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THE ADJUSTERS



66

Los Angeles, Aftermath





“So how’s everything?” asked Elizabeth Parkinson—who liked to be called Betty—smiling her usual affable smile, relaxed behind her desk, the consummate HR professional. “I heard you did very well in Los Angeles on an team assignment that turned into a solo assignment.”

Daniel Malcolm nodded. “Not a lot of secrets around here, are there?”

If Betty picked up on the sarcasm, she did not let on. “Oh, quite the contrary. There are lots of secrets around here. Security is paramount at ADCorp, as I’m sure you’re starting to appreciate. With some of the sensitive materials we have, it only makes sense.”

Daniel was curious. “Actually, if you don’t mind the question, do you actually know what those sensitive materials are? Do you know what my assignment involved back in Los Angeles?”

Elizabeth smiled, and shook her head. “I don’t. I don’t have the security clearance. And if you tell me anything about your own work, I’d have to report you, so please don’t.”

Then again, Daniel thought, if she knew anything and the fact that she did was itself classified, then she would have to say that, didn’t she? Daniel, you’re becoming paranoid. He could practically hear Sam O’Neill’s grumpy response in his head: Good!

Daniel nodded his understanding to Betty.

“In any case, that’s a great mark on your record. It shows that Agent Shawbank felt comfortable and confident leaving you in charge, and that speaks volume. She can be a harsh evaluator, and people know it. That Control seemed pleased with the result of the operation adds additional weight. So well done, very well done.” She sounded like a teacher proud of her pupil.

“Thank you,” Daniel said. He had not known that Control—the head of the Investigation and Enforcement Division—kept such close tabs on the recruits. He felt oddly pleased about this. “It was… an interesting experience.”

“I can imagine. The first time an agent has to shoulder the kind of responsibilities you had to shoulder can be difficult. Especially in someone as young as you. It sometimes brings up stuff that has never had a change to come up with. We have some very good psychologists on staff, I can set you up with one.“

“I’ll think about it. And it touches on something else I wanted to talk about.”

“The psych evaluation.”

“I’m that transparent, aren’t I?” He laughed, and not for the first time noticed how easy it was to talk to Betty. Which was probably something the blonde had cultivated as part of her professional skills. “I guess I’m a bit worried about that, yes. I’d love to get a sense from you of how things are going, how I compare to other recruits that you’ve seen in the past, that sort of thing. Trying to strategize, I guess is the right way to say it.”

“Of course, makes sense. Are you still worried about it?”

“The evaluation? Much less than before. I think the experience in California was helpful.”

“Gave you some confidence?”

“For one thing.”

For the other, a good friend of mind reminded me why I was doing this, and that sacrifices needed to be made, and that sometimes the end justifies the means. If only temporarily.

“Good to hear. Very good to hear. So how do you feel about it, now?”

“I don’t know… is this the psych eval? “

Elizabeth grinned. “Maybe?” And after a beat, she laughed. “No,” she said. “This is a genuine curiosity question.”

“I’m not entirely happy with the uncertainty of it, I guess but it’s okay. If there’s one thing I learned in this past year, it’s to roll with the changes and trust my adaptability.” He looked at her. “Does that sound like a line? I thought it sounded like a line.”

Betty laughed, shaking her head. It sent ripples in her blonde bobbed hair. She was beautiful, Daniel noted almost absently.

“That makes perfect sense,” Betty was saying. She folded her hands together on the table. Daniel glanced at them, and noticed she had laid her left hand over her right hand. He was being trained to notice just those kind of things. Betty Parkinson was right-handed, and right-handers tended to put their right hand atop their left, presumably to keep it free in case of need.

Betty Parkinson put her left hand on top of her right. Her left hand with its tattooed little finger, the wreathed ring tattoo that Calypso also bore on her same little finger, a wreathed ring that he had seen on the hip bone of Rebecca McGregor back in Los Angeles, the wreathed tattoo that he had since on the little finger of several of the female staff here at ADCorp’s headquarters.

It fit. It fit everything he had been thinking since coming back from Los Angeles, since talking to Cindy. You can’t play it safe, Dan, she had said. You can’t hide. Not if you want what I know you desperately want.

Betty Parkinson remained silent, looking at him, waiting.

Sink or swim, Daniel thought.

“Betty,” he said, looking into her eyes, “adjustment code C006.”



*



It was on his last night in Los Angeles that Daniel finally talked to Cindy Caprese. And Cindy took advantage of the moment to talk to him as well.

After their tryst in Cindy’s apartment, they had gone out for pancakes. Cindy’s choice. She ate like there was no tomorrow. Sex made her hungry, she said, and Daniel had wondered, not for the first time, where she put all those calories.

Daniel watched her eat. She was a breath of fresh air, a constant reminder of how dark and sad his life back home really was. If home even meant a thing anymore.

“So, something’s been bothering me,” he said, carefully.

“If it’s about what we just did, don’t. I loved it.”

“It’s not.”

“Cool. Well, something’s been bothering me too.” She looked at him. “You first.”

“Okay. Well. Earlier, after… well, after Fairbank did his thing, you said you weren’t worried, because Specials don’t affect you.” He waited until Cindy nodded. “How did you know?”

She shrugged. “I’m immune to the stuff that Cargyle used at Darnell. And we talked about the possibility that whatever the Specials do and the stuff that Cargyle used are related, somehow. So…”

“The key word there is possibility. We don’t know for sure.”

“Now we do.”

Daniel shook his head. “You guessed. You didn’t know what would happen.” He could feel the anxiety rise within him and he pressed it down mercilessly. “Do you see why I might be just a bit worried here?”

“You sound like my dad,” Cindy said. “That’s not really a compliment, by the way.” She stared at him for a moment, fierce, a look that he had never really seen before on her face.

“Cin?”

