In a futuristic world where the Internet is an interactive virtual reality, morality laws have outlawed the existence of all sexual content on the net. When even the most innocent of pornography has been banished to the dark corners of the net, the pornography people share and seek has grown increasingly depraved. Marissa is a detective who is on the trail of Stratton, a man who runs a series of illegal sites where it’s rumoured you can find far more than just pornography.

In this world, people are assigned only one online profile. It’s theirs for life, and the avatar is an accurate projection of their real-world image. As part of her investigations, Marissa takes on a fake profile and avatar— Elle. Elle doesn’t exist, she’s just a fake profile, the narrative often refers to “Elle” when Marissa is using this fake profile.

Marissa entered the site through the homenode. The homenode was small, a circle perhaps two meters in diameter. Her invisibility status worked, which was something she had hoped for but not counted on. Marissa did a quick scan of the site beyond the node.

Generally, when a person enters a site, the homenode takes them to a central place, with clear signposts to direct them around the site, much like the homepages of the old text-based net. Not so here. The visuals showed a crossroad, but Marissa’s scan showed only one of the roads was accessible. It was a plain dirt road, leading down an abandoned-looking street lined with derelict buildings. Her scan showed active users, but her eyes couldn’t see any. Her scans also showed that she wouldn’t be able to remain invisible once she’d left the safety of the homenode. Which she’d have to do. Sometime. But sometime soon.

Part of Marissa still couldn’t believe she was here, despite the work it had taken. Months of investigating Stratton, hacking his account, watching, listening, following breadcrumbs. Then once they’d located this site in the dark web, they’d had to prepare an avatar to come. Marissa’s Avatar was that of an eighteen-year-old girl named Elle. Yes it is, of course, illegal to use any other avatar or identity other than your own online, but law enforcement officers can break some laws in the course of their duty.

Marissa was stalling. She took a deep breath, changed her status from “invisible” to “online,” and stepped out from the home node.

Nothing happened. Her fake avatar held. No alarms went off, or none that she could sense. She walked down the street, trying for all the world to look like just a naïve young woman investigating a naughty part of the net and not a detective investigating illicit activity of a sexual nature.

The street remained deserted. The buildings she passed had no doors or other apparent entry points. Marissa ran her hand along the side of a building. The tactile feedback was remarkable, it felt as though she was really running her hand along rough old wood with dry, peeling paint. A small fleck of paint flicked off, and she caught it in her fingers. Even something so small as a dry paint fleck was picked up. A combination of very good coding from whoever made this site, and of course the high-quality RJT her real body was lying in.

An RJT, or Responsive Jell Tank, might seem a surprising choice of VR tech to use for this mission, but it was required by the site for entry. The site also required the safety features to be turned off. Yes, jailbreaking a RJT to turn off the safeties was illegal, but it was also very dangerous. If, for example, Marissa was stabbed here on the net while her body was in an RJT with no safeties, the Responsive Jell in which she was encased would form the shape, hardness and sharpness of a blade and stab her. Marissa’s crew had not turned off the safeties, not entirely. They’d lowered them as much as they could and had made up the gap between “lowered” and “off” with a fake status overlay. So far it appeared the site had been tricked. If Marissa was stabbed, she’d live. If she were punched in the face ... well, she’d try not to get punched in the face.

A door caught her eye and a quick scan showed users in the room beyond. A lead! Might Stratton be inside? Perhaps, but that would be too fortunate. But from her knowledge of the site, any person here might be complicit in his activities, so Marissa turned towards the door. She took a few long strides. She paused. No, she was walking with too much confidence to be innocent young Elle. Marissa was bold and determined in her search. Elle would be cautious. Marissa pulled up her profile, or rather, Elle’s profile to help her get back into character. No, her profile. She’d need to start thinking of herself as Elle, in this space. A deep breath and a moment later, Elle closed her profile and looked to the door. She tiptoed timidly to it, gently pushed it ajar and peered through.

Inside was a pub. A rather ratty-looking one at that. Not well lit, with shabby-looking tables marred with rings left by countless glasses put down without a coaster. There was a man behind the bar, wiping it with a dirty-looking cloth. It was like a caricature of a pub as one might be portrayed in a netflick or game, rather than an accurate depiction of a pub. There were some twenty-odd occupants. All male, but no sign of any naughty projections or behaviour or anything. Had she come to the wrong place? Should she go? A man inside caught her eye.

“Hello dear,” he said. “Come in.”

