Headsets For Fear

PRESENT 14 : NORA

Thirty days later

Things are improving with every day. I had never believed that the graph of this case would ever have such a positive slope. Ever since Margot came and taught me how to personalize the antivirus, the both of us have been working on it day and night.

Benji's website was growing more and more successful, with new people logging in every day. He had agreed to do some interviews for some news channels as well, who were going head over heels for him. Literally. He was the only topic of discussion for a long time.

Things like his lifestyle, his interests, his family, his background, were probed into time and again, and we couldn't always stop everyone from sneaking into his life. But Benji was enjoying the publicity, that was for sure. It was a good thing that our address had not been revealed yet. He came to the FBI headquarters every time he went out for some reason or the other. This way, we could ensure no one was stalking him.

Honestly, I thought it went a bit overboard at times, but the overwhelming amount of positive responses from people was enough to make up for it. Now, there was only one catch.

Several people were claiming to have been affected by the game these seven days, and many of them survived. This should mean, that the number of deaths should decrease. But there was nothing of that sort. No, they just remained the same. Which meant, the number of people the game could reach was increasing.

The game was growing more ferocious, more cruel.

But still, we were making progress. One step at a time. Everything would be okay.

I removed the headsets and turned towards Margot. "They seem to be okay. But the positive rays have decreased in magnitude, are you sure we can't do anything about that?"

Margot nodded. "We can. It's just going to take some time."

After Margot had examined my software, she decided that it needed a lot of work. And that work could only be done by our collective efforts.

She had made us shift to an old office. It was located at a dusty, mostly uninhabited part of New York. That was where Andrew's team used to work once.

It used to be a fairly populated place back then. But there was a bomb attack. The bomb had been placed right under the office where they worked, so that all of the members were dead even before they realised what was going on. Even though no one knew for sure how it happened, Margot and Andrew could guess who had done it.

And when Andrew died mysteriously, Margot was even more sure.

Apart from looking into the antivirus and finding out its loopholes, Margot asked me a lot about Andrew. What he liked apart from coding, how many friends he had, was he a well organised or an untidy man, and the like. She never shifted the focus from work to Andrew, but she would suddenly blurt out a question, and I would try to answer her with as much detail as I could remember.

Andrew had already predicted that after Amara suceeded in making the game, she would proceed to make it personalised. She would ensure that whoever was the unfortunate soul who came across the game, would experience very personal fears. The game would be capable of uprooting the person right from within.

So, he had already made the prototype of a code that could be used to make the antivirus strong enough to counter it. However, as I and Margot soon found out, it had many bugs. We had several members of the FBI try the software out, which they could by downloading it into their computers, and connecting it to a headphone. By the reactions that they gave and the feelings that they experienced, we could tell what was wrong with it and what wasn't.