Anna was mad as hell. The apology offered by Mia had been superficial. She could live with that, but it was more that the bitch had kept her from so many stories that made her angry. Also, she had no interest in Damian, only professional, so the whole thing had been without reason.

Nevertheless, as soon as she had received the login information from Damian, she logged off and immediately called Josh. “Josh, I’ve gained access to Aragoth’s personal account. We might be able to find something more about Marcus there.”

“We can’t use illegally obtained information.” Josh’s answer fell immediately and with little room for negotiation.

“My source swears that Aragoth gave the information to him personally,” she rebutted. “I just checked with some other sources, Aragoth is busy with a raid on a dungeon for the next few hours.”

“That’s good enough for the press, but not the law.”

“Yes, but if I invited you to watch along as I perused the information, you can still use it to steer your investigation, without it being illegal,” Anna pressed.

“It’s a very thin legal argument, even for you to access it,” Josh said hesitantly. “How credible is your source? Is it Damian?”

“Yes,” she replied immediately. She did not want to hide anything from her temporary partners. “If Aragoth personally has given the account information to Damian, then Damian is a whistleblower. Instead of giving us cherry-picked information, he has given us access to everything.”

“Will he be able to answer truthfully when tested, if it comes to that?” Josh was still not convinced.

“I bet my career on it,” Anna said without showing the hesitation she felt.

“It might very well be the case,” Josh said with a sigh. “Fine, but did you find out why he was so distant to you?”

“Yeah, let me just get dressed and I’ll head over to you at once. I’ll tell you on the way,” Anna said and hung up.

Ten minutes later she was sitting in a hovercar heading to Josh and Ben’s apartment. A minute after she had arrived at the apartment, Ben had already made his way into Dawnguard’s system. As expected, Aragoth had access to everything.

“Damn, they’re moving fast,” Josh mumbled as Ben found the correspondence between Dawnguard and Silvertech.

“Wait!” Anna exclaimed as they almost passed by a document. The title had caught her attention. “Is that an agreement? Damian said they were still negotiating.”

Ben opened the file, and just as the title of the file had said, it was a final agreement, signed by both parties.

“Damn, that’s cold,” Ben said as his eyes flew over the content. Anna was only a few sentences behind, but she had to agree.

“They’re agreeing to try and swindle as many voting shares out of the winners as possible. Rallying them under a pretence of wanting to abolish the Coffins,” Anna was summarising the agreement. “Then when every Challenge is over, they’ll hand the voting shares over to Silvertech.”

“Not exactly illegal if the contracts they make is airtight,” Josh said.

“Immoral though. Damn, I wish we could bust them for this,” Ben mumbled.

“Damian been right so far, why was he wrong about the phase they were in?” Anna asked.

“He might not have checked up on the information, but it seems it was just signed,” Ben said and pointed out the date that was just a day earlier. He scrolled through the correspondence quickly. “It seems that Dawnguard has been positioned badly in the negotiations because of Blue Lotus. The final nail was the achievement for First Village in the World. It worsened the deal for Dawnguard by almost ten percent. I think they made it to not lose even more.”

“That’s well and good, see if you can find anything about Marcus,” Josh said. “I want to know who that fucker is.”

Ben started scrolling through one database after another, but he could not find a trace of Marcus anywhere. It was like the man was a ghost. The only place he was listed was on Dawnguard’s guild roster. However, nothing else. With the protection Perennial had in place around player anonymity, they would not be able to follow that thread anywhere.

“Fuck, a waste of time,” Josh grumbled after thirty minutes.

Anna, on the other hand, had tuned the two officers out. She was busy writing draft after draft for the big scoop she had just made. “Well, we can still make life a little hard for him by revealing this story.”

“Sure, but I want to nail the bastard,” Josh replied and dropped heavily into the recliner across from her.

Another twenty minutes passed when Ben exclaimed, “I just found a hidden partition, filled with video files.”

Josh was out of his chair at once. “Why was it so hard to find?”

“I don’t know. I was just poking around, suddenly it was there,” Ben replied with a shrug and a baffled expression. “Wait, let me check something.”

A minute later, he explained, “Someone logged on with a ghost account which enabled access to the archive of video files, but it’s very weird. All of them seem to be made at the same time, which is impossible unless you take time to spoof the metadata, which takes time. And there are almost two hundred thousand files here. The first is just a minute long, but it seems to add another ten seconds every ten thousand files or so.”

