Gustavo Caliente sat at Max Fawkes’ old desk, a cup of coffee in hand, poring over the information he’d spent the better part of a month assembling.

Some of it, of course, was data that Max had already gleaned by the time the Syndicate took him, hidden treasure that Caliente had found in backup files designed to elude the searches of blunt-minded thugs like his Syndicate liaison, Jimmy Beam. The one-time Cuban spy often felt odds moments of kinship with the target he’d replaced, but never more so than when he’d discovered an honest-to-goodness old school microdot on the Renoir replica in the living room. It was such a classically American cloak-and-dagger solution that somehow, it had almost brought tears to his eyes.

The old head of Operation Freedom hadn’t realized in time what some of that information was worth, of course. If, for instance, he’d latched onto the name "Siouxsie Sexcrime" more seriously when he’d had the chance, he might well have forestalled the fate that befell him. The road not travelled, Caliente thought to himself. But if he’s somehow still alive, I’m sure Fawkes isn’t wasting his time regretting the past.

Was the money in Island City really good enough to justify the risk? Was all this still better than working for the Castros?

At first, Caliente had still savoured the old thrill of pulling off the act, fooling the victim’s closest confederates day after day after day. It was a worthy challenge, too, with people like John Mosley and especially Summerset O’Neale to reckon with.

But he’d been perpetually wary after what he’d seen that first night. He remembered the winsome, innocent girl that he’d recruited: her arms tied behind her back, sobbing face-down on the concrete as she lay in puddle of her own piss and cum, a cock still throbbing in her wrecked asshole, shamed utterly by the responses of her own drugged body to a brutal rape. It was because of that incident that he reminded himself every morning: Your employers are venomous snakes, more than the usual. They’re not above simply poisoning you to get leverage over you. Never take anything from them, be it a glass of water or a suitcase full of money, without checking it first. When Jimmy Beam came by with his weekly payments, always cash, he discreetly let the man leave the case on the porch and handled the loot with gloved hands when he was gone.

Years of dealing with dictators had given the Man With a Thousand Faces valuable experience in reading between the lines of a situation, of sensing danger even if the surface of the waters seemed placid. The money was good, of course. But Caliente studied the instructions he was passing on to Mosley and the Foxxes, and he listened to the hints that Beam (often unwittingly) dropped during his visits – allusions to events they otherwise judged that he didn’t need to know about. It wasn’t enough to give him a precise picture of the Red Queen Syndicate that was paying him... but carefully combined with the scattered information in Fawkes’ old files, it was enough for him to deduce that the organization he was dealing with was, at its highest level, deranged.

It was plain to see that The Boss – none other than the so-called "Siouxsie Sexcrime" – was using Operation Freedom to knock off her rivals, perhaps had even been doing so from long before they’d ever hired him, probably in hopes that the gutting of the criminal underworld would leave her by default as its reigning head. A plan that bespoke almost delusional ambition, and this from an organization that already had to have international operational reach in order to identify and find a man as elusive as himself in the first place. And he knew that there was something bizarrely off-kilter about the Syndicate’s M.O. – especially its evident devotion to gratuitous amounts of sexual cruelty, much of it aimed at girls and young women in ways that went far beyond the simian calculus that governed people like the Vory v zakone. It was probably somehow significant that Siouxsie herself was a woman – childhood jealousy issues? botched sex change? some kind of sublimated self-hatred? – but it didn’t really matter, in the end.

What mattered was that Caliente was no babe in the woods. Even if he fulfilled the terms of his contract, a boss as apparently crazy as The Boss would likely try to eliminate him at whatever point she felt she no longer needed him, consequences and questions of reputation be damned. And besides, she had to realize how much information he could acquire in the pivotal post he occupied, that he could very well Know Too Much, whatever his reputation for discretion.

Clearly, his life depended on getting outside the box she’d built for him.

"SKYHIGH," he’d written on one of the pieces of paper on the desk in front of him. Beam had made a casual reference to it once – grimacing afterwards as though belatedly catching his mistake – and after a bit of research and combing through Fawkes’ files, Caliente realized that it was probably a gentlemen’s club the Syndicate ran, or was at least affiliated with, in Island City. Likely one of many. There were several restaurants and clubs which bore the name, but only one was closed and clandestine enough to really fill the bill: the SkyHigh Penthouse Club overlooking the vast green expanse of Heartland Park, almost all of whose parties were invitation-only.

In fact, that particular SkyHigh was one of the "backburner" cases Max Fawkes had been monitoring in his cover persona as low-level analyst "Max Richards" at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, supposedly because they had been suspected of selling stolen duty-free liquor. It had never gone anywhere, but all material related to the club still crossed Richards’ – now Caliente’s – desk at the Bureau.

And it just so happened that today was a special day at SkyHigh for two reasons:

First, because today’s invitation – sent to him at a dummy address used by one of "Max Richards’" yet further cover personalities, a wealthy sprocket-selling businessman named Franco Spicoli – was to an event called The 1^st Annual Superheroines’ Masquerade and displayed a cover charge outrageous even for the SkyHigh, indicating a truly special occasion.

Second, because five days ago as Max Fawkes, Caliente had outlined a plan for the most ambitious operation yet to use Operation Freedom’s teenaged spies, the Kitts. Not just the superstar Bailey Phillips, not even just Bailey and her small group of cronies (who had gone with her on her latest infiltration of the Sabrina Lockhart Sex Research Centre) ... but all of them. Not two days before, Phillips’ "investigation" at the Lockhart Centre had finally borne fruit, that last mission supposedly yielding decisive evidence of the facility’s ties to designer dbm rug manufacture – along with an indication that members of the Rubinetto crime family would be staying in the Soliko Grand Hotel for an event a few days’ hence, and that one of them would be an accountant on the business of settling outstanding recievables for designer drug retailing in Little Italy.

The Kitts were being sent, the story went, undercover as a group of out-of-town coeds attending a rock concert, intended to pilfer the rooms identified with Rubinetto Family figures and find the evidence that would allow the Foxx Force Five to unleash their next major campaign in the war on vice in Island City.

It just so happened, of course, that the SkyHigh Penthouse Club was in the penthouse of... the Soliko Grand Hotel. No way was that a coincidence.

There was no question of presenting even the false form of the Kitts’ mission as a milk run this time, of course, so instead his script presented it to the Foxxes as the silver bullet, the coming-of-age of the Kitt program and the prelude to their own final assault on crime in Island City. He’d allayed their fears with talk of three separate backup extraction teams, double backups for the girls’ emergency transponders, full concentration of satellite surveillance, an on-site camera network installed with full cooperation of the hotel management. "The best-supported operation we’ve ever conducted," he’d declared in Max Fawkes’ ringing, confident tones on the conference call... and found he was hating himself as he said the words, sick at the knowledge of how easily the Syndicate would subvert all that high technology and use it to feed Operation Freedom a battery of comforting lies.

No agents on-site, of course, with the ostensible rationale that the Rubinettos would be on guard by now and likelier to spot them than they would the Kitts. His script had further made it clear that the Foxxes wouldn’t be going back into action until their leader had undergone the same neurotherapy course as the rest of her team, conveniently sidelining anyone who might provide the girls with any real protection. And Caliente had a feeling that the Kitts would arrive at their assignment to find their sprightly leader informing them of a last-minute change of plans; as yet the mostly barely-legal would-be spies wouldn’t have a full understanding of procedure, so Bailey would just need to feed them some thrown-together bullshit about how they’d gotten reports that the accountant had the documents with him and they’d need to infilitrate the SkyHigh posing as waitresses or something, blah blah blah. It was virtually a sure thing that the other girls would follow her and her little "Kitt Force" anywhere, no matter how flimsy the excuse.

He had no illusions or hypocritical fantasies about saving them, any of them. But he was betting that the Syndicate and the Commission would both be well-represented in the crowd... and he needed to understand the dynamics between them, put faces to more of the people who would, he suspected, very soon be his enemies. He needed to find chinks in their armour or their unity, some crack through which he might escape the trap with his life intact, or at least find some option better than trying to explain to some interrogator in Washington about his being an impostor who used to work for Castro and who’d helped dismantle their quarter-billion dollar operation in Island City. Compared to that... a risk like this was nothing.

Caliente smirked humourlessly to himself. Why are you pretending that you still don’t know if you’ll do this? he thought. Of course you will do it. He took a last sip of coffee, set it aside and got up to prepare for the day.

* * * * *

"It’ll be just fine, Summer. You’ll see!"

As the Foxx Force Five sat around their meeting table in the middle of the deepest sanctum of the Den, each with a hand full of playing cards, Raven McCoy followed up this reassuring declaration with: "Do you have any nines?"

"Go fish," replied Summerset O’Neale distractedly, drawing a gesture of exasperation from the super-petite knife-fighter as the other Foxxes laughed teasingly. The Number One Foxx barely registered it, chewing absently on her bottom lip as she gazed blindly at her cards, tugged down a corner on the tiny white button-up top that only barely covered her magnificent double D’s, adjusted the short red plaid tie hanging between them and absent-mindedly rearranged her matching little plaid skirt to almost cover her white thong panties.

They were all sporting various versions of schoolgirl fashion today, right down to the knee socks and demure pumps and (with the exception of Satin) even pigtails. The near-psychic rapport they’d always shared about fashion was as intact as ever, the inbuilt playful urge to out-dare the others’ outfits well in evidence. Summerset had almost won this round – though victory today had to go to Mylene, whose outfit skipped the top entirely in favour of a collar and tie and little plaid pasties on her nipples – and in normal circumstances she would be thinking a little guiltily about how much Max would probably love her outfit if he saw it... but today, it was hard to take the usual pleasure in the old game. O’Neale’s lightning-fast synapses were too busy chasing down other problems, other worries.

Many people were under the impression that Summerset’s great advantage was her formidable brain, but they were only half-right. Her total lightning recall was a powerful tool, it was true, just as was her natural gift for marksmanship, but Max Fawkes had taught her early on that she had a greater gift yet than either of these: the gift of intuition, of being able to sense when something felt right, or felt wrong, even when raw intellect might not catch the necessary signals.

A gift it was, but a frustrating and incomplete one. Ever since the raid on Vladimir Popov’s so-called "stable," or rather ever since the first meeting they’d had with Max after that raid, her intuition had been going haywire. And the frustration was that she hadn’t been able to put her finger on any concrete reason why.

Had there been something not quite right in Max’s voice the night of that meeting? Something just off in his intonation, a word, a phrase? She’d replayed it over and over and over again in her head... and couldn’t pin anything down. Max was still clearly the same old Max as ever.

Max’s order to send Bailey Phillips out on a mission had seemed weird and sudden to her, though... and she’d thought she felt something very wrong the day of that mission, too, had come close to ordering a breach at least a half-dozen times and had spent the ensuing weeks analyzing and replaying every moment of the day. But Max’s instincts had proved right, as always, and Phillips’ mission had been a success. The now-Number One Kitt had gone on to fit perfectly in as a new addition to the Den’s operational team, an attentive student and loyal friend of the Foxxes.

Later, as they’d rolled to victory after victory over the last and hardest of the Blood gangs, she’d watched through her rifle scope as Keiko danced dazzlingly with feet and fists through rooms full of hulking men and left them all in groaning broken-limbed heaps, watched Raven slice up whole packs of gangsters three times her size with her lightning-fast knives, watched Satin come leaping out of the smoking confusion created by her carefully-placed bombs, assault rifle in hand... those raids had been their finest hour, excelling even the satisfying coup of taking Popov. The only glitch had been the unusual loss of Mylene’s mission recorder on that final raid against the Black Suns, but the results of Mylene’s work spoke for themselves, on that mission most of all, and equipment could and did get lost or damaged during missions. Everything there checked out, there was no obvious reason for any of it to feel wrong...

... but somehow, it did.

The Kitts. The Kitts were the most obvious anomaly. Bailey Phillips had only just barely been ready to try out a mission when she’d been sent out, but the circle of new friends who’d joined her on that last outing to the Lockhart Centre were definitely nowhere close to finishing the training. Summerset had spent the entire day pacing until they returned, every cell of her body bracing for the inevitable news of disaster, but instead they’d returned with news of unprecedented triumph, bearing out Max’s instincts yet again.

She was happy beyond words that the Kitts were turning out to be such an unexpected success on such an accelerated timetable, of course she was. But it was – she felt almost ungrateful, sacreligious to think it – almost as though they were too successful. As though their opponents were trying to draw them in, hand them some early token victories and then bait Operation Freedom into sending the Kitts out into a situation they really couldn’t handle. Like, say, a hotel full of hardened Rubinetto Family hitmen, with only their emergency transponders and a SWAT team’s response time between them and a quick death. Okay, three SWAT teams, and the Rubinettos are theoretically supposed to be out of the hotel when they’re there... but still.

Max, though, didn’t agree. And surely he of all people would spot a possibility like that? It was an unusual, discomfiting feeling to disagree with Max, but so far he’d been right and she’d been wrong. And being wrong was another unusual, discomfiting feeling.

Besides, she had to admit, if the enemy were just going to hand the Kitts a few token victories, giving up information that concretely linked them into the largest wave of designer drug activity in American history was a puzzling choice. That was damning information, the kind of information that would allow Operation Freedom to finally bring the hammer down, make something stick to them in court. And if they could get the Rubinettos into the bargain, then only the Matrillo Cartel, straightforward dope smugglers by comparison, would be left. It was an exciting, tantalizing scenario, it was. Who wouldn’t be tempted by it?

Maybe, she thought, maybe it’s just that my pride is injured. That for the first time we’ve come to a place where I can’t see all the variables, all the angles. After all, as Keiko said, it’s not like we didn’t take appalling risks when we were starting out, and there was no Foxxes’ Den then, no on-call SWAT teams and satellite surveillance. And that wasn’t even all that long ago. Maybe I’m just begrudging them a share of the spotlight. Maybe I miss the days when it was just us Foxxes against the big bad world.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But that explanation felt... wrong. And the thing was, she couldn’t call up her auxiliary Washington contact and expect to get any action out of saying: "I have a bad feeling about this." She’d been tempted to do just that every day for weeks, but knew the answer would be an affably-phrased version of: "Talk to your handler about your fucking feelings. This is an emergency communications channel only."

She had talked to Special Agent Johnny Mosley, Max’s trusted lieutenant and long-time friend, proprietor of the grimy SUDDZ hair salon that was their installation’s cover at street level. She’d mentioned her strange misgivings – and found to her surprise that he strongly agreed with some of them, about the Kitts in particular. "But look," he’d finally said. "Max knows what he’s doing. He always has. Hell, I’m alive right now because of him, we all are in one way or another. If he thinks they’re ready, that probably means he sees an angle we don’t. I had a hell of a lot of sleepless nights when I first trusted his faith in you Foxxes, the whole idea seemed crazy to me then... but you all turned out pretty okay, right? I’ve got to trust his faith in the Kitts."

"Summer?"

Satin Rayne’s voice broke her out of her reverie. The Black Bombshell – more fetching than ever with her head full of wild, untamed curls cascading down her back, a teeny white top knotted between her proud tits, her nipples prominent against the starched white fabric – was looking at her compassionately. Summerset gave them all a sheepish smile.

"I’m really sorry, you guys," she said. "I guess I’m just not up for cards right now."

"Don’t be sorry, cherie," said Mylene gently. "You are just feeling the pressure. We’ve all felt it."

"Today of all days it’s understandable," added Raven. "We’re all worried about the Kitts too, Summer. It really sucks ass to have to wait on the sidelines while somebody else takes the risks. I think I know now how Max and Johnny must feel when we go out."

"But a bird must be put at risk of falling if it is ever meant to fly," put in Keiko helpfully. "By the way, have you been for your session with Dr. Nielson-san yet today?"

Summerset shook her head. But she’d have to go today, she was fresh out of excuses on the conference calls with Max. And if I’d gone earlier, we could be out with extraction teams right now instead of cooped up here, she thought with a horrible stab of guilt. The other Foxxes must be so frustrated with me... even if they’re not showing it.

"It’ll really do you good, Summer," a bright-eyed Satin reassured her. "I was feeling like a bit of a wreck before I went, too, but I swear to God whatever he does with that Machine, it works like a charm. I think I feel the best I’ve ever felt." There was a general murmur of encouraging agreement around the table, turning quickly into ribald laughter as Rayne added: "He’s got great shoulders, too. What? He does!"

