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Adrian’s Demand

Author: Tyson Roy
last update Last Updated: 2025-10-07 19:28:26

Morning arrived like a knock I didn’t want to answer. The light through my blinds was colorless, hospital clean. I lay there for a breath, feeling the echo of Victor’s voice in the server room—the way “I’m trying” had sounded both terrifying and holy. For a minute I wanted to stay folded in that memory, to live where the war fell silent. Then my phone vibrated on the nightstand, the kind of insistence that means the world is still turning whether or not you’re ready.

I reached for it, throat already tight.

A message flashed in the group thread Marco had set up for operations: Channel 2 in 10. Lena got a text. No exclamation point. Marco knows punctuation is gasoline.

The adrenaline was there before my feet hit the floor. I dressed by muscle memory—black jeans, sweater, hair yanked back with the decisiveness I reserve for deadlines and danger—and jogged the four blocks to Elysium, breath skritching in cold air. The building opened for me with its familiar hush, lemon oil and copper and
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  • Shadows of Desire   Victor’s Apology

    Night had settled over Elysium like a sigh. The hum of the servers in the control room was the only sound left, a mechanical heartbeat that refused to stop even when everyone else had gone home.Marco had left first, his laptop slung over one shoulder and a half-eaten pastry in his hand. Jennifer followed, her heels echoing down the hall until they faded into the street noise. Lena had been the last to go, turning at the door just long enough to whisper a goodnight that sounded like gratitude disguised as exhaustion.And then it was just me.Me, the hum, and the storm Victor Volkov carried wherever he went—except tonight, he wasn’t the storm. He was the calm before one.He appeared in the reflection of the glass before I heard his footsteps. His presence always felt like gravity—a pull that rearranged the air, making it heavier, more deliberate. I didn’t turn at first. I was still looking at the city lights beyond the window, tiny and flickering, like the city itself was exhaling.“Ev

  • Shadows of Desire   Marco’s Revelation

    When systems wake, they do it in layers. First the hum—the servers in the control room drawing breath. Then the glow—the monitors warming from blue to white. After that, the people follow in their own stutters: coffee on, locks off, voices low. Today, Elysium woke early and on purpose. We were done being prey. We were learning how to hunt ethically.Marco was already at the console when I came in, hoodie half-zipped, hair doing its best impression of static electricity. He had six screens up like a stained-glass window for nerds: corporate registries, tax records, WHOIS lookups, and a spreadsheet that looked like it had made other spreadsheets call it “sir.”He didn’t look up when I set a paper cup beside him.“You’re a saint,” he said, reaching for the coffee without breaking typing rhythm.“I’m a witness with a caffeine budget,” I corrected, sliding onto the spare chair and pulling my notebook into my lap. “Tell me what we’re hunting.”“Money,” he said. “The only language Adrian res

  • Shadows of Desire   Cassie Investigates

    y morning, the adrenaline had burned itself to ash. The city outside my window was gray and clean, the kind of morning that looks like paper waiting for ink. Sleep hadn’t found me — it never does when the truth is this close.Feld’s voice kept looping in my head: “Adrian said—”Said what? Said when? Said how?I’d spent too long trying to heal the aftermath; now I wanted to understand the beginning.So, I did what I’ve always done best — I followed the trail backward.The archives sat four blocks from the courthouse, a square of old stone and fluorescent light that smelled like dust and toner. I hadn’t been there in months, not since before Elysium became more than a story. Back then, I was a journalist chasing whispers about “exclusive clubs” and “consent economies.” I didn’t realize one of those whispers would become my life.Now I wasn’t chasing scandal. I was chasing motive.The librarian — a woman with kind eyes and a lanyard full of buttons shaped like punctuation marks — remembe

  • Shadows of Desire   The Messenger

    The next morning arrived with the metallic scent of tension and the bitter taste of coffee-fueled nerves. The moment I stepped into Elysium, I could feel it—the air was taut, charged like the atmosphere before lightning strikes.Marco's urgent voice drifted from the control room. "He's reached out again." My pulse quickened. "Adrian?" But Marco shook his head grimly. "No. Feld. The reporter messaged Lena directly through a private channel. He wants the 'final package.'"I froze in disbelief. "After the injunction?" Leo's voice answered from behind me, heavy with concern. "He doesn't know yet. The process server's visit didn't scare him off—it cornered him. Now he's desperate."Lena sat at the long table, her hands folded tightly around a paper cup that threatened to crumple under her grip. Her eyes were wide but dry, her breathing controlled in the precise way Elise had taught her—counting silently, grounding herself through rhythm. "He said today," she murmured. "One last handoff. He

  • Shadows of Desire   Silent Night

    The rain returned after dusk. Not the cleansing kind this time, but the softer, heavier one that wraps the city in itself. From my window, the streetlights blurred into halos, and every drop against the glass sounded like a question I still didn’t know how to answer.Elysium had closed early. No meetings. No plans. No digital traces of strategy or crisis. Just stillness—earned, uneasy stillness. Everyone scattered to their corners of survival, each carrying ghosts that refused to stay silent even when the world finally did.Sometimes it feels like quiet is a trap; other times, it’s the only thing left to hold.VictorHe stayed late at Elysium, long after the last light dimmed. I knew because his office window still glowed when I walked past, its silhouette cutting through the rain.Victor doesn’t know how to rest—he only knows how to pause between wars. But tonight, something about his stillness looked different. He wasn’t working; he was sitting in that massive chair like it was the

  • Shadows of Desire   Marco & Leo’s Support

    Morning had that rinsed, after-rain clarity that makes the city’s edges look new. I woke before the alarm, the quiet so complete I could hear the building next door flex and settle. Elysium was closed to members again—the injunction had bought us time, and Victor intended to spend it like a miser: carefully, deliberately. I walked there with coffee cooling against my palms, the air bright and clean enough to taste.Inside, the main hall still smelled faintly of garlic and candle smoke from dinner, a domestic ghost haunting chandeliers. Somewhere, Elise’s kettle clicked off. Farther in, a door sighed shut with the politeness of someone trying not to wake a sleeping house.I wasn’t looking for anyone. I told myself that. I was going to the library to work through footnotes and fix two sentences in my draft that insisted on being melodramatic. But when I reached the mezzanine, I heard voices in the library—low, careful, the kind of pitch men use when the truth is fragile and the walls ar

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