Chapter 1: The Stolen Thesis
The air in Felicity’s study tasted of ozone and stale coffee. A holographic whiteboard flickered silently on the far wall, covered in equations that, to anyone else, would look like chaos magic. To her, it was just Tuesday. One of her mother’s textbooks, Phenomena and Phantoms: A Primer, lay spine-up on the floating desk, a quiet act of rebellion.
She scrolled through her university portal, the blue light washing out the warm, dusky gold of her skin. The submission confirmation box glared back at her.
Title: Cultic Gestation Iconography in Pre-Sumerian Proto-Cultures
Author: Howard Theramore
Submitted: 03:17 AM EST
IP Address: [Redacted - Student Residential]
Her own IP. The one for this house.
“No,” she whispered, the word a dry leaf in her throat. She clicked into the document. Her words, her research, her fucking all-nighter conclusions about clay figurines and ritual bloodletting. All of it. Under his name.
Her wards—intricate gossamer threads of intent woven into the very code of her operating system—showed green across her secondary monitor. No tampering. No breach. It was like the paper had gotten up and walked itself to the submission server while she slept.
The door to the study hissed open. Mandy shuffled in, a gray hoodie drowning her slender frame, her shaggy brown hair a chaotic halo against the neon tube lights lining the doorframe. She held two mugs. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Which, given your major, is actually kinda plausible.” She set a mug down next to Felicity’s trembling hand. “Brought you rocket fuel.”
“Someone stole my paper,” Felicity said, her voice unnaturally flat. “Submitted it as theirs. At 3:17 AM.”
Mandy’s perpetual smirk vanished. She leaned over Felicity’s shoulder, her eyes scanning the screen. “Howard Theramore? That dickweed from your Semiotics seminar? The one who said your mom’s book ‘lacked scholarly rigor’?”
“The same.”
“And it was submitted from here?” Mandy’s tech-brain was already whirring, overriding the morning fog. “Jeeves?”
The floating brass sphere, about the size of a grapefruit, hummed to life from its charging cradle on a bookshelf. Numerous tiny articulated arms unfolded with a series of soft clicks. “Mistress Mandy. Mistress Felicity. The residential network logged no external intrusions between the hours of 22:00 and 07:00. Internal traffic was minimal. A single data packet originated from Mistress Felicity’s terminal at 03:17:04, destination: University Scholastic Archive Server.”
“See? No breach,” Felicity said, hysteria clawing at the edges of the words. “So I either have a sleepwalking doppelganger, or I’m going insane.”
“Or someone’s magic is way slicker than your wards,” Mandy murmured, sipping her coffee. “Where’s Mai?”
“Live-stream prep. She was up before dawn waxing poetic about sonar pings and possible serpent scale keratin.” Felicity finally picked up the mug, the heat barely registering. “What do I do, Mandy? I can’t go to the department. ‘My magical cybersecurity was defeated’ isn’t exactly a recognized excuse.”
“We tell Ben and Bruce. Ben’s got brawn, Bruce has his weird steampunk mojo. Then we crack this ourselves.” Mandy’s smirk returned, sharper now. “After. You’re wound tighter than a spring, Flick. You need to not be in your head for an hour.”
Felicity closed her eyes. The righteous anger was there, a cold knot in her stomach. But under it, swirling and hot, was something else. The memory of skin, and sweat, and hands everywhere. That night six months ago with Mandy, Ben, Mai, Mike, and Casey had unlocked a door in her, and it wouldn’t shut. Her mother’s teasing voice echoed: Mike broke my daughter. Maybe he had. The scholarly part of her wanted to obsess over the data violation. The rest of her, the newly awakened, hungry rest, was already following Mandy’s implication.
“Where’s Ben?” Felicity asked, her voice lower.
“Basement. Fixing that resonance calibrator for me.” Mandy’s eyes were dark and knowing. “Come on.”
The basement was Mandy’s kingdom. Exposed brick walls were lined with server racks emitting a soft, blue glow. Workbenches overflowed with mystical components next to soldering irons and crystal oscillators. The air was cooler, smelling of solder and sage.
Ben was bent over a metal apparatus, his back muscles shifting under his thin cotton tee. He heard them and straightened, flashing Amy Bryant’s brilliant, disarming grin. “Hey. Just about got it… whoa.” His grin faltered as he took in their expressions. “What’s wrong?”
“Academic theft. Supernatural fuckery. The usual,” Mandy said, waving a hand dismissively. She walked up to him, hooked a finger in the waistband of his jeans, and pulled him close. “We’re dealing with it. Later. Right now, Felicity needs a distraction.”
Ben’s eyes darted to Felicity, concern morphing into understanding, then into a hot, appreciative look that traveled down her body. He knew the score. Mandy had been clear from the start: this was a sharing situation. He was good with his hands, better with his cock, and he adored them both in his own, uncomplicated way.
“Okay,” he said, simple and direct.
Mandy turned to Felicity. “Still in your head?”
Felicity shook her head, the academic panic being smothered by a rising, throbbing need. “No.”
