The Doctor wished he knew a little more about the biochemical side of his and Candace’s work. Sinner’s burn had been dressed carefully and would be looked after, but he’d far rather he had a better and - just as important - a quicker fix. If Candace were here…

He let that thought trail off. Not one he wanted to pursue. She was a slave, he reminded himself. A helper, yes; pleasant companionship, yes, and a brain that perfectly complemented his own and often saw what he didn’t (though she was programmed not to think of herself as being in his league).

“You’ll have to take some time off from flying,” he told Sinner, who quietly nodded. “But you know how to use a highly technical device, and you take training well, or you wouldn’t have the job you have. Yes?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Bimbeau smiled. “You’ll work as my assistant,” he commanded.

“Yes, Doctor,” Sinner replied. And she smiled, suddenly, in spite of the pain she felt. She had purpose now. She would obey. And obedience would make her happy.

The Doctor nodded to himself, headed back to the laboratory. At least he had that going for him. With any luck teaching Sinner how to work the Tiara would give him some thoughts on refinements, just through seeing her perspective.

*

“He’s assigned her to himself, Commander,” a faceless trooper with sergeants’ stripes on his shoulder reported. “An assistant.”

Overshadow smiled slowly. “Wonderful,” she said. “Keep an eye out. I want to be sure he’s teaching her.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“We’ll have to give him opportunities to teach, too.”

“Yes, Commander.” There was amusement in the Sergeant’s voice now. Amusement that almost matched Overshadow’s own. They had known each other for a long time now; he was almost a perfect Sergeant, and his attitude to the country who had trained him had made him a natural ally for Overshadow.

It was very possible that he now knew her better than any other living human. Having heard her thinking aloud, he did what all the best sergeants do by instinct. He anticipated her next requirement and started planning how to handle it. But he took no liberties. He didn’t act. He waited for the requirement to be spoken aloud.

“Who do we have on disciplinary?” Overshadow asked.

“Meadows,” her Sergeant answered. “Tanaka. And I’ve let it slide because his work otherwise is very good, but Belloc could be written up any time, if you want him to be.”

“Belloc?” Overshadow raised an eyebrow. “What’s he done?”

“His discipline in his off-hours is sloppy. Plus he’s doing all the usual tricks we turn a blind eye to if the work is good.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Too much chance you’d have executed him as a message to the others, Commander. Ruins morale for a week every time.”

Overshadow fixed him with a piercing stare, then laughed. “Well, so be it,” she said. “Write him up, give Meadows over to him, then if that works we’ll push Belloc across first and Tanaka next.”

“Yes, Commander.”

*

Melissa’s scalp tingled. She could still feel the blissful sensation of Candace’s fingers intertwined in her hair, holding her, directing her. Making it easier for Melissa to solve the puzzle of Candace’s perfect cunnilingus.

The tingling felt like an award, an achievement. A badge of honour. She’d done her job, done it exactly the way she should. Mistress had shown her appreciation for that job, and that was her reward. That and the taste of Mistress on her tongue and staining her lips.

She was drifting in and out of proper awareness of the world around her because the alternative was the bliss of knowing how she had pleased Mistress and feeling it with every fibre of her body. It was just a better mindset than to take in the world around her, to acknowledge the challenges she’d faced and to remember how badly her pre-control self would consider this to have gone.

She drifted back into some idea of her surroundings when the perfect ass of her Mistress, to which her eyes had been glued by hypnotic suggestion and which she followed obediently to a direct order, stopped moving. The dark blue of Mistress’ wetsuit clung beautifully to her ass-curves, just as it had been used to great effect to show off her chest.

Melissa found it hard to believe either of them were as deliciously, wonderfully desirable as they were. They seemed unreal, yet the usual telltale signs of surgical enhancement were completely missing.

They were also decidedly not something she was interested in, she reminded herself. Yet Mistress had told her how badly she wanted to suckle at Mistress’ tits and to worship her ass, and Melissa believed everything Mistress told her.

…Even the things, she belatedly realised, that she knew, for a certainty, to be untrue. She knew her job couldn’t be considered done just because she’d found Candace Kraft. But in her heart she believed it with such certainty that it was impossible to make herself care that the woman was still in the clutches of some malign mental manipulator.

Candace gestured to a chair. The chair was high-backed, made of some dark, shiny metal, with high armrests and thick, circular restraints set into the base of the front legs and the end of the armrests. Those seemed to be part of the main structure, though Melissa knew that if they could close around wrists and ankles, there had to be moving parts involved somewhere, somehow.

