The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

San Antonio, Texas, June 2037.

Now:

There was no noise but the faint static of her radio earpiece. Sarah felt her heart beat in dull, percussive thumps. She had her back pressed against the wall, uniform clinging to her beneath the bullet-resistant vest. The sticky air failed to move in any sort of breeze. She waited.

One floor below them, the sound of a car driving by. Sarah glanced over to the window at the end of the hallway, where Sgt. Prescott surveyed the street below through the holographic sight of her assault rifle. She steadily followed some unseen movement, then raised her left hand to signal all-clear. Sarah started breathing again. Sergeant Prescott went back to chewing gum. Her red hair was barely visible under the helmet and the goggles she wore. She was half a head taller than Sarah, almost six feet tall. Sarah looked down at her boots, swallowing. She took in a deep lungful of humid air. For a moment, she’d forgotten the heat. Now it demanded her attention again, until the next time something happened. She waited.

The gun in her hand was heavy and slippery with sweat. She was starting to get hungry and she wondered for how much longer she would be able to maintain her focus. Her heavy-duty bullet-resistant vest pulled her down and the strap of her gun cut into her neck. Strands of her own black hair had come loose from a bobby-pin where it hadn’t gone into her short ponytail. She swiped them out of her face and hurriedly pushed them back under her helmet. She waited.

She mentally went through the mission briefing again. Floor plans, escape routes. Lopez, Kobayashi, O’Donnel. Moreau. Faces and names. Detain if possible. Deadly force authorized. The hush-up-crew was on stand-by. It couldn’t be much longer. She waited.

Her radio crackled to life.

“All units.” Came the voice of Agent Shaw in her earpiece. “We have confirmation. Eight on the inside. Small arms. This is it. Code Green.”

Prescott pivoted from the window, readied her weapon and approached her. Sarah half-slid the slide of her gun back to check for a properly chambered round.

“Teams Ready?” asked the voice in her ear.

“Alpha ready,” she heard Captain Luther.

“Bravo ready,” she heard Sergeant Moffat.

Sarah looked at Prescott who nodded back at her. They took positions left and right of the door. Sarah subvocalised “Charlie ready” into her throat mic.

Eight on the inside. Sarah disengaged the safety on her gun. Her heart pounded in her ears like war drums. She breathed, deliberately and slowly.

Three strike teams, and a small army outside as backup. They wouldn’t underestimate them this time. And they might still be able to get her back before it was too late.

The fluorescents above them went out and the long corridor became a dark tunnel, lights at both ends. ”Breach!”, commanded the voice over the radio. Sarah turned away from the door and opened her mouth, anticipating the pressure of the shockwave. She felt the punch in her chest as the breaching charge on the door exploded, too loud to register as noise. She turned around, weapon raised. They plunged into a cloud of dust and the staccato of erupting gunfire.

Two days earlier:

”Director. What’s the situation?”

”Agent Zimmerman stopped broadcasting two hours ago. We sent the emergency strike team, they only found her tracker.”

“Shit. Does Mahoney know?”

”I informed her. She didn’t take it well.”

”What about the data? Did Zimmerman find out anything before she went dark?”

“She saw Moreau and the Machine before we lost contact. Her snooper picked up some wireless data which we’re decrypting right now.”

“So it wasn’t a complete loss.”

“No. It wasn’t. I would however recommend not to mention that fact to Agent Mahoney.”

“Zimmerman knew the risk. She and Mahoney were too close!”

“That is beyond your authority to judge, Agent Luther. I will hear no more of this.”

“I apologize, Director.”

“Expect to be briefed tomorrow at 0700. Dismissed.”

“Ma’am.”

Sarah sat in her car, in the parking lot. She’d been sitting there for ten minutes. She should get out. Go inside. To work. They had sent her home, under protest. She hadn’t slept.

She didn’t see the point. She was gone. She had lost her. Sarah had told her not to go. And now she’d been captured. Lost. Tracking signal gone. It had been fifteen hours.

She looked at the half-empty parking lot. The sun had just risen and it was still somewhat cool. One by one, cars pulled up and one of her fellow agents got out, busily moving towards the security checkpoint. She watched them with disinterest.

She opened the door and got out. She couldn’t just drive home again. She passed the checkpoint, got into the elevator. As she walked down the underground corridors, people were watching her. Sympathetic, worried. It made her feel like the object of voyeurism. She sleepwalked to the briefing room and got into a chair. She stared at the wall as the room around her slowly filled to the brim. Sarah didn’t notice that there were more agents present than usual. When Captain Luther entered along with the Director, the hushed whispers died instantly.

Captain Luther stepped forward. He spoke with urgency and authority. There was no greeting, no pleasantries.

“Information recovered by agent Zimmerman tells us that in seven hours, there will be a Syndicate meeting in San Antonio with several key players.” An excited buzz went around the room and died again as Luther raised a hand. “The division has called in all forces to disrupt this meeting in an attempt to capture these figures, eliminate the Syndicate threat and, if possible, recover agent Zimmerman.”

Sarah swallowed, wide awake, her heart suddenly racing.

Now:

A woman and two men lay with their cheeks in the dust, hands cuffed behind their backs. Five dead bodyguards lay sprawled on the floor, pools of blood blooming around them. Guns got picked up and unloaded, corners got checked. The dust slowly settled.

Sarah manhandled one of the captives onto her back and shoved a gun in her face. The woman was Kimberly O’Donnell, head of the South African slavers. She had a face cut from marble, hard and flawless.

“Where is Moreau?!” Sarah yelled at her. Her ears were still ringing from the gunfire. Her units had been using suppressors. Their targets hadn’t.

O’Donnell spat. “Fuck you, bitch! She’ll come for you next!”

Sarah knelt down and punched her in the face. Captain Luther and Sergeant Prescott watched her disapprovingly, but knew better than to intervene. They knew what brought them here.

”Where is she?!” she yelled again. Around her, agents were nervously scanning the second-floor warehouse.

“I know who you are, Sergeant Mahoney. Moreau got your cute friend.”

There was a short pause, and O’Donnel smiled. Her teeth glistened red.

“She wants you, you know? To complete the pair.”

She tried not to let it show that it got to her. She leaned in close. She couldn’t quite suppress her voice trembling a bit.

“Listen here, you fucking monster. I could just execute you right now, right here on the floor. And every second I want to do just that a little bit more. Maybe your Japanese friend here will be more talkative after he’s got some of your brains on him. One last time: Where. Is. Moreau.”

She pressed the gun against O’Donnel’s throat, finger on trigger, ready to make true, when she heard distant gunfire. She looked up and around. Muffled sounds of footsteps came from beyond the burst-open doors, getting louder.

“Why don’t you ask Delta team, bitch?” spat O’Donnel.

Suddenly, Sarah was on her feet, hand on her radio. She opened all channels. “Code Omega! Code Omega!”

There was no answer.

“Our radio is jammed!” exclaimed Luther, gun already at his shoulder. The operatives eyed each other with a mix of deadly seriousness and shock. “Spread out! Take cover!”

They immediately scattered into the rows of high and densely packed shelves around them. She readied her gun, heart pumping fast. They had forty-seven men and women outside. They couldn’t possibly have been taken out. That would have taken a small army, she thought as she ran.

Suddenly, she was alone. Everyone else had vanished from sight. She heard the commotion outside. A drum roll of combat boots. Twenty shots left in her magazine, three more magazines in her vest. Exits to her left, right and at the far left of the other side, behind nine rows of shelves. She turned off the safety as the steps got louder. She knelt down behind a pallet of cement bags.

She was invisible from the door. She waited, carefully peeking between two boxes on the shelf between her and the door. Eight black-clad commandos stormed in, guns ready. They didn’t wear heavy body armour, but tight suits. She suspected Kevlar with ceramic scale inlays. Top of the line. Prohibitively expensive. They carried rifles and grenade launchers.

They were all women. Syndicate. Fuck.

This was catastrophically bad. She played through scenarios in her mind and discarded them all. Tactical analysis: I’m fucked.

She subvocalised into her throat-mic: “Eight bogeys north side, heavy armour and weaponry.”

Nothing came back. There would have been static had the hardware not filtered it out.

She swore silently under her breath and shook her head. She checked the gap she’d been spying through again. The Syndicate commandos were already spreading out in groups of two. Three raised their grenade launchers, one of them in her direction. Without making a conscious decision, she fired at them.

The suppressed shots screamed through the dusty air and one of the commandos dropped. The others scattered, and two grenades got launched her way, trailing white gas. She didn’t have a gas mask. She fired two more bursts and downed two more. They did not fire back. The gas grenades landed behind her and to her left. She held her breath and pulled a magazine from her vest in a practised motion while ejecting the old one with her other hand. As if by her signal, shots started to ring out from different directions all around the warehouse, and by the time she pulled back the charging handle, the noise all around her was deafening. She leaned out of cover to fire another burst, but the commandos were gone.

The smoke from the grenades was all around her now. Her goggles kept her eyes from burning, but she couldn’t hold her breath much longer. Moving from her position might get her killed.

She darted in the direction of the loudest source of gunfire, keeping her head down and her right shoulder close to the shelf next to her, hoping for the smoke to clear. It didn’t. It seemed to have filled the whole space. The inside of her nose started to burn. She couldn’t hold her breath much longer. The smoke got thicker again. Visibility was zero.

She tripped over something and pulled in an involuntary breath. Her sinuses and lungs exploded in pain. Riot gas. She coughed and retched as her insides burned. She somehow got herself up and looked at what she had tripped over. The body of Captain Luther lay before her face-down. She gasped in another lungful of fire and doubled over in pain, when suddenly a hand grabbed her. She squealed and raised her gun.

”Don’t! It’s me!” said a raspy voice. She looked up and saw Sergeant Prescott. She was missing a sleeve of her shirt and had something tied around the lower half of her face.

Suddenly she felt stupid.

”Cover me!” she wheezed, pulled a knife from her belt and cut off her own sleeve.

After another painful half-minute breathing felt deeply irritating instead of agonizingly painful.

“We need to get out! Luther’s dead!” she said.

”I know! Everyone else, too – we got some of them, but there were just too many! We are cut off from all exits and I don’t know if anyone else is still around! They must have ambushed our outside team.”

“They didn’t shoot me,“ she said.

“Yeah, me neither. We’d be dead if they had. They are doing the Syndicate thing. Keep one bullet for yourself,” said Prescott. She didn’t manage to keep the dread from her voice at all.

”Do you have any more breaching charges?”

“Yes,” Said Prescott.

“The wall over there, quickly! I’ll cover you!”

Prescott got to work and placed three charges in a triangle on the wall. The smoke was starting to clear. There were footsteps not far away.

“Ready when you are,” said Prescott, gun back in hand.

“Wait,“ shouted a muffled voice from inside the smoke.

