Virtue's Last Reward Playthrough (full o' spoilers)

[Rune Lai]

Okay, Virtue's Last Reward is getting nifty enough that I have to write down how I'm going through it so that if and when I replay it years from now, I can do it completely differently and let my mind be boggled by how it unwinds.

If you played Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors you know that it's not like a regular visual novel where you play through the story and the different endings are simply different paths taken. You actually need to hit a specific ending in order to later unlock the real ending.

In any other game that's a crappy/annoying reason to replay the game, but in 999 the reason you do that is because there is information in that non-canonical ending that you need to solve a puzzle on the path to the true ending. The fact that information can pass from one timeline to another is actually part of the story.

VLR is like that one element of 999 on crack. The game interface displays the story as a flow chart, and after hitting the first bad ending or "To Be Continued" it's possible to jump to any previous decision and see how alternate actions play out. Information gained in one branch of the story is vital to continuing in others. Which is why I need to record what I'm doing, because the story and the flow of information is going to unwind differently for each player based on their choices!

Prologue

On December 25, 2028 Sigma was knocked out by a gas attack in his car and through his rear view mirror, spied a fellow in a gas mask watching him. The gas mask person looks suspiciously like Zero from the first game (999), but there's no reason for Zero to run the Nonary Game anymore so my feeling is that this one's a fake.

Sometime later, Sigma woke up trapped inside an elevator along with a cantankerous young woman named Phi who mysteriously already knew his name despite the fact this appeared to be the first time they'd met. She refused to explain how/why she already knew his name.

I managed to escape the elevator, though I was stuck for a little minute because I didn't realize the full extent of one of the puzzles. Chuffed that I didn't need a FAQ though.

Outside I discovered that the "elevator" was one of a bank of rooms in a large warehouse, and end up meeting the other seven characters who comprise the unwilling nine participants in the newest incarnation of the Nonary Game, the Ambidex Edition. (Nona- being a Latin prefix for 9.) All of them are wearing bracelets with a digital reader that they can't take off.

Like Sigma and Phi they were also inside elevators and had to escape. We have Alice, a confident woman of African descent who clearly does not believe in wearing a shirt; Luna, a meek white woman who says she's something like a doctor (but not a doctor?); Dio, a blond jerk who who can pretty much be counted on to stab everyone in the back; Tenmyouji, a gruff old Japanese man; Quark, a boy maybe around eight or ten; Clover, a young woman from the first game, now sporting a bikini top; and K, a big guy trapped in a full body suit of armor who claims to have amnesia so he doesn't know his real name and since he's in armor no one knows what he looks like.

It's insinuated that one of the nine people is also the Zero who trapped them inside.

Everyone was divided into six teams; three pairs and three solos. Each team was given a color displayed on the digital part of their bracelets (at the start they're red, green, and blue). Zero III, an AI subservient who the one he said is the real Zero, explained that we enter rooms unlocked by teams that produce the appropriate color combination when mixed. So a red team and a blue team working together can open the magenta door.

But only three people can go through a given door, so it must be a pair and a solo. There are three doors (yellow, cyan, and magenta), so all nine people can go through them based on their current color combinations.

After finishing an escape room, players return to the warehouse to play the Ambidex Game with the other team they solved the escape with. The Ambidex Game is a simplified version of the prisoner's dilemma (or game theory, as I learned it in college). Everyone starts with 3 points. If both teams Ally then each one gets 2 points. If one team Allies and the other Betrays, the Betrayer gets 3 points and the Ally loses 2. If both Betray, no points are exchanged. Paired teams do not split rewards or penalties. They both go up 2-3, down 2, or stay the same depending on the result.

Only someone who has earned 9 or more points can open the number 9 door and escape, thus ending the game. But the 9 door can only be opened once and will only stay open for 9 seconds before closing forever.

The Ambidex Game will run as many rounds as it takes until someone opens the door 9. But it's also possible to hit 9 points and not open the door, thus assisting others in finishing.

Obviously the most altruistic solution is to have everyone Ally every round of the game to get everyone out. But can a bunch of strangers really trust each other to do that?

Also, dropping to 0 points or below means death by lethal injection from needles in the bracelets they can't take off. Tampering with the bracelets or breaking the rules results in a death penalty.

SO! Going to insert a post break here so things are more readable, and then move on to my first decision!

[Rune Lai]

Escape Round 1 - Yellow Door - Infirmary

I decided to group Sigma and Phi (who were paired) with Tenmyouji and their color combination meant we would go through the Yellow Door. I did it for RP reasons. Tenmyouji was the second one to escape the elevator puzzle. I didn't fully trust Alice because she escaped first and because of that she could have manipulated things before anyone else got out. Going with someone else who was clever seemed a good idea. I could also have gone with Luna, who was the third solo player, but she didn't seem that interesting.

The Yellow Door took us to an infirmary which was about the right amount of tough that I like in an escape game, though I was really bothered that we didn't use the monitor as part of the escape, since usually you use everything that you can interact with to escape, or at least you did in the first game.

When I opened the password-protected safe to get our reward (the escape key) I found a newspaper clipping that mentioned a disease called Radical-6 that broke out. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties and people were quarantined.

Ambidex Game Round 1 - Post-Yellow Door - Ally

Back in the warehouse, everyone got ready to go into the pseudo-elevators to do their votes, except Sigma had the bad luck of finding a dead body of an elderly woman in the room he intended to use. It was originally occupied by K and Clover, but Clover had been unconscious during the initial escape and K swears the old lady wasn't there before. The group takes the body to the infirmary and Luna determines the woman was killed by a stab wound to the heart and Tenmyouji seems oddly melancholy on seeing the body.

Unfortunately there's a timer on playing the Ambidex Game and it starts as soon as the voting doors are opened, so everyone has to run back to the elevators and vote.

I thought Tenmyouji was a good guy, despite being gruff, so I agreed with Sigma and voted Ally, even though Phi advocated for Betray. Also, from a meta standpoint, if you're playing a series of prisoner's dilemmas where the results are shared among all participants, you probably don't want to Betray too early otherwise no one will ever Ally with you and Betraying only works if the other player chooses Ally. Get a reputation as a Betrayer and you'll be stuck at 0 reward every vote.

When the results came out, Clover and Phi Betrayed Luna, Dio and Quark Betrayed Alice, and Tenmyouji Betrayed Sigma and Phi. Naturally, there were quite a few upset people.

I chalked it up to Tenmyouji being shaken up by the woman's body, because I didn't think it was quite in his nature.

While waiting for the next round to start, everyone split up to look for an exit (futile) and Sigma learned from Clover that this is not the first Nonary Game, but she wouldn't give him details about the others out of concern that he could be the new Zero and fishing for information. Clover and Alice are both apparently part of some secret organization as well.

Tenmyouji revealed that he's Quark's grandfather, but he refused to talk about how he and Quark were kidnapped, to the point he yells at Quark not to talk to Sigma about it.

Sigma shared the Radical-6 newspaper clipping with everyone, which people agreed doesn't add up, because they should have heard about a disease with that many casualties. The possibility came up that they're in a quarantine building, but that wouldn't make any sense because they hadn't even heard an outbreak yet. Dio outright called it a hoax set up by Zero.

After all this, Quark went nuts and tried to kill himself. He had to be sedated to the point of unconsciousness. Luna used a medical scanner in the infirmary to examine him and found out that he'd been infected with Radical-6, making the disease very real. Tenmyouji reacts with shock and horror, but there seems to be more there than a concerned grandfather, like not only is he horrified that Quark is infected, but that it shouldn't been have been possible.

Escape Round 2 - Blue Door - PEC

Everyone's bracelet colors and pair/solo statuses got changed after voting so Sigma got paired with Clover for the next round, who I ended up finding super annoying. She doesn't feel like the same person she was in 999.

I had to choose between grouping with Tenmyouji again for the Blue Door or with Dio for the Red Door. I was pretty sure Dio would be a smarmy traitor so there wouldn't be anything to gain from going with him. Tenmyouji Betrayed me earlier, but I was sure there was a story behind him, so I choose him.

Unfortunately I couldn't choose the Green Door because that combination resulted in Alice and K being grouped with Dio, who Alice couldn't stand since he Betrayed her, and Phi and Luna going with Tenmyouji, who Phi disliked for similar reasons.

After going through the Blue Door, there was a brief stop at a three way intersection with only one unlockable door. Then we found the PEC room (pressure exchange chamber), which was some sort of clean room leading to the outside, where the atmospheric pressure is different, and lower, than the pressure inside the facility we're in.

The PEC was a tougher room and I actually had to drop the game difficulty to Easy and have the other characters give me hints to get out. Which I was later annoyed with, because there's a point where you don't have the solution because the characters get separated and you have to direct someone to get a clue that you visually can see but can't interact with. But the thing is, when I was on the correct side of the divider, I saw but couldn't interact with the object I needed, so if it had been a real physical escape I would have been fine.

That escape earned us a memory card which was the right size to fit in the side of that monitor I couldn't use in the Infirmary!

When we met up again with the others, we found out that the group that went through the Red Door went to the Laboratory and ended up with some Axelavir, the drug that can cure Radical-6, so Luna administered it to Quark, who was still sedated.

As for my group, it turned out that the memory card held audio from Dec 31st, 2028 involving a mission control checking in with a Mars mission that had nine astronauts. After a lot of silence and concern, woman came on the line from the astronaut side and she brokenly explained that six of them were dead and there would probably be six million others. She seems irrational and thinks it's her fault, and control panics saying they're sending out a rescue.

After the audio ended, Tenmyouji admitted being familiar with a Mars simulation project because he used to work on it. The audio was probably from that, but the date bothers people because that means they've been unconscious for days (since Sigma was kidnapped the 25th and a couple people a few days before).

Sigma would like to ask Tenmyouji more, but the time is running out for voting in the next Ambidex Game.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Blue Door - Ally

Sigma talked to Tenmyouji about voting Ally, because if he didn't, then Sigma's points would drop to -1, killing him, and Tenmyouji doesn't seem like a murderer. Tenmyouji considered and asked about Clover, who was currently at 6 points. If Sigma and Clover Betrayed, then Clover would get 9, which would allow her to leave. Sigma, being a nice guy, swears to Ally.

Once isolated in the voting elevator, Clover did push for Sigma to vote Betray, saying that she wouldn't leave even if she had 9, because Alice is her friend and she wouldn't leave Alice.

I didn't think it would be in character to Betray after all that protesting, so I chose Ally, so Sigma walked away with 3 points, Clover 8, and Tenmyouji 8.

Among the other characters, Phi and Luna voted Betray against Dio who also voted Betray, ending up with a net gain of 0 for all involved (this is why you don't be a Betraying jerk early in a prisoner's dilemma game) and Alice and K voted Ally along with Quark, who defaulted to Ally because he was sedated and unconscious.

We realized Alice disappeared shortly after the results though, and when we found her in the Crew Quarters behind the Cyan Door (from Round 1), she was already dead from a stab in the heart with a scalpel.

Clover freaked out, swearing to kill everyone unless we could prove it wasn't a murder, which we couldn't... drawing us to my first "To Be Continued".

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Blue Door - Betray

By now I could see pretty far down into the plot flow chart, and knew that some choices went really deep and others did not. The Betray branch next to the Ally I had just done was just a stub, so I was pretty sure it would be a bad ending. Not to mention being out of character since Sigma just swore up and down that he would Ally.

So I backtracked to my second round vote and chose to Betray for the lulz.

