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It was the fifth year after Relegation passed, the Corporates sold out, and the Exchange came to power in $NYC. The Board of Directors had just acquired an incredibly valuable asset, that being the Blaseball star Valentine Games, traded for the Millionaires’ $VGHN whose threatening slide towards anticapitalist tendencies would be a non-issue to the Exchange in desolate, faraway, unimportant Breckenridge. (One could hope that, with the ace Games off of their team, Breckenridge would slide down the rankings into relegation, and the Jazz Hands—and $VGHN—would be wiped off the map entirely.)
While Games herself was worthless to the Exchange, as they only brought skill at Blaseball to the Board—no financial sense whatsoever, no feel for the cutthroat politics of capitalism—he could be traded, as anything could be in $NYC, for something substantially more useful. And traded Games was, signed and stamped and handed over to the highest bidder—unsurprisingly, a Blaseball team, the up-and-coming Houston Influencers—within the financial quarter.
Easy come, easy go. They weren’t planning to keep him, anyways.
One certain evening, with the trade nearing its deadline, found $DRAC hunched over a computer, artificial light straining his eyes. A glass of wine, twice-refilled and half-empty, sat forgotten a few inches to the side of the monitor. Every so often came a few slow, deliberate clicks as another Influencer, found to be unusable for $DRAC’s purpose, had their webpage closed and their prospects for a career in the Exchange shattered.
Throughout the night, $DRAC’s scowl grew deeper, only ever abating to reform into a nastier grimace. By the time he reviewed the seventh pretty-faced airhead with the same vapid smile as the rest, he’d developed half a mind to purchase the entire team just to Liquidate them all, financial losses be d___ed.
He’d almost given up, almost called Houston to cancel the deal entirely, when he came across the profile of #Solis.
One of the less popular Influencers, on the proverbial B-list, so to speak. Not necessarily unmarketable, but unremarkable, second-rate, not cut out for the celebrity world.
The first things $DRAC noticed were his eyes.
#Solis didn’t look at the camera with a half-lidded gaze attempting seduction but coming off as drugged, didn’t beam ear to ear with a grotesque Botox-bloated grin, didn’t parade around with overly skimpy clothes to make a statement. No, nothing like the stereotypical Influencer at all. His smile was quiet like thunder, and his eyes were sharper than the lightning that called it.
His list of qualifications was stacked neatly in a sidebar. Voiceline snippets revealed a silky, sugared tone, eager to conceal any poison folded among the honey, if only he could voice anything deadlier than advertising jingles.
#Solis was a fit for $NYC, the Exchange, not Houston who would only continue to waste his potential. B-list celebrity indeed! Already, the rage dissipated, quenched by a chilled, calculated satisfaction. When the Influencers departed the city after the series finished, #Solis would not be leaving with them.
The newest member of the Board of Directors walked into the hundred-sixty-third story of the Exchange building like he already owned it, coolly appraising the vaulted ceiling, checking himself out through his reflection in the polished marble floor. He’d arrived early enough to make a point, though not early enough to be seen as desperate, and now he only had to wait for the man in the penthouse suite to open the door.
He’d already traded his own hashtag for a dollar-sign, already been instructed in the finer points of pronunciation. Already met $DOYLE in an induction he understood as indoctrination, already forgotten something, though already the memory of even losing that was fading, and soon there would be no tell that anything had happened between them, and their next meeting would be their first.
But now he would meet $DRAC, who he understood to be the right-hand man of $WEED, the leader of the Exchange. If $SOLIS was irked by the snub—his introduction being led by the Millionaires’ second-in-command, rather than their first—he didn’t show it.
The door opened into a mockup of Victorian gothic, with more than ostentatious golden trim contouring every edge. Inside was at least ten degrees colder than the hallway, and despite carpet-curtains tied back with silken ribbons allowing the midday sun to stream through windowed walls, light rays didn’t penetrate more than two feet through the dark, heavy air, leaving the innermost reaches of the sanctum to be illuminated by an ornate candle chandelier suspended far above $SOLIS’s head.
He shivered.
$SOLIS must have allowed himself to look intimidated, because $DRAC, sitting in a high-backed chair akin to a throne, hands clasped in front of him over an ebony-wooden desk, cleared his throat to break the silence.
“My warmest welcomes,” he purred, in a voice that was neither warm nor welcome. “Do take a seat, by the way.”
$SOLIS positioned himself on the hard leather armchair closer to the door, $DRAC softly chuckling in the background.
