“Bet”, Zep said. Instead of the usual stone expression, which she and the others constantly sported, she had a smile on fixed in on her face, while looking at Troy. After he noticed, she even winked at him, before going back to the regularly scheduled programming of stone colds.

If it was meant, to let Troy relax, it worked terribly. His back wasn't even close to touching the chair. No, it was standing for attention, not wavering in the slightest. Troy was a little worried about looking to the sides, because of it.

“Raising”, Esme stated, while throwing in two tokens. After they landed, Troy could see that the tokens were fifty and a ten. A slight raise. Nothing that would make him change his decisions.

“Bet”, Charlie stated, as quickly as ever. No hesitation on his part. Troy could respect that.

But, it did make his own reaction time seem slow, in comparison. Which didn't make the quality any worse, or anything. It just wasn't as impressive a sight.

“Bet”, Troy repeated, gently putting in the necessary tokens. He made extra sure to get the amount right.

According to what he previously settled on, Troy should actually be raising the betting minimum. But, that didn't sound good in the first few rounds. To him, the big numbers should stay at the big finale. No need to stress oneself before it was necessary.

Now, it was time for the most important part of poker. The revealing of the community cards. It would be even better, in Troy's personal opinion, if he was able to see what the cards meant for him, but, again, that was just his idea.

And, it only applied to people in his specific circumstances, so it did not really matter to most, averagely-intelligent people.

The automation may have moved quickly in showing the next card, but it was still way too slow, for matching Troy's expectations. He just wanted to get this part over with, so he could get back with Adam.

The hand was flipped, and the card was revealed. A jack of clubs. Troy noticed a small on Charlie's face, but he was guessing that it was from the music he was hearing.

Music, which Troy was supposed to currently hear.

“Raise”, Francis set, throwing in tokens worth seventy-five in tokens. This was fine, in Troy's opinion. There was a casual fifty per cent chance of this being preferable.

Darlow took a short look at his cards, before throwing them over to the automation.

“I fold”, Darlow said, before leaning back in his chair. Seemed like he didn't want to put that much into the game, with those lower cards of his. Good for him, and even better for Troy.

“Bet”, Zep said, with a small amount of hesitation. She waited a good two seconds, before using her turn for anything. Seventy-five tokens were really not something to mess around with. Especially, when it wasn't the final round.

“Raise”, came from Esme. She threw in tokens that had the sum of eighty tokens. This was getting higher and higher, without Troy even needing to do anything.

“Yeah, no”, Charlie said, as he took up his cards, and threw them at the dealer. “I fold as well.” Very casually said, Troy noted down in his mind. Not that it would be for future reference or anything. Either he would get called out for cheating, or he would get back in control under Adam. No later prospects for personal choice in poker.

Anyway, it was time to put his faith in Adam to the test. At least, it was what Troy thought would have wanted. If it wasn't, there would be problems.

“Raise”, Troy said, putting the minimum betting amount up to a hundred tokens. A fine, intimidating number, in his own, humble opinion.

It was time for the final card to be revealed.

The atmosphere seemed even more tense than normal. Troy could feel the hairs on his neck begging to straighten themselves out. He showed as little as possible, though. Troy did have a knack for not showing too much on his face. Not from poker, though, so if it applied correctly, he wasn't too sure.

The automation moved smoothly, and, with a flick of its mechanical wrist, showed that the final card of the game would be the… ace of diamonds. Something that didn't match with anything on the board.

Troy took that, as a positive thing.

And, now for the final-

“All in”, Francis quickly stated, moving his whole pile to the middle.

What?

“Are you sure, buddy?” Charlie stated. “If you want, we can overlook you just did that.”

“I keep to the rules”, Francis simply responded. “Let the game continue in peace.”

This was bad. Troy was meant to be in control of the amount raised, but then, Francis comes out of nowhere and destroys the little balance that had been created unanimously.

His praise was like a giant in the land of dwarves. Not that compatible.

And, oh, how it showed.

“I fold,” Zep simple said, before taking a long sigh and releasing her cards from her grasp, letting them fall to the table.

She had a jack of diamonds and a king of hearts. A pair with two higher ranked cards. Would have been good in the usual situations.

But this wasn't even close to a usual situation.

Esme took one good look at that massive pile before, just shrugging, and throwing her cards to the robotic dealer.

“I'm not even touching that with a ten-foot pole. Dude, this is stuff you do much later in the night,” Esme declared, before putting one leg across the other. “I'm folding.”

This left Troy to make his decision.

Would he make an all-in, gambling everything he and Adam had worked to preserve? Or would he fold, and hope the others had been satisfied with his current results?

Would Troy even be satisfied with what he had currently done? From an outside perspective, he had just put up the prices, without sticking with his guns. A sign of an amateur player. But, that was also coming from somebody, who hadn't played poker, like, at all, so it could be taken with a larger grain of salt.

To Troy, it seemed like a win or lose situation. Both results could happen with both choices.

So, why take the one, with the worst results, if you won?

“All-in”, Troy said, matching Francis' bet.

“I hope you know what you're doing, Troy,” Charlie said, as a comment to the whole thing.

“I hope so as well,” Troy murmured in response.

The automation took a long look at Troy, before finally reverting to the standard position of looking forwards.

