Limitless Evolution As a Snake

”My dad knows where I am.”

[System: Does he?]

Nope, not that I’m aware of anyway.

”Right, your father,” the Manager spits, his eye twitching. He leans closer, leaning right over the desk. ”And if something were to... happen to you down here? If you were to just disappear into the foundations? Do you think he’d burn this whole block to the ground?”

”Probably,” I lie smoothly, trying not to look like a guy who’s two seconds away from burping up panic-venom. ”He’s pretty sensitive about his stuff.”

The Manager stares at me for three long, agonising seconds. Sweat beads on his ratty little forehead, and for one glorious moment I actually think the bluff might work.

Then his lips peel back into the worst smile I’ve ever seen on anybody, rat or otherwise.

”Funny thing about fathers,” he says, easing back into his big oak chair like he’s got all the time in the world. ”Never met one yet that actually showed up when it mattered.”

He snaps his fingers, and I hear the door behind me creak open again.

Oh no.

[System: Yeah nah, mate, that’s not a good sound. That’s a ’bring in the next guy’ sound.]

I really wish you’d shut up right now.

The door doesn’t creak open to reveal some hulking big boss. It creaks open to reveal absolutely nobody, because the guy who was supposed to walk through it apparently changed his mind about his life choices somewhere between the hallway and here.

The Manager’s grin falls apart in real time.

”Marcus?” he calls out, voice cracking. ”MARCUS, WHERE ARE YOU, YOU USELESS LITTLE SHIT!”

That’s when he loses it. Not in the cool villain way, but in the way a grown rat man just full-on combusts emotionally right in front of me.

”HE’D SKIN ME ALIVE!” he shrieks, slamming both palms on the table so hard one of the henchmen behind him flinches. ”HE’D BOIL MY KIDS IN OIL! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR FATHER DID TO THE LAST GUY WHO OWED HIM MONEY? HE TURNED HIM INTO A LAMP! A LAMP, FUCK! I HEARD HE FLUSHED HIS EX DOWN THE DRAIN THE OTHER DAY, THE ACTUAL DRAIN, DOWN TO THE CROCS AND THE SLIMES AND EVERYTHING. WHAT KIND OF MAN DOES THAT?”

He freezes mid-rant. His huge nose twitches, and his eyes go wide and glassy.

”Wait. Oh god, was that your mom?”

I have genuinely no idea what he’s talking about, but I’m not about to correct a man having a breakdown.

”Yeah,” I nod, because honestly, going along with it feels safer than the truth, which is that I don’t even know if she was my real mother.

”Oh god, I’m so sorry, please, please forgive me, I didn’t mean, fuck—” He’s babbling now, spit flying, hands shaking so bad the papers on the desk start vibrating with him. Behind him, the henchmen aren’t doing much better. One of them is full-on sniffling into his own sleeve. The other one’s lip is wobbling like he’s about to start bawling over a dead goldfish.

Old mate, please tell me this is normal.

[System: Nah mate. This is not normal. This is a man who has heard way too many campfire stories about your old man and none of them good.]

The Manager’s still going, working himself into a full spiral. ”I don’t have six million to give you,” he starts crying, voice cracking clean in half. ”You think- you think all this gold is real? IT’S FAKE! IT’S PAINTED LEAD, MAN, I’M SORRY, FUCK!”

He grabs a fistful of his own hair and yanks, actual clumps coming loose in his fist like he’s trying to rip his own skull open. For a second I think he’s going to have a heart attack right there on the desk. Instead he lurches sideways and hauls the big vault door open behind him with both paws, metal groaning like it hasn’t been oiled since before I was hatched.

I stretch forward on my coils to look inside.

It’s empty.

Not just ’a little empty.’ It is completely, hilariously bare except for three pathetic stacks of hundred-dollar bills sitting in the middle of the floor. Next to them, somehow more insulting, is a half-eaten chocolate bar.

My snake brain short-circuits. Is this a joke? This is the grand prize? This is the big, scary vault I was almost turned into a belt for?

”The owner took the reserves topside yesterday,” the Manager sobs, dropping straight down onto his knees on the cold concrete like his legs just gave up on him. ”He bet it all on the horse girl races! We don’t have the cash! If I don’t pay your father’s kid the jackpot, he kills me! If I tell you to get lost, he still kills me! There’s no version of tonight where I don’t die, don’t you get it?!”

He scrambles up, grabs a thick stack of legal-looking papers off the desk, and before I can even process what’s happening, he’s already shoved a pen straight into my tail.

”Sign it,” he begs, tears streaming down that huge rat nose, dripping onto the paperwork and smudging the ink. ”Take it. Take the whole place. The building, the slot machines, the bunny girls, the debt, all of it, it’s yours! Just don’t tell your dad I defaulted on a payout, please, I’m begging you, I have children, I have a mortgage, I have a boyfriend!”

I stare down at the legal documents. My tail’s holding the pen steady out of pure muscle memory, not because any part of my brain has caught up yet.

[System: Well, struth mate. Guess who just inherited a full-blown money laundering operation.]

Come again?

I look from the rat-man to the trembling stack of forms to the trio of miserable henchmen and finally back to the rat, who is now hyperventilating directly into the oak desk.

I flick my tongue, just to make sure the air doesn’t taste like straight-up ketamine. Nope, this is still real life.