Previously on Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device: For the first time since 1998, murder is afoot in Nancy Drew-land! As ever, when we went to investigate, we quickly found out that nobody liked the murder victim and nobody gives a single fuck that he was brutally killed in their workplace using their equipment. Oh, Nancy Drew suspects, never change.
So we saw with our own two eyes that Ryan has been sneaking into the lab. Niko’s murder was in the lab. Ergo, there must be a ton of evidence in the lab, but none of our suspects will let us get in there. I SEE HOW IT IS. Luckily, we found a blank key card in Ryan’s workspace, so now we have to program it to make it work. We also found a piece of paper with a rainbow pattern on it, and it turns out to be the key to the card programming puzzle.
So there’s a key card machine in the security booth, so we put our blank key card in, and this puzzle pops up. It’s similar to one of the puzzles in The Captive Curse — the different-colored squares have to be layered on top of each other in the pattern shown in the picture.
Now we have a working key card, so let’s bust into the lab! But the moment we step out of the office, we hear a strange humming noise. “Ellie might want to know about this,” Nancy muses. Yeah, Nancy, after a malfunction that literally killed one of the top scientists working here, I bet they would like to know about possible equipment problems.
Of course, this is just an excuse to get Ellie away from her desk. She runs off to investigate the mysterious humming noise, and now we can go through her things. We see a picture of a blonde girl (Ellie’s cousin, I think?), and a copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Inside the book is a sticky note, with a number (Ellie’s key card?), and a note that “each set = 15”. Intriguing.
Ellie’s computer has nothing interesting on it, but her drawer is full of clues. We find a key, this set of instructions for the “control booth”, an SD card labeled “Journal – Late Fall”, and a letter from Ellie’s cousin. Ellie’s cousin writes about some secret deal that Ellie’s doing — if it pans out, Ellie will be super famous and fabulously rich. Yet despite the potential for fortune and fame, Ellie’s having problems fitting in at TTT, which her cousin sympathizes with. HMMMMM.
We also find a box of capacitors. Cool beans.
Let’s check in with Gray. We ask about his relationship with Niko, and Gray claims they didn’t have anything to do with each other. We know from Victor that Gray’s serial killer ass wouldn’t even have been hired if not for Niko, but Gray’s all, “Could be true. Could not be.” After some prodding, he finally admits that he and Niko were friends.
God, I hate Gray. Maybe I’m just biased because “guy in plaid short sleeve button down over a geeky T-shirt who makes pseudo-cryptic, vaguely nihilistic comments and acts like you’re too dumb to understand” is a fairly accurate summary of every pretentious male computer science major I knew in college.
Anyway, we ask him about he night of the murder, and he says that Ellie was the only identifiable person in the building. The computer log confirms the presence of the murderer, the person using the mysterious key card, but the cameras don’t have anyone else there. Gray tells us that he’s watched the tape several times, looking for Niko’s killer, but he can’t find them.
We ask what the killer’s motive would have been, and Gray creeps that “Energy is power. People who want power will not hesitate to get what they want.” I mean…okay…you could’ve just said “money,” Gray. It’s not like most people are really out there being thrilled by the mere existence of electricity. We can also ask about the rest of the suspects, but Gray hates all of them, so there’s not a lot to do there.
Finally: Gray, we know about the computer log! Someone else was in the lab the night Niko died! Nancy BSes that she found this out from the police report, not from like, breaking into the security booth and poking around. That would be totally out of character and not like her at all. Gray says that the police brushed off the mystery key card, calling it a glitch. Nancy’s like, “Okay…so, was it?” and Gray snarls that it doesn’t matter what HE believes, only what THEY believe. Gray uses the word “sheeple”, doesn’t he?
But! More importantly, Deirdre texts us! I am all aflutter. Do you think I should text her back right away or would that seem desperate? Anyway, Deirdre tells us that Ellie seems to have waited a whole 30 minutes before calling 911 to report Niko’s death. Pretty suspicious! Dammit, Ellie. You can’t make ASMR videos from jail.
