2010

In Agent Karen Wainwright’s opinion, you knew a case had properly gotten started when - and only when - you found yourself crawling through air vents.

She was in the ducting belonging to the Mexico City headquarters of Rossum International, a tech corporation of long-standing - they’d been making office equipment, calculators, and computational tools since the 1920s or thereabouts and had begun shipping, then establishing overseas branches, in the fifties. The Mexican expansion was thirty years old itself, and had rapidly become its own master.

Flash forward to now, and the Covert Actions, Liaisons, Infiltrations and Battle Recon Echelon had found it necessary to investigate.

Wainwright was proud to work for C.A.L.I.B.R.E. She did difficult jobs well, did them for a good cause, and the world was a better place whenever she completed one. That was always good. There were, though, jobs that made her skin crawl, and infiltrating Rossum International had been one of them.

Quite honestly, she was glad the case was now moving to a new phase. She’d felt more than a little out of place among the other women working for Rossum - all perfect teeth in identical smiles, all day long, brisk movements, and maximum efficiency. They came in all shapes and sizes, at least, which made things a little less horrifying than if they’d all been stamped out of a machine.

Honestly, Karen had been expecting that for a while. You got a sense in C.A.L.I.B.R.E. for the weird jobs, and Rossum International had very visibly been one of those from the off. But they didn’t seem to be robots - they had actual lives - and besides, they’d given her a job.

Eventually she’d confirmed the existence of several sub-basement research levels not accessible by ordinary means. And that meant she got to get back into the taut, rubbery, resilient catsuit that was the C.A.L.I.B.R.E. field uniform, strap a gun to her waist, check her belt full of equipment pouches and jump into action.

Wainwright crawled through the ducts for twenty minutes before finally hitting paydirt. Peering through the vents themselves, she saw a brightly-lit sterile white workroom below. The desks and other furniture was built - and clearly wired - into the floor; the computers were built into the desks.

This was a purpose-built room for purpose-built projects. Except that wasn’t quite right, because the furnishings that weren’t desks were cylinders, each over six feet tall, each four feet in diameter, made out of glass, and lit from below; they contained some sort of fluid and, floating in the fluid, nude women, hooked up to various different pieces of equipment; an athletic, slightly muscular Latina in a bulky headset covering eyes and ears, a heavily tattooed, somewhat dumpy black woman sporting a thin headband, a short, slim redhead with - Karen could just make out at the angle they were to one another - a metal strip implanted along the spine, and a tall blonde, unremarkable in build, who appeared to have an antenna extending from the surgical scar by their left ear.

Wainwright recognised one of the men who was also in the room as a Rossum researcher; not one she’d thought had much importance to the company. It looked like that might not be so true after all. Rodriguez played the part of an underling very well but his body language in this room was completely different; the atmosphere was different, too, clear that he ruled the roost over the other two, who honestly looked like interns from undergrad courses using up the last of their weed stash. One was even in a Creedence T-shirt, which Karen personally considered to be too on the nose for real life.

She produced a slim digital camera and started filming. Colby would want a full report on what Karen was bringing down before she actually tried bringing it down.

“…How much mental activity are you getting from her?” Rodriguez was pointing at the woman with the headband. The undergrad-looking lab techs hurried to answer.

“Uh, she’s still within a single sigma of normal,” said the tech Wainwright had mentally dubbed Creedence, which made the other tech Babybeard.

“And how much has her mentality adjusted?”

“It hasn’t, sir,” said Babybeard. His voice was hesitant but firm.

Karen couldn’t help but think of Colby’s behaviour in some unit briefings, where it was clear to his entire field team that he’d explained whatever he was saying to the listener several times before, knew it wouldn’t sink in, but also knew he’d be in trouble for not saying it again. “The schematics we have for this device suggest it’s only activated when there’s a command to follow.”

Rodriguez frowned. “That’s not much use.”

“No, sir. If there wasn’t a memory suppressant it’d be no use at all, and the main reason she’s not trying to get asleep is the sedative in the tank. But we might be able to combine some of its tech with others. The suppressant seems useful.”

Rodriguez shrugged and moved on. Through her camera’s sensitive lenses, Karen could actually see Babybeard roll his eyes. She’d sympathise with him if he wasn’t working here.

“What about the radio implant? How much mental activity are you getting?”