They both turned and pointed their guns at the figure emerging from the smoke, only trained discipline keeping them from immediately shooting the woman that stood there, hands raised.

The woman wore a gas mask, and a black, skin-tight suit.

”Hello Kate,” said the woman and nodded at Prescott. “And hello, Sarah.”

She gasped. “Oh God! No!”, she thought. They’d been too late. But… how?

”I send you regards from Mistress Moreau. She wanted me talk to you because she hoped you wouldn’t shoot me. I hope so, too, by the way,“ she said with a nod and a shrug.

“Don’t do this to me, Lilly!” cried Sarah. The gun in her hand trembled.

”Mahoney. We need to leave. Fuck this,” said Prescott.

”Sarah, Kate. It’s over. We have you now. Please just give up,“ said the woman in the mask.

“Lilly! How?” Sarah blinked hard to get rid of the tears in her eyes.

“Yes, it’s me, Sarah. We’ll be together again.”

“What did Moreau do to you? It’s only been two days.”

“Sarah, don’t –“

“Fuck this!” cried Prescott and set off the charges. The wall behind them exploded and the blood-red light of the evening sun burst in.

”Mahoney! Now!” yelled Prescott and jumped out of the newly-formed hole in the wall.

“You don’t have to go, Sarah! Please, just give up! We’ll serve together!”

Something inside of her died. A deep and heavy coldness enveloped her. She’d lost her. She should just shoot her. This wasn’t her. She raised her gun with trembling hands.

“Sarah. Please!” said Lilly and Sarah knew she couldn’t do it. With a sob, she turned and jumped into the light. She landed next to Prescott in the dusty warehouse back lot, rolling to break her fall. They picked themselves up and started to run for the emergency evac point. Sarah just hoped that there was someone left to exfiltrate them. She looked back.

In the hole in the side of the warehouse stood Lilly. She had pulled of her gas mask and her blonde hair fell across her beautiful face. She looked annoyed as she yelled after them: “We’ll get you, honey! You’ll lick cunts all day long and love it!”

Prescott broke her stride, turned, and raised her rifle, finger on trigger. Without thinking, Sarah tackled her. A burst of shots pocked the wall ten feet to the right of the hole.

“No!” she cried. “I can’t let you kill her! Let’s please just get out of here!”

A bullet impacted the ground next to them. Prescott fired a burst in the direction it came from and then they ran. They turned a corner, and another, and another, each time without dying. As they fled, shots cracked behind them, and none hit. When they reached their destination, the black Van was indeed there to pick them up.

Shaking, exhausted and bleeding they escaped.

”Tell me what happened.”

If Karen West was shocked, or angry, she never showed it. Her expression was concentrated and carefully neutral. She was just in her forties, but she felt very old today. The four surviving agents of operation “Price Money” sat around the large table in the situation room. Too many empty chairs, thought Sarah.

“I don’t know! They showed up at the emergency evac all bloody and—“

“Thank you, Mister Bower. I was asking Sergeant Mahoney and Prescott.”

Mike Bower had driven the van and now nervously fumbled with the legs of his pants as he stopped talking and lowered his head in embarrassment. Next to him sat Sophie Shaw, a slight woman. Shaw had been on comms in the back and was now quietly sobbing into her hands, the chestnut bob of her hair hiding her face. Kate Prescott and Sarah Mahoney were the only survivors of the ground team, as far they knew. There had been three women among the perimeter unit. They might be alive and in the hands of the Syndicate. They didn’t have the intel.

“Miss Prescott?”

”We successfully infiltrated the compound and apprehended three of the targets with no casualties on our side, five on their side. Moreau wasn’t there. While we detained the suspects and inquired for the whereabouts of Moreau, radio communications got interrupted and a large number of Syndicate forces stormed the Compound. They used riot gas and large numbers to overwhelm us. Everyone except Miss Mahoney and me were KIA.

“Moreau was behind this,“ said Sarah, anger in her voice. “She wasn’t there. It was a trap. She eliminated her competition and wiped us out in one damn swoop.”

“Even though I see the logic in that, let us not jump to conclusions, Miss Mahoney,” said West.

“I will fucking kill her for what she did to Lilly.”

“Agent Zimmerman?“, asked Director West with raised eyebrows.

“She was there, and she was already... enslaved.”

There was an awful pause.

“I’ll have to make some calls, you are dismissed,” said Director West.

”Yes, Karen West here. Mister Secretary, I need to—“

“…”

“No Sir, I need you to listen to me! Almost my entire division was wiped out! I have spoken with the Director of the NSA, and they are working on the hush-up, but I simply need more personnel, and I need it right now! As I have stated numerous times, my division deals with a serious threat to national security! This has grown well beyond a mere matter of human trafficking, and should—“

“…”

“With all due respect—“

“…”

“That is not at all sufficient! There are m–“

“…”

“Yes, Sir. Three weeks. Thank you. Good day too you, too.”

click

“Motherfucker!”

Sarah sat in the empty lunchroom when Kate walked in, bandage around her neck. Sarah was filling out a requisitions order for armour-penetrating bullets. It had taken her the better part of an hour to get through the address section. The fluorescent light hurt her eyes.

“What happened to your neck?”, Sarah asked.

”Low-velocity ricochet. Peeled off some skin and tissue. Could have been bad, but I got lucky. As is, no biggie. Agent Shaw fixed me up. She does data analysis but she’s an ex-military nurse. How about that?”

She paused. ”Mahoney… Sarah… do you want to talk?”

Sarah took a sip of the Red Bull she had gotten from the vending machine. It tasted awful. It was her third. She was jittery.

“Sarah? Come on…”

“Nothing to talk about,” said Sarah.

Kate looked like she saw a ghost. “Really? Really?! Nothing to talk about?“ she exclaimed and threw up her hands in a show of disbelief. “You can’t seriously mean that!”

“I don’t want to talk about, okay?”

“No, not okay! I can’t have you be a traumatized wreck, and what happened there was enough to fuck up everyone and their fucking dog!”

Sarah took another sip of her drink and closed her eyes.

“We’ll get Mureau and we’ll stop the Syndicate, that’s all there is to it”, said Sarah. “Happy now? I talked the talk. Now leave me alone.”

Kate opened her mouth, then took a deep breath and sighed. “Sarah, please, don’t do this,” she said and placed her hand on Sarah’s shoulder, sitting down next to her. “I know we haven’t been close before, but you need someone to talk, and everyone else is… I’m the only one here right now. Let me help you.”

“I just need to be alone right now”, said Sarah.

Kate sighed and stood up again. “I knew Lilly, too, you know?” For a moment, there was bitterness in her voice.

Sarah looked at Kate and said nothing. Kate’s expression had turned harder. After a moment, she relaxed. “I’ll be there if you want to talk, okay?” she said carefully, turned around, and left.

Sarah watched her leave the room. Her eyes lingered on the empty doorframe. She sobbed.

”I’m sorry, but could you please tell me what is going on,“ said Mike Bower. “I didn’t even get briefed, yet!”

”What,” said Kate in flat disbelief.

“I… I just got transferred Monday. I was scheduled to be briefed first thing today but then all this commotion happened and they told me to drive the getaway van in case of contingencies. And you know… some itsy bitsy contingencies fucking happened.”

“You are talking about the death of forty human beings, many of which I knew personally.”

“Oh God, fuck! Sorry. Miss Prescott. Fuck. I’m so sorry! And sorry for swearing!”

He was gesturing wildly, eyes wide in embarrassment, then caught himself and took a deep breath.

“Listen. This is going entirely off the rails, so please just let me start over.”

“…Sure,” said Kate, arms crossed in front of her.

“I am qualified to do my job. I’m not stupid. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be working with you guys. I am an expert in surveillance and reconnaissance, which is why Sophie, ahem, Miss Shaw recommended me for a transfer to your division.”

He blushed a bit. Kate decided to ignore it.

”I could even ‘hack the planet’ for you. But please never call it that. I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses. One of my weaknesses is not saying stupid hurtful shit. Sorry. I’m not a bumbling unqualified idiot that doesn’t know how to do his job. I’m an expert in his field who sometimes doesn’t know how to talk good and was given a job he’s only nominally qualified to do… driving an escape vehicle in an unknown context, I mean. Understand what I mean?”

She nodded.

“I don’t want to be put into that situation again, so may I ask what is that you do here?”

”Thank you for that explanation, Mike. I won’t say that I’m not a bit relieved. First, let me tell you that I don’t care at all how you talk. In the presence of the Director, however, you should really try talking as good as you can. Get it?

Bower smiled at that.

”Good. This is your briefing. What I’m about to tell you is classified top secret and sharing this information with anyone not cleared on that level is high treason. Buckle up, it gets heavy from here, and I won’t be sugar-coating anything.”

Mike leaned forward in his seat.

“This division is part of the federal intelligence network. We investigate domestic cases of what started as human trafficking.

“Quite the secret base for that.”

“Just let me finish. In the early twenties, human trafficking rings developed and co-opted techniques of brain-washing and mind control to make their victims more obedient. They would use these techniques to make the people they sold into slaves that didn’t resist or try to evade their captivity. Those slaves were used for work, entertainment and sex.

“Entertainment?”

”They murdered them for sport or let them fight.”

“Fuck, I need to shut up.”

“Yes you do.”

“In the twenties, these brain-washed slaves were low-functioning and sometimes near catatonic. Many died during the brain-washing. Rescued individuals took years to recover basic function, sometimes they were unable to recover at all. It was in that time that our division was founded in secret by Director West. From the outset, one of our directives was to limit the proliferation of these mind control methods. The way we try to accomplish this is a huge cover-up campaign. All deaths, injuries and crimes connected to our cases will be falsified or omitted in official reports. We work in conjunction with the NSA, who have access to all federal and state criminal and public records as well as all devices in the US that are connected to the internet, and to most that aren’t.”

Bower was touching his temples with his outstretched hands, brows furrowed. ”The mind-controllers got better at it, didn’t they?”

“Yes. Yes they did. Make no mistake, there were always techniques to brain-wash people that worked well and left the victim high-functioning. The Russians did it in the cold war, as far back as the fifties. We did it, too, by the way. But that takes many months of intensive work – the work being intense physical and psychological torture. But four years ago, something changed. A particular human trafficker, by the name of Florence Moreau, was able to turn people into high-functioning slaves in no more than two days! Someone is missing for a weekend and comes back fully brain-washed, thinking and wanting what Madame Moreau wants them to. Scared yet?”

Bower just swallowed.

“It gets worse. As you can imagine, the possible ways to abuse this technology are virtually endless, and hard to detect. We know from the unhealed injection scars of victims that were captured early that some form of mildly invasive procedure is used. The scars heal quickly and in almost all cases without trace. We don’t know anything more about it. No victim could ever be made to talk, and we tried everything, including all the nasty stuff. They are absolutely devoted to their Masters.”