Less importantly: Ned has also texted us. “I found a quarter, but it fell into a puddle,” he writes. Ned, you are making it really hard for me to not just leave you on read.
We find a suspicious plug-looking thing on the floor of the security booth. Let’s hold on to it for now. Gray doesn’t seem to notice us picking it straight up off the floor.
Now that we’ve made a key card, we can go into the lab and scope it out. There’s a big table with lots of science-y things on it, so let’s look at that first. We find a journal, which opens to a page about “Etching Solutions.” We take that with us, as well as a beaker. There’s a mixing station full of chemical solutions, which we’ll be using later. One of the chemicals mentioned in the Etching Solutions compounds, hydrogen fluoride, isn’t on the shelf.
However! There’s a locked cabinet next to the mixing station, where all the super dangerous chemicals are kept. It’s locked with this keypad, and the goal is to turn all the red squares blue. Clicking one of the squares will switch the colors, but will also switch the colors of some of the squares around it. So the goal is to click the right squares, in the right order, to make them all blue.
Here’s the hydrogen fluoride mentioned in the journal. Let’s just take it, shall we? Walking around a bunch of dangerous machinery with chemical solutions in our pocket, what could go wrong?
There’s also this mini Tesla coil, which doesn’t work. We’ll come back to it.
Off to the side is a door that leads into the photolithography room. It’s much brighter than the rest of the lab. We find an etching machine, which the book over there tells us how to use. There’s ways of using the machine to make copies of fingerprints and circuit boards. Under the circuit board section is a note from Niko, telling Mason and Ellie that he loaded the program on the computer next to the etcher, if they need it. Okay, so we’ll do all this stuff later.
There’s an intercom on the wall, but no one is there. Yet!
We also find some more photolithography supplies, including a silicon wafer that we steal.
Leaving the photolithography room, we pass this wall that’s all like, “Danger! High voltage! Stay away!” Nancy’s all, “That sign won’t stop me because I can’t read!”
We also find a book about the competition between Edison and Tesla, with their DC and AC currents. If you were asleep in history class (or if you’re just repressing all your memories of high school, #relatable), the book will inform you that Tesla and AC won, and Edison went on to be associated with lightbulbs and electrocuting elephants.
Let’s figure out what we’re supposed to do with the capacitors we found in Ellie’s cubicle. They’re supposed to be put in the Tesla coil, which has apparently broken down sometime between Ellie’s demonstration and now. So we can just rock into the coil room (whatever, murder scene, whatever), and open up the bottom part of the coil, where all the mechanical bits are. We put the capacitors inside, which starts the puzzle. Ryan had notes on how to organize the capacitors; they have to be arranged so that there are none of the same color in a row or column. Like sudoku, but with colors.
With that done, we step away from the coil, but Nancy notes that the lightning rod still isn’t working.
Since we’re here, let’s also try to get into the control booth! What for? I don’t know. It’s there. It might be fun. Ellie’s notes gave us hints as to how to get into the control booth — the shapes initially all start out as red, so they have to be changed to yellow (square), red (diamond), green (circle), blue (star), and purple (triangle). Then they have to be pressed in order: star, triangle, diamond, circle, square.
Inside the booth, we find Ellie’s notebook. She has some notes in the booth on how to turn the coil on and stay safe (like don’t walk around the floor while the coil is on, fucking duh). The next page of her notes is progress reports on the coil — there have been technical difficulties, and parts of the coil keep disappearing. Dang. I once quit a job because one of my coworkers kept asking me to count how many bagels were left over after company breakfasts and I got tired of doing math. If I worked at a lab full of dangerous electrical machines, and parts kept disappearing? I would’ve bailed in about five seconds. Mason, Ellie, and Ryan are braver than I. Or they’re just really trying to avoid jobs in IT.
Hey, why don’t we just try to turn the coil on? I bet nothing could go wrong!