“Zero,” Creedence said, “unless we run a command in there. I feel like this is only ever going to work if we get an army of them and set an AI to run them.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s basically a meat puppet,” Creedence explained. “And there’s no feedback, so you’re basically playing the world’s worst video game. Danny and me,” and now, Karen thought, she had a name better than Babybeard for one of them, “we think your supplier must have had her stashed after the last time someone let Macrovac boot up.”

“You think she survived the Mecha-Montreal incident?” Rodriguez asked.

Danny shrugged, picking up the story from his colleague. “We think she was probably one of the Macrovac soldiers before the Pulse,” he said. “It’s not impossible we could be doing better with her, Doctor, but we’d need someone who has skills we don’t have. Ideally you want an AI specialist.”

“That’s no good for our current project,” Rodriguez says. “Have her crated up and shipped to Paris. Professor Montrose has some projects she might be surprisingly suitable for.”

Karen watched as Creedence took a note on these new instructions. She wasn’t happy. This was going to be more than just something she could handle.

“OK,” Rodriguez agreed. “And the full override implant, already discussed. So onto the synthesis helmet - is that actually delivering the metrics for the project?”

Creedence grinned slyly and Karen felt her stomach lurch. She didn’t need to hear what he was about to say to know its basic shape.

“Most of ‘em,” he said. “We’ve tested her in the field, in covert, and in the bedroom. She works flawlessly in all three. Total submission to her encoded Master, uses her skills without needing prompting, will do whatever she’s told. Honestly performance is ahead of any of the methods you’ve had us working on.”

“And the length of control?”

Creedence looked across to Danny, who sighed ruefully. Karen realised she was holding her breath. It wasn’t fear of these two, it was something that periodically came up in C.A.L.I.B.R.E. briefings.

Mental control always wears off over time. One of the reasons people researching in these areas look at implants is that basically any brainwashing technology strong enough to stand out from common or garden psychotherapy needs to be refreshed from time to time.

There were countless solutions that had been tried. Implants were one, but they tended to interfere with the affected subject’s own neural pathing, meaning memory or skills could be lost.

Drugs were another, but needed to be regularly administered. And, long-term, subjects tended to develop an immunity. Occasionally you heard about someone who used drugs as a gateway for something else, but it was only ever so useful.

Metahuman abilities and traditional brainwashing techniques lost a lot of their force over time. Admittedly there were always some who didn’t recover quite as quickly, but it couldn’t be relied on.

Remote helmets or other control wear - there’d been a well-publicised case about four or five years ago where it turned out that the US Department of Defence had attempted to make a super-squad (and breeding pack, it turned out) of heroines into a covert unit. C.A.L.I.B.R.E. hadn’t been involved in either uncovering that one or cleaning it up, and the department still considered that one a major blow to its credibility.

Rumours persisted that someone, somewhere, had the secret to permanent control, but nobody had turned up anything that looked like proof so far. Some Brit, the story went; but then, they did things differently in Europe, and it wasn’t C.A.L.I.B.R.E.’s job to fix their problems.

“It’s a projection,” Danny said, “because we’re not leaving it long enough to verify right now. We’d want a test subject less capable of bringing this place down around us. But based on how little command degradation we’re getting, plus the speed of response to command over time, we think the helmet buys you a good six months before we’d need to set up a refresher.”

Karen bit her lip. That was a new record. Rodriguez’ team seemed to be splicing technologies together and it looked like their research was paying dividends. This was getting pretty serious.

Plus it sounded like the naked woman in the helmet was a metahuman of some kind. They really were the biggest political problem the Reagan administration had given the world, and they’d long become numerous enough that no agency could reliably track them.

It was getting to be a real problem, and it wasn’t one where Karen could risk the meta getting sic’ed on her.

She didn’t make her entrance as she’d initially planned, therefore. Instead she inched her hand back down to her belt, moving as slowly as she dared, making sure no sound would distract them.

Careful fingers found one of her pouches, reading the pattern of raised marks on it even through her catsuit. She drew out her respirator, bringing it back up to her face just as cautiously, just as quietly as before. She primed the reservoir, opened her mouth, and slipped it into place. The minute nose connectors felt the pressure of her jaw on the grip and deployed, sliding up into her nostrils.

So far so good. She took a moment to catch up on the chatter in the room.