“Sit,” Candace ordered.

“Yes, Mistress,” Melissa replied. It was so easy to agree. It slipped out before she could think about the problem for even a moment.

She sat against the metal. Cold seeped through her costume across her ass, her back, her thighs, and her forearms. But she sat, and she stayed sat.

“Fasten your ankles in.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Melissa tried to stop herself. She really did. But it felt so right, so obvious, so natural that she should lean forward, rest each foot in turn against the chair, and just gently push on the restraints until they snapped into place. The clunk as they locked closed sounded so satisfying.

Her fingers traced the restraints themselves. Someone very slick must have designed these; there was no trace of a gap, of a break in the material. Nothing to indicate a lock or any mechanism she could work to open them again.

“Now your right wrist.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

She didn’t fight as hard to prevent her wrist being locked. Maybe that was defeatism. Maybe it was the pleasure that had pulsed through her mind with each of her leg restraints as they snapped closed.

It was a pleasure she didn’t understand. It came from nowhere but doing what she was told, but it started at the base of her skull and ran like blissful fire all the way down her spine to her pussy, heating her throughout. She set her left arm on the other armrest in anticipation of her Mistress’ requirements and squirmed delightedly, doing her best to grind the tips of her labia against the cool, teasing metal.

Candace locked her wrist into place and the small part of Melissa still raging against her own submission screamed in frustration, setting off a small chain of blissful firecrackers through the part of her mind which had already surrendered.

“Do you like your new chair?” Candace teased.

Melissa opened her mouth to answer but what passed her lips was a hungry, needy, embarrassing moan.

“That’ll do,” Candace said with a chuckle. Melissa suddenly felt no need to apologise or explain, or even to speak at all. What she’d said would do. “You know by now that our Master, Doctor Bimbeau, brainwashed me.”

Melissa nodded.

“What you don’t know is that I helped him do it.” Melissa’s eyes widened, and Candace smirked. “It wasn’t intentional,” she said quickly. “I was hypnotised at the time. He’d worked out some trick to bypass my will. But that meant he could use my brain was well as my body.”

Candace’s eyes unfocused. She smiled off into the distance at the memory, a loving, happy nostalgia for the time when Doctor Bimbeau turned her from a free woman to a helpless, obedient slave. A willing participant in her own corruption. An aide who corrupted further for her Master.

“He didn’t know how to make things permanent then. That’s a problem in the field, did you know?” She glanced back at Melissa, checking that the captive heroine was taking it all in, and Swift Fox was uncomfortably reminded that before she was a slave, this woman had been a university professor. Teaching was automatic for her, almost a reflex.

“But he had his speciality, and I had mine, and together, we made the first version of this.” She patted the chair top of the chair back.

“It’s far past time you were brainwashed. Isn’t it? Oh - your answer is ‘yes’.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Melissa said, and it was as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders. She felt lighter, happier, suddenly full of purpose and satisfaction. She moaned again, grinding harder against the chair.

Candace reached behind the chair and started fiddling with something. “I mentioned you needed a new role model, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Right.” She chuckled. “Your new role model is me. A dutiful slave going above and beyond for her Master.”

“A dutiful slave,” Melissa agreed, even though a tiny part of her was still horrified by the idea. “Going above… and beyond…” Everything felt so good. Her entire nervous system was singing with pleasure. “…for my Mast-”

She never finished the word. Ragged breathing gave way to delighted cries of excitement. Gasping for breath, the orgasm hit her and she let go with a needy, desperate, blissful scream.

*

Meadows; five feet eleven inches, dirty blonde hair in an undercut, a small brass hoop nostril piercing, and even through the baggy combat fatigues, clearly heavily muscled.

She was not at all what Bimbeau had expected Overshadow to send. Without really thinking through the logic, he’d automatically assumed that men would count for less than women here. And indeed, with very few exceptions, he was right; but Meadows was also Kentucky born, and while Overshadow recruited Americans, she didn’t think much of them as a nationality.

He also hadn’t expected something quite so butch when the faceless helmet came off. The suspicious glower on her face, on the other hand, fit his expectations perfectly.

He was aware, out of the corner of his eye, that Sinner was pottering about by the table of tools without a care in the world; as someone not under hypnotic compulsions, all the unease in the room was left to him to experience.

