“Ah, Madam Mayor! Congratulations on your election. I trust my driver found you OK?”

“Yes. But I don’t-”

“Silence.”

Mayor Fisher felt the rest of the sentence die in her throat. Standing there for a moment gawping like a fish out of water, she recovered her composure swiftly enough to close her mouth. Something prickled across her scalp as she did, a pleasing tingle.

“I don’t mean to interrupt - what am I saying, obviously I enjoyed that - but I do know what you were going to say. I had the same conversation with Connor here when he first arrived in this office.”

Fisher turned her head along with the gesture. She’d never seen the police chief look so sheepish. She couldn’t help but be reminded of a child caught red-handed and given time to stew on it before they find out what’s going to happen.

“So. You walked out of your house because it turned 8pm. You got into the car outside because it was there. My man then put you in the elevator and sent you up here, and here we are. And now you can’t speak. Can you?”

Rather than try, she shook her head. That same pleasing tingle came back, and it might not have been her imagination that it felt better than the first time.

“You’re an intelligent woman, Madam Mayor. You’ve doubtless already put this together. Something is compelling you to do as I wish. To behave like a cog in the greater machine of my plans. And you had no choice but to obey. Not with any of these instructions.”

She glowered. All that got her was a smirk.

“Let’s be clear here, Madam Mayor. You will not be telling anyone about this. If you did, why, of course the first step would be a police investigation. But who would be overseeing that?”

Fisher looked back at Chief Cartwright. He gave her a tight little half-smile and a shrug. “We shouldn’t rock the boat,” he said. “That’s the point of all this. Much easier to just do our jobs and let HyperCorp do their own thing.”

“Indeed!” The words came with a purr of self-satisfaction. Fisher looked back, wanting to say anything but staying silent. “HyperCorp has been good for this city, Madam Mayor, and this city has been good for HyperCorp. All I’m doing is ensuring that continues. Do smile, please.”

Fisher smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes, but they had in any case a faraway look as her scalp began to tingle again. No; it wasn’t her scalp, it was her brain, resonating with satisfaction and pleasure. Quite unexpected, but quite inevitable all the same.

“Mmm. Much better. Stand up straight.”

Fisher stood up straight. Two footsteps later, her chest was being groped. A hiss of escaped breath left her lips, the loudest protest she could manage. “Oh, relax and enjoy it,” she was told, just before a particularly possessive squeeze.

She relaxed into the experienced hands. The smile on her lips reached her eyes as she began to enjoy it.

“That’s better. I may take this further sometime, if I have a quiet evening. You’ll make time for me, after all.” A snort of amused laughter. One of Fisher’s biggest social peeves had always been people who laughed at their own jokes, but even if she was enjoying herself now, she could tell she’d need to expand the list.

She looked across at Connor and tried to decide whether he was enjoying watching because he’d been told to or whether the ‘culture problems’ in the police department went all the way to the top. Likely the second, she decided.

“And, of course, if HyperCorp needs anything the city can give, you’ll be happy to help, won’t you, Madam Mayor?”

Still unable to speak, Mayor Fisher looked her controller in the eye and nodded wordlessly, smiling all the while. The tingle had spread all across the back of her head now. Thinking was secondary to enjoying that sensation - along with the other experience she’d been told to enjoy.

“Good.” Abruptly, the hands left her body. “That’s all for now. It’s just important that you understand your situation. The sooner the better after your election, I thought. And you agree, of course.”

Fisher nodded mutely again.

“Chief Cartwright can see you home. You’ll find you can speak again once you get in his car.”

She nodded again, and the pair left, dismissed by someone whose control over them had just been proven indisputable.

*

“You’re going to have to explain that one to me,” Hornet said, but Vivian had already registered the hesitation before she spoke. It was very possible she didn’t know everything, but she knew something, or at least suspected it.

She’d been a heroine of longstanding before her disappearance, and in Vivian’s experience this meant she’d probably been hit with some kind of mental influence a few times. Her best friend, for example, almost always had an awareness when she was under some kind of control. So maybe that was all it was.

Not that Vivian would gamble on that. “I don’t know that you’d believe me if I told you,” she said. “We’ve both followed very strange paths to end up here.”

The other woman straightened up - taller than Vivian had expected - and placed her hands, curled loosely into fists, at her hips. “You can’t expect me to leave it at that.”

Mercy stood watching her for a few moments, weighing her options. They’d just had one fight; the next could be perfunctory or brutal. She didn’t want to hurt this woman.

The thought struck her as odd. She would have, once. The longer she spent behind the mask of a heroine, the more it seemed to fit. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s just say I’m older than I look.”

“And?”

“And in a previous life I knew something about Castor.”