Aaaand it doesn’t work, then Gray catches us and chews us out, then Victor catches us and chews us out. Victor snaps at us not to go back into the lab, and we’re like, “Victor, screwing around with things we are in no way qualified to touch is an essential part of solving a mystery!” So we are now officially banned from the lab, assuming Victor decides to ever come into the office to catch us.
Let’s unwind from all that excitement with some relaxing gossip. I swing by Ellie’s cubicle to ask what’s up with her and Mason. Maybe they’re secretly in love! Ellie tells us that she tries to be nice to everyone, but Mason pisses her off to the point that “every rage center of [her] brain releases its hate Mason chemicals.” Heh. We ask why she and Mason work opposite schedules, and she snarks, “As a good Southern girl, I know that if you don’t have anything good to say, you keep it zipped.”
Speaking of people no one likes — can she tells us more about Niko? Ellie says she doesn’t think he had any real friends (aw, what about Gray?), because he was “too much of a scientist.” By that she means that he didn’t seem to need people, or care about them in a way that wasn’t weird and clinical. Interesting.
We go to bed and wake up the next day. Nancy hears footsteps outside of our room, but when we investigate, no one is there. Although, to be fair, our room does directly open up into the break area of an office, so…I mean, maybe Mason was just getting his lunch.
So let’s go see Ryan. Entering her area promptly triggers a scream, and Ryan starts freaking out at us that Mason keeps leaving robotic cat parts lying around, and Ryan does not like robotic cat parts. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with robotic cats. It’s their weird gaslighting owners who are the problem, usually. Nancy notes that she has some experience with robotic cats, and offers to put it together.
There are a bunch of things we can go over with Ryan, so let’s run through them. You’ll recall, way back when we first started this case, we found a media player in Niko’s office, but it didn’t work. Ryan can fix it for us, but we have to get her some candy first. Okay, but Ryan, the candy machine in Niko’s office also doesn’t work. Niko was kind of a crap scientist. I’m just saying, between the media player, candy machine, and getting killed by his own Tesla coil, his track record is not great. Ryan gives us a weird rainbow disc that will help us fix the candy machine.
Why can’t Niko just have a vending machine like a normal person?
We ask her if she knows how to fix the mini Tesla coil in the lab, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, for sure. Just make a new circuit board, because I’m sure you know how to do that!” Ryan, if we get electrocuted and my hair gets messed up, I’m blaming you.
And now, let’s completely switch gears and ask Ryan how being arrested and interrogated by the police was, just super casually. Understandably, she gets quite upset, and emos that Niko was one of science’s brightest minds, and she doesn’t understand how he can be gone. She tells us that Niko used to talk to her, and she thinks he might have trusted her, even though everyone else has told us that he was a crotchety old dude who hated everyone. The police immediately tried to pin the murder on Ryan, and wouldn’t give her any evidence. “It was like they were waiting for me to tell them why they thought I was guilty,” she says. Sounds like the kind of crack police work typical of Nancy Drew cops. Nevertheless, Nancy says she’d like to hear that from Ryan, too, because she doesn’t think we’re getting the whole story. HMMM.
Moving on, we ask what happened with the wiring for the Tesla coil. Ryan says Niko asked her to build it in a specific way, and it worked exactly as it was supposed to. What, so Niko committed suicide? Cool, case closed, let’s get the fuck out of Colorado. No, just kidding, Ryan emos that she knew the coil was deadly the way it was built, but Niko insisted. She figured it would be better for her to build it than for someone else. Yeah, and now you’re under suspicion for murder, Ryan, so how is that working out for you? Nancy gets hella aggressive, and practically yells at Ryan that her machine killed Niko, and Ryan wails that she would never hurt anyone. Man. This game is intense.
Finally, we note that Ryan snuck into the lab the day of the murder, without using her key card. Ryan blusters that she lost her key card, and she knows how to get around security — but like, in a totally innocent way. She would never use her powers for evil! And on that totally not suspicious note, our conversation with Ryan ends.
We can talk to Mason about his robot cat affinity. Hey, Mason, are you also a socially awkward math nerd who’s gaslighting your girlfriend in an effort to undermine her wishes and make her follow your dreams instead?
