Tracy had no intention of leaving the office that night, but she didn’t want anyone aware of the lair, and she certainly didn’t want anyone on the floors near her when she popped the lid on Sofia, just in case the process - or her aide’s reaction to it - was going to be louder than she anticipated.

At the same time, she didn’t want to summon anyone else up to the penthouse to solve the problem of dinner, as she’d have to find some way to get two people’s worth of food and hide Hornet, and in any case they would wonder why she hadn’t delegated the job through her aide, which might lead to the wrong person (Tracy was sure there’d be one, and she had no idea who it would be) missing Sofia and wondering where she was.

She said as much to Hornet as the heroine stood nude to attention in front of her. Hornet remained silent, which surprised Tracy but she couldn’t deny there was something about that decision she really enjoyed.

Tracy was mulling over the problem, drumming her fingers on the big desk (surprisingly satisfying; maybe this was why those expensive woods were so highly priced, as they gave a great sound and felt excellent with only a thin coat of lacquer), when she realised she was, quite literally, looking the solution in the face.

“Hornet,” she said, “you want to obey me, don’t you?”

There was a change in how Hornet stood, or in her expression, or something. Tracy was sure of that, even if she couldn’t say what shift in posture she’d observed, nor claim even to herself that Hornet’s blank features had any kind of expression, either before or after. “Yes, Mistress.”

The tone of her voice had changed too, or the undertones at least, with the same kind of eagerness that had come over Hornet when Tracy had started pushing the boundaries of what she was willing to order.

It felt significant, like one of those moments where a dozen small things crystallise into a moment of pure, brilliant insight, and Tracy hated that nothing occurred to her and when the moment passed she was none the wiser.

Not that what she had in mind now involved pushing any boundary on the orders she’d give.

“Good,” she said. Hornet’s eyes glittered. “We need to get you some kind of incognito outfit.”

“There are some in storage below, Mistress,” Hornet answered. “Vulcan is thorough.”

“Was,” Tracy corrected firmly. “What else has he got for you down there?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“My old costume, the serving wench version of my old costume, and two different outfits for use when I am required to commit crimes, Mistress.”

It was on the tip of Tracy’s tongue to say Let’s just take a look at that serving wench outfit, but at that moment, as if sensing a loss of attention, her stomach growled. “Well,” she said, and triggered the lair entrance to open, “go and get changed.”

“I obey, Mistress.”

*

Terry Wilson had decided that he liked the Vulcan armour a lot. It had been the devil’s own job fitting into it; while Terry still made his twice-weekly trips round the golf course and showed up to play squash once a week, he had long ago decided that a man in his position shouldn’t stint himself at meals, and the result was a bit of a paunch.

It hadn’t occurred to him that a paunch and a sleek suit of power armour might be at odds with each other.

He was also sure he hadn’t identified every important feature of the suit; there were definitely controls he hadn’t mapped out, the thing had no voice command function, and any time he opened his mouth more than a particular distance a part of his chin nudged one of what was obviously a set of control buttons set into the armour’s jawline.

One of these had superimposed wireframe gridlines over his view of the city, and he hadn’t been able to figure out how to turn it off yet.

But for all flying the armour was a daunting, complex and bewildering process, it was an exhilarating one, too, and he already knew he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

He was accelerating toward midtown at a level just lower than the tallest buildings when the suit started beeping at him and a small window opened in the helmet’s visual overlay. It looked like a small humanoid figure approaching the track forward from his position.

Presumably, Terry Wilson thought, that was one of the flying heroes in the city headed toward him. Immediately the confidence the armour had suffused him with died away, the sudden stark realisation that if he were seen he’d be in a fight when he had no idea how half the suit’s weapons worked filling him instead.

For all he knew that tracker appeared only when superhumans were already on an intercept path. Paladin was rumoured to have telescopic vision (then again, the rumours persisted that he had X-Ray vision, and if he did Castor would never have kept his identity secret for as long as he had, surely?) and might already be closing on him.

If that were so, he was almost certainly about to be smashed out of the air, exposed, and ruined and humiliated. But it was possible the super was just flying on a very similar path.

If he could avoid the conflict, he had to. Terry Wilson peeled away to the left and increased his speed, hoping to be gone before he’d be noticed.

As angry as he was with Hathor, he was shaken now. This wasn’t the night to show her the folly of messing with him, and tomorrow night might not be either. He was going to master the suit before he laid down the law. That way, even if Paladin showed up to save her, he’d be ready.

*

There weren’t many ways to dress that meant Hornet’s body wouldn’t turn heads. In her civilian identity, she was slowly remembering, she had often worn business pantsuits, and she’d always selected loose blouses and left her jacket open rather than fasten it under her bust. All the same, her silhouette still suggested the prodigious curves that had arrived alongside her powers.