For what seemed like only a few slow minutes, though, when he would walk out, the midday sky would have blackened into a starless night, $SOLIS was interviewed, probed about anything, everything. His talents, his weaknesses. His preferred cut of suit. His thoughts on the Smog, the ever-present weather of $NYC. Any relationships with Influencers he may have had prior to his leaving the team, though, strangely, a dark sort of fog obscured his usually-clear mind when he tried to respond to that question. His favourite style of tea.
The hour was late, and the questions had become sourly mundane, when a new, vitalized spirit possessed $DRAC. Breaking off the most recent line of inquiry, he paused for a moment before speaking again, now in a low, silky voice.
“I don’t mean to alarm you, dearest $SOLIS. But I haven’t yet been entirely forthcoming with you.”
$DRAC unfolded his hands and leaned forward across the desk, gaze boring into $SOLIS’s, unblinking, ice-blue eyes chilling the room below freezing.
“The Exchange will be coming under new management soon.”
Suddenly, the pieces in his head all snapped together, a jigsaw of intrigue solving itself. Yes, this was why he had been chosen above other, more profitable Influencers; this was why he was meeting $DRAC rather than $WEED. He could feel, somewhere far away from his mind, the other man in the room looking at him with a distant cousin of approval.
“It will be, in your best interests,” $DRAC paused to accentuate, nodding meaningfully at the Chief Operations Officer plaque bearing his name, “to help.”
So he was to be a honeypot, the ointment with which to bait the fly; while he distracted $WEED, $DRAC would ally with the rest of the Millionaires. When they finally closed in for the kill, it would be up to $SOLIS to extricate himself from the fray, or he, too, would be caught in the crossfire.
It did not need to be said that, if the cards did fall that way, no-one would help him but himself.
What threatened him wasn’t death. The Millionaires didn’t do that; despite all their talks of “blood money” and “getting their hands dirty”, $CERV was really the only one who’d physically rough someone up, and even then, it reserved that brutality for members of opposing teams under Blood Moons—recently, it had permanently removed a Mike Townsend from play.
No, it was Liquidation. Which would be, as he understood it, considerably worse.
Liquidation was a process reserved for a Millionaire whose Value on the Exchange had plummeted beyond repair. Bleeding money left and right, a liability not only to themselves or any concept of a “team”, but to the credibility of the Exchange itself, their assets, physical and otherwise, would be seized and repossessed through their dissolution in the Immateria, that deadly not-water of losing, of unmaking, that had flooded $NYC during the Exchange’s ascent. A Liquidated Millionaire was less than nothing, an insubstantial body that would forget it was ever human, and, most d___ingly, was unable to trade or be traded on the Exchange ever again.
It was $SOLIS’s understanding that, before the blood dried, each Millionaire would attempt to seize power for themselves. And each Millionaire would fail, because any semblance of trust would be shattered, and no alliances would form, because each Millionaire would know that any alliances would end with one or the other’s backstabbing. This very capitalization upon trust had happened to $SOUL, and this was why $WEED would be deposed.
$SOUL had come under financial hardships, and their Value had plummeted, and $WEED had stepped in and promised to take the fall with them and weather their struggles. And as they forfeited their shares, their very self to him, $WEED Liquidated them and kept what little Value they had left for himself.
That was how it was told to $SOLIS by none other than $WEED himself. He was a proud man, and he described in lengthy detail how he’d predicted $SOUL’s fall from the beginning, how he’d tried to warn the other Millionaires that they were nothing more than a liability, but how ultimately how he’d taken it upon himself to see that their remaining Value was at least put to good use—his own—rather than the repayment of myriad Debts they’d accrued so carelessly.
“Too soft,” $WEED had said, shrugging, ending the tragedy of $SOUL with an and-that-was-that. “I did them a favour, really. They couldn’t handle the Exchange, being on the Board.”
He’d paused, turned to look at $SOLIS like a lion examining a gazelle.
Abruptly, he crossed the room, took $SOLIS’s chin in a massive hand that could crush bones, and tilted his head up, one set of dark eyes meeting another.
“I’m sure you’re different, though.” $WEED smiled with the crystalline warmth of glaciers, releasing $SOLIS and dismissing him with an inconsequential wave of that same hand, almost as an afterthought.
$SOLIS stumbled into the elevator back down from the highest floor in the Exchange, collapsing against the wall as he dialled in the number for his own suite. His heart was pounding, he realised, only half from fear.