That fetched her, Vivian was satisfied to see; there was a real twitch there. “He’s locked up,” she said. “And I assure you, they don’t give him access to anything he could use to pull my strings from out here.”

“Oh, I didn’t think that for a second,” Mercy replied. Behind her impassive android mask she grinned. “But the moment we moved onto the topic you were suddenly ready to admit the strings exist. So now I just want to know who is pulling them.”

“Nobody,” Hornet retorted. “But I know they exist, if that’s what’s bothering you. He rubbed that in pretty well.”

“I’m… sorry to hear that,” Mercy said sympathetically, although part of her enjoyed it when Master took the time to underline how impossible it was for her to disobey his instructions, once they were given.

She was pretty sure the experience would get old under Castor.

“I kind of came here to check up on you,” she admitted. “In a manner of speaking.”

It had the desired effect, as the heroine was suddenly looking at her very differently. “Do we know each other?” she asked eventually.

*

“And what happens when she comes in?”

“I need you to hit her low. Get her off balance. Crash her into a wall for preference.” Castor wasn’t wearing his armour, but he may as well have been; his face was as expressionless, as heartless, as the faceplate of his helmet.

You couldn’t call him emotionless, but he was certainly composed; the directives came out calm and casual. A businessman talking about what he wanted, just as confident in getting the outcome he wanted as if he was just saying where the coffee machine should go. “She’s pretty strong,” he continued. “So I’m not asking you to pin her down. If you can slow her down in that room, the machine will do the rest.”

Behind Macabre’s half-face mask, Vivian looked doubtfully at the device. “And what does this thing do again?” she asked.

“That’s not the question you’re really asking.” Castor had a smile on his lips, just a small one, barely more than a quirk of the lips but somehow broadly patronising. “You’re worried it’s going to affect you too.”

The fact this was true didn’t make her any more willing to admit it. “Believe what you want,” she said.

Castor laughed. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Assuming, that is, that you don’t share an origin with her. And based on what I know about her I doubt you do.”

She probably didn’t have to take the job, she reflected. But walking away now could hurt in the long run. Vivian sighed; she’d really hoped when she came into her powers that it meant she could put aside the kind of petty bullshit she was dealing with now.

“Okay,” she said, and shrugged, and prepared to intercept a pissed-off superheroine when she arrived.

*

“Not to speak of,” Mercy said. “Maybe we can get into it, if we have to. In the meantime… let’s say I have access to, kind of a supervillain discussion forum.” And if you could not ask for details, she thought, that’d really help.

“Oh, God.” Hornet lifted one hand to her face, cradling it in cringing embarrassment. “You mean I’m being… discussed? Online?”

“Right. If it’s any consolation, only by a small inner circle.”

“Ugh.”

Mercy looked at her sympathetically. “So… I guess the thing is this. There are old contacts of Vulcan’s out there. Now, he was never a team player unless he was leading it,” she continued, and then hurriedly, “as you probably know better than I do. Most of his secrets I imagine are still secret. But some of them knew he had you on ice, somehow.” She wasn’t exactly clear on the mechanism herself. “And under control.”

Hornet rubbed absently at the back of her neck, and Mercy took note. Implant, then, she thought. Must have taken some effort to get through her skin, but obviously the payoff had been worth it.

She should look into why Vulcan never spread that more widely in future. Right now, though…

“In the absence of a big public announcement of another of his bases being unearthed, there’s a lot of speculation about how you got loose,” she said. “Nobody figured you’d be able to break yourself out?” If it hadn’t been for her mask, the look she gave the other heroine would have been a question all on its own.

*

Hornet had tried to explain the effect the implant had on her several times, as her Mistress truly seemed to enjoy any behaviour that demonstrated how total her control over Hornet was. This included Hornet’s own attempts to explain her powerlessness against this technology.

To the best of her understanding (although Harrier disagreed) the implant did not edit her own thoughts, not exactly. It rewarded thoughts it found correct through pleasure signals, and it overrode control of her own body within the context of any order she had been given. Orders could also limit the thoughts and feelings possible over a period of time.

At the time it had seemed obvious that the chip could process orders in context, that, for example, saying to her Don’t run also carried weight for the instruction Don’t fly away. But it had puzzled Ms Hathor to no end, and in the past few months Hornet, dealing for the first time with search engines and smartphones, had come to understand why.

Computers weren’t nearly as effective at understanding context clues as it had seemed reasonable to her that they would be. The team worked nowadays with the theory that the chip used the victim’s own language centre to add this level of interpretation. It was a source of some speculation among Tracy’s inner circle why they could only come up with one example of Castor using the implant.

