Where's My Five Hundred Million?

Back when EFD was still a game, I used to throw myself straight back into the Darkzone the second I got out — win or lose, it never mattered. I'd been a dopamine junkie then and I was a dopamine junkie now, and every fresh run of EFD had been one of the few reliable hits I could get. Nothing strange about that.

But now that EFD had become reality, I'd learned I couldn't just keep slamming the retry button. I was a living human being, and a human body — no matter how hard you trained it, no matter how many upgrades you bolted on — had hard, unforgiving limits.

In short, I needed rest.

"Royal straight flush. Lucky me."

"Cut the shit!"

"What the fuck! This bastard hid a card, didn't he?!"

"Check his sleeves! Hell, just strip-search his crotch!"

Another dopamine tap for the prisoners, and a decent little side hustle besides: the hellish pleasure den at the bottom of the world. The Seoul Southern Prison Lowest Floor Casino was packed with junkies again today. I was, of course, no exception.

"Easy, friends. We're all wearing the same prison issue — you really think checking my sleeves or my crotch is going to turn something up? In an outfit this thin, a hidden card would be sticking out a mile."

I raked the credit chips off the table and needled the losers at my leisure. That was enough to send one of them over the edge. He fished a crude blade out of his clothes and brought it up where everyone could see it.

Security at the door — another prisoner, naturally — had wanded everyone with a metal detector on the way in, so if he'd managed to smuggle the thing through, it was almost certainly plastic. Crude or not, though, a blade was a blade. Get stabbed hard and it hurt. Get stabbed gently and it still hurt.

"You fat pig. I split that belly open and haul your guts out, I bet a whole deck of marked cards comes with them."

"All I had this morning was a bowl of prison bulgogi and rice and a lemonade to wash it down."

"Guess we'll find out when I open you up. Die!!"

I had to admire, privately, how he could spit a line that cookie-cutter third-rate-villain without a shred of shame. Then I flung my cards into the face of the ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man vaulting onto the table.

Ah. Glittering. Gold.

"You son of a bitch! You dare throw cards that came out of your ass?!"

He spat and sputtered the cards off his face and came at me again, but the guards were already pounding over from not far off, so there wasn't much for me to do. At most I turned my shoulder and let his wild stab slide past.

The worst man at a gambling table was never the one who won and walked. It was the one who lost and started a riot.

Crash!

I flicked his thrust aside with my shoulder and he went sprawling, slamming into a drink cart that happened to be rolling past and setting ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠off a beautiful little chain-reaction pileup. You wouldn't even need to send this one to a dashcam channel.

I walked over to where he lay tangled among scattered chips and complimentary party favors and tossed him a consolation chip.

"If I'd actually been planning to cheat, you think I'd be wasting my ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time at a table this cheap? I'd be touring the big players' games and stripping them down to their underwear."

"You son of a—!"

He trembled and tried to get up, but the guards had already arrived. They boxed him in and started cheerfully stomping him into the floor. Every one of them was a hulking brute with enhancement implants; against a man waving a plastic shank, it was almost embarrassingly more than enough.

Anyway. The signal ought to be coming any time now.

I was tidying the wrecked table and scooping up credit chips when a dealer ghosted up beside me and murmured straight into my ear.

"Sir, I can't help but feel this floor is a bit beneath someone of your caliber. If it wouldn't be an imposition, might I offer you a more comfortable gaming environment?"

"Do you serve lemonade?"

"Of course."

"Then I'm in."

The dealer had timed the approach perfectly — neither too soon nor too late — and just like that I was free of the "cheap" floor.

Under ordinary circumstances, the sane thing after a Darkzone run would have been to stretch out in my private cell and sleep the afternoon away. The reason I was sitting here playing cards I didn't even care about was simple enough.

It was about time I unlocked a new merchant NPC.

The only merchant NPCs I'd gotten friendly with so far were Lee Sena, who ran the Cute Tool Shop, and Vladimir Borshch, who ran the General Store. Between those two I could buy or sell just about anything without much trouble. But what I wanted wasn't just merchandise.

I needed information.

