[Balance updated. Current balance is 349.6 Silver Eagles.]
[Simulation starting in 3, 2, 1.]
The blinding flash of temporal displacement faded, leaving Cole perfectly still in the freezing mud, hidden deep within the shadows of the wooden mining crane.
He was back in the projected future. The rain fell with the exact same miserable rhythm. Elias slept in the exact same wooden chair, fifty yards away, completely oblivious to the cold, calculating eyes watching him from the dark.
Cole did not attempt to crawl toward the revolver this time. He knew the gun was a fatal trap.
He analyzed the environment with the clinical, detached perspective of a ghost.
Elias was sitting under a heavy canvas awning. The awning was supported by a thick central wooden pole, secured by four taut hemp ropes staked deeply into the muddy ground. Directly above Elias's head hung the glass oil lantern, burning brightly with highly volatile kerosene. Behind the tent was a steep, forty-foot drop into a raging, swollen river.
If Cole could severe the rear support ropes, the heavy canvas would collapse forward. The lantern would shatter upon Elias, instantly igniting the kerosene and the dry canvas interior. The sheer panic and agonizing pain of the fire would force Elias to retreat backward, directly over the steep embankment and into the drowning currents of the river.
It was a perfectly logical sequence of environmental hazards.
Cole began his agonizing crawl.
He moved in a wide arc, entirely avoiding the front of the tent and the illumination of the lantern. He dragged his splinted, broken right leg through the deep mud, his elbows digging into the freezing earth.
It took him twenty minutes to navigate around the perimeter of the campsite and position himself directly behind Elias's large canvas tent.
The roar of the swollen river below the forty-foot embankment easily masked the sound of his ragged breathing.
Cole reached the first thick hemp rope securing the rear of the tent. It was pulled incredibly taut, anchored to a heavy iron stake driven deep into the mud.
He pulled the sharp slate wedge from his pocket. It was the same crude chisel he had used to extract the gold.
He placed the jagged edge of the stone against the thick hemp rope and began to saw violently back and forth.
The thick fibers began to fray and snap.
He sawed with desperate, frantic energy, ignoring the bleeding blisters on his palms.
With a loud, sharp twang, the first rope snapped completely.
The heavy canvas awning sagged noticeably on the left side, but the central pole held firm. Elias shifted slightly in his wooden chair, grumbling in his sleep, but he did not wake.
Cole dragged himself to the second rear rope, repeating the agonizing process.
His muscles screamed. The slate wedge was dulling against the tough hemp fibers.
Snap.
The second rope gave way.
The structural integrity of the tent was instantly compromised. The heavy, wet canvas awning collapsed heavily forward, dragging the central wooden pole down with it.
The glass oil lantern swung violently, slipped from its iron hook, and smashed directly onto Elias's lap.
The results were instantaneous and catastrophic.
The shattered glass released a massive splash of kerosene across Elias's heavy wool coat and thick beard. The open flame ignited the highly combustible liquid with a deafening whoosh.
Elias awoke from his drunken slumber entirely engulfed in a blinding pillar of bright orange fire.
He let out a roar that did not sound human. It was the absolute, terrifying scream of a massive beast experiencing pure, unadulterated agony.
Cole watched from the mud behind the collapsing tent, waiting for the burning man to stumble backward over the cliff as the logical sequence dictated.
But Elias defied logic. Elias defied physics.
Driven by the sheer, terrifying vitality that had kept him alive in the brutal frontier, Elias did not retreat from the flames. He charged directly through them.
The burning giant burst through the heavy, collapsing canvas, blindly swinging his massive arms. His clothes were melting to his skin, his beard a blazing inferno.
He did not stumble toward the river. He stumbled forward, directly out into the muddy thoroughfare of the camp.
Elias was a walking bonfire, screaming incoherently, his hands grasping blindly in the dark.
He tripped over his own wooden crate, falling heavily into the deep mud. The freezing water and wet earth instantly smothered the flames on his chest and face, leaving him badly burned but very much alive.
Elias gasped for air, his skin blackened and smoking in the rain.
He looked back at the ruined, burning remains of his tent.
And then, through the flickering light of the fire, his completely enraged, bloodshot eyes locked directly onto the small, muddy figure lying on the ground behind the broken ropes.
He saw Cole holding the sharp slate wedge.
Elias did not care about his burns. He did not care about the pain.