Summerset had to admit that the weeks of constant worrying and self-doubt were taking their toll. And it was the ways they were taking its toll that were her worst and newest worries, making everything else almost pale in comparison. She was having by far the wettest dreams she’d ever had, night in and night out, dreams she’d dared mention to no-one. She’d woken up this very morning as her hot snatch was in the midst of squirting rapturously, wave after shuddering wave of sensation breaking over her writhing, bucking body and convulsing her in a messy multiple climax so intense she’d had to hastily stuff one of her sensitive tits in her mouth and suck and bite painfully on it to keep herself from screaming out loud, hearing her own pitiful stifled little-girl whines as the stimulation had drawn out and intensfied the devastating orgasms as she went over the edge repeatedly.

She couldn’t remember the dreams. That was so deeply disconcerting she was almost afraid to confront it consciously; Summerset could always remember her dreams. But her otherwise perfect memory could bring vivid recall of that sensation of climax at any time of the day, and when that happened she would feel her clit rise, her snatch heat up and start to drip with aching arousal, her nipples stiffen and her tits start to tingle with sensation. One day, in the middle of a workout, she’d had an unwanted and especially strong flash of that sexual heat and found herself groaning, desperately fighting the urge to shove her fingers in her cunt right there while fondling her hot tits, and she’d had to cut her routine short and make a hasty trip back to her room to writhe and moan in her bed while she frigged her snatch and drove her body to another of those gushing, spurting climaxes, which bled into another, and another, and another... her mind had whirled with debilitating shame.

At first she’d been convinced that they were all being somehow poisoned, had suspected the new products that had sturted turning up in the Den. But those all came with rock-solid official screening reports that she’d checked and rechecked multiple times, not to mention Max’s personal assurances; and she had to admit, the soap and body lotion she’d been asked to endorse did feel great on the skin.

Could just emotional strain produce the effects she was experiencing?

Well, Max had found them a therapist whose techniques seemed almost supernaturally effective for the other Foxxes. It was true, everybody looked as focussed, as centered, as positive and confident as she’d ever known them to be. Which was a good thing, a very good thing. Dr. Nielson had shown up at exactly the appropriate time, had delivered just what they needed. There was nothing... wrong with that, was there?

Summerset needed to get centered, too, she had to figure out what was happening in those dreams, what was producing those riotous sensations in her body. It was just plain superstitious to stay away from Nielson because of some vague feeling, especially since the evidence was mounting that her once-flawless intuition was somehow going out of whack. "Thanks, you guys," she said, trying to smile. "I will go. I’ll go this afternoon, I promise."

Satin punched her gently on the arm. "There’s our Number One Foxx," she said with a smile. "By the way, you got any threes?"

As Summerset forked the cards over, she pushed her doubts aside and thought resolutely: Yes, I’ll go. I need help to work this all out. Max did find him, after all... and if we can’t trust Max, who can we trust?

* * * * *

Cornelius van Rooyen the Third, a.k.a "Dr. Ryan ‘Ace’ Nielson," a.k.a. The Hound, had thoroughly enjoyed the work he’d done over the years for the Red Queen Syndicate. But nothing, he reflected, topped the week or so that he’d spent in the Foxxes’ Den.

The Foxxes were really something else. Among other things, he’d been thoroughly amazed at what they wore, or rather failed to wear, when off-duty. Good God, it has to be hell on the men working here, he remembered thinking when a barely-clothed Satin Rayne had first sauntered into his office, wearing something that was apparently meant to be exercise gear – and it was the first sense of real fellow-feeling he’d had with Operation Freedom’s gaggle of otherwise detestable spooks and g-men.

Maintaining his clinical distance from women that alluring was by far the biggest challenge of the work. What he was doing was essentially the equivalent of smashing porcelain dolls and then gluing them back together so the cracks were invisible to the naked eye. It was difficult, demanding labour requiring creative improvisation and constant focus, so he couldn’t very well go hauling out his cock and plowing the subjects in the middle of the sessions. But by God, staunch one-woman man though he was, there were times he had to admit that when he had them restrained and hypnotized, their legs splayed wide to allow easier access to their holes with his small arsenal of toys and vibrators, ther minds lost in the elaborate psychosexual hells he’d crafted for them... he’d been tempted by their naked, squirting snatches, by those tight, vulnerable assholes practically begging to be reamed.

Really, really tempted.

And they were capable women, too, he could see that just from the sheer presence each of them had in anything they did. Truly out of the ordinary. But thanks to the Alethex in their bloodstreams and their own suppressed natures, they were also vulnerable to his particular brand of psychic assault. The Neural Oscillation Synchronic Emulator, or "the Machine" as far as the Foxxes were concerned – he lovingly dusted down the gleaming chair with its protruding electrodes, resisting the temptation to hum a tune under his breath – was an instrument too powerful for even the most resilient mind to withstand for long.

Most of them had broken quickly, inside of an hour of real time. In Mylene Desange’s case it had taken mere minutes; she’d come to him already well-prepped by her, ahem, experience during the Black Sun Nation raid, so it had just been a matter of fine-tuning the results and locking in the deep-level conditioning. (Too bad, really, he’d had to pad out the rest of the session with a pantomime of actual, boring therapy just to make the time elapsed seem credible, sending her dreams of power animals and healing caves and other... shite.) Keiko Takeda had lasted the longest so far at an hour and fifteen, until he’d finally found the right combination of levers.

All in all it was profoundly satisfying. It was always worth the wait to see the final images from their subconscious on his session monitor, watching each of them at the end of a course of viciously ecstatic torment, kneeling in naked, shivering defeat to receive their reprogramming, utterly surrendering in the depths of body and soul to the fears and the insecurities and the temptations he’d dredged from the darkest crannies of their minds... it was a feeling of pure power. There was nothing like it. To bring some truth to an overused phrase, it really was better than sex.

But he’d been told to expect a bigger challenge from Summerset O’Neale. "She’ll be an interesting case," The Boss had told him. "I think you’ll find she takes much longer to re-condition than your usual subjects." They’d laid money on it, in fact; the Hound’s faith in the power of the NOSE was absolute, with good reason. Nevertheless he found himself almost hoping that Summerset could prove him wrong – that would definitely make things interesting. His instrumentation hadn’t faced a real challenge in a long time.

Except Fawkes, he recollected with irritation. But that was just a field box, not a real NOSE, and still, if we’d had more time and better conditions, if it hadn’t been for that damnable fuckwit of a guard messing up the flow right at the end... hell, it performed well enough, we got pretty much everything we needed...

There came a knock at the door, and the Hound snapped out of it, quickly putting his "Dr. Nielson" face on. "Come in! Come in!" he turned around, practised enough by now not to be wrong-footed by the awesome, cock-stiffening sight of Summerset O’Neale in her pigtails and sexy schoolgirl outfit. Game on, he thought as he came around the chair to take her warmly by the arm. Let’s see what you’ve got, ‘Number One Foxx.’ "Before we get started, I’d just like to say what an honour it is to meet you in person..."

* * * * *

While he’d been preparing his impersonation, the Red Queen Syndicate had given Gustavo Caliente a complete file on Max Fawkes. Today he was gambling that they hadn’t held anything back; they might not normally be fussed about full disclosure but they certainly weren’t going to undermine the lynchpin of Operation: Foxx Hunt.

If, in fact, that file held everything they knew... then they hadn’t managed to gain access to all of the files at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Or perhaps whoever had done so had simply missed or not known the right things to look for. Their file contained no hint that Max Fawkes’ cover persona, Max Richards, had himself had multiple covers – the Bureau itself probably didn’t know, for that matter – and that meant they didn’t know about Franco Spicoli.

Spicoli was a phantasm that Fawkes had plainly conjured to be pressed into use if he should ever need it in an emergency. He had an entire life on paper, bank accounts, birth certificates, school report cards, passports, divorce papers from two fictional failed marriages, the works. He rarely spent much time in Island City, usually doing business abroad, where he had supposedly last visited China about a month and a half previously. His main line of business was in sprocket manufacture, which meant a lot of trips to countries known for their cheap labour... raising the possibility that though apparently legit, Spicoli might also be open to a little corruption. And he had a "childhood friendship" with a real-life Irish mobster, Dermott DeWitt, one of Fawkes’ informants who’d taken a few payments for the favour of passing Spicoli’s name around in the right circles and eventually getting him on the invitation lists for clubs like the SkyHigh.

It was a perfect blank canvas on which Caliente could work – thank you, Max, he’d thought to himself only half-sardonically as he prepared – and by the time he arrived at the Soliko Grand Hotel he was Frankie Spicoli, a heavyset, bearded, jowly Italian-American businessman with a pronounced gut and a full head of hair not quite tamed by the massive quantities of hair gel dumped on it. He was dressed casually for the occasion in a suit without a tie, sporting a gold chain and cross of ridiculous proportions at his open collar in the way a man who’d seen mobsters in the movies might think a mobster would dress. Spicoli was bespectacled and awkward, but plainly determined to adopt a tough-guy swagger in a way that would suggest to anyone watching that he’d never been in a fight in his life. A too-legitimate businessman just aching to go crooked, a perfect mark.

Caliente walked into the lobby, affecting the look of a man who was affecting not to be impressed by the Soliko Grand’s hyper-opulent Oriental-themed decoration. Out of the corner of his eye, the Man With a Thousand Faces marked several knots of men in the lobby noticing him as he walked in, dressed casually like himself but with less ludicrously ostentatious chains, and wearing the look naturally, with an air of practised brutality. Rubinetto Family soldiers, without a doubt, and probably representatives from the other six Families too. Smaller in number but just as menacing was a cluster of huge shaven-headed men in immaculate black-on-black suits who by now were instantly recognizable as Syndicate bruisers. Caliente noticed them all; Frankie Spicoli awkwardly affected not to notice any of them as he strode for the nearest elevator.

In a nice touch, the elevators actually had attendants: compact, shapely, crisply business-suited young Asian women with the hotel’s crest blazoned on their left lapels. As he approached one of them and she asked his floor, he ostentatiously waved his invitation at her and said: "Penthouse! I’m heading to the penthouse."

With an indulgent, carefully-neutral smile she said: "Of course, sir. Please do step in." He saw a couple of gangsters’ heads turned curiously in his direction as the elevator doors slid shut.

"Is this your first visit with us today, sir?" asked the attendant pleasantly.

Spicoli was a bit of a blowhard. "Well to this club, sure, but I been to plenty like it," he said, puffing out his chest, an ill-at-ease man trying to seem casual. "Plenty like it. I’m just hoping you all live up to Shanghai standards here, that’s all. That’s what I’m hoping. Yeah, they’re really something over in Shanghai. Really something."

He was satisfied to see the woman make an obviously Herculean effort to keep herself from raising an eyebrow. That was it for conversation until the elevator doors opened again and she said: "I hope you enjoy your time with us, sir."

"Oh thanks, I will, honey." As he stepped out he stopped, smacked his forehead, fished out a crumpled, sweaty five-dollar bill from his pocket and shoved it at her. "You have a nice day now, alright?"

She took the bill by a corner, daintily, as though someone had just handed her a dead fish. "Very generous, thank you sir," she said, and was gone.

As he walked into the SkyHigh he could see that news of his arrival, and obvious cluelessness, had been transmitted ahead of him. There was a young Asian hostess hovering at the door – the club a huge, vaulting skylit space beyond, already buzzing with activity – but for the moment, she’d been clearly preempted in her duties by a goateed, swarthy Syndicate man, a little less Panzer-like than the norm and setting himself slightly apart from his brethren’s fashion sense with a natty Nehru suit.

"And how are you today, my friend?" the man greeted him with the kind of false hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie that Caliente had always hated... and that Spicoli eagerly lapped up, reaching out to clasp the big man’s hand in a damp double-pump handshake.

"Good to be here, really good to be here, buddy, thanks for asking! Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?"

"I’m Grayson, I’ll be emceeing the entertainment a little later on."

"Grayson, nice to meet you. Franco Spicoli, Global Industrial Products."

Grayson gave him a big grin, recognizing the name. "Mr. Spicoli! Well I’ll be! Real nice to have you with us, we’ve been sending you invitations for ages!"

"Well, you know, I was finally in town, so I figured I’d come up and see if you’ve all got it going up to Shanghai standards here. They’re really something, you know, over in Shanghai."

"I’m sure we won’t disappoint. Right this way. No no, don’t worry about the cover, your money’s no good here, Mr. Spicoli."

"Well thanks, buddy! And please, call me Frankie!"

The SkyHigh proper was palatial, its western wall a two-storey high half-hemisphere of glass curving down the side of the club like a whale’s ribcage, its centrepiece the enormous bar where knots of Italian men dragging makeup-plastered mistresses in tow mingled with a swarm of stockbroker, lawyer and businessman types. The east wall was devoted to a sizable stage, and there were lofty booths, almost opera boxes, set in the north and south walls, while the middle of the floor was interspersed with dining tables where a number of people were having lunch.

Spicoli craned his head around, trying not to look too impressed, while Caliente marked that the central booth on the southern wall was obviously given over to a small delegation from the Matrillo Cartel, full of well-dressed Colombian men and their gorgeous Latina molls. But it was the largest booth on the northern wall that caught his more immediate attention.

He recognized Jimmy Beam immediately, standing like a porter behind the chair of an icily beautiful, lithe-bodied platinum blonde woman in a tight business suit. These sorts of clubs were usually non-smoking these days, but the woman was clearly an exception, casually puffing at a big cigar as she chatted pleasantly with a shorter, equally elegant sandy-haired woman sitting to her left. Even in the seemingly easygoing mode in which he was seeing her, the air of command that surrounded the spectacular blonde was palpable.

Hello, Siouxsie Sexcrime, Caliente thought to himself. Nice to put a face to the name. Rapidly he took stock of the other people in the booth, noting a good representation of higher-level Rubinetto Family figures – though not yet Boss Angel Rubinetto, the self-styled "King of Island City," maybe he was staying away? – and more puzzlingly, a delegation of what looked to be Chinese businessmen, one of whom seemed oddly familiar, none of whom matched the Chinese underworld figures in Max Fawkes’ files.

The flickering appraisal took him a few seconds as Grayson guided him toward a knot of men at the bar. As they arrived, the emcee shouted, "Barkeep! A drink for my friend here!" And without further ado he turned and introduced Spicoli to the pair of brutal-looking men whose conversation had been interrupted by their arrival. "Mr. Franco Spicoli, I’d like you to meet Sonny Rubinetto and Fingers Costello, good friends of mine. Sonny, Fingers, this is Frankie."

The two hard-eyed men greeted Spicoli with that same synthetic cheer that Grayson had shown – perhaps a little more forced, but clearly they too recognized his name – and he introduced himself: "Hello gents, name’s Frankie Spicoli, Global Industrial Products! Real nice to meet you! I’m really looking forward to this show, you know? I just hope it’s as good as what they got in Shanghai, that’s all I’m saying, love Island City to pieces don’t get me wrong but it’s really top-notch over there in Shanghai, you know?"

* * * * *

"Now, just look at the screen... look at the screen..."

One moment, Summerset was sitting in the Machine, her limbs and head immobilized by padded steel restraints, electrodes hooked up all over her body – including her big stiff nipples and sensitive clit – and her snatch already unaccountably hot and pulsating and dripping. ("Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal," Nielson had reassured her.) Then the Doctor had swivelled the chair and pointed it at a blank white screen, and as she watched, a rapid series of coloured lights dazzled her...

... and the doctor’s office had vanished!

The Number One Foxx found herself standing outside, the sun shining, a cool breeze goosepimpling her skin, fresh air filling her lungs. She took quick stock of her surroundings, quickly identifying several species of trees, mentally sorting and cataloguing the bird calls she could hear on the wind, and realized she was in the Saranacs park preserve, cottage country in upstate New Amsterdam. Impressive realism, she thought in genuine astonishment. It really is exactly like being there!

Her mind had clearly furnished up a scenario from the past: she’d operated upstate about two years before, near the village of Casanovia, investigating a rumoured illegal sex club operating out of one of the cottages. They were a small group of men who would lure poor girls out from Island City with the promise of making them "tour guides" and then get them drunk and drugged and take advantage of them. Summerset had played a naive punk rocker who needed money for rent. The look on the bastards’ faces in the moment when they’d suddenly realized she wasn’t as drunk as she had pretended, and just after she’d deftly snagged one of their pistols and demonstrated a little of her firearms expertise by literally parting one man’s hair with a bullet, was one of her most treasured memories. She often replayed it in her mind the way normal people would re-watch a favourite movie. Even sweeter, one of that group of sad perverts had had criminal ties; he’d become a key early informant, and this mission had been one of the first steps toward taking out the DeWitt Gang in Island City.

Summerset looked down at herself and realized, grimacing slightly, that all the other details were accurate as well.