$SOLIS wasn’t half-bad at Blaseball, something he had taken meager pride in while an Influencer, though now, it seemed, his skill was something the Millionaires almost looked down on him for. He didn’t understand; wasn’t Value based on marketability, and shouldn’t any Millionaire who looks competent at a bloodsport be more marketable?
“It’s a point of pride,” sighed $WEED late one night, exhaling smoke with his despair as he and $SOLIS watched the lights of $NYC dim to create the night. “Some Millionaires decide that money’s worth more than their stars. So they sell their stars, sell their abilities at the game. Leave themselves with the bare minimum to escape Relegation.”
He shrugged slowly, muscled shoulders rolling, nonchalance mixed with a display of force. He’d spoken too much; he knew this and $SOLIS knew this. Leave this between us, he was saying. Let's not take this any further, he was saying.
"But you don't," pointed $SOLIS meaningfully, feigning oblivious to the implied. $WEED had given him an inroad—a chink, however small, in his armour—and d__n $SOLIS if he wasn't going to use it. We don't, he wanted to say. But he'd taken risk enough already, and that would be pushing it; no, he'd feign interest only in $WEED now, not in $WEED-and-$SOLIS. (Certainly, though, if $WEED wanted to look for whatever $SOLIS was saying with his omissions, pick up whatever $SOLIS wasn't putting down, by all means $SOLIS wouldn't not encourage that.)
An artificial laugh, more forced than its accompanying smile. "So you noticed. I…." He let himself trail off.
"You...?" prompted $SOLIS when it became clear he wasn't going to continue.
"Don't." At once, $WEED turned away from $SOLIS, voice suddenly hard and cold as reinforced steel.
The dismissal was implied. But this time, $SOLIS took the cue.
He'd made a point of taking a few days to apologise, allowing $WEED to stew without him, to begin missing his lackeyish, almost servile presence already. When he finally asked for pardon, he merely spoke of a "breach in professional conduct"- no need to remind $WEED exactly what he’d pried into, and in fact, it was better that $SOLIS suggested something else entirely.
And he'd worn his tie loose to that rooftop meeting, and he’d stood just inside the suite as $WEED appraised him from the veranda, and he’d allowed $WEED’s eyes to linger on the undone top button of his suit, and he’d passed on the sentiment that he himself wasn't sorry for any breaches in professional contract, and he’d received a wordless message of much the same.
Satisfied, he retreated to his own suite for the night, dialling his floor with fingers still quivering from nerves.
He only realised after he stepped into his room that the door was already open.
So, too, was a window, allowing sundown breezes of Smog to sail through, tainting those new satin curtains and befouling the fresh-car scent of the suite, which he’d secretly been using air fresheners to prolong.
But its intended effect was—judging from the hunched figure with hair like dark silver sitting on an armchair, back turned to him—to turn the room colder, rather than to pollute it.
It worked.
$SOLIS froze.
Without turning to look at him, the man in the armchair spoke.
"You're convincing, $SOLIS."
It wasn't admiration that $DRAC burnished that statement with, but threat. Too convincing, he’d meant.
He scoffed. "Must I remind you not to fall in love?"
$SOLIS had been reprimanded, and he was mad.
Love? $DRAC thought he was in love?
Even if $SOLIS had been on the receiving end of his own—he could call them affections, at least—he wouldn’t think to label it love. Admiration, definitely. Lust, quite probably. But was it love? Didn’t that imply some sort of caring about the person behind the facade, the soft flesh beneath $WEED’s callous exterior?
He pushed the thought away, still seething, unable to deal with the philosophy of emotions. The only thing $SOLIS cared about, at the end of the day, was his guaranteed position as $DRAC’s right-hand man after $WEED was taken care of.
And besides, even if he had been a bit of a bleeding heart—no, even if he’d acted that way despite his true intentions—who was $DRAC to tell him what to do? $SOLIS had been given a mission, and he certainly hadn’t lost sight of it, and he certainly wasn’t in danger of losing sight of it any time soon. So what if he was enjoying himself along the way?
Enjoying himself at his target’s expense, too, he thought to himself, taking another bottle of white from the fridge and sidling up beside $WEED, who offered his glass with pleasure.
Their nighttime moments together had been growing less formal. Dinner parties usually ended with $SOLIS leaving much, much later than the other Millionaires. But he’d never stayed the whole night. Some appearances, after all, had to be kept up.
