Frozen Vengeance: The Last Meal

chapter 5

 Ninety-Nine Million to One

The lotto outlet near Rafi's rented condo in Ortigas was the same one he remembered from a lifetime he was trying very hard to leave behind — fluorescent lights, a bored attendant scrolling her phone, a hand-lettered sign advertising the current Grand Lotto jackpot climbing toward half a billion pesos.

He remembered the numbers the way you remember your own birthday. He'd stared at that winning combination for three straight days in his previous life, standing in a soup line outside a relief center, watching a stranger's phone flash the results while Rafi himself hadn't had two hundred pesos to spare on a ticket that week.

This time, he had exactly enough.

"A hundred tickets," Rafi told the attendant, sliding his ID across the counter along with every peso he'd managed to withdraw before Bel's lawyers could freeze anything jointly held. "Same combination on all of them."

The attendant looked up, one eyebrow raised. "Sir, that's — you sure? Same six numbers, a hundred times?"

"I'm sure."

She processed the order without further comment, the printer chattering out ticket after identical ticket, and Rafi folded the thick stack into his jacket with hands that were, for the first time in ninety-one days, completely steady.

Rafi did not buy the tickets impulsively. He had spent the entire walk to the outlet checking his memory against every detail he could still recall.

The winning combination had become almost legendary in his previous life because the jackpot was enormous and because the winners appeared at the worst possible moment in history. People had celebrated for a few days before the first waves of the freeze disrupted everything. Afterward, money became increasingly useless.

Rafi remembered the numbers because he had envied the strangers who possessed them.

He had once stood outside a relief center while people argued over bottled water and watched a news clip about the jackpot winner. He had thought, absurdly, that even a fraction of that money could have saved hundreds of people.

This time he was not going to waste it.

At the outlet, he counted the cash twice before placing it on the counter.

"A hundred tickets," he repeated.

The attendant stared at him.

"Same combination?"

"Every one."

She shrugged and began printing.

The machine produced ticket after ticket, a ridiculous paper waterfall. Rafi watched each one appear with an almost clinical fascination. In his first life, he had believed fate was something that happened to other people.

Now he understood that knowledge could be its own form of power.

He checked into a modest three-star hotel near the lotto office that evening — nothing extravagant, nothing that would draw attention before the draw — and sat on the edge of a stiff hotel bed watching the live broadcast on a television bolted to the wall, the same way he'd once watched the apocalypse begin on a different screen, in a different life, powerless to stop any of it.

The numbers rolled out one by one.

Fourteen. Twenty-two. Thirty-one. Thirty-nine. Forty-four. Forty-eight.

Every single one matched.

Rafi sat frozen for a long moment, staring at the television, the studio audience's muffled excitement filtering through cheap hotel speakers, and felt something crack open in his chest that had nothing to do with grief this time.

He had done it. Four hundred and ninety-two million pesos, split ninety-nine ways with whoever else had somehow guessed the same six numbers — but he alone held a hundred identical tickets.

He picked up his phone and dialed the one number in this city he actually trusted.

He kept the tickets in a waterproof envelope and placed the envelope inside the inner pocket of his jacket. He did not celebrate. Not yet.

The world he remembered had taught him that certainty was dangerous.

That evening, he checked into the hotel under his own name. He ordered plain food, locked the door, and placed the tickets on the desk in neat rows. Then he opened a notebook.

Food.

Water.

Fuel.

Medicine.

Generator.

Solar panels.

Construction materials.

Tools.

Weapons.

He stopped at the last word.

In his previous life he had avoided weapons because he had believed society would eventually recover. That belief had nearly killed him. This time he would not build his survival plan around the assumption that strangers would remain civilized.

He wrote another word underneath it.

Trust.

Then he underlined it twice.

There were only two people in the city he believed might remain useful when everyone else began lying: Ronnie, who had never asked him for money without offering something in return, and the old contacts he still remembered from work and business circles.

Everyone else would have to prove themselves.

On television, the lottery broadcast began.

Rafi sat on the edge of the bed.

"Ronnie," he said, when his old fraternity brother-turned-real-estate-broker picked up, groggy with sleep. "I need you to find me a property. Something specific."

"Rafi? It's almost midnight, pare, what—"

"Forbes Park," Rafi said. "Or Dasmariñas, if nothing's available in Forbes. Specifically the lot directly across from the Ongpin residence on Mahogany Street."

There was a long pause on the other end. "You know that lot's the old Ferrer estate, right? It hasn't sold in six years because the owners want an insane price, and it's — pare, that's literally across the street from your father-in-law's house."

"Ex-father-in-law," Rafi corrected. "And yes. That's exactly why I want it."

Fourteen.

Twenty-two.

Thirty-one.

Thirty-nine.

Forty-four.

Forty-eight.

For several seconds he simply stared.

Then he counted them again.

One hundred tickets.

One hundred identical combinations.

A laugh escaped him.

It sounded unfamiliar.

He had spent so long remembering the moment when he died that he had forgotten what winning felt like.

His phone was already in his hand before the broadcast ended.

Ronnie answered groggily.

"Pare, it's almost midnight."

"I need a property."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tonight."

Ronnie laughed, assuming he was joking.

Rafi gave him the address.

The laughter stopped.

"You mean the Ferrer estate?"

"Yes."

"That's across from your in-laws."

"Ex-in-laws."

"Rafi, that place has been sitting there for years."

"I know."

"Why?"

Rafi looked through the hotel window at the city lights.

"Because I need to be somewhere nobody expects me to be."

He ended the call.

The decision felt almost peaceful.

The money was coming.

The property would become his.

And for the first time, the people who had spent nine years looking down on him would have to look across the street to see exactly what he had become.