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Rouge sat at the blackjack dealer’s table, elbows on the surface, chin resting on her interlocked hands. The other players had already taken their turns. A queen and a king lay on the table in front of her, and the dealer showed an ace. With that hand and the dealer’s card, she should bide her time and hope that the dealer would bust.
Instead, she slid a second pile of chips across the table, tapped once, and smirked. Double down and hit me.
One of the other players did a double-take, and his eyebrows shot into his hairline. ‘Are you drunk, woman?’
‘No?’ She yawned delicately and said, ‘But that does sound like a good idea. Waiter, another glass, thank you.’
‘Are you sure?’ the dealer asked, as though he were speaking to a small child.
‘I gave you the chips, didn’t I?’ She let out an affected giggle. ‘Sometimes I just double down to see what happens.’
The dealer shook his head in bewilderment, and her eyes narrowed, looking for sleight of hand as he dealt her another card. It was an ace, and the other players groaned as Rouge’s face lit up. ‘You can’t be serious,’ one of them muttered. ‘How many times has she won tonight?’
‘She hasn’t won yet,’ the dealer said pointedly, but his resistance was futile. He revealed his hole card as a formality, for a total of 15, which forced him to hit once. To add insult to injury, he busted out.
‘Can you leave a little luck for the rest of us?’ one of the men said hopefully.
‘Sorry, boys,’ Rouge said, using her arms to gather her chips with a satisfied purr. ‘I don’t like to share.’
‘Quite impressive,’ the dealer said, and Rouge could tell that he wanted to say ‘suspicious’ instead. ‘If it weren’t for your apparent level of experience, I’d ask if you were counting cards.’
Rouge took her requested glass of champagne from a nearby waiter and sipped it delicately. ‘I don’t need to. I’m just that lucky.’ She got up from the table, ignoring her fellow players’ enamoured glances, and made her way around the table to leave. As she passed the dealer, she leaned down and murmured in his ear, saying, ‘Hide your mirror in a better spot next time.’
Unable to help himself, the dealer glanced at the peeker embedded in the table, then glared at her. He was probably racking his brain, trying to work out how she had seen the mirror when she hadn’t left the table and had been wholly focused on the game. ‘Are you out of your mind? I’ll have you thrown out for cheating, young lady.’
‘Do that, and I’ll get you fired,’ Rouge whispered. ‘I’ve seen grade schoolers who are better at sleight of hand than you.’
He turned deathly pale and abruptly turned away from her. ‘Enjoy your winnings.’
Rouge bit back and amused smirk as one of the casino employees gathered her chips onto a tray, taking them to a growing pile at one of the concierge desks. ‘How kind.’
She walked around a pillar and nearly bumped into Shadow, who was waiting for her. He’d been pacing back and forth while she’d been playing, and his highly reflective inhibitor rings had glimmered in her vision as he’d passed behind the dealer’s side of the table.
‘Well?’ Shadow asked.
‘Oh, it’s terrible,’ Rouge said, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. ‘All the machines are rigged, the dealers’ equipment is modified, and even the billiards tables are tilted. I’m having the time of my life.’ She downed the last of her champagne and foisted the glass onto another waiter.
‘Rouge…’ A reluctant smile flashed across Shadow’s face. She could tell that he wanted to tell her to be more serious, but what was the point of that? He’d tried it before, and it had never gotten him anywhere. ‘Do you have all the data we need for the investigation?’
‘Nearly. I haven’t hit the roulette tables yet,’ Rouge joked, and she wandered off, but Shadow swiftly steered her back with a hand on her shoulder.
‘We’re going to attract unnecessary attention if you keep this up. You’re already pissing off the dealers.’
‘So what?’ They fell into step with each other, wandering between rows of garish gold chrome slot machines. ‘The worst that could happen is that we get into a fight, and it’s always a great time. Neon lights breaking, bottles smashing, chips flying everywhere. You haven’t lived.’
Shadow sighed wearily, slipping his hands into the pockets of his dress jacket. She’d told him to dress to blend in, as much as someone with rings the colour of the slot machines and fur that was marked like the patterns on a roulette table could blend in. On second thought, perhaps it was helping him to camouflage. ‘You get into fights at casinos often?’
‘Not all the time. Just sometimes.’ She stopped him beside a slot machine on the far end of the row and gave him a mischievous smile. ‘Come on, don’t make me do all the work. You should have a go.’
‘No. You just told me that this entire establishment is rigged. Why would I put money into one of these things?’
‘Come on,’ Rouge wheedled. ‘It’s GUN’s money, not ours. And the more data points for the slots I have, the better.’
Shadow grunted disapprovingly and looked up. The bright, flashing lights danced in his eyes, and he shook his head. ‘I used up all my luck when I survived those falls from outer space.’
‘You don’t know that. Besides, doesn’t the idea of wasting GUN’s money appeal to you?’
