Zoe sat there in silence for a long moment. “Sorry,” she said at last. “Are you telling me that you were offered a trade by the Watchdogs to stay out of Texas?”

“I certainly was, and it wasn't like I wasn't in trouble if I tried to keep operations going in Texas.” He shrugged. “So it wasn't exactly like I had a good negotiating position, or anything. But they knew I'd need an incentive, I think, and they knew exactly who to make that incentive.”

“So... you had MegaWoman as a sex slave for a month?”

He made a gesture of his hands that said kind of yes but kind of no. “I think their idea was that obviously I’d just treat her as a sex slave. But, I mean, she still had her powers. I might not have been in Texas, and I didn't want to send her back across state lines just in case, but that didn't mean there weren't research institutes with relevant information for me. And the fact of the matter is very few institutions are built to withstand a determined superhuman.”

“You're telling me you didn't use her for sex?”

“Lord, no. Of course I did. Tell me, if it's not too personal, are you straight, gay, bi?”

“I'm basically straight.” It was the answer she always gave when people who came across as just a little bit too pervy asked about her sexuality. It wasn't exactly untrue; she was much more interested in men than women, but some people just had a certain quality to them.

He shrugged again. “Then maybe you get it, and maybe you don't, but I'm not ace, I'm not an angel, and I'm not going to turn down someone I want to fuck who genuinely wants me to fuck them.”

“And do you think she did?”

“The woman is a full blown hypnofetishist,” he answered. “I don't know if you'd ever heard of this before?”

“Sort of... I definitely got the impression she might be submissive. But what you just said - is that even a thing?”

He shrugged again. “It doesn't matter to me whether you believe it or not,” he told her. “Some people, and when you have powers like mine you get to know the difference, get off on giving up control. I guess it's not much different than getting off on being tied up. That's not my bag, but when I look at it what I mostly see is someone who's given up control. And if they enjoy that, I don't think it's any weirder that someone might enjoy their mind being turned into a nice little melty slush while their body, not having to worry about ethics or aesthetics or really anything at all, just get on with the good stuff.”

Zoe squinted dubiously at him. It wasn't so much the phrasing he was using, although she didn't particularly find that appealing, but the concept just felt like he was trying to justify himself. That was particularly strange, as everything about his testimony had seemed completely honest up until this point, without holding anything back.

He shrugged again. It was evidently a habit. “Look, I don't pretend that the things I did in my old life were the right way to be. I've done my time and during that time I was presented with a chance to do some thinking.

“You've already seen the results of that thinking. I just don't think the goals I have before were going to be well served by the strategy I had back then. I've tried enough now to know , I've thought enough about what I did to regret many of my actions, and unfortunately nobody is going to hire me to do the kind of research that I think needs to be done in any kind of legal fashion.

“So I'm out of that game. But those regrets I have? MegaWoman isn't one of them. I didn't make her do anything she wanted to fight back against, and I know she enjoyed everything I had her do during our exile. Now, if you want to believe that I'm making that up specifically, but everything else I said is true, you're allowed to do that. I kind of don't want you to name me in connection with your investigation anyway. After all, I had a deal with the Watchdogs.”

“That's right,” she said slowly. “Although I don't understand how it could ever be enforced in the courts…”

“I can't imagine they'd risk doing that, no. But that wasn't the point, really. If you ask me, the Watchdogs just don't think they have a good way to deal with mind controllers. So they came up with an alternative.”

“If you don't think that they can deal with mind control that well, why would you have to go along with their deals?”

“Not have to. Choose to. And the answer to that is simple, whether I could get the better of them for a time or not there are enough Watchdogs that I’d end up in serious pain if I kept going up against them. So when they offer me a little bribe to make sure that I go bug other hero groups instead of them in future? Of course I'm going to take that deal.”

“Hm.” She frowned thoughtfully. “If I go public with this, they're going to know you won't back on the deal.”

“I have a solution to that.”

“You do?”

“Yes, but I'm going to regret it.” He reached out and put his hand on hers. Shocked by the sudden physical contact from someone who had been carefully avoiding it up until that point, she looked up, startled, and her eyes met his.

She was still sat where she had been, but she was also tumbling, falling giddily head over heels, spinning and whirling and entirely lost. A strange, delicious, giddy euphoria bubbled up out of nowhere, as if happiness - no, not happiness; bliss - was soaking into every fold of her brain.

“You're not going to name me as a source,” She heard him say dimly.

She blinked, and the sensation of falling was no longer there, but she still had the strange, delicious giddiness to her, as if being pulled along, out of her own control, just fast enough to be dizzy and off balance, and loving that sensation more than made any sense. “No, Doctor, of course not.”

“You're not going to include me in deep background.”

“No, Doctor, of course not.”

“When the Watchdogs inevitably ask you, you're not going to mention me.”