Her expression softened, and she attacked her pancakes with renewed vigor talking while chewing. “Fine, I’ll play, you big baby. Let me see if I can guess what’s bugging you. You’re worried that little ol’ me is so fascinated by the thought of surrendering her will to a suitably dominant male that I’d forsake all prudence and jump into the arms of the first Special I meet so that he can turn me into a brainless bimbo that lives only to suck and fuck.”

A young couple in a nearby booth turned to stare at her, eyes wide. Cindy gave them a big smile, and they quickly averted their eyes and turned back to their meal.

Daniel refused to be mocked. “Sounds crazy when you put it that way, but given your history, and how you behaved with me earlier, well… it’s not inconceivable.”

Cindy looked straight at him, her mouth full. “You know me well enough to figure that, yeah, that scenario gets me dripping wet, and I won’t deny that when you’re gone I’m going to put little Daniel through his paces as I relive today again and again, but you should also know me well enough to realize that I wouldn’t endanger myself that way without there being a serious benefit at the other end. I was safe.”

“You did enjoy being a toy for the Delta Iota Kappa,” Daniel reminded her. It came out with more spite than he cared to admit.

“One, I was perfectly safe. And two, I got out when you needed me.”

Daniel dropped his head. He toyed with his food, not hungry. “Okay. Fine. But how did you know for sure? I mean, what if Fairbank had…” He paused, looked at her—she had a little guilty smile on her face. For which there was but one explanation. “Oh my god,” he said.

“What?”

“You knew! You knew because you’ve done it before!”

Cindy did manage to look contrite, although the smile that kept tugging at the corner of her mouth suggested she may have been less ashamed than she perhaps should have been.

“Fuck me!” Daniel groaned, and shook his head violently. “You did, didn’t you?”

“Did what?” Cindy put on her most fake innocent expression.

“You ran into a Special, haven’t you?”

Cindy grinned, shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe.” She paused, poured more syrup onto her pile of pancakes. “It was an experiment, really. And a successful one. And our guess seemed right. The effects of a Special are pretty similar to whatever Cargyle’s tech did. When I hear instructions, they don’t compel me. But it also diffuses my fuck block.”

There was a tinge of glee in her voice. Her fuck block was how Cindy sometimes referred to her inability to have penetrative sex, for reasons that she never fully explained to Daniel. It was just something she had, almost like a panic attack at any attempt at penetration. Being programmed by the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity as an on-command fuck toy had the consequence of letting her enjoy sex fully, even when the compelling force of the programming stopped working on her.

“So like the medallion.”

The bronze medallion that Cindy had kept from a party set up by the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity and that “forced” her to obey anyone who wore it.

“Actually, no, that’s the weird bit. The medallion does compel me. I don’t know why it affects me so much. But when you wear the medallion and tell me to do something, I have to do it. Specials, not so much.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know.” She frowned cutely, but did not seem particularly concerned. This worried Daniel. She was way to casual about any of it. He could almost feel that worry slide into anger—she had let a Special touch her as an experiment, to see what it would do, without sparing a thought for the risks she was taking.

He stomped on this nascent anger, snuffed it. It was getting more and more difficult to hold the emotions at bay. He was getting a headache from the effort. Around him, the air felt hot and humid, the restaurant small and oppressive. He took a deep breath, willed his face to show nothing of his turmoil.

“So are you going to tell me what happened? Are you going to tell me who that Special is and how you met him and where he is so I can go kick his ass?”

“My hero. Maybe I’ll tell you, one day. It was fine, Dan. I had it all under control. And he was not a bad guy. He was pretty charming, actually. And I got a blood sample from him in the process, which I’m happily studying. It’s slow, but I got high hopes. But, “ she added, interrupting Daniel who was about to respond, “now it’s your turn, Mister High Horse. What happened to you this afternoon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Please,” she said. “I got to the room early enough to catch some of your exchange with Fairbank. He had that gun pointed at you, and you just kept walking toward him. ‘Go ahead. I don’t care,’ you said. I saw your face. You wanted him to shoot you.”

“Come on. I was bluffing.”

“Bluffing my tight little ass. You can lie to me if you want, but don’t lie to yourself. He was about to shoot you, and you were going to let him. You wanted him to shoot you. That’s why I spoke up. You wanted him to shoot you.“

Daniel remained silent. Again, he willed his face to show no emotion. Willed his entire being to show no emotion. Feel no emotion. He almost succeeded.

“Daniel,” she said, her voice low, soft. “Look at me.”

He had never heard her sound like that, so poised, so maternal almost. And she never called him Daniel, even though that was what he preferred, and she knew it.

He looked up. He did not know what he expected to see in her face—judgment, disappointment, sadness. Instead, he saw patience. Acceptance. It called forth a surge of emotion from within that he struggled to contain, a desire to break down and let go, even though he knew he knew that those emotions would overwhelm him and he would drown.

He looked down again.

“Maybe, just maybe…” He hesitated. Breathe. “Maybe I did think it might offer…” The words did not want to come alone, did not want to come with pulling behind them pain and agony.

“An easy way out,” Cindy finished after a moment. Her voice was soft. It was not a question.

In the din of the restaurant, with people around alive and talking and generally enjoying themselves, with kids screaming in both joy and frustration, babies crying, couples flirting, friends partaking in the content-free back and forth the fueled friendships, Daniel felt full force of the alienation that had come to define his life.

Cindy seemed satisfied with something, and went back to destroying her pancakes.

“I think I might be depressed,” Daniel said, finally. The words felt weird on his tongue.

Cindy looked at him, tilted her head. “Glad to see that all that great investigative training has finally paid off.”

“I don’t really need your sarcasm right now, thanks.”

“Oh, but I think you do. And also: you’re not depressed.”

