As much as Kara had intended to steadily displace other slaves and become the Thoughtsmith’s most favoured toy, it turned out to be more difficult than expected.

She and Christina spent a lot of time on the road. Master referred to it as ‘running errands’. Christina often described what they did as commando raids. Kara, being a realist and not being a former cop, liked to just call these thefts.

“There’s nae ethical component to it,” she’d told Christina more than once. “We have our orders an’ we obey. Ethics dinnae come into it fuir us.”

The first few times she’d said this, Christina had made a face, as if she found the argument an uncomfortable one. That reaction seemed to be dwindling with time and repetitions, which was good.

In the first four months she was a slave to the Thoughtsmith, they’d been sent out to steal ten different items from across the United States, ranging in size from a small lump of semiprecious stone on a copper chain - looking like nothing so much as the world’s cheapest jewellery item, now broken so that it was a single length of chain rather than a loop - to a large box, five feet across, four feet deep, eight feet tall, one face of which was a door made of bulletproof glass, and mounted on the side of which was a console.

That job had required them, first, to boost a furniture truck from a lot nearby. Kara had been glad to have Christina with her; learning to jump start a car wasn’t something that had even been on her training list yet. A tiny part of her mind made an insistent note to use it once she was away from Thoughtsmith. As always, most of her mind happily insisted that this time the brainwashing would stick, this time her mind wouldn’t reassert itself, this time she could go along happily for the rest of her life.

There was certainly more reason than usual for her to be willing to believe that; Master was clearly working hard on researching alternatives, or rather, Master had agents working on doing so. Many of their thefts were delivered to another office in the same complex Kara had broken into before her conversion. A couple instead found themselves delivered to obscure buildings on or near the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

Of all of them, the one that Kara was least happy about giving up was the big box. Not only did it suggest certain things on its own, the few scraps she knew for sure about Bimbeau’s work said that it was technological rather than mystic or pharmaceutical and it could effect physical changes as well as mental ones. A box like that seemed like it might be his work.

(And, even more privately, part of her wanted to play with it herself, to come to understand the possibilities. She hadn’t been willing to suggest that to Christina at that point, hadn’t felt comfortable enough with the woman - after all, she was a former policewoman, and there were enough scandals to confirm to anyone paying attention that they were typically untrustworthy - which was a shame, as a month or two later she felt like she and Christina were actually getting to be close friends, in a way that reminded her of Mike.

She couldn’t decide how she felt about Mike not being part of all this. On the one hand, by now she’d embroiled Mike in hypnotic villains’ plots more than once, and Mike was never exactly happy about it when they were done. As a friend, Kara was glad to spare her this.

On the other hand, Master could benefit from having a tame pilot at his beck and call, and more importantly, he’d get a kick out of owning one.

So far, Kara had not told her Master about her friend except in the vaguest terms. She had managed to square this with the primary part of her head - the part that obeyed without question - through a number of tortured logic loops.

She did wonder whether that would collapse at some point, leading to her confessing to her Master the identities and value of Mike and Charlotte Whitestar, before offering to contact them both and arrange a meeting at which he could ambush them.

As well as the ten thefts, there had been one abduction. They’d flown to Alaska to find the target, then drove out in a hired van, down through Canada to Seattle and then across the States. The return trip had taken a little under four days of near-constant driving, the two of them alternating driving duties and sleeping in the back with their sedated passenger, keeping her drugged enough not to cry out. They had only stopped to refuel and use the bathroom, and the hired van would never be the same again. Kara was firmly of the opinion that the feat was only possible because it had been ordered, and that if they had planned the abduction themselves, it would have taken a week.

Over time, they had begun to talk. Kara had heard all about how Christina had arrested the Master, and the fleeting moments where she had been affected before he was subdued, and the jailbreak she had then been caught up in. Christina had confessed her betrayal of her sister. In turn, Kara had related the reason she had been hunting mind controllers in the first place, the whole sorry saga from her mother’s corruption onwards.

She didn’t know what had happened to the woman they’d abducted. Not yet. She did somewhat expect that when they returned this time, they’d see her somewhere around Master’s base of operations.

Kara was looking forward to it. She probably wasn’t supposed to be curious about these things, but when she wasn’t mindless, she was driven by her curiosity more than anything else than the need to obey. Who the woman was, what she’d been doing, and what value Master expected from her - Kara wanted to know, especially having sunk days into her retrieval.

