He didn’t ask why. He didn’t ask how it would quantifiably affect her chances of winning. He wasn’t blindly following Balot either. It was his own decision based on his instinctive knowledge of her thoughts.
Oeufcoque was in the fight too. As a part of their new combination.
Balot smoothly placed her chips. Her impatience had vanished completely, not like the shadow had lifted into dawn, but as if her senses had pierced the unpredictable darkness, adding their own light to it.
She felt herself becoming one with the game. The cards were her, and she was new.
It was stress, it was hostility, and it was a blessing.
Ashley’s management of the cards grew more and more skewed. That determined which cards Balot should chase after. Her 10 and 9 of clubs were impeded by the ace and king of spades. Next the 4 and 5 of clubs brought forth the king of clubs, only to be crushed by the jack of hearts and his reinforcements, the 3 and 7 of diamonds.
Balot’s senses reached out like a hand searching through the darkness and colliding with something, for the ever-widening crack in Ashley’s flawless handling of the cards.
Once, she hadn’t the will to resist being used. She had thrown away her senses. Until she’d met Oeufcoque. And now, from within her thin shell, she sensed with voracity. Suddenly, a sharp odor came to her nose. A phantom smell. A smell like the cologne Death would wear came over her body, enveloping her. Balot thought back to the time she’d been trapped inside that car, when the stench of gas filled the space. At that time, all she could do to survive was to withdraw into herself.
At that time, she thought she would die. Sad and pitiful.
But they came in time.
Ashley’s upcard, an 8.
Balot’s cards, 3-6.
All of them clubs. Balot’s finger tapped the table.
She received a 6. She raised her finger, then tapped the table again.
With a flutter of Ashley’s hand, her next card came—6.
So, 3-6-6-6. She had seen it before, but now it was on her side of the table.
The same card appeared three times in a row—that was the wailing of the iron wall as she pried it open.
Balot stayed. Ashley turned over his hole card as if lifting an impossibly heavy weight. The ace of spades. Ashley’s guardian deity had appeared. But it was too late. With the 8, he had nineteen. Balot won.
“Congratulations,” said the dealer with a smile. Before retrieving the cards, he handed out her winnings.
But neither his smile nor the winnings impressed her.
Her honed senses focused upon one point among the swirling numbers.
She turned over her left hand, and with her right, she grabbed it from her palm and gently placed it upon the table.
Until both her hands were back on the table, Ashley didn’t move a muscle.
The crowd of onlookers gasped. The golden million-dollar chip was in play.
“Balot…” said the Doctor. He wasn’t calling for her. It was just a whisper, pregnant with surprise and anticipation.
Bell’s eyes were steady upon her.
Balot tapped the table. Ashley’s eyes flicked over to the golden chip, and his hands casually slid the cards from the shoe.
His upcard, a jack. Balot’s cards, A-4. All of them spades.
The cards were his sword swing, and Balot attacked them head on.
A card came. The seven of clubs. Her ace, once worth eleven points, was now worth one.
Balot tapped the table without hesitating, as if keeping in beat. Ashley didn’t slow either. The card came. The 7 of clubs. Nineteen.
Balot took a deep, slow breath, then announced her stay. Ashley turned over his hole card.
It was a 2. The red card showed on top of the shoe. Ashley removed it without a word. His eyes held on Balot. Balot looked only at the cards.
The next card came. A king. Of clubs.
“Balot, you did it…”
The words came rushing out of the Doctor’s mouth, but he quickly composed himself. The game was only beginning.
Without turning to him, Balot nodded and, careful not to disturb her inner rhythm, moved her gaze to Ashley.
As he swept away the cards, his mouth curled into a frown. He looked back at her with a joke in his eyes. He started to say something but was cut off.
“Did you see that?” Bell said. Her voice was cold, but a reserved smile was on her face. “Women can endure much more than men. No matter what you might say about this girl, she knows what it means to endure, more than you can even imagine.”
“And here I was, thinking we were on the same side, Bell.”
With a stunned expression, Ashley reached for the box at the edge of the table.
Waving her hand as if she were clearing away the smoke from a cigarette, Bell said, “If the match were to end that easily, it wouldn’t be interesting.”
Ashley shrugged. He lifted the box of golden chips into his hands and said, “There’s still plenty left.”
He offered the box to Balot as if the weight of it pulled down on his arm.
For a moment, she wanted to say that she wasn’t after all the chips, but she stopped herself and reached for the box. She wasn’t after the chips themselves. She didn’t want the shell or the white. She kept her mouth shut and repeated to herself the Doctor’s words:
Her bare fingers grabbed a chip. One with the OctoberCorp emblem stamped on it—one tightly packed with the rotten insides of certain man’s egg.
She squeezed the chip in the palm of her left hand and placed it atop her gloves. Then she pushed the box aside with an almost foolish reverence. She watched Ashley begin the shuffle as she stashed the chip between the two gloves.
As Balot’s senses followed Oeufcoque’s work and Ashley’s shuffle, Bell Wing placed a hand upon her shoulder.
“I have a little soliloquy to mutter to myself. I don’t want to get in your way.” This was Bell’s way of talking to Balot without causing the girl to turn around. “There’s just one thing I want you to remember. One thing I taught to you. Even if unnecessarily. Something I couldn’t help but say.”
Balot, still focused on the shuffle, nodded.
“Yes. It’s simple. All you have to do is be a woman, and you’ll be all right. Be the person you should be, you’ll be all right. If not, you won’t be able to talk with the cards. And if you can’t talk with the cards, you can’t beat this man. You don’t want to lose, do you?”
“Good. You have a pretty face.”
Balot touched Bell’s hand. It was a kind hand. And it was a stern hand. It gently moved away from her and settled on the back of her chair. Both Bell and the Doctor placed their hands on her chair, watching over her.
Facing down the three of them, Ashley frowned. Over the sound of the cutting cards, he growled, “I should