When he started to protest, she stopped him. “Trust me, I’ve seen depressed. I’ve lived with depressed.” Her face screwed up in a grimace he had never seen on her face before. “If you were depressed, I’d be running away from you so fast I’d redshift. Been there, done that, don’t need that shit in my life again.” She spat those last words out like they were poison.

When she looked back at him, there was life in her eyes. “You’re not depressed. But you’re going to get there if you don’t do something. And then you’ll be alone, and there won’t be anyone there to pick you up and keep you from killing yourself. And Jenn will be left all alone to deal with whatever it is that she’s dealing with because you abandoned her.”

It was a slap in the face, and Daniel again fought back the reaction that blossomed deep in his bones. How dare she? He breathed it down, wrestled it into submission.

“There. That’s your problem right there.” She sounded satisfied, as though she’s made her point.

“What are you talking about?”

“When’s the last time you let yourself feel something. Like, really feel something?”

Daniel had no response.

“You’re terrified. Terrified that if you feel something, anything, then there won’t be a way to hold back all those emotions struggling to get out and have their say. You’re terrified you’ll melt down.”

“Drown,” Daniel mumbled, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug as though it might offer comfort.

“Drown,” Cindy nodded, acknowledging that he was agreeing with her. “Seems apt. And you know what? Yeah, it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt like fuck. But you know what else? You’ll get through it. We all get through it. It’ll hurt, and then it’ll hurt less, and then less and less. And throughout, you’ll get stuff done and you’ll talk to people and you’ll live, and when we find Jenn you’ll be in a position to be there for her because I bet you anything that she’ll need someone there to comfort her.”

Daniel felt tears come to his eyes as he shut them tight, knowing of course that she was right, and that he needed to face what he had been avoiding for so many months now, what had driven him to hide in his apartment when he was not training at ADCorp Headquarters, almost cutting off all contacts with anyone but Cindy and O’Neill. And Calypso, of course.

Cindy reached out and grabbed his hand and he let her, and when the tears started streaming down his face he did not fight them, did not try to erase the sadness or hide it away. It did not feel good. It hurt. A lot. But the hurt was oddly validating. It was if his own body was proving to itself that it was still alive.

They held hands, like that, for longer than Daniel cared to think about.

“When did you get so wise?” he asked her.

“Three days ago. There was a quiz in Cosmo.”

He could not contain a burst of laughter. Between the tears and the laughs, he felt like something was draining. A little bit. Just a little bit. People around them were turning to look at him, a worried look on their face. He ignored them all.

Unbidden, the woman with the broken leg they had met a few days earlier, one of the Special’s victim—what was her name?—Christina—popped into his mind's eye. The way she stoically withstood what was happening to her. But she did not seem in denial, or resigned. She was… accepting, almost. Sacrificing herself for the love of her husband, suffering the pain of getting her legs smashed over and over again. With her fiancé doing it—hurting her—because it was what was needed to be done, because it was the only thing that worked, because he loved her and wanted to remain with her. He must have felt terrible. Yet he did it, because it was what was needed to be done.

The thought sobered him up. If Raul could do that for Christina, then Daniel could do it for Jenn. He nodded to himself, repeatedly, and was about to point out his realization to Cindy when he noticed that she was no longer looking at him

She was looking over his shoulder, her eyes widening in surprise.

The voice startled him before he could turn to see what had caught Cindy’s attention.

“Miss Caprese. Hope you are well.”

Shawbank’s voice was her usual neutral. If she was surprised or angry to see Cindy there, she did not let on. Daniel did not even know Shawbank could recognize Cindy, although it did not particularly surprise him. Little could surprise him about Shawbank anymore.

“Shawbank,” he said, trying to play it as cool as his partner. “Would you like to join us?”

Cindy was trying hard not to stare at the tall raven-haired woman towering over the table. She wore her customary black leather duster. People around were staring at the new arrival trying to make it look like they were not in fact staring. The woman could practically blend in the shadows at time, but not tonight. Tonight, she was there to be seen. She was making a point.

“I’m not staying,” Shawbank said. “I’m heading back tonight. Good job on the assignment, Malcolm.” She nodded her head, as close to smiling as she ever came.

“Huh, thanks,” he said, taken aback. “If I go pack now, I can be ready to—”

“Don’t bother. Take two days’ leave, you deserve it. Enjoy your… time off,” she added, turning her head to look at Cindy, who looked back at her with an expression filled with both curiosity and awe. “Miss Caprese,” Shawbank said, “thank you for your help. It is nice to finally meet you in person. I have heard much about you. You look… well.”

Cindy grinned, somewhat nervously. “Thanks…” For once, she seemed out of words.

Shawbank’s eyes crawled over Cindy, slowly, taking in everything up to and including the obscenely short skirt she wore and bared her legs almost completely. Cindy sustained the look at first, but started to fidget, and then blushed slightly. She dropped her eyes, unable to look at the raven-haired woman in the eyes.

“You looked better as a blonde,” Shawbank said, and Daniel sad Cindy shiver at the woman’s words.

“Thank you,” she said in a small voice.

“Malcolm,” Shawbank said by way of goodbye. She turned on her heels and left. Daniel let out the breath he had not been aware he had been holding.

Cindy looked at the departing figure with what appeared to be longing. After several seconds, she turned to Daniel, who was eyeing her curiously. “What?” she asked.

“You’re blushing. I don’t recall you ever blushing before.”

“I’m not— Dammit. “ She took a deep breath. “That woman is… something.”

“You tell me.”

Cindy turned to look in the direction where Shawbank had gone.

“Cin, you okay?”

“What? Oh. Yes. Sorry.” She shook her head, then shivered.

“I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I haven’t felt like this in… a while.” She stared at her food. “I told you about Farid, didn’t I?”

“The guy you dated in high school? The one who…”

“We didn’t date. He used me like a fucking bitch, and I loved every single minute of it.”

