There was one thing about living in Island City that Special Agent Johnny Mosley liked above all else. When the stresses of life crowded in on him, he could always take a trip down to the Half Moon Wharf, stand alone by the water with a hot dog in one hand and a soda in the other, look out at the distant shadow of Angel Island and find a little peace. It was the closest thing he had to meditation or prayer.

He liked doing it in the morning, like today, even though it meant braving Midtown’s notorious commuter traffic. Dressed in his best, of course, in this case his nattiest purple leisure suit; his favourite spot was hallowed ground, the very spot where the founders of Jive, Inc. had met before going on to record one of the unsung classics of pure disco magic, and you didn’t wear just any old thing when walking on hallowed ground. Mosley had a private theory that if you just stood still and let your senses run free, you could feel the sheer funkiness reverberating through that spot.

And as a bonus, there was a nice charge of patriotism to be had from the mighty winged statues of the Three Angels of the Revolution, their unmistakable outlines just visible through the ever-present haze of smog: Liberty in the middle and at the summit, head thrown back in serene rapture and her torch held aloft with both hands, Fraternity and Equality standing at thigh level on either side of her to mightily sound their trumpets, the New World’s official welcoming committee. "Morning, ladies," Mosley toasted them with his soda, as he always did. "It’s been a while." And he remembered with amusement what Max had once said about Johnny’s love affair with the Angels.

"Look closely at those dramatic stances," he’d said. "Tell me they’d look out of place on a Boonie Ehm album cover. Truth is, they were disco before there was disco. Of course you love them."

He was already, he noticed, thinking of Max Fawkes in a wistful past tense. There was nothing for it. He’d come down to the Wharf this morning to bring himself face to face with hard truths he’d been avoiding until now. He needed to take stock, to figure out what to do.

Because the truth was, despite its recent string of apparent triumphs, something had obviously gone horribly wrong with Operation Freedom.

A big part of it for him was intuition, and observation. The first clue had been the Kitts. When Bailey Phillips had returned from her mission, she’d seemed transformed, possessed of a saucy, sexy new confidence that everyone had praised and encouraged. And it had seemed at least plausible that her four best friends would imitate her, as they’d begun to seem to do after the furlough to the movies that the five of them had shared together, although granted that did seem a little... weirder.

But then, five days ago, the rest of the Kitts had been sent out on a mission with Bailey’s so-called "Kitt Force Five" leading them. For them all to come back changed so radically wasn’t plausible, or natural, but it had definitely happened. Walking into the SUDDZ salon – the key part of his street-level front for the Foxxes’ Den facility – the day after their return had been like walking into a room full of pod people. And while a guilty part of him had long dreamed of having his sexy teen charges make salacious remarks, lick their lips at him invitingly, find excuses to bend over and pick things up in front of him while waggling their taut, luscious asses or their intoxicatingly pert young tits... having the dream made flesh turned out to be creepy, unsexy, and deeply disturbing.

Something, he’d realized with a chill in the pit of his stomach, had to have been done to them to make these radical transformations happen. But when, and where, and what? All their surveillance had been in line, the girls had never been sent anywhere alone or unobserved, there’d been enough satellite eyes trained on them in the Soliko Grand operation to shame NASA... so who had had an opportunity? He didn’t know. All he knew was that something was extremely wrong.

It wasn’t just the Kitts. The Foxxes, too, had manifested some subtly odd behaviour in the past few weeks, before the arrival of Max’s neurotherapist, an apparently famous doctor who Johnny Mosley had never heard of – not that there was any particular reason he should – and at first, the neurotherapy had seemed impressive, miraculously successful.

But.

Days before her session, Summerset had come to Mosley and confided in him that she had serious doubts about the haste with which the Kitts were being pushed into service, and he’d agreed with her – though trying to convince her (and maybe himself) that Max had to know what he was doing. His reassurances hadn’t fully swayed her, and she’d plainly still been fussing over the issue in her head as she left. The day after her session, though, she’d come to Mosley with a sunny smile and told him he was completely right, that there was absolutely nothing to worry about with the Kitts, that she was really excited about the coming missions and hoped his doubts were laid to rest, too.

To simply reverse course like that was completely out of character for her. Not to mention that if the Kitts’ general transformation had kicked his danger-senses into overdrive, it seemed extremely improbable that it shouldn’t do the same for Summerset, who’d always shared similar intuitions. So why was she suddenly so sanguine? And in the subsequent days, he realized why he’d felt so uneasy sitting at the conference table in the Foxxes’ inner sanctum the night after the Kitts’ mission at the Soliko Grand. All the Five now seemed too happy and confident, almost inhumanly so, as though the most imperviously cheerful version of each of them had been beamed in from the sunniest street in Pleasantville, Happy County. Talking with them ever since, and especially sitting in on the conference calls, he was increasingly overwhelmed by that same crazy sensation of being surrounded by pod people.

There, at least, it was easy to identify who’d had an opportunity to get to them: the neurotherapist, Nielson, who’d packed up abruptly and decamped from the Den the very afternoon of his marathon session with Summerset O’Neale. Nielson, though, was a busy neurotherapist with a busy schedule... and after all, he had been thoroughly vetted and vouched for by Max.

So, then. What about Max?

Nielson had been approved and his credentials provided... by Max. The mysterious reams of new products that had recently started appearing in the Foxxes’ Den had been checked and cleared... according to reports furnished by Max. The Kitts were piling one brilliant success on another despite their manifest inexperience and still-incomplete training... said Max. Operation Freedom now had all the evidence it needed to crush the Syndicate and their employers and put them all in jail for the rest of their lives... claimed Max.

But on the ground, in the last few weeks, Mosley’s once-impressive informant network was suddenly shredding before his eyes. It had started with a few suspicious "accidents" here and there, but that sort of thing was par for the course. Key double-agents and stool-pigeons were disappearing now at an alarming rate that was getting worse all the time, and those informants that weren’t disappearing – including the pitiful trickle that still came around to the SUDDZ "salon" – were clamming up in obvious fear. New pimps and hustlers and gangs were starting to step into the vaccuum created by many of Operation Freedom’s earlier raids, and there were scattered reports that some of them were as brazen as their predecessors had been or even moreso – but too few reports, too few informants, to form a big picture. There were whispered rumours of massive "big box" brothels reactivating their operations upstate, too, but they couldn’t be confirmed, and all of Operation Freedom’s government contacts still swore up and down that they were keeping a lid on things...

... or at least, so said Max.

The same Max who had, yesterday morning, treated the question of a seeming all-out war against Operation Freedom’s informant network with uncharacteristic breeziness, reassuring Mosley that it was just "last-minute pushback" before the imminent collapse of the Commission and its pet Syndicate.

Mosley finally suspected then, and was willing to admit to himself now, that there were only two possibilities: either the person they were talking to on their daily calls was not Max Fawkes, or Max Fawkes had somehow been turned by the enemy. But no, he told himself sternly, that first one isn’t a serious possibility, is it? No impersonator, however skilled, could have fooled both you and Summerset for that long, especially not Summerset. There’s only one possibility, and you know it. You just don’t want to face it.

Max Fawkes, his best friend. A traitor. He strained to swallow a bite of hot dog around a sudden, agonizing lump in his throat. How could it be? Max was a country-first man to the marrow of his bones, he had more integrity than anyone I knew! They must have some truly extreme leverage on him. But heartbreaking as it was, there was no other plausible explanation. The truth had to be faced, because it meant that Operation Freedom was being walked headlong into a trap... or that they were already in it.

The trouble was that the knowledge was paralyzing. If Max of all people truly had gone over, everyone in Operation Freedom was pretty much screwed. A soldier can’t fight a war, Mosley thought, if his own general starts fighting for the other side. The enemy would have all their vital systems, access to their surveillance networks, data on all their agents and informants, probably a network of surveillance cameras of their own in the Den by now... the works. They’d probably had all those resources since the Popov bust at a minimum, resources that amounted to an ability to completely unravel everything Operation Freedom and the Foxx Force Five had spent years building. And he realized with a sense of sick, stomach-curdling horror: They’d have the ability to sneak designer drug compounds into the facility! The ability to poison our key operatives, or to send in a fake "neurotherapist" tasked with permanently fucking up their brains!

It was a nightmare scenario, worse than the most chilling of worst-case situations he’d ever planned for. And he was living it. He felt almost helpless in face of it. No, not "almost." Chewing absent-mindedly on another gristly bite of his now-flavourless hot dog, swallowing it down mechanically, he knew the honest truth was that he hadn’t the slightest idea what to do.

The other problem, of course, was that when it came right down to it, he couldn’t prove that Max had betrayed them, or that all the many things he felt were wrong meant what he suspected they did. All he really had was some alarming, discordant data and his gut instincts. Mayor Sidel’s office was reluctantly taking its cues from Washington on Operation Freedom, and in Washington they were seeing five-star publicity and superficially impressive results: exactly the things their campaign had been meant to produce in the first place. Most of the Island City Vice Taskforce wouldn’t want to be told about anything else. They particularly wouldn’t want to be told that some disco-throwback FBI man had a feeling and some circumstantial maybe-evidence that their golden boy, one of the superstars of the American intel community, had sold them out. He’d find maybe one sympathetic ear in a hundred, if that.

But... did that really matter, in the end?

He looked again at that distant silhouette of the Three Angels. Especially the statue of Fraternity on the left, sounding her trumpet eternally, calling people of all stripes to stand by one another and build a better world. He looked at her for a long time.

I have to take the chance, he decided suddenly. The hell with "career prospects" and advancement. The Kitts trusted me to take care of them, the Foxxes are my friends. And I’ve failed them! I’ve got to do something! I’ve got to find that one sympathetic ear, wherever it is, and make it count!

So then... that was it. It would have to be Mr. Mosley Goes to Washington. Phone calls wouldn’t do for revelations like these. He would have to grab a few things from the Den, send warnings to whatever agents he could, get the hell out as quickly as he could, then burn rubber for the nation’s capital and make his case to anyone who would listen.

It felt good, at least, to have made the decision. As he finished his hot dog, Special Agent Johnny Mosley raised his soda can one more time in salute to the Three Angels. "Good talk, ladies," he told them. "Be seeing you."

* * * * *

Keiko Takeda was on the hunt.

It had brought her to a derelict warehouse under the enormous shadow of the Kingsway Bridge. She’d followed a black-clad, masked figure here, tracking his flitting, impossibly agile form through the shadows, just barely able to keep pace with him. He’d killed an Operation Freedom informant in front of her, and he had to pay... but somewhere along the line she’d been separated from the other Foxxes, her earpiece had gone dead, and a nameless fear was starting to send chill tendrils through her body, her skin somehow cold underneath her skintight black jumpsuit.

Every step, every movement, every breath brought a powerful, disorienting sense of deja vu. She’d been here before, she’d chased this man before. And as she stepped into the vast, shadowy space of the long-abandoned warehouse, she had to fight down an urge to flee. I will not turn tail like a coward, she thought, and knew she’d had the thought before. It would bring dishonour to the team, and to Max. I must face this opponent... again.

Why should she feel such fear? She was one of the finest fighters in the world, dubbed "The Tiger Princess" by the Japanese media, who’d followed her accomplishments over the past year almost as obsessively as the American press. She’d snapped the bones and cracked the skulls of opponents by the dozen, made grown men thrice her size weep like babies in the grip of her crushing jiujitsu holds, held an undefeated record in exhibition matches against the best in the world from every style and discipline and every weight class. Why should she fear this one, anonymous opponent?

"You are a shameful and disgusting spectacle," said a voice behind her.

She spun around, knowing she’d find the masked man there, unleashing a vicious kick that would all but take his head off his shoulders. But he caught her foot effortlesly, twisted it and shoved her back to the ground, the tendrils of fear tightening suddenly in her chest as she sprang swiftly back up to face him.

