Chapter 15

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The biker didn't speak again until the end of the run, keeping a decent distance from me the whole time. The biker didn't speak again until the end of the jog.

I went upstairs and spent a long time tossing and turning in bed after my shower. I wondered if I needed this morning's run if communication with Lance was failing and if my attempts to build a bridge of "understanding" with him were failing. Thoughts sometimes jumped at the biker's strange reaction to my words about jogging with Daas, but I drove them away. Because thinking about it was a futile exercise, apparently, I had touched on some detail of their past together that only the two of them could understand. Without knowing the details of that past, it's impossible to understand the reason for Lance's laughter, so there's nothing to fill my head with it.

When the alarm clock sounded, letting me know that it was time to get ready for work, I concluded that it was unwise to interrupt my jogging. After all, it was a thin, but still a thread, and by pulling it, there was a chance to unravel the tangle of intolerance of the Goons toward me.

Since Illea's sister had brought her son over again today, my bartending lessons had to be postponed. Rati greeted me like an old acquaintance and said that today he would tear me apart in air hockey like Hercules the Nemean lion! I had to cool the kid down by telling him that until his homework was done, there would be no game.

I couldn't get rid of the boy that easily, though. Illea sent me to see how her nephew was doing in his studies. From the looks she threw at me, I got the impression that there was no way she was going to let Daas fire me. For where else would she find a babysitter for her nephew who was free of charge to her pocket?

I glanced at the chef from time to time and noticed the way her gaze changed when she looked at Rati. Apparently, Illea loves the boy, but she tries not to show it, and not to annoy the boy with her attention. She also seems to think that I like being a nurse. This is a common misconception of many people - if they see that a person is good at something, they are sure that that person enjoys doing it. On the other hand, not to say that this role annoyed me too much, I just don't really like babysitting. Yes, I have experience in this field, because no matter how much I would deny it, and quite often when Dana was not at home, I had to babysit my little sister.

It was the skills I had acquired at that time that made it easy enough for me to cope with Rati's quirks. Because, despite his flightiness, his energy, and his childish stubbornness, Illea's nephew was much easier to manipulate than my sister. And with a boy who liked to play computer games, I found common ground rather quickly. Besides, studying was easy for Rati; all I had to do was break through his active unwillingness to do it. Which was easily solved by the same method that I had tried the first time we met.

There was one good thing about my role today, though. It was the attention Aloya was getting; she was always at our table, trying to slip the boy some kind of candy. And some of that attention went to me as well, and I took advantage of that, trying to show myself in the best possible light.

The more time I spend with this girl, the more I like her. There is such naturalness in her, she is not uptight, she rejoices sincerely, and she is sad without hiding it. And her tongue is perky: she was the only one, except for me, who could come up with a witty response to Jiro's constant taunts. And all those traits were packed into an unbelievably seductive figure! No, it wasn't love. But I felt more and more attracted to her every day.

The only thing that saddens me immensely is that, apparently, my interest is one-sided. Yes, she treats me well, I do not disgust her, but that is all that can be credited to me as an asset. Otherwise, it's all bad: the looks she glides over me, there's a lot in them, but not the interest I would have dreamed of. Apparently, she was the kind of girl who was subconsciously drawn to bad guys. At least it seems to me that she looks at Meck, a frequent guest in our restaurant, with a lot of interest. Which pisses me off sometimes...

The next day's jog turned out to be a somewhat too mundane affair. All I heard from Lance was a greeting, and then he kept such a distance ahead of me that no conversation was possible. But the breathing technique he taught me yesterday made a big difference in my running progress. I was able to run half of the way without stopping, and that was nearly five kilometers!

The rest of the day was no good either. Jiro must have seen something in the looks I threw at Aloya yesterday, and guessed that I liked her. It turned out to be an endless series of jokes, banter, and "good advice" from the bartender. It was a good thing he had the decency not to tell the girl anything, or I would probably have burned with embarrassment.

And just before the restaurant closed, when all the customers left, there was an episode that spoiled my mood completely. It all started with my mistake. Once again, while mixing drinks under Jiro's watchful eye, I spilled some of the creamy liquor on the floor. I had to go to the back, get a mop and rag and clean the floor. Except I didn't wipe the floor very well, and Aloya slipped as she walked by the bar...