Daniel flinched. “Yeah, you told me about him.”

“He was unlike anyone I’d ever met, and unlike anyone I’ve ever met since. But…”

“Shawbank.”

“Shawbank,” Cindy nodded, then she shivered again, her eyes closed. “When she looked at me right then, I was a mouse and she was a bird of prey, and she was daring me to move, waiting for it, knowing that she just needed to reach out and claw me out and bam, I’m helpless and at her utter and complete mercy.” She licked her lips.

“Huh, you okay?” Daniel was worried suddenly.

Cindy opened her eyes, and they were shining. “I’m so fucking horny right now. Let’s go.” She stood, dropped too many bills on the table, and grabbed Daniel’s hand.

Daniel knew better than to resist. For a girl with such submissive tendencies, he thought, Cindy Caprese certainly could have a dominating streak.



*



As soon as he said those words—Betty, adjustment code C006—Daniel wondered if it had been a mistake.

He did not know what to expect. No, that was not quite true—he knew of a range of possibilities. He might see a look of incomprehension on Betty Parkinson’s face as she tried to understand what he had just said. He might see anger and disbelief if Betty knew of Calypso and took offense at his presumption that she was like Calypso and that he could turn her into a little sexpot with a few words.

He might also see Betty react like Calypso, either because there was some conditioning going on with both girls, or they were both in on the plan, whatever it might be. While Cindy scoffed at the idea, Daniel still had not dismissed the possibility that Calypso had been hired and was acting. Wishful thinking, responded a knowing voice inside of him.

What Daniel did not expect was Betty’s actual reaction. Her eyes glazed over slightly, the way Calypso’s did when he uttered the adjustment trigger, and then her face broke into a broad grin.

“Well done, Agent Malcolm,” Betty said, pushing her chair back and standing up. She smoothed her skirt, drawing attention to her smooth curves and her long legs.

“And the 06 adjustment, too. An excellent choice, if I may say so. Fits your profile perfectly. I’m going to enjoy this,” she added as she made her way around her desk to end up in front of Daniel. There was a sway in her hips that he had never seen before.

“Before we turn to the fun,” she said, “this is a special program made to run the first time an agent activates me. It is merely an introduction to our program—details will be provided by your training mentor, in your case, Agent Shawbank. What clued you in to use the trigger sentence, Agent Malcolm?”

As if they were having a different conversation than their owner, Betty’s hands were running underneath her short jacket and rubbing her breasts over her blouse. Betty’s breath was coming in slightly quicker as well, and she was rubbing her thighs together, slowly but unmistakably.

“Well…” He forced himself to look her in the eyes, playing the role of the Big-Ass Agent. “That tattoo on your finger is just like Calypso’s. And she’s clearly been programming somehow to respond to that sentence I used. So I figured I’d try it on you as well.”

Daniel watched Betty unbuttoning her blouse after pulling off her short jacket, exposing a lacy white bra that did an effective job at pushing her sizable breasts up.

“Still a big risk,” Betty said. “What if the trigger sentence didn’t activate me the way it does Calypso? What if it didn’t turn me into a lusty little slut that can’t wait to feel that big cock of yours smashing into her tight pussy?”

Daniel swallowed. Big-Ass Agent, he reminded himself. Unbidden, a sentence that Paul, his mysterious phone contact, had said came back to mind: You’ll need to prove that given the opportunity to use a young woman, you will do so with enthusiasm and pleasure. He could hear Cindy’s voice in his ear. Just like role-play, Dan. What did he have to lose at this point anyway?

“I’d have figured something out,” he shrugged, looking at Betty in the eyes. “Frankly, if there was even a small chance that—” and he let his eyes roam down her body as he spoke, lingering on the tip of her breasts half-exposed by her bra, on her hands caressing her flat stomach, on the curve of her hips, “I’d get to see you strip and then bang you, it was worth any risk.”

“Flatterer,” she said, even as she pulled off her blouse, a big smile on her face. “So you like my body?”

“Who wouldn’t?” he smiled, and tried to make the smile as self-sufficient as he could. Thinking of it as role play helped. That he had no strong emotional attachment to her helped as well. He was getting hard. Betty was indeed a beautiful woman, and she was looking at him as though she wanted to swallow him whole. “But what about the other girls around with the same tattoo on their finger?”

Betty grinned. “Having two sexy bitches at your beck and call not enough for you, Agent Malcolm?”

“Wouldn’t want to get bored.”

“They can also be activated. But you’ll need to modify the trigger sentence a little bit. Your mentor will explain the details. But yes, they are all available. Them, and any other girl out there with this tattoo on their finger. Available for you to activate and treat like horny little sluts whenever you want. A perk of your position. You should feel free to indulge. Especially on me,” she grinned, “often, and hard.” Her bra was off now, and her beautiful breasts were out and she was cradling them and kneading them.

“Now, of course, there are rules and limits on your conduct, which your assigned mentor will go over with you. The main ones are discretion—this perk is not widely known, and requires at least security clearance B3 that you have earned today. Discussing this with non-cleared personnel or outsiders will be punished by termination with prejudice. You don’t really want that, believe me.”

She may have meant it as a threat, but the edge was severely blunted by her unfastening her skirt and letting it drop, exposing a pair of white lacy panties matching her discarded bra.

“Do you have any questions, Agent Malcolm?” She sounded a lot more playful now, as if she were stringing him along now, postponing the inevitable for her own amusement, for her own delayed gratification. Her eyes were as shiny as her lips, her breath was short, her nipples were rock hard.

“Many,” Daniel said, making it a point to stare at the exposed body of his HR representative. He was finding it easy to act like an entitled asshole—all he had to think back to was the brothers at the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity. What would Biff do, he half-joked to himself, if only to blunt to edge of pain that came with the image. Accordingly, he leered openly at Betty, letting his eyes follow her curves from her breasts to her hips down her legs and then all the way back up.

