Overshadow had set aside a portion of the base for a dining room, big enough that the grand table could play host to generals and admirals of a global army. A far greater army than she had; but she had great designs. Bimbeau now thought she might well also have the power to complete them, in time.

Of course, he hadn’t exactly intended to become a part of how she did so.

He was seated not far from the head of the table, where Overshadow of course had her own chair. Sinead stood opposite him, eyes glassy, her tits resting atop bra cups she’d pulled down, her shirt wide open just as she’d been when Overshadow walked in on them, holding a tray on which the wine bottle Overshadow was drinking from rested. She had not moved in some minutes.

She had not been told to.

Which was exactly what Overshadow was testing at this point in time. In front of the Doctor, so that he could sit and squirm about the results, if he had any doubts.

And he did - at least somewhat. Hypnotic inductions weren’t his speciality. They were usually the basis for something he augmented with technological enhancements. He hadn’t been at all sure he’d be able to improvise one into conversation and bring her into trance. Let alone that it would hold up under the fear Sinead should be feeling.

Hopefully, having structured the trance as an inoculation against fear, it’d do what they needed it to.

“What else can you do with her?” Overshadow asked.

No lies, he told himself sternly. If she catches you in one, it’s over. Save them for when you have no other choice.

“Not much,” he said. “She’s deep enough to follow direct suggestions. She’s scared of you enough that I figure she’ll stay pretty deep. But if you wanted me specifically, you wanted better than that.

“Sinead here is programmed to be loyal to you and your people. But isn’t going to use her own initiative for you. She’s too deep to access it, and if we bring her up, she’s not going to stay loyal.”

Overshadow’s lip curled into a thin sneer. “Not much use to me.”

“No,” Bimbeau agreed. “But I pointed that out before the test. What I do - it’s science, not metahuman power. I can’t just do it, not without technology. My own technology.”

“My people can fetch it,” Overshadow said simply.

The Doctor found he didn’t like the idea of Candace under threat from this woman. Didn’t like it at all. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Across the table, he caught sight of Sinead’s expression changing slightly; the sudden appearance of a furrow in an otherwise placid brow stood out. Something about this was making her stir.

He raised his hands. “We could, but there’d be fightback. I wouldn’t be able to stop it unless I went with them.” He paused. “And I’m assuming you don’t want to put me back in my laboratory, with my own followers.”

That got a smile. Overshadow wasn’t stupid. If she had been, with her sheer power, she’d probably never have decided to put together an army. She knew why the Doctor was having to work for her. Knew there was going to be distrust.

“Certainly not. So.” Her attention sharpened on him and fear shivered down his spine. “Explain to me how you can be of enough use to justify my not killing you.”

Bimbeau tilted his head to one side. “Do your men include good thieves?”

There was a gracious, amused nod.

“Would they take direction?”

Another.

“Then we need to stock up,” he said. “I have no idea where we are-”

“Nor shall you,” she confirmed. Not that it surprised him.

“And therefore I don’t know where would be the closest sources. But I can go to guide your thieves, or if not…” He half-smiled. An outright lie was always going to be a risk. Yet he still had to earn greater leeway if he was to get opportunities. That meant pushing his boundaries, and that meant pushing his luck.

So whenever he could nudge things so that he made a decision, that was a step worth taking. “If not, Sinead here can act as my voice.”

“She’s got no initiative of her own, you said.”

“That she doesn’t. But I can instruct her. She’ll see it as her duty and her best path to success,” that last part added with hopes of soothing the subconscious of the slave stood near them, “to secure my requirements exactly.”

He paused. “Once I have the tools, we’ll be able to prove our worth to you. You’ll know neither of us should be, uh…” He tried to choose his words carefully. “Extinguished.”

“And if I were to say accuse you of doing this to be able to take your pleasure of her?”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “It seems my path to survival is in service to you,” he said carefully. “If I choose a way to do that which brings me some pleasure, what’s wrong with that?”

Overshadow chuckled. She finished her wine glass and rose, taking the wine bottle from Sinead’s tray.

Aside from the worried furrow in her brow, Sinead had not moved throughout the conversation.

“You shall have a laboratory, Doctor,” she said as she stalked to the door. “And a single bed to sleep in while you work.”

“I suppose the internet’s out of the question?” he said, forcing levity into his voice.

