CHAPTER 38: CHAPTER 38: EXTRA C AND THE EVILS OF CAPITALISM (3)

The whiskey tasted like peat and burnt money.

"To patterns," Nathaniel Reed said, raising his glass. The crystal caught the low light of the private room, fracturing it into a dozen tiny rainbows.

"To patterns," I echoed. I took a sip. It burned going down, settling in my stomach like a hot coal.

We were in a VIP suite at the back of the lounge. It was smaller than the main floor but infinitely more expensive. The walls were padded with acoustic foam covered in red velvet. It felt like the inside of a heart valve.

Nathaniel sat opposite me on a leather sofa. The two rugby players—his muscle—stood by the door. Their jackets were unbuttoned. I could see the matte black grip of a pistol tucked into the waistband of the one on the left.

Guns. Of course there were guns. Why wouldn’t a high school student council president have armed guards in a secret underground casino?

I hated this plotline.

"So," Nathaniel leaned forward, placing his glass on the marble table. "Show me the magic."

I pulled out my phone. My hands were steady, but my heart was doing a drum solo against my ribs. I unlocked the screen and opened the browser.

"It’s not on the main app," I said, keeping my voice bored. "You have to access the developer backend through a mirrored domain. It catches the server ticks before the RNG scrambles them."

I typed in the URL. It was a fake site Peridot had whipped up in ten minutes. It looked exactly like the Vangels interface, but with a scrolling command line at the bottom that spat out nonsense code.

"Here." I slid the phone across the table.

Nathaniel looked at it. His eyes widened as the command line predicted the next card.

Queen of Spades.

On the screen, the dealer flipped a Queen of Spades.

"Incredible," Nathaniel whispered. He wasn’t looking at the code. He was looking at the dollar signs in his head.

While he was distracted, I reached into my blazer pocket.

"I need a pen," I muttered, patting my chest. "To write down the sequence. The glitch resets every ten minutes."

I pulled out the silver retractable pen I used to cross out faces on my wall. I clicked it once.

Click.

The recording light was invisible, hidden in the clip. I placed it on the table, right next to the ice bucket.

"It’s about the server lag," I improvised. "When the user load spikes, the random number generator defaults to a pre-set seed to save processing power. If you know the seed, you know the cards."

Technobabble. Complete garbage. But Nathaniel nodded like I was explaining the theory of relativity.

"And you found this?" he asked, looking up. His eyes were sharp again. Predatory.

"I stumbled on it. I’m just exploiting it."

Nathaniel picked up my phone. He scrolled through the fake code.

"This is worth millions," he said. "If we scale it. If we automate it."

"If you scale it, they patch it," I said, snatching the phone back. It was a risky move. The guard by the door twitched, his hand drifting toward his waist.

Nathaniel stared at me. The air in the room grew heavy. It tasted of ozone and violence.

"You have spirit," Nathaniel said softly. "I like that. But you’re playing in the deep end, Abel."

"I can swim."

"Can you?" Nathaniel glanced at the guard, then back at me. "Leave the phone."

"No."

"I can take it."

"You can try," I said. I leaned back, crossing my legs. "But the exploit is encrypted to my biometrics. You take the phone, the code wipes. You get a brick. I get a hospital bill. Nobody wins."

A lie on top of a lie. I was building a castle of bullshit on a foundation of sand.

Nathaniel held my gaze. He was calculating. Risk versus reward. Violence versus profit.

Finally, he laughed. He clapped his hands together.

"Fine," he said. "Keep your secrets. But this conversation isn’t over. I need to run this up the chain."

"Up the chain?"

"Partners," he said vaguely. "I’ll be in touch. Don’t leave town."

He stood up. The meeting was over.

"I’ll leave the pen," I said, standing up too. "I have another one. Just... don’t lose the napkin I wrote the sequence on."

There was no napkin. But leaving the pen behind was the point.

"Get out," Nathaniel said, turning back to the screen on the wall.

I walked out. My back itched. I expected a bullet, or at least a hand on my shoulder.

The door clicked shut behind me.

I was in the hallway. I was alive.

I let out a breath that shook my entire body.

I couldn’t leave yet. Leaving immediately would look suspicious. It would look like I had done exactly what I had just done.

I needed to be a gambler.

I walked back to the main floor. The silence was still suffocating. The click of digital chips and the soft hum of the air conditioning were the only sounds.

I found an empty seat at a poker table near the bar. The buy-in was five hundred. I tossed a chip on the felt.

"Deal me in."

The players were zombies. Glazed eyes. Slack jaws. But the person to my right was different.

She was a girl, maybe a year or two older than me. She wore a hoodie pulled low over her face, but I could see the collar of a Fairfax Academy uniform peeking out from underneath. A senior.

She was tapping her foot. A frantic, staccato rhythm. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

She looked at her cards. Folded.

She looked at the next hand. Folded.

