SINGAPORE—Locked as they were in a deadly, high-stakes game of cat and mouse, patrons of the Marina Bay Sands Casino were revealed Wednesday to be either in the process of conducting a risky and sophisticated assassination or were themselves the target of an ingeniously orchestrated assassination attempt. “Every person here is either an accomplished, veteran killer skilled in countless deadly weapons and tactics, such as myself—and, I’m utterly certain, several others—or a high-end arms dealer or ambassador who has allowed the casino tower’s state-of-the-art security to lure him into a false sense of security and is oblivious to the fact that he or she almost certainly won’t make it out alive,” said one ruthless and deadly operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, who clarified that every single casino employee would at some point be escorted to an unfurnished back room to be swiftly restrained and relieved of their uniforms. “They are all playing their roles flawlessly, from the craps player pretending to chat up that beautiful Argentinian heiress to the blackjack dealer cracking wise with those South American mining executives—all hitmen under deep cover. Granted, there are a few hapless tourists playing slots. They’ll almost certainly be murdered in order to eliminate potential witnesses, if the Russian petroleum oligarch’s ex-Spetsnaz bodyguards don’t use them as mobile cover when the curtain rises on our savage ballet.” At press time, every pair of eyes in the casino was following the cocktail waitress threading her way across the casino floor and attempting to deduce which of the champagne flutes on her tray were poisoned.

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