Top's eyebrows almost at meet the bridge of his nose, surprised, and at the same time, puzzled about on how he can get back his billions. "What? A game?" he asked to verify.

"Oh yes. I promise you'll enjoy this," said Jeff, his excitement has already gone through the roof of CBOT despite not starting yet. "I want you to look at the website I gave you.

Top obeys. "What's next."

"Press F5. That will refresh the page."

"Done." The way Top pressed the key is like someone flattening a dough – hard and forceful.

"Thank you. You just disabled everyone else from logging into the network; you also just gave me control over your terminal."

"WHAT!?"

"I don't want anything disrupting us while we play; I also don't want you doing anything except to watch, like I did inside a box for four-hundred and sixty-six days."

"I have nothing to do with your incarceration, Satur."

"We'll see about that." Jeff straightens on his chair, doing some sort of slight stretch. "You have no idea how I dreamed of this moment – night and day for more than a year: I ask you something and all you can do is answer me with the truth."

"What if I refused?" Top puts his arm on his desk, shaking in his anger.

"You'll get the treatment."

"How?"

"Look at your screen."

Top does, looking at the amount that he has been robbed of right under his nose. "I'm looking at it now."

"Good. Keep watching."

Suddenly the interface in the website changes: the topmost part where the twenty-plus billion is showing disappears, clearing the screen white clean. Afterwards, three lines of text show, one on top of the other. The topmost shows the name of their game, while the other two have their names. Beside each name are value amounts that are exorbitantly high.

"What have you done, Satur!?" asked Top, agitated that the total pot has been divided into two equal portions.

"You see what I did? I've split your money between us: I told you I am not without a heart."

"Stop whatever this is!"

"You don't give the orders here, Sutthirak: I do. If I ask 'Are you ready?', you say "Yes, Mister Jeff". If I tell you to answer, you append "Mister Jeff" to it. Got it?"

"No!" Top scoffs away Jeff's instructions.

"Each time I ask a question and you give me attitude, there will be consequences. Each time I asked a question and you give an answer that I don't like, there will also be consequences."

"Like what?"

"Let's do some warming up, shall we," said Jeff to test if Top will – at least – cooperate. "Are you ready?"

"Go to hell, Satur."

"EEEEEEEHHHHH! Wrong answer!"

To Top's surprise, something happens in topsucks.html, infuriating him even further.

"Satur, you son-of..."

"My parents? Yes, I am." Jeff finishes Top's statement, echoing the insult back. "Each time you give me attitude or answer incorrectly, I take away a couple of numbers from your pot – and that is any numbers I please. At any time one's pot becomes zero, it's game over. When that happens, both of us walk away with the amount next to our name. Clear?"

"One thing." Top voices out a concern.

"Fire away."

"Don't you think it's unfair that I get to answer your questions right, and I don't get back some from your pot?"

"You'll get some back – I told you I'm not without a heart: If I like your answer, you'll get some of your money back."

"Understood."

"Now, let's try that again: are you ready, Sutthirak?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes, Mister Jeff." Top rolls his eyes, finding the situation irritating.

"Good boy." Jeff changes the tally in the screen again.

"Welcome to Jeffpardy, Sutthirak. I can't mimic Alex Trebek, so I apologize about that. This is a game show that has a simple rule: I ask, you answer."

As Jeff is talking, Top spreads his hands over his keyboard and mouse.

"I already said the rules earlier, and you already tried how strict I am when...hmmmmm." Jeff stops, looking at the black window in his screen, which registers and shows what Top is doing in his terminal back in Le Cargaison. The logs stack up – per action, one by one – and he doesn't like anything from what he is seeing.

While Top is composing a message in a blank e-mail template, to his shock, the cursor freezes. Then, it moves backward, erasing every letter despite him not pressing the Backspace key. In a matter seconds, the template has been cleared. After that, his Outlook application terminates without him closing it. Shaking his head, he was forced to get his attention back to the website topsucks.html.

"You were attempting to send an e-mail asking for help. Misdemeanors like that carry a penalty in Jeffpardy." Jeff changes the values in the screen again.

"Alright. I'll behave from now on," said Top, conceding and believing at the same time that Jeff is indeed in control of his terminal.

"Don't you ever test my rules – not even the string of my patience. You have no idea what I am capable of now." Jeff's warning warrants some serious following to.

"You win. Let's continue, then," Top sounds uptight, having made a fool of for his temerity.

"Okay. So much for the commercials, let's play Jeffpardy!" said Jeff, playing an applause sound effect over the phone. "YEY!!"

Leaning back in his seat, Top crosses his arms: this will be a long night, not to mention that Gameplay has not reached out to him yet.

"We only have one category here," said Jeff, starting off in momentum with a lively voice.

"Which is?"

"Time travel. Something like that, yeah – we're going to dig a thing or two from the past."

"Are we to start soon?"

"Yes. In fact, we're starting with this one for...let's see...two billion? To get things going?" said Jeff, locking in his mind the amount he will either add to his pot or to Top's. "Scylla and Charybdis? Do you know them?"

"Yes, I do," replied Top confidently.

"Yes, I do what?"

"Yes, I do, Mister Jeff." Top shakes his head in disbelief, feeling powerless. He wants to hurl something he can get his hands on, but the problem is which one to pick up.

"Good answer. Now let's call some of those numbers back." Jeff changes the board again.

"Call?" whispered Top to himself. As if overtaken by a thought, he gets his phone and holds it using both hands.

"Next, what are they?"

"Those are two systems I use, Mister Jeff." Top answers as he fiddles with his phone, looking for something.

"Nice. Now you know how to answer."