“No, Doctor, of course not.”

“You can keep digging. But anything you learned here you attribute to someone else.” He paused, and she had just opened her mouth to say yes when he continued again. She immediately fell silent, letting his voice wash over hers as the more important of the two. “In fact, you will tell them You got this from Professor Power.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course.”

Zoe felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The Doctor had told her what to do and what not to do, and all she had to do was follow his lead. It was wonderful.

“You know with absolute certainty that I have not used my power on you.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course.”

“Right, well, I think that's everything,” he smiled. “I have a lot to atone for and I just added something else to the list. But I think these guys might have almost as much, and if Professor Power gets what's coming to him as well, my conscience is clear. Zoe?”

Zoe had no idea why he would think he had anything new to atone for. She set that puzzle aside, however, in order to deal with the fact that he was clearly about to ask her something. Her heart soared. She wanted so much to do whatever this man was about to ask of her. She would make sure that his wishes were carried out. There could be no other conclusion. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Blow this story wide open. Nail these assholes. Frankly, there's some good heroes out there but Texas deserves better.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course.” She rose automatically, and went to obey.

*

Zoe attempted to arrange an interview with Professor Power, but the warden of the prison in which he currently resided was not willing to allow him the chance to communicate with an outsider. It was, the warden assured her, difficult enough to allow him humane contact with others without him having the chance to overwhelm them with his power.

After that, she worked on the story for almost two days, writing and rewriting until she had the best draft she possibly could. Knowing that her editors would never publish this without giving the Watchdogs a chance to rebut, she did something she had never done before.

She published the story directly to her website and tweeted the link. Then she sat back and watched for reactions. She had to make sure that the story would nail those assholes. Nothing else was more important.

*

The piece went unnoticed for a couple of hours and Zoe was just trying to work out how she could bring it more attention when she suddenly saw her notifications start to spike. Having attracted maybe a half dozen or so likes in the first hour and twice that in the second, it finally got a retweet that brought it to wider attention.

The tweet was from Ms Lotus. No longer active, she had through the 80s and 90s been a quite prominent heroine On the national level. In the first half of the 80s, she had been making her name as a member of the Watchdogs, at that time a very new organisation.

@MsLotus

This explains so much. I've gone on record before about having holes in my memory from my time of the Watchdogs. Reading the account of what they've done to another one of their own 1/?

…finally makes me feel like I know what happened to me in that time. I didn't have her raw power. My combat skills were highly praised by the team on missions, but I lost more time off mission 2/?

…Than any other Watchdog and I remember almost none of it. But, quite often, the things I do remember are bound up with one mind control on villain or another. They cannot be allowed to get away with this. 3/3

Zoe sat there and reread the tweet chain several times with her mouth open. She had seen, it seemed, only some of the story. The Watchdogs hadn't developed a new problem, they'd had this solution for decades. After Miss Lotus left the team it would have been someone else - she would have to figure out who soon - before the job fell to MegaWoman.

Zoe watched the responses for another hour, interrupted more and more and by phone calls from colleagues in the industry. It amused her somewhat that her editor wasn't even in the first five to call.

When he did ring, he did so at volume. “You walk into a story like this one and you don't fucking bring it to us?”

“What would the Watchdogs have done?” She asked. “The news had to be out there. It had to get people's attention. This story has to nail those assholes. If they found out we were onto them before it got published they would have found a way to silence this.”

Into the fuming silence that followed she said, “But I do have follow up stories that will need to be run, and you can bet that every single one of them will be in the Examiner.”

He was only slightly mollified. “Well I guess that's the situation we're in. But we get quotes for a reason, so we we go through legal for a reason. Right now, you’ve acted alone and your vulnerable if you can't prove this. We're not going to be able to help you much on this first story. But if you bring in what you have now, and we get a supplemental out as soon as possible, we can get that through legal. At least stand by you on that.”

Zoe knew enough to recognise when somebody was just bargaining. He wanted this to be an Examiner story, he wanted the sales figures and the praise that would come from attaching the newspaper to this story. That was already in jeopardy; aside from anything else, a lot of people would reach the conclusion that the only reason she'd initially published herself was because she didn't expect backing from the Examiner.

“There's just one thing I don't have clear,” he said. “Does she know?”

Zoe had wondered this herself. On the one hand, Ms Lotus evidently had had no idea. On the other hand, Zoe had no idea whether Ms Lotus would have submitted willingly to so many controllers, but as she trusted Braun entirely, she was happy to accept that MegaWoman enjoyed being used in this way, and might or might not have been asked.

“Once I get a chance to speak to her, I'll be able to tell you,” she said. “Couldn't risk it before first publication.”

“Zoe, they're heroes. You're making it out like they’re some kind of gang.”