He let out a guttural, terrifying roar and drew the heavy military revolver from his holster with lightning speed.
He did not aim carefully. He simply pointed the heavy steel barrel at the boy and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.
The deafening reports of the gun echoed like thunder across the camp.
The first bullet missed, splashing deeply into the mud beside Cole's head.
The second bullet struck Cole perfectly in the center of his chest.
The massive kinetic force of the lead projectile completely shattered his sternum, tearing a massive hole through his heart and exiting through his spine.
Cole was thrown violently backward, sliding to the very edge of the steep embankment.
He could not breathe. He could not feel his arms or legs. He simply stared up at the cold, indifferent rain as his consciousness faded into absolute nothingness.
[Simulation terminated. Host vital signs depleted.]
[Cause of death: Catastrophic ballistic trauma to the cardiovascular system.]
[Resetting temporal coordinates.]
Cole gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He was back in the mud beneath the mining crane. Elias was asleep in his chair, completely unburned.
The sequence had failed.
The environmental trap had not been lethal enough, and it had completely exposed his position. He had vastly underestimated the sheer physical resilience and lethal reflexes of his target.
Fire was too chaotic. It did not guarantee an instant kill.
He needed something heavier. He needed something absolutely crushing.
"System," Cole whispered, his voice incredibly flat and devoid of all emotion. "Deduct one Silver Eagle. Initiate simulation."
[Balance updated. Current balance is 348.6 Silver Eagles.]
[Simulation starting in 3, 2, 1.]
The flash. The reset. The rain.
Cole crawled again.
This time, he did not target the tent ropes. He targeted the massive, heavy wooden water barrel sitting on a high wooden platform directly beside Elias's tent.
The barrel held over fifty gallons of rainwater, weighing easily four hundred pounds.
Cole spent thirty minutes dragging himself to the base of the wooden platform. He used his slate wedge to painstakingly dig out the muddy earth beneath the front two structural support legs of the platform.
He worked in absolute, terrifying silence, his hands bleeding freely into the mud.
He dug until the thick wooden legs were resting precariously on nothing but a thin layer of wet dirt.
He crawled away, finding a heavy, fist-sized stone in the dark.
He positioned himself safely ten yards away, hiding behind a pile of discarded lumber.
He threw the heavy stone with his good left arm.
The stone struck the side of the massive wooden water barrel with a loud, hollow thud.
The sudden vibration, combined with the compromised foundation, caused the heavy wooden platform to groan violently.
The front legs snapped the thin layer of mud and gave way entirely.
The massive, four-hundred-pound barrel tipped forward, falling perfectly directly toward the sleeping Elias.
It was a flawless execution of gravity.
But Elias possessed the instincts of a predator.
The loud groan of the wooden platform waking him a fraction of a second before the barrel fell.
He threw himself violently out of his wooden chair, diving sideways into the deep mud.
The massive barrel crashed heavily onto the wooden chair, instantly crushing it into thousands of splinters and flooding the ground with fifty gallons of freezing water.
Elias rolled in the mud, instantly drawing his heavy revolver.
He scanned the darkness, his eyes narrowing. He saw the compromised legs of the platform. He saw the muddy trail leading directly to the pile of discarded lumber.
Elias walked slowly toward the lumber, the heavy revolver raised and perfectly steady.
Cole tried to drag himself backward, but his splinted leg caught loudly on a piece of wood.
Elias stepped around the corner, looking down at the terrified sixteen-year-old boy lying helpless in the mud.
Elias did not say a single word. He simply pointed the barrel of the revolver directly at Cole's face and pulled the trigger.
[Simulation terminated. Host vital signs depleted.]
[Cause of death: Catastrophic ballistic trauma to the cranium.]
[Resetting temporal coordinates.]
Cole awoke in the mud.
He did not gasp this time. He simply stared blankly at the dark outline of the mining crane above him.
He had died three times tonight. He had been choked, shot through the heart, and shot through the head.
He could vividly remember the terrifying, absolute agony of every single death. He could remember the smell of his own burning flesh, the taste of his own blood, the blinding flash of the muzzle flare.
The system was stripping away his humanity, layer by bloody layer, replacing it with cold, absolute data.
He was learning the precise mathematical parameters of a murder.
He realized his fundamental flaw.
