Chapter 5: The Riddler's Lair
The Water Sprite cut through the pre-dawn gloom, its hull whispering through water that was too calm, too quiet. The usual chaos of the Atlantic was absent here, replaced by a stagnant, heavy silence that pressed against the eardrums. Miami’s neon aurora was a distant memory, replaced by a starless blanket of cloud that seemed to absorb the boat’s running lights.
Mai stood at the helm, her hands steady on the wheel, her eyes fixed on the holographic chart overlay. The coordinates from Amy and Yukio glowed a sickly green, a digital X marking a spot forty nautical miles into the dead zone.
“This is proper creepy,” Bruce murmured, leaning against the rail with his steampunk wrench hooked on his belt. The Scottish lilt in his voice was subdued. “The water’s not right. No current. No birds. It’s like the world’s holding its breath.”
Felicity, wrapped in a cable-knit sweater despite the humidity, chewed her lip as she monitored a suite of paranormal sensors. “Electromagnetic readings are off the charts. But it’s not a spike. It’s a constant, oppressive field. Like a dome.” She glanced at Mandy. “It’s dampening our outgoing signals. We’re on our own.”
Mandy didn’t look up from her workstation, a makeshift array of laptops and Wand-derived scanners cobbled together on the saloon table. The cracked wand lay beside her like a trophy. “Good. If we can’t call out, neither can he. This is a closed system now.” Her fingers flew across three different keyboards. “I’m mapping the field’s source. It’s subsurface. Big. Non-organic.”
Ben stood near Mai, a silent bulwark. He wore a life vest over a t-shirt, his expression grim. “So this Nigma guy. He’s like a Bond villain? Secret underwater base, watching people screw? That’s… pathetic.”
“It’s the Riddler,” Maryam said from the stern, where she was checking the lines on the dinghy. She adjusted her baseball cap. “E. Nigma? Come on. It’s gotta be a reference. My dad’s got all the old comics. The Riddler leaves puzzles.”
Kim, who had been meditating quietly in the bow, her curved sword across her lap, opened her hazel eyes. “A riddler who collects intimate moments. That tracks. The ego required to see people as puzzles to be solved… it’s a particular sickness.” She stood, fluid and silent. “He’ll have layered his lair with them. Tests of intellect, not just force.”
Jessica emerged from the cabin below, having changed into her charcoal Gray Wand field suit. The severity of it was undermined by the flush still visible on her neck from the previous day’s activities. “The Order has profiles on several independent operatives with this modus. Curators, as I said. They see the world as a gallery and themselves as the sole audience. They’re often the most dangerous because their only goal is their own gratification. They have no ideology to predict.”
Mai snorted. “Well, this particular wanker’s gallery is about to get a hostile takeover. Look.”
She pointed. Ahead, in the flat, dead water, a pattern emerged. It wasn’t a natural formation. A perfect circle of floating, glassy orbs, each the size of a basketball, bobbed silently. They emitted a soft, internal phosphorescence.
“Sensors are going berserk,” Felicity whispered. “They’re projecting a localized field. This is the outer perimeter.”
Mandy brought up a sonar image on the main screen. Beneath the circle of orbs, the seafloor dropped away into a sheer, artificial cliff. And set into that cliff face, like a colossal plug, was a circular door of dull gray metal, easily a hundred feet in diameter.
“There’s your door,” Mandy said. “No visible handles. No keypad.”
As the Water Sprite drifted to the edge of the orb-circle, the nearest sphere glowed brighter. A beam of light projected from it, painting words on the surface of the water itself, as if on a screen.
RIDDLE THE FIRST: FOR THE TECHNO-MAGE
I have keys but open no locks. I have space but no room. You can enter but not go outside. What am I?
Ben groaned. “Seriously?”
Mandy’s smirk returned. “It’s a keyboard.” She didn’t hesitate. She swung her chair to a secondary console, pulled up a command prompt, and began typing. “The orbs are a network. A living firewall. The riddle is the passphrase.” Her typing was a rapid staccato. She entered the answer.
Nothing happened for three heartbeats.
Then, with a deep, sub-aquatic groan that vibrated through the hull, the massive circular door began to rotate. A segment slid sideways, revealing a dark, cavernous opening. The interior lights flickered on, revealing a water-filled tunnel leading down.
“He made it easy,” Jessica said, her voice tight with suspicion.