And it turns out that he actually kind of is, since his alibi for the murder is that he was on a date that night. The police did indeed follow up with the woman, “Proving that she does, in fact, pick up her phone.” HEE! Denied, Mason! Mason grumps that he hates all the small talk that comes with dating. He’d rather just jump into whether or not they’re going to have kids, how many, and if it’s going to be a June wedding. Oh, Mason. “Some women find this to be a bit much…so far all. But I only need one perfect or near perfect match to validate the entire system.”
We can also ask if he thinks it’s likely that Niko would have a soft spot for Ryan, and Mason’s like, “No, that sounds pretty dumb to me.” But I’m also kind of thinking I don’t really trust Mason’s perceptions of human relationships, so let’s take this with a grain of salt.
Alrighty, so we wanna get that candy bar for Ryan. The disc she gave us fits onto the candy machine, and it turns out to be a memory puzzle. The colors will light up and make sounds, and then we have to repeat the order that they light up in. It’s not hard, theoretically, except it kind of is because my memory is terrible 🙁 Anyway, we steal a Koko Mallos bar for Ryan, and I guess we can also make Nancy stuff her face if we want. I won’t, though, because I am a serious detective and this is a serious mission.
Ned texts us that he went to Nancy’s house, but then he remembered that she was in Colorado. Then he writes “Laughing out loud” to make it sound like this is funny and #relatable, and not actually really sad. Ned, please. You’re hurting me.
We hand the candy over to Ryan, and she runs off to fix the media player. We can get closer to her desk and pick up the cat head. This mission is just running around picking up robotic cat pieces, and it’s pretty boring. I’m not even sure what the cat is for.
The next part of the cat’s body is in the lab, which is conveniently where we have to go anyway. We have to make an etching of the circuit board, which first involves making etching solution with the chemicals on the shelf. The instructions are in that book we found; we want to use 3 parts hydrofluoric acid, 1 part nitric acid, and 4 parts water. It’s not too hard, it mostly involves adding and subtracting the chemicals from the various cylinders. Once that’s done, we have to make an etching of the board in the photolithography room. It’s one of those puzzles where you have to rotate the circuit lines to connect them and make all of the dots light up. When the puzzle is finished, we get a printout of the design.
Then we have to put the etching solution in the machine, put the printout in the slot under the monitor, and put the silicon wafer we stole earlier in the tray under the microscope. Then we press start, and we have to come back tomorrow to get the board.
In the meantime! I am generous of spirit and have decided to grace the Hardy Boys with my attention. We chat a bit about our suspects — you’ll recall that we enlisted the Hardys to do a bit of background checking for us. As ever, they are useless: they found files on Niko and Gray, but the files are classified. I bet Deirdre Shannon would’ve had actual information for me.
That’s literally all we can discuss with the Hardys, so let’s move on to the love of my life. We also chat with her about our suspects, telling her about Ryan sneaking into the building without her key card. “Just spitballing here, but do you think you could take her in a fair fight?” Deirdre asks. Nancy: “What kind of question is that?” “The kind of question you ask someone who’s kickin’ it with killers,” Deirdre says. See? The Hardy Boys never ask us useful shit like that. Nancy protests that she doesn’t think Ryan is the killer, because she’s so quirky and loves gummy bears, and Deirdre notes that, much like crying and baseball, there are no feelings in murder investigations. Ryan has a motive (she does?) and if the evidence points to her, she’s guilty.
Okay, but let’s not forget the most important rule of criminology, the Nancy Drew Principle: if you’re in a Nancy Drew game, and everyone is convinced that one person is guilty, and that one person is acting really shady and weird, that person is definitely not guilty. Thus, we must continue our investigation!
Ryan’s fixed the media player, so now we can play the SD card we found in Ellie’s cubicle. It turns out to be Niko’s diary. Wait, why did Ellie have it? Whatever. We can listen through all the entries — we find out that Ryan did indeed threaten Niko, but he also thought the original design of the coil wouldn’t work the way he wanted it to, and he did make her change it. Niko was also working with Mason, but didn’t like his contributions. He talks about using Gray to “keep him in line.” Oh dear.