Rodriguez evidently wasn’t actually the lead researcher here, just the man whose name was on the project. He was getting briefed by Danny and Creedence. But now they’d begun a technical conversation about the best ways to pre-program the metahuman for activity in the wild, and it was clear to see that Rodriguez at least had some relevant knowledge.

Ugh. Project managers. They could be stunningly dangerous sometimes.

She glanced to the doors, checking them carefully. High-tech doors, and closed - which probably also meant sealed; these labs looked like they’d been overengineered when they were built. Prepared for every contingency.

Which meant they would be pretty good at containing gas. Karen slowly fished out the slim canister and opened it, just by the vent feed.

Knockout gas was never a good idea when you were dealing with crowds. It just took someone noticing they weren’t the only one yawning and suddenly you had panic stations and who even knew how many of them staying upright a while on adrenaline alone - and in that time, everything could go badly wrong.

But something a little more precisely engineered would just slow people’s reactions. Wainwright would already cheerfully give herself the advantage in physical combat against three lab rats, but they might be able to activate one or more of their captives. Or they might summon security. There were a bunch of simple ways this could suddenly go extremely wrong. But, of course, if they were a little slow to react…

Karen shifted around in the vent, moving slowly and carefully, until she could brace her back against the wall and her feet against the grate, ready for a quick exit when it was time.

She was already counting off in her head, and when she hit ninety seconds, she kicked the grate forward and slid out of the new gap, dropping onto one of those desks. The trio were only starting to react when she flipped forward, dropping Creedence with a punch to the nose as she somersaulted from one desk to another. Rodriguez took a kick to the jaw from her as she braced herself on the jaw, a boot to his face in easy, casual range but driven by her thick, powerful thighs.

Danny was trying to shout something. He’d got as far as “Enmascarada-” before a thrown coffee mug caught him in the temple and he dropped.

Karen dug out six ties and began securing the trio. She headed back to the vent and collected her camera. To no surprise, there was no connection here - she couldn’t upload yet. That was probably fine.

Karen was methodical, but she was also a cynic. So while she intended to search the room as a whole, she started by looking at the monitors. Not for what they displayed, but for the memo stickers attached to them. She was searching through them looking for the word Danny had got out, and it was the seventh she checked that had several sentences under that word.

She made her way over to the cylinder containing the Latina in the helmet, holding the sticker-note attached to her gloved forefinger.

This was a bit of a gamble. There was supposed to be sedative in these tanks. Supers could be erratic and unreliable anyway. But if it didn’t happen, all she’d actually lost was time.

She looked down the list. Specific simple instructions, indoctrination mode, direct orders, return to cylinder, whore mode… ew… fuckbot mode… janitor mode.

“Well,” she said aloud. “Clearly you three are lovely people who treat women with the respect we deserve.” She took a deep breath. “Although that being said…

“Enmascarada, superslut.” The disdain dripping from her voice for the second word lowered the temperature in the room, but that was the trigger on the paper.

She hadn’t been at all sure how well this would work, but even floating suspended in the greenish fluid, the heroine’s posture changed. Her shoulders went from round to back, her chest pushed out, her thighs and upper arms pulled in toward her body.

“Alright. Good.” She looked for a release catch on the cylinder. Couldn’t find one. Well, there was more than one way to solve any problem, and they’d been talking about the meta like she was strong.

She took a step back. “Punch through the glass.”

Back went one shoulder. That athletic build, Karen saw, concealed some muscle quite deceptively; when the metahuman cocked an arm, there was far more muscle development than you’d suspect beforehand. Metas broke all the rules; it seemed like they always looked better than humans, too.

Wainwright did her best not to be jealous, but when a C.A.L.I.B.R.E. agent and a metahuman connected, there tended to be some serious tension. Half the time the meta was a target. The other half, they were an untrained loose cannon. But when a body that looked like a teenage boy’s dream could smash through quarter-inch reinforced glass with a single punch, cracking it so badly that the pressure of the water inside caused half of the cylinder to slide off and crash to the ground, shattering into four large sections from the momentum alone, you couldn’t help but be a little jealous.

She took a deep breath. Things were probably about to be easier. “You need to keep me safe,” she instructed. “Understand?”

The woman - Enmascarada was probably part of her codename, but it was easier for now just to think of her as the woman - didn’t nod, or speak, or anything Karen had expected. Instead she knelt smoothly forward on one knee, her arms, resting on her thigh, crossed together under her breasts, pushing them forward, head bowed.