At that moment I was sitting on a high bar stool, watching Jiro whip cream for a cocktail. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Aloya falling, and immediately rushed out of my seat. Realizing I wasn't in time, I dropped to one knee and stretched out my arms, the only way I could make it. The girl fell very unluckily, flat on her back, straight back. My hands stopped her fall. For a second, everything froze, and the little brown girl who had conquered me hung in my arms a mere half meter from the floor. I caught her, very unluckily for me, with my arms fully extended. I managed to see her smile, and then my arms failed, and I collapsed to the floor with Aloya. Nothing bad happened to her, and I wasn't hurt. I mean, not physically, but mentally...

Aloya was very embarrassed and, confused but sincerely thanking me, immediately ran off to the back room.

"You're such a wuss!" Jiro said in a low whisper, very accurately. "She weighs no more than forty-five kilos! How could you not hold her?"

"Yes... It just happened... I just caught it in the palm of my hand, and my arms were outstretched, so..." Even I find these excuses worthless.

"Such an opportunity missed!" The bartender shook his head sorrowfully. "And what, he ended up on top of her, with his face right on her stomach!"

"I told you, I lost my balance and stretched..." I did manage to bump into Aloya's belly, but not with my face, as the giant had imagined, but with my forehead.

"Yeah..." Jiro tickled his tongue and smacked his forehead with his palm. "Well, did you... You had time to grope her while you were lying there, didn't you? I saw where your hands were!"

In fact, we weren't lying on the floor, the whole episode from the beginning of the girl's fall didn't take ten seconds.

"Of course not!" I blush fiercely and deny this assumption.

"Ow!!! You're so stupid!" The bartender twiddles his thumb on his temple. "Such an occasion, and you miss it!...! Even if she had noticed something, she would have taken it down to an unnatural situation!" Jiro winked at me, and continued, "I'll give you a piece of advice, in fact! Never pass up an opportunity to grope out a pretty girl! Well, unless, of course, no one sees, and it kind of came out by itself!" When the bartender says this, his eyes wander dreamily to the ceiling."

"Screw you...!" I brushed his advice aside.

"Nah... I give him real advice and he brushes me away!"

The most surprising thing about this dialogue was that Jiro was really offended. He got up from his chair and, defiantly ignoring me, went into the back room.

"Don't be upset!" Illea's palm touches my shoulder so unexpectedly that I flinch. "If you hadn't been there, Aloya might have been badly hurt." Did the chief see everything? "And dropped, well... It happens... Not all be athletes," she said, hurting my self-esteem even more. "But you're smart! And restrained ..." And heard our conversation?" That's much rarer.

Whether she sincerely didn't realize that she was making things worse, or whether she was just mocking me, I didn't understand. Barely waited until midnight, and then I ran off to my room.

Much later, scrolling through the memories of what prompted me to do the act that completely changed my life, I confess to myself that it was that moment of weakness and shame that was the last stone that tipped the scales of my choice...

The two days passed like a haze for me. A haze of ordinary routine spiced with bitterness. Aloya was distant, preferring to ignore me. Jiro was still sulking, unable to forgive me for taking his advice as a joke. It was getting harder and harder to make myself run in the morning. I was slipping back into the self-deprecation I had been accustomed to since my injury. It seemed to me that the whole world was playing against me, kicking a man named Utis like a rubber ball from one puddle to another. All my floundering, all my attempts to fix things and make my life work was seen as completely worthless and leading nowhere. This mood was exacerbated when, after playing three ranked games, I dropped out of Diamond, which gave my despondency an almost unbearable weight.

On the fifth morning of Daas' absence, even the fact that Lance suddenly spoke to me on the jog was unable to break the ice of my estrangement.

"How do you feel about making a little money?"

Only my depressed mood kept me from having a surprised expression on my face.

"It depends on how," I shrug my shoulders indifferently.

Apparently, my calm and detachment were not the reactions Lance had expected. The biker was silent for almost a minute before he spoke again.

"Ahem. It's not hard..." Those words lit a little fire of interest, but I managed not to show it. "Well, we'll owe you... A little... If it works out..."

"Uncomplicated for you may be beyond my power." The option that the Goons would owe me something was very interesting. But having already figured out what manner of behavior to follow in this dialogue, I didn't change my facial expression.

"Here, it's more like the complete opposite situation," the biker leader said, a little reluctantly. "Well, I won't beat around the bush..." He waved his hand and went on: "Daas seems to trust you. I need you to get some information for us from your uni's Medlab."

Information? I was already tensing up at the thought that it was going to be about some painkillers.

"It depends on what kind of information... And this is not idle curiosity, for example, the students' medical records are on a computer that is not connected to the network." There have been cases of intranets being hacked and medical records being stolen, so the university made it a rule.