Her cover name had been "Pinka Leitmeister," and her look was built to play off of it. She was dressed in trashy riot-grrl fashion, wearing a sleeveless black fishnet body stocking, a tiny pink camo bikini top and equally tiny pink camo hotpants with slits up the sides, a pink bullet belt and pink bullet wristbands, a pink spiked leather choker, pink camo arm warmers and chunky black combat boots with pink stitching. Her arms were wreathed down to the elbows in fake tattoos, there was a fake pink-winged butterfly tattoo around her belly button, and she knew there would be a fake "tramp stamp" – Gothic letters reading "think pink" – on the small of her back. Touching her head confirmed the sides of her skull were shaved; the rest of her flowing hair would be dyed pink too, as would the thatch at her pussy – she’d always insisted on the thorough touches. And she had finished the look with glossy pink lipstick and deep pink eyeshadow.

This was also the first mission that any of the Foxxes had tested out the breast-enhancement serum, the same formula used today in the more advanced setting of the Foxxes’ Den... and it was the first and last time that Summerset had ever used it.

They’d had information that one member of the ring was a big-breast fetishist, and though she was more than amply equipped to play on that fetish in her natural state, the less experienced Summerset O’Neale of that time hadn’t believed in taking chances. She’d virtually demanded that they inject her with the serum, and the result had been the growth of her already majestic double D’s to a full-on F-cup.

Summerset’s mouth-watering tits were already sensitive in the normal run of things, but the procedure hadn’t just supersized them; it had also ultra-sensitized them, making it hard even to just breathe without getting stiff-nippled, soaking wet and aroused. They had felt heavier, too – the serum worked in part by stimulating lactation. Great as it was to have the ability to change cup sizes without implants, she’d been very lucky in retrospect that none of the sad wasters in that cottage had really gotten their hands on her massive breasts; it could have been game over, and that was an unnecessary risk that she’d never taken again.

But now she was back in her "Pinka" identity, massively augmented bust and all, her nips already proud and stiff, her pussy already leaking from just the normal stimulation of fabric on her breasts. I’ll just have to work with it, she thought resignedly.

She wondered what exactly she should be doing. "I can’t guide you," Dr. Nielson had told her when she’d asked about the procedure. "I can only give you the means to explore your own subconscious. The direction has to come from you. Everything you encounter will come from you. All the Machine does is facilitate. Afterwards, we’ll study and interpret your experiences together." For some reason her faulty intuition had sputtered back into suspicion mode on hearing these words, and she’d slapped it down hard. Dr. Nielson is here to help you! she’d reminded herself. Listen to what he’s saying!

The direction has to come from me. So... what direction did she feel like she should be taking right now?

To the cottage was the most obvious choice. She’d appeared on the pathway there, it was just a short walk away, it was the only site of any real interest to her in these woods. Didn’t they drive me straight there the last time? Summerset wondered to herself. Well, never mind, this is a subconscious scenario, not a straight replay. There’ll be differences.

The Number One Foxx set out determinedly, whistling a tune to keep her mind occupied as her tight cunt juiced up from the fabulous sensations created by the jiggling of her super-heavy tits, the throbbing of her nipples against fishnet and bikini top fabric. Time to get to the bottom of a few things here, she thought, and despite the vulnerable feelings of arousal coursing through her body, she felt a thrill of anticipation.

* * * * *

Caliente had taken a table with the two gangsters, Sonny and Fingers, and spent the last hour playing the credulous mark as they chatted him up about some great card games he could sit in on, and some first-rate investment opportunities they could line up. "You know, when you’re ready to grow some fuckin’ balls and lay out a mil to make ten fuckin’ mil," Fingers had said memorably at one point in an only half-joking tone, stinging Frankie Spicoli’s sensitive pride and starting him off on one of his endless supply of "I’ve done incredibly manly things in Third World countries, I’ll have you know" stories. Caliente had spent a few hours working up these tales, most of them involving some combination of epic whoring and fights with muggers or wild beasts and all designed to be pitifully obvious self-aggrandizing lies, and he had to admit he was having no small amount of fun yarning them out.

He didn’t limit his conversation to just storytelling, though. In character as Spicoli, desperate to prove his manly bona fides, he had also gawped unsubtly at the beauty of this or that mistress in the room at regular intervals. This always drew warnings from his lunch companions, "You don’t wanna fuck around with that, buddy, trust me." And when Frankie would artlessly ask why or proclaim that he could handle the situation, he would more often than not have a specific figure pointed out to him, "See that fuckin’ Spicaroon over there? They call him Ramon, he’d cut your fuckin’ balls off."

Caliente could, of course, identify a great many of these people by sight anyway thanks to Max’s files. What he was monitoring were his companions’ attitudes about them... and one thing became clear very quickly. Whenever they found themselves pointing out a Syndicate figure, both men radiated a sense of profound distaste from beneath their ruthlessly calm exteriors. When he’d first noticed this, the spy had found himself closely studying body language in the rest of the room whenever he could plausibly do it; and he noticed that that tension wasn’t limited to Sonny and Fingers. Even the Rubinetto representatives in Siouxsie’s booth were, on longer inspection, recognizably on edge and out of sorts.

The mafiosi don’t like the Red Queen Syndicate at all, he’d realized, clamping down as best he could on the sense of giddy excitement that swept through him at the thought. Maybe even hate them! Done right, it could be possible to play them against each other! He mentally filed the insight away for later planning, concentrating on keeping up the Spicoli character.

And the back of his mind kept working at the identity of that Chinese man he thought he recognized in Siouxsie’s booth.

The atmosphere and tone of the club was changing, and had been over the past hour. Gradually the light was growing dimmer and more artificial; too early for dusk, it was that great windowed wall that was being artificially tinted, until finally it was all but completely opaque. As that happened, the classily-dressed waitresses moving between the tables – all of them young, taut-bodied Asian women – began to gradually change attire. They’d started out in demure black pantsuits with white blouses, but by the middle of the hour had traded up for mid-length black pleated skirts. By the bottom of the hour a third costume change had taken place, and the pleated skirts were now much tinier, showing off their pert bottoms, while their blouses were knotted playfully between their tits. The waitresses’ transition from elegant to slutty was mirrored by the music in the background, which had started out as well-mannered classical and had transitioned to throbbingly rhythmic techno heavy on the sampling of porn sounds. There was something of a buzz in the room as more and more people began to take their seats.

"Alright," said Sonny finally as the lights dimmed even further. "Looks like they’re about to start the show, let’s can the fuckin’ business chit-chat for a bit. But Frankie, don’t let me forget to finish tellin’ you about that sweet fuckin’ construction project out in Kingsway, I’m tellin’ you it’s fuckin’ made for you buddy, forget about it."

Theatrically, the club’s windows reached full opacity and the light in the room dimmed down to virtually nothing. An anticipatory hush fell over the crowd.

A deep, thundering amplified voice suddenly echoed through the room: "WELCOME. WELCOME TO YOU ALL, MY FRIENDS! WELCOME... TO MY DOMAIN."

A spotlight suddenly glared through the darkness, illuminating a figure suspended high above the stage and above the diners, arms outstretched in a grand benediction. It was a big, muscular man in outlandish costume, like something out of a comic book: encased in black spandex, he wore a full-face mask – a bone-white version of aTibetan Gadhi mask, its face fixed in a hideous expression, a fringe of skulls around its upper edge – along with a belt of elaborately knotted white rope, black leather boots with absurdly huge cuffs, and elbow-length black leather gloves. There was a white abstract symbol on his chest that after a moment Caliente recognized as the Tibetan "infinite knot." Going by height and build, he guessed the figure was none other than the same Grayson who’d greeted him earlier.

"YES, I SAY: MY DOMAIN. FOR YOU HAVE LEFT THE ORDINARY WORLD BEHIND, MY FRIENDS." As he spoke, the suspended man was being lowered ever so slowly, the very faint sound of pulleys just audible if one listened for them. "I, TOO, WAS AN ORDINARY MAN ONCE. UNTIL THE DAY I STUMBLED UPON THE ANCIENT HIDDEN CITY OF XANADU, WHOSE MONKS TAUGHT ME A SECRET... THE SECRET OF THE INFINITE KNOT."

There was scattered laughter from around the club, and the costumed figure threw out his arms imperiously.

"IT IS NO LAUGHING MATTER!" he boomed, waiting for a moment until the titters indulgently subsided. "FOR I BEHELD THE BASIC FACT OF ALL EXISTENCE: THAT THE ONLY ETERNAL TRUTH IS POWER! THAT THERE EXIST ONLY TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE: THOSE WHO DOMINATE, AND THOSE WHO SUBMIT, THOSE WHO CONTROL THE KNOT AND THOSE WHO ARE RESTRAINED!"

Huh, don’t remember that from the Buddhist teachings, Caliente thought wryly. The figure was getting closer to alighting on the stage, and he could dimly see that just forward of him, a sizable orchestra pit was opening its black maw.

"AND ONCE I UNDERSTOOD THIS TRUTH, I GAINED ABILITIES BEYOND THOSE OF A MORTAL MAN," went on the masked man dramatically. "THE POWER TO BIND THE WILL OF OTHERS TO MY OWN! THE POWER OF MIND OVER MATTER, TO MAKE ANY ROPE, CORD OR CHAIN DANCE AT MY WILL AND DO MY BIDDING! I BECAME," he alighted on the stage and threw his hands dramatically skyward, as if praising his own divine powers: "DOCTOR SHIBARI!"

A thunderous fanfare shook the SkyHigh as a hackneyed, faux-Oriental cinematic music began to play, the thread of a classic snake-charming motif running through it. The lights in the club came up somewhat, enough to make the orchestra pit visible to all, and Doctor Shibari began to gesture arcanely at it as if conducting a symphony. Something began to stir inside the pit, and after a moment, tendrils of rope began to appear, moving sinuously, like live cobras. The costumed man gestured more and more elaborately, more and more serpents of rope appearing as he did so, and soon the pit was a vast, seething mass of white rope, as though some enormous Rope Monster inhabited it. "BEHOLD!" shouted Doctor Shibari triumphantly, to genuinely impressed applause from his rather jaded audience, and he sketched a short bow of acknowledgment.

"YES, MY FRIENDS," he went on. "I AM PLEASED TO WELCOME YOU ALL TO MY DOMAIN, TO THE PALACE OF DOCTOR SHIBARI IN THE LOST CITY OF XANADU. IT ONCE BELONGED TO THE MONKS, BUT... AS I SAID BEFORE, THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE. THEY TURNED OUT TO BE THE SECOND KIND." A hearty laugh rang around the room at that – exactly the right type of joke for this crowd – and then a second round of guffaws as human skulls and shreds of saffron robes briefly emerged from the Rope Monster’s seething innards before vanishing again. "AND IN MY HOUSE, I’VE HOSPITALITY TO OFFER! FOR YOUNG, IMPRESSIONABLE DISCIPLES HAVE FLOCKED TO ME, AND BECOME MY WILLING SLAVES. AS THEY WAIT UPON ME, SO TODAY SHALL THEY WAIT UPON YOU! I GIVE YOU... MY LOVELY MAIDENS OF THE ROPE!"

There was another grand musical flourish, and then an explosion of cheering and whistling – Sonny and Fingers joined in enthusiastically, and Frankie Spicoli followed suit – as the sexy Asian waitresses made another entrance. This time, they were wearing nothing except for transparent platform heels, tiny g-strings made of white rope, and coils of rope binding their pert tits in place, just enough to cover their nipples. They all moved now with a practised, swaying, slutty stride. Not just waitresses, but strippers too, Caliente mused as the Maidens of the Rope lined up and posed in front of orchestra pit.

Doctor Shibari came to the edge of the stage and made another theatrical gesture, and a thick tentacle of intertwined ropes came shooting out of the pit, wrapping around the central "Rope Maiden"’s waist. As it lifted her high in the air, demonstrating its capacity to hold human weight, she smiled sunnily and made a ta-dahhh! gesture like a magician’s assistant, drawing another round of impressed applause.

How are they doing that? Caliente wondered as his Frankie Spicoli persona clapped along with the rest. He casually glanced over at Siouxsie’s booth and noticed her leaning in to have a conference with that vaguely familiar Chinese businessman he’d noticed earlier. (Damn, I still can’t place him.) The man was pointing down at the pit and making motions with his hand as though he were explaining something technical. Caliente looked back at the pit with renewed fascination. Not just a sex show... but a tech demonstration as well? Interesting. Very interesting.

Doctor Shibari sketched another bow as the Rope Monster set its captive back down, and the Maidens of the Rope resumed their drink trays and began moving back out into the crowd, their tips no doubt increasing fivefold. "AND SO," went on the Doctor, "SHALL WE EAT, AND DRINK, AND MAKE MERRY?" There was a shout of amused acclamation from around the room. "YES! OF COURSE WE SHALL! BUT," he added darkly, "STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM, THERE ARE THOSE WHO DON’T WANT US TO ENJOY OURSELVES TODAY. FOR IT PAINS ME TO ADMIT THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD WHO DISLIKE THE WAY I LIVE... WHO EVEN CALL ME... EVIL!"

There was a round of good-natured booing as the stage supervillain held out his hands at his sides in appeal. "I KNOW, RIGHT? ME EVIL? WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO!" he said, bringing more chuckles. "BUT SUCH ARE THE CROSSES WE ALL BEAR. WHY, JUST THE OTHER DAY A SASSY LITTLE GROUP OF SUPERHEROINES TRIED TO INFILTRATE MY PALACE!" Another chorus of good-natured boos. Shibari held out his hands: "DON’T WORRY, MY FRIENDS, DON’T WORRY. I CAUGHT THEM, OF COURSE, AND BENT THEM TO MY WILL. THEY SERVICE ME, NOW... PERHAPS THEY SHOULD ALSO SERVICE YOU?" A cheer went up. "WOULD YOU LIKE TO MEET THEM?" Another cheer! Frankie Spicoli shouted enthusiastically along with the rest, but Caliente was fighting growing trepidation. Now it was really beginning.

Doctor Shibari made another dramatic gesture at the Rope Monster’s pit. "MY FRIENDS, IT PLEASES ME TO GIVE YOU... THE VIXXEN VANGUARD!"

Again the Rope Monster’s innards seethed, and there was a prolonged bout of cheering and whistling as five scantily-clad girls were lifted from its depths, their wrists and ankles bound by tentacles of rope, every one of them struggling fetchingly, their bodies glistening with sweat, their tits heaving, their lips parted and their eyes wide and shining. They wore tiny fur g-string bikinis, knee-high fur stiletto boots, and furry cowl masks topped with fox ears over their upper faces. The outfits were colour-coded, four of them in natural red, brown, white and silver fox fur hues, the fifth (at the centre) in black. As they struggled and writhed enticingly, it was plain to see that glistening juices of arousal were sliding down their thighs, that their mouths were open in moans of ecstasy and desperate, wanton lust.

Some of the cheers were turning into ugly jeers. Many in the crowd – especially among the gangsters – had to know who the girls really were; they could be none other than Bailey Phillips and her little crew of corrupted Kitts from Operation Freedom, their name and outfits chosen to play up the connection. Which means the rest of the Kitts are captured here, somewhere, sold out by their own ‘leader,’ thought Caliente sourly. No surprises there. The "Vixxen Vanguard" were clearly far gone in whatever the Syndicate had done to them; even the vicious jeering only made them writhe more sluttily, one or two of them licking their lips in arousal, and in all their eyes was a bright sheen of happy, fractured madness.

Doctor Shibari made another gesture at the pit, and narrow, writhing strands of rope began to rise between each wriggling girl’s spread legs. As the crowd’s cheers rose again, the tendrils began to rub lasciviously against the Vixxens’ pussy mounds, making them arch their backs and groan, their eyes sliding shut; the White Vixxen’s big tits were jiggling and heaving with almost instant abandon. At another gesture from Shibari, the Rope Monster turned the bound sluts as one with the backs to the audience. Yet more tendrils snaked up and wrapped in amazingly complex patterns to fold each girl into an impromptu frog-tie, displaying her sweet, luscious teenaged rump to the increasingly lustful eyes of the crowd. The Vixxens’ hips were still grinding as they were clearly being driven toward the brink of climax by the ceaseless rubbing of their wet, sensitive snatches through their bikinis.

Then even more narrow tendrils were reaching for them, and as Shibari gestured and shouted: "BEHOLD!" the narrow strands of rope flashed into blurry motion, mercilessly whipping the sexy, jiggling asses of their helpless prey!

