Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

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The Legal Stuff: Emerald Princess © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Caution: While this chapter does not go over any lines in my opinion, it does skirt close to issues that may affect some readers. Violence is also contained within this chapter, reader discretion is advised.
 
 

Chapter 54: Breached

HANNAH LAID ME down then on the seat and quickly changed my now poopy diaper. Eventually, she and I walked inside, still wearing our costumes, and approached the front security area to enter the police station. “Umm… can I help you?” An officer asked in front of the metal detectors.

“I’m FBI Agent Emerald, and this is Agent Emped. Agent Sanders was supposed to set up an interrogation room for us?” I pulled my ID out, and he looked at my ID and badge.

He looked at me like I had grown a second head, and I sighed, “I’m not kidding; where do we need to go?”

He looked at another officer, “Can you show these two where the interrogation rooms are?”
“Umm… Sure…” He said.

He walked us down, and we soon found Agent Sanders hanging out in the hallway from a one-way glass room. “There you two are. Where’d you go?”

“Someone was going through food withdrawals. Rather than have Emerald whine for all eternity, I decided McDonald’s was an okay stop on the way.” Hannah told him.

He smiled at me, “I hope you know we appreciate what you’ve done here. You said you think Emped can help out here?”

“I think so. Emped, can you tell Sanders what they figured out with your talent?”

“Well… I don’t know…”

“Come on, it will help here.”

“Well, it’s a useless talent, but I can tell what people’s emotions are… and what they’re feeling? So I guess I can tell when people lie?”

“That’s certainly not useless,” he told her. “We do have to be careful with you questioning suspects with it. But since you can’t actually read minds, it’s okay. Still, privacy laws mean we must ensure we don’t void any information discovered.”

She blushed, “You really think it’s useful?”

“Yes, it is, and I would guess Emerald understands why since she insisted on you being involved. Now Emerald, do you want me to take the lead on questioning?” He asked me.

“Actually, sir, I think it will blow her mind more if I do it. She’s been taking care of me for almost two weeks now… So I have a feeling it’ll mess with her a lot more if I do it.”

“Fair enough, I’m going to go in as backup. If I say stop for any reason, you need to. If the woman asks for a lawyer, we must stop too.”

I nodded, having seen enough detective shows growing up. He opened up the door to the interrogation room for me, and I saw Kate sitting in a chair with her hands cuffed together. Two chairs sat on the other side of the table, and I decided to just jump on top and sit down, looking at her. “So, Kate… I think I should introduce myself. My name is not Olivia, but rather Agent Emerald, F.B.I.”

“What the fuck is going on?!?” she looked at Hannah and Sanders, who sat behind me.

“What’s going on is that you are involved in one of the worst child exploitation rings in a decade, and we’ve got you and Ian as our only suspects now.”

“Bullshit! That was all Jake! You’d know that if you didn’t kill him!”

“I’m sure he was involved, but you were the one who carried me off to go get abused. What was the plan? Were you sickos going to have me sucking on that stupid toy, then move on to pushing it into me?!?” I hissed. I could tell my eyes had just started their ‘I’m pissed off’ glow as she looked suddenly terrified.

“It wasn’t like that!” She started to cry.

“Then how was it?”

“Babies aren’t supposed to remember – you wouldn’t have known in a year or two!”

“Now that’s bullshit!” I told her, “And a jury is going to think that too. With the long record, you’re looking at life in prison, maybe even the needle’s possible here. Prisoners aren’t going to look too kindly on you as a child molester.”

“What?!? But I didn’t do…?”

“You’re right; you didn’t do anything to stop it,” I told her.

“But…”

“But what? You enjoyed it too? Seeing someone else abused for once instead of it being you? I’ve seen your record, one arrest after another. So you got to be the pimp now? It made you feel powerful?” Hannah pitched in, “I can feel your positive memories there. You must have loved watching…?”

“Stop!” She cried, “I hated it!!!! If I didn’t help them, though, they would kill me! Ian is my pimp!”

She broke a lot easier than I had expected, honestly. After she told us about his involvement, I asked, “Who else at the daycare is involved?”

“No one,” she said nervously.

“She’s lying,” Hannah said though to confirm that.

“No…”

“I can tell you’re lying; it’s one of my powers,” Hannah told her.

“You’re not allowed to read my mind!”

“I’m not. It’s just a feeling of truth or lies for me, now why don’t you tell us the truth? No other babies need to get hurt here…?”