"Tartarus!" Lance cursed. "You mean you can't?"

"This is a useless conversation since I don't know what you need."

"Tonight, Rick went out partying at an uptown club. There, as usual, some chick got hung up on him, and he went to her for the night. She turned out to be a student of your university and drunkenly told the Runner a very entertaining story that she had witnessed. According to her, as she was walking in the university park, she witnessed a quarrel that turned into a brawl. Nothing unusual or interesting, right?" Nodding, it was a common occurrence. "Except that it was Troy Bork and Vladis Urima... Do those names mean anything to you?"

"Yes. The captain and point guard of the varsity volleyball team." Of course, the whole university is covered with pictures of these volleyball players!

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"The chick claims the fight was serious and ended with the coach breaking them up and taking them to the infirmary... Get it?"

"No, I'm not interested in volleyball," I answer honestly.

"The fact is that tomorrow your Jumping Taurus are playing a college volleyball league game. The opponent is serious, the Ptolomean Bulls, but the bookmakers still have your team as the favorite. The bet on the Bulls winning is three whole one-tenths. If the fight was serious and the Taurus go into tomorrow's game without their two leaders, they're almost guaranteed to lose. Get it now?"

"Doesn't anyone know if Bork and Urima were injured?"

"You're not into sports at all, are you?"

"Just cybersports." Lance's face twisted a little at my words.

"No coach would release such information the day before the match! I'm sure that if no one saw the fight except the Riсks chick, then even the players of the team don't suspect anything! Because it would drop the team spirit."

"And if there are no injuries?"

"Then nothing..." The biker shrugs.

"No," I shook my head negatively. "You're asking me to look at the students' medical records. You'd have to find a way to do it without getting caught... Risk getting kicked out of uni, and all for what? I have to do it whether these players are injured or not. So "nothing" doesn't suit me in the slightest."

"Hmmm. Makes sense. What do you want?"

"You'll owe me a favor either way. And if the injury rumors are confirmed, I have two thousand, I'd like to participate."

I could make my own bets at online betting shops. All I had to do was go to an ATM and deposit the money into my account. But I didn't want my name to come up if anything happened. For example, an investigation into the sudden change in odds the day before a match by the Avalon Gaming Committee. We don't have gambling and betting banned in this country, but we do have a ban on anonymous betting, which could backfire when they found out I was in the university medical office and had bet on a match on the same day.

"In order not to make noise and not to knock down the odds, we plan to bet in different offices a little at a time, not more than thirty in total. No more than that, otherwise there would be too much attention to this match. So I would ask you in any case not to bet on your own, should you have such a desire... I agree on both counts. Deal?"

"There is one "but": I work, and I need about four hours of time in the middle of the day, otherwise how will I get to the university?"

"I'll talk to Stormbearer, consider it your day off."

"If that's the case, then it's a deal!"

After shaking hands, we continued jogging. All the negativity of the last few days was rapidly dissipating, like the morning fog in the sea breeze. Talking with Lance again gave me a chance to make things right with the Goons, and that made me feel good. If I could do them a favor, who knows, maybe that would be the first step that would break the ice of their mistrust.

After a run and a shower, I sat down at the computer and went online with a European proxy, and ran through the student sports sites. Volleyball is the second most popular game on Avalon after rugby, leaving even soccer behind. So betting on professional league games reaches a very impressive size. Student league was also a very popular tournament. Full halls during Jumping Taгurus games at my uni were no exception to the rule, other institutions of higher learning had the same picture. As for the stakes, or rather their volume, the difference between these tournaments was enormous. Even for a college league final the total betting volume rarely exceeded a million francs, and for the PL it was the norm for betting on a match between teams at the bottom of the table. When the leaders met, the amounts were in the tens of millions.

Having looked through the websites of seven different bookmaker firms, I estimated the approximate size of bets on the match between the Jumping Taurus and the Ptolomean Bulls at three hundred thousand francs. I think that Lance did not get the amount that the Goons were willing to play with out of thin air.

Around eleven, I took my eyes off the monitor and called Illea. She confirmed that I was free for the day, and she also talked my ear off a little bit about how to make sure that this kind of "time off" didn't become a habit.

I didn't just take the job on the fly. Because if I failed, if someone caught me rummaging through the students' medical records, the chance of getting kicked out of the university was not so slim. But what the leader of the Goons didn't know was that such an adventure was easy for me, with practically no risk or effort.