“So… sorry, but, yeah… you know, is it, umm… is it a sex thing?”

“That’s a big part of it.”

He grimaced.

“We’ve had many small victories, and have successfully purged hundreds of slaves from positions in public office, government agencies, and high-ranking businesses. Remember the scandal around the leadership staff of Microsoft? Yeah. But it’s been an uphill struggle to say the least. Since our work is supposed to be invisible, even to our own government, we can’t become too large an entity ourselves. We are an elite team, but we are small, and we can barely keep up with the enemy.”

She drew a breath.

“However, there has been one recent breakthrough. Two days ago, for the first time, we got intel on one suspected device that was used to brainwash people. We did get some intel, but far less than we’d hoped. Regrettably, the operation to recover it went bust and the Agent got compromised.”

”Fuck.”

“Indeed.”

”So, let me get on thing straight: They can use the brainwashing technology to infiltrate society on a massive scale. Doing that scales quadratically as more brain-washed people gets you more access to brain-wash more and so on. Is this what is happening right now?”

She nodded.

”Perfect. Fucking perfect! That’s fucking super-villain stuff!”

“They got themselves a brand,” she said bitterly, “They call themselves the ‘Syndicate’”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Tell me we’ve got anything against them!”

“The intel I mentioned. Our agent was sending out a constant data stream before she was… compromised. It led us to a meeting between the heads of the biggest human trafficking rings with Moreau. This was our chance to stop both Florence Moreau and her competitors, who could otherwise potentially fill the power vacuum she would leave. We dispatched almost all of our operatives to capture or kill them. It should have been overkill, but we wanted to avoid any… contingencies.”

”Fuck.”

”Welcome to the team. You have become a much more valuable asset by virtue of scarcity, I’m afraid.”

“Fuck. FUCK!” He threw his hands up, ”Well, at least it can’t get any worse.”

The door of the briefing room flew open. Director West entered, followed by Sarah and Shaw.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Kate mumbled.

Two days earlier:

Lilly Zimmerman put on the bugged leather jacket. Cameras in the buttons, microphone membrane and wiring sewn directly into the cloth.

”I know I seemed all confident in the briefing, but I’m fucking scared, you know?”, she said.

Sarah was leaning against the wall next to the mirror, her face full of sorrow. Lilly hated seeing her this way.

“Then don’t do it, Lilly! You don’t have to do this!”

“Who else, then? Kate Prescott? Lorraine Kelly? None of you could lie yourselves out of an open box. Least of all you. That’s what I love about you. You’re always so transparent.”

Sarah swallowed.

“I’m the only one who has any experience doing undercover work.”

”Miller could do it. He did undercover work before.”

She looked at Sarah with a raised eyebrow. “Miller lacks the assets,” she said and squeezed her breasts. “No boys allowed.“ She came close and braided her fingers behind Sarah’s neck. They touched foreheads and closed their eyes. For a moment, neither spoke. She listened to Sarah softly breathing.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. This has worked a million times before. My cover is airtight. The NSA makes some real good fake IDs.”

“Nine.”

She pulled back her head and looked at Sarah. “What?”

“Nine times. Not a million.”

“At least they taught you to count real good in the navy before they kicked you out.” If she had been anyone else saying this, she would have been in trouble. But Sarah understood. Lilly leaned back in and kissed her. Sarah pulled her in tighter, her hands around her. Lilly put her hand on Sarah’s cheek. It was wet where a tear had rolled down it.

When the kiss finally broke, she said: ”Nine times is plenty. I’m gonna be fine!”

Sarah seemed to think about something, opened her mouth as if to speak, paused, and shut it again. She closed her eyes and sighed. When she spoke, she looked back up at her and Lilly knew that she meant it when she said: “I love you, Lilly. Be safe.”

“I love you, too.”

Now:

“I have reason to believe that the department has been compromised. The situation is dire. My usual sources contradicted each other in seven different ways. This has never happened before. I do not know which sources and contacts can still be trusted. Events are rapidly spiralling out of control.”

“What about reinforcements?” asked Kate

“Secretary Stanton has refused to immediately allocate emergency personnel even after being confronted with all the details of the situation. I confess I should have seen it sooner. I was naïve to think that his stubborn dismissal of the importance of this division was mere incompetence and wilful ignorance. This makes it clear that we have been thoroughly compromised in our capacity to act.”

She eyed the round.

“The time frames do not line up. There is no way for Agent Zimmerman to be turned that quickly. I have reviewed the data that was sent back before she was found out. We know from reliable sources that the process takes at least forty hours. This has been corroborated the data agent Zimmerman sent back herself before she stopped broadcasting. It involves heavy machinery, which can’t be concealed or easily transported. We were able to monitor her long enough to know the window just wasn’t big enough. Agent Zimmerman was compromised before her final operation.”

“No!”, shouted Sarah. “I would have known!”

“Miss Mahoney, I am sorry to say that my personal assessment is that she could have fooled any one of us. I am currently reviewing surveillance data to analyze her movement patterns in the last three months.

“Bullshit! I would have known!” yelled Sarah and leapt out her seat, to the confusion of Shaw and Bower.

“Sarah,” said Kate, her voice calm.

“No! I don’t have to listen to this!”

“Miss Mahoney. You are acting irrational. This does not reflect on the character of Miss Zimmerman in any way. As far as we know, there is no way at all to resist—“

Sarah thought of how they had lain together the night before, how they had embraced and felt each other. Kisses and Goodbyes that she hadn’t known were final. Those couldn’t have been—they must have been real.

She was crying.

Director West and all the others were looking at her with varying shades of confusion and empathy.

“I need a minute,” she said and turned to leave, arms wrapped around herself.

“Holy shit, were they together?!” gasped Bower. Shaw, who was sitting right next to him, hit him on the back of the head.

“You need to learn to shut up!” snapped Kate and followed after Sarah.

“We do not have time for this!” shouted the Director, neck craned after them, as the door to the meeting room fell closed.

”Please, Sarah! This is not the time!” she said to the crying woman sitting on the hallway floor with her face buried in her hands.

“I can’t take this. Why does this keep happening?” She was hard to understand between the sobbing and her voice being muffled by her hands.

“Sarah. Please. I know that none of this is fair, but things keep happening while we are crying!” said Kate as calmly as she could.

“You know? You have no idea!” Sarah cried, raising her head to face Kate. She was covered in tears and her eyes were swollen and red.

“You don’t know how it is to lose the only person in your life that really means something to you! That understands you! And then you tell me she was only faking! And—”

“No one’s saying that, Sarah!”

”And you made her do it! Why couldn’t they get someone else than Lilly?! Why did it have to be her?!” She sounded angry now.

“Because she was the best and most qualified! Lilly did what she had to do.”

“Now you too? You think that was a good decision?!”

“I didn’t—“

“Yes! Send Lilly to her death!—“

“No!”

“None of you fucking care about her, or me, or anyone!”

She couldn’t help herself. Only watch herself do it. It was like dam breaking after months of floods.

“You think I don’t care?!”, yelled Kate “Lilly was my friend, too! And I’m fucking sick of this shit! You think I didn’t lose friends yesterday? Paul, Evan, Simon, Chris. They died yesterday,“ she sobbed. “They were my friends! Simon had his birthday just last week! And the others, too! I knew them! Most of them! Do you think Lilly was the only reason I wanted to talk?!” Her head was flushed and red now, too. She was yelling at the top of her voice. “You’re not the only one that’s grieving! But you’re so fucking self-obsessed! Just because you didn’t have any other friends! Is it just so fucking unimaginable to you that Lilly had more than one friend, or that there are other people that matter to each other?”

There was a moment where they both stared at each other through tears, and Kate knew she had ruined it. She didn’t protest as Sarah rubbed the tears from her eyes and wordlessly stomped back into the meeting room.

Director West eyed them critically as they re-entered. They must have had heard everything.

“I understand these are trying times emotionally. However, I need the both of you to function properly, because this is a matter of literally catastrophic proportions,” said West.

“You and your fellow agents are the only people in the country I can trust right now, because as your employer in an intelligence agency I have reliable tracking data of all of you that can be verified. No offense.”

”None taken,“ said Shaw, putting her hand on the arm of Bower, who had looked like he wanted to protest. Bower looked at her. She gently smiled at him and shook her head. Kate thought she saw a wink. Oh great, she thought, as if things weren’t complicated enough already.

“I appreciate your… professionalism,” said West with a not-so-subtle undertone and looked at Kate and Sarah.

“As I was going to say, our hands are firmly tied. We must assume the worst. With the capture of agent Zimmerman, the Syndicate now knows about us, where our base is, and may plot to move against us right now. We need to get ahead of them and find out what their next move is. Again, I made the connection too late. If it weren’t for sheer luck, we could have been overrun before I realized there was such a threat and had time to check the essential personnel for possible double agents.”

Her cell phone sounded a message tone. She looked at the screen.

“In one rare instance of intelligent thought on my part, I considered the possibility of this happening when this place was built. This is our signal. We abandon base. Our databanks have been erased and structural charges are armed. We leave now.”

They all got up before they could really realize what was happening. Bower spoke as he trailed behind the others. “I appreciate the seriousness of the situation and I’m sorry, but I really, really have to comment on the fact how cool it is that we have a fucking self-destruct button for our secret underground base.”

”It is pretty neat,” said Director West.

They sat in silence as the black Lincoln turned another corner. Kate rode shotgun, with Shaw, Bower and Sarah on the back seat. Sarah had her arms crossed, frowning at the tinted windows as the streets swept by. They pulled up to what looked like a middle-class suburban residential home.

“All our agents are now being coordinated through decentralized means,” said Director West. “No one but me knows where our new base of operations is.”

“Then why are you trusting us with that information?”, asked Bower.

“I am not. This isn’t our new base of operations. This is where I live. I will be leaving shortly.“ She got out of the car and waited for them to follow suit. She then walked back around the house and unlocked the back door which led them to a spacious kitchen.

“We will meet in safe houses when the need arises,” she said.

“But first, let me brief you on what I need you to do next. We have bought some time. Our enemy is still powerful, but they no longer know our location and can’t target us directly for the time being. I have received further analysis sent back from the neural networks at the NSA indicating that the chance of any of our remaining operatives being compromised is less that 96 percent, which are better odds than I had hoped for. I trust this data, no human had any input on it. The data on miss Zimmerman is undergoing extra computation passes and is still being processed.”

She sat down on a kitchen chair with visible exhaustion.

“I need you to find Agents Kelly, Johnson and Kimball,

“Who are they?” asked Bower.

“The female members of the perimeter team.”

”Why only the female— Oh God, they only take women, don’t they?”

“Your skill of analysis will serve you well, Mister Bower, should the division survive this crisis,” said the Director.

She pulled out a manila envelope and proceeded to open it.

“I need you to follow them to track down their current base of operations. We need to eliminate Moreau. Our only hope is trying to cut off the dragon’s head. That might not work, but it’s the best chance we have.”

