Hero

by Dan Sugralinov

  “Been a bit tied up lately,” Gleb replied, suddenly doleful. “Can we come in? I brought along a friend. He’s never been here before. Phil?”

  I nodded, faking hesitation.

  “Hi, Phil,” Anton switched his attention to me. “Would you like to join the club? Membership offers you quite a few perks-”

  “No, thanks,” I cut him short. “Not tonight. I’d just like to mosey around for a bit and try my hand at competitive poker. I’ve only ever played online.”

  I can see the guy’s Interest plummet. Just a moment ago it had been at nearly 60% and now it had dropped to almost complete indifference. He must have thought that I didn’t have much to burn.

  He didn’t even know how right he was.

  He must have read something in my face because he went on to tell me more about the club and its competitions: all those daily tournaments with varying prize funds, the major championships and all kinds of privileges enjoyed by club members.

  The nicest thing I’d gleaned from his soliloquy was that at midnight, they’d already started the high rollers tournament with a guaranteed prize fund of over a hundred thousand bucks. The entry fee was two thousand bucks and I still had time to sign up because the tournament’s rules allowed rebuys within the first hour — in other words, if you lost, you could still buy more chips, but only within the first hour. And this hour was already nearly up.

  As we spoke, Gleb had already turned all our cash into chips.

  “Thanks, Anton! This is all highly educational,” I said as I dragged Gleb onto the gaming floor.

  “What?” he looked confused.

  “We have fifteen minutes to double up. They have another tournament going on here, and the entry fee is two thousand dollars. They allow rebuys which means we can still make it!”

  He understood me in a flash. To double our winnings in fifteen minutes was a tough call even with my interface, but my friend and I had always had a wild streak.

  The door nearest to the reception room opened into a large hall studded with shafts of light illuminating the gaming tables. It was quite busy — and that on a week night! Players were speaking between themselves, rubbing and clicking the chips in their hands. The croupiers’ voices droned on monotonously.

  “Over there!” Gleb had already got his bearings and dragged me toward a table with an empty seat.

  The croupier was just finishing up the last game. Excellent. I sat down and laid out the chips in front of myself.

  That’s it. I was in the game. Trying to preserve an impassive expression under my partners’ studying gazes, I fiddled with my chips, biting my lip and furrowing my brow as I faked nervousness and excitement.

  The stakes weren’t too high, only five to ten dollars. If I didn’t have an all-in pronto, I stood no chance of ever making it to the big tournament.

  The first two hands gave me nothing worth risking. Luckily, my opponents were no better off. They all kept laying down their hands, so it didn’t take much time, after all. The third hand gave me three kings on the flop. The community cards were still closed and I only had one pair. Still, I called.

  Three of my opponents did the same, and the fourth — a slick young man in sunglasses and a G-star T-shirt with rhinestones — raised the stakes to fifty dollars with nothing to show for it.

  He was bluffing. He had nothing, his move only an attempt to scare all the others and force them into throwing in their hands. Exactly what I needed.

  His bluff nearly worked as everybody except me lost out. Like a novice chess player who hovers over the board undecided over where to place his piece, I faked hesitation as I called his raised bet.

  I glimpsed the shadow of a smirk on the Rhinestone Cowboy’s face. Gleb who’d been fidgeting in desperation for quite a while, whispered that we were running short on time.

  I called. Now that there were only two of us left, I could see pretty clearly what kinds of hands the Rhinestone Cowboy and I would have. I’d have three Kings while he’d have an open-ended straight draw on turn. My job was to make sure he played till the end.

  When the flop was opened, I checked — that’s to say, I passed without betting. Without batting an eyelid, the Rhinestone Cowboy raised his stakes to two hundred. I feigned hesitation, then called his bet.

  Gleb behind me slapped his forehead as if swatting a mosquito. “Phil, that’s Rodion Kazansky! Are you sure? He’s a professional! Watch out man, he’s provoking you!”

