Chapter 7: Future Chat
The mirrored halls of the Pleasure Prison reflected infinity, a funhouse of horrors where every turn showed Stacy another version of herself: trapped, screaming, or locked in an endless, joyless fuck. The heat from the grid-like benches beneath their feet pulsed through the soles of their shoes, a rhythmic throb that matched the anxious beat of her heart. The air smelled of cloying incense overlaying the sharp, coppery tang of fear-sweat.
Cooper shuffled behind her, his breathing ragged. The man was a shell, drained of more than just sexual energy; his will was frayed to a thread. Rick walked beside Stacy, his hand a steadying presence on her lower back. Bruce moved ahead, his steampunk wrench held ready, his eyes scanning the shifting silhouettes that moaned and beckoned from the walls. Felicity brought up the rear, her scholarly eyes wide but analytical, cataloging the bizarre magical distortions.
Godfrey III, a small white ball of fluff in Stacy’s arms, whined softly. His telepathic voice, a sound only she could hear in her mind, was a familiar, Scooby-Doo-esque grumble. “Rhis place is rhatted, Racy.”
“Tell me about it, buddy,” she whispered.
A particularly vivid silhouette detached itself from the wall, molding into the form of a muscular, spiky-haired man in sunglasses. Tobias. It was just an echo, a recorded impression, but it spoke with his voice.
“Why struggle, Stacy? The purpose of flesh is sensation. You can feel everything here. You can be everything. No more decisions. Just… experience.”
Stacy didn’t break stride. “My purpose is kicking your ass back to whatever hell you crawled out of,” she said, her voice flat. The echo smiled and dissolved back into the wall with a sigh.
They reached a nexus where seven corridors met. In the center, the floor dipped into a shallow, steaming pool of clear, oily liquid. Above it, the ceiling’s viscous syrup dripped in a slow, hypnotic rhythm, each drop causing the pool’s surface to shiver with rainbows.
“We need to rest,” Rick said, his voice low. “Cooper’s about to drop.”
Stacy nodded, her security-focused mind assessing the defensibility of the spot. It was as good as any. “Five minutes. Bruce, watch that corridor. Felicity, the other. Rick, help me with him.”
They lowered Cooper onto a heated bench that hummed gently. He stared at nothing, his eyes glassy. “The machine… it never stopped… it just takes and takes…” he mumbled.
Stacy knelt, placing Godfrey on the floor. She took Cooper’s face in her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Look at me. It’s stopped. You’re with us. You’re safe.”
A pathetic laugh rattled in his throat. “Safe? Nothing’s safe here.”
Before she could reply, a wave of disorientation hit her like a physical blow. The mirrored walls, her friends, the pool—they all dissolved into a blinding white light. For a terrifying second, she was nowhere. Then, shapes coalesced.
She stood in a warm, sunlit kitchen that smelled of coffee and baking bread. It was achingly familiar. Jan’s kitchen, but twenty years in the future. The Jan who stood at the counter, her red hair now streaked with silver, her body fuller but her green eyes just as mischievous, was Fat Aunt Jan. She was humming, icing a birthday cake that read “Happy 15th Birthday, Portia!” in lopsided letters.
Around the kitchen table sat the future.
Mike and Casey, their hair more grey, their bodies softer, were playfully arguing over a board game with a teenager who had to be their son Rick, now a man in his early twenties, his kind awkwardness tempered into a gentle confidence, while his three younger sisters watched, amused. Hank and Fatima were there, Hank’s laugh a booming roar as he nudged Rick, Fatima sipping tea with an elegant smirk. The twins, Kim and Maryam, were gently arguing whether baseball or Green Moon martial arts competitions were better spectator sports. Amy, her willowy frame unchanged, was braiding the hair of a teenage Portia while Jason looked on adoringly. Yukio, her tattoos a sprawling tapestry up her arms, was showing a photo on her phone to a teenage Mai, who rolled her eyes with a fond smile.
It was a scene of perfect, mundane happiness. A future that had survived.