We can call Victor about this, but he says he knew Niko kept audio diaries, but not what was on them. Okay, then.
Night falls again…
Let’s go check in with Gray. We ask if he blames Ryan for Niko’s death, and he’s like, “Sure do.” Oh, uh…good to know. He doesn’t care if she messed the coil up on accident or not; either way, he’s mad at her. I mean, he already hates everyone, so I can’t say I’d feel too broken up about it if I were her.
The etching of the circuit board is done, so we go back to the lab and pick that up.
That turns the little mini coil on. It’s a musical coil, because…that’s something someone thought was useful, I guess. We don’t know what to play on it yet, though.
In the lounge area, we find a bunch of threatening notes. Written on gummy bear stationery! That’s how I would deliver death threats, if I were to do such a thing. Anyway, despite everyone’s insistence that Ryan is a stone cold killer, the threats really aren’t very much against Niko; she’s really just warning him that if he keeps fucking around with a giant transformer, he gon’ die. The last “threat” mentions that Ryan is going to be accepting an award at a conference on the 24th. Niko was murdered in the wee hours of the 25th, so if Ryan was really at the conference all night, she has an alibi.
The only real reason to switch into nighttime is to trigger the appearance of the notes. Let’s go to the next day and confront Ryan. She admits to writing the notes, but says that she wasn’t threatening him, just trying to point out that he was putting himself in danger. I mean, you could’ve been more tactful about it, Ryan. Like, the gummy bear stationery kinda softened the message, but you could’ve leaned less on the whole death thing. Nancy asks if Ryan has any way of proving that she was trying to help, and Ryan snaps at us to get out. Way to not look guilty, girl!
We call Deirdre to tell her about the notes — like, for example, a particularly charming one that was like, “Unless you want to see the inside of a body bag, I suggest you back off.” Wow, I wonder how people came to the conclusion that Ryan’s a serial killer based on that line. Anyway, Deirdre’s like, “I admire the directness.” Hee. Nevertheless, Deirdre did some digging and found out that Ryan’s alibi stands up — there are photos of the award ceremony she was at, and Ryan was standing near a clock…”She couldn’t have killed Niko!” Nancy says. “Yes, that’s the line I was building to, and was excited to say out loud, that you interrupted,” Deirdre deadpans. “Deirdre, you’re amazing,” Nancy says. I concur! Run away with me, Deirdre!
Let’s call Victor with this good news. I bet he’ll be pretty happy to find out that one of his employees isn’t a murderer, right?
Ha, no. Victor flips the fuck out, yelling that it HAD TO HAVE BEEN HER, and now the police will just REOPEN THE CASE, which I guess is a bad thing. He yells that everything will just stall out again and hangs up on us. Yeesh. Okay, Victor.
After that, we get a text from Ryan, apologizing for shutting us down earlier. She tells us to come by so we can talk. Aw! Well, we know she’s innocent now, so let’s go do that.
We apologize to Ryan for ever believing she was guilty. Yeah, in retrospect, the obsession with gummy bears probably should’ve told us we weren’t dealing with a stone cold killer. Anyway, Ryan’s figured out that we’re here to solve the mystery of Niko’s murder — way to fly under the radar, Nancy — and she says she’ll help us.
We leave the lab feeling pretty good about ourselves, which means it’s about time for Nancy to get knocked out. A big ol’ pipe comes out of nowhere and hits us in the head. Dude! Why you gotta rain on my parade like this 🙁
We wake up in the photolithography lab. Nancy notes that all the air’s been cut off, so we have to get out before we run out.
We go to the intercom to call for help, but only Ellie is on the other end, and she says she’s been locked in, too, in the control booth. I’m guessing she at least has oxygen, so maybe don’t make this all about you, Ellie.
She tells us that we can get out through the vents, which presents another problem. We now have air, but it’s super hot inside the vents, so we have to make our way out before Nancy passes out from the heat. There are little tags on the walls, which we have to use to note where we are.