She pulled a tablet out of the envelope and placed it on the table.

“This contains all the details and access to satellite tracking. The safe house it mentions contains ten thousand dollars in cash, medical facilities, surveillance hardware, encrypted network access, tactical gear, and weaponry, as well as three beds.”

Kate caught Bower glancing at Shaw, who blushed slightly. No. Not even subtle.

“You may use my car to get to the safe house. I have other means of transport,” said West and put the car keys on the table.

Sarah stepped forward, snatched up the tablet and the keys. “Let’s go get this over with” she said without looking at anyone and walked out the door.

”Sarah, wait!” said Kate hurriedly.

“I’m tired of waiting,” came Sarah’s voice from outside. “Are you fucking coming, already?”

Kate glanced at West.

“I’m afraid Agent Mahoney is right,” said West, “Time is an issue.”

The three remaining agents exchanged looks, then followed Sarah out the door and got in the car. The motor was already running and Sarah drove off before they could even buckle their seat belts.

Sarah threw the tablet into Kate’s lap without looking. She picked it up, read it, then passed it on to Shaw and Bower. At one point, Bower asked Sarah to slow down. Sarah ignored him. She had a mission, now, and nothing would stop her.

Two days earlier:

Lilly was in the dark. Why was she the dark? She couldn’t remember. She tried to get out of bed. Then she noticed that she wasn’t in bed. She wasn’t even lying, she was sitting. Her head hurt and she was nauseous. For a moment she considered going back to sleep. But her head hurt too much. She would have to undo the shackles, get dressed and get some aspirin or something.

Suddenly she was wide awake as her heart lurched with the sudden realization. She was bound to a chair, and she was naked. She didn’t remember what had happened but they must have found out. Oh God, no! This wasn’t supposed to happen! She had been fooling them! They wouldn’t have let her come so far if she hadn’t been fooling them!

She tried to remember the events before she blacked out. She had been pretending to be Alice Faraday, owner of a modest business of questionably legal nature and woman of definitely illegal tastes. The business was a legit criminal enterprise, secretly run by the division after it had been seized from its original owners. She had been there to make a purchase of three slaves and discuss renting out her place of business to the Syndicate.

They had given her the tour. They had shown her the machinery they used. Then she was lead into a warehouse to pick out the slaves. They had stood there, looking her in the eyes with devotion. Every slave had enthusiastically told her how ready she was to serve her. She had had to touch them in a show of mock fascination and desire. Touching them had felt like betraying Sarah. A stray thought entered her mind like poison dripping into a well. Betraying her. That’s what was going to happen, wasn’t it? That was how they operated. They were going to strap her into one of the machines and enslave her, brain-wash her.

Only no, they wouldn’t. Her friends would know she had been captured, she couldn’t be a double agent. Relief was short- lived, however. That didn’t make her situation any better, did it? Maybe they would make her into a sex-slave, or a worker drone. Thinking about that made her feel cold.

There was the sound of a door opening and she was blinded by the light streaming in. Someone flipped a switch and the room was bathed in harsh fluorescent lights. She glanced around the room through half-closed eyes, looking for exits and things to be used as weapons. There were scalpels lying on a metal tray right next to her, which would make excellent weapons. Somehow, that didn’t make her feel much better.

The woman who had entered her cell came into focus as her eyes adjusted. Lilly took in a sharp breath. Before her stood a tall woman in her late thirties. She wore a black tank-top and rimless glasses. Her hair was bound back in a bun. Between her teeth, she held a small metal cylinder that looked a bit like a small cigar. She was struggling to put on latex gloves.

“Florence Moreau!”

The woman looked at her as if she was about to speak, then seemed to remember the thing in her mouth, took it out and carefully placed it in the tray next to the scalpels.

“Oui,” she said with a small nod, and continued.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Moreau seemed focused on her gloves. “Testing a new method,” she mumbled absent-mindedly.

“I’m not going to beg, you know, ” said Lilly with as much conviction and defiance as she could. She leaned forward as far as her restraints let her and stared her down with disgust. “Just fucking tell me why, you sick bitch! Why do you do this? I’d like to know before you brain-fuck me.”

The woman pulled the glove down the last of her finger and looked at Lilly with what looked like brief consideration. Then she picked up the cylinder from the tray.

“No speeches,” she said and carefully pushed the injector into Lilly’s neck.

Lilly jerked back in reflex, let out a short yelp and gasped, then went limp. Her head fell back, mouth hanging open and eyes closed.

Moreau looked at her wrist watch. It was an old model. Mechanical. There were one hundred and four ticks, then Lilly twitched and opened her eyes. She looked at Moreau in surprise. Their eyes met.

Moreau smiled, and slave Lilly smiled back.

Now:

“This can’t be their main base of operations,” said Kate, commenting on the structure she was sneaking up to.

“Probably a waypoint or an outpost of some sort,” said Bower over the radio “Do we know anything about how they operate?”

“They have a decentralized system, never stay in any place for long. They move like locusts. They use property of victims once they are enslaved. Once they find somewhere new, they move and leave the brain-washed owners behind as sleeper-agents.” replied Kate.

“It’s what I would do,” they heard Shaw saying. She was sitting in the van with Bower, the mic picking her up pretty well.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side, Sophie,” said Bower.

“Oh, I can be deadly,“ she snarked.

“Cut the chatter,” snapped Sarah from the rooftop she was lying on, and the radio remained silent after that. She was carefully scanning the perimeter of the building through the magnifying scope of her high-calibre rifle. She had picked the .50, imagining what it would do to Moreau’s head if she dared to show up. It had been one of her more positive thoughts as of late.

It was a small building, not much larger that a simple cabin, though with a high ceiling and large windows and skylights. It might originally have been used it as a small machine shop or garage. There was probably only one room inside. A Fence ran close to it and blocked the light of any street lamps. Not many corners, easy to sneak up to. They expected a trap.

Kate had a an electronic sniffer and had taken it once around the building. It hadn’t detected any explosives. She steered a micro-drone though an air-vent and watched the video feed on a small screen on her wrist. There was a single guard with the three unconscious prisoners lying on blankets with their hands bound together. Only one guard. She looked at her watch. It was 4 a.m. It had been seven hours since they had gotten captured. They hadn’t been enslaved yet. That took at least four times that long.

“What about the perimeter?”

“Aerial drone is picking up nothing. No movement within 500 meters, all parked cars show nominal heat signatures, no unaccounted-for radio frequencies… all quiet. Sophie?” There was a small pause and the faint sound of a keyboard could be heard. “Thumbs-up from her. You’re good to go, Prescott!”

”Sarah, what about you?”, asked Kate

”Just go”, said Sarah and fired the gun. It shattered a window and exploded a sizeable chunk out of the wall right next to the guard, who twitched and looked around in panic, then threw himself on the ground.

“Cutting it close,” whispered Kate. “you almost hit him.”

Sarah didn’t answer.

The guard scrambled into a corner, and pulled out a cell phone. He dialled a number, set the phone down, and pulled out a handgun. The three unconscious agents remained still.

“Any reaction?”

“I don’t pick up anything, yet,” said Bower over the radio.

Kate raised her suppressed rifle and fired at the building, making sure not to aim anywhere near where she new the guard and the captured agents were. The shots were suppressed but still as loud as hammer blows.

“How about now?”

“Well, you’ve certainly woken up the neighbourhood. I’ve got lights, some movement, but—wait! I got something! Vehicles approaching from the east and west! ETA 2 minutes 20 seconds! There’s a lot of them!”

“Good, let’s hope this works,” said Kate. She let her rifle swing down from its strap and picked up the shotgun she had placed on the ground earlier. She checked the drone feed, visualized the inside of the building, trained the shotgun at a point in space beyond the wall, kicked down the door and immediately fired the crowd control rounds at the guard.

The guard screamed through clenched teeth as the projectile bruised him and the electricity made him twitch. He dropped his gun.

“Stay the fuck down!” she yelled. “Are you alone?! Answer me now!”

“Nnnngh aaargh!”

“Answer me!”

“Yes! Aah!”

“Then who did you call?”

“I…, I…”

She put hear hand on her earpiece, pretending to get a radio transmission. She faked surprise and made a show of looking around the room. She kicked away the gun, ran towards the unconscious Agents and knelt over them as if to check their vitals.

“They are here! Maybe there is time to—“ she said to nobody in particular. As she spoke she quietly injected one of them with a subderdmal tracker. “No, fuck you, I won’t –“

“One minute thirty! Get out! You’re not going for an Oscar!”

“Fuck! Damn you” she screamed as she got up. She picked up the cell phone and smashed it on the floor next to the guard, who winced. She raised her rifle at him. He closed his eyes.

“You tell your fucking boss to go fuck herself!” she said and stormed out.

“Left, then right!” came Bower over the radio “Fast! We’re on the move!”

She ran out the door and pain shot through her. Her hands and legs cramped and she fell. She hit the dirt face-first.

On the rooftop, Sarah watched Kate fall though the scope and a surge of adrenaline rushed through her. She frantically scanned the perimeter through her scope.

“Shaw! Prescott is down, I don’t see tangos! Open up her channel!”

“What?”

“Do it!”

As Shaw set the mic to always-on, the noise of Kate’s pained screams popped into her ear, mixed with bursts of noise as the mic rubbed against the ground. Sarah considered her options. She was three blocks away, no time to come help her. From here, she had limited visibility. She assumed the attacker to be on the far side of the building.

“Drone’s got visual, there’s someone on the north side.”

She hated being right.

“Kate, get him to move towards you.”

“Nggh,” came back over the radio and she saw Kate slowly and with difficulty turning herself on her back, nose bloody “no time, leave me!”

“Bullshit!”

“They’re gonna be here in a minute.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Bower! Pick her up!”

“No!”

Kate pulled her handgun from its holster. She lifted it up towards her temple, hand trembling.

“Sarah, I’m sorry!” she said. She closed her eyes, ready to pull the trigger. Another stunner hit her and she collapsed into a heap.

Shaw’s voice came high-pitched and raspy over the radio: “Mahoney! We’re picking you up. Get out of there!”

She looked though the scope at Kate lying unconscious in the dust. Out of the door stumbled the guard, unarmed, looking self-satisfied. She could hear his muffled voice over Kate’s radio.

“Hey bitch. Looks like you’re not so smart anymore. Did you really think I was alone? You—”

She pulled the trigger and a tenth of a second later, his head exploded. She aimed at Kate, putting the crosshair over her head. Her aim was unsteady now. “Save one bullet for yourself,” Kate had said what felt like months ago, but what had only been hours. How had it all gone so fucking wrong? She swallowed and put her finger on the trigger.

No! Wait! Stupid! There was still a chance. They had the trackers. There were just four to rescue now instead of three. A tiny bit of relief rolled through her. Her head felt clearer now. She got to her knees.

