Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device (Part Three)

Previously on Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device: Science is hard 🙁 We cleared Ryan as a suspect, so now we can enjoy her wacky antics without guilt. Then we found out that Niko was probably killed because his hair was full of secrets. Like any good Nancy Drew character, he apparently has a secret lair that we’ll have to find our way into. Let’s go forth!

But first: let’s see if Gray is still cranky. Good news, everyone, he is! We ask if he knows why Mason and Ellie are hanging out together. “I have a theory,” he grumps. “What is it?” Nancy asks. “Secret,” Gray snipes at us. Gray ships them, doesn’t he? If we dug a little deeper on that computer of his, we’d probably find fanfiction.

Nancy muses that it seems like Niko had been protecting Gray from getting his ass fired by Victor. Now, why would that be? Gray’s like, “Idk,” and Nancy’s like, “Cool, good talk.”

Gray’s shredded note mentioned the coat rack in the security booth is important, so let’s look at that. We have to pull the alarm again to get him out of the booth, then we can inspect the coat rack. We find that if we turn three of the hooks like so, it opens up to reveal a secret compartment.

Gray apparently has that weird affinity that so many Nancy Drew characters do, for printing out email conversations and storing them places where Nancy can conveniently find them. Has the development of technology been the most inconvenient thing for mystery writers? I feel like it is. Anyway, we find an exchange of bitter emails between him and Niko, wherein Niko tells Gray to stay out of the lab. “I have work to do in the lab,” Gray writers back, which is weird for a glorified security guard. Niko gets pissed at the idea that Gray might be working on a project, particularly without him. He like, invented him, you know?

We also find a post-it with a bunch of letters and numbers on it, and a doctorate degree in physics from Kingston University. Nancy’s all, “OMG, if Gray has a PhD in physics, why is he working as a security guard?” I don’t know, Nancy. Kingston University abandoned their entire dig team in the middle of the desert, hired a black market smuggler to lead the dig, and then let a random teenage girl take over. I don’t know how much a degree from them is worth.

So the numbers on the post-it refer to one of the security tapes. We pull it up and watch it, and it  shows Gray going into the lab. Nancy wonders if this is the unedited murder tape. (It’s not. I’ll just get that out of the way now.)

Ned texts us again. Ned, please find a hobby. I beg you.

The next day, we go to see Ryan. We tell her about nearly getting killed in the photo lab, and Ryan’s like, “Oh, that was me.” What the fuck, Ryan! She tells us that she was working on the vents, and she shut the air off. She was the only one who knew about the air being off, so if anyone locked Nancy in the lab, they weren’t trying to kill her. Uh, Ryan, are you new here?

We also tell her about finding the murderer’s key card near Mason and Ellie’s cubicles, and Ryan’s like, “I bet they’re dating and also murderers.” She points out that Niko was all into doing science for the love of science, and refused to profit off his work — which, as she says, was fine for an established scientist backed by a huge lab, but Mason and Ellie are just scraping by. Ellie in particularly has a lot of debt. Ah, millenials. Ryan muses that the lab is “like a fortress”, so Niko’s killer has to be someone who works here. HMMM.

Then we go to confront Mason, but he acts cagey and refuses to answer anything. You’re really not doing a good job of making me think you’re not the murderer, Mason! He does deny that the key card is his, though. “Mine has my name on it,” he snipes.

After we leave Mason, that triggers a call from Victor. He apologizes for yelling at us last time we talked, and Nancy’s like, “It’s cool, some of my old bosses have blamed me and then fired me for getting injured on the job, so that was nothing.” Fuck you, Paula Santos. I’m still bitter about that. I bet Captain’s Cove has been hit by so many employment lawsuits.

Anyway, we mention finding the killer’s key card. Nancy wants to turn it over to the police, but Victor whines that they’ll never get anything done. We should just hold on to our evidence until we solve the case ourselves. I mean, the police do have a tendency to not even show up until Nancy solves the case, so he’s not wrong. He tells us to follow up on the key card — whoever it belongs to is our culprit. Don’t tell me how to do my job, Victor.