Overshadow laughed as she passed through the door. “Keep him from making mistakes, Sinead,” she called back over her shoulder. “That’s an order.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Sinead answered, and Bimbeau could hear the emotion churning awkwardly under the numb drone of her trance. “I will obey your order.”

*

Finally the Doctor had something resembling peace with Sinead. He was sure there would be a microphone in there somewhere - it’s what he’d have done - but the room was otherwise empty. No visible camera. No reminder that they were being constantly watched.

It probably counted as progress in Overshadow’s twisted mind.

He resented her. That was, perhaps, only natural. He’d become used to total control of his own little world, and he now had almost none. His own world was out there, too, still turning, without him to guide it, and perhaps never to be seen by him again.

He was doing his best to keep this turmoil from showing on his face as he passed one hand back and forth across Sinead’s field of vision, fingers dancing in an ornate pattern. With his other hand he was stroking her bare arm, the shirt now abandoned on the table next to them. His hand only made contact with her skin on the downstrokes.

Sinead had already been taught that downward touch against her arm exerted a pull. When he stroked her arm like that, she felt herself drawn down in her trance, and she had been primed to belief that it would also draw her down into trance if she was released from her current state.

Not that Bimbeau had any intention of letting her wake. Sinead was the one thing here he had some control over. He wasn’t letting go of that without a really, really good reason. Instead, he was doing what he could to keep her nice and deep, his voice soft and soothing, showing as little of his own fear as he could.

Sinead seemed to react to his fear, her own threatening to rise back up from under the layers of trance that blanketed it. That had to be kept under control.

“You’re completely at peace now,” he told Sinead. Watched her eyelids twitched as their muscles relaxed fractionally further. As Sinead let go. “You’re a loyal servant of Overshadow. You’re as safe as anyone can be,” he continued. The woman was taking to this line much more strongly than he’d anticipated. Her topless form was as relaxed as you could get while still standing upright. Every time his fingers passed her head in a different direction, she swayed at the hips to follow.

The absence of fear was, for her, the biggest reason to drop smoothly and completely into trance. Resistance had become a mistake in her eyes, a grievous error that would only bring harm. She had let go of it completely.

“I’m completely at peace now,” she echoed. “I’m a loyal servant of Overshadow. I’m as safe as anyone can be.”

“You serve me to serve Overshadow,” he told her. “You know how important it is to be my eyes and hands, for Overshadow’s success and pleasure.”

There was a strange note of excitement to her drone as she responded. “I serve you to serve Overshadow. I know how important it is to be my eyes and hands, for Overshadow’s success and pleasure.” After a moment, still droning, she added “Obedience makes me happy.”

She was still swaying slightly, her expression was still vacant, but there was a definite set to her lips that made the Doctor think of a smile. He smiled in turn, not from her delight but because she was starting to integrate her various sets of programming. If everything was combining like that in her head, the web of suggestions would hold together much more securely.

“Good girl,” he assured her. “You’re going to make a fine tool.”

It wasn’t a compliment she could ever have expected before. For the moment, though, she smiled to receive it.

“I’m going to make a fine tool,” she recited.

Bimbeau stopped stroking her arm and took a deep breath. “Right,” he said. “Listen very carefully. I’m about to give you a list you must memorise. The only excuse for any of these items not to be stolen is if the place you’re using doesn’t have them…”

*

It wasn’t everything, of course. Not even enough equipment to make the things that needed to be custom-built. He wouldn’t build a full system here - not where it might eventually fall into someone else’s hands. There’d be enough to imprint new instruction firmly. Enough to make it part of the brain’s own neural pathways, so that the effect would last.

No more than that. Nothing to affect the body physically.

That was partly him trying to be secure, but it was also a simple recognition of facts; the full system was so complex he didn’t hold all of it in his mind. Not all of it could be reconstructed on his own, either. There were dozens of insights which had come from Candace, once she was made dedicated enough.

But once Sinead had been given enough of a shopping list, the Doctor had to let her go out there and attempt to bring it back. She would not be doing the heavy lifting; she wouldn’t be cracking locks. It wasn’t her job to neutralise security.

But Overshadow had people for all of that, and she knew exactly what he needed. The combination was obvious.

He just hoped enough would come back from the first raid that he could show Overshadow progress. At the moment, almost every move he made had to be pointed toward survival.

The other passengers and crew of the aircraft, he gathered, were being held onboard the vehicle. Food was brought in occasionally; they’d slept in their chairs last night.

