It was rare that Fantasio stood trial. He wasn’t alone in this; a number of metahumans had sort of slid sideways from regular crimes into the espionage arena, and when they were caught, judgement was usually summary and behind closed doors. Occasionally it led directly into his next job.

He was led, one morning, from his cell and taken to a small interview room, where he was handcuffed to the desk. Sitting there alone for a short while, he allowed himself a gentle smile. As much as things had gone very, very wrong, he wasn’t being put somewhere like this unless there was a deal to be reached. Someone in the US government wanted someone given his treatment.

He didn’t get the option as much as he used to these days; a lot of the decision makers who used to turn to him had gradually acknowledged that mind control always wore off in the end. Usually when it did that meant whoever had been affected was only too happy to blow the whistle on whatever operation they’d been compelled to cooperate with, which made most strategies a gamble if you had to remain in the public arena.

On the other hand, anyone sufficiently callous had ways of dealing with people before their own free will reasserted itself, and there was always someone who thought they could make their biggest rival screw over their own career and come out the other end grateful they’d been made to. And sometimes they were even right about that - but that didn’t matter. A deal meant that he was coming out of all this better than anyone else, and he’d have plenty of time to rebuild before C.A.L.I.B.R.E. worked out he was still at large.

He was grinning when the door opened. By the time it closed after the two women, his smile was nowhere to be seen.

Pytki spat on the desk between his hands. “You,” she snapped, “you are a worm.”

“You can’t be in here,” he protested. Which was, he knew, completely pointless. The people they dealt with didn’t follow rules. Alongside people like Pytki’s brother, who’d started off working to overthrow America, he now worked for people looking for revenge or to seize power. He knew as well as anyone that unless C.A.L.I.B.R.E. and the other agencies in the alphabet soup worked on it constantly, they were as bad as him (or little better, at the very least.)

Anything could happen if someone with power wanted it to.

Pytki slapped him. As robust and sturdy as the old woman was, it didn’t hurt much; all the same, his hands were chained, he couldn’t strike back, and he was discovering just how much worse that made it.

“That wasn’t good enough, was it?” the other woman asked. Fantasio wasn’t at all sure who she was, and even though she dwarfed Pytki, the little Russian woman somehow seemed to tower over her six feet of height. Amazing what a sufficiently forceful personality could do; Fantasio didn’t think she’d be content to sit in the farm and oversee it anymore.

But the other woman…

Tall. Statuesque. Startlingly muscular - the definition on her arms was something he’d have been obsessing over if she was under the influence of his hypnotic gas - and busty enough with it that Fantasio wasn’t sure if she was just a fitness freak or a full on superhuman.

She was staring at him like he was garbage, something he was familiar enough with outside his work, outside opportunities to dose the women around him - but just like Pytki’s slap, it was much scarier when he was chained up. The woman was…

Fantasio felt the blood drain from his face, a light-headed moment of true fear. “Oh, shit,” he said. “You’re the thief.”

Carmen’s lip curled. “Is that all you think I am?”

“I-”

He never even saw her backhand coming. One moment he was trying to find the words; the next, his head had snapped back, there was a raging pain across his jaw and his cheek, and the two women were smiling together in a satisfied way.

“Yes,” Pytki said quietly. “She’s the one we picked to be the thief. Remember? You pointed me at C.A.L.I.B.R.E. and we both looked at them as pawns? Except I was a pawn too.” She leaned in close. “I learn quickly, little man. And since these Americans have helped me find my true self again,” and she spat on him once more, “I recommend you do not try this again. Or there will be another lesson, and it will not be for me.”

“That goes double,” the Mexican villainess chimed in. “You’ve hurt someone you shouldn’t have. Do you really think revenge is a good idea?”

He shook his head weakly. Fantasio wasn’t a man who spent time on revenge unless it was someone else’s. If he ever tried for it, it was seizing an opportunity he was near anyway.

His head bowed, he only looked up again when he heard the door close, finding himself once again alone in his thoughts.

There was sure to be a deal coming, he knew. But he also knew that if those two had been granted access, allowed so close to him that any of that had happened, he was still going to be watched.

This was going to be… difficult.

*

Carmen paused after closing the door. She reached out, putting her hand on gently on Pytki’s shoulder. The older woman turned and looked up toward her.