We also tell him about Ryan turning the air off, and Victor’s like, “…okay, she really needs to tell people if she’s going to do stuff like that.” Right? I’m saying.

I gotta say, the game seems to be jumping the gun a bit on Ryan’s innocence? I mean, we’re all acting like we cleared her as a suspect — which we thought we did — but now she’s out here all like, “Oh, I shut off the oxygen to half the building, but like, coincidentally.” I’m watching you, Ryan! Being ~lol random~ won’t save you from suspicion!

That’s it for Victor. Since we’re on the phone, let’s call the Hardy Boys. We update them on the case, and mention that Deirdre’s been helping us. “She’s actually been helpful,” Nancy says. “That might be more surprising than Ryan’s innocence,” Frank snarks. Is it really that surprising that Deirdre is a better sidekick than you, Frank? Is it?

We tell them about Mason and Ellie working together, and Frank wonders if it’s “corporate espionage.” Oh. I thought they were just secretly in love 🙁 I’m not cut out for the gritty world of capitalism.

Let’s call Deirdre, because I can’t just let Frank diss my girl like that. We mention that Ryan texted us — did Deidre give her our number? “No. But I did post it online like a whole bunch. Don’t lecture me or anything, because my dad already did,” she says. HEE. Anyway, Deirdre says Ryan must have good Google-fu, because Deirdre posted the number a while ago.

Then we tell her about getting knocked out and waking up in the photo lab with no oxygen. “That’s like the least shocking thing ever. You know that, right?” Deirdre deadpans. Nancy: “I suppose that’s what I get for calling you with this problem. Deirdre: “Have you considered volunteering at one of those neurological study places? Because you have been knocked out a lot, my friend.” Nancy: “I’ll keep that in mind.” “Maybe not the safest place to keep it in your case,” Deirdre snarks.

That was amazing.

Nancy tries to bounce some ideas off of Deirdre, but Deirdre just snarks that Nancy’s only calling her because she’s too chicken to get more information from her suspects. She’s all, “Hurry up and solve the case, because I already titled my paper and you’re ruining it.” God, I love her.

We go over to the toolbox in the lounge area, where we find a blacklight. Nancy recalls that Niko referenced a blacklight in his mysterious note, so we swipe it. Then we go over to the worktable and put together the mechanical cat. Maybe we should send it to Miwako, like a “Here’s a mechanical cat that wasn’t made by your gaslighting jerky ex-boyfriend” present.

Let’s go confront Gray about some of the stuff we found in the lockbox. We ask why he’s in security if he has a PhD, and Gray snarls, “There’s nothing wrong with what I do!” and Nancy’s like, “I’m not saying there is, except I kind of am.” Okay, as someone that got a degree and ended up working a bunch of entry-level jobs nowhere near my field because I couldn’t deal with the competition/pressure, I relate hardcore to Gray and Nancy is being a dick. Anyway, Gray just shrugs that he likes what he does.

We ask what he was doing in the lab the night Niko died, and Gray gets mad at us. Come on, Gray, tell us about your best friend’s murder! It can’t be that traumatizing for you! He refuses to talk any more about it, and kicks us out. Fine, Gray! I guess that means we just have to go through more of your stuff! You brought this on yourself!

We can pop in to check on the Tesla coil, and Nancy will note that a part is missing. So let’s rock up to Ryan and ask her how to rebuild the missing part, because I’m sure that reactivating the machine she built that killed her boss won’t be at all upsetting for her.

And…actually, Ryan’s just like, “You want to reactivate the machine that I feel incredible guilt for building? Yeah, sure, here are the plans.” Are you okay, Ryan? Do you need to go to therapy?

Also, I’m slightly confused, because Ellie gave us that demonstration of the working Tesla coil, but now half the pieces are missing and nobody can use it. What happened there?

Let’s chat with Mason again. He’s his usual charming self; we ask about Victor, and he says, “He drops in now and again, brings snacks.” Good to know. We try to pry for more information, but Mason doesn’t know anything.