Though it was ostensibly the purpose of their meetings, $WEED would diverge more and more often from his stories of the Exchange’s conception, injecting his personal twists into tales of the rivalry with the Corporates or the tangled interweb of Millionaire intrigues, though never going so far again as that night he’d implied a difference between himself and the rest of the Board. $SOLIS was a sympathetic listener, always the shoulder to—well, not cry on, but to… air one’s grievances on.
And he would never tell another soul. For that simple mercy, at least, he was true to his word.
The door was open again. Though it was three, edging towards four, in the morning, $DRAC was sharp as ever, locking icy eyes onto $SOLIS as he walked into his own room. He could have been here all night, waiting, and perhaps all the better for it.
“It’s late.” $SOLIS took a step and a half towards his bed. “We can exchange pleasantries tomorrow—”
“He’s using you,” $DRAC interrupted, tilting his chin upwards to look down at $SOLIS.
$SOLIS narrowed his eyes, waiting for him to continue.
“He knows you’re just trying to get close to him for his Value.” His voice softened, losing some of its calculated taunt. It almost sounded like $DRAC cared. “He’s entertaining you—like a puppy, he thinks of you. He’s just using you—”
"And you aren't?"
Red flashed in his vision. $WEED was nothing if not honest—ever from the beginning, he’d made everything crystal-clear—and what did $DRAC know, anyways? He wasn’t the one spending every night with $WEED. $SOLIS was.
Oh, he’d had one too many on the roof tonight. Oh, that was a bad move. He braced himself for some sort of retribution, some punishment—but wait. Had that been a laugh?
$DRAC’s typical sneer crept back onto his face. "That's my boy."
It was just another one of their myriad nights together—though $SOLIS would refuse to call any night of theirs “just” anything—when he noticed a shift in $WEED’s tune.
They’d both drunk enough to loosen their tongues, though $WEED had obviously partaken more than $SOLIS, and they were sitting on the edge of the rooftop balcony, barely six inches between them, legs dangling over the edge to the street over a hundred stories below.
It was maybe the third time $SOLIS had heard this particular narrative from $WEED, the one about $SOUL. But this rendition, unlike the other two, didn’t end when $SOUL’s life did.
“You know,” remarked $WEED, leaning back with half-lidded eyes unfocused towards the sky, “$DRAC’s always been… jealous of me.”
Ice ran up $SOLIS’s spine, cutting through the pleasant buzz of alcohol.
“It’s flattering, really.” He gave a terse laugh. “But he’s a glutton for power—oh, don’t give me that face, you should know this, you’re around him enough.”
Had $SOLIS been making a face? He tried to relax his features, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.
“It got worse-” $WEED yawned, “it got worse when I… Liquidated $SOUL. Suddenly, he’s trying to rile up the Millionaires, saying that I can’t just “do that”. Planning some sort of… hostile takeover, I’d bet.”
$SOLIS felt like he was on death row, having his crimes read to him one last time before they gave him the chair.
There’s nothing he suspects, he attempted to reassure himself. Just the ramblings of the most powerful man in the Exchange. If I were in his position, I’d be paranoid too.
It didn’t work.
$WEED laughed, oblivious to $SOLIS’s inner turmoil.
“Imagine! Him, caring for $SOUL so much that he’d take revenge for their sake? No, he was mad at me because we had the same idea. We both knew they were going down. We were both planning to take their assets for ourselves. I just did it first.”
$SOLIS barely took in a single word. He didn’t want to.
But it all made sense.
“Oh… but it’d never happen.”
He gave a lazy grin while $SOLIS’s heart skipped a beat.
“I can think of reasons to look over my shoulder six ways to Sunday, but I’m just wasting my energy. There’s no way anyone wouldn’t see right through him. No matter what he promises, he’ll go back on it as soon as he’s got what he wants. You know this. Everyone knows this.”
He looked at $SOLIS, and it felt like he was staring into his very soul.
They were sitting on the very edge of the roof, and there wasn’t a railing, and $WEED was next to him, and $WEED knew what he was, and $WEED could push him off at any moment and $SOLIS’s heart was pounding like he was about to die and for all he knew he was about to die and—
A hand that could shatter bones in its crushing grip reached down beside him, and, taking hold of his forearm, encircled his wrist completely.
Pulling it, pulling him, towards $WEED.
“You’re shivering,” $WEED declared, his voice authoritative as if he were giving a command. “Let’s go inside.”
—and his heart was pounding and his heart was pounding and as he realised it was again only half from fear who could possibly blame him for staying the night?