“Was that enough, do you think?” Carmen asked. She was doing her best to be compassionate; she knew the woman deserved it, but it didn’t come easily to her. She’d actually asked for hypnotic compulsion on the topic before the two ladies made this visit; without it, she wasn’t sure she could have brought herself to accompany the woman who’d screwed around with Karen even if it wasn’t her intention. “It seemed like you didn’t really get revenge.”

Pytki shrugged. “Revenge is not what I needed, child. It’s just what I had to tell your Mr Colby I needed.” Not that Carmen really knew Colby, but that wasn’t a conversation worth having.

“What were you really after?”

“Hm?” Pytki chuckled. “No, no.” She waved a hand. “There’s no grand plan, child. Revenge isn’t something I need on America, either. Perhaps after that helmet’s effect wears off, but not now.” The smile was almost toothless, delighted, and nothing like the buttoned-up bitch Carmen had pictured at the heart of all this beforehand - nor the sobbing wreck she’d seen once Colby had needled her into breaking Fantasio’s conditioning. Suddenly Carmen had some understanding of the tragedies that must already have littered this woman’s life, to bounce back from each one so quickly. Would she have recovered from her treatment at Rossum if she hadn’t had a lot of space and plenty of opportunities to enjoy her telenovelas? “No, what I needed was to see that it’s at an end. I needed to see in his eyes that he will not return for me.”

“And he won’t.” Carmen didn’t need to make that a question; she was every bit as certain as the old Russian. The hit she’d landed was one he wouldn’t forget any time soon.

“No, no.” She looked down and laughed. “No. I go back to my farm now. I enjoy my farm. I don’t see any reason to go waste my time on feuds that aren’t mine in another country.”

Carmen was still trying to work out what to say when the stocky woman stopped, turned around, and wrapped her up in a hug. “You do something for me,” she said.

“Uh… sure?”

“Stop fucking around,” Pytki said bluntly. “We knew about you. Read your records. You got in trouble because you fucked around. Yes?”

It wasn’t true, Carmen told herself insistently. But if she was complete honest… “I guess so.”

“Power like yours can be used to make everyone better. That makes you better too.” She gave a more sympathetic smile this time. “And it makes enough money to stop worrying about money. Crime isn’t smart. Yes?”

Carmen was blushing. She really hadn’t known this woman at all…

Which made sense, as Pytki had been under control throughout. It just wasn’t what Carmen expected; she felt like if someone wasn’t themself under control, they should be clearly distinct, the way her maidslut and superslut personas were.

“I think you’re going to be OK,” she told the older woman, who snorted. “Are you?”

“I think so,” Carmen said. Then she repeated herself. “I think so. I have some support this time.”

The grin on Pytki’s face was obscenely knowing, the laugh startlingly earthy. “I bet,” she said. “I bet!”

And then the two of them, already walking along the corridor, reached a point where one of Burrows’ men was waiting for them, and Pytki was on her way to a car and the airport, while Carmen was walking down a different corridor, headed to whatever others had scheduled for her.

*

By courtesy of Director Zorn, Deputy Director Burrows’ deprogramming was to take place separately from the others. It could be a messy, uncomfortable process when handled in a group, but group deprogramming remained a common practice; it would often highlight shared triggers much earlier than they might come out for some of the affected agents. The Director felt that Burrows was already the subject of too many rumours, and giving any foundation of fact to them would not help her authority.

She disagreed, for several reasons, but all her reasons stemmed from a decision she’d made. As she had no idea, pre-deprogramming, whether she’d actually been the one to make the decision, she hadn’t argued yet.

The one positive was that she’d been shipped overseas for her deprogramming. There were some really good clinics in America, but there were plenty just as good throughout Europe - and none of them were embroiled in the usual politicking of the American intelligence agencies. Zorn had found room in the budget for a high-priced private clinic in Switzerland. It had been a school, once, a finishing school for the daughters of the ultra-rich before it closed down in a blaze of scandal.

The new owners had improved comforts across the campus, but importantly they were a purely private endeavour. Most of the deprogramm-ees who attended were rich women or men who’d been kidnapped and conditioned until, finally, they either rescued or escaped. Money was no object for the average attendee.

