The Game of Luck

by Catherine Cerveny

  “What about the last card? It’s good, isn’t it?” he asked, nodding toward it.

  The Judgment. Like the Death card, it symbolized a change. An old life ended, and a new one began. But this card was more positive. It wasn’t just a new start, but a reward for past efforts. It meant be happy because new beginnings were coming. I took the hand he’d rested on my thigh and laced my fingers with his.

  “Yes,” I said, smiling at him. “It’s good.”

  * * *

  One of my positive takeaways from my time spent in One Gov was I’d learned how to endure an off-the-rails staff meeting, which was where Alexei and I spent the next two hours.

  All the high-ranking Consortium members were assembled—every last tattooed, suspicious one of them—and Alexei laid out his plan to slip power away from One Gov. It was a plan I’d heard before and one I hadn’t supported at the time. What a difference six months could make.

  Also involved was Brody, which shocked the hell out of me. When I spotted him, he nodded at me from the other side of the conference room. Next, I felt a flutter on my left wrist from my newly returned c-tex bracelet, meaning an incoming shim. Surprise, surprise—a message from Brody.

  “He needed me. Again. So he broke me out of prison. Again. Looks like I’m the first line of attack against the queenmind. Are you good with taking out One Gov?”

  “It was my idea,” I sent back, tapping away laboriously. For a second, I missed my implants before I let the regret go. They turned me into someone I didn’t want to be. Maybe someday I’d want them back. For now, I could live without them.

  I caught Brody’s smile. “In that case, I’m all in.”

  The plan involved taking down the CN-net and reinstalling the Consortium’s own operating network in its place. They would control everything that connected the tri-system—all the socioeconomic trappings holding it together from finance to communications to entertainment to the resources that kept the system running. All AIs would realign with the new coding and all t-mods would be recalibrated to answer only to the new system.

  It was a massive undertaking, but it would be bloodless and clean. If all went well, no one would notice the new programming until it was complete. One Gov hooahs and any planetary police forces like the MPLE would be converted to Consortium troops without even realizing it as their order systems were overwritten. Any dissenters would be cut off from the new system, becoming spooks. Hardly the worst of punishments, but when you’d spent your whole life wired to the greater CN-net collective, it might seem like its own brand of torture.

  One Gov officials would be rounded up and detained by Consortium teams already moving into position. This was the only place where I envisioned things turning messy. I could only imagine what sort of disaster might befall the group of chain-breakers sent to round up Secretary Arkell. I thought about the Two of Wands and wondered how it might come into play. What kind of opposition could we expect? Arkell may not have been my King of Swords, but he was still powerful all on his own.

  I saw people nodding, agreeing. There were questions about tactics and strategies, and what might happen if they didn’t manage to pull down the entire CN-net at once.

  “What is the timing?” someone asked. A woman—Sonya Ivanov. Her face was lightly lined, which meant she had to be at least three hundred. “When will we make our run against One Gov?”

  “We need time to plan accordingly,” a man added. Pavel Chapaev may have been even older than Sonya, if the lines on his face were any indication. He was part of the old guard that had come to Mars with Konstantin Belikov. However, since he’d survived Alexei’s purge, he could be trusted. “We can’t be hasty. If we make a mistake, and this goes wrong, we’ll be helpless and exposed.”

  Alexei was about to speak, but I gripped his hand, squeezing hard. He looked at me, his gaze curious. My gut prodded with a sharp and furious jab, in a hurry to get my attention. I’d been largely silent during the meeting. I didn’t have any power there and no plans to rock the boat. But at the same time, everyone knew I had Alexei’s ear in a way none of them did.

  “Now,” I said in Russian. “We need to act now.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I rubbed my free hand over my stomach, as if that could ease the anxious surety demanding action. “You need to get everyone into position. Now is your best time to catch One Gov off guard.”

  “That’s preposterous!” said Pavel. “Being ready so quickly is impossible. We can’t rush off to…”

  His voice faded. The room fell silent. I looked from face to face as their expressions went blank, even Alexei’s. They all took on the far-away look that spoke of connecting with the CN-net. While I’d witnessed that look before, seeing it affect a whole room at once was nothing short of freakish.