"Women like you are not meant for fighting," he went on, his eyes like chips of obsidian above the black strip of fabric covering his lower face, his voice deep and iron-hard, disconcertingly familiar. "It seems I must teach you over and over again, and you refuse to learn."

"Perhaps it is I who will teach you, coward," she said defiantly, chin raised, her almond-shaped eyes flashing and her adorably freckled face set in fierce determination... but her belly was fluttering, and he was laughing a contemptuous laugh she had heard before.

"Come at me with everything you have," he said.

And she did. She unleashed a lightning flurry of punches and kicks, her limbs moving so fast they were barely visible, her moves economical, graceful and precise in the Tiger style that was her greatest weapon, her blows strong enough to break bricks... or bones. She had never faced an opponent who could withstand such a concentrated flurry from her...

... except this one. Incredibly, the masked man blocked every attack without breaking a sweat, batting her punches and kicks away as though they were nothing but a child’s tantrum, seeming to know every move the Foxx would make before she did. She felt the fear settling deep into her bones as she pressed her attack with increasing desperation, trying to make her moves more unpredictable, throwing in a dazzling series of capoeira kicks in the hopes of disorienting him... but her every attempt was rebuffed with dispiriting ease, the man’s cold eyes never leaving hers, never wavering. After a minute, then two, then three, then four of fruitless attacks, she could feel her limbs starting to tire, her moves growing clumsier and less disciplined, her fear starting to alchemize into something like despair.

Then he counterattacked... and it was like fighting a reflection of herself, one that could move faster than she did.

She sent a straight right hammering toward his ribcage; he swatted it away and pounded two agonizing rights into her midsection in quick succession.

Moaning in pain and shock, she stumbled, recovered herself and let fly with a left at his jaw; he caught it with his right hand and rapidly smashed his own left fist twice into her face, a hook to the temple following into a blindingly fast spinning frontfist flush across the jaw that sent her crumpling to the ground as her mind reeled with agony and disbelief.

"Guh... guh..." she gasped, trying desperately to clear her head as she wobbled back to her feet, despairingly flailing out a leg in a low sweeping kick; but he evaded it easily, flashing and whirling at almost exactly the same time into a precisely-aimed footsweep of his own that caught her back leg with a painful impact and sent her back to the cold ground on her shapely rump.

He stepped in toward her before she had a chance to rise, and she aimed a frantic kick between his legs... but he caught her ankle, yanked her leg to one side and sent his boot thundering once, twice, and then three times into her sensitive snatch. "Agghhh aghhhhh ahhaggggh," she groaned in misery, her body folding up around the brutal pain as she turned her face against the concrete and retched, bilious vomit bubbling past her lips... then retching again and writhing helplessly onto her front as her cruel opponent hammered another sadistic kick into her twat. "UUHHUGGGGHHCK!"

Keiko’s whole world was pain as she lay for what seemed a brief eternity in a near-swoon... but as the pain began to fade, she went rigid with fear as heard the fabric of her jumpsuit tearing, felt the cold air of the warehouse goose-pimpling her flesh as the fabric ripped down her back, helpless to stop her vile abuser as he shredded the material down further until her firm buttocks and tight slit were humiliatingly exposed. Then her arms were being yanked back brutally and she whined as she felt harsh rope being tied around her elbows!

"You are a fraud, Keiko," her assailant said as he went on binding the defeated Foxx, more rope now going around her wrists as she started to writhe and struggle feebly... and with a stab of further humiliation she realized that the ebbing pain in her pussy was starting to be replaced with a hot sexual craving, her snatch starting to pulse and juice up sluttily as her firm, young body wriggled in shameful submission. "You pretend to be a fighter, but you are only a filthy whore with no rightful place on the battlefield. Look at you!" Her captor yanked back on her bound arms, pulling her up on her knees, the better to display her ass, her glistening cunt. "Already dripping with lust like the slut you are!"

"No... please..." she moaned weakly, then jolted and squealed as a brutal slap landed on her ass. "AHHHHHHOWWW!"

"Your master has not given you permission to speak," he said sternly.

He wrapped the fingers of one hand in her silky hair as he landed another slap on her ass, another, another, another, the spanks picking up speed as he punished his bound, beautiful captive like a disobedient schoolgirl, her throaty cries echoing off the uncaring walls of the abandoned warehouse as her ass writhed and reddened and her pussy grew hotter, wetter with every insulting, demeaning smack. "AHHHHH! AHHHHHH! AHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHH!" Keiko cried, tears rolling down her face as she felt the liquid heat in her snatch rising, her juices running down her thighs. He is... humiliating me... treating me like I am nothing... I feel so helpless... so ashamed... "AHHHHHHHHH-AHHHHHHHHHH!" she screamed as she went suddenly over the edge, writhing and convulsing in her captor’s grip as her taut ass jiggled under its punishment and her girl-come squirted messily out of her naked slit. "AAAAAHHHHHHAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

As her body twitched in the aftermath of a devastating chain of screaming, spurting orgasms, she felt something hard and rubbery being inserted between her teeth, jolting and spurting again in sheer humiliation when she realized what it was. A horse bit! She felt it pulling back, bending her head back and up with inexorable pressure, realizing that there must be reins attached to it. "Ahhhhaaaahahhhaaaa," she screwed her eyes shut and sobbed around the gag helplessly, already feeling her traitorous snatch starting to pulse wetly again.

"You see," he said, and Keiko went cold at the sound of a zipper being pulled down behind her. She felt the head of a big, hard, throbbing cock nudge up against the mouth of her sopping fuckhole, her juices flowing out to lubricate it as his other hand dug brutally into the tender skin at her hip, ready to pull her back against him. "You are no ‘heroine,’ little Keiko. You are a worthless slut good only for being tied up and fucked. Just like your mother was."

Her eyes went wide as the last sentence skewered into her reeling mind, at the same time as the massive cock was skewering into her shuddering body. My... mother...? Her head swam as the big slab of man-meat started to piston into her tight, squelching cunt, the satiny walls of her greedy cock socket gripping and milking the shaft as a set of hanging balls slap-slap-slapped against her sensitive clit. "NNNnnngghhhh! NNNNnnnnn-HHHHnnnggghhh!" she moaned like a whore as the bitch-taming climaxes started to claim her body almost immediately, one after another, her mind still spinning, trying desperately to process his words through the waves of explosive pleasure. Mother... ? She craned her head around, blearily trying to focus her eyes...

... and she saw her rapist’s now-unmasked face.

"NAAAAHHHHAAAAAAAAA! NNNNAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAA!" she screamed in abject horror as she suddenly, urgently tried to wriggle away – but she was bound, held firmly in place by the hand at her hip and the reins of the horse bit in her drooling mouth, able to do nothing but grind and thrash and buck against the massive shaft that was ruthlessly dominating her. To her body, a cock was a cock, and her horror did nothing to abate the hot waves of orgasm that seized the slut’s fuckhole over and over again, growing more and more powerful now as her futile hip-churning struggles rubbed sensitive nerve endings over the veins of his fat dick, intensifying the horny sensations that claimed her... her juices were jetting out around the plundering, conquering cockflesh of her new master. "NNNNNAAAAAAAAHHHHAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!"

"What," gloated that voice that had sounded so familiar. "Not happy to see your father returned from the land of the dead? No matter, you still get your lesson! A lesson about your inner whore!" He was ramming into his prey with greater and greater speed and viciousness, grunting with the pleasure the incestuous rape was bringing him as Keiko moaned and sobbed and orgasmed helplessly underneath him. "I have taught you this lesson three times tonight already – and I will teach it to you again! Every night I will teach it to you again... and again... and again!"

This has happened before! It’s all happened before! It’s all going to happen again! Keiko felt her mind sliding into an abyss, into pure horrified sexual hell as she was claimed by a sense of utter doom, her fate to be forever stalked and beaten and raped by her own... her own... Debilitating, ruinous shame swept over her as her pussy surrendered climax after spurting, machine-gun climax to the cruel raping cock. Nooooooo please father please father PLEASE father NONONONONO, her mind wailed pitifully as she felt his hot spunk explode inside her and she seized up again, and again, and again: "NAHHHHAHHHHHHAAAAAHHHHHHH! NNNAAAAAHHHHAAA--"

* * * * *

"-aaaaaahhhhhhhhh!"

Keiko jolted out of her sleep with her sweet pussy spurting, with four of her fingers slamming rapidly into her clutching snatch as a powerful orgasm ripped through her. "Aaaahhhhahhhhhh!" she moaned deliciously as she drew out the pleasure, the incredible sexual sensations pulsing through her, gradually ebbing, leaving her shivering and spent in her wet, tangled sheets... staring with shining eyes up the ceiling as her body floated in blissful aftermath.

She frowned for a split second as a vague lingering chord of emotions thrummed along her nerve endings – terror? shame? horror? helplessness? despair? – but even as her brain thought to name them, they were already fading into indistinct echoes, as though they’d never been there at all... and they were gone, forgotten, leaving her to enjoy the moment. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmmm." The sexy Eurasian Foxx lifted her hand up to her lips and closed her eyes while she luxuriously, decadently licked her own essence from her dripping fingers as she tingled all over, savouring the honey taste of her juices on her tongue as they slid down her throat.

She’d been very frightened at first when she’d started to have these incredible wet dreams, frightened by the unprecedented hot lust that seemed to swamp her body every night. But her session with Dr. Nielson had set her mind at ease. "Experiences like these are just your mind finding an outlet for stress," he’d told her when she’d surfaced from her hypnotic daze in his gleaming contraption, the Machine. "We have to work with your subconscious, not try to fight it. Don’t try to suppress or avoid the dreams, don’t try to remember them. Your mind and body are looking for much-needed release. Simply let them have what they need and then move on with your day. You’ll feel much stronger and more confident for it."

You were so right, Doctor-san, thought the Tiger Princess happily as she stretched languidly and slid out of bed. Her body felt almost lighter than air, suffused with well-being as she got up and headed for the shower. It feels really good not to fight it. Really, really good. And she’d been so relieved to learn the other Foxxes were having the same feelings, too. She no longer had to hide what she was experiencing, no longer had to muffle the wild climactic wails which, after all, she would occasionally hear from her friends’ rooms, too. She would smile when she heard those sounds, thinking: I guess all our minds must be "looking for outlets"!

It was really too bad that Dr. Nielson had had to leave so quickly after finishing his sessions with them. He’d been an interesting man... not to mention a handsome one! And Keiko had been pretty sure he had liked her. I do wish I could flout his advice and remember the dreams just once though, she admitted to herself, her ears heating faintly as she stepped into her shower and turned it on, the hot water cascading over her smooth, lightly-freckled skin as she soaped herself up. They must be incredibly hot.

She was looking forward with eager anticipation to the day. She’d been proud and delighted to get the assignment, routine though it seemingly was: Max had asked for a Foxx to meet with and interrogate a new informant inside the Rubinetto Family, one "Fingers" Costello. A simple assignment, yes, and yet far from it... because Costello claimed to know when and where the next meeting of the Seven Families of the Commission would be. And apparently the Boss of the Syndicate was slated to be there, to report to Boss Angel about her group’s work on the mob’s behalf.

It was the final piece of the puzzle. That meeting would be a perfect opportunity for a raid, to snap them all up in one shot – the endgame! Checkmate for the forces of evil, slavery and vice!

Summerset had tapped Keiko as the obvious choice for such a meeting. If any... physical inducements were necessary, her fearsome capabilities as a fighter would hold her in good stead. Not that it should come to that; the meet had been set up in a tame family-friendly Argentinian restuarant called Bolero’s, down in Devil’s Banquet. She could take a cover team in with her, and she wouldn’t even be needing to go with much in the way of disguise. Maybe dress a little librarian-style, she thought with a quirk of amusement, towelling her hair vigorously as she stepped out of the shower. I might ask Raven to do a braid for me, though; stay battle-ready, just in case. You never know what Rubinetto Family scum like Costello might have up their sleeves.