More tears from Kate later, we learned that the daycare owner and four other employees were also involved. The daycare owner was apparently fully complicit and even gave the orders more than Maponus. Sanders had him and the others arrested where they were held at the daycare. They also made sure that the state shut down the daycare facility for good at that point. It seemed like Ian and Maponus had been friends growing up, and he’d reached out to his Mergent friend for help with this awful scheme. The two of them, plus the daycare owner, had been operating secretly for four years – sadly abusing more kids than could be counted!

I’d sat in with Agent Sanders’ quick interrogation of Ian before he lawyered up. When I was there, I decided he was a piece of scum that needed to be forever removed from society. But, unfortunately, I had no justification for having done that earlier!

We were in a small conference room afterward where Hannah had had a debriefing, “Okay, Agent Emped has given her account for these past couple weeks. I need yours now, Emerald?”

Two other agents had joined us, and everything was recorded as they documented my account. I spent the better part of two hours telling and re-telling everything before the recorder was turned off. “With your account, Kate’s testimony, and the film from the cameras, this will be called a justified shoot,” Agent Sanders told me.

“Thanks… I would hope so! Capturing him alive wasn’t really an option.”

“No, I agree it wasn’t. Now, it will be a three-hour drive back to your school. I will take you back there and then deal with everything from this case back in my office. I’ll be in touch soon about your internship details over the summer.”

“Thank you, sir,” I told him and followed him out where Hannah had been waiting.

I held my arms up to her, and she picked me up, making a face as she said, “You’re poopy again!”

“Gee, I hadn’t noticed,” I said sarcastically.

“You know, I think I liked it better when you only babbled.” She smiled, “When you said Mama, you were so cute!”

“Just change me already, please!” I told her as she carried me to a nearby women’s bathroom and laid me on the small pull-down table. A lady officer washing her hands at the sink gave us a funny look before leaving us both giggling when she left.

 
 

WE WERE DRIVEN by Agent Sanders to the apartment to pick up the belongings we cared about, including the baby food device, before heading away from the town we were in. Then, after we stopped for a quick dinner at a Waffle House, we drove back to Bechtel in Agent Sanders’ SUV.

We each used our phones to call our parents on the way back. “Mom?” I asked when she answered the phone.

“Sofia!” She said excitedly, “Levi, Sofia’s on the phone!”

A moment later, I began having a conversation catching them up on nearly two weeks of missed time. “I was so worried about you!” Mom told me. “Did you catch them?”

I nodded as I said, “Yes, we did.”

“What were you doing anyway? You didn’t say beforehand?”

“I went into a daycare undercover as a baby,” I told her. “It’s probably what my job will be like most of the time.”

She giggled, “So you had two weeks of pretending to be a baby at daycare each day?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes, “I had two weeks of pretending to be a baby all day long, Mom. Let me tell you, if I ever see a jar of baby food again…?”

Hannah giggled next to me, and I stuck my tongue out as she held up a jar of that chicken goop.

We both had good conversations with our parents, and I even talked to Lily. I learned that they and Hannah’s parents had found a large cabin to rent for Christmas for us to be together. They would fly out at the end of our finals week and stick around until after New Year’s Day. I felt myself tearing up about seeing everyone again, but I managed to not start bawling! I missed my family so much!!!

When we pulled up to the front office, he said, “What you two did on this case was really great work! I’m sure we’ll have another mission for you no later than the summer. I was very impressed that you kept in character throughout the mission. You went above and beyond what I would have hoped for, Emerald.”

I blushed, “Thank you, sir; I’m just glad to be done with that. You have no idea how hard it was to pretend to be that young!”

He laughed, “No, I don’t, and I don’t want to!”

He waited with our things while we checked back into the school office. It was very late, but a security officer was up for such reasons. “You’re back late?”

I nodded, “Sorry, we’ve been on an assignment. We just need to check back in.”

He looked at me and shook his head, “This is so surreal sometimes.”

Once we were marked back present on the campus, we grabbed our things and returned to Trident. We used our student badges to open the door, and Mrs. Lang saw us and walked over. “You’re back! I thought you might not make it back before the end of the semester?”

Hannah smiled, “Sofia here managed to end the case today, so we’re back already!”

“Great! That means you’ve made it in time to have two days of review, and then you’ll be ready for your finals next week?”

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach, “Umm… maybe I should have taken longer, Hannah?”

Mrs. Lang laughed while Hannah said, “Yes, I guess you should have!”

“You two might have some packages in my office, come see me tomorrow, and I’ll get them for you.”

“Okay, goodnight Mrs. Lang,” Hannah said.