“It’s not about difficulty,” Felicity said, her scholarly passion overriding her fear. “It’s about verification. He’s confirming we’re who he thinks we are—the ones who broke his wand. He’s tailoring the experience.”
Mai engaged the thrusters, guiding the Water Sprite into the tunnel. The door sealed behind them with a final, ominous boom. They were in a gigantic, submerged docking bay. The air was cold, sterile, smelling of ozone and stale salt. The boat’s engines echoed in the vast space.
A wide gangplank extended from a lit platform to their deck. At its head stood a pedestal with a second, smaller orb.
They disembarked, weapons ready—Kim’s sword, Maryam’s enchanted bat, Bruce’s wrench. Mandy carried a heavily modified tablet. The orb glowed.
RIDDLE THE SECOND: FOR THE SCHOLAR OF THE UNSEEN
I am always hungry, I must always be fed. The finger I touch will soon turn red. What am I?
Felicity blinked. “Fire.” She stepped forward. “But that’s too simple. It’s a classic.” She studied the pedestal. There was no input. “It’s not about saying the answer. It’s about… demonstration.” She looked at Kim. “Green Moon initiates can conjure minor elemental effects. Joy sparks. Can you…?”
Kim nodded. She focused, a faint green aura surrounding her hand. She snapped her fingers. A small, cheerful flame, no bigger than a candle’s, burst to life above her thumb. She held it towards the orb.
The orb absorbed the flame. A section of the far wall hissed open, revealing a long, white corridor.
“He’s testing our aptitudes,” Mandy muttered. “Building a profile.”
The corridor led to a central chamber, vast and circular. In its center was a dais. On the dais was a third orb, larger than the others. Doors lined the walls, all sealed. The air was colder here.
The third orb activated.
RIDDLE THE THIRD: FOR THE WARRIOR OF FLESH AND PHILOSOPHY
I am not a weapon, but I can part the mightiest army. I am not a king, but I can crown a man. I am not a god, but I can answer a prayer. What am I?
Kim’s brow furrowed. Maryam hefted her bat. “Something you hit with? A home run parts a defense…”
“No,” Kim said softly. “It’s more abstract. A warrior of philosophy…” Her gaze drifted to Ben, to Mandy, to the memory of the tangled bodies on the basketball court. Her eyes widened. “It’s a woman. Or more precisely, sex. The power of sex. It parts armies, crowns kings, answers primal prayers.”
The orb pulsed, waiting.
“But how do you demonstrate that?” Bruce asked, shifting uncomfortably.
Kim looked at Mai. A silent understanding passed between them. The connection from the backyard, the resolution of loneliness, was still a live wire. The sterile, watchful atmosphere of the chamber was its own kind of tension. A tension that demanded release.
“We demonstrate it,” Kim said, her voice losing its meditative calm, gaining a raw edge. She walked to Mai, never breaking eye contact. “He wants data on interconnected pleasure? On the warrior aspect of it? Fine.”
She grabbed the front of Mai’s shirt and tore it open, buttons pinging off the metal floor. Mai gasped, not in protest, but in challenge. She clawed at Kim’s belt, yanking it loose, shoving her combat pants down over her hips.
This wasn’t the sensuous orchestration of the backyard. This was a clash. A claiming.
Kim spun Mai around, bending her over the cold dais next to the glowing orb. Mai’s palms flattened on the metal, her back arched. Kim’s hand came down hard on Mai’s ass, a sharp crack that echoed in the chamber. A red handprint bloomed on the pale skin.
“Yes!” Mai hissed, pushing back.
Kim didn’t bother with foreplay. She was wet already, her own need a sharp, angry thing. She positioned herself, the head of her cock—a manifestation of Green Moon will, solid and real—pressing against Mai’s entrance. “This is for him,” Kim growled, a promise and a curse. “Every fucking second.”
She drove in, a single, brutal thrust that buried her to the hilt. Mai cried out, a sound of pure, stunning fullness, her fingers scrabbling on the dais.
Kim fucked her with a relentless, punishing rhythm. Each snap of her hips was a declaration, the wet, slapping sounds obscenely loud in the sterile space. She gripped Mai’s hips hard enough to bruise, holding her in place as she pistoned into her.
“You see this, you voyeuristic fuck?” Kim shouted at the orb, at the unseen cameras. “This is what you don’t understand! It’s not just data! It’s this!”
Mai was meeting her thrust for thrust, her ass bouncing against Kim’s pelvis. “Harder! God, don’t you dare fucking stop!” she screamed, her accent thick with arousal.
