Chen’s apartment was bigger than one woman needed; was in fact big enough not just for a partner but for one or two children as well. Gigi wasn’t at all sure whether Sergeant-at-Arms Chen living there was a statement of what she wanted, an echo of decisions past (and possibly regrets), or just that she was expected to take a big place as part of the authority of her rank.

Whatever the case, the kitchen in particular was far too big for one woman, and Gigi could actually feel herself untense when Chen opened two of the big cupboard doors and revealed that the shelves inside that unit had been removed. Instead she had a conspiracy-web style map she was assembling.

“You don’t do this in the office?” Gigi asked, then flushed slightly, having heard the tale of Chen’s secretary.

“All the information’s in the department files,” Chen said shortly, which Gigi noted was pretty far from a yes. “But we’ve got a problem that isn’t really supposed to be our responsibility, except nobody else looks at DC much.” She glanced over her shoulder. “With the possible exception of whoever busted your team out of General Walters’ control…?”

Gigi half-smiled. “We’re still not completely sure,” she said. “Not properly, anyway. It was sort of a cascade failure; I broke free first and I think he panicked about that and sent the team out to secure me.”

Her gaze shifted, mind drifting into memory. “I don’t really remember some of it clearly,” she said. “I was deprogrammed somewhere along the way, but I’d been under control for years.”

“It’s been shown mind control can’t last for more than about six months.”

Gigi nodded. “Right - if it’s not being reinforced. I had a control helmet on me most of that time. I was - they could put me in storage for long periods. Me and the rest of the team.

“Walters didn’t want anyone to work out what had happened to us, I think. For him, if we were just not around except when he needed one of our skills, people would assume we were just another team that broke up and more or less vanished.”

Chen was quiet for a few moments. Gigi tried to read her expression, but the former spy had a poker face par excellence. Eventually, though, Chen spoke. “Huh. I wonder how many times that’s actually what’s gone down with this kind of thing.”

Gigi nodded.

“Any idea who deprogrammed you?”

“Just what they were calling themselves at the time,” she deflected. “What would you bet me it’s their real name?”

Chen shrugged at that. “You think they’re around?”

“I doubt it.”

“Okay.” She turned back to her chart. “So. Here’s the issue, so far as I can see it.”

Gigi moved up curiously.

Chen tapped the map in two or three places. “So. We’ve got an attempt on me, which used someone in my workplace - the person with the least reason to be careful - as its approach.”

“Right.”

“We’ve got an abduction of a fixer from right outside a party. Close enough the host was effectively an eyewitness. That’s the one that brings you in, right?”

Gigi nodded, but she was frowning. “Those don’t sound like the same person.”

“That’s what I was thinking, truth be told,” Chen said. “I also have a bunch of reports about a ‘Capitol Ghost’ who uses ‘Stagehands’ whenever they need something done.”

“That… Hm.”

“I know.” She sighed. “That could just be some crook who’s into wacky gimmick outfits. Some low-key meta, maybe, who thinks the gimmick will be the start of something big for them. But…”

“But it could be a mind controller,” Gigi confirmed. “Especially if the Stagehands are usually feminine. It’s rare that you get an all-girl gang led by a guy without something suspicious behind it.”

She couldn’t help but picture her Master, Doctor Bimbeau, as she said that. Her team were all women; their Master led them, or did whenever he wanted to give an order. And to anyone who hadn’t been affected by the Tiara, the hypnotic compulsions they were under would definitely be suspicious.

“Right.” Chen nodded. “So we have between two and three controllers loose in Washington right now.”

“That you know of.”

Chen winced. “Make it worse, by all means,” she said. “But okay, yeah, I guess I’ve got to take that into consideration.”

Gigi nodded. “Do you have much on any of them?”

“Not yet.” Chen looked the costumed heroine up and down speculatively. “If I can get some locations I’m hoping to use you to change that.”

“You’re really looking forward to being able to trust your team again, huh?”

Chen’s expression was somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

*

It was such a privilege to have had her phone returned, but it was also an essential for what she did - and Penny’s owner had finally acknowledged that she had much more value than just serving as a usable advisor or putting forward a single document.