Lights were supposed to be out by this time on school nights unless you had some odd condition that kept you from sleeping. That meant we got inside our room without encountering anyone else. “I could so use a bath!” I found myself saying.

“You want one, and then we’ll both go to bed?” Hannah asked.

“Sure…” I told her. She grabbed a set of pajamas, a diaper, some wipes for me, and a bathrobe and underwear set for her. As she let the bath fill, I watched her bring the curtain that surrounded the tub closed. “Why are you closing that?” I asked, “You usually just let everyone see me naked?”

“Umm… do you mind if I just join you in the bath tonight? A bath sounds great, but I don’t want to stay up after you go to bed?”

“I could take a bath alone, you know…?”

“I know…”

I sighed and just nodded, “Fine, I’ll share! You’re such a big baby!”

She smiled at me and began stripping off her clothes first. Once her underwear was off, I became the focus of her efforts. My diaper was balled up and placed next to my clothes before she gathered me up and sat in the tub with me in her lap. She’d been giving me baths since we’d arrived, but this was the first time she’d joined me. I felt like she took more time washing herself and me, and then she played with me a bit in the water.

After a while, I felt something and went, “oops…” as I peed in the water.

She just laughed, “It’s just pee… it’s okay,” She squeezed me when I was done and rinsed us off with a spray nozzle after the tub emptied. I was dressed back in a diaper, her in her panties and robe, and then she carried me and our stuff back to the room. Closing the door, she sat down in the rocking chair with me.

She hugged me for a long moment before startling me by suddenly speaking, “I was so scared today,” she told me.

I looked up at her, “Of what?”

“Of losing you, silly! Or something else happening! You realize what they wanted to do with you, right?”

I nodded, “I still want to vomit thinking about it.”

“Well, I was so scared… As soon as I got the call that you were being moved out of the daycare, I left work immediately.”

“I hope you didn’t put them in a jam?” I said, “They seemed nice enough…?”

“It turns out I was working there because her husband works for the Bureau, she understood.”

I nodded at that, “Sorry I scared you.”

She hugged my naked body to her own for a few minutes before saying, “You ready for your night-night num-nums?”

“You’ll have to tone down the mommy stuff with everyone else around here,” I told her, blushing.

“So, no more baby food at meal times?”

I just sighed, leaned forward, took her nipple in my mouth, and began nursing. The day had been so crazy, and she was right… I could have died or had something else happen. But, instead, Caireen gave me a mental hug, and I was soon asleep.

 
 

WHEN I WOKE in my crib, I heard bells clanging and loud yelling! I was about to cry to get Caireen’s attention, but she quickly strode through the door and picked me up. I looked at her and saw she wasn’t wearing a dress like normal. Instead, she was dressed in what looked like leather pants and a similar tunic. It made me think of some of the ‘armor’ pre-chainmail in the history books I’d seen.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Camulus is ramping up his attack on the valley wall. Our scouts have also noticed a force that seems to be trying to tunnel through the mountain.”

I nodded and put my arms up to be picked up. Caireen carried me to the table and dressed me again in the thin diaper she’d created. She pulled out a nearly matching set of clothes to what she wore but included a chainmail shirt. “What’s that made out of?” I asked. “It looks like mithril?”

She nodded, “You’ve noticed my guard wears it; it’s the most protective armor I can give you. It should protect you from being cut by sword blows. Hopefully, you’ve learned your lessons well from d’Artagnon. I suspect you’re going to need them soon.”

I looked up at her in surprise and wondered just what Camulus was doing that she was suddenly more nervous.

The tunic went over my clothes’ top, and she added my tiara. Looking in a tall mirror, we looked like mother and daughter dressed up for some Halloween event… ‘This isn’t a costume, though!’ I thought to myself.

She carried me down to the situation room, and I looked at a sea of the General’s aides running back and forth with information. The scrying mirrors had someone watching them individually, calling out more information. Still, I could just see the views past them.

I felt my jaw drop as I saw the wall on the southern end of the valley suddenly gain a massive crack running down the middle. Even as Camulus’s forces were trying to split the wall apart, they had managed to land men on top with ladders and quickly overwhelmed our troops! Then, just as I got my mind wrapped around that, we felt a rumble in the ground like an earthquake. The view from Citadel Four showed that a tunnel had suddenly appeared across the valley below Citadel Two. Below Citadel Two, their men were streaming out! Then, just as I thought the bad news would be finished, the same thing happened with the view from Citadel One, underneath Citadel Three.

“They’ve breached the valley!” I heard multiple voices call out!

 
 

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