Where the corridor was dingy carpet and peeling wallpaper, her 200 square feet gleamed with polished hardwood. The walls were covered in vintage gambling paraphernalia: antique playing cards framed behind glass, a miniature roulette wheel mounted like a clock, what looked like genuine Wild West poker chips in a shadow box. Everything was arranged with the kind of precision that suggested a mind that saw patterns everywhere and couldn’t tolerate disorder.
“Sit,” she instructed, pointing to a well-worn leather chair that was the nicest piece of furniture I’d encountered since waking up in that puddle. I obeyed. Sal, Shep, and Fade God found spots around the room’s edges like spectators at a prize fight.
Lady Luck pulled out a deck of cards. Not ordinary playing cards. These had deep green backs with gold filigree, and when she spread them on the coffee table, I saw they had game stats where the suits and numbers should be. Player names. Team logos. Numbers I couldn’t quite parse.
“Do you know what these are?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“These are prediction cards. They’re how Sharks like me make our living.” She spread them in a fan. “Each card represents a player, a team, an event. Sharks can see the probabilities, the actual mathematical chances of outcomes, better than anyone else.”
“Like what I did with the Falcons game,” I said.
“Exactly,” Sal interjected from the corner. “But most of us need these cards to focus our abilities. They’re tools. Crutches, if you want to be uncharitable about it.” He nodded at me. “But you? You just saw it, didn’t you? Raw probability streaming into your brain.”
I nodded slowly. “Numbers and percentages. Like I was reading stats off a screen.”
“Holy crap,” Fade God whispered. “Just like your old man.”
My head snapped up. “You knew my father?”
Lady Luck laughed. The sound was warm, the kind that made the cramped room feel bigger than it was. “Knew him? Kid, your father was a legend. Robert Brownbag was the greatest Shark who ever lived.”
╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║ LORE ENTRY UNLOCKED ║
║ ║
║ THE SHARKS ║
║ ║
║ Individuals with the ability to ║
║ perceive and (in rare cases) ║
║ manipulate probability fields. ║
║ ║
║ Common Sharks: See probabilities ║
║ with assistance (cards, tools) ║
║ ║
║ Rare Sharks: See probabilities ║
║ unaided (raw perception) ║
║ ║
║ Legendary Sharks: See AND shift ║
║ probabilities (active manipulation) ║
║ ║
║ Known Legendary Sharks in ║
║ Fanhattan history: 3 ║
║ Your father was one of them. ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝
The revelation should’ve hit like a truck. And it did, partly. But it also settled into place with a strange familiarity, like a key finding a lock it was cut for. My father, a sports predictor? It didn’t match the quiet, methodical dad I half-remembered. The one who worked for some mysterious company and did treasure hunts with us kids before bed.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “My dad worked for Rubber Plug Stoppers. RPS.”
Sal burst out laughing. Full body. Tears forming. The gold chain bounced against his chest hair.
“RPS? That’s what he told you?” He wiped his eyes. “Kid, RPS stood for ‘Robert’s Prediction Service.’ Your dad ran the biggest underground betting analysis operation in Fanhattan history.”
╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║ MEMORY FRAGMENT UNLOCKED (3/?) ║
║ ║
║ NEW INFORMATION INTEGRATED ║
║ ║
║ You remember: Sitting at the ║
║ breakfast table as a kid. Dad ║
║ studying papers covered in ║
║ numbers. You asked what he was ║
║ doing. ║
║ ║
║ He smiled and said: "Just making ║
║ sure the right people win, Billy." ║
║ ║
║ You thought he meant cheering for ║
║ the good guys. ║
║ ║
║ XP Gained: 25 ║
║ LEVEL 1: 125/200 XP ║
║ ██████████?????? 62.5% ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝
“So what happened to him?” I asked. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “Where is he now?”
The mood in the room dropped like someone had flipped a switch. Sal’s laughter died. Lady Luck’s warmth contracted. Even Shep’s ever-present geniality dimmed.
“About six months ago,” Sal began, his voice low and careful, “your dad disappeared. Rumor had it he’d gotten too close to something big. Figured out a pattern in games that shouldn’t have had patterns.”
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“The Syndicate was fixing outcomes,” Lady Luck continued. “Not just influencing them with dirty refs or paid-off players. Something bigger. Your dad was tracking it.”
“Then one day, poof.” Fade God snapped his fingers. “Gone. His house cleaned out, his family scattered, and a reputation smeared across every newspaper in town.”
Shep put a meaty hand on my shoulder. It was warm and heavy and the closest thing to an anchor I’d felt in days. “They framed him, kid. Made it look like he was the one fixing games. Running scams. Bilking people out of hundreds of thousands.”
I leaned back in the leather chair. The room was spinning slightly, but not from the hangover. From this. From the shape of the thing I was only now beginning to see.
“And my sisters?” I managed. “Bailey and Baby?”
“In hiding, last we heard,” Lady Luck said. “Smart move on their part.”
I pulled out my father’s deck. The room shifted when I set it on the coffee table. Not a physical shift. More like the barometric pressure adjusted itself around fifty-two small rectangles of card stock.