Overshadow was holding onto them because Doctor Bimbeau would soon need demonstration subjects to prove his systems work. The first wave of unshakably loyal soldiers in her army would come from that passenger manifest.

They’d still need training to be useful, but they made sense as an experimental pool.

He sat and waited for Sinead and the team to bring the technology back, aware that in the meantime his mind was just screaming around in circles, making himself more paranoid at every turn.

He hated this. He was starting to hate Overshadow. But much more than he hated her, he feared her.

Trying to lift his mind onto happier topics, he wondered how his own slaves were doing.

*

“I don’t like it,” Lulu said for the third time.

Lying flat against the dunes, Candace peered through her binoculars. “No,” she said finally. “No, I don’t like it either. And get down, one of them is going to see you.”

Lulu pouted, but the hierarchy in the Doctor’s service was very clear. She settled to her knees, then lay down beside Candace. True to her programming, she made quite a production of it, pushing her ass out into the air until the short skirt she was wearing flopped away from it and over her back before leaning forward onto the warm sand as if she were doing yoga.

Candace supported anything the Doctor did - Doctor Bimbeau was always right - but there were times that she did wonder if the level of sexualisation he required of the slaves on the island might not get in the way.

She looked back at the boat through her binoculars.

Boat was probably the wrong word. This was a yacht, maybe a superyacht - Candace had never had any reason to try and find out what the difference might be - and it was surprisingly close to their island. Closer than any other vessel had come so far.

The island was owned by the Doctor, bought and paid for with her husband’s money, under an assumed name. It had taken a while to sell - many people didn’t want to be near a volcano, even a dormant one. The Doctor had seen the possibilities in geothermal energy and had gleefully signed up to take the risk.

As private property, it was unlikely the yacht would call in. But they were close, and it was dimly possible something might happen. That had been Lulu’s concern when she’d caught sight of the vessel and come to fetch Candace. Candace could only agree, now she saw it.

It was their conditioning, of course. Candace knew that; she knew a lot of the details of her programming. Had even suggested some of them to her Master the Doctor. She knew she’d been conditioned to a deep level of protectiveness of her Master, and of his property - the island, the women on it, the various assets buried elsewhere in the world.

When Doctor Bimbeau had revealed who he truly was to her (for Candace did not believe, any more, that the diffident, respectful young man she and her husband had befriended had been real - the Master was only the Master; the time before and the mental breakdown she’d witnessed must have been illusions), he had said, almost off-handedly, “I’ve tried doing life the right way. Turns out you can lose everything that matters in an instant. So now? Now it’s time to cheat. Supervillains don’t have this kind of trouble.”

Candace’s brain had been in the process of being broken down at the time. It was, perhaps, no wonder that she’d taken those sentences so deeply to heart.

And in fact it was only now, hearing that sentence play back through her memory, that she realised it applied to her, too. She’d lost everything that mattered to her first life, and she’d done it in an instant, the moment she sat down and looked at her doctored computer monitor without checking.

Being on the Doctor’s side was much better. Just existing in his service was better. She believed that. She had to believe that. It was programmed into her.

She sighed. “Do we know anything about these guys?”

“I asked Rikki to-”

“You shouldn’t be asking Rikki things.”

Lulu sighed. “I know, Mistress, but-”

“You outrank Rikki. You can order her to do what’s necessary.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Lulu mumbled. Candace could almost sympathise - the woman couldn’t remember the days when she’d been assertive and independent, and now that she had the rank to speak up it was clearly difficult for her.

As much as Candace understood, though, she could only almost sympathise.

“Master expects you to do your duty,” she said. It was meant to sting, and even with most of her attention on the ship, she could see that it did; Lulu almost flinched. The personality the Doctor had left her with was a natural submissive to a degree he hadn’t quite instilled in Candace.

Candace was still trying to work that one out; they’d been given very similar programming over time, but the end results were different. It didn’t feel quite right for that to be true. The Master’s devices should produce the same results every time, she felt.

She decided to let it drop for now. It could be picked up if Lulu hadn’t learned her lesson. “Go on. What did you ask Rikki?”

“I asked Rikki to try and find them on the radio,” Lulu said. “Just for monitoring.” A pause. “It worried me that maybe they were… well… Army in disguise.”

It didn’t take much for Candace to decode that as, General Walters is still out there somewhere.

“There’s been no radio transmissions from the boat,” Candace said. It wasn’t a question, but she was prepared to be wrong.

“None.”

“Much transmission at all?”

