Page 79 of Ideal Life

But this change—Sam still being in the tournament—was okay, right? It was great news that he was still here. If he placed higher, he could win something to put toward the bookstore.

So why was Talia hiding from him in the restroom?

Guilt wrapped its tentacles around her heart.

Not only had she broken her promise (many times over) not to use the watch on him, but she was also cheating. Talia thought the end justified the means—by winning the tournament, she would prevent Omni from merging Ideal Life with CerebraLink and creating a Frankenstein AI capable of brain horrors she couldn’t even think about.

But that didn’t mean Sam would see her “strategic use” of the rewind mechanism in the same way.

She wasn’t even sure if she really saw it that way.

It wasn’t until Louise opened the bathroom door and left that Talia poked her head out to check if Sam was still there.

The coast was clear.

She slipped back into ballroom A. At least for the rest of today, the tournament would keep the players in their respective ballrooms, just whittling down the number of tables in each. Tomorrow, they would consolidate into one room, and if Talia and Sam were both still playing then, there would be no way to avoid him. But she’d figure out later what to do if that happened. Right now, she had level 7 to concentrate on.

Talia breezed through the rest of the evening. Well, perhaps “breeze” wasn’t the right word, since she had the benefit of redoing her strategy should any particular hand not go as she’d hoped. At first, she wasn’t sure if she should keep using her watch, since it was clearly having an inadvertent effect on Sam’s life, too. But Talia decided that because she was working toward a greater good, it was okay. Besides, Sam had lost in level 6 all the previous times; the fact that he had made it past that now was gravy, right?

The only side effect was that headache, nausea, and dizziness were now her constant companions. But for better or for worse, she was getting used to functioning with a baseline of feeling ill. Maybe this was what it was like to have morning sickness. (Was Libby feeling this way? She reminded herself to catch up with her sister once this was all over.)

In any case, if Talia messed something up because of brain fog or otherwise, she simply undid it and tried again. A little sicker, but with knowledge of what the other hands would be and what she needed to do to win.

By the time level 10 concluded, Talia was ranked 82nd out of the remaining 471 players. Sam was doing even better, ranked 16th. Not that the current standings really mattered; all that counted was what you were ranked when you finally lost all your chips, and you’d better be in the top 200 if you wanted to go home with anything.

Still, it was a relief to make it to the second (and final) day of play. Hopefully Sam wouldn’t look past the top twenty-five or so names on the leaderboard tonight, and Talia could avoid talking to him about her presence at the tournament until tomorrow.

As she walked out of ballroom A, though, Sam stood waiting with his arms crossed.

“What are you doing here, Tal?”

“Um…” A couple of other players stopped, anticipating some drama and hoping to eavesdrop.

Talia crossed the hallway to Sam and lowered her voice a little. “I decided to sign up and play in the tournament.”

The right corner of his mouth twitched. “You don’t play anymore. You haven’t since college. And never in a real tournament.” He looked pointedly at her watch. “And yet here you are, ranked in the top one hundred. How curious.”

“Sam, I can explain.”

“No need. I understand perfectly.” He turned and strode away.

“It’s not like that!” Talia chased him down the hall and grabbed his arm. Now people were definitely watching.

Sam jerked out of her grasp, turned, and glared straight down at her. Talia shrank. Never in their years of friendship had he looked at her with so much anger. So much disappointment. “It’s not like what?” Aware of the onlookers, his voice was a furious whisper now. “Not like you using that watch to go back in time and redo any hands that didn’t turn out the way you wanted?”

“I swear the money’s not for me. Come on, Sam—you know me! I have to do this because I found out something awful will probably happen if I let this deal with Omni go through, so I have to kill the acquisition, but there’s a one-million-dollar termination fee in the agreement.”

He kept staring at her.

“The company doesn’t have that kind of money to spare, so if I don’t come up with it, Ideal Life goes bankrupt. All my employees lose their jobs. Everything we’ve worked hard to build—a really amazing technology that could be helpful to the world if it’s in the right hands—will go up in flames.”

Sam bit his lip. She hoped he could understand. “And what about me?” he asked.

“What about you?”

That was the wrong thing to say, though, because he clenched his fists and turned to walk away.

“I’m sorry,” Talia said. “That didn’t come out right.”