Castor’s solution eventually had been to doctor a pair of sweatpants so that their waistband was narrow enough to cling, while their several-sizes too-big nature meant her buttocks didn’t reveal themselves by straining the fabric, and to add on top of that a sweatshirt three sizes too big; there was still the suggestion of the shape of her breasts in the way light and shadow fell on it, but muted to the point that only the most prurient would stare and speculate. Hornet thought of it as a Velma sweater, but couldn’t yet remember why she associated that word with the look. Had it been a brand name?

Even with the slick black vertical stripes running down the sides, the day-glo bright yellow of the outfit seemed out of place on the streets of San Francisco - Castor’s private joke on her old costume, she imagined - and as such from the moment she stepped out of an alleyway after landing she was drawing curious stares - but stares and attention was something she was used to; it came with the territory when you could catch the flying cars some power armoured villain had hurled at you.

She crossed the road and made her way over to Gyro King, where she stood in line to collect the order Mistress had placed. Up ahead were a pair of college kids, probably not as drunk as they were behaving but high on the experience of the city itself, fresh-faced and glad to be away from their families and spreading their wings, and a harassed woman of about Hornet’s own biological age (which she reminded herself meant the woman must be twenty or more years her junior) whose worry lines disappeared whenever she looked down to answer the young boy with her.

Mother and son, Hornet thought, and she smiled. The scene felt cosy and familiar, though she wasn’t at all sure she was looking at it from the right angle.

This restaurant hadn’t existed the last time she’d had this feeling, she found herself suddenly sure, and didn’t know why she was sure.

She was going to have to do something about her memory. It was starting to get in the way of her continued obedience, and her implant had taught her, over and over again, that obedience was her duty.

And then it was her turn to collect her order, and she walked out of the restaurant and across the road and into an alleyway and she took to the skies with as little effort as many people need to take a single step, and again she couldn’t be sure but she felt like she’d done this before, so lost in her thoughts that she paid no attention to any other people who might be flying the friendly skies of San Francisco.

*

“I just don’t like it, Annie,” Milo Mack said to his wife, standing in their apartment kitchen, a cold slice of pizza in his hand. She nodded, her expression, as much of it could be seen beneath the domino mask she wore, solemn but sympathetic.

“It seems so impossible that Vulcan would go out quietly,” she agreed. “Well, not quietly exactly, but…”

“Without repercussions.” It should be impossible to take a bite of pizza moodily, but Milo achieved it somehow. Perhaps, Annie thought lightly to herself, this was something that you needed superhuman powers to do; there was very little in their five years of marriage that Paladin hadn’t been able to achieve.

“Right.” And it was true; they had both been on high alert ever since the arrest, certain that Castor would have some plan set up to go the moment he was processed into custody, some remotely activated drone to break him out of prison, or even some obscure supervillain kept on retainer for just such an eventually.

There had been rumours over the years, after all, that Vulcan had been involved with any number of different unsolved crimes, and in some cases Paladin and the Hooded Hawk knew very well that he must have been as technologies stolen in seemingly unrelated thefts turned up later in his byzantine schemes.

There was even a persistent rumour that a blonde superhuman thief specialising in the smash-and-grab, with no confirmed ID but referred to in local law enforcement circles as the Golden Wrecking Ball, was somehow connected to Vulcan, simply because she showed up only rarely, struck without warning, and disappeared, with no other activity to track.

Far more likely, in the costumed couple’s opinion, that she was simply only in San Francisco occasionally and had a regular stomping ground elsewhere. But it was always hard to confirm these things.

“It would have been nice,” Annie Mack said to her husband, “if once he went behind bars we could actually relax. Maybe once he goes to trial?”

“I think,” Paladin told her thoughtfully, “that if I just knew where he’d been keeping all of his crap, I’d rest easier.”

*

Almost immediately on her return Hornet was ordered to shed the civilian disguise she’d been wearing, and of course she obeyed happily.

Tracy grinned at that, and said simply “Now go put on that serving wench outfit and bring me our dinner.”

“Yes, Mistress. I obey.”

The deep ochre yellow of her costume, with the black bands across it, was a lot less vibrantly ugly than the sweatsuit she’d run her errand in, but this cut of it didn’t present the powerful or dignified appearance that Hornet had always striven to achieve.

It had made its debut only the fourth or fifth time Vulcan had brought her out to show off his control to his criminal friends, and she had not recognised several of the faces she’d waited on at that dinner, new stars of the criminal scene. She received different lingering looks from them to the ones she had fought.

As she pulled the black fishnet stockings up and clipped them into place with the yellow garter belt, she remembered those looks, and wondered - as she had not at the time - what made the difference.