The raw carnality of it was a shockwave in the room. Ben was hard, his hand unconsciously moving to adjust himself. Mandy watched, her own breath short, her analyst’s mind momentarily silent. Felicity’s mouth was open, her skin flushed. Jessica’s professional composure was gone, replaced by naked hunger.
Kim reached around, her fingers finding Mai’s clit, rubbing it in rough, tight circles. “Come for him,” she commanded, her voice ragged. “Come all over my cock and show him what he’s just a spectator to.”
The combination of the deep, pounding penetration and the frantic stimulation on her clit was too much. Mai’s body locked, a silent scream on her face before sound erupted—a raw, guttural roar as her orgasm detonated. Her cunt clenched around Kim’s shaft in violent, rhythmic spasms, milking it.
The sensation pushed Kim over the edge. With a final, grunting thrust, she buried herself and came, a hot flood pulsing deep inside Mai. She stayed there, slumped over Mai’s back, both of them shuddering, joined and sweating in the cold room.
The orb glowed blindingly bright. A series of doors around the chamber hissed open simultaneously, revealing passages leading deeper into the facility. The central door led to a control room.
The third riddle was solved.
They disentangled, clothes in disarray, the heat of the act fading into the chill of the facility. Without a word, they moved toward the control room, a new, grim unity in their steps.
The room was a masterpiece of minimalist surveillance. Wall-to-wall screens showed every angle of the Bermuda Triangle, of Miami, of Judy’s beach house, of their own bedrooms. Frozen frames from their sexual encounters—the basketball game, the coordinated assault on Mai—were displayed like works of art.
But the room was empty. Dustless, humming with power, but devoid of life.
In the center of the main console, a single screen glowed with text.
CONGRATULATIONS. YOU SOLVED THE RIDDLES, BUT THE REAL PUZZLE IS STILL UNFOLDING. THE FACILITY IS YOURS. A TOOL, A TOY, A TROPHY. USE IT AS YOU WILL.
I AM NOT HERE. I HAVE NEVER BEEN HERE. THE LEASE, THE SHELL COMPANIES, THE SIGNATURES—ALL DIVERSIONARY PATHS. YOU SOUGHT A COLLECTOR IN HIS LAIR. YOU FOUND ONLY A MIRROR.
THE GAME WAS NEVER ABOUT MY OBSERVATION. IT WAS ABOUT YOUR REACTION. AND WHAT A GLORIOUS, BEAUTIFUL, DIRTY REACTION IT HAS BEEN. THE DATA IS INCONCLUSIVE. THE EMOTIONAL VARIABLES ARE TOO RICH, TOO CHAOTIC. YOU HAVE, IN YOUR WAY, WON.
OR PERHAPS, YOU HAVE SIMPLY ENTERED THE NEXT PHASE.
KEEP THE FACILITY. IT MAY BE USEFUL. I HAVE LEFT ONE FINAL GIFT IN THE DOCKING BAY. A TOKEN FOR THE DRAGON-RIDER’S DAUGHTER, WHO SEEKS A DIFFERENT KIND OF MONSTER.
UNTIL OUR PATHS CROSS AGAIN,
-E
The message dissolved. The screens all went dark, then rebooted to a default, user-accessible menu. Systems unlocked. Environmental controls. The massive door controls. Everything.
Silence, deeper than the ocean outside, filled the room.
“He was never here,” Mandy said, her voice hollow. “This was a… a prop. A giant fucking honeypot.”
“But the gift?” Felicity asked.
They hurried back to the docking bay. Next to the Water Sprite, floating gently in the water, was a submersible. It was sleek, organic in design, like a metal manta ray. A cockpit canopy was open. Inside, on the pilot’s seat, was a note.
FOR MAI’S DEEP DIVES. A PROPER VESSEL. THE SEA SERPENT AWAITS. ITS COORDINATES ARE PRE-LOADED. HAPPY HUNTING.
Mai stared at the craft, her face a war of emotions—aversion to the gifter, sheer, undeniable lust for the machine and what it represented.
“He’s still playing,” Jessica said, her Wand agent instincts reassembling. “Giving a gift creates obligation, curiosity. It’s a psychological tether.”
Ben kicked a wall, the clang echoing. “So what now? We just take his shit and go home?”
