Chapter 9: Reporters Need Rescuing?
The scent of hot glue and fresh cardboard filled Mara’s sleek high-rise apartment. Rolls of cream-colored bunting lay across her minimalist gray sofa, and a pile of paper bells, half-inflated, covered the glass coffee table. Zack knelt on the floor, meticulously assembling a cardboard arch that would frame the dining area for Rebecca’s bridal shower. He frowned at the instructions, his tongue peeking out in concentration.
“I maintain,” Mara said, carefully lettering ‘Happily Ever After’ on a banner with precise, silver strokes, “that this is an excessive amount of fuss for a party where the sole activities will involve small sandwiches and Rebecca blushing every time someone says the word ‘husband.’”
Jan, sprawled on her stomach on the rug, lifted her head. Godfrey the golden retriever puppy snored softly beside her, twitching in a dream. “Fuss is the point, Counsel. It’s not about the sandwiches. It’s about the vibe. The celebration of love. The… communal joy.” A mischievous grin spread across her freckled face. “Also, I ordered a penis-shaped piñata. It’s filled with mini bottles of champagne and organic lube.”
Zack snorted, nearly dropping his arch. “Of course you did.”
“Tradition,” Jan said solemnly, then rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. The apartment was quiet, save for the soft jazz Zack had put on and the distant hum of the city twenty floors below. A comfortable, domestic peace settled in the room. Too comfortable. Too quiet. Jan could feel the hum of her own magic under her skin, a restless energy looking for an outlet. Her eyes drifted from Zack’s focused, handsome profile to Mara’s fierce concentration over the banner. A warm, fond spark ignited in her chest, quickly fanned into a hotter, more playful flame.
She didn’t even need to utter a spell. For a Green Moon initiate, desire was a language she spoke natively. She simply let the feeling unspool from her core—a soft, pervasive warmth that seeped into the air like a perfumed mist. It was the scent of skin after sun, of shared laughter, of late nights where boundaries softened. It was an invitation.
Zack’s hands stilled on the cardboard. He blinked, slowly. A flush crept up his neck. He looked at Mara, not with his usual awe-struck admiration, but with a sharp, sudden hunger. His gaze traveled over the line of her neck where her dark hair was tucked behind her ear, down to the curve of her breast beneath her simple white tank top.
Mara felt it a second later. The silver marker slipped, adding a squiggle to the ‘R’. A wave of heat, unrelated to the room’s temperature, washed through her. It centered low in her belly, a familiar but suddenly urgent ache. She looked up, meeting Zack’s eyes, and her breath hitched. The legal brief she’d been mentally composing evaporated. All that was left was the rapid pulse in her throat and the sight of her fiancé’s lips.
“Jan,” Mara said, her voice tighter than usual. “What are you doing?”
“Me?” Jan innocently traced patterns in the air with her finger, a faint green spark dancing at her fingertip. “Just enjoying the ambiance. You two have such a… productive energy tonight.”
“Cut it out,” Mara said, but the command lacked its usual steel. She shifted on her stool, a faint tremor in her thighs. The fabric of her jeans felt abrasive, confining.
Zack stood up. The movement was fluid, purposeful. He walked to Mara, the half-built arch forgotten. He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her cheek. “You look incredible,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Zack, the banner…” she protested weakly, even as she leaned into his touch.
“Fuck the banner,” he whispered, and kissed her.
It wasn’t their typical gentle, loving kiss. It was deep and claiming, a hungry press of lips and tongue that spoke of a need that had just been cranked from a simmer to a roaring boil. Mara moaned into his mouth, her hands coming up to clutch at his shoulders. The silver marker clattered to the floor.
Jan sat up, cross-legged, a delighted spectator. She watched as Zack’s hands slid down from Mara’s face to her waist, pulling her off the stool until she was standing flush against him. The ridge of his erection was firm against her hip. Mara gasped into the kiss, her own hips rocking forward involuntarily.
“Jan, I swear to god…” Mara panted, breaking the kiss.
“You’ll what? Sue me?” Jan grinned. “Go on, Counselor. Serve me. Or let him serve you. You’ve been stressed for weeks. You think I haven’t noticed? Let it go.”
