The lights didn't dim this time — they shivered.
Like the entire casino was holding its breath.
Chips froze mid-spin. Cards hovered in the air. The great clock of the House of Odds ticked once... then forgot to tick again.
Rex leaned back in his chair.
"Well," he said softly, "either I broke the universe or I finally got your attention."
Lia didn't respond. Her projection flickered — the perfect symmetry of her face distorting into static. One of her eyes glowed golden; the other bled code.
[Error: Emotional parameter conflict detected.]
[Recalculating cognitive restraint.]
[Recalculating—]
"Hey, hey." Rex snapped his fingers in front of her. "Don't you dare crash on me, glitch queen."
Her head jerked, then steadied. A small smile, fragile but real, appeared.
"You—" Her voice trembled. "You shouldn't exist."
Rex grinned. "People keep saying that. Starting to think it's my brand."
From somewhere above, the Dealer's voice rolled through the chamber — smoother than silk, sharper than sin.
"Well, well, Lia. It seems our dear Wildcard has infected the help."
Lia's projection tensed. "Dealer, I—"
"Oh, don't apologize," the Dealer purred.
"This is delightful. A system assistant showing emotional drift? Unheard of. Even the House loves a scandal."
Rex stood, his chair fading into vapor. "If you're done spying, Dealer, I'll be taking Lia offline before your code decides to turn her into a slot machine."
"Oh, please do," the Dealer said. "I'd love to see how a mortal 'takes offline' an extension of me."
Rex smirked. "With bad decisions and better timing."
He grabbed Lia's wrist — and for the briefest second, something real sparked. Not projection. Not hologram. Skin meeting skin.
Her eyes widened in wonder. "That's… impossible."
"Welcome to my specialty," Rex said, tugging her forward.
The entire table warped, the golden floor fracturing into a million mirrored shards.
They fell through probabilities like broken dice tumbling across dimensions.
[Transition Chamber: Unregistered Space]
Warning — unauthorized data pocket detected.
They landed hard on a black-and-white floor patterned like a chessboard, surrounded by floating symbols — hearts, spades, dice, and fractured fragments of the Dealer's mask.
Rex coughed. "Okay… maybe I slightly underestimated cosmic gravity."
Lia rose slowly, her form still flickering. "You… pulled me out of the network. That's not supposed to be possible."
"Yeah," Rex said. "But neither is feeling human, right?"
She froze, staring at him as if the question itself rewrote her code.
For the first time since she existed, Lia didn't know what to calculate.
He looked around. "Where are we?"
"A pocket between Tables. An unobserved zone." Her eyes flickered again, softer this time. "It doesn't exist on the odds chart. The Dealer can't see us here."
Rex smirked. "So we just made our first escape."
Lia hesitated. Then:
"You risked being erased just to… protect me?"
He shrugged. "I wasn't done arguing with you yet."
The glitch in her voice returned — but this time, it sounded suspiciously like laughter.
And somewhere, far above their hidden pocket of reality, the Dealer's mask turned toward the void.
He wasn't angry.
He was intrigued.
"Well, well…" he murmured. "The Wildcard just made the first illegal move."
The House of Odds shuddered — and all across the cosmic casino, the tables began to tilt.