He was trying to execute an offensive attack against an opponent who possessed vastly superior statistics in strength, speed, weapons, and combat experience.
Elias was a veteran prospector. He slept lightly. He reacted to noise instantly. He fired with deadly accuracy.
No matter how clever the trap was, if it gave Elias even a fraction of a second to react, the massive man would survive and retaliate with lethal force.
To kill Elias, Cole had to completely eliminate the reaction phase.
He could not use fire. He could not use falling objects. He could not use distance.
He had to strike perfectly, instantly, and with absolute, overwhelming force.
He had to use the one thing in the camp that weighed more than a barrel of water.
He had to use the earth itself.
Cole looked away from Elias's tent. He turned his head and looked at the large, dark opening of the mine shaft located only twenty yards to his left.
Hanging directly over the open shaft was the heavy iron mining crane, used for lowering buckets and hauling up dirt. It was a massive, archaic structure built from thick iron beams and heavy gears.
Beside the shaft were several massive, heavy wooden planks used to cover the hole during heavy storms.
Cole stared at the dark abyss of the shaft.
It was a sixty-foot drop straight down to a solid slate floor.
If a man fell down that hole, he would not need a fraction of a second to react. Gravity and solid rock did not offer second chances.
Cole looked at his balance. 347.6 Silver Eagles.
"System. Deduct one Silver Eagle. Initiate simulation."
[Balance updated. Current balance is 346.6 Silver Eagles.]
[Simulation starting in 3, 2, 1.]
Cole awoke in the projected future.
He did not crawl toward Elias. He dragged himself directly toward the open mine shaft.
He reached the edge of the sixty-foot drop, peering into the pitch-black abyss.
He carefully positioned himself on the muddy ground, exactly two feet away from the dangerous edge.
He needed to lure the predator into the trap. He needed to use the one thing that completely bypassed Elias's survival instincts and triggered his absolute, blinding greed.
He needed to use the gold.
Cole untied the knot in his ruined shirt and pulled out the heavy, fist-sized chunk of raw gold and quartz.
He held it tightly in his bloody right hand.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cold, wet air.
He opened his mouth and let out a raw, desperate, agonizing scream that echoed perfectly across the sleeping camp.
"Help! Elias! Help me!"
The scream was completely genuine. He channeled every ounce of pain from his crushed leg and his multiple deaths into his voice.
Fifty yards away, Elias jolted awake.
The massive man grabbed his heavy revolver and stood up, looking frantically around the dark camp.
"Elias! Over here! At the shaft!" Cole screamed again, thrashing his upper body in the mud to create loud, splashing noises.
Elias marched heavily across the mud, the rain pouring off his thick coat.
He reached the edge of the shaft, looking down at Cole, who was lying flat on his back near the edge of the hole, covered in mud and blood.
Elias did not lower his gun. His eyes were cold and highly suspicious.
"What are you doing up here, boy?" Elias demanded roughly. "I told you not to come up without color. Why are you screaming like a dying pig?"
Cole coughed weakly, holding his right hand tightly against his chest, concealing the object within it.
"The shaft collapsed, sir," Cole gasped perfectly, his voice trembling. "The roof gave way. It crushed my leg. I barely made it up the ladder."
Elias looked at Cole's mangled, splinted right leg. He did not show an ounce of pity. He simply frowned in extreme annoyance.
"You collapsed my shaft?" Elias growled, stepping closer. "You ruined a perfectly good dig site because you don't know how to swing a pickaxe properly? I should shoot you right now and throw you back down the hole."
Elias raised the heavy revolver, pointing it directly at Cole's face.
This was the critical moment. The tipping point.
Cole slowly opened his bloody right hand, exposing the heavy, glittering chunk of raw gold to the dim ambient light of the campfires.
"I found it, sir," Cole whispered, holding the massive nugget up weakly. "When the roof fell. It exposed a vein. A motherlode. I brought up a piece."
Elias froze completely.
The cold, suspicious glare in his eyes vanished entirely, instantly replaced by a feverish, absolute, all-consuming madness.
The Western Fever.
Elias slowly lowered the barrel of the revolver. He took a heavy step forward, his eyes locked entirely on the fist-sized chunk of pure wealth resting in Cole's bloody hand.
It was more gold than Elias had seen in ten years of brutal, miserable prospecting.
He did not care about the collapsed shaft. He did not care about the boy's broken leg. He only cared about the yellow metal.
