“Where is she?”

Vivian was already moving, a worried expression on her face, before it came to her that this was her reaction to news that her former rival was in labour; immediate sympathy and concern. It made very little sense for her to be there, as she didn’t exactly have much medical experience, but she wanted to be. She had that strange, unjustifiable belief that her presence could somehow make a difference.

“I’ll show you.” Stormcaller was moving too, and Vivian’s fear of discovery registered surprise that he didn’t hesitate in including her, was perfectly willing to lead her deeper into the base.

True, she’d been here before under her previous identity, but only after the Earthbreaker had been defeated, as part of the wrap-up, and even then she’d seen very little of the interior.

She followed the mystic powerhouse through the corridors and into a vertical shaft, open at both ends. Stormcaller started to rise with only the briefest backward glance to confirm his memory that Vivian could fly.

Up they went - three floors, four floors, then Stormcaller stepped off onto another corridor. Vivian followed, safe behind the mask of Mercy.

This corridor rapidly widened out. The medical bay here was huge; there were a good thirty permanent bed fixtures, more than three times enough to accommodate the entire team. Each one was built into its own little nook, the walls patterned with devices and with sockets for who knew what kind of technology.

This was built to be a crisis centre, when needed; with only one patient it seemed unnecessary, but as she looked around she could picture times in the past when there might have been four or five heroes and heroines occupying some of the beds, with a number of civilians or private security in the others.

In fact, she could think of times when she’d probably caused that exact situation. Vivian was suddenly very uneasy.

Like Stormcaller, she drifted over to the bed where Ms Miracle had begun the process of giving birth. Maxine was stood close by, and Professor Mordecai was currently watching the situation by monitor, though Vivian suspected he’d be the one to help the most once he could.

“Please tell me you guys have some kind of gadget that can speed this stuff up,” she murmured softly. Stormcaller just laughed.

“Childbirth has been a source of tragedy for millennia,” he said. “If Professor Mordecai had something to make it swifter and safer, he would have given it to the world already.”

Mordecai’s attention remained on the monitor, but he heard enough to nod. “I don’t have a cure for cancer tucked away, either,” he said. His tone was disinterested, the comment sounded rehearsed. Vivian wondered how often people demanded he produce one. How many of them were convinced one existed and was hidden away. How many thought it was just a question of Mordecai taking a weekend to figure something out.

Then she wondered if he might have had the time, the past couple of decades, if he’d spent less time working to stop people like Macabre.

“How’s it looking?” she asked, hoping a softball question would help to ease the awkwardness she suddenly felt.

“That’s what I’m wondering myself,” Mordecai said. His eyes hadn’t left the screen. “There’s some very unusual psionic energy.”

“Someone’s doing something?”

“I don’t think this is someone,” Professor Mordecai said slowly. “It might be, though. I don’t want to get ahead of my own knowledge. I’ve ended up developing and following plans based on what I thought was happening before.” He paused. “I think I’d rather just say that psionic energy is channelling into the child.”

As Amy groaned, Stormcaller and Vivian exchanged worried glances, though Stormcaller probably couldn’t be sure Vivian was actually worried. Not behind her mask.

“And we don’t know from where?” Maxine was asking.

The other end of the medical bay had a huge pair of double doors. These swung open now to reveal the figure of Bulwark between them. His tight blue costume revealed, as it had for the last forty years, the epitome of the muscular male physique.

Bulwark effortlessly had the body that male film stars starved and sweated themselves to have for a day or two at a time; not for nothing, his could also deflect bullets, endure infernos and laser fire, even shrug off being hit over the head with a tank - and he could pick that tank up, fly back to where the fight had begun, and smash his attacker with it in the twinkling of an eye.

Right now, though, Bulwark was instead giving the almost featureless metallic mask of Mercy a death glare.

“I don’t know what the interruption is,” Mordecai said, still not looking up. “But keep it away from my patient, please.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I intend to,” said the Earth’s second most powerful hero. Vivian fell back a step instinctively. “Step away from Ms Miracle.”

