Harrier wasn’t yet used to the name, but it felt like it fitted, not because it was right for her but because of who had assigned it to her.

Mistress was always right. That was one of the things her implant told her, so it must be true; Harrier already knew that her implant was correct whenever it conflicted with her thoughts.

At present, she was running into the interesting problem of how to react when her implant told her something, but her thoughts could not twist themselves to justify it.

Interesting was, perhaps, not the best choice of word for this; it was more like there was something itchy deep within her head. Disquieting, in a mind that now understood it was supposed to be quiet when not commanded.

Harrier had reservations about the Mistress converting others into her slaves. Witnessing and even supporting her in doing so, even to prevent discovery, turned out to sit poorly with her. And yet the implant told her Mistress was always right, and therefore if the Mistress chose to take a new slave, it must be right.

Harrier knew that, but she couldn’t understand how to get from one to the other, and the conflict would not go away, would not die down.

She looked across to Hornet, who was watching the Mistress select new programming for the other heroine with a light smile on her lips. There was clearly none of the same concern in her mind.

Hornet, Harrier reflected, had been brainwashed for a lot longer, so if she was at peace with all this, perhaps she had simply developed new insights that Harrier didn’t yet have. Maybe it would be simpler to give up entirely, to think only in the thoughts and rules Mistress provided. Maybe it wasn’t necessary to make things make sense, and instead what she should do was simply not to question anything.

Her implant sent a jolt of bliss up and down her spine, tingling in her clit and her backbrain simultaneously. Her vision swam, and she concluded that yes, she should treat Hornet as a role model; she should obey and serve and think only when called upon to do so.

Mistress was always right. If Harrier served without question, that would also always be right.

Harrier let her questions go and a vacuous smile spread easily across her face.

*

Hornet was watching Mistress with an intentness she wasn’t at all used to. When Vulcan had controlled her, he had seen her as a tool, or as a trinket to show off for his friends; it had been enough for him that she obeyed and nothing else mattered to him.

There was something about the Mistress that was different, and it had taken her some time to work out what it was. She had ruled out the idea that it was an ethical question, first of all; in fact that hadn’t taken very long, as Mistress had shown a certain disregard for laws and for social mores that Hornet couldn’t call ‘good’. She might not be a supervillain, but she wouldn’t let that get in her way (and, the more Hornet’s memories of her adolescence and early adulthood surfaced, the more she remembered San Francisco in the 1980s, the more she was unsure that commercial villainy was automatically better) if she wanted something.

It wasn’t her gender, although that seemed very important to Mistress in ways Hornet didn’t bother to analyse - it wasn’t an area where she could add to her Mistress’ satisfaction, so it was irrelevant to her purpose - but finally Hornet was fairly sure she understood the difference.

She wasn’t a tool to Mistress. She was an opportunity for Mistress to play with power. Her reactions, the way she responded, that was just as important to Mistress as the fact of her responding.

And that was enough to make Hornet enjoy the control Mistress had over her, it turned out; which, in turn, was enough to help Hornet focus on being the best she could. She was a much happier slave than she was a tool.

It was, she vaguely remembered having been told, a good thing to learn something about yourself.

Which was also a little bit of a shame, she thought; it had been clear to her that the newcomer, Hooded Hawk Mistress had called her, knew something.

She knew Hornet was Hornet, of course, but that on its own wouldn’t have made for that reaction. Even now that Mistress had told her how long she’d been on ice, Hornet knew that superhumans resurfaced long after their time on a regular basis - it had been when Hornet was a rookie that a number of old WWII heroes returned, reforming to save the world one last time, and not all of them had aged in the meantime - so Hooded Hawk might be surprised by that, but…

Hornet didn’t have any conclusive proof that the other woman had known more, had known something connected, but she’d been a fair detective in her crimefighting days and the more her memories surfaced, the more it seemed that her instincts were surfacing with them.

It would be nice to know more about herself. With Vulcan out of the picture, Hornet was happy to obey, but it would be much easier to just let herself submit unquestioningly if she was sure she was serving someone who believed in enough of the same things. Being a heroine had never meant she was infallible - Hornet had struggled to make Stormcaller understand that about himself at one time, she remembered - nor were her adversaries necessarily working for bad causes, just approaching their goals in bad ways.