To her old foes, it had been a kind of revenge to touch her while she was helpless, to grope her, lick her, kiss her, tweak her nipples or slap her ass or (in the case of the Grande Dame) pour their drink over their own cleavage, scold her for her clumsiness in spilling it, and demand she lick her clean.

She stepped into the high-cut swimsuit and pulled it into place, the thigh arches rising a full three inches clear above her garter belt, each entire side of her ass on clear display, and thought about the quietly gloating wonder and envy she’d experienced from Desperado and Honey Badger.

As she ensured that the suit sat properly on her chest, with the cut-out semicircles revealing the underside of each breast up to a purposefully tantalising hint of nipple, it occurred to her that these villains had not been thinking about her sexual display in terms of the power Vulcan held over her; they had themselves realised, meeting her in the flesh, that her body had held power over them in their youthful fantasies.

Castor would have known that throughout, of course, she thought - and not without bitterness.

It was strange to be feeling emotions again. She was not at all sure why Hornet felt what Alpha hadn’t even registered. She wasn’t sure she liked it, she thought, except when Mistress was involved, and at that thought she smiled.

She buckled the hazard-striped collar and cuffs into place around her otherwise bare throat and wrists, then stepped into the tall striped heels, gathered up the bags their food order had come in, and moved to leave the lair and return to the big desk where Mistress waited.

A stray thought struck her as she did so; instead, she picked up the titanium sheet, painted green on one side, that had been prepared by Vulcan to act as a replacement chest cover should his armour take damage and bent it back out to a flat sheet. Hornet hummed to herself, a low steady tone, as she arranged the foil packets, cardboard boxes, and soda cans on it, then lifted it one-handed to just above her shoulder, turned, and walked back out of the lair.

I hate heels on stairs, she remembered, but the power of human flight compensated for that; she walked a bare half-inch above the ground with every step. I just plain hate heels. Why don’t I mind wearing them?

All her wondering and her concern at her own emotional state vanished in a heartbeat when she saw the way her Mistress’ face lit up at the sight of her done up like an obedient serving wench. Fleetingly she regretted not applying the makeup, but she hadn’t been told to and hadn’t thought to. It’s bad enough putting makeup on when I know I’ve got a press conference later in the day.

*

Trapped in the tube, Sofia had watched the woman Mistress Hathor called Hornet descend the stairs twice; the first time, she had come down nude, dressed in hideously bright, ridiculously baggy clothes, then left immediately.

The second time, as she came down the stairs nude, Sofia thought she was walking differently, holding herself differently. There was, at any rate, something not the same in her walk, or her body language, or her lack of expression. Sofia was far from sure which; she just knew she’d picked up on something.

A part of her head said, I hope she hasn’t learned to resist Mistress Hathor. I can’t possibly do anything to stop her while I’m stuck in here.

Not that she could do much against a superhuman anyway. Not yet, she thought, and didn’t know why.

She didn’t think the other woman would disobey Mistress Hathor, though. There was no possible good reason for someone to disobey her. She was Mistress Hathor. She was infallible. She must be served, and served well.

Hornet started to dress again, and Sofia, held suspended in place, only vaguely aware of the passage of time, her thoughts slow, sticky, and sugary as treacle, watched.

If Sofia Aguilar had been certain of anything, before her captivity, it likely would have been that she was interested only in men. She’d heard friends talk about ‘girl crushes’ so passionate they were almost sexual attraction, and other friends discuss their experimentation or their bi-curious ‘phase’ at college, and while she had never been so rude as to say it, she had always thought, If you’re that into women and you think you’re not all the way into them, you’re probably deluding yourself.

It was not a thought that came with any judgement, but on the four or five occasions when someone had asked her if she was sure she was straight (and how on earth did the number get as high as four or five in the short time she’d been dating?), she had remembered hearing those things and feeling that way in response, and it had been a confirmation to her that she was straight, because her mind never wandered to consider the beauty of the female form in more than a dispassionate, aesthetic way.

Watching Hornet don a purely sexualised version of her old crimefighting costume, two things stirred in Sofia simultaneously.

Seeing the blonde mane over the ochre-yellow and black stripes, she remembered as a child seeing the original of the costume on the local news, remembered the heroine, and understood why Mistress Hathor called her what she called her.

But she also found herself desiring a woman for the first time. She wanted to run her hands along the bare skin of that thigh, to kiss her way up its inside; to caress those breasts and feel hers caressed in return; she wondered what those lips might feel like against her own skin, and she found herself getting excited at the idea that perhaps Mistress Hathor would order her to find out.

It was, she assured herself, just the machines doing something to her, and with that assurance in mind she stopped worrying about it, and promptly forgot she had ever found women less than deeply desirable.

She watched the other woman jiggle back upstairs with a deep pang of regret that she could not linger, but of course Miss Hathor needed her.