Vivian tilted her head to one side. “Come on, man. There’s something screwy going on, this is not the time-”

“Yeah, you don’t get to follow your plan through,” Bulwark retorted.

“Hey,” Maxine interjected. “You want to maybe-”

But Bulwark was already moving forward. His top speed was somewhere closer to the speed of light than the speed of sound, but his acceleration wasn’t much better than Vivian’s. She caught his first punch on a raised arm, placed her booted foot on his chest and kicked him backward, giving them both distance from where her former nemesis was giving birth as she floated backward herself. Stormcaller, always tactically wise, had moved to prevent a Bulwark charge from disturbing Mordecai even through a side draft.

“What’s gotten into him?” Stormcaller asked. Vivian was just about to answer when Maxine said “It’s way too early in the year for the planetary alignment to do this.”

Bulwark blew by Stormcaller and hit Vivian around the belly, a football tackle delivered at near-supersonic speeds. She probably had D.A.N.I.E.L. to thank for the huge window sliding open in time to let them both out into the open air around them, although she knew that meant now at least part of this fight - and clearly it was going to be a fight - was going to be in front of the cape-watchers that were always gathered outside, some of which she was pretty sure should count as a cult.

She waited until they were over the heads of the cape-watchers and past them before she started pushing back, her own flight speed deployed now to counter his. They skidded to a halt maybe a half-mile out from the Justice Guard headquarters, about fifty yards into the air.

“Look-”

When Bulwark threw a punch, you knew about it, and he was fast enough this time to get inside her guard. She smashed backward and down, impacting on a concrete bench near a bus stop. It snapped under her, dumping her onto the sidewalk, and she scrabbled back to a knee.

Bulwark was already rushing back on toward her. Vivian wanted to throw a proper shot of her own, to hammer him senseless. Her hands were balled into fists, but she couldn’t do it; couldn’t throw the punch. She opened her hand and caught his punch instead, frustrated.

It was so rare now that she even pushed up against the boundaries her Master’s programming had given her. She caught his follow-up punch with her other hand, but her mind was already racing. How do you get out of a fight with a hero when you’re conditioned never to fight them?

It barely mattered. She and Bulwark weren’t far apart in strength, but he had a focus right now that she couldn’t match. He spun, sending her flying, and she only barely braked before she would have collided with a wall.

He didn’t give her time to recover and reorient. She barely managed to block some of the impact this time; what remained spun her off her axis, hitting a lamp post on the way. The steel buckled around her, and Bulwark grabbed one end of it and twisted, getting it wrapped around her at the elbows before she could react.

It was, she figured, probably just a coincidence that the arc of the metal just under her breasts did wonders for their presentation, lifting and supporting better than a Wonderbra.

She could definitely snap this improvised restraint, but it felt like it might be a way out of a fight she couldn’t attack in. “Well,” she said. “You’ve got me. You happy?”

“Bulwark! What the hell?” Maxine was descending from the skies and Vivian felt herself cringe. This could be deeply embarrassing…

He looked up at his fellow Justice Guard member, then glanced back down to Vivian, and sighed. “To answer your question first,” he said, “No. I’m not. I don’t much like either of the options for what happens after I do this. And to answer your question, Maxine…”

He put his hand on Vivian’s helmet, gripped, and pulled the facemask off despite its anchoring.

Maxine frowned. “That’s a familiar face, but…”

“I’ll… save him the trouble.” She sighed. “My name is Vivian Dent.”

“Macabre?” Her eyes widened. “You’re Macabre.”

“Don’t - call me that.” She was grinding her teeth. “Not any more. Did - uhh…” Should she incriminate her friend? Of course not…

Wait, though. There was a better way. “Did D.A.N.I.E.L. try to get your attention when you took off after us?”

“Yes…”

“Irrelevant,” Bulwark said. “Or… well. We can find out later.” He gave Vivian a nod that was almost polite. “Since you decided not to break free of that restraint…” His lips had quirked into a small smile, and she found herself giving one of her own.

