Chris was a man trapped. The worn faux-leather gaming chair, had become a prison. His command center, the multi-monitor setup that had once felt like the cockpit of a starship, now felt like the four walls of a rapidly shrinking cell. He existed in a state of perpetual, compulsive refreshing.
He'd click the refresh button on the Upshur County Community Forum, his eyes scanning the page for new posts with the frantic energy of a day trader watching a stock market crash. He'd tab over to the local news website, hitting F5 again and again, praying for no new updates. He felt like a rat in a maze, and he was starting to suspect that the walls were electrified.
Then, it happened. A new post, written in the unhinged, glorious fury of all capital letters, exploded onto the forum page. It was from a woman named Violet Radclyffe, the mother of a local teenager named Caleb who was, by all accounts, a certified tech genius.
"I CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED. A SHERIFF'S DEPUTY JUST LEFT MY HOUSE. SHERIFF MILNER SENT HIM HERE TO QUESTION MY SON, CALEB, ABOUT SOME STUPID FACEBOOK POST. MY SON IS A GOOD BOY, HE GETS STRAIGHT A'S, HE IS THE CAPTAIN OF THE CYBER-PATRIOTS TEAM. AND NOW HE'S BEING TREATED LIKE A CRIMINAL. THIS IS HARASSMENT, THIS IS AN ABUSE OF POWER, AND I'M CALLING MY LAWYER. AND THE WORST PART? THEY HAVE A WARRANT FOR MY SON'S INTERNET RECORDS!"
The word WARRANT seemed to leap off the screen and punch Chris directly in the stomach. All the air rushed out of his lungs. A jolt of pure, ice-cold terror shot through him, so potent it made the hairs on his arms stand up.
A warrant.
This had escalated. This wasn't a prank anymore. This wasn't a meme or a hashtag or a funny sign at a local restaurant. This was a legitimate criminal investigation, with signed papers and legal authority and men with badges showing up at people's houses. His fun little side quest had just triggered the main storyline, and it was a high-level one he was nowhere near prepared for.
His bedroom suddenly felt claustrophobic. The walls seemed threatening. The glow from his monitors, once a comfort, now felt like the harsh glare of an interrogation lamp. He was a troll caught in the open, exposed in the harsh light of the real world, and the game warden was coming.
His panicked mind scrambled for his only tool, his only advantage. He frantically used his [INSPECT] ability on the mother's all-caps post. The data window confirmed what the text already screamed.
[Poster: Violet Radclyffe]
[Status: Enraged, Protective (Lioness Protocol Activated)]
He didn't want to know what the Lioness Protocol was, but it sounded terrifying.
He opened a new tab and navigated to the Buckhannon Record Delta website. The story was already there, on the front page. He scanned the article, his heart pounding a frantic drumbeat against his ribs. The data confirmed his worst fears. Mayor Thompson, leveraging his political influence and his manufactured outrage, had successfully convinced a local judge to issue a subpoena.
But it wasn't a wide, sweeping request for data. It was a targeted strike. The subpoena specifically named five students, the five members of the Buckhannon-Upshur High "Cyber-Patriots" competitive team. It was a flawed, arrogant, and deeply foolish assumption on the Mayor's part. He was so convinced that only a teenage tech prodigy could be behind the "Bucky Watcher" persona that he had focused the entire initial investigation on them.
Chris's name was not on the list. Not yet.
But he knew, with the cold, hard certainty of a player who understands spawn patterns, that this was only a temporary reprieve. The police would hit five dead ends. They would go through Caleb Radclyffe's internet history and find nothing but homework assignments and conversations about overclocking his graphics card. They would clear all five teens. And then, inevitably, the investigation's scope would widen. They would start looking at other possibilities. The shield of the Mayor's flawed logic would dissolve, and Chris would be left exposed.
He couldn't let that happen. He had to act. He had to create a diversion.
His brain, honed by years of MMO raids and strategy games, kicked into high gear. When you can't fight the boss head-on, you pull aggro. You create a distraction so bizarre, that the boss's attention is diverted elsewhere. He thought back to the morning, to the silent, creepy army of garden gnomes all staring at his window. It had been an accident, a glitch. But maybe, just maybe, he could turn that into a feature.
A desperate, half-insane plan began to formulate in his mind. He would use his [Probability Manipulation (Minor)] skill, his Nudge, to make the now town-wide "wandering gnome" phenomenon seem like a more pressing and bizarre case. If he could nudge a few more strange, inexplicable pranks into existence, a string of weird property mischief, surely that would take precedence over a single Facebook post. Sheriff Milner was a practical man; he'd have to focus on the tangible crimes, not the digital ones. Chris would nudge the Sheriff's cognitive priorities away from the "trolling" case and toward a full-blown "Gnomepocalypse."
It was a terrible plan. It was a long shot. But it was the only plan he had.