Anyone who'd ever watched a movie knew how casinos got portrayed. EFD's casino followed the cliché to the letter: hit a certain set of conditions, unlock the merchant NPC, and you could buy or sell intel on special items — or pick up special quests. Back when I'd been playing EFD for real, Darkzone mapping and clears had been my specialty, and I'd actually been tighter with this casino merchant than with Vladimir Borshch.

"This way, sir."

I followed the dealer's courteous lead and, before I quite realized it, stepped into another gaming floor whose entire atmosphere had changed. True to a place built by gutting an entire cell block — same as the underground fighting pit — every section had its own flavor and its own scale.

The room I'd just entered was the VIP Hall. One full rank above the Regular Hall, where the cheap day-to-day regulars came to burn through their money.

In EFD, the conditions for walking into the VIP Hall were simple. String together ten straight wins against the AI in the Regular Hall, amount irrelevant — or pull in more than fifty million won off another player. I'd knocked out a clean ten-win streak between this morning and now, which was apparently enough to get me through the door.

Every idiot I sat across from was dead broke, so I didn't even clear ten million won. Not bad for pocket money, though.

Frankly, ten million won was a drop in the ocean next to what I was going to be making. Even if I could stroll in here every day and peel off a reliable ten million, I wouldn't have been interested. Not that the house would have let me — they'd have blacklisted me and barred the door.

The point was this: I'd been in the casino half a day and I was already standing in the VIP Hall.

Definitely quieter in here.

After hours of laughter, sobbing, shouting, cursing, and the wet percussion of violence, walking in felt like stepping into a clean room. The clientele here had money or a name or both, and they observed at least a baseline of manners. Compared to the rest of the prison population, anyway.

"Looks like I've won again. I'll be taking my leave of this hand."

"You'd better. You walk out of here, you won't get the chance."

"Aigoo, that's frightening. We're just here to have a little fun, aren't we?"

"That's true. Winning fun, though. Not losing fun."

"Heh. Be interesting to see how many walk out of here alive today."

Suffocating games were underway in every direction — men with power and backing, men with money and skill. The sums crossing those tables ran at least five times what you'd see in the Regular Hall, and sometimes ten. The name VIP Hall wasn't just for show.

"If you'd take a seat at this table, sir."

The dealer guided me to a game that happened to have an empty chair, handed me off to the man running it, and vanished as if he'd never been there.

The seat I'd lucked into still carried dark, mottled stains, the kind that seemed to advertise exactly how the people who'd sat here before me had ended up. The ones who'd been led over just like I had probably dropped into this chair thinking, I'm different from those guys — and then gotten wrecked like dogs.

I'm different from those guys.

Maybe the cursed chair had gotten its hooks into me too. I sat down thinking the same thing every last one of my predecessors had thought.

"Welcome, sir."

The dealer running the game was a classic pretty-boy parasite — the type who would have been drowning in affection if you'd dropped him among rich women instead of these sweating, stinking men. Something about him had felt off from the first look. He was just sitting there smiling, and somehow it still felt like he was laughing at me.

"Before we begin, would you like a brief explanation of the game?"

"Not necessary. Let's go."

"How bold. Then we'll begin at once. Players, please place your bets."

The moment the game started, I was promoted from guest to player. The two men seated on either side of me started betting first.

What I'd sat down to was a mutated cousin of ordinary casino roulette — the classic wheel stripped even simpler, and that much more dependent on raw luck. Each player picked three numbers from one to a hundred and put money on them. A massive roulette wheel spun at a brisk clip, and three very small steel balls dropped onto it. Odd and even, color, zero — all of that was gone. To make the rules so simple even a gambling virgin could play, the only question that mattered was whether a ball landed on one of your three numbers or not.

Easiest on-ramp after a slot machine, honestly.

Hit one of your three and you got your stake back. Hit two and it paid five to one. If the heavens smiled and all three balls found all three of your numbers, you got ten times your money. Miss everything? You donated your entire bet to the dealer. Beautifully simple. There was one exception, though. If two or more balls dropped into the same number, it didn't count as a double — the bet was voided, and that money went to the dealer too.