The young woman seemed to love it, pushing out her chest and running her hands on her sides, caressing her skin, running her tongue over her lower lip to keep it moist.

There was no denying it: he was aroused, and Betty was incredibly sexy.

Is this how you become a monster?

The question went without an answer. Betty turned around, facing her desk, thrusting her ass toward him, clad in an obscenely thin G string. Her body was perfect, lean with satiny skin, her ass round and firm.

In a single movement, she leaned forward on her desk and pulled the gusset of her G string to the side, exposing a clearly wet pussy. It was just like with Calypso: Betty was wet and ready, and eager to fuck.

As if there was any doubt about what he was supposed to do, Betty looked over her shoulder. “Come on, baby. Come and fuck your little slut.”

He stood, rising behind Betty who kept her G string pulled out of the way and her ass raised. She was swaying gently, hypnotically.

Daniel unfastened his trousers, already hard. If he were entirely honest with himself, what he was about to do was no great hardship. Betty was gorgeous, and her body practically screamed for being taken.

“Come on, baby,” Betty moaned, running a finger through her slit with the same hand she was pulling her string aside with. “Shove that big cock inside!”

In for a penny… Daniel took a step toward her, and rubbed the tip of his cock against her wetness. He had intended to tease her a little, but Betty would have none of it. With a twist of the hips, she pushed back and slipped her pussy around his cock, sucking it in with no difficulty.

She was hot and wet and felt so good that Daniel worried for a second—an old reflex—that he might come right there on the spot. Was he supposed to come inside her anyway?

He could practically hear Cindy groan in his ear. Just fuck the slut already! Quit thinking so much. Just feel.

So he did. He closed his eyes, and let himself go, enjoying Betty’s tightness around him. She moaned deeply, pressing back against him, a hand dropping between her legs. He felt her rubbing herself even as he plunged into her, bringing herself quickly to a crashing orgasm that sent shivers down his spine.

Daniel pounced into her, unleashing a pent-up frustration that he would have not been aware before his trip to Los Angeles and his conversation with Cindy. His hands grabbed Betty’s hips, and he could hear Cindy’s voice in his ear urging him to go harder, faster, deeper.

He pulled out right before he came, sending long streaks of c8k up Betty’s ass and lower back, even as she rubbed herself with renewed vigor into a second orgasm that left her panting on her desk.



*



Ten minutes later, Daniel emerged from Betty Parkinson’s office, shell shocked. Betty had put her clothes back on after their tryst, still teasing Daniel and trying to coax a second fuck out of him, offering to suck him off if he would just stick his cock back in her cunt and make her scream till the windows shatter. But Daniel declined, and after a few minutes—just like Calypso—Betty quietly and gently returned to normal.

What have I done?

Daniel made an effort to hide his discomfort as he left Betty’s office. Everyone around were going about their business, oblivious to the act that had taken place inside the small office, oblivious to the fact that Betty had fucked him over her desk.

Everyone behaved like it was another day at the office.

Daniel figured that maybe it was. For ADCorp. He was nothing special—he was a newly promoted agent, and there were two dozens of them on the team, at various levels. They presumably all had the same deal he had.

Did the girls themselves know? Daniel suspect that they did not.

It was Darnell and Delta Iota Kappa all over again. The DIK girls, programmed by Cargyle’s technology to do the bidding of the fraternity brothers, unaware of their actions, programmed to dismiss all of it as completely normal.

Cargyle, who according to Sam O’Neill, had worked at ADCorp. Daniel had been unable to find any information about him, but that was hardly surprising. Security at the company was of prime concern, and Advanced Research was particularly cordoned off.

It was all become clear. Cargyle had run away, for some reason, with some of ADCorp technology, and had used it at Darnell. Shawbank had been sent to retrieve him, and recover the technology. He did not have any proof of it, but he guessed that the attack at Delta Iota Kappa and subsequent fire must have also been instigated by ADCorp, probably to get rid of the evidence. Was Shawbank involved in that part of the operation?

And why was he still alive? He was a witness, and should have been eliminated. Instead, ADCorp hired him. It made no sense. Not when it was so easy to get rid of him.

And what about Cindy? She had been attacked in North Alexandria while the fraternity was assaulted—Sam O’Neill had intervened to help her out—presumably as part of the same operation, since Cindy had been programmed using Cargyle’s technology. Yet she was still alive, and Shawbank clearly knew about her already.

Daniel’s mind was firing on all cylinders. The wreath ring tattoo on the little finger—it seemed to indicate that a woman had been programmed by ADCorp. What about the tattoo on the hip of Rebecca McGregor? It had to have meant the same thing. Did she work for the company as well? If she did, Shawbank had not known about it. And Daniel doubted that Shawbank was to kind to miss something like that.

Before he could proceed further with his internal investigation, he spotted Patrick Dee, head of Advanced Research, walk in his direction. The young man saw Daniel at the same time, and gave him a smile that never reached his eyes.

“Agent Malcolm,” Dee said, nodding. “Good to see you. Control said good things about you regarding a recent assignment. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir. Good news travel fast.”

“Bad news even faster, unfortunately. I hope we won’t have to deal with any of those.”

There was something in Dee’s eyes that Daniel could not penetrate. It was only after the man had saluted him and kept walking towards the HR department that Daniel managed to put a name on the feeling—Dee did not like him. Why was anybody’s guess.

Daniel remembered than both of his previous encounters with Patrick Dee had occurred near Elizabeth Parkinson’s office. Daniel had thought that the man was having an office fling with Elizabeth. But now there was another possibility. If agents had access to programmed women within the company, it made sense that executives would as well.

Perks of the position, Betty had said.

Patrick Dee was banging Betty Parkinson.