"Give it to me," Elias demanded, his voice thick and entirely breathless.
He stepped directly to the very edge of the sixty-foot drop, reaching his massive left hand down toward Cole.
Cole held the gold out, his hand shaking violently.
But he did not offer it to Elias. He intentionally held it just an inch out of the man's reach, positioning his hand directly over the open abyss of the shaft.
Elias leaned forward aggressively, his heavy boots slipping slightly in the slick, freezing mud. His entire center of gravity shifted over the edge of the hole.
"Give it here, you little rat," Elias snarled, extending his arm fully, his fingers brushing against the gold.
Cole's eyes went completely cold.
He dropped the gold nugget.
It fell directly into the pitch-black shaft, vanishing instantly from sight.
Elias let out a desperate, panicked shout, his massive body instinctively lunging entirely forward to catch the falling wealth.
It was a fatal, irreversible error in physics.
With his center of gravity completely compromised, Elias pitched violently forward into the open air.
He realized his mistake a fraction of a second too late.
He threw his arms out wildly, desperately trying to grab the muddy edge of the shaft, but there was nothing to hold onto but wet dirt and empty space.
Elias fell.
He did not have time to fire his gun. He did not have time to scream.
He plummeted sixty feet straight down into the absolute darkness of the collapsed mine shaft.
Cole lay perfectly still on the surface, listening closely.
Two seconds later, a massive, sickening, catastrophic sound echoed violently up the vertical tunnel. It was the distinct, unmistakable sound of a heavy body impacting solid slate at terminal velocity.
Total silence returned to the camp, save for the steady rhythm of the falling rain.
Cole slowly pulled himself up to the edge of the hole. He peered down into the darkness.
There was no movement. There was no groaning.
A fall from sixty feet onto solid rock was an absolutely guaranteed, non-negotiable death sentence.
He had done it. He had killed the monster.
Cole sat back in the mud, a massive, overwhelming wave of relief washing over his exhausted body. He had finally engineered the perfect, flawless execution.
He looked at his blue timer. He still had 23 hours of simulation left.
He decided to wait out the clock, just to observe the aftermath and ensure his plan had no hidden flaws.
He lay in the mud near the shaft, resting his ruined body as the simulated sun slowly rose over the mining camp.
The camp began to wake up. Dozens of rough, heavily armed prospectors emerged from their tents, coughing and cursing the rain.
A large, heavily bearded man named Silas, who ran the neighboring claim, walked over to Elias's tent to borrow some chewing tobacco.
Silas found the tent empty. He looked around the camp and eventually spotted Cole lying near the edge of the open mine shaft.
Silas walked over, his heavy boots squelching loudly in the mud.
"Hey, boy," Silas grunted, looking down at Cole's bloody, splinted leg. "Where is Elias? I need to talk to him about the water rights."
Cole pointed weakly down into the dark shaft.
"He fell, sir," Cole lied smoothly, his voice perfectly pathetic. "Last night. He was drunk. He came over to check the crane and slipped in the mud. I tried to grab him, but he was too heavy."
Silas frowned deeply, stepping carefully to the edge of the hole and peering down.
"Elias fell?" Silas muttered, highly skeptical. "Elias was a clumsy drunk, but he wasn't stupid enough to walk on the edge of an open shaft in the dark."
Silas walked over to the heavy iron mining winch. He grabbed the thick hemp rope attached to the iron bucket and began to rapidly lower it down the shaft.
He unhooked a lantern from his belt, lit it, and tied it to the bucket, lowering it down to illuminate the bottom.
Cole watched anxiously, confident in his lie.
The lantern reached the bottom of the sixty-foot shaft, casting a grim, flickering yellow light over the grisly scene.
Silas leaned over the edge, squinting his eyes.
Suddenly, Silas froze completely.
He pulled his head back, his face completely pale and absolutely furious.
He turned around, drawing his heavy revolver and aiming it directly at Cole's chest.
"You lying little murderer," Silas roared, his voice drawing the immediate attention of several nearby prospectors.
Cole's blood ran entirely cold.
"What are you talking about?" Cole asked, raising his hands defensively. "It was an accident!"
"An accident?" Silas spat, kicking Cole viciously in the ribs. "I can see his body down there. And I can see exactly what he is lying on."
Cole's eyes widened in absolute, sheer horror.
