City of Games

by Jeff Deck

“You make it very hard to tell, sometimes.”

  Kathryn slaps her notebook down on the side table. “All right. I apologize: I’m overcomplicating this discussion. I don’t need to know whether what you say is true. You’re the cop, not me. My only job is to keep you emotionally on task. So, that being said, whether Detective Ulrich met his end at the hands of aliens or at the bottom of the Piscataqua—if you did not kill him, you are not responsible. Do you understand?”

  “Sometimes you have to be the adult for someone else,” I say. “It’s too easy to shrug off responsibility.”

  “No, Allard,” Kathryn says, again with far more steel than I’m used to her showing. “It’s too easy to take responsibility for everyone else. To deny that anyone else can be an adult except you. That’s what you did with Hannah, too.”

  This is an error on her part. I’d been starting to listen, but dropping your name into the conversation is like dropping an atomic bomb into a gunfight. Instant game over.

  Kathryn doesn’t try to stop me from fleeing this time. She just asks, as I reach the door, “Are you still taking the escitalopram?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “And keeping the thought record?”

  Again, I fib: “Of course.”

  “Divya,” she says, “I want to believe you.”

  “I know,” I say, opening the door. “See you next time, Doc.”

  On the drive back to Portsmouth, I call Ethan Jeong to get an update.

  “Well, we’ve notified the public that a dementia-addled elderly man is wandering the streets of Portsmouth,” he says. “Ramirez found nobody home at Grieg’s house, and there’s no point in keeping the search secret—this is a mind-everyone-else’s-business kind of city, and we can use that.”

  “Hmm.” I don’t share Jeong’s faith in the public. In my experience, people around here only keep an eye out for others if those others are blocking their water view. But I could be wrong.

  “So I got the super-quick version of your story,” Jeong says. “I could use the expanded version—if I’m going to help.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t. It’s goddamn dangerous to mess with these Ports. Ulrich learned that the hard way.”

  “And you said he… was ripped open and eaten? By these creatures in metal suits?” He doesn’t sound disbelieving, but instead hungry to believe.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Let’s back up. I’m not sure I adequately explained what these Avariccians were like.”

  “You explained what they look like,” Jeong observes. “But not what drives them. Why would a whole caste of these… people be turned away from worshiping their god so easily? You said that Shaughnessy manipulated the Soldier Lord’s mind with his tools, or whatever, but then the Lord’s whole army rebelled too. What was in it for them?”

  “Maybe Chaum promised them all human parts,” I say. “I think… the Avariccians, or at least ones like Chaum, want to be human.”

  “That’s why the Soldier Lord took Milly’s eyes? Not just to see better?”

  I wince against windshield glare. “Yeah. I mean, it did enhance Chaum’s sight, too, I assume; since taking Chaum’s ears, my hearing has gotten a lot stronger. But—the eyes fit right into the human mask on its suit, Ethan. They all had masks with human faces wearing human expressions. ”

  “So they’d had contact with humans before Shaughnessy?”

  “Yeah, there were human-like sculptures in the pediment of the temple.” I remember the wrecked spaceship, the conclusions I drew that Doxe Ungam didn’t want to hear. “I don’t think they built Avariccia; I think humans did—or at least people pretty close to what we call human. Maybe those people were gone when these… aliens arrived.”

  “Or maybe they were still there, and the aliens killed them.”

  “True. I don’t know. Whatever happened… it was a long time ago. I think the Avariccians themselves have forgotten their own history, but Shaughnessy reached into Chaum’s brain and woke something up. Now Chaum’s harvesting human parts and talking about conquering Earth… it said it’d come for our world.”

  “But what’s Shaughnessy get out of this? Why start a civil war?”

  I frown as I arrive in the Portsmouth community parking lot. A couple rows over, I see a car pulling out, so I zip over and get ready to claim the spot. Another car belatedly comes into the row, sees me, and drives away again, defeated. “Not sure what Shaughnessy wants from the City of Games. Whatever it is, it’ll be easier for him to get with Chaum in charge rather than the Doxe and the Priest Lord.”