A wave of disgust shot through him—what a scuzzball—and the hypocrisy of the feeling was not lost on him.

He stayed with that feeling as he walked back to the Investigation and Enforcement Division building, nodding at people on the way, surreptitiously examining their fingers, and generally trying to be pleasant. But inside, he was reeling. What have I done?

His team’s station was empty when Daniel keyed inside. He sat down on the small table around which they often reviewed the reports from the various information centers that monitored activity that could potentially be interpreted as indicating a Special. He stared at the bank of monitors, lost in thought.

How long he remained there, and how long Armand Brisecoeur, the team technician, stood in the doorway watching him, Daniel did not know. But when he felt eyes on his back, he turned around to find the Belgian watching him with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Félicitations, my friend,” the man said, his accent still strong despite having lived in the United states for most of his life.

“What about?”

“Your psychological evaluation, dummy. You passed. Well done!”

“My… What?” It made no sense, he did not go through any evaluation. Unless… Of course. Betty Parkinson. Activating her had been his psychological evaluation. It made sense. Did he have what it took to become an agent? Did he lack morals and was he willing to take advantage of a sexy woman with no means of saying no? He tried to hide his anger, mindful of Cindy’s words earlier that week not to bury the feeling, but still wanting to appear professional.

“Thank you,“ he said, trying to project the feeling of entitlement that he had managed to channel earlier. “It was no big deal.”

Brisecoeur eyed him for a moment, a lot more carefully that he had ever done. “Ah, you say that, but the pool had you passing only a month for now, at the very least. You did good.”

There was a pool? He probably should not have been surprised. “Glad to beat the odds. How did you bet?”

Brisecoeur dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “C’est pas important. So who was it?”

“Who was what?”

Brisecoeur looked at him meaningfully.

“Oh. Elizabeth. I mean, Betty. Parkinson. From HR.”

“Oh nice! She’s a little hottie, that one. Nice titties too.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty sweet alright. Though I prefer her ass.”

Brisecoeur studied him for a long moment, and Daniel got nervous. “What?” It came out harsher than he meant it, but he was starting to feel annoyed. The day was getting to be a bit much.

Brisecoeur snapped out of whatever reverie he had been stuck in. “Nothing. Pardon.” He slapped Daniel on the back. “Anyway, well done, man. Well done. We have to go out and celebrate tonight!”

“Look I don’t…”

“No argument. It’s a tradition. The team goes out to celebrate. I’ll let Shawbank know. Eight o’clock, The Drunken European. It’s a sweet little pub in Pigtown. Come on, man! It’s a good thing!”

Brisecoeur took Daniel by surprise and pulled him close to hug him. What made the gesture stranger was what Brisecoeur whispered in his ear in the two seconds he was near. “Just play along.”

When Brisecoeur pulled out, he was grinning broadly. “Beside, if you can’t celebrate the happy stuff, what can you celebrate?”

Daniel forced a smile on his face and nodded. “Fine, fine, you win. We celebrate.”

“Great! Eight, the Drunken European. And now I got to go and do some code review of what those idiots congénitaux they call programmers tried to add to my pattern recognition platform. See you later!”

Daniel watched him go, doubting everything.



*



Daniel stared at the small sign advertising the pub, hesitating. Could he trust Brisecoeur? Was this a trap? And if so, what sort of trap? He shook his head. He was sounding more and more like O’Neill. Idly, he wondered where the private investigator was—he had not heard from him since before leaving for Los Angeles.

The pub was tucked away the basement of an old building. Inside, he was greeted by a hostess who nodded when he gave his name as if she were expecting him. He followed a beautiful waitress with short red hair to a small booth in an isolated corner, partly hidden behind a brick column. He thanked her, and could not help being reminded Kyra MacKenna, another victim of the disaster at the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity house. He was working for the people that probably caused it.

The selection revolved heavily on local microbreweries and Belgian beers. Given Brisecoeur’s origin, he doubted it was a coincidence. Daniel settled for a dense oat stout, which fit his dark mood perfectly.

Brisecoeur showed up right on time. He knew exactly where to go, nodding at the hostess on his way in. He seemed relaxed, comfortable. Daniel was always surprised by this. Probably because Brisecoeur was associated to computers in his mind, he kept trying to compare him to Radhu, his brilliant but socially awkward friend from Darnell. Another victim of that fateful year that changed Daniel’s life. His mood darkened further.

Brisecoeur took a seat in front of him. Almost immediately, the red-headed waitress appeared beside him. “Armo,” she smiled. “Long time.”

“Been busy, ma belle,” Brisecoeur replied. “You know how it is. The usual, please?”

“Sure thing. Be right back,” the cute redhead replied.

“What are you drinking?” Brisecoeur asked, looking at Daniel’s tall glass.

But Daniel was too distracted to answer. When the waitress dropped a coaster on the table, he had spotted the wreathed ring tattoo on her little finger, the same one that adorned Calypso and Betty. He kept staring after her.

“Ah, so you noticed. Yes. Annie has the mark.” Brisecoeur was looking at him, and settled back in his seat. “So what did Betty tell you exactly?”

“The standard spiel, I guess. That the tattoo marks women that have been programmed to be… available to us.”

Brisecoeur nodded. “Yeah, I got the same description when I started. In truth, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s a good introduction.”

“Betty said that my mentor, Shawbank, would explain the details.”

Brisecoeur grinned at that, and shook his head. “That’ll be the day.”

“She isn’t coming?”

“Shawbank? Oh, she doesn’t come to these . She’s not the most sociable of people. No, it’s just you and me tonight.”

Daniel suddenly had a thought—could Brisecoeur be Paul? The man used a modulator to hide his voice on the phone, and so could really be anyone.