"AWWWWWW! AWWWW! AWWWWW! AWWWWW!" cried the Vixxens as their backs arched and their butts gyrated, welts appearing across their glossy flesh as the ropes Crack! Crack! Crack! CRACK!ed over them. The enslaved teens’ bodies at first instinctively tried to jerk away from the lashes tormenting their sensitive young flesh... but there was nowhere to go, no escape, and the tendrils at their pussies were still busily masturbating them, giving them no respite. It wasn’t long before, one after another, the trapped sluts were giving in to waves of intense pain and pleasure, squealing as they lifted their asses up to meet the punishing tendrils, their juices running freely down their thighs... and finally, they all surrendered utterly. Each of the Vixxens gave a shrill cry of pure ecstasy as she came to a messy, spurting multiple climax, juices splashing out around their bikini bottoms as the whipping ropes picked up their pace, drawing out the agonized convulsions of those clearly devastating orgasms, the nubile captives left twitching and shuddering in their bonds as the tendrils finally withdrew.

There was a moment of stunned, respectful silence in the club before the crowd erupted in applause.

"YOU SEE HOW WELL-PREPARED THEY ARE!" said Shibari. "AND THE GOOD NEWS IS... THEY’RE ALL YOURS! IF YOU’D LIKE TO USE ONE OF THESE VIXXENS TODAY, JUST CALL OVER YOUR WAITRESS AND ORDER A ‘VIXXEN PIE’!" A huge acclamation greeted this news, with people at tables near them high-fiving, and even more people furiously flagging down their waitresses... and Caliente noticed his mafioso companions exchanging a mischievous look, realizing instantly that they were going to put Frankie Spicoli’s fatuous stories about championship whoring to the test. The thought made his stomach sink, but there was no help for it; Frankie couldn’t leave now, much less turn down purchased pussy, while staying in character. "VIXXENS, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY TO MY GUESTS!"

The Rope Monster had turned the Vixxens back to face the audience, and now the girls drew breath and shouted in well-rehearsed unison: "Please give us what we deserve! Please make us suck and fuck! Please fill all our holes! Please humiliate us and abuse us and treat us like the worthless sluts we are!" The Vixxen in black – probably Bailey – arched and spurted again as she finished this declaration, her last sentence trailing off into "ah-ha-harrrrre!"

Cheers and whistles and stamping greeted this performance, and Sonny gave a low whistle of his own. "I’ll say this for those motherfuckers," Caliente heard him say almost to himself, clearly talking about the Syndicate. "They do know how to throw a party."

"THERE YOU HAVE IT, STRAIGHT FROM THE VIXXEN’S MOUTH! BUT THAT, MY FRIENDS, IS JUST THE APPETIZER." The light dimmed on the Rope Monster’s pit and its toothsome captives for the moment as an enormous screen flicked to life behind the black-costumed stage villain, at first shining a featureless white. "YOU SEE, AFTER I CAPTURED THE VIXXEN VANGUARD, SOME OF THEIR FRIENDS CAME LOOKING FOR THEM. AND THEN SOME OF THEIR FRIENDS CAME LOOKING FOR THEM... AND SO ON, AND SO ON, AND SO ON. BEFORE I KNEW IT, MY PALACE BASEMENT WAS PRACTICALLY OVERFLOWING WITH CAPTURED SUPERHEROINES!" Doctor Shibari gestured ruefully up at the screen and said: "SEE FOR YOURSELF!"

Caliente’s breath caught as the picture on the screen resolved. The Kitts.

What it showed was a dismal, cell-like chamber full of girls, eighteen of them, each one a taut-bodied teen dream, each one dressed in a different slutty superheroine outfit, each one with her hands tied elbows-to-wrists behind her back... and each one of them moaning pitifully and drooling around a ball gag, eyes bleary and unfocused and utterly bewildered. They’ve all been heavily chloroformed, Caliente realized. Probably no more than a couple of hours ago.

"NOW, OKAY, I MAY BE JUST A TEENSY LITTLE BIT EVIL," Shibari confessed to general laughter. "BUT I DO LIVE BY A CODE OF HONOUR NEVERTHELESS. I GAVE THE VIXXEN VANGUARD A CHANCE TO WIN BACK THEIR FREEDOM BEFORE I BROKE THEM, AND I WILL GIVE EACH OF THESE HEROINES THE SAME CHANCE! EACH OF THEM WILL FACE MY MAIDENS OF THE ROPE AND HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO PROVE HER HEROISM, AND GO FREE!" There was general appreciative cheering and laughter, and the villain held his hands up for quiet before going on. "THE PROBLEM IS: WHAT IF THEY SHOULD FAIL? I MAY BE THE GREAT DOCTOR SHIBARI, MASTER OF THE INFINITE KNOT, BUT TAMING EIGHTEEN SUPERHEROINES AT ONCE IS A LOT OF WORK EVEN FOR ME! I WONDER... IS THERE ANYONE HERE WHO CAN HELP ME?"

A thunderous cheer rattled through the SkyHigh club, and Fingers Costello thumped Caliente’s back heartily. "Guess this is gonna get pretty interesting, huh, buddy?"

"Man oh man," replied Frankie Spicoli with feeling. "They sure don’t do it like this in Shanghai!" And Gustavo Caliente felt a wave of futile pity wash over him as he watched the bound and captured girls on the screen.

* * * * *

The walk to the cottage took longer than Summerset had hoped. It wasn’t because the distance was all that great; it was because the sensations washing through her body from her ultra-sensitive tits forced a couple of... unscheduled stops.

I’ve got to get this out of my system! she’d thought to herself desperately when the heated lust in her throbbing snatch had boiled over for the second time in ten minutes. It wasn’t nearly this bad in real life! "UHHHHHAHHHHHHH!" she cried out as she fell wantonly to her knees again, her snatch exploding wetly under her fingers as she rubbed frantically through the tiny hotpants, pure pleasure convulsing her body and searing her mind, the waves of amazing sensation from her tingling tits growing more intense – she couldn’t help stroking and squeezing and tugging them – and drawing out the crotch-soaking climaxes. And just as the shuddering, moaning orgasms seemed to be coming to an end, she accidentally tugged too hard on her left nipple and a sharp tingling sensation seized her tit, accompanied by a sensation of spreading wetness in the fabric on her breast, Ahhhh shit my milk just shot out again!, and drove her back over the edge, pitching forward on her face, her ass writhing and wriggling in the air. "AAAAHH-HHAAHHHHHH!"

Finally the orgasmic waves receded, and after a few minutes spent catching her breath, she climbed weakly to her feet. Maybe I should just go bare-breasted to make this easier, she wondered dizzily... but even in her own subconscious, she didn’t fancy the idea of showing up topless to a house full of perverted men. Not that my current condition is much better, she thought, looking down at herself with a stab of shame. The triangles of her little bikini top were dark and soaked, little rivulets of milk still dripping off her hot, hard tits, her aroused nipples as big and stiff as bullets; the crotch of her hotpants would be obviously saturated, and she could feel her girl-come still streaming down her thighs. Not the ideal way to go into this situation... but there was nothing for it, now. There was nowhere available to clean up, and the cottage was in sight; and she was a little afraid that if she stopped again, for anything, she might not be able to move again for some time.

The quiet wooden cottage stood only another hundred yards away. Oddly quiet; the men she remembered had been fond of loud music. She felt an intuitive twinge, an urge not to approach it, but she wasn’t sure whether to trust those kinds of signals anymore. And besides, if the place was somehow empty, she could still use it to rest and recover and stop her mind from spinning the way it was now.

She climbed up on the front porch, looking in the windows, seeing nothing. She extended a hand and knocked tentatively at the front door... and someone promptly opened it, the door creaking wide. But there was nobody standing there.

The normal Summerset would have backed off then and there, but in her discombobulated state she unthinkingly blundered forward instead. "Hello... ?"

BAMMM! A booted foot connected squarely with her diaphragm out of the blue, knocking the wind out of her and making her see stars. Wh- whaaa...? her mind whirled, struggling desperately to function as she folded and collapsed, her body croakingly fighting to draw breath through the excruciating pain. But her attacker gave her no time to recover: BAMMM! A steel-toed boot connected viciously with her side, the intense agony of the impact scrambling her brain even further, and desperately she wanted to curl up to protect herself but her limbs wouldn’t obey her, everything was reduced to the simple problem of air and the lack of it, to the struggle to get oxygen into her brutally-evacuated lungs.

As she gaggingly and chokingly tried to breathe, she felt her arms being pulled behind her back and crossed over each other from wrists to elbows, then being tied in place with strong cord. She heard herself making a desperate mewing noise as she feebly, abortively attempted to struggle, and then a hand was grabbing her brutally by the hair and yanking her inexorably to her feet, the new pain bringing tears to her eyes.

SMACK! An open handed, leather-gloved bitch-slap connected with the left side of her face as soon as she was standing, sending the agonized and disoriented Foxx staggering to collide with a wall. As she reeled away from it again, the world spinning around her, another SMACK! connected with the right side of her face, and then the left, and the right, and the left, over and over... barely conscious of where she was, barely conscious at all, the world reeled and reeled around her as she stumbled in a nightmarish near-swoon, the dark shapes of men cutting across her vision, the punishing blows coming out of nowhere and everywhere, her body slamming into walls and furniture as she was contemptuously slapped silly like a streetwalking whore who’d come home short of money for her pimp.

When the slaps finally stopped, her brain barely had time to form the questions who? and why? before she was grabbed by the hair again and bent over the back of a wooden chair. Someone behind her kicked her legs apart and landed a hard, painful slap on her snatch, making her pull in a sobbing breath and finally cry out: "AAAAHHAAAAOOWW!" But when she did so, a pair of powerful hands seized her jaw painfully and held her mouth open as a wide plastic object was shoved in and buckled in place. Wha...? her mind wondered in disoriented confusion, then: "Naaaahaaa," she moaned in futile protest as she realized it was a ring gag!

Finally the assault relented for a moment, and her reeling senses had a chance to register her surroundings. Panting in terror as she looked around her with wide eyes, she counted a group of six men, all big men in green military camo gear, sporting black balaclavas, their eyes cold and faces unreadable behind the masks. Obviously not the men who should be here, and no, there were seven; one was right behind her, and he was the one who finally spoke.

"Welcome to your life as a ‘tour guide,’ Pinka, you dumb fucking slut," he rumbled good-naturedly. "We heard a bunch of losers were up here running this racket, so we thought we’d come up and give the girls a taste of what real men could do with it. How do you like it so far?"

"Ngaaaahhhaaaah," she whimpered weakly, feeling drool starting to run down her chin and helpless tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Good answer," said the man in amusement, and Summerset jolted as he casually ran a finger over the soaked crotch of her little hotpants, right along her slit. Her mind whirled in shamed horror as that simple gesture kicked her slutty snatch back into overdrive mode, her juices starting to flow again. Instinctively she twisted in her bonds as he started stroking her fabric covered pussy-mound gently, the uselessness of her struggles only intensifying the liquid heat in her fuckhole as he continued talking affably: "So here’s what our little club is going to do with you, Pinka the tour guide. In a few minutes, we’re going to let you run from this cottage and give you a bit of a head start. There’s a highway not far from here. If you can figure out where it is and get there, we’ll let you go. I’m sure you can suck a few trucker dicks to get a ride back into Island City, and we know you can’t I.D. us."

He was masturbating her clit through the fabric now, making her cheeks burn hot in humiliation as she felt herself grinding erotically back against his hand, delicious sexual sensations pulsing through her abused, pain-wracked body. He said: "We, meanwhile, will be hunting you. And when we catch you, we’e going to treat you like the piece of fuck meat you are and take a tour of your holes with our big dicks. And I do mean big; believe me, we’re all pretty well hung." Summerset moaned in her throat as his crude words pummeled her already reeling consciousness, as her pussy juice started to drip down her thighs and his relentless rubbing of her cunt began to take over her whole world.

He went on: "Any party that catches you will get to use you in every way they can think of until they’re spent. If you’re still conscious after they’re done with you, they have to release you for the next party to take a crack at you. But when you eventually do pass out from coming on one of our dicks, and I think you probably will," she was whining and panting and writhing with the motions of his hand as he said this, sweat was breaking out all over her body, her juices were running freely: "Well then, whoever made you pass out, whoever broke you gets to keep you. Forever. As a permanent fuck-toy slave. Your life as you know it is over, the face of "Pinka Leitmeister" turns up on milk cartons across this fine country, and you get to spend every day sucking and fucking your master’s cock – and any other cock he feels like making you fuck – until he gets tired of you and tosses your dirty little whore ass in a dumpster."

"NAHHHHHHHAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" she screamed in ecstasy and humiliation as his molesting fingers and lurid description of her impending fate took her over the edge, right as he said the word "dumpster." The already saturated fabric at her crotch got a fresh soaking as she squirted messily around it, once, twice, three times, four, then five, her body bucking and her round ass and massive tits jiggling. "NAHAHHAHHAAAAAH-HAAHH!"

"Damn, she really is fuck meat," commented one of the others coarsely, moving up in front of her, a hard-on tenting his pants disturbingly close to her vulnerable, drooling, ring-gagged mouth.

"Yeah, we couldn’t help but notice," the man at her back said to her, "that you walked up here with these little hotpants all soaked with your slut juices, with milk leaking out of those fat fucking tits. Hell, you didn’t think we could see you get down and rub one out right in the lane outside, like a hundred yards away from us? It was when we saw that that we decided to really treat you like the stupid little fuck pig you are." He was still rubbing her sopping twat, and now started running his other hand all over her luscious ass, her skin goosepimpling at the fresh sensation. "Couldn’t even make the walk here without masturbating, huh? You are one bad little bitch, aren’t you?"

"UHHHHHUGHHHHHH!" she moaned deep in her throat; the man at her front had taken hold of her ultra-sensitive tits and started stroking and squeezing them, kneading them into hot, swollen mounds of lust. Sensations from the rough mauling of her tits rocked their way through her body, lancing into her twat and bringing her right back to the brink of orgasm. NononoNONONO not my tits PLEASE not my tits that’s gonna make me CUM so hard, her mind gabbled in ecstatic terror, but it was no use, his gripping and rough mauling of her massive mams wasn’t about to let up.

"You know what happens to bad little bitches, don’t you, Pinka?" said the voice behind her. "They get spanked."

WHACK! An open hand landed a stinging slap on her ripe ass as the hand on her pussy sped up its frigging motions. "NNNAHHHHGAAAWWWWD!" she squealed as the stinging abuse of her ass drove her molested pussy instantly to the boiling point... and then the man in front of her was squeezing and pulling her tits hard, an electric tingle shot through her body, the telltale sign that her tits were being milked, and the spanks were going on and on, making her feel more helpless and humiliated than ever, and she wasn’t able to stop herself from bucking hard, her eyes rolling back in her head...

... oh my GOD, she thought, oh my GOD...

... and she was lost in a wet, screaming, sobbing orgasm, her snatch squirting again and again, her milk dripping around the little triangles of bikini fabric covering her nipples and running off her heaving tit-flesh, drool dripping off her chin, the spanks going on and on, drawing out her sloppy climax in wave after mind-breaking wave: "NNNNAAAHHHAAHHHHAAAHHHH!" The room reeled around her, and for a horrible second she was sure she was going to pass out then and there, condemned to sexual slavery without even leaving the cabin.

But finally, the tidal wave of orgasm receded, leaving her shivering and shuddering and twitching in its wake, weak as a kitten, her whole body tingling.

She realized that the man with the enormous tent in his pants was still in front of her, hesitating, clearly tempted to unzip and sink his cock into her hot, defenseless mouth and throat-fuck her like a dirty whore... he even reached for his zipper... but finally he stepped away, saying: "Fuck. Better save it for the hunt."

With that, she was grabbed harshly by the hair again and hauled bodily to the door of the cabin. "Okay, bitch, that’s enough lollygagging," said a voice at her ear. "Time to start running. You have five minutes before we come for you."

"Aghhhh," Summerset moaned around her ring gag as a boot planted on her ass and shoved her out the door, staggering and collapsing in a heap in the yard beyond, unable to put her bound hands out to cushion her fall. Her head swam as she made a panicked attempt to get her legs under her, her body enervated by the beating and the intense forced orgasms it had endured.

Only five minutes, she thought in desperation, I’ve got to get away from here! But I’m so weak... so weak...

* * * * *

The lights had come up on the stage now, the anticipation of the crowd thick in the air as two of Doctor Shibari’s Maidens of the Rope sauntered sexily into view, a pair of strikingly beautiful, fair-skinned Chinese women with unusually big tits bound into their barely-there rope bikinis, waving to the crowd with sunny smiles. The villain himself had been "levitated" back into the air and was now hovering high over the Rope Monster’s pit.