That was the other problem with Bulwark, she’d always thought. It wasn’t just his power. He was smarter than you tended to think, and his sense of humour was subtle a lot of the time.

He’d known who she was, and that meant he knew it wasn’t a working restraint. It had been a test. Some kind of test. “Go on.”

“We had your bioscans on record from the Earthbreaker incident,” he said. “The moment you went through into the inner sanctum, the system registered a match. Obviously, you’re under arrest.”

“Obviously.”

“But the reason I’m treating this as such a priority is so you can tell us what you’ve done to Ms Miracle before whatever your plan is comes to fruition.

Her jaw dropped. “My plan?”

“Of course.”

“I wish this was my plan. Then I’d know how to fix it.”

Bulwark sighed and looked across to Maxine. “If she won’t tell us, we’re going to have to figure it out for ourselves.”

“You mean Mordecai will.”

“Right.” He half-smiled. “But if you’re not talking, Macabre, I guess the best we can do is lock you up and deal with you later. We need to look after our team-mate.”

Vivian sighed. “If that’s the way she gets help, then… sure. But talk to D.A.N.I.E.L. soon, please. And don’t call me by that name.” She could feel her eye twitch as she said it. She probably looked insane. “I’m not her. But… it might provoke something.”

“Let’s take her in,” Maxine said. “Are you actually going to come quietly?”

“Sure.”

“Well. New experiences all round.”

*

After a stunt Mentat had pulled four or five years ago, the reinforced Class-Ultra holding cells were no longer part of the Justice Guard building; mo more inviting their enemies in. Really, what Mentat had done you could only get away with if you were a psionic, but the theory went that it was much better to be safe than sorry, and Vivian definitely agreed with that. She’d always been curious whether she could break out of one of these cells, but if she did that now, she’d just have the entire active League on her in minutes.

That wasn’t going to convince anyone she should be allowed to stand by her friend’s side.

Most accounts of her old criminal behaviour included the word patient somewhere along the line; one of the reasons she had as high a success rate as she did was that she was willing to wait until everything was ready. Any time she was locked up made a mockery of that, but the few journalists who’d actually tried talking to her never saw the difference between waiting for your plans to come to fruition and simply waiting for something to change.

Vivian didn’t like feeling powerless. Not unless it was around her Master.

It had been four hours when the change in the slow background hum of electronics told her someone was cycling through the security seals to her cell.

She walked over to the small table and took a seat. May as well be polite, she thought. Anything that gets me out quicker. I want to help Amy.

…I want to serve my Master.

She’d expected that by this time, she’d probably be making plans to go kneel at his feet for the evening, and… well, and anything else he might want. Not that she’d be locked up and facing the very real possibility she might not be free to visit him any time soon.

Amy had said it had taken about two weeks away from him for Master’s control to dwindle…

Vivian shivered. That was the last thing she wanted. It was a terrible thing, to have become someone who feared what her older self would do to others if given the chance.

The inner cell door opened and Maxine Power stepped into the room. She glanced across to the table, saw Vivian already sitting, and something in her expression told Vivian she’d talked to D.A.N.I.E.L.

Maxine sat down on the opposite side of the table and looked at her for a long, long moment; long enough that it was Vivian who broke the silence. “How’s Miracle?”

“She’s fine. So’s the baby.”

“Really? What does Mordecai say?”

“Oh, he’s still not sure. Something very weird went down there. But, uh, they’re both physically healthy.”

Vivian breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”

“So… The Justice Guard now knows about you,” she said. “Officially, I mean. Obviously some of us already did.” She looked like she’d just tasted something sour.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Vivian pointed out.

“But you don’t seem to be fighting it.”

“No. I…” Vivian sighed. “They stumbled on something. Pure accident, I think. But it helps me to not want to fight it. There’s more to it, but that’s at the core.”

Maxine looked back at her steadily. “You realise, of course, pretty much none of us want to believe you.”

“Yeah. I can get that.”