Annie—the red-headed waitress—arrived with a large bottle with an intricate label. “One Fin du Monde for my favorite customer,” she said, placing the bottle and a glass before Brisecoeur. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

Daniel shook his head, and Brisecoeur replied. “Not just yet, ma belle. But we’re thinking of appetizers, so perhaps you can swing by in five minutes? Give us some time to decide?”

“Of course, Armo. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” She looked around quickly, swooped down to give Brisecoeur a quick kiss on the lips, then was gone.

“Annie here is my Calypso,” Brisecoeur said by way of explanation as he poured his beer. Daniel did not react to learning that Brisecoeur knew about Calypso. “She was assigned to me when I started, when I was tested. Playing with her was my test, just like it was yours.” He took a long swill of beer, and sighed in contentment. “And yes, to answer the question you’re not asking, she’s still assigned to me. Her adjustments have been keyed to my voice, so only I can activate them. Like Calypso and you. Except, of course, that’s not quite true.” He gave a humorless grin.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s all about the funding model, really. There’s a lot of research going on into the Adjustment process, as we call it. Reducing the side effects, making sure that it holds without frequent reinforcements, making sure that the adjustments don’t leak up to the everyday personality, while still remaining hidden from a adjustee’s consciousness. And that gets expensive fast. And it’s been going on for years. So how do we pay for it?”

“It’s a big company. Profit from other divisions?”

Brisecoeur shook his head. “The pharmaceutical and chemical branches of ADCorp are independent subsidiaries and their profit does get reinvested, but they are ultimately accountable to their own stockholders. ADCorp proper is still privately held.“

Annie the waitress showed up to take their order, and they gave it, even though Daniel was not particularly hungry. Brisecoeur thanked her with a smile. “So,” Annie asked Daniel before leaving. “You work with Armo here?”

“I have that pleasure.”

“Then we have to get together at some point and you’ll have to dish out all the dirt you got. He never tells me anything!” She playfully punched the Belgian on the shoulder. “I’ll be back with your food shortly.” She left, her pert little ass swaying in her bouncy skirt.

Daniel turned back to Brisecoeur, instantly back to serious. “Don’t tell me… they sell women?”

“Non. I’d like to think even we wouldn’t stoop that low. Though it’s been discussed, if the rumor mill’s right. No, we adjust women, for a hefty fee. Wives, girlfriends, the odd co-worker, sometimes a daughter. It’s pretty wide open, determined on a case-by-case basis to make sure that the requester can be trusted to not lose control of the situation.“

“So wealthy clients can just have women programmed at will? Just women?”

Brisecoeur nodded. “The Adjustment process is only stable for women. They’ve been trying to crack the code for men for a while now, to no avail. At best, the men turn aggressive, then psychotic. At worst…“

Like the Specials, Daniel realized. “The Specials?”

Brisecoeur gave a wry grin. “That’s still above your clearance level, I’m afraid. Sorry. “

“Anyway. The problem with that model, the executives discovered, is that there just aren’t enough reliable perverts with the necessary disposable income that want to turn someone they know into their love slave. So they developed an alternate sales model, a subscription-based one.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does when you think about it. What I just described is a private adjustment, where the woman adjustments are keyed to the person paying for it, for their exclusive use. But for a much smaller price, you can purchase a public adjustment. You get a woman with the default adjustments, plus a few specific ones if you wish, for an additional fee, but then that woman is available for use by clients that have purchased a subscription, renewable monthly, that gives them access to all public adjustees. They are given an authorization code, and they can activate any adjustee with public adjustments while they are subscribed.”

Daniel’s eyes widened. It made sense as a business model, if one completely overlooked its misogynistic and abusive foundations. In a flash, he understood something else.

“The tattoos,” he said, thinking out loud. “They mark the adjusted women. But I’ve seen two sorts of tattoos, one on the little finger, and one on the hip…”

Brisecoeur nodded, drinking more of his beer. “Public adjustees get tattooed on the finger, for easy recognition by clients. Private adjustees get a tattoo on the hip—or anywhere generally hidden.”

“So Calypso… Annie…”

“Public. Any client subscribed to ADCorp’s plan can activate them.”

Daniel felt like he was going to be sick.

“Did you ever wonder why we’re called Investigation and Enforcement? Investigation is what you’ve been doing—mostly concentrating on identifying and catching Freaks these days—but enforcement? Basically, agents dealing with enforcement monitor and prevent abuse. They enforce the contracts. Funny the lengths people will go to to get access to women ready to do any dirty thing at the drop of a hat. We make sure that unauthorized accesses are caught and punished, that adjustees do not go missing or get misused in ways that can splash back to ADCorp, that sort of thing. There are failsafes in place that prevent adjustees from revealing anything about us, but we’re the last line of defense.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” That question had been burning on Daniel’s tongue for a while now.

Brisecoeur looked at him, his face serious. “Two reasons. First, you will learn some of this soon enough. You haven’t had an enforcement case yet, but it’s bound to come up soon.”

“That’s what Shawbank did when we were in LA, isn’t it? That woman, Rebecca McGregor, she was a private adjustee, right?”

Brisecoeur nodded. “Her adjustments did not interact well with the Freak’s ability, and she collapsed. Shawbank had to investigate and I believe punish the husband.”

“Why the husband?”

“Whomever pays for an adjustee is responsible for her, including accidents and unpredictable events.”

Daniel did not feel sorry for the man who had had his own wife programmed—adjusted—to be a fuck toy.

“Anyway. As an agent, you can actually activate any adjustee, public or private. Just use the trigger sentence you use for Calypso, then say override authorization followed by your employee ID number. That will override the access-control restrictions, and give you full access. That’s useful for investigating, and you’ll be expected to use it at regular intervals as part of the continuing part of your evaluation.”