(Not that the bill he’d had was in any way ready to pass muster. Even if there was enough pressure behind it for it to be voted through, it still needed to read like law. Her owner had a number of things he wanted to happen, a number of areas he wanted federally protected from exploitation. But there were ways to express that which he simply didn’t know.)

Penny was working her phone now with an enthusiasm and a gusto she hadn’t had since her first year in Washington. Then it had been enthusiasm for something she was good at but just learning the ropes of; now, she was working with a motivation beyond money or pride.

She was doing this because her owner wanted it done.

And what she was doing was trying to identify who had broken into her apartment. Who might be on her owner’s trail.

Who, in short, posed a threat to them both.

There was no office on the Hill that was completely safe from leaks, nowhere you could set plans in motion and be sure that nobody would hear. Sooner rather than later, word got out into the world.

This was the principle that Penny was working on; that people beside those chasing her already knew what had happened, who had ordered it.

That meant she could find them.

Except that so far, an hour into her calls, there wasn’t even a sniff of any knowledge. The biggest gossips in Washington, the people with the widest extended network, not only didn’t know who’d broken into her apartment - far more worryingly, they weren’t aware her apartment had been broken into.

There were only two explanations for that. Either she’d been unpersoned - unlikely, as they were still at least taking her calls - or this was someone from outside the world of Washington, operating by different rules, not using anyone who was part of the usual city scene.

Except that this also described her owner, and if he’d broken in, he’d have no reason to lie to her about it.

Penny felt a strange fuzziness around the edge of her thoughts, an odd discomfort simply in thinking. She hadn’t experienced that before, and she didn’t much like it.

Why was it happening, she wondered. Why had her head suddenly started complaining? Had it anything to do with the fact her thoughts were questioning her owner?

She’d had doubts about him before, but those doubts had all been about his readiness, had been based on the fear that he was trying to do too much too fast.

That was something that could change, she reflected; if on the other hand he was lying to her, trying to manipulate her in spite of having total ownership of h-

Penny squeezed her eyes shut, putting her hands to her temples. This felt like the beginnings of a migraine.

Her owner, she thought hurriedly, was wonderful. Was so good. It was impossible for her to imagine anyone better to be owned by.

The moment she took her thoughts down that path the pressure and the pain lifted. She opened her eyes again and sighed, having learned an important lesson.

*

Her Ghost was unbuttoning her blouse, and Melissa stood still and patient as a Beautiful Assistant should. As much as he was trying to hide it, she could hear the excitement and the tension in his breathing.

He tugged the tails of her blouse out of the waistband of her miniskirt and ran a hand across her belly. Melissa could almost feel the surprise that there was so little fat across her belly, that the muscle of her core was so close to the surface he would register it with a touch; she knew he would be wondering how someone who worked a desk job maintained an athlete’s body.

He brushed the blouse off her shoulders, took hold of it under her arms and tugged it down sharply.

If this had been the programming she was more used to, Melissa would have made quick, brief adjustments to the way she held her arms and her blouse would have shrugged away quickly. But she was simply (if effectively) in a light hypnotic trance, and no suggestion had been made for her to help, and those two facts together meant there was no agency or impetus to act.

The Ghost clucked his tongue, chiding himself, but from the expression on his face he was finding it amusing more than anything else. He had the blouse off her unresisting, unmoving arms without much more effort or delay, then turned back to her chest.

And, of course, the bra belied the idea of an athlete’s body. To anybody who didn’t know she’d been mentally and physically reworked by Candace Kraft, the Master’s first and foremost slave, Melissa would seem to have a suspiciously perfect body; it was one reason that the only tight clothes she ever wore was the Swift Fox uniform. She wanted to hide the contrast between the deep, sweeping curves of her breasts, hips, and ass and the smooth muscular athletic frame on which they rested.

It would raise far too many questions, many of which she knew had to be going through her Ghost’s head, none of which she could stop him from wondering or even distract him from unless she was given an order.

He unclasped her bra behind her back then hooked his thumb into the taut cloth trying to span her cleavage. Then he pulled, with a flourish worthy of the stage magician he’d lifted much of his villainous gimmick from. Her arms flapped slightly as the shoulder straps jerked forward free of her shoulders, but she remained otherwise motionless as her bra was whisked away and those almost impossibly perky, surprisingly hefty tits of hers jiggled softly into full display.