Since I was a frequent visitor at the nurse's station, especially in the first three weeks after the injury, I know very well how the work is done there. On ordinary days, there are two nurses and a doctor on duty in the infirmary. They work two shifts, two by two. Today Gerard Ducanier, the physiotherapist who was responsible for my recovery, is on duty. A passionate young doctor in his early thirties. I spent quite a bit of time around him when I was being rehabilitated. During his watch, it would be the easiest thing to pull off my case. However, if a second doctor were working today, I would also find a way out, just with Gerard I would hardly have to do anything at all! All I had to do was to time my visit to coincide with the beginning of my lunch break, and that was no problem at all.

When I called the nurse's office, I told Ducanier that I was making progress and that I wanted to take a small course electrostimulation. Then I let some sadness creep into my voice, saying that I might have thought I was making progress, but I didn't want to lose a shadow of a chance. I was asked to come up at three in the afternoon, which I was in no way happy about, so I stubbornly said I was working, and the despotic boss let me go for a while. I knew exactly why Gerard wanted to postpone my visit until after lunch. It was no secret to me that the doctor more than liked his nurse. But in light of his natural indecision, Ducanier did not confess anything to her, though I think a young girl named Olga would not have minded having the doctor as her husband.

In short, Gerard tried to be close to his nurse at all times. He went so far as to violate regulations by going to lunch with her. This was against the rules since the nurse's office should always be staffed by medical personnel. But everyone looked the other way when the physical therapist broke the rules. Perhaps because it was only a three-minute leisurely walk from the cafeteria to the nurse's station, or more likely because lunchtime was always the quietest time on campus.

I calculated the time, so I approached the nurse's station fifteen minutes before the lunch break, or, more precisely, before the nurse left for the cafeteria. Of course, this schedule was subject to change if someone needed medical care, but it was rare. Today, apart from the three students who came in before lunch to get their certificates, there was no one else but the staff.

I nodded to Olga as an old acquaintance, and she waved, "Come into the study". Ducanier was alone in his office. Constantly glancing at his watch, he quickly examined my hand and said that he did not observe any changes. I countered that I definitely felt improvement, which was a brazen lie, but you had to know me a lot better than the physical therapist knew me to notice my lies. The closer the minute hand got to two in the afternoon, the more nervous the doctor became.

"If you need to go somewhere, put me on the electrostimulation and leave, and I'll sit by myself. I'll keep an eye on the room."

There's nothing extraordinary in my suggestion, he suggested it to me a couple of times, and I was left alone in the nurse's station. Of course, it was a violation of the rules, but much less than having the nurse's station closed altogether.

After placing the electrodes on my wrist and plugging the machine in, Gerard briefly instructed me what to do if someone came. The whole instruction boiled down to asking me to wait for someone to come and to call him or Olga urgently. More precisely, if a student comes in for a note, then of course there is no need to call anyone. The student would wait, he wouldn't fall apart. One only had to call in case of accidents or a visit from someone from the administration. I assured Ducanier that I understood everything and that it was not the first time at all, while carefully remembering how he placed the electrodes. Having seated me so that my hand lay relaxed and the wires were not tangled, he turned on the machine. The clock showed two hours and three minutes. Once again, after making sure that I had understood what to do if someone came, Gerard stormed out of the office.

After waiting two minutes, I carefully disconnected the electrodes and looked out into the waiting room. It was empty. I took the mop and placed it so that if someone opened the front door, it would fall and I would hear it, and then returned to the office.

The information I needed could be accessed in three ways. Some medical records were kept in paper form in the office and also on the doctor's computer. In addition, all referrals and the diagnosis of the initial examination were entered on the nurse's computer. Not taking the risk of leaving any digital footprint, I just walked over to the file cabinet. Of course, there were only the medical records of students who had recently sought help in the office; a special room was set aside for the full file cabinet, the key to which was held only by the nurse. It took less than a minute to find Bork's and Urima's files, and it didn't take long to flip to the last pages and read the diagnoses, either.

Rick's girlfriend was right; the two did fight. To the delight of Lance and my pocket, the fight was not without consequences. The captain had sprained his back, and the point guard had a hand injury. That's if you don't count the multiple bruises. The doctor's recommendations were unequivocal: the former had at least a week without practice, and the latter might be out for longer.

After putting the medical cards in place, I immediately sent a message to Lance, using one of the anonymous messenger servers. Then he sat back down and placed the electrodes the way Gerard had placed them.

After fifteen minutes of my inactivity, Ducanier returned from lunch. He was in the best possible mood, apparently, Olga had favored his advances today. Whistling something, he almost without looking at me took off all the wires and, after listening to my gratitude, just waved his hand, though he did not forget to repeat that I do not entertain too much hope for a complete recovery...

