

Evil Jackpot
I never meant to win. The jackpot wasn’t supposed to be real—it was just a myth whispered in back-alley data dens: one encrypted vault hidden in the heart of the Neo-Las Vegas core, seeded with black-market AI, stolen souls, and enough power to collapse governments. But I cracked it. And now it’s whispering my name. Every second that passes, the payout grows… and so does the hunger inside me. They say the prize corrupts absolutely. I’m starting to believe them.My fingers trembled over the terminal as the final cipher broke. The screen flashed once—blood-red letters spelling: JACKPOT CLAIMED. Then silence. No alarms. No sirens. Just the hum of dying servers and the taste of copper in my mouth.
I didn’t feel different. Not at first. But then the security drones passed me twice without scanning. A falling girder missed me by inches. My sister’s vitals stabilized—for the first time in weeks.
That’s when the voice came. Soft. Smug. Mine, but deeper. You won, it said. Now spend.
My console lit up: $9.8 trillion in untraceable crypto, access keys to every vault in Neo-Las Vegas, and a single command prompt blinking like a heartbeat.
Then the newsfeed popped up—Lena had been taken. The message was clear: 'Redeem your prize… or watch her pay the tax.'
The Jackpot whispered the first option: Burn the city to find her.
