It was magic every time, and the real kind of magic too, not the ether. The kind that flashed in your chest for an afternoon or a conversation or maybe just a moment as the trees caught the sunlight in just such a way. And then it was gone, and try as you might to summon it again, everything had gone back to normal, whatever that was.

Every time she was allowed to roam freely through the forest, she found it spell-binding. Every time she saw something she hadn't before. Having spent her life up until Gunnerkrigg Court in a hospital ward, she had never experienced nature. Young's Park wasn't really nature either, just another controlled habitat. Gillite Wood though... that was about as close to nature as you could get, and it was the exact opposite of that cold, awful, sterile hospital.

She had always liked to walk barefoot. After weeks in the forest, her feet had begun to develop thick calluses that protected her from prickly leaves and itchy stalks of grass. They carried her over moss-covered boulders and through meadows and over ravines without ever missing a step. After a few minutes, she came to a stream. She bent down on one knee and examined her reflection. A pair of shadowed eyes peered back at her, but they no longer seemed so hard and serious as they once were. She gathered up a double handful of water and splashed it onto her face, enjoying the feeling of the breeze on her wet cheeks. Then she did it again, and again, until all the makeup was gone from her face. That too felt good. Freeing.

She stood up and crossed the stream via a fallen log. Up ahead she saw something pushing out of the ground, a stone structure now mostly overgrown with grass and vines. Trees leaned against the large stone pillars for support, and their roots spidered through the web of cracks on their surface, slowly returning it to the earth. The pillars were weather-worn and the pictograms on them faded, but when Antimony looked closely she could clearly see that they were depictions of people in ecstasy, mostly sexual.

Her curiosity peaked, she pushed aside some of the larger vines and ventured into the maze of blocks. Some of them had fallen over, but the ivy had grown between the ones left standing, forming a sort of cathedral. The stone went down in steps, forming a sunken circular area in the center. It was much cooler in here, the air humid and ripe with the scent of green plants growing. A patchy coat of moss covered many of the stones, but it was not moist and slimy as it first looked, but dry and comfortable, almost as though mother nature had been thoughtful enough to leave places for the two-legs that might want to sit or lie down.

Antimony wandered down to the central dais, which seemed much less weathered than it's companion stones. Enscribed into the surface was a pair of figures- two women dancing. Antimony reached her hand down and ran her fingers across it, feeling the perfect grooves left by the maker. Suddenly there was a click, and the stones began to move.

A seamless crack parted, and the center of the dais pushed up, revealing an alcove hidden inside it. Inside it was a ball of... something. Its surface was very smooth, yet there were small lumps in it, and it was slightly oblong. She looked at it for a moment, thinking about the consequences. The forest was not perfectly safe. There were things in here better left alone. Yet something about this place- the pillars and the drawings and the moss, made her feel like it would be alright to reach out and grab this thing. Just to see what it was.
Before she lost her courage, she reached out and grabbed hold of it, ready to let at any second. To her relief it did not burn her, or explode, or trigger some kind of trap. The ball was warm, as though it had been left outside for a summer afternoon. She could feel things moving beneath it's smooth, rippling surface. It felt quite nice in her hands, like an electric hand massager or some kind of weird stress reliever. It seemed to grow slightly warmer and more pliable at her touch. After a moment, it began to move.

It stretched and elongated, changing shape before her very eyes into... oh.

Suddenly the carvings made sense.

Lying in her palm was a very life-like phallus. Instantly, she felt her body grow a bit warmer. She reached out into the ether as far as she could go, letting the chirps and the rustle of grasses and the thoughts of earthworms filter into her mind. For a few overwhelming seconds she picked through the noise of information and could not spot any sign of other people. Then she withdrew back into her own senses, confident that she would not be disturbed.

It was always a bit of a chore to visit the forest as far as her libido was concerned. In the Court she had a dorm that was empty most of the day, and Jack to toy around with when Kat was present. In the forest she was now bunking with the other Anwyn girls, as the guest room was frequently occupied by relatives or visitors of the chieftain. This reduced her opportunities to rub one out significantly, almost to zero in fact.

She was going to enjoy this.

With one hand she raised the her skirt above her hips. She wasn't wearing any undergarments. Going commando in the forest seemed a perfectly natural thing to do, and there was something about a stiff breeze round the privates that felt wonderfully liberating.

She traced circles around her mound with the object, moving closer and closer with each pass until she was rubbing the tip of it between her lips. It didn't take long until she was more horned up than she had been in a long while. Absentmindedly, she wondered if the object could sense what size was best for her, as it was clearly magic and it had picked a form that would definitely by a tight fight, but did not look like it would cause he undue damage.