He had forgotten a crucial, fatal detail.
When Elias fell, he did not just fall onto the slate floor. He fell directly onto the heavy, fist-sized chunk of pure raw gold that Cole had intentionally dropped down the hole to bait him.
The massive gold nugget was currently lying highly visibly right next to Elias's crushed skull, perfectly illuminated by Silas's lantern.
"He found a motherlode," Silas shouted to the gathering crowd of greedy, violent miners. "Elias found a massive nugget, and this little rat pushed him down the hole to steal the claim!"
The crowd of prospectors erupted into an immediate, violent frenzy.
In the Western Fever, there was no formal law, no police, and no trials. There was only frontier justice, fueled entirely by extreme greed and paranoia.
They did not care about the truth. They only cared that a massive chunk of gold was sitting at the bottom of a shaft, and a dead man was in the way. Hanging the boy was the easiest way to legitimize claiming the gold for themselves.
Four massive miners grabbed Cole roughly by the arms and legs, completely ignoring his agonizing screams as they violently dragged him through the mud toward the tall, sturdy branch of a nearby dead oak tree.
Someone produced a thick length of hemp rope, quickly tying a crude, heavy noose.
Cole thrashed wildly, fighting with every ounce of his remaining strength, but it was entirely useless against four grown men.
They threw the rope over the high branch. They dragged Cole upright, forcing the rough, scratchy hemp noose tightly around his ruined neck.
"You can't do this!" Cole screamed, tears of absolute panic streaming down his dirty face. "It's mine! I found it!"
Silas stepped forward, looking at Cole with utter disgust.
"Gold belongs to the men strong enough to keep it, boy," Silas said coldly.
He gave a sharp nod to the men holding the rope.
They pulled violently downward.
Cole was instantly jerked high into the air.
The heavy noose constricted violently around his throat, instantly crushing his windpipe and cutting off the blood flow to his brain.
His legs kicked frantically, pedaling against the empty air in a useless, agonizing dance of death.
The crowd of miners simply watched in silence, already calculating how to divide the gold at the bottom of the shaft.
Cole's vision faded to a narrow tunnel of blackness. His lungs burned like absolute fire.
He died slowly, choking on the end of a rope, surrounded by the absolute worst of humanity.
[Simulation terminated. Host vital signs depleted.]
[Cause of death: Strangulation and cervical asphyxiation.]
[Resetting temporal coordinates.]
Cole gasped violently, his eyes snapping open.
He was back in the mud beneath the mining crane. It was raining. Elias was asleep in his chair.
Cole lay perfectly still, staring blankly at the dark sky, his chest heaving as he tried to process the horrific trauma of a slow hanging.
The system had saved him again. It had shown him the absolute, inescapable truth of the world he lived in.
Killing the monster was not enough.
In a world driven entirely by the Western Fever, possessing extreme wealth was a far greater crime than murder.
If he killed Elias, he had to conceal the body. If he claimed the gold, he had to conceal the wealth. He could not leave a single trace of evidence, a single dropped nugget, or a single suspicious footprint.
He needed to perform a magic trick. He needed Elias to vanish completely, and he needed the gold to remain absolutely hidden until he was hundreds of miles away from this cursed camp.
Cole looked at his balance. 345.6 Silver Eagles.
He closed his eyes, his mind working with the terrifying, cold precision of a supercomputer.
He analyzed every single variable he had gathered from his multiple deaths. He knew the precise layout of the shaft. He knew Elias's greed. He knew the reaction time of the camp.
He formulated the final, mathematically flawless execution.
"System," Cole whispered, his voice absolutely steady and completely devoid of fear.
"Terminate simulation protocols."
[Confirmed. Simulation protocols suspended.]
Cole opened his eyes. He was no longer projecting futures. He was operating in absolute, irreversible reality.
If he made a single mistake now, he would die permanently.
He began to crawl through the mud.
He moved directly toward the open mine shaft, dragging his splinted leg silently behind him.
He reached the edge of the sixty-foot drop. He positioned himself carefully, exactly two feet away from the dangerous edge.
He looked at the heavy, massive wooden planks stacked neatly beside the shaft. They were thick, solid oak, each weighing over a hundred pounds.
Cole grabbed the edge of the first heavy plank. He used his good left leg and his shoulders to slowly, painstakingly slide the heavy wood across the mud until it was resting precariously on the very lip of the shaft, balancing dangerously over the abyss.