  I’m still reeling over how Shaughnessy outfoxed me and made me think that poor dead Ilana was the “sorcerer.” If only the Avariccians had a grasp on gender pronouns, they could have told me the fucking sorcerer is a “he” and not a “she.” I was suspicious about Shaughnessy’s dementia from the start—thinking that it was a lie to hide behind. Now it seems I’ve been proven right, but…

  No. What if I’m wrong about the dementia?

  “Okay,” I say, suddenly bursting with inspiration. I walk in circles around the parking lot, blind to my surroundings. “I think I know what Shaughnessy wants. I know why he’s so obsessed with mind control… because his own mind is disintegrating. Let’s say the dementia is real, though not as advanced as we’ve been led to believe. Shaughnessy’s brain is still betraying him.”

  “But he’s got a place accessible from his own attic, that allows people to Wager anything they want. Including—”

  “—Including their own brain, for someone else’s,” I finish for him. “Doxe Ungam and Priest Lord Guhnach wouldn’t allow Shaughnessy to make that Wager without the other party’s permission… and who’d be crazy enough to put their own brain up as the stakes? But Chaum would allow Shaughnessy to gin up a rigged Wager to get himself a new brain.”

  “Whose brain would Shaughnessy want?” Jeong says. “One of the Wager Lords’? Do they even have brains like ours?”

  “No—why would he have to settle for an alien brain, when he could get a human’s? Shaughnessy let Milly think that she was… doing whatever she was trying to do, while he took the opportunity to study her, to see if her brain was worthy of a swap.”

  “Oh no.”

  “He’s going to take Milly’s brain, Ethan. We need to stop this fucker!”

  “I agree. But we need to do it in a… methodical way.”

  I’m no longer listening. I tell him I’ll call him back. I’ve thought of an avenue for finding Shaughnessy. She wears a flag pin and seems content enough with mind-warping wallpaper, but she might not sit well with outright murder…

  12

  I’m filled with nervous energy; I can’t stop. I barrel down Court Street, then cut up the side street they’ve blocked off from traffic to commemorate the old slave burial ground, then take a left on State Street past the grim brick edifice of the Rockingham Building.

  He’s going to take her brain—no! The thought is even worse to me than Milly simply wasting away in captivity in the Tower. At least she’d still have her own thoughts and grey matter, not a diseased substitute…

  The law office of Grieg, Sununu & Cloud is open for business. Patricia looks up in surprise as I burst into the mansion foyer. “Officer Allard?”

  “I need to know where Grieg and Shaughnessy are,” I say. “A woman’s life is at stake.”

  “Attorney Grieg isn’t here,” Patricia says nervously, “and I’ve already told that Latina woman from the FBI that I don’t know where he is, or Scott Shaughnessy for that matter.”

  I glance at the walls. I don’t trust anything about this place. “Can we speak in confidence, outside? Please?”

  Grieg’s receptionist-slash-confidante purses her lips. “I really don’t…”

  “Please.”

  I’m banking on that shred of humanity I witnessed in her the last time I was here. The little scrap of doubt that was enough to make her ask me who, exactly, had said that her boss actually kills people. And now I see that Patricia’s stifled
little better angel has won out again, because she get up from her desk and follows me outside.

  “Whose life is at stake?” she asks me in a whisper.

  “Officer Milly Fragonard’s,” I tell her in an equally muted voice. “Shaughnessy is the one threatening her. Surely you heard he’s demented and on the loose.”

  She nods reluctantly. “I—do you really think Mr. Grieg is hiding him somewhere?”

  “What do you think?” I ask her. And I wait as she works out her answer.

  Finally, she says, “What you said yesterday… it bugged me. I’ve helped Sandy with a lot of questionable things over the years, in the name of keeping Portsmouth safe.”

  I nod, trying not to show my satisfaction at cracking her.

  “I looked into… certain records. For a few young people we had identified as cultists who have gone missing, or coincidentally died of opioid overdoses.”

  Cultists. Finally I’m getting somewhere with this woman. She goes on: “I found payments to a Portsmouth police officer from an LLC that Mr. Grieg uses. The same officer who’d discovered at least two of the overdose victims.”