“Seems to me they've been breaking the law plenty enough to be treated like a gang,” Zoe retorted, “And considering they started with Ms Lotus, the whole team has turned over since then. There's a heap of conspiracy charges to go around once this is proven.”

Again, her editor was silent for a long time. Zoe figured she'd probably got through to him. Whether or not you could call the Watchdogs heroes now, even if they had saved the world a time or two, was probably going to be one of the big debate topics of the next several weeks.

God, she'd probably have to pause her social media before too long. A certain type of person was going to cancel her loudly just for following up on this kind of story.

She heard her doorbell ring. “Look, I gotta go,“ She told her editor. “Someone's at the door.” She paused. “If you don't hear back from me and I disappear, give the cops the time of this call to start investigating.”

He grunted agreement irritably and signed off. She was still slipping her phone back into her pocket as she walked into the hallway of her apartment and opened the front door.

MegaWoman was standing right in front of her. Her expression was unreadable.

*

"You must think I’m an absolute fool.” They had gone through into the lounge. MegaWoman seemed distracted, frustrated. She was full of nervous energy, moving around awkwardly, pacing back and forth, fiddling with anything that had been left out in the room from games console controllers to Zoe's treasured old Rubik's Cube.

She wouldn’t meet Zoe's eye, but Zoe wasn't entirely sure she'd have an easy time meeting the heroine’s gaze if she had. “To tell the truth, I wasn't sure what to think about you.”

It didn't take the heroine long to work out what she meant. “You think I signed up for this Knowingly?”

“I…” Zoe flushed.

MegaWoman turned back from the window to face her. “Well,” she said, “The good news is, you aren't a million miles off.” She dipped her hand into her costume’s cleavage and came back out holding something, what looked like a tiny gadget, all in gleaming chrome, with a diminutive pistol grip. The whole thing looked like it was designed to be easily palmed if necessary.

“I went into this remembering how I’d felt before,” she said. “You did your research, you know my history.“

“Big dumb girljock,” Zoe mumbled, without realising what she was saying, eyes locked on the barrel of the device. Evidently the phrase had stayed in her head more than she'd thought.

The super heroines eyelids fluttered for a moment. “Yes,” she breathed. “A big... dumb...” With an obvious effort of will, MegaWoman snapped back to the present. “I wanted to do good , I still want to do good. But if someone reaches out with their minds to mine, I can't fight it but I also know I'm not going to want to fight it anyway.

“I don't know how the team figured me out. Maybe the same way you did. But I was approached and made an offer.”

Her gaze was practically boring a hole into Zoe. The heroine's dad straight at her, her voice flat and uninfected, the words pouring out, the - pistol? Gadget? - still pointed directly at her. Zoe cleared her dry throat. “Excuse me, but that thing you're pointing at me, should I be frightened?”

MegaWoman continued talking, the words just spilling out. “They had someone already who they would offer out the way they offered me out. The way Ms Lotus had been used. She hadn't agreed to it, and she'd figured it out somehow, and she'd made them understand that this had to be voluntary.”

She was just talking, on and on, in what felt like a prepared speech without emotion, without inflection, without listening to what Zoe had asked. Maybe she just felt need to confess, but maybe that was something compelled to it, maybe she was acting under orders. Zoe couldn't think of any sensible set of orders those would be, but she couldn't exactly rule it out.

“And it has been, but I guess that ends now. And that's all down to you.” The emotion that have been lacking in her voice was suddenly shot all through it, the words vibrating with a frustrated fury.

Zoe slowly raised both hands placatingly. “Listen,” she said, “Let's not do anything we're going to regret.”

“I don't have many choices left,” came the retort. “There's no way the team gets to continue the deal we had, not now. And now, everybody knows my weak spot. I don't have a good way back from that.”

“There was only so much I could hide and still be able to run the story,” Zoe said. “I'm sorry.” And indeed, she had tried several different ways of framing the story which revealed as little as possible about why MegaWoman had been chosen.

“Doesn’t matter,” was the retort. “It is what it is. The only question is, why did he do it?” Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you working for?”

“You're not going to name me as a source.”

“No, Doctor, of course not.”

“You're not going to include me in deep background.”

“No, Doctor, of course not.”

“When the Watchdogs inevitably ask you, you're not going to mention me.”

“No, Doctor, of course not.”

“You can keep digging. But anything you learned here you attribute to someone else. In fact, you will tell them You got this from Professor Power.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course.”

The words echoed through her head, which was strange, because Braun definitely hadn’t used his power on her. “Professor Power,” she answered , and if MegaWoman noticed that there was less nervousness in her voice, that the syllables escaped her lips with a perfectly rhythmic cadence, she gave no sign of it.

Professor Power was currently incarcerated, but that didn't mean that people wouldn't see this as his attack from within the system.

MegaWoman's eyes fluttered again, The tension went out of her stance, and to the focus and concentration that had been clear in every part of her being disappeared into glossiness. She raised her free hand to her ear and said “It was Professor Power, Sir.”