On the screen behind the stage, a flurry of activity had broken out in the chamber containing the captured Kitt "superheroines." More Rope Maidens had appeared on the feed, crowding into the room, and these ones were different from the Asian hotties working the club; they all looked very young, as young as the prisoners, and Caliente guessed they belonged directly to the Syndicate. They were apparently throwing a little impromptu party in the holding cell, laughing and joking with each other as they fondled and stroked the bound, desperately writhing bodies of the captives, all of whose eyes were wide in horror and complete disorientation as they felt playful hands smacking their asses, rude fingers fondling and probing their tight young snatches and vulnerable assholes.

"MY FRIENDS!" came Doctor Shibari’s booming voice. "I HOPE YOU ARE ALL PREPARED TO HELP ME IN BREAKING THE WILL OF THESE FOOLISH, INTERFERING SUPERHEROINES! PLEASE ORDER A "MASKED SPECIAL" FROM YOUR WAITRESS IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VOLUNTEER!" There was a general hurrah from the crowd and more frantic gesturing at the waitresses, and two of the "Rope Maidens" in the holding chamber on the screen could be seen hauling one of their captives roughly to her feet, dragging the staggering girl out of frame between them. "AND NOW... ARE WE READY TO BEGIN?" Another cheer rang out without hesitation. "PLEASE WELCOME THE FIRST CONTESTANT IN OUR ‘FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM’ TOURNAMENT, A DOCTOR SHIBARI’S PALACE EXCLUSIVE... IT’S MISS ADVENTURE!"

There were scattered shouts of appreciative recognition at the name, apparently there were some comics buffs in the audience... and then Caliente’s breath caught as a slender girl stumbled out into view, coming out from under the mammoth screen, off-balance as though she’d just been shoved. The sweet-faced, taut-bodied young hottie was unbound now and ungagged... just so, rubbing at her arms and sore jaw, her chin still wet and dripping with her own drool that had formed a wet stream between her tits, and a camera somewhere in the club was now replacing the image of her cell full of defeated fellow Kitts with a giant image of her confused, glazed-eyed, terrified face.

The petite "Miss Adventure" had lustrous black hair styled in a fetching Bettie Page and was wearing a white micro-mini pleated skirt, so brief it was in danger of rendering her red belt redundant. A tiny white halter top, its plunging neckline bordered in red, covered her full C-cup breasts as her nipples poked stiffly out against the fabric. Red was the theme of the rest of her costume: the domino mask, the opera gloves, the leg-warmers and eight-inch stiletto heels – she was clearly awkward in them, lurching precariously – and the thong panties under her skirt, adorned at the crotch with a stylized white letter "A" that was visible with every step she took. The fabric of her panties was clearly dark, soaked with the juices that glistened visibly on her inner thighs; her pussy had been stroked and fingered by the backstage Rope Maidens before they’d untied her and thrust her into the spotlight.

She was looking wildly around, her senses overwhelmed by the cheers of the crowd, dazzled and blinded by the glaring footlights, probably still with no idea of where she was, how she had gotten there, what was happening or why, tears of confusion welling up under her mask as she could be seen to mouth a name: "B- Bailey...?"

She jumped in terror as a deep voice, like the voice of doom, thundered around her: "MISS ADVENTURE, O LADY OF THE LOST, SO-CALLED DAME OF THE DOWNTRODDEN AND PROTECTOR OF PHOENIX CITY! YOU HAVE TRESPASSED IN THE SACRED PRECINCTS OF THE CITY OF XANADU, IN THE PALACE OF THE GREAT DOCTOR SHIBARI! YOU MUST NOW PROVE YOUR WORTHINESS AS A HEROINE... OR FOREVER BECOME MY SLAVE!" A wave of cheers thundered through the dark and assailed her ears as she desperately squinted into the glaring lights, seeking the source of the terrible pronouncement. "BEHOLD, SUPPOSEDLY MIGHTY HEROINE, MY MAIDENS OF THE ROPE! DEFEAT THEM, AND YOU MAY YET GO FREE! BE DEFEATED, AND YOU WILL SPEND ETERNITY IN THE COILS OF THE INFINITE KNOT!"

Miss Adventure looked wildly on either side of her at the gorgeous, big-titted, barely-clad Chinese beauties closing in on her, neither of them especially tall but both with at least half a foot on her own slender little frame. Both of them had dropped into fighting stances that had the look of real martial arts training, not just showmanship... and not easy to pull off in those platform heels, either, mused Caliente clinically, steeling himself for what was coming. The "superheroine" gaped uncomprehendingly, her befuddled brain still hadn’t wrapped itself around her situation, and she was raising her hands tentatively above her head as though she were being held up at a bank...

And then the Maidens of the Rope went at her like hellcats.

The Maiden on Miss Adventure’s left let out a blood-curdling yell and swept the hapless girl’s legs out from under her with a perfectly aimed kick, the skimpily-costumed teen landing on her back with an audible "Ugh!" as the fall drove the wind out of her. Then: "Ahhhhhhhhh!" – she found the second Maiden grabbing her hair and yanking her painfully back up, and her body convulsed in pain as the woman landed a vicious punch to her ribs and dealt her a back-handed SLAP! across the face, sending her reeling back into the arms of the first attacker... who grabbed the girl in a full Nelson, lifted her up and and then brought her tender young pussy slamming down on one knee in a brutal Atomic Drop.

"Uhhhhuuuughhhhhhh," moaned the girl loudly as her body sought to fold up in misery around the agonizing pain in her snatch, but the Maiden behind her yanked her back into a ramrod straight position as her partner stepped forward, grabbed Miss Adventure’s tiny top, and ripped it away with a single vicious yank, the teen’s luscious tits bouncing free for the edification of the cheering crowd. Terrified humiliation was visible for a moment in the teen dream’s bleary eyes before the woman at her back twisted her arms into a vicious double hammerlock that forced her to thrust out her heaving tits, and: "Ahhhhh! Ahhhowww! Owwww! Aghhhh!" The Maiden in front of her was slapping her tits with punishing force, winding up and leaning her body into each blow, the girl writhing desperately with her whole body but with no hope of escape as the wicked abuse sent her head swimming... and unaccountably, juices of arousal were visibly flowing down her thighs as her young body suffered the price of hesitation.

Finally, as Miss Adventure’s jiggling tits had grown an angry red from the beating and her eyes were rolling back in her head in a near-swoon, the Maiden behind her released the hammerlock, grabbed her by the hair and threw her with obvious contempt face down on the stage. The SkyHigh vibrated, the crowd going wild as the second Maiden stripped the heroine’s belt and micro-mini from her, tossing them aside and leaving her shuddering foe clad in the tiny, sopping wet thong that just barely covered her pulsating, agonized teen twat.

"THE LOVELY MISS ADVENTURE DISAPPOINTS ME," came the voice of Doctor Shibari. "I EXPECTED MORE FIGHT FROM HER. IT ISN’T OVER QUITE YET, BUT HERE, MY MAIDENS... I THINK YOU HAD BETTER START WRITING SOME INSTRUCTIONS ON HER FLESH FOR OUR VOLUNTEERS, JUST IN CASE."

Miss Adventure’s body went rigid as another thunderous cheer broke over her and she hauled up her head... freezing, her eyes registering nightmare-grade shock as she watched mysterious tendrils of white rope snake onto stage from beyond the footlights, each tentacle holding a small silver tube that it presented politely to her attackers. As the tentacles retreated back out of view, the teen heroine shook her head as if to dispel an apparition and visibly made an attempt to recover herself, to get her legs under her...

But it was too late, she was too overwhelmed and too disoriented to fight back. The Maidens were on her again, grabbing her hair and yanking the hapless girl back to her feet as her hands fluttered ineffectually. The Maiden in front of her grabbed one of her legs and hauled it straight up in the air next to her torso – lucky for Miss Adventure that she was flexible – her partner behind the teen heroine yanking the red thong to one side and without warning driving four of her fingers brutally into the tight, juicy young snatch. "AHHHHHAHHHHHHH! AWWWW AWWWWW AWWWW AWWWW!" the heroine wailed, waves of hot, lustful sensation pulsing out from her twat, her juices slopping and squirting around the merciless, rapidly plunging fingers as the Maiden in front of her used her teeth to pull the lid off the silver tube she was carrying – it was red lipstick! The girl’s face twisted in fear and misery and humiliated incomprehension and her body wriggled helplessly as a super-wet, soul-searing orgasm was forcibly ripped from her defenseless snatch while the word SLUT was scrawled in red across her heaving, naked tits.

Caliente noticed that the image on the mighty screen had changed, that it was again showing a view of the cell where the other "superheroines" still lay trapped and bound. There was obviously a monitor in that room; they could all be seen watching it with wide fearful eyes, presumably being shown Miss Adventure’s humiliating defeat as the Rope Maidens in their cell tortured their sopping twats with playful fingers and teasing tongues. The two Maidens mauling Miss Adventure, meanwhile, hauled the defeated teen dream into one humiliating posture after another, scrawling COCK SOCKET above her pussy, WHORE down one leg, BITCH down the other, all while Doctor Shibari’s maniacal cackles echoed in her ears, mingling with the cheers and jeers of the crowed as her tormentors forced spurting climaxes out of her pussy one after the other, each orgasm fracturing her already damaged mind and will into smaller and smaller pieces.

Finally the heroine’s thong was stripped from her entirely and the Maidens decided to use her flexibility against her. Pushing her onto her back, one of them restrained her arms as the other folded her body painfully, bringing her haunches over and over as the girl moaned helplessly...

... until finally Miss Adventure’s own hot, dripping pussy was directly over her pretty face!

She resisted for a moment, holding her mouth closed until the woman restraining her arms instructed her crudely, "Bitch, you suck pussy or you get spanked!" Letting out a little moan of humiliation, the masked girl stuck out her pink tongue and tentatively lapped at her own glistening snatch, gasping "Ahhhh!" at the sensation before her sweet honey-pit was shoved forcefully into her hot mouth.

"MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmHMMMMMMmmmmmmmphhhh!" moaned the shuddering young slut through her own cuntflesh as her sucking mouth and lapping tongue sent her own sweet juices spurting down her throat, her climaxes starting to come rapid-fire as her tormentor shoved two fingers rudely into her tight, inexperienced asshole and, with a wicked smile, wrote FUCK HOLE across Miss Adventure’s ass-cheeks, drawing little arrows pointing to the orifice she was busily violating. The sight of the words and the awful fact of her own humiliating act of forced auto-cunnilingus sent the teen heroine over the edge more wetly and messily than before, the girl moaning in abandon as she swallowed hard, drinking down her own juices as they squirted all over her face: "MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMHHHMMMMMMMMMMPHHHHHHH!"

The Club had lapsed from raucous cheering into more of a mood of lascivious contemplation – nobody, including Caliente himself, could be unaffected by the sight of the gorgeous little Miss Adventure being forced to collaborate so intimately in her own ruination. If the scene was horrifying, it was also profoundly arousing, and he was sure he wasn’t the only one in the room with blood pounding in his ears and in his cock. There was no point in hiding it.

After she’d been forced to bring herself to five more orgasms, each one more intense than the last, her copious girl-cum splashed and slathered and dripping all over her face and into her eyes and matting her no-longer immaculate hair while more and more fingers stuffed her ass, the Rope Maidens finally released their spent, shivering victim. The voice of Doctor Shibari proclaimed:"DEFEAT, MISS ADVENTURE! THIS IS THE END! YOU ARE NO LONGER CHAMPION OF PHOENIX CITY... FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, YOU ARE MY SLAVE! LET THE TRAINING BEGIN!" And Miss Adventure squealed brokenly as thick tentacles of rope appeared from nowhere to bind her ankles and haul her up in the air, suspending her upside down with her legs spread wide, her mouth just at crotch-level as a dozen naked men with big, tumescent cocks – the "volunteers" who’d paid handsomely to help break her – came walking onto the stage.

As the men started in on their prey, Caliente heard a sultry voice at his shoulder: "Did one of you fine gentlemen order a Vixxen Pie?"

Her turned to see the big-titted White Vixxen standing over him, wisps of her blonde hair sticking out from underneath her cowl, her eyes shining with lust, a naughty smile quirking her lips. He heard his table-mates let out low laughs as he swallowed in trepidation; it was, luckily, completely in character for Frankie Spicoli to do just that. Tentatively, he raised his hand.

* * * * *

Summerset didn’t know how long it took to finally get her wind back, get her shaking legs underneath her and start a desperate stagger into the woods... only that it was too long, her "head start" almost wasted.

There was no help for it. The problem wasn’t just the pain and weakness in her bruised body; it was the vivid, unlooked-for memories of her humiliating orgasmic submission in the cabin shafting into her dripping, pulsating snatch at regular intervals, multiplying the wanton sexual heat that had already claimed her twice on the walk to the cabin and was now a dozen times more debilitating, augmented even further by her bound arms, her rudely ring-gagged mouth dripping a river of drool down her heaving tits.

Her head swam as she blundered through the trees, looking around wild-eyed, trying to will herself to focus on finding a route to the highway that would keep her hidden from her pursuers... but focus eluded her, her mind swarmed with distractions. A sudden memory of a hand brutally spanking her ass jolted through her body, so vividly that it felt as if her sweet ass-flesh were being struck right now, and her pussy spurted as the feeling drove her into a miniature orgasm that set the world spinning, the Number One Foxx moaning low in despair as she fought a losing battle to regain control.

The knowledge that none of this was real, that the men chasing her could not actually trap her in sexual slavery for the rest of her life, might have been some comfort. It might have given her a means of surmounting the sexual hell that was quickly swamping her... except for the cold, horrible realization that had clicked into place as she’d struggled out of the cottage’s front yard.

No, it’s not real, the remains of her fraying reason had told her. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie. You’ve been set up, Summerset O’Neale! You and all the Foxxes!

She felt shamed by her body’s response to being bound, humiliated, defeated... but she’d been bound before, had spent days on end in shackles as a prisoner of the Russian mob, back before she’d become Summerset O’Neale. She’d never responded to it like this. Something else had to have changed.

What if there was nothing wrong with her intuition? What if all the signals, all her instincts had been right, and the apparent surface facts were fabrications, a brilliant deception on a massive scale? What if Max and Operation Freedom had been outmaneuvered and outwitted? And what if "Dr. Nielson" was actually an enemy agent, sent specifically to break and remold the mind and will of every member of the Foxx Force Five, his so-called therapeutic "Machine" really an instrument of fiendish psychosexual torture?

The awful insight felt right. It fit the facts in a way that had eluded all the strained rationalizations she’d been trying to comfort herself with. But it provided no solace, none at all.

Because it meant that all her friends, the Foxxes, were already broken, hollow shells of themselves, that she was the last intact one left. It meant that incredibly, Max had somehow been hoodwinked, had failed to protect them, failed to see the danger. It meant that something horrible had happened, and was happening, to the vulnerable young Kitts... and that it had surely been happening for weeks, under all their noses. It meant there was some kind of poison in her system, rendering her extra-vulnerable to usually submerged, taboo urges. And it meant that in real life, her naked body was bound into a chair with steel restraints, electrodes placed the better to manipulate her consciousness and the sensations in her flesh, at the mercy of a sadistic, perverted criminal who wanted nothing more than to smash her mind into a million pieces, crush her will and torment her into utter submission and madness at the deepest level of her being... and someone like that could trap her into a life of sexual slavery. He could trap them all.

And it was almost certainly too late to stop him.

She knew instinctively that the danger here, for all the artifice of the setting, was very real. There was a reason he was focussed on making her pass out from orgasm; at a guess, it would represent her passing into a state of suggestibility more profound even than her current one, in which she’d be most receptive to deep conditioning, in which it would be easiest to consummate her defeat and wield the ultimate power over her.

Knowing that all this was happening didn’t stop the riotous effects coursing through her body, unfortunately. It only augmented the sheer misery accompanying them... and the misery itself stoked the heat even further. The greedy, aching response in her twat to the knowledge of her helplessness and onrushing defeat may have been artificial, but that didn’t blunt its power one iota. An image of the so-called "Dr. Nielson" leering over her naked, restrained, unconscious form in the Foxxes’ Den shafted into her abruptly... mingling with the cold, crude remembered words of the man in the cabin ("until he gets tired of you and tosses your dirty little whore ass in a dumpster")... and the combination abruptly took her right over the edge, her wet fuckhole spasming as she collapsed to her knees, mewling loudly in despair: "NgggggAHHHHHAhahhhhAHHHHHH!" The hot, lust-filled core of her being squirted and convulsed and squirted again, again, again, conscious thought fleeing as the orgasm claimed her.