“Every couple of minutes there’s some uplink chatter. Mostly there just seems to be traffic the other way. Rikki tells me someone’s streaming audio.”

“So they’re probably actually just rich, entitled holidaymakers?”

Lulu shrugged, which on someone with her body type was a pleasure to watch. “Some of them are, anyway.”

“Mm.” Candace gave the yacht another look; this time she actually caught sight of a couple of figures stirring from where they were lying on the deck. Both tanned; one wore a bikini, but the other, a little older, had a pair of shorts on and nothing else as he fished inside a cooler, producing two beer bottles.

Candace could just make out a flash of white that was the man’s smile. She frowned, biting her lip. There was something almost familiar about his face…

She couldn’t place where that familiarity came from, but it was enough to decide her on a course of action. “How many of the staff can swim?” she asked.

“I’ve not asked them,” Lulu replied, sounding taken aback. “I’d guess most? Do you want me to check?”

“Of course.” Candace nodded. “If we’ve got more than ten women capable of swimming who’ve had the unarmed combat indoctrination, then I have a mission to run tonight.”

*

It seemed strange, somehow, to be wearing clothes above the waist.

Sinead was only mildly aware of her own headspace, mostly feeling as if she were floating. It was an out of body experience except she was still in her own body, and she’d only been even partially topless for just over twenty-four hours before the new uniform was issued to her.

She wore the same drab green fatigues as the armed men and women around her in the helicopter. Like them, she had a purple shoulder patch, though hers had a single silver bar at the base; a marker to the team that she was a non-combat asset. Her long red hair had been drawn back into a ponytail by the same soldier who’d brought her the uniform - a quiet, briskly professional woman whose patch had three silver Vs, marking her as a sergeant - and then the same gas mask had been put in place. Aside from her hair, there would be nothing for anyone looking at her to use to identify her.

In that way she was just like the soldiers around her. But in a much more important way, she was completely different - and they clearly sensed it themselves. Even in the helicopter, she was given space, treated differently. What little of her mind was still her own looked at their body language and saw a strange type of fear.

It didn’t puzzle Sinead that they were scared, either. Fear was what awaited her if she woke from trance. Fear, she was prepared to believe, was the natural state of humanity outside trance.

She very much hoped Overshadow would never see the need to wake her up again. Maybe it was that what she’d been taught since going under had locked off her perception so she just couldn’t see something that would contradict that, but it seemed like being conscious and aware wasn’t a good way to be.

The Doctor Bimbeau guy who’d hypnotised her was visibly terrified whenever Overshadow was in the same room. And considering he was almost arrogant the rest of the time, that said something to her.

She couldn’t understand how she’d never realised that independent thought was so bad before the plane was hijacked. Sure, this was a flashpoint - but it should have been pretty obvious even without that, shouldn’t it?

She wasn’t at all sure how long the helicopter flight out had lasted; when the squad around her started shifting and standing, clipping their gear to the abseil ropes, she found herself marginally more aware, nothing more. She might have sat still without noticing for minutes or hours.

She rose with the rest of them. Another of the faceless troops - the sergeant, by their shoulder patch - clipped her harness into place on the ropes in her turn.

It was dark outside as the doors slid open. She made her way forward and descended at her point in the order.

Back when she was an individual, not a tool, Sinead had been taught to parachute. This was not quite the same thing, but reflexes took over somewhat on impact; her knees and ankles flexed just as they should and she took the impact lightly. It took a moment to disconnect from the ropes, then she turned to follow the troopers.

They were already moving, focused on their objective. They held their weapons low, heads up toward the front door, moving fast. Sinead had to hurry to keep up with them. Moving at this pace, she was relieved for the first time not to be topless; the bra she’d been issued was heavy-duty, and made the military trot much less painful than it might have been.

She didn’t want to feel pain. It might wake her from her trance. Her trance was important; it kept her going.

The soldiers breached the double doors ahead with a crash and Sinead’s awareness floated back into the current moment. She saw security guards rise up and, as she watched, the soldiers fired.

There wasn’t the noise she expected from gunfire. Nor the muzzle flare. Sinead passed into the room idly wondering if these things were just masked from her.

The troopers were splitting up to search the building; the sergeant plucked at her shoulder, and Sinead turned to follow her. As she passed one of the downed guards she saw a dart in the man’s chest. So, she told herself, that was alright.

Overshadow must not have wanted the extra publicity of dozens of deaths.