We switch to nighttime, so we can talk to Ellie, and also because we need to use Mason’s computer. None of your office equipment is safe from Nancy Drew, Mason! Anyway, we ask Ellie if she likes working at TTT, and Ellie heaves a huge sigh and starts telling us her life story. Damn, Ellie, I just wanted to know if you hate your job enough to murder your boss. She tells us that she’s always been “the smart one”, and Nancy sighs that she knows what that’s like. Hee. Nancy, you didn’t even know who the Mayans were. She was all hype to fulfill her potential at TTT, but she misses her family. Nancy’s like, “So move back. Dude, I still live with my dad.” Ellie says that her grandma had to put up the farm to afford Ellie’s tuition, and there’s no high-paying jobs back in wherever the hell she’s from. Ellie gets all salty that Victor wanted to sell her and Mason’s work — she was okay with Niko giving it away for free, but Victor was planning on selling it for TTT, and not give Ellie and Mason the profits. Ellie is not down with that.

Alrighty! So now that we’ve interrogated Ellie, we can go use the 3D design program on Mason’s computer to print the missing Tesla coil part. Ryan gave us the design of the part, so now we just have to figure out how to put it together. We have to copy the layers so that the design looks like the pictures on the right at all angles. Once that’s done, we can print the design.

If you’re better at these games than I am, you might have done this first and then used the time that it takes to print to do something else productive. I didn’t, though, so let’s just skip the part where I dicked around doing nothing for like an hour, and go get the printed part.

So then we go back to the lab and put the piece in the coil.

Woo! Science!

As instructed by Niko’s note, we use the blacklight over the hexagon on the lab floor. The words “Enter the hex” appear. All right, time to go through the secret tunnel!

We go down the hatch and through a spooky hall. There’s a door at the end of the hall, and Nancy’s all hype to open the spooky door and find out all of Niko’s secrets…except the door is locked by a biometric fingerprint scanner 🙁 Damn you, Niko! Let me break into your lab and go through all your stuff!!! You are the most inconvenient murder victim I’ve ever dealt with!

The solution to this problem is to talk to Ryan. We want to use the jelly from her gummy bear collection to make a finger print. Oh. I thought we were gonna just find Niko’s body and slice off his finger, Artemis Fowl-style. Anyway, Ryan refuses to hand one over, because she doesn’t want to be snowed in without gummy bears. Ryan, please. We’re trying to solve a murder here. She grumps a bit but gives us a gummy bear.

And! We have an interesting new conversation option with her. Having watched the security tape of Gray leaving the lab right before Niko died, we ask Ryan if she can watch the footage with us to see if there’s something weird about it. Ryan agrees.

We watch the security tape, and Ryan tells us that the tapes have…signatures or whatever, so data can be pulled from them…or something…science…something. I don’t know! I cheated off of my friend all through high school chem and I still only got a C! Right after Niko enters the lab, Ryan notices a bunch of weird code, and says that the video was tampered with. Oh snap! Then a bunch more numbers pop up, and Ryan freaks out. She tells us that whoever killed Niko must have flagged the video, so they would know if anyone watched it. And now they know Nancy and Ryan are onto them! Ryan bails out of there — again, we’re snowed in, so I don’t know where she thinks she’s going — and THEN we hear the security breach alert going off.

Damn. This lab has terrible working conditions. I don’t blame Ellie for wanting to leave.

So we go running to the lab, only to find Mason doing something suspicious with the coil. What’re you up to, Mason? Mason’s all, “No time to explain my shady behavior! Something bad is about to happen!” Another alarm starts going off — this time saying that the power is about to go critical — and we get sent over to the security booth to do the same puzzle that we did at the beginning of the game.

Remember this? Good times. The solution isn’t the same as the first time, but the instructions are the same. So we turn off the power and save Mason’s sorry ass. I bet everyone will be really grateful to Nancy for saving the day!