Deputy Director Burrows sat on a sun lounger on her balcony, snug in her chic winter wear, and sipped daintily at the Aperol Spritz the barman had made her at the end of lunch. She had a while before her afternoon session, and she was determined to enjoy it just as much as she could.

In the evening, she’d have a chance to get out on the slopes. She was really relishing the opportunity to be out and about with no risk that the person to descend on her would be Fantasio. No real risk, either, that anyone she connected with might be after her because of anything other than her looks.

Burrows had no interest in abandoning the pleasures of the flesh. The knowledge she’d been controlled by Fantasio only horrified her because of the damage he’d done; being controlled was an occupational hazard with a horrible cost if your will crumbled to the wrong provocation, but it was also, in her opinion, the perfect excuse to let go. Way back at the beginning of her career, the attitude had seemed to be that if you weren’t seducing a target, you shouldn’t be having or thinking about sex; you were just putting everyone at risk.

Things were different now, but the first time the Deputy Director had been hypnotised, when she was a young field agent herself… well, the amount of classified information she’d confided had been a serious problem. On the other hand, the two weeks she’d spent as a doting, drooling, dripping fuckdoll had left a strong impression on her.

Burrows sipped at her drink and reflected that if she’d ever told Zorn that he would certainly not have sent her to this outfit. Any deprogrammer did a fair amount with hypnotic suggestion as part of their process. Zorn would have wanted to make sure nobody took advantage of her.

Burrows, on the other hand, had packed all her best lingerie and had spent the first day in the clinic eyeing up all the male employees. There were a few likely candidates, she thought, to let them take her to bed imagining it was their idea. Privately, there was one of that list she thought would take advantage of hypnotic suggestions to do that.

Something like five per cent of the reports that crossed the Deputy Director’s desk were associated with mind control in one format or another. She’d become quite adept at recognising the body language of the people who used it… well, so she’d thought.

Had she overlooked Fantasio? Or had some part of her been just aching for the release?

It was a release that had led to the partial destruction of her organisation’s head office. Good men and women were in the hospital. As a result of even a short burst of shadow war, America was temporarily vulnerable.

That was a huge misstep in judgement, if it was a misstep.

The floorboard outside her door creaked, and was abruptly silent. She didn’t investigate, knowing he would enter in any case.

His name was Kian. He wasn’t one of the doctors in charge, but instead seemed to fill a role somewhere between orderly and technician.

Burrows had mentally noted that on her return to active duty, she should task someone with figuring out where all the control technology here originally came from; some of it seemed to be integrated into the building in ways that would have been hard to do after the fact. Kian was one of the people tasked with operating it.

She sipped her drink and watched, on the slope facing the clinic, as two skiers passed into view near the treeline. She was smiling to herself. Kian no doubt thought himself so clever, so self-assured, and for that matter, so sneaky.

Burrows heard his every movement in the room behind her. Without taking her eyes off the skiers, she could track his progress perfectly, and she knew he’d paused at the headboard to nudge open the false panel, to pluck out the control headband.

If she hadn’t worked hard during her first couple of days to make sure he had the idea in his head to take advantage of her, if a little time out of her own head with no issues of national security arising wasn’t exactly what she wanted, he would never have seen the backhand strike coming.

But she’d put in the effort, and she firmly believed that the best cure for a bad experience was a good one of the same kind. And so Kian would never realise how much she anticipated his approach on each visit.

The headband wasn’t exactly a headband, that was just how she thought of it. It was a metal band shaped into a loose semi-circle a little larger across than the human head, and it had a silicon sponge padding on the inside which used some kind of static adherence technique to stick in place once applied to the head. It had been a genuine surprise the first time - she’d been expecting a pocketwatch to fall in front of her face, or perhaps a smartphone with some app or other - and she still wasn’t entirely sure she felt anything once contact was made.

At either end of the band was a small conical nozzle made of a soft rubbery material. Burrows wasn’t at all sure what it was but she knew that it vibrated in a harmonic with the human body, and the result was absolutely delightful. It was like skilled hands massaging her brain’s pleasure centres directly.

The device was already running as Kian slipped it over her temples. Burrows’ vision swam immediately, not that she was in any state to register that as the shuddering happiness rolled over her and her ability to think quivered and dissolved into nothingness.