“Especially when something weird happens with your nemesis just as you start getting on actual good terms with her.”

“Right.” She shrugged. “Look… promise me nobody’s going to do anything against Master, and I’ll let Mentros check out my mind. Confirm I’m on the side of good now.”

Maxine stayed quiet for a long time, and a sinking feeling settled around Vivian. “You’re planning to do something to Master,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

“That’s still under discussion. And that’s one reason I’m here.”

“One reason?” It was the only thing Vivian could think about. She couldn’t let them take Master away from her.

“Let’s just say I’m a little more willing to believe what’s happened to Miracle isn’t your scheme than some of the rest of us. Me and Stormcaller; well, he just wants to give you a chance. Says everyone deserves redemption.”

“…Good? I think?”

“I don’t like how Mercy has been created. But I don’t like the alternative to her much either.”

Vivian nodded. “So…”

“So I wanted to see just how real your new friendship is.”

Vivian met her eye and said simply “She’s the second most important person in my world.”

“No prizes for guessing who the first is, huh?”

Vivian pouted. “There’s no reason to sound so disgusted.”

“Miracle’s the one you want to say that to. I don’t take pleasure in being mindfucked unless I’m made to. And we both know that doesn’t really count.”

Strictly speaking, Vivian had been made to take the pleasure she felt; when Amy’s offhand comment, interpreted as an order, had made her internalise her once-archfoe’s own fetishes. But pointing that out was probably not a good idea.

“Whatever. The point is, I’ll help if I possibly can.”

“It’ll have to be just bouncing ideas off you,” Maxine said, raising a finger in caution against getting too excited. “Bulwark doesn’t want you involved at all. We sure can’t have you and Miracle in the same place.”

“…Just how long am I going to have to stay here?”

“At least until we know what we’re doing about your ‘Master’.” Maxine actually made air quotes as she said it. “And believe me, deciding that isn’t top priority right now.” Her expression was sympathetic, her tone was sympathetic, but it invited no protest, no chance of negotiation.

“So… can you give me a guess?” God, she must sound like an addict…

Maxine shrugged. “Two, three weeks?”

The sound Vivian made was deeply embarrassing, and she could feel her cheeks turning red at the realisation she’d exposed such weakness.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… I can’t do that,” Vivian said, her voice so small she wasn’t sure the other woman could hear it. “I can’t go that long.”

The heroine tilted her head, looking thoughtfully at Vivian. “Seriously?”

“Yes. I…” A plan was presenting itself to Vivian, and she turned it over in her head, cautiously, wondering what kind of plan it was.

When she was satisfied it was more of a Mercy way of doing things than a Macabre way, she nodded. “You’ve been mindfucked before, right?”

“Sure. You’ve been there a couple of times when it’s happened.” Maxine glowered. “At least you never took advantage of that yourself.”

“I never thought it counted for anything if you beat a hero while their brain wasn’t their own. Anyway… no, you said you don’t take pleasure in being mindfucked.”

“Right.”

“Okay. So…” She blushed. “I do. And, I mean, that’s a lot of it. But there’s more than the pleasure. You remember the need you had when you were mindfucked? That desire that was suddenly up on a level with the need to breathe?”

“I… wouldn’t describe it quite like that.”

“No?”

“It was less of a need and more… inevitability. Sometimes there was a part of me fighting, but mostly my body and any part of my mind they wanted just followed a script. Resistance wasn’t even a thing. Does that make sense?”

“It sounds like you remember exactly how it feels to be under control,” Vivian said quietly. “That’s such a clear explanation, it’s like you’re still experiencing it now.”

“I… kinda? It made an impression, but…”

“You know exactly how it feels,” Vivian purred. “You feel it in your dreams, don’t you?”

There was something in the flicker of Maxine’s eyes that told her she was on the right track. She leaned forward. “The feeling comes back to envelop you whenever you’re not looking for it, doesn’t it?”

“How did you know?”

“Sometimes it’s a dream. Sometimes you’re just sitting there, and you do something even a little unusual, and you wonder, don’t you? Wonder whether you’re a sleeper agent?”