It would be nice to know more, but on this occasion the Mistress had prevented that from happening. Hornet worked on the assumption that the Mistress must know what Hooded Hawk knew, and if so, she didn’t want Hornet to find out. And Mistress was always right; Hornet’s implant told her that. So as much as she wanted to know more, she would make no effort to find out.

Everything was, she thought, going very well until they heard the sound of a superhuman punching effortlessly through the reinforced safety glass that formed the penthouse windows.

*

Paladin wasn’t happy about any of this, but that evidently didn’t matter right at the moment; his control collar meant he didn’t get a say in what his body was doing.

It was only a couple of days since he’d last visited the HyperCorp penthouse, and as bad an impression as he’d left that time, he suspected he was going to leave a far worse one this time.

This wasn’t the first time Vulcan had built what he’d always called a ‘hostile takeover’ for Paladin, but it was the first time it hadn’t been something he could shrug off. There’d always been mutterings from the villain about having some longer process, and honestly the main reason Paladin hadn’t worried about it was that he couldn’t see Vulcan pinning him down for a long time.

With the collar around his neck he was regretting not taking more steps to ensure he never lost control, but equally, with the collar around his neck there was only so much he could do about it.

The penthouse was empty, which at that time of night was only a mild surprise; Paladin felt a moment of relief, as the ersatz Vulcan calling his shots was likely to get distracted by frustration here (if what Paladin had already seen was anything to judge by) so the order to kill Tracy Hathor would probably be overridden by an order for large-scale property damage - still not great, but in Paladin’s eyes someone’s life was worth a lot more than a building.

He was just wondering whether he could push the limits the collar put on his actions enough to find and set off the fire alarm, helping clear the building ahead of getting those orders, when two women stepped into view out of apparently nowhere, and his heart sank.

It wasn’t that the penthouse was empty. It was just that some of it was hidden.

Discovering that caused the command he’d been given to become dominant in his actions again. Neither of the women was Hathor, he saw at a cursory glance, and Paladin started moving forward again, to see if she was hidden wherever they’d come from.

At the same time, his brain was screaming at his body to stop, to slow down, to at least look again at the taller of the two women, the one without the wings, so he could confirm what he was almost sure he’d seen. But his body didn’t listen to his mind anymore; it listened to the collar, and then it obeyed, and its attention was past the women.

Or at least that was the case until the taller woman reached out and put a hand on his chest, and it turned out there was enough strength in her that Paladin couldn’t push past at a typical brisk walk.

That wasn’t normal. Paladin wouldn’t put himself up against someone like Ms Miracle on the strength scale - he’d fought Macabre, once, and while he’d foiled her plans he thought of the fight itself less a victory or even a draw and much more of an endurance competition - but if a typical human being tried their hardest to stop him, it didn’t have much effect. So he was being stopped by a superhuman.

The collar had routines in place for this, Paladin discovered. He felt a scratching and a pulling at the base of his brain as the technology systematically raided his reflexes for instinct-honed combat strikes, and a heartbeat later, after the collar had processed them, it launched one of them, a right uppercut that, to the women bracing him, came out of nowhere - after all, until it was happening, Paladin hadn’t known he was going to throw it either.

Her head snapped upward and she fell back several steps. Internally Paladin was panicking, screaming, struggling with his collar to stop it - the only thing that’d stopped that punch being full strength was that he hadn’t been in the right stance to follow through as hard as he might. To most, that was a potential killing shot.

The blonde picked herself back up and glowered at him. “Stop that,” she said, and even if her face hadn’t been achingly familiar, the voice was enough. His heart sank.

The first time he’d seen his mother in decades and, unable to stop himself, he’d attacked her.

*

Tracy tiptoed close to the stairway leading up from her penthouse lair and leaned awkwardly to one side, trying to see what was happening, and from the little she saw, it didn’t look good.

Paladin was back, and he was fighting Hornet and Harrier - though Harrier had danced back, ducking away from his punches, her wings twitching to help her move that little bit faster than a peak human athlete should be able to - but she wasn’t quite as fast as Paladin, that much was obvious. There was only so long she’d be able to kite away from his attacks for.

Hornet lunged forward and seized Paladin from behind, clamping her arms around his, pinning his arms to his sides at the elbow. His head snapped backward, smashing violently into hers, but she didn’t let go; she was strong enough to hold on.

