Quaranteam Ch 16 19

Chapter 16

The day of the party felt like it came much faster than it should've. While everyone had a few days to prepare, they all felt like they were struggling to get their costumes together. Most hysterically, all the girls had made some sort of tacit agreement not to tell Andy what they were dressing up as for the Halloween party.

They were all a little surprised he wasn't dressing up as the Druid Gunslinger himself, but they seemed okay with it. He told them he'd done the gear next year, but he'd literally worn the costume last year, and despite all the changes they'd been through over the past several months, he didn't want to do it two years in a row. While none of the girls may have seen him in it, he knew that both Eric and Phil would've given him an endless amount of shit for it.

He loved vintage sci-fi costumes, so for this year, he'd decided to be Logan from Logan's Run, the 1976 film he'd adored growing up. It was a relatively simple costume, a black turtleneck with white trim and a large white stripe over the chest, as well as a blinking red palm flower crystal. When he'd done the costume as a teenager, he'd had to use a bike light, which took over so much of his hand, but now he could achieve the same effect with a simple LED light attached to a battery. It was much more convenient.

A few hours before the party was to start, Andy was banned from entering his own bedroom as the girls had set up a sort of base camp there, working on all their costumes away from his prying eyes. The staff had decided to dress up as Clue characters, so Nicolette was back in her Yvette costume, Jenny R. was dressed as the cook (from the movie, not the board game) and Katie was dressed as Mrs. White. They had been a little surprised that they were invited to the party once the food was laid out, but Andy had been adamant that he wanted them to feel like members of the family as much as staff. He was glad to see they accepted that without too much of a fuss, although Jenny was insistent that she and Nicolette would be tending to the food all night, even while they were mingling.

Surprising no one, none of the girls who weren't staff were ready by the time the first guests showed up. Andy wasn't shocked that it was Eric who arrived first, along with his whole group. Eric was dressed as Han Solo, with Lily as Princess Leia, Jenny C. as Luke Skywalker, Sarah as Chewbacca, and two other girls who'd recently joined his family - Lara, a tall, statuesque blonde, and Nikki, a tiny little plump brunette - were dressed as C3-P0 and R2-D2 accordingly.

Phil and his family arrived next. They were all dressed up as characters from the video game Street Fighter, with Phil as Ryu, Audrey as Chun Li, Linda as Cammy, Tamika as Poison and a new girl named Yuko, who was dressed as Sakura.

Andy, much like both Phil and Eric, had never been big on large social gatherings, but this felt entirely different. Perhaps they'd been so starved for company, or perhaps they'd been trying to make sense of the new normal for so long, it was nice to have a touch of the old normal, even if it was only a shadow of how it used to be.

Dressed all in costume, the boys sat down to play poker.

After Phil showed up, Andy's girls descended down the staircase and made a grand entry for themselves. Aisling had dressed up as Amy Adams' portrayal of Lois Lane from the Superman movies, in a white open shirt with a black vest, her hair done up in a smart ponytail, a black lanyard hanging around her neck that said "Daily Planet." Lauren had dressed up as the Black Canary, from the Green Arrow comic books, a leather jacket she'd stolen from his closet, a black leotard and ripped black fishnets that Andy couldn't deny made her pop even more.

The biggest surprise, however, was Niko. It took him a few seconds to realize what she was dressed as, and as soon as he did, his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. She was dressed in a white lab coat, with her hair up in a bun, held in place with chopsticks. Beneath it, she wore a deep purple shirt. It all looked vaguely familiar, but then she turned her head and it all clicked as soon as he saw that coloration done to her hair. While most of her hair was still jet black, on the right side, there was a blue stripe, followed by a violet stripe, and his heart stopped a beat. She was dressed as Doctor Erika Shirow, the coroner who often worked with the Druid Gunslinger in his novels. Around her neck hung a pendant of a celtic cross, exactly as he'd described it in the most recent novel.

Shirow had been a regular recurring character, but she was easily what fans would've called "a deep cut." When he'd first introduced her in the second book, he suspected she was a character he would come back to, but hadn't planned her to have much impact on the overarching storyline he had in mind. Now, some nine books into the series, she'd actually appeared in more of them than any other character other than Dale Sexton, the titular Druid Gunslinger. Most of the time, she usually only appeared in a chapter or two, but now, seeing Niko dressed as her, he wondered if he'd been subconsciously building a relationship between Dale and Erika over the course of the novels. He made a mental note to ask Niko about it later.