Kim, still adjusting her clothes, looked at the submersible, then at the control room. “He said the real puzzle is still unfolding. He’s not in this facility. But he’s somewhere. And now he’s not just a watcher. He’s an investor.” She met Mandy’s eyes. “He’s invested in us.”
Mandy walked to the main console, her fingers hovering over the keys. She accessed the external feeds. One camera showed the surface, the circle of orbs. Another showed the deep ocean, the coordinates for the sea serpent blinking.
“He gave us a base,” Mandy said slowly. “And a mission. He’s herding us. But.” She turned, a familiar, defiant smirk finally cracking through the numbness. “We now have a fully-equipped, magically-shielded, subsurface lair in international waters. And a state-of-the-art deep sea exploration vehicle.” She looked at Mai. “You wanted to document a sea serpent.”
Mai’s conflicted expression solidified into a razor-edged grin. “I did.”
“Then let’s go document it,” Mandy said. “On our terms. Using his toys. And while we’re at it…” She began typing furiously. “Let’s see what other data this ‘mirror’ has collected. Who else has he been watching? If he’s not here, his other observation posts must be. We find them. We dismantle them.”
The game had shifted. The collector had vanished, leaving behind not an enemy, but a patron’s twisted endowment. The puzzle was no longer about entering his world.
It was about figuring out what to build in the space he had vacated. And what monsters, both in the deep and in themselves, they would summon with the tools he provided.
The ocean outside, and the labyrinth of screens within, held their breath.
The ocean outside, and the labyrinth of screens within, held their breath. The silence in the control room was a physical weight.
Mandy broke it, her voice slicing through the hum of servers. “We’re not taking that sub anywhere until we know what’s down there. Or who the hell ‘E’ really is.” She turned from the mesmerizing submersible feed to the main console. “Kim, Jess. Sweep this room. Every corner. Magical residue, psychic echoes, anything your Orders can detect.”
Jessica gave a sharp nod, already pulling a compact, steampunk-looking scanner from her belt. Kim closed her eyes, extending her hands, a faint green shimmer radiating from her palms as she walked the room’s perimeter, sensing for the emotional fingerprints of Green Moon magic or the cold imprint of obsessive thought.
Mandy’s fingers were a blur on the keyboard, diving into the facility’s core systems. She bypassed the user-friendly menus, tunneling into raw data logs, access histories, and external link protocols. The code was clean, elegant, and terrifyingly comprehensive.
“Nothing,” Kim said after a few minutes, opening her eyes with frustration. “The space is… surgically clean. No lingering joy, no pain, no pride. It’s hollow.”
“Same,” Jessica confirmed, tucking her scanner away. “No Wand tech signatures beyond what’s standard in the infrastructure. No mystical trace elements at all. It’s like a showroom. Never lived in.”
“But heavily used,” Mandy muttered, her eyes widening as lines of code scrolled past. “Oh, you creepy, meticulous bastard.”
She brought up a master surveillance index. A cascading tree of locations blossomed across the main screen. “He’s not just been watching us. He’s watching everyone. Everything.”
The list was exhaustive. Judy’s beach house was just one node. There was Aunt Judy’s Miami condo. Barbie’s hidden cove stash. Bruce’s repair shop, Mystic Gear & Gadgetry, and the apartment above it he shared with Ben. The entire University of Miami’s Magical Studies department. Stacy and Rick’s beachfront condo. Proof & Provision Bakery. Gabriel Álvarez’s boat rental shack. Kim’s Green Moon meditation center and the apartment she shared with Maryam. Jessica’s Golden Wand dormitory room. Franklin and Jesse’s place.
It kept going, names and addresses Mandy only vaguely recognized from her parents’ stories.
“The only place not on the list,” Mandy said, her voice tight, “is Shiv’s house.”
Ben let out a low whistle. “Even ‘E’ isn’t stupid enough to fuck with Jan’s mom. That doesn’t tell us anything useful, though. Just that he’s got a survival instinct.”
“It tells me I don’t want to climb into his shiny new sub and follow his coordinates,” Mai said, crossing her arms. She stared at the dock feed where the manta-ray sub floated. “I either find nothing and feel like a gullible idiot, or I find a bomb. Neither option appeals.”
Maryam leaned against a console. “He hasn’t tried to kill us yet. Everything’s been a test, a game. Even the gifts. That’s not a murderous pattern.”
“It’s not a benevolent one either,” Mandy shot back, not looking up from her digging. “It just means we’re still entertaining. And that doesn’t mean he found a sea serpent. Why would he? And if he did, why give the discovery to me? He’s a collector. He’d keep it for himself.”
