And at that moment, Balot was greedily feasting upon the sensation of that power. Oeufcoque and Balot were tightly connected, their senses bonded.
At the twenty-seventh game, their senses had melded to perceive a deeply vivid image.
Ashley’s upcard, an ace. Balot’s hand, 5-J. The cards were like the muzzle of a gun in Ashley’s hand, thrust right at her.
Balot muttered.
–They’re pointy. I want to round them off.
She spoke unconsciously, to no one in particular.
To the somewhat perplexed-looking Ashley, she announced her hit.
Ashley pulled a card from the shoe. It was a 2.
–It’s still light.
Her voice was soft, but it jolted through the air of tension over the table.
Balot hit. An ace.
–It’s getting even pointier.
Grief sounded in her words, but Balot’s expression was suddenly taken by a vastness that was hard to grasp. Where was she looking? What was she thinking? Her expression was unreadable. But she was looking at something. She had her sights on it.
The Doctor gulped. Bell’s eyes opened wide.
–Hit.
Ashley’s hand moved instantly. Even if the card would bring about his own destruction, his practiced hand drew it without hesitation. Such was his skill.
The card came. Another ace. Balot didn’t stop. Her body felt like a sharp blade slicing effortlessly through her opponent’s windpipe.
–Hit.
Another ace.
–Hit.
Another ace. Balot took a deep breath. 5-J-2-A-A-A-A—
–Stay.
Ashley revealed his hole card. A jack. Ashley stared at the table, speechless. In his place, the Doctor whispered with disbelief. “A push…”
“It seems like it,” said the dealer.
He quickly collected the cards, sweeping them into a neat pile, Balot’s senses attuned to their movement.
Ashley looked down at Balot’s hand. He seemed to stare right through the chips stacked in a neat circle in the palm of her bare hand.
“Do you know why I’m looking forward to the next card?” Balot looked up at him. With a vacant expression, she nodded deeply.
She had become so focused on the game, she had forgotten to think of him as her enemy.
–If it’s a king, you’ll lose. Especially if it’s a spade. It’ll mean you separated them for nothing.
She appeared lost in thought, as if still trying to figure out why her statement was true.
“You do know, then?”
Balot tilted her head.
“You managed to weather my special move, and I’d prefer not to think of it as by chance.”
Finally understanding his meaning, the girl nodded.
–I think I know.
“You’ve seen through my shuffle?”
His face was mischievous, but there was a bluster in it that betrayed a small thread of fear.
Balot looked at him and slowly shook her head.
“Then what do you know?”
–Until a moment ago, the upcards have all been your allies.
Her eyes gazed distantly upon the card shoe.
–But now I too have allies.
Ashley, his hand still atop the shoe, shrugged and said, “For sure. But I don’t think you have many.”
–I don’t need many. It’s enough to know I have them. That’s all I know.
“But will they arrive in time?” He smiled sharply at her.
She thought for a moment, then answered.
–I don’t need to win many times.
Ashley’s smile froze. For a brief moment, his eyes went completely expressionless. Somewhere deep inside him, his caution toward Balot transformed into animosity.
Balot tapped the table. Ashley’s hand flicked out the cards.
His upcard, a 5. Balot’s hand, J-J.
–It’s like they’re fighting. And just when I’ve come to save them.
She looked at the jacks with disappointment. The red and black one-eyed jacks.
–But I’ll stay.
Without hesitation, Ashley turned over his hole card. A king. Spades.
Beneath Balot’s left arm, Oeufcoque’s swirl of numbers adjusted.
Some of the suits pressed together, amassing into an iron wall.
With great contentment, Balot watched the dealer draw his next card.
He drew a 6. Twenty-one. He was an overwhelming fortress.
Ashley’s thick hands casually collected her chips. The cards went too.
Balot’s eyes remained on the table as if seeing the afterimage of the cards: 5-K-6 and J-J.
“Have you had enough?”
Balot sensed something behind his mocking words. He was trying to hide the moment of defenselessness born of a hastily built defense.
That held the true meaning of building an impregnable iron wall in this game.
Balot snarced Oeufcoque.
–I want to bet on clubs. So they will become my ally.
–Understood.
He didn’t ask why. He didn’t ask how it would quantifiably affect her chances of winning. He wasn’t blindly following Balot either. It was his own decision based on his instinctive knowledge of her thoughts.
Oeufcoque was in the fight too. As a part of their new combination.
Balot smoothly placed her chips. Her impatience had vanished completely, not like the shadow had lifted into dawn, but as if her senses had pierced the unpredictable darkness, adding their own light to it.
She felt herself becoming one with the game. The cards were her, and she was new.
It was stress, it was hostility, and it was a blessing.
Ashley’s management of the cards grew more and more skewed. That determined which cards Balot should chase after. Her 10 and 9 of clubs were impeded by the ace and king of spades. Next the 4 and 5 of clubs brought forth the king of clubs, only to be crushed by the jack of hearts and his reinforcements, the 3 and 7 of diamonds.
Balot’s senses reached out like a hand searching through the darkness and colliding with something, for the ever-widening crack in Ashley’s flawless handling of the cards.
The scariest thing within the darkness, thought Balot, is to be struck motionless from fear, unable to move even a single finger and to be freely used.
Once, she hadn’t the will to resist being used. She had thrown away her senses. Until she’d met Oeufcoque. And now, from within her thin shell, she sensed with voracity. Suddenly, a sharp odor came to her nose. A phantom smell. A smell like the cologne Death would wear came over her body, enveloping her. Balot thought back to the time she’d been trapped inside that car, when the stench of gas filled the space. At that time, all she could do to survive was to withdraw into herself.
At that time, she thought she would die. Sad and pitiful.
But they came in time.
Ashley’s upcard, an 8.
Balot’s cards, 3-6.
All of them clubs. Balot’s finger tapped the table.
–Hit.
She received a 6. She raised her finger, then tapped the table again.
–Hit.
With a flutter of Ashley’s hand, her next card came—6.