“See?” Fat Aunt Jan’s voice spoke beside her, though the Jan at the counter didn’t look up. “We made it. We had more parties. More cake. More life.”
Stacy, a ghost in this vision, felt a pang so sharp it stole her breath. Then she saw her. Leaning against the doorway, a Stacy in her mid-forties, her dark hair woven with silver, her body still strong but bearing the graceful marks of time. This older Stacy watched Rick with a love so deep and settled it was like a physical force in the room. She caught Future Jan’s eye and winked, a secret, intimate communication between oldest friends.
“That’s… me?” Present-day Stacy whispered.
“One version,” Fat Aunt Jan’s spectral voice said. “A good one. A happy one.”
The scene flickered. For a second, Stacy saw another possibility—a Stacy alone in a pristine penthouse, staring out at a city with empty eyes. Then another—a Stacy locked in a never-ending battle, her face hardened into a permanent scowl. The visions came faster, a kaleidoscope of potential futures, all branching from the choices she was making right now, here, in the Prison.
“How do I get there?” Stacy asked, her voice desperate, pointing to the sunny kitchen. “To him. To that peace.”
The mental plane wavered. Fat Aunt Jan’s form solidified beside her, not the one at the counter, but a focused projection. She looked directly at Stacy, her gaze piercing.
“By being here now, kiddo,” Future Jan said, her tone suddenly urgent, losing its auntly softness. “The protection we wove around you is a bubble. It’s popping. Tobias is a time-warper. He’s probing the edges, looking for a seam. You need to move. You need to fuck, or fight, or better yet, fuck and fight, and pour every ounce of your own goddamn glorious will into breaking his concentration. Your friends are scattered, playing their parts. You play yours.”
“What’s my part?” Stacy asked, the Coach needing a game plan.
“You’re the anchor. You’re the one who brings order to chaos. Right now, your chaos is standing right beside you, scared shitless and so in love with you it hurts him to breathe.” Jan’s image began to pixelate. “The magic’s thin here. He’s coming. Wake up, Stacy. And for fuck’s sake, live a little on the way.”
The white light rushed back, then collapsed into the oppressive, rainbow-hued gloom of the Pleasure Prison nexus.
She gasped, stumbling back into Rick’s arms. He’d caught her as she swayed. “Stacy! What happened? You went blank for a full minute.”
Bruce and Felicity had turned from their watch, concern etched on their faces. Cooper just moaned.
“Jan,” Stacy managed, her mouth dry. “Fat Aunt Jan. The protection… it’s wearing off. Tobias is trying to find us. Now.”
Rick’s arms tightened around her. “What do we do?”
Stacy looked at him—the boy from her past, the man from her future. She saw the fear in his eyes, but under it, a solid, unwavering trust. He believed in her. Fat Aunt Jan’s words echoed: Your chaos is standing right beside you.
“We make a distraction,” Stacy said, her voice finding its steel. “A big, messy, magical one. We use what we have.” Her eyes locked with Rick’s. “Green Moon magic runs on emotion. On release. Tobias feeds on stolen pleasure. So we generate our own. We make a signal so bright and so fucking loud it blinds him.”
Rick’s brow furrowed in confusion for a second. Then it cleared, replaced by dawning understanding and a flash of heat. “Oh.”
Bruce coughed. “You two want to… here? Now?”
“Yes,” Stacy said, already pulling her shirt over her head.
Her sports bra followed, landing on the shimmering floor with a soft thud. The humid air kissed her skin, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with cold. Rick stared, his breath catching, the reality of her command and her naked torso hitting him all at once.
“You heard the Coach,” he said, his voice rough. He didn’t hesitate. He yanked his own shirt off, his movements urgent, practical.
Bruce spun around, facing the corridor entrance, wrench held high. “Right. Uh, providing cover.” His Scottish brogue thickened with embarrassment. Felicity merely adjusted her glasses, her academic curiosity overtaking her shock as she observed the pooling magical energies in the air.
Stacy didn’t wait. She stepped into Rick, her mouth finding his in a collision that was all teeth and desperate need. This wasn’t about finesse. It was a battle cry made flesh. Her hands shoved his jeans down over his hips, her fingers wrapping around his already hard cock. He gasped into her mouth, his own hands fumbling with the button on her pants.
