Vendors sold fast food. Hawkers offered tournament programs and other Victorious-branded souvenirs.
Mahoney said, “Feels like we’re going into a combination of a prize fight, a rock concert, and a Star Wars convention.”
“With three million in Bitcoin to the winner,” said Philip Stapleton, Victorious Gaming’s security director.
“Why Bitcoin?” I asked.
Stapleton shrugged. “My bosses think it’s edgy.”
Stapleton was in his early forties, a former navy NCIS investigator who’d been shot in the hip in the line of duty, left the military, and joined Victorious two years ago.
We’d given him the gist of what had brought us to the event and a copy of Kristina Varjan’s photograph to distribute via text to his team. He’d been concerned that a wanted bomber might be in the complex, but we told him it was unlikely she was there.
He took us through open double doors into a sprawling exposition space. There were five raised stages, four of them set up to look like boxing rings but without the highest rope around their perimeters.
There were seats surrounding the rings and the main stage, fifty rows deep and filling with fans. Above each ring were four large screens facing the growing crowds. The pulsing techno grew louder.
Stapleton explained that during the preliminary rounds, each of the four rings would serve as a battleground for one of the four big Victorious games.
The first ring would feature contestants in Conker’s Bad Fur Day, the game Ali described the night before. The Ruins would play in ring number two, starring the Marstons, a couple in a dystopian world searching for their lost children.
Competitors in ring three would vie in Avenging Angel, which featured the avatar Gabriel in a fantasy scenario. Ring four’s contestants were looking to advance in Blade Girl, starring Celes Chere, a badass with mad martial arts skills facing danger in an unnamed urban setting.
I wanted to head straight to the Blade Girl ring but was stopped by a booming voice over the PA system: “Let’s get ready to rumble! Let’s get ready to be Victorious!”
The fans jumped up, raised their fists overhead, screamed, whistled, and stomped their feet. The music took on a frenetic, infectious pace and beat.
Stapleton led us to the central stage where Austin Crowley and Sydney Bronson, the young co-founders of Victorious, were dancing and imploring the crowd to join them. They were dressed like hipsters, Crowley in thick black glasses and a nerd cut and Bronson in a black-and-white-checkered jacket and a red porkpie hat.
I’d read up on them on the way over. Crowley and Bronson had met by chance at a party in Boston. Crowley was a sophomore and standout student at MIT who spent his free time gaming. Bronson was a bored freshman at Harvard who also spent most of his free time playing games.
In their first conversation, both said they thought they could come up with better games than any on the market. They decided to try, and they had enough success with their first effort that they both quit school. The rest was history. According to Forbes, six years after they left academia, they were worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
The music died. Bronson went to the mike, said, “That’s the energy we want in this room! Am I right, right, right?”
The crowd hooted and howled back its approval.
“We hear you,” Bronson said. “We see ya, and we feel ya too!”
The fans erupted again.
Over their clapping, Bronson said, “I am Sydney Bronson, chief visionary officer at Victorious! And I’d like to introduce my partner and our chief geek, the man who takes my ideas and makes them come alive, Austin Crowley!”
Crowley came somewhat reluctantly to the mike. His eyes swept the crowd, hesitated, then pushed on. He looked like he was suffering from stage fright as he said, “Well, do they make you happy? Our games?”
The crowd cheered. He gained confidence, threw his fist overhead, and roared, “Will Victorious rule the gaming world?”
The fans went wild.
“All right!” Bronson said, coming back to the mike and throwing his arm around his partner. “Austin and I welcome you to the Victorious world championships, the richest e-sports event on the planet, an event that is only going to get bigger and richer in the years to come!”
The men gave each other high-fives and then shouted in unison, “We declare these games open!”
Crowley threw both hands over his head, and Bronson pumped his fist and crowed, “First bouts start in five minutes!”
They waved and walked offstage.
Fans started to push toward the various rings.
I was about to suggest to Ned that we take a walk around when, across the sea of people moving in all directions away from the stage, I saw a woman dressed as Celes Chere gazing back at me. She had a green lanyard around her neck and a green badge that identified her as a contestant.
Pretty face, short, spiky blond hair, shiny white coat, and pale skin. She looked away, put on cat’s-eye sunglasses, and merged with the fans heading toward rings one and two. I stared after her, seeing the structure of her cheekbones, jaw, and nose in profile before the crowd blocked my view.
“Alex,” Mahoney said. “Let’s—”
I started pushing into the crowd, calling over my shoulder, “I think I just saw Varjan!”
Chapter 44
The current in the river of fans was moving against us, and we didn’t want to pull our badges and set off a panic. It was slow getting through, but we finally reached the left side of the stage and entered into a flow of people moving in the direction I had seen her.
“There she is,” Mahoney said.
I stopped to see him pointing at a woman about thirty yards away, also dressed as Celes Chere. But she had thirty pounds on the woman I’d just seen.
“Not her,” I said, catching sight of another Celes Chere, but she was too tall. In frustration I looked at Stapleton, who’d followed us. “Can we get up on the stage?”
He hesitated, and then nodded. “You’re sure it was her?”
“Not one hundred percent, no,” I said, climbing the stairs.
On the stage, I pivoted to scan the crowds on the north side of rings one and two. Mahoney climbed up beside me.
I spotted a third Celes Chere with her back to us, and then two more, and then six or seven others just entering the venue in a pack.
“They’re everywhere!” Mahoney said.
“We’ll have to check every one.”
A voice behind us said, “Who are these guys, Phil?”
Mahoney and I turned to find the founders of Victorious looking at us. We pulled out our credentials and introduced ourselves. They were alarmed when Stapleton said we were searching for an assassin and bomber.
“In here?” said Bronson, the one who’d left Harvard. “Why would he come here?”
“She,” Mahoney said. “And we don’t know. Maybe she’s a fan of your games.”
I said, “She was wearing a contestant’s badge.”
Crowley, the one who’d dropped out of MIT, had a mild stammer. “What d-does she look like?”
“She’s dressed as Celes Chere.”
Bronson laughed. “Good luck finding her. There’ll be two hundred of them in here by the time we get to the semifinals.”
Crowley studied me. “Do we need to clear this hall? Sweep the place?”
“We can’t do that,” Bronson said. “We’re not doing that. It’s all we’d need to—”
Over the crowd noise, the first explosion was muffled. The second was louder but nothing like the bomb that had torn apart the motel room the day before.
Still, gray and brown smoke boiled and billowed from the northeast corner of the space. People there began to scream and run toward the exits.