“Mm-mm-mmm,” was the Ghost’s assessment. “Holy shit.”

The part of Melissa that had been conditioned to take pride in her role as the Ghost’s first Beautiful Assistant wanted to preen at this, but even that was beyond her without a direct order.

He took her tits in his hands, gently, almost nervously, bouncing them on his palms, and Melissa realised that this man, her Ghost, was only barely older than her. “They feel real,” he said quietly. “Are these real?”

“Yes, my Ghost.” God, the relief to have a direct prompt from the person in control, to have something she could actively obey. She shivered.

“Damn.” He tugged speculatively at a nipple, and grinned when a whimper escaped her lips in spite of herself. “And to think I just wanted you to get close to the Raineses.”

This was not a question. It was not an order. But Melissa pushed her trancy, spacey mind, in the hopes of providing better service by so doing: “Yes, my Ghost?”

“I need more information,” he said. “More influence. I need to be able to hit people with power from already behind their security.

“You are the perfect opportunity to seduce Senator Raines and get him under my thumb.”

“Yes, my Ghost.” It wasn’t agreement, which would have required her to think about it, but it was at least acknowledgement, which she was sure would please him.

His hands roamed south from her breasts, finding the waistband of her skirt, and he plucked at the button concealed just above her ass until he could fumble it loose and work the zip down.

Melissa felt his hands linger on her hips, then on her buttocks, long after the skirt had been drawn down far enough that the Ghost could release it and she could feel it fall away around her ankles. If she’d had permission to tilt her head she could even have seen it.

He couldn’t be more than mid-twenties at most, she thought. And he’d evidently picked up his grandfather’s old hypnotic techniques.

Melissa would have bet, if there was anyone to bet with, that he was new to the life of a supervillain. That his ideological decision to begin - to change something for what he saw as the better - was behind him. But he wasn’t yet completely comfortable with what he had the power to do.

And he was trying, using her obedient body as his testing ground, to make himself more comfortable with it than he’d ever been before.

Melissa would willingly serve his purpose, if he would only order her to do so. In the meantime, she stood helplessly, her mind in a trance not quite deep enough that she couldn’t think about things, and enjoyed the feeling of his hands on her ass, and analysed the situation she was in.

She didn’t see any way she could serve both her Ghost and the Doctor. Under his influence, at present she was more interested in serving the Ghost. The impact of Candace Kraft’s brainwashing had overturned her suspicion of mind controllers like Doctor Bimbeau, but Candace’s teachings were no longer uppermost in her mind.

Melissa was accordingly less happy to be controlled than she had been, but she was nonetheless in a positive frame of mind.

You will be the first. You want to be the first, the Ghost had said, and her open, unresisting mind had soaked in the idea like a sponge. She wanted to be part of her Ghost’s new inner circle. Wanted to help him replace the American political system with himself.

He decided after just a couple of moments that her tights weren’t something he was going to take his time with, nor try to work down over her wide broodmare hips and her thick muscular thighs. Instead the Ghost started to rip the material, half-crouched, half-kneeling in front of her, wrenching savagely at the waistline until it gave and then splitting the rest open handfuls at a time, much more easily.

Melissa was very, very conscious that his face - his nose, particularly - was very close to her panties. The excitement she felt might be programmed, and was most a holdover from Candace and the Doctor, but it was as real for her body as it could be in any case.

“Your tits are amazing,” he said quietly. “Your ass is amazing.”

Again, it wasn’t a question, wasn’t an order. It required an act of will on her part just to say “Yes, my Ghost,” but she still did.

“Tell me you’re not a naive young virgin.”

“I’m not a naive young virgin, my Ghost.”

She wasn’t able to look down without instruction, but she was sure he was looking up at her with a slight frown. Still, there was no way for a smile to give away her amusement.

“Well, I guess we put that to the test,” he said. “Because I definitely intend to have you make me cum over and over.”

“Yes, my Ghost,” she said, and waited.

He stood up, put one hand in the small of her back, and started walking forward; Melissa obediently walked with him, and continued walking as his hand slid down to one buttock.

She was promptly marched forward to a table at one side of the room, half-filled with ropes and lighting rigs and coils of electrical cable, everything he hadn’t actually needed in the hypnotic ‘deathtrap’ he’d used to make her his, and then he turned her around, not with a hand on her shoulder but instead one on one tit.

