Chapter 7: Midnight at Pier Twelve
The harbor air did nothing to cleanse her. It was thick with the stench of diesel, rotting fish, and wet concrete—a foul perfume that clung to her suit, mixing with the sweat and the dried, metallic scent of what she’d done in the quarry. The belt was a living thing against her skin, a persistent, warm pulse that mapped directly onto her clit. Every heartbeat from her body was echoed there, a constant, maddening reminder.
She perched on a rusty gantry crane, overlooking Pier Twelve. The soreness between her legs was a deep, bruised ache, a testament to Mason. It should have been a warning. It felt like an invitation.
Below, the trawler Neptune’s Due listed in the water, its hold open like a dark mouth. Two men in bulky jackets stood sentry by a stack of unmarked plastic crates. A third worked a forklift, its engine a sputtering cough in the night.
No Slag. Not yet.
The information from Mason was good. This was it.
She dropped, a silent fall that ended with a thud on the corrugated metal roof of a shipping container. The impact traveled up her legs and exploded in her core as a bolt of sharp pleasure. She stifled a groan, her teeth gritted.
“Hear that?” one guard below said, his hand going to his hip.
“Rats. Big fuckin’ rats,” the other replied, lighting a cigarette.
She moved. Silently, she swung down from the container, landing behind the smoking guard. Her hand clamped over his mouth, her other arm snaked around his neck. A quick, vicious twist. The crack was soft, wet. The pleasure that followed was not. It was a hot, shocking flood that made her knees weak. She let the body slump.
The second guard turned. “Jimmy?”
She was already in motion. She drove her fist into his solar plexus. The air left him in a pained oof. Before he could fall, she grabbed his head and slammed it, face-first, into the steel edge of the crate. There was a crunch. He slid down, leaving a dark smear.
The forklift driver saw. He fumbled for something at his waist.
Americana didn’t run. She walked towards him, each step deliberate. The terror on his face fed the thing inside her. He raised a pistol. Her hand shot out, faster than he could track, and gripped the barrel. She crushed it, the metal squealing in protest. He stared at the ruined weapon in his hand, then at her.
“Please,” he whispered.
She took the pistol from his limp grip and tossed it into the water. Then she grabbed the front of his coveralls and threw him against the forklift. His head snapped back against the cage with a dull gong. He was dazed, sliding to the ground.
She turned to the crates. Using a crowbar from the ground, she pried the lid off the nearest one. Nestled in foam were rows of glass vials, each filled with a viscous, glowing green liquid. Refined crystallium. The source of the city’s sickness. The source of her… awakening.
The belt’s gem ignited. A searing, green light burned through her costume. The hum became a deafening roar in her skull. Her cunt, already wet and aching, clenched so violently she saw stars. Need, pure and undiluted, short-circuited every thought in her head. It was worse than the quarry. This was the motherlode.
She grabbed a vial. It was warm. The liquid inside swirled, hypnotic.
“Don’t…” the forklift driver moaned from the ground.
She ignored him. Her fingers, trembling, popped the cork seal. A wisp of green vapor escaped. It smelled like ozone and sex and power. Without thinking, she raised the vial to her face and inhaled deeply.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Her vision shattered into prismatic fractals. The dock, the trawler, the sky—all melted into a cascade of green light. The belt wasn’t just pulsing now; it was screaming, a frequency that vibrated in her teeth, in her bones, in the sodden, desperate flesh between her legs. Her clit throbbed, a hard, unbearable knot of sensation that demanded relief.
Rational thought was erased. There was only the need.
She threw her head back and screamed, a raw, animal sound that ripped its way out of her throat. Her free hand dove into the open seam of her costume. Her fingers found her clit, swollen and exposed. She rubbed, hard, in frantic, punishing circles.
It wasn’t enough. The friction was a tiny spark against a forest fire.
She looked down, her vision swimming. The forklift driver was trying to crawl away. He was a shape. A warm, male shape.
She dropped the empty vial. It shattered on the dock.
In two strides she was on him. She rolled him onto his back with a boot. He was crying, snot and tears on his face. “No, no, please…”
She ripped his belt open, tore his zipper down. She didn’t look. She didn’t care. She just needed to be filled. The emptiness inside her was a yawning chasm, a void that the crystallium had carved wide open.
She sank onto him, guiding his soft cock into her with a brutal, unthinking shove of her hips. He was limp. She was so wet, so open, he slid in anyway. The stretch was nothing. She needed more.
“Get hard,” she snarled, her voice not her own. It was guttural, possessed. She began to ride him, a savage, bouncing rhythm that had nothing to do with his participation. Her hand was still on her clit, rubbing, pinching, pulling. The other hand braced against the cold metal of the forklift.
His body, responding to sheer, brutal biology, began to stiffen inside her. That was worse. That was better. Now she could really fuck herself on him. Each slam of her hips took him deeper, the base of his cock hammering a spot that made her vision go white at the edges. The crystallium sang in her veins. The belt seared her skin.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” she chanted, a mantra of ruin. She was mindless. An animal in a costume. Spit dripped from her lips. Her thighs burned with the effort. The sound of their bodies meeting was wet, obscene, punctuated by his choked sobs and her ragged grunts.
She was chasing it. The peak was a mountain, and she was clawing her way up the cliff face. Every nerve was exposed. The world narrowed to the pounding in her cunt and the electric fire on her clit.
It hit her like a freight train.
The orgasm was not pleasure. It was annihilation. A seizure of ecstasy that locked every muscle in her body. Her cunt spasmed around his cock in a series of brutal, rhythmic clenches, milking him. A raw, tearing scream tore from her throat, echoing over the silent water. It seemed to go on forever, waves of it crashing through her, each one wringing a new spasm from her core.
When it finally released her, she collapsed forward, her forehead hitting the forklift’s tire. She was hollowed out. Spent.
Beneath her, the man was crying softly. He had come inside her. She could feel the wet, warm trickle.
She pushed herself up, disengaging. Her legs didn’t want to hold her. She stumbled back, resealing her costume with fingers that felt like strangers. The belt’s light had dimmed to a low, satiated thrum.
The crates of crystallium glowed beside her.
From the shadows at the landward end of the pier, a slow, mocking applause began.
She turned, her body heavy, her mind fogged.
Slag leaned against a crumbling piling, his massive arms crossed over his barrel chest. A grin split his slag-stone face. “Damn, Flag Girl. Knew you had a hunger on you. But that?” He shook his head, chuckling. “That was something else. Poetry.”
She said nothing. Her breath fogged in the cold air.
“Figured you’d follow the candy,” he said, pushing off the piling and walking slowly towards her. “Tastes good, don’t it? Makes you feel real. Now…” He cracked his knuckles, the sound like breaking rocks. “You got what you needed. I got a shipment to move. And you’re in my way.”
The satiated hum of the belt shifted. It coiled again, a low, gathering heat. The emptiness was already returning, deeper now, an addict’s hunger after the first, perfect hit.
She looked at the crates. She looked at Slag.
She bent her knees, settling into a fighting stance. The slickness between her thighs was a cold reminder.
“You’re not moving anything,” she said, her voice rough from screaming.