Some time later, as she began to come back to herself, the world spun around her, her legs buckling as she tried to get back up, then buckling again. On the third try she finally managed to stand, and as she staggered and blundered forward, she realized: He can manipulate how my recall is working, build on that effect I was experiencing in the real world! He can focus me in on erotic thoughts and sensations, trap me in an orgasmic feedback loop! That’s why my body won’t recover, why I can’t think clearly! That, too, fit; and if he could manipulate something like that, he could manipulate other things too... like the geography of memory, like where things "were" in this simulation.

Another, even worse realization: He will never, ever let me out of these woods. There is no highway here. No hope of escape. And even if there had been, it would only have been "escape" into real-life bondage.

For a long moment, utter despair claimed her, stopping her in her tracks. But she was still, despite everything, Summerset O’Neale, and in that instant of stillness, a last, desperate gambit took shape in her mind. Yes, yes, that could work, she thought as the idea took shape, a kind of curdled half-hope rising within her. If I can only stay on the run long enough, keep him and his figments from breaking me for long enough to find the right—

"I definitely think we get first crack," came a sudden, coarse voice from a few yards behind her. "I heard the bitch squealing over here!"

Terror jolted through her as she desperately started to flounder away from the rough voice, No no no I’m not ready I’M NOT READY... and then she froze as a huge man in a balaclava stepped out of the trees in front of her, blocking her path.

"Well, hello sweetie," he said evilly. "Mind if I buy you dinner?"

Moaning in horror, she spun away from him—

--and walked straight into a vicious backhanded SMACK! that snapped her head back and laid her out flat on the ground, groaning in pain and confusion.

"No dinner, then," said the second man laughingly. "Guess we’ll skip straight to the Pinka Leitmeister Dessert Skewer!"

As her eyes slowly started to refocus, she felt her bikini top and her little hotpants torn away from her body, the saturated garments flung away into the bushes as two pairs of hands ripped at the fishnet body stocking beneath, tearing it away around her crotch and her massive tits before her attackers bruisingly sank their fingers into her flesh and flipped her over, yanking her up so that her mouth was presented to one of them and the rearward view of her sopping cunt greeted the second. The bound Foxx went rigid as she heard the sound of a zipper behind her... and then a massive cock slammed into her, balls deep!

"AAAAAHHHHAHHHHH! NNNNAAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAA!" she wailed as the man lost no time bucking his cock into her in a vicious frenzy, his hands reaching around her body to take a brutal grip on her ultra-sensitive tits, holding onto them for dear life as he skewered into her. "NNNGAAAHHHAHHHHHHH! AAAAHHHHAHHHHHH-HAAAA!"

For all Summerset’s foxiness, she’d never been the most sexually experienced of the Foxxes – had been able to hold her own in flirting but had only ever had a couple of below-average fumblings with clueless young boyfriends before she’d taken up her crusade against crime... and since then her only real romance had been with the disembodied voice of Max Fawkes (and the odd session of sweet, gentle play with Satin Rayne). Nothing in her experience could prepare her for this brutal, animalistic stretching of her super-tight, explosively wet fuckhole, the big hanging balls slapping rapidly and ruinously against her stiff little clit, the thunderbolts of agonized ecstasy ripping through her body and mind as her heaving tits were mauled and squeezed and quickly, copiously started to spurt their sweet milk in time with the pounding thrusts of her rapist. And from the first few of those thrusts she was cumming, cumming, cumming, her juices squirting as multiply-orgasmic bliss seized hold of her, wrecked her with unrelenting spasm after spasm. "AAAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA! NNNNNGGGAHHHAHH-HHAAAAHAAAAAAA!!"

"Goddamn this little bitch is fucking juicy!" panted her pussy-plunderer. "Look at her fucking milk shoot out! Every time that milk spurts out, her pussy’s choking my cock! Fuck that’s fucking tight! She’s fucking cumming all over it, the little fucking slut!"

"You like my buddy’s cock, huh, whore?" said the man in front of her, unzipping. "Then you’re gonna love this!"

If she’d been woefully unprepared for the violating invasion of her snatch, the enormous slab of salty man-meat that shoved through the big ring-gag and into her wet mouth was even worse. She’d never had much practice at giving head, let alone deep-throating a dick, and as the ten-inch cock slid over her tongue and into her throat her gag reflex was kicking in, convulsing her body with nausea even as she kept on cumming all over the cock in her cunt. "CCCKKKKHHHHHHHHHH!" came the wet, miserable gagging and retching around the brute’s meat as he mercilessly throat-fucked her. "AAGGHHHHHHCCCKKKHHHHHHH!"

"Guess she doesn’t love it after all!" said the throatfucker’s partner in violation, laughing.

"Well, who gives a fuck," replied his buddy, and as she tried to pull her head away from the brutal throat-fucking he grabbed her hair to hold her in place... then reached down and pinched her nose shut with his other hand, cutting off her air supply!

Oh my God NONONOOONOOOO! her mind wailed helplessly as stars burst in front of her eyes, her soul-wracking orgasms growing even more intense and mixing confusingly with the nauseous misery emanating from the gagging, degrading abuse of her drooling mouth-hole while her head spun and tears ran down her face and the world around her started to dim. They’re gonna break me OH GOD they’re gonna break me I can’t take it I can’t take it...

"AWWWWWWWFUUUUCK TAKE MY CUM, BITCH!" With a rasping yell, the man behind her was flooding her pussy with wad after wad of hot spunk, firing it deep into her clutching wet depths, driving her to an earth-shattering orgasm that seemed to go on and on, and she could feel her mind losing its grip on consciousness, starting to float away, and for a weirdly detached moment she was thinking: Well, I guess it’s not so bad to be broken...

... and then a massive, seaweedy flood of jism spurted into her mouth and slid down her throat into her churning stomach, her face-rapist yelling in triumph, and he thrust his cock even deeper into her throat, a triumphant "YEEEEAAHHHHHHH!" growling out of him while he did it.

But it was too deep.

With another gagging retch, her stomach finally rebelled – her body convulsing as she violently vomited back up the spunk he’d just shot into her, along with the remains of the smoothie she’d had for lunch. As he felt the hot vomit pour over his dick, he recoiled in shock, "Fuck what the fuck!" leaping back and letting go of her nose and, incidentally, just barely sparing her from passing out. The messy cocktail of fruit juice, bile and spunk slithered down her chest and belly as she took a gasping, sobbing breath and convulsed again, feebly retching more fluid into the grass.

The rapist behind her mercifully released her tits and pulled out of her as he exploded in uproarious laughter. "Goddamn man she just blew chunks all over your dick! That’s some funny shit, man!"

But as Summerset caught her breath, she knew his fellow-"figment" wouldn’t be amused. As she looked up at the masked man fearfully, his hard stare bored into her as he gripped her chin and said: "You’re gonna pay for that, little Pinka. Oh yes you are, slut. There’s plenty more of my spunk where that came from... and now it’s all going in your ass."

Just hold on, Summer, she told herself even as she heard a weak, terrified whimper escape her throat. Just hold on... hold on... you’ve got to hold on...

* * * * *

Frankie Spicoli’s face was locked in a look of glassy, callow ecstasy, as though all his dreams were coming true, the fatuous expression hiding the turmoil in Caliente’s mind as the young White Vixxen moaned and hornily sucked and licked and deep-throated his throbbing cock under the table, her spit running sloppily down his shaft as she moved down to lap and suck at his balls. She’d already milked and swallowed a load of his spunk, but had simply kept bobbing her head without stopping as she drank it down, keeping his cock hard as she went questing for more jism to drink. Her eagerness, her need, was astonishing, almost frightening.

Gustavo Caliente was truly coming to understand how nightmarish... and alluring... the Syndicate’s world could be.

As the naked, spunk-soiled, thoroughly fucked and abused Miss Adventure was hauled down from the stage to join the Vixxen Vanguard in servicing the crowd, the scene at some of the dining tables was getting crazy. Most striking was a table full of stockbrokers that had waylaid the Red Vixxen not far from Caliente; she was a petite girl who moaned fetchingly as they’d ripped down her g-string and bent her down so they could mount her wriggling ass one by one, fucking it hard with long, deep strokes as the girl squealed and squealed, "UUGGGHHHH! UUUGHHHH!" and her pussy squirted and squirted, the young men spitting on her, spanking her, slapping her face, dumping drinks over her and calling her "nothing but a dirty fuckhole" as the anal gang-ravaging went on and on. A couple of the hot Asian Rope Maiden waitresses had stopped to watch, amused, and taken it upon themselves to discreetly fluff the Vixxen’s waiting paramours with their hands or mouths, the better to keep the savage train going.

The second "superheroine contestant" would be hitting the stage any moment, and up on the screen the teenaged Rope Maidens in the holding cell could be clearly seen stacking the odds further and further against the bound, helpless girls at their mercy. No longer content to tease and finger their prey, they’d since produced a large bucket of vibrators that they were passing around to each other, pumping the toys into the captured Kitts’ vulnerable holes, ensuring that when it was their turn on that stage they’d be weakened, their strength and confidence sapped by the forced, multiple orgasms they’d endured as they’d been compelled to watch their predecessors get beaten and fucked and humiliated and finally whored out to the increasingly horny crowd.

He’d thought the Syndicate was devoted to gratuitous sexual cruelty. I didn’t know the half of it, he realized.

As the party started degenerating, Doctor Shibari was plainly editing down his humorous theatrics so as not to provide any distractions. He still hovered over the Rope Monster’s pit, furnishing the occasional mad cackle, but as the next heroine victim staggered onstage from under the screen, his announcement was much briefer: "MY FRIENDS, PLEASE WELCOME OUR NEXT CONTESTANT: MIDNIGHT COWGIRL OF EMERALD CITY, THE BUFFALO SOLDIERETTE, FASTEST FIST IN THE WEST! DEFEAT MY MAIDENS OF THE ROPE AND GO FREE, COWGIRL, OR BE DEFEATED AND SPEND YOUR LIFE AS THE SEXUAL CATTLE OF DOCTOR SHIBARI!" A cheer went up; a sizable portion of the crowd, no doubt including many of the comics enthusiasts, was still watching the show.

"Midnight Cowgirl" was dressed in knee-high buckskin boots with eight-inch heels, a buckskin micro-mini skirt – another one so tiny it was basically a belt – a tiny buckskin halter top and arm warmers, a saucy little black plastic gun belt sporting clearly useless ornamental pistols, black lacy panties, garters and stockings and a black domino mask and cowgirl hat. She was an Afrocentric cutie with smooth, lustrous mahogany skin and an hourglass figure, her delectably ripe, full tits pressed up into an inviting cleavage underneath her top, the wiry curls under her hat dyed a bright yellow, and she looked stronger and more athletic than Miss Adventure had.

But she was clearly already in trouble, her eyes glazed over and her body faintly shuddering as though she were just in the wake of a powerful orgasm, her copious juices glistening on her thighs, her legs tottering weakly in the punishing heels that had been inflicted on her. Two new Rope Maidens had been selected to face her, these ones cute little Thai girls each at least a foot shorter than her, but as she made a weak, wobbling attempt at a fighting stance the mismatch was still plain. One girl danced up to her in a Muay Thai stance before stopping, smirking, then laughing in her hesitant opponent’s face and simply kicking her between the legs, the heroine moaning helplessly and folding to the ground as the next humiliating rout began.

Caliente’s Vixxen was taking her mouth off his cock and sliding her way sinuously up his body, her back to him as she arched back, laying her head on his shoulder while she pulled the gusset of her fur bikini aside and planted her tight, wet twat on his cock, her breath coming in little gasps as she started to pump herself up and down, her pussy muscles clinging, her juices running down his shaft. The sensation was undeniably incredible; he gritted his teeth and tried to concentrate hard on restraining his orgasm.

One of the Maidens landed another punishing kick to the Cowgirl’s crotch, the Western heroine writhing pitifully on her belly as the White Vixxen asked him, high and breathy and girly as she fucked herself on his throbbing tool: "Do you like watching young girls get turned into dirty little sluts, mister?"

He was almost absent-mindedly running his hands across her silky flesh, bringing them up to push her bikini top aside and fondle and stroke her big, sexy, bouncing tits. "How about you?" he answered with a question in Frankie Spicoli’s accent. Midnight Cowgirl had struggled to her knees, but one of the Rope Maidens had come over and put a foot on her neck, forcing her down with her ass high in the air and her shapely legs parted, ready to be assaulted.

"Oh yes," she breathed. "Dirty little whores should never deny their nature. We should all be fucked and spanked and whipped and made to obey every day of our lives. We should all have a Mistress to tell us what to do, to punish us, to remind us of our place. That way we can be good little whores and bring pleasure to the world, and everyone will like us." Her pussy got wetter with every word of this clearly rote recitation, every bounce and grind on his hard cock. "Punish her," she chanted under her breath as she watched the Cowgirl’s sexy ass writhe as she got spanked on stage. "Punish her, punish her, punish her... ohhhh, I love your cock, mister... I love cock... I can feel your balls slapping my clit, mister... uuuughhhhh... you’re so hard..."

He was closing his eyes shamefully to savour the wonderful wet sensations of her tight teenaged cunt, giddy and guilty with the awareness that he was fucking an abused, broken, crazed and drugged Kitt... and then a sudden exclamation from the crowd and a little "Ooh!" from his fuck partner brought his attention back to the stage.

There were surprising developments as the Midnight Cowgirl, clearly experiencing a burst of adrenaline, desperately reached up and grabbed the shoe on her neck, lifting and pushing her assailant back and off her, sending the Thai girl stumbling to the ground as the heroine successfully scuttled away from the Maiden spanking her ass. Angrily, the second Maiden followed her with the clear intention of kicking her back into her place... but overconfidently, with her guard down, and the Cowgirl took the opportunity to land a sharp stiletto-heeled kick to her midsection. This time it was the Maiden of the Rope who folded and dropped! (The White Vixxen clearly wasn’t particular about who she cheered for, her pussy gushing and clutching as she moaned at this development: "Yes, Janie," that must be the Cowgirl’s real name, "Punish them, punish them, punish those dirty bitches...")

As the Cowgirl tottered to her feet, the other Maiden had recovered and came stalking in to meet her, now assuming a proper fighting stance, moving with improbable agility in her platform heels, feinting with lightning movements of one foot, then the other, slowly maneuvering the heroine back, the Cowgirl still looking clumsy and off-balance by comparison... and then she pounced in for the kill, aiming a high kick straight for the Cowgirl’s face...

... but her target wasn’t there! The Cowgirl had dropped frantically to one knee and flailed out a counterpunch, driving her knuckles painfully into her assailant’s twat! Her eyes were almost as wide with shock as the Maiden’s, as though she’d just finally pulled off a move that had always stumped her in practice... but this time, she didn’t hesitate. Unlike the Maidens, the desperate captive Kitt didn’t have the luxury of toying with and tormenting her prey, and as her opponent doubled over the howling agony in her cunt, the teen heroine made good on her luck and landed a right cross flush on her jaw, knocking her down!

"Whoo! Go Janie! Yes yes punish her!" cheered the White Vixxen breathlessly as she ground her pussy down around the base of Caliente’s hard man-meat. The crowd had gone a little quiet at the Kitt’s unexpected success, though there were scattered cheers here and there for her good fortune.

"A WORTHY OPPONENT!" boomed Shibari. "MOST WORTHY INDEED, O FASTEST FIST IN THE WEST! YOU HAVE MY LOVELY MAIDENS ON THE ROPES! NOW FINISH THEM, AND YOU WILL BE FREE!"

The Maiden she’d kicked, still clearly winded, was climbing unsteadily to her feet and moving forward, now wary of her opponent. Rubbing at her jaw and shaking the cobwebs out of her head, the girl who’d taken the right cross limped back to her feet and began to circle back around the Cowgirl on her right side. The three nubile, scantily-clad combatants jockeyed warily for the best positioning, the heroine clearly drawing much-needed confidence from her early successes and looking much steadier even in the debilitating heels she wore. Admittedly enjoying the view of the Midnight Cowgirl’s taut, mouth-watering ass as his horny Vixxen’s snatch pulsed hotter and suddenly wetter around his dick, Caliente suddenly realized that the Rope Maidens had deliberately maneuvered their opponent...

... with her back to the Rope Monster’s pit.

Suddenly, one of the Rope Maidens seemed to lose her footing, her guard dropping. The Cowgirl was darting forward to take advantage of the opening when, lightning-fast, two thick rope tendrils flashed out of the pit, wrapped around her ankles, and yanked, sending the hapless heroine face first into the stage before she could even put out her arms to brace her impact! The loud smack! she made as she hit drew general winces around the room, even from hardened hitmen like Sonny and Fingers... but also a round of loud cheers, and the White Vixxen’s breath was catching as she suddenly went over the edge, her pussy starting to spurt wetly around Caliente’s cock as its satiny walls milked his shaft, her eyes rolling back in her head as she cooed madly: "See Janie so much better to be a slut Janie it feels so gooood Janie uugghhhhh soooo gooood..."

