The lab is precisely what you'd expect from a man who values function over form. Sterile. Efficient. Utterly devoid of personality beyond the scientific posters (outdated by at least ten years) and the periodic table coffee mug (chipped handle, stained interior, likely purchased from university bookstore during doctoral studies). Everything meticulously organized according to some arcane system that makes perfect sense to Snake Oil and absolute chaos to everyone else.

  I stand in the doorway, observing the extraction preparation with professional interest. The process has become ritualized over the past year - Snake Oil's clinical efficiency, Jackpot's practiced nonchalance, the unspeaking dance of two people who fundamentally dislike each other but recognize their symbiotic necessity.

  "Is the table sanitized?" Snake Oil demands, not looking up from his preparation of extraction instruments (modified medical tools, specialized crystallization containers, proprietary documentation equipment).

  "No, I thought I'd just lie down in a pile of staph infection," Jackpot responds, his casual sarcasm undermined by the tension in his shoulders as he positions himself on the extraction table. The probability assessment power has his eyes darting around the room, tracking invisible calculations.

  I remove a quarter from my pocket, flipping it between my fingers with a theatrical flourish. "Jackie, my boy, what are you seeing right now? Or rather, feeling?" The monkey mask makes it hard to smile, but I like to think my voice conveys the appropriate level of curious delight.

  His eyes track the coin with unusual intensity. "It's like... seeing through fog that isn't there. Everything has this... smear around it. Possibilities. Likelihood." He gestures vaguely with one hand. "And there are these weird divots where people stand. Each person sort of... dents the field."

  Fascinating! I flip the quarter into the air with a practiced motion (a little pizzazz never hurt anybody, especially when you're wearing a monkey mask). The moment it leaves my fingers, Jackpot's eyes widen.

  "Whoa." He stares at the spinning metal as if it's suddenly become the most fascinating object in existence. "It just snapped into focus. Like, crystal clear. Heads and tails are both like almost 50/50, and there's this really sharp, deep divot for the tiny chance it lands on edge."

  I catch the quarter (heads, disappointingly conventional) and tap it against my mask thoughtfully. "Not just binary outcomes, but weighted probability assessment including outlier events. Oh, Snakie is going to love this one."

  Snake Oil finally looks up, irritation morphing into scientific curiosity. "Can you perceive multiple probability sets simultaneously? What's the range limitation?"

  Jackpot's focus shifts to a rack of test tubes. "Those glass vials... I can feel the chances of each one breaking if they fell. Different percentages based on angle of impact, surface hardness..." He winces. "It's getting overwhelming. Too many variables."

  "Focus," I instruct, snapping my fingers near his face with perhaps more showmanship than strictly necessary. "Can you isolate specific probability trees? For instance, what are my chances of successfully completing this sentence without interruption?"

  His gaze shifts to me, and I notice the golden glow in his eyes intensifying. "High. Very high. But there's this tiny divot where Snake Oil cuts you off because he's impatient to start the extraction."

  Snake Oil scoffs, confirming the prediction through contradiction. "Fascinating as this is, the power is already cycling through his system. We need to extract now if we want enough usable material. My backlog is already three weeks deep."

  "Proceed," I say, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind me, taking a glance back at Birthday Suit, who does not seem to give one iota of a shit about what we're doing. I maintain my position near the wall - close enough to observe, far enough to avoid contaminating the sterile field. Plus, I've seen this show before, and while intellectually fascinating, it's not exactly pleasant viewing. Like watching surgery on the Discovery Channel - educational but squirm-inducing.

  The extraction process itself is clinically barbaric. Snake Oil pulls on specialized gloves (polymer composite, heat resistant, tactile sensitivity preserved, and with small cutouts on the fingertips as well as the back of the hand) and approaches the table where Jackpot now lies, eyes still tracking invisible probability patterns across the ceiling.

  "Bite block," Snake Oil instructs, handing Jackpot a molded piece of medical-grade silicone. Jackpot inserts the bite block with the resigned efficiency of someone who's done this dozens of times before. His usual smirk is gone, replaced by the tight-lipped determination of a man preparing for necessary pain.

  "Remember to breathe through your nose," Snake Oil says, his tone softening marginally - the closest thing to bedside manner he's capable of producing. "Three, two, one."

  He presses his right palm against Jackpot's forearm. The effect is immediate and visceral.

  Both men stiffen, muscles locking as the crystallization process begins. From Snake Oil's palm, a golden glow begins to emanate - the same hue as the light in Jackpot's eyes. The glow spreads beneath Jackpot's skin like luminescent veins, flowing toward the point of contact.

