High Potential

Help! Help!

Get away from me. Leave me alone.

Watch where you going.

Are you okay?

-Hey, are you okay? -He's trying to kill me.

-Adam. -Lucia.

-Wow. -Yeah, uh, it's been a minute.

How are you? I heard you moved.

Uh, a few times actually.

Uh, last stop was Santa Fe.

Santa Fe? I've never been.

I liked it. There's no skyscrapers.

Lots of weirdos.

I heard you met a guy. Sounded serious.

-You stalking me? -No, I just--

I'm just kidding. It's

-Nick and Natalie told you, right? -Yeah.

-You know, they say things now and then. -Yeah.

I ask them about you sometimes, too.

And, uh, the guy didn't stick. So

-Oh. I'm sorry. -I'm not.

-You still with the LAPD? -Yeah, yeah, they keep me busy.

Yeah, I remember.

Anyway, next project's here in LA.

You moved back?

For now.

Well, uh, welcome back.

Listen, I-I got a couple minutes. Do you wanna, like, sit down, catch up?

- Uh, I am - Oh. Oh, right. Sorry.

Your shift's about to start. You have to get to work.

I can be a little late.

Good morning.

-You're late. -Ah. Lost track of time. Not a big deal.

-What happened? -Well, uh, let's see.

"I" is a first-person pronoun.

"Lose" means to misplace or fail to keep sight of.

Very cute. Thank you, Ms. Rachel.

What I mean is, how does someone like you lose track of time?

You got one of those mugs that says, "If you're on time, you're late."

-No, I don't. -Huh.

-Well, you're about to. -Don't. Don't do that.

Instead of drilling into my personal life, how about we concentrate on this case?

-Pretty sure I can do both. -Mm-hmm.

Pedestrian v. car. Driver is cooperating.

Sounds like the guy just ran into the middle of the street.

No wallet, no ID, and wherever he came from,

he didn't even stop to put on shoes.

The couple over there talked to him briefly.

Said he was disoriented, possibly drunk.

He acted like someone was chasing after him.

He yelled, "He's trying to kill me" right before this happened.

Did they see anyone chasing after him?

They made it clear they did not.

Hmm. Yeah, so maybe he was hallucinating.

You're still thinking about why I was late, aren't you?

-Yeah. -Hmm.

You know that thing you said about bugging me and working the case?

I have been. He was hallucinating. Because he was poisoned.

Um, and you're sure about that how?

The vomit.

What vomit would that be?

- Ugh. - Okay,

so none of you have ever had a baby puke directly into your mouth. Got it.

I saw it on my way in.

You sure this is from the victim?

Well, he had some of it on his shirt.

So, unless he found somebody else's barf that he wanted to dribble on himself,

-that is my guess, yeah. -Why is it black?

Oh, God. That smells like rotten eggs.

Yeah, that's because it's activated charcoal.

And when charcoal interacts with gut bacteria,

it releases hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs.

And the only reason to take that much activated charcoal

is if you've ingested something toxic.

Which would explain why he was hallucinating.

So either he swallowed something accidentally or maybe he was poisoned.

Next question is where did he come from?

Well, the victim's feet were cut up.

-Looks like he left a trail. -Right.

Morgan and I will follow the blood. You guys head back to the intersection,

see if there's any traffic cams we can pull.

And make sure forensics gets some samples of, um, that.

You gonna tell me why you were late, or are you gonna force me to be annoying?

I ran into Lucia.

Lucia, the ex-fiancée who painted you that rose that you still have on your wall?

That's the one.

This is huge. You guys haven't seen each other in five years, right?

It's not huge, Morgan. It was just coffee.

Uh, yeah, I've had that kind of coffee.

And this, I'm guessing, was where our victim came from.

-We're not done here. -Morgan, I don't wanna talk about it.

Well, then you shouldn't have said anything.

Uh-huh. Our guy may have died in the street, but whatever happened to him,

it definitely happened here.

He's got a name. "Declan Harker, 31 years old."

I don't see any of the usual household poisons, meds, illegal drugs.

Doesn't look like he has any cleaning products.

There's plenty of stuff here that could have been spiked.

I'll have forensics collect it.

