Mardock Scramble

Balot took a deep, slow breath, then announced her stay. Ashley turned over his hole card.

It was a 2. The red card showed on top of the shoe. Ashley removed it without a word. His eyes held on Balot. Balot looked only at the cards.

The next card came. A king. Of clubs.

“Balot, you did it…”

The words came rushing out of the Doctor’s mouth, but he quickly composed himself. The game was only beginning.

Without turning to him, Balot nodded and, careful not to disturb her inner rhythm, moved her gaze to Ashley.

As he swept away the cards, his mouth curled into a frown. He looked back at her with a joke in his eyes. He started to say something but was cut off.

“Did you see that?” Bell said. Her voice was cold, but a reserved smile was on her face. “Women can endure much more than men. No matter what you might say about this girl, she knows what it means to endure, more than you can even imagine.”

“And here I was, thinking we were on the same side, Bell.”

With a stunned expression, Ashley reached for the box at the edge of the table.

Waving her hand as if she were clearing away the smoke from a cigarette, Bell said, “If the match were to end that easily, it wouldn’t be interesting.”

Ashley shrugged. He lifted the box of golden chips into his hands and said, “There’s still plenty left.”

He offered the box to Balot as if the weight of it pulled down on his arm.

For a moment, she wanted to say that she wasn’t after all the chips, but she stopped herself and reached for the box. She wasn’t after the chips themselves. She didn’t want the shell or the white. She kept her mouth shut and repeated to herself the Doctor’s words: Go for the golden yolk.

Her bare fingers grabbed a chip. One with the OctoberCorp emblem stamped on it—one tightly packed with the rotten insides of certain man’s egg.

She squeezed the chip in the palm of her left hand and placed it atop her gloves. Then she pushed the box aside with an almost foolish reverence. She watched Ashley begin the shuffle as she stashed the chip between the two gloves.

As Balot’s senses followed Oeufcoque’s work and Ashley’s shuffle, Bell Wing placed a hand upon her shoulder.

“I have a little soliloquy to mutter to myself. I don’t want to get in your way.” This was Bell’s way of talking to Balot without causing the girl to turn around. “There’s just one thing I want you to remember. One thing I taught to you. Even if unnecessarily. Something I couldn’t help but say.”

Balot, still focused on the shuffle, nodded.

–To aspire to womanhood.

“Yes. It’s simple. All you have to do is be a woman, and you’ll be all right. Be the person you should be, you’ll be all right. If not, you won’t be able to talk with the cards. And if you can’t talk with the cards, you can’t beat this man. You don’t want to lose, do you?”

–No, I don’t.

“Good. You have a pretty face.”

–Thank you, Bell.

Balot touched Bell’s hand. It was a kind hand. And it was a stern hand. It gently moved away from her and settled on the back of her chair. Both Bell and the Doctor placed their hands on her chair, watching over her.

Facing down the three of them, Ashley frowned. Over the sound of the cutting cards, he growled, “I should have asked someone else to come be my witness.”

05

“There’s something I’m having trouble believing,” Ashley said, casually shuffling the cards. “You seem to be trying to understand luck. And what’s even harder to believe is I think you may already understand it. What I’ve wagered my entire life to understand. All while you haven’t yet been at this table for a single hour.”

–I’m learning from you.

Her answer was candid. Balot felt gratitude for the man before her.

–I feel like I’m learning a lot at this table. Thank you.

Ashley scowled, resentful of hearing those words from a fifteen-year-old kid. But then, his dour expression was tinged with a bit of affinity for the girl as he said, “Are you trying to learn the secret of my shuffle? Is that your aim?”

Balot’s vague expression seemed to say Maybe I am.

“Well, it’s impossible. I wouldn’t even know how to teach it if I wanted to. I have no way of nurturing a successor. It’s a problem, really.” Ashley shook his head, and from his expression, he seemed to be genuinely wrestling with the problem.

–I think I know.

“You do?”

–Not your shuffle itself. How no one else can understand it.

“I see. Yes… Have you ever thought about luck?”

–I think it’s bad. I’ve thought that often.

“Life is like that sometimes. But have you ever thought about how luck controls us?”

–I’ve thought that I was at fault.

“Well, people can think that way sometimes.”

–I never think about the times I wasn’t at fault.