She felt Kian slide a hand under her top, reaching down to squeeze a tit; the device’s pleasure seemed to double as his fingers made contact. With his other hand he tilted her head back, her mouth falling open, and he kissed her, the device’s energy seeming to tingle across their lips…

*

Karen was a little uneasy in her own deprogramming session. Also in the room - though rather more chained to their seats than she was - were Bennet and Chen. Cooper, she knew, would be elsewhere dealing with some similar process at the hands of the CIA.

The room was an auditorium she’d never been in before. Not surprising; she’d only actually needed deprogramming once before and she’d been the only person who did at the time. Most of her evaluations and tests had similarly been solo.

Neither of the others wanted to look at the screen in front of them, and they were making that known and very, very clear. Karen didn’t much like the idea either, but as the spiral formed on the screen she forced herself to study it, to keep her eyes on it.

The muttering from Chen’s chair was becoming a little much for her, getting in the way of letting go - not that she wanted to let go in the first place, as important as she knew it was - so without looking away from the spiral, Karen kicked out to the side. Her boot hit Chen’s chair high and sent it toppling to the side, leaving the agent sprawling as the chair shattered.

Chen bounced back to his feet, but she was facing in the wrong direction, and that rebound brought her face to face with the spiral. What could have gone very badly for everyone in the room… just didn’t, as Chen, caught in the effect of the spiral, became so still she was almost a statue.

“No!” Bennet blurted. She stomped at the floor - as best she could with boots taped to her chair - trying to give herself the opportunity to escape.

Karen was almost lost to the spiral, and she hung there for a while, deliciously close to dropping - but the gasps and yells of Bennet were keeping her from it, just as she’d reached the point where she didn’t just understand the importance of dropping. She wanted to drop.

“Tell your friend to stop,” she said or, rather, slurred. She was processing things more slowly and probably was only hearing half as much as she should be.

“Bennet, stop,” Chen said, rapping out the syllables in military cadence. If anything she was standing taller now, though it was hard for Karen to be sure that wasn’t her own altered perception.

Bennet fell silent, and Karen dropped away into trance.

*

“The thing that sticks with me the most,” Chen told Colby afterwards, beers in hand, “is the certainty. It was… Well. You probably miss being certain as much as I do.”

He nodded. Certainty wasn’t something a C.A.L.I.B.R.E. agent got to have very often. “Must have been tempting,” he offered.

“Oh, no,” she denied. “Well… yes. But it wasn’t the big temptation. It wasn’t what kept me locked in.”

“Okay.”

“This was the worst part,” Chen told him, and the frustration she felt at that was visible in her eyes. “I didn’t just feel like I was doing the right thing. It was like… like I finally had the chance to make up for doing the wrong thing… for years.”

“So everything you’d done for us became a mistake?”

“Exactly that. And there’s still a little bit of that in my head.” She sighed. “I know it’s wrong, now. But it’s still there. You don’t just get away from that.”

He looked at her sympathetically for a long moment. “That’s pretty rough.”

“Yeah. Anyway… sorry I clocked you.” There was a half-smile on her lips there, but he heard the genuine, honest regret too.

“Well, you had the advantage of surprise,” he said, then laughed. “Not that I could’ve stopped you anyway.”

“You got that right,” she grinned. “But… I’m probably going to hold myself back from the next few strike teams. Maybe go train agents a while.”

Colby nodded. “I get that.”

*

The double doors slid open in front of Bennet. Glassy-eyed, she began to move forward again

The room beyond the doors was more like a classroom than an office; every desk was empty except for a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and water bottle, they all pointed in the same direction, and the spacing between them didn’t lend itself to office workers passing in the aisles but instead to a single file kind of movement that only worked well when movement was strictly and clearly controlled.

Bennet didn’t need to look where she was going to find her way to her assigned desk; it was programmed into her mind. She wasn’t even aware of the other compromised C.A.L.I.B.R.E. analysts who were filing into the room at the same time, but collided with none of them all the same.

A few moments after the last straggler was in place, each monitor - and the corresponding desktops - turned on in unison, and the dozen or so glazed analysts’ vision focused in on it.

C.A.L.I.B.R.E. had long ago come to the realisation that as useful as AI is for processing reams of data very fast, calibrating it to make value judgements is near impossible.