As she went to her closet, surveying her dazzling range of outfits, she wrinkled her nose at the smell of sex in the air. Must get housekeeping in again. Those dreams might be nice, but they’re murder on the linen...

* * * * *

Mosley’s mind worked rapidly as he pushed his huge boat of a Cadillac through the mind-boggling traffic and chaos of huge, flashing billboards that was Olympia Square.

His heart was hammering as though in anticipation of a shootout. And that might not be far wrong, he thought sourly. The Foxxes’ Den, a dozen blocks away in East Middleburg, had always seemed like an impregnable haven, a home away from home in a secret seven-levelled hive of underground chambers beneath the incongruously sleazy SUDDZ and its companion set of dummy storefronts and businesses. But his epiphany down at Half Moon Wharf had transfigured it into a pit of vipers and unseen threats.

The best reason for someone to alter the Kitts’ behaviour, he realized during the drive, would have been to turn them, to recruit a force of agents working in the Den on their enemies’ behalf. He didn’t want to let his mind dwell on what could have been involved in that process, what might have been happening to his teenaged charges while he’d thought them safe and protected under the shield of Operation Freedom’s army of agents and their high technology. He couldn’t let himself dwell on it; the regret, grief and guilt would overwhelm and cripple him, and he needed to keep moving.

Besides which, the damage they could have done in their altered state – even the most recently turned of them – was more than enough to think about. That damage, he guessed, was probably extensive by now. The Kitts themselves could have been, would have been, monitoring him and reporting to whomever it was that now controlled them... probably the Red Queen Syndicate they’d supposedly been "investigating." The Syndicate might well have read signs of his growing disaffection, could easily have decided on doing away with him. He would have to get in and get out quickly, avoid attracting attention.

Luckily for him, the Kitts wouldn’t necessarily know everything about the secret ways in and out of the Den.

As he fought his way free of the Olympia Square traffic, he shot at top speed through the somewhat quieter streets of East Middleburg, finally pulling up a block away from the SUDDZ storefront. Getting out of his car, he moved at a fast clip toward SUDDZ’ neighbouring storefront, an equally moribund dummy business called "Miriam’s Shawarma."

Operation Freedom had bought Miriam’s Shawarma out from the original "Miriam" when they’d built the Foxxes’ Den. It had been a perfect fit with their "horribly unattractive businesses" theme for the block, rated then as the worst Lebanese eatery in Middleburg and probably in all of Midtown, if not beyond. They’d proudly kept Miriam’s signature inedible sauces, slimily decomposing salads, evidently filth-caked tables and counters and the redoubtable, grisly lumps of cat meat turning endlessly on her shawarma skewers intact; hence the wave of unappetizing odours and equally unappetizing bazuki music that washed over him as Mosley burst through the front door.

The small group of Agents "running" the place – chief among them Agent Janet Makepeace, a handsome middle-aged woman who was also the chief nurse at the Foxxes’ Den – looked at him in evident shock. Mosley’s cover persona (and Johnny himself, for that matter) was a devotee of burgers and hot dogs and would even more rarely be seen setting foot in Miriam’s than any other sane human being.

"Hey, Johnny," Agent Makepeace started to say, but he cut her off with a curt gesture, moving through into the empty restaurant’s equally deserted kitchen. But Makepeace was following him in evidently increasing alarm. "Johnny... Johnny, what’s going on?"

He looked for a moment at a blank wall beside one of the ovens. It’s been a while. As he did, he answered her. "Nothing to worry about. Just head back out front. Tell nobody that I came through here." He looked at her in emphasis: "Nobody."

After a moment, she nodded. He turned back back to the wall, said: "Ahhhh." And he reached out to push in four of the featureless white tiles in quick sequence. A section of the kitchen’s wall slid away to reveal a secret passage: a tunnel into a secret backroom behind SUDDZ, a secondary gateway to the Foxxes’ Den.

"Johnny," said Agent Makepeace, forestalling him for a moment as he started briskly into the tunnel. "Johnny, is everything alright?"

He paused, then said over his shoulder: "No. No, it isn’t. But I’ll do everything I can to make it right. I promise." And then he was gone, the secret passageway sliding automatically shut behind him.

He never looked back at Agent Makepeace. He never saw the stricken expression of grief and guilt on her face as she stood staring for several minutes at the spot where he’d disappeared... before she reluctantly reached for her cell phone.

* * * * *

"Here comes your girl, Beam. Looks like we get to find out whether all this Syndicate voodoo shit really works."

Jimmy Beam and Sonny Rubinetto, the Rubinetto Family’s chief street capo in Midtown, were sitting in a small room in the basement of Bolero’s, one of a number of Syndicate-owned "family" restaurants in Devil’s Banquet. Together they were watching a set of camera monitors, and Jimmy was trying to ignore the curious twinges in his gut, the twinges that seemed to be getting worse as the weeks went by.

Maybe I should lay off the Mexican food, he thought absently for the thousandth time as he watched the images being piped in from the upstairs restaurant. He gave Sonny a noncommittal grunt.

Keiko Takeda was indeed strutting in the front door of Bolero’s, looking like a slut librarian stepping out of a teenaged boy’s wet dreams: her charcoal-grey Chanel mini-jacket was open to reveal a sheer white crop blouse with its top buttons open, a sexy black bra clearly visible underneath; she wore a stylish, simple black belt above a tiny, pleated charcoal gray micro-mini skirt that made vain, fluttering attempts to conceal her black satin panties; and black stockings and garters adorned her mile-long, mouthwatering legs as she strode confidently in her black, high-heeled fuck-me pumps. The shining black silk of her long hair was gathered back into a braided bun behind her head, and square-rimmed spectacles gave her a saucy, profoundly cock-stiffening nerdy-nasty look.

She would not, of course, find Fingers Costello waiting for her. In a few minutes, one of Bolero’s waitresses – on loan from the stable of teen conquests that the Mistress called her Pony Girls, the very same girls who’d helped capture and break the Kitts – would be dropping a note for her directing her to meet Fingers alone downstairs. The Operation Freedom agents already dispersed around the restaurant would be, naturally, of no help to the so-called "Tiger Princess;" given the recent work of the Kitts in acquiring leverage over various agents inside the Den, this would be the first mission of Operation: Foxx Hunt that didn’t require all the elaborate subterfuges (though they’d still deactivated the emergency transponder hidden in Keiko’s spectacles). The agents were hand-picked by a compromised colleague named Lonnie James, a ranking man who’d been simply ordered to quietly subvert Mosley’s choice of team and substitute his own, all men who were now insiders for the Syndicate whether they liked it or not.

Everything was in place. It should be a deliriously happy moment for Beam, his first chance to really see what Foxx Hunt was all about.

It wasn’t.

He watched Keiko saunter over to a table, drawing open-mouthed gapes from booths full of families, some of the mothers covering their children’s eyes. She folded her heart-stopping frame into a chair by the counter to order a virgin mimosa and was humming happily to herself, oblivious to the reactions around her, as though her ultra-slutty choice of attire – selected as if for a high-class cosplay brothel – were completely normal for the setting she was in. The Hound had apparently conditioned all of the Five to show a surface of happy confidence, and it seemed to have worked almost too well: the confidence itself was becoming a form of profound delusion that was affecting their judgment, editing and dulling and warping their perception of the world around them. And all the while, the toxic swamp of lust and shame and terror and despair that completely ruled their subconscious minds bubbled and seethed underneath.

It was subtle, refined cruelty, The Boss’ favourite kind, the hidden numb wound that you would never locate before it had bled you out. But somehow this kind of subterranean... hollowing out of the enemy left an ashen taste in his mouth. Jimmy was no saint, God knew he’d fantasized for a long time about teaching the interfering Foxxes who was Boss – but he’d always envisioned doing it somehow... differently than this.

Fucking idiot, the thug lectured himself. You work for Siouxsie Sexcrime. What did you expect? But sitting and watching the once-invincible Keiko Takeda hum and sip on her drink, a lamb being led to the proverbial slaughter, he finally had to face the fact that all the twinges in his gut were more than just indigestion. He was starting to realize that this, all of this, made him feel dirty. That he didn’t like... no, that he... hated sitting in this room with some turncoat Mafia scumbag, waiting to watch these events unfold. He actually hated it.

It wasn’t just that the work was wearing on him, though he had to admit it was. As he’d helped to break Officer Deena Ryder at the Fort West women’s prison the other day, he’d felt himself floating outside his body, the callous thuggery of his treatment of the woman increasingly a mask he was wearing so as not to arouse anyone else’s suspicion, pushing himself to ever-greater heights of verbal and physical cruelty to make sure he fit in. He was undoubtedly, in criminal parlance, "going soft." He could feel it. He wondered now whether people around him, or The Boss herself, might have sensed it.

But it was more than that. Jimmy Beam was no genius, he admitted that, but he was a lot smarter than people gave him credit for. And he knew enough to suspect that the Foxxes were far from the only people being set up for a fall in Operation: Foxx Hunt.

Jimmy himself had come to work for the Syndicate as part of a wave of deceit and murder, he and all the so-called Cleanheads now doing most of The Boss’ day-to-day grunt work. The first Cleanheads – a.k.a. the Shineheads, "Los Cabezas Brillantes" – had been a gang of Dominicans, ruthless operators who’d helped Siouxsie make her first inroads into Island City’s criminal underworld. Almost all of them were dead or in prison now, bled away in the attrition of conflicts with the police and with rival gangs as men like Jimmy had been recruited to replace them, as the Syndicate drove for its present place as the underworld’s hidden power, the Commission’s semi-official even-dirtier-tricks division. And a silent part of Jimmy had always suspected that the high attrition rates of those original Brillantes had been deliberate.

Replacements like himself, after all, really hadn’t come from the criminal class at all. They didn’t share an ethnic background or an ideology or even the same taste in music. About all they had in common was that they were almost all former college athletes, usually on swiftly-dwindling Financial Aid, men who’d been facing the fact that they were never going to be the next Matt Saracen and who were easily lured in by the promise of fast money and an outlaw lifestyle. Men, moreover, with families in the city or elsewhere in the States who lived within the reach of Siouxsie’s then-new Mafia allies. They’d all been naive when they’d started out, easier to control than the Dominicans.

But Siouxsie had never stopped playing them against one another. It was evident even today: Jimmy would normally have been entrusted with this Keiko Takeda situation, but instead he was along only as a joint observer with Sonny Rubinetto. It was a relatively new man, Grayson, who’d be handling things directly. It wasn’t an uncommon sort of thing: Siouxsie liked to keep everyone on their toes, in ways that demonstrated to them all how disposable they were.

And now... now maybe the Cleanheads as a whole were becoming obsolete, just like their forebears. Maybe the time for all of their disposals was at hand in Siouxsie’s labyrinthine, ruthless mind.

More and more new faces were showing up at all the old Syndicate spots. Not just Max Fawkes, who was puzzlingly still alive and imprisoned at the Sands Estate well beyond any apparent use he might have been to the Gustavo Caliente gambit; in recent days there were other new guests at the Estate, hard-eyed men with military bearing and South African or Israeli accents on whom the Cleanheads were expected to wait almost like servants. More than that, Beam remembered the chill that had gone down his spine on meeting the Chinese "businessman" who called himself "Han-Cho Eng" at the Soliko Grand the other day; he didn’t know who the man was, but that had been a bastard who’d as soon eat your liver as shake your hand, and no mistake. A man after Siouxsie’s own cold heart.