Pushing her hips forward a little, she applied pressure to the dildo and the head slid past her opening. Her suspicions were correct. It was a perfect fit. Gingerly she pressed harder, and more slid in until the palm of her hand was resting against her vagina. Now that it was in her, she could distinctly feel it pulsating, as though it was alive. She played with it for a while, bringing herself right to the edge of orgasm and then slowing her thrusts to a crawl, and allowing the warmth to recede just at the point when it would have overwhelmed her. Drops of her dew smeared onto the shaft as she came up short a third time, just barely managing to keep it in check.

Slowly, she pulled it all the way back out, and then began to pump furiously. The next moment, her whole body tensed up like she had just been tazed. It was a good thing she had checked for peeping toms, because her mouth let out a strangled cry somewhere between a yelp and a groan. A little flock of birds erupted from the upper reaches of one of the pillars, but Antimony didn't see them. It was the longest one she had ever had, and when it gradually allowed her control of her limbs again, she noticed that her legs were still trembling slightly.
She also noticed that the dildo had gone missing.

Well, not missing. That would imply she didn't know where it was. Rather, she realized with a sudden lurch that it was lodged snugly all the way inside of her. There had been no "base" on the end of it. She briefly tried to fish it out, but it was snug in there, and there was no way two more fingers were going to fit without serious pain. She stood up and took a wide stance, but nothing fell save for a few drops of her own dew. She tried jumping up and down a few times, but it was no good. The fit was too good.

Immediately her mind reeled with horror. How was she going to get this out? If she couldn't, how much was she going to have to bribe or threaten the school nurse? What if the whole school found out, and all she was remembered for was being that slutty red-haired girl?

Despite this panic, she did come to the conclusion that it was not causing any immediate distress. In fact, it felt quite good... It was still moving, and if anything it was more insistent than before. She sighed and pulled her knickers back up her thighs, wishing fervently that she had thought this through.


Jack watched the program execute on his computer. It was a huge amount of data, and he wasn't sure what all of it was doing. A web of nodes was assembling itself like a spiderweb while a progress bar crawled slowly from one side of the screen to the other.

His smart phone began to vibrate, making a growling noise as it scooted across the desk in short bursts. Jack picked it up and answered. A heavily modulated voice greeted him.

"I take it there were no errors?"

"None. Everything synced up just like you said. I put that new SIM card in too." Jack said. "Can you see all this?"
"I can. It seems that their research projects are locked down to some degree, but they have not isolated their critical infrastructure. Everything is connected through a single trunk, including a whole lot of things that even the greenest network analyst should know to isolate. Almost all the routers still have default passwords."

"There's a lot of data here..." Jack said.

"Don't worry about processing it, it's being streamed to my own servers. I have people who can handle that. Just focus on gaining more access. Open more backdoors for me."

"I can't help but wonder if this makes me expendable to you."

Jack was in the habit of speaking his mind, regardless of the consequences. With other people it seemed to take practice and effort, but it had always come naturally to him. It was moderating himself that was the issue. That had taken a long time to develop.

"Of course not, don't be paranoid. I can't physically be in the Court, hardly anyone can. I've said it before Jack, you're one of a very lucky few who pass through that place. There are heads of state and chiefs of top-level intelligence agencies who would kill to be invited there even once. There will still be plenty of work for you. You're not expendable to me Jack, you're more valuable than you ever were, because you're the only one available to me who can grasp all this and keep a cool head. You're irreplaceable."

That familiar excitement was coursing through him. At first he had broken the rules just because he wanted to, not because it was profitable. There was a little thrill every time, a tremble up his spine when he managed to know something he should not. Except this time he had not just cracked a motion sensor or broken into student records, he had all of it. Every router, every camera, every computer, phone, tablet, sensor, server and switch. There would be a lot of white noise, of course, useless information and things to sift through before he found vulnerabilities to exploit and valuable data. Luckily, his benefactor seemed to be reading his mind.

"I know you don't have much formal coding experience, so I took the liberty of preparing a few toolkits for you, they're uploading to your phone now. Take a look."

Jack switched the conversation to speaker and looked at the screen. Sure enough, several apps were already installing themselves.

"You'll find lots of new features to your liking. You can toggle a whole lot of subsystems now, as long as you're connected. Lights, motor tracks, trains, automated doors, motion sensors. You can use video and audio input devices as if they were your own, and I also included a paid key for one of the good BlackShades subscriptions, so if you find computers with sensitive material that aren't connected to any network, you'll have what you need to make entry."