“Good.” Mandy closed the distance and kissed her, hard. It wasn’t gentle. It was possession, a demand to be present. Felicity moaned into it, her hands coming up to tangle in Mandy’s messy hair. The taste of coffee and mint toothpaste was overwhelmingly familiar, a catalyst.
Ben moved behind Felicity, his large hands settling on her hips, pulling her back against him. She could feel the thick, hard line of his erection already straining against his jeans, pressing into the cleft of her ass. He nuzzled her neck, his breath hot. “Tell us what you need, Flick.”
“I need to feel something that makes sense,” she gasped against Mandy’s mouth.
Mandy broke the kiss, her own breathing ragged. “Then get naked. Both of you.”
They obeyed. Clothes became a frantic, awkward pile on the concrete floor. Felicity’s pale skin goosebumped in the cool air. Ben stood bare, gloriously so, his cock already fully erect, thick and heavy and curving slightly upwards. Mandy, still in her hoodie, shoved it off along with her panties, standing naked and smirking as she watched them.
“Ben, on the workbench. Flick, ride him.”
The polished metal of the workbench was cold against Ben’s back. He lay back, his cock standing straight up from a thatch of dirty blonde hair. Felicity climbed over him, her knees on either side of his hips. She didn’t tease. She needed the blunt, physical truth of it. Reaching down, she guided him, the broad head of his cock nudging against her wetness.
She sank down onto him in one slow, relentless slide.
A choked, guttural sound escaped Ben. His hands flew to her hips, gripping hard. “Fuck, you’re so tight.”
He filled her, stretching her, a perfect and undeniable anchor to the physical world. She began to move, setting a deep, urgent rhythm, bouncing on his cock, the slap of skin on skin echoing in the tech-filled room. Her tits bounced with each descent. The scholarly tension, the violation, all of it was being fucked out of her, replaced by a white-hot coil of pleasure winding tighter in her gut.
Mandy watched, her hand drifting between her own legs, fingers working in slow circles. “That’s it. Use him, Flick. Take what you need.”
Felicity’s movements became more frantic, her nails digging into Ben’s chest. The coil was about to snap. “I’m… I’m gonna…”
“Come,” Mandy ordered, her voice husky. “Come on his cock.”
The command did it. Felicity’s orgasm ripped through her, a silent scream on her lips as her back arched violently. Her cunt clenched around Ben’s shaft in rhythmic pulses, milking him. The sensation was too much for him. With a raw shout, his hips pistoned up off the bench, driving into her as he came, his release hot and jetting deep inside her.
She collapsed forward onto his sweat-slicked chest, spent. He held her, his breath heaving.
Mandy approached. She put a hand under Felicity’s chin, tilting her face up. She kissed her again, softer this time, tasting her gasps. Then she looked down at Ben, his cock still semi-hard, glistening with their combined fluids. “My turn.”
She pushed Felicity gently off him. Felicity slid to the floor, legs wobbly, leaning against the bench, watching as Mandy climbed onto Ben. Mandy didn’t bother with preamble. She impaled herself on him with a sharp cry of satisfaction, setting a punishing, efficient pace. Ben, recovered and eager, met her thrust for thrust, his hands gripping her ass, helping her drive down onto him.
Felicity watched, the heat returning to her blood. She saw the way Ben’s body strained, the way Mandy’s head fell back in ecstasy, her breasts jutting forward. She crawled over. As Mandy rode him, Felicity took one of Mandy’s nipples into her mouth, sucking and nibbling, her hand sliding between Mandy’s legs to rub her clit in time with Ben’s thrusts.
“Yes… fuck, right there, both of you, don’t stop…” Mandy chanted, her body beginning to shudder. Her orgasm was a series of sharp, breathy cries, her cunt fluttering around Ben. He followed her over again with a groan, his body going rigid.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the hum of servers.
Then, from upstairs, Jeeves’s placid voice chimed through the intercom. “Mistress Felicity. An urgent delivery has arrived. A physical manuscript. The return address is listed as H. Theramore, University Archeology Department.”
The cold reality crashed back in, sharper now, laced with a new kind of dread. It was one thing to steal a file. It was another to send a physical object to her home.
Felicity looked at the slick sheen on Ben’s softening cock, at Mandy’s flushed, satisfied face, then down at her own trembling hands. The distraction was over. The thing that made no sense was now on their doorstep.
“Get dressed,” she said, her voice quiet but clear. “We’ve got a package to open.”
They dressed quickly, the frantic energy of moments before replaced by a focused urgency. Felicity led the way back upstairs, her bare feet silent on the polished concrete steps. In the main living area, sprawled on a sun-bleached couch with a tablet in hand, was Mai. She wore a thin silk kimono, loosely tied, her dark hair a waterfall over one shoulder.
“What’s all the commotion?” Mai asked, not looking up from her screen displaying sonar waveforms. “You three sound like a herd of elephants.”
“Package,” Felicity said, striding past toward the front foyer. “Some fuckery with my paper.”
Mai’s head lifted at that. The imprecise, un-scholarly nature of Felicity’s answer was like a flare. “What kind of fuckery?” She stood up, a little gingerly, and winced.
