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Cassie Investigates

Author: Tyson Roy
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-10-20 08:56:47

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
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  • Shadows of Desire   Revealing the True Enemy

    Adrian looked smaller than I expected.I don’t mean physically; he’s tall, wiry, the kind of man who fills a room by simply taking up space. I mean the way he folded inward the moment the evidence began to play — like paper scorched by a match. The bravado drained out of his face in strips until what was left was a man trying to remember how to lie convincingly.We were all in the back lounge, the same room where Marco once told us he’d had enough of carrying the weight alone. The leather smelled faintly of lemon oil and old decisions. The overhead light was low but honest. Victor had arranged the chairs in a semi-circle like a tribunal, and I sat with my hands clasped so tightly my knuckles had gone white.Adrian had been invited. Summoned, really. The word felt better in my mouth — less theatrical, more precise. Marco had sent him a polite, empty-sounding message this morning to ask if he’d come by “to clarify some business matters.” Adrian had walked in with his usual smile and a r

  • Shadows of Desire   Escape

    When the van’s engine idled like a held breath, I felt it in my bones. The whole world was a taut string, vibrating with possibility — the kind that makes your teeth feel sensitive.I was in Elysium, headphones in, watching three different feeds and a hundred little status lights. Marco was in the van, fingers moving like a pianist on the tablet; Leo sat beside him with binoculars trained on the window across the street. Victor hovered near the monitors in the operations room, a pillar of quiet, ready to become an avalanche. Lena was in the quiet room, blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and every so often I could hear her inhale through the comm as if someone had taught her breathing like a lifeline and she was practicing it.We’d traced him. We had the location. We had his endpoint. We had a plan that felt like a thin rope over a canyon — one correct step and we’d all cross; one mistake and something snapped.Marco’s voice came in, low and tight: “He’s moving.”Leo’s whisper follo

  • Shadows of Desire   Tension Peaks

    By noon the whole energy of Elysium had changed.Not loud. Not chaotic.Just tight.Like the air had been stretched thin across the ceiling and was waiting to snap over our heads.Lena was back from the café — safe, shaken, wrapped in a soft blanket in the quiet room — but the operation was far from over. The reporter wasn’t retreating. He wasn’t calming down. He wasn’t even doubting his angle.He was escalating.And fast.I sat at the operations desk, headset hanging loosely around my neck, eyes locked on the blinking feed indicators Marco had left running. My stomach felt like it had folded itself into a complicated origami shape no one warned me about.Victor paced the length of the room behind me, silent in a way that meant his brain was red-hot, working every angle at once.Across the comm system, Marco’s voice crackled:“Cass, Vic — bad news. He reached out to Lena again.”I froze. Victor stopped mid-step.“When?” Victor demanded.“Just now.” Marco’s breath came tight, controlle

  • Shadows of Desire   The Meeting Point

    The morning of the sting felt wrong before I even opened my eyes.Not dramatic-wrong. Not loud-wrong.Just… off, the way a dream dissolves before you can name it, leaving the air too still around you.My alarm buzzed like it was apologizing for waking me, not alerting me. I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to steady the breath that didn’t want to stay steady.Today was the day.Lena is meeting the reporter at the café.Marco and Leo are monitoring from the van.Me listening in from Elysium with a comm unit clipped to my collarbone like a borrowed heartbeat.I’d imagined myself being ready. Focused. Anchored.I was none of those things.But I showed up anyway.Elysium – 10:12 a.m.The club felt eerie with daylight leaking through the cracks. Elysium was a night-creature — it didn’t know what to do with sunshine. Everything looked naked: the velvet curtains too red, the gold trim too sharp, the air too honest.Victor was already there, pacing near the security monitors with a

  • Shadows of Desire   Night Before the Storm

    The club felt wrong that night.Not unsafe — just too quiet.Like the walls were holding their breath right along with us.We were all scattered across Elysium’s main floor, pretending to do small, normal things as if tomorrow wasn’t looming over us like a pressure drop before a hurricane. Marco checked comms, pacing like a wild thing. Lena busied her hands tying and untying a soft rope, her fingers trembling only when she thought no one noticed. Jennifer and Leo were whispering in a corner, leaning into each other for strength.And Victor…Victor was looking for me.I felt him before I saw him — that subtle shift in the air, the way the room sharpened around his presence. When I turned, he was already walking toward me with that steady, unreadable expression he saved for moments when the world was coming apart and he refused to let it show.“Cassie,” he said softly. “Can we talk?”My throat tightened. “I thought we weren’t doing big conversations tonight.”“We aren’t,” he said. “But…

  • Shadows of Desire   Leo’s Declaration

    I swear, I thought the night would be ordinary.A low-energy Tuesday, soft music humming through Elysium, the kind of evening where everyone drifts in slowly, finding corners to settle into. Nothing dramatic. Nothing wild.But Leo never does “ordinary.”He stood near the center of the main lounge — under the warm chandelier lights — looking sharper than usual. Not polished, just… present. Focused. The kind of focus that makes the air shift before anyone speaks.Jennifer and Marco were beside him.Already that was strange enough.Jennifer, cheeks faintly flushed but chin lifted like she dared someone to question her.Marco, hands tucked in his pockets, shoulders relaxed in a way that meant he was absolutely not relaxed at all.I lingered near the bar with Lena and Victor, watching the three of them form a triangle of quiet electricity.Then Leo cleared his throat.And the entire room stilled.He had that kind of voice — not loud, but commanding. Like he spoke in colours rather than vol

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