The girls wandered into the room and took their time showing off their costumes for everyone, but as soon as they did, Niko moved over to slide down into Andy's lap, sliding an arm around him. "You like?" she asked him, a mischievous smile on her lips.

"No, I absolutely hate it," he laughed, sticking his tongue out at her. "You look stunning. You all look stunning."

"Lauren worried she was too tall to pull off the Black Canary, but I told her that in those fishnets, you wouldn't give a fuck."

"You would absolutely be right."

Niko gestured for him to tip up his hole cards so she could look at them, which he did, and then tipped them back down. "Looks like you're doing well."

"Ah, we're mostly playing for fun," Eric said.

Niko winked over in his direction. "Sure. That's why your chip stack is so utterly small."

"Absolutely," Lily said, moving to stand behind Eric. "And it certainly isn't because my man has no poker face whatsoever."

Audrey moved to stand behind Phil. "Phil's usually pretty good at poker, though," she said, kissing his cheek. "Although I heard Andy's always been better."

Andy shrugged. "I'm not bad. I mean, I wouldn't drop ten K of my own money to enter the World Series of Poker, but I usually come out at least a little bit ahead at poker nights."

"Go easy on them then, I guess, Andy. How high are the stakes?" Niko asked, clearly wiggling her ass in his lap, trying to distract him off his game. "Are we rich yet?"

Andy cocked his head to one side, mocking a frown upon his face. "Have you missed the mansion we now live in?"

"Sure, but that's not *money* money," she teased. "What're you playing for?"

Eric laughed. "Big, big money." He looked left, looked right, then leaned forward, putting his hand over one side of his mouth, stage whispering to her. "Twenty dollars is the buy in." He widened his eyes and nodded in her direction, like it was his life savings they were talking about.

Niko rolled her eyes. "Forget what I said about going easy on them. Take them for everything they're worth."

"Oh, and the loser has to buy dinner for the next game night," Phil said. "Or, at least, they used to have to, but that was before we all got our own private staff."

"I can't remember the last time Andy bought dinner," Eric grumbled.

"I don't know that he ever has," Phil sighed. "I think it's all the rest of us just passing the buck around."

The doorbell rang, and Niko slid off his lap. "Who else are we expecting?"

Phil rolled his eyes upward in thought. "Ari and his family are coming. Jenna's hooked up with some guy named Gary, so they said they'd stop by. Mel told me he couldn't make it this time, but would try and catch us for the next get together."

"I'll go see who it is."

Niko headed to the door and Andy could hear from outside the door as soon as she opened it a chorus of children shouting "TRICK OR TREAT!" They'd just resolved the hand, so all the guys got up and headed to the door to see five children, all dressed up in Minecraft costumes, holding out buckets, into which Niko graciously dropped a couple of candies each. There was a woman standing behind the children, back at the foot of the walkway up to the house, waving at them. It wasn't anyone that any of them recognized, but Andy was glad to see the children weren't out by themselves.

For the next hour or so, every ring of the doorbell would bring either another gaggle of children, or another of the group's mutual friends, until the house felt like a booming party. The parade of trick or treating children eventually slowed, and it was almost ten pm when the doorbell rang again. Andy went to answer the door, holding the pot of candies, and as soon as he opened the door, he tensed up a little, even as he heard the shout of "TRICK OR TREAT!"

There were only two children standing there, a girl dressed as Hermione from Harry Potter, and a slightly older boy, dressed as Draco Malfoy. But the children weren't the problem. Behind them stood Arthur Robert Covington the Fourth, dressed as Napoleon. Andy had to mentally tell himself not to curl his hand into a fist.

"Ah, Andrew!" Covington said. "So this is where you live. I did wonder which of the open houses they'd assigned you to."

Andy dropped candies into the outstretched bags of the two children. They shouldn't be punished for what an ass their father was. "Yes. Well. Here we are." He couldn't wait to get this horrific man as far from his home as possible. Covington practically oozed oil everywhere he went.

