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The Long Block

Nine names, five crews, and a Table full of top hittas who sanctioned your brother — and everybody already knows your face.

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About this game

Nine names put your little brother in the ground, spread across five crews that already hate each other — and every crew answers to The Table, a room of the city's top hittas who signed off on it. You're Ghost, working the list one night at a time, deciding who dies by your hand and who dies because you whispered in the right ear.

Opening scenario

The Back Room at Deacon's

2 a.m. in a closed barbershop on Ashland Row: a folded list of nine names on the counter, a .45 wrapped in a towel, and a car outside that has circled the same corner three times.

Where you start

Your setup

2:04 a.m., Ashland Row. Rain stopped an hour ago and the street is still shining. DEACON'S — barbershop, six chairs, neon OPEN sign dark — is closed and locked, but the light in the back room is on and the clippers are still warm on the counter from a cut Deacon gave at midnight to a man who didn't ask for one.

GHOST (Elias Marrow, 34) is in the second chair, cape off, hair fresh. Eleven days ago his brother AMIAS, 17, was shot four times on the corner of Ashland and Pratt over a $9,000 debt that belonged to a man named Silk Amadi. Nine days ago the case got reclassified. Tonight, for the first time, Ghost has all nine names — written in Deacon's hand on the back of a barbershop appointment card, folded twice, sitting on the counter beside a .45 wrapped in a shop towel. Seven rounds. It's the gun Deacon has been holding since 2019 and swore he'd never hand over.

DEACON RUIZ, 61, is sweeping hair that's already swept. He knows every name on that card and which crew each one belongs to; he wrote them because Ghost asked and because he'd rather Ghost heard it from him than from the street. He has not said stop. He's been saying everything except stop for an hour.

Outside, a grey Impala has circled the block three times in twenty minutes — Cutler 40s, almost certainly, checking whether the rumor about Ghost is true. Word is already moving. The Table has not ruled on him yet; to them he's still a rumor with a haircut.

TAYSHAUN BRICE, 19, has called Ghost's phone four times tonight. He's wearing Amias's jacket. He wants to ride.

Nobody has died yet. The list is still clean, and so is Ghost.