Choosing Betray naturally pissed Tenmyouji off for trusting Sigma, but worse than that, Clover hit 9 points and opened the number 9 door. She skipped off by herself saying that Alice left her orders to escape no matter what. Since Alice only had 1 point herself she knew she didn't have much chance of escape.

And that's what I got for being a bad person. Being trapped in a warehouse with no escape.

Escape Round 2 - Red Door - Laboratory

I rewound to the next decision up and decided to go through the Red Door with Dio this time instead of the Blue with Tenmyouji. As before there is a three way intersection (actually four way, but one of those is the way I came) along the way with only one unlockable door before we get to our next escape room.

The Laboratory bothered me because like the Infirmary, there was a device in the room (a machine no one knew what it was) that I didn't use as part of my escape. This was also the first room where I found a bonus password before the real one (bonus passwords give you extra backstory on the game, the real password gives you the key to unlock the door and escape). Unfortunately, this meant I had to redo the escape because the password protected safe either holds the bonus info or the escape key, but not both, so I was actually a little disappointed to find a bunch of files instead of a key.

I figured I'd do a sweep of the bonus stuff post-game.

Along with the key we got a bottle of Axelavir, which I was expecting from my Blue Door PEC playthrough, and a journal written in a language we couldn't read. Sigma being a nice guy, offered the Axelavir to Dio when he asked to take a look at it, and Dio snatched it away. Dio agreed to give it back under the condition that Sigma voted Ally in the next Ambidex Game, and if he told anyone about the blackmail, then Dio would smash that bottle so there would be no saving Quark.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Red Door - Ally

Back at the main warehouse, Sigma showed the journal to Phi, who said the writing was in Latin, which she could read a little of, but the journal was mostly technical stuff. As she skimmed it though, she found she could read page 216 without too much trouble, which documented the symptoms of Radical-6 and that it eventually drove its victims to suicide. I had thought Quark's attempt to kill himself was part of the disease. Now I had proof.

At voting time, Clover expressed concern that Sigma would be signing his death warrant to save Quark if he chose Ally, so she wouldn't blame him for choosing Betray. But Sigma couldn't stomach the thought of sacrificing a kid to save himself.

I chose Ally, not sure what kind of ending this would be, because really, it looked like ending-wise I would be getting screwed either way. That's what I get for going through a door with Dio. That bastard. But at least this way Sigma would be doing the honorable thing.

The results came in, and Sigma hit -1, because of course Dio would Betray. Now he had 9 points and could skip out.

As for Sigma, the death by lethal injection is supposed to be a two step process, per the previous explanation given by Zero III. First, the victim is injected with Soporil, an anesthetic, so they go numb. A few minutes later, after the victim is good and anesthetized, the victim is then injected with tubocurarine, and that's a muscle relaxant, so you pretty much relax until you stop breathing. But hey, there's the anesthetic so at least you won't go out with any pain.

Shortly after the results (and everyone else's shock), Sigma got his first injection and started to get woozy, but as soon as he saw Dio getting ready to open the number 9 door he forced himself over there and demanded the bottle of Axelavir for Quark, figuring that if Dio wouldn't hand it over he would at least die with his hands around Dio's neck.

Dio coughed it up though, revealing his blackmail to everyone, and then Sigma collapsed from the anesthetic.

But even though he was about to die in a few minutes, I was surprised that Sigma was convinced there might still be a way for him to save himself. Unfortunately I couldn't think of anything and I got... "To Be Continued". Which means this was not an ending and there is a way to survive!

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Red Door - Betray

I was pretty sure this was a bad ending, but I rewound to the last Ambidex Game and this time had Sigma Betray Dio to see what happens. The blackmail came out, but Dio kept his threat about shattering the cure. Unfortunately, though Dio didn't hit 9 points in this route, K did (I assume he also has 9 in the Ally scenario, but we TBCed before the fact he does played out) and he opened the number 9 door. Clover also had 9 thanks to being Sigma's partner when he Betrayed, so she skipped out along with K. Bad ending.

I came to realize that a big part of this game is not only getting to 9 and not dropping to 0, but that you can't allow other players to get 9 either, if Clover and K are any indication.

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Blue Door Redux - Ally

Here's where the game started getting really interesting (not that it wasn't already fun). I went back to my first To Be Continued where I had Allied with Tenmyouji, Alice had died from a scalpel to the heart, and Clover was screaming bloody murder, because I had new information.

This time, when Clover went off on her tirade, Sigma said he had proof that Alice was not murdered. And he did, from the timeline where he went through the Red Door with Dio, though Sigma wasn't sure exactly how he knew the information he did. He asked about the journal the Laboratory group found (which was K, Alice, and the unconscious Quark) and had the journal handed over to Phi. She couldn't read most of it, but he directed her to page 216, which she translated into the proof Clover needed to understand that Alice must have gotten infected with Radical-6 and then killed herself.

Luna corroborated that statement saying someone had come in the Infirmary while she was tending to Quark, so Alice must have picked up the scalpel to kill herself then.

When asked how he knew about the journal, Sigma wasn't able to answer. He couldn't. He just knew that he did.

Even though Alice died, that didn't stop the game. The bracelets come off when there's no longer a heartbeat, so Dio picked up her bracelet since he ended up grouped with her for the third round and he needed it to get through the next set of doors.

Also, Quark recovered and woke up! The group hid Alice's death from him though and everyone met up in front of the next set of doors, which were all white, which meant that like colors have to pair with like in order to get through. This time, the three groups are set and the only choice involved is which door to go through.

After everyone else made up their mind, Sigma, who was a solo this time, was left with the white door on the right, and he's grouped with Tenmyouji and Quark, who were a pair.

Escape Round 3 - White Door - Director's Office

I didn't like this room. Which is ironic because it has nice wood paneling and doesn't look like I'm stuck in a industrial building, but I found the headless suit of armor creepy, the pink helium balloon stuck in the middle of the room creepy, and especially creepy the letters H, E, L, P painted in various parts of the room in blood red paint.

But I solved it without too much trouble. Again there were leftover items I didn't need though. There was a weird device on the floor that was briefly speculated to be a Roomba (it wasn't) and there was a computer with a login username and password that I didn't have. The login screen also had the image of a two-headed lion. I had seen a lion iconograph on a metal tray in the Laboratory as well. Clearly there is something to this lion imagery.

As part of solving the room, we needed a female face to be seen by a facial recognition program, which was a weird puzzle since Zero clearly should have known it was possible to end up with an all male group like we did. But Tenmyouji had a photo he was able to hold before the reader to get it to trigger. Considering everyone else had their personal belongings taken, it didn't make sense that Tenmyouji would have that. Did Zero leave him with it as a failsafe in case an all male group ended up in this room or is there another reason why?

The photo is of a young girl and Sigma initially asks if she's Tenmyouji's granddaughter, but Quark corrects him and says that she's Grandpa's first love. Tenmyouji says her name is Akane and he's been looking for her for years. I know Akane. She's from the first game.

Winnings were slim this time, and I remember the characters commenting on that. I actually don't remember if we found anything other than the key and the cards needed to open the doors for the Ambidex Game.

On the way back Tenmyouji realized he forgot the photo and left it on the reader, so he and Quark went back while Sigma returned to the main warehouse to meet everyone else.

Dio, being a jerk, opened the Ambidex doors to start the game even though Quark and Tenmyouji hadn't returned yet, thus starting the vote timer. They were taking a while getting back though, so Sigma ran back for them.

Once he got to the Director's Office though, he saw it was empty. When he looked at the floor map (picked up in the PEC room) he realized he had taken the long route to get there and had probably missing Tenmyouji and Quark going back the other way.

But something else was amiss.

The machine on the floor was turned on and glowing. A holograph of an old man claiming to be Zero appeared and said he had two things to tell Sigma. The first was comparing humans to termites. Termites build these wondrous mounds, but can termites appreciate their skill in architecture the way a human can, or are they only aware of that small piece of the mound they are creating? Similarly, what if humans are in turn creating something that only a higher intelligence can perceive and appreciate? Sigma might get a glimpse soon.

Secondly, Zero gave Sigma a code to disarm a bomb, which he said he will only tell him once. Since Sigma has a fantastic memory (this comes out as part of the story) I don't think this will be a problem.

Ambidex Game Round 3 - Post-White Director's Office Door - Ally

To Sigma's relief, when he returned to the warehouse he found Tenmyouji and Quark had indeed returned the other way. The two of them then asked that Sigma vote Ally and they would vote Ally as well. Since both of them were currently at 8 points (both Betrayed in Round 1 and Allied in Round 2) they didn't need to Betray in order to escape. Tenmyouji also promised that the two of them would not open the number 9 door after getting 9 points. They're willing to help out everyone else.

By this time I had an inkling of who Tenmyouji probably was, due to the photo, so I was willing to trust him. Sigma internally wanted to trust them as well, though when he thought about it, if he picked Betray he would bring himself up to 6 points and Tenmyouji and Quark down to 6, which would force them to stick around. Still, I had Sigma vote Ally, because it seemed right.

When the results came out, Tenmyouji overrode Quark and had selected Betray, presumably to protect his own points in case Sigma Betrayed as well. This brought the pair up to 11 and Sigma down to 1 again. Tenmyouji said that he had promised not to open the door, not that he would Ally.

Unfortunately Clover exceeded 9 points as well, and she ran for the number 9 door. (Can I say I really did not like Clover? I was detecting a pattern here...) Because the door would only open once, Tenmyouji and Quark booked it too, but they did drop two pieces of information.

One, Tenmyouji said he now knows who Zero is. (How??? What tipped him off? The hologram?) Two, Quark left Sigma with a letter, and asked him to read it.

The letter explained Quark's history with Tenmyouji. He's not Tenmyouji's biological grandson, but an adopted one. Tenmyouji never married. Even though he's a tough grandpa, he loves Quark very much.

Quark's letter had some interesting clues as to what reality really is, since Quark mentions root beer floats being a rare and expensive treat, which it could be for someone without much money, but it's considered equal bragging rights as having an actual biological mother raising him, since most kids don't (which is not normal).

I think it's implied they'll bring help, but the game ends there. Not really a bad ending, but certainly not a good one. It's called the Tenmyouji Ending, which tells me there's probably one for each character.

Ambidex Game Round 3 - Post-White Director's Office Door - Betray

Just for the lulz, I went back and Betrayed that last choice, so Tenmyouji and Quark are stuck. Clover, of course, skips out the door (I hate you) and it's a bad end.

I get the impression that Betraying is actually not very good in this game. Every bad end so far has come from picking Betray.

So at this point, here's what I got:

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:

- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- Phi might be able to branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma, which is how she already knows his name despite technically meeting for the first time
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999, based on having a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- Everyone except for Tenmyouji and Quark (and maybe K) were put into stasis decades ago, which explains a number of things:

- Why nobody knows (or admits knowing) about the disease Radical-6 even though there was an outbreak with a hundred thousand victims
- How there is already a cure for Radical-6 (medical solutions take time!)
- Why Tenmyouji (if he is Junpei) is vastly older than Clover, who is also from 999 and says a year has passed since the last Nonary Game
- How Tenmyouji was once working on a Mars base project when his dialogue implies his current job is scavenging parts (decades allow for job changing)
- Why it's common for children Quark's age to not have living biological parents (they died to the disease)

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start). The first game was really about past Akane reaching into various possible futures in order to save her own life, which is how information traveled through one timeline to the next, because past Akane was guiding present Junpei to the solution to the puzzle that would save her in the past. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Akane is guiding Sigma in a similar fashion, but that would mean that Sigma has to have something in common with her, because she only was able to link with Junpei due to being close childhood friends.