  I shrugged, as if saying I couldn’t do anything about it anymore.

  The dealer announced the fourth community card. I still had my three Kings while the professional player still had nothing, either.

  Now was the moment of truth for both Gleb and myself.

  I could say “Check” but there was always the risk of Kazansky replying in kind. Yes, I would win, but that wouldn’t be enough to enter the big tournament. I could go all-in — and if he laid down his hand, the winnings would be more or less the same. I could also bet a little bit in which case I’d still be short whether Kazansky called or not.

  Come on, head, think. I’d spent the entire game cautiously checking and calling. If I bet now, he might think I finally had a good hand. Well, well...

  “Check,” I said in a weak voice, as if hoping that he’d do the same, giving me the opportunity to see the last community card.

  “Three hundred,” Radik bet confidently.

  “Three hundred,” the croupier confirmed, having counted the chips.

  “All in,” I said.

  Take this!

  Now not to reply to my all-in would cause him to lose face. And he could always hope for a straight to come.

  Radik must have thought the same because he confidently called.

  Bingo. Gotcha!

  While the croupier counted the chips and the rest of the table awaited the results with bated breath, I glanced at my watch. We had less than five minutes left. Could we make it?

  “What did you have?” Gleb whispered hotly in my ear.

  “You’ll see. Where are they holding this tournament? You think we can still make it?”

  “It’s in the VIP hall. Over there...” without finishing the phrase, Gleb grabbed my shoulders and shook me in a fit of joy as both I and Radik showed our cards which spoke for themselves.

  I’m sorry to have cheated, Radik, but you still had a crapload of chips and I had a friend’s life to save.

  We scooped up all the chips, left the penny arcade and dashed along the corridor toward the VIP room. I remembered all those movies where the hero always manages to save the world or defuse a ticking bomb at the last possible moment, courtesy of the screenwriters. I always found this artificial drama slightly ridiculous. And now I was in the same position myself, two minutes before the expiry of the signing on for the game.

  Two more guards gestured to us, forcing us to stop by the door we needed.

  “Guys, we’ll be late for the tournament, please let us in!” Gleb begged. “Here’re our chips!”

  The two winced, apparently not happy with him addressing them as “guys”.

  “Wait here,” the burlier one of the two said while his slighter partner spoke into his microphone to the management.

  “The tournament,” Gleb began pleadingly.

  “I’m very sorry,” the second guard interrupted him, “your participation in the tournament hasn’t been approved.”

  Having received this new input data, my brain initiated a flurry of thought processes. Should we go back to the other room and take it step by step? We might not be able to recoup all of Gleb’s losses overnight but it would be a good start. Two or three nights like this would solve the problem.

  The hall’s double doors opened, letting in two grim-looking young men: one in a suit, the other in a bomber jacket despite the hot summer evening.

  Gleb’s face changed when he saw them. All his joy and excitement deflated like a burst balloon.

  The two paid no attention to me. Their faces seemed va
guely familiar. I must have seen them somewhere but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Well, well, well, look who’s here! If it’s not Gleb!” the one in the suit said cheerfully. “Talk about the devil!”

  His partner grabbed Gleb’s neck and pressed down on it, forcing Gleb’s head toward his chest. “Are you stupid or something? What did the boss tell you?”

  He kept talking as he dragged Gleb away somewhere. His partner in the bomber jacket followed, making sarcastic comments. I started after them, but my Intuition was screaming for me to stay where I was: Wait! You’ll spoil everything!

  My blood was boiling, the Righteous Anger buff burning me up from inside. It took all of my self-control to suppress the impulse to stick up for my friend. Hundreds of potential scenarios flashed through my head until they gelled into a sensible and clear-cut plan, every point of which was nailed down with an unbendable steely nail.

  Yes! This was exactly what I was going to do! I had to act firmly and without hesitation.

  All this must have taken less than a couple of seconds.

  “I thought you wanted to take part in the tournament?” the guard asked me. “You can still make it.”