At that moment, she and Christina were in a stolen Camaro, years old but still powerful and well-maintained, heading back toward Boston at speed. In the back seat were four Samsonite briefcases, and in each briefcase were eighty small ampoules full of a chemical, nestled into custom-cut foam inserts that would absorb impacts and prevent the glass from breaking under most circumstances.

These had previously been in a storeroom belonging to a crime boss in Philadelphia. Ellie, one of Master’s other slaves, had infiltrated his group over the past month and a half. It was something she excelled at, but did only rarely - once Master already had a lead on something that interested him, if he couldn’t get enough information at range, he sent in either Ellie or Henson, depending on whether the situation called for toughness and streetsmarts or a certain raunchy type of maternal vibe - something that was far more frequently effective than Kara would have guessed, though with hindsight, her mother had perhaps exercised a more natural version of the same.

The guy had called himself the Cobra, and while most people had assumed that was a boast about his viciousness, it turned out he was also using hypnotic suggestion to help get what he wanted. Evidently those suggestions were backed by whatever this chemical was.

“He’ll be pleased,” she said, breaking a silence that had stretched for two hours and over a hundred miles. “We’ll be rewarded.”

“If he chooses,” Christina said. It wasn’t disagreement, but neither was it nearly so confident as Kara. She glanced across, but Christina’s eyes were on the road as she drove. “Sometimes something’s caught his attention while we were out,” she said. “And we’re straight back out there.”

“Hm.” Kara pouted slightly. Becoming his most desired and most used slave, while also maintaining her status as his most valuable remote operative, was a challenge. It was a good thing that she felt such pleasure in obedience alone. She looked down at the skintight jumpsuit she wore, the curves within. “Perhaps we can persuade him to delay.”

There was silence for another mile or so of road. “I’ve never tried that,” Christina said. There was no criticism in her voice, just an honest statement.

“It’s not disobedience,” Kara assured her. “If we have our orders, we will obey. But if we can persuade him to give us more orders… well, that’s a deeper service, is it nae?”

“I guess you have a point,” Christina said slowly. Kara watched as Christina gave herself the same downward glance of self-assessment, albeit much faster before returning her eyes to the road. “So… how?”

“Follow my lead.” Kara grinned.

*

Her half-formed plans stalled in any case when, on arrival, they went to present themselves and their spoils to the Thoughtsmith.

Having broken into the Cobra’s inner circle, Master’s ersatz throne room now seemed positively tasteful by comparison. All the same, the throne wasn’t the first thing she noticed. As compelled by her programming, her eyes went to Master first. He was sitting forward in his chair, his eyes downcast, a coin held between thumb and forefinger.

Kara followed his gaze. Then her jaw dropped and she stared openly.

Lying face-down on the ground was the woman from Alaska. She’d spent enough time sat in the back of a van with her, keeping an eye out for any indications that the dose might be starting to wear off, to know that. She’d know that face for a long time to come.

The rest of the woman she was looking at was different enough to almost make her doubt herself. Her physique had changed; a woman so slim Kara wanted to call her skinny now rested with her shoulders several inches above the ground, held aloft by what Kara suspected would be a magnificent pair of tits if she stood up, her head resting on her folded forearms so that her neck wasn’t in an awkward position.

Her hips swelled out more than they had before, and if her ass and thighs had been like that, Kara would absolutely have remembered. There was no sign of surgery. Kara’s mind immediately went to the box; was this proof for her speculations?

Master flicked his hand down, releasing the quarter from his hand. It hit the woman’s buttock and bounced nearly three inches in the air before landing again, this time on the floor. He let loose a cackle.

Kara realised she had stopped dead in her tracks, as had Christina. Annoyed with herself, she started forward, stopping just short of where the quarter lay, and dropped to one knee, head bowed, resting the two briefcases she had been carrying on the ground beside her. Christina followed suit.

“Ah.” Thoughtsmith’s attention was on her again, at least, and the tone in his voice was fond. Good. She could work with that. “Welcome back. Your mission was successful?”

“Aye, Master.” She lifted her head and looked back at him boldly. She’d noticed that none of the others did, but she’d also noticed he didn’t seem annoyed when she did it. She was, she thought, his daring doll, someone who accepted his reins absolutely but still pushed for more. As an identifier, it was a useful one to have. She was sure it gave her more leeway. “I believe you’ll be satisfied wi’ oor work.”