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 1 - Post-Yellow Door - Betray


At this point I back up to my very first Ambidex Game, and decide to see what happens when I choose Betray on Tenmyouji, and the result is pretty interesting! I expected that he would Betray, because that's what he did last time, but he Allies instead, making Sigma the jerk who Betrayed the person who was counting on him.

That's not how it was supposed to play out though, and Sigma knows it! He even calls Tenmyouji out saying that he had voted Betray last time, and Tenmyouji says he has no idea what Sigma is talking about.

Sometimes visual novels play out differently on different routes in ways unrelated to player choices (and I hate that, because if the player's decision is the only factor that changed, there shouldn't be changes involving things that the player logically could have had no impact on), but in VLR, this is an anomaly and worth paying attention to.

Things mostly play out similarly from here. Tenmyouji still refuses to talk about how he got here. Alice and Clover mention the previous Nonary Game. Sigma shares the newspaper pandemic article. Quark comes down with Radical-6 and needs to be sedated.

Differently though, Sigma and Phi both mention being a little under the weather. (Uh oh…)

Escape Round 2 - Green Door - Treatment Center

The pair/solo assignments, as well as assigned bracelet colors, are supposed to be randomized, but their make-up post voting is the same as last time, so Sigma is stuck with Clover again.

When we get to the Red, Green, and Blue doors for the second escape round, the unhappy parties are different. Alice (paired with K) still does not want to go with Dio, Luna and Phi (paired) are fine with Dio, Tenmyouji, or Quark since they have not been betrayed by any of them yet, but Tenmyouji is particular about who Quark goes with since Quark is unconscious and he doesn't want him taken advantage of.

This argument seems to comes up because Sigma betrayed Tenmyouji and he doesn't trust him, but the pairs available for the solo Quark to go with are no different from last time, so I'm not sure why this is a problem now. Maybe Tenmyouji's trust in general was shaken? Because he then says that there is only one person he can trust to keep Quark safe, and that's Clover, even though she's paired with Sigma.

This makes the Green Door the only choice if Clover and Sigma are to take Quark. Alice really doesn't want to be stuck with Dio again, but gets no support from the rest of the group so she puts up with it. This arrangement should send Alice, K, and Dio to the PEC and Phi, Luna, and Tenmyouji to the Laboratory.

As with the Red and Blue doors, we run into a three way branch in our way with one unlockable door before we get to the next puzzle room, the Treatment Center.

This is all new to me (yay), though I do get stumped on a puzzle, presumably because I can't figure out where the starting space is supposed to be, but actually because of something else. I drop down to Easy, but the only help I get from Clover is that I must be missing some information, which prompts another look around the room. Since by then I had triggered everything else in the room, my second sweep revealed that if I open up the lid of one of the treatment pods it'll cross a previously activated laser beam, and the number readout on the lid then changes. Which gave me the break I needed to solve the puzzle, because what happened was that I only thought I was solving the puzzle correctly because the number I was using was incomplete to begin with.

The Treatment Center reveals some very important things though. Though it can't cure Radical-6, the treatment pods can treat the symptoms, so we leave Quark inside one. There is also the option to put him into cold sleep, but we refrain since Clover accidentally shattered a potted plant when we froze it as part of the escape puzzle.

Finally, at least one of the pods was in use no more eight hours ago, and a subject was revived from cold sleep. There are three pods, so there could have been three people here. They could have been stored, and then defrosted before being put into the elevators.

Also interesting is that the time stamp for the last use is not the date, but the number of hours, like there is a reason that Zero does not want them to know the actual day and time.

It looks like my hunch about being in stasis was right. But if there are only three pods (and there aren't more hidden in the facility), then who was frozen? And, if only three people were frozen, does that mean the other six are lying about the true state of the world outside? I can buy Tenmyouji knowing about Radical-6 and hiding it, but Luna, Phi, and Dio too? K has memory loss so if he's to be believed then he could have forgotten it, and Quark, being a kid, might not have known much.

The safe has an injection gun with neostigmine in it, which Clover and Sigma don't know what to do with, so Clover hangs on to it. It also has a new note that I haven't seen before, and come to think of it, the Green Door group on previous playthroughs did not mention it either. (This may be important.) The note says that at least one member of every trio must vote in the Ambidex Game or all of them will be penalized (which means lethal injection time).

On the way back to the warehouse, Clover suggests Betraying Quark because it would be an easy 3 points for each of them, bringing them up to 9 so they can escape (Sigma and Clover are both at 6 because they Betrayed in Round 1). She points out that they might not get another opportunity like this.

When we regroup at the warehouse, Tenmyouji freaks out because Quark is not with us, but when the treatment pod is explained to him, he calms down and asks Clover to take him there.

Of course, while he's gone, that dip Dio opens the doors to the Ambidex Game and Sigma yells at him because we need at least one member of every trio present to vote to avoid getting penalized.

Everyone shares where they went and what they found, and interestingly enough, the group that went through the Red Door did not visit the Laboratory (with the Axelavir cure for Quark), but hit another location; the Pantry. Initially I thought this was a consistency error.

Phi asks about the treatment pods and the cold sleep, which brings up the realization that if cold sleep stops the heart, they can take off the bracelets that are only removable by death (or by escaping through the number 9 door), which results in everybody running for the Treatment Center, only to find out that the cold sleep function has been disabled.

It's speculated that Zero wants us to know that cold sleep worked, but doesn't want us actually using it for obvious reasons.

Time for the Ambidex Game is running out though, so most of the group decides to return, except for Tenmyouji, who wants to stay by Quark, even though he knows that he is a solo at 1 point and doesn't have a partner to vote for him. He will default to Ally.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Green Door - Ally

Fortunately Tenmyouji's groupmates are Phi and Luna, so they plan to vote Ally. This is an easy vote for them because they know he will default so they don't have to worry about Betrayal and they don't want to kill him.

Once in the voting room, Clover tells Sigma that she changed her mind after talking with Tenmyouji (they had time to speak alone on the way to Quark). She now knows who he really is so she doesn't want to hurt him by hurting Quark. She no longer wants to vote Betray, even though that would take her and Sigma to 9 points. Unfortunately she promised not to discuss what passed between her and Tenmyouji, but I think this all but confirms that he's Junpei from 999.

Sigma and I are in agreement that it would be poor form to get points off a helpless opponent, even if Clover hadn't had a change of heart, so I vote Ally.

When the results come out, they're as expected. Phi and Luna Allied with Tenmyouji, Sigma and Clover Allied with Quark, and Dio mutually Betrayed Alice and K (way to go Dio).

Alice is naturally upset that Dio chose Betray, because if she had chosen Ally he would have killed her since she was at 1 point after Round 1, but the logic Dio offers in response is sound. He says that in Alice's situation she has to choose Betray. It's the only way to not lose points. Knowing this, he chose Betray as well, to maintain the status quo.

Now, from another timeline I know that Dio does not have a problem choosing Betray even if it will kill someone, but Alice does not know this. Dio also points out that if he had attempted Allying and been Betrayed, then K would have hit 9 points (having Betrayed Luna in Round 1) which would have enabled K to leave, ending the game.

It's a sound decision, but no one likes Dio, so it makes it a bitter pill to swallow.

Everyone goes exploring to look for a way out while waiting for Round 3 to start, and Sigma ends up hanging out with Clover in the PEC room. He finally gets her to admit that she does have some idea what's going (besides being another Nonary Game) and she spills the beans on what happened to her post-999.

After escaping the last game, the former participants ran into Alice (the hitchhiker at the end of 999) who had been on her way to the test site in pursuit of some terrorists. She suggested that they could have been the ones running the Nonary Game, but she was not believed.

Alice was a Special Office of Internal Security (SOIS) agent under the Department of Defense (kinda like FBI and CIA, but off the record) and she recruited Clover, her brother, and the kids from the first Nonary Game (the one that took place before 999) to train them in taking down the organization believed to be responsible for kidnapping them and forcing them to play the first one.

The first Nonary Game involved testing a person's ability to send information through morphogenic fields, kinda like telepathy. The SOIS trained Clover and the others to use their abilities and made them agents. Clover was about to participate in a bust along with Alice on December 22, 2028 when they were knocked out. This organization was suspected of manufacturing a biological weapon, which is possibly what we now know as Radical-6.

Ever since she woke up Clover has been sending, trying to contact her brother, but she hasn't been able to reach him.

Clover also stumbles on some vague memory and then remembers what neostigmine (in the injection gun) can be used for. It can counteract tubocurarine, which is the lethal injection drug on everyone's bracelets! There's only enough for one dose though, so they plan to save it for if they need to go through the number 9 door and take someone who doesn't have 9 points.

Excited, Clover runs off to find Alice and tell her the good news. Sigma follows her after a short delay (Clover uses an elevator to leave the room so he has to wait for it to come back), but when he gets up top he finds Phi acting listless, resembling how Quark looked before turning crazy.

Stupidly, he leaves her and hurries after Clover to the Treatment Center, where they expect Alice will be. Only no one's there. Sigma runs around through the Pantry (a new place I haven't seen!) and still doesn't find anyone. The warehouse, the Crew Quarters, the Lounge, still nobody.

Finally he checks the Infirmary and finds everyone except Quark (who's in stasis) is dead in what appears to have been a bloody mass suicide with a single scalpel on the floor. And yes, Sigma picks it up and his narration begins talking about wanting to wake up from a nightmare as he cuts his own throat.

Clover Ending.

I have to say that even though I got her backstory, it's not a very happy ending since everyone's dead! Oh wait. Now that I think about it, K wasn't present in the Infirmary body count. Very suspicious, though suicide might be hard in full body armor. K outwardly appears to be a nice guy, even the time he opens the door and ditches everyone he says he's doing it to get help for Quark, but I still don't know much about him.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Green Door - Betray

For lulz I rewound to the last Ambidex Game and chose Betray since Quark would default to Ally. In this ending Sigma acts a little out of character and outright giddy that he's going to get out of here, and I admit I was curious because this would be my first bad ending when Sigma actually hit 9 points (and I was pretty sure it would be bad).

Everyone totally gangs up on Sigma for being the jerk who would toss a kid under the bus to get out of here (even Dio, though I think he would have done the same), so even though Sigma opens the door, it doesn't open fast enough for him to get out before he's tackled, specifically by K who is very heavy with that full body suit of armor.

When Sigma protests that someone needs to get outside before the 9 seconds are up or they'll all be trapped, Alice orders Clover through. Oddly enough, even though she skips out really easily in every other ending I've seen so far, even when Alice is still alive, Alice has to actually push her through this time.

And then the doors close. Another jerk ending for making a jerk choice.

And here's the next speculation round-up before I rewind waaaaaaay back to my very first choice in the game (because knowing about the injection gun to counteract the tubocurarine is still not enough to get through my second TBC where Sigma is at -1 and going to die from lethal injection in the immediate future).

Confirmed:
- Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who

All but confirmed:
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999

- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark)
- After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:
- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- Phi might be able to branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma, which is how she already knows his name despite technically meeting for the first time
- Alternately, if Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the participants visit next, so the Green Door group in other timelines actually never found the Treatment Center and that's why the Red Door group in my latest playthrough went to the Pantry instead of the Laboratory where the Axelavir was
- At minimum Sigma, Clover, and Alice are the cold sleepers, because:

- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago
- Clover and Alice know each other and were kidnapped three days before Sigma
- The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start).