"Rough night?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

She jumped. She looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. She didn’t recognize me. Why would she? I was a ghost in the hallways.

"I need to hit," she whispered, more to herself than me. "I need to hit big."

"Chasing losses is a bad strategy."

"It’s not losses," she hissed. "It’s funds. I need the funds."

"Funds?"

"For the campaign," she muttered. She shoved a stack of chips into the pot. All in. "He said if I raised the funds, I’d get the VP spot. I just need to double it."

My stomach turned.

Campaign funds. Student council.

Nathaniel Reed wasn’t just running a casino. He was turning the student body into his personal piggy bank.

The dealer flipped the cards.

She lost.

Her face crumbled. It wasn’t a cry of anger. It was a look of absolute, hollow devastation. She stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor, and ran toward the exit.

I watched her go. I folded my hand.

I cashed out.

I had seen enough.

Cafe Gnosis was empty.

Peridot was wiping down the counter. She looked up as I walked in, the bell above the door jingling cheerfully.

"You look like you’ve seen a ghost," she said.

"Worse," I said. "I saw a politician."

I sat down on a stool. I didn’t ask for coffee. Peridot slid a glass of water across the wood.

"Well?"

"It’s real," I said. "The basement. The casino. It’s all real. And it’s run by kids."

"Kids?"

"Students. Nathaniel Reed. The Student Council President."

Peridot whistled. "Ambitious."

"That’s one word for it." I rubbed my face. The adrenaline was fading, leaving me exhausted. "He has armed guards. Real guns, Peridot. In a basement under Aversque."

"Did you get it?"

"The pen is in the room. He thinks I left it by accident."

Peridot grinned. It was a sharp, dangerous expression. "Good boy. I’ll be able to pull the audio remotely once the buffer fills up. We’ll know everything they say for the next twelve hours."

"He mentioned partners," I said. "He said he had to run it up the chain."

"Rooney," Peridot said. "It has to be."

"Or someone worse."

I took a sip of water. The image of the girl at the poker table flashed in my mind. The desperation in her eyes. I need the funds.

"They’re harvesting them," I said quietly. "The students. They’re bleeding them dry to fund... something. Campaigns. Power. I don’t know."

"And now you’re in the middle of it."

"I’m always in the middle of it," I said. "It’s my curse."

"Go home, Abel," Peridot said, her voice softening slightly. "You did good. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is a school day."

School.

It felt like a different planet.

The sun was too bright.

I walked through the school gates, squinting against the morning light. The world was saturated with color—the green of the trees, the blue of the sky, the pristine white of the school building.

It was jarring.

Last night, I had been in a velvet-lined coffin surrounded by guns and desperation. Today, I was surrounded by teenagers talking about homework and dating.

I grabbed a can of coffee from the vending machine. The cold metal felt grounding.

I walked to the courtyard. The usual spot.

They were all there. The protagonists.

Sebastian was laughing, throwing a grape into Eric’s mouth. Emily was scrolling through her phone. Anna was reading a book, her brow furrowed in concentration. Lia was leaning against a tree, looking bored.

When she saw me, Lia’s eyes lit up. She gave me a tiny, secretive nod.

I nodded back. I’m alive.

"Hey, Abel!" Sebastian called out. "Come join the circle of wisdom."

"Is that what we’re calling it?" I asked, walking over.

"Eric thinks the cafeteria pizza is a metaphor for the decline of society," Emily said, rolling her eyes.

"It is," Eric insisted. "The cheese isn’t even cheese. It’s a petroleum product."

It was normal. It was safe. It was terrifying how easily the darkness was hidden by the sunshine.

I sat down next to Anna. She smelled like jasmine shampoo.

"You’re late," she whispered.

"Overslept," I lied.

"Did the meeting go well?"

"Ideally."

Just then, a girl ran up to the group. I recognized her. Sarah. She was in our English class. She was usually cheerful, always talking about her cat.

Today, she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her uniform was rumpled.

"Emily," she gasped, grabbing Emily’s arm.

"Sarah? What’s wrong?" Emily stood up, her face filled with concern. The laughter died instantly. The circle went quiet.

Sarah was shaking. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

"It’s my brother," she sobbed. "Mike."

Mike. I knew the name. He was a junior. A varsity athlete.

"What happened?" Sebastian asked, stepping forward.

Sarah looked around the group, her eyes wild with panic.

"He didn’t come home last night," she whispered. "He went out... he said he was going to meet some friends for a game. But he never came back."

My blood ran cold.

A game.

"His phone is off," Sarah cried. "And... and I found this in his room."

She held out a crumpled piece of paper.

It wasn’t a note. It was a receipt.

A withdrawal slip from an ATM near Aversque Boulevard. For five hundred dollars.

And stamped on the back, in faint red ink, was a symbol.

A pair of wings.

Vangels.

I looked at Lia. Her face had gone pale.

The harvest had begun.