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Chapter 24 - Jesse's Plan

Jesse spent all night and the next day reading up on viruses- antivirus software, programs, and techniques to get rid of them. She gassed up her car, threw away the burner phone, and polished her trusty baseball bat. Jesse hoped desperately that she wouldn't have to use it. Movement would exacerbate her injury, even break the fragile stitches. But her plan wouldn't require much of that at all, if it went according to plan.

Jesse had to assume that Ethan wasn't contacting her because he was not, in fact, Ethan. It was Blank she had to deal with now.

She told Blank to meet her at eight that night on the wharf, forty minutes from Ethan's apartment. If he waited for Jesse for ten minutes- she expected he'd be rather impatient- he would be out of his apartment for an hour and a half, at least. She prayed it would be enough time.

Jesse had no intentions of going to the wharf. She did, however, plan to enter Ethan's apartment, log onto his computer, and find a way to be rid of Blank once and for all. Jesse knew Blank had said there was a backup of him there, so that computer had to hold some clue to defeating him... she hoped.

So Jesse drove to Ethan's apartment building shortly after seven, parking the car down the road in a secluded parking lot. From there, she walked to the building and waited.

Sure enough, Ethan- or what appeared to be Ethan- emerged from the front doors, walked to his car, and pulled out of the lot. Jesse thought he appeared to be limping, but from so far away it was hard to tell- his shoulders bobbed unnaturally, and his feet seemed heavy. Jesse watched him turn north and head for the wharf, where she would not be waiting. 

Jesse fished Ethan's key from her pocket, slinking to the building front door. She- as always- took the stairs up to his floor, bypassing the elevator. A stab of pain shot through her stomach as she approached Ethan's apartment and she gasped, hand darting to her bandaged abdomen.

"Not now, please," Jesse grunted sarcastically. Walking up all those stairs wasn't the best of ideas, but the pain faded quickly. Jesse gritted her teeth as she entered Ethan's apartment.

"What...?" she breathed, flipping the light switch. Three of the bulbs were shattered, spraying sparks as they powered on, and one hung limply from its fixture. Its dim light revealed a dismal scene. The couch had been flipped, carpet torn, and mirror shattered. The bathroom door was leaning up against the wall, with the hinges torn off. Shattered glass littered the living room floor, and the TV had a hole in it, surrounded by a spiderweb of cracks.

Jesse gingerly stepped around a suspicious red stain, trying not to imagine what it meant. Obviously Ethan had put up a fight here... one she suspected hadn't gone well. She gulped. He would be fine- he just had to hold on a little longer...!

Jesse reached Ethan's little recording studio, which, to her surprise, seemed to be in perfect condition. She pushed the chair away from his desk, booting up the computer. As the systems awakened themselves, she searched Ethan's tabletop for suspicious items or notes. She pulled open the top drawer, which was full of scrap paper, covered in scribbled writing.

crankgameplayscrankgameplayscrankgameplays

"Oh my god," Jesse breathed, pulling out sheet after sheet of paper, all covered in Ethan's screen name. The drawer was full of it, what must've taken hours of writing and writing and writing...

At the bottom of the drawer, however, Jesse found a single black flashdrive, pinning down a final piece of scrap paper with only one word on it, written in thick strokes of dark red.

BLANKGAMEPLAYS

A chill ran up Jesse's spine as she took the flashdrive out of the drawer and turned it in her fingers. She'd never seen anything like it- the drive was cased in something like black granite or quartz. It was engraved all over in tiny little symbols. They appeared to be just letters, but altered and covered in excess markings. The drive shined, reflecting Ethan's desk lamp as Jesse rotated it. The light caught every letter, spelling out words too small for Jesse to read. This had to be the drive Blank had told her about in the warehouse- this drive was where it all started.

The computer was on now, so Jesse began to search for Blank's backup file. She ran virus scanners, searched his document folders, checked for background programs-... all to no avail.

"Dammit," Jesse growled, scrolling through yet another folder. Nothing caught her eye onscreen, but her gaze wandered back to the little black flashdrive from the desk drawer. Curiosity gnawed at her. She picked it slowly up off the desk, trying to make out some of the tiny text. But the odd markings and minuscule size made that impossible. 

She glanced at the clock- nearly eight. Soon Blank would know that Jesse had lied to him. Fear and desperation clawed their way into Jesse's mind, and she ran a hand anxiously through her hair.

She plugged the flashdrive into the computer, grinding her teeth nervously. 

"What do you got for me?" she challenged, opening the flashdrive's file. Jesse hovered the mouse over the drive's title: ethans_new_friend. She shuddered, opening the folder.

There were just three files inside.

Instructions.txt

BlankGameplays.exe

EthanNestorBackup.hmn

Jesse paused. Blank had told her that he downloaded Ethan's mind into a computer before installing himself - but it never occurred to her that he'd actually find Ethan's mind inside the computer.

"What the hell...?" Jesse murmured, clicking on the file marked with Ethan's name. The computer produced a popup, stating that it didn't have the necessary software to open the document. Jesse frowned, letting her mouse hover idly over the little file.

She frowned, moved the cursor away and went back to work.