Shadow considered her words for a moment. Then he heaved a dramatic sigh and took the pre-loaded membership card that she gave him, swiped it on the machine, and yanked the lever without even looking at the screen. ‘This is stupid. I don’t understand what makes people keep playing these when they never win anything –‘
Three emeralds lined up on the screen, and an ear-splitting ping nearly made Shadow jump out of his skin. He turned back to the machine, staring in bewilderment as golden tokens poured into a dish. It would be more efficient to just print out a pay-out slip, but everything about this place – from the heft of the tokens to the colour of the carpet – was intentional, designed to get people to spend more and more.
‘It’s the high,’ Rouge said, studying him closely. ‘Winning and losing both elicit the same reaction in your brain, and you just keep chasing it.’
He picked up one of the tokens, turning it over in his fingers. ‘I don’t believe in luck.’ His shoulders slumped, and his ears drooped. ‘But it would be very easy to believe that I’m not a lucky person.’
Rouge leaned against the slot machine, watching as the golden lights played over his features. If you wanted to talk about luck, he’d had a bad run of it over the years. He’d been brought into the world under terrible circumstances, and he’d lost everyone he had ever loved and cared about. He wasn’t a very happy person, and she couldn’t blame him one bit. He was exactly the kind of person who would get addicted to dopamine, and she’d just handed him a shiny new vice on a platter.
She darted in front of him, blocking him from the machine. ‘I-I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’
Shadow frowned. Then he shrugged and half-smiled. ‘I’m not going to become a gambling addict. I have some self-restraint.’
’But–‘
‘What do we do with these?’ he asked, passing her the tray of golden tokens. He was completely unfazed. She’d been petrified that this had been a pivotal moment in his life, but for him, this was just another mission. He arched one eyebrow and said, ‘If you’re so concerned about me, then perhaps you shouldn’t set such a bad example.’
‘Oh, hush,’ Rouge grumbled, and they made their way over to the concierge. She held a finger to her earpiece, saying, ‘Omega, wrap it up. We’ll be out of here in a few minutes.’
‘Acknowledged.’ Omega’s synthesised voice always used the same pitch and intonation, but he still sounded extremely bored. He was just outside the premises, and she’d jacked him into the casino’s network so she could use his processing power to run diagnostics on the machines inside. ‘Please hurry. I am going to blow myself up just so that I have something to do.’
‘You will not,’ she scolded. ‘Not with all of that newly retrieved data now on you. Keep it together.’ She slid the tokens and her membership card across the counter, and the woman behind it froze in place. ‘… Is there a problem?’
‘No, no.’ Rouge noticed that the woman was gripping the edge of the desk, and she fought the urge to sigh. What were the odds that she’d pressed a call button at the sight of Rouge’s takings? A moment later, Rouge saw armed men approaching them, though whether they were security guards or henchmen, she couldn’t tell. Perhaps they were both. The house always won, even if they had to cheat.
Shadow drew one foot back. With one word from her, the two of them would disappear before a single shot could be fired. But the idea of leaving without her winnings rankled. It was a stupid thing to get into a fight over – and wasn’t like it was ‘her’ money – but facts of ownership had never gotten in the way of what she wanted.
Shadow glanced between her torn expression and the armed guards, then his Emerald appeared in one hand, and he muttered two words under his breath. The world turned grey. Everything froze, from the machines to the patrons, all save but for the woman behind the desk. Coloured light bled from her computer screen.
Shadow stared at her, unblinking. She shot a glance at the motionless guards, then typed frantically on the keyboard, dispensing and counting out their winnings with shaking fingers.
‘… You should have brought a bigger bag,’ Shadow muttered, glancing at Rouge’s purse.
‘I did.’ Rouge shook out a collapsible bag and swept the piled bundles of banknotes into it, cinching the ties and tossing it over her shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here, sweetheart. I’m not in the mood to go double or nothing with our lives.’
He grabbed her hand before she had even finished the sentence, streaking off in a burst of thruster fire. The doors swung open as he shouldered through them, and the hot, night air of the desert hit her face. Time resumed, and she could hear men running and shouting within the den of neon lights behind them. Omega emerged from the shadows and lumbered over. ‘Were you successful?’
‘Yes.’ Rouge held up the bag with a grin and said, ‘We’re rich!’
‘We got the data,’ Shadow said in exasperation. ‘The cash is irrelevant.’
‘You won’t be saying that once I ask Abraham to let us keep the winnings. You two can use your share to buy new guns and weapon attachments.’
Shadow and Omega looked at each other. ‘Is there another casino nearby?’ Shadow asked.
‘There are several. Let’s perform a systematic sweep of the area.’
‘Let’s make our getaway first,’ Rouge chided, stepping back as the doors of the casino opened. ‘We can debate the impracticality of you two becoming professional gamblers another time. Move it!’
Shadow brandished his Emerald the moment that the armed guards saw them, and the world split apart. As the three of them disappeared, she couldn’t help but smile. She hadn’t got to play the roulette tables, and the dealer had never had the chance to ask her if she wanted to bet on red or black. Shadow’s black-and-red fur and Omega’s red-and-black exterior vanished from sight, and the three of them reappeared in Central City.
Both. I bet on both.