All this takeout. Kinda feels like Declan almost never left this room.

You think he had a job?

It does have a bit of an unemployed aesthetic, doesn't it?

But, nope. You see that chair?

That's a Thunder Throne V2.

Magnetic head pillow, four-way lumbar support

- and nanofoam seat cushions. - Oh!

And over here, we've got high-grip,

sweat-absorbent gloves and state-of-the-art headphones.

And then there's this.

Declan Harker was a professional gamer, an esport athlete.

-Video games are not a sport, Morgan. -Personally, I agree with you,

but, technically, pro gamers require heightened reaction time.

So, they might not seem like athletes, but they do train like them.

-Elliot? -Yeah.

If he's not playing video games, he's talking to me about them.

Well, if our guy was so into video games, where's his computer?

Exactly. It's not here.

-Maybe whoever poisoned him took it? -Hmm.

-Who are you? -LAPD. Who are you?

My name is Adity Shaw.

My ex-boyfriend lives here. Declan Harker?

Is he all right?

Sorry to inform you, but he's dead.

-I'm too late. -You're too late for what?

Declan left me a weird voicemail this morning,

and I came over as soon as I heard it.

Adity, you gotta help me. It's all my fault.

I killed him so many times.

I killed him over and over again, and now he's trying to kill me.

Any idea what "I killed him over and over again" means?

Is that more hallucinating?

Actually, we think he was talking about gaming.

Declan's a top player in an online game called Battle Dynasty.

Swords and sorcery, knights and dragons.

You kill someone in the game, they come back to life,

you kill them again, rinse and repeat.

So, we're thinking game violence spills over into real life.

The player he kept killing found him in the flesh and killed him for real.

Given Declan's voicemail, it sounds like he thought so.

We know what the toxin was that poisoned him?

The ME is still running tests. Hasn't ID'd it yet. But Oz is on top of it.

Forensics did find traces of blood

on one of the food containers in the apartment though.

Looks like somebody cut their finger on a staple.

They've tested it already. It's not Declan's.

Declan was using contact-free delivery.

According to the app, the food arrived about an hour before he died.

Maybe the killer got to the food while it was still outside the door.

Hopefully, when we find the guy, we'll have a DNA sample to match.

And what about the ex-girlfriend?

Conveniently shows up to discover him dead,

has her own keys.

-She also a gamer? -Yeah, she is.

She seems earnest though. Genuinely broken up.

Willing to do anything she can to help.

-What? -Well, you're getting all soft on me.

Morgan mentioned you ran into Lucia this morning.

-I'm gonna legitimately kill her. -Well, don't do it yet.

I got her combing through everything we found in the apartment,

make sure there's nothing we missed.

In the meantime, I'll trust your instinct on the ex-girlfriend.

Double-check her alibi.

Okay.

Declan and I met in-game before we ever met in real life.

Battle Dynasty was our lives.

Neither of us really fit in anywhere else.

But then last year, he quit gaming.

And he ghosted me,

told me not to come by his place anymore, stopped returning my calls.

Well, that must have been awful. Any idea why?

He wouldn't tell me.

But then, last month, he showed up back in the game.

Apologized to me, said he was a changed man.

We were making plans to see each other again in the real world, but

I'm sorry.

Declan's computer was missing from his apartment.

Any idea what happened to it?

He got rid of his whole rig when he quit gaming.

But you just said he started playing again. What was he playing on?

I think he had an old laptop that he'd use in a pinch.

-What? -You wanna find it

because you think whoever killed him took it.

We're considering the possibility.

You and Declan didn't just share house keys, did you?

We also shared a Find My Tech account.

Okay.

So the laptop is somewhere in this lot.

All right, well, let's split up, look in car windows and see if we can find it.

Yeah, I'll start on this side.

You just find out about a sale on Tide sticks or did Lucia text you?

Well, text her back.

We're working. It can wait.

What, Morgan?

You guys broke up because you put work before her.

You want another shot at this, don't you think

you should show her it'll be different this time?

I never said we were going to give it another shot.

Yeah, well, you didn't have to. Your face did it for you.

- It's more complicated than that. - Of course it's complicated.

Relationships are complicated, and it's okay to be scared, but--