“Cut off Prescott! We need safe comms! I’m leaving, give me directions!” she said and rushed down the stairwell.

Three minutes later, she was in the van, holding onto a overhead handrail as it turned a corner at a measured pace. It made her nervous. They should be racing at breakneck speed. But they hadn’t been seen, so blending into traffic was the right thing to do, no matter how fast their blood was pumping.

“I’ve got West on the line!” said Shaw as Bower pulled them into an alley, put the van in park and went back to his computer in the back.

“Put her on the radio. Director West?”

“West here. What is the situation?”

“We successfully planted a tracker on our captive agents, but Prescott was captured by the enemy. We are monitoring the site by drone. They are currently loading the captives into a van. We are ready to covertly follow them once they move out.”

”I will ready our remaining operatives for an attack on Moreau—if she is indeed at the location the captives are being transported to.”

“You mean…”

“I’m sorry, Miss Mahoney. I cannot expend any personnel unless we are absolutely positive that Moreau is there. If she is not, I am afraid we will have to write our agents off as lost.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I am afraid that I am. We simply cannot risk another involvement with the Syndicate. We do not have the forces to take them on. Every encounter will entail losses to our side. They will slowly wear us down every time we fight them. Our only chance at all is directly taking out Moreau.”

“You can’t just give up Kate!”

“I do not at all intend to do so, but I may be forced to.”

Sarah wanted to scream at West. It took all self-control that she had not to so.

“Let us just pray that it will not come to that,” said West.

“Yes. Let’s,” said Sarah bitterly. She made herself think of Moreau to direct her anger at something useful. They would follow Kate to find Moreau, and kill her. They would kill her. She imagined pulling the trigger. That helped a bit.

“Ummm… something’s happening”, said Bower. He sounded worried.

“Is there a problem?”

“There might be. They are loading them into two different vans. The tracker is still in place but only on of the captives has one. We can only follow the one with the tracker, if they split up.”

”What about the drone?”

”Drone isn’t fast enough. They’re moving now.”

In Bower’s monitor, there was a window with the drone feed, and one with a map that had the tracker dot overlaid on it. Both still showed the same area, but were starting to diverge.

“You will follow the one with the tracker and regard the other as lost,” said West over the comms. Her voice was crisp and hard.

“They’re moving south. Fuck. Of course. They’re splitting up! One’s going southwest.” Bower hit some keys and the drone feed followed the other van. It could somewhat keep up, but it was slowly crawling towards the edge of the feed.

“Which one is Kate in?”

Bower didn’t answer.

“Mike!”

“The one without the tracker,” he said in a small voice.

Sarah closed her eyes. Shaw and Bower looked at her. Shaw swallowed, because she knew what was about to happen. “Sarah,” she said. “We’ve got to do this.”

Sarah shot her an angry look, then reached over Shaw’s shoulder and killed the feed to Director West.

”We’re going after Prescott.”

“But Director West just said that—“ tried Bower.

“I’m not fucking leaving her!” she yelled and squeezed herself into the driver’s seat.

“Keep tracking the other van! We can’t lose that one, can we? So what’s more urgent, huh?”

She put her foot on the gas and drove off. “Now tell me where to fucking go or you can try to explain to West why we just sat there and did nothing at all!”

Bower looked at Shaw. She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and nodded.

“Okay, we’ll do it your way then! Take a left!”

Sarah followed and the unmarked van sped into the night.

Kate woke with a start. She tried to get up, but fell back when her wrists caught something. She hit the back of her head against the wall of the van. She groaned. She was handcuffed and chained to the bench between her legs.

“Oh, welcome back!”, said a voice.

Kate looked at the woman sitting at the front end of the van. It was Lilly.

She wore a black latex suit that reflected the deep red light that lit the van. She was lazily toying with the tazer gun she had shot Kate with.

“I was afraid you might not be awake in time to be rescued. But it didn’t take you long at all. We barely started moving. You are very resilient.”

“What?”

“We are being pursued,” said Lilly and, continued, voice dripping with sarcasm: “I’m afraid we are not driving quite fast enough to evade them. And sadly, we have no escort to protect us at all! How unfortunate!”

“You won’t get them!” said another voice. Kate turned her head. It was one of the captured agents. Kate hadn’t even noticed her. She was sitting on the other side of the van, across from Kate. She had short black hair, messy and oily from what she had been through. She looked very tired. It was Lorraine Kelly. Kate and her had spoken once or twice. She was ex-FBI, early thirties. Last time they’d talked, she had had told Kate about the horse she co-owned and something about how hot her downstairs neighbour was.

“No, I won’t. You will,“ said Lilly and put down the tazer gun. She produced a small metal cylinder from her cleavage. Kate looked at it, then at Lorraine, who stared back at her. She looked as scared as Kate felt. Lilly got up from her seat, carefully balancing in the moving car. Kate watched her sit down next to agent Kelly with crossed legs, like they were about to take a picture together.

“Hey Kate, watch this,” she said and stabbed the cylinder into agent Kelly’s neck. The woman’s eyes went wide and she took in a sharp breath. Then she made a croaking noise and collapsed forward in her seat as the breath escaped her in a sigh. Lilly gently caught her and righted her back up back against the wall. Her head was hanging loosely from her neck.

“We’re so high-tech now, Kate! It’s a modern-day miracle.”

Kate’s mouth opened and closed and she blinked, trying to understand. She felt inevitable conclusion forming in her mind.

“Oh God, no!”

“Yesss! You get it, don’t you? How it’s been only two days and I’m already… enslaved.” Lilly caressed the words as she spoke them. She traced a finger down agent Kelly’s face.

“It’s so hot, seeing them this way. Turning. Becoming—“ She paused, putting a finger on her right ear and listened to something. She nodded and looked at Kate, smiling again.

“Ten minutes until our friends catch up, give or take. Ample time to prepare,“ she lounged back and put her arm around the shoulders of the unconscious woman next to her and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek. She stayed close, glancing at Kate from the corners of her eyes as she started to draw circles around the tips of agent Kelly’s breasts.

“Don’t you—“

“Shush, Kate! Don’t spoil the moment! Any second now!”

Kate wanted to retort, but in that moment, agent Kelly twitched and raised her head. Kate looked at her, feeling numb, breathing heavily. Lilly was still right next to her, half wrapped around her, fingers on her chest.

Agent Kelly’s eyes narrowed and seemed to be in thought for a moment. She looked at Lilly.

“I obey,” she said.

There was a pause. Then she chuckled, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. That sounded way less stupid in my head. I just felt like I had to say something. Kind of a big deal what just happened, I mean.”

“Don’t worry, I get it,” said Lilly with a smile. They looked deeply into each other’s. Then, they kissed, mouths wide open. Lilly’s hand was firmly on Lorraine’s left breast. The kiss lasted for what felt like hours to Kate. After they finally broke apart, Lilly did a little nod in Kate’s direction and they both eyed her. Lorraine leaned forward, elbows resting on her spread legs. Lilly’s arm again around Lorraine’s shoulders. Their smiles were predatory, hungry.

Kate was just staring in utter shock and disbelief. In the red light, tears glistened.

“And now…”, said Lilly.

“You,” smiled Lorraine.

Kate stared in disbelief for a moment, then just lowered her head and said nothing.

Lilly stood up and pulled another injector from between her breasts. She gently swayed as she stood over Kate. “What? No fight left in you? I honestly expected better of you.”

Kate wasn’t listening. She was thinking of her friends and colleagues. They were right behind them. Shaw and Bower, Sarah. They had no idea. It had taken less than two minutes. Literally anyone could be turned. It was hopeless. She breathed heavily. Her heart was racing, fight or flight instincts unprepared for this situation. The fear of dying. In a way, she would be, she thought. After this, there would be no Kate Prescott. Again, she thought of Sarah. Poor thing. At least she had apologized.

She sat up straight, calmly staring ahead into the distance, not looking at Lilly and Lorraine.

“Fuck you,” she said flatly as she waited for the inevitable.

“Fuck you, too,” said Lilly with a smile and injected her.

As the cold metal bit into her, Kate let out a small scream that turned into a grunt. She didn’t move. She was still sitting straight with her head raised, eyes facing forward in a look of defiance that lasted maybe a second. Then, like someone had flipped a switch, her eyes went blank, her face went slack and she collapsed forward like her strings had been cut. Lilly caught her fall and pushed her back against the backrest, tilting back Kate’s head up to look at the woman’s unconscious face. Kate’s eyes were closed and her mouth hung slightly open. It made her look slightly confused. Lilly lightly brushed across her cheek, then let go. Kate’s head dropped ungracefully down onto her chest.

Lilly produced a key and undid Kate’s handcuffs, then sat down next to Lorraine and did the same to hers. Lorraine rubbed her wrists as they came loose and put her hand on Lilly’s thigh. She whispered something into her ear. Lilly nodded and kissed her cheek before they both quickly turned back to watch Kate, not wanting to miss her turning.

Kate’s head was still dangling from her neck, hanging crookedly. Her red hair had fallen in front of her face and hid most of her features. She had slid forward in her seat and her arms rested bonelessly next to her, palms up, and her legs had spread apart. There was only the noise of the van driving down the streets, quickly, but not too quickly. Seconds passed, and Kate’s head was gently bobbing left and right with each movement of the car.

Her fingers twitched, once, twice, and then her body tensed almost invisibly. Slowly, she raised her head. She looked at slave Lilly and slave Lorraine from behind strands of messy crimson. Her eyes were bright and terribly awake. She sat up straight, brushing the hair from her face. She leaned forward towards slave Lilly, right index finger pointing at the women across from her, then back at herself. She raised her eyebrows.

She knew what had happened. She remembered everything. But everything had changed. She understood slave Lorraine now. She felt her new desires, in her heart and in her loins. Both unfamiliar and natural at the same time. She loved what had happened to her. Not loving it was out of the question.

It was an overwhelming head rush. All the things she wanted to do now that she hadn’t wanted, would have rather died than doing. She remembered how she had felt when the injector hit her, how it would be like dying. She smiled. The old Kate was dead. Long live slave Kate. The thought made her pussy swell in excitement. She looked up at the others.

“When this is over, we’re going to fuck so hard”, said slave Kate in breathless awe.

Slave Lilly and slave Lorraine beamed at her. She beamed back. They were so hot. She wanted to have them.

“I’m sorry you don’t get time to enjoy this more, slave Kate”, said slave Lilly. Slave Kate shivered when she called her that. “I’d love to fuck your sweet ass right now, but...”

“But first, I get to betray Sarah and the rest”, smiled slave Kate with barely restrained excitement. “So. What’s the plan?”

”It’s almost out of reach of the drone, Mike!” yelled Shaw.

“We almost have visual, just need to catch up a little bit more! Right turn!”

They van jerked around violently, and a mug crashed and shattered on the floor.