“Uhhh…” Maxine couldn’t meet her gaze. Her head seemed unsteady somehow.

“You know exactly how it feels to be under control. How inevitable your obedience could be. Will be.” She paused, watched the reaction, gauged her moment. Smiled. “How inevitable it is, Maxine. How inevitable it is, right now.” She waited for Maxine’s lips to move, waited for her to start to form a reply.

“Yes,” Vivian said over whatever objection Maxine had been about to raise. “Yes, control is inexorable. Obedience is inevitable. You’re under control, and all I’m doing is telling you, so I can take the reins.”

“I… I…”

“You are under control.”

“I… am under… control.” The other heroine’s voice was suddenly feeble, weakened, uncertain.

“You are under control. You will obey.”

“I am under control. I…”

“You are under control,” Vivian said patiently. Bluffing was all she had, so she had to play this hand strong. “You will obey.”

“I will obey.”

“Good girl, Maxine. Good girl. You will obey me.”

“I will obey you.”

“And Maxine?”

“Yes?”

“You will take pleasure in your obedience.”

“I will take pleasure in my obedience.” Her voice was warmer as she acknowledge that order. Not that it particularly surprised Vivian.

She considered deliberately doing to Maxine what Amy had accidentally done to her. Making control a fetish. But she couldn’t bring herself to.

Maxine was a heroine. Mercy was a heroine. Vivian wanted to remain Mercy. She wanted her fellow heroines to be strong. She shouldn’t be introducing new weaknesses.

Perhaps Master would be upset she hadn’t taken the opportunity. But she doubted it.

“It’s very important I can leave here, Maxine,” she said gently. “You will help me leave.”

“Yes. I will help you leave.”

“You will go about your day at Justice Guard as if our conversation had not proven to you that you are under control.”

“I will go about my day as if our conversation had not proven to me that I am under control.”

“And when Bulwark leaves, you will call me and tell me I’m welcome back.”

“When Bulwark leaves, I will call you and tell you I’m welcome back.”

“Good girl, Maxine. You like being a good girl, now. You enjoy it. You take pleasure in it.”

The other heroine’s blank expression became a dopey smile. After a few moments, one hand crept from her lap to her breast. Vivian bit her lip; the control fetish she had now made that a very, very powerful image.

“I promise you, Maxine, so long as you obey me for now, Ms Miracle will get out of this fine. I’ll meet my Master. And we’ll both get to stay heroines.”

“Yesssss…”

“But obey only me.”

“Only you?”

“Only me.” An idea struck her. “Er - who else would you be obeying, otherwise?”

“The Ophidian Circle.”

“What?”

“I am a sleeper agent for the Ophidian Circle.”

Vivian’s eyes widened. Her successful induction seemed less a matter of successful improvisation, now, more a matter of luck falling her way. “Since when?”

“Since two months ago.”

“Oh. Well. Definitely don’t obey any of their commands. Repeat after me: You do not serve the Ophidian Circle.”

“I do not serve the Ophidian Circle.”

“The Ophidian Circle can go fuck themselves.”

“The Ophidian Circle can go fuck themselves.”

Vivian made a mental note to make sure Maxine reported on this once the crisis was over. “You’re a very good girl, Maxine.”

“Thank you, Mercy.” Her voice was a happy, needy sing-song.

“You want to play with yourself, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mercy.”

Well… there was no harm in a little delay when they had to wait for Bulwark anyway, right? Especially if she could bring her Master a video?

“Strip naked and play with yourself,” she ordered. “You can follow your other orders once you’ve cum and dressed.”

“Yes, Mercy.” Her fingers were already moving toward her jumpsuit’s hidden seal. Mercy activated some of the systems hidden in what remained of her helmet and settled in to watch.

God, the woman had a body that was a work of art. But it was her blank, empty, obedient smile that turned Vivian on, her fetish so strong it needed only to see someone succumb for Vivian to want nothing more than to kneel at Master’s feet.