Mardock Scramble

again. He won’t even be allowed to own shares in a casino or take a backroom role. He’ll be out, thoroughly and with absolute finality.

This was why the dealer and the other mechanics now had to try and bring the table back toward average. Their livelihoods, if not their lives, were at stake. If you pricked them, would they not bleed? The answer was: most definitely.

–I’m sure the mechanics have been moving from table to table, using their same tricks every time. But if we can wrong-foot just one of them—well, catch one, catch all.

The dealer’s actions and his shifty, sharp eye movements seemed to confirm Oeufcoque’s every word.

The dealer dealt the next hand, and as Balot picked up her cards she noticed a number of things looking toward her that hadn’t been there a minute ago. More overhead cameras, responding incredibly quickly to recent developments at the table.

The cameras were focused in on all the people at the table except for Balot.

The casino, after all, could draw on their records to note how much Balot had lost at the table up to this point. A duty manager was far more likely to conclude that a cheating maneuver from someone else had somehow backfired, rather than assume that Balot had anything to do with the cheating herself.

The mechanics and the dealer understood this fact all too well, and this only contributed to the intense pressure they were now under.

And yet they needed to continue cheating in order to try and bring the table back toward some sort of average. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Balot’s cards were 2

and 4

.

–That’s their game, then. No more high cards for us—they’ll be keeping the aces and kings to themselves from now on.

–What should we do?

–Raise them.

Balot did so. In the first round she acted assertively, raising and re-raising when she had the chance. She was just as forceful in the second round.

She felt the dealer and the two other mechanics give a collective sigh of relief. They seemed to believe that she had fallen for their plan, and now she was betting indiscriminately on a weak hand.

This would make it easier for them to bring things back toward an average pattern of play, or so they hoped. Even the potbelly was raising now, as if to acknowledge that this round was their opportunity to put everything right in one fell swoop.

No one folded, and they moved into the second round of betting.

The flop cards were 5

, K

, K

.

There were a number of rounds of calls and raises, during which the old gentleman folded.

–The cameras.

Balot knew what Oeufcoque meant and followed his orders automatically. She snarced the cameras, moving them by a couple of millimeters so that none of them were focused directly on her, deliberately or not. Then her gloves squished, swallowing one of her cards and spitting out another in a split second, without anyone noticing. Her cards were now 2

and 3

.

They moved into the third round.

The moment the turn card was revealed, the cowboy folded with a sigh. It was 4

. The potbelly raised cautiously, the Doctor met this and raised him back, and Balot and the suit both called. They went around the table a number of times, each performing the same set of actions.

After the raises and re-raises were finished they moved into the fourth round.

The river card was A

.

It was just like the last hand. Balot did wonder whether they might not be pushing her luck, but:

–I know for a fact that nobody has the real 3

in their hand. Relax.

So she did, silently obeying Oeufcoque’s instructions, calling when necessary. They were fighting fire with fire, and with Oeufcoque on her side Balot knew she had more or less won before the game had even started.

Eventually the Doctor folded and the potbelly too, sensing that his task of raising the stakes had been accomplished. The suit raised, and Balot called without a second thought. The suit looked troubled for a moment, unnerved by her confidence. But he couldn’t retreat at this point. There was no retreat.

The suit revealed his hand. His cards were an extremely impressive A

and K

.

A full house, aces over kings. Surely an unbeatable hand.

–I think I’ve won.

The suit’s hands were already reaching for the pile of chips when Balot interrupted.

His hands stopped deadly still, and the only sound was the cowboy roaring as he clocked Balot’s cards.

The suit withdrew his hands from the pile of chips and, with the dealer, looked on in horror at Balot’s hand.

–I have the ace, two, three, four, and five of clubs.

Not royal, but a full-on straight flush nonetheless.

One of the very few hands in the game that beats a full house of aces over kings.

The mechanics blanched, and even the cowboy and the old gentleman were stopped still in their tracks. The Doctor was the Doctor, and played his part of the overenthusiastic country bumpkin with relish.

Balot proceeded to rake in her winnings. Oeufcoque nimbly changed her altered card back to normal, and the cards were returned facedown. Ever the professional, the dealer returned the cards to the cutting machine and opened a new deck, but even as he did so his eyes flitted to the other two mechanics.

–And so it begins…the seeds of doubt have been planted, and they’re about to reap what they’ve