2026-09-06 14:00:44Jax tilted his head. His dark, messy tattoos stretched on his neck.
"But you are a boy from the dirty slums of Sector One," Jax said smoothly. "In the slums, power is a gun. Power is a strong punch. But here? In Sector Zero? Power is not a gun, Evan. Power is a contract. Power is a legal document."
Evan frowned. He did not like the sound of Jax’s voice. "What are you talking about?"
Jax shifted on his knees to make himself comfortable.
"You set up
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Chapter 371
Evan looked around the table. His stomach twisted into a tight knot. The game had just changed completely. It was no longer just Evan against the cheating cyborg. He was completely surrounded. Sitting to Evan’s left was a tall, thin man wearing a suit made of bright, glowing yellow silk. He had sharp, greedy eyes and a thin mustache. He tapped a solid gold cane against the floor impatiently. Next to the yellow man sat a beautiful woman wearing a heavy necklace made of glowing red rubies. Her skin was perfectly smooth, and her eyes were cold and bored. Across the table sat a very large, muscular man. He did not look like a businessman. He wore heavy gray armor and had thick, deep scars across his cheeks. He was a famous mercenary commander who had gotten rich fighting the Bank’s wars. Beside the mercenary sat an old woman. She wore a dark black dress. Her hands were covered in expensive diamond rings. She looked like a sweet grandmother, but her eyes were black and soulless. And
Chapter 370
The heavy, silent air inside the Glass Lotus felt like it was pressing down on Evan Kennedy’s chest. Evan sat in the soft leather chair. He looked at his two face-down cards. He knew what they were. The Ace of Hearts and the King of Hearts. It was a beautiful, powerful hand. It was a hand that screamed at him to bet all his chips. Across the black velvet table, Jax was smiling. The Syndicate Boss had pushed his massive mountain of eight hundred million years into the center. Jax’s dark metal arms rested on the table. His glowing red cybernetic eye spun and clicked rapidly.But Evan was not looking at Jax’s smile. Evan was looking at the tiny, invisible red laser shooting out of Jax’s mechanical eye. The laser was bouncing off the polished silver shuffling machine. It was scanning the tiny, microscopic barcodes on the edges of the physical paper cards. Jax knew the future. Jax knew exactly which cards the Dealer was going to flip over. "Call the bet, Evan," Jax mocked. His robotic
Chapter 369
Evan let out a long, heavy breath. He had risked his life, and he had won. The Dealer pushed a massive, towering mountain of black chips toward Evan. He now controlled over a billion years of life. He was the chip leader. "You read him, kid," Marco laughed softly, patting Evan’s back. "You called his bluff perfectly. You are amazing."But Evan did not feel amazing. His head hurt terribly. He wiped more blood from his nose. He knew he could not use the Perception again. The scramblers were too strong. If he tried it one more time, his brain would melt. "Next hand," the Dealer said smoothly. The game continued. It was a brutal, bloody war of attrition. Evan played smart. He used his massive stack of chips to bully the weaker players. He folded when he met resistance. He relied on pure, human poker skills. An hour later, Evan bet heavily against the woman with the fiber-optic snake hair. She tried to bluff him, but her hair cables hissed and flashed orange near the roots when she w
Chapter 368
Evan stared at the massive bet. His heart raced. He had Pocket Kings. It was an incredibly strong hand. The board was safe. If he called and won, he would eliminate the Brain and take a massive lead in the tournament. But if he called and lost, he would be crippled. He would have almost no chips left. Evan looked at the glass jar. The brain was a mathematical genius. It calculated probabilities perfectly. Would a perfect computer risk its entire life on a bluff? Or did the Brain have a set of Fours, Sevens, or Twos? "Kid," Marco whispered behind him. "It is a huge bet. Be careful. Machines don't bluff like humans do."Evan needed an edge. He needed to know if the machine was lying. He could not read its face, because it did not have a face. He could not read its heartbeat, because it did not have a heart. Evan took a slow, deep breath. He closed his eyes. He opened the mental door in his mind. He triggered his Chronos Perception. The pain was absolutely horrific. It was worse t
Chapter 367
The fat gold man folded. The woman in white feathers folded. The bet came to Jax. Jax looked at the old man. The Syndicate Boss’s glowing red eye stopped spinning. It focused completely on the old man’s shaking hands. "You are weak, old man," Jax said, his deep, robotic voice dripping with cruelty. "You are betting on hope. I do not believe in hope."Jax pushed a tall stack of black chips into the center. "I call."Everyone else folded. It was just the old man and the metal monster. "Show your cards," the Dealer commanded. The old man flipped his cards over with trembling fingers. “Queen of Hearts. Queen of Diamonds.” A very strong pair. Jax laughed. He flipped his cards over. “Ace of Spades. Ace of Clubs.” The best possible starting hand in the game. The Dealer flipped the five community cards rapidly. None of them helped the old man. No Queens appeared. "The winning hand is a pair of Aces," the Dealer said coldly. "The player Jax wins the pot."The old man let out a horribl
Chapter 366
Behind Evan, Marco rested his good hand on the back of Evan’s leather chair. "Just breathe, kid," Marco whispered softly. The old grifter’s voice was full of pain, but it was steady. "Do not look at the guards. Do not look at the spears. Look at the cards. Play the man, not the table."Rell stood next to Marco. The scavenger girl held her sharp knives tightly. She watched the shadows. Glitch was hiding behind Evan’s chair. The tiny hacker was trembling. "I do not like this game, Evan. It is too scary.""I will protect you, Glitch," Evan said quietly. "I promise."Evan looked back at the table. He placed his bare, bruised hands flat on the soft black velvet. "Deal," Evan commanded. The Dealer’s hands blurred. He slid two cards face down to every player. The Obsidian Tournament began. Evan did not touch his cards right away. He remembered what Marco had taught him. He watched the other players. The fat man made of gold picked up his cards. He smiled a greedy smile. The woman wit
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