Caliente grimaced, keeping his goofy Frankie-Spicoli-gets-unexpectedly-laid face intact but otherwise losing himself in the sensation as his balls tightened up and blasted the Vixxen’s snatch with hot spunk. "AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh," she moaned appreciatively into his ear as the spurting cum brought her back up to another hot, wet climax of her own. "Yeeahhhhh I’m such a fucking slut for your cock mister... ahhhhh you’re making me your little bitch, mister... you like fucking your little bitch, mister?" The dirty talk and powerfully clutching, squirting cunt conspired to milk his cock longer and harder than he’d ever felt before, the pleasure in his throbbing tool mind-bendingly intense as it went on painting her insides with jism for what seemed like a delicious eternity.

Finally both their orgasms were spent and she slid back down off his cock to kneel between his legs and clean him with her tongue. Caliente found Sonny and Fingers giving him surprised, impressed looks, and despite the intense post-coital high suffusing his body, he had the presence of mind to give a Frankie Spicoli faux-tough shrug and say: "What? I told you guys about that weekend I spent in Peru, right?" The two mobsters chuckled ruefully and shook their heads, Sonny saying "Fuckin’ guy, I’ll be damned," as they turned back to watch the show.

The Cowgirl, almost knocked out by her hard fall, was now easy prey for the Maidens as they worked her over. One of them had pulled the crotch of her rope bikini bottoms aside and was squatting with her pussy on the heroine’s face to keep her pinned and quiet as she was forced to lick the sweet cuntflesh; the other held her ass up, her splayed legs jerking ineffectually like a puppet’s as she was spanked with vicious, ass-jiggling force, the slaps ringing out loudly and seeming to go on forever. Her face-rider had taken the black hat and had it perched saucily on her head, and she’d somehow produced, or been given, a large Buck knife whose sharp blade she was playfully tracing all over her victim’s vulnerable, goose-pimpling skin with the lightest of touches, pausing here and there to cut off articles of clothing: the panties first and then the mini-skirt, revealing a brightly glistening, aroused snatch growing wetter with every stinging, punishing smack on her ass; then the top, letting the full heaving tits spring free with their rock-hard nipples.

Taking advantage of that splayed, naked, vulnerable cunt, the Cowgirl’s spanker broke off her attack in order to maneuver her rope-covered quim over the teen heroine’s, and then she sinuously, mercilessly began to grind against her. The forced stimulation of the rough rope against her sopping, superheated snatch and sensitive clit broke down the helpless captive’s resistance with brutal efficiency. "MMMMMM-HHHHMMMMMPHHHHHHHH!" she let out a shrill and desperate squeal around a mouthful of dripping pussy, knowing that delicious doom was at hand, that it was here, breaking over her young body in wave after devastating wave of sensation as the heat in her squack boiled over and she climaxed, squirting messily and jerking and moaning and crying out in stifled despair as the pleasure convulsed her over and over again: "NNNNNNNNHHHNNNNNNNNNNNN! NNNNNNNNHHHNNNNNNHNNNNN! NNNNHHHHNNNHHHNNNHHNN!"

"DEFEAT, MIDNIGHT COWGIRL!" announced Doctor Shibari to ecstatic cheering. "YOU FOUGHT VALIANTLY, BUT FOR NOTHING, AND IT IS NOW YOUR FATE TO BE THE FILTHIEST FUCK IN THE WEST! WILL OUR VOLUNTEERS PLEASE COME FORWARD AND INITIATE MY LATEST SLAVE INTO HER NEW LIFE!"

The Rope Maidens made way as lightning-fast, the Rope Monster’s tendrils took hold of the Midnight Cowgirl’s shuddering form and lifted her up into the air, binding her ankles-to-wrists and lewdly splaying open her fuckholes for the turgid-cocked groups of men coming on to the stage, at least a dozen on each side. And as the first pair stepped up to drive their poles into the defeated teen heroine's pussy and ass, the girl squealing brokenly as she quickly began to climax from the crude force-fucking, he realized his own cock was hard and throbbing again in the White Vixxen’s mouth, that she was eagerly deep-throating his pole, and that his sap was rising again. Hastily, he pulled her up and planted her on his cock again, this time facing him, her wild blue eyes glazed with bright lust and broken madness as she automatically started to slam herself down and down and down on his fuck-stick, her wet hole squelching and spurting.

"See? See mister? See?" she panted, leaning in close and whispering throatily into his ear as her fucking motions picked up speed. "Nasty little whores are good for something, huh? You like it when I do this, huh, mister?"

He pistoned his cock hard into her sopping depths by way of reply, making her moan... and through the haze of erotic sensation, he caught sight of Siouxsie’s booth again, many of its occupants now having joined the general rowdiness but those remaining – including Siouxsie, her sandy-haired companion and her Chinese businessman – chatting pleasantly as though the increasingly raunchy fuckfest taking over the SkyHigh were completely invisible to them.

And abruptly, out of nowhere, something clicked... and he realized who that strangely familiar Chinese businessman was.

* * * * *

Summerset lay writhing in a clearing in the woods – one of what she was sure were a dozen different identical clearings she’d passed through in her nightmarish wanderings – her girl-come jetting and splashing forcefully out of her body as she moaned, clinging desperately to the last shreds of her conscious mind as a tsunami of orgasm swept over her again. Not a shred of her body stocking was left, dozens of angry red welts covered her back, her ass and her legs, and memories of sensation were crashing over her at more frequent intervals, getting more devastating each time, the orgasms coming closer and closer to dragging her into oblivion.

Things had happened in a specific order, of course. In her lucid moments she could put them in that order:

First, that first pair of hunters had dunked her in a cold stream and hauled her out on the other side, the former face-rapist promptly making good on his threat to break her cherry ass while his partner had gripped her massive mams and turned them into a sensual tunnel for his hard cock, and with their ultra-sensatitivity, that tit-fucking had been like having an extra pussy installed on her chest, the space between her breasts becoming another ecstatic fuckhole as her milk squirted and spurted and the hot tingling combined with the agonizing ecstasy in her wrecked, plundered asshole to bring her slutty little snatch off, harder and harder and harder as her butt filled for the first time with hot spunk ... and then the second... and then the third... and cum splashed in hot torrents all over her face and tits over and over again until finally the two men had had their fill, leaving her shuddering and sobbing and soiled and dripping...

Then she’d been kneeling near a creek and trying to lap up some precious water through her ring gag when the ghost-memory of a massive cock had shafted brutally into her spunk-dripping asshole, and she’d squealed aloud helplessly as a massive orgasm rocked her world, and she only found out that that squeal had brought a second pair of hunters when a very "real" hand had smacked her hard on the ass, sending her right back over the edge into pure sexual hell as her pussy juice spurted all over the laughing men behind her....

Then they’d taken off their belts and held her down in the water and thrashed her thoroughly as she’d mewled miserably, agony and rapture mixing in her cries as the SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!ping leather covered her writhing, bucking body in welts and the helpless torment brought her off again and again, chatting and joking with each other while they brutalized her as though they were just a couple of buddies out on a fishing trip...

Then they’d spent a couple of hours really showing her how to take a hard cock to the back of her throat, spanking her face rudely with their dicks before forcing her to gag and choke and drool on them while she obeyed their crude command to grind her hips and hump her hot pussy against their shiny leather boots, her fuckhole spasming and exploding messily every time a massive load of spunk spewed down her throat and slid down into her stomach or spilled down her chin to slop down in a slimy river between her tits and down over her belly...

Then they’d positioned her between them on the ground and double-fucked her, their shafts plowing her ass and pussy while they roughly smacked her butt, bit and sucked and mauled and swatted and abused her hot, spurting tits, and repeatedly slapped her hard across the face to keep her dizzy and disoriented as climax after hard, punishing climax blended one into another and made her moan and scream and finally shriek in devastated ecstasy when they painted her insides with the last of their loads of nasty spunk, telling her what a "filthy fucking bitch" she was as their cocks twitched and jumped and spurted inside her, kicking her contemptuously into the bushes as soon as they were finished with her...

It had all happened in a specific order.

But when the storms of unwanted sexual memory overtook her, it was like getting unstuck in time. It was all happening to her at once, she had multiple hard cocks and gallons of hot jetting spunk in every hole and her body was being punished and ravaged and abused everywhere, and every time it happened she knew she was in greater and greater danger of her mind finally shutting itself down completely in self-defense. Every time it happened she was in greater danger of breaking. But she held on. Somehow, impossibly, she held on.

Somewhere along the line, before her capture by that second pair of hunters, she had thought of a song to sing. Her shredded mind couldn’t remember any more why she had picked this particular song, just a two-tone singsong ditty that came breathily out of her sore, gagged mouth as Nga-Ngah, Nga-Nga-Ngahh, Nga-Ngahh-Nga... It didn’t matter why she’d picked it. She had to keep singing it, for some reason it was very important that she keep singing it, she had to stay conscious to keep singing it. And every time the tempests of orgasmic recall swept over her, she clung to that nonsense ditty like a spar of driftwood until she could get her head above water again. She was doing it right now, fighting her way above the waters of unconsciousness, triumphing over oblivion one more time as the orgasms receded and she could start singing the ditty again under her breath.

It was getting hard to keep fighting, though, harder and harder each time. And there were three more hunters out there – the thought of them made her soiled, bruised, beaten, agonizingly exhausted body shiver in fear. Or anticipation. Or both. But she gathered herself and found the will, somewhere, to rise back up to her feet again, to keep going.

And then her eyes focused, and she saw a smiling man in a balaclava standing casually a few feet in front of her, holding what looked to be a pair of small tin buckets in one hand, and she heard a twig snap behind her. Summerset looked frantically around and saw the second man, carrying a long coil of rope. She whimpered, knowing she didn’t have the wherewithal to run.

"Hello, Pinka," said the man in front. She recognized the same rumbling voice that had taunted her in the cabin.

Frozen in place, she unconsciously started to sing her song under her breath.

"I’ll say this much for you," he went on. "You’re one game whore. Quite a tour you’ve taken us on. You know we’ve been watching you for the last three miles and we’ve even lost count of the number of times you’ve rolled around in the dirt with your pussy squirting?"

"Gotta be a dozen at least," his partner agreed.

"And you still haven’t broken. Amazing." The hunter stepped forward, his little tin buckets rattling in his hand. "But we both know you can’t last."

The man behind her put a solid arm around her throat, holding his shivering victim in place as she braced herself... but she still felt her eyes widen in shock as a massive plastic phallus slid between her dripping folds and brutally rammed its way home into her shuddering young body. "NNNNGGGGAHHHHHHAHHHHHH!" she wailed as she convulsed and spurted around the huge toy as it stretched her to the utmost, even bigger than the huge cocks that had taken her so far. Desperately, she clung to the notes of her song in her head as her tormentor turned a knob on the end of the dildo and sent it buzzing into life, her orgasm swamping her senses as her hips writhed and her tits jiggled and heaved... her juices were spraying out around the fake cock, the world spinning and growing dim, and she knew she was alarmingly close to blacking out as a second massive vibrator forced its way up her ass. "UUHHHHUUGHHHHHHHH!"

La-la-lahhh-la-lahhh-la... Sing... sing... keep it in your head... sing... it’s important to keep singing in your head... She came to the razor’s edge of breaking, but just managed to pull herself back as the orgasms subsided, her body twitching and shuddering as the rumbling voice of the man before her commented with amusement: "So you like those, do you? I thought you might." The second man was looping his rope over her neck, knotting it down the front of her body between her tits while his companion spoke. "We’re going to leave them in for you while we march you back to the cabin. Aren’t we nice guys?" She moaned and gave a little jolt as the rope was brought back between her legs and looped back up, rubbing across her clit, pressing the vibrating dildos firmly into her – he was tying her into a harness! "And by the end of that hike, I guarantee you this: you’ll be the most thoroughly tamed fuck-toy who ever lived."

He fished something out of his pocket as his partner worked his knots rapidly, rope now going above and below her tits, pushing them out severely as if proffering them to the whole world to be abused, and she whined as felt them getting hot and hard and even more ultra-sensitive that they'd’already been, more of her milk starting to leak and drip from her nipples as she could feel the beginnings of another devastating multiple climax building in her stuffed holes. Then she saw what the man in front of her was holding, and said"Nnnnaaahhhhaaaa," as she felt her pussy spasm.

They were steel nipple clamps, with chains dangling from them! Suddenly, she understood what those little tin pails were for. The hunter smiled as he saw the terrified comprehension dawn in her eyes. "That’s right, slut, it’s those big udders of yours that we’re going to tame you with," he said smugly. "You like having them abused, don’t you? And there’s no sense in letting all that tasty milk go to waste, is there?"

Both hunters laughed cruelly as he lifted the first clamp, and she felt her pussy starting to seize up and squirt even before he’d touched her, her mind about to be swamped again. La-la-lahhh-la-lahhh-la... Sing... sing... she repeated to herself, trying not to listen to her own pitiful, futile moans. La-lahhh-la-la-lahhh...

* * * * *

"MY FRIENDS, PLEASE WELCOME OUR NEXT CONTESTANTS: DEVILETTE, THE DAMSEL OF DARING FROM MAGNOLIA, AND MYSTERIA, THE SELF-PROCLAIMED SUPER-SLEUTH OF NEWVALE CITY!" Two more "heroines" were shoved onto the SkyHigh’s stage, the crowd watching them now at least half-consisting of several huge gangbangs surrounding the sluts of the Vixxen Vanguard and the first two defeated heroines, all of the taut-bodied teens bouncing on or sucking big cocks or being forced to eat out the pussies of gangster molls and mistresses.

Devilette was a big-titted strawberry blonde dressed in a red slingshot thong bikini, a little red Mardi Gras devil mask, and long black latex gloves and platform stripper boots decorated in red flames – and surprisingly, she’d been given a weapon of sorts, a red cheerleading baton. Mysteria was a slender Latina hottie in a sheer black Zentai catsuit – her gorgeous features just visible through the spandex encasing her face – her look finished by a tiny pinstripe minidress and a saucily-cocked fedora, knee-high black stiletto boots and black leather belt adorned with the letter "M" in rhinestones. She’d been given a weapon, too, a set of rhinestone-crusted knuckle-dusters.

The sole purpose of the weapons, Caliente mused, would be to mock the teen heroines with false hope. The girls had to know it. And the deck was being further stacked against them – each of the captive Kitts were clearly wobbly and shaking and weak as a kitten, having just emerged from the hellish holding cell where they were all now being fucked with strap-ons or made to bring each other off, where it was clearly going to be the rule that the girls who had just suffered the most debilitating, humiliating string of forced orgasms would be the first sent on stage whenever the call came down. The sounds of crude sex assailed their senses from beyond the footlights, and there too they now knew was the mysterious and terrifying Rope Monster and the mad cackling of Doctor Shibari. Each of them faced three Maidens of the Rope, not two, and without comment a new wrinkle was being added to the game: from beneath the stage there rose a platform with a double-ended piston device on it, pairs of enormous dildoes mounted on the ends of the steel shafts the emerged from the sinister construct. A rape machine.

Having gone several more rounds with the White Vixxen before she’d moved on, feeling more than a little guilty about it and increasingly oppressed by a sense of dread after he’d realized just who it was sharing Siouxsie’s booth, Caliente was more than ready to leave the SkyHigh. But he would have to wait until it wouldn’t be suspicious for him to do so. Frankie Spicoli, in character, would be having the time of his life at an event like this – exactly the kind of underworld craziness that he ached to be a part of – and would have to be practically dragged away (or enticed away by food). Dinner time was still several hours away. They’d be long and uninterrupted hours; he should know, he’d given the orders to the extraction teams mandating that they breach only in the event of a transponder emergency signal or if the Kitts still hadn’t left the hotel by nine in the evening.

As Caliente watched the groups of Rope Maidens toy with their prey, the desperate teen heroines lashing out weakly with their novelty weapons at opponents they couldn’t reach or hope to catch, he had to fight not to slide his eyes back to the Chinese "businessman" chatting amiably with Siouxsie Sexcrime. When he’d worked for Castro, the Man With a Thousand Faces had had occasion to meet top figures in the intelligence community from around the world, especially from regimes that had cooperated with Cuba.

Figures like the ruthless Qin Zhang from China’s Ministry of State Security, the man who many felt would one day be running that organization, the notorious Mindroling Butcher whose face as yet was still unknown to the Americans... but it was known to Gustavo Caliente.