Felicity nodded, her scholar’s brain latching onto the inconsistency. “Exactly. The psychology is all wrong. A true collector doesn’t gift the centerpiece of their collection. They lure people in to admire it under their terms. This feels like another lure.”
Mai’s eyes, however, had drifted to one of the dozens of live feeds Mandy had pulled up. She squinted, then a slow, incredulous smirk spread across her face. “Hold on. Is Aunt Judy… is she fucking Stacy?”
Mandy glanced over. The feed showed Judy’s condo, specifically a spacious, fogged-glass shower. Two figures were visible in the steam. Judy, her expertly maintained body pressed against the tiles, and Stacy, her silver-streaked dark hair plastered to her neck, her mouth trailing down Judy’s stomach.
“Jesus,” Mandy hissed, her face flushing with a mix of embarrassment and violation. She hammered a key, shutting that monitor off.
It flickered back on instantly. This time, audio fed into the room: the hiss of water, a low, throaty moan from Judy, the slick, wet sound of a mouth on skin.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bruce muttered, turning his head away with a grimace.
The group tried to talk over the noise. “The point is,” Kim said, raising her voice slightly over Judy’s gasp, “the funding source. This facility, the sub, the surveillance network… it’s a massive, liquid investment. Who has that?”
“Not anyone we know,” Mandy said, forcing herself to focus on her screen and not the soundtrack. “Aunt Judy’s comfortable, not ‘underwater base’ rich. Amy and Yukio do well, but they work. My own parents scraped by for years when mom’s commissions dried up. This is different wealth. Old, quiet, disposable wealth.”
On the screen, the shower scene shifted. Rick, looking tired but smiling, entered the steamy bathroom, drawn by the noise. He was still in his baker’s whites, faint smudges of flour on his cheeks. Stacy turned, saw him, and grinned, pulling him into the shower by his shirt. Judy’s hand snaked out to help, popping the buttons.
“Wow, they’re really going for it,” Mai observed, her critical eye analyzing their technique. “Rick looks knackered. Stacy’s taking charge, see how she’s—“
“Mai, please,” Mandy snapped, her stomach churning.
Felicity, her cheeks pink, bulldozed onward. “Stacy has this kind of money. The interdimensional business empire. But she wouldn’t play games like this. She’s direct.”
“Aye,” Bruce agreed, steadfastly examining a rivet on his wrench. “If Stacy was ‘E’, she’d have just bought you the sub, handed you the keys, and told you to send her a postcard. And if she found out someone was spying on her like this, she’d have already tracked them down and beat the shit out of them with her bare hands.”
Maryam, ignoring the escalating visuals from the condo, tapped a thoughtful rhythm on her baseball bat. “What if it’s not an enemy? What if it’s someone we know who’s just… really bad at being helpful? Someone with a crush who’s gone full weirdo?”
Mandy was about to dismiss it when the audio crescendoed. She made the mistake of looking.
In the now-crowded shower, Judy and Stacy were on their knees, their faces buried in Rick’s groin. Their heads bobbed in a alternating rhythm, lips stretched around his thick, hard cock, tongues swirling over the head and shaft. Rick’s head was thrown back against the tile, his mouth open in a silent cry of overwhelmed pleasure, his hands clutching at their wet hair.
Mandy recoiled as if struck, a full-body shudder of revulsion. “Goddamn it, I did not need to see my brother’s dick. Ever.” She violently Alt-Tabbed away, but the muffled, sucking sounds persisted in the room.
Felicity cleared her throat, speaking loudly. “An Order, then? One of the big ones could fund this.”
“Not the Wands,” Jessica stated firmly, her professional tone strained. “The aesthetics are all wrong. Too sleek, too solitary. Wand projects have committees, design-by-committee ugliness, and paperwork in triplicate.”
“And the Green Moons fund community centers and pleasure gardens,” Kim said, finally walking over and slamming her hand on the console’s master audio mute. Blessed silence fell. “We don’t build silent underwater tombs. The joy here is absent. It’s a vacuum.”
The questions now hung thick and suffocating in the sterile air, heavier than the silence. They stared at each other, then at the mesmerizing, treacherous sub on the monitor, then at the sprawling map of their invaded lives.
Does ‘E’ want them dead or not?
Was anything he’d said or offered even real?
How much deeper did this maze of glass and silence truly go?