Tracy had a moment to thrill at the sheer power under her control, but Paladin was still fighting. He wrenched forward with one shoulder, nearly getting loose, but she managed to hold, and even lifted him off the ground, floating into the air with him, before he could go to stomp her foot.

Tracy bit her lip. It was probably stupid to be enjoying this. But, as Harrier raked her clawlike fingers across Paladin’s face while Hornet kept him pinned, it was hard not to think about the power under her command, and God, that was just such a wonderful experience, so much bliss, even the thought of her own danger didn’t keep her carefully hidden as she should have been.

Seen through a camera and played back on TV news reports, the Vulcan suit’s energy blasts were a vivid blue, focused in a single, coherent dart. So it was that it took Tracy a moment to realise what was happening when the penthouse seemed to fill with a brilliant, purple-tinged light that was all but white.

The blast targeted Hornet, catching the controlled heroine full on in the back. She went flying and so did Paladin, but it was Hornet who’d lost her grip, Hornet who nearly blacked out from the impact, Hornet who smashed into Hathor’s heavy desk, causing it to buckle and nearly split in two.

Paladin, meanwhile, was back up on his feet (well, upright and hovering six or seven inches in the air) and shaking off the stunning effect of the blast’s penumbra. Harrier looked between the descending battlesuit and the collared hero, her expression carved out of panic.

Tracy tried to ease back into the lair, but the battlesuit had seen her. Vulcan extended an arm. “That’s her!” its synthetic voice bellowed. “Kill the bitch.”

Paladin turned away from Harrier and started moving toward Tracy, who lunged for the lair’s internal door control. The heavy door slammed down just before Paladin got there; gasping for breath and staring at it, Tracy couldn’t help but imagine Castor revisiting his battles with Paladin, timing his nemesis on video to know exactly how fast the door needed to shut.

After several shaky, ragged breaths, she turned and scrambled deeper into the lair. There had to be something in there she could use, didn’t there?

*

Hornet was upright again, just barely, in time to see Paladin slam into the heavy slab keeping Mistress and the lair safe. She responded immediately, rocketing forward and catching him with a diving tackle she’d learned from - from - that memory hadn’t unearthed yet - that she used to drive him backward into the Vulcan powersuit, then crashed both of them into the tall marble column that divided one section of windows from another.

She backed off, catching her breath, and snagged the wrist of Paladin as he woozily got back up. A quick pivot at the waist and putting all of her upper body into it was enough to send him flying out of the window at speed; nothing serious for him, she was sure, but definitely enough to buy her time.

That was all she was looking for; though she had no idea of this, there was a big difference between her implant and the collar, something that could only be done because the implant had time to run before it had to activate. She had rules to obey, but could solve them for herself; Paladin’s collar stole his skills but didn’t duplicate the expertise and understanding he used to do what he felt needed to be done.

With Paladin out of the way, she turned to the Vulcan suit. A huge rabbit punch to the midriff dented the breastplate, although a moment later it fixed itself with a spang. She fired off two more hard punches, but since her last battle with Vulcan the suit had improved; there wasn’t even any damage from her later shots, as if some additional protective systems had fired up.

She switched from punching to gripping, looking for a weak spot, any weakness in the armour that would allow her to make a tear and pull pieces loose so she could get inside and neutralise the gear, and then the suit’s amplified voice bellowed “STOP IT!”

Hornet found herself suddenly completely still.

Just as suddenly her mind was deeply unsettled. She had forgotten, somehow, that it wasn’t just the Mistress’ remote that allowed control over her. Her implant, one of the ones issued while Vulcan was still active, gave dominance over her to Vulcan too.

“Why did you stop?” the suit asked, bewildered, mere moments later. Hornet willed herself to keep silent, but couldn’t; she wasn’t in control.

She was Vulcan’s tool once again. “You told me to.”

The man in the suit laughed, and the anonymizing mechanical voice filter distorted it into something nightmarish.

“Stand to attention,” he said, and she obeyed. She’d barely straightened up when someone slammed into her from the side at speed.

It turned out not to be Harrier - Harrier, knowing herself outclassed, was just staying some distance back - but Paladin, finally returned from her throw.