  “Eddie Barndollar? Jill Haven?”

  “Yes,” Patricia whispers, wide-eyed.

  “Which police officer?”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t—I don’t want to say. Not yet.”

  “Do you know what the cultists are trying to do?” I ask carefully.

  She nods. “I know about the Ports, Officer Allard. I know they’re dangerous, and that the people in this cult are opening them recklessly wherever they find them, with no heed for the consequences. Even so… they don’t deserve to die for that. Without a trial or anything.”

  A thought occurs to me. “Patricia, thank you for being honest with me. I have to ask you about that wallpaper in Grieg’s office. Did it come from another world?”

  She gives a guilty start at that, but she does answer me. “Sandy told me about his visit there. It was years ago. One of those crazy zealots had opened a Port to this… truly nightmarish world, got herself killed doing it. Everyone in the place was a mental slave—Sandy called them thralls—slaves to this one man referred to as the Mesmerist. The Mesmerist ruled his thralls from a—I guess it was a Victorian-ish mansion with all manner of tricks and traps.

  “Ordinarily the councilors would close the Port and make sure nobody ever opened it again. But this one claimed a few victims from our world… including Sandy’s wife, Rebecca. The Mesmerist drew them into his house. So Sandy and a few of his fellow councilors, including Scott Shaughnessy, led a raid on the mansion.”

  She looks haunted. I feel a chill coming on myself, despite the summer sun.

  “I don’t know how they bypassed all of the Mesmerist’s traps, but they did. The Mesmerist was waiting for them in an upstairs parlor. Watching, as Rebecca and the other brainwashed people from our world did… unspeakable things to each other. The floor was slick with blood and other, uh, fluids. Sandy went berserk and he, and he says he cut the Mesmerist open.”

  “And he took a souvenir from that house?”

  Patricia shudders. “I’m not going to pretend to understand. Maybe something broke in him then… well. If Sandy had the capacity to kill someone then, what would stop him from killing again?”

  “So where does that leave us?” I ask as gently as I can.

  “I want to help you,” Patricia says. “I want the truth about what really happened to those young folks. But—I’m afraid he’ll find out. And I don’t know what’d happen then.”

  “Did you know that Shaughnessy has a Port in his attic?”

  Patricia’s mouth opens. “Oh, shit. No—no, I honestly didn’t.”

  “Your boss has kept you out of the loop,” I say. “Like with what he’s been doing to the cultists. Well—I figured out Scott Shaughnessy has been up to some sinister stuff. The old man’s been using that Port in his house on the regular, and he’s been mind-controlling people, and he himself killed at least one cultist. As I was figuring it all out, he escaped from Round Island, and I saw Grieg pick him up on the mainland.”

  “Oh, no,” she says.

  “So do you have any idea where Grieg would have taken Shaughnessy?”

  “Well,” Patricia whispers, “I do.”

  “Then let’s go there,” I say. “Now. I’ve got federal agents ready to make a move on my say-so.”

  “Wait! If you go there now, Sandy will figure out I betrayed him. I can’t—I can’t tell you where it is.”

  “You’ve got to, Patricia,” I say, as mildly as I can, ignoring the screaming in my mind. “People will die if you don’t. Even if Grieg isn’t capable of murder, Shaughnessy definitely is.”

  She thinks on it a moment. “I’ve got a check-in call with Sandy on the calendar for this afternoon already. I’ll figure out a way to invite myself out to the hideaway, if they are in fact there. Then I’ll get back in touch—give me your number—and that’s when you do your raid on the place, while I’m still there, and arrest all of us. So it looks like I’m as surprised as they are. That’s the best I can offer. I have a husband, I have two kids—I have to think of their safety, too. Do you understand?”

  I do understand. Having pushed this lead as far as I can, and hoping for the best, I move on to my next stop.

  Priest Lord Guhnach begged me to stash the Relic somewhere safe in my world. He wanted there to be no chance for the Soldier Lord to get it.