It was pretty clear that there’d been a lot of extra conditioning going on with this woman.

Wainwright nodded to herself, moving across to the desk that had been on the left when she was filming. She withdrew a strip of small USB drives from one of her pouches, accompanied by a compact black marker. Marking the first one with a #1, she connected it up and waited for its boot systems to identify the OS that Rossum International was using, shut down the firewall, and pull all local data. Once she saw the data was beginning to pull, she moved on to the next.

She finished up with Creedence’s desk. He was the one who’d been giving key facts and figures on their control helmet, and useful data was most likely to be there. And there was plenty of key data she wanted.

It looked like the other three control systems they’d been drawing their inspiration from were probably available on the black market - there’d been more than one of each of the surgical implants, after all, and the headband was sleek enough it was probably a production model - which meant other people might have a breakthrough in duration, too. C.A.L.I.B.R.E. would want to know which designers’ work to crack down on and keep the secret in.

But for that, they needed to know how research had developed here.

She made another circuit, collecting all the smaller pieces of paperwork, photographing the others, making a small pile to dump acid over. Fires could be countered; often would be, in labs like these - they tended to have, at minimum, halon systems to keep fires under control. C.A.L.I.B.R.E. had switched to small phials of acid to resolve the problem.

A third circuit collected the USB sticks. With all of that in place - and her captives still out, and no alarm raised at the downloads - it was time to make her exit and call Colby for a response team.

Getting out with all four women would be a challenge. She decided to see if her new asset could solve it, and went back to stand in front of her, one hand on her cocked hip.

“I also need a way out of here,” she said. “Do you fly?”

Still the woman didn’t speak. She lifted her arms, brought her hands together, palms together, fingers pointing up, and bowed her head deeper before resuming her pose.

Well, at least that seemed like a yes. Karen pointed up at the ceiling. “Make a hole,” she said. “Make a hole all the way through to the open air, then come back for me.”

The woman’s legs flexed and she shot up, hurtling at a speed Karen wasn’t prepared for. She hit the ceiling with a noise like thunder and it gave like she’d jumped through a taut sheet of paper. Thundercrack after thundercrack followed, getting closer together as she accelerated through the sub-basements, the basement, the ground floor, the first floor…

Karen shook her head to clear it and started back to the computer consoles. Chances were good that one of them would get the cylinders open.

The building alarm began to blare as she worked. A few moments later, the meta crashed back down beside her, landing with surprisingly little impact, then settling to her knees, thighs apart, hands clasped behind her head, mouth open beneath her helmet in a perfect O.

Karen growled to herself. This woman had been completely reshaped, and the fact she was halfway between a sex toy and a superhuman slave was somehow more unsettling than if she’d been either.

She turned back to the monitor, trying to ignore the vision beside her. And it was in that moment of frustration that she saw it.

A lock icon placed in the bottom right with the other notifications everyone was trained to overlook. She clicked it and a grid of four came up on the screen, all red. Clicking through them all she was rewarded with a series of pleasing clicks as the cylinders began to drain the sedatives.

She checked her communicator, and was relieved to find she had a signal again with the holes made above her. “Colby, you reading me?” she asked. She knew he would be, of course, but it was nice to be polite.

“I’m here,” he answered. “Are you out?”

“Change of plan,” she said. “They’ve got some stuff here we can’t let them have. I’ve liberated some of it, but there’s also some victims in my location who need care. Is your strike team standing by?”

“We can go in five.”

“Well, you can probably hear the alarms,” she said. “I’m about to make my exit. I’ve got plenty of data, beaming that to you now.”

“Well… let’s hope we don’t have to deal with the local cops,” Colby said. “I’m giving the go order now.”

Karen smiled. She turned back to the kneeling super. “Do you remember your home?”

Once again, the hands came together, the head bowed.

“Alright. Fly me to your home. Let’s get somewhere safe.”

Her strong arms caught Wainwright up so quickly and so easily the veteran agent was startled. Flying seemed even faster when being flown than when watching.

*

The worst part of a field assignment was being shot at, of course. But a close runner-up was the debriefing process. Wainwright had had to write a first report almost immediately, without access to the data she’d recovered or a chance to talk to Enmascarada Verde (as her escape route had turned out to be called - and not so much a heroine as a villain, either, with several outstanding warrants C.A.L.I.B.R.E. was hotly debating whether or not to honour). Then a debriefing with Colby, which she’d enjoyed even less owing to the decisions he made.