A full season after $SOLIS had arrived at the Exchange, the Board of Directors held its midyear session of the twice-annual meeting that was so necessary to proper function.
Ostensibly, the agenda contained one item out of the ordinary: the welcoming of new Millionaire $FNTSTC, up-and-comer in the entertainment industry, who had replaced $WDUD earlier that season after a deadly Blood Moon resulted in an unfortunately necessary Liquidation.
To everyone other than $WEED, there was a second unorthodox listing.
As the polite clapping marking $FNTSTC’s welcome to the Board died down, $DRAC stood to give the closing words.
From a folder nested in the inside of his suit, he took a single paper. Next to him, at the head of the table, $WEED narrowed his eyes.
“For the abhorrent breach in trust marked by the Liquidation of a fellow Board Member,” $DRAC began.
The condemnation was thirty seconds long, if that.
It felt like hours to $SOLIS.
“All in favour of Liquidating $WEED, Chief Executive Officer: stand up.”
As he finished, $SLYFOX, always $DRAC's yes-man, rose out of her chair on his right.
“Th-this is absurd,” blurted out $WEED, clenching a fist but making no other movement. “There is no way that any of you agree with this.”
On $SLYFOX’s right side, $CERV stood up, staring impassively at the panic beginning to set in on $WEED’s face.
“$TURN.” $WEED shook his head, trying to clear the worry, smiling almost genially- but a twitch on the corner of his mouth gave it away.
“$FLIX. $₵MTH.” Millionaires $SOLIS had never met, never even exchanged names with. One by one, they all stood.
“$DOYLE.” $WEED was desperate, now; only two Millionaires, save himself, remained seated. “$DOYLE, please-”
She didn’t even look at him.
“$SOLIS.” $WEED laughed nervously, finally turning to the man seated at his left. “God, $SOLIS, don’t tell me you’re—after everything—”
He could barely hear $WEED speak.
It would be up to $SOLIS to extricate himself from the fray, or he, too, would be caught in the crossfire.
Bile rose in his throat.
It did not need to be said that, if the cards did fall that way, no-one would help him but himself.
“$SOLIS!” It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t terror, it was pure, betrayed anguish—
He stood up, but neither moving with $DRAC as the Millionaires began to converge at the head of the table, nor standing by $WEED, but running to the door and slamming it behind him, punching in the top floor on the elevator, tears streaming down his face, sinking to the floor, clamping his hands over his ears but being unable to block out $WEED’s screams—no, his screams—
It was $DOYLE who found him, half-conscious, curled up in $WEED’s four-poster in the divot he’d so recently called his own, sheets torn, soaked in sweat and vomit and tears and blood.
For a time, she sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed, head resting next to $SOLIS’s. Every so often, a raw, guttural moan broke the muffled sobbing, but gradually they grew less and less frequent, and eventually gave way to soft snoring.
He would awaken with his head in $DOYLE’s lap, gaze tilted towards a face he had never seen without sunglasses. And he would feel it, a primal fear, an instinct to turn away, to look anywhere other than the twin darknesses of her eyes, singularities where no light reflected because no light escaped.
“Look at me. Look at me, $SOLIS.” Her voice would be raspy, too, from a throat raw with crying, too.
She would cup his face in her hands, stroking his hair, and, slowly, with the force of an executioner, turn it towards hers. Despite her best efforts to hold it back, a single tear, the colour of pitch, would roll down her blood-spattered cheek.
“I promise you, everything is going to be alright.”
It was the sixth year after Relegation passed, the Corporates sold out, and the Exchange came to power in $NYC. Recently, the Board of Directors had undergone a change of leadership: every Millionaire had voted unanimously, in the Exchange’s first and final display of unity, to Liquidate $WEED, the Chief Executive Officer of the Board.
$SOLIS, newly acquired from the Houston Influencers, had been the perfect honeypot. As $DRAC, $WEED’s successor as CEO, had extorted and bribed his way to cooperation among the Millionaires, $SOLIS had distracted $WEED from seeing anything other than what was right in front of him. But while $WEED had fallen for $SOLIS hard and fast, $SOLIS had reciprocated nothing, putting on an act more than perfect.
He had not been promised anything in return for his cooperation with $DRAC’s plan. But due to his exemplary performance, $DRAC, generously, had agreed to keep $SOLIS on the Board of Directors, rather than return him to Houston, where he otherwise would have languished as a B-rate celebrity for the rest of his career.
This is how $SOLIS understood the recent history of the Exchange.