"Children, go meet up with your mother. Daddy needs to talk to his friend here for a moment."

By this point, Niko had made her way to the door, just in time to see the children skipping down the walkway to their mother, who was dressed in Liza Minelli's outfit from Cabaret. "Andy, it's not polite to keep your guests waiting," she said, sliding an arm around his waist, trying to help him extricate himself from this situation.

"This won't take but a moment, miss," Covington said to her. "I'm meant to understand from one of my women that you're something of a card player. That's of interest to me, because I hold a card game every so often, when we're expecting new partners to arrive."

Andy was about to interrupt him, but Niko pinched him just a little, and he glanced in her direction. The look on her face told him to remain quiet, so he turned his attention back to Covington.

"I'm sort of 'in the know,' you might say, so I know that on Monday, most of us are going to get new women arriving. The way the card game works is that none of us men imprint our newest women on that day, but instead use them as stakes in our little card game on that evening. Each woman is staked in at 50k, and at the end of the night, the person with the most money in their pot gets to spend their winnings to buy as many of the women from the pool as they can afford. The person who comes in second gets to do the same, then the third, the fourth and then the fifth, or last place, gets whatever's left over. Or, rather, whoever, I suppose," Covington smiled wolfishly. "It adds a little sport to all of it, and makes the game really something worth playing for."

Andy desperately wanted to say something, but Niko was squeezing on his hip, urging him to keep his comments short. "And why are you telling me all this?"

"Well," Covington said with a condescending smile. "Usually we have a set group of participants, but one of our regulars had to drop out this week, as one of his incoming women is a woman of some clout, who wouldn't stand for being traded as such. Normally we don't care what women think, but this woman has, let us say, enough political clout to make disrupting her placement more trouble than it is worth. So we find ourselves with an opening for this week and this week only, and since I happen to know that you, like all the other participants in the game, will be having two women delivered on Monday, I thought I would invite you to come play in our little game. You simply tell the women who arrive on Monday that you think there may have been some error in who they've been delivered to, and after Monday night, it'll all work itself out."

"Every player still gets a woman at the end of the night?" Niko asked, much to Andy's surprise.

"That entirely depends on how each player does," Covington sniffed. "If someone is completely wiped out, they are at the mercy of the other players. Now, while usually there is some woman that the winners don't have an interest in, there have been occasions in which the pot has been split by two or three winners, and a couple of men have gone home entirely empty handed. But surely you aren't scared of such a thing, are you Andrew?" The man was clearly trying to goad him into it.

"He'll do it," Niko quickly said before Andy even knew what was happening. "I'm guessing you heard Andy was a good card player from Rachel, so just have her give me your address on Monday at work, and I'll pass it on to Andy. What time does the game start?"

"Tally ho," Covington said with a smile. "While I'm generally not eager to see a woman taking initiative, in this case I will make an exception. The game begins at 7pm and we are usually done before ten, although some nights have gone as long as midnight. Remember, no imprinting of your new women on Monday, otherwise you're only harming them and yourself. Pip pip. See you then, old sport!"

Niko closed the door, and Andy realized he had barely spoken at all to the man, with Niko doing all of the talking. "C'mere," Niko said to him, pulling him from the hallway towards his study, both of them stepping into the room, closing the door behind them, Niko even going so far as to lock it.

The study was where Andy came to focus purely on his writing, a room mostly filled with bookcases, but also had a couch, a desk and a very high end gaming chair to sit in while he wrote. Most of the time, Andy had been happy to work in one of the living rooms with Aisling on the other end of the couch, but there had been days where he'd just wanted to focus on writing and had holed up inside of here to focus.

"Niko, what the actual *fuck*?" Andy asked, as she pushed him to sit down on the couch, before sitting down with him, facing him. "What the fuck was all that about?"

"Andy, stop being modest for a minute. How good a poker player are you?"

Andy's eyes widened and he raised his hands, spreading them palms up. "Uh, pretty good, I guess, but I don't like the idea of playing with people as fucking collateral! What is going on?"

"Look, I know who he's getting delivered on Monday. My job at the Air Force is provide security for the people working on the vaccination and inoculation projects, and there's no way I'm letting him get these particular women, so you have to take him to the fucking cleaners."