“The bets have been made, and any more has become impossible. Remaining players, please present your cards,” the automation said. Its voice seemed more excited than usual. Was that a programmed feature, or was that just Troy's mind playing tricks on him? Likely a mixture of both somehow.

“I'll go first”, Francis said.

He released the hold of his card, letting them fall to the table, with their back-side down.

Francis had the nine of hearts and the nine of spades.

By using the community hand, he had three of a kind. Troy was in a larger load of hell now.

“He showed his, Troy”, Charlie said. “It's time to show yours.”

Troy wasn't sure, he had the strength to do so.

But, that wouldn't matter in the end. The card would be revealed no matter what. So, there was no reason for him to not do so now.

Troy flipped his own cards. The sight caused his eyes to nearly bulge. Before him sat a wonder of chance.

The ace of hearts and the ace of clubs were in his personal hand.

Troy had won.

Darlow chuckled, at Troy's reaction.

“Should have known,” Darlow muttered. “You even warned me of the whole thing, but I didn't listen. Troy. You are redeemed in my eyes.”

Seeing that Troy wasn't doing so, the dealer nudged the large pile of tokens in the middle of the table in his direction.

Troy got the hint, standing up to get them all. His mood brightened- no, that undervalued it- his mood skyrocketed. Who needed such things as incredible strategy, when you had incredible luck?

He even chose to ignore the irony of that statement.

Seeing Francis's cards, Adam finally sighed in relief. It had been quite a rocky road, but Troy had done it all himself.

Well, it may have seemed so, but, in the background, Adam had worked tirelessly, since the moment Troy had decided to go into free play.

In this test, Adam was supposed to be the one to make the choice. The one to choose, what Troy would say. While, yes, Adam had allowed Troy to answer with some superficial groundwork a few times, but, for the more important conversations, he had been the one steering the words spoken.

When the time had come to explain what purpose Troy had the earpiece for, Adam had used the prior experience to formulate an easily proven explanation.

Troy was supposed to explain that the earpiece was a hearing aid. Faking the capabilities of such a thing would be easy. Adam would just need to copy every sound heard, and feed it back into the person, with a louder volume. Preferably, a very loud volume, which would cause the decider to make a quick decision on the earpiece's validity, and hastily take it off, with not much consideration on where the sound came from.

A near-flawless plan, in Adam's estimations. It would have the best, logical standpoint, while also giving a good argument for, why Troy would need the earpiece back.

But… as stated earlier, Troy had decided to ignore the goal of the test, that he himself had created, and just answer the question himself.

A music player! What had Troy expected to happen? That they would just accept it as it was, and move on with the game? No! These people were researchers. His statement was the hypothesis. Checking how valid it was, by trying it on, would be the testing.

And, maybe he did know that they would check and was just expecting for Adam to play them some music.

The obvious risks of such an assessment were astounding. Even more astounding, was that Troy had gone ahead with it.

Never, while being in contact with Troy, had Adam ever heard music. There would be no basis for Troy to think he had ever heard music.

But, luckily for them both, he had listened to some music. This had happened, during the latest debriefing, with Dr Fidelis.

And, with Adam's perfect memory, he could even replicate the sound of the whole ordeal. But, as he just said, it would be every single thing, that was recorded. This included the voice of Dr Fidelis.

Now, Adam wasn't too much of an expert on that subject, but listening to recordings of live music, which had a voice-over, that also had nothing to do with the music, was not something most people would listen to willingly.

So, in the span of seven whole seconds, Adam had to prepare a fully edited version of a previous memory in sound form only. It did not leave much time for slacking off. He even debated just throwing the current test out the window and speeding himself up, to a point where he could do it easily.

Adam decided not to do so, in the end, much to his future annoyance.

But in the end, it paid off. When Zep first put on the earpiece, there had been a slight delay. This had been due to a few problems with finding the source-lines. Different outputs to different outgoing sources. A delaying ordeal.

Yet the reaction had been worth it. The quality might have been lacking, in comparison to the original one, but it was convincing nonetheless.

Zep had been convinced. The fact that Charlie also wanted a listen wasn't too bad either. He was convinced of the excuse just as easily.

At the end of it all, it all seemed to have been diverted.

And Francis just had to stay stubborn. Adam couldn't blame him, seeing as he had been spot on, with his original guess. In some confusing way, he could even admire Francis' determination, throughout the whole thing. Standing up against, what the other thought of as outright facts, was honourable in its own, twisted way.

But, if he had just conceded, it would have all been so much easier for Adam. And, Darlow should have stayed out of it, as well. Without his skill in controlling the thoughts of the crowd, they wouldn't have agreed to hold away the earpiece from Troy's feeble hands. Zep had tried to side with Troy in the start, but even she couldn't resist that snake-tongue, which Darlow possessed.

He was forced to continually edit his memories, so Charlie wouldn't notice any inconsistencies. It was gruelling, challenging, and not helping him further his knowledge in any meaningful way.

Now, though, it was done. Troy had luckily stuck with his cards. It was stupid to do so, as he had no idea what cards he had, but it ended well all the same.

'Great work. I knew you could do it.', Adam automatically sent out, through the source line. With differing tones, throughout the sentence, even. He had been sending out these messages near-automatically, with every round for while now, no matter if they won or not. He had originally hoped, that it would lessen the foul mood Troy had been in, but now-

Wait. No.

Adam could feel Charlie smile a little wider, as he congratulated Troy on his success.