They peeled the rest of their clothes off in a frantic, tangled dance, garments kicked aside onto the humming floor. Stacy pushed him back toward one of the heated benches. “Now, Rick. Fuck me right now.”
He didn’t need more invitation. He sat on the edge, the heated surface making him hiss, and pulled her onto his lap. She guided him inside her with one swift, sure hand, sinking down onto him in a single, deep stroke that forced a choked groan from both their throats. She was already wet, her body thrumming with adrenaline and the raw, Green Moon-fueled need to create a beacon of defiant feeling.
“God, Stacy,” he rasped, his hands gripping her ass, fingers digging into her firm muscles.
“Don’t talk. Feel.” She began to move, riding him with a fierce, athletic rhythm born of a thousand workouts. Each rise and fall was deliberate, powerful. The slick, wet sound of their joining echoed off the mirrored walls, a counter-rhythm to the dungeon’s ominous hum. She leaned back, bracing her hands on his knees, giving him a full view of where their bodies connected, of his length sliding in and out of her, glistening and perfect.
He watched, mesmerized, his hips meeting her thrusts. “I can feel it… the magic,” he grunted, his head falling back. “It’s like… a circuit.”
It was. The protective bubble woven by Jan and Fat Aunt Jan, stretched thin by Tobias’s probing, began to thrum with new energy. A visible, golden-green light pulsed from their locked bodies, washing over the nexus, pushing back the multi-colored gloom. It was the light of genuine connection, of shared history and a hard-won future, a spark against the stolen, hollow sensations Tobias hoarded.
Felicity watched the resonance patterns in the air sharpen and stabilize. She chewed her lip, then turned to Bruce, who was resolutely staring down the empty hall. “Bruce.”
“Aye, lass?”
“The resonance is harmonic. It needs more… inputs. To stabilize the field.” Her voice was clinical, but a blush crept up her neck.
Bruce glanced over his shoulder, his eyes taking in Stacy arching on top of Rick, her breasts swaying, her cries becoming louder, less controlled. He arched an eyebrow at Felicity. “You’re suggesting we… contribute?”
“I never do anything unless I’m completely sure,” she stated, as if discussing a laboratory experiment. Then, with shocking decisiveness, she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him into a kiss.
Bruce dropped his wrench with a clatter. It was not a gentle kiss. It was all pent-up academic frustration and the primal need to survive. His large hands came up to cradle her face, then slid down to roughly pull her sweater off. Soon, they were a second knot of grappling limbs on another bench, Felicity’s usually quiet gasps soon joining the chorus.
The golden-green light intensified, glowing brighter, washing over Cooper where he lay shivering. He flinched as it touched him, expecting pain. Instead, a warmth seeped into his bones. The hollow ache in his core, where the draining machine had left a void, began to fill. Color returned to his cheeks. His breathing deepened, steadied.
As Stacy felt her climax coiling, a tight, screaming knot in her belly, she looked down at Rick. Sweat slicked his chest. His eyes were locked on hers, wide with awe and a love so vast it terrified him. “I see it,” he whispered. “The kitchen. The cake. I see you with the grey in your hair. You’re so beautiful.”
His words shattered her last restraint. She came with a sharp, wordless cry, her internal muscles clamping around him in rhythmic pulses. The light around them flared into a brilliant sunburst. Rick followed, his own release ripped from him, shouting her name as he emptied himself deep inside her.
The light didn’t fade. It solidified, becoming a dome of calm, quiet gold over their section of the nexus. The hum of the Pleasure Prison receded, replaced by a profound, protective silence.
On the adjacent bench, Felicity’s precise, calculated movements had given way to a trembling, shuddering finish, her nails scoring lines down Bruce’s back as he groaned into her neck.
Cooper sat up. He looked at his hands, turning them over. The tremors were gone. The dead-eyed stare was replaced by confused, dawning clarity. He looked at the two couples, now separating, breathing heavily, wrapped in each other. He saw the golden dome.