“Well, we might as well check them out,” Anna said hopefully.

Ben looked at Josh. Josh shrugged. “Sure, why not. The fish hasn’t bitten so far.”

Ben opened the first video file. A gaunt-looking man appeared on the screen, his eyes wild and unfocused. Anna exclaimed, “It’s Marcus. I just saw him once, but I’ll never forget those eyes, so filled with hate.”

“Let’s play it,” Josh said, staring intently at the video of the man he was hunting. Ben pressed play.

“It’s the seventh hundred and twenty-second time that I can remember I’ve woken up on this date,” Marcus said with a sigh, held a small pause before he started rambling, “I wish these fucking videos I make for myself every time I go back in time would carry over. My memory is getting a bit spotty. I cannot even remember joining Dawnguard, or meeting Aragoth, but he trusts me. Anyway, time to list what I can remember.”

What followed was thirty seconds of him listing people he could remember hiring in the past. Ben shook his head. “This guy is certifiable. He believes he has travelled back in time.”

“Why did it cut off mid sentence?” Josh asked.

“The file ended,” Ben replied with a shrug.

“Let’s try the next one,” Anna said eagerly.

Ben complied. “This one is only forty seconds long.”

Marcus appeared on the screen again, this time looking very excited. “I don’t know what happened, but one of my video-files remained through the time warp, but only one minute of it persisted. What does this mean? However, I can’t remember making that specific clip. Does that mean I can’t remember the last lifetime?”

“Man, this guy is losing it, either it’s an elaborate prank, or he’s very delusional,” Ben commented and opened the next one. It was much like the other one. When they reached number five it changed.

“I can remember the first time the files remained, so it seems I can’t remember anything about the last three incarnations. Neither can I remember anything that happened in the game, only if it is something outside the games. Like hiring people, parties, victories. What does all this mean?” Marcus started musing.

Josh shook his head. “Let’s try and jump a few thousand files down.”

They started jumping in the different files. Marcus started rambling about Champions, pain, murdering people, and other things. Things that had not happened yet as well. He was becoming more and more unhinged. It was not until around file seventy-five thousand that they stumbled onto something of interest.

The file started with, “My memory is getting even weirder. Not only can’t I remember joining Dawnguard, now I’m beginning to remember a past that is not mine. Almost as if it was from another life, before the Scare. Going to MIT, voting against some delusional millionaire for president. Armageddon, hunkering down in a bunker I built. This is fucked up.”

It then went on to become the normal list, but with one very interesting part added, “I’ve to remember to hire Damian Pryce halfway through the first game, he’s a good analyst. It was because of him we won the Second challenge. He needs some experience working for Index first before he’s worthy of hiring.”

Ben paused it. “This guy hired Damian?”

“No, Damian hates the guy, warn me against him,” Anna said.

At the same time, Josh said, “No way. Also, the Second Challenge has not even started yet. They don’t even know what the game will be about. What the frak is he talking about?”

“He’s delusional,” Anna said. “Let’s skip ahead. Try number one hundred thousand.”

Ben complied and opened the file. The start was the usual crazy talk about time travel, they almost skipped it when Marcus mentioned Hannah Vixen. For Anna, it was like she was hit by lightning. She froze up, just staring at the monitor. She had not expected to be mentioned by the madman, but Damian had warned her.

“Play that part again,” Josh demanded of his boyfriend.

Ben complied and on the screen, Marcus started ranting again, “That fucking cunt Alvaraz, he fucking won. Somehow the bastard won, I just know it. He has vanished without a trace, I can’t find him. Just like the other seven Champions who won. Fuck I fucking hate that bastard. If I can’t take my vengeance on him, I’ll just take my vengeance on his girlfriend, Hannah Vixen. Fucking cunt, I’ll have Aragoth rape her over and over again, make her commit suicide. I’ll fuck—”

The file stopped mid-rant as it often did. Josh asked quietly, “Who’s this Alvaraz?”

“I don’t know,” Anna whispered, yet her heart ached at the mere mention of the name. It felt familiar, but she did not know anyone by that name.

“What the heck is going on?” Josh mumbled and motioned for Ben to move on. For the next hundred files, Marcus was raving about what he wanted to do to Anna, and what he hallucinated he had done.

