I absolutely think you're right that if Chris showed up he would end up dying. like yahtzee loves a downer/melancholy/etc ending and as much as I would love to just see them all having crazy adventures in DEDA files and hanging out with Adam and Victor and Allison I know that shit isn't happening. but one can dream.... imagining chris and victor blowing up microwaves and shit outside with victor's fire powers....
I did kind of wonder if maybe Nicholas Fisk actually is literally supposed to be Chris but my evidence is pretty threadbare (chris seems to have also be a contract worker agent for the ministry, it's not that much of a stretch that he might be using a new name considering he's canonically british nobility, Nicholas Fisk and Christopher Quinn have the same number of syllables, if the person using the name Thief online is actually Trilby possessing him that sure is one way to make them "soulmates") and also I don't really like that theory very much. would love it if Nicholas Fisk and Chris knew each other back in the day, maybe they went on missions and stuff together. maybe they had a few drunken hookups. maybe Fisk kidnapping trilby at gunpoint was part of a horrible confusing love triangle situation that trilby was fully unaware of. dream big!!!
one thing I have been thinking about a lot recently is the sequence with old Trilby in 6 Days.... when I played it originally on release a thousand years ago I was sure he was the clone you see got brought there at the end but revisiting that scene in the past year I think it might actually, truly be the real him. and I keep thinking about how both consuming shadow AND DEDA files not only leave the door wide open for that to be the case but also set up the circumstances for it to happen?? like consuming shadow has a whole ending for stopping the entity from entering the world but getting the player character trapped there.... and DEDA files has the last picture of him with just fully grey hair like he appears in the game.... !! but I wonder if maybe this will fully get left up in the air in the books. we shall see I guess...
ANON YOUR MIND... very beautiful... very powerful....
Ali and Chris having to go on a mission together is my ideal payoff for Chris coming in. Chriss blowing Diablerie off with some dismissive statements and plucking Alison away to help reload his ballistics, or perhaps Elizabeth arranging for Alison to finish her training as a field agent with someone who isn't Diablerie. Something really violent and dangerous so Alison has no choice but to get her hands bloody and gets to do something that makes her feel like a bad person for like three weeks afterwards. Having a grizzled old Quinn teach her how to use firearms... god, that's the fucking dream!!!
I feeeeel like Fisk was supposed to be a red herring for Trilby himself (the first book sets up a lot of details that make him feel Trilbyish) but now he's turned out to be his own character, possibly, I wonder how Fisk's backstory is going to be woven into Trilby and Chris and the ministry's histories. Of course, the man actually piloting Fisk's body may not actually be Fisk, but perhaps the third book will have more information. Where we are now is a terrible cliffhanger. However I now believe that any explanation for Fisk kidnapping Trilby that isn't a Chris Quinn love triangle is now the inferior option to a beautiful and glorious world that we could all live in if Yahtzee believed in true love.
I really really want the last shot of 6 Days to truly be Trilby, and not just a clone. I don't think he should get to fight Cabadath and Chzo and win, as just a mere mortal. Even he is just a resource to Cabadath, in the end, and Chzo itself is much stronger than his mere acolyte. The idea that a character like Trilby could ever get any hope or chance of escape once he's already within destiny's pull is too hopeful, too kind. He has to lose, and if he wins, it can't be forever. Or it has to be a different genre (Art of Theft, and the Casey Joint game, and Chris and Trilby as a webcomic that's separate from the main story). Perpetually doomed by the narrative from the second he's on the screen or the page, unless genre convention itself intervenes and saves him.