Her gaze dipped back down to the prostrate captive, who presumably was no longer a captive but a willing attendant upon Master’s will. “Ah see ye’ve been enjoying the fruits of our labours,” she said, and she kept her tone light and amused.

She thought again of her mother, who had taught her how to handle this by example, What your tone and expression said didn’t have to have anything to do with how you felt; the Thoughtsmith might decide that her jealousy was a useful motivator, and one that would help him get the results he wanted, but he also might decide that he didn’t need to deal with it. Better to use a front he enjoyed.

“Yes… though I’ve made some improvements,” he smirked. “Haven’t I?” He punctuated the question with another flicked coin. This was clearly something he’d been doing for some time, and something he hadn’t got tired of yet.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

Kara felt impulse carry her further. “Ah take it yuir glad tae understand who ye belong to?” she asked the unknown woman.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed, eyes alight.

“Then I think ye should thank myself an’ my friend, shouldn’t ye?” She smiled broadly.

There was a moment of confusion in the woman’s face - doubtless she didn’t remember the faces from the van anything like so well - before she put it together. Kara made a mental note that the woman was probably smart. “Thank you?” she said. “Of course. Master… may I thank them properly?”

Even smarter, then, and with people skills. Kara filed this away quietly. Whoever this woman was, she would be one to watch for.

“Go right ahead,” Master told her.

The woman pushed herself off the ground to one knee, turning to face them as she did. From this pose she was able to look down on them as they knelt, and she used this to favour them both with a knowing, excited smile.

By whatever calculus she was making her choices, she decided to attend to Christina first, cradling her head between her hands and tilting it back, easing forward and stooping her head into a long, lingering kiss. By virtue of superior positioning she could control the kiss from the beginning onward and Kara was perfectly placed to watch - as was Master.

It was something special. Kara’s own interest in women, never as high as her interest in men, she believed to have been cultivated through mind control. The fact that, if so, it should have ended six months or so after the controller who implanted it lost control was something she ignored, focusing instead on the fact her desires were higher while she was mentally controlled.

But then, of course, all of her desires always were.

Whatever the justification, watching the kiss took her breath away, and when the newcomer broke the kiss with Christina and turned toward her, Kara realised her lips were dry; her tongue flickered out, tracing the red curve of her lips in anticipation.

She had only a few moments to think about it before the newcomer took Kara’s head into her hands in turn. What Kara was sure of was that she wasn’t willing to be outdone by another of Master’s slaves; the part of her which yearned to triumph, to be marked by Master as his foremost slave, had not been blunted.

It was possible that this woman had the skills needed to earn a jumpsuit and to be sent out on missions herself. It was equally possible that whatever value she had to Master was in knowledge and knowledge alone, as well as the augmentations that had been made to her body.

Kara was not willing to be left to a disadvantage. One arm slipped around the other woman’s shoulders, her fingers interweaving with her hair, and clasping her head closer to Kara’s own, she took control of the kiss. Her other hand reached down, taking a handful of the other woman’s buttock and squeezing.

Kara heard a startled moan into her mouth during the kiss. Internally she was giddy with triumph.

It was always worth taking the initiative.

As their lips touched, something more than usual seemed to flow into and through Kara. Scalp and skin tingled, pleasure flooding through her, a giddying pleasure. She could feel more than that, a sense of something, but she did not know what that something was; it was nothing she’d experienced before.

When they broke the kiss - rather, when Kara broke the kiss, as her handful of hair guaranteed her control over the other woman’s head - she eased the newcomer’s head back and slightly to one side, gently enough so as not to hurt her, but firmly enough to ensure that they both ended up where she wanted; their heads level, no suggestion of dominance through position, and Kara’s own face more visible to Master than the other woman.

She did not read awareness of her own calculation in the newcomer’s eyes, but she knew well that she didn’t know her well enough to make a guess.

“A fine greeting,” she said, her voice soft but pitched to carry; she wanted Master to hear at least her side of this if not the contributions of both women. “Ah’m Kara Kraft. An’ who might ye be?”

“I’m…” The woman hesitated. Kara saw her eyes flick to one side, seeking guidance from Master, but her head was caught at an angle where she couldn’t see him. It was useful information, in Kara’s view, simply to know that she’d wanted that guidance.

When the woman spoke again, she said “Belinda Marsden.” And now Kara had something else to file away, because the word her lips had begun to shape before she hesitated hadn’t begun with a B, nor an M; Kara’s guess would have been an A.

