Followup

[xp_dominion]

Thanks to Rogue's details about what happened last night, it is pretty clear we're dealing with Arcade again, although Jacob Lowenstein and his wife Lorina were both spotted ringside at the Pena/Green rematch in Las Vegas last night. Looks like he's letting staff run it or maybe sublets Murderworld out now.

So, bad news. Nothing recoverable at the site so far and unless Arcade's MO has changed or he got sloppy, that will likely continue to be the case. The building and land is owned through a shell company for foreign investment that disappears into a maze of subholdings and the like. It would take years to unravel it to try and find who specifically owns it. And I put in a call to EDIE and the Javits Centre. Seems the theatre was shutdown for staff training at the time our people were there, with no video records or corroborating evidence. We could try and leverage our GPS tracking on the mansion phones, but even then, we can't prove they were taken anywhere. Just that their phones ended up in the garbage out back.

In short, once again, Arcade covered his tracks well enough that there's no evidence that any kind of crime took place. I called in a couple of favours so they're going to spend a couple more days on the site but unless they turn up some evidence or stumble on a witness, there's nothing we can do through official channels.

The good news is that no one seems badly hurt by the encounter. But in the past, Arcade has been clear he doesn't target kids for anything potentially lethal. In our last Murderworld run in, he let them think other 'contestants' had been harmed but no one suffered more than a few minor bumps and bruises. Something doesn't add up. Hopefully we can uncover more in the future.

Comments

[xp_wildchild]

" Arcade has been clear he doesn't target kids for anything potentially lethal. "

hol up, the first time we dealt with this guy it was electric flyswatters and killer robots and star wars dianoga rooms full of dead pigs. Are we 100% sure he doesn't target kids for lethal stuff? I mean maybe he's been talking out his ass and he DGAF and we just believed him.

[xp_dominion]

Only time teens were targeted was in the attack in Vegas, which we know was under the command of Selene's henchman, Heinrich Klar, not Arcade. Afterwards, Nate had pretty strong suspicions that someone was manipulating Murderworld to help them escape and get to Klar, and suspected it might have been Lowenstein himself. When he took twelve teens in 2009 for his bizarre reality television superhero auditions, none of them were in real danger at the end.

Not to say the man isn't a psychopath or capable of doing violence to teens, but up until now, he hasn't. So what's changed?

[xp_cypher]

I’m working on getting all the replacement phones up and running, it’ll take a fair chunk of the day due to volume - the downside of security is that I can’t just run things simultaneously to get them going. I’m checking the dumped phones for anything before wiping them, but I don’t have high hopes given Arcade’s attention to data security in the past.

[xp_wildchild]

Huh. I missed the after action stuff b/c I was, you know, one of the teens, in the dianoga crushing room of pork.

So we've got Vegas where some other guy was running the show and killing kids and the giant pinball machine, and then the reality TV stuff, which was not lethal and just weird...

I mean maybe somebody got one of his old murderwarehouses and hates mutant kids?

[xp_dominion]

Remember when we saved his ass in 2017 and he said he was planning to retire? Maybe he sold off his old tech when he did or someone from his old organization decided to strike out on their own? It would explain the change in MO.

[xp_dominion]

It's a longshot but let me know if you get anything usable.

[xp_cypher]

Like... the villain version of franchising? It would explain Lowenstein being elsewhere…

[xp_clea]

What about the 2018 incident with Diskom? When we were trapped in the VR game called Predator X. I mean, it wasn't targeted strictly to kids, but people did die in that one.

[xp_longshot]

Speaking of Longshots —

Spent the morning reaching out via DX and MU sources across Manhattan through XFI.

- No reports of other missing persons or kids.

- The EDIE raffle looks real enough, but a little applied charm with their PR department revealed there's no record of a "Ben Hammil" or anyone we know having won tickets or on record at the event. The staff was proud to hype other mutant streamers being there... so one point for inclusion I guess, negative points for more questions.

- Will look at local hospitals. Maybe we'll find a contractor caught in the blast.

[xp_longshot]

@ Garrison — I want to take a little jaunt down to the Murderworld (what a name) to see what I can read, but it would be great if I didn't have to dance around your friends. Please let me know when the feds clear out?

[xp_tarot]

I went over all our records, and that seems to have been that company, Diskom and a former employee, Marcus Seed.

Perhaps worth re-investigating, he would have gone to trial by now.

[xp_clea]

Hmmm. That is true. But it feels too similar. VR experience and trapped inside a game.

[xp_dominion]

Agents will have one more day on-site and if they don't find anything, they'll be off. NYFD will still be around, so make sure you have a clipboard and some kind of ID badge as a cover.

[xp_longshot]

Will do just in case and thank you, but I've always been excellent at improvising. :)