  “What is it?” I asked, tugging at Alexei’s hand the moment his face cleared. “Has something changed?”

  “It’s Secretary Arkell. He was found at home, slumped over his desk with a knife in his back. He’s been murdered. Rhys Arkell is dead. And apparently the last person known on record to be seen with him, Tanith Vaillancourt-Vieira, has disappeared without a trace.”

  * * *

  It was all the impetus the Consortium needed to put the hustle in their asses. Less than an hour later, we set about knocking One Gov off its pedestal and taking over the tri-system.

  The conference room was transformed. Chain-breakers lifted out the meeting table and brought in reclining chairs. Then an army of tech-meds streamed in, led by Karol Rogov. They wheeled in monitoring equipment and set up makeshift workstations around the room. The reclining chairs were placed in clusters around the workstations so one tech-med could monitor five or six chairs at once. Nonessential personnel were hurried out while chain-breakers took up sentry positions around the room.

  As I watched, various Consortium members sat in the reclining chairs and made themselves comfortable. Alexei was in a cluster with Luka, another man, and two women I didn’t know well. Brody was in a cluster with Stanis. Soon everyone was seated while tech-meds calibrated their equipment.

  It would be a coordinated snipe of the CN-net. Each cluster would move through one area of the network, working from the top and cascading the changes through the whole system. One Gov’s queenmind would be dismantled first, then rebuilt with the new programming architecture so everything would flow from there.

  I watched Karol fuss over the machines while Alexei sat in the recliner. I held his hand in a death grip. Alexei may have been confident of their success, but telling me not to worry was like telling me not to breathe. And the worst part, I could do nothing but stand by and watch.

  Alexei kissed both of my hands. “It will be fine. In six hours, it will be over,” he promised.

  “I just keep thinking about the Two of Wands,” I admitted. “I’m afraid of things going sideways. What if it takes longer than six hours? There’s a reason One Gov has CN-net usage restrictions. You can’t stay logged in to the CN-net indefinitely.”

  “We’ll work in shifts until it’s done.”

  “But what if—”

  “Everything will go according to plan, and if things do go wrong, you need to be patient. It will work out. Temperance, remember? You picked the card.”

  I sighed. “I guess I did.”

  “You did, so listen to your own advice.”

  “Gospodin Petriv, I need to check your vitals,” Karol interrupted, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, but I must establish a baseline.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m just getting in the way here.”

  “You’re never in the way,” Alexei said and used our joined hands to pull me down and kiss me. It was long and slow, with a lot of tongue and filled with so much heat, I thought my panties were melting. When he let me go, I felt so flushed and dazed, all rational thought fell straight out of my head.

  “See you in six hours,” I managed.

  He grinned. “Yes, you will.”


  * * *

  “She’s not my grandmother. I don’t need to be here—unless you need moral support,” Lotus said, rubbing her belly and tucking her feet up under her.

  “Of course I want moral support. Talking to Grandmother without losing my mind is like running through quicksand—impossible. Besides, this is something I want you to hear too and I don’t want to repeat myself” was my answer.

  Lotus and I were in a sitting room in the new underground condo. Before Alexei, I’d never had a room dedicated solely to sitting. Now I was awash in them, with each room lavishly furnished and the walls blanketed in colorful artwork to make up for the lack of windows. No point having windows when you lived underground and had no view to speak of.

  Both of us were at loose ends so we’d gravitated to each other for comfort the way family did, bound together by genetics and shared worry. We sat on the couch, Lotus rubbing her ever-expanding belly in the classic image of glowing, blissful motherhood-in-waiting. Once, I would have been envious, though I’d never admit it aloud. Now everything was different in ways I still had yet to process.

  “I’ll be interested to know if Suzette is really the bitch you claim she is.”

  “If she isn’t, try not to act disappointed. I’m about to tell her that her son is dead, so things could get weird.”

