Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 703: Lowest Point

”Who is this?” Brittany repeated, and her voice hardened.

”Call me... Mister Hero.” Another chuckle, longer, wetter. ”I’m a friend. A friend with resources, and a deep appreciation for hot awakened women.”

Trisha had leaned in close enough to hear. Every muscle around her mouth tightened. She shook her head once. Hang up.

Brittany almost did. Her thumb hovered over the screen. But sixty-eight hours and five hundred thousand Chronos and zero firms willing to fight were still burning in her skull, and the phone stayed against her ear three seconds longer than it should have.

”What kind of resources?”

”The helpful kind.” The heavy breathing sounded again. ”I’m willing to make your problems go away. Both of you. Every Chronos of it. In exchange for... a small favor.”

Brittany felt the floor tilt the way it had tilted in Maeve’s tent.

”What favor?” she asked, and her voice came out thin.

”Hehehe...” The chuckle stretched, and the breathing got heavier, and the man on the other end of the line took his time with it. ”What do you think, little slut?”

Brittany’s hand clenched on the phone so hard the case creaked.

”I have a yacht. Beautiful thing. Leaves port tomorrow morning. Seven days at sea with some very important friends of mine. You and your partner come aboard, keep us entertained, and you each walk away with five hundred thousand Chronos.”

”I’m not a prostitute!” Brittany spat, and her voice shook with fury. ”I’m an A-tier awakened combatant and if you ever-”

”Britt.” Trisha’s hand closed on her wrist.

Brittany looked at her, and the expression on Trisha’s face stopped her cold. The disgust had shifted into calculation, and the calculation was happening behind eyes that were furious and wet and doing math she clearly hated.

”What exactly,” Trisha said through her teeth, leaning toward the phone, ”would I need to do?”

”Trisha, no-”

”Britt... We’re fucked.”

The breathing on the line shifted. Pleased. The sound of a man who’d heard that question before from other women in other desperate moments and knew what it meant.

”Nothing extreme,” he said, and the reassurance was worse than the proposition. ”Just... entertain some old pals of mine. Good men. Generous men. Men who appreciate beauty and power in equal measure.” He paused, and the pause had teeth. ”Oh, and my sons, maybe. At their age, you know, it’s important that they learn how to treat women nicely. Proper respect. A boring mother like theirs can only teach so much.”

Trisha’s hand was still on Brittany’s wrist. Her grip went white.

”What...?” Trisha’s voice was barely a whisper. She spoke the most painful, most disgusting words of her life. ”Age...?”

”Hmm, what was it again?” He said it the way a man checks a grocery list. ”The oldest is fourteen by now, I think?”

Brittany stopped breathing.

Trisha didn’t move. The calculation behind her eyes didn’t shift into rage the way it should have. It just stopped. Every part of her that had been doing math, weighing options, measuring survival against degradation, all of it went blank at the same time, the way a screen dies when you pull the power.

”No,” Brittany whispered. Then louder, her voice climbing and cracking at the same time. ”No. No, you sick fuck! I’ll find your number and report you to the cops!”

”Now, now,” the man sighed, and the sigh was patient and warm, the tone of a father explaining something obvious to a child. ”It’s not like I want you to mate with them. Nothing like that. Just... show the boys what it’s like, you know? Maybe let them see what a real woman looks like up close. A little hands-on education. Maybe they touch a few things, you know.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. ”The innocent stuff.”

Trisha ripped the phone from Brittany’s hand.

”If I ever find you, I’ll cut your dick off!”

She ended the call and threw the phone onto the balcony floor.

Neither of them spoke.

Brittany’s chest was heaving. Trisha’s fingers were curled into her sweats. The moon was still white and still beautiful and neither of them saw it.

The phone rang again.

Different number. Same structure. No name, no prefix, just digits.

Trisha answered it this time, and the voice on the other end was different. Older. Raspier. He’d heard they were available for private engagements and wanted to discuss terms.

The call lasted five seconds before Trisha hung up.

It rang again.

A younger voice this time, smoother, with the polished vowels of old money. He wanted them for a weekend at his estate. His wife was pregnant and boring. The three of them could discuss boundaries in person.

Trisha hung up.

It rang again.

Heavy breathing. No introduction. Just a description of what he wanted them to do, delivered in a monotone that suggested he’d rehearsed it.

Trisha hung up.

It rang again.

By the fourth call, Brittany had stopped flinching. By the sixth, she’d stopped listening. She sat with her knees against her chest and her face pressed into them and her hands over her ears while Trisha answered and hung up and answered and hung up, each call shorter than the last, each voice different but the offer always the same. Money. Access. Their bodies and dignity in exchange for a debt that someone, somewhere, had leaked within hours of Maeve setting the terms.

Trisha had been willing to hear the first man out. She hated herself for it, but she’d been willing, because desperation made calculators out of people who used to have standards. But that was before the children. Before the yacht. Before every call that followed painted the same picture in different colors, and the picture was always a room she couldn’t leave with men she couldn’t fight because they owned the door.

When she’d done what she did for Ashbound, it had been controlled. Cameras she could see. Contracts she could read. People she knew by name, in spaces the guild maintained, with security staff on the other side of a wall. Degrading, yes. Humiliating in ways she was still cataloging. But structured. Safe, in the technical sense of the word, and she’d clung to that distinction because it was the only thing separating what they did from what these men were asking for.

That distinction felt thinner now than it had three hours ago, after all, those same contracts had come to bite them. The safety had been an illusion maintained at Maeve’s discretion. And the people she’d known by name and trusted included Ash, who was sitting in a holding cell because he’d tried to murder a man on live television.

These callers were different only in that they skipped the pretense.

They called with the casual entitlement of men who’d bought people before and expected to do it again, rich and anonymous and patient, and Trisha listened to their voices and heard the same frequency every time, the same oily certainty that everything had a price and they were generous enough to pay it.

They all reminded her of someone.

A man every single girl in the world despised.

The CEO of ChronosX, Maximilian Vice. Death row now, and good riddance, but the machine that made him hadn’t stopped running. These men weren’t Vice. Most of them weren’t even close. But they were cut from the same cloth, stitched together by the same assumption that power entitled you to people, and people who needed money weren’t really people at all.

Someone had told these men that two A-tier women were desperate and available. That was all it took.

The phone rang again and Brittany looked up from her knees with swollen eyes and a voice that had been scraped raw.

”We don’t pick it up,” she said. ”I’d rather die than hear one more ’offer’.”

Trisha looked at the screen. Different number. Same anonymous format.

She picked it up.

The line was quiet for a moment.

”My name is Nyx Cosmos.”