The sight of Qin had made a great many things fall into place. If the MSS was working with the Red Queen Syndicate, the latter organization’s ability to locate Caliente himself made sense. So did their seemingly inexplicable international reach, intel capabilities and technological prowess; added to their own talents and personnel, the Syndicate would have access at some level to the Ministry’s formidable staff of hackers and cyber-spies and counter-surveillance experts, among other things. Perhaps even access to advanced military and materials tech – like whatever was behind Doctor Shibari’s Rope Monster.

It was a chilling development. No, chilling wasn’t a strong enough word. Appalling. Caliente was caught in the middle of something far, far bigger than just Operation: Foxx Hunt. Whatever the Syndicate was after, it was important enough for the MSS to risk involving itself in an elaborate, uncharasterically CIA-style op right in the heart of America’s greatest metropolis. The kind of thing that Washington would probably be inclined to regard as an outright act of war.

What could possibly be valuable enough to run such an apocalyptic risk? wondered Caliente. And how in hell am I going to get out of this alive? His hopes of playing the Rubinettoes against Siouxsie seemed ridiculously naive, now; the Italians and the Colombians clearly had no idea how vastly outclassed they were by the Red Queen Syndicate, had been fooled into thinking that Siouxsie worked for them. There would be no help there.

His mind chewed at the problem restlessly as he watched the show.

Devilette’s group of Rope Maidens were taunting and toying with her for all the world like schoolyard bullies, shoving her from unpredictable directions as she fought to keep her tottering balance, insouciantly groping her, slapping at her ripe ass and her jiggling tits. Finally, crying out in despair, she rushed at the Maiden in front of her, flailing her baton – and found herself promptly swept off her feet, flat on her face. And as she writhingly struggled to get back up, she jolted as she felt something hard crack brutally across her ass: "AAAGGHHHHHH!" Her own baton, of course.

Mysteria was in even worse shape. After the initial taunting and teasing phase, her Maidens had closed with her quickly, the girl too slow to land a punch on any of them as she had a knee driven into her ribs and her knuckle-duster pried easily away from her nerveless fingers; and now her assailants were bitch-slapping her insultingly, her head lolling back and forth and her expression one of dazed horror through her spandex sheathing as she staggered from one punishing slap right into the next. They were ripping the minidress away from her now, her firm tits and fuckable ass and pussy plain to see through the sheer spandex as they wrapped Mysteria’s belt around her neck, using it like a leash to yank the helpless teen heroine back and forth as the slaps continued to rain down, on her tits now, too, on her ass and on her sopping cunt, the poor girl jumping and jolting and writhing ineffectually as she tried to escape the hands punishing her body.

Before long, holes were being ripped in her spandex as Mysteria was wrestled to her back with her legs spread, the ass and crotch of her Zentai ripped away for easy access, one of the Maidens restraining her arms behind her and whispering threateningly in her ear as the other two finger-fucked her pussy and ass – and it didn’t take on for their well-primed captive to lose control, her juices squirting as they ripped a climax out of her struggling body.

As Mysteria went swiftly down to orgasmic defeat, Devilette was being forced into a humiliating crawl around the stage. With the strap of her thong pulled aside at her crotch to expose her dripping slit, she was impaled on the red cheerleader’s baton, her juices leaking out around its shiny shaft and dripping down her thighs as she was spanked, big tears rolling down her cheeks as nearby parts of the milling crowd jeered at her predicament. Finally she was maneuvered down next to Mysteria, placed likewise on her back with her legs spread – a Maiden behind her pulling away the strips just barely covering her nipples the better to yank and fondle and punish her big tits, the girl screaming "AHHHHHAAA! UGGGGHHHHHHH!" as the baton was shoved into her cherry ass while insistent fingers ripped a spurting climax from her tight young snatch, and then another, and then another... and another...

The taut teen captives writhed in shared sexual hell, helplessly cumming over and over again – their juices jetting out more and more copiously each time – for another fifteen minutes before Doctor Shibari melodramatically commanded: "VERY WELL, MY MAIDENS! ENGAGE THE MACHINE! LET THE TRAINING OF OUR LOVELY HEROINES BEGIN!"

Mysteria and Devilette screamed as the tendrils of the Rope Monster claimed them from the midst of the Rope Maidens, one of whom stepped over the platform where the sinister fucking machine waited and flicking a switch, starting its demonic pistons to motion. As the captive Kitts were held high in the air, their minds still trying desperately to process what was happening to them as the Rope Monster worked with amazing dexterity to completely shred away Devilette’s thong and bare Mysteria’s glistening flesh from the crotch right up to the neck. Soon more tendrils were wrapping around them, forming complex knots and folding each of the girls’ bodies into a vulnerable, humiliating frog-tie... and they were being lowered with awful inevitably toward that crude machine!

Devilette could be heard begging: "Nonono please please please pleeeeheeease!" while Mysteria looked over her shoulder, rigid with fear as the girls’ spasming holes were positioned at either end of the machine. Then slowly, inexorably, they were inched backwards – the buzzing, vibrating dildos mounting the machine at first teasing the entrances to their fuckholes, then sliding in an inch, then two, then three... and finally the wailing, shuddering teen heroines were fully mounted: "AWWWWW! AWWWWW! AWWWWW! AWWWWWWHAWWWWWWWWW!" Their pussies and asses were being repeatedly, mercilessly reamed and impaled by the pistoning action, their hips writhing and butts jiggling as they couldn’t help humping back against the bitch-taming, will-breaking double penetration, cunts squirting as the uncaring contraption raped orgasm after helpless orgasm out of them. And lines of men were starting to form in front of them, their hard throbbing cocks at the ready, about to stifle the teens’ orgasmic screams with man-meat...

By the end of the day, Caliente could see, all of the Kitts surely would be thoroughly broken. They all had that same ecstatic drugged response, which would combine with the sheer surreality of what was happening in the SkyHigh to utterly smash their minds, their will to resist. He, ultimately, had delivered all of them up to this fate, just as he’d delivered that innocent girl on the night he’d replaced Max Fawkes. The teen spies were trapped like flies in a spider’s web; there was no way out, not for any of them. Thanks to Gustavo Caliente.

But they’re not alone – it could be that we’re all trapped, Caliente mused as he watched a coarse, fat gangster brutally fuck Devilette’s sweet young mouth. It could be that none of us will walk away from whatever Siouxsie is planning. None of us.

* * * * *

"You’re a truly remarkable woman, Summerset."

The words seemed to come from far away as Summerset fought her way back up from the depths of another tempest of total orgasmic recall. For the last time, she knew; there was no energy, no fight left in her. When the next one came, it would be over.

Where was she? What had happened when? She’d been walking, a long walk, she’d had vibrators stuffed in her holes and metal pails attached to her tits, she’d been throatfucked by her two captors every time she stumbled and fell – and every once in a while they’d been fond of landing a playful kick on her snatch to make sure that she did fall as yet another climax claimed her. They’d finally arrived at the cabin, full circle, despair sweeping over her as they’d forced her to kneel and choke down another double load of nasty spunk, then stuck a funnel in her mouth and forced her to wash their ball-butter down with mouthfuls of her own milk, taken from the pails hanging from her nipple clamps. Finally they’d pulled out the vibrators, taken off the nipple clamps and hosed her down with cold water, tossing her inside the cabin where she’d lain shuddering, utterly spent... and then she’d felt rope rubbing over her clit as someone grabbed her harness from behind and started to cut it away, and the storm of orgasmic memory, far worse than any before it, had swept over her, left her screaming hoarsely...

She was on the floor of the cabin. Naked. And she realized that her arms were untied, tested her sore jaw as she discovered that finally, mercifully, someone had taken out the ring gag. Shivering, she looked up; the final hunter stood there, a shorter, stockier man than the rest of them had been. His eyes looked almost sympathetic beneath his balaclava, and after a moment he sheathed the buck knife he was holding and gestured to her to come closer.

He’d called her "Summerset," she realized suddenly. Not "Pinka." As she crawled submissively over to kneel in front of him, her sore body cringing like a whipped dog’s in the expectation of a random kick or slap, the kind of casual brutality the other hunters had shown from the beginning... but nothing. He simply gazed at her for a long moment, as if undecided about something, and then said: "Lie back, Summerset. Lie back and spread your legs."

Shaking, her breath catch in anticipation, she did so, taking hold of her ankles and spreading her legs as wide as they would go, opening up her soaking cunt and gaping asshole for his inspection.

After a moment he nodded, bending over her and working at his zipper. And after a moment she felt his hard cock slip into her, almost gently, the throbbing member whispering in her depths and starting a powerful liquid heat stirring inside her. He was a solid eight inches, not as big as the other mammoth members that had pounded and violated her... but hard, wonderfully hard, and the mere fact that he was simply inside her, gently, not raping her like a rutting stag and spitting in her face and calling her a whore, made it a new sensation.

He simply stayed sheathed inside her, looking in her eyes. Then he said: "I’m going to start thrusting into you in a minute. That will be the end, that will be when you break. But before I do that, I wanted to have a last conversation, while you’re still intact."

She looked back at him in puzzlement. "I... I don’t understand... why would you care... ?"

He looked at her again for another long moment and then reached up and took off his mask... revealing the face of "Dr. Nielson." "I’ve never seen anything like you," he said simply. "Do you know how long you’ve been in my chair, fighting, resisting the transition to final conditioning? Over three and a half hours in real time. Three and a half hours. Nobody has ever lasted that long, Summerset. By rights it should be neurologically impossible. You’ve already taken more punishment than the other four Foxxes put together." He moved slightly, the base of his cock grinding against her stiff little clit and bringing a moan from her lips. "For that matter, none of the others realized the truth of what was happening to them, the truth about their situation. That kind of courage and ability deserves a gesture in return. I think you’ve earned a face-to-face with the person I really am before we finish this."

Summerset licked her lips for a moment, fought down a crazy urge to head-butt the bastard on top of her. It would be useless; he’d simply call the other hunters back down on her and start it all over again, and despite herself she shuddered with fear at the thought. Finally she said: "Who are you? Why are you doing this?"

"They call me the Hound," he replied promptly. "I helped Siouxsie Sexcrime found the Red Queen Syndicate. I was sent here to break you, so that Operation Freedom can’t interfere when the time comes."

"The time... for what?"

"You’ll see, I promise." He moved again, bringing another sharp gasp from her, and said: "Ahhhhh, you have no idea how hard it is for me to stop myself from pounding your pussy right now, Summerset. You know I’m breaking my cardinal rule? I never fuck the patients while they’re under, but right now I’m standing over your body in my office with my cock balls-deep inside you. I just couldn’t resist any more. Feels good, doesn’t it?"

She moaned, his revelation stirring new feelings of helplessness and humiliation inside her, the satiny walls of her snatch pulsing around his cock as she tried to stop herself from moving against him. "How..." she asked breathlessly after a moment. "How did you... fool Max? You have to know... he’ll figure out what you are..."

The Hound gave her a pitying look. "He really is your blind spot, isn’t he? You managed to work out all the rest of it, but not him." He reached up to stroke her hair gently as he went on: "Who do you think it was who sold you all out? Right now, your poor little Kitts are being gang-banged into a collective stupor at the SkyHigh Penthouse Club, getting ready to join Bailey Phillips and her friends as brainwashed sex slaves, as our fifth column inside the Foxxes’ Den. And not one of your NSA hacks even suspects it’s happening, because that club is hardened with counter-surveillance tech – just like the Lockhart Centre – and because your digital link with all your fancy satellite surveillance has been hacked... by us. Who do you think gave us the codes we needed to do all that? Who ordered the Kitts on all those missions? Who insisted that you Foxxes, all of you, go under my Machine before you went out again?"

Summerset froze, the world seeming to lurch around her, her mind freezing for a moment as she said, in a bewildered little girl voice: "M... Max... ?" Max would never betray us no no no no no no NOOOOOO... but the explanation felt right. He was the most logical traitor. "Why... whyhyyy ... ?"

"Simple, really. We figured he’d have to have been a bit of a dirty old man to come up with the whole idea of the Foxx Force Five in the first place. In exchange for his help, we offered him the prize he really wanted all along." He stroked her hair again. "We offered him you."

Her stomach lurched and fluttered. Us. So that’s how it’s going to end for the Foxx Force Five? Sex slaves to an evil traitor who pretended to... to be our friend and mentor? To care about us? To... to love us? She realized she was sobbing uncontrollably, inconsolably, her head shaking back and forth in futile denial.

"Shhhh, shhhhh," said the Hound soothingly. "I know it’s a shock. But listen. I can talk The Boss into offering him some other payment. The rest of the Foxxes would have to go with Max... but I could spare you. I could protect you."

"Protect... me... why... ?" She was gulping down her sobs, hating the snivelling sound of her voice.

"It’s not just anyone who could get to me the way you have, Summerset. I’ve been honest with you, here; has Max ever done the same? Why spend the rest of your life as his trophy when you could spend that time serving someone who actually does care about you? Who really does admire you?"

He ground the base of his cock against her clit again and she shuddered, her body responding as her consciousness reeled. Her whole world had been violently upended, and the man who’d been everything to her for years stood revealed as a base traitor, a creature worse than Vladimir Popov, worse than all the criminals they’d faced put together. It really was the only explanation that made sense. Max Fawkes: betrayer of the Foxxes, betrayer of the innocent Kitts, betrayer of Operation Freedom and of Johnny Mosley and of every agent who’d risked their lives at their sides, every woman and girl they’d tried to help over the years. How could you do it, Max? How could you do it? Don’t you know we loved you? Don’t you know what you meant, what you stood for?

She felt her tears flowing again. What was there left? What was there to lose? It was all gone already, all of it... and finally, exhausted, the last shreds of her will torn away, Summerset stopped fighting the despair and let it in to claim her. She looked away from the Hound’s searching eyes as she said: "What... what do you want me to do..."

"That part’s easy, Summerset. I want you to ask me to break you. I want to hear you say the words, I want to know you mean them. I want you to beg for oblivion."

She shut her eyes tight at the horrible words, but felt her hot pussy spasm around his cock, felt that final, monster surge of orgasmic memory waiting for her, whispering in the back of her skull and at the fringes of her nerve-endings. Soon his hard meat would drive into her, and in that moment every other beating, whipping, humiliation and rape she’d endured throughout the day would stab into her flesh and her holes, she’d feel it all at once... and her mind would shut down to save itself, it would have to.

And she’d be a slave, then... but she’d be free, at least, of this awful, horrific knowledge of Max’s treachery. All she had to do was open her mouth and say the words: "Fuck me. Please pound me with your cock. Please fuck me. I need you to fuck me like a whore. Fuck me." It would mean giving up everything she had, everything she was...

But then without Max, I have nothing. I am nothing, she thought with an inward wail. Nothing.

She said the words.

The Hound gave a low chuckle as he pulled his hard shaft back, ready to pound it home inside her. And a weird, singsong little ditty wandered into her brain from somewhere, striking her curiously before his cock slammed back in... and oblivion claimed her.

* * * * *

"Hello, Foxxes!" rang out the rich, familiar voice of Operation Freedom’s commander on that night’s conference call.

"Hello, Max!" the Five said in beaming unison, as always.

"Let’s all join in congratulating the Kitts on a job well done!" The Foxxes cheered, happy and relieved. "The word has come back that one of the new Kitt team, Janie Price, found the information we were looking for at the Soliko Grand Hotel! What a coup for the Kitts! It’s time, Foxxes: time at long last to take down the Rubinetto Family and their pet Syndicate!" Another cheer from around the table.

Summerset didn’t have any memory of her session – Dr. Nielson had told her that was normal, nothing to worry about – but she knew she already felt better, more confident, and surer of the future than she’d ever done before. She smiled at the others, her friends, her sisters-in-arms. Foxx Force Five, she thought happily. As strong as ever. That Dr. Nielson is really something... and great shoulders, too! she thought with an inward laugh.

Only Johnny Mosley was looking ill at ease, an uncharacteristic reticence in his face as he fussed with his awful combover while listening to Max talking on the speakerphone. I’ll have to give him a pep talk later, thought the Number One Foxx. Got to make sure we’re all on board together.

She had the funniest song playing over and over again in her head, though. A weird little ditty, just two notes, curious and irregular rhythms. It had been there ever since her visit with Dr. Nielson – and she hadn’t thought to ask him about it. Best not to bother the Doctor with minor details, she rationalized. Maybe I’ll give my friend Ethan in Washington a call, I remember he likes to play "name that tune."

Yes, she resolved as they went on to talk about upcoming mission schedules. That’s a good plan. I’ll call him right away. I’ll bet he knows what this song is.