  “Is this kind of behavior normal here?” trying to sound as cool as I could, I nodded at the two thugs taking Gleb away.

  “It’s up to the gentlemen themselves to sort out their differences,” he replied. “Why? Do you have a problem with that?”

  Detecting a menacing note in his voice, I decided not to push it, otherwise I might risk failing what Russians call “face control”[42] and ruin our whole mission.

  ‘Not at all,” I said, beaming at them. “Where do I sign in?”

  “Across the hall to your right. You’ll see it,” he replied through pressed lips.

  I ran, clenching the box with the chips which Gleb had managed to pass to me as soon as he’d noticed his abductors.

  I made it.

  The rebuy period was already over but you could still sign in during the break.

  The tournament chips were different from those used at the normal tables. I put in my two thousand dollars’ worth of chips and received ten chips of a hundred bucks and two five-hundreds. There was no point in them issuing lower denominations as by this stage of the game, the small blind was already a hundred.

  A specially trained girl led me to the table. “You can leave your chips here and check out the bar,” she said, smiling. “There’s a fifteen-minute break just started.”

  “Thanks. That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I said.

  I draped my suit jacket over the back of my chair and headed for the exit, trying not to attract any attention. I needed to check up on Gleb. Somehow I didn’t think those two were prepared to do him any real damage. Most likely, they just wanted to put the fear of God into him.

  I left the room and looked over the corridor but didn’t see any of them. The two guards bursting with the importance of their mission (that is to say, guarding the peace of some stinking rich playboys) froze by the door like two disabled stone golems.

  “Excuse me,” I addressed one of them, “You didn’t see my friend, by any chance?”

  “Who do you mean?” one of them deigned to answer.

  “My friend, Gleb, where is he?”

  “How would I know?” he replied through pressed lips.

  What was wrong with them? Did I have pauper status written all over me? How could they tell a worthless nobody from a tycoon at first glance?

  I could feel my blood seethe but thought better of it. This wasn’t the right moment to have it out with a social level-3 security guard. Only a short time ago I’d been as worthless for humanity as he was.

  I hurried down the corridor past more gaming rooms and “relaxation lounges” until I came to an unlocked door. Behind it was an emergency exit stairwell.

  I opened the door and stepped into the darkness barely dispersed by the lights in the corridor behind me. I waited for my eyesight to adapt.

  One floor below, an angry voice remonstrated,

  “Tomorrow, got it? Tomorrow your time’s up! The boss is angry with you now! You haven’t paid him off yet but you had the audacity to come here and try to sneak into the VIP room! What does that mean? It means you do have the money. I don’t give a shit whether it’s yours or not. If you don’t have the money, go and earn it! If you can’t earn it, just steal it! If you can’t steal, sell your kidney or your house, whatever, but you must pay him back!”

  “I know, I know,” Gleb sounded annoyed. “No need to go on about it. You’ve said it three times already.”

  I heard a rustling sound followed by a thump. Gleb gasped.

  I flew down the stairs. “Gleb, you here?” I called confidently into the darkness.

  In fact, it wasn’t completely dark: there was a weak light coming from under a door by which Gleb was standing doubled up, clutching his ribs. The thug wearing the suit — according to my interface, his nickname was Wheezie — was leaning against the opposite wall smoking calmly. Every time he inhaled, the burning cigarette cast a light over his bored face. The one in the bomber jacket — his nickname was apparently Zak — held Gleb by the scruff of his neck, not allowing him to slump to the floor.

  “Gleb, you here?” he repeated mockingly.

  “Phil, don’t get involved!” Gleb demanded, spitting something black on the floor. “Do as we agreed!”

  “What did you agree on? What’s all that about?” Wheezie asked. “Phil, is that your name? Come down here, you wuss!”

  “He was with him, wasn’t he?” Zak said, remembering me.

  “Phil, go back to the room,” Gleb repeated.