Try the civil tack. “Good morning,” he said, his voice more or less even, although he was pretty sure an experienced soldier would hear the nerves in his voice.

“Sure.” She was giving him nothing.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

The first sign of doubt in her eyes. “No…”

“No? Not even rumours?”

“Well…” Meadows shrugged. “Around here, you learn not to put too much faith in rumours.”

“Ah.” The Doctor smiled politely. “Yes. I imagine Overshadow does some pretty unbelievable stuff.”

“It’s not her. It’s the supers she’s got.” For the first time, her eyeline dropped. She shifted slightly.

“Not a fan of metahumans?”

“Hell no.”

He nodded slowly. Went over what he needed to do and what he risked in his head. Decided on a plan of action.

“So does that mean you don’t want to be one?”

Meadows’ attention sharpened on him immediately. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever you’ve heard, you know I’m here to do an experiment. Right?”

“Sure…”

He kept his face as straight as he could. Bimbeau had become a pretty good liar while still teaching - you could hardly progress in academia if you didn’t have a pretty loose relationship with the truth - but he’d had no reason to lie for the best part of two years.

Was it a skill you lost over time?

“Overshadow wants more superpowered lieutenants. I’m betting that’s pretty well known.”

Meadows was starting to see the shape of the lie he was hinting toward. She gave a short laugh. “Yeah. That’s one way of putting it.” Which wasn’t trust. But she was listening now, not dismissing. It was a step forward.

“Well, apparently, Ms Meadows, you fit a very specific set of criteria, and you’re the first test subject for these experiments.”

She frowned. “What exactly are you talking about?”

“I can give you superpowers, Ms Meadows-”

“Corporal Meadows.”

“…oh! My apologies. The point is the same. I can give you superpowers. You then receive a higher rank in Overshadow’s army. And, of course, superpowers.”

Meadows folder her arms and glowered. “I’m not stupid, Doc,” she said. “I’ve been written up three times.”

“Yes.” He nodded. Kept his eyes, as best he could, from tearing up or blinking too much. Still trying not to give it all away. “But you’ve got potential, they tell me. So you’re the test subject.”

She frowned. “How often have you done this before?”

“Twice. But not on her people. She’s cautious.”

“So why should I set myself up to be killed?”

“When the alternative is maybe being executed for not following assignations?”

Meadows frowned. “She wou- no, she absolutely would.” She sighed. “What kind of powers? I don’t want anything that makes me radioactive or stops me touching people.”

He laughed. She’d probably bought it, it looked like. He could relax a little. “Well, I can’t do either of those anyway,” he said. Mindful of the woman’s bulk under her fatigues, he said “It’ll be strength, most likely. And bulletproofing.”

“Bulletproofing?”

He shrugged. “Tougher, anyway. I think it should work all the way up to bullets.”

“But you don’t know.”

“Well, no, Corporal, I don’t. You’d be a prototype.”

“Prototype…” Meadows grinned. “Cool name.”

The Doctor blinked. A dozen different replies tempted him, but he’d almost got her bought into the lie. Didn’t want to accidentally ruin that. In the end he decided on saying nothing.

“Alright, Doc. Level with me. What’s the odds this kills me?”

“Honestly? I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be glad you did this.”

Meadows took another deep breath. Bimbeau, not wanting to crowd her, glanced away. Sinner, he saw, had stopped pottering around and was now, instead, watching the conversation with a total focus. The importance of getting this right had clearly sunken in.

“I must be crazy,” Meadows muttered. “OK. If I finish this up and I can punch out Fireman’s lights, you’ve got a deal.”

Fireman, the Doctor assumed, was one of the lieutenants. He decided not to risk asking what history the two had together. “Fantastic,” he said. “Let’s get started. Lie down over there on the bed, please.”

Meadows finally took in the ramshackle nature of the equipment in the room. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

*

Melissa felt the band tighten around her forehead as Mistress fastened it into place.

It was a brainwashing chair. It was going to turn her into an obedient slave, going the extra mile for her Master. And a part of her screamed internally at that.

But the rest of her kept grinding against the chair. Squirmed happily at the very idea.

The only sadness was that she couldn’t now continue to gaze at her Mistress. Her role model. Her inspiration. The reason she’d come out to this island.

There was something wrong with that, she knew. But she also believed it to be truth unquestioningly.