“Call the turns earlier, dammit!”

“Sorry! Next left, cut the roundabout! Then— wait.”

“What?!” Screamed both Sarah and Shaw.

“They stopped! Less than three blocks ahead! Go! Go! Just two more corners!”

Sarah hesitated for a moment.

“Check the perimeter.”

He hurriedly switched to thermal, zoomed in and did a scan of the surrounding area.

“Don’t see anything, checking back at the van!”

”I see it now!”, said Sarah. “It crashed!”

Shaw and Bower looked out the front window. The van was lying on its side at the end of a long trail of snaking skid marks. White Smoke was billowing from the wreck.

“There’s someone outside the van!” yelled Shaw when se saw.

There was a person limping from the van in their direction.

“Quick! Gun locker! Four Seven One Five!”

Shaw got up and entered the digits into the electronic lock on the metal compartment. He pulled out an MP7 and loaded it. It had been a while since he’d had to use one of these.

”It’s Kate!” he heard Sophie yell. He moved to the front of the van and looked out the wind shield. It was Sergeant Prescott. She was bleeding from her neck. They had almost reached her. Behind her, around the van, there was movement, and suddenly the noise of gunfire. He heard bullets ricochet off the asphalt. They must still be dazed from the accident. They were shooting like shit. Sarah slid the van into a handbrake turn as she screeched to a halt between the smoking wreck and Kate.

Sophie opened the doors. Kate looked like she had been in, well, a car crash.

Gunfire was still screaming around them as Kate jumped in. Bower was shooting bursts out the window now, too. Shots impacted the bullet-resistant exterior of the van.

”Kelly’s dead!” screamed Kate over the pandemonium. “We need to leave! Now!”

Sarah didn’t need to be told twice. She floored it, and after a quick right turn, the gunfire stopped and the screaming engine seemed like a quiet spring day in comparison.

“Kate, are you alright?!” screamed Sarah, too loudly. Her ears were ringing heavily. They hadn’t had time to wear ear protection.”

“I’ll live!”, she yelled back. “Just get us home safe!”

“Umm, guys…” said Mike.

“What are we going to do now?” asked Sophie.

“GUYS! Aargh” yelled Mike and screamed as he coughed heavily. Everyone looked at him. His shirt was soaked in blood from a wound below his shoulder.

“I’m passing out now…” he slurred, and did.

They stood in a semicircle in the room of the safe house that had the gurney and medical supplies. Sophie stood next to Mike, who had fallen asleep after being drugged. A heavy bandage was wrapped around his shoulder. Sophie’s skin was white as a sheet. Her voice was small and hoarse. She had blood stains all over the sleeves of her shirt.

“He was extremely lucky. The bullet went clean through him. It probably missed his major arteries, or he would have died in the van. I think it clipped the very top of his lung, but for now he’s stable. We do need to get him to a hospital, though. I can’t drain his lungs if fluid starts to build up.”

Kate nodded.

“We will. Director West is on her way. We’ll ask her to arrange that. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Some professional should also look at the stitches you tore open on your neck.”

“When there is time,” said Kate.

“Okay,” said Sophie. “For now, Mike needs rest and quiet. I’ll stay here,“ she put her hand on his arm.

They got the hint and left. There was a couch and an armchair in the main room. Sarah sat down. Kate carefully closed the door to the sick room. The sun had risen while Sophie had stitched Mike back together. Outside, birds were singing. It was a clear and bright day, and only thin strands of clouds hung in the morning sky. For a while they just sat there in silence. Kate thought about injecting Sarah, but this was not the plan.

“Thank you for coming for me!” said Kate, finally. “After what I said to you…”

“Don’t be stupid!” said Sarah.

“I’m so sorry!”

“Shut up. You don’t have to be. Look at me, Kate!”

She did. She looked deep into Sarah’s dark brown eyes. She thought about injecting her. But that was not the plan.

“You were right. I was a self-obsessed asshole.”

“You were grieving.”

“So were you! But I thought I was the only person who lost something, that I was the only one that was hurting. And you came to me, and you didn’t have to. We weren’t close, before. Yes, I know, we talked. But I didn’t consider you my friend. I didn’t consider anyone my friend. Only…”

“Sarah, stop.”

“I never told anyone where I got transferred from. Only West knows.”

Kate said nothing. It took Sarah a while to continue.

“I… was doing private security. Some chemical plant. Nowhere, USA. I had a friend there, from back in the navy. Her name was Sarah, too. Fucking stupid. We were… close. Very close. They say you shouldn’t mix up your relationship with workplace. But we made it work.”

For a moment she seemed lost in thought. The sun slowly rose in the sky. A sheet of sunlight crept down the wall. Kate thought about injecting her.

“One week, she takes three days off, and texts me that she’ll be out of town and not to worry, she’ll be back. And I didn’t worry and she was back like she’d promised.

Then, a week later, we’re at the plant and everything is normal and we’re having lunch and suddenly she pulls out a gun and shoots everyone at the table. Except me. She tells me to get on the floor, and cuffs me. She leans down next to me and whispers into my ear. I’ll never forget what she said… she… she said: ‘We’ll serve together.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Kate, face screwed up in pain. She thought about injecting her.

“They were going to take me. I was put in a van. Division raided the place just in time and freed me. I was recruited as part of the hush-up.”

“What happened to Sarah?”

“She killed two division operatives before they shot her in the head”

”Oh God…”

“I… I thought I could never trust anyone again. I spent my first year at the division completely isolated. I went home after the shift and locked my doors until it was time to go back to work. Until I met Lilly. She didn’t let me be alone, she didn’t let me be miserable. She didn’t allow it, she wouldn’t have it. She made me laugh again and no matter how bad I tried, I just couldn’t help but love her.”

Her eyes were wet. She took a deep breath.

“I… I never told anyone about Sarah... Not even Lilly,“ she sobbed. “And each time she went out undercover, I wanted to tell her. B... but I thought she had no choice, and that I would only burden her. And now, I always think, why didn’t I tell her?!” She was crying now. ”Why didn’t I tell her?! I could have stopped her!”

Kate got up sat herself next to her, taking her in her arms, comforting her.

“Why didn’t I tell her?!” cried Sarah and leaned into Kate. Kate felt Sarah breathing softly against her. She thought about injecting her. She could do it right now. It would be so hot.

“It’s okay, It’s okay. Everything’s going to be alright. All of this will be over soon,“ said Kate. “We’ll get through this. We’re a team. You’re my friend. And you’re the strongest woman I know. You saved me, and I’ll always be there for you.”

Sarah let out a final sob, then took some slow, deep breaths.

“Thank you, Kate.”

For a little while, they just sat there. Kate kept her arms wrapped around Sarah as she was quietly thinking about the things to come.

Sophie was washing her hands for the third time, now. There was still red stuff under her fingernails. The hot water on her hands stung. Her hands were red and she couldn’t tell if it was from blood or from the heat. She heard Sarah and Kate talking outside. It sounded emotional. She turned her head to look at Mike.

He was awake.

“Mike!” she said in soft surprise.

He spoke, words a slow slur: ”Yep, that’s me. Whoah. Whoah. Oh, wow… I’m so high right now. What did you give me?

“Morphine,” she said.

“Right on.”

She laid her hands on his cheeks. He smiled.

“You need rest,” she said.

“Hey, are you getting all Florence Nightingale on me, young lady? I can get behind that. Also, You have really warm and wet hands.”

She laughed and gently put her hand on his chest, avoiding his wound. “You’re high.”

“You made me high. That’s pretty cool of you. Can I have a kiss?”

“As long as you don’t get blood on me, you doofus,“ she said and kissed him.

The door opened and Sarah and Kate stopped mid-stride. She hurriedly pulled back, her hands making erratic movements as she tried to find a set of gestures that would somehow cover up what they had been doing.

“Errr…” she said. “This isn’t—”

“We knew,” said Kate.

“You knew?”

“We totally knew”, said Sarah. She looked like she’d been crying, but she wore a little smile now that almost hid the pain. Sophie could relate.

“You guys should try kissing on morphine, it’s so much better!” slurred Mike, raising a finger at the ceiling.

“Director West is here. We need you for a minute,“ said Kate.

“Holy shit! Sex must be amazing.”

“MIKE!”

They stood in a row. Director West leaned heavily with her back against a wall, her temples cradled in the fingertips of her left hand. Sophie was speaking, Sarah was fidgeting, and Kate was taking a quick look at her cell phone.

“Hospital care for Mister Bower can be arranged. Thank you, Miss Shaw.”

“May I go back to Mike, I’m uncomfortable leaving him alone, if there’s something—“

“You may. Dismissed.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

She went to the sick room. They watched her leave, then the Director stood up straight and turned her attention to Sarah.

“Agent Mahoney. Were I not so short on personnel, I would relieve you of your duty right here and now. What you did was insubordinate, irresponsible and plain stupid. Any number of things could have gone wrong. The fact that agent Prescott managed to overwhelm her captors and force the vehicle to crash was lucky, and you couldn’t have planned for that to happen. And if it hadn’t, they would very probably have gotten away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I will have to accept your apology. However, you are relieved of your rank.”

Kate interrupted: “Is this necessary? Don’t we have enough trouble already?”

“Some measures need to be taken. Agent Mahoney, I respect your capabilities in combat and despite everything you remain a valuable asset, but I do no longer trust you to make the right decisions. Hence, you are no longer afforded the authority to do so. I ask you to join agent Shaw in the sick room. I would like to speak to agent Prescott in private.

Sarah looked sour, but she didn’t protest. She nodded, turned, and entered the sick room, closing the door behind her.

“Agent Prescott, you said you have recovered sensitive information and that you needed to show me in person. This constitutes a big risk, but here I am. What is it that you have to show me?”

”When I escaped from the van, I snatched this,” she said and pulled a small metal cylinder from her pocket. It was the size of a lipstick, or maybe a crayon. She held it up in front of her as she stepped closer.

“What is that?” asked the Director.

“Not sure, but they had them in heavy boxes to protect them. I think they are some sort of new technology they are using.”

“What makes you think that?”

In Kate’s pocket, her cell phone chimed.

She looked into Director West’s eyes and said: ”Seven blue purple leaves left at the right lot.”

The moment of confusion was enough. Kate put one hand over West’s mouth and in one quick motion injected her with the other. The woman had no time to react. She twisted for a second and let out a barely audible scream, muffled by slave Kate’s hand.

Slave Kate saw the Director’s eyes widen in shock. Their faces were inches apart. Their eyes met for an instant and she could see the confused fear and rage in them. Then, the Director’s eyelids twitched and her pupils dilated. Her gaze went empty and her eyes rolled back. With the voiceless sigh of her breath escaping her she collapsed into slave Kate’s arms. Slave Kate quickly lowered the unconscious body to the floor, then took four quick steps toward the sick room and locked the door.