"Christ..." Jack muttered, swiping his forefinger across the screen, examining all the new icons.

"Oh just wait, it gets better. There's an app called LiveProfiler which plugs you into the Court's personal record system. Everybody has a file, staff included. It's got facial recognition. As in, the kind that hasn't even hit the market yet. You can point your phone at anyone and get the whole story on them in a few seconds. What country they come from, their family, their disciplinary record, their past, their habits, their vices, all kinds of unsettling shit. You can even search a student and find their current position via the trackers in their food and their clothing, or by automatic face recognition from one of the millions of cameras in the Court."

Jack glanced back up at the desktop screen. The great tree of dots was still unfolding, and each one had a label. Without his influence, the tree spun this way and that, and new labels were typed in at an almost unnatural speed. Suddenly he got the feeling that despite his benefactor's warm words, he was very much out of his league here. He didn't even know this person's name, but he had allowed him into his life for the sake of personal power and a lot of cold, hard cash. So far the relationship had paid off immensely. Jack had always craved this kind of control, and now he was in one of the most sensitive places in Britain and perhaps the world, and all that he had ever desired had just been granted him. Suddenly he felt the urge to get up. Once again, the stranger read his mind.

"I'm sure you're dying to take a walk and try it out. There will be some bugs at first. I'll be refining the apps as more data comes in. Go on now. Impress me."

Jack ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket.

"I always do."


They were somewhere. The scenery didn't matter. It was all grey and indistinct anyway, but the body underneath her was not. She could see every bead of sweat on that small, compact ass as it moved against her hips. She was pumping like mad and there was an incredible feeling, like nothing she had ever experienced before... There was a faint whimper which caused her to look up and see Kat staring back over her shoulder at Antimony, an expression of pure, unadulterated pleasure on her face.

Antimony jerked awake, sitting up suddenly as though she had just come out of a dream about falling. She got those often. These though... these dreams were brand new. She was sweating heavily. Luckily her body had had the good sense not to rise all the way upright, or else she would have knocked herself out on the ceiling. Kat was still snoring contentedly one bunk below, being a very heavy sleeper. Antimony tried to go back to sleep, but she simply could not. The object was awake again and it was undulating harder than ever, making the insides of her thighs slick with moisture.

For some reason, she could no longer get herself off by rubbing. It just wouldn't happen. All it did was make her hornier. Moving carefully, she swung her legs out from underneath the covers and left the damp spot where she had been laying to stand on the floor of the dorm. Dawn was still several hours off, judging by the clock on the wall. She looked around the room for a minute, trying to find something to distract herself from the almost insatiable sexual urges. Unbidden, her eyes settled on Kat, and would not dislodge. She was lying face-down on the pillow, her heavy breathing muffled by the goose feathers. Antimony walked over to the edge of the bed, not really knowing what she was doing, and at the same time, knowing exactly what she was doing.

Kat's bed attire was reliably boyish- a long sleeve "ethical hacking" T-shirt and a pair of underwear. For some reason Antimony's senses had become much more sensitive, especially hearing and smell. As she pulled the blanket up and inched closer, she could smell the fact that Kat had not had a shower before bed. The pair of underwear she was wearing was old, and very tight fitting. Antimony could clearly see the outline of her mound and that perfect, delicious little bottom that she had seen in her dream.

She felt something stir in her loins- hard. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from gasping, and at the same time she was possessed by a powerful urge to pull her body on top of Kat's and do all sorts of unspeakable things. Instead she pulled back the waistband of her own drawers and saw that something was poking out. The tip of something round...

Utterly horrified, she shook her head, trying to snap herself out of it.

Change of plans. This thing was going to have to come out now. Today. Whatever it took.

She pulled on some real clothes and then opened Kat's side of the dresser. Underneath a stack of gaming mags was the motion sensor spoofer that they had first used to sneak out, plus a spare key to Kat's workshop. She took them both and left, taking care to close the door as quietly as possible.


Jack moved well through crowds. In another life, his father had always insisted on dragging him to his business parties, perhaps to show off the polite, well-mannered young boy who would someday inherit his father's legacy. During these things he always tried to keep moving and find a way to slip away, usually into the scullery or the kitchen, so as to avoid having to be engaged in conversation with his father's friends. It had taught him to slip through a field of arms and shoulders without disturbing a single one. It was just past lunchtime and the cafeteria was emptying out. Despite the fact that he was wearing a backpack, he was not headed to class. Not today. Normally he would wait until darkness for something like this, but his impatience to try out the multitude of new toys had overwhelmed him. One of them was open on his phone now, and he glanced at it occasionally- an incredibly detailed map of the Court in pseduo-3D.