Upon finding what he is looking for, Top opens Skype. With him always logging out of it after every use, he needs to supply his credentials at the initial screen each time to get in.

"From what I remember when I used to work there, those two systems are not in our List of Assets, right?"

"Correct, Mister Jeff." Top waits for the login screen as Skype loads.

"So, it must have been developed by programmers outside Le Cargaison, right?"

"Right, Mister Jeff." Top scrambles as he supplies his username in Skype – something he forgets a lot like his password.

"Hmmmmm. And who did them?"

"Opp Weerapong."

"He sounds familiar." Jeff, once again, changes the distribution of figures, going on ahead and forgetting the fact that Top missed two words at the end of his answer.

Top glances at the website shortly and sees that he has more money than Jeff now. When he looks back to his phone, he sees that he has successfully logged into Skype. Immediately, he opens his chat with Gameplay, launching it in a separate box. He types in it in a hurry: "Gameplay, I need help. Contact DSI and look..." However, before he can give the name of the person that GP should get in touch with, his cursor stops. He watches in awe – like at what happened before in his Outlook – as his message gets completely deleted, with one character disappearing after another as the cursor moves backwards.

"I thought you understand our rules, Sutthirak. This will definitely cost you." The new message appears on Gameplay's chat box.

Turning to the screen of his laptop, he sees the result of his misplaced intrepidity.

"How long we go in this is up to you, Sutthirak," Jeff's voice over the phone has a gluey force on it that should not be taken for granted.

"How did you..."

"When you took this call earlier, it activated a bug I sent through the line, giving me access to your phone – complete access."

"Very clever." Top's face does not suggest that he is impressed one bit.

"You access a porn website, I'll know about it. You change the date of your scheduled dinner with Gameplay, I can revert it without you knowing."

"Basically, I'm your prisoner, right? Not only in the physical aspect?"

"Ding! Ding! Ding! That's correct. So, my suggestion is while you're in my leash, you better not do anything stupid, or this will be all over before you can say 'I quit'."

"Have it your way, then."

"Now, let's continue playing," said Jeff with the mentality that from here on in, it is all Daily-Double-level questions: playtime is over. "Before you rudely interrupted me earlier, I said that Opp Weerapong sounds familiar, remember?"

"Yeah, so?"

"He's the other guy in my scandal video, and he was the one who programmed Scylla and Charybdis? I don't follow here, Sutthirak. Help me."

"He's a sex worker I met at Sky Bar. There, I learned that he is a programmer."

Jeff changes the number sagain after having confirmed one of the things Opp told him before.

"After what we did, I told him to make Scylla and Charybdis," followed up Top after seeing that the board changed.

"I see." Jeff likes the succeeding details that Top gave even without him asking.

"What are those two systems for, Sutthirak?"

"To track the savings of my company."

"Really?" The answer did not sit well with Jeff, prompting him to take away some out of Top's pot.

"Let's try that again. Be careful in answering this time, or I might take away all your money in one go," cautioned Jeff, stressing the consequence should the other do otherwise.

Top shakes his head in dismay, seeing this is no ordinary game they are playing. "I use them to track payments, Satur."

"Payments of what? From whom? To Le Cargaison?"

"Yes, payments to Le Cargaison."

"Good boy."

Top sees that the board changes again.

"From whom?" asked Jeff.

"Partners." Top tries to answer as reservedly as he can.

"Who are they."

"What's the point of all this, Satur?"

"You are only to answer questions, Sutthirak. You don't have the right to ask."

"Six companies," said Top after a rather heavy exhale.

"Okay. Who are they?"

"SEA Airlines, MMG Body Wears, Bright-Win Textiles, Fiat and Chimon's Meat Inc., Yuuki Dairies, and Zee-Max Agri Produce Co." Top fixes himself in his seat because he knows that he can only be reticent for so long.

"Those are big business names," said Jeff, changing the board again as Top's answers match the one that Folk told him before.

"When I was still working for you, I looked into the database and didn't find those six in the official clients of Le Cargaison. Why is that?" asked Jeff. In his mind, it's time for the prey to lay out the trap for the predator.

"I don't know."

Jeff did not answer. To Top's surprise, the board changes again, and this time, it is not in his favor.

"Satur, please, I really..."

"Why are they not in Le Cargaison's official list of clients?"

"I SWEAR I DON'T KNOW!" Top bellows, his voice vibrating throughout his office.

"WRONG ANSWER!"

"WHY ARE THEY NOT IN THE OFFICIAL LIST OF CLIENTS? ANSWER!" Jeff shouts each word – one after the other – in a unified length of pauses.

"Satur...That is..."

"I swear to god I'll empty your pot the next time you evade the question."

Top closes his eyes to weigh his options, which is not so many at the moment.

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!"

Completely caught by his prey, Top takes in a deep breath. "They are what I consider midnight companies," he said after letting all the air out of his lungs.

"Meaning what?"

"We have under-the-table deals with them."

"What kind?"

"It's a long story." Top thinks that this cliché will make Jeff give up the topic. To his surprise, the board changes again.

"It's a long night," said Jeff, showing no signs of deviating.

Leaning back into his chair, Top silently clears his throat, cleaning every part of his mouth first before he floods it with impurities from the next set of details he is about to divulge. 

------

Author's Note

Top is now in spotlight, and it's not looking good for him. He must pick his answers more carefully or lose most of his money.

Though what are these under-the-table deals that the six companies have had - or are still having - with Le Cargaison? Can Jeff uncover the connection between Scylla and Charybdis and his imprisonment?

Stay tuned for release of the next chapter - A Devil Singing - soon.

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