Strangers, and strange things. That bizarre "rope monster" thing at the Soliko Grand, some kind of weird materials technology... what the hell was that about? And Siouxsie’s latest designer drug, which Lockhart was already starting to test on the most disobedient of her Pony Girls... just a couple of days earlier he’d witnessed the chilling results, seen two of the utterly blank, purely catatonic vegetables that drug produced. What was the point? Beyond that, he was starting to notice that many of the government visits where he’d accompanied The Boss were to places within close proximity of the nineteen water reservoirs that fed Island City... why?

He’d shied away from speculating on those last two questions together. The barely-guessed possibilities filled him with real, undeniable dread. The only sure thing was that the ground was shifting under everyone’s feet, moving to a tune only The Boss really knew.

And sure, yes, taking down the Foxxes had been a fantasy... but going down after them hadn’t been part of the plan. The pall of suspicion and paranoia that increasingly hung over his waking hours made it hard, now, for Jimmy Beam to appreciate moments like this one. Suddenly, he felt not like a tool of The Boss’ endless schemes, but like he also was prey, like he was trapped in them. And there was nothing to blunt that feeling; he didn’t even have the dubious gift of wakeful, blissful ignorance that the Five had been given.

"Okay, here we fuckin’ go," said Sonny suddenly, jerking Beam out of his reverie.

He looked back at the monitor, saw the Pony Girl – one of the twin blondes, Chloe, or was it Zoe? – quietly dropping her note for Keiko Takeda. The Foxx took it casually, glanced at it, then just as casually stuck it to the bottom of her glass as she got up. She rearranged her braided bun slightly, flashing a coded wait here hand-signal to the Operation Freedom agents as she did so, and started decisively toward the kitchens where the staff would knowingly nod her through. Oh, don’t worry, thought Beam bitterly. Your agents’ll wait there, all right... no matter what happens. Those are their orders, from us.

He and Sonny turned their attention to the second monitor, showing the large, soundproofed and featureless underground cell that awaited their quarry, sporting two doors and occupied only by a chair containing Fingers Costello himself.

* * * * *

Keiko felt a surge of happy excitement as she walked into the dingy, fluorescent-lit cell of a room where the "informant" waited for her. So, she thought, a little bit of action after all!

It couldn’t be more plainly a trap if they’d written the word all over the walls. The conspicuously, she noticed, soundproofed walls. A lesser woman might have quailed in fright as the door swung automatically shut with a clicking, locking sound behind her, revealing itself to have no handles on the inside, to be fixed flush to the wall. Keiko just smiled sweetly as she activated the emegency transponder in the frame of her glasses. They don’t know who they’re dealing with, she realized. The Rubinettos have never faced us directly. You’re about to get the surprise of your life, my fine Italian friend.

Fingers was a grizzled man of below-average height and deep-seamed features, his beady eyes cold on the Foxx as she faced him. "So you’re a watchacallit, huh? A Foxx?" he said, sounding unimpressed.

She shrugged. "I take it you’re no informant, Costello-san," she replied steadily, her body in a state of coiled readiness, the strength and centred calm of her years of training suffusing her limbs.

"Well, I might be," said Fingers, a bit surprisingly. "It’s just, I got a couple friends here who wanna ask you something first. Way it works is if you make them happy, I make you happy, capisce?"

The Foxx raised an eyebrow. "They had better ask quickly." Any moment now, she knew, there would be agents pounding down the door behind her.

But the door behind Fingers was already opening. A group of huge, shaven-headed men, half a dozen in all, were filing in as the Mafioso kicked his chair back and away and slid behind them. They were all clad in immaculate black-on-black suits, except for one, slightly smaller than the others, who was decked out in a natty Nehru suit. Good sense of style, she thought admiringly as she envisaged smashing in his Adam’s apple. I’ll have to try not to ruin it.

Nehru Suit said: "Just before we get started, I want to say it’s an honour to face you, Ms. Takeda. It’s not every day we get a chance to take the legendary Tiger Princess."

Just before we get started... She was struck by the curious way that first sentence almost duplicated the way Dr. Nielson had first greeted her. And not "take on," but "take." All she said was: "Not every day, and certainly not today. I would give you an opportunity to surrender, but that would be pointless, yes?"

Nehru Suit’s mouth quirked in cold amusement as his men fanned out to either side of them. "To put it mildly. You may be Keiko Takeda, but as much as I respect your talents, you’re only one woman. And," he observed, indicating the featureless cell around them with a sweep of his hands, "you’re locked in here with us."

Keiko’s smile broadened. "Oh my, you poor man, you have it all wrong," she replied as she dropped easily into a fighting stance, not even bothering to remove her glasses or her expensive pumps. "You are locked in here. With me."

Nehru Suit opened his mouth smirkingly to say something more, his eyes full of easy arrogance... but she flashed across the space between them, and all he got out was: "I am the PrUGGGHHHCHHHHKKKHHHHHHHHHHH!" He dropped, gurgling and thrashing in agony, hands clutched over his Adam’s Apple where she’d four-knuckle-struck him with flawless accuracy and carefully calibrated force; if he was strong enough, he might not die from the blow.

There was a long, stunned moment in the cell as Nehru Suit’s choking grew quieter, his thrashing steadily weaker. Keiko straightened, insouciantly cracking her knuckles and then her neck as she looked sidelong right, then left at her other antagonists, shrugging off her Chanel jacket as she resumed her stance. No point getting blood on it.

The five remaining shaven-pated goons looked suddenly at a loss, as though they hadn’t actually planned on fighting her – and Fingers was backed fully into a corner, pale as a sheet and plainly trying to look as small as possible – but whatever else the skinheads might be, they weren’t entirely cowards. Quietly, they each nodded and took on kickboxer fighting stances, readying themselves with the air of men who’d seen more than a little close combat themselves.

They would have had better chances if an actual tiger had been unleashed in the cell with them. Against the unleashed fury of the Tiger Princess, they had none at all.

Keiko was a blur as she smashed into the nearest man at her left, cutting through his guard like a knife through cheesecloth with a strike to the solar plexus. As the thug folded soundlessly, she smoothly turned, grabbed one of his arms for leverage, twisted and threw him overhead into the path of his confederate coming in behind her, wielding all three hundred pounds of him like a seven-foot club of meat and bone, the crushing impact leaving both men in an insensate heap.

The man that lashed out a kick from her right was surprisingly fast for someone his size, but not fast enough. The Foxx ducked in graceful, almost leisurely fashion under his massive foot and hammered a tiger claw strike matter-of-factly into his testicles, crushing them like overgrown walnuts. The goon collapsed with a high, pitiful keening sound of agony emerging from the back of his throat, twitching feebly for a few moments before he passed out from the pain.

This development definitely gave the last two skinheads pause. They exchanged uncertain glances as they belatedly started to backpedal away from their quarry... but there was nowhere to go, and she was on them.

CRUNCH! She darted in with a vicious kick to the side of the nearest one’s left knee, the appendage folding under him like wet cardboard. He gamely flailed a fist at her as he collapsed, and for his trouble she caught his arm, holding him off the ground for a split-second as she efficiently brought up her other hand and snapped the limb in half at the elbow, dropping the screaming thug and turning his cries into a gurgling death rattle with a high-heeled stomp to the throat as she stepped toward her last remaining opponent.

The last man, clearly determined to go out fighting, came at her with a flawless flying knee strike that might have incapacitated her if it landed, but his target had vanished in a spinning blur by the time he arrived, and as he landed she was already sweeping his left leg out from under him. As he fell with a "whooof!" on his back, his last sight was the elbow that scythed down into his nose, driving it into his brain and killing him instantly.

Take that, father! a crazy thought wandered randomly across her mind as she stood and straightened... but she didn’t have time to wonder where it came from as she heard the sound of a pistol cocking behind her.

"Okay, Little Miss Bruce Lee," came the shaky voice of Fingers Costello: "How’s about you just make like a nice little gook now, alright? Hands up."

Bruce Lee and gook in the same sentence, she thought with a rueful shake of her head. They never learn. Couldn’t one of them at least say Jet Li? Just once? She turned to look at the Mafioso as she said: "I think not, Costello-san. Why not just shoot me?"

The mobster hesitated, licking his lips. She smiled ominously. They’d come here hoping to "take" her, in Nehru Suit’s words. Of course he’d have orders not to shoot her. But he tried to bluff it anyway, sidling along the wall as he said: "Hey, you move and I just might, you get me? Make you suckee-suckee on a mouthful of lead, capisce? Now just..."

Before he had a chance to finish the sentence, she’d whipped across the space between them, knocking the gun out of his hand with her first spinning kick and the sense out of his head with the second. As he collapsed unconscious to the floor, she picked up his revolver and dumped out the bullets, tossing it aside as she surveyed the carnage.

Two men very, very dead. Another who wouldn’t be of any further use to women, nor recovering consciousness anytime soon. She might have felt a twinge of sadness or guilt at that, but she’d had no choice but to go all-out; her agents should be down here by now, something had clearly malfunctioned in her transponder. Mercy was a luxury she couldn’t afford. But Costello was alive, and the two goons she’d smashed into each other were starting to groan and stir feebly... and lo and behold, Nehru Suit had actually managed to fish his Adam’s apple out of his windpipe and was drawing deep, shuddering, ragged breaths. Tough bastard, she thought, vaguely pleased. She’d left more than enough to work with.

Now, to get out of here. She walked over to crouch down and grab Nehru Suit by his jacket, hauling the goon up to face her. "Time to come upstairs and meet my agents," she told him. "Now is the time to talk, my stylish friend. Tell me how we open these doors." For a moment he just hung limply in her hands, still gasping, clearly savouring the sweet oxygen entering his lungs. She hauled off and slapped him sharply across the face: "I said, talk!"

Slowly, the man’s eyes focussed on her. There was a rabid, vicious gleam in his gaze now, but his smile was still affable as he nodded, holding up a finger as though to indicate "just give me a moment" as he drew a few more deep, ragged breaths, his eyes closing again as he did it.

Then finally, he opened his eyes, his smile broadening. And he talked.

* * * * *

Johnny Mosley had snuck into his operational office on the second level of the Den and was working feverishly at his computer, deleting some files and backing up others to a minidisc, the crucial ones that he’d be taking with him. As that work drew to a close, he found himself obsessively checking through the Operation Freedom network and seeing confirmation of some of the fears that had swamped his thoughts on his journey back from the wharf.

He ran across one thing in particular that jumped out at him: there was a suspicious irregularity in the personnel listed on Keiko Takeda’s cover team. It wasn’t, he realized, at all the team he’d told Agent James to take out; the man had countermanded his orders behind his back and selected a completely different team! Cold terror shafted into his guts.

They’ve turned Agents, too? How? And how many? That’s a dozen men on Keiko’s team! And Lonnie! Who the hell can I trust?

Then, following on that realization: They didn’t expect me to be around to check that detail, he thought. I am in danger here! Right now!

He shut down the computer immediately, abruptly leaping up from his chair and resolving to grab a few things and get out. And then he heard the unmistakable snikt! of a gun being taken off safety directly behind him... and he froze.

"Slow and easy, Mister Mosley," said a sultry voice. "Turn around slow and easy."

He turned, slow and easy. Bailey Phillips was standing in the doorway of his office. She had finally shed the "Siobhan O’Connor" disguise of the past weeks and was back to her normal tanned, brunette hoochie-girl sexiness, her dark brown hair swept up into a cute top knot, clad in a transparent blue mesh top that showed off her otherwise bare and perky young B-cup breasts, denim hotpants hugging her hips and amazing, curvaceous ass, white high-heeled pumps on her feet. Most importantly, though, she had a service-issue Glock levelled right at him, a mad sheen glistening in her eyes as she smiled naughtily.