It was hard, balancing the two sides of her mind. But the brainwashing would solve that. Melissa smiled tentatively as she looked forward to it.

“Mistress?”

“Yes, little fox?”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“You may, little fox, but I don’t promise to act on it.”

“This chair needs a ridge.”

“A ridge?”

“Yes, Mistress.” She squirmed, and could see in her mind’s eye where a single shallow bump could make all the difference to the pleasure of a brainwashing subject.

Candace laughed. “Ahhhh. I see. Very good thought. Remember that, and tell me later,” she instructed.

“Of course, Mistress.”

Candace made some adjustments to the controls, out of Melissa’s sight. There was a sudden, steady electronic thrumming. Melissa felt a strange, wonderful tension tingling across her forehead, then slowly spreading out until her whole brain was singing with odd, melting pleasure.

She felt as if her brain, previously so set in its ways, was a gooey, sticky, hot mess of putty that could be sculpted and changed in any way someone wanted.

*

“I’m going to have to start with your head,” Bimbeau said. “It’s…” Shit. He hadn’t thought this out yet, but he was damn sure the restraints he could rig up wouldn’t hold this amazon of a soldier. “It’s precautionary. We don’t want you to be acting without understanding of your new strength. If you rip my arm off shaking my hand…”

Meadows snorted. “I wouldn’t do that, Doc,” she said. But at the same time, she looked rattled.

“All the same.” He kept his tone diplomatic, and after a few moments, Meadows nodded.

“Watch closely,” he instructed Sinner, who nodded and moved in for a better perspective. Silently, the Doctor took his time over every step of prepping his makeshift Tiara for application, then checking the correct spots on Meadows’ cranium to apply its electrodes, and securing it into place.

“How does that feel?” he asked Meadows quietly.

“Like you’re setting up to make me into a Frankenstein,” she said, a smirk on her face.

“Actually, Frankenstein was-”

“Oh, Doc, nobody gives a shit.”

Sinner chuckled, which rankled somewhat with the Doctor. He forced himself to smile all the same and threw the lever.

There was a sound like an old, dust-filled computer shuddering into life, followed by bursts of staccato electronic thrumming. Meadows felt a strange, wonderful tension tingling across her forehead, then slowly spreading out until her whole brain was singing with odd, melting pleasure.

She felt as if her brain, previously so set in its ways, was a gooey, sticky, hot mess of putty that could be sculpted and changed in any way someone wanted.

“Uhhh…” She practically gurgled the sound, her head reeling.

“Can you hear me?” the Doctor asked.

“Wh-what… the fuck… are… are… are you doing… are… are…” Meadows felt the point where her speech and her thoughts simultaneously jumped back a few moments after shuddering to a halt.

Bimbeau made some adjustments on the control panel, gesturing to Sinner to take them in as he did.

“I said, can you hear me?”

“I… yes… I, uh… I hear you…”

“That’s good. And you feel good, don’t you?”

“Yess…” It was a hiss of pleasure and the Doctor found himself hard simply from hearing it.

“Very good. Now, Meadows, you will tell me the truth whenever I ask for any information. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Brooke.”

It felt somehow a dainty name for the woman in front of him, a woman who was taller than most of Overshadow’s other faceless soldiers. But then he’d been christened Alphonse Bimbeau and he had no right to criticise anyone’s luck in naming.

“Serial number?”

“AC4271.”

Well, she had it memorised. That was a positive; Bimbeau had a picture in his head of how he wanted to handle this.

“What’s the most important thing in your life, AC4271?”

There was a long silence before Meadows answered. “My car?”

She sounded deeply unsure… “That’s not a question you’d ever asked yourself, is it?”

“No.”

“So. Not family?”

“No.”

“Money?”

“Not really.”

“Proving yourself?”

“I know who I am, Doc.”

He had the gain on the Tiara set higher than usual, on the basis that Overshadow didn’t need geniuses so much as she needed a minimum tactical understanding - alongside total submission. An answer like that was surprisingly intense - but it also had the ring of something she’d said many times before.

People had been trying to explain Meadows to themselves before, and they’d told her their conclusions enough times that her retort had become reflex. That probably made it absolutely true.

“And you’re not out for revenge on someone.”

“No.”

He pursed his lips and thought it over. “It’s a pretty good car, then, is it?”

“Not really.”

“Alright. AC4271, here’s my suspicion: Nothing really matters to you these days. True or false?”