Aaaand Victor fires us. Hey, what the hell, Victor! I know nobody likes Mason, but we totally just saved you the trouble of having two dead employees on your record. He’s called a ride for us, although of course the cab won’t be here for hours, on account of being snowed in. He’s like, “You’re stuck here, but you can’t really leave, so…just don’t touch anything.” Yeah, that’s not happening, Victor. We turn in all our passes and keys, and Victor says he’ll hire a professional next time. I’m confused about how this is Nancy’s fault. MASON was the one fucking around with the coil. This is sexist >:(

Let’s call the Hardy Boys. I bet Frank will take our side on this and help me feel vindicated. But first, we tell them about finding out that the security video was edited and flagged. The Hardy Boys are like, “The only person who could’ve set that up is the killer!” Yes, guys, Nancy already figured that out. They agree to “look into it” for her, whatever that means. If we could Google who the murderer was, the case probably would’ve already been solved by now, guys.

Then we ask if they know how to get past the fingerprint scanner, and the Hardy Boys confess that they’re actually terrible with those. Am I surprised that the Hardy Boys are incompetent? No, I’m not. “As much as it pains me to say, maybe Deirdre’s your best bet right now,” Frank sighs. Deirdre is always our best bet! I’ve known this for years!

We also tell them that Victor’s here and has kicked us off the case, although we’re snowed in, so we’re not actually going anywhere. Frank and Joe tell us to pick an ally among the people at the lab, although we should choose wisely, since one of them is an actual murderer. Yeah, thanks for that.

Woo! So let’s call Deirdre! We ask her what specifically she said to Victor when he asked for a reference, and she’s like, “Uh…I may have told him you were grossly incompetent and chronically wrong.” Heh. She remarks that it’s surprising that Victor hired Nancy after hearing that. Intriguing. Nancy’s like, “Well, Victor’s here,” to which Deirdre says, “And Ned’s here.” Nancy: “WHAT?” Deirdre: “Just kidding. He won’t pick up his phone.” HEE!

We ask her how to get past the biometric scanner, and Deirdre’s like, “Aren’t you surrounded by science? Just make a finger.” Nancy: “I don’t think it’s that easy.” Deirdre: “To be perfectly open about my schadenfreude, I actually hope it’s very difficult.” HA! I love her. Also, I bet Frank and Joe couldn’t use “schadenfreude” in a sentence. She tells us that we can “science up” a reverse fingerprint. Nancy: “And then what?” Deirdre: “I don’t know. Excuse me for not being some total creeper who knows how to crank out fake body parts.” Anyway, she agrees to research biometric scanning for us.

So, as the Hardy Boys pointed out, we ought to have someone on our side here. Hey, Ryan, you’ve gotten in this deep with us! We ask if she can give us more gummy bears, and she chirps that if we steal some of Victor’s candy, she’ll trade us for it. Nancy’s like, “You, uh, really like gummy bears.” “I less than three them!” Ryan says, because this game came out in 2012.

We ask what happens in the event of a snowstorm, and Ryan says that the lab has snowmobiles to get out, in case of emergency. If this game ends with another 2D snowmobile chase, I swear to God.

We also tell her that we need a key card, and Ryan hands hers over. Thanks, Ryan!

Victor really doesn’t look nearly as imposing sitting down, I gotta say. I actually think it’s purely just the color of his eyes — they’re so light and watery looking, they make his whole face look less scary. Anyway, he hands over his candy without question, just to get us out of his hair. Little does he know that this action is the beginning of a domino effect that will end with Nancy solving the case and completely undermining his efforts to fire her! Suffer, Victor!

We go back and give Ryan Victor’s candy. “Take, take of my bears and be merry!” Ryan says, giving us a bunch of gummy bears. Cool beans.

Then we ask if she knows how to distract Victor, and she’s all, “Ooh, listen to this!” It’s a terrible, high-pitched buzzing sound. Nancy’s like, “That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” and Ryan chirps that Victor hates it. She’ll get in hella trouble for playing it, though, so we better be wise with our time.