He sent her sprawling and she stayed down; Paladin hovered over her for a moment. Hornet looked up at him and for all the instincts she’d developed over her time fighting crime she found his posture completely unreadable.

There was no intention, no message, in his body language; there was instead an odd limpness to the way he hung that suggested nobody was in control. On the other hand, his face spoke volumes; there was regret, there were tears, there was some deep pent-up emotion that she didn’t understand.

“Leave her,” Vulcan said. “She’s not a problem. Just get the safehouse open.”

Paladin started probing the ground, looking for a weak spot he could tear it up from; Hornet recognised the approach, having tried the same thing with Vulcan’s suit already. However, the part of her which had to serve had something else to do - it had heard a command it could obey.

She rose and made her way over to a spot by the window, where she stepped on the key button, and the lair began to open. “As you wish, Master,” she said.

She was aware of the expression on Paladin’s face changing. “What did you do to her?” he asked.

Vulcan, moving forward to the opening lair, just shrugged. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “She just has to do what I tell her.”

Hornet blinked.

That wasn’t Vulcan, she thought. That was just his suit.

*

Paladin blinked.

This wasn’t something he was willing to tolerate. He could stand to be controlled for a time - it was only ever for a time, he’d noticed, although he might have to reconsider that now he knew his mother hadn’t just disappeared fighting her nemesis decades ago - but the more trouble he was being used for, the harder he fought against it.

Now he was finding that when his mom was also under control, it was something to fight even harder.

There was a sudden electronic shriek of discordance from around his throat as the collar, trying to match and overcome his sudden spike in resistance, shorted out.

Paladin hit Vulcan from behind at speed, but to his startlement he wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t even one of two.

Harrier, Hornet, and Paladin’s impacts caught the powersuit hard in the knees, lower spine, and across the shoulders. They bore him down, pinning him to the reinforced floor of the lair.

“Wait!”

Paladin looked up, surprised, to meet the new voice. He was peripherally aware that his mom and the other woman looked up, too, but his attention was on the other speaker, who turned out to be Hathor, so he didn’t see the expressions on their faces.

Hathor was holding some kind of remote. She pointed it at Vulcan and pressed something, and after a moment where a high-pitched whine echoed around the chamber, the powersuit popped open along every seam, all but falling off the man wearing it.

“Who the hell is that?” Paladin asked, staring at him.

Hathor seemed a little less confused, but no less surprised. “Terry Wilson,” she said, after a long moment. “Terry fucking Wilson,” she repeated heavily. She pointed to the birdwoman. “You,” she directed, “get this man cuffed and take him somewhere to wait for the police. Then call the police.”

“Yes,” the birdwoman said, hauling him up and discarding the remaining pieces of suit that hung on his body.

“Fuck you, Hathor,” Wilson was saying. “You can’t do this.” But for all that the birdwoman didn’t seem to be in Paladin’s power class, she was manifestly strong enough to handle Wilson without the suit on his own.

Paladin got to his feet, ripping the remains of the collar loose. “Thank you,” he said. “At least, I think.” Then he turned to Hornet. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, we need to talk. Immediately. And, uh…” He looked across to Tracy Hathor and wondered if he could ask her to leave without coming across badly. “I’d prefer to discuss this in private.”

She furrowed her brow at him, but looked back to Hathor rather than him. He felt something inside him crumble at that. How could she be closer to this woman than to him?

Hathor cleared her throat. “I… think honestly, a lot of what happened here tonight, I’d rather forget,” she said. “You’re welcome for me helping, but as I remember you trying to kill me, it’s a bit of a wash, right?”

Paladin sighed. “I wasn’t ready to be collared,” he said. He opened his mouth to say more, but found that nothing came out - and that his mouth wasn’t moving, and nor was the rest of him.

He saw Hathor’s shoulders slump as if a great tension had gone out of her. “Well done, Hawk,” she said.

“Thank you, Mistress,” Paladin’s wife said, stepping into sight holding the big paralysis ray cannon that Vulcan had used only occasionally - bulky and requiring too much power to be portable, it was the sort of thing you needed to have set up as part of a major building’s electrical system. He’d never felt its effects before himself; he’d rescued others from it.

“How long does it take for the aftereffects to run long enough for us to get him into the cylinder?”