Finally, she had a second, more detailed written report to submit, in which she was expected to include anything that came up in her verbal debriefing, any other information or inferences gleaned from the perspective of other agents, and any other assets.

It had taken her quite a while to figure out how to make Verde speak while in a submissive mode. It had been worth it, though; almost everything she’d been told before checking it that way had turned out to be a lie, except for one thing; Verde had been open from the off that Rossum International had brought her in with a promise of paid work and got an earlier version of the helmet over her before she could stop them.

She’d never been paid and she’d spent almost a year being used as a test subject for the helmet - as well as at least one criminal errand and a lot of time spent as a brainwashed plaything.

C.A.L.I.B.R.E.’s debrief of the rank-and-file workers what what they were now calling ‘the Rossum front’, the legitimate business housing this operation, had turned up that around 10% of the male staff and nearly 45% of the female staff had undergone at least some level of mental conditioning.

That had led to Wainwright’s current frustration - Colby had booked her in for a slot in C.A.L.I.B.R.E.’s anti-indoctrination process before she was even cleared for full desk work. Submitting the reports was all she got to do, and she’d likely have to write up another after the anti-indoctrination work, assuming that got solved quickly.

On the other hand, Rossum wasn’t going to be a criminal problem again for a while, at least their Mexican end, and that made for an easier time handling a lot of issues on the border. C.A.L.I.B.R.E. were internally happy with her results, and Colby had assured her that the repeat anti-indoctrination check was just him making sure no awkward questions would be asked once his own report was filed.

So, once she got through it, it should all be pretty straightforward. And the sooner her superiors decided what to do with Verde and she didn’t have a horny teenage boy’s idea of the perfect docile woman in her apartment, the better.

…Although she’d admit this much; telling Verde to cook one night when she didn’t have the energy herself had been a stroke of genius.

*

The process took place in one of the best offices in C.A.L.I.B.R.E. HQ, overlooking an extensive woodland in a remote, secret Pacific North West location. The agent receiving the process was always sat facing the window, able to enjoy the view and the tranquillity.

Karen always made a point of attending these in as close to off-duty garb as possible. She was in blue sweatpants and a white halter top with a C.A.L.I.B.R.E. logo on the left breast, plus the ridiculously expensive, overengineered running shoes that were one of her luxury treats for herself.

She sat peacefully, waiting for the consultant to arrive, enjoying the view. She always felt like she could actually smell the fresh pine scent of the trees outside when she was here.

Karen’s eyelids fluttered for a moment and, as they re-opened, her gaze started to blur. She yawned involuntarily, drawing in even more of that fresh, welcoming scent.

She didn’t worry that her vision was going. Didn’t worry that it was early morning after a good night’s sleep, but she was drifting off to sleep all the same. Somehow all of this seemed familiar. Seemed perfectly natural.

She heard a change in the tone of the fans in their air vents, and settled more comfortably into her chair. Karen closed her eyes and sighed contentedly.

The door opened behind her. “Hello, Agent Wainwright,” a man’s voice said softly. It wasn’t the voice she expected in these sessions; if she’d known C.A.L.I.B.R.E.’s actual expert in indoctrination and counter-brainwashing was slumped in his own office chair, asleep, a mug of his coffee fallen onto the carpet, she might have been concerned.

But that man had done his job for the years of her service. She trusted C.A.L.I.B.R.E. implicitly.

Up until two weeks previous, that was basically fine.

The man behind her put his hand on her shoulder, and Karen’s head flopped forward as she dropped the rest of the way.

He closed the door and locked it behind him. Standing behind her chair, he reached down and slipped one hand inside her top, finding his way inside her bra to fondle her, watching for any response.

When she didn’t react, he chuckled. “Can you hear me, Agent?”

“Yes,” she murmured softly.

His other hand found its way around her head, cradling her cheek, stroking it gently. “You’ve done very well, Agent,” he said. “But we need more from you now.” He paused. “C.A.L.I.B.R.E. needs you. But you need to keep this all secret. Very secret.”

She would have objected to his hands in any other situation. But something about her state right now was open. Curious. Accepting. She was used to being led easily while she was in this room.