Agent Makepeace sold me out, he thought in despair. She’s one of the ones they’ve turned... shit... how? "Bailey," he started to say aloud. "Whatever they’ve told you, they’re lying to you, you can still—"

"Your weapons, Mister Mosley. Take them out slowly and kick them over to me."

Slowly, he fished the gun out of his shoulder hoster and the backup piece at his ankle, kicking them over to her one after the other as he kept talking. "Whatever the Syndicate’s done to you," he said slowly, steadily: "It isn’t your fault. You didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry, Bailey, I’m so sorry we failed you so badly, but we can get help for you, for all the Kitts. It’s not too late, Bailey. It’s not too—"

"Oh, but it is too late," she said, her aim steady as she gathered up the pistols and shoved them into either side of her little waistband. "Much too late. You see, we love Our Mistress, Mister Mosley. And She loves us. She showed us the truth, She showed us all how to be strong through Her." He could plainly hear the capitalization, the worship in the teen spy’s words. "She showed us the power of submitting to our true natures.We wield Her power now, through our obedience to Her. You’ll all learn about Her power, Mister Mosley. This is only the beginning." She backed away from him, beckoning for him to follow her with the barrel of the pistol.

He walked forward slowly, noting the resolve in her eyes, the rock steadiness of her finger on the trigger. She’s not the least bit afraid of capping me right here, he thought, abandoning any ideas of rushing the girl. She will do it. And then everything will be truly lost. Got to play along until I can find an opening...

"This?" he asked aloud. "Are you sure you’re ready to betray your friends in Operation Freedom? To betray the Foxxes? These are things you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life, Bailey."

She giggled. " ‘Friends in Operation Freedom?’ " she echoed mockingly as they stepped out into the hallway, gesturing for him to walk ahead of her. " ‘Friends’ would have seen the truths that Our Mistress saw all along, Mister Mosley. And the Foxxes will lie naked and broken and begging at Her feet before the end, I promise you. Now move."

The hallway was curiously deserted as they made their way to the elevator, almost as though Bailey had someone carefully keeping it clear. Mosley felt like he was in a nightmare, felt like crying. Perversely, he also felt a twinge of pride in the corrupted Kitt when he noticed how carefully she maintained a distance of at least a metre between herself and her prisoner at all times. They’d taught her well, they really had. But not well enough to save her from... whatever they’ve done to her...

No, not "whatever." All the talk about a Mistress was clear reference to a dominatrix. The Syndicate had used rape and humiliation to break Bailey, then used the crippling shame and trauma of those experiences to twist her mind and turn her against Operation Freedom. And no wonder it worked. We sat by like a bunch of blind chumps while it was done to her, while she helped do it to the rest of the Kitts. I couldn’t even read the signs until it was too late! Of course she hates us! Of course she holds us in contempt! Of course she’s latched on to the very person who abused and broke her as a new authority figure! It was too late to change any of that, now, but there had to be a way to make it right. There had to be.

Pieces of the puzzle were missing. How had the Syndicate subverted their surveillance so completely, as they had to have done for all this to be possible? Even if they had Max in their pocket, even if they had access to all the vital systems and the digital interface codes for the satellite system, they’d have to have had advanced counter-surveillance technology at their disposal, and they’ve have to have been able to hack the satellite system in real time and substitute credible forgeries for the real data to fool Agents and extraction teams on the ground. That last would take cyber-espionage resources on a truly appalling scale, hundreds upon hundreds of hackers working on the problems at any given time of day. Had they so completely misread the scale of what they were fighting?

They arrived at the elevator, and as it slid open he could see that one of the ceiling panels had been pushed aside. Voluptuous Irina Dubrovna was perched in the ceiling’s aperture, her blonde hair falling wildly around her face and dressed in the same uniform of transparent mesh top, denim hotpants and white pumps. Her bullet-hard pink nipples pushed out the fabric of her top as her ample tits rose and fell with evident excitment; she had a shotgun levelled at Mosley’s chest and the same crazed gleam in her eyes.

"Hey, Irina. Been raiding the armoury, I see," said Mosley conversationally.

"Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, Mister Mosley," said the blonde Kitt with a winning smile. "We’ve been keeping busy. Please, come in."

He stepped in slowly. Bailey followed him, pressing the button for the upper level as she did so. "Yes, you have been busy," he went on. "Tell me, how many of the Agents have you turned? How did you do it?"

"Oh, the ‘how many’ is for us to know, Mister Mosley," said Bailey with amusement. "All you need to know is that before long, it will be ‘all.’ As for the ‘how’," the elevator chimed as it arrived at Mosley’s office in SUDDZ: "Well, you’re about to find that out for yourself."

The elevator opened, and two more Kitts were waiting for him there. Apparently, the whole of Bailey’s "Kitt Force Five" had assigned themselves to take him: in front of him, with submachineguns trained at his chest, stood sandy-haired runway beauty Gemma Bond and Bailey’s fellow brunette hoochie-cutie, Katie Staite. Beyond them, in SUDDZ, he could hear raucous party music pounding.

He stepped out of the elevator, walking slowly forward as the heavily-armed Kitts arrayed themselves carefully around him, clearly taking no chances. "On into the salon, Mister Mosley," said Bailey. "We’ve got a surprise for you." Blood running cold, he swallowed, looked wistfully at his old portrait of John Travolta – he had a feeling he wouldn’t be seeing it again – and stepped out of the office.

The blinds in the salon were drawn, and the Kitts had mounted a mirrorball on the ceiling. The sound system was blaring hard-edged dance music, and looking around he could see that all the Kitts were wearing the same skimpy uniform as the Kitt Force Five, their pert tits bouncing and their taut asses writhing as they danced sinuously, running their hands over their taut young bodies, licking their lips lasciviously.

In the middle of the salon they’d set a table, a huge birthday cake adorned with a single candle. It was chocolate with green and white icing, the words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. MOSLEY" picked out in white on the top. Standing next to it was little Lizzie Maxwell, last member of Bailey’s Kitt Force, dressed in a slutty Goth variation on what the rest of the girls were wearing, her top made of loose black fishnet, a bullet belt around her waist, her denim hotpants done in red zebra print, her feet clad in big black platform heels. She was sporting a short, sassy Hime cut with the bangs dyed in bright red, and her eyes gleamed just as crazily as her friends’, if not more so.

Held in Lizzie’s grip, breathing nervously, her eyes shining, was the slender, ripe-titted Latina cutie Selena Jolie. Her hands were leather-cuffed behind her back and she was entirely naked except for her high heels, her dark hair tumbling around her beautiful, anxious features, her golden-brown skin goose-pimpled with apprehension or excitement, her pussy shaved bald for the occasion and already dripping its glistening juices down her thighs as her brown nipples stood out rock-hard from her young, firm tits.

"It’s all for you, Mister Mosley," said Bailey from behind him, as he felt a gun barrel prodding him forward. "This is a birthday celebration for the new you. And we got you a very nice present."

He was seized by a powerful sense of the surreal as he watched Lizzie grab the bound Selena by the hair, bending her forward and mashing her delectable tits thoroughly into the cake. Not a few weeks ago they’d both been innocent girls training to be part of law enforcement’s greatest triumph since the Untouchables took down Al Capone. Now they were both whores from Hell, Selena giving a little moan as her captor yanked her back upright, a double helping of chocolate cake dripping off her tits and sliding down the front of her young body as she was brought over to Mosley, the Latina slut’s eyes gleaming as she stood proudly with her spine erect and her messy, heaving breasts thrust out in a lewd offering.

"Have some cake, Mister Mosley!" said Lizzie in a bright voice.

Horror stayed him for a moment more, but then Irina pumped her shotgun meaningfully behind him and, reluctantly, he bent forward, reaching out to grab one of Selena’s firm, supple, glorious mams and feed the delicious young flesh with its sickly-sweet topping into his mouth. Then he inhaled her scent... and he felt his mind disconnecting abruptly from his body, his cock suddenly engorging, his mouth suddenly sucking and chewing at the teenaged tit with abandon as he stepped in closer to claim her other breast, moving his mouth back and forth between them, feeding avidly as the bound Selena gasped and writhed hornily against him.

Some kind of pheromone, he realized clinically as his hands came up and started to rip at his clothes, the watching Kitts cheering uproariously. So, it’s blackmail videos of sexual misconduct, then. Yes, I suppose that would do the trick.

One of his last thoughts before it began in earnest was: Well... I tried...

* * * * *

"Thanks for the assist, Beam, you fucking... asshole," came Grayson’s ragged voice over the feed from the Cell. "Get the hell over here, will you?"

The Nehru-suited Cleanhead was standing with his arm braced shakily against a wall, still nursing the pain in his throat as he looked venomously into the camera. Beam had to admit that the best part of the day so far had been seeing that overconfident bastard come within a hairsbreadth of being killed. Serves you right, you fucking Bond villain wannabe, he thought a little smugly. Conditioning or no conditioning, never forget they’re still the Problem, the Foxx Force Five.

Sonny Rubinetto was looking at him quizzically as they booth stood, getting ready to go through. "Hey," Beam said, "I would’ve piped some audio into the room and caught her from a safe distance. It was Grayson’s bright idea to get in a hell-in-a-cell match with her." The mobster grimaced and nodded as they left the observation room.

Unwittingly, the Foxx had given Grayson an opening to finally choke out the code phrase: "I am the Projector of the Planetarium." He’d rasped it with vengeful relish as she crouched over him to interrogate him, and just like that, the joyfully conquering Tiger Princess was gone. Keiko’s features froze, her eyes going wide, her lips parting in a soundless gasp, all colour draining from her face and all strength clearly vanishing from her limbs as her body shuddered faintly in subliminally-conditioned terror and submission. "Instruction... kneel." She’d complied with cringing alacrity as though the command had been punctuated by the lash of a whip, her hands folded behind her back and her eyes down, her pert bottom peeking out from beneath the cute micro-mini. She waited tamely to be instructed, glancing furtively around her in terror as though she could hear some horrible, private voice taunting her.

It had been a messy way to get the result, though. Bill and Cody were dead, Tommy arguably worse than dead. Ahmed and Cache were limping painfully, woozily to their feet, arms looped around each other for support, clearly nursing multiply-broken ribs and probably other injuries from the way the first had been used as a living cudgel against the second; they’d both be needing medical attention. Fingers Costello was still out cold. Grayson was damnably lucky to be alive, and should probably get medical attention himself... but Jimmy Beam had seen the livid, animal rage in the normally amicable man’s eyes. No way would he leave the action now that he had a personal score to settle with Keiko Takeda.

As they headed through the twisting passages underneath Bolero’s, Jimmy fished a walkie-talkie out from his jacket pocket and barked into it. "Chris, Bobby, we need you in the Cell. There’s a mess to clean up." After a few more steps he added: "And call up to the shift manager, get Chloe or Zoe or whatever her name is down here, too. Grayson’ll want her."

They came to the Cell door and opened it.

"Ahem," Sonny Rubinetto said with an odd touch of almost-daintiness as he held a handkerchief to his face. Jimmy Beam flinched too, but only slightly. The room reeked of the piss and shite of the slain men, but he’d smelled worse in his years working for Siouxsie. Chris and Bobby arrived close behind them, both huge men pausing to give low whistles as they surveyed the bizarre scene in the Cell.

"Fuck, that’s ripe," said Bobby redundantly. Jimmy looked at him in irritation and gestured succinctly to the corpses, setting him to work dragging them out as Chris picked up Costello’s limp form, following the painfully limping Ahmed and Cache back out into the passageway. Jimmy himself grabbed a hold of Tommy, the man letting out a pitiful groan as he was dragged to the back doorway for collection. As he did this, the front door to Bolero’s opened and the babydoll-cute Pony Girl walked in in her frilly, flouncy waitress uniform, her blue eyes suddenly going saucer-wide at the sight of Tommy’s prone carcass being dragged across the floor and at the obvious stench of death hanging in the room. She hastened to let the door fall shut behind her.