Nasty piece of work.

At a glance it looked easier than regular roulette. More balls in play, none of those irritating side bets to track. But everyone knew a casino never ran a losing business. Ordinary roulette already had a reputation for miserable returns, which was why it had never been that popular. A wheel this vicious had to be worse.

The exception clause was the real knife.

Players could bet any numbers they wanted before the ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spin, which meant that in theory the whole table could pile onto the same three. And if two balls dropped into one of those numbers? Even if the third ball lucked into another of your picks, the entire bet was voided and you lost to the dealer. You didn't get a chip back. On a dealer's dream spin, he could vacuum every stake on the table like a shop-vac. The players, meanwhile, shared the risk with each other and had almost no clean shot at peeling money off the house.

And any casino game run by a fully automatic machine was dangerous on principle.

A long, rattling whir filled the air. While I'd been turning that over, the wheel had already started spinning, and the three steel balls dropped onto it one after another. The prisoners on either side of me pretended not to care, but they couldn't hide the wet shine of want and dopamine pinning their eyes to the wheel. I had bet the table minimum, on thirty-three, sixty-six, and ninety-nine.

A last rattle. A click.

The wheel stopped and showed where the balls had settled. Two on thirty-three. One on fifty-one. Exactly the situation I'd been worried about, served up on the first spin.

"No!"

"Nngh — that damned ball dropped on the same number twice again!"

"Hah. Luck isn't with me today."

They didn't howl and tear the place apart the way the Regular Hall animals did, but these prisoners were still pathetic bottom-rung gamblers. Cheat if you had the skill, crush the other inmates with raw money if you had the fortune, and if you had neither, you sat there praying for a miracle and took your beating.

Separate from all that, my five-hundred minimum evaporated into thin air. A floor the Regular Hall vermin couldn't just wander into, indeed.

"Shall we proceed to the next game?"

"No reason not to."

I tossed another bet down without much interest, and the gamblers around me piled in as if they'd been waiting for me to move. My numbers were thirty-three, sixty-six, and ninety-nine again.

The wheel spun up with that same dry rattle, and the balls dropped onto it with two careless little ticks. When it stopped, they were sitting on one, thirty-three, and seventy-five. I'd hit one. Some of the others had hit nothing at all; one of them had landed two and taken the fivefold payout.

They're toying with us.

That was about enough. I asked to start the third game immediately. Maybe he took the impatience for blood running hot — the dealer put on that grating smile of his and started setting up again.

That was when I jacked my bet to fifty million without a flicker of hesitation, one chip each on one, two, and three.

Nobody could see anyone else's numbers until the result came up, but the amounts showed on a little display board, and the gamblers around me stared like I'd grown a second head. Had I lost my mind? Was I sliding into a full-blown gambling addiction? Sorry, but even if I could sweep up hundreds of millions here every day without breaking a sweat, I had no intention of nesting in a casino.

I hadn't come here today to gamble, and I hadn't come here for pocket money.

And I had a card nobody else at this table was holding.

You're up.

◈ CRAZY CLOCK ◈

Analysis of this inferior, low-grade, imbecilic so-called "gambling management system" of the primitive era is complete. All random-number arrays confirmed. Artificial manipulation program successfully hacked.

Good work. Looks like I won't be needing Pretty today.

◈ CRAZY CLOCK ◈

The Prisoner would do well, going forward, to refrain from employing such outdated relics of a bygone era.

Crazy Clock's unfiltered slander made me feel a pang of pity for Pretty, who'd been left with the guards at the door. Next time I'd make a point of using the hammer more sincerely on somebody's skull.

A long rattle. A click.

The wheel stopped. And the result came up — the kind of result that would have America sweating, Japan wringing its hands, and China in a state of shock.

The three steel balls had landed on one, two, and three. Exactly. Not a single other player at the table had bet those numbers.

The amount I had put down was fifty million won. Almost everything I had.

"Lucky me."

I lifted my head, nice and slow. The dealer's poker face — the one he'd been wearing behind that grating little smile all night — was completely shattered.