  “It still cranks me that you’re not upset by this. I mean, it’s your dad. He’s dead. Why aren’t you all weepy and sedated?”

  “One, I hardly knew him. He was more like a remote uncle than a father. Two, I got the closure I needed when I pushed his murderer off the space elevator. I can pass on the weepy sedation.”

  “Right. Got it. Total badass. Still, I can’t imagine turning my back on my baby the way your parents did. It isn’t right,” she said, thoughtful. Introspective Lotus. This was something the world hadn’t seen before. Maybe motherhood would be good for her. “If Stanis pulled something like that, I’d kick his ass all over Mars.”

  Or maybe Lotus was still Lotus.

  “Stanis adores you, so that would never happen. And my parents…Well, maybe that was how things needed to be. If I’d had a normal upbringing, I doubt I’d have been a blip on Alexei’s horizon. Now let me shim the old bat and get this over with.”

  The super-secret underground evil lair had excellent communication tech, on par with One Gov’s. It didn’t take long for my shim to reach Earth via the boosted signal amplifier blue-chip connected to my c-tex. We listened for a few beats and then the holo for face-chat shim popped up, and there was Suzette Sevigny.

  It was barely dawn in Nairobi, but Grandmother looked like she’d been awake for hours, waiting for my shim. Not possible, but she’d always been uncanny that way.

  “Felicia. You have news.” It was said matter-of-factly, as if she already knew what I planned on saying.

  “Hello, Grandmother. Yes, I have news. This is Lotus, by the way.”

  “Ah, yes, I’ve heard about her from Celeste.”

  Queen Bee Celeste strikes again. I almost smiled, imagining Celeste’s attempts to herd all the Sevigny cats and keep them in order and connected. Now I did the same, doing what I could to keep us safe, although in a bloodier, more violent way.

  “Hi,” Lotus said, waving. “Felicia asked me to be here or I’d never intrude. Nice to meet you.”

  Suzette inclined her head like royalty before those Sevigny green eyes swung back to me. “I dreamed I would hear from you soon, so I’ve been preparing myself. Tell me what’s happened. What do I need to know?”

  I steeled myself for the inevitable. “I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound cruel, but he’s dead. I’m sorry, Grandmother. Julien was murdered on Venus about four months ago. It was…not a good death.”

  Suzette nodded, her expression never changing. “And do you know who did it? Have you dealt with them?”

  “Yes, I know who it was and yes, I dealt with him personally. He won’t be a problem for us ever again.”

  “Good. I’m glad it’s been kept in the family. Thank you, Felicia.” She closed her eyes, her face crumpling a little before she pulled herself together and spoke again. “In my dream…I knew it would play out this way, but it’s good to have it confirmed and know we’re safe. When the baby comes, none of this should be hanging over our heads.”

  “It won’t, and we’ll do our best to keep it from happening again,” I said.

  “Baby?” Lotus burst out. “What baby? My baby? Or wait…The Empress! Are you pregnant, Felicia? Are you and the Russian pregnant? Are we going to have babies together? Why didn’t you say something?”

  I gave Lotus a sharp look from the corner of my eye. “Because it’s too new and we’re not saying anything yet.”

  “Oh, right, got it. Sorry, forget I’m here.”

  “No, wait. Listen.” I turned back to Grandmother. If I was going to tear the skin renewal patch off, I may as well do it all the way. “There’s something I want both of you to know. It’s a truth I’ve been keeping to myself, mainly because I didn’t want it to change who we were as a family. It’s made me doubt the person I am, so I’ve been wrestling with how to share the details.”

  “But you feel we should know about it now,” Suzette said, as if she had an inkling of what was coming. Who knew? If she dreamed the future, maybe she did.

  “Yes. I’ve come to terms with it, and I know I can’t let the rest of the family remain in the dark.” I took a deep, fortifying breath and let it out slowly before I spoke again. “There’s a reason why our family was taken and murdered. And if we’re not careful, it could happen again. It explains why I’m so good with Tarot cards, and you have dreams, and why this family does the illogical things it does yet still manages to come out ahead.”