“Who… who are you people?” he asked, his voice weak but clear.
Stacy, still straddling Rick, still intimately joined to him, turned her head. Sweat dripped from her chin. Her eyes held the fierce gleam of a general who’d just won a key skirmish. “We’re the ones,” she said, her voice thick and satisfied, “who want to put Bob the Workout King back on his throne.”
The air in the low, dripping tunnel smelled of stale water and rotten meat. Franklin held the grimy parchment map up to a faint, fungal glow. “The ‘Conduit’ should be just ahead. It’s where the realm’s control systems were centralized before… him.”
“Before Professor Pump-and-Grind ruined everything,” Mandy quipped, adjusting her glasses. She held Ben’s hand tightly.
“Something like that,” Franklin muttered. He led them around a bend, and they stopped.
A massive, iron-bound wooden crate, large enough to hold a car, sat in the center of a cavern. It was sealed with a padlock the size of a dinner plate. Standing before it, picking its nose with a clawed finger, was an ogre. It was monumentally stupid-looking, with a sloping brow and a single, yellowed tusk.
“Box,” the ogre grunted to itself. “Guard box. No touch box.”
Calista stepped forward, her silver hair almost glowing in the gloom. “We need to see what’s in the box.”
The ogre blinked. “No.”
“It’s important.”
“No.”
Franklin sighed. “Diplomacy is overrated.” He looked at Calista. “Your move.”
A smile touched Calista’s lips. She raised her hands. Small flames, beautiful and deadly, blossomed in her palms, dancing like living flowers. She didn’t hurl them. She simply took a step forward, letting the heat radiate toward the creature.
The ogre sniffed. It looked at the fire. It looked at its own hairy, flammable arm. A slow, terrified understanding dawned in its tiny eyes. “Hot,” it said.
“Very,” Calista agreed, her voice serene.
The ogre squealed, a high-pitched, comical sound, and turned, thundering away down the tunnel in a blind panic, its footsteps shaking the ground.
Ben let out a low whistle. “Remind me never to piss you off.”
“Duly noted,” Calista said, extinguishing her flames. “Now, the lock.”
Mandy was already prodding it. “It’s mechanical, not magical. I can… oh, here.” She fished a hairpin from her shaggy hair, bent it, and with a few precise clicks, had the colossal padlock open. It fell to the stone floor with a deafoning clang.
Franklin and Ben gripped the edge of the heavy lid and heaved it open.
Inside, curled into a fetal position amidst old packing straw, was a small, greenish figure with large, bat-like ears and enormous, fearful eyes. He wore the tattered remains of a velour tracksuit.
Bob the Goblin flinched from the light, his voice a terrified squeak. “No more! No more draining! Bob is sorry! Bob is very, very sorry!”
Franklin leaned over the edge of the box, his calm demeanor finally cracking into a look of pure exasperation. “We’re not with Tobias. We’re here to help.”
Bob slowly uncurled, his huge eyes blinking up at the four faces peering down at him. A fragile hope dawned on his wrinkled features. “You… you are here to… put Bob back?”
Calista offered a hand. “That’s the plan. But you’re going to have to tell us how to shut his machine down.”
Bob took her hand, his own trembling. “Bob knows the way,” he whispered, his voice gaining a sliver of its old, entrepreneurial zeal. “Bob built it. Bob can break it.” He clambered out of the box, looking at his captors-turned-rescuers. “But must hurry. The time-warp is almost complete.”
Bob's enormous eyes darted between their faces, lingering on Franklin's calm expression. "Bob is grateful," he squeaked, wringing his tiny hands. "Bob thought the pretty flesh-eater had come back for seconds. Bob was very scared."
Franklin crouched, bringing himself to the goblin's level. "Bob," he said gently. "Do you always refer to yourself in the third person?"
The goblin blinked, his pointed ears drooping. A flicker of confusion, then painful clarity, passed over his face. "No," he whispered, the affectation dropping. "No, I don't. I… I had another name before. A real one." He rubbed his temples. "He scraped it out of me. Along with… other things."
