CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Cami had been playing the game for only a minute when her email pinged. It was an email from Bordercross asking for some details to reinforce the game’s security. When she did, her character would receive an upgrade and be fully functional.
“In-Game Security Checklist” it was entitled. “Dear User, welcome to Bordercross. Please confirm your details to gain full access to the game.”
Listed below were the details Cami had given to log in to the game. Her date of birth, her name, her area, and the email address she had used. There were a couple more details that were optional, but if she filled them in, she’d receive a hundred experience points, so who would say no?
She was about to click reply when she checked the return email address.
It all looked above board and standard, a simple request for confirmation that was not surprising—but was it? Could there somehow be more to this? she wondered. Was this a way that he was getting information on the victims, and had they been wrong about the IP addresses?
Cami’s mind raced as she examined the email more carefully. There were ways of analyzing this. She had a program that could get into the email and find out more about it, tracking back to the page’s source code.
Just as a precaution, Cami ran the program. It was from the gaming company, without a doubt. The return email address was entirely legitimate.
But there was something here that her program was picking up—a command within the email itself. A command to send on, to a different email address.
Cami narrowed her eyes.
The game email was normal. But the automatic forwarding address was not. It was something that had been added. Almost like a secret program running over a program, Cami realized.
Someone had set up the instruction to be forwarded. And that someone could only be the killer.
“He’s someone who worked on the game in the past,” Cami realized.
She let out a long breath as finally, she realized how this had been done. It was a software engineer. Not Rowan, the game owner. But perhaps one of his employees, someone that he’d used in the past. One of the hundreds of people his lawyers had referred to, and perhaps one who’d left on bad terms.
Someone, somewhere, had gotten into this game and had set up this almost invisible and undetectable instruction. There was no way of tracing it, but now she knew more about who this person was. This was how he was able to narrow down his victims. Because, by receiving a copy of the return email, he would know their date of birth, their email address, their name, and the area where they lived. He would also know their IP address.
It was all innocent enough information, but it could be used to find them. From being anonymous people in a game, they had now become living, breathing targets that could be located and were vulnerable.
She sat up, her heart racing. Her mouth was dry. She had to get out of there, now.
She looked at the instructions on the screen. They were innocent enough. She could click reply and confirm them. She could continue playing the game.
In fact, she had to. Because without them, there was no way the killer might be prompted to target her.
She had only to click reply, confirm the details, and then she could carry on with the game.
She wondered if the killer was watching online even now. Was he waiting for her to be lured, to be trapped? If he was online, where was he? Was he watching her?
She had no choice. She clicked Reply, and watched the email disappear with a sick feeling in her stomach that her information was going elsewhere. That didn’t sit well with her at all.
But it meant she now, finally, knew how the killer was working.
There was a way to find who he was and track him down. He was a software developer who, at some stage, had worked on Bordercross.
She realized, too, that he must have had access to the game’s programming. That was how he had been able to put those instructions in there in the first place.
It was a worrying thought. There were so many people involved in what was essentially the creation of a massive game. It was hard to know who could be involved in such a way.
He had, somewhere, in the past, left an instruction to all new users.
She could track that information.
It must be someone who had left on bad terms, that was Cami’s suspicion. Perhaps he’d started doing this as a form of payback and his methods had escalated.
It all made sense to her now.