The betting shop was a cathedral of desperate hope and quiet despair, a place Marc knew with an intimacy that bordered on shame.
The air was thick with the holy trinity of scents: cheap coffee, rain-soaked coats, and the faint, metallic tang of lost money.
A dozen men, all with the same haunted, calculating look in their eyes, stood like statues before the flickering screens, a digital altar displaying the sacred texts of odds and statistics.
They were the faithful, the believers, praying for a miracle that was always just one late goal or one missed penalty away.
Marc, however, walked in with a confidence that was entirely out of place, a sacrilege in this temple of uncertainty. He wasn't here to hope. He wasn't here to pray. He was here to collect.
His eyes, sharp and clear, scanned the wall of screens, bypassing the frantic, flashing lights of the virtual horse racing and the dizzying array of weekday football fixtures.
He was looking for one thing and one thing only. There it was, tucked away in the FA Cup third-round fixtures, a match so lopsided it was almost an afterthought.
Burton Albion vs. Manchester United.
The odds were, as he remembered, laughable. A United win was so certain that the odds were 1/20, meaning a €10 bet would barely buy you a bag of crisps.
A Burton Albion victory was a ludicrous 50/1, a bet for madmen and dreamers.
But there, nestled between the two extremes, was the option that everyone overlooked, the outcome that was statistically improbable and logically absurd.
The draw. The odds were a beautiful, tantalizing 15 to 1.
He remembered the game with a clarity that was almost painful, a high-definition replay in the cinema of his mind.
He remembered Sir Alex Ferguson, confident in his squad's depth, fielding a team of youngsters and fringe players. He remembered a young Gerard Piqué, years before his Barcelona glory, struggling with the physicality of the non-league strikers.
He remembered a fresh-faced Giuseppe Rossi, full of talent but lacking the killer instinct, missing a sitter in the dying minutes.
He remembered the mud-caked pitch at Burton's tiny Pirelli Stadium, a great leveller that had nullified United's technical superiority. It was a perfect storm of complacency, bad luck, and gritty underdog determination.
And it was the reason Marc's accumulator bet had failed so spectacularly in his past life. The memory, once a source of deep, burning irritation, was now a golden ticket, a key to the first door of his new life.
He walked up to the counter, his heart a steady, rhythmic drum against his ribs.
He slid the single, crisp €100 note under the grille. It was his entire world, the sum total of his second chance. Pushing it across the counter felt like pushing all his chips into the center of the table.
"One hundred euros on the draw," he said, his voice clear and firm, cutting through the low murmur of the shop. "Burton Albion versus Manchester United."
The man behind the counter, a portly, world-weary fellow named Dave, didn't even look up. He was a man who had seen a thousand hopefuls and a million sob stories.
He started tapping the details into his machine with a practiced, cynical air. Then he paused, his pudgy fingers hovering over the keyboard. He looked at the stake. Then he looked at Marc. He finally raised his eyes, a flicker of genuine surprise in them.
"A hundred? On the draw, son?" he asked, his voice a gravelly mix of concern and amusement. "That's a brave bet. A very, very brave bet. It's your money to waste, I suppose."
"I have a good feeling about it," Marc said with a calm, enigmatic shrug that he hoped concealed the frantic pounding of his heart.
As he waited for his betting slip, a heated conversation from a nearby table of grizzled, lifelong United fans caught his ear. It was the topic that was never far from any fan's lips in 2006, a fresh, open wound that refused to heal.
"It's the debt, I'm telling you, Frank," one man grumbled, his face a mask of righteous indignation.
"Seven hundred and ninety million pounds! How does a club that was debt-free, a club that was a model of financial stability, suddenly owe that much money? It's criminal! They should be locked up!"
"It's a leveraged buyout," Marc said, turning towards the group. He couldn't help himself.
The words just came out, a reflex born from two decades of angry forum posts, bitter pub debates, and a deep, abiding hatred for what had been done to his club.
The men turned to look at him, their conversation cut short. "A what?" one of them asked, his brow furrowed.
"A leveraged buyout," Marc repeated, stepping closer, his voice taking on a new, authoritative tone.
"The Glazers didn't use their own money, not the bulk of it anyway. They borrowed it, hundreds of millions of pounds, and the loans are secured against the club's own assets. In essence, they made the club buy itself for them. We, the fans, the club, are paying the mortgage on a house we already owned. It's the most audacious, cynical piece of financial engineering I've ever seen."