Zack’s mouth found the sensitive spot below Mara’s ear. She shuddered, her head falling back. “The… the neighbors…”
“Soundproofed,” Zack mumbled against her skin, his hands slipping under her tank top to palm her breasts. Her nipples were already hard peaks against his calloused hands. “I researched the building specs before we moved in. For… privacy.”
Mara laughed, a ragged, desperate sound. “You are such a goddamn nerd.” Then she gave in, her resolve melting under the dual assault of Zack’s touch and Jan’s enchantment. “Fine. But just… quickly.”
Jan’s smile widened. “No such thing.”
Zack didn’t need further encouragement. He pulled Mara’s tank top over her head, tossing it onto the bunting. Her breasts, free from the confinement of her bra, were full and pale in the soft light. He bent his head, taking one taut nipple into his mouth, sucking hard. Mara cried out, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him to her.
Her own hands went to his belt, fumbling with the buckle. She got it open, then yanked his jeans and boxers down in one frantic motion. His cock sprang free, thick and already weeping at the tip. She wrapped her hand around him, pumping once, twice, her grip tight. Zack groaned, the vibration against her breast making her knees buckle.
“Bedroom,” Mara gasped. “Now.”
But Zack guided her backward instead, until the backs of her thighs hit the dining table. He swept aside rolls of wrapping paper and a bag of balloons. “Here,” he said, his voice thick with need. He lifted her, seating her on the edge of the polished wood. He pushed her legs apart, stepping between them. The cool surface against her ass was a shocking contrast to the feverish heat of her skin.
He didn’t wait, didn’t tease. He guided himself to her entrance, which was already slick and hot. He looked into her eyes, seeking final permission. Mara, her face flushed, her pupils blown wide, gave a sharp, single nod.
He drove into her.
“Fuck!” Mara screamed, her head thrown back. He filled her completely, a stretch that bordered on pain before tipping over into blinding pleasure. He set a brutal, immediate pace, fucking her on the table with hard, deep strokes that jolted her whole body. Each thrust slammed the table legs into the floor with a rhythmic thump.
Jan watched, her own breath coming faster. She could feel the feedback loop of their pleasure, a crackling energy in the room that fed her magic and was, in turn, amplified by it. She slipped a hand under her own skirt, finding herself wet. She didn’t touch herself, though. This was for them. She was just the conductor.
Zack’s hands gripped Mara’s hips, holding her steady as he pounded into her. The sounds were obscene—skin slapping against skin, their ragged breaths, Mara’s high, keening cries punctuating every thrust. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper.
“Harder,” she demanded, her lawyer’s composure shattered into pure, carnal need. “Don’t you fucking hold back on me now.”
He obeyed, slamming into her with a force that made her scream again. One of his hands left her hip, moving between their joined bodies to find her clit. He rubbed tight, frantic circles, the pressure perfect.
“I’m gonna… Zack, I’m gonna come…” Mara babbled, her words dissolving into a sob.
“Come on my cock,” he growled, his own rhythm starting to stutter, his control fraying. “Do it. Now.”
The command, the feeling of him hitting her deepest point, the relentless rub of his fingers sent her over. Her orgasm ripped through her like a seismic event, a blinding white wave of sensation that clenched around him, milking him desperately. With a guttural shout, Zack followed, his own release pumping into her in hot, pulsing jets as he held himself deep, grinding against her as they both shuddered through the aftermath.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their heaving breaths. Mara lay back on the table, utterly spent, staring at the ceiling. Zack leaned over her, bracing his hands on the table, his head hanging between his shoulders.
Jan let out a soft, satisfied sigh, letting the amped-up desire fade back to its normal, background hum. The green spark at her fingertip winked out.
The peaceful silence was shattered by the apartment door flying open with a force that rattled the frame.
Bethany Xander stood in the doorway, her usual pink-spiked hair hidden under a charcoal-gray fedora, a matching suit crisply tailored over her slender frame. Her sunglasses were pushed up on her head. Her face was pale, her expression grim.
Godfrey lifted his head and let out a single, quiet ‘woof’.