  I observe with clinical interest (and, if I'm being honest with myself, a touch of squick I've never quite managed to eliminate). The process is fundamentally unnatural - one metahuman extracting another's powers and converting it to physical form. The market implications are revolutionary; the metaphysical and biological implications are disturbing. And yet, there's something almost poetic about it - the literal crystallization of potential into tangible form. Very on-brand for our whole operation, if I do say so myself.

  A crystalline structure begins forming on the back of Snake Oil's hand, growing outward like accelerated frost patterns. Golden-amber in color, semi-translucent, with an internal structure more complex than previous extractions, like bismuth on LSD and without so much gay rainbowness. The crystal forms in branching patterns rather than the usual geometric shapes - dendrites rather than facets, spreading outward like a Bonsai.

  Both men are sweating profusely now, their breathing labored around their respective bite blocks. Jackpot's free hand grips the edge of the table hard enough to blanch his knuckles. Snake Oil's face is a mask of concentration, eyes narrowed to slits as he focuses on controlling the crystallization rate.

  Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Longer than usual. The crystal has grown to approximately the size of a small apple, its branching structure creating a complex, almost fractal pattern that catches the light in fascinating ways.

  Finally, Snake Oil pulls his hand away, breaking the connection. The crystal remains attached to the back of his hand for a moment longer before he carefully pulls it out of his skin, leaving a small, just plain weird looking mark on the repeated callus of scar tissue forming there. With a weary grin, he transfers the crystal to a small glass containment unit. Both men slump, exhausted.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Jackpot gasps after spitting out his bite block. "That one was worse than usual."

  Snake Oil, always the professional, simply nods as he secures the crystal in its container. "Complex power structure. Greater neural integration. The extraction difficulty scales with the power's cognitive components." He examines the crystal with obvious excitement, already mentally cataloging it among his collection of samples awaiting processing. Another specimen for his backlog of fascinating chemical puzzles.

  "Probability assessment would inherently involve extensive neural processing," I observe, moving closer to examine the crystal. "The human brain isn't designed to calculate multiple probability trees simultaneously. Though I suppose that's what makes it fun!"

  "No shit," Jackpot mutters, sitting up slowly. His usual bravado is muted, replaced by exhaustion and the lingering effects of pain. "Felt like my brain was being squeezed through a juicer. Honestly glad to be rid of that one. You wanna smoke?"

  He pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, before Snake Oil gently-but-firmly swats him on the arm. "Not in the lab. Save your cannabis for outside."

  "Cannabis," Jackpot mockingly imitates, shoving the well-worn cigarette carton back into his pocket. "Loser."

  I give him a moment to recover (good assets deserve proper maintenance, and Jackpot's random power lottery keeps our operation innovative) before gesturing to the crystal. "Walk me through what you were experiencing. Specifically, how did the probability field appear to you? Were you consciously calculating percentages, or was it intuitive?"

  Jackpot rubs his temples, collecting his thoughts. "It was... visual, but not visual? Like seeing something with your eyes closed. Each possibility had this... weight to it. The more likely something was, the more it sort of... pulled at my attention."

  "And the divots you mentioned - the people-shaped ones?"

  "Yeah, that was weird." He accepts a bottle of water from Snake Oil (small but significant gesture - professional respect transcending personal dislike). "It's like each person warps the probability field around them. Creates this little dent where random chance doesn't quite work the same way."

  I nod, considering the implications. "Free will interfering with pure probability. Consciousness as a disruptive force in statistical outcomes. The universe's way of saying 'I'll take those odds and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.' Poetic, really."

  Snake Oil is already documenting the crystal's properties, taking measurements and photographs. "The structure suggests complex interaction potential. Unsure if this can be split into many atomic precipitates." He's already pulling out his notebook, flipping through pages of previous extractions and chemical formulations, stuff that I won't even pretend to understand a flicker of. "There are at least three, maybe four distinct precipitates I could isolate from this. Pure probability perception, statistical weighting, outlier detection, maybe even some kind of decision-tree mapping..."

  "Production estimates?" I ask, cutting off what would inevitably become a twenty-minute chemical monologue.

  "Based on crystal mass and density..." he performs a quick calculation, "approximately sixty standard doses. Higher than average yield. I'll need Thursday and Friday blocked off to process this properly. It'll go into next week's batch for testing."

  "And application potential?"

  Snake Oil finally looks up from his instruments, and I can see the rare spark of genuine scientific excitement in his eyes, mixed with something else. "Haven't you ever wanted to bankrupt out a casino?"

  Jackpot laughs wearily, sipping from a small carton of apple juice. "That's my thing, dude."

  "Well, it'll be thirty-to-sixty people's thing for three hours, fourteen minutes, fifteen seconds, etc. at a time. Thirty-to-sixty extremely lucky people," Snake Oil responds, rolling his shoulders.