He spoke with a passion and a precision that was startling.
He wasn't just repeating headlines; he was explaining the complex financial mechanics with a chilling, almost academic clarity.
The men, who had been expecting a simple agreement, were captivated, their mouths slightly agape.
Sitting at a small table in the corner, a young woman with sharp, intelligent eyes and a notepad open in front of her, stopped doodling in the margins.
Her name was Chloe Jenkins, and she was a junior reporter for the local paper, assigned the thankless task of writing a "color piece" on fan reactions to the Glazer takeover.
So far, she'd heard nothing but generic, profanity-laden complaints, the same tired lines she'd heard a hundred times before. But this was different. This was new.
"So what does that mean for us? For the team?" one of the men asked Marc, his voice now quiet, respectful.
"It means that instead of reinvesting our record profits into the squad, the stadium, or the youth academy, a huge chunk of our revenue, over a hundred million pounds a year in the beginning, will go to servicing that debt. It's a parasite. It will drain the life out of the club, slowly but surely, until all that's left is a brand, a logo, a hollowed-out shell of what we used to be."
Chloe scribbled furiously on her notepad. Parasite. Drains the life out of the club. A hollowed-out shell. This was good. This was the kind of sharp, insightful quote that could get her off the fluff pieces and onto the real news pages. This was a source.
"Your slip, son," Dave the bookie said, pushing the small, rectangular piece of paper across the counter. Marc's brief, impassioned lecture was concluded. He took the slip, a tangible contract with fate, and gave a brief nod to the now-silent group of fans.
As he turned to leave, he noticed the young woman watching him. She had an intense, curious gaze that made him feel, for a second, like he was under a microscope. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod and walked out, the precious slip of paper clutched in his hand.
He didn't watch the match. He couldn't. The anxiety, even knowing the outcome with absolute certainty, was a physical thing, a knot in his stomach.
The 5% chance that he was wrong, that he was in some alternate timeline where United actually won, was too terrifying to contemplate.
Instead, he walked the streets of Manchester, his city, a ghost in his own past. He saw the beginnings of the construction boom that he knew would lead to the housing bubble.
He saw people using clunky Nokia phones, completely oblivious to the iPhone revolution that was just a year away. It was like walking through a museum of his own life.
Finally, as evening fell, he found a pub with the final scores displayed on a screen outside. His eyes scanned the list, his heart in his throat. And then he saw it, in stark, beautiful black and white.
Burton Albion 0 - 0 Manchester United.
A slow, triumphant smile spread across his face. It had happened. Just as he remembered. The universe had not deviated. His cheat sheet was valid.
He walked back into the betting shop, which was now buzzing with the news of the great upset.
The men he had spoken to earlier saw him enter, and their jaws collectively dropped. Dave, the man behind the counter, just shook his head in disbelief, a look of grudging respect on his face.
Marc slid the winning slip under the grille without a word. The man processed it, his hands moving as if in a daze.
He counted out the winnings, the crisp notes a symphony of success. One thousand, five hundred euros. A small fortune, won not by luck, but by the painful, priceless gift of hindsight.
As Marc pocketed the thick wad of cash, a voice from behind him, sharp and inquisitive, cut through the noise. "That was either the luckiest bet I've ever seen, or you knew something nobody else did."
He turned.
It was the journalist, Chloe. She had her notepad out, but she wasn't writing. She was just watching him, her expression a mixture of deep suspicion and undeniable intrigue.
"I just had a good feeling," Marc said, his face an unreadable mask, a placid lake over a torrent of emotions.
"And your 'good feeling' about the club's finances? The parasitic debt structure? Was that just a feeling too?" she pressed, taking a step closer.
Marc held her gaze for a long moment.
He saw the intelligence in her eyes, the hunger for a story, the refusal to accept a simple answer. He knew, in that instant, that she was going to be a problem. And, perhaps, something more.
"I'm just a fan," he said, the words a deliberate, calculated understatement. He turned and walked out of the shop, leaving her standing there with more questions than answers, the scent of a career-making story tantalizingly out of reach.
As he stepped out into the cool night air, the blue screen flickered in his vision, visible only to him, a private celebration of his first victory.
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: Survive the Week][Objective Met: €1,500 > €200]
[Reward: 10 System Points (SP) have been credited to your account.]
Marc grinned. He had the capital. He had the System. And he had a plan. The game had just begun.