Zoe's eyes widened. So she was under control right at that moment. Maybe she'd been loans to a villain but it seemed just as likely, now that someone connected with the Watchdogs had hold of her puppet strings.

“Yes, Sir,” she answered the voice in her ear. “How should I proceed here?”

Zoe tensed. Her eyes measured the distance to the door. It was no good; There was no way she'd get there in time, even if the heroine wasn't perfectly capable of running her down afterwards in seconds.

“Yes, Sir.” MegaWoman fired the tiny pistol and a bright pink flare of light enveloped Zoe. She felt her eyes rolling up in her head as her knees buckled and her joints went limp. She was out before her body hit the floor.

*

She was face down on a bed, hands behind her back tied to feet bent back almost to her ass, entirely hogtied. The bedding didn’t have the scent of her preferred laundry powder, making her even more certain she had been moved. She moaned through what turned out to be a gag and immediately afterwards she heard an electronic click from between her thighs. Moments later, she discovered that she had been placed lying on a vibrator, its head nestled against her pussy through her jeans.

Her initial moan became a squeak, but immediately afterwards someone was on top of her, holding her down, preventing her from rolling off the vibe and even, with a hand on one buttock, grinding her more intensely against it. The other hand found Zoe's hair, lifting her head up and for a second a motel room swam into focus, only to be lost entirely when her eyes took in the TV, which strobed with a pink and green swirling spiral. Zoe's eyes were immediately locked to the spiral, and her peripheral vision fell away until it was all she could see.

It had to be MegaWoman she thought. The power and the unhesitating willingness to do this all said that she was under control and dealing with Zoe as she had been ordered to. That also meant there was no way that someone could break her grip. So what could she do?

She was trying to work out what options she had But every thought process seemed to fall to shreds before it could complete. It was like her thoughts were trying to find their way out of a maze that was also the spiral in front of her and they simply couldn't do it. She kept finding herself back at the centre of the spiral with another thought in fragments, and almost forgotten already. She was vaguely aware that she had started to hump the vibrator with a passion and enthusiasm that surprised her.

She could feel drool emerging around the edges of her gag and running down her chin, she was desperately grinding against the vibrator, she seems to be trapped in the spiral. That was all she knew.

“Do you hear me, Zoe?”

In answer, she moaned through her gag. The hand which had been pressing her against the vibrator released her, reaching up to unsnap the gag from its fastening just below her ears.

“Do you understand me, Zoe?”

“Yuh,” She said, and then tried again. “Yeah.”

“Who knows about your other research?”

“My editor.”

“Are they expecting to hear from you?”

“Yes,” she answered, the precaution she had taken against being interfered with in some way lost somewhere else in the spiral.

“Well done for telling me,” MegaWoman said. It was strange, Zoe thought, that they both seemed to speak in the same empty, vacant way. All the same, the praise filled her with a warmth that she wanted to feel again and again. “Are you happy you told me?”

Zoe tried to decide, but her attempt was lost in the spiral. She discovered the answer when she heard her own voice say “Yes, Ma’am.”

So she was happy, she told herself.

“What do you think about being under control? You love it, don't you?”

“Yes, I love it, Ma’am,” she answered, and there was no one in the room who could tell that she did so in a monotone.

“Good. What would you need to do to minimise suspicion before you disappeared?”

Another complicated question, too complicated for someone who couldn't find a thought in the spiral that trapped her. Yet she was aware that her mouth was answering in extensive detail.

*

The pair stood side by side on a raised, bare wooden stage. They were white ankle socks, white Nikes, white G-string panties, and both of them had the number 17 daubed over their bare breasts in white body paint, symbolising that they were lot number 17. Both had their heels together, their hands straight down with fingertips touching their thighs, their heads upright staring out over the top of their audience, glassily unseeing.

They were a matched lot to be sold together at auction in Berlin. Far enough away from the revelations about one of them and the fuss stirred up by the other for their sale to be, if not exactly unnoticed, relatively subtle.

Zoe was aware that the person who had submitted them both for auction considered this vengeance. That it was the last thing they had been able to do before Watchdogs HQ was stormed by the Eagles, a federal team, and the mastermind was arrested and detained for trial. A story had run in the Houston Examiner under the byline of Jay Cliffe which revealed this mastermind to be Harvey Livingston, who had bankrolled the Watchdogs since their founding and who now stood unveiled as The Metal Patriot, who have been the first leader of the team.

Patriot himself had been mind controlled twice in the first six months of the team's existence, which Cliffe speculated may have led to the team's creation of the policy. They had found a number of devices designed to control or influence minds in Livingston's home.

Zoe was aware that her sale alongside MegaWoman was supposed to be vengeance. She simply did not understand this as she loved being under control.