Daniel wanted to say something to that, but could not find the words. There was too much information. He needed to digest it all. “You said there were two reasons you were telling me this…”

Brisecoeur took a deep breath, and looked Daniel in the eyes. “I like you. You’re not like the others. And I’m not just saying that because you helped me out with my sister. She loved the museum, by the way. And we had the longest conversations we’ve ever had. And I read up on you, mon ami, looked at your file, what happened to your girlfriend—”

“We were engaged.” He carried her engagement ring in a necklace around his neck.

“Right. Sorry. Fiancée. And, well, I would feel bad if something happened to you.”

“Why would something bad happen to me?”

“Honestly, because you don’t belong here. I have no idea why they hired you in the first place. I have no idea how you passed the psych evaluation—I’ve checked your usage of Calypso, and it’s barely above threshold. Bare minimum. And it’s not very surprising either. You don’t want to activate her. You hate it. Just like you hated activating Betty.”

Daniel wanted to protest, but Brisecoeur stopped him. “It was written all over your face when you came back from HR.”

This time it was Daniel who drank, downing three quarters of his glass as he tried to determine how much trouble he was in now.

Brisecoeur’s voice dropped. “You’re a nice guy, Daniel Malcolm. Agents are not nice. In fact, as I think you’ve already figured out because you’re not dumb, we recruit jerks, or at least arrogant assholes, and we test them to make sure that their attitudes toward women is, shall we say, concomitant with their working in an environment where said women are nearly chattel. If you’re not careful, you’re liable to do something stupid and get… taken care of.”

Daniel felt a wave of anger wash over him. He did not try to hide it. Cindy would be proud. “So why would you want to help me if you’re all such arrogant assholes? “

Brisecoeur gave a shot to his left, where Annie the waitress was slowly making her round toward them with their food. “I’m not going to say that I was not a trou de cul in my youth, but people change, man. People change.” His tone was almost wistful on this last sentence.

It was not difficult to guess what had happened to Brisecoeur.

“You fell for her. Annie. She was your test. And you fell for her.”

“Big time. I mean, the company did its homework, and knew exactly what I liked, and set it up for me to discover her adjustments and use them. And I did at first. I’m not proud of it. But I did. And then…”

“Then she became a person.”

“That’s a good way to put it. She became a person to me. I didn’t want to,. I mean, come on man, in an environment where you got hot women walking around pretty much available all the time, getting attached is stupid, isn’t it? But of course—”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“It really doesn’t.” Brisecoeur finished his beer. “So I’m stuck. Evaluation is constant and permanent. Remember that. It’s less blatant, less systematic, less invasive. But it’s still there. You get reviewed at regular intervals. So I understand what you’re going through, . Hiding your feelings and getting on with the job. I could read your face well because I’m feeling the same.”

“So why are you still there? “

“Working for the company, you mean?” Brisecoeur made a face. “Let’s just say that once you’ve been in deep enough, it’s not exactly easy to leave. Not impossible, but not easy. And even though the work is starting to get gross—the whole Adjustment process is really starting to creep me out—there is some good we’re doing.”

“The Specials.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m so happy to have moved back to Specials duty. It’s… let’s say, ethically unproblematic. Before that, I was Internal Affairs, which is also reasonable: taking care of bastards that step out of bounds. I don’t do so well with Enforcement anymore, where we get to regulate how our clients use adjustees. But there’s more and more of it. “

Daniel suddenly understood something else about Brisecoeur as the Belgian started relaxing and talking more freely. He’s lonely. He has no one to talk to about this, these new feelings he’s having. But now he has me.

“Anyway,” Brisecoeur continued, “welcome to the mad house.” He raised his glass, and Daniel clinked it.

There was a long pause, as they both watched Annie flitter about from table to table, flirting lightly with customers, once in a while flashing Brisecoeur a heartbreaking smile.

“So what now?“ Daniel finally added.

“Now? Et bien, you just continue the great job you’re doing, and concentrate on catching the bad guys. And try to get some enjoyment out of the girls—indulge a lot at first, almost every day, everybody does—and then you can slowly bring it down to a couple of times a week, which is more or less the frequency everyone gets to in the end.

“Tonight, you keep on drinking some of this fine beer, we eat a bit, and you tell me about your life and I tell you about mine, and we get drunk. There’s a club down the road that has some pretty good bands that we’ll go and check out. And then tonight when you get back to your place you call up your Calypso, you activate her with some kinky adjustment, and you fuck her brains out so that whomever’s monitoring you can fill some checkboxes.”

Daniel made a face. “That doesn’t feel right,” he said. “I like her. I can’t do that to her.”

“Stop thinking that way, right now. I know how you feel, but you go soft on this and you’ll be found… well actually, you won’t be found. You’re going to disappear. Your Calypso is a tool right now. She’s not aware of it at least, and she gets to enjoy her life outside of what you tell her to do. Just take comfort in that.”

He leaned back and gave Annie a glance.

“There’s another thing,“ Brisecoeur said, and he clearly steeled himself for what he said next. “Before the night is over, you have to activate Annie and fuck her.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You have to use your override code on Annie.”

Daniel made a face.

Brisecoeur again read his mind. “Yes, it’s horrible. I agree. Trust me, I hate it as much as you do.”

“Annie, though? Tonight?”

“Yup. It’s not just you that’s being tested. It’s me, too. Just to show them that I’m not getting too attached. It’s for that reason that the Division holds parties every couple of weeks where every agent brings their girl, and they swap them around. You’ll be added to the list, and you’ll have to bring Calypso.”

Daniel’s eyes grew wide at the implication of what Brisecoeur was saying.

“Yeah, again, I know,” the Belgian responded, his face a mask now. “Think of it as a bonding experience with your fellow agents.“

“Bunch of bastards,” Daniel growled, failing to keep his anger in check.

“Hear, hear,” Brisecoeur said, raising his glass again. “Now let’s get drunk!”

Is this how you become a monster?

Daniel still did not have an answer.



THE END of BOOK VI