He pulled up the Upshur County Sheriff's Department website on his monitor. He found a professional, smiling headshot of Sheriff Milner. This was his target. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves. He focused on the image, on the abstract, intangible concept of "The Sheriff's Investigative Priorities." He pictured the Sheriff's to-do list, the #MusketGate case file sitting on top. He pictured a new file, labeled "BIZARRE STATUE MIGRATION WAVE," being placed on top of it.
He prepared to activate the Nudge ability. He gathered his will, ready to commit the 0.25 EP, a quarter of his current energy reserves. He was about to do it, to push the button, to roll the dice on the fate of every garden gnome in a two-mile radius.
Just as he was about to commit, a stark white pop-up slapped itself into the center of his vision. It appeared with an aggressive, instantaneous finality, no fade-in, no gentle warning. The spinning hourglass of ModBot_734 seemed to mock him.
[SYSTEM STABILITY UNIT 734]
[VIOLATION WARNING: User is attempting to manipulate the cognitive priorities of a primary civic authority figure during an active investigation. This is a Tier-3 Violation of the User Agreement, Section 9 (Interference with Active Legal Investigations of Ordinaries). Ability [Minor Probability Manipulation] will be placed on a 60-minute cooldown if User proceeds. Cease and desist immediately.]
Chris stared at the message, a wave of cold dread washing over him. The ModBot. His bureaucratic, fun-hating nemesis. It had anticipated his move. It had cut him off at the knees. The one tool he had to influence the situation, his only hope for a desperate diversion, was now locked behind a direct threat from the System itself. A sixty-minute cooldown. In the fast-moving world of a criminal investigation, sixty minutes was an eternity.
He was trapped. His plan was dead.
The next hour was pure, uncut agony. Chris was a prisoner in his own bedroom, his powers effectively useless. All he could do was watch. He sat there, helpless, as the digital world churned on without him.
Just as he had feared, the parents of the other four targeted teenagers began to post on the community forum. One after another, their angry, frantic posts appeared, each one a fresh stab of anxiety in Chris's gut.
"Sheriff's deputy was at our house too! My daughter is on the honor roll! This is insane!"
"What is happening in this town? My son builds websites for local charities and now he's being treated like a hacker?"
Each new post was a confirmation. The investigation wasn't just a threat; it was real, and it was proceeding exactly as Mayor Thompson had planned. Chris felt utterly, completely helpless. He was convinced it was only a matter of time. He pictured the deputies methodically working their way through the list of five names. Five dead ends. And then what? Who would they look at next? Their criteria would expand. From "tech-savvy teens" to "anyone with a known interest in computers." From there, to "anyone with a history of online arguments." His name had to be on one of those lists. He was doomed. The ordeal was at its peak; the threat was imminent, and he was powerless to stop it.
The next day passed in a blur of anxiety. Chris barely left his room. He expected a knock on the door at any moment, the heavy, official rap of a Sheriff's deputy. He jumped at every sound—the mailman on the porch, a car door slamming down the street. The tension was unbearable.
Late in the afternoon, he heard Pete's voice from the kitchen. He was on the phone, and he was laughing. It was a deep, genuine belly laugh. Confused, Chris crept out of his room and down the hall, his heart pounding. He stood in the shadows of the hallway, just out of sight of the kitchen doorway, and listened.
"No, no way," Pete said into the phone, his voice choked with laughter. "You're kidding me. Chris? My Chris? Nah, couldn't be."
Pete paused, listening to the person on the other end. Chris's blood ran cold. They were talking about him. This was it. "Oh, I see," Pete said, another chuckle escaping him. "Well, that's hilarious. Yeah, I'll tell him you said hi. Talk to you later, Ed."
Pete hung up the phone. Chris heard him turn to Misty.
"You will not believe this," he said, shaking his head with a wide grin. "That was Ed down at the Sheriff's office. You know, the dispatcher."
"Everything okay?" Misty asked.
"Oh, everything's fine," Pete said, a fresh wave of laughter bubbling up. "It's just... Ed says Sheriff Milner actually had Christopher's name on a preliminary list of 'persons of interest' for this whole Bucky Watcher thing."
Chris felt his knees go weak. He leaned against the wall for support. He was right. They had his name.
"They had his name on the list because of some old complaint from years ago," Pete continued, "something about his video game forum arguments getting too heated. But Milner crossed the name off immediately. The Sheriff told Ed, 'Bob Thompson is convinced we're looking for some teenage hacker mastermind. Chris Day is thirty years old and still lives with his mother. That man is the opposite of a mastermind.' Milner didn't even consider him a possibility."
Chris listened from the hallway, the words washing over him. He felt a wave of relief so profound, so overwhelming, it almost brought him to his knees. He was safe. The investigation had passed over him. He had been spared.
And why?
Not because of his powers. Not because of a clever plan or a daring escape.
He was saved by the simple, undeniable, and deeply humiliating fact that his own life circumstances made him an unbelievable suspect. Too pathetic to be considered a threat. He wasn't a criminal mastermind; he was just the thirty-year-old guy who lived with his mom. It was the most insulting, most degrading, and most wonderfully, gloriously welcome near-miss of his entire life. Not because he was clever, but because he was invisible.