Todd.

I stared at the man as he walked through the door to the back of the casino, presumably towards the security room. I felt my legs itch as they begged me to pursue him, but I knew confronting him was a risk that would not be worth it. At least as things were. I didn’t want to bring the wrath of the other employees down on me by accusing another victim of this cruel world that he was a traitor.

If anything, he could’ve been on the goose chase just like me, and the box glue he had was likely the spoils of finding a higher up in the cheaters’ chain of command! I was trying to convince myself that he truly was innocent, but I knew I was lying to myself.

I was stuck between two raging emotions, fear and anger, and couldn’t move. I was ready to give up for now and head back to the catering table for another sandwich, when I was broken out of my stupor by a massive hand falling on my shoulder.

“Hey Mike, there’s this homeless man outside looking for you,” said one of the bouncers. “I sent him away though.”

I turned around and looked at the large man in confusion for a moment before my eyes lit up. “Sam! Which way did he go?” I said in a flurry of words.

“Easy there, he said he was just here to deliver this to you,” said the bouncer as he handed me an envelope.

“Thanks,” I said as I opened it up and slowly slid out its contents.

It was a black and white picture with a note written at the top. The note simply read, “found your culprit.” The picture was a very clean shot of a very familiar man handing a stack of packages to somebody else.

The image crumpled in my sudden harsh grip.

“Hey,” I began.

“What is it, Mike?” asked the bouncer.

“Call Goldshanks and the police over, I found our spy.” I turned around and began to walk towards the back, before turning into a jog and then breaking out into a sprint.

The bouncer took a few seconds to register what I’d said before pulling up his radio and saying something urgent into it. By the time he’d done so, I was too far away to hear anything other than the walkie-talkie’s static.

I barged into the back rooms, shoving the door hard enough to have it almost fly off its hinges into the wall and leave a crack. I was ready to raise my foot and kick down the door of the security room, but before I could make it there, Todd beat me to the punch and ran out, heading for the emergency exit.

“Todd!” I shouted, running after him outside and into the early morning sunlight.

The man didn’t bother to reply, and just kept panting as he tried to get away from me.

Futile.

I closed the distance between us in four long steps and grabbed him by the back of his neck, but it was slick from an excess of hair grease that had dribbled down, and he squeezed out of my grasp.

But rather than continue running, Todd screamed at the physical contact and tried to throw a punch at me.

I looked at him unblinkingly as I only felt a numb tingling where his fist had landed on my cheek. And I barely even realized he had doubled over, knees falling to the ground with his hand clutching his chest, with my own fist planted firmly in his stomach.

Adrenaline blurred through my veins. It forced my mind to move at a million miles an hour, yet it was entirely dedicated to processing a wellspring of emotions, barely having any power to spare for a proper reply. All I could sputter out was a single soft word.

“Why?”

“W-why?” repeated Todd in a hoarse voice, followed by a cough.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, my face frozen in an expressionless stupor. “After everything Goldshanks has given us, why’d you do it?”

“B-because,” Todd sputtered, but said with a sinister grin. “They promised me everything I ever wanted. A position of real power, w-where I can finally be the one everyone will fear instead of the other way around!”

“Is that worth throwing away everything you already have?!” I shouted, finally regaining proper control of my vocal chords. “It’s a shit system, and even after all the suffering it’s obviously brought you, you want to jump back in it?! Wouldn’t you rather end it?”

Fear flashed through Todd’s eyes, but I could see he registered my words by the look of disgust on his face at my last sentence. “I deserve this!” He shouted back at me. “It’s only fair I get to be on the other side!”

I began to sag forwards as all of the muscles in my body went slack. I slowly lifted my head until I was staring right at Todd. I didn’t know what he saw, but the indignation he showed me earlier completely shriveled as we made eye contact. The entire neighborhood, the noisy urban playpen, went entirely silent in that moment save for a few police sirens in the distance.

“Oh, you definitely deserve this, all right.”

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Todd didn’t even acknowledge me. He just reached into his pants and began to whip out a pistol.

I didn’t let him get any further.

Before he could point the weapon at me, I grabbed him by the wrist and squeezed. I heard a crack, and a scream, and he dropped the gun. I let go for a moment, ready to block or react to a counter punch or kick, but he ran instead.

Todd didn’t get two steps before I spun him around, and landed a punch on the right side of his chest. I could’ve sworn I heard ribs breaking, and he was about to collapse. He didn’t get the chance to fall on his own, as I sent my other fist flying into his cheek. Blood and teeth flew out of his mouth, but some of that blood could have very well been from the first blow.

He somehow hit the ground chest first, the previous blow sending him into a spin that managed to let his head touch down gently compared to the rest of him. I didn’t stop and walked over to him and raised my foot.