  But I can’t indulge the dead priest’s wishes if it means giving up a potential weapon against Chaum. The Relic has powers that can be unlocked—I’ve seen them in action. It’s a question of how to unlock those powers, how to wield them…

  …well, I suppose I’m sounding like Shaughnessy himself right now. I can only hope motivation makes a difference.

  I can think of one semi-trustable person who may be able to enlighten me about activating an otherworldly artifact.

  I drive down to the grocery store plaza and park near the Tenacious Trainers gym. Last time I was here, I discovered a body in the dumpster behind the place; the time before that was a break-in, during which I got caught by my former colleagues in the PD. So this gym doesn’t exactly have positive connotations for me.

  As I get out of my car, Jeong pulls up alongside me. He rolls down his window. “You never called me back.”

  “Hey,” I say. “Nadia’s gonna get spooked if she sees an FBI agent here. I’ve got this.”

  “I’ll wait outside,” Jeong says, shrugging, “but signal me if there’s trouble. This woman is still a cultist, no matter how much she pretends to be your friend. They’ve got something wrong upstairs.”

  I give him an exaggerated sigh. “Sure, I’ll be on the lookout for brainwashing. If I’m not out in an hour, call a SWAT team.”

  Jeong sends me off with a rueful wave. It’s a lull time for the gym, I see through the window; only a few people are using the machines. I march in and head for the front desk. There’s a familiar face there: the freckled young guy with the glasses who called himself “Trig” last we met. His face is buried in an e-reader like before, but he straightens out of his slouch at the sight of me.

  “Nadia around?” I ask him.

  “Out back,” he says. It looks like he’s considering offering his hand for a shake, but it never makes it over the counter. Awkward. “Good… to see you, Divya. Knock on the back door three times, and she’ll let you in.”

  That’s what she said? “Thanks, Trig. Good to see you too.”

  He blushes and I turn away, walking past the glistening, muscle-rippling bodies busy at the treadmills and exercise bikes. The Tenacious Trainers undergo grueling workouts together, but as I’ve discovered, some of the members of this particular chapter are softer than one might imagine. The gym makes a convenient cover for cultists to make their secret plans under the nose of the city councilors. Judging by the “oath” Sol claimed he and others have had to take, the cult nested within Tenacious Trainers intends to stay secret fo
r as long as it can.

  I head to the unmarked door set in the back wall amid large motivational messages painted in bright colors (CRUSH THIS DAY; YOU ARE A MILE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK; etc). I knock thrice, feeling silly.

  The door opens a crack and I see Nadia’s attractive face. “Couldn’t find a machine you liked, Detective?”

  “I need you to spot me,” I say. “Can you let me in?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Technically.”

  “I guess that’ll have to do.” Nadia opens the door. I follow. “Shut it behind you, please.”

  I do as she says. Nadia Chopin is wearing a tight-fitting tracksuit that brings out the green in her eyes. Her short blonde hair is pulled back. My heart speeds up as soon as I see her; completely unacceptable. She does not comment on the large, bizarre object I have tucked under my arm. I follow her down the unremarkable hallway to her office.

  I don’t know whether I expected a room adorned with souvenirs from Nadia’s journeys to other worlds, or one full of exercise equipment and manuals and awards from such-and-such iron-pumping competition of the Greater Seacoast. I’d be wrong in either case. Nadia’s hideaway resembles, at first glance, any office worker’s cubicle. Only with a closer look do I see the strangeness of the charts on the walls, which do not depict an org chart or a record of the gym’s revenue from the past year…

  They’re diagrams of the gateways between worlds, I realize: rendered as blandly as possible, in simple lines and captions created by mundane office software, but the implications are staggering. Even with most of the names hidden behind codes and abbreviations, it’s clear Nadia’s cult has charted hundreds of Ports, if not thousands, along with their locations (in latitude and longitude?) and their type (only thanks to my conversation with Sol at the Avariccian banquet do I understand what F, E, A, W, and Q represent).

  It would be devastating to the cult if the city councilors got their hands on these charts.

  “You ought to secure those better,” I say. “Your abbreviations and codes wouldn’t stop someone from figuring out each listing.”