As I boarded the return streetcar and looked at the receding buildings of the university, I finally felt myself relaxing. Although nothing threatened me and everything had gone as smoothly as possible, I was still full of internal tension. Moreover, if there had been another shift on duty today, I would not have had much difficulty either, for a quite respectable matron, Catisia, was a nurse there. A lady well into her forties, but with a weakness for online flirting in virtual toys, where she posed as a sixteen-year-old hottie. When she found out that I was on the university cybersports team, then, as soon as I came to the nurses' station during her shift, she immediately sat me down at her computer and asked for help or something to explain the games. Distracting her with something and taking a look at the digital visitation log, which listed my preliminary diagnoses for the past week, would not be difficult at all.

With the sound of the streetcar's wheels screeching, I found myself thinking that I felt no remorse at all. What had I done? Well... Broke a bunch of university rules, yes. Also, I ignored medical confidentiality, but I didn't tell Lance anything about the nature of their injuries, and I only told him that these two can't play tomorrow. Somehow, both of these points do not go beyond the point at which I begin to feel the torment of conscience.

In addition, the thought that my two thousand would soon turn into at least five, with the odds dropping as the bets on one side increased, warmed me up nicely. And the fact that the Taureans would lose without a captain and point guard was almost guaranteed; our team didn't even have players as close to the same level as this pair. It was Urima and Bork who essentially carried the Taurus, without them our volleyball players would not be competing for first place and would be hanging around in the middle of the table at best. Maybe if the coach had time to rebuild his team's play, they'd have a chance, but the game's already tomorrow! Of course, the possibility of losing is always there but in this case, the risk was justified.

However, when I went back to my place and took the money into my hands, this justified risk did not seem so justified. I stood with the bills in my hands for three minutes, and then, after counting out exactly half of them, I hid the rest and only then went down to the restaurant.

Fel was on "duty" from the Goons today. The same biker who had asked me about the legality of the money I received for winning cybersports tournaments. After counting the money I handed him, he asked in bewilderment:

Lance was talking about two thousand, and there's only one here.

"I'm not a gambler," I shrug, not going to explain anything.

Fel didn't ask anything more; with a nod of his own, he got up from the table and went outside. In fact, I'm certainly a gambler, and that's my main problem. But it was the fight against this flaw of mine that made me not put all my accumulated money into this bet. Although if I admit to myself, I really wanted not only to bet all of my own but also to call my older sister and borrow from her for this case. Even now, having already made the final decision and having given Fel only a thousand, I could hardly keep myself from stopping the biker and running for the rest of the money.

I was just about to go back up to my room when Illea caught me, and when she found out that I had already done all my chores she asked me to finish the day. I could have stood up and said that I had a full day off. But it was true that there were a lot of new visitors today, so, after thinking for a while I didn't start arguing and having changed my clothes went to work.

The chief's request was not just a fad; apparently, someone had posted a complimentary review of our restaurant on one of the social networks, thus causing an influx of new customers. So my advice really helped Vera, who was working alone in the hall today. Aloya, on the other hand, helped Illea in the kitchen. By the end of the day, everyone was exhausted and overworked because by nine p.m. all the tables were full of customers. It got to the point that even I was delivering some orders, not at Illea's request, but to help Vera, on my own initiative, so to speak. According to Jiro, if this continued, Daas would have to think about expanding the staff.

By nine o'clock it had calmed down a bit, and at ten p.m. all the customers had gone. Only the table closest to the entrance was occupied, and the duty shift of bikers was seated there, as usual.

I was so busy all day that I didn't even have time to look at my smartphone. So when I got to it, I was puzzled by two messages from Lance. The first was profane: it turns out that at 6 p.m. at the pre-match conference, the coach of Taurus did talk about the injuries of leading players, which led to a collapse in bets. The second was more subdued, in which the head of the Goons reported that they had managed to place all the bets before this announcement, and my thousand was placed on a Bulls win at odds of two and nine. If the first message made me tense, the second immediately calmed me down. If the money managed to bet at one odds, then its further decline no longer matters.

We were already cleaning up when, at half past eleven, someone I hadn't expected to be here walked into the restaurant. When he crossed the threshold, Blaise stood still for a moment, getting used to the bright lights in the room, and then he saw the bikers and headed toward them. He didn't see me, though I wasn't hiding, I was sitting at the bar, halfway to the entrance. What did the gang leader of the next neighborhood want here?!

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