We reach the end of the vents, and we can hear Gray and Mason talking on the other side. Gray is confronting Mason over…something — Mason tells him to back off, and Gray snaps that he wants to know what’s in Mason’s bag. Suspicious! Also, on a weird note, Gray tells Mason to stop “screwing around”, which feels like slightly more mature language than these games usually go for.
So, cool, near-death experience over. As ever, Nancy needs 0 minutes to process her trauma or anything like that, so we go straight into continuing our investigation. We pass the security room, where we hear the shredder buzzing. Mason’s run away, and Ellie’s still trapped in the lab (I guess we don’t give a fuck about her), so that must be Gray in there. Hmm, SHREDDING things in an OFFICE? Gray can only be up to something suspicious.
Let’s go talk to him! We only heard him threatening to beat up Mason; I bet confronting him can only end well. As usual, he refuses to answer any of our questions, and doesn’t seem to care much that we nearly died, either. He’s like, “This is a lab. It’s not to be taken lightly. Forget that, and you’ll end up dead.” Well, sorry, Gray, I made the silly assumption that I was on EARTH, and I could walk around without worrying about running out of oxygen.
Maybe we should check on Ellie, and like, make sure she’s still alive. So we go upstairs, and hey, what’s this in the lounge?
There’s a phone lying on the table, and we have to solve a puzzle to open it. Each three numbers connected by a line have to add up to 15 (so 8 + 5 + 2, 6 + 5 + 4, etc).
The phone turns out to be full of texts between Ellie and Mason. But we thought they hated each other! Are they secretly besties? Are they secretly IN LOVE? Actually, maybe not; even over text, Mason is still a dick. They’ve been texting back and forth about calling various groups in different cities (New York, Chicago, Palo Alto) about some kind of project proposal. Whatever it is, it involves Niko’s research, and they seem to think it’ll make everyone involved very rich. (Well, except Niko. Because he’s dead.) Ellie agrees that their theory is a little shaky, and Mason offers to mansplain it to her. Ew, I take back shipping them a little. Even if Ellie’s a murderer, she doesn’t deserve to suffer Mason.
Under the table, we also find a suspicious key card. Hmm, who could this belong to?
Ellie’s still locked up in the lab, but let’s not bother with worrying about her. Instead, this is an opportune time to go through her stuff! We find a note with some intriguing hints — “Condemned elephant’s name,” “Tesla’s good friend,” etc. Clearly, once we figure out these references, we will discover something important.
The note is referring to the books in the downstairs break room. Everyone who watched that episode of Bob’s Burgers knows that the condemned elephant is Topsy, then we want to click Ohm’s Law, Mark Twain, The Tungsten Divide, Trans Atlantic Quest, Chicago, and Guinevere and Lancelot. Once we’ve clicked on all the books in order, the portrait of Nikola Tesla on the wall swings open. Aw yes, secret — oh, bummer, this isn’t a secret passage, it’s just a secret compartment 🙁 Hold up, does this game not have a secret passage? I feel betrayed.
Inside the compartment, we find another audio diary, plus an actual diary. Niko, make up your mind. You can’t have two diaries. That totally defeats the purpose. Ominously, Niko’s written diary notes that the Faraday cage in the lab is starting to fail. Oh! Great! I’m sure that won’t be a problem at all!
There’s also a puzzle here that apparently involves binary code. Ugh. Fucking math. Okay, I’m gonna do that later.
We go back to Niko’s office to listen to his audio diaries. They’re mostly just him being emo about the progress of his electricity project — it’s not going well! Now it’s going too well! Damn, Niko, what do you WANT? Niko frets that the world isn’t ready for the revolution in energy that he’s about to bring about. His final entry notes that Ellie wondered how much their project would sell for on the open market, and Niko muses that he should look into her finances.