Ryan starts playing the bad noise, but on the way down (I saw you, and you saved me from myself~) (Okay, no, sorry, that was just my childhood rearing its ugly head there), the elevator breaks down! Oh no! Could someone be trying to kill Nancy (again)? So we have to fix the elevator. The gears are in the right-side wall, and we have to put them back in the right places to get the elevator moving again. This puzzle comes up in like every game, so it’s pretty easy. You’re not even trying, murderer.

Once we get out of the elevator, we go into Niko’s office and see that Victor is still gone, distracted by Ryan’s buzzy thing. Yay! So what we want to do is poke around the office and find one of Niko’s fingerprints, so we can make a fake finger. Using the tape technique we learned from Alibi in Ashes, we find one of Niko’s prints on this coil thingy in his cabinet.

When we back up from the cabinet, a paper comes fluttering to the floor. What’s this? It looks like ~someone~ is planning to sell Niko’s work to some dude named Crawford Rumney. Suspicious!

So we want to A) make Niko’s fingerprint under the cover of night and B) ask everyone what they know. Both of these things require switching to nighttime. First, we have to make an etching of the fingerprint, so we do the whole thing with the etching solution and silicon wafer all over again. Then we have to wait for it to finish. So let’s switch over to nighttime, and since we’re here, let’s interrogate our favorite cranky security guard, Gray! What up, Gray!

We mention that Victor is here, and Gray is unhappy about this, as he is about all things. We bring up that he’s way overqualified to work here, and Gray’s like, “It’s because of the fucking recession, Nancy.” Just kidding. Gray finally crumbles and admits that Niko just gave him a job here because he felt sorry for him. Nancy snipes that Gray doesn’t seem very grateful — he wrote Niko all those threatening emails, and he was leaking his work, WASN’T HE? Gray denies it and kicks us out.

Okay, good talk, Gray. So now we’re gonna go make Niko’s fingerprint. We get the silicon wafer with the fingerprint on it from the photo lab, then use the hot plate in the kitchen to melt down Ryan’s gummy bears. Then we pour the melted bears on the wafer, which will impress on the fingerprint.

Like so.

We go back to Niko’s secret lab and use the print on the door, and it opens for us. Defeated by gummy bears, Niko! His lab is pretty sweet looking, lots of dark colors and sciencey aesthetics. What a nerd.

And this whole damn time, Niko’s just been hanging out with the lost diary of Nikola Tesla. Damn, Niko! I bet he was murdered by some really pissed-off museum curator.

According to Niko’s notes, he managed to bring Tesla’s wireless transmission idea to life. We want to take note of the drawing at the bottom of the paper.

We also find a bunch of these magnet things. There are 7 in total. We also pick up another SD card containing Niko’s diaries, and with that, we’ve successfully explored his hidden lab. It’s a little anticlimactic, I must say.

We have to get into Niko’s office to listen to his diary, so we switch back to daytime and ask Ryan to distract Victor again. Ryan sighs: “Dear ears and general feelings of self-worth, I am so sorry for what’s about to happen to you. Your sad friend, Ryan.” Heh. Don’t feel bad, Ryan, this happens to everyone who encounters Nancy Drew. They’re probably going to form a therapy group.

Once Victor’s gone, we go in and listen to Niko’s diaries. He’s babbling on about pigeons and how frequency 37 might’ve destroyed Wardenclyffe Tower. Good to know!

Ryan texts us that Victor’s coming back. Whatever, he’s already fired us. Should’ve saved that card for later, Victor!

So the clue to the pigeon puzzle is in binary code. How can a game that graced me with Deirdre Shannon also torture with me with so much math? Anyway, the magnets have to be placed at the base of the pigeon sculpture in the binary forms of 13, 6, and 5. When that’s done, the pigeon will project the words “1902 Patent” on the wall.

When we check the Tesla book in the lounge, we can see that the 1902 patent was for an “Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy.” We also find out that Wardenclyffe Tower was his energy transmittal station. It was demolished because Tesla was in debt and it was foreclosed on, but Niko has a conspiracy theory that it was taken down by a frequency instead. Okay, if you say so, Niko.