“I think about ten minutes should build up enough residual freeze, Mistress.” She lifted her domino mask, looking directly at Paladin, and smiled. “Sorry, honey, but I made a deal with my Mistress in the last few minutes.

“See, I understand now.” She grinned broadly. “I met your mom earlier this evening, and Mistress had to convert me to stop me saying anything.”

He heard the intake of startled breath from Hornet standing beside him, but couldn’t even turn to look at her. “Milo?” Hornet asked, and Annie nodded.

Knowing his mother enslaved had been enough for a burst of defiance earlier. He tried again, but it didn’t help, wasn’t enough. His wife’s eyes met his steadily, and there was regret there, but there was also love.

“You must be Alexandra,” Annie the Hooded Hawk told her mother-in-law. “And I know you must have questions but we do, too, and I just hope we can get all our answers in turn. But, well… you put me in the chamber.”

“I did.” Hornet’s voice was proud, not remorseful. Paladin - Milo Mack - couldn’t understand it.

“And now I’ve been in the chamber, I understand why. When Mistress was looking for a way to help you… well, the only problem is that Milo would never allow this.”

“So you decided to take the option away from him?” his mom asked, and his wife nodded.

“I love you, Milo,” she said. “But I serve the Mistress. Whatever that guy was using, it wasn’t enough. But your mom’s got all the powers you do, so if the chamber can convert her, it can convert you.”

Hathor cleared her throat. “On a personal level, Paladin, let me apologise that you have to wait so long knowing it’s coming. I can’t imagine that’s very fun. But, if you want any consolation… I intend for Hooded Hawk and Paladin to continue to be heroes. I respect the fact she loves you. I hope you won’t feel so betrayed I have to order you to love her.

“And Hornet can return to heroism, too.” She smiled warmly. “Truthfully, I was always a huge fan.

“I don’t intend to be a villain. Not much, anyway. Maybe the three of you - the four of you - can talk me out of it when I’m tempted. But that’s for us to figure out in the future. In the meantime, we need to get you paralysed and into the chamber, and then Hooded Hawk will accompany Hornet to her first press conference in decades, and Terry Wilson is out of my hair.”

*

HyperCorp

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Board of Directors of Hypercorp formally agreed to resign en masse today following the confirmation that Terrence Wilson was also part of the Vulcan super-criminal conspiracy alongside former CEO Jason Castor.

Replacement CEO Tracy Hathor remains in the chair. Hathor made news last night by co-operating with the Hooded Hawk and returning heroine Hornet to defeat Terrence Wilson.

Hathor says “It goes without saying that I’m shocked to discover that the Vulcan connection to HyperCorp goes even further. Terry promised to ‘teach me the ropes’ here and I can’t help wondering if I’ve had a lucky escape from a terrible tragedy.

“It’s clear that HyperCorp needs to do better. I am creating a new seat on the Board - Director of Ethics - and I would like to extend an invitation to Paladin to take the seat. If he’s listening, I look forward to hearing from him.”

*

“Needless to say,” she told him, “you will accept.”

Milo Mack looked steadily back at Tracy Hathor. “Yes, Mistress,” he said. The frustrating thing was, the more he said it, the more he found he was coming to mean it. His wife smiled, resting her hand on his shoulder.

Hathor smiled. “You’re still a hero, remember?” she asked him. “Still with your wife. Aside from the fact you can’t turn me in for my part in everything, it’s all fine.”

He made a noncommittal noise that didn’t really escape from his throat. Hathor rose. “Get hard,” she told him.

“Yes, Mistress.”

As she went out the door she looked at the Hooded Hawk and ordered “Fuck your husband for me.”

“Yes, Mistress,” the heroine responded. Hathor heard Paladin’s chair fall backward onto the floor before she closed the door behind her.

In the other room, Hornet was waiting, having arrived back from a special assignment Hathor had had for her. Instead of the classic black and yellow striped outfit she’d mostly made her way back to, she was wearing a black jumpsuit with vertical green stripes up her sides from ankle to shoulder, her hair gathered back into a ponytail, the zipper pulled low to give anyone who saw her something to focus on.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

“Yes, Mistress,” Hornet answered. “But, Mistress - I thought you were going to shun villainy?”

Hathor took the item from her superslave. “I am,” she said. “Forget your last mission.”

Hornet blinked. “Yes, Mistress.”