Vanished: City of Lies #1

by E. J. Larson

  He loved games. Helping one of his friends by testing a game was one of his favorite hobbies. After graduating from design school, or while still there, many of his friends had ended up in game development. Carter had started his own small gaming company when his game SteamPower had become a surprise success on download platforms. It was about the fictional life story of a worker in the age of industrialization. Steam engines were everywhere and a gloomy atmosphere floated across the screen in every scene. The goal of the game could be chosen by the player - you either opted for wealth or family, and in a way the two were both conditional and mutually exclusive. By now, the sequel had been on the market for three years. The gaming world was eagerly awaiting the third installment in the series, which stood out for its diverse story world. Daedalus Entertainment had announced the new game well in advance and the date was approaching mercilessly.

  Only a little light penetrated through the closed shutters in front of the windows. They shielded the sun as best as possible so that the apartment didn't heat up even more. Despite the pleasant effect of the blackout, it was time to finally open the windows again. By now the front of the house was in shadow, so there wouldn't be too much warm air coming in. Jasper pushed open the window and took a deep breath. Yes, he needed that now. When he turned back to the room, the stink of leftover food and dirty clothes assaulted his nose. Another unpleasant side effect of the summer heat that didn't mix well with his personal mess.

  With a broken console, he was no help to Carter and if it was the game, there wasn't much he could do about it anyway. A few hours away from the screen would be good for Jasper. He had already spent half the weekend in front of it and wasted valuable time with a game that drove him to rage. A little exercise and something productive to do would be good, he thought.

  It wasn't that he didn't have alternatives for how to spend his weekend. But he had felt obligated to Carter to deliver an initial report on SteamPower 3.

  The ringing of his phone snapped him out of his musings. Variety - at last. He would deal with Carter later. When he saw the caller's name on the display, he was briefly tempted not to answer after all. Novalee was not only his colleague, but also the toughest test of his frustration tolerance ever born.

  "Yeah," he growled passive aggressively into the receiver before he knew what she wanted from him this time.

  "Jasper, we got the job," she squealed euphorically.

  He understood her words, but could not place them.

  "What kind of assignment, and why are you calling me on a Saturday night about it?"

  "The event agency FU.Ture, you mountain troll," she explained little charming as always. "The confirmation for the first date just came in the mail."

  "Fine, and why are you calling?" Jasper began pacing back and forth in his living room. The pent up energy of the day had to go somewhere. For hours he had sat and had to restart the console over and over again because the picture had frozen like it had only minutes before.

  "Because I thought that meant something to you. But I guess I was wrong," she hissed irritably now, too. He could picture her small, pale face turning red with anger beneath her tousled dark hair. It amused him that she went through the roof like a rocket every time he provoked her.

  "Wow, you're touchy again, princess. Didn't you take your pills?"

  "How can you be so self-righteous?" she snapped back. "Why did I just assume your job meant anything to you?"

  "Now don't get all high and mighty. This wasn't the first job we've gotten, nor will it be the last." He knew things had been a little sparse lately in terms of new assignments. But his colleague was just acting like they'd be out on the street next week because of it. So then they were doing media relations for this event agency. No need to make such a fuss. It was just some job. "Or are you hoping for invitations to exclusive events?"

  "I don't care in the least. But, Jasper, I'm warning you, don't build shit this time."

  The virtual index finger of horror pointed right at his forehead. Novalee had this tic. Whenever she narrowed her eyes and threatened him - which she did more often than was believable - she usually pointed the index finger of her right hand at his forehead like a slender pistol. Surely she was doing the same at this moment.

  "I'll be good, like always," he promised with a grin.

  "I'm sure no one's called you good yet. I'd be fine if you just didn't fuck it up," she returned, hanging up without a word of goodbye.

  Novalee was admittedly a very special person in his life. A constant source of drama and always good for some entertainment. Every conversation with her more or less ended in an argument, but they still worked together like two well-rehearsed cogs in Swiss clockwork.

  On his way to the fridge, he considered his options for the evening. The living room looked like a battlefield. Dishes, wrappers from snacks, countless bottles and cans, and more clothes than belonged in the average living room. It got worse rather than better on the way to the kitchen. So cleaning up would be a very appropriate activity. Then again, it was Saturday night - the perfect time for socializing. Where had Milo been all day again, anyway?

  One last, ice-cold orange soda was still there. Someone had to do the shopping too. Hopefully Milo had been thinking the same thing and that was why he was on his way. It was quite possible that his roommate had been home until half an hour ago. Jasper had been oblivious to his surroundings as he played, as he often did. He pulled the tab and let the excess pressure escape with a hiss.

  The door flew open and his missing roommate stumbled in. Loaded to the tip of his nose with purchases, he tried not to let the daring stacking structure collapse. Jasper set the can aside without so much as a sip, and took some of his load from Milo. Still, some of the nondescript objects slid to the floor.

  "Oops," Milo commented, grimacing. "Okay, it was predictable that I wouldn't succeed in getting safely into the kitchen with that. The door is and always will be my final opponent."