A long hesitation. Despite the pleasure centres the Tiara was designed to hit, she sounded almost sullen when she spoke again. “I guess that’s true.”

“No wonder you’re in and out of disciplinary.”

That didn’t get a reaction. Not close enough to her buttons to spur on a comment; not a question she was required to answer. The Doctor leaned forward, over her, and studied her eyes, but they weren’t just glazed; they’d rolled halfway back in her head, and the little he could see of them had gone cross-eyed.

Definitely under, then, he told himself. But still trying to be aware? Possibly. Just how strong-willed was this soldier?

“Alright. Listen carefully, AC4271.” He took a deep breath, checked his phrasing carefully in his mind. Then wondered why he’d bothered, as it was probably the simplest phrasing he’d used in ages. “What matters to you the most is Overshadow.”

“Okay…”

“Say it. Understand it. Accept it.”

“What matters to me the most is Overshadow,” Meadows said, and then she blinked in puzzlement, her eyes rolling back up in her head immediately afterward. “Uhm.” She cleared her throat. “Uh. Yeah. Why didn’t I see that?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for, AC4271.”

“Doc?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you telling me this? I thought this was all about my powers.”

“Overshadow wants me to tell you this,” Bimbeau returned. “Do you object to that?”

The most awkward of pauses. “I guess not.”

“Of course not. She matters more to you than anything else. She deserves to achieve her goals, whatever they may be. Repeat.”

“Overshadow matters more to me… than anything else. She deserves to achieve her goals, whatever they may be.”

“You are one of her faceless soldiers. A drone in her army.”

Meadows stayed silent.

“Repeat,” he said firmly.

“I am… one of her faceless soldiers. A drone in her army.”

“You follow her orders and the orders of her officers.”

No hesitation this time. “I follow her orders and the orders of her officers.”

“You live under military discipline. You have no desires that would breach that.”

“I live under military discipline.” She almost trailed off, eyes crossing wider. “I… have… no desires… that would breach that.”

“You have no desires. You are a faceless soldier-drone.”

“I have no desires.” Another pause. The Doctor watched her swallow deeply and had the distinct sensation that she might be choking that idea down, physically as well as mentally. “I am a faceless soldier-drone.”

“You have no name. You are not a person.” He glanced across to Sinner and was startled to see a light in her eyes and a manic grin between her lips as she watched.

“I have no name.” After losing desires, the woman who was no longer Meadows accepted that one much more easily. “I am not… not…”

Bimbeau turned up the gain on the Tiara. He wasn’t too worried about burning out some of her older self, not with the little he wanted to reduce her to. “You are not a person.” Saying it the second time was easier. Perhaps that was because she was pushing back?

“I am… not… a person.” She sighed after saying it. Without his prompting, she said it again. “I am not a person.”

Something in her expression changed, as vacant as it was; an absence of something that had been there before, a smoothing out of the forehead or of wrinkles around the eyes. He couldn’t tell which, or even if he was imagining it, but she certainly seemed somehow more relaxed.

“You are a nameless soldier-drone.”

“I am a nameless soldier-drone.”

“Your serial number is Overshadow Slave Two. OS-02.”

“My serial number is Overshadow Slave Two. OS-02.”

He’d been going to say One. Two was what came out, and he didn’t realise until afterward it had been a safety reflex; it prevented anyone wondering why he thought of Sinner not as Overshadow’s slave.

He wouldn’t want them to think too hard about the wording he’d given her. The intent of keeping a slave of his own. An edge to be used later, when it inevitably came to conflict.

He had to figure out some way to get word of his capture back to the island. And some way that Overshadow couldn’t just destroy what he’d built when it tried to rescue him.

*

Candace was kissing her as Melissa came back to consciousness. Hungry, needy, horny and submissive, she kissed back eagerly. Her role model was kissing her, was using her. Her role model was her Mistress, and always would be.

Seeing that showed Melissa just how high the possibilities went. Even if she was away from her Master for most of her life, masquerading as her cover identity, the heroine, she would be serving. She might be able to aspire one day to do as much for her Master as Candace did.

Mistress broke the kiss and pulled back, looking Melissa in the eye with a bright, broad smirk. “Do you know what comes next?” she asked.

“No, Mistress,” Melissa said truthfully. She didn’t even know what had happened while she’d blacked out; certainly she’d been modified, changed, to her Mistress’ desires. But she could no longer put her finger on what might be new parts of herself and which were original; had no idea what might have been part of her and what wasn’t.