"Niko..."

"Andy," Niko said, her face scrunching up, almost as if she was ready to cry. "That fucking prick is going to get the doctor who took care of me when I was first injected, Dr. Charlotte Varma. She's a good woman who lost her husband in March, as one of the first casualties of this fucking disease. She's smart, capable and deserves better than that fucking asshole."

"But Niko..."

"Covington knows people around here, and his little game is being overlooked by everyone in authority. The fucking bastard's practically got tacit approval because the fucking Mayor is one of the people who comes to his poker night."

"Jesus."

"That's not even the worst of it."

Andy narrowed his eyes. "Tell me."

"It's not just Dr. Varma that Covington's getting. It's also Dr. Varma's eighteen year old daughter Asha." Andy was about to speak, when Niko suddenly clutched his arm frantically. "I know! I know what you're going to say!"

"Niko, that's half my fucking age! That's too young!"

"I don't care, Andy," Niko said, her strong grip clinging to his forearm. "I am not letting that prick get his claws into the woman who saved my life, or her fucking daughter, so if she's got to be bound to somebody, she's going to be bound to you, because you are a good man, and you aren't going to do the kinds of sick and twisted shit that Covington would."

Andy scowled. "Dare I even ask?"

Niko frowned, looking down. "He likes to ensure he gets mothers and daughters, or sisters, and then have them go at each other while he watches. And that's the least disgusting thing I can tell you I've heard about him."

Andy inhaled a deep breath and then let out a long sigh. "This is really important to you, isn't it?"

"I swear to you, I wouldn't ask otherwise, Andy. Dr. Varma's a good woman. A *good* woman, who's still mourning the loss of her husband, of Asha's father." She leaned her head down and kissed his hand. "If you want me to beg, I will, but you can't let that asshole get his fucking claws on my friend and her daughter. Please, Andy. Don't let him."

Andy brought his hand up and rubbed his forehead. "This is a lot of fucking pressure to put on a goddamn game of poker, Niko."

"I know, Andy, I know," she said, her cheeks starting to line with tears. "And I should've told you I knew this might happen. When I found out that Dr. Varma was going to be sent to Covington, I went to work."

"What does *that* mean?"

"I convinced one of the girls I work with that her man was going to get a prominent political figure for a new partner."

"She isn't?"

"She is, but this little cabal of theirs wouldn't have known that in advance if I hadn't told them. So she told her man, and he dropped out of the game. As soon as that happened, Rachel, one of Covington's partners who also works at the lab on the base, began asking around if anyone was paired up with a man who played poker."

"And you volunteered me."

"You've always seemed so good when we played strip poker, so I hoped that would be enough!" she said, a frayed desperation in her voice. "And there was another girl whose man played poker, so it was like a fifty-fifty chance he was going to ask you to fill in. I didn't want to say anything in case it didn't happen. Please don't be mad at me. I swear to you, Andy, I'm trying to save my friend here, and my motives are pure."

"So you know who's already showing up for me on Monday?"

"I do," Niko said. "But you're good enough at poker that you'll be able to keep them too. Rachel says they're mostly shitty card players, except for Covington, who's pretty good. But you're more than pretty good, right?" Andy didn't answer, so Niko asked again. "Right?"

"When it's a couple hundred bucks on the line, sure, but we're talking about *people* here, Niko!"

"Look, all I care about is you running Covington into the ground. If you can get Dr. Varma and her daughter into our house, all the better, but you have to make sure he doesn't get them." Niko frowned again. "I've talked to Rachel a bit about her life with him, and it's not good, Andy, but she's locked in, and Dr. Varma... Charlotte... she's not locked into that, and neither is her daughter Asha, and all I'm asking is that you try."

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, Niko trying to stop herself from crying and Andy trying to see a way through this maze of horrible.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?" she finally asked him.

He sighed and leaned back on the couch, pulling her to him, wrapping his arms around her, settling her body against his. "I'm not mad at you, Niko. I wish you'd told me about this in advance, but you're right. If you've got a friend who apparently did this much for you, you can't let her go into Covington's fucked up family without a fight. I'm just worried I'm going to let you down."