She couldn’t refuse now, so she pushed the door open a tad more and slipped inside. The smell of cigarette smoke and old beer hit her nostrils. Or, at least, Marissa’s brain thought it did. This was some good coding, but why waste it on a dingy little place like this? Well, she’d find out. Stepping back into her cover of Elle she stepped timidly towards the table the older man sat, taking a quick opportunity to get a closer glance around. Aside from the man who’d invited her in, no one so much as glanced her way. Marissa took a better count, twenty-three. Their ages were mixed, but the demographics appeared to skew older. She didn’t see Stratton.

“Sit down,” the man said when she reached his table. A quick glance at his profile showed his name as Craig Jack, age 42, the location of “WA” with no country listed suggested he was from the states, and his accent certainly didn’t sound like he was from Warrington England or Western Australia. Marissa wondered if it was fake or not

“I think I’m a little lost.” This was a far cry from the naughty-but-fun place Marissa was pretending Elle had been reeled in by.

“Then why not take some time for a chat? Or you got someplace to be?”

“No,” Marissa sat Elle down next to Craig. “Nowhere to be. Got some free time.”

“How nice. Nice RJT too. One sweet piece of tech there.” It was a nice one. It needed to be for what they needed it to do, but not many eighteen-year-olds had access to tech like that.

“Oh, it’s my dad’s. Wish it was mine.” Elle shrugged.

“Nice of him to let you borrow it.”

“Oh ... well ... I didn’t really ask...” Elle squirmed a little uncomfortably. “He’s away, see.”

“Ah,” Craig chuckled. “Well, if he’s not using it right now...”

“Exactly! It’s just a waste sitting there, unused. He and mum are overseas, it’s school holidays, but I’m not allowed to go out, or have a party or anything. They say I should just study and get ahead of the class, I’m at uni next year. I haven’t even got this year’s booklists yet.” This all came out in a rush.

“Ah, typical Asian parents then? Study study study, no time off for good behaviour?”

“Something like that,” Elle agreed.

“How long are they overseas for?”

“Three weeks altogether, they’ve been gone two. Only check in on me via message to make sure I’m being good, they can’t be bothered even calling. I haven’t even gone out drinking since I turned eighteen! What do they think I’m up to? Got so sick of it that I set an app to auto-reply how good I’m being. Nothing to do but sit at home and surf the net. Good thing I know how to put an IPM on that.” Elle sighed. Typical dramatic teenager, but what Marissa was really saying was I’m home alone. I don’t have much life experience. No one’s going to call or check what I’m up to. There’s an IPM active which means nothing here is being recorded. You could get away with a lot.

“Ah, oh, yeah. Drinking age over there’s eighteen, isn’t it? It’s twenty-one here.”

“Didn’t they change that?”

“Nah, big hoo-ha about changing it, but in the end kept it as is.”

“Come on, get with modern times!” Elle joked.

“Right?” Craig said with a chuckle. “So how’d you end up here?”

“Well ... not sure where is...” Elle shifted uncomfortably again.

“Oh, just a place where some like-minded fellas get together, you know, socially.”

“Oh, no girls allowed then?”

“Nah, girls allowed. Especially pretty ones.” Ugh. Disgusting. The Elle character was young enough to be his daughter, but Marissa was playing her as innocent and naïve. So Elle giggled. “So, how’d you end up here?”

“Well, I was looking at some ... um ... flicks. You know...”

“Ah,” Craigh leaned forward and gave her a little wink. “Naughty ones?”

“Yeah,” Elle blushed. “And, um, well ... one click led to another, and I, uh ... well, I found some more naughty ones. And this guy there I was talking to suggested this place he thought I’d like. But the web address he gave me was wrong.”

“Maybe you would like it here?” Craig prompted. After all, I could show you a good time.” Elle flinched as she felt his hand touch her thigh under the table.

“Oh— um—” she drew back. “I wasn’t looking to do anything.” She stood up. “I should probably be going anyway.”

“But you’ve got nowhere to be right now,” Craig said with a sly smile. “Stay.” Marissa tried to focus on making her avatar look afraid, but the butterflies in her belly weren’t just from fear. There was a reason she’d volunteered for this mission. Secretly, somewhere deep inside of her, she had dark desires. There were things that she desired, disgusting dirty things she could never consent to. But if someone were to take her. To use her...

Elle stepped back. Elle didn’t have those desires. She was a good girl. She didn’t want to be defiled. Hopefully, that would make Craig want her all the more.

“I ... um ... I’m not that sort of girl! I was just looking—”

“I’ll give you a better angle to see from!” Craig grabbed her by the wrist and spun her around. Before Elle had quite taken stock of the situation she was lying on the table on her belly, with Craig holding her down.