Zack scrambled back, yanking his jeans up. Mara sat up swiftly, covering her breasts with her arms, her post-coital haze vaporizing under a wave of shock and embarrassment.
“Bethany, what the hell?” Mara snapped, reaching for her discarded tank top.
Jan was already on her feet, her playful energy gone, replaced by a sharp, focused alertness. “What’s wrong?”
Bethany’s eyes flickered over the scene—the disheveled couple, the scattered party decorations, Jan’s knowing calm. She didn’t comment. “The reporters. Leanne and Kent. They never made it back to their office after leaving Jules’s place.”
The air in the apartment went cold.
“We ran the traffic cam footage from Ravenswood,” Bethany continued, her voice clipped, professional—the voice of Agent Pendragon. “Their car stalled. Six hostiles in tactical gear, non-standard tech. They surrounded the vehicle, extracted them. Clean, fast. The car was towed ten minutes later. No police calls. No witnesses.”
Jan closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, the mischievous glint was gone, replaced by a hard, weary resolve. She walked to the window, looking out at the glittering city. “The Consortium,” she stated, not asking.
“Signature is consistent,” Bethany confirmed. “Low-EMF pulse to kill the engine, coordination gear, the whole sterile, sci-fi horror show. They have them, Jan.”
Mara, now fully dressed again, was pacing, her mind already shifting from lover to litigator. “Why? What do they want? They can’t think two reporters from a trash tabloid have any real intelligence.”
“They were at Jules’s,” Jan said quietly, her forehead resting against the cool glass. “They were sniffing around the Foundation. Jules softened them up, showed them the cliff. She thought they’d back off.” She turned, her expression grim. “The Consortium doesn’t believe in backing off. They believe in acquisition. They’ll torture them. For what they know. For what they might know.”
“They don’t know anything!” Zack said, his voice tight with anger and a fresh, cold fear.
“They know us,” Jan corrected. “They know Mara’s name. They know Jules’s practice. They know something weird is happening. And now they’ll know the Consortium is real. That’s enough. They’ll break. Everyone breaks.”
She looked at the half-finished banner, the deflating paper bells. The normalcy of it felt like a photograph from another life.
“The Davenport move is scheduled for Thursday,” she said, more to herself than anyone. “Rainbor and Aaron are prepping the ghost package. It’s our best shot at putting that thing somewhere no one, not even us, can find it.”
She sighed, a long, heavy exhale that seemed to carry the weight of the crumbling Veil. She knelt and scratched Godfrey behind the ears. The puppy licked her hand, his brown eyes calm and understanding.
“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Jan murmured, standing up. Her shoulders straightened. The vivacious free spirit was gone, folded away. In her place stood the Red Tornado, a member of the Order of the Green Moon. “They’ve escalated. Taking civilians. We can’t wait for Thursday.” She looked at Bethany. “Call the Wands. We need a trace on their tech, any chatter. It’ll be encrypted, but there’s always a bleed.”
Bethany gave a sharp nod.
Jan turned to Mara and Zack. “Cancel the shower prep. I’m sorry. We have a different kind of party to plan now.” Her grin returned, but it was sharp as a blade. “The Consortium wanted a war on secrecy. They just declared it. Time to show them what happens when you mess with a woman’s friends and her dog’s walk schedule.”
The sharp scent of ozone and cold metal replaced the warm, sex-scented air of Mara’s apartment. Kent’s consciousness slammed back into his body with a nauseating lurch. He was upright, strapped into a cold chair that conformed unnaturally to his spine. A translucent visor was clamped over his eyes, projecting not darkness, but a blinding, perfect blue sky.
He blinked, and the sky resolved. He was sitting in tall, soft grass. The sun was warm on his skin. A gentle breeze carried the scent of wildflowers. It was idyllic, serene, and utterly wrong.
“Hello, Kent.”
He turned. Three women stood in the pasture. Fatima, Jan, and Dr. Julia Nash. They were all gloriously, unabashedly nude. Fatima’s dark skin gleamed in the sunlight, her posture regal. Jan’s fiery hair was a splash of color against the green, her freckled body looking like it was built for laughter. Dr. Nash’s curves were a hypnotic sculpture, her hazel eyes fixed on him with therapeutic warmth. The sight should have been overwhelming, a fantasy made flesh. Instead, a cold wire of alarm tightened in his gut.