In the same way, it wasn’t clear to most of those who’d spent time in it exactly what the gel actually did, aside from paralyse them. Hornet had few memories from the experience, and would have described the situation as dozing, half-asleep, through the decades. She was pretty sure that was the chip. Some kind of shutdown mode. It might need the gel to be present to activate, though.

She sighed “Maybe - probably not, but maybe - I could have broken loose,” she said. “I don’t know that I could have decided to.”

“And from that,” Mercy said, “it follows that someone else was involved. I figured it might be like that. So my concern is basically who that might be, because they probably have a whole bunch of Castor’s old gear and designs.”

Alexandra squinted at the android. Was that the reason for concern? “You know,” she said slowly, “I remember Vulcan experimenting with robotics once…”

*

Her head ached. It always did when she’d taken a lungful of Compound V. When Vulcan had developed the gas she wasn’t sure, nor how, but a breath or two would weaken her powers and more than that could shut them down until her body finished processing them.

Half the time, between noticing the effect on her powers and getting to safety, Vulcan had knocked her out or hit her with some kind of expanding web, security chain, or anything else he could design to restrain her.

The restraints she was in would hold her a little longer, but as she flexed one wrist against the wall she was bolted to, she was sure they couldn’t take her once her powers were fully returned.

That meant something else was going on. She turned her head to find him and her eyes went wide.

“Ah, Hornet! Welcome back to the land of the living. I see you’ve met your replacement?”

Vulcan’s voice was crowing. His armour was partly dismantled to allow him to work on the figure in front of her, a robotic replica of herself.

She clenched her teeth. “You have got to be kidding me.”

*

“Not me,” the android told her. “Where were you when you were freed?”

Alexandra sighed. Distracting her wasn’t working. “Do I really come across like I’m under some kind of mind control?”

“You’d be surprised what that can look like,” came the answer. “I’ll grant you, you’re doing better than some.”

“Thanks, I think. Look - do I get your word this doesn’t go any further?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “I can accept that,” she said.

“We haven’t broadcast that the place was found because we need to inventory it first. And before you ask, it’s me and my rescuers. Paladin and Hooded Hawk.”

There it was. She’d committed them all to an explanation before checking with Mistress. Hopefully it was the right thing to do.

“Local heroes, right?”

“Right. Like you, but for here.”

The android raised both hands apologetically. “I didn’t mean that as offence,” she said. “I’m just only so clear on what’s been happening here the past couple years. All I had to go on was what Miracle told me.”

“Ms Miracle?” Alexandra was surprised at the sudden excitement she felt at that.

The android nodded.

“If you two know each other, I’d love an introduction,” she said. “I owe her a lot.” It had been her intervention, alongside Paladin, that had resulted in Castor finally being busted in a way that stuck, without which Hornet wouldn’t now be free.

“We’re getting off topic,” Mercy said. “Just… be aware that one of those two probably has a device that could put you under their control in a heartbeat.”

“I trust them both.”

“Then they may already have used it,” the android returned. Alexandra was debating explaining her relationship to Milo before it continued. “But honestly, my concern is more that the device exists, whatever it is. Some well-informed villains believe you’re under someone’s control. How interested do you think they’d be in taking over?”

She could only nod here. “I’ll take that under advisement,” she said. “I still have other issues on my hands, right now.”

“Right. The Circle.”

Hornet nodded. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I won’t be making this a team-up. I’ve got to worry that you might be under someone’s control, looking for whatever gadget you’re talking about.” She paused. “You’re on forums with villains. For all I know you’re a front.”

The android stood there for a few moments, then said “Fine. You work your case.”

Hornet launched into the air. Her ears picked out the muttered “And I’ll work mine,” that Mercy probably thought she’d got away with. She clenched her jaw, feeling a muscle tense. This was going to be a problem.

*

“Ah, Madam Mayor! Welcome back.”

“Yes. Well. I don’t have much choice.”

“That’s right. I wonder if you’d disrobe before we continue this discussion?”

Despite the treatment she’d received last time, she gasped at the audacity, but recovered quickly. “I’d rather not.”

“Are you sure?”

It was such an odd question that she didn’t have an answer. She hesitated, and it turned out for too long, because, “Strip for me. Power suit to birthday suit.”

Her eyes widened as she shrugged her suit jacket off her shoulders. Fisher looked around and found the second chair in the room, far away from the desk and the occupied grand chair within; she could just about persuade her own body to drift over to hang her jacket on it rather than drop it on the floor, but there was a strained quality about her movements, as if muscles were aching, except that the ache was entirely in her head.

She stepped out of her heels and pushed them together beside the chair, standing barefoot on the office carpet, and was surprised how plush it felt under her stockinged feet. She wriggled her toes instinctively, enjoying the sensation. Not something she could imagine doing in a civic building.