  “I don’t think so,” the hatred for these two bastards started to bore a hole in my self-control. “What’s going on here, anyway? Who are you two, scumbags? Why is my friend Gleb in such a bad shape, in the dark? Do I understand it correctly that he’s been subjected to verbal threats and corporal abuse?”

  I finished the last phrase already in my stride as I took the remaining flight of stairs in two powerful leaps.

  There was only one thought left in my head: bastards like them had no right to live. There was no way you could reason with them or fob them off. They only understood brute force.

  No idea why I suddenly became so bloodthirsty.

  “What did you say?” Zak began.

  He didn’t even get the time to get properly surprised before my fist made contact with his head, slamming it into the wall.

  You’ve dealt critical damage to Zachary “Zak” Nikolaev: 395 (Punch)

  “Well, well, well,” Wheezie leisurely stood up. “What’s this, the cavalry coming?”

  A knife blade glinted in his hand. This guy meant business. Judging by the Heroin Withdrawal debuff dominating his stats, this one wouldn’t stop at anything.

  Not a knife again. As if that story with Tural hadn’t been enough.

  My field of vision shifted momentarily, edged with a fiery crimson. Time slowed down.

  Warning! Potentially lethal aggression detected!

  Danger of illegal activity targeting a user whose social status level is at least threefold more than that of his attackers.

  Forceful activation of heroic ability: Sprint.

  Ability class: Combat

  +100% to the user’s Speed

  Requires changes to the user’s metabolism and perception of time.

  Awaiting activation confirmation...

  Sending request to server. Please wait. Server connection timeout. Impossible to establish connection with the server.

  Forceful activation of heroic ability: Sprint is canceled.

  I skimmed over the message while keeping a close eye on Wheezie. So Martha couldn’t get through this time, either.

  I stood too close to him to break away. This time, I didn’t even get the chance to feel the time slow down: it had only lasted a split second.

  “Please, he’s very sorry! He knows nothing about my debts!
” Gleb grabbed the thug’s hand, begging. “It’s a misunderstanding! We’ll see you’re all right!”

  Wheezie shoved him away, “Fuck off!”

  My friend went flying down the stairs. I forced my gaze away to look at him.

  Gleb was lying motionless on the landing below, frozen in an unnatural position.

  Trying to suppress my anxiety, I dodged the knife that came straight for me, ducked, then performed my signature uppercut (as Matov had called it). Before he knew what hit him, I’d knocked the knife out of his hand and finished him off with a series of quick blows which I’d had practiced to perfection and which had been beefed up by a Righteous Anger II.

  Peppered with blows, Wheezie’s head bobbed like that of a rear-window toy dog, even hough the wall behind him prevented him from slumping to the floor. The system showered me with crit reports. One final hook to the temple KO’ed him, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  I looked around the scene to make sure both were unconscious, then hurried toward Gleb. He was still lying in the same position, his neck turned awkwardly. His glazed-over eyes stared in front of him, unmoving.

  Still not quite realizing what had just happened, I pressed my fingers to his neck.

  No pulse.

  He was dead.

  I heard a rustling behind my back, followed by the stomping of feet on the stairs. I froze, having not the slightest wish to do anything. I really needed to watch out, I thought, because this could be one of their associates coming to teach me a lesson.

  But I just didn’t care.

  Mechanically I took note of the debuffs taking over my Interface: Apathy and Desperation.

  That was the last thing I’d noticed in this life. Something pierced my back, exploding my chest with blinding agony and paralyzing my limbs. And that was just the beginning. The fourth but by no means the last blow pierced my heart.

  I died on the spot.

  THE NEXT MOMENT, I was standing by the green poker table draping my suit jacket over the back of my chair. Martha was standing next to me.

  “Sorry I came uninvited,” she said. “I need to tell you something very important. Please don’t die anymore. It took me all I had left of the local segment’s combined Spirit to bring you back. Luckily for you, reality split off only six minutes ago.”