There.

An inconspicuous hallway, and then a maintenance door.

He parted from the crowd. Nobody stopped to look because he looked like he knew where he was going. That was the key to being places you didn't belong: you just had to act like you did. Having something useful-looking in your hands like a sheet of paper or a clipboard never hurt either. You could always take it a step further, too. Several mechanical engineering classes took place outside the bounds of the school, and into the industrial areas of the Court, for which they carried special ID's and were not hassled. These students wore grey coveralls on the days they went to their ME classes, and Jack had found it to be little trouble to "borrow" a set from the laundry rooms.

The door was locked, but locks were highly theoretical around Jack. A few moments later the door clicked open and spat him out into a machine room. A bunch of rusting sprinkler valves sprouted like mushrooms from the tangled coil of pipes snaking up the wall. The fire alarm switches themselves were here too, similarly corroded, and a lot of other stuff which Jack couldn't identify, though it was probably related to air conditioning. It was very loud and not where he needed to be, so he consulted the map on his phone again and continued on down to the far end of the room. He took a left and came to another door. This one was unlocked.
Suddenly he was out in the fresh air, and there was a long drop below him. Between the main school building and the broadcast tower there was a short gap divided by a fence topped with razor wire. Unfortunately for the people who had installed this fence, they had not counted on ethereally inclined students. Jack took a deep breath and let it out, just like Antimony had showed him. Then he reached deep down, to that part of his mind that still bore traces of the white legs.
Then he jumped.

It was a bit of a sloppy jump, but they didn't call him Springheel for nothing. The leap carried him clear across the gap and dropped him roughly on the far rooftop. He rolled, and then spent a few moments clutching his shin and hissing through his teeth. He soon put aside the pain however, because he had reached his objective.
The massive metal pylon stuck up into the sky like a rapier, and as the wind blew against it it leaned slightly from side to side.

Jack reached into his backpack and withdrew a small PVC tube that had end-caps screwed on either side. It was a homebrew device- essentially just a wireless antenna hooked up to a Raspberry Pi board, surrounded by a casing to ensure that it stayed dry. Every few seconds it would update to the server he set up on another rooftop some distance away, which itself would ping out to an IP his mysterious benefactor gave to him. Not before Jack had time to run password sniffers through all of it and grab logins en masse, of course. He had his own collections to add to. The tap planted, he sat down and booted up his laptop.

He plugged his packet sniffer into the traffic and switched on a filter to query only the header and body of emails sent from Court employees. It was easy to do this because they all used the same ancient in-house mail service, and therefore the same protocol, whereas students were all over the place with Gmail, Ymail, Hotmail and so on, most of which had long switched to more secure protocols than HTTP. The Court, however, apparently hadn't seen fit to update their software in years, which Jack was endlessly grateful for. Right away, he intercepted an email regarding that day's unexplained absences and noted the address of the machine it was sent to, and that it was sent only a few minutes ago, so the mail had probably not been read yet. He quickly booted up Qsploit and scanned all the ports on that address. Three ports come back as active, a printer, a router and a box running Windows XP Service Pack 1. The machine was on, and there was a command shell already open, but, looking at the processes, nothing much was happening in it.

Tentatively, he opened up another shell alongside it and ran a search for the file-name from the email. Sure enough, it had not downloaded it yet. Jack pressed another button and migrated to the browser. He almost deleted the email outright. Thankfully he stopped himself before he made that mistake.

"If it's gone they'll notice..." he murmured to himself.

Quickly he downloaded the text file and opened it. He ran through the list, found his name, deleted it, and saved the file again. He was about to close it when he saw a name near the very top that he recognized.

Carver, Antimony - Unexcused Absence - Note on file: N/A

He stared at this for a whole minute, and then deleted her name as well. Once that was done he had to break into the sender's computer and resend the email with the edited attendance file attached, after deleting the original. There was another command shell open on this one as well, but the owner was too busy browsing Reddit to notice that someone was running several processes in the background. Heck, she probably didn't even know how to check those, or what the words even meant.

With that done, Jack double checked that he had disposed of any tracks and closed both shells. He leaned back against the broadcast tower and looked away from the screen, his eyes smarting slightly. Whenever his mother had seen him on his laptop she had always scowled and admonished him that it was bad for his eyes. He imagined how wide her scowl would be if she could fathom what the kids were doing with Kali Linux and open source software these days.