Instead they used AI to group news stories, social media, and leaked documents that appeared related, and these were then flashed up on screens in front of trained analysts whose conditioning suppressed their own personal biases. This process allowed them to bring human judgement to bear on potential crises early, so long as the indicators were available to the public online.

Bennet was unaware that she’d been sentenced to spend six months as part of this service; in fact, to be part of it until her conditioning wore off. But then Bennet wasn’t aware of much right at that moment; her mind was almost entirely absent, running purely on her new programming, which would carry her over until whatever amount of mental worm programming she currently had also elapsed.

She would probably resent the loss of half a year of her life, but she might be comforted, once it happened, to realise that she’d spent six months with almost no expenditure and her C.A.L.I.B.R.E. pay being deposited into her account every month like clockwork.

*

Driving back to the condo after her deprogramming, the world seemed a little larger and scarier. Karen felt ill at ease, uncertain, and looked at every upcoming turn in the road as if she might be ambushed there. As if she might be driving there solely to be ambushed.

She’d betrayed herself, when programmed to do so. Hadn’t been able to stop it, and had barely known it was coming. It was far, far too easy to assume there was nothing left - and there almost certainly was nothing left - but she was still worried, still wondered if she might betray herself again.

She let herself into her condo and securely, safely locked herself in. The burner phone Fantasio had used (and what a relief to be able to think that name again without a panic attack) was gone. There was nothing in her home that could open her up to attack.

Her silent, empty home.

When she’d bought the condo, Karen had been excited to get it how she wanted. To make memories. She’d thought idly that one day it might hold a family, at least while the children were young.

Now it seemed both too large and empty and too cramped and confined. Karen walked slowly from room to room, almost in a daze. What had happened? Was it just the aftereffects of Fantasio? Was it her fear?

She was passing by the door to the den when she realised what was missing. At that time of day the TV should have been on. Carmen was always watching her telenovelas.

Karen was surprised to realise she was wistful at the thought. She’d hated those things.

…But, of course, it wasn’t the telenovelas themselves that Karen missed. She missed Carmen. Missed the presence of the other woman. Missed the flashes of sarcastic humour that had come out from time to time. Missed her confidence.

If she was willing to be truly honest with herself (and there was a good chance she wasn’t, she told herself, but either way…) Karen missed the way Carmen’s jaw went slack when she was triggered. Missed the powerhouse’s surprisingly gentle touch, the warm softness of her naked body.

Giving in to impulse and triggering the woman when she didn’t need to had been a mistake. It had made the idea of doing it again all too tempting.

Karen hadn’t given any consideration at the time to what Carmen would do when the helmet’s influence finally wore off. When she was a villainess once again, with full awareness of what she’d been made to do.

At first Karen had told herself that rescuing Carmen would count for something. That she wasn’t required after to keep Carmen under control unless she tried to leave. And as she’d triggered her more and more, she hadn’t re-examined that rationalisation.

But now, thinking back over everything she’d done - especially the day Carmen had been commanded to pamper her, then taken to the bedroom and used - Karen’s blood chilled.

There was no way this didn’t lead to vengeance. And while C.A.L.I.B.R.E. as a whole had their victories against metahumans, a single agent against a single supervillain was never likely to go the agent’s way.

Karen stood outside the den, lost in thought and fear, for a long time - long enough to realise that fear wasn’t the only emotion running through her. She also felt regret; a strong dose of it. Regret for how she’d acted, yes, but regret also for everything she’d lost by doing so.

Maybe she should put in for a transfer, she thought. Disappear to another branch office. Keep her head down. Unless Carmen enlisted that know-all friend of hers again, she might never find her…

But, of course, if she wanted vengeance for herself, Carmen would surely call in that favour. Running would be useless, wouldn’t it?

What eventually startled her out of her absent musings was a gentle rapping sound, someone knocking to get in. Karen froze, unsure who would knock but certain they were a threat.

Staying still didn’t work, in that the knocking never fully went away; whoever this was wouldn’t be put off.

Karen went to fetch her gun.

The hidden lens in her front door showed nobody there, so Karen knew it had to be an ambush. She placed herself to one side of the door, eased the lock off, and waited.

When the knocking next came she realised it wasn’t even coming from the front door. Hastily she locked it again, kept her gun held ready, and moved back through the condo trying to place the sound.