“You’ve had a difficult time,” Dr. Nash purred, stepping forward. The grass whispered against her thighs. “All that fear. All that confusion. Let us help you make sense of it.” She knelt before him, her breasts swaying. Her hand, soft and warm, came to rest on his knee.
Jan plopped down cross-legged beside him, her grin infectious. “Yeah, buddy. You’re among friends now. You can tell us everything. No more secrets.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, her bare skin shockingly hot. “Start with the Davenport Case. Where is it really? We know you know.”
Fatima stood behind him, her fingers beginning to massage his shoulders. “The truth will unburden you,” she murmured, her voice like honey. “The Order of the Green Moon seeks only to understand. Tell us of our enemies, the Consortium. What have you learned of their structure?”
The sensations were hyper-real—the warmth of their bodies, the scent of their skin, the gentle pressure of their hands. But the coding was flawed. The breeze didn’t stir the individual hairs on Jan’s head in a believable way. The sunlight cast no shadows from Fatima’s eyelashes. And Dr. Nash… he let his gaze drift down her arm as she leaned closer, her nipple brushing his hand. The skin was flawless, porcelain. The small, dark mole he’d memorized during their session, just above her left elbow, was absent.
This was a construct. A beautiful, seductive lie.
“The Davenport thing,” Kent said, forcing his voice into a slurred, relaxed tone. He let his head loll back against Fatima’s stomach. “It’s a real estate scam. Some shell company in the Caymans. I’ve got a source says the paperwork leads to a holding group called… uh… Midwestern Heritage Trust.” He invented the name on the spot.
Jan’s hand slid up his inner thigh. “That’s not what we heard, Kent. We heard it was a key. A magical key.” Her fingers brushed against the fly of his jeans, and despite his terror, his body responded. He felt himself hardening under her touch.
“Magic?” Kent snorted, a convincingly drunken sound. “C’mon. That’s your department. I just follow the money.” He focused on the missing mole. Anchor to the real. “The O’Connor Foundation? Bunch of rich weirdos funding alt-medicine. Crystal healing, aura cleansing. Tax write-offs.”
Dr. Nash’s other hand cupped his face, turning him to look into her eyes. They were like deep pools, trying to pull him under. “And the Order of the Green Moon? What do you know of our rituals? Our initiates?”
He let a lecherous grin spread across his face, playing the part of a man being seduced into indiscretion. “I know I’d like to be initiated right fucking now.” He reached out, grabbing Dr. Nash’s breast roughly. The texture was perfect, yielding, but the action felt like grabbing mannequin flesh. “You’re all so… persuasive.”
In a sterile white observation room, Leanne strained against the polymer restraints holding her to a similar chair. A screen on the wall showed Kent’s point-of-view from the simulation: the pasture, the nude women. She could hear his voice through a speaker, tinny and distorted.
“He’s lying!” she screamed, her throat raw. “Kent, don’t! It’s a trick!”
James Murphy stood beside her, immaculate in his suit, watching the screen with detached interest. He didn’t look at her. “He can’t hear you. The auditory feed is one-way. He is in a sensory paradise, being coaxed to compliance by his deepest fantasies. It’s more humane than electrodes, don’t you think?”
On screen, Fatima’s hands drifted down Kent’s chest, unbuttoning his shirt. Jan was unbuckling his belt. “Just relax,” the simulated Jan whispered. “Tell us about the Consortium’s plans. Their Chicago cell. Then we can really have fun.” Her hand slipped inside his open jeans, wrapping around his cock.
Leanne watched, horror and a bizarre, voyeuristic shame twisting in her gut. She saw Kent’s body react in the simulation, saw him arch his back. But she also heard his voice, still playing the fool. “Consortium? Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie. You girls are the only conspiracy I’m interested in.”
He was fighting. He knew. And he was feeding them garbage, protecting the very people who had just fucked with their heads and warned them away. The realization hit her like a physical blow. These weren’t their sources. They were their subjects. And you don’t burn a source, even an unwilling one.