Niko has a miniature replica of Wardenclyffe Tower in his secret lab, like the total fanboy he is. So we take the tower and then we go back to the regular lab, and put the replica in the oscillator. Then we turn the taps according to that note from Niko that we found — you’ll recall that they were labeled with 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, and 4. Niko mentioned frequency 37, so we want to turn the taps that will add up to 37. That’s going to be 13, 11, 9, and 4. When we do that, the replica breaks, and we find a key inside. OOOH.

The key will unlock the tablet screen in Niko’s secret lab, so let’s head all the way down the hatch again, and back into the lab. We have to do this puzzle again — it’s the same charge puzzle that we did to get into Gray’s computer, way back when. When we do that, a password screen will come up. We know the password is related to the 1902 patent — specifically, its patent number, which is 1119732.

For some reason, Niko has the video of his death in his secret lab that nobody knew about. No, it doesn’t make much sense. Let’s roll with it anyway. So remember how we sent the Hardy Boys and Deirdre off to investigate stuff for us? None of that matters now, because we’re about to find out who the killer is.

Niko goes into the lab…

Gray leaves…

Then Victor enters, sparky crispy death ensues, and then Victor leaves. Victor is the murderer, guys! Yes, the guy who hired us, and also the guy who was a phone friend for most of the game, is the killer! Like I said, it’s only a small twist on the usual Nancy formula, but it’s pretty cool and novel, I think.

But yeah. Victor’s a murderer. We’re also snowed in a building with him. What could go wrong?

The video is on a USB that’s already stuck in the player — I don’t know how it got there — so we just take it with us. Nancy says we have to get this USB to the police.

Unfortunately, as we walk out of the lab, Niko’s security system fries all of Nancy’s electronics — including the USB and her phone. So now we can’t even call the police and tell them what’s happening. Can’t we email them?

So we go to see Ryan, and she starts crying to us that Victor yelling at her is killing her soul. Yeah, well, he actually killed Niko, so let’s prioritize, Ryan. We tell her about the video and Niko’s security system, and she muses that we’ll have to build a Faraday cage, that way we can get the USB out without wiping it. She gives us the equipment to build the cage, and she and Ellie will take out the snowmobiles and try to ride for help. Ryan makes an ill-timed crack that the cage is either going to work, or Nancy’s gonna build it wrong and it’ll fire back and kill her. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just so happy we’re gonna bust him! And also really scared he’ll catch us and kill us all. I’m on a rollercoaster right now.” Heh.

There’s an extra USB drive near Ryan’s table, so let’s take that with us.

To put together the makeshift Faraday cage, we want to get some aluminum foil from the photo lab (the silicon wafers are wrapped in foil), then wrap it around the box Ryan gave us. Then we make a ground from a straightened paper clip and a binder clip. Voila! Man, I wish this game had been around when I was in grammar school. I bet this would’ve made an impressive fourth-grade science fair project.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what Ryan’s whole thing about getting help with Ellie was, because when we switch to nighttime, Ellie’s still in her usual place, unaware of everything that’s happened. First, let’s ask what the hell Mason was doing fucking around with the coil. Ellie’s like, “IDK, but I hope he gets in trouble. That would be funny.” Thanks Ellie, that was helpful.

So tell her that her boss is a murderer, and she says she and Ryan will go for help. Ellie! Ryan is on the day shift! Where the hell are you gonna find her? Besides, I thought you two WERE going for help. Man, Nancy has to do everything around here.

Ellie tells us to hide behind Gray until the police get here, which seems like the only reasonable suggestion anyone has made so far. We tell him that Victor killed Niko — so really, at this point, only Mason doesn’t know. Heh. Sucks to be Mason.

He tells us to get the video proof, and in the meantime, he’ll hold Victor off. Once we split, that’ll be the start of the end of the game, so let’s unlock the rest of Gray’s backstory before we go. What happened with him and Niko? Gray tells us that they became besties as kids, back when Niko was a kid with “bad acne and a lisp.” They went through school together, but Niko eventually became one of those cool geeks who makes hella money and everyone is jealous of them at the high school reunion, while Gray became one of the geeks who actively avoids everyone from his past because he’s ashamed of how he thought he was going to be successful and show them all but he burned out and failed. Gray is #relatable. He tells us that he realized that nothing is real, man — time, space, humanity, it’s all just a bunch of weird cosmos and shit. He got stuck in that headspace and it made him crazy.