He slid a second plank next to it, creating a wide, highly unstable wooden diving board that looked solid in the dark, but would immediately tip forward under the weight of a heavy man.
He had created a flawless mechanical trap.
Now, he needed the bait.
But he knew from his previous death that he could not drop the raw gold nugget down the hole. He could not leave evidence for the rest of the camp to find.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sharp slate wedge he had used as a chisel.
It was roughly the same size and weight as the gold nugget. In the dim, flickering ambient light of the camp, covered in mud, it would cast a highly convincing silhouette.
He held the dark stone tightly in his right hand.
He took a deep, steadying breath. He cleared his mind of all hesitation, all empathy, and all humanity.
He opened his mouth and let out the exact same raw, desperate, perfectly calculated scream he had perfected in the simulation.
"Help! Elias! Help me!"
Fifty yards away, the massive man jolted awake, instantly grabbing his heavy revolver.
"Elias! Over here! At the shaft!" Cole screamed again, thrashing his arms in the mud.
Elias marched heavily across the camp, his boots squelching loudly in the freezing rain. He reached the edge of the shaft, looking down angrily at the muddy boy.
"What are you doing up here, boy?" Elias demanded roughly, pointing the gun.
"The shaft collapsed, sir," Cole gasped, perfectly reciting the rehearsed script. "The roof gave way. It crushed my leg."
Elias frowned deeply. "You collapsed my shaft? I should shoot you right now."
Cole slowly opened his right hand, exposing the dark, mud-covered shape of the slate wedge to the dim light.
"I found it, sir," Cole whispered, his voice trembling with perfectly simulated awe. "A motherlode. I brought up a piece."
Elias froze completely.
The absolute, blinding madness of the Western Fever instantly consumed his eyes.
He lowered the heavy revolver. He took a heavy step forward, completely ignoring the boy, completely ignoring the danger. He only saw the shape of wealth in Cole's hand.
"Give it to me," Elias demanded breathlessly.
He stepped directly onto the heavy wooden planks Cole had carefully positioned on the edge of the shaft.
Elias reached his massive hand down, leaning heavily forward.
Cole looked up at the man who had tortured him, starved him, and treated him like garbage for his entire life.
Cole felt absolutely nothing. No anger. No triumph. Just cold, mechanical efficiency.
He pulled his hand back, pulling the fake gold entirely out of Elias's reach.
"Give it here!" Elias snarled, shifting his massive weight fully forward onto the edge of the wooden planks.
The physics trap executed flawlessly.
The heavy oak planks, suddenly subjected to three hundred pounds of forward-leaning weight on an unsupported edge, tilted violently forward like a massive seesaw.
Elias let out a sharp gasp of sheer terror as the ground completely vanished beneath his boots.
He threw his arms out wildly, trying to balance, but the momentum was entirely unstoppable.
The heavy wooden planks slid completely off the muddy edge of the shaft, plunging down into the abyss.
Elias fell perfectly with them.
He plummeted sixty feet straight down into the absolute darkness, silently followed by two hundred pounds of solid oak wood.
Cole lay perfectly still on the surface, listening to the dark.
Two seconds later, a massive, sickening, catastrophic sound echoed violently up the vertical tunnel. It was followed immediately by the loud, heavy crash of the thick oak planks smashing onto the slate floor.
Total, absolute silence returned to the rainy camp.
Cole slowly pulled himself up to the edge of the hole. He peered down into the darkness.
There was nothing but blackness.
He had killed Elias. And this time, there was absolutely no gold lying next to the body. If anyone ever bothered to look down the shaft, they would simply find a dead drunk who had slipped on some loose wooden planks in the rain.
It was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly tragic mining accident.
Cole sat back in the deep mud, the freezing rain washing the blood and dirt from his pale face.
He reached into his shirt, his fingers brushing against the solid, heavy knot of fabric containing the genuine chunk of raw gold.
He was alive. He was incredibly wealthy. And he possessed an absolute, flawless mastery over his own future.
He looked at the dark, sprawling mining camp sleeping around him. They were all digging in the mud, completely blind to the true mechanics of the universe.
Cole slowly began to drag himself away from the shaft, disappearing silently into the shadows of the long, rainy night.
The simulation had taught him the currency of pain. And he was ready to buy the world.