“Sit,” he told her.

“Yes, my Ghost.” And she perched herself on the side of the table; anticipating his next order, she parted her thighs wide, inviting and eager.

He moved in close, put one hand behind her head, and pulled her in for a kiss. She responded tentatively, without enthusiasm, until he broke the kiss to say “You want me to fuck you,” and when his lips met hers again she was all eager indrawn breaths and sharp nails and grinding body.

Her hand reached his belt and she popped the buckle free with a move that seemed practised even if it wasn’t.

She shunted herself forward until only her heavy buttocks kept her on the table as he thrust inside her, humping him with desperate, needy moans and whimpers of pleasure.

*

His office was a room just two doors down from his bedroom, which in a home as large as his was startlingly close. Furnishing and decorating it had cost a six-figure sum, not including the device in the globe-shaped drinks cabinet, which had cost a hundred times as much.

He had an extremely loyal staff. In the twenty years he’d been working in the Capitol, it had become a joke how few of his staff ever left, how few of them really took any time for their families, how little information left his office that wasn’t later found to be information he was happy to have out there.

It was also something of a joke how expansive that staff had ended up being. Certainly, in his office that evening, he was not surrounded by his full team; far from it. But there were seven women there, standing in a loose semi-circle on the far side of his desk; and there was an eighth, who knelt beneath the desk in the space the makers had intended for his legs.

The eighth was currently incapable of thought, in part because her hands were on her nipples, toying and teasing and tugging, and in part because he had shut off her mind with a word. She didn’t need it for what he’d had in mind; when she saw his cock, her reaction was automatic, as natural and instinctive as breathing, and could only be stopped if he specifically told her to.

“Well,” he asked the other seven, “where is he?”

There was an awkwardness to the silence that was made less awkward for him by the eager, worshipful sucking of the eighth woman. That same lifting of the spirits didn’t seem to be happening for his staff, though. Two of them exchanged awkward glances.

“We can’t reach him, sir,” one of those women said. “We’ve been trying, but he isn’t answering.”

“Which means he probably can’t answer,” the other woman chimed in. “You know he would if he could, sir.”

He nodded.

“Opinions?” he asked.

“We have to assume our infiltrator was blown, sir,” the first woman answered. “So when our agent went in to collect Chen, she was ready.”

“How was she blown?”

“That we don’t know, sir. Yet.” This from the second woman. Their tones were identical, matter-of-fact almost to the point of monotone. There was no question of them lying to him, nor of them giving him anything but their best. “I’ve tasked 0034 with investigating.”

He nodded. The thirty-fourth to join his loyal staff had been hired knowing about their computer skills; they had been encouraged to develop those skills and were now an expert hacker. It was likely they could unearth the information reasonably quickly; if the agent had been detained, this would be logged somewhere, and on a computer with network capability.

He shifted slightly. His attention was mostly on the meeting, but the eighth woman in the room’s mouth was competing excellently.

He preferred his meetings like this, believing - incorrectly - that the blowjob kept his mind sharp.

“So we have no idea what’s happening with the Rutherford abduction?”

“Not from that avenue, sir,” the first woman to speak said. “However, I sent 0013 to patrol the suburbs looking for the van, and 0021 to keep an eye on her apartment, in case something happened there.”

“And one or both of these have paid off?”

“Yes, sir.” Her monotone voice was starting to quicken; her breath caught a couple of times; it was clear she was becoming excited. He knew from this reaction that she was reporting results. Results, he had long indoctrinated his staff, earned rewards.

“0021 saw someone break into her apartment. We didn’t recognise her, but I have the description circulating. And then, a day later, Ms Rutherford returned.”

“And?”

“And she was accompanied, sir.” She was moving as she spoke, now, even though her feet seemed glued to the floor; with every heavy, ragged breath her body seemed to undulate, her crotch thrusting as if humping back against some unseen lover. “Not by anyone 0021 recognised. Not by anyone who fits.”

“It’s confirmed, then.”

“Yes, sir,” she moaned, and it was more like she was begging than anything else. “We… ffffuuuuck… we have competition.” She bit her lip, eyes closed, and he could see how badly she wanted to cum.