[Rune Lai]

Escape Round 1 - Cyan Door - Crew Quarters

Time to go waaaaaaaaaay back to the very first choice in the game. Sigma and Phi just got out of their elevator, they know what the rules are now, and they need to pick which door and thus which solo person they're going to take with them. This time I choose Alice, which means we go through the Cyan Door.

The Cyan Door leads to the Crew Quarters, which is a tough, but possible to solve puzzle. I think I know how to get the bonus password for this one too, but I'll come back later for that. I also find a book about Schrodinger's Cat which is not part of the puzzle solving, but clearly means something.

Anyhow, everyone comes back in short order to play the first Ambidex Game, but things don't go quite the same as before!

When Sigma and Phi open the door to the same voting elevator as they used last time, it's empty. There's no dead elderly woman! Sigma is shocked, though Phi doesn't understand why he's surprised to find an empty room.

If I hadn't already seen Tenmyouji's vote change for no good reason, I would have really been caught off guard by this, but even so, this wasn't something I would have expected to change since the dead lady wasn't even a participant. Now the question becomes, would she have been there if I had chosen Alice and the Cyan Door as my first playthrough or is she only there if I join Tenmyouji in going through the Yellow Door?

Since there's no dead body sucking away everyone's time, the group collectively locks themselves in their individual voting chambers with 40 minutes to spare. Annoyed by that, but having plenty of time to talk, Phi and Sigma are able to spend a fair bit of it conversing.

He asks how she knows his name when they haven't met before, and Phi, oddly, asks him if he's sure they hadn't met before. I'm thinking, well, sure he's spent a fair bit of time with her in other timelines, but then that request triggers something in Sigma.

Memories start flashing before him, and they're more detailed than when he pulled information from the Laboratory exploration to help prove that Alice wasn't murdered. More shockingly, they're of events I haven't seen.

They're just snatches of dialogue and sepia toned scenes. Phi apologizing and thanking Sigma. A bomb was going to go off and they couldn't stop it (and I'm thinking, I have the password for that!). A small building on the moon with smoke coming out of it.

Unable to come up with an explanation, Phi and Sigma move on to their current predicament, and whether to vote Ally or Betray. Phi runs through a more detailed explanation of the prisoner's dilemma and why it promotes Betrayal even though in the long run it costs the individual as well as the group.

The safest option for the individual to minimize losses is to Betray, but if everyone Betrays, they go nowhere.

If we look at the nine players as playing collectively against Zero rather than each other, Ally is the best option, because that generates points collectively in the group's favor with every mutual Allegiance. Mutual Betrayal generates no points, and mixed results can actually take away points (depending on whether the pair is the Betrayers or not).

Unfortunately, even though Ally is best in the long term, Phi advocates for Betray for this first round, because she doesn't know if they can trust Alice.

Unusually, she also says that it would be really bad for her and Sigma's points to drop 1, because if they later drop to 0 they'll die, which Zero has not told the group yet (he only reveals that after the first Ambidex Game). When Sigma asks how she knows, she can't answer.

Ambidex Game Round 1 - Post-Cyan Door - Ally

I had a hard time deciding this one. Phi put up a convincing case, convincing enough that if this had been my first playthrough I probably would have gone for it despite my meta strategy of not come out of the gates with Betray because I don't want to be labeled a consistent Betrayer. As we know from Dio, who consistently Betrays, it's hard for chronic Betrayers to get points after the first round.

I also don't know what Alice is like other than she's super grudgey. If I Betray her… she's totally going to hate me (Sigma will be her new Dio!), and her default vote could be considered Ally since she was Ally in my previous playthrough when she went up against Dio and Quark. And if her default vote is Ally, it's best to Ally, isn't?

But just because she voted Ally last time though doesn't mean she'll do it again. Tenmyouji's vote changed.

And it turns out, that's what sells it to me. I want to know if it's going to change. Sigma is aware to some degree that there are alternate timelines, so me using that information to make a decision is perfectly sensible. I choose to Ally.

When the results come out, we see that Clover and K Betrayed Tenmyouji, Quark and Dio Allied with Luna (wait… wha?), and Alice Betrayed Phi and Sigma.

Meanwhile, Alice quickly gets herself labeled as a jerk when she tells a shocked Sigma he's an idiot for choosing anything other than Betray. Phi also thinks Sigma is an idiot for choosing to believe in Alice.

Among the other groups, Quark says that Dio was going to Betray Luna, but he stopped him so they could Ally. At first Luna is horrified, but then Quark says it was a joke. Or was it? Dio looked really uncomfortable when Quark said he was going to Betray her, and even after the joke admission he seemed more relieved than annoyed.

Everyone goes off to explore as before in the Yellow Door timeline, leaving Sigma to brood by himself as the last person in the warehouse (which he did before) before joining up with everyone else.

After talking with Phi, Sigma finds out she also experienced a headache like the one he got when he first woke up here and he got again when he had the flashback to events that had yet to take place (specifically the bomb scenario I haven't encountered yet). Both of them are also feeling an odd sense of detachment from their bodies, kind of like they're floating. Luna and Clover, also in the conversation, do not seem to feel this so much, and Luna thinks it might be a side effect from the anesthetic gas used to knock them out prior to kidnapping.

In another conversation Sigma talks with Alice, Dio, and Tenmyouji in an attempt for them to get to know and trust each other better. Alice says she's something like a detective (but I know that she's SOIS agent). She's hunting her father's killer and thinks her kidnapping might be connected to that case, but she has no idea why the rest of the group is here.

Dio is a circus ringleader (which explains his outfit) and a fifth generation performer at that. He also shares that Luna has a medical license of some kind so is either a doctor or a nurse. Tenmyouji calls himself a garbage collector. Sigma shares that he's a graduate student working on his PhD.

In the last group conversation Quark shows us the Radical-6 newspaper clipping that he, Dio, and Luna found in the Infirmary. Sigma initially says that he's never heard of it, but then in his internal narration he realizes he has, but he's not sure how.

The conversation stops though when Clover alerts everyone to an antimatter bomb in the Crew Quarters and it's the same one from Sigma's vision. Alice guesses there's enough power in it to equal a ton of TNT. Worse, it's labeled 03, implies there are at least two other bombs somewhere in the facility, and there's no guarantee that it's the last one. It wasn't there when Sigma, Phi, and Alice went through earlier, so it had to have been planted after their escape.

No one was alone from room completion through the end of the Ambidex Game and there should only be nine people present in the game area, but someone could have ducked off while they were searching the hallways. Then it comes to everyone's attention that Sigma had stayed behind by himself in the warehouse, making him prime suspect #1.

In any case, though people would like to argue, they discover they're running out of time until the next set of Chromatic Doors open and they need to go through before they're penalized, so everyone heads down to the (now familiar) Green, Red, and Blue doors.

Phi quickly lays out the possible combinations (Sigma is now paired with Luna, Dio with Tenmyouji, Quark with K, and Phi, Alice, and Clover are now solos). Phi proposes letting the people with the most at stake, those at 1 point, to make the grouping decisions, but Alice refuses and asks for a general vote.

So the group votes, and disturbingly, Alice wants to pair up with Sigma and Luna, even though she knows Sigma is mad at her. This concerns me, a lot. I would not have thought Alice was willing to kill someone to escape, but I don't know anymore. Worse, the voting shakes out where Option C, the one where Sigma and Luna have to group with Alice is the one that wins.

[Rune Lai]

Escape Round 2 - Blue Door - B. Gardens

As before, there is a long hallway ending in an intersection with multiple doors, but only one opens. I notice one says B. Gardens, another says PEC, and the third is blank. I don't remember seeing multiple door labels before, so this is probably new. The open door takes us to what I assume are the Botanical Gardens.

The garden puzzle wasn't very hard, though it had a weird mechanic that threatened to drop my difficulty from Hard to Easy if I failed too much. I got the bonus password before the real one again, but this time I stayed in the room and redid the puzzle to get the real one as well. I found out that if I open the safe with the bonus password and then reset the room, I can put in the real one in right away without redoing the entire room. Sweet.

For a reward we get the usual escape key and cards for the next Ambidex Game round, but there's also a slip of paper with the word "Immunoglobulin" on it, which Luna calls IG for short, and a strange diagram with a few letters and the word "Nevada site" on it which I think is a callback to the location of the first game.

After finishing the Gardens we bump into the Green Door group of Tenmyouji, Dio, and Phi. They went to the Treatment Center and run through the fact three people were in cold sleep again. But Tenmyouji throws a wrench in it saying that Alice was not one of those people.

He says that the water in Alice's body is actually Ice-9 and she can go into cold sleep without the assistance of a pod just by dropping her body to room temperature. Clover told him this when they were partnered in the Lounge. But Alice laughs it off and says she often gets confused with the urban legend of a frozen mummy that would not thaw. Clover must have been joking. (For what it's worth, Junpei's mental picture of the mummy looked like Alice when portrayed in 999.)

Everyone heads back to the warehouse to check on the others and they find out that Quark has collapsed. Luna discovers he's been infected by Radical-6 (took a little longer this time) and after they sedate him, they realize that Alice is acting weird too, just like Quark had been a moment ago. She runs off and everyone except Tenmyouji (who stays with Quark) gives chase to stop her from killing herself.

Phi and Sigma find Alice in the Garden, apparently passed out before she could kill herself and bring her back to the Infirmary where they discover that Quark had been carrying a bottle of Axelavir in his pocket that he must have picked up in the Laboratory when he went with K and Clover. Unfortunately, there is only enough dosage for one person.

By rights, there should be a To Be Continued here, but Sigma remembers the IG replicator in the Laboratory from when he went through with Dio and Clover in a different timeline (that strange machine not used as part of the escape). Now that he knows that IG is immunoglobulin (also known as antibodies) he figures they can synthesize a second dose to save both Quark and Alice.

They do, but Sigma clumsily drops one of the bottles. It doesn't break, but it rolls under the table where Phi finds the 02 bomb. Clover also notices that there's a memory card there and Sigma picks it up. No one has time to do much else though, because the Ambidex Game's ten minute warning sounds (I don't remember anyone opening the gates this time though…) so they head back to give the doses to Alice and Quark.

They figure the bomb must have been set while everyone was out looking for Alice, since Clover, K, and Quark did not see it earlier, and only Quark is not suspect because he was unconscious.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Gardens Door - Ally

Changed my naming scheme a bit to avoid have two Round 2 entries for Post-Blue Door.

Luna says that since Alice is unconscious and recovering we should vote Ally to avoid taking advantage of someone who can't vote. She's probably the sweetest person in the group (and therefore must be Zero! ...kidding?).

I think about it, because Alice can certainly stand to lose some points, whereas Sigma can't (being at 1), but figure I have nothing to lose since she can't vote so I'll Ally.

But when the results come out, Alice's vote comes in as Betray, putting Sigma at -1. This is the first bad ending I get where Sigma actually dies (or it's heavily implied that he dies), and the last thing he sees is a blurry apparition of Alice standing in the open doors of the one remaining elevator booth. Holy crap.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Gardens Door - Betray

I rewind, vote Betray, and Alice's vote again comes out Betray, but this time I find out what's going on. And this time, it hurts, both Sigma and me. Alice explains that sedatives don't keep her under long and she sprinted over just in time to make her Betray vote, and sighs with relief that she made the right call, chastising Sigma for thinking he could get some easy points off her.