So now that we’ve found that out, let’s go talk to Ellie! I guess she got out of the booth by herself, because Nancy couldn’t be fucked to help her. Not that Ellie could be fucked to help Nancy, either; when we ask what happened back there, Ellie’s like, “Idk. It’s cool that you’re alive tho.” (She mentions that it was a “lockdown”, so I guess all the doors just sealed themselves.)
We bring up that Ellie bailed after Niko’s death, and Ellie said she went back “home”, by which she means her actual home, not Colorado. Ellie confesses that she wants to leave TTT. Not because of the murder or anything, she just really longs for the humidity and lack of public transit in the South. We also note that she took all of her work with her when she left, and Ellie says that she had to keep it safe — but she won’t tell us from who.
(It was from Mason, wasn’t it? He’s totally the James Watson to her Rosalind Franklin.)
We also confront her about waiting 30 minutes to call 911 after finding Niko, but she tells us that the phones were out, and she forgot her cell phone. Ellie, this game came out in 2012. Nobody was forgetting their cell phones in 2012. Otherwise how could we keep up with important things like Call Me Maybe memes and “binders full of women” jokes?
Damn, we’re just confronting Ellie about everything. Next up: we know she had some of Niko’s things, like his journals. Ellie, you were reading his diary! Did he have a crush on anyone? Did he and Gray have a really tragic breakup? Ellie snipes at us to stay out of her things. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” Look, Ellie, there’s an actual murderer running around this place, so unless that’s you, you really aren’t scary enough to be slinging around threats like that. That said, she kind of explains it by saying that Niko was kind of a big deal (he has many leather bound books and mahogany furniture!), and she wanted to understand how he thought. Fair enough.
We’re like, “Okay…so uh…was this project he was working on ALSO a big deal?” and Ellie creeps at us that humanity is plugged in 24/7 now, but we’re running out of energy fast — “People live in a dream of their own creation…Imagine the jolt when we all wake up together.” Okay, I lied, this game is a little philosophical, and I gotta say, some of the lines do feel rather prescient. She tells us that Niko found a way to harness the energy “all around us”, and his work is more than money — it’s economic, political, and military power. Did Niko invent Cambridge Analytica?
Finally, we bring up that Ellie’s been working with Mason, and she grumps that she has to, not that she wants to. They’re doing some kind of secret project together — sadly, she doesn’t crack when we threaten to tell Victor; instead, she merely says that we shouldn’t.
Okay, let’s go investigate Gray some more. We set off the alarm and get him out of the security room, and we can go in and look at what he was shredding. Gray isn’t cool enough to have a cross-cut shredder, so we can easily tape the strips back together.
Oh, yeah, and we’ve been picking up cat parts in the midst of all this. It’s really not that important to the plot.
And then! We also find the kill switch for the Tesla coil! Wait, Gray literally stole the kill switch for a giant transformer, and he’s saying WE’RE not careful enough in the lab? I hate him.
We tape the shredded pieces back together, and find a drawing of some kind of machine. There are notes on the drawing, one of which says that it’s been placed in “safe keeping.”
Then we put the key card we found in the cubicle area in the card reader. Oh snap, it’s the card from the night of the murder!
So, let’s solve the binary puzzle in Niko’s diary. The solution is based on the binary poster in the lounge that we passed when we first started the game; I couldn’t be fucked to point it out, because math is stupid. Certain squares have to be darkened based on the binary translation of the numbers to the left. You can just copy the picture, okay? But like change the wording a little so the teacher doesn’t notice. Anyway, the solution spells out: “Play every fifth letter above on the coil.” That must be referring to the mini musical coil in the lab.
So we go do that, and play every fifth letter in Niko’s message as a note. (That’s A G B e g a g d B c G E F D C). The coil lights up, then deposits a note for us.
“The closer I come to the answer, the more I appreciate the magnitude of this discovery. I fear that I can no longer trust those around me.” Does he mean Victor and Gray? Is it because they’re both bald?
Up next: At long last, we find a secret passage. A snow storm blows through, trapping us in the lab with our suspects. Honestly, I’m not that worried about being stuck in the building with a murderer. It’s really the prospect of never being able to leave Colorado that’s freaking me out.
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