Jemma explained that we really just wanted to track down the three missing boys and that it was our belief that the game might have had something to do with their disappearance. She asked if he was willing to share his experience with the final levels. He messaged back that he was sworn to secrecy as to the content of the final levels, but Xenon 1426 would say that after the final level was reached and conquered, he and the other two