It turned out to be coming from the balcony; from the living room doorway she could see her visitor, hovering a foot above the balcony, and her blood ran cold.

Was Carmen already free of her programming? Was that why the beautiful villainess was there?

Her gun was going to be useless regardless. Karen set it down on the desk in the hallway and crossed to the balcony door, walking almost on tiptoes in her nervousness. The closer she got to the other woman, the more that cocktail of regret and attraction and fear seemed to rise up inside her until she wasn’t sure what she was feeling but she was feeling it with every fibre of her body.

Carmen settled down to land on the balcony as Karen opened the door, and the two women looked at one another in silence.

“May I come in?” Carmen asked after a long while of quiet. Karen fell back a pace in answer, nodding.

The superhuman stepped in cautiously. It took Karen a moment to realise what was off; she seemed just as nervous as Karen felt.

Obviously that was ridiculous. What did she have to be nervous about?

“I expected you’d head back to Mexico by now,” Karen said, her voice suddenly small. As scared as she was, it was now very clear to her just how much she didn’t want Carmen to leave.

“No,” Carmen said simply. “I thought about it, but… No.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t like who I was down there.” Carmen’s voice was quite. “It would be easy to slide back into her.”

C.A.L.I.B.R.E.’s official line had been that it was perfectly alright if Enmascarada Roja returned to her criminal ways, just so long as she kept them to another country. They might operate outside the States from time to time, but other nations weren’t their responsibility; they only reached out if they believed America might be targeted.

“Oh,” was all Karen could manage. Her eyes were on the floor; she didn’t want to see Carmen’s face. Didn’t want to give away how she felt. Didn’t want, either, to see in Carmen’s reactions the rejection she knew must be coming.

“I thought I’d stay here.”

This was technically a criminal act of its own; she certainly didn’t have residency. It was, however, one C.A.L.I.B.R.E. could turn a blind eye to - just so long as nothing else happened.

“Well… be careful, please? I really don’t want to have to arrest you.” Karen hated herself for the way her voice cracked as she spoke. She felt like an open book. Her shame and her embarrassment as clear as her attraction and her guilt.

This was why she shouldn’t have allowed herself to indulge. Mind control would always come back to bite you in the ass in the end.

She kept her eyes on the floor. When the punch came she didn’t want to see it. She’d rather just black out from the impact.

“You won’t,” Carmen said. “I can guarantee it.” It seemed to Karen as if the other woman’s voice cracked a little there too. As if this was just as hard.

“Are you joining a supergroup or something?”

There was another long, long period in which neither said anything.

“Fuck it,” was how Carmen began when she finally spoke again. “If you tell me to I will.” She leaned hard on the sentence. Emphasising its importance. Trying to send a message.

Karen didn’t see how this could lead to Carmen’s revenge. Bewildered, she tried to process what Carmen had said again, looking for the hint that everything was about to go horribly wrong.

When she couldn’t, she looked up. Almost a foot taller, Carmen seemed to be looming over her, staring down at Karen, a fierce longing in her eyes.

Now their eyes had met it seemed neither of them could look away. Karen was conscious of the heat in her cheeks, of her blush; it must be some kind of projection that she saw a blush in Carmen’s eyes too.

“I’ll,” Carmen began, and her voice shook, “I’ll do it if you tell me to. I’ll do anything you tell me to.” There were tears brimming in her eyes, and Karen realised suddenly there were tears in her own.

“You’re not,” Karen started, but her throat was dry and the words died on her tongue. She tried again. “You don’t really think that. You just-”

“Mistress,” Carmen interrupted firmly. “Apparently you don’t understand what was done to me.” Her scared expression now had a hint of amusement blended in. “You can tell me what to do, but you can’t tell me what I think.”

“I - I - oh.” Karen was quiet for a while, eyes downcast away from Carmen’s once again. “Oh,” she said again, so quietly it might have been just for herself.

She wasn’t sure how it happened or even when it had started but Carmen was holding her and, nestled close against the taller woman’s soft, strong body, Karen began to smile. “Are you sure about this?” she mumbled.

“Perfectly sure, Mistress,” Carmen replied. “So long as you are.”

Karen couldn’t contain her grin any longer. She tilted her face up, still nestled in the woman’s superhuman bosom. “Kiss me,” she commanded, and Carmen happily obeyed.