She must have concocted her heroine identity for some reason, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t have been the admiration for Red Fox that she’d claimed publically, because that really didn’t make any sense. Perhaps that was the issue? Or perhaps it was just that her Mistress’ changes made clear the lack of logic of her younger self in a way she hadn’t had access to before.

“Next up is a little reward,” Mistress said, “for being such an obedient little thing before you had no choice.”

For whatever reason, Melissa expected an internal wince at that comment. A defiant pang of anguish inside at the idea there was a time she could have fought back, but failed.

But after a few moments it was clear that it wasn’t going to materialise. There was nothing in her mind that resented the current state of affairs; instead, she was simply happy she had no choice and excited to see what might happen next.

“Thank you,” Melissa said, because it seemed expected. She couldn’t really imagine having a choice not to obey. Obedience to the Mistress, and especially to the Master, was as natural as breathing.

“You don’t really have the figure the Doctor prefers,” Candace told her. “I’m sure you’d like to change that.”

“Yes, Mistress,” she said at once, determined to show herself as eager as anyone. She didn’t want word to make it back to her Master that she might be awkward to work with. “Should I have plastic surgery?”

After all, she reasoned to herself, the Mistress’ tits were huge and amazing. That had to be the way Master’s tastes ran, and when face to face with the Mistress she understood that there was work to be done in that area. But Candace just laughed.

“There’s no reason for that,” she said. “Now, you work closely with a brilliant detective. We can’t push your development too far. But we can at least give you a reason to upgrade your costume… it’s fine, I’m sure, but it’s a bit tacky, little fox.”

Melissa felt oddly stung by the comment. She’d designed the costume herself, and she’d taken the design very seriously. Possibly too seriously since Swift Fox was just a ruse she used to better serve her Master…

She was still restrained, and had not complained at this; it was after all her Mistress’ choice when to release her. But her arms were still bound in place, her ankles still held, when Candace adjusted a setting behind the chair. With a loud mechanical sound, something shifted in the chair. Melissa felt twin rows of needles prick into her rear, three per buttock, two lines suddenly within. There was a strange static tingle around each one, and she almost wanted to squirm against the delicious new sensation.

At the same time something snapped forward and inward under her arms. The same electrically-charged stings caught her in the sides of her breasts and in the side of her body where it supported them. Still others, less stinging needles and more cool, static-charged rods, jutted out to rest against her spine.

The electromagnetic effect of each slowly spread out across her body until the tingles met. Her entire nervous system was feeding back pulses of blissful pleasure, and anything else she might have done with it was washed away with each pulse. Even thoughts came slowly and rarely.

The points where the chair pricked against her became warm as the Tiara needles began to inject her with a nutrient and protein solution. The energy pulses shifted in intensity immediately following, and Melissa’s eyes rolled back in her head. She moaned audibly as the pleasure started to strobe through her mind, then again as she felt her skin tingling and softening around her chest, her ass, and her hips.

The way her body felt was changing; she found herself sitting just a fraction taller as her buttocks swelled, her chest noticing gravity more with breasts just noticeably bigger than before, her hips and her thighs thickening. She almost didn’t hear the ripping of her costume fabric down the seams on her thighs, so loudly was she panting. But she certainly felt her chest getting tighter and tighter.

Candace kept each part of her captive growing until the costume had just ripped in each place, the seams popping open bit by bit and thread by thread, and then finally powered down the Tiara. In civilian clothes, or with a freshly tailored costumed, even those who’d known the old Melissa best might write the change off as their own imagination (and many men and some women, she reflected, would probably notice the change but consider it their own wishful thinking). She was sure that when she had the heroine strip down the difference would be obvious.

And besides, she still had thighs not as thick as Candace’s, a chest not as plungingly eyecatching, a rear not quite so tempting. And to Candace, that was essential.

She was determined to stay her Master’s foremost and most frequent choice of fucktoy. Strange, how that criterion had gone from a mild amusement at how some students stared into a necessity for her own submissive ego now.

*

The man who had previously been known as Tanaka, now answering to OS-03, had not exactly been the Doctor’s ideal choice for hypnotic subject. Certainly he’d have received almost no attention if it had been up to Bimbeau.

At the moment, though, absolutely nothing was. Anything he could count as a private win he still had to make reasonable to Overshadow, or at least be confident he had a good enough explanation in his back pocket.