“Can we try to move on?” Anna asked a bit shakily.

Ben nodded and moved ten thousand files further down. “With every one of them having the same date, and the sheer volume. He must have spent a year recording these. However, they all contain details about the Challenges that was announced less than a month ago.”

“Maybe he’s using the time-dilation in the pods?” Josh suggested.

Ben cocked his head. “Maybe, but they only dilate by a factor of two. Unless he has hacked it and is running a factor of fifteen or twenty times. Would still require a lot of time, but it would be doable. Maybe that’s why he has cracked?”

“May—” Josh said when his phone rang. His official phone, looking at the display, he saw it was his boss. “It’s the boss.”

“We’ll be quiet,” Ben said.

“Boss, what do you need?” Josh asked after accepting the call, putting it on speaker.

“I don’t know what shit you’ve stirred up, just giving you a heads-up. The Office of Professional Responsibility is on the way over. You and Ben need to stay where you are,” his boss said before hanging up.

“Fuck, I knew this was a bad idea,” Josh cursed. “Anna, you need to leave right now.”

“Okay,” she said and grabbed her things.

Ben called out to her, “Don’t forget this.”

He threw a datacube to her. She managed to catch it and looked confused at it. “What’s this?”

“The documents, I couldn’t copy any of the video files, too heavy encryptions. I’ve stamped the documents with an authenticity watermark from the BIS, meaning they’re above reproach. You can only read the files, not alter or copy them in any way,” Ben explained.

She sent him a big smile. “Thanks.”

In a flash, she was out of the apartment and down on the street. She was just about to call a hovercar when a luxurious black hovercar landed next to her. The door opened and a large bodyguard looking guy stepped out of the car.

“Miss Vixen, my employer would like to speak with you,” the beefy guy said. Anna backed up a bit.

A familiar voice drifted out from the interior, “Miss Vixen, I don’t mean you any harm. Would you please indulge an old man and join me? My chauffeur will drive you home.”

“Ken Masters?” Anna asked, baffled, having recognized the voice immediately.

The old man leaned forward so he could be seen. It really was him. Anna looked around nervously. ‘Why was he here? What was going on?’

“Please join me,” he said a bit more forcefully, and Anna found herself automatically obeying. She did not want to get into the car, but she did nonetheless.

“What’s going on?” she asked with panic in her voice as she sat down across from the richest and most powerful man in the world.

He just looked at her with sad eyes for a while, waiting for the bodyguard to close the door and the car to start moving.

Finally, he started speaking. “I’m really sorry for all that Marcus has done to you, I’m glad you for once survived.”

Anna was staring at him, uncomprehending. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re an innocent bystander caught up in his madness. I’m sorry or that,” Ken Masters said with a sad shake of his head. “I had not predicted that Damian would give you access at the same time as Marcus was trying to record more videos in a hope of more of it surviving the rewind. The man is stubborn. It has left me with a large conundrum. You’re aware of something no one should be.”

“I don’t understand,” Anna said. She felt like she should be screaming bloody murder, try to get away from this crazy person in front of her. However, she could not move an inch.

“It doesn’t matter, I need you to forget. I’ll deal with Ben and Josh in a moment,” Ken said and leaned forward, placing a hand on her head.

Anna’s eyes became unfocused and she slumped down a bit, before jerking up. She looked around confused, before catching sight of Ken Masters. She let out a small eep. “Mister Masters.”

“Miss Vixen, I’m glad you reached out to me for an interview. The information regarding Silvertech and Dawnguard is disconcerting but not against the rules, but it’s definitely immoral,” Ken said with a gentle smile.

“Interview?” she said baffled for a second when everything came rushing back to Anna. After discovering the information regarding the deal, she had tried to get an interview with Perennial. She had never in her wildest fantasy thought she would get a one on one interview with Ken Masters.

“Right, interview. Sorry, I’m a little flustered by your presence,” she said and pulled a camera she always carried out of her back. “Excuse me one minute while I get everything set up. I’m really sorry, normally I’m more prepared than this.”

“It’s quite alright, young lady,” Ken Masters said with a gentle smile. Anna was unable to see the small glint of sadness in his eyes as he watched her bustle around to prepare for the interview she never had requested.