As soon as Todd got his bearings, his fear returned as he saw what I was about to do. “Please, no, stop!” he weakly pleaded.

Maybe I’d show him some mercy and aim for something not vital like his knee, or his crotch? Though with the kinds of people who lived in this shithole, that was pretty vital. Remembering that people like Todd weren’t exactly a rare breed here threw a metaphorical can of gasoline onto my already burning rage, turning it into a blazing inferno.

Before I could stomp on the worm below me, I heard a series of shouts from nearby that snapped me back to reality.

“Freeze! Step back from him and get on the ground!” said the voice.

I turned over to see a pair of uniformed police officers aiming their guns at me, and perfectly complied with their first demand.

“Now get back from the man!”

I did as requested and slowly took several steps back.

One of the officers then holstered his gun and reached for a radio, mumbling something into it about getting an ambulance before rushing over to Todd..

“Now on the ground!” shouted the other officer.

“He had a gun, he tried to shoot me!” I shouted back, looking towards the downed worm and his weapon lying on the ground.

The officer headed towards Todd hesitated a moment before following my eyes and rushing over to the weapon first.

“I said, on the ground!” the second officer shouted again.

I didn’t immediately comply due to the gun’s proximity to the man who’d attacked me, worried that he might somehow get up enough to grab it and fire a shot at me, but the officers didn’t like that. Before either of us could make a decision on what to do next, a new voice came out from behind me.

“That won’t be necessary, officers, he’s one of mine,” said Goldshanks. “The one on the floor, however…”

At that moment Todd opened his eyes and lifted his head towards Goldshanks, but only did just that.

“Take him. He belongs to the streets.”

Todd’s head fell back onto the pavement and he let out a pained groan.

The first officer grabbed the gun with a handkerchief and carried it back to the other one. An ambulance’s wail became audible in the background and soon pulled into the lot. A pair of paramedics came out with a stretcher, carefully moved Todd into it, and brought him back into the emergency vehicle before driving away.

The police officers nodded at us and the second one spoke, “We’ll keep someone on him and bring him over to the jail once he’s recovered. Who knows when that’ll be, though.”

Goldshanks simply nodded, and the officers turned around to leave. The two of us did the same after my boss motioned me back inside. The short walk was silent, and he only spoke once we were through the doors.

“So it was Todd, all along.” It wasn’t a question.

I merely nodded to acknowledge the words.

“Truth be told, I knew Todd wasn’t the same as the rest of us,” said Goldshanks after a long moment. “I just saw his pain and gave him a safe place from all of that. He was free to leave any time.”

I slowly turned towards my boss.

“But I didn’t expect him to sell me out like that. No good deed goes unpunished, right?”

I let out a sigh of my own. “No sir, it does not.”

“I overheard some of your conversation with him, even if it was mostly mumbles, but I didn’t catch who he sold me out to.”

“I might not have exactly given him a chance to say after he pulled a gun on me,” I replied sheepishly.

“Well, we can always ask him at the hospital once he wakes up. Maybe we can dangle a more lenient sentence in front of him if he complies?”

“Aren’t the sentences for cheating already lenient?”

“I wouldn’t consider attempted murder to be in the same realm as cheating at a card game, even one with a million dollars on the line.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, somehow having forgotten that very important detail.

“I don’t know what kind of boss I’d be if I didn’t let an employee take the rest of the day off if he had a gun pulled on him. So how about if you come back tomorrow? I’d give you the whole week off, but we’ve still got the tournament.”

The adrenaline was beginning to fade, and I was tired. Before I could open my mouth to reply however, I caught sight of the real traitor. The high ranking military officer my Skill identified as selling off state secrets.

“Don’t worry, I’ll stay,” I said. “But I’ll take it easy for a bit, if that’s fine.”

Goldshanks looked at me carefully, then nodded before walking away.

For a moment, I was alone in the back of the casino. The heavy doors leading to the front kept out all the noise from the crowd getting ready, giving me a moment to process everything that had happened.

After Todd pulled the gun on me, I lost it. I didn’t feel bad for what I did to him after that, at least until he was on the floor, but even before the turning point, I’d felt like I was losing myself. I was incandescent. But then once he was disarmed, entirely at my mercy, begging me… I was ready to kill him.

“So much for controlling my anger,” I said with a shameful frown.

[Level Up!]

[Str: +2 | Con: +1 | End: +1 | Cha: +1 | Atr: +0 | Dex: +0 | Int: +2]

[Str: 20 | Con: 21 | End: 18 | Cha: 24 | Atr: 13 | Dex: 15 | Int: 22]

[Skill Level Up! Situational Awareness 8 -> 9]

[Skill Level Up! Revenge 10 -> 11]