She was quickly brought to a room deeper in the facility, a storeroom. Something clicked in her head, and suddenly Sinead was operating on a different level. She moved through the shelving, dimly conscious that one of the troopers was following close behind. All senses but vision and touch were gone, and her vision showed her only the items on shelves and the drawers full of other items.

Each one was examined one by one, not by Sinead, but by the programming the Doctor had drilled into her most recently. She was a tool, as he had promised she would be; her body was a sorting system. Object recognition rules governed her eyes and her arms moved only to pick out the components the Doctor wanted. She would then hold them out to her other side and the accompanying soldier would take them from her.

Her own mind, her own sense of the world around her, was almost completely suppressed. She was reduced to a tool. She was doing so well. She felt so good.

Despite tuning her other senses out, some tiny part of her was aware of the unease the soldier felt around her. She wasn’t consciously following the discomfort in his body language but the part of her mind that was stripping all of that input out had a tiny little leak.

She had checked off about two thirds of her mental list when she ran out of items to inventory. At once, the tool became Sinead again. She turned to face the soldier and, at this point, finally realised that she had no good way to communicate; there was no radio mic in her outfit.

She shrugged, hoping that would do. The soldier, worried, shouldered his gun, shrugged the back onto his other shoulder, and waited.

Sinead considered for less than a moment before simply walking forward out of the room. As she’d hoped, the soldier followed.

Elsewhere, as she understood it, other members of the squad were destroying the security system, trashing all records from the video surveillance, and generally erasing record of their presence.

She hoped the Doctor would tell Overshadow what a good tool she had been.

*

Chad van Corthard was, Melissa Wilder had privately decided, no longer on her alibi list. Rich enough, eligible enough, and certainly gullible enough; she’d been able to talk him into an overseas yachting holiday without really trying, even pushed him to set a route near the islands she suspected, and he’d brought along enough models and other rich young men that the media had excitedly collected a spree of photos, written up a lot of gossip, and then, once the yacht was out of easy zoom lens range from Casablanca, let the matter drop until they returned.

So far, so good, even if she was already preparing herself to need to grovel to her dad on return. He really hated to think of her as running with the rich kids - especially annoying given his friendship with some of the richest in town.

(Not that he was wrong about their kids being bad influences. But she’d become Swift Fox all the same, because Red Fox couldn’t handle the whole city on his own.)

The problem with Chad wasn’t that he didn’t make for great alibis. The problem was that it was difficult to get to do what she needed an alibi for. The man didn’t take no for an answer, didn’t sleep much, and didn’t see why anyone else should.

It was three a.m. local time. The sun hadn’t fully left the sky until one, and dawn was expected not long after five. Melissa’s window to don her costume, swim to the mystery island, and have a look around was getting pretty tight, but Chad had kept the party going - and on the deck - until just a few minutes ago.

Melissa was currently back in her cabin with the lights out staring at the glow-in-the-dark dial on her watch, trying to judge how long she needed to leave it before she could exit without anyone stumbling across her. Until she was absolutely sure the party wasn’t going to suddenly kick back off, she wasn’t even willing to get her costume out of its hiding place, let alone get dressed for work.

She would think, later, that it had been a ridiculous slip that she hadn’t been watching the water outside the yacht. She’d blame herself for it. Truthfully, it wasn’t even that surprising; people slipped in surveillance when they weren’t frustrated with attractive but dumb and stubborn men they didn’t actually want to sleep with, let alone when they had that kind of distraction on their plate.

All the same, she’d missed several shapes slipping into the water from the island she wanted to investigate the moment the lights and sounds of the party finally faded from the deck.

*

Lulu had just gotten her rope hooked onto the boat’s railing when light spilled out of one of the portholes above her. She looked up, startled, and wondered for a moment if she should move to a different point on the railing - but there was a real chance that moving the rope would catch the occupant’s attention. It wasn’t quite in line to begin with; she might be fine.

She pulled herself halfway out of the water against the rope, thankful the Doctor kept her at her physical fitness regimen. Once there, she lifted a foot and braced it against the hull, then the other. And then she began to climb, quietly determined not to slip or to give anything away.

Around the ship as a whole, eleven other women were also climbing the sides, each with the same goal; locate the occupants of the yacht and neutralise them before inspection.

Lulu was just going to start a little earlier. As she drew level with the porthole, she paused, reaching down to her hip with one hand to unsnap the gadget she had secured there. Her other arm, now supporting her entire weight, protested. She tensed her grip as best she could against it.