This was, then, someone with more than one name. Maybe an alias. Maybe an alter ego.

“Mah pleasure,” she said, to cover her thoughts. “And this is my friend an’ yuir other rescuer, Christina Stoppel.”

She released her hold on Belinda’s hair and the other woman looked across to Christina and nodded her thanks.

“I have tae say,” Kara continued, “You’re looking a lot… healthier… than you were when we delivered you.”

Belinda’s eyes widened. She looked down at her curves and laughed, almost sounding sheepish. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “I’m… still getting used to this.”

For some reason, that was what gave Kara the solution. Some combination of her word choices, her behaviour, the lingering sensations from that kiss, and the situation, all came together. “Aye,” she said. “I can imagine it’s a little different experiencin’ mind control from this angle.”

Belinda’s eyes widened, but it was Master who spoke first. “I didn’t tell you that,” he said.

“Nae, Master,” she agreed. “But I’d be less useful to you if I couldn’t work these things out, is that not so?”

“Well.” Thoughtsmith laughed. “Perhaps.”

“Hypnotic lips,” Christina said slowly, putting together the rest of the detail from that. “Were you holding back? Or has being controlled yourself affected it?”

Belinda blushed. “We don’t know yet.” The way she said it, it was a confession, shame and confusion curling around the edges of her tone.

“Ah.” Kara smiled. “Testing’s begun.” Looking up at Master, she said “Will ye be needing a collection of volunteers rounding up, Master?”

“Not exactly.” He smiled. “But I do have one in mind for you to collect.”

“Yes, Master,” Kara said.

Christina’s answer was hot on her tail. “Anything, Master.”

Kara threw Christina an approving smile and a tiny nod. Being a proactive slave was the key to more use, to more orders, to more programmed pleasure. It was good to see her friend realising that.

“Tell them,” Master said.

Kara turned her attention to Belinda. She seemed, for whatever reason, hesitant to answer. Still, she had been given a direct order. “There is someone I’ve taken control of several times,” she said. “I know her mind and her resistance well.

“If she holds me at bay longer, we’ll know that Master has affected me.”

“In which case, your power likely won’t be put to his use,” Kara mused aloud. She saw the slight wince in the other woman’s expression, but didn’t point out the obvious; this would certainly mean that her body was instead. “But if it does, I can imagine that would make Master’s life much easier, dealing with renewing th’ bonds of slavery on his harem.” She tried the smallest smile actually directed toward him, her head very slightly tilted so that any eye contact came through her lashes, and she saw the jolt of excitement that ran through him. Good.

“We will make no assumptions until we know,” he said. It was the sort of statement which, said one way, would have been taken as an order. The way he actually said it, it felt instead like a warning, and Kara could understand why that would be so. “Kara, you will oversee the operation.”

“Aye, Master.” She was caught between elation and frustration. The good news was that she would be serving her Master. The bad, that she would not be close by for him to use. Especially with this new factor…

“I’m assigning you Christina and Jillian. This one will be tough.”

“Aye, Master.” They hadn’t said who the target was, but for her Master, a notoriously overconfident man, to be concerned enough to pull Jillian out of her job for however long this took suggested it would be a real challenge.

“We know roughly where our quarry is. You will go there. You will find her. You will engineer privacy for her and Belinda, and if the kiss does not do the job, you will abduct her back here.”

So the new treat was coming too? That felt like a relief, but Kara was also aware that parts of her backbrain that she rarely heard from while under control had woken up and were starting to flex. She was getting ideas, somewhere in her subconscious. That might or might not be a good thing, but on the whole she was concerned. Some parts of her weren’t a good slave.

Still, what else could she answer? “Aye, Master.”

Christina cleared her throat tentatively. “Can we ask the target?”

“Of course,” Master said.

Belinda looked to him, but no more came from him. Kara, again, felt illogically better; this woman was being tested too. She might be a new toy for him, but she was also an X-factor, an uncertain quantity, simply because she had been a controller herself.

Kara was fairly sure she could outcompete that.

Belinda sighed. “Her name is Rebecca Burrows,” she said. “She’s the Deputy Director of C.A.L.I.B.R.E.” She looked thoughtful, gazing off into the middle distance, remembering. “I first made her a doting, drooling, dripping fuckdoll fifteen years ago, when she was a field agent, a few years past rookie and experienced enough to be out on her own.

“Since then, I’ve tapped her several times when I needed input. If she can fend off my kiss, I am no longer in control of anyone.”