Mardock Scramble

“The reason I said it was a fifty-percent answer was because, depending on which side of it you’re on, your response changes. Let’s see… For example, a different fifty-percent answer would be to say that you wouldn’t help anyone and you wouldn’t expect anyone to save you. Or that you would save them, fully prepared that they may kill you.”

Clenching her hands, Balot pressed forward in an attempt to shake off the pressure. Just as the Doctor had pressed him on the cards.

–What’s a one-hundred-percent answer?

Ashley shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “If someone asks you for help, kill him. If someone responds to your call for help, he’s also fair game. Act like you are going to help, or that you need help, and then take. Take his money, take everything. In the world of gambling, that’s common sense.”

As he completed the shuffle, he looked at Balot with eyes that seemed almost kind.

“Here, you can’t trust anyone. You can’t even trust yourself. You understand, don’t you? And if you want proof, who do you think is going to save you here?”

Suddenly, within Balot, an unfamiliar enmity sprouted to life. With no outlet for that new feeling, the girl remained motionless as the cards were stacked on the table.

“Here, we can lawfully steal from others. I have to wonder why you’ve come so blithely to such a place as this.”

Finished with the shuffle, Ashley tidied up the stack of cards, then stood with his hands folded together.

He towered before her, all traces of a smile wiped from his stern countenance.

“Has your throat always been like that? Or did somebody take your voice from you? When you’d been hitchhiking, perhaps?”

The instant his words pierced Balot’s ears, her entire body became a ball of enmity.

He knows something, doesn’t he? How I was killed. Why I was killed. How I was disposed of, like a thing forbidden happiness and free will.

Her hair stood on end. Her body blazed. The enmity spread like a poison through her body down to every strand of hair. It welled up deep inside her, relentless.

–Balot, calm yourself. You don’t know what he’s planning. Don’t be careless.

Oeufcoque already knew what she was moments away from doing.

–Please, believe me.

–I believe you.

Balot clenched her fists so that Ashley could clearly see them. Hard. So Oeufcoque would feel it. And with all her heart, she said,

–So please, believe in me.

Oeufcoque was silent.

–He’s testing me.

In that moment, Balot felt everything become crystal clear. The meaning behind Ashley’s questions, why she had chosen this game, and the source of her impatience.

–He’s testing you?

–Yes. He’s testing to see if I’m playing the game.

Ashley smiled and said, “Is this hard for you? Would you like to move to a different table? Or do you just want to leave and climb back into your motel bed? Take a limousine like the one you came in? Too bad. You’ve come this far. You can’t go back now. Understand?”

Balot slowly opened her fists.

–I understand.

As she spoke, she pushed Oeufcoque into her right glove.

Oeufcoque didn’t even have time to say anything. She moved her hands behind her neck and undid the hook connecting her two gloves. The cloth gently slipped from the base of her neck. With her right hand, she gently slid off her left glove.

Just like her clients used to demand. So she could be seen.

Her skin, like a boiled egg with the shell peeled off, was laid bare. She removed her right glove and neatly laid them onto the table. She crossed her naked arms, resting them on top of her gloves.

Her bare skin keenly sensed the table. It was cold against her flesh.

To the girl, it was the feeling of her cool, sharpened heart, resolved either to live or to die.

Balot leveled her cold stare at the dealer.

–Do I look that easy to kill?

Ashley Harvest didn’t respond. He only gave one slow nod. Not in answer to her question, but as if seeing her face for the first time.

04

“It looks like I have a formidable opponent.”

Ashley watched Balot as she stacked her chips with her bare hands.

With her bare right hand. Her left arm was atop her gloves, which she had spread flat like a tablecloth. The fingers of her left hand were soothingly caressing the gloves.

“If we performed a full search of your body, we might not find anything. There may not be anything there. But that’s fine. You took off your gloves of your own volition. Neither the casino nor I forced you to. We’re clear on that, right?”

Like a gunslinger in an old pulp Western confirming the rules before the duel, Balot nodded, holding her eyes steady on his face.