“Will you do that, Agent?”

“Yess,” she whispered.

“You can only speak of it in this room, or,” and he broke off from groping her to place a handset on the table, “when this phone rings. It must be answered only in private. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she said crisply. His hand returned to her breast. She straightened under his touch, arching her back ever so slightly - little enough that she could be unaware of it herself.

“Agent, I can say with confidence that you walked into this room a loyal agent of C.A.L.I.B.R.E.,” he continued. “And that’s what we need here. This organisation is compromised. And you will help me to identify the compromised individuals, and to help us protect C.A.L.I.B.R.E. from being taken over. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, sir,” Karen breathed. With his touch, it became much harder to think, to focus. Her voice grew quieter. Deference became more natural.

“That’s very good, Agent. I will need you to give me support no matter what. I will have to ask you for unhesitating obedience to my orders.” He paused, and the tone of his next statement was very different from his gentle request. “You will give it freely.”

Well, he was correct. Of course he was. Karen knew she would give him unhesitating obedience the moment he told her she would give it freely. Her posture shifted, spine straightening further, firmly assuming the role of his underling, attentive and ready.

“So let’s put you to the test.” No question in the tone; the same firm confidence he’d already shown. “Remember, every order you obey brings C.A.L.I.B.R.E. closer to the right path.”

She nodded.

“Stand up,” he said. Her first order! She rose to her feet happily, delighted to have a chance to obey. She wasn’t at all clear, once she’d finished following the order, how it would help C.A.L.I.B.R.E. but it was a small, simple order. She didn’t have the big picture. So it was fine that she didn’t know.

He pulled her top off, and she did nothing to resist. She felt she should be objecting. She just… didn’t. This was her superior, and while C.A.L.I.B.R.E. had always drilled into her and her team mates the importance of questioning superiors, it didn’t seem right.

Not here, not in this room.

“Bend over the table,” he instructed, and she did. She could see what was coming and she wasn’t convinced she liked it, but she was still a loyal C.A.L.I.B.R.E. agent and she’d do her level best to fulfil her orders well. She braced her hands against the smooth finish of the table, the phone she’d been given between them, stepped backward from the table and spread her legs.

He pulled her sweatpants down to her knees, then took a moment to fondle her rear before slipping his fingers into her panties at the hips, drawing them down in turn. Karen shifted slightly at his touch, a little uneasy.

He probed her with his fingers, eager at first, then awkward and hesitant. “Get wet for me, Agent,” the man said. “And enjoy this.”

Karen was less and less happy with her orders, but she nonetheless obeyed unhesitatingly. Her dazed half-frown melted into a blissful smile. It was time to enjoy this. She could try to figure out how the orders would help later.

And then he was in her. She gasped in delight, feeling that everything was, now, going right. She was enjoying herself. She was enjoying this. She was wet - not just wet, but wet for him. This was her superior, and it was an essential part of her loyalty to C.A.L.I.B.R.E. that she stand there and-

“Fuck me,” he said. Everything changed again. She was still aroused - she’d been ordered to be - but now there was more to it. She squeezed herself tight around him, and a part of her delighted in his startled gasp. She always tried to excel above her directives, after all.

She was pretty sure this wasn’t going to help C.A.L.I.B.R.E. but a nagging voice in her head insisted it would. And while she might question her orders, she still obeyed unhesitatingly. This was not the time to question. That could come later…

She heard his breath start to quicken as his pace did, and she pushed herself hard to match him, rocking back against him, milking him, simulating a needy eagerness that she imagined would be the better experience for him.

Her hands tightened around the desk, gripping harder, giving her the balance she needed to grind back against him until he erupted inside her. Moments later, the compulsion to enjoy it overwhelmed her, eyes rolling back in her head, crying out in bliss.

She slumped forward on the table as he pulled out.

“Wait there, just like that, for five minutes,” the man said. “Then get dressed, make sure you look like nothing is out of the ordinary, hide the phone, and go about your day. You’ve proven your loyalty now, Agent. I’ll be in touch with further orders.”

He unlocked the door and left. Karen, still slumped over the table, waited out the five minutes unhesitatingly, but a list of questions she’d want answered was growing. She’d find a way to get her answers. She’d make sure C.A.L.I.B.R.E.’s corruption was banished.

She was a loyal agent, and she would obey.