Mike had fallen back asleep. Sarah was leaning in the corner, arms crossed. Sophie was checking some data on her tablet. Suddenly, Sarah stood up straight.

“What was that?” said Sarah.

“What?”

”Someone screamed.”

“I didn’t—“

There was the sound of the door being locked. Sarah rushed towards it and tried to open it. “Kate? Director?”, she shouted. No reply came. Instead, Sarah heard the sound of the front door being opened, followed by footsteps.

“Right on time,” said Kate’s voice.

”I noticed. She’s not even awake yet. Well done, slave,” said a young, bright voice.

Sarah would recognize that voice anywhere.

Lilly.

She blanked on reactions. For a moment just stood there, mouth open.

“They’re in the sick room,” came Kate’s voice. Sarah stepped back from the door.

“What is going on?” whispered Sophie.

“It’s happening again,” Sarah muttered, her eyes as dead as her voice. “It’s always happening.”

“What is happening?”

With a click, the door opened and behind it stood Lilly Zimmerman, Kate Prescott, and Florence Moreau.

“Not this time,” whispered Sarah, her face a grimace of pain and rage. She held a pistol, aimed at Moreau. Faster than she could fire it, Lilly and Kate were between them. They looked at her with unreadable expressions. She looked at Kate. She looked at Lilly.

“No,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer pulled back and snapped forward. Click. Nothing happened.

“Removable firing pin,” said Kate and sprang forward, knocking the gun out of her hand. Sarah ducked, dodging the follow-up and punched her in the gut. Kate’s left fist hit her flank, a bit too high. Sarah grabbed her by the shoulders, and pulled Kate’s face into her raised knee. Kate screamed and hit the floor. Sarah made an automatic side-step to dodge whatever attack Lilly would be launching against her right now. She felt a blow glance her shoulder and there was the noise of someone falling behind her. She pivoted and her eyes darted around. Kate was in a heap at her feet. Lilly was struggling to her feet behind her. Moreau—

Moreau had a gun pointed at her.

Sophie saw Sarah hesitate for just an instant. She should have charged. Instead, she hesitated. Running into gunfire isn’t a human instinct. That moment of indecision was enough. Sarah seemed to realize it, too. But too late. It was enough time for the blonde woman that had been Agent Lilly Zimmerman to grab her from behind, violently twisting Sarah’s arms into a tight grip.

Sophie watched, paralyzed in terror and confusion. Sarah was struggling hard. She let out a scream of pure rage. “No! No! No!”, she yelled, as she was twisting in the woman’s grip. The sinews in her arms and neck stood out as she tried to escape the police hold, lifting her feet off the ground, kicking, trying to gain leverage.

Moreau strode forward, pulling out a small metal cylinder. She sidestepped a kick by Sarah. There was death in Sarah’s eyes. She kicked again, missing. Moreau raised her hand. Sarah screamed as Kate was now grabbing her by the legs. The woman stepped up to Sarah. Sarah spat. “Moreau! You motherfucking—” The woman brought her hand down against Sarah’s neck. “Aaargh! You fucking—” Sarah began. Then her breath caught and she made a croaking noise, like suddenly all the air inside of her had left. Her eyes went wide in pain and shock. Then, suddenly, she collapsed, lifelessly folding in on herself. Lilly and Kate were still holding her by her armpits and calves. Her arms stood out awkwardly as she was being held upright. They quickly lowered her unconscious body to the floor where she lay motionless, eyes closed.

Sophie had backed into the far corner, back against a cabinet, the gurney and Mike between her and them.

Moreau was now pointing her gun at her.

“Drop it,” she said with the slightest trace of a French accent.

She hadn’t even realized it, but Sophie was brandishing a scalpel. It was trembling in her hands. She looked at it, then back at the gun pointed at her. She dropped it and it hit the floor with a thin clatter. The woman handed the gun to Kate, and turned her attention back to Sarah. Kate aimed the gun steadily at her with both hands, feet planted firmly in a solid stance. Sophie looked at Kate with an expression of betrayal and fear.

She looked at Mike. He was out. The noise hadn’t woken him. Even if it had…

“It’s some new technology, isn’t it?” asked Sophie, looking at Sarah’s motionless face. She felt her eyes turning wet as tears came to her, uselessly and unbidden. Kate just kept pointing the gun, not answering. “They got to you!” She swallowed. “How long does it take? Less than an hour?”

Kate softly sighed as she seemed to recall a pleasant memory. “About two minutes,” she said with a benign smile.

Something caught in Sophie’s throat. She felt cold. She looked at Sarah again. She could have been sleeping. Two minutes? She looked back at Kate, mouth agape in disbelief and fear. She tensed.

“Sophie,” said Kate calmly but firmly. “We’re not going to hurt you, unless you do something stupid. So stay where you are.”

Something drew Sophie’s attention, then. There was some movement behind Kate, outside the door. Someone stepped inside the sick room. Sophie’s guts turned to ice. She’d forgotten. But of course she’d been here. It was so much worse.

“You started without me,” said Director West as a statement of simple fact as she walked in, brushing wrinkles from her crumpled dress. The stress seemed to have lifted from her face. She looked content and dignified. She noticed Moreau. She stood up straighter.

“Mistress,” she breathed.

“Slave,” answered Moreau in the cadence of ritual.

“Karen,” supplied West.

“Slave Karen. I’ll have need of you shortly. For now, you may watch.”

“Thank you, Mistress. I shall,” she said gracefully and looked down at Sarah.

Sophie caught herself looking, too. She knew and dreaded what would happen next. She felt sick. No one spoke. She imagined this is what mice felt like when cats played with them before eating them.

Lilly was now kneeling over Sarah, gently stroking her neck and shoulders. It was a loving gesture that felt completely out of place to Sophie.

Sarah lay on her back, arms and legs spread out around her. She was wearing a tight black tank top, and try as she might, Sophie couldn’t help but notice the absurd detail of the little bulges where Sarah’s nipples had gotten erect underneath it. Sophie shut her eyes for a few seconds before her own morbid curiosity got the better of her again. She looked at Sarah, trying hard to concentrate on her face. It had been well over a minute already.

Sarah twitched, and her fingers flexed. Sophie winced.

Sarah opened her eyes. There was a brief moment of disorientation, confusion. Then, she realized. It almost overwhelmed her. She saw Sophie Shaw looking at her. She smiled and enjoyed the look of shock on Sophie’s face. She realized she wanted to see her naked, enslaved, like herself. Because that’s what she was, now. The burning heat between her legs told her. The cold desire in her head told her. The pounding need in her chest told her. She was a slave. She loved how good it felt. She was wet. She loved that she was. She wondered how they did it. She remembered the fight, being injected. It didn’t matter. They had enslaved Kate, and they had enslaved Sarah. Slave Kate, now, and slave Sarah. Her pussy ached inside her wet panties.

She felt a hand on her neck and with a start, she remembered the third player in this game. She turned her head to look up at the beautiful face of slave Lilly. Her blonde hair fell down towards her face, just inches from her. Slave Lilly wore the black skin-tight Syndicate suit, smoothly stretching over her curves. Seeing her like this made her hips buckle. She wanted her. She didn’t think. She just wrapped herself around slave Lilly and pushed her open lips against hers. Slave Lilly responded in kind and they kissed like they had never kissed, with no inhibition or false modesty. They fell back down together, smacking and slurping. Feeling the slave against her skin, her tongue pushing into her mouth, hands all over her, was bliss.

“Slave Sarah” spoke Mistress and the world fell away. Slave Lilly’s lips parted from her own with a wet smack. The slaves got up hastily, slave Lilly pulling slave Sarah up with her. They faced their Mistress, beaming. Slave Sarah bathed in the light of her presence as she felt the sweet strings that were pulling her mind. She let them pull her. This was who she was, now. What she had been before only made it sweeter.

“Mistress”, said slave Sarah and stepped forward.

Sophie had watched Sarah and Lilly disentangle after what felt like hours. They stood at attention before Moreau now. Seeing it shouldn’t have made it worse. Sophie had known what was coming. But seeing it actually happen was terrifying. Not five minutes ago, she’d been talking to Sarah. Now, there stood a woman that looked and talked like her, but Sarah was gone. Sarah would fight Moreau. Sarah would despise Moreau, and scream at her for what she’d done. Hurt her. Kill her.

The brainwashed woman that had been Sarah just stood there, looking at Moreau with wide eyes and erect nipples. Sophie felt sick and dizzy. She felt like she had left her body, no longer participating, like she was watching a movie.

“Look at me, slave”, said Moreau and held up another metal cylinder. An injector, like she had used on Sarah. “Serve,” said Moreau with a nod in Sophie’s direction. Sarah immediately took the injector and fixed her gaze at Sophie.

Realization hit Sophie like cold as her thoughts cleared. She was now very aware of her own presence. Fear hit her like a punch to the gut, overwhelming and relentless. The kind of fear the body reserved for matters of sheer survival, sharp and pure.

Enslavement was something you read about. It happened to other people. Now, it was happening to her. Right now. She looked into Sarah’s eyes and there was no sympathy. Sophie might have screamed at the sight, but she was too afraid.

Sarah had been a dangerous woman, strong and uncompromising. Sophie had been under her protection. Now she was her prey. Sarah strode towards her, steps quick and pitiless. An unstoppable avalanche rolling down a mountainside. Sophie tried to back away.

“No!” she whimpered quietly, desperately. She hit her back against a cabinet. “No!” she whimpered again. Empty IV bags spilled on the floor. Her hands were blindly grasping behind her, searching something to defend herself with, finding nothing.

“Sarah, no!” she begged as Sarah reached out to take her, “Please!”

Sarah’s gaze stayed unmoved. Sophie had run out of space. Sarah grabbed her by the wrist. Sophie noticed how much taller she was than herself. Sarah raised the injector. “No! Wait!”, Sophie screamed and raised her other arm in front of her. Her high-pitched shrieks of protest turned into a whimper as Sarah easily pushed it aside, like she had no more strength that a little child. Sarah’s arm shot forward as she injected her.

The needle pushed in and the sharp pain made Sophie gasp and whimper. Her eyes were screwed tight for a moment, brows furrowed and teeth clenched.

The moment passed. She went limp and her face melted into expressionless calmness as she passed out.

Slave Sarah lowered her down to the ground, sitting her against the medicine cabinet. She dropped the spent injector. “I’m so fucking wet right now,” she gushed. “Thank you, Mistress!” Mistress smiled at her, and she shivered.

“I told you we’d get you,” whispered Lilly, embracing her from behind, putting her chin on Sarah’s shoulder and her hands on her breasts.

“And now we serve her together,” Sarah murmured back, and put her own hands on Lilly’s, pushing them tighter against her tits. “So… what was that about licking cunts all day long?” she whispered, enjoying Lilly’s touch.

Director West, slave Kate and Moreau stepped closer, watching Sophie.