She’d stalled as long as she could. Her body turned on its heel to face the big chair again, her hands already rising to her blouse, which she unbuttoned from the bottom up. Her head had started to tingle, not her scalp but the brain underneath,

She discarded her blouse as she approached the chair, letting it fall, and pivoted on the spot on her toes, thrusting her ass out to the side as she did so,

Fisher realised with shock that she was smiling, in spite of never having been instructed to. She wasn’t enjoying this, was she?

That would be… embarrassing.

Her fingers found the zipper concealed in the back of her skirt. She inched it down slowly. She wasn’t just undressing now, she thought. She was stripping. She was putting on a show, grinding her hips from side to side as the zip sank far enough that she could peel the waistband down, then working it all down to her knees.

Straightening up, she stepped out of her skirt with one foot, lifting the leg high, and then turned back to face the chair. As she did, she extended the other leg even high, a quick kick that sent her suit skirt arcing away from her to land, forgotten, on the floor. Her hands rose up away from her body, then came down fast, slapping her nylon-cased hips with an audible sound.

Her smile had become a grin. She wasn’t sure when, but she was certain that she hadn’t felt like this in years. Moments of sensuality had become planned events, conducted hurriedly, almost perfunctorily. There was nothing wrong with her husband, but nothing about him excited her. Fifteen years earlier, the committee had suggested she run for Mayor, not him, and that had been, in hindsight, the beginning of the end of their love. What remained was affection and obligation. Neither had made significant effort to rebuild what they had once had; it would have taken efforts by both at once, in any case. Of such slow steps can sex lives die.

She took two quick steps toward the chair and turned again on the spot, one foot flat against the floor, one raised to the toes, so that she faced away from her observer again. Fisher found herself resolved not to think about how she should or should not feel.

With her back to him she raised her hands again, then brought them down this time on her buttocks, spanking herself with a synchronised, audible clap. She turned her head, tossing her hair, all so she could get a sense of the reaction from the chair. In those eyes she saw not surprise but delight and excitement. That was enough.

She grasped the waistband of her nylon tights and tugged sharply. It took a false start or two, but the fabric began to tear, ripping slowly apart until the tear extended far enough down one leg for her to easily draw the rest off. Turning again to face the chair, she balled up her torn tights and tossed them, lightly and underhand, to land on the desk in front of the chair.

The delicious tingling itch at her scalp, or at the top of her brain, now filled her head entirely and extended down her spine. She had not had a clear thought for some moments, but also had not noticed, could not notice if she tried.

Two more steps closer to the chair as she reached up, first with one hand then the other, sliding the straps of her bra from her shoulders. With each move she felt her own bodyweight more keenly, felt her age a little more; but so what if she was not as perky as she had been in her college years?

What mattered really was the here and now. Here and now she was stripping in direct obedience to a command she could not resist and her head was full of pleasure and tingling, tickly unthinkingness, as eyes watched her body be revealed in appreciation. She thrust out her chest as she reached back, arching her back to find and unsnap her bra strap, before bringing both arms forward, crossed.

Her bra fell free of her breasts. She caught it with both hands, setting it down on the desk, and briefly squeezed her tits together with her forearms before turning again to peel her panties away from her body.

If she hadn’t already realised how much she was enjoying this the sudden redoubling of her musk in the air once the panties were removed would have underlined it for her indisputably.

She lifted them back to waist height as she stood, then let them drop to the floor. Fuck it, a tiny thought ran in the back of her mind, almost unnoticed. It’s not my carpet.

At last she turned back again to face the chair.

“I see we understand each other, Madam Mayor,” she was informed after an appreciative moment of silence. “I have some policy changes to give you, and I want you to implement them just as I command.”

“As you command,” she echoed, eager and excited but suddenly uncertain.

“Yes. I like that. You should respond that way when we’re alone.”

“As you command.” She grinned warmly, happy at the positive response.

Fisher leant back against the big desk and listened to a long list of changes to her policies. Some of it directly contradicted election promises, but it didn’t seem too bad. Not that it would have mattered if it did. “As you command,” she said simply in the end. Somehow she was confident she would remember it all.

“There is one other thing,” he told her. “You understand, the technology used on you isn’t exactly off the shelf.”

“I understand.”

“It’s possible it will fail one day. And I like having insurance.”

Fisher nodded, wondering where this was going. Her scalp still tingled, her whole self euphoric. She understood she should be suspicious about this line of conversation, but she was not.

A door opened behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Chief Cartwright, his eyes glassily vacant, his usual suit absent, his cock tenting his boxers. She looked back to the chair.

“Breed,” they were commanded.

“As you command,” she said. She climbed backward onto the desk, lying back beside her discarded panties, and the chief obediently came toward her.