But Sigma "remembers" she killed him and is upset that she would do that knowing he only had 1 point left. Alice asks what does it matter because he voted Betray so her decision stands as the right one.

Meanwhile, we notice that everyone voted Betray this round. K (paired with unconscious Quark) and Clover mutually Betrayed one another, even though they had each told the other they would Ally beforehand. Dio (paired with Tenmyouji who didn't vote since he was watching over Quark) and Phi mutually Betrayed each other too. We're now at the start of the Betray cycle Phi warned Sigma about, where everyone loses.

Sigma tries to get everyone to pull their heads out of their butts, but instead everyone leaves to go have time apart to think. Alice is displeased when Sigma shows up in the Infirmary where she is, but he's there to use the monitor to read the memory card.

What comes up is string of repeating letters, which Alice recognizes as a code from a terrorist group called the Myrmidons, but without the key to break the code, she can't translate it. Sigma asks for more information on the Myrmidons, but Alice refuses to share, eventually walking out on the conversation rather than deal with the constant grilling.

Sigma follows her around until they end up at the Garden where her facade breaks down and she admits she's relieved she didn't accidentally kill him. She's clearly under a lot of stress and can no longer keep up her confident look.

In exchange for Sigma not telling Clover that she started crying, she tells him her story about how she came to work for the SOIS and how her father had been kidnapped by the Myrmidons and forced to work for them. The Myrmidons were funded by a cult called Free the Soul. The man who ran the Nonary Game in 2018, the first one from when Clover was a kid, was a member. Alice met Clover out in the desert when she thought that two Myrmidons were behind the second game, but changed her assessment after having met and exchanged information with Clover and her companions.

She would like to break the code, but without a key she can't do anything. The key should look like a long string of numbers, and Sigma wonders if he's seen any somewhere, ending on a "To Be Continued".

Since this is as far as I was able to get in what I assume is the route to Alice's ending, I think it's time for another recap on what I know:

Confirmed:
- Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who
- The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next

All but confirmed:
- Phi might be able to branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma, which is how she already knows his name and how she knows we'll die if we hit 0 points
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999

- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark)
- After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:
- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists in all possibilities.
- At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:

- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago
- The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start).

Discredited:
- If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too)
- Alice was in cold sleep

[Rune Lai]

Hm... Proboards has started hating my posts, and refused to let me edit in my reasoning for discrediting Alice being in cold sleep, based on the assumption Clover was telling the truth. I'm not sure why it's blocking that since it suggests I put in bad code or bad words in the post and even rewording my reasoning wouldn't let me get around it.

It wouldn't even let me break the post in half and repost the second half as a new entry (I thought it might be a length issue).

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 1 - Post-Cyan Door - Betray

I skipped back to my first Ambidex Game with Alice, now knowing that she previously chose Betray, but at this point I suspect she will change to Ally. I just don't know why.

When the results come out, her vote changes, and amusingly, Sigma actually gets mad at her for not picking Betray. She's upset because if anyone has a right to be mad, it should be her. Sigma asks her when she cast her vote and she says 5 minutes before the deadline.

At this point Sigma drops into thought, comparing the results last time with the current time. Alice cast her vote 5 minutes before deadline, but he cast his at the last second. If it was possible for Alice to know what he chose for his vote, that could influence her decision (though choosing Ally when she knows he's going to Betray is weird). But she changed her vote before he had even inputted his.

Sigma compares what happened to a rock, paper, scissors game. If he throws down a scissors and she sees it, she'll change to rock. Even if he goes back in time and changes his vote to paper, if she sees it, she'll change to scissors.

But what happened in the Ambidex Game is more like she chose her move before Sigma made his. So he comes out with scissors and it happens that she has rock. Sigma goes back in time, now knowing that she will be rock. Again she makes her selection before him, but when he plays paper, she has already changed to scissors.

Essentially, somehow, Alice is getting information from the future, just like Sigma is. She "remembers" he was safe to Ally with before, so she chose Ally, just like Sigma "remembers" that she Betrays, so choosing Betray is a good choice for him.

Head trip. And this reasoning would also explain why Tenmyouiji changed his vote the last time I saw this kind of flip.

This time around we also hear more of Tenmyouji's conversation with Clover after being Betrayed and he says that he could never Betray her. (Yep, he's probably Junpei.)

Interestingly, Zero III says it was okay for everyone to not know that hitting 0 will equal death since everyone was in the dark about that rule, right Phi? He had made that comment before, but the way Zero III zeroes in on Phi is new, and means that Zero III is well aware that this information crossing is happening.

Then we go through much of the information sharing conversations as before, except that this time K calls us over to the bomb instead of Clover. Interestingly, K was able to identify it was one due to a brief memory fragment that came back to him. Clover was able to ID it because of her SOIS training.

Before anything can be done though, everyone needs to run off to the next set of Chromatic Doors. This time instead of asking for a vote, Alice says that people with 1 point should get to pick since they're the most disadvantaged (that's really not fair how she does this…) and she wants to go through the Green Door with K and Quark. This puts Tenmyouji and Dio with Clover in the Blue Door, and Sigma and Luna with Phi for Red.

I am okay with this arrangement as I want to talk with Phi more. Tenmyouji, also at 1, likes this arrangement as well, because he wants to talk more with Clover. He also says he would like to talk with Alice as well, given the chance.

Escape Round 2 - Red Door - Control Room

At the three way, only one door is lit (mistake?) and it's not the Laboratory, which I find concerning because I'm expecting that Quark will come down sick and if we don't get the Axelavir then there's no hope for him.

The Control Room puzzle is surprisingly easy and I even got the bonus password right off the bat. We find out the Control Room has an annihilation engine of some kind, generating energy through the collision of matter and antimatter, and probably powers the facility.

When we leave we get a sort of keypad that I think is for disabling the bombs, cards for starting the next Ambidex Game, and of course the escape key. As soon as we open the door we hear the announcement for the start of the next Ambidex Game, which we soon find out has been started early by Dio. Of course.

K comes and gets everyone before they can vote though because Quark as collapsed, he has Radical-6, and a few minutes later everyone finds out Alice has it too. This time when Sigma and Phi find Alice in the Gardens, the dialogue plays out a little differently in that Phi has noticed a 01 bomb has been planted on the tree trunk. She brings up that if we found a 01 and 03 so far, there should be a 02.

I am very disturbed that there is a 01 bomb in the Gardens though, when there wasn't last time. Sure, anyone could have planted it during the search of Alice, but the fact it wasn't there before and it is there now and Phi is right next to it bothers me. I wonder if the 02 bomb is in the Laboratory even though no one went there (because the Red Door led to the Control Room this time).

Sigma and Phi take Alice back to the Infirmary and there is no Axelavir to be found anywhere. The Treatment Center is not an option either, as the Green Door took Alice, K, and Quark to the Archives this time.

The voting time limit continues to countdown though. Clover refuses to go since Alice is incapacitated, and Tenmyouji likewise refuses so he can stay with Quark. This means that Dio (paired with Tenmyouji) would be voting against a non-voting Clover, and Dio is a little offended that people think he'll pick Betray.

Dio points out that K could also rack up an easy Betray since his partner Quark is unconscious and their solo groupmate Alice is also unconscious (defaulting her to Ally). K is at 6 points, so a Betray would let him leave, but K says he would vote Ally because to do otherwise would kill Alice who is currently at 1 point.

Rather than sit around arguing, Tenmyouji (go old man Junpei!) punches Dio in the gut to incapacitate him and yells at Clover to go vote for their trio. With Tenmyouji and Dio not voting, they'll default to Ally, and Tenmyouji is willing to trust the Clover will Ally and not kill him since Tenmyouji is at 1 point.

This puts Clover in the same position as K, each of them at 6 points. If they Betray they can escape, but only at the cost of killing someone.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Control Room Door - Ally

Phi stops Sigma as everyone who is voting goes to vote and asks him to promise to vote Ally. He gives her his promise and she tells him he better keep it or she'll make him pay. I don't have an issue with it. I like and trust Phi.

Inside the elevator room, Luna points out that if Phi Betrays and Sigma Allies she'll have 9 points and be able to leave everyone. When Sigma asks Luna if she means that they should Betray, she disagrees saying that outcome might not be any better for her. She has 5 points, so if Sigma Betrays and Phi Allies, then Sigma could leave, but either way, Luna is still stuck since the most she could obtain is 8.

For me, there was no question. I chose Ally.

When the results come up, K, Quark, and Alice all Allied, so K kept his word. Clover, Tenmyouji, and Dio all Allied, so Clover wasn't willing to kill Tenmyouji. But for our group, Phi Betrayed us.

Sigma naturally doesn't take it well and Phi claims it is payback for the last Round 2. When he argues that this is Round 2, she tells him to drop it since he knows what's really happening. Phi is clearly remembering a Round 2 where Sigma Betrayed her and changed her vote accordingly, but I haven't played that decision yet! (Holy crap. What would have happened if I had gotten to this point on my first playthrough? It's possible without hitting any TBCs where information is required to cross timelines.)

Phi is incredibly wounded at having been Betrayed and plans to take her leave of everyone now that she has 9 points. When Sigma tries to block her, she takes a huge leap into the air, flying over everyone's heads, and lands by the door. Sigma tries to think of something he could say to make her stop, but can't come up with anything, leading to a "To be Continued."

Normally I would flip over to the Betray option on my next rewind to see what happens, but I don't have the heart to make that reality real right now.

Current speculation recap:

Confirmed:
- Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who
- The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next
- Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma, which is how she already knows his name and how she knows we'll die if we hit 0 points

All but confirmed:
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999

- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark)
- After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:
- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists in all possibilities.
- Current bets for Zero are K, Luna, and Phi; K for not getting killed in the everyone gets infected with Radical-6 ending, Luna because she is oddly helpful without being too helpful, and that last conversation about Betraying Phi seemed weird, Phi because Zero must know about the different realities overlapping and Phi is pulling the same trick as Sigma
- The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high, which she has actually done twice now, though it was less obvious in the prologue (but if gravity is different, why hasn't anyone else noticed?)
- At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:

- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago
- The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start).

Discredited:
- If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too)
- Alice was in cold sleep (she says she doesn't actually have Ice-9 in her body to go into cold sleep without a machine, but since the info came from Clover I'll put this here for now)

[Rune Lai]

I've been playing this whole time and writing my playthrough as well, but work has been busy so I haven't been posting them in the evenings/weekends since I like to reread and edit them before doing so. I have a little time this lunch hour though so time for another entry.

[Rune Lai]

Escape Round 2 - Green Door - Archives

I jumped back to the decision between the Blue and Green Doors after Betraying Alice. By default she wants the option where she goes through the Green Door with K and Quark, and Tenmyouji is fine with that, though he wants to talk with Alice sometime. I have Sigma protest the arrangement and when Alice asks why, he says, "Because" which amuses me since he really can't offer a satisfactory explanation other than I want to see a different room/story branch.

I make the suggestion that Luna and Sigma go through the Green Door with Clover, which would put Tenymouji and Dio with Alice. Tenmyouji is fine with this arrangement too since he wants to talk to her, which piques Alice's curiosity, so she agrees.

On the way past the Green Door we find the three doors with only one that unlocks. One of the doors is labeled Treatment Center, but it doesn't open. Instead one of the others does, and that takes us to the Archives.

By the way, for some reason, starting with that intersection and all through the Archive escape Sigma gets really pervy. While he's a little pervy in a couple other scenes, this is the only one where he makes outright (and unwanted) lewd comments to female members of the cast. It makes me really annoyed with him.