Grayson and Sonny were standing contemplatively over the kneeling, shivering form of Keiko Takeda. Jimmy and the Pony Girl joined them.

"So alright, we can see it leaves all that kung fu, shoot-em-up, whatever Foxxy Five shit intact if you want it," Sonny was saying. "Though Christ on a fuckin’ crutch, I don’t see why you’d want it. What I wanna know is, how’s all the rest of it work?"

Grayson nodded, swallowing painfully before he rasped: "Way I understand it, a Foxx’s mind now is like a layer-cake. The top layer is their conscious ‘Foxx’ personality. Sort of bliss... blissfully..." He had to pause for a moment as he swallowed again.

"Blissfully ignorant," Sonny prompted him, and the Cleanhead nodded again.

"Ignorant of what’s underneath," Grayson continued. "Second layer is like a... submissive mode."

"That’s when they get off on gettin’ tied up and banged and shit, right? Like with those whatchacallem, those Vixxens at the Grand the other day?"

"The Kitts, right," confirmed Grayson. "And the bottom layer is what you see here. Think of it like... changing the settings on a computer. That’s what the code phrase puts them into. If you want... want to increase their sensitivity to pain and pleasure, or give them an irresistible urge to beg for mercy, or want to... make them hop on one leg when they hear the name ‘Gumbel,’ this is where you... plant the command. Then you use a second code phrase to bring them one layer up into... submissive mode."

Sonny smirked. "Increased sensitivity, beg for mercy and hop on one leg, huh? You gonna do all that?"

Grayson shook his head. His eyes were hard, implacable as he looked at the kneeling Foxx. "No. Just the first... two." He grimaced. "We’re shorthanded for the second part of the... demonstration, though. Beam, you dickhead, you going to make yourself... useful for something today?"

"Useful? You mean you’d like me to handle reporting to The Boss about how great your plan worked out, Grayson?" Beam responded sardonically. The other man, caught off guard, shot him an almost pleading look, and he shrugged. "Guess I’ll leave that with you. Look, I’d love to stick around and help with the festivities, but I’ve got to take Chris and Bobby to get rid of those bodies and get our wounded to a doc. Maybe I’ll find someone who can implant some artificial balls for poor Tommy."

Grayson had the good grace to look chastened, and nodded after a moment in agreement, stroking his jaw. Then he was struck by an apparent bolt of inspiration, and he turned to the Pony Girl, snapping his fingers. "Hey, Chloe—"

"Zoe, sir."

"Whatever," he said indifferently. "Listen, I want you to go get naked, and get any paddles, toys and... and ropes you brought with you. Bring them here. But before you do all that," he added, reopening the front door with a remote in his pocket as the Pony Girl moved eagerly to obey, "I want to you to go upstairs. I want you to tell all those Operation Freedom motherfuckers to get... get down here in fifteen minutes. All of them."

Her own agents. That’s fucking cold, thought Beam with a pitying look at the Foxx still kneeling, still shivering, hearing it all being said around her but only able to respond to orders. You’ll go far, Grayson. Lot of good it’ll do you. He nodded to Sonny Rubinetto, gave another shorter nod to his fellow Cleanhead, and turned to head out, profoundly glad to be doing so.

As he was closing the door behind him, he overheard Sonny saying: "You remember at the Grand the other day there was this one really flexible girl, and they made her do that thing that was so fucking hot? I’ll bet you fifty bucks this bitch could do it too..." And suddenly, he had a thought.

* * * * *

The world went white. Keiko was floating somewhere, quivering in stark terror as the nightmare-voice of her father, the cold cruel voice of the demonic, incestuous rapist that owned all her dreams, gave her instructions. "You will feel everything we do to you now more intensely than you’ve ever felt before," came his mocking, sardonic tones. "You will be punished if you have the audacity to beg for mercy... but you will beg anyway. Again and again you will beg. Because you like to be punished." And sussurating through the background, that same voice was taunting her constantly: "Filthy slut... worthless whore... tied up and fucked... all you’re good for... filthy slut... worthless whore... tied up and fucked... all you’re good for..."

Keiko jerked back into awareness, a stark, helpless sense of dread panic invading every fibre of her being. Her whole body hurt – she tried desperately to move, and couldn’t!

Wh- what...? she thought in utter bewilderment as her senses swam. Her situation had changed in the blink of an eye. One moment she’d been crouched over a defeated foe, trying to get him to tell her... something, and he’d said... something... and she’d blinked, and here she was now, wriggling on the ground, tied and helpless –

-- and, she realized with horror, in a profoundly humiliating position!

Her body hurt because she’d been profoundly contorted, tied into a human knot. There was rough rope tied tight around her ankles... and they were folded behind her head! Her black satin panties and her micro-mini skirt had been removed, and her own naked crotch was pressed close to her face by the tight, inescapable bondage! Her arms had been pulled through her legs, then twisted behind her back where her wrists were tied, the leverage of her arms inevitably forcing her exposed pussy even closer to her face, her cuntflesh practically pressing right into her mouth! She wriggled and whined and moaned desperately, the sensation of the rope against her skin as stark and vivid as anything she’d ever felt, the agonizing vulnerability of her contorted position sending electrifying jolts of terror through her, her overwhelmed mind babbling: oh my GOD oh my GOD what’s happening to me?! And as she struggled, she could feel her own hot breath panting on her snatch, each movement of air like a solid feather stroking down the length of her hot slit, and she could watch her clit stiffening and her cunt starting to moisten... the wetness growing more pronounced even as her panic swamped her!

There was a commotion in the room – there were people all around her! They could see her like this! She craned her head around, able to make out blurry shapes in her peripheral vision, knots of men standing around and talking, arguing about something, she couldn’t really hear. "Puh... pleaheeease..." she heard her own whining, snivelling voice as though it were somebody else’s. "Somebody... please! Please help me!"

The face of a super-pretty, doll-like blonde girl loomed suddenly into view over her ass, grinning saucily. Keiko could see and feel a soft little hand running playfully over her ass-flesh, could feel her skin goose-pimpling all over... God, my skin is so sensitive! I’ve never felt so... "Hello, Keiko!" the girl said brightly, resting one of her cheeks adorably against the bound captive’s ass. "I’m Zoe! You begged?"

"Zoe... puh... please... please let me go... I can’t take... tied like this... I feel too... too..."

"Too naked? Too vulnerable? Too splayed? Too wet? Too slutty? Too filthy? Too helpless? Too humiliated?" suggested the blonde in sprightly rapid-fire fashion, making the bound Foxx’s body jolt as she snuck a finger in to play wickedly around the rim of her tight asshole.

"Y – yes..." admitted Keiko miserably, despairing in the realization that Zoe intended only to torment her. But she couldn’t stop herself from begging: "Please... please have mercy... I... I’ll be a good girl... you’ll see... I’ll show you... please don’t do..."

"Don’t do what, ‘good girl’? We haven’t done anything yet," Zoe cut her off, a malicious gleam in her eyes now. And suddenly Keiko realized who she was: the waitress from Bolero’s! "But there’s a problem with the whole ‘mercy’ thing, Keiko. You see, you just killed two of my friends. You did worse than kill a third, and injured more yet. So now... now there’s gonna be some payback, see?"

A shaft of cold terror shot through Keiko. "I’m... please I’m so sorry... I... I’m sorry..."

"Not yet, you’re not," said Zoe, smiling naughtily. "Not by a long shot. First rule, Tushy Princess: I have the right to leave you lying here tied up in abject humiliation for as long as I want. Second rule: you have no right to ask for mercy. Every time you do ask for it, you’ll be punished, and the only way out of your punishment will be for you to stick out that nasty little tongue of yours and suck an orgasm out of your own fucking slut-whore twat and down your throat. And no faking, either: I’ll want to see those juices squirt all over your face and in your mouth... awwww, poor little Tushy Princess doesn’t like my rules?" The girl broke off mockingly as she saw Keiko shaking her head in desperate denial, her eyes wide in terror. "Well then, you’re really not gonna like my third one: if I have to punish you five times for begging a mercy you don’t deserve... well then, I’ll turn this whole room full of fourteen big throbbing cocks loose on you. And then you’ll find out what ‘punishment’ really means." Zoe’s hand squeezed one of her buttocks playfully. The girl looked at her pointedly and said: "Any questions?"

Keiko had never felt so overwhelmed and terrified, so powerless, so helpless and bewildered in all her life. Even her worst memories, even the stuff of her endless awful nightmares couldn’t compare. And yet her pussy was already a hot pool of dripping lust, getting wetter by the second, her honey-sweet juices already starting to run in rivulets down her thighs and drip-drip-drip onto her flinching face. She desperately didn’t want to be forced to suck her own pussy, desperately didn’t want to find out what ‘punishments’ the cruel little Zoe had in mind, but the panic was too vivid, too overpowering and she found herself babbling: "Ohpleaseohpleasepleaseplease don’t do this to me please I’m sorry I’ll be a good little girl you’ll see just please untie me please have mercy pleasepleasePLEASE have MERCY..."

Zoe gave her a cold smile. "Well, if that’s the way you want it."

Her face vanished, and Keiko cringed in panicked anticipation. What... what is she going to—

Crack! A big black leather paddle slashed down across the taut flesh of her ass, just inches from her watching eyes. "AWWwwwhawww!" she squealed, the pain arcing through her body like a thirty thousand volt shock, more powerful than anything she’d ever felt before, her body going rigid... and then the paddle was coming down again... again... AGAIN! Crack! CRACK! CRACK! "AWWWWWW! AWWWWWW! AWWWWWWHAWWW!" Her head was swimming, she could feel her whole body seizing up in agony and ecstasy, could already feel her hot snatch boiling on the brink of orgasm. God, it hurts so MUCH... why am I so SENSITIVE oh God I can’t take it I can’t TAKE it...

She could hear Zoe’s voice as the paddle came down on her reddening ass again and again: "Suck that pussy, bitch! Suck it! I don’t stop spanking ‘til you’ve sucked one out of your FUCKING WHORE CUNT! SUCK IT! I SAID SUCK IT!" NononoNONONO, Keiko’s mind babbled, but as the next blow blazed across her ultra-sensitive, stinging ass, she knew she had no choice, that the battle was lost.

To her utter shame and defeat, the Foxx lifted her mouth up to her cunt... ran her tongue across her clit and shuddered with the powerful, profound sensations it produced... and then started to lick and suck her own sopping, slutty snatch.

"MMMMMMMMMMHHHHMMMMPHHHH!" Keiko was cumming in her own hot mouth within moments, sweet spurts of fuck-nectar jetting down her throat and splashing all over her face as her hot twat clenched and spasmed in delight... but still Zoe didn’t stop spanking. "MMMMMMMMMMHMMMMPHHHHHH! MMMMMMMMMM-MMMMMMHHHMMPHHHHHHHH!" As the Foxx squealed and sobbed brokenly and sucked desperately on her cunt-flesh, every agonizing impact of the paddle now sent thunderbolts of ecstasy, pulsations of sexual heat through her pussy and her stiff little clit, and the vicious spanking went on and on as one wet climax blended into another... and another... and another.

Cumming... so hard... again and AGAIN... can’t stop CUMMING... my pussy so... so sensitive... her mind babbled despairingly as the multiple climaxes claimed and shamed her, every powerful spasm searing her soul and breaking her will even further. At one point, she found herself closing her eyes and sticking out her tongue and vigorously fucking her squirting pussy with it, reduced to nothing but a nympho putting on a filthy sex show, utterly lost in hot lust and shameful debauchery as the punishment mingled with a pleasure more intense than any she’d ever known. "MMMMMMMMMMMM-HMMMMMPH!"