“Hey! Let me go!” Elle struggled but to no avail. Around her men were standing up, leaving their tables and slowly walking towards her.

SMACK! Craig’s hand came down sharply on her arse.

“Hey!” Elle struggled and tried to tug her skirt back down to hide her knickers. But no success.

“Oh, don’t try to hide your pretty body from us, baby girl,” Craig said. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of it before we’re through. Now be a good girl and open up.” He grabbed her hair and pulled her head up. There was a cock. Right in front of her face, a nasty, erect cock, straining out of the fist which held it, its bulbous head pointing directly at her lips. One of the men who’d approached had undone his fly and pulled it out. Now he expected ... Elle glanced around. All the men she could see had their cocks out, or were in the process of doing so.

Elle disconnected. Or, rather, Marissa made it look like Elle had tried to disconnect. Craig laughed.

“Oh, sweetheart, you can’t do that here. You’re ours until we’re done with you.” The area they were in had code blocking anyone from disconnecting, Marissa had noticed it when she’d done her initial scan from the home node. She’d prepared for that possibility, and could still DC if she wanted, but Elle couldn’t. Elle hadn’t known. Elle was just realising, for the first time, that to DC she’d have to run back to the homenode. And there were twenty-three horny perverts online ready to prevent her from doing just that.

“But— oomph!” Taking advantage of Elle’s open mouth, the man in front of her silenced her protest with his cock. Back in real life, responsive jell forced its way into Marissa’s mouth and down her throat. Elle struggled and gagged, but the grip on her hair tightened, forcing the cock in deeper and harder. Fuck, Marissa would have to try and get through this without cumming, she was already unreasonably wet.

Behind her Craig started tracing the edges of her knickers, sliding a finger under here and there, each time getting further and further in, closer and closer to her honey pot. Elle struggled, making her little arse wiggle under his hands.

“Nice!” He slapped her arse. Next thing she knew there was the sound of ripping fabric and he’d torn her knickers off entirely. A finger ... no, it wasn’t a finger, ran down her arse, and over her pink little lips.

“NO!” Elle tried to scream around the cock in her mouth. Craig pulled her head back and the cock popped out of her mouth. “No!” She screamed again. “Please, don’t!”

“You think she really wants it, boys?” Craig said, and there was general laughter in response. “Flip her over, I want her to watch me as I rape her.”

Rape. A short, nasty word. Disgusting. Vile. But that nasty little place deep inside Massria wasn’t repulsed. It was ... excited...

Elle wouldn’t be excited though, so as the men flipped her onto her back she struggled. Firm hands held her arms, her legs. One grasped her throat, squeezing gently, but firmly. Firm too were the cocks which surrounded her, pointing at her like a threat ... or a promise ... of what was to come. Once on her back, the hands didn’t leave. Touching. Robbing. Groping. Her top was torn and her small, perk breasts spilled out. They were grabbed. Pinched. Squeezed. Her skirt lifted again, exposing her sex to the group.

“Please!” Elle cried, begging them to stop. Hands forced her legs apart, and Craig ran his cock along her pussy lips. “Please don’t! Stop! Let me go! I won’t tell anyone, I promise!”

“Why would you want to tell people what a slut you are?” A man near her head said. Others laughed.

“Why not? Everyone will want to fuck her if they knew. You’d like that, wouldn’t you slut?”

“No, please! I’m not a— a— what you say. I’m a good girl!”

“Here that boys? She’s a good girl.”

There was more general laughter. Then a pressure at the entrance to Elle’s most private of places. Elle screamed as Craig’s cock pushed past the flimsy barrier of her hymen and forced its way into her tight little pussy.

“No! You can’t!” Elle screamed again. “I’m a virgin.”

“You were a virgin,” Craig said as he pumped in and out. “Not any more! Slut!”

“I am!” Elle cried. “This isn’t real!”

“No? Right now in real life, your tight little teenage cunt is being raped by responsive gel. Your once virgin pussy is breached, and I’m the one that did it. Virgin? No. By the time we’re done with you, you’ll be a seasoned slut.

In the real world, Marissa’s wet cunt was full of responsive gel, formed in the shape of Craig’s slightly stubby cock. There’d been no hymen broken for her this time, as a woman in her thirties she’d lost her virginity years ago. She’d had men, and in normal circumstances, Craig would be no great lay. But these were not normal circumstances. She was being held down. Violated. And fuck ... it turned her on.