The Archive escape is tough enough I have to drop down to Easy, and I honestly don't think I would have made it if I hadn't. The other times I felt the game either cheated or I could have found the answer with enough exploration on my own, but I was totally clueless for this one.

By dumb luck I got the bonus password first, but repeated the puzzle to get the real one, so when I opened the safe I did bonus first, reset the room, and went straight to the safe with the real one. Normally I don't make a note of the bonus info since they tie into what I just learned or am about to learn with additional detail, but this time it's worth mentioning that I found papers describing the creation of artificial arms that function like real ones. They are covered with artificial biological tissue (ABT) and are capable of circulating anything injected back to the rest of the body.

As soon as we escapes the room, the Ambidex Game announcement rings out, because once again Dio opened the door. And once again, K comes running in to say that Quark has collapsed. Luna finds out he has Radical-6 and Alice runs away to go commit suicide because she's infected too.

Sigma and everyone except Tenmyouji go looking for her. Sigma checks the Lounge, then the Pantry (where the Red Door had taken Dio, Tenmyouji, and Alice), the Archives, and finally the Gardens (where the Blue Door had taken K, Quark, and Phi). But unlike the previous two times he'd checked the Gardens for Alice, she isn't there.

He runs back to the Crew Quarters and finds her inside, already dead. The room spins around him as he goes into denial and he passes out. I get a Game Over, which is really weird as the flowchart hadn't indicated one would be there, and I wasn't sure how the game was actually over from that.

Escape Round 2 - Green Door Redux - Archives

When I went to the flow chart to rewind I saw that I could rewind to the start of when we look for Alice, after I had already finished the Archives, and the story lock icon was Green, so I met the criteria to continue.

I started it up again and found Sigma in the Lounge, the very first place he checked. He was looking for Alice, but this time he got a flash of insight and realized he knew where Alice was.

This time Sigma gets to Alice in the Crew Quarters before she has a chance to kill herself. They fight to stop her from killing herself and he manages to cut his left hand while pulling the scalpel away from her. I notice that when the scalpel falls to the floor there's no blood, and this game hasn't been shy about showing it. She then falls unconscious and Sigma brings her back to the Infirmary where Luna sedates her.

Voting needs to happen again though. Tenmyouji and Dio are voting against Alice, so Tenmyouji says he'll go vote along with Dio to make sure he Allies. Clover wants to stay behind with Alice, which leaves Sigma and Luna free to do what they want, though Sigma says he'll Ally. Phi says she'll stay too even though she's solo. She says she knows she can trust K (whose partner is the unconscious Quark) not to Betray her. I assume this is because she has seen another timeline where she's learned she can trust him.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Archives Door - Ally

Inside the voting booth, Luna asks Sigma what's wrong with his hand and he looks at it for the first time since subduing Alice and he sees that there is a thick white fluid oozing out of it. He lies and tells Luna that he knocked over some milk while looking for Alice in the Pantry. But inside Sigma is panicking because he's never seen this before and he knows that he bleeds. He's been injured in various ways before throughout his life.

I pick Ally to not take advantage of Clover, and for the first time when all the results come out, everyone has chosen Ally! Phi's faith in K is rewarded and whatever happened between Tenmyouji and Dio worked.

Most of the group heads off to the Infirmary to check on everyone else, but Luna wants to speak privately to Sigma so the two of them go off to the Gardens. She's surprised a place like this exists in here, and Sigma says something to the effect of feeling the same when he came here earlier.

Luna shares a little bit about her past and then asks Sigma how he knew about the Gardens. He says he came here while searching for Alice, but Luna doesn't buy it. She asks where he started searching for her (the Lounge) and where he found her (the Crew Quarters) and points out that going to the Gardens would have detoured him to an entirely different floor of the facility. There wasn't time for that.

She then asks about his hand (clearly having not bought the milk excuse) and if Sigma might be a robot, because then he could have existed here from the start and it would make sense for him to know about things that he shouldn't. Luna is aware that there is technology that will clothe a robot in artificial biological tissue so it looks like a human.

Luna believes in Asimov's Three Rules for robots as an ideal, if not a reality, and that if Sigma is a robot, he's still a good person, so she's not afraid of him. He voted Ally after all, when Betray could have ended the game. She thinks though that they should go back to the Infirmary and have him scanned so they can determine whether he is or not.

At this point they hear someone in the Gardens with them, and when Luna calls out, Phi reveals herself. She says she didn't overhear anything, but she found something they should see, and it's the 01 bomb again, which anyone could have planted while they were searching for Alice. Phi also admits she looked for them because she heard Luna and Sigma were going to talk in private and she wanted to know about what.

The three then go back to the Infirmary to let everyone else know about the bomb. Once everyone is gathered, Phi says she's going to search everyone, because whoever planted the bomb must have the detonator on them. Refusal to comply is pretty much admitting they have it.

Sigma gets a flashback showing of a bunch of images, several of which I haven't seen yet, and declares that's not necessary. He knows exactly who set up the bomb. Probably the most dramatic "To Be Continued" yet!

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Archives Door - Betrayal

Again for the lulz since I know it's going to be a bad ending. I have Sigma Betray and he tells Luna he honestly has no idea why he did it. It was like someone else was controlling him. In another game this could be a joke, but this is VLR, and may actually tie into the story. He's actually given this excuse before in a bad ending, but this time is sinks in harder.

While Sigma is trying to defend his actions, Dio, Tenmyouji, and K notice that his hand is "bleeding" thick white fluid and they quickly conclude that he's not human and subdue him before he can open the number 9 door. K chokes him to the point of unconsciousness.

When Sigma wakes up (and I was surprised he did before the Game Over screen), he finds himself in an empty Infirmary. Even Quark and Alice are gone. Then he also realizes that his bracelet and left hand are gone. The break at his wrist is smooth and oozing out more white liquid. Then it's Game Over.

Current speculation recap:

Confirmed:
- Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who
- The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next
- Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma

All but confirmed:
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999

- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark)
- After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:
- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists simultaneously.
- Current bets for Zero are K, Luna, and Phi; K for not getting killed in the everyone gets infected with Radical-6 ending, Luna because she is oddly helpful without being too helpful and that conversation about Betraying Phi seemed weird, and Phi because Zero must know about the different realities overlapping and Phi is pulling the same trick as Sigma
- The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high, which she has actually done twice now, though it was less obvious in the prologue (but if gravity is different, why hasn't anyone else noticed?)
- Sigma is a cyborg; with mechanic parts being his left arm at minimum
- Zero wants everyone to succeed (like 999, the game is designed so that no one has to be left behind, but they can be if the players are greedy and do not trust each other)
- Corollary to above, Zero and the bomber are not the same person, but Zero is intentionally allowing the bomber to do his/her thing
- At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:

- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago
- The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start).

Discredited:
- If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too)
- Alice was in cold sleep (she says she doesn't actually have Ice-9 in her body to go into cold sleep without a machine, but since the info came from Clover I'll put this here for now)

Despite encountering 7 TBCs, I still have four locks; the one where Sigma is about to die from lethal injection (apparently knowing an antidote exists and that Sigma can remove his left hand and bracelet without killing himself is not enough), the one where Sigma needs to give Alice a string of numbers, the one where he figures out who the bomber is, and the one where he needs to convince Phi not to ditch everybody.

I'm a little surprised at the thought that all of these answers will lie beyond the Magenta Door if I group with Luna at the first decision branch. The Yellow Door branch with Tenmyouji only got me one unlock on the Cyan Door branch with Alice. The other unlock came from within Alice's branch itself.

Or, maybe multiple pieces of information are needed to unlock them, possibly involving Sigma going back on forth through different paths as he gets information (as Alice's path has at least two locks). If that's the case, those branches probably go deeper into the story. The flow chart does show dead ends, but as I found out in Tenmyouji's case, sometime it's just that there's an unlock at the end of the dead end and the story continues beyond that.

Currently I suspect the path I took where Luna thinks Sigma is a robot is the "real" path because 1) Sigma will identify the bomber, 2) it had a lot of spoilery looking flashback scenes, and 3) it's the only Round 2 where everyone chooses Ally and that's the optimal solution needed to get everyone out of the game.

[Rune Lai]

Escape Round 1 - Magenta Door - Lounge

I rewind all the way back to my first choice in the game again and it occurs to me that having Sigma and Phi partner with Luna to go through the Magenta Door is actually the first choice listed. Because I was so focused on RP I hadn't realized that those who didn't care who they went with probably defaulted to her. I wonder if this means there is a slight bias to doing this branch first, when I'm actually doing it last.

This arrangement actually makes other people happy too, as Tenmyouji gets to group with Quark and Dio, and Alice groups with Clover and K.

The Lounge drives me a little crazy compared to other puzzles, because I need to mix drinks to solve a puzzle and I end up with the bonus password first and can't see how to solve the puzzle to get the real password. Turns out I was looking in the wrong place so once I solved something else, I was able to get the drink combination that led to the real password.

Phi tells us something when we leave, based on a magazine article we found about a total eclipse on Dec 31, 2018 (which was mentioned in the Yellow Door playthrough as well). She says that when there's a total eclipse of the moon it doesn't turn dark or disappear, but rather it turns red because it still reflects the sunlight that passes through the Earth's atmosphere at the edges where it's sunset/sunrise. I'm not sure how this is relevant, but Phi seems to think we need to know.

Back in the main warehouse everyone gets ready to vote for the first time, but when Phi and Sigma open their elevator (which again is the one that K and Clover originally were trapped in) they find the dead body of an elderly woman. Why is she back again on this route?!

Now that Sigma has figured out that somehow his choices in the future can influence the past, I'm guessing that something he does must be the reason why the lady's murderer doesn't kill her and throw her body in the elevator when I play the Cyan Door route, but I can't quite wrap my head around how that would work.

Phi behaves oddly too. She doesn't seem surprised to see the body this time.

We do the autopsy again and this time I read the results more carefully. She was killed about 3-4 hours ago, which means it was after the sleepers had been taken out of the treatment pods. Tenmyouji is upset again too, but given my theory regarding who the dead body is, I'm not surprised.

Ambidex Game Round 1 - Post-Magenta Door - Betray

When the Ambidex Game's 10 minutes remaining message comes up, everyone runs back out to vote. Phi tells Sigma that there isn't time to explain strategy. He should just push Betray. This is much more forceful than the first time she suggested it when we went through the Yellow Door, or even when we went through the Cyan Door.

Sigma balks too, asking for an explanation, and refuses to push the button knowing they will default to Ally if he refrains. He and Phi play chicken until the last second when Phi tells them that if they drop to 0 points they die, so he better Betray.

While I already know that, Phi's insistence makes me wonder if I'm missing something. I don't want to Betray Luna, who out of everyone present, has never pressed the Betray button while in the booth (though her partners have while she was outside of it or I was inside controlling Sigma). I had expected to press Ally when I got in the booth, but because of Phi's insistence... I pick Betray.

Luna is terribly unhappy when the results come out, but Phi is quick to take the blame, saying she forced Sigma into it. Phi does reveal that she wants to get everyone out of the game (which is odd because the other Phi was going to ditch everyone), but Luna is hurt and doesn't want to believe her. Phi says that she needed to win the first round to get leverage, and I'm not sure what she means.

The other groups shake out poorly. K and Clover Betray Alice and Dio and Quark Betray Tenmyouji. Knowing their relationships now, it's possible to see the stings. K and Clover did way too much overthinking and picked Betray for the safe choice. Dio blamed Quark and told Tenmyouji that Quark isn't the nice kid he thinks he is. (You suck, Dio.)