Finally, Zoe relented. It took Keiko one more convulsive, squirting orgasm to realize the paddle wasn’t punishing her vulnerable ass anymore. She opened her eyes, seeing a blurred image of the blonde girl simply gazing down at her with a mocking grin – they’d left her fake spectacles on, and now they were thoroughly spattered with her cunt juices – and she moaned as she licked and sucked out another hot helping of her own girl-come anyway. Oh God... oh God I’m such... such a SLUT... she thought shamefully as her pussy seized and spurted, spurted, spurted into her mouth, as she swallowed hard and savoured the sweet liquid sliding down her throat. Such a slut...

"Wow, you’re some fucking whore," said Zoe cheerfully. "You love being spanked, don’t you, slut?"

Panting, Keiko lay back her head, shaking it in futile denial. "Please..." she moaned. "Please... Zoe... isn’t this... isn’t this enough... ? I... I don’t think I can... take..."

"Oh, you’re gonna take more, Keiko, believe me. A lot more. And hey," the girl drew a vulnerable shudder from her helpless captive as she dipped two fingers into her soaking cunt, rubbing the glistening juices around her asshole. "It seems like you’re begging again. Are you begging again, you dumb bitch?"

"Unnnghhh," Keiko moaned as the blonde’s fingers pushed into her tight ass, probing her intimately and sending intense jolts of sensation through the bound Foxx as fear spiked into her mind. Oh God what is she going to do... what’s going to happen to me... and unbidden, she heard the pleading spill from her lips, knowing it would doom her even as she babbled in rhythm with the slow, wicked finger-fucking: "Oh please Zoe... ughhhh... please I can’t take being... unnnhhhh... treated like a slut... I just want to... uhhhhh... go home please Zoe... please uhhhhhhh... stop treating me like a whore... unnnnhhhh... please have mercy... ughhhh... please have mercy... ughhhh..."

"Have it your way." Zoe’s fingers slipped out of her asshole as the girl reached for something... and then she came back into view again, holding a string of big red plastic beads. Anal beads! Keiko realized, her stomach sinking. And she was holding a little leather whip! "How’s this for mercy, Keiko? I’m gonna stretch out your tight ass so it’ll be ready for all the fat dicks that are about to fuck it. Isn’t that nice?" Keiko whimpered, her mouth opening to beg again, then squealing "AWWWWW!" as the leather whip snapped across her ass. "Now get to work on that pussy, bitch. Tongue-fuck it for me, I liked watching you tongue-fuck it."

Sobbing with humiliation, Keiko obeyed miserably, sticking out her tongue and lifting up her head to spear it into her sweetly dripping slit. "AAAAaaaaahhhaaaahhhh," she moaned, panting hard through her nose, her eyes wide in disbelief as, right in front of her, she could see the first of the big plastic beads being pressed up against her tight pucker, could feel and see her sphincter stretching and dilating incredibly as Zoe pushed it in... and as it popped all the way into the bound Foxx’s ass, the girl punctuated the crude invasion with a snap of the leather whip. "AHHHHH-AHHHHHHHHHHH!" squealed the bound slut as the combination of intense sensations brought her off again, drinking down the honeyed juices from her spasming, pulsating snatch as she watched the second bead pressing up against her hole.

"You like that, huh? You like that?" Zoe grinned wickedly. "Four more to go! And I’ve got good news, Keiko... they feel even more intense when they’re coming out."

The Foxx moaned despairingly around her sweet pussy-flesh, feeling another monster orgasm building in her snatch as she watched the next plastic bead start to shove its way into her shuddering body, jagged splinters of thought ricocheting through her fractured mind. Can’t believe... this is happening... oh GOD it feels so good... why does it feel so GOOD... oh GOD I’m going to CUM AGAIN...

* * * * *

It’s the strangest thing, mused a detached part of Johnny Mosley’s horrified mind in the midst of the messy orgy that the SUDDZ salon had become. Nobody’s walked in on this... I wonder how they managed that?

His body, entirely out of his control, couldn’t care less. One of his hands was gripping a handful of slutty little Selena’s hair as he bent her over the table and powered into her tight teenaged rump with all ten inches of his angry cock, wrecking her ass with thrust after pounding thrust as he leaned down to lick a sweet morsel of chocolate off the glistening skin of her back. The girl had been smeared all over with cake, her fellow Kitts wriggling around her to slather the delicious confection all over her flesh – Lizzie was under her right now, pumping her fingers into the fuck-victim’s dripping cooze as she mashed a handful of chocolate and icing into the girl’s panting face.

"AWWWWWWYYYEAAHHHHHHHHHH!" he heard the animal growl of release burst from his throat as his nuts tightened and then jumped, pumping a load of hot cum into the Kitt’s tight ass as she squealed and bucked in her own blissful climax.

It was his third time around with Selena. After the first fuck, when he forced her to her knees and made her choke on his cock before throwing her to the ground and skewering her ruthlessly until he’d creamed the screaming girl’s wet, clutching fuckhole, the salon had fairly exploded into a food fight and a sexual free-for-all. The wickedly giggling Kitts had torn into the huge cake with their hands, flinging and smearing it all over each other and tearing into each other with fingers and tongues and dildoes and fists jammed up one another’s pussies and assholes... and the pheromone-addled Mosley had rampaged through their midst, ripping and shredding the skimpy clothing from any taut-fleshed body he could reach, impaling any vulnerable young orifice he could find on his rampant cock. In the midst of it all several of them had produced bottles of champagne or containers of whipped cream, and anyone in the room could expect to be randomly hosed down with either substance at any time.

At one point he’d found himself crouched over Bailey Phillips herself, having smeared whipped cream all over his hard-on and fed it to her via a vicious throatfucking, her spit running down her chin and her hornily submissive moans vibrating intensely through his throbbing member as she’d looked up at him... and despite her position of wanton sexual servitude, it was mad, evil triumph that glistened in her eyes.

Some part of what remained of his conscious mind knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this was the ignominious end of his days with Operation Freedom. Their objective hadn’t been to kill him, but to compromise him, gain leverage over him. That had to be how they’d turned Agents in the Den, but he had this much left to him: they wouldn’t turn him. He’d resign, he’d skip town if he had to, but he wouldn’t serve the Syndicate.

Cold comfort indeed.

And his body, meanwhile, thoroughly in the grip of whatever they’d used on him, was having the time of its life, making real every covert, perverted lust for his teenaged charges that he’d ever buried unacknowledged in the muck of his subconscious. He’d blasted his spunk down their throats, pumped it all over their grinning faces and heaving tits, filled their sweet teen cunts and buttholes with it, spanked and slapped them and pulled their hair and spat in their faces and called them bitches and sluts and whores while he did it... and yet his lust still wasn’t slaked, his erection still throbbing as though it were possessed by years of pent-up, unacknowledged desires. It was as though he were alive, truly alive for the first time, his body full of power, and for all that he’d tried to hold his mind aloof from the awful acts his drugged body was committing... he couldn’t help but admit how right these wrong and horrible things felt.

As he pulled his still-spurting cock from Selena’s gaping ass and let the rest of his load spill over her back and buttocks, he felt a soft little hand grab his cock and guide it into a wet, waiting mouth that started tonguing and sucking him hornily. It was Gemma Bond, gulping and slurping loudly around his cock as he twined his fingers into her long, sandy hair and automatically started to fuck her beautiful face, the girl moaning and gyrating and squealing as the mahogany-skinned cutie Janie Price appeared behind her, her body glistening with sweat and spilled champagne as she grinned and unceremoniously shoved an empty bottle deep into Gemma’s sloppy cunt.

The sensations... they really were amazing. He’d never dared dream of getting such an eager, slutty blowjob from the super-cute Gemma as she looked up at him with avid lust, never dared dream of using the sexy teen spies as crudely and viciously as he’d been given license to do today. "That’s right, suck that fucking dick, bitch," he heard his own voice saying as he pushed his stiff member to the back of her throat. "Gag on that cock... you’ve always wanted to gag on it, haven’t you, you fucking whore..." And the detached remnants of his consciousness wondered whether he could really stop now, if he was capable of denying himself pleasures like this now that he had known them.

Worst of all, a different part of his brain was warming up to his body’s demonic acts. There must be a way, it was whispering evilly, tempting him. There must be a way to own these fucking bitches. To take them from their precious ‘Mistress’ and whip them and use them every day, fuck them the way these little skanks deserve to get fucked... Turn them out, use them like true whores, make them suck and fuck any cock you tell them to... There must be a way... there must be a way...

The dark fantasies were increasingly swamping his mind, crowding out the wailing denials of his old consciousness. Oh yesss, he found himself thinking as he fucked the horny Kitt’s mouth more and more urgently. There must be a way... to make this sweet little slut choke down my spunk for breakfast every morning... there must be a way... I’ll have to stay here in Island City, go to ground and figure it out... Gemma’s cheeks ballooned, her eyes shining as she swallowed down his cum and writhed from the wine-bottle fucking Janie was administering to her from behind.

And at that moment, his old conscience was overcome entirely, leaving a strange new alien brain to calculate what he’d need to take the Kitts from this ‘Mistress’ Bailey had spoken of. Fuck, yes. Figure it out. Got to find a way. They don’t know it yet...

... but these bitches are going to be mine. Every one of them...

* * * * *

Keiko’s delicious, degrading punishment went on and on as she lost all track of time, all sense of reality, all traces of dignity.

The orgasms were growing so mind-bendingly intense that she was starting to black out when they hit, coming to again with stars bursting across her vision and the doomed awareness of yet another freight train of bitch-taming climax roaring toward her shattered mind through her super-sensitive nerve-endings. And desperately, she found herself begging, again and again, begging for release, begging for mercy, hating her inability to stop herself and knowing that every futile plea would trap her abused, contorted, pain-wracked body into a new round of merciless punishment.

The first blackout had happened with the intense release of Zoe pulling the last of the jumbo anal beads out of her, whipping her cruelly as she did it. The second had come when the sadistic girl stuffed a big black rubber toy into her butt, stretching it out even further... and the third had come when she’d crouched over the defeated, humiliated Foxx and started to force-fuck her ass with a wicked blue vibrating strap-on, her vicious taunting cries of "Take it, you nasty little butt-slut! You fucking love it, I can see you getting off! Take it! Fucking take it!" chasing Keiko’s broken consciousness through a twisting haze, equal parts blissed-out oblivion and wakeful shamed, orgasmic torment as the ravishing of her ass took her over the edge too many times to count. Each round of punishment had ended with Keiko snivelling and begging pathetically in the brief moments when she wasn’t being forced to suck the pungent flavour of her own ass off whatever object had just been used to rudely violate it.

As she came out of the latest blackout, her senses swimming, her mouth opening automatically to whimper out another series of craven, demeaning supplications – the last time, she vaguely remembered hearing herself promise to be Zoe’s "good little bitch slave" and to lick her boots clean every day – she found something rubbery being pushed between her teeth, instantly recognizing the sensation of being gagged as the object was buckled in place around her jaw. She was in an awful state, her bound limbs now howling in pain from the prolonged contortion that had been forced on them, her face and neck covered and her hair matted with a viscous, dripping slime of her own spit and cum, her fake glasses long since discarded... but she knew with despairing certainty that the "payback" was far, far from over.

As she moved her head, she realized there was something protruding from the gag, sticking out in front of her... a black rubber phallus! It was a dildo gag! She whimpered in fresh humiliation as Zoe’s face swam into view again. "Zmmmm! Plllmmmhmmmmphhh! Plllmmmmhmmmphhh! PLLLMMMMmmmmhmmmphhh!" she sobbed pathetically through her gag as the girl smiled.

