Chapter 2 Sabine
SABINE
I didn't let myself think about the Vinduthi from yesterday. The one with green traceries and red eyes who'd sat at my table for twenty minutes. Who'd burned through thirty thousand credits without flinching. Who'd looked at me like he saw something worth studying.
I didn't think about him. Thinking was dangerous.
I rolled out of the narrow bunk and went straight to the loose panel behind the ventilation grate. My fingers found the credit chips by touch, no need to look.
I couldn’t help it though. Touching the hidden chip was the only thing that every felt real here.
Twenty-seven thousand credits. Five years of perfect dealing, careful skimming of tips, and eating nothing but protein paste when I could stomach it.
Twenty-seven thousand. Still two hundred and seventy-three thousand short of what I owed.
Medical debt from my sister. The kind that ate through legitimate lenders, then moved to the ones who broke fingers. Eventually, my contract ended up in Qeth's hands like inventory.
I showered in the trickle of recycled water, dressed in my dealer's uniform, and took the service lift to Level 10.
The mezzanine never closed, but the players changed with the shifts.
Day shift got the functional addicts. Night shift got the desperate ones.
I worked the transition shift, catching both crowds at their worst.
Ambassador Krell took his usual seat before I'd even finished my opening count. His trade negotiations were failing. Everyone knew it. He'd been hemorrhaging credits for six days straight, chasing the big win that would somehow fix his political disasters. His initial bet trembled onto the felt.
“Good evening, Ambassador,” I said, shuffling the deck. Standard Flux, six decks merged, quantum randomizer engaged. “Your usual stakes?”
He nodded, the fine fabric of his suit already dampening with sweat. I dealt his hand and watched him pretend to think about his play. He'd bet big. He always bet big when the negotiations went badly. Tomorrow, he'd be either broke or dead. Not my problem.
A cluster of Nexian merchants took their place, sensory filaments twitching as they tried to read the table's energy.
Then a Mondian couple on their honeymoon, about to learn why gambling on Parallax was different from the tourist stations.
Then a Lyrikan noble constantly tugging at a collar that seemed too tight.
Just another shift. Just another night.
I didn't scan the mezzanine entrance. Didn't track approaching footsteps. Didn't wonder if he'd return.
Until Kreeg appeared.
He always moved like someone trying not to be noticed, even in his floor supervisor's suit.
The Nazok's pointed ears constantly swiveled, tracking every conversation in the room while his small frame let him slip between tables without drawing attention.
He'd been watching me for six months now, our little exchanges growing more frequent.
“Sabine.” He leaned against the table's edge, a study in forced casualness. “How's the action tonight?”
“Standard variance,” I replied, dealing cards without looking at him. “Krell's down sixty thousand. The Poraki twins tried their usual. Nothing noteworthy.”
“What about unusual players? Anyone showing interest in casino operations beyond the games?”
That was new. Usually he asked about security threats, potential cheaters, suspicious behaviors. This was more specific.
“Define unusual,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.
“Anyone studying the infrastructure. Watching patterns beyond their own table. Asking questions about the station itself.”
I gave him what he wanted: reports on three players who'd seemed more interested in the cameras than the cards, a Mondian who'd asked about shift schedules, a human who'd wanted to know which levels were restricted. Routine suspicious behavior, nothing actionable.
I didn't mention the Vinduthi who'd lost in a mathematical sequence. That felt different. Personal. Not something I wanted to hand over.
“Double rates for anything more substantial,” he said, sliding a credit chip across the felt. “Especially if you notice anyone interested in the algorithmic systems. The probability matrices. The behavioral prediction modules.”
My fingers never hesitated as I pocketed the chip, but my mind filed that information away. He was hunting something specific.
“Of course,” I said. “I'll let you know.”
He left, and I continued dealing. The shift ground on. Players won and lost. Credits changed hands. The station's endless twilight continued.
It wasn't until my break that I couldn't avoid it anymore.
“That Vinduthi at your table yesterday,” Chgriz mentioned in the break room. He'd been dealing here for fifteen years, saw everything, said little. “Strange one.”
My hand tightened on my water cup.
“The one with the green traceries?” Naya asked. She was new, still terrified of everything. “He barely watched his cards at Collapse. Kept looking at the probability displays instead.”
“Lost big at Sabine's table,” Marza added from his corner. The shift chief knew everyone's business. “Thirty thousand. But the pattern...” He shook his head. “Almost seemed deliberate.”
I'd noticed the pattern. Of course I'd noticed. I noticed everything. But I'd filed it away without analyzing it, the way I'd learned to file away anything that might make me feel something other than nothing.
Now, sitting in the break room with its flickering lights and broken coffee dispenser, the numbers surfaced in my mind, demanding attention.
Eight thousand. Five thousand. Twelve thousand. Eight thousand. Thirteen thousand. Twenty-one thousand.
Ter'gathi sequence, but modified. The modification was specific. Each number shifted by a value that corresponded to... I worked through the mathematics. Letter positions. Basic substitution cipher hidden in mathematical sequence.
I. See. You. Seeing. Me.
The warmth that flooded my chest was unwelcome and undeniable.
Five years I'd been dealing on this station. Years of being furniture. A function. A tool that moved cards and collected credits and reported suspicious behavior. Players looked through me, not at me. They saw the uniform, the smile, the hands that dealt their fate. Never the person.
But this Vinduthi, Varrick, his player registration had said, he'd seen me.
He'd recognized what I was doing and told me so. Not through words, not through obvious interest, but through mathematics.
The language I thought in when I wasn't being careful.
It was dangerous, this curiosity I'd been suppressing since yesterday. This warmth when I pictured those red eyes that seemed to find something in me worth understanding.
I should crush the feeling. Hope was expensive, and I couldn't afford it.
But as I returned to my table, my gaze kept drifting to the mezzanine entrance. Wondering if he'd come back. Wondering what game he was really playing.
And wondering, despite all my careful defenses, what it might mean that he'd seen me.