Mandy knelt beside him. "Tobias."
Bob flinched at the name. "He is hunger wearing a man-suit. He saw my realm, my beautiful Pain-and-Gain Zone, and saw a… a buffet. I used the Orb. I banished him." His voice grew stronger, edged with pride. "I built this place to celebrate the burn, the glorious struggle of muscle and will! Not for his… consumption."
"But he came back," Calista stated, her silver hair catching the faint light.
"He learned," Bob said, a shudder running through his small frame. "He learned about time. He warped it. Made a… a back door. He siphoned my power, twisted my people, stole my Orb." His large eyes filled with milky tears. "He made me small. He made me talk like a fool."
Franklin placed a steadying hand on the goblin's bony shoulder. "We're going to find that Orb. We're going to shove it down his throat. But we need your help."
Bob straightened his torn tracksuit with a pathetic attempt at dignity. "The Conduit is this way," he said, no longer 'Bob,' just a scared, angry creature pointing a clawed finger down the darkest tunnel. "The machine is there. But the Orb… he keeps it close. In his throne. In the heart of the maze."
The golden dome around Stacy’s group shimmered like a soap bubble, holding back the oppressive, whispered sensations of the prison. Inside, the air was clean, quiet. Stacy slid off Rick’s lap, their skin separating with a soft, wet sound. She didn’t reach for her clothes. Instead, she stood, naked and glistening with sweat, and offered Rick a hand up.
He took it, his own body humming with spent energy and the strange, resonant magic. They dressed in silence, their movements synchronized. Bruce and Felicity did the same, avoiding each other’s eyes, a new and awkward tension buzzing between them.
Cooper stared at his hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. “The emptiness… it’s gone. It’s really gone.” He looked up at Stacy, awe replacing the hollow terror. “What did you do?”
“We reminded this place what real feeling is,” Stacy said, her voice low and firm. She clipped her holster back on, the weight of the 9mm a comfort. “Now we move. That light is a beacon, but it’s also a target. Tobias will be coming.”
Godfrey III yipped, trotting over to the edge of the golden dome. He placed a tiny paw against the shimmering boundary. “Rhe rhing is ron the rove,” his telepathic voice grumbled in Stacy’s mind.
“What thing?”
“Rhe rogre. Rhunning.”
A distant, thunderous footfall echoed down one of the seven corridors. Then another. Closer.
“Shit,” Rick breathed, pulling his shirt on. “He’s sending the welcome wagon.”
Stacy peered into the dimness. The silhouette of a massive ogre resolved from the gloom, its single yellow tusk gleaming. It was the one from the crate, but its fear had been replaced by a blank, malevolent obedience. It held a crude club fashioned from a twisted beam.
“It’s her!” Bob whispered, pointing a trembling finger at Calista from behind Franklin’s legs. “The fire-lady! She scared it! Now it’s angry!”
“Plan?” Ben asked, his voice tight.
Calista stepped forward, her hands already curling into fists. “I’ll handle the ogre. You three get Bob to the Conduit. Shut the machine down.”
“Calista, no—” Mandy started.
“It’s what I’m for,” Calista said, and there was no arrogance in it, just a simple, frightening truth. Silver flames erupted from her knuckles, wreathed her arms in ghostly light. She looked at Ben, a quick, fierce glance. “Keep her safe.”
Then she ran, not away from the charging ogre, but towards it, a streak of molten moonlight in the dank tunnel.
The ogre swung its club. Calista didn’t dodge. She slid under the blow, coming up inside its guard. She planted a hand, wreathed in cool, searing flame, against the beast’s hairy chest. There was no explosion, just a horrible, hissing crackle and a smell of burning hide and cooked meat. The ogre bellowed in agony, stumbling back. Calista was already moving, a dancer in a duel of brute force and deadly grace.
“Go!” Franklin yelled, shoving Bob down a side passage. Ben grabbed Mandy’s hand and pulled her after them, leaving Calista to her roaring, flaming battle.
