The room was a small one, tucked away in the back hallway of a dingy bar in a back alley.  The bar itself, despite its lack of aesthetic appeal, was a popular dive amongst the degenerates who wandered the more squalid sectors of the city.  The liquor was cheap, as were the women, and there were no rules save for the occasional restriction the bartender would announce after consuming too much of his own supply.  But by the time that happened, the old bastard was usually too drunk to enforce those restrictions so no one ever really paid him any mind.  Not that it mattered to him anyway--the bulk of his profit didn't come from sales, legal or otherwise.  Most of his earnings were generated by the game room in the back--a room only few were aware of.
    And for good reason as Collin Fisk had come to realize.  He squinted at his cards and then looked up at the five men sitting around the poker table.  Some of the faces were grizzled and weathered, some scarred, but all looked long and forlorn.  The air was stale and smelled of marijuana and cigarettes and the suspended clouds of smoke lent an almost dreamlike quality to the environment.  Everyone seemed rather distant, their features vague and obscure.  It reminded Collin of those dream sequences he had watched in so many movies.
    But this wasn't a dream and there was no room for error.
    He turned his attention back to his cards, worn and frayed from months of consistent use.  His hand was hardly one to be desired.  But he had to play it.  There were no re-deals here.  His hands trembled as he thumbed through the cards.  He knew which three he would exchange, but he couldn't bring himself to throw them down.  He wanted to, but he just kept staring at them instead as if, by some divine miracle, they might change to something more favorable.
    One of the men sitting directly across the table--a middle-aged black man with some kind of Arabic phrase tattooed along his forearm--was growing increasingly impatient.  He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, drained his glass of what little whiskey remained, slammed it down, and went back to drumming.
    "Play if you're gonna play, motherfucker," he said. " We ain't got all night."
    Collin looked up at him, gave a slight nod, and went back to thumbing through his hand.
    "Okay," he said finally.  "I'll take three."
    He slid the chosen cards to the center of the table face-down and the dealer, a slender, sinewy young man in his mid-twenties, slid him three new ones.
    They weren't much better than the last, but they would have to do.
    After everyone had gotten their cards, an obese biker with superfluous sunglasses and a ridiculous English mustache took a deep breath and said, "All right.  Let's do it."
    "Choose a number," the dealer said.
    The biker hung his head and was quiet for a moment.  Collin figured he was trying to think of a number that he might consider lucky.
    "A number, sir," the dealer said again.
    "Sixteen."  The biker raised his head, looked confident.  "Let's do sixteen."
    The dealer nodded and moved a green square made of construction paper to the pot.  It had a large "16" stenciled on it in permanent marker.
    "Moving along," the dealer said.
    The black man was next and wasted no time.
    "Give me nine."
    The dealer complied and pushed another paper square into the pot.
    Next up was a man Collin took for a vagrant.  He wore a dirty grey hat with a missing band, camouflage pants smeared with dirt and other, more...