Viva La Vida: Chapter IV

Again, did my best with the formatting. And I'm reviewing 2 more pieces. Enjoy.

"Wait a second, Sergey." A man in long trench coat spoke up in a gravelly voice. "He wants to play, and he doesn't want anymore waiting around. Look at him." The man pointed to Daniel. "He just wants to play, as do I. So lets stop fooling around and get to it."

"Very well, James. Easy does it." Jade said a ghost of a smile on her face. "So Daniel, You want to know how to play. I'll give you the short version. We play with dice. No cards, no chips, just dice. It preserves the quality of this aged game, or so we believe. We keep it plain and simple. Look around you. Who do you see?"

"Strangers," Daniel answered.

" Exactly," Jade replied. "And we like to keep it that way. James, here? He's a top Financing Exec for Microsoft. Right hand man of Bill Gates himself. If ol' Bill ever found out where that extra 5% every month goes, James would be a dead man."

James sipped his drink and said nothing. Daniel was awestruck.

"You seem amazed, Daniel. The technology industry brings in just as much as the drug runners every year and can be twice as ruthless. Money is power, and the more you have the more you have to lose."

"But on to the game, the dice is rolled by a player and the numbers correspond to a certain prize. Not their sum, their actual number. Say you roll the same number on both die. You win big. You roll two odd numbers you lose. And whoever is sitting directly across from you chooses what you lose and who it goes to. Roll two even numbers and the person across from you chooses your prize and who you get it from. It could be a sum of money, a certain influence, a position, an object. And we rotate so every time its a different chooser. Your life is literally in all of our hands, Daniel. But all of ours are in your hands as well. There are no alliances, no buy-offs, just straight up give-and-take. Remember, though there are always options. Its usually a pretty solid game, moving along, until someone rolls snake eyes."

"Two ones? What does that mean, the clothes off your back?" Daniel spat.

Jade drew a breath and shook her head. "No, it means everything. Get it? Snake eyes means, you lose Everything. Everything. To be divvied up by all of us. Capiche?"

'Why even play? There's so much to lose!!" Daniel asked.

"But so, so much to gain, Daniel." Sergey answered. "Think about it. Sure, the other guy loses, but you win big. Think about it, you could literally control the world!"

"But then you roll two ones. And you are basically starting from the beginning again. You have nothing!" Daniel cried.

"Remember, there our always options." Jade said quietly. "You roll two ones and you have three. One, Give it all up and admit defeat. Two, try to run from us and bet you won't wake up the next morning. Three," Jade produced a small handgun seemingly from nowhere. "We gave you this, you go outside and count to three."

Daniel's mouth hung open, his eyes wide with fear. Jade spoke again, but to him, her voice seemed far away.

"There's always options..."