Back in the transformed office, the scent of sex and ozone still hung in the air. Portia leaned against the warped filing cabinet, her arms crossed. Amanda and Cody stood before her, hastily re-dressed, their faces flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and residual pleasure.
“A closet, Amanda?” Portia’s voice was ice. “While Jenny was taken? Are you fifteen?”
Amanda had the decency to look at the floor. Cody squared his shoulders. “It was my fault. The stress, the magic… it got to me.”
“It gets to everyone,” Portia shot back, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That’s why we have discipline. That’s why we think. We are not animals reacting to stimulus. We are supposed to be better.” She let out a long, frustrated breath. “My brother is out there, probably in the middle of god-knows-what, and I’m here babysitting a teenage girl and her boyfriend who can’t keep it in their pants during a rescue mission.”
“We’re sorry,” Amanda muttered, her defiance gone.
“Sorry doesn’t find Jenny.” Portia pushed off the cabinet. “Start looking for anything useful. Tobias is theatrical. He wouldn’t just destroy Bob’s records. He’d keep them. As trophies.”
As Portia stalked toward the other side of the room, kicking at debris, Cody wandered toward the toppled desk. Something was wedged underneath, a leather-bound book half-chewed by what looked like acidic slime. He pulled it free, wiping the cover.
“Hey,” he called, his voice hesitant. “Portia. I found something.”
Portia was at his side in an instant. She took the journal, flipping it open. The handwriting inside was cramped, jagged, a mix of English and strange, geometric symbols. “It’s Bob’s,” she confirmed. “His personal log.”
Cody peered over her shoulder as she skimmed. “Is it clear?”
Portia scanned a few pages. “No. It’s clear. Precise. ‘I discovered the dimensional nexus today. The potential for a dedicated fitness realm is unprecedented.’” She looked up at Cody, her eyes hardening. “So Tobias didn’t just steal his realm. He broke his mind. Made him a caricature.”
She read on, her finger tracing the lines. “Here. ‘Encountered a parasitic entity today. A shapeshifter. Calls itself Tobias. It views visitors not as clients, but as feedstock. It wants to consume their vital energies, their time, their very wills. I cannot allow this.’” Portia turned the page. Her breath caught. “‘I used the Orb’s primary function. I didn’t banish it. I erased it from the timeline of this realm. A total ontological deletion. It is gone.’”
She slammed the book shut. “But it’s clearly not gone. It came back.”
“How?” Amanda asked, creeping closer.
“Time warp,” Cody said, his political mind connecting dots. “Franklin guessed Tobias warps time. Like how he was both himself and disguised as Fat Aunt Jan earlier. He must have… I don’t know, un-deleted himself. Found a crack in the erasure and crawled back through.”
Portia tossed the journal onto the desk. “The Orb is the key. Bob used it to try to delete Tobias. Tobias survived, came back, and now has the Orb. We find the Orb, we can maybe do what Bob couldn’t. We can finish the job.”
A low, resonant thrum began to pulse through the floor of the office. The fleshy shelves lining the walls quivered. The single, grotesque chandelier made of fused barbells began to sway.
“What’s that?” Amanda whispered, fear edging back into her voice.
Portia looked toward the sealed door they’d entered through. It was now glowing with a sickly purple light. “That,” she said, drawing a slender, clock-handled dagger from her boot, “is the sound of the realm recognizing a threat. He knows we’re in his stuff.”
The door dissolved into shimmering dust.
Standing in the now-open doorway was not Tobias, but a figure they recognized. Jenny. Her red hair was disheveled, her clothes torn. But her eyes were wrong. They glowed with the same purple light as the doorway, vacant and fixed on them. In her hands, she held two crackling whips of raw, violet energy.
“Jenny?” Amanda breathed, taking a step forward.
“Don’t,” Portia commanded, her voice flat. “That’s not your sister anymore. That’s a puppet.”
Jenny’s head tilted, a marionette’s jerk. A smile stretched her lips, too wide, too cruel. “Playtime’s over,” she said, but the voice was a distorted overlay, Tobias’s baritone underneath Jenny’s softer one. The energy whips crackled to life, lashing out like violet lightning toward Cody’s head.