Everyone goes off to search for an exit again and there isn't much in the way of new information, though we discover that there is an interface of some kind that needs a key in the back of K's head, which will presumably allow for the removal of his armor. He also suspects that he normally wore the armor even before he lost his memory since he thinks it feels comfortable.

In the Lounge, Alice finds the magazine article about the lunar eclipse and is shocked to think that Dec 31st is six days in the future for Sigma when it's nine days for her. We finally get Dio's kidnap date and it's Dec 20th. Since Dio only reacts to the six days in the future comment and not the year 2028, that probably means that he hails from the same year as Sigma and Alice.

Alice is the one to share the Radical-6 newspaper article this time. Interestingly Dio does not call BS on it, though he's in agreement with Alice that if this is a quarantine center it's weird that there's only nine of them and they're being forced to play the Nonary Game.

Quark does not get sick (at least not yet) and Alice, Dio, and Sigma head down to the Red, Green, and Blue doors on their own time, which is still pretty close to deadline and Phi gets mad at us for slacking. She lays out the possible team combinations as per the usual, and this time I don't get a choice.

Dio (paired with Phi) wants to group with Luna, and Phi is okay with that, though Luna is concerned. Phi promises to Ally though, because to do otherwise would kill Luna. I wonder if this is what Phi meant by getting leverage. People with 1 point are at a disadvantage and may be more inclined to vote Ally if they're sure the other person will as well (which can be ensured if Phi and Dio don't vote, leaving Luna free to Ally without fear of Betrayal).

Escape Round 2 - Red Door - Pantry

The way things shake out Sigma ends up going through the Red Door with Alice (pair partner) and Clover (solo), leaving Tenmyouji and Quark to group with the solo K.

As before the three way split in the path only opens one door and I finally visit the much discussed but I have never actually solved Pantry. I dislike it intensely.

I never have to drop it down to Easy, but one of the puzzles involves laying out rations according to the nutritional requirement of subjects A, B, C, D, and E, which was like playing Tetris with 15 variables in a 5x5 space. It was doable, but took more brainpower than I was happy with. That, and a lot of flipping back and forth between the puzzle and my archived notes. I suspect this was less of a problem on 3DS which probably would have put the notes on the bottom screen, but I was playing on Vita.

Solving the puzzle only gave me the bare minimum of the cards and escape key.

Of course, as soon as we leave the room we hear the announcement that the next Ambidex Game game is about to start. I blame Dio.

But before we can run back to the warehouse and confront him, Tenmyouji and K charge up and say that Quark's gone missing. K, Alice, and Clover head up to let the others know and Tenmyouji and Sigma stay behind to look for him. K and Tenmyouji lost track of him when they finished the Treatment Center, and he wasn't in the Pantry where Sigma had come from. The Blue Door is the PEC this time, but there's still no sign of Quark.

They head back to the warehouse hoping that Quark slipped ahead of them and is already found, and they run into Dio who is less than sympathetic, even going so far as to say Quark could be Zero since Zero should be the only person who could disappear without a trace. Before things between Tenmyouji and Dio can get too heated, Phi shows up and tells everyone to come quick.

In the crew quarters we find not one, but two dead bodies, and neither of them are Quark. One is Alice, dead from the usual scalpel, and the other is Luna, presumably dead from whatever was in the injection gun next to her. I assume both are Radical-6 victims, though at this point the characters don't know that.

Dio accuses Clover, who found the bodies, then he accuses Quark, who isn't around at all, but he doesn't take it well when Tenmyouji points out that Dio also gains from this. With Luna dead, she will automatically vote Ally since she can no longer participate. Both Dio and Phi (who are paired) are at 6 points. A Betray would take them to 9.

The ten minute warning sounds for the Ambidex Game and Dio says they need to go vote. Sigma thinks they have more important things to do, but Dio points out that Sigma abstaining will allow Clover a chance to escape. All she needs to do is Betray and she has an easy 9 points. Sigma realizes he needs to go vote.

Clover is in shock over Alice's death, so when Sigma tells her to Ally, she agrees, and he promises to Ally too, which will take them both to 8 (since they both Betrayed in Round 1).

But after Clover enters her voting elevator, Phi runs up to Sigma and tells him that he has to pick Betray so he can get 9 points. There's no way that Dio will not Betray, he can't make Luna any deader than she already is, so if Sigma votes Ally he'll only end up being trapped. Dio will surely open the number 9 door as soon as he has the points. Phi says she wants Sigma to come with her, since she'll have to leave when Dio opens the door, and she feels he's important somehow.

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Pantry Door - Betray

Sigma promised, but... I realize Phi is right. If Sigma Allies he will be trapped no matter what. If Clover Betrays and Sigma Betrays then they'll be trapped too. But if Clover Allies and Sigma Betrays, then Sigma can escape. Betray is the only option with any hope! (I love that the game will actually put the player in this scenario.)

I pick Betray. As soon as the elevator doors open, Dio runs for the number 9 door, but Phi delays him long enough for the results to come up, revealing Sigma's Betrayal and causing Clover to freak out because he broke his promise.

Dio doesn't care though so he opens the door and runs through. When the door starts closing and Sigma is still frozen in place, Phi grabs his arm and drags him through.

When the door closes, I'm in shock. I'm on the other side of the number 9 door. I'm actually outside. I didn't think I'd see this until the real ending of the game.

I'm still inside the facility though and Dio, Phi, and Sigma ride an elevator up to a higher floor. The hallway there opens to a pressure exchange chamber, a different one from the puzzle room, and from there they're able to put on the sealed pressure suits and decompress from the higher pressure interior to the lower pressure exterior.

According to a manual Luna found earlier and told Phi about, the higher pressure has something to do with keeping out the Radical-6 virus, and I assume this is why they don't take off the suits when they get outside. But still, I really wish Sigma had looked at the final atmospheric pressure before they stepped outside, because if it was much less than 1 atm that would be telling.

I recognize the shot outside the facility from the flashback Sigma had with the bomb. The landscape seems to be a desert of some kind and it's evening. The body in the sky I had taken for the Earth in the sepia flashback is actually a blood red moon, meaning that it's a lunar eclipse. Sigma thinks this means it really has been six days from his kidnapping, but I'm not so sure. It could be a different lunar eclipse.

Suddenly Phi falls down like she tripped and when she gets up her attitude is extremely brusque. She says they need to find Dio, who seems to have fled since they got outside. She says that she needs to get the zero bomb code off him, and when Sigma doesn't understand what she's talking about she says that Sigma must not have jumped to that timeline yet.

They look for Dio and Phi catches up with him first. Sigma manages to join them before Dio can kill her, but Dio seems oddly happy, saying that his mission was a success. He intentionally snuck into the facility for the Nonary Game and has a transmitter box of some kind he was going to use to report in to Free the Soul. It turns out that Dio is a Myrmidon and fourth generation clone of Left, the younger brother of Free the Soul's leader, a man called Brother. All the Myrmidons are Left clones and Dio is their leader.

The transmitter has a long 25 digit string of numbers on it which Dio admits is a encryption key (which I need to give to Alice in another timeline!). He also coughs up the zero bomb deactivation code to Phi, saying that it doesn't matter anyway since he succeeded.

But Dio probably doesn't know about Sigma and Phi being able to reality hop. Phi tells Sigma to remember the code just in case she can't. She says she sometimes loses memories when she jumps. Then they begin to follow Dio who says he knows where the nearest shelter is, presumably because this world has been ravaged by Radical-6.

Thus giving me the Dio Ending. Wow.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Pantry Door - Ally

For the lulz since I know this will be a bad ending (Phi pretty much lays out what will happen if this choice is made), I rewound to the last choice and picked Ally.

Dio runs over to the door without even waiting for the results again and skips out the door. Phi turns to Sigma, but finds out he voted Ally so she has to leave him behind. Clover is grateful he kept his promise though, and the door closes. Oddly enough, the ending does have a little extra dialogue afterwards where Tenmyouji and K realize that they still need to find Quark and they run off.

I assume the two remaining story branches for the Magenta Door will answer what's going on with Quark's disappearance.

Now for the latest speculation recap:

Confirmed:
- Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who
- The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next
- Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma

All but confirmed:
- Zero and the bomber are not the same person, because Dio "snuck" in the facility holding the Nonary Game which should be unnecessary if he was running it
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999

- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark)
- After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:
- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists simultaneously.
- Current bets for Zero are K, Luna, and Phi; K for not getting killed in the everyone gets infected with Radical-6 ending, Luna because she is oddly helpful without being too helpful and that conversation about Betraying Phi seemed weird, and Phi because Zero must know about the different realities overlapping and Phi is pulling the same trick as Sigma
- Sigma is a cyborg; with mechanic parts being his left arm at minimum
- Zero wants everyone to succeed (like 999, the game is designed so that no one has to be left behind, but they can be if the players are greedy and do not trust each other)
- Zero is intentionally allowing the bomber to do his/her thing since the game does not stop even when the bombs are found
- Dio is the bomber since he has the deactivation code to "the zero bomb," but I'm not putting this in all but confirmed because the keypad that looks necessary for deactivating the bombs was in a safe set up by Zero
- At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:

- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago
- The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start).

Largely Discredited:
- If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too)
- Alice was in cold sleep (she says she doesn't actually have Ice-9 in her body to go into cold sleep without a machine, but since the info came from Clover I'll put this here for now)
- The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high (because when they go outside in Dio's Ending they see the moon under a lunar eclipse)

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Gardens Door Redux - Betray

Now that I know the encryption key, I jump back to my meeting with Alice in the Gardens. Sigma provides her with the number, which she's shocked he's able to rattle off so easily. Fortunately she's as good at math as Sigma is at remembering strings of data, and quickly reduces the 25 digit key to the translation instructions necessary to decode the text on the memory card, which Sigma had managed to memorize as well.

With his fantastic memory and Alice's instructions, Sigma is able to decipher the code without even going back to the monitor to look at it and we realize that the message says "completed completed completed."

Clearly this is a reference to Dio's mission being completed, but before Alice and Sigma can discuss, Clover interrupts and says that Dio, Tenmyouji, and Phi got into a really bad argument about the last Ambidex Game and Sigma and Alice really should come and help stop them.

It's pointed out that it's a little puzzling why the three would argue since Tenmyouji (paired with Dio) was at 1 point and so was Phi. They had mutually Betrayed in the last round, which was an appropriate defensive measure on both their parts since Tenmyouji and Phi could have been killed if they Allied and their opponent Betrayed.

When we meet up, everyone is present except for Quark (currently sedated and recovering from Radical-6 in this timeline) and Luna (staying with Quark). Sigma quickly turns the argument from fighting with each other to fighting with the one who planted the bombs and he confronts Dio.

Using the information he got from the Dio Ending timeline, Sigma is able to trick Dio into thinking he came from Free the Soul as a second agent to observe him. Dio doesn't entirely buy the story, but Sigma's knowledge is thorough enough that arguing with him causes Dio to slip up and admit that he's the leader of the Myrmidons.

Seeing that his cover's blown Dio pulls out the detonator and explains that he's planted four bombs. At this point I have physically seen 01, 02, and 03 across different timelines and I have the ability to deactivate 00 (from Dio Ending) and 01 (from Tenmyouji Ending, which somehow the hologram of Zero Sr knew).