Mandy, pulling her hoodie back on, caught the movement. “You okay?”
“Stiff. Sore. Weird,” Mai said, rolling her shoulders. “Must’ve slept in a contortionist’s position. Where’s this package?”
Jeeves hovered a foot above a small, brown-paper-wrapped parcel on the entryway table. The sphere rotated, a blue scanning beam washing over it. “Analysis complete. No explosives, no biological agents, no active magical signatures. Contents appear to be paper and cardstock. Low threat probability.”
“Open it, Jeeves,” Felicity said.
A fine, precise laser extended from one of the sphere’s many arms, slicing through the twine and paper with surgical neatness. Inside was a manuscript box. Felicity lifted the lid. On top of a stack of printed pages sat a single note card. She read it aloud, her voice cold.
“An impressive thesis. Truly. You should check your house security system. - H.”
Beneath the card was her paper. Her title. But the author line read Howard Theramore.
“I did check,” Felicity hissed, crumpling the card. “The digital wards. There was no magic near my terminal.”
Mandy was already moving, grabbing a remote and pointing it at the large, frameless screen that dominated the living room wall. “Maybe he doesn’t mean the digital security. He means the physical security. Jeeves, pull up the exterior and interior feeds from last night. Three AM to four AM. Four-way split.”
The screen bloomed to life with high-definition black-and-white footage. Four views: the front door, the hallway outside their bedrooms, the main living area, and Felicity’s study door. They watched in silence, the only sound the hum of the climate control. The timecode ticked over. 3:10 AM. 3:12. Everything was still.
Then, on the hallway feed, the door to Mai’s room opened.
“What the hell?” Ben murmured.
Mai leaned forward, her kimono gaping. “I was asleep.”
On screen, Mai stepped into the hallway. Her movements were smooth, purposeful. Not sleepy. She was wearing the oversized tee she’d gone to bed in. She paused, looked directly down the hall at the camera—a blank, empty look—and then pulled the shirt over her head in one fluid motion, dropping it to the floor.
“Oh, come on,” the real Mai whispered, her face flushing.
The nude figure on screen turned and walked into the shared bathroom opposite her room. The camera had an angle through the open door. She stood before the large mirror, her hands running over her own body—cupping her small breasts, pinching her nipples until they pebbled, then sliding down over her flat stomach to the dark triangle between her legs. Her fingers dipped, stroking. Her head lolled back, a smile on her face that didn’t look like Mai’s at all. It was smug. Possessive.
“He’s… using my hand to get himself off in my body,” Mai said, her voice a mixture of horror and furious fascination.
After a minute, the figure stopped, gave its reflection a final, appreciative look, and padded, naked and unselfconscious, out of the bathroom and directly to Felicity’s study. The door was unlocked. She went in.
“Switch to the study cam, Jeeves,” Mandy ordered, her voice tight.
The view changed. The room was dark, lit only by the standby lights of various devices. Nude-Mai walked straight to Felicity’s floating desk, woke the terminal, and began typing. Her fingers flew over the keyboard with a speed and certainty the real Mai didn’t possess for that system. It took less than a minute. She navigated to the university portal, uploaded the file, confirmed the submission. Then she leaned back in the chair, stretched like a cat, and swiveled to face the small, discreet camera in the upper corner of the room.
She smiled. A wide, knowing, shit-eating grin.
And she waved.
Then she stood, left the study, and returned to her own room. Inside, she didn’t dress. She performed a series of slow, sinuous dance moves, her hands all over herself again, culminating in her slipping two fingers inside herself with a visible shudder of pleasure captured in grayscale. Only then did she pull her sleep shirt back on, climb into bed, and—according to the timecode—appear to fall instantly, deeply asleep.
The screen went dark. The silence in the beach house was absolute, broken only by the distant crash of waves.
Mai was the first to speak. “I don’t… I have no memory of that. None.” She looked at her own hands as if they were foreign objects. “I woke up sore. I thought it was from sleeping weird. But it was… that.”
Felicity nodded slowly, the academic in her piecing it together despite the visceral violation. “I know you didn’t do it. The magic wasn’t on my computer. My wards were perfect. He bypassed them completely.” She looked at Mai, her blue eyes sharp with a terrible understanding. “He didn’t hack the system. He hacked the user. He put his mind, his consciousness, into your body while you slept. You were the Trojan horse. Your fingerprints, your biometrics, your access. No security flags. Just you, asleep, with a psychic parasite riding you.”
The thought sank in, vile and intimate. The theft of academic work was one thing. This was a violation that left a physical ache.
The tension coiled in the room, thick and suffocating. Ben cracked his knuckles, his jaw clenched. Mandy stared at the black screen, her mind racing through tech and magical loopholes.
Mai let out a long, slow breath. Then she shrugged, the silk of her kimono whispering. A flicker of her usual, reckless defiance returned to her eyes. “Well,” she said, her English accent crisp in the heavy silence. “At least this Howard wanker has the good enough taste to take over my own gorgeous body. Could’ve been worse. He could have been squatting in some ugly fucker.”