Once the gadget was in her other hand she switched it on with her thumb, rapped it sharply against the glass of the porthole twice, and pressed it into place, its own glow mingling with the light of the room.

*

It was time. Melissa was finally sure she wouldn’t run across anyone capable of rumbling her secret. She switched the lights back on and headed for the closet, where she’d taken some pains to create a secret compartment the moment she got some alone time, before they even set sale.

Her costume needed to be hidden somewhere and there was too much chance one of the models might wonder if Melissa had anything interesting in her suitcase. It hadn’t happened to her before, but she’d heard stories from Red Fox about his own cover operations. She was determined not to make the kind of mistakes she sometimes had.

She discarded her T-shirt and stripped off her bikini top, picking up the sports bra she had on hand. The costume gave a certain amount of support, but only so much - you couldn’t do much in her line of work without sensible clothing.

She fastened her sports bra into place, opened the closet, and reached inside to grab her costume, when there were suddenly two loud knocks from the side of the boat.

Melissa looked up, startled. Her first thought was that it had to be Chad; she was just telling herself that even Chad wouldn’t dangle himself off the side of the yacht to prank her when her eyes met some strange blue-and-red lightshow from outside, shining in through the window.

Who’s doing that? she asked herself. Then, what is it? They were both reasonable questions, but she should have asked something else first. By the time she was wondering about the strange spiral swirls which continuously emerged from the flickering, ever-shifting patterns, her mind had been affected deeply enough that she couldn’t look away.

Not that she realised at first. Standing there, her hand on the strangely-textured costume that was both bulletproof and flexible to wear, Melissa only noticed that something was wrong when it occurred to her that just having the secret compartment open could compromise her identity.

Then she realised she’d been standing just like that, watching the patterns, for not just moments but maybe even minutes. Time had been passing without her mind taking notice of it.

Something was wrong, Melissa told herself. She had to hurry.

But she didn’t.

She felt as if the freedom to move was draining out of her. The more she stared, the less any of her muscles seemed to want to cooperate.

Somehow, the more her body became rigid, the less fixed it felt; she felt almost floppy, as if, left to her own devices, her hands would open, her arms would sag, her knees would buckle… as if she would drop onto her knees like a puppet with her strings cut, and not long afterward, perhaps collapse into a helpless pile.

But she wasn’t left to her own devices. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t resist. She couldn’t fight back.

She couldn’t even, she discovered, close her eyes.

This was mind control, then. There were meant to be mental techniques to ward it off; Red Fox had referenced them at one point, even promised to teach them to her. But he hadn’t, or at least not yet - and it seemed like it was going to be too late.

By the time Lulu lowered the device, almost dropping it under her arm’s strain, Melissa could not and would not move. Across the ship, the Doctor’s other slaves, guided by Candace, were moving through the corridors, catching the inhabitants of one room or another to place them each in a light trance.

*

Sinead’s hopes she had been a good tool were rewarded with a fractional smile from the Doctor when the stolen goods were delivered to him, though he’d stayed preoccupied throughout. His eyes were mostly on the items themselves, checking them each over in turn.

She stood by in her combat fatigues, waiting. The light-headedness of trance was threatening to part, and she clung to it the best way she could. It was like trying to hold onto the end of a song as the playlist moved on, but so far, at least, her head remained comfortably vacant.

Maybe it wasn’t necessary that she woke up?

She was hoping that dozing off to sleep wouldn’t affect how she felt; she could hardly stay up forever.

The Doctor asked a question, and her attention instantly shifted from her own internal thoughts to what he’d said.

“This was all they had, then?”

“Everything that was on your list,” Sinead replied. She still spoke in a monotone, but the register of her voice had lifted. She realised she sounded bright and cheerful, and she felt more cheerful just from that. The lightness of her trance seemed to settle more warmly around her.

“Hm,” the Doctor said, his eyes still on the equipment. “Good work.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she said nothing.

Bimbeau nodded to himself. “I don’t suppose you’re experienced with electronic engineering?”

“No,” she replied. It felt like letting him down. She was supposed to be his eyes and his hands, and his hands turned out not to be so skilled.

“That’s fine,” he said. His attention still wasn’t on her; he’d now spread out the various stolen components and he was looking them over, deep in thought. “Take that uniform off.”