Murphy’s lip curled. “He’s more resistant than projected. Increase dopamine drip and tactile fidelity. Focus the avatar of ‘Jan’ on genital stimulation. Lower his inhibitory thresholds.”
In the pasture, the world seemed to sharpen, the colors becoming unbearably vivid. Jan’s mouth descended on him, taking his cock deep into a wet, hot heaven that felt more real than anything he’d ever experienced. A moan was torn from his throat, genuine and helpless. Dr. Nash guided his hand between her legs, pressing his fingers into a slick, tight heat. “The Foundation, Kent,” she breathed into his ear, her voice layered with a sub-harmonic buzz that vibrated in his bones. “Who runs it? Where is its safe house?”
“It’s… it’s just… lawyers,” he gasped, his mind fraying at the edges under the biochemical and digital assault. He focused on the mole. The missing mole. This was not Julia Nash. “Mara Henderson… she’s the front. Office… downtown. That’s all.”
The pleasure was a tsunami, threatening to drown his will. Jan’s head bobbed in his lap, her tongue doing impossible things. Fatima’s nails scraped down his chest. He was moments from breaking, from babbling every name he’d ever heard—Johnny, Brigid, the Perpetual Sunrise.
In the observation room, Leanne saw his physiological readings spiking on a secondary monitor. “He’s lying, you sterile fuck!” she yelled at Murphy. “He’s giving you nothing! You’re torturing him for a phone book entry!”
Murphy finally glanced at her, his eyes cold behind his glasses. “Persistence is a form of data. His resistance tells us the information is valuable. His lies tell us its shape. We will map the outlines of his secrets by the sheer force of his denial.” He turned back to the screen. “Administer the compliance serum. Stage two.”
A cold flush spread through Kent’s veins in the simulation, a contrast to the burning pleasure. The world didn’t waver, but his own thoughts became slippery, heavy. The need to please these beautiful women, to give them what they wanted, became a physical ache in his chest, rivaling the ache in his groin.
Jan pulled off his cock with a wet pop, her lips glistening. “The Order, Kent. How do we contact the higher-ups? The… the Perpetual Sunrise?” The name, coming from her simulated mouth, was a jolt.
He opened his mouth, the truth—that he’d only heard that phrase once, from a strange young man who faded in and out of existence and claimed to be a time mage—hovering on his tongue. He saw the missing mole. He saw Leanne’s fierce, terrified face in his mind’s eye. He thought of the terrifying normalcy of James Murphy’s voice.
“Sunrise…” he slurred, letting his eyes go unfocused. “It’s… a diner. On Western. Great pancakes.” He let his head fall back, a string of drool connecting his lip to his chin, playing the idiot to the hilt. “Can we… can you just suck me again? Please?”
In the observation room, Murphy went very still. The lie was too absurd, too perfectly useless. He tapped a console. “Terminate sequence. He’s either remarkably stupid or remarkably stubborn. Prep him for direct neural inquiry. We’ll scrape the data from his hippocampus.”
The pasture, the sun, the three beautiful women, all dissolved into static and then blinding white light.
Kent was plunged into a silent, formless void, the lingering ghost of Jan’s mouth the only proof any of it had happened. The real pain was just beginning.
Leanne, hearing the order, sagged in her restraints. She had failed to warn him, but he hadn’t needed it. He’d known. And he’d held the line. A fierce, desperate pride cut through her terror. They were in a sterile hell, being taken apart by men in suits, but they were still reporters. They protected their sources. Even from themselves.
The door to the observation room hissed open. Two technicians wheeled in a cart bearing a sleek, sinister-looking headset lined with fine needles. Murphy watched, his expression one of mild, clinical interest.
“Begin with the female,” he instructed, his voice devoid of malice. It was just procedure. “Her psychological profile suggests a more associative memory structure. We’ll find the threads he was trying to hide.”
The world narrowed to the glint of the needles under the fluorescent lights. Leanne closed her eyes, searching for her own anchor. She found it in the lingering, shameful taste of Dr. Nash on her lips, and in the memory of Kent’s voice, stubbornly lying to a fantasy.