“He left me these,” I said. “They’re not just playing cards. They’re messages. Clues.”
Lady Luck’s hand moved toward the deck, then stopped. “May I?”
I hesitated. Then handed her the top card. The snake.
She examined it with the kind of attention most people reserve for wedding rings or ransom notes. Turned it over. Tilted it to the light. Her breath caught.
“This isn’t just a clue, Billy. It’s a Shark card. A real one.”
“What does that mean?”
She flipped it, showing me the symbols and numbers I couldn’t decode. “Shark cards don’t just predict. They can influence. If you know how to use them.”
╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║ TUTORIAL: SHARK CARD SYSTEM ║
║ ║
║ Each card can have multiple ║
║ functions: ║
║ ║
║ ?? PREDICTION ║
║ Reveals hidden probabilities ║
║ ║
║ ? INFLUENCE ║
║ Shifts real-world probability ║
║ (costs vitality to activate) ║
║ ║
║ ?? QUEST ║
║ Contains hidden missions ║
║ ║
║ ?? TREASURE ║
║ Reveals locations of hidden items ║
║ ║
║ ? SPECIAL ABILITY ║
║ Grants temporary skills ║
║ ║
║ Most Sharks use single-function ║
║ cards. Your father pioneered ║
║ multi-function cards. ║
║ ║
║ CARD MASTERY LEVELS: ║
║ Novice → Apprentice → Journeyman ║
║ → Adept → Master ║
║ ║
║ Current mastery: Novice ║
║ Cards mastered: 0/52 ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝
“I don’t understand,” I said. Though I was starting to.
“Normal Sharks like us,” Sal leaned forward, elbows on knees, “we see probabilities. We can predict outcomes with better accuracy than anyone else. But we can’t change them. We’re just really good observers.”
“But your dad,” Fade God picked up, excitement creeping into his voice, “he was different. He could actually nudge probabilities. Not a lot. We’re talking tiny percentages. But enough to matter in a close game.”
“And these cards,” Lady Luck held up the snake card with something approaching reverence, “they’re like stored probability shifts. Little pockets of influence that can be released at the right moment.”
I stared at the card in her hand. At my father’s handwriting. At the crude drawing of Silas with his yellow eyes and dripping fangs.
“So my dad could actually change the outcomes of games?”
“Within limits,” Sal cautioned. “Not making a team score when they wouldn’t have. More like… nudging a shot that would’ve rimmed out to fall in instead.”
“Or a receiver getting one extra inch of separation,” Shep added from the doorway.
“And that’s why the Syndicate wanted him,” I said. The pieces were falling into place now, one after another, the probability of the picture becoming clearer with each new data point. “Because he could counter whatever they were doing.”
Lady Luck nodded. “Exactly.” She pointed to the snake drawing. “And this card specifically targets Silas.”
A chill. Down my spine, through my gut, into my shoes.
“It’s a counter-card,” she explained. “It doesn’t boost something. It negates. This would protect someone from Silas’s abilities.”
“Which are what, exactly?” I asked.
Nobody wanted to answer that one. Four people in a tiny apartment, and suddenly nobody could make eye contact.
“Mind control,” Fade God finally said. “Memory manipulation. Weird stuff, man. That’s why they call him the Snake. He gets in your head and twists things around.”
I thought about the purple liquid. The room that collapsed to a point. The static where my memories should be.
“That’s what happened to me,” I whispered. “He poisoned me. He scrambled my brain.”
“But you escaped,” Sal said. His voice carried genuine awe. “And you’ve got this.” He tapped the snake card on the table. “Your father must’ve known you’d need protection.”
“How do I use it?” I asked, taking the card back from Lady Luck.
“You need to activate it,” she said. “Each card has a trigger. For some it’s a place. For others, it’s solving a puzzle.” She watched me flip the card over. “What do you see?”
In the bottom corner, in my father’s handwriting, tiny and precise:
“Where snakes shed their skin, the key awaits. Vol Valley holds the door.”
“Vol Valley,” I read aloud. “What’s Vol Valley?”
“One of the Districts,” Shep said. “The fan territories. Vol Valley is home to the Tennessee Volunteers fanbase in Fanhattan.”
“Orange-wearing lunatics,” Fade God added. “But they throw a hell of a tailgate.”
I looked up from the card. “Then that’s where I’m going.”
╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║ NEW QUEST: "Vol Voyage" ║
║ ║
║ Objective: Infiltrate Vol Valley ║
║ and locate the activation point ║
║ for the Snake Card ║
║ ║
║ Difficulty: HIGH ║
║ Risk Level: SIGNIFICANT ║
║ ║
║ Reward: Card activation, ║
║ memory restoration, new ability ║
║ ║
║ Bonus XP if completed without ║
║ detection by Syndicate agents ║
║ ║
║ RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 3 ║
║ YOUR LEVEL: 1 ║
║ ║
║ ...Good luck with that. ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝
Recommended level 3. My level: 1.
That seemed like a problem.