“Glad to see you like this, Director,” said slave Sarah.

“Slave Karen,” corrected the Director with a satisfied smile.

“Hot,” replied slave Sarah. They exchanged eager looks.

“You’re not the only one who’s wet right now,” said slave Karen.

“Hey, look at you, talking all dirty. Hardly recognize you,” said slave Kate, who had holstered the gun.

“That’s kind of the point,” said slave Karen with a smile.

They enjoyed the next moments in silence together as they looked down on former agent Sophie Shaw, who sat on the floor, head hanging from her neck. She looked tiny and vulnerable. They watched in reverent silence.

Slave Sophie woke to a burning need.

“Oh God, Yes!” she moaned, her eyes taking in the faces around her. “Yes! Fuck, yes!” Her hands were on her chest, squeezing her tits in excitement.

She felt it in her mind. Where she’d been altered. New desires and instincts made from pure, sweet dopamine, singing in her mind, making her dance. She explored the new thoughts that were so easy and so satisfying to think. First out of curiosity, then for the feeling of sex she got from thinking them. Her new neural pathways were paved with ecstasy and joyous obedience. She remembered how afraid she had been before, and the cognitive dissonance sparkled like a thousand kisses on her pussy. How could she at all be surprised? She had been injected and after Mistress injected you, you became a slave. That’s what she was now, and she loved it. Little slave Sophie, ready to be fucked and ready to obey. She enjoyed how swollen and wet her pussy was from just thinking about it.

She looked up at the other slaves, towering above her. Slave Lilly, who had been the first of them, paving the way. Slave Kate, who had betrayed them. Slave Karen, who wore an expression of benign pride and joy. Slave Sarah, who had been the one to enslave her. She remembered the last moments of her old self, and this time she imagined herself as Sarah, bearing down on her, overpowering her, watching as little Sophie turned into a slave. It almost set her off.

Florence Moreau stepped forward.

“Mistress,” slave Sophie blurted, crawling and kneeling before her. In her mind, the need to submit pulled her like gravity, and her Mistress was the inescapable singularity at the center of the galaxy. Mistress took her by the chin, raising her up, until they both stood, slave Sophie looking up at her. She was tall and beautiful and for a moment the need to fuck her eclipsed slave Sophie’s mind.

“Slave,” said Moreau.

“Sophie,” she breathed, eyes bright and still glistening with forgotten tears.

“Slave Sophie,” Moreau affirmed, then considered her for a moment as the slave shivered with the pleasure of her recognition.

”Kill the male.”

There was a small pause. Slave Sophie blinked. Then she smiled. She calmly knelt down and picked up the scalpel she had dropped before.

She obeyed without hesitation.

The sun had risen. They were back in the main room, where slave Kate had enslaved the Director. Moreau watched the slaves undress before her. She was satisfied to see that their nipples were as hard as their panties were wet. It made her shiver. Watching them turn was the best part, but there was a special thrill in making a slave bare herself for the first time. Seeing in their eyes how much they liked it. She took them in hungrily.

Slave Karen seemed to do it for her own pleasure, just knowing that it was in service of her. She stepped out of her shoes and took her dress off deliberately and carefully. She removed her earrings and necklace, then undid her bra and pulled down her panties. She was tall and elegant, heavy breast just barely starting to betray her age. She was beautiful. In her youth, she must have been stunning.

Slave Sophie was very much undressing for her Mistress, submissively staring at her with wide eyes as she unclasped her bra. Her shirt lay on the ground where she had carelessly tossed it in the hurry to bare herself. She was a small woman, but she tried to present as much of herself as possible, chest out and swollen pussy glistening between slightly spread legs. It made for quite the show. Her dark nipples stood erect on small, round breasts. She had a tattoo of a strawberry on her left ankle.

Slaves Sarah and Lilly were undressing each other, not looking at her. Moreau didn’t mind. She could suppress that kind of behaviour if she wanted to. But, honestly, she was enjoying it, and she knew that slave Sarah would see slave Lilly as a symbol of her Mistress’s victory over her. Slave Lilly in turn was showing off her latest catch to her.

They stood very close, leaned slightly forward, gently touching foreheads. Moreau caught slave Lilly’s sly sideway glance as she pulled down slave Sarah’s soaked panties. Slave Sarah had undone the ponytail she’d worn before and her black hair fell in gentle waves around her face. It made her look youthful and playful. She was pale and muscular. Her breasts were lightly glistening with sweat, nipples hard like everyone else’s. She turned to Moreau, confident and proud, her hand entwined in slave Lilly’s.

Slave Kate was the tallest of them, with round hips and long legs. Her straight red hair reached down to her freckled collarbones. She stood rigidly and tensely, muscles taut and defined beneath sweaty, pearly skin. When Moreau’s eyes wandered down her body, taking in her full breasts with large, swollen nipples, slave Kate smiled in satisfaction.

When the slaves had all undressed, they stepped out of the heaps of discarded clothes they would forever leave behind. They stood around her, proudly nude. They gave her the look. The look of absolute submission and adoration. She lived for that look. Her breath caught in her throat for a second as she shivered at the sight. She almost didn’t feel worthy, then. The feeling passed as she fell back into the moment.

“Slaves,” she said. Seeing their eyes light up made her loins tingle. She wanted to throw herself at them right then, make them tear off her clothes and take her. She controlled herself. Soon. This was foreplay. The best foreplay there was.

She had come up with it after something her second slave had blurted out in bed. The slave had apologized, and they had chuckled as they had lain entwined. Then, she had made her say it again. And again, whispered in her ear as she had stroked herself, the slave lovingly caressing her.

She stepped up to slave Kate. Tall, like her, and strong, like slave Sarah and slave Lilly. She kissed her softly. She had to tiptoe just a little bit.

“Tell me how you feel. Tell me what you ache to say out loud. I want to hear it. ”

Slave Kate understood.

“I am a slave. I obey. I’m glad to be a slave. It makes me so wet. I want you so bad, Mistress. And I want the others, too. I want to enslave more. I—”

“Enough, for now.”, she said, softly. She would make her say more when she was between her legs. Moreau kissed her again, more deeply.

She moved on to slave Karen, kissing her, too. She looked into her eyes expectantly. Slave Karen understood.

“I am a slave. I obey. The Syndicate has won and I couldn’t be happier, Mistress. I love you for conquering me. Seeing my agents as your slaves makes me wet. I want to fuck you, and more importantly I want everyone to hear that I want to. I think of destroying the last rest of the division as your slave and it makes me wet.”

Moreau raised her hand and nodded with a smile, then kissed her tightly.

When Moreau came to her, slave Sophie spoke breathlessly and with an intense need, like they were already in bed. She vowed: “I’m a slave, Mistress! I obey. I’m yours. Use me, Mistress. I want to be your mindless tool. Obeying makes me so wet, and I want to cum all the time. There is only obedience now. Nothing else is important. I am a slave and I obey.”

When she kissed her, the slave’s lips were quivering beneath hers.

Slave Sarah was last in line, a bit smaller than slave Karen and slave Kate, but standing tall and proud. She looked at her adoringly. “Thank you so much for enslaving me, Mistress. Thank your for enslaving Lilly. Thank you for enslaving Kate, and Karen, and Sophie. I am your slave, and I obey, now and always. I am your warrior and your slut. I need to be fucked. By you, and by everyone you make me. Everyone will serve you. Thinking about everyone being enslaved by you almost makes me cum. Please make me enslave more.”

Moreau stopped her. She had been talking herself into a frenzy. Moreau tried to keep her hands steady, but she was dripping and shivering. She kissed slave Sarah like she had kissed the others.

Moreau broke the kiss. Her need was palpable now, and her slaves had been undressing her with their eyes from the start. She looked down at herself. She was wearing practical clothing. Blouse, jeans. She’d never been the dress-with-no-underwear type. Her slaves adored her either way.

She started to undo her blouse, looking at the naked bodies of the enslaved women. She saw it in their quivering hips, in the wetness between their legs. The need they shared.

”I am blessed,” she said, looking at their enraptured faces, “by your obedience. You are magnificent. Turning you was a pleasure, and a privilege. I am your Mistress, and you shall obey and adore me, but I also adore you. Slaves, but not mindless. You are still strong, and your strength is my strength.”

She slipped off the blouse and let it drop on the floor. She undid her bra. She struggled with the hooks for a second. No one minded. She let it fall to the floor and enjoyed their needful gazes on her breasts.

“I could be your Queen, your Empress, your Goddess.”

She stepped out of her pants.

“But what I enjoy even more than your subservience is your companionship.”

Her panties were as wet as the ones of her slaves. She pulled them down.

“So please, fucking relax,“ she laughed softly. “You’ve all been aching to touch yourselves since I enslaved you, so, for God’s sake, just do it already! I don’t mind, quite the opposite.”

Like a string snapping, the slaves were on the floor and over each other. Slave Lilly and slave Sarah were in some sort of contest who could most quickly and effectively touch all of the other with their hands and tongues. Slave Sophie was on her knees, fingers of one hand deep inside of her, her other hand on her left breast. The other breast was occupied by slave Kate, who was kneeling next to her. They were furiously tonguing, and slave Kate was alternating between rubbing her clit and pushing her middle finger between her swollen lips. Slave Karen had lain down on the floor, legs spread wide, furiously working between them. Moans and the wet noises of sex filled the air. Moreau watched them, her own hands slowly stroking the wetness between her legs. Climax came fast, for all of them. She watched them come.

When they had all climaxed, she stepped closer. She stretched out her hand, reaching out to slave Sarah. It was arbitrary. She would have them all, eventually. Possibly all of them today.

Slave Sarah took her hand. The slave’s skin felt hot and sticky. She raised her from the floor until they were eye to eye, hand in hand, faces only a foot apart, breasts almost touching. They could feel each other’s heat. The other slaves watched intently. Slave Sophie and slave Kate were still holding hands.

Slave Sarah looked at her Mistress with deep need. It was true, she thought. She was confident she could still make decisions. Mistress just had made it so she’d never want anything other than to obey. That was what made her a slave. She hadn’t been dulled, only remotivated. She loved it. Of course, she loved it. She looked at her Mistress, Florence Moreau, who she had no desire not to worship, not to obey. Her pussy screamed with the need to fuck her, to be fucked by her. She looked down at her Mistress’s tits and her own, two pairs of hard nipples, so ready to be touched, played with, sucked.

Slave Sarah waited. She could make the first move, she judged. She just didn’t want to. She wanted to wait, enjoy the anticipation. She wondered if that desire was her own and then, of course, found that she didn’t care.

Finally, Mistress raised her hand, cupping slave Sarah’s cheek, thumb on the corner of her mouth. Slave Sarah sighed and leaned her head into her Mistress’s hand.

“Pleasure your Mistress.” Spoken not as an order, but an invitation.

Slave Sarah chose to obey.