Finally, with regards to what he was shredding — Niko made some discoveries that were very dangerous, like A-bomb dangerous. He made Gray promise to destroy his research if anything happened to him.

Alright, so we go back to Niko’s secret lab, download the video onto Ryan’s USB, and put the USB in the Faraday cage. Justice will be served!

Or not. When we exit back out to the main lab, we see Gray knocked out cold on the floor. Well…maybe he just got the vapors? This is some exciting shit, after all.

“I should find help,” Nancy derps, like there’s a single person left in the lab. Either way, there’s nothing to do but go to the door —

— where we promptly meet Victor. Well, this is not good.

Victor knocks us out, and puts us in the Faraday cage in the coil room. Damn, Victor, you’re gonna kill us AND you’re giving Deirdre more material. Why you gotta do us like this. He evils that he knew Victor had something hidden in the lab, and he was looking for it — that was why he wanted us to stay out of here. Uh, so Victor didn’t know about Niko’s secret lab? How did the murder tape get in there then?

Well, whatever. Anyway, he snarls that all he asked us to do was stay out of the lab, but no, we just HAD to go in. Well, damn, Victor, I thought you genuinely wanted us to solve this case! If I had known you were the murderer from the start, I would have handled this much differently! Victor yells at us that he hired us because of Deirdre’s shitty recommendation, and he was expecting us to accuse Ryan and make her take the fall for the murder. After we cleared her, he tried to get us to accuse Ellie and/or Mason. But sadly for him, we figured it out. So now he has to kill us, too. And then presumably hire another detective and hope they get Ryan arrested this time? This could go on for a long time, Victor. I’m just saying.

Victor turns on the Tesla coil, and tells us that the Faraday cage won’t last long against it.

We open up the circuit board inside the cage, and we can place inside the electrical components from Ryan that we’ve been carrying around. The schematics for the circuit board will automatically pop up on the right, as well as the Tesla Coil book. I love the image of Nancy sitting in the Faraday cage, madly flipping through the book while she’s being electrocuted.

So the circuit board should be arranged like so, and the electricity will…escape from the coil…or something…science…something. Victor runs out from the control booth, and the electricity starts sparking off the railings and knocks him out. What, it doesn’t kill him? This is a very fickle Tesla coil.

Victor goes to the hospital, then to jail. A bunch of buyers come forward with proof that Victor was courting them, and they end up cutting funding to the lab.

Mason broke into the lab after Victor was arrested and stole a bunch of his and Niko’s research. Gray tracked him down and found him trying to sell it at a conference, and they got into a public fight. Someone posted it on not-YouTube under the title “EPIC DORK FIGHT,” which sounds plausible because in 2012 we were still using the word “epic” unironically. “It went viral almost immediately,” Nancy says. I’ll never be comfortable hearing Nancy “Really 80 Years Old” Drew use modern lingo.

On the other hand, the comment section is almost uncomfortably realistic.

Ellie works with Mason to finish up Niko’s work, and then she moves back to the South. All is well for her until the 2016 election, I’m assuming.

Gray and Ryan are much less emo now that Niko’s real killer has been caught, and they move on with their careers. Nancy’s all, “Niko’s work will be known the world over, while Victor’s will be forgotten, which proves that the world remembers those who gives and forgets those who only take.” And that’s super righteous, dude.

And finally, after the game is entirely over and the credits have rolled, the Hardys FINALLY get back to us about the security video. Fucking Hardys. They’re like, “It’s Victor! He’s the murderer! You should get out of there!” and then Frank adds, “Nancy, I just want to tell you that I’ve always –” and then the answering machine cuts him off. That answering machine knows what’s up.

And seriously, Ryan can forget that screeching noise, because that message is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. CALL YOUR GIRLFRIEND, FRANK.

THE END.