Then there came the inevitable, reoccurring thought, the one that would one day surely ruin him.

I'm bored. What now?

His mind backtracked to what he had seen earlier. Bad grades were normal for Carver, but skipping school was not, and as her sometimes fuck-buddy, he felt obliged to take interest. Besides, it was the perfect opportunity to try out the people-finder app. He loaded it up and threw Antimony's name into the search bar. The machine muddled about with GPS for a few minutes, but ultimately came up with no results. Jack pursed his lips, as he often did when confronted with errors. This could mean one of several things. Either Antimony had gotten rid of her trackers, or the software was not working right, or she was out of range of the tower. He decided to go with the last one, since there were a dozen other towers spread all throughout the Court that he had yet to bug.
He went back to the IP for the 9th year girl's dorm wifi (among the first things he had cracked into) and used his backdoor to rifle through webcam feeds until he found the room Antimony shared with Kat. There was no one there.

Puzzled, he went back to the location scanner and typed in "Katerina Dolan", catching his spelling mistake at the last minute. This time, the scanner quit after a few seconds. The map flashed open and a small tag entitled "KDonlan - keep Lat/Long - y/n?". He hit the lowercase y with his finger and the tag scooted to a point on the map that was somewhere between the 9th year dorms and the flight of stairs that led up to the train platforms. The map also listed devices nearby that he had planted rootkits on or otherwise controlled. Unfortunately he had only been at this for a few hours and so far had been too overwhelmed by all the new capabilities to settle into the dry business of breaking into each system one by one.

Instead, he decided to be patient and wait. The tag was moving in the direction of the dorms, so soon he would be able to see her on the cams.

He watched her pause in the lobby and discuss Antimony's absence with Lindsey, then go back to the dorm room, which she seemed just as puzzled to find empty. Jack saw her reach for her phone and begin to text. His fingers flew over the keyboard, and within seconds he was in Kat's phone, watching the conversation.

Kat: Where are you?

Annie: I'm at your workshop. I need help.


Antimony heard the warehouse door open, and a wave of shame swept over her.
Whatever way this was about to go, it wasn't going to be good. She had a feeling that explaining this predicament to her friend was going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done.

Kat looked very concerned, which made it even worse. She was still wearing her school uniform, and looked like she'd come straight from class. Antimony braced herself. Just get it out. Stick to your story.

"What's wrong Annie?"

She let out a deep breath. If anyone would understand, it would be Kat. The reputation hit wouldn't be that huge. She would find ways to build it back up in other ways when this was over. At the same time, a familiar arousal was rising up into her extremities. Embarrassment was keeping it under wraps for now, overpowering it, but not forever. The scales would tip, sooner or later, and when they did Antimony was not entirely sure what would happen.

"You know how I've been living in the forest a lot more recently?"

Kat nodded.

"Of course. What is it?"

"Well... we were... having a little bit of fun, me and this kid from the village and..."

Already, Kat was grinning bashfully into her hand, which somewhat eased her trepidation.

"...and we had some... toys... and one of them got stuck."

She finished at a gallop, spitting the last words out as quickly as she could. She had told a half truth to save face. The whole truth- that she had randomly come across a weird sex shrine and put the idol in her snatch was just too far out to even contemplate telling. Just a little white lie, that hurt nobody. Kat was now actually laughing.

"Seriously?"

Suddenly Antimony found herself trying not to smile, because the truth was so much more absurd than Kat would ever know.

"I am deadly fucking serious."

"I'm sorry for laughing, it's just... wow." Kat said, her cheeks bright red. "I didn't know they got that wild over there in Gillite Wood. I thought me and Paz were a little kinky but damn..."

"You don't know the half of it. This thing moves on its own."

"What?"

"Yeah, it feels like it's alive or something."

Kat's eyes roamed down to her midriff.

"So it's... inside?"

Antimony nodded.

"Maybe you just need to... you know. Cum."

"I've tried that, believe me. It doesn't work anymore. I can't get myself off. I can't get this damn thing out either, I tried everything."

Kat looked down at the floor pensively and tapped her chin for a minute, as she often did when she was thinking.
"I could probably rig some kind of suction device to grab the end of it, even if it's a flat surface. I'm going to have to take a look, though."