*

Hornet set the makeshift tray down on the table and stood to attention.

“Thank you, Hornet,” Mistress said, and Hornet was aware that Mistress was studying her face looking for a response.

Mistress started preparing her own meal. “I should absolutely be buying something better,” she said, and Hornet listened but had didn’t feel the need to comment. “Classier, I mean. And healthier. But right now I want simple, I want filling, I want greasy. The small pleasures.”

Mistress, Hornet found herself thinking, was too concerned about her image. Who would criticise her? She was Mistress. She was infallible. She must be served, and served well.

Mistress took a bite of her food and looked up at Hornet. “Earlier,” she said, “I asked you if you want to obey me, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“You didn’t want to obey Vulcan, did you?”

Hornet wasn’t sure why this mattered to Mistress, but the intensity of her attention made it clear that it did. “Yes, Mistress.”

“So what’s different?”

Hornet was silent. She wasn’t sure she had an answer, and none had bubbled up compulsively from within.

“Hmm.” Mistress turned back to her food, chewing thoughtfully. After a few more mouthfuls she said “I ordered for two - well, more like three. Aren’t you having any?”

“I don’t know, Mistress.”

Mistress smirked, and Hornet wanted to writhe in response, wanted to encourage that, wanted it to happen again. But she wasn’t sure she should react, so she didn’t.

“Are you hungry?”

Hornet hesitated. She was, actually. But it was so rare that she’d been out of the mutrient tube for long enough to be hungry…

Alpha had never been hungry, but Alpha had also never been embarrassed or excited or psychologically aroused. That wasn’t a good measurement.

“Yes, Mistress,” she admitted, and she tried to make herself sound apologetic, in case it didn’t fit with Mistress’ plans, in spite of the way the conversation was going, and she wasn’t at all sure that she needed to.

Hornet had never been meekly accommodating. When she had gone along with others’ desires, it had always been from a position of power or authority, had been because she understood their needs or saw the wisdom of their position.

“Sit,” Mistress ordered. “And eat.”

“Yes, Mistress. I obey.”

And she did, and some part of her, inside, sighed, but she couldn’t tell whether it was contentment or frustration.

*

Sofia saw Mistress Hathor and Hornet descend the steps into the lair again and approach her. Mistress Hathor had the control in hand. A part of Sofia was excited for her release, her upcoming opportunity to show the Mistress how well she would serve her.

Another part of her was telling her not to expect anything so fast, to wait for… something. Something she didn’t understand.

Sofia’s subconscious mind apparently understood more than she did and, if she was being honest, that was beginning to frustrate her.

“Right,” Mistress Hathor said. “Time to get to work.” She pointed the remote at Sofia’s tube and pressed something, and nothing happened. She tried it again, and still nothing happened.

“Fucking hell, I need to understand this better.” Sofia watched her Mistress cross to one of the big consoles, where she smacked her palm across the big blue button. Fleetingly Sofia wished it had been one of her buttocks there instead, but she didn’t get the chance to think about that nearly so much as she’d wanted.

The screen came to light - Sofia could tell, because the face of her Mistress was suddenly brightly lit, but she couldn’t see the screen. With Hornet standing behind her, Mistress Hathor worked away slowly, scowling in frustration, until finally something presumably gave her the answer she’d been chasing.

“You can’t take someone out of this tube,” she said slowly, “until they’re superhuman? Am I reading this right?”

Yes, said the part of Sofia’s subconscious that had been primed. “I think so, Mistress,” said Hornet, more doubtfully.

Mistress Hathor looked to Hornet, her expression confident, even arrogant, but affectionate. Sofia had seen businesswoman look at loyal subordinates like that before.

She looked back at Sofia and the warmth was gone, and she quailed inside as she realised her old self had deserved it.

“I hope Castor got a decent menu in place for this fucking thing,” Mistress Hathor muttered. “I’ve got no fucking idea.”

Her attention went back to the screen, her brow furrowed, and she must have been paging through options, assessing each one, and Sofia waited, excited and eager to find out what kind of slave she would be.

It did not seem like she would be made a drone. The way Hornet was behaving was very different from what the program shaping Sofia’s thoughts had expected.

“Ah.” Mistress Hathor’s expression lightened and she smiled. “Here we go, then.” She looked up at Sofia. “If you’re going to be changed, you’re going to change. And if you think you shouldn’t be,” which made no sense to Sofia, who knew this was entirely Mistress Hathor’s decision, “then you should know this is your own fucking fault for selling me out without even considering giving me a heads-up.”

She hit the button, and the tube Sofia was in started to glow, and she felt warm prickles begin to spread all across her. The implant behind her hummed into life, and a small section of the ceiling descended on robotic extendors to inject her in the side of the neck with a dozen small needles at once.