He might not be looking at her, but it seemed he was paying some attention. “Yes,” she agreed. Her hands were moving in advance of her mind; she was back in that state of out-of-body experience within her own body. Watching, like a passenger, as she unlaced the heavy black boots and set them aside; as she unzipped the jacket and shrugged it off, then discarded the drab pants and, in turn, pulled off the thick olive tee she’d worn beneath the jacket.

It was Sinead’s habits of neatness that had the entire outfit smoothed and folded as it was set aside, she thought to herself; and she was a little proud at the idea, though she couldn’t say why.

She turned back to face the Doctor, who by this stage was re-arranging the components on the table where they rested. His attention might be divided, but that seemed to help him, she thought; his activity flowed better now he was thinking about her body as well as his work.

She felt the warm glow of satisfaction that she was helping.

“Go and stand by the mirror,” he told her. “In front of the mirror.”

There hadn’t been a mirror in the small lab when she left. There hadn’t been the table, either, or the single bed shoved into the corner. Sinead moved to stand in front of the mirror, where she stood with her back to it, arms behind her back, chest slightly arched.

The look that had so pleased him earlier on.

The Doctor looked up at her directly for a moment. He tutted. “The bra won’t do,” he said. “Your panties you can keep for now, but ditch that thing. It’s ugly.

It was true that few sports bras were designed mostly for aesthetic appeal, but she’d been very glad of the support. However, on orders, she was just as glad to discard it, feeling that little fizz of pleasure that came from obedience. It seemed stronger, somehow, when nothing else was happening - which was probably something to do with the level of focus.

“Turn to face the mirror,” he directed. Sinead obeyed. “Look into your own eyes. What do you see?”

“I see my own eyes,” she answered. If more of her mind was conscious, she might have felt baffled by the question; as it stood, the emotional context of her puzzlement couldn’t even reach her own mind.

“You see the eyes of a hypnotised woman,” the Doctor said. “Yes?”

“Yes,” she agreed readily.

“You’re hypnotised.”

“Yes.”

“You want to be more deeply hypnotised.”

“Yes.”

“Your own stare hypnotises you.”

“My own stare hypnotises me,” Sinead droned. She could already feel it; the pull of her reflected eyes, the way it weighed on her thoughts, a gentle, steady pull.

“The deeper you sink, the lower you’ll stoop.”

“The deeper I sink, the lower I’ll stoop,” Sinead echoed. Her breasts were suddenly now a weight of their own too. She could feel her spine start to lean forward, pivoting at the hips…

The next thing Sinead knew she was bent almost fully forward, her eyes still locked on the blank, helpless gaze of her reflected self. The Doctor was standing behind her now, his hands on her tits, toying with her. She was wet and helpless and programmed and needy, she thought to herself.

It didn’t occur to her to wonder why ‘programmed’ was in there. It wasn’t possible for her to remember reciting those four descriptors as a mantra, over and over, as she took herself deeper.

The Doctor slipped his foot in between hers and moved her legs out swiftly to either side. She felt herself slightly lowered, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t protest. She didn’t think.

She was learning that an absence of activity could also be obedience, could also bring pleasure.

The Doctor pulled down her panties. Startled, she glanced over her shoulder at him, and saw an almost predatory grin on his face as he looked over her body. Beyond him, she saw a partially-assembled apparatus.

She had no idea how long she’d been taking herself deeper.

The strangely out-of-body sensation of obedience changed abruptly to a very clear, very present sensation as she felt the Doctor thrust inside her. She gasped.

“Look into your eyes,” he commanded, steadying himself with one hand on her hip, the other on her bare breast, gripping tight with both.

He was finding his rhythm as her eyes met their reflection and she began to lose her sense of time again.

Her pussy was delighted to be of use. Wet and helpless and programmed and needy, Sinead wasn’t just a good tool but a good toy, and knowing that - feeling it - was so good, so right, so amazingly wonderful.

The Doctor fucked her body as her mind fucked itself. Both were so good, so right.

Both showed her obedience, which was pleasure, but both were also pleasure in their own right. The combination was like nothing she’d experienced before.

Even the titfuck earlier in the day, her first proper hypnotised action, hadn’t felt like this, and nothing in her previous life had been so uncomplicatedly delicious.

She was wet for his cock, helpless to resist it, programmed to pump back against it, needy for it. She was wet and helpless and programmed and needy.

She was so deeply hypnotised now that she couldn’t even remember how not to be. There was room for nothing in her mind but pleasure and obedience.