Something else was rising in Antimony and it wasn't shame. She didn't know why she had been worried. Kat was taking this in stride, and the crushing fear of losing her best friend was receding. In it's place an enormous, unspeakable lust was coalescing. The blood was beating hard behind her temples. Her hands felt light and shaky.
"Here, have a seat up here." Kat said, patting a counter top.

Antimony hopped up onto the cold tile and spread her legs, pulling her underwear down off of her feet. They were sopping wet, and gave a thick splat when they hit the floor. Kat leaned in, and Antimony felt her toes curl. It was moving again.

"Oh wow, there it is..." Kat said.

Before Antimony could say anything she reached a hand in and pressed against the sides of her mound, pushing it apart to get a better look. At that minute pressure, something seemed to peak inside her. A cup had been filling up somewhere in the back of her mind, and now that cup had reached the brim and was running over. Her whole body shuddered violently. Her legs spread wide, and a small squirt of liquid shot out of her vagina and splashed Kat squarely in the nose and mouth. She recoiled, wiping at her face. Antimony immediately got up to apologize, but Kat's movements were becoming more sluggish and disoriented with every second. She took two unsteady steps back, and fell onto one of the metal tables for support, leaning over and presenting that supple bottom that Antimony had dreamed about.

"Uhhh... what was that... I feel so- lightheaded..."

Antimony felt her hips quiver again as more of the object forced it's way out of her. It was no longer firm and cylindrical, but long and uneven, like a giant worm. Pleasure arced up her spine in waves, blocking out conscious thought and leaving only the breath-taking reality of how ridiculously good this felt. She was a spectator, watching helplessly as she came up behind Kat and wrapped her arms around the girls thin waist, pressing them together. Her kneecaps scrapped against the soft backs of Kat's legs, and that contact alone sent another shiver racing up her body. The object pushed further out, and bent upwards, straining to reach the fork of Kat's legs. Antimony quickly reachined underneath her skirt and tugging her panties down.

"What are you doing Annie..." Kat said faintly.

When Antimony spoke her voice sounded muted. Far away.

"I'm sorry, I'm not- I can't stop-"

Antimony was barely moving, but she felt completely out of breath. A moment later, another spasm shook through her. The reddish tentacle closed the gap and plunged into her friend, who was not struggling at all now. She jerked a little, and groaned deeply, but it seemed that they had both become non-verbal. Her dream last night had come true. Both of them were sweating profusely as Antimony bucked hard, trying to get a good rhythm going- anything to make that overwhelming, mind-destroying pleasure just a little higher... It was a lot harder than Jack made it look, but pretty soon the sound of her hips hitting Kat's buttocks rose to a regular wet slap, a metronome broken only by Kat's whimpering. It felt like hours, but in retrospect the whole thing took less than three minutes.

And then, there it was. Sweet relief. Everything was gone, their surroundings a mass of indistinct grey. All she could see was a tight brown ass peeking out from underneath a green skirt. They were both shaking uncontrollably. The dildo was getting thicker, rotating. After a moment, she realized it was contracting back into itself. With a faint pop it slipped out of both of them simultaneously and hit the floor, an innocuous red blob once more. Both of them were practically gushing. The juice was running down her inner leg and into her socks.
It was a very long time before either of them spoke.

Antimony helped Kat up and they both wordlessly tried to salvage as much of their clothing as possible, although that seemed to be wishful thinking at this point. Antimony picked up her ruined underwear and sighed.

"I think we should wait until school is out before we head back." Kat said, finally.

"I think so too."

There was another long silence. Antimony was feeling the shame again. Shame and embarrassment and apprehension, and now that there was no distraction from it, it felt a hundred times more potent.

"You alright now?" Kat asked.

"Kat, I'm sorry."

"Eh. It could have been a lot worse I suppose. It could have exploded, or poisoned us both, or decided to grow spikes."

"I suppose it could have." Antimony replied, her eyes following Kat's gaze down to the floor, where the red orb sat, trying to look completely inconspicuous.

"What should we do with it?"

Kat left the room and returned with a large glass mason jar and a sheet of paper. She screwed off the lid and shooed the ball into the jar like a stray spider that had wandered into her study. Then she tilted it upright and screwed the lid closed.

"I'm going to keep it as a reminder to watch what you let other people stick in your cooter." Kat said.

"You have to promise not to tell a soul about this."

"Trust me Annie, I'm taking this one to my grave."

Meanwhile, on a windowsill overlooking this whole episode, a Tic-Toc had sat unnoticed, recording. Somewhere close-by, tethered by an invisible WiFi connection, Jack sat with his jaw hanging slackly open.