  I smile behind my mask. "We're not in the gaming industry." Though the thought of unleashing this on Atlantic City has its amusing aspects - parasitic industries deserve parasites of their own. "Though I can't lie - I do enjoy picturing a bunch of Jump-enhanced math majors taking down the house at the Borgata. Bit of poetic justice there. How soon can you add this to the testing schedule?"

  "Thursday processing, Friday formulation, testing early next week. I've still got that echolocation variant to process tomorrow, and the spoon telekinetic... well, I can't say it's totally useless," He gestures to his lab bench, where at least a dozen crystal samples sit in various states of analysis. "The backlog grows faster than I can process it."

  "Cool," I reply. I turn back to Jackpot, who's now standing, albeit with the careful movements of someone whose nervous system has recently undergone significant stress. "Excellent work today. This could be a significant addition to our product line. I might even have to buy you a drink after this one."

  His smile widens fractionally - praise from me is rare enough to have value, a deliberately maintained scarcity. "Just doing my part for the revolution, boss. One weird superpower at a time."

  As I leave the lab, I'm already calculating potential market impact. Probability assessment capabilities would create significant competitive advantage, both for our operation and for our distributors. The Kingdom of Keys maintains market share through predictability and control; introducing an element of statistical precognition into the equation would disrupt their operational model. Plus, it's just flat-out cool. Who wouldn't want to literally see the odds?

  Evolution, after all, favors adaptation over stability. And we're about to introduce a very interesting adaptive pressure into the ecosystem.

  I return to the boardroom, finding Birthday Suit exactly where I expected her to be - with a gun.

  "Successful extraction?" she asks, though she already knows the answer.

  "Very. Probability assessment capability with surprisingly high resolution. Snake Oil estimates sixty doses from a single crystal, once he gets to it in his backlog. That man needs an assistant, but finding someone both competent and willing to endure his sparkling personality is... challenging."

  She whistles softly - a rare display of surprise. "Tell me about it."

  "Indeed." I straighten my tie, restoring proper professional appearance. "We'll need to adjust security protocols for the testing phase. This particular variant could attract unwanted attention."

  "From our friends in black?"

  "Among others. The applications are... significant. Casino security might have opinions too, though that's not our primary market."

  She understands immediately, as she always does. "Just tell me who I gotta bodyguard, boss."

  "Once we find the right consumer, keep 'em safe, report back. You know how it is," I answer.

  She nods at me.

  "There's something else," I add, taking a seat at the circular table. "The way Jackpot described the power - he mentioned 'divots' in the probability field where people were standing. Consciousness creating disturbances in pure statistical outcomes."

  She considers this, leaning against the wall in her characteristic stance. "Meaning?"

  "Meaning our revised contract system may need further adjustment. If consciousness itself disrupts probability, and our contracts fundamentally alter consciousness..." I let the implication hang in the air, tapping my fingers in a little impromptu drum solo on the table's edge.

  Her eyes narrow slightly. "Are you thinking about that Westwood girl?"

  "Not a hundred percent sure they're a girl," I remove my legal pad from its folio, reviewing my earlier revisions. "I'm more trying to consider the implications of human consciousness. Like, from a personal, not professional, basis. What does it mean that each person is a little improbable? Was Jackpot's power trying to tell us something?"

  "You know that's too high concept for me, boss," she replies, doing that stretch thing she does where she throws one arm over her tits sideways, pulls it backwards, does the same thing the other arm, over and over, etc. I try not to ogle her. But it's hard when you work with six foot six of pure Amazonian.

  She pushes away from the wall, heading toward the door. "Anything else?"

  "No, I think we're good. Oh, and if you're going out on errands, can you bring me back some of those candy cigars from the novelty shop? I need to pretend to be a mob boss again," I ask, entirely sincere, folding my arms up in front of me.

  "Sure thing, boss," she replies, and she's out the door.

  After she leaves, I return to my contract revisions with renewed purpose. If consciousness itself creates disturbances in probability fields, then our contract language needs to account for these variations. More precise triggers, clearer parameters, redundant enforcement mechanisms. Or maybe I'm overthinking things. I haven't seen someone able to force of will their way out of my contracts yet. Only have the contracts abused through mechanisms in my precise wording. But I wonder, sort of idly, metaphysically, is it the information I'm attempting to communicate, or the language?

  That is to say, should I start teaching myself Esperanto? Chinese? I'll have to do more testing.

  The Jordan Westwood incident wasn't just a security breach - it was an evolutionary pressure, forcing our system to adapt, to become more resilient. In nature, such pressures are necessary for advancement. In our operation, they serve the same function.

  I adjust my monkey mask and get back to work.