"Crying and begging like a little bitch right to the end," said Zoe conversationally. "I like it that you’re consistent, Keiko. I’m going to have to leave you to your butt-busting gangbang in a minute, but the good news is I get to show you just what a dirty little bitch you are one more time before I go. Isn’t that good news?"

The Foxx jolted and moaned in despair, feeling her pussy heat up as the girl dipped three fingers into her gaping asshole, then four, then five, pumping them lewdly in and out. Zoe looked at the well-fucked ass distending around her fingerfucking with feigned astonishment.

"Wow, look at that whore ass open up! You’ve come a long way, Keiko!" said Zoe breathily. "I wonder... how much you can take?"

"NNNNNNGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHNNGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!" Keiko screamed as her tormentor shoved her hand in... and in... and in... Oh my GOD that’s... that’s her whole FIST... GOD I’ve never felt... ANYTHING... The world swam and spun around her, agony and sick delight radiating from her wrecked ass, knifing up her spine and down into her snatch and taking over her mind and soul completely.

Zoe kept up her look of staged, horny, open-mouthed astonishment – "Wow! That’s one slutty ass!" her expression seemed to say – as her fist gradually penetrated her writhing, swooning victim up to the wrist. She looked at Keiko, then back at her fist-stuffed butt, then back at Keiko again... then grabbed her victim by the back of the head and yanked her face up, as if to say: "You have GOT to get a closer look at what this slut’s ass is taking!"

"NNNNNNNGGGGGHHHHNNGGGHHHHHHHH!" Keiko squealed as the dildo protruding from her gag sank deep into her tight, dripping fuckhole, her sugar walls spasming powerfully around it as that first penetration unleashed an apocalyptic climax. Her eyes rolled back in her head, blackness claiming her... but as she swam back to consciousness, Zoe’s hand was still gripping the back of her head, still using it to fuck her with the dildo as her ass absorbed the punishment of that cruel, violating fist! "NNNNNGGGGGHHHHHHHNGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" she shrieked around the gag, oh God it’s going to kill me I can’t TAKE it it’s going to DESTROY me...

... and another climactic wave crashed over her, and she went down into the blackness again.

* * * * *

As the Foxx swam back to consciousness again, having lost count of the punishing climaxes, she realized with a start that she was lying prone and shivering on the ground... her limbs had been unbound! A wave of relief washed over her as she simply lay, limp, eyes shut, feeling the pain throb through her arms and legs, through her raw, whipped ass and her gaping butthole, wondering in terror what new hell her captors had dreamed up.

But strangely, there was nobody there to taunt and torment her, nobody to shame and humiliate her. There were... voices behind her, she registered the words but barely understood them, her mind was still spinning... an argument? There was a woman’s voice hissing in fury.

"Now that we’ve got the room clear, just what the fuck were you playing at?"

A ragged male voice answered her petulantly... was that the one she’d thought of as Nehru Suit? Had her encounter with him... had that been real?

"Listen, Sabrina," he was saying, sounding pained. "We were well... well within the parameters—"

"Well within the fucking parameters! Don’t you fucking say that to me again, you stupid sack of shit! A simple five-man demo, Grayson! In and out, limited timeframe! Those were the parameters! Van Rooyen’s positivity conditioning is only designed to withstand so much – and I get a call from Beam and come down here to find fourteen fucking men lined up? Most of them Operation Freedom agents?! And you’ve got Zoe fucking fisting her?!" The sound of a sharp slap reported through the room. "We still need her operational, you shithead! We can’t destroy them yet!"

There was a short silence. Operation Freedom agents? wondered Keiko distantly. What... what does that mean... here? They were here? Why... why wouldn’t they...

"A call from Beam, is that right," came the voice of ‘Grayson’ again, low and venomous and dangerous this time.

"Don’t get shirty about it, you punk, he was right to call me in! You get two men killed, another one permanently out of commission, one of our key Rubinetto Family street crew contacts knocked cold... it’s a goddamned miracle Sonny still went in for it after this fiasco, and that fact is the only thing that’s going to keep you alive, do you understand that?" A sullen silence greeted this. "I take it that’s a ‘yes.’ Now, what do you suppose happens if I have to pass the news on to Siouxsie about your utter loss of control here? What do you think happens to your entire family after that, Grayson? What do you think happens to your precious little niece?"

Another, longer silence, this one perceptibly more cowed.

"That’s better. Now, I’m going to keep this between us, since I’d rather not be ordered to scrub Zoe out with Kenocil or ship her off to a whorehouse in Siberia just yet, thank you very much. But you... fucking... owe me, do you understand? And I intend to collect."

After a moment: "Understood... uhhh, thanks, Sabrina."

"Don’t thank me, you ape. Just clean up this—" The woman broke off abruptly, then said: "Her breathing’s changed. She’s awake and listening to us."

Terror shot through Keiko’s body as the woman’s heels click-click-clicked over to stand beside her. The Foxx opened her eyes, still too wracked and exhausted to move, finding herself looking up at a short, slender, beautiful woman with long sandy hair and an expensive business suit. Standing beside her was Nehru Suit, Grayson, his hand absently rubbing his throat. Ah-haaaa, she thought with a brief, welcome glow of satisfaction. Well, I’ve got that much, at least.

"Doesn’t matter," said Grayson, sounding uncertain. "She won’t remember a thing once we’ve... resurfaced her, will she?"

The woman give him a wry sidelong glance, but didn’t answer. She looked back at Keiko, gazing pointedly into her eyes as she said: "Here’s a little something to carry with you into your sweet dreams, Takeda. When the time comes, when we’re finished using you and all the other Foxxes, the fate Grayson had planned for you today will look like a picnic compared to what we finally do to you. Know that... and fear it. But know above all that you can’t escape it."

Keiko gave a little moan and felt herself nodding, wide-eyed, tears leaking down her face as she heard the silky promise of violence and punishment in the woman’s voice.

The woman nodded in satisfaction and walked out of her field of vision again, Grayson in tow. She said something more about, "Just make it look plausible, I don’t care how you do it," and then the sound of one of the cell’s doors opening and shutting echoed through the sound-deadened space with finality.

Heavy, thumping steps came back over to where the Tiger Princess lay. Grayson’s face came back into view, dark now with pent-up, livid fury. Oh God, she realized, there’s nobody else here, I’m alone with him! "Please," she heard herself say, high and girlish as she cringed. "Please... please have mercy..."

Grayson smiled. "You caused me a lot of trouble today, Keiko... Takeda," he rasped thickly. "You and that motherfucker Beam both. Bet you thought that was pretty fucking... funny, didn’t you?" He cracked his neck as his eyes gleamed, her body tensing in anticipation as he said: "Well, stop me if you’ve heard this one."

Agony exploded through her as a boot collided sharply with her ribs, knocking her wind out... she couldn’t even scream.

* * * * *

"Keiko? Keiko?"

A soft voice stirred her from the void. Keiko opened her eyes, gradually focussing... she was in the sick bay at the Foxxes’ Den, and Raven McCoy was standing over her, looking compassionate and sympathetic. She took a breath, felt a sharp pain in her ribs and a pounding in her skull, her whole body hurt, there was pain everywhere, especially in her – in her –

"Wow," she joked weakly. "Did somebody get the number of that truck?"

Raven smiled. "Hey, Keiko. Good to see you, Tiger Girl. You had a bit of a close call."

"It definitely feels that way. What... what happened?"

"Agent James says you were ambushed, that they must have crushed your transponder before you could get a warning off. They stopped a van leaving the site, that’s where they found you. They think Fingers must have been in it, too."

Keiko sat up, wincing, putting her hands to her bruised ribs underneath the medical gown. The head nurse, Janet Makepeace, was in the room a few feet behind Raven consulting what looked like X-Rays. Good pinochle player, the Foxx remembered, and she gave the Agent a weak, rueful smile. Oddly, Makepeace hastily looked away, she must be really busy with something... the Foxx’s mind must be playing tricks on her, that had looked almost like a flash of guilt in the woman’s eyes...

"So we didn’t get the information, then?" she asked Raven. "That’s disappointing." Ahhhh, my joints really hurt, she thought. And it hurts to sit... hurts down... down there... I wonder what happened...

"Actually," said Raven brightly, "that’s the good news! When they abandoned the van, that Mafia idiot left his address book in it! The references in it are coded, but it’s a pretty simple cipher, Agent James thinks they can break it and have the meeting site by tomorrow morning."

Keiko smiled in surprise. "Well, that’s good news." And it was good news, she could feel that fact alone fortifying her, some of the pain in her body ebbing. Then she caught something. "Wait... Agent James thinks they can break the cipher? Wouldn’t Johnny normally handle that?"

Raven shook her head and shrugged. "Johnny called in this afternoon, apparently he’s having some kind of medical thing, it wasn’t really clear. Max asked Agent James to fill in for him."

"Well, Lonnie’s a good man."

"Yeah, and at least their names rhyme," joked McCoy with a wry grin. "So, you remember anything?"

The Tiger Princess nodded. "There was more than one ambush," she said, remembering the surging joy of ripping apart Nehru Suit and his crew. "There had to be. And we’ll have to get maintenance on all the transponders, by the way, mine must have malfunctioned, they didn’t crush it." She rubbed at her ribs again, and her mind inched toward wondering again about the pain... down there... but something inside her clamped down abruptly and banished any further thoughts about it from her mind. Instead, she felt the remembered joy surge in her again as she said: "I gave the first ambush party a good whalloping, I can tell you that much. Must have been Syndicate men. I had to kill a couple of them and then knock out Fingers when he pulled a pistol on me. I was interrogating the leader when... someone must have managed to hit me from behind with something. A taser? I don’t know." She grimaced. "After that... not a thing."

"Well, it was a close call, but you pulled through," said Raven. "And by this time next week, the Rubinettos are gonna be learning a lot about payback."

Keiko grinned, combative joy surging in her again. "Oh, yes. There is definitely going to be some payback."

As she said it, a random, chilling sentence wandered across her mind in a woman’s voice: "Know above all that you can’t escape it." But the thought shredded like gossamer and vanished as her sore brain tried to grasp at it. After a moment, the Tiger Princess dismissed it, turning her thoughts to coming fall of Operation Freedom’s enemies. It was only a matter of days, now. Only a matter of days. And they’d pay for ambushing her today.

There is definitely going to be some payback.

* * * * *

El Rey’s Restaurant in The Morners really did have some of the best burritos in the city. Jimmy Beam took a big bite, savouring the flavours, washing it down with a swallow of Panther Pilsner as he sat on the rooftop patio, looking out at the sunset over the brownstones and dingy streets of his favourite Island City borough. He was letting the day wash away from him, the conflicted emotions of crisis and anxiety – and the small, sweet triumph of throwing a monkeywrench into Grayson’s day – settling to the bottom of his mind like sediment to the bottom of the Mohegan.

He’d probably made an enemy for life today, he knew it. But on the upside, "life" probably wouldn’t last much longer anyway. And Jimmy Beam was starting to think that maybe, just maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

"Hello, Jimmy. Good to see you again."

He started at the voice from behind him, dropping his beer as he spun with one hand reaching for his pistol... and he stared. "Caliente?"

"No, Jimmy, it’s me." The nondescript looking man with the salt-and-pepper hair came up alongside him to look out at the view. "It’s Max."

"Fawkes? I didn’t realize Siouxsie was letting you off the Estate."

The former Operation Freedom commander’s mouth quirked humourlessly. "She isn’t."

"Then how...?"

Max shrugged. "Some people have a guardian angel. Me, I’ve got a guardian Goblin." As a stunned Jimmy struggled to wrap his head around the implications of that statement, Max Fawkes turned to him, his eyes and face inscrutable in the fading light. "Hope you don’t mind my showing up here, the guys at the Estate told me this is your favourite restaurant. I’ve come here with a proposition, Jimmy, and I want you to listen to me very carefully..."