Alice and Clover manage to disarm him, but it turns out that separating Dio from the detonator makes all the bombs automatically arm themselves, giving us only a half hour to find and deactivate them, but we don't have the input device that will allow us to enter the deactivation codes.

Alice manages to browbeat the deactivation code for 03 out of Dio before he commits suicide by poison capsule and then the group quickly splits up to look for the 00 and 01 bombs (not yet seen in this timelines) and the input device.

They don't make it before the 30 minutes are up. The facility blows sky high and I get the Alice Ending.

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Archives Door Redux - Ally

Now that I know conclusively that Dio is the bomber, I unlocked my TBC where Sigma names the bomber. By now my brain is starting to fry, keeping all these timelines straight (which I suspect is intentional on the game's part). It takes me a moment to remember this is the timeline where Sigma discovers that his hand doesn't bleed blood, but a white liquid instead.

This time when Sigma says he knows exactly who the bomber is, the scene does not cut and he immediately names Dio, who asks because of what proof. Dio refuses to allow himself to be searched and while denying knowledge about Free the Soul and the Myrmidons he stumbles and accidentally reveals that he knows a little too much information that wasn't imparted to him.

Dio claims that he was instructed to plant the bombs and blow this place up if it looked like Zero's AB test was going to be successful, and he's a little surprised when Sigma hasn't heard of the test, considering how much he knows about everything else.

Dio pulls out the detonator again and forces everyone to stand back, except for Tenmyouji, who tricks Dio into thinking that the detonator is a fake. While Dio is distracted, Tenmyouji (go old man Junpei!) kicks his ass and sends the detonator flying. Whoops.

With the detonator separated from Dio the bombs start counting down. They manage to wrangle the 02 deactivation code out of Dio (who seems to love taunting people by only giving them part of the information they need, not knowing that Phi and Sigma are moving across timelines collecting everything he isn't telling them) and Dio tries to kill himself again. This time they manage to tackle him before he can swallow the pill, but because they can't search while holding him down they end up having to sedate him.

Everyone splits up to either look for the input device and remaining bombs (00 and 02 in this timeline) or carry the unconscious Alice and Quark down to the white doors for the third escape round. The timing is such that they could get lucky and make it through the doors just as the bombs go off.

While looking, Sigma finds Luna has stayed behind in the Infirmary, assuming he would come back to find out whether or not he really was a robot. Though there are only 10 minutes left at this point in time, Luna seems really disappointed that he doesn't think that's a priority to find out, but when he finds out the scan only takes 5 minutes or so he agrees.

Post-scan Sigma learns that he is human, for the most part, but his arms are now cybernetic. He can't recall when his arms were replaced though, as he knows he had real ones before. Sigma asks if it's possible the bracelet won't work on him because his arms are mechanical and Luna says no, because the cybernetic arms are designed to interface with the rest of his human body so any injections will still carry through.

When he asks how she knows, she says that she just does, which is the answer that Sigma and Phi use when they give information that crossed over from a different timeline (!). She compares it to how Sigma knew about the Garden without having gone there, and how he knew Dio was the bomber without having proof. Luna warns Sigma to listen closely as she has specific instructions to tell him and they are almost out of time. There is only one minute remaining until the bombs go off.

Luna tells him to look for the two-headed lion swallowing the sun (this is the logo on the computer screen in the Director's Office!) and gives him a string of numbers to remember that she calls the key to the first gate. Then the bombs go off.

Sigma Ending.

Yes, Sigma, not Luna, even though this this path had focused on her and we got some of her backstory which is usually reserved for when we get that person's ending. (Though, granted, we got a lot of Sigma.) Things are getting crazy.

Now for latest speculation recap:

Confirmed:
- Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who
- The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next
- Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma
- Zero and the bomber are not the same person
- Dio is the bomber
- Sigma is a cyborg with mechanic arms

All but confirmed:
- Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999

- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love
- Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark)
- After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt

Personal suspicions, unconfirmed:
- Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names
- The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 (assuming Tenmyouji is Junpei) because Tenmyouji/Junpei's color scheme is blue and both Akane and the unknown murdered woman wear purple
- Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
- This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists simultaneously.
- Current bets for Zero are K and Phi; K for not getting killed in the everyone gets infected with Radical-6 ending, and Phi because Zero must know about the different realities overlapping and Phi is pulling the same trick as Sigma
- Zero wants everyone to succeed (like 999, the game is designed so that no one has to be left behind, but they can be if the players are greedy and do not trust each other)
- Zero is intentionally allowing the bomber to do his/her thing since the game does not stop even when the bombs are found
- The AB test Dio refers to is the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition
- Luna is assisting Zero, due to the fact she has instructions to relay information to Sigma under specific conditions that will only work if he's able to carry the information from one timeline to another
- At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:

- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago
- The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep
- If Alice is not a cold sleeper, by process of elimination the third one is probably Phi (Tenmyouji and Quark being in the future relative to Clover, Alice having Ice-9, K not having/needing a memory of the date, Dio and Luna for having reasons to hide things)

Wild speculation:
- This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (assuming she's the dead body at the start).

Largely Discredited:
- If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too)
- Alice was in cold sleep (she says she doesn't actually have Ice-9 in her body to go into cold sleep without a machine, but since the info came from Clover I'll put this here for now)
- The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high, which she has actually done twice now, (because when they go outside in Dio's Ending they see the moon under a lunar eclipse)
- Luna is Zero (because she says she has instructions to relate information to Sigma, and if she was Zero, she shouldn't be reporting to someone else).

[Rune Lai]

Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Red Door Redux - Ally

The unlocks keep coming. Now that Sigma knows his arms are cybernetic, the flow chart shows me that the TBC where he fell to -1 points in exchange for the Axelavir that will save Quark's life has been unlocked.

I fire it up and return to Dio getting ready to open the door at 9 points and a drugged Sigma about to pass out with only a few minutes left before the second injection, which will be the lethal one.

Sigma does come up with a plan, though it's not one I would have chosen. He goads Dio into opening the door and yells at K (who's also at 9 points) to escape and get help. But rather than let Dio go through without a fight, Sigma tackles him. He lets Dio drag him up to the edge of the door and lets go when he's just far enough that his wrist gets through the doorway. (I suspect Sigma is doing this because he's not strong enough to crawl there on his own due to the anesthetic.) Then he lets Dio go and the number 9 door (which opens vertically) comes down and severs Sigma's arm just past the wrist. Sigma passes out.

But, even though the door has closed, the game continues and Sigma wakes up in the Infirmary. Surprisingly, everyone takes Sigma's cybernetic arms better than they did in the bad ending where he's "bleeding" and they conclude he's not human. The stump where his hand and wrist had been is now bandaged up.

Quark also wakes up, fit and healthy now, and people speculate what they should do. Tenmyouji asks what's the point though, seeing as the eight of them are never leaving. His comment prompts everyone to remember the elderly woman, who is the eighth person he's including.

Quark speculates that she could be Zero, which at first seems outrageous. She was found in a locked room which only Zero could open, so even if someone had murdered her they couldn't get her inside. But Quark has an alternate solution to that. Maybe she wasn't murdered, but died to Radical-6!

The thought hadn't even crossed my mind, since I had found her before I even knew about Radical-6. But as is quickly pointed out, there were no weapons found near her. Sigma searches her body though and finds a key card with her photo and a name "Kurashiki" (which is Akane's family name). There is a password written on the back that says "Jumpydoll." I don't quite remember the reference, but I think Akane may have had a toy called her Jumpydoll, which was named after Junpei.

Before he can do more though, he hears people panicking about Alice and runs around the divider in the Infirmary to find her about to kill herself. And this time there's no Axelavir left.

Oddly enough, the game ends as she kills herself and we get the Quark Ending.

This was strange since usually the game ends where there is no longer any avenue for the story to continue, but since they were willing to roll post-game a bit, it seems like there could have been a lot to do with the key card. I mean, what is the password to?

When the game ends, the announcer specifically says that all doors except for the number 9 door are unlocked, so those trapped inside could explore further (well, assuming they don't get blown up by Dio's bombs, which I suppose could happen in every timeline that doesn't end well). There also wasn't much Quark in this ending either other than his life being saved.

In any case, this pretty much confirms that the old woman is Akane and Tenmyouji is Junpei. The question is, why are they here and what's going on?

Ambidex Game Round 1 - Post-Magenta Door - Ally

I rewind to the last of the Round 1 Ambidex Game choices, where Sigma and Phi play against Luna. Under all other circumstances the other player swapped their votes, and Phi is yelling at Sigma to Betray. But this time I pick Ally.

And it turns out that Luna Allies as well!

This was not entirely unexpected, since as mentioned she has never voluntarily Betrayed in any playthrough, but the fact she does when everyone else switches is still a shock, and again it makes me wonder what she knows, and if she's Zero accomplice to keep the game on track.

We go through all the information sharing again, K learning about the possible way to unlock his suit, Radical-6 newspaper clipping, blah blah, and then head down to the next set of doors. This time Tenmyouji argues against grouping with the solo K, since that would mean they're opponents in the next round. His reasoning is because K picked Betray before, but his phrasing is weird, saying that it's because K Betrayed Clover, when Alice was K's opponent. True, K talked Clover into picking Betray against Alice, but the wording just doesn't sound right and Tenmyouji didn't have any objections last time where he and Quark went with K.

Before everyone can get too argumentative though, Quark seizes up and falls sick, clearly being affected by Radical-6 again, though the other characters aren't sure what's happening. (I wonder why his infection point is different depending on timeline.) At this point Tenmyouji doesn't care where he goes as long as they get going so they can finish these rooms and help Quark.

Escape Round 2 - Blue Door - Rec Room

I elect to have Sigma and Alice group up with K since I realize I don't know much about him at all and he's the most mysterious out of my companions. The other option is Luna, but I already know her.

This puts Tenmyouji and Quark together with Luna, and Phi and Dio with Clover. We end up going through the Blue Door, which takes us to the Rec Room. I've never been here before! And Alice and K comment on how it seems like people were intended to live here a long time, seeing as they have an Infirmary, Crew Quarters, and now a Rec Room.

The Rec Room poses the first puzzle where I actually stop for the night and just go to bed because it was already very late, I was tired, and not getting any closer to solving the puzzle. I was afraid I would have to go to a FAQ, but when I went back the next day I solved it with a fresh perspective, netting me the bonus password. After a little grumbling, I solved it again and got the real escape password.

After getting the key and not much else, we left to the usual opening of the Ambidex Gates announcement. Once we get to the warehouse we find it was started by Dio (again) and he also took something from the safe in the Treatment Center where he had gone with Clover and Phi. Clover manages to snatch it back from him and it's the injection gun with the neostigmine in it, which can counteract the lethal tubocurarine injection.

Dio manages to grab it back, and before more thrashing (verbal or physical) can be done, Tenmyouji and Luna run up in a panic, because somehow they've lost Quark. Everyone goes looking for him and eventually Dio rounds everyone up because he's found Alice and Luna dead in the Crew Quarters. Quark is still missing.

The scene with the two of them dead plays out a little differently this time. Even though Dio is proposed as a suspect for finding the bodies, he has nothing to gain from killing them in this round because his Ambidex Game will be played against Clover, who is still alive. Instead, the one who benefits the most is Tenmyouji, who would have been playing against Luna, and the only person who could change his vote (Quark) is missing.

Even though Clover would like to stay by Alice's body, when the 10 minute warning sounds, she agrees to go vote since Phi does not think she could stop Dio from picking Betray.