  He shrugged and continued to chew his gum, unmoved. Whenever Jasper or Milo took care of the groceries, it was high time for that. Grateful that this time it had been Milo's turn when it should have been his, Jasper refrained from saying something stupid.

  "What else is going on with you tonight?" he asked instead.

  Milo slid soda can after soda can from a six-pack into the fridge and looked at Jasper over the fridge door.

  "Hand me that one."

  He pointed to some prepared foods that he apparently wanted to store in there as well.

  "What's that?" Jasper asked after a skeptical look at the welded aluminum shell.

  "Lasagna," Milo answered his second question first. As he put the groceries away, he finally got to the topic that Jasper was much more interested in. "Tonight I still have to go to the Burton vs. Dakota fight and then to Lace. Do you want to go?"

  "Boxing?" Jasper speculated. His friend and roommate nodded wordlessly. Actually, the testosterone-filled air at such sporting events wasn't his cup of tea. But before he painstakingly coordinated with Milo for a time afterwards, he'd just go with it. He knew there was no way Milo was going to skip the fight, because it was now his job to go there and cover it. And duty was duty.

  "Alright, who else is coming?"

  "So knew you'd ask that." Smirking, he scratched his scalp under the short-cropped hair he called a hairstyle.

  "Now tell me," he demanded more forcefully as Milo marched out of the kitchen. Jasper followed him, not wanting to let him get away without an answer.

  "Hey, is that SteamPower 3?" his roommate deflected. Milo had spotted the freeze screen on the TV and stepped closer curiously.

  "This is what SteamPower 3 should have been, but this is how Daedalus can forget about the release date. The game is complete junk." He shrugged. "Or the console's trashed."

  He didn't have to sugarcoat things in front of Milo. His roommate was at least as passionate a gamer as Jasper himself. He knew how eagerly the fan base of the two predecessors waited for t
he third part of the series. Yet in this state the game was simply not marketable. The story was stunning - as with every game Carter developed - but the programming behind it wasn't convincing this time. Why that was, and why Carter gave him such an immature product to test, was a mystery to him.

  "Sucks. Do you mind?" Milo held out his hand.

  "Sure, knock yourself out," Jasper gathered the gamepad back up and handed it to him. "But please don't throw the controller right into the screen when the crutch hangs up again."

  "That bad?" the journalist asked skeptically.

  "Why do you think the screen is there?" Jasper raised his eyebrows and restarted the console. "I certainly didn't hit pause because I wanted a soda in the middle of a fight..."

  "Crap, I was really looking forward to this game." As the home screen appeared, Milo got an overview of the two-year-old game console's stats with a few clicks. "Nope, this thing is perfectly fine. The CPU is normal and there's no crash reports either. It must be the game."

  Jasper ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He had been afraid of this. For the life of him, he couldn't fathom what had happened. Carter ran his shop conscientiously. The team had been working on nothing but this game for three years. Mistakes like this just didn't happen.

  "Let's go talk to Carter tomorrow, maybe we can help save it." He felt committed to his job of testing the game. His job was to get the most out of the final product. While he wasn't a professional developer, for most engines he knew what problems could be fixed and how. He had hung around with hobbyist developers long enough for that. Something was very wrong.

  "Okay, if you need help, you can count on me," the dark-haired journalist with the deep-set eyes assured him, a little too motivated. Milo needed his sleep like a baby, or he would get meowy.

  "Don't you have to work occasionally? You know the release date and there would be a lot of work to do, surely?" Jasper warned his friend.

  "Oh, sleep is overrated and I don't have a girlfriend anyway."

  "Speaking of which. You were going to tell me why we were going to Lace," Jasper reminded him of his actual question.

  "My new colleague Olivia wants to meet me there and I thought it would be nice to get to know her a little better. After all, I was new at the job once too and she's really got it rough," Milo explained a little too thoroughly. "Did you know that she succeeded Delia Gupta?"

  Something rang in the back of Jasper's mind at the name. Still, it took him a moment to make an association.

  "The one that disappeared a few weeks ago?" he finally asked.

  "Yes, exactly," the journalist confirmed. "She's also bringing a friend, by the way."

  "Uh-oh," Jasper smirked. "I wonder what that means. A grab bag. Have you made up your mind yet?"

  With a pitying look, his roommate shook his head.

  "You really can't be helped, can you?"

  "Nope," Jasper returned.

  5. Quinn

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD SHOULD be right, Quinn thought. She wandered the busy streets of the strange city with her two suitcases and backpack, looking for her new address. It had looked simple enough on the map, but there hadn't been billboards and neon lights everywhere on the map either. All of that drew her gaze and made her circle around the light like a moth. She'd probably been walking in circles for half an hour.

  On a pillar she saw the image of an unknown woman again. Gradually, Quinn became curious as to what it was all about. She paused and studied the poster. The woman with the bright smile had been missing since July, and someone was asking for clues to her whereabouts. An Internet address and a large reward were listed. She must have been a happy person if there were such photos of her, Quinn thought. She never looked like this - at least not since her father had died. What had happened to her?

  "So, what do you see?" Kate asked from the phone to her ear.