He was still proud of the work he’d done on OS-03, though. It wasn’t just about reducing the man’s free will or blunting his horizons. Largely on impulse, while working with the woman once called Meadows, he’d used the word ‘drone’ - and now, he was quietly happy that he had. As with his initial induction for Sinner, this had become an experiment not in perverting existing drives in a person but in erasing them, allowing room to place something new.

But having made one drone, the test was in making a second and seeing how closely their behaviour echoed one another. Which was why, now, Sinner and he were stood in the main gymnasium of Overshadow’s compound, watching as 02 and 03 attempted an assault course.

Strange as it was to the Doctor, it looked like the modifications he’d made with the Tiara were working as intended. They ran with the same movements. They climbed in identical motion. They turned in the same ways.

OS-02 was tall, especially so for a woman, and she was actually a little taller than OS-03. Despite her impressively muscular physique (once the combat fatigues had come off for inspection) she was less muscular than )S-03, but not by much. It was probably not too surprising that they moved similarly - but the level of resemblance to each others’ movement was plain eerie.

He smiled cheerfully to himself, then turned to Sinner. “What do you think?”

She turned lazily to look at him rather than their experiments of the day, and that dreamlike smile spread over her face once again. “It’s wonderful,” she said, her words coming slowly but happily - not like when he’d heard her speak before at all. This had all clearly punched a button she’d never known she had.

“Granted,” he said cheerfully. “But beyond that - what do you think of the work we’ve done?”

“Uh-” He was forcibly reminded of the least attentive of his students when he’d been a lecturer. That rabbit-in-the-headlights look never changed, even when you saw it on obedient, brainwashed slaves. “I think we need a third,” Sinner said, and he could see the need in her eyes, if only because he recognised it from himself.

Sinner would need a tight hand on the reins, he realised.

“Well, let’s see,” he said. He raised his voice. “Two! Three! Heel.”

Both of them ceased their workout at the same time. Straightened at the same time. Turned and marched toward them in unsettling synchronisation.

“What was the name of the third trooper we were given?” he asked Sinner.

“Belloc, Doctor,” she said, and smiled, eager to be at work.

*

Overshadow’s most dependable sergeant found her in her luxurious quarters, overlooking the internal training grounds. She had set aside the quasi-military outfit that was her habitual costume while working, and was seated at a small table, watching her men train, drinking tea from a silver tea set in her shirtsleeves.

As she was out of ‘uniform’ he did not bother to salute, but did briefly come to attention before dropping into the other chair at the table. “Ma’am,” he said laconically.

“Well?” she asked, still not looking at him. He smiled slightly. Overshadow ignoring you was one thing; not bothering to look at you while you had her attention was practically trust.

“The pilot reports the first three went well,” the sergeant says. “Although by my evaluation none of them should be anything but privates anymore. They’re not going to give orders well.”

“How well do they follow them?”

“Excellently. And if I give them drill or put them in CQB situations they perform like the troopers they were. But Belloc isn’t exactly going to talk philosophy anymore.”

Overshadow snorted. “That’s no bad thing.”

“Sure, sure.” The sergeant shrugged. “Bimbeau told me he’d have a different approach for our NCOs, specialists, and any metas with ‘nonstandard’ powers, whatever that means.”

Overshadow’s tongue clucked. “We both know what it means,” she said sharply. “There’s no need to exaggerate to make a point when you’re talking with me.”

He raised his hands. “OK. So he thinks he could do the treatment he’s currently doing with any big tough strong supers, but if their powers are finicky in any way, not so much.”

“Does he have this other approach?”

“Apparently it’s the one he used on the pilot. But it takes longer, and it’s a little less… efficient?” He shrugged. “He might be playing me. I don’t know enough to be able to guess.”

“Recommendation?”

He exhaled. “Well… honestly, I think we need to put on a raid,” he said. “If he can do something with supers, that’s where he’s really going to change things. Turning soldiers into drones just isn’t going to happen fast enough to have a useful effect. But if he can turn one of your enemies into a super-trooper… it doesn’t matter so much if it takes him a few hours to do each one.”

“We could feed him one of the team to test him.”

“Sure, but if we raid, we take someone else off the chessboard. And I can put the drones through their paces and evaluate them.”

Overshadow considered for a few moments, then nodded slowly. “I’ll give you a target in the morning.”

“You got it, ma’am.” He rose and made his way out, still not saluting.