  “Go on,” Suzette urged, and beside me, Lotus was breathless with waiting.

  “It’s because, as weird as this sounds, we’re lucky. Not metaphorically lucky. Actual luck. We have a gene that twists situations so that we benefit and others don’t. You know when you get the feeling suggesting you do something stupid or random, yet somehow, things work out for you? That’s the luck gene, doing its thing. We succeed where others wouldn’t. But the thing is, people want that luck for themselves. They want to hunt and exploit us, and do whatever it takes to use our luck to their advantage.”

  “Except it doesn’t want to be used, does it?” Grandmother said, surprisingly unruffled, accepting my words without question.

  “No, it doesn’t. It has a mind of its own, and its own set of rules. The rules are actually pretty straightforward, but they can make your life so complicated, sometimes you can’t tell up from down.”

  “I have a luck gene?” Lotus squeaked. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Do you know what I could have done if I’d known about this sooner? Well, I’m not sure what I would have done, but it would have been something. I would have used it instead of wasting it!”

  “Actually, you’ve been using it all along,” I told her drily. “Why do you think you dumped your loser ex-boyfriend and hooked up with Stanis?”

  Her mouth opened and closed, and she looked thoughtful. Then she held up her hand and waved it in my face. “Would someone cut off my fingers and put them under their pillow and wish for luck?”

  I groaned. “That’s not quite how it works.” Then I thought about Caleb and his plans for the luck gene; that was exactly what he believed. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Tell us the rules,” Grandmother said, urgent and excited. It wasn’t quite the reception I expected, but then again, her reactions never were. “Tell us everything you know. Explain how the luck gene works.”

  So I did.

  25

  I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I was shaken awake. I opened my eyes to see Stanis over me, reaching down to shake me again. All the lights were on and I jolted from groggy to instantly awake at the shock of seeing the big Russian in my bedroom.

  He leaned over me, his face haggard and t
roubled. I checked my c-tex. It was almost nine in the morning. Gods, where had yesterday gone? I’d crawled into bed, exhausted after a marathon talking session with Grandmother and Lotus, explaining the ins and outs of the luck gene. Then I’d crashed in a deep sleep, expecting to wake up and see Alexei beside me. Instead, I got Stanis.

  “Lotus let me in. Please, get dressed.”

  “What’s going on?” My stomach plummeted. “Where’s Alexei?”

  “Please, Felicia, I need you to get dressed and come with me.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Please. Just come.”

  He waited in the hall while I flew about the room and pulled myself together. Five minutes later, we hurried down several floors to the conference room where I’d last seen Alexei. Stanis was quiet as we ran—which did nothing to ease my peace of mind. I did some quick calculations. The Consortium takeover of the CN-net should have been completed within six to twelve hours. We were well beyond twelve hours. If Stanis had finished his tasks, where was Alexei?

  I had my answer a minute later.

  We entered the conference room, wading through the wall of chain-breaker security guarding the door. The room was mostly empty aside from a number of vacant recliner chairs, the monitoring machines, and Karol and two other tech-meds. Luka and Brody stood by, looking grave. Lastly, I saw Alexei, eyes closed as if in sleep.

  I slowed to a stop. “Where is everyone else? Why is he the only one still out?”

  “He hasn’t surfaced yet.” Brody spoke first, as if only he had the courage to say anything.

  “He’s been in the CN-net this whole time?”

  “Yes,” Karol said, looking from the monitoring machine to me, then away. “He ensured everyone else logged out, but he hasn’t yet logged out himself.”

  “But it’s been over twelve hours. No one’s supposed to be in that long. Can’t you just wake him up?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Brody said, voice gentle. “He has to be near a nexus-node. Alexei wanted to dismantle them. He hates how they limit and restrict access, forcing everyone to go through the paid channels One Gov managed. Unfortunately, it was too much for the initial startup. Right now, the Consortium is in control of the CN-net, but most of the old rules still apply.”