  "A street," she grumbled, annoyed. It should be easy enough, after all, she wasn't looking for Platform 9 ¾ but for a perfectly normal address in a perfectly normal city. But therein lay the problem. The town she came from consisted of two thoroughfares. The next largest town, where she'd gone to school and gotten her education, had less than a tenth the population of Fairfield. And that was the scale to which her navigational skills were limited. "Kate, I think I have to hang up or I'll end up like that missing woman on the wanted posters here because I'll never find my apartment."

  She was finally going to pull up the map app again to get her bearings. She had thought she had memorized the way from the bus stop. But in that case, she should have been there by now. Maybe she had underestimated the scale and turned too early.

  "What kind of posters?" Kate asked.

  "Some woman is missing," she explained what little she knew. "She looked nice, but the poster is older. They've probably found her by now."

  Quinn shrugged and continued her way past diners, shops, and insurance offices. Every shop window tempted her to step closer and see what was behind it, Not now, she told herself. She still had the whole year to do that when she finally found her apartment.

  "Okay, I wish you the best of luck and call me right back, okay?" Kate demanded on the other end of the line.

  "Yeah, I will," Quinn promised half-heartedly.

  She wanted to go home - whether that was in Fairfield or Wyoming. Pulling the covers over her head and sleeping until the next morning sounded like a tempting alternative to looking for a needle in a haystack.

  "Hey, you look lost, can I help you?" a man approached her.

  Quinn clutched her tools tighter. She desperately needed help or her search would take days. The stranger was at least ten years older than her and had an eccentric look. He wore dark-rimmed glasses and a suit combination that looked like latte macchiato.

  "Yeah, I could really use some help." Hopefully, she told him the address she was looking for. "Do you know how I can get there?"

  "Sure, no problem. I'll take you," the stranger replied as if they were old friends. His smile shone engagingly. Relieved that he really could help her, she followed the man on whom all her hopes rested.

  "You're new in town, aren't you?" he guessed correctly. "Where are you from?"

  Was this still small talk or was he asking her out? She lacked experience with such situations. Surely it was safe to give him an approximate. She memorized his appearance well so that later she could give a police sketch artist reliable information - heck, she'd draw him herself in a minute. His high forehead and narrow lips were characteristic.

  "I'm from Wyoming and I accepted a job offer here."

  "Well, that sounds like a huge step." He sounded as euphoric as she had been a few hours ago. Yet it didn't even concern him. By now, doubts were gnawing at her. Was it really wise to move to the big city and leave behind everything she knew and loved? "I'm sure you'll settle in quickly. Do you know anyone here yet?"

  "No, but I have a roommate who sounded really nice on the phone," she bragged, trying to keep the stranger at arm's length.

  "That's nice. Here we are." He pointed to an entrance in a narrow, black-plastered building whose ground floor housed an antique shop. Had she passed by here before? Probably not. The house would have stuck in her memory. So this was where she lived now? "Then I wish you a good start in Fairfield. Maybe we'll meet again sometime."

  "Yeah, thanks for bringing it over. I probably would have looked forever more."

  The sight of the house took her senses completely. She hardly noticed how the man moved away. Then he had disappeared behind the next corner.

  It was a gorgeous neighborhood. At the end of the short cul-de-sac, she could see into a spacious park. In the distance, something that might have been a pond or a discarded gum wrapper glistened similarly in the sunlight. The next morning, she was eager to take a closer look at the park. It was like a miracle she could afford a room in this location.

  She pressed the doorbell of Apartment 4. In a second, the moment of truth came. Was Jonah an attractive big city guy or m
ore of a bald old man who promised her a room and hoped for different? Oh man, hopefully neither. She couldn't have a guy hoping for more, and just as she didn't want to slobber all over anyone in vain. She had come to study and work. She'd have plenty of time for men when she got back to Wyoming.

  "Yes?" asked the sympathetic voice she already knew from the phone. The knot inside her loosened. Surely Jonah - no matter what he looked like - was a nice guy.

  "Hey, I'm Quinn, your new roommate," she told the intercom.

  "Wait, I'll come down and help you with your luggage. I'll be right down." She heard a thump, then all was quiet. Only seconds later, the door was yanked open and a nerdy man wearing glasses, beige cloth pants, and a white comic book shirt with red sleeves stood before her. It wasn't quite what she'd imagined her new roommate to be, but his goofy smile melted the last of her suspicions.

  "Pleased to meet you," he stammered, seeming unsure how to greet her. After some hesitation, she found herself in a half-hearted hug that felt like he'd never touched a woman before. But that was okay.

  She generously acknowledged his efforts to make a good entrance and let him carry the suitcase with her clothes upstairs. The tools she preferred to keep under control herself. On the second floor, from which a staircase led even further up, she entered her new apartment. At first glance, everything appeared spotlessly clean. Somehow she had imagined it differently. She would be living with a student and expected more of a dingy bachelor pad. But this place looked like a cleaning crew had just marched out five minutes ago. Acknowledging, she nodded. Even the sofa's upholstery was spotless. Later, she'd look for chip crumbs in the cracks-something Jonah had to have missed. It couldn't be that he was so much neater than she was.