The presidential suite at the Grand Monarch Hotel cost three thousand dollars a night. To the old Gael, that was six months of rent. It also meant instant noodles. And a lot of humiliations. To the new Gael, it was just the result of a broken roulette wheel and a waiter with a face full of glass. A more than reasonable price.
Gael was on a large white leather sofa. He was barefoot, holding a glass of single malt whiskey in one hand and a calculator in the other. On the Italian glass coffee table sat chips from the Onyx Palace. There was also a wad of bills from the ATM and a winning lottery ticket.
He had spent the last hour doing math. If his theory of Equivalent Exchange was true, the universe had already paid a steep price. It had suffered greatly in blood and damages for his current wealth. The system was, temporarily, at peace. He was safe.
He took a sip of wine, the most vintage in the place.
"Probability of this day getting any better: absolute," he muttered to himself.
The exact instant he pronounced the last syllable, the physics of the room collapsed.
It wasn't a loud event, but a sudden vacuum. The constant hum of the air conditioning died. The traffic on the main avenue, visible from the suite's large window, went mute. It was as if someone had pressed the mute button on the world. Gael lowered his glass. The amber liquid in the crystal tumbler stopped shifting. The drops floated in the air, like tiny golden spheres.
The temperature plummeted, frosting the edges of the table. In the center of the living room, space seemed to fold. It tore reality apart, like a cheap theater curtain.
Three figures emerged from that fissure.
Gael didn't blink. His biological instinct ordered him to scream and run, but his brain, cold and calculating, took the reins instantly. Extinction-level anomaly, he thought. Unknown variables. Three anthropomorphic entities.
The first woman glowed with a chaotic, golden light. She had messy hair and her expression showed guilt and childish curiosity. It was Gad.
Beside her, Tyche, the goddess of Fortune, stood elegantly. She wore an impeccable tailored suit, as if woven from pure silver threads. Her eyes spun like the reels of a slot machine before locking onto him.
But it was the third figure that made the air barely breathable. Nemesis. She wore dense shadows that writhed like black smoke. Her gaze was pure vengeance, an abyss of hatred that threatened to disintegrate Gael.
"Gael," Nemesis's voice resonated. She didn't speak with vocal cords; the word vibrated directly in the young man's bones. "You are profaning the balance."
Gael set the calculator down on the sofa. He caught one of the floating drops of wine with his index finger, brought it to his mouth, and leaned back even further.
"If you're here for the money, you're going to have to get in line," Gael said, his voice flat. "And I'll warn you, the casino manager down on Twelfth Street didn't fare too well trying to take it from me."
Gad stepped forward, raising her hands in a placating gesture.
"We don't want your painted paper, human. There was a... calculation error. A statistical anomaly in the Office of Probabilities. You received a payload of pure fortune that didn't belong to you."
"An error?" Gael raised an eyebrow. His mind tied the loose ends together at breakneck speed. Supernatural entities. Probability control. The rule of misfortune exchange. "Quite the opposite, it's been the most wonderful success."
"We are the order that keeps this world from being consumed by chaos," Tyche intervened, her tone cold and bureaucratic. "And you, with your little show in the city, are overloading the system. Every time you push your luck to save your life or get rich, the collateral damage adds up in the community. If you keep this up, you're going to fracture the destiny of thousands of people."
Gael looked at the stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Then he looked at the deities. A cynical smile, devoid of any religious respect, split his face.
"So?" he asked.
The word dropped into the room like a bomb. Nemesis clenched her fists. The suite's reinforced glass windows cracked with a menacing sound.
"'So'?" Nemesis repeated, her voice guttural. "Arrogant worm. We can erase you from existence before your brain even registers the pain."
Gael stood up. He wasn't tall, or muscular, but his absolute certainty made him seem immense. He approached the glass table and leaned on it, barely six feet from the goddesses.
"No, you can't," Gael stated, looking them in the eyes with extreme coldness. "If you could erase me, you would have done it from a distance without bothering to make the trip to my living room. But you're here. Negotiating. Threatening. That means you have rules."
Tyche narrowed her eyes, visibly irritated by the human's deduction.
"The contract is sealed," Gael continued, tapping the table with his index finger. "You gave me this luck for who knows what reasons, but now it belongs to me. And according to your rules, any attempt to harm me will cause a catastrophic 'accident.' This will backfire on you or affect the city. If you attack me now, I bet all my money that this hotel collapses. That could kill hundreds of people. Then, you'll have to answer to whoever pays your salary."
Gad swallowed hard, glancing sideways at Tyche. The human had found the loophole in record time.
Nemesis took a step forward, the darkness around her swallowing the light from the lamps.
"Listen to me closely, parasite. We are bound by the balance, but there are entities in our pantheon who are not. If you keep standing out on the cosmic radar, you will attract forces that do not answer to luck, but to total fatality. And when the Hounds of Destiny come for you, your luck won't save you."
Gael picked up his glass and drank the last sip of wine.
"I'll take the risk," he said, turning his back to them. He walked over to the large window and looked out at the sleeping city. "For twenty-seven years, the universe was my executioner. Now I own the board. Tell your superiors that if they want to stop the chaos, they're going to have to try harder. And now, if you don't mind, I paid three thousand dollars for this room and I want to sleep. Close the cosmic rift on your way out and, if you come back, bring some snacks from your pantheon; they must be 'divine'."
Tyche sighed, a mix of frustration and strange admiration gleaming in her bureaucratic eyes.
"We warned you, Gael. Equivalent exchange always ends up collecting its debts."
When Gael turned around, the room was empty. The air conditioning hummed back to life. Gravity pulled down the spilled drops of wine. The noise of the night traffic filled the suite once again.
He was alone. But he was no longer an ordinary man. The goddesses had just confirmed he was untouchable. A dark laugh bubbled up from his chest. The entire world had just become his personal casino.