“There’s another mind controller in town.”

“Yes, sir,” the semi-circle of seven women chorused.

“Well,” he said, and his lips were thin and his expression was cold, “we can’t have that. Ladies, get to it. 0005?”

The first woman to speak, shuddering on the edge of orgasm, replied “Yes, sir?”

“Cum for me.”

Her legs gave way and she cried out with the release. She slumped to the ground, gasping and moaning with her need.

*

Darby didn’t leave her apartment until her watch said it was past ten-thirty at night. Partly that was nerves, partly uncertainty, and partly she was constantly second-guessing herself about the whole situation.

The one thing she was sure of was that she didn’t want Melissa Wilder to catch on that she was being investigated. Darby didn’t think Melissa was dangerous, exactly, but even if her suspicions were wrong, one thing the other woman unquestionably was was capable. Darby was pretty sure she wouldn’t want that capability directed against her.

So she had left it fairly late, confident that Melissa would not be at home when she got there; all the same, she knew she would only have so long before it would be wise to be elsewhere again. However capable the woman was, she’d have to sleep - and sleeping was something she’d probably do at home. Darby would have to be clear before then.

There was no light on in Melissa’s rented home, which Darby chose to take as a positive. Tiptoeing up to the door, she took a deep breath and produced a letter-opener and a hairpin from her pocket. She’d spent hours on video sites online watching; now she would get to put her own abilities to the test. How quickly could you learn something physical without doing it?

Darby had always prided herself on being a quick study, and while the sound of her heart hammering in her ears was both a huge distraction and a sign that she was probably doing something unwise, however necessary she felt it was, she would always remember a strange disappointment that she hadn’t been able to test herself when the lock proved already to be open.

Her senses now on high alert, she slipped inside, glancing around carefully. The lack of light didn’t feel nearly so welcoming now.

There was a faint scent of something, something she couldn’t place at all, something right on the edge of her sensitivity in any case. It was stronger in one of the rooms than the others; exploring cautiously, it took her a long time before she noticed an oddity in the way the window reflected light; there was a point where it seemed, very briefly, to stop.

She made her way over to the windowpane and confirmed there was a hole in there by touch. Her thoughts went immediately to a gunshot, but that didn’t make sense; she’d noticed no blood, inside or out, and there was no damage inside the room that she could see.

It was time to move on around the house, she decided, while also debating whether turning a light on would be safe to do or not.

She went through two more rooms in painstaking detail but also painfully slowly before deciding, in the fourth room, that she had to risk the lights.

It turned out that she was in a bedroom; looked like it was the one Melissa was using. The bed was unmade, sheets half-off exactly as they probably had been when the blonde had got up that morning and gone to the shower. The wardrobe door was ajar. A collection of cosmetics rested on the dresser.

A suitcase rested in the corner, its lid open, neatly folded clothes resting in it.

Darby started by checking under the bed, where she saw nothing of interest. She looked in the drawers of the dresser and found them empty. The bedside table yielded up a surprise; no fewer than three vibrators of various types.

Darby was aware of one of the brands blazoned on the side; she had a vague idea that they made vibrators that could be controlled online, at great distances. The others, she wasn’t sure of the brands but the purpose was clear.

What kind of sex drive must this woman have that when she left home for what was expected to be a short investigation she felt the need for three separate vibrators?

After a few moments during which the answer presented itself in a series of vivid images, Darby forcefully stopped herself from thinking about it. Instead she paused to consider the fact of the open wardrobe - which from this angle she could see into, and see clothes both hanging and lying in the bottom, folded - and the open suitcase, also showing folded clothes.

Melissa didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d half-unpack, half-not.

She picked up the suitcase and turned it on its side.

The clothes didn’t fall out, they just stayed in place.

She tried to pull the top layer out, a pastel blue blouse.

It wouldn’t come.

She rested the suitcase on the bed and felt along the inside. Her fingers found something odd, something that by all logic shouldn’t be there. It felt like a raised bump, maybe like a button.

Darby pressed the button. There was a sharp click and the clothes rose, hinged to the suitcase at one side.

She peered under this into the hidden compartment, then stared at the incredibly recognisable chest logo of Swift Fox.

“…Shit,” she breathed.