Chapter 51 Bright
brIGHT
The office was even bigger than Bright remembered.
The ceiling soared high above his head, easily forty feet at the apex, with hanging alien light fixtures shaped like glowing fungus pods.
They cast a greenish-yellow illumination that gave the whole space a sickly hue, like a bruise left too long to heal.
One entire wall was covered with heavy bookcases built for a creature twice his height—packed with warped, oversized ledgers and strange bone-colored data cylinders.
The desk at the center of the room was massive, its glistening, opalescent surface marbled with veins of gold and black. Four long tusks—possibly decorative, possibly functional—protruded from the corners and the chair behind it was big enough to seat a Trollox… or maybe two.
Bright stepped in and let the door swing closed behind him.
Focus, he told himself. Don’t think about last night.
Which, of course, made him think about last night.
About how soft Noelle had felt under his hands and mouth…how her curves molded so perfectly to his touch. How she’d gasped when he kissed her and how she’d cried out when Burn licked her just the way she liked it. How she’d opened for them, trusting and unashamed, giving them everything…
Gods, he thought, rubbing a hand down his face. I’ve never wanted anything more than I want her.
And it wasn’t just the tasting—though that had been mind-melting. It was the way she looked at him and Burn, like she saw straight to the heart of them both. The way she touched so gently but with complete confidence. The way she called both their names in the dark…
Bright took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.
You can’t help her if you’re thinking with your cock. You need to find that key!
Time to work—or at least make it look like he was working.
He crossed to the desk and examined the ledgers.
As Cookie had warned, they were laid out neatly—three of them, all open and lined up in a row like little coffins.
The entries were hand-written in blocky alien script, which he could read easily enough, but the numbers… the numbers made his head hurt.
“What in the Seven Hells is going on here?” he muttered, flipping a few pages. “Is Thune embezzling from himself? Where is all this money coming from?”
The credits moved in wild, illogical patterns—massive deposits followed by equally massive withdrawals, without any indication of where the funds were coming from or going to or why. No invoice records…no client names…no transaction IDs.
It was chaos.
This’ll take days to unravel, he thought, thumbing through another ledger with mounting frustration. If I had a full console and some software, maybe. But this? Fuck.
He needed a break.
He pushed back from the desk and started opening drawers.
Most were stuffed with more account books—some dating back a decade or more.
One was filled with what looked like bottles of industrial strength lube, all of them half-empty and sticky.
Another contained a bundle of what he suspected were preserved animal testicles, tied together with a red ribbon.
“Lovely,” he muttered, letting that one fall closed.
It wasn’t until he stood and moved behind the desk that he spotted the cabinet inset into the wall—a shallow recess with no handle—just a small raised sensor. He pressed it and the panel clicked open silently.
Inside was a private viewing system. A sleek, dark-gray screen with a row of old-fashioned physical slots beneath it. A stack of thin entertainment disks—none labeled—sat beside it like an ominous little monolith.
Bright glanced at the door.
Don’t be an idiot, he told himself. Just look for the key. No time to be curious.
But curiosity had always been his worst vice—he just couldn’t help himself.
He grabbed the top disk and slid it into the reader. The screen flared to life with a faint buzz of static, and then…
The moans started.
Loud and enthusiastic, they echoed from the small speakers like a chorus of sweaty desperation.
The camera angle swung wide, revealing two green-scaled Saurians on what looked like a fur-covered floor.
One was on all fours, tail lifted, and the other—a male—was thrusting into her from behind, his long reptilian tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
And in the background, someone was urging them on.
“That’s right—fill her egg sack with your seed,” Thune’s gravelly voice barked. “Do it harder—fuck her egg hole!”
Bright reeled back instinctively.
“Gods,” he whispered, reaching for the fast-forward. But the next scene was just as bad.
It was another species—blue-skinned bipeds this time—with enormous black eyes and glistening skin that seemed to ripple under the lights.
The male had four arms and two shafts. The female—assuming that’s what she was—was bent double, crying out in a high-pitched trill as Thune’s voice coached again from offscreen.
“You call that rutting? Pound her harder—you think anyone’s gonna pay for that weak-ass thrusting?”
What the actual fuck? Bright wondered.
He tried another disk.
This time, it was a set of hairy humanoids—possibly from the Jurnak system, judging by their fur and facial ridges. The female was strapped to a vertical rotating wheel. The male was growling as he mounted her from behind, and again, Thune was directing.
“Fill her furry hole with your seed! Come on—do it right!”
Bright yanked the disk out with a trembling hand and shoved it back onto the stack. He was nauseated.
He’s filming them. Recording all of it. Selling it.
That explained the unmarked credit deposits. The massive incoming transactions. And the huge amounts of credit going out must be from when the Trollox bought more “breeders.”
Just like he had bought the three of them—Bright, Burn, and Noelle.
It explained what the other “breeders” had been doing here before they vanished. And it explained why Thune was so interested in them.
Bright slumped into the too-large chair and buried his head in his hands.
Gods. Noelle. He’s going to try and put her in one of those videos—probably with both of us fucking her. That sick bastard!
Bright stood again, scanning the desk, the cabinet, the wall—anywhere a key might be hidden. But there was nothing in the office—not a damn thing.
If we can’t find that biometric key, he thought grimly, we’re never getting out of here.
And if they didn’t get out…
He didn’t finish the thought. He couldn’t. Not with the image of that Saurian female howling in his ears and Thune’s voice barking orders over the sounds of grunting and pain.
He turned off the screen and stepped back, breathing heavily, hands clenched at his sides.
Get it together, Bright. You’ve got a job to do. You need to protect her—protect both of them. You and Burn are the only things standing between Noelle and whatever happened to those poor bastards who came before you.
He headed for the door.
It was time to find the others. One of